11171	----	[Transcriber's note: there is no Chapter XI.] UNCLE TOM'S CABIN YOUNG FOLKS' EDITION By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE UNCLE TOM'S CABIN CHAPTER I UNCLE TOM AND LITTLE HARRY ARE SOLD Very many years ago, instead of having servants to wait upon them and work for them, people used to have slaves. These slaves were paid no wages. Their masters gave them only food and clothes in return for their work. When any one wanted servants he went to market to buy them, just as nowadays we buy horses and cows, or even tables and chairs. If the poor slaves were bought by kind people they would be quite happy. Then they would work willingly for their masters and mistresses, and even love them. But very often cruel people bought slaves. These cruel people used to beat them and be unkind to them in many other ways. It was very wicked to buy and sell human beings as if they were cattle. Yet Christian people did it, and many who were good and kind otherwise thought there was no wrong in being cruel to their poor slaves. 'They are only black people,' they said to themselves. 'Black people do not feel things as we do.' That was not kind, as black people suffer pain just in the same way as white people do. One of the saddest things for the poor slaves was that they could never long be a happy family all together--father, mother, and little brothers and sisters--because at any time the master might sell the father or the mother or one of the children to some one else. When this happened those who were left behind were very sad indeed--more sad than if their dear one had died. Uncle Tom was a slave. He was a very faithful and honest servant, and his master, Mr. Shelby, was kind to him. Uncle Tom's wife was called Aunt Chloe. She was Mr. Shelby's head cook, and a very good one too, she was. Nobody in all the country round could make such delicious pies and cakes as Aunt Chloe. Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe lived together in a pretty little cottage built of wood, quite close to Mr. Shelby's big house. The little cottage was covered with climbing roses, and the garden was full of beautiful bright flowers and lovely fruit trees. Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe lived happily for many years in their little cottage, or cabin, as it was called. All day Uncle Tom used to work in the fields, while Aunt Chloe was busy in the kitchen at Mr. Shelby's house. When evening came they both went home to their cottage and their children, and were merry together. Mr. Shelby was a good man, and kind to his slaves, but he was not very careful of his money. When he had spent all he had, he did not know what to do to get more. At last he borrowed money from a man called Haley, hoping to be able to pay it back again some day. But that day never came. Haley grew impatient, and said, 'If you don't pay what you owe me, I will take your house and lands, and sell them to pay myself back all the money I have lent to you.' So Mr. Shelby sold everything he could spare and gathered money together in every way he could think of, but still there was not enough. Then Haley said, 'Give me that slave of yours called Tom--he is worth a lot of money.' But Mr. Shelby knew that Haley was not a nice man. He knew he did not want Tom for a servant, but only wanted to sell him again, to make more money. So Mr. Shelby said, 'No, I can't do that. I never mean to sell any of my slaves, least of all Tom. He has been with me since he was a little boy.' 'Oh very well,' said Haley, 'I shall sell your house and lands, as I said I should.' Mr. Shelby could not bear to think of that, so he agreed to let Haley have Tom. He made him promise, however, not to sell Tom again except to a kind master. 'Very well,' said Haley, 'but Tom isn't enough. I must have another slave.' Just at this moment a little boy came dancing into the room where Mr. Shelby and Haley were talking. He was a pretty, merry little fellow, the son of a slave called Eliza, who was Mrs. Shelby's maid. 'There now,' said Haley, 'give me that little chap, as well as Tom, and we will say no more about the money you owe me.' 'I can't,' said Mr. Shelby. 'My wife is very fond of Eliza, and would never hear of having Harry sold.' 'Oh, very well,' said Haley once more, 'I must just sell your house.' So again Mr. Shelby gave in, and Haley went away with the promise that next morning Uncle Tom and little Harry should be given to him, to be his slaves. CHAPTER II ELIZA RUNS AWAY WITH LITTLE HARRY Mr. Shelby was very unhappy because of what he had done. He knew his wife would be very unhappy too, and he did not know how to tell her. He had to do it that night, however, before she went to bed. Mrs. Shelby could hardly believe it. 'Oh, you do not mean this,' she said. 'You must not sell our good Tom and dear little Harry. Do anything rather than that. It is a wicked, wicked thing to do. 'There is nothing else I can do,' said Mr. Shelby. 'I have sold everything I can think of, and at any rate now that Haley has set his heart on having Tom and Harry, he would not take anything or anybody instead.' Mrs. Shelby cried very much about it, but at last, though she was very, very unhappy she fell asleep. But some one whom Mr. and Mrs. Shelby never thought of was listening to this talk. Eliza was sitting in the next room. The door was not quite closed, so she could not help hearing what was said. As she listened she grew pale and cold and a terrible look of pain came into her face. Eliza had had three dear little children, but two of them had died when they were tiny babies. She loved and cared for Harry all the more because she had lost the others. Now he was to be taken from her and sold to cruel men, and she would never see him again. She felt she could not bear it. Eliza's husband was called George, and was a slave too. He did not belong to Mr. Shelby, but to another man, who had a farm quite near. George and Eliza could not live together as a husband and wife generally do. Indeed, they hardly ever saw each other. George's master was a cruel man, and would not let him come to see his wife. He was so cruel, and beat George so dreadfully, that the poor slave made up his mind to run away. He had come that very day to tell Eliza what he meant to do. As soon as Mr. and Mrs. Shelby stopped talking, Eliza crept away to her own room, where little Harry was sleeping. There he lay with his pretty curls around his face. His rosy mouth was half open, his fat little hands thrown out over the bed-clothes, and a smile like a sunbeam upon his face. 'My baby, my sweet-one,' said Eliza, 'they have sold you. But mother will save you yet!' She did not cry. She was too sad and sorrowful for that. Taking a piece of paper and a pencil, she wrote quickly. [Illustration] 'Oh, missis! dear missis! don't think me ungrateful--don't think hard of me, anyway! I heard all you and master said to-night. I am going to try to save my boy--you will not blame me I God bless and reward you for all your kindness!' Eliza was going to run away. She gathered a few of Harry's clothes into a bundle, put on her hat and jacket, and went to wake him. Poor Harry was rather frightened at being waked in the middle of the night, and at seeing his mother bending over him, with her hat and jacket on. 'What is the matter, mother?' he said beginning to cry. [Illustration] 'Hush,' she said, 'Harry mustn't cry or speak aloud, or they will hear us. A wicked man was coming to take little Harry away from his mother, and carry him 'way off in the dark. But mother won't let him. She's going to put on her little boy's cap and coat, and run off with him, so the ugly man can't catch him.' Harry stopped crying at once, and was good and quiet as a little mouse, while his mother dressed him. When he was ready, she lifted him in her arms, and crept softly out of the house. It was a beautiful, clear, starlight night, but very cold, for it was winter-time. Eliza ran quickly to Uncle Tom's cottage, and tapped on the window. Aunt Chloe was not asleep, so she jumped up at once, and opened the door. She was very much astonished to see Eliza standing there with Harry in her arms. Uncle Tom followed her to the door, and was very much astonished too. 'I'm running away, Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe--carrying off my child,' said Eliza. 'Master sold him.' 'Sold him?' they both echoed, lifting up their hands in dismay. 'Yes, sold him,' said Eliza. 'I heard master tell missis that he had sold my Harry, and you, Uncle Tom. The man is coming to take you away to-morrow.' At first Tom could hardly believe what he heard. Then he sank down, and buried his face in his hands. 'The good Lord have pity on us!' said Aunt Chloe. 'What has Tom done that master should sell him?' [Illustration] 'He hasn't done anything--it isn't for that. Master don't want to sell; but he owes this man money. If he doesn't pay him it will end in his having to sell the house and all the slaves. Master said he was sorry. But missis she talked like an angel. I'm a wicked girl to leave her so, but I can't help it. It must be right; but if it an't right, the good Lord will forgive me, for I can't help doing it. 'Tom,' said Aunt Chloe, 'why don't you go too? There's time.' Tom slowly raised his head and looked sorrowfully at her. 'No, no,' he said. 'Let Eliza go. It is right that she should try to save her boy. Mas'r has always trusted me, and I can't leave him like that. It is better for me to go alone than for the whole place to be sold. Mas'r isn't to blame, Chloe. He will take care of you and the poor--' Tom could say no more. Big man though he was, he burst into tears, at the thought of leaving his wife and dear little children, never to see them any more. 'Aunt Chloe,' said Eliza, in a minute or two, 'I must go. I saw my husband to-day. He told me he meant to run away soon, because his master is so cruel to him. Try to send him a message from me. Tell him I have run away to save our boy. Tell him to come after me if he can. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless you!' Then Eliza went out again into the dark night with her little boy in her arms, and Aunt Chloe shut the door softly behind her. CHAPTER III THE MORNING AFTER Next morning, when it was discovered that Eliza had run away with her little boy, there was great excitement and confusion all over the house. Mrs. Shelby was very glad. 'Thank God!' she said. 'I hope Eliza will get right away. I could not bear to think of Harry being sold to that cruel man.' Mr. Shelby was angry. 'Haley knew I didn't want to sell the child,' he said. 'He will blame me for this.' One person only was quite silent, and that was Aunt Chloe. She went on, making the breakfast as if she heard and saw nothing of the excitement round her. All the little black boys belonging to the house thought it was fine fun. Very soon, about a dozen young imps were roosting, like so many crows, on the railings, waiting for Haley to come. They wanted to see how angry he would be, when he heard the news. And he was dreadfully angry. The little nigger boys thought it was grand. They shouted and laughed and made faces at him to their hearts' content. At last Haley became so angry, that Mr. Shelby offered to give him two men to help him to find Eliza. But these two men, Sam and Andy, knew quite well that Mrs. Shelby did not want Eliza to be caught, so they put off as much time as they could. They let loose their horses and Haley's too. Then they frightened and chased them, till they raced like mad things all over the great lawns which surrounded the house. Whenever it seemed likely that a horse would be caught, Sam ran up, waving his hat and shouting wildly, 'Now for it! Cotch him! Cotch him!' This frightened the horses so much that they galloped off faster than before. Haley rushed up and down, shouting and using dreadful, naughty words, and stamping with rage all the time. At last, about twelve o'clock, Sam came riding up with Haley's horse. 'He's cotched,' he said, seemingly very proud of himself. 'I cotched him!' Of course, now it was too late to start before dinner. Besides, the horses were so tired with all their running about, that they had to have a rest. When at last they did start, Sam led them by a wrong road. So the sun was almost setting before they arrived at the village where Haley hoped to find Eliza. CHAPTER IV THE CHASE When Eliza left Uncle Tom's cabin, she felt very sad and lonely. She knew she was leaving all the friends she had ever had behind her. At first Harry was frightened. Soon he grew sleepy. 'Mother, I don't need to keep awake, do I?' he said. 'No, my darling, sleep, if you want to.' 'But, mother, if I do get asleep, you won't let the bad man take me?' 'No!' 'You're sure, an't you, mother?' 'Yes, sure.' [Illustration] Harry dropped his little weary head upon her shoulder, and was soon fast asleep. Eliza walked on and on, never resting, all through the night. When the sun rose, she was many miles away from her old home. Still she walked on, only stopping, in the middle of the day, to buy a little dinner for herself and Harry at a farm-house. At last, when it was nearly dark, she arrived at a village, on the banks of the river Ohio. If she could only get across that river, Eliza felt she would be safe. She went to a little inn on the bank, where a kind-looking woman was busy cooking supper. 'Is there a boat that takes people across the river now?' she asked. 'No, indeed,' replied the woman. 'The boats has stopped running. It isn't safe, there be too many blocks of ice floating about.' Eliza looked so sad and disappointed when she heard this, that the good woman was sorry for her. Harry too was so tired, that he began to cry. [Illustration] 'Here, take him into this room,' said the woman, opening the door into a small bed-room. Eliza laid her tired little boy upon the bed, and he soon fell fast asleep. But for her there was no rest. She stood at the window, watching the river with its great floating blocks of ice, wondering how she could cross it. As she stood there she heard a shout. Looking up she saw Sam. She drew back just in time, for Haley and Andy were riding only a yard or two behind him. It was a dreadful moment for Eliza. Her room opened by a side door to the river. She seized her child and sprang down the steps towards it. Haley caught sight of her as she disappeared down the bank. Throwing himself from his horse, and calling loudly to Sam and Andy, he was after her in a moment. In that terrible moment her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground. The next, she was at the water's edge. On they came behind her. With one wild cry and flying leap, she jumped right over the water by the shore, on to the raft of ice beyond. It was a desperate leap. Haley, Sam, and Andy cried out, and lifted up their hands in astonishment. The great piece of ice pitched and creaked as her weight came upon it. But she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries she leaped to another and still another--stumbling--leaping--slipping--springing up again! Her shoes were gone, her stockings cut from her feet by the sharp edges of the ice. Blood marked every step. But she knew nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank. 'Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye are!' said the man. 'Oh, save me--do save me--do hide me,' she cried. 'Why, what's the matter?' asked the man. 'My child! this boy--mas'r sold him. There's his new mas'r,' she said, pointing to the other shore. 'Oh, save me.' 'Yer a right brave gal,' said the man. 'Go there,' pointing to a big white house close by. 'They are kind folks; they'll help you.' 'Oh, thank you, thank you,' said Eliza, as she walked quickly away. The man stood and looked after her wonderingly. On the other side of the river Haley was standing perfectly amazed at the scene. When Eliza disappeared over the bank he turned and looked at Sam and Andy, with terrible anger in his eyes. But Sam and Andy were glad, oh, so glad, that Eliza had escaped. They were so glad that they laughed till the tears rolled down their cheeks. 'I'll make ye laugh,' said Haley, laying about their heads with his riding whip. They ducked their heads, ran shouting up the bank, and were on their horses before he could reach them. 'Good evening, mas'r,' said Sam. 'I berry much 'spect missis be anxious 'bout us. Mas'r Haley won't want us no longer.' Then off they went as fast as their horses could gallop. It was late at night before they reached home again, but Mrs. Shelby was waiting for them. As soon as she heard the horses galloping up she ran out to the balcony. 'Is that you, Sam?' she called. 'Where are they?' 'Mas'r Haley's a-restin' at the tavern. He's drefful fatigued, missis.' 'And Eliza, Sam?' 'Come up here, Sam,' called Mr. Shelby, who had followed his wife, 'and tell your mistress what she wants to know.' So Sam went up and told the wonderful story of how Eliza had crossed the river on the floating ice. Mr. and Mrs. Shelby found it hard to believe that such a thing was possible. Mrs. Shelby was very, very glad that Eliza had escaped. She told Aunt Chloe to give Sam and Andy a specially good supper. Then they went to bed quite pleased with their day's work. CHAPTER V ELIZA FINDS A REFUGE A lady and gentleman were sitting talking happily together in the drawing-room of the white house to which Eliza had gone. Suddenly their old black man-of-all-work put his head in at the door and said, 'Will missis come into the kitchen?' The lady went. Presently she called to her husband, 'I do wish you would come here a moment.' He rose and went into the kitchen. There lay Eliza on two kitchen chairs. Her poor feet were all cut and bleeding, and she had fainted quite away. The master of the house drew his breath short, and stood silent. [Illustration] His wife and the cook were trying to bring Eliza round. The old man had Harry on his knee, and was busy pulling off his shoes and stockings, to warm the little cold feet. 'Poor creature,' said the lady. Suddenly Eliza opened her eyes. A dreadful look of pain came into her face. She sprang up saying, 'Oh, my Harry, have they got him?' As soon as he heard her voice, Harry jumped from the old man's knee, and running to her side, put up his arms. 'Oh, he's here! he's here,' she said, kissing him. 'Oh, ma'am,' she went, on turning wildly to the lady of the house, 'do protect us, don't let them get him.' 'Nobody shall hurt you here, poor woman,' said the lady. 'You are safe; don't be afraid.' 'God bless you,' said Eliza, covering her face and sobbing, while Harry, seeing her crying, tried to get into her lap to comfort her. 'You needn't be afraid of anything; we are friends here, poor woman. Tell me where you come from and what you want,' said the lady. 'I came from the other side of the river,' said Eliza. 'When?' said the gentleman, very much astonished. 'To-night.' 'How did you come?' 'I crossed on the ice.' 'Crossed on the ice!' exclaimed every one. 'Yes,' said Eliza slowly, 'I did. God helped me, and I crossed on the ice. They were close behind me--right behind, and there was no other way.' 'Law, missis,' said the old servant, 'the ice is all in broken up blocks, a-swinging up and down in the water.' 'I know it is. I know it,' said Eliza wildly. 'But I did it. I would'nt have thought I could--I didn't think I could get over, but I didn't care. I could but die if I didn't. And God helped me.' 'Were you a slave?' said the gentleman. 'Yes, sir.' 'Was your master unkind to you?' 'No, sir.' 'Was your mistress unkind to you?' 'No, sir--no. My mistress was always good to me.' 'What could make you leave a good home, then, and run away, and go through such danger?' 'They wanted to take my boy away from me--to sell him--to sell him down south, ma'am. To go all alone--a baby that had never been away from his mother in his life. I couldn't bear it. I took him, and ran away in the night. They chased me, they were coming down close behind me, and I heard 'em. I jumped right on to the ice. How I got across I don't know. The first I knew, a man was helping me up the bank.' It was such a sad story, that the tears came into the eyes of everyone who heard her tell it. [Illustration] 'Where do you mean to go to, poor woman?' asked the lady. 'To Canada, if I only knew where that was. Is it very far off, is Canada'? said Eliza, looking up in a simple, trusting way, to the kind lady's face. 'Poor woman,' said she again. 'Is it a great way off?' asked Eliza. 'Yes,' said the lady of the house sadly, 'it is far away. But we will try to help you to get there.' Eliza wanted to go to Canada, because it belonged to the British. They did not allow any one to be made a slave there. George, too, was going to try to reach Canada. 'Wife,' said the gentleman, when they had gone back again into their own sitting-room, 'we must get that poor woman away to-night. She is not safe here. I know some good people, far in the country, who will take care of her.' So this kind gentleman got the carriage ready, and drove Eliza and her boy a long, long way, through the dark night, to a cottage far in the country. There he left her with a good man and his wife, who promised to be kind to her, and help her to go to Canada. He gave some money to the good man too, and told him to use it for Eliza. CHAPTER VI UNCLE TOM SAYS GOOD-BYE The day after the hunt for Eliza was a very sad one in Uncle Tom's cabin. It was the day on which Haley was going to take Uncle Tom away. Aunt Chloe had been up very early. She had washed and ironed all Tom's clothes, and packed his trunk neatly. Now she was cooking the breakfast,--the last breakfast she would ever cook for her dear husband. Her eyes were quite red and swollen with crying, and the tears kept running down her cheeks all the time. 'It's the last time,' said Tom sadly. Aunt Chloe could not answer. She sat down, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed aloud. 'S'pose we must be resigned. But, O Lord, how can I? If I knew anything where you was goin', or how they'd treat you! Missis says she'll try and buy you back again in a year or two. But, Lor', nobody never comes back that goes down there.' 'There'll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here.' 'Well,' said Aunt Chloe, 's'pose dere will. But the Lord lets drefful things happen sometimes. I don't seem to get no comfort dat way.' 'Let's think on our mercies,' said Tom, in a shaking voice. 'Mercies!' said Aunt Chloe, 'don't see any mercies in 't. It isn't right! it isn't right it should be so! Mas'r never ought to have left it so that ye could be took for his debts. Mebbe he can't help himself now, but I feel it's wrong. Nothing can beat that out of me. Such a faithful crittur as ye've been, reckonin' on him more than your own wife and chil'en.' 'Chloe! now, if ye love me, you won't talk so, when it is perhaps jest the last time we'll ever have together,' said Tom. 'Wall, anyway, there's wrong about it somewhere,' said Aunt Chloe, 'I can't jest make out where 'tis. But there is wrong somewhere, I'm sure of that.' Neither Tom nor Chloe could eat any breakfast; their hearts were too full of sorrow. But the little children, who hardly understood what was happening, enjoyed theirs. It was not often that they had such a fine one as Chloe had cooked for Tom's last morning at home. [Illustration] Breakfast was just finished, when Mrs. Shelby came. Chloe was not very pleased to see her. She was angry, and blamed her for letting Tom be sold. But Mrs. Shelby did not seem to see Aunt Chloe's angry looks. 'Tom,' she said, turning to him, 'I come to--' she could say no more, she was crying so bitterly. Then all Aunt Chloe's anger faded away. 'Lor', now missis, don't-don't,' she said. She too burst out crying again, and for a few minutes they all sobbed together. 'Tom,' said Mrs. Shelby at last, 'I can't do anything for you now. But I promise you, most solemnly, to save as much, money as I can. As soon as I have enough, I will buy you back again.' Just then Haley arrived. Tom said a last sad good-bye to his wife and children, and got into the cart, which Haley had brought with him. As soon as Tom was seated in the cart, Haley took a heavy chain, and fastened it round his ankles. Poor Tom had done nothing wrong, yet he was treated worse than a thief, just because he was a slave. 'You don't need to do that,' said Mrs. Shelby, 'Tom won't run away.' 'Don't know so much about that, ma'am; I've lost one already. I can't afford to run any more risks,' replied Haley. 'Please give my love to Mas'r George,' said Tom, looking round sadly. 'Tell him how sorry I am he is not at home to say good-bye.' Master George was Mr. and Mrs. Shelby's son. He was very fond of Tom, and was teaching him to write. He often used to come and have tea in Uncle Tom's little cottage. Aunt Chloe used to make her very nicest cakes when Mas'r George came to tea. But he was not at home now, and did not know that Tom had been sold. Haley whipped up the horse, and, with a last sad look at the old place, Tom was whirled away to a town called Washington. CHAPTER VII UNCLE TOM MEETS EVA Haley stayed in Washington several days. He went to market each day and bought more slaves. He put heavy chains on their hands and feet, and sent them to prison along with Tom. When he had bought all the slaves he wanted, and was ready to go, he drove them before him, like a herd of cattle, on to a boat which was going south. It was a beautiful boat. The deck was gay with lovely ladies and fine gentlemen walking about enjoying the bright spring sunshine. Down on the lower deck, in the dark, among the luggage, were crowded Tom and the other poor slaves. Some of the ladies and gentlemen on board were very sorry for the poor niggers, and pitied them. Others never thought about them at all, or if they did, thought it was quite just and proper that they should be treated badly. 'They are only slaves,' they said. Among the passengers was a pretty little girl, about six years old. She had beautiful golden hair, and big blue eyes. She ran about here, there, and everywhere, dancing and laughing like a little fairy. There were other children on board, but not one so pretty or so merry as she. She was always dressed in white, and Tom thought she looked like a little angel, as she danced and ran about. Often and often she would come and walk sadly around the place where the poor slaves sat in their chains. She would look pityingly at them, and then go slowly away. Once or twice she came with her dress full of sweets, nuts, and oranges, and gave them all some. Tom watched the little lady, and tried to make friends with her. His pockets were full of all kinds of things, with which he used to amuse his old master's children. He could make whistles of every sort and size, cut baskets out of cherry-stones, faces out of nut-shells, jumping figures out of bits of wood. He brought these out one by one, and though the little girl was shy at first, they soon grew to be great friends. 'What is missy's name?' said Tom one day. 'Evangeline St. Clare,' said the little girl; 'though papa and everybody else call me Eva. Now, what's your name?' 'My name's Tom. The little chil'en at my old home used to call me Uncle Tom.' 'Then I mean to call you Uncle Tom, because, you see, I like you,' said Eva. 'So, Uncle Tom, where are you going?' 'I don't know, Miss Eva.' 'Don't know?' said Eva. 'No. I'm going to be sold to somebody. I don't know who.' 'My papa can buy you, said Eva quickly. 'If he buys you you will have good times. I mean to ask him to, this very day.' 'Thank you, my little lady,' said Tom. Just at this moment, the boat stopped at a small landing-place to take in some wood. Eva heard her father's voice, and ran away to speak to him. Tom too rose and walked to the side. He was allowed to go about now without chains. He was so good and gentle, that even a man like Haley could not help seeing that it could do no harm to let him go free. Tom helped the sailors to carry the wood on the boat. He was so big and strong that they were very glad to have his help. [Illustration] Eva and her father were standing by the railings as the boat once more began to move. It had hardly left the landing-stage when, some how or other, Eva lost her balance. She fell right over the side of the boat into the water. Tom was standing just under her, on the lower deck, as she fell. In one moment he sprang after her. The next he had caught her his arms, and was swimming with her to the boat-side, where eager hands were held out to take her. The whole boat was in confusion. Every one ran to help Eva, while the poor slave went back to his place, unnoticed and uncared for. But Mr. St. Clare did not forget. The next day Tom sat on the lower deck, with folded arms, anxiously watching him as he talked to Haley. Eva's father was a very handsome man. He was like Eva, with the same beautiful blue eyes and golden-brown hair. He was very fond of fun and laughter, and though he had quite made up his mind to buy Tom, he was now teasing Haley, and pretending to think that he was asking too much money for him. [Illustration] 'Papa do buy him, it's no matter what you pay', whispered Eva softly, putting her arms around her father's neck. 'You have money enough, I know. I want him.' 'What for, pussy? Are you going to use him for a rattle-box, or a rocking-horse, or what?' 'I want to make him happy.' Mr. St. Clare laughed; but after making a few more jokes about it, he gave Haley the money he asked for, and Tom had a new master. 'Come, Eva,' said Mr. St. Clare, and, taking her hand, went across the boat to Tom. 'Look up, Tom,' he said to him, 'and see how you like your new master.' Tom looked up. Mr. St. Clare had such a gay, young, handsome face, that Tom could not help feeling glad. Grateful tears rushed to his eyes as he said, 'God bless you, mas'r.' 'Can you drive horses, Tom?' 'I've been allays used to horses,' said Tom. 'Well, I think I'll make you a coachman. But you must not get drunk.' Tom looked surprised and a little hurt. 'I never drink', mas'r,' he said. 'Never mind, my boy,' said Mr. St. Clare, seeing him look so grave; 'I don't doubt you mean to do well.' 'I certainly do, mas'r,' said Tom. 'And you shall have good times,' said Eva. 'Papa is very good to everybody, only he always will laugh at them.' 'Papa is much obliged to you,' said Mr. St. Clare laughing, as he walked away. CHAPTER VIII ELIZA AMONG THE QUAKERS While Uncle Tom was sailing South, down the wide river, to his new master's home, Eliza with her boy was travelling north to Canada. Kind people helped her all the way. She passed from friend to friend, till she arrived safely at a village where the people were Quakers. The Quakers were gentle, quiet people. They all dressed alike in plain grey clothes, and the women wore big, white muslin caps. Because they thought it was wicked to have slaves, they helped those who ran away from their cruel masters. Often they were punished for doing this, but still they went on helping the poor slaves. For though the laws said it was wrong, they felt quite sure that it was really right to do so. The kind Quaker women grew to be very fond of Eliza, and would have been glad if she would have stayed with them. But Eliza said, 'No, I must go on; I dare not stop. I can't sleep at night: I can't rest. Last night I dreamed I saw that man come into the yard.' 'Poor child,' said Rachel, the kind Quaker woman to whom she was speaking, 'poor child, thee mustn't feel so. No slave that has run away has ever been stolen from our village. It is safe here.' While they were talking, Simeon, Rachel's husband, came to the door and called, 'Wife, I want to speak to thee a minute.' Rachel went out to him. 'Eliza's husband is here,' he said. 'Art thee sure?' asked Rachel, her face bright with joy. 'Yes, quite certain; he will be here soon. Will thee tell her?' Rachel went back into the kitchen, where Eliza was sewing, and, opening the door of a small bedroom, said gently, 'Come in here with me, my daughter; I have news to tell thee.' Eliza rose trembling, she was so afraid it was bad news. 'No, no! never fear thee. It's good news, Eliza,' said Simeon, Rachel shut the door, and drew Eliza towards her. 'The Lord has been very good to thee,' she said gently. 'Thy husband hath escaped, and will be here to-night.' 'To-night!' repeated Eliza, 'to-night!' Then it seemed as if the room and everything in it swam round her, and she fell into Rachel's arms. Very gently Rachel laid her down on the bed. Eliza slept as she had not slept since the dreadful night when she had taken her boy and run away through the cold, dark night. She dreamed of a beautiful country--a land, it seemed to her, of rest--green shores, pleasant islands, and lovely glittering water. There in a house, which kind voices told her was her home, she saw Harry playing happily. She heard her husband's footstep. She felt him coming nearer. His arms were around her, his tears falling upon her face, and she awoke. It was no dream. The sun had set, the candles were lit. Harry was sleeping by her side, and George, her husband, was holding her in his arms. CHAPTER IX UNCLE TOM'S NEW HOME Uncle Tom soon settled down in his new home. He was as happy as he could be, so far away from his wife and dear little children. He had a kind master. Mrs. St. Clare, however, was not nearly so nice as her husband. She was cruel, and would often have beaten her poor slaves, but Mr. St. Clare would not allow it. She always pretended that she was very ill, and spent most of her time lying on a sofa, or driving about in her comfortable carriage. Mrs. St. Clare said she really was too ill to look after the house, so everything was left to the slaves. Soon things began to be very uncomfortable, and even good-natured Mr. St. Clare could stand it no longer. He went to his cousin, Miss Ophelia St. Clare, and begged her to come and keep house for him, and to look after Eva. It was on the journey back with her that the accident to Eva happened, which ended in his buying Tom. Miss Ophelia was a very prim and precise person, not at all like the St. Clares. In her home people did not have slaves. Though her cousin had a great many, and was kind to them, she could not help seeing that it was a very wicked thing to buy and sell men and women as if they were cattle. She was very, very sorry for the poor slaves, and would have liked to free them all. Yet she did not love them. She could not bear even to have them near her, nor to touch them, just because they were black. [Illustration] It made her quite ill to see Eva kissing and hugging the black slave women when she came home. 'Well, I couldn't do that,' she said. 'Why not?' said Mr. St. Clare, who was looking on. 'Well, I want to be kind to every one. I wouldn't have anybody hurt. But, as to kissing niggers--' she gave a little shudder. 'How can she?' Presently a gay laugh sounded from the court. Mr. St. Clare stepped out to see what was happening. 'What is it?' said Miss Ophelia, following him. There sat Tom on a little mossy seat in the court. Every one of his buttonholes was stuck full of flowers. Eva, laughing gaily, was hanging a wreath of roses round his neck. Then, still laughing, she perched on his knee like a little sparrow. 'Oh, Tom, you look so funny!' Tom had a sober smile on his face. He seemed in his own quiet way to be enjoying the fun quite as much as his little mistress. When he lifted his eyes and saw his master he looked as if he were afraid he might be scolded. But Mr. St. Clare only smiled. 'How can you let her do that?' said Miss Ophelia. 'Why not?' said Mr. St. Clare. 'Why? I don't know. It seems dreadful to me.' 'You would think it was quite right and natural if you saw Eva playing with a large dog, even if he was black. But a fellow-creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at. I know how you north-country people feel about it. You loathe the blacks as you would a toad or a snake. Yet you pity them, and are angry because they are often ill-treated.' 'Well, cousin,' said Miss Ophelia thoughtfully, 'I daresay you are right. I suppose I must try to get over my feeling.' CHAPTER X UNCLE TOM'S LETTER Uncle Tom felt that he was indeed very fortunate to have found such a kind master and so good a home. He had nice clothes, plenty of food, and a comfortable room to sleep in. He had no hard, disagreeable work to do. His chief duties were to drive Mrs. St. Clare's carriage when she wanted to go out, and to attend on Eva when she wanted him. He soon grew to love his little mistress very, very much indeed. Mr. St. Clare too began to find Tom very useful. He was dreadfully careless about money, and his chief servant was just as careless as his master. So between them a great deal was not only spent but wasted. Mr. Shelby had trusted Tom in everything, and Tom had always been careful of his master's money--as careful as if it had been his own. Waste seemed dreadful to him, and he tried to do something to stop it now. Mr. St. Clare was not long in finding out how clever Tom was, and soon trusted him as thoroughly as Mr. Shelby had done. But in spite of all his good fortune, Tom used to long very much to go home to see his dear ones again. He had plenty of spare time, and whenever he had nothing to do he would pull his Bible out of his pocket and try to find comfort in reading it. [Illustration] But as time went on, Uncle Tom longed more and more for his home. At last one day he had a grand idea. He would write a letter. Before Uncle Tom was sold, George Shelby had been teaching him to write so he thought he could manage a letter. He begged a sheet of writing-paper from Eva, and going to his room began to make a rough copy on his slate. It was very difficult. Poor Uncle Tom found that he had quite forgotten how to make some of the letters. Of those he did remember, he was not quite sure which he ought to use. Yes, it was a very difficult thing indeed. While he was working away, breathing very hard over it, Eva came behind him, and peeped over his shoulder. 'Oh, Uncle Tom! what funny things you are making there!' Eva put her little golden head close to Uncle Tom's black one, and the two began a grave and anxious talk over the letter. They were both very earnest, and both very ignorant. But after a great deal of consulting over every word, the writing began, they really thought, to look quite like a proper letter. 'Yes, Uncle Tom, it begins to look beautiful,' said Eva, gazing on it with delight. 'How pleased your wife will be, and the poor little children! Oh, it is a shame that you ever had to go away from them! I mean to ask papa to let you go back, some day.' 'Missis said that she would send down money for me, as soon as they could get it together,' said Tom. 'Young Mas'r George, he said he'd come for me. He gave me this dollar as a sign,' and Tom drew the precious dollar from under his coat. 'Oh, he is sure to come, then,' said Eva, 'I am so glad.' 'I wanted to send a letter, you see, to let 'em know where I was, and tell poor Chloe that I was well off, 'cause she felt so dreadful, poor soul.' 'I say, Tom,' said Mr. St. Clare, coming in at the door at this minute. Tom and Eva both started. 'What's this?' Mr. St. Clare went on, coming up and looking at the slate. 'Oh, it's Tom's letter. I'm helping him to write it,' said Eva. 'Isn't it nice?' 'I wouldn't discourage either of you,' said her father; 'but I rather think, Tom, you had better let me write your letter for you. I'll do it when I come home from my ride.' 'It is very important that he should write,' said Eva, 'because his mistress is going to send money to buy him back again, you know, papa. He told me they had said so.' Mr. St. Clare thought in his heart that very likely this meant nothing. He thought it was only one of these things which good-natured people said to their slaves to comfort them when they were taken away from their dear ones to be sold. He did not really believe Mrs. Shelby meant to buy Tom back again. However, he did not say so out loud, but just told Tom to get the horses ready for a ride. That evening the letter was written, and Uncle Tom carried it joyfully to the post-office. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII GEORGE FIGHTS FOR FREEDOM The day after George and Eliza met each other once more at the end of so many sad months of parting, was a very happy one in the Quaker house. The two had much to say to each other. George had to tell how he had escaped from his cruel master, and how he had followed Eliza all the way and at last found her. Then there were plans to make for going on towards Canada. It was arranged that they should start that night at ten o'clock. 'The pursuers are hard after thee, we must not delay,' said Simeon. Rachel was happy and busy, packing up food and clothes for them to take on the journey. Late in the afternoon another Quaker, called Phineas, came with the dreadful news that the wicked men, whom Haley had sent to catch Eliza, were only a few miles away. So George and Eliza decided to start as soon as it was dark. A little while after supper a large covered waggon drew up before the door. They got in and the waggon drove off. On and on, all through the dark night they drove. About three o'clock, George heard the click of a horse's hoof coming behind them. 'That's Simeon,' said Phineas, who was driving, as he pulled up the horses to listen. 'Halloa, there, Simeon,' he shouted, 'what news? Are they coming?' 'Yes, right on behind, eight or ten of them.' 'Oh! what shall we do?' groaned Eliza. But Phineas knew the road well. He lashed the horses till they flew along, the waggon rattling and jumping over the hard road behind them. [Illustration] On they went till they came to a place where the rocks rose straight up from the road like a wall. It seemed impossible for any one to climb up there. But Phineas knew a way. He stopped the horses. 'Here, Simeon,' he said, 'take the waggon, and drive on as fast as thou canst, and bring back help. Now follow me,' he said to the others, 'quick, for your lives. Run now, if you you ever did run.' Quicker than we can say it, they were following him up a tiny narrow path to the top of the rocks, and Simeon was galloping the horses with the empty waggon along the road. 'We are pretty safe here,' said Phineas, when they had reached the top. 'Only one person can come up that path at a time. If any one tries it, shoot him.' The men who were chasing them had now arrived at the foot of of the rocks. They were led by a big man called Tom Loker, and another mean-looking little man, whom Haley had sent. After some hunting about, they found the path, and, headed by Tom Loker, began to climb up. 'Come up if you like,' George called out, 'but if you do we will shoot you.' For answer, the little man took aim at George, and fired. Eliza screamed, but the shot did not hurt him. It passed close to his hair, nearly touched her cheek, and, struck a tree behind. Tom Loker came on. George waited until he was near enough, then he fired. The shot hit him in the side. But, though wounded, he would not go back. With a yell like that of a mad bull he came leaping on, and sprang right in among them. Quakers are not allowed to use guns and pistols, so Phineas had been standing back while George shot. Now he sprang forward. As Tom Loker landed in the middle of them, he gave him a great push, saying, 'Friend, thee isn't wanted here.' Down fell Tom Loker, down, down the steep side of the rock. He crashed and crackled among trees, bushes, logs, loose stones, till he lay bruised and groaning far below. The fall might have killed him, had it not been broken by his clothes catching on the branches of a large tree. Cruel people are, very often, cowardly too. When the men saw their leader first wounded, and then thrown down, they all ran away. Mounting their horses, they rode off as fast as they could, leaving Tom Loker lying on the ground wounded and groaning with pain. As soon as Phineas and the others saw that the wicked men had really ridden away, they climbed down, meaning to walk along the road till they met Simeon. They had just reached the bottom, when they saw him coming back with the waggon and two other men. 'Now we are safe,' cried Phineas joyfully. 'Well, do stop then,' said Eliza, 'and do something for that poor man. He is groaning dreadfully.' 'It would be no more than Christian,' said George. 'Let us take him with us.' They lifted the wounded man gently, as if he had been a friend instead of a cruel enemy, and laid him in the waggon. Then they all set out once more. [Illustration] A drive of about an hour brought them to a neat farm-house. There the tired travellers were kindly received and given a good breakfast. Tom Loker was put into a comfortable bed, far cleaner and softer than any he had ever slept in before. George and Eliza walked about the garden hand-in-hand, feeling happy together, and almost safe. They were so near Canada now. CHAPTER XIII AUNT DINAH Miss Ophelia found that it was no easy matter to bring anything like order into the St. Clare household. The slaves had been left to themselves so long, and had grown so untidy, that they were not at all pleased with Miss Feely, as they called her, for trying to make them be tidy. However, she had quite made up her mind that order there must be. She got up at four o'clock in the morning, much to the surprise of the housemaids. All day long she was busy dusting and tidying, till Mrs. St. Clare said it made her tired to see cousin Ophelia so busy. CHAPTER XIV TOPSY One morning, while Miss Ophelia was busy, as usual, she heard Mr. St. Clare calling her from the foot of the stairs. 'Come down here, cousin. I have something to show you.' 'What is it?' said Miss Ophelia, coming down with her sewing in her hand. 'I have bought something for you. See here,' he said, pulling forward a little negro girl of about eight or nine years old. She was quite black. Her round, shining eyes glittered like glass beads. Her wooly hair was plaited into little tails which stuck out in all directions. Her clothes were dirty and ragged. Miss Ophelia thought she had never seen such a dreadful little girl in all her life. 'Cousin, what in the world have you brought that thing here for?' she asked, in dismay. 'For you to teach, to be sure, and train in the way she should go,' said Mr. St. Clare, laughing. 'Topsy,' he went on, 'this is your new mistress. See, now, that you behave yourself.' 'Yes, mas'r,' said Topsy gravely, but her eyes had a wicked twinkle in them. 'You're going to be good, Topsy, you understand?' said Mr. St. Clare. 'Oh yes, mas'r' said Topsy again, meekly folding her hands, but with another twinkle in her eyes. 'Now cousin, what is this for? Your house is full of these little plagues as it is. I get up in the morning and find one asleep behind the door; see one black head poking out from under the table; another lying on the mat. They tumble over the kitchen floor, so that a body can't put their foot down without treading on them. What on earth did you want to bring this one for?' 'For you to teach, didn't I tell you?' 'I don't want her, I'm sure. I have more to do with them now than I want.' 'Well the fact is, cousin,' said Mr. St. Clare, drawing her aside, 'she belonged to some people who were dreadfully cruel and beat her. I couldn't bear to hear her screaming every day, so I bought her. I will give her to you. Do try and make something of her.' 'Well, I'll do what I can,' said Miss Ophelia. 'She is fearfully dirty, and half naked.' 'Well, take her downstairs, and tell somebody to clean her up, and give her some decent clothes.' Getting Topsy clean was a very long business. But at last it was done. Then, sitting down before her, Miss Ophelia began to question her. 'How old are you, Topsy?' 'Dunno, missis,' said she, grinning like an ugly little black doll. 'Don't know how old you are! Did nobody ever tell you? Who was your mother?' 'Never had none,' said Topsy, with another grin. 'Never had any mother! What do you mean? Where were you born?' 'Never was born.' 'You mustn't answer me like that, child,' said Miss Ophelia sternly. 'I am not playing with you. Tell me where you were born, and who your father and mother were.' 'Never was born,' said Topsy again very decidedly. 'Never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin!' Miss Ophelia hardly knew what to make of her. 'How long have you lived with your master and mistress, then?' she asked. 'Dunno, missis.' 'Is it a year, or more, or less?' 'Dunno, missis.' 'Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?' asked Miss Ophelia next. Topsy looked puzzled, but kept on grinning. 'Do you know who made you?' 'Nobody as I knows on,' replied Topsy, with a laugh. 'Spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody ever made me.' [Illustration] 'Do you know how to sew?' asked Miss Ophelia, quite shocked. 'No, missis.' 'What can you do? What did you do for your master and mistress?' 'Fetch water, and wash dishes, and clean knives, and wait on folks.' 'Well, now, Topsy, I'm going to show you just how my bed is to be made. I am very particular about my bed. You must learn exactly how to do it.' 'Yes, missis,' said Topsy, with a deep sigh and a face of woeful earnestness. 'Now, Topsy, look here. This is the hem of the sheet. This is the right side of the sheet. This is the wrong. Will you remember?' 'Yes, missis,' said Topsy with another sigh. 'Well, now, the under-sheet you must bring over the bolster--so, and tuck it right down under the mattress nice and smooth--so. Do you see?' 'Yes, missis.' 'But the upper sheet,' said Miss Ophelia, 'must be brought down in this way, and tucked under, firm and smooth, at the foot--so, the narrow hem at the foot.' 'Yes, missis,' said Topsy as before. But while Miss Ophelia was bending over the bed she had quickly seized a pair of gloves and a ribbon, which were lying on the dressing-table, and slipped them up her sleeves. When Miss Ophelia looked up again, the naughty little girl was standing with meekly-folded hand as before. 'Now, Topsy, let me see you do this,' said Miss Ophelia, pulling the clothes off again and seating herself. Topsy, looking very earnest, did it all just as she had been shown. She did it so quickly and well that Miss Ophelia was very pleased. But, alas! as she was finishing, an end of ribbon came dangling out of her sleeve. 'What is this?' said Miss Ophelia, seizing it. 'You naughty, wicked child--you have been stealing this.' The ribbon was pulled out of Topsy's own sleeve. Yet she did not seem a bit ashamed. She only looked at it with an air of surprise and innocence. 'Why, that's Miss Feely's ribbon, an't it? How could it a got into my sleeve?' 'Topsy, you naughty girl, don't tell me a lie. You stole that ribbon,' 'Missis, I declare I didn't. Never seed it till dis blessed minnit.' 'Topsy,' said Miss Ophelia, 'don't you know it is wicked to tell lies?' 'I never tells no lies, Miss Feely,' said Topsy. 'It's jist the truth I've been, tellin' now. It an't nothin' else.' [Illustration] 'Topsy, I shall have to whip you, if you tell lies so.' 'Laws, missis, if you whip's all day, couldn't say no other way,' said Topsy, beginning to cry. 'I never seed dat ribbon. It must a caught in my sleeve. Miss Feely must'a left it on the bed, and it got caught in the clothes, and so got in my sleeve.' Miss Ophelia was so angry at such a barefaced lie that she caught Topsy and shook her. 'Don't tell me that again,' she said. The shake brought the gloves on the floor from the other sleeve. 'There,' said Miss Ophelia, 'will you tell me now you didn't steal the ribbon?' Topsy now confessed to stealing the gloves. But she, still said she had not taken the ribbon. 'Now, Topsy', said Miss Ophelia kindly, 'if you will confess all about it I won't whip you this time.' So Topsy confessed to having stolen both the ribbon and the gloves. She said she was very, very sorry, and would never do it again. 'Well, now, tell me,' said Miss Ophelia, 'have you taken anything else since you have been in the house? If you confess I won't whip you.' 'Laws, missis, I took Miss Eva's red thing she wears on her neck.' 'You did, you naughty child! Well, what else?' 'I took Rosa's ear-rings--them red ones.' 'Go and bring them to me this minute--both of them.' 'Laws, missis, I can't--they's burnt up.' 'Burnt up? What a story! Go and get them, or I shall whip you.' Topsy began to cry and groan, and declare that she could not. 'They's burnt up, they is.' 'What did you burn them up for?' asked Miss Ophelia. 'Cause I's wicked, I is. I's mighty wicked, anyhow. I can't help it.' Just at this minute Eva came into the room wearing her coral necklace. 'Why, Eva, where did you get your necklace?' said Miss Ophelia. 'Get it? Why, I have had it on all day,' answered Eva, rather surprised. 'And what is funny, aunty, I had it on all night too. I forgot to take it off when I went to bed.' Miss Ophelia looked perfectly astonished. She was more astonished still when, next minute, Rosa, who was one of the housemaids, came in with a basket of clean clothes, wearing her coral ear-rings as usual. I'm sure I don't know what to do with such a child,' she said, in despair. 'What in the world made you tell me you took those things, Topsy?' 'Why, missis said I must 'fess. I couldn't think of nothing else to 'fess,' said Topsy, wiping her eyes. 'But of course, I didn't want you to confess things you didn't do,' said Miss Ophelia. 'That is telling a lie just as much as the other.' 'Laws, now, is it?' said Topsy, looking surprised and innocent. 'Poor Topsy,' said Eva, 'why need you steal? You are going to be taken good care of now. I am sure I would rather give you anything of mine than have you steal it.' Topsy had never been spoken to so kindly and gently in all her life. For a minute she looked as if she were going to cry. The next she was grinning as usual in her ugly way. What was to be done with Topsy? Miss Ophelia was quite puzzled. She shut her up in a dark room till she could think about it. 'I don't see,' she said to Mr. St. Clare, 'how I am going to manage that child without whipping her.' 'Well, whip her, then.' 'I never heard of bringing up children without it,' said Miss Ophelia. 'Oh, well, do as you think best. Only, I have seen this child beaten with a poker, knocked down with the shovel or tongs, or anything that came handy. So I don't think your beatings will have much effect.' 'What is to be done with her, then?' said Miss Ophelia. 'I never saw such a child as this.' But Mr. St. Clare could not answer her question. So Miss Ophelia had to go on, as best she could, trying to make Topsy a good girl. She taught her to read and to sew. Topsy liked reading, and learned her letters like magic. But she could not bear sewing. So she broke her needles or threw them away. She tangled, broke, and dirtied her cotton and hid her reels. Miss Ophelia felt sure all these things could not be accidents. Yet she could never catch Topsy doing them. In a very few days Topsy had learned how to do Miss Ophelia's room perfectly, for she was very quick and clever. But if Miss Ophelia ever left her to do it by herself there was sure to be dreadful confusion. Instead of making the bed, she would amuse herself with pulling off the pillow-cases. Then she would butt her woolly head among the pillows, until it was covered with feathers sticking out in all directions. She would climb the bedpost, and hang head downwards from the top; wave the sheets and covers all over the room; dress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia's nightgown and act scenes with it, singing, whistling, and making faces at herself in the looking-glass all the time. 'Topsy,' Miss Ophelia would say, when her patience was at an end, 'what makes you behave so badly?' 'Dunno, missis--I'spects' cause I's so wicked.' 'I don't know what I shall do with you, Topsy.' 'Laws, missis, you must whip me. My old missis always did. I an't used to workin' unless I gets whipped.' So Miss Ophelia tried it. Topsy would scream and groan and implore. But half an hour later she would be sitting among the other little niggers belonging to the house, laughing about it. 'Miss Feely whip!' she would say, 'she can't do it nohow.' 'Law, you niggers,' she would go on, 'does you know you's all sinners? Well, you is; everybody is. White folks is sinners too--Miss Feely says so. But I 'spects niggers is the biggest ones. But ye an't any of ye up to me. I's so awful wicked, there can't nobody do nothin' with me. I 'spects I's the wickedest crittur in the world.' Then she would turn a somersault, and come up bright and smiling, evidently quite pleased with herself. CHAPTER XV EVA AND TOPSY Two or three years passed. Uncle Tom was still with Mr. St. Clare, far away from his home. He was not really unhappy. But always in his heart was the aching longing to see his dear ones again. Now he began to have a new sorrow. He loved his little mistress Eva very tenderly, and she was ill. He saw that she was growing white and thin. She no longer ran and played in the garden for hours together as she used to do. She was always tired now. Miss Ophelia noticed it too, and tried to make Mr. St. Clare see it. But he would not. He loved his little Eva so much, that he did not want to believe that anything could be the matter with her. Mrs. St. Clare never thought that any one, except herself, could be ill. So Eva grew daily thinner and weaker, and Uncle Tom and Aunt Ophelia more and more sad and anxious. But at last she became so unwell, that even Mr. St. Clare had to own that something was wrong, and the doctor was sent for. In a week or two she was very much better. Once more she ran about playing and laughing, and her father was delighted. Only Miss Ophelia and the doctor sighed and shook their heads. And little Eva herself knew; but she was not troubled. She knew she was going to God. 'Papa' she said one day, 'there are some things I want to say to you. I want to say them now while I am able.' She seated herself on his knee, and laid her head on his shoulder. 'It is all no use, papa, to keep it to myself any longer. The time is coming when I am going to leave you. I am going, never to come back', and Eva sobbed. 'Eva, darling, don't say such things; you are better you know.' 'No, papa, I am not any better. I know it quite well, and I am going soon.' 'And I want to go,' she went on, 'only I don't want to leave you--it almost breaks my heart.' 'Don't, Eva, don't talk so. What makes you so sad?' 'I feel sad for our poor people. I wish, papa, they were all free. Isn't there any way to have all slaves made free?' 'That is a difficult question, dearest. There is no doubt that this way is a very bad one. A great many people think so. I do myself. I wish there was not a slave in the land. But then, I don't know what is to be done about it.' 'Papa, you are such a good man, and so noble and kind. Couldn't you go all around and try and persuade people to do right about this? When I am dead, papa, then you will think of me, and do it for my sake.' 'When you are dead, Eva! Oh, child, don't talk to me so.' 'Promise me at least, father, that Tom shall have his freedom, as soon as I am gone.' 'Yes, dear, I will do anything you wish. Only don't talk so.' Miss Ophelia and Eva had been to church together. Miss Ophelia had gone to her room to take off her bonnet, while Eva talked to her father. Suddenly Mr. St. Clare and his little girl heard a great noise coming from Miss Ophelia's room. A minute later she appeared, dragging Topsy behind her. 'Come out here' she was saying. 'I will tell your master.' 'What is the matter now?' asked Mr. St. Clare. 'The matter is that I cannot be plagued with this child any longer' said Miss Ophelia. 'It is past all bearing. Here, I locked her up, and gave her a hymn to learn. What does she do, but spy out where I put my key. She has gone to my wardrobe, taken a bonnet-trimming, and cut it all to pieces to make dolls' jackets! I never saw anything like it in my life.' [Illustration] 'I don't know what to do' she went on; 'I have taught and taught. I have talked till I'm tired. I've whipped her. I've punished her in every way I can think of, and still she is as naughty as she was at first.' 'Come here, Topsy, you monkey,' said Mr. St. Clare. Topsy came, her hard, round eyes glittering and blinking, half in fear, half in mischief. 'What makes you behave so?' said Mr. St. Clare, who could not help being amused at her funny expression. 'Spects it's my wicked heart; Miss Feely says so.' 'Don't you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you? She says she has done everything she can think of.' 'Lor', yes, mas'r! Old missis used to say so, too. She whipped me a heap harder, and used to pull my hair and knock my head agin the door. But it didn't do me no good. I 'spect if they is to pull every hair out o' my head it wouldn't do no good neither. I's so wicked. Laws! I's nothin' but a nigger noways.' 'I shall have to give her up,' said Miss Ophelia. 'I can't have that trouble any longer.' Eva had stood silent, listening. Now she took Topsy by the hand, and led her into a little room close by. 'What makes you so naughty, Topsy?' she said, with tears in her eyes. 'Why don't you try to be good? Don't you love anybody, Topsy?' 'Dunno nothin' 'bout love. I love candy, that's all.' 'But you love your father and mother?' 'Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva.' 'Oh, I forgot,' said Eva sadly. 'But hadn't you any brother, or sister or aunt, or--' 'No, none on 'em. Never had nothin' nor nobody.' 'But, Topsy, if you would only try to be good you might--' 'Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good,' said Topsy. 'If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then.' 'But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would love you if you were good.' Topsy laughed scornfully. 'Don't you think so?' said Eva. 'No. She can't bear me, 'cause I'm a nigger. She'd as soon have a toad touch her. There can't nobody love niggers, and niggers can't do nothin'. I don't care,' and Topsy began whistling to show that she didn't. 'Oh, Topsy! I love you,' said Eva, laying her little, thin hand on Topsy's shoulder. 'I love you, because you haven't had any mother, or father, or friends; because you have been a poor, ill-used child. I love you, and I want you to be good. It makes me sorry to have you so naughty. I wish you would try to be good for my sake, because I'm going to die soon. I shan't be here very long.' Topsy's round, bright eyes grew suddenly dim with tears. She did believe at last that it was possible for some one to love her. She laid her head down between her knees and wept and sobbed. 'Poor Topsy,' said Eva gently. [Illustration] 'Oh, Miss Eva, dear Miss Eva,' cried the poor little black child, 'I will try, I will try. I never did care nothin' about it before.' CHAPTER XVI EVA'S LAST GOOD-BYE It soon became quite plain to everybody that Eva was very ill indeed. She never ran about and played now, but spent most of the day lying on the sofa in her own pretty room. Every one loved her, and tried to do things for her. Even naughty little Topsy used to bring her flowers, and try to be good for her sake. Uncle Tom was a great deal in Eva's room. She used to get very restless, and then she liked to be carried about. He was so big and strong that he could do it very easily. He would walk about with her under the orange-trees in the garden, or sitting down on some of their old seats, would sing their favorite hymns. He loved to do it, and could not bear to be long away from his little mistress. He gave up sleeping in his bed, and lay all night on the mat outside her door. One day Eva made her aunt cut off a lot of her beautiful hair. Then she called all the slaves together, said good-bye to them, and gave them each a curl of her hair as a keepsake. They all cried very much, and said they would never forget her, and would try to be good for her sake. A few nights later Miss Ophelia came quickly to Tom, as he lay on the mat outside Eva's door. 'Go, Tom,' she said, 'go as fast as you can for the doctor.' Tom ran. But in the morning little Eva lay on her bed, cold and white, with closed eyes and folded hands. She had gone to God. Mr. St. Clare was very, very unhappy for a long time after Eva died. He had loved her so much, that now his life seemed quite empty without her. He did not forget his promise to her about Tom. He went to his lawyer, and told him to begin writing out the papers that would make Tom free. It took some time to make a slave free. 'Well, Tom,' said Mr. St. Clare the day after he had spoken to his Lawyer, 'I'm going to make a free man of you. So have your trunk packed and get ready to set out for home.' Joy shone in Uncle Tom's face. 'Bless the Lord,' he said, raising his hands to heaven. Mr. St. Clare felt rather hurt. He did not like Tom to be so glad to leave him. 'You haven't had such a very bad time here that you need be in such rapture, Tom,' he said. 'No, no, mas'r! tan't that. It's bein' a free man! That's what I'm joyin' for.' 'Why, Tom, don't you think that you are really better off as you are?' 'No, indeed, Mas'r St. Clare,' said Tom, very decidedly; 'no, indeed.' 'But, Tom, you couldn't possibly have earned by your work such clothes and such nice, comfortable rooms and good food as I have given you.' 'I knows all that, Mas'r St. Clare. Mas'r has been too good. But, mas'r, I'd rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have 'em mine than have the best, and have 'em any man's else. I had so, mas'r. I thinks it's nature, mas'r.' 'I suppose so, Tom. You will be going off and leaving me, in a month or two,' he said, rather discontentedly. 'Though why you shouldn't, I don't know,' he added, in a gayer voice. [Illustration] 'Not while mas'r is in trouble,' said Tom. 'I'll stay with mas'r as long as he wants me--so as I can be of any use.' 'Not while I am in trouble, Tom?' said Mr. St. Clare, looking sadly out of the window. 'And when will my trouble be over?' Then half-smiling he turned from the window, and laid his hand on Tom's shoulder. 'Ah, Tom, you soft, silly boy,' he said. 'I won't keep you. Go home to your wife and children, and give them all my love.' 'Cousin,' said Miss Ophelia, coming into the room, 'I want to speak to you about Topsy.' 'What has she been doing now?' [Illustration] 'Nothing; she is a much better girl than she used to be. But I want to ask you, whose is she--yours or mine?' 'Why yours, of course; I gave her to you,' said Mr. St. Clare. 'But not by law. There is no use my trying to make this child a Christian, unless I can be quite sure that she will not be sold as a slave again. If you are really willing I should have her, I want you to give me a paper saying she is mine.' 'But you think it is wicked to keep slaves. Now you want to have one of your own. Oh! shocking, cousin,' said Mr. St. Clare, who loved to tease. 'Nonsense! I only want to have her, so that I can set her free.' 'Very well,' said Mr. St. Clare, 'I will write the paper for you.' Then he sat down and began to read. 'But I want it done now,' said Miss Ophelia. 'Why are you in such a hurry?' 'Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in,' said Miss Ophelia. 'want to make sure of it. You may die or lose all your money. Then Topsy would be taken away and sold, in spite of anything I could say.' Mr. St. Clare hated being made to do things when he didn't want to. However, after teasing his cousin a little more, he wrote out the paper, and Topsy belonged to Miss Ophelia. That evening Mr. St. Clare went out for a ride. Tom saw him go, and asked if he should come too. 'No, my boy,' said Mr. St. Clare, 'I shall be back in an hour.' Tom sat down on the verandah to wait till his master came home. While he waited, he fell asleep. Presently he was awakened by loud knocking, and the sound of voices at the gate. He ran to open it. Several men were there carrying a load. It was Mr. St. Clare. He had been hurt in an accident, and was dying. Very gently they laid him on a sofa. Nothing could be done. In a short time he had gone to join his little Eva. CHAPTER XVII UNCLE TOM'S NEW MASTER There had been great grief in the house when Eva died. Now there was not only sorrow, but gloom and fear. The kind master was dead, and the poor slaves asked themselves in despair what would happen to them now. They were not long left in doubt. One morning Mrs. St. Clare told them that they were all to be sold. She was going back to her father's house to live, and would not want them any more. Poor Uncle Tom! The news was a dreadful blow to him. For a few days he had been so happy in the thought of going home. Once more, after all these years, he thought he would see his dear wife and little children. Now, at one stroke, he had lost both his kind master and his hope of freedom. Instead of going home, he was to be sent farther away than ever from his dear ones. He could not bear it. He tried to say, "Thy will be done", but bitter tears almost choked the words. He had one hope left. He would ask Miss Ophelia to speak to Mrs. St. Clare for him. 'Mas'r St. Clare promised me my freedom, Miss Feely,' he said. 'He told me that he had begun to take it out for me. And now, perhaps, if you would be good enough to speak about it to missis, she would feel like going on with it. Seeing it was Mas'r St. Clare's wish, she might.' 'I'll speak for you, Tom, and do my best,' said Miss Ophelia. 'I haven't much hope, but I will try.' So Miss Ophelia asked Mrs. St. Clare to set Tom free. 'Indeed, I shall do no such thing,' she replied. 'Tom is worth more than any of the other slaves. I couldn't afford to lose so much money. Besides, what does he want with his freedom? He is a great deal better off as he is.' 'But he does want it very much,' replied Miss Ophelia. 'And his master promised it to him.' 'I dare say he does want it,' replied Mrs. St. Clare. 'They all want it. Just because they are a discontented set, always wanting what they haven't got.' 'But Tom is so good and gentle, and such a splendid worker. If you sell him there is the chance of his getting a bad master.' 'Oh, I have no fear about that. Most masters are good, in spite of all the talk people make about it,' replied Mrs. St. Clare. 'Well', said Miss Ophelia at last, 'I know it was one of the last wishes of your husband that Tom should have his freedom. He promised dear little Eva that he should have it. I think you ought to do it.' Then Mrs. St. Clare began to cry, and say every one was unkind to her, and Miss Ophelia saw it was no use saying anything more. There was only one other thing she could do. She wrote to Mrs. Shelby, telling her that poor Uncle Tom was going to be sold again. She asked her to send money to buy him back, as soon as possible. The next day, Uncle Tom and the other slaves belonging to Mr. St. Clare were sent to market to be sold. As Uncle Tom stood in the market-place, waiting for some one to buy him, he looked anxiously round. In the crowd of faces, he was trying to find one kind, handsome one, like Mr. St. Clare's. But there was none. Presently a short, broad man, with a coarse, ugly face and dirty hands, came up to Tom. He looked him all over, pulled his mouth open and looked at his teeth, pinched his arms, made him walk and jump, and indeed treated him as he would a horse or cow he had wished to buy. Tom knew from the way this man looked and spoke, that he must be bad and cruel. He prayed in his heart that this might not be his new master. But it was. His name was Legree. He bought Uncle Tom, several other men slaves, and two women. One of the women was a pretty young girl, who had never been away from her mother before, and who was very much afraid of her new master. The other was an old woman. The two women were chained together. The men, Uncle Tom among them, had heavy chains put on both hands and feet. Then Legree drove them all on to a boat which was going up the river to his plantation. It was a sad journey. This time there was no pretty Eva, nor kind-hearted Mr. St. Clare, to bring any happiness to the poor slaves. One of the first things Legree did was to take away all Tom's nice clothes which Mr. St. Clare had given him. He made him put on his oldest clothes, then he sold all the others to the sailors. Legree made his slaves unhappy in every way he could think of. Then he would come up to them and say, 'Come, come, I don't allow any sulky looks. Be cheerful, now, or--' and he would crack his whip in a way to make them tremble. At last the weary journey was over. Legree and his slaves landed. His house was a long way from the river. The men slaves walked, while Legree and the two women drove in a cart. Mile after mile they trudged along, over the rough road through wild and dreary country, till, hungry, thirsty, and tired, they arrived at the farm, or plantation as it was called. Legree was not a gentleman like Mr. Shelby or Mr. St. Clare. He was a very rough kind of farmer. On his farm he grew cotton. The cotton had to be gathered and tied into bundles. Then he sold it to people who made it into calico, muslin, and other things, which we need to use and wear. Gathering cotton is very hard work. The house Legree lived in had once been a very fine one, and had belonged to a rich gentleman. Now, it was old, neglected, and almost in ruins. The house was bad enough, but the cabins where the slaves lived were far worse. They were roughly built of wood. The wind and the rain came through the chinks between the planks. There were no windows. The floors were nothing but the bare earth. There was no furniture of any kind in them, only heaps of dirty straw to sleep upon. Uncle Tom felt more unhappy than ever. He had hoped at least to have a little room which he could keep clean and tidy. But this hole he did not even have to himself. He had to share it with five or six others. Now began the saddest time of Uncle Tom's life. Every morning very early the slaves were driven out into the fields like cattle. All day long they worked hard. The burning sun blazed down upon them, making them hot and tired. Legree and his two chief slaves, called Quimbo and Sambo, marched about all the time with whips in their hands. At night they drove the slaves back again to their miserable huts. But before they could rest, they had to grind and cook the corn for their supper. When at last they did go to sleep, they had to lie on the heaps of dirty straw instead of in comfortable beds. CHAPTER XVIII GEORGE AND ELIZA FIND FREEDOM Tom Loker lay tossing and tumbling in his clean, comfortable bed at the Quaker farmhouse. A pretty, old Quaker lady, with white hair and a kind face, was nursing him. Tom Loker did not like being ill and having to lie in bed. He threw the clothes about, grumbling and using naughty words all the tune. 'I must ask thee, Thomas Loker, not to use such language,' said the nice lady, as she smoothed his sheets, and made his bed comfortable again for him. 'Well, I won't, granny, if I can help it,' he replied; 'but it is enough to make a fellow swear, it is so awfully hot.' He gave another great lunge, and made the sheets and blankets all untidy again. 'I suppose that fellow George and the girl Eliza are here,' he said, in a sulky voice, after a few minutes' silence. 'Yes, they are,' said the old lady. 'They had better get away across the lake,' said Tom Loker, 'the quicker the better.' 'Very likely they will do so,' said the old lady, calmly going on with her knitting. 'But, listen,' said Tom Loker, getting excited, 'there are people who are watching the boats for us. I don't care if I tell now. I hope they will get away, just to spite the others for going and leaving me as they did--the mean puppies, the--' 'Thomas Loker!' said the old lady. 'I tell you, granny, if you bottle a fellow up too tight he'll split,' said Tom Loker. 'But about Eliza--tell them to dress her up some way so as to alter her. We have sent a description of what she looks like to the town where the boats start from. She will be caught yet if she doesn't dress up differently.' 'I thank thee, Thomas Loker,' replied the old lady with her usual calmness. 'We will attend to that. Thank thee.' Then she went to tell George and Eliza what Tom Loker had said. They were indeed very grateful to him, and very glad that they had not left him, as his own friends had done, to die by the roadside. So next day Eliza cut off all her beautiful black hair, and dressed herself like a boy. 'Don't I make a pretty young fellow?' she said to George, laughing and blushing at the same time. 'You always will be pretty,' said George gravely, 'do what you will.' 'What makes you so sober?' asked Eliza, kneeling on one knee, and laying her hand on his. 'We are within twenty-four hours of Canada, they say. Only a day and a night on the lake, and then--oh, then!' 'O Eliza,' said George, holding her fast, 'that is just it. To be so near liberty, to be almost in sight of it--and then if we lost it. O Eliza, I should die.' 'Don't fear,' said Eliza hopefully. 'The good Lord would not have brought us so far if He didn't mean to save us. I seem to feel him with us, George.' So George kissed his wife and took heart again. Then the kind old lady brought Harry in dressed as a little girl. And a very pretty girl he made too. They called him 'Harriet,' as it was so like Harry it was easy to remember. Harry did not know his mamma, dressed as she was, and clung to the kind lady, feeling rather afraid of the strange young man. That was just as well, as he was too young to understand what this dressing-up and pretending meant, and he might have spoiled it all by calling the nice-looking young man 'Mamma.' So the kind lady was going with them, pretending to be the little girl's aunt. When everything was ready they got into a cab, and drove to the wharf. The two young men, as they seemed to be, got out, Eliza helping the kind lady and little girl, while George saw to the luggage. As he was standing at the office, taking the tickets, George overheard two men talking by his side. 'I've watched every one that came on board,' said one, 'and I know they are not on this boat.' 'You would scarcely know the woman from a white one,' said the other. 'The man is very fair too. He has an H burned into the palm of his hand.' The hand with which George was taking the tickets and change trembled a little, but he turned calmly round, looked straight at the speaker, and then walked slowly away to where Eliza was waiting for him. It was a terribly anxious time, but at last the bell rang, the boat began to move, and George and Eliza drew long sighs of relief as they saw the shore getting farther and farther away. It was a lovely day. The blue waves of Lake Erie danced, rippling and sparkling, in the sunlight. Hour after hour the boat steamed on. Night came; and in the morning, clear and beautiful before them, rose the shores of Canada. George and his wife stood arm in arm as the boat came near the little town, where they were going to land. His breath came thick and short; a mist gathered before his eyes; he silently pressed the little hand that lay trembling on his arm. The bell rang--the boat stopped. [Illustration] Scarcely seeing what he did, George looked out his luggage, and gathered his little party. They were landed on the shore, and stood still till the boat had started again. Then with tears of joy, the husband and wife, with their wondering little boy in their arms, knelt down and lifted up their hearts to God. They were free. CHAPTER XIX UNCLE TOM FINDS FREEDOM The letter which Miss Ophelia wrote to Mrs. Shelby, telling her that Tom was to be sold again, was delayed a long time in the post. When at last it did arrive, Mr. Shelby was very ill, and though Mrs. Shelby felt dreadfully sorry about Uncle Tom, she could do nothing, as her husband was so ill. Soon Mr. Shelby died. Mrs. Shelby was very sad, but in her sorrow she did not forget her promise to Aunt Chloe and Uncle Tom. As soon as she could, she sold some land, and George Shelby, taking the money with him, went off to try to find Uncle Tom and buy him back again. But by the time George Shelby, came to the place where Mr. St. Clare used to live, Uncle Tom had been sold to Legree, and no one knew where he had gone. At last, after searching about for months, George Shelby found out where Uncle Tom was, and followed him. Two days after Legree had been so cruel, George Shelby drove up the avenue and stopped at the door of the old house. 'I hear,' he said to Legree, 'that you bought a slave named Tom. He used to belong to my father. I have come to buy him back again.' Legree's face grew black with anger. 'Yes, I did buy such a fellow,' he growled in rage. 'And a bad bargain it was, too! The most rebellious, saucy, impudent dog! Set up my niggers to run away. He owned to it, and, when I bid him tell me where they were, he said he knew, but wouldn't tell. He stuck to it, too, though I gave him the very worst beating I ever gave a nigger yet. I believe he is trying to die. I shouldn't wonder if he did.' 'Where is he?' said George. 'Let me see him.' His cheeks were crimson, and his eye flashed fire at the thought that Legree had dared to treat dear Uncle Tom so badly. 'He is in that shed,' said a little fellow who was holding George Shelby's horse. George, without saying another word, hurried to the place to which the little boy pointed. As he entered the shed, his head felt giddy and his heart sick. Uncle Tom lay on a heap of straw on the floor, still and quiet. 'Oh, dear Uncle Tom,' cried George as he knelt beside him, 'dear Uncle Tom, do wake--do speak once more. Here's Mas'r George--your own little Mas'r George. Don't you know me?' 'Mas'r George!' said Tom, opening his eyes, and speaking in a feeble voice. 'Mas'r George? it is--it is. It's all I wanted. They haven't forgot me. It warms my soul; it does my old heart good. Now I shall die content.' 'You shan't die! you mustn't die, nor think of it. I've come to buy you and take you home,' said George, and the tears came into his eyes as he bent over poor Uncle Tom. 'Oh, Mas'r George, ye're too late. The Lord has bought me, and is going to take me home.' [Illustration] 'Oh, don't. It breaks my heart to think of what you've suffered--lying in this old shed, too.' 'You mustn't, now, tell Chloe, poor soul, how ye found me,' said Tom, taking George by the hand. 'It would seem so dreadful to her. Only tell her ye found me going into glory, and that I couldn't stay for no one. And oh, the poor chil'en, and the baby--my old heart's been most broke for them. Tell them to follow me. Give my love to mas'r, and dear, good missis, and everybody in the place. I love them all.' He closed his eyes, and with a smile he fell asleep. Uncle Tom too was free. Beyond the gates of Legree's farm, George had noticed a dry, sandy knoll, shaded by a few trees. There he made Uncle Tom's grave. No stone marks his last resting-place. He needs none. God knows where he lies. Kneeling there George bent his head, in shame and sorrow. 'Here me, dear God,' he said, 'from this day, I will do what one man can to drive out the curse of slavery from this land.' CHAPTER XX GEORGE SHELBY FREES HIS SLAVES George Shelby wrote a little note to his mother, telling her that he was coming home. He tried to write about Uncle Tom, but he could not; tears blinded him, and sobs choked him. On the day he was expected every one was in a state of bustle and excitement. Aunt Chloe in a new print dress, and clean white apron walked round the supper-table, making sure that everything was right. Her black face shone with joy at the thought of seeing Uncle Tom again. 'I'm thinking my old man won't know the boys and the baby,' she said. Mrs. Shelby sighed. Ever since the letter had come from George she had had a very sad heart. She felt sure something must be wrong. 'He won't know the baby, my old man won't,' said Chloe again, 'Why, it's five years since they took him.' Just then the sound of wheels was heard. 'It's Mas'r George,' cried Aunt Chloe, running to the window in great excitement. Mrs. Shelby ran to the door. As George met her he put his arms round her, and kissed her tenderly. Aunt Chloe stood behind anxiously looking out into the darkness. 'Oh, poor Aunt Chloe,' said George, gently taking her hard, black hand between both his own. 'I'd have given all my fortune to have brought Uncle Tom home with me; but he has gone to a better country.' Mrs. Shelby cried out as if she had been hurt, but Aunt Chloe did not make a sound. In silence they went into the supper-room. [Illustration:] 'There,' said Aunt Chloe, holding out her trembling hands to her mistress, 'it's just as I knew it would be. He's been sold and murdered on dem old plantations.' Then she turned and walked proudly out of the room. Mrs. Shelby followed her softly, took one of her hands, drew her down into a chair, and sat down beside her. 'My poor, good Chloe,' she said gently. Chloe leaned her head on her mistress's shoulder, and sobbed out, 'Oh, missis, 'scuse me, my heart's broke--dat's all.' 'I know it is,' said Mrs. Shelby, as her tears fell fast, 'and I cannot heal it.' There was silence for a little as they wept together. Then George sat down beside Aunt Chloe, and took her hand. He talked gently to her, telling her of Uncle Tom's last loving messages. So she was comforted a little. One morning, about a month after this, George Shelby called all his servants together, telling them he had something to say to them. They wondered what it could be, and were very much surprised when he appeared, carrying a bundle of papers in his hand. They were still more astonished when he gave a paper to each one, and told them all that they were free. With sobs and tears and shouts they pressed round him, thanking and blessing him. But some of them came with anxious faces, begging him to take their free papers back again, and not to send them away. 'We don't want to be any freer than we are,' they said. 'We have always had all we wanted.' 'We don't want to leave the old place, and young mas'r and Missis, and the rest.' [Illustration] 'My good friends,' said George, when he could get silence, 'there will be no need for you to leave me. We want quite as many servants as we did before. But now you are free men and free women. I shall pay you wages for your work, and if I die, or get into debt, you can't be taken away to be sold. That is all the difference. I want you all to stay with me, for I want to teach you how to live as free men and women ought.' 'One thing more,' added George, when the cheering and rejoicing had died away a little. 'You all remember our good old Uncle Tom. You have heard how he died, and how he sent his love to you all. It was on his grave, my friends, that I made up my mind, with God's help, never to own another slave, if it were possible to free him. I resolved that nobody, through my fault, should ever run the risk of being parted from his dear ones, and of dying far from them, as he died. 'So, when you rejoice in your freedom, remember that you owe it to dear old Uncle Tom, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom every time you see Uncle Tom's Cabin; and let it help you to try to live as he did, and be as honest and faithful and Christian as he was.' THE END. 
10431	----	Proofreaders Transcriber's note: The inconsistent spellings of the original have been retained in this etext. THIRTY YEARS A SLAVE From Bondage to Freedom. THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY AS SEEN ON THE PLANTATION AND IN THE HOME OF THE PLANTER. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LOUIS HUGHES. PREFACE. The institution of human slavery, as it existed in this country, has long been dead; and, happily for all the sacred interests which it assailed, there is for it no resurrection. It may, therefore, be asked to what purpose is the story which follows, of the experiences of one person under that dead and accursed institution? To such question, if it be asked, it may be answered that the narrator presents his story in compliance with the suggestion of friends, and in the hope that it may add something of accurate information regarding the character and influence of an institution which for two hundred years dominated the country--exercising a potent but baneful influence in the formation of its social, civil and industrial structures, and which finally plunged it into the most stupendous civil war which the world has ever known. As the enlightenment of each generation depends upon the thoughtful study of the history of those that have gone before, everything which tends to fullness and accuracy in that history is of value, even though it be not presented with the adjuncts of literary adornment, or thrilling scenic effects. CHAPTER I. LIFE ON A COTTON PLANTATION. * * * * * BIRTH--SOLD IN A RICHMOND SLAVE PEN. I was born in Virginia, in 1832, near Charlottesville, in the beautiful valley of the Rivanna river. My father was a white man and my mother a negress, the slave of one John Martin. I was a mere child, probably not more than six years of age, as I remember, when my mother, two brothers and myself were sold to Dr. Louis, a practicing physician in the village of Scottsville. We remained with him about five years, when he died, and, in the settlement of his estate, I was sold to one Washington Fitzpatrick, a merchant of the village. He kept me a short time when he took me to Richmond, by way of canal-boat, expecting to sell me; but as the market was dull, he brought me back and kept me some three months longer, when he told me he had hired me out to work on a canal-boat running to Richmond, and to go to my mother and get my clothes ready to start on the trip. I went to her as directed, and, when she had made ready my bundle, she bade me good-by with tears in her eyes, saying: "My son, be a good boy; be polite to every one, and always behave yourself properly." It was sad to her to part with me, though she did not know that she was never to see me again, for my master had said nothing to her regarding his purpose and she only thought, as I did, that I was hired to work on the canal-boat, and that she should see me occasionally. But alas! We never met again. I can see her form still as when she bade me good-bye. That parting I can never forget. I ran off from her as quickly as I could after her parting words, for I did not want her to see me crying. I went to my master at the store, and he again told me that he had hired me to work on the canal-boat, and to go aboard immediately. Of the boat and the trip and the scenes along the route I remember little--I only thought of my mother and my leaving her. When we arrived at Richmond, George Pullan, a "nigger-trader," as he was called, came to the boat and began to question me, asking me first if I could remember having had the chickenpox, measles or whooping-cough. I answered, yes. Then he asked me if I did not want to take a little walk with him. I said, no. "Well," said he, "you have got to go. Your master sent you down here to be sold, and told me to come and get you and take you to the trader's yard, ready to be sold." I saw that to hesitate was useless; so I at once obeyed him and went. * * * * * A SLAVE MARKET. The trader's establishment consisted of an office, a large show-room and a yard in the rear enclosed with a wall of brick fifteen feet high. The principal men of the establishment were the proprietor and the foreman. When slaves were to be exhibited for sale, the foreman was called to the office by means of a bell, and an order given him to bring into the show-room all the slaves in the establishment. This was the work of but a few minutes, and the women were placed in a row on one side of the room and the men on the other. Persons desirous of purchasing them passed up and down between the lines looking the poor creatures over, and questioning them in about the following manner: "What can you do?" "Are you a good cook? seamstress? dairymaid?"--this to the women, while the men would be questioned as to their line of work: "Can you plow? Are you a blacksmith? Have you ever cared for horses? Can you pick cotton rapidly?" Sometimes the slave would be required to open his mouth that the purchaser might examine the teeth and form some opinion as to his age and physical soundness; and if it was suspected that a slave had been beaten a good deal he would be required to step into another room and undress. If the person desiring to buy found the slave badly scarred by the common usage of whipping, he would say at once to the foreman; "Why! this slave is not worth much, he is all scarred up. No, I don't want him; bring me in another to look at." Slaves without scars from whipping and looking well physically always sold readily. They were never left long in the yard. It was expected that all the slaves in the yard for sale would be neatly dressed and clean before being brought into the show-room. It was the foreman's business to see that each one was presentable. * * * * * SLAVE WHIPPING AS A BUSINESS. Whipping was done at these markets, or trader's yards, all the time. People who lived in the city of Richmond would send their slaves here for punishment. When any one wanted a slave whipped he would send a note to that effect with the servant to the trader. Any petty offense on the part of a slave was sufficient to subject the offender to this brutal treatment. Owners who affected culture and refinement preferred to send a servant to the yard for punishment to inflicting it themselves. It saved them trouble, they said, and possibly a slight wear and tear of feeling. For this service the owner was charged a certain sum for each slave, and the earnings of the traders from this source formed a very large part of the profits of his business. The yard I was in had a regular whipping post to which they tied the slave, and gave him "nine-and-thirty," as it was called, meaning thirty-nine lashes as hard as they could lay it on. Men were stripped of their shirts in preparation for the whipping, and women had to take off their dresses from the shoulders to the waist. These whippings were not so severe as when the slaves were stripped entirely of their clothes, as was generally the case on the plantations where slaves were owned by the dozen. I saw many cases of whipping while I was in the yard. Sometimes I was so frightened that I trembled violently, for I had never seen anything like it before. * * * * * SOLD IN THE MARKET. I was only in the yard a short time before I was bought by one George Reid who lived in Richmond. He had no wife, but an old lady kept house for him and his three sons. At this time he had a place in the postoffice, but soon after I came there he lost it. He then moved into the country upon a farm of about one thousand acres, enclosed by a cedar hedge. The house was a plain frame structure upon a stone basement and contained four rooms. It was surrounded with shrubbery, and was a pleasant country seat. But I did not like it here. I grieved continually about my mother. It came to me, more and more plainly, that I would never see her again. Young and lonely as I was, I could not help crying, oftentimes for hours together. It was hard to get used to being away from my mother. I remember well "Aunt Sylvia," who was the cook in the Reid household. She was very kind to me and always spoke consolingly to me, especially if I had been blue, and had had one of my fits of crying. At these times she would always bake me an ash cake for supper, saying to me; "My child, don't cry; 'Aunt Sylvia' will look after you." This ash cake was made of corn meal and water, a little salt to make it palatable, and was baked by putting it between cabbage leaves and covering it with hot ashes. A sweeter or more delicious cake one could not desire, and it was common upon the tables of all the Virginia farmers. I always considered it a great treat to get one of these cakes from "Aunt Sylvia." The appellations of "aunt" and "uncle" for the older slaves were not only common among the blacks, but the whites also addressed them in the same way. * * * * * ON THE AUCTION BLOCK I was sick a great deal--in fact, I had suffered with chills and fever ever since Mr. Reid bought me. He, therefore, concluded to sell me, and, in November, 1844, he took me back to Richmond, placing me in the Exchange building, or auction rooms, for the sale of slaves. The sales were carried on in a large hall where those interested in the business sat around a large block or stand, upon which the slave to be sold was placed, the auctioneer standing beside him. When I was placed upon the block, a Mr. McGee came up and felt of me and asked me what I could do. "You look like a right smart nigger," said he, "Virginia always produces good darkies." Virginia was the mother of slavery, and it was held by many that she had the best slaves. So when Mr. McGee found I was born and bred in that state he seemed satisfied. The bidding commenced, and I remember well when the auctioneer said; "Three hundred eighty dollars--once, twice and sold to Mr. Edward McGee." He was a rich cotton planter of Pontotoc, Miss. As near as I can recollect, I was not more than twelve years of age, so did not sell for very much. * * * * * PRICE OF SLAVES. Servant women sold for $500 to $700, and sometimes as high as $800 when possessing extra qualifications. A house maid, bright in looks, strong and well formed, would sell for $1,000 to $1,200. Bright mulatto girls, well versed in sewing and knitting, would sometimes bring as high as $1,800, especially if a Virginian or a Kentuckian. Good blacksmiths sold for $1,600 to $1,800. When the slaves were put upon the block they were always sold to the highest bidder. Mr. McGee, or "Boss," as I soon learned to call him, bought sixty other slaves before he bought me, and they were started in a herd for Atlanta, Ga., on foot. * * * * * STARTED FOR A COTTON PLANTATION. Boss, myself and ten others met them there. We then started for Pontotoc, Miss. On our way we stopped at Edenton, Ga., where Boss sold twenty-one of the sixty slaves. We then proceeded on our way, Boss by rail and we on foot, or in the wagon. We went about twenty miles a day. I remember, as we passed along, every white man we met was yelling, "Hurrah for Polk and Dallas!" They were feeling good, for election had given them the men that they wanted. The man who had us in charge joined with those we met in the hurrahing. We were afraid to ask them the reason for their yelling, as that would have been regarded as an impertinence, and probably would have caused us all to be whipped. * * * * * MY MISSISSIPPI HOME. At length, after a long and wearisome journey, we reached Pontotoc, McGee's home, on Christmas eve. Boss took me into the house and into the sitting room, where all the family were assembled, and presented me as a Christmas gift to the madam, his wife. My boss, as I remember him, was a tall, raw-boned man, but rather distinguished in looks, with a fine carriage, brilliant in intellect, and considered one of the wealthiest and most successful planters of his time. Mrs. McGee was a handsome, stately lady, about thirty years of age, brunette in complexion, faultless in figure and imperious in manner. I think that they were of Scotch descent. There were four children, Emma, Willie, Johnnie and Jimmie. All looked at me, and thought I was "a spry little fellow." I was very shy and did not say much, as everything was strange to me. I was put to sleep that night on a pallet on the floor in the dining room, using an old quilt as a covering. The next morning was Christmas, and it seemed to be a custom to have egg-nog before breakfast. The process of making this was new and interesting to me. I saw them whip the whites of eggs, on a platter, to a stiff froth; the yolks were thoroughly beaten in a large bowl, sugar and plenty of good brandy were added, and the whites of the eggs and cream were then stirred in, a little nutmeg grated on top of each glass when filled for serving. This was a delicious drink, and the best of all was, there was plenty of it. I served this to all the family, and, as there were also visiting relatives present, many glasses were required, and I found the tray so heavy I could hardly carry it. I helped myself, after the service was finished, and I was delighted, for I had never tasted anything so fine before. My boss told me I was to wait on the madam, do any errand necessary, attend to the dining room--in fact I was installed as general utility boy. It was different from the quiet manner of life I had seen before coming here--it kept my spirits up for some time. I thought of my mother often, but I was gradually growing to the idea that it was useless to cry, and I tried hard to overcome my feelings. * * * * * PLANTATION LIFE. As already stated, it was Christmas morning, and, after breakfast, I saw the cook hurrying, and when I went out into the yard, everywhere I looked slaves met my view. I never saw so many slaves at one time before. In Virginia we did not have such large farms. There were no extensive cotton plantations, as in Mississippi. I shall never forget the dinner that day--it was a feast fit for a king, so varied and lavish was the bill of fare. The next attraction for me was the farm hands getting their Christmas rations. Each was given a pint of flour of which they made biscuit, which were called "Billy Seldom," because biscuit were very rare with them. Their daily food was corn bread, which they called "Johnny Constant," as they had it constantly. In addition to the flour each received a piece of bacon or fat meat, from which they got the shortening for their biscuit. The cracklings from the rendering of lard were also used by the slaves for shortening. The hands were allowed four days off at Christmas, and if they worked on these days, as some of them did, they got fifty cents a day for chopping. It was not common to have chopping done during the holidays; some planters, however, found it convenient thus to get it out of the way for the work which came after Christmas. * * * * * THE GREAT HOUSE. I soon became familiar with my work in the house and with the neighborhood, as I often had to carry notes for Boss to neighboring farmers, as well as to carry the mail to and from the postoffice. The "great house," as the dwelling of the master was called, was two stories high, built of huge logs, chinked and daubed and whitewashed. It was divided, from front to rear, by a hall twenty-five feet long and twelve feet wide, and on each side of the hall, in each story, was one large room with a large fire-place. There were but four rooms in all, yet these were so large that they were equal to at least six of our modern rooms. The kitchen was not attached to the main building, but was about thirty feet to the rear. This was the common mode of building in the south in those days. The two bedrooms upstairs were very plain in furnishings, but neat and comfortable, judged by the standard of the times. A wing was added to the main building for dining room. In rear of the kitchen was the milk or dairy house, and beyond this the smoke house for curing the meat. In line with these buildings, and still further to the rear, was the overseer's house. Near the milk house was a large tree, and attached to the trunk was a lever; and here was where the churning was done, in which I had always to assist. This establishment will serve as a sample of many of those on the large plantations in the south. The main road from Pontotoc to Holly Springs, one of the great thoroughfares of the state and a stage route, passed near the house, and through the center of the farm. On each side of this road was a fence, and in the corners of both fences, extending for a mile, were planted peach trees, which bore excellent fruit in great profusion. * * * * * HOUSE SERVANT AND ERRAND BOY. My first work in the morning was to dust the parlor and hall and arrange the dining room. It came awkward to me at first, but, after the madam told me how, I soon learned to do it satisfactorily. Then I had to wait on the table, sweep the large yard every morning with a brush broom and go for the mail once a week. I used to get very tired, for I was young and consequently not strong. Aside from these things which came regularly, I had to help the madam in warping the cloth. I dreaded this work, for I always got my ears boxed if I did not or could not do the work to suit her. She always made the warp herself and put it in, and I had to hand her the thread as she put it through the harness. I would get very tired at this work and, like any child, wanted to be at play, but I could not remember that the madam ever gave me that privilege. Saddling the horse at first was troublesome to me, but Boss was constant in his efforts to teach me, and, after many trials, I learned the task satisfactorily to the master and to bring the horse to the door when he wished to go out for business or pleasure. Riding horseback was common for both ladies and gentlemen, and sometimes I would have to saddle three or more horses when Boss, the madam, a friend or friends desired a ride. Bird hunting parties were common and were greatly enjoyed, by the young people especially. Boss always invited some of the young people of the neighborhood to these parties and they never failed to put in an appearance. Williams, Bradford and Freeman were the sons of rich planters, and were always participants in this sport, and their young lady friends joined in it as on-lookers. The young men singing and whistling to the birds, I in the meantime setting the net. As soon as I had got the net in order they would approach the birds slowly, driving them into it. There was great laughter and excitement if they were successful in catching a fine flock. * * * * * CRUEL TREATMENT. I was but a lad, yet I can remember well the cruel treatment I received. Some weeks it seemed I was whipped for nothing, just to please my mistress' fancy. Once, when I was sent to town for the mail and had started back, it was so dark and rainy my horse got away from me and I had to stay all night in town. The next morning when I got back home I had a severe whipping, because the master was expecting a letter containing money and was disappointed in not receiving it that night, as he was going to Panola to spend Christmas. However, the day came and all the family went except me. During the time they were gone the overseer whipped a man so terribly with the "bull whip" that I had to go for the doctor, and when Dr. Heningford, the regular family physician, came, he said it was awful--such cruel treatment, and he complained about it. It was common for a slave to get an "over-threshing," that is, to be whipped too much. The poor man was cut up so badly all over that the doctor made a bran poultice and wrapped his entire body in it. This was done to draw out the inflammation. It seems the slave had been sick, and had killed a little pig when he became well enough to go to work, as his appetite craved hearty food, and he needed it to give him strength for his tasks. For this one act, comparatively trivial, he was almost killed. The idea never seemed to occur to the slave holders that these slaves were getting no wages for their work and, therefore, had nothing with which to procure what, at times, was necessary for their health and strength--palatable and nourishing food. When the slaves took anything the masters called it stealing, yet they were stealing the slaves' time year after year. When Boss came home he was called on by the town officials, for the case had been reported to them. Boss, however, got out of it by saying that he was not at home when the trouble occurred. The poor slave was sick from his ill treatment some four or five months, and when he recovered there was a running sore left on his body, from the deep cuts of the whip, which never healed. I can not forget how he looked, the sore was a sickening sight; yet, when he was able to walk he had to return to work in the field. I had not been at Pontotoc very long when I saw the hounds run a slave, by name Ben Lyon. "Old Ben," as he was called, ran away and had been gone a week when he was seen by a woman who "told on him," and then I was sent to get the man who had trained dogs, or hounds as they were called. The dogs ran the slave about ten miles when they lost track at a creek, but he was caught that night in a farmer's house getting something to eat. * * * * * INSTRUCTIONS IN MEDICINE. After some time, Boss began to tell me the names of medicines and their properties. I liked this and seemed to grasp the idea very well. After giving me a number of names he would make me repeat them. Then he would tell me the properties of each medicine named, how it was used and for what purpose and how much constituted a dose. He would drill me in all this until I knew it and, in a short time, he would add other names to the list. He always showed me each medicine named and had me smell and carefully examine it that I might know it when seen again. I liked this, and used to wish that I was as wise as my master. He was very precise, steady and gentle in any case of sickness, and, although he had long retired from the medical world, all recognized his merit wherever he went. I used to go to the woods and gather slippery elm, alum root and the roots of wild cherry and poplar, for we used all these in compounding medicines for the servants. * * * * * THE OVERSEER--WHIPPINGS AND OTHER CRUELTIES. The overseer was a man hired to look after the farm and whip the slaves. Very often they were not only cruel, but barbarous. Every farmer or planter considered an overseer a necessity. As a rule, there was also on each plantation, a foreman--one of the brighter slaves, who was held responsible for the slaves under him, and whipped if they did not come up to the required task. There was, too, a forewoman, who, in like manner, had charge of the female slaves, and also the boys and girls from twelve to sixteen years of age, and all the old people that were feeble. This was called the trash gang. Ah! it would make one's heart ache to see those children and how they were worked. Cold, frosty mornings, the little ones would be crying from cold; but they had to keep on. Aunt Polly, our forewoman, was afraid to allow them to run to get warm, for fear the overseer would see them. Then she would be whipped, and he would make her whip all of the gang. At length, I became used to severe treatment of the slaves; but, every little while something would happen to make me wish I were dead. Everything was in a bustle--always there was slashing and whipping. I remember when Boss made a change in our overseer. It was the beginning of the year. Riley, one of the slaves, who was a principal plower, was not on hand for work one Monday morning, having been delayed in fixing the bridle of his mule, which the animal, for lack of something better, perhaps, had been vigorously chewing and rendered nearly useless. He was, therefore, considerably behind time, when he reached the field. Without waiting to learn what was the reason for the delay, the overseer sprang upon him with his bull whip, which was about seven feet long, lashing him with all his strength, every stroke leaving its mark upon the poor man's body, and finally the knot at the end of the whip buried itself in the fleshy part of the arm, and there came around it a festering sore. He suffered greatly with it, until one night his brother took out the knot, when the poor fellow was asleep, for he could not bear any one to touch it when he was awake. It was awful to hear the cracking of that whip as it was laid about Riley--one would have thought that an ox team had gotten into the mire, and was being whipped out, so loud and sharp was the noise! I usually slept in the dining room on the floor. Early one morning an old slave, by name of "Uncle Jim," came and knocked at the window, and upon my jumping up and going to him, he told me to tell Boss that Uncle Jim was there. He had run away, some time before, and, for some reason, had returned. Boss, upon hearing the news, got up and sent me to tell the overseer to come at once. He came, and, taking the bull whip, a cowhide and a lot of peach-tree switches, he and Boss led Uncle Jim back into the cow lot, on the side of the hill, where they drove four stakes in the ground, and, laying him flat on his face, tied his hands and feet to these stakes. After whipping him, in this position, all they wanted to, a pail of strong salt and water was brought, and the poor fellow was "washed down." This washing was customary, after whippings, as the planters claimed it drew out all the soreness, and healed the lacerated flesh. Upon one occasion, the family being away, I was left extra work to do, being set to help three fellow slaves lay off the rows for planting corn. We did not get them quite straight. The deviation we made from the line was very little, and could scarcely be seen, even by an expert; but the least thing wrong about the work would cause any slave to be whipped, and so all four of us were flogged. * * * * * THE SLAVE CABIN. There was a section of the plantation known as "the quarters," where were situated the cabins of the slaves. These cabins were built of rough logs, and daubed with the red clay or mud of the region. No attempt was made to give them a neat appearance--they were not even whitewashed. Each cabin was about fourteen feet square, containing but one room, and was covered with oak boards, three feet in length, split out of logs by hand. These boards were not nailed on, but held in their places by what were termed weight-poles laid across them at right angles. There were in each room two windows, a door and a large, rude fire-place. The door and window frames, or facings, were held in their places by wooden pins, nails being used only in putting the doors together. The interior of the cabins had nothing more attractive than the outside--there was no plastering and only a dirt floor. The furniture consisted of one bed, a plain board table and some benches made by the slaves themselves. Sometimes a cabin was occupied by two or more families, in which case the number of beds was increased proportionately. For light a grease lamp was used, which was made of iron, bowl shaped, by a blacksmith. The bowl was filled with grease and a rag or wick placed in it, one end resting on the edge for lighting. These lamps gave a good light, and were in general use among the slaves. Tallow candles were a luxury, never seen except in the "great houses" of the planters. The only light for outdoors used by the slaves was a torch made by binding together a bundle of small sticks or splinters. * * * * * COTTON RAISING. After the selection of the soil most suitable for cotton, the preparation of it was of vital importance. The land was deeply plowed, long enough before the time for planting to allow the spring rains to settle it. Then it was thrown into beds or ridges by turning furrows both ways toward a given center. The seed was planted at the rate of one hundred pounds per acre. The plant made its appearance in about ten days after planting, if the weather was favorable. Early planting, however, followed by cold, stormy weather frequently caused the seed to rot. As soon as the third leaf appeared the process of scraping commenced, which consisted of cleaning the ridge with hoes of all superfluous plants and all weeds and grass. After this a narrow plow known as a "bull tongue," was used to turn the loose earth around the plant and cover up any grass not totally destroyed by the hoes. If the surface was very rough the hoes followed, instead of preceding, the plow to unearth those plants that may have been partially covered. The slaves often acquired great skill in these operations, running plows within two inches of the stalks, and striking down weeds within half an inch with their hoes, rarely touching a leaf of the cotton. Subsequent plowing, alternating with hoeing, usually occurred once in twenty days. There was danger in deep plowing of injuring the roots, and this was avoided, except in the middle of rows in wet seasons when it was necessary to bury and more effectually kill the grass. The implements used in the culture of cotton were shovels, hoes, sweeps, cultivators, harrows and two kinds of plows. It required four months, under the most favorable circumstances, for cotton to attain its full growth. It was usually planted about the 1st of April, or from March 20th to April 10th, bloomed about the 1st of June and the first balls opened about August 15th, when picking commenced. The blooms come out in the morning and are fully developed by noon, when they are a pure white. Soon after meridian they begin to exhibit reddish streaks, and next morning are a clear pink. They fall off by noon of the second day. * * * * * THE COTTON WORM. A cut worm was troublesome sometimes; but the plants were watched very carefully, and as soon as any signs of worms were seen work for their destruction was commenced. The majority of the eggs were laid upon the calyx and involucre. The worm, after gnawing through its enclosed shell, makes its first meal upon the part of the plant upon which the egg was laid, be it leaf, stem or involucre. If it were laid upon the leaf, as was usually the case, it might be three days before the worm reached the boll; but were the eggs laid upon the involucre the worm pierced through within twenty-four hours after hatching. The newly hatched boll worm walks like a geometrical larva or looper, a measuring worm as it was called. This is easily explained by the fact that while in the full grown worm the abdominal legs, or pro legs, are nearly equal in length, in the newly hatched worm the second pair are slightly shorter than the third, and the first pair are shorter and slenderer than the second--a state of things approaching that in the full grown cotton worm, though the difference in size in the former case is not nearly so marked as in the latter. This method of walking is lost with the first or second molt. There is nothing remarkable about these young larvae. They seem to be thicker in proportion to their length than the young cotton worms, and they have not so delicate and transparent an appearance. Their heads are black and their bodies seem already to have begun to vary in color. The body above is furnished with sparse, stiff hairs, each arising from a tubercle. I have often watched the newly hatched boll while in the cotton fields. When hatched from an egg which had been deposited upon a leaf, they invariably made their first meal on the substance of the leaf, and then wandered about for a longer or shorter space of time, evidently seeking a boll or flower bud. It was always interesting to watch this seemingly aimless search of the young worm, crawling first down the leaf stem and then back, then dropping a few inches by a silken thread and then painfully working its way back again, until, at last, it found the object of its search, or fell to the ground where it was destroyed by ants. As the boll worms increase in size a most wonderful diversity of color and marking becomes apparent. In color different worms will vary from a brilliant green to a deep pink or dark brown, exhibiting almost every conceivable intermediate stage from an immaculate, unstriped specimen to one with regular spots and many stripes. The green worms were more common than those of any other color--a common variety was a very light green. When these worms put in an appearance it raised a great excitement among the planters. We did not use any poison to destroy them, as I learn is the method now employed. * * * * * THE COTTON HARVEST. The cotton harvest, or picking season, began about the latter part of August or first of September, and lasted till Christmas or after, but in the latter part of July picking commenced for "the first bale" to go into the market at Memphis. This picking was done by children from nine to twelve years of age and by women who were known as "sucklers," that is, women with infants. The pickers would pass through the rows getting very little, as the cotton was not yet in full bloom. From the lower part of the stalk where it opened first is where they got the first pickings. The season of first picking was always a great time, for the planter who brought the first bale of cotton into market at Memphis was presented with a basket of champagne by the commission merchants. This was a custom established throughout Mississippi. After the first pickings were secured the cotton developed very fast, continuing to bud and bloom all over the stalk until the frost falls. The season of picking was exciting to all planters, every one was zealous in pushing his slaves in order that he might reap the greatest possible harvest. The planters talked about their prospects, discussed the cotton markets, just as the farmers of the north discuss the markets for their products. I often saw Boss so excited and nervous during the season he scarcely ate. The daily task of each able-bodied slave during the cotton picking season war 250 pounds or more, and all those who did not come up to the required amount would get a whipping. When the planter wanted more cotton picked than usual, the overseer would arrange a race. The slaves would be divided into two parties, with, a leader for each party. The first leader would choose a slave for his side, then the second leader one for his, and so on alternately until all were chosen. Each leader tried to get the best on his side. They would all work like good fellows for the prize, which was a tin cup of sugar for each slave on the winning side. The contest was kept up for three days whenever the planter desired an extra amount picked. The slaves were just as interested in the races as if they were going to get a five dollar bill. * * * * * PREPARING COTTON FOR MARKET. The gin-house was situated about four hundred yards from "the great house" on the main road. It was a large shed built upon square timbers, and was similar to a barn, only it stood some six feet from the ground, and underneath was located the machinery for running the gin. The cotton was put into the loft after it was dried, ready for ginning. In this process the cotton was dropped from the loft to the man who fed the machine. As it was ginned the lint would go into the lint room, and the seed would drop at the feeder's feet. The baskets used for holding lint were twice as large as those used in the picking process, and they were never taken from the gin house. These lint baskets were used in removing the lint from the lint room to the place where the cotton was baled. A bale contained 250 pounds, and the man who did the treading of the cotton into the bales would not vary ten pounds in the bale, so accustomed was he to the packing. Generally from fourteen to fifteen bales of cotton were in the lint room at a time. * * * * * OTHER FARM PRODUCTS. Cotton was the chief product of the Mississippi farms and nothing else was raised to sell. Wheat, oats and rye were raised in limited quantities, but only for the slaves and the stock. All the fine flour for the master's family was bought in St. Louis. Corn was raised in abundance, as it was a staple article of food for the slaves. It was planted about the 1st of March, or about a month earlier than the cotton. It was, therefore, up and partially worked before the cotton was planted and fully tilled before the cotton was ready for cultivation. Peas were planted between the rows of corn, and hundreds of bushels were raised. These peas after being harvested, dried and beaten out of the shell, were of a reddish brown tint, not like those raised for the master's family, but they were considered a wholesome and nutritious food for the slaves. Cabbage and yams, a large sweet potato, coarser than the kind generally used by the whites and not so delicate in flavor, were also raised for the servants in liberal quantities. No hay was raised, but the leaves of the corn, stripped from the stalks while yet green, cured and bound in bundles, were used as a substitute for it in feeding horses. * * * * * FARM IMPLEMENTS. Almost all the implements used on the plantation were made by the slaves. Very few things were bought. Boss had a skilled blacksmith, uncle Ben, for whom he paid $1,800, and there were slaves who were carpenters and workers in wood who could turn their hands to almost anything. Wagons, plows, harrows, grubbing hoes, hames, collars, baskets, bridle bits and hoe handles were all made on the farm and from the material which it produced, except the iron. The timber used in these implements was generally white or red oak, and was cut and thoroughly seasoned long before it was needed. The articles thus manufactured were not fine in form or finish, but they were durable, and answered the purposes of a rude method of agriculture. Horse collars were made from corn husks and from poplar bark which was stripped from the tree, in the spring, when the sap was up and it was soft and pliable, and separated into narrow strips which were plaited together. These collars were easy for the horse, and served the purpose of the more costly leather collar. Every season at least 200 cotton baskets were made. One man usually worked at this all the year round, but in the spring he had three assistants. The baskets were made from oak timber, grown in the home forests and prepared by the slaves. It was no small part of the work of the blacksmith and his assistant to keep the farm implements in good repair, and much of this work was done at night. All the plank used was sawed by hand from timber grown on the master's land, as there were no saw mills in that region. Almost the only things not made on the farm which were in general use there were axes, trace chains and the hoes used in cultivating the cotton. * * * * * THE CLEARING OF NEW LAND. When additional land was required for cultivation the first step was to go into the forest in summer and "deaden" or girdle the trees on a given tract. This was cutting through the bark all around the trunk about thirty inches from the ground. The trees so treated soon died and in a year or two were in condition to be removed. The season selected for clearing the land was winter, beginning with January. The trees, except the larger ones, were cut down, cut into lengths convenient for handling and piled into great heaps, called "log heaps," and burned. The undergrowth was grubbed out and also piled and burned. The burning was done at night and the sight was often weird and grand. The chopping was done by the men slaves and the grubbing by women. All the trees that blew down during the summer were left as they fell till winter when they were removed. This went on, year after year, until all the trees were cleared out. The first year after the new land was cleared corn was put in, the next season cotton. As a rule corn and cotton were planted alternately, especially if the land was poor, if not, cotton would be continued year after year on the same land. Old corn stalks were always plowed under for the next year's crop and they served as an excellent fertilizer. Cotton was seldom planted on newly cleared land, as the roots and stumps rendered it difficult to cultivate the land without injury to the growing plant. I never saw women put to the hard work of grubbing until I went to McGee's and I greatly wondered at it. Such work was not done by women slaves in Virginia. Children were required to do some work, it mattered not how many grown people were working. There were always tasks set for the boys and girls ranging in age from nine to thirteen years, beyond these ages they worked with the older slaves. After I had been in Pontotoc two years I had to help plant and hoe, and work in the cotton during the seasons, and soon learned to do everything pertaining to the farm. * * * * * COOKING FOR THE SLAVES. In summer time the cooking for the slaves was done out of doors. A large fire was built under a tree, two wooden forks were driven into the ground on opposite sides of the fire, a pole laid on the forks and on this kettles were hung over the fire for the preparation of the food. Cabbage and meat, boiled, alternated with meat and peas, were the staple for summer. Bread was furnished with the meals and corn meal dumplings, that is, little balls made of meal and grease from the boiled bacon and dropped into boiling water, were also provided and considered quite palatable, especially if cooked in the water in which the bacon was boiled. In winter the cooking was done in a cabin, and sweet potatoes, dried peas and meat were the principal diet. This bill of fare was for dinner or the mid-day meal. For supper each slave received two pieces of meat and two slices of bread, but these slices were very large, as the loaves were about six inches thick and baked in an old fashioned oven. This bread was made from corn meal for, as I have said, only on holidays and special occasions did the slaves have white bread of any kind. Part of the meat and bread received at supper time was saved for the "morning bite." The slaves never had any breakfast, but went to the field at daylight and after working till the sun was well up, all would stop for their morning bite. Very often some young fellow ate his morning bite the evening before at supper and would have nothing for the morning, going without eating until noon. The stop for morning bite was very short; then all would plunge into work until mid-day, when all hands were summoned to their principal meal. * * * * * CARDING AND SPINNING. Through the winter and on rainy days in summer, the women of the field had to card the wool and spin it into yarn. They generally worked in pairs, a spinning wheel and cards being assigned to each pair, and while one carded the wool into rolls, the other spun it into yarn suitable for weaving into cloth, or a coarse, heavy thread used in making bridles and lines for the mules that were used in the fields. This work was done in the cabins, and the women working together alternated in the carding and spinning. Four cuts were considered a task or day's work, and if any one failed to complete her task she received a whipping from the madam. At night when the spinners brought their work to the big house I would have it to reel. The reel was a contrivance consisting of a sort of wheel, turned on an axis, used to transfer the yarn from the spools or spindles of the spinning wheels into cuts or hunks. It was turned by hand and when enough yarn had been reeled to make a cut the reel signaled it with a snap. This process was continued until four cuts were reeled which made a hunk, and this was taken off and was ready for use. So the work went on until all was reeled. I often got very weary of this work and would almost fall asleep at it, as it was generally done at night after I had had a long day's toil at something else. * * * * * WEAVING--CLOTHES OF THE SLAVES. One woman did the weaving and it was her task to weave from nine to ten yards a day. Aunt Liza was our weaver and she was taught the work by the madam. At first she did not get on so well with it and many times I have seen the madam jump at her, pinch and choke her because she was dull in understanding how to do it. The madam made the unreasonable demand that she should do the full task at first, and because she failed she was punished, as was the custom in all cases of failure, no matter how unreasonable the demand. Liza finally became equal to her task and accomplished it each day. But the trouble and worry to me was when I had to assist the madam in warping--getting the work ready for the weaver. She would warp the thread herself and place it in the loom, then I would have to hand her the threads, as she put them through the hames. For any failure in quickly comprehending or doing my work, I did not fail to receive the customary blow, or blows, from her hand. Each piece of cloth contained forty yards, and this cloth was used in making clothes for the servants. About half of the whole amount required was thus made at home; the remainder was bought, and as it was heavier it was used for winter clothing. Each man was allowed for summer two pairs of pants and two shirts, but no coat. The women had two dresses and two chemises each for summer. For winter the men had each two pairs of pants, one coat, one hat and one pair of coarse shoes. These shoes before being worn had to be greased with tallow, with a little tar in it. It was always a happy time when the men got these winter goods--it brought many a smile to their faces, though the supply was meager and the articles of the cheapest. The women's dresses for winter were made of the heavier wool-cloth used for the men. They also had one pair of shoes each and a turban. The women who could utilize old clothes, made for themselves what were called pantalets. They had no stockings or undergarments to protect their limbs--these were never given them. The pantalets were made like a pant-leg, came just above the knee, and were caught and tied. Sometimes they looked well and comfortable. The men's old pant-legs were sometimes used. I remember once when Boss went to Memphis and brought back a bolt of gingham for turbans for the female slaves. It was a red and yellow check, and the turbans made from it were only to be worn on Sunday. The old women were so glad that they sang and prayed. A little gift from the master was greatly appreciated by them. I always came in for my share each year, but my clothes were somewhat different. I wore pants made of Boss's old ones, and all his old coats were utilized for me. They rounded them off at the tail just a little and called them jackets. My shoes were not brogans, but made of lighter leather, and made suitable for in the house. I only worked on the farm in busy seasons, and did not have the regular wear of the farm hands. On Monday morning it was a great sight to see all the hands marching to the field. The cotton clothes worn by both men and women, and the turbans of the latter, were snowy white, as were the wool hats of the men--all contrasted with the dark faces of the wearers in a strange and striking manner. * * * * * SLAVE MOTHERS--CARE OF THE CHILDREN. The women who had young babies were assigned to what was considered "light work," such as hoeing potatoes, cutting weeds from the fence corners, and any other work of like character. About nine o'clock in the forenoon, at noon, and three o'clock in the afternoon, these women, known on the farms as "the sucklers," could be seen going from work to nurse their babies. Many were the heart-sighs of these sorrowing mothers as they went to minister to their infants. Sometimes the little things would seem starved, for the mothers could only stop their toil three times a day to care for them. When old enough to receive it, the babies had milk, the liquor from boiled cabbage, and bread and milk together. A woman who was too old to do much of anything was assigned to the charge of these babies in the absence of their mothers. It was rare that she had any one to help her. The cries of these little ones, who were cut off almost entirely from motherly care and protection, were heart-rending. The cabin used for the infants during the day was a double one, that is, double the usual size, and was located near the great house. The cradles used were made of boards, and were not more than two by three feet in size. The women carried their babies in the cradles to the baby cabin in the morning, taking them to their own cabins at night. The children ranging in age from one to seven years were numerous, and the old woman had them to look after as well as the babies. This was indeed a task, and might well have taxed the strength of a younger woman. They were always from eight to a dozen infants in the cabin. The summer season was trying on the babies and young children. Often they would drink too much liquor from cabbage, or too much buttermilk, and would be taken with a severe colic. I was always called on these occasions to go with Boss to administer medicine. I remember on one occasion a little boy had eaten too much cabbage, and was taken with cramp colic. In a few minutes his stomach was swollen as tight and hard as a balloon, and his teeth clenched. He was given an emetic, put in a mustard bath and was soon relieved. The food was too heavy for these children, and they were nearly always in need of some medical attendance. Excessive heat, with improper food, often brought on cholera infantum, from which the infants sometimes died rapidly and in considerable numbers. * * * * * METHODS OF PUNISHMENT. The methods of punishment were barbarous in the extreme, and so numerous that I will not attempt to describe them all. One method was to tie the slave to a tree, strip off his clothes, and then whip him with a rawhide, or long, limber switches, or the terrible bull whip. Another was to put the slave in stocks, or to buck him, that is, fasten his feet together, draw up his knees to his chin, tie his hands together, draw them down over the knees, and put a stick under the latter and over the arms. In either of these ways the slave was entirely at the mercy of his tormentors, and the whipping could proceed at their pleasure. After these whippings the slave was often left helpless and bleeding upon the ground, until the master, or overseer, saw fit to let him up. The most common method of punishment was to have the servants form a ring, called the "bull ring," into which the one to be punished was led naked. The slaves were then each given a switch, rawhide, strap or whip, and each one was compelled to cut at the poor victim as he ran around the ring. The ring was composed of men, women and children; and, as they numbered from forty to fifty, each circuit of the ring would result in that number of lashes, and by the time the victim had made two or three rounds his condition can be readily imagined. The overseer was always one of the ring, vigorously using the whip, and seeing that all the slaves did the same. Some of the victims fainted before they had passed once around the ring. Women slaves were punished in the same manner as the men. The salt water bath was given after each punishment. Runaway slaves were usually caught by means of hounds, trained for the purpose by men who made it a business and a source of revenue, notwithstanding its brutal features and degrading influence. * * * * * FOURTH OF JULY BARBECUE. Barbecue originally meant to dress and roast a hog whole, but has come to mean the cooking of a food animal in this manner for the feeding of a great company. A feast of this kind was always given to us, by Boss, on the 4th of July. The anticipation of it acted as a stimulant through the entire year. Each one looked forward to this great day of recreation with pleasure. Even the older slaves would join in the discussion of the coming event. It mattered not what trouble or hardship the year had brought, this feast and its attendant pleasure would dissipate all gloom. Some, probably, would be punished on the morning of the 4th, but this did not matter; the men thought of the good things in store for them, and that made them forget that they had been punished. All the week previous to the great day, the slaves were in high spirits, the young girls and boys, each evening, congregating, in front of the cabins, to talk of the feast, while others would sing and dance. The older slaves were not less happy, but would only say; "Ah! God has blessed us in permitting us to see another feast day." The day before the 4th was a busy one. The slaves worked with all their might. The children who were large enough were engaged in bringing wood and bark to the spot where the barbecue was to take place. They worked eagerly, all day long; and, by the time the sun was setting, a huge pile of fuel was beside the trench, ready for use in the morning. At an early hour of the great day, the servants were up, and the men whom Boss had appointed to look after the killing of the hogs and sheep were quickly at their work, and, by the time they had the meat dressed and ready, most of the slaves had arrived at the center of attraction. They gathered in groups, talking, laughing, telling tales that they had from their grandfather, or relating practical jokes that they had played or seen played by others. These tales were received with peals of laughter. But however much they seemed to enjoy these stories and social interchanges, they never lost sight of the trench or the spot where the sweetmeats were to be cooked. The method of cooking the meat was to dig a trench in the ground about six feet long and eighteen inches deep. This trench was filled with wood and bark which was set on fire, and, when it was burned to a great bed of coals, the hog was split through the back bone, and laid on poles which had been placed across the trench. The sheep were treated in the same way, and both were turned from side to side as they cooked. During the process of roasting the cooks basted the carcasses with a preparation furnished from the great house, consisting of butter, pepper, salt and vinegar, and this was continued until the meat was ready to serve. Not far from this trench were the iron ovens, where the sweetmeats were cooked. Three or four women were assigned to this work. Peach cobbler and apple dumpling were the two dishes that made old slaves smile for joy and the young fairly dance. The crust or pastry of the cobbler was prepared in large earthen bowls, then rolled out like any pie crust, only it was almost twice as thick. A layer of this crust was laid in the oven, then a half peck of peaches poured, in, followed by a layer of sugar; then a covering of pastry was laid over all and smoothed around with a knife. The oven was then put over a bed of coals, the cover put on and coals thrown on it, and the process of baking began. Four of these ovens were usually in use at these feasts, so that enough of the pastry might be baked to supply all. The ovens were filled and refilled until there was no doubt about the quantity. The apple dumplings were made in the usual way, only larger, and served with sauce made from brown sugar. It lacked flavoring, such as cinnamon or lemon, yet it was a dish highly relished by all the slaves. I know that these feasts made me so excited, I could scarcely do my house duties, and I would never fail to stop and look out of the window from the dining room down into the quarters. I was eager to get through with my work and be with the feasters. About noon everything was ready to serve. The table was set in a grove near the quarters, a place set aside for these occasions. The tableware was not fine, being of tin, but it served the purpose, and did not detract from the slaves' relish for the feast. The drinks were strictly temperance drinks--buttermilk and water. Some of the nicest portions of the meat were sliced off and put on a platter to send to the great house for Boss and his family. It was a pleasure for the slaves to do this, for Boss always enjoyed it. It was said that the slaves could barbecue meats best, and when the whites had barbecues slaves always did the cooking. When dinner was all on the table, the invitation was given for all to come; and when all were in a good way eating, Boss and the madam would go out to witness the progress of the feast, and seemed pleased to see the servants so happy. Everything was in abundance, so all could have plenty--Boss always insisted on this. The slaves had the whole day off, and could do as they liked. After dinner some of the women would wash, sew or iron. It was a day of harmless riot for all the slaves, and I can not express the happiness it brought them. Old and young, for months, would rejoice in the memory of the day and its festivities, and "bless" Boss for this ray of sunlight in their darkened lives. * * * * * ATTENDANCE AT CHURCH. There was an observance of religious forms at least by the occupants of both the great house and the cabins. The McGee family were church-going people, and, except in very inclement weather, never failed to attend service on Sunday. They were Methodists, and their church was four miles from their residence. The Baptist church was but two miles distant, and the family usually alternated in their attendance between the two places of worship. I always attended them to church, generally riding behind while the Boss drove. Upon reaching church, my first duty was to run to a spring for a pitcher of fresh water, which I passed not only to the members of our party, but to any others desiring drink. Whatever may be thought of the religious professions of the slave-holders, there can be no question that many of the slaves were sincere believers in the Christian religion, and endeavored to obey the precepts according to their light. * * * * * RELIGIOUS MEETINGS OF THE SLAVES. Saturday evening on the farm was always hailed with delight. The air was filled with happy shouts from men and boys, so glad were they that Sunday, their only day of rest, was near. In the cabins the women were washing and fixing garments for Sunday, that they might honor the Lord in cleanliness and decency. It was astonishing how they utilized what they had, and with what skill and industry they performed these self-imposed tasks. Where the family was large it was often after midnight before this work was done. While this preparation for the Sabbath was in progress in most of the cabins, the old men would gather in one for a prayer-meeting. As they began to sing some familiar hymn, the air would ring with their voices, and it was not long before the cabin was filled with both old and young, who came in their simple yet sincere way to give praise to God. It was common to have one or two exhorters on the plantation who claimed to be called to do service for God, by teaching their fellow men the principles of religion. God certainly must have revealed himself to these poor souls, for they were very ignorant--they did not know a letter of the Bible. But when they opened their mouths they were filled, and the plan of Salvation was explained in a way that all could receive it. It was always a mystery to the white brethren how the slaves could line out hymns, preach Christ and redemption, yet have no knowledge even of how the name of Christ was spelled. They were illiterate to the last degree, so there is but one theory, they were inspired. God revealed unto them just what they should teach their flock, the same as he did to Moses. I remember very well that there was always a solemnity about the services--a certain harmony, which had a peculiar effect--a certain pathetic tone which quickened the emotions as they sang those old plantation hymns. It mattered not what their troubles had been during the week--how much they had been lashed, the prayer-meeting on Saturday evening never failed to be held. Their faith was tried and true. On Sunday afternoons, they would all congregate again to praise God, and the congregation was enthusiastic. It was pathetic to hear them pray, from the depths of their hearts, for them who "despitefully used them and persecuted them." This injunction of our Saviour was strictly adhered to. The words that came from the minister were always of a consolatory kind. He knew the crosses of his fellow slaves and their hardships, for he had shared them himself. I was always touched in hearing him give out the hymns. I can hear old Uncle Ben now, as he solemnly worded out the following lines: Must I be carried to the skies, On flowery beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize, And sailed through bloody seas? After singing he would always speak to them of the necessity for patience in bearing the crosses, urging them to endure "as good soldiers." Many tears were shed, and many glad shouts of praise would burst forth during the sermon. A hymn usually followed the sermon, then all retired. Their faces seemed to shine with a happy light--their very countenance showed that their souls had been refreshed and that it had been "good for them to be there." These meetings were the joy and comfort of the slaves, and even those who did not profess Christianity were calm and thoughtful while in attendance. * * * * * A NEIGHBORHOOD QUARREL Opposite our farm was one owned by a Mr. Juval, and adjoining that was another belonging to one White. The McGees and the Whites were very fast friends, visiting each other regularly--indeed they had grown up together, and Mr. White at one time was the lover of the madam, and engaged to be married to her. This friendship had existed for years, when McGee bought the Juval farm, for which White had also been negotiating, but which he failed to get on account of McGee having out-bid him. From this circumstance ill feeling was engendered between the two men, and they soon became bitter enemies. McGee had decided to build a fence between the farm he had purchased and that of White, and, during the winter, his teamsters were set to hauling the rails; and, in unloading them, they accidentally threw some of them over the line on to White's land. The latter said nothing about the matter until spring, when he wrote McGee a letter, asking him to remove the rails from his land. McGee paid no attention to the request, and he soon received a second note, when he said to his wife: "That fellow is about to turn himself a fool--I'll give him a cow-hiding." A third and more emphatic note followed, in which White told the Boss that the rails must be removed within twenty-four hours. He grew indignant, and, in true Southern style, he went immediately to town and bought arms, and prepared himself for the fray. When he returned he had every hand on the plantation stop regular work, and put them all to building the fence. I was of the number. Boss and the overseer came out to overlook the work and hurry it on. About four o'clock in the afternoon White put in an appearance, and came face to face with McGee, sitting on his horse and having a double barreled shot gun lying across the pummel of his saddle. White passed on without saying a word, but Boss yelled at him; "Hello! I see you are about to turn yourself a d--d fool." White checked up and began to swear, saying: "You are a coward to attack an unarmed man." He grew furious, took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, saying: "Here I am, blow me to h--l, and I'll have some one blow you there before night." During White's rage he said: "I'll fight you anywhere--bowie-knife fight, shot gun fight or any other." He called, in his excitement, for his nephew, who was working on his farm, to come, and immediately sent him to Billy Duncan's to get him a double barreled shot gun. Meantime, Mrs. McGee appeared on the scene, and began to cry, begging White to stop and allow her to speak to him. But he replied: "Go off, go off, I don't want to speak to you." Boss grew weak and sick, and through his excitement, was taken violently ill, vomiting as if he had taken an emetic. He said to White; "I'll return as soon as I take my wife home," but he never came back. As Boss and the madam rode off, White came galloping back, and said to Brooks, our overseer: "If I am shot down on foul play would you speak of it?" Brooks replied: "No, I don't care to interfere--I don't wish to have anything to do with it." White was bloodthirsty, and came back at intervals during the entire night, where we were working, to see if he could find Boss. It is quite probable that White may have long cherished a secret grudge against Boss, because he had robbed him of his first love; and, brooding over these offenses, he became so excited as to be almost insane. Had McGee returned that night, White would certainly have shot him. Boss became so uneasy over the situation that he sent one of his slaves, a foreman, to Panola county, some seventy-five miles distant, to Mrs. McGee's father, to get her brother, a lawyer, to come and endeavor to effect a settlement. He came, but all his efforts were unavailing. The men met at a magistrate's office, but they came to no understanding. Our folks became dissatisfied, and did not care to remain longer in the place, so they began to look out for other quarters. Boss finally decided to buy a farm in Bolivar, Miss., and to remove his family to Memphis, where he secured a fine place, just outside of the city. [Illustration: Farmer's Merchants Bank--Three Dollar Banknote] CHAPTER II. SOCIAL AND OTHER ASPECTS OF SLAVERY. * * * * * REMOVAL TO MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE. McGee had decided to build a new house upon the property which he had purchased at Memphis; and, in August 1850, he sent twenty-five of his slaves to the city, to make brick for the structure, and I went along as cook. After the bricks were burned, the work of clearing the ground for the buildings was commenced. There were many large and beautiful trees that had to be taken up and removed; and, when this work was completed, the excavations for the foundations and the cellar were undertaken. All of this work was done by the slaves. The site was a beautiful one, embracing fourteen acres, situated two miles southeast from the city, on the Memphis and Charleston railroad. The road ran in front of the place and the Boss built a flag-station there, for the accommodation of himself and his neighbors, which was named McGee Station. * * * * * A NEW AND SPLENDID HOUSE. The house was one of the most pretentious in that region, and was a year and a half in building. It was two stories in height, and built of brick, the exterior surface being coated with cement and marked off in blocks, about two feet square, to represent stone. It was then whitewashed. There was a veranda in front with six large columns, and, above, a balcony. On the back there were also a veranda and a balcony, extending across that end to the servants' wing. A large hall led from front to rear, on one side of which were double parlors, and on the other a sitting room, a bedroom and a dining room. In the second story were a hall and four rooms, similar in all respects to those below, and above these was a large attic. The interior woodwork was of black walnut. The walls were white, and the centerpieces in the ceilings of all the rooms were very fine, being the work of an English artisan, who had been only a short time in this country. This work was so superior, in design and finish, to anything before seen in that region that local artisans were much excited over it; and some offered to purchase the right to reproduce it, but Boss refused the offer. However, some one, while the house was finishing, helped himself to the design, and it was reproduced, in whole or in part, in other buildings in the city. This employment of a foreign artist was unusual there and caused much comment. The parlors were furnished with mahogany sets, the upholstering being in red brocade satin. The dining room was also furnished in mahogany. The bedrooms had mahogany bedsteads of the old-fashioned pattern with canopies. Costly bric-a-brac, which Boss and the madam had purchased while traveling in foreign countries, was in great profusion. Money was no object to Edmund McGee, and he added every modern improvement and luxury to his home; the decorations and furnishings were throughout of the most costly and elegant; and in the whole of Tennessee there was not a mansion more sumptuously complete in all its appointments, or more palatial in its general appearance. When all was finished--pictures, bric-a-brac, statuary and flowers all in their places, Mrs. McGee was brought home. In this new house Boss opened up in grand style; everything was changed, and the family entered upon a new, more formal and more pretentious manner of living. I was known no longer as errand boy, but installed as butler and body-servant to my master. I had the same routine of morning work, only it was more extensive. There was a great deal to be done in so spacious a mansion. Looking after the parlors, halls and dining rooms, arranging flowers in the rooms, waiting on the table, and going after the mail was my regular morning work, the year round. Then there were my duties to perform, night and morning, for my master; these were to brush his clothes, black his shoes, assist him to arrange his toilet, and do any little thing that he wanted me to. Aside from these regular duties, there were windows to wash, silver to polish and steps to stone on certain days in the week. I was called to do any errand necessary, and sometimes to assist in the garden. A new staff of house servants was installed, as follows: Aunt Delia, cook; Louisa, chambermaid; Puss, lady's maid to wait on the madam; Celia, nurse; Lethia, wet nurse; Sarah, dairymaid; Julia, laundress; Uncle Gooden, gardener; Thomas, coachman. * * * * * THE NEW STYLE OF LIVING. The servants, at first, were dazed with the splendor of the new house, and laughed and chuckled to themselves a good deal about mars' fine house, and really seemed pleased; for, strange to say, the slaves of rich people always rejoiced in that fact. A servant owned by a man in moderate circumstances was hooted at by rich men's slaves. It was common for them to say: "Oh! don't mind that darkey, he belongs to po'r white trash." So, as I said, our slaves rejoiced in master's good luck. Each of the women servants wore a new, gay colored turban, which was tied differently from that of the ordinary servant, in some fancy knot. Their frocks and aprons were new, and really the servants themselves looked new. My outfit was a new cloth suit, and my aprons for wearing when waiting on the table were of snowy white linen, the style being copied from that of the New York waiters. I felt big, for I never knew what a white bosom shirt was before; and even though the grief at the separation from my dear mother was almost unbearable at times, and my sense of loneliness in having no relative near me often made me sad, there was consolation, if not compensation, in this little change. I had known no comforts, and had been so cowed and broken in spirits, by cruel lashings, that I really felt light-hearted at this improvement in my personal appearance, although it was merely for the gratification of my master's pride; and I thought I would do all I could to please Boss. * * * * * THE ADORNMENT OF THE GROUNDS. For some time before all the appointments of the new home were completed, a great number of mechanics and workmen, besides our own servants, were employed; and there was much bustle and stir about the premises. Considerable out-door work was yet to be done--fences to be made, gardens and orchards to be arranged and planted, and the grounds about the house to be laid out and adorned with shrubbery and flower beds. When this work was finally accomplished, the grounds were indeed beautiful. The walks were graveled, and led through a profusion of shrubbery and flower beds. There was almost every variety of roses; while, scattered over the grounds, there were spruce, pine and juniper trees, and some rare varieties, seldom seen in this northern climate. Around the grounds was set a cedar hedge, and, in time, the place became noted for the beauty of its shrubbery; the roses especially were marvelous in the richness and variety of their colors, their fragrance and the luxuriousness of their growth. People who have never traveled in the South have little idea of the richness and profusion of its flowers, especially of its roses. Among the climbing plants, which adorned the house, the most beautiful and fragrant was the African honeysuckle--its odor was indeed delightful. * * * * * THE GARDEN. One of the institutions of the place was the vegetable garden. This was established not only for the convenience and comfort of the family, but to furnish employment for the slaves. Under the care of Uncle Gooden, the gardener, it flourished greatly; and there was so much more produced than the family could use, Boss concluded to sell the surplus. The gardener, therefore, went to the city, every morning, with a load of vegetables, which brought from eight to ten dollars daily, and this the madam took for "pin money." In the spring I had always to help the gardener in setting out plants and preparing beds; and, as this was in connection with my other work, I became so tired sometimes that I could hardly stand. All the vegetables raised were fine, and at that time brought a good price. The first cabbage that we sold in the markets brought twenty-five cents a head. The first sweet potatoes marketed always brought a dollar a peck, or four dollars a bushel. The Memphis market regulations required that all vegetables be washed before being exposed for sale. Corn was husked, and everything was clean and inviting. Any one found guilty of selling, or exhibiting for sale, vegetables of a previous day was fined, at once, by the market master. This rule was carried out to the letter. Nothing stale could be sold, or even come into market. The rules required that all poultry be dressed before being brought to market. The entrails were cleaned and strung and sold separately--usually for about ten cents a string. * * * * * PROFUSION OF FLOWERS. Flowers grew in profusion everywhere through the south, and it has, properly, been called the land of flowers. But flowers had no such sale there as have our flowers here in the north. The pansy and many of our highly prized plants and flowers grew wild in the south. The people there did not seem to care for flowers as we do. I have sold many bouquets for a dime, and very beautiful ones for fifteen and twenty cents, that would sell in the north for fifty to seventy-five cents. * * * * * THE FRUIT ORCHARD. The new place had an orchard of about four acres, consisting of a variety of apple, peach, pear and plum trees. Boss hired an expert gardener to teach me the art of grafting, and, after some practice, I became quite skilled in this work. Some of the pear trees that had been grafted had three different kinds of fruit on them, and others had three kinds of apples on them besides the pears. This grafting I did myself, and the trees were considered very fine by Boss. Another part of my work was the trimming of the hedge and the care of all the shrubbery. * * * * * I PRACTICE MEDICINE AMONG THE SLAVES. McGee had a medicine chest built into the wall of the new house. The shelves for medicine were of wood, and the arrangement was very convenient. It was really a small drug store. It contained everything in the way of drugs that was necessary to use in doctoring the slaves. We had quinine, castor-oil, alcohol and ipecac in great quantities, as these were the principal drugs used in the limited practice in the home establishment. If a servant came from the field to the house with a chill, which was frequent, the first thing we did was to give him a dose of ipecac to vomit him. On the evening after, we would give him two or three of Cook's pills. These pills we made at home, I always had to prepare the medicines, and give the dose, the Boss standing by dictating. Working with medicine, giving it and caring for the sick were the parts of my work that I liked best. Boss used Dr. Gunn's book altogether for recipes in putting up medicines. He read me the recipe, while I compounded it. * * * * * A SWELL RECEPTION. In celebration of the opening of the new house, McGee gave an elaborate reception and dinner. The menu embraced nearly everything that one could think of or desire, and all in the greatest profusion. It was a custom, not only with the McGees but among the southern people generally, to make much of eating--it was one of their hobbies. Everything was cooked well, and highly seasoned. Scarcity was foreign to the homes of the wealthy southerners. * * * * * RELATIVES VISIT AT THE MANSION. After the family had been settled about a month in the new home, their relatives in Panola Co., Miss., Mr. Jack McGee, known among the servants as "Old Jack," Mrs. Melinda McGee, his wife, Mrs. Farrington, their daughter who was a widow, and their other children Louisa, Ella and William, all came up for a visit, and to see the wonderful house. Mr. Jack McGee was the father of madam and the uncle of Boss. My master and mistress were therefore first cousins, and Boss sometimes called the old man father and at other times, uncle. Old Master Jack, as he alighted, said to those behind him: "Now be careful, step lightly, Louisa, this is the finest house you ever set foot in." When all had come into the house, and the old man had begun to look around, he said: "I don't know what Edmund is thinking about-out to build such a house-house." He was very old, and had never lost all of his Scotch dialect, and he had a habit of repeating a part or all of some words, as in the foregoing quotation. The other members of the visiting family were well pleased with the house, and said it was grand. They laughed and talked merrily over the many novel things which they saw. Mrs. Farrington, who was a gay widow, was naturally interested in everything. I busied myself waiting upon them, and it was late that night before I was through. So many made extra work for me. * * * * * ONE OF THE VISITORS DISTRUSTS ME. The next morning, after breakfast, Boss and old Master Jack went out to view the grounds. They took me along so that if anything was wanted I could do it. Boss would have me drive a stake in some place to mark where he desired to put something, perhaps some flowers, or a tree. He went on through the grounds, showing his father how everything was to be arranged. The old man shook his head, and said: "Well, it's good, but I am afraid you'll spoil these niggers-niggers. Keep you eye on that boy Lou, (meaning me) he is slippery-slippery, too smart-art." "Oh! I'll manage that, Father," said Boss. "Well, see that you do-oo, for I see running away in his eyes." One of the things that interested old Master Jack was the ringing of the dinner bell. "Well, I do think," said the old man, "that boy can ring a bell better than anybody I ever heard. Why, its got a regular tune." I used to try to see how near I could come to making it say, come to dinner. * * * * * THE MADAM IN A RAGE. The four days soon passed, and all the company gone, we were once more at our regular work. Delia, the cook, seemingly had not pleased the madam in her cooking while the company were there; so, the morning after they left, she went toward the kitchen, calling: "Delia, Delia." Delia said: "Dah! I wonder what she wants now." By this time she was in the kitchen, confronting Delia. Her face was flushed as she screamed out: "What kind of biscuits were those you baked this week?" "I think they were all right, Mis Sarh." "Hush!" screamed out the madam, stamping her foot to make it more emphatic. "You did not half cook them," said she; "they were not beat enough. Those waffles were ridiculous," said the madam. "Well, Mis Sarh, I tried." "Stop!" cried Madam in a rage, "I'll give you thunder if you dictate to me." Not a very elegant display in language or manner for a great lady! Old Aunt Delia, who was used to these occurrences, said: "My Lord! dat woman dunno what she wants. Ah! Lou, there is nothing but the devil up here, (meaning the new home); can't do nothin to please her up here in dis fine house. I tell you Satan neber git his own til he git her." They did not use baking powder, as we do now, but the biscuits were beaten until light enough. Twenty minutes was the time allotted for this work; but when company came there was so much to be done--so many more dishes to prepare, that Delia would, perhaps, not have so much time for each meal. But there was no allowance made. It was never thought reasonable that a servant should make a mistake--things must always be the same. I was listening to this quarrel between madam and Delia, supposing my time would come next; but for that once she said nothing to me. * * * * * THE MADAM'S SEVERITY. Mrs. McGee was naturally irritable. Servants always got an extra whipping when she had any personal trouble, as though they could help it. Every morning little Kate, Aunt Delia's little girl, would have to go with the madam on her rounds to the different buildings of the establishment, to carry the key basket. So many were the keys that they were kept in a basket especially provided for them, and the child was its regular bearer. The madam, with this little attendant, was everywhere--in the barn, in the hennery, in the smokehouse--and she always made trouble with the servants wherever she went. Indeed, she rarely returned to the house from these rounds without having whipped two or three servants, whether there was really any cause for the punishment or not. She seldom let a day pass without beating some poor woman unmercifully. The number and severity of these whippings depended more upon the humor of the madam than upon the conduct of the slaves. Of course, I always came in for a share in this brutal treatment. She continued her old habit of boxing my jaws, pinching my ears: no day ever passing without her indulging in this exercise of her physical powers. So long had I endured this, I came to expect it, no matter how well I did my duties; and it had its natural effect upon me, making me a coward, even though I was now growing into manhood. I remember once, in particular, when I had tried to please her by arranging the parlor, I overheard her say: "They soon get spirit--it don't do to praise servants." My heart sank within me. What good was it for me to try to please? She would find fault anyway. Her usual morning greeting was: "Well, Lou, have you dusted the parlors?" "Oh, yes," I would answer. "Have the flowers been arranged?" "Yes, all is in readiness," I would say. Once I had stoned the steps as usual, but the madam grew angry as soon as she saw them. I had labored hard, and thought she would be pleased. The result, however, was very far from that. She took me out, stripped me of my shirt and began thrashing me, saying I was spoiled. I was no longer a child, but old enough to be treated differently. I began to cry, for it seemed to me my heart would break. But, after the first burst of tears, the feeling came over me that I was a man, and it was an outrage to treat me so--to keep me under the lash day after day. * * * * * A SHOCKING ACCIDENT. Not long after Mrs. Farrington had made her first visit to our house, she came there to live. Celia had been acting as her maid. When Mrs. Farrington had been up some months, it was decided that all the family should go down to old Master Jack's for a visit. Celia, the maid, had been so hurried in the preparations for this visit that she had done nothing for herself. The night before the family was to leave, therefore, she was getting ready a garment for herself to wear on the trip; and it was supposed that she sewed until midnight, or after, when she fell asleep, letting the goods fall into the candle. All at once, a little after twelve o'clock, I heard a scream, then a cry of "fire! fire!" and Boss yelling: "Louis! Louis!" I jumped up, throwing an old coat over me, and ran up stairs, in the direction of Mrs. Farrington's room, I encountered Boss in the hall; and, as it was dark and the smoke stifling, I could hardly make any headway. At this moment Mrs. Farrington threw her door open, and screamed for "Cousin Eddie," meaning McGee. He hurriedly called to me to get a pitcher of water quick. I grasped the pitcher from the stand, and he attempted to throw the water on Celia, who was all in a blaze, running around like a mad woman; but the pitcher slipped from his hand and broke, very little of the water reaching her. She was at last wrapped in an old blanket, to extinguish the flames; but she was burned too badly to recover. Boss, being a physician, said at once: "Poor girl, poor girl! she is burned to death." He did all he could for her, wrapped her in linen sheets, and endeavored to relieve her sufferings, but all was of no avail--she had inhaled the flame, injuring her internally, and lived only a few days. * * * * * MASTER'S NEW COTTON PLANTATION. Shortly after Boss bought his home in Memphis, he bought a large farm in Bolivar, Miss. It was a regular cotton farm, on the Mississippi river, embracing 200 acres. The houses built for the slaves were frame, eighteen in number, each to contain three or four families, and arranged on each side of a street that ran through the farm. This street was all grassed over, but there were no sidewalks. All the buildings--the barn, gin-house, slaves' quarters and overseers' house--were whitewashed, and on this grass-grown street they made a neat and pretty appearance. The house where the Boss and the madam staid, when they went down to the farm, was about two hundred yards from the slaves' quarters. It was arranged in two apartments, one for the overseer and wife, and the other for the master and mistress upon the occasion of their visits. This building was separated from the other buildings by a fence. There was what was called the cook house, where was cooked all the food for the hands. Aunt Matilda was cook in charge. Besides the buildings already named, there were stables, a blacksmith shop and sawmill; and the general order of arrangement was carried out with respect to all--the appearance was that of a village. Everything was raised in abundance, to last from one crop to the next. Vegetables and meat were provided from the farm, and a dairy of fifty cows furnished all the milk and butter needed. The cane brakes were so heavy that it was common for bears to hide there, and, at night, come out and carry off hogs. Wolves were plenty in the woods behind the farm, and could be heard at any time. The cane was so thick that when they were clearing up new ground, it would have to be set on fire, and the cracking that would ensue was like the continuous explosion of small fire crackers. About one hundred and sixty slaves, besides children, all owned by McGee, were worked on the farm. Instead of ginning two or three bales of cotton a day, as at Pontotoc, they ginned six to seven bales here. * * * * * INCIDENTS. I remember well the time when the great Swedish singer, Jenny Lind, came to Memphis. It was during her famous tour through America, in 1851. Our folks were all enthused over her. Boss went in and secured tickets to her concert, and I was summoned to drive them to the hall. It was a great event. People swarmed the streets like bees. The carriages and hacks were stacked back from the hall as far as the eye could reach. On another occasion, when the great prodigy, Blind Tom, came to Memphis, there was a similar stir among the people. Tom was very young then, and he was called the Blind Boy. People came from far and near to hear him. Those coming from the villages and small towns, who could not get passage on the regular trains, came in freight or on flat bottom cars. The tickets were $5.00 each, as I remember, Boss said it was expensive, but all must hear this boy pianist. Many were the comments on this boy of such wonderful talents. As I drove our people home they seemed to talk of nothing else. They declared that he was indeed a wonder. * * * * * LONGING FOR FREEDOM. Sometimes when the farm hands were at work, peddlers would come along; and, as they were treated badly by the rich planters, they hated them, and talked to the slaves in a way to excite them and set them thinking of freedom. They would say encouragingly to them: "Ah! You will be free some day." But the down-trodden slaves, some of whom were bowed with age, with frosted hair and furrowed cheek, would answer, looking up from their work: "We don't blieve dat; my grandfather said we was to be free, but we aint free yet." It had been talked of (this freedom) from generation to generation. Perhaps they would not have thought of freedom, if their owners had not been so cruel. Had my mistress been more kind to me, I should have thought less of liberty. I know the cruel treatment which I received was the main thing that made me wish to be free. Besides this, it was inhuman to separate families as they did. Think of a mother being sold from all her children--separated for life! This separation was common, and many died heart-broken, by reason of it. Ah! I cannot forget the cruel separation from my mother. I know not what became of her, but I have always believed her dead many years ago. Hundreds were separated, as my mother and I were, and never met again. Though freedom was yearned for by some because the treatment was so bad, others, who were bright and had looked into the matter, knew it was a curse to be held a slave--they longed to stand out in true manhood--allowed to express their opinions as were white men. Others still desired freedom, thinking they could then reclaim a wife, or husband, or children. The mother would again see her child. All these promptings of the heart made them yearn for freedom. New Year's was always a heart-rending time, for it was then the slaves were bought and sold; and they stood in constant fear of losing some one dear to them--a child, a husband, or wife. * * * * * MY FIRST BREAK FOR FREEDOM. In the new home my duties were harder than ever. The McGees held me with tighter grip, and it was nothing but cruel abuse, from morning till night. So I made up my mind to try and run away to a free country. I used to hear Boss read sometimes, in the papers, about runaway slaves who had gone to Canada, and it always made me long to go; yet I never appeared as if I paid the slightest attention to what the family read or said on such matters; but I felt that I could be like others, and try at least to get away. One morning, when Boss had gone to town, Madam had threatened to whip me, and told me to come to the house. When she called me I did not go, but went off down through the garden and through the woods, and made my way for the city. When I got into Memphis, I found at the landing a boat called the Statesman, and I sneaked aboard. It was not expected that the boat would stay more than a few hours, but, for some reason, it stayed all night. The boat was loaded with sugar, and I hid myself behind four hogsheads. I could see both engineers, one each side of me. When night came on, I crept out from my hiding place, and went forward to search for food and water, for I was thirsty and very hungry. I found the table where the deck hands had been eating, and managed to get a little food, left from their meal, and some water. This was by no means enough, but I had to be content, and went back to my place of concealment. I had been on board the boat three days; and, on the third night, when I came out to hunt food, the second mate saw me. In a minute he eyed me over and said: "Why, I have a reward for you." In a second he had me go up stairs to the captain. This raised a great excitement among the passengers; and, in a minute, I was besieged with numerous questions. Some spoke as if they were sorry for me, and said if they had known I was a poor runaway slave they would have slipped me ashore. The whole boat was in alarm. It seemed to me they were consulting slips of paper. One said: "Yes, he is the same. Listen how this reads:" "Ran away from Edmund McGee, my mulatto boy Louis, 5 feet 6 inches in height, black hair, is very bright and intelligent. Will give $500 for him alive, and half of this amount for knowledge that he has been killed." My heart sprang into my throat when I heard two men read this advertisement. I knew, at once, what it all meant, remembering how often I had heard Boss read such articles from the papers and from the handbills that were distributed through the city. The captain asked me if I could dance. It seemed he felt sorry for me, for he said: "That's a bright boy to be a slave." Then turning to me he said: "Come, give us a dance." I was young and nimble, so I danced a few of the old southern clog dances, and sang one or two songs, like this: "Come along, Sam, the fifer's son, Aint you mighty glad your day's work's done?" After I finished singing and dancing, the captain took up a collection for me and got about two dollars. This cheered me a good deal. I knew that I would need money if I should ever succeed in getting on. On the following evening, when we reached West Franklin, Indiana, while the passengers were at tea, another boat pushed into port right after ours. Immediately a gentleman passenger came to me hurriedly, and whispered to me to go down stairs, jump out on the bow of the other boat, and go ashore. I was alarmed, but obeyed, for I felt that he was a friend to slaves. I went out as quietly as I could, and was not missed until I had gotten on shore. Then I heard the alarm given that the boy was gone--that the runaway was gone. But I sped on, and did not stop until I had run through the village, and had come to a road that led right into the country. I took this road and went on until I had gone four or five miles, when I came to a farm house. Before reaching it, however, I met two men on horseback, on their way to the village. They passed on without specially noticing me, and I kept on my way until reaching the farmhouse. I was so hungry, I went in and asked for food. While I was eating, the men whom I had met rode up. They had been to the village, and, learning that a runaway slave was wanted, and remembering meeting me, they returned in hot haste, in hope of finding me and securing the reward. They hallooed to the people in the house, an old woman and her daughter, whom they seemed to know, saying: "There is a runaway nigger out, who stole off a boat this evening." The old lady said, "Come," becoming frightened at once. When they came in they began to question me. I trembled all over but answered them. They said: "You are the fellow we want, who ran off the boat." I was too scared to deny it; so I owned I was on the boat, and stole off. They did not tarry long, but, taking me with them, they went, about a mile and a half, to their house. They planned and talked all the way, and one said: "We are good for $75.00 for him any way." The next morning they took me into the village. They soon found out that the engineer, by order of the captain, had stayed over to search for me. A lawsuit followed, and I was taken before the magistrate before the engineer could get possession of me. There was a legal course that had to be gone through with. A lawyer, Fox by name, furnished the $75.00 for the men who had caught me. That part of the case being settled, Fox and the engineer started for Evansville, Ind., that same night. Upon arriving there, Fox received from the captain of the boat the money he had advanced to the men who caught me; and we went on, arriving at Louisville, Ky., the next day. I was then taken again before a magistrate, by the captain, when the following statement was read by that official: "Captain Montgomery brought forth a boy, and said he is the property of Edmund McGee, of Memphis, Tenn. Come forth owner, and prove property, for after the boy shall remain in jail six months he shall be sold to pay jail feed." Mr. McGee was informed of my whereabouts, and it was not long before he and his cousin came to get me. When they came, I was called up by the nickname they had given me, "Memphis." "Come out here, 'Memphis,'" said the turnkey, "your master has come for you." I went down stairs to the office, and found Boss waiting for me. "Hello, Lou!" said he, "what are you doing here, you dog?" I was so frightened I said nothing. Of course, some few words were passed between him and the officers. I heard him say that I was a smart fellow, and he could not tell why I had run away; that he had always treated me well. This was to impress the officers with the idea that he was not unkind to his slaves. The slave-holders all hated to be classed as bad taskmasters. Yet nearly all of them were. The clothes I wore were jail property, and he could not take me away in them; so we started to go up town to get others. As we passed out the jailer, Buckhanon, said: "Ain't you going to put hand-cuffs on him?" "Oh, no!" said Boss. After I was taken to the store and fitted with a new suit of clothes, he brought me back to the jail, where I washed myself and put on the new garments. When all was complete, and I seemed to suit master's fastidious eye, he took me to the Gault House, where he was stopping. In the evening we started for home, and reached Memphis the following day. Boss did not flog me, as I expected, but sent me to my regular routine work. We had been in this new home so short a time he did not want it to be rumored that he whipped his slaves, he was so stylish and rich. But the madam was filled with rage, although she did not say much. I think they saw that I was no longer a child--they feared I would go again. But after I had been home some three or four weeks, Madam Sarah commenced her old tricks--attempting to whip me, box my jaws and pinch me. If any little thing was not pleasing to her at meal time, it was a special delight for her to reach out, when I drew near to her to pass something, and give me a blow with her hand. Truly it was a monstrous domestic institution that not only tolerated, but fostered, such an exhibition of table manners by a would-be fine lady--such vulgar spite and cruelty! * * * * * MY SECOND RUNAWAY TRIP. About three months after my first attempt to get away, I thought I would try it again. I went to Memphis, and saw a boat at the landing, called the John Lirozey, a Cincinnati packet. This boat carried the mail. She had come into port in the morning, and was being unloaded. I went aboard in the afternoon and jumped down into the hull. Boss had been there in the fore part of the afternoon inquiring for me, but I did not know it then. After I had been in the boat some time, the men commenced loading it. I crept up in the corner and hid myself. At first two or three hundred dry and green hides were thrown in, and these hid me; but later on two or three tiers of cotton bales were put in the center of the hull, and, when the boat started, I got upon the top of these, and lay there. I could hear the people talking above me, but it was so dark I could not see anything--it was dark as a dungeon. I had lain there two nights and began to get so weak and faint I could stand it no longer. For some reason the boat did not start the day I went aboard, consequently, I had not gotten as far from home as I expected, and my privations had largely been in vain. Despairing and hungry, on the third day, I commenced howling and screaming, hoping that some one would hear me, and come to my relief, for almost anything else would have been preferable to the privation and hunger from which I was suffering. But I could make no one hear, at least no one paid any attention to my screams, if they did hear. In the evening, however, one of the deck hands came in with a lantern to look around and see everything was all right. I saw the light and followed him out, but I had been out of my hiding only a short time when I was discovered by a man who took me up stairs to the captain. It was an effort for me to walk up stairs, as I was weak and faint, having neither eaten nor drank anything for three days. This boat was crowded with passengers, and it was soon a scene of confusion. I was placed in the pilot's room for safety, until we arrived at a small town in Kentucky called Monroe. I was put off here to be kept until the packet came back from Cincinnati. Then I was carried back to Memphis, arriving about one o'clock at night, and, for safe keeping, was put into what was called the calaboose. This was especially for the keeping of slaves who had run away and been caught. Word was sent to Boss of my capture; and the next morning Thomas Bland, a fellow servant of mine, was sent to take me home. I can not tell how I felt, for the only thought that came to me was that I should get killed. The madam met us as we drove into the yard. "Ah!" she said to me, "you put up at the wrong hotel, sir." I was taken to the barn where stocks had been prepared, beside which were a cowhide and a pail of salt water, all prepared for me. It was terrible, but there was no escape. I was fastened in the stocks, my clothing removed, and the whipping began. Boss whipped me a while, then he sat down and read his paper, after which the whipping was resumed. This continued for two hours. Fastened as I was in the stocks, I could only stand and take lash after lash, as long as he desired, the terrible rawhide cutting into my flesh at every stroke. Then he used peach tree switches, which cracked the flesh so the blood oozed out. After this came the paddle, two and a half feet long and three inches wide. Salt and water was at once applied to wash the wounds, and the smarting was maddening. This torture was common among the southern planters. God only knows what I suffered under it all, and He alone gave me strength to endure it. I could hardly move after the terrible ordeal was finished, and could scarcely bear my clothes to touch me at first, so sore was my whole body, and it was weeks before I was myself again. * * * * * PREACHING TO THE SLAVES. As an offset, probably, to such diabolical cruelties as those which were practiced upon me in common with nearly all the slaves in the cotton region of the south, it was the custom in the section of country where I lived to have the white minister preach to the servants Sunday afternoon, after the morning service for the whites. The white people hired the minister by the year to preach for them at their church. Then he had to preach to each master's slaves in turn. The circuit was made once a month, but there was service of some kind every Sunday. The slaves on some places gathered in the yard, at others in the white folks' school houses, and they all seemed pleased and eager to hear the word of God. It was a strong evidence of their native intelligence and discrimination that they could discern the difference between the truths of the "word" and the professed practice of those truths by their masters. My Boss took pride in having all his slaves look clean and tidy at the Sabbath service; but how would he have liked to have the slaves, with backs lacerated with the lash, appear in those assemblies with their wounds uncovered? The question can never be answered. The master and most of his victims have gone where professions of righteousness will not avail to cover the barbarities practised here. * * * * * A FAMILY OF FREE PERSONS SOLD INTO SLAVERY. My wife Matilda was born in Fayette county, Kentucky, June 17th, 1830. It seems that her mother and her seven children were to have been free according to the old Pennsylvania law. There were two uncles of the family who were also to have been free, but who had been kept over time; so they sued for their freedom, and gained it. The lawyers in the case were abolitionists and friends to the slaves, and saw that these men had justice. After they had secured their freedom, they entered suit for my wife's mother, their sister, and her seven children. But as soon as the brothers entered this suit, Robert Logan, who claimed my wife's mother and her children as his slaves, put them into a trader's yard in Lexington; and, when he saw that there was a possibility of their being successful in securing their freedom, he put them in jail, to be "sold down the river." This was a deliberate attempt to keep them from their rights, for he knew that they were to have been set free, many years before; and this fact was known to all the neighborhood. My wife's mother was born free, her mother, having passed the allotted time under a law, had been free for many years. Yet they kept her children as slaves, in plain violation of law as well as justice. The children of free persons under southern laws were free--this was always admitted. The course of Logan in putting the family in jail, for safe keeping until they could be sent to the southern market, was a tacit admission that he had no legal hold upon them. Woods and Collins, a couple of "nigger traders," were collecting a "drove" of slaves for Memphis, about this time, and, when they were ready to start, all the family were sent off with the gang; and, when they arrived in Memphis, they were put in the traders' yard of Nathan Bedford Forrest. This Forrest afterward became a general in the rebel army, and commanded at the capture of Fort Pillow; and, in harmony with the debasing influences of his early business, he was responsible for the fiendish massacre of negroes after the capture of the fort--an act which will make his name forever infamous. None of this family were sold to the same person except my wife and one sister. All the rest were sold to different persons. The elder daughter was sold seven times in one day. The reason of this was that the parties that bought her, finding that she was not legally a slave, and that they could get no written guarantee that she was, got rid of her as soon as possible. It seems that those who bought the other members of the family were not so particular, and were willing to run the risk. They knew that such things--such outrages upon law and justice--were common. Among these was my Boss, who bought two of the girls, Matilda and her sister Mary Ellen. Matilda was bought for a cook; her sister was a present to Mrs. Farrington, his wife's sister, to act as her maid and seamstress. Aunt Delia, who had been cook, was given another branch of work to do, and Matilda was installed as cook. I remember well the day she came. The madam greeted her, and said: "Well, what can you do, girl? Have you ever done any cooking? Where are you from?" Matilda was, as I remember her, a sad picture to look at. She had been a slave, it is true, but had seen good days to what the slaves down the river saw. Any one could see she was almost heart-broken--she never seemed happy. Days grew into weeks and weeks into months, but the same routine of work went on. * * * * * MY MARRIAGE--BIRTH OF TWINS. Matilda had been there three years when I married her. The Boss had always promised that he would give me a nice wedding, and he kept his word. He was very proud, and liked praise. The wedding that he gave us was indeed a pleasant one. All the slaves from their neighbor acquaintances were invited. One thing Boss did was a credit to him, but it was rare among slave-holders--he had me married by their parish minister. It was a beautiful evening, the 30th of November, 1858, when Matilda and I stood in the parlor of the McGee house and were solemnly made man and wife. Old Master Jack came up from Panola at that time, and was there when the ceremony was performed. As he looked through his fingers at us, he was overheard saying: "It will ruin them, givin wedins-wedins." Things went on as usual after this. The madam grew more irritable and exacting, always finding fault with the servants, whipping them, or threatening to do so, upon the slightest provocation, or none at all. There was something in my wife's manner, however, which kept the madam from whipping her--an open or implied threat perhaps that such treatment would not be endured without resistance or protest of some kind. This the madam regarded as a great indignity, and she hated my wife for it, and, at times, was ready to crush her, so great was her anger. In a year there were born to us twin babies; and the madam now thought she had my wife tied, as the babies would be a barrier to anything like resistance on her part, and there would be no danger of her running away. She, therefore, thought that she could enjoy, without hindrance, the privilege of beating the woman of whose womanhood she had theretofore stood somewhat in fear. * * * * * MADAM'S CRUELTY TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN. Boss said from the first that I should give my wife assistance, as she needed time to care for the babies. Really he was not as bad as the madam at heart, for she tried to see how hard she could be on us. She gave me all the extra work to do that she could think of, apparently to keep me from helping my wife in the kitchen. She had all the cooking to do for three heavy meals each day, all the washing and ironing of the finest clothes, besides caring for the babies between times. In the morning she would nurse the babies, then hurry off to the kitchen to get breakfast while they were left in charge of a little girl. Again at noon she repeated her visit to the babies, after cooking the dinner, then in the evening, after supper, she would go to nurse them again. After supper was over, dishes all washed and kitchen in order, she would then go to the little ones for the night. One can see that she had very little time with the children. My heart was sore and heavy, for my wife was almost run to death with work. The children grew puny and sickly for want of proper care. The doctor said it was because the milk the mother nursed to them was so heated by her constant and excessive labors as to be unwholesome, and she never had time to cool before ministering to them. So the little things, instead of thriving and developing, as was their right, dwindled toward the inevitable end. Oh! we were wretched--our hearts ached for a day which we could call our own. My wife was a Christian, and had learned to know the worth of prayer, so would always speak consolingly. "God will help us," she said: "let us try and be patient." Our trial went on, until one morning I heard a great fuss in the house, the madam calling for the yard man to come and tie my wife, as she could not manage her. My wife had always refused to allow the madam to whip her; but now, as the babies were here, mistress thought she would try it once more. Matilda resisted, and madam called for Boss. In a minute he came, and, grabbing my wife, commenced choking her, saying to her: "What do you mean? Is that the way you talk to ladies?" My wife had only said to her mistress: "You shall not whip me." This made her furious, hence her call for Boss. I was in the dining room, and could hear everything. My blood boiled in my veins to see my wife so abused; yet I dare not open my mouth. After the fuss, my wife went straight to the laundry. I followed her there, and found her bundling up her babies' clothes, which were washed but not ironed. I knew at a glance that she was going away. Boss had just gone to the city; and I did not know what to say, but I told her to do the best she could. Often when company came and I held the horses, or did an errand for them, they would tip me to a quarter or half a dollar. This money I always saved, and so had a little change, which I now gave to Matilda, for her use in her effort to get away from her cruel treatment. She started at once for Forrest's trader's yards, with the babies in her arms and, after she got into Memphis, she stopped outside the yard to rest. While she was sitting on the curb stone, Forrest came out of the yard by the back gate and saw her. Coming up to her he said: "My God! Matilda, what are you doing here? You have changed so I would not have known you. Why have you come here?" Matilda said: "I came back here to be sold again." He stepped back and called another "nigger trader," Collins by name, from Kentucky. "Look here," said Forrest, pointing to my wife. Collins took in the situation at once and said he would buy her and the children. "That woman is of a good family," said he, "and was only sold to prevent her from getting her freedom." She was then taken into the yard. "Oh!" said Forrest, "I know these McGees, they are hard colts." Word was then sent McGee that his cook was in the yard and had come to be sold. He went in haste to the yard. Collins offered to buy her, but McGee said no man's money could buy that woman and her children. I raised her husband and I would not separate them. She was brought back, and as they rode along in the rockaway, Boss said: "When I am through with you I guess you won't run away again." As they drove up I saw the madam go running out to meet them. She shouted to Matilda: "Ah! madam, you put up at the wrong hotel." They at once went to the barn where my wife was tied to the joist, and Boss and the madam beat her by turns. After they had finished the whipping, Boss said, tauntingly: "Now I am buying you and selling you--I want you to know that I never shall sell you while my head and yours is hot." I was trembling from head to foot, for I was powerless to do anything for her. My twin babies lived only six months after that, not having had the care they needed, and which it was impossible for their mother to give them while performing the almost endless labor required of her, under threats of cruel beatings. One day not long after our babies were buried the madam followed my wife to the smoke house and said: "I am tempted to take that knife from you, Matilda, and cut you in two. You and old Ruben (one of the slaves) went all around the neighborhood and told the people that I killed your babies, and almost whipped you to death." Of course, when the slaves were accused falsely, as in this case, they were not allowed to make any reply--they just had to endure in silence whatever was said. * * * * * EFFORTS TO LEARN TO READ AND WRITE. Thomas, the coachman, and I were fast friends. We used to get together every time we had a chance and talk about freedom. "Oh!" Tom would say, "if I could only write." I remember when Tom first began to take lessons at night from some plasterers, workmen of the neighborhood. They saw that he was so anxious to learn that they promised to teach him every evening if he would slip out to their house. I, too, was eager to learn to read and write, but did not have the opportunity which Tom had of getting out at night. I had to sleep in the house where the folks were, and could not go out without being observed, while Tom had quarters in another part of the establishment, and could slip out unobserved. Tom, however, consoled me by saying that he would teach me as soon as he knew how. So Tom one night put a copy of some figures on the side of the barn for me to practice from. I took the chalk and imitated him as near as I could, but my work was poor beside his, as he had been learning for some months, and could make the figures quite well and write a little. Still I kept trying. Tom encouraging me and telling me that I would learn in time. "Just keep trying," said he. When this first lesson was over, I forgot to rub out the marks on the barn, and the next morning when Old Master Jack, who happened to be at our home just at that time, went out there and saw the copy and my imitation of it, he at once raised great excitement by calling attention to the rude characters and wanting to know who had done that. I was afraid to own that I had done it; but old Master Jack somehow surmised that it was Tom or I, for he said to Boss: "Edmund, you must watch those fellows, Louis and Thomas, if you don't they will get spoilt--spoilt. They are pretty close to town here--here." Tom and I laughed over this a good deal and how easily we slipped out of it, but concluded not to stop trying to learn all we could. Tom always said: "Lou, I am going to be a free man yet, then we will need some education; no, let us never stop trying to learn." Tom was a Virginian, as I was, and was sold from his parents when a mere lad. Boss used to write to his parents (owners) occasionally, that his people might hear from him. The letters were to his mother, but sent in care of the white folks. Tom had progressed very fast in his secret studies, and could write enough to frame a letter. It seems it had been over a year since Boss had written for him, but nothing was said until one morning I heard Boss telling Tom to come to the barn to be whipped. He showed Tom three letters which he had written to his mother, and this so startled him that he said nothing. I listened breathlessly to each word Boss said: "Where did you learn to write?" asked he, "and when did you learn? How long have you been writing to your mother?" At that moment he produced the three letters which Tom had written. Boss, it seems, had mistrusted something, and spoke to the postmaster, telling him to stop any letters which Tom might mail for Virginia to his mother. The postmaster did as directed, for slaves had no rights which postmasters were bound to respect; hence, the letters fell into the master's hands instead of going to their destination. Tom, not hearing from his first letter, wrote a second, then a third, never dreaming that they had been intercepted. Boss raged and Tom was severely whipped. After this nothing Tom did pleased any of the family--it was a continual pick on him. Everything was wrong with both of us, for they were equally hard on me. They mistrusted, I think, that I could write; yet I could not find out just what they did think. * * * * * TOM STRIKES FOR LIBERTY AND GAINS IT. Tom stayed only a few weeks after this. He said to me, one morning: "Lou, I am going away. If I can get a boat to-night that is starting off, why, I am gone from this place." I was sad to see him go, for he was like a brother to me--he was my companion and friend. He went, and was just in time to catch the boat at the Memphis dock. He succeeded in getting on, and made an application to the captain to work on the boat. The captain did not hesitate to employ him, as it was common for slaves to be permitted to hire themselves out for wages which they were required to return, in whole or in part, to their masters. Of course all such slaves carried a written pass to this effect. Tom was shrewd; and, having learned to write fairly well, he wrote himself a pass, which was of the usual kind, stating his name, to whom he belonged, and that he was privileged to hire himself out wherever he could, coming and going as he pleased. Where the slave was an exceptional one, and where the owner had only two or three slaves, a pass would readily be given to hire himself out, or hire his own time, as it was generally called, he being required to turn over to his master a certain amount of his earnings, each month or week, and to make a report to his master of his whereabouts and receipts. Sometimes the slave would be required to turn in to his master a certain sum, as, for instance, fifty or one hundred dollars a year; and he would have to earn that before he could use any of his earnings for himself. If he was a mechanic he would have little trouble in doing this, as the wages of such were often quite liberal. This kind of a pass was rarely, if ever, given by the planters having large numbers of slaves. Another kind of pass read something like this: "Pass my boy or my girl," as the case might be, the name being attached. These were only given to permit the slave to go from the farm of his own master to that of another. Some men had wives or children belonging on neighboring farms, and would be given passes to visit them. Without such a pass they were liable to be stopped and turned back to their homes. There was, however, a good deal of visiting without passes, but it was against the general rule which required them; and any slave leaving home without a pass was liable to punishment if discovered. On our plantation passes were never given, but the slaves did visit in the neighborhood, notwithstanding, and would sometimes slip into town at night. Tom had in this way seen the pass of a neighboring slave to hire out; and it was from this he learned the form from which he wrote his, and which opened his way to freedom. Upon reading Tom's pass, the captain did not hesitate, but hired him at once; and Tom worked his way to New Orleans, to which city the boat was bound. In the meantime Boss took me and we drove to numerous stations, where he telegraphed ahead for his run-away boy Tom. But Tom reached New Orleans without hindrance, and there fell in with the steward of a Boston steamer, and, getting aboard of it, was soon on the ocean, on his way to that city where were so many friends of the slave. Arriving there he made his way to Canada; which was, for so many generations, the only land of freedom attainable to American slaves. * * * * * NEWS OF TOM'S REACHING CANADA. Now that Tom was gone, excitement prevailed at the house among the white folks--nothing had been heard of him or the method of his escape. All the servants expected that he would be caught, and I was alarmed every time Boss came from the city, fearing that he had news that Tom was caught. He had been gone about six months, when, one morning, I went to the postoffice and brought back a letter. It seemed to me that I felt that it contained something unusual, but I did not know what it was. It proved to be a letter from Tom to Boss. They did not intend that the servants should know it was from Tom, but one of the house maids heard them reading it, and came out and told us. She whispered: "Tom is free; he has gone to Canada; Boss read it in the letter Lou brought." This news cheered me, and made me eager to get away; but I never heard from him any more until after the rebellion. Tom gone made my duties more. I now had to drive the carriage, but Uncle Madison was kept at the barn to do the work there, and hitch up the team--I only had to drive when the family went out. * * * * * M'GEE EXPECTS TO CAPTURE TOM. In the summer the McGees made up their minds to go down east, and come around by Niagara Falls, for this was the place from which Tom had written them. Boss had great confidence in himself, and did not doubt his ability to take Tom home with him if he should meet him, even though it should be in Canada. So he took a pair of handcuffs with him as a preparation for the enterprise. His young nephew had been to Niagara Falls, and seen and talked with Tom; but Boss said if he had seen him anywhere he would have laid hands on him, at once, and taken him home, at all hazards. * * * * * MAKING CLOTHES. When the family went on this visit down east I was left in charge of the house, and was expected to keep everything in order, and also to make the winter clothes for the farm hands. The madam and I had cut out these clothes before she left, and it was my principal duty to run the sewing machine in their manufacture. Many whole days I spent in this work. My wife made the button holes and sewed on the buttons. I made hundreds of sacks for use in picking cotton. This work was always done in summer. When the garments were all finished they were shipped to the farm at Bolivar, to be ready for the fall and winter wear. In like manner the clothes for summer use were made in winter. * * * * * A SUPERSTITION. It was the custom in those days for slaves to carry voo-doo bags. It was handed down from generation to generation; and, though it was one of the superstitions of a barbarous ancestry, it was still very generally and tenaciously held to by all classes. I carried a little bag, which I got from an old slave who claimed that it had power to prevent any one who carried it from being whipped. It was made of leather, and contained roots, nuts, pins and some other things. The claim that it would prevent the folks from whipping me so much, I found, was not sustained by my experience--my whippings came just the same. Many of the servants were thorough believers in it, though, and carried these bags all the time. * * * * * MEMPHIS AND ITS COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE. The city of Memphis, from its high bluff on the Mississippi, overlooks the surrounding country for a long distance. The muddy waters of the river, when at a low stage, lap the ever crumbling banks that yearly change, yielding to new deflections of the current. For hundreds of miles below there is a highly interesting and rarely broken series of forests, cane brakes and sand bars, covered with masses of willows and poplars which, in the spring, when the floods come down, are overflowed for many miles back. It was found necessary to run embankments practically parallel with the current, in order to confine the waters of the river in its channel. Memphis was and is the most important city of Tennessee, indeed, the most important between St. Louis and New Orleans, particularly from the commercial point of view. Cotton was the principal product of the territory tributary to it. The street running along the bluff was called Front Row, and was filled with stores and business houses. This street was the principal cotton market, and here the article which, in those days, was personified as the commercial "king," was bought and sold, and whence it was shipped, or stored, awaiting an advancing price. The completion of the Memphis and Charleston railroad was a great event in the history of the city. It was termed the marriage of the Mississippi and the Atlantic, and was celebrated with a great popular demonstration, people coming from the surrounding country for many miles. Water was brought from the Atlantic ocean and poured into the river; and water taken from the river and poured into the Atlantic at Charleston. It was anticipated that this railroad connection between the two cities would make of Charleston the great shipping port, and of Memphis the principal cotton market of the southwest. The expectation in neither of these cases has been fully realized. Boss, in common with planters and business men throughout that whole region, was greatly excited. I attended him and thus had the opportunity of witnessing this notable celebration. [Illustration] CHAPTER III. SLAVERY AND THE WAR OF THE REBELLION. * * * * * BEGINNING OF THE WAR. I remember well when Abraham Lincoln was elected. Boss and the madam had been reading the papers, when he broke out with the exclamation: "The very idea of electing an old rail splitter to the presidency of the United States! Well he'll never take his seat." When Lincoln was inaugurated, Boss, old Master Jack and a great company of men met at our house to discuss the matter, and they were wild with excitement. Was not this excitement an admission that their confidence in their ability to whip the Yankees, five or six to one, was not so strong as they pretended? The war had been talked of for some time, but at last it came. When the rebels fired upon Fort Sumter, then great excitement arose. The next day when I drove Boss to town, he went into the store of one Williams, a merchant, and when he came out, he stepped to the carriage, and said: "What do you think? Old Abraham Lincoln has called for four hundred thousand men to come to Washington immediately. Well, let them come; we will make a breakfast of them. I can whip a half dozen Yankees with my pocket knife." This was the chief topic everywhere. Soon after this Boss bought himself a six shooter. I had to mould the bullets for him, and every afternoon he would go out to practice. By his direction, I fixed a large piece of white paper on the back fence, and in the center of it put a large black dot. At this mark he would fire away, expecting to hit it; but he did not succeed well. He would sometimes miss the fence entirely, the ball going out into the woods beyond. Each time he would shoot I would have to run down to the fence to see how near he came to the mark. When he came very near to it--within an inch or so, he would say laughingly: "Ah! I would have got him that time." (Meaning a Yankee soldier.) There was something very ludicrous in this pistol practice of a man who boasted that he could whip half a dozen Yankees with a jackknife. Every day for a month this business, so tiresome to me, went on. Boss was very brave until it came time for him to go to war, when his courage oozed out, and he sent a substitute; he remaining at home as a "home guard." One day when I came back with the papers from the city, the house was soon ringing with cries of victory. Boss said: "Why, that was a great battle at Bull Run. If our men had only known, at first, what they afterwords found out, they would have wiped all the Yankees out, and succeeded in taking Washington." * * * * * PETTY DISRESPECT TO THE EMBLEM OF THE UNION. Right after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, they brought to Memphis the Union flag that floated over the fort. There was a great jubilee in celebration of this. Portions of the flag, no larger than a half dollar in paper money, were given out to the wealthy-people, and these evidences of their treason were long preserved as precious treasures. Boss had one of these pieces which he kept a long time; but, as the rebel cause waned these reminders of its beginning were less and less seen, and if any of them are now in existence, it is not likely that their possessors will take any pride in exposing them to view. As the war continued we would, now and then, hear of some slave of our neighborhood running away to the Yankees. It was common when the message of a Union victory came to see the slaves whispering to each other: "We will be free." I tried to catch everything I could about the war, I was so eager for the success of the Union cause. These things went on until * * * * * THE BATTLE OF SHILOH, APRIL 9, 1862. Boss came hurrying in one morning, right after breakfast, calling to me: "Lou, Lou, come; we have a great victory! I want to go up and carry the boys something to eat. I want you and Matilda to get something ready as quickly as you can." A barrel of flour was rolled into the kitchen, and my wife and I "pitched in" to work. Biscuit, bread, hoe-cake, ham, tongue--all kinds of meat and bread were rapidly cooked; and, though the task was a heavy one for my wife and me, we worked steadily; and, about five o'clock in the afternoon the things were ready. One of the large baskets used to hold cotton was packed full of these provisions. Our limbs ached from the strain of the work, for we had little help. One reason for the anxiety of the Boss for the preparation of this provision for the soldiers was that he knew so many in one of the companies, which was known as the "Como Avengers," and he had a son, a nephew and a brother of his wife connected with it; the latter a major on Gen. Martin's staff. On the following morning I got up early, and hurried with my work to get through, as I had to go to the postoffice. Madam hurried me off, as she expected a letter from her husband, who had promised to write, at the earliest moment, of their friends and relatives. I rushed into the city, at full speed, got some letters and a morning paper, and, returning as rapidly as possible, gave them to her. She grasped them eagerly, and commenced reading the paper. In a short time I heard her calling me to come to her. I went in, and she said, in great excitement: "Louis, we want to have you drive us into town, to see the Yankee prisoners, who are coming through, at noon, from Shiloh." I went and told Madison to hitch up, as soon as he could. In the meantime I got myself ready, and it was not long before we were off for the city. The madam was accompanied by a friend of hers, a Mrs. Oliver. We were at the station in plenty of time. About twelve o'clock the train from Shiloh drew into the station; but the prisoners that were reported to be on board were missing--it proved to be a false report. While they were looking for the prisoners, Mrs. Oliver saw Jack, a servant of Edward McGee, brother of madam. "Oh! Look," said Mrs. Oliver, "there is Edward's Jack. Lou, run and call him." In a minute I was off the carriage, leaving the reins in madam's hands. Jack came up to the carriage, and the women began to question him: "Where is your Master, Ed," asked both of them. "He is in the car, Missis--he is shot in the ankle," said Jack. In a minute the women were crying. "I was going to get a hack," said Jack, "to--" "No, No!" said both of them. "Go, Lou, and help Jack to bring him to our carriage. You can drive him more steadily than the hackman." Jack and I went to the car, and helped him out, and after some effort, got him into our carriage. Then I went and got a livery hack to take the women and his baggage home. When we reached home, we found there old Mrs. Jack McGee, mother of the madam, Mrs. Charles Dandridge, Mrs. Farrington, sisters of madam, and Fanny, a colored woman, Edward's housekeeper and mistress--a wife in all but name. All of these had come to hear the news of the great battle, for all had near relatives in it. Mrs. Jack McGee and Mrs. Dr. Charles Dandridge had each a son in the terrible conflict. * * * * * MOURNING IN MASTER'S FAMILY. In the afternoon, when all were seated in the library reading, and I was in the dining room, finishing up my work, I happened to look out of the window, and saw a messenger coming up the graveled walk. I went out to meet him. "Telegram for Mrs. McGee," he said. I took it to her; and, reading it without a word, she passed it to the next member of the family, and so it was passed around until all had read it except Mrs. Dandridge. When it was handed to her, I saw, at a glance, that it contained for her the most sorrowful tidings. As she read she became livid, and when she had finished she covered her face with her handkerchief, giving a great, heavy sob. By this time the whole family was crying and screaming: "Oh! our Mack is killed." "Mars, Mack is killed," was echoed by the servants, in tones of heart-felt sorrow, for he was an exceptional young man. Every one loved him--both whites and blacks. The affection of the slaves for him bordered on reverence, and this was true not alone of his father's slaves, but of all those who knew him. This telegram was from Boss, and announced that he would be home the next day with the remains. Mrs. Farrington at once wrote to old Master Jack and to Dr. Dandridge, telling them of Mack's death and to come at once. After I mailed those letters nothing unusual happened during the afternoon, and the house was wrapped in silence and gloom. On the following morning I went for the mail as usual, but there was nothing new. At noon, the remains of the much loved young man arrived at our station, accompanied by Boss and Dr. Henry Dandridge, brother of the father of the deceased, who was a surgeon in the rebel army. I went to the station with another servant, to assist in bringing the body to the house. We carried it into the back parlor, and, after all had been made ready, we proceeded to wash and dress it. He had lain on the battlefield two days before he was found, and his face was black as a piece of coal; but Dr. Henry Dandridge, with his ready tact, suggested the idea of painting it. I was there to assist in whatever way they needed me. After the body was all dressed, and the face painted, cheeks tinted with a rosy hue, to appear as he always did in life, the look was natural and handsome. We were all the afternoon employed in this sad work, and it was not until late in the evening that his father and mother came down to view the body for the first time. I remember, as they came down the broad stairs together, the sorrow-stricken yet calm look of those two people. Mrs. Dandridge was very calm--her grief was too great for her to scream as the others did when they went in. She stood and looked at her Mack; then turning to Boss, she said: "Cousin Eddie, how brave he was! He died for his country." Poor, sorrowing, misguided woman! It was not for his country he died, but for the perpetuation of the cruel, the infamous system of human slavery. All the servants were allowed to come in and view the body. Many sad tears were shed by them. Some of the older slaves clasped their hands, as if in mute prayer, and exclaimed, as they passed by the coffin: "He was a lovin boy." It seems that all his company but five or six were killed. At an early hour next morning the funeral party started for the home in Panola, where the body of the lamented young man, sacrificed to an unholy cause, was buried, at the close of the same day. Edward stayed at our house some six weeks, his ankle was so slow in getting well. At the end of that time, he could walk with the aid of crutches, and he took Fanny and went home. * * * * * ALARM OF THE MEMPHIS REBELS. Not long after this the people were very much worked up over the military situation. The Yankees had taken Nashville, and had begun to bombard Fort Pillow. The officials of the Memphis and Ohio railroad company became alarmed at the condition of things, fearing for the safety of their stock. The officers, therefore, set about devising some plan by which they might get the cars down on the Memphis and Jackson road, where they imagined their property would be safe from the now terrible Yankees. The railroad officials at once set to work to buy the right of way through Main street, to give them the connection with the southern road named. At first it was refused by the city authorities, but finally the right of way was granted. When, however, the railroad men began to lay the ties and rails, the people grew furious. Some fled at once, for they imagined that this act of the railroad officials indicated that the Yankees must be coming pretty near. Boss became so excited, at this time, that he almost felt like going away too. The family grew more and more uneasy; and it was the continual talk: "We must get away from Memphis. The companies are already moving their rolling stock, fearing the Yankees may come at any time and destroy everything; we must get away," said Boss, speaking to the madam. * * * * * THE FAMILY FLEE FROM MEMPHIS. Things continued in this way until about June, 1862. The Union troops had taken Fort Pillow. We had heard the firing of cannon, and did not know what it meant. One morning I was in the city after the mail, and I learned that a transient boat had just come down the river, which had lost a part of her wheelhouse. She was fired on from Fort Pillow, sustaining this serious damage from the shot. This increased the excitement among the people; and our folks became alarmed right away, and commenced talking of moving and running the servants away from the Yankees, to a place of safety. McGee was trying for some time to get some one to take the house, that is, to live in and care for it until after the war, while the family were gone. They never thought that slavery would be abolished, and so hoped to come back again. After some search, they found a widow, a Mrs. Hancock. She was to have full charge of the house and continue keeping boarders, as she had been doing in Memphis. The vaunted courage of this man seems to have early disappeared, and his thought was chiefly devoted to getting his family and his slaves into some obscure place, as far away as possible from the Yankees, that were to be so easily whipped. We were about two weeks getting ready to leave, stowing away some of the things they did not want to move. The Boss and his family, my wife and I, and all the house servants were to go to Panola, to his father's. The family went by rail, but I had to drive through in a wagon. * * * * * I AM TAKEN TO BOLIVAR FARM. Soon after the family all reached Master Jack's, Boss took me to his own farm in Bolivar county. This separated me for a time from my wife, for she remained with the family. I had to look after the house, at the farm, attend the dining room, and, between meals, sew every day, making clothes for the hands. I could run on the machine eighteen to twenty pairs of pants a day, but two women made the button holes and did the basting for me, getting the goods all ready for the machine. * * * * * CAPTURE OF A UNION TRADING BOAT. The Yankees had made a raid through Bolivar, before I came, and the excitement had not abated, as they were spreading themselves all through the state. There was a Union trading boat, the Lake City, that had been successful in exchanging her goods for cotton that came from Memphis. She usually stopped at Helena, Fryer's Point and other small towns; but on a trip at this time she came about fifty miles farther down the river, to Carson's Landing, right at Boss' farm. She was loaded with all kinds of merchandise--sugar, tobacco, liquor, etc. She had a crew of about forty men, but they were not well prepared for a vigorous defense. The rebel soldiers stationed in the vicinity saw her as she dropped her anchor near the landing, and they determined to make an effort for her capture. They put out pickets just above our farm, and allowed no one to pass, or stop to communicate with the boat. Every one that sought to pass was held prisoner, and every precaution taken to prevent those on the boat from learning of the purposes of the rebels, knowing that the boat would land in the morning, if not informed of the danger, and then it was anticipated that they could easily make her a prize. There was a small ferry boat behind the steamer, and as the latter dropped down stream, and then steamed up to the landing, the former stood off for a few moments. As the steamer touched shore, the rebels charged on her, and captured her without a struggle. In the meantime the ferry boat, seeing what had happened, sped away up stream, the soldiers firing at her, but doing little damage, except the breaking of the glass in the pilot house. The rebels, seeing that the ferry boat had escaped them, turned their attention to the unloading of the steamer. They sent out for help in this work, and the summons was answered by the neighbors far and near. Wagons were brought, two of which were from our farm, and loaded with goods, which were taken to Deer Creek, forty miles from Carson Landing. What goods they found themselves unable to carry away were packed in the warehouse. The steamer was then burned. McGee was present, and the rebel captain gave him a written statement of the affair to the effect that the residents were not responsible for it, and that this should be a protection for them against the Union forces. The officers and crew of the steamer to the number of forty were made prisoners, and taken to Deer Creek, the rebel headquarters of that region, and put in the jail there. The ferry boat that escaped went to Helena, Arkansas, and carried the news of the affair to the Union forces there. * * * * * BOSS TAKEN PRISONER. I was told by Boss to take my stand on our veranda, and keep watch on the river, and if I saw any boat coming down to let him know at once. I kept a close watch the next morning until about eight o'clock, when I saw a boat, but she had almost gone past our house before I discovered her. I ran into the house and told Boss. He ordered me to get his horse at once, which I did; and he mounted and went down to the landing as fast as he could. Upon reaching there, he was taken prisoner by the Union soldiers, who had just landed from the boat. All who came near were captured. The Union soldiers went to work and transferred all the goods which the rebels had put into the warehouse from the boat which they had captured, then setting fire to the warehouse and the postoffice, they pushed off yelling and shouting with glee. Among those captured by the Union soldiers were three other rich planters besides Boss, all of whom were taken to Helena. After they had been there about a week, the planters offered to secure the release of the Unionists captured on the boat which the rebels had burned at Carson Landing, and who had been sent to the rebel jail at Deer Creek, if they were guaranteed their own release in exchange. They offered to bear the expense of a messenger to the rebel officer, at Deer Creek, with this proposition. The Union officer at Helena accepted the proposition, and the messenger was sent off. It was arranged that he should stop over at our house, both on his way down and back. Upon his return, he stopped over night, and the next morning proceeded on his way. When he had gone about five miles, he saw a flat-boat at a landing, on which were people drinking and having a merry time. He stopped, and went aboard; and, in joining the carousal, he soon became so intoxicated that he was unable to go on with his journey. Among those present was one Gilcrease, a cousin of the McGees, who recognized the man as the messenger in this important business, went to him and asked him for the letters he carried. The fellow refusing to give them up, Gilcrease took them from him, and at once sent to our overseer for a reliable man by whom to forward them to the commandant at Helena. The overseer called me up from the cabin to his room, and told me that I was to go to Helena to carry some important papers, and to come to him for them in the morning, and make an early start. I left him and went back to my cabin. * * * * * MY THIRD EFFORT FOR FREEDOM. I made up my mind that this would be a good chance for me to run away. I got my clothes, and put them in an old pair of saddle bags--two bags made of leather, connected with a strip of leather, and used when traveling horseback for the same purpose as a satchel is used in traveling in the cars. I took these bags, carried them about a half mile up the road, and hid them in a fence corner, where I could get them in the morning when I had started on my trip. Fryer's Point, the place to which I was to go, was about fifty miles from the farm. I started early in the morning, and, after I had gone twenty-five miles, I came to the farm of William McGee, a brother of the madam, and stopped to change horses. I found that William McGee was going, in the morning, down to old Master Jack's; so I took one of their horses, leaving mine to use in its place, went right to Fryer's Point, delivered the letters to a man there to carry to Helena, and got back to William McGee's farm that night. I made up my mind to go with William down to Panola, where madam was, to tell her about Boss being captured. The next morning, he started, and Gibson, his overseer and myself accompanied him. He questioned me about the capture of Boss, what the soldiers had done, etc., and I told him all I knew of the matter. "Well, Lou," he said, "why did you not bring us some whisky?" "I did bring a little with me," I said. He laughed, saying: "Oh, well, when we come to some clear water we will stop and have a drink." Then I said: "Mr. Smith will look for me to-night, but he wont see me. I am going to tell the madam that Boss is captured." "Hey, ho!" he said, "then you are running away." I replied: "Well I know Miss Sarah don't know Boss is in prison." We traveled on, all three of us, stopping at intervals to be refreshed. After two days, we arrived at Panola. Our journey was a tedious one. The streams were so swollen in places that we could hardly pass. The Tallehatchie we had to swim, and one of the men came near losing his horse and his life. The horses became tangled in a prep vine, as we were nearing the shore at which we aimed, and, the current being very swift, we were carried below the landing place; but, finally, we got safely ashore, McGee landing, and we following. Reaching Panola, wet and weary, I conveyed to madam the story of her husband's capture and imprisonment, a rumor of which had already reached her. The next morning was Christmas, and a number of the family had come to spend it together. They had heard that McGee was captured and in prison; but, now, as I told them every feature of the affair in detail, they grew excited and talked wildly about it. Among those who came were Dr. Dandridge and his wife, Blanton McGee and his wife, Tim Oliver and his wife. All these women were daughters of old Master Jack McGee, and sisters to the madam. Mrs. Farrington and old lady McGee were already there. These re-unions on Christmas were a long established custom with them, but the pleasure of this one was sadly marred by the vicissitudes and calamities of the war. A shadow hung over all the family group. They asked me many questions about Boss, and, of course, I related all I knew. After I had been there three days, they started me back with letters for Boss. When I left it was near night, and I was to stop over at Master Jack's farm fifteen miles away. It was expected that I would reach Fryer's Point on the third morning, thus allowing me three days to go sixty miles; but I could not make much headway, as the roads were so heavy. The understanding was that I was to deliver the letters to the same gentleman, at Fryer's, to whom I delivered the others, for forwarding to Boss at Helena. I was then to go straight to the farm at Boliver, and report to Smith, the overseer. But after I had got about four miles away, I concluded that I would not go back to the farm, but try to get to the Yankees. I knew I had disobeyed Smith by going down to the madam's to tell her about Boss, because he told me not to go when I spoke to him about it. And now if I went back I feared he would kill me; for I knew there would be no escape for me from being run into the bull ring, and that torture I could not think of enduring. I, therefore, stopped, and, taking the bridle and saddle from the horse, hid them in the corner of a fence in a cornfield. Then I went into the woods. The papers which I had were in the saddlebag safe. The place where I stayed in the daytime was in a large shuck-pen--a pen built in the field to feed stock from, in the winter time. This pen was on Dr. Dandridge's farm; and the second night I worked my way up near the house. Knowing all the servants, I was watching a chance to send word to the coachman, Alfred Dandridge, that I wanted him to tell my wife that I was not gone. I went down to his cabin, in the quarters; and, after a short time he came. I was badly scared, and my heart was heavy and sore; but he spoke comfortingly to me, and I was cheered, somewhat, especially when he promised to see Matilda, and tell her of my whereabouts. He gave me some food, and hid me away for the night in his house. I kept close all the next day; and, at night, when all was still, Alfred and I crept out, and went to old Master Jack's. The distance was not great, and we soon covered it. Alfred went in and told my wife that I was outside and wanted to see her. She came out, and was so frightened and nervous that she commenced sobbing and crying, and almost fainted when I told her, in low tones, that I was going to try to get to Memphis, and that Alfred was helping to plan a way to this end. The rebels occupied both roads leading to Memphis, and I was puzzled to know how to reach the city without coming in contact with them. Two days after I had talked with my wife, the rebel troops who were camped on the Holly Springs road left for some other point. My friend Alfred found this out, and came and told me the encouraging news. The following night I went to old Master Jack's and told my wife that the way now seemed clear, and that I was going at once. I was bent on freedom, and would try for it again. I urged my wife not to grieve, and endeavored to encourage her by saying that I would return for her, as soon as possible, should I succeed in getting to a land of freedom. After many tears and blessings, we parted, and I left, Uncle Alfred going with me some three miles, as I was not acquainted with the road. When he left me I went on alone with gloomy forebodings, but resolved to do my best in this hazardous undertaking, whatever might happen. The road passed over hills and through swamps, and I found the traveling very wearisome. I had traveled some hours, and thought I was doing well; when, about one o'clock in the night, I came up out of a long swamp, and, reaching the top of a hill, I stopped for a moment's rest, raising myself to an erect position from that of walking, inclined by reason of weariness and the weight of the saddle-bags thrown across my shoulders. The weather was bad, a heavy mist had come up, and was so dark that I could hardly see my way. As I started on, a soldier yelled at me from the mist: "Halt! advance and give the countersign." I stopped immediately, almost scared out of my wits. "Come right up here," said the soldier, "or I'll blow you into eternity." I saw at once he was a rebel soldier. I knew not what to do. This place where I was halted was Nelson's farm, and the house was held as headquarters for a company of rebel soldiers, known as bushwhackers. While they belonged to the rebel army, they were, in a measure, independent of its regulations and discipline, kept back in the woods, ready for any depredation upon the property of unionists--any outrage upon their persons. The soldier who had halted me took me up to the house, and all began to question me. I told them that I had been sent on an errand, and that I had lost my way. The next morning I was taken about a mile away down in the swamp, over hills and through winding paths, till at last we came to the regular rebel camp. I was in great fear and thought my end had come. Here they began to question me again--the captain taking the lead; but I still stuck to my story that I had been sent on an errand, and had lost my way. I knew that this was my only chance. They tried to make me say that I had come from the Yankees, as they were in camp near Holly Springs. They thought the Yankees had sent me out as a spy; but I said the same as at first--that I had lost my way. A soldier standing by said: "Oh! we will make you talk better than that;" and stepping back to his horse, he took a sea-grass halter, and said: "I'll hang you." There was a law or regulation of the rebel government directing or authorizing the hanging of any slave caught running away; and this fellow was going to carry it out to the letter. I talked and pleaded for my life. My feelings were indescribable. God only knows what they were. Dr. Carter, one of the soldiers, who knew me and the entire McGee family, spoke up and said: "You had better let me go and tell Mr. Jack McGee about him." The captain agreed to this, and the doctor went. The following day, Old Jack came, and steadily refused to consent to my being hung. He said: "I know Edmund would not have him hung-ung. He is too valuable-aluable. No, no! we will put him in jail and feed him on bread and water--too valuable a nigger to be hung-ung." They tried again to make me say that I was with the Yankees. They whipped me a while, then questioned me again. The dog-wood switches that they used stung me terribly. They were commonly used in Mississippi for flogging slaves--one of the refinements of the cruelty of the institution of slavery. I refused to say anything different from what I had said; but when they had finished whipping me I was so sore I could hardly move. They made up their minds to put me in jail at Panola, twenty-two miles away, to be fed on bread and water. The next day was Sunday, and all arrangements having been made for taking me to the place appointed for those whose crime was a too great love for personal freedom, they started with me, passing on the way Old Master Jack's, where they halted to let him know that his advice respecting me was to be carried out. The old man called to my wife: "Come out and see Louis." Some one had told her that they were going to hang me; and I shall never forget her looks as she came out in the road to bid me good-by. One of the soldiers was softened by her agony, and whispered to her: "Don't cry, aunty, we are not going to hang him--we will only put him in jail." I saw this changed my wife's looks in a minute. I said a few words to her, and, with a prayer for God's blessing on us both, we parted, and they moved on. After we had gone about seven miles, we met two soldiers, who belonged to the regiment at Nelson. They said: "Hello! where you going with that nigger?" The two men in charge of me replied: "We are going to take him to Panola jail." "Why," said one of the soldiers, "there is no jail there; the Yanks passed through and pulled down the doors and windows of the jail, and let all the prisoners out." This caused a stop; and a council of war was held in the fence corner, the result of which was a decision to take me back to old Jack McGee's. After we had gotten back there, they took me and gave me another flogging to satisfy the madam. I was never so lacerated before. I could hardly walk, so sore and weak was I. The law was given me that if ever I was caught out in the public road again, by any soldier, I was to be shot. Monday morning I was sent to the field to plow; and, though I was very stiff and my flesh seemed sore to the bone, my skin drawn and shriveled as if dead, I had, at least, to make the attempt to work. To have said: "Master, I am too sore to work," would only have gotten me another whipping. So I obeyed without a word. * * * * * REBELS BURN THEIR COTTON. The capture of Memphis by the Union troops closed the principal cotton market of the country, and there was, as a consequence, an immense accumulation of the product in the hands of the farmers of that region. They were, therefore, compelled to resort to temporary expedients for its protection from the elements. Old Master Jack had his piled up in a long rick, and shelters built over it. Other farmers did the same. As cotton was almost the only source of revenue for the farmers, and as there was now no opportunity of getting it to market, there was such a dearth of money as had seldom, if ever, been known, and a corresponding dearth of those necessaries of life which money was the only means of procuring. The accumulations of our family in this product were very great. While the rebel farmers were waiting for a time when they could turn their stores of this valuable article into money, a proclamation was issued by the rebel government that all the owners of cotton that had it stored on their farms must prepare to have it burned. Hundreds of rebel soldiers marched to every section of Mississippi that they could reach, and applied the torch to these cotton ricks. The destruction was enormous. This was to prevent the cotton from falling into the hands of the Unionists. Jeff Davis said to his deluded followers that it was better for them to destroy this property than to risk its coming into the possession of their enemies, since that would equally impoverish themselves, while it might result to the pecuniary advantage of those with whom they were at war. I know that it was a terrible sight when our cotton was burned. Hundreds of bales were consumed, and it seemed like a wholly unnecessary destruction of property, and, therefore, unwise as a war measure. Many were sorry that they had acquiesced in the policy, as it cost them thousands of dollars, and made many poor. They thought that possibly their farms might have escaped the visits of the Union soldiers, and the property, so much needed, been saved in whole or in part. They reasoned, and reasoned correctly, that their condition would in no sense have been worse if their cotton had not been burned by their own soldiers, but might have been much better in many cases, without any real detriment to the rebel cause. The sacrifice of the property of their own people, by the rebel authorities, was evidence of the desperation of the condition of the rebellion, and was so regarded by not a few at that time. Those were terrible days. One could see anxiety written on every face among the whites. The slaves even looked worried at times, though the war meant so much to them, as they were always looking forward to freedom, at its close, if the Union troops were successful. * * * * * MY FOURTH RUNAWAY TRIP. After I had been working on the farm about two months, and had thoroughly talked the matter over with Alfred Dandridge, we planned to make a careful and persistent effort to escape from the land of bondage. We thought that as others, here and there, all through the neighborhood, were going, we would make trial of it. My wife and I were at old Master Jacks; and, after we had consulted with Alfred and Lydia, his wife, we all concluded to go at once. Alfred had been a teamster for Dandridge for many years, and was familiar with the road, as he had hauled cotton into Memphis for his master for so long a time he could hardly tell when he began. Matt Dandridge was a fellow servant, belonging to the same man, and both had, as was not unusual, taken their master's name, or, rather, were known by it. Matt had learned of our purpose to run away, and concluded to join our party. So one night, when all was still, we started. Uncle Alfred, as I always called him, was to be our leader. He was older than any of the rest of us, and had had a good deal of experience; we, therefore, all looked to him--in fact, we relied entirely upon him. After we had traveled about twelve miles, we came to a swamp, called Hicke-Halley. Here we stopped, as day was dawning, and settled down for the day, as we could travel only in the night, lest we should be seen and caught. We were wet--our clothes soaked through from the heavy dew. We had to travel through corn fields, cotton patches, oat fields and underbrush, not daring to take the main road. This is why we were so wet. Uncle Alfred traveled wholly by the stars--they were his guide. He knew by looking at them the four cardinal points of the compass. Many old slaves were guided in this way when traveling in the night, and some could tell the time of night by the position of the stars. We stayed in Hicke-Halley all day, and in the evening, when it was dark enough, we started on again, Uncle Alfred offering up a prayer to God to guide us safely through. Cold Water was our next stopping place, and here a difficulty rose before us that made us fearful. We had nothing to wear but what we had on, and not much of that, so had small space for carrying anything, and, therefore, had brought with us only a little bite to eat. As we had lived on this small provision for a day, there was now but little left for our increasing wants; and the difficulty of securing anything from the houses without danger of detection was almost insurmountable. But we felt encouraged as we thought of what we were striving for, and sped on our way. But the way was hard, for sometimes we got completely stuck in brier patches, and had to turn and go back, in order to find a way out. Old logs and driftwood, that had been piled up year after year, were other obstacles in our way; and one can imagine how hard it was to make our way through such a mass of brush and forest by the dim light of the stars as they struggled through the dense branches of the trees. We stumbled on, however, as best we could, each fearful, yet silently praying for guidance and help. When within four or five miles of Cold Water, Uncle Alfred stopped, and cautioned us not to speak above a whisper, as the rebel troops were camped on both sides of us. We were in a swamp between the two roads, gradually working our way through to the river, as we could not go on either of the roads for fear of detection. At the bridges, where these roads crossed the river, there were rebel camps, and it was useless for us to think of crossing either. We, therefore, worked our way carefully through the thicket that we were in until we came within sight of the river. Then Uncle Alfred went ahead, creeping a few steps, then stopping to see if the river was clear of soldiers. From this point it was some two and a half miles to the bridges, each way; and it was our idea that if we could cross here without being seen by the soldiers, we would be all right. Uncle Alfred came back to us and told us that he thought the way was clear. "I can not hear a sound," said he, "so let us go on." We followed the river down until we came to a place where we could cross. Here we found some drift-wood--an old tree had been blown down, nearly across the river, leaving a space of about twenty feet. Over this natural bridge we crept to the open space which we waded, the water being up to our knees; but we did not mind this. There was no talking above a whisper, for fear of being heard by the soldiers. Daylight had begun to dawn, and we felt good that we had succeeded thus far. We went on quietly until we got entirely out of the swamp and reached some hills. The woods were on each side of us and still thick; so we stopped here, on the side of a hill, where the sun shone brightly on us, expecting to rest for the day. Our clothes had already become quite dry from the sunshine; and, so far, we felt all right. Alfred and I had made a turn around the place, listening to see if we could hear any noise, or see any trace of soldiers; but we discovered no trace of them, and went back to our stopping place. I had been asleep and some of the others were still asleep, when suddenly I heard the yelp of blood hounds in the distance. It seemed quite far away at first, but the sound came nearer and nearer, and then we heard men yelling. We knew now that they were on our trail, and became so frightened that we all leaped to our feet, and were about to run, when Uncle Alfred said: "Stop children, let me oil you feet." He had with him a bottle of ointment made of turpentine and onions, a preparation used to throw hounds off a trail. All stopped; and the women, having their feet anointed first, started off, Uncle Alfred telling them to run in different directions. He and I were the last to start. Alfred said: "Don't let the bushes touch you;" at the same time he ran through the bushes with such a rattling noise one could have heard him a great distance. He wore one of those old fashioned oil cloth coats made in Virginia; and, as he ran, the bushes, striking against the coat, made a noise like the beating of a tin board with sticks. The funny part of it was that, having cautioned us to be careful about noise, he made more than all of us. By this time the woods were resounding with the yelping of the hounds and the cries of their masters. The hounds numbered some fourteen. The men howled and cheered in concert with the brutes, for they knew that they were on the right trail, and it would be but a short time before they caught us all. I had gotten further away than any of them. Having run about a mile, I came to a farm, and started across an open field, hoping to reach a wood beyond, where I might conceal myself. Before I was half way across the field, on looking back, I saw the dogs coming over the fence, and knowing there was no chance of my getting to the woods, I turned around, and ran back to a persimmon tree, and just had time to run up one of the branches when the dogs came upon the ground. I looked and saw the men, Williams the nigger-catcher, and Dr. Henry and Charles Dandridge. As soon as Williams rode up, he told me to come down, but I was so frightened I began to cry, yet came down trembling. The dogs laid hold of me at once, tearing my clothes and biting my flesh. Dr. Dandridge was just riding up, and seeing what was happening, yelled out to Williams: "I thought your dogs didn't bite." "Oh! well," said Williams, "he aint hurt--we've got to let 'em bite a little." They took us all back to the fence where I crossed over, all the others having been caught. Our hearts were filled with dismay. All looked as if they were condemned to be hung. We knew not what was to be done with us. The women were pitiful to see, crying and moaning--all courage utterly gone. They started back with us to Old Master Jack's, at Panola, and we stopped for the night at a small farm house. The old woman who kept it said, tauntingly: "You niggers going to the Yankees? You all ought to be killed." We started on the following morning, and got back home at one o'clock in the afternoon. All of us were whipped. All the members of the family were very angry. Old Lady Jack McGee was so enraged that she said to my wife: "I thought you were a Christian. You'll never see your God." She seemed to think that because Matilda had sought freedom she had committed a great sin. * * * * * INCIDENTS. Ever since the beginning of the war, and the slaves had heard that possibly they might some time be free, they seemed unspeakably happy. They were afraid to let the masters know that they ever thought of such a thing, and they never dreamed of speaking about it except among themselves. They were a happy race, poor souls! notwithstanding their down-trodden condition. They would laugh and chat about freedom in their cabins; and many a little rhyme about it originated among them, and was softly sung over their work. I remember a song that Aunt Kitty, the cook at Master Jack's, used to sing. It ran something like this: There'll be no more talk about Monday, by and by, But every day will be Sunday, by and by. The old woman was singing, or rather humming, it one day, and old lady McGee heard her. She was busy getting her dinner, and I suppose never realized she was singing such an incendiary piece, when old Mrs. McGee broke in upon her: "Don't think you are going to be free; you darkies were made by God and ordained to wait upon us." Those passages of Scripture which refer to master and servants were always cited to us when we heard the Word preached; and they were interpreted as meaning that the relation of master and slave was right and proper--that they were rightly the masters and we the slaves. I remember, not long after Jeff Davis had been elected president of the Confederacy, that I happened to hear old Master Jack talking to some of the members of the family about the war, etc. All at once the old man broke out: "And what do you think! that rascal, Abraham Lincoln, has called for 300,000 more men. What is Jeff Davis doin'-doin'?" He talked on, and seemed so angry that he gave no one a chance to answer: "Jeff Davis is a grand rascal-rascal," said he, "he ought to go into the field himself." At first all the Southerners were jubilant over Davis; but as they were losing so, and the Unionists gaining, they grew angry and denounced him oftentimes in unsparing terms. * * * * * UNION RAID AT MASTER'S FARM. During the time the Union headquarters were at Helena, a Union gun-boat came down the river as far as Boliva, and stopped at Miles McGee's. The soldiers made a raid through the farm, taking chickens, turkeys, meat and everything that they could lay hands on. During this raid Miles McGee came out of the house with a gun, and shot the commanding officer of the party. He became alarmed over what he had done, and hid in the cabin of one of the servants. He never came near the house. The Union soldiers came three different times to catch him, but never succeeded. The last time they came, he made for the canebrake, and hid himself there until they were gone. But though he had escaped their righteous vengeance, he became so nervous that he left his hiding place in the canebraker, and went to Atlanta, Ga., and staid there among friends until things became more quiet. At last wearying of this, he determined to return to old Master Jack's, but not to his own home. Word had been received of his coming, and great preparations were made for his reception. After he had started on his return, he was taken ill on the train, and was left at a small town called Jackson, where he soon died. I drove the family to the depot upon the day of his expected arrival, and as the train came in, the women waved their handkerchiefs; and, when the conductor stepped off, they asked him if Mr. McGee was aboard. He said no--"I have his remains." The scene that followed, I can not describe--such wailing and screaming! I could not but feel sad, even though they had treated me so meanly, causing the death of my children, and separating me from my wife. Their grief was indeed great. The sad news was conveyed to his mother, old Mrs. Jack McGee, at the house by an advance messenger, and we soon followed with the body. He was the favorite son of his mother, and her grief was very great. But for his wanton shooting of the Union officer, he would probably not have met his death as he did. * * * * * UNION SOLDIERS PASS THE PANOLA HOME. One winter night, while I was at old Master Jack's, I was awakened by a rumbling noise like that of heavy wagons, which continued steadily and so long a time that I finally concluded it must be an army passing, and such I found to be the case, upon getting up and venturing out, the rumbling which had awakened me being caused by the passing artillery. I was afraid to go out straight to the soldiers, but would take a few steps at a time, then stop and listen behind a tree or the shrubbery. All seemed quiet--there was no talking. I had listened about twenty minutes when there seemed to be a halt at the creek, some distance from the house. Soon afterwords I heard the command given: "Forward!" I at once made up my mind that they were Yankee soldiers. I got on my knees and crawled to the fence, not daring to go openly, fearing that they might hear or see me and shoot, supposing me to be a spy. I went back into the house and told my wife that they were Yankees who had just passed. "Uncle George," said I, "this would be a good time for us to go." "Oh, no," said he, "we are not quite ready." Uncle George's cabin was where my wife and I stayed while at old Master Jack's. In the morning I was to carry a parcel to Como, a place not far from home, to Mr. James McGee, who was in the rebel army. It was not quite daylight when I made ready to go on my trip, for I was anxious to find out more about the soldiers. Going to the stable and saddling my horse, I mounted and rode out to the big gate leading to the main road, just as day was dawning. As I dismounted to open the gate, some soldiers were passing and an officer sung out to me, "Hello! which way are you going." I said "to Como, to carry this parcel of clothing to my young master in the war." "You have a fine horse," said the officer, "I guess I will exchange horses with you." He took my package of clothing and some letters which I had to mail and my horse, leaving me his, which was a very poor animal. I was badly scared at this performance, fearing that I would be severely whipped for the loss of the horse and package. Yet how could I help it? We knew nothing but to serve a white man, no matter what he asked or commanded. As a matter of course, I did not go to Como, as I had nothing to take--the officer had everything, but went back to the cabin. I supposed that the soldiers had all passed; but in about half an hour Aunt Kitty, on looking out of her cabin window, exclaimed: "My God! just look at the soldiers!" The yard was covered with the blue coats. Another venerable slave said: "My Lord! de year of jubilee am come." During the excitement I ran to the big house, and told the madam that the Yankees were there, and had taken my horse and every thing I had. Old Master Jack had heard the news, but was not able to come out. He had arisen, but, when he knew of the presence of the Yankees, he went back to bed, calling for Kitty to get him a mush poultice. "Tell Kitty-ity-ity to get me a mush poultice-oltice." It was customary, after the beginning of the war, for him to take sick, and call for a poultice to be put upon his stomach whenever he heard of the Yankees being near. He and many like him were especially valorous only when the blue coats were far away. The soldiers went into the dairy and drank all the milk, helped themselves to butter, cheese, meat, bread and everything in sight which they wanted. Nothing was said to them by the white folks, but the slaves were glad, and whispered to each other: "Ah! we's goin' to be free." Old Master Jack, lying on his couch would ask every little while: "Where are they? Are they gone?" After they had all left the premises, he said; "My God! I can't stand it. Them devils-evils are just goin' through the country destroyin' everything." I was sent down to get Uncle Peter for old master, and when Peter came up the old man asked: "Well, did any of the servants go away? And, sir, them devils took Louis' horse and the clothes he had for his young master." * * * * * HIDING VALUABLES FROM THE YANKEES. Right after this the McGees commenced planning to put away their valuables, to keep them from the Union soldiers. All the servants had to fill up their bed-ticks with fine gin cotton--the lint part--for safe keeping. Great boxes and barrels were packed full of their best things, and put into the cellar, under the house. It was not exactly a cellar, but a large shallow excavation, which held a great deal. We put all the solid silver ware, such as cake baskets, trays, spoons, forks, dishes, etc., in boxes, and buried them under the hen house. Great packages of the finest clothing I had to make up, and these were given in charge of certain servants whose duty it was to run into the big house and get them, whenever they heard that the Yankees were coming, and take them to their cabins. This was a shrewd arrangement, for the soldiers never went into the cabins to get anything. When the soldiers had passed, these packages were taken back to the house. It speaks well for the honesty and faithfulness of the slaves that such trusts could be devolved upon them, notwithstanding all the cruelties inflicted upon them by their masters. * * * * * DEATH TO RUNAWAY SLAVES. It was about this time, that the law or regulation of the rebel government was promulgated, authorizing or directing the shooting or hanging of any slave caught trying to get away to the Union army. This barbarous law was carried out in many cases, for every little while we would hear of some slave who was caught running away, and hung or shot. A slave belonging to Boss, ran away, and got safely within the Union lines; but he returned to get his sister. They both got away from the house, but had gone only a few miles, when William McGee overtook them, and shot the man dead. William boasted of this, but told Uncle Peter, the foreman, that he never wanted it mentioned. * * * * * SLAVES HUNG AND LEFT TO ROT AS A WARNING. Two slaves belonging to one Wallace, one of our nearest neighbors, had tried to escape to the Union soldiers, but were caught, brought back and hung. All of our servants were called up, told every detail of the runaway and capture of the poor creatures and their shocking murder, and then compelled to go and see them where they hung. I never shall forget the horror of the scene--it was sickening. The bodies hung at the roadside, where the execution took place, until the blue flies literally swarmed around them, and the stench was fearful. This barbarous spectacle was for the purpose of showing the passing slaves what would be the fate of those caught in the attempt to escape, and to secure the circulation of the details of the awful affair among them, throughout all the neighborhood. It is difficult at this day for those not familiar with the atrocities of the institution of slavery to believe that such scenes could ever have been witnessed in this or any other civilized land, as a result simply of a human being's effort to reach a portion of the country, where the freedom of which it was said to be the home, could be enjoyed without molestation. Yet such was the horrible truth in not one case alone, but in many, as I know only too well. * * * * * RUNAWAY SLAVE CAUGHT AND WHIPPED. One day while I was waiting at dinner, some of the children from the slave quarters came running into the house, and said to old Master Jack: "Uncle John is going away--he is down to the creek." He had been put in the carpenter shop, fastened in the stocks, but by some means he had gotten the stocks off his feet, and got loose. All in the house immediately got up and ran out. Old master told me to run and catch the runaway. I did not like to do it, but had to obey. Old master and I ran in pursuit, and soon overtook him. He could not run, as the stocks were still on his arms and neck. We brought him back, and he was "staked out"--that is, four stakes were driven into the ground, the arms tied to two and the legs to the other two. He was then paddled with the whipping paddle upon the bottom of his feet, by old Master Jack, until blood blisters arose, when he took his knife and opened them. I was then sent for salt and water, and the bruises of the suffering chattel were washed as usual in the stinging brine. * * * * * A HOME GUARD ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS HIMSELF. After the capture of Memphis by the Union forces, the soldiers were in the habit of making raids into the surrounding country. These were a source of alarm and anxiety among the people, and they were constantly on the watch to defend their property and themselves, as best they could. One day Dr. Charles Dandridge went over to one of our neighbors, Mr. Bobor's, to practice shooting, and to see if he had heard anything new about the war. It was the custom of the home-guards to meet weekly, and practice with their fire-arms, in order to be the better prepared, as they pretended, for any sudden incursion of the now dreaded Yankee. Mr. Bobor had gotten a Yankee pistol from some friend, who was in the army, and Dr. Charles wanted to see and try it. It was shown him, and its workings explained. He took it and began shooting, and in showing the other men how quickly he could shoot a Yankee, and mount his horse, he accidentally shot himself under the short rib near his heart, and fell to the ground. All the men came running to him, picked him up and carried him into the house, immediately sending word to Mrs. Dandridge and Master Jack McGee, his father-in-law. The boys came hurrying in, and told us what had happened. I hitched up and drove Boss over to Mr. Bobor's. We found the wounded man rapidly sinking; and when, a little later, his wife came, he could not speak--only clasped her hand. He died that night, and we carried his body to the home, which so short a time before, he had left in health and high spirits. No casket was to be had--everything of that kind had been consumed or shut out by the war. Accordingly two slaves were ordered to make a coffin, which they did, using plain boards. It was then covered with black alpaca from a dress of the madam, and lined with the cloth from Mrs. Dandridge's opera cloak. The regular material used for these purposes was not to be had. By the time the coffin was ready, the body was so bloated, that it could not be got into it. Resort was then had to a plain box, and in this the body of another of the stricken family group was laid away. At the suggestion of old Master Jack, the coffin, was put up in the carriage house, for safe keeping, he saying it would do for him to be buried in. Sorrow had come to this family with such crushing force, that their former pride and boastful spirit had given place to utter dejection. * * * * * SUBSTITUTES FOR COFFEE. During the war everything was scarce and dear, and substitutes were devised for many of those things which had formerly been regarded as the necessaries of life. Sweet potatoes were peeled, then cut in small pieces and put out in the sun to dry. They were then used as a substitute for coffee, when that article became so scarce, toward the close of the war. Great quantities of this preparation were used. Okra was another substitute for coffee. It was dried in the pod, then the seeds shelled out, and these were dried again and prepared something as the coffee is. This made a delicious drink when served with cream, being very rich and pleasant to the taste. Quinine was a medicine that had been of almost universal use in the south; yet it became so scarce that it was sold at seven dollars a bottle, and could not often be had at that price. Lemon leaves were used as a substitute in cases of chills and fever. The leaves were made into a tea, and given to the patient hot, to produce perspiration. During an attack of chills, I was treated in this manner to some advantage. At any rate I got well, which can not always be said of all methods of treatment. CHAPTER IV. REBELLION WEAKENING--SLAVES' HOPES STRENGTHENING. * * * * * M'GEES SLAVES TAKEN TO ALABAMA. While I was absent on my last runaway trip, the Yankees had made a raid through Panola; and our people had become greatly frightened. As soon as they had got back with me and my fellow runaways, they assembled a gang of slaves for the purpose of taking them to Atlanta, Ga., to get them out of the reach of the Union soldiers. Among the slaves selected for the transfer were myself, my wife Matilda, and the seamstress. The others all belonged to Dr. Dandridge and Blanton McGee. Both the Drs. Dandridge went with us to Atlanta. We traveled across the country until we came to Demopolis, Alabama, where we found Boss camped on the bank of the Tombigbee river with all the farm slaves from Bolivar county. This was the first time I had seen Boss since he was captured and taken to Helena. As my wife and I were the only ones in the gang who belonged to Boss, we left those with whom we had come and joined his gang. We all then went aboard a boat and were taken to the salt works, situated on the Tombigbee, ninety miles from Mobile. These salt works belonged to the rebel government. The first president of the works was Mr. Woolsey, of Salem, Alabama. During Mr. Woolsey's term, the first part of 1864, when we had been there some time, he wrote to Boss asking if he would sell myself and wife, and offering $3,000 for both of us. Boss was indignant at this and curtly refused. My wife acted as cook at the salt works, in the headquarters for the president, managers and clerks. Mr. Woolsey was delighted with her cooking; her bread and rolls, he said, could not be surpassed. * * * * * M'GEE'S GREAT SCHEME. When the election of officers of the works came off in the fall, Mr. Gallatin McGee was chosen president. Boss then hired us all, about 100 in number, to labor in these works, but he, of course, received all the revenue. The work assigned me was that of butler at headquarters, and my wife was cook. Both women and children, as well as men, were employed in these works. After some months labor here, soon after Gallatin McGee became president, Matilda and I were removed to the Montgomery headquarters, where we remained until nearly Christmas. A few days before that time, Boss came to Montgomery and arranged for us to meet him in Mobile. We started at the appointed time, reached the city in the morning, and I went directly to the hotel where he told me he would be. I found him at once, and he informed me all about his plans for the future, and what he expected to accomplish. He had purchased an island in the bay, a little way from Mobile, where he had decided to establish salt works of his own. All the brick and lumber for the buildings had been carried there, and work upon them was to be commenced immediately after Christmas. He intended to make a home for the family on the island; and, as soon as he could complete the works, to remove all his hands from the government works to his own. He was very enthusiastic over this scheme, claiming that he would make far more money by it than he was then receiving from hiring out his slaves. He told me that he would remain in Mobile two or three days and would go to Panola to spend the holidays, after which he intended to bring all the family to Mobile, and remain there until the island was in readiness to be occupied. There was to be a general break up of the old home, and the beginning of a new manner of life. I stayed in his room at the hotel all the forenoon, listening to his plans; then I went back where my wife was stopping. As I left his room, he said: "Lou," as he always called me, "I will see you and Matilda at the boat this evening." We went to the boat at the appointed time and saw the Boss, but he did not come near us. As the boat was about to put off, I looked and saw him walking up and down the levee, apparently much excited, running his hands nervously through his hair--a habit common to him when he was worried. He seemed greatly distressed. The military situation troubled him, for the Union army had conquered nearly everything; and the fact now stared him in the face that he would soon lose his slaves. He never dreamed in the beginning of the war that the Unionists would conquer, and that the slaves would be freed; but now he saw that not only all his wealth in the bodies and souls of men was slipping away from him, but that much, if not all of the gain which these chattels had brought him was likely to "take wings and fly away." * * * * * M'GEE'S DEATH. We returned to the salt works the morning after leaving Mobile. Boss remained two days in Mobile, and then started for Panola, the home of his father-in-law; but, on his way, he was taken sick, having contracted a heavy cold which ran into pneumonia, and he lasted only a short time, dying on New Year's day. He had taken cold in bringing the slaves from Bolivar over the river on barges. The river was overflowed about fifty miles out, and the only way he could get the slaves across was by using large barges made of logs. They were several days floating down in this way, before he could get out to the railroad at Jackson, Miss., where he transferred them to the cars. This was too much of an exposure and it killed him. After Boss died all the plans were changed. Col. Hunting, son-in-law of old Master Jack, came down to the salt works and hired us all out there for another year. This was the beginning of the year 1865. Of master's plans concerning the island and his proposed salt works the family knew little, for they questioned me close as to what he told me of the matter. What he spent on the island in lumber, brick, etc., was lost, as they knew nothing of the particulars of the expenditure. The madam remained at her fathers, and the slaves at the works. * * * * * I MAKE SOME MONEY. As I was here for another year, acting as butler, I thought I would try and see if I could not make some money for myself. I asked Mr. Brooks, the manager of the works, if he could get me some tobacco by sending to Mobile for it. He said he could; and on the fourth day thereafter, in the evening, it came. I was anxious to get it the same evening, but Mr. Brooks said: "Oh! I guess you had better wait until morning, then when you finish your work come down to the office and get it--you will then have more time to see the boys in the works." In the morning I was up early, and after doing my morning work I was off to Brooks' office. When I went in he said: "There it is under the table." The package was so small I felt disappointed--a hundred dollars worth ought to be more, said I to myself; but I took it, and went out among the men. I thought I would try to sell it at five dollars a plug, and if I could not sell it at that I would take four dollars. I must make something, for I had borrowed the money to buy it with; and I saw that to clear anything on it, I must at least get four dollars a plug. The money which I had borrowed was from three fellow servants, who had been fortunate in earning some little time and had saved their money. The first man I met in the works bought two plugs, at five dollars each; and after I had been there about an hour all was sold. So I went back with a light heart. Mr. Brooks said to me at dinner: "Well, how did you get along with your tobacco?" "I did very well," I said, "the only trouble was I did not have enough. I sold it for $180." "Well," said he, "if you did, you made more clear money than the works here. How much a plug did you sell it for?" at the same time drawing out his pencil and commencing to figure it up. "I had thirty-six plugs," said I, "and I sold them for five dollars a plug." Nothing more was said just then, but after dinner Brooks and two of the clerks went out on the veranda to smoke. When they were in a good way smoking, Brooks slipped into the dining room, and said: "Well, that was fine; you got five dollars a plug for the tobacco?" "Oh, yes!" I said, "tobacco is scarce, and they were hungry for it; it went like hot cakes--the price was not questioned, I sold at once." "What is the prospect for selling more?" he asked. "Will you sell it for half the profit if I furnish the tobacco?" I said "yes." So he sent the same day for a box of tobacco--about five hundred plugs. When the tobacco came the box was sawed in two and one-half sent up to my room. I put some fellows out as agents to sell for me--Uncle Hudson, who took care of the horses and mules at the works; John at the hospital; William, head chopper, among the 100 men in the woods. Each brought in from $40.00 to $50.00 every two or three days, and took another supply. Sometimes, when I had finished my work in the afternoon, I would get an old pony and go around through the neighborhood and sell four or five plugs. It was a mystery to the servants how I got the tobacco; but I did not let on that Brooks was backing me. In two weeks we had taken in $1,600.00, and I was happy as I could be. Brooks was a fine fellow--a northerner by birth, and did just what he said he would. I received one-half of the money. Of course this was all rebel money, but I was sharp, and bought up all the silver I could find. Just as we got on the other half of the box, Brooks received word that the Yankees were coming, and to send all the hands to their masters. I was glad that I had made some money, knowing that I would need it if I gained my freedom, which I now knew was quite probable, as the Union forces were gaining ground everywhere. But the message ended my money-making, and I prepared to go home to Panola. * * * * * GOING BACK TO PANOLA. Mr. Brooks fixed the return papers so that my wife and I could leave the party of slaves at Demopolis, and go on thence to Panola by rail, to convey the news to madam that all hands were coming home; that the Yankees were expected to capture the salt works within a short time. At Jackson, some seven miles from the salt works, we were delayed over night by reason of lack of facilities for crossing the Tombigbee river. The report that the Yankees were coming through had created a panic among the white people; and hundreds, fleeing from their homes, had gathered at the river, waiting and clamoring for an opportunity to cross. Though slaves were property, and valuable on that account, the whites seemed to think that their own lives were in danger, and to be protected first. They therefore took precedence of us. In the morning about seven o'clock a steamer was seen coming at a distance; but it could not be discovered at once just what the character of it was. The whites became alarmed. Some said: "The Yankees are coming." Other said: "It is a gun boat--they will surely fire on us." But as the boat drew near the people saw that there was nothing to fear--it was only the regular passenger boat. Besides the hundreds of people, there were scores of wagons, filled with household goods to go over, and the passage was slow and tedious. We finally got across and traveled as far as Demopolis, where Matilda and I left the other slaves, and took a train and went on to Panola. I delivered the papers to the madam from Brooks, which told her all the particulars concerning the break up at the salt works. She sent wagons right away after the other slaves who were coming back on foot. They were not brought back to Panola; but were hired out to different farmers along the road home--some in Jackson, some in Granda and others in Panola town. These were all small towns in Mississippi. My wife and I went to work at old Master Jack's, I on the farm and my wife at her old duties in the house. We longed for freedom, but were content for the time with hoping and praying for the coming of the day when it should be realized. It was sad to see the changes that had come to the white folks. Sorrow had left its impress upon all and we felt it, notwithstanding all that we had suffered at their hands. Boss had willed the homestead in Memphis to Mrs. Farrington, and she was getting ready to take possession. He had borrowed a great amount of money from her when he bought the island at Mobile; and the rapid coming on of the end of the rebellion destroyed all prospect of the success of his salt works scheme, even before his death, and really rendered him bankrupt. Hence the transfer of the Memphis property to her was the only way he could make good what he owed her. The madam now had no home, but was compelled to stay with her father, old Master Jack. She was sadly changed--did not appear like the same person. Her troubles and sorrows had crushed her former cruel and haughty spirit. Her mother had died a few months before, and then her husband had followed, dying suddenly and away from home. Then much of her property had been lost, and social pleasures and distinction were gone forever. Who shall say that the wrongs done her poor, helpless slaves were not avenged in this life? The last I knew of her she was still at her father's. * * * * * INCIDENTS. A servant who belonged to Dr. Dandridge ran away and got to Memphis just after it was captured by the Union soldiers. He was put into the army and was stationed at one of the entrances to the city. He was to halt all persons passing to or from the city, no difference who they were, and learn their names and their business. Young William McGee and his sister, Miss Cherry, one day went up to Memphis and, to their surprise, were halted by this former servant of their uncle. When they came home they were speaking of it to their father, and old Master Jack said: "And you halted, did you?" "Why, yes," replied William, "we had to do it." "Well," said the old man, "I would have died-died before I would have done it. To think that a servant should have halted you, and one who has belonged to the family like Anderson!" This old man, notwithstanding all his boasting in the absence of immediate danger, was the veriest coward when danger was present; and if he had been in the place of young William, he would have halted with the greatest alacrity. While at the salt works I had a little experience at nursing. A fellow slave was taken ill, and I was called on to care for him at night. I always liked this work; it was a pleasure to me to be in the sick room. Typhoid fever was a new case to me, but I remembered what instructions Boss had given me about it. I "pitched in" to do what I could; but the fever was so great he lasted only a few days. * * * * * MY FIFTH STRIKE FOR FREEDOM IS A SUCCESS. We had remained at old Jack's until June, 1865, and had tried to be content. The Union soldiers were still raiding all through that section. Every day some town would be taken, and the slaves would secretly rejoice. After we came back from Alabama we were held with a tighter rein than ever. We were not allowed to go outside of the premises. George Washington, a fellow servant, and Kitty, his wife, and I had talked considerably about the Yankees, and how we might get away. We knew it was our right to be free, for the proclamation had long been issued--yet they still held us. I did not talk much to my wife about going away, as she was always so afraid I would be killed, and did not want me to try any more to escape. But George, his wife and I continued to discuss the matter, whenever we had a chance. We knew that Memphis was headquarters for the Union troops, but how to reach it was the great question. It was Sunday, and I had driven one portion of the family to church, and George the other. The family was now very large, as the madam and her family were there, in addition to Old Master Jack's, and all could not go in one carriage. On the way back, young William McGee came up through the farm, on horseback, a nearer way home from church, and encountered several servants belonging to some of the neighbors. He asked them what they were doing there, and if they had passes. To this last question all answered no. "Well," said he, "never come here again without having passes, all of you." At this they all quickly disappeared. When Old Jack came home, Will told him what had passed; and he immediately called for George and Uncle Peter, the foreman, and told them that no one not belonging there was to come into the quarters without a pass; and any servant with a pass should be brought to the house, that the pass might be inspected. They thought, or feared, that if the servants were permitted to come together freely they might plan ways of escape, and communicate to each other what they knew about the war and the Yankees. George came out, and finding me, told me what they had said. "No slave from outside is to be allowed on the place," said he. I replied: "If we listen to them we shall be here until Christmas comes again." "What do you mean?" asked George. "I mean that now, today, is the time to make a start." So, late in the afternoon, during the servants' prayer meeting, of which I have heretofore spoken, we thought would be a good time to get away, as no one would be likely to see us. We talked with John Smith, another servant, and told him all about our plan, asking him not to say a word about our being gone until he was through feeding the stock. This would give us another hour to advance on our journey, as the feeding usually took about that time--from six o'clock until seven. Our fear was that we might be overtaken by the bloodhounds; and, therefore, we wished to get as far away as possible before the white people knew we were gone. It was Sunday afternoon, June 26th, 1865, when George and I, having made ready for the start for the Union lines, went to bid our wives good-bye. I told my wife to cheer up, as I was coming again to get her. I said to Kitty, George's wife: "We are going, but look for us again. It will not be with us as with so many others, who have gone away, leaving their families and never returning for them. We will be here again." She looked up at me, smiling, and with a look of resolution, said: "I'll be ready." She was of a firm, daring nature--I did not fear to tell her all my plans. As my wife was so timid, I said as little as possible to her. George and I hurriedly said our farewells to our wives. The parting was heartrending, for we knew the dangers were great, and the chances were almost even that we should not meet again. I could hardly leave my wife, her agitation and grief were so great. But we were off in a few moments. We crept through the orchard, passing through farm after farm until we struck the railroad, about seven miles from home. We followed this road until we reached Senatobia, about half past seven in the evening. We felt good, and, stopping all night, we started the next morning for Hernando, Miss., another small town, and reached there at two o'clock in the afternoon. The most of the bridges had been burned, by the troops, and there were no regular railroad trains. Fortunately, however, flat cars, drawn by horses were run over the road; and on a train of this kind we took passage. On several occasions, the passengers had to get out, and push the car over a bridge, as it was not made so horses could cross on it, the horses meantime being driven or led through the stream, and then hitched to the car again. After we had gone through this process repeatedly, we at last reached Memphis, arriving about seven o'clock Monday evening. The city was filled with slaves, from all over the south, who cheered and gave us a welcome. I could scarcely recognize Memphis, things were so changed. We met numbers of our fellow servants who had run away before us, when the war began. Tuesday and Wednesday we spent in making inquiries; and I visited our old home at McGee's station. But how different it was from what it had been when the McGees were there. All was changed. Thursday we went to see Col. Walker, a Union officer, who looked after the colored folks, and saw that they had their rights. When we reached his office we found it so filled with people, waiting to see him, that we were delayed about two hours, before we had an opportunity of speaking with him. When our turn came, we went in, and told him that we were citizens of Memphis until the fall of Fort Pillow and Donelson, when our master had run us off, with a hundred other slaves, into Mississippi, and thence to the salt works in Alabama. He questioned us as to where we lived in Memphis. I answered: "What is now headquarters of the Union forces was the home of master, Mr. Edmund McGee, who is now dead." After a few minutes, I said: "Colonel, we want protection to go back to Mississippi after our wives, who are still held as slaves." He replied: "You are both free men to go and come as you please." "Why," said I, "Colonel, if we go back to Mississippi they will shoot the gizzards out of us." "Well," said he, "I can not grant your request. I would be overrun with similar applications; but I will tell you what you can do. There are hundreds of just such men as you want, who would be glad of such a scout." We thanked him and left. * * * * * GOING BACK FOR OUR WIVES. After carefully considering the matter, we concluded to go back to Senatobia and see the captain of the Union troops there. The next day, Friday, we hired a two horse wagon, and made preparations to start on our perilous undertaking Saturday morning. It was our hope to find some one at Senatobia to go with us to Panola, and protect us in the effort to bring away our wives. So, early in the morning, we set out. Our first stop was at Big Springs camping ground, where we made preparations for refreshing ourselves and spending the night. Just as we had finished building a fire, for cooking and keeping off the mosquitoes, two soldiers came riding up to the spring. "Hello," said one, "which way are you traveling?" "We are just from Memphis," said George. "Have you any whisky?" asked one of them. We replied "yes." "Will you give a fellow a horn?" We answered the question by handing them the bottle. While they were drinking, George and I stepped aside, and, after a few moments talk, we decided to put the question to them of going with us to get our wives. I asked: "Where are you from?" "Senatobia," replied one. We at once laid our cause before them, telling them what Col. Walker had said regarding our getting some one to go with us on our enterprise. They listened attentively, and when we had finished, one of them asked: "How much whisky have you?" George answered: "Two bottles." "What do you intend to do when you see the captain at Senatobia?" "Lay our complaint before him," said I. "Now my friend," said one of the soldiers, "I am afraid if you go to the captain you will be defeated. But I'll tell you what I'll do. Give my comrade and me one of your bottles of whisky, and we will put you on a straight track. The reason why I say this is that our captain has been sweetened by the rebel farmers. He is invited out to tea by them every evening. I know he will put you off. But I will write a note to some comrades of mine who, I know, will bring you out safe." We agreed at once to this proposition, and gave them the whisky. He wrote the note, and gave it to us, telling us to go to the last tent on the line in the camp, where we would find two boys to whom we should give it. "They are brave," said he, "and the only two I know of that can help you. If they are not there don't give the note to any one else, but wait till they come back, on Tuesday night. I feel satisfied that they will go and help you out." With these words, they rode off. George and I felt good over our prospects. * * * * * A HAZARDOUS TRIP. The next morning was Sunday, and we started on, reaching Senatobia about eleven o'clock. We went into the camp, following the directions given us, to go to the last tent in the line; but, when we reached there, the soldiers were out. We lingered around the grounds a short time, then went back, and found them there. We gave them the note; and, after reading it, they simply asked us where we had stopped our wagon. I told them outside the village. "Go there," said one of them, "and remain until we come out to see you." Shortly they came out; and, after we had told them what we wanted, the distance to McGee's, which was about nineteen miles from Senatobia, and had given them such other information as they desired, they concluded that they would go. "We want to be back," said I, "before daylight Monday morning, because we must not be seen on the road; for we are well known in that section, and, if discovered, would be captured and killed." "Well," said one of the soldiers, "we will have to go back to camp, and arrange to be excused from roll call this evening, before we can make the trip." They went back to camp; and, in about ten minutes they came out again saying: "All is right; we will go." We gave them each ten dollars; and promised, if they brought us out safely, to give each ten dollars more. It was now about half-past eleven o'clock. They had to go to camp, and slip their horses out cautiously, so as not to be seen by the captain. In half an hour we were on our way; and, after we had ridden some two miles, we were overtaken by the two soldiers. It was Sunday afternoon; and our having a wagon attracted much attention from the farmers as we passed along. They looked at us so sharply that George and I felt decidedly uneasy; yet we kept up courage and pressed steadily on. After a long and weary ride we reached old Master Jack's a little after sundown. The soldiers rode into the yard ahead of us, and the first person they met was a servant (Frank) at the woodpile. They said to him: "Go in and tell your master, Mr. McGee, to come out, we want to see him," at the same time asking for Louis' and George's wives. Young William McGee came out and the soldiers said to him: "We want feed for seventy-five head of horses." McGee said: "We have not got it." Just then George and I were coming up. We drove in at the gate, through the grove, and passed the woodpile where McGee and the soldiers were talking. McGee had just replied: "We have not got that much feed to spare--we are almost out." "Well," said the soldiers, "we must have it," and they followed on right after the wagons. As we drove past them, young McGee went running into the house, saying to his mother: "It is Louis and George, and I'll kill one of them to-night." This raised quite an alarm, and the members of the family told him not to do that, as it would ruin them. As soon as George and I drove up to the first cabin, which was my wife's and Kitty's, we ran in. Kitty met us at the door and said: "I am all ready." She was looking for us. We commenced loading our wagon with our few things. Meanwhile the soldiers had ridden around a few rods and came upon old Master Jack and the minister of the parish, who were watching as guards to keep the slaves from running away to the Yankees. Just think of the outrage upon those poor creatures in forcibly retaining them in slavery long after the proclamation making them free had gone into effect beyond all question! As the soldiers rode up to the two men they said: "Hello! what are you doing here? Why have you not told these two men, Louis and George, that they are free men--that they can go and come as they like?" By this time all the family were aroused, and great excitement prevailed. The soldier's presence drew all the servants near. George and I hurried to fill up our wagon, telling our wives to get in, as there was no time to lose--we must go at once. In twenty minutes we were all loaded. My wife, Aunt Kitty and nine other servants followed the wagon. I waited for a few moments for Mary Ellen, sister of my wife; and as she came running out of the white folks' house, she said to her mistress, Mrs. Farrington: "Good-bye; I wish you good luck." "I wish you all the bad luck," said she in a rage. But Mary did not stop to notice her mistress further; and joining me, we were soon on the road following the wagon. * * * * * TWO BRAVE MEN. Those soldiers were brave indeed. Think of the courage and daring involved in this scheme--only two soldiers going into a country of which they knew nothing except that every white man living in it was their enemy. The demand which they made for food for seventy-five horses was a clever ruse, invented by them to alarm the McGees, and make them think that there was a troop of horses near by, and that it would not be safe for them to offer any resistance to our going away with our wives. Had they thought that there were but two soldiers, it is certain that they would have endeavored to prevent us getting away again, and one or more of us would undoubtedly have been killed. As already stated, nine other slaves followed our wagon, as it moved off. They had no hats on; some were bare-footed,--they had not stopped to get anything; but, as soon as they saw a chance to get away, they went just as they were at the moment. Aunt Kitty was brave and forethoughtful, for during the week we were gone she had baked and cooked a large amount of substantial food that would keep us from starving while on our journey. At the first road crossing, the two soldiers thought they saw a large troop of soldiers in the distance, and they galloped ahead of us at full speed; but, on arriving at the spot, they found that what they had thought soldiers were only a herd of cattle. They rode on to the next crossing, we following as we conveniently could. Each poor slave was busy with his thoughts and his prayers. Now and then one would hear a moan or a word from some of the party. All were scared, even though the soldiers were with us. We came to the next cross road, and passed that safely. Our fear was that the McGees might get the neighborhood to join them and pursue us, or send the home guards after us; but Providence was seemingly smiling upon us at last, for no one followed or molested us. We moved on all night, until we came to a creek, at four o'clock in the morning of Monday. The banks of the creek were very steep, and as the horses and wagon went down into the stream, the mattress on top of the wagon, upon which my wife and her sister's children were sitting, was thrown off into the water. Immediately the horses stopped, and became balky. It was such a warm night that they did not want to move on out of the water, and would not start, either, until they got ready. As soon as the soldiers saw the mattress slide off with my wife and the children, one of them plunged into the water with his horse, and, in a minute, brought them all out. All had a good ducking--indeed it seemed like a baptism by immersion. The drenched ones were wrapped in old blankets; and, after an hour's delay, we were again on our way. The soldiers said: "Now we must leave you; the time is coming when we must be in camp for roll call. If you are not at our camp when roll call is over, we will come back and see about you." We gave them each the second ten dollars, as agreed upon, and just as they rode to the top of the hill they left us. We had a clear sweep from this point, and we came into Senatobia about nine o'clock in the forenoon. Our two soldier friends, who had brought us out so safely, came out of camp to see us. They cheered us, and seemed glad that they had rendered us service. We stopped at the camp until we had dried our clothes and had some breakfast; and, then, we made our way to Memphis. * * * * * OUT OF BONDAGE AT LAST. My wife and her sister were shoeless, and the latter had no hat on--she had hurried out of the house in such excitement that she thought of nothing but getting away. Having to walk some of the way, as all could not ride in the wagon at the same time, we were all tired, dirty and rest-broken, and, on the whole, a pitiful crowd to look at, as we came into the city. One venerable old man, bent with age, whose ebony face shone with delight, came running out into the road as we appeared, exclaiming: "Oh! here dey come, God bless 'em! Poor chil'en! they come fannin." We used large palm leaves to fan ourselves with, as we were so warm. Those nine souls that followed us walked the whole distance, arriving shortly after we did. Thousands of others, in search of the freedom of which they had so long dreamed, flocked into the city of refuge, some having walked hundreds of miles. It was appropriately the 4th of July when we arrived; and, aside from the citizens of Memphis, hundreds of colored refugees thronged the streets. Everywhere you looked you could see soldiers. Such a day I don't believe Memphis will ever see again--when so large and so motley a crowd will come together. Our two soldier rescuers looked us up after we were in Memphis, and seemed truly glad that we had attained our freedom, and that they had been instrumental in it. Only one thing we regret, and that is that we did not learn their names; but we were in so much trouble, and so absorbed in the business which we had in hand--so excited by the perils of our undertaking, that we never thought to ask them their names, or to what regiment they belonged. Then, after we got to Memphis, though we were most grateful for the service which they had rendered us, we were still so excited by our new condition and surroundings that we thought of little else, and forgot that we had no means of establishing, at a later time, the identity of those to whom we owed so much. Freedom, that we had so long looked for, had come at last; and we gave praise to God, blessing the day when we met those two heroes. It is true that we should have been free, sooner or later; still, but for their assistance, my wife and I might never have met again. If I could not have gone back, which I could never have done alone, until long after, such changes might have occurred as would have separated us for years, if not forever. Thousands were separated in this manner--men escaping to the Union lines, hoping to make a way to return for their families; but, failing in this, and not daring to return alone, never saw their wives or children more. Thanks to God, we were guided to these brave soldiers, and so escaped from so cruel a fate. * * * * * A WORD FOR MY OLD MASTER. In closing this account of my years of bondage, it is, perhaps, but justice to say of my old master that he was in some respects kinder and more humane than many other slaveholders. He fed well, and all had enough to wear, such as it was. It is true that the material was coarse, but it was suited to the season, and, therefore, comfortable, which could not truthfully be said of the clothing of the slaves of other planters. Not a few of these did not have sufficient clothes to keep them warm in winter; nor did they have sufficient nourishing and wholesome food. But while my master showed these virtues, similar to those which a provident farmer would show in the care of his dumb brutes, he lacked in that humane feeling which should have kept him from buying and selling human beings and parting kindred--which should have made it impossible for him to have permitted the lashing, beating and lacerating of his slaves, much more the hiring of an irresponsible brute, by the year, to perform this barbarous service for him. The McGees were charitable--as they interpreted the word--were always ready to contribute to educational and missionary funds, while denying, under the severest penalties, all education to those most needing it, and all true missionary effort--the spiritual enlightenment for which they were famishing. Then our masters lacked that fervent charity, the love of Christ in the heart, which if they had possessed they could not have treated us as they did. They would have remembered the golden rule: "Do unto others as ye would that men should do to you." Possessing absolute power over the bodies and souls of their slaves, and grown rich from their unrequited toil, they became possessed by the demon of avarice and pride, and lost sight of the most vital of the Christly qualities. CHAPTER V. FREEDOM AFTER SLAVERY. * * * * * COMING NORTH. As before stated, we arrived in Memphis on the Fourth of July, 1865. My first effort as a freeman was to get something to do to sustain myself and wife and a babe of a few months, that was born at the salt works. I succeeded in getting a room for us, and went to work the second day driving a public carriage. I made enough to keep us and pay our room rent. By our economy we managed to get on very well. I worked on, hoping to go further north, feeling somehow that it would be better for us there; when, one day I ran across a man who knew my wife's mother. He said to me: "Why, your wife's mother went back up the river to Cincinnati. I knew her well and the people to whom she belonged." This information made us eager to take steps to find her. My wife was naturally anxious to follow the clue thus obtained, in hopes of finding her mother, whom she had not seen since the separation at Memphis years before. We, therefore, concluded to go as far as Cincinnati, at any rate, and endeavor to get some further information of mother. My wife seemed to gather new strength in learning this news of her mother, meager though it was. After a stay in Memphis of six weeks we went on to Cincinnati, hopeful of meeting some, at least, of the family that, though free, in defiance of justice, had been consigned to cruel and hopeless bondage--bondage in violation of civil as well as moral law. We felt it was almost impossible that we should see any one that we ever knew; but the man had spoken so earnestly and positively regarding my mother-in-law that we were not without hope. On arriving at Cincinnati, our first inquiry was about her, my wife giving her name and description; and, fortunately, we came upon a colored man who said he knew of a woman answering to the name and description which my wife gave of her mother, and he directed us to the house where she was stopping. When we reached the place to which we had been directed, my wife not only found her mother but one of her sisters. The meeting was a joyful one to us all. No mortal who has not experienced it can imagine the feeling of those who meet again after long years of enforced separation and hardship and utter ignorance of one another's condition and place of habitation. I questioned them as to when and where they had met, and how it happened that they were now together. My mother-in-law then began the following narrative: "When I was sold from the Memphis trader's yard I was bought by a man who lived not far from Memphis. I never heard of any of the children, and knew nothing as to what had become of them. After the capture of Memphis by the Union army, the people to whom I belonged fled from their home, leaving their slaves; and the other slaveholders of the neighborhood did the same. The slaves, left to themselves, at once departed for Memphis, and I among the number. When I had been there but a short time a call was made for nurses to go into the hospital; and, after thinking of it for a few minutes, I concluded to answer the call, and was speedily installed in the work. When I had been there a short time I found, to my great surprise and delight, my eldest daughter was also employed there. She had come to Memphis as I had, because her master's family had fled; and, hearing the call for nurses, had entered the service at once. I can not tell my pleasure in meeting one of my children, for I had never expected to see any of them again. We continued our work in the hospital until Generals Sheridan and Grant said the city was getting too crowded with colored people--there was not room for them; some must be removed. So, large numbers of them were sent to Cincinnati, and my daughter and I were among them. This is why you see us here together." When she had finished telling this story my wife and I were shedding tears of joy. My sister-in-law, Mary Ellen, whom Boss bought at the same time that he bought my wife, was with us; thus the mother and three daughters had met again most unexpectedly, and in a way almost miraculous. This meeting again of mother and daughters, after years of separation and many vicissitudes, was an occasion of the profoundest joy, although all were almost wholly destitute of the necessaries of life. This first evening we spent together can never be forgotten. I can see the old woman now, with bowed form and gray locks, as she gave thanks in joyful tones yet reverent manner, for such a wonderful blessing. * * * * * IN CANADA. We did not remain long in Cincinnati, as houses were so scarce we could not get a place to stop in. My wife's mother had but one room, and we could not stay there. We went on to Hamilton, but stayed there only two months. I worked at whatever I could get to do--whitewashing and odd jobs of any kind. The women managed to get washing to do, so that we got on very well. Our aim was when we left Memphis to get to Canada, as we regarded that as the safest place for refugees from slavery. We did not know what might come again for our injury. So, now, as we had found some of my wife's people, we were more eager to go; and, as I could not get any steady work in Hamilton, we made ready to move on. We went straight to Detroit, and crossed over the river to Windsor, Canada, arriving there on Christmas 1865. I succeeded in getting work as a porter at the Iron House, a hotel situated near the landing. Here my wife also was employed, and here we remained until spring; when, as the wages were so small in Windsor, I went over to Detroit to seek for more profitable employment. After some effort, I succeeded in securing a situation, as waiter, in the Biddle House, and remained there two years, when the manager died, and it changed hands; and, much as I disliked to make a change in my work, I found it necessary. An opportunity soon offered of a position as sailor on the steamer Saginaw, which ran from Green Bay to Escanaba, in connection with the railroad. * * * * * A CLEW TO MY BROTHER WILLIAM. While I was on this boat, one of the men who worked with me said to me, one day: "Have you a brother, Hughes?" I said, "Yes, but I don't know anything about him. We were sold from each other when boys." "Well," said he, "I used to sail with a man whose name was Billy Hughes, and he looked just like you." I told him there were three boys of us; that we were sold to different parties, and that I had never seen either of my brothers since. One brother was named William, but went by the nickname of Billy. "Has this man had his forefinger cut off," asked I. "Oh!" replied he, "I don't know, Hughes, about that." "Well," said I, "this is all I remember about Billy. I accidentally chopped off his forefinger one day, when we were small boys in Virginia. This is the only thing by which I could identify my brother William." Nothing more was said upon the matter, and it dropped out of my mind. I did not realize how important were the words of this man. It never occurred to me that he held the clew that might bring us together again. * * * * * WORK IN CHICAGO. When the sailing season had ended, the steamer tied up at Chicago for the winter. Upon going ashore, I at once tried to get something else to do, for I could not afford to be idle a day. One of the first men I met in Chicago was my old friend and fellow-servant Thomas Bland. He was glad to see me, and told me all about his escape to Canada, and how he had met Will McGee, at Niagara Falls. He was working at the Sherman House, having charge of the coat room. I told him that I had been sailing during the summer, but that the boat was now laid up, and that I was anxious for another job. He said he would try and see what he could do for me. He went to the proprietor of the hotel, Mr. Rice; and, to my surprise and delight, he was so fortunate as to secure me a position as porter and general utility man. My family were still at Windsor, Canada; and, when I had secured this place, I got leave of absence to make them a visit, and went there at once. Two babies had been born only a day before my arrival. I had hoped to be there on the interesting occasion, but was too late. However, I was pleased to find two bright little girls to aid in the family greeting, which was delightful after the months of separation. My wife, her sister Mary and her two children, her mother and the sister we found at Cincinnati were all still here living together. * * * * * ATTENDING NIGHT SCHOOL. After a visit of two weeks with my family, I returned to Chicago, and began my work at the Sherman House. I was full of energy and hope, and resolved to put forth every effort to make a man of myself, and to earn an honest living. I saw that I needed education, and it was one of the bitterest remembrances of my servitude that I had been cheated out of this inalienable right--this immeasurable blessing. I, therefore, determined to do what was in my power to gain something of that of which I had been cruelly defrauded. Hence I entered the night-school for freedmen, which had been established in the city, and faithfully attended its sessions during the months it was kept open. * * * * * I SETTLE IN MILWAUKEE. I worked at the Sherman House until August 1868, and, during this time, saw many travelers and business men, and made some lasting friends among them. Among these was Mr. Plankinton. He seemed to take a fancy to me, and offered me a situation in the Plankinton House, soon to be opened in Milwaukee. I readily accepted it for I was not getting a large salary, and the position which he offered promised more. The Plankinton House was opened in September, and I was placed in full charge of the coat room; and, after I had been there some time, I had, in connection with my coat room duties, charge of the bell stand. My wife had charge of the waiter's rooms, a lodging house situated on Second street, one door from Grand Avenue. This was a brick building that stood where the west portion of the Plankinton now stands. The second floor was used as our living rooms; the third and fourth floors constituted the sleeping apartments of the hotel waiters. My wife looked after these apartments, saw that they were clean, and had a general supervision of them. * * * * * BEGIN BUSINESS FOR MYSELF IN A SMALL WAY. After the hotel had been running a little over a year, I saw there was a chance for me to make something at laundry work. I was allowed to take washing from any of the guests who desired their work done privately. In this way I worked up quite a business. I still continued my coat room duties, as my wife managed the laundry work. Our laundry business increased so rapidly I deemed it best to change our quarters from Second street to 216 Grand avenue, which seemed better suited for our purpose. Here the business continued to grow until it reached proportions of which we had little idea when we began it. * * * * * MEETING RELATIVES OF MY OLD MASTER. One day while I was at the Plankinton I happened to be coming through the hall, when whom should I meet but Col. Hunting, son-in-law of old Master Jack McGee, of Mississippi. We came face to face, and I knew him at once, but he only partially recognized me. He said: "I know your face, but can not recall your name." I said: "Don't you know Louis McGee?" He then remembered me at once. "Why," said he, "my wife, my brother and all his family are here. There is a party of us on a pleasure trip through the north." I soon learned that they had visited at Waukesha springs, and had been at the hotel only a few hours, waiting for the boat for Grand Haven. I hastened to bring my wife to see them and got back with her just in time. They were already in the 'bus, but waited for us. We very cordially shook hands with them. They asked me why I had come so far north, and I replied that we kept traveling until we found a place where we could make a good living. They wished us success and the 'bus rolled away. * * * * * FINDING MY BROTHER WILLIAM. While I was at the Plankinton House many of the traveling men seemingly liked to talk with me when they came to the coat room to check their things. I remember one day when conversing with one of these gentlemen, he asked, all of a sudden: "Say, Hughes, have you a brother?" I answered: "Yes, I had two, but I think they are dead. I was sold from them when a mere lad." "Well," said he, "if you have a brother he is in Cleveland. There is a fellow there who is chief cook at the Forest City Hotel who looks just like you." I grew eager at these words, and put the same question to him that I did to the man on the steamer when I was sailing: "Has he one fore-finger cut off?" He laughed and answered: "Well, I don't know, Hughes, about that; but I do know this: His name is Billy and he resembles you very much. I'll tell you what I'll do, when I go back to Cleveland on my next trip I'll look and see if that fore-finger is off." Now that the second person had called my attention to the fact that there was a man in Cleveland who looked very much like me, I became deeply interested--in fact, I was so excited I could hardly do my work. I awaited the agents return with what of patience I could command; and, at last, one day, when I was least expecting him, I was greeted with these words: "Hello, Hughes! I have good news for you." I grew so excited I could hardly stand still. "Well," he said, "you told me that you had a brother whose name was William, but called Billy for short?" "Yes," I said. "Did your brother Billy have his fore-finger chopped off by his brother Louis, when, as boys, they were one day playing together?" "Yes," I replied. "Then I have found your brother," he said. "I have seen the man in Cleveland, and he corroborates your story in every particular. He says that he was born in Virginia, near Charlottesville, and was owned by one John Martin." I knew now, beyond question, that this was my brother William. Words failed me to express my feelings at this news. The prospect of seeing my brother, lost so many years before, made me almost wild with joy. I thanked the agent for the interest he had taken in me, and for the invaluable and comprehensive information he had brought. He could hardly have done me a greater favor, or bound me to him by a more lasting obligation. My first step was to arrange for a leave of absence from my work, which I found no difficulty in accomplishing, and by night I was aboard the express going to Cleveland. My excitement did not diminish as I sped on my journey, and the speed of the express was too slow for my eager anticipations. Upon reaching Cleveland I went directly to the hotel where I was told my brother was employed, and inquired at the office for Billy Hughes. A bell boy was summoned to take me around to the department where he was. When we met neither of us spoke for some moments--speech is not for such occasions, but silence rather, and the rush of thoughts. When the first flash of feeling had passed I spoke, calling him by name, and he addressed me as brother. There seemed to be no doubt on either side as to our true relationship, though the features of each had long since faded forever from the memory of the other. He took me to his house; and each of us related his story with such feelings as few can fully appreciate. He told me that he had never heard anything of our mother or brother. He went back to the old home in Virginia, after the close of the rebellion, but could get no trace of her. As we related our varied experiences--the hardships, the wrongs and sorrows which we endured and at last the coming of brighter days, we were sad, then happy. It seemed, and indeed was, wonderful that we should have met again after so long a separation. The time allotted to my visit with him passed most pleasantly, and all too quickly; and, as I looked into the faces of his wife and children, I seemed to have entered a new and broader life, and one in which the joys of social intercourse had marvelously expanded. When I came to saying good-bye to him, so close did I feel to him, the tie between us seemed never to have been broken. That week, so full of new experiences and emotions can never be erased from my memory. After many promises of the maintenance of the social relations thus renewed, we parted, to take up again the burdens of life, but with new inspiration and deeper feeling. I came back to my work with renewed vigor, and I could not but rejoice and give praise to God for the blessings that I had experienced in the years since my bondage, and especially for this partial restoration of the broken tie of kindred. I had long since learned to love Christ, and my faith in him was so firmly established that I gave him praise for each and every ray of happiness that came into my life. * * * * * GROWTH OF THE LAUNDRY BUSINESS. I continued the laundry work, in connection with that at the hotel, until 1874. I had been in the Plankinton House then six years and a half. The laundry business had increased to such an extent that my wife could not manage it all alone. I, therefore, gave up my position at the hotel, and went into the laundry work on a somewhat larger scale than that upon which we had been conducting it. We were still doing business at 216 Grand avenue, and there we remained until 1876; when we removed to more commodious quarters at 713 on the avenue. But we remained there only a few mouths, when we removed to 134 Fourth street in the rear. The establishment here was fitted up with all modern appliances; but I was not so successful as I anticipated. My losses were heavy; and though the facilities for doing the work were much better than those which we had before possessed, the location was not so accessible or inviting. We, therefore, went back to our former location at 713 on the avenue. * * * * * EMPLOYED AS A NURSE. Not long after this, Dr. Douglas, a prominent physician of the city at that time, was in failing health, and, wishing a nurse, I was recommended to him for this service by a friend. I served the doctor in this capacity every night for three months. I then went with him to McComb, a village in southern Mississippi, which had been, in the days of slavery, a somewhat famous resort, but which had lost its prestige, and entered upon a general decline; the hotel and all its surroundings presenting the appearance of general dilapidation. I remained here with the doctor for two weeks--until they succeeded in getting another person to care for him. I then took a run down to New Orleans. * * * * * A TRIP SOUTH. On this southern trip I had the opportunity of observing the condition of the country through which we passed. Many of the farms seemed neglected, the houses dilapidated, or abandoned, the fields either uncultivated and overgrown with bushes, or the crops struggling with grass and weeds for the mastery, and presenting but little promise of a paying harvest. In some places the bushes and other undergrowth were fifteen feet high, and the landscape was peculiar and by no means inviting. I could remember the appearance of the cotton farms in slavery days; but how changed were things I now saw! They did not look at all like those which I had been accustomed to see. Everything was dismal and uninviting. The entire country passed through in Mississippi looked like a wilderness. This deterioration was the natural result of the devastating war which had swept the country, and to the industrial revolution which followed and to which affairs had not been adjusted. When I arrived at New Orleans I found the levee filled with fruit. Oranges and bananas were piled in masses like coal, and the scenes in this portion of the city were very different from anything one sees in the north. Among the many places of interest in the city were the cemeteries. Owing to the low level of the ground and its saturation with water, burials are seldom made in graves, but instead in tombs built of brick or marble or other stone, in which are constructed cells running back from the front and of a size and shape sufficient to admit a coffin. Then, as soon as filled, they are sealed up. These tombs contain from two to six or eight, or even more of these cells, and their general appearance from the front is not unlike that of a section of mail boxes in a postoffice. Other places of interest were the old French market, the public squares and gardens, the old Catholic churches, and some of the relics of slavery days in the shape of pens where slaves were exposed for sale. One of these was in the basement of the Hotel Royal, which would contain several hundred at once, and from which hundreds went to a bondage bitterer than death, and from which death was the only relief. * * * * * I MAKE NURSING MY REGULAR BUSINESS. I came back to Milwaukee with a new idea. I liked nursing--it was my choice from childhood. Even though I had been deprived of a course of training, I felt that I was not too old to try, at least, to learn the art, or to add to what I already knew. Dr. Douglas gave me a splendid recommendation, and had some cards printed, bearing my name and address. These I distributed, and thus began the business which I have followed steadily since that time. Dr. Marks very kindly recommended me to well known men needing the service of a nurse, and to his professional associates; and through this means, and through his continued kindness and interest, I have been almost constantly engaged in this work. I am also indebted to Drs. Fox and Spearman and other prominent physicians for recommendations which have resulted in securing me employment which has proved remunerative to me, and which seemed to give entire satisfaction to the sick and their friends. This is no small part of the compensation in the difficult, often wearing, and always delicate duties of the nurse in the sick room. To every true man or woman it is one of the greatest satisfactions to have the consciousness of having been useful to his fellow beings. My duties as nurse have taken me to different parts of the state, to Chicago, to California and to Florida; and I have thus gained no little experience, not only in my business, but in many other directions. I have endeavored, in the foregoing sketch, to give a clear and correct idea of the institution of human slavery, as I witnessed and experienced it--its brutality, its degrading influence upon both master and slave, and its utter incompatibility with industrial improvement and general educational progress. Nothing has been exaggerated or set down in malice, although in the scars which I still bear upon my person, and in the wounds of spirit which will never wholly heal, there might be found a seeming excuse for such a course. Whatever of kindness was shown me during the years of my bondage, I still gratefully remember, whether it came from white master or fellow slave; and for the recognition which has been so generously accorded me since the badge of servitude was removed, I am profoundly and devoutly thankful. 
17146	----	[Illustration: EVENING DEVOTIONS.] DIDDIE, DUMPS & TOT OR PLANTATION CHILD-LIFE By Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle Originally Published 1882 TO MY DEAR FATHER DR. RICHARD CLARKE OF SELMA, ALABAMA MY HERO AND MY BEAU IDEAL OF A GENTLEMAN I Dedicate this Book WITH THE LOVE OF HIS DAUGHTER PREFACE. In writing this little volume, I had for my primary object the idea of keeping alive many of the old stories, legends, traditions, games, hymns, and superstitions of the Southern slaves, which, with this generation of negroes, will pass away. There are now no more dear old "Mammies" and "Aunties" in our nurseries, no more good old "Uncles" in the workshops, to tell the children those old tales that have been told to our mothers and grandmothers for generations--the stories that kept our fathers and grandfathers quiet at night, and induced them to go early to bed that they might hear them the sooner. Nor does my little book pretend to be any defence of slavery. I know not whether it was right or wrong (there are many pros and cons on that subject); but it was the law of the land, made by statesmen from the North as well as the South, long before my day, or my father's or grandfather's day; and, born under that law a slave-holder, and the descendant of slave-holders, raised in the heart of the cotton section, surrounded by negroes from my earliest infancy, "I KNOW whereof I do speak;" and it is to tell of the pleasant and happy relations that existed between master and slave that I write this story of "Diddie, Dumps, and Tot." The stories, plantation games, and hymns are just as I heard them in my childhood. I have learned that Mr. Harris, in "Uncle Remus," has already given the "Tar Baby;" but I have not seen his book, and, as our versions are probably different, I shall let mine remain just as "Chris" told it to the "chil'en." I hope that none of my readers will be shocked at the seeming irreverence of my book, for that _intimacy_ with the "Lord" was characteristic of the negroes. They believed implicitly in a Special Providence and direct punishment or reward, and that faith they religiously tried to impress upon their young charges, white or black; and "heavy, heavy hung over our heads" was the DEVIL! The least little departure from a marked-out course of morals or manners was sure to be followed by, "Nem' min', de deb'l gwine git yer." And what the Lord 'lowed and what he didn't 'low was perfectly well known to every darky. For instance, "he didn't 'low no singin' uv week-er-day chunes uv er Sunday," nor "no singin' uv reel chunes" (dance music) at any time; nor did he "'low no sassin' of ole pussons." The "chu'ch membahs" had their little differences of opinion. Of course they might differ on such minor points as "immersion" and "sprinklin'," "open" or "close" communion; but when it came to such grave matters as "singin' uv reel chunes," or "sassin' uv ole pussons," Baptists and Methodists met on common ground, and stood firm. Nor did our Mammies and Aunties neglect our manners. To say "yes" or "no" to any person, white or black, older than ourselves was considered very rude; it must always be "yes, mam," "no, mam;" "yes, sir," "no, sir;" and those expressions are still, and I hope ever will be, characteristic of Southerners. The child-life that I have portrayed is over now; for no hireling can ever be to the children what their Mammies were, and the strong tie between the negroes and "marster's chil'en" is broken forever. So, hoping that my book (which claims no literary merit) will serve to amuse the little folks, and give them an insight into a childhood peculiar to the South in her palmy days, without further preface I send out my volume of Plantation Child-life. Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle. Columbus, Ga. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Diddie, Dumps, And Tot 13 II. Christmas On The Old Plantation 29 III. Mammy's Story 44 IV. Old Billy 50 V. Diddie's Book 67 VI. Uncle Snake-bit Bob's Sunday-school 82 VII. Poor Ann 92 VIII. Uncle Bob's Proposition 106 IX. Aunt Edy's Story 111 X. Plantation Games 119 XI. Diddie In Trouble 128 XII. How The Woodpecker's Head And The Robin's Breast Came To Be Red 140 XIII. A Plantation Meeting, And Uncle Daniel's Sermon 152 XIV. Diddie And Dumps Go Visiting 166 XV. The Fourth Of July 182 XVI. "'Struck'n uv de Chil'en" 199 XVII. What Became Of Them 212 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Evening Devotions Frontispiece. Sanitary Measures 19 Playing "Injuns" 39 "Ole Billy" 59 "The Tar Baby" 79 "My Min', Hit's Made Up" 103 "Yer'll all Be Havin' De Croup Next" 135 "Well, My Invice Is Dis" 147 "Monahs 'pun Top Er Monahs" 163 "Bringin' 'im the Picnic" 171 "Swinging On Grape-vines and Riding On Saplings" 195 "'Struck'n uv de Chil'en" 201 DIDDIE, DUMPS, AND TOT. CHAPTER I. DIDDIE, DUMPS, AND TOT. They were three little sisters, daughters of a Southern planter, and they lived in a big white house on a cotton plantation in Mississippi. The house stood in a grove of cedars and live-oaks, and on one side was a flower-garden, with two summer-houses covered with climbing roses and honeysuckles, where the little girls would often have tea-parties in the pleasant spring and summer days. Back of the house was a long avenue of water-oaks leading to the quarters where the negroes lived. Major Waldron, the father of the children, owned a large number of slaves, and they loved him and his children very dearly. And the little girls loved them, particularly "Mammy," who had nursed their mother, and now had entire charge of the children; and Aunt Milly, a lame yellow woman, who helped Mammy in the nursery; and Aunt Edy, the head laundress, who was never too busy to amuse them. Then there was Aunt Nancy, the "tender," who attended to the children for the field-hands, and old Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who could scarcely walk at all, because he had been bitten by a snake when he was a boy: so now he had a little shop, where he made baskets of white-oak splits for the hands to pick cotton in; and he always had a story ready for the children, and would let them help him weave baskets whenever Mammy would take them to the shop. Besides these, there were Riar, Chris, and Dilsey, three little negroes, who belonged to the little girls and played with them, and were in training to be their maids by-and-by. Diddie, the oldest of the children, was nine years of age, and had a governess, Miss Carrie, who had taught her to read quite well, and even to write a letter. She was a quiet, thoughtful little girl, well advanced for her age, and ladylike in her manners. Dumps, the second sister, was five, full of fun and mischief, and gave Mammy a great deal of trouble on account of her wild tomboyish ways. Tot, the baby, was a tiny, little blue-eyed child of three, with long light curls, who was always amiable and sweet-tempered, and was petted by everybody who knew her. Now, you must not think that the little girls had been carried to the font and baptized with such ridiculous names as Diddie, Dumps, and Tot: these were only pet names that Mammy had given them; but they had been called by them so long that many persons forgot that Diddie's name was Madeleine, that Dumps had been baptized Elinor, and that Tot bore her mother's name of Eugenia, for they were known as Diddie, Dumps, and Tot to all of their friends. The little girls were very happy in their plantation home. 'Tis true they lived 'way out in the country, and had no museums nor toy-shops to visit, no fine parks to walk or ride in, nor did they have a very great variety of toys. They had some dolls and books, and a baby-house furnished with little beds and chairs and tables; and they had a big Newfoundland dog, Old Bruno; and Dumps and Tot both had a little kitten apiece; and there was "Old Billy," who once upon a time had been a frisky little lamb, Diddie's special pet; but now he was a vicious old sheep, who amused the children very much by running after them whenever he could catch them out-of-doors. Sometimes, though, he would butt them over and hurt them, and Major Waldron had several times had him turned into the pasture; but Diddie would always cry and beg for him to be brought back, and so Old Billy was nearly always in the yard. Then there was Corbin, the little white pony that belonged to all of the children together, and was saddled and bridled every fair day, and tied to the horse-rack, that the little girls might ride him whenever they chose; and 'twas no unusual sight to see two of them on him at once, cantering down the big road or through the grove. And, besides all these amusements, Mammy or Aunt Milly or Aunt Edy, or some of the negroes, would tell them tales; and once in a while they would slip off and go to the quarters, to Aunt Nancy the tender's cabin, and play with the little quarter children. They particularly liked to go there about dark to hear the little negroes say their prayers. Aunt Nancy would make them all kneel down in a row, and clasp their hands and shut their eyes: then she would say, "Our Father, who art in heaven," and all the little darkies together would repeat each petition after her; and if they didn't all keep up, and come out together, she would give the delinquent a sharp cut with a long switch that she always kept near her. So the prayer was very much interrupted by the little "nigs" telling on each other, calling out "Granny" (as they all called Aunt Nancy), "Jim didn't say his 'kingdom come.'" "Yes I did, Granny; don't yer b'lieve dat gal; I said jes' much 'kingdom come' ez she did." And presently Jim would retaliate by saying, "Granny, Polly nuber sed nuf'n 'bout her 'cruspusses.'" "Lord-ee! jes' lis'n at dat nigger," Polly would say. "Granny, don't yer min' 'im; I sed furgib us cruspusses, jes' ez plain ez anybody, and Ginny hyeard me; didn't yer, Ginny?" At these interruptions Aunt Nancy would stop to investigate the matter, and whoever was found in fault was punished with strict and impartial justice. Another very interesting time to visit the quarters was in the morning before breakfast, to see Aunt Nancy give the little darkies their "vermifuge." She had great faith in the curative properties of a very nauseous vermifuge that she had made herself by stewing some kind of herbs in molasses, and every morning she would administer a teaspoonful of it to every child under her care; and she used to say, "Ef'n hit want fur dat furmifuge, den marster wouldn't hab all dem niggers w'at yer see hyear." Now, I don't know about that; but I do know that the little darkies would rather have had fewer "niggers" and less "furmifuge;" for they acted shamefully every time they were called upon to take a dose. In the first place, whenever Aunt Nancy appeared with the bottle and spoon, as many of the children as could get away would flee for their lives, and hide themselves behind the hen-coops and ash-barrels, and under the cabins, and anywhere they could conceal themselves. But that precaution was utterly useless, for Aunt Nancy would make them all form in a line, and in that way would soon miss any absentees; but there were always volunteers to hunt out and run down and bring back the shirkers, who, besides having to take the vermifuge, would get a whipping into the bargain. And even after Aunt Nancy would get them into line, and their hands crossed behind their backs, she would have to watch very closely, or some wicked little "nig" would slip into the place of the one just above him, and make a horrible face, and spit, and wipe his mouth as if he had just taken his dose; and thereby the one whose place he had taken would have to swallow a double portion, while he escaped entirely; or else a scuffle would ensue, and a very animated discussion between the parties as to who had taken the last dose; and unless it could be decided satisfactorily, Aunt Nancy would administer a dose to each one; for, in her opinion, "too much furmifuge wuz better 'n none." And so you see the giving of the vermifuge consumed considerable time. After that was through with, she would begin again at the head of the line, and, making each child open its mouth to its fullest extent, she would examine each throat closely, and if any of them had their "palates down," she would catch up a little clump of hair right on top of their heads and wrap it around as tightly as she could with a string, and then, catching hold of this "topknot," she would pull with all her might to bring up the palate. The unlucky little "nig" in the meanwhile kept up the most unearthly yells, for so great was the depravity among them that they had rather have their palates down than up. Keeping their "palate locks" tied was a source of great trouble and worriment to Aunt Nancy. [Illustration: SANITARY MEASURES.] The winter was always a great season with the children; Mammy would let them have so many candy-stews, and they parched "goobers" in the evenings, and Aunt Milly had to make them so many new doll's clothes, to "keep them quiet," as Dumps said; and such romps and games as they would have in the old nursery! There were two rooms included in the nursery--one the children's bedroom and the other their playroom, where they kept all their toys and litter; and during the winter bright wood fires were kept up in both rooms, that the children might not take cold, and around both fireplaces were tall brass fenders that were kept polished till they shone like gold. Yet, in spite of this precaution, do you know that once Dilsey, Diddie's little maid, actually caught on fire, and her linsey dress was burned off, and Aunt Milly had to roll her over and over on the floor, and didn't get her put out till her little black neck was badly burned, and her little woolly head all singed. After that she had to be nursed for several days. Diddie carried her her meals, and Dumps gave her "Stella," a china doll that was perfectly good, only she had one leg off and her neck cracked; but, for all that, she was a great favorite in the nursery, and it grieved Dumps very much to part with her; but she thought it was her "Christian juty," as she told Diddie; so Aunt Milly made Stella a new green muslin dress, and she was transferred to Dilsey. There was no railroad near the plantation, but it was only fifteen miles to the river, and Major Waldron would go down to New Orleans every winter to lay in his year's supplies, which were shipped by steamboats to the landing and hauled from there to the plantation. It was a jolly time for both white and black when the wagons came from the river; there were always boxes of fruits and candies and nuts, besides large trunks which were carried into the store-room till Christmas, and which everybody knew contained Christmas presents for "all hands." One winter evening in 1853, the children were all gathered at the big gate, on the lookout for the wagons. Diddie was perched upon one gate-post and Dumps on the other, while Tot was sitting on the fence, held on by Riar, lest she might fall. Dilsey and Chris were stationed 'way down the road to catch the first glimpse of the wagons. They were all getting very impatient, for they had been out there nearly an hour, and it was now getting so late they knew Mammy would not let them stay much longer. "I know de reason dey so late, Miss Diddie," said Riar; "dey got dat new mule Sam in de lead in one de wagins and Unker Bill say he know he gwine cut up, f'um de look in he's eyes." "Uncle Bill don't know everything," answered Diddie. "There are six mules in the wagon, and Sam's jest only one of 'em; I reckon he can't cut up much by hisself; five's more 'n one, ain't it?" "I do b'lieve we've been out hyear er hun-der-d hours," said Dumps, yawning wearily; and just then Dilsey and Chris came running towards the gate, waving their arms and crying, "Hyear dey come! hyear dey come!" and, sure enough, the great white-covered wagons came slowly down the road, and Major Waldron on Prince, his black horse, riding in advance. He quickened his pace when he caught sight of the children; for he was very fond of his little daughters, and had been away from them two weeks, trading in New Orleans. He rode up now to the fence, and lifting Tot to the saddle before him, took her in his arms and kissed her. Diddie and Dumps scrambled down from the gate-posts and ran along by the side of Prince to the house, where their mamma was waiting on the porch. And oh! such a joyful meeting! such hugging and kissing all around! Then the wagons came up, and the strong negro men began taking out the boxes and bundles and carrying them to the store-room. "Hand me out that covered basket, Nelson," said Major Waldron to one of the men; and, taking it carefully to the house, he untied the cover, and there lay two little _white woolly puppies_--one for Diddie, and one for Dumps. The little girls clapped their hands and danced with delight. "Ain't they lovely?" said Dumps, squeezing hers in her arms. "Lubly," echoed Tot, burying her chubby little hands in the puppy's wool, while Diddie cuddled hers in her arms as tenderly as if it had been a baby. Mammy made a bed for the doggies in a box in one corner of the nursery, and the children were so excited and so happy that she could hardly get them to bed at all; but after a while Tot's blue eyes began to droop, and she fell asleep in Mammy's arms, murmuring, "De booful itty doggie." "De booful itty doggies," however, did not behave very well; they cried and howled, and Dumps insisted on taking hers up and rocking him to sleep. "Hit's er gittin' so late, honey," urged Mammy, "let 'um stay in de box, an' go ter bed now, like good chil'en." "I know I ain't, Mammy," replied Dumps. "You mus' think I ain't got no feelin's ter go ter bed an' leave 'im hollerin'. I'm er goin' ter rock 'im ter sleep in my little rockin'-cheer, an' you needn't be er fussin' at me nuther." "I ain't er fussin' at yer, chile; I'm jes' visin' uv yer fur yer good; caze hit's yer bedtime, an' dem puppies will likely holler all night." "Then we will sit up all night," said Diddie, in her determined way. "I'm like Dumps; I'm not going to bed an' leave 'im cryin'." So Mammy drew her shawl over her head and lay back in her chair for a nap, while Diddie and Dumps took the little dogs in their arms and sat before the fire rocking; and Chris and Dilsey and Riar all squatted on the floor around the fender, very much interested in the process of getting the puppies quiet. Presently Dumps began to sing: "Ef'n 'ligion was er thing that money could buy, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign; De rich would live, an' de po' would die, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign. _Chorus._ O reign, reign, reign, er my Lord, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign: O reign, reign, reign, er my Lord, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign. But de Lord he 'lowed he wouldn't have it so, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign; So de rich mus' die jes' same as de po', O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign." This was one of the plantation hymns with which Mammy often used to sing Tot to sleep, and all the children were familiar with the words and air; so now they all joined in the singing, and very sweet music it was. They had sung it through several times, and the puppies, finding themselves so outdone in the matter of noise, had curled up in the children's laps and were fast asleep, when Diddie interrupted the chorus to ask: "Dumps, what are you goin' ter name your doggie?" "I b'lieve I'll name 'im 'Papa,'" replied Dumps, "because he give 'im ter me." "'Papa,' indeed!" said Diddie, contemptuously; "that's no name for a dog; I'm goin' ter name mine after some great big somebody." "Lord-ee! I tell yer, Miss Diddie; name 'im Marse Samson, atter de man w'at Mammy wuz tellin' 'bout totin' off de gates," said Dilsey. "No yer don't, Miss Diddie; don't yer name 'im no sich," said Chris; "le's name im' Marse Whale, w'at swallered de man an' nuber chawed 'im." "No, I sha'n't name him nothin' out'n the Bible," said Diddie, "because that's wicked, and maybe God wouldn't let him live, just for that; I b'lieve I'll name him Christopher Columbus, 'cause if he hadn't discovered America there wouldn't er been no people hyear, an' I wouldn't er had no father nor mother, nor dog, nor nothin': an', Dumps, sposin' you name yours Pocahontas, that was er _beau-ti-ful_ Injun girl, an' she throwed her arms 'roun' Mr. Smith an' never let the tomahawks kill 'im." "I know I ain't goin' to name mine no Injun," said Dumps, decidedly. "Yer right, Miss Dumps; now yer's er talkin'," said Riar; "I wouldn't name 'im no Injun; have 'im tearin' folks' hyar off, like Miss Diddie reads in de book. I don't want ter hab nuffin 'tall ter do wid no Injuns; no, sar! I don't like dem folks." "Now, chil'en, de dogs is 'sleep," said Mammy, yawning and rubbing her eyes; "go ter bed, won't yer?" And the little girls, after laying the puppies in the box and covering them with an old shawl, were soon fast asleep. But there was not much sleep in the nursery that night; the ungrateful little dogs howled and cried all night. Mammy got up three times and gave them warm milk, and tucked them up in the shawl; but no sooner would she put them back in the box than they would begin to cry and howl. And so at the breakfast-table next morning, when Dumps asked her papa to tell her something to name her puppy, Diddie gravely remarked, "I think, Dumps, we had better name 'um Cherubim an' Seraphim, for they continually do cry." And her papa was so amused at the idea that he said he thought so too; and thus the puzzling question of the names was decided, and the little woolly poodles were called Cherubim and Seraphim, and became great pets in the household. CHAPTER II. CHRISTMAS ON THE OLD PLANTATION. Christmas morning, 1853, dawned cold and rainy, and scarcely had the first gray streak appeared when the bolt of the nursery was quietly turned, and Dilsey's little black head peered in through the half-open door. "Chris'mus gif', chil'en!" she called out, and in a twinkling Diddie, Dumps, and Tot were all wide awake, and climbing over the side of the bed. Then the three little sisters and Dilsey tip-toed all around to everybody's rooms, catching "Chris'mus gif';" but just as they were creeping down stairs to papa and mamma two little forms jumped from behind the hall door, and Riar and Chris called out, "Chris'mus gif'!" and laughed and danced to think they had "cotch de white chil'en." As soon as everybody had been caught they all went into the sitting-room to see what Santa Claus had brought, and there were eight stockings all stuffed full! Three long, white stockings, that looked as if they might be mamma's, were for the little girls, and three coarse woollen stockings were for the little nigs; and now whom do you suppose the others were for? Why, for Mammy and Aunt Milly, to be sure! Oh, such lots of things--candies and nuts, and raisins and fruits in every stocking; then there was a doll baby for each of the children. Diddie's was a big china doll, with kid feet and hands, and dressed in a red frock trimmed with black velvet. Dumps's was a wax baby with eyes that would open and shut; and it had on a long white dress, just like a sure-enough baby, and a little yellow sack, all worked around with white. Tot was so little, and treated her dollies so badly, that "Old Santa" had brought her an India-rubber baby, dressed in pink tarlatan, with a white sash. Dilsey, Chris, and Riar each had an alabaster baby, dressed in white Swiss, and they were all just alike, except that they had different colored sashes on. And Diddie had a book full of beautiful stories, and Dumps had a slate and pencil, and Tot had a "Noah's ark," and Mammy and Aunt Milly had red and yellow head "handkerchiefs," and Mammy had a new pair of "specs" and a nice warm hood, and Aunt Milly had a delaine dress; and 'way down in the toes of their stockings they each found a five-dollar gold piece, for Old Santa had seen how patient and good the two dear old women were to the children, and so he had "thrown in" these gold pieces. How the little folks laughed and chatted as they pulled the things out of their stockings! But pretty soon Mammy made them put them all away, to get ready for breakfast. After breakfast the big plantation bell was rung, and the negroes all came up to the house. And then a great box that had been in the store-room ever since the wagons got back from the river, three weeks before, was brought in and opened, and Mrs. Waldron took from it dresses and hats, and bonnets and coats, and vests and all sorts of things, until every pair of black hands had received a present, and every pair of thick lips exclaimed, "Thankee, mistis! thankee, honey; an' God bless yer!" And then Chris, who had been looking anxiously every moment or two towards the quarters, cried out, "Yon' dey is! I see um! Yon' dey come!" And down the long avenue appeared the funniest sort of a procession. First came Aunt Nancy, the "tender," with her head handkerchief tied in a sharp point that stuck straight up from her head; and behind her, two and two, came the little quarter negroes, dressed in their brightest and newest clothes. All were there--from the boys and girls of fourteen down to the little wee toddlers of two or three, and some even younger than that; for in the arms of several of the larger girls were little bits of black babies, looking all around in their queer kind of way, and wondering what all this was about. The procession drew up in front of the house, and Diddie, Dumps, and Tot went from one end of it to the other distributing candies and apples, and oranges and toys; and how the bright faces did light up with joy as the little darkies laughed and chuckled, and I dare say would have jumped up and clapped their hands but for Aunt Nancy, who was keeping a sharp eye upon them, and who would say, as every present was delivered, "Min' yer manners, now!" At which the little nigs would make a comical little "bob-down" courtesy and say, "Thankee, marm." When the presents were all delivered, Major Waldron told the negroes that their mistress and himself were going to the quarters to take presents to the old negroes and the sick, who could not walk to the house, and that after that he would have service in the chapel, and that he hoped as many as could would attend. Then the crowd dispersed, and the children's mamma filled a basket with "good things," and presents for old Aunt Sally, who was almost blind; and poor Jane, who had been sick a long time; and Daddy Jake, the oldest negro on the place, who never ventured out in bad weather for fear of the "rheumatiz;" and then, accompanied by her husband and children, she carried it to the quarters to wish the old negroes a happy Christmas. The quarters presented a scene of the greatest excitement. Men and women were bustling about, in and out of the cabins, and the young folks were busily engaged cleaning up the big barn and dressing it with boughs of holly and cedar; for you see Aunt Sukey's Jim was going to be married that very night, and the event had been talked of for weeks, for he was a great favorite on the place. He was a tall, handsome black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting with all of the negro girls; but at last he had been caught himself by pretty Candace, one of the house-maids, and a merry dance she had led him. She had kept poor Jim six long months on the rack. First she'd say she'd marry him, and then she'd say she wouldn't (not that she ever really _meant_ that she wouldn't), for she just wanted to torment him; and she succeeded so well that Jim became utterly wretched, and went to his master to know "ef'n he couldn't make dat yaller gal 'have herse'f." But his master assured him it was a matter that he had nothing on earth to do with, and even told Jim that it was but fair that he, who had enjoyed flirting so long, should now be flirted with. However, one evening his mistress came upon the poor fellow sitting on the creek bank looking very disconsolate, and overheard him talking to himself. "Yes, sar!" he was saying, as if arguing with somebody. "Yes, sar, by rights dat nigger gal oughter be beat mos' ter deff, she clean bodder de life out'n me, an' marster, he jes' oughter kill dat nigger. I dunno w'at makes me kyar so much er bout'n her no way; dar's plenty er likelier gals 'n her, an' I jes' b'lieve dat's er trick nigger; anyhow she's tricked me, sho's yer born; an' ef'n I didn't b'long ter nobody, I'd jump right inter dis creek an' drown myse'f. But I ain't got no right ter be killin' up marster's niggers dat way; I'm wuff er thousan' dollars, an' marster ain't got no thousan' dollars ter was'e in dis creek, long er dat lazy, shif'less, good-fur-nuffin' yaller nigger." The poor fellow's dejected countenance and evident distress enlisted the sympathy of his mistress, and thinking that any negro who took such good care of his master's property would make a good husband, she sought an interview with Candace, and so pleaded with her in behalf of poor Jim that the dusky coquette relented, and went down herself to Aunt Sukey's cabin to tell her lover that she did love him all along, and was "jis' er projeckin' wid 'im," and that she would surely marry him Christmas-night. Their master had had a new cabin built for them, and their mistress had furnished it neatly for the young folks to begin housekeeping, and in mamma's wardrobe was a white dress and a veil and wreath that were to be the bride's Christmas gifts. They were to be married in the parlor at the house, and dance afterwards in the barn, and the wedding supper was to be set in the laundry. So you see it was a busy day, with so much of cake-baking and icing and trimming to be done; and then the girls had to see about their dresses for the evening, and the young men had their shoes to black, and their best clothes to brush, and their hair to unwrap; but, notwithstanding all this, when Major Waldron and his family entered the chapel they found a large congregation assembled; indeed, all were there except the sick; and master and slaves, the white children and black, united their hearts and voices to "Laud and magnify His holy name," and to return thanks to God for his great Christmas gift of a Saviour to the world. As they were leaving the chapel after service, Dumps drew close to her mother and whispered, "Mamma, bein' as this is Chris'mas, an' it's rainin', can't we have some of the little quarter niggers to go to the house and play Injuns with us?" Mamma was about to refuse, for the little girls were not allowed to play with the quarter children; but Dumps looked very wistful, and, besides, Mammy would be with them in the nursery, so she consented, and each of the children were told that they might select one of the little negroes to play with them. Diddie took a little mulatto girl named Agnes. Dumps had so many favorites that it was hard for her to decide; but finally she selected Frances, a lively little darky, who could dance and pat and sing and shout, and do lots of funny things. Tot took Polly, a big girl of fourteen, who could, and sometimes did, take the little one on her back and trot around with her. She lifted her now to her shoulders, and, throwing her head up and snorting like a horse, started off in a canter to the house; while Diddie and Dumps, and Chris and Riar, and Agnes and Frances followed on behind, all barking like dogs, and making believe that Tot was going hunting and they were the hounds. "See, Mammy, here's Agnes and Polly and Frances," said Diddie, as they entered the nursery; "mamma let us have them, and they are to stay here a long time and play Injuns with us." "Now, Miss Diddie, honey," said Mammy, "Injuns is sich a sackremenchus play, an' makes so much litter and fuss; git yer dolls, an' play like er little lady." "No, no, no," interrupted Dumps; "we're goin' ter play Injuns! We're goin' ter make out we're travellin' in the big rockin'-cheer, goin' ter New Orleans, an' the little niggers is got ter be Injuns, hid all behin' the trunks an' beds an' door; an' after we rock an' rock er _lo-o-ong_ time, then we're goin' ter make out it's night, an' stretch mamma's big shawl over two cheers an' make er tent, and be cookin' supper in our little pots an' kittles, an' the little niggers is got ter holler, 'Who-ee, who-eee,' an' jump out on us, an' cut off our heads with er billycrow." "How silly you do talk, Dumps!" said Diddie: "there ain't any Injuns between here and New Orleans; we've got ter be goin' ter California, a far ways f'um here. An' I don't b'lieve there's nothin' in this world named er '_billycrow_;' it's er tommyhawk you're thinkin' about: an' Injuns don't cut off people's heads; it was Henry the Eighth. Injuns jes' cut off the hair and call it sculpin', don't they, Mammy?" "Lor', chile," replied Mammy, "I dunno, honey; I allers hyeard dat Injuns wuz monstrous onstreperous, an' I wouldn't play no sich er game." But "Injuns, Injuns, Injuns!" persisted all the little folks, and Mammy had to yield. The big chair was put in the middle of the room, and the little girls got in. Chris sat up on the arms to be the driver, and they started off for California. After travelling some time night set in, and the emigrants got out, and pitched a tent and made preparations for cooking supper: little bits of paper were torn up and put into the miniature pots and kettles, and the children were busy stirring them round with a stick for a spoon, when the terrible war-whoop rang in their ears, and from under the bed and behind the furniture jumped out the five little negroes. The travellers ran in every direction, and the Injuns after them. Diddie hid in the wardrobe, and Mammy covered Tot up in the middle of the bed; Chris turned the chip-box over and tried to get under it, but the fierce savages dragged her out, and she was soon tied hand and foot; Dumps jumped into the clothes-basket, and Aunt Milly threw a blanket over her, but Frances had such keen little eyes that she soon spied her and captured her at once. Then a wild yell was sounded, and Polly and Dilsey pounced upon Tot, who had become tired of lying still, and was wriggling about so that she had been discovered; and now all the travellers were captured except Diddie. The Injuns looked everywhere for her in vain. "She mus' er gone up fru de chimbly, like Marse Santion Claws," said Agnes; and Diddie thought that was so funny that she giggled outright, and in a moment the wardrobe was opened and she was also taken prisoner. Then the four little captives were laid on their backs, and Polly scalped them with a clothes-brush for a tomahawk. As soon as they were all scalped they started over again, and kept up the fun until the big plantation bell sounded, and then the Injuns deserted in a body and ran off pell-mell to the quarters; for that bell was for the Christmas dinner, and they wouldn't miss that for all the scalps that ever were taken. [Illustration: PLAYING "INJUNS."] There were three long tables, supplied with good, well-cooked food, followed by a nice dessert of pudding and cake, and the darkies, one and all, did full justice to it. Up at the house was a grand dinner, with turkey, mince-pie, and plum-pudding, of course. When that was through with, mamma told the little girls that the little quarter negroes were to have a candy stew, and that Mammy might take them to witness the pulling. This was a great treat, for there was nothing the children enjoyed so much as going to the quarters to see the little negroes play. The candy stew had been suggested by Aunt Nancy as a fine device for getting rid of the little darkies for the night. They were to have the frolic only on condition that they would go to bed and not insist on being at the wedding. This they readily agreed to; for they feared they would not be allowed to sit up any way, and they thought best to make sure of the candy-pulling. When the little girls reached Aunt Nancy's cabin, two big kettles of molasses were on the fire, and, to judge by the sputtering and simmering, the candy was getting on famously. Uncle Sambo had brought his fiddle in, and some of the children were patting and singing and dancing, while others were shelling goobers and picking out scaly-barks to put in the candy; and when the pulling began, if you could have heard the laughing and joking you would have thought there was no fun like a candy stew. As a special favor, the little girls were allowed to stay up and see Candace married; and very nice she looked when her mistress had finished dressing her: her white Swiss was fresh and new, and the wreath and veil were very becoming, and she made quite a pretty bride; at least Jim thought so, and that was enough for her. Jim was dressed in a new pepper-and-salt suit, his Christmas present from his master, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen all looked very fine. Mamma arranged the bridal party in the back parlor, and the folding-doors were thrown open. Both rooms and the large hall were full of negroes. The ceremony was performed by old Uncle Daniel, the negro preacher on the place, and the children's father gave the bride away. After the marriage, the darkies adjourned to the barn to dance. Diddie and Dumps begged to be allowed to go and look at them "just a little while," but it was their bedtime, and Mammy marched them off to the nursery. About twelve o'clock supper was announced, and old and young repaired to the laundry. The room was festooned with wreaths of holly and cedar, and very bright and pretty and tempting the table looked, spread out with meats and breads, and pickles and preserves, and home-made wine, and cakes of all sorts and sizes, iced and plain; large bowls of custard and jelly; and candies, and fruits and nuts. In the centre of the table was a pyramid, beginning with a large cake at the bottom and ending with a "snowball" on top. At the head of the table was the bride-cake, containing the "ring" and the "dime;" it was handsomely iced, and had a candy Cupid perched over it, on a holly bough which was stuck in a hole in the middle of the cake. It was to be cut after a while by each of the bridesmaids and groomsmen in turns; and whoever should cut the slice containing the ring would be the next one to get married; but whoever should get the dime was to be an old maid or an old bachelor. The supper was enjoyed hugely, particularly a big bowl of eggnog, which so enlivened them all that the dancing was entered into with renewed vigor, and kept up till the gray tints in the east warned them that another day had dawned, and that Christmas was over. But you may be sure that in all Christendom it had been welcomed in and ushered out by no merrier, lighter hearts than those of the happy, contented folks on the old plantation. CHAPTER III. MAMMY'S STORY. One cold, rainy night a little group were assembled around a crackling wood fire in the nursery; Mammy was seated in a low chair, with Tot in her arms; Dumps was rocking her doll back and forth, and Diddie was sitting at the table reading; Aunt Milly was knitting, and the three little darkies were nodding by the fire. "Mammy," said Dumps, "s'posin' you tell us a tale." Tot warmly seconded the motion, and Mammy, who was never more delighted than when astonishing the children with her wonderful stories, at once assumed a meditative air. "Lem me see," said the old woman, scratching her head; "I reckon I'll tell yer 'bout de wushin'-stone, ain't neber told yer dat yit. I know yer've maybe hearn on it, leastways Milly has; but den she mayn't have hearn de straight on it, fur 'taint eb'y nigger knows it. Yer see, Milly, my mammy was er 'riginal Guinea nigger, an' she knowed 'bout de wushin'-stone herse'f, an' she told me one Wednesday night on de full er de moon, an' w'at I'm gwine ter tell yer is de truff." Having thus authenticated her story beyond a doubt, Mammy hugged Tot a little closer and began: "Once 'pon er time dar wuz a beautiful gyarden wid all kind er nice blossoms, an' trees, an' brooks, an' things, whar all de little chil'en usen ter go and play, an' in dis gyarden de grass wuz allers green, de blossoms allers bright, and de streams allers clar, caze hit b'longed to er little Fraid, named Cheery." "A 'little Fraid,'" interrupted Diddie, contemptuously. "Why, Mammy, there's no such a thing as a 'Fraid.'" "Lord, Miss Diddie, 'deed dey is," said Dilsey, with her round eyes stretched to their utmost; "I done seed 'em myse'f, an' our Club-foot Bill he was er gwine 'long one time--" "Look er hyear, yer kinky-head nigger, whar's yer manners?" asked Mammy, "'ruptin uv eld'ly pussons. "I'm de one w'at's 'struck'n dese chil'en, done strucked dey mother fuss; I'll tell 'em w'at's becomin' fur 'em ter know; I don't want 'em ter hyear nuf'n 'bout sich low cornfiel' niggers ez Club-foot Bill. "Yes, Miss Diddie, honey," said Mammy, resuming her story, "dar sholy is Fraids; Mammy ain't gwine tell yer nuf'n', honey, w'at she dun know fur er fack; so as I wuz er sayin', dis little Fraid wuz name Cheery, an' she'd go all 'roun' eb'y mornin' an' tech up de grass an' blossoms an' keep 'em fresh, fur she loved ter see chil'en happy, an' w'en dey rolled ober on de grass, an' strung de blossoms, an' waded up an' down de streams, an' peeped roun' de trees, Cheery'd clap 'er han's an' laugh, an' dance roun' an' roun'; an' sometimes dar'd be little po' white chil'en, an' little misfortnit niggers would go dar; an' w'en she'd see de bright look in dey tired eyes, she'd fix things prettier 'n eber. "Now dar wuz er nudder little Fraid name Dreary; an' she wuz sad an' gloomy, an' nebber dance, nor play, nor nuf'n; but would jes go off poutin' like to herse'f. Well, one day she seed er big flat stone under a tree. She said ter herse'f, 'I ain't gwine ter be like dat foolish Cheery, dancin' an' laughin' foreber, caze she thinks sich things ez flowers an' grass kin make folks happy; but I'm gwine ter do er rael good ter eb'ybody;' so she laid er spell on de stone, so dat w'en anybody sot on de stone an' wush anything dey'd hab jes w'at dey wush fur; an' so as ter let er heap er folks wush at once, she made it so dat eb'y wush would make de stone twice ez big ez 'twuz befo'. "Po' little Cheery was mighty troubled in her min' w'en she foun' out bout'n hit, an' she beg Dreary ter tuck de spell off; but no, she wouldn't do it. She 'lowed, do, ef anybody should eber wush anything fur anybody else, dat den de stone might shrink up ergin; fur who, she sez ter herse'f, is gwine ter wush fur things fur tudder folks? An' she tol' de little birds dat stay in de tree de stone wuz under, when anybody sot on de stone dey mus' sing,' I wush I had,' an' 'I wush I wuz,' so as ter min 'em bout'n de wushin'-stone. Well, 'twan't long fo' de gyarden wuz plum crowded wid folks come ter wush on de stone, an' hit wuz er growin' bigger an' bigger all de time, an' mashin' de blossoms an' grass; an' dar wan't no mo' merry chil'en playin' 'mong de trees an' wadin' in de streams; no soun's ob laughin' and joy in de gyarden; eb'ybody wuz er quarlin' bout'n who should hab de nex' place, or wuz tryin' ter study up what dey'd wush fur; an' Cheery wuz jes ez mizer'bul as er free nigger, 'bout her gyarden. "De folks would set on de stone, while de little birds would sing,' I wush I had;' an' dey'd wush dey had money, an' fren's, an' sense, an' happiness, an' 'ligion; an' 'twould all come true jes like dey wush fur. Den de little birds would sing,' I wush I wuz;' an' dey'd wush dey wuz lubly, an' good, an' gran'; un' 'twould all come ter pass jes so. "But all dat time nobody neber wush nobody else was rich, an' good, an' lubly, an' happy; fur don't yer see de birds neber sung,' I wush _you_ wuz,' 'I wush _dey_ had;' but all de time 'I wush _I_ wuz,' 'I wush _I_ had.' At last, one day dar come inter de gyarden er po' little cripple gal, who lived 'way off in er ole tumble-down house. She wuz er little po' white chile, an' she didn't hab no farder nor mudder, nor niggers ter do fur her, an' she had to do all her own wuck herse'f." "Bress de Lord!" ejaculated Aunt Milly, who was becoming very much interested in the story, while tears gathered in Dumps's blue eyes; and even Diddie was seen to wink a little at the forlorn condition of "de po' white chile." "Yes, indeed," continued Mammy, "she done all her own wuk herse'f, an' nobody ter say er blessed word ter her, nor he'p her a bit; an' she neber eben hyeard ob de wushin'-stone, but had jes come out fur er little while ter enjoy de birds, an' de fresh air, an' flowers, same as de quality folks; fur she was mos' all de time sick, an' dis wuz jes de same as Christmus ter her. She hobbled erlong on her crutchers, an' atter while she got ter de stone; an' hit so happened dar wan't nobody dar, so she sot down ter res'. Well, mun, she hadn't mo'n totch de stone when de little birds began, 'I wush I had,' 'I wush I wuz.' "'Oh, what er sweet, pretty place!' de little gal said; an' what nice little birds! I wush dat po' ole sick man what libs next ter us could come out here and see it all.' "'I wush I had,' 'I wush I wuz,' sung de little birds. 'I wush all de po' chil'en could come an' spen' de day here,' said de little gal; 'what er nice time dey would hab!' "'I wush I wuz,' 'I wush I had,' sung de birds in er flutter, hoppin' all 'bout 'mong de branches. "'An' all de lame people, an' sick people, an' ole people,' said de little gal, 'I wush dey could all git well, an strong, an' lib in er beautiful place jes like dis, an' all be happy.' "Oh, de little birds! what er bustle dey wuz in, to be sho'! Dey sot upon de bery topes' branches, an' dey sung like dey d split dey troats, "'I wush _I_ had,' 'I wush _I_ wuz.' "But de little gal neber min' 'em. She was rested, an hobbled on all by herse'f, but now, sence she done wush fur blessin's fur tudder folks, de spell was loosen', an' de stone all drawed up ter a little bit er stone, den sunk away in de groun' clar out o' sight. An' dat wuz de last ob de wushin'-stone." "Dar now!" exclaimed Aunt Milly. "De truff, sho'! jes like I ben tellin' yer," said Mammy. "But, Mammy, what about the little girl? did she ever get well an' strong, an' not be lame any more?" asked Dumps. "Well, honey, yer see de Lord, he fixes all dat. He son't fur her one night, an' she jes smiled, bright an' happy like, an' laid right back in de angel's arms; an' he tuck her right along up thu de hebenly gates, an' soon as eber he sot her down, an' her foot totch dem golden streets, de lameness, an' sickness, an' po'ness all come right; an' her fader, an' her mudder, an' her niggers wuz all dar, an' she wuz well an' strong, an' good an' happy. Jes' like she wush fur de po' folks, an' de sick folks, de Lord he fixed it jes dat way fur her. He fixed all dat hisse'f." CHAPTER IV. OLD BILLY. The gin-house on the plantation was some distance from the house, and in an opposite direction from the quarters. It was out in an open field, but a narrow strip of woods lay between the field and the house, so the gin-house was completely hidden. Just back of the gin-house was a pile of lumber that Major Waldron had had hauled to build a new pick-room, and which was piled so as to form little squares, large enough to hold three of the children at once. During the last ginning season they had gone down once with Mammy to "ride on the gin," but had soon abandoned that amusement to play housekeeping on the lumber, and have the little squares for rooms. They had often since thought of that evening, and had repeatedly begged Mammy to let them go down to the lumber pile; but she was afraid they would tear their clothes, or hurt themselves in some way, and would never consent. So one day in the early spring, when Mammy and Aunt Milly were having a great cleaning-up in the nursery and the children had been sent into the yard to play, Chris suggested that they should all slip off, and go and play on the lumber pile. "Oh yes," said Dumps, "that will be the very thing, an' Mammy won't never know it, 'cause we'll be sho' ter come back befo' snack-time." "But something might happen to us, you know," said Diddie, "like the boy in my blue book, who went off fishin' when his mother told him not to, an' the boat upsetted and drownded him." "Tain't no boat there," urged Dumps; "tain't no water even, an' I don't b'lieve we'd be drownded; an' tain't no bears roun' this place like them that eat up the bad little chil'en in the Bible; and tain't no Injuns in this country, an' tain't no snakes nor lizards till summer-time, an' all the cows is out in the pasture; an' tain't no ghos'es in the daytime, an' I don't b'lieve there's nothin' ter happen to us; an' ef there wuz, I reckon God kin take care of us, can't he?" "He won't do it, though, ef we don't mind our mother," replied Diddie. "Mammy ain't none of our mother, and tain't none of her business not to be lettin' us play on the lumber, neither. Please come, Diddie, we'll have such a fun, an' nothin' can't hurt us. If you'll come, we'll let you keep the hotel, an' me an' Tot'll be the boarders." The idea of keeping the hotel was too much for Diddie's scruples, and she readily agreed to the plan. Dilsey was then despatched to the nursery to bring the dolls, and Chris ran off to the wood-pile to get the wheelbarrow, which was to be the omnibus for carrying passengers to and from the hotel. These details being satisfactorily arranged, the next thing was to slip off from Cherubim and Seraphim, for they followed the little girls everywhere, and they would be too much trouble on this occasion, since they couldn't climb up on the pile themselves, and would whine piteously if the children left them. The plan finally decided upon was this: Diddie was to coax them to the kitchen to get some meat, while the other children were to go as fast as they could down the avenue and wait for her where the road turned, and she was to slip off while the puppies were eating, and join them. They had only waited a few minutes when Diddie came running down the road, and behind her (unknown to her) came Old Billy. "Oh, what made you bring him?" asked Dumps, as Diddie came up. "I didn't know he was comin'," replied Diddie, "but he won't hurt: he'll just eat grass all about, and we needn't notice him." "Yes, he will hurt," said Dumps; "he behaves jus' dreadful, an' I don't want ter go, neither, ef he's got ter be er comin'." "Well--I know he _shall_ come," retorted Diddie. "You jes don't like him 'cause he's gettin' old. I'd be ashamed to turn against my friends like that. When he was little and white, you always wanted to be er playin' with him; an' now, jes 'cause he ain't pretty, you don't want him to come anywhere, nor have no fun nor nothin'; yes--he _shall_ come; an' ef that's the way you're goin' to do, I'm goin' right back to the house, an' tell Mammy you've all slipped off, an' she'll come right after you, an' then you won't get to play on the lumber." Diddie having taken this decided stand, there was nothing for it but to let Old Billy be of the party; and peace being thus restored, the children continued their way, and were soon on the lumber-pile. Diddie at once opened her hotel. Chris was the chambermaid, Riar was the waiter, and Dilsey was the man to take the omnibus down for the passengers. Dumps and Tot, who were to be the boarders, withdrew to the gin-house steps, which was to be the depot, to await the arrival of the omnibus. "I want ter go to the hotel," said Dumps, as Dilsey came up rolling the wheelbarrow--"me an' my three little chil'en." "Yes, marm, jes git in," said Dilsey, and Dumps, with her wax baby and a rag doll for her little daughters, and a large cotton-stalk for her little boy, took a seat in the omnibus. Dilsey wheeled her up to the hotel, and Diddie met her at the door. "What is your name, madam?" she inquired. "My name is Mrs. Dumps," replied the guest, "an' this is my little boy, an' these is my little girls." "Oh, Dumps, you play so cur'us," said Diddie; "who ever heard of anybody bein' named Mrs. Dumps? there ain't no name like that." "Well, I don't know nothin' else," said Dumps; "I couldn't think of nothin'." "Sposin' you be named Mrs. Washington, after General Washington?" said Diddie, who was now studying a child's history of America, and was very much interested in it. "All right," said Dumps; and Mrs. Washington, with her son and daughters, was assigned apartments, and Chris was sent up with refreshments, composed of pieces of old cotton-bolls and gray moss, served on bits of broken china. The omnibus now returned with Tot and her family, consisting of an India-rubber baby with a very cracked face, and a rag body that had once sported a china head, and now had no head of any kind; but it was nicely dressed, and there were red shoes on the feet, and it answered Tot's purpose very well. "Dese my 'itty dirls," said Tot, as Diddie received her, "an' I tome in de bumberbuss." "What is your name?" asked Diddie. "I name--I name--I name--Miss Ginhouse," said Tot, who had evidently never thought of a name, and had suddenly decided upon gin-house, as her eye fell upon that object. "No, no, Tot, that's a _thing_; that ain't no name for folks," said Diddie. "Let's play you're Mrs. Bunker Hill, that's a nice name." "Yes, I name Miss Unker Bill," said the gentle little girl, who rarely objected to playing just as the others wished. Miss "Unker Bill" was shown to her room; and now Riar came out, shaking her hand up and down, and saying, "Ting-er-ling--ting-er-ling--ting-er-ling!" That was the dinner-bell, and they all assembled around a table that Riar had improvised out of a piece of plank supported on two bricks, and which was temptingly set out with mud pies and cakes and green leaves, and just such delicacies as Riar and Diddie could pick up. As soon as Mrs. Washington laid eyes on the mud cakes and pies, she exclaimed, "Oh, Diddie, I'm er goin' ter be the cook, an' make the pies an' things." "I doin' ter be de took an' make de itty mud takes," said Miss Unker Bill, and the table at once became a scene of confusion. "No, Dumps," said Diddie, "somebody's got to be stoppin' at the hotel, an' I think the niggers ought to be the cooks." "But I want ter make the mud cakes," persisted Dumps, an' Tot can be the folks at the hotel--she and the doll-babies." "No, I doin' ter make de mud takes, too," said Tot, and the hotel seemed in imminent danger of being closed for want of custom, when a happy thought struck Dilsey. "Lor-dy, chil'en! I tell yer: le's play Ole Billy is er gemman what writ ter Miss Diddie in er letter dat he was er comin' ter de hotel, an' ter git ready fur 'im gins he come." "Yes," said Diddie, "and lets play Dumps an' Tot was two mo' niggers I had ter bring up from the quarters to help cook; an' we'll make out Ole Billy is some great general or somethin', an' we'll have ter make lots of cakes an' puddin's for 'im. Oh, I know; we'll play he's Lord Burgoyne." All of the little folks were pleased at that idea, and Diddie immediately began to issue her orders. "You, Dumps, an' Tot an' Dilsey, an' all of yer--I've got er letter from Lord Burgoyne, an' he'll be here to-morrow, an' I want you all to go right into the kitchen an' make pies an' cakes." And so the whole party adjourned to a little ditch where mud and water were plentiful (and which on that account had been selected as the kitchen), and began at once to prepare an elegant dinner. Dear me! how busy the little housekeepers were! and such beautiful pies they made, and lovely cakes all iced with white sand, and bits of grass laid around the edges for trimming! and all the time laughing and chatting as gayly as could be. "Ain't we havin' fun?" said Dumps, who, regardless of her nice clothes, was down on her knees in the ditch, with her sleeves rolled up, and her fat little arms muddy to the elbows; "an' ain't you glad we slipped off, Diddie? I tol' yer there wan't nothin' goin' to hurt us." "And ain't you glad we let Billy come?" said Diddie; "we wouldn't er had nobody to be Lord Burgoyne." "Yes," replied Dumps; "an' he ain't behaved bad at all; he ain't butted nobody, an' he ain't runned after nobody to-day." "'Ook at de take," interrupted Tot, holding up a mudball that she had moulded with her own little hands, and which she regarded with great pride. And now, the plank being as full as it would hold, they all returned to the hotel to arrange the table. But after the table was set the excitement was all over, for there was nobody to be the guest. "Ef Ole Billy wan't so mean," said Chris, "we could fotch 'im hyear in de omnibus. I wush we'd a let Chubbum an' Suppum come; dey'd er been Lord Bugon." "I b'lieve Billy would let us haul 'im," said Diddie, who was always ready to take up for her pet; "he's rael gentle now, an' he's quit buttin'; the only thing is, he's so big we couldn't get 'im in the wheelbarrer." "Me 'n Chris kin put 'im in," said Dilsey. "We kin lif 'im, ef dat's all;" and accordingly the omnibus was dispatched for Lord Burgoyne, who was quietly nibbling grass on the ditch bank at some little distance from the hotel. He raised his head as the children approached, and regarded them attentively. "Billy! Billy! po' Ole Billy!" soothingly murmured Diddie, who had accompanied Dilsey and Chris with the omnibus, as she had more influence over Old Billy than anybody else. He came now at once to her side, and rubbed his head gently against her; and while she caressed him, Dilsey on one side and Chris on the other lifted him up to put him on the wheelbarrow. And now the scene changed. Lord Burgoyne, all unmindful of love or gratitude, and with an eye single to avenging this insult to his dignity, struggled from the arms of his captors, and, planting his head full in Diddie's chest, turned her a somersault in the mud. Then, lowering his head and rushing at Chris, he butted her with such force that over she went headforemost into the ditch! and now, spying Dilsey, who was running with all her might to gain the lumber-pile, he took after her, and catching up with her just as she reached the gin-house, placed his head in the middle of her back, and sent her sprawling on her face. Diddie and Chris had by this time regained their feet, both of them very muddy, and Chris with her face all scratched from the roots and briers in the ditch. Seeing Old Billy occupied with Dilsey, they started in a run for the lumber; but the wily old sheep was on the lookout, and, taking after them full tilt, he soon landed them flat on the ground. And now Dilsey had scrambled up, and was wiping the dirt from her eyes, preparatory to making a fresh start. Billy, however, seemed to have made up his mind that nobody had a right to stand up except himself, and, before the poor little darky could get out of his way, once more he had butted her down. [Illustration: "OLE BILLY."] Diddie and Chris were more fortunate this time; they were nearer the lumber than Dilsey, and, not losing a minute, they set out for the pile as soon as Old Billy's back was turned, and made such good time that they both reached it, and Chris had climbed to the top before he saw them; Diddie, however, was only half-way up, so he made a run at her, and butted her feet from under her, and threw her back to the ground. This time he hurt her very much, for her head struck against the lumber, and it cut a gash in her forehead and made the blood come. This alarmed Dumps and Tot, and they both began to cry, though they, with Riar, were safely ensconced on top of the lumber, out of all danger. Diddie, too, was crying bitterly; and as soon as Billy ran back to butt at Dilsey, Chris and Riar caught hold of her hands and drew her up on the pile. Poor little Dilsey was now in a very sad predicament. Billy, seeing that the other children were out of his reach, devoted his entire time and attention to her, and her only safety was in lying flat on the ground. If she so much as lifted her head to reconnoitre, he would plant a full blow upon it. The children were at their wits' end. It was long past their dinner-time, and they were getting hungry; their clothes were all muddy, and Diddie's dress almost torn off of her; the blood was trickling down from the gash in her forehead, and Chris was all scratched and dirty, and her eyes smarted from the sand in them. So it was a disconsolate little group that sat huddled together on top of the lumber, while Old Billy stood guard over Dilsey, but with one eye on the pile, ready to make a dash at anybody who should be foolish enough to venture down. "I tol' yer not to let 'im come," sobbed Dumps, "an' now I spec' we'll hafter stay here all night, an' not have no supper nor nothin'." "I didn't let 'im come," replied Diddie; "he come himself, an' ef you hadn't made us run away fum Mammy, we wouldn't er happened to all this trouble." "I never made yer," retorted Dumps, "you come jes ez much ez anybody; an' ef it hadn't er been fur you, Ole Billy would er stayed at home. You're all time pettin' 'im an' feedin' 'im--hateful old thing--tell he thinks he's got ter go ev'ywhere we go. You ought ter be 'shamed er yourse'f. Ef I was you, I'd think myse'f too good ter be always er 'soshatin' with sheeps." "You're mighty fond of 'im sometimes," said Diddie, "an' you was mighty glad he was here jes now, to be Lord Burgoyne: he's jes doin' this fur fun; an' ef Chris was _my_ nigger, I'd make her git down an' drive 'im away." Chris belonged to Dumps, and Mammy had taught the children never to give orders to each other's maids, unless with full permission of the owner. "I ain't gwine hab nuf'n ter do wid 'im," said Chris. "Yes you are, Chris," replied Dumps, who had eagerly caught at Diddie's suggestion of having him driven away. "Get down this minute, an' drive 'im off; ef yer don't, I'll tell Mammy you wouldn't min' me." "Mammy'll hatter whup me, den," said Chris (for Mammy always punished the little negroes for disobedience to their mistresses); "she'll hatter whup me, caze I ain't gwine ter hab nuf'n tall ter do wid dat sheep; I ain't gwine ter meddle long 'im, hab 'im buttin' me in de ditch." "Riar, you go," said Diddie; "he ain't butted you yet." "He ain't gwine ter, nuther," said Riar, "caze I gwine ter stay up hyear long o' Miss Tot, like Mammy tell me. I 'longs to her, an' I gwine stay wid 'er myse'f, an' nuss 'er jes like Mammy say." It was now almost dark, and Old Billy showed no signs of weariness; his vigilance was unabated, and the children were very miserable, when they heard the welcome sound of Mammy's voice calling "Chil'en! O-o-o-o, chil-en!" "Ma-a-a-m!" answered all of the little folks at once. "Whar is yer?" called Mammy, "On top the lumber-pile," answered the children; and soon Mammy appeared coming through the woods. She had missed the children at snack-time, and had been down to the quarters, and, in fact, all over the place, hunting for them. The children were delighted to see her now, and so, indeed, seemed Old Billy, for, quitting his position at Dilsey's head, he set out at his best speed for Mammy, and Dilsey immediately jumped to her feet, and was soon on the lumber with her companions. "Now yer gwuf fum yer, gwuf fum yer!" said Mammy, furiously waving a cotton-stalk at Old Billy. "Gwuf fum yer, I tell you! I ain't bodern' you. I jes come fur de chil'en, an' yer bet not fool 'long er me, yer low-life sheep." But Old Billy, not caring a fig for Mammy's dignity or importance, planted his head in her breast, and over the old lady went backwards. At this the children, who loved Mammy dearly, set up a yell, and Mammy, still waving the cotton-stalk, attempted to rise, but Billy was ready for her, and, with a well-aimed blow, sent her back to the earth. "Now yer stop dat," said Mammy. "I don't want ter fool wid yer; I lay I'll bus' yer head open mun, ef I git er good lick at yer; yer better gwuf fum yer!" But Billy, being master of the situation, stood his ground, and I dare say Mammy would have been lying there yet, but fortunately Uncle Sambo and Bill, the wagoners, came along the big road, and, hearing the children's cries, they came upon the scene of action, and, taking their whips to Old Billy, soon drove him away. "Mammy, we won't never run away any more," said Diddie, as Mammy came up; "'twas Dumps's fault, anyhow." "Nem min,' yer ma's gwine whup yer," said Mammy; "yer'd no business at dis gin-house long o' dat sheep, an' I won'er what you kinky-head niggers is fur, ef yer can't keep de chil'en in de yard: come yer ter me!" And, picking up a cotton-stalk, she gave each of the little darkies a sound whipping. The children were more fortunate. Mamma lectured them on the sin of running away from Mammy; but she put a piece of court-plaster on Diddie's head, and kissed all of the dirty little faces, much to Mammy's disgust, who grumbled a good deal because they were not punished, saying, "Missis is er spilin' dese chil'en, let'n uv 'em cut up all kind er capers. Yer all better hyear me, mun. Yer better quit dem ways yer got, er runnin' off an' er gwine in de mud, an' er gittin' yer cloes tor'd, an' er gittin' me butted wid sheeps; yer better quit it, I tell yer; ef yer don't, de deb'l gwine git yer, sho's yer born." But, notwithstanding her remarks, the little girls had a nice hot supper, and went to bed quite happy, while Mammy seated herself in her rocking-chair, and entertained Aunt Milly for some time with the children's evil doings and their mother's leniency. CHAPTER V. DIDDIE'S BOOK. One morning Diddie came into the nursery with a big blank-book and a lead-pencil in her hand. "What's that, Diddie?" asked Dumps, leaving her paper dolls on the floor where she had been playing with Chris, and coming to her sister's side. "Now don't you bother me, Dumps," said Diddie; "I'm goin' to write a book." "Are you?" said Dumps, her eyes opening wide in astonishment. "Who's goin' ter tell yer what ter say?" "I'm goin' ter make it up out o' my head," said Diddie; "all about little girls and boys and ladies." "I wouldn't have no boys in it," said Dumps; "they're always so hateful: there's Cousin Frank broke up my tea-set, an' Johnnie Miller tied er string so tight roun' Cherubim's neck till hit nyearly choked 'im. Ef I was writin' er book, I wouldn't have no boys in it." "There's boun' ter be boys in it, Dumps; you can't write a book without'n boys;" and Diddie seated herself, and opened the book before her, while Dumps, with her elbows on the table and face in her hands, looked on anxiously. "I'm not goin' ter write jes one straight book," said Diddie; "I'm goin' ter have little short stories, an' little pieces of poetry, an' all kin' of things; an' I'll name one of the stories 'Nettie Herbert:' don't you think that's a pretty name, Dumps?" "Jes' beautiful," replied Dumps; and Diddie wrote the name at the beginning of the book. "Don't you think two pages on this big paper will be long enough for one story?" asked Diddie. "Plenty," answered Dumps. So at the bottom of the second page Diddie wrote "The END of Nettie Herbert." "Now, what would you name the second story?" asked Diddie, biting her pencil thoughtfully. "I'd name it 'The Bad Little Girl,'" answered Dumps. "Yes, that will do," said Diddie, and she wrote "The Bad Little Girl" at the top of the third page; and, allowing two pages for the story, she wrote "The END of The Bad Little Girl" at the bottom of the next page. "And now it's time for some poetry," said Diddie, and she wrote "Poetry" at the top of the fifth page, and so on until she had divided all of her book into places for stories and poetry. She had three stories--"Nettie Herbert," "The Bad Little Girl," and "Annie's Visit to her Grandma." She had one place for poetry, and two places she had marked "History;" for, as she told Dumps, she wasn't going to write anything unless it was useful; she wasn't going to write just trash. The titles being all decided upon, Dumps and Chris went back to their dolls, and Diddie began to write her first story. "Nettie Herbert." "Nettie Herbert was a poor little girl;" and then she stopped and asked, "Dumps, would you have Nettie Herbert a po' little girl?" "No, I wouldn't have nobody er po' little girl," said Dumps, conclusively, and Diddie drew a line through what she had written, and began again. "Nettie Herbert was a rich little girl, and she lived with her pa and ma in a big house in Nu Orlins; and one time her father give her a gold dollar, and she went down town, and bort a grate big wax doll with open and shet eyes, and a little cooking stove with pots and kittles, and a wuck box, and lots uv pieces uv clorf to make doll cloes, and a bu-te-ful gold ring, and a lockit with her pas hare in it, and a big box full uv all kinds uv candy and nuts and razens and ornges and things, and a little git-ar to play chunes on, and two little tubs and some little iuns to wash her doll cloes with; then she bort a little wheelbarrer, and put all the things in it, and started fur home. When she was going a long, presently she herd sumbody cryin and jes a sobbin himself most to deaf; and twas a poor little boy all barefooted and jes as hungry as he could be; and he said his ma was sick, and his pa was dead, and he had nine little sisters and seven little bruthers, and he hadn't had a mouthful to eat in two weeks, and no place to sleep, nor nuthin'. So Nettie went to a doctors house, and told him she would give him the gold ring fur some fyssick fur the little boys muther; and the doctor give her some castor-oil and parrygorick, and then she went on tell they got to the house, and Nettie give her the fyssick, and some candy to take the taste out of her mouth, and it done her lots uv good; and she give all her nuts and candy to the poor little chillen. And she went back to the man what sold her the things, and told him all about it; and he took back all the little stoves and tubs and iuns and things she had bort, and give her the money, and she carried it strait to the poor woman, and told her to buy some bread and cloes for her chillen. The poor woman thanked her very much, and Nettie told em good-by, and started fur home." Here Diddie stopped suddenly and said, "Come here a little minute, Dumps; I want you to help me wind up this tale." Then, after reading it aloud, she said, "You see, I've only got six mo' lines of paper, an' I haven't got room to tell all that happened to her, an' what become of her. How would you wind up, if you were me?" "I b'lieve I'd say, she furgive her sisters, an' married the prince, an' lived happy ever afterwards, like 'Cinderilla an' the Little Glass Slipper.'" "Oh, Dumps, you're such er little goose; that kind of endin' wouldn't suit my story at all," said Diddie; "but I'll have to wind up somehow, for all the little girls who read the book will want to know what become of her, an' there's only six lines to wind up in; an' she's only a little girl, an' she can't get married; besides, there ain't any prince in Nu Orlins. No, somethin' will have to happen to her. I tell you, I b'lieve I'll make a runaway horse run over her goin' home." "Oh, no, Diddie, please don't," entreated Dumps; "po' little Nettie, don't make the horse run over her." "I'm _obliged to_, Dumps; you mustn't be so tender-hearted; she's got ter be wound up somehow, an' I might let the Injuns scalp her, or the bears eat her up, an' I'm sure that's a heap worse than jes er horse runnin' over her; an' then you know she ain't no sho' nuff little girl; she's only made up out of my head." "I don't care, I don't want the horse to run over her. I think it's bad enough to make her give 'way all her candy an' little tubs an' iuns an' wheelbarrers, without lettin' the horses run over her; an' ef that's the way you're goin' ter do, I sha'n't have nuthin' 'tall ter do with it." And Dumps, having thus washed her hands of the whole affair, went back to her dolls, and Diddie resumed her writing: "As she was agoin along, presently she herd sumthin cumin book-er-ty-book, book-er-ty-book, and there was a big horse and a buggy cum tearin down the road, and she ran jes hard as she could; but befo she could git out er the way, the horse ran rite over her, and killed her, and all the people took her up and carried her home, and put flowers all on her, and buried her at the church, and played the organ 'bout her; and that's "The END of Nettie Herbert." "Oh, dear me!" she sighed, when she had finished, "I am tired of writin' books; Dumps, sposin' you make up 'bout the 'Bad Little Girl,' an' I'll write it down jes like you tell me." "All right," assented Dumps, once more leaving her dolls, and coming to the table. Then, after thinking for a moment, she began, with great earnestness: "Once pun er time there was er bad little girl, an' she wouldn't min' nobody, nor do no way nobody wanted her to; and when her mother went ter give her fyssick, you jes ought ter seen her cuttin' up! _she_ skweeled, an' _she_ holler'd, an' _she_ kicked, an' she jes done ev'y bad way she could; an' one time when she was er goin' on like that the spoon slipped down her throat, an' choked her plum ter death; an' not long after that, when she was er playin' one day--" "Oh, but, Dumps," interrupted Diddie, "you said she was dead." "No, I nuver said nuthin' 'bout her bein' dead," replied Dumps; "an' ef you wrote down that she's dead, then you wrote a story, 'cause she's livin' as anybody." "You said the spoon choked her to death," said Diddie. "Well, hit nuver killed her, anyhow," said Dumps; "hit jes only give her spasums; an' now you've gone and put me all out; what was I sayin'?" "When she was er playin' one day," prompted Diddie. "Oh yes," continued Dumps, "when she was er playin' one day on the side uv the creek with her little sister, she got ter fightin' an' pinchin' an' scrougin', an' the fus thing she knowed, she fell kersplash in the creek, and got drownded. An' one time her mammy tol' 'er not nuber ter clim' up on the fender, an' she neber min' 'er, but clum right upon the fender ter git an apple off'n the mantel-piece; an' the fender turned over, an' she fell in the fire an' burnt all up. An' another time, jes er week after that, she was er foolin' 'long--" "Dumps, what are you talkin' 'bout?" again interrupted Diddie. "She couldn't be er foolin' long o' nothin' ef she's dead." "But she ain't dead, Diddie," persisted Dumps. "Well, you said the fire burned her up," retorted Diddie. "I don't care ef hit did," said Dumps; "she nuver died bout hit; an' ef you're goin' ter keep sayin' she's dead, then I sha'n't tell yer no mo'." "Go on, then," said Diddie, "and I won't bother you." "Well, one time," continued Dumps, "when she was er foolin' 'long o' cow, what she had no business, the cow run his horns right through her neck, an' throwed her way-ay-ay up yon'er; an' she nuver come down no mo', an' that's all." "But, Dumps, what become of her?" asked Diddie. "I dunno what become uv her," said Dumps. "She went ter hebn, I reckon." "But she couldn't go ter hebn ef she's so bad," said Diddie; "the angel wouldn't let her come in." "The cow throwed her in," said Dumps, "an' the angel wan't er lookin', an' he nuver knowed nuthin' 'bout it." "That's er mighty funny story," said Diddie; "but I'll let it stay in the book--only you ain't finished it, Dumps, Hyear's fo' mo' lines of paper ain't written yet." "That's all I know," replied Dumps. And Diddie, after considering awhile, said she thought it would be very nice to wind it up with a piece of poetry. Dumps was delighted at that suggestion, and the little girls puzzled their brains for rhymes. After thinking for some time, Diddie wrote, "Once 'twas a little girl, and she was so bad," and read it aloud; then said, "Now, Dumps, sposin' you make up the nex' line." Dumps buried her face in her hands, and remained in deep study for a few moments, and presently said, "And now she is dead, an' I am so glad." "Oh, Dumps, that's too wicked," said Diddie. "You mustn't never be glad when anybody's dead; that's too wicked a poetry; I sha'n't write it in the book." "Well, I nuver knowed nuthin' else," said Dumps. "I couldn't hardly make that up; I jes had ter study all my might; and I'm tired of writin poetry, anyhow; you make it up all by yoursef." Diddie, with her brows drawn together in a frown, and her eyes tight shut, chewed the end of her pencil, and, after a few moments, said, "Dumps, do you min' ef the cow was to run his horns through her _forrid_ stid of her neck?" "No, hit don't make no diffrence to me," replied Dumps. "Well, then," said Diddie, "ef 'twas her _forrid_, I kin fix it." So, after a little more study and thought, Diddie wound up the story thus: "Once 'twas er little girl, so wicked and horrid, Till the cow run his horns right slap through her forrid, And throwed her to hebn all full of her sin, And, the gate bein open, he pitched her right in." And that was "The END of the Bad Little Girl." "Now there's jes one mo' tale," said Diddie, "and that's about 'Annie's Visit,' an' I'm tired of makin' up books; Chris, can't you make up that?" "I dunno hit," said Chris, "but I kin tell yer 'bout'n de tar baby, ef dat'll do." "Don't you think that'll do jes as well, Dumps?" asked Diddie. "Certingly!" replied Dumps. So Diddie drew her pencil through "Annie's Visit," and wrote in its place, "The Tar Baby," and Chris began: "Once pun a time, 'twuz er ole Rabbit an' er ole Fox and er ole Coon: an' dey all lived close togedder; an' de ole Fox he had him er mighty fine goober-patch, w'at he nuber 'low nobody ter tech; an' one mornin' atter he git up, an' wuz er walkin' 'bout in his gyarden, he seed tracks, an' he foller de tracks, an' he see whar sumbody ben er grabbin' uv his goobers. An' ev'y day he see de same thing; an' he watch, an' he watch, an' he couldn't nuber cotch nobody! an' he went, he did, ter de Coon, and he sez, sezee, 'Brer Coon, dar's sumbody stealin' uv my goobers.' "'Well,' sez Brer Coon, sezee, 'I bet yer hit's Brer Rabbit.' "'I lay I'll fix 'im,' sez Brer Fox; so he goes, he does, and he tuck'n made er man out'n tar, an' he sot 'im, he did, right in de middle uv de goober-patch. Well, sar, soon ez eber de moon riz, Brer Rabbit, he stole outn his house, and he lit right out fur dem goobers; and by'mby he sees de tar man er stanin' dar, an' he hollers out, 'Who's dat er stanin' dar an' er fixin' ter steal Brer Fox's goobers?' Den he lis'en, and nobody nuver anser, and he 'gin ter git mad, and he sez, sezee, 'Yer brack nigger you, yer better anser me wen I speaks ter yer;' and wid dat he hault off, he did, and hit de tar baby side de head, and his han' stuck fas' in de tar. 'Now yer better turn me er loose,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'I got er nuther han' lef',' and 'ker bum' he come wid his udder han', on de tar baby's tuther jaw, an' dat han' stuck. "'Look er hyear! who yer foolin' wid?' sez Brer Rabbit; 'I got er foot yit.' Den he kick wid all his might, an' his foot stuck. Den he kick wid his udder foot, an' dat stuck. Den Brer Rabbit he 'gun ter git madder'n he wuz, an' sezee, 'Ef yer fool 'long o' me mun, I'll butt de life out'n yer;' an' he hault off wid his head, an' butt de tar baby right in de chis, an' his head stuck. Den dar he wuz! an' dar he had ter stay, till, by'mby, Brer Fox he come er long, an' he seed de Rabbit er stickin' dar, an' he tuck him up, an' he cyard 'im long ter Brer Coon's house, an' he sez, sezee, "'Brer Coon, hyear's de man wat stole my goobers; now wat mus' I do wid 'im?' "Brer Coon tuck de Fox off one side, he did, an' he say, 'Le's give 'im his chice, wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de fire or de brier-patch; an' ef he say de fire, den we'll fling 'im in de briers; an' ef he say de briers, den we'll fling 'im in de fire.' So dey went back ter de Rabbit, an' ax 'im wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de fire or de briers. "'Oh, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'plee-ee-eeze don't tho me in de briers, an' git me all scratched up; plee-ee-eeze tho me in de fire; fur de Lord's sake,' sezee, 'don't tho me in de briers.' "And wid dat, Brer Fox he lif' 'im up, an' tho'd 'im way-ay-ay over in de briers. Den Brer Rabbit he kick up his heels, he did, an' he laugh, an' he laugh, an' he holler out, "'Good-bye, Brer Fox! Far' yer well, Brer Coon! I wuz born an' riz in de briers!' And wid dat he lit right out, he did, an' he nuber stop tell he got clean smack home." [Illustration: "THE TAR BABY."] The children were mightily pleased with this story; and Diddie, after carefully writing underneath it, "The END of The Tar Baby," said she could write the poetry and history part some other day; so she closed the book, and gave it to Mammy to put away for her, and she and Dumps went out for a ride on Corbin. CHAPTER VI. UNCLE SNAKE-BIT BOB'S SUNDAY-SCHOOL. There was no more faithful slave in all the Southland than old Uncle Snake-bit Bob. He had been bitten by a rattlesnake when he was a boy, and the limb had to be amputated, and its place was supplied with a wooden peg. There were three or four other "Bobs" on the plantation, and he was called _Snake-bit_ to distinguish him. Though lame, and sick a good deal of his time, his life had not been wasted, nor had he been a useless slave to his master. He made all of the baskets that were used in the cotton-picking season, and had learned to mend shoes; besides that, he was the great horse-doctor of the neighborhood, and not only cured his master's horses and mules, but was sent for for miles around to see the sick stock; and then, too, he could re-bottom chairs, and make buckets and tubs and brooms; and all of the money he made was his own: so the old man had quite a little store of gold and silver sewed up in an old bag and buried somewhere--nobody knew where except himself; for Uncle Snake-bit Bob had never married, and had no family ties; and, furthermore, he was old Granny Rachel's only child, and Granny had died long, _long_ ago, ever since the children's mother was a baby, and he had no brothers or sisters. So, having no cause to spend his money, he had laid it up until now he was a miser, and would steal out by himself at night and count his gold and silver, and chuckle over it with great delight. But he was a very good old man; as Mammy used to say, "he wuz de piuses man dar wuz on de place;" and he had for years led in "de pra'r-meetin's, and called up de mo'ners." One evening, as he sat on a hog-pen talking to Uncle Daniel, who was a preacher, they began to speak of the wickedness among the young negroes on the plantation. "Pyears ter me," said Uncle Bob, "ez ef dem niggers done furgot dey got ter die; dey jes er dancin' an' er cavortin' ev'y night, an' dey'll git lef', mun, wheneber dat angel blow his horn. I tell you what I ben er stud'n, Brer Dan'l. I ben er stud'n dat what's de matter wid deze niggers is, dat de chil'en ain't riz right. Yer know de Book hit sez ef yer raise de chil'en, like yer want 'em ter go, den de ole uns dey won't part fum hit; an', sar, ef de Lord spars me tell nex' Sunday, I 'low ter ax marster ter lemme teach er Sunday-school in de gin-house fur de chil'en." Major Waldron heartily consented to Uncle Bob's proposition, and had the gin-house all swept out for him, and had the carpenter to make him some rough benches. And when the next Sunday evening came around, all of the little darkies, with their heads combed and their Sunday clothes on, assembled for the Sunday-school. The white children begged so hard to go too, that finally Mammy consented to take them. So when Uncle Snake-bit Bob walked into the gin-house, their eager little faces were among those of his pupils. "Now, you all sot down," said Uncle Bob, "an' 'have yerse'fs till I fix yer in er line." Having arranged them to his satisfaction, he delivered to them a short address, setting forth the object of the meeting, and his intentions concerning them. "Chil'en," he began, "I fotch yer hyear dis ebenin fur ter raise yer like yer ought ter be riz. De folks deze days is er gwine ter strucshun er dancin' an' er pickin' uv banjers an' er singin' uv reel chunes an' er cuttin' up uv ev'y kin' er dev'lment. I ben er watchin' 'em; an', min' yer, when de horn hit soun' fur de jes' ter rise, half de niggers gwine ter be wid de onjes'. An' I 'low ter myse'f dat I wuz gwine ter try ter save de chil'en. I gwine ter pray fur yer, I gwine ter struc yer, an' I gwine do my bes' ter lan' yer in hebn. Now yer jes pay tenshun ter de strucshun I gwine give yer--dat's all I ax uv yer--an' me an' de Lord we gwine do de res'." After this exhortation, the old man began at the top of the line, and asked "Gus," a bright-eyed little nig, "Who made you?" "I dun no, sar," answered Gus, very untruthfully, for Aunt Nancy had told him repeatedly. "God made yer," said Uncle Bob. "Now, who made yer?" "God," answered Gus. "Dat's right," said the old man; then proceeded to "Jim," the next in order. "What'd he make yer outn?" demanded the teacher. "I dunno, sar," answered Jim, with as little regard for truth as Gus had shown. "He made yer out'n dut," said Uncle Bob. "Now, what'd he make yer out'n?" "Dut," answered Jim, promptly, and the old man passed on to the next. "What'd he make yer fur?" Again the answer was, "I dunno, sar;" and the old man, after scratching his head and reflecting a moment, said, "Fur ter do de bes' yer kin," which the child repeated after him. "Who wuz de fus man?" was his next question; and the little nig professing ignorance, as usual, the old man replied, "Marse Adum." And so he went all down the line, explaining that "Marse Cain kilt his brudder;" that "Marse Abel wuz de fus man slewed;" that "Marse Noah built de ark;" that "Marse Thuselum wuz de oldes' man," and so on, until he reached the end of the line, and had almost exhausted his store of information. Then, thinking to see how much the children remembered, he began at the top of the line once more, and asked the child, "Who made yer?" "Dut," answered the little negro. "Who?" demanded Uncle Bob, in astonishment. "Dut," replied the child. "Didn' I tell yer God made yer?" asked the old man. "No, sar," replied the boy; "dat'n wat God made done slip out de do'." And so it was. As soon as Uncle Bob's back was turned, Gus, who had wearied of the Sunday-school, slipped out, and the old man had not noticed the change. The confusion resulting from this trifling circumstance was fearful. "Dut" made the first child. The question, "What did he make yer fur?" was promptly answered, "Marse Adum." "Eve wuz de fus man." "Marse Cain wuz de fus 'oman." "Marse Abel kilt his brudder." "Marse Noah wuz de fus one slewed." "Marse Thuselum built de ark." And so on, until the old man had to begin all over again, and give each one a new answer. The catechising through with, Uncle Bob said: "Now, chil'en, I gwine splain de Scripchurs ter yer. I gwine tell yer boutn Dan'l in de lions' den. Dan'l wuz er good Christyun man wat lived in de Bible; and whedder he wuz er white man or whedder he wuz er brack man I dunno; I ain't nuber hyeard nobody say. But dat's neder hyear nor dar; he wuz er good man, and he pray tree times eby day. At de fus peepin' uv de day, Brer Dan'l he usen fur ter hop outn his bed and git down on his knees; and soon's eber de horn hit blowed fur de hans ter come outn de field fur dinner, Brer Dan'l he went in his house, he did, and he flop right back on 'is knees. And wen de sun set, den dar he wuz agin er prayin' and er strivin' wid de Lord. "Well, de king uv dat kentry, he 'low he nuber want no prayin' bout 'im; he sez, sezee, 'I want de thing fur ter stop;' but Brer Dan'l, he nuber studid 'im; he jes prayed right on, tell by'mby de king he 'low dat de nex' man wat he cotch prayin' he wuz gwine cas'm in de lions' den. "Well, nex' mornin, soon's Brer Dan'l riz fum 'is bed, he lit right on 'is knees, an' went ter prayin'; an' wile he wuz er wrestlin' in prar de pater-rollers dey come in, an' dey tied 'im han' an' foot wid er rope, an' tuck 'im right erlong tell dey come ter de lions' den; an' wen dey wuz yit er fur ways fum dar dey hyeard de lions er ro'in an' er sayin', 'Ar-ooorrrrar! aroooorrrrrar!' an' all dey hearts 'gun ter quake sept'n Brer Dan'l's; he nuber note's 'em; he jes pray 'long. By'mby dey git ter de den, an' dey tie er long rope roun' Brer Dan'l's was'e, an' tho 'im right in! an' den dey drawed up de rope, an' went back whar dey come fum. "Well, yearly nex' mornin hyear dey come agin, an' dis time de king he come wid 'em; an' dey hyeard de lions er ro'in, 'Ar-ooorrrrar! arooorrrrar!' an' dey come ter de den, an' dey open de do', an' dar wuz de lions wid dey mouf open an' dey eyes er shinin', jes er trompin' backerds an' forerds; an' dar in de corner sot an angel smoovin' uv 'is wings; an' right in de middle uv de den was Dan'l, jes er sot'n back dar! Gemmun, _he wuzn totch!_ he nuber so much as had de smell uv de lions bout'n 'im! he wuz jes as whole, mun, as he wuz de day he wuz born! Eben de boots on 'im, sar, wuz ez shiny ez dey wuz wen dey put 'im in dar. "An' he jes clum up de side uv de den, he did; an' soon's uber his feet tech de yeath, he sez ter de king, sezee, 'King, hit ain't no usen fur yer ter fool erlong o' me,' sezee; 'I'm er prayin' man mysef, an I 'low ter live an' die on my knees er prayin' an' er sarvin' de Lord.' Sezee, 'De Lord ain't gwine let de lions meddle long o' me,' sezee; 'I ain't fyeard o' nufn,' sezee. 'De Lord is my strengt an' my rocks, an' I ain't er fyeard o' NO man.' An' wid dat he helt er preachin', sar, right whar he wuz; an' he tol' 'em uv dey sins, an' de goodness uv de Lord. He preach de word, he did, right erlong, an' atter dat he 'gun ter sing dis hymn: "'Dan'l wuz er prayin' man; He pray tree times er day; De Lord he hist de winder, Fur ter hyear po' Dan'l pray.' "Den he 'gun ter call up de mo'ners, an' dey come too! Mun, de whole yeath wuz erlive wid 'em: de white folks dey went up; an' de niggers _dey_ went up; an' de pater-rollers _dey_ went up; an' de king _he_ went up; an' dey all come thu an' got 'ligion; an' fum dat day dem folks is er sarvin' de Lord. "An' now, chil'en, efn yer be like Brer Dan'l, an' say yer prars, an' put yer pen'ence in de Lord, yer needn be er fyeard uv no lions; de Lord, he'll take cyar uv yer, an' he'll be mighty proud ter do it. "Now," continued the old man, "we'll close dis meet'n by singin' uv er hymn, an' den yer kin all go. I'll give de hymn out, so's dar needn't be no 'scuse 'bout not know'n uv de words, an' so's yer all kin sing." The children rose to their feet, and Uncle Bob, with great solemnity, gave out the following hymn, which they all, white and black, sang with great fervor: "O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O bless us mo' an' mo'; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We will not let yer go. "My marster, Lord; my marster, Lord-- O Lord, he does his bes', So when yer savin' sinners, Lord, Save him wid all de res'. O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! An' keep us in yer cyar; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We're gwine ter hol' yer hyear. "My missus, Lord; my missus, Lord, O bless my missus now-- She's tryin' hard ter serve yer, Lord, But den she dunno how. O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O bless us now, we pray; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We won't leave hyear ter day. "Deze chil'en, Lord; deze chil'en, Lord, O keep dey little feet Er gwien straight ter hebn, Lord, Fur ter walk dat golden street. O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O come in all yer might; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We'll wrestle hyear all night. "Deze niggers, Lord; deze niggers, Lord, Dey skins is black, hit's true, But den dey souls is white, my Lord, So won't yer bless dem too? O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O bless us mo' an' mo'; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We'll keep yer hyear fur sho. "All folkses, Lord; all folkses, Lord-- O Lord, bless all de same. O bless de good, an' bless de bad, Fur de glory uv dy name. Now bless us, Lord! now bless us, Lord! Don't fool 'long o' us, no mo'; O sen' us down de blessin', Lord, An' den we'll let yer go." CHAPTER VII. POOR ANN. "Miss Diddie!" called Dilsey, running into the nursery one morning in a great state of excitement; then, seeing that Diddie was not there, she stopped short, and demanded, "Whar Miss Diddie?" "She's sayin' her lessons," answered Dumps. "What do you want with her?" "De specerlaters is come," said Dilsey; "dey's right down yon'er on de crick banks back er de quarters." In an instant Dumps and Tot had abandoned their dolls, and Chris and Riar had thrown aside their quilt-pieces (for Aunt Milly was teaching them to sew), and they were all just leaving the room when Mammy entered. "Whar yer gwine?" asked Mammy. "Oh, Mammy, de specerlaters is come," said Dumps, "an' we're goin' down to the creek to see 'um." "No yer ain't, nuther," said Mammy. "Yer ain't er gwine er nyear dem specerlaters, er cotchin' uv measles an' hookin'-coffs an' sich, fum dem niggers. Yer ain't gwine er nyear 'um; an' yer jes ez well fur ter tuck off dem bunnits, an' ter set yerse'fs right back on de flo' an' go ter playin'. An' efn you little niggers don't tuck up dem quilt-pieces an' go ter patchin' uv 'em, I lay I'll hu't yer, mun! Who dat tell deze chil'en 'bout de specerlaters?" "Hit uz Dilsey," answered Chris and Riar in a breath; and Mammy, giving Dilsey a sharp slap, said, "Now yer come er prancin' in hyear ergin wid all kin' er news, an' I bet yer'll be sorry fur it. Yer know better'n dat. Yer know deze chil'en ain't got no bizness 'long o' specerlaters." In the meanwhile Dumps and Tot were crying over their disappointment. "Yer mean old thing!" sobbed Dumps. "I ain't goin' ter min' yer, nuther; an' I sha'n't nuver go ter sleep no mo', an' let yer go to prayer-meetin's; jes all time botherin' me, an' won't lemme see de specerlaters, nor nothin'." "Jes lis'en how yer talkin'," said Mammy, "givin' me all dat sass. You're de sassies' chile marster's got. Nobody can't nuver larn yer no manners, aller er sassin ole pussons. Jes keep on, an' yer'll see wat'll happen ter yer; yer'll wake up some er deze mornins, an' yer won't have no hyar on yer head. I knowed er little gal onct wat sassed her mudder, an' de Lord he sent er angel in de night, he did, an' struck her plum' bald-headed." "You ain't none o' my mother," replied Dumps. "You're mos' black ez my shoes; an' de Lord ain't er goin' ter pull all my hair off jes 'boutn you." "I gwine right down-sta'rs an' tell yer ma," said Mammy. "She don't 'low none o' you chil'en fur ter sass me, an' ter call me brack; she nuver done it herse'f, wen she wuz little. I'se got ter be treated wid 'spec myse'f; ef I don't, den hit's time fur me ter quit min'en chil'en: I gwine tell yer ma." And Mammy left the room in high dudgeon, but presently came back, and said Dumps was to go to her mother at once. "What is the matter with my little daughter?" asked her father, as she came slowly down-stairs, crying bitterly, and met him in the hall. "Mammy's ben er sa-a-as-sin me," sobbed Dumps; "an' she sa-aid de Lord wuz goin' ter sen' an angel fur ter git my ha-air, an' she won't lem'me go-o-o ter see de spec-ec-ec-erlaters." "Well, come in mamma's room," said her father, "and we'll talk it all over." And the upshot of the matter was that Major Waldron said he would himself take the children to the speculator's camp; and accordingly, as soon as dinner was over, they all started off in high glee--the three little girls and the three little negroes--leaving Mammy standing at the top of the stairs, muttering to herself, "Er catchin' uv de measles an' de hookin'-coffs." The speculator's camp was situated on the bank of the creek, and a very bright scene it presented as Major Waldron and his party came up to it. At a little distance from the main encampment was the speculator's tent, and the tents for the negroes were dotted here and there among the trees. Some of the women were washing at the creek, others were cooking, and some were sitting in front of their tents sewing; numbers of little negroes were playing about, and, altogether, the "speculator's camp" was not the horrible thing that one might suppose. The speculator, who was a jolly-looking man weighing over two hundred pounds, came forward to meet Major Waldron and show him over the encampment. The negroes were well clothed, well fed, and the great majority of them looked exceedingly happy. They came across one group of boys and girls dancing and singing. An old man, in another group, had collected a number of eager listeners around him, and was recounting some marvellous tale; but occasionally there would be a sad face and a tearful eye, and Mr. Waldron sighed as he passed these, knowing that they were probably grieving over the home and friends they had left. As they came to one of the tents, the speculator said, "There is a sick yellow woman in there, that I bought in Maryland. She had to be sold in the settlement of an estate, and she has fretted herself almost to death; she is in such bad health now that I doubt if anybody will buy her, though she has a very likely little boy about two years old." Mr. Waldron expressed a wish to see the woman, and they went in. Lying on a very comfortable bed was a woman nearly white; her eyes were deep-sunken in her head, and she was painfully thin. Mr. Waldron took her hand in his, and looked into her sad eyes. "Do you feel much pain?" he asked, tenderly. "Yes, sir," answered the woman, "I suffer a great deal; and I am so unhappy, sir, about my baby; I can't live long, and what will become of him? If I only had a home, where I could make friends for him before I die, where I could beg and entreat the people to be kind to him and take care of him! 'Tis that keeps me sick, sir." By this time Diddie's eyes were swimming in tears, and Dumps was sobbing aloud; seeing which, Tot began to cry too, though she hadn't the slightest idea what was the matter; and Diddie, going to the side of the bed, smoothed the woman's long black hair, and said, "We'll take you home with us, an' we'll be good to your little boy, me an' Dumps an' Tot, an' I'll give 'im some of my marbles." "An' my little painted wagin," put in Dumps. "An' you shall live with us always," continued Diddie; "an' Mammy'll put yer feet into hot water, an' rub turkentine on yer ches', an' give yer 'fermifuge' ev'y mornin', an' you'll soon be well. Papa, sha'n't she go home with us?" Major Waldron's own eyes moistened as he answered, "We will see about it, my daughter;" and, telling the woman, whose name was Ann, that he would see her again, he left the tent, and presently the camp. That night, after the little folks were asleep, Major Waldron and his wife had a long talk about the sick woman and her little boy, and it was decided between them that Major Waldron should go the next morning and purchase them both. The children were delighted when they knew of this decision, and took an active part in preparing one room of the laundry for Ann's reception. Their mother had a plain bedstead moved in, and sent down from the house a bed and mattress, which she supplied with sheets, pillows, blankets, and a quilt. Then Uncle Nathan, the carpenter, took a large wooden box and put shelves in it, and tacked some bright-colored calico all around it, and made a bureau. Two or three chairs were spared from the nursery, and Diddie put some of her toys on the mantel-piece for the baby; and then, when they had brought in a little square table and covered it with a neat white cloth, and placed upon it a mug of flowers, and when Uncle Nathan had put up some shelves in one corner of the room, and driven some pegs to hang clothes on, they pronounced the room all ready. And Ann, who had lived for several months in the camp, was delighted with her new home and the preparations that her little mistresses had made for her. The baby, too, laughed and clapped his hands over the toys the children gave him. His name was Henry, and a very pretty child he was. He was almost as white as Tot, and his black hair curled in ringlets all over his head; but, strange to say, neither he nor his mother gained favor with the negroes on the place. Mammy said openly that she "nuver had no 'pinion uv wite niggers," and that "marster sholy had niggers 'nuff fur ter wait on 'im doutn buyen 'em." But, for all that, Ann and her little boy were quite happy. She was still sick, and could never be well, for she had consumption; though she got much better, and could walk about the yard, and sit in front of her door with Henry in her lap. Her devotion to her baby was unusual in a slave; she could not bear to have him out of her sight, and never seemed happy unless he was playing around her or nestling in her arms. Mrs. Waldron, of course, never exacted any work of Ann. They had bought her simply to give her a home and take care of her, and faithfully that duty was performed. Her meals were carried from the table, and she had every attention paid to her comfort. One bright evening, when she was feeling better than usual, she went out for a walk, and, passing Uncle Snake-bit Bob's shop, she stopped to look at his baskets, and to let little Henry pick up some white-oak splits that he seemed to have set his heart on. The old man, like all the other negroes, was indignant that his master should have purchased her; for they all prided themselves on being inherited, and "didn't want no bought folks" among them. He had never seen her, and now would scarcely look at or speak to her. "You weave these very nicely," said Ann, examining one of his baskets. Uncle Bob looked up, and, seeing she was pale and thin, offered her a seat, which she accepted. "Is this always your work?" asked Ann, by way of opening a conversation with the old man. "In cose 'tis," he replied; "who dat gwine ter make de baskits les'n hit's me? I done make baskits 'fo mistiss wuz born; I usen ter 'long ter her pa; I ain't no bort nigger myse'f." "You are certainly very fortunate," answered Ann, "for the slave that has never been on the block can never know the full bitterness of slavery." "Wy, yer talkin' same ez wite folks," said Uncle Bob. "Whar yer git all dem fine talkin's fum? ain't you er nigger same ez me?" "Yes, I am a negress, Uncle Bob; or, rather, my mother was a slave, and I was born in slavery; but I have had the misfortune to have been educated." "Kin yer read in de book?" asked the old man earnestly. "Oh yes, as well as anybody." "Who showed yer?" asked Uncle Bob. "My mistress had me taught; but, if it won't bother you, I'll just tell you all about it, for I want to get your interest, Uncle Bob, and gain your love, if I can--yours, and everybody's on the place--for I am sick, and must die, and I want to make friends, so they will be kind to my baby. Shall I tell you my story?" The old man nodded his head, and went on with his work, while Ann related to him the sad history of her life. "My mother, who was a favorite slave, died when I was born; and my mistress, who had a young baby only a few days older than myself, took me to nurse. I slept, during my infancy, in the cradle with my little mistress, and afterwards in the room with her, and thus we grew up as playmates and companions until we reached our seventh year, when we both had scarlet fever. My little mistress, who was the only child of a widow, died; and her mother, bending over her death-bed, cried, 'I will have no little daughter now!' when the child placed her arms about her and said, 'Mamma, let Ann be your daughter; she'll be your little girl; I'll go to her mamma, and she'll stay with my mamma.' "And from that time I was no more a slave, but a child in the house. My mistress brought a governess for me from the North, and I was taught as white girls are. I was fond of my books, and my life was a very happy one, though we lived on a lonely plantation, and had but little company. "I was almost white, as you see, and my mistress had taught me to call her mamma. I was devoted to her, and very fond of my governess, and they both petted me as if I really had been a daughter instead of a slave. Four years ago the brother of my governess came out from Vermont to make his sister a visit at our home. He fell in love with me, and I loved him dearly, and, accompanied by my 'mamma' and his sister, we went into Pennsylvania, and were married. You know we could not be married in Maryland, for it is a Slave State, and I was a slave. My mistress had, of course, always intended that I should be free, but neglected from time to time to draw up the proper papers. "For two years after my marriage my husband and I lived on the plantation, he managing the estate until he was called to Washington on business, and, in returning, the train was thrown down an embankment, and he was among the killed. "Soon after that my baby was born, and before he was six months old my mistress died suddenly, when it was found that the estate was insolvent, and everything must be sold to pay the debts; and I and my baby, with the other goods and chattels, were put up for sale. Mr. Martin, the speculator, bought me, thinking I would bring a fancy price; but my heart was broken, and I grieved until my health gave way, so that nobody ever wanted me, until your kind-hearted master bought me to give me a home to die in. But oh, Uncle Bob," she continued, bursting into tears, "to think my boy, my baby, must be a slave! His father's relatives are poor. He had only a widowed mother and two sisters. They are not able to buy my child, and he must be raised in ignorance, to do another's bidding all his life, my poor little baby! His dear father hated slavery, and it seems so hard that his son must be a slave!" "Now don't yer take on like dat, er makin' uv yerse'f sick," said Uncle Bob; "I know wat I gwine do; my min' hit's made up; hit's true, I'm brack, but den my min' hit's made up. Now you go on back ter de house, outn dis damp a'r, an' tuck cyar er yerse'f, an' don't yer be er frettin', nuther, caze my marster, he's de bes' man dey is; an' den, 'sides dat, my min' hit's made up. Hyear, honey," addressing the child, "take deze hyear wite-oak splits an' go'n make yer er baskit 'long o' yer ma." [Illustration: "MY MIN' HIT'S MADE UP."] Ann and her baby returned to the house, but Uncle Snake-bit Bob, long after the sun went down, still sat on his little bench in front of his shop, his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands; and when it grew quite dark he rose, and put away his splits and his baskets, saying to himself, "Well, I know wat I'm gwine do; my min', hit's made up." CHAPTER VIII. UNCLE BOB'S PROPOSITION. The night after Ann's interview with Uncle Bob, Major Waldron was sitting in his library overlooking some papers, when some one knocked at the door, and, in response to his hearty "Come in," Uncle Snake-bit Bob entered. "Ebenin' ter yer, marster," said the old man, scraping his foot and bowing his head. "How are you, Uncle Bob?" responded his master. "I'm jes po'ly, thank God," replied Uncle Bob, in the answer invariably given by Southern slaves to the query "How are you?" No matter if they were fat as seals, and had never had a day's sickness in their lives, the answer was always the same--"I'm po'ly, thank God." "Well, Uncle Bob, what is it now?" asked Major Waldron. "The little negroes been bothering your splits again?" "Dey's all de time at dat, marster, an' dey gwine git hu't, mun, ef dey fool long o' me; but den dat ain't wat I come fur dis time. I come fur ter hab er talk wid yer, sar, ef yer kin spar de ole nigger de time." "There's plenty of time, Uncle Bob; take a seat, then, if we are to have a talk;" and Major Waldron lit his cigar, and leaned back, while Uncle Bob seated himself on a low chair, and said: "Marster, I come ter ax yer wat'll yer take fur dat little boy yer bought fum de specerlaters?" "Ann's little boy?" asked his master; "why, I would not sell him at all. I only bought him because his mother was dying of exposure and fatigue, and I wanted to relieve her mind of anxiety on his account. I would certainly never sell her child away from her." "Yes, sar, dat's so," replied the old man; "but den my min', hit's made up. I've laid me up er little money fum time ter time, wen I'd be er doct'in' uv hosses an' mules an' men'in' cheers, an' all sich ez dat; de folks dey pays me lib'ul; an', let erlone dat, I'm done mighty well wid my taters an' goobers, er sellin' uv 'em ter de steamboat han's, wat takes 'em ter de town, an' 'sposes uv 'em. So I'm got er right smart chance uv money laid up, sar; an' now I wants ter buy me er nigger, same ez wite folks, fur ter wait on me an' bresh my coat an' drive my kerridge; an' I 'lowed ef yer'd sell de little wite nigger, I'd buy 'im," and Uncle Bob chuckled and laughed. "Why, Bob, I believe you are crazy," said his master, "or drunk." "I ain't neder one, marster; but den I'm er jokin' too much, mo'n de 'lenity uv de cazhun inquires, an' now I'll splain de facks, sar." And Uncle Bob related Ann's story to his master, and wound up by saying: "An' now, marster, my min', hit's made up. I wants ter buy de little chap, an' give 'im ter his mammy, de one wat God give 'im to. Hit'll go mighty hard wid me ter part fum all dat money, caze I ben years pun top er years er layin' uv it up, an' hit's er mighty cumfut ter me er countin' an' er jinglin' uv it; but hit ain't doin' nobody no good er buried in de groun'; an' I don't special need it myse'f, caze you gives me my cloes, an' my shoes, an' my eatin's, an' my backer, an' my wisky, an' I ain't got no cazhun fur ter spen' it; an', let erlone dat, I can't stay hyear fureber, er countin' an' er jinglin' dat money, caze wen de angel soun' dat horn, de ole nigger he's got ter go; he's boun' fur ter be dar! de money can't hol' 'im! De Lord, he ain't gwine ter say, 'Scuze dat nigger, caze he got money piled up; lef 'im erlone, fur ter count dat gol' an' silver.' No, sar! But, marster, maybe in de jedgemun' day, wen Ole Bob is er stan'in' fo' de Lord wid his knees er trim'lin', an' de angel fotches out dat book er hisn, an' de Lord tell 'im fur ter read wat he writ gins 'im, an' de angel he 'gin ter read how de ole nigger drunk too much wisky, how he stoled watermillions in de night, how he cussed, how he axed too much fur doct'in' uv hosses, an' wen he wuz men'in' cheers, how he wouldn't men' 'em strong, so's he'd git ter men' 'em ergin some time; an' den, wen he read all dat an' shet de book, maybe de Lord he'll say, 'Well, he's er pow'ful sinful nigger, but den he tuck his money, he did, an' buy'd de little baby fur ter give 'im ter his mammy, an' I sha'n't be too hard on 'im." "Maybe he'll say dat, an' den ergin maybe he won't. Maybe he'll punish de ole nigger ter de full stent uv his 'greshuns; an' den, ergin, maybe he'll let him off light; but dat ain't neder hyear nur dar. What'll yer take fur de baby, caze my min' hit's made up?" "And mine is too, Uncle Bob," said his master, rising, and grasping in his the big black hand. "Mine is too. I will give Ann her freedom and her baby, and the same amount of money that you give her; that will take her to her husband's relatives, and she can die happy, knowing that her baby will be taken care of." The next day Uncle Bob dug up his money, and the bag was found to contain three hundred dollars. His master put with it a check for the same amount, and sent him into the laundry to tell Ann of her good fortune. The poor woman was overcome with happiness and gratitude, and, throwing her arms around Uncle Bob, she sobbed and cried on his shoulder. She wrote at once to her husband's relatives, and a few weeks after Major Waldron took her to New Orleans, had the requisite papers drawn up for her freedom, and accompanied her on board of a vessel bound for New York; and then, paying her passage himself, so that she might keep her money for future emergencies, he bade adieu to the only slaves he ever bought. CHAPTER IX. AUNT EDY'S STORY. Aunt Edy was the principal laundress, and a great favorite she was with the little girls. She was never too busy to do up a doll's frock or apron, and was always glad when she could amuse and entertain them. One evening Dumps and Tot stole off from Mammy, and ran as fast as they could clip it to the laundry, with a whole armful of their dollies' clothes, to get Aunt Edy to let them "iun des er 'ittle," as Tot said. "Lemme see wat yer got," said Aunt Edy; and they spread out on the table garments of worsted and silk and muslin and lace and tarlatan and calico and homespun, just whatever their little hands had been able to gather up. "Lor', chil'en, ef yer washes deze fine close yer'll ruint 'em," said Aunt Edy, examining the bundles laid out; "de suds'll tuck all de color out'n 'em; s'posin' yer jes press 'em out on de little stool ober dar wid er nice cole iun." "Yes, that's the very thing," said Dumps; and Aunt Edy folded some towels, and laid them on the little stools, and gave each of the children a cold iron. And, kneeling down, so as to get at their work conveniently, the little girls were soon busy smoothing and pressing the things they had brought. "Aunt Edy," said Dumps, presently, "could'n yer tell us 'bout Po' Nancy Jane O?" "Dar now!" exclaimed Aunt Edy; "dem chil'en nuber is tierd er hyearn' dat tale; pyears like dey like hit mo' an' mo' eb'y time dey hyears hit;" and she laughed slyly, for she was the only one on the plantation who knew about "Po' Nancy Jane O," and she was pleased because it was such a favorite story with the children. "Once pun er time," she began, "dar wuz er bird name' Nancy Jane O, an' she wuz guv up ter be de swif'es'-fly'n thing dar wuz in de a'r. Well, at dat time de king uv all de fishes an' birds, an' all de little beas'es, like snakes an' frogs an' wums an' tarrypins an' bugs, an' all sich ez dat, he wur er mole dat year! an' he wuz blin' in bof 'is eyes, jes same like any udder mole; an', somehow, he had hyearn some way dat dar wuz er little bit er stone name' de gol'-stone, way off fum dar, in er muddy crick, an' ef'n he could git dat stone, an' hol' it in his mouf, he could see same ez anybody. "Den he 'gun ter steddy how wuz he fur ter git dat stone. "He stedded an' _he stedded_, an' pyeard like de mo' he stedded de mo' he couldn' fix no way fur ter git it. He knowed he wuz blin', an' he knowed he trab'l so slow dat he 'lowed 'twould be years pun top er years befo' he'd git ter de crick, an' so he made up in 'is min' dat he'd let somebody git it fur 'im. Den, bein' ez he wuz de king, an' could grant any kin' er wush, he sont all roun' thu de kentry eb'ywhar, an' 'lowed dat any bird or fish, or any kin' er little beas' dat 'oud fotch 'im dat stone, he'd grant 'em de deares' wush er dey hearts. "Well, mun, in er few days de whole yearth wuz er movin'; eb'ything dar wuz in de lan' wuz er gwine. "Some wuz er hoppin' an' some wuz er crawlin' an' some wuz er flyin', jes 'cord'n to dey natur'; de birds dey 'lowed ter git dar fus', on 'count er fly'n so fas'; but den de little stone wuz in de water, an' dey'd hatter wait till de crick run down, so 'twuz jes 'bout broad ez 'twuz long. "Well, wile dey wuz all er gwine, an' de birds wuz in de lead, one day dey hyeard sump'n gwine f-l-u-shsh--f-l-u-shsh--an' sump'n streaked by like lightnin', and dey look way erhead, dey did, an' dey seed Nancy Jane O. Den dey hearts 'gun ter sink, an' dey gin right up, caze dey knowed she'd outfly eb'ything on de road. An' by'mby de crow, wat wuz allers er cunnin' bird, sez,' I tell yer wat we'll do; we'll all gin er feas',' sezee, 'an' git Nancy Jane O ter come, an' den we'll all club togedder an' tie her, sezee. "Dat took dey fancy, an' dey sont de lark on erhead fur ter cotch up wid Nancy Jane O, an' ter ax 'er ter de feas'. Well, mun, de lark he nearly kill hese'f er flyin'. He flew an' he flew an' he flew, but pyear'd like de fas'er he went de furder erhead wuz Nancy Jane O. "But Nancy Jane O, bein' so fur er start uv all de res', an' not er dreamin' 'bout no kin' er develment, she 'lowed she'd stop an' take er nap, an' so de lark he come up wid 'er, wile she wuz er set'n on er sweet-gum lim', wid 'er head un'er 'er wing. Den de lark spoke up, an', sezee, 'Sis Nancy Jane O,' sezee, 'we birds is gwinter gin er big feas', caze we'll be sho' ter win de race any how, an' bein' ez we've flew'd so long an' so fur, wy we're gwine ter stop an' res' er spell, an' gin er feas'. An' Brer Crow he 'lowed 'twouldn' be no feas' 'tall les'n you could be dar; so dey sont me on ter tell yer to hol' up tell dey come: dey's done got seeds an' bugs an' wums, an' Brer Crow he's gwine ter furnish de corn.' "Nancy Jane O she 'lowed ter herse'f she could soon git erhead uv 'em ergin, so she 'greed ter wait; an' by'mby hyear dey come er flyin'. An' de nex' day dey gin de feas'; an' wile Nancy Jane O wuz er eatin' an' er stuffin' herse'f wid wums an' seeds, an' one thing er nudder, de blue jay he slope up behin' 'er, an' tied 'er fas' ter er little bush. An' dey all laft an' flopped dey wings; an' sez dey, 'Good-bye ter yer, Sis Nancy Jane O. I hope yer'll enjoy yerse'f,' sez dey; an' den dey riz up an' stretched out dey wings, an' away dey flewed. "Wen Po' Nancy Jane O seed de trick wat dey played her, she couldn' hardly stan' still, she wuz so mad; an' she pulled an' she jerked an' she stretched ter git er loose, but de string wuz so strong, an' de bush wuz so fum, she wuz jes er was'en 'er strengt'. An' den she sot down, an' she 'gun ter cry ter herse'f, an' ter sing, "'Please on-tie, please on-tie Po' Nancy Jane O! Please on-tie, please on-tie Po' Nancy Jane O!' "An' atter er wile hyear come de ole bullfrog Pigunawaya. He sez ter hisse'f, sezee, 'Wat's dat I hyear?' Den he lis'en, an' he hyear sump'n gwine, "'Please on-tie, please on-tie Po' Nancy Jane O!' an' he went whar he hyeard de soun', an' dar wuz de po' bird layin' down all tied ter de bush. "'Umph!' says Pigunawaya, sezee, 'Ain't dis Nancy Jane O, de swif'es'-flyin' bird dey is?' sezee; 'wat ail 'long yer, chile? wat yer cryin' 'bout?' An' atter Nancy Jane O she up an' tol' 'im, den de frog sez: "'Now look er yer; I wuz er gwine myse'f ter see ef'n I could'n git dat gol'-stone; hit's true I don't stan' much showin' 'long o' _birds_, but den ef'n eber I gits dar, wy I kin jes jump right in an' fotch up de stone wile de birds is er waitin' fur de crick ter run down. An' now, s'posin' I wuz ter ontie yer, Nancy Jane O, could yer tuck me on yer back an' cyar me ter de crick? an' den we'd hab de sho' thing on de gol'-stone, caze soon's eber we git dar, I'll git it, an' we'll cyar it bof tergedder ter de king, an' den we'll bof git de deares' wush uv our hearts. Now wat yer say? speak yer min'. Ef'n yer able an' willin' ter tote me fum hyear ter de crick, I'll ontie yer; efn yer ain't, den far yer well, caze I mus' be er gittin' erlong.' "Well, Nancy Jane O, she stedded an' stedded in her min', an' by'mby she sez, 'Brer Frog,' sez she, 'I b'lieve I'll try yer; ontie me,' sez she, 'an' git on, an' I'll tuck yer ter de crick.' Den de frog he clum on her back an' ontied her, an' she flopped her wings an' started off. Hit wuz mighty hard flyin' wid dat big frog on her back; but Nancy Jane O wuz er flyer, mun, yer hyeard me! an' she jes lit right out, an' she flew an' she flew, an' atter er wile she got in sight er de birds, an' dey looked, an' dey see her comin', an' den dey 'gun ter holler, "'Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nancy Jane O?' An' de frog he holler back, "'Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!' "Den, gemmun, yer oughten seed dat race; dem birds dey done dey leb'l bes', but Nancy Jane O, spite er all dey could do, she gaint on 'em, an' ole Pigunawaya he sot up dar, an' he kep' er urg'n an' er urg'n Nancy Jane O. "'Dat's you!' sezee; 'git erhead!' sezee. 'Now we're gwine it!' sezee; an' pres'nly Nancy Jane O shot erhead clean befo' all de res'; an' wen de birds dey seed dat de race wuz los', den dey all 'gun ter holler, "'Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nancy Jane O?' An' de frog, he turnt roun', he did, an' he wave his han' roun' his head, an' he holler back, "'Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!' "Atter Nancy Jane O got erhead er de birds, den de hardes' flyin' wuz thu wid; so she jes went 'long, an' went 'long, kin' er easy like, tell she got ter de stone; an' she lit on er' simmon-bush close ter de crick, an' Pigunawaya he slipt off, he did, an' he hist up his feet, an' he gin er jump, kerchug he went down inter de water; an' by'mby hyear he come wid de stone in his mouf. Den he mount on Nancy Jane O, he did; an', mun, she wuz so proud, she an' de frog bof, tell dey flew all roun' an' roun', an' Nancy Jane O, she 'gun ter sing, "' Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nancy Jane O?' An' de frog he ans'er back, "'Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!' "An' wile dey wuz er singin' an' er j'yin' uv deyselves, hyear come de birds; an' de frog he felt so big, caze he'd got de stone, tell he stood up on Nancy Jane O's back, he did, an' he tuck'n shuck de stone at de birds, an' he holler at 'em "'O Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!' An' jes ez he said dat, he felt hisse'f slippin', an' dat made him clutch on ter Po' Nancy Jane O, an' down dey bof' went tergedder kersplash, right inter de crick. "De frog he fell slap on ter er big rock, an' bust his head all ter pieces; an' Po' Nancy Jane O sunk down in de water an' got drownded; an' dat's de een'." "Did the king get the stone, Aunt Edy?" asked Dumps. "Wy no, chile; don't yer know de mole he's blin' tell yit? ef'n he could er got dat stone, he could er seen out'n his eyes befo' now. But I ain't got no time ter fool 'long er you chil'en. I mus' git marster's shuts done, I mus'." And Aunt Edy turned to her ironing-table, as if she didn't care for company; and Dumps and Tot, seeing that she was tired of them, went back to the house, Tot singing, "Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nanty Dane O?" and Dumps answering back, "Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!" CHAPTER X. PLANTATION GAMES. "Mammy, the quarter folks are goin' ter play to-night; can't we go look at 'em?" pleaded Diddie one Saturday evening, as Mammy was busy sorting out the children's clothes and putting them away. "Yer allers want ter be 'long er dem quarter-folks," said Mammy. "Dem ain't de 'soshuts fur you chil'en." "We don't want ter 'soshate with 'em, Mammy; we only want ter look at 'em play 'Monkey Moshuns' and 'Lipto' and 'The Lady You Like Best,' and hear Jim pick the banjo, and see 'em dance; can't we go? PLEASE! It's warm weather now, an' er moonshiny night; can't we go?" And Diddie placed one arm around Mammy's neck, and laid the other little hand caressingly on her cheek; and Mammy, after much persuasion, agreed to take them, if they would come home quietly when she wanted them to. As soon as the little girls had had their supper, they set out for the quarters. Dilsey and Chris and Riar, of course, accompanied them, though Chris had had some difficulty in joining the party. She had come to grief about her quilt patching, having sewed the squares together in such a way that the corners wouldn't hit, and Mammy had made her rip it all out and sew it over again, and had boxed her soundly, and now said she shouldn't go with the others to the quarters; but here Dumps interfered, and said Mammy shouldn't be "all time 'posin' on Chris," and she went down to see her father about it, who interceded with Mammy so effectually that, when the little folks started off, Chris was with them. When they got to the open space back of Aunt Nancy's cabin, and which was called "de play-groun'," they found that a bright fire of light-wood knots had been kindled to give a light, and a large pile of pine-knots and dried branches of trees was lying near for the purpose of keeping it up. Aunt Nancy had a bench moved out of her cabin for "marster's chil'en" to sit on, while all of the little negroes squatted around on the ground to look on. These games were confined to the young men and women, and the negro children were not allowed to participate. Mammy, seeing that the children were safe and in good hands, repaired to "Sis Haly's house," where "de chu'ch membahs" had assembled for a prayer-meeting. Soon after the children had taken their seats, the young folks came out on the play-ground for a game of Monkey Motions. They all joined hands, and made a ring around one who stood in the middle, and then began to dance around in a circle, singing, "I ac' monkey moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' monkey moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem monkeys ac'. "I ac' gemmun moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' gemmun moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem gemmuns ac'. "I ac' lady moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' lady moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem ladies ac'. "I ac' chil'en moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' chil'en moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem chil'ens ac'. "I ac' preacher moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' preacher moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem preachers ac'. "I ac' nigger moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' nigger moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem niggers ac'." The song had a lively air, and Jim picked the accompaniment on the banjo. Many of the negroes had good voices, and the singing was indeed excellent. While the dancers were singing the first verse, "I ac' monkey moshuns," the one in the middle would screw up his face and hump his shoulders in the most grotesque manner, to represent a monkey. When they sang "I ac' gemmun moshuns," he would stick his hat on one side of his head, take a walking-cane in his hand, and strut back and forth, to represent a gentleman. In the "lady moshuns," he would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be fanning with his hand. "I ac' chil'en moshuns" was portrayed by his pouting out his lips and twirling his thumbs, or giggling or crying. When they sang "I ac' preacher moshuns," he straightened himself back, and began to "lay off" his hands in the most extravagant gestures. "I ac' nigger moshuns" was represented by scratching his head, or by bending over and pretending to be picking cotton or hoeing. The representation of the different motions was left entirely to the taste and ingenuity of the actor, though it was the rule of the game that no two people should represent the same character in the same way. If one acted the lady by a mincing walk, the next one must devise some other manner of portraying her, such as sewing, or playing on an imaginary piano, or giving orders to servants, or anything that his fancy would suggest. The middle man or woman was always selected for his or her skill in taking off the different characters; and when they were clever at it, the game was very amusing to a spectator. After one or two games of "Monkey Moshuns," some one proposed they should play "Lipto," which was readily acceded to. All joined hands, and formed a ring around one in the middle, as before, and danced around, singing, "Lipto, lipto, jine de ring; Lipto, lipto, dance an' sing; Dance an' sing, an' laugh an' play, Fur dis is now er holerday." Then, letting loose hands, they would all wheel around three times, singing, "Turn erroun' an' roun' an' roun';" then they would clap their hands, singing, "Clap yer han's, an' make 'em soun';" then they would bow their heads, singing, "Bow yer heads, an' bow 'em low;" then, joining hands again, they would dance around, singing, "All jine han's, an' hyear we go." And now the dancers would drop hands once more, and go to patting, while one of the men would step out with a branch of honeysuckle or yellow jessamine, or something twined to form a wreath, or a paper cap would answer, or even one of the boys' hats--anything that would serve for a crown; then he would sing, "Lipto, lipto--fi-yi-yi; Lipto, lipto, hyear am I, Er holdin' uv dis goldin' crown, An' I choose my gal fur ter dance me down." Then he must place the crown on the head of any girl he chooses, and she must step out and dance with him, or, as they expressed it, "set to him" (while all the rest patted), until one or the other "broke down," when the man stepped back in the ring, leaving the girl in the middle, when they all joined hands, and began the game over again, going through with the wheeling around and clapping of hands and the bowing of heads just as before; after which the girl would choose her partner for a "set to," the song being the same that was sung by the man, with the exception of the last line, which was changed to "An' I choose my man fur ter dance me down." "Lipto" was followed by "De One I Like de Bes'," which was a kissing game, and gave rise to much merriment. It was played, as the others were, by the dancers joining hands and forming a ring, with some one in the middle, and singing, "Now while we all will dance an' sing, O choose er partner fum de ring; O choose de lady you like bes'; O pick her out fum all de res', Fur her hansum face an' figur neat; O pick her out ter kiss her sweet. O walk wid her erroun' an' roun'; O kneel wid her upon de groun'; O kiss her once, an' one time mo'; O kiss her sweet, an' let her go. O lif' her up fum off de groun', An' all jine han's erroun' an' roun', An' while we all will dance an' sing, O choose er partner fum de ring." At the words "choose de lady you like bes'," the middle man must make his selection, and, giving her his hand, lead her out of the ring. At the words "walk wid her erroun' an' roun'," he offers her his arm, and they promenade; at the words "kneel wid her upon de groun'," both kneel; when they sing "Kiss her once," he kisses her; and at the words "one time mo'" the kiss is repeated; and when the dancers sing "Lif' her up fum off de groun'," he assists her to rise; and when they sing "All jine han's erroun' an' roun'," he steps back into the ring, and the girl must make a choice, the dancers singing, "O choose de gemmun you like bes';" and then the promenading and kneeling and kissing were all gone through with again. Some of the girls were great favorites, and were chosen frequently; while others not so popular would perhaps not be in the middle during the game. "De One I Like de Bes'" was a favorite play, and the young folks kept it up for some time, until some one suggested sending for "Uncle Sambo" and his fiddle, and turning it into a sure-enough dance. Uncle Sambo was very accommodating, and soon made his appearance, when partners were taken, and an Old Virginia reel formed. The tune that they danced by was "Cotton-eyed Joe," and, the words being familiar to all of them as they danced they sang, "Cotton-eyed Joe, Cotton-eyed Joe, What did make you sarve me so, Fur ter take my gal erway fum me, An' cyar her plum ter Tennessee? Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd er been married long ergo. "His eyes wuz crossed, an' his nose wuz flat, An' his teef wuz out, but wat uv dat? Fur he wuz tall, an' he wuz slim, An' so my gal she follered him. Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd er ben married long ergo. "No gal so hansum could be foun', Not in all dis country roun', Wid her kinky head, an' her eyes so bright; Wid her lips so red an' her teef so white. Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd er been married long ergo. "An' I loved dat gal wid all my heart, An' she swo' fum me she'd never part; But den wid Joe she runned away, An' lef' me hyear fur ter weep all day. O Cotton-eyed Joe, O Cotton-eyed Joe, What did make you sarve me so? O Joe, ef it hadn't er ben fur you, I'd er married dat gal fur true." And what with Uncle Sambo's fiddle and Jim's banjo, and all of those fresh, happy young voices, the music was enough to make even the church members want to dance. The children enjoyed the dancing even more than they had the playing, and Diddie and Dumps and Tot and all of the little darkies were patting their hands and singing "Cotton-eyed Joe" at the very top of their voices, when Mammy appeared upon the scene, and said it was time to go home. "No, Mammy," urged Dumps; "we ain't er goin' ter; we want ter sing 'Cotton-eyed Joe;' hit ain't late." "Umph-humph! dat's jes wat I 'lowed," said Mammy. "I 'lowed yer wouldn't be willin' fur ter go, er set'n' hyear an' er patt'n' yer han's same ez niggers, an' er singin' uv reel chunes; I dunno wat makes you chil'en so onstrep'rous." "Yes, Dumps, you know we promised," said Diddie, "and so we must go when Mammy tells us." Dumps, finding herself overruled, had to yield, and they all went back to the house, talking very animatedly of the quarter folks and their plays and dances. CHAPTER XI. DIDDIE IN TROUBLE. Diddie was generally a very good and studious little girl, and therefore it was a matter of surprise to everybody when Miss Carrie came down to dinner one day without her, and, in answer to Major Waldron's inquiry concerning her, replied that Diddie had been so wayward that she had been forced to keep her in, and that she was not to have any dinner. Neither Major nor Mrs. Waldron ever interfered with Miss Carrie's management, so the family sat down to the meal, leaving the little girl in the schoolroom. Dumps and Tot, however, were very indignant, and ate but little dinner; and, as soon as their mamma excused them, they ran right to the nursery to tell Mammy about it. They found her overhauling a trunk of old clothes, with a view of giving them out to such of the little negroes as they would fit; but she dropped everything after Dumps had stated the case, and at once began to expatiate on the tyranny of teachers in general, and of Miss Carrie in particular. "I know'd how 'twould be," she said, "wen marster fotch her hyear; she got too much wite in her eye to suit me, er shettin' my chile up, an' er starvin' uv her; I ain't got no 'pinion uv po' wite folks, nohow." "Is Miss Carrie po' white folks, Mammy?" asked Dumps, in horror, for she had been taught by Mammy and Aunt Milly both that the lowest classes of persons in the world were "po' white folks" and "free niggers." "She ain't no _rich_ wite folks," answered Mammy, evasively; "caze efn she wuz, she wouldn't be teachin' school fur er livin'; an' den ergin, efn she's so mighty rich, whar's her niggers? I neber seed 'em. An', let erlone dat, I ain't neber hyeard uv 'em yit;" for Mammy could not conceive of a person's being rich without niggers. "But, wedder she's rich or po'," continued the old lady, "she ain't no bizness er shettin' up my chile; an' marster, he oughtn't ter 'low it." And Mammy resumed her work, but all the time grumbling, and muttering something about "ole maids" and "po' wite folks." "I don't like her, nohow," said Dumps, "an' I'm glad me an' Tot's too little ter go ter school; I don't want never to learn to read all my life. An', Mammy, can't you go an' turn Diddie erloose?" "No, I can't," answered Mammy. "Yer pa don't 'low me fur ter do it; he won't do it hisse'f, an' he won't let dem do it wat wants ter. I dunno wat's gittin' in 'im myse'f. But, you chil'en, put on yer bunnits, an' run an' play in de yard tell I fixes dis chis' uv cloes; an' you little niggers, go wid 'em, an' tuck cyar uv 'em; an' ef dem chil'en git hut, yer'll be sorry fur it, mun; so yer'd better keep em off'n seesaws an' all sich ez dat." Dumps and Tot, attended by their little maids, went out in the yard at Mammy's bidding, but not to play; their hearts were too heavy about poor little Diddie, and the little negroes were no less grieved than they were, so they all held a consultation as to what they should do. "Le's go 'roun' ter de schoolroom winder, an' talk ter her," said Dilsey. And, accordingly, they repaired to the back of the house, and took their stand under the schoolroom window. The schoolroom was on the first floor, but the house was raised some distance from the ground by means of stone pillars, so none of the children were tall enough to see into the room. Dilsey called Diddie softly, and the little girl appeared at the window. "Have you said your lesson yet?" asked Dumps. "No, an' I ain't ergoin' to, neither," answered Diddie. "An' yer ain't had yer dinner, nuther, is yer, Miss Diddie?" asked Dilsey. "No; but I don't care 'bout that; I sha'n't say my lesson not ef she starves me clean ter death." At this dismal prospect, the tears sprang to Tot's eyes, and saying, "I'll dit it, Diddie; don' yer min', I'll dit it," she ran as fast as her little feet could carry her to the kitchen, and told Aunt Mary, the cook, that "Diddie is sut up; dey lock her all up in de woom, an' s'e neber had no dinner, an' s'e's starve mos' ter def. Miss Tawwy done it, an' s'e's des ez mean!" Then, putting her chubby little arms around Aunt Mary's neck, she added, "_Please_ sen' Diddie some dinner." And Aunt Mary, who loved the children, rose from the low chair on which she was sitting to eat her own dinner, and, picking out a nice piece of fried chicken and a baked sweet potato, with a piece of bread and a good slice of ginger pudding, she put them on a plate for the child. Now it so happened that Douglas, the head dining-room servant, was also in the kitchen eating his dinner, and, being exceedingly fond of Tot, he told her to wait a moment, and he would get her something from the house. So, getting the keys from Aunt Delia, the housekeeper, on pretence of putting away something, he buttered two or three slices of light bread, and spread them with jam, and, putting with them some thin chips of cold ham and several slices of cake, he carried them back to the kitchen as an addition to Diddie's dinner. Tot was delighted, and walked very carefully with the plate until she joined the little group waiting under the window, when she called out, joyfully, "Hyear 'tis, Diddie! 'tis des de bes'es kine er dinner!" And now the trouble was how to get it up to Diddie. "I tell yer," said Chris; "me 'n Dilsey'll fotch de step-ladder wat Uncle Douglas washes de winders wid." No sooner said than done, and in a few moments the step-ladder was placed against the house, and Dilsey prepared to mount it with the plate in her hand. But just at this juncture Diddie decided that she would make good her escape, and, to the great delight of the children, she climbed out of the window, and descended the ladder, and soon stood safe among them on the ground. Then, taking the dinner with them, they ran as fast as they could to the grove, where they came to a halt on the ditch bank, and Diddie seated herself on a root of a tree to eat her dinner, while Dumps and Tot watched the little negroes wade up and down the ditch. The water was very clear, and not quite knee-deep, and the temptation was too great to withstand; so the little girls took off their shoes and stockings, and were soon wading too. When Diddie had finished her dinner, she joined them; and such a merry time as they had, burying their little naked feet in the sand, and splashing the water against each other! "I tell yer, Diddie," said Dumps, "I don't b'lieve nuthin' 'bout bad little girls gittin' hurt, an' not havin' no fun when they runs away, an' don't min' nobody. I b'lieve Mammy jes makes that up ter skyeer us." "I don't know," replied Diddie; "you 'member the time 'bout Ole Billy?" "Oh, I ain't er countin' him," said Dumps; "I ain't er countin' no sheeps; I'm jes er talkin' 'bout ditches an' things." And just then the little girls heard some one singing, "De jay bird died wid de hookin'-coff, Oh, ladies, ain't yer sorry?" and Uncle Snake-bit Bob came up the ditch bank with an armful of white-oak splits. "Yer'd better git outn dat water," he called, as soon as he saw the children. "Yer'll all be havin' de croup nex'. Git out, I tell yer! Efn yer don't, I gwine straight an' tell yer pa." It needed no second bidding, and the little girls scrambled up the bank, and, drying their feet as best they could upon their skirts, they put on their shoes and stockings. "What are you doin', Uncle Bob?" called Diddie. "I'm jes er cuttin' me er few willers fur ter make baskit-handles outn." "Can't we come an' look at yer?" asked Diddie. "Yes, honey, efn yer wants ter," replied Uncle Bob, mightily pleased. "You're all pow'ful fon' er dis ole nigger; you're allers wantin' ter be roun' him." "It's 'cause you always tell us tales, an' don't quar'l with us," replied Diddie, as the children drew near the old man, and watched him cut the long willow branches. "Uncle Bob," asked Dumps, "what was that you was singin' 'bout the jay bird?" "Lor', honey, hit wuz jes 'boutn 'im dyin' wid de hookin'-coff; but yer better lef' dem jay birds erlone; yer needn' be er wantin' ter hyear boutn 'em." "Why, Uncle Bob?" "Caze, honey, dem jay birds dey cyars news ter de deb'l, dey do; an' yer better not fool 'long 'em." "Do they tell him everything?" asked Diddie, in some solicitude. "Dat dey do! Dey tells 'im e'bything dey see you do wat ain't right; dey cyars hit right erlong ter de deb'l." "Uncle Bob," said Dumps, thoughtfully, "s'posin' they wuz some little girls l-o-n-g _time_ ergo what stole ernuther little girl outn the winder, an' then run'd erway, an' waded in er ditch, what they Mammy never would let 'em; efn er jay bird would see 'em, would he tell the deb'l nuthin' erbout it?" "Lor', honey, dat 'ud be jes nuts fur 'im; he'd light right out wid it; an' he wouldn't was'e no time, nuther, he'd be so fyeard he'd furgit part'n it." [Illustration: "YER'LL ALL BE HAVIN' DE CROUP NEXT."] "I don't see none 'bout hyear," said Dumps, looking anxiously up at the trees. "They don't stay 'bout hyear much, does they, Uncle Bob?" "I seed one er settin' on dat sweet-gum dar ez I come up de ditch," said Uncle Bob. "He had his head turnt one side, he did, er lookin' mighty hard at you chil'en, an' I 'lowed ter myse'f now I won'er wat is he er watchin' dem chil'en fur? but, den, I knowed _you_ chil'en wouldn't do nuffin wrong, an' I knowed he wouldn't have nuffin fur ter tell." "Don't he never make up things an' tell 'em?" asked Dumps. "I ain't neber hyeard boutn dat," said the old man. "Efn he do, or efn he don't, I can't say, caze I ain't neber hyeard; but de bes' way is fur ter keep 'way fum 'em." "Well, I bet he do," said Dumps. "I jes bet he tells M-O-O-O-R-E S-T-O-R-I-E-S than anybody. An', Uncle Bob, efn he tells the deb'l sump'n 'boutn three little white girls an' three little niggers runnin' erway fum they teacher an' wadin' in er ditch, then I jes b'lieve _he made it up_! Now that's jes what I b'lieve; an' can't you tell the deb'l so, Uncle Bob?" "Who? Me? Umph, umph! yer talkin' ter de wrong nigger now, chile! I don't hab nuffin te do wid 'im mysef! I'se er God-fyearn nigger, I is; an', let erlone dat, I keeps erway fum dem jay birds. Didn' yer neber hyear wat er trick he played de woodpecker?" "No, Uncle Bob," answered Diddie; "what did he do to him?" "Ain't yer neber hyeard how come de woodpecker's head ter be red, an' wat makes de robin hab er red breas'?" "Oh, I know 'bout the robin's breast," said Diddie. "When the Saviour was on the cross, an' the wicked men had put er crown of thorns on him, an' his forehead was all scratched up an' bleedin', er little robin was settin' on er tree lookin' at him; an' he felt so sorry 'bout it till he flew down, an' tried to pick the thorns out of the crown; an' while he was pullin' at 'em, one of 'em run in his breast, an' made the blood come, an' ever since that the robin's breast has been red." "Well, I dunno," said the old man, thoughtfully, scratching his head; "I dunno, dat _mout_ be de way; I neber hyeard it, do; but den I ain't sayin' tain't true, caze hit mout be de way; an' wat I'm er stan'in' by is _dis_, dat _dat_ ain't de way I hyeard hit." "Tell us how you heard it, Uncle Bob," asked Diddie. "Well, hit all come 'long o' de jay bird," said Uncle Bob. "An' efn yer got time fur ter go 'long o' me ter de shop, an' sot dar wile I plats on dese baskits fur de oberseer's wife, I'll tell jes wat I hyearn 'boutn hit." Of course they had plenty of time, and they all followed him to the shop, where he turned some baskets bottom-side up for seats for the children, and, seating himself on his accustomed stool, while the little darkies sat around on the dirt-floor, he began to weave the splits dexterously in and out, and proceeded to tell the story. CHAPTER XII. HOW THE WOODPECKER'S HEAD AND THE ROBIN'S BREAST CAME TO BE RED. "Well" began Uncle Bob, "hit wuz all erlong er de jay bird, jes ez I wuz tellin' yer. Yer see, Mr. Jay Bird he fell'd in love, he did, 'long o' Miss Robin, an' he wuz er courtin' her, too; ev'y day de Lord sen', he'd be er gwine ter see her, an' er singin' ter her, an' er cyarin' her berries an' wums; but, somehow or udder, she didn't pyear ter tuck no shine ter him. She'd go er walkin' 'long 'im, an' she'd sing songs wid 'im, an' she'd gobble up de berries an' de wums wat he fotch, but den w'en hit come ter marry'n uv 'im, she wan't dar. "Well, she wouldn't gib 'im no kin' er 'couragement, tell he got right sick at his heart, he did; an' one day, ez he wuz er settin' in his nes' an' er steddin how ter wuck on Miss Robin so's ter git her love, he hyeard somebody er laughin' an' talkin', an' he lookt out, he did, an' dar wuz Miss Robin er prumurradin' wid de Woodpecker. An' wen he seed dat, he got pow'ful mad, an' he 'low'd ter hisse'f dat efn de Lord spar'd him, he inten' fur ter fix dat Woodpecker. "In dem times de Woodpecker's head wuz right black, same ez er crow, an' he had er topknot on 'im like er rooster. Gemmun, he wuz er han'sum bird, too. See 'im uv er Sunday, wid his 'go-ter-meetin'' cloze on, an' dar wan't no bird could totch 'im fur looks. "Well, he an' Miss Robin dey went on by, er laffin' an' er talkin' wid one ernudder; an' de Jay he sot dar, wid his head turnt one side, er steddin an' er steddin ter hisse'f; an' by'mby, atter he made up his min', he sot right ter wuck, he did, an' he fix him er trap. "He got 'im some sticks, an' he nailt 'em cross'n 'is do' same ez er plank-fence, only he lef' space 'nuff twix' de bottum stick an' de nex' one fur er bird ter git thu; den, stid er nailin' de stick nex' de bottum, he tuck'n prope it up at one een wid er little chip fur ter hole it, an' den jes res' tudder een 'gins de side er de nes'. Soon's eber he done dat, he crawlt out thu de crack mighty kyeerful, I tell yer, caze he wuz fyeared he mout er knock de stick down, an' git his own se'f cotch in de trap; so yer hyeard me, mun, he crawlt thu mighty tick'ler. "Atter he got thu, den he santer 'long, he did, fur ter hunt up de Woodpecker; an' by'mby he hyeard him peckin' at er log; an' he went up ter him kin' er kyeerless, an' he sez, 'Good-mornin',' sezee; 'yer pow'ful busy ter day.' "Den de Woodpecker he pass de kempulmence wid 'im, des same ez any udder gemmun; an' atter dey talk er wile, den de Blue Jay he up'n sez, 'I wuz jes er lookin' fur yer,' sezee; 'I gwine ter hab er party ter-morrer night, an' I'd like fur yer ter come. All de birds'll be dar, Miss Robin in speshul,' sezee. "An' wen de Woodpecker hyearn dat, he 'lowed he'd try fur ter git dar. An' den de Jay he tell him good-mornin', an' went on ter Miss Robin's house. Well, hit pyeart like Miss Robin wuz mo' cole dan uzhul dat day, an' by'mby de Jay Bird, fur ter warm her up, sez, 'Yer lookin' mighty hansum dis mornin',' sezee. An' sez she, 'I'm proud ter hyear yer say so; but, speakin' uv hansum,' sez she, 'hev yer seed Mr. Peckerwood lately?' "Dat made de Blue Jay kint er mad; an' sezee, 'Yer pyear ter tuck er mighty intrus' in 'im.' "'Well, I dunno 'bout'n dat,' sez Miss Robin, sez she, kinter lookin' shame. 'I dunno 'boutn dat; but, den I tink he's er mighty _hansum_ bird,' sez she. "Well, wid dat de Jay Bird 'gun ter git madder'n he wuz, an' he 'lowed ter hisse'f dat he'd ax Miss Robin ter his house, so's she could see how he'd fix de Peckerwood; so he sez, "'Miss Robin, I gwine ter hab er party ter-morrer night; de Woodpecker'll be dar, an' I'd like fur yer ter come.' "Miss Robin 'lowed she'd come, an' de Jay Bird tuck his leave. "Well, de nex' night de Jay sot in 'is nes' er waitin' fur 'is cump'ny; an' atter er wile hyear come de Woodpecker. Soon's eber he seed de sticks ercross de do', he sez, 'Wy, pyears like yer ben er fixin' up,' sezee. 'Ain't yer ben er buildin'?' "'Well,' sez de Jay Bird, 'I've jes put er few 'provemunce up, fur ter keep de scritch-owls outn my nes'; but dar's plenty room fur my frien's ter git thu; jes come in,' sezee; an' de Woodpecker he started thu de crack. Soon's eber he got his head thu, de Jay pullt de chip out, an' de big stick fell right crossn his neck. Den dar he wuz, wid his head in an' his feet out! an' de Jay Bird 'gun ter laff, an' ter make fun atn 'im. Sezee, 'I hope I see yer! Yer look like sparkin' Miss Robin now! hit's er gre't pity she can't see yer stretched out like dat; an' she'll be hyear, too, d'rectly; she's er comin' ter de party,' sezee, 'an' I'm gwine ter gib her er new dish; I'm gwine ter sot her down ter roas' Woodpecker dis ebenin'. An' now, efn yer'll 'scuse me, I'll lef' yer hyear fur ter sorter 'muse yerse'f wile I grin's my ax fur ten' ter yer.' "An' wid dat de Jay went out, an' lef de po' Woodpecker er lyin' dar; an' by'mby Miss Robin come erlong; an' wen she seed de Woodpecker, she axt 'im 'wat's he doin' down dar on de groun'?' an' atter he up an' tol' her, an' tol' her how de Jay Bird wuz er grin'in' his axe fur ter chop offn his head, den de Robin she sot to an' try ter lif' de stick offn him. She straint an' she straint, but her strengt' wan't 'nuff fur ter move hit den; an' so she sez, 'Mr. Woodpecker,' sez she, 's'posin' I cotch holt yer feet, an' try ter pull yer back dis way?' 'All right,' sez de Woodpecker; an' de Robin, she cotch er good grip on his feet, an' she brace herse'f up 'gins er bush, an' pullt wid all her might, an' atter er wile she fotch 'im thu; but she wuz bleeged fur ter lef' his topknot behin', fur his head wuz skunt des ez clean ez yer han'; an' 'twuz jes ez raw, honey, ez er piece er beef. "An' wen de Robin seed dat, she wuz mighty 'stressed; an' she tuck his head an' helt it gins her breas' fur ter try an' cumfut him, an' de blood got all ober her breas', an' hit's red plum tell yit. "Well, de Woodpecker he went erlong home, an' de Robin she nusst him tell his head got well; but de topknot wuz gone, an' it pyeart like de blood all settled in his head, caze fum _dat_ day ter _dis_ his head's ben red." "An' did he marry the Robin?" asked Diddie. "Now I done tol' yer all I know," said Uncle Bob. "I gun yer de tale jes like I hyearn it, an' I ain't er gwine ter make up _nuffin'_, an' tell yer wat I dunno ter be de truff. Efn dar's any mo' ter it, den I ain't neber hyearn hit. I gun yer de tale jes like hit wuz gunt ter me, an' efn yer ain't satisfied wid hit, den I can't holp it." "But we _are_ satisfied, Uncle Bob," said Diddie. "It was a very pretty tale, and we are much obliged to you." "Yer mo'n welcome, honey," said Uncle Bob, soothed by Diddie's answer--"yer mo'n welcome; but hit's gittin' too late fur you chil'en ter be out; yer'd better be er gittin' toerds home." Here the little girls looked at each other in some perplexity, for they knew Diddie had been missed, and they were afraid to go to the house. "Uncle Bob," said Diddie, "we've done er wrong thing this evenin': we ran away fum Miss Carrie, an' we're scared of papa; he might er lock us all up in the library, an' talk to us, an' say he's 'stonished an' mortified, an' so we're scared to go home." "Umph!" said Uncle Bob; "you chil'en is mighty bad, anyhow." "I think we're heap mo' _better_'n we're _bad_," said Dumps. "Well, dat mout er be so," said the old man; "I ain't er 'sputin' it, but you chil'en comes fum er mighty high-minded stock uv white folks, an' hit ain't becomin' in yer fur ter be runnin' erway an' er hidin' out, same ez oberseer's chil'en, an' all kin' er po' white trash." "We _are_ sorry about it now, Uncle Bob," said Diddie "but what would you 'vize us to do?" "Well, my invice is _dis_," said Uncle Bob, "fur ter go ter yer pa, an' tell him de truff; state all de konkumstances des like dey happen; don't lebe out none er de facks; tell him you're sorry yer 'haved so onstreperous, an' ax him fur ter furgib yer; an' ef he _do_, wy dat's all right; an' den ef he _don't_, wy yer mus' 'bide by de kinsequonces. But fuss, do, fo' yer axes fur furgibness, yer mus' turn yer min's ter repintunce. Now I ax you chil'en _dis_, Is--you--sorry--dat--you--runned--off? an'--is--you--'pentin'--uv--wadin'--in--de--ditch?" Uncle Bob spoke very slowly and solemnly, and in a deep tone; and Diddie, feeling very much as if she had been guilty of murder, replied, "Yes, I am truly sorry, Uncle Bob." Dumps and Tot and the three little darkies gravely nodded their heads in assent. "Den jes go an' tell yer pa so," said the old man. "An', anyway, yer'll hatter be gwine, caze hit's gittin' dark." The little folks walked off slowly towards the house, and presently Dumps said, "Diddie, I don't b'lieve I'm _rael_ sorry we runned off, an' I don't _right_ 'pent 'bout wadin' in the ditch, cause we had er mighty heap er fun; an' yer reckon ef I'm jes _sorter_ sorry, an' jes _toler'ble_ 'pent, that'll do?" "I don't know about that," said Diddie; "but _I'm_ right sorry, and I'll tell papa for all of us." [Illustration: "WELL, MY INVICE IS DIS."] The children went at once to the library, where Major Waldron was found reading. "Papa," said Diddie, "we've ben very bad, an' we've come ter tell yer 'bout it." "An' the Jay Bird, he tol' the deb'l," put in Dumps, "an' 'twan't none er his business." "Hush up, Dumps," said Diddie, "till I tell papa 'bout it. I wouldn't say my lesson, papa, an' Miss Carrie locked me up, an' the chil'en brought me my dinner." "'Tuz me," chimed in Tot. "I b'ing 'er de _besses_ dinner--take an' jam an' pud'n in de p'ate. Aunt Mawy durn turn me." "Hush, Tot," said Diddie, "till I get through. An' then, papa, I climbed out the winder on the step-ladder, an' I--" "Dilsey an' Chris got the ladder," put in Dumps. "HUSH UP, Dumps!" said Diddie; "you're all time 'ruptin' me." "I reckon I done jes bad ez you," retorted Dumps, "an' I got jes much right ter tell 'boutn it. You think nobody can't be bad but yerse'f.' "Well, then, you can tell it all," said Diddie, with dignity. "Papa, Dumps will tell you." And Dumps, nothing daunted, continued: "Dilsey an' Chris brought the step-ladder, an' Diddie clum out; an' we runned erway in the woods, an' waded in the ditch, an' got all muddy up; an' the Jay Bird, he was settin' on er limb watchin' us, an' he carried the news ter the deb'l; an' Uncle Snake-bit Bob let us go ter his shop, an' tol' us 'bout the Woodpecker's head, an' that's all; only we ain't n-e-v-er goin' ter do it no mo'; an', oh yes, I furgot--an' Diddie's rael sorry an' right 'pents; an' I'm sorter sorry, an' toler'ble 'pents. An', please, are you mad, papa?" "It was certainly very wrong," said her father, "to help Diddie to get out, when Miss Carrie had locked her in; and I am surprised that Diddie should need to be kept in. Why didn't you learn your lesson, my daughter?" "I did," answered Diddie; "I knew it every word; but Miss Carrie jus' cut up, an' wouldn't let me say it like 'twas in the book; an' she laughed at me; an' then I got mad, an' wouldn't say it at all." "Which lesson was it?" asked Major Waldron. "'Twas er hist'ry lesson, an' the question was, 'Who was Columbus?' an' the answer was, 'He was the son of er extinguished alligator;' an' Miss Carrie laughed, an' said that wan't it." "And I rather think Miss Carrie was right," said the father. "Go and bring me the book." Diddie soon returned with her little history, and, showing the passage to her father, said, eagerly, "Now don't you see here, papa?" And Major Waldron read, "He was the son of a _distinguished navigator_." Then, making Diddie spell the words in the book, he explained to her her mistake, and said he would like to have her apologize to Miss Carrie for being so rude to her. This Diddie was very willing to do, and her father went with her to the sitting-room to find Miss Carrie, who readily forgave Diddie for her rebellion, and Dumps and Tot for interfering with her discipline. And that was a great deal more than Mammy did, when she saw the state of their shoes and stockings, and found that they had been wading in the ditch. She slapped the little darkies, and tied red-flannel rags wet with turpentine round the children's necks to keep them from taking cold, and scolded and fussed so that the little girls pulled the cover over their heads and went to sleep, and left her quarrelling. CHAPTER XIII. A PLANTATION MEETING AND UNCLE DANIEL'S SERMON. "Are you gwine ter meetin', Mammy?" asked Diddie one Sunday evening, as Mammy came out of the house attired in her best flowered muslin, with an old-fashioned mantilla (that had once been Diddie's grandmother's) around her shoulders. "Cose I gwine ter meetin', honey; I'se er tryin' ter sarve de Lord, I is, caze we ain't gwine stay hyear on dis yearth all de time. We got ter go ter nudder kentry, chile; an' efn yer don't go ter meetin', an' watch an' pray, like de Book say fur yer ter do, den yer mus' look out fur yerse'f wen dat Big Day come wat I hyears 'em talkin' 'bout." "Can't we go with you, Mammy? We'll be good, an' not laugh at 'em shoutin'." "I dunno wat yer gwine loff at 'em shoutin' fur; efn yer don't min' de loff gwine ter be turnt some er deze days, an' dem wat yer loffs at hyear, dem's de ones wat's gwine ter do de loffin' wen we gits up yon'er! But, let erlone dat, yer kin go efn yer wants ter; an' efn yer'll make has'e an' git yer bunnits, caze I ain't gwine wait no gret wile. I don't like ter go ter meetin' atter hit starts. I want ter hyear Brer Dan'l's tex', I duz. I can't neber enj'y de sermon doutn I hyears de tex'." You may be sure it wasn't long before the children were all ready, for they knew Mammy would be as good as her word, and would not wait for them. When they reached the church, which was a very nice wooden building that Major Waldron had had built for that purpose, there was a large crowd assembled; for, besides Major Waldron's own slaves, quite a number from the adjoining plantations were there. The younger negroes were laughing and chatting in groups outside the door, but the older ones wore very solemn countenances, and walked gravely in and up to the very front pews. On Mammy's arrival, she placed the little girls in seats at the back of the house, and left Dilsey and Chris and Riar on the seat just behind them, "fur ter min' 'em," as she said (for the children must always be under the supervision of somebody), and then she went to her accustomed place at the front; for Mammy was one of the leading members, and sat in the amen corner. Soon after they had taken their seats, Uncle Gabe, who had a powerful voice, and led the singing, struck up: "Roll, Jordan, roll! roll, Jordan, roll! I want ter go ter heb'n wen I die, Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, pray, my brudder, pray! Yes, my Lord; My brudder's settin' in de kingdum, Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. _Chorus._ Roll, Jordan, roll! roll, Jordan, roll! I want ter go ter heb'n wen I die, Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, shout, my sister, shout! Yes, my Lord; My sister she's er shoutin' Caze she hyears sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, moan, you monahs, moan! Yes, my Lord; De monahs sobbin' an' er weepin', Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, scoff, you scoffers, scoff! Yes, my Lord; Dem sinners wat's er scoffin' Can't hyear sweet Jordan roll." And as the flood of melody poured through the house, the groups on the outside came in to join the singing. After the hymn, Uncle Snake-bit Bob led in prayer, and what the old man lacked in grammar and rhetoric was fully made up for in fervency and zeal. The prayer ended, Uncle Daniel arose, and, carefully adjusting his spectacles, he opened his Bible with all the gravity and dignity imaginable, and proceeded to give out his text. Now the opening of the Bible was a mere matter of form, for Uncle Daniel didn't even know his letters; but he thought it was more impressive to have the Bible open, and therefore never omitted that part of the ceremony. "My bredren an' my sistren," he began, looking solemnly over his specs at the congregation, "de tex' wat I'se gwine ter gib fur yer 'strucshun dis ebenin' yer'll not fin' in de foremus' part er de Book, nur yit in de hine part. Hit's swotuwated mo' in de middle like, 'boutn ez fur fum one een ez 'tiz fum tudder, an' de wuds uv de tex' is dis: "'Burhol', I'll punish um! dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "My bredren, embracin' uv de sistren, I'se ben 'stressed in my min' 'boutn de wickedness I sees er gwine on. Eby night de Lord sen' dar's dancin' an' loffin' an' fiddlin'; an' efn er man raises 'im er few chickens an' watermillions, dey ain't safe no longer'n his back's turnt; an', let erlone dat, dar's quarlin' 'longer one nudder, an' dar's sassin' uv wite folks an' ole pussuns, an' dar's drinkin' uv whiskey, an' dar's beatin' uv wives, an' dar's dev'lin' uv husban's, an' dar's imperrence uv chil'en, an' dar's makin' fun uv 'ligion, an' dar's singin' uv reel chunes, an' dar's slightin' uv wuck, an' dar's stayin' fum meetin', an' dar's swearin' an' cussin', an' dar's eby kin' er wickedness an' dev'lment loose in de land. "An', my bredren, takin' in de sistren, I've talked ter yer, an' I've tol' yer uv de goodness an' de long-suff'rin' uv de Lord. I tol' yer outn his Book, whar he'd lead yer side de waters, an' be a Shepherd ter yer; an' yer kep' straight on, an' neber paid no 'tenshun; so tudder night, wile I wuz er layin' in de bed an' er steddin' wat ter preach 'bout, sumpin' kin' er speak in my ear; an' hit sez, 'Brer Dan'l, yer've tol' 'em 'bout de Lord's leadin' uv 'em, an' now tell 'em 'boutn his drivin' uv 'em. An', my bredren, includin' uv de sistren, I ain't gwine ter spare yer feelin's dis day. I'm er stan'in' hyear fur ter 'liver de message outn de Book, an' dis is de message: "'Burhol', I'll punish um! dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Yer all hyear it, don't yer? An' now yer want ter know who sont it. De Lord! Hit's true he sont it by a po' ole nigger, but den hit's his own wuds; hit's in his Book. An', fussly, we'll pursidder dis: IS HE ABLE TER DO IT? Is he able fur ter kill marster's niggers wid de s'ord an' de famine? My bredren, he is able! Didn' he prize open de whale's mouf, an' take Jonah right outn him? Didn' he hol' back de lions wen dey wuz er rampin' an' er tearin' roun' atter Dan'l in de den? Wen de flood come, an' all de yearth wuz drownded, didn' he paddle de ark till he landed her on top de mount er rats? Yes, my bredren, embracin' uv de sistren, an' de same Lord wat done all er dat, he's de man wat's got de s'ords an' de famines ready fur dem wat feels deyse'f too smart ter 'bey de teachin's uv de Book. 'Dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Oh, you chu'ch membahs wat shouts an' prays uv er Sundays an' steals watermillions uv er week-days! Oh, you young men wat's er cussin' an' er robbin' uv hen-rooses! Oh, you young women wat's er singin' uv reel chunes! Oh, you chil'en wat's er sassin' uv ole folks! Oh, you ole pussons wat's er fussin' an' quarlin'! Oh, you young folks wat's er dancin' an' prancin'! Oh, you niggers wat's er slightin' uv yer wuck! Oh! pay 'tenshun ter de message dis ebenin', caze yer gwine wake up some er deze mornin's, an' dar at yer do's 'll be de s'ord an' de famine. "'Burhol', I'll punish um! dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Bredren, an' likewise sistren, yer dunno wat yer foolin' wid! Dem s'ords an' dem famines is de wust things dey is. Dey's wuss'n de rheumatiz; dey's wuss'n de toofache; dey's wuss'n de cramps; dey's wuss'n de lockjaw; dey's wuss'n anything. Wen Adam an' Ebe wuz turnt outn de gyarden, an' de Lord want ter keep 'em out, wat's dat he put dar fur ter skyer 'em? Wuz it er elfunt? No, sar! Wuz it er lion? No, sar! He had plenty beases uv eby kin', but den he didn' cyar 'boutn usen uv 'em. Wuz hit rain or hail, or fire, or thunder, or lightnin'? No, my bredren, hit wuz er s'ord! Caze de Lord knowed weneber dey seed de s'ord dar dey wan't gwine ter facin' it. Oh, den, lis'en at de message dis ebenin'. "'Dey young men shall die by de s'ord.' "An' den, ergin, dars dem famines, my bredren, takin' in de sistren--dem famines come plum fum Egypt! dey turnt 'em erloose dar one time, mun, an' de Book sez all de lan' wuz sore, an' thousan's pun top er thousan's wuz slaint. "Dey ain't no way fur ter git roun' dem famines. Yer may hide, yer may run in de swamps, yer may climb de trees, but, bredren, efn eber dem famines git atter yer, yer gone! dey'll cotch yer! dey's nuffin like 'em on de face uv de yearth, les'n hit's de s'ord; dar ain't much chice twix dem two. Wen hit comes ter s'ords an' famines, I tell yer, gemmun, hit's nip an' tuck. Yit de message, hit sez, 'dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Now, bredren an' sistren, an' monahs an' sinners, don't le's force de Lord fur ter drive us; le's try fur ter sarve him, an' fur ter git erlong doutn de s'ords an de famines. Come up hyear roun' dis altar, an' wrestle fur 'ligion, an' dem few uv us wat is godly--me an' Brer Snake-bit Bob an' Sis Haly an' Brer Gabe, an' Brer Lige an' Brer One-eyed Pete, an' Sis Rachel (Mammy) an' Sis Hannah--we're gwine put in licks fur yer dis ebenin'. Oh, my frens, yer done hyeard de message. Oh, spar' us de s'ords an de famines! don't drive de Lord fur ter use 'em! Come up hyear now dis ebenin', an' let us all try ter hep yer git thu. Leave yer dancin' an' yer singin' an' yer playin'; leave yer whiskey an' yer cussin' an' yer swearin', an' tu'n yer min's ter de s'ords an' de famines. "Wen de Lord fotches dem s'ords outn Eden, an' dem famines outn Egyp', an' tu'n 'em erloose on dis plantation, I tell yer, mun, dar's gwine be skyeared niggers hyear. Yer won't see no dancin' den; yer won't hyear no cussin', nor no chickens hollin' uv er night; dey won't be no reel chunes sung den; yer'll want ter go ter prayin', an' yer'll be er callin' on us wat is stedfus in de faith fur ter hep yer; but we can't hep yer den. We'll be er tryin' on our wings an' er floppin' 'em" ("Yes, bless God!" thus Uncle Snake-bit Bob), "an' er gittin' ready fur ter start upuds! We'll be er lacin' up dem golden shoes" ("Yes, marster!" thus Mammy), "fur ter walk thu dem pearly gates. We can't stop den. We can't 'liver no message den; de Book'll be shot. So, bredren, hyear it dis ebenin'. 'Dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Now, I've said ernuff; dey's no use fur ter keep er talkin', an' all you backslidin' chu'ch membahs, tremblin' sinners, an' weepin' monahs, come up hyear dis ebenin', an' try ter git erroun' dem s'ords an' dem famines. Now my skyearts is clar, caze I done 'liver de message. I done tol' yer whar hit come fum. I tol' yer 'twas in de Book, 'boutn middle-ways twix' een an' een; an' wedder David writ it or Sam'l writ it, or Gen'sis writ it or Paul writ it, or Phesians writ it or Loshuns writ it, dat ain't nudder hyear nor dar; dat don't make no diffunce; some on 'em writ it, caze hit's sholy in de Book, fur de oberseer's wife she read hit ter me outn dar; an' I tuck 'tickler notice, too, so's I could tell yer right whar ter fin' it. An', bredren, I'm er tellin' yer de truf dis ebenin'; hit's jes 'bout de middle twix' een an' een. Hit's dar, sho's yer born, an' dar ain't no way fur ter 'sputin' it, nor ter git roun' it, 'septin' fur ter tu'n fum yer wickedness. An' now, Brudder Gabe, raise er chune; an' sing hit lively, bredren; an' wile dey's singin' hit, I want yer ter come up hyear an' fill deze monahs' benches plum full. Bredren, I want monahs 'pun top er monahs dis ebenin'. Bredren, I want 'em in crowds. I want 'em in droves. I want 'em in layers. I want 'em in piles. I want 'em laid 'pun top er one ernudder, bredren, tell yer can't see de bottumus' monahs. I want 'em piled up hyear dis ebenin'. I want 'em packed down, mun, an' den tromped on, ter make room fur de nex' load. Oh, my bredren, come! fur 'dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.'" The scene that followed baffles all description. Uncle Gabe struck up-- "Oh, lebe de woods uv damnation; Come out in de fields uv salvation; Fur de Lord's gwine ter bu'n up creation, Wen de day uv jedgment come." "Oh, sinners, yer may stan' dar er laffin', Wile de res' uv us is er quaffin' Uv de streams wich de win's is er waffin' Right fresh fum de heb'nly sho'." "But, min', dar's er day is er comin', Wen yer'll hyear a mighty pow'ful hummin'; Wen dem angels is er blowin' an' er drummin', In de awful jedgment day." "Oh, monahs, you may stan' dar er weepin', Fur de brooms uv de Lord is er sweepin', An' all de trash dey's er heapin' Outside er de golden gate." "So, sinners, yer'd better be er tu'nin', Er climbin' an' er scramblin' an' er runnin', Fur ter 'scape dat drefful burnin' In de awful jedgment day." And while the hymn was being sung, Uncle Daniel had his wish of "monahs 'pun top er monahs," for the benches and aisles immediately around the altar were soon crowded with the weeping negroes. Some were crying, some shouting Glory! some praying aloud, some exhorting the sinners, some comforting the mourners, some shrieking and screaming, and, above all the din and confusion, Uncle Daniel could be heard halloing, at the top of his voice, "Dem s'ords an' dem famines!" After nearly an hour of this intense excitement, the congregation was dismissed, one of them, at least, more dead than alive; for "Aunt Ceely," who had long been known as "er pow'ful sinful ooman," had fallen into a trance, whether real or assumed must be determined by wiser heads than mine; for it was no uncommon occurrence for those "seekin' 'ligion" to lie in a state of unconsciousness for several hours, and, on their return to consciousness, to relate the most wonderful experiences of what had happened to them while in the trance. Aunt Ceely lay as if she were dead, and two of the Christian men (for no sinner must touch her at this critical period) bore her to her cabin, followed by the "chu'ch membahs," who would continue their singing and praying until she "come thu," even if the trance should last all night. The children returned to the house without Mammy, for she was with the procession which had followed Aunt Ceely; and as they reached the yard, they met their father returning from the lot. "Papa," called Dumps, "we're goin' ter have awful troubles hyear." "How, my little daughter?" asked her father. "The Lord's goin' ter sen' s'ords an' famines, an' they'll eat up all the young men, an' ev'ybody's sons an' daughters," she replied, earnestly. "Uncle Dan'l said so in meetin'; an' all the folks was screamin' an' shoutin', an' Aunt Ceely is in a trance 'bout it, an' she ain't come thu yet." [Illustration: "MONAH'S 'PUN TOP ER MONAHS."] Major Waldron was annoyed that his children should have witnessed any such scene, for they were all very much excited and frightened at the fearful fate that they felt was approaching them; so he took them into his library, and explained the meaning of the terms "swords and famines," and read to them the whole chapter, explaining how the prophet referred only to the calamities that should befall the Hebrews; but, notwithstanding all that, the children were uneasy, and made Aunt Milly sit by the bedside until they went to sleep, to keep the "swords and the famines" from getting them. CHAPTER XIV. DIDDIE AND DUMPS GO VISITING. It was some time in June that, the weather being fine, Mammy gave the children permission to go down to the woods beyond the gin-house and have a picnic. They had a nice lunch put up in their little baskets, and started off in high glee, taking with them Cherubim and Seraphim and the doll babies. They were not to stay all day, only till dinner-time; so they had no time to lose, but set to playing at once. First, it was "Ladies come to see," and each of them had a house under the shade of a tree, and spent most of the time in visiting and in taking care of their respective families. Dumps had started out with Cherubim for her little boy; but he proved so refractory, and kept her so busy catching him, that she decided to play he was the yard dog, and content herself with the dolls for her children. Riar, too, had some trouble in _her_ family; in passing through the yard, she had inveigled Hester's little two-year-old son to go with them, and now was desirous of claiming him as her son and heir--a position which he filled very contentedly until Diddie became ambitious of living in more style than her neighbors, and offered Pip (Hester's baby) the position of dining-room servant in her establishment; and he, lured off by the prospect of playing with the little cups and saucers, deserted Riar for Diddie. This produced a little coolness, but gradually it wore off, and the visiting between the parties was resumed. After "ladies come to see" had lost its novelty, they made little leaf-boats, and sailed them in the ditch. Then they played "hide the switch," and at last concluded to try a game of hide-and-seek. This afforded considerable amusement, so they kept it up some time; and once, when it became Dumps's time to hide, she ran away to the gin-house, and got into the pick-room. And while she was standing there all by herself in the dark, she thought she heard somebody breathing. This frightened her very much, and she had just opened the door to get out, when a negro man crawled from under a pile of dirty cotton, and said, "Little missy, fur de Lord's sake, can't yer gimme sump'n t' eat?" Dumps was so scared she could hardly stand; but, notwithstanding the man's haggard face and hollow eyes, and his weird appearance, with the cotton sticking to his head, his tone was gentle, and she stopped to look at him more closely. "Little missy," he said, piteously, "I'se er starvin' ter def. I ain't had er mouf'l ter eat in fo' days." "What's the reason?" asked Dumps. "Are you a runaway nigger?" "Yes, honey; I 'longs ter ole Tight-fis' Smith; an' he wanted ter whup me fur not gittin' out ter de fiel' in time, an' I tuck'n runned erway fum 'im, an' now I'm skyeert ter go back, an' ter go anywhar; an' I can't fin' nuf'n t' eat, an' I'se er starvin' ter def." "Well, you wait," said Dumps, "an' I'll go bring yer the picnic." "Don't tell nobody 'boutn my bein' hyear, honey." "No, I won't," said Dumps, "only Diddie; she's good, an' she won't tell nobody; an' she can read an' write, an' she'll know what to do better'n me, because I'm all the time such a little goose. But I'll bring yer sump'n t' eat; you jes wait er little minute; an' don't yer starve ter def till I come back." Dumps ran back to the ditch where the children were, and, taking Diddie aside in a very mysterious manner, she told her about the poor man who was hiding in the gin-house, and about his being so hungry. "An' I tol' 'im I'd bring 'im the picnic," concluded Dumps; and Diddie, being the gentlest and kindest-hearted little girl imaginable, at once consented to that plan; and, leaving Tot with the little negroes in the woods, the two children took their baskets, and went higher up the ditch, on pretence of finding a good place to set the table; but, as soon as they were out of sight, they cut across the grove, and were soon at the gin-house. They entered the pick-room cautiously, and closed the door behind them, The man came out from his hiding-place, and the little girls emptied their baskets in his hands. He ate ravenously, and Diddie and Dumps saw with pleasure how much he enjoyed the nice tarts and sandwiches and cakes that Mammy had provided for the picnic. "Do you sleep here at night?" asked Diddie. "Yes, honey, I'se skyeert ter go out anywhar; I'se so skyeert uv Tight-fis' Smith." "He's awful mean, ain't he?" asked Dumps. "Dat he is, chile," replied the man; "he's cruel an' bad." "Then don't you ever go back to him," said Dumps. "You stay right here an' me'n Diddie'll bring you ev'y-thing ter eat, an' have you fur our nigger." The man laughed softly at that idea, but said he would stay there for the present, anyway; and the children, bidding him good-bye, and telling him they would be sure to bring him something to eat the next day, went back to their playmates at the ditch. "Tot," said Diddie, "we gave all the picnic away to a poor old man who was very hungry; but you don't mind, do you? we'll go back to the house, and Mammy will give you just as many cakes as you want." Tot was a little bit disappointed, for she had wanted to eat the picnic in the woods; but Diddie soon comforted her, and before they reached the house she was as merry and bright as any of them. The next morning Diddie and Dumps were very much perplexed to know how to get off to the gin-house without being seen. There was no difficulty about obtaining the provisions; their mother always let them have whatever they wanted to have tea-parties with, and this was their excuse for procuring some slices of pie and cake, while Aunt Mary gave them bread and meat, and Douglass gave them some cold buttered biscuit with ham between. They wrapped it all up carefully in a bundle, and then, watching their chances, they slipped off from Tot and the little darkies, as well as from Mammy, and carried it to their guest in the pick-room. He was truly glad to see them, and to get the nice breakfast they had brought; and the little girls, having now lost all fear of him, sat down on a pile of cotton to have a talk with him. "Did you always b'long to Mr. Tight-fis' Smith?" asked Diddie. "No, honey; he bought me fum de Powell 'state, an' I ain't b'longst ter him no mo'n 'boutn fo' years." [Illustration: "BRINGIN' 'IM THE PICNIC."] "Is he got any little girls?" asked Dumps. "No, missy; his wife an' two chil'en wuz bu'nt up on de steamboat gwine ter New 'Leans, some twenty years ergo; an' de folks sez dat's wat makes 'im sich er kintankrus man. Dey sez fo' dat he usen ter hab meetin' on his place, an' he wuz er Christyun man hisse'f; but he got mad 'long er de Lord caze de steamboat bu'nt up, an' eber sence dat he's been er mighty wicked man; an' he won't let none er his folks sarve de Lord; an' he don't 'pyear ter cyar fur nuffin' 'cep'n hit's money. But den, honey, he ain't no born gemmun, nohow; he's jes only er oberseer wat made 'im er little money, an' bought 'im er few niggers; an', I tells yer, he makes 'em wuck, too; we'se got ter be in de fiel' long fo' day; an' I oberslep' mysef tudder mornin' an' he wuz cussin' an' er gwine on, an' 'lowed he wuz er gwine ter whup me, an' so I des up an' runned erway fum 'im, an' now I'se skyeert ter go back; an', let erlone dat, I'se skyeert ter stay; caze, efn he gits Mr. Upson's dogs, dey'll trace me plum hyear; an' wat I is ter do I dunno; I jes prays constunt ter de Lord. He'll he'p me, I reckon, caze I prays tree times eby day, an' den in 'tween times." "Is your name Brer Dan'l?" asked Dumps, who remembered Uncle Bob's story of Daniel's praying three times a day. "No, honey, my name's Pomp; but den I'm er prayin' man, des same ez Dan'l wuz." "Well, Uncle Pomp," said Diddie, "you stay here just as long as you can, an' I'll ask papa to see Mr. Tight-fis' Smith, an' he'll get--" "Lor', chile," interrupted Uncle Pomp, "don't tell yer pa nuf'n 'boutn it; he'll sho' ter sen' me back, an' dat man'll beat me half ter def: caze I'se mos' loss er week's time now, an' hit's er mighty 'tickler time in de crap." "But, s'posin' the dogs might come?" said Dumps. "Well, honey, dey ain't come yit; an' wen dey duz come, den hit'll be time fur ter tell yer pa." "Anyhow, we'll bring you something to eat," said Diddie, "and try and help you all we can; but we must go back now, befo' Mammy hunts for us; so good-bye;" and again they left him to himself. As they neared the house, Dumps asked Diddie how far it was to Mr. "Tight-fis' Smith's." "I don't know exactly," said Diddie; "'bout three miles, I think." "Couldn't we walk there, an' ask him not to whup Uncle Pomp? Maybe he wouldn't, ef we was ter beg him right hard." "Yes, that's jest what we'll do, Dumps; and we'll get Dilsey to go with us, 'cause she knows the way." Dilsey was soon found, and was very willing to accompany them, but was puzzled to know why they wanted to go. The children, however, would not gratify her curiosity, and they started at once, so as to be back in time for dinner. It was all of three miles to Mr. Smith's plantation, and the little girls were very tired long before they got there. Dumps, indeed, almost gave out, and once began to cry, and only stopped with Diddie's reminding her of poor Uncle Pomp, and with Dilsey's carrying her a little way. At last, about two o'clock, they reached Mr. Smith's place. The hands had just gone out into the field after dinner, and of course their master, who was only a small planter and kept no overseer, was with them. The children found the doors all open, and went in. The house was a double log-cabin, with a hall between, and they entered the room on the right, which seemed to be the principal living-room. There was a shabby old bed in one corner, with the cover all disarranged, as if its occupant had just left it. A table, littered with unwashed dishes, stood in the middle of the floor, and one or two rude split-bottomed chairs completed the furniture. The little girls were frightened at the unusual silence about the place, as well as the dirt and disorder, but, being very tired, they sat down to rest. "Diddie," asked Dumps, after a little time, "ain't yer scared?" "I don't think I'm scared, Dumps," replied Diddie; "but I'm not right comfor'ble." "_I'm_ scared," said Dumps. "I'm _jes_ ez fraid of Mr. Tight-fis' Smith!" "Dat's hit!" said Dilsey. "Now yer talkin', Miss Dumps; dat's er mean wite man, an' he mighter git mad erlong us, an' take us all fur his niggers." "But we ain't black, Diddie an' me," said Dumps. "Dat don't make no diffunce ter him; he des soon hab wite niggers ez black uns," remarked Dilsey, consolingly; and Dumps, being now thoroughly frightened, said, "Well, I'm er goin' ter put my pen'ence in de Lord. I'm er goin' ter pray." Diddie and Dilsey thought this a wise move, and, the three children kneeling down, Dumps began, "Now, I lay me down to sleep." And just at this moment Mr. Smith, returning from the field, was surprised to hear a voice proceeding from the house, and, stepping lightly to the window, beheld, to his amazement, the three children on their knees, with their eyes tightly closed and their hands clasped, while Dumps was saying, with great fervor, "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take; An' this I ask for Jesus' sake." "Amen!" reverently responded Diddie and Dilsey; and they all rose from their knees much comforted. "I ain't 'fraid uv him now," said Dumps, "'cause I b'lieve the Lord'll he'p us, an' not let Mr. Tight-fis' Smith git us." "I b'lieve so too," said Diddie; and, turning to the window, she found Mr. Smith watching them. "Are you Mr. Tight-fis' Smith?" asked Diddie, timidly. "I am Mr. Smith, and I have heard that I am called '_tight_-fisted' in the neighborhood," he replied, with a smile. "Well, we are Major Waldron's little girls, Diddie and Dumps, an' this is my maid, Dilsey, an' we've come ter see yer on business." "On business, eh?" replied Mr. Smith, stepping in at the low window. "Well, what's the business, little ones?" and he took a seat on the side of the bed, and regarded them curiously. But here Diddie stopped, for she felt it was a delicate matter to speak to this genial, pleasant-faced old man of cruelty to his own slaves. Dumps, however, was troubled with no such scruples; and, finding that Mr. Smith was not so terrible as she had feared, she approached him boldly, and, standing by his side, she laid one hand on his gray head, and said: "Mr. Smith, we've come ter beg you please not ter whup Uncle Pomp if he comes back. He is runned erway, an' me an' Diddie know where he is, an' we've ben feedin' him, an' we don't want you ter whup him; will you please don't?" and Dumps's arm slipped down from the old man's head, until it rested around his neck; and Mr. Smith, looking into her eager, childish face, and seeing the blue eyes filled with tears, thought of the little faces that long years ago had looked up to his; and, bending his head, he kissed the rosy mouth. "You won't whup him, will you?" urged Dumps. "Don't you think he ought to be punished for running away and staying all this time, when I needed him in the crop?" asked Mr. Smith, gently. "But, indeed, he _is_ punished," said Diddie; "he was almost starved to death when me and Dumps carried him the picnic; and then he is so scared, he's been punished, Mr. Smith; so please let him come home, and don't whup him." "Yes, PLE-EE-ASE promise," said Dumps, tightening her hold on his neck; and Mr. Smith, in memory of the little arms that once clung round him, and the little fingers that in other days clasped his, said: "Well, I'll promise, little ones. Pomp may come home, and I'll not whip or punish him in any way;" and then he kissed them both, and said they must have a lunch with him, and then he would take them home and bring Pomp back; for he was astonished to learn that they had walked so long a distance, and would not hear of their walking back, though Diddie persisted that they must go, as they had stolen off, and nobody knew where they were. He made the cook bake them some hot corn hoe-cakes and boil them some eggs; and while she was fixing it, and getting the fresh butter and buttermilk to add to the meal, Mr. Smith took them to the June apple-tree, and gave them just as many red apples as they wanted to eat, and some to take home to Tot. And Dumps told him all about "Old Billy" and Cherubim and Seraphim, and the old man laughed, and enjoyed it all, for he had no relatives or friends, and lived entirely alone--a stern, cold man, whose life had been embittered by the sudden loss of his loved ones, and it had been many weary years since he had heard children's voices chatting and laughing under the apple-tree. After the lunch, which his guests enjoyed very much, Mr. Smith had a little donkey brought out for Dilsey to ride, and, taking Diddie behind him on his horse, and Dumps in his arms, he started with them for home. There was but one saddle, so Dilsey was riding "bareback," and had to sit astride of the donkey to keep from falling off, which so amused the children that merry peals of laughter rang out from time to time; indeed, Dumps laughed so much, that, if Mr. Smith had not held her tightly, she certainly would have fallen off. But it was not very funny to Dilsey; she held on with all her might to the donkey's short mane, and even then could scarcely keep her seat. She was highly indignant with the children for laughing at her, and said. "I dunno wat yer kill'n yerse'f laffin' 'bout, got me er settin' on dis hyear beas'; I ain't gwine wid yer no mo'." Major Waldron was sitting on the veranda as the cavalcade came up, and was surprised to see his little daughters with Mr. Smith, and still more so to learn that they had walked all the way to his house on a mission of mercy; but being a kind man, and not wishing to check the germs of love and sympathy in their young hearts, he forbore to scold them, and went with them and Mr. Smith to the gin-house for the runaway. On reaching the pick-room, the children went in alone, and told Uncle Pomp that his master had come for him, and had promised not to punish him; but still the old man was afraid to go out, and stood there in alarm till Mr. Smith called: "Come out, Pomp! I'll keep my promise to the little ones; you shall not be punished in any way. Come out, and let's go home." And Uncle Pomp emerged from his hiding-place, presenting a very ludicrous spectacle, with his unwashed face and uncombed hair, and the dirty cotton sticking to his clothes. "Ef'n yer'll furgib de ole nigger dis time, marster, he ain't neber gwine run erway no mo'; an', mo'n dat, he gwine ter make speshul 'spress 'rangemunce fur ter git up sooner in de mornin'; he is dat, jes sho's yer born!" said the old negro, as he came before his master. "Don't make too many promises, Pomp," kindly replied Mr. Smith; "we will both try to do better; at any rate, you shall not be punished this time. Now take your leave of your kind little friends, and let's get towards home; we are losing lots of time this fine day." "Good-bye, little misses," said Uncle Pomp, grasping Diddie's hand in one of his and Dumps's in the other; "good-bye; I gwine pray fur yer bof ev'y night wat de Lord sen'; an', mo'n dat, I gwine fotch yer some pattridge aigs de fus' nes' wat I fin's." And Uncle Pomp mounted the donkey that Dilsey had ridden, and rode off with his master, while Diddie and Dumps climbed on top of the fence to catch the last glimpse of them, waving their sun-bonnets and calling out, "Good-bye, Mr. Tight-fis' Smith and Uncle Pomp." CHAPTER XV. THE FOURTH OF JULY. "The glorious Fourth" was always a holiday on every Southern plantation, and, of course, Major Waldron's was no exception to the rule. His negroes not only had holiday, but a barbecue, and it was a day of general mirth and festivity. On this particular "Fourth" the barbecue was to be on the banks of the creek formed by the back-waters of the river, and was to be a "fish-fry" as well as a barbecue. All hands on the plantation were up by daylight, and preparing for the frolic. Some of the negro men, indeed, had been down to the creek all night setting out their fish-baskets and getting the "pit" ready for the meats. The pit was a large hole, in which a fire was kindled to roast the animals, which were suspended over it; and they must commence the barbecuing very early in the morning, in order to get everything ready by dinner-time. The children were as much excited over it as the negroes were, and Mammy could hardly keep them still enough to dress them, they were so eager to be off. Major and Mrs. Waldron were to go in the light carriage, but the little folks were to go with Mammy and Aunt Milly in the spring-wagon, along with the baskets of provisions for the "white folks' tables;" the bread and vegetables and cakes and pastry for the negroes' tables had been sent off in a large wagon, and were at the place for the barbecue long before the white family started from home. The negroes, too, had all gone. Those who were not able to walk had gone in wagons, but most of them had walked, for it was only about three miles from the house. Despite all their efforts to hurry up Mammy, it was nearly nine o'clock before the children could get her off; and even then she didn't want to let Cherubim and Seraphim go, and Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who was driving the wagon, had to add his entreaties to those of the little folks before she would consent at all; and after that matter had been decided, and the baskets all packed in, and the children all comfortably seated, and Dilsey and Chris and Riar squeezed into the back of the wagon between the ice-cream freezer and the lemonade buckets, and Cherubim and Seraphim in the children's laps, and Mammy and Aunt Milly on two split-bottomed chairs, just back of the driver's seat, and Uncle Snake-bit Bob, with the reins in his hands, just ready to drive off--whom should they see but Old Daddy Jake coming down the avenue, and waving his hat for them to wait for him. "Dar now!" said Mammy; "de folks done gone an' lef Ole Daddy, an' we got ter stuff 'im in hyear somewhar." "They ain't no room in hyear," said Dumps, tightening her grasp on Cherubim, for she strongly suspected that Mammy would insist on leaving the puppies to make room for Daddy. "Well, he ain't got ter be lef'," said Mammy; "I wuz allers larnt ter 'spect ole folks myse'f, an' ef'n dis wagin goes, why den Daddy Jake's got ter go in it;" and, Major and Mrs. Waldron having gone, Mammy was the next highest in command, and from her decision there was no appeal. "How come yer ter git lef, Daddy?" asked Uncle Snake-bit Bob, as the old man came up hobbling on his stick. "Well, yer see, chile, I wuz er lightin' uv my pipe, an' er fixin' uv er new stim in it, an' I nuber notus wen de wagins went off. Yer see I'm er gittin' er little deef in deze ole yurs uv mine: dey ben er fasten't on ter dis ole nigger's head er long time, uperds uv er hunderd years or mo'; an' de time hez ben wen dey could hyear de leaves fall uv er nights; but dey gittin' out'n fix somehow; dey ain't wuckin' like dey oughter; an' dey jes sot up dar, an' let de wagins drive off, an' leave de ole nigger er lightin' uv his pipe; an' wen I got thu, an' went ter de do', den I hyeard er mighty stillness in de quarters, an', bless yer heart, de folks wuz gone; an' I lookt up dis way, an' I seed de wagin hyear, an' I 'lowed yer'd all gimme er lif' some way." "Dem little niggers'll hatter stay at home," said Mammy, sharply, eying the little darkies, "or else dey'll hatter walk, caze Daddy's got ter come in dis wagin. Now, you git out, you little niggers." At this, Dilsey and Chris and Riar began to unpack themselves, crying bitterly the while, because they were afraid to walk by themselves, and they knew they couldn't walk fast enough to keep up with the wagon; but here Diddie came to the rescue, and persuaded Uncle Bob to go to the stable and saddle Corbin, and all three of the little negroes mounted him, and rode on behind the wagon, while Daddy Jake was comfortably fixed in the space they had occupied; and now they were fairly off. "Mammy, what does folks have Fourf of Julys for?" asked Dumps, after a little while. "I dunno, honey," answered Mammy; "I hyearn 'em say hit wuz 'long o' some fightin' or nuther wat de wite folks fit one time; but whedder dat wuz de time wat Brer David fit Goliar or not, I dunno; I ain't hyeard 'em say 'bout dat: it mout er ben dat time, an' den ergin it mout er ben de time wat Brer Samson kilt up de folks wid de jawbone. I ain't right sho' _wat_ time hit wuz; but den I knows hit wuz some fightin' or nuther." "It was the 'Declination of Independence,'" said Diddie. "It's in the little history; and it wasn't any fightin', it was a _writin'_; and there's the picture of it in the book; and all the men are settin' roun', and one of 'em is writin'." "Yes, dat's jes wat I hyearn," said Uncle Bob. "I hyearn 'em say dat dey had de fuss' Defemation uv Ondepen'ence on de fourf uv July, an' eber sence den de folks ben er habin' holerday an' barbecues on dat day." "What's er Defemation, Uncle Bob?" asked Dumps, who possessed an inquiring mind. "Well, I mos' furgits de zack meanin'," said the old man, scratching his head; "hit's some kin' er writin', do, jes like Miss Diddie say; but, let erlone dat, hit's in de squshionary, an' yer ma kin fin' hit fur yer, an' 'splain de zack meanin' uv de word; but de Defemation uv Ondepen'ence, hit happened on de fuss fourf uv July, an' hit happens ev'y fourf uv July sence den; an' dat's 'cordin' ter my onderstandin' uv hit," said Uncle Bob, whipping up his horses. "What's dat, Brer Bob?" asked Daddy Jake; and as soon as Uncle Bob had yelled at him Dumps's query and his answer to it, the old man said: "Yer wrong, Brer Bob; I 'members well de fus' fourf uv July; hit wuz er man, honey. Marse Fofer July wuz er _man_, an' de day wuz name atter him. He wuz er pow'ful fightin' man; but den who it wuz he fit I mos' furgot, hit's ben so long ergo; but I 'members, do, I wuz er right smart slip uv er boy, an' I went wid my ole marster, yer pa's gran'pa, to er big dinner wat dey had on de Jeems Riber, in ole Furginny; an' dat day, sar, Marse Fofer July wuz dar; an' he made er big speech ter de wite folks, caze I hyeard 'em clappin' uv dey han's. I nuber seed 'im, but I hyeard he wuz dar, do, an' I knows he _wuz_ dar, caze I sho'ly hyeard 'em clappin' uv dey han's; an', 'cordin' ter de way I 'members bout'n it, dis is his birfday, wat de folks keeps plum till yet, caze dey ain't no men nowerdays like Marse Fofer July. He wuz er gre't man, an' he had sense, too; an' den, 'sides dat, he wuz some er de fus' famblys in dem days. Wy, his folks usen ter visit our wite folks. I helt his horse fur 'im de many er time; an', let erlone dat, I knowed some uv his niggers; but den dat's ben er long time ergo." "But what was he writin' about, Daddy?" asked Diddie, who remembered the picture too well to give up the "writing part." "He wuz jes signin' some kin' er deeds or sump'n," said Daddy. "I dunno wat he wuz writin' erbout; but den he wuz er man, caze he lived in my recommembrunce, an' I done seed 'im myse'f." That settled the whole matter, though Diddie was not entirely satisfied; but, as the wagon drove up to the creek bank just then, she was too much interested in the barbecue to care very much for "Marse Fofer July." The children all had their fishing-lines and hooks, and as soon as they were on the ground started to find a good place to fish. Dilsey got some bait from the negro boys, and baited the hooks; and it was a comical sight to see all of the children, white and black, perched upon the roots of trees or seated flat on the ground, watching intently their hooks, which they kept bobbing up and down so fast that the fish must have been very quick indeed to catch them. They soon wearied of such dull sport, and began to set their wits to work to know what to do next. "Le's go 'possum-huntin'," suggested Dilsey. "There ain't any 'possums in the daytime," said Diddie. "Yes dey is, Miss Diddie, lots uv 'em; folks jes goes at night fur ter save time. I knows how ter hunt fur 'possums; I kin tree 'em jes same ez er dog." And the children, delighted at the novelty of the thing, all started off "'possum-hunting," for Mammy was helping unpack the dinner-baskets, and was not watching them just then. They wandered off some distance, climbing over logs and falling into mud-puddles, for they all had their heads thrown back and their faces turned up to the trees, looking for the 'possums, and thereby missed seeing the impediments in the way. At length Dilsey called out, "Hyear he is! Hyear de 'possum!" and they all came to a dead halt under a large oak-tree, which Dilsey and Chris, and even Diddie and Dumps, I regret to say, prepared to climb. But the climbing consisted mostly in active and fruitless endeavors to make a start, for Dilsey was the only one of the party who got as much as three feet from the ground; but _she_ actually did climb up until she reached the first limb, and then crawled along it until she got near enough to shake off the 'possum, which proved to be a big chunk of wood that had lodged up there from a falling branch, probably; and when Dilsey shook the limb it fell down right upon Riar's upturned face, and made her nose bleed. "Wat you doin', you nigger you?" demanded Riar, angrily, as she wiped the blood from her face. "I dar' yer ter come down out'n dat tree, an' I'll beat de life out'n yer; I'll larn yer who ter be shakin' chunks on." "In vain did Dilsey apologize, and say she thought it was a "'possum;" Riar would listen to no excuse; and as soon as Dilsey reached the ground they had a rough-and-tumble fight, in which both parties got considerably worsted in the way of losing valuable hair, and of having their eyes filled with dirt and their clean dresses all muddied; but Tot was so much afraid Riar, her little nurse and maid, would get hurt that she screamed and cried, and refused to be comforted until the combatants suspended active hostilities, though they kept up quarrelling for some time, even after they had recommenced their search for 'possums. "Dilsey don't know how to tree no 'possums," said Riar, contemptuously, after they had walked for some time, and anxiously looked up into every tree they passed. "Yes I kin," retorted Dilsey; "I kin tree 'em jes ez same ez er dog, ef'n dar's any 'possums fur ter tree; but I can't _make_ 'possums, do; an' ef dey ain't no 'possums, den I can't tree 'em, dat's all." "Maybe they don't come out on the Fourf uv July," said Dumps. "Maybe 'possums keeps it same as peoples." "Now, maybe dey duz," said Dilsey, who was glad to have some excuse for her profitless 'possum-hunting; and the children, being fairly tired out, started back to the creek bank, when they came upon Uncle Snake-bit Bob, wandering through the woods, and looking intently on the ground. "What are you looking for, Uncle Bob?" asked Diddie. "Des er few buckeyes, honey," answered the old man. "What you goin' ter do with 'em?" asked Dumps, as the little girls joined him in his search. "Well, I don't want ter die no drunkard, myse'f," said Uncle Bob, whose besetting sin was love of whiskey. "Does buckeyes keep folks from dying drunkards?" asked Dumps. "Dat's wat dey sez; an' I 'lowed I'd lay me in er few, caze I've allers hyearn dat dem folks wat totes a buckeye in dey lef britches pocket, an' den ernudder in de right-han' coat pocket, dat dey ain't gwine die no drunkards." "But if they would stop drinkin' whiskey they wouldn't die drunkards anyhow, would they, Uncle Bob?" "Well, I dunno, honey; yer pinnin' de ole nigger mighty close; de whiskey mout hab sump'n ter do wid it; I ain't sputin' dat--but wat I stan's on is dis: dem folks wat I seed die drunk, dey nuber had no buckeyes in dey pockets; caze I 'members dat oberseer wat Marse Brunson had, he died wid delirums treums, an' he runned, he did, fur ter git 'way fum de things wat he seed atter him; an' he jumped into de riber, an' he got drownded; an' I wuz dar wen dey pulled 'im out; an' I sez ter Brer John Small, who wuz er standin' dar, sez I, now I lay yer he ain't got no buckeyes in his pockets; and wid dat me 'n Brer John we tuck'n turnt his pockets wrong side outerds; an', less yer soul, chile, hit wuz jes like I say; DAR WA'N'T NO BUCKEYES DAR! Well, I'd b'lieved in de ole sayin' befo', but dat jes kinter sot me on it fas'er 'n eber; an' I don't cyare wat de wedder is, nor wat de hurry is; hit may rain an' hit may shine, an' de time may be er pressin', but ole Bob he don't stir out'n his house mornin's 'cep'n he's got buckeyes in his pockets. But I seed 'em gittin' ready fur dinner as I comed erlong, an' you chil'en better be er gittin' toerds de table." That was enough for the little folks, and they hurried back to the creek. The table was formed by driving posts into the ground, and laying planks across them, and had been fixed up the day before by some of the men. The dinner was excellent--barbecued mutton and shote and lamb and squirrels, and very fine "gumbo," and plenty of vegetables and watermelons and fruits, and fresh fish which the negroes had caught in the seine, for none of the anglers had been successful. Everybody was hungry, for they had had very early breakfast, and, besides, it had been a fatiguing day, for most of the negroes had walked the three miles, and then had danced and played games nearly all the morning, and so they were ready for dinner. And everybody seemed very happy and gay except Mammy; she had been so upset at the children's torn dresses and dirty faces that she could not regain her good-humor all at once; and then, too, Dumps had lost her sun-bonnet, and there were some unmistakable freckles across her little nose, and so Mammy looked very cross, and grumbled a good deal, though her appetite seemed good, and she did full justice to the barbecue. Now Mammy had some peculiar ideas of her own as to the right and proper way for ladies to conduct themselves, and one of her theories was that no _white lady_ should ever eat heartily in company; she might eat between meals, if desired, or even go back after the meal was over and satisfy her appetite; but to sit down with a party of ladies and gentlemen and make a good "square" meal, Mammy considered very ungenteel indeed. This idea she was always trying to impress upon the little girls, so as to render them as ladylike as possible in the years to come; and on this occasion, as there were quite a number of the families from the adjacent plantations present, she was horrified to see Dumps eating as heartily, and with as evident satisfaction, as if she had been alone in the nursery at home. Diddie, too, had taken her second piece of barbecued squirrel, and seemed to be enjoying it very much, when a shake of Mammy's head reminded her of the impropriety of such a proceeding; so she laid aside the squirrel, and minced delicately over some less substantial food. The frowns and nods, however, were thrown away upon Dumps; she ate of everything she wanted until she was fully satisfied, and I grieve to say that her papa encouraged her in such unladylike behavior by helping her liberally to whatever she asked for. But after the dinner was over, and after the darkies had played and danced until quite late, and after the ladies and gentlemen had had several very interesting games of euchre and whist, and after the little folks had wandered about as much as they pleased--swinging on grape-vines and riding on "saplings," and playing "base" and "stealing goods," and tiring themselves out generally--and after they had been all duly stowed away in the spring-wagon and had started for home, then Mammy began at Dumps about her unpardonable appetite. "But I was hungry, Mammy," apologized the little girl. "I don't cyar ef'n yer wuz," replied Mammy; "dat ain't no reason fur yer furgittin' yer manners, an' stuffin' yerse'f right fo' all de gemmuns. Miss Diddie dar, she burhavt like er little lady, jes kinter foolin' wid her knife an' fork, an' nuber eatin nuffin' hardly; an' dar you wuz jes er pilin' in shotes an' lams an' squ'ls, an' roas'n yurs, an' pickles an' puddin's an' cakes an' watermillions, tell I wuz dat shame fur ter call yer marster's darter!" And poor little Dumps, now that the enormity of her sin was brought home to her, and the articles eaten so carefully enumerated, began to feel very much like a boa-constrictor, and the tears fell from her eyes as Mammy continued: "I done nust er heap er chil'en in my time, but I ain't nuber seed no wite chile eat fo de gemmuns like you duz. It pyears like I can't nuber larn you no manners, nohow." "Let de chile erlone, Sis Rachel," interposed Uncle Bob; "she ain't no grown lady, an' I seed marster he'p'n uv her plate hisse'f; she nuber eat none too much, consid'n hit wuz de Fourf uv July." "Didn't I eat no shotes an' lambs, Uncle Bob?" asked Dumps, wiping her eyes. [Illustration: "SWINGING ON GRAPE-VINES AND RIDING ON SAPLINGS."] "I don't b'lieve yer did," said Uncle Bob. "I seed yer eat er squ'l or two, an' er few fish, likely, an' dem, wid er sprinklin' uv roas'n yurs an' cakes, wuz de mos' wat I seed yer eat." "An' dat wuz too much," said Mammy, "right befo' de gemmuns." But Dumps was comforted at Uncle Bob's moderate statement of the case, and so Mammy's lecture lost much of its intended severity. As they were driving through the grove before reaching the house it was quite dark, and they heard an owl hooting in one of the trees. "I see yer keep on sayin' yer sass," said Daddy Jake, addressing the owl. "Ef'n I'd er done happen ter all you is 'bout'n hit, I'd let hit erlone myse'f." "What's he sayin'?" asked Diddie. "Wy, don't yer hyear him, honey, er sayin, "Who cooks fur you-oo-a? Who cooks fur you-oo-a? Ef you'll cook for my folks, Den I'll cook fur y' all-l-lll?" "Well, hit wuz 'long er dat very chune wat he los' his eyes, an' can't see no mo' in de daytime; an' ef'n I wuz him, I'd let folks' cookin' erlone." "Can't you tell us about it, Daddy?" asked Dumps. "I ain't got de time now," said the old man, "caze hyear's de wagin almos' at de do'; an', let erlone dat, I ain't nuber hyeard 'twus good luck ter be tellin' no tales on de Fourf uv July; but ef'n yer kin come ter my cabin some ebenin' wen yer's er airin' uv yerse'fs, den I'll tell yer jes wat I hyearn 'bout'n de owl, an' 'struck yer in er many er thing wat yer don't know now." And now the wagon stopped at the back gate, and the little girls and Mammy and the little darkies got out, and Mammy made the children say good-night to Daddy Jake and Uncle Bob, and they all went into the house very tired and very sleepy, and very dirty, with their celebration of "Marse Fofer July's burfday." CHAPTER XVI. "'STRUCK'N UV DE CHIL'EN." It was several days before the children could get off to Daddy Jake's cabin to hear about the owl; but on Saturday evening, after dinner, Mammy said they might go; and, having promised to go straight to Daddy Jake's house, and to come home before dark, they all started off. Daddy Jake was the oldest negro on the plantation--perhaps the oldest in the State. He had been raised by Major Waldron's grandfather in Virginia, and remembered well the Revolutionary War; and then he had been brought to Mississippi by Major Waldron's father, and remembered all about the War of 1812 and the troubles with the Indians. It had been thirty years or more since Daddy Jake had done any work. He had a very comfortable cabin; and although his wives (for the old man had been married several times) were all dead, and many of his children were now old and infirm, he had a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren who attended to his wants; and then, too, his master cared very particularly for his comfort, and saw that Daddy Jake had good fires, and that his clothes were kept clean and mended, and his food nicely cooked; so the old man passed his days in peace and quiet. The children found him now lying stretched out on a bench in front of his cabin, while Polly, his great-granddaughter, was scratching and "looking" his head. "We've come for you to tell us about the Owl, Daddy," said Diddie, after she had given the old man some cake and a bottle of muscadine wine that her mother had sent to him. "All right, little misses," replied Daddy; and, sitting up on the bench, he lifted Tot beside him, while Diddie and Dumps sat on the door-sill, and Dilsey and Chris and Riar and Polly sat flat on the ground. "Well, yer see de Owl," began Daddy Jake, "he usen fur ter see in de daytime des same ez he do now in de night; an' one time he wuz in his kitchen er cookin' uv his dinner, wen hyear come de Peafowl er struttin' by. Well, in dem days de Peafowl he nuber had none er dem eyes on his tail wat he got now; his tail wuz des er clean blue." "Did you see him, Daddy?" interrupted Dumps. [Illustration: "'STRUCK'N UV DE CHIL'EN."] "No, honey, I ain't seed 'im wen he wuz dat way; dat wuz fo' my time; but den I know hit's de truf, do'; his tail wuz er clar blue dout'n no eyes on it; an' he wuz er pow'ful proud bird, an', 'stid er him 'ten'in ter his bizness, he des prumeraded de streets an' de roads, an' he felt hisse'f too big fur ter ten' ter his wuck. Well, de Owl knowed dat, an' so wen he seed de Peafowl walkin' by so big, an' him in de kitchen er cookin', it kinter hu't his feelin's, so he tuck'n holler'd at de Peafowl, "'Whooo cooks fur you-oo-a? Whooo cooks fur you-oo-a? I cooks fur my folks, But who cooks fur y'all-ll-l?' "Now he jes done dat out'n pyo' sass'ness, caze he knowed de Peafowl felt hisse'f 'bove cookin'; an' wen de Peafowl hyeard dat, he 'gun ter git mad; an' he 'lowed dat ef'n de Owl said dat ter him ergin dey'd be er fuss on his han's. Well, de nex' day de Owl seed him comin', an' he 'gun fur ter scrape out'n his pots an' skillets, an' ez he scrope 'em he holler'd out, "'Whoo cooks fur you-oo-a? Whoo cooks fur you-oo-a? Ef you'll cook fur my folks, Den I'll cook fur y'all-ll.' "An' wid dat de Peafowl tuck'n bounct him; an' dar dey had it, er scrougin' an' er peckin' an' er clawin' uv one nudder; an' somehow, in de skrummidge, de Owl's eyes dey got skwushed on ter de Peafowl's tail, an' fur er long time he couldn't see nuffin' 'tall; but de rattlesnake doctored on him." "The rattlesnake?" asked Diddie, in horror. "Hit's true, des like I'm tellin' yer," said Daddy; "hit wuz de rattlesnake; an' dey's de bes' doctors dey is 'mongst all de beases. Yer may see him creepin' 'long thu de grass like he don't know nuffin', but he kin doctor den." "How does he doctor, Daddy?" asked Dumps. "Now you chil'en look er hyear," said the old man; "I ain't gwine ter tell yer all I know 'bout'n de rattlesnake; dar's some things fur ter tell, and den ergin dar's some things fur ter keep ter yerse'f; an' wat dey is twix' me an' de rattlesnake, hit's des twix' me'n him; an' you ain't de fust ones wat want ter know an' couldn't. Yer may ax, but axin' ain't findin' out den; an', mo'n dat, ef'n I'm got ter be bothered wid axin' uv questions, den I ain't gwine obstruck yer, dat's all." The children begged his pardon, and promised not to interrupt again, and Daddy Jake continued his story. "Yes, de rattlesnake doctored on him, an' atter er wile he got so he could see some uv nights; but he can't see much in de daytime, do; an' ez fur de Peafowl, he shuck an' he shuck his tail, but dem spots is dar tell yit! An' wen he foun' he couldn't git 'em off, den he 'gun ter 'ten like he wuz glad uv 'em on dar, and dat wat makes him spread his tail and ac' so foolish in de spring uv de year. "Dey's er heap uv de beases done ruint deyse'fs wid dey cuttin's up an' gwines on," continued Daddy Jake "Now dar's de Beaver, he usen fur ter hab er smoove roun' tail des like er 'possum's, wat wuz er heap handier fur him ter tote dan dat flat tail wat he got now; but den he wouldn't let de frogs erlone: he des tored down dey houses an' devilled 'em, till dey 'lowed dey wouldn't stan' it; an' so, one moonshiny night, wen he wuz er stan'in on de bank uv er mighty swif'-runnin' creek, ole Brer Bullfrog he hollered at him, "'Come over! come over!' "He knowed de water wuz too swiff fur de beaver, but den he 'lowed ter pay him back fur tearin' down his house. Well, de Beaver he stood dar er lookin' at de creek, an' by'mby he axes, "'How deep is it?' "'Knee-deep, knee-deep,' answered the little frogs. An' de Bullfrogs, dey kep' er sayin, 'Come over, come over;' an' de little frogs kep' er hollin,' 'Jus' knee-keep; jus' knee-deep,' tell de Beaver he pitched in fur ter swim 'cross; an', gemmun, de creek wuz so deep, an de water so swiff, tell hit put 'im up ter all he knowed. He had ter strain an' ter wrestle wid dat water tell hit flattent his tail out same ez er shobel, an' er little mo'n he'd er los' his life; but hit larnt him er lesson. I ain't _nuber_ hyeard uv his meddlin' wid nuffin' fum dat time ter dis; but, I tell yer, in de hot summer nights, wen he hatter drag dat flat tail uv his'n atter him ev'ywhar he go, 'stid er havin' er nice handy tail wat he kin turn ober his back like er squ'l, I lay yer, mun, he's wusht er many er time he'd er kep' his dev'lment ter hisse'f, an' let dem frogs erlone." Here Daddy Jake happened to look down, and he caught Polly nodding. "Oh yes!" said the old man, "yer may nod; dat's des wat's de matter wid de niggers now, dem sleepy-head ways wat dey got is de cazhun uv dey hyar bein' kunkt up an' dey skins bein' black." "Is that what makes it, Daddy?" asked Diddie, much interested. "Ub cose hit is," replied Daddy. "Ef'n de nigger hadn't ben so sleepy-headed, he'd er ben wite, an' his hyar'd er ben straight des like yourn. Yer see, atter de Lord made 'im, den he lont him up 'gins de fence-corner in de sun fur ter dry; an' no sooner wuz de Lord's back turnt, an' de sun 'gun ter come out kin'er hot, dan de nigger he 'gun ter nod, an' er little mo'n he wuz fas' ter sleep. Well, wen de Lord sont atter 'im fur ter finish uv 'im up, de angel couldn't fin' 'im, caze he didn't know de zack spot whar de Lord sot 'im; an' so he hollered an' called, an' de nigger he wuz 'sleep, an' he nuber hyeard 'im; so de angel tuck de wite man, an' cyard him 'long, an' de Lord polished uv 'im off. Well, by'mby de nigger he waked up; but, dar now! he wuz bu'nt black, an' his hyar wuz all swuv'llt up right kinky. "De Lord, seein' he wuz spilte, he didn't 'low fur ter finish 'im, an' wuz des 'bout'n ter thow 'im 'way, wen de wite man axt fur 'im; so de Lord he finished 'im up des like he wuz, wid his skin black an' his hyar kunkt up, an' he gun 'im ter de wite man, an' I see he's got 'im plum tell yit." "Was it you, Daddy?" asked Dumps. "Wy, no, honey, hit wan't me, hit wuz my forecisters." "What's a forecister, Daddy?" asked Diddie, rather curious about the relationship. "Yer forecisters," explained Daddy, "is dem uv yer _way back folks_, wat's born'd fo' you is yerse'f, an' fo' yer pa is. Now, like my ole marster, yer pa's gran'pa, wat riz me in ole Furginny, he's you chil'en's forecister; an' dis nigger wat I'm tellin' yer 'bout'n, he waz my _fuss forecister_; an' dats' de way dat I've allers hyearn dat he come ter be black, an' his hyar kinky; an' I b'lieves hit, too, caze er nigger's de sleepies'-headed critter dey is; an' den, 'sides dat, I've seed er heap er niggers in my time, but I ain't nuber seed dat nigger yit wat's wite, an' got straight hyar on his head. "Now I ain't er talkin' 'bout'n _murlatters_, caze dey ain't no reg'lar folks 'tall; dey's des er mixtry. Dey ain't wite, an' dey ain't black, an' dey ain't nuffin'; dey's des de same kin' er _folks_ ez de muel is er _horse_! "An' den dar's Injuns; dey's ergin ernudder kin' er folks. "I usen ter hyear 'em say dat de deb'l made de fuss Injun. He seed de Lord er makin' folks, an' he 'lowed he'd make him some; so he got up his dut and his water, an' all his 'grejunces, an' he went ter wuck; an' wedder he cooked him too long, or wedder he put in too much red clay fur de water wat he had, wy, I ain't nuber hyeard; but den I knows de deb'l made 'im, caze I allers hyearn so; an', mo'n dat, I done seed 'em fo' now, an' dey got mighty dev'lish ways. I wuz wid yer gran'pa at Fort Mimms, down erbout Mobile, an' I seed 'em killin' folks an' sculpin' uv 'em; an, mo'n dat, ef'n I hadn't er crope under er log, an' flattent myse'f out like er allergator, dey'd er got me; an' den, ergin, dey don't talk like no folks. I met er Injun one time in de road, an' I axed 'im wuz he de man wat kilt an' sculpt Sis Leah, wat usen ter b'longst ter yer gran'pa, an' wat de Injuns kilt. I axt 'im 'ticklur, caze I had my axe erlong, an' ef'n he wuz de man, I 'lowed fur ter lay him out. But, bless yer life, chile, he went on fur ter say, "'Ump, ump, kinterlosha wannycoola tusky noba, inickskymuncha fluxkerscenuck kintergunter skoop.' "An' wen he sed dat, I tuck'n lef' him, caze I seed hit wouldn't do fur ter fool 'long him; an', mo'n dat, he 'gun fur ter shine his eyes out, an' so I des off wid my hat, an' scrope my lef' foot, an' said, 'Good ebenin', marster, same ez ef he wuz er wite man; an' den I tuck thu de woods tell I come ter de fork-han' een' er de road, an' I eberlastin' dusted fum dar! I put deze feets in motion, yer hyeard me! an' I kep' 'em er gwine, too, tell I come ter de outskwirts uv de quarters; an' eber sence den I ain't stopped no Injun wat I sees in de road, an' I ain't meddled 'long o' who kilt Sis Leah, nudder, caze she's ben in glory deze fifty years or mo', an' hit's all one to her now who sculpt her." But now, as it was getting late, Daddy said he was afraid to stay out in the night air, as it sometimes "gun him de rheumatiz," and wound up his remarks by saying, "Tell yer ma I'm mighty 'bleeged fur de cake an' drinkin's, an' weneber yer gits de time, an' kin come down hyear any ebenin', de ole man he'll 'struck yer, caze he's gwine erway fo' long, an' dem things wat he knows is onbeknownst ter de mos' uv folks." "Where are you going, Daddy," asked Diddie. "I gwine ter de 'kingdum,' honey, an' de Lord knows hit's time; I ben hyear long ernuff; but hit's 'bout time fur me ter be er startin' now, caze las' Sat'dy wuz er week gone I wuz er stretchin' my ole legs in de fiel', an' er rabbit run right ercross de road foreninst me, an' I knowed 'twuz er sho' sign uv er death; an' den, night fo' las', de scritch-owls wuz er talkin' ter one ernudder right close ter my do', an' I knowed de time wuz come fur de ole nigger ter take dat trip; so, ef'n yer wants him ter 'struck yer, yer'd better be er ten'in' ter it, caze wen de Lord sen's fur 'im he's er _gwine_." The children were very much awed at Daddy's forebodings, and Dumps insisted on shaking hands with him, as she felt that she would probably never see him again, and they all bade him good-night, and started for the house. "Miss Diddie, did you know ole Daddy wuz er _trick_ nigger?" asked Dilsey, as they left the old man's cabin. "What's er trick nigger?" asked Dumps. "Wy, don't yer know, Miss Dumps? Trick niggers dey ties up snakes' toofs an' frogs' eyes an' birds' claws, an' all kineter charms; an' den, wen dey gits mad 'long o' folks, dey puts dem little bags under dey do's, or in de road somewhar, whar dey'll hatter pass, an' dem folks wat steps ober 'em den dey's _tricked_; an' dey gits sick, an' dey can't sleep uv nights, an' dey chickens all dies, an' dey can't nuber hab no luck nor nuf'n tell de tricks is tuck off. Didn't yer hyear wat he said 'bout'n de snakes? an' de folks all sez ez how ole Daddy is er trick nigger, an' dat's wat makes him don't die." "Well, I wish I was a trick nigger, then," remarked Dumps, gravely. "Lordy, Miss Dumps, yer'd better not be er talkin' like dat," said Dilsey, her eyes open wide in horror. "Hit's pow'ful wicked ter be trick niggers." "I don't know what's the matter with Dumps," said Diddie; "she's gettin' ter be so sinful; an' ef she don't stop it, I sha'n't sleep with her. She'll be er breakin' out with the measles or sump'n some uv these days, jes fur er judgment on her; an' I don't want ter be catchin' no judgments just on account of her badness." "Well, I'll take it back, Diddie," humbly answered Dumps. "I didn't know it was wicked; and won't you sleep with me now?" Diddie having promised to consider the matter, the little folks walked slowly on to the house, Dilsey and Chris and Riar all taking turns in telling them the wonderful spells and cures and troubles that Daddy Jake had wrought with his "trick-bags." CHAPTER XVII. WHAT BECAME OF THEM. Well, of course, I can't tell you _all_ that happened to these little girls. I have tried to give you some idea of how they lived in their Mississippi home, and I hope you have been amused and entertained; and now, as "Diddie" said about _her_ book, I've got to "wind up," and tell you what became of them. The family lived happily on the plantation until the war broke out in 1861. Then Major Waldron clasped his wife to his heart, kissed his daughters, shook hands with his faithful slaves, and went as a soldier to Virginia; and he is sleeping now on the slope of Malvern Hill, where he "Nobly died for Dixie." The old house was burned during the war, and on the old plantation where that happy home once stood there are now three or four chimneys and an old tumbled-down gin-house. That is all. The agony of those terrible days of war, together with the loss of her husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs. Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman, with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers, is the once beautiful "mamma" of Diddie, Dumps, and Tot. Diddie grew up to be a very pretty, graceful woman, and when the war began was in her eighteenth year. She was engaged to one of the young men in the neighborhood; and, though she was so young, her father consented to the marriage, as her lover was going into the army, and wanted to make her his wife before leaving. So, early in '61, before Major Waldron went to Virginia, there was a quiet wedding in the parlor one night; and not many days afterwards the young Confederate soldier donned his gray coat, and rode away with Forrest's Cavalry. "And ere long a messenger came, Bringing the sad, sad story-- A riderless horse: a funeral march: Dead on the field of glory!" After his death her baby came to gladden the young widow's desolate life; and he is now almost grown, handsome and noble, and the idol of his mother. Diddie is a widow still. She was young and pretty when the war ended, and has had many offers of marriage; but a vision of a cold white face, with its fair hair dabbled in blood, is ever in her heart. So Diddie lives for her boy. Their home is in Natchez now; for of course they could never live in the old place any more. When the slaves were free, they had no money to rebuild the houses, and the plantation has never been worked since the war. The land is just lying there useless, worthless; and the squirrels play in and out among the trees, and the mocking-birds sing in the honeysuckles and magnolias and rose-bushes where the front yard used to be. And at the quarters, where the happy slave-voices used to sing "Monkey Motions," and the merry feet used to dance to "Cotton-eyed Joe," weeds and thick underbrush have all grown up, and partridges build their nests there; and sometimes, at dusk, a wild-cat or a fox may be seen stealing across the old play-ground. Tot, long years ago, before the war even, when she was yet a pure, sinless little girl, was added to that bright band of angel children who hover around the throne of God; and so she was already there, you see, to meet and welcome her "papa" when his stainless soul went up from Malvern Hill. Well, for "Mammy" and "Daddy Jake" and "Aunt Milly" and "Uncle Dan'l," "dat angel" has long since "blowed de horn," and I hope and believe they are happily walking "dem golden streets" in which they had such implicit faith, and of which they never wearied of telling. And the rest of the negroes are all scattered; some doing well, some badly; some living, some dead. Aunt Sukey's Jim, who married Candace that Christmas-night, is a politician. He has been in the Legislature, and spends his time in making long and exciting speeches to the loyal leaguers against the Southern whites, all unmindful of his happy childhood, and of the kind and generous master who strove in every way to render his bondage (for which that master was in no way to blame) a light and happy one. Uncle Snake-bit Bob is living still. He has a little candy-store in a country town. He does not meddle with politics. He says, "I don't cas' my suffrins fur de Dimercracks, nur yit fur de 'Publicans. I can't go 'ginst my color by votin' de Dimercrack papers; an' ez fur dem 'Publicans! Well, ole Bob he done hyearn wat de _Book_ say 'boutn publicans an' sinners, an' dat's ernuff fur him. He's er gittin' uperds in years now; pretty soon he'll hatter shove off fur dat 'heb'nly sho';' an' wen de Lord sen' atter him, he don't want dat angel ter cotch him in no kinwunshuns 'long wid 'publicans an' sinners.'" And so Uncle Bob attends to his store, and mends chairs and tubs, and deals extensively in chickens and eggs; and perhaps he is doing just as well as if he were in Congress. Dilsey and Chris and Riar are all women now, and are all married and have children of their own; and nothing delights them more than to tell to their little ones what "us an' de wite chil'en usen ter do." And the last I heard of Aunt Nancy, the "tender," she was going to school, but not progressing very rapidly. She did learn her letters once, but, having to stop school to make a living, she soon forgot them, and she explained it by saying: "Yer see, honey, dat man wat larnt me dem readin's, he wuz sich er onstedfus' man, an' gittin' drunk, an' votin' an' sich, tell I furgittin' wat he larnt me; but dey's er colored gemman fum de Norf wat's tuck him up er pay-school ober hyear in de 'catermy, an' ef'n I kin git him fur ter take out'n his pay in dat furmifuge wat I makes, I 'low ter go ter him er time er two, caze he's er membah ub de Zion Chu'ch, an' er mighty stedfus' man, an' dat wat he larns me den I'll stay larnt." And Dumps? Well, the merry, light-hearted little girl is an "old maid" now; and if Mammy could see her, she would think she was "steady" enough at last. Somebody, you know, must attend to the wants and comfort of the gray-haired woman in the asylum; and Diddie had her boy to support and educate, so Dumps teaches school and takes care of her mother, and is doing what Uncle Snake-bit Bob told the Sunday-school children that God had made them to do; for Dumps is doing "DE BES' SHE KIN." 
28021	----	file made using scans of public domain works at the University of Georgia.) Music file created by Linda Cantoni. THIS LITTLE WORK IS DESIGNED TO ADAPT MRS. STOWE'S TOUCHING NARRATIVE TO THE UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE YOUNGEST READERS AND TO FOSTER IN THEIR HEARTS A GENEROUS SYMPATHY FOR THE WRONGED NEGRO RACE OF AMERICA. The purpose of the Editor of this little Work, has been to adapt it for the juvenile family circle. The verses have accordingly been written by the Authoress for the capacity of the youngest readers, and have been printed in a large bold type. The prose parts of the book, which are well suited for being read aloud in the family circle, are printed in a smaller type, and it is presumed that in these our younger friends will claim the assistance of their older brothers or sisters, or appeal to the ready aid of their mamma. JANUARY, 1853. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PICTURES AND STORIES From UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Published by John P. Jewett & Co., Boston. UNCLE TOM'S PICTURE BOOK. THE SALE OF LITTLE HARRY. Come read my book good boys and girls That live on freedom's ground, With pleasant homes, and parents dear, And blithesome playmates round; And you will learn a woeful tale, Which a good woman told, About the poor black negro race, How they are bought and sold. Within our own America Where these bad deeds are done, A father and a mother lived Who had a little son; As slaves, they worked for two rich men, Whose fields were fair and wide-- But Harry was their only joy, They had no child beside. Now Harry's hair was thick with curls And softly bright his eyes, And he could play such funny tricks And look so wondrous wise, [Illustration: THE SALE OF LITTLE HARRY. Oh children dear, 'twas sad to hear, That for the trader's gold, To that hard-hearted evil man Her own sweet boy was sold.] That all about the rich man's house Were pleased to see him play, Till a wicked trader buying slaves Came there one winter day. The trader and the rich man sat Together, at their wine, When in poor simple Harry slipped In hopes of something fine. He shewed them how the dandy danced, And how old Cudjoe walked, Till loud they laughed and gave him grapes, And then in whispers talked. The young child knew not what they said, But at the open door Eliza, his poor mother, stood, With heart all sick and sore. Oh children dear, 'twas sad to hear, That for the trader's gold, To that hard-hearted evil man Her own sweet boy was sold. And he would take him far away, To where the cotton grew, And sell him for a slave to men More hard and wicked too. She knew that none would heed his woe, His want, or sickness there, Nor ever would she see his face, Or hear his evening prayer. So when the house was all asleep, And when the stars were bright, She took her Harry in her arms, And fled through that cold night:-- Away through bitter frost and snow Did that poor mother flee; And how she fared, and what befell, Read on, and you shall see. Before setting out, Eliza took a piece of paper and a pencil, and wrote hastily the following note to her kind mistress, who had tried in vain to save little Harry from being sold:-- "Oh missus! dear missus! don't think me ungrateful; don't think hard of me. I am going to try to save my boy; you will not blame me! God bless and reward you for all your kindness!" Hastily folding and directing this, she went to a drawer and made up a little package of clothing for her boy, which she tied firmly round her waist; and so fond is a mother's remembrance, that even in the terrors of that hour she did not forget to put up in the little package one or two of his favourite toys. On the bed lay her slumbering boy, his long curls falling negligently around his unconscious face, his rosy mouth half open, his little fat hands thrown out over the bed-clothes, and a smile spread like a sunbeam over his whole face. "Poor boy! poor fellow!" said Eliza, "they have sold you, but your mother will save you yet." It was some trouble to arouse the little sleeper; but after some effort he sat up, and began playing with his wooden bird, while his mother was putting on her bonnet and shawl. "Where are you going, mother?" said he, as she drew near the bed with his little coat and cap. His mother drew near, and looked so earnestly into his eyes, that he at once divined that something unusual was the matter. "Hush, Harry," she said; "mustn't speak loud, or they will hear us. A wicked man was coming to take little Harry away from his mother, and carry him 'way off in the dark; but mother won't let him--she's going to put on her little boy's cap and coat, and run off with him, so the ugly man can't catch him." Saying these words, she had tied and buttoned on the child's simple outfit, and taking him in her arms, she whispered to him to be very still; and, opening the door, she glided noiselessly out. It was a sparkling, frosty, starlight night, and the mother wrapped the shawl close round her child, as, perfectly quiet with terror, he clung round her neck. At first the novelty and alarm kept him waking; but after they had gone a considerable way, poor Harry said, as he found himself sinking to sleep-- "Mother I don't need to keep awake, do I?" "No, my darling; sleep now, if you want to." "But, mother, if I do get asleep, you won't let him get me?" "No! so may God help me!" said his mother with a paler cheek, and a brighter light in her large dark eyes. "You're _sure_, an't you, mother?" "Yes, _sure_!" said the mother, in a voice that startled herself; for it seemed to her to come from a spirit within, that was no part of her; and the boy dropped his little weary head on her shoulder, and was soon asleep. When morning came, as poor Harry complained of hunger and thirst, she sat down behind a large rock, which hid them from the road, and gave him a breakfast out of her little package. The boy wondered and grieved that she could not eat, and when putting his arms round her neck he tried to force some of his cake into her mouth, it seemed to her that the rising in her throat would choke her. "No, no, Harry, darling! mother can't eat till you are safe! We must go on--on--till we come to the river." And she hurried again into the road and proceeded on her journey. When the trader came to take away Harry, he was in a great rage, because neither the boy nor his mother could be found. The master who sold him was also very angry, and ordered two of his negroes, called Andy and Sam, to bring out two of the swiftest horses, and help the trader to pursue Eliza, and take Harry from her. Andy and Sam did not like that work, but being slaves, they dare not disobey. However, they did what they could to detain the trader; for, pretending to be in great haste, they squalled for this and that, and frightened the horses, till they ran off over hedges and ditches, with Andy and Sam after them, laughing till their sides ached as soon as they got out of sight. The trader all the while stood cursing and swearing, like a wicked man as he was. When the horses were caught, they were so tired with their race, that he was fain to let them stay and rest till dinner-time. But when dinner-time came, Chloe the cook, of whom you will hear more in the course of the story, spilled one dish, kept another long in baking; and so the trader did not get his dinner till it was late in the afternoon. The horses were brought out at last, and he set off with Sam and Andy in pursuit of poor Harry and his mother. They had gone a great way by this time, and Eliza's feet were sore with walking all the night and day, and Harry was ready to lie down and sleep on the snow. As the sun was setting, they came in sight of the great river Ohio. There was no bridge over it. People crossed in boats in the summer time, and in winter on the thick ice, with which it was always covered. Now it was the month of February. The ice had broken, because spring was near. The river was swollen over all its banks, and no boatman would venture on it. There was a little inn hard by, and there poor Eliza hoped to get a little rest for herself and Harry, who was now fast asleep in her arms. She had just sat down by the fire, when, who should ride into the yard but the trader and his guides. The swift horses had brought them much quicker than she and Harry could walk, but the weary mother would not lose her child. She darted out with him that moment, and the verses will tell you by what means she escaped. ELIZA CROSSING THE RIVER From her resting-place by the trader chased, Through the winter evening cold, Eliza came with her boy at last, Where a broad deep river rolled. Great blocks of the floating ice were there, And the water's roar was wild, But the cruel trader's step was near, Who would take her only child. Poor Harry clung around her neck, But a word he could not say, For his very heart was faint with fear, And with flying all that day. Her arms about the boy grew tight, With a loving clasp, and brave; "Hold fast! Hold fast, now, Harry dear, And it may be God will save." From the river's bank to the floating ice She took a sudden bound, And the great block swayed beneath her feet With a dull and heavy sound. So over the roaring rushing flood, From block to block she sprang, And ever her cry for God's good help Above the waters rang. And God did hear that mother's cry, For never an ice-block sank; While the cruel trader and his men Stood wondering on the bank. A good man saw on the farther side, And gave her his helping hand; So poor Eliza, with her boy, Stood safe upon the land. A blessing on that good man's arm, On his house, and field, and store; May he never want a friendly hand To help him to the shore! A blessing on all that make such haste, Whatever their hands can do! For they that succour the sore distressed, Our Lord will help them too. When the two negroes saw Eliza's escape, they began to laugh and cheer; on which the trader chased them with his horsewhip, cursing and swearing as usual. But he could not get over the river, and went in very bad temper to spend that night at the little inn, determined to get a boat, if possible, and catch Harry in the morning. The man who had helped Eliza up the river's bank, showed her a pretty white house at some distance, where a kind gentleman and his wife lived. The dark night had fallen, the tea-cups were on the table, and the fires were bright in kitchen and parlour, when the poor mother, all wet and weary, her feet cut by the sharp ice (for she had lost her shoes in the river), walked in, with Harry still in her arms. Before she could ask for shelter, she dropped down fainting on the floor. The good people of the house thought she was dead, and raised a terrible alarm. Mr. and Mrs. Bird ran into the kitchen to see what had happened. They were good, kind people, and great in that place, for Mr. Bird was a member of the American Parliament. He kept slaves himself, and tried to think it was no sin. He had even been trying that very night, in conversation with his wife, to defend a law lately passed, which forbade any one to give shelter to poor runaway slaves. But Mrs. Bird would listen to no defence of such a law, and said, "It is a shameful, wicked, and abominable law, and I'll break it for one the first time I have a chance, and I hope I shall have a chance too. I know nothing about politics, but I can read my Bible, and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow. No, no, John, said she, you may talk all night, but you would not do what you say. Would you now turn away a poor, shivering, hungry creature from your door because he was a runaway? Would you, now?" Now, if the truth must be told, Mr. Bird was a very kind man, and could not in his heart give a very decided reply to his wife; and it was just at this moment that poor Eliza and little Harry came to his door. As we said, Mr. and Mrs. Bird ran to the kitchen to see what had happened. They found poor Eliza just recovering from her faint. She stared wildly round her for a moment, and then sprang to her feet, saying, "Oh! my Harry! have you got him?" The boy at this ran to her, and put his arms round her neck. "Oh! he's here, he's here!" she exclaimed. And then she cried wildly to Mrs. Bird, "O, ma'am, do protect us, don't let them get him!" "Nobody shall hurt you here, poor woman," said Mrs. Bird. "You are safe; don't be afraid." "God bless you," said the woman, covering her face and sobbing, while poor little Harry, seeing her crying, tried to get into her lap. With many gentle and womanly offices which no one knew better how to render than Mrs. Bird, the poor woman was rendered more calm. A temporary bed was provided for her near the fire; and after a short time, Eliza, faint and weary with her long journey, fell into a heavy slumber, with little Harry soundly sleeping on her arm. "I wonder who and what she is," said Mr. Bird, when he had gone back to the parlour with his wife. "When she wakes and feels a little rested, we shall see," said Mrs. Bird, who began to busy herself with her knitting. Mr. Bird took up a newspaper, and pretended to be reading it, but it was not long before he turned to his wife and said, "I say, wife, couldn't she wear one of your gowns; and there's that old cloak that you keep on purpose to put over me when I take my afternoon's nap, you might give her that; she needs clothes." Mrs. Bird simply replied, "We'll see;" but a quiet smile passed over her face as she remembered the conversation they had had together that very night before Eliza and little Harry came to their door. After an hour or two, Eliza awoke, and Mr. and Mrs. Bird again went to the kitchen. As they entered, poor Eliza lifted her dark eyes, and fixed them on Mrs. Bird, with such a forlorn and imploring expression, that the tears came into the kind-hearted woman's eyes. "You need not be afraid of anything; we are friends here, poor woman! Tell me where you came from, and what you want?" said she. "I came from Kentucky," said poor Eliza. "And what induced you to run away?" said Mrs. Bird. The woman looked up with a keen, scrutinising glance, and it did not escape her that Mrs. Bird was dressed in deep mourning. "Ma'am," she said, suddenly, "have you ever lost a child?" The question was unexpected, and it was a thrust on a new wound; for it was only a month since a darling child of the family had been laid in the grave. Mr. Bird turned round and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst into tears; but, recovering her voice, she said-- "Why do you ask that? I have lost a little one." "Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another--left them buried there when I came away; and I had only this one left. I never slept a night without him; he was all I had. He was my comfort and pride day and night; and, ma'am, they were going to take him away from me--to _sell_ him--a baby that had never been away from his mother in his life! I couldn't stand it, ma'am. I knew I never should be good for anything if they did; and when I knew the papers were signed and he was sold, I took him and came off in the night, and they chased me--the man that bought him and some of master's folks, and they were coming down right behind me, and I heard them--I jumped right on to the ice, and how I got across I don't know, but first I knew a man was helping me up the bank." "Crossed on the ice?" cried every one present. "Yes," said poor Eliza, slowly. "I did, God helping me. I crossed on the ice, for they were behind me--right behind--and there was no other way!" All around were affected to tears by Eliza's story. Mr. Bird himself, to hide his feelings, had to turn away, and became particularly busy in wiping his spectacle-glasses and blowing his nose. After a short pause, Mrs. Bird asked:-- "And where do you mean to go to, my poor woman?" "To Canada if I only knew where that was. Is it very far off ma'am?" said she, looking up with a simple and confiding air to Mrs. Bird's face. "Poor woman," said Mrs. Bird, "it is much further off than you think; but we will try to think what can be done for you. Here Dinah," said she to one of the servants, "make her up a bed in your own room close by the kitchen, and I'll think what to do for her in the morning. Meanwhile, never fear poor woman, put your trust in God, He will protect you." Mrs. Bird and her husband re-entered the parlour. She sat down in her little rocking chair before the fire, swinging it thoughtfully to and fro. Mr. Bird strode up and down the room, grumbling to himself. At length, striding up to his wife, he said:-- "I say, wife, she'll have to get away from here this very night. That trader fellow will be down after her early to-morrow morning." "To-night," said Mrs. Bird, "how is it possible--and where to?" "Well, I know pretty well where to," said Mr. Bird, beginning to put on his boots. "I know a place where she would be safe enough, but the plague of the thing is, nobody could drive a carriage there to-night but me. The creek has to be crossed twice, and the second crossing is quite dangerous, unless one know it as I do. But never mind. I'll take her over myself. There is no help for it. I could not bear to see the poor woman caught." "Thank you, thank you, dear John," said the wife, laying her white hand on his--"Could I ever have loved you had I not known you better than you do yourself?" Off Mr. Bird set to see about the carriage, but at the door he stopped for a moment, and then coming back, he said, with a quivering voice,-- "Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's the drawer full of things--of--of--poor little Henry's." So saying, he turned quickly on his heel, and shut the door after him. His wife opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and taking the candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer, and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy-like, had followed close on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at their mother. And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are, if it has not been so! Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many a form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and waggon, a top, a ball--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heartbreak! She sat down by the drawer, and leaning her head on her hands over it, wept till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly raising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest and most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle. "Mamma," said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, "are you going to give away those things?" "My dear boys," she said, softly and earnestly, "if our dear, loving, little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his blessings with them!" Mr. Bird returned about twelve o'clock with the carriage. "Mary," said he, coming in with his overcoat in his hand, you must wake her up now. "We must be off." Soon arrayed in a cloak, bonnet, and shawl that had belonged to her benefactress, poor Eliza appeared at the door with her child in her arms. When she got seated in the carriage, she fixed her large dark eyes on Mrs. Bird's face, and seemed going to speak. Her lips moved, but there was no sound; pointing upward with a look never to be forgotten, she fell back in her seat and covered her face. The door was shut, and the carriage drove on. It was not long before they arrived at the place where Mr. Bird thought they would be safe from the cruel trader. It was a village about seven miles off, consisting of neat houses, with orchards and meadows about them. They all belonged to Quakers, a sect of Christians whom foolish people laugh at, because they think it right to wear broad-brimmed hats, and odd old-fashioned bonnets; but they do many good and charitable things, especially for the poor negroes, and one of them took Harry and his mother in. I cannot tell all the kindness the Quaker and his family did to them, giving Harry such good things, and watching lest the trader should come that way; but the greatest joy of all was, one evening, when a tall strong man, called Phineas Fletcher, who was a Quaker, and a great traveller, guided to the village Harry's poor father, George. His master was going to sell him too, and he had run away, and searched everywhere for his wife and child, to take them with him to Canada, which you know belongs to England. Oh what a happy meeting that was between George, Eliza, and little Harry. But they could not remain long with the kind Quakers. Their cruel pursuers had found out where they were hid, so they had all to set out again together. This time they were guided by the brave-hearted Phineas Fletcher, and hoped to reach Canada in safety. But their pursuers overtook them, and they had to run to the rocks to defend themselves, as the verses will tell. THE DEFENCE. See Harry's poor father, with pistol in hand, How bravely he takes on the steep rock his stand, Over rivers, and forests, and towns he has passed, And found his Eliza and Harry at last. The kind Quaker folks that wear drab, brown, and gray, To the wanderers gave shelter and bread on their way, Their warm clothes were given them, their waggon was lent, And the strong-armed Phineas along with them went. Their hope was to journey to Canada's shore, Where the trader or master could reach them no more; For the English flag floats there, o'er land and o'er sea, And they knew in its shadow the negro was free. But far is their way through the slave-dealing land, And now on their track comes the trader's fierce band; So for refuge and rest to the rocks they have run, And the father will fight for his wife and his son. He fires on the first up the steep rock that springs, But the trader comes on, shouting all wicked things, Till Phineas right over the crag flings him clear, Saying, "Friend, in my mind thou hast no business here." Then off go the traders to find them more men, And off go the friends in their waggon again; But don't you wish well to the good man for life, Who would fight for his freedom, his child, and his wife? [Illustration: THE DEFENCE. But far is their way through the slave-dealing land, And now on their track comes the trader's fierce band So for refuge and rest to the rocks they have run, And the father will fight for his wife and his son.] After this, George and Eliza, with their little Harry, journeyed on, never stopping, except at the house of another kind friend, to disguise themselves before going on board the steamboat, which at last brought them safe to Canada. ARRIVAL IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM. Look on the travellers kneeling, In thankful gladness, here, As the boat that brought them o'er the lake, Goes steaming from the pier. 'Tis Harry, like a girl disguised, His mother, like a boy, But the father kneels beside them, And their hearts are full of joy. No man can buy or sell them, No trader chase them more, The land of freedom has been gained, The good Canadian shore. And they are strangers on the soil, As poor as poor can be, But the English flag above them floats, They know that they are free. George got employment in a factory, and as he was active and clever in his work, he soon earned enough to take a pretty little house, where they all lived together. Harry grew older, and went to school, where he was a good boy, and never forgot how God had preserved him from the wicked trader, and what his poor mother had suffered to bring him away. His father, George, though he worked all day, was learning too from all sorts of good books, which he used to read by the fire in the evenings. He was ever thinking of the poor heathen kings in Africa, and the negroes they sold for slaves. So at last, when he had learned a great deal, he determined to become a missionary; and, with his wife and family, he embarked for Africa, where he still labours, teaching the poor negroes the glad tidings of the gospel. WHO UNCLE TOM WAS. Now I must tell you something about Uncle Tom, from whom this book is named. He was a negro man, as black as jet, and a slave, belonging to Mr. Shelby, the rich man who at first owned Eliza and Harry. Mr. Shelby had a great estate, and many slaves to cultivate it, but they all loved and respected Tom, for he was a good Christian, and kind to everybody, on which account they used all to call him Uncle. Tom's master was kind to his slaves, and especially to Tom, because he was honest and careful with his property. Tom had a cabin or cottage hard by the rich man's house; it was built of logs cut from great trees; there was a garden in front, with beautiful flowers and strawberries in it; and climbing plants, so common in our country, twined along the walls. Tom had also a wife as black as himself; her name was Chloe, and she cooked for the Shelbys. You will remember how late she kept the trader's dinner when he wanted to pursue Eliza. They had two little sons, with very black faces and curly heads, and a little black baby just beginning to walk. Tom and his family were very happy in that cabin; the poor negroes used to gather there to hear Tom sing hymns and pray, for, as I said, he was a pious man, and the slaves had no other church to go to, for many people in America will not let negroes worship God with them. Mr. Shelby's son, a very clever boy, who had gained many prizes at school, liked Tom too, and used to come teach him to read and write in the evenings, and Tom had great hopes of being able to read the Bible at last. As Chloe was a cook she always contrived to have ready something very nice for Mr. George when he came to teach her goodman, and George would stand with one eye on Tom's copy, and another on the cake she prepared, while the boys and the baby played about them. [Illustration: ARRIVAL IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM. No man can buy or sell them, No trader chase them more, The land of freedom has been gained, The good Canadian shore.] But all those pleasant days came to an end. Mr. Shelby lost his money, and got in debt to a man who dealt in slaves; for that debt he sold little Harry to him, and the rest of it was paid with poor Tom. Think what sad news that was for the cabin! TOM AND HIS WIFE HAVE HEARD THAT HE IS SOLD. The work of the winter day is o'er, But Tom and his wife are weeping sore Beside the hearth, where you can't forget How the cakes were baked, and the copy set. Oh, never again will Tom be taught! From his master, by wicked trader bought; And he will carry poor Tom next day, From children, and wife, and home away. His home--It was low of roof and wall, But there had been room and love for all, The peace that waits on contented days, The voice of prayer and the hymn of praise. And Tom himself, he is black of skin, But, children, his soul is fair within, His life is good and his heart is brave, And yet they have sold him as a slave. [Illustration: TOM AND HIS WIFE HAVE HEARD THAT HE IS SOLD. The fire-light shows on the lowly bed, Each dusky face, and each curly head Of his little children, sound asleep; Oh well may their poor tired mother weep!] The fire light shows on the lowly bed, Each dusky face, and each curly head Of his little children, sound asleep; Oh well may their poor tired mother weep! Now Tom is trying to soothe her woe: "Dear Chloe 'tis best that I should go, Our babes and you will live safely here, And I may be far, but God is near." "Yet think of me, love, when I am gone, And the days of the pleasant spring come on. Don't grieve, dear wife"--and his tears fell fast. "You know we will meet in heaven at last." Tom might have fled away, as Eliza did with Harry, but he took pity on Mr. Shelby for being in debt to the trader, and also feared that if he fled, his wife and children would be sold to pay it. Poor Chloe wept sore, and so did the boys, and all the negroes on the estate were very sorry to part with him. George Shelby was from home when Tom was sold, and knew nothing about the matter. But he returned that very day, and the moment he learned that Tom was gone, he saddled his horse and rode after him. When he came up to the waggon he sprang into it, and throwing his arms round Tom's neck, began sobbing and scolding most violently. "I declare it's a shame! I don't care what they say, any of them. It's a nasty mean shame! If I was a man, they shouldn't do it," said George. "Oh, Mas'r George! this does me good!" said Tom. "I couldn't bear to go off without seein' ye! It does me real good, ye can't tell!" Here Tom made some movement of his feet, and George's eyes fell on the fetters. "What a shame!" he exclaimed, lifting his hands. "I'll knock that old fellow down--I will!" "No, you won't, Mas'r George; and you must not talk so loud. It won't help me any, to anger him." "Well, I won't, then, for your sake; but only to think of it--isn't it a shame? They never sent for me, nor sent me any word, and, if it hadn't been for Tom Lincoln, I shouldn't have heard it. I tell you, I blew them up well, all of them, at home." "That wasn't right, I'm feared, Mas'r George." "Can't help it! I say it's a shame! Look here, Uncle Tom," said he, turning his back to the rest of the party, and speaking in a mysterious tone, "_I've brought you my dollar!_" "Oh, I couldn't think o' takin' it, Mas'r George, no ways in the world," said Tom, quite moved. "But you shall take it," said George. "Look here; I told Aunt Chloe I'd do it, and she advised me just to make a hole in it, and put a string through, so you could hang it round your neck, and keep it out of sight, else this mean scamp would take it away. I tell ye, Tom, I want to blow him up! it would do me good." "No, don't, Mas'r George, for it won't do _me_ any good." "Well, I won't, for your sake," said George, busily tying his dollar round Tom's neck; "but there, now, button your coat tight over it, and keep it, and remember, every time you see it, that I'll come down after you, and bring you back. Aunt Chloe and I have been talking about it. I told her not to fear; I'll see to it, and I'll tease father's life out if he don't do it." "O, Mas'r George, ye mustn't talk so about your father! You must be a good boy; remember how many hearts is set on ye. Always keep close to yer mother. Don't be gettin' into them foolish ways boys has of gettin' too big to mind their mothers. Tell ye what, Mas'r George, the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once. Ye'll never see sich another woman, Mas'r George, if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her, thar's my own good boy--you will, now, won't ye?" "Yes, I will, Uncle Tom," said George, seriously. "And be careful of yer speaking, Mas'r George. Young boys, when they come to your age, is wilful, sometimes--it's natur they should be. But real gentlemen, such as I hopes you'll be, never lets fall no words that isn't respectful to thar parents. Ye an't offended, Mas'r George?" "No indeed, Uncle Tom; you always did give me good advice." "I's older, ye know," said Tom, stroking the boy's fine curly head with his large, strong hand, but speaking in a voice as tender as a woman's--"and I sees all that's bound up in you. O, Mas'r George, you has everything--larnin', privileges, readin', writin'--and you'll grow up to be a great, learned, good man, and all the people on the place, and your mother and father'll be so proud on ye! Be a good mas'r, like yer father; and be a Christian, like yer mother. Remember yer Creator in the days o' yer youth, Mas'r George. And now, Good-bye, Mas'r George," said Tom, looking fondly and admiringly at him. "God Almighty bless you!" Away George went, and Tom looked, till the clatter of his horse's heels died away, the last sound or sight of his home. When the trader was disappointed in catching Harry, he put handcuffs on poor Tom to prevent his escape, and took him away in a waggon to a town, where he bought more slaves--children from their mothers, and husbands from their wives--some of them as black as Tom, and some nearly white, like Harry and his mother. Then he put them all on board of a steamboat going down the great river Mississippi. You will see on the map that it is one of the largest rivers in America. There are many towns on its banks, and steamboats go from one to another carrying goods and passengers; and the trader seeing that Tom was quiet and peaceable, took off the handcuffs, and allowed him to go about the steamboat helping the sailors, for Tom would help anybody. There were many people on board besides the negroes, and among them a rich gentleman called Mr. St. Clair. He was returning home from a visit to his relations, who lived in New England, and had with him his little daughter Eva, and his cousin Miss Feely. Eva had long yellow curls, and a fair, pretty face; better than that, she had the fear of God and the love of all goodness in her heart. Always cheerful, meek, and kindly, everybody loved Eva St. Clair, especially her father, for she was his only daughter. Tom saw her play about the steamboat, for they were days and nights on the voyage. Eva used to come close and look at him, when he sat thinking of Chloe and the children. The little one was shy, notwithstanding all her busy interest in everything going on, and it was not easy to tame her. But at last Tom and she got on quite confidential terms. "What's little missy's name?" said Tom at last, when he thought matters were ripe to push such an inquiry. "Evangeline St. Clair," said the little one, "though papa and everybody else call me Eva. Now, what's your name?" "My name's Tom; the little children used to call me Uncle Tom, away back thar in Kentucky." "Then, I mean to call you Uncle Tom, because, you see, I like you," said Eva. "So, Uncle Tom, where are you going?" "I don't know, Miss Eva." "Don't know?" said Eva. "No. I am going to be sold to somebody. I don't know who." "My papa can buy you," said Eva, quickly; "and if he buys you, you will have good times. I mean to ask him to, this very day." "Thank you, my little lady," said Tom. The boat here stopped at a small landing to take in wood, and Eva, hearing her father's voice, bounded nimbly away. Tom rose up, and went forward to offer his service in wooding, and soon was busy among the hands. Eva and her father were standing together by the railings to see the boat start from the landing-place; the wheel had made two or three revolutions in the water, when, by some sudden movement, the little one suddenly lost her balance, and fell sheer over the side of the boat, into the water. Her father, scarce knowing what he did, was plunging in after her, but was held back by some behind him, who saw that more efficient aid had followed his child. Tom was standing just under her on the lower deck as she fell. He saw her strike the water and sink, and was after her in a moment. A broad-chested, strong-armed fellow, it was nothing for him to keep afloat in the water, till, in a moment or two, the child rose to the surface, and he caught her in his arms, and, swimming with her to the boat-side, handed her up, all dripping, to the grasp of hundreds of hands, which, as if they had all belonged to one man, were stretched eagerly out to receive her. A few moments more, and her father bore her, dripping and senseless, to the ladies' cabin, where she soon recovered. Her father was much rejoiced, and Eva took such a liking for Tom, that she would not rest till the rich Mr. St. Clair had bought him from the trader; and the girl hoped that she would one day get her father coaxed to set him free. From that day Tom and Eva were great friends. The steamer brought them safely to New Orleans. The trader took all his slaves away to sell them in that town; and Tom was taken to Mr. St. Clair's fine house, where you see him and Eva. You may also see the doings of little Topsy, a poor negro child, whom Mr. St. Clair bought, and made a present of to his cousin Miss Feely. EVA PUTTING A WREATH OF FLOWERS ROUND TOM'S NECK. Poor Tom is far from his cottage now, From his own good wife, and children three, Where coffee, and rice, and cedars grow, By a wide old river like the sea. And he has a master rich and kind, With all that his heart can well desire, But homeward still goes the negro's mind, To the curly heads by his cottage fire. He the gentle Eva's life did save, When over the great ship's side she fell, And brought her up from the drowning wave,-- So Eva had grown to love him well. She will read to Tom for hours on hours, And sit with him on the grass all day; You see she is wreathing pretty flowers, About his neck, in her pleasant play. Different in colour and in years Are the negro man and that fair child's face; But a likeness in God's sight appears, For both are the children of his grace. [Illustration: EVA PUTTING A WREATH OF FLOWERS ROUND TOM'S NECK. She will read to Tom for hours on hours, And sit with him on the grass all day; You see she is wreathing pretty flowers About his neck, in her pleasant play.] TOPSY AT THE LOOKING GLASS. See little Topsy at the glass quite gay, Her mistress has forgot the keys to-day, So she has rummaged every drawer, and dressed Herself out in Miss Feely's very best. Mark where she stands! the shawl of gorgeous red Wound like a Turk's great turban round her head; A finer shawl far trailing on the floor, Just shews her bare black elbows, and no more. With what an air she flaunts the ivory fan, And tries to step as stately as she can, Mincing fine words to her own shadow, "Dear! How very ungenteel the folks are here!" But while that shadow only Topsy sees, Back comes the careful lady for her keys, And finds her in the grandeur all arrayed-- Poor Topsy will be punished, I'm afraid. Now it is wrong, as every reader knows, To rummage people's drawers, and wear their clothes; But Topsy is a negro child, you see, Who never learned to read like you and me. A child whom bad men from her mother sold, Whom a harsh mistress used to cuff and scold, Whom no one taught or cared for all her days, No wonder that the girl had naughty ways. [Illustration: TOPSY AT THE LOOKING-GLASS. Mark where she stands! the shawl of gorgeous red Wound like a Turk's great turban round her head, A finer shawl for trailing on the floor, Just shows her bare black elbows, and no more.] No home, no school, no Bible she had seen, How bless'd besides poor Topsy we have been! Yet boys and girls among ourselves, I've known Puffed up with praise for merits not their own. The copy by some clever school-mate penned, The witty saying picked up from a friend, Makes many a miss and master look as fine, As if they coined the words or penned the line. But none can keep such borrowed plumes as these, For some one still comes back to find the keys, And so they are found out, it comes to pass, Just like poor Topsy at the looking-glass. TOPSY BRINGING FLOWERS TO EVA. Poor Topsy, trying to be kind, Has brought a bunch of garden flowers To Eva, when she lies reclined Through the bright summer's sultry hours. For sickness hangs on Eva now, She can no longer run or play, Her cheek is pale, her voice is low, And there she lies the livelong day. Yet Eva does not fear to die, She knows a better home remains For her, beyond the great blue sky, Where comes no sickness, tears, or pains. [Illustration: TOPSY BRINGING FLOWERS TO EVA. "Oh mother dear, let Topsy stay," Says Eva in her gentle mood, "She brought such pretty flowers to-day, Indeed she's trying to be good."] For in her happier days of health She read and prized her Bible true, Above this poor world's pride or wealth, And loved her blessed Saviour too. And she like him was kind to all, And pity on poor Topsy had, Because the rest would scold and call Her names, for being black and bad. So Eva strove to make her good, And told her, of all tales the best, How Christ came down to shed his blood, That sinners might be saved and blest. Poor Topsy tried to understand-- None ever taught her so before-- And brought the sweet flowers in her hand,-- The negro girl could do no more. But Eva's proud mamma comes in With scornful look and frown severe, She cries, "begone, you nasty thing! In all the world what brings you here?" "Oh mother dear, let Topsy stay," Says Eva in her gentle mood, "She brought such pretty flowers to-day, Indeed she's trying to be good." "I'm going fast, where there will be No difference, but in sins forgiven, And mother it might chance that we Would bring poor Topsy flowers in heaven." [Illustration: DEATH OF EVA. Oh, swift and sad were the tears that fell, As her gifts among them passed, And Tom, he got the first fair curl, And Topsy got the last.] THE DEATH OF EVA. There is peace on Eva's wasted brow, And a soft light in her eye; But her father's heart grows hopeless now, For he knows that she must die. Yet the thought is kind and the trust is true, As she takes him by the hand,-- Dear father I will look for you In the light of God's own land. "Oh let them cut the long, long curls That flow about my head, And let our poor kind negroes come For a moment round my bed. "They have smoothed and stroked it many a day In their kindly sport, and care, And it may be they will think of me When they see that curling hair." The negroes loved her, young and old, With a fond and deep regard, For Eva's look was never sour, And her words were never hard. And her old nurse by the bedside stood, Sore sobbing in her woe, That so many sinners here should stay, And the good and young should go. "Dear nurse," said Eva, "I go home To the happiest home of all; Where never an evil thing will come, And never a tear will fall. "And I will hope each one to see, That blessed home within; Where Christ himself will set us free From the bonds of death and sin." Oh, swift and sad were the tears that fell, As her gifts among them passed, And Tom, he got the first fair curl, And Topsy got the last. But first and last alike were given, With some words of love and prayer; And it may be, hearts were helped to heaven, By the links of that soft hair. When Eva was dead and buried, Tom missed her sore, but he knew it was the will of God, and tried to comfort his master. Mr. St. Clair intended to set him free for Eva's sake. He was a kind man, but given to delay, and one day a wicked man stabbed him in a coffee-house, when he was trying to settle a quarrel. Mrs. St. Clair was a proud, hard-hearted woman, who cared for nobody but herself. She sold all the negroes, and Tom among them, to a cruel cotton planter, called Legree, and you shall see how he behaved. LEGREE STRIKING TOM. Tom's good wife Chloe, far at home, And his boys so blythe and black, Are all working hard, in hopes to win The dollars, to buy him back. And George, who taught him long ago, Has many a pleasant plan, To pay his price, and set him free. When he comes to be a man. But little does that wicked man, In his angry madness, know, That God himself will take account Of each cruel word and blow. And children dear, who see him here, At night and morning pray, That you may never have aught like this Laid up for the judgment day! By the time all these things happened, George Shelby had grown up; but when he came to buy back Tom, the pious, kindly negro, had been so ill-treated by that cruel planter, because he tried to save the other slaves from his evil temper, that he lay dying in an old shed; and there was no law to punish the wicked planter, because Tom was black. When George entered the shed where Tom lay, he felt his head giddy and his heart sick. "Is it possible?" said he, kneeling down by him. "Uncle Tom, my poor, poor old friend!" Something in the voice penetrated to the ear of the dying. He smiled, and said-- "Jesus can make a dying bed Feel soft as downy pillows are." Tears fell from the young man's eyes as he bent over his poor friend. "O, dear Uncle Tom! do wake--do speak once more! Look up. Here's Mas'r George--your own little Mas'r George. Don't you know me?" "Mas'r George!" said Tom, opening his eyes, and speaking in a feeble voice--"Mas'r George!" He looked bewildered. Slowly the idea seemed to fill his soul; and the vacant eye became fixed and brightened, the whole face lighted up, the hard hands clasped, and tears ran down the cheeks. "Bless the Lord' it is--it is--it's all I wanted! They haven't forgot me. It warms my soul; it does my old heart good! Now I shall die content! Bless the Lord, O my soul!" He began to draw his breath with long, deep aspirations; and his broad chest rose and fell heavily. The expression of his face was that of a conqueror. "Who--who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" he said, in a voice that contended with mortal weakness; and with a smile he fell asleep. Beyond the boundaries of the plantation George had noticed a dry, sandy knoll, shaded by a few trees; there they made a grave for poor Tom. "Shall we take off the cloak, mas'r?" said the negroes, when the grave was ready. "No, no; bury it with him. It's all I can give you now, poor Tom, and you shall have it." They laid him in; and the men shovelled away silently. They banked it up, and laid green turf over it. "You may go, boys," said George, slipping a quarter dollar into the hand of each. They lingered about, however. "If young mas'r would please buy us," said one. "We'd serve him so faithful!" said the other. "Do, mas'r, buy us, please!" "I can't--I can't," said George, with difficulty, motioning them off; "it's impossible!" The poor fellows looked dejected, and walked off in silence. "Witness, eternal God," said George, kneeling on the grave of his poor friend--"O, witness that, from this hour, I will do _what one man can_ to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!" There is no monument to mark the last resting-place of poor Tom. He needs none. His Lord knows where he lies, and will raise him up immortal, to appear with Him when He shall appear in his glory. [Illustration: LEGREE STRIKING TOM. But little does that wicked man, In his angry madness, know, That God himself will take account Of each cruel word and blow.] LITTLE EVA SONG. UNCLE TOM'S GUARDIAN ANGEL. WORDS BY JOHN G. WHITTIER . . . . MUSIC BY MANUEL EMILIO. [Illustration: Music] Dry the tears for holy Eva! With the blesséd angels leave her; Of the form so sweet and fair, Give to earth the tender care. For the golden locks of Eva, Let the sunny south land give her Flow'ry pillow of repose, Orange bloom and budding rose, Orange bloom and budding rose. All is light and peace with Eva; There the darkness cometh never; Tears are wiped, and fetters fall, And the Lord is all in all. Weep no more for happy Eva; Wrong and sin no more shall grieve her, Care, and pain, and weariness, Lost in love so measureless! Gentle Eva, loving Eva, Child confessor, true believer, Listener at the Master's knee, "Suffer such to come to me." O for faith like thine, sweet Eva, Lighting all the solemn river, And the blessing of the poor, Wafting to the heavenly shore. THE END. 
20438	----	[Illustration: "'THANK THE LORD! _NOW I CAN SEE TO LOOK FOR 'EM!_'"] MORIAH'S MOURNING and Other Half-Hour Sketches By RUTH MCENERY STUART _Author of "In Simpkinsville" "A Golden Wedding" etc._ WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON AND NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1898 Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers. _All rights reserved._ _Printed in New York, U.S.A._ CONTENTS PAGE MORIAH'S MOURNING 3 AN OPTICAL DILEMMA 19 THE SECOND MRS. SLIMM 37 APOLLO BELVEDERE. A CHRISTMAS EPISODE OF THE PLANTATION 53 NEAREST OF KIN (ON THE PLANTATION) 71 THE DEACON'S MEDICINE 93 TWO GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE 113 THE REV. JORDAN WHITE'S THREE GLANCES 131 LADY. A MONOLOGUE OF THE COW-PEN 157 A PULPIT ORATOR 165 AN EASTER SYMBOL. A MONOLOGUE OF THE PLANTATION 175 CHRISTMAS AT THE TRIMBLES' 181 A MINOR CHORD 211 ILLUSTRATIONS "'THANK THE LORD! _NOW I CAN SEE TO LOOK FOR 'EM!_'" _Frontispiece_ "A SURPRISED AND SMILING MAN WAS SITTING AT HER POLISHED KITCHEN TABLE" _Facing p._ 8 "'I'M AC-CHILLY MOST AFEERD _TO_ SEE YOU CONVERTED'" " 40 "'I PROMISED HIM I'D PUT ON MO'NIN' FOR HER SOON AS I MARRIED INTO DE FAMILY'" " 74 "SAYS SHE, 'OPEN YORE MOUTH!' AN' OF CO'SE I OPENED IT" " 98 "I DES LETS 'EM LOOSE P'OMISKYUS, TELL EV'YBODY SEE BLUE LIGHTNIN'" " 134 "SALVATION'S KYAR IS MOVIN'!" " 148 "'WON'T YER, PLEASE, SIR, SPELL DAT WORD OUT FUR ME SLOW?'" " 168 MORIAH'S MOURNING Moriah was a widow of a month, and when she announced her intention of marrying again, the plantation held its breath. Then it roared with laughter. Not because of the short period of her mourning was the news so incredible. But by a most exceptional mourning Moriah had put herself upon record as the most inconsolable of widows. So prompt a readjustment of life under similar conditions was by no means unprecedented in colored circles. The rules governing the wearing of the mourning garb are by no means stringent in plantation communities, and the widow who for reasons of economy or convenience sees fit to wear out her colored garments during her working hours is not held to account for so doing if she appear at all public functions clad in such weeds as she may find available. It is not even needful, indeed, that her supreme effort should attain any definite standard. Anybody can collect a few black things, and there is often an added pathos in the very incongruity of some of the mourning toilettes that pass up the aisles of the colored churches. Was not the soul of artlessness expressed in the first mourning of a certain young widow, for instance, who sewed upon her blue gown all the black trimming she could collect, declaring that she "would 'a' dyed de frock th'oo an' th'oo 'cep'n' it would 'a' swunked it up too much"? And perhaps her sympathetic companions were quite as _naïve_ as she, for, as they aided her in these first hasty stitches, they poured upon her wounded spirit the healing oil of full and sympathetic approval, as the following remarks will testify. "Dat frock mo'ns all right, now de black bows is on it." "You kin put any colored frock in mo'nin' 'cep'n' a red one. Sew black on red, an' it laughs in yo' face." "I'm a-sewin' de black fringe on de josey, Sis Jones, 'case fringe hit mo'ns a heap mo'nfuler 'n ribbon do." Needless to say, a license so full and free as this found fine expression in a field of flowering weeds quite rare and beautiful to see. Moriah had proven herself in many ways an exceptional person even before the occasion of her bereavement, and in this, contrary to all precedent, she had rashly cast her every garment into the dye-pot, sparing not even so much as her underwear. Moriah was herself as black as a total eclipse, tall, angular, and imposing, and as she strode down the road, clad in the sombre vestments of sorrow, she was so noble an expression of her own idea that as a simple embodiment of dignified surrender to grief she commanded respect. The plantation folk were profoundly impressed, for it had soon become known that her black garb was not merely a thing of the surface. "Moriah sho' does mo'n for Numa. She mo'ns f'om de skin out." Such was popular comment, although it is said that one practical sister, to whom this "inward mo'nin'" had little meaning, ventured so far as to protest against it. "Sis Moriah," she said, timidly, as she sat waiting while Moriah dressed for church--"Sis Moriah, look ter me like you'd be 'feerd dem black shimmies 'd draw out some sort o' tetter on yo' skin," to which bit of friendly warning Moriah had responded, with a groan, and in a voice that was almost sepulchral in its awful solemnity, "_When I mo'n I mo'n!_" Perhaps an idea of the unusual presence of this great black woman may be conveyed by the fact that when she said, as she was wont to do in speaking of her own name, "I'm named Moriah--after a Bible mountain," there seemed a sort of fitness in the name and in the juxtaposition neither the sacred eminence or the woman suffered a loss of dignity. And this woman it was who, after eight years of respectable wifehood and but four weeks of mourning her lost mate, calmly announced that she was to be married again. The man of her choice--I use the expression advisedly--was a neighbor whom she had always known, a widower whose bereavement was of three months' longer standing than her own. The courtship must have been brief and to the point, for it was positively known that he and his _fiancée_ had met but three times in the interval when the banns were published. He had been engaged to whitewash the kitchen in which she had pursued her vocation as cook for the writer's family. The whitewashing was done in a single morning, but a second coating was found necessary, and it is said by one of her fellow-servants, who professes to have overheard the remark, that while Pete was putting the finishing-touches to the bit of chimney back of her stove, Moriah, who stooped at the oven door beside him, basting a roast turkey, lifted up her stately head and said, archly, breaking her mourning record for the first time by a gleaming display of ivory and coral as she spoke, "Who'd 'a' thought you'd come into my kitchen to do yo' _secon' co'tin'_, Pete?" At which, so says our informant, the whitewash brush fell from the delighted artisan's hands, and in a shorter time than is consumed in the telling, a surprised and smiling man was sitting at her polished kitchen table chatting cosily with his mourning hostess, while she served him with giblets and gravy and rice and potatoes "an' coffee b'iled expressly." [Illustration: "A SURPRISED AND SMILING MAN WAS SITTING AT HER POLISHED KITCHEN TABLE"] It was discovered that the kitchen walls needed a third coating. This took an entire day, "because," so said Pete, "de third coat, hit takes mo' time to soak in." And then came the announcement. Moriah herself, apparently in nowise embarrassed by its burden, bore the news to us on the following morning. There was no visible change of front in her bearing as she presented herself--no abatement of her mourning. "Mis' Gladys," she said, simply, "I come ter give you notice dat I gwine take fo' days off, startin' nex' Sunday." "I hope you are not in any new trouble, Moriah?" I said, sympathetically. "Well, I don' know ef I is or not. Me an' Pete Pointdexter, we done talked it over, an' we come ter de conclusion ter marry." I turned and looked at the woman--at her black garments, her still serious expression. Surely my hearing was playing me false. But catching my unspoken protest, she had already begun to explain. "Dey ain't no onrespec' ter de dead, Mis' Gladys, in _marryin'_," she began. "De onrespec' is in de _carryin's on_ folks does _when_ dey marry. Pete an' me, we 'low ter have eve'ything quiet an' solemncholy--an' pay all due respects--right an' left. Of co'se Pete's chillen stands up fur dey mammy, an' dey don't take no stock in him ma'yin' ag'in. But Ca'line she been dead _long enough_--mos' six mont's--countin' fo' weeks ter de mont'. An' as fur me, I done 'ranged ter have eve'ything did ter show respec's ter Numa." (Numa was her deceased husband.) "De organ-player he gwine march us in chu'ch by de same march he played fur Numa's fun'al, an' look like dat in itse'f is enough ter show de world dat I ain't forgot Numa. An', tell de trufe, Mis' Gladys, ef Numa was ter rise up f'om his grave, I'd sen' Pete a-flyin' so fast you could sen' eggs to market on his coat tail. "You see, de trouble is I done had my eye on Pete's chillen ever sence dey mammy died, an' ef dey ever was a set o' onery, low-down, sassy, no-'count little niggers dat need takin' in hand by a able-bodied step-mammy, dey a-waitin' fur me right yonder in Pete's cabin. My hand has des nachelly itched to take aholt o' dat crowd many a day--an' ever sence I buried Numa of co'se I see de way was open. An' des as soon as I felt like I could bring myse'f to it, I--well--Dey warn't no use losin' time, an' so I _tol' you, missy, dat de kitchen need' white-washin'_." "And so you sent for him--and proposed to him, did you?" "P'opose to who, Mis' Gladys? I'd see Pete in de sinkin' swamp 'fo' I'd p'opose to him!" "Then how did you manage it, pray?" "G'way, Mis' Gladys! Any wide-awake widder 'oman dat kin get a widder man whar he can't he'p but see her move round at her work for two days hand-runnin', an' can't mesmerize him so's he'll ax her to marry him--Um--hm! I'd ondertake ter do dat, even ef I warn't no cook; but wid seasonin's an' flavors to he'p me--Law, chile! dey warn't no yearthly 'scape fur dem chillen! "I would 'a' waited," she added, presently--"I would 'a' waited a reas'nable time, 'cep'n dat Pete started gwine ter chu'ch, an' you know yo'se'f, missy, when a well-favored widder man go ter seek consolation f'om de pulpit, he's might' ap' ter find it in de congergation." As I sat listening to her quiet exposition of her scheme, it seemed monstrous. "And so, Moriah," I spoke now with a ring of real severity in my voice--"and so you are going to marry a man that you confess you don't care for, just for the sake of getting control of his children? I wouldn't have believed it of you." "Well--partly, missy." She smiled a little now for the first time. "Partly on dat account, an' partly on his'n. Pete's wife Ca'line, she was a good 'oman, but she was mighty puny an' peevish; an' besides dat, she was one o' deze heah naggers, an' Pete is allus had a purty hard pull, an' I lay out ter give him a better chance. Eve'y bit o' whitewashin' he'd git ter do 'roun' town, Ca'line she'd swaller it in medicine. But she was a good 'oman, Ca'line was. Heap o' deze heah naggers is good 'omans! Co'se I don't say I _loves_ Pete, but I looks ter come roun' ter 'im in time. Ef I didn't, I wouldn't have him." "And how about his loving you?" "Oh, Mis' Gladys, you is so searching!" She chuckled. "Co'se he _say_ he loves me already better'n he love Ca'line, but of co'se a widder man he feels obleeged ter talk dat-a-way. An' ef he didn't have the manners ter say it, I wouldn't have him, to save his life; but _ef he meant it, I'd despise him_. After Ca'line lovin' de groun' he tread fur nine long yeahs, he ain't got no right ter love _no_ 'oman better'n he love her des 'caze he's a-projec'in' ter git married to 'er. But of co'se, Mis' Gladys, I ca'culates ter outstrip Ca'line in co'se o' time. Ef I couldn't do dat--an' she in 'er grave--_an' me a cook_--I wouldn't count myse'f much. An' den, time I outstrips her an' git him over, heart _an'_ soul, I'll know it by de signs." "Why will you know it more than you know it now? He can but swear it to you." "Oh no, missy. When de rock bottom of a man's heart warms to a 'oman, he eases off f'om swearin' 'bout it. Deze heah men wha' swear so much, dey swear des as much ter convince deyselves as dey does ter ketch a 'oman's ear. No, missy. Time I got him heart _an'_ soul, I looks for him to commence to th'ow up Ca'line's ways ter me. Heap of 'em does dat des ter ease dey own consciences an' pacify a dead 'oman's ghost. Dat's de way a man nachelly do. But he won't faze me, so long as I holds de fort! An' fur de chillen, co'se quick as I gits 'em broke in I'll see dat dey won't miss Ca'line none. Dat little teether, I done tol' Pete ter fetch her over ter me right away. Time I doctors her wid proper teas, an' washes her in good warm pot-liquor, I'll make a fus'-class baby out'n her." Moriah had always been a good woman, and as she stood before me, laying bare the scheme that, no matter what the conditions, had in it the smallest selfish consideration, I felt my heart warm to her again, and I could not but feel that the little whitewasher--a kindly, hard-pressed family man of slight account--would do well to lay his brood upon her ample bosom. Of course _she_ was marrying _him_, and her acquisition of family would inevitably become pensioners upon our bounty; but this is not a great matter in a land where the so-called "cultivation" of the soil is mainly a question of pruning and selection, and clothes grow upon the commonest bush. As she turned to go, I even offered her my best wishes, and when I laughingly asked her if I might help her with her wedding-dress, she turned and looked at me. "Bless yo' heart, Mis' Gladys," she exclaimed, "_I ain't gwine out o' mo'nin'_! I gwine marry Pete in des what I got on my back. I'll _marry_ him, an' I'll take dem little no-'counts o' his'n, an' I'll make _folks_ out'n 'em 'fo' I gits th'ough wid 'em, ef Gord spares me; but he nee'n't ter lay out ter come in 'twix' me an' my full year o' mo'nin' fur Numa. When I walks inter dat chu'ch, 'cep'n' fur de owange wreaf, which of co'se in a Christian ma'iage I'm boun' ter wear, folks 'll be a heap mo' 'minded o' Numa 'n dey will o' de bridegroom. An' dem chillen o' his'n, which ain't nuver is had no proper mo'nin' fur dey mammy--no mo' 'n what color Gord give 'em in dey skins--I gwine put 'em in special secon' mo'nin', 'cordin' to de time dey ought ter been wearin' it; an' when we walks up de island o' de chu'ch, dey got ter foller, two by two, keepin' time ter de fun'al march. You come ter de weddin', Mis' Gladys, an' I lay you'll 'low dat I done fixed it so dat, while I'm a-lookin' out fur de livin', de dead ain't gwine feel slighted, right nur left." She was starting away again, and once more, while I wished her joy, I bade her be careful to make no mistake. A note of sympathy in my voice must have touched the woman, for she turned, and coming quite up to me, laid her hand upon my lap. "Missy," she said, "I don't believe I gwine make no mistake. You know I allus did love chillen, an' I ain't nuver is had none o' my own, an' dis heah seemed like my chance. An' I been surveyin' de lan'scape o'er tryin' ter think about eve'ything I can do _ter start right_. I'm a-startin' wid dem chillen, puttin' 'em in mo'nin' fur Ca'line. Den, fur Pete, I gwine ring de changes on Ca'line's goodness tell he ax me, _for Gord sake, ter stop_, so, in years ter come, he won't have nothin' ter th'ow up ter me. An' you know de reason I done tooken fo' days off, missy? I gwine on a weddin'-trip down ter Pine Bluff, an' I wants time ter pick out a few little weddin'-presents to fetch home ter Pete." "Pete!" I cried. "Pete is going with you, of course?" "Pete gwine wid me? Who sesso? No, ma'am! Why, missy, how would it look fur me ter go a-skylarkin' roun' de country wid Pete--_an' me in mo'nin'_? "No, indeedy! I gwine leave Pete home ter take keer dem chillen, an' I done set him a good job o' whitewashin' to do while I'm gone, too. De principles' weddin'-present I gwine fetch Pete is a fiddle. Po' Pete been wantin' a good fiddle all his life, an' he 'ain't nuver is had one. But, of co'se, I don't 'low ter let him play on it tell de full year of mo'nin' is out." AN OPTICAL DILEMMA Elder Bradley had lost his spectacles, and he was in despair. He was nearly blind without them, and there was no one at home to hunt them for him. His wife had gone out visiting for the afternoon; and he had just seen Dinah, the cook, stride gleefully out the front gate at the end of the lane, arrayed in all her "s'ciety uniform," on her way to a church funeral. She would not be home until dark. It was growing late in the afternoon, and the elder had to make out his report to be read at the meeting of the session this evening. It _had to be done_. He could not, from where he sat, distinguish the pink lion's head from the purple rose-buds on the handsome new American Brussels rug that his wife had bought him as a Christmas gift--to lay under her sewing-machine--although he could put out his boot and touch it. How could he expect to find anything so small as a pair of spectacles? The elder was a very old man, and for years his focal point had been moving off gradually, until now his chief pleasures of sight were to be found out-of-doors, where the distant views came gratefully to meet him. He could more easily distinguish the dark glass insulators from the little sparrows that sometimes came to visit them upon the telegraph pole a quarter of a mile away than he could discriminate between the beans and the pie that sometimes lay together on his dinner plate. Indeed, when his glasses stayed lost over mealtimes, as they had occasionally done, he had, after vainly struggling to locate the various viands upon his plate and suffering repeated palatal disappointments, generally ended by stirring them all together, with the declaration that he would at least get one certain taste, and abide by it. This would seem to show him to have been an essentially amiable man, even though he was occasionally mastered by such outbursts of impatience as this; for, be it said to his credit, he always left a clean plate. The truth is, Elder Bradley was an earnest, good man, and he had tried all his life, in a modest, undeclared way, to be a Christian philosopher. And he would try it now. He had been, for an hour after his mishap, walking more rapidly than was his habit up and down the entire length of the hall that divided the house into two distinct sides, and his head had hung low upon his bosom. He had been pondering. Or perhaps he had been praying. His dilemma was by no means a thing to be taken lightly. Suddenly realizing, however, that he had squandered the greater part of a valuable afternoon in useless repining, he now lifted his head and glanced about him. "I'm a-goin' to find them blame spec's--eyes or no eyes!" He spoke with a steady voice that had in it the ring of the invincible spirit that dares failure. And now, having resolved and spoken, he turned and entered the dining-room--and sat down. It was here that he remembered having last used the glasses. He would sit here and think. It was a rather small room, which would have been an advantage in ordinary circumstances. But to the elder its dimensions were an insurmountable difficulty. How can one compass a forty-rod focus within the limits of a twelve by sixteen foot room? But if his eyes could not help him, his hands must. He had taken as few steps as possible in going about the room, lest he should tread upon the glasses unawares; and now, stepping gingerly, and sometimes merely pushing his feet along, he approached his writing-table and sat down before it. Then he began to feel. It was a tedious experiment and a hazardous one, and after a few moments of nervous and fruitless groping, he sought relief in expression. "That's right! turn over!" he exclaimed. "I s'pose you're the red ink! Now if I could jest capsize the mucilage-bottle an' my bag o' snuff, an' stir in that Seidlitz-powder I laid out here to take, it would be purty cheerful for them fiddle-de-dees an' furbelows thet's layin' everywhere. I hope they'll ketch it ef anything does! They's nothin' I feel so much like doin' ez takin' a spoon to the whole business!" The elder was a popular father, grandfather, uncle, husband, and Bible-class teacher to a band of devoted women of needle-work and hand-painting proclivities, and his writing-table was a favorite target for their patiently wrought love-missiles. One of the strongest evidences of the old man's kindliness of nature was that it was only when he was wrought up to the point of desperation, as now, that he spoke his mind about the gewgaws which his soul despised. There are very few good old elders in the Presbyterian Church who care to have pink bows tied on their penholders, or to be reminded at every turn that they are hand-painted and daisy-decked "Dear Grandfathers." It is rather inconvenient to have to dodge a daisy or a motto every time one wants to dry a letter on his blotting-pad, and the hand-painted paper-cutter was never meant to cut anything. "Yes," the good old man repeated, "ef I knowed I could stir in every blame thing thet's got a ribbon bow or a bo'quet on it, I'd take a spoon to this table now--an' stir the whole business up--an' start fresh!" Still, as his hand tipped a bottle presently, he caught it and set it cautiously back in its place. He had begun now to systematically feel over the table, proceeding regularly with both hands from left to right and back again, until on a last return trip he discerned the edge of the mahogany next his body. And then he said--and he said it with spirit: "Dod blast it! They ain't here--nowheres!" He sat still now for a moment in thought. And then he began to remember that he had sat talking to his wife at the sewing-machine just before she left the house. He rose and examined the table of the machine and the floor beneath it. Then he tried the sideboard and the window-sill, where he had read his morning chapter from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapter viii. He even shook out the leaves of his Testament upon the floor between his knees and felt for them there. There had been a Biblical surrender of this sort more than once in the past, and he never failed to go to the Good Book for relief, even when, as now, he distinctly remembered having worn the glasses after his daily reading. Failing to find them here, he suddenly ran his hand over his forehead with an eager movement. Many a time these very spectacles had come back to him there, and, strange to say, it was always one of the last places he remembered to examine. But they were not there now. He chuckled, even in his despair, as he dropped his hand. "I'll look there ag'in after a while. Maybe when he's afeerd I'll clair lose my soul, he'll fetch 'em back to me!" The old man had often playfully asserted that his "guardeen angel" found his lost glasses, and laid them back on his head for him when he saw him tried beyond his strength. And maybe he was right. Who can tell? That there is some sort of so-called "supernatural" intervention in such matters there seems to be little doubt. There is a race--of brownies, probably, or maybe they are imps--whose business in life seems to be to catch up any needed trifle--a suddenly dropped needle, the very leaf in the morning paper that the reader held a moment ago and that holds "continuations," the scissors just now at his elbow, his collar button--and to hide it until the loser swears his ultimate, most desperate swear! When the profanity is satisfactory, the little fellows usually fetch back the missing article, lay it noiselessly under the swearer's nose, and vanish. At other times, when the victim persistently declines profanity, they have been known to amiably restore the articles after a reasonable time, and to lay them so absurdly in evidence that the hitherto forbearing man breaks his record in a volley of imprecations. When this happens, if one has presence of mind to listen, he can distinctly hear a fine metallic titter along the tops of the furniture and a hasty scamper, as of tiny scurrying feet. This may sound jocund, but the writer testifies that it is true. Of course when the victim is a lady the pixies do not require of them men's oaths. But they will have only her best. When the elder had tried in vain all the probable places where the glasses might be hidden, he began to realize that there was only one thing left for him to do. He must feel all over the floor. He was a fat old man and short of neck. For five years he had realized a feeling of thankfulness that the Presbyterian form of worship permitted standing in prayer. It hurt him to kneel. But nothing could hurt him so much as to fail to hand in his report to-night. Indeed, the missionary collection would be affected by it. It _must be written_. He found a corner in the room and got down on his marrow-bones, throwing his hands forward and bringing them back in far-reaching curves, as one swimming. This was hard work, and before many minutes great drops of perspiration were falling upon the carpet and the old man's breath came in quick gasps. "Ef I jest had the blame things _for a minute_ to slip on my eyes, why, _I could find 'em_--easy enough!" he ejaculated--desperation in his voice. And then he proceeded to say a number of things that were lacking in moderation, and consequently very sinful--in an elder of the church. The "bad words" spoken in the vacant house fell accusingly upon the speaker's ears, and they must have startled him, for he hastened to add: "I don't see where no sense o' jestice comes in, nohow, in allowin' a man on the very eve of doin' his Christian duty to lose his most important wherewithal!" This plea was no doubt in mild extenuation of the explosive that had preceded it, and as he turned and drew himself forward by his elbows to compass a new section of the room, which, by-the-way, seemed suddenly expanded in size, he began to realize that the plea was in itself most sinful--even more so than the outburst, perhaps, being an implication of divine injustice. A lump came into his throat, and as he proceeded laboriously along on his dry swim, he felt for a moment in danger of crying. Of course this would never do, but there was just so much emotion within him, and it had begun to ferment. Before he realized his excitement his arms were flying about wildly and he was shrieking in a frenzy. "But _I must have 'em_! I _must have 'em_! I must, I say; O Lord, I must--I MUST HAVE THEM SPECTACLES! Lor-r-d, I have work to do--FOR THEE--an' I am eager to perform it. All I ask is FIVE MINUTES' USE O' MY EYES, so thet I may pursue this search in patience--" His voice broke in a sob. And just now it was that his left hand, fumbling over the foot of the sewing-machine treadle, ran against a familiar bit of steel wire. If it had connected with an ordinary electric battery, the resulting shock could scarcely have been more pronounced. There was something really pathetic in the spasmodic grasp with which he seized the glasses, and as he rose to a sitting posture and lifted them to his eyes, his hand shook pitifully. "Thank the Lord! _Now I can see to look for 'em!_" And as he tremblingly brought the curved ends of the wire around his ears he exclaimed with fervor, "Yas, Lord, with Thy help I will keep my vow--an' pursue this search in patience." His wet, red face beamed with pleasure over the recovery of his near vision. So happy was he, indeed, in the new possession, that, instead of rising, he sat still in the middle of the floor, running his eyes with rapid scrutiny over the carpet near him. He sat here a long time--even forgetting his discomfort, while he turned as on a pivot as the search required. Though the missing articles did not promptly appear at his side, Bradley felt that he was having a good time, and so he was, comparatively. Of course he would find the glasses presently. He looked at his watch. What a joy to see its face! He would still have time to do the report, if he hurried a little. He began to rise by painful stages. "Lemme see! The last thing I done was to open the sideboa'd an' cut a piece o' pie an' eat it. I _must_ o' had my glasses on then. I ricollec' it was sweet-potato pie, an' it was scorched on one side. Lordy! but what a pleasure it is to look for a thing when a person _can_ look!" He crossed over to the sideboard. "Yas"--he had opened the door and was cutting another piece of pie. "Yas. Sweet-potato pie, an' burnt on one side--the side thet's left. Yas, an' I'll leave it ag'in!" He chuckled as he took a deep bite. "Of co'se I _must 'a'_ had 'em on _when I cut the pie_, or I couldn't 've _saw_ it so distinc'--'an I finished that slice a-settin' down talkin' to her at the sewin'-machine. Ricollec' I told _her_ how mother used to put cinnamon in hers. I'll go set there ag'in, an' maybe by lookin' 'round--They might 'a' dropped in her darnin'-basket." It was while he sat here, running one hand through the basket and holding the slice of pie in the other, that he heard a step, and, looking up, he saw his wife standing in the door. "Why, Ephraim! What on earth!" she exclaimed. "I lef you there eatin' that pie fo' hours ago, an' I come back an' find you settin' there yet! You cert'n'y 'ain't forgot to make out yo' report?" "Forgot nothin', Maria." He swallowed laboriously as he spoke. "I 'ain't done a thing sence you been gone but look for my glasses--not a blame thing. An' I'm a-lookin' for 'em yet." Mrs. Bradley was frightened. She walked straight up to her husband and took his hand. "Ephraim," she said, gently, and as she spoke she drew the remainder of the pie from his yielding fingers--"Ephraim, I wouldn't eat any mo' o' that heavy pie ef I was you. You ain't well. Ef you can't make no mo' headway'n that on yo' favor_ite_ pie in fo' hours, you're shorely goin' to be took sick." She took her handkerchief and wiped his forehead. And then she added, with a sweet, wifely tenderness: "To prove to you thet you ain't well, honey, yo' glasses are on yo' nose right now. You better go lay down." Bradley looked straight into her face for some moments, but he did not even blink. Then he said, in an awe-stricken voice: "Ef what you say is true, Maria--an' from the clairness with which I see the serious expression of yo' countenance I reckon it must be so--ef it _is_ so--" He paused here, and a new light came into his eyes, and then they filled with tears. "Why, Maria honey, _of co'se it's so_! I know when I found 'em! But I was so full o' the thought thet _ef I jest had my sight_ I could _look for 'em_ thet I slipped 'em on my nose an' continued the search. Feel my pulse, honey; I've no doubt you're right. I'm a-goin' to have a spell o' sickness." "Yes, dearie, I'm 'feered you are." The good woman drew him over to the lounge and carefully adjusted a pillow to his head. "Now take a little nap, an' I'll send word over to Elder Jones's thet you ain't feelin' well an' can't come to prayer-meetin' to-night. What you need is rest, an' a change o' subject. I jest been over to May Bennett's, an' she's give out thet she an' Pete Sanders has broke off their engagement--an' Joe Legget, why his leg's amputated clean off--an' Susan Tucker's baby had seven spasms an'--" "That so? I'm glad to hear it, wife. But ef you send word over to him thet I ain't well, don't send tell the last minute, please. Ef you was to, he'd come by here, shore--an' they'd be questions ast, an' I couldn't stand it. Jest send word when the second bell starts a-ringin' thet I ain't well. _An' I ain't_, Maria." "I'm convinced o' that, Ephraim--or I wouldn't send the message--an' you know it. We ain't so hard pressed for excuses thet we're goin' to lie about it. I knowed you wasn't well ez soon ez I see that piece o' pie." Bradley coughed a little. "Appearances is sometimes deceitful, Maria. I hadn't wrastled with that pie ez unsuccessful ez I seemed. That was the second slice I'd et sence you left. No, the truth is, I lost my glasses, an' I got erritated an' flew into a temper an' said things. An' the Lord, He punished me. He took my reason away. He gimme the glasses an' denied me the knowledge of 'em. But I'm thankful to Him for lettin' me have 'em--anyhow. Ef I was fo'ordained to search for 'em, it was mighty merciful in Him to loan 'em to me to do it with." THE SECOND MRS. SLIMM Ezra Slimm was a widower of nearly a year, and, as a consequence, was in a state of mind not unusual in like circumstances. True, the said state of mind had not in his case manifested itself in the toilet bloomings, friskiness of demeanor, and protestations of youth renewed which had characterized the first signs of the same in the usual run of Simpkinsville widowers up to date. If he had for several months been mentally casting about for another wife, he had betrayed it by no outward and visible sign. The fact is Ezra's case was somewhat exceptional, as we shall presently see. Although he was quite diminutive in size, there was in his bearing, as with hands clasped behind him he paced up and down before his lonely fireside, a distinct dignity that was not only essentially manly--it was _gentlemanly_. The refinement of feeling underlying this no doubt aggravated the dilemma in which he found himself, and which we cannot sooner comprehend than by attending to his soliloquy as he reviewed his trials in the following somewhat rambling fashion: "No, 'twouldn't never do in the world--never, never. 'Twouldn't never do to marry any o' these girls round here thet knows all my ups an' downs with--with pore Jinny. 'Twouldn't never do. Any girl thet knew thet her husband had been chastised by his first wife the way I've been would think thet ef she got fretted she was lettin' 'im off easy on a tongue-lashin'. An' I s'pose they is times when any woman gits sort o' wrought up, livin' day in an' day out with a man. No, 'twouldn't never do," he repeated, as, thrusting both hands in his pockets, he stopped before the fire, and steadying the top of his head against the mantel, studied the logs for a moment. "An' so the day pore Jinny took it upon herself to lay me acrost her lap an' punish me in the presence of sech ill-mannered persons ez has seen fit to make a joke of it--though I don't see where the fun comes in--well, that day she settled the hash for number two so fur ez this town goes. "No, 'twouldn't never do in the world! Even ef she never throwed it up to me, I'd be suspicious. She couldn't even to say clap her hands together to kill a mosquito less'n I'd think she was insinuatin'. An' jest ez quick ez any man suspicions thet his wife is a-naggin' him intentional, it's good-by happiness. "Ef 'twasn't for that, of co'se they's more'n one young woman roun' this county thet any man might go further an' do worse than git. "Not thet I hold it agin Jinny, now she's gone, but--" He had resumed his promenade, extending it through a second room as he proceeded: "--but it does seem strange how a woman gifted in prayer ez she was, an' with all her instinc's religious the way hers was, should o' been allowed to take sech satisfaction in naggin' the very one she agonized most over in prayer, which I _know_ she done over me, _for I've heerd 'er_. An' ef she had o' once-t mentioned me to the Lord confidential ez a person fitten to commingle with the cherubim an' seraphim, 'stid of a pore lost sinner not fitten to bresh up their wing-feathers for 'em, I b'lieve I might o' give in. I don't wonder I 'ain't never had a call to enter the Kingdom on her ricommendation. 'Twouldn't o' been fair to the innocent angels thet would 'a' been called on to associate with me. That's the way I look at it. "An' yit Jinny 'lowed herself thet my _out'ard ac's_ was good, but bein' ez they didn't spring from a converted _heart_, they was jest nachel _hypocercy_, an' thet ef I'd o' lied an' stole, _or even answered her back_, she'd o' had more hope for me, because, sez she, a 'consistent sinner is ap' to make a consistent Christian.' "She even tol' me one day--pore Jinny! I can see her face light up now when she said it--sez she, 'I'm ac-chilly most afeerd _to_ see you converted, less'n you'll break out in some devilment you hadn't never thought about before-you're that inconsistent.' [Illustration: "'I'M AC-CHILLY MOST AFEERD _TO_ SEE YOU CONVERTED'"] "Sometimes I feel mean to think I don't miss 'er more'n what I do--an' she so lively, too. Tell the truth, I miss them little devils she used to print on the butter pads she set at my plate ez a warnin' to me--seem to me I miss them jest about ez much ez I miss her. "The nearest I ever _did_ come to answerin' her back--'cept, of co'se, the time she chastised me--was the way I used regular to heat my knife-blade good an' hot 'twix' two batter-cakes an' flatten that devil out _de_lib'rate. But he'd be back nex' day, pitchfork an' all. "But with it all Jinny loved me--in her own way, of co'se. Doubt if I'll ever git another to love me ez well; 'n' don't know ez I crave it, less'n she was different dispositioned. "I've done paid her all the respec's I know--put up a fine Bible-texted tombstone for her, an' had her daguerre'type enlarged to a po'tr'it. I don't know's I'm obligated to do any more, 'cep'n, of co'se, to wait till the year's out, which, not havin' no young children in need of a mother, I couldn't hardly do less than do." It was about a week after this that Ezra sat beside his fire reading his paper, when his eye happened to fall upon the following paragraph among the "personals": "The Claybank Academy continues to thrive under the able management of Miss Myrtle Musgrove. That accomplished and popular young lady has abolished the use of the rod, and by substituting the law of kindness she has built up the most flourishing academy in the State." Ezra read the notice three times. Then he laid the paper down, and clapping his hand upon it, exclaimed: "Well, I'll be doggoned ef that ain't the woman for me! _Any_ girl thet could teach a county school an' abolish whuppin'--not only a chance to do it, but a crowd o' young rascals _needin_' it all around 'er, an' her _not doin' it_! An' yit some other persons has been known to strain a p'int to whup a person they 'ain't rightly got no business _to_ whup." He read the notice again. "Purty name that, too, Myrtle Musgrove. Sounds like a girl to go out walkin' with under the myrtle-trees in the grove moonlight nights, Myrtle Musgrove does. "I declare, I ain't to say religious, but I b'lieve that notice was sent to me providential. "Of co'se, maybe she wouldn't look at me ef I ast her; but one thing shore, she _can't if I don't_. "Claybank is a good hund'ed miles from here 'n' I couldn't leave the farm now, noways; besides, the day I start a-makin' trips from home, talk'll start, an' I'll be watched close-ter'n what I'm watched now--ef that's possible. But th' ain't nothin' to hender me _writin_'--ez I can see." This idea, once in his mind, lent a new impulse to Ezra's life, a fresh spring to his gait, so evident to solicitous eyes that during the next week even his dog noticed it and had a way of running up and sniffing about him, as if asking what had happened. An era of hope had dawned for the hitherto downcast man simply because Miss Myrtle Musgrove, a woman he had never seen, had abolished whipping in a distant school. Two weeks passed before Ezra saw his way clearly to write the proposed letter, but he did, nevertheless, in the interval, walk up and down his butter-bean arbor on moonlight nights, imagining Miss Myrtle beside him--Miss Myrtle, named for his favorite flower. He _had_ preferred the violet, but he had changed his mind. Rose-colored crêpe-myrtles were blooming in his garden at the time. Maybe this was why he began to think of her as a pink-faced laughing girl, typified by the blushing flower. Everything was so absolutely real in her setting that the ideal girl walked, a definite embodiment of his fancy, night after night by his side, and whether it was from his life habit or an intuitive fancy, he looked _upward_ into her face. He had always liked tall women. And all this time he was trying to frame a suitable letter to the real "popular and accomplished Miss Musgrove," of Claybank Academy. Finally, however, the ambitious and flowery document was finished. It would be unfair to him whose postscript read, "For Your Eyes alone," to quote in full, for the vulgar gratification of prying eyes, the pathetic missive that told again the old story of a lonely home, the needed woman. But when it was sent, Ezra found the circuit of the butter-bean arbor too circumscribed a promenade, and began taking the imaginary Miss Myrtle with him down through his orchard and potato-patch. It was during these moonlight communings that he seemed to discover that she listened while he talked--a new experience to Ezra--and that even when he expressed his awful doubts as to the existence of a personal devil she only smiled, and thought he might be right. Oh, the joy of such companionship! But, oh, the slowness of the mails! A month passed, and Ezra was beginning to give up all hope of ever having an answer to his letter, when one day it came, a dainty envelope with the Claybank postmark. Miss Musgrove thanked him for his letter. She would see him. It would not be convenient now, but would he not come down to the academy's closing exercises in June--a month later? Until then she was very respectfully his friend, Myrtle Musgrove. The next month was the longest in Ezra's life. Still, the Lord's calendar is faithful, and the sun not a waiter upon the moods of men. In twenty-nine days exactly a timid little man stood with throbbing heart at the door of Claybank Academy, and in a moment more he had slipped into a back seat of the crowded room, where a young orator was ringing Poe's "Bells" through all the varying cadences of his changing voice to a rapt audience of relations and friends. Here unobserved Ezra hoped to recover his self-possession, remove the beads of perspiration one by one from his brow with a corner of his neatly folded handkerchief, and perhaps from this vantage-ground even enjoy the delight of recognizing Miss Myrtle without an introduction. He had barely deposited his hat beneath his chair when there burst upon his delighted vision a radiant, dark-eyed, red-haired creature in pink, sitting head and shoulders above her companions on a bench set at right angles with the audience seats, in front of the house. There were a number of women in the row, and they were without bonnets. Evidently these were the teachers, and of course the pink goddess was Miss Myrtle Musgrove. Ezra never knew whether the programme was long or short. The bells had tintinabulated and musically welled into "Casabianca" which, in turn, had merged into "The Queen o' the May," and presently before he realized it Freedom was ringing in the closing notes of "America," and everybody was standing up, pupils filing out, guests shaking hands, babel reigning, and he had seen only a single, towering, handsome woman in all the assembly. Indeed, it had never occurred to him to doubt his own intuition, until suddenly he heard his own name quite near, and turning quickly, he saw a stout matronly woman of forty years or thereabouts standing beside him, extending her hand. Every unmarried woman is a "young lady" by courtesy south of Mason and Dixon's line. "I knew you as soon as I saw you, Mr. Slimm," she was saying. "I am Miss Musgrove. But you didn't know me," she added, archly, while Ezra made his bravest effort at cordiality, seizing her hand in an agony which it is better not to attempt to describe. Miss Musgrove's face was wholesome, and so kindly that not even a cross-eye had power to spoil it. But Ezra saw only the plain middle-aged woman--the contrast to the blooming divinity whose image yet filled his soul. And he was committed to her who held his hand, unequivocally committed in writing. If he sent heavenward an agonized prayer for deliverance from a trying crisis, his petition was soon answered. And the merciful instrument was even she of the cross-eye. Before he had found need of a word of his own, she had drawn him aside, and was saying: "You see, Mr. Slimm, the only trouble with me is that I am already married." "Married!" gasped Ezra, trying in vain to keep the joy out of his voice. "Married, you--you don't mean--" "Yes, married to my profession--the only husband I shall ever take. But your letter attracted me. I am a Normal School psychology student--a hard name for a well-meaning woman--and it seemed to me you were worth investigating. So I investigated. Then I knew you ought to be helped. And so I sent for you, and I am going to introduce you to three of the sweetest girls in Dixie; and if you can't find a wife among them, then you are not so clever as I think you--that's all about it. And here comes one of them now. Kitty, step here a minute, please. Miss Deems, my friend, Mr. Slimm." And Miss Myrtle Musgrove was off across the room before Ezra's gasp had fully expanded into the smile with which he greeted Miss Kitty Deems, a buxom lass with freckles and dimples enough to hold her own anywhere. Two other delightful young women were presented at intervals during the afternoon in about the same fashion, and but for a certain pink Juno who flitted about ever in sight, Ezra would have confessed only an embarrassment of riches. "And how do you get on with my girls?" was Miss Musgrove's greeting when, late in the evening, she sought Ezra for a moment's _tête-à-tête_. He rubbed his hands together and hesitated. "'Bout ez fine a set o' young ladies ez I ever see," he said, with real enthusiasm; "but, tell the truth, I--but you've a'ready been so kind--but--There she is now! That tall, light-complected one in pink--" "Why, certainly, Mr. Slimm. If you say so, I'll introduce her. A fine, thorough-going girl, that. You know we have abolished whipping in the academy, and that girl thought one of her boys needed it, and she followed him home, and gave it to him there, and his father interfered, and--well, _she whipped him too_. Fine girl. Not afraid of anything on earth. Certainly I'll introduce you, if you say so." She stopped and looked at Ezra kindly. And he saw that she knew all. "Well, I ain't particular. Some other time," he began to say; then blushing scarlet, he seized her hand, and pressing it, said, fervently, "God bless you!" * * * * The second Mrs. Slimm is a wholesome little body, with dimples and freckles, whom Ezra declares "God A'mighty couldn't o' made without thinkin' of Ezra Slimm an' his precize necessities." No one but himself and Miss Musgrove ever knew the whole story of his wooing, nor why, when in due season a tiny dimpled Miss Slimm came into the family circle, it was by Ezra's request that she was called Myrtle. APOLLO BELVEDERE A CHRISTMAS EPISODE OF THE PLANTATION He was a little yellow man with a quizzical face and sloping shoulders, and when he gave his full name, with somewhat of a flourish, as if it might hold compensations for physical shortcomings, one could hardly help smiling. And yet there was a pathos in the caricature that dissipated the smile half-way. It never found voice in a laugh. The pathetic quality was no doubt a certain serious ingenuousness--a confiding look that always met your eye from the eager face of the diminutive wearer of second-hand coats and silk hats. "Yas, I'm named 'Pollo Belvedere, an' my marster gi'e me dat intitlemint on account o' my shape," he would say, with a strut, on occasion, if he were bantered, for he had learned that the name held personal suggestions which it took a little bravado to confront. Evidently Apollo's master was a humorist. Apollo had always been a house-servant, and had for several years served with satisfaction as coachman to his master's family; but after the breaking up, when the place went into other hands, he failed to find favor with the new-comers, who had an eye for conventional form, and so Apollo was under the necessity of accepting lower rank on the place as a field-hand. But he entered plantation circles with his head up. He had his house rearing, his toilets, and his education--all distinguishing possessions in his small world--and he was, in his way, quite a gentleman. Apollo could read a chapter from the Bible without stopping to spell. He seized his words with snap-shots and pronounced them with genius. Indeed, when not limited by the suggestions of print, as when on occasion he responded to an invitation to lead in public prayer, he was a builder of words of so noble and complex architecture that one hearing him was pleased to remember that the good Lord, being omniscient, must of course know all tongues, and would understand. That the people of the plantation thought well of Apollo will appear from the fact that he was more than once urged to enter the ministry; but this he very discreetly declined to do, and for several reasons. In the first place he didn't feel "called to preach"; and in the second place he did feel called or impelled to play the fiddle; and more than that, he liked to play dance music, and to have it "danced by." As Apollo would have told you himself, the fact that he had never married was not because he couldn't get anybody to have him, but simply that he hadn't himself been suited. And, indeed, it is because of the romance of his life that Apollo comes at all into this little sketch that bears his name. Had he not been so pathetic in his serious and grotesque personality, the story would probably have borne the name of its heroine, Miss Lily Washington, of Lone Oak Plantation, and would have concerned a number of other people. Lily was a beauty in her own right, and she was belle of the plantation. She stood five feet ten in her bare feet, and although she tipped the scales at a hundred and sixty, she was as slim and round as a reed, and it was well known that the grip of her firm fingers applied to the closed fist of any of the young fellows on the place would make him howl. She was an emotional creature, with a caustic tongue on occasion, and when it pleased her mood to look over her shoulder at one of her numerous admirers and to wither him with a look or a word, she did not hesitate to do it. For instance, when Apollo first asked her to marry him--it had been his habit to propose to her every day or so for a year or two past--she glanced at him askance from head to foot, and then she said: "Why, yas. Dat is, I s'pose, of co'se, you's de sample. I'd order a full-size by you in a minute." This was cruel, and seeing the pathetic look come into his face, she instantly repented of it, and walked home from church with him, dismissing a handsome black fellow, and saying only kind things to Apollo all the way. And while he walked beside her, he told her that, although she couldn't realize it, he was as tall as she, for his feet were not on the ground at all; which was in a manner true, for when Lily was gracious to him, he felt himself borne along on wings that the common people could not see. Of course no one took Apollo seriously as Lily's suitor, much less the chocolate maid herself. But there were other lovers. Indeed, there were all the others, for that matter, but in point of eligibility the number to be seriously regarded was reduced to about two. These were Pete Peters, a handsome griff, with just enough Indian in his blood to give him an air of distinction, and a French-talking mulatto who had come up from New Orleans to repair the machinery in the sugar-house, and who was buying land in the vicinity, and drove his own sulky. Pete was less prosperous than he, but although he worked his land on shares, he owned two mules and a saddle-horse, and would be allowed to enter on a purchase of land whenever he should choose to do so. Although Pete and the New Orleans fellow, whose name was also Peter, but who was called Pierre, met constantly in a friendly enough way, they did not love each other. They both loved Lily too much for that. But they laughed good-naturedly together at Apollo and his "case," which they inquired after politely, as if it were a member of his family. "Well, 'Pollo, how's yo' case on Miss Lily comin' on?" either one would say, with a wink at the other, and Apollo would artlessly report the state of the heavens with relation to his particular star, as when he once replied to this identical question, "Well, Miss Lily was mighty obstropulous 'istiddy, but she is mo' cancelized dis mornin'." It was Pete who had asked the question, and he laughed aloud at the answer. "Mo' cancelized dis mornin', is she?" he replied. "How you know she is?" "'Caze she lemme tote her hoe all de way up f'om de field," answered the ingenuous Apollo. "She did, did she? An' who was walkin' by her side all dat time, I like to know?" Apollo winced a little at this, but he answered, bravely, "I don't kyah ef Pier was walkin' wid her; I was totin' her hoe, all de samee." At this Pete seemed to forget all about Apollo and his case, and he remarked that he never could see what some folks saw in city niggers, nohow--and neither could Apollo. And they felt a momentary sense of nearness to each other that was not exactly a bond, but they did not talk any more as they walked along. It is probable that the coming of the "city fellow" into her circle hastened to culmination more than one pending romance, and there were now various and sundry coldnesses existing between Lily and a number of the boys on the place, where there had recently existed only warm and hopeful friendships. The intruder, who had a way of shrugging his shoulders and declaring of almost any question, "Well, me, I dun'no'," seemed altogether _too sure_ when it came to a question of Lily. At least so he appeared to her more timid rural lovers. * * * * The Christmas-eve dance in the sugar-house had been for years an annual function on the plantation. At this, since her début, at fourteen, three Christmases before, Lily had held undisputed sway, and all former belles amiably accepted their places as lesser lights. But there had been some quarrelling and even a fight or two on Lily's account, indirectly, and the church people had declared against the ball, on the score of domestic peace on the place. They had fought dancing _per se_ as long as they could, but Terpsichore finally waltzed up the church aisle, figuratively speaking, and flaunted her ruffled skirts in the very faces of elders and minister, and they had had to smile and give her a pew to keep her still. And she was in the church yet, a troublemaker sometimes, and a disturber of spiritual peace--but still there. If they had forcibly ejected her, some of their most promising and important members would have followed. But they could preach to her, and so they did. Mayhap in time they would convert her and have her and her numerous votaries for their own. As the reverend brother thundered out his denunciations of the ungodly goddess he cast his eyes often in the direction of the leading dancer, and from her they would wander to the small fiddler who sat beside the tall hat in a back pew. But somehow neither Lily nor Apollo seemed in the least conscious of any personal appeal in his glance, and when finally the question of the Christmas ball was put to vote, they both rose and unequivocally voted for it. So, for that matter, did so large a majority that one of the elders got up and proposed that the church hold revival meetings, in the hope of rousing her people to a realization of her dangers. And then Lily whispered something to her neighbor, a good old man of the church, and he stood up and announced that Miss Lily Washington proposed to have the revival _after Christmas_. There was some laughter at this, and the pastor very seriously objected to it as thwarting the very object for which the meetings would be held; and then, seeing herself in danger of being vanquished in argument, Lily, blushing a fine copper-color in real maidenly embarrassment, rose in the presence of the congregation, to say that when she proposed to have the revival after Christmas, she "didn't mean no harm." She was only thinking that "it was a heap better to repent 'n to backslide." This brought down the house, an expression not usually employed in this connection, but which seems to force its way here as particularly fitting. As soon as he could get a hearing the reverend brother gave out a hymn, followed it with a short prayer, and dismissed the congregation. And on the Sunday following he gave notice that for several reasons it had been decided as expedient to postpone the revival meetings in the church until _after Christmas_. No doubt he had come over to Lily's way of thinking. Lily was perfectly ravishing in her splendor at the dance. The white Swiss frock she wore was high in the neck, but her brown shoulders and arms shone through the thin fabric with fine effect. About her slim waist she tied a narrow ribbon of blue, and she carried a pink feather fan, and the wreath about her forehead was of lilies-of-the-valley. She had done a day's scouring for them, and they had come out of the summer hat of one of the white ladies on the coast. This insured their quality, and no doubt contributed somewhat to the quiet serenity with which she bore herself as, with her little head held like that of the Venus of Milo, she danced down the centre of the room, holding her flounces in either hand, and kicking the floor until she kicked both her slippers to pieces, when she finished the figure in her stocking feet. She had a relay of slippers ready, and there was a scramble as to who should put them on; but she settled that question by making 'Pollo rise, with his fiddle in his arms, and lend her his chair for a minute while she pulled them on herself. Then she let Pete and Pierre each have one of the discarded slippers as a trophy. Lily had always danced out several pairs of slippers at the Christmas dance, but she had never achieved her stocking feet in the first round until now, and she was in high glee over it. If she had been admired before, she was looked upon as a raving, tearing beauty to-night--and so she was. Fortunately 'Pollo had his fiddling to do, and this saved him from any conspicuous folly. But he kept his eyes on her, and when she grew too ravishingly lovely to his fond vision, and he couldn't stand it a minute longer in silence, he turned to the man next him, who played the bones, and remarked, "Ef--ef anybody but Gord A'mighty had a-made anything as purty as Miss Lily, dey'd 'a' stinted it somewhar," and, watching every turn, he lent his bow to her varying moods while she tired out one dancer after another. It was the New Orleans fellow who first lost his head utterly. He had danced with her but three times, but while she took another's hand and whizzed through the figures he scarcely took his eyes from her, and when, at about midnight, he succeeded in getting her apart for a promenade, he poured forth his soul to her in the picturesque English of the quadroon quarter of New Orleans. "An' now, to proof to you my lorv, Ma'm'selle Lee-lee"--he gesticulated vigorously as he spoke--"I am geeving you wan beau-u-tiful Christmas present--I am goin' to geeve you--w'at you t'ink? My borgee!" With this he turned dramatically and faced her. They were standing now under the shed outside the door in the moonlight, and, although they did not see him, Apollo stood within hearing, behind a pile of molasses-barrels, where he had come "to cool off." Lily had several times been "buggy-ridin'" with Pierre in this same "borgee," and it was a very magnificent affair in her eyes. When he told her that it was to be hers she gasped. Such presents were unknown on the plantation. But Lily was a "mannerly" member of good society, if her circle was small, and she was not to be taken aback by any compliment a man should pay her. She simply fanned herself, a little flurriedly, perhaps, with her feather fan, as she said: "You sho' must be jokin', Mr. Pier. You cert'n'y must." But Mr. Pierre was not joking. He was never more in earnest in his life, and he told her so, and there is no telling what else he would have told her but for the fact that Mr. Pete Peters happened to come out to the shed to cool off about this time, and as he almost brushed her shoulder, it was as little as Lily could do to address a remark to him, and then, of course, he stopped and chatted a while; and after what appeared a reasonable interval, long enough for it not to seem that she was too much elated over it, she remarked, "An' by-de-way, Mr. Peters, I must tell you what a lovely Christmas gif' I have just received by de hand of Mr. Pier. He has jest presented me wid his yaller-wheeled buggy, an' I sho' is proud of it." Then, turning to Pierre, she added, "You sho' is a mighty generous gen'leman, Mr. Pier--you cert'n'y is." Peters gave Lily one startled look, but he instantly realized, from her ingenuous manner, that there was nothing back of the gift of the buggy--that is, it had been, so far as she was concerned, simply a Christmas present. Pierre had not offered himself with the gift. And if this were so, well, he reckoned he could match him. He reached forward and took Lily's fan from her hand. He hastened to do this to keep Pierre from taking it. Then, while he fanned her, he said, "Is dat so, Miss Lily, dat Mr. Pier is give you a buggy? Dat sholy is a fine Christmas gif'--it sho' is. An' sence you fin' yo'se'f possessed of a buggy, I trust you will allow me de pleasure of presentin' you wid a horse to drive _in_ de buggy." He made a graceful bow as he spoke, a bow that would have done credit to the man from New Orleans. It was so well done, indeed, that Lily unconsciously bowed in return, as she said, with a look that savored a little of roguishness: "Oh, hursh, Mr. Peters! You des a-guyin' me--dat what you doin'." "Guyin' nothin'," said Peters, grinning broadly as he noted the expression of Pierre's face. "Ef you'll jes do me de honor to accep' of my horse, Miss Lily, I'll be de proudest gen'leman on dis plantation." At this she chuckled, and took her fan in her own hand. And then she turned to Pierre. "You sho' has set de style o' mighty expensive Christmas gif's on dis plantation, Mr. Pier--you cert'n'y has. An' I wants to thank you bofe mos' kindly--I cert'n'y does." Having heard this much, 'Pollo thought it time to come from his hiding, and he strolled leisurely out in the other direction first, but soon returned this way. And then he stopped, and reaching over, took the feather fan--and for a few moments he had his innings. Then some one else came along and the conversation became impersonal, and one by one they all dropped off--all except 'Pollo. When the rest had gone he and Lily found seats on the cane-carrier, and they talked a while, and when a little later supper was announced, it was the proud fiddler who took her in, while Pierre and Peters stood off and politely glared at each other; and after a while Pierre must have said something, for Peters suddenly sprang at him and tumbled him out the door and rolled him over in the dirt, and they had to be separated. But presently they laughed and shook hands, and Pierre offered Pete a cigarette, and Pete took it, and gave Pierre a light--and it was all over. * * * * It was next day--Christmas morning--and the young people were standing about in groups under the China-trees in the campus, when Apollo joined them, looking unusually chipper and beaming. He was dressed in his best--Prince Albert, beaver, and all--and he sported a bright silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck. He was altogether a delightful figure, absolutely content with himself, and apparently at peace with the world. No sooner had he joined the crowd than the fellows began chaffing him, as usual, and presently some one mentioned Lily's name and spoke of her presents. The two men who had broken the record for generosity in the history of plantation lovers were looked upon as nabobs by those of lesser means. Of course everybody knew the city fellow had started it, and they were glad Peters had come to time and saved the dignity of the place; indeed he was about the only one on the plantation who could have done it. As they stood talking it over the two heroes had nothing to say, of course, and 'Pollo began rolling a cigarette--an art he had learned from the man from New Orleans. Finally he remarked, "Yas, Miss Lily got sev'al mighty nice presents last night." At this Pierre turned, laughing, and said, "I s'pose you geeve 'er somet'ing too, eh?" "Pity you hadn't a-give her dat silk hankcher. Hit'd become her a heap better'n it becomes you," Peters said, laughing. "Yas, I reckon it would," said 'Pollo; "but de fact is _she_ gi' _me_ dis hankcher--an' of co'se I accepted it." "But why ain't you tellin' us what you give her?" insisted Peters. 'Pollo put the cigarette to his lips, deliberately lit it, puffed several times, and then, removing it in a leisurely way, he drawled: "Well, de fact is I heerd Mr. Pier here give her a buggy, an'--an' Mr. Peters, he up an' handed over a horse,--an' so, quick as I got a chance, I des balanced my ekalub'ium an' went an' set down beside her an' ast her ef she wouldn't do me de honor to accep' of a _driver_, an'--an' _she say yas_. "You know I'm a coachman by trade. "An' dat's huccome I come to say she got sev'al presents las' night." And he took another puff of his cigarette. NEAREST OF KIN (ON THE PLANTATION) When Tamar the laundress was married to the coachman Pompey, there was a big time on the plantation. Tamar wore white tarlatan and an orange wreath--although it was her severalth marriage--and she had six bridemaids and a train-bearer. The last, a slim little black girl of about ten years, was dressed somewhat after the fashion of the ballet, in green tarlatan with spangles, and her slender legs were carefully wrapped with gilt paper that glistened through the clocked stockings with fine effect. Otherwise the "clockings" in the black stockinet would have lost their value. Pompey, as groom, was resplendent in the full glare of a white duck suit, and he wore a rosette of satin ribbon--"so's to 'stinguish him out f'om de groomsmen," each of whom was likewise "ducked" out in immaculate linen; and if there were some suggestive misfits among them, there were ample laundry compensations in the way of starch and polish--a proud achievement of the bride. There was a good deal of marching up and down the aisles of the church by the entire party before the ceremony, which was, altogether, really very effective. Pompey was as black as his bride, and his face was as carefully oiled and polished for the occasion as hers, which is saying a good deal, both as to color and shine. After the ceremony everybody repaired, for a supper and dance, to the sugar-house, where there was a bride's cake, with all the usual accessories, such as the ring and thimble, to be cut for. And of course, before the end of the evening, there was the usual distribution of bits of cake to be "dreamed on." This last, indeed, was so important that nearly every girl on the plantation slept in a neighbor's cabin that night, so as to command the full potency of the charm by dreaming her great dream in a strange bed. The whole wedding was, in fact, so disturbing a social function that everything on the place was more or less disarranged by it--even the breakfast hour at the great house, which was fully three-quarters of an hour late next morning. But that was no great matter, as all the family had been witnesses to the wedding and were somewhat sleepy in consequence--and the "rising-bell" was a movable form anyway. Perhaps if the nuptials had been less festive the demeanor of the bride immediately afterwards would not have been so conspicuous. As it was, however, when she appeared at the wash-house, ready for duty, on the second morning following, dressed in heavy mourning, and wearing, moreover, a pseudo-sorrowful expression on her every-otherwise shining face, they wondered, and there was some nudging and whispering among the negroes. Some hastily concluded that the marriage had been rashly repudiated as a failure; but when presently the groom strolled into the yard, smiling broadly, and when he proceeded with many a flourish to devotedly fill her wash-tubs from the well for his bride, they saw that there must be some other explanation. The importance of the central figure in so recent a pageant still surrounded her with somewhat of a glamour in the eyes of her companions, setting her apart, so that they were slow to ask her any questions. Later in the day, though, when her mistress, happening to pass through the yard, saw the black-gowned figure bending low over the tubs, she hastened to the wash-shed. "Why, Tamar," she exclaimed, "what on earth--" At this Tamar raised her face and smiled faintly. Then, glancing down at her dress to indicate that she understood, she drawled, demurely: "Ain't nothin' de matter, missy. I jes mo'nin' for Sister Sophy-Sophia." "Sophy-Sophia! You don't mean--" "Yas, 'm, I does. I means Pompey's las' wife, Sis' Sophy-Sophia. She didn't have no kinfolks to go in mo'nin' for her, an' time Pompey an' me got ingaged he made known his wushes to me, an' I promised him I'd put on mo'nin' for her soon as I married into de family. Co'se I couldn't do it 'fo' I was kin to her." [Illustration: "'I PROMISED HIM I'D PUT ON MO'NIN' FOR HER, SOON AS I MARRIED INTO DE FAMILY.'"] "Kin to her!" the mistress laughed. "Why, Tamar, what relation on earth are you to Pompey's former wife, I'd like to know?" The black woman dropped the garment she was wringing and thought a moment. "Well, missy," she said, presently, "looks to me like I'm a speritu'l foster-sister to her, ef I ain't no mo'--an' I done inherited all her rights an' privileges, so Pompey say--an' ef I 'ain't got a right to mo'n for her, _who is_? Dey tell me a 'oman is got a right to go in mo'nin' for her husband's kin anyway; but of co'se, come down to it, she warn't no blood-kin to Pompey, nohow. Howsomever, eve'ybody knows a widder or a widderer is intitled to wear _all de mo'nin' dey is_; an' his wife, why, she's intitled to a equal sheer in it, if she choose to seize her rights. I'd 'a' put it on befo' de weddin', 'cep'n I didn't have no title to it, an' it wouldn't 'a' been no comfort to her noways. Set down, missy." She began wiping off one of her wash-benches with her apron as she spoke. "Set down, mistus, an' lemme talk to you." The situation was interesting, and the mistress sat down. "You see, missy"--she had come nearer now, and assumed a confidential tone--"you see, Sister Sophy-Sophia she 'ain't nuver found rest yit, an' dat frets Pompey. Hit troubles 'im in de sperit--an' I promised him to try to pacify her." "Pacify her! Why, Tamar! How can you pacify a person who is dead? And how do you know that her spirit isn't at rest?" The black woman turned and looked behind her to make sure that no one should overhear. Then, lowering her voice, she whispered: "Her grave 'ain't nuver settled yit, mistus. She been buried ever sence befo' Christmus, an' hit ain't evened down yit. An' dat's a shore sign of a onrestless sperit--yas, 'm." Her face had grown suddenly anxious as she spoke. And presently she added: "Of co'se, when a grave settles _too_ quick, dat's a sign dey'll soon be another death, an' nobody don't crave to see a grave sink too sudden. But it'll ease down gradual--ef de dead sleeps easy--yas, 'm. No, Sister Sophy-Sophia she 'ain't took no comfort in her grave yit. An' Pompey, righteously speakin', ought to pacified her befo' he set out to marry ag'in. Heap o' 'omans would 'a' been afeerd to marry a man wid a unsunk grave on his hands--'feerd she'd ha'nt her. But I done had 'spe'unce, an' I'm mo' 'feerd o' live ha'nts 'n I is o' dead ones. I know Sis' Sophy-Sophia she's _layin' dar_--an' she _can't git out_. You know, she died o' de exclammatory rheumatism, an' some say hit was a jedgmint f'om heaven. You know, Sis' Sophy-Sophia she was a devil for fun. She would have her joke. An' some say Gord A'mighty punished her an' turned eve'y bone in 'er body into funny-bones, jes to show her dat eve'y funny thing ain't to be laughed at. An' ef you ever got a sudden whack on de funny-bone in yo' elbow, missy, you know how she suffered when she was teched. An' she ain't at rest yit. She done proved dat. Of co'se, ef she died wid some'h'n' on 'er mind, we can't do nothin' for her; but ef she jes need soothin', I'll git her quieted down." She leaned forward and resumed her washing--that is to say, she raised a garment from the suds and looked at it, turned it over idly in her hands several times, and dipped it languidly. Her visitor watched her in amused silence for a while. "And how are you going to soothe her, Tamar?" she asked, presently. "Tell me all about it." At this the woman began wiping her hands upon her apron, and dropping into a seat between two of the tubs and resting her arms upon their rims, she faced her mistress. "Of co'se, honey," she began, "de fust thing is to _wear mo'nin_'--an' dat ain't no special trouble to me--I got consider'ble black frocks lef' over from my widderhoods. An' in addition to dat, I gwine carry it around in my countenance--an' _ef she sees it_--an' I b'lieve de dead does see--_maybe it'll ease her mind_. Of co'se, when a pusson ain't able to sorrer in her heart, dey 'bleeged to wear it in dey face--" There was something in her voice as she said these last words--an indescribable note that seemed to express detachment from all feeling in the matter--that made her listener turn and look narrowly into her face. Still, she was not in the least prepared for the hearty laughter that greeted her question. "And don't you mourn for her in your heart, Tamar?" She eyed her narrowly as she put the question. The black woman did not even attempt an answer. Nor did she apparently even try to control her mirth. But, after a while, when she had laughed until she was tired, she suddenly rose to her feet, and as she gathered up a handful of wet garments, and began rubbing them on the wash-board, she exclaimed, still chuckling: "Lemme git to my washin', honey, befo' I disgrace my mo'nin'." In a little while, however, she grew serious again, and although she still seemed to have trouble with her shoulders, that insisted upon expressing merriment, she said: "I 'clare, I talks like a plumb hycoprite, missy--I sho' does. But I ain't. No, 'm, I ain't. Of co'se I grieves for Sis' Sophy-Sophia. I'd grieve for any po' human dat can't find rest in 'er grave--an' I'm gwine to consolate her, good as I kin. Soon as de dark o' de moon comes, I gwine out an' set on her grave an' moan, an' ef dat don't ease her, maybe when her funer'l is preached she'll be comforted." "And hasn't she had her funeral sermon yet, Tamar?" "Oh no, 'm. 'Tain't time, hardly, yit. We mos' gin'ly waits two or three years after de bury-in' befo' we has members' funer'ls preached. An' we don't nuver, sca'cely, have 'em under a year. You see, dey's a lot o' smarty folks dat 'ain't got nothin' better to do 'n to bring up things ag'in dead folks's cha'acter, so we waits tell dey been restin' in de groun' a year or so. Den a preacher he can expec' to preach dey funer'ls in peace. De fac' is, some o' our mos' piousest elders an' deacons is had so many widders show up at dey funer'ls dat de chu'ches is most of 'em passed a law dat dey compelled to wait a year or so an' give all dese heah p'omiscu'us widders time to marry off--an' save scandalizement. An' Pompey an' Sophy-Sophia dey didn't have no mo'n a broomstick weddin' nohow--but of co'se _dey did have de broomstick. I'm a witness to dat, 'caze dey borried my broom--yas, 'm._ Ricollec', I had one o' dese heah green-handle sto'e brooms, an' Pompey he come over to my cabin one mornin' an' he say, 'Sis' Tamar,' he say, 'would you mind loandin' Sis' Sophy-Sophia dat green-handle straw broom dat you sweeps out de chu'ch-house wid?' You 'member, I was married to Wash Williams dat time--Wash Williams wha' live down heah at de cross-roads now. He's married to Yaller Silvy now. You know dat red-head freckled-face yaller gal dat use to sew for Mis' Ann Powers--always wear a sailor hat--wid a waist on her no thicker'n my wris'--an' a hitch in her walk eve'y time she pass a man? Dat's de gal. She stole Wash f'om me--an' she's welcome to 'im. Any 'oman is welcome to any man she kin git f'om me. Dat's my principle. But dese heah yaller freckle niggers 'ain't got no principle _to_ 'em. I done heerd dat all my life--an' Silvy she done proved it. Time Wash an' me was married he was a man in good chu'ch standin'--a reg'lar ordained sexton, at six dollars a month--an' I done de sweepin' for him. Dat's huccome I happened to have dat green-handle sto'e broom. Dat's all I ever did git out o' his wages. Any day you'd pass Rose-o'-Sharon Chu'ch dem days you could see him settin' up on de steps, like a gent'eman, an' I sho' did take pride in him. An' now, dey tell me, Silvy she got him down to shirt-sleeves--splittin' rails, wid his breeches gallused up wid twine, while she sets in de cabin do' wid a pink caliker Mother Hubbard wrapper on fannin' 'erse'f. An' on Saturdays, when he draw his pay, you'll mos' gin'ally see 'em standin' together at de hat an' ribbon show-case in de sto'e--he grinnin' for all he's worth. An' my belief is he grins des to hide his mizry." "You certainly were very good to do his sweeping for him." Tamar's graphic picture of a rather strained situation was so humorous that it was hard to take calmly. But her mistress tried to disguise her amusement so far as possible. To her surprise, the question seemed to restore the black woman to a fresh sense of her dignity in the situation. "Cert'ny I done it," she exclaimed, dramatically. "Cert'ny. You reckon I'd live in de house wid a man dat 'd handle a broom? No, ma'am. Nex' thing I'd look for him to sew. No, ma'am. But I started a-tellin' you huccome I come to know dat Pompey an' Sis' Sophy-Sophia was legally married wid a broom. One day he come over to my cabin, jes like I commenced tellin' you, an' he s'lute me wid, 'Good-mornin', Sis' Tamar; I come over to see ef you won't please, ma'am, loand Sister Sophy-Sophia Sanders dat straw broom wha' you sweeps out de chu'ch-house wid, please, ma'am?' An' I ricollec's de answer I made him. I laughed, an' I say, 'Well, Pompey,' I say, 'I don't know about loandin' out a chu'ch broom to a sinner like you.' An' at dat he giggle, 'Well, we wants it to play preacher--an' dat seems like a mighty suitable job for a chu'ch broom.' An' of co'se wid dat I passed over de broom, wid my best wushes to de bride; an' when he fetched it back, I ricollec', he fetched me a piece o' de weddin'-cake--but it warn't no mo'n common one-two-three-fo'-cup-cake wid about seventeen onfriendly reesons stirred into it wid brown sugar. I 'clare, when I looks back, I sho' is ashamed to know dat dey was ever sech a po' weddin'-cake in my family--I sho' is. Now you know, missy, of co'se, dese heah broom--weddin's dey ain't writ down in nuther co't-house nur chu'ch books--an' so ef any o' dese heah smarty meddlers was to try to bring up ole sco'es an' say dat Sister Sophy-Sophia wasn't legally married, dey wouldn't be no witnesses _but me an' de broom_, an' I'd have to witness _for it_, an'--an' _I_ wouldn't be no legal witness." "Why wouldn't you be a legal witness, Tamar?" "'_Caze I got de same man_--an' dat's de suspiciouses' thing dey kin bring up ag'ins' a witness--so dey tell me. Ef 'twarn't for dat, I'd 'a' had her fun'al preached las' month." "But even supposing the matter had been stirred up--and you had been unable to prove that everything was as you wished--wouldn't your minister have preached a funeral sermon anyway?" "Oh yas, 'm, cert'n'y. On'y de fun'al he'd preach wouldn't help her to rest in her grave--dat's de on'ies' diffe'ence. Like as not dey'd git ole Brother Philemon Peters down f'om de bottom-lands to preach wrath--an' I wants grace preached at Sister Sophy-Sophia's fun'al, even ef I has to wait ten years for it. She died in pain, but I hope for her to rest in peace--an' not to disgrace heaven wid crutches under her wings, nuther. I know half a dozen loud-prayers, now, dat 'd be on'y too glad to 'tract attention away f'om dey own misdoin's by rakin' out scandalizemint on a dead 'oman. Dey'd 'spute de legalness of dat marriage in a minute, jes to keep folks f'om lookin' up dey own weddin' papers--yas, 'm. But me an' de broom--we layin' low, now, an' keepin' still, but we'll speak when de time comes at de jedgmint day, ef she need a witness." "But tell me, Tamar, why didn't Pompey take his bride to the church if they wanted a regular wedding?" "Dey couldn't, missy. Dey couldn't on account o' Sis' Sophy-Sophia's secon' husband, Sam Sanders. He hadn't made no secon' ch'ice yit--an', you know, when de fust one of a parted couple marries ag'in, dey 'bleeged to take to de broomstick--less'n dey go whar 'tain't known on 'em. Dat's de rule o' divo'cemint. When Yaller Silvy married my Joe wid a broomstick, dat lef' me free for a chu'ch marriage. An' I tell you, _I had it, too_. But ef she had a'tempted to walk up a chu'ch aisle wid Joe--an' me still onmarried--well, I wush dey'd 'a' tried it! I'd 'a' been standin' befo' de pulpit a-waitin' for 'em--an' I'd 'a' quoted some Scripture at 'em, too. But dey acted accordin' to law. Dey married quiet, wid a broomstick, an' de nex' Sunday walked in chu'ch together, took de same pew, an' he turned her pages mannerly for her--an' dat's de ladylikest behavior Silvy ever been guilty of in her life, I reckon. She an' him can't nair one of 'em read, but dey sets still an' holds de book an' turns de pages--an' Gord Hisself couldn't ax no mo' for chu'ch behavior. But lemme go on wid my washin', missy--for Gord's sake." Laughing again now, she drew a match from the ledge of one of the rafters, struck it across the sole of her bare foot, and began to light the fire under her furnace. And as she flattened herself against the ground to blow the kindling pine, she added, between puffs, and without so much as a change of tone: "Don't go, please, ma'am, tell I git dis charcoal lit to start dese shirts to bile. I been tryin' to fix my mouf to ax you is you got air ole crêpe veil you could gimme to wear to chu'ch nex' Sunday--please, ma'am? I 'clare, I wonder what's de sign when you blowin' one way an' a live coal come right back at yer 'gins' de wind?" And sitting upon the ground, she added, as she touched her finger to her tongue and rubbed a burnt spot upon her chin: "Pompey 'd be mighty proud ef I could walk in chu'ch by his side in full sisterly mo'nin' nex' Sunday for po' Sister Sophy-Sophia--yas, 'm. I hope you kin fin' me a ole crêpe veil, please, ma'am." Unfortunately for the full blossoming of this mourning flower of Afro-American civilization, as it is sometimes seen to bloom along the by-ways of plantation life, there was not a second-hand veil of crêpe forth-coming on this occasion. There were small compensations, however, in sundry effective accessories, such as a crêpe collar and bonnet, not to mention a funereal fan of waving black plumes, which Pompey flourished for his wife's benefit during the entire service. Certainly the "speritu'l foster-sister" of the mourning bride, if she witnessed the tribute paid her that Sunday morning in full view of the entire congregation--for the bridal pair occupied the front pew under the pulpit--would have been obdurate indeed if she had not been somewhat mollified. Tamar consistently wore her mourning garb for some months, and, so far as is known, it made no further impression upon her companions than to cause a few smiles and exchanges of glances at first among those of lighter mind among them, some of whom were even so uncharitable as to insinuate that Sis' Tamar wasn't "half so grieved as she let on." The more serious, however, united in commending her act as "mos' Christian-like an' sisterly conduc'." And when, after the gentle insistence of the long spring rains, added to the persuasiveness of Tamar's mourning, the grave of her solicitude sank to an easy level, bespeaking peace to its occupant, Tamar suddenly burst into full flower of flaming color, and the mourning period became a forgotten episode of the past. Indeed, in reviewing the ways and doings of the plantation in those days, it seems entitled to no more prominence in the retrospect than many another incident of equal ingenuousness and novelty. There was the second wooing of old Aunt Salina-Sue, for instance, and Uncle 'Riah's diseases; but, as Another would say, these are other stories. Another year passed over the plantation, and in the interval the always expected had happened to the house of Pompey the coachman. It was a tiny girl child, black of hue as both her doting parents, and endowed with the name of her sire, somewhat feminized for her fitting into the rather euphonious Pompeylou. Tamar had lost her other children in infancy, and so the pansy-faced little Pompeylou of her mid-life was a great joy to her, and most of her leisure was devoted to the making of the pink calico slips that went to the little one's adorning. On her first journey into the great world beyond the plantation, however, she was not arrayed in one of these. Indeed, the long gown she wore on this occasion was, like that of her mother, as black as the rejuvenated band of crêpe upon her father's stovepipe hat; for, be it known, this interesting family of three was to form a line of chief mourners on the front pew of Rose-of-Sharon Church on the occasion of the preaching of the funeral of the faithfully mourned and long-lamented Sophy-Sophia, whose hour of posthumous honor had at length arrived. The obsequies in her memory had been fixed for an earlier date, but in deference to the too-recent arrival of her "nearest of kin" was then too young to attend, they had been deferred by Tamar's request, and it is safe to say that no child was ever brought forward with more pride at any family gathering than was the tiny Miss Pompeylou when she was carried up the aisle "to hear her step-mammy's funeral preached." It was a great day, and the babe, who was on her very best six-months-old behavior, listened with admirable placidity to the "sermon of grace," on which at a future time she might, perhaps, found a genealogy. Her only offence against perfect church decorum was a sometimes rather explosive "Agoo!" as she tried to reach the ever-swaying black feather fan that was waved by her parents in turn for her benefit. Before the service was over, indeed, she had secured and torn the proud emblem into bits; but Tamar only smiled at its demolition by the baby fingers. It was a good omen, she said, and meant that the day of mourning was over. THE DEACON'S MEDICINE When the doctor drove by the Gregg farm about dusk, and saw old Deacon Gregg perched cross-legged upon his own gatepost, he knew that something was wrong within, and he could not resist the temptation to drive up and speak to the old man. It was common talk in the neighborhood that when Grandmother Gregg made things too warm for him in-doors, the good man, her spouse, was wont to stroll out to the front gate and to take this exalted seat. Indeed, it was said by a certain Mrs. Frequent, a neighbor of prying proclivities and ungentle speech, that the deacon's wife sent him there as a punishment for misdemeanors. Furthermore, this same Mrs. Frequent did even go so far as to watch for the deacon, and when she would see him laboriously rise and resignedly poise himself upon the narrow area, she would remark: "Well, I see Grandma Gregg has got the old man punished again. Wonder what he's been up to now?" Her constant repetition of the unkind charge finally gained for it such credence that the diminutive figure upon the gate-post became an object of mingled sympathy and mirth in the popular regard. The old doctor was the friend of a lifetime, and he was sincerely attached to the deacon, and when he turned his horse's head towards the gate this evening, he felt his heart go out in sympathy to the old man in durance vile upon his lonely perch. But he had barely started to the gate when he heard a voice which he recognized as the deacon's, whereupon he would have hurried away had not his horse committed him to his first impulse by unequivocally facing the gate. "I know three's a crowd," he called out cheerily as he presently drew rein, "but I ain't a-goin' to stay; I jest--Why, where's grandma?" he added, abruptly, seeing the old man alone. "I'm shore I heard--" "You jest heerd me a-talkin' to myself, doctor--or not to myself, exactly, neither--that is to say, when you come up I was addressin' my remarks to this here pill." "Bill? I don't see no bill." The doctor drew his buggy nearer. He was a little deaf. "No; I said this pill, doctor. I'm a-holdin' of it here in the pa'm o' my hand, a-studyin' over it." "What's she a-dosin' you for now, Enoch?" The doctor always called the deacon by his first name when he approached him in sympathy. He did not know it. Neither did the deacon, but he felt the sympathy, and it unlocked the portals of his heart. "Well"--the old man's voice softened--"she thinks I stand in need of 'em, of co'se. The fact is, that yaller-spotted steer run ag'in her clo'esline twice-t to-day--drug the whole week's washin' onto the ground, an' then tromped on it. She's inside a-renchin' an' a-starchin' of 'em over now. An' right on top o' that, I come in lookin' sort o' puny an' peaked, an' I happened to choke on a muskitty jest ez I come in, an' she declared she wasn't a-goin' to have a consumpted man sick on her hands an' a clo'es-destroyin' steer at the same time. An' with that she up an' wiped her hands on her apron, an' went an' selected this here pill out of a bottle of assorted sizes, an' instructed me to take it. They never was a thing done mo' delib'rate an' kind--never on earth. But of co'se you an' she know how it plegs me to take physic. You could mould out ice-cream in little pill shapes an' it would gag me, even ef 'twas vanilly-flavored. An' so, when I received it, why, I jest come out here to meditate. You can see it from where you set, doctor. It's a purty sizeable one, and I'm mighty suspicious of it." The doctor cleared his throat. "Yas, I can see it, Enoch--of co'se." "Could you jedge of it, doctor? That is, of its capabilities, I mean?" "Why, no, of co'se not--not less'n I'd taste it, an' you can do that ez well ez I can. If it's quinine, it'll be bitter; an' ef it's soggy an'--" "Don't explain no mo', doctor. I can't stand it. I s'pose it's jest ez foolish to investigate the inwardness of a pill a person is bound to take ez it would be to try to lif the veil of the future in any other way. When I'm obligated to swaller one of 'em, I jest take a swig o' good spring water and repeat a po'tion of Scripture and commit myself unto the Lord. I always seem foreordained to choke to death, but I notice thet ef I recover from the first spell o' suffocation, I always come through. But I 'ain't never took one yet thet I didn't in a manner prepare to die." "Then I wouldn't take it, Enoch. Don't do it." The doctor cleared his throat again, but this time he had no trouble to keep the corners of his mouth down. His sympathy robbed him for the time of the humor in the situation. "No, I wouldn't do it--doggone ef I would." The deacon looked into the palm of his hand and sighed. "Oh yas, I reckon I better take it," he said, mildly. "Ef I don't stand in need of it now, maybe the good Lord'll sto'e it up in my system, some way, 'g'inst a future attackt." "Well"--the doctor reached for his whip--"well, _I_ wouldn't do it--_steer or no steer_!" "Oh yas, I reckon you would, doctor, ef you had a wife ez worrited over a wash-tub ez what mine is. An' I had a extry shirt in wash this week, too. One little pill ain't much when you take in how she's been tantalized." The doctor laughed outright. "Tell you what to do, Enoch. Fling it away and don't let on. She don't question you, does she?" "No, she 'ain't never to say questioned me, but--Well, I tried that once-t. Sampled a bitter white capsule she gave me, put it down for quinine, an' flung it away. Then I chirped up an' said I felt a heap better--and that wasn't no lie--which I suppose was on account o' the relief to my mind, which it always did seem to me capsules was jest constructed to lodge in a person's air-passages. Jest lookin' at a box of 'em'll make me low-sperited. Well, I taken notice thet she'd look at me keen now an' ag'in, an' then look up at the clock, an' treckly I see her fill the gou'd dipper an' go to her medicine-cabinet, an' then she come to me an' she says, says she, 'Open yore mouth!' An' of co'se I opened it. You see that first capsule, ez well ez the one she had jest administered, was mostly morphine, which she had give me to ward off a 'tackt o' the neuraligy she see approachin', and here I had been tryin' to live up to the requi'ements of quinine, an' wrastlin' severe with a sleepy spell, which, ef I'd only knew it, would o' saved me. Of co'se, after the second dose-t, which I swallered, I jest let nature take its co'se, an' treckly I commenced to doze off, an' seemed like I was a feather-bed an' wife had hung me on the fence to sun, an' I remember how she seemed to be a-whuppin' of me, but it didn't hurt. Of co'se nothin' couldn't hurt me an' me all benumbed with morphine. An' I s'pose what put the feather-bed in my head was on account of it bein' goose-pickin' time, an' she was werrited with windy weather, an' she tryin' to fill the feather-beds. No, I won't never try to deceive her ag'in. It never has seemed to me thet she could have the same respect for me after ketchin' me at it, though she 'ain't never referred to it but once-t, an' that was the time I was elected deacon, an' even then she didn't do it outspoke. She seemed mighty tender over it, an' didn't no mo'n remind me thet a officer in a Christian church ought to examine hisself mighty conscientious an' be sure he was free of deceit, which, seemed to me, showed a heap 'o' consideration. She 'ain't got a deceitful bone in her body, doctor." [Illustration: "SAYS SHE, 'OPEN YORE MOUTH.' AN' OF CO'SE I OPENED IT"] "Why, bless her old soul, Enoch, you know thet I think the world an' all o' Grandma Gregg! She's the salt o' the earth--an' rock-salt at that. She's saved too many o' my patients by her good nursin', in spite o' my poor doctorin', for me not to appreciate her. But that don't reconcile me to the way she doses you for her worries." "It took me a long time to see that myself, doctor. But I've reasoned it out this a-way: I s'pose when she feels her temper a-risin' she's 'feerd thet she might be so took up with her troubles thet she'd neglect my health, an' so she wards off any attackt thet might be comin' on. I taken notice that time her strawberry preserves all soured on her hands, an' she painted my face with iodine, a man did die o' the erysipelas down here at Battle Creek, an' likely ez not she'd heerd of it. Sir? No, I didn't mention it at the time for fear she'd think best to lay on another coat, an' I felt sort o' disfiggured with it. Wife ain't a scoldin' woman, I'm thankful for that. An' some o' the peppermints an' things she keeps to dole out to me when she's fretted with little things--maybe her yeast'll refuse to rise, or a thunder-storm'll kill a settin' of eggs--why, they're so disguised thet _'cep'n thet I know they're medicine_--" "Well, Kitty, I reckon we better be a-goin'." The doctor tapped his horse. "Be shore to give my love to grandma, Enoch. An' ef you're bound to take that pill--of co'se I can't no mo'n speculate about it at this distance, but I'd advise you to keep clear o' sours an' acids for a day or so. Don't think, because your teeth are adjustable, thet none o' yore other functions ain't open to salivation. _Good_-night, Enoch." "Oh, she always looks after that, doctor. She's mighty attentive, come to withholdin' harmful temptations. Good-bye, doctor. It's did me good to open my mind to you a little. "Yas," he added, looking steadily into his palm as the buggy rolled away--"yas, it's did me good to talk to him; but I ain't no more reconciled to you, you barefaced, high-foreheaded little roly-poly, you. Funny how a pill thet 'ain't got a feature on earth can look me out o' countenance the way it can, and frustrate my speech. Talk about whited sepulchures, an' ravenin' wolves! I don't know how come I to let on thet I was feelin' puny to-night, nohow. I might've knew--with all them clo'es bedaubled over--though I can't, ez the doctor says, see how me a-takin' a pill is goin' to help matters--but of co'se I wouldn't let on to him, an' he a bachelor." He stopped talking and felt his wrist. "Maybe my pulse is obstropulous, an' ought to be sedated down. Reckon I'll haf to kill that steer--or sell him, one--though I swo'e I wouldn't. But of co'se I swo'e that in a temper, an' temp'rate vows ain't never made 'cep'in' to be repented of." Several times during the last few minutes, while the deacon spoke, there had come to him across the garden from the kitchen the unmistakable odor of fried chicken. He had foreseen that there would be a good supper to-night, and that the tiny globule within his palm would constitute for him a prohibition concerning it. Grandmother Gregg was one of those worthy if difficult women who never let anything interfere with her duty as she saw it magnified by the lenses of pain or temper. It usually pleased her injured mood to make waffles on wash-day, and the hen-house owed many renovations, with a reckless upsetting of nests and roosts, to one of her "splittin' headaches." She would often wash her hair in view of impending company, although she averred that to wet her scalp never failed to bring on the "neuraligy." And her "neuraligy" in turn meant medicine for the deacon. It was probably the doctor's timely advice, augmented, possibly, by the potencies of the frying-pan, with a strong underlying sympathy with the worrying woman within--it was, no doubt, all these powers combined that suddenly surprised the hitherto complying husband into such unprecedented conduct that any one knowing him in his old character, and seeing him now, would have thought that he had lost his mind. With a swift and brave fling he threw the pill far into the night. Then, in an access of energy born of internal panic, he slid nimbly from his perch and started in a steady jog-trot into the road, wiping away the tears as he went, and stammering between sobs as he stumbled over the ruts: "No, I won't--yas, I will, too--doggone shame, and she frettin' her life out--of co'se I will--I'll sell 'im for anything he'll fetch--an' I'll be a better man, yas, yas I will--but I won't swaller another one o' them blame--not ef I die for it." This report, taken in long-hand by an amused listener by the road-side, is no doubt incomplete in its ejaculatory form, but it has at least the value of accuracy, so far as it goes, which may be had only from a verbatim transcript. It was perhaps three-quarters of an hour later when Enoch entered the kitchen, wiping his face, nervous, weary, embarrassed. Supper was on the table. The blue-bordered dish, heaped with side bones and second joints done to a turn, was moved to a side station, while in its accustomed place before Enoch's plate there sat an ominous bowl of gruel. The old man did not look at the table, but he saw it all. He would have realized it with his eyes shut. Domestic history, as well as that of greater principalities and powers, often repeats itself. Enoch's fingers trembled as he came near his wife, and standing with his back to the table, began to untie a broad flat parcel that he had brought in under his arm. She paused in one of her trips between the table and stove, and regarded him askance. "Reckon I'll haf to light the lantern befo' I set down to eat, wife," he said, by way of introduction. "Isrul'll be along d'rec'ly to rope that steer. I've done sold him." The good woman laid her dish upon the table and returned to the stove. "Pity you hadn't 'a' sold 'im day befo' yesterday. I'd 'a' had a heap less pain in my shoulder-blade." She sniffed as she said it; and then she added, "That gruel ought to be e't warm." By this time the parcel was open. There was a brief display of colored zephyrs and gleaming card-board. Then Enoch began re-wrapping them. "Reckon you can look these over in the morn-in', wife. They're jest a few new cross-stitch Bible texts, an' I knowed you liked Scripture motters. Where'll I lay 'em, wife, while I go out an' tend to lightin' that lantern? I told Isrul I'd set it in the stable door so's he could git that steer out o' the way immejate." The proposal to lay the mottoes aside was a master-stroke. The aggrieved wife had already begun to wipe her hands on her apron. Still, she would not seem too easily appeased. "I do hope you 'ain't gone an' turned that whole steer into perforated paper, Enoch, even ef 'tis Bible-texted over." Thus she guarded her dignity. But even as she spoke she took the parcel from his hands. This was encouragement enough. It presaged a thawing out. And after Enoch had gone out to light the lantern, it would have amused a sympathetic observer to watch her gradual melting as she looked over the mottoes: "A VIRTUOUS WIFE IS FAR ABOVE RUBIES." "A PRUDENT WIFE IS FROM THE LORD." "BETTER A DINNER OF HERBS WHERE LOVE IS--" She read them over and over. Then she laid them aside and looked at Enoch's plate. Then she looked at the chicken-dish, and now at the bowl of gruel which she had carefully set on the back of the stove to keep warm. "Don't know ez it would hurt 'im any ef I'd thicken that gruel up into mush. He's took sech a distaste to soft food sense he's got that new set." She rose as she spoke, poured the gruel back into the pot, sifted and mixed a spoonful of meal and stirred it in. This done, she hesitated, glanced at the pile of mottoes, and reflected. Then with a sudden resolve she seized the milk-pitcher, filled a cup from it, poured the milk into the little pot of mush, hastily whipped up two eggs with some sugar, added the mixture to the pot, returned the whole to the yellow bowl, and set it in the oven to brown. And just then Enoch came in, and approached the water-shelf. "Don't keer how you polish it, a brass lantern an' coal ile is like murder on a man's hands. It will out." He was thinking of the gruel, and putting off the evil hour. It had been his intention to boldly announce that he hadn't taken his medicine, that he never would again unless he needed it, and, moreover, that he was going to eat his supper to-night, and always, as long as God should spare him, etc., etc., etc. But he had no sooner found himself in the presence of long-confessed superior powers than he knew that he would never do any of these things. His wife was thinking of the gruel too when she encouraged delay by remarking that he would better rest up a bit before eating. "And I reckon you better soak yo' hands good. Take a pinch o' that bran out o' the safe to 'em," she added, "and ef that don't do, the Floridy water is in on my bureau." When finally Enoch presented himself, ready for his fate, she was able to set the mush pudding, done to a fine brown, before him, and her tone was really tender as she said: "This ain't very hearty ef you're hungry; but you can eat it all. There ain't no interference in it with anything you've took." The pudding was one of Enoch's favorite dishes, but as he broke its brown surface with his spoon he felt like a hypocrite. He took one long breath, and then he blurted: "By-the-way, wife, this reminds me, I reckon you'll haf to fetch me another o' them pills. I dropped that one out in the grass--that is, ef you think I still stand in need of it. I feel consider'ble better'n I did when I come in this evenin'." The good woman eyed him suspiciously a minute. Then her eyes fell upon the words "ABOVE RUBIES" lying upon the table. Reaching over, she lifted the pudding-bowl aside, took the dish of fried chicken from its sub-station, and set it before her lord. "Better save that pudd'n' for dessert, honey, an' help yo'self to some o' that chicken, an' take a potater an' a roll, and eat a couple o' them spring onions--they're the first we've had. Sence you're a-feelin' better, maybe it's jest ez well thet you mislaid that pill." * * * * The wind blows sometimes from the east in Simkinsville, as elsewhere, and there are still occasional days when the deacon betakes himself to the front gate and sits like a nineteenth-century Simon Stilites on his pillar, contemplating the open palm of his own hand, while he enriches Mrs. Frequent's _répertoire_ of gossip by a picturesque item. But the reverse of the picture has much of joy in it; for, in spite of her various tempers, Grandmother Gregg is a warm-hearted soul--and she loves her man. And he loves her. Listen to him to-night, for instance, as, having finished his supper, he remarks: "An' I'm a-goin' to see to it, from this on, thet you ain't fretted with things ez you've been, ef I can help it, wife. Sometimes, the way I act, I seem like ez ef I forgit you're all I've got--on earth." "Of co'se I reelize that, Enoch," she replies. "We're each one all the other's got--an' that's why I don't spare no pains to keep you in health." TWO GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE One could see at a glance that they were gentlemen as they strolled leisurely along, side by side, through Madison Square, on Christmas morning. A certain subtle charm--let us call it a dignified aimlessness--hung about them like an easy garment, labelling them as mild despisers of ambitions, of goals, of destinations, of conventionalities. The observer who passed from casual contemplation of their unkempt locks to a closer scrutiny perceived, even in passing them, that their shoes were not mates, while the distinct bagging at the knees of their trousers was somewhat too high in one case, and too low in the other, to encompass the knees within which were slowly, but surely, gaining tardy secondary recognitions at points more or less remote from the first impressions. One pair was a trifle short in the legs, while the other--they of the too-low knee-marks--were turned up an inch or two above the shoes: a style which in itself may seem to savor of affectation, and yet, taken with the wearer on this occasion, dispelled suspicion. It seemed rather a cold day to sit on a bench in Madison Square, and yet our two gentlemen, after making a casual tour of the walks, sat easily down; and, indeed, though passers hurried by in heavy top-coats and furs, it seemed quite natural that these gentlemen should be seated. One or two others, differing more or less as individuals from our friends, but evidently members of the same social caste, broadly speaking, were also sitting in the square, apparently as oblivious to the cold as they. "The hardest thing to bear," the taller one, he of the short trousers, was saying, as he dropped his shapely wrist over the iron arm of the bench, "the hardest thing for the individual, under the present system, is the arbitrariness of the assignments of life. The chief advantage of the Bellamy scheme seems to me to be in its harmonious adjustments, so to speak. Every man does professionally what he can best do. If you and I had been reared under that system, now--" "What, think you, would Bellamy the prophet have made of you, Humphrey?" "Well, sir, his government would have taken pains to discover and develop my tendency, my drift--" "Ah, I see. I should judge that nature had endowed you with a fine bump of drift, Humphrey. But has it not been rather well cared for? The trouble with drifting is, so say the preachers, that it necessarily carries one downstream." "To the sea, the limitless, the boundless, the ultimatum--however, this is irrelevant and frivolous. I am serious--and modest, I assure you--when I speak of my gifts. I have, as you know, a pronounced gift at repartee. Who knows what this might have become under proper development? But it has been systematically snubbed, misunderstood, dubbed impertinence, forsooth." "If I remember aright, it was your gift of repartee that--wasn't it something of that sort which severed your connection with college?" "Yes, and here I am. That's where the shoe pinches. Ha! and by way of literal illustration, speaking of the mal-adjustments of life, witness this boot." The speaker languidly extended his right foot. "The fellow who first wore it had bunions, blast him, and I come into his bunion-bulge with a short great toe. As a result, here I am in New York in December, instead of absorbing sunshine and the odor of violets in Jackson Square in New Orleans, with picturesqueness and color all about me. No man could start South with such a boot as that. "I do most cordially hope that the beastly vulgarian who shaped it has gone, as my friend Mantalini would express it, 'to the demnition bow-wows.' You see the beauty of the Bellamy business is that all callings are equally worthy. As a social factor I should have made a record, and would probably have gone into history as a wit." "Condemn the history! You'd have gone into life, Humphrey. That's enough. You'd have gone into the home--into your own bed at night--into dinner in a dress-coat--into society, your element--into posterity in your brilliant progeny, paterfamilias--" "Enough, Colonel. There are some things--even from an old comrade like yourself--" "Beg pardon, Humphrey. No offence meant, I assure you. "It's only when life's fires are burning pretty low that we may venture to stir the coals and knock off the ashes a little. "For myself, I don't mind confessing, Humphrey, that there have been women--Don't start; there isn't even a Yule-log smouldering on my heart's hearth to-day. I can stir the smoking embers safely. I say there have been women--a woman I'll say, even--a nursemaid, whom I have seen in this park--a perfect Juno. She was well-born I'd swear, by her delicate ears, her instep, her curved nostrils--" "Did you ever approach your goddess near enough to catch her curved articulation, Colonel? Or doubtless it flowed in angles, Anglo-Saxon pura." "You are flippant, Humphrey. I say if this woman had had educational advantages and--and if my affairs had looked up a little, well--there's no telling! And yet, to tell you this to-day does not even warm my heart." "Nor rattle a skeleton within its closet?" "Not a rattle about me, sir, excepting the rattle of these beastly newspapers on my chest. Have a smoke, Humphrey?" The Colonel presented a handful of half-burned cigar-stubs. "No choice. They're all twenty-five-centers, assorted from a Waldorf lot." "Thanks." Humphrey took three. The Colonel, reserving one for his own use, dropped the rest into his outer pocket. And now eleven men passed, smoking, eleven unapproachables, before one dropped a burning stump. As Humphrey rose and strode indolently forward to secure the fragment, there was a certain courtliness about the man that even a pair of short trousers could not disguise. It was the same which constrains us to write him down Sir Humphrey. "I never appropriate the warmth of another man's lips," said he, as, having first presented the light to his friend, he lit a fragment for himself. Then, pressing out the fire of the last acquisition, he laid it beside him to cool before adding it to his store. "Nor I," responded the Colonel--"at least, I never did but once. I happened to be walking behind General Grant, and he dropped a smoking stub--" "Which you took for Granted--" "If you will, yes. It was a bit sentimental, I know, but I rather enjoyed placing it warm from his lips to mine. It was to me a sort of calumet, a pipe of peace, for rebel that I was, and am, I always respected Grant. Then, too, I fancied that I might deceive the fragment into surrendering its choicest aroma to me, since I surprised it in the attitude of surrender, and I believe it did." "Sentimental dog that you are!" said Sir Humphrey, smiling, as he inserted the remaining bit of his cigar into an amber tip and returned it to his lips. "You have never disclosed to me, Humphrey, where you procured that piece of bric-à-brac?" "Haven't I? That is because of my Bostonian reticence. No secret, I assure you. I found it, sir, in the lining of this coat. The fair donor of this spacious garment on one occasion, at least, gave a _tip_ to a beggar unawares." "Exceptional woman. Seems to me the exceptional beggar would have returned the article." "Exceptional case. Didn't find the tip for a month. I was in Mobile at the time. I should have written my benefactress had stationery been available and had I known her name. When I returned to New York in the spring there was a placard on the house. Otherwise I should have restored the tip, and trusted to her courtesy for the reward of virtue." "You have forgotten that that commodity is its own reward?" "Yes, and the only reward it ever gets, as a New Orleans wit once remarked. Hence, here we are. However, returning to my fair benefactress, I haven't much opinion of her. Any woman who would mend her husband's coat-sleeve with glue--look at this! First moist spell, away it went. Worst of it was I happened to have no garment under it at the time. However, the incident secured me quite a handsome acquisition of linen. Happened to run against a clever little tub-shaped woman whose ample bosom, I take it, was ordered especially for the accommodation of assorted sympathies. She, perceiving my azure-veined elbow, invited me to the dispensing-room of the I. O. U. Society, of which she was a member, and presented me with a roll of garments, and--would you believe it?--there wasn't a tract or leaflet in the bundle--and as to my soul, she never mentioned the abstraction to me. Now, that is what I call Christianity. However, I may come across a motto somewhere, yet. Of course, at my first opportunity, I put on those shirts--one to wear, and the other three to carry. So I've given them only a cursory examination thus far." "Which one do you consider yourself wearing, Humphrey, and which do you carry?" "I wear the _outside_ one, of course--and carry the others." "Do you, indeed? Well, now, if I were in the situation, I should feel that I was wearing the one next my body--and carrying the other three." "That's because you are an egotist and can't project yourself. I have the power the giftie gi'e me, and see myself as others see me. How's that for quick adaptation?" "Quite like you. If the Scotch poet had not been at your elbow with his offering, no doubt you'd have originated something quite as good. So you may be at this moment absorbing condensed theology, _nolens volens_." "For aught I know, yes, under my armpits. However, I sha'n't object, just so the dogmas don't crowd out my morals. My moral rectitude is the one inheritance I proudly retain. I've never sold myself--to anybody." "Nor your vote?" "Nor my vote. True, I have accepted trifling gratuities on election occasions; but they never affected my vote. I should have voted the same way, notwithstanding." "Well, sir, I am always persuaded to accept a bonus on such occasions for _abstaining_. I have been under pay from both parties, each suspecting me of standing with the opposition. Needless to say, I have religiously kept my contract. I never vote. It involves too much duplicity for a man of my profession." "Not necessarily. I resided comfortably for quite a period in the basement of the dwelling of a certain political leader in this metropolis, once. He wished to have me register for his butler, but I stickled for private secretary, and private secretary I was written, sir, though I discovered later that the rogue had registered me as secretary to his coachman. However, the latter was the better man of the two--dropped his h's so fast that his master seemed to feel constrained to send everything to H---- for repairs." "What else could you expect for a man of _aspirations_?" "By thunder, Humphrey, that's not bad. But do you see, by yon clock, that the dinner-hour approacheth?" The Colonel took from his waistcoat-pocket two bits of paper. "Somehow, I miss Irving to-day. There's nothing Irving enjoyed so much as a free dinner-ticket. I see the X. Y. Z.'s are to entertain us at 1 P.M., and the K. R. G.'s at 4." Sir Humphrey produced two similar checks. "Well, sir, were Irving here to-day I'd willingly present him with this Presbyterian chip. There are some things to which I remain sensitive, and I look this ticket in the face with misgivings. It means being elbowed by a lot of English-slaying mendicants in a motto-bedecked saloon, where every bite at the Presbyterian fowl seems a confession of faith that that particular gobbler, or hen, as the case may be, was fore-ordained, before the beginning of time, to be chewed by yourself--or eschewed, should you decline it. Somehow theology takes the zest out of the cranberries for me. However, _de gustibus_--" "Well, sir, I am a philosopher, and so was Irving. Poor Irving! He was never quite square. It was he, you know, who perpetrated that famous roach fraud that went the rounds of the press. I've seen him do it. He would enter a restaurant, order a dinner, and, just before finishing, discover a huge roach, a Croton bug, floating in his plate. Of course the insects were his own contribution, but the fellow had a knack of introducing them. He could slip a specimen into his omelette soufflé, for instance, dexterously slicing it in half with his knife, with a pressure that left nothing to be desired. The interloper, compactly imbedded, immediately imparted such an atmosphere to his vicinity that even the cook would have sworn he was baked in. I blush to say I was Irving's guest on one such occasion." "And Sir Roach paid for both dinners?" "Bless you, yes. Sir Roach, F.R.S. (fried, roasted, or stewed). Indeed, his hospitality did not end here. We were pressed to call again, and begged not to mention the incident. Of course, this was in our more prosperous days, before either of us had taken on the stamp of our exclusiveness. Even Irving would hesitate to try it now, I fancy." "Poor Irving! A good fellow, but morally insane. In Baton Rouge now, I believe?" "Yes. He changed overcoats with a gentleman. "I wonder how the cooking is in that State institution, Humphrey? Irving is such an epicure--" "Oh, he's faring well enough, doubtless. Trust those Louisianians for cookery. When Irving is in New Orleans there are special houses where he drops in on Fridays, just for _court-bouillon_. I've known him to weed a bed of geraniums rather than miss it." "Such are the vicissitudes of pedestrianism. Well, _tempus fugit_; let us be going. We have just an hour to reach our dining-hall. Here come the crowd from church. The Christmas service is very beautiful. Do you recall it, Humphrey?" "Only in spots--like the varioloid." They were quite in the crowd now, and so ceased speaking, and presently the Colonel was considerably in advance of his companion. So it happened that he did not see Humphrey stop a moment, put his foot on a bit of green paper, drop his handkerchief, and in recovering it gather the crumpled bill into it. Thus it came about that when Sir Humphrey overtook his friend, and, tapping him upon the shoulder, invited him to follow him into a famous saloon, the Colonel raised his eyes in mild surprise. Sir Humphrey paid for the drinks with a ten-dollar note, and then the two proceeded to the side door of a well-known restaurant. "Private dining-room, please," he said, and he dropped a quarter into the hands of the servant at the door as he led the way. * * * * It was two hours later when, having cast up his account from the bill of fare, Sir Humphrey, calling for cigars, said: "Help yourself, Colonel. If my arithmetic is correct, we shall enjoy our smoke, have a half dollar for the waiter, and enter the Square with a whole cigar apiece in our breast pockets--at peace with the world, the flesh, and his Satanic majesty. Allow me to give you a light." He handed the Colonel one of the free dinner-tickets of the X. Y. Z. Society. "The Presbyterian blue-light I reserve for my own use. Witness it burn. "Well, Colonel, I hope you have enjoyed your dinner?" "Thoroughly, sir, thoroughly. This is one of the many occasions in my life, Humphrey, when I rejoice in my early good breeding. Were it not for that, I should feel constrained to inquire whom you throttled and robbed in crossing Fifth Avenue, two hours ago, during the forty seconds when my back was turned." "And my pious rearing would compel me to answer, 'No one.' "The wherewithal to procure this Christmas dinner dropped straight from heaven, Colonel. I saw it fall, and gratefully seized it, just in the middle of the crossing." "Thanks. I have taken the liberty of helping myself to the rest of the matches, Humphrey." "Quite thoughtful of you. We'll use one apiece for the other cigars. Do you know I really enjoyed the first half of that smoke. It was quite like renewing one's youth." And so, in easy converse, they strolled slowly down Fifth Avenue. As Sir Humphrey hesitated in his walk, evidently suffering discomfort from his right boot, he presently remarked: "I say, Colonel, I think I'll call around tomorrow at a few of my friends' houses, and see if some benevolent housewife won't let me have a shoe for this right foot." "Or why not try your cigar on the ebony janitor of the apartment-house across the way. He has access to the trash-boxes, and could no doubt secure you a shoe--maybe a pair." "Thanks, Colonel, for the suggestion, but there are a few things I never do. I never fly in the face of Providence. I shall smoke that cigar intact." And they walked on. THE REV. JORDAN WHITE'S THREE GLANCES The Reverend Jordan White, of Cold Spring Baptist Church, was so utterly destitute of color in his midnight blackness of hue as to be considered the most thoroughly "colored" person on Claybank plantation, Arkansas. That so black a man should have borne the name of White was one of the few of such familiar misfits to which the world never becomes insensible from familiarity. From the time when Jordan, a half-naked urchin of six, tremblingly pronounced his name before the principal's desk in the summer free Claybank school to the memorable occasion of his registration as an Afro-American voter, the announcement had never failed to evoke a smile, accompanied many times by good-humored pleasantry. "Well, sir," so he had often laughed, "I reck'n dey must o' gimme de name o' White fur a joke. But de Jordan--I don' know, less'n dey named me Jordan 'caze ev'ybody was afeerd ter cross me." From which it seems that the surname was not an inheritance. In his clerical suit of black, with standing collar and shirt-front matched in fairness only by his marvellously white teeth and eyeballs, Jordan was a most interesting study in black and white. There were no intermediate shades about him. Even his lips were black, or of so dark a purple as to fail to maintain an outline of color. They looked black, too. Jordan was essentially ugly, too, with that peculiar genius for ugliness which must have inspired the familiar saying current among plantation folk, "He's so ogly tell he's purty." There is a certain homeliness of person, a combined result of type and degree, which undeniably possesses a peculiar charm, fascinating the eye more than confessed beauty of a lesser degree or more conventional form. Jordan was ugly in this fashion, and he who glanced casually upon his ebony countenance rarely failed to look again. He was a genius, too, in more ways than one. If nature gave him two startling eyes that moved independently of each other, Jordan made the most of the fact, as will be seen by the following confession made on the occasion of my questioning him as to the secret of his success as a preacher. "Well, sir," he replied, "yer see, to begin wid: I got three glances, an' dat gimme three shots wid ev'y argimint. "When I'm a preachin' I looks straight at one man an' lays his case out so clair he can't miss it, but, you see, all de time I'm a-layin' him out, my side glances is takin' in two mo'." "But," I protested, "I should think he whom you are looking at and describing in so personal a manner would get angry, and--" "So he would, sir, if he knowed I was lookin' at him. _But he don't know it_. You know, dat's my third glance an' hit's my secret glance. You see, if my reel glance went straight, I'd have ter do like de rest o' you preachers, look at one man while yer hittin' de man behin' 'im, an' dat's de way dey _think I is doin_', whiles all de time I'm a watchin' 'im wriggle. "Of cose, sometimes I uses my glances diff'ent ways. Sometimes I des lets 'em loose p'omiskyus fur a while tell ev'ybody see blue lightnin' in de air, an' de mo'ner's bench is full, an' when I see ev'ybody is ready ter run fur 'is life, of co'se I eases up an' settles down on whatever sinner seem like he's de leastest skeered tell I nails 'im fast." [Illustration: "'I DES LETS 'EM LOOSE P'OMISKYUS, TELL EV'YBODY SEE BLUE LIGHTNIN''"] He hesitated here a moment. "De onies' trouble," he resumed, presently. "De onies' trouble wid havin' mixed glances is 'dat seem like hit confines a man ter preach wrath. "So long as I tried preachin' Heaven, wid golden streets an' harp music, I nuver fe'ched in a soul, but 'cep'n' sech as was dis a-waitin' fur de open do' _to_ come in. Dat's my onies' drawback, Brer Jones. Sometimes seem like when Heaven comes inter my heart I does crave ter preach it in a song. Of cose, I does preach Heaven yit, but _I bleege ter preach it f'om de Hell side, an' shoo 'em in_!" There was, I thought, the suspicion of a twinkle lurking in the corners of his eyes throughout his talk, but it was too obscure for me to venture to interpret it by a responsive smile, and so the question was put with entire seriousness when I said: "And yet, Jordan, didn't I hear something of your going to an oculist last summer?" "Yas, sir. So I did. Dat's true." He laughed foolishly now. "I did talk about goin' ter one o' deze heah occular-eye doctors las' summer, _and I went once-t_, but I ain't nuver tol' nobody, an' you mustn't say nothin' 'bout it, please, sir. "But yer see, sir." He lowered his voice here to a confidential whisper. "Yer see dat was on account o' de ladies. I was a widder-man den, an', tell de trufe, my mixed glances was gettin' me in trouble. Yer know in dealin' wid de ladies, yer don' keer how many glances you got, yer wants ter use 'em _one at a time_. Why dey was a yaller lady up heah at de crossroads wha' 'blongs ter my church who come purty nigh ter suein' me in de co't-house, all on account o' one o' my side glances, an' all de time, yer see, my _reel_ glance, hit was settled on Mis' White, wha' sot in de middle pew--but in cose she warn't Mis' White den; she was de Widder Simpson." "And so you have been recently married," I asked; "and how does your wife feel about the matter? "Well, yer see, sir," he answered, laughing, "she can't say nothin', 'caze she's cross-eyed 'erse'f. "An' lemme tell you some'h'n', boss." He lowered his tone again, implying a fresh burst of confidence, while his whole visage seemed twinkling with merriment. "Lemme tell yer some'h'n', boss. You ain't a ma'ied man, is yer?" I assured him that I was not married. "Well, sir, I gwine gi'e you my advice. An' I'm a man o' 'spe'unce. I been ma'ied three times, an' of cose I done consider'ble co'tin' off'n an' on wid all three, not countin' sech p'omiskyus co'tin' roun' as any widder gemman is li'ble ter do, an' I gwine gi'e you some good advice. "Ef ever you falls in love wid air cross-eyed lady, an' craves ter co't'er, you des turn down de lamp low 'fo' yer comes ter de fatal p'int, ur else set out on de po'ch in de fainty moonlight, whar yer can't see 'er eyes, caze dey's nothin' puts a co'tin' man out, and meek 'im lose 'is pronouns wuss 'n a cross-eye. An' ef it hadn't o' been dat _I knowed what a cook she was_, tell de trufe, de Widder Simpson's cross-eye would o' discour'ged me off enti'ely. "But now," he continued, chuckling; "but now I done got usen ter it; it's purty ter me--seem like hit's got a searchin' glance dat goes out'n its way ter fin' me." Needless to say, I found the old man amusing, and when we parted at the cross-roads I was quite willing to promise to drop in some time to hear one of his sermons. Although somewhat famed as a preacher, Jordan had made his record in the pulpit not so much on account of any powers of oratory, _per se_, as through a series of financial achievements. During the two years of his ministry he had built a new church edifice, added the imposing parsonage which he occupied, and he rode about the country on his pastoral missions, mounted on a fine bay horse--all the result of "volunteer" contributions. And Jordan stood well with his people; the most pious of his fold according him their indorsement as heartily as they who hung about the outskirts of his congregation, and who indeed were unconsciously supplying the glamour of his distinguished career; for the secret of Jordan's success lay especially in his power of collecting money from _sinners_. So it came about that, without adding a farthing to their usual donations, the saints reclined in cushioned pews and listened to the words of life from a prosperous, well-fed preacher, who was manifestly an acceptable sower of vital seed--seed which took root in brick and mortar, branched out in turret and gable, and flowered before their very eyes in crimson upholstery. The truth was that Cold Spring was the only colored church known to its congregation that boasted anything approaching in gorgeousness its pulpit furnishings of red cotton velvet, and never a curious sinner dropped in during any of its services for a peep at its grandeur without leaving a sufficient quota of his substance to endow him with a comfortable sense of proprietorship in it all. The man who has given a brick to the building of the walls of a sanctuary has always a feeling of interest in the edifice, whether he be of its fold or not, and if he return to it an old man, it will seem to yield him a sort of welcoming recognition. The brick he gave is somewhere doing its part in sustaining the whole, and the uncertainty of its whereabouts seems to bestow it everywhere. I was not long in finding my way to Jordan's church. It was in summer time, and a large part of his congregation was composed of young girls and their escorts on the afternoon when I slipped into the pew near the door. The church was crowded within, while the usual contingent of idlers hung about the front door and open windows. I searched Jordan's face for a few moments, in the hope of discovering whether he recognized me or not, but for the life of me I could not decide. If his "secret glance" ever discerned me in my shadowed corner, neither of the other two betrayed it. I soon discovered that there was to be no sermon on this occasion, for which I was sorry, as I supposed that his most ambitious effort would naturally take shape in this form. Of this, however, I now have my doubts. After the conventional opening of service with prayer, Scripture reading, and song, he passed with apparent naturalness to the collection, the ceremony to which everything seemed to tend. The opening of this subject was again conventional, the only deviation from the ordinary manner of procedure being that, instead of the hat's passing round it was inverted upon the table beside the pulpit, while contributors, passing up the aisles, deposited their contributions and returned to their seats. This in itself, it will be seen, elevated the collection somewhat in the scale of ceremonial importance. For some time the house was quite astir with the procession which moved up one side and down the other, many singing fervently as they went, and dramatically holding their coins aloft as they swayed in step with the music, while above all rose the exhortations of the preacher which waxed in fervor as the first generous impulse began to wane. "Drap in yo' dollar!" he was shouting. "Drap in yo' half dollar! Drap in yo' dime! Drap in yo' nickel. Drap in yo' nickel, I say, an' ef yer ain't got a nickel, come up an' let's pray fur yer! "Ef yer ain't got a nickel," he repeated, encouraged by the titter that greeted this; "ef yer ain't got a nickel, come up an' let de whole congergation pray fur yer! We'll teck up a collection fur any man dat 'l stan' up an' confess he ain't wuth a nickel." A half dozen grinning young fellows stepped up now with coins concealed in the palms of their hands. "Come on! Come on, all you nickel boys! Come on. "Ev'y nickel is a wheel ter keep salvation's train a-movin'! Come on, I say; bring yo' wheels! "Ef you ain't got a big wheel fur de ingine fetch a little wheel fur de freight train! We needs a-plenty o' freight kyars on dis salvation train. 'Caze hit's loaded up heavy wid Bibles fur de heathen, an' brick an' lumber to buil' churches, an' medicine fur de sick, an' ole clo'es fur de po'--heap ob 'em wid de buttons cut off'n 'em, but dat ain't our fault, we bleeged ter sen' 'em on! Fetch on yo' little wheels, I say, fur de freight train." There had been quite a respectable response to this appeal thus far, but again it spent itself and there was a lull when Jordan, folding his arms, and looking intently before him, in several directions apparently, exclaimed in a most tragic tone: "My Gord! Is de salvation train done stallded right in front o' Claybank chu'ch, an' we can't raise wheels ter sen' it on? "Lord have mussy, I say! I tell yer, my brers an' sisters, you's a-treatin' de kyar o' glory wuss'n you'd treat a ole cotton mule wagon! You is, fur a fac'! "Ef air ole mule wagon ur a donkey-kyart was stallded out in de road in front o' dis chu'ch--don' keer ef it was loaded up wid pippy chickens, much less'n de Lord's own freight--dey ain't one o' yer but 'd raise a wheel ter sen' it on! You know yer would! An' heah de salvation train is stuck deep in de mud, an' yer know Arkansas mud _hit's mud_; hit ain't b'iled custard; no, it ain't, an' hit sticks like glue! Heah de glory kyar is stallded in dis tar-colored Arkansas glue-mud, I say, an' I can't raise wheels enough out'n dis congergation ter sen' it on! An' dis is de Holy Sabbath day, too, de day de Lord done special set apart _fur_ h'istin' a oxes out'n a ditch, es much less'n salvation's train. "Now, who gwine fetch in de nex' wheel, my brothers, my sisters, my sinner-frien's? Who gwine fetch a wheel? Dat's it! Heah come a wheel--two wheels--three wheels; fetch one mo'; heah, a odd wheel; de train's a-saggin' down lop-sided fur _one mo' wheel_! Heah it come--f'om a ole 'oman, too! Shame on you, boys, ter let po' ole Aunt Charity Pettigrew, wha' nussed yo' mammies, an' is half-blin' an' deef at dat--shame on yer ter let 'er lif' dis train out'n de mud! An' yer know she kyant heah me nuther. She des brung a wheel 'caze she felt de yearth trimble, an' knowed de train was stallded! "Oh, my brers, de yearth gwine trimble wuss'n dat one o' deze days, an' look out de rocks don't kiver you over! Don't hol' back dis train ef you c'n he'p it on! I ain't axin' yer fur no paper greenbacks to-day _to light de ingine fire_! "I ain't a-beggin' yer fur no gol' an' silver wheels fur de passenger trains for de saints, 'caze yer know de passenger kyars wha' ride inter de city o' de King, dey 'bleege ter have gol' and silver wheels ter match de golden streets; but, I say, I ain't axin' yer fur no gol' an' silver wheels to-day, nur no kindlin'! De train is all made up an' de ingine is a steamin', an' de b'ilers is full. I say _de b'ilers is full_, my dear frien's. "Full o' what? Whar do dey git water ter run dis gorspil train? Dis heah's been a mighty dry season, an' de cotton-fiel's is a-beggin' now fur water, an' I say _whar do de salvation train git water fur de ingine_? "Oh, my po' sinner-frien's, does you want me ter tell yer? "De cisterns long de track is bustin' full o' water, an' _so long as a sinner got o' tear ter shed_ de water ain't gwine run out!" "Yas, Lord!" "Glory!" "Amen!" and "Amen!" with loud groans came from various parts of the house now, and many wheels were added to Glory's train by the men about the door, while Jordan continued: "Don't be afeerd ter weep! De ingine o' Glory's kyar would o' gi'en out o' water long 'fo' now in deze heah summer dry-drouths if 'twarn't fur de tears o' sinners, an' de grief-stricken an' de heavy-hearted! I tell yer Glory's train stops ter teck in water at de mo'ner's bench eve'y day! So don't be afeerd to weep. But bring on de wheels!" He paused here and looked searchingly about him. There was no response. Stepping backward now and running both hands deep into his pockets, he dropped his oratorical tone, and, falling easily into the conversational, continued: "Well, maybe you right! Maybe you right, my frien's settin' down by de do', an' my frien's leanin' 'gins' de choir banisters, an' I ain' gwine say no mo'. I was lookin' fur you ter come up wid some sort o' wheel, an' maybe a silver wheel ter match dat watch-chain hangin' out'n yo' waistcoat-pocket; but maybe you right! "When a man set still an' say nothin' while de voice is a callin' I reck'n he knows what he's a-doin'. "He knows whether de wheels in his pocket is _fitt'n_ fur de gorspil kyar ur not! An' I say ter you to-day dat ef dat money in yo' pocket ain't _clean money_, don't you _dare_ ter fetch it up heah! "Ef you made dat money sneakin' roun' henrooses in de dark o' de moon--I don't say you is, but _ef_ you is--you set right still in yo' seat an' don't _dare_ ter offer it ter de Lord, I say! "Ef you backed yo' wagon inter somebody else's watermillion patch by de roadside an' loaded up on yo' way ter town 'fo' sunup--I don't say you is, mind yer, but _ef you is_--set right whar you is, an' do des like you been doin', 'caze de money you made on dat early mornin' wagon load ain't fitt'n fur wheels fur de gorspil train! "An' deze yo'ng men at de winders, I say, ef de wheels in _yo_' pockets come f'om _matchin' nickels on de roadside, or kyard-playin', or maybe drivin' home de wrong pig_. (You nee'n't ter laugh. De feller dat spo'ts de shinies' stovepipe hat of a Sunday sometimes cuts de ears off'n de shoat he kills of a Sa'day, 'caze de ears got a tell-tale mark on 'em.) _An', I say, ef you got yo' money dat a-way_, won't you des move back from de winders, please, an' meck room fur some o' dem standin' behin' yer dat got good hones' wheels ter pass in!" This secured the window crowds intact, and now Jordan turned to the congregation within. "An' now, dear beloved." He lowered his voice. "For sech as I done specified, _let us pray_!" He had raised his hands and was closing his eyes in prayer, when a man rose in the centre of the church. "Brer Jordan," he began, laughing with embarrassment. "Ef some o' de brers ur sisters'll change a dime fur me--" Jordan opened his eyes and his hands fell. "Bless de Lord!" he exclaimed, with feeling. "Bless de Lord, one man done claired 'isse'f! Glory, I say! Come on up, Brer Smiff, 'n' I'll gi'e you yo' change!" "Ef--Brer Smiff'll loan _me_ dat nickel?" said a timid voice near the window. Smith hesitated, grinning broadly. "Ef--ef I could o' spared de dime, Mr. Small, I'd a put it in myse'f, but--but--" "_But nothin'_! Put de dime in de hat!" The voice came from near the front now. "Put it all in de hat, Brer Smiff. You owes me a nickel an' I'll loan'd it to Mr. Small." And so, amid much laughter, Smith reluctantly deposited his dime. Others followed so fast that when Jordan exclaimed, "Who gwine be de nex'?" his words were almost lost in the commotion. Still his voice had its effect. "Heah one mo'--two mo'--fo' mo'--eight mo'! Glory, I say! An' heah dey come in de winder! Oh, I'm proud ter see it, yo'ng men! I'm proud ter see it!" Borrowing or making change was now the order of the moment, as every individual present who had not already contributed felt called upon thus to exonerate himself from so grave a charge. Amid the fresh stir a tremulous female voice raised a hymn, another caught it up, and another--voices strong and beautiful; alto voices soft as flute notes blended with the rich bass notes and triumphant tenors that welled from the choir, and floated in from the windows, until the body of the church itself seemed almost to sway with the rhythmic movement of the stirring hymn "Salvation's kyar is movin'." [Illustration: "SALVATION'S KYAR IS MOVIN'!"] Still, above all, Jordan's voice could be distinguished--as a fine musical instrument, and whether breaking through the tune in a volley of exhortations, or rising superior to it all in a rich tenor--his words thrown in snatches, or drawn out to suit his purpose--never once did it mar the wonderful harmony of the whole. It was a scene one could not easily forget. The shaft of low sunlight that now filled the church, revealing a bouquet of brilliant color in gay feathers and furbelows, with a generous sprinkling of white heads, lit up a set of faces at once so serious and so happy, so utterly forgetful of life's frettings and cares, that I felt as I looked upon them, that their perfect vocal agreement was surely but a faint reflection of a sweet spiritual harmony, which even if it did not survive the moment, was worth a long journey thither, for in so hearty a confession of fellowship, in so complete a laying down of life's burdens, there is certainly rest and a renewal of strength. Feeling this to be a good time to slip out unobserved, I noiselessly secured my hat from beneath the pew before me, but I had hardly risen when I perceived a messenger hurrying towards me from the pulpit, with a request that I should remain a moment longer, and before I could take in the situation the singing was over and Jordan was speaking. What he said, as nearly as I can recall it, was as follows: "Befo' I pernounces de benediction, I wants ter 'spress de thanks o' dis chu'ch ter de 'oner'ble visitor wha' set 'isse'f so modes' in de las' pew dis evenin', _an' den sen' up de bigges' conterbutiom_, fulfillin' de words o' de Scripture, which say _de las' shill be fus' an' de fus' shill be las_'. "Brer Chesterfiel' Jones, please ter rise an' receive de thanks o' de congergation fur dat gen'rous five-dollar bill wha' you sont up by Brer Phil Dolittle." He paused here, and feeling all eyes turned upon me, I was constrained to rise to my feet, and I think I can truly say that I have never been surprised by greater embarrassment than I felt as I hurriedly subsided to the depths of my corner. Addressing himself now to Dolittle, Jordan continued: "I 'ain't see you walk so biggoty in a _long_ time, Brer Dolittle, as you walked when you fetched up dat five dollars. Ef dis heah 'd been a cake walk yo'd o' tooken de prize, sho'. "De nex' time dy' all gets up a cake walk on dis plantation, lemme advise you ter borry a five-dollar note _f'om somebody dat don't know yer_, ter tote when yer walk. Hit'll he'p yer ter keep yo' chin up. "_An' dat ain't all_. Hit'll he'p _me_ ter keep _my chin up_ when I ca'ys dis greenback bill to de grocery to-morrer an' I'll turn it into a wheel, too--two wheels, wid a bulge between 'em. Now guess wha' dat is?" The congregation were by this time convulsed with laughter, and some one answered aloud: "A flour-bar'l!" "Dat's it, Joe, a flour-bar'l! You's a good guesser. "An' so now, in de name o' Col' Spring Chu'ch, Brer Jones, I thanks you ag'in fur a bar'l o' flour, an' I tecks it mighty kin' o' you too, 'caze I knows deys a heap o' 'Piscopalpalian preachers _wha' wouldn't o' done it!_ Dey'd be 'feerd dat ef dey gi'e any o' de high-risin' 'Piscopalpalian flour ter de Baptists dat dey'd ruin it wid _col' water!_" There was so much laughter here that Jordan had to desist for a moment, but he had not finished. "_But_," he resumed, with renewed seriousness--"_But ef Christians on'y knowed it_, dey kin put a _little leaven o' solid Christianity_ in all de charity flour dey gi'es away, an' hit'll _leaven de whole lot_ so strong dat _too much water can't spile it_, nur _too much fire can't scorch it_, nur _too much fore-sight_ (ur whatever dis heah is de P'esberteriums mixes in dey bread) _can't set it so stiff it can't rise_, 'caze hit's got de strong leaven o' de spirit in it, an' hit's _boun' ter come up_! "I see de sun's gitt'n low, an' hit's time ter let down de bars an' turn de sheeps loose, an' de goats too--not sayin' deys any goats in dis flock, an' not sayin' dey ain't--but 'fo' we goes out, I wants ter say one mo' word ter Brer Dolittle." His whole face was atwinkle with merriment now. "Dey does say, Brer Dolittle, dat riches is mighty 'ceitful an' mighty ap' ter turn a man's head, an' I tookin' notice dat arter you fetched up Brer Chesterfiel' Jones's five dollars to-day you nuver corndescended ter meck no secon' trip to de hat on Brer Dolittle's 'count. "I did think I'd turn a searchin' glance on yer fur a minute an' shame yer up heah, but you looked so happy an' so full o' biggoty I spared yer, but yer done had time ter cool off now, an' I 'bleeged ter bring yer ter de scratch. "Now, ef you done teched de five-dollar notch an' can't git down, we'll git somebody ter loan'd yer a greenback bill ter fetch up, an' whils' de congergation is meditatin' on dey sins I'll gi'e you back fo' dollars an' ninety-five cents." Amid screams of laughter poor little Dolittle, a comical, wizen-faced old man, nervously secured a nickel from the corner of his handkerchief, and, grinning broadly, walked up with it. "De ve'y leastest a man _kin_ do," Jordan continued, as leaning forward he presented the hat--"de ve'y _leastest_ he kin do is ter _live up ter 'is name_, an' ef my name was _Dolittle_ I sho' would try ter _live up ter dat, ef I didn't pass beyond it_!" And as he restored the hat to the table beside him, he added, with a quizzical lift of his brow: "I does try ter live up ter _my_ name even, an' yer know, my feller-sinners, hit does look like a hard case fur a man o' my color ter live up ter de name o' White." He waited again for laughter to subside. "At leas'," he resumed, seriously, "hit did look like a hard case _at fust_, but by de grace o' Gord I done 'skivered de way ter do it! "Ef we all had ter live up ter our skins, hit'd be purty hard on a heap of us; but, bless de Lord! he don't look at de skins; he looks at de _heart_! "I tries ter keep my _heart_ white, an' my _soul_ white, an' my _sperit_ white! Dat's how I tries ter live up ter _my_ name wid a _white cornscience, bless de Lord_! An' I looks fur my people ter he'p me all dey kin." And now, amid a hearty chorus of "Amens!" and "Glorys!" he raised his hands for a benediction, which in its all-embracing scope did not fail to invoke Divine favor upon "our good 'Piscopalpalian brother, Riviren' Chesterfiel' Jones--Gord bless him." LADY A MONOLOGUE OF THE COW-PEN Umh! Fur Gord sake, des look at dem cows! All squez up together 'g'ins' dem bars in dat sof' mud--des like I knowed dey gwine be--an' me late at my milkin'! You Lady! Teck yo' proud neck down f'om off dat heifer's head! Back, I tell yer! Don't tell me, Spot! Yas, I know she impose on you--yas she do. Reachin' her monst'ous mouf clair over yo' po' little muley head. Move back, I say, Lady! Ef you so biggoty, why don't you fool wid some o' dem horn cows? You is a lady, eve'y inch of yer! You knows who to fool wid. You is de uppishes' cow I ever see in all my life--puttin' on so much style--an' yo' milk so po' an' blue, I could purty nigh blue my starch clo'es wid it. Look out dar, Peggy, how you squeeze 'g'ins' Lady! She ain' gwine teck none o' yo' foolishness. Peggy ain't got a speck o' manners! Lady b'longs ter de cream o' s'ciety, I have yer know,--an' bless Gord, I b'lieve dat's all de cream dey is about her. Hyah! fur Gord's sake lis'n at me, passin' a joke on Lady! I does love to pleg dem cows--dey teck it so good-natured. Heap o' us 'omans mought teck lessons in Christianity f'om a cow--de way she stan' so still an' des look mild-eyed an' chaw 'er cud when anybody sass 'er. Dey'd be a heap less fam'ly quar'lin on dis plantation ef de 'omans had cuds ter chaw--dat is ef dey'd be satisfied ter chaw dey own. But ef dey was ter have 'em 'twouldn't be no time befo' dey'd be cud fights eve'y day in de week, eve'y one thinkin' de nex' one had a sweeter moufful 'n what she had. Reckon we got 'nough ter go to law 'bout, widout cuds--ain't we Lady? Don't start pawin' de groun' now, des caze yer heah me speculatin' at yo' feed-trough. I kin talk an' work too. I ain't like you--nuver do n'air one. I ain't gwine pay no 'tention ter none o' y' all no mo' now tell I git yo' supper ready. Po' little Brindle! Stan' so still, an' ain't say a word. I'm a-fixin' yo' feed now, honey--yas, I is! I allus mixes yo's fust, caze I know you nuver gits in till de las' one an' some o' de rest o' de greedies mos' gin'ally eats it up fo' you gits it. She's a Scriptu'al cow, Brindle is--she so meek. Yas, I sho' does love Brindle. Any cow dat kin walk in so 'umble, after all de res' git done, an' pick up a little scrap o' leavin's out'n de trough de way she do--an' turn it eve'y bit into good yaller butter--_dat what I calls a cow!_ Co'se I know Lady'll git in here ahead o' yer, honey, an' eat all dis mash I'm a-mixin' so good fur you. It do do me good to see 'er do it, too. I sho' does love Lady--de way 'er manners sets on 'er. She don't count much at de churn--an' she ain't got no conscience--an' no cha'acter--_but she's a lady!_ Dat's huccome I puts up wid 'er. Yas, I'm a-talkin' 'bout you, Lady, an' I'm a-lookin' at yer, too, rahin' yo' head up so circumstantial. But you meets my eye like a lady! You ain't shame-faced, is yer! You too well riz--you is. _You_ know dat _I_ know dat yo' po' measly sky-colored milk sours up into mighty fine clabber ter feed yo'ng tukkeys wid--you an' me, we knows dat, don't we? Hyah! Dar, now, we done turned de joke on all you yaller-creamers--ain't we, Lady? Lordy! I wonder fo' gracious ef Lady nod her head to me accidental! Is you 'spondin' ter me, Lady? Tell de trufe, I spec's Lady ter twis' up 'er tongue an' talk some day--she work 'er mouf so knowin'! Dis heah cotton-seed ought ter be tooken out'n her trough, by rights. Ef I could feed her on bran an' good warm slops a while, de churn would purty soon 'spute her rights wid de tukkeys! A high-toned cow, proud as Lady is, ought ter reach white-folk's table somehow-ma-ruther. But you gits dar all the same, don't yer Lady? You gits dar in tukkey-meat _ef dey don't reco'nize yer_! Well! I'm done mixin' now an' I turns my back on de trough--an' advance ter de bars. Lordy, how purty dem cows does look--wid dat low sun 'g'ins' dey backs! So patient an' yit so onpatient. Back, now, till I teck out dese rails! Soh, now! Easy, Spot! Easy, Lady! I does love ter let down dese bars wid de sun in my eyes. I loves it mos' as good as I loves ter milk. Down she goes! Step up quick, now, Brindle, an' git yo' place. Lord have mussy! Des look how Brindle meck way fur Lady! I know'd Lady'd git dar fust! I know'd it! An' dat's huccome I mixed dat feed so purtic'lar. I does love Lady! A PULPIT ORATOR Old Reub' Tyler, pastor of Mount Zion Chapel, Sugar Hollow Plantation, was a pulpit orator of no mean parts. Though his education, acquired during his fifty-ninth, sixtieth, and sixty-first summers, had not carried him beyond the First Reader class in the local district school, it had given him a pretty thorough knowledge of the sounds of simple letter combinations. This, supplemented by a quick intuition and a correct musical ear, had aided him to really remarkable powers of interpretation, and there was now, ten years later, no chapter in the entire Bible which he hesitated to read aloud, such as contained long strings of impossible names hung upon a chain of "begats" being his favorite achievements. A common tribute paid Reub's pulpit eloquence by reverential listeners among his flock was, "Brer Tyler is got a black face, but his speech sho' is white." The truth was that in his humble way Reub' was something of a philologist. A new word was to him a treasure, so much stock in trade, and the longer and more formidable the acquisition, the dearer its possession. Reub's unusual vocabulary was largely the result of his intimate relations with his master, Judge Marshall, whose body-servant he had been for a number of years. The judge had long been dead now, and the plantation had descended to his son, the present incumbent. Reub' was entirely devoted to the family of his former owners, and almost any summer evening now he might be seen sitting on the lowest of the five steps which led to the broad front veranda of the great house where Mr. John Marshall sat smoking his meerschaum. If Marshall felt amiably disposed he would often hand the old man a light, or even his own tobacco-bag, from which Reub' would fill his corn-cob pipe, and the two would sit and smoke by the hour, talking of the crops, the weather, politics, religion, anything--as the old man led the way; for these evening communings were his affairs rather than his "Marse John's." On a recent occasion, while they sat talking in this way, Marshall was congratulating him upon his unprecedented success in conducting a certain revival then in progress, when the old man said: "Yassir, de Lord sho' is gimme a rich harves'. But you know some'h'n', Marse John? All de power o' language th'ough an' by which I am enable ter seize on de sperit is come to me th'ough ole marster. I done tooken my pattern f'om him f'om de beginnin,' an' des de way I done heerd him argify de cases in de co't-house, dat's de way I lay out ter state my case befo' de Lord. "I nuver is preached wid power yit on'y but 'cep' when I sees de sinner standin' 'fo' de bar o' de Lord, an' de witnesses on de stan', an' de speckletators pressin' for'ard to heah, an' de jury listenin', an _me--I'm de prosecutin' 'torney_! "An' when I gits dat whole co't-room 'ranged 'fo' my eyes in my min', an' de pris'ner standin' in de box, I des reg'lar _lay 'im out_! You see, I knows all de law words ter do it _wid_! I des open fire on 'im, an' prove 'im a crim'nal, a law-breaker, a vagabone, a murderer in ev'y degree dey is--fus', secon', _an_' third--a reperbate, an' a blot on de face o' de yearth, tell dey ain't a chance lef' fur 'im but ter fall on 'is knees an' plead guilty! "An' when I got 'im down, _I got 'im whar I want 'im_, an' de work's half did. Den I shif's roun' an' ac' _pris'ner's 'torney_, an' preach grace tell I gits 'im shoutin'--des de same as ole marster use ter do--clair a man whe'r or no, guilty or no guilty, step by step, nuver stop tell he'd have de last juryman blowin' 'is nose an' snifflin'--an' he'd do it wid swellin' dic'sh'nary words, too! "Dat's de way I works it--fus' argify fur de State, den plead fur de pris'ner. "I tell yer, Marse John," he resumed, after a thoughtful pause, "dey's one word o' ole marster's--I don'no' huccome it slipped my min', but hit was a long glorified word, an' I often wishes hit'd come back ter me. Ef I could ricollec' dat word, hit'd holp me powerful in my preachin'. "Wonder ef you wouldn't call out a few dic'sh'nary words fur me, please, sir? Maybe you mought strike it." Without a moment's reflection, Marshall, seizing at random upon the first word that presented itself, said, "How about _ratiocination_?" The old man started as if he were shot. "Dat's hit!" he exclaimed. "Yassir, dat's hit! How in de kingdom come is you struck it de fust pop? Rasheoshinatiom! I 'clare! Dat's de ve'y word, sho's you born! Dat's what I calls a high-tone word; ain't it, now, Marse John?" "Yes, Uncle Reub'; ratiocination is a good word in its place." Marshall was much amused. "I suppose you know what it means?" "Nemmine 'bout dat," Reub' protested, grinning all over--"nemmine 'bout dat. I des gwine fetch it in when I needs a thunder-bolt! Rasheoshinatiom! Dat's a bomb-shell fur de prosecutiom! But I can't git it off now; I'm too cool. Wait tell I'm standin' in de pulpit on tip-toes, wid de sweat a-po'in' down de spine o' my back, an' fin' myse'f _des one argimint short_! Den look out fur de locomotive! "Won't yer," he added, after a pause--"won't yer, please, sir, spell dat word out fur me slow tell I writes it down 'fo' I forgits it?" [Illustration: "'WON'T YER, PLEASE, SIR, SPELL DAT WORD OUT FUR ME SLOW?'"] Reaching deep into his trousers pocket, he brought forth a folded scrap of tobacco-stained paper and a bit of lead-pencil. Notwithstanding his fondness for the old man, there was a twinkle in Marshall's eye as he began to spell for him, letter by letter, the coveted word of power. "R," he began, glancing over the writer's shoulder. "R," repeated Reub', laboriously writing. "A," continued Marshall. "R-a," repeated Reub'. "T," said the tutor. "R-a-t," drawled the old man, when, suddenly catching the sound of the combination, he glanced first at the letters and then with quick suspicion up into Marshall's face. The suppressed smile he detected there did its work. He felt himself betrayed. Springing tremulously from his seat, the very embodiment of abused confidence and wrath, he exclaimed: "Well! Hit's come ter dis, is it? One o' ole marster's chillen settin' up makin' spote o' me ter my face! I didn't spect it of yer, Marse John--I did not. It's bad enough when some o' deze heah low-down po'-white-trash town-boys hollers 'rats' at me--let alone my own white chillen what I done toted in my arms! Lemme go home an' try ter forgit dis insult ole marster's chile insulted me wid!" It was a moment before Marshall saw where the offence lay, and then, overcome with the ludicrousness of the situation, he roared with laughter in spite of himself. This removed him beyond the pale of forgiveness, and as Reub' hobbled off, talking to himself, Marshall felt that present protest was useless. It was perhaps an hour later when, having deposited a bag of his best tobacco in his coat pocket, and tucked a dictionary under his arm, Marshall made his way to the old man's cabin, where, after many affectionate protestations and much insistence, he finally induced him to put on his glasses and spell the word from the printed page. He was not easily convinced. However, under the force of Marshall's kindly assurances and the testimony of his own eyes, he finally melted, and as he set back the candle and removed his glasses, he remarked, in a tone of the utmost humility, "Well--dat's what comes o' nigger educatiom! Des let a nigger git fur enough along ter spell out c-a-t, cat, an' r-a-t, rat, an' a few Fus' Reader varmints, an' he's ready ter conterdic' de whole dic'sh'nary. "Des gimme dat word a few times _in my ear_ good, please, sir. I wouldn't dare ter teck it in thoo my eye, 'caze don' keer what you say, when a word sets out wid r-a-t, I gwine see a open-eyed rat settin' right at de head of it blinkin' at me ev'y time I looks at it." AN EASTER SYMBOL A MONOLOGUE OF THE PLANTATION _Speaker_: A Black Girl. _Time_: Easter Morning. "'Scuse me knockin' at yo' do' so early, Miss Bettie, but I'se in trouble. Don't set up in bed. Jes' lay still an' lemme talk to yer. "I come to ax yer to please ma'am loand me a pair o' wings, mistus. No'm, I ain't crazy. I mean what I say. "You see, to-day's Easter Sunday, Miss Bettie, an' we havin' a high time in our chu'ch. An' I'se gwine sing de special Easter carol, wid Freckled Frances an' Lame Jane jinin' in de chorus in our choir. Hit's one o' deze heah visible choirs sot up nex' to de pulpit in front o' de congergation. "Of co'se, me singin' de high solo makes me de principlest figgur, so we 'ranged fur me to stan' in de middle, wid Frances an' Jake on my right an' lef' sides, an' I got a bran new white tarlton frock wid spangles on it, an' a Easter lily wreath all ready. Of co'se, me bein' de fust singer, dat entitles me to wear de highest plumage, an' Frances, she knows dat, an' she 'lowed to me she was gwine wear dat white nainsook lawn you gi'n 'er, an' des a plain secondary hat, an' at de p'inted time we all three got to rise an' courtesy to de congergation, an' den bu'st into song. Lame Jake gwine wear dat white duck suit o' Marse John's an' a Easter lily in his button-hole. "Well, hit was all fixed dat-a-way, peaceable an' proper, but you know de trouble is Freckled Frances is jealous-hearted, an' she ain't got no principle. I tell you, Miss Bettie, when niggers gits white enough to freckle, you look out for 'em! Dey jes advanced fur enough along to show white ambition an' nigger principle! An' dat's a dange'ous mixture! "An' Frances--? She ain't got no mo' principle 'n a suck-aig dorg! Ever sence we 'ranged dat Easter programme, she been studyin' up some owdacious way to outdo me to-day in de face of eve'ybody. "But I'm jes one too many fur any yaller freckled-faced nigger. I'm black--but dey's a heap o' trouble come out o' ink bottles befo' to-day! "I done had my eye on Frances! An' fur de las' endurin' week I taken notice ev'ry time we had a choir practisin', Frances, she'd fetch in some talk about butterflies bein' a Easter sign o' de resurrection o' de dead, an' all sech as dat. Well, I know Frances don't keer no mo' 'bout de resurrection o' de dead 'n nothin'. Frances is too tuck up wid dis life fur dat! So I watched her. An' las' night I ketched up wid 'er. "You know dat grea' big silk paper butterfly dat you had on yo' _pi_anner lamp, Miss Bettie? She's got it pyerched up on a wire on top o' dat secondary hat, an' she's a-fixin' it to wear it to church to-day. But she don't know I know it. You see, she knows I kin sing all over her, an' dat's huccome she's a-projectin' to ketch de eyes o' de congergation! "But ef you'll he'p me out, Miss Bettie, we'll fix 'er. You know dem yaller gauzy wings you wo'e in de tableaux? Ef you'll loand 'em to me an' help me on wid 'em terreckly when I'm dressed, I'll _be_ a _whole live butterfly_, an' I bet yer when I flutters into dat choir, Freckled Frances'll feel like snatchin' dat lamp shade off her hat, sho's you born! An' fur once-t I'm proud I'm so black complected, caze black an' yaller, dey goes together fur butterflies! "Frances 'lowed to kill me out to-day, but I lay when she sets eyes on de yaller-winged butterfly she'll 'preciate de resurrection o' de dead ef she never done it befo' in her life." CHRISTMAS AT THE TRIMBLES' * * * * Part I _Time_: Daylight, the day before Christmas. _Place_: Rowton's store, Simpkinsville. _First Monologue, by Mr. Trimble_: "Whoa-a-a, there, ck, ck, ck! Back, now, Jinny! Hello, Rowton! Here we come, Jinny an' me--six miles in the slush up to the hub, an' Jinny with a unweaned colt at home. Whoa-a-a, there! "It's good Christmas don't come but once-t a year--ain't it, Jinny? "Well, Rowton, you're what I call a pro-gressive business man, that's what you are. Blest ef he ain't hired a whole row o' little niggers to stand out in front of 'is sto'e an' hold horses--while he takes his customers inside to fleece 'em. "Come here, Pop-Eyes, you third feller, an' ketch aholt o' Jinny's bridle. I always did like pop-eyed niggers. They look so God-forsaken an' ugly. A feller thet's afflicted with yo' style o' beauty ought to have favors showed him, an' that's why I intend for you to make the first extry to-day. The boy thet holds my horse of a Christmus Eve always earns a dollar. Don't try to open yo' eyes no wider--I mean what I say. How did Rowton manage to git you fellers up so early, I wonder. Give out thet he'd hire the first ten that come, did he? An' gives each feller his dinner an' a hat. "I was half afeered you wouldn't be open yet, Rowton--but I was determined to git ahead o' the Christmus crowd, an' I started by starlight. I ca'culate to meet 'em all a-goin' back. "Well, I vow, ef yo' sto'e don't look purty. Wish _she_ could see it. She'd have some idee of New York. But, of co'se, I couldn't fetch her to-day, an' me a-comin' specially to pick out her Christmus gif'. She's jest like a child. Ef she s'picions befo' hand what she's a-goin' to git, why, she don't want it. "I notice when I set on these soap-boxes, my pockets is jest about even with yo' cash-drawer, Rowton. Well, that's what we're here for. Fetch out all yo' purties, now, an' lay 'em along on the counter. You know _her_, an' she ain't to be fooled in quality. Reckon I _will_ walk around a little an' see what you've got. I 'ain't got a idee on earth what to buy, from a broach to a barouche. Let's look over some o' yo' silver things, Rowton. Josh Porter showed me a butter-dish you sold him with a silver cow on the led of it, an' I was a-wonderin' ef, maybe, you didn't have another. "That's it. That's a mighty fine idee, a statue like that is. It sort o' designates a thing. D'rec'ly a person saw the cow, now, he'd s'picion the butter inside the dish. Of co'se, he'd know they wouldn't hardly be hay in it--no, ez you say, 'nor a calf.' No doubt wife'll be a-wantin' one o' these cow-topped ones quick ez she sees Josh's wife's. She'll see the p'int in a minute--of the cow, I mean. But, of co'se, I wouldn't think o' gittin' her the same thing Josh's got for Helen, noways. We're too near neighbors for that. Th' ain't no fun in borryin' duplicates over a stile when company drops in sudden, without a minute's warnin'. "No, you needn't call my attention to that tiltin' ice-pitcher. I seen it soon ez I approached the case. Didn't you take notice to me a-liftin' my hat? That was what I was a-bowin' to, that pitcher was. No, that's the thing wife hankers after, an' I know it, an' it's the one thing I'll never buy her. Not thet I'd begrudge it to her--but to tell the truth it'd pleg me to have to live with the thing. I wouldn't mind it on Sundays or when they was company in the house, but I like to take off my coat, hot days, an' set around in my shirt-sleeves, an' I doubt ef I'd have the cheek to do it in the face of sech a thing as that. "Fact is, when I come into a room where one of 'em is, I sort o' look for it to tilt over of its own accord an' bow to me an' ask me to 'be seated.' "You needn't to laugh. Of co'se, they's a reason for it--but it's so. I'm jest that big of a ninny. Ricollec' Jedge Robinson, he used to have one of 'em--jest about the size o' this one--two goblets an' a bowl--an' when I'd go up to the house on a errand for pa, time pa was distric' coroner, the jedge's mother-in-law, ol' Mis' Meredy, she'd be settin' in the back room a-sewin,' an' when the black gal would let me in the front door she'd sort o' whisper: 'Invite him to walk into the parlor and be seated.' I'd overhear her say it, an' I'd turn into the parlor, an' first thing I'd see'd be that ice-pitcher. I don't think anybody can _set down_ good, noways, when they're ast to 'be seated,' an' when, in addition to that, I'd meet the swingin' ice-pitcher half way to the patent rocker, I didn't have no mo' consciousness where I was a-settin' than nothin'. An' like ez not the rocker'd squawk first strain I put on it. She wasn't no mo'n a sort o' swingin' ice-pitcher herself, ol' Mis' Meredy wasn't--walkin' round the house weekdays dressed in black silk, with a lace cap on her head, an' half insultin' his company thet he'd knowed all his life. I did threaten once-t to tell her, 'No, thank you, ma'am, I don't keer to be seated--but I'll _set down_ ef it's agreeable,' but when the time would come I'd turn round an' there'd be the ice-pitcher. An' after that I couldn't be expected to do nothin' but back into the parlor over the Brussels carpet an' chaw my hat-brim. But, of co'se, I was young then. "Reckon you've heerd the tale they tell on Aleck Turnbull the day he went there in the old lady's time. She had him ast into the cushioned sanctuary--an' Aleck hadn't seen much them days--an' what did he do but gawk around an' plump hisself down into that gilt-backed rocker with a tune-playin' seat in it, an', of co'se, quick ez his weight struck it, it started up a jig tune, an' they say Aleck shot out o' that door like ez ef he'd been fired out of a cannon. An' he never did go back to say what he come after. I doubt ef he ever knew. "How much did you say for the ice-pitcher, Rowton? Thirty dollars--an' you'll let me have it for--hush, now, don't say that. I don't see how you could stand so close to it an' offer to split dollars. Of co'se I ain't a-buyin' it, but ef I was I wouldn't want no reduction on it, I'd feel like ez ef it would always know it an' have a sort of contemp' for me. They's suitableness in all things. Besides, I never want no reduction on anything I buy for _her_, someways. You can charge me reg'lar prices an' make it up on the Christmas gif' she buys for me--that is, ef she buys it from you. Of co'se it'll be charged. That's a mighty purty coral broach, that grape-bunch one, but she's so pink-complected, I don't know ez she'd become it. I like this fish-scale set, myself, but she might be prejerdyced ag'in' the idee of it. You say she admired that hand-merror, an' this pair o' side-combs--an' she 'lowed she'd git 'em fur my Christmus gif' ef she dared? But, of co'se, she was jokin' about that. Poor little thing, she ain't never got over the way folks run her about that side-saddle she give me last Christmus, though I never did see anything out o' the way in it. She knew thet the greatest pleasure o' my life was in makin' her happy, and she was jest simple-hearted enough to do it--that's all--an' I can truly say thet I ain't never had mo' pleasure out of a Christmus gif' in my life than I've had out o' that side-saddle. She's been so consistent about it--never used it in her life without a-borryin' it of me, an' she does it so cunnin'. Of co'se I don't never loand it to her without a kiss. They ain't a cunnin'er play-actor on earth 'n she is, though she ain't never been to a theatre--an' wouldn't go, bein' too well raised. "You say this pitcher wasn't there when she was here--no, for ef it had 'a' been, I know she'd 'a' took on over it. Th' ain't never been one for sale in Simpkinsville before. They've been several of 'em brought here by families besides the one old Mis' Meredy presided over--though that was one o' the first. But wife is forever a-pickin' out purty patterns of 'em in the catalogues. Ef that one hadn't 'a' give me such a setback in my early youth I'd git her this, jest to please her. Ef I was to buy this one, it an' the plush album would set each other off lovely. She's a-buyin' _it_ on instalments from the same man thet enlarged her photograph to a' ile-painted po'trait, an' it's a dandy! She's got me a-settin' up on the front page, took with my first wife, which it looks to me thet if she'd do that much to please me, why, I might buy almost anything to please her, don't it? Of co'se I don't take no partic'lar pleasure in that photograph--but she seems to think I might, an' no doubt she's put it there to show thet she ain't small-minded. You ricollec' Mary Jane was plain-featured, but Kitty don't seem to mind that ez much ez I do, now thet she's gone an' her good deeds ain't in sight. I never did see no use in throwin' a plain-featured woman's looks up to her _post mortem_. "This is a mighty purty pitcher, in my judgment, but to tell the truth I've made so much fun o' the few swingin' pitchers thet's been in this town that I'd be ashamed to buy it, even ef I could git over my own obnoxion to it. But of co'se, ez you say, everybody'd know thet I done it jest to please her--an' I don't know thet they's a more worthy object in a married man's life than that. "I s'pose I'll haf to git it for her. An' I want a bold, outspoke dedication on it, Rowton. I ain't a-goin' about it shamefaced. Here, gimme that pencil. Now, I want this inscription on it, word for word. I've got to stop over at Paul's to git him to regulate my watch, an' I'll tell him to hurry an' mark it for me, soon ez you send it over. "Well, so long. Happy Christmus to you an' yo' folks. "Say, Rowton, wrap up that little merror an' them side-combs an' send 'em along, too, please. So long!" Part II _Time_: Same morning. _Plate_: Store in Washington. _Second Monologue, by Mrs. Trimble_: "Why, howdy, Mis' Blakes--howdy, Mis' Phemie--howdy, all. Good-mornin', Mr. Lawson. I see yo' sto'e is fillin' up early. Great minds run in the same channel, partic'larly on Christmus Eve. "My old man started off this mornin' befo' day, an' soon ez he got out o' sight down the Simpkinsville road, I struck out for Washin'ton, an' here I am. He thinks I'm home seedin' raisins. He was out by starlight this mornin' with the big wagon, an', of co'se, I know what that means. He's gone for my Christmus gif', an' I'm put to it to know what tremenjus thing he's a-layin' out to fetch me--thet takes a cotton-wagon to haul it. Of co'se I imagine everything, from a guyaskutus down. I always did like to git things too big to go in my stockin'. What you say, Mis' Blakes? Do I hang up my stockin'? Well, I reckon. I hadn't quit when I got married, an' I think that's a poor time to stop, don't you? Partic'larly when you marry a man twice-t yo' age, an' can't convince him thet you're grown, noways. Yas, indeedy, that stockin' goes up to-night--not mine, neither, but one I borry from Aunt Jane Peters. I don't wonder y' all laugh. Aunt Jane's foot is a yard long ef it's a' inch, but I'll find it stuffed to-morrer mornin', even ef the guyaskutus has to be chained to the mantel. An' it'll take me a good hour to empty it, for he always puts a lot o' devilment in it, an' I give him a beatin' over the head every nonsensical thing I find in it. We have a heap o' fun over it, though. "He don't seem to know I'm grown, an' I know I don't know he's old. "Listen to me runnin' on, an' you all nearly done yo' shoppin'. Which do you think would be the nicest to give him, Mr. Lawson--this silver card-basket, or that Cupid vase, or--? "Y' all needn't to wink. I seen you, Mis' Blakes. Ef I was to pick out a half dozen socks for him like them you're a-buyin' for Mr. Blakes, how much fun do you suppose we'd have out of it? Not much. I'd jest ez lief 'twasn't Christmus--an' so would he--though they do say his first wife give him a bolt o' domestic once-t for Christmus, an' made it up into night-shirts an' things for him du'in' the year. Think of it. No, I'm a-goin' to git him somethin' thet's got some git-up to it, an'--an' it'll be either--that--Cupid vase--or--lordy, Mr. Lawson, don't fetch out that swingin' ice-pitcher. I glimpsed it quick ez I come in the door, an', says I, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' an' turned my back on it immejiate. "But of co'se I ca'culated to git you to fetch it out jest for me to look at, after I'd selected his present. Ain't it a beauty? Seems to me they couldn't be a more suitable present for a man--ef he didn't hate 'em so. No, Mis' Blakes, it ain't only thet he don't never drink ice-water. I wouldn't mind a little thing like that. "You ricollec' ol' Mis' Meredy, she used to preside over one thet they had, an' somehow he taken a distaste to her an' to ice-pitchers along with her, an' he don't never lose a chance to express his disgust. When them new folks was in town last year projec'in' about the railroad, he says to me, 'I hope they won't stay, they'd never suit Simpkinsville on earth. They're the regular swingin' ice-pitcher sort. Git folks like that in town an' it wouldn't be no time befo' they'd start a-chargin' pew rent in our churches.' We was both glad when they give out thet they wasn't a-goin' to build the road. They say railroads is mighty corrupting an' me, with my sick headaches, an' a' ingine whistle in town, no indeed! Besides, ef it was to come I know I'd be the first one run over. It's bad enough to have bulls in our fields without turnin' steam-ingines loose on us. Jest one look at them cow-ketchers is enough to frustrate a person till he'd stand stock still an' wait to be run over--jest like poor crazy Mary done down here to Cedar Springs. "They say crazy Mary looked that headlight full in the face, jes' the same ez a bird looks at a snake, till the thing caught her, an' when the long freight train had passed over her she didn't have a single remain, not a one, though I always thought they might've gethered up enough to give her a funeral. When I die I intend to have a funeral, even if I'm drownded at sea. They can stand on the sho'e, an' I'll be jest ez likely to know it ez them thet lay in view lookin' so ca'm. I've done give him my orders, though they ain't much danger o' me dyin' at sea, not ef we stay in Simpkinsville. "How much are them willer rockers, Mr. Lawson? I declare that one favors my old man ez it sets there, even without him in it. Nine dollars? That's a good deal for a pants'-tearin' chair, seems to me, which them willers are, the last one of 'em, an' I'm a mighty poor hand to darn. Jest let me lay my stitches in colors, in the shape of a flower, an' I can darn ez well ez the next one, but I do despise to fill up holes jest to be a-fillin'. Yes, ez you say, them silver-mounted brier-wood pipes is mighty purty, but he smokes so much ez it is, I don't know ez I want to encourage him. Besides, it seems a waste o' money to buy a Christmus gif' thet a person has to lay aside when company comes in, an' a silver-mounted pipe ain't no politer to smoke in the presence o' ladies than a corncob is. An' ez for when we're by ourselves--shucks. "Ef you don't mind, Mr. Lawson, I'll stroll around through the sto'e an' see what you've got while you wait on some o' them thet know their own minds. I know mine well enough. _What I want_ is _that swingin' ice-pitcher_, an' my judgment tells me thet they ain't a more suitable present in yo' sto'e for a settled man thet has built hisself a residence an' furnished it complete the way _he_ has, but of co'se 'twouldn't never do. I always think how I'd enjoy it when the minister called. I wonder what Mr. Lawson thinks o' me back here a-talkin' to myself. I always like to talk about the things I'm buyin'. That's a mighty fine saddle-blanket, indeed it is. He was talkin' about a new saddle-blanket the other day. But that's a thing a person could pick up almost any day, a saddle-blanket is. A' ice-pitcher now-- "Say, Mr. Lawson, lemme look at that tiltin'-pitcher again, please, sir. I jest want to see ef the spout is gold-lined. Yes, so it is--an' little holes down in the throat of it, too. It cert'n'y is well made, it cert'n'y is. I s'pose them holes is to strain out grasshoppers or anything thet might fall into it. That musician thet choked to death at the barbecue down at Pump Springs last summer might 'a' been livin' yet ef they'd had sech ez this to pass water in, instid o' that open pail. _He's_ got a mighty keerless way o' drinkin' out o' open dippers, too. No tellin' what he'll scoop up some day. They'd be great safety for him in a pitcher like this--ef I could only make him see it. It would seem a sort o' awkward thing to pack out to the well every single time, an' he won't drink no water but what he draws fresh. An' I s'pose it would look sort o' silly to put it in here jest to drink it out again. "Sir? Oh yes, I saw them saddle-bags hang-in' up back there, an' they are fine, mighty fine, ez you say, an' his are purty near wo'e out, but lordy, I don't want to buy a Christmus gif' thet's hung up in the harness-room half the time. What's that you say? Won't you all never git done a-runnin' me about that side-saddle? You can't pleg me about that. I got it for his pleasure, ef it was for my use, an', come to think about it, I'd be jest reversin' the thing on the pitcher. It would be for his use an' my pleasure. I wish I could see my way to buy it for him. Both goblets go with it, you say--an' the slop bowl? It cert'n'y is handsome--it cert'n'y is. An' it's expensive--nobody could accuse me o' stintin' 'im. Wonder why they didn't put some polar bears on the goblets, too. They'd 'a' had to be purty small bears, but they could 'a' been cubs, easy. "I don't reely believe, Mr. Lawson, indeed I don't, thet I could find a mo' suitable present for him ef I took a month, an' I don't keer what he's a-pickin' out for me this minute, it can't be no handsomer 'n this. Th' ain't no use--I'll haf to have it--for 'im. Jest charge it, please, an' now I want it marked. I'll pay cash for the markin', out of my egg money. An' I want his full name. Have it stamped on the iceberg right beside the bear. 'Ephraim N. Trimble.' No, you needn't to spell out the middle name. I should say not. Ef you knew what it was you wouldn't ask me. Why, it's Nebuchadnezzar. It'd use up the whole iceberg. Besides, I couldn't never think o' Nebuchadnezzar there an' not a spear o' grass on the whole lan'scape. You needn't to laugh. I know it's silly, but I always think o' sech ez that. No, jest write it, 'Ephraim N. Trimble, from his wife, Kitty.' Be sure to put in the Kitty, so in after years it'll show which wife give it to him. Of co'se, them thet knew us both would know which one. Mis' Mary Jane wouldn't never have approved of it in the world. Why, she used to rip up her old crocheted tidies an' things an' use 'em over in bastin' thread, so they tell me. She little dremp' who she was a-savin' for, poor thing. She was buyin' this pitcher then, but she didn't know it. But I keep a-runnin' on. Go on with the inscription, Mr. Lawson. What have you got? 'From his wife, Kitty'--what's the matter with 'affectionate wife'? You say affectionate is a purty expensive word? But 'lovin'' 'll do jest ez well, an' it comes cheaper, you say? An' plain 'wife' comes cheapest of all? An' I don't know but what it's mo' suitable, anyhow--at his age. Of co'se, you must put in the date, an' make the 'Kitty' nice an' fancy, please. Lordy, well, the deed's done--an' I reckon he'll threaten to divo'ce me when he sees it--till he reads the inscription. Better put in the 'lovin',' I reckon, an' put it in capitals--they don't cost no more, do they? Well, goodbye, Mr. Lawson, I reckon you'll be glad to see me go. I've outstayed every last one thet was here when I come. Well, good-bye! Have it marked immediate, please, an' I'll call back in an hour. Good-bye, again!" Part III When old man Trimble stood before the fireplace at midnight that night, stuffing little parcels into the deep, borrowed stocking, he chuckled noiselessly, and glanced with affection towards the corner of the room where his young wife lay sleeping. He was a fat old man, and as he stood with shaking sides in his loose, home-made pajamas, he would have done credit to a more conscious impersonation of old Santa himself. His task finally done, he glanced down at a tall bundle that stood on the floor almost immediately in front of him, moved back with his hands resting on his hips, and thoughtfully surveyed it. "Well, ef anybody had 'a' told it on me I never would 'a' believed it," he said, under his breath. "The idee o' me, Ephe Trimble, settin' up sech a thing ez that in his house--at my time o' life." Then, glancing towards the sleeper, he added, with a chuckle, "an' ef they'd 'a' prophesied it I wouldn't 'a' believed sech ez _thet_, neither--at my time o' life--bless her little curly head." He sat down on the floor beside the bundle, clipped the twine, and cautiously pushed back the wrappings. Then, rising, he carefully set each piece of the water-set up above the stocking on the mantel. He did not stop to examine it. He was anxious to get it in place without noise. It made a fine show, even in the dim, unsteady light of the single taper that burned in its tumbler of oil close beside the bed. Indeed, when it arose in all its splendor, he was very much impressed. "A thing like that ought to have a chandelier to set it off right," he thought--"yas, and she'll have one, too--she'll have anything she wants--thet I can give her." Sleep came slowly to the old man that night, and even long after his eyes were closed, the silver things seemed arrayed in line upon his mental retina. And when, after a long while, he fell into a troubled slumber, it was only to dream. And in his dream old Judge Robinson's mother-in-law seemed to come and stand before him--black dress, side curls, and all--and when he looked at her for the first time in his life unabashed--she began to bow, over and over again, and to say with each salutation, "Be seated"--"be seated"--"be seated," getting farther and farther away with each bow until she was a mere speck in the distance--and then the speck became a spot of white, and he saw that the old lady had taken on a spout and a handle, and that she was only an ice-pitcher, tilting, and tilting, and tilting--while from the yellow spout came a fine metallic voice saying, "Be seated"--"be seated"--again and again. Then there would be a change. Two ladies would appear approaching each other and retreating--turning into two ice-pitchers, tilting to each other, then passing from tilting pitchers to bowing ladies, until sometimes there seemed almost to be a pitcher and a lady in view at the same time. When he began to look for them both at once the dream became tantalizing. Twin ladies and twin pitchers--but never quite clearly a lady and a pitcher. Even while the vision tormented him it held him fast--perhaps because he was tired, having lost his first hours of sleep. He was still sleeping soundly, spite of the dissolving views of the novel panorama, when above the two voices that kept inviting him to "be seated," there arose, in muffled tones at first, and then with distressing distinctness, a sound of sobbing. It made the old man turn on his pillow even while he slept, for it was the voice of a woman, and he was tender of heart. It seemed in the dream and yet not of it--this awful, suppressed sobbing that disturbed his slumber, but was not quite strong enough to break it. But presently, instead of the muffled sob, there came a cumulative outburst, like that of a too hard-pressed turkey-gobbler forced to the wall. He thought it was the old black gobbler at first, and he even said, "Shoo," as he sprang from his bed. But a repetition of the sound sent him bounding through the open door into the dining-room, dazed and trembling. Seated beside the dining-table there, with her head buried in her arms, sat his little wife. Before her, ranged in line upon the table, stood the silver water-set--her present to him. He was beside her in a moment--leaning over her, his arms about her shoulders. "Why, honey," he exclaimed, "what on earth--" At this she only cried the louder. There was no further need for restraint. The old man scratched his head. He was very much distressed. "Why, honey," he repeated, "tell its old man all about it. Didn't it like the purty pitcher thet its old husband bought for it? Was it too big--or too little--or too heavy for it to tote all the way out here from that high mantel? Why didn't it wake up its lazy ol' man and make him pack it out here for it?" It was no use. She was crying louder than ever. He did not know what to do. He began to be cold and he saw that she was shivering. There was no fire in the dining-room. He must do something. "Tell its old man what it would 'a' ruther had," he whispered in her ear, "jest tell him, ef it don't like its pitcher--" At this she made several efforts to speak, her voice breaking in real turkey-gobbler sobs each time, but finally she managed to wail: "It ain't m-m-m-mi-i-i-ne!" "Not yours! Why, honey. What can she mean? Did it think I bought it for anybody else? Ain't yours! Well, I like that. Lemme fetch that lamp over here till you read the writin' on the side of it, an' I'll show you whose it is." He brought the lamp. "Read that, now. Why, honey! Wh--wh--wh--what in thunder an' lightnin'! They've done gone an' reversed it. The fool's put my name first--' Ephraim N. Trimble. From--his--' "Why, Jerusalem jinger! "No wonder she thought I was a low-down dog--to buy sech a thing an' mark it in my own name--no wonder--here on Christmus, too. The idee o' Rowton not seein' to it thet it was done right--" By this time the little woman had somewhat recovered herself. Still, she stammered fearfully. "R-r-r-owton ain't never s-s-s-saw that pitcher. It come from L-l-l-awson's, d-d-down at Washin'ton, an' I b-bought it for y-y-y-you!" "Why, honey--darlin'--" A sudden light came into the old man's eyes. He seized the lamp and hurried to the door of the bed-chamber, and looked in. This was enough. Perhaps it was mean--but he could not help it--he set the lamp down on the table, dropped into a chair, and fairly howled with laughter. "No wonder I dremp' ol' Mis' Meredy was twins!" he screamed. "Why, h-h-honey," he was nearly splitting his old sides--"why, honey, I ain't seen a thing but these two swingin' pitchers all night. They've been dancin' before me--them an' what seemed like a pair o' ol' Mis' Meredys, an' between 'em all I ain't slep' a wink." "N-n-either have I. An' I dremp' about ol' Mis' M-m-m-eredy, too. I dremp' she had come to live with us--an' thet y-y-you an' me had moved into the back o' the house. That's why I got up. I couldn't sleep easy, an' I thought I might ez well git up an' see wh-wh-what you'd brought me. But I didn't no mor'n glance at it. But you can't say you didn't sleep, for you was a-s-s-snorin' when I come out here--" "An' so was you, honey, when I 'ranged them things on the mantel. Lemme go an' git the other set an' compare 'em. That one I picked out is mighty purty." "I'll tell you befo' you fetch 'em thet they're exactly alike"--she began to cry again--"even to the p-p-polar bear. I saw that at a glance, an' it makes it s-s-so much more ridic'--" "Hush, honey. I'm reely ashamed of you--I reely am. Seems to me ef they're jest alike, so much the better. What's the matter with havin' a pair of 'em? We might use one for buttermilk." "Th-that would be perfectly ridiculous. A polar bear'd look like a fool on a buttermilk pitcher. N-n-no, the place for pitchers like them is in halls, on tables, where anybody comin' in can see 'em an' stop an' git a drink. They couldn't be nothin' tackier'n pourin' buttermilk out of a' ice-pitcher." "Of co'se, if you say so, we won't--I jest thought maybe--or, I tell you what we might do. I could easy take out a panel o' banisters out of the side po'ch, an' put in a pair o' stairsteps, so ez to make a sort o' side entrance to the house, an' we could set one of 'em in _it_. It would make the pitcher come a little high, of co'se, but it would set off that side o' the house lovely, an' ef you say so-- "Lemme go git 'em all out here together." As he trudged in presently loaded up with the duplicate set he said, "I wonder ef you know what time it is, wife?" She glanced over her shoulder at the clock on the wall. "Don't look at that. It's six o'clock last night by that. I forgot to wind her up. No. It's half-past three o'clock--that's all it is." By this time he had placed his water-set beside hers upon the table. "Why, honey," he exclaimed, "where on earth? I don't see a sign of a' inscription on this--an' what is this paper in the spout? Here, you read it, wife, I ain't got my specs." "'Too busy to mark to-day--send back after Christmas--sorry. ROWTON.'" "Why, it--an' here's another paper. What can this be, I wonder?" "'To my darling wife, from her affectionate husband.'" The little wife colored as she read it. "Oh, that ain't nothin' but the motter he was to print on it. But ain't it lucky thet he didn't do it? I'll change it--that's what I'll do--for anything you say. There, now. Don't that fix it?" She was very still for a moment--very thoughtful. "An' affectionate is a mighty expensive word, too," she said, slowly, glancing over the intended inscription, in her husband's handwriting. "Yes. Your pitcher don't stand for a thing but generosity--an' mine don't mean a thing but selfishness. Yes, take it back, cert'nly, that is ef you'll get me anything I want for it. Will you?" "Shore. They's a cow-topped butter-dish an' no end o' purty little things out there you might like. An' ef it's goin' back, it better be a-goin'. I can ride out to town an' back befo' breakfast. Come, kiss me, wife." She threw both arms around her old husband's neck, and kissed him on one cheek and then on the other. Then she kissed his lips. And then, as she went for pen and paper, she said: "Hurry, now, an' hitch up, an' I'll be writin' down what I want in exchange--an' you can put it in yo' pocket." In a surprisingly short time the old man was on his way--a heaped basket beside him, a tiny bit of writing in his pocket. When he had turned into the road he drew rein for a moment, lit a match, and this is what he read: "MY DEAR HUSBAND,--I want one silver-mounted brier-wood pipe and a smoking set--a nice lava one--and I want a set of them fine overhauls like them that Mis Pope give Mr. Pope that time I said she was too extravagant, and if they's any money left over I want some nice tobacco, the best. I want all the price of the ice-set took up even to them affectionate words they never put on. "Your affectionate and loving wife, "KITTY." When Ephraim put the little note back in his pocket, he took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Her good neighbors and friends, even as far as Simpkinsville and Washington, had their little jokes over Mis' Trimble's giving her splendor-despising husband a swinging ice-pitcher, but they never knew of the two early trips of the twin pitcher, nor of the midnight comedy in the Trimble home. But the old man often recalls it, and as he sits in his front hall smoking his silver-mounted pipe, and shaking its ashes into the lava bowl that stands beside the ice-pitcher at his elbow, he sometimes chuckles to himself. Noticing his shaking shoulders as he sat thus one day his wife turned from the window, where she stood watering her geraniums, and said: "What on earth are you a-laughin' at, honey?" (She often calls him "honey" now.) "How did you know I was a-laughin'?" He looked over his shoulder at her as he spoke. "Why, I seen yo' shoulders a-shakin'--that's how." And then she added, with a laugh, "An' now I see yo' reflection in the side o' the ice-pitcher, with a zig-zag grin on you a mile long--yo' smile just happened to strike a iceberg." He chuckled again. "Is that so? Well, the truth is, I'm just sort o' tickled over things in general, an' I'm a-settin' here gigglin', jest from pure contentment." A MINOR CHORD I am an old bachelor, and I live alone in my corner upper room of an ancient house of _Chambres garnies_, down on the lower edge of the French quarter of New Orleans. When I made my nest here, forty years ago, I felt myself an old man, and the building was even then a dilapidated old rookery, and since then we--the house and I--have lapsed physically with the decline of the neighborhood about us, until now our only claims to gentility are perhaps our memories and our reserves. The habit of introspection formed by so isolated an existence tends to develop morbid views of life, and throws one out of sympathetic relations with the world of progress, we are told; but is there not some compensation for this in the acquisition of finer and more subtle perception of things hidden from the social, laughing, hurrying world? So it seems to me, and even though the nicer discernment bring pain, as it often does--as all refinement must--who would yield it for a grosser content resulting from a duller vision? To contemplate the procession that passes daily beneath my window, with its ever-shifting pictures of sorrow, of decrepitude ill-matched with want, new motherhood, and mendicancy, with uplifted eye and palm--to look down upon all this with only a passing sigh, as my worthy but material fat landlady does, would imply a spiritual blindness infinitely worse than the pang which the keener perception induces. There are in this neighborhood of moribund pretensions a few special objects which strike a note of such sadness in my heart that the most exquisite pain ensues--a pain which seems almost bodily, such as those for which we take physic; yet I could never confuse it with the neuralgic dart which it so nearly resembles, so closely does it follow the sight or sound which I know induces it. There is a young lawyer who passes twice a day beneath my window.... I say he is young, for all the moving world is young to me, at eighty--and yet he seems old at five-and-forty, for his temples are white. I know this man's history. The only son of a proud house, handsome, gifted--even somewhat of a poet in his youth--he married a soulless woman, who began the ruin which the wine-cup finished. It is an old story. In a mad hour he forged another man's name--then, a wanderer on the face of the earth, he drifted about with never a local habitation or a name, until his aged father had made good the price of his honor, when he came home--"tramped home," the world says--and, now, after years of variable steadiness, he has built upon the wreck of his early life a sort of questionable confidence which brings him half-averted recognition; and every day, with the gray always glistening on his temples and the clear profile of the past outlining itself--though the high-bred face is low between the shoulders now--he passes beneath my window with halting step to and from the old courthouse, where, by virtue of his father's position, he holds a minor office. Almost within a stone's throw of my chamber this man and his aged father--the latter now a hopeless paralytic--live together in the ruins of their old home. Year by year the river, by constant cavings, has swallowed nearly all its extensive grounds, yet beyond the low-browed Spanish cottage that clings close within the new levee, "the ghost of a garden" fronts the river. Here, amid broken marbles--lyreless Apollos, Pegasus bereft of wings, and prostrate Muses--the hardier roses, golden-rod, and honeysuckle run riot within the old levee, between the comings of the waters that at intervals steal in and threaten to swallow all at a gulp. The naked old house, grotesquely guarded by the stately skeleton of a moss-grown oak, is thus bereft, by the river in front and the public road at its back, of all but the bare fact of survival. No visitor ever enters here; but in the summer evenings two old men may be seen creeping with difficult steps from its low portal up to the brow of the bank, where they sit in silence and watch the boats go by. The picture is not devoid of pathos, and even the common people whisper together as they look upon the figures of father and son sitting in the moonlight; and no one likes to pass the door at night, for there are grewsome tales of ghosts afloat, in which decapitated statues are said to stalk about the old garden at nightfall. A sigh always escapes me as I look upon this desolate scene; but it is not now, but when the old-young man, the son, passes my door each day, carrying in his pale hands a bunch of flowers which he keeps upon his desk in the little back office, that my mysterious pain possesses me. Why does this hope-forsaken man carry a bunch of flowers? Is it the surviving poet within him that finds companionship in them, or does he seem to see in their pure hearts, as in a mirror, a reflection of his own sinless youth? These questions I cannot answer; but every day, as he passes with the flowers, I follow him with fascinated eye until he is quite lost in the distance, my heart rent the while with this incisive pain. Finally, he is lost to view. The dart passes through and out my breast, and, as I turn, my eye falls upon a pretty rose-garden across the way, where live a mother and her two daughters. * * * * Seventeen years ago this woman's husband--the father--went away and never returned. The daughters are grown, and they are poor. The elder performs some clerical work up in Canal Street, and I love to watch her trig little figure come and go--early and late. The younger, who is fairer, has a lover, and the two sit together on a little wrought-iron bench, or gather roses from the box-bordered beds in the small inland garden, which lies behind the moss-grown wall and battened gate; and sometimes the mother comes out and smiles upon the pair. The mother is a gentlewoman, and though she wears a steel thimble with an open top, like a tailor's, and her finger is pricked with the needle, she walks and smiles, even waters her roses, with a lady's grace; but it seems to me that the pretty pink daughter's lover is less a gentleman than this girl's lover should be--less than her grandfather must have been when he courted her grandmother in this same rose-garden--less than this maid's lover would be if her father had not gone to India, and her mother did not sew seams for a living. As I sit and watch this peaceful fragment of a family, my heart seems to find repose in its apparent content; but late at night, when the lover has gone and the mother and daughters are asleep, when I rise to close my shutters I perceive, between the parted curtains in the mother's window, a light dimly burning. When I see this beacon in the deserted wife's chamber, and remember that I have seen it burning there, like the faint but steadfast hope that refuses to be extinguished, for seventeen years, the pain of pains comes into my heart. * * * * There is a little old man with a hump upon his shoulder who passes often in the crowd, and a sight of him always awakens this pain within me. It is not the tragedy of senility which his extreme age pictures, nor yet the hump upon his back, which stirs my note of pain. Years ago this man left his wife, for a price, to another who had betrayed her, and disappeared from the scene of his ignominy. When the woman was dead and her betrayer gone, the husband came back, an old man; and now, as I see him bending beneath its weight, the hump upon his shoulder seems to be labelled with this price which, in my imagination, though originally the bag of gold, has by a slow and chemically unexplained process of ossification, become a part of himself, and will grotesquely deform his skeleton a hundred years to come. When, morning and evening, I see this old man trudge laboriously, staggering always towards the left, down the street, until he disappears in the clump of willows that overshadow the cemetery gate, and I know that he is going for a lonely vigil to the grave of the dishonored woman, his lost wife, pain, keen as a Damascus blade, enters my heart. * * * * I close my window and come in, for the night dews are falling and I am rheumatic and stiff in the legs. So, every night, musing, I go early to my bed, but before I lie down, after my prayer is said, I rise to put fresh water in the vase of flowers, which are always fresh, beneath the picture upon my wall. For one moment I stand and gaze into a pure, girlish face, with a pallid brow and far-away blue eyes. She was only fifteen years old, and I twice as many, when we quarrelled like foolish children. The day she married my brother--my youngest, best-beloved brother Benjamin--I laid this miniature, face downward, in a secret drawer of my desk. In the first year she died, and in another Benjamin had taken to himself a new wife, with merrier eyes and ruddier lips. My heart leaped within me when I kissed my new sister, but she knew not that my joy was because she was giving me back my love. Trembling with ecstasy, I took this image from its hiding-place, and for nearly fifty years the flowers beneath it have not withered. As I stood alone here one night, ere I knew he had entered, my little brother's hand was upon my shoulder. For a moment only he was silent, awe-stricken. "She was always yours, my brother," he said, presently, in a tremulous whisper. "I did not know until it was too late. She had misunderstood--but God was very merciful," and turning he left her to me. And still each day I lay fresh flowers at her shrine, cherishing the dart that rends my heart the while, for its testimony to the immortality of my passion. Do you smile because a trembling old man feasts his failing eyes on a fair woman's face and prates of love and flowers and beauty? Smile if you will, but if you do it is because you, being of the earth, cannot understand. These things are of the spirit; and palsy and rheumatism and waning strength are of the flesh, which profiteth nothing. THE END 
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22673	----	made from images produced by the North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library.) PLANTATION SKETCHES BY MARGARET DEVEREUX PRIVATELY PRINTED AT The Riverside Press, Cambridge MDCCCCVI [Illustration: MAMMY] COPYRIGHT 1906 BY MARGARET DEVEREUX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED EDITOR'S PREFACE The descriptions of Southern life in this little book, as well as the accompanying stories, were written by Mrs. Devereux during the past fifteen years, in large part after she had passed her sixty-fifth year. They are essentially reminiscent, and were prepared originally with no thought of publication, but merely to be read to her grandchildren, so that there might be preserved in their minds some conception of the old-time lives of their grandparents. The sketches thus came to be read by me to my own children, who are of the third generation. They brought to my mind so simply, yet so vividly and in so attractive a manner, a picture of the old plantation life, they showed such remarkable memory of interesting details, that they seemed to me to merit publication. The charm of the descriptions will impress all readers, and the truthfulness of the illustrations of negro character and habits will be recognized by all who are familiar with the South. The sketches are simple, homely little tales prepared for children, and they must be read with this fact in mind; but they have nevertheless an interest and a lesson for maturer readers, to whom they are now offered. Arthur Winslow 18 Chestnut St., Boston, Mass. April 27, 1906 CONTENTS _Letter to my Grandchildren_ ix _Plantation Life_ 1 _Going to the Plantation_ 40 _My Own Early Home_ 52 _Two Bob Whites_ 59 _Little Dave_ 74 _The Hog-Feeder's Day_ 85 _The Junior Reserve_ 113 _Mammy_ 119 _War Reminiscences_ 150 TO MY GRANDCHILDREN As the "New South," with all its changes and improvements, rises above the horizon, those whose hearts still cling to the "Old South" look sadly backward and sigh to see it fade away into dimness, to be soon lost to sight and to live only in the memory of the few. Hoping to rescue from oblivion a few of the habits, thoughts, and feelings of the people who made our South what it was, I have drawn from memory a few pen sketches of plantation life, based upon actual events, in which are recorded some of the good and even noble traits of character which were brought forth under the yoke of slavery. For you, my dear grandchildren, I have tried to fix, before they fade entirely, these already faint reflections from the "light of other days." Margaret Devereux. Raleigh, North Carolina. December, 1905. PLANTATION LIFE I am going to try to describe to you something of the lives and homes of your dear grandfather and of your great-grandfather, because I want you to know something of them, because their mode of life was one of which scarcely a vestige is left now, and because, finally, I don't want you to be led into the misconception held by some that Southern planters and slaveholders were cruel despots, and that the life of the negro slaves on the plantation was one of misery and sorrow. Before I enter upon my brief narrative I want you to realize that it is all strictly true, being based upon my knowledge of facts; very simple and homely in its details, but with the merit of entire truthfulness. Your great-grandfather, Thomas Pollock Devereux, and your grandfather, John Devereux, were planters upon an unusually large scale in North Carolina; together they owned eight large plantations and between fifteen and sixteen hundred negroes. Their lands, situated in the rich river bottoms of Halifax and Bertie counties, were very fertile, the sale crops being corn, cotton, and droves of hogs, which were sent to Southampton county, Virginia, for sale. The names of your great-grandfather's plantations were Conacanarra, Feltons, Looking Glass, Montrose, Polenta, and Barrows, besides a large body of land in the counties of Jones and Hyde. His residence was at Conacanarra, where the dwelling stood upon a bluff commanding a fine view of the Roanoke river, and, with the pretty house of the head overseer, the small church, and other minor buildings, looked like a small village beneath the great elms and oaks. Your grandfather's principal plantation, and our winter home, was Runiroi, in Bertie county. The others were "The Lower Plantation" and "Over the Swamp." At Runiroi we lived and called ourselves at home, and of it I have preserved the clearest recollection and the fondest memories. From Kehukee bluff, which we usually visited while waiting for the ferryman on our return journey after the summer's absence, the plantation could be seen stretching away into the distance, hemmed in by the flat-topped cypresses. From there we had a view of our distant dwelling, gleaming white in the sunlight and standing in a green oasis of trees and grass, all looking wonderfully small amid the expanse of flat fields around it. Apart as I now am from the restless, never-ending push of life, when neither men nor women have time for leisure, when even pleasure and amusement are reduced to a business calculation as to how much may be squeezed into a given time, I think it might perhaps calm down some of the nervous restlessness that I perceive in my dear children and grandchildren if they could, for once, stand there in the soft November sunshine. The splendor of the light is veiled in a golden haze, the brown fields bask in the soft radiance and seem to quiver in the heat, while the ceaseless murmur of the great river is like a cradle song to a sleepy child; the rattle of the old ferryman's chain and the drowsy squeak of his long sweeps seem even to augment the stillness. The trees along the banks appear to lack the energy to hang out the brilliant reds and purples of autumn, but tint their leaves with the soft shades of palest yellow, and these keep dropping and floating away, while the long gray moss waves dreamily in the stillness. The house at Runiroi was a comfortable, old, rambling structure, in a green yard and flower garden, not ugly, but quite innocent of any pretensions at comeliness. Neither was there, to many, a bit of picturesque beauty in the flat surroundings; and yet this very flatness _did_ lend a charm peculiar to itself. My eyes ever found a delight in its purple distances and in the great, broad-armed trees marking the graceful curves of the river. The approach from the public road, which followed the bank of the river, was through the "willow lane," between deep-cut ditches, which kept the roadway well drained unless the river overspread its banks, when the lane was often impassable for days. In the springtime, when the tender green boughs of the willows were swayed by the breeze, it was a lovely spot, and a favorite resort of the children. I was so young a bride, only seventeen, when I was taken to our winter home, and so inexperienced, that I felt no dread whatever of my new duties as mistress. The household comforts of my childhood's home had seemed to come so spontaneously that I never thought of _processes_, and naturally felt rather nonplussed when brought into contact with realities. The place had for years been merely a sort of camping-out place for your great-grandfather, who liked to spend a part of the winter there; so the house was given over to servants who made him comfortable, but who took little heed of anything else. I recollect my antipathy to a certain old press which stood in the back hall. The upper part was filled with books. In the under cupboard, Minerva kept pies, gingerbread, plates of butter, etc. The outside looked very dim and dusty. I could not bear to look at it, but knew not how to remedy its defects. I know now that it was a handsome old piece, which a furniture-lover would delight in. However, my youthful appetite did not scorn Minerva's gingerbread, and, as I had many lonely hours to get through with as best I could, I would mount the highest chair that I could find, and ransack the old musty volumes in search of amusement. The collection consisted chiefly of antiquated medical works, some tracts, etc., but once, to my delight, I unearthed two of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, which were indeed a treasure trove; one of them was "Gaston de Blondeville," which I thought beautiful. I have regretted that I did not take care of it, for I have never seen another copy. Minerva was a woman of pretty good sense, but of slatternly habits. She had been so long without a lady to guide her that her original training was either forgotten or entirely disregarded. Once, when starting to Conacanarra for Christmas, I charged her to take advantage of the fine weather to give the passage floors a thorough scrubbing; they were bare and showed every footprint of black mud from the outside. When it came time to return, in spite of our pleasant Christmas week, we were glad to think of our own home and were rather dismayed when the morning fixed for our departure broke dark and very cold, with little spits of snow beginning to fall. I was much afraid that we should be compelled to yield to the hospitable objections to our going, but at last we succeeded in getting off. We crossed at Pollock's (your great-grandfather's ferry), so that should the storm increase we need not leave our comfortable carriage until we should be at home. It was a lonely drive; the snow fell steadily but so gently that I enjoyed seeing the earth and the trees, the fences and the few lonely houses that we passed all draped in white; though we were warmly wrapped, the anticipation of the crackling fires in our great old fireplaces was delightful. When we got home, the first sound that greeted our ears, as we stepped upon the piazza, was a mournful, long-drawn hymn. Shivering and damp from our walk up the yard, we opened the door, to see Minerva, with kilted skirts, standing in an expanse of frozen slush and singing at the top of her voice, while she sluiced fresh deluges of water from her shuck brush. I was too disgusted for words, but resolved that this should not occur again. As soon as I could communicate with the outside world I had the hall floors covered with oilcloth (then the fashionable covering). Also, Minerva was displaced, and Phyllis reigned in her stead, but Minerva, nevertheless, always indulged in the belief that she was indispensable to our happiness and comfort. In honor of my advent as mistress, the floors had been freshly carpeted with very pretty bright carpets, which were in danger of being utterly ruined by the muddy shoes of the raw plantation servants, recently brought in to be trained for the house. Although the soil generally was a soft, sandy loam, I observed in my horseback rides numbers of round stones scattered about in the fields. They were curious stones, and looked perfectly accidental and quite out of place. Their presence excited my interest, and aroused my curiosity as to their origin, which has never been gratified. They seemed so out of place in those flat fields! However, I determined to utilize them and had a number collected and brought into the yard, and with them I had a pretty paved walk made from the house to the kitchen. Our house stood upon what was known as the "Second Land," which meant a slight rise above the wide, low grounds, which were formerly, I believe, the bed of the sluggish stream now known as the Roanoke. All along the edge of these Second Lands, just where they joined the low grounds, there was a bed of beautiful small gravel. I was delighted when I discovered this and at once interested myself in having a gravel walk made up to the front of the house, and this was, when completed, all that I had hoped, and served as a perfect protection against the offending mud. There was one evil, though, which I could not guard against, and this was the clumsy though well-meaning stupidity of a plantation negro. One afternoon the house became offensive with the odor of burning wool. I followed up the scent and, after opening several doors, I finally traced it to the dining-room. It was filled with smoke, and there, in front of an enormous fire, squatted Abby. In a fit of most unaccountable industry she had undertaken to clean the brass andirons, and had drawn them red hot from the fire and placed them upon the carpet. Of course, four great holes were the result and, as the carpets had been made in New York, there were no pieces with which the holes could be mended. As I had already decided her to be too stupid to be worth the trouble of training, I felt no desire to find fault with her, so I merely told her to put them back, or rather stood by to see it done. I did not keep her in the house after that, but do not suppose that she ever at all realized the mischief that she had done. One of my amusements was to watch the birds; they were so numerous, and appeared to be so tame. I set traps for them. This was childish, but I was very young and often rather at a loss to find something to do; so I used to take with me my small house boy, "Minor," whom I was training to be a grand butler; he would carry the trap and, after it had been set and baited, I would make him guide me to the trees where the sweetest persimmons grew; there I would while away the morning and on the next we would find one or more birds fluttering in the trap, which, to Minor's silent disgust, I would set free. The squirrels, too, were a pleasure to me in my horseback rides toward Vine Ridge, especially. Your grandfather and I would pause to watch them playing hide and seek just like children, scampering round and round, their pretty gray tails waving, until some noise would send them out of sight, and the silent forest would seem as if no living thing were near. It was upon one of these rides that your grandfather told me how, when he was about twelve years old, and spending his Christmas holidays at Runiroi with his grandfather, he once said that he could shoot one hundred squirrels between sunrise and sunset. His uncle, George Pollock Devereux, happened to hear him and rebuked him sharply for so idle a boast, and when your dear grandfather manfully stood his ground, saying that it was not an idle boast, his uncle called him a vain braggart, which so offended your grandfather that he told his uncle that he would prove the truth of his assertion. And so, upon the following morning, he rose early and was at Vine Ridge gun in hand, ready to make his first shot, as soon as the sun should appear. The squirrels were very numerous at first, and he made great havoc among them. Many a mile he tramped that day, scanning with eager eyes the trees above him, in search of the little gray noses, hidden behind the branches, and thus it happened that he got many a fall and tumble among the cypress knees; but what did that matter to his young limbs? he had only to pick himself up again and tramp on. As the day advanced, fewer little bright eyes peeped from the tree-tops and his number was not made up; he was getting tired too, and very hungry, for he had eaten nothing since his early breakfast. He stumbled wearily on, however, determined not to fail, for he dreaded his uncle's triumphant sarcasm should he do so. A few more shots brought his number to ninety-nine, but where was the one-hundredth to be found? The sun was sinking to the horizon; he had come out from the swamp and was tramping homeward; the gun, so light in the morning, now weighed like lead upon his shoulder. As he looked into every tree for that hundredth squirrel which could not be found, the sun's disk was resting upon the horizon when he turned into the willow lane leading to the house. Just at the entrance there stood a great chestnut oak. This was his last chance. He paused to take one hopeless look, when, to his unspeakable joy, he beheld a fox squirrel seated up among the branches. Now he knew that the fox squirrel was the slyest, as well as the shyest of all his kind; no creature so expert as he in slipping out of range; there would be no chance for a second shot, for now only a rim of the sun was left. With a wildly beating heart he raised his gun, took time to aim well,--fired,--and down came his hundredth squirrel. His wager was won; fatigue and hunger all gone, he hastened gayly home and with pride emptied his bag before his uncle and his delighted old grandfather, who loved him above everything, and who finally made him his heir, so that your grandfather was quite independent of his own father. When I first became acquainted with the plantation, the sale crop was taken down to Plymouth in a great old scow, but this was afterward superseded by the introduction of freight steamers, which took the produce direct to Norfolk. These steamers proved to be a great comfort and convenience to us. By them we might receive anything that we desired from Norfolk, of which the things most enjoyed were packages of books,--Vickry and Griffiths, booksellers, having standing orders to send at their discretion what they thought desirable, besides the special orders for what we wished to see. The advent of a steamer at the landing would cause much pleasurable excitement. If anything of special interest was expected, the first puff of steam from down the river would be eagerly examined through the spy-glass. Then would follow several days of busy life down at the different barns from which the corn was to be shipped. Before the introduction of the corn-sheller, the corn was beaten from the cob by men wielding great sticks, or flails; others raked the grain into an immense pile; from this pile it was measured by select hands and put into bags, which were carried to the steamer lying at the landing. The men who measured and kept the tally maintained a constant song or chant, and designated the _tally_, or fifth bushel, by a sort of yell. The overseer stood by with pencil and book and scored down each tally by a peculiar mark. The constant stream of men running back and forth, with bags empty or full, made a very busy scene. After the corn had been shipped, the boat had steamed down the river, and the place, lately so full of busy life, had returned to its accustomed quiet seclusion, the redbirds came to peck up the corn left upon the ground. I remember how once, upon a cold, gray afternoon, I put on my wraps and ran down to the Sycamore Barn, on purpose to watch the shy, beautiful things. Snowflakes were beginning to fall and whisper about the great bamboo vines; twisted around the trees upon the river banks, the long gray moss hung motionless and a thick grayness seemed to shut out the whole world; all about me was gray,--earth, sky, trees, barn, everything, except the redbirds and the red berries of a great holly tree under whose shelter I stood, listening to the whispering snowflakes. The Sycamore Barn derived its name from a great sycamore tree near which it stood. This tree was by far the largest that I ever saw; a wagon with a four-horse team might be on one side, and quite concealed from any one standing upon the other. When I knew it, it was a ruin, the great trunk a mere shell, though the two giant forks,--themselves immense in girth--still had life in them. In one side of the trunk was an opening, about as large as an ordinary door; through this we used to enter, and I have danced a quadrille of eight within with perfect ease. This tree gave its name to the field in which it grew, which formed part of the tract known as the Silver Wedge. It was about the Silver Wedge that an acrimonious lawsuit was carried on during the lives of your great-great-grandparents, John and Frances Devereux. She was a Pollock, and the dispute arose through a Mr. Williams, the son or grandson of a certain Widow Pollock, who had, after the death of her first husband, Major Pollock, married a Mr. Williams. She may possibly have dowered in this Silver Wedge tract. At any rate, her Williams descendants set up a claim to it, although it was in possession of the real Pollock descendant, Frances Devereux. It was a large body of very rich land, and intersected the plantation in the form of a wedge, beginning near the Sycamore Barn, and running up far into the Second Lands, widening and embracing the dwelling-house and plantation buildings. I have heard your great-great-grandfather laugh and tell how Williams once came to the house, and, with a sweeping bow and great assumption of courtesy, made your great-great-grandmother welcome to remain in _his_ house. After the suit had been settled, Williams had occasion to come again to the house, feeling, no doubt, rather crestfallen. Mrs. Devereux met him at the door and, making him a sweeping curtsy, quoted his exact words, making him welcome to _her_ house. One of my pleasant memories is connected with our fishing porch. This was a porch, or balcony, built upon piles driven into the river upon one side, and the other resting upon the banks. It was raised some eight or ten feet above the water and protected by a strong railing or balustrade and shaded by the overhanging branches of a large and beautiful hackberry tree. It made an ideal lounging-place, upon a soft spring afternoon, when all the river banks were a mass of tender green, and the soft cooing of doves filled the air. We usually took Minor with us to bait our hooks and assist generally, and often went home by starlight with a glorious string of fish. The drawback to the plantations upon the lower Roanoke lay in their liability to being flooded by the freshets to which the Roanoke was exposed. These were especially to be dreaded in early spring, when the snow in the mountains was melting. I have known freshets in March to inundate the country for miles. At one time there was not a foot of dry land upon one of the Runiroi plantations. It was upon a mild night in that month that I sat upon the porch nearly all through the night, feeling too anxious to sleep, for your grandfather, the overseer, and every man on the plantation were at the river, working upon the embankments. The back waters from the swamp had already spread over everything. This gentle and slow submersion did no great damage, when there was no growing crop to be injured; the thing to be guarded against was the breaking of the river dam and the consequent rushing in of such a flood as would wash the land into enormous holes, or "breakovers," of several acres in extent in some places, or make great sand ledges in others, to say nothing of the destruction of fences, the drowning of stock, etc. On the night that I speak of, the moon was at its full and glittered upon the water, rippling all around where dry land should have been. I sat listening anxiously and occasionally shuddering at a sharp cracking noise, like a pistol shot, and, following upon it, the rushing of water into some plantation up the river. Once in the night I heard a noise and, upon my calling to know who it was, a man replied that they had come up in a canoe to get some water. I could not help laughing; it struck me that water was rather too plentiful just then. They worked upon the dam until there was no more material to work with, water being level with the top on both sides and only a foot of standing-room at the top, so, having done all that they could, all hands took to canoes and went to their homes. That "March freshet" did incalculable damage to the whole region, but still fine crops were made that season. Your grandfather was indefatigable while anything could be done, but, having done all that human energy could, he would resign himself cheerfully to the inevitable, and his family never were saddened by depression on his part. This wonderful elasticity was most noticeable at the fearful period of the surrender and, indeed, through all the succeeding years, when this power of his, despite all of our losses and anxieties, made our life one of great happiness. When, during the winter months, a moderate freshet meant nothing more serious than the flooding of the low grounds, it was considered rather a benefit, owing to the rich deposit left upon the land, besides the advantages gained in floating out lumber from the swamps. This March freshet caused great pecuniary loss; new dams had to be constructed at a heavy expense, and many miles of repairing had to be done to those left standing. The few days before the water had reached its height were most trying to the nerves (that is, my nerves). I believe my fears culminated upon the night that I saw the water rippling over our own doorstep and realized that there was not a foot of dry land visible for miles; by morning, though, the river was "at a stand," and by evening little spots of green were showing themselves in the yard and garden. The word garden recalls to my memory our pretty garden, a most beautiful continuation of the smooth green yard, its many alleys bordered with flowers and flowering shrubs. It was, I own, laid out in a stiff, old-fashioned manner, very different from the present and far more picturesque style; still, it was charming,--the profusion of flowers, fed by that wonderful river loam, exceeded anything that I have ever seen elsewhere. In the springtime, what with the flowers, the beautiful butterflies, and the humming-birds, the sunny air would actually seem to quiver with color and life. Every plantation had a set of buildings which included generally the overseer's house, ginhouse, screw, barn, stable, porkhouse, smokehouse, storehouse, carpenter's shop, blacksmith shop, and loomhouse, where the material for clothing for each plantation was woven,--white cloth for the underclothes, and very pretty striped or checked for outer garments. At Runiroi, the weaver, Scip, was a first-class workman, and very proud of his work. I often had sets of very pretty towels woven in a damask pattern of mixed flax and cotton. The winter clothing was of wool, taken from our own sheep. The carpenters at Runiroi were Jim, the head carpenter, Austin, and Bill, who were all good workmen. Frank, "Boat Frank," as he was called, from having formerly served as captain of the old flat-bottomed scow which carried the sale crop to Plymouth, was also in the shop and did beautiful work. I was fond of visiting Jim's shop and ordering all sorts of wooden ware, pails, piggins, trays, etc.; these last, dug out of bowl-gum, were so white that they looked like ivory. Boat Frank was very proud of the smoothness and polish of his trays. Our children, with their mammy, were fond of visiting "Uncle Jim's" shop and playing with such tools as he considered safe for them to handle, while Mammy, seated upon a box by the small fire, would indulge in long talks about religion or plantation gossip. That shop was indeed a typical spot; its sides were lined to the eaves with choice lumber, arranged systematically so that the green was out of reach, while that which was seasoned was close at hand. Uncle Jim would have felt disgraced had a piece of work made of unseasoned wood left his shop. The smoke from the small fire which burned in the middle of the big shop, upon the dirt floor, escaped in faint blue wreaths through the roof, leaving behind it a sweet, pungent odor. The sun streamed in at the wide-open door, while Jim and Frank tinkered away leisurely upon plough handles and other implements or household articles. Uncle Jim was a preacher as well as a carpenter. He was quite superior to most of his race, both in sense and principle and was highly thought of by both white and black. Upon two Sundays in each month he preached in the church and his sermons were quite remarkable, teaching in his homely way the necessity of honesty and obedience. His companion in the shop, Boat Frank, was of a more worldly nature, and wore great golden hoops in his ears and a red woolen cap upon his head, and resembled an elderly and crafty ape, as he sat chipping away at his work. Next came the blacksmith shop, where Bob wielded the great hammer and grinned with childish delight at seeing the children's enjoyment when the sparks flew. After the blacksmith's shop came the loomhouse, where Scip, the little fat weaver, threw the shuttles and beat up the homespun cloth from morning till night; there, too, were the warping-bars, the winding-blades, and the little quilling-wheel, at which a boy or girl would fill the quills to be in readiness for the shuttles. Scip was an odd figure, with his short legs, and his woolly hair combed out until his head looked as big as a bushel. The dwellings of the negroes were quite a distance from the "Great House," as that of the master was called, and were built in two or more long rows with a street between. This was the plan upon every plantation. Each house had a front and back piazza, and a garden, which was cultivated or allowed to run wild according to the thrift of the residents. It generally was stocked with peach and apple trees, and presented a pretty picture in spring, when the blue smoke from the houses curled up to the sky amid the pink blossoms, while the drowsy hum of a spinning-wheel seemed to enhance the quiet of the peaceful surroundings. The church at Runiroi was large and comfortably furnished with seats; colored texts were upon the walls, and the bell, which summoned the people on Sunday mornings, swung amid the branches of a giant oak. Both your great-grandfather and grandfather employed a chaplain. At Runiroi, he officiated only upon alternate Sundays, as the people liked best to listen to Carpenter Jim. It used to be a pretty sight upon a Sunday morning to see the people, all dressed in their clean homespun clothes, trooping to church, laughing and chattering until they reached the door, when they immediately would assume the deepest gravity and proceed at once to groan and shake themselves more and more at every prayer. The singing would often sound very sweet at a distance, although I must confess that I never sympathized in the admiration of the negro's voice. Of course, like all other laboring classes, the negroes had to work, and of course, as they had not the incentive of poverty, discipline was necessary. They knew that they would be housed, clothed and well fed whether they earned these comforts or not; so, in order to insure diligence, reliable men were chosen from among them as assistants to the white overseers; these were called "foremen," and were looked up to with respect by their fellows. Upon every large plantation there was also a Foreman Plower, his business being to take the lead and see that the plowing was well done and that the plow horses were not maltreated. With the settled men this was unnecessary, but it was very needful with the younger hands. These colored foremen were, in their turn, subject to the overseers, who, in turn, if not found to be temperate and reliable, were dismissed. Upon well-ordered plantations punishments were rare, I may say unknown, except to the half-grown youths. Negroes, being somewhat lacking in moral sense or fixed principles, are singularly open to the influence of example; and thus it was that a few well-ordered elders would give a tone to the whole plantation, while the evil influences of one ill-disposed character would be equally pronounced. The plantations of which I am speaking were singularly remote, being so surrounded by other large plantations that they were exempt from all outside and pernicious influences. The one or two country stores at which the negroes traded might have furnished whiskey, had not those who kept them stood too much in awe of the planters to incur the risk of their displeasure. As the town of Halifax could boast of several little stores, and was the trading post of Feltons, Conacanara, and Montrose, your great-grandfather, in order to prevent the evils of promiscuous trading, caused certain coins to be struck off, of no value except to the one merchant with whom his people were allowed to trade. Perhaps you will be surprised to know how important to the country merchants was the trade of a plantation, so I will explain to you of what it consisted. Of course, a few of the careless, content with the abundance provided for them, did not care to accumulate, while others, naturally thrifty, amassed a good deal from the sale of otter, coon, mink, and other skins of animals trapped. Then, some owned as many as thirty beehives. One old woman, known as "Honey Beck," once hauled thirty or more gallons of honey to Halifax and back again, the whole distance (twenty-five miles), rather than take a low price for it. Besides skins, honey, and beeswax, eggs and poultry were always salable. One of my necessities in housekeeping was a bag of small change, and, as I never refused to take what was brought to me, my pantry was often so overstocked with eggs and my coops with ducks and chickens, that it was a hard matter to know how to consume them. The beautiful white shad, now so highly prized in our markets, were then a drug. It was the prettiest sight in the early dawn of a spring morning to see the fishermen skimming down the broad river with their dip-nets poised for a catch. My opportunities for seeing them at that early hour were from my bedroom window, when I happened to be visiting the family at Conacanara. Our home at Runiroi stood some distance from the river, but the dwelling at Conacanara was upon a bluff just over the stream. Beside the sale crops of cotton and corn, sweet potatoes were raised in large quantities for the negroes, to which they were allowed to help themselves without stint, also a summer patch of coarse vegetables such as they liked. The regular food furnished consisted of corn meal, bacon or pickled pork, varied with beef in the autumn, when the beeves were fat, salt fish with less meat when desired, molasses, dried peas and pumpkins without stint (I mean the peas and pumpkins). I don't suppose any laboring class ever lived in such plenty. A woman with a family of children always had the use of a cow, the only proviso being that she should look after the calf and see that it did not suffer, for your grandfather was particular about his ox teams; they were the finest that I ever saw, and were well blooded,--Holstein for size and Devon for speed and activity. Our dairy was very pretty; it was built of immense square logs, with a paved brick floor, and great broad shelves all around. The roof was shaded by hackberry trees, and the grass around it was like velvet, so thick and green. Old Aunt Betty, who was the dairy woman until she grew too infirm, was the neatest creature imaginable; she wore the highest of turbans, and her clothes were spotless. She took the greatest pride in her dairy; for milk vessels she used great calibashes with wooden covers, and, as they naturally were absorbent, it was necessary to sun one set while another was in use. She kept them beautifully, and the milk and butter were delicious. There was a man upon the plantation called "Shoe Joe," or "Gentleman Joe." He had, when a young man, been body-servant to his young master George, your great-grandfather's brother. I never in my life have seen finer manners than Joe's, so deeply respectful, and so full of courtesy. Notwithstanding his really fine deportment, Joe's nature was low and mean, and something that he did so offended his young master that, to Joe's great disgust, he was remanded back to the plantation and field work. In consequence of this, he always bore his young master a grudge, which, of course, he kept to himself. Once, however, he made some disrespectful speech before old Betty, who was devoted to her Master George, and this so offended her that she never again spoke to Joe, nor allowed him to make her shoes, though this last was more from fear than vindictiveness. For Shoe Joe was suspected of being a trick negro, and of possessing the power so to trick his work as to cause the death of any one wearing his products. Nothing was productive of more evil upon a plantation than was the existence upon it of a "Trick" or "Goomer" negro; and so insidious was their influence, and so secret their machinations, that, though suspected, it was impossible to prove anything, for, although detested by their fellows, fear kept the latter silent. Nothing would cause such abject terror as the discovery of an odd-looking bundle, wrapped and wrapped with strands of horse-hair, secreted beneath the steps, or laid in an accustomed path. Instantly after such a discovery the person for whom it was meant would begin to pine away, and, unless some counter spell were discovered, death would ensue. These occurrences, fortunately, were rare, but if the thing once took root upon a plantation, it wrought much evil in various ways. Joe was suspected of these evil practices, and, though a wonderfully capable man at all kinds of work, and a most accomplished courtier, was always looked upon with suspicion. His death was sudden, and the people firmly believed that he had made a compact with the devil, that the term had expired, and that Satan had met him in the woods and broken his neck. He was a tall, finely formed man, as black as ebony, and his movements always reminded me of a serpent. Negroes, even in these days of school education, retain many of their superstitions, though ashamed to own it. One of their beliefs was that the word _you_ meant the devil's wife, and it was insulting to address any one by that word. To one another it was always _yinna_. So marked was this custom that the negroes of that section were known as the yinna negroes. This word, though, was never used toward their superiors, who were invariably addressed in the third person. Manuel was rather a common name among them; there were always two or three Manuels upon every plantation, and one was always called "Hoodie Manuel." No one could ever discover what this meant; perhaps they did not know themselves, though I am rather inclined to think that it was a superstitious observance, understood, perhaps, only by a select few. I think it must have had some sort of significance, as it was never omitted. As soon as one Hoodie Manuel died, another Manuel assumed the title, though not always the oldest. It was not required of a woman with a large family to do field work. Such women had their regular tasks of spinning allotted to them, sufficiently light to allow ample time to take care of their houses and children. The younger women (unless delicate) left their children in a day nursery in charge of an elderly woman who was caretaker. Usually they preferred field work, as being more lively; but if one disliked it, she usually soon contrived to be classed among the spinners. When, occasionally, I happened to go to any of the houses, often quite unexpectedly, I can assert truthfully that I never, in a single instance, saw dirt or squalor in one of them. The floors were clean, the beds comfortable, with white and wonderfully clean blankets. Everything, though very homely, with clumsy benches and tables, looked white and thoroughly clean. I remember hearing your grandfather speak of once going at breakfast time to a house to visit a sick child. The man of the house was seated at a small table while his wife served him. The table was covered with an immaculately clean homespun cloth, and coffee, in a tin pot shining with scrubbing, either sugar or molasses, I forget which, a dish of beautifully fried bacon and hoe-cakes, fresh from the fire, constituted his plain but most abundant meal. Separation of families has ever been a favorite plea for the abolition of slavery, and I admit that in theory it was a plausible argument; and justice compels me to say that such instances, though rare, were not unknown. As a rule, however, family ties were respected, and when, through the settlement of an estate, such separations seemed impending, they were usually prevented by some agreement between the parties; for instance, if a negro man had married a woman belonging to another planter, a compromise was generally effected by the purchase of one of the parties, regardless of self-interest on the part of the owners. Thus families were kept together without regard to any pecuniary loss. Public sentiment was against the severing of family ties. Before I close this little sketch I will tell you as well as I can the outline of plantation work. With the beginning of a new year, the crop being all housed, the sale corn being stored in large barns or cribs on the river banks, and the cotton either being sold or kept for better prices, the plowing, ditching, and, when the swamps were full, the floating out of timber, were all carried on with great diligence. At Christmas, when all the clothing, shoes, and Kilmarnock caps had been given out to the ditchers, high waterproof boots were distributed. It was the custom to allow to every man who desired it a bit of land, upon which, in his spare time, to cultivate a small crop, for which he was paid the market price. Christmas was the usual day chosen for settling these accounts, and the broad piazza was full of happy, grinning black faces gathered around the table at which the master sat, with his account-book and bags of specie. A deep obeisance and a scrape of the foot accompanied each payment, and many a giggle was given to the lazy one whose small payment testified to his indolence. What a contrast between those happy, sleek, laughing faces and the sullen, careworn, ill-fed ones of now! In the early springtime, what was known as the "trash-gang," that is, boys and girls who had never worked, were set to clearing up fences, knocking down cotton stalks, and burning small trash piles. I pause here to say that, the woodlands being a long distance from the quarters, the supply of fuel was a serious question, and when there was a threat of snow or increasing cold, every man would be employed in cutting or hauling a supply of fuel to the houses. Planting time began with the middle of March. In August the crops were "laid by." The three days' holiday began with the slaughter of pigs and beeves, in preparation for the annual dinner upon every plantation. After holiday came the fodder-pulling, a job hated by all, especially by overseer and master, as the drenching dews and the hot sun combined to make much sickness. This work was never begun until late in the morning, but even after the sun had shone upon the fields, the people would be drenched in dew to their waists. Next, the whitening fields told that cotton-picking must begin, and, later on, a killing frost upon the already browning shucks sent the great wagons to the fields, where the corn-gatherers, with sharp needles tied to their wrists, ripped open the tough shucks and let loose the well-hardened ears of grain. As each field became stripped, stock would be turned in to feast upon the peas and pumpkins. With winter came that period of bliss to the soul of Cuffee, namely, the hog-killing, when even the smallest urchin might revel in grease and fresh meat. If eyesight permitted, I might tell you some tales of plantation doings which might perhaps amuse you, but I have said enough to give you some idea of the old Southern life. All that I have said is within bounds, but, after all, I fear I have not been able to give you an adequate idea of the peacefulness and abundance of life upon a great plantation. GOING TO THE PLANTATION Summer is over; the nights grow chill, and the autumnal tints, beginning to glow upon the hillsides, tell the low-country folk that the time draws near for the yearly flitting to their plantation homes. The planter, who passes the hot season amid the breezy uplands, begins to think of his whitening cotton fields, and grows impatient for the frost, which must fall ere the family may venture into the land of swamps and agues. He looks out upon the flower-beds, glowing with life and quivering in the sunshine, and listens to the incessant shrill-voiced cicada piping from the tree-tops, while the insect-drone, in the heated, languid air, seems to speak of an unending summer; but as "all things come to him who waits," so at length come the frosts to the planter. The week preceding the departure is a busy one, embracing, along with the numberless good-byes, many important afterthoughts in the way of providing the necessities required in the isolated home, where shops are unknown. At length, however, the great boxes are closed, and stand ready for the daylight start of the wagon; the bird-cage, the basket of kittens, and the puppy are also committed by the children to "Ung Jack," the teamster, who, with the broadest of smiles, promises "little missis" and the "little masters" to take the best of care of them. Giving the baggage a day's start, the family's departure takes place on the day following. After an early breakfast, Mammy and the younger children bundle into the big carriage, mother and the rest of the little mob follow in the _barouche_, while papa, who abhors the confinement of a carriage, follows on horseback. Although the animal which he bestrides is a noble specimen of his kind, still it must be confessed that papa does not present a jaunty appearance as he jogs soberly along; and yet, as he sits easily swaying in the saddle, there is about him a careless grace which marks the natural horseman. Three days are consumed upon the journey. It might be made in less time; but the party prefer to take it easily, and at midday make a halt by a running stream, where, seated upon a fallen log or mossy bank, they open their well-stored baskets, and dine. The horses utter impatient whinnies as their drivers dip their buckets into the sparkling water of the little stream, and, when these are lifted to their heads, thirstily thrust their muzzles into the cool depths, and drink long and deeply of the refreshing draughts. At sunset, the tired little ones begin to look out for the white chimneys of old John Tayler's wayside inn, where they are to pass the night. This house has, for generations, been the halting-place for planters' families. Tayler's grandfather and his father have entertained bygone generations; and so it is not strange that when the little cortège draw up before the old piazza, and the red light from the pine blaze streams out from the open door, not only old John, but his wife and two elderly daughters stand with beaming faces to give the travelers a hearty greeting, kindly to usher them into the carpetless room and seat them upon the stiff "split-bottomed" chairs. While the women busy themselves in getting supper, old John talks crops and politics to his guests, who, on their part, calmly accept the discomforts of the little inn as one of the unalterable laws of nature, without any idea of the possibility of improvement, swallow without complaint the nauseous coffee, and rest philosophically under the home-made sheets and blankets, feebly wondering that so much weight should contain so little warmth. When supper is over, the women throw a fresh torch upon the fire, and, as it crackles up the wide chimney, and sends its red light and sweet odors over the room, they set themselves to their tasks of picking the seeds from the "raw cotton," for, being famous spinners and weavers, they disdain that which has had its staples torn by the teeth of the gin. Upon the second day, the party leave the hills, now gorgeous in their autumnal brilliancy, the rocky roads, and the swiftly running streams of the up-country, and enter the lonely region where the great turpentine trees rear their lofty crests, and interminable sandy roads stretch away into dimness between columns of stately pines whose lofty tops make solemn music to the sighing wind. The third day finds them in "The Slashes," a desolate region inhabited by squatters. As they jolt over corduroy roads between pools of stagnant waters, the travelers look out wearily upon a sparse growth of gallberry and scrub-pine. Now and then they pass the solitary hut of a charcoal-burner, surrounded by its little patch of meagre corn; a pack of cur dogs rush out and bark fiercely, within the safe limits of the wattle fence surrounding the premises; white-headed children gaze from the doorways at the passing carriages. At the last settlement which they pass, a woman and a small, pale-faced boy are gathering in their corn crop. They are the wife and son of Bolin Brazle, an idle but good-natured vagabond, who spends his days scraping upon his fiddle up at the store, or occasionally, upon the promise of a drink, lending a hand in rafting tar-barrels. In consequence of the presentation of a worn-out mule, Bolin swears by the planter, wants to run him for the presidency, and obstinately refuses to receive pay for his charcoal. The matter is finally arranged by a barrel of corn being sent as a present whenever a load of charcoal is needed. Soon after leaving the "Slashes," a huddle of houses standing irregularly in a grove of magnificent oaks comes into view. In passing the one which does double duty as store and post-office, the travellers look at it with the realization that it is the connecting link with the outside world, as from it the bi-weekly mail is dispensed. Inside, some one (Brazle, no doubt) is scraping a lively jig upon his fiddle; on the long piazza men, lounging in chairs tilted against the wall, take off their hats to the carriages as they roll by. The planter draws his rein for a little friendly greeting, and the men, squirting tobacco juice, stand around and lazily report the country-side news as to the opening of the cotton, the state of the river, etc. Even the screech of the fiddle has died away. The long descents of the ferry hill commence, and the carriages roll pleasantly between deeply wooded banks. The approach to the river is marked by long rows of tar-barrels awaiting shipment, or rather rafting. From this point the road has become a sort of concrete from years of leakage from the tar-barrels. The children shriek with joy as the carriages come to a stop, and, craning their heads out, they behold the great tawny river in all its majesty. The repeated hallooings for the ferryman are at length responded to from far upstream. The old scamp is off fishing, and the party seek the shade, where a spring of clear water bubbles from a bank. While the children are drinking copious draughts, the parents stroll off and take a woodland path, which, after many a twist and turn amid thickets of sweet myrtle and purple-berried Bermuda Shrub, brings them to the summit of "The Bluff." Standing there, they look down upon the river, two hundred feet below. Upon the further side lie fields, all brown and golden in the sunshine, level and limitless; they stretch into the purple dimness where cypress trees loom upon the horizon, their flat tops mingling dreamily with the soft autumnal hazes. Far away, amid the sun-bathed fields, stand the trees which shelter the plantation home, whose chimneys and white gables are scarce visible save where a stray sunbeam falls upon them. "So to the Jews fair Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between," murmured the mother, as she glanced at her husband, to whom she knew the lands spread before them were, by inheritance and long association, far dearer than could be measured by the mere money value. Descending again to the ferry, they find the carriage already in the flat, and the children scarce restrained by Mammy from crossing without their elders. They draw deep breaths of delight as they watch old Bartley, with active limp, loosen the chain, and, planting his iron-shod pole deep into the grating sands, send the flat upstream; then, at a given point, they watch with intense admiration his skill in taking the sweeps and shooting swiftly to the other side. The horses know that they are near home, and prick up their ears, and go briskly onward. Scarcely a quarter of a mile is gone before the buildings of the "lower plantation" come into view,--a row of cabins built irregularly upon the highest points straggle along the river banks. Each cabin has its little garden with its row of coleworts and its beehives, or perhaps a pumpkin or two shows its yellow sides amid the withered vines. Outside the cabins, fish-nets are hung to dry, and from within comes the sleepy drone of a spinning-wheel; about the doorstep hens are scratching, while from around the corner a cluster of little woolly heads peep out shyly. Standing in the mellow sunlight, amid fields of ripening corn, with the river gently flowing between levees of such strength as to set floods at defiance, these cabins seem the very embodiment of peaceful security; the high piles, though, upon which they stand, are rather suggestive, and give a hint of what the now peacefully flowing stream is capable of when roused. A story is told of an old negro who obstinately refused to leave his house at a time when the unusually high water made it necessary to remove the people to a place of greater security. The rafts were ready, and the people, scared and anxious, had left their houses, and now only wailed for old Todge, who, with mulish persistence, refused to be moved. At length, unable to persuade him, and afraid to wait longer, they poled the rafts away. For the first few hours Todge got on very well. He had plenty of provisions, and, as for the isolation, he did not care for it. By and by the water began to make its appearance upon his hearth, and, before long, his little bank of coal, upon which his bread was baking, began to sizzle, and soon became a moist and blackened heap. Todge, however, was not imaginative, and when night fell, he lay down upon his bed and slept without fear; that is, he slept until his bed began to float, then he awoke and groped his way neck deep in water until he found his ladder and managed by it to climb up into his loft, where he sat shivering, till suddenly he felt the cabin give a lurch, and the water rushed in. It had been lifted clear off the piles, and when it should settle down poor Todge would be caught like a rat in a hole. It was settling fast, and the water was gurgling into poor Todge's ears, when, in desperation, he made a bolt at the roof, and, using his head as a battering ram, succeeded in knocking a hole in it, through which he contrived to creep out. Luckily, the point of the chimney was not quite submerged, and Todge was rescued in the course of the following day. The road, following the winding of the river, is bordered by giant trees from whose branches the gray moss waves dreamily, while leaves of palest yellow drop and silently float through the still air until they fall into the stream. In the fields, the corn-gatherers pause to doff their hats and smile their welcome. Ere long the barns and workshops of the upper plantation become visible. The tall gables and chimneys of the great house glisten in the sunlight. They pass the little church, with its bell half hidden amid the brown leaves of the great oak from which it dangles; from cabin chimneys, half hidden in trees, thin columns of smoke ascend and mingle with the soft blue sky. At the open gate, a broadly smiling dusky group stands with welcome depicted upon every face. Hearty handshakes of real affection are exchanged, while the children are being hugged, caressed, laughed over, and extolled for their growth and beauty. The master and mistress pass under the trees, whose long shadows rest upon the soft, green grass between streams of sunshine. The old piazza, gilded into brightness, smiles a welcome home. MY OWN EARLY HOME I was born at the old home in Raleigh, upon the land originally held by my great-grandfather, Colonel Lane, from the Crown. It had been the home of my grandfather, Harry Lane, and of his wife, Mary, and it was there that their children and grandchildren were born. When my oldest brother attained his majority, he took possession of this place, while my mother settled at Wills Forest, which was also part of the Lane land. This, Wills Forest, became our beloved summer home, which I inherited at the death of my dear mother. At the breaking out of the war between the states, your grandfather left to his subordinates his plantation interests in the eastern part of the state, and Wills Forest became our permanent home. Although you never saw this place in its palmy days, still, you are too well acquainted with its situation to need a description. In spite of neglect, Wills Forest is still beautiful; to it my heart is ever turning with regret and longing for that which can never return. It was for many years the brightest and happiest of homes, and as such it is still remembered by many besides its former inmates. Hospitality has ever been a marked characteristic of the Lane blood. Colonel Lane's doors were ever open, not only to his friends, but to every wayfarer, and as the small settlement, originally called Bloomsbury, became Raleigh, and the state capital, he found it necessary to build an "ornery" for the accommodation of strangers; this building stood upon Hillsborough Street, and was torn down only a short time ago. These "orneries" were a very common adjunct to gentlemen's residences in country neighborhoods, where there were no inns for the accommodation of travelers. We once stopped at one belonging to the Littles, near Littleton. It was kept by two servants, a man and his wife, belonging to the family, and they made us very comfortable. My grandfather, Harry Lane, inherited his father's liberal and open-hearted nature, and the old home, even since the death of my brother, still maintains its character for genial hospitality. Nor was Wills Forest inferior to it in that respect. My mother, accustomed from earliest youth to lavish housekeeping, kept it up after her removal to Wills Forest, and, so long as her health permitted, ever took delight in making her home all that a kindly, open-handed hospitality could. Nor do I think its character deteriorated after your grandfather became its master. Both he and I were fond of society, and few strangers ever came to town who were not entertained at Wills Forest. This could not be possible now, but previous to the war it was not at all impossible, and, during the war, at times, we received whole families of refugees. I do not mention these facts in a boastful spirit, but only as a sample of the old customs of the South. During the winter of 1865, we had the pleasure of entertaining the family of Colonel Norris of Baltimore, and early in March we had an unexpected visit from a large party of South Carolinians, who had been wounded in an attack made by General Kilpatrick upon Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's command at Fayetteville. Your grandfather met them in the street seeking for shelter; and, compassionating their forlorn condition, he directed them to Wills Forest. When we first caught sight of the cortège surrounding two ambulances, we were alarmed, thinking that it must be the Yankees coming to deprive us of house and home. You may, perhaps, imagine the relief when I saw the dear Confederate gray. I met the cavalcade at the front steps, and bade them welcome; the wounded were brought in and laid upon beds in the nursery, after which I directed one of our men, Frank, the carriage-driver, I think it was, to conduct the horsemen to the stable, to give the horses a plentiful feed, and then to bring the men up to the house to get their dinners. In ordinary times, this unlooked-for addition of more than twenty guests would, no doubt, have been an unwelcome tax, but in those days preceding the sad termination of the war there were so many poor, half-starved stragglers from the different commands passing to and fro, that we were never unprepared to feed as many as called upon us. At this time, two cooks were kept continually at work in the kitchen preparing such plain food as we could command: such as boiled hams, biscuit, loaf bread, corn bread, and wheat coffee. The milk and butter, all that we had, were joyfully given to our soldiers. The gray jacket was, indeed, a passport to every Southern heart. I have fed many a poor, footsore "boy in gray," but never in a single instance heard a despondent word from one of them. Most grateful they were for their good, abundant meals, but often too modest to carry any away in their haversacks. In times of peace, both before and after the war, the social life at the table, with family and always welcome friends, was a source of much pleasure. For a dinner of ten or twelve persons, including ourselves, there would be a ham at the head, a large roast turkey at the foot, a quarter of boiled mutton, a round of beef _à la mode_, and a boiled turkey stuffed with oysters. In the middle of the table would be celery in tall cut-glass stands, on the sides cranberries in moulds and various kinds of pickles. With these would be served either four or six dishes of vegetables and scalloped oysters, handed hot from the plate-warmer. The dessert would be a plum pudding, clear stewed apples with cream, with a waiter in the centre filled with calf's-foot jelly, syllabub in glasses, and cocoanut or cheesecake puddings at the corners. The first cloth was removed with the meats. For a larger entertainment a roast pig would be added, ice-cream would take the place of stewed apples. The dessert cloth would be removed with the dessert, and the decanters and fruit set upon the bare mahogany, with the decanters in coasters; cigars would follow, after the ladies had left, of course. At the time of the surrender, General Logan borrowed, or asked to borrow, my tables and cut-glass tumblers and wine-glasses; as such a request meant an order, I, of course, allowed them to be taken; to my surprise all were returned. Generals Grant and Sherman were entertained by Logan at this time, the tables being set before his tent in the grove. When my two little girls went to day school at St. Mary's, their dinners were sent to them by a negro boy or man. He carried the basket of hot dinner, while another carried the ice for their water, while another often walked behind bearing a large watermelon. As the other day-pupils dined in a similar way, the road at this time of day would be full of negroes carrying dinners. Since these bygone days, knowledge has increased, and men go to and fro with ease between the far corners of the earth; but I do not think that either virtue or happiness has kept pace with this increase of knowledge, nor has there ever been or will there ever be again such a country as the Old South, nor a people so good, so brave, or so true-hearted as the dear, primitive people of that good old time. TWO BOB WHITES Two Bob Whites were standing beneath the old thorn-bush at the far end of the orchard; indeed, they had been standing there for some time, with their heads held close, just as though they were talking together. In fact, that is just what they were doing. They were talking about the nest that they were going to build. And it was high time, for already there was a nice little brood in that nest beyond the brook. But our Bob Whites were a prudent couple; they did not approve of those early broods which came off barely in time to miss the chilly May rains. But the May spell was over now, the sun shone hot upon the waving wheat, and over the fence, there in the old field, the dewberries were ripe. Already the little boys who live in the house over yonder had been after the berries, regardless of briers and bare feet. Yes, it was high time that nest was built; but, somehow, they could not fix upon an altogether suitable location. True, the old thorn-bush, with its wide-spreading branches, was most attractive; but there the cart tracks ran too close by. As they stood thus in the clover, all undecided, they were startled by a loud cry from Robin Redbreast, whose nest was high up in that apple tree. Turning to ascertain the cause of the outcry, they espied a great, evil-looking, yellow cat, creeping through the long grass. This decided them, and without waiting another moment, they abandoned the thorn-bush and flew away to seek a safer abode. This they finally found over toward the wheat field, far away from cats and all the nuisances which attend the abodes of men. The nest was built back of the old gray, lichen-covered fence, just above the brook where the hazels and alders grow. All around was a blackberry thicket, and a great tussock of brown sedges sheltered the nest like a roof. Just beyond the fence was the wheat field. No one ever came there, excepting that now and then on a Saturday the little boys who lived over yonder would pass by with their fishing-poles, jump the fence, and disappear in the hazel thickets. The Bob Whites didn't mind the boys, unless Nip happened to be along, nosing about in search of some mischief to get into. But as yet no little white egg lay in the nest, and when Nip cocked his impudent little ears at them, they were off with a whirr that sent him, scampering, startled and scared, after the boys. From the trees to which they had flown, the Bob Whites watched the movements of the boys with some anxiety. "They might, you know," whispered Mrs. Bob, "be after that brood of our cousin's beyond the brook; but no, they've stopped--they are throwing something into the water, and there's that good-for-nothing Nip with them, so we may go back to the nest." But they did not go, for there was that pert Jennie Wren fluttering about, as bold as anything, actually peeping into the bait gourd, and, goodness gracious! she has stolen a worm and flown off with it; what impudence! And listen, there's Cardinal Grosbeak singing to them,-- "Boys, boys, boys, Do, do, do Fish a little deeper." There he is, just a little above them, upon the hackberry; now he's flown to that willow; he looks like a coal of fire, there among the green leaves. Now he begins again with his-- "Boys, boys, boys, Do, do, do." "The song may do well enough, but we don't approve of such forward ways," sighed Mrs. Bob. "No," chimed in Mrs. Mate Hare, limping from her home in the broom sedge. "It's not safe, with that horrid little Nip so near; to be sure, they've got wings, but as for me, he just frightens the life out of me, with his nosing and sniffing; forever nosing and sniffing after some mischief." And she wiggled her nose and ears and looked so funny that the Bob Whites almost laughed in her face. Before long there was a little white egg in the nest, and Bob White was so proud of it that he just stood upon the fences and called, "Bob White, Bob White, Bob White," all day long. And the boys who lived over yonder at the farmhouse said, "Listen to the Bob White, he's got a nest over there in the wheat." "Let him alone," said the farmer; "there'll be good shooting over there by and by." But Bob White had no thoughts to spare for by-and-bys. The blue June sky and the rustling wheat, the wild roses, and that little egg lying there in the nest were enough for him. So he just turned his round breast to the sunshine, and called "Bob White" louder than ever. After a while, when the nest was full of eggs, the Bob Whites would creep through the wheat and whisper of the little ones that would soon be coming. "They'll be here by the time the wheat is ripe," says Bob. "It'll be fine feeding for them," replies Mrs. Bob. They never thought of the reapers with their sharp scythes, and of the noise and tramping, where all was now so peaceful. While Mrs. Bob sat upon her eggs, it amused her to see the Mate Hares come limping out at sunset, very timidly at first, pausing, startled, at every sound. Soon, however, they forgot their fears and began their dances, hopping and running round and round like mad, and cutting such capers as quite scandalized the Bob Whites. "How very odd!" said Mrs. Bob, as she settled herself over her eggs. "I have heard that the March Hares have a Bee in their bonnets." "Same family," Bob White replied drowsily. Then Mrs. Bob, pressing her soft feathers gently upon her eggs, tucked her head under her wing and slept. Their dance over, the Mate Hares skipped down to the meadow, where the dew lay thick upon the clover. "How good!" they said, as they nibbled and munched. "So sweet and tender, with the dew upon it!" "Who would eat dry seeds like the Bob Whites?" said one. "And go to sleep at dusk!" snickered another. "And whistle all day!" said a third. "As much as to say to all men and dogs, 'Here I am, come and shoot me;' so silly! Oh, there's no family like the Mate Hares for sense; come, let's have another dance." So they skipped and hopped and munched clover until the dawn sent them scudding away to their homes. Well, at last, upon a sunny June morning, the lonely field was no longer lonely, neither was it quiet; for the grain was ripe and the reapers had come. Yes, the reapers had come, and with them came Nip. Yes, there he was, showing that ugly little red tongue of his, and poking his black nose into every hole and bush; no place was safe from those inquisitive eyes and sharp little cruel teeth. Mr. Bob watched him with a fluttering heart, as he ran sniffing about; suddenly, there came a sharp yelp, and then Mrs. Mate Hare's cotton tail went flying over rock and brier, followed by Nip, with his short, inadequate legs. Soon, however, he tired of this fun, and, trotting back, cocked his ears at the brier patch, sniffed about it, and crept in. Bob White, with an anxious call, flew into a tree. "He's got a nest somewhere about there," said one of the reapers. "I bet it's full of eggs," he added. "Yes, but the boss has give orders that they ain't to be tetched," said another. Then there came from the thicket a growl and a yelp, and Mrs. Bob, with a loud whirr, flew to her mate. "Nip's got 'em!" cried one of the men, and, picking up a stone, he ran to the thicket, from whence now issued yelps of anguish. "He'll not trouble them again, I reckon," the man said, with a grin, as he picked up his scythe. Nip trotted home with a crestfallen and dejected air, but the Bob Whites, still agitated, remained in the tree, with necks craned anxiously toward the nest. When, at length, Mrs. Bob found courage to return, the melancholy sight met her eyes of three broken eggs, some more scattered ones, and a generally disordered nest. Bob now came to her assistance, the scattered eggs were put back, the nest repaired, and Mrs. Bob contentedly seated herself upon it. The hatching time was drawing near, and it was a most exciting period. Mrs. Bob sat very still, but, as for Bob, he just fidgeted from nest to tree and back again, stopping around and asking questions. Yes, one egg is pipped; they'll all be out by to-morrow. And so they were,--thirteen little puff-balls, upon tiny coral feet. "There would have been sixteen, but for that horrid Nip," sighed Mrs. Bob. But she was very proud and happy, as she led the little brood through the brush, showed them how to pick up ants' eggs, and tore up the soft mould for grubs and other dainties. When the nimble little feet grew tired, she took them to the alder thicket, where, hidden away beneath her feathers, they piped themselves to rest. It was very quiet now: the reapers had gone; there was no rustling of waving wheat, only the shocks stood up silent; there was only the soft clang, clang from the bell-cow, as the herd went home. Then the sun went down, and grayness followed, and from the thicket came the sad cry of the Chuck Will's widow. But the Bob Whites were fast asleep. At dawn, Bob White stood upon the topmost rail, and whistled and whistled as loud as he could; he felt so happy that he had to repeat, "Bob White, Bob White" to everything that he saw,--to the bell-cow, as she passed by on her way to the meadow; then to the boy, who popped his whip and whistled back; then to the trees, which nodded in return. When the sun came glinting through the leaves and set the dewdrops to glistening and the whole world to laughing, he whistled louder than ever, just for joy. But presently the reapers came again. Then Bob White slipped away and hid himself far down amid the alders, where Mrs. Bob was showing the puff-balls how to pick up grubs and how to use their little nimble legs in running after gnats and other good things. "Don't try to catch that great bee, but come and pick up these ants' eggs," she called, as she threw aside the earth with her strong claws. "You must attend to what I say, for you are very ignorant little things, and if you are not careful to mind what I say you may be caught up by a hawk at any moment. So, listen: when I say 'Tuk,' you must hide yourselves immediately; don't try to run away, but just get under a rock, or even a leaf, or just flatten yourselves upon the ground, if you can't do better; you are so nearly the color of the ground that a boy will never see you, and you can even escape a hawk's keen eye." After a while, mother and brood left the alder thicket, and, as the reapers were now in a distant part of the field. Mrs. Bob led them all to a sunny spot where they might pick upon the fallen grains and wallow in the dry, hot sand. It was very nice to do this, and they were having a charming time, when suddenly voices were heard, and at once two boys were upon them. But not so much as one little brown head or one little pink toe was visible; the sign had been given, and now only a poor, wounded Bob White lay in the path before them. "She's dead," said one of the boys. "No, she ain't, her wing's broke," cried the other, as he made a dive at her. But somehow, Mrs. Bob continued to flop the broken wing, and to elude them. Another futile dive, and the two tin buckets containing the reapers' dinners were thrown down and forgotten in the keen interest of chasing the wounded Bob White, who managed to flop and flutter just beyond their reach until she had led them quite across the field,--then, with a whirr, she bounded into the air and safely perched herself upon a distant tree. The astonished small boys gazed blankly after her, wiped their hot faces upon their sleeves, and turned, reluctantly, to pick up their buckets. As they went along, hot and crestfallen, one of them suddenly exclaimed: "She's got young ones hid yonder, I bet," and with that they set off at a run. Mrs. Bob White, who knew boy-nature well, craned her neck to watch, and fluttered nearer. Then Bob White came, and both continued to watch with anxiously beating hearts, for those little boys were evidently bent upon mischief. Would the poor little puff-balls outwit them? One little piping cry, one brown head raised, and all would be lost. But, as they watched, their fears began to subside. The boys are again wiping their hot faces, they look discouraged, they have evidently found nothing; yes, certainly not, for, see, they are picking up their buckets, and now they are going across the field to where the reapers are calling them to hurry along with their dinners. Such daily annoyances as this now determined the Bob Whites to take refuge in the alder thicket, in whose deep seclusion they soon regained tranquillity of spirits. The dampness of the situation, however, proving most unfavorable to their brood, they anxiously awaited the time when the departure of the reapers would restore quiet and enable them to return to their haunts. At length the wished-for time arrived; from the topmost boughs of the big maple Bob White could see neither man, boy, or dog, in the whole length and breadth of the field. Summoning the family together, they joyfully crept through the brush to bask in the broad stretches of sunshine and to pick up the scattered grain amid the stubble. Here they remained through all the long summer days, their solitude broken only by the yellow butterflies and by the big brown grasshoppers bumping about in the stubble, the silence broken only by the occasional jangle from the bell-cow, as she shook the deerflies from her sleek sides. By and by, when the goldenrod was yellow upon the hillside, the young ones, in their new brown coats, began to try their wings, and felt very proud if they could make them whirr, when they rose to the fence or to a low brush. Had they been boys, they would have been called hobbledehoys; but, being Bob Whites, they were known as squealers, and as such they felt very mannish and ambitious to be independent; but, nevertheless, they still liked to huddle together at nightfall and talk over the day's doings, close to, if not under, the mother's wing. By and by, again, when goldenrod stood brown and sere upon the hillside and the sumach glowed red in the fence corners and thickets, when the fall crickets were chiming their dirge down amid the grass roots and the air was growing frosty at nights, then the Bob Whites grew restless and took flight for a far-off pea field, noted as a feeding-ground. Here they met other families of kinsfolks, and then began a right royal time, running nimbly through the rich pea vines or scratching in sassafras or sumach thickets for insects, growing fat and growing lazy all the time. The gourmand of the autumn was in manner quite a contrast to the Bob Whites of the days of young wheat and wild roses. No blithe, good music now issued from that throat so intent upon good cheer. True, some unpleasant rumors are afloat. The Mate Hares, scudding frantically away, reported an advance of men, with guns and dogs; but the Mate Hares were always silly and unreliable. So our Bob Whites just keep on eating and making merry. Fortune may favor them,--who knows? Let us hope, and listen out next year for the cheery "Bob White, Bob White," from the old nesting-place. LITTLE DAVE The cool fogginess of an August morning has melted under the fierce sun. The level fields, like a waveless ocean, stretch away into the dim, green distance. The hot air quivers above cotton-fields, heavy with bolls and gay with blossoms, which give out a half-sickening fragrance. A languid air rustles low amid the corn, from whose dense growth arises a damp, hot breath. Out in the pasture, work-horses leisurely crop the sunburnt grass, or stand under the trees, lazily switching away the swarming gnats. A restful quiet broods over the big plantation, for the plow and the hoe have finished their task; sun and showers must do the rest. The crop is "laid by," and the summer holidays have begun. Three days of rest before the gathering in begins. Over at the quarter, the young people fill the long, lazy day with patting and dancing, banjo-playing and watermelon-eating. The elders, for the most part, are absorbed in preparations for the big holiday dinner. By dawn, holes have been dug in the ground and heated for the barbecuing of various meats, and those who hold the honorable posts of cooks are busily engaged in basting, tasting, and sending the small urchins after fuel. Some of the women are kneading flour hoe-cakes; others, gathered about a table under a great mulberry tree, are peeling fruit for pies, while now and then they raise their voices with blood-curdling threats to hasten the lagging steps of a little gang, which, looking like a string of black beetles, troop slowly along from the orchard, each holding in the skirt of his solitary garment the small store of fruit which he has not been able to eat. A row of tables spread in the shade stands ready for the feast, and, along the pathway, the guests from neighboring plantations are already approaching. Up at the great house an unnatural quiet prevails, for upon this day all work is laid aside and all are off to the barbecue; even old Aunt Sylvie has forgotten the "misery" in her back, has donned her Sunday garments, and stepped briskly off to the quarter; cook, too, has closed the ever-open kitchen door and departed, along with nurse, over whose toilet her little charges have presided with so much zeal that they have emptied their mother's cologne flask in order to bedew their mammy's pocket-handkerchief to their satisfaction. Tiny curly-headed Jack feels rather disconsolate without his mammy, but is partially consoled by flattering visions of what her pockets will bring home at the end of the day.[1] Away down upon the creek the little gristmill stands silent; the old mossy wheel has for to-day ceased its splash and clatter, and, like all else upon the plantation, is resting from its labor; to-day no sacks stand open-mouthed, awaiting their turn; no little creaking carts, no mill boys mounted astride their grists are seen upon the path, and Wat, the miller, in the lazy content of dirt and idleness, lies basking in the sun. Within the wattle fence on the other side of the path, his three children, little Dave, Emma Jane, and a fat baby, are sprawling upon the ground, along with the house pig, two puppies, and the chickens. Little Dave, who is perhaps somewhat dwarfed by toting first Emma Jane in her infancy, and now the fat baby, looks not unlike a careworn little ape, as he sits flat upon the ground, spreading his bony toes for the baby to claw at. Emma Jane, with her stout little body buttoned into a homespun frock, is also seated in the sand, solemnly munching upon a hunk of corn bread, while the chickens, with easy familiarity, peck at the crumbs which fall upon her black shins. Within the cabin, Polly, the miller's wife, has tied a string of beads about her sleek black throat, and now, in all the bravery of her flowered calico, is ready to set off for the quarter; first, though, she pauses at the gate to speak to little Dave. "When de chile git hongry, you git dat sweeten water off de shelf and gie it to him long wid his bread;" then adds, with a suspicion of tenderness upon her comely face; "I gwine fetch you some pie." Then, calling to Wat, that he had better "fix his sef and come along, ef he speck to git any of de dinner," she steps briskly along the narrow pathway, mounts the zigzag fence, and disappears amid the high corn. Some miles below, where the little creek which turns the mill-wheel steals from out the swamp to join the river, a clumsy, flat-bottomed scow lies grounded upon a sand-bar. This is no evil to Boat Jim, who, sprawled upon the deck, snores away the hours, regardless of the blistering sun beating down upon his uncovered head, and all unconscious of the departure of his chance passenger, an itinerant organ-grinder. This fellow, having had the ill luck to lose the respectable member of the firm, his monkey, and finding difficulty without the aid of his little partner to attract an audience, had, while idling about the docks, encountered Boat Jim, and persuaded the latter to give him a lift up the river, the condition being that he was to grind as much music as Jim should desire. But, disgusted with three days of slow progress upon the boat, he had, after viciously kicking the unconscious Jim, stolen the small boat and put himself ashore. Following the windings of the creek, he came to the little mill, where, attracted by the shade, he seated himself close to the wattle fence of Polly's little yard. Hearing voices, he peeped through the fence, and his eyes were soon fixed upon little Dave, who, with the fat baby and Emma Jane for spectators, is performing various tricks with infinite delight to himself. He stands upon his head, he turns somersaults, he dances, he pats, and finally he swings himself into a tree, where he skips about with the agility of a monkey. A thought comes into the organ-grinder's head; he glances at the silent mill and at the cabin: evidently both are deserted; here is a chance to replace the dead monkey. The sun is sending long shafts of crimson light into the swamp and glinting upon the millhouse; the high corn, awakening from its midday torpor, rustles softly to the evening breeze, as Wat and Polly wend their way homeward. A bucket, lightly poised upon Polly's head, holds scraps of barbecue and little Dave's promised pie, and, as she draws near the wattle fence, she thinks, with a pleased smile, of how she will set it before "de chilluns," when a prolonged howl falls upon her ears. Recognizing the voice of Emma Jane, she says to herself: "She hongry, I spek," and trudges on, in nowise disturbed by this familiar sound. But, when they enter the yard, there is only Emma Jane, bawling, open-mouthed, beside the baby, who, with the house pig, lies asleep on the warm sand. The chickens are daintily picking their way to the house, the old muscovy duck has tucked her head under her wing for the night, Old Keep, the stump-tailed coon dog, crawls from under the cabin to greet them. But where is Dave? The miller carries the sleeping child indoors, followed by the still bawling Emma Jane, while the wrathful Polly goes to the back of the house. Stripping the twigs from a switch, she mutters: "I knows what you's arter; you tuck yoursef to dat watermillion patch, dat whar you gone; but ne' mine, boy, you jest le' me git hold o' you." Then, after a time given to unsuccessful search, calls of "Da-a-vie--oh, oh, Dave!" fall upon the stillness, to be answered only by weird echo from the lonely swamp. Returning from her search, she finds Wat seated upon the doorstep. "Dave done took hissel off to de quarter," he says; "but no mind, I gwine fill him full o' licks in de mornin'." But, when morning comes and brings no little Dave, wrath gives place to fear. The plantation is aroused; finally the mill-pond is dragged, and, although the body is not found, the conclusion is that the boy has been drowned. After a time Polly's smile beams as broadly as ever, but her heart still yearns for her boy, and amid the sleepy drone of her spinning-wheel, she pauses to listen; or, standing in her door, she looks ever wistfully along the crooked path. Across the way, the little mill clatters on as merrily as of yore; Wat heaves the great sacks upon his brawny shoulder, metes out the grist, and faithfully feeds the hopper; but, when a chance shadow falls athwart the sunny doorway, he looks up with a gleam of hope upon his stupid, honest face, then brushes his hand across his eyes, and goes on in stolid patience with his work. So the summer and the autumn pass, without change, save that Emma Jane substitutes sweet potatoes for corn bread, and the fat baby has learned to balance himself upon his bowlegs. Upon a winter evening Wat enters the cabin at the usual hour. Polly has laid a bit of clean homespun upon the table; his bowl of coffee, his fried meat, and his hoe-cake stand ready; but, instead of falling to, as his custom is, he sits silent and despondent, with his face buried in his hands, until Polly asks:-- "What de matter; is you po'ly?" "I dunno as I 'se, to say, po'ly," Wat replies, "but dat boy's been a-pesterin' me dis livelong day, a-callin' 'Daddy, Daddy!' jes' like I talkin' now, till seem like I 'se most beat out along o' him." "Dat mighty curous," Polly answered, "'cause Ole Keep, he's been a-howlin' dis blessed day. I 'lowed dat Ung Silas were gwine be tuck." "'T ain't dat," the miller interrupted. "Ung Silas, he done got better; he howlin' arter sompen nother, but 't ain't arter Ung Silas." Upon that identical winter's day, in a back alley of New York, a small crowd of idlers had gathered to witness the performance of the "Man Monkey." A little creature, dressed in tinsel, leaped and capered, keeping time to the grinding of an organ. When the spectators were silent, he would glance timidly at his ill-favored keeper, but when they cheered, the poor little figure would strive to outdo itself, in spite of laboring breath and trembling limbs. Then a rope was stretched, and "The Man Monkey," seizing an end, swung himself up, and, amid the acclamations of the admiring mob, began a new act of his performance. The day was cold, and at that dizzy height the wind struck bitterly through the starved little overtaxed body; he lost his footing, caught wildly at the rope, missed it, and--fell. In that brief second did he see the old mill and the little cabin standing in the sunshine? Did he hear his mother's voice? God knows. When a pitying hand gently turned the little heap of quivering humanity, a happy smile lit up the pinched face, and the dying lips murmured, "Daddy." FOOTNOTE: [1] Little Jack is now a grave and reverend bishop, but I doubt if he has altogether forgotten the deliciousness of the flabby pie, eaten with such content at the close that day. THE HOG-FEEDER'S DAY I The cold gray light of early dawn had given place to saffron, and the first drowsy challenge from the henroost had been shrilly answered from far and near, when old man Jerry awoke from his nap in the chimney corner, and, finding himself chilled through all his old, rheumatic bones, bent over the dying embers, pushed together the blackened and half-burned "chunks," and blew them until they glowed. Then, hitching his stool close into the ashes, he spread his horny palms to the blaze, and basked in its genial warmth as it crackled up the wide chimney. Reaching his pipe from its nook, he filled it, dipped it skillfully in the coals so as to ignite without wasting the precious weed, and drew a long whiff by way of a start; then, bending still closer to the blaze, he pulled away, now and then rubbing his shins in slow content, as though to emphasize his comfort. All things, though, must come to an end. The "chunks" became a heap of white ashes, the pipe was finished, and broad shafts of light stealing down the chimney and under the door told "Ung Jerry" that it was time to be stirring. He had, according to his usual custom, risen from his bed long before cockcrow, and, having cooked and eaten his "morning bread," had unlatched his door in order to throw a morsel to his old hog-hound, "Drive," who had already crept from under the house, and stood wagging his stump of a tail in eager expectancy. The morsel being thrown, the old man had cast a knowing look towards the heavens, and, judging by the seven stars that it yet lacked an hour to dawn, had returned to the smoky warmth and comfort of his hovel, where, seated in the chimney nook, he had nodded till roused by the crowings from all the neighboring henroosts--for his cabin was one of many. The pipe being smoked, Ung Jerry rose stiffly, and, shuffling to his bed, fumbled underneath it, and, taking care not to disturb the setting hen, brought out two bits of old blanket, with which he proceeded to wrap his feet before putting on his shoes.[2] The hog-horn was now slung over the old coat, a bucket of cold victuals was reached from the shelf, and the old hog-feeder, equipped for his day's work, lifted the latch, and, stepping out into the sharp frostiness of the November morning, plodded with heavy steps toward the barnyard, Drive following closely at his heels. The frosty fields were glittering in the slant rays of the newly risen sun, and sounds of busy life came floating through the crisp air, telling the old man that the day's labor had begun. The sharp crack of the teamster's whip told that the great ox wagons were already afield. The plow-boys whistled as they led out their mules; men and short-skirted, heavily shod women went trooping to the cotton fields; the milkwomen stepped briskly by, with the foaming pails balanced upon their well-poised heads. Then came the cowboys, with noisy whoop, driving before them the crowding, clumsy, sweet-breathed herd, while, fearlessly amid all, pigeons fluttered, greedily picking up the refuse grain, heedless of the hoofs among which they pecked and fluttered. One small, grizzled mule, of great age and much cunning, had contrived to slip into the feedroom, and was there enjoying a stolen bait of oats when Ung Jerry found her. "You 'speck I wan't gwine fine you, I reckon, but you 'se wrong dis time," he said, taking her by one of the long ears and leading her off to the barnyard, where the little cart awaited her. Drive, meanwhile, had crept under the barn, where, nosing about, he had come upon a hen's nest, and was feasting upon the warm, fresh eggs. The hitching-up was done with great deliberation. Ung Jerry plodded to and from the harness-room many times, bringing out first a chuck collar, then a bit of leather, finally, after a long search, an end of rope. At length, when all seemed to be adjusted, the old man again retired to the harness-room, where he remained so long that Drive was contemplating another raid upon the hens, when he reappeared, bringing with him an old piece of bagging, with which he proceeded with careful adjustment to protect the old mule's back from the friction of the cart-saddle. She, meanwhile, had stood with closed eyes and flopped ears, immovable save for an occasional twitching of her small, rat-like tail; but when the loading began, her manner changed from its quiescent indifference; watchful glances followed each basketful that was dumped in, and an ominous backing of the ears gave warning of what would happen should the load be heavier than she liked. At length, all being ready for the start, Ung Jerry climbed slowly to his perch on the cart's edge, gave a jerk to the rope bridle, and Rachel moved off, closely followed by Drive, who, conscious of egg-sucking and fearful of its consequences, had prudently ensconced himself beneath the cart, from whence he eyed, suspiciously, all passers-by. Slowly the little cart crept along the narrow plantation lanes, crept past the level cornfields and into the wide pasture, where sunburnt mares were grazing with their wild-eyed, unkempt colts; crept past the marsh, where the heron, disturbed in her solitary vigil, rose upon silent wing and sought some more secluded haunt amid the dim recesses of the swamp. Turning at length into the forest, where the gray moss hanging from the trees almost obscured the deep blue autumnal sky, the cart slowly creaked through the rustling leaves until it came upon a cross fence which barred the way. Here, as Rachel came to a full stop, Ung Jerry awoke from his nap, descended from his perch, and, unslinging his horn, blew one long blast. One was enough. In a moment the deep stillness of the forest was broken by the pattering of many little feet; from the thickets the hogs came; each hurrying with might and main to be foremost, they rushed, grunting, squealing, crowding to the fence, where, standing with upturned faces and small covetous eyes, they awaited the feast of golden grain which the old man hastened to scatter amongst them. Then, leaning upon the fence, he noted each greedy grunter as he wriggled his small tail in keenest enjoyment and cracked the sweet corn. No need was there to count; to the hog-feeder each animal possessed an individuality so marked that in all the drove the absence of the most insignificant was at once detected. So now, as he leaned upon the fence, he cast anxious glances into the dimness beyond. Evidently some were missing. Drive, too, divining his master's thoughts, stood with look intent and anxious yelp, impatient for the search to begin. Then the word came, "Seek, boy!" Scrambling through the fence, he dashed into every covert or tangle wherein a hog might lurk, but without result; there came no rush of feet, no shaking of the brown leaves, no startled grunt. All was still, save for the quick panting of the old hound. The old man then turned his eyes again upon the greedy mob, still hoping to discover the missing ones amongst them. 'T was all in vain. "De listed sow, _she_ done gone, an' de big white _hogue_, _he_ done gone, an' seben head o' shotes!" he at length murmured, still, however, casting expectant glances toward the thickets, in which Drive was still sniffing with uneasy yelpings. "Seem like dem creturs is clean gone, sho' nuf," he exclaimed, with an air of unwilling conviction; then adding, "well, ef dey's gone, I 'se got 'em to fine, dat's de trufe." He called in the dog, and, taking his dinner bucket, climbed the fence and struck off into the woods. Now and again he would pause, put his horn to his lips, and give a long blast, then stand listening with anxious expectancy. Every thicket was searched. It was a weary tramp,--through bogs and sloshes, where the cypress knees stood up like sugar-loaves in the shallow water, or sometimes his steps were bent to some open glade, where the great oaks dropped sweet mast among the brown leaves. The day was no longer young when a low fence came into view; beyond it stretched a levee, and at its base a glint of water showed itself through the great trees, which stretched their mighty arms as though they would embrace it. Ung Jerry, after climbing the fence, mounted the levee and stood upon the brink of a wide and muddy river. Taking off his hat, the old man wiped the sweat from his face, then turned an observant eye upon the river, whose muddy waters were already lapping the boughs of the overhanging trees, and with a long-drawn breath exclaimed, "Bank an' bank!" Then, as his experienced eye noted the angry swirls near the shore and the débris borne rapidly upon the turbid current, "An' still on de rise. She gwine be out in de low groun's befo' mornin', bless de Lord; I's been 'spectin' she gwine play dis trick eber since de win' set like et did." Then, looking at the field of standing corn upon the further shore, protected by a low levee, and seeming to be upon a lower level than the red waters of the flood, he soliloquized:-- "I's skeared de fresh gwine 'stroy a sight o' Mars Jones's corn. It raly do 'pear like dat corn mout a been housed befo' now." The old man's thoughts were interrupted at this point by loud and animated barkings from Drive, and, hurrying to the spot whence they proceeded, he discovered the old hound standing in a broken gap in the fence, in a state of excitement over the numerous footprints which told that the truants had broken through and made for the river, evidently with designs upon "Mars Jones's" cornfield. "Here's wha' dey tuck de watah," the old man remarked to the dog, as together they followed the footprints to the water's edge. "Dat 'ere listed sow, she got mo' sense un folks! She know 'bout Mars Jones's corn, an' dey ain't no fence gwine stop dat cretur when she take a notion for to go. "Well, well, well, de listed sow, an' de big white hogue, an' seben head o' shotes done tore down de fence, an' took deyselves 'cross de riber for to steal Mars Jones's corn; I 'clare 't is a disgrace. I reckon Mars Jones gwine cuss a plenty when he fine it out. It certinly is a pity for master's creturs to do sich a low-life trick as dat. But bless de Lord," and a look of crafty triumph came into his face, "dey's got dey bellies full, anyhow." With this pleasing reflection, and the conviction that nothing more could be done for the present, the old man seated himself upon a log, opened his bucket, took out his jack-knife, and proceeded to eat his dinner, while Drive sat by, in eager readiness to snatch the morsels flung to him, ere they could reach the ground. When the meal was finished, dog and man each took comfort in his own way. The dog stretched himself in the sunshine. The old man sat with bent head "a-studyin'," then nodded, then fell into a deep sleep, soothed by the silence, which reigned unbroken save for the distant cawing of a crow. The long gray moss swayed dreamily upon the motionless boughs of the giant trees. Where the sycamore lifted its gaunt, white arms, the great bald eagle sat immovable, watching with fierce, intent gaze for its prey in the waters below. II The shadows were growing long upon wood and river when the light dip of a paddle broke upon the stillness, and old Jerry, rousing from his nap, spied a canoe gliding down stream, guided by two youths who, with their guns lying crosswise upon their knees, were making for the bank. "Mars Harry an' Mars Phil," he murmured, eying them with lazy curiosity, as they brought their little craft to land, and after making it fast, picked up their guns, crossed the levee, and struck off into the swamp. "Dey's after turkey, I 'speck; Mars Harry an' me, we's killed many a varmint in dese here woods. Dey want no Mars Phil 'bout here in dem days befo' ole Mars were tuck down." Thus soliloquizing, the old man continued to gaze wistfully after the retreating figures; for their appearance had seemed to bring a disturbing element into his peaceful dreams, and a look of helpless trouble overspread his face as, taking off his hat and slowly scratching his head, he murmured:-- "Seem like it mos' a pity Mars Phil trouble hisself for to come here, anyhow. Well, well, well! we folks all gwine be 'vided up 'twix Mars Harry an' Mars Phil, 'cause ole Mars, he not long for dis world! Bless de Lord, whinsoever it please Him for to teck ole Mars to hisself, I trus' he gwine 'vide off Jerry to Mars Harry's shere, 'cause I nachally ain't got no use for t'other one--he too outlondesh." So saying, he rose and reached his bucket from the bough where it hung. Drive, who had for some moments been watching him out of the corner of one red eye, rose also, and the two set out upon their tramp back to the cart. The old man had climbed the fence, the dog had scrambled through, and both were threading their way across the swamp, when the report of a gun close by caused the dog to beat a retreat from the thicket into which he had thrust his nose, and, with tail tucked in, to creep to his master's side; while the old man, exclaiming, "Good Gor-a-mighty! whot dat?" pushed aside the bushes in order to see what game the boys had brought down. The sight that met his eyes froze him with horror. Philip's lifeless body lay upon the ground, while Harry, with scared white face, bent over it. For a brief space the old man stood as if petrified, then muttered: "Jerry ain't gwine know nothin' bout dis here. When ole Mars say, 'Jerry, what you seen in de Vine Ridge Swash?' Jerry, he gwine say, 'Nothin', Marster, fo' de Lord. I seen nothin' 't all!' An' I ain't gwine tell no lie, nuther, 'cause I ain't gwine look!" Thus thinking, he cautiously drew back, and, with ashen face and limbs that through trembling almost failed to support him, he stealthily crept away until out of earshot; then took to his heels and fled. When, however, he was forced to pause for breath, he considered if he had done well to desert his young master, and turned reluctantly to retrace his steps, when, as he did so, the air was suddenly rent with ear-piercing shrieks for half a second, and Jerry's heart quailed. "It's boun' to be de debil," he whispered. Then, a light seeming to break upon him, he exclaimed: "Bless God! 't ain't nothin' but de ole Chieftain a-blowin'." The Chieftain, a small freight steamer, had recently taken the place of the old flat-bottomed scows, and, as the steam whistle was still a novelty, it is not surprising that Ung Jerry, in his terror, should for the moment have mistaken it for some unearthly sound. After many irresolute pauses, the old man at length reached the scene of the disaster, and with shaking hands thrust aside the bushes. Except for the small birds silently flitting to their roosts, the place was utterly deserted. The level sunbeams glinted through the gray moss, gilded the tree trunks, and glowed crimson upon the brown leaves; the solitary peace of nature seemed unbroken; only the pool of blood at Ung Jerry's feet told him that what he had witnessed had not been a vision. After a moment's survey he was turning away, when his eyes fell upon the two guns: here, at least, was something tangible, and the old man proceeded to secrete them in the fallen leaves. Squatted upon the ground, he was too busily engaged to note the sound of approaching footsteps, and started violently when a rough voice accosted him. He mustered courage, however, to quaver:-- "Dat you, Mars Jones?" "Me? of course it's me! Who did you reckon it was?" "I dunno, Mars Jones." "Well, you'll know next time, if you don't keep them hogs o' yourn out of my corn. Why, that confounded old sow can destroy more corn in one night than you are worth." "Yes, Mars Jones, dat de trufe," meekly assented the old man. Mars Jones, warming to the subject, now waxed more and more eloquent over his grievances, until, having exhausted his pent up wrath, he had leisure to observe old Jerry's ashen face and shaking limbs, and he exclaimed:-- "Why, what's the matter with you? are you sick?" "Yes, Mars Jones, I's been po'ly dis liblong day, an' I's gittin' sassifrax for to make me a little drap o' tea, I's got sich a mis'ry." "Sassafras!" here broke in Mars Jones; and, good-natured, despite his roughness, he took from his pocket a _tickler_, and handing Jerry a dram, said: "Drink this, you old blockhead. _Sassifrax_, indeed!--what good you reckon sassifrax goin' do you?" With a scrape and a bow and a "Thank ye, Marster," the old man gulped down the dram, and Mars Jones, replacing his _tickler_, was turning away, when his foot slipped in something, and looking down he saw that it was blood. The dram had put so much heart into the old man that he was able to reply glibly to Mars Jones's questions. "Its jes' wha' I's been markin' hogs, Marster." "I don't believe you; I believe you've been killin' one of your master's hogs--that's what you've been at." But as this did not concern him, he did not wait to inquire further, and so, turning on his heel, he strode off. The hog-feeder, too, hastening away, took the shortest path back to his cart. The deserted barnyard lay silent in the white moonlight when the little cart creaked through the gate; but up at the "great house" there were lights and movements where the family watched the coming of the boys. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday passed without tidings, and the hope that they had been caught by the rising water and imprisoned upon some isolated knoll had been abandoned after the swamps had been searched in every direction. To add to the grief of the household, the master, already enfeebled, now lay prostrated in a condition that almost forbade hope. Upon Sunday the waters began to abate, fences again appeared, and patches of drowned corn showed themselves above the wastes of water, to the no small joy of the flocks of blackbirds which chattered and fluttered amongst them. Mr. Jones, tired of the loneliness of his water-girt home, made his way to the meeting-house, more for the sake of a gossip with some of the neighbors than for the day's preaching, and it was there that he first heard the startling news of the unaccountable disappearance of Squire Brace's nephews. In the excitement, each man was eager to advance his own theory. The discussion ended, however, in the general opinion that their canoe had been swamped in the freshet and the boys drowned, until a newcomer asserted that the canoe, with Phil's overcoat still in it, had been found tied up at the Vine Ridge landing, and that their guns had been discovered hidden in the leaves at no great distance in the swamp. Upon hearing this, Mr. Jones could but call to mind his meeting with the hog-feeder, his strange behavior, and the blood upon the ground, and he at once jumped to the conclusion that old Jerry had been at least a party to some foul deed. His suspicions, once made known, became certainties, and the whole party, hastily mounting their horses, rode off to the nearest justice, their convictions gaining ground so rapidly that, ere the house of the justice was reached, poor, simple old Jerry, the most harmless of God's creatures, had become in their estimation a villain of the deepest dye. Upon this identical Sunday morning the old hog-feeder betook himself to the little plantation church, whose bell, with cracked clamor, gave warning that preaching was about to begin. The frosty brightness of the past week had given place to a soft mist, through whose dimness the pale sunbeams looked sadly upon the autumnal world; and as the old man, dressed in his Sunday clothes, plodded along the path, the tiny crickets from beneath the grass sent up their sad, perpetual dirge. Men and women, all shining with Sabbath cleanness, came straggling toward the church, silently and soberly, without the usual light-hearted laughter, for the trouble at the "great house" was felt by all the little band. Yet their feelings were not without a mixture of pleasurable excitement, for all were anticipating with gloomy satisfaction the lengthy prayers, the groanings, and the head-shakings upon this mournful day. The congregation had taken their seats, old Jethro had taken his place in the pulpit, the long-drawn cadence of the funeral hymn had floated sadly up to the "great house," when a noise at the door startled the congregation, who, turning, beheld standing in the door a group of white men. Among them was the overseer, who, coming forward, announced that hog-feeder Jerry was to be arrested upon a charge of murder. "Not that I believe it, men," he said, "but the law must take its course." In the meantime two others had approached the old man, who had already stumbled to his feet, and, while bowing in a dazed kind of way, kept murmuring, "Sarvent, Marsters." Handcuffs were put upon him, and amid a profound silence he was led forth and lifted into a cart. The two sheriffs took their places upon each side of him, and the cortège moved off. The people, having sufficiently recovered from their shock to jostle one another out of the building, stood huddled together like a flock of frightened sheep; but when the cavalcade had driven off, a subdued clamor of voices arose, all unanimous in contempt for "dese here po' white, who'd ha' knowed better 'n to come meddlin' long o' Marster's folks ef Marster wan't down on de bed an' mos' like to die!" That the dull and simple brain of the old man should have been capable of any formulated plan is not to be imagined, and when upon the following day he was taken before the justice for examination, he merely acted from an instinct of affection in shielding his young master, even at the risk of his own life. When questioned, he preserved an obstinate silence; then, when forced to speak, denied having seen either of the boys upon the day of their disappearance, but, when cross-questioned, admitted that he had seen Mars Phil in the Vine Ridge woods; and finally, when taxed with the blood upon the ground and with having hidden the guns, he reluctantly admitted that "ef Mars Phil had been hurted" he had done it. "What did you do with the body?" questioned the justice; "throw it in the river?" A murmur from the prisoner, which passed for assent, concluded the examination, and the justice, sorely puzzled, committed him to jail to await his trial. With the early morning, the country people had begun to gather around the courthouse, and when told that the old miscreant had actually confessed to the murder, their innate love of justice gave place to fierce anger; and when the prisoner, gray with terror, bent and tottering, was led forth, he was surrounded by a silent but determined crowd, who, thrusting the sheriffs aside, seized and drove him before them, and had already slipped the noose about his neck, when an inarticulate shout caused the crowd to sway,--a horseman dashed into their midst and proclaimed that both boys were alive. Their disappearance had been explained on that morning by a letter forwarded by hand, which ran as follows:-- On Board the Chieftain. Dear Uncle,--This afternoon, while hunting in the Vine Ridge woods, Phil's gun went off and wounded him in the side. I was at my wit's end what to do, when I heard the Chieftain blow up the river; so I tore off to the levee, where I was lucky enough to succeed in attracting Captain Smith's attention, who sent off a boat, and we managed to get Phil on board. I wanted Smith to put back to our landing, but he thought the current too strong; and on the whole, I believe it is better for Phil to keep on to Hilton, as it would be impossible to get a doctor at home in this high water. Phil's hurt is not very serious, I hope. Your dutiful nephew, Harry Brace. * * * * * On the day succeeding Harry's homecoming, he entered the room designated the "study," in which the Squire was usually to be found when indoors. The room probably owed the name of "study" to a set of _Farmer's Magazines_ which, in all the dignity of expensive bindings, divided the shelf with a rather damaged edition of "The Turf Register," a "Farrier's Manual," a brace of antiquated medical works, and a stack of newspapers. Fishing tackle, a cupping apparatus, a set of engineering instruments, half a dozen ears of extra fine seed corn, medicine scales, and a huge cotton stock filled the rest of the bookcase. The Squire, seated before a blazing fire, in the lazy comforts of convalescence, with pipe and tobacco at his elbow, presented a not unenviable picture when contrasted with the wintry grayness outside. Harry, who had been greatly touched by the old hog-feeder's affectionate fidelity, now sought his uncle in order to beg that as a recompense he might be given his freedom. "Freedom!" exclaimed the Squire; "why, confound it, my dear boy, what would he do with freedom, if he had it?" "I think he would like it," Harry murmured, a little sheepishly. "Why, he's as free as air now; a deuced sight freer than I am." Nevertheless Harry gained his point, and though the Squire growled, "You young jackanapes, you've robbed me of the best hog-feeder on the river," still he was evidently pleased, and in the evening old Jerry was sent for. When, in answer to the summons, Jerry presented himself at the study door, his master said to him, with a stateliness fitted to the occasion:-- "Jerry, I have sent for you to tell you that your young master here, as a reward for your fidelity, desires to give you your freedom." Here the Squire paused, and Jerry, not knowing what else to say, said, "Yes, Marster." Harry, standing by, was feeling rather wrought up, while the Squire, also somewhat excited, continued:-- "I will give you a house in the free settlement, out in the slashes, and your young master will always take care of you." Another rather disconcerting pause was broken by a second "Yes, Marster;" and the old man, picking up his hat, shuffled out. The Squire glanced at Harry with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, but the boy's face expressed such blank disappointment that he took pity upon him, and, picking up a newspaper, dismissed the matter. Upon the following evening a low knock was heard at the study door, then a fumbling at the latch, and old Jerry once more stood upon the threshold. "Well, old man, what is it now?" his master asked kindly. "Come, out with it!" he repeated, as the old man, with a feeble grin, stood helplessly fingering his hat. "What's the matter?" And old Jerry, slowly scratching his head, made answer:-- "Thank, Marster; I's come to ax Marster what I done to 'splease Mars?" "Displease me! Why, what has put that notion into your head?" "I dunno, Mars, what I's done, but I's skeared Mars mout be set agin me, 'cause he say he gwine sen' me offen de plantation." Then Harry explained that he was to be set free, and eagerly enlarged upon the delights of liberty. The hog-feeder listened, but was unmoved: he obstinately declined to accept his freedom, his plea being that "the varments" would "'stroy up his creeturs" if he were not there to look after them. "De black sow, she got a fine litter o' pigs now, an' de foxes is a'ter 'em de blessed time." After this no more could be urged, and Jerry, scraping his foot, went out with a mind full of content. FOOTNOTE: [2] As this is a true tale of an old-time plantation negro, I think it but fair to state that he had a "chist" full of good clothes; but, with a parsimony not uncommon among his race, he preferred to protect his feet with old bits of blanket, instead of using the excellent home-knit woollen socks which lay snugly hidden away in his "chist;" and it was the same feeling which caused him to wrap himself now into an old garment made up of patches, although three good ones lay snugly folded away in the same chest. THE JUNIOR RESERVE It was in the early summer of 1864 that the family at Swan Manor was thrown off its balance by the calling out of "The Junior Reserves." That unfledged boys, and among them their own little smooth-cheeked Billy, should be called upon to fill up the thinned and broken ranks of the Southern army filled their hearts with dismay. The old Squire, with bushy brows beetling over his eyes, sat in grief too deep for words, a prey to the darkest forebodings. Miss Jemima had wept until her eyes were mere nothings, while her nose, coming gallantly to the front, had assumed an undue prominence. Kate, with her pretty lips drawn to keep down the rising sobs, tried all in vain to bestow upon her twin brother bright looks and smiles, ever before so ready and spontaneous. In the early secession days it had seemed such fun to ride to dress parade and toss bouquets to the laughing "boys in gray," while all the world played Dixie! "Away down South in Dixie." How she and Billy had whispered and plotted, and how great the triumph when together they climbed the gate-post and, after much toil, successfully planted their little red and white flag! But now, alas! all was changed,--they were fast getting to be grown-up people, and now her own dear Billy must go to help drive the Yankees out of Dixie. As for Billy himself, a suppressed but exultant grin shone upon his face, a trifle deprecating when in the presence of his grandfather or his tearful Aunt Jemima, but very jubilant despite these drawbacks. In truth this junior reserve was only too pleased to exchange the Latin grammar for the musket, and little cared he for prospective hardships, provided school were not among them. In the few busy days before the departure, Kate followed Billy's footsteps, trying in vain to share his elation. "Good gracious, Kate," he would exclaim, when he discovered her furtively wiping her eyes with her little damp ball of a pocket handkerchief, "don't be such a little goose; why, what would you have a fellow do? I had no idea that you were that sort of a girl." Then, as between laughing and crying her face contorted itself into a sort of spasmodic grin, he would say: "Now that's right, that's the way to do, if you'll just cheer up, I'll be all right; the Yankees'll not bother me much, you bet." At the request of Serena (Billy's former nurse) her boy Cy was chosen to accompany his young master as body servant, one of his chief recommendations being that, naturally "skeary," he would be a safe companion; also, as his mother proudly averred, he was the fastest runner upon the plantation. It was upon a golden evening in June that little Billy bade farewell to his home, Miss Jemima and Kate going with him to the little wayside station. Cy, gotten up in great style, followed, while the rear was brought up by a motley procession,--all eager for the honor of carrying some of the belongings. The Squire, with Don the old Irish setter, stood in the doorway until Billy passed out of sight; then the two together, the old man and the old dog, went back into the silent house. The path to the station wound its way through a field of ripening wheat, from whence the clear whistle of a partridge smote sharply though the fervid air. Billy paused, and, pointing to a tangle of blackberry, exclaimed: "There's a nest there as sure as shooting, and I'll go there to-mor--" A quick catching of the breath cut short the unfinished words, and the boy, with lips slightly drawn, quickened his pace. Kate, choking down her sobs, held his hand in her tight clasp, as she kept pace with his hurried step. Miss Jemima, steadying her voice, remarked with a sprightly air that there would be fine shooting when he should come back in the autumn. Then the little station came into view, looking very empty and deserted; two men loading a flat car were the only living objects to be seen. They paused in their work to greet Billy, and ask where he was off to. It seemed so strange a thing to Kate that all the world did not know. The train was not on time, and the waiting became so painful that it was almost with gladness that they heard the warning whistle far down the track. A small crowd had gradually collected, and some one remarked: "She's blowin' for the bridge. It'll be ten minutes before she's here." To the tumultuously throbbing hearts of the little party it was a positive relief when a puff of smoke was seen and the engine came rushing around the bend. Then there were hurried kisses; the bell clanged, a voice called out, "All aboard," and the train was off. "Gone, gone, gone," Kate repeated over and over to herself, as she gazed with tearless eyes into the dim distance of the now silent track. As the party retraced their steps homeward the partridge was still calling his cheerful "Bob White" from amid the wheat, while from the shadowy depth of a laurel thicket came the sweet gurgle of the wood-thrush. In the late summer, news--glorious news--came that the foe had been driven back, and their boy was unhurt. Later, a man from the front at home on furlough was heard to say that "Billy Swan was a regular trump, and had borne himself like a veteran." Kate walked elate, saying the words over and over, with a proud smile, "A hero, a regular trump,"--he, her own dear Billy. The old Squire, too, with ill-concealed pride in his boy, was once more like his former self. Happy days--brief, hopeful days! Alas, alas! Many Junes have come and gone since little Billy was laid to rest in the old burying-ground, close to the wheat-field where the partridge calls, calls, the long day through. June roses scatter their leaves above him, and when the sun drops low, with long golden shafts upon the green mound which covers him, from far down in the laurel thicket comes the liquid gurgle of the wood-thrush. Kate looks into faces, once frank and bright, and full of youth and hope, now grown old and seamed with care, and she tells herself that "whom the gods love, die young." MAMMY Two little snub noses were flattening themselves against the nursery window pane, while the four eager eyes watched the soft flakes whirling through the air and silently descending upon the whitening earth. "Sposen we was to steal out," whispered the boy, "an' hide, so Mammy couldn't never find us no more." An excited chuckle interrupted the further development of this deliciously lawless scheme; but, though the little sister caught the infection, she prudently turned from the tempting prospect, saying, "No, Sed, I's 'fraid you might git the croups an' die." The other occupants of the room were a little roly-poly cherub of a girl, seated in a tiny chair, holding in her arms a rag baby, which she rocked and dangled in servile imitation of her mammy, who, with bumpings peculiar to the nursery chair, was rocking to sleep a still younger babe. A fair little maiden, curled up comfortably upon a cushion, the firelight glistening upon her yellow locks, bent over a book, from which she read, in high-pitched, childish voice, to her mammy, the story of "Ellen Lynn." Mammy was very proud that her nursling could read, and would cast admiring looks upon the child as she bent over her book, with finger pointing to each word. Both were absorbed in the story, and every picture was examined with scrupulous care. Another occupant of the nursery was "Chany," the under nursemaid. Gawky, sleek, and black, she sat flat upon the floor, her large, well-shod feet turned to the fire, a picture of lazy, vacant content. "Ch-Ch-Chany," stuttered Mammy, "look in de top drawer an' git a hankcher and blow dat chile's nose. Go on wid yo book, honey; Mammy ain't goin' 'sturb you no mo." "Mr. Lynn left the sleigh, and turning from the island"--piped little Caroline. Then there came another prolonged snuffle from Sedley. "You Ch-Ch-Chany, why'n't you git dat hankcher?" caused that languid maiden to bestir herself. Having fumbled in the drawer for the handkerchief, she approached the window, but no sooner did the little boy become aware of her intention than, with a rebellious shake of his curly head, he buried his nose in his little chapped fists, and, regardless of Sibyl's advice, that he had better be good, he firmly stood his ground, determined to resist Chany to the death. "He ain't gwine let me tetch him," said Chany, feebly dabbing at him with the handkerchief. "Do, pray, gal, don't be so no-'count," Mammy answered. Then Chany, stung by the imputation, made another helpless dive; a scuffle ensued, in which she was utterly routed, and the victorious Sedley threw himself upon Mammy's lap. "Gi' me de hankcher," said Mammy, with an air of withering contempt. "There, now, you done woke up your little brother," she said, when, the nose being blown, she again returned to trying to jolt baby Joe to sleep. "He jest had drapped off into a doze." "Oh, chilluns, le's pop some corn!" Chany now exclaimed. "Here's a whole sight of it," she went on, as she searched a basket, which she had unearthed from the closet. "Oh! pop corn!" shouted Sedley and Sibyl, running, and each seizing an ear. "Oh! pop torn!" echoed the cherub, throwing down her rag baby. So the shovel was run into the ashes, and Chany and the three little ones set to work to shell the corn. Quiet was again restored, and Caroline, who, all through the hubbub, had kept her finger faithfully upon "island," continued her reading. Mammy now substituted a sideways movement of the knees for the more vigorous bumping of the chair, and baby Joe--lying luxuriously upon her wide lap--gazed dreamily into the glowing coals upon the hearth, until gradually the white lids drooped over the blue eyes, and he slept. The nursery was very quiet now. The corn-poppers were intent upon their work, and Mammy, soothed by the unwonted stillness, listened drowsily to the little reader until fresh interest was excited by the following words. "The men were now still more alarmed," read Caroline. "Farmer Lynn said that he would go with them and see what had become of Mr. Lynn and Annie. The whole party accordingly went back to the river. After searching about for some time, one of the men espied something black on the surface of the snow, at a great distance down the river. They all proceeded to the spot, and were dreadfully shocked on arriving there to find that the black spot was a part of Mr. Lynn's arm and that his body was beneath, frozen, and buried up in the snow." When Mammy heard these words, she threw up her arms, and exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy 'pon my soul! What! Mr. Lynn hisself?" To her imagination Mr. Lynn was a most real person. The book was now brought to her and she, with little Caroline, looked with deep and mournful interest at the picture of the empty sleigh. "It certainly is a awful country to live in; seem like it ain't fitten for a dog, much less white folks. To think o' Mr. Lynn hisself bein' froze to death. Well! well! well! It certainly was onexpected." The children's story books furnished Mammy with many thoughts. Among them was a set of German nursery tales, full of quaint colored pictures, in which she took especial pleasure. Seated by the nursery fire, the baby asleep in his crib and the others out at play, she would turn the leaves feeling that each picture was a living portrait. Slovenly Peter, Rocking Phillip, and Greedy Jacob were her favorites. Once when shown a pretzel, she exclaimed, "Ef it ain't the very thing what Jacob had in his hand when he busted," and, taking the pretzel in her hand, she contemplated it with a thoughtful and sentimental air. The nursery door was now burst open, and in rushed Harry, bringing with him a blast of fresh cold air; black Ned came too, and both brought upon their feet enough snow to cover the carpet with moist tracks. "You Ne-Ne-Ned, ain't you got no mo' manners than to be a-tracking up de house dis way? Go 'long out and clean your feet;" but the hubbub was too great for Mammy's words to be heeded; pig-tails were being brandished aloft, and the children all clustered round Harry and Ned, asking questions and clamoring for pig-tails. "Look!" said Harry. "Here's somefin better'n pig-tails," and he drew from his pocket the mangled remains of a dozen or more snow-birds. A scramble now ensued, and Sibyl--having secured as many as she wanted--retired to a corner, and silently fell to plucking them, while Sedley, who was as vainglorious as a Comanche, capered about on his short legs, and boasted of imaginary exploits with trap and dead-fall. Caroline looked on, half pleased and half disgusted, keeping herself clear of contact. "Miss Calline she too proud to tetch pig-tails," grinned Chany. "'F cose she is," Mammy answered, bridling. She was very vain of Miss Caroline's daintiness. The baby was now laid in his crib. Chany was dispatched for salt and pepper; the shovel was again run into the ashes, pig-tails were placed delicately upon the coals, and the nursery, pervaded with the various odors of wet shoes, burnt corn, fried grease, etc., was given up to disorder and cooking, into which Mammy threw herself with as much zest as did the children. The pig-tails were broiled to a turn, and the small birds were frizzling away upon the shovel, when Sedley, taking advantage of his opportunity, made a rush for the door, opened it, and was outside, with mouth and hands full of snow. Before Mammy's vigilant eye had noted his escape, he was flying back in triumph, with a big ball in his fist, when she met him and, with dexterous grasp, wrenched it from him. "Di-di-did anybody ever see your match!" she exclaimed as she hurled the ball into the fire. "I clar I's got a good mind to take you right straight to your ma." But Sedley knew the value of such threats and soon wiggled himself out of her grasp. "Da now, go 'long an' 'have yourself," she said, with admiring fondness, as he laughed and capered away from her. "Honey, what is you a-doin'?" she now inquired of Sibyl, who, with hot cheeks, was bending over a pile of coals. "Cookin' a bird? Let me do it,--you's a-burnin' your little face clean to a cracklin'." "No, Mammy, I'm cookin' my bird for grandma," the child answered, rejecting all help, "an' I'm goin' to do it all by myself." "Wh', baby honey, your gran'ma ain't comin' before Christmas eve, an' dat's a week off. Your bird ain't goin' keep all dat time, but ne' mine, I'll make Ned ketch you another one." * * * * * Upon Christmas Eve, the children might have been seen at the big gate, straining their eyes down the road, each hoping to be the first to see their grandmother's carriage. Visions of waxen dolls, sugar-plums, and other vague delights imparted a double zest to her arrival,--to say nothing of Uncle Robin (the driver) who, in the estimation of the little boys, was of far greater importance than was their grandmother. To them he was an oracle of wisdom, and their delight was to follow him about the stable lot or to sit in the sunshine and hang upon his words; for his imagination was fertile, and the boys would listen with wonder to the tales of his prowess and skill with horses. Something was now observed to be moving far down the road, which soon proved to be the carriage. Yes, there were "Phoenix" and "Peacock," which no one but Uncle Robin could handle, and there sat Uncle Robin upon the box, and there was grandma inside, smiling and waving her handkerchief, and there, too, sat Aunt Polly, grandma's maid. The carriage stopped, and Uncle Robin, bowing and smiling, descended and opened the door, and they all scrambled in and were hugged and kissed, and Polly admired their beauty and exclaimed at their growth. Then the door was clapped to again, but not before Harry had managed to slip out and clamber to the box beside Uncle Robin, who, having driven through the gate, handed him the reins, with a caution to keep his eye upon Peacock. In the estimation of the boy, this sleek and overfed Peacock seemed little less than a raging lion whom only Uncle Robin could quell. "He'll run in a minute, if he gits a chance," said the guileful Uncle Robin. So Harry clutched the reins and drove proudly past the lot, in full view of some of the men, turned in at the yard gate, and drew up before the door. Grandma could not wait for the hanging of the Christmas stockings, but insisted upon opening her trunk at once, and displaying her gifts to the children's delighted eyes. The wax babies exceeded their wildest hopes. The house was made horrible with horns and drums. Mammy laughed and showed her dimples and courtesied over her own gorgeous present, and all felt that Christmas had really come. For several days, indeed, throughout the holidays, Harry felt that he had left childhood far behind him, and, as he strutted about the stable yard, he now and then expectorated, in imitation of Uncle Robin, as though he had a quid in his mouth. Aunt Polly, though far inferior to Uncle Robin in the children's estimation, was yet a person of distinction, and no naughtiness was ever displayed when she was by to witness it. Mammy usually enjoyed a gossip with Aunt Polly over the nursery fire. But, sometimes feelings of coolness would arise. Polly belonged to the family of the mother of the children, while Mammy came from that of the father, and between the two a slight rivalry had always existed as to the superiority of her own white children. "'T is a pity Miss Calline's back's so round," said Polly one night as the children were being undressed. Now, if there was a feature in which Mammy took a pride, it was in the straightness of the children's limbs and the flatness of their backs, above all the limbs and backs in the other branches of the family; so, firing up at once, she replied that she would like to see a flatter back than "this here one," laying her hand upon Caroline's. "Miss Emmaline's is a sight flatter," Polly stoutly maintained. "She's got as pretty shape as ever I see,--all our people's got good shapes from old Missis down. I reckon this chile's got her back from her pa's fambly." When Polly said this, Mammy felt that the gauntlet had been flung down, and, at once, with an eloquence all her own, so defended the "shapes" of her "fambly" that Polly was fairly beaten in the war of words, and was forced to admit, with many apologies, that Miss Caroline's back was as flat as Miss Emmaline's. Mammy accepted the apology with some hauteur, and it was several days before entire cordiality was reëstablished; in fact, in all her after life, Mammy would, when in certain moods, hark back to "dat time when dat long-mouthed Polly had de imperdence to say dat our folks' backs weren't as straight as hern." Full of peaceful content were the lives of both whites and blacks. Merrily the Christmas went by, to be followed by others as merry, and the winters and summers came and went, turning childhood into maturity and maturity into old age. Mammy's glory reached its zenith when, at "Miss Calline's" grand wedding, she herself rustled about in all the grandeur of a new black silk and Polly was forever squelched. The whole world seemed full of prosperity, abundance, and careless happiness, when suddenly, like a thunderbolt, the war came. The plantation home was abandoned very carelessly, and with light hearts the family drove away, expecting nothing but to return with the frosts of winter. They refugeed to a farmhouse upon the outskirts of a little up-country village. Sedley, though still a beardless youth, shouldered his musket, and took his place in the ranks. Sibyl and her mother, in the little rude farmhouse, thought not of their lost splendor, but cheerfully looked for the good days sure to come when, the war over, the dear ones would come back, and the old times. Every Southern woman knows how it was when the great battles were fought and a trembling, white-lipped group of women and aged men would stand huddled together to hear what the midnight dispatches might have in store for them. In the little upland village the refugees were closely knit together by hopes and fears in common. When sorrow fell upon one household the little community all mourned. But if the wires brought glad words that all at the front were unharmed, there would come a period of happy reaction; the little society would be wildly gay, especially if one or more young heroes from the front had come home with a slight wound,--just enough to make a demigod of him. Such was Sedley's happy fate one never-to-be-forgotten summer, when every girl in the village fell madly in love with his blue eyes and his gray coat and his mustache and his lovely voice, as he strummed the guitar in the moonlight,--and most of all with his merry laugh. Did time permit, I might tell of such odd costumes, such make-ups of homespun and lace, fine old silks and calicoes, in which the Dixie girls danced so merrily. It was just upon the heels of one of these happy seasons that a rumor was whispered that the army was about to fall back and that the offices and stores would be removed in consequence. At first the rumor was rejected,--no good Confederate would listen to such treason; but finally the croakers were proved to be right. The government stores were hastily removed. The office-holders took a sad farewell of those whom they left behind them, and the little town was abandoned to its fate, outside the Confederate lines. Sibyl and her mother were among the tearful group who watched the little band of departing friends, as it passed out of the town, waved a last adieu, and strained their dimmed eyes for a last sight of the Confederate gray, ere they went sadly back to their homes. When Sibyl and her mother reached home, they found Mammy already at work. She had ripped open a feather bed, and amid its downy depths she was burying whatever she could lay her hands upon. Clothing, jewelry, even a china ornament or two,--all went in. It was a day or two after that Rita complained of a great knot in her bed, which had bruised her back and prevented her sleeping. Mammy heard her, but, waiting until they were alone, said in a half whisper, "Honey, I knows what dat knot is, 't ain't nothin' but your brother's cavalry boots that I hid in the bed. I reckon the feathers has got shuck down. Don't say nothin', an' I'll turn your bed over, and then you won't feel 'em. An', honey, do pray be kereful how you talks before Jim. I ain't got no 'pinion o' Jim, an' it'll never do in de world to let him speck where the things is hid." No one knew how soon the Yankees might come, and all were busily engaged in concealing whatever they had of value. People may smile now at some of the recollections of that day, but they were earnest enough then, and as much importance was attached to the concealment of a ham or a pound of black sugar as to that of a casket of diamonds. Clothing and provisions were hidden in various strange and out-of-the-way places, and, when night came, Mammy and her mistress were glad to rest their tired bodies, although too much excited to sleep. At last, however, a deep sleep fell upon them, from which they were awakened by the distant roar of cannon. The village, though no longer a depot for Confederate stores, was not to be given up without a struggle. It now became a sort of debatable ground, and cannonading, more or less distant, told the anxious listeners of almost daily skirmishes. Awakened by the cannon's roar, Sibyl opened the window and listened. A pale glory to the eastward, a low rustle of leaves, a drowsy chirp from tiny nests, all merging into one inarticulate murmur of awakening nature, told that night was over. Sibyl and her mother hastily dressed themselves, called Rita from her fearless young sleep, roused up the baby, as they still called little Joe; then asked themselves why they did it. There was nothing to do but to sit on the porch or to wander aimlessly, listening with beating hearts to the faint and more faint boom of the artillery. And the roses glowed in the May sunshine, and the honeysuckle wafted its perfume in at the open windows, and the bees droned among the flowers, and all was so peaceful, but for the incessant dull roar of the battle. The Confederates were finally driven back, the Federals entered the town, and then the bummers came streaming through the country, leaving desolation behind them. Cattle, poultry, everything eatable was driven off or carried away in the great army wagons that came crashing along, regardless of all obstacles in their cruel course. Cut off from all news from the army, Sibyl and her mother dragged wearily through the long, sad summer, and the two children grew gaunt for want of nourishing food. It was a morning in the early autumn that Sibyl, sitting at work by an open window, became suddenly conscious of an unusual presence near her, and, looking up, beheld a man gazing fixedly upon her. A party of Federals had that very morning visited the house upon a pretended search for concealed weapons, and the girl, with nerves still vibrating with terror, uttered a little shriek, and, starting up, was about to close the window, when the figure leaped over the low sill, a pair of strong arms encircled her, kisses fell upon her lips, and, ere the shriek of terror could find voice, she recognized, under the rough countryman's hat, the laughing eyes of her brother Sedley. Such meetings can be better imagined than described; seconds had become minutes ere Sibyl or her mother could begin to realize their joy, which, in its first intensity, was almost pain. Then came the breathless questionings as to the well-being of the other dear ones, then the deep sigh of thankfulness from the long-burdened hearts. At the sound of a strange voice. Mammy, peeping in at the open door, had fallen prostrate with joy, and, while hugging her boy to her faithful bosom, had called upon her Maker to testify that upon this very morning the scissors had stuck up twice. "An' I knowed when dey done dat, dat somebody was a-comin'." Then Dinah, the cook, came in, courtesying and laughing and loyal as though no emancipating army had set foot in Dixie. When the joyful tidings had reached the children, Rita's thin legs might have been seen flying through the high grass. The more practical Joe toiled behind, bending under the burden of (their treasure trove) a big pumpkin, a basket of persimmons, and a few stalks of sorghum, for, like the Scriptural colts of the wild ass, they passed their time in searching after every green thing. In the magnetism of the bright presence of the young soldier, all the sad forebodings seemed to vanish into thin air. While listening to his brave words of hope, they forgot that the sunny hours of this most happy day were hastening by. Already the shadows lay long upon the grass, and there remained yet so much to be said and so little time wherein to say it! By set of sun Sedley must be on his way to rejoin his command. His brief and daring visit had been achieved by his assuming a disguise before venturing inside the enemy's lines. "How did you ever manage it?" asked the mother. "I tremble when I think of it." "Oh," he answered, "it was easy enough. I came in with a fellow who was driving cattle into town." "Oh, Sed!" his sister whispered; "you ran an awful risk; how will you manage to get back without being discovered?" "There'll be no trouble about that," he answered. "Don't you and mother go and worry yourselves about me. I'll be all right, so cheer up and don't look so doleful." Urged on by fear, they now almost hurried him away, and Mammy, while filling his haversack with provisions, entreated him to be careful. "De ain't no tellin' what dem Yankees would do ef dey once clapt hands on you." Sedley might guess shrewdly enough what his fate would be in such case, but he replied, with his old boyish laugh, that it was his trade to outrun the Yankees. "Never fear, Mammy," he said at parting. "Trust me to beat 'em at that game." Then the sad good-byes were said, and manfully he strode down the little path, turning only once to wave a last good-by to the sorrowful group on the broad front porch, who watched till he passed out of sight. The night was spent in anxious watching, but confidence returned with the morning, and all again settled back to their employments and amusements. Sybil wandered into the parlor, and, sitting down to the piano, sang in a low, sweet voice some of the pathetic war melodies. The "colts of the wild ass seeking after every green thing" had sought the sorghum patch, and Mammy had taken a basket into the garden for a final gathering of sage leaves. The day was dreamy, as only an October day of the South can be. The tempered sunlight, streaming softly through the filmy autumnal mist, threw a veil of loveliness over the homeliest objects; the old gray fences, the russet fields, the lonely pastures, where from beneath the grass roots the tiny crickets chanted their low, sweet dirge the long day through, the cawing of the crows from a distant tree-top, all told in notes of most harmonious pathos that "the fashion of this world passeth away." As Mammy, with back stiffened from stooping, raised herself for a moment's rest, she saw Jim lounge into the backyard and speak to Dinah. Mammy had but little use for Jim in general, but now she felt anxious to know what had been going on in the village, and for that reason she left her basket among the sage and went near to hear what he was saying. As she drew near, Dinah suddenly threw up her hands, and, starting from the hencoop on which she had been leaning, came towards her, stuttering and stammering in a manner so excited as to be unintelligible. "What's dat you say? For Gods sake, ooman, say what yere got to say, an' be done wid it!" said Mammy, too frightened to be patient. Jim then drew near to her and, glancing cautiously towards the not very distant piazza, upon which his mistress happened at the moment to be standing, he whispered, "Dey's done ketched him." "K-k-ketched who?" stammered Mammy fiercely. "Mas' Sedley, dat's who," Jim answered doggedly. "How you know? I don't b'lieve a word on it." "Anyhow, dey's done done it." "Ho' come you know so much 'bout it?" "'Cause I seen 'em when dey done it." "Y-y-you have de face to stan' da an' tell me dat you seen 'em a-troublin' dat chile an' you not lif' a han' to help him?" "How I gwine help him? G'long, you don't know what you talkin' 'bout." "Whar'bouts did dey come across him?" Mammy inquired. "Right down yonder at de mill," Jim answered, nodding his head in the direction. "Good Lord," exclaimed Mammy, "dey must 'a' ketched him directly after he went away!" This conversation was carried on in such low murmurings that even a listener at a short distance could not have distinguished what was said; the three were very intent, but did not omit occasional cautious glances in the direction of the house. "Dat's so," Jim replied; "an' den dey shet him up in de mill house, and den I never seed no mo', 'cause I was skeered an' runned away." Then, after an uneasy pause, he added, "I come 'long dat-a-way soon dis mornin'," and here he murmured so low into Mammy's ear that Dinah, though she stretched her neck, could not catch the word, which turned Mammy's brown face to ashen gray. She stood for a minute like one turned to stone, then staggered to her own doorstep. Sitting down, she buried her head in her apron, and so sat motionless for half an hour, while Jim and Dinah continued their guarded murmurings by the hencoop. At the end of half an hour she rose, took a bunch of keys from her pocket, went into her house and, closing the door behind her, unlocked her chest. Drawing from it a little workbox, which had, in years gone by, been one of Caroline's cherished Christmas gifts, she opened it. From beneath her Sunday pocket handkerchief, and a few other articles of special value, she produced another and smaller box which she opened, and, taking from it a gold coin, looked at it tenderly. "Po' little fellow! God bless him! he give me this that fus' time he come home from school. I never 'spected to part with it, but ef it's de Lord's will, it may help him now." With these thoughts, Mammy quickly replaced the things in her chest, put the coin into her pocket, and, taking up the man's hat, which upon week days she always wore, she strode off towards the mill. As she passed by the piazza, she paused one moment irresolute, but murmuring to herself, "'T ain't no use upsettin' Mistis, po' cretur, and I can do it better by myself anyhow," she walked briskly forward, revolving in her mind her plan. The mill house consisted of two rooms, and in the one in which Jim had reported Sedley to be confined there was a small trap-door. It had been used for regulating the working of the machinery, and led from beneath the house directly to the creek, which ran close to the walls of the house. This trap Mammy had once happened to see opened, and in that way knew of its existence, otherwise she would never have suspected it, as, from its infrequent use, it was usually covered with dust and dirt and could not be distinguished from the rest of the floor. Her plan was to endeavor to get speech with Sedley, tell him of the trap-door, and leave the rest to him. Her great fear had been that she might be refused admittance to him, and hence it was that she had thought of her gold piece, as she hoped by its potent influence to be given a few minutes alone with the prisoner. There would be no great difficulty for Sedley to lift the trap without noise and, when it was lifted, to swing himself through to the ground, to creep until he came to the thick tangle upon the creek banks, then to swim across and escape into the shelter of the woods beyond. That would be simple enough, and Mammy, full of hopeful thoughts, was walking briskly forward, when suddenly a turn in the path brought into view a small body of Federals, all mounted, and evidently coming from the direction of the mill. They seemed in haste, and she could hear the rattle of their sabres as they cantered by. Standing amid the broom-sedge, Mammy watched them, casting eager, anxious looks upon them, fearing, dreading to see her boy in their midst, a poor, defenseless captive. Finally, as the last horseman disappeared, she heaved a sigh of infinite relief. "Bless de good Lord, dey ain't took de po' chile wid 'em," and so went on her way. At length the gray gables of the little mill house came into view, and Mammy, feeling in her pocket to assure herself that the gold piece was safe at hand, went boldly forward, telling herself that, if she spoke politely, the Yankee guard would not shoot her. So she went on until the little mill came into full view, but with no guard or any other object to inspire fear. All seemed quiet, and the place quite deserted. There were footprints about the door, and broken bushes showed the trampling of both men and horses, but now all was very quiet. The old mill house looked very peaceful, with the yellow autumnal sun shining upon its moss-grown roof, with no sound to break the deep silence, save the low, continuous warbling of a solitary mockingbird which, perched upon an overhanging bough, seemed to review its past joys in low, sweet notes of retrospection. Upon seeing that the place was quite deserted, Mammy paused, and, after looking around to satisfy herself that this was really the case, ascended the steps and, lifting the latch of the door, looked into the outer room. "Thank God!" she murmured, upon finding it empty. "Thank God! dey's all took deyselves off to town an' lef' him here, locked up by hisself. It raly is 'stonishin' to think how foolish dem creturs is; dey mout ha' knowed as someon' would ha' come an' let him loose." While thus thinking, she had crossed the room, and was now endeavoring to open the door, which gave admittance to the inner and larger apartment. Finding, as she had anticipated, that this door was fastened, she first called to the prisoner within, and, when no answer was returned, she shook the door until at length the crazy old lock gave way and the door creaked slowly back upon its rusty hinges. "Honey, whar'bouts is you?" Mammy questioned, as, pausing upon the threshold, she peered into the obscurity beyond. The windowless room was dark, and Mammy, after again calling, groped her way in, straining her eyes into the gloom, but unable to discern any object. Then, suddenly, the deep silence and the gloom smote upon her senses, and a great horror came over her. She turned to rush from the room, when her eyes, grown more accustomed to the darkness, fell upon an object which froze the lifeblood in her veins. It lay almost at her feet. She stooped and bent over it, with thick, laboring breath. Very still it lay, with set white face and wide-open, unseeing eyes. WAR REMINISCENCES I remember when Wheeler's cavalry passed through town that the men, when halted, just dropped in the streets and slept, so that passers-by were forced to step over them, but in spite of starvation and weariness the old indomitable spirit would assert itself. One of the poor fellows, while the column was passing by Christ Church, looked up at the weathercock and remarked to a comrade that it was the first and only instance of Wheeler's boys seeing a chicken which they could not get at. We were singularly fortunate in the neighborhood of Raleigh in having no lack of wholesome food, and in being able to send boxes of provisions to the army around Petersburg. We, in particular, were plentifully supplied from the plantation, a four-horse wagon being constantly engaged in hauling supplies. One of the greatest taxes upon our resources, and the event that brought the war very closely home to us, was the advent of the cavalcade and ambulances referred to in my notes concerning My Own Early Home. Most of the horsemen who had come with the ambulances returned to the front the next morning, leaving behind them six or more sick and wounded, with their surgeon and friends to look after them. Fortunately, the office in the yard (a house with two comfortable rooms) was easily made ready and the wounded men were installed in the quarters which they kept for a month. The wound which afterwards deprived one of the wounded, a young man by the name of Nat Butler, of his arm, was by far the most serious. The attempt to save the arm came very near costing him his life. Instead of healing, the wound constantly sloughed, with great loss of blood. As the wound was between the elbow and the shoulder, the danger attending amputation increased with each sloughing, but the poor boy was deaf to all that his doctor could urge, positively refusing to have the arm amputated, and he grew weaker and weaker with every hemorrhage. Meantime several of the sick and wounded were so far cured as to be able to return to duty. Captain Butler (an older brother of Nat Butler), Dr. Thompson, Mr. Taylor, and several others whose names I have forgotten, and the bugler, named Glanton, still remained. One morning, while I was in the mealroom getting out dinner, I heard Captain Butler's voice calling loudly that young Butler was bleeding to death. I just took time to call out to my daughters, Annie and Kate, who were just starting to town, to drive as quickly as they could to Dr. Johnson's and to ask him to come. Then I ran down to the office, where I found the poor old captain frantic with terror and quite unable to do anything for the patient, who lay senseless and bleeding upon the bed. I can never forget his ghastly appearance; I never saw so bloodless a face. The mouth, partly open, showed a tongue bluish like new flannel. I went to the bedside and pressed the arm above the wound, as hard as I could, and I held it so until the arrival of Dr. Johnson. I had thus succeeded in partially arresting the hemorrhage, and possibly may have saved young Butler's life. I started to leave as soon as the doctor came, and when I arose from my knees, I realized for the first time that I was covered with blood. The amputation could no longer be deferred, and the operation took place as soon as the patient's strength permitted, which was, I think, two days after the hemorrhage. There was then barely a chance that he could survive in his weak condition. I shall never forget how the girls and I sat upon the front steps and watched the silent men standing before the office,--it seemed as though the suspense would never end. After the amputation, Butler lay for twenty-four hours like one dead. Finally, when he did rally sufficiently to be given something, I sent our excellent nurse, Caroline, to take care of him, for I could not trust him to the ignorant though kindly meant attentions of his friends. At this time General Galbraith Butler was our guest, and, as the Norrises had now left for Richmond, I gave him a room in the house. He was quite ill there for several days, during which time the house was thronged with messengers from the front. It gives me pleasure to say that they conducted themselves like polished gentlemen, who appreciated the comforts which they received. Under Caroline's devoted nursing Nat Butler slowly returned to life and to a degree of strength. When it became evident that Raleigh would soon be in possession of the enemy, Nat Butler declared that he preferred the risk of dying by exposure to that of being captured. It was with the saddest forebodings that we prepared for his departure. The ambulance was made comfortable with pillows, blankets, etc., and nothing was omitted that could contribute to the well-being of the poor sufferer. It was a painful parting, as we all knew that we were on the eve of horrors that we dared not contemplate. The moon shone upon the sorrowful little cortège, as it passed beneath the trees, and we were too sad for tears, as we watched it go slowly out of sight. Nat Butler lived, and visited us a year later, but his life was a brief one. We were up late that night, bidding adieu to many friends. Indeed, the past few days had been days of varied and intense excitement. People who under ordinary circumstances would have scarcely recognized each other as acquaintances now met and parted as old and dear friends. Mounted officers would come cantering up just for a handshake and a God-keep-you. We were admonished to take off rings or any little bits of jewelry which we might wear. A gentleman sitting by me had concealed my watch in my ball of knitting cotton. People everywhere were wildly seeking places wherein to conceal their valuables. We had no reason to imagine that our house was safer than others, but we could not refuse to receive the trunks and boxes brought to us in desperation, by refugees chiefly, who were leaving town in a panic, and going they knew not whither. All that we could promise was that they should be as well cared for as were our own; and so the garret was packed with all sorts of trunks and boxes, many of which were not claimed until the next autumn. I cannot pretend to give you an idea of the excitement and turmoil of that last week of the Confederacy. Every minute of your grandfather's time was taken up with his duties as a state officer, until he, in company with Governor Graham and Dr. Warren, were despatched by Governor Vance to meet Sherman with a flag of truce and to surrender the town. He was absent upon this mission upon a night that I happened to go into the dining-room and found several rough-looking men, whom I took to be Confederates, seated at supper. Robert was waiting upon them, and Adelaide talking, while one of my little children was seated cosily upon the knee of a particularly dirty-looking man. This did not please me, for there was a freedom of manner about them which I had never seen in one of our men before. Still, I had no suspicion that they were not what they seemed, and, being called off, I left them, although a certain uncomfortable feeling caused me to do so unwillingly. Just as I left, a clatter of horses' feet was heard outside, and Adelaide (always loquacious), exclaimed, "Here comes the General and his staff!" The words were scarcely uttered before the men jumped from their seats and dashed from the room. We were afterwards convinced that they were some of the scum of Sherman's army, and while we (myself and daughters) were sitting quite unsuspectingly, they were lurking near us. I omitted to mention that, at our urgent invitation, our dear friends the Burgwyns had come to us, and, in the midst of other distractions, I was occupied in disposing of their numerous boxes, barrels, and pictures. There was a universal feeling that there would be a degree of safety in numbers, and we could not possibly have enjoyed more congenial companionship than that of our cousins, the Burgwyns. Upon that day we prepared twenty lunches, which were most thankfully received. I recollect that towards evening some hot tea was made for our old friend, Mr. John Robinson. He had been at work all day, shipping freight and provisions, and transferring engines to Greensboro, to which place he was now going. He had had nothing to eat, and was, as you may imagine, very tired, and so hungry that his lunch of cold ham, bread, and butter, with many cups of tea, was so much enjoyed that in after life he often spoke of it with real gratitude. When he said good-by, he gave into my keeping a little box of trinkets, requesting me to keep them for him, as he had no idea what his destination might be. I, of course, said that I would try to keep them safely; and I did, returning them just as I had received them, some months later. Upon that day, our dinner was but a meagre one, consisting chiefly of soup, and, as the very last of the silver had been hidden out of sight, we were compelled to take it from teacups. Upon that night, after the stir and bustle of the day had subsided, after the last good-by had been uttered, and the last horseman had galloped away, a most intense stillness followed, which, if possible, increased our melancholy, and magnified our fearful apprehensions of what was to come. On the following morning, I saw three odd, rough-looking men come galloping up from the barn. They were mounted upon mules, were seated far forward upon the withers, and had their knees drawn up after a most ungainly fashion. I saw at a glance that they were not our countrymen. They rode furiously into the yard, where they halted abruptly. The servants stood gaping at them in stupid bewilderment. I went forward and asked them the meaning of this intrusion. Their reply was an insolent demand for my keys. Then I knew that they were bummers. During the whole of this period your grandfather had had more than his hands full at his office, taking care of and sending off government stores, and doing a thousand other things, so that all the domestic offices rested with me. I told the bummers, with a great show of courage, that I had no idea of giving them my keys, and as I walked off, feeling quite triumphant, I had the mortification of seeing them dismount and swagger to the doors of the mealroom, smokehouse, and storeroom, slip their miserable, dastardly swords into the locks, and open the doors, with the most perfect ease. Conscious now of my own weakness, I would not condescend to parley with them, and watched them at their insolent and thievish game, until their mules were almost hidden beneath the load of hams, sausages, and other plunder. Then they remounted, and dashed off at the same furious pace as they had come. In a little time after others came and played the same game, only adding to their abominable thievishness by driving off our mules and all our cattle. Our horses, I am glad to say, had been sent away. It was towards noon upon that fatal day that we espied a long blue line crawling serpent-like around a distant hill. Silently we watched, as it uncoiled itself, ever drawing nearer and still nearer, until the one great reptile developed into many reptiles and took the form of men. Men in blue tramping everywhere, horsemen careering about us with no apparent object, wagons crashing through fences as though they had been made of paper. The negroes stood like dumb things, in stupid dismay. It was at a later period that their time of joy came (in many instances it never came); then the only feeling was one of awe. In an incredibly short time tents were pitched, the flag run up, and the Yankees were here. The crowd grew more dense. A large column was passing through the grove at almost a run, when, to my horror, I saw Adelaide and Lizzie, each with one of my little girls in her arms, rushing along in their midst in a state of such wild excitement that they had almost lost their reason. Almost in despair, I rushed after them, sometimes seeing them, only to lose them again in the moving mass. As I passed a soldier I signed to him for help; I do not think I could have spoken. He saw the danger that threatened my children, and, overtaking the two nurses, took the children and brought them to me. The women had meant no harm, and did not realize the risk. As I before remarked, every one during this period of panic entertained an idea that he must commit his valuables to the keeping of some one else; for instance, my sister gave her set of pearls to her maid Sally for safe keeping, and Sally, in her turn, brought them to Caroline (her mother). Caroline, not knowing a safe place of concealment, lifted a stone from her hearth, placed the casket in the cavity, and replaced the stone; this, however, caused the stone to fit loosely in the hole from which it had been displaced, and Caroline, in her fear lest this should lead to the discovery of the pearls, sat all night with her feet resting upon it. She came to me in the morning, looking perfectly haggard, and told me that she had never before passed through such a night of horror, for her house had been crowded with Federals, prying into every corner and taking whatever they fancied. With my sister's casket, she handed me a red cotton handkerchief tied up and full of silver coins, belonging to herself and her husband. She had no place in which to keep it, and asked me to take care of it. I, of course, took charge of it and kept it for her until the last bluecoat had left the place, which was not until August; for, after the departure of the army, a regiment was left in our grove. One day General Logan came to the door and said that he had reason to believe that a Confederate officer was concealed in the house, and, if I kept his presence a secret, he threatened me with the consequences. The Federals, while searching for buried treasure, had discovered the amputated arm of poor young Butler, and had jumped to the conclusion that he was concealed in the house. At all events, it served as a plea for them to claim that he was there. When I assured him that this rumor was quite false, his manner was so utterly incredulous that I requested him to satisfy himself of the truth of my assertion by making a search of the entire house and outbuildings. I entreated him to do this, for his threats had so alarmed me that I felt that in that alone lay our preservation. His reply, with an insolent, jeering laugh, was: "I will not take that trouble, for my boys will settle that question." The safeguards stationed both at the back and front protected the house. For, whatever might have been their feelings, they dared not relax in their vigilance. The discipline in that army was perfect. Not long after the above-mentioned interview with Logan, we were told (by a servant, I think), that the whole division was going to leave that night. This was true. It was before the articles of the surrender had been signed, and Logan was in pursuit of General Johnston. It was a night of such commotion that not one of the family retired to rest. It was discovered, when too late for redress, that Logan had withdrawn our safeguards, taken every commanding officer with him, and had left us to the mercy of his wagon train of bummers and of negroes. That night of terror terminated in a violent storm, in the midst of which your grandfather set out for the headquarters in town for the purpose of demanding a safeguard. With daylight came a greater feeling of safety, so we separated, the girls going to their rooms, and I to mine, in order to refresh ourselves and make a fresh toilet. While so engaged, I kept hearing the bells ringing and tinkling incessantly, and, while I was hurrying to put on my dress in order to inquire the meaning of this, Caroline and Adelaide rushed in, exclaiming that men were climbing the walls of the house, and the tinkling of the bells was caused by their twisting them off the wires. These women, whose natural color was bright mulatto, now looked ashy. I do not think that I spoke a word, but just flew into the nursery, took the children, and ran up the stairs. As I passed by the sitting, room, I met Kate, all disheveled, running out and saying that men were climbing into her window. I just took time to lock the door between her room and the sitting-room, and then we all ran upstairs, where the Burgwyns and my other girls were quietly dressing, in entire ignorance of what was taking place. It seems strange that I should recollect every trifle so vividly; I remember, even now, that, as I ran up the stair, my throat and mouth became so dry that I could not speak. From the window at the head of the stair nothing was visible but a sea of upturned faces; not just by the house, but away down the slope, as far as the eye could reach, were men's upturned faces. I can never forget the look upon Mrs. Burgwyn's face as she whispered, "We can throw ourselves from the window." My poor, craven heart might have failed me, but I am convinced that she could have done it. While we thus stood, a poor, cowering, terror-stricken group, steps were heard approaching, and a tall figure slowly ascended the stairs, and a grim, saturnine-faced man stood before us, and said, "I don't know that I can save you, but for the sake of my mother and sisters I will do all that I can do." I do not remember whether any one made a reply or not, I only recollect that he went as deliberately as he had come. When your grandfather returned, having with difficulty succeeded in procuring the permit for a safeguard, the mob had begun to disperse. Our deliverer was a man named Fort. He was division quartermaster, and had been left in charge of the wagon trains. He was from one of the Western States, Iowa, I believe. He was a good man, and was God's instrument to save us from destruction. He remained near the house all through the day, and at first said that he would sleep that night inside the dwelling, but afterwards told your grandfather that, upon further consideration, he thought it best that he should stay outside, so his tent was pitched close to the house, and there he remained until his command left. He was forbidding in manner, and would accept no thanks. I think that he hated us as Southerners, but acted from humanity. Mr. Burgwyn was suffering from an apoplectic stroke, and was lying insensible. My son had not returned from Appomattox. Had any man been with us, he would have been utterly helpless, and would probably have been murdered. One day, either immediately preceding or following the incident just related, our ever-faithful man, Frank, stealthily entered the house. He was evidently afraid of being observed, for he slipped in, and, closing the door after him, asked to speak a word to his master. When your grandfather came, Frank almost whispered his communication, as though afraid of being overheard. "Master," he said, "I come to ask you, please, sir, don't go out of the house to-day;" he would not say why he gave this warning, and it was not until afterwards that we found that the Federals had intended to hang your grandfather up until he told them where our silver was hidden. I rejoice to say that they did not get one piece of it, although a part of it was buried in the branch that runs at the foot of the grove, and, in digging out a place for watering their horses, they had actually thrown the sand upon the box, thus burying it deeper. I could relate many other incidents of this period, some of them rather amusing; but it is time to bring my reminiscences to a close. But before doing so, I must say a word about our last safeguard, Monhagan. He was Irish, and possessed all of the best attributes of the Irish character. After the departure of Logan's division, with the rest of Sherman's army, this man was deputed to guard the place, as a regiment was still quartered in the grove. He stayed until August, and, besides faithfully discharging his duties, he exerted himself in other and various ways to ameliorate the inconveniences to which we were subjected. Our servants, lounging in idleness, contented themselves with professions as idle. Frank, acting upon his master's advice, had taken his family to the plantation. Adelaide was ill the greater part of the summer with brain fever. Monhagan worked the garden, gathered fruit and vegetables, and performed many other services. I felt a little amused when he one day brought me all his money and asked me to take care of it for him. At first I positively refused to take upon myself this responsibility, but yielded at last, and made him count it, and kept it as long as he remained. Every Saturday afternoon he would come and ask me to let him have one dollar and allow him to go to town for a little while. He left with the regiment in August, and he wrote once to your uncle Tom from New York, but omitted to give his address, which we regretted, as we would have liked to have him as a gardener. Transcriber's Note Minor typographic errors have been corrected without note. However, variation in spelling, particularly in the speech, but also in other words, has been left as printed. 
21357	----	Nic Revel; A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land, by George Manville Fenn. ________________________________________________________________________ Nic Revel is brought up on a small landed estate in Devon. The date is somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century. There is a very good salmon pool on the estate, but it is often used by poachers, which greatly annoys the Revel family. Eventually they have a great fight there, in which they had arranged to be supported by men from a vessel of the Royal Navy. Nic is wounded and is mistaken for a poacher by the naval party, who press-gang the poachers. When they reach America, Nic is still hardly conscious, and not capable of much work. All the less able poachers are then sold by the ship to an American slave dealer, who sells them to a settler who lives a long way up a river. After a journey to the farm they find that they are given very hard work to do, and not fed very well. And of course Nic and one of the poachers, who has become a good friend of his, want to get back to Devon. After many trials and tribulations they eventually escape. George Manville Fenn is a master of suspense, and this book is a very good example of his work. ________________________________________________________________________ NIC REVEL; A WHITE SLAVE'S ADVENTURES IN ALLIGATOR LAND, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN. CHAPTER ONE. CAPTAIN REVEL IS CROSS. "Late again, Nic," said Captain Revel. "Very sorry, father." "Yes, you always are `very sorry,' sir. I never saw such a fellow to sleep. Why, when I was a lad of your age--let's see, you're just eighteen." "Yes, father, and very hungry," said the young man, with a laugh and a glance at the breakfast-table. "Always are very hungry. Why, when I was a lad of your age I didn't lead such an easy-going life as you do. You're spoiled, Nic, by an indulgent father.--Here, help me to some of that ham.--Had to keep my watch and turn up on deck at all hours; glad to eat weavilly biscuit.-- Give me that brown bit.--Ah, I ought to have sent you to sea. Made a man of you. Heard the thunder, of course?" "No, father. Was there a storm?" "Storm--yes. Lightning as we used to have it in the East Indies, and the rain came down like a waterspout." "I didn't hear anything of it, father." "No; you'd sleep through an earthquake, or a shipwreck, or--Why, I say, Nic, you'll soon have a beard." "Oh, nonsense, father! Shall I cut you some bread?" "But you will," said the Captain, chuckling. "My word, how time goes! Only the other day you were an ugly little pup of a fellow, and I used to wipe your nose; and now you're as big as I am--I mean as tall." "Yes; I'm not so stout, father," said Nic, laughing. "None of your impudence, sir," said the heavy old sea-captain, frowning. "If you had been as much knocked about as I have, you might have been as stout." Nic Revel could not see the common-sense of the remark, but he said nothing, and went on with his breakfast, glancing from time to time through the window at the glittering sea beyond the flagstaff, planted on the cliff which ran down perpendicularly to the little river that washed its base while flowing on towards the sea a mile lower down. "Couldn't sleep a bit," said Captain Revel. "But I felt it coming all yesterday afternoon. Was I--er--a bit irritable?" "Um--er--well, just a little, father," said Nic dryly. "Humph! and that means I was like a bear--eh, sir?" "I did not say so, father." "No, sir; but you meant it. Well, enough to make me," cried the Captain, flushing. "I will not have it. I'll have half-a-dozen more watchers, and put a stop to their tricks. The land's mine, and the river's mine, and the salmon are mine; and if any more of those idle rascals come over from the town on to my grounds, after my fish, I'll shoot 'em, or run 'em through, or catch 'em and have 'em tied up and flogged." "It is hard, father." "`_Hard_' isn't hard enough, Nic, my boy," cried the Captain angrily. "The river's open to them below, and it's free to them up on the moors, and they may go and catch them in the sea if they want more room." "If they can, father," said Nic, laughing. "Well, yes--if they can, boy. Of course it's if they can with any one who goes fishing. But I will not have them come disturbing me. The impudent scoundrels!" "Did you see somebody yesterday, then, father?" "Didn't you hear me telling you, sir? Pay attention, and give me some more ham. Yes; I'd been up to the flagstaff and was walking along by the side of the combe, so as to come back home through the wood path, when there was that great lazy scoundrel, Burge, over from the town with a long staff and a hook, and I was just in time to see him land a good twelve-pound salmon out of the pool--one of that half-dozen that have been lying there this fortnight past waiting for enough water to run up higher." "Did you speak to him, father?" "Speak to him, sir!" cried the Captain. "I let him have a broadside." "What did he say, father?" "Laughed at me--the scoundrel! Safe on the other side; and I had to stand still and see him carry off the beautiful fish." "The insolent dog!" cried Nic. "Yes; I wish I was as young and strong and active as you, boy. I'd have gone down somehow, waded the river, and pushed the scoundrel in." He looked at his father and smiled. "But I would, my boy: I was in such a fit of temper. Why can't the rascals leave me and mine alone?" "Like salmon, I suppose, father," said the young man. "So do we--but they might go up the river and catch them." "We get so many in the pool, and they tempt the idle people." "Then they have no business to fall into temptation. I'll do something to stop them." "Better not, father," said Nic quietly. "It would only mean fighting and trouble." "Bah!" cried Captain Revel, with his face growing redder than usual. "What a fellow to be my son! Why, sir, when I was your age I gloried in a fight." "Did you, father?" "Yes, sir, I did." "Ah! but you were in training for a fighting-man." "And I was weak enough, to please your poor mother, to let you be schooled for a bookworm, and a man of law and quips and quiddities, always ready to enter into an argument with me, and prove that black's white and white's no colour, as they say. Hark ye, sir, if it was not too late I'd get Jack Lawrence to take you to sea with him now. He'll be looking us up one of these days soon. It's nearly time he put in at Plymouth again." "No, you would not, father," said the young man quietly. "Ah! arguing again? Why not, pray?" "Because you told me you were quite satisfied with what you had done." "Humph! Hah! Yes! so I did. What are you going to do this morning-- read?" "Yes, father; read hard." "Well, don't read too hard, my lad. Get out in the fresh air a bit. Why not try for a salmon? They'll be running up after this rain, and you may get one if there is not too much water." "Yes, I might try," said the young man quietly; and soon after he strolled into the quaint old library, to begin poring over a heavy law-book full of wise statutes, forgetting everything but the task he had in hand; while Captain Revel went out to walk to the edge of the high cliff and sat down on the stone seat at the foot of the properly-rigged flagstaff Here he scanned the glittering waters, criticising the manoeuvres of the craft passing up and down the Channel on their way to Portsmouth or the port of London, or westward for Plymouth, dreaming the while of his old ship and the adventures he had had till his wounds, received in a desperate engagement with a couple of piratical vessels in the American waters, incapacitated him for active service, and forced him to lead the life of an old-fashioned country gentleman at his home near the sea. CHAPTER TWO. A WET FIGHT. The Captain was having his after-dinner nap when Nic took down one of the rods which always hung ready in the hall, glanced at the fly to see if it was all right, and then crossed the garden to the fields. He turned off towards the river, from which, deep down in the lovely combe, came a low, murmurous, rushing sound, quite distinct from a deep, sullen roar from the thick woodland a few hundred yards to his right. "No fishing to-day," he said, and he rested his rod against one of the sturdy dwarf oaks which sheltered the house from the western gales, and then walked on, drawing in deep draughts of the soft salt air and enjoying the beauty of the scene around. For the old estate had been well chosen by the Revels of two hundred years earlier; and, look which way he might, up or down the miniature valley, there were the never-tiring beauties of one of the most delightful English districts. The murmur increased as the young man strode on down the rugged slope, or leaped from mossy stone to stone, amongst heather, furze, and fern, to where the steep sides of the combe grew more thickly clothed with trees, in and amongst which the sheep had made tracks like a map of the little valley, till all at once he stood at the edge of a huge mass of rock, gazing through the leaves at the foaming brown water which washed the base of the natural wall, and eddied and leaped and tore on along its zigzag bed, onward towards the sea. From where he stood he gazed straight across at the other side of the combe, one mass of greens of every tint, here lit up by the sun, there deep in shadow; while, watered by the soft moist air and mists which rose from below, everything he gazed upon was rich and luxuriant in the extreme. "The rain must have been tremendous up in the moor," thought the young man, as he gazed down into the lovely gully at the rushing water, which on the previous day had been a mere string of stony pools connected by a trickling stream, some of them deep and dark, the haunts of the salmon which came up in their season from the sea. "What a change! Yesterday, all as clear as crystal; now, quite a golden brown." Then, thinking of how the salmon must be taking advantage of the little flood to run up higher to their spawning-grounds among the hills, Nic turned off to his right to follow a rugged track along the cliff-like side, sometimes low down, sometimes high up; now in deep shadow, now in openings where the sun shot through to make the hurrying waters sparkle and flash. The young man went on and on for quite a quarter of a mile, with the sullen roar increasing till it became one deep musical boom; and, turning a corner where a portion of the cliff overhung the narrow path, and long strands of ivy hung down away from the stones, he stepped out of a green twilight into broad sunshine, to stand upon a shelf of rock, gazing into a circular pool some hundred feet across. Here was the explanation of the deep, melodious roar. For, to his right, over what resembled a great eight-foot-high step in the valley, the whole of the little river plunged down from the continuation of the gorge, falling in one broad cascade in a glorious curve right into the pool, sending up a fine spray which formed a cloud, across which, like a bridge over the fall, the lovely tints of a rainbow played from time to time. It was nothing new to Nic, that amphitheatre, into which he had gazed times enough ever since he was a child; but it had never seemed more lovely, nor the growth which fringed it from the edge of the water to fifty or sixty feet above his head more beautiful and green. But he had an object in coming, and, following the shelf onward, he was soon standing level with the side of the fall, gazing intently at the watery curve and right into the pool where the water foamed and plunged down, rose a few yards away, and then set in a regular stream round and round the amphitheatre, a portion flowing out between two huge buttresses of granite, and then hurrying downstream. Nic was about fifteen feet above the surface of the chaos of water, and a little above the head of the pool; while below him were blocks of stone, dripping bushes, and grasses, and then an easy descent to where he might have stood dry-shod and gazed beneath the curve of the falling water, as he had stood scores of times before. But his attention was fixed upon the curve, and as he watched he saw something silvery flash out of the brown water and fall back into the pool where the foam was thickest. Again he saw it, and this time it disappeared without falling back. For the salmon, fresh from the sea, were leaping at the fall to gain the upper waters of the river. It was a romantic scene, and Nic stood watching for some minutes, breathing the moist air, while the spray began to gather upon his garments, and the deep musical boom reverberated from the rocky sides of the chasm. It was a grand day for the fish, and he was thinking that there would be plenty of them right up the river for miles, for again and again he saw salmon flash into sight as, by one tremendous spring and beat of their tails, they made their great effort to pass the obstacle in their way. "Plenty for every one," he said to himself; "and plenty left for us," he added, as he saw other fish fail and drop back into the foam-covered amber and black water, to sail round with the stream, and in all probability--for their actions could not be seen--rest from their tremendous effort, and try again. All at once, after Nic had been watching for some minutes without seeing sign of a fish, there was a flash close in to where he stood, and a large salmon shot up, reached the top of the fall, and would have passed on, but fortune was against it. For a moment it rested on the edge, and its broad tail and part of its body glistened as a powerful stroke was made with the broad caudal fin. But it was in the air, not in the water; and the next moment the great fish was falling, when, quick as its own spring up, there was a sudden movement from behind one of the great stones at the foot of the fall just below where Nic stood, and the salmon was caught upon a sharp hook at the end of a stout ash pole and dragged shoreward, flapping and struggling with all its might. The efforts were in vain, for its captor drew it in quickly, raising the pole more and more till it was nearly perpendicular, as he came out from behind the great block of dripping stone which had hidden him from Nic, and, as it happened, stepped backward, till his fish was clear of the water. It was all the matter of less than a minute. The man, intent upon his fish--a magnificent freshly-run salmon, glittering in its silver scales--passed hand over hand along his pole, released his right, and was in the act of reaching down to thrust a hooked finger in the opening and closing gills to make sure of his prize in the cramped-up space he occupied, when the end of the stout ash staff struck Nic sharply on his leg. But the man did not turn, attributing the hindrance to his pole having encountered a stone or tree branch above his head, and any movement made by Nic was drowned by the roar of the fall. The blow upon the leg was sharp, and gave intense pain to its recipient, whose temper was already rising at the cool impudence of the stout, bullet-headed fellow, trespassing and poaching in open daylight upon the Captain's grounds. Consequently, Nic did take notice of the blow. Stooping down as the end of the pole wavered in the air, he made a snatch at and seized it, gave it a wrench round as the man's finger was entering the gill of the salmon, and the hook being reversed, the fish dropped off, there was a slight addition to the splashing in the pool, and then it disappeared. The next moment the man twisted himself round, holding on by the pole, and stared up; while Nic, still holding on by the other end, leaned over and stared down. It was a curious picture, and for some moments neither stirred, the poacher's not ill-looking face expressing profound astonishment at this strange attack. Then a fierce look of anger crossed it, and, quick as thought, he made a sharp snatch, which destroyed Nic's balance, making him loosen his hold of the pole and snatch at the nearest branch to check his fall. He succeeded, but only for a moment, just sufficient to save himself and receive another heavy blow from the pole, which made him lose his hold and slip, more than fall, down to where he was on the same level with his adversary, who drew back to strike again. But Nic felt as if his heart was on fire. The pain of the blows thrilled him, and, darting forward with clenched fists, he struck the poacher full in the mouth before the pole could swing round. There was the faint whisper of a hoarse yell as the man fell back; Nic saw his hands clutching in the air, then he went backward into the boiling water, while the end of the pole was seen to rise above the surface for a moment or two, and then glide towards the bottom of the fall and disappear. For the current, as it swung round the pool, set towards the falling water on the surface, and rushed outward far below. Nic's rage died out more quickly than it had risen, and he craned forward, white as ashes now, watching for the rising of his adversary out somewhere towards the other side; while, as if in triumphant mockery or delight at the danger having been removed, another huge salmon leaped up the fall. CHAPTER THREE. A GAME OF TIT FOR TAT. "I'd have pushed him in." Captain Revel's threat flashed through his son's brain as the young man stood staring wildly over the agitated waters of the pool, every moment fancying that he saw some portion of the man's body rise to the surface; but only for it to prove a patch of the creamy froth churned up by the flood. It was plain enough: the man had been sucked in under the falls, and the force of the falling water was keeping him down. He must have been beneath the surface for a full minute now--so it seemed to Nic; and, as he grew more hopeless moment by moment of seeing him rise, the young man's blood seemed to chill with horror at the thought that he had in his rage destroyed another's life. Only a short time back the shut-in pool had been a scene of beauty; now it was like a black hollow of misery and despair, as the water dashed down and then swirled and eddied in the hideous whirlpool. Then it was light again, and a wild feeling of exultation shot through Nic's breast, for he suddenly caught sight of the man's inert body approaching him, after gliding right round the basin. It was quite fifty feet away, and seemed for a few moments as if about to be swept out of the hollow and down the gully; but the swirl was too strong, and it continued gliding round the pool, each moment coming nearer. There was no time for hesitation. Nic knew the danger and the impossibility of keeping afloat in foaming water like that before him, churned up as it was with air; but he felt that at all cost he must plunge in and try to save his adversary before the poor fellow was swept by him and borne once more beneath the fall. Stripping off his coat, he waited a few seconds, and then leaped outward so as to come down feet first, in the hope that he might find bottom and be able to wade, for he knew that swimming was out of the question. It was one rush, splash, and hurry, for the water was not breast-deep, and by a desperate effort he kept up as his feet reached the rugged, heavily-scoured stones at the bottom. Then the pressure of the water nearly bore him away, but he managed to keep up, bearing sidewise, and the next minute had grasped the man's arm and was struggling shorewards, dragging his adversary towards the rugged bank. Twice-over he felt that it was impossible; but, as the peril increased, despair seemed to endow him with superhuman strength, and he kept up the struggle bravely, ending by drawing the man out on to the ledge of stones nearly on a level with the water, where he had been at first standing at the foot of the fall. "He's dead; he's dead!" panted Nic, as he sank upon his knees, too much exhausted by his struggle to do more than gaze down at the dripping, sun-tanned face, though the idea was growing that he must somehow carry the body up into the sunshine and try to restore consciousness. Comic things occur sometimes in tragedies, and Nic's heart gave a tremendous leap, for a peculiar twitching suddenly contracted the face beside which he knelt, and the man sneezed violently, again and again. A strangling fit of coughing succeeded, during which he choked and crowed and grew scarlet, and in his efforts to get his breath he rose into a sitting position, opened his eyes to stare, and ended by struggling to his feet and standing panting and gazing fiercely at Nic. "Are you better?" cried the latter excitedly, and he seized the man by the arms, as he too rose, and held him fast, in the fear lest he should fall back into the whirlpool once more. That was enough! Pete Burge was too hardy a fisher to be easily drowned. He had recovered his senses, and the rage against the young fellow who had caused his trouble surged up again, as it seemed to him that he was being seized and made prisoner, not a word of Nic's speech being heard above the roar of the water. "Vish as much mine as his," said the man to himself; and, in nowise weakened by his immersion, he closed with Nic. There was a short struggle on the ledge, which was about the worst place that could have been chosen for such an encounter; and Nic, as he put forth all his strength against the man's iron muscles, was borne to his left over the water and to his right with a heavy bang against the rocky side of the chasm. Then, before he could recover himself, there was a rapid disengagement and two powerful arms clasped his waist; he was heaved up in old West-country wrestling fashion, struggling wildly, and, in spite of his efforts to cling to his adversary, by a mighty effort jerked off. He fell clear away in the foaming pool, which closed over his head as he was borne in turn right beneath the tons upon tons of water which thundered in his ears, while he experienced the sudden change from sunshine into the dense blackness of night. "How do you like that?" shouted the man; but it was only a faint whisper, of which he alone was conscious. There was a broad grin upon his face, and his big white teeth glistened in the triumphant smile which lit up his countenance. "I'll let you zee." He stood dripping and watching the swirling and foaming water for the reappearance of Nic. "Biggest vish I got this year," he said to himself. "Lost my pole, too; and here! where's my cap, and--?" There was a sudden change in his aspect, his face becoming full of blank horror now as he leaned forward, staring over the pool, eyes and mouth open widely; and then, with a groan, he gasped out: "Well, I've done it now!" CHAPTER FOUR. NIC WILL NOT SHAKE HANDS. History repeats itself, though the repetitions are not always recorded. A horrible feeling of remorse and despair came over the man. His anger had evaporated, and putting his hands to the sides of his mouth, he yelled out: "Ahoy, there! Help--help!" Again it was a mere whisper in the booming roar. "Oh, poor dear lad!" he muttered to himself. "Bother the zammon! Wish there waren't none. Hoi, Master Nic! Strike out! Zwim, lad, zwim! Oh, wheer be ye? I've drowned un. Oh, a mercy me! What have I done?-- Hah! there a be." There was a plunge, a splash, and a rush against the eddying water, with the man showing a better knowledge of the pool, from many a day's wading, than Nic had possessed. Pete Burge knew where the shallow shelves of polished stones lay out of sight, and he waded and struggled on to where the water was bearing Nic round in turn. Then, after wading, the man plunged into deep water, swam strongly, and seized his victim as a huge dog would, with his teeth, swung himself round, and let the fierce current bear him along as he fought his way into the shallow, regained his footing, and the next minute was back by the ledge. Here he rose to his feet, and rolled and thrust Nic ashore, climbed out after him, and knelt in turn by his side. "Bean't dead, be he?" said the man to himself. "Not in the water long enough. Worst o' these here noblemen and gentlemen--got no stuff in 'em." Pete Burge talked to himself, but he was busy the while. He acted like a man who had gained experience in connection with flooded rivers, torrents, and occasional trips in fishing-boats at sea; and according to old notions, supposing his victim not to be already dead, he did the best he could to smother out the tiny spark of life that might still be glowing. His fine old-fashioned notion of a man being drowned was that it was because he was full of water. The proper thing, then, according to his lights, must be to empty it out, and the sooner the better. The sea-going custom was to lay a man face downward across a barrel, and to roll the barrel gently to and fro. "And I aren't got no barrel," muttered Pete. To make up for it he rolled Nic from side to side, and then, as his treatment produced no effect, he seized him by the ankles, stood up, and raised the poor fellow till he was upside down, and shook him violently again and again. Wonderful to relate, that did no good, his patient looking obstinately lifeless; so he laid him in the position he should have tried at first-- extended upon his back; and, apostrophising him all the time as a poor, weakly, helpless creature, punched and rubbed and worked him about, muttering the while. "Oh, poor lad! poor dear lad!" he went on. "I had no spite again' him. I didn't want to drownd him. It weer only tit for tat; he chucked me in, and I chucked him in, and it's all on account o' they zammon.--There goes another. Always a-temptin' a man to come and catch 'em--lyin' in the pools as if askin' of ye.--Oh, I say, do open your eyes, lad, and speak! They'll zay I murdered ye, and if I don't get aboard ship and zail away to foreign abroad, they'll hang me, and the crows'll come and pick out my eyes.--I zay.--I zay lad, don't ye be a vool. It was on'y a drop o' watter ye zwallowed. Do ye come to, and I'll never meddle with the zammon again.--I zay, ye aren't dead now. Don't ye be a vool. It aren't worth dying for, lad. Coom, coom, coom, open your eyes and zit up like a man. You're a gentleman, and ought to know better. I aren't no scholard, and I didn't do zo.--Oh, look at him! I shall be hanged for it, and put on the gibbet, and all for a bit o' vish.--Zay, look here, if you don't come to I'll pitch you back again, and they'll think you tumbled in, and never know no better. It's voolish of ye, lad. Don't give up till ye're ninety-nine or a hundred. It's time enough to die then. Don't die now, with the sun shining and the fish running up the valls, and ye might be so happy and well." And all the while Pete kept on thumping and rubbing and banging his patient about in the most vigorous way. "It's spite, that's what it is," growled the man. "You hit me i' th' mouth and tried to drownd me, and because you couldn't you're trying to get me hanged; and you shan't, for if you don't come-to soon, sure as you're alive I'll pitch you back to be carried out to zea.--Nay, nay, I wouldn't, lad. Ye'd coom back and harnt me. I never meant to do more than duck you, and Hooray!" For Nic's nature had at last risen against the treatment he was receiving. It was more than any one could stand; so, in the midst of a furious bout of rubbing, the poor fellow suddenly yawned and opened his eyes, to stare blankly up at the bright sun-rays streaming down through the overhanging boughs of the gnarled oaks. He dropped his lids again, but another vigorous rubbing made him open them once more; and as he stared now at his rough doctor his lips moved to utter the word "Don't!" but it was not heard, and after one or two more appeals he caught the man's wrists and tried to struggle up into a sitting position, Pete helping him, and then, as he knelt there, grinning in his face. Nic sat staring at him and beginning to think more clearly, so that in a few minutes he had fully grasped the position and recalled all that had taken place. It was evident that there was to be a truce between them, for Pete Burge's rough countenance was quite smiling and triumphant, while on Nic's own part the back of his neck ached severely, and he felt as if he could not have injured a fly. At last Nic rose, shook himself after the fashion of a dog to get rid of some of the water which soaked his clothes, and looked round about him for his cap, feeling that he would be more dignified and look rather less like a drowned rat if he put it on. Pete came close to him, placed his lips nearly to his ear, and shouted, "Cap?" Nic nodded. "Gone down the river to try and catch mine for me," said the man, with a good-humoured grin, which made Nic frown at the insolent familiarity with which it was said. "You'll have to buy me another one, Master Nic," continued the man, "and get the smith to make me a noo steel hook. I'll let you off paying for the pole; I can cut a fresh one somewheres up yonder." "On our grounds?" cried Nic indignantly, speaking as loudly as he could. "Well, there's plenty, aren't there, master? And you've lost mine," shouted back the man, grinning again. "You scoundrel!" cried Nic, who was warming up again. "I shall have you up before the Justices for this." "For what?" said the man insolently. "For throwing me into the pool." "Zo shall I, then," shouted the man. "It was only tit for tat. You zent me in first." "Yes; and I caught you first hooking our salmon, sir." "Tchah! much my zammon as your own, master. Vish comes out of the zea for everybody as likes to catch them." "Not on my father's estate," cried Nic. "You've been warned times enough." "Ay, I've heerd a lot o' talk, master; but me and my mates mean to have a vish or two whenever we wants 'em. You'll never miss 'em." "Look here, Pete Burge," cried Nic; "I don't want to be too hard upon you, because I suppose you fished me out of the pool after throwing me in." "Well, you've no call to grumble, master," said the man, grinning good-humouredly. "You did just the zame." "And," continued Nic, shouting himself hoarse, so as to be heard, and paying no heed to the man's words, "if you faithfully promise me that you'll never come and poach on my father's part of the river again, I'll look over all this, and not have you before the Justices." "How are you going to get me avore the Justice, Master Nic?" said the man, with a merry laugh. "Send the constable, sir." "Tchah! he'd never vind me; and, if he did, he dursen't tackle me. There's a dozen o' my mates would break his head if he tried." "Never mind about that," cried Nic. "You promise me. My father warned you only yesterday." "So he did," said the man, showing his teeth. "In a regular wax he was." "And I will not have him annoyed," cried Nic. "So now then, you promise?" "Nay, I shan't promise." "Then I go straight to the constable, and if I do you'll be summoned and punished, and perhaps sent out of the country." "What vor?--pulling you out when you was drownding?" "For stealing our salmon and beating our two keepers." "Then I'd better have left you in yonder," said the man, laughing. "You mean I had better have left you in yonder, and rid the country of an idle, poaching scoundrel," cried Nic indignantly. "But there, you saved my life, and I want to give you a chance. Look here, Pete Burge, you had better go to sea." "Yes, when I like to try for some vish. Don't ketch me going for a zailor." "Will you give me your word that you will leave the fish alone?" "Nay; but I'll shake hands with you, master. You zaved my life, and I zaved yourn, so we're square over that business." "You insolent dog!" cried Nic. "Then I'll go straight to the Justice." "Nay; you go and put on zome dry clothes. It don't hurt me, but you'll ketch cold, my lad. Look here, you want me to zay I won't take no more zammon." "Yes." "Then I won't zay it. There's about twenty of us means to have as many fish out o' the river as we like, and if anybody, keepers or what not, comes and interveres with us we'll pitch 'em in the river; and they may get out themzelves, for I'm not going in after they. Understand that, master?" "Yes, sir, I do." "Then don't you set any one to meddle with us, or there may be mischief done, for my mates aren't such vools as me. Going to give me a noo steel hook?" "No, you scoundrel!" "Going to zhake hands?" "No, sir." "Just as you like, young master. I wanted to be vriends and you won't, so we'll be t'other. On'y mind, if there's mischief comes of it, you made it. Now then, I'm going to walk about in the sun to get dry, and then zee about getting myself a noo cap and a hook." "To try for our salmon again?" The fellow gave him a queer look, nodded, and climbed up the side of the ravine, followed by Nic. At the top the man turned and stared at him for a few moments, with a peculiar look in his eyes; and the trees between them and the falls shut off much of the deep, booming noise. "Well," said Nic sharply, "have you repented?" "Nothing to repent on," said the man stolidly. "On'y wanted to zay this here: If you zees lights some night among the trees and down by the watter, it means vishing." "I know that," said Nic sternly. "And there'll be a lot there--rough uns; so don't you come and meddle, my lad, for I shouldn't like to zee you hurt." The next minute the man had disappeared among the trees, leaving Nic to stand staring after him, thinking of what would be the result if the salmon-poachers met their match. CHAPTER FIVE. THE CAPTAIN CANNOT LET IT REST. "Hullo, Nic, my boy; been overboard?" The young man started, for he had been thinking a good deal on his way back to the house. His anger had cooled down as much as his body from the evaporation going on. For, after all, he thought he could not find much fault with Pete Burge. It would seem only natural to such a rough fellow to serve his assailant as he had himself been served. "And he did save my life afterwards, instead of letting me drown," thought Nic, who decided not to try to get Pete punished. "I'll give him one more chance," he said; and he had just arrived at this point as he was walking sharply through the trees by the combe, with the intention of slipping in unseen, when he came suddenly upon his father seated upon a stone, and was saluted with the above question as to having been overboard. "Yes, father," he said, glancing down at his drenched garments, "I've been in." "Bah! you go blundering about looking inside instead of where you're steering," cried the Captain. "Aren't drowned, I suppose?" Nic laughed. "Well, slip in and get on some dry things. Look alive." Nic did not want to enter into the business through which he had passed, so he hurried indoors, glad to change his clothes. Then, as the time went on he felt less and less disposed to speak about his adventure, for it seemed hard work to make an effort to punish the man who had, after all, saved his life. About a fortnight had passed, when one morning, upon going down, he encountered his father's old sailor-servant, who answered his salute with a grin. "What are you laughing at, Bill?" asked Nic. "They've been at it again, sir." "What! those scoundrels after the salmon?" "Yes, sir; in the night. Didn't you hear 'em?" "Of course not. Did you?" "Oh yes, I heerd 'em and seed 'em too; leastwise, I seed their lights. So did Tom Gardener." "Then why didn't you call me up?" cried Nic angrily. "'Cause you'd ha' woke the Captain, and he'd have had us all out for a fight." "Of course he would." "And he was a deal better in his bed. You know what he is, Master Nic. I put it to you, now. He's got all the sperrit he always did have, and is ripe as ever for a row; but is he fit, big and heavy as he's growed, to go down fighting salmon-poachers?" "No; but we could have knocked up Tom Gardener and the other men, and gone ourselves." "Oh!" ejaculated the old sailor, laughing. "He'd have heared, perhaps. Think you could ha' made him keep back when there was a fight, Master Nic?" "No, I suppose not; but he will be horribly angry, and go on at you fiercely when he knows." "Oh, of course," said the man coolly. "That's his way; but I'm used to that. It does him good, he likes it, and it don't do me no harm. Never did in the old days at sea." "Has any one been down to the river?" "Oh yes; me and Tom Gardener went down as soon as it was daylight; and they've been having a fine game." "Game?" "Ay, that they have, Master Nic," said the man, laughing. "There's no water coming over the fall, and the pool was full of fish." "Well, I know that, Bill," cried Nic impatiently; "but you don't mean to say that--" "Yes, I do," said the man, grinning. "They've cleared it." "And you laugh, sir!" "Well, 'taren't nowt to cry about, Master Nic. On'y a few fish." "And you know how particular my father is about the salmon." "Oh, ay. Of course I know; but he eats more of 'em than's good for him now. 'Sides, they left three on the side. Slipped out o' their baskets, I suppose." Nic was right: the Captain was furious, and the servants, from William Solly to the youngest gardener, were what they called "tongue-thrashed," Captain Revel storming as if he were once more rating his crew aboard ship. "They all heard, Nic, my boy," he said to his son. "I believe they knew the scoundrels were coming, and they were too cowardly to give the alarm." This was after a walk down to the pool, where the water was clear and still save where a little stream ran sparkling over the shelf of rock instead of a thunderous fall, the gathering from the high grounds of the moors. "I'm afraid they heard them, father," said Nic. "Afraid? I'm sure of it, boy." "And that they did not like the idea of your getting mixed up in the fight." "Ah!" cried the Captain, catching his son by the shoulder; "then you knew of it too, sir? You wanted me to be kept out of it." "I do want you to be kept out of any struggle, father," said Nic. "Why, sir, why?" panted the old officer. "Because you are not so active as you used to be." "What, sir? Nonsense, sir! A little heavy and--er--short-winded perhaps, but never better or more full of fight in my life, sir. The scoundrels! Oh, if I had been there! But I feel hurt, Nic--cruelly hurt. You and that salt-soaked old villain, Bill Sally, hatch up these things between you. Want to make out I'm infirm. I'll discharge that vagabond." "No, you will not, father. He's too good and faithful a servant. He thinks of nothing but his old Captain's health." "A scoundrel! and so he ought to. Wasn't he at sea with me for five-and-twenty years--wrecked with me three times?--But you, Nic, to mutiny against your father!" "No, no, father; I assure you I knew nothing whatever about it till I came down this morning." "And you'd have woke me if you had known?" "Of course I would, father." "Thank you, Nic--thank you. To be sure: you gave me your word of honour you would. But as for that ruffian Bill Solly, I'll blow him out of the water." "Better let it rest, father," said Nic. "We escaped a bad fight perhaps. I believe there was a gang of fifteen or twenty of the scoundrels, and I'd rather they had all the fish in the sea than that you should be hurt." "Thank you, Nic; thank you, my boy. That's very good of you; but I can't, and I will not, lie by and have my fish cleared away like this." "There'll be more as soon as the rain comes again in the moors, and these are gone now." "Yes, and sold--perhaps eaten by this time, eh?" "Yes, father; and there's as good fish in the sea." "As ever came out of it--eh, Nic?" "Yes, father; so let the matter drop." "Can't help myself, Nic; but I must have a turn at the enemy one of these times. I cannot sit down and let them attack me like this. Oh, I'd dearly like to blow some of 'em out of the water!" "Better put a bag of powder under the rock, father, and blow away the falls so that the salmon can always get up, and take the temptation away from these idle scoundrels." "I'd sooner put the powder under my own bed, sir, and blow myself up. No, Nic, I will not strike my colours to the miserable gang like that. Oh! I'd dearly like to know when they are going to make their next raid, and then have my old crew to lie in wait for them." "And as that's impossible, father--" "We must grin and bear it, Nic--eh?" "Yes, father." "But only wait!" CHAPTER SIX. PLOTS AND PLANS. The rain came, as Nic had said it would, and as it does come up in the high hills of stony Dartmoor. Then the tiny rills swelled and became rivulets, the rivulets rivers, and the rivers floods. The trickling fall at the Captain's swelled up till the water, which looked like porter, thundered down and filled the pool, and the salmon came rushing up from the sea till there were as many as ever. Then, as the rainy time passed away, Captain Revel made his plans, for he felt sure that there would be another raid by the gang who had attacked his place before, headed by Pete Burge and a deformed man of herculean strength, who came with a party of ne'er-do-weels from the nearest town. "That rascal Pete will be here with his gang," said the Captain, "and we'll be ready for them." But the speaker was doing Pete Burge an injustice; for, though several raids had been made in the neighbourhood, and pools cleared out, Pete had hung back from going to the Captain's for some reason or another, and suffered a good deal of abuse in consequence, one result being a desperate fight with Humpy Dee, the deformed man, who after a time showed the white feather, and left Pete victorious but a good deal knocked about. So, feeling sure that he was right, Captain Revel made his plans; and, unwillingly enough, but with the full intention of keeping his father out of danger, Nic set to work as his father's lieutenant and carried out his orders. The result was that every servant was armed with a stout cudgel, and half-a-dozen sturdy peasants of the neighbourhood were enlisted to come, willingly enough, to help to watch and checkmate the rough party from the town, against whom a bitter feeling of enmity existed for depriving the cottagers from getting quietly a salmon for themselves. The arrangements were made for the next night, a stranger having been seen inspecting the river and spying about among the fir-trees at the back of the pool. But no one came, and at daybreak the Captain's crew, as he called it, went back to bed. The following night did not pass off so peacefully, for soon after twelve, while the watchers, headed by the Captain and Nic, were well hidden about the pool, the enemy came, and, after lighting their lanthorns, began to net the salmon. Then a whistle rang out, a desperate attack was made upon them, and the Captain nearly had a fit. For his party was greatly outnumbered. The raiders fought desperately, and they went off at last fishless; but not until the Captain's little force had been thoroughly beaten and put to flight, with plenty of cuts and bruises amongst them, Nic's left arm hanging down nearly helpless. "But never mind, Nic," said the Captain, rubbing his bruised hand as he spoke. "I knocked one of the rascals down, and they got no fish; and I don't believe they'll come again." But they did, the very next night, and cleared the pool once more, for the watchers were all abed; and in the morning the Captain was frantic in his declarations of what he would do. To Nic's great delight, just when his father was at his worst, and, as his old body-servant said, "working himself into a fantigue about a bit o' fish," there was a diversion. Nic was sitting at breakfast, getting tired of having salmon at every meal--by the ears, not by the mouth--when suddenly there was the dull thud of a big gun out at sea, and Captain Revel brought his fist down upon the table with a bang like an echo of the report. "Lawrence!" he cried excitedly. "Here, Nic, ring the bell, and tell Solly to go and hoist the flag." The bell was rung, and a maid appeared. "Where's Solly?" cried the Captain angrily. "Plee, sir, he's gone running up to the cliff to hoist the flag," said the girl nervously. "Humph! that will do," said the Captain, and the maid gladly beat a retreat.--"Not a bad bit of discipline that, Nic. Wonder what brings Lawrence here! Ring that bell again, boy, and order them to reset the breakfast-table. He'll be here in half-an-hour, hungry. He always was a hungry chap." The maid appeared, received her orders, and was about to go, when she was arrested. "Here, Mary, what is there that can be cooked for Captain Lawrence's breakfast?" "The gardener has just brought in a salmon he found speared and left by the river, sir." The Captain turned purple with rage. "Don't you ever dare to say salmon to me again, woman!" he roared. "No, sir; cert'n'y not, sir," faltered the frightened girl, turning wonderingly to Nic, her eyes seeming to say, "Please, sir, is master going mad?" "Yes; tell the cook to fry some salmon cutlets," continued the Captain; and then apologetically to his son: "Lawrence likes fish." As the maid backed out of the room the Captain rose from the table. "Come along, my boy," he said; "we'll finish our breakfast with him." Nic followed his father into the hall, and then through the garden and up to the edge of the cliff, passing William Solly on his way back after hoisting the flag, which was waving in the sea-breeze. "Quite right, William," said the Captain as the old sailor saluted and passed on. "Nothing like discipline, Nic, my boy. Ha! You ought to have been a sailor." The next minute they had reached the flagstaff, from whence they could look down at the mouth of the river, off which one of the king's ships was lying close in, and between her and the shore there was a boat approaching fast. As father and son watched, it was evident that they were seen, for some one stood up in the stern-sheets and waved a little flag, to which Nic replied by holding his handkerchief to be blown out straight by the breeze. "Ha! Very glad he has come, Nic," said the Captain. "Fine fellow, Jack Lawrence! Never forgets old friends. Now I'll be bound to say he can give us good advice about what to do with those scoundrels." "Not much in his way, father, is it?" said Nic. "What, sir?" cried the Captain fiercely. "Look here, boy; I never knew anything which was not in Jack Lawrence's way. Why, when we were young lieutenants together on board the _Sovereign_, whether it was fight or storm he was always ready with a good idea. He will give us--me--well, us--good advice, I'm sure. There he is, being carried ashore. Go and meet him, my boy. I like him to see that he is welcome. Tell him I'd have come down myself, but the climb back is a bit too much for me." Nic went off at a trot along the steep track which led down to the shore, and in due time met the hale, vigorous, grey-haired officer striding uphill in a way which made Nic feel envious on his father's behalf. "Well, Nic, my boy," cried the visitor, "how's the dad? Well? That's right. So are you," he continued, gazing searchingly at the lad with his keen, steely-grey eyes. "Grown ever so much since I saw you last. Ah, boy, it's a pity you didn't come to sea!" Then he went on chatting about being just come upon the Plymouth station training men for the king's ships, and how he hoped to see a good deal now of his old friend and his son. The meeting between the brother-officers was boisterous, but there was something almost pathetic in the warmth with which they grasped hands, for they had first met in the same ship as middies, and many a time during Captain Lawrence's visits Nic had sat and listened to their recollections of the dangers they had gone through and their boyish pranks. William Solly was in the porch ready to salute the visitor, and to look with pride at the fine, manly old officer's greeting. He made a point, too, of stopping in the room to wait table, carefully supplying all wants, and smiling with pleasure as he saw how the pleasant meal was enjoyed by the guest. "We were lying off the river late last night, but I wouldn't disturb you," he said. "I made up my mind, though, to come to breakfast. Hah! What delicious fried salmon!" "_Hur-r-ur_!" growled Captain Revel, and Solly cocked his eye knowingly at Nic. "Hallo! What's the matter?" cried the visitor. "The salmon--the salmon," growled Captain Revel, frowning and tapping the table. "De-licious, man! Have some?--Here, Solly, hand the dish to your master." "_Bur-r-ur_!" roared the Captain. "Take it away--take it away, or I shall be in another of my rages, and they're not good for me, Jack--not good for me." "Why, what is it, old lad?" "Tell him, Nic--tell him," cried Captain Revel; and his son explained the cause of his father's irritation. "Why, that was worrying you last time I was here--let me see, a year ago." "Yes, Jack; and it has been worrying me ever since," cried Captain Revel. "You see, I mustn't cut any of the scoundrels down, and I mustn't shoot them. The law would be down on me." "Yes, of course; but you might make the law come down on them." "Can't, my lad. Summonses are no use." "Catch them in the act, make them prisoners, and then see what the law will do." "But we can't catch them, Jack; they're too many for us," cried the Captain earnestly. "They come twenty or thirty strong, and we've had fight after fight with them, but they knock us to pieces. Look at Solly's forehead; they gave him that cut only a few nights ago." The old sailor blushed like a girl. "That's bad," said the visitor, after giving the man a sharp look. "What sort of fellows are they?" "Big, strong, idle vagabonds. Scum of the town and the country round." "Indeed!" said the visitor, raising his eyes. "They thrash you, then, because you are not strong enough?" "Yes; that's it, Jack. Now, what am I to do?" "Let me see," said the visitor, tightening his lips. "They only come when the pool's full of salmon, you say, after a bit of rain in the moors?" "Yes; that's it, Jack." "Then you pretty well know when to expect them?" "Yes; that's right." "How would it be, then, if you sent me word in good time in the morning? Or, no--look here, old fellow--I shall know when there is rain on the moor, and I'll come round in this direction from the port. I'm cruising about the Channel training a lot of men. You hoist a couple of flags on the staff some morning, and that evening at dusk I'll land a couple of boats' crews, and have them marched up here to lay up with you and turn the tables upon the rascals. How will that do?" Solly forgot discipline, and bent down to give one of his legs a tremendous slap, while his master made the breakfast things dance from his vigorous bang on the table. "There, Nic," he cried triumphantly; "what did I say? Jack Lawrence was always ready to show the way when we were on our beam-ends. Jack, my dear old messmate," he cried heartily, as he stretched out his hand--"your fist." CHAPTER SEVEN. THE CAPTAIN WILL "WHERRIT." Captain Lawrence spent the day at the Point, thoroughly enjoying a long gossip, and, after an early dinner, proposed a walk around the grounds and a look at the river and the pool. "What a lovely spot it is!" he said, as he wandered about the side of the combe. "I must have such a place as this when I give up the sea." "There isn't such a place, Jack," said Captain Revel proudly. "But I want you to look round the pool.--I don't think I'll climb down, Nic. It's rather hot; and I'll sit down on the stone for a few minutes while you two plan where you could ambush the men." "Right," said Captain Lawrence; and he actively followed Nic, pausing here and there, till they had descended to where the fall just splashed gently down into the clear pool, whose bigger stones about the bottom were now half-bare. "Lovely place this, Nic, my boy. I could sit down here and doze away the rest of my days. But what a pity it is that your father worries himself so about these poaching scoundrels! Can't you wean him from it? Tell him, or I will, that it isn't worth the trouble. Plenty more fish will come, and there must be a little grit in every one's wheel." "Oh, I've tried everything, sir," replied Nic. "The fact is that he is not so well as I should like to see him; and when he has an irritable fit, the idea of any one trespassing and taking the fish half-maddens him." "Well, we must see what we can do, my boy. It ought to be stopped. A set of idlers like this requires a severe lesson. A good dose of capstan bar and some broken heads will sicken them, and then perhaps they will let you alone." "I hope so, sir." "I think I can contrive that it shall," said the visitor dryly. "I shall bring or send some trusty men. There, I have seen all I want to see. Let's get back." He turned to climb up the side of the gorge; and as Nic followed, the place made him recall his encounter with Pete Burge, and how different the pool looked then; and, somehow, he could not help hoping that the big, bluff fellow might not be present during the sharp encounter with Captain Lawrence's trusty men. "Hah! Began to think you long, Jack," said Captain Revel; and they returned to the house and entered, after a glance seaward, where the ship lay at anchor. Towards evening Solly was sent to hoist a signal upon the flagstaff, and soon after a boat was seen pulling towards the shore. Then the visitor took his leave, renewing his promise to reply to a signal by sending a strong party of men. Nic walked down to the boat with his father's friend, and answered several questions about the type of men who came after the salmon. "I see, I see," said Captain Lawrence; "but do you think they'll fight well?" "Oh yes; there are some daring rascals among them." "So much the better, my dear boy. There, good-bye. Mind--two small flags on your signal-halyards after the first heavy rain upon the moor, and you may expect us at dusk. If the rascals don't come we'll have another try; but you'll know whether they'll be there by the fish in the pool. They'll know too--trust 'em. Look, there's your father watching us--" and he waved his hand. "Good-bye, Nic, my dear boy. Good-bye!" He shook hands very warmly. Two of his men who were ashore joined hands to make what children call a "dandy-chair," the Captain placed his hands upon their shoulders, and they waded through the shallow water to the boat, pausing to give her a shove off before climbing in; and then, as the oars made the water flash in the evening light, Nic climbed the long hill again, to stand with his father, watching the boat till she reached the side of the ship. "Now then, my boy," said the old man, "we're going to give those fellows such a lesson as they have never had before." He little knew how truly he was speaking. "I hope so, father," said Nic; and he was delighted to find how pleased the old officer seemed. The next morning, when Nic opened his bedroom window, the king's ship was not in sight; and for a week Captain Revel was fidgeting and watching the sky, for no rain came, and there was not water enough in the river for fresh salmon to come as far as the pool. "Did you ever see anything like it, Nic, my boy?" the Captain said again and again; "that's always the way: if I didn't want it to rain, there'd be a big storm up in the hills, and the fall would be roaring like a sou'-wester off the Land's End; but now I want just enough water to fill the river, not a drop will come. How long did Jack Lawrence say that he was going to stop about Plymouth?" "He didn't say, father, that I remember," replied Nic. "Then he'll soon be off; and just in the miserable, cantankerous way in which things happen, the very day he sets sail there'll be a storm on Dartmoor, and the next morning the pool will be full of salmon, and those scoundrels will come to set me at defiance, and clear off every fish." "I say, father," said Nic merrily, "isn't that making troubles, and fancying storms before they come?" "What, sir? How dare you speak to me like that?" cried the Captain.--"And you, Solly, you mutinous scoundrel, how dare you laugh?" he roared, turning to his body-servant, who happened to be in the hail. "Beg your honour's pardon; I didn't laugh." "You did laugh, sir," roared the Captain--"that is, I saw you look at Master Nic here and smile. It's outrageous. Every one is turning against me, and I'm beginning to think it's time I was out of this miserable world." He snatched up his stick from the stand, banged on the old straw hat he wore, and stamped out of the porch to turn away to the left, leaving Nic hesitating as to what he should do, deeply grieved as he was at his father's annoyance and display of temper. One moment he was for following and trying to say something which would tend to calm the irritation. The next he was thinking it would be best to leave the old man to himself, trusting to the walk in the pleasant grounds having the desired result. But this idea was knocked over directly by Solly, who had followed his master to the porch, and stood watching him for a few moments. "Oh dear, dear! Master Nic," he cried, turning back, "he's gone down the combe path to see whether there's any more water running down; and there aren't, and he'll be a-wherriting his werry inside out, and that wherrits mine too. For I can't abear to see the poor old skipper like this here." "No, Solly, neither can I," said Nic gloomily. "It's his old hurts does it, sir. It aren't nat'ral. Here he is laid up, as you may say, in clover, in as nice a place as an old sailor could end his days in." "Yes, Solly," said Nic sadly; "it is a beautiful old place." "Ay, it is, sir; and when I cons it over I feel it. Why, Master Nic, when I think of all the real trouble as there is in life, and what some folks has to go through, I asks myself what I've ever done to have such good luck as to be safely moored here in such a harbour. It's a lovely home, and the troubles is nothing--on'y a bit of a gale blowed by the skipper now and then along of the wrong boots as hurts his corns, or him being a-carrying on too much sail, and bustin' off a button in a hurry. And who minds that?" "Ah! who minds a trifle like that, Solly?" sighed Nic. "Well, sir, you see he does. Wind gets up directly, and he talks to me as if I'd mutinied. But I don't mind. I know all the time that he's the best and bravest skipper as ever lived, and I'd do anything for him to save him from trouble." "I know you would, Solly," said Nic, laying a hand upon the rugged old sailor's shoulder. "Thank ye, Master Nic; that does a man good. But look here, sir; I can't help saying it. The fact is, after his rough, stormy life, everything here's made too easy for the skipper. He's a bit worried by his old wounds, and that's all; and consekens is 'cause he aren't got no real troubles he wherrits himself and makes quakers." "Makes quakers?" said Nic wonderingly. "Sham troubles, Master Nic--wooden guns, as we call quakers out at sea or in a fort. Strikes me, sir, as a real, downright, good, gen-u-wine trouble, such as losing all his money, would be the making of the Captain; and after that he'd be ready to laugh at losing a few salmon as he don't want. I say, Master Nic, you aren't offended at me for making so bold?" "No, Solly, no," said the young man sadly. "You mean well, I know. There, say no more about it. I hope all this will settle itself, as so many troubles do." Nic strolled out into the grounds and unconsciously followed his father, who had gone to the edge of the combe; but he had not walked far before a cheery hail saluted his ears, and, to his great delight, he found the Captain looking radiant. "Nic, my boy, it's all right," he cried; "my left arm aches terribly and my corns are shooting like mad. Well, what are you staring at? Don't you see it means rain? Look yonder, too. Bah! It's of no use to tell you, boy. You've never been to sea. You've never had to keep your weather-eye open. See that bit of silvery cloud yonder over Rigdon Tor? And do you notice what a peculiar gleam there is in the air, and how the flies bite?" "Yes--yes, I see all that, father." "Well, it's rain coming, my boy. There's going to be a thunderstorm up in the hills before many hours are past. I'm not a clever man, but I can tell what the weather's going to be as well as most folk." "I'm glad of it, father, if it will please you." "Please me, boy? I shall be delighted. To-morrow morning the salmon will be running up the river again, and we may hoist the signal for help. I say, you don't think Jack Lawrence has gone yet?" "No, father," said Nic; "I do not." "Why, Nic?--why?" cried the old sailor. "Because he said to me he should certainly come up and see us again before he went." "To be sure; so he did to me, Nic. I say, my boy, I--that is--er-- wasn't I a little bit crusty this morning to you and poor old William Solly?" "Well, yes; just a little, father," said Nic, taking his arm. "Sorry for it. Change of the weather, Nic, affects me. It was coming on. I must apologise to Solly. Grand old fellow, William Solly. Saved my life over and over again. Man who would die for his master, Nic; and a man who would do that is more than a servant, Nic--he is a friend." CHAPTER EIGHT. THE CAPTAIN'S PROPHECY. Before many hours had passed the Captain's words proved correct. The clouds gathered over the tors, and there was a tremendous storm a thousand feet above the Point. The lightning flashed and struck and splintered the rugged old masses of granite; the thunder roared, and there was a perfect deluge of rain; while down near the sea, though it was intensely hot, not a drop fell, and the evening came on soft and cool. "Solly, my lad," cried the Captain, rubbing his hands, "we shall have the fall roaring before midnight; but don't sit up to listen to it." "Cert'n'y not, sir," said the old sailor. "Your watch will begin at daybreak, when you will hoist the signal for Captain Lawrence." "Ay, ay, sir!" "And keep eye to west'ard on and off all day, to try if you can sight the frigate." "Ay, ay, sir!" "And in the course of the morning you will go quietly round and tell the men to rendezvous here about eight, when you will serve out the arms." "Ay, ay, sir." "The good stout oak cudgels I had cut; and if we're lucky, my lad, we shall have as nice and pleasant a fight as ever we two had in our lives." "Quite a treat, sir," said the old sailor; "and I hope we shall be able to pay our debts." The Captain was in the highest of glee all the evening, and he shook his son's hand very warmly when they parted for bed. About one o'clock Nic was aroused from a deep sleep by a sharp knocking at his door. "Awake, Nic?" came in the familiar accents. "No, father. Yes, father. Is anything wrong?" "Wrong? No, my boy; right! Hear the fall?" "No, father; I was sound asleep." "Open your window and put out your head, boy. The water's coming down and roaring like thunder. Good-night." Nic slipped out of bed, did as he was told, and, as he listened, there was the deep, musical, booming sound of the fall seeming to fill the air, while from one part of the ravine a low, rushing noise told that the river must be pretty full. Nic stood listening for some time before closing his window and returning to bed, to lie wakeful and depressed, feeling a strange kind of foreboding, as if some serious trouble was at hand. It was not that he was afraid or shrank from the contest which might in all probability take place the next night, though he knew that it would be desperate-- for, on the contrary, he felt excited and quite ready to join in the fray; but he was worried about his father, and the difficulty he knew he would have in keeping him out of danger. He was in this awkward position, too: what he would like to do would be to get Solly and a couple of their stoutest men to act as bodyguard to protect his father; but, if he attempted such a thing, the chances were that the Captain would look upon it as cowardice, and order them off to the thick of the cudgel-play. Just as he reached this point he fell asleep. Nic found the Captain down first next morning, looking as pleased as a boy about to start for his holidays. "You're a pretty fellow," he cried. "Why, I've been up hours, and went right to the falls. Pool's full, Nic, my boy, the salmon are up, and it's splendid, lad." "What is, father?" "Something else is coming up." "What?" "Those scoundrels are on the _qui vive_. I was resting on one of the rough stone seats, when, as I sat hidden among the trees, I caught sight of something on the far side of the pool--a man creeping cautiously down to spy out the state of the water." "Pete Burge, father?" cried Nic eagerly. "Humph! No; I hardly caught a glimpse of his face, but it was too short for that scoundrel. I think it was that thick-set, humpbacked rascal they call Dee." "And did he see you, father?" "No: I sat still, my boy, and watched till he slunk away again. Nic, lad, we shall have them here to-night, and we must be ready." "Yes, father, if Captain Lawrence sends his men." "Whether he does or no, sir. I can't sit still and know that my salmon are being stolen. Come--breakfast! Oh, here's Solly.--Here, you, sir, what about those two signal flags? Hoist them directly." "Run 'em up, sir, as soon as it was light." "Good. Then, now, keep a lookout for the frigate." The day wore away with no news of the ship being in the offing, and the Captain began to fume and fret, so that Nic made an excuse to get away and look out, relieving Solly, stationing himself by the flagstaff and scanning the horizon till his eyes grew weary and his head ached. It was about six o'clock when he was summoned to dinner by Solly, who took his place, and Nic went and joined his father. "Needn't speak," said the old man bitterly; "I know; Lawrence hasn't come. We'll have to do it ourselves." Nic was silent, and during the meal his father hardly spoke a word. Just as they were about to rise, Solly entered the room, and the Captain turned to him eagerly. "I was going to send for you, my lad," he said. "Captain Lawrence must be away, and we shall have to trap the scoundrels ourselves. How many men can we muster?" "Ten, sir." "Not half enough," said the Captain; "but they are strong, staunch fellows, and we have right on our side. Ten against twenty or thirty. Long odds; but we've gone against heavier odds than that in our time, Solly." "Ay, sir, that we have." "We must lie in wait and take them by surprise when they're scattered, my lads. But what luck! what luck! Now if Lawrence had only kept faith with me we could have trapped the whole gang." "Well, your honour, why not?" said Solly sharply. "Why not?" "He'll be here before we want him." "What?" cried Nic. "Is the frigate in sight?" "In sight, sir--and was when you left the signal station." "No," said Nic sharply; "the only vessel in sight then was a big merchantman with her yards all awry." "That's so, sir, and she gammoned me. The skipper's had her streak painted out, and a lot of her tackle cast loose, to make her look like a lubberly trader; but it's the frigate, as I made out at last, coming down with a spanking breeze, and in an hour's time she'll be close enough to send her men ashore." The Captain sprang up and caught his son's hand, to ring it hard. "Huzza, Nic!" he cried excitedly. "This is going to be a night of nights." It was. CHAPTER NINE. READY FOR ACTION. "That's about their size, Master Nic," said Solly, as he stood in the coach-house balancing a heavy cudgel in his hand--one of a couple of dozen lying on the top of the corn-bin just through the stable door. "Oh, the size doesn't matter, Bill," said Nic impatiently. "Begging your pardon, sir, it do," said the old sailor severely. "You don't want to kill nobody in a fight such as we're going to have, do ye?" "No, no; of course not." "There you are, then. Man's sure to hit as hard as he can when his monkey's up; and that stick's just as heavy as you can have 'em without breaking bones. That's the sort o' stick as'll knock a man silly and give him the headache for a week, and sarve him right. If it was half-a-hounce heavier it'd kill him." "How do you know?" said Nic sharply. "How do I know, sir?" said the man wonderingly. "Why, I weighed it." Nic would have asked for further explanations; but just then there were steps heard in the yard, and the gardener and a couple of labourers came up in the dusk. "Oh, there you are," growled Solly. "Here's your weepuns;" and he raised three of the cudgels. "You may hit as hard as you like with them. Seen any of the others?" "Yes," said the gardener; "there's two from the village coming along the road, and three of us taking the short cut over the home field. That's all I see." "Humph!" said Solly. "There ought to be five more by this time." "Sick on it, p'r'aps," grumbled the gardener; "and no wonder. We are." "What! Are you afraid?" cried Nic. "No, sir, I aren't afraid; on'y sick on it. I like a good fight, and so do these here when it's 'bout fair and ekal, but every time we has a go in t'other side seems to be the flails and we only the corn and straw. They're too many for us. I'm sick o' being thrashed, and so's these here; and that aren't being afraid." "Why, you aren't going to sneak out of it, are you?" growled Solly. "No, I aren't," said the gardener; "not till I've had a good go at that Pete Burge and Master Humpy Dee. But I'm going to sarcumwent 'em this time." "Here are the others coming, Bill," cried Nic.--"What are you going to do this time?" he said to the gardener. "Sarcumwent 'em, Master Nic," said the man, with a grin. "It's no use to hit at their heads and arms or to poke 'em in the carcass--they don't mind that; so we've been thinking of it out, and we three's going to hit 'em low down." "That's good," said Solly; "same as we used to sarve the black men out in Jay-may-kee. They've all got heads as hard as skittle-balls, but their shins are as tender as a dog's foot." Just then five more men came up and received their cudgels; and directly after three more came slouching up; and soon after another couple, and received their arms. "Is this all on us?" said one of the fresh-comers, as the sturdy fellows stood together. "Ay, is this all, Master Nic?" cried another. "Why?" he said sharply. "Because there aren't enough, sir," said the first man. "I got to hear on it down the village." "Ah! you heard news?" cried Nic. "Ay, sir, if you call such ugly stuff as that news. There's been a bit of a row among 'em, all along o' Pete Burge." "Quarrelling among themselves?" "That's right, sir; 'cause Pete Burge said he wouldn't have no more to do with it; and they've been at him--some on 'em from over yonder at the town. I hear say as there was a fight, and then Pete kep' on saying he would jyne 'em; and then there was another fight, and Pete Burge licked the second man, and then he says he wouldn't go. And then there was another fight, and Pete Burge licked Humpy Dee, and Humpy says Pete was a coward, and Pete knocked him flat on the back. `I'll show you whether I'm a coward,' he says. `I didn't mean to have no more to do wi' Squire Revel's zammon,' he says; `but I will go to-night, for the last time, just to show you as I aren't a cowards,' he says, `and then I'm done.'" "Ay; and he zays," cried another man from the village, "`If any one thinks I'm a coward, then let him come and tell me.'" "Then they are coming to-night?" cried Nic, who somehow felt a kind of satisfaction in his adversary's prowess. "Oh, ay," said the other man who had grumbled; "they're a-coming to-night. There's a big gang coming from the town, and I hear they're going to bring a cart for the zammon. There'll be a good thirty on 'em, Master Nic, zir; and I zay we aren't enough." "No," said Nic quietly; "we are not enough, but we are going to have our revenge to-night for all the knocking about we've had." "But we're not enough, Master Nic. We're ready to fight, all on us--eh, mates?" "Ay!" came in a deep growl. "But there aren't enough on us." "There will be," said Nic in an eager whisper, "for a strong party of Jack-tars from the king's ship that was lying off this evening are by this time marching up to help us, and we're going to give these scoundrels such a thrashing as will sicken them from ever meddling again with my father's fish." "Yah!" growled a voice out of the gloom. "Who said that?" cried Nic. "I did, Master Nic," said the gardener sharply; "and you can tell the Captain if you like. I say it aren't fair to try and humbug a lot o' men as is ready to fight for you. It's like saying `rats' to a dog when there aren't none." "Is it?" cried Nic, laughing. "How can that be? You heard just now that there will be about thirty rats for our bulldogs to worry." "I meant t'other way on, sir," growled the man sulkily. "No sailor bulldogs to come and help us." "How dare you say that?" cried Nic angrily. "'Cause I've lived off and on about Plymouth all my life and close to the sea, and if I don't know a king's ship by this time I ought to. That's only a lubberly old merchantman. Why, her yards were all anyhow, with not half men enough to keep 'em square." "Bah!" cried Solly angrily. "Hold your mouth, you one-eyed old tater-grubber. What do you mean by giving the young master the lie?" "That will do, Solly," cried Nic. "He means right. Look here, my lads; that is a king's ship, the one commanded by my father's friend; and he has made her look all rough like that so as to cheat the salmon-gang, and it will have cheated them if it has cheated you." A cheer was bursting forth, but Nic checked it, and the gardener said huskily: "Master Nic, I beg your pardon. I oughtn't to ha' said such a word. It was the king's ship as humbugged me, and not you. Say, lads, we're going to have a night of it, eh?" A low buzz of satisfaction arose; and Nic hurried out, to walk in the direction of the signal-staff, where the Captain had gone to look out for their allies. "Who goes there?" came in the old officer's deep voice. "Only I, father." "Bah!" cried the Captain in a low, angry voice. "Give the word, sir--`Tails.'" "The word?--`Tails!'" said Nic, wonderingly. "Of course. I told you we must have a password, to tell friends from foes." "Not a word, father." "What, sir? Humph, no! I remember--I meant to give it to all at once. The word is `Tails' and the countersign is `Heads,' and any one who cannot give it is to have heads. Do you see?" "Oh yes, father, I see; but are the sailors coming?" "Can't hear anything of them, my boy, and it's too dark to see; but they must be here soon." "I hope they will be, father," said Nic. "Don't say you hope they will be, as if you felt that they weren't coming. They're sure to come, my boy. Jack Lawrence never broke faith. Now, look here; those scoundrels will be here by ten o'clock, some of them, for certain, and we must have our men in ambush first--our men, Nic. Jack Lawrence's lads I shall place so as to cut off the enemy's retreat, ready to close in upon them and take them in the rear. Do you see?" "Yes, father; excellent." "Then I propose that as soon as we hear our reinforcement coming you go off and plant your men in the wood behind the fall. I shall lead the sailors right round you to the other side of the pool; place them; and then there must be perfect silence till the enemy has lit up his torches and got well to work. Then I shall give a shrill whistle on the French bo'sun's pipe I have in my pocket, you will advance your men and fall to, and we shall come upon them from the other side." "I see, father." "But look here, Nic--did you change your things?" "Yes, father; got on the old fishing and wading suit." "That's right, boy, for you've got your work cut out, and it may mean water as well as land." "Yes, I expect to be in a pretty pickle," said Nic, laughing, and beginning to feel excited now. "But do you think the sailors will find their way here in the dark?" "Of course," cried the Captain sharply. "Jack Lawrence will head them." "Hist!" whispered Nic, placing his hand to his ear and gazing seaward. "Hear 'em?" Nic was silent for a few moments. "Yes," he said. "I can hear their soft, easy tramp over the short grass. Listen." "Right," said the Captain, as from below them there came out of the darkness the regular _thrup_, _thrup_ of a body of men marching together. Then, loudly, "king's men?" "Captain Revel?" came back in reply. "Right. Captain Lawrence there?" "No, sir; he had a sudden summons from the port admiral, and is at Plymouth. He gave me my instructions, sir--Lieutenant Kershaw. I have thirty men here." "Bravo, my lad!" cried the Captain. "Forward, and follow me to the house. Your men will take a bit of refreshment before we get to work." "Forward," said the lieutenant in a low voice, and the _thrup_, _thrup_ of the footsteps began again, not a man being visible in the gloom. "Off with you, Nic," whispered the Captain. "Get your men in hiding at once. This is going to be a grand night, my boy. Good luck to you; and I say, Nic, my boy--" "Yes, father." "No prisoners, but tell the men to hit hard." Nic went off at a run, and the lieutenant directly after joined the Captain, his men close at hand following behind. CHAPTER TEN. A NIGHT OF NIGHTS. Nic's heart beat fast as he ran lightly along the path, reached the house, and ran round to the stable-yard, where Solly and the men were waiting. "Ready, my lads?" he said in a low, husky voice, full of the excitement he felt. "We'll go on round to the back of the pool at once. The sailors are here, thirty strong, with their officer; so we ought to give the enemy a severe lesson.--Ah! Don't cheer. Ready?--Forward. Come, Solly; we'll lead." "Precious dark, Master Nic," growled the old sailor in a hoarse whisper. "We shan't hardly be able to tell t'other from which." "Ah! I forgot," cried Nic excitedly. "Halt! Look here, my men. Our password is `Tails,' and our friends have to answer `Heads.' So, if you are in doubt, cry `Tails,' and if your adversary does not answer `Heads' he's an enemy." "Why, a-mussy me, Master Nic?" growled Solly, "we shan't make heads or tails o' that in a scrimble-scramble scrimmage such as we're going to be in. What's the skipper thinking about? Let me tell 'em what to do." "You heard your master's order, Solly," replied Nic. "Yes, sir, of course; but this here won't do no harm. Look here, my lads; as soon as ever we're at it, hit hard at every one who aren't a Jack. You'll know them." Nic felt that this addition could do no harm, so he did not interfere, but led on right past the way down to the falls, which had shrunk now to a little cascade falling with a pleasant murmur, for the draining of the heavy thunder-showers was nearly at an end, and the pool lay calm enough in the black darkness beneath the overhanging rocks and spreading trees--just in the right condition for a raid, and in all probability full of salmon. All at once the old sailor indulged in a burst of chuckles. "Hear something, Bill?" said Nic. "No, my lad, not yet; I was on'y thinking. They was going to bring a cart up the road yonder, waren't they?" "Yes; one of the men said so," replied Nic. "Well, we're a-going to give 'em something to take back in that cart to-night, my lad," whispered the man, with another chuckle; "and it won't be fish, nor it won't be fowl. My fingers is a-tingling so that I thought something was the matter, and I tried to change my stick from my right hand into my left." "Well, what of that?" said Nic contemptuously; "it was only pins and needles." "Nay, Master Nic, it waren't that. I've been a sailor in the king's ships and have had it before. It was the fighting-stuff running down to the very tips of my fingers, and they wouldn't let go." "Hush! don't talk now," whispered Nic; "there may be one or two of the enemy yonder." "Nay, it's a bit too soon for 'em, sir; but it'll be as well to keep quiet." The narrow paths of the tangled wilderness at the back of the pool were so well known to all present that their young leader had no difficulty in getting them stationed by twos and threes well down the sides of the gorge on shelves and ledges where the bushes and ferns grew thickly, from whence, when the poachers were well at work, it would be easy to spring down into the water and make the attack. For the flood had so far subsided now that the worst hole was not above five feet deep, and the greater part about three, with a fairly even bottom of ground-down rock smoothed by the pebbles washed over it in flood-time. Here it was that the salmon for the most part congregated, the new-comers from the sea taking naturally to the haunts of their forerunners from time immemorial, so that poacher or honest fisher pretty well knew where he would be most successful. Nic chose a central spot for himself and Solly, some four feet above the level of the black water, and after ranging his men to right and left he sat down to wait, with all silent and dark around, save for the murmur of the water and the gleaming of a star or two overhead, for besides this there was not a glint of light. Still, the place seemed to stand out before him. Exactly opposite, across the pool, was the narrow opening between the steep rocks on either side; and he knew without telling that as soon as the poachers began their work his father would send some of his active allies into the bed of the stream lower down, to advance upward, probably before the whistle was blown. "And then the scoundrels will be in a regular trap before they know it," thought Nic, as he strained his ears to catch the sound of the sailors being stationed in their hiding-places; but all was still save the soft humming roar of the falling water plunging into the pool. An hour passed very slowly, and Nic's cramped position began to affect him with the tingling sensation known as pins and needles; this he did not attribute to the movement of his nerve-currents eager to reach his toes and fill him with a desire to kick his enemies, but quietly changed his position and waited, trembling with excitement, and longing now to get the matter over, fully satisfied as he was that his friends were all in position and ready for the fray. At last! There was a sharp crack, as if someone had trodden upon a piece of dead-wood away up to the right. Then another crack and a rustling, and an evident disregard of caution. "Come along, my lads," said a low, harsh voice; and then there was a splash, as if a man had lowered himself into the water. "They had enough of it last time, and won't come this, I'll wager. If they do, we're half as many again, and we'll give 'em such a drubbing as'll stop 'em for long enough." "Needn't shout and holloa," said another voice from the side. "Keep quiet. We don't want to fight unless we're obliged." "Oh no, of course not!" said the man with the harsh voice mockingly. "If we do have to, my lads, two of you had better take Pete Burge home to his mother." There was a low laugh at this, and Pete remained silent as far as making any retort was concerned, but directly after Nic felt a singular thrill run through him as the man said softly: "Three of you get there to the mouth and drop the net across and hold it, for the fish will make a rush that way. Don't be afraid of the water. Shove the bottom line well round the stones, and keep your feet on it. A lot got away last time." There was the sound of the water washing as men waded along the side of the great circular pool, and then the whishing of a net being dropped down and arranged. "Ha, ha!" laughed a man; "there's one of 'em. Come back again' my legs. He's in the net now. Can't get through." "Now then," cried the harsh-voiced fellow; "open those lanthorns and get your links alight, so as we can see what we're about." "Not zo much noise, Humpy Dee," said Pete sharply, as the light of three lanthorns which had been carried beneath sacks gleamed out over the water, and the light rapidly increased as dark figures could be seen lighting torches from the feeble candles and then waving their sticks of oakum and pitch to make them blaze, so that others could also start the links they carried. At first the light was feeble, and a good deal of black smoke arose, but soon after over a dozen torches were burning brightly, showing quite a little crowd of men, standing in the black water, armed with hooks and fish-spears, and each with a stout staff stuck in his belt. The scene was weird and strange, the light reflected from the cliff-like sides of the pool seeming to be condensed upon the surface; and the faces of the marauders gleamed strangely above the flashing water, beginning to be agitated now by the startled salmon; while rising upward there was a gathering cloud of black, stifling smoke. "Ready there with that net," cried Humpy Dee, a broad-shouldered, dwarfed man, whose head was deep down between his shoulders. "Ay, ay!" came from the mouth of the pool. "Less noise," cried Pete angrily. "Here, you, Jack Willick, and you, Nat Barrow, go up towards the house and give us word if anyone's coming, so as we may be ready." "To run?" snarled Humpy Dee. "Stop where you are, lads. If the old squire meant to come with his gang he'd ha' been here afore now, and--" _Phee-yew_! The Captain's shrill silver whistle rang out loudly at this instant, and Nic and his men grasped their cudgels more tightly. "Now for it, lads," he shouted, and he sprang from his ledge into the water and made at Humpy Dee. CHAPTER ELEVEN. A BLACK NIGHT. Nic's cry was answered by a loud cheer from his men, which seemed to paralyse the enemy--some thirty strong, who stood staring, the torch-bearers holding their smoky lights on high--giving the party from the Point plenty of opportunity for picking their men, as they followed their leader's example and leaped into the pool. This caused a rush of the fish towards the lights for the most part, though many made for the gap to follow the stream, shooting against the net, which was held tightly in its place. "There, go home, you set of ugly fools, before you're hurt," cried the deformed man, with a snarl like that of a wild beast. "What! You will have it? Come on, then. Hi, there! hold the links higher, and let us see their thick heads. Give it to 'em hard." Emboldened by old successes, two wings of the gang whipped out their sticks and took a step or two forward, to stand firm on either side of the deformed man, who was a step in front. The next minute the fray had commenced, Nic leading off with a tremendous cut from his left at Humpy Dee's head. For the young man's blood was up; he was the captain of the little party, and he knew that everything depended upon him. If he fought well they would stand by him to a man, as they had shown before. If, on the other hand, he seemed timid and careful, they would show a disposition to act on the defensive. That would not do now, as Nic well knew. His object was to make a brave charge and stagger the enemy, so that they might become the easier victims to panic when they found that they were attacked by a strong party in the rear. _Crack_! went Nic's stout stick, as he struck with all his might; and _crick_, _crick_, _crack_, _crash_! went a score or more, mingled with shouts of defiance. But Nic's cudgel did not give forth its sharp sound from contact with the leader's head, for he had to do with a clever cudgel-player as well as one who had often proved his power as a tricky wrestler in contests with the best men of the neighbouring farthest west county. Nic's blow was cleverly caught on as stout a cudgel, and the next moment his left arm fell numb to his side. He struck savagely now, making up for want of skill by the rain of blows he dealt at his adversary, and thus saved himself from being beaten down into the water at once. But it was all in vain. On the other hand, though his men did better, being more equally matched they did not cause the panic Nic had hoped for, and the enemy kept their ground; while the torches spluttered, blazed, and smoked, and to the spectators the amphitheatre during those few brief moments looked wild and strange as some feverish dream. But, as before said, Nic's brave efforts were all in vain. His muscles were too soft and green, and he was, in addition to being young, no adept in the handling of a stick. He fought bravely, but he had not the strength to keep it up against this short, iron-muscled, skilful foe. He was aware of it only too soon, for his guard was beaten down, and he saw stars and flashes of light as he received a sharp blow from his adversary's stick. Then he felt himself caught by the throat, and by the light of one of the torches he saw the man's cudgel in the act of falling once more for a blow which he could only weakly parry, when another cudgel flashed by, there was a crack just over his head, and Humpy Dee uttered a yell of rage. "You coward!" he roared. "Take that!" and quick as a flash Nic made out that he struck at some one else, and attributed the side-blow in his defence to Solly, who was, he believed, close by. At that moment a loud, imperious voice from somewhere in front and above shouted, so that the rocks echoed: "Hold hard below there!" Nic involuntarily lowered his cudgel and stood panting, giddy, and sick, listening. "Yah! never mind him," roared Humpy. "You, Pete, I'll pay you afterwards." "Now, boys, down with you." "The poachers' companions," cried one of Nic's men, and they stepped forward to the attack again, when a pistol-shot rang out and was multiplied by the rocky sides of the arena, making the combatants pause, so that the voice from above was plainly heard: "Below there, you scoundrels! Surrender in the king's name. You are surrounded." "Brag, my lads!" roared Humpy Dee. "Stand to it, boys, and haul the beggars out." There was a moment's pause, just enough for the next words to be heard: "At 'em, lads! You've got 'em, every man." A roaring cheer followed, and Nic saw the torches through the cloud that seemed to be thickening around them. He could hear shouts, which grew louder and fiercer. There was the rattle of cudgels, savage yells seemed to be bellowed in his ears, and he felt himself thrust and struck and hauled here and there as a desperate fight went on for his possession. Then, close at hand, there was a deafening cheer, a tremendous shock, the rattle of blows, and he was down upon his knees. Lastly, in a faint, dreamy way, he was conscious of the rush of cold water about his face, in his ears the thundering noise of total immersion, with the hot, strangling sense of drowning; and then all was blank darkness, and he knew no more. CHAPTER TWELVE. A STRANGE AWAKENING. Another storm seemed to have gathered in Dartmoor--a terrible storm, which sent the rain down in sheets, which creaked and groaned as they washed to and fro, and every now and then struck against the rocks with a noise like thunder. Great stones seemed to be torn up and thrown here and there, making the shepherds shout as they tried to keep their flocks together under the shelter of some granite for, while down by the falls at the salmon-pool the water came over as it had never come before. Nic had a faint recollection of his fight with Humpy Dee, and of some one coming to take his part, with the result that they were all tangled up together till they were forced beneath the water. This must have separated them, so that he was quite alone now, being carried round and round the pool, rising and falling in a regular way, till he came beneath the falls, when down came the tons of water upon his head, driving him beneath the surface, to glide on in the darkness, feeling sick and half-suffocated, while his head burned and throbbed as if it would burst. It did not seem to matter much, but it appeared very strange; and this must be drowning, but it took such a long time, and went on and on, repeating itself in the same way as if it would never end. That part of it was very strange, too--that light; and it puzzled Nic exceedingly, for it seemed to be impossible that he should be going round and round in the salmon-pool, to be sucked under the falls, and feel the water come thundering upon his head with a crash and creak and groan, and in the midst of it for a lanthorn to come slowly along till it was quite close to him, and voices to be heard. After seeing it again and again, he felt that he understood what it was. He had been drowned, and they were coming with a lanthorn to look for his body; but they never found it, though they came and stood talking about him over and over again. At last he heard what was said quite plainly, but he only knew one voice out of the three that spoke, and he could not make out whose that was. The voice said, "Better, sir, to-day;" and another voice said, "Oh yes, you're getting all right now: head's healing nicely. The sooner you get up on deck and find your sea-legs the better." "Oh, I shall be all right there, sir." "Been to sea before?" "In fishing craft, sir--often. But would you mind telling me, sir, where we're going?" "Oh, you'll know soon enough, my lad. Well: America and the West Indies." "This must be a dream," thought Nic; and he was lying wondering, when the light was suddenly held close to him, and he could see over his head beams and planks and iron rings and ropes, which made it all more puzzling than ever. Then a cool hand touched his brow, and it seemed as if a bandage was removed, cool water laved the part which ached and burned, and a fresh bandage was fastened on. "Won't die, will he, sir?" said the voice Nic knew but could not quite make out. "Oh no, not now, my lad. He has had a near shave, and been none the better for knocking about in this storm; but he's young and healthy, and the fever is not quite so high this morning.--Hold the light nearer, Jeffs.--Hallo! Look at his eyes; he can hear what we say.--Coming round, then, my lad?" "Yes," said Nic feebly, "round and round. The falls will not come on my head any more, will they?" _Crash_--_rush_! and Nic groaned, for down came the water again, and the young man nearly swooned in his agony, while a deathly sensation of giddiness attacked him. "Head seems to be all right now," said the third voice. "Yes, healing nicely; but he ought to have been sent ashore to the hospital." "Oh, I don't know. Bit of practice." The roar and rush ceased, and the terrible sinking sensation passed off a little. "Drink this, my lad," said a voice, and Nic felt himself raised; something nasty was trickled between his lips, and he was lowered down again, and it was dark, while the burning pain, the giddiness, and the going round the pool and under the falls went on over and over in a dreamy, distant way once more. Then there was a long, drowsy space, and the sound of the falls grew subdued. At last Nic lay puzzling his weary, confused head as to the meaning of a strange creaking, and a peculiar rising and falling, and why it was that he did not feel wet. Just then from out of the darkness there was a low whistling sound, which he recognised as part of a tune he had often heard, and it was so pleasant to hear that he lay quite still listening till it ended, when he fell asleep, and seemed to wake again directly, with the melody of the old country ditty being repeated softly close at hand. "Who's that?" he said at last; and there was a start, and a voice--that voice he could not make out--cried: "Hullo, Master Nic! glad to hear you speak zensible again." "Speak--sensible--why shouldn't I?" "I d'know, zir. But you have been going it a rum 'un. Feel better?" "Feel--better. I don't know. Who is it?" "Me, sir." "Yes, yes," cried Nic querulously; "but who is it?" "Pete Burge, sir." "Pete--Burge," said Nic thoughtfully, and he lay very still trying to think; but he could not manage it, for the water in the pool seemed to be bearing him along, and now he was gliding up, and then down again, while his companion kept on talk, talk, talk, in a low murmur, and all was blank once more. Then a change came, and Nic lay thinking a little more clearly. "Are you there, Pete Burge?" he said. "Yes, I'm here, master." "What was that you were saying to me just now?" "Just now?" said the man wonderingly. "Well, you do go on queer, zir. That was the day afore yes'day. But I zay, you are better now, aren't you?" "Better? I don't know. I thought I was drowned." "Poor lad!" said Pete softly; but it seemed to sting Nic. "What do you mean by that?" he said feebly. "Zorry for you, master." "Why?" "'Cause you've been zo bad." "Been so bad?" said Nic thoughtfully. "Why have I been so bad? It's very strange." Pete Burge made no reply, and there was silence again, till it was broken by Nic, who said suddenly: "Have you been very bad too?" "Me, zir? Yes, horrid. Thought I was going to the locker, as they call it. Doctor zaid I ought to have been took to the hospital." "Were you nearly drowned?" said Nic after a pause, during which he had to fight hard to keep his thinking power under control. "Was I nearly drowned, zir?" said the man, with a low chuckle. "Zeems to me I was nearly everythinged. Head smashed, chopped, choked, and drowned too." Nic was silent again, for he could not take in so many ideas as this at once, and it was some minutes before he could collect himself for another question. "But you are better now?" "Oh yes, zir, I'm better now. Doctor zays I'm to get up to-morrow." "The doctor! Was that the doctor whom I heard talking yesterday?" "Yes: two of 'em; they've pulled uz round wonderful. You frightened me horrid, master, the way you went on, and just when I was most bad. You made me feel it was all my fault, and I couldn't zleep for thinking that if you died I'd killed you. But I zay, master, you won't die now, will you?" "How absurd!" said Nic, with a weak laugh. "Of course not. Why should I die now?" "Ah, why indeed, when you're getting better?" There was another silence before Nic began again. "I've been wondering," he said, "why it is that we can be going round the salmon-pool like this, and yet be lying here talking about the doctor and being bad." "Ay, 'tis rum, sir." "Yes, it puzzles me. Look here; didn't we have a fight with you and your men to-night?" "We had a big fight, sir; but it waren't to-night." "But it's quite dark still, and I suppose it's my head being giddy that makes me feel that we're going up and down." "Oh no, it aren't, zir," said the man, laughing; "we're going up and down bad enough. Not zo bad as we have been." "And round and round?" "No; not going round, master." "But where are we?" said Nic eagerly. "Ah, that puzzles you, do it, zir? Well, it puzzled me at first, till I asked; and then the doctor zaid we was in the cockpit, but I haven't heard any battle-cocks crowing, and you can't zee now, it's zo dark. Black enough, though, for a pit." "Cockpit--cockpit!" said Nic. "Why, that's on board ship." "To be zure." "But we are not on board ship?" "Aren't we?" said the man. "I--I don't understand," cried Nic after a pause. "My head is all confused and strange. Tell me what it all means." Pete Burge was silent. "Poor lad!" he said to himself; "how's he going to take it when he knows all?" "You do not speak," said Nic excitedly. "Ah! I am beginning to think clearly now. You came with the men after the salmon?" "Ay, worse luck. I didn't want to, but I had to go." "Come," said Nic sharply. "To-night, wasn't it?" "Nay. It's 'bout three weeks ago, master." This announcement, though almost a repetition, seemed to stun Nic for the time; but he began again: "We had a desperate fight, didn't we?" "Worst I was ever in." "And--yes, I remember; we were struggling in the pool when the sailors came." "That's it, master; you've got it now." "But your side won, then, and I'm a prisoner?" "Nay; your side won, master." "How can that be?" cried Nic. "'Cause it is. They was too many for uz. They come down like thunder on uz, and 'fore we knowed where we was we was tied up in twos and being marched away." "Our side won?" said Nic, in his confusion. "That's right, master. You zee, they told Humpy Dee and the rest to give in, and they wouldn't; so the zailor officer wouldn't stand no nonsense. His men begun with sticks; but, as our zide made a big fight of it, they whips out their cutlashes and used them. I got one chop, and you nearly had it, and when two or three more had had a taste of the sharp edge they begun to give in; and, as I telled you, next thing we was tied two and two and marched down to the river, pitched into the bottoms of two boats, and rowed aboard a ship as zet zail at once; and next night we was pitched down into the boats again and hoisted aboard this ship, as was lying off Plymouth waiting to start." "Waiting to sail?" "That's right, master! And I s'pose she went off at once, but I was too bad to know anything about it. When I could begin to understand I was lying here in this hammock, and the doctor telled me." "One moment. Where are the others?" "All aboard, sir--that is, twenty-two with uz." "Some of our men too?" "Nay, zir; on'y our gang." "But I don't understand, quite," said Nic pitifully. "I want to know why they have brought me. Tell me, Pete Burge--my head is getting confused again--tell me why I am here." "Mistake, I s'pose, sir. Thought, zeeing you all rough-looking and covered with blood, as you was one of us." Nic lay with his head turned in the speaker's direction, battling with the horrible despairing thoughts which came like a flood over his disordered brain; but they were too much for him. He tried to speak; but the dark waters of the pool were there again, and the next minute he felt as if he had been drawn by the current beneath the fall, and all was mental darkness and the old confusion once more. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. WILLIAM SOLLY HAS THOUGHTS. It would have been better, perhaps, for Nic Revel if he had not heard the result of the plan to get help from Captain Lawrence's ship and its disastrous results for him. For Pete Burge's narrative was correct enough, save that he made an omission or two, notably the fact that he was captured while making a brave effort to save Nic from the savage blows being dealt out to him by Humpy Dee, who was trying to visit upon his head the disappointment he felt through the failure of the raid. It was from finding Nic, helplessly insensible, being carried off by Pete that in the dark the sailors took the young man for one of the party they were to attack; and hence it was that he was tied fast to his injured companion, carried down the hill-slope to the river, bundled into the boat with the other prisoners, and carried off, there being no further communication held with the shore. Captain Lawrence knew nothing till long afterwards about Nic being missing, and the long, long search made for him in the pool; two of the men, when questioned later on during the inquiry, having seen him go down in the fierce struggle. But no one, during the confusion which ensued, had seen him rise again; for it was somewhere about that time that those who bore torches, and saw that the fight was going against them, dashed them down into the water, hoping the darkness would cover their escape. The Captain, in the triumphant issue of the encounter, had stood to see the prisoners all bound, and soon after, upon not finding his son, accepted Solly's suggestion that Nic had walked down to see the prisoners off, and perhaps gone on board to thank the officer for his help. The next morning the ship was gone, and a horrible dread assailed master and man as to Nic's fate. Then came the information from the two labourers who had taken part in the defence and the search, every inch of the pool and river being examined, till the suspicion became a certainty that Nic had been swept down the river and carried out to sea, the cap he wore having been brought in by one of the fishermen who harboured his boat in the mouth of the stream. But Captain Revel did not rest content with this: in his agony he communicated with Captain Lawrence, who came on at once, and confessed now to his old friend why, when his help was asked, he had jumped at the idea. They wanted men for one of the ships bound for Charleston and the West Indies, the pressgangs having been very unsuccessful; and as the salmon-poachers were described to him as being strong, active fellows, the idea struck him that here was a fine opportunity for ridding the neighbourhood of a gang of mischievous ne'er-do-weels--men who would be of service to their country, and henceforth leave his old brother-officer in peace; while any of them not particularly suitable could be easily got rid of among the sugar and tobacco plantations. "Then," said Captain Revel, "you have sent them away?" "Yes; they sailed the next night. It was rather a high-handed transaction; but the service wanted them badly, and we can't afford to be too particular at a time like this." "But do you think it likely that my poor boy was among the prisoners?" "Impossible," said the Captain. "If he were--which is not in the least likely--all he had to do was to speak and say who he was. But absurd! I should have known, of course." "But after he was on board the other vessel?" "My dear old friend," said Captain Lawrence sympathetically, "I shrink from dashing your hopes, but I feel how unjust it would be to back you up in the idea that he may have gone with the impressed men. He is a gentleman, and an English officer's son, and he would only have to open his lips to any one he encountered, and explain his position, to be sent home from the first port he reached." "Yes, yes, of course," said the Captain bitterly; "and I shall never see my poor boy again." Captain Lawrence was so uneasy about his friend that he went back to the boat and sent her off to the ship, returning afterwards to the house, bitterly regretting that he had sent his men ashore and allowed himself to be tempted into making a seizure of the poachers. Captain Revel was seated in his arm-chair when Captain Lawrence re-entered the house, looking calm, grave, and thoughtful. His friend's coming made him raise his head and gaze sorrowfully; then, with a weary smile, he let his chin drop upon his breast and sat looking hard at the carpet. "Come, Revel, man," cried Captain Lawrence, "you must cheer up. We sailors can't afford to look at the black side of things." "No, no; of course not," said the stricken man. "I shall be better soon, Jack; better soon. I'm getting ready to fight it." "That's right; and before long you will have the boy marching into the room, or else sending you a letter." "Yes, yes," said Captain Revel, with a sad smile, and in a manner totally different from that which he generally assumed, "he'll soon come back or write." "But, poor fellow! he does not think so," said Captain Lawrence to himself, as Nic's father relapsed into thoughtful silence. "Solly, my lad," said the visitor, when he felt that he must return to his vessel, "your master has got a nasty shock over this business." "Ay, ay, sir; and he aren't the only one as feels it. I ought never to ha' left Master Nic's side; but he put me in my station, and, of course, I had to obey orders." "Of course, my lad. Here, we must make the best of it, and hope and pray that the boy will turn up again all right." Solly shook his head sadly. "Ah, don't do that, my man," cried Captain Lawrence. "You a sailor, too. There's life in a mussel, Solly. A man's never dead with us till he is over the side with a shot at his heels." "That's true, sir," said the old sailor; "but, you see, I'm afraid. There was some fierce fighting over yonder in the pitch-dark, where the lights waren't showing. Sticks was a-going awful. If my poor boy got one o' they cracks on his head and went beneath, there was plenty o' water to wash him out o' the pool and down the river." "Yes; but hope for the best, man; hope for the best. Remember the bit of blue that comes in the wind's eye often enough when we're in the worst part of a gale." "Ay, sir, that's what I do--hope for the best, and that if my poor young master, who was as fine a lad as ever stepped, is done for, I may some day find out who it was that hit that blow, and pay it back." "No, Solly," said Captain Lawrence sternly. "An English sailor does not take revenge in cold blood for what was done in hot. Never! There, I must get off, and in a few days I hope to be back to see my old friend again. Meanwhile, I know he's in good hands, and that he would not wish to be watched over by any one better than William Solly, his old companion in many a trouble of the past." "It's very kind o' you to say so, sir," said Solly humbly. "I only speak the truth, my man," said the visitor. "I have seen a great deal, and Captain Revel has told me more, about what a faithful servant you have been to him. Do all you can to comfort him, for he is terribly changed." The tears were in old Solly's eyes, and there seemed to be a kink in his throat, as he said huskily: "Awful, sir. I was a-saying on'y the other day, when the skipper was wherriting hisself about losing a few salmon, and raging and blowing all over the place, that he wanted a real trouble to upset him, and that then he wouldn't go so half-mad-like about a pack o' poachers working the pool. But I little thought then that the real bad trouble was coming so soon; and it has altered him, sewer-ly. Poor Master Nic--poor dear lad! Seems on'y t'other day as I used to carry him sittin' with his little bare legs over my two shoulders, and him holding on tight by my curly hair. Yes, sir, you look; it is smooth and shiny up aloft now, but I had a lot o' short, curly hair then, just like an old Calabar nigger's. And now, on'y to think of it." "No, don't think of it, my lad, for we are not certain, and we will not give up hope. There, good-bye, Solly, my man. Shake hands." "Shake--hands, sir--with you, cap'n?" "No, not with the captain, but with the man who looks upon you as an old friend." The next minute Solly was alone, rubbing his fist first in one eye and then in the other, twisting the big bony knuckle of his forefinger round so as to squeeze the moisture out. "Well now," he said, "just look at that! What an old fool I am! Well, if I didn't know as them there drops o' mystur' was 'cause o' my poor lad Master Nic, I should ha' thought it was all on account o' what Cap'n Lawrence said. `Friend!' he says. Well, I like that. I s'pose it's 'cause I've allus tried to do my dooty, though I've made a horful muddle on it more'n once." CHAPTER FOURTEEN. FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT. The next time the doctor came below to see his patients he examined Pete Burge. "Humph!" he ejaculated. "Lucky for you, my man, that you have such a thick skull. You'll do now; but you've had a narrow escape. There, you can go up on deck every day a bit, but keep out of the sun; it's very hot, and getting hotter. It will do you more good than stopping down in this black hole." "Thank ye, master," said Pete; and he lay still in his hammock, waiting for the doctor to go on deck before getting out and beginning to dress. "Look here," said the doctor; "you are not off the sick-list yet, and you will come down and look after this lad till he is fit to go up.-- Well, how are you, my lad?--Hold that light closer," he continued, turning to his assistant. "Humph! fever stronger.--Has he been talking to you--sensibly?" "Yes, zir," replied Pete. "A good deal muddled at first, but he began asking questions at last." "What about?" "Didn't know how he come here, and I had to tell him." "Yes! What then?" "Give a zort of a groan, zir, and been talking to hisself ever zince." "Humph! Poor wretch," muttered the doctor, and he gave some instructions to his assistant before turning once more to Pete: "Look here, you had better stay with your mate when you are not on deck. If he gets worse you can fetch me." "Where shall I find you, zir?" asked Pete. "Ask one of the men." Pete began to dress as soon as he was alone, and found that it was no easy task on account of a strange feeling of giddiness; but he succeeded at last, and stepped to Nic's hammock and laid a cool hand upon the poor fellow's burning brow. Then he went on deck, glad to sit down right forward in the shade cast by one of the sails and watch the blue water whenever the vessel heeled over. The exertion, the fresh air, and the rocking motion of the ship produced a feeling of drowsiness, and Pete was dropping off to sleep when he started into wakefulness again, for half-a-dozen men came up a hatchway close at hand, with the irons they wore clinking, to sit down upon the deck pretty near the convalescent. Pete stared as he recognised Humpy Dee and five other partners in the raid. "There, what did I tell you?" said the first-named, speaking to his companions, but glaring savagely at Pete the while. "There he is. I allus knowed it. He aren't in irons. It was his doing. Give warning, he did, and they brought the sailor Jacks up. It was a regular trap." "What do you mean?" said Pete wonderingly. "What I say. I always knew you'd turn traitor and tell on us." "You don't know what you're talking about," cried Pete. "Look here, lads." The men he addressed uttered a low growl and turned from him in disgust. "Oh, very well," said Pete bitterly; "if you like to believe him instead of me, you can." "I told you so," went on Humpy Dee, whose countenance looked repulsive now from a patch of strips of sticking-plaster upon his forehead; "and he says I don't know what I'm talking about." "That's right," said Pete; "you don't." "Maybe; but I do now. Look ye here, Pete Burge; it's your doing that we're here. Nearly the whole lot on us took--there, you can see some of 'em sailors now. Pressed men. They took the pick of us; but we're not good enough, we're not, while you're to be a bo'sun, or some'at o' that sort, you expect. But you won't, for, first chance I get, Pete Burge, I'm going to pitch you overboard, or put a knife in your back; so look out." "You don't know what you're talking about," said Pete again, for nothing better occurred to him; and as the charge seemed to have gone home for truth with the other unfortunates, one and all embittered by sickness, injuries, and confinement in irons below deck, Pete sulkily did as they did, turned away, confident that Humpy Dee's threat would not be put in force then; for a marine was standing sentry over them, till the men in irons were marched below, Pete finding that, as one on the sick-list, he was free to go up or down when he liked. During the next fortnight the man puzzled himself as to what was to become of them. He had seen others of his companions often enough, going about their duties; but every one turned from him with a scowl of dislike, which showed that the charge Humpy had made had gone home, and that all believed he had betrayed them. The consequence was that he passed much of his time below decks, and preferred to come up for his breath of fresh air after dark, passing his time beside Nic's hammock, thinking what he ought to do about him, and making up his mind what it was to be as soon as the poor fellow grew better and fully recovered his senses. "I'll tell the doctor then," he said to himself. "There's no good in telling him now, for if I did they'd take him away and put him in a cabin, where it would only be lonezome for him and for me too; and no one would wait on him better than I do." But Nic did not get better, as Pete wished, nor yet as the doctor essayed to make him. "It has got on his brain, poor fellow," said that gentleman one day, when the patient was able to walk about, apparently nearly well, but his mind quite vacant. He talked, but the past was quite a blank. "But he'll get it off, won't he, zir?" said Pete, who felt the time to speak had come. "Some day, my lad. I dare say his memory will come back all of a sudden when he is stronger and better able to bear his trouble; so perhaps it's all a blessing for him in disguise." There was so much in this that Pete felt that it was not the time to speak yet. "What good can it do him till he can think?" he said to himself. "It will only be like me losing a mate as can be a bit o' comfort, now every one's again' me. I mean to stick to him till he can speak out and tell 'em as I didn't inform again' the others." So Pete held his tongue, and being so much below, was almost forgotten, save by the men of the watches who had to bring the two sick men their rations; and finally he left it till it was too late. For he awoke one morning to find that they were in port in a strange land, and in the course of the morning the word was passed to him and his unfortunate companion to "tumble up." "Here, master," he said to Nic; "you're to come up." Nic made no objection, but suffered himself to be led on deck, where he stood, pale and thin, the wreck of his former self, blinking in the unwonted light, and trying to stare about him, but in a blank way, ending by feeling for and clinging to Pete's arm. Very little time was afforded the latter for looking about, wondering what was to happen next; all he saw on deck was a group of marines and about a couple of dozen of the sailors doing something to one of the boats, while the officers were looking on. The next minute his attention was taken by the beautiful country spreading out beyond the shore, a quarter of a mile away across the sparkling waters of the harbour. But there was something else to take his attention during the next minute, for there was the clanking of irons, and he saw Humpy Dee and his five companions marched up from below to be called to where he was standing with Nic. The poachers looked repellent enough as they followed Humpy Dee's example, and scowled at the pair who had come up from the sick bay, and seemed to receive little sympathy from those who were looking on. Then there was an order given by one of the officers, and the crew of the boat climbed quickly in, while the marines came up behind the prisoners. "They're going to take us ashore," thought Pete excitedly, and the idea had hardly been grasped, before a couple of old hats were handed to him and his companion by the sergeant of marines. "They're going to put uz with Humpy and that lot," said Pete to himself excitedly; "and I must speak now." He spoke. It was hurriedly and blunderingly done, and the officer whom he addressed looked at him frowningly. "What!" he cried; "this man is not one of you--one of the gang taken that night?" "No, master; he's a gentleman, and took by mistake." Humpy Dee's eyes flashed, and he burst into a coarse laugh. "Silence, you scoundrel!--How dare you?" cried the officer angrily. "Couldn't help it, master," growled Humpy. "Make a horse laugh to hear such gammon." "What! Do you say that what he tells me is not true?" "It is true, master," cried Pete, "every word--" "All lies," snarled the poacher savagely. "He was in the fight, and got hurt. He's one of us. That Pete Burge peached on us, and brought the sailor Jacks on us; and he wants to get out of it to let us go alone. Lies, captain; all lies." "What do you say, my men?" said the officer sternly, turning to Humpy's companions. "Same as he does," cried the pressed men in chorus. "And you?" cried the officer, turning to Nic. "Are you one of this fellow's comrades?" "No, master, he aren't," cried Pete; "he aren't, indeed. He's nought to me. He's--" "Silence, sir!" roared the officer. "You, sir," he continued, turning to Nic, "speak out. Are you one of this fellow's comrades?" Nic looked at him blankly, and there was silence on the deck, as the various groups stood there in the burning sunshine. "Well, sir, why don't you answer?" cried the officer. Nic's answer was in dumb-show, for, poor fellow, he did not grasp a word. He knew that the man by his side had been with him a great deal, and nursed and helped him, speaking soothingly when he was at his worst--every one else seemed strange; and without a word he smiled sadly in Pete's face and took hold of his arm. "That will do," said the officer, who had his orders to carry out. "In with them!" The marines laid their hands on Nic's and Pete's shoulders, while the sergeant signed to the others to climb into the boat; Humpy Dee turning, as he got in last, to give Pete a savage look of triumph. Pete turned sharply to the marine who was urging him to the side. "Tell me, mate," he whispered quickly; "just a word. Where are we going to be took?" The marine glanced swiftly aside to see if it was safe to answer, and then whispered back: "Off to the plantations, I s'pose. There, keep a good heart, lad. It aren't for ever and a day." The plantations--to work as a kind of white slave for some colonist far-away. Pete, in his ignorance, only grasped half the truth; but that half was bad enough to make him sink down in the boat as it was lowered from the davits, put his lips close to Nic's ear, and groan more than say: "Oh, Master Nic, lad, what have you done?" Then the boat kissed the water; the order was given; the oars fell with a splash; and, as the men gave way, Pete Burge darted a wild look about him, to find Humpy Dee just at his back, glaring malignantly, and as if about to speak, as he leaned forward. But no word came, for the marine sergeant clapped a hand upon his shoulder and thrust him back. "All right," said Humpy Dee; "my time'll come bimeby. Better than being a pressed man, after all." Nic had been a long while in the darkness below deck, and his eyes were feeble; but, as the boat glided on rapidly towards the shore, they became more accustomed to the light, and he gazed wonderingly about in his confused state, seeing nothing of the trouble ahead, only the fact that he was approaching the far-stretching, sun-brightened shore. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. HUMPY DEE'S LITTLE THREATS. However much he might have been disposed to make a fresh appeal on his companion's behalf, Pete had no opportunity; for, upon the boat being run alongside of a roughly-made wharf, he and the others were hurried out and marched away to a kind of warehouse, and the care of them handed over to some people in authority, by whom they were shut-in, glad of the change from the broiling sun outside to the cool gloom of the interior, lit only by a grated window high up above the door, from which the rays streamed across the open roof, leaving the roughly-boarded floor in darkness. After a few minutes the eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and the men seated themselves upon the empty chests and barrels lying about, Pete securing one for Nic, who sat down mechanically, with his head thrown back so that he could gaze at the light. Pete contented himself with the rough floor, where he half-lay, listening to his companions in misfortune, half-a-dozen yards away, as they talked over their position and wondered where they were to go--to a man keeping aloof from Pete, the traitor they accredited with bringing them to their present state. The men were better informed than Pete had been, his stay in company with Nic and the dislike in which he was held by his old companions having kept him in ignorance of facts which they had picked up from the sailors. And now Pete gradually grasped in full that of which he had previously only had an inkling--that the pick of the prisoners had been reserved for man-o'-war's-men, those who were considered unsuitable having been reserved for handing over to the colonists. This was in accordance with a custom dating as far back as the days of Cromwell, the Protector being accredited with ridding himself of troublesome prisoners by shipping them off to the plantations as white slaves, most of them never to return. "Well," said Humpy Dee aloud, in the course of conversation, "I suppose it means work." "Yes," said another; "and one of the Jacks told me you have to hoe sugar-cane and tobacco and rice out in the hot sun, and if you don't do enough you get the cat." "If any one tries to give me the lash," growled Humpy, "he'll get something he won't like." "They'll hang you or shoot you if you try on any games, old lad," said another of the men. "Maybe, if they can," said Humpy, with a laugh. "Perhaps we may be too many for them. I mean to take to the woods till I can get taken off by a ship." "Ah, who knows?" said another. "I aren't going to give up. Place don't look so bad. See that river as we come up here?" "Of course," growled Humpy. "Well, I dare say there'll be salmon in it, same as there is at home." "Tchah!" cried Humpy; "not here. This is foreign abroad man. You'll get no salmon now." "Well, any fish'll do," said another of the men. "The place don't look bad, and anything's better than being shut down below them decks. 'Nough to stifle a man. I know what I'm going to do, though, along with them as like to join me." "You're going to do what I tells you," said Humpy Dee sourly; "I'm going to be head-man here; and if you don't you'll find yourself wishing you hadn't been born." The man growled something in an undertone, and Humpy made an offer at him as if to strike, causing his companion in misfortune to flinch back to avoid the expected blow. "Look here, boys," said Humpy; "if every one here's going to try to do things on his own hook we shall do nothing, so what you've got to do is to stick by me. We're not going to be sold here like a gang o' black slaves." "But we are sold," said the man who had shrunk away. "Never mind that; we're not going to work, then," said Humpy. "We're going to slip off into the woods, get to that there river, and do something better than spear or bale out salmon. We're going to take the first boat we see and get round to the coast, and then keep along till we find a ship to take us off." "Well, that's what I meant," said the other man. "Then you'll be all right," said Humpy. So far, without paying attention, Pete had heard every word, and his blood began to course faster through his veins at the thought of escaping and helping Nic back to his friends; but, though he strove hard, not another word reached his ears; for Humpy leaned forward and began speaking in a hoarse whisper, his companions bending towards him, as he said with a peculiar intensity: "We've got to get back home, lads, and not stop here to rot in the sun to make money for whoever's bought us; but there's something to do first." "What?" said one of the men, for Humpy Dee had stopped and sat in the gloom, glaring savagely at the farther side of the place. "Wait, and you'll hear," was the reply; and there was another pause, during which Nic uttered a low, weary sigh, and let himself fall sideways, so that his head sank in Pete's lap, and, utterly exhausted, he dropped off to sleep. "You know how it all was," Humpy went on at last. "I aren't going to name no names, but some 'un was jealous-like o' me, and wanting to take the lead always; and, when he found he couldn't, he goes and blabs to the young master yonder. Well, we're not going to take him back--we've not going to tell him how we're going to do it." "Have told him. Spoke loud enough," said the man who had received the rebuff. Humpy leaned towards him, and with a peculiar, savage air, said in a husky whisper: "Look here, mate; there's only room for one to lead here. If you aren't satisfied you can go and sit along with them two and sham sick, like Pete Burge has all through the voyage." "Well, don't bite a man's head off," said the other. "Who wants to lead?" "You do, or you wouldn't talk like a fool. Think I'm one, mates?--think I'm going to do as I said, and let him go and blab, so as to get into favour here? That's just what I don't mean to do." "Then what are you going to do?" said his fellow-prisoner; but for a few moments Humpy only glared at him without speaking. At last, though, he whispered: "I mean for us to go off together and get free; and as for some one else, I mean for us all to give him something to remember us by afore we go." CHAPTER SIXTEEN. HUMAN CATTLE. The prisoners had been sitting in the dark warehouse-like place for some hours, Nic sleeping soundly, and Pete watching and listening to his companions in misfortune, judging from their behaviour that he was to be treated as an outcast, but caring little, for he was conscious of having been true to them in their nefarious doings. "Let them think what they like," he said to himself. "Humpy has got that into their heads, and if I talk to them for a week they won't believe me." Then he began to muse upon the subject which forms seven-eighths of a prisoner's thoughts--how he and Nic were to escape, and whether it would be possible to get to a boat and float down the river of which they had had a glimpse, and of which he had heard his companions speaking, when suddenly there was the deep, heavy barking of a dog, followed by that of two more; and, as he listened, the sounds came nearer and nearer, in company with the shuffling of feet. Voices were heard too, and directly after there was a loud snuffling sound and a deep growling, as the dogs they had heard thrust their noses under the big door, tore at it, and growled savagely, till a fierce voice roared: "Come here! Lie down!" and there was a crack of a whip, and a sharp yelp to indicate that one of the dogs had received a blow. Directly after there was the rattle of a big key in the lock, the bolt snapped back, and the door was thrown open, to fill the place with the glow of the afternoon sunshine; and three great hounds bounded in, to rush at once for the prisoners and begin snuffing at them, growling loudly the while. "Call those dogs off, Saunders," said a stern voice, as the entrance was darkened by the figures of a group of men. "In a moment," was the reply, made by a tall, active-looking man, "They only want to know the new hands, and their flavour.--Here: down, boys!" The speaker accompanied his order with a sharp crack of the whip, and the dogs came back unwillingly from the groups seated on the floor. "Take care," said the first speaker; "that man has a knife." Pete turned sharply, to see that a knife-blade was gleaming in Humpy Dee's hand. "Knife, has he?" said the man addressed as Saunders, and he stepped forward to where Humpy was crouching down. "Give me that knife," he said sharply. "I don't want to be eat by dogs," said Humpy in a low, surly tone. "Give me that knife," was reiterated sternly, "or I set the dogs to hold you while I take it away." Humpy hesitated for a moment and glared in the speaker's eyes; but he read there a power which was too much for him, and he closed the blade with a snap and slowly held it up. The man snatched it from him with his left hand, and the next instant there was a sharp whish through the air and a smart crack, as the stinging lash of a whip fell across Humpy's shoulder, making him utter a yell of rage. "Saunders, Saunders!" said the first speaker reproachfully. "All right, Mr Groves; I know what I'm about," said the man sharply. "That fellow was armed with a knife which he must have stolen from one of the sailors; and he was ready to use it. The sooner a savage brute like that is taught his position here the better for him. You have done your part and handed the scoundrels over to me, so please don't interfere." The first speaker shrugged his shoulders, and turned to a couple of men who were carrying a basket and a great pitcher; while Saunders went on sharply: "You hear what I am saying, my lads; so understand this: You have been sent out here from your country because you were not fit to stay there; and you will have to serve now up at your proprietor's plantation. Behave yourselves, and you will be well fed, and fairly treated over your work; but I warn you that we stand no nonsense here. The law gives us power to treat you as you deserve. Our lives are sacred; yours are not--which means, as Mr Groves here will tell you, that if you venture to attack any one you will be shot down at sight, while I may as well tell you now that we shall fire at any man who attempts to escape." Pete's head gave a throb, and his hand glided slowly to Nic's and held it tightly. "When you get up to the plantation you will see for yourselves that you cannot get away, for you will have jailers there always ready to watch you or hunt you down. There are three of them," he continued, pointing to the dogs which crouched on the warehouse floor, panting, with their long red tongues out and curled up at the ends. At their master's gesture the sagacious animals sprang up and gazed eagerly in his face. "Not now, boys; lie down.--Ah, what's that?" he cried sharply, and the dogs made a movement as if to rush at the prisoners, for Humpy leaned sideways and whispered to his nearest companion: "More ways than one o' killing a dog." "Talking about the dogs," said the other surlily. "You are making yourself a marked man, my friend. Take care. Who are these--the two who have been in hospital, Mr Groves?" "I suppose so," was the reply. "What's the matter with you?" said the overseer--for such he proved to be--addressing Pete. "Jump up." Pete softly lifted Nic's head from his knee and rose quickly. "Was cut down, sir," said Pete; "but I'm getting better fast now." "Good job for you. Now, you, sir; wake up." The overseer raised the whip he held, to make a flick at Nic as he lay soundly asleep; but Pete stepped forward to save his companion, and in bending over him received the slight cut himself without flinching, though the lash made him feel as if he had been stung. "He has been a'most dead, zir," said Pete sharply; "but he's getting better now fast. Hasn't got his zenses, though." "Wake him up, then," said the overseer sharply; "and you can get your meal now.--Here, my lads, bring that stuff here and serve it out." Pete obeyed the order given, and began by gently shaking Nic, who made no sign. Pete shook him again more firmly, starting violently the next moment, for, unnoticed, one of the great hounds had approached him and lowered its muzzle to sniff at the prostrate man. Pete's first instinctive idea was to strike fiercely at the savage-looking intruder, but fortunately he held his hand and bent over his companion wonderingly, and hardly able to believe what he saw; for as the dog nuzzled about Nic's face, the young man, partly aroused by the shaking, opened his eyes, looked vacantly at the brute for some moments, and then, as if his intellectual powers were returning, he smiled, the animal stopping short and staring down at him closely. "Well, old fellow," he said gently; "whose dog are you?" Pete looked up sharply, and saw that every one's attention was centred on the basket and pitcher, the two men serving out the provisions and their two superiors looking on. Then he glanced back again, to see in horror that Nic had raised his hand to the dog's muzzle, and followed that up by taking hold of and passing the animal's long, soft ears through his hand. Pete would have seized the dog, but he felt paralysed by the thought that if he interfered he might make matters worse; and then his heart seemed to rise in his throat, for the great hound uttered a deep, short bark, which had the effect of bringing the others to its side. "Quiet, you, sirs!" cried their master, but he did not turn his head, and the three dogs now pressed round Nic, the first planting his fore-paws on the young man's chest, blinking at him with his jaws apart and the long red tongue playing and quivering between the sets of keen milk-white teeth, evidently liking the caresses it received, and of which the other two appeared to be jealous, for they suddenly began to whimper; and then the first threw up its head, and all three broke into a loud baying. "Quiet, there!" roared Saunders, and he turned sharply now, saw what had taken place, and came back cracking his whip. "Ah!" he shouted. "Get back! How dare you?" The dogs growled, stood fast, and barked at him loudly. "Good boys, then!" cried Saunders. "Yes, it's all right; you've found him. There, that will do." The dogs began to leap and bound about the place, while their master turned to Pete. "Why didn't you call me?" he said. "Have they bitten him?" "No; haven't hurt him a bit," said Pete quietly. "Lucky for him," said the man. "There, you see what they're like, and know what you have to expect--What?" "I said, are they your dogs?" Pete stared, for it was Nic who spoke, perfectly calmly, though in a feeble voice. "Yes," replied Saunders. "Why?" "I could not help admiring them. They are magnificent beasts." "I am glad you like them, sir," said Saunders, with a mocking laugh; and he turned and strode away, to order the men to take some of the food they had brought to the other two prisoners, leaving Nic gazing after him. "Rather brusque," he said, half to himself, and then he passed his hand over his eyes, drew a long, deep, restful breath, and turned over as if to go to sleep again; but he started up on his elbow instead as he encountered Pete's face, and a look of horror and dislike contracted his own. "You here?" he said wonderingly. "Hush! Don't speak aloud, dear lad," whispered Pete excitedly. "Dear lad?" "Master Nic Revel, then. You haven't quite come-to yet. You don't remember. You were took bad again after being bad once--when you asked me questions aboard ship, and I had to tell you." "Taken bad--aboard ship?" "Here you are; catch hold," said a voice close to them; and one of the men handed each half a small loaf, while his companion filled a tin mug that must have held about half-a-pint, and offered it to Nic. The young man had let the great piece of bread fall into his lap, but the gurgling sound of the water falling into the mug seemed to rouse a latent feeling of intense thirst, and he raised himself more, took the vessel with both hands and half-drained it, rested for a few moments, panting, and then drank the rest before handing the tin back with a sigh of content. "No, no; hold it," said the man sharply; and Nic had to retain it in his trembling hands while it was refilled. "There, give it to your mate," said the water-bearer. The two young men's eyes met over the vessel in silence, Nic's full of angry dislike, Pete's with an appealing, deprecating look, which did not soften Nic's in the least. "Well, why don't you take it?" said the man with the pitcher. "Don't seem to kinder want it now," replied Pete hoarsely. "Drink it, man, and don't be a fool. You'll be glad of it long before you get there. Sun's hot yet, and the water's salt for miles, and then for far enough brackish." Nic looked at the speaker wonderingly, for the blank feeling seemed to be coming with the forerunner of the peculiar sensation of confusion which had troubled him before, and he looked from one to the other as if for help; while Pete took the mug and drained it, but contented himself with slipping his bread inside the breast of his shirt, and stood looking down at Nic, whose lips parted to speak, but no words came. "Seem decent sort of fellows," said the water-bearer, as he turned off towards the door with his companion; and the dogs rose to follow them, sniffing at the basket. "Yes, poor beggars!" said the other. "Whatever they've been up to in the old country, they've got to pay pretty dearly for it now." Nic's hearing was acute enough now, and he heard every word. "Here, you," he gasped painfully. "Call them back." "What for, Master Nic?" said Pete in an appealing whisper. "Don't; you mustn't now. Ask me for what you want." "I want to know what all this means," panted the young man. "Why am I here? What place is this? I'm not--I will know." "No, no; don't ask now, Master Nic," whispered Pete. "You aren't fit to know now. I'm with you, my lad, and I swear I won't forsake ye." "You--you will not forsake me?" said Nic, with a look of horror. "Never, my lad, while I've got a drop o' blood in my veins. Don't-- don't look at me like that. It waren't all my fault. Wait a bit, and I'll tell you everything, and help you to escape back to the old country." "To the old country!" whispered Nic, whose voice was panting again from weakness. "Where are we, then?" "Amerikee, among the plantations, they say." "But--but why? The plantations? What does it mean?" "Work," said Saunders, who had come up behind them. "Now then, look sharp, and eat your bread. You'll get no more till to-morrow morning, and in less than half-an-hour we shall start." "Start?" cried Nic huskily, as he clapped his hands to his head and pressed it hard, as though he felt that if he did not hold on tightly his reason would glide away again. "Yes, man, start," said Saunders. "Can you two fellows row?" "He can't, sir; he's too weak," cried Pete eagerly; and the overseer's face contracted. "But I can. Best man here with an oar. I can pull, sir, enough for two." "I'll put you to the proof before you sleep," said the overseer sharply. "Now, Mr Groves, I'm at your service. I suppose I have some papers to sign?" "Yes," said the agent, and he led the way, while the overseer followed, closing the door, placing a whistle to his lips and blowing a shrill note which was answered by a deep baying from the dogs. "Escape!" muttered Nic wildly. "Plantations! Why, I shall be a slave!" "No, no, my lad; don't take it like that. I'll help you to get away." "Will ye?" growled Humpy Dee, coming towards them. "Then I tells that chap next time he comes. I splits on you as you splits on we; so look out, I say, both of you; look out!" "It's a lie, Master Nic--a lie," cried Pete fiercely. "I swear to you, I never--" Pete caught at the young man's arm as he spoke, and then loosened it with a groan, for, with a look of revulsion, Nic cried hoarsely: "Don't touch me; don't come near me. Wretch--villain! This is all your work." "And so say we, my fine fellow," cried Humpy Dee, whose eyes sparkled with malignant joy. "His doing, every bit, 'cept what you put in, and for that you've got to take your share the same as us. And all because a few poor fellows wanted a bit o' salmon. Hor, hor, hor! I say, take it coolly. No one won't believe ye, and you may think yourself lucky to get off so well." Nic turned from the man with a look of disgust, and sat up, resting his throbbing head in his hands; while, as Humpy Dee went back to his companions, whistling as he went, Pete threw himself upon the floor, watching him, with his hands opening and shutting in a strange way, as if they were eager to seize the brutal ruffian by the throat. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. CHAINS AND SLAVERY. Pete calmed down after a while, and began to feel a bit sulky. He had common-sense enough to begin looking at the state of affairs from a matter-of-fact point of view, and he lay conning the position over. "Just as he likes," he said. "He pitches me over, and won't have any more to do with me. Well, it aren't no wonder, zeeing what I've been. Wonder what made me turn so zoft and zilly about him! Zeeing how hard it was for him to be zarved as he was, and then hooked off along with us." "Dunno that it's any worse for him than it is for me," he muttered; "but zeemed to feel a bit sorry about him, poor lad!--there I go again: poor lad! No more poor lad than I be. Got it into my thick head that it was nice to help him while he was so bad, and that, now our lads have pitched me overboard, we was going to be mates and help one another. But we aren't, for he's pitched me overboard too." "Well," muttered Pete, with a bitter laugh, "I can zwim as well as most on 'em, and I shan't hurt much; and as for him, he must take his chance with the rest on us. He's got his wits back again, and don't zeem like to go wool-gathering again; and, if he's sharp, he'll speak up and make that t'other man understand it's all a blunder about him being sent off along o' we. But there, he wants to go his own fashion, zo he must. But if I was him I should kick up a dust before we start, and have myself zent back home by the next ship." He glanced in the gloom at where Nic was seated, and a feeling of sorrow for the poor fellow filled him again; but after the rebuff he had received he fought it off, and began to watch Humpy Dee and the others, as they sat together talking in a low tone, and then to meditate on their position towards himself. "They're half-afraid of Humpy," he thought, "and he's made 'em think that I zet the sailors at them. If I go on talking till it's a blue moon they won't believe me, zo things must go their own way, and zome day they'll find Humpy out; on'y I'm not going to let him do as he likes with me. This isn't going to be a very cheerful zort of life out here; but, such as it is, it's better than no life at all; zo I aren't going to let him pitch me into the river or down some hole, or knock me on the head, or stick a knife into me. That won't do. It's murder--leastwise it is at home; p'raps it aren't out here. Zeems not after the way that chap talked about shooting us down and zetting them dogs at us. Why, one of 'em's stronger than us, and a zet-to wi' one of 'em wouldn't be nice. Bit of a coward, I s'pose, for I can't abide being bitten by a dog." "Best thing I can do will be to slip off first chance; for I zeem, what with Humpy and these folk, to have dropped into a nasty spot. Dessay I can take care of myself, and--nay, that won't do; zeem sneaky-like to go and leave that poor lad, for I do zort o' like him. Wonderful how they dogs took to him. Nay, that aren't wonderful. Got a lot o' zense, dogs have. Allus zeem to take to zick people and little tiny children, and blind folk too. How they like them too!" At that moment there was a deep baying sound not far-away, and Pete had not long to wait before there were steps, the door was unlocked and thrown open, and the overseer entered, accompanied by the dogs, and followed by a party of blacks, one of whom carried a roughly-made basket. They were big, muscular fellows, and shiny to a degree whenever the light caught their skins, a good deal of which was visible, for their dress consisted of a pair of striped cotton drawers, descending half-way to the knee, and a sleeveless jacket of the same material, worn open so that neck and breast were bare. The dogs barked at the prisoners, and repeated their examination by scent, ending by going well over Nic, who made no attempt to caress them, nor displayed any sign of fear, but sat in his place stolidly watching the proceedings, the dogs ending their nasal inspection by crouching down and watching him. The overseer was alone now, and his first proceeding was to take his stand by the black, who had set down the heavy basket, and call Humpy Dee to come forward, by the name of Number One. The man rose heavily, and this seemed to be a signal for the three hounds to spring to their feet again, making the man hesitate. "Them dogs bite, master?" he said. "Yes; they'll be at your throat in a moment if you make the slightest attempt to escape," said the overseer sharply. "Who's going to try to escape?" grumbled Humpy. "You are thinking of it, sir," said the overseer. "Mind this," he continued--drawing the light jacket he wore aside and tapping his belt, thus showing a brace of heavy pistols--"I am a good shot, and I could easily bring you down as you ran." "Who's going to run?" grumbled Humpy. "Man can't run with things like these on his legs." "I have seen men run pretty fast in fetters," said the overseer quietly; "but they did not run far. Come here." Humpy shuffled along two or three steps, trailing his irons behind him, and the overseer shouted at him: "Pick up the links by the middle ring, sir, and move smartly." He cracked his whip, and a thrill ran through Nic. Humpy did as he was told, and walked more quickly to where the overseer stood; but before he reached him the herculean black who stood by his basket, which looked like a coarsely-made imitation of the kind used by a carpenter for his tools, clapped a hand upon the prisoner's shoulder and stopped him short, making Humpy turn upon him savagely. "Ah!" roared the overseer, as if he were speaking to one of the dogs. Humpy was overawed, and he stood still, while the black bent down, took a ball of oakum out of the basket, cut off about a foot, passed the piece through the centre ring of the irons, and deftly tied it to the prisoner's waist-belt. Then, as Nic and Pete watched, the action going on fascinating them, the black made a sign to one of his companions, who dropped upon his knees by the basket, took out a hammer, and handed it to the first black. Then the kneeling man lifted out a small block of iron, which looked like a pyramid with the top flattened, clapped it on the floor, and the first black began to manipulate Humpy as a blacksmith would a horse he was about to shoe, dragging him to the little anvil with one hand, using the hammer-handle to poke him into position with the other. "Going to take off his irons," thought Pete, and the same idea flashed across Nic's mind. He was mistaken. Another black stepped up, as if fully aware of what was necessary, and stood behind Humpy, ready to hold him up when necessary; for the second black now seized one of the prisoner's ankles, lifted his foot on to the little anvil, and the first examined the rivet, grunted his dissatisfaction, and Humpy's foot was wrenched sidewise by one man, who held the rivet upon the anvil, while his leader struck it a few heavy blows to enlarge the head and make it perfectly safe. This done, Humpy was marched nearer the door, scowling savagely at having had to submit to this process; but he grinned his self-satisfaction as he saw his companions brought forward in turn for their irons to be examined--one to have them replaced by a fresh set, which were taken from the basket, and whose rings were tightly riveted about his ankles, the rivets of the old ones being quite loose. The men were ranged near the entrance, which, at a look from the overseer, was now guarded by the three unoccupied blacks. "Now you," said the overseer to Pete, who rose from where he sat alone and approached the anvil with a curious sensation running through him. "Why didn't they iron you?" said the overseer harshly. "Wounded and sick," replied Pete gruffly. "Ah, well, you are not wounded and sick now.--He's a big, strong fellow, Sam. Give him a heavy set." The big black showed his fine set of white teeth. A set of fetters was taken from the basket, and with Pete's foot held in position by the second black--a foot which twitched and prickled with a strong desire to kick--the first ring was quickly adjusted, a soft iron rivet passed through the two holes, and then the head was rested upon the little block of iron, and a few cleverly-delivered blows from the big black's hammer spread the soft iron out into a second head, and the open ring was drawn tight. The second ankle-ring was quickly served in the same way, and the centre link was lifted and tied to the prisoner's waist-belt, Pete turning scarlet, and wiping the perspiration from his dripping brow from time to time. "Over yonder with the others!" There was a movement among the men at the door as this order was given, and Pete winced; but even a man newly fettered can still feel pride, and the poor fellow determined that his old comrades should not think he was afraid of them. He walked boldly up to take his place, meeting Humpy's malignant look of triumph without shrinking, and turning quickly directly after with a feeling of pity as he heard the overseer summon Nic to take his place in turn. "Now's your time, my lad," Pete said to himself. "Speak out like a man, and if you ask me to, I'll back you up--I will." He looked on excitedly, wondering whether Nic's wits were still with him, as but so short a time ago they had only returned to him like a flash and then passed away, leaving him, as it were, in the dark. It was very still in the hot, close place, and every word spoken sounded strangely loud in the calm of the late afternoon. "Lighter irons," said the overseer to the big black; and there was the clinking sound of the great links as the man handed the fetters from the basket. "And him not shrinking," thought Pete. "Give me quite a turn. He can't understand." The big black took the fetters and balanced them in his hand, looking at his superior as much as to say, "Will these do?" The overseer took a step or two forward and grasped the chain, to stand holding it, gazing frowningly the while at Nic, who met his gaze without blenching. "Why don't you speak--why don't you speak?" muttered Pete. "Can't you see that now's your time?" "You've been bad, haven't you?" said the overseer roughly. Nic raised his hand slowly to his head and touched the scar of a great cut on one side, the discoloration of a bruise on the other. "But quite well again now?" Nic smiled faintly. "I am weak as a child," he replied. "Humph! Yes," said the overseer, and he threw the chain upon the floor. Pete, who had been retaining his breath for some moments, uttered a faint exclamation full of relief. "But why didn't he speak out and tell him?" For a few moments his better feelings urged him to speak out himself; but he shrank from exposing both to the denials of the other men again, and stood frowning and silent. Then the chance seemed to be gone, for the overseer gave the young prisoner a thrust towards the others, and Nic walked towards them straight for where Pete was waiting. Then he raised his eyes, saw who was standing in his way, and he went off to his right, to stop beside Humpy Dee, while a feeling of resentment rose hotly in Pete's breast. "Oh, very well," he muttered to himself; "it's no business of mine." The next minute the overseer gave a sharp order; the big black raised the basket and put himself at the head of the prisoners; the other slaves took their places on either side, and the overseer followed behind with the dogs, which began to bound about, barking loudly for a minute or two, and then walked quietly as the party left the gloomy warehouse behind. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. HUMPY DEE'S PLAN GOES "A-GLEY." It all seemed to Nic like part of some terrible dream, for a strange struggle was going on in his weakened brain, where reason seemed to come and go by pulsations. One minute everything appeared to be real, the next it was dream-like; and he was so convinced that in a short time he would wake up that he walked quietly on side by side with one of the negroes, taking notice of the place, which seemed to be a port, with the beginnings of a town dropped down in a scattered fashion a short distance from the mouth of a river. The houses were of timber, and to each there was a large, roughly fenced-in piece of cultivated ground, with some trees standing, while others had been cut down, leaving the blackened stumps in all directions. It was a strange mingling of shed, shipbuilding-yard, and store, for many of the erections and their surroundings wore all the aspect of barns. As the little party now tramped on, with the prisoners' fetters giving forth a dull, clanking sound, the aspect of the place grew more and more rustic, the people who stopped to stare fewer, till, as they reached a large boarded house, evidently nearly new, and against whose rough fence a farmer-like man, in a damaged straw hat, was leaning, gazing intently at the prisoners. All beyond seemed trees and wild growth, amidst which the river made a curve, and the trampled track looked more green. Nic looked half-wonderingly at the man leaning upon the fence, and felt that he was going to speak in commiseration of his plight; but the next moment his hopes were dashed, for the settler shouted: "How are you, Master Saunders? How's the Gaffer?" "All well," said the overseer, with a nod. "Seems a nice, tidy, strong-limbed lot you've got there, master." "Oh yes; pretty well." "Some of all sorts. That's an ugly one," continued the farmer, pointing to Humpy Dee, and mentally valuing him as if he were one in a herd of cattle. "But I daresay he can work." "He'll have to," said the overseer, and Nic saw that each black face wore a grin, while Humpy was scowling savagely. "Yes, I should like a lot such as that. 'Member me to the Gaffer. Tell him to look in if he comes to town." "Yes," thought Nic as they passed on; "it must be a dream, and I shall wake soon." It grew more and more dream-like to him as the track was followed among the trees till a rough landing-place was reached, formed by some huge stakes driven down into the mud, with heavy planks stretched over to them, and others laid across. The reddening sun was turning the gliding water to gold, as it ran up the river now, for the flood-tide was running fast; and as they drew nearer, Nic caught sight of what looked like the launch of some large vessel swinging by a rope fastened to an upright of the landing-stage. Just then one of the blacks uttered a peculiar, melodious cry, the great dogs bounded on to the stage and began to bark, and a couple of blacks, dressed like those about him, sprang up in the boat, where they had been lying asleep, and began to haul upon the now unfastened rope to draw the craft up to the stage. Nic's head was throbbing again, and the unreality and novelty of the scene increased. "I shall wake soon," he said to himself. "How strange it is!" For at that moment, as the boat came abreast, he saw one of the great dogs leap from the stage, run to the stern, and sit down, the others following and joining it behind the seat provided with a back rail. It seemed to be no new thing to the blacks, for the huge fellow who had acted as smith stepped down into the boat, followed by his assistant, walked aft, and deposited his bag with the dogs, and then stooped down and drew from under the side-seat a couple of muskets, one of which he handed to his assistant, both examining their priming, and then seating themselves one on either side of the boat, with their guns between their legs, watching the embarkation. "You next," said the overseer to Pete; and the prisoner walked to the edge, made as if to leap, but checked himself and climbed down, feeling that the other way would have been risky, weighted as his legs were by the shackles. "Help your young mate," said the overseer roughly; and Pete's eyes flashed as he stood up and held out his hand to Nic, who shrank from the contact as his wrist was caught. Then he descended feebly into the boat, and then had to be helped right forward, to sit down close to one of the blacks who was now holding on to the woodwork with a boat-hook. The other prisoners followed awkwardly enough in their irons, and took the places pointed out to them by one of the blacks who had been in charge of the boat. As the second of the party took his place next to Pete, he hung down his head and whispered: "Humpy says we're to make a dash for it and take the boat." Pete started; but the man, under the pretence of adjusting his irons, went on, with his head nearly in his comrade's lap: "T'others know. We shall push off into the stream, where he can't hit us with his pistols, and we can soon pitch the niggers overboard." "Silence, there!" shouted the overseer. The other men descended, and exchanged glances with their companions-- glances which Pete saw meant "Be ready!"--and his blood began to dance through his veins. Should he help, or shouldn't he? Yes; they were his fellows in adversity, and it was for liberty: he must--he would; and, with his heart beating hard, he prepared for the struggle, feeling that they must succeed, for a blow or two would send the men by them overboard, and a thrust drive the boat gliding swiftly up-stream, the man with the boat-hook having enough to do to hold on. "Young Nic Revel don't zeem to understand," thought Pete; "but he couldn't help us if he did." He had hardly thought this when, in obedience to an order from the overseer, the last man, Humpy Dee, tramped clumsily to the edge and seemed to hesitate, with the result that there was a sharp bark from one of the dogs right astern, and a chill ran through Pete's burning veins. "I forgot the dogs!" he said to himself. "Get down, fool!" cried the overseer, and he struck at the hesitating prisoner with the whip. It was all a feint on the part of Humpy to gain time and carry out his plan. He winced as the whip-lash caught him on his leg, and then, instead of descending slowly, leaped down right upon the black who held the boat to the stage by the hook. It was cleverly done, and acted as intended, for the black was driven over the side, and the prisoner's weight gave the boat the impetus required, sending it a little adrift into the stream, which began to bear it away, but not before the result of a little miscalculation had made itself evident. For Humpy Dee had not allowed for the weight and cumbersomeness of his fetters; neither had he given them credit for their hampering nature. He had leaped and suddenly thrust the black overboard, to hang clinging to the boat-hook; but he had been unable to check himself from following; and, as the boat yielded to his weight and thrust, he seemed to take a header over the bow, there was a tremendous splash, and the water was driven over those seated forward. The two blacks astern leaped up, and the overseer uttered a cry of rage; the water closed over Humpy Dee's head, while the dogs set up a chorus of baying as the boat glided steadily away. CHAPTER NINETEEN. "WHAT'LL MASSA SAY?" The scene taking place before him acted strangely upon Nic. It seemed to rouse him from his dreamy state, and awakened him to a wild pitch of excitement. He sprang to his feet, and was on the point of springing overboard to the man's help; but a touch from Pete upon the shoulder was enough: he sank down beneath its pressure, weak and helpless as a child. "What are you going to do?" whispered Pete. "Are you mad?" "Help! Save him! Can you stand like that and see the man drown before your eyes?" "What can I do, lad?" growled Pete angrily. "If I go over after him, it's to drown myself. These irons'll stop a man from zwimming, and take one to the bottom like a stone." "Ay, ay; ye can't do 'un," growled one of the other prisoners, in whom the desire for escaping died out on the instant. "Sit still, lad; sit still." But Pete stood with staring eyes, gazing wildly at the place where his enemy had disappeared; the veins in his forehead swelled, his lips parted, and he panted as he drew his breath, looking ready at any moment to leap overboard and make an effort to save his old companion's life. Meanwhile the overseer was shouting orders to his blacks ashore as well as to those in the boat, which was gliding faster up the stream, and the men laid down their guns and picked up and put out a couple of oars, the dogs barking frantically the while. "Pete Burge," whispered one of the men, "we must make friends now. Here's our chance; shall we take it?" "No, no," cried Pete furiously, but without taking his eyes from where Humpy had disappeared. "I cannot bear it," panted Nic to himself, as he once more sprang up; and before he could be stayed he dived out of the boat, rose, and struck out for the landing-stage. Pete shouted at him in his agony, and jumped overboard to save him, forgetting what was bound to happen, and going down like a stone, feet foremost, but rising to the surface again, to fight gallantly in spite of the weight of his irons, and strive to overtake Nic, who, unencumbered, was some yards away. But it proved to be as Pete had foreseen; there was the gallant will and the strength to obey it, but it was merely a spasmodic force which only endured a minute or two. Then the brave young swimmer's arms turned, as it were, to lead, the power to breast the strong current ceased, and he remained stationary for a moment or two, before being gradually borne backward, his efforts ceasing; while the men in the boat watched him and Pete, who, with the water quite to his nostrils, was swimming with all his strength, but only just able to keep the heavy fetters from dragging him to the bottom. "Two more on us going," said one of the men. "Here, Bob; come and help. You stop and grab 'em as soon as they're near." The man and the comrade he had addressed scrambled over the thwarts towards where the two blacks were rowing hard, but hardly holding the heavy boat against the powerful tide; and as soon as the fetters clanked, the dogs barked savagely and leaped up to meet them; but as the intelligent beasts saw the men seize a couple of oars and thrust them over the sides, they stopped short, panting. "All the better for you," growled one of the men to the dog glaring at him, "for I'd ha' choked you if you'd come at me.--Pull away, blackies." The additional oars had the right effect, for as the four men pulled with all their might the boat began to stem the current and shorten the distance between it and the two drowning men. But, in spite of his great strength, Pete was being mastered by the heavy weight of the irons, and was getting lower and lower in the water; while Nic's arms had ceased to move, and he was drifting with the tide. "Keep up; strike out, lads," cried the man in the bows, in agony. "We're coming fast now." It was not the truth, for the heavy boat was moving very slowly against the swift tide, and the swimmers' fate seemed to be sealed, as the man reached back, got hold of another oar, and thrust it out over the bows, ready for Pete to grasp as soon as he came within reach. "We shall be too late," groaned the man, with all his enmity against Pete forgotten in those wild moments of suspense. "Here, look out for the oar. Pete, lad, swim back. Oh! poor lad, he can't hear me. He's drownin'--he's drownin'." Pete could not hear, and if he had heard during his frantic efforts to reach Nic, he would not have heeded, for there was no room in the man's brain in those wild moments for more than that one thought--that he must save that poor, weak fellow's life. It takes long to describe, but in the real action all was condensed into less than a minute. Pete, who fought wildly, frantically, to keep his head above water, fought in vain, for his fettered legs were fast losing their power, and he was being drawn gradually lower and lower, till, after throwing his head back to gasp for a fresh breath, he straightened his neck again, with the water at his eyes, and saw that what he could not achieve the current had done for him. He made a wild, last effort, and caught with one hand at the arm just within reach; his fingers closed upon it with a grip of iron, and another hand caught desperately at his hair. Then the water closed over the pair, joined together in a death-grip, and the tide rolled them unresistingly up the stream. "Pull, pull!" yelled the man in the bows, as he reached out with his oar; but he could not touch the place where he saw the figures disappear. Quick as thought, though, and with the clever method of one accustomed to the management of a fishing-boat, the man changed his tactics. He laid the oar over the prow, treating the iron stem as a rowlock, and gave a couple of strokes with all his might, pulling the boat's head round, and bringing it well within reach of the spot where Nic's back rose and showed just beneath the surface. Then, leaving the oar, the man reached over, and was just in time to get a good hold, as the oar dropped from the bow into the river, and he was almost jerked out of the boat himself. "Hold hard, lads, and come and help," he yelled. The help came; and, with the dogs barking furiously and getting in every one's way, Nic and Pete, tightly embraced, were dragged over into the bottom of the boat, the blacks, as soon as this was done, standing shivering, and with a peculiar grey look about the lips. At that moment there was a distant hail from the landing-stage, and the big smith pulled himself together and hailed in reply. "Ah, look!" he cried; "you white fellow lose one oar. Quick, sharp! come and pull. Massa Saunders make trebble bobbery if we lose dat." The oars were seized, and with two of the prisoners helping to row, the oar was recovered from where it was floating away with the tide, the others trying what they could do to restore the couple, who lay apparently lifeless; while the dog which had behaved so strangely earlier in the day stood snuffing about Nic, ending by planting his great paws upon the poor fellow's chest, licking his face two or three times, and then throwing up his muzzle to utter a deep-toned, dismal howl, in which the others joined. "Say, um bofe dead," groaned the big smith. "Pull, boy; all pull you bess, and get back to the massa. Oh, lorimee! lorimee! what massa will say along wi' dat whip, all acause we drown two good men, and couldn't help it a bit. Oh, pull, pull, pull! Shub de boat along. What will massa say?" CHAPTER TWENTY. FISHING FOR MEN. Those with the boat had been too much occupied in their own adventure to heed what had taken place at the landing-stage; and, even had they glanced in that direction, the distance the swift tide had carried them up-stream would have made every movement indistinct. But busy moments had passed there, for the overseer was a man of action, and prompt to take measures toward saving the life of the drowning man. For a human life was valuable in those early days of the American colonies, especially the life of a strong, healthy slave who could work in the broiling sunshine to win the harvest of the rich, fertile soil. So, as the boat drifted away, he gave his orders sharply, and the black slaves, who had stood helplessly staring, rushed to the help of their companion, who was hanging by the boat-hook, half in the water, afraid to stir lest the iron should give way and the tide carry him off to where, as he well knew, there were dangers which made his lips turn grey with dread. The help came just as the poor fellow was ready to lose his hold and slip back into the river, and in another minute he was shivering on the stage. "Take hold of that boat-hook," cried the overseer, speaking with his eyes fixed upon one spot, where the water ran eddying and forming tiny whirlpools, and not daring to look round for fear of losing sight of the place where it seemed to him that his white slave had gone down like a stone; and this had kept him from giving much heed to the proceedings in the boat. One of the men seized the pole and waited for the next order. "He went down there," cried the overseer, pointing. "Sound with the pole, and try how deep it is." The man obeyed, the pole touching the muddy bottom about four feet below the surface. "That's right; jump in," cried Saunders. The man started, and then remained motionless, gazing piteously at his companions. "Do you hear? Quick!" roared the overseer. "There big 'gator, sah--'gator gar, sah," cried the man piteously. "Bah! In with you," cried the overseer fiercely, and he cracked his whip, with the result that the man lowered the pole again, and then half-slipped, half-jumped down into the water, which rose breast-high, and he had to hold on by the boat-hook to keep himself from being swept away. But the next moment he steadied himself. "There, wade out," cried Saunders; "quick, before it is too late. Quick, sir; do you hear?" He cracked his whip loudly as he spoke, and the man raised the pole after separating his legs to increase his support, as he leaned to his left to bear against the rushing tide, which threatened to sweep him from his feet. Then, reaching out, he thrust down the boat-hook again to get another support before taking a step farther from the staging. But it was in vain. The water deepened so suddenly that as he took the step the water rose to his nostrils, and he uttered a yell, for the current swept him from his feet to fall over sidewise, and the next moment lay, as it were, upon the surface, with only one side of his face visible; but he was not borne away. The other blacks, and even the overseer, stared in wonder, for there the man lay, with the tide rushing by him, anchored, as it were, in the stream, rising and falling gently like a buoy for a few moments before beginning to glide with the current. "It's of no use," said the overseer sharply; "the hound's dead before now. Clumsy fool! Two of you jump in, and one reach out to get hold of Xerxes; we must give the new fellow up." The men shrank, but they obeyed, lowering themselves into the water and joining hands, one of them taking hold of the end of the staging, while the other waded a step or two and reached out, as he clung to his fellow's extended hand till he was just able to get hold of the cotton jacket. That was sufficient; the black was drawn a trifle shoreward, and then came more and more, as if dragging with him whatever it was that had anchored him to the bottom. That mystery was soon explained, for the pole of the boat-hook, to which the poor fellow clung, appeared level with the surface, and as the drag was increased more and more of the pole appeared, till all three were close up to the piles; after which first one and then another climbed out to drag at the long stout staff, till, to the surprise of all, they found that what it was hitched into was the clothes of Humpy Dee, who had lain nearly where he had sunk, anchored by the weight of his irons, in some hole where the pressure of the current was not so great as at the surface. In another minute the heavy figure had been hauled upon the platform, to lie there apparently dead; while the blacks began, after their homely, clumsy fashion, to try and crush out any tiny spark of life which might remain, and kept on rolling the heavy body to and fro with all their might. "It's no good, boys," said the overseer, frowning down at the prisoner. "Keep on for a bit, though;" and he turned away to watch the coming of the boat, just as Pete sat up, looking dazed and strange, and Nic rose to his knees, and then painfully seated himself in his old place. "Better than I thought for," muttered the overseer. "One gone instead of three--pull, boys," he shouted. The blacks needed no telling, for they were exerting themselves to the utmost, and in a few minutes one of the blacks on the landing-stage caught the prow with the hook, and the boat was drawn alongside of the woodwork, the dogs having quietly settled themselves in their place behind the stern seat as soon as the two half-drowned men had shown signs of recovery. The overseer scanned the two dripping figures hard, uttered a grunt, and turned once more to where the blacks were busy still with the heavy figure of Humpy Dee, which they were rolling and rubbing unmercifully, with the water trickling between the boards, and the sunset light giving a peculiarly warm glow to the man's bronzed skin. "Well," cried the overseer, "is he quite dead?" "No, sah; am t'ink he quite 'livo," said one of the blacks. "Eh? What makes you think that?" "Him bit warm, massa--and just now him say _whuzz_, _whuzz_ when we rub um front." "No," said the overseer; "impossible. He was under the water too long. Here, what are you doing?" The black had laid his ear against the patient's breast, but he started up again. "Lissum; hear whever him dead, massa. You come, put your head down heah, and you hear um go _wob_, _wob_ berry soffly." Saunders bent down and laid his head against the man's bull-throat, to keep it there for a few moments. "No go _wob_, _wob_, sah?" cried the black. "You two and me gib um big shake. Um go den." "No, no; let him be," cried the overseer; and the blacks looked on in perfect silence till their tyrant rose slowly to his feet, scowling. "Clumsy brute," he said, "causing all this trouble and hindrance. Nearly drowned two men. There, two of you take him by his head and heels and drop him in." "Tie big 'tone to um head first, massa?" "What!" roared the overseer, so sharply that the black jumped to his feet. "What do you mean?" "Make um go to de bottom, sah, and neber come up no more." "Bah! you grinning black idiot. Didn't you tell me he was alive?" "Yes, sah; quite 'livo, sah." "Drop him in the boat, then, and hurry about it, or we shan't get up to the farm before the tide turns. There, four of you take him; and you below there, ease him down. Don't let him go overboard again, if you want to keep whole skins." The men seized the heavy figure by the hands and legs, and bearing it quite to the edge, lowered it down to the others, room being made at the bottom of the boat, where it was deposited with about as much ceremony as a sack of corn. Then, in obedience to another order, the blacks descended, and the overseer stepped down last, to seat himself with his back to the dogs; while the smith and his assistant once more took up their guns and their places as guards. Then the boat was pushed off. Four of the blacks seized the oars, the boat's head swung round, and the next minute, with but little effort, she was gliding rapidly up the muddy stream. It was dangerous work to begin talking, but as Nic sat there in silence, with his head growing clearer, and gazing compassionately at the prostrate figure, two of the prisoners put their heads together and began to whisper. "Close shave for old Humpy," said one. "Think he'll come round again?" "Dunno; but if he does, I'm not going to help in any more games about going off. This job has made me sick." "He won't want you to; this must have pretty well sickened him if he comes to." "Mind what you're saying. That there black image is trying to hear every word." "He can't understand. But I say, the gaffer didn't know how it happened, after all. Thought it was an accident." "So it was," said the other man, with a grim smile, "for old Humpy. Here, Pete, old man, how are you now?" Pete looked at the speaker in wonder, then nodded, and said quietly: "Bit stiff and achey about the back of the neck." "Mind shaking hands, mate?" said the man in a faint whisper. "What for?" said Pete sourly. "'Cause I like what you did, mate. It was acting like a man. But we're not friends over that other business of splitting on us about the salmon." "Better wait a bit, then, my lad," said Pete. "It aren't good to shake hands with a man like me." "But I say it is," said the other with emphasis. "The way you went overboard with them heavy irons on, to try and save young master here, sent my heart up in my mouth." Nic, who had sat listening moodily to the whispered conversation, suddenly looked up in a quick, eager way. "Say that again," he whispered huskily. "Say what agen?" "Did Pete Burge jump in to save my life?" "Course he did--like a man." "Oh!" gasped Nic, turning to look Pete wonderingly in the face. "Silence there!" roared the overseer savagely. "Do you think you've come out here for a holiday, you insolent dogs?" At the last words the three animals behind the speaker took it to themselves, and began to bark. "Down! Quiet!" roared the overseer, and the barking of the dogs and his loud command came echoing back from a wood of great overhanging trees, as the boat now passed a curve of the river. Nic glanced at the overseer, then to right and left of him, before letting his eyes drop on the swiftly-flowing river, to try and think out clearly the answers to a couple of questions which seemed to be buzzing in his brain: "Where are we going? How is this to end?" But there was no answer. All seemed black ahead as the rapidly-coming night. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. IN ALLIGATOR LAND. As the night grew darker, and Nic sat in the forepart of the boat in his drenched clothes, which at first felt pleasantly cool, and then by degrees grew colder until he shivered, his head grew clearer and he became more himself. He was able to grasp more fully his position and how hardly fate had dealt with him. It was clear enough now; he had been sent off in that terrible blunder as one of the salmon-poachers; and he was there, sold or hired to one of the colonists, to work upon a plantation until he could make his position known to some one in authority, and then all would be right. He felt that it would be of no use to appeal to this brutal slave-driver who had him and his fellow-unfortunates in charge. What he had to do was to wait patiently and make the best of things till then. His head was rapidly growing so clear now that he could piece the disconnected fragments of his experience together, few as they were, and broken up by his sufferings from the injuries he had received; and, as he sat there in the darkness, he became more calm, and rejoiced in the thought that he was growing stronger, and would, without doubt, soon be fully recovered and able to act. Till then he made up his mind to wait. When he had arrived at this point he began to think about his position in connection with the rough ne'er-do-wells who were his companions. He shivered involuntarily at the thought of being in such close touch with men of this class; but he softened a little as he dwelt upon the fact that, bad as he was, Pete Burge had behaved bravely, and that he had to thank him for twice-over saving his life. He might have said three times, but he was unaware of the patient attention he had received from the man during the feverish hours produced by his contusions and wound. But, still, there was a feeling of revulsion which made him shrink from contact with one whom he felt to be the cause of all his sufferings, and he hardened himself against the man more than against the others. Then, with a sigh of relief, he cast all thoughts of self away, after coming to the conclusion that, as soon as his father realised what had happened, he would never rest till the authorities had had him found and brought back, even if a ship was purposely despatched. For this thought was very comforting. He had only to wait, he felt, little thinking that the old Captain was lying in peril of his life from the genuine trouble which had come upon him, as he mourned over the loss of the son whom he believed to be dead, and for the recovery of whose body he had offered a heavy reward to the fishermen. For he said to Solly, "One of these days they will find him cast up on the shore." It was very dark; the cloudy sky seemed to be hanging low over the heads of those in the boat, as the men rowed on till the overseer made a change in his crew; the four blacks who had been rowing taking the places of those who had been guards and steersman, while the rowers took the muskets in turn. The fresh crew pulled steadily and well, and the boat glided on along the winding river, whose banks grew more and more wooded until they seemed to be going through a thick forest, whose closely-growing trees formed dense, high walls, above which there was a strip of dark, almost black, sky. Then another change was made, just when Nic was suffering from a fresh anxiety; for after he had proved to himself, by kneeling in the boat and touching him, that Humpy Dee was alive and regaining consciousness, his companions had suddenly grown very quiet, and the dread had assailed Nic that the man was dead, for he had been left to take his chance as far as the overseer was concerned; and when twice-over the prisoners had begun to trouble themselves about their comrade's state, Nic setting the example by kneeling down to raise Humpy's head, a stern command came from the stern of the boat, and this threat: "Look here, you fellows; if I hear any more talking or shuffling about there I shall fire." Nic felt that the man would act up to his threat; but after a time, when a groan came from Humpy, the whispering and movements recommenced in the efforts made to succour the sufferer. "I don't speak again," roared the overseer; and Nic started and shuddered, but felt fiercely indignant the next moment as he heard the ominous _click_! _click_! of a pistol-lock from out of the darkness astern. At last came the order for a fresh change of rowers, and four of the captives went climbing over the thwarts, with their irons clanking and striking against the seats as they took their places, all being men who had been accustomed to the handling of an oar. Nic took advantage of the noise to sink upon his knees beside Humpy in the bottom of the boat to try if he could not do something for him; he was no longer the hated, brutal ruffian, but a suffering fellow-creature. As Nic felt about in the dark he found that the man had somehow shifted his position and slightly rolled over, so that his face was partly in the water which had collected for want of baling; and doubtless, in his helpless, semi-insensible state, but for Nic's efforts, Humpy Dee's career would after all have been at an end. It was only a fresh instance of how strangely we are all dependent upon one another, and the way in which enemies perform deeds which they themselves would previously have looked upon as impossible. And without doubt big, brutal Humpy Dee would have stared in wonder, could he have opened his eyes in daylight, to see what took place in the pitch-darkness--to wit, the feeble, suffering young man, whom he had struck down and tried to drown in the Devon salmon-pool, kneeling in the wash-water, making a pillow of his knees for his companion's rough, coarse head. Still, for hours this was Nic's position, while the boat was rowed by the white slaves along the winding river, until another change was made, the blacks taking the oars, when Pete, being the first of the rowers to come back to his seat, found what had taken place, and insisted upon relieving Nic of his task. "On'y to think of it, zur," he said; "on'y to think o' your doing o' that, and you so bad!" Nic said nothing, but had to be helped back to his seat, the position he had occupied having cramped him; and then once more he sat gazing at the great black wall opposite to him as the blacks sent the boat along, till suddenly, about midnight, there was heard a deep bark from somewhere ashore. The three dogs, which had been curled up asleep, sprang to their feet and answered in chorus, when another chorus rose from the right and came nearer and nearer. Then the black wall on the same side dropped away, and amidst the baying of the great hounds the boat's speed was slackened, and it was turned into a narrow creek. Here the oars were laid in, and progress was continued for about a hundred yards by a couple of the blacks poling the boat along towards a light which suddenly appeared, the bearer hailing and coming alongside to begin talking to the overseer. It was dark enough still; but another lanthorn was brought, the prisoners were ordered to step out, and were then marched to a barn-like place, where, as they entered a door, Nic felt the soft rustling of Indian-corn leaves beneath his feet. "In with you, boys," cried the overseer; and the three dogs, and the others which had saluted them, scampered in. "Watch 'em, boys, and give it to them if they try to get away. There, lie down." The man held up the lanthorn he had taken as he spoke, and Nic saw that seven of the great hounds settled themselves in a heap of leaves close to the door, while quite a stack was close to where he was standing with his companions. "There's your bed, my lads," cried the overseer. "You heard what I said. Lie down, all of you, at once. There will be a sentry with a musket outside, and you can guess what his orders are." The man strode out; the door was banged to, there was the noise of a big bar being thrown across and the rattling of a padlock, followed by the clink of fetters as their wearers lay down in the heap of sweet-smelling corn-stalks and leaves; and for a few moments no one spoke. Nic had sunk down in the darkness, glad to be in a restful posture, and began to wonder whether Humpy Dee had been carried in by the blacks, for he had been one of the first to leave the boat, and had seen hardly anything by the light of the lanthorns. "Poor wretch!" he sighed. "I hope he is not dead." Just then one of the other men said, in the broad Devon burr: "Zay, lads, bean't they going to give uz zum'at to eat?" "Brakfus-time," said another. "Zay, Humpy, how is it with ye? Not thuzty, are you? Oughtn't to be, after all that water." "I'm going to make zumun pay for all this," came in the man's familiar growl. "Why didn't you get hold o' me and pull me in? Zet o' vools. Had your chance; and we might ha' got away." "Why, it was all your fault," said another. "We was waitin' for you. What did you go and stop zo long under water for?" "Did I?" said Humpy confusedly. "Course you did. We was too good mates to go and leave you behind." There was a heavy bang at the door, as if from the butt of a musket, and the dogs leaped up and began to growl. "Lie down, boys," cried a thick voice, the words sounding as if spoken through a big keyhole. "An' I say, you chaps, look heah; de massa say you make a row in dah I got to shoot." "All right, blackie," said one of the prisoners; "don't shoot. Good-night, boys. I'm going to sleep." Just at that moment Nic started, for there was a snuffling noise close to him, the leaves rustled, and he felt the hot breath of one of the dogs on his face. But it was a friendly visit, for the great brute turned round two or three times to trample down the dense bed of leaves, and settled itself into a comfortable curve, with its big head upon the poor fellow's chest, making Nic wonder whether it was the dog which had been friendly before. He risked it: raising his hand, he laid it gently between the animal's soft ears, and there was a low muttering sound that was a big sigh of satisfaction, not a growl; and Nic felt as if the companionship of the dog was pleasant in his terrible loneliness and despair. It was warm and soothing, too, and seemed like the beginning of something hopeful-- he knew not what. Then he began to think of home, and a sensation of prayerful thankfulness came over him as he felt that his head was growing clearer. The next minute all trouble, pain, and weariness were forgotten in a deep and dreamless sleep. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. REACHING THE PLANTATION. A deep growl and a loud burst of barking roused Nic Revel from his deep sleep, free from fever, calm and refreshed, to lie listening to the dogs, wondering what it all meant. The sun was up, and horizontal rays were streaming in between ill-fitting boards and holes from which knots had fallen consequent upon the shrinking of the wood. There was a feeling of cool freshness in the air, too, that was exhilarating; but for a few moments Nic could not make out where he was. Then the slight confusion passed away, as he heard the rustling of leaves, and turned to see his companions stirring and yawning, while at the same moment a dog's great head was butted at him as if its owner were a playful sheep, and it then drew back, swinging its tail slowly from side to side. The next minute the heavy bar was swung down, the great padlock rattled, and the door was drawn open, to let in a flood of light, followed by the two blacks who had fitted on the irons, but who now bore a huge loaf of bread and a pitcher of water; while two more blacks, each shouldering a musket, closed in behind them, to stand as if framed in the doorway. "Heah, jump up," cried the big smith. "Make has'e; eat your brakfas' 'fore you go to de boat." As he spoke he turned an empty barrel with its head upward, banged the loaf down upon it, drew a knife from its sheath in his belt, and counted the prisoners over with the point of the blade. He then drew a few imaginary lines upon the top of the loaf, paused to rub his woolly head with the haft, looking puzzled and as if cutting the loaf into as many pieces as there were prisoners bothered him, and ended by making a dash at his task. He cut the loaf in half, then divided it into quarters, and went on working hard as he made these eighths, and finally sixteenths. By this time the top of the barrel was covered. "Now, den, 'tan' in a row," he cried importantly. The men scowled, but they were hungry, and obeyed, the black sticking the point of his knife into the chunks he had cut, and handing a piece to each in turn, beginning with Humpy Dee, who did not seem any the worse for his immersion, and ending with Nic. After this he began again with Humpy, went down the line again, and had begun for the third time when it suddenly struck him that there would not be enough to go round, and he snatched the piece back. Humpy Dee uttered a furious growl, and made a step forward to recover it; but the big black presented the point of the knife at him and shouted: "Ah, what dat? You back, sah, 'fore set de dog at you." Humpy growled like one of the beasts, and resumed his place in the line, and the black went on calmly dividing the remaining pieces, distributed them, and called up the dogs to catch what remained. The water was then passed round, the blacks went off leaving the sentries in position, and the prisoners sat amongst the Indian-corn leaves, to eat their breakfast ravenously enough. Before they had finished, the barking of the dogs announced the coming of the overseer, who came in, whip in hand, to run his eye over his prisoners, nodding his satisfaction as he saw that he was not going back minus any of them, and went out again. Then, as Nic sat eating the remainder of his bread, the entry was darkened a little, and he saw a couple of women peer in--one a middle-aged, comely body, the other a young girl. There was a pitying expression upon their faces; and, obeying a sudden impulse, Nic stood up to go to speak to them, for it seemed to him that his chance had come. But at his first movement Humpy Dee leaped up, with his fetters clinking, to intercept him, a sour look upon his face, and the frightened women ran away. "No, you don't," growled Humpy; "not if I knows it, m'lad." "You, sah--you go back and eat your brakfas', sah," came from the door; and Humpy turned sharply, to see that their guards were standing, each with his musket steadied against a doorpost, taking aim at him and Nic. "Yah, you old pot and kettle," cried Humpy scornfully; "you couldn't hit a haystack;" but he went back to his place and sat down, Nic giving up with a sigh and following his example. Half-an-hour after the overseer was back with the dogs, the order was given, and the prisoners marched out, to find the blacks waiting. Nic saw now that there was a roomy log-house, fenced round with a patch of garden; and in a group by the rough pine-wood porch a burly-looking man was standing with the two women; and half-a-dozen black slaves were at the far end of the place, each shouldering a big clumsy hoe, and watching, evidently with the greatest interest, the prisoners on their way to the boat. In his hasty glance round, Nic could see that the farm was newly won from the wilderness, and encumbered with the stumps of the great trees which had been felled, some to be used as logs, others to be cut up into planks; but the place had a rough beauty of its own, while the wistful glances that fell upon him from the occupants of the porch sent a thrill through his breast, and raised a hope that if ever he came that way he might find help. But his heart sank again as his eyes wandered to the black labourers, and then to a couple of huge dogs similar to those which followed behind with the overseer; for he knew that he was among slave-owners, and in his despondency he could not help asking himself what chance he would have, an escaped prisoner, if he tried to get away. He had little time for thought, but he took in the surroundings of the place quickly, noting that the house and out-buildings stood well raised upon a mound, round one side of which the creek they had turned into ran; while through the trees some little distance away there was the river, and across it the forest, rising from the farther bank, not black and forbidding now, but beautiful in the early morning sunshine. The overseer shouted a hearty good-bye to the people by the porch, and there was a friendly reply, as they marched on to where the boat lay fastened to a stump; the dogs sprang in to retake their places, barking their farewell to the others which trotted down to look on; a big basket of provisions was next put on board by the smith and his assistant, and then the prisoners were sent forward to their old places, Pete glancing once at Nic, whose eyes were wandering here and there; but Nic avoided the glance. "Now you, sir," cried the overseer; "don't stand staring about. In with you." Nic obeyed as soon as there was room, and the overseer took his place astern. A minute later they were being poled along the creek, which was here and there overarched by the spreading boughs of the trees, and soon after they were out in the main stream, with the blacks rowing steadily in water which seemed to be very slack; the little settlement was seen as a bright spot for a few minutes, and then disappeared behind the trees, which began upon the left bank, and became once more a great green wall to shut out everything else. And then hour after hour the boat was rowed onward, the river winding far less than on the previous evening, and seeming to form a highroad into the interior, upon which they were the only travellers. It varied little in its width at first, but towards afternoon Nic noted that it was beginning to narrow considerably; but it ran always through forest. As thoughts of escape would intrude, and the poor fellow scanned the banks, he quickly grasped the fact that if an attempt were made it must be by the river, for the forest on either side seemed to be impassable, and how far it ran inland was impossible to say. A change was made every hour or so, the prisoners taking their turn with the oars; and before the morning was far advanced the overseer ordered Nic into one of the places, watching him intently as he obeyed and fell into stroke at once, rowing hard for a few minutes in the hot sunshine without a murmur. Then all at once the trees on the bank began to sail round, the oar slipped from his hand, and he fell backward into Pete's arms. When he opened his eyes again he was sitting forward in the bottom of the boat, with one of the blacks supporting him and splashing water from over the side in his face, while the overseer stood looking down grimly. "You needn't take another turn," he said gruffly; "I wanted to see whether you could do your share." The rest of the day Nic sat watching their progress, a good deal of it through the gloomy shades of a great swamp, through which the river ran at times almost in twilight, the faint current being marked by the difference in colour and the freedom from the vegetation which marked the waters of the great lagoon spreading away to right and left among the trees, which grew and fell and rotted as far as eye could penetrate. The vegetation, was rich, but it seemed to be that of a dying forest which had been inundated by the stream, for bank there was none. Huge cypresses stood out at every angle, many having fallen as far as they could, but only to be supported by their fellows. And as the boat went swiftly on in obedience to the sturdily-tugged oars, Nic forgot his troubles in wonder at the strangeness of the scene through which he passed, for it was dreary, horrible, and beautiful all in one. Rotting vegetation supplied the rich, muddy soil from which rose vine and creeper to climb far on high, and then, finding no further support, throw themselves into the air, to hang and swing where the bright sunshine penetrated. Wherever it was shadowy the trees were draped with hanging curtains of moss; while all around Nic looked down vistas of light and shade, whose atmosphere was now golden, now of a score of different delicious greens. There was something so new and strange about the swamp that it had a fascination for Nic, and he was leaning over the bows, resting his chin upon his hand, when he had his first glance at one of its inhabitants; for, as the boat was being steered past a moss-covered, rotting stump, the gnarled wood suddenly seemed to become animated, a portion of it rising a little and then gliding away with a heavy splash into the water. Before he could realise what it was, there was another movement just beyond, and this time he made out plainly enough the gaping mouth, prominent eyes, and rugged back of a great alligator, followed by its waving tail, as it dived down from a cluster of tree-roots out of sight. After this the reptiles became common enough, for the swamp swarmed with them, and Nic realised that it might be a strangely-perilous task to make his way through the forest unless provided with a boat. The men whispered to themselves as the reptiles scuttled about in their eagerness to escape, and shook their heads; and as Nic turned from observing them to gaze aft he became conscious of the fact that the overseer was watching them with a grim smile upon his lips, reading their thoughts respecting the dangers of an attempt to escape. The dogs were evidently familiar with the sight of the reptiles, rarely paying any heed to them save when the boat approached quietly and aroused a sleeper, which in its surprise raised its great jaws menacingly, when one of the dogs would set up the hair about its neck, growl, and make a savage snap at the reptile; and after a while the prisoners grew in turn accustomed to the loathsome-looking creatures. "But we might seize the boat," thought Nic, "in the case of no help coming;" and he sat there more and more grasping the fact that after all he might be forced to depend upon the aid and companionship of those around him, and be compelled to master the dislike and repulsion which they inspired. Another stoppage at a woodland farm for the night, and then on again for a fresh day's toil as monotonous as the last. At the different changes made, the rowers left their oars dripping with perspiration, for the swamp seemed breathless and the heat intense; but towards evening a faint breeze sprang up, and instead of its growing darker there was a lightening in the appearance of the place; the setting sun sent a red glow among the trees, and then they passed out of the forest into a lovely, dreamy, open country, stretching for miles and miles towards where a range of hills ran right across their course, beyond which, pale orange by the fading light, another range of greater height appeared. Soon after they passed the mouth of a clear stream, and at the end of another mile the boat was turned suddenly off to their right into a little river of the clearest water, which ran meandering through a lightly-wooded slope rising towards the hills; and as Nic was gazing at the fairy-like scene, whose atmospheric effects seemed, even in his despondent state, far more beautiful than anything he had ever seen at home, the boat swept round a curve whose banks were thickly set with trees, and once more there was a human habitation in sight, in the shape of a well-built, farm-like house upon a knoll, and the agitation amongst the dogs warned the prisoners that here was their resting-place for the night. The next minute, as the dogs were barking, the boat was steered close inshore, and the brutes bounded over into the shallow water, to scramble up the bank, and set off as fast as they could go towards the house, from which figures could be seen issuing; and at last, as Nic scanned the signs of cultivation around, the growing crops roughly fenced, and the out-buildings, the thought struck him that this might be their destination. While he was wondering whether this were so, the boat was run into a little creek only big enough to let it pass for about a couple of hundred yards before it grounded where a track came down to some posts; and as the boat was secured to one of these the overseer sprang ashore to meet a tall, sun-browned, grey-haired man, whose keen eyes were directed towards the bows of the boat. "Back again, then, Saunders!" he said sharply. "Well, what sort of a lot do they seem?" "Rough, but strong," replied the overseer; "all but one young fellow who has been knocked about, but he seems as if he'll soon come round." "Like so many horses or bullocks," said Nic to himself bitterly, "and I am the one with broken knees." CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. NIC'S APPEAL. "This, then, is my owner," thought Nic, scanning the settler narrowly as he stood apart talking in a quick, decisive manner to the overseer, who seemed to treat him with great respect, while the blacks stood apart waiting for their orders. These were not long in coming, for the man turned sharply upon them. "Clear the boat," he said; and the blacks ran to the bows, a couple of them holding the vessel steady while the prisoners stepped clanking out, to stand in a row on the bank, with their new master scanning them sharply. "Here, Saunders," he said, "why is that boy not in irons?" "That is the sick one, sir. Weak as a rat." "Oh!--Here, what's the matter with you, boy?" cried the settler. "No disease, have you?" "No, sir," said Nic, speaking out firmly, for his time seemed to have come. "I was beaten about the head, and received a wound from a cutlass on the night these men were seized during an outrage, and--" "That will do. I don't want a sermon," said the settler brutally. "Nor I to preach one, sir; but I was seized with these men by mistake." "Ah, yes," said the settler, frowning; "some bad mistakes of this sort are made. That will do." "But I appeal to you, sir. I was hurried on board a ship while stunned, and I only recovered my senses when I reached this place." "Then you were a long time without them, my lad; but you are wrong." "I do not understand you, sir." "Well, I'll tell you," said the settler, sharply. "You lost your senses before you got into trouble." "I was only defending my father's property, sir," cried Nic passionately. "I am a gentleman--a gentleman's son." "Yes, we get a good many over here in the plantation, my lad; they are the biggest scamps sent over to rid the old country of a nuisance; but we do them good with some honest work and make decent men of them." "But I assure you, sir, I am speaking the truth. I appeal to you, men. Tell this gentleman I was not one of your party." "Hor, hor," roared Humpy, derisively. "What a sneak you are, Nic Revel. Take your dose like we do--like a man." "I appeal to you, Pete Burge. Tell this gentleman that I was brought out here by mistake." "Yes, it was all a mistake, master," cried the man. Humpy roared with laughter again. "Don't you believe him, master," he cried; "that there Pete Burge is the biggest liar we have in our parts. He'd say anything." "Men, men!" cried Nic, wildly, to the others; "speak the truth, for Heaven's sake." "Course we will," cried Humpy quickly. "It's all right, master. Don't you show more favour to one than another. We was all took together after a bit o' poaching and a fight. Youngster there got a crack on the head which knocked him silly, and he's hatched up this here cockamaroo story in his fright at being sent out. Do him good--do all on us good, and we're all glad to ha' got with such a good master; aren't we, lads?" "That will do," said the settler. "You have got too much grease on your tongue, my man." "But, sir," cried Nic. "Silence!" "You will let me write to my friends?" "We don't want you to write to us, mate," cried Humpy grinning; "we can't none on us read. You can tell us what you want to say." "Silence, you, sir," said the settler, sternly; "I keep a cat here, and that man who saw to your irons knows how to use it. Hold your tongue, once for all." "Oh, all right master; I on'y--" "Silence!" Humpy gave his mouth a slap, as if to shut it, and the settler turned to Nic. "Look here, young man," he said; "I have only your word for your story, and it seems likely enough to be as your fellow-prisoner says, something hatched up from fear. You are sent out here for your good." "You don't believe me, sir?" cried Nic, wildly. "Not a word of it," replied the settler. "We get too much of that sort of thing out here. Every man, according to his own account, is as innocent as a lamb. You were sent out of your country, and came in a king's ship. You are assigned to me for a labourer, and if you--and all of you," he cried, turning to the others, "behave well, and work well, you'll find me a good master. You shall be well fed, have decent quarters and clothes, and though you are slaves I won't make slaves of you, but treat you as well as I do my blacks. Look at them; they're as healthy a set of men as you can see." The blacks grinned and seemed contented enough. "That's one side of the case--my part," continued the settler; "now for the other. I've had a deal of experience with such men as you are, and I know how to treat them. If you play any pranks with me, there's the lash. If you attack me I'll shoot you down as I would a panther. If you try to escape: out north there are the mountains where you'll starve; out south and east there is the swamp, where the 'gators will pull you down and eat you, if you are not drowned or stifled in the mud; if you take to the open country those bloodhounds will run you to earth in no time. Do you hear?" he said meaningly, "run you to earth; for when they have done there'll be nothing to do but for some of my blacks to make a hole for you and cover you up. Now, then, you know what's open to you. Your country has cast you out; but we want labour here; and, rough and bad as you are, we take you and make better men of you." "Thank ye, master," cried Humpy; "that's fair enough, mates." The settler gave him a look which made the man lower his eyes. "Now then," said the settler, "I am going to begin, and begin fairly with you.--Samson." "Yes, massa," cried the big black. "Take off their irons.--And if you all behave yourselves you'll never have to wear them again." The basket was at hand; the assistant brought out the little anvil, and the task of filing and then drawing out the rivets began, with the dogs looking on. "As for you, my lad," said the settler, "I can see you look weak and ill; you can take it easy for a few days till you get up your strength." "But you will make some inquiries, sir?" pleaded Nic. "Not one, boy. I know enough. I take the word of the king's people; so say no more." He turned his back upon his white slave, and it was as if the old confusion of intellect had suddenly come back: Nic's brain swam, black specks danced before his eyes, and he staggered and would have fallen but for Pete Burge's arm, as the man caught him and whispered: "Hold up, Master Nic; never say die!" CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. PETE'S APPEAL. "Aren't you a bit hard on me, Master Nic?" said Pete, busy at his task in the plantation of hoeing the weeds, which seemed to take root and begin to grow again directly they were cut down. He did not look up, but spoke with his head bent over his work, conscious as he was that they might be keenly watched. "I have said nothing harsh to you," said Nic coldly. "No, zir; but I thought that when you got a bit better, zeeing as we're both in the zame trouble, working together like them niggers, you might ha' got a bit more friendly." "Friendly!" said Nic bitterly. "I don't mean reg'lar friendly, but ready to say a word to a man now and then, seeing how he wants to help you." "You can't help me," said Nic sadly. "I seem to be tied down to this weary life for always, and for no fault of mine--no fault of mine." "And it's no fault o' mine, Master Nic. You don't believe it, but I couldn't help coming that night; and I did try all I could to keep Humpy Dee from hurtin' you." "Don't talk about it, please." "No, zur, I won't; but you're hot and tired. You haven't got your strength up yet, though you are a zight better. Wish I could do all the work for you. Here, I know." They were hoeing a couple of rows of corn, and Pete was some feet ahead of his companion, who looked at him wonderingly, as, after a quick glance round, he stepped across and back to where Nic was toiling. "Quick," he said, "you get on to my row and keep moving your hoe and resting till I ketch up." "But--" began Nic. "Quick," growled Pete fiercely; and he gave the lagger a sharp thrust with his elbow. "If they zee us talking and moving, old Zaunders'll come across." That meant a fierce bullying, as Nic knew, and he hesitated no longer, but stepped into Pete's row. "I don't like this; it is too full of deceit," said Nic. "You will be blamed for not doing more work." "Nay; I shan't," replied Pete, "because I shall work harder. We're a-going to do it this way; they won't notice it, and if I keep pulling you up a bit level with me it'll make your work easier." "But I have no right to let you." "'Taren't nought to do wi' you; it's for the zake of the old country. When you get stronger and more used to the hoeing you'll do more than I can, p'raps, and help me." For the prisoners had been compelled to settle down at the plantation; and men who had never been used to regular hard toil, but had lived by fishing and salmon-spearing, and any odd task which offered, now slaved away among the sugar-canes or the Indian-corn, the rice cultivation being allotted to the blacks. The settler had kept his word as to the behaviour to his white servants, treating them with what he considered stern justice; but every effort Nic had made to obtain a hearing failed, the last producing threats which roused the young man's pride, and determined him to fight out the cruel battle as fate seemed to have ordained. Three months had passed since the boat reached the place that night, and there had been little to chronicle, for the prisoners' life had been most monotonous, embraced as it was in rising early, toiling in the plantation in the hot sunshine all the day, with the regular halts for meals, and the barn-like shed at night, with the men's roughly-made bunks, a blanket, and a bag of husks of Indian-corn. The life suited Nic, though, for after the first fortnight he rapidly began to gain strength, and soon after he was sent out with the rest of the men. There had been no open trouble; the prisoners shared the same building, and their meals were served out to them together; but there was a complete division between them which was kept up whenever possible; and one day out in the field Pete began about it to Nic, who took no heed of either party. "Zee Humpy Dee look at me, Master Nic?" said Pete. "Yes." "Know why, don't you?" "No." "You do: I telled you. He zays, as you heered, that I set the zailors on 'em to get 'em brought out here." Nic said nothing. "He means to kill me one o' these days. He'll hit me on the head, or pitch me into the river, or zomething; and the others won't interfere." Nic looked up at the speaker quickly. "Comes hard on me," continued Pete. "I never done nothing, and they keeps me off, and don't speak; and you don't, Master Nic, zo I zeem all alone like. It makes me feel zometimes as if I must make mates o' the blacks, but I s'pose they wouldn't care for me. Wish I'd got drowned." Nic raised his head to look in the man's face; but the old trouble rankled in his breast. His heart would not go out to him, fellow-sufferers though they were. It was so several times over, Pete trying hard to show what goodwill he could under their painful circumstances; but it was not until that day out in the corn-rows, when Pete helped him with his work at a time when the heat was trying his barely-recovered strength, that Nic felt that perhaps there was some truth in the man's story. At any rate, he was showing himself repentant if guilty, and the prisoner recalled how Pete had nursed him and without doubt had saved his life. Pete went on hoeing till he had worked level with Nic, and then he worked harder to get as far ahead as he could before slipping back to his own row, for Nic to return to his with once more a good start, and a feeling of gratitude for his companion's kindness, which softened his voice next time he spoke, and delighted Pete, who began talking at once. "Know where they keep the boat, Master Nic?" he said, as they worked away. "No. Do you?" A few hours earlier Nic would have said, "No," and nothing more. "Think I do," said Pete, brightening up. "I mean to get it out of the niggers zomehow. We never zee it go after they've been out in it. They tie it up at night, and next morning it's always gone." "Yes," said Nic; "I have noticed that." "It's that Zamson and old Xerxes who take it away zomewhere in the night, and walk or zwim back." "Very likely, Pete." "Yes, Master Nic; that's it; but keep on hoeing. I've laid awake nights thinking about it, for we must have that boat. I don't mean Humpy Dee and his lot when I zay `we,' because you will go off wi' me if I zee a chance?" "I--I think not, Pete." "Master Nic!" "Well, yes, then; I will." "Hab, my lad; you zeem to ha' put life into a man. There's zummat to live for now. I've thought and thought till I've felt zick; but that's the on'y way. I could risk running for it; but there's the dogs--the dogs--Pst! look out!" The warning was needed, for there were steps coming in their direction, and directly after the overseer strode up. "I thought so," he said; "I've had my eye on you--you scoundrel! Every now and then your hoe has stopped, and I could tell from your manner that you were talking, and wasting your time. Here are you a good six feet behind this weak young fellow. Get on, and catch up to him." Nic felt stunned, and he turned to speak and exculpate his fellow-slave; but there was such an agonised, imploring look in Pete's eyes that he was silent, and felt compelled to join in the little deception. "Yes," said the overseer, "a good six feet behind you, my lad, when it ought to be the other way on. Get on, you, sir, get on." "Yes, zur; zoon pull up, zur." "Zur and zoon!" cried the overseer. "Bah! what a savage burr you have." He went on, followed by one of the two dogs which accompanied him, the other hanging back to look up at Nic with its tail wagging slowly, till its absence was noticed and a shrill whistle rang out, which fetched it along with a rush, doubtless caused by recollections of the whip. "Oh, Pete!" whispered Nic reproachfully. "It's all right, lad," said the man, laughing merrily. "What a game it was. I didn't mind a bit." "I did." "Then don't, Master Nic, zur. I can't have you wear yourself out. We've got to 'scape, my lad, and the boat's the thing; but if you could get t'other two dogs as friendly as that one, we'd make for the woods. But anyhow, you've got to grow as strong as me; we can't do nothing without. Master Nic--" "Yes." "If it was the last words I'd got to zay, I did fight for you that night, and it waren't my fault you was took." "I begin to believe it now, Pete," was the reply. "Do, zur: do try hard. I aren't a bragger, Master Nic, but it's just truth what I zay. I want to get you back again to the old country; and I can't think o' nought else night or day. If I can get you off, and come with you, o' course I should like; but if I can't, and I can get you off--there, I'll lie down and die to do it, lad. But look here, we must only trust ourselves. If the other lot, who are making some plan of their own, knew it, they'd tell upon us and spoil us. Master Nic, can't you believe in me!" Nic was silent for a few moments as he turned to look in the man's eyes. "Yes," he said at last; "I do believe in you." "And you'll trust me, zur?" Again there was a momentary hesitation before Nic answered, "Yes." "Hoe, Master Nic, hoe," whispered Pete excitedly; "he's been watching us, and he's sent the dogs at us for not being at work." As proof thereof the two fierce-looking brutes came rushing down one of the rows, open-mouthed, and Pete raised his hoe as if to strike. "Me first, Master Nic," panted Pete. "I aren't afeared. Let him do what he likes after; I'll kill one or both on 'em before they shall touch you." At that moment there was a savage growling from the dogs not thirty yards away, and they came rushing at the poor fellows as hard as they could tear. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE. A LURKING PERIL. In obedience to the order which had despatched them, the two well-trained bloodhounds of the overseer tore on till they were about to bound upon the prisoners, when a sharp, shrill whistle arrested their rush on the instant, and they stopped, growling fiercely, their white teeth menacing, and their eyes red, as with a smouldering fire. The next moment a different note was blown from a distance, a shrill, chirruping note which made the dogs turn and bark. Then one of them set off at a steady trot, while the other, as if its duty were done, approached Nic in the most friendly way, with its tail waving from side to side. The whistle chirruped again, and the dog gave vent to a sharp bark, as much as to say, "All right, I'm coming--" and bounded after its companion. "Well, we're out of that job, Master Nic. I did wonder at that dog coming at you zo fierce." "Set at me, Pete," said Nic quietly, "and education was stronger than nature. Keep on working now, and pray let me do my hoeing myself." Pete grunted, and was silent, as he chopped away with his hoe till a horn was blown up at the house, when the tools were shouldered, and, hot and weary, the two companions trudged back to their barrack, to partake of their evening meal together, Humpy Dee and his party sitting quite aloof, for the feud was stronger than ever. From that day a change seemed to have come over Nic. It was partly due to the feeling of returning health, but as much to his growing belief in Pete's sincerity, and to the conviction that under the fellow's rough shell there was an earnest desire to serve him and help him to escape from his terrible position. The despondency to which he had given way seemed cowardly now, and as the days rolled on he worked as one works who is determined to make the best of his position. All the same, though, he joined heart and soul with Pete in the plans made for getting away. Drawn closer together as they were now, the subject was more and more discussed, and in the long talks they had in whispers of a night, they could not help dwelling on the difficulties they would have to encounter even if they did manage to escape. "But we will, Master Nic; you zee if we don't. They both talk about shooting us, and that zets me up. I don't want to hurt anybody; but when a man zays he's going to fire at me as if I was a wild beast, I don't feel to mind what I do to him. Don't you be downhearted; we shall do it yet." "But," said Nic, "it is the getting taken in a ship if we manage to find our way to the coast." "If we find our way? We've on'y to get that boat. The river will show us the way down to the zea; and as to getting away then, all we've got to do is to try and find a ship that wants men." "They will not take us, Pete; we shall be looked upon as criminals." "Not if the skipper wants men," said Pete, laughing softly. "Long as a man can work hard, and is strong, and behaves himself, he won't ask any questions." The time went on, and there seemed to be no likelihood of any captain asking questions; for in spite of keeping a sharp watch, neither Nic nor Pete could obtain the information they wanted. The boat seemed to disappear in the most mysterious way after being used by the settler or his overseer, and Nic grew more and more puzzled, and said so to his companion. "Yes, it gets over me zometimes, Master," said Pete; "but one has no chance. You see, there's always people watching you. It aren't as if it were on'y the masters and the dogs, and the niggers who are ready to do anything to please old Zaunders; there's old Humpy Dee and the others. Humpy's always on the lookout to do me a bad turn; and he hates you just as much. He's always thinking we're going to get away, and he means to stop it." "And this all means," said Nic, with a sigh, "that we must be content to stay as we are." "Don't mean nothing o' the kind," said Pete shortly. "It's a nice enough place, and there's nothing I should like better than staying here a bit, if we could go about the river and swamp and woods, fishing and shooting, and hunting or trapping; but one gets too much zun on one's back, and when it's always chopping weeds with a hoe, and the weeds grow faster than you can chop, one gets tired of it. Pretty country, Master Nic; most as good as home, only zun is a bit too warm." Nic sighed. "That's 'cause you wants to write letters and get 'em sent, Master Nic, I know; but don't you worry 'bout that. You can't send letters here like you do at home, so it aren't no use to worry about what you can't do. Worry 'bout finding the boat, dear lad; that's better than letters." "I have worried about it," said Nic, "but it is of no use till we get a chance to go and wander about to try and discover where it is kept." "And that the skipper and old Zaunders won't let us do, you zee," said Pete quietly. "They're a wicked pair, both on 'em. Might let us loose a bit on Zundays; but not they. Zunday and week-days all the zame. They've got us, and they mean to have their penn'orth out on us. Never thought as I should have all my strength turned into sugar for some one else to eat. There, work away; old Humpy's watching us, and he'll go and tell the skipper we're hatching eggs." Nic smiled, for his companion's good temper and patience were contagious, but he could not repress a sigh from time to time as he thought of home; and the beauty of the country, the waving fields of tasselled Indian-corn or beautiful sugar-cane, with the silver river beyond, the glorious slopes leading up to the distant blue mountains, and the gloomy, green, mysterious attraction of the swampy forest enhancing its attractions to an explorer, did not compensate for the absence of liberty, though Nic was fain to confess that the plantation would have been a glorious place for a few months' visit. The blacks were not friendly, as Nic soon found; but he attributed it to the stern orders they had received; but now and then one or another made a little advance, by offering, on the sly, fish or flesh in the shape of bird or 'possum which he had caught or trapped during the moonlight nights. For Saunders seemed to pay no heed to the black slaves slipping away of a night on some excursion. "'Nuff to make a man wish for a kettle o' tar, or a pot o' black paint," said Pete one day. "What for, sir? Just to put on a coat of it, and change the colour of one's skin. They'd treat us better than they do. Makes me wish I was a nigger for a bit, so long as I could wash white when I got away." "Master Nic," said Pete one night when they were alone in their bunks, "I aren't going to share that bit o' 'possum." "What bit of 'possum?" asked Nic, as he lay listening to the low murmur arising from where Humpy Dee was talking to his fellow-prisoners, who were all chewing some tobacco-leaf which the former had managed to secrete. "Why, you know; that bit old Zamson give me, wrapped up in one o' them big leaves." "Oh yes; I had forgotten. Eat it, then; I don't mind." "Likely, aren't it?" grumbled Pete. "Good as it smells, for them black fellows do know how to cook a thing brown and make it smell nice. Can't you zee what I mean?" "No." "Want it for the dogs. I'm going to slip off after that boat as soon as it's a bit later." "Impossible, Pete. Don't try; you'll be shot at. There is sure to be one of the blacks outside the door with a musket." "Let him stop there, then. I aren't going by the door." "How, then?" "Climb up here to where I've got a couple o' them split wooden tiles-- shingles, as they call 'em--loose." "But you can't climb up there." "Can't I? Oh yes, my lad. There's them knot-holes, and I've got some pegs cut as fits into 'em, ready to stand on. I can get up easy enough." "But the dogs?" "Well, I smuggled a knife and sharpened it up, and it's tied to my leg in a sheath I made out of a bit o' bamboo cane." "But it would be madness to fight the poor brutes, and the noise would bring out Saunders with a gun." "Just what I thought, my lad," said Pete, laughing softly; "so I went on the other tack this month past." "I don't understand you, Pete." "I'll tell you, then, my lad," said Pete softly. "I made up my mind to get you back to the old country, and the on'y way to do it seems to be to make friends." "Make friends?" "That's it. Way that big dog, Gripper, took to you zet me thinking. If he was zet at you he'd lay hold, 'cause he's been taught to obey orders. He wouldn't want to, no more than a soldier might want to shoot a man; but if it was orders he'd do it. Well, I've thought a deal about them dogs, and dogs is dogs--eh, Master Nic?" "Of course," said the young man, smiling to himself. "And dogs has got zweet tooths, Master Nic; on'y the sugar they likes is a bit o' salt." "You mean you wanted that piece of roast 'possum to give the dogs if they came at you." "That's right, Master Nic. If old Zaunders was shouting 'em on, they wouldn't take no notice of the meat; but if he waren't there they'd be friends at once, and eat it. So I'm ready for 'em if they comes after me." "And you're going to try if you can find where they keep the boat to-night?" "_Sn-n-n-ork_!" said Pete, pinching his arm, and as the deep, low, snoring went on, Nic grasped the reason. For there was a faint rustling of the dry corn-leaves, which stopped, and went on again in the utter darkness, while beyond it the low murmur of talking continued. "The talking kept on to cover Humpy's movements," thought Nic. "He has heard us, and is coming to listen." Pete snored again, moved uneasily, and began to mutter in a low tone: "Couldn't throw Humpy Dee?" he said. "Let you see. Better wrastler than him. _Snore--snurrk_!" The rustling ceased, and then went on again. "Where's that there moog o' zyder, lads?" muttered Pete in a dull, stupid way. "Where's the huff-cap?" Then he smacked his lips, and said "Hah!" softly, turned himself over, yawned, and began to snore, keeping it up steadily, while the rustling went on; but it sounded now as if the man who made it was retiring. Nic listened, with every nerve on the strain, while Pete kept on the snoring, and a minute later he made out clearly enough that Humpy Dee had returned to his companions, and distinctly heard the change in the conversation, as the man whispered the result of his investigation. Pete's snore was lower now, and sounded as if it would last; but it did not, for the next moment Nic was conscious that his comrade was leaning over him; a pair of lips touched his ear, and a voice whispered: "He thinks he's clever, but we can be too sharp for him." "Don't talk any more," whispered Nic softly, "or he'll come back." "Right," said Pete, and the snoring recommenced. And as Nic lay there in the darkness, thinking over his companion's words, and feeling that it would have been madness to have made any attempt to leave the barrack-like shed, with watchful enemies both within and without, and the certainty in his mind that Humpy Dee's intention was to betray Pete so as to get him flogged for attempting to escape, the snoring went on, with a strange lulling effect. He had toiled hard that day in the burning sunshine, and had lain down after his supper with that pleasant sensation of weariness which comes to the healthy and strong; and he had been feeling a glow of satisfaction and thankfulness for the full recovery of all his faculties, when Pete had spoken as he did. It was not surprising, then, that the heavy breathing of his companion should have the effect it had, and that, just when he was in the midst of pleasant thoughts of the possibility of escape, he should suddenly pass from extreme wakefulness into deep sleep, in which he saw the red cliffs of Devon again, with the sparkling sea, and listened to the soft murmur of the falls low down in the combe. Back home once more. Then he opened his eyes with a start. "I've been asleep," he said to himself, as he listened to Pete's heavy breathing; "not for many minutes, though," he mused; and then he wondered and stared, for he could see the cracks and knot-holes of the wooden building against the grey dawn of the rapidly-coming day. "Why, I must have been asleep for hours and hours!" he mentally ejaculated. Proof came the next moment that it must have been eight hours at least, for the dull booming bellow of the great conch shell blown by one of the blacks rang out, and Pete started up in his bunk to stare at Nic and rub his calf softly. "Had a good night, Pete?" said the lad. "Tidy," said the man softly; "but one o' the dogs had me by the leg." "What! Surely you didn't go?" "Ay, but I did. He let go, though, when he smelt the roast meat. Smelt better than raw." "Pete!" ejaculated Nic, in his surprise. "Now then, rouse up, all on you," shouted Humpy Dee, "or they'll be sending in the dogs for us, and the cat for some one else." "Oh," thought Nic, as a pang of agony shot through him; "that wretch must have been on the watch." CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. PETE THINKS HE HAS FOUND IT. In the morning, as the eternal hoeing went on, Pete found his opportunity for telling of his adventures during the night. Humpy Dee had evidently heard nothing. "Keep at it, Master Nic," he said; "this here stuff's growed up zo that there's no telling when they're coming on to you. It's all right though, now." "Tell me, then, quickly. You got out?" "Zure I did. I meant to, and had a good long night of it." "And you're sure the dog hasn't hurt you much?" "Nay, on'y a pinch; I had the meat ready to shove in his face, But there aren't much to tell you." "I was afraid so. We must be patient, Pete, and live on hope." "Can't live on hope, master. Hope's on'y the salt as makes the rest o' life tasty. Want zome'at else as well. But don't you be down. We've got to get away, and we'll do it afore we've done." "Then you found out nothing?" "Oh yes, I did," said Pete dryly. "I found out that it didn't matter which way I went there waren't what I wanted." "You mean the boat?" "That's right, master. I went as far as I could get along the river one way, and it waren't there; and I went as far as I could get t'other way, and it waren't there. Old Zam must get in and paddle it right away zomewheres. There now, if I haven't found it after all!" "What! Where it is hidden?" "I believe I have; zeemed to turn it over and find it under this here clod I'm breaking up with the hoe. Wish I'd looked when we was aboard." "Looked at what?" "Her bottom. She's got a big bung-hole in her zomewhere, and he must pole her along into a deep part, and take the bung out, and let her fill and zink. Then he zinks the painter with a stone." "But she wouldn't sink, Pete." "Oh yes, she would, with ballast enough, sir; and all we've got to do now is to find out where she is." Nic shook his head sadly, for he was not convinced. "Don't you do that, my lad; that's not the way to get home. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I'm right, and I dare zay, if we knowed where to look, she's just close handy zomewhere. Zay, Master Nic, s'pose I get old Zamson down and kneel on his chest, and pull out my knife. I could show my teeth and look savage, and pretend I was going to cut his head off if he didn't tell me. That would make him speak--eh?" "Yes, to Saunders; and you would be punished, and we should be worse off than ever." "That's about it, sir. I'm afraid I did no good last night." Pete chopped and broke clods, and muttered to himself in a way which suggested that he was by no means satisfied with his investigations. Then all at once he said: "What do you zay to our going quietly down to the water some night, dropping in, and zwimming for it?" "Into the jaws of the great alligators, Pete?" "Didn't think o' that. Could hear 'em, too, as I walked along. One whacker went off from just under my feet once. I 'most fell over him, and he roared out like a bull calf. I thought he meant my legs. No, we couldn't do that, Master Nic. We must get hold o' that boat. I'll have another try to-night." "Better not," said Nic. "Some of the others will hear you." "And old Humpy be on'y too glad to get me in a row. Well, I mean to have it zomehow." But Pete did not go upon any nocturnal excursion that night. Nature was too much for him. He dropped asleep, and did not wake till the conch shell sounded its braying note; and Nic rose once more to go to his labour in the fields, asking himself if it was not all a dream. The next time the settler came that way the young man made an appeal to him for permission to send off a letter to some one in authority; but the angry refusal he received, coupled with a stern order to go on with his work, taught him plainly enough not to place any confidence in obtaining his liberty through his employer, so he tried to move the overseer the next time he came by. Nic fared worse. "Look here, my lad," said Saunders; "your country said you were better out of it, and we've taken you, and mean to try and make something decent of you. We're going to do it, too." "But that was all a mistake, sir, as I told you," pleaded Nic. "And this is a bigger one. Who is to believe your word? Get on with your work, and if you worry me again with your whining I'll shorten your rations, and keep you on the hardest jobs about the plantation." "It's of no use, Pete," said Nic as soon as he could speak unobserved; "there is nothing to hope for here. We must escape somehow, or else die in trying." "That's sense, Master Nic, all but the last part. I don't see any fun in dying for ever so long. I'm going out to-night to find that boat, and if I do, next thing is to zave up some prog and be off. There's one thing to do, though, 'fore we start." "What's that?" "Borrow a couple o' guns and some powder and shot." "Impossible, Pete. No; I think I could manage it." "How, my lad? It has bothered me." "There are two ways. Get at the guns one day when Samson is cleaning them; or else creep to the house some hot night, risk all, and climb in by one of the windows. I think in time I shall know whereabouts they are kept." "Risk getting zeen and shot?" "We must risk something, Pete," said Nic quietly. "It is for liberty. I should leave it to the last moment, and get them when the boat was all ready; then, if I were heard there would be somewhere to make for, and once afloat we should be safe. But there, we have not found out where the boat is yet." "And," said Pete thoughtfully, "there's zomething else we haven't took count of." "What's that?" said Nic eagerly. "The dogs, my lad; the dogs!" CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. A FIGHT WITH MORPHEUS. Nic had no faith in his companion's notions about the boat lying sunk in the creek or river; but as the time wore on he could suggest no better idea. Still, he did find out where the guns were kept one day when, in company with a man of Humpy Dee's party, he was ordered up to help in stowing some bales of tobacco-leaf in a kind of store at the back of the low wooden building. The work was pretty hard, but Nic hardly felt it, for in going to and fro he had to pass an open door which led into the place used by the settler and Saunders for their dining and sitting room. It was a very rough spot, and the furniture was all home-made--that is to say, it was manufactured by the blacks. But Nic hardly heeded its contents after seeing a series of hooks driven into the wall, and upon each pair a musket, with powder-flask and bullet-pouch attached. He could think of nothing else as he walked away, for these weapons meant a supply of food if he and Pete took to the woods, and that night he communicated the discovery to his companion. "It ought to be easy to borrow a couple of them," said Pete quietly--"zome night when the two gaffers are asleep. On'y one thing to hinder it, as I zee, for I don't believe they shut themselves up, feeling as they do that we're under lock and key." "What is to prevent me creeping in and getting them, Pete?" "Dogs," said the man quietly. "Now, if we was at home I could walk into Plymouth and go to a druggist's shop, and for twopence buy zomething I knows of as would zend those dogs to sleep till we'd done what we wanted; but there aren't no shops in the woods here." "And we haven't found the boat, Pete." "And we haven't found the boat, my lad. But here's a little bit of a tool here I've got for you at last. Better one than mine. One of the blacks had been cutting up zome meat with it yesterday, and left it out on the bench--forgetted all about it--they're good ones at forgetting; and zo I scrambled back and got hold of it, sharpened it up at the point, and made a wooden sheath for it, so as you can wear it in your belt under your shirt." "A knife!" whispered Nic excitedly as Pete thrust the weapon into his hand. "No; I don't want to shed blood." "I didn't say it was to kill men with, did I? S'pose one of them dogs had you by the throat, wouldn't it be useful then? or to kill a deer out in the woods? or skin a 'possum? Might even be useful to stick into a 'gator's throat. Better take it, master." Nic's hand closed upon the handle of the keen blade, and he transferred it to his belt; when, as the hard sheath pressed against his side, he felt that, after all, it was one step towards liberty. The next morning Pete told him that he had had another good hunt by the river-side, going as far as he dared, but without result. "And 'twix' you and me, Master Nic, I suppose it's being a bit of a coward, but I dursen't go no more. I aren't afraid o' things you can see; but when you're down by the water o' nights listening to the strange birds making queer noises, and the big bats whuzzing round you, to say nothing of the 'gators walloping about at the edge, and other gashly things zeeming to be lying wait for you, it's a bit too much for me." "It must be very nervous work, Pete." "Last night about settled me that we must go right up-country or through the woods, for I trod on a big snake, and felt it twissen round my leg. Ugh! I don't mind a conger, because, even if he bites you, it's on'y a bite, and it gets well; but a snake! Why, they tell me--leastwise one of the blacks did--as a bite from one of the rattlesnakes'll finish you off in 'bout an hour." "But you were not bitten?" "S'pose not, and I've been thinking since I must ha' trod on the gashly thing's head. Anyhow it did scare me, and I mean to chop every one I zee while I'm hoeing. I have killed four since we've been here." "You must not try it again, Pete," said Nic. "Then we shall have to take to the woods, master, for I don't zee any chance o' getting the boat." That day, while the two prisoners were hoeing together, the settler came round, stood watching them for a time, and then came nearer and examined their work, saw nothing to complain of, but still being dissatisfied, he turned upon Pete. "Here, you get chattering too much with this lad," he cried; "be off across to the long corn-field behind the house and join that gang. Work with them, and send black Jupe here to take your place." "Yes, master," said Pete quietly; and as he shouldered his hoe and the settler walked away, he made an offer at him with the hoe, when one of the dogs growled savagely. Suspicious of danger, the settler turned sharply, to see Pete slouching away with his eyes on the ground; so, after an angry word or two at the dog, the master went on again, leaving Nic hoeing away, thinking how dreary the days would pass if he were to have no better companionship than that of the black. Half-an-hour passed before the slave came slowly along the row Nic was hoeing--for the waving growth completely shut them from sight--and upon reaching his fellow-prisoner's side he made a few scrapes with his hoe and then stopped, with his black face shining as he showed his teeth. "You had better go on with your work," said Nic quietly; "the master will be back." "Not a day, sah," said the black. "Him going get boat and go up ribber 'long o' Massa Saunder." Nic looked at the man sharply as he uttered the word _boat_. Wouldn't it be possible to hear from him where the boat was kept? "Berry hot. Take four boy row de boat, and tell Sam and Zerks load de gun and shoot ebbery white body who done work." "Ah!" said Nic. "Dat so, sah," said the man, laughing. "No shoot black fellow." He said no more, but went on chopping away in the hot sunshine far faster than Nic could manage, and the intense heat did not seem to affect him. For it was so hot that the prisoner felt exhausted, early as it was in the day, the tall growth around keeping off the breeze. But he worked away, with the perspiration streaming down his face, thinking what an opportunity this would be for taking to the woods or the open country, but with his heart sinking as he dwelt upon the possibility of Humpy Dee and the others fighting against such a plan from pure malice. And besides, Pete was not there to discuss the matter. There were the armed blacks, too, and the dogs. Nic went to the end of his row, turned, and worked away back, forgetful of his black companion, till he was half-way along the return row, when a peculiar sound startled him, and stepping aside among the canes, his heart gave a big throb, for the black seemed to have fallen from exhaustion. The next minute he smiled, for he realised that the man was fast asleep. And how hot it was! Nic's throat was dry, his tongue parched, while only some three hundred yards from where he toiled there was the green band of cane and reed jungle, and just beyond that the bright, cool waters of the river. Oh, if he could only be where he could lie down and take one long, deep draught! The thought of it increased his thirst. Well, why not? The black had shown him that there was no danger. Their tyrants had started in the boat by now, or the idle rascal would not have lain down so coolly to sleep, and this terrible thirst-- "Oh, I must go and have a drink," muttered Nic wearily; and then, laying down his hoe, he walked swiftly to the end of the row, turned at right angles along by the ditch which divided the field from the next field, and, satisfied that he could not be seen from the house, kept on and on, startled more than once by the rustle of a gliding snake, till the narrow patch of jungle was reached, and he plunged into it, to force his way along to the edge of the river. The reeds and dense water-growth ended suddenly, and he was about to peer out, up and down, to make sure that he was not seen, thinking the while of how easy escape seemed, when he drew back and stood watching with starting eyes. But it was not at the alligator six feet long which lay between him and the gliding river, nor yet at that other, a dozen yards away, sunning itself at the surface of the water; but at the black woolly head of a swimmer nearly at the other side, making easily and well for the mouth of an overhung creek nearly opposite to where Nic crouched, and quite regardless of the dangerous reptiles which might be near. The feeling of thirst died out as Nic watched, seeing that there was a way of escape after all by the river; for if that man dared trust himself to swim in open daylight to the other side, surely he and Pete might venture, even if the place did swarm with reptiles? Nic's heart beat with a strange feeling of satisfaction. Here, then, was one of his unfortunate companions taking advantage of the master's absence to escape. Why was not Pete there to join him, and they might all get away together? In another minute Nic would have been on his way back to try and get speech with Pete, and tell him what he had seen. He might, he thought, elude Samson's watchfulness, when, to his astonishment, the man reached the farther shore, stepped out, and shook himself, when Nic felt that he must be dreaming, for it was Samson himself. The next minute Nic saw him plunge into the thick growth overhanging the narrow creek and disappear. "Left his musket behind because he felt doubtful about getting it across," thought Nic, and once more he was about to hurry back, when a strange rustling sound caught his ear, followed by the rattle as of a pole; and directly after the mystery of the boat's hiding-place was laid bare, for it glided out from among the waving canes, and there was Samson standing upright, dipping the pole first on one side, then on the other, sending the boat across as it glided down with the stream, passed the watcher, and evidently was being directed for the other creek. "Poor old Pete, how glad he'll be!" thought Nic. "That's it, plain enough; kept over there because they think no one would dare to swim across; but we dare." "Dare we?" said Nic to himself the next minute, as he saw an unusually large alligator make a swirl in the water and dart by; and he shuddered as the thought occurred to him that, though the reptiles might not touch the blacks, with a white man it might mean something very different. "Ugh! you little beast," he muttered, as there was a rustle in the moist patch of jungle, and he caught sight of the loathsome blunt muzzle of what looked like a monstrous eft staring hard at him, not a couple of yards distant. A quick movement sent the reptile scuffling away; then there was a splash, and forgetful entirely of his thirst, Nic hurried back, feeling a lingering doubt as to whether the settler or his overseer might not have been to the field during his absence, as they were certainly not gone. But upon reaching the place where he had left his hoe, there it lay with the handle too hot to hold, and the slave close at hand, shining and happy, fast asleep, with his mouth open, and the red lips attracting the flies, as if it were some huge ugly red blossom from which they might sip. That day seemed as if it would never come to an end. But at sunset the conch shell was blown, and the black started up, just as Nic straightened his weary back, and came slowly towards him down the row he had hoed. "Um tink um been fass 'sleep, sah," said the black, grinning. "You tell Mass' Saunder? No, you not tell um, and me shut de eye nex' time you go 'sleep." "I shan't tell tales," said Nic good-humouredly. "But I say, do you ever think about running away?" "Run away? What for? No use run away. Set dogs to catch you 'gain. An' if dogs not catch um, where run to? Plantations all alike." "To you," thought Nic. "Yes; where could he run to--back to Africa? What then? Only to be caught and sold again. Poor wretch! Worse off than I. There is no pleasant Devon for him to reach, as we must and will reach it some day. Yes, there are slaves far worse off than I. What can the dear old dad have thought when he found me gone? There is only one answer to that," said Nic, with a weary sigh--"that I was drowned in the pool struggle and swept out to sea." The next minute Pete came into sight, and their eyes met, Nic giving the man so long and intent a look that he did not see Humpy Dee watching him, only that Pete's face worked a little, as if he grasped the fact that his companion had some news to impart. But they had no chance of communicating then, for Samson and Xerxes were ready to count them as they went up to their shed; the dogs looking on and trotting about busily, as if helping two black shepherds by rounding up their flock. It was hard work to eat that night, and the evening meal seemed more than ever to resemble a mash prepared for fattening cattle such as they seemed to be. But Nic felt that food meant strength when the time for escaping came, and he forced himself to devour his portion as if ravenously. The night soon came there, and they were locked up once more, Nic eagerly waiting for the chance to tell all he knew. As he lay in his bunk listening, it was evident, from the low, guarded tone in which their companions talked, that they were in ignorance of the fact that their masters were absent, and all was very still outside, till one of the men spoke out angrily. Then a bang on the door from the butt of a musket, followed by a burst of deep-toned barking, told plainly enough that proper precautions were taken, Samson's voice coming loudly and hoarsely with an order to keep quiet and lie down before he had to shoot. "But there's light ahead," thought Nic; and he waited till he thought he could communicate his news to Pete; but, to his disgust, the deep, low breathing close at hand told that he was asleep. "Worn out with his weary toil last night," thought Nic. "Well, I'll keep watch to-night until he wakes, and tell him then." But hour after hour went sluggishly by, with the watcher trying to think out the plan by which they could escape in the easiest way. In spite of the excitement produced by the knowledge that a door was open by which they could get away, there was a hindrance to his thoughts coming clearly. That long day's toil in the burning sun made his plans run together till they were in a strange confusion; and at last he was swimming the river to reach the boat, when a dozen of the reptiles which haunted the water seemed to be tugging at him to drag him down, barking fiercely the while. Then he started up, to find that he had been fast asleep, and that the dogs were barking loudly because of their master's return. "What's the row about?" Nic heard Humpy Dee growl. "Then I was right," said another of the men. "The gaffers have been off somewhere, and have just come back. I thought so, because neither of them showed up in the fields after quite early." "Why didn't you tell me?" growled Humpy; and he whispered to his companions very earnestly. Just then the voices of the settler and the overseer were heard talking to Samson; the dogs came smelling about the door, and the sentry spoke loudly to them to get away. Then by degrees all grew silent again, and a rustling sound told Nic that Pete was moving in his bunk. "Couldn't help it, lad," he whispered; "I was zo worn out, I went off fast. You've got zome'at to tell me?" "Yes." "I knowed it; but if I'd had to save my life I couldn't ha' kep' my eyes open. What is it?" Nic told him, whispering earnestly in his excitement. "What a vool--what a vool!" whispered Pete. "On'y to think o' me never thinking o' that. Then it's all right, Master Nic. We can just get together enough prog to last us, borrow the guns, pick out the night that zuits us, and then go quietly off." "But would you dare to swim across the river--the alligators?" "Yes," said Pete; "if they was twice as big; and if they touch me--well, they'll find out what an edge and point I've given my knife. It's all right, Master Nic, and I'm glad it's you as found out the way." "Hist!" whispered Nic, laying a hand on the man's mouth. For there was a rustling not far from where they lay; and Nic felt as if a hand were catching at his throat, for the thought came to thrill him through and through that Humpy Dee had crept nearer to hear what, in their eager excitement, they had said; and if he had heard-- Pete put it this way: "If he knows, the game's at an end." Nic slept little more that night; not that he and Pete talked again about their plans, but because his brain was full of the momentous question: Had their treacherous companion heard? CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. THE TIME AT LAST. It was nervous work during the next few days, neither Nic nor Pete daring to take any step towards making their escape, for the feeling was strong upon both that they were in their enemy's hands, and that he was only waiting his time before betraying them to the overseer. "That's his way, Master Nic, and it always was. Once he had a grudge agen a man he'd never forgive him," said Pete one night, "and he'd wait his chance to serve him out. I never liked Humpy, and he never liked me; zo, after all, it was six o' one and half-a-dozen o' the other." "I can't help thinking that we are worrying ourselves about nothing, Pete," replied Nic. "It's a case of the guilty conscience needing no accuser." "That it aren't, sir," said the man sturdily. "I aren't going to believe you've got any guilty conscience, and there aren't nothing worse on mine than a bit o' zalmon." Nic smiled in the darkness, and Pete went on: "Well, if you think like that, Master Nic, let's risk it. Old Humpy's cunning enough, but p'raps two heads'll be better than one, and we can beat him. What do you zay to trying, then?" "Anything is better than this terrible suspense, Pete," said Nic. "I did manage to bear my fate before, but the thought now of that boat lying ready to carry us down the river is too much for me, and there are moments when I feel as if I must say to you, `Come on; let's run down to the river and dash in, risking everything.'" "What! and them zee us go, Master Nic?" "Yes; I am getting desperate with waiting." "Wouldn't do, my lad. They'd chivvy us, them and the blacks and Humpy and t'others. Why, bless you, nothing old Humpy would like better." "I'm afraid so." "That's it, zir, whether you're 'fraid or whether you bean't. And s'posing we got the boat, what then, zir? Them seeing us and going along by the bank shooting at us." "We might lie down, Pete." "Yes; and they'd send in half-a-dozen niggers to zwim to the boat and bring it ashore. What do you say to that, zir?" "That I'm half-mad to propose such a thing," replied Nic. "Talk lower, zir. I can't hear old Humpy; but let's be on the lookout." "Better give up all thought of getting away," said Nic despondently. "Bah! Never zay die, Master Nic. Why, there's the old place at home seeming to hold out its finger to us, beckoning-like, and zaying `Come,' and once I do get back, you'll never ketch me meddling with no one's zalmon again. But look here, zir, we thought it all out before, and I don't see as we can better it." "I feel hopeless, Pete." "And I feel as if I've got 'nough o' that stuff in me for both. Wish we could be hoeing together again, so as we could talk it over." "I wish so too, Pete." "It aren't half so pleasant hoeing along with the blacks as it is with you, zir." "Thank you, Pete," said Nic, smiling to himself. "I aren't got nought agen 'em. They can't help having black skins and them thick lips, and they're wonderful good-tempered. Just big children, that's what they are. Fancy a man being a zlave and ready to zing and dance 'cause the moon zhines, ready to go out hunting the coons and 'possums as if there was nothing the matter." "It's their nature to be light-hearted," said Nic. "Light-hearted, zir? Why, there's one o' the gang along with me as allus seems as if you were tickling him. Only to-day he drops hisself down and rolls about in the hot sun, and does nothing but laugh, just because he's happy. Why, I couldn't laugh now if I tried." "Wait, Pete; perhaps you may again some day." "I want to laugh to-morrow night, zir." "What?" "When we've got a couple o' guns aboard that boat, and we're going down the river," whispered Pete excitedly. "I can laugh then." "We couldn't do it, Pete." "We could, zir, if we zaid we would." "There is the risk of that man watching us and telling." "He'd better!" growled Pete. "Look here, zir; let's have no more shilly-shallying. Say you'll go to-morrow night, and risk it." "Why not wait for a good opportunity?" "'Cause if we do it mayn't never come." "But food--provisions?" said Nic, whose heart was beginning to throb with excitement. "Eat all we can to-morrow, and chance what we can get in the woods, or go without a bit. I'd starve two days for the sake of getting away. Will you risk it, zir?" For answer Nic stretched out his hand and grasped Pete's, having his own half-crushed in return. "That settles it, then," whispered Pete hoarsely. "Zave a bit of bread-cake if you can. May come in useful. To-morrow night, then." "To-morrow night." "Are you two going to keep on talking till to-morrow morning?" growled a deep voice. "Zum on us want a bit o' sleep. Look here, mates; I'm going to speak to the gaffer to-morrow, to ax if them two chatterin' old women can't be put somewheres else." Nic turned cold, and Pete uttered a deep sigh, for if this were done they would, he knew, have to begin making their plans again. But hope cheered them both as the next day dawned and passed on without incident. Humpy Dee's was evidently only an empty threat, and as evening drew on Nic's excitement increased, and with it came a sensation of strength such as he had not enjoyed for months. It was as if his companion had endowed him with a portion of his own elastic temperament, and success was going to attend their efforts. All the weary despondency had passed away, and in imagination Nic saw the boat floating down the river towards the sea, where, hope whispered, it must be very easy to find some British ship whose captain would be ready to listen to their unhappy story, and let them hide on board till he set sail, and then let them work their passage home. "For," argued Nic now in his excitement, "no Englishman could be so hardhearted as to refuse help to a white slave." He saw nothing of Pete after they had started for their day's work, their duties taking them to different parts of the plantation; but that was no more than he expected, and he toiled away with his hoe, telling himself that this was the last time he would handle it, for they would-- they must--escape; and he wondered now that he could have hesitated so long, and have let the notion that Humpy Dee was quietly trying to undermine them act like a bugbear. One thing was difficult, though, and that was to eat heartily in readiness for what might be a long fast. Nic ate all he could force down, however, and hid away the rest. But how long that hot day seemed, before the darkness closed in and the strange sounds began to rise from the woods and river! Never had all these sounded so loudly before; and when at last Nic lay down in his rustling bunk, and the place had been locked and the black sentry placed at the door, it seemed to the listener as if the great goat-suckers were whirring about just outside, and the bull-frogs had come in a body to the very edge of the woods and up the ditches of the plantation to croak. Humpy Dee and his companions were talking together; the black sentry yawned, and began to hum an air to himself; and soon after the voices of the settler and the overseer passed, discussing some plan in connection with the crops; but Nic did not hear either of the dogs bark, neither did the one which had shown friendliness towards him come snuffling about the entrance of the low shed. "Why doesn't Pete say something?" thought Nic, who began to wonder at the silence of his companion, not a word having passed since they met at the rough supper; and now, for the first time that day, Nic's heart sank a little, for it seemed to him that his fellow-plotter had shrunk from the risks they would have to encounter--risks which might mean being shot at, worried by the dogs, dragged down by the alligators to a horrible death, perhaps fever and starvation in the swamp, or being drowned at sea, if they reached the river's mouth, and were swept away by one of the fierce currents along the shore. It meant waiting two hours at least before they could begin their attempt; but still Nic wanted to get rid of the oppression which troubled him, and to feel that they really were going to make their escape; but the murmuring of their companions' voices went on, and still Pete made no sign. At last Nic could contain himself no longer. He was all eagerness now; and, if they were not going to make the attempt, he wanted to know the worst. He spoke in a whisper: "Pete, Pete!" "Phew! how hot--how hot!" muttered the man. "Pete!" whispered Nic again. "I wish you wouldn't keep on talking," said Pete loudly. "You know how it set them grumbling last night." Nic drew a deep breath through his teeth, as he lay there in the hot, oppressive darkness. They were not going, then. It was the way with a man of Pete's class to pick a quarrel upon some other subject when he wanted to find an excuse and back out of an arrangement. "Ay, you had a narrow escape on it," said one of the men surlily. "Old Humpy was pretty nigh going to the gaffer to-day." "It's all over," thought Nic, as a feeling of bitterness ran through him. Only four-and-twenty hours earlier he had been ready to give up and accept his position. Then Pete had touched the right chord in his nature, and roused him up to a readiness to run any risk, and make a brave dash for liberty; while now the man seemed to have shrunk back into his shell, and to be completely giving up just when the call was about to be made upon his energies. At another time Nic might have argued differently; but, strung up as he had been, his companion's surly indifference was crushing, and it seemed that the wild, exciting adventures of the night were to give place to a cowardly, sordid sleep. "If anything big is to be done, one must depend upon one's-self," thought Nic at last; and, angry with the whole world, bitter at his own helplessness, as he felt how mad it would be to attempt the venture alone, he turned over in his bunk, throwing out one hand in the movement, and it came in contact with Pete's, to be gripped fast. In an instant the blood was dancing through his veins, and a choking sensation as of impending suffocation troubled him; the arteries in his temples beat painfully, and he lay breathing hard. For it was to be after all, and this conduct was his companion's way of showing him that it was better to lie in silence, waiting till the time arrived for commencing their task. Nic lay there listening to the low murmur of his fellow-prisoners' voices and the chorus of strange sounds from the forest and river; and in the stillness of the night, every now and then, a faint splash came plainly to where he lay, sending a thrill through him, as he thought that, if all went well, before very long he might be swimming across the river, running the gauntlet of the horrible-looking reptiles, and his left hand stole down to his belt to grasp the handle of the sharpened knife, while he wondered whether the skin of the alligators would be horny or tough enough to turn the point. How long, how long it seemed before all was perfectly still in the long, low shed, and not a sound could be heard outside but the faint humming noise made by the black sentry! Then all at once there were steps. Some one had come up, and in a low whisper Nic heard the words: "All right?" "Yes, massa." Then the steps passed away again, and Pete gripped Nic's hand as he lay straining his hearing to try and ascertain whether the overseer had entered the house; but the barking or croaking of reptiles was the only sound. Another hour must have passed, and then Nic's blood rushed through his veins, for a hand touched his again lightly, and seemed to seek for the other. Directly after he felt a hot breath upon his face, and lips to his ear, uttering the one word: "Come!" CHAPTER TWENTY NINE. FOR LIFE AND LIBERTY. Before Nic Revel's mental sight the difficulties rose like a great black rock, but he did not shrink. He rose softly from his bunk, striving hard to keep the corn-stalks from crackling, and felt Pete as the man took a couple of steps from his sleeping-place and stood with his face to the back of the shed. Then, in the midst of a very faint rustling, Nic knew that his companion had thrust a couple of pegs into the knot-holes in the stout planks, and raised himself by hand and foot till he could softly draw the wooden shingles of the roof aside, and the cool, moist air of the night came down. Then for a moment or two Nic saw a bright star, which was blotted out by something dark as the faint rustling continued. Nic turned to listen, but all was well within the shed. He could hear the deep breathing of sleepers, and the low humming song of the sentry outside the door. "How long will it be?" thought Nic, who was trembling with excitement; but the suspense was soon over. All at once there was a dull sound, such as might be made by two bare feet alighting on the earth outside, and he knew that his turn had come. He was lightly enough clothed, merely in short-sleeved, striped cotton shirt, and breeches which did not reach the knee, and his feet were bare, so that there was nothing to hinder his efforts as he reached up till he could place one foot upon the first peg. Then, seeking for the other, he seized it in his hand, and drew himself into a standing position upon the first, reached up to the rafters, drew himself farther up till he could rest his foot on the second peg and pass his head and shoulders through the hole in the roof; then, resting a hand on either side, he drew his legs through, turned and lowered himself down, and dropped upon the ground almost without a sound. It was intensely dark, but every step was familiar enough, and there was no need for words: their plans had been too well made. But as they moved off towards the house, one thought was in both minds as presenting the greatest obstacle they had to dread: Where were the dogs? If loose, and their approach were heard, the great brutes would set up a fierce baying directly, preliminary to a savage attack; and then-- They neither of them cared to reckon more in advance than that, and went softly on, to receive proof directly that the dogs were not loose, for there came from the back of the house the rattle of a chain being drawn over wood, followed by a low, muttering growl, as if one of the animals was uneasy. This ceased directly; and, treading cautiously, Nic went straight up to the front of the building, feeling as if, at any moment, he might see the flash of a musket and hear its roar. But the place was dark and still, and the croaking and other sounds which came in chorus were quite loud enough to drown their light footsteps as they approached. The door was closed, but the two long, low windows in the veranda proved to be open; and, as Nic approached the one upon his right and listened, he could distinctly hear the heavy breathing of a sleeper. He drew cautiously back, to come in contact with Pete, who was taken by surprise at the sudden movement made. Then they stood with hearts thumping against their ribs, feeling certain that they must have been heard; but not a sound followed. After waiting nearly a minute, a fresh movement was made, Nic stepping softly to the window on his left, the perspiration streaming down his face, for the heat was intense. He listened here, with Pete close behind, but all was still, the window wide open to admit the air; and he knew that all he had to do was to pass softly in, take down a couple of the guns, passing one out at a time through the window to Pete, beat a retreat, and then all would be as easy as possible. It was only cool, quiet action--that was all; but Nic for a time could not move, only stand there, breathing heavily, in the full expectation of hearing his companion say something to urge him on. Pete did not stir: he felt that he must trust to his companion's common-sense, and leave him to act as was best. Then the power to act seemed to come, and Nic softly grasped the window-sill, passed one leg in, then the other, and stood upon the bare floor, fully expecting to hear a bullet whiz past his head, even if it did not strike. But he could hear nothing; the house might have been unoccupied; and, drawing a deep breath, he acted quickly now, turned to his left, raised his hands, and pressed forward till they touched one of the weapons hanging upon the wall. A sudden feeling of elation now came over him, for it all seemed to be so astonishingly easy, as he stepped softly to the window to pass out a musket with its flask and pouch, feeling it taken from his hand directly. The next minute he was in front of the other pieces, and took down a second musket, felt that the flask and pouch were attached to it, and, with his pulses hard at work, he was about to make for the window when every drop of blood in his veins seemed to stand still. For there was a sharp, angry oath, a quick start, and the overseer, who had been sleeping upon a rough couch, rose to a sitting position. It was too dark for Nic to make out anything more than a shadowy figure within ten feet of him; and he stood as if petrified, holding the musket, meaning to use it as a club at the first attack; one which seemed to be strangely deferred, for the figure sat as if staring at him in astonishment. How long this pause lasted it is impossible to say, but to the intruder it seemed like minutes before he heard a faint rustling movement as if the overseer was about to lie down again. "He can't see me," thought Nic. "It is too dark." Then his heart seemed to stand still again, as the horrible thought occurred that the rustling meant getting something out of a pocket, and that something must be a pistol. Instinct taught the listener that to save his life he must spring at his enemy before he could take aim, and, nerving himself for a leap forward to dash the musket he held upon the man's face, he was almost in the act of bounding across the room when there was a low gurgling sound, and his nerves and muscles relaxed, for he realised the fact--the overseer had awoke suddenly from some nightmare-like dream, and it was no pistol he had taken out, but a flask of spirits. It was plain enough now--the gurgling of the flask, the smack of the lips in the darkness, and the long, satisfied breath taken, before the bottle was replaced and its owner sank back upon his couch. In another minute the breathing had grown deeper and sounded stertorous; and, without pausing longer, Nic stepped to the window, handed out the gun, and felt it taken quickly from his hands. Just then there was a faint muttering which almost paralysed Nic, who turned to meet an attack; but none came, and in another instant or two he had slipped out of the window and was following Pete, who had handed back one gun, with the warning to beware of the dogs. Pete's stooping figure was just visible as Nic followed, him in silence till they were about a hundred yards away, making for the spot where the boat was hidden, when one of the dogs barked loudly. "Mustn't stop to load," whispered Pete. "Let's get to the water, and then they can't take up the scent." They hurried on, listening the while; but the dog quieted down again; and with his spirits rising, Nic closed up alongside of his companion. "That was a near touch, master," whispered Pete. "I waited ready to jump in and help you, for I zomehow thought it was too dark in there for him to zee you, and you hadn't made any noise. Lucky for him he lay down again." Nic made no reply, but he thought a great deal; and no more was said till they had crossed a couple of the great fields and knew by the sounds they heard that they must be close to the long, low band of reedy growth which ran by the river-side. "You lead now, my lad," whispered Pete. "Get as nigh as you can to where you think the creek is on the other side." "It is so dark," whispered Nic; "but I think we are right." He went to the front, assailed by a horrible doubt now that he had taken the wrong way, and was some distance farther up the river; but, as he bent down to part the low growth, to peer through over the dark water, there was a scuffle and a splash, telling of some reptile taking flight, and he shrank back. But he hardly heeded it, for he had dimly made out a solitary tree across the river, some eighty or a hundred yards away, which he had marked down for bearings. "This is the place, Pete," he whispered. "If you stand here and look across, the creek is a little way up to the right." "That is good, my lad; I was beginning to be feared that we should have to wait for daylight, and be missed. Now then, take my gun and the tackle, and while I'm gone you load both on 'em." "While you are gone?" whispered Nic excitedly. "You are not going; I know the way, and I'll fetch the boat." "That you don't, Master Nic," said the man sturdily. "That there water's full o' them great brutes, and one of 'em might pull you down." "I know it is; and one of them might pull you down." "He'd be zorry for it if he did, for I'd zoon zend my knife through his carcass. It's my job, zir, and I'm going." "I tell you I know just where it is, and I'm going to fetch it." "That you aren't, zir. I won't have you risk it." "Then we'll swim the river together, Pete." "And what about the guns?" "Leave them on the bank, and come back and fetch them." "Never find 'em again in the darkness and hurry, my lad. Now, do be zensible." "I'm master, and I order you to stay." "Which you aren't master, zir, for we're both zlaves, and if you talk so loud you'll be bringing down the dogs and I'm off." Almost before Nic could realise it, Pete had slipped across the narrow space, lowered himself into the water, and swum away, leaving his companion horrified at the sounds he heard. For directly after the man had struck out there was a tremendous wallowing splash, which Nic felt certain had been caused by some monstrous reptile; and he crouched there grasping the guns, with a chilly perspiration breaking out over his brow. It was some minutes before he thought of the loading, and when he did he could not follow out his instructions for listening and staring across the dark, gliding water, which was full of life, startling him with the belief that Pete had been attacked when some louder splash than usual came from the direction the man had taken. Then the horrible thought came that the poor fellow had been seized the moment he plunged in, and that that loud wallowing noise was when he was dragged underneath. For, though he listened so hard, there was nothing to prove that his comrade was still swimming across the river; and his heart sank at the thought of what would be a most horrible death. Everything served to depress him more as he crouched there in the enforced inaction; he could hear rustlings in the low water-growth as of reptiles creeping along, the splashes in the river, and all about him the croaking, hooting, and barking of the nocturnal creatures which made the place their home; while, as if these were not sufficient, there was the dread of pursuit, with their enemies hounding on the savage dogs, which might spring upon him at any moment. "Not without giving notice, though," he said to himself. "What a nervous coward all this has made me! Why, the hounds would begin to bay as soon as they took up the scent." He listened again; but all was still save a splash or two, and he bitterly repented that they had not thought of some signal--a whistle or the like--to give warning that the river had been successfully crossed. "He would do it," thought Nic, trying to be firm. "He is a splendid swimmer. Why, it was wonderful what I believe he did when he tried to save me--in irons, too." Nic paused for a few moments longer to listen to the splashing which went on; and then, recalling once more his companion's words, he prepared to load the muskets. But the first he tried proved to be loaded, and, on replacing the ramrod and opening the pan, he found the priming all right. The next proved to be in the same condition; and, once more laying the pieces down, he crouched with his ear near the water to listen to the lapping and splashing which went on. But there was nothing that he could interpret to mean the movement of an oar or pole on a boat, and his heart began to sink again lower and lower, till wild thoughts arose about his companion's fate. He would not give harbour to the suggestion that he had been dragged down by the reptiles, but fancied that the boat might be securely padlocked, or that Pete had got it out, and, not knowing the force of the stream, had been swept away past where he should have landed, and with so big and heavy a boat he might not be able to get back. If this were the case Pete would escape, and he would have to go back to his prison. "No, he would not forsake me," muttered Nic, with a strange glow about his heart as he thought of the man's fidelity to his cause; and he had just come to this conclusion when he heard a rustling behind him as of some creature creeping up. It was forgotten, though, the next moment, for unmistakably there was the sound of an oar whishing about in the water, as if someone had it over the stern and, fisherman fashions was sculling the boat towards the bank. Then for a moment Nic was doubtful, for the sound ceased. "It was one of the alligators," he muttered through his teeth, "and the poor fellow--" There was a faint chirrup off the river, and once more Nic's heart beat wildly as he answered the signal. Then the sculling began again, the rustling was repeated somewhere behind where Nic crouched, and he felt for the muskets to take them up. "Whatever it is, I shall be aboard in a moment or two," he thought, with a strangely wild feeling of exultation; for he heard the oar drawn in, the head of the boat suddenly appeared close at hand, and it was run into the muddy, reedy bank a couple of yards away, while Pete leaped ashore with the painter. "Now!" cried a loud voice, when, with a rush, half-a-dozen men sprang upon them from the bed of reeds and a fierce struggle began. CHAPTER THIRTY. MAKING FRIENDS OF ENEMIES. The struggle was very fierce but short. Nic fought his best, and, in spite of the excitement, wondered at his strength. He was encouraged, too, by Pete, whom he heard raging and tearing about; and, hard pressed as he was, he yet had a thought for his companion. "Never mind me, Master Nic," he shouted. "Zwim for it--the boat. Never mind me." Then his voice was smothered, and there was the sound of a heavy fall, but the struggle went on. "Hold on!" came the voice of the overseer, giving his orders; and then that of the settler: "Give in, you scoundrels!" he raged out. Then fiercely, "Hold their heads under water, boys, if they don't give in." "All done now, sah," panted Samson, with his lips close to Nic's head, for he was across his prisoner's chest, and a couple of the blacks were holding his legs. "Yes, we must give up, Master Nic," cried Pete. "I've got five loads o' black stuff sitting on me." "Have you your whip with you, Saunders?" cried the settler. "No, sir; I wish I had. But it is hanging by the door, and we can give them a better taste by daylight." "You use it on him," roared Pete fiercely, "and I'll kill you." "Silence, you scoundrel!" cried the settler, "or I'll have you gagged as well as ironed. I warned you both of what would happen if you tried to escape." "Lucky for them I let loose the black dogs instead of the brown," cried the overseer. "We should not have had the trouble of taking them back. Tie their hands behind their backs, Samson, and have the irons ready as soon as we get to the house." "Got no rope, sah." "What!" cried the settler. "Why didn't you bring some, you black fool?" "No time, sah," said the black humbly. "Soon as dat ugly ruffyum, Humpy, come knock at door and say dey 'scape, Zerk call me quite sharp, an' I come tell you, and dey fetch de boy and have 'em back. Me no t'ink 'bout no rope, sah; on'y t'ink dey go swim for de boat and catch 'em first." "Quite right," said the settler more calmly. "There, one of you go in front of each man, and two others take fast hold of a wrist on each side. Cock your pistols, Saunders." There was a sharp clicking sound. "Walk behind that big scoundrel, and if he makes the slightest attempt to escape send a bullet through him. I'll look after this one. Pity we didn't stop to loose the dogs. Ready?" "Iss, sah," came from Samson, as Nic felt a strong hand like a live handcuff upon each wrist. "Lead on, then." "You be very careful, please, massa; no make mistake and shoot dis boy." "Oh yes, I'll take care." The march back began, and at the second step Nic felt that a cold ring of iron had been pressed between his shoulders--the pistol-muzzle resting upon his skin where the shirt had been torn down from neck to waist. He could not suppress a shiver, for the heat and passion of the struggle had passed away, leaving him weary, aching, and depressed. But in a few minutes the pistol-muzzle was withdrawn, it being awkward for the holder to walk over the rough ground and keep it there; and the prisoner marched on between his black warders as patiently as Pete in front, thinking perhaps the same ideas. For he felt that they had not taken warning by the hints they had received. Humpy Dee had been on the watch, and, in his malignity, let them get away before giving notice to the sentry, that they might be caught, ironed, and flogged, or perhaps meet their death in the struggle. But Nic had yet to find that Humpy Dee's designs were deeper than this. The walk back was not long enough for a hundredth part of the bitter thoughts that crowded into Nic Revel's brain; neither would they have got a hearing had the distance been a thousand times the length, on account of the one dominant horror which filled his brain: "Will they flog us?--will they flog us?" That question was always repeating itself, and, when the prisoner heard Pete utter a low groan, he was convinced that the poor fellow was possessed by similar thoughts. Only so short a time before that they had left their quarters, and now they were back in the darkness, their plans crushed, and only the punishment to look forward to. "Now, Sam, be sharp with a couple of lanthorns and those irons," cried the overseer. "Iss, sah." "Prisoners been quiet?" whispered the settler to the sentry. "Iss, sah, berry quiet; all fass asleep;" and the man let his musket fall down upon the ground with an ominous thud as, in obedience to an order, he unlocked the shed-door and lowered the huge bar before drawing it open. "Now then," muttered the overseer, "how long is he going to be with that lanthorn? Here, in with them, boys; but don't loose your hold till I tell you." Nic and Pete were hurried on; and, as soon as they were inside, the settler and his lieutenant stood in the doorway, pistol in hand, while Nic's face was involuntarily turned in the direction of the corner where Humpy Dee's bunk lay, in the full expectation of hearing some bantering sneer. But the man made no sign, and directly after the _pad_, _pad_ of Samson's feet was heard, and a faint light threw up the figures of those at the doorway. Then Samson's big black face appeared, lit up by the lanthorns he swung, one in each hand. "I take in de light, sah, and den go fetch de irons?" "Yes; look sharp," cried Saunders. He made way for the black to pass, and the man raised one of the lanthorns to hang it upon a hook. He did not do this, but raised the other lanthorn and hurriedly took a few steps in the direction of the bunks, to begin shouting directly: "Hyah!" he cried, "whar dem oder white fellow? You, Zerk, what you go and done wid de oder man?" "What!" roared the settler and the overseer in a breath as they rushed forward, pistol in hand. "All gone, sah," cried Samson, beginning to tremble. "Bah! you 'most fass 'sleep," cried Xerxes, who had come in at the call of his companion; "dey all tuck under de corn-'talk." "You black idiot!" roared the overseer, turning upon the sentry so savagely that the man's knees began to knock together; he let go his hold of his musket, and it fell on the floor with a thud, followed by a flash and an explosion, while the man escaped a knockdown blow by ducking. "Here, quick!" cried the settler, who had seized one of the lanthorns from Samson and convinced himself that the other prisoners had taken advantage of the hole made by Pete, and, as soon as the chase began, climbed quietly out in turn. "All of you follow. Pick up that musket and load it again, you black fool!" "No 'top clap irons on dese two, sah?" cried Samson. "No. Here, Saunders, fetch another musket. Samson, you and Nero guard these two while we're gone; and if you let them escape I'll shoot you." "No, no," said Saunders quickly; "I'll manage them. We want all our men. Here, Sam; go and let loose the dogs." "But these two?" cried the settler impatiently. "Well, the dogs will watch them." "We want them, man, to track the other scoundrels." "We can do that ourselves. They followed us, for a hundred pounds, and have taken the boat by now." The settler uttered a furious oath and stamped his foot. "Sharper than we are," he roared. "Yes, that is right." Just then the dogs, newly set at liberty, came bounding up, followed by Samson; and the overseer went up to the two prisoners. "There, lie down in your kennels," he snarled. "We shall not be long, and it depends upon yourselves whether we find you when we come back. I warn you that if you move the hounds will tear you to pieces." "Saunders!" whispered the settler. "Their lives will be in their own hands, sir," cried the overseer warmly. "Let me have my own way, please; it is the only thing to do." The settler shrugged his shoulders, and the blacks all stood there round-eyed and staring, while the two unfortunates lay down in their bunks, and the overseer called up the dogs and bade them couch. "Watch," he said fiercely, and a deep-toned growl arose. "Stay there and watch." "Now, sir," he said coldly, "the sooner we are off the better. Out with you, boys, and bring the lights." The blacks ran out, the settler followed, and the overseer went to the door last. "I've warned you," he said fiercely, as he turned to face the prisoners. "Make the slightest movement, and those hounds will be at your throats and rend you limb from limb. Good dogs, then--watch," he shouted; then he banged the door, locked and barred it, and just then the settler's voice was heard at a little distance. "Here, Saunders," he cried; "two of the loaded muskets have been taken from the hooks." "Hor, hor!" laughed Pete savagely; "just found that out?" He ceased, for three dogs sprang to their feet, uttering a furious barking trio which made his heart seem to leap to his throat. In the intense desire to save himself, Nic sprang up into a sitting position and spoke quickly and gently, calling to the dog which had shown a friendly disposition towards him from the first. "Don't do that, Master Nic," said Pete hoarsely. But even as the man spoke the dog was upon Nic's bunk, whining, pawing at him, and thrusting its great muzzle in his hand, uttering the while a low, eager bark. The others barked too, and, as if in imitation of their companion, made at Nic as well, favouring him with their clumsy caresses, and ending by sitting close up to him, panting loudly. "Have they killed you, Master Nic?" whispered Pete hoarsely, eliciting a fierce growl from one of the brutes. "Quiet," cried Nic loudly, and the growling ceased; while the next moment from out of the darkness a great head began to nestle upon his shoulder. "Good dog, then!" cried Nic, patting and stroking its head. "There, I think you may venture to talk, Pete." "Do you, zir? If I waren't beginning to think they'd done for you. Aren't you hurt, then?" "No; they are used to us now, and I don't think there's anything to fear. Look here; do you dare to reach out your hand and pat him?" "No, zir; I'm too great a coward. I was always feared of a dog's bite; not of the dog." Nic was silent for a few moments, and then he began to pat first one dog and then another heavily, the great brutes submitting to the familiarities evidently with satisfaction, one of them beginning to bound about the shed, and returning to be caressed again. "You order me to come close and pat one of 'em, Master Nic, and I will," said Pete hoarsely. "Come on, then." The man drew a deep breath and made the venture, with so much success attending it that he tried it upon the others. "Master Nic," he whispered excitedly, "what do you think of that?" "Of what?" "Here's one of 'em licking my face. Oh, I zay, it don't mean tasting me first to zee whether I'm good, do it?" "No; the poor brutes believe we are friends, I suppose, from being shut up with us. But, Pete, they've all gone off after the others. Couldn't we try to escape again?" "Nay; t'others have got the boat." "But the high ground yonder, or the woods?" "Nay; they'd hunt us down with the dogs. The beggars would go at us if they hounded 'em on." Nic was silenced for a few moments, and he sat with a dog on either side and his arms on their necks. "But we could get out again; the shingles must be off the roof." "Yes; that's how Humpy and the others got out, zir. They must ha' known all our plans." "Let's creep out, then; the dogs couldn't follow." "S'pose not, zir; but they'd make howl enough to bring the gaffers back to lay 'em on our scent. I don't think it's any use to try. I'd face it and the dogs too with my knife; they never took it away from me. Did they take yourn?" "I don't know, Pete. No: here it is." "And it would be too hard on you to have to face 'em. Best not to try. We had our go and missed; p'raps we'd better take what they give us and not grumble." "Impossible, Pete. I'd rather face the dogs than the lash. But I don't believe they'd hurt us now." "P'raps not, zir," said Pete sadly. "This here one's as playful as a puppy. He's 'tending to bite my arm, but he don't hurt a bit." There was silence again for a few minutes, during which time Nic sat with his heart beating hard, listening to the familiar sounds which came from the forest, while the passionate desire to flee grew and grew till it swept everything before it. "Pete," he cried at last, "we must escape. Better starve in the woods than lead such a life as this. We shall be flogged to-morrow, and it will kill me, I know." "The dogs'll hunt us down if we go, lad, and we shall get it worse. Better face what we've got to have." "I will not; I cannot, Pete. The way is open, man. Let's try for our liberty before these wretches come back." "Zay the word, then, Master Nic; but the dogs is friends now, as long as we're quiet; they won't let us go." "Ah, I know!" cried Nic wildly. "Why didn't I think of it before?" "Think of what, zir?" "This. Perhaps they might attack us if they thought they were going to be left." "That's zo." "And if we got away they'd be laid on our track." "O' course, zir." "Then we will not give Saunders the chance." "I dunno what you mean, zir; but I'm ready for anything you tell me to do. What is it?" "Take the dogs with us, man. I believe they'll follow us now." "Take 'em with us?" panted Pete. "Why, o' course! I never thought o' that. But we can't, Master Nic; we're locked in." "The roof's open. Look here, Pete; I'm going to climb out at once. The dogs will begin to bay at this, but as soon as I'm on the roof, ready to drop down, you get up, put your hands against the boards, and lay a-back. Then I'll call them. They'll scramble up, and I'll help them through. You come last." "Think they'll do it?" said Pete, panting like one of the hounds. "I'm sure they will." "Be worse than the flogging," cried Pete excitedly; "they'll tear all the skin off my back. But I don't care; I'm ready. They'll leave the bones." "Ready, then?" cried Nic. "The moment there's room make a back for the dogs." The eager talking excited the great animals, and they began to sniff at the speakers and growl; but Nic's blood was up, and he was ready to risk an attack on the chance of his scheme succeeding. "A dog is a dog, whether it's here or at home, and I know their nature pretty well." The next moment he was proving it by leaping to his feet. "Hey, boys, then!" he cried loudly; "the woods--a run in the woods!" The dogs sprang round him, and began leaping up, barking excitedly. "Come on, then," he shouted, though his heart leaped with a choking sensation at his mouth; and, scrambling up to the opening by means of the pegs, he was the next minute squeezing himself through, the dogs bounding up at him as he went, and nearly causing him to fall. For one moment he felt he was being dragged back, and shuddered at the thought of what might happen if the excited animals got him down. But the dread passed away as quickly as it had come. He tore off another of the shingles to widen the opening, and shouted down into the shed: "Come on, then. Come on." Already the hounds were growing savage in their disappointment, and baying and growling with tremendous clamour, as they kept on leaping over each other and dropping back. But at the words of encouragement from above one of them awoke to the fact that there was a step all ready in the darkness, and, leaping upon it, the great creature reached up, got its paws on the sides of the opening, scrambled through without help from Nic, as he sat on the roof, and leaped down. That was enough; the others followed quickly, and the next minute Pete was up, seated by Nic's side, the dogs now leaping at them from below, barking loudly. "Hurt?" panted Nic. "Not a bit. Durst us jump down?" "We must," cried Nic firmly; and, shouting to the dogs, he lowered himself down, dropped to the ground, and was followed by Pete. "Hie on, boys! Forward, then!" cried Nic, as the dogs leaped and bounded around him, and he began to trot away from the river. "Which way?" said Pete, who was as excited now as his companion. "Wherever the dogs lead us," replied Nic. "Anywhere away from this slavery and death. Forward, then, boys! Hie on!" The dogs ceased barking and began dashing on through the plantation leading to the nearest wood. The hunt was up, and Nic had rightly weighed their nature. They were off in chase of something; that was enough, and the two men followed, feeling that at last they were on the highroad to freedom, with their most dreaded enemies turned to friends. "Master Nic," said Pete hoarsely as they trotted on, step for step following the sound made by the heavy dogs, "I aren't never been a 'ligious sort of a chap, but would it be any harm if, instead o' kneeling down proper, I was to try and say a prayer as we run?" "Harm, Pete?" cried Nic, with a wild, hysterical ring in his voice; "it could not be. Why, I've been praying for help ever since I leaped down among those savage beasts. I could not have ventured but for that." Sound travels far during the night, and, though the fugitives were not aware of it, their attempt to escape was known. For, just when the dogs were free of the shed and were baying their loudest, the settler, at the head of his men, turned to Saunders: "Hear that?" he said hoarsely. "Yes. They've risked it, and the dogs are running them down. Well, they have only themselves to thank; I wash my hands of it all." The settler shuddered, for his companion's words had brought up a thought that was full of horror; and for a moment he was about to order his blacks to turn back. But just then the overseer whispered: "Keep up, sir; not a sound, please. We shall have them now." "No firing," said the settler quickly; "they will be unarmed." "I don't know that," said the overseer; "but we shall soon know. Hadn't we better deal with them as they deal with us? Hark! the dogs are quiet now. They've got their prisoners, and, if I'm not wrong, in a few minutes we shall have taken ours." "Heah dat, Zerk?" whispered Samson. There was a grunt. "You an' me's gwan to have de arm-ache to-morrow morn' wid all dat lot to flog." "Iss," whispered Xerxes; "and den got to go and bury dem oder one bones." CHAPTER THIRTY ONE. A NIGHT'S MUDDLE. On went the dogs, apparently following the track of some animal; and, as they seemed to be leading the fugitives farther and farther away from the plantation, nothing Nic felt, could be better. For, in spite of the long imprisonment at the settler's place, the knowledge of the prisoners was confined to the river and the clearings about the house. Certainly they had had a view of the distant hills; but all beyond the plantation, save towards the swamp, was unknown land. "We can't do better than go on, Pete," said Nic, after following the dogs for about an hour. "Don't see as we can, zir. They're hunting after zomething they've got the zmell of, and maybe, if we cross their scent, they may begin hunting us; zo I zay let 'em go. You zee, they're mostly kep' chained up in them gashly kennels o' theirs; and they're enjoying a run in the woods. Any idee where we be?" "Not the slightest, Pete; but at any rate we're free." "Till we're ketched again, Master Nic. But I zay, you'll show fight if they should catch up to uz?" "Yes, Pete; I should feel so desperate that I should be ready to die sooner than give up now." "That's me all over, lad," said Pete. "I zay, though; couldn't get to be more friends still wi' the dogs, and make 'em fight for uz, could we?" Nic laughed bitterly, and then stopped short, for the yelping had ceased. "Can you hear the hounds now?" A sharp burst of barking a short distance away told of their direction, and after wandering in and out among the trees for a few minutes, they found the three great creatures apparently waiting for them to come up before starting off again. This went on for a full hour longer, the dogs leading them on and on, evidently getting scent of one of the little animals the blacks hunted from time to time; but from their clumsiness, and the activity of the little quarry, each run being without result. "Where are we now?" said Pete at last, after the yelping of the little pack had ceased. "It is impossible to say," replied Nic. "It is all so much alike here in the darkness that I have felt helpless ever since we started; but we must be many miles away from the plantation, and I hardly know how the night has gone in this excitement; but it must be near morning." "Must be," said Pete, "for my clothes are quite dry again, and I'm getting thirsty. What are we going to do now?" "Keep on, and coax the dogs more and more away. We must not let them go back." "No; that wouldn't do, Master Nic. On'y if they don't ketch anything they'll get hungry, and if they gets hungry they'll grow zavage; and if they grow zavage, what's going to happen then?" "Wait till the trouble comes, Pete," replied Nic; "then we'll see." "That's good zense, Master Nic; and I b'lieve them brutes are lying down and resting zomewhere. Shall I give a whistle?" "Yes; it would do no harm." Pete uttered a low, piping sound such as would be given by a bird, and it was answered by a bark which showed the direction; and, on turning towards it, a minute had not elapsed before they heard the heavy panting of the three animals, which sprang up and came to them, lolling out their tongues to be caressed. "Good old dogs, then," said Nic, patting their heads. "Go on, and take us right away, and when it gets daylight you may all have a good sleep. Hie on, then, boys; hie on! Right away." The dogs threw up their heads, snuffed about a bit, and then started off once more at a steady pace, which soon slowed down, and made the task of following them in the darkness much less difficult. Then all at once one of them uttered a low, whining sound and sprang off a little faster. For the ground was more open here, the trees bigger, and the undergrowth--the great hindrance--scarce. "Better going here, Master Nic, if it waren't for the great roots sticking out. Now, if the day would only break we should be able to zee better what we were doing. My word! if we could only come across a good wild-apple orchard it wouldn't be amiss." "And that we shall not find." "Never mind, zir; we'll find zum'at else--toadstools on the trees, or wild berries, or zomething; and if them dogs don't run down anything good for a roast, why, they don't come up to one of our old Devon lurchers. If this was one of our woods we shouldn't be long without something between our teeth. Don't you be downhearted; I'll find zome'at we can eat." "I am not downhearted, Pete; and, if we can do so in safety, we'll go on walking all day." "That's right; on'y we don't want to run upon no more plantations." "No; we must trust to the wild country, Pete, till we can reach the sea." "And not feel zafe when we get there, zir. Zay, Master Nic, I don't think much of a country where they has zlaves, whether they're white or whether they're black." "Never mind that now, Pete; we have escaped." "And without my having a chance to thrash Humpy Dee, and giving Master Zaunders one for his nob." "Hist! what's that?" whispered Nic, as a peculiar sound came through the trees. "Water!" said Pete excitedly. "The dogs lapping. Come on, zir. My mouth's as if it was full of dust. The very thing we want." The next minute the darkness seemed to be less intense, and in another they were close to a little stream, where the dogs were drinking deeply; but they left the edge as the fugitives came up, shook themselves, and stood by while Pete sought for a place a little higher up. "Here you are, Master Nic," he said. "They might ha' let uz have first go; but I forgive 'em for finding it. Lie down on your face and drink." Nic needed no incitement, and Pete followed his example, both enjoying the sweetest, most refreshing draught that had ever passed their lips. "Hall!" ejaculated Pete as he raised himself into a sitting posture. "Can't drink any more. Hope we aren't zwallowed no young 'gators or a snake; but if we have, zir, it'll be vittles as well as drink, and do uz good." "Ugh! don't talk about it," said Nic. "But where are the dogs?" "Eh? Gone on, I s'pose; and we must trot on too. I'm ready for anything now." "Look, Pete. Yonder's the east." "That's our way then, zir." "And the sun will not be long before it's up. It is getting light fast. Come along and find the dogs. We came up from the left; they will go right on to the right. We should have heard them if they had crossed the stream." "That's right, lad. What a good--" Pete was going to say poacher, but he checked himself--"wood-man you'd have made. Forward, then. It's all open yonder." A minute later they had stopped short, to see the three dogs walking across a clearing, plainly seen in the grey dawn, while to the left the stream had widened out. It was only a momentary pause, and then the fugitives shrank back into cover, chilled to the heart by the dreadful truth. The dogs, quite at home in the neighbouring forest, had taken them a long round, and brought them back to the plantation; and now, wearied out, they were making their way to their kennel at the back of the house and sheds. The night's labour seemed to have been all in vain; and Nic laid his hand upon his companion's shoulder as he said, with a bitter sigh: "Pete, Pete, it is hopeless. We shall never see the old home again." CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. NEVER SAY DIE. "What zay?" cried Pete sharply. "Never zay die, lad. English lads are never beat. Look at that!" He pointed through the trees at where the streamlet widened into the little creek where they had first landed, and Nic rubbed his eyes, refusing to believe in what he saw. But there it was plain enough in the dim, grey dawn--the boat lying tied up to the post; and a great sob rose to the poor fellow's lips, while for a few moments he could not stir. Then a thrill of excitement ran through him as he looked round and saw that the dogs had passed out of sight beyond the long, low shed which had been their jail. It came like a flash to him now what must have taken place--one of those guesses at the truth which hit the mark. He knew that his enemies had dashed off in pursuit of the men who had made for the boat. They must have been overtaken during the night, brought back, and were doubtless at that moment shut up in their old quarters. Nic hurriedly told Pete his impression, and the latter slapped his leg. "That's it," he said, "and zarve 'em right, zir. That's tumbling into the hole you made for zomebody else, isn't it? That's why they've not blown the old shell yet and didn't put the boat back. Been out all night." "Could we make sure by trying to see whether there is any one on guard at the barrack-door?" "Zoon do that, zir," said Pete; and, going down upon hands and knees, he crawled away among the bushes, to be back in a few minutes. "Old Zamson and Zerk both there at the door, zir, with guns." "Then they have caught them," said Nic excitedly. "But the blacks are both sitting down, fast asleep, zir." "Worn out with their night's work, Pete; but the prisoners will be well ironed and safe enough." "Ay, zir, or they'd have had the boat by now." "Now then, can we crawl to it under cover? We must be off at once." "Couldn't on'y crawl half-way, zir, and then it's all open, and we might be shot at if they zaw us from the house. Better make a dash for it at once and chance it." "Come on, then," cried Nic; and they ran as quickly as they could down by the side of the creek, reached the boat in safety, found that the poles and oars were in their places, and jumped in. There was no stopping to untie the rope which ran across the gunwale. Pete's knife flew out and sawed through it in a moment or two. Then one vigorous thrust sent the craft into the stream; but before they had cleared the creek there was a shout, followed by the whiz of a bullet and the report of a musket. "All right; fire away. Shouldn't come back if you was a ridgment of zojers," cried Pete, who was sending the boat along vigorously with the pole. "Lie down, Master Nic; they're going to shoot again." "And leave you there?" cried Nic. "No." Instead of screening himself by the boat's side, Nic seized two oars, got them over the rowlocks, and as soon as they were in the river he began to pull with all his might, watching the figure of Saunders limping slowly down after them and stopping from time to time for a shot; Samson and Xerxes, wakened by the firing, hurrying up, handing him a fresh musket, and reloading each time. "Don't see nothing of the gaffer," said Pete coolly; "he must have been hurt too, or he'd have been after us. There come the blacks. Hear that?" Plainly enough, for the whistle was very shrill, and it was answered by the dogs, which came tearing round the end of the shed to follow the overseer. "Row faster than they can zwim," said Pete, laying down the pole. "Here, give us one oar, Master Nic," he continued; and, taking his seat, the oar was handed to him, and, aided by the current, the boat began to move more swiftly. "Why, there's the gaffer," cried Pete suddenly; and Nic saw that the settler was coming down from the house by the help of a stick, while the dogs stood close by Saunders, barking loudly. "There must have been a desperate fight in the night, Pete," cried Nic. "Look, there are two of the blacks with their heads tied up." "And jolly glad I am, Master Nic. I shouldn't have cried much if they'd all killed one another and left nothing but the bones. There, put that gun away, stoopid; you can't hit us at this distance." The overseer seemed to have thought so too, for he lowered the musket, and Nic just caught sight of him striking savagely with it at the dogs, which began to bay and make rushes at him. But Nic saw no more, for a bend in the river, with a clump of trees thereon, hid the plantation from their sight; while Pete began to sing an old West-country ditty, something about a clever moneyless adventurer who, no matter what task he undertook, always succeeded in getting the best of his adversaries. The words were absurd and often childish, but there was a ring in the familiar old melody that went straight to Nic's heart and brought a strange moisture to his eyes, for it thrilled him with hope, and brought up memories of the far-away home that he began to feel now he might see again. And that feeling of hope drove away the horrible dread and the miserable sensation of weariness, sending vigour through every nerve, and making him bend to his oar to take a full grip of the water and swing back at the same moment as Pete, making the river ripple and plash beneath the bows and driving the boat merrily along, just as if the two fugitives were moved by the same spirit. "Zome zaid a penny, but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am a-zinging I'd five poun' free," chanted Pete in a fine, round, musical bass voice, and the trees on one side echoed it back, while the ungreased rowlocks, as the oars swung to and fro, seemed to Nic's excited fancy to keep on saying, "Dev-on, Dev-on, Dev-on," in cheery reiteration. "Zinging right fol de ree!" cried Pete. "Zay, Master Nic, why don't you join in chorus? You know that old zong." "Ay, Pete, I know it," said Nic; "but my heart's too full for singing." "Nay, not it, lad. Do you good. That's why I began. Mine felt so full that it was ready to burst out, and if I hadn't begun to zing I should ha' broken zomething. I zay, Master Nic, get out o' stroke and hit me a good whack or two with your oar and fisties, right in the back." "What for?" "To waken me up. I'm dreaming, I'm afraid, and I'd rather be roused up than go on in a dream like this. It's zo hearty, you zee, and makes me feel as if I could go on rowing for a month without getting tired." "So do I now, Pete." "Well, that's real, Master Nic. I dunno, though; p'raps it aren't, and I want it cut short. It would be horrid to wake up and find it all zleep-hatching; but the longer I go on the worse I shall be. It's dreaming, aren't it, and we didn't get away?" "You know it is not a dream, Pete," replied Nic. "We have escaped--I mean, we have begun to escape." "Begun, lad? Why, we've half-done it," cried Pete, who was wild with excitement. "Pull away, and let's zhow 'em what West-country muscles can do. Pull lad, pull, and keep me at it, or I zhall be getting up and dancing zailor's hornpipe all over the boat, and without music. Music! Who wants music? My heart's full of music and zinging of home again, and I don't know what's come to my eyes. Master Nic, all this river, and the trees, and fog rising on each zide through the trees, looks zo beautiful that I must be dreaming. Zay, lad, do tell me I ra-ally am awake." "Yes, Pete, awake--wide awake; and I am feeling just the same. My heart's beating with hope as it never beat before." "Hooroar for Master Nic's heart!" cried the big fellow wildly. "Beat away, good old heart, for we're going to do it, and it'll be just as easy as kissing your hand." "We mustn't be too sanguine." "Oh yes, we must, lad. I don't know what being zangwing is, but if it's anything to do with fancying we shall get away, I zay let's be as zangwing as we can. None of your getting into the dumps and `shan't do it' now. We're free, my lad--free; and I should just like to have a cut at any one as zays we aren't. Zlaves, indeed! White zlaves! But I knowed it couldn't last. You can't make a zlave of an Englishman, Master Nic. You may call him one, and put irons on him, or shut him up like zyder in a cask, and hammer the bung in; but zooner or later he'll zend the bung out flying, or burst the hoops and scatter the staves. It was only waiting our chance, and we've got it; and here we are rowing down this here river in the boat, and they may hoe the old plantation themselves. Zay, Master Nic." "Yes, Pete." "Don't it zeem strange what a differ a black skin makes in a man?" "What do you mean--in the colour?" "Nay-ay-ay-ay, lad! I mean 'bout being a zlave. Here's these niggers brought here and made zlaves of, and they zettles down to it as happy-go-lucky as can be. They don't zeem to mind. They eat and drink all they can, and zleep as much as they can, and they do as little work as they can. Why, I zometimes did three times as much hoeing as one o' they in a day; and that aren't bragging." "No, Pete; they took it very easy." "I should just think they did, my lad; and then the way they'd laugh! I never zee any one laugh as they could. I s'pose that's what makes their mouths zo big and their teeth zo white. Gets 'em bleached by opening their mouths zo wide." "Look, Pete!" whispered Nic. "Wasn't that something moving on the right bank?" "Yes; I zee it, Master Nic. Dunno what it was, but it waren't a man on the watch. Zay; they aren't got another boat anywhere, have they?" "Oh no; I feel sure they have not," said Nic sharply. "Then we're all right. This water's running zwift, and we're making the boat move pretty fast. They can't zwim half as fast as we're going, and they've no horses, and the dogs can't smell on the river, even if they made a raft of the trees they've got cut down yonder." "It would take them a day, Pete." "Ay, it would, Master Nic; and going on as we're going, we shall be a long way on at the end of a day." "Yes; we shall be some distance towards the mouth. I begin to think, Pete, that we shall really manage to escape." "Yes, we've done it this time, Master Nic; and we only want a veal-pie, a cold zalmon, a couple o' loaves, and a stone bottle o' zyder, to be 'bout as happy as any one could be." "But do you think we can reach the mouth of the river without being stopped?" "Don't zee who's to stop uz, zir," said Pete coolly. "What we've got to do is to row a steady stroke till we come to a place where we can get zome'at to eat; and then we'll row right out to zea, and get ourselves picked up by the first ship we can board. But we zeem to want that there veal-pie, cold zalmon, two loaves, and the stone bottle." "Yes, we want provisions, Pete. Are you keeping a good, sharp lookout?" "I just am, Master Nic. I'm afraid it's taking zome of the bark off when I look among the trees. But we needn't; nobody can't overtake uz unless we tie the boat up to a tree on the bank and lie down to go to zleep." "And that we shall not even think of doing, Pete." "That's zo, Master Nic. But by-and-by, when the zun gets hot and you're a bit tired, we'll get ashore zomewhere to break off a few good leafy boughs and make a bit of a shelter in the stern of the boat, zo as you can lie down and have a zleep." "Or you, Pete." "When it's my turn, Master Nic. We'll take watch and watch, as the zailors call it, zo as to keep the boat going till we get aboard a ship. I zay, how far do you make it to the landing-place where we come aboard the boat?" "I can't say, Pete," replied Nic. "I was in such a confused state that I have lost all count." "And I aren't much better, zir. You zee, we landed and slept on the road, and that took up time; but I've allowed us three days and nights as being plenty to get down to the zea; and that means tying up to the bank when the river's again' uz--I mean, when we come to where the tide runs, for we should knock ourzelves up trying to pull this heavy, lumbering old boat against the stream." Nic nodded, as he kept on looking anxiously astern; but he said nothing, and they rowed steadily on. "Zay, Master Nic," said Pete suddenly. "Yes." "Getting hot, aren't it?" "Terribly." "Well, I can't zay that, zir, because the zun aren't shining now on a zlave's back; it's on a free man's, and that makes all the differ. But what are you thinking about?" "The possibility of seeing another boat coming round the bend of the river." "It's unpossible, zir. The gaffer hadn't got no other boat to come in. I believe we was the only other planters up the river, and that there'll be no boat till we come to the places where we stayed of a night, and it's a zight nearer the zea. I keep on thinking, though, a deal." "What about--our escaping?" "Nay. It's very queer, Master Nic, and I s'pose it's because I'm zo empty." "Thinking of food, Pete?" said Nic sadly. "Yes, Master Nic. More I tries not to, more I keeps on 'bout veal-pie, cold zalmon, and zyder." "Ah yes, we must contrive to get some provisions after a bit." They rowed on in silence for some time, with the sun gathering power and beating down upon their heads, and flashing back from the surface of the river, till at last Pete said suddenly: "We must run the boat ashore close to those trees, Master Nic, or we shall be going queer in the head for want of cover." "Yes; I feel giddy now, Pete. Do you think we could tie a few leaves together for hats?" "You'll zee, my lad," said the man. "I could do it best with rushes, but I'll work zomething to keep off the zun." The boat was run in under the shade of a tree whose boughs hung down and dipped in the running stream; and as Pete laid in his oar he glanced down over the side and saw fish gliding away, deep down in the transparent water. "Zee um, zir?" said Pete. "Yes; there are some good-sized fish, Pete." "And either of 'em would make uz a dinner if we'd got a line." "And bait, Pete." "Oh, I'll manage a bait, Master Nic. Dessay they'd take a fly, a beetle, or a berry, or a worm, but I aren't got neither hook nor line. I'm going to have one, though, zoon, for the way I'm thinking o' cold zalmon is just horrid. I could eat it raw, or live even, without waiting for it to be cooked. These aren't zalmon, but they're vish." Nic said little, for he could think of nothing but the overseer coming into sight with musket and dogs, and his eyes were constantly directed up the river. But Pete took it all more calmly. He had dragged the boat beneath the shade of the overhanging tree, secured it to one of the boughs with the remains of the rope, several feet having fortunately been passed through the ring-bolt to lie loose in the bottom; and while Nic kept watch he roughed out something in the shape of a couple of basket-like caps, wove in and out a few leaves, and ended by placing them before his companion. "They aren't very han'some, Master Nic," he said, "but they'll keep the zun off. What do you zay now to lying down and having a nap while I take the watch?" "No, no," cried Nic excitedly; "let's go on at once." "I'm ready, Master Nic, but, if you could take both oars, I've been thinking that I could cut off one sleeve of my shirt, loosen and pull out the threads, and then twissen 'em up into a sort o' fishing-line, paying it over with some of the soft pitch here at the bottom of the boat, so as it would hold together a bit." "And what about a fish-hook?" asked Nic. "Ah, that's what bothers me, master. I've been thinking that when we get on into that great big marsh of a place where the river runs through the trees we might stop and vish, for there must be plenty there, or else the 'gators wouldn't be so plentiful. I did zee one big fellow, close to the top, in the clear water where it looked like wine. I thought it was a pike as we come up, and I felt as if I should like to try for him; but how to do it without a hook's more than I can tell. But we must have zomething to eat, Master Nic, or we shall be starved, and never get away after all." "Go on making your line," said Nic thoughtfully. "I'll row." As Nic took both oars Pete unfastened the piece of rope, and the boat began to glide along with the stream, while the latter burst into a low and hearty laugh. "On'y think o' that now, Master Nic. There's no need for me to spoil my shirt when there's a vishing-line half-made, and a hook waiting to be finished." "Where? What do you mean?" cried Nic excitedly. "Why, here in the bows, lad. I've on'y got to unlay this piece o' rope--it's nearly new-- and then I can twist up yards o' line." "But the hook, man--the hook?" "There it be, Master Nic--the ring in the bolt. I've on'y got to zaw it through with my knife, bend it to get it out, and then hammer one part out straight, ready to tie on to the line, and there you are." "But--" "Oh, I know; it won't be as good as a cod-hook, because it won't have no point nor no barb, but I'll tie a big frog or a bit o' zomething on to it, and if I don't yank a vish out with it afore night I never caught a zalmon." Nic winced a little at the word "salmon," but he kept his thoughts to himself and went on rowing; while Pete set to work with such goodwill that he soon had plenty of the rope unlaid, and began to plait the hempen threads into a coarse line, which grew rapidly between his clever fingers. But many hours had passed, and they were gliding through the interminable shades of the cypress swamp before he prepared to saw at the ring. It was Nic who made the next suggestion. "Pete," he said quickly, "why not take the head off the pole? It is very small for a boat-hook, and it is quite bright. There's a hole for you to fasten the line to, and a big pike-like fish might run at it as it is drawn through the water." "Of course it might, lad. Well, that is a good idea. Why waren't I born clever?" Pete set to work at once, and after a great deal of hard work he managed to cut away the wood from the nail-like rivet which held the head on to the shaft, after which a few blows sufficed to break the iron hook away, with the cross rivet still in place, ready to serve as a hold for the newly-made line. "Wonder whether a vish'll take it, Master Nic," said Pete as he stood up in the boat. "Now if it was one o' them 'gators I could lash my knife on to the end of the pole and spear a little un, but I s'pose it wouldn't be good to eat." Nic shook his head. "Might manage one to-morrow, zir, if we don't ketch a vish." Nic shook his head again. "I mean, zir, when we're nex' door to starvation-point. Don't feel as if I could touch one to-day." "Don't talk about the horrible reptiles, Pete," said Nic, with a shudder. "Right, Master Nic, I won't, for horrid they be; and I don't mind telling you that when I zwimmed across to get this boat I was in such a fright all the time that I felt all of a zweat. I don't know whether I was, for it don't zeem nat'ral-like for a man to come all over wet when he's all wet already; but that's how I felt. There we are, then. I'm ready, Master Nic, if you'll go on steady, on'y taking a dip now and then to keep her head straight." He held up the iron hook, which began to spin round, and he chuckled aloud. "I wouldn't be zuch a vool as to throw a thing like that into the water at home, Master Nic," he said, "for no vish would be zuch a vool as to run at it; but out here the vish are only zavages, and don't know any better. That's what I hopes." Nic began to dip an oar now and then, so as to avoid the rotten stumps, snags, and half-fallen trees, as the stream carried them on, so that he had little opportunity for noting the occupants of this dismal swamp; but Pete's eyes were sharp, and he saw a good deal of the hideous, great lizard-like creatures lying about on the mud or upon rotten trunks, with their horny sides glistening in the pencils of light which pierced the foliage overhead, or made sunny patches where, for the most part, all was a dim twilight, terribly suggestive of what a man's fate might be if he overbalanced himself and fell out of the boat. "I believe them great 'gators are zo hungry," said Pete to himself, "that they'd rush at one altogether and finish a fellow, bones and all." At last: "Looks a reg'lar vishy place, Master Nic; zo here goes." Pete gave the bright hook a swing and cast it half-a-dozen yards from the boat to where it fell with a splash, which was followed by a curious movement of the amber-hued water; and then he began to snatch with the line, so as to make the bright iron play about. Then there was a sudden check. "Back water, Master Nic," cried Pete. "I'm fast in zomething." "Yes," said Nic, obeying his order; "you're caught in a sunken tree. Mind, or you'll break your line." "That's what I'm feared on, Master Nic, but it's 'bout the liveliest tree I ever felt. Look where the line's going. I'm feared it's gone." The line was cutting the water and gliding through Pete's fingers till he checked it at the end, when a black tail rose above the surface and fell with a splash, and the line slackened and was hauled in. "Hook aren't gone, zir," said Pete as he drew it over the side. "Rum vishing that there. Why, it were one o' them 'gators, five or six foot long. Let's try lower down." They tried as Pete suggested, and there was another boil in the water, but the hook was drawn in without a touch; and Pete tried again and again, till he felt the glistening iron seized by something which held on fast. "Got him this time, zir," said Pete, with his face lighting up. "It's a vish now. One o' they pike things, and not zo very big." "Haul in quick," cried Nic. It was an unnecessary order, for the line was rapidly drawn close inboard, and Pete lowered one hand to take a short grip and swing his captive out of the water. But he put too much vigour into the effort, and flung his prize right over just as it shook itself clear of the hook, and fell upon the gunwale before glancing off back into the water. No fish, but an alligator about thirty inches long. "Ugh!" ejaculated Pete; "and I thought I'd got a vish. Never mind, Master Nic. We'll have zomething good yet." His companion did not feel hopeful. It was evident that the water swarmed with the reptiles, and in spite of the terribly faint sensation of hunger that was increasing fast, Nic felt disposed to tell his companion to give up trying, when suddenly there was a fierce rush after the glistening hook as it was being dragged through the water, a sudden check, and the water boiled again as Pete hauled in the line, sea fishing fashion, to get his captive into the boat before it could struggle free from the clumsy hook. This time success attended Pete's efforts. He got hold of the line close to the iron, and with a vigorous swing threw his prize into the boat just as the hook came away, leaving the fish to begin leaping about, till Nic stunned it with a heavy blow from the boat-hook pole. "I knowed we should do it, Master Nic," said Pete triumphantly. "There now, aren't it zummat like one of our big pike at home? Now, that's good to eat; and the next game's tie up to the zhore where there's some dry wood, and we'll light a fire." "Yes," said Nic as he bent over their prize. "I suppose it's what they call the alligator-gar, Pete." "Dessay it is, zir; but I don't care what they calls it--Ah, would you?" cried Pete, stamping his bare foot upon the great fish as it made a leap to escape. Nic too was on the alert, and he thrust the ragged head of the pole between the teeth-armed, gaping jaws, which closed upon it fiercely and held on. But Pete's knife was out next moment, and a well-directed cut put the savage creature beyond the power to do mischief. "A twenty-pounder, Master Nic. Wish it were one o' your zalmon. There, I'll zoon clean him, while you run the boat in at a good place." "But how are we to get a fire, Pete?" said Nic anxiously, for an intense feeling of hunger now set in. "I'll zoon show you that, lad," replied Pete; and he did. In a very short time after, by means of a little flint he carried in company with his pocket-knife, the back of the blade, and some dry touchwood from a rotting tree, he soon had a fire glowing, then blazing, for there was dead-wood enough to make campfires for an army. Another quarter of an hour passed, and the big fish was hissing and spluttering on a wooden spit over the glowing embers; and at last they were able to fall to and eat of the whitest, juiciest flesh--as it seemed to them--that they had ever tasted. "Bit o' zalt'd be worth anything now, Master Nic, and I wouldn't turn up my nose at a good thick bit o' bread and butter, and a drop o' zyder'd be better than river water; but, take it all together, I zay as zalmon's nothing to this here, and we've got enough to last uz for a couple or three days to come." "Now for a few big leaves to wrap the rest in," said Nic at last, after they had thoroughly satisfied their hunger. "Right, Master Nic; but I must have a good drink o' water first." "Yes," said Nic, suddenly awakening to the fact that he was extremely thirsty, and he rose to his feet to utter a cry of horror. "Pete--Pete! The boat! the boat!" Pete leaped up and stared aghast, for the action of the running stream had loosened the thin remnants of the rope with which they had moored their boat. These had parted, and the craft was gliding rapidly away, a quarter of a mile down the river. CHAPTER THIRTY THREE. A STERN-CHASE. "Oh, why didn't I watch it?" groaned Pete, in agony; and his next glance was along the bank of the river, with the idea of running till opposite the boat. He groaned again as he grasped the fact that he could not run, only walk for two or three yards before the dense tangle of the forest commenced, and progress through that was impossible. "Means zwim for it, Master Nic," he cried, with an attempt at being cheery; "but look here, lad, if you zee me pulled down by them 'gators or vish, let it be a lesson to you. Don't you try the water." Then to himself, as he plunged in: "Why, o' course he wouldn't. What's the good o' saying that?" The water was deep and clear close in to the overhanging bank, and Pete dived out of sight, scaring some occupant of the river, which swept itself away with as much commotion in the water as was caused by the man's dive; but when he rose to the surface, yards away, shook his head, and glanced back over his left shoulder, it was to see Nic's head rise a short distance behind him, for the younger man had followed on the instant. Pete ceased swimming, to allow his companion to come abreast. "Oh, Master Nic!" he cried, "you zhouldn't ha' done that;" and he glanced wildly about him as if expecting to see the rugged head of an alligator rise close by. "Go back, lad; go back. It's on'y one man's work." "Go back? No," said Nic firmly. "We must fight it out, shoulders together, Pete. Come on." Pete gave vent to something like a sob, and his face grew wrinkled; but the next moment he forced a smile. "Well, you're master," he said cheerily; "zo now for it, zir. You zwim lighter than I do, but I'll race you down to the boat. Virst to lay a hand on gunwale wins." "Come on," said Nic, fighting hard to master the horrible feeling that at any moment they might be attacked from beneath by one or other of the fierce creatures which inhabited the stream--Nic's dread being mostly respecting the shark-like gar-fish, which he knew must be abundant. Pete shared his dread, but they both kept their thoughts to themselves as they swam on with strong, steady strokes, their light clothing of shirt and short drawers impeding them but slightly. Life from childhood on the seashore had conduced to making them expert swimmers; the swift stream helped them famously; and, keeping well away towards the middle to avoid the eddies near the shore, they went on steadily after the boat. But this, in its light state, was being swept rapidly on, and had so good a start that for some time the swimmers did not seem to gain upon it in the least, and at last, as the distance still remained about the same, a feeling of despair began to attack them. Pete saw the change in his fellow-swimmer's countenance. "Take it easy, Master Nic. Long ztroke and zlow. We could keep this up all day. On'y got to zwim steady: river does all the work." "We must swim faster, Pete, or we shall never reach the boat," cried Nic. "Nay, lad; if we zwim hard we shall get tired out, and lose ground then. Easy as you can. She may get closer in and be caught by zome of the branches." Nic said no more, but swam on, keeping his straining eyes fixed upon the ever-distant boat, till at last hope began to rise again, for the craft did happen to be taken by the eddy formed by a stream which joined the river, and directly after they saw it being driven towards one of the huge trees which dipped its pendent boughs far out in the water. The feeling of excitement made Nic's breath come thick and fast as he saw the boat brush against the leafage, pause for a few moments, and the young man was ready to utter a cry of joy, but it died out in a low groan, for the boat continued its progress, the twigs swept over it, and the power of the stream mastered. But it was caught again, and they saw it heel over a little, free itself, and then, swaying a little, it seemed to bound on faster than ever. "Never mind, lad," said Pete coolly; "it'll catch again soon." Pete was right; the boat was nearer to the wall of verdure, and it once more seemed to be entangled in some boughs which dipped below the surface and hung there, while the swimmers reduced the distance between them and the boat forty or fifty yards. Then, with a swift gliding motion, it was off again. "That's twice," cried Pete. "Third time does it. Zay, Master Nic, aren't the water nice and cold?" The look which Nic gave the speaker in his despair checked Pete's efforts to make the best of things. "A beast!" he muttered to himself. "I should like to drive my hoof through her planks. Heavy boat? Why, she dances over the water like a cork." At that moment Nic could not suppress a sharp cry, and he made a spasmodic dash through the water. "Eh, my lad, what is it?" cried Pete, who was startled. "One of the great fishes or reptiles made a dash at me and struck me on the leg," gasped Nic. "Nay, nay, don't zay that, lad. You kicked again a floating log. There's hunderds allus going down to the zea." Nic shook his head, and Pete felt that he was right, for the next minute he was swimming on with his keen-edged knife held in his teeth, ready for the emergency which he felt might come; but they suffered no further alarm. Disappointment followed disappointment, and weariness steadily set in; but they swam steadily on, till Nic's strength began to fail. He would not speak, though, till, feeling that he had done all that was possible, he turned his despairing eyes to Pete. Before he could speak the latter cried: "I knowed it, Master Nic, and expected it ever so long past. Now, you just turn inshore along with me; then you shall lie down and rest while I go on and ketch the boat. But how I'm to pull her back again' this zwiff stream, back to you, my lad, is more'n I know." Nic made no reply, but, breathing hard, he swam with Pete to an open spot at the side, and had just strength to draw himself out by a hanging branch, and then drop down exhausted, with the water streaming from him. "No, no; don't leave me, Pete," he cried hoarsely. "Must, my lad, must;" cried the man, preparing to turn and swim away. "You stop there, and I can zee you when I come back." "It is impossible to overtake it. We must try and get down through the trees. You can't do it, I tell you." "Must, and will, my lad," cried Pete. "Never zay die." Nic sank back and watched the brave fellow as he swam away more vigorously than ever. At every stroke Pete's shoulders rose well above the surface, and, to all appearance, he was as fresh as when he started. But there was the boat gliding down the stream, far enough away now, and beginning to look small between the towering trees rising on either side of the straight reach along which Nic gazed; and the watcher's agony grew intense. "He'll swim till he gives up and sinks," said Nic to himself; "or else one of those horrid reptiles will drag him down." He drew breath a little more hopefully, though, as he saw a bright flash of light glance from where Pete was swimming, for it told that the keen knife was held ready in the strong man's teeth; and he knew that the arm was vigorous that would deliver thrust after thrust at any enemy which attempted to drag him down. With the cessation of his exertion, Nic's breath began to come more easily, and he sat up to watch the head of the swimmer getting rapidly farther away, feeling that he had been a hindrance to the brave fellow, who had been studying his companion's powers all the time. But how much farther off the boat seemed still!--far enough to make Nic's heart sink lower and lower, and the loneliness of his situation to grow so terrible that it seemed more than he could bear. For a full half-hour he sat watching the dazzling water, from which the sun flashed, while he was in the shade. Pete had not reached the boat, but he seemed now to be getting very near, though Nic knew how deceptive the distance was, and gazed on, with a pain coming behind his eyes, till all at once his heart leaped with joy, as now he could just make out that the boat was very near the shore, apparently touching some drooping boughs. Then his heart sank again, for he told himself that it was only fancy; and he shivered again as he felt how utterly exhausted Pete must be. Every moment he felt sure that he would see that little, dark speck disappear, but still it was there; and at last the watcher's heart began to throb, for the boat must have caught against those boughs. It was not moving. The watcher would not believe this for a long time, but at last he uttered a cry of joy, followed by a groan; for, though the boat was there, the dark speck which represented Pete's head had disappeared; and, to make the watcher's despair more profound, the boat began to move once more, unmistakably gliding from beside the trees. All was over now, for Nic felt that to struggle longer was hopeless: there was nothing more to be done but lie down and die. He held his hands over his brows, straining his failing, aching eyes to keep the boat in sight as long as he could; and then a strange choking sensation came into his throat, and he rose to his knees, for there was a flash of light from the water close to the boat, and another, and another. There was a strange, indistinct something, too, above the tiny line made by the gunwale, and it could only mean one thing: Pete had overtaken it, climbed in, and the flashes of light came from the disturbed surface of the river. Pete must be trying to row her back to take him up. The intense sensation of relief at knowing that the brave fellow was alive and safe seemed more than Nic could bear. He was already upon his knees. His face was bowed down upon his hands, and for a few minutes he did not stir. At last, with a wave of strength and confidence seeming to run through every fibre of his body, Nic rose up, feeling fully rested; and, as he shaded his eyes once more to gaze down the river at the boat, the cloud of despair had floated away, and the long reach of glistening water looked like the way back to the bright world of hope and love--the way to home; while the thought of lying down there to die was but the filmy vapour of some fevered dream. Pete was coming back to him: there could be no mistake about that, for Nic could see more clearly now, and there were moments when he could distinctly see the flashing of the water when the oars were dipped. "Oh!" cried Nic, with his excitement rising now to the highest pitch, "and there was a time when I looked upon that brave, true-hearted fellow with contempt and disgust. How he is slaving there to send the great, heavy boat along!" Nic watched till his eyes ached; and once more his heart began to sink, for the truth was rapidly being forced upon him that, in spite of Pete's efforts, the boat remained nearly motionless--the poor fellow was exhausting himself in his efforts to achieve the impossible. What to do? Nic was not long in making up his mind. He knew that Pete would try till he dropped back in the boat, and it would have been all in vain. The pair of them could hardly have rowed that heavy boat up-stream, and they were as yet far above the reach of the tide, or Pete might have waited and then come up. There was only one thing to do--go down to him. A minute or two's trial proved to Nic that he could not tear his way through the dense growth on the bank till he was opposite his companion and could hail him to come ashore. There was only one thing to be done--swim down, and that he dared not do without help. But the help was near, and he set to work. He still had his keen knife, and the next moment he was hewing away at a patch of stout canes growing in the water, and as he attacked them he shuddered, for there was a wallowing rush, and he caught a glimpse of a small alligator's tail. He did not stop, though. He knew that he had frightened the reptile, and this knowledge that the creatures did fear men gave him encouragement, making him work hard till he had cut a great bundle, ample to sustain him in the water. This he firmly bound with cane, and when this was done he once more gazed at the distant boat, which did not seem to have moved an inch. How to make Pete grasp the fact that he was coming to join him? For even if he saw something floating down he would never think that it was his companion. This task too was easy. Cutting the longest cane he could reach, he cut off the leafy top, made a notch in what was left, and then inserting the point of his knife in the remaining sleeve of his shirt, he tore it off, ripped up the seam, and after dragging one end down through the knot and slit in the cane, he bound up the end with a strip of cotton, stuck the base firmly in the bundle or truss he had bound together, and so formed a little white flag. "If he sees that he'll know," said Nic triumphantly; and without a moment's hesitation he thrust off from the bank with his cane bundle under one arm, and struck out with the other, finding plenty of support, and nothing more to do than fight his way out to where the stream ran most swiftly. The scrap of white cotton fluttered bravely now and then, as, forcing himself not to think of the dangers that might be around, Nic watched and watched. He soon began to see the boat more distinctly, and in good time made out that his companion in misfortune grasped the position, rowing himself to the nearest drooping tree, making fast to a bough, and then laying in one oar and fixing the other up astern as a signal for his companion's guidance. How short the time seemed then, and how easily Nic glided down, till he became aware of the fact that Pete was leaning over the side, knife in hand, watching eagerly. This sent a shudder through the swimmer, setting him thinking again of the perils that might be near, and how unlikely any effort of Pete's would be to save him should one of the reptiles attack. The dread, however, soon passed off, for Nic's every nerve was strained to force the bundle of canes across the stream, so that it might drift right down upon the boat. He could only succeed in part, and it soon became evident that he would float by yards away; but Pete was on the alert. He cast the boat adrift from where he had secured it to a drooping bough, and giving a few vigorous pulls with one oar, in another minute he had leaned over the bows, grasped his companion's hands, dragged him into the boat, and then, as the buoyant bundle of canes floated away, the poor fellow sank back in the bottom of the boat and lay staring helplessly. "Don't you take no notice o' me, Master Nic," he said hoarsely. "Just put an oar over the ztarn and keep her head ztraight. Zhe'll go down fast enough. We ought to row up to fetch that fish we left, but we couldn't do it, zir; for I'm dead beat trying to get to you--just dead beat." He closed his eyes, and then opened them again as he felt the warm grasp of Nic's hand, smiled at him, till his eyelids dropped again, and then sank into a deep stupor more than sleep. CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. WOMAN'S PITY. The sun sank lower and disappeared behind the trees straight away as the boat drifted on; the sky turned of a glorious amber, darkened quickly, and then it was black night, with the eerie cries of the birds rising on either side, and the margins of the swift river waking up into life with the hoarse bellowings and croakings of the reptiles which swarmed upon the banks. Every now and then there was a rush or a splash, or the heavy beating of the water, as some noisome creature sought its prey; and Nic sat there watching and listening, wakeful enough, and always on the alert to catch the breathing of his companion, who for hours had not stirred. "Beat out," said Nic to himself; "utterly exhausted, poor fellow! If I could only feel that it was a natural sleep." He was thoroughly done-up himself, and in spite of his efforts to keep awake, and the dread inspired by the movements of the strange creatures splashing about in the water, and often enough apparently close at hand, he could not keep from dozing off time after time, but only to start up in an agony of fear. He hardly lost consciousness, and at such times the startling noises and movements around him in the darkness seemed to be continued in the wild dreams which instantly commenced. Now in imagination he saw through the transparent darkness some huge alligator making for the boat, where it reared itself up, curved over, and seemed about to seize upon Pete, when he raised the oar with which he was keeping the boat's head straight and struck at the monster with all his might, and in the act awoke. Another time Nic dropped off, to imagine that they were slowly gliding beneath the far-spreading boughs of a gigantic forest tree; and, as they swept on, something soft and heavy suddenly hung down into the boat, began crawling about, and at last stopped its progress by coiling itself round one of the thwarts, and then raising its head high in the air and beginning to dart its tongue, now at Nic, now at the motionless body of Pete, who still lay sleeping soundly. Nic felt powerless, and lay watching the approach of the huge boa, seeing it plainly in spite of the darkness and suffering an agony of horror as he felt that he could not move, but must lie there, quite at the mercy of the powerful reptile, which drew the boat over so much on one side that the water, as it rippled by, rose apparently higher and higher till it was about to pour in. Ripple, ripple, ripple, against the sides, while the boughs of a tree swept over his face, the touch awakening the dreamer, who uttered a low gasp of relief as he realised how much the water and the brushing of the leaves over his face had had to do with the dream from which he had just been roused. Morning at last, with the east all aglow, and the beauties of river and tree sweeping away the horrors of the black night. Pete awoke as if by instinct, and started into a sitting position, to stare hard at his companion. "Why, Master Nic, you aren't never gone and let me sleep all night?" "Indeed, but I have, Pete," replied Nic. "Feel better?" "No, zir. Never felt so 'shamed of myself in my life. Oh dear! oh dear! To think of my doing that! Where are we, zir? 'Most got to that t'other zattlement, aren't uz?" "What! where we rested for the night, Pete? No; I don't think we are near that yet." "Then get nigh we must," cried Pete, putting out his oar. "We've got to find some braxfuss there. What we had yes'day don't zeem to count a bit. I zay, though, you don't think they got another boat and passed us while we were asleep, do you?" "No, Pete," replied Nic, smiling; "and I don't think that we shall dare to land at that plantation lower down. The man there would know we are escaped slaves, and stop us." "He'd better not," said Pete, with a curious look in his eyes. "He's the only man there." "There are several blacks." "Blacks!" cried Pete contemptuously. "I'm not afraid o' them. It's o' no use, Master Nic; I've tried hard to bear it, and I can bear a deal, but when it comes to starvation it's again' my natur'. I must eat, and if he calls twenty blacks to stop me I mean to have zomething, and zo shall you. Why, lad, you look as if you're half-dead wi' want o' zleep and a morsel o' food. Nay, nay; you leave that oar alone, and cover your head up with those leaves while you have a good rest. By that time p'raps we may get a bit o' braxfuss." "I'm not sleepy, Pete," said Nic sadly. "P'raps not, zir; but man must eat and he must zleep, so you lie back in the bottom of the boat. Now, no fighting agen it, zir; you worked all night, zo I must work all day." "Well, I'll lie down for an hour, Pete, for I do feel very weary. As soon as you think an hour's gone, you wake me up." "Right, Master Nic, I will," cried Pete heartily; and after a glance up and down the river, the young man sank back in the bottom of the boat, settled the leafy cap and veil in one over his face to shield it from the sun, and the next minute--to him--he unclosed his eyes to find that Pete was kneeling beside him with a hand on each shoulder as if he had been shaking the sleeper. "Hullo! Yes; all right, Pete, I've had such a sleep. Why, Pete, it must be getting on for noon." "Ay, that it is, my lad; noon to-morrow. But don't bully me, zir; you was zleeping just lovely, and I couldn't waken you. Here we are at that farm-place, and I don't zee the man about, but yonder's the two women." "And the dogs, Pete?" "Nay, don't zee no dogs. Maybe they're gone along wi' the master. Come on, lad; I've tied the boat up to this post, and we'll go up and ask the women yonder to give us a bit o' zomething to eat." The place looked very familiar as Nic glanced round and recalled the time when he reached there, and their departure the next morning, with the looks of sympathy the two women had bestowed. Just as he recalled this he caught sight of the younger woman, who came from the door of the roughly-built house, darted back and returned with her mother, both standing gazing at their visitors as they landed from the boat. "Must go up to the house quiet-like, Master Nic, or we shall scare 'em," said Pete. "Just you wave your hand a bit to show 'em you know 'em. Dessay they 'members we." Nic slowly waved his hand, and then shrugged his shoulders as he glanced down at his thin cotton rags; and his piteous plight made him ready to groan. "We must go up to them as beggars, Pete," he said. "That's right enough for me, Master Nic; but you're a gentleman, zir, and they'll know it soon as you begin to speak. Let's go on, zir. I'm that hungry I could almost eat you." Nic said nothing, but began to walk on towards the house by his companion's side, anxiously watching the two women the while, in the full expectation that they would retreat and shut the door against their visitors. But neither stirred, and the fugitives were half-way to the house, when suddenly there was a growl and a rush. "Knives, Master Nic," cried Pete, for three great dogs came charging from the back of the low shed which had given the slaves shelter on their journey up the river. The dogs had evidently been basking in the sunshine till they had caught sight of the strangers, and came on baying furiously. Nic followed his companion's example and drew his knife, feeling excited by the coming encounter; but before the dogs reached them the two women came running from the door, crying out angrily at the fierce beasts, whose loud barking dropped into angry growls as they obeyed the calls of their mistresses--the younger woman coming up first, apron in hand, to beat off the pack and drive them before her, back to one of the out-buildings, while her mother remained gazing compassionately at the visitors. "Thank you," said Nic, putting back his knife. "Your dogs took us for thieves. We are only beggars, madam, asking for a little bread." "Have you--have you escaped from up yonder?" said the woman, sinking her voice. "Yes," said Nic frankly. "I was forced away from home for no cause whatever. I am trying to get back." "It is very shocking," said the woman sadly, as her daughter came running up breathlessly. "Some of the men they have there are bad and wicked, and I suppose they deserve it; but Ann and I felt so sorry for you when you came that night months ago. You seemed so different." "You remember us, then?" said Nic, smiling sadly. "Oh yes," cried the younger woman eagerly. "But they are hungry, mother. Bring them up to the house; I've shut-in the dogs." "I don't know what your father would say if he knew what we did," said the woman sadly. "It's against the law to help slaves to escape." "It isn't against the law to give starving people something to eat, mother." "It can't be; can it, dear?" said the woman. "And we needn't help them to escape." "No," said Pete; "we can manage that if you'll give us a bit o' bread. I won't ask for meat, missus; but if you give us a bit, too, I'd thank you kindly." "Bring them up, mother," said the girl; "and if father ever knows I'll say it was all my fault." "Yes; come up to the house," said the elder woman. "I can't bear to see you poor white men taken for slaves." "God bless you for that!" cried Nic, catching at the woman's hand; but his action was so sudden that she started away in alarm. "Oh mother!" cried the girl; "can't you see what he meant?" The woman held out her hand directly, and Nic caught it. The next moment he had clasped the girl's hands, which were extended to him; but she snatched them away directly with a sob, and ran into the house, while the mother bade the pair sit down on a rough bench to rest. The girl was not long absent; but when she returned with a big loaf and a piece of bacon her eyes looked very red. "There," she said, setting the provisions before them; "you'd better take this and go, in case father should come back and see you. Don't, please, tell us which way you're going, and we won't look; for we shouldn't like to know and be obliged to tell. Oh!" The girl finished her speech with a cry of horror; for how he had approached no one could have said, but the planter suddenly came up with a gun over his shoulder, and stood looking on as, with a quick movement, Pete snatched at the loaf and thrust it under one arm. "Hullo!" said the man quietly as he looked from one to the other; "where are the dogs?" "I shut 'em up, father, so as they shouldn't hurt these two poor men." "An' s'pose these two poor men wanted to hurt you; what then?" "But they didn't, father," said the girl, as the mother stood shivering. "They were hungry, and only wanted something to eat." "Yes, that's right, master," said Pete stoutly. "We shouldn't hurt no one." "Let's see," said the planter; "I've seen you both before. My neighbour brought you up months ago." "Yes," said Nic firmly; "but he had no right to detain us as slaves." "Humph! S'pose not," said the planter, glancing sharply from one to the other. "So you're both runaways?" "We are trying for our liberty," replied Nic, who was well upon his guard; but the man's reply disarmed him. "Well, it's quite nat'ral," said the planter, with a chuckle. "Hot work hoeing the rows, eh? Took the boat, I s'pose, and rowed down?" "Yes," said Pete gruffly. "Hungry too, eh?" "Yes," said Pete again. "Course you would be. Quite nat'ral. They've give you a bit to eat, I see. Well, then, you'd better come and sit down out o' the sun and eat it, and then be off, for your overseer won't be long before he's down here after you. He's a sharp un, Master Saunders, aren't he?" "Yes; he's sharp enough," said Pete quietly. "He'll be down after you with his dogs, and then, if he catches you, there'll be a big row and a fight, and I don't want nothing o' that sort, my lads. Come on, and bring your bread and meat in here.--Ann, my gal, get 'em a pitcher o' cool, fresh water." "Yes, father," said the girl; and, as the planter turned off to lead the way, Nic caught the lass's eyes; for she began to make quick movements of her lips, and her eyes almost spoke as she pointed towards the river and signed to them to go. Nic gave her an intelligent nod, and followed Pete after the planter into the great, barn-like place which had been their prison for the night when they were there before; but as he passed the door he noticed the great wooden bar turning upon a bolt, and fully realised that the girl's signs were those of warning, for treachery was meant. "Nice and cool in here," said the man. "Sit ye down on the corn-husks there. My gal will soon be back with the water; and I wouldn't be long, if I were you, in case Master Saunders should come down the river, for when he asked me if you two was here I couldn't tell a lie about it, could I?" "No," growled Pete. "That would be a pity." "Ay; it would. But he'd know you was both here by the boat. Where did you tie it up?" "Just at the bottom there, by the trees," said Nic, to whom these words were addressed. "Ah, 'tis the best place," said the man, halting by the door, and standing aside to make room for the young men to pass. "In with you. It's better than being in the hot sun. Seems a bit dark; but it's cooler to have your dinner there. Well," he continued, "why don't you go in? The dogs are not here." "Because it looks like a trap, sir," said Nic firmly. "Do you want to shut us up there, and keep us prisoners till your neighbour comes?" "Yes, I do," cried the planter fiercely as he stepped back, and with one motion brought down and cocked his piece, which he presented at the young man's breast. "In with you both, or I'll shoot you like dogs!" He raised his gun to his shoulder and drew the trigger; but it was too late. Nic had sprung forward, striking up the barrel; and, as the mother and daughter shrieked aloud from the house door, there was a sharp report, which set the dogs baying furiously from the shed in which they were fastened. A short struggle followed, in which the gun was wrested from the planter's hands by Nic, and the next moment Pete had joined in the fray, securing the planter's arms, and then with Nic's help he was dragged and thrown into the great barn. Then the door was banged to and fastened with the bar; and the prisoner began to call and threaten what he would do if his people did not let loose the dogs. What followed would have seemed almost comic to a spectator, for the two women came hurrying up with their fingers stuck in their ears. "Run--run to your boat!" they whispered. "We can't hear what he says now, but we must soon, and then we shall be obliged to let out the dogs." "Oh, mother!" cried the girl, "the blacks will be here directly." "Yes, yes," cried the elder woman, who somehow seemed to have heard that. "Run, then, run, and get away before it is too late." "God bless you both for what you have done for us!" cried Nic. "I pray that you may not get into more trouble on our account." "Oh, father won't hurt me," said the girl; "and he shan't hurt mother. Serve him right for being so cruel. You never did him any harm." "Oh, run, run!" cried the woman, with her fingers still in her ears; and the two young men dashed off to the boat and leapt in, Nic's next action, as Pete unfastened the slight cord, being to fling the gun as far out into the river as he could. "Oh!" cried Pete, "what did you do that for?" as the gun fell with a splash and disappeared. "I was not going to steal the scoundrel's gun," said Nic, seizing an oar. "Well, it wouldn't ha' been any use without powder and zhot," said Pete as he thrust the boat out into the stream. "Good-bye to you both," he shouted, waving his hand to the two women, who stood waving their aprons. "But it seems cowardly, Pete, to go and leave them in the lurch." "Ay, it do, Master Nic; but it only means a rowing for them, and it's life and liberty for us." There was another wave of a white apron as the boat glided out into mid-stream, and Nic responded with his hand. Then trees interposed and hid the house and sheds from view, and the fugitives went on straining at their oars till they felt that their safety was assured, when they relaxed their efforts. "That was close, Master Nic," said Pete. "Treacherous martal. Wish I'd give him a good topper before we zhut the door." "I'm glad you did not, for his wife and daughter's sake," replied Nic. "Poor things! they will suffer for their gentle, womanly compassion towards a pair of poor escaped slaves." "Ay, it was good of 'em, Master Nic. Zees how hungry we were, and fetches that fresh brown loaf, and all that pink-and-white bacon as looks d'licious. Zo, as we're going gently on, and not likely for him to take boat after us, what do you say to staying all that horrid gnawing of our insides with a good bite and sup? But--I say, Master Nic, what did you do with that bacon and bread?" Nic looked sharply up at Pete, and the latter uttered a dismal groan. The bread and bacon had gone, neither knew where, in the struggle, and the landing and encounter had all been for nothing. "Not quite," Nic said later on. They had learned how much gentle compassion existed for the poor white slaves, even in a district where the sight of them was so common. "P'raps so, Master Nic; but I'd give all the compassion in the world just now for a zlice of that bacon and a hunk of bread. What's to be done now, zir?" "Row, Pete, row; and let's try and forget our hunger in the knowledge that we are so far free." "Right, zir; we will. But what about that treacherous hound? Think he's got a boat?" "Sure to have," replied Nic. "Then he'll come after as zoon as he can get help; and if he do--Well, I should be sorry to hurt him, on account of them as was kind to us; but if he does ketch it, mind, Master Nic, it's his fault and not mine." There was no more talking, for both felt morose and weak, their growing sense of hunger making them more and more silent and disinclined to speak. Still, fortune favoured them to a certain extent, for there had been rain somewhere inland, and the stream ran as if it were in flood higher up, so that their rate of progress was swift. As the hours went on and there was no sign of pursuit--no enemies who had made a short cut to the river-bank waiting to fire at them from among the trees--the fugitives grew more and more confident; and when at last they reached another swamp, the alligators appeared to be less monstrous and the gloomy place lost half its forbidding aspect. At last, after endless difficulties, and nearly starved, the tidal part of the river was reached, and, to the delight of both, they found that they had hit exactly the right moment, for the tide was at its height, and stood as if waiting to bear them onward towards the sea. Excitement had kept off all thought of food; but when, after a long journey, they approached the straggling town at nightfall and saw the twinkling lights, an intense desire seized upon both to land as soon as possible and satisfy their needs. "You see, we lost everything, Master Nic, in that struggle. What you looking at, zir?" "You, Pete. I was thinking." "What about, zir?" "About this place. If we land we must go to some house for food; and when we two half-naked, miserable, starved wretches have obtained what we want we shall be asked to pay." "My word!" gasped Pete, ceasing to row. "I never thought of that. And we aren't got any money." "Not a coin." "And they'd want it here just the same as they would at home, though it is a foreign country?" "Of course." "Then I tell you what, Master Nic," said Pete after a long pause; "we must go straight to zomebody and tell 'em how we've been zarved, and ask him to help us." "We should have to tell them everything, Pete." "Of course, zir; downright honest." "And who would believe us at a place like this, where we know that poor wretches are brought to go up to the plantations?" "Oh, hark at him!" sighed Pete. "And I'd been thinking our troubles were over, and we'd got nothing to do but get plenty to eat and a good ship to take us home. You're right, zir; it would be as mad as March hares to go ashore. They'd put us in prison and keep us there till old Zaunders come again with his dogs and guns and niggers to take us back; and when we got to the plantation it would be the lash and short commons, and the hoe again out in the hot sun." "Yes, Pete," said Nic sadly; "that is what I fear." "And you're a deal longer-headed than me, master. It's going and giving ourselves up for the sake of a good dinner. Master Nic!" "Yes, Pete." "Just buckle your belt a bit tighter, two or three holes, like this. That's the way. Now then, take hold of your oar again. We can hold out another day or two on what we can find, while we coast along till we see a ship outward bound somewhere. Sure to be lots. Then we'll row till they see us and pick us up. They won't bring us back, that's for sartain, but to the port they're going to; and of course they can't starve us. Then they'll hand us over to a judge o' some kind, and as soon as he hears your story you'll be all right; and--and--" "Yes, Pete?" "I know I've been a bad un; Master Nic; but I'm going to turn over a new leaf, zir, and never meddle wi' the zalmon again. You'll put in a good word for a poor fellow, won't you?" "A good word for you--for one who has been ready to risk his life again and again to help me? Pete, we have been brothers in our great misfortune, and we must hold together, come what may." "Then take a good grip of your oar, Master Nic, and let's forget being empty by taking our fill of work. Pull away, my lad, right out, and I dessay the tide'll run us along the shore, as it does at home. When the day comes again we shall zoon zee a zhip. We can't give up now. Ready?" "Yes." "Then pull." And in their desperate strait, feeling as they did that they would starve sooner than go back to slavery, those two bent to their oars in the darkness that closed them in, and rowed on with the swift tide. The lights on the shore grew fainter, the tide swifter, and the water became rough; but they rowed on, hungry, exhausted: on and on, ignorant of the set of the tides, of the trend of the coast, and without a drop of fresh water to satisfy their thirst. A mad, mad attempt; but it was for liberty--for all that man holds dear. What wonder that when the day dawned both had sunk forward over their oars and were sleeping heavily, to wake at last with the southern sun beating down upon their heads, and that they gazed at each other in a half-delirious, stupefied way, wondering what had happened and where they were. There was a faint appearance as of a cloud low down on the water far-away, but no cloud overhead, nothing but the burning, blistering sun to send a fierce energy through Nic's veins, which made him keep calling wildly upon Pete to row, row hard, before they were overtaken and dragged back to a white slave's life. Pete's eyes were staring fiercely, and looked bloodshot, while his throat was hot and dry, his brain felt as if on fire; but at every order from Nic he bent down over his oar and pulled and pulled, till his strokes grew more and more wild, and at last, as he made one more desperate than ever, he did not dip the blade, but fell backward from the thwart. Then, after vainly trying to pull with both oars himself, Nic turned to face his companion in misfortune, wondering in his delirium why he was there. The sun went down like a ball of fire on his left, and directly after, as it seemed, rose like a ball of fire on his right. It was that, he felt, which caused all his suffering, and in his rage and indignation he turned upon it fiercely, and then bent down to lap up the sparkling water which tempted him and seemed to promise to allay his awful thirst. He reached down and dipped his hand, but the attitude seemed to send the blood like molten lead running to his brain, and with a weary groan he fell sidewise and rolled over in the bottom of the boat. CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE. SAFE AT LAST. "Looks like a ship's longboat, sir; but she's right under the sun, and I can't make her out." "Any one in her?" "No, sir; not a soul." The conversation was between the captain and one of the foremast men of the good ship _Sultan_, bound from a western city with passengers and sugar to the port of Bristol. The wind was very light, and men were up aloft, setting the main top-gallant sail, when the boat was sighted only a little way out of the vessel's course. Then the captain argued, as he took a look at her from the main-top, that a boat like that might be battered, and not worth the trouble of picking up; but, on the other hand, she might; and finally, after taking the first-mate into debate, it was decided to steer a point or two to the west and pick her up. "For who knows what she may have aboard, or what good ship may have been wrecked?" the skipper said to one of the passengers brought on deck by the news of a boat in sight, for such an event broke the monotony of the tedious voyage. As the news spread through the ship the rest of the passengers came on deck, and when the boat was neared, the captain, as he stood inspecting the object through his glass, began to be satisfied that the find was in good condition, and then the announcement came from aloft that there were two bodies lying in the bottom. The excitement now became fierce; one of the ship's boats was swung out on the davits ready for lowering, manned, and dropped, and finally the prize was brought alongside, with its freight still alive, but apparently at their last gasp. Fortunately the captain was a man of old experience in the tropics, and noting that there was neither food nor water on board, he put the right construction upon the poor fellows' condition--that they were dying of hunger and thirst, after escaping from some wrecked or sinking vessel. Merchant captains have a smattering of knowledge, and a medicine chest on board, and there were willing hands to take charge of "the poor shipwrecked men;" but it was a hard fight with the raging fever and delirium from which both suffered, and again and again they were given over, and were still too weak to answer questions when Bristol port was reached, and they were taken to hospital ashore. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was quite a month before the journey home could be taken in the old stage-coach bound from Bristol to Plymouth. But Nic bore it well, for Captain Revel was seated by his side, holding his hand as if afraid that after all his son might slip from his grasp and the old suffering recommence. "It nearly killed me before, my boy," he said piteously, as he urged his son to be careful not to exert himself in the least. "I gave you up for dead, and I was following you fast, Nic, for I don't believe I should have lived another year." "I'll take care, father; never fear," said the young man cheerily, for, though thin and worn, his eyes were brightening, and there were signs of returning health in his cheeks. "I only need a good, quiet rest in the old place, where I can lie and watch the sea, or go down the shady old combe, to listen to the falls and watch the salmon leap." "Ugh! don't talk about the fish," cried the Captain, with a shudder; "they were the cause of all this suffering." "Oh no," said Nic, smiling. "It was all that terrible mistake." "Well, don't let's talk about the past," said the Captain hurriedly; "or only about one thing, my boy. I did want to consult you about that fellow who's up aloft with William Solly." "About Pete, father?" "Yes, the scoundrel! He was as bad as the salmon." "Poor old Pete!" said Nic, smiling. "He saved my life over and over again, father. I want you to take him into your service." "What! that poacher who used to defy us all?" "Poachers make the best keepers, father, when they reform; and Pete has proved himself a good man and true. Will you tell him he is to stay?" "I'll keep a dozen of such fellows if you'll only get strong and well again, my boy," said the old sailor eagerly. "I'll tell him next time we change horses. But I shall never forgive Lawrence." "What, father!" cried Nic, smiling. "Why?" "An old comrade like he has always been, to have such a stupid blunder made by those under his command." "A terrible mistake, father; but, to be quite fair, it was all my doing, and I was hoist with my own petard." "No, no, Nic; you're wrong," said the old man, "and William Solly--an impudent rascal!--was right." "How, father?" "Well, my boy, it was all my fault for making such a fuss about a few salmon. William Solly had the insolence to tell me I made a trouble about nothing, and wanted a real one to do me good. This has been a real one, Nic, and I've suffered bitterly." "But there's fair weather ahead, father." "Please God, my boy," said the old man piously, and with his voice trembling, "and--and there, Nic, I've got you back again, and you will get well, my boy--you will get well, won't you?" "Fast, father," replied Nic, pressing the old man's hand. Nic did mend rapidly in the rest and quiet of his old home, where one day Captain Lawrence, newly returned from a long voyage, came to see his old friend, and heard Nic's adventures to the end. "A bitter experience, my dear boy," he said; "but let's look to the future now: never mind the past." But one day, when the convalescents had been for two months drinking in the grand old Devon air, Nic was rambling through the combe with Pete, both pretty well strong again, when the latter said: "I want to be zet to work now, Master Nic, or to be zent away; for I feel as if I ought to be doing zomething, instead of idling about here." "You've talked like that before, Pete," said Nic, smiling. "Have a little patience, and then you shall begin." "But it zeems zo long, zir. I zay, though, it's rather queer, isn't it, for me to be water bailiff and keeper over the vish as I used to take. Think Humpy Dee and them others will get away and come back again?" "I hope so," said Nic slowly and thoughtfully. "They deserved their punishment, but they will have had enough by now." "Nay, you're a bit too easy, Master Nic. Humpy's a down bad one, and I should like the others to have one year more out yonder, and Humpy too." "Too long for white slaves, Pete," said Nic. "We have suffered with them, and know what the sufferings are; so I forgive them. What say you?" "Zame as you do, Master Nic; o' course, that is, if they don't come back and meddle with our zalmon again--_our zalmon_! That zounds queer, Master Nic, don't it? I can't quite feel as if it's all true." "But it is true, Pete; and we are here safe in the good old home, after what seems now like an ugly dream." "Dinner-bell's rung twice, Master Nic," said William Solly, coming upon them suddenly from behind the trees; "and you can't 'spect to get your strength up proper if you aren't reg'lar at the mess. I run out to look for you, to keep the skipper from--Well, there now--if he aren't come to look for you hisself! Give him a shout, and say you're coming." Nic hailed, and hurried back to meet the old officer, while William Solly turned to Pete: "Come along, messmet; the beef and soft tack's waiting. And so you're going to stop here altogether!" "I s'pose so," said Pete. "And we're to be messmets reg'lar sarving under Captain Revel and Master Nic?" "That's it," said Pete sturdily. "Well," said Solly, "I aren't jealous, for you did the right thing by the young master; so let's shake hands." This was solemnly done, and Solly went on: "As good a skipper as ever stepped a deck, and as fine a boy as ever breathed. Pete, messmet, you've dropped into a snug thing." "Which that zame I know," said Pete gruffly. "But you saved Master Nic's life, and the skipper's too, by bringing the young master back; and I'm glad you're going to stay. So suppose we shakes hands agen?" They did, as if they meant it, too. They did mean it, and somehow a great attachment sprang up between those two men, while as time rolled on Nic smiled more than once on meeting them consulting together about matters connected with the estate, and made Solly wince. At last, after a good deal of hesitation, Solly turned upon his young master. "Beg pardon, sir," he said; "speaking respeckful like--" "What is it?" said Nic, for the man stopped. "Well, sir, you know; and it goes hard on a chap as is doing his dooty and wants to keep things straight." "I still don't understand you, Solly," said Nic. "Well, sir, it's all along o' that there chap, Pete: you never ketch me a-talking to him, and giving him a bit o' good advice about what the skipper likes done, but you grins." "Grins?" "Oh, it's no use to make believe, Master Nic, because you do, and it hurts." "They were not grins," said Nic. "I only smiled because I was glad to see you two such good friends." "Ho!" ejaculated Solly; "that was it, sir? I thought you was grinning and thinking what an old fool I was." "Nothing of the sort." "Well, I'm glad o' that, Master Nic, though it do seem a bit queer that I should take a lot o' notice of a feller as fought agen us as he did. But we aren't friends, sir." "Indeed!" said Nic. "It's on'y that I can't help taking a bit to a man as stood by you as he did over yonder in furren abroad. You see, a man like that's got the making of a good true mate in him." "Yes, Solly, of as good a man as ever stepped." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Two years had passed, when one day Solly watched his opportunity of catching Nic alone in the grounds, and followed him. "Master Nic!" he whispered hoarsely. The young man turned round, and Solly "made a face" at him. That is to say, he shut his left eye very slowly and screwed up the whole of his countenance till it was a maze of wrinkles. "What is it, Solly?" "Pete's over yonder, sir, by the combo, and wants to speak to you." "Oh, very well, I'll go," said Nic, and the old sailor nodded, looked mysterious, slapped his mouth to indicate that it was a secret mission, and hurried away. "What does it all mean?" said Nic to himself. "Why, I do believe Pete is going to tell me that he wants to be married, and to ask if my father will object." He reached the combe, to find Pete, now a fine sturdy-looking Devon man in brown velveteen jacket and leather gaiters, counting the salmon in the pool. Pete turned sharply directly he heard Nic approach, and the serious look in the man's face told that something unusual had occurred. "Morn', Master Nic, zir." "What is it, Pete? Surely you don't mean that we've had poachers again?" "Poachers it be, zir," said the man mysteriously; "but they won't come here again. Master Nic, there's three on 'em come back, and I've zeen 'em." "What! From the plantation?" "Yes, zir; after a long spell of it they managed to give the dogs zome poison stuff they got out of the woods. The blacks told 'em of it. Manshy something it was." "Manchioneel! I know," said Nic. "That's it, zir, and it killed 'em. They got away in a boat--a new un, I s'pose." "I'm glad they escaped, poor fellows," said Nic; "but is that scoundrel Dee with them?" Pete was silent. "Dead, Pete?" "Yes, zir, 'fore we'd been gone two months," said the man gravely. "He went at Zaunders one day with his hoe, and nearly killed him; but the dogs heard the fight, and rushed down." "Ah! the dogs!" cried Nic. "Yes, zir, and what with their worrying and a shot he'd had from Zaunders, it meant a couple o' the blacks with spades, and a grave in the woods." "Horrible!" ejaculated Nic. "Yes, zir, horrible. Humpy allus hated me, and I s'pose I never liked him; but if I'd been there, zir, I'd ha' helped him fight for his life agen them zavage dogs." "I know you would, Pete," cried Nic warmly. "But what about these men-- are they going to stay in the neighbourhood?" "Not they, zir. They belong to the crew of a ship in Plymouth harbour; and zomehow they got to know that I was here. They walked all the way o' purpose to wish me luck and zhake hands and zay they hadn't aught agen me, for they'd found out how it was they was took. It was poor Humpy as made 'em believe it was me. They went back lars night." "Poor Humpy!" said Nic wonderingly. "Well, yes, zir. You zee, he waren't like other men," said Pete simply. "He was born all crooked and out o' shape and ugly, and got teased and kicked about when he was a boy; and I zuppose it made him zour and evil-tempered. Then he grew up stronger than other men, and he got to love getting the better of them as had knocked him about. I dunno, but it allus zeemed zo to me. Well, poor chap, he's dead, and there's an end on it." "Yes," said Nic, gravely repeating the man's words, "there's an end of it." THE END. 
22282	----	domain works at the University of Georgia.) [Illustration] UNCLE REMUS _and_ BRER RABBIT _By_ Joel Chandler Harris NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1906, by Joel Chandler Harris Copyright, 1907, by Frederick A. Stokes Company September, 1907 THE CREETURS GO TO THE BARBECUE [Illustration] "Once 'pon a time," said Uncle Remus to the little boy--"But when was once upon a time?" the child interrupted to ask. The old man smiled. "I speck 'twuz one time er two times, er maybe a time an' a half. You know when Johnny Ashcake 'gun ter bake? Well, 'twuz 'long in dem days. Once 'pon a time," he resumed, "Mr. Man had a gyarden so fine dat all de neighbors come ter see it. Some 'ud look at it over de fence, some 'ud peep thoo de cracks, an' some 'ud come an' look at it by de light er de stars. An' one un um wuz ol' Brer Rabbit; starlight, moonlight, cloudlight, de nightlight wuz de light fer him. When de turn er de mornin' come, he 'uz allers up an' about, an' a-feelin' purty well I thank you, suh! [Illustration] "Now, den, you done hear what I say. Dar wuz Mr. Man, yander wuz de gyarden, an' here wuz ol' Brer Rabbit." Uncle Remus made a map of this part of the story by marking in the sand with his walking-cane. "Well, dis bein' de case, what you speck gwineter happen? Nothin' in de roun' worl' but what been happenin' sence greens an' sparrer-grass wuz planted in de groun'. Dey look fine an' dey tas'e fine, an' long to'rds de shank er de mornin', Brer Rabbit 'ud creep thoo de crack er de fence an' nibble at um. He'd take de greens, but leave his tracks, mo' speshually right atter a rain. Takin' an' leavin'--it's de way er de worl'. [Illustration] "Well, one mornin', Mr. Man went out in his truck patch, an' he fin' sump'n missin'--a cabbage here, a turnip dar, an' a mess er beans yander, an' he ax how come dis? He look 'roun', he did, an' he seed Brer Rabbit's tracks what he couldn't take wid 'im. Brer Rabbit had lef' his shoes at home, an' come bar'footed. [Illustration] "So Mr. Man, he call his dogs 'Here, Buck! Here, Brinjer! Here, Blue!' an' he sicc'd um on de track, an' here dey went! [Illustration] "You'd 'a' thunk dey wuz runnin' atter forty-lev'm rhinossyhosses fum de fuss dey made. Brer Rabbit he hear um comin' an' he put out fer home, kinder doublin' 'roun' des like he do deze days. [Illustration] "When he got ter de p'int whar he kin set down fer ter rest his face an' han's, he tuck a poplar leaf an' 'gun ter fan hisse'f. Den Brer Fox come a-trottin' up. He say, 'Brer Rabbit, what's all dis fuss I hear in de woods? What de name er goodness do it mean?' Brer Rabbit kinder scratch his head an' 'low, 'Why, deyer tryin' fer drive me ter de big bobbycue on de creek. Dey all ax me, an' when I 'fuse dey say deyer gwine ter make me go any how. Dey aint no fun in bein' ez populous ez what I is, Brer Fox. Ef you wanter go, des git in ahead er de houn's an' go lickity-split down de big road!' [Illustration] "Brer Fox roll his little eyes, an' lick his chops whar he dribble at de mouf, an put out ter de bobbycue, an' he aint mo' dan made his disappearance, 'fo' here come Brer Wolf, an' when he got de news, off he put. "An' he aint mo'n got out'n sight, 'fo' here come ol' Brer B'ar, an' when he hear talk er de bakin' meat an' de big pan er gravy, he sot up on his behime legs an' snored. Den off he put, an' he aint got out'n hearin', 'fo' Brer Coon come rackin' up, an' when he got de news, he put out. [Illustration] "So dar dey wuz an' what you gwine do 'bout it? It seem like dey all got in front er de dogs, er de dogs got behime um, an' Brer Rabbit sot by de creek-side laughin' an' hittin' at de snake doctors. An' dem po' creeturs had ter go clean past de bobbycue--ef dey wuz any bobbycue, which I don't skacely speck dey wuz. Dat what make me say what I does--when you git a invite ter a bobbycue, you better fin' out when an' whar it's at, an' who runnin' it." BRER RABBIT'S FROLIC [Illustration] The little boy, when he next saw Uncle Remus, after hearing how the animals went to the barbecue, wanted to know what happened to them: he was anxious to learn if any of them were hurt by the dogs that had been chasing Brother Rabbit. The old darkey closed his eyes and chuckled. "You sho is axin' sump'n now, honey. Und' his hat, ef he had any, Brer Rabbit had a mighty quick thinkin' apple-ratus, an' mos' inginner'lly, all de time, de pranks he played on de yuther creeturs pestered um bofe ways a-comin' an' a-gwine. De dogs done mighty well, 'long ez dey had dealin's wid de small fry, like Brer Fox, an' Brer Coon, an' Brer Wolf, but when dey run ag'in' ol' Brer B'ar, dey sho struck a snag. De mos' servigrous wuz de identual one dat got de wust hurted. He got too close ter Brer B'ar, an' when he look at hisse'f in runnin' water, he tuck notice dat he wuz split wide open fum flank ter dewlap. [Illustration] "Atter de rucus wuz over, de creeturs hobbled off home de best dey could, an' laid 'roun' in sun an' shade fer ter let der cuts an' gashes git good an' well. When dey got so dey could segashuate, an' pay der party calls, dey 'gree fer ter insemble some'rs, an' hit on some plan fer ter outdo Brer Rabbit. Well, dey had der insembly, an' dey jower'd an' jower'd des like yo' pa do when he aint feelin' right well; but, bimeby, dey 'greed 'pon a plan dat look like it mought work. Dey 'gree fer ter make out dat dey gwine ter have a dance. Dey know'd dat ol' Brer Rabbit wuz allers keen fer dat, an' dey say dey'll gi' him a invite, an' when he got dar, dey'd ax 'im fer ter play de fiddle, an' ef he 'fuse, dey'll close in on 'im an' make way wid 'im. [Illustration] "So fur, so good! But all de time dey wuz jowerin' an' confabbin', ol' Brer Rabbit wus settin' in a shady place in de grass, a-hearin' eve'y word dey say. When de time come, he crope out, he did, an' run 'roun', an' de fust news dey know'd, here he come down de big road--bookity-bookity--same ez a hoss dat's broke thoo de pastur' fence. He say, sezee, 'Why, hello, frien's! an' howdy, too, kaze I aint seed you-all sence de last time! Whar de name er goodness is you been deze odd-come-shorts? an' how did you far' at de bobbycue? Ef my two eyeballs aint gone an' got crooked, dar's ol' Brer B'ar, him er de short tail an' sharp tush--de ve'y one I'm a-huntin' fer! An' dar's Brer Coon! I sho is in big luck. Dar's gwineter be a big frolic at Miss Meadows', an' her an' de gals want Brer B'ar fer ter show um de roas'n'-y'ar shuffle; an' dey put Brer Coon down fer de jig dey calls rack-back-Davy. [Illustration] "'I'm ter play de fiddle--sump'n I aint done sence my oldest gal had de mumps an' de measles, bofe de same day an' hour! Well, dis mornin' I tuck down de fiddle fum whar she wuz a-hangin' at, an' draw'd de bow backerds an' forerds a time er two, an' den I shot my eyes an' hit some er de ol'-time chunes, an' when I come ter myse'f, dar wuz my whole blessed fambly skippin' an' sasshayin' 'roun' de room, spite er de fack dat brekkus wuz ter be cooked!' [Illustration] "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit bow'd, he did, an' went back down de road like de dogs wuz atter 'im." [Illustration] "But what happened then?" the little boy asked. "Nothin' 't all," replied Uncle Remus, taking up the chuckle where he had left off. "De creeturs aint had no dance, an' when dey went ter Miss Meadows', she put her head out de winder, an' say ef dey don't go off fum dar she'll have de law on um!" BROTHER BEAR'S BIG HOUSE [Illustration] "Uv all de creeturs", said Uncle Remus, in response to a questioning took on the part of the little boy, "ol Brer B'ar had de biggest an' de warmest house. I dunner why ner wharfo', but I'm a-tellin' you de plain fack, des ez dey to!' it unter me. Ef I kin he'p it I never will be deceivin' you, ner lead you inter no bad habits. Yo' pappy trotted wid me a mighty long time, an' ef you'll ax him he'll tell you dat de one thing I never did do wuz ter deceive him whiles he had his eyes open; not ef I knows myse'f. Well, ol' Brer B'ar had de big house I'm a-tellin' you about. Ef he y'ever is brag un it, it aint never come down ter me. Yit dat's des what he had--a big house an' plenty er room fer him an' his fambly; an' he aint had mo' dan he need, kaze all er his fambly wuz fat an' had what folks calls heft--de nachal plunkness. [Illustration] "He had a son name Simmon, an' a gal name Sue, not countin' his ol' 'oman, an' dey all live wid one an'er day atter day, an' night atter night; an' when one un um went abroad, dey'd be spected home 'bout meal-time, ef not befo', an' dey segashuated right along fum day ter day, washin' der face an' han's in de same wash-pan in de back po'ch, an' wipin' on de same towel same ez all happy famblies allers does. [Illustration] "Well, time went on an' fotched de changes dat might be spected, an' one day dar come a mighty knockin' on Brer B'ar's do'. Brer B'ar, he holla out, he did. 'Who dat come a-knockin' dis time er de year, 'fo' de corn's done planted, er de cotton-crap's pitched?' De one at de do' make a big noise, an' rattle de hinges. Brer B'ar holla out, he did, 'Don't t'ar down my house! Who is you, anyhow, an' what you want?' An' de answer come, 'I'm one an' darfo' not two; ef youer mo' dan one, who is you an' what you doin' in dar?' Brer B'ar, he say, sezee, 'I'm all er one an' mighty nigh two, but I'd thank you fer ter tell me yo' full fambly name.' Den de answer come. [Illustration] "'I'm de knocker an' de mover bofe, an' ef I can't clim' over I'll crawl under ef you do but gi' me de word. Some calls me Brer Polecat, an' some a big word dat it aint wuff while ter ermember, but I wanter move in. It's mighty col' out here, an' all I meets tells me it's mighty warm in dar whar you is.' Den ol' Brer B'ar say, sezee. 'It's warm nuff fer dem what stays in here, but not nigh so warm fer dem on de outside. What does you reely want?' Brer Polecat 'spon', he did, 'I wants a heap er things dat I don't git. I'm a mighty good housekeeper, but I takes notice dat dar's mighty few folks dat wants me ter keep house fer um.' Brer B'ar say, sezee, 'I aint got no room fer no housekeeper; we aint skacely got room fer ter go ter bed. Ef you kin keep my house on de outside, you er mighty welcome.' [Illustration] "Brer Polecat say, 'You may think you aint got no room, but I bet you got des ez much room ez anybody what I know. Ef you let me in dar one time, I boun' you I'll make all de room I want.'" [Illustration] Uncle Remus paused to see what effect this statement would have on the little boy. He closed his eyes, as though he were tired, but when he opened them again, he saw the faint shadow of a smile on the child's face. "'Taint gwine ter hurt you fer ter laugh a little bit, honey. Brer Polecat come in Brer B'ar's house, an' he had sech a bad breff dat dey all hatter git out--an' he stayed an' stayed twel time stopped runnin' ag'in' him." BRER RABBIT TREATS THE CREETURS TO A RACE [Illustration] One sultry summer day, while the little boy was playing not far from Uncle Remus's cabin, a heavy black cloud made its appearance in the west, and quickly obscured the sky. It sent a brisk gale before it, as if to clear the path of leaves and dust. Presently there was a blinding flash of lightning, a snap and a crash, and, with that, the child took to his heels, and ran to Uncle Remus, who was standing in his door. "Dar now!" he exclaimed, before the echoes of the thunder had rolled away, "Dat dust an' win', an' rain, puts me in mind er de time when ol' Brer Rabbit got up a big race fer ter pleasure de yuther creeturs. It wuz de mos' funniest race you ever hear tell on. Brer Rabbit went 'way off in de woods twel he come ter de Rainmaker's house. He knocked an' went in, an' he ax de Rainmaker ef he can't fix it up so dey kin have a race 'tween Brer Dust an' Cousin Rain, fer ter see which kin run de fastes'. De Rainmaker growled an' jowered, but bimeby he 'gree, but he say that ef 'twuz anybody but Brer Rabbit, he wouldn't gi' it but one thunk. [Illustration] "Well, dey fix de day, dey did, an' den Brer Rabbit put out ter whar de creeturs wuz stayin' at, an' tol' um de news. Dey dunner how Brer Rabbit know, but dey all wanter see de race. Now, him an' de Rainmaker had fixt it up so dat de race would be right down de middle er de big road, an' when de day come, dar's whar he made de creeturs stan'--Brer B'ar at de bend er de road, Brer Wolf a leetle furder off, an' Brer Fox at a p'int whar de cross-roads wuz. Brer Coon an' Brer Possum an' de yuthers be scattered about up an' down de Road. [Illustration] "Ter dem what has ter wait, it seem like de sun stops an' all de clocks wid 'im. Brer B'ar done some growlin'; Brer Wolf some howlin' an' Brer Possum some laughin'; but atter while a cloud come up fum some'rs. 'Twant sech a big cloud, but Brer Rabbit know'd dat Cousin Rain wuz in dar 'long wid Uncle Win'. De cloud crope up, it did, twel it got right over de big road, an' den it kinder drapped down a leetle closer ter de groun'. It look like it kinder stop, like a buggy, fer Cousin Rain ter git out, so der'd be a fa'r start. Well, he got out, kaze de creeturs kin see 'im, an' den Uncle Win', he got out. [Illustration] "An' den, gentermens! de race begun fer ter commence. Uncle Win' hep'd um bofe; he had his bellows wid 'im, an' he blow'd it! Brer Dust got up fum whar he wuz a-layin' at, an' come down de road des a-whirlin'. He stricken ol' Brer B'ar fust, den Brer Wolf, an' den Brer Fox, an' atter dat, all de yuther creeturs, an' it come mighty nigh smifflicatin' um! Not never in all yo' born days is you y'ever heern sech coughin' an' sneezin', sech snortin' an' wheezin'! An' dey all look like dey wuz painted red. Brer B'ar sneeze so hard dat he hatter lay down in de road, an' Brer Dust come mighty nigh buryin' 'im, an' 'twuz de same wid de yuther creeturs--dey got der y'ears, der noses, an' der eyeses full. [Illustration] "An' den Cousin Rain come 'long, a-pursuin' Brer Dust, an' he come mighty nigh drownin' um. He left um kivver'd wid mud, an' dey wuz wuss off dan befo'. It wuz de longest 'fo' dey kin git de mud out 'n der eyes an' y'ears, an' when dey git so dey kin see a leetle bit, dey tuck notice dat Brer Rabbit, stidder bein' full er mud, wuz ez dry ez a chip, ef not dryer. [Illustration] "It make um so mad, dat dey all put out atter 'im, an' try der level best fer ter ketch, but ef dey wuz anything in de roun' worl' dat Brer Rabbit's got, it's soople foots, an' 'twant no time 'fo' de yuther creeturs can't see ha'r ner hide un 'im! All de same Brer Rabbit aint bargain fer ter have two races de same day." "But, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "which beat, Brother Dust or Cousin Rain?" The old man stirred uneasily in his chair, and rubbed his chin with his hand. "Dey tells me," he responded cautiously, "dat when Cousin Rain can't see nothin' er Brother Dust, he thunk he am beat, but he holla out, 'Brer Dust, wharbouts is you?' an' Brer Dust he holla back, 'You'll hatter scuzen me; I fell down in de mud an' can't run no mo'!'" BRER RABBIT'S FLYING TRIP [Illustration] Dar once wuz a time when most er de creeturs Got mighty tired er Brer Rabbit's capers, An' dey 'semble', dey did, grass an' meat eaters. Browsers an' grazers, an' likewiss de bone-scrapers, Fer ter see what dey kin do. Brer B'ar wuz dar, wid his bid fur suit on, An' ol' Brer Wolf fetched his big howl along, An' when eve'ything wuz ready, wid a long, loud hoot on, Here come ol' Simon Swamp Owl along, A-tootin' of his too-whoo. Dar wuz ol' Brer Fox, suh, wid his black socks, suh, An' a heap er creeturs dat I don't hatter mention; Some bow-legged an' some knock-kneed in de hocks, suh. An' dey all agree fer ter hol' a convention Fer ter stop Brer Rabbit's pranks. [Illustration] Brer Fox, he 'low he'll gi' a pot er gol', suh, Ter de man what kin tol Brer Rabbit off, suh; Brer Buzzard say, "I'm a-gittin' ol', suh, But I'll try my han," an' den he cough, suh. An' de rest un um bowed dere thanks. Now, ol' Brer B'ar wuz a-settin' in de cheer, suh, So he stand up an' move a motion; He up an' 'low, "Le's erso'v right here, suh, Fer ter thank Brer Buzzard whiles we're in de notion, An' not put it off ter some yuther day." An' den dey had it up an' down, suh, 'Sputin' 'bout what dey oughter do, Some wanter gi' 'im a flower crown, suh, Ef he rid Brer Rabbit up dar in de blue, An' drap 'im when he got half-way. [Illustration] Dey sont a runner atter ol' Brer Rabbit Ter ax 'im ter call an' 'ten' de convention; But ol' frien' Wobble-nose had a quare habit Er knowin' a thing befo' it wuz mention', An he come 'fo' he got de word. He wiggle his nose, an' wunk his eye-- "Here sho is de man I wants ter see, suh! Brer Buzzard I'm tryin' ter l'arn how ter fly!" An' c'ose Brer Buzzard gi' his agree, suh, An' all un um say he's a 'commydatin' bird! [Illustration] An' den Brer Buzzard half spread his wing, suh He try ter look young, but he wuz ol' suh-- He try ter strut an' walk wid a swing, suh; He wuz dreamin' 'bout dat pot er gol', suh, An' what he wuz gwine fer ter buy. Brer Buzzard ain't skacely got thoo wid his pride, suh, 'Fo' Brer Rabbit lit right 'tween his floppers, Wid, "Now, hump yo'se'f, an' gi' me a ride, suh, Ef you don't I'll hit--I'll hit you some whoppers When I git you up dar in de sky!" [Illustration] Well, de creeturs grinned when Brer Buzzard riz, suh. An' made a big fuss accordin' ter der natur'; Ez fer ol' Brer Rabbit, de pleasure wuz all his, suh De ridin' wuz easy ez eatin' tater When it's b'iled an' made inter pie! Kaze under bofe wings he had a paw, suh, An', when Brer Buzzard try fer ter drap 'im. He'd scratch an' tickle 'im wid his claw, suh; An' when Brer Buzzard try fer ter flap 'im, He'd scratch an' wink his eye! [Illustration] An' wid his claws he tuck an' steered 'im Fum post ter pillar in de deep blue, suh; He'd holla an' laugh--all de creeturs heer'd 'im-- You know how you'd feel ef it hab been you, suh, A-waitin' fer some un ter fall! When ol' Brer Rabbit got tired er ridin', He steered Brer Buzzard right straight ter de groun', suh, An' den an' dar went right inter hidin'. When de creeturs come up he couldn't be foun', suh, An' I speck an' I reckon dat's all! BRER RABBIT AND THE GOLD MINE [Illustration] There had been silence in the cabin for a long ten minutes, and Uncle Remus, looking up, saw a threat of sleep in the little boy's eyes. Whereupon he plunged headlong into a story without a word of explanation. "Well, suh, one year it fell out dat de craps wuz burnt up. A dry drouth had done de work, an' ef you'd 'a' struck a match anywhar in dat settlement, de whole county would 'a' blazed up. Ol' man Hongriness des natchally tuck of his cloze an' went paradin' 'bout eve'ywhar, an' de creeturs got bony an' skinny. Ol' Brer B'ar done better dan any un um, kaze all he hatter do wuz go ter sleep an' live off'n his own fat; an' Brer Rabbit an' his ol' 'oman had put some calamus root by, an' saved up some sugar-cane dat dey fin' lyin' 'roun' loose, an' _dey_ got 'long purty well. But de balance er de creeturs wuz dat ga'nt dat dey ain't got over it down ter dis day. [Illustration] "De creeturs had der meetin'-place, whar dey could all set 'roun' an' talk de kind er politics dey had, des like folks does at de cross-roads grocery. One day, whiles dey wuz all settin' an' squottin' 'roun', jowerin' an' confabbin', Brer Rabbit, he up 'n' say, sezee, dat ol' Mammy-Bammy-Big-Money tol' his great gran'daddy dat dar wuz a mighty big an' fat gol' mine in deze parts, an' he say dat he wouldn't be 'tall 'stonished ef 'twant some'rs close ter Brer B'ar's house. Brer B'ar, he growled, he did, an' say dat de gol' mine better not let him fin' it, kaze atter he got done wid it, dey won't be no gol' mine dar. [Illustration] "Some laughed, some grinned an' some gapped, an', atter jowerin' some mo', dey all put out ter whar der famblies wuz livin' at; but I boun' you dey ain't fergit 'bout dat gol' mine, kaze, fum dat time on, go whar you mought, you'd ketch some er de creeturs diggin' an' grabblin' in de groun', some in de fields, some in de woods, an' some in de big road; an' dey wuz so weak an' hongry dat dey kin skacely grabble fer fallin' down. [Illustration] "Well, dis went on fer de longest, but bimeby, one day, dey all 'gree dat sump'n bleeze ter be done, an' dey say dey'll all take one big hunt fer de gol' mine, an' den quit. Dey hunted in gangs, wid de gangs not fur fum one an'er, an' it so happen dat Brer Rabbit wuz in de gang wid Brer Wolf, an' he know'd dat he hatter keep his eyes wide open. All de creeturs hatter dig in diffunt places, an' whiles Brer Rabbit want much uv a grabbler, he had a way er makin' de yuthers b'lieve dat he wuz de best er de lot. So he made a heap er motion like he wuz t'arin' up de yeth. Dey ain't been gwine on dis away long fo' Brer Wolf holler out, [Illustration] "'Run here, Brer Rabbit! I done foun' it!' Brer B'ar an' Brer Fox wuz bofe diggin' close by, an' Brer Rabbit kinder wunk one eye at de elements; he say, sezee, 'Glad I is fer yo' sake, Brer Wolf; git yo' gol' an' 'joy yo'se'f!' Brer Wolf say, 'Come git some, Brer Rabbit! Come git some!' Ol' Brer Rabbit 'spon', 'I'll take de leavin's, Brer Wolf; you take what you want, an' den when you done got 'nough I'll get de leetle bit I want.' Brer Wolf say, 'I wanter show you sump'n.' Brer Rabbit 'low, 'My eyes ain't big fer nothin'.' Brer Wolf say, 'I got a secret I wanter tell you.' Brer Rabbit 'low, 'My y'ears ain't long fer nothin'. Des stan' dar an' do yo' whisperin', Brer Wolf, an' I'll hear eve'y word you say.' [Illustration] "Brer Wolf ain't say nothin', but make out he's grabblin', an' den, all of a sudden, he made a dash at Brer Rabbit, but when he git whar Brer Rabbit wuz at, Brer Rabbit ain't dar no mo'; he done gone. Weak an' hongry ez he is, Brer Wolf know dat he can't ketch Brer Rabbit, an' so he holler out, 'What's yo' hurry, Brer Rabbit? Whar you gwine?' Brer Rabbit holler back, 'I'm gwine home atter a bag fer ter tote de gol' you gwine leave me! So long, Brer Wolf; I wish you mighty well!' an' wid dat he put out fer home." BRER RABBIT GETS BRER FOX A HOSS [Illustration] Not many er de creeturs wuz fon' er water, Onless it mought 'a' been Brer Coon's daughter; Brer B'ar, Brer Fox, an' ol' Brer Rabbit, Dey vow'd dey can't never git in de habit Er wadin' de creek, er swimmin' de river-- When it come ter dat, dey'd run ter kivver! When folks come 'long fer ter git across, De creeturs tuck notice dat dey rid a hoss. [Illustration] Brer Fox, he say he wish he had one, An' 'mongst all de yuthers he'd be de glad un; He'd git a bridle an' a bran' new saddle, An' git on de hoss an' ride 'im straddle; He say, sezee, "He'd do some trottin', Kaze when I git started, I'm a mighty hot un!" Brer Rabbit, he smole a great big smile, Wid, "I can't ride myse'f, kaze I got a b'ile! [Illustration] "But it seem like ter me dat I knows whar a hoss is: He's away back yan' whar two roads crosses, An' I'll meet you dar termorrer mornin', Des 'bout de time when day's a-dawnin'." Brer Fox, he say, "I hear yo' sesso, An' ef I ain't sick I'll be dar desso!" Brer Rabbit tip his hat, wid, "So-long, frien'; We'll git de hoss, you may depen'." [Illustration] Long 'fo' de time, Brer Rabbit wuz a-stirrin', An' he chuckle ter hisse'f like a cat a-purrin'; De hoss wuz stretched out asleep in de pastur'; Brer Rabbit went up des ez close ez he dast ter, Fer ter see ef he 'live: hoss switched his tail, suh! "Dis time we'll git you widout fail, suh!" So Brer Rabbit say; den he seed Brer Fox-- "An' an'er fine gent fer ter git in a box!" [Illustration] Den he say out loud, "Good luck done sont 'im, An' laid 'im down right whar you want 'im! Ef youer tied ter his tail, you kin sholy hol' 'im, An' mo' dan dat, you kin trip 'im an' roll 'im!" So said, so done! an' dar Brer Fox wuz, Right close ter de place whar a heap er knocks wuz! Brer Rabbit, he holla, "Hol' 'im down! hol' 'im down! Des make 'im stay right spang on de groun'!" [Illustration] De hoss, he riz wid a snort an' a whicker, An' showed dat he wuz sump'n uv a kicker! An' den an' dar, Brer Rabbit 'gun ter snicker, Wid, "Hol' 'im, Brer Fox! 'twon't do ter flicker! Ef you make 'im stan' still, you kin ride 'im de quicker!" De hoss, he r'ar'd an' raise a mighty dust up, An' fust thing you know, Brer Rabbit hear a bust-up! "I hope, Brer Fox, dat you ain't much hurt-- But yo' wife'll be mad, kaze you done tored yo' shirt!" BRER RABBIT FINDS THE MOON IN THE MILL POND [Illustration] Oh, one bright day in de middle er May, Brer Rabbit wuz feelin' fine; He tuck ter de road, an' never know'd De place whar he wuz gwine! "Oh, fur an' free," sezee, "siree, No gal kin change my min'!" Brer Tarrypin, sly, he wunk one eye, Un'neat' his green-gourd vine! He holla an' say, "Whar you gwine dis day, Wid yo' pipe an' walkin'-cane?" Brer Rabbit wave his han' like a gal do her fan-- "My heart's 'bout ter bust wid pain; [Illustration] "I'm a heap too nice, I ain't laugh'd but twice Sence de big Jinawary rain; My day'll be done ef I don't have some fun-- Dey'll call me Sunday-Jane! "I'll git sollumcholic ef I don't have a frolic, My head'll git flabby an' swink; I chaw de pine-bud, kaze I'm 'bout ter lose my cud An' some nights I don't sleep a wink! "Ef I has ter set still, oh, I'll w'ar de green willow, An' go in mo'nin' wid de Mink! But I bet you a hat dat 'fo' I does dat, I'll show um all a new kink!" [Illustration] So, off he put, on his nimbles' foot, Wid a grin, a laugh, an' a cough; Ter Miss Motts an' Miss Meadows, an' all de udders, He tell what 'uz gwineter come off! 'Twuz a mill-pon' fishin', an' he lef um a-wishin' Dat de win' don't blow fum de norf! An' de creeturs all, bofe long an' tall-- An' dem no bigger dan a dwarf-- Brer Wolf an' Brer B'ar,--all say dey'd be dar, An' dey promise fer ter fetch a seine; Dey 'gree ter de day, an' Brer Rabbit say Dat dey don't hatter come ef it rain; [Illustration] So said, so done, an' when de time come, De big road ez well ez de lane Wuz filled wid a crowd, all talkin' out loud, An' a-prankin' wid might an' main! Brer Rabbit wuz dar, wid Miss Molly Har', A-waitin' fer de fun ter begin; He shuck his shank, an' went ter de bank, An' make like he gwineter jump in! But de sight dat he saw made 'im drap his jaw, An' break up a great big grin! He sez ter Brer Coon, "Run here an' see de Moon! A-floatin' widout a fin!" [Illustration] He look ag'in--"She sho fell in, An' we got ter git her out; Ef she stays in de pon', it's 'good-bye, John!' An' uv dat dey ain't no doubt; "We got ter have light when we play at night, Fer ter see how ter git about; We'll drag wid de seine--ef we don't drag in vain, We'll have good reason ter shout!" But when it come ter seinin', dar wuz some complainin 'Bout who wuz ter do it all, Dey all make out dat dey wanter wade out, But it fell on dem dat wuz tall: [Illustration] Brer B'ar, he laugh, ez he tuck a staff, Brer Wolf say he fear'd he'd fall, But he tuck his place wid a mighty wry face, An' when dey 'gun ter haul. "Oh, you better bet dis water's wet! I feel des like a sponge!" An' den dey all, wid a kick an' a squall, Wid a squeal an' den a lunge, Grabbed at de water--which dey hadn't oughter Went over der heads wid a splunge; Brer Rabbit bent double, "Oh, all er yo' trouble Fills me full er fun-unj-unj!" HOW MR. LION LOST HIS WOOL [Illustration] "Twuz des sech a day ez dis dat Mr Lion lost his wool," remarked Uncle Remus to the little boy, "Mr. Man tuck a notion dat de time done come fer him fer ter have a hog-killin' an' he got 'im a big barrel, an' fill it half full er water fum de big springs. Den he piled up 'bout a cord er wood, an' ez he piled, he put rocks 'twix' de logs, an' den he sot de wood after at bofe een's an' in de middle. 'Twan't long 'fo' dey had de hogs killt, an' eve'ything ready fer ter scrape de ha'r off. Den he tuck de red-hot rocks what he put in de fire, an' flung um in de barrel whar de water wuz, an' 'twan't long, mon, 'fo' dat water wuz ready fer ter bile. Den dey tuck de hogs, one at a time, an' soused um in de water, an' time dey tuck um out, he ha'r wuz ready fer ter drap out by de roots. Den dey'd scrape un wid sticks an' chips, an' dey aint leave a ha'r on um. [Illustration] "Well, bimeby, dey had all de hogs killt an' cleaned, an' hauled off, an' when eve'ything wuz still ez a settin' hen, ol' Brer Rabbit stuck his head out fum behine a bush whar he been settin' at. He stuck his head out, he did, an' look all 'roun', an' den he went whar de fier wuz an' try fer ter warm hisse'f. He aint been dar long 'fo' here come Brer Wolf an' Brer Fox, an den he got busy. [Illustration] "He say, 'Hello, frien's! howdy an' welcome! I 'm des fixin' fer ter take a warm baff like Mr. Man gi' his hogs; wont you j'ine me?' Dey say dey aint in no hurry, but dey holp Brer Rabbit put de hot rocks in de barrel an' dey watch de water bubble, an' bimeby, when eve'ything wuz ready, who should walk up but ol' Mr. Lion? [Illustration] "He had a mane fum his head plum ter de een' er his tail, an' in some places it wuz so long it drug on de groun'--dat what make all de creeturs 'fear'd un 'im. He growl an' ax um what dey doin', an' when Brer Rabbit tell 'im, he say dat's what he long been needin'. 'How does you git in?' 'Des back right in,' sez ol' Brer Rabbit, sezee, an' wid dat, [Illustration] "Mr. Lion backed in, an' de water wuz so hot, he try fer ter git out, an' he slipped in plum ter his shoulder-blades. You kin b'lieve me er not, but dat creetur wuz scall'd so dat he holler'd an' skeer'd eve'ybody fur miles aroun'. [Illustration] "An when he come out, all de wool drap't out, 'cep' de bunch you see on his neck, an' de leetle bit you'll fin' on de een' er his tail--an' dat'd 'a' come off ef de tail hadn't 'a' slipped thoo de bung-hole er de barrel." With that, Uncle Remus closed his eyes, but not so tightly that he couldn't watch the little boy. For a moment the child said nothing, and then, "I must tell that tale to mother before I forget it!" So saying, he ran out of the cabin as fast as his feet could carry him, leaving Uncle Remus shaking with laughter. HOW BRER RABBIT GOT A HOUSE [Illustration] Oh, once 'pon a time, all de creeturs, all de creeturs, Tuck a notion dat dey'd build a house, An' fix it so ez ter keep out de skeeters, An' fix it up nix cummy rous! Dey all wuz dar fum de B'ar ter de Possum, Brer Wolf, Brer Fox, Brer Coon, Wid ol' Brer Rabbit fer ter stan' 'roun' an' boss um, Kaze dey hatter have de' house right soon. [Illustration] Brer Rabbit, he wuz busy, oh, yes, mighty busy, Not doin' uv a blessed thing; Ef he clim' de scaffle, he say he'll git dizzy, So he medjur an' mark an' sing. Dey buil' de house, an' it sho wuz a fine un, Made er poplar, oak an' pine; De littlest room wuz a sev'm-by-nine un, Whar de sick could go an' whine! [Illustration] Brer Rabbit, he wait, an' when de time come He choosened a upsta's room, An' dar he sot (ef I kin make de rhyme come) A-singin' "Hark fum de Toom"! An' den he got what he aint had oughter, Ez all de creeturs said, A gun, a cannon, an' a tub er water, An' hid um under his bed! [Illustration] When de creeturs come home, Brer Rabbit wuz ready, An' he tell um he gwineter set down; "Well, set," sez dey, "an' we'll try ter be ste'dy," An' wid dat, Brer Rabbit kinder frown; Bang-bang! went de gun--de barrels wuz double-- An' de creeturs wuz still ez mice; Brer B'ar he say, "Dy must be some trouble, But I hope heedon't loosen de j'is!" [Illustration] Brer Rabbit, he say, "Wharbouts mus' I spit at?" An' Brer Wolf answer, wid a grin, "Des wharsomever you kin make it hit at!" Brer Fox, he rub his chin; Brer Rabbit, he tuck de tub er water, An' empty it all on de sta'rs, An' it come nigh drownin' Brer Coon's daughter. An' likewise one er Brer B'ar's! [Illustration] Brer Rabbit say, "When I sneeze I'll skeer you, An' I hate fer ter have it ter do!" Brer Fox say, "We'll lissen an' hear you Des go right ahead wid yo' sneeze-a-ma-roo!" Boom-a-lam! went de cannon, an' de creeturs, dey lit out Thoo window-sash an' do' Any way, any way dat dey kin git oot, An' dey aint come dar no mo'! BRER RABBIT AND THE PARTRIDGE NEST [Illustration] Oh, what's de matter wid de Whipperwill, Dat she sets an' cries on de furder hill? An' what's de matter wid Miss Bob White, Dat she choke herse'f wid sayin' Good-night? You know mighty well dat sump'n is wrong When dey sets an' sings dat kinder song, 'Twix' a call an' a cry, 'twix' a weep an' a wail-- Dey must be tellin' a mighty sad tale. [Illustration] Miss Whipperwill's troubles, an' what she say Will do fer ter tell some yuther day; But Miss Bob White--my! aint she a sight?-- I'll hatter tell why she hollers Good-night. Dey once wuz a time (needer mo' ner less) When she ain't try ter hide ner kivver her nes'; She built it in de open, whar all kin see, An' wuz des ez perlite ez she kin be. [Illustration] She'd make her house facin' eas' an' wes', An' den wid eggs she'd fill her nes'; Fer ter keep um warm she'd brood an' set, An' keep her house fum gittin' wet. Whiles dis gwine on, Brer Rabbit come by, A-wigglin' his mouf, an' a-blinkin' his eye: "De top er de mornin', Miss Bob," sezee; "De same ter you, Brer Rabbit," se' she. [Illustration] Sez ol' Brer Rabbit, "I been missin' you long, I wuz mighty fear'd dat sump'n wuz wrong, But here you set ez still ez a mouse, Not doin' nothin' but keepin' house!" "Oh, well," se' she, "I'm too ol' ter gad, I use' ter do it, but I wish I never had! De only thing I want is ter wash my dress, But I can't do dat whiles I'm on my nes'." [Illustration] Brer Rabbit, he say, "Can't I he'p you out? I ain't doin' nothin' but walkin' about, An' my ol' 'oman is willin' fer ter bet Dat ef settin 's de thing, I'm ol' man Set!" "I know mighty well," sez Miss Bob White, "Ef you set a-tall, it'll be done right." "Thanky-do, Miss Bob! Go wash yo' dress, An' I'll do what I kin fer ter kivver yo' nes'!" [Illustration] So off she put, wid a flutter an' a flirt, An' washed her dress in a pile er clean dirt; Brer Rabbit see de eggs, an' shuck his head; His mouf 'gun ter dribble, an' his eye turn red; Sezee, "It'd sholy be hard fer ter match um, So I'll des take um home an' try fer ter hatch um!" So said, so done! An' den when he come back, He come in a gait 'twix' a lope an' a rack. [Illustration] An' Miss Bob White, atter washin' her dress, Went a-runnin' back ter house an' nes'; "Much erbleege, Brer Rabbit," an' den she bowed. "Say nothin', ma'am, fer ter make me proud, Kaze I been a-waitin' here, frettin' an' sweatin', Fer fear I ain't sech a good han' at settin'; My ol' 'oman say I got a slow fever, An' I 'clar' ter goodness, I'm ready ter b'lieve her! [Illustration] "I felt sump'n move, I hear' sump'n run, An' de eggs done gone--dey ain't na'er one! I sho is seed sights, I done hear folks talk-- But never befo' is I seed eggs walk!" "My goodness, me!" sez Miss Bob White, A-peepin' in de nes', "You sho is right!" An' y'ever sence den, when darkness falls, She gives de lost chillun her Good-night calls! An' y'ever sence den, when darkness falls, She gives de lost chillun her Good-night calls! 
14897	----	made available by the Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 14897-h.htm or 14897-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/8/9/14897/14897-h/14897-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/8/9/14897/14897-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through the Kentuckiana Digital Library, Kentuckiana Digital Texts Collection. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?;page=simpleext THAT OLD-TIME CHILD, ROBERTA Her Home-Life on the Farm by SOPHIE FOX SEA Louisville Printed by John P. Morton and Company 1892 [Illustration: "Must I look so when I die? Boo-oo!" "I'll cross my heart, Lil Missus, 'twuz dem drefful men dat sed 'Boo-oo!'"] TO MY REVERED AND BELOVED FRIEND, Mrs. Preston Pope, I DEDICATE THIS CHILD'S STORY. IT WAS SHE WHOSE LOVE OF CHILDREN FIRST SUGGESTED IT, AND WHOSE WORDS OF KIND APPRECIATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT HAVE BEEN TO ME "AS APPLES OF GOLD IN PICTURES OF SILVER." Roberta Marsden, or Lil Missus, as the negroes called her, for the opening of my story dates back several years before the Civil War began, lived on a country place in Kentucky. She was a beautiful child, and despite a few foibles that all flesh is heir to, such a really lovable one that she was fairly worshiped by mother, aunt and uncle, and every one of the negroes, from old Caleb, the testy and ancient coachman, to the veriest pickaninny, who thought it a great feat to catch hold with grimy fingers to the fluttering strings of the little girl's white apron when she came among them at Christmas and on other occasions to distribute sweets and more substantial tokens. It was a great wonder that the child was not utterly spoiled. But it seemed that her nature reflected the love lavished on her as a mirror the face that looks into it. Aunt Betsy declared she did not have one selfish bone in her whole body. I think the reason of that was, there were so many about her looking to her for comfort in some way, that when little more than a baby in years she fell into the habit of thinking of and caring for others almost as a woman would. Aunt Betsy was a rheumatic, and always ailing, and the child could not remember the time when her beautiful, patient mamma was not very, very sad. Although she smiled often on her little daughter, it seemed as if there were tears right behind the smiles, just like rain-drops shining through the rays of the sun. And when she crept close to her at night she could feel the long lashes sweep her cheek, and they were so often wet. The negroes on the place, especially the older ones, would grumble out their aches and pains to the child, as if they thought she had the gift of healing. And indeed she had, in her way. For when old Squire split his foot open with an ax, they lived so far in the country they couldn't get a physician every time it needed attention, and her kind, brave mamma undertook to dress the wound herself every morning. She would let the deft little fingers squeeze a sponge full of tepid water over the cut as many times as it was necessary, then hold the scissors and bandages, and help in other ways. And old Squire said the tender, compassionate little face "ho'ped 'im as much as Miss July did." Those that need sympathy intuitively know where to get it. It's just like the flowers reaching out for sun and dew. I expect the city children who read this story feel very sorry for Roberta because she lived in the country. But they needn't be, for she was never lonely and scarcely ever idle. The older negroes on the place said she was like "ole missus" (that was her grandmother) in her ways. And among other things they told about the old lady, to show how stirring she was and what a manager, was her method of arousing the household to their duties in the beginning of the week: "Wake up! wake up! I say. To-day's Monday, to-morrow's Tuesday, next day's Wednesday, next day's Thursday, then comes Friday, and Saturday will be here before you know it, and nothing done." Roberta didn't belong to any "mite society" nor the "little busy bees," where city children are trained to think of and help the poor, and she didn't wear the badge of the "Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," as many children do nowadays. Indeed I don't expect she ever heard there was such a society. But she was instrumental nevertheless in doing a great deal of real practical good. O, how her eyes did flash when she saw animals mistreated. She made beds for the cats and beds for the dogs; and when any of the milkers struck the cows while they were milking them, if she was near about, she would say, "Mamma says good milkers are always gentle with the cows, for they won't give down their milk unless you treat them kindly. And anybody can tell by the quantity of milk you get whether you are good to them or not. If I was a cow I wouldn't give down my milk if you struck me and hollered at me." So she made the cruel milkers ashamed of themselves often. And she practically established a foundling asylum for little motherless lambs and calves; raised them herself on the bottle just like they were babies. "O, you tootsey weetsy darlin'," I've heard her say to a bright-eyed, gentle lamb, her especial delight. The little creature would run to her and bleat by way of telling her it was hungry, and when she had fed it it would rub its pretty head against her knee and look love at her, just as I have seen babies look love at their mothers. And, my! how she did fuss over the little negro children when they were sick! It just kept her busy bringing them gourds of fresh water from the spring and watching the well ones to see that they didn't purloin the dainties she brought the sick. She actually learned how to sew, making clothes for the pickaninnies. And you just ought to have seen her when any of the fathers and mothers whipped their children severely. She would fly down to the cabin, tear the pickaninnies away and trot them up to the big house, and pet them until they were willing to take another whipping to get the good things she gave them. "She's jes de very spi't ob her par," old Squire would say on those occasions; "Dat's jest de way hees eyes useter flash out at Mis Betsy when she cum 'twix' him an Mis July." O, I wish I could make the little children who read this story see, as I have seen it, the country place where Roberta Marsden was raised. On either side fields of golden-tasseled corn, rustling in the breeze and shimmering in the sunlight, many of the stalks so entwined with morning-glories, pink, white, blue, and variegated, one could almost believe fairies had been there and arrayed the yellow silken-haired corn babies for some festival, so crowned and garlanded they were. In front of the house were wooded slopes, where the birds sang their love songs and chattered noisily in bird language all the day long. Those woodlands might have been called a primeval forest, for the trees were truly there in the earliest memory of the oldest living resident of the county. It used to puzzle me to understand how the birds knew when it was time to wake up and begin their matin songs, for it was so like night there. Roberta, who was an early riser and withal a child of poetic imagination, used to say "that the fairies woke them up." She declared she saw a little glittering thing, with wings and wand of silver, alight on the tops of the trees and peep through at the Darbys and Joans of the bird tribe. And she was sure it must have told them it was time to wake up; for soon would begin a low twitter that swelled louder and louder, as bird after bird joined in until every family of birds was represented. From the back porch of the house could be seen a range of blue misty hills, that Roberta called brides. They were often enveloped in white filmy folds, like bridal veils, and one might catch glimpses of the river from there also gliding along between banks of green. A giant's great glittering eye she called that; the trees on the hills above the giant's brows, and the ferns and grasses growing on either bank were upper and lower lashes. With a little encouragement Roberta would have been a genuine poet. But Aunt Betsy took such a literal view of things, she was constantly saying to Mrs. Marsden: "That child's imagination will get away with her, Julia, if you don't check it. It will, indeed." And she had a way of making the child repeat over and over again descriptions of things that had struck her fancy, and cutting here and there until the description didn't seem applicable at all to the places she had seen. "I feel just like the old woman in Mother Goose, Auntie," Roberta would say, her eyes full of vexed tears, "when she woke up on the king's highway and found her petticoats were cut off." "But truth is truth, child," said Aunt Betsy. Aunt Betsy's intensely realistic temperament could not understand that fine, exquisite perception God had given the little girl, which enabled her to see beauty that others, differently organized, would never see, nor, believe was there. The house, where four generations of Mrs. Marsden's family had lived, was home-like, but quaint and unpretentious. It had a very solid look and was in thorough repair, for the family were thrifty and well-to-do always. Luxuriant vines of the Virginia creeper grew on the sides of the house and around the pillars of the porches. Wandering tendrils hung from the eaves and crept in the second-story windows. There was a wild-brier rose there that had been planted by Mrs. Marsden's grandmother. It partook somewhat of the nature of the old lady; nothing could keep it from doing its duty. It filled the air with fragrance in its season, and was a mass of delicate pink flower cups. Inside of the old house were many little nooks, and each nook haunted by the spirit of some legendary story. As is the case in all houses where successive generations of the same family have lived and died, ghostly visitants came at certain times, so the negroes said, rang bells softly at dead of night, tipped across the floor with but the echo of a step, jostled medicine bottles together and did many curious things. Roberta, brave as she was and sensible as she was, would actually cover up her head with the bedclothes, and nearly smother for fear she would hear the bells and ghostly steps. Mam' Sara was the only one of the negroes who didn't believe in ghosts. "No, indeed, honey," she would say to Roberta, "daid fo'ks don' never cum bak. If they gits ter Heaven, they don' wan'er, and if they gits ter de udder place they can't. The devil won' never let 'em git away frum him, kase he's wuk so hard ter git 'em." The part of the house of most interest to Roberta was the parlor, where were stored the heir-looms of the family, a spinet with all the ivory worn off the keys, two pier-glasses with brass claws for feet, and a clock so tall and big she actually hid in it once when she was playing "hide and go seek" with some little visitors, who said they had seen a clock "larger." Roberta was a very amiable child, but old Squire said she "wuz techus erbout sum things." And the old clock must have been one of the things. The chairs were brought from Virginia on the backs of mules, and the covers on them embroidered by the little girl's grandmother. The same busy hands that superintended the manufacture of those piles of linen sheets stored away in the presses above stairs, and the counterpanes woven with the American eagle in the center, bunches of hollyhocks and sweet pea in the corners, and trumpet vines running along the edges. The paper on the walls of the parlor was a curiosity. It was imported from England many, many years before Roberta's mother was born, because her grandfather saw a room somewhere, I think in Baltimore, that had similar paper, and he took such a fancy to it he ordered some from the same place. The paper was wrought in great panels, with life-size figures of orientals in the center. They were terrible looking men, the children thought. They had swarthy skins and beards down to their waists, and fierce eyes that flashed out beneath their turbans with a fe-fo-fi-fum look. Those fierce eyes were the cause of no little alarm, I can assure you, when darkness swooped down upon Roberta and Polly and Dilsy, playing Lady-come-to-see in the old parlor in childlike unconsciousness of the passage of time. Polly, the imp, would always insist upon singing "Lady Jane Grey," as they tiptoed backward out of the room. They did not dare to look away, for fear those terrible men would fly at them when they were not looking and throttle them with their long, bony fingers, so they joined hands and sung as they tiptoed backward: Lady Jane Grey, she went to church for to pray; She went to the stile and there rested awhile; She went to the door and there rested a little more; She went up the aisle and there rested awhile; She looked up; she looked down; She saw a corpse lie on the ground; She said to the sexton, must I look so When I die? Boo, boo! Now when they came to the last part it was always Polly who stretched open her eyes till they looked like an owl's great round eyes, and jumped at Roberta and Dilsy and hollered "Boo, boo!" Although they knew it was coming they were awfully scared, and would break loose and run, screaming like mad things, into the sitting-room, really believing the orientals were after them. They had made believe it so many times, and Polly had said so many times, "I'll cross my heart, Lil Missus, 'twuz dem drefful men dat sed 'boo-oo'; I seed thar lips muven; you don' ketch me in thar no mo'," they had come to really believe it. They had heard the story of the children who played wolf, and a wolf did sure enough come and devour them. As many times as they had played Lady Jane Grey they were always worse scared the last time than ever before. The sitting-room was a cozy place when they got there, panting for breath after their fright in the parlor. In one of the deep window recesses Roberta had set up her entire doll family to housekeeping. She was very fond of her dolls. The mother instinct in her was developed very early. She had wax dolls and china dolls and rag dolls. Mrs. Marsden painted features on the rag dolls, and they looked very natural. There was Miss Prim and Miss Slim, Mrs. Jolly and Mrs. Folly, Miss Snappy and Miss Happy, named from their different expressions. Roberta had the quaintest way of talking to her dolls. She had caught some of Aunt Betsy's old-time ideas: "Straighter, my dears, straighter. One's spine should never touch the back of a chair," and, "Don't rest your elbows on the table while you are eating; my great-grandmother used to keep cushions stuffed with pins to slip under the children's elbows," etc. Her favorite dolls were the figures cut out of the fashion plates of Godey's Lady's Book. She was an artist with her fingers, if there was a pair of scissors in them. So she took sheets of different colored tissue-paper, cut dresses, and fitted them nicely on her dolls. Each doll had a variety. I believe she thought her dolls looked cosier at the dinner-table than anywhere else, and she kept them sitting there a great deal. Sometimes Polly, who seemed born to make trouble, would roll her eyes at the dolls and say, "You iz de greedes' things. Whar iz you gwiner to put it?" Then, of course, Roberta would feel obliged to take some notice of their sitting at the table so long: "Come, get down now, dears. Little ladies should _not_ appear greedy." Roberta was very much like some mothers of real children, who will wink at what their little ones do at one time, and, if a neighbor drops in at another, who is not of the same way of thinking, scold the poor children for doing those very things they had winked at before. But Roberta did not have it in her heart to scold anybody much, not even that impish Polly, who would go around after she had provoked her little mistress beyond endurance, sniffling and singing in a dolorous tone, Whar she goes en how she fars, Nobody knows en nobody kyars. and invariably wind up by getting the very playthings she wanted from Roberta as a peace offering. I must not forget to tell you about Roberta's Sunday School for little negro children. If the child didn't always keep perfect order and make the headway she would have liked, it wasn't because she didn't try. Her whole heart was in the work. She really was very intelligent, and Aunt Betsy said, "If there was such a thing as anybody being born in this world a Christian, she believed Roberta was." I think she must have had the germ of object teaching--that is the fad now--in her nature, she could paint such vivid mental pictures to convey an idea. Once she was telling Polly about God's punishment of sinners, and Polly said, "Lawdy, Lil Missus, I feel dem blazes creepen' all over me dis minit." She had a great deal to contend with, almost as much as Mrs. Marsden had, in getting the older negroes to come in to prayers. Nine times out of ten, when she rang the bell for them Sunday morning, Squire would put his head in the door and say: "Mis July, dat deviles hoss dun played me dat same trick ergin. He dun lade down in de mud en roll ober en ober. 'T will take me clar up ter de time to start ter chech ter git dat mud orf him, en hard wurk at dat. Dat hoss knows ez well when Sad-day night comes ez you duz. Jes' de way he dun las' week when I hetch him in de plow: lay down en groan lak he sick enuff ter die, ter keep fum worken'; en half hour arfter I turn him luse frolerken lak er colt--jes' kicken' up his heels, I kin tell you." "Why not drive some of the others, Uncle Squire, so you can come in to prayers?" "I dun turn em all out, en dey's gorn, de Lord unly knows whar. If I'd unly know'd it en time now. But I'll show 'im--I'll show 'im. I gwiner be mity solid wid 'im, en mebbe heel larn arfter while dat he aint his own master." At other times it was a mule. "Mis July, dat mule dun tore down dat rock fence ergin. I bounter fix it or de stock will git out en go orf, you knows dat ez well az I duz. Dat mule's yours, en you kin do what you please wid him, but ef he 'longter me I'd sell him de fus chance I git. Dat mule nuff ter mek er man strike hees gran-daddy." Now, it was a well-known fact that Mrs. Marsden had tried several times to sell the mule, and old Squire had always declared "the mule was the most valuable animal on the place, and it was just giving him away to sell him at the price offered." Polly was Squire's granddaughter, and inherited his want of reverence for sacred things. She was very, very trying, especially on one occasion I will tell you about. Roberta gathered the children together, took her Catechism and primer, and went down to the summer-house. She noticed that Polly's expression was sulky, and that she was rolling her eyes at Dilsy. But Polly was always tormenting Dilsy. Dilsy was a little hunchback negro, that everybody but Polly felt sorry for and tried to turn the soft side of life to. Roberta was not much discouraged by Polly's actions, still she knew it was a great deal pleasanter to teach her when she was in a good humor, and concluded to resort to a strategy to mollify her. The child was a close observer of nature, and knew how indispensable to germinate seed was a mellow, rightly prepared soil, and what service sunshine and timely rainfalls were to growing crops. So she intuitively drew an analogy in her childish way between the soil the plow-man turns over and the human heart. Now, if there was one thing that Polly delighted in more than another it was the game of "Chick-a-mie, chick-a-mie, craney-crow." So the children joined hands and moved around and around in a circle, singing: "Chick-a-mie, chick-a-mie, craney-crow, Went to the well to wash my toe, When I got back my chickens was gone. What o'clock is it, old Buzzard?" Then they would fly around looking for the chickens. At least all of them but Polly would. Polly always took the part of old Buzzard, so she could flop down in Dilsy's seat, although she knew she would have to get right up. Somehow, that evening Roberta's strategy did not seem to have accomplished its object, judging from Polly's expression. Still she hoped for the best. Polly was the biggest, so she always begun with her. "Who made you, Polly?" No answer immediately; then, "Dunno fur sarten, spec' 't wuz Gord." A lump gathered in the child's throat. Her bump of reverence was so largely developed it distressed her to see a want of it in others; she said "it hurt her feelings." She passed it by, however, and ventured on another. "What else did God make?" "Dunno fur sarten, never seed 'im wuken'." "For shame, Polly! God made all things. Say 'God made all things.'" "No, never. Never made Dilsy thar. Dilsy nuffin' but er scrap he throw'd erway when he got fru cutten' out de grow'd-up ones." "For shame, Polly! Don't you know everybody has to be little and grow up." "No, never! Adam and Eve wuz born'd grow'd up." "Well, that was because they were the first people on earth, and there was nobody to be papa and mamma for 'em, and take care of 'em, when they were little." "Dat's like Dilsy thar. Dilsy never had no daddy." "Well, Polly, you haven't answered my question yet. Say 'God made all things.'" "No, never! God never made mammy's twins--no mo' dan he made Dilsy thar. Dey iz prezak like dem monkeys I seed de time I went en town ter de circus." Now Polly was not an impartial judge of the twins, for she had been installed as their nurse, and she hated to nurse. "For shame, Polly! Those nice little babies. And then, besides, as God made all things, he made monkeys too, of course." "No, never! You can't make me berleeve dat. Gord nerver wase hees valerbel time maken' monkeys." That was the "last straw that broke the camel's back." After trying so hard to be patient, and especially as she knew it was nothing but pure contrariness in Polly, for only the Sunday before she had answered every question correctly, and added some pious interpolations exceedingly gratifying to her young teacher. So she got up, went to her refractory pupil, and lifted her forefinger by way of giving emphasis to her words. But Polly, recognizing that her little mistress's temperature was rising, felt a proportionate rise in her own, rolled her eyes till nothing but the whites were visible, and stuck her lower lip out. It would be impossible to conceive of a creature uglier or more aggravating looking than Polly, when she did that way. In a flash, down came Roberta's little soft pink palm on her cheek. Mrs. Marsden happened to be passing on her way to the quarters to visit a sick servant, and witnessed the performance. She was amused, but worried too, that Roberta had allowed herself to be so provoked, for it almost made a farce of the whole thing; and she knew how much in earnest her little daughter really was. The child's flushed cheeks and flashing eyes brought back, O so vividly! another face and another pair of flashing orbs so like hers. There were tears in Mrs. Marsden's eyes when she went in the summer-house and took her seat on the bench that circled around it. "Did you strike Polly, daughter?" "Yes 'em, Mamma." "What did you strike her for, daughter?" "She wouldn't say her lesson, Mamma, and she knew it all the time. And she rolled her eyes at me so, and stuck out her lip and looked so ugly, I just couldn't help it, that's all." "I am sorry, daughter, that you gave way to your temper so. For remember, you are only the sower that plants the seed, and God takes care of all the rest. If you really try to teach Polly, and she won't be taught, you mustn't make a personal thing of it, but just leave it with God. Then, again, daughter, unless you practice self-control, teaching others is a farce. I know Polly has been very trying, indeed. But I want you to show a real forgiving spirit, as one should always show when one is working for the Master. I want you to tell Polly you are sorry you struck her. For you are sorry, I know--I see it in your face." A kind of staccato snuffle was heard in the direction of Polly. Roberta gave another look at the surly, unprepossessing countenance, then said, in a low voice: "I will, Mamma, if you will let me hide my face in your lap while I am saying it." "But why hide your face in my lap, daughter?" "Because--because--Mamma--I am afraid--if she looks at me as she did before, that I will slap her again. I don't believe I could keep from it this evening; I am all out of sorts." Afterwards that observation of Polly's, "Dilsy never had no daddy," caused Roberta no little thought. Really, she was no better off than Dilsy, she reasoned, for of course the child did not take in the full significance of the imp's meaning. Nobody ever told her that her papa was dead. Indeed she had been taught to pray for him every night. She felt sure he was living. But, where? Why did he not come home and pet her, like other little girls' papas she knew--pet her, and make her beautiful, sad mother smile sometimes. For it seemed to the child that she grew sadder and sadder all the time. There was nobody she could talk to about him, for her mamma's eyes filled with tears at any chance allusion to him. Aunt Betsy nearly snapped her head off when she asked her a question, and Uncle Squire, chatty as he was upon every other subject, would squint his eyes in a knowing way, puff out his cheeks, and answer, "Lay o'ers ter ketch meddlers." Yes, there was one person she was sure she could coax into telling her why her papa never came home to see them all, and that was dear, good Mam' Sarah, the weaver. When Aunt Betsy scolded Mam' Sarah, she would get down on the floor by Aunt Betsy and hug her tight around the knees and say, "God love you, Mistiss," to show her she wasn't mad at her for scolding her. That was "religion," mamma said. Aunt Betsy would cry, and say: "Get up, Sarah, you make me ashamed of myself." Yes, she would go to Mam' Sarah at the loom-house. It was considered a great treat by Roberta to go down to the loom-house. That was where the wool, cotton, and flax was carded, spun, and wove, then manufactured into winter and summer clothes for the negroes on the place. Yard upon yard of beautiful red and black flannel, blue and brown linseys, and blue and white striped cottonades, for the women, jeans for the men, and that coarse fabric called tow-linen made from the refuse of flax. The wonderful counterpanes, I have mentioned before, were manufactured there and the linen for sheets and towels. Let me tell you something curious while I am on the subject of the loom-house: Roberta's grandmother raised silk-worms in the room adjoining. She fed them on mulberry leaves. Mam' Sarah told Roberta they made a noise like wind while they were feeding. Those worms spun fluffy balls of silk, called cocoons, that the old lady reeled her silk thread from. She had all the silk thread and embroidery floss she needed. There were no silk-worms raised in Roberta's time, and the room was given up to other uses. There was kept the huge iron mortar where the grains of corn were crushed to make the delicious hominy Kentuckians are so fond of. When rightly prepared each grain stands out like the beautiful white-plumed corn captains and colonels that dance up so gaily over beds of live coals. There were made also the tallow dips, almost the only light used in the old days on the farms in Kentucky. Pieces of cotton wick were cut the required length and fastened at regular intervals to sticks of wood. One of the rows of wicks was dipped in the melted tallow, taken out and suspended over a vessel to drip. Then another was dipped, and another, till the same process was gone through with all. That was repeated many times before the wicks held enough tallow to be used for candles. An improved method was to run the wicks through tin molds, the required size and shape, and fasten them at one end with a knot; then pour in the melted tallow, and set the molds aside for the tallow to harden. The candles were put in brass, silver, and bronze candlesticks, accompanied by quaint little waiters that held snuffers, used to nip off the charred wick, as the tallow melted away from it. Very primitive that, compared with the brilliant luminaries we have now. Well, there were hanks of different colored yarns and strings of red peppers hanging from the ceiling of the loom-house. Great beams ran through, called "warping bars," where the various warp threads were measured and cut for the loom. There were scutchens for dressing flax, carding combs, spinning wheels, and the great wooden loom with shafts reaching almost to the ceiling. It was prime fun for Roberta to go down to the loom-house in the long winter evenings, and, sitting down before the open fire-place, help Polly and the others card the wool in long, smooth "curls," and pile them in even layers, ready for the spinner. It required deft fingers, too, to gather together all the bits of wool caught on the many sharp teeth of the carding comb, and that, by working the two parts of the comb up and down, like a see-saw, then turning them over and smoothing the rolls with the back. Those were busy days on the farms in old Kentucky, and happy days, besides. The very best days for many, both white and black. That afternoon I will tell you about especially, Mam' Sarah had a bright-colored rag carpet in the loom. There she sat, her eyes fixed intently on the pattern before her, shuttles carrying the black, red, and orange filling flying in and out under her deft, busy fingers. Many a strip of that gay filling had the little girl cut, sewed, and wrapped. Mam' Sarah raised her eyes and smiled at the child, but didn't stop working. "Don't it tire you Mam' Sarah?" Roberta once compassionately asked. "No, indeed, honey! Pear-lak I got sumfin' in my elbers en sumfin' in my knees that keeps on goen, sumfin' like springs. I never gits tired. I likes it." That was the secret, Mam' Sarah liked it. One can keep on forever when one "likes it." "A merry heart goes all the day, a sad one tires in a mile." Roberta climbed upon a stool and sat there watching Mam' Sarah. She was a nice person to watch. She had such kind eyes and such a pleasant mouth. Roberta thought Mam' Sarah's mouth was just made to say "honey." Just like a "prune" and "prism" mouth I've read of somewhere. Her skin was the color of coffee, with a little cream in it. She always wore a head-handkerchief, generally white, and one similar, folded over the bosom of her dress. Mam' Sarah was very tall, and she had the best lap in the world to coddle down in, Roberta thought. [Illustration: MAM' SARAH. "Sumfin' in my elbers en knees keeps on goen. I never gits tired--I likes it."] Presently Mam' Sarah took her foot off the treadle, went to the fire-place, lit her pipe, returned to her seat and puffed away in peaceful silence. Roberta waited for her to get through, for she knew how dearly she loved her pipe. After a little Mam' Sarah laid her pipe aside and looked at the child. "What's de matter, honey?" she asked. "Your putty eyes full of tears. Ennybody hurt your feelens?" The touch of sympathy coming at that tender moment, like a rose-leaf upon a full vessel of water, caused the pent-up emotion to overflow. Roberta climbed in Mam' Sarah's lap, put her head down on her shoulder and sobbed like her heart would burst. The old woman caressed the golden head, and droned out a quaint lullaby, accompanying it with a kind of swaying motion of her body as though soothing an infant to slumber: "Who's dis, who's dis, er coddlen down here? I spec dis iz black mammy's gyurl; Her skin so white iz mammy's delite. And her long golden ha'r in kyurl. Shoo-oo-oo, shoo-oo-oo-- Rest, white chile, rest, on black mammy's breast. "Who's dis, who 's dis, er coddlen down here, Wid her eyes full of greeven' tears? Fru de chink of the do', let de lite po', De shadders, my little gyurl skeers. Shoo-oo-oo, shoo-oo-oo-- Rest, white chile, rest, on black mammy's breast. "This iz the way I useter nuss you when you wuz er baby. You wuz warken' about fo' you know'd who your mammy wuz. You see, your mar wuz so troubled after your par went erway, she diden' take no entres' in enny thing much; po' thing! po' thing! You'd axel cum enter this wurl' with out a rag ter your back, if I haden' hunted up sum baby cloze your mar wo', en git em ready." "What made my papa go away, Mam' Sarah?" asked the child, quickly. "I dunno fur sarten, honey, wot did make him go erway. You see, he wuzen' lak our fo'ks. Cum frum the Norf. Pear-lak he cuden' take ter our ways, sumhow. Mars Robert was razed in town, en he diden' lak it out here in the country. I heered him say he wuz so tired of the country, hee'd be glad never ter see another blade of grass grow. Mis Betsy tho't that was orful. He wuz allers arfter your mar ter sell all of us, en sell the place en go Norf with him ter live. Sumhow he diden' lak culured peepel ter wate on him. Jes lak hees sister, who cum down here to visit Mis July, en bro't her little gal with her. When enny of us wud go ni the child, shee'd draw bak en say, 'och-y,' jes lak our black skins wuz nasty. She seed Judy with her hans en the biskit do', and she wuden' eat the biskits. She said the blak rubbed orf in 'em. Shee'd never heered of worfles 'til she cum out here, en she wuden' tech 'em, cors she tho't we made the holes in em with our fingers. Yer mar felt mity bad cors de chile wuden' eat nuffin', for she wuz a po' little wite-face thing ennyhow. "Well, you wanter know erbout your par en your mar. It ain' nuffin' but natchel, en I'll tell you the best I know how. One day I wuz cleneen' your mar's room. Your par en your mar wuz en de setten' room, en I heered him say: "'It's unly a queshun of er little time, en they'll all be free. Sell 'em now wile you kin en put the money en your pocket. Ef you wate, they'll be er dead loss ter you. You made one fulis mistake en not selling Squire; don't make another.' "Lemme tell you wot he mean by that, honey. Squire's mammy, Free Fanny, cum down here fum the city, en tried ter buy Squire fum yer mar. She orfered her er big price fur Squire; she wuz rich, en mity keen ter git her unly son. But Squire, he jes' went on so, got down on his knees ter your mar en begged her not to sell him ter his mammy. Axel cried, en got your mar ter cryen', en Mis Betsy en Mars Charley. You never seed enny thin' lak et. En your mar tole Free Fanny she wud leave it with Squire, en do jes' ez he sed. Yer par wuz jes' out-dun. Pear-lak he cuden' git over your mar payen' mo' tenshun ter Squire then ter him. "I nerver know'd why Squire diden' want your mar ter sell him ter hees own mammy. It looked unnatchel. Free Fanny, that's hees mammy, wuz mity rich, en owned six colored peeple hersef. Shee's liven' yet en the city, en when she dies Squire will get her money. "Well, when yer par sed that, your mar sed: "'I cuden' sell them ef I wanter; you know that, Robert, en I don' wanter.' "Then your par, he spoke up sharp: "'It's nonsense, it's wuss than nonsense fur the liven' ter be so bound by the dead. Sarcumstances are allers changen'. I say you've got no rite ter think of everbody fo' you duz me. En its jes' cum ter this pass, you've got ter chuse twixt them en me. You've got ter sell 'em en sell this place en go with me, war I kin make the liven' I wuz eddiketed for, or I'll brake luse mysef, en go. I can't stan' this life no longer.' "Then your mar sed: "'I wud be miserbel, Robert, ef I broke my father's will. It would kill me, I do believe. Besides, I wuden' sell em, ef I diden' have er cent ter buy er crust of braid with, even ef I wuzen' boun' by the will. En ez fur sellen' this place, war I wuz born'd en raze, I never spec' ter. I wan'er live en die rite here. Besides, there's Aunt Betsy. She wud never consent ter go away fum here, en I cuden' leave her by hersef.' "Yer par git up then, en slam the do, 'en I never heerd no mo'. 'Twuz the fus' out-en-out quarrel they ever had; but they had menny er one arfter that. Pear-lak one led ter ernuther; en thar wuz nobody ter take hold en help. Mis Betsy wud pitch in en say things that made 'em madder en madder. Well, one mawnen' early, Squire went ter the stable ter feed, en he sed Mars Robert dun took the horses en buggy, en er wagin fur hees trunk, en gorn. Erbout dinner time the men cum bak with the buggy en wagin, but no Mars Robert. Fum that day ter this he never cum bak." "Did he never write to mamma?" asked the child, her cheeks burning. "I berleeve he did, unct; sent her sum money or sumfin'. I heered Mis Betsy say, 'Put it en bank fur your unborn'd chile,' en your mar sed, 'I don' want it; I have enuff.' "Tempers iz er mity bad thing, honey," continued Mam' Sarah. "Now, I don' mean that nasty sperit that makes er dog snap hees teef at you, cors your mar en par never had no temper lak dat, chile. Mo' lak spile chillen, that dun had ther way so long they cuden' give in, speshly your par. If your par haden' gorn so fur erway, your mar en him wud made up when you cum. Chillens teeches fo'ks er heep. But you see, honey, they never had no chance ter make up. My ole man en me haz menny ups en downs. Sumhow, when he gits sick, or I haz ter do sumfin' fur him, I furgit erbout bein' mad at him. "Pear-lak, ter me, honey, en I've stidded on it er heep, the mo' you do fur fo'ks the better you laks 'em. 'Twud bin the same with your mar en your par, ef your par haden' gorn so fur away. When you marry, honey, you marry one of the nabor boys." "I never mean to marry anybody," said Roberta, getting down from Mam' Sarah's lap, and shaking out the creases in her muslin dress. She was a dainty creature. "I am going to be an old maid and take care of mamma. May be I can make her laugh and sing, after a while, like Aunt Betsy says she used to. I'll never leave her, never, never. And then there's Aunt Betsy to take care of, and you, and Aunt Judy and all." "Bless your sweet mouf. But we've gotter die fo' long, honey, en be put erway in the cold groun' fur the wurms ter make meals of; sum of us cheaten' the grave rite now. What iz you gwiner do then, honey?" "Then," said the child, and her face was sober indeed, "when that comes to pass I shall be very, very sorry for a long time; but I will try to make others happy, as mamma does, and may be that will comfort me a little. I will get all the little girls together, like me, that haven't got any papas and mammas, and all the little hunchback darkies like Dilsy, and all the sorrowful people like mamma, and I'll love 'em and take care of 'em until the angel comes for us, the angel that God sends." Thus the years rolled by until the war came. Peaceful, happy years they were to Roberta on the old farm; golden years, in which the child's character grew and strengthened, with no unkindly influence to warp it, and her nature, it seemed, became more responsive all the time to the love that was lavished upon her. Mam' Sarah told Roberta that she was going down to the tobacco fields, early Sad-day morning, July 4, '63, and Roberta coaxed her mamma to let she and Polly and Dilsy go with her. Although Federal cannon were planted along the bluff overlooking Green River, their presence occasioned no especial uneasiness, nor suspicion of impending warfare. Mrs. Marsden as well as everybody else had grown accustomed to them. Almost during the entire civil war that point was thought important on account of the bridge; army stores were constantly shipped South that way. So the three children started off, merry as larks, with their trusty companion. On either side of the turnpike road were green fields flushed with light. The morning air stirred about them, redolent in sweet scents and attuned with the many voices of summer. They heard the drowsy hum of bees; and butterflies were there, thick as motes in the midday sun. Roberta's observant, nature-loving eyes roved delightedly from one point to another of the sunny landscape, while she repeated gaily to Mam' Sarah a little couplet. The child's memory was stored with quaint rhymes: "A country lane between fields of clover Rippling in sunshine over and over. There the whirl of gay revelrie, Butterflies waltzing mad with glee, Honey-bees, powdered in dust of gold, Chassezing around like gay knights of old, Clad in silken doublet and hose; Lookout, lookout, if you tread on their toes." Suddenly Polly broke away, pulled up an iron-weed growing on the road-side, and fell to whipping a large purple thistle. Her thirst grew; she left the thistle and fell to whipping the rank grass. Then was heard an angry buzz, as the assaulted bees swarmed out of their defenses and literally stormed her. They settled all over her. Head, face, bare feet and legs were attacked all at once. They stung her terribly. The death of their comrade was summarily avenged. She rent the air with her cries, and backed toward Mam' Sarah, fighting them off as she went from different parts of her body. Mam' Sarah covered up her retreat as well as she could, saying: "I natchel hate ter see fo'ks in trubble, but I ain' er bit sorry fur you. I never seed ennybody fo' that wuz allers on the war-paf. Them bees haden' dun nuffin' ter you. They is prezak lak humans. Ef you let 'em erlone you won't hear from 'em; but fite 'em en they'll fite you back, erver time." At the same time that Mam' Sarah and Roberta were fussing over Polly, a line of glittering points were coming up the rise near the bend of the river. A column of Confederate soldiers appeared, marching shoulder to shoulder, their arms shining in the morning sun. On they came, crossing the fields with the springing step of hope and the steady step of high, dauntless courage, making directly for the works the Federals had thrown up and protected with the bodies of felled trees. Well-nigh impregnable, those works, from their vast advantage of position, but in their line of march it was the policy of their leaders to fight every thing of like nature that came in the way, to hide, if possible, their real weakness in numbers. So they were told to take those works, and take them they would. Knowing not the hesitancy of doubt, nor the trammels of fear, what recked they of danger or of death, as they sprung to their work? Alas! the awful death-trap that caught them, held them, while that deadly fusilade opened upon them, reddened with their warm, young blood the soil of their native State--mowed them down, ruthlessly, those hapless Kentuckians. For ruthless it ever seems, when youth and hope and glorious promise are offered in vain. At last they fell back, the living; what flesh and blood could do otherwise? Fell back, but undismayed, and fighting stubbornly inch by inch, as they bore off their wounded. O, those darlings of old Kentucky! whose light went out on that July morning nearly thirty years ago, those eager souls that God sealed with His eternal peace ere aught had ruffled them, other than the zest of a hurdle-race or quail hunt on their native bluegrass; many of them scarce passed the mile-stones of boyhood, fresh from the classroom and tender home circle. Yet, they plunged into the awful fire of that needless sacrifice, like veterans, to whom the smoke and crash of charging squadrons is a pastime. No braver souls than they ever perished; none more loyal to the land that gave them birth. Well may Kentucky embalm their worth in enduring tablets of brass and marble. Let her see to it that she keeps their memory green in her heart, for they loved her with a love passing the love of woman. When Mam' Sarah heard the firing she caught hold of Roberta's hand and started to run, calling on the others to follow. She heard voices shouting to her, in reality the voices of the negroes who had gone down to the tobacco fields, calling to her to turn back. But, in her excitement she thought they were war cries, and ran as fast as she could away from them. "Let's go to the play-house under the hill, Mam' Sarah," said quick-witted Roberta. That play-house was a rocky recess, once the bed of some subterranean stream, and protected from view by a sycamore's gnarled, knotted branches extending down, and hung with matted wild grape tendrils. Mam' Sarah had often gone down there and spread her linen on the grass to bleach, and she generally took the children along for company. That's how they happened to find out the rocky recess or cave, for it ran under the hill a considerable distance. They hadn't been in there long before a shadow darkened the entrance to the recess. A figure crept toward them with the muzzle of a gun pointing straight at them. "O, don't shoot!" they cried in terror. "I won't," responded a boyish voice, and when their tears subsided they saw it was a mere lad, wounded and bleeding. "Are you much hurt?" asked Roberta. "O, no; just a scratch." His chin fell on his chest. A dry sob burst from him. "I wish now I had been killed with the rest of 'em." "Have you got a mother?" Roberta asked. "Yes, I've got a mother; but what will she say when I tell her I left Bert lying yonder in that death-trap? That's what's the matter. I wanted to find Bert and take him away with me. I hunted for him all along among those trees, and I got cut off from our boys. I think I must have lost my head, for I forgot which way they went." "Who is Bert?" asked Roberta. "Bert was my brother, and the best boy that ever lived. Curse them!" he cried, shaking his clenched fist; "curse the Yankees. What right have they on Kentucky soil, anyhow?" "O, don't curse them," said the child; "my papa is a Yankee." "Is he?" He stopped short and looked at her with a kind of pity. "I am sorry for you, that's all; sorry from my heart. I'd rather be a negro trader." "I'm sorry too," said Roberta. There was a droop about the corners of her mouth. "But don't you worry about your brother. Mam' Sarah and me will find him and do all we can for him." "Will you?" said the hoy eagerly; "will you, really? O! that will be too kind for any thing. I can never forget it, never." "But how am I to know him? Is he like you?" "Yes, he is like me; we were twins; but ten million times better looking. He looked like an angel, as he is, as he is." Great throes convulsed his chest in his efforts to control himself. "I don't want to be a baby, but I was never away from Bert a day in my life. Say, I can tell you how to know him. He has a picture of mother and a Testament in his pocket, with his name written on the fly-leaf, 'Albert Kurl.'" "Well, we will find him," said Roberta. There was a whispered consultation between the three, Mam' Sarah, Roberta and the soldier. It seemed entirely satisfactory. And then Mam' Sarah told Roberta they must hurry home on account of her mammy. "We kin cum back, honey, en find him." And come back they did. They found him and washed the blood away from the poor mangled features, straightening out the twisted limbs as well as they could. Roberta took charge of the little pocket Bible with his name written on the fly-leaf, and the picture of his mother, such a stately, beautiful lady. Albert Kurl's body was not the only one they looked for. Mam' Sarah's tears fell like rain, as she went from one to another searching for curly-haired Mars Charley, the little boy she nursed. She would have known him, she was sure, no matter how he looked. But, thank God, he was not there. She remembered so well the morning he rode off on his prancing horse, with the bands playing Dixie. "Charlie," called Aunt Betsy, "take this Bible with you." "O Auntie," laughed the merry young fellow, "I can't, but I'll promise to say, 'Now I lay me down to sleep' every night." "O, what duz make fo'ks git so mad with ech other?" said Mam' Sarah. "It will all cum rite, if they'll only hol' back en trust God." Just before tea, Roberta ran down to uncle Squire's cabin, on the hill back of the spring-house. She told him she had a secret for his ears alone, made him look under the bed, the cup-board, chairs, and every place, to be sure there were no eaves-droppers. Then she sat down on a stool and slided it along towards him. He edged his chair a little closer towards her, so by the time she began her communication their heads almost touched. It was comical to see the old man's various facial expressions while the child talked. He would squint his eyes like he was trying to sight something away ahead of him, puffed out his cheeks till they resembled an inflated bellows. Finally, slapped his thigh vigorously, blurting out, "You iz er sharp one, Lil Misus, you won' never 'go fru er thicket en pick up er 'oop-pole', he-he-he." "Can you manage it for me, Uncle Squire?" asked the child anxiously. "Ob cose I kin, Lil Misus, ob cose I kin. Squire's your man." "O, you dear, good, Uncle Squire," cried the delighted child. "I feel like hugging you." The old man twisted around in his seat and went through his facial pantomimes again, pretty much on the principle of a dog wagging his tail when he is fed. Roberta was feeding him with the daintiest of food, the nectar of the gods to all of us, old and young, high and low. Although it was July, there was a bed of glowing embers on the stone hearth, where Uncle Squire was cooking his supper. He liked the independence of it. A pot of steaming coffee stood close beside the fire, slices of middling meat were broiling on the coals, and an ash cake slowly browning. He nodded his head toward them, on hospitable thoughts intent. "Iz you hongry, Lil Missus?" "Well, I believe I am, rather, Uncle Squire, and your supper looks nice, but I think I will save myself for Aunt Judy's waffles. I took her a basketful of fresh eggs, and she promised me some waffles and scrambled eggs. You know I adore waffles and scrambled eggs, Uncle Squire." Suddenly the child burst into a ringing peal of laughter. Something very funny was evidently suggested by the eggs. "O, Uncle Squire," she cried, "did I tell you how I got the best of Jemimy at last?" "Iz dat de hen dat's been so bobstreperous, you bin tellen' me erbout, Lil Missus?" "The very same, Uncle Squire. O 'twas nice, the way I managed her yesterday. I let all of the good hens out, and I said, 'Jemimy, you've got to stay in. You haven't been doing your duty lately at all. I am just ashamed of you. You will ruin your reputation. People will stop coming here to get your eggs to set with." Aunt Betsy says, "Jemimy, A bird that can sing, and wont sing, ought to be made to sing, and I am going to do my duty by you. I am just going to keep you in here until you get in the habit, the habit, you hear, Jemimy, of laying one egg a day.' You know, Uncle Squire, habit is every thing. Jemimy cackled, just like she was going right at it. But I said, 'No, Jemimy, you've fooled me before.' Then she ruffled up her feathers and flew around, determined to get out. I was firm with her, Uncle Squire, and wouldn't let her out. This evening I went there and found two beautiful eggs, fresh laid, in her nest." "You iz er sharp one, Lil Missus; I allers sed it. Who'd s'poze now you cud make dat hen underston' lak er human creeter, dat she gotter turn over er new leaf en do better. Pear-lak, sum chillen's born'd en de wurl' now-er-days wid ez much sense ez grow'd-up fo'ks." As they sat there a rumble of thunder was heard. Roberta listened intently: "'Tater wagens, Uncle Squire, _big_ 'tater wagens, rumbling over the bridge." "Yes, Lil Missus, it's comen'. En de stormier 'tis, en de darker 'tis, de better fur him en me." That night about nine o'clock Mrs. Marsden heard a low but distinct rap on the shutters of the sitting-room window opening on the porch. She happened to be there alone. It startled her for an instant, but she soon recovered composure and asked: "Who is it?" "A friend," was the reply. "What do you want" "Shelter for a few hours, a bite to eat, and--I will tell you more anon." "These are dreadful times, and I am not in the habit of taking strangers in at this hour of the night." "All right," said he on the outside; then added with the glibness of a Fourth of July stump speaker, "that is, if you can reconcile it with your conscience to turn the cold shoulder on a fellow being in the desperate strait I am in." "Where did you come from?" was next asked. "From those who are wandering up and down the earth, seeking how they may devour me." "Where are you going to?" "Destination unknown. Depends somewhat on yourself." Without another word, Mrs. Marsden turned the lamp down low, and hurried towards the front hall door. "Take a light with you, Julia," called Aunt Betsy, from the bed-room adjoining. "Not for the world, Auntie." Her acute ear had caught the tramp of horses' hoofs coming through the avenue. When she opened the door, a tall man dressed in the Federal uniform stood outside, his hair disheveled by wind, and face shining with dashes of rain. She locked and bolted the door after him, and led the way to the dining-room, where Roberta sat playing "checkers" with a boyish-looking soldier, also dressed in Federal uniform. "Give this gentleman some cake and wine, dear," she said to Roberta, "and entertain him until I return; and you," to the other soldier, "go outside for a little; Squire will show you where to go." Her surmises were correct. Heavy spurred boot-heels crossed the porch floor; there was a thundering knock with the butt-end of a riding-whip on the outside of the door. Inwardly quaking, and strengthening herself with silent prayer, she opened the door. A squad of Federal soldiers stood before her. One of them lifted his hat, and said courteously: "We have come with authority from headquarters to search your house, Madam; we understand you are harboring rebels." "You are at liberty to search my house," she answered in a clear, penetrating voice. "You will find some women and children, and one of your cloth, here." They searched sitting-room, bed-room, and passed into the dining-room; saw a brother Federal there partaking of light refreshments; were pleasantly accosted by him, and told he belonged to Company G, of Colonel M.'s Michigan volunteers; had been sick and was out on furlough at the house of a friend. One of them, a social kind of fellow, lingered on the threshold, amused at the badinage passing between the soldier and the beautiful child. "Oh, no, you are not a rebel," the soldier was saying, "you can't make me believe that; you've got too honest a face to be a rebel. Now, just confess you are glad of the drubbing our boys gave 'em this morning." "No, I'm not glad;" said Roberta, her eyes were filling with tears and her lips quivering, "I'm just as sorry as I can be." "Well, then, I'll tell you what I expect the trouble is. You've got a sweetheart among them; and if I was you, I'd trade him off for a Union sweetheart right away." "I don't want any sweetheart at all; but if I wanted one I wouldn't have a Yankee." Her eyes flashed and her cheeks crimsoned. "Why not?" continued her tormentor. "They are lots nicer than the rebels; have more to eat, and wear better clothes. Besides, didn't the rebels steal your mamma's best horses, the last time they passed this way, and leave her nothing but two starved, broken-down nags in their place? Didn't they, now?" "Yes," the child was reluctantly forced to admit. Suddenly her face brightened; she almost trembled with eagerness. "Who stole my mamma's negroes, I wonder; every one of them but Mam' Sarah, and Aunt Judy, and Uncle Squire, and Polly and Dilsy--every one; who did that?" That sally provoked such a peal of laughter and put everybody in such a good humor, possibly the search was not prosecuted as vigorously as it might have been otherwise. The next morning about sunrise two Federal soldiers sat on their horses before Mrs. Marsden's front door. The family were assembled on the porch. They were always early risers, and their being up a little earlier than usual would have caused no comment. Possibly the leave-taking might have seemed a little queer to prying eyes. "Take care of my gun," the youngest-looking of the soldiers whispered to Roberta, "and if I live, I'll come back before long and get it." "Will you?" said the child, delightedly. "Then I'll take care of it, sure." An instant afterwards added, with the serio-comic imitation of the fire of older tongues, so common at that time, "They will have to walk over my dead body before they take it from me." As the soldiers rode through the avenue the murkiness overhead cleared, and shafts of clear gold fell earthward; each blade of grass sparkled like a diamond, and tiny globules hung from the leaves of the trees, reflecting countless dazzling prisms of light. A lark started up from the high grass of the meadow, and soared aloft, dropping soft trills and quavers and clear, fresh warbles from his happy little throat. Just outside of the avenue gate they met a line of milch-cows en route for the "cuppen." They moved swiftly as though there was purpose in their movements, and glanced about with eager eyes. Slender streams of milk flowed from their swollen teats, and marked their passage along the road-side. In barnyards near calves were waiting, frantic to get at those same swollen teats. The black boy who had them in charge opened the avenue gate for them, then stood and looked after the soldiers, the very embodiment of shrewd, impish humor. Hands burrowing in his pockets; his body, from the waist up, thrown back; his mouth stretched in a broad grin, and indeed every feature replete with fun. When they passed out of ear-shot, he put his thumb on the end of his nose, and bawled out: "It's all in my eye, Betty Martin," and wound up by turning somersaults on the grass by the roadside. Later on the sun glared like a great ball of brass. Anon a light breeze sprung up with a breath of moisture in it. "That's good," said the oldest soldier, taking off his cap and baring his forehead to it; "that's good. 'Twill make more bearable the rays of yonder heater." Their bodies were refreshed and spirits hopeful in proportion. They did not converse much; seemed to be taken up with noting the country, as though comparing it with some memoranda retained in recollection only. They were evidently strangers to that locality, for they relied for direction upon milestones and the sign-posts that appeared at intersecting roads. At last, when they had passed over about ten miles, they came to an Irishman beating rock by the roadside. The oldest of the travelers was accustomed to read the countenance, for he was bred a lawyer, and gave up a large practice in criminal courts to join the army. He observed a shrewdness in the Irishman's countenance that he thought might possibly be of service; but it was a delicate matter to get at in those times, when one might well be afraid often of the members of one's own household. "Good morning," he finally said. "Good morning to ye," the Irishman responded without raising his eyes from his rock pile. "Have you heard the news?" was next asked. "Faith, an' so much of it flies here and there, if a mon lets all of it roost, 'twill stale his pace of mind like the thaving crows stale his corn." "What I mean is, the fight yesterday at Green River bridge. Ar'n't you glad of the drubbing our boys gave the rebels? There's many a mother's son of them lying in those green bottom lands there, that the morning's reveille will never awaken more." The face of the youngest soldier was turned away. His eyelashes were wet, and his teeth gnawed his under lip. Once he drew his coat sleeve across his eyes, and once he looked as if the conversation had become unbearable, almost. "Weel, an' when it comes to that, I am the last man to be glad at the death of a sinner, an' I take it, many a sinner handed in his checks there yistiddy." After a few general remarks the soldiers rode on. When they had gone about three hundred yards they stopped, held a brief consultation, and finally returned. The oldest man, who seemed to be the speaker, said: "We have been struck with your answers to our questions, and have come back to confide to you our situation and ask your aid. We are not," he continued, "what we seem to be." "If ye are not what ye seem to be, what are ye?" "We are escaped rebel prisoners trying to make our way south. At least I am, and that young fellow there was in this fight yesterday and got cut off from his command. We believe you are a friend to our cause, and we must have your advice and aid, for we are here without knowledge of people or country." "Well," said the Irishman, "if ye are decaving me the sin is all yer own. If ye be honest an' true men, follow my advice and all will be well. I live just two miles up the road, the first white frame house on the left hand side of the road, with a barn in front of it. The country is full of spies, an' you must be careful. Just ye ride up where I live, get off your horses and go in. Make my wife take the horses to the stable and feed 'em. Then order your dinner, an' when you've eaten it, drive the wimmen and children out of the house and raise the divil ginerilly." The soldiers went on, and the Irishman resumed his work. In less than an hour a neighbor rode up in hot haste, told him the Yankees had taken possession of his house and driven wife and children into the road. "Ye say they have?" responded he, laying down his hammer and serenely lighting his pipe. "Yes, yes! come on and do something for your family." "Holy saints and angels, defend us! What kin I do? It's not me all by meself, neighbor, that kin whip out the whole Yankee army. Gineril Lee an' Stonewall Jackson have been thrying it for some time, an' faith, if they can't, how kin I?" The dismayed messenger returned to report to the excited wife and children that the husband and father would do nothing for them. Again and again was a messenger sent, but to no purpose. The Irishman sat and plied his hammer to his rocks in serene quiet. About four in the afternoon a rockaway drove up, stopped a few yards away, and a lady got out, accompanied by a little girl, and approached the man at the rock-pile. They were Mrs. Marsden and Roberta. "May I ask," said the lady hesitatingly, "if two soldiers dressed in Federal uniform have passed here this morning; and how long since? The reason I ask is this, a flying rumor has reached me that two soldiers wearing the Federal uniform were arrested not far from here and carried to headquarters as Confederate spies." "Faith, an' the shoe is on the other foot intirely, madam. It's meself that's been arristed, or it amounts to about the same thing. Them same soldiers you ax about have taken possession of my house, driv my wife an' childers out of doors, and raised the divil ginerilly." "O! I am so sorry to hear it," answered Mrs. Marsden. Then noticing a sly twinkle in the man's eyes, utterly out of keeping with his words, the quick-witted woman instantly caught on to the "cue." "O! Mr. McGarvy!" she cried, "for you are Mr. McGarvy, ar'n't you? I might have known you would have helped them to carry out the blind, if they came anywhere near you; but I thought they were going a different way." She added, admiration kindling her features as she looked at him, "I don't believe there is another man in Kentucky, sharp enough to conceive of such a blind, or self-sacrificing enough to carry it out, and may God bless you." She turned away, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. At sundown Mr. McGarvy hitched his horse to his cart, lit his pipe, and jolted slowly homeward. His wife and children were still in the road, and the soldiers still had possession of the house. "I would not have believed it, Jim McGarvy," cried his wife, her bosom panting with rage, "not if the Holy Mither of God had tould me." "Have they hurt you, Rosy, darlint?" "Not them, Jim McGarvy. They have been civil spoke enough. It's you that's hurt me--you that have gone back on the wife of your bosom an' your own flesh an' blood." "Whisht, Rosy, darlint, whisht." He got as close to her as circumstances would allow. "Them soldiers are our own boys, who are trying to make their way south, I've jis' had them do all that for a blind, jis' for a blind, the poor fellers. Sure, an' you know, Rosy, darlint, that Jim McGarvy is a spotted man, an' the very first one in these parts that the inimy would go for." Wondrous the transformation. "Is that thrue?" she cried, with beaming face, forgetting already the day's worry, "are they raly our own boys? Sure, an' it's a dolt I am, not to know what the tallest one meant when he whispered to me: "When the South is free, I am for Jim McGarvy for any office he wants." "Whisht, Rosy, darlint, birds of the air carry tidings; but come along now and get us a hot supper, and a good one too to stay our stomachs, for I've got to carry the boys further on their way to-night, the holy Mither of God bless 'em!" Now I am going to tell you how Roberta kept her promise about taking care of the soldier boy's gun. Not many weeks after that memorable Fourth, Squire came home in great excitement, saying the soldiers were searching every house for contraband articles, and soon would be at theirs. "I should be very sorry," said Mrs. Marsden, "to have to give up the suit of gray jeans I've made for Charlie and the dear boy's boots." "You won't have to give them up, mamma," responded Roberta, who had lain awake night after night, planning what she should do in the event the soldiers came after them. Now what do you suppose she did? Pushed boots and clothes to the very bottom of the flour-barrel under the flour. Not even our own Yankee Bligh could have detected their whereabouts. Then she dressed the gun up in baby clothes, with long white robe and cloak and pretty baby cap; tied a veil over the cap. When she was through, it really looked very much like a baby. She gave the gun to Polly, and told her to walk up and down the porch with it and sing a lullaby. Polly didn't like counterfeit babies any more than she liked real babies. "Lawdy! Lawdy! Lawdy!" said Polly, "iz you rite sho', Lil Missus, thar ain' nuffin' in it that's gwiner blow my head orf?" "Right sure, Polly. Uncle Squire cleaned it out yesterday." "O, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy! I dunno howter ketch on ter de creeter, nohow. I'd redder nuss real live babies, I wud." "Be a good girl, Polly. Take hold this way. Now sing: "Dear little baby, shut your eyes, Stars are shining in the skies; Soon an angel will at you peep, Whisper to you while you sleep. Dear little baby, what do you hear? Mamma's voice, sweet and clear. Why, mamma's the angel, baby dear." "I dunno it; I never heered it." "Be a good girl, Polly, and I will give you my new China tea-set." "I don' like cheeny dishes, caze I have ter wash 'em when dey gets dirty. I'd redder eat orf chips en frow 'em erway." "Well, then, I'll give you the pretty colored paper dolls I cut out of Godey's Lady's Book; any thing, just so you make believe it's a real live baby. Sing this, then: "Folks, won't you go? Folks, won't you go? Folks, won't you go to see the monkey show?" "You know it, Polly; I heard you singing it yesterday." (The soldiers were coming up the avenue.) "The royal tiger will be there, The ring-tailed monkey And the polar bear; The royal tiger will be there," etc. "I'll cross my heart, I dunno it. I natchelly 'spize babies, ennyhow. If I wuz er blue-gum nigger, I'd bite 'em," said Polly, showing her teeth viciously. "Well, then," said Roberta in desperation, "I'll give you my red sash that you think so pretty; I will indeed." That did the work; Polly's love of finery was intense. She began to sing in a surly tone, that straightened out as visions suggested by the song flitted before her. The circus was her delight. If the soldiers, in passing, noticed the incongruous lullaby, they made no comment. Possibly, they were not family men. They went through the house; pushed their bayonets in the mattresses, lifted them up and looked underneath; searched every nook and corner below stairs, then tramped up. Roberta called to Polly: "Is the baby asleep, Polly?" "No; yes. Lawdy, Lawdy! I'ze gwiner drap it, sho'; it's sliden'." Roberta looked through the window at the counterfeit baby; she flew out on the porch, took it away from the awkward nurse, saying: "You will never make a nurse, Polly; there's no use trying to teach you;" carried it in and laid it on the dismantled bed, just in time to prevent the drapery from slipping off and exposing the shining metal. She darkened the room, and sat there patting it and singing to it till the search was over and the soldiers gone. Then the child put her head in her mamma's lap, and sobbed from pure nervousness. But she had kept her promise, the loyal little soul. In years to come, she made and kept another promise, that the first one led to, as links in a chain. In the muddy back yard Polly was strutting, proud as a peacock, in her scarlet sash. The ends swept the ground, and she glanced back over her shoulder at them every step. Roberta burst out laughing, Polly looked so ridiculous. "O, Mamma!" she said, "do call Polly in and sing to her about-- "The little girl that was so vain, Strutting up a dirty lane, With mamma's best dress for a train, O, fie, fie, fie! O, fie, fie, fie! She'd better sweep cob-webs from the sky; She'd better bake, she'd better stew, She'd better knit, she'd better sew; O, fie, fie, fie! O, fie, fie, fie! The little girl put her finger in her eye, Looked down at her shoe, and said 'boo-oo.'" Now I am going to tell you how the soldier boy kept his promise. Old Squire had loaded a wagon with pumpkins, golden-brown russet apples, and splendid potatoes to take into town, a few miles off. He promised to give the children a lift as far as the forks of the road. Roberta coaxed Aunt Judy to fix her a nice lunch. They wanted to gather wild grapes and nuts in the woods and have a tea-party besides. Aunt Judy fried her some spiced apple turnovers, made beaten biscuits, crisp and brown, split them while they were hot, buttered them, and put thin slices of pink ham between. Then she got at least one half of an iced white mountain cake, left from Sunday, and packed that in with the other things. Little did Roberta suspect who would eat that lunch, and think it the best lunch ever eaten. It was good; Aunt Judy knew all about fixing lunches. She was a great "Camp-meeting" woman. Roberta took up the basket and flew out to the wood-pile, where Uncle Squire was cutting wood. He saw her coming, and called out: "Look out, honey! chips iz mity keerless things, you never know when they gwiner fly at you, like some fo'ks I knows." "Old man," called Judy from the kitchen, "that ash-hopper is plum dry. Don' forgit ter put some water in it fo' you goze." "Dat ash-hopper allers iz dry. It's like me since Mars Charlie's bin gorn. Judy," he called out again, with a mighty bravado of voice, "I am got no time ter be fillin' dat ash-hopper fo' I goze, you knows dat." "I can wait, Uncle Squire," said the child, always willing to make peace at any cost to her own convenience. "'Twon' take no mo' dan er minit to fill it up, honey, I got de water ready. I jes' wanter show her I wuzen' gwiner be bullied inter it." The children thought it was prime fun to be jostled along in the wagon with the pumpkins and potatoes. Inconveniences in youth are diversions only. One seeks them. If the children who read this story have never seen our glorious Kentucky woods in October, they can have but faint idea of its beauty. It is just like some vast cathedral--aisle upon aisle opening before one, columned and gorgeous beyond description, in infinite variety of tint, shaded from blood-red to pink, from orange to tawny yellow, from golden russet-brown to more delicate wood-colors. Under foot is a tesselated floor, mosaiced with the same gorgeous colors. From every quarter is wafted herby odors. Here and there one comes to trees whose leaves are all a vivid glowing crimson. You can't imagine any thing more beautiful when the light shines through them. Through openings in the columned aisles one sees fields steeped in golden glamour, where float feathery tufts of down. There also linger a few late golden-rods, and butterflies with limbs chilled by the crisp air. Later on those same meadows are enveloped morn and eve in veils of floating white mist; the golden-rod is gone; the butterflies lie in their shroud; but grape-vines are loaded with rich purple clusters, ripened by the frost. The beautiful persimmon trees glow with luscious fruit. Roberta's mother used to gather the persimmon apples and pack them away in glass jars, in alternate layers of fruit and sugar. They are as nice as dates. Wherever you turn the ground is covered with nuts--hickories, walnuts, and chestnuts. You can hear them "drop" every few seconds. Sometimes I think our Kentucky woods were made for children. That afternoon I am going to tell you about, when the forks of the road were reached, Squire lifted the children down, cautioning them against lingering too late, mounted his wagon and was about starting when there appeared a little ahead two horsemen riding abreast and coming directly toward the children. They were dressed in gray, and sat their horses with the air of "Charlie has come to his own again," softly singing snatches of "My Old Kentucky Home." Roberta could hardly believe her eyes. "O, Uncle Squire, it's the rebels, it's the rebels!" "Yes, it's 'pintly dem," he answered, a broad grin overspreading his face. When they came up with the children they drew rein, and one of them reached out his hand to Roberta. It was the soldier boy. "Have you come for your gun?" asked she. [Illustration: "Have you come for your gun?" the child asked. "Yes, and to see you," was the reply.] "Yes, and to see you." The child had no coquetry in her nature, else would have noticed the earnest look in the boy's brown eyes that accompanied his significantly spoken words. As it was, she only smiled and said: "Well, I kept it for you; and are you as hungry as you were that night?" "Well, yes, I reckon so. Soldiers generally are; at least our boys are. But why do you ask? I wanted you to forget how many beat biscuits I ate." "Because I've got a nice lunch here that I will give you. Aunt Judy fixed it up for me to have a tea party in the woods." "Who were you going to have at your tea party--Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox?" "No, indeed," said the child, a fine scorn kindling her features; "no, indeed. We were going to have General Morgan and Uncle Charlie and you. Of course it was make-believe. That's the way we play, but we like it ever so much." "Well, if I take your chicken fixings you can't have any tea party." "O yes, I can. I can just make-believe some hungry soldier has come along and eaten it all up." "There is no make-believe about that," laughed the soldier; "that's real." There was a smothered sound in the direction of Polly. The boy turned toward her, evidently seeing her for the first time. "What's the matter with you, tar baby?" "I wuz gwiner tell you erbout de time de Union sojer stole Miss Betsy's bee-hives, en he wuz dat hongry he pitch en ter de honey fo' de bees got out, en one git en hees frote en stung him; Lawdy, how he hollered! But I won't, cors you called me tar baby." "I beg your pardon, I meant no offense. I just have an unfortunate habit of calling things by their names. I am like the hungry old lady who sung: "'Alack-alack, alack-alack! A dinner's a dinner, a snack's a snack. I can call them none other, alack-alack!' "But I think I have gotten the gist of your story from the preamble; so am not inconsolable. Anyhow," he turned to Roberta, "if you wait here a little you can have a sure-enough General Morgan and Uncle Charlie at your tea party. They are just behind. Only, if they are as hungry as I am, I don't know how they will like that make-believe part." Away ran the child to Squire that she might tell him Uncle Charlie was just behind, and urge him forward to meet him. The soldier looked after her with a rueful expression. "'Le roi est mort; vive le roi!'" he said--("'The king is dead; live the king!') My little sweetheart is a gem, if she did go back on me for Uncle Charlie." While Lewie Kurl talked with Roberta the animal he rode seemed laboring under strange excitement. She looked back at the horses in old Squire's wagon, neighed joyously and with spirit. Absorbed in his conversation, Lewie let the reins fall loosely about the mare's neck. In an instant she turned and made for the wagon. Then began a pantomimic show of affectionate demonstrations. The old comrades of the stable and meadow kissed and caressed each other fondly. It required a firm hold upon the reins to separate them. When Lewie rejoined his companion his mare tossed her mane angrily at the turn affairs had taken. Little shivers of dissatisfaction ran over her. She continued to look back and neigh, almost viciously, and one of the horses in old Squire's wagon responded in like manner. Back again to the bluegrass, Horse and rider too; Back again to the old haunts, Comrades tried and true. Forgot, the weary marches; Forgot, the hunger and cold. Back again to the bluegrass, And hearts whose worth is gold. As old Squire and the children moved on a squad of soldiers mounted the crest of the hill, then halted. They met right there a man in citizen's clothes, on horseback, with a pair of fat saddle-bags swung across the pommel of his saddle. The men in gray surrounded him instantly; one seized hold of his bridle-rein, another made threatening demonstrations toward his saddle-bags. "O, Uncle Squire," cried Roberta, "that's Mr. Shanks, that's Sallie's dear grandpapa! O, my heart just trembles for him. I hope they won't do any thing to him." "Yes, dat's him. He dun kotch up wid at las'. He gwiner be paid back fur all hees meanness at las'." "Where are you going?" asked he who held the bridle-rein. "Home, to my family." "What have you got in your saddle-bags?" was next asked. "Nothing but a calico dress for my wife." "Well, hand it out; I know a 'print' when I see it," responded he who had made the threatening demonstrations towards the saddle-bags--was even then diving in them. "O, Uncle Squire," cried Roberta, "won't they give the calico dress back to him? Poor Mrs. Shanks needs it awfully. The one she has on is all faded, and her elbows are out." "If he's gotter calicer dress en thar fur her," grunted old Squire, "'twill be de fus'. I heered her say he never give her de rappens ob her finger, en dat she wuden min' hees whippen' her ef hee'd unly previde fur her." He who was diving in Mr. Shanks' saddle-bags, drew thence a long slip of white paper with something printed on it in black letters. He cleared his throat, and read aloud the following: "Fellow-citizens, I took up arms for my country in the War of 1812, and were it not for the infirmities of age, would be again in the saddle, to drive that notorious horse-thief and scoundrel, John Morgan, from the State." "You would, hey?" said the soldier. "Well, wait here a little, and see what General Morgan says about that." A dust was even then arising ahead, and in a few moments a squad of Confederates dashed up. The foremost one, a soldierly looking-man, with a pair of keen, humorous eyes, halted beside the group on the hill-side. "What are you detaining this gentleman for?" he asked, in a clear, ringing voice; "we are not making war on citizens." "Well; but, General, just see this circular," handing him one. General Morgan took it, glanced over it, then with a shrug of his shoulders and a "pshaw!" dropped it to the ground, and rode on. The vidette followed him. "Well; but, General, what must we do with the prisoner?" "Do?" responded the General, "Do? Why, turn him loose. He is nothing but a little constable." Up to the moment Roberta heard the circular read, her sympathies were all with Mr. Shanks, the poor man looked so terribly frightened. He had started out with his circulars, not knowing the Confederates were within a hundred miles; and he expected every moment to have a bullet put through his brain, or be swung up to the nearest limb. When she heard the circular read, the wind veered from another quarter altogether. As the soldiers rode off, the released prisoner came swiftly towards Squire and the children. "I wish you would let me empty these drotted things under them 'taters an' apples, thar," he said. Roberta came forward before Squire could reply. "No, indeed, you can't put those dreadful things in our wagon. No, indeed. I heard what you said about my Uncle Charlie, just the dearest and best man on this earth." "I never said nothing about your Uncle Charlie," said Mr. Shanks, recognizing the child. "Well, you said it about General Morgan, and that's the same thing. My Uncle Charlie is one of his captains, and I think General Morgan is the bestest man that ever lived not to do something awful to you. If I was you, I would turn over a new leaf, and stop writing bad things about people, your neighbors, too; and the Bible says, 'Love your neighbors as yourself.' Mamma read it to me last night." Who was that dashing towards them in a cloud of dust? Dust whitening his long, unkempt beard; whitening his brown, curly locks; belted all around with pistols and knives; teeth glistening through his tawny mustache; radiant, positively radiant with joy, as he leaped from his panting horse, and fairly crushed the startled child in his arms? She screamed aloud in nervous terror. "O, you goosey!" said he, "don't you know Uncle Charlie?" The next minute he had sprung on to the wagon wheel, squeezed old Squire's hand until the bones snapped, and snatched up a hatful of russets, craunching one of them between his white teeth, stopping after each bite to ask questions about everybody at home. Well, I reckon there were never three happier children than the three who returned home that afternoon, with the tall soldier walking beside them, leading his horse, and eating russet apples as fast as ever he could. Old Squire jolted slowly along behind, grinning from ear to ear. Uncle Charlie wouldn't sleep in the house that night, but wrapped himself in his blanket and laid down on the ground under a great elm tree in the corner of the yard, with his faithful horse close by. Mrs. Marsden and Roberta watched from an upper porch, and old Squire by the avenue gate. At least Roberta thought she watched, but next morning mamma told her with tears in her eyes that Uncle Charlie was gone, that somebody had given him away. Uncle Squire heard the Federals coming, and told him, and he barely had time to escape. In February of '64 old Squire came out from town one afternoon strutting, as Aunt Judy said, for all the world just "lak er turkey goberler." He made six consecutive trips to the sitting-room, carrying one stick of wood each time as a pretext, before he caught Roberta's eye. When he finally succeeded, he beckoned mysteriously to her, and she got right up and followed him from the room. He led her out of ear-shot of the others before he told her what he wanted. "Lil Missus, how's it happen dat you never axes me no mo' whar your par is?" "Because, Uncle Squire, I am afraid you will tell me 'lay o'ers to catch meddlers.'" "I neber sed erlong wid dat, honey, 'en you'd be de fus' one caught.' Well, if I never sect dat, thar's nuffin' sartin erbout who I means when I sez 'lay o'ers ter ketch meddlers'; you musen jump et conclugeons, honey. Ennyhow, you ax me ergin, en see what I'll say dis time." She asked him, her eager eyes uplifted to his face, her small hands clasped, wondering and hope bursting into instant full dawn. A way hope has of doing in youth. The old man went through his accustomed facial pantomime, slapped himself on the thigh, and blurted out: "In town wid de Unions. He is Kyurnel Robert Marsden now." "Who told you, Uncle Squire?" Her eyes were filled with sudden gathered tears, and her scarlet lips trembled. "Jim, dat is Kyurnel Tadlock's man, telled me. He seed him en know'd him. But he is mity sick, honey, mity sick." "O, Uncle Squire," cried the delighted child, "won't mamma go right straight in town and take me?" "Well, now, dat's er gray hoss ob ernuther color. Mebbe she mout, en mebbe she mouten." The child's countenance fell, her sensitive nature touched. Already a womanly intuition, wonderful in one so childlike and ignorant of the world's ways, begun to stir faintly. "If mamma can't leave Aunt Betsy, don't you reckon she will let me go with you in town to see him, Uncle Squire?" "You en your mar fur dat, honey. But Squire's your man." That night after Aunt Betsy had been given her medicine and tucked away, the child climbed to her mamma's lap and coddled down to her. Instinctively she wanted the magnetism of touch to help her. And then, with her warm breath playing about her mamma's cheek, and her little hand nestling in hers, she told her what Squire had heard. Mrs. Marsden was not especially startled. She had suffered so much it seemed to her sometimes that her feelings were numb. "Aren't you going in town to see him, Mamma?" the child asked. "Me! Oh, no; I couldn't. You don't know what you ask, darling." Tears gathered in the beautiful sad eyes. "Then, may I go, Mamma? May I? Squire will take good care of me." The mother-arms tightened around the childish form. An unwonted jealousy sprung up in the mother-heart. Hitherto she had had her all to herself. "Would you leave me, darling," she asked, "my one comfort? Suppose he should take you away from me, and carry you off where I could seldom see you, what would become of me?" The child looked up in the beautiful, agitated face with surprise. "He would never do that. Mamma, never. In the first place, nobody on earth _could_ take me away from my darling mamma. Then he wouldn't take me away if he could. That would be too mean for any thing, and Squire says my papa is a splendid gentleman." Mrs. Marsden made no reply to this. She sat gazing dreamily into the glowing fire. Splendid? Yes, that was what she thought him before the hard feeling came between them. She recalled his eyes, glowing--tender. Her little daughter had them exactly. Those ardent glances had so bewitched her she could have followed them to the ends of the earth. "Suppose he should die, poor papa, all by himself? Squire says he is very, very sick." "God forbid!" cried Mrs. Marsden, "God forbid." "If papa has come all the way down to Kentucky," continued Roberta, "I don't believe he came down here just to fight us, I don't indeed. It looks to me more like he is hunting for somebody. And who should that somebody be but my own darling mamma?" "It isn't probable he is hunting me, darling. It has been ten long years since he went away. He knows where the old place is. He could have found me easily enough." "Well, but may be he wasn't exactly sure about you wanting him to come. He might have wanted ever so bad to come himself, and yet been afraid _you_ didn't want him. I wouldn't go where I wasn't sure I was wanted," continued the child, a fine scorn curving her lips, "no, not for any thing." How much she looked like her father when she said that. "May I go, Mamma?" she coaxed again. "Say yes, dear Mamma. You don't know how I've longed to have a papa like other little girls." Then the sorely tried heart gave a great leap and got way beyond self. "Yes, you may go, darling," she cried; "and may the God of the pure in heart watch over you and bring you back safely to your lonely mother." The child coddled down again to her. "What must I tell him for you, Mamma?" she asked. Mrs. Marsden started. She had not expected that. "Send him kind message, Mamma, just like your own sweet self. You are so good to everybody, and he is your little daughter's papa, and you love him dearly, don't you, dear Mamma?" Then the woman-heart gave a great leap and reached out to that other heart the child was pleading for, and it seemed as if they touched, although miles separated them, and pride lay prostrate. "I have erred," she reasoned dumbly, "erred in the sight of God and man. I have been hard, hard. What right have I to hold him to so strict an account? By my own contrition and unutterable yearning to behold his face, will I judge him, and naught else, the husband of my youth, once the delight of my eyes." Then, having gone thus far, she could stop at nothing. Her eyes shone, varying emotions chased over her beautiful face, her whole nature unbent, tender, as when she stood in that room in the old days and heard the benediction that pronounced them man and wife. "O, you dear child!" she cried, "surely God has put in your little hands the gift of healing. Tell him, tell him, your Father, that for ten long years, the string has been on the outside of the latch for him. Tell him"--then, utterly unable to say more, she bowed her head and wept. Roberta clung to her and caressed her. That phase of her mother's character touched her unspeakably, young as she was. She never forgot it. It was a revelation of how blessed a possession is the heart that is incapable of cherishing resentment. "O, you darling mother!" she cried, "I don't believe God's angels are any sweeter than you." When Roberta and old Squire reached the house where they had been told Colonel Marsden was lying sick they saw an officer sitting in the front room, writing busily by a table. He looked up as they entered, startled by the vision of childish beauty before him. Roberta's scarlet hood, edged with swansdown, was pushed back, and her hair lay in fluffy golden rings on her white forehead. Her cloak, the color of her hood, was bordered with the same snowy, feathery trimming. She carried in her hand a tiny, swansdown muff. The rich blood of health mantled her cheek. Her eyes were like stars. Where had he seen them before, those wondrously beautiful eyes? In person and manner Roberta was like her mother, but her features were her father's. A little aristocrat she was, from the poise of her golden head to the tip of her prunella boots. "Well," said the officer, laying down his pen, "what can I do for you, little lady?" The child turned to Squire, who came forward and stood in embarrassed silence, uneasily shifting his position from one foot to the other. He had been advised by saucy Polly "not ter skeer fo'ks ter def by de way he dun his face," and he was a little out of his moorings. But finally he managed to say: "It's Mars Robert Marsden, sah, dat me and Lil Missus wan'er see." "Well, who is Lil Missus? and what is she to Colonel Marsden?" His admiring gaze was directed again to the child. "Shee's his own flesh en blood, sah; nuffin' shorter; hees lil gal dat wuz born'd arfter he wen' back ter N'ark." "Whew," whistled the officer; "I didn't know Colonel Marsden was a family man. That accounts for many things, I have always thought peculiar in a man of his attractive personality. Well, I am sure I envy him his newly found daughter. Wait here a little, and I will see if the Colonel is awake. He is convalescent now, and will doubtless be glad to see you both." He returned in a moment and said, "Colonel Marsden is asleep, and I thought best not to awaken him; but you shall see him," he said to Roberta, "just as soon as he awakes." The child could not repress her eagerness. "I can't wait," she cried; "I want to see him so bad. Let me go in and look at him while he is asleep. I won't make any noise. That's the way I do mamma when she has headache." "Well," said the officer, smiling, "go right in." Squire started to follow. "No; you wait outside. Two at once might make him a little nervous. He has been a very sick man." Roberta crept softly in on tiptoe. The room was darkened, and there was no light save the reflection of the fire. Colonel Marsden was, in health, a superbly handsome man. But, as he lay there in the dim light, emaciated and pallid, there was something almost touching in the droop of his shoulders and the look of helpless weakness about the mouth. It was not long before he stirred uneasily and opened his eyes. His gaze fell directly on the child sitting beside him and looking at him with her whole heart in her eyes. "Who are you?" he asked. "I am Roberta Marsden. My papa's name is Robert, and my mamma called me Roberta after him." [Illustration: "My Papa's name was Robert, and my Mamma named me Roberta, after him."] He raised himself upon one elbow. A flush burned in his cheeks. It was like a flame through alabaster. "I don't understand," he said; "what does it all mean?" Right there old Squire put in an appearance. "Don't you know me, Mars Robert? It's Squire dat useter 'long ter you." "Yes; I know you. How are you, Squire? But this child, who is she?" "Your own flesh an' blood, Mars Robert, born'd after you went away an' left Miss July." Colonel Marsden sank back on the pillow with a groan and covered his eyes with his hands. "O, Uncle Squire!" cried Roberta, "you have hurt his feelings. But she isn't mad at you, Papa, not a bit. She told me to tell you, that for ten long years the string has been on the outside of the latch for you. She did indeed, Papa." "She is an angel," said Colonel Marsden. There was moisture in his fine eyes. "That's what Mam' Sarah says. She says she is afraid every morning that she will find mamma's wings sprouting." "But why was I not written to? Why was I not told I had a child?" Again a groan escaped him. "My God!" he cried, "I forgot I had no right to expect that. Like a self-willed child I wantonly threw away life's choicest blessings, was unmindful of its most sacred obligations." His lips moved for an instant in silent prayer, and then he stretched out his arms yearningly toward the child and asked almost humbly: "Will my little daughter give me a kiss?" The child crept to him and kissed him again and again. "I do not deserve this blessing from Heaven; I do not deserve this darling little daughter." "And you have the darlingest and most beautiful wife in all the world!" cried the child. "Lawd, honey!" said old Squire--he was in a broad grin--"he know'd her long fo' you did." "Is she like this?" asked Colonel Marsden. He reached under his pillow and drew thence a small square case and handed it to Roberta. Roberta fairly screamed: "It's my mamma; it's my own darling mamma! Now I know how much you love her, or you wouldn't carry her picture about with you." "It has never been away from me an instant, never one instant." "Why did you stay away from her so long if you loved her so dearly?" Her great brown eyes were lifted in wonder to his face. "I can't stay away from her a single day. Sometimes, even when I'm just out in the yard playing, I have to come back and peep at mamma, to be sure she is there." A red flush mounted to Colonel Marsden's temples. "I must tell her first, little daughter; and if she forgives me, will not you?" "O yes!" cried the child delightedly. "I won't wait for you to tell me. I'll forgive you right now, before I know, and so will mamma. Mam' Sarah says it makes you feel good all over to forgive people, 'sho' 'nuff.'" Then, her tender heart touched by the appealing look in Colonel Marsden's eyes, she added: "Mamma says we must have faith in people and not blame 'em, but believe that nearly everybody does the very best they can. And we don't know, even when they do _wrong_, what makes 'em. You know, Papa," continued the little theologian gravely, "nobody ever does _exactly_ right in this world." When old Squire and Roberta returned home they found Aunt Betsy very sick, and Mrs. Marsden entirely occupied at her bed-side. It was a great disappointment to the child, she was so eager to bring father and mother together, but Mrs. Marsden was firm. "Your father does not need me, darling; but she does. And it is right always to take up the duty that is nearest." It was an anxious night; but when morning came the sick woman was better, and resting easily. Soon after breakfast, as Mrs. Marsden and Roberta were standing by the window in the sitting-room, and looking out at the yard, bathed in light and sparkling with dew, an ambulance appeared in the avenue. It stopped in front of the porch; two officers descended from it and assisted a third one down the steps, then they supported him to the door. "It's papa," cried Roberta; "he is like me, he couldn't wait." She ran to meet him, beaming with joy, and led him to the sitting-room, opened the door for him, and, with strange tact in a child so young, left father and mother alone together. Robert Marsden was once more in the quaint old room where he first courted his wife. He was ready to do the courting all over again, glad of the opportunity and thankful for the familiar associations that would naturally appeal to both. The room was very little changed. The wear is less in the country, and then Dame Fashion, our capricious queen, is not so absolute there. When he last saw it, 'twas in the early morning. He remembered so well what took him there. The night before they had one of their heated discussions about selling the negroes, selling the old place, and moving north. When his wife turned to leave the room there was something in her figure and bearing that stirred him strangely. Before he retired, feeling that he had a strong additional claim upon her, as one would reasonably have, upon whom rested the responsibility of providing for a family, he wrote to her, and of course in his masterful way urged her to accede to his request. "Sleep on it," he wrote, "and let me know before I leave in the morning" (he was going north on business). "Send your reply to the sitting-room, only a line, telling me I am free to make my business arrangements in New York, and return for you." As he recalled the way in which he expressed himself, a qualm of shame crossed his heart. "A selfish brute!" he groaned in spirit: "never occurring to _him_ to yield, always trying to bend _her_." Well, there was nothing for him that morning, and he had gone off with a hot heart, feeling that any thing was better than the life of disinclination he was forced to lead, if he remained. Yes, the room was as little changed as she, there, coming toward him with outstretched hands. Although her eyes fell beneath his searching glances, and hot blushes suffused her cheeks, she, the mother of his child and many years gone his wife, he did not move one step to meet her advances. O, her pitiable confusion! "Our child," he said, "the beautiful little daughter you have given me, tells me you still care for me, though, God knows, I don't see how you could, except that it is your nature and you can't help it. But what I want to know is this, has the outrage I put upon you caused the fire, that once burned in your heart for me, to smoulder to ashes, where only a pleasant warmth remains, or is there still fire there that I can rekindle to the old-time blaze, no matter what the effort required? What I want, Julia, is my old place in your heart, if I can have it. I was never a man that could do things in moderation; and, God help me, undeserving as I am, that and that alone will satisfy me." "The fire still burns, my husband; O, how can you doubt it?" And then the hungry arms closed about her. After a little, when she had fixed him cosily on the couch and was kneeling beside him, he said: "I am not by nature an humble man, nor one glib at confession; but there is one thing I will say, my love, this choleric temperament of mine has been to me severer flagellation than was ever administered by priestly hands in expiation of heinous offenses. But I will _down_ it yet, my love; God helping me, I will down it yet." The door opened and a golden head was visible. "May I come in, dear Mamma?" Colonel Marsden stretched forth his disengaged hand and drew the child to him. "She is like you, love," he said fondly. "Her eyes are yours, Robert. I remember, when she was a baby, how I used to hang over her, longing for her to awaken, that I might see her eyes." Colonel Marsden's grasp tightened on his wife's slender white fingers. "Mam' Sarah was afraid I would make her nervous. She would steal her away, carry her down to the loom-house, and rock her to sleep on her lap." "I remember it perfectly, Mamma," said Roberta, grave as an owl. "I wore the same robe and cloak and cap that I dressed the gun in that time." Colonel Marsden laughed heartily; her diverting words, coming just at that moment, were a relief to both. The negroes had talked to the child so much about her birth and babyhood, she had come to believe that she remembered them herself. Every date of late years went back to the time "fo' Lil Missus wuz born'd," or the time "sence she was born'd," or the time "when she was born'd." Old Squire especially humored the conceit: "Lemme see, Lil Missus; what room?" "The front room up stairs, Uncle Squire, with the sweet-brier roses climbing in the window, and the beautiful red and black rag carpet Mam' Sarah made." "Jes' so, Lil Missus; what bed?" "The great high bed, with the posts and tester and muslin ruffle, I remember Aunt Betsy put a little Bible in my hand as soon as I was born, and shut my fingers down tight on it, because she wanted me to love the Bible first, before every thing." "Jes' so, Lil Missus; jes' so. I allers sed you wuzer sharp one. But who'd s'poze, now, you cud rikerlec so fur back? He-he-he." Roberta cuddled down, like a kitten, on the rug before the blazing fire, and looked delightedly at her mother and father. "Real papas are so much nicer than make-believe papas. I don't think I can play that way again; it makes me hungry to see the difference. O, I wish Uncle Charlie was here, too, and that other one." "I would like to see Uncle Charlie, too" (Colonel Marsden turned laughingly to his wife), "but I don't wish he was here. I remember what a pet he was of yours in the old days, love--the curly-haired scamp. He could wheedle you and Aunt Betsy out of any thing he wanted. Such a tender heart he had--mad as fire one minute, and tears in his eyes the next--but withal so fearless and high-minded and lovable." "God bless and watch over him," Mrs. Marsden softly added, "and bring him back safely to us all, my dear, my only brother." "Amen," responded Colonel Marsden. Good-bye to Roberta Marsden's child-life on the old farm! Good-bye to the child mind that thought no evil; to the child-heart that reached out to all other hearts, and drew them within a charmed circle of affection! Good-bye to the kindly black faces that the child loved, and the simple, homely lives she saw so much beauty in! Good-bye to the old house that she loved, with Carlo, the watchdog, dozing on the porch in the sunshine; and the peafowl close by, spreading his wondrous-hued tail and strutting; to the old parlor, with its quaint papering and quaint furnishing suggesting dead and gone generations! Good-bye to the old farm, with its peaceful, busy days; its glad days and its sad days; its merry songsters and its whip-poor-wills; its old-time industries and its hearty hospitalities! Good-bye! [Illustration] 
19107	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) [Illustration] An Arkansas Planter BY OPIE READ, AUTHOR OF "A Yankee from the West," "The Waters of Caney Fork," "Mrs. Annie Green," "Up Terrapin River." CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. AN ARKANSAS PLANTER. CHAPTER I. Lying along the Arkansas River, a few miles below Little Rock, there is a broad strip of country that was once the domain of a lordly race of men. They were not lordly in the sense of conquest; no rusting armor hung upon their walls; no ancient blood-stains blotched their stairways--there were no skeletons in dungeons deep beneath the banquet hall. But in their own opinion they were just as great as if they had possessed these gracious marks of medieval distinction. Their country was comparatively new, but their fathers came mostly from Virginia and their whisky came wholly from Kentucky. Their cotton brought a high price in the Liverpool market, their daughters were celebrated for beauty, and their sons could hold their own with the poker players that traveled up and down the Mississippi River. The slave trade had been abolished, and, therefore, what remained of slavery was right; and in proof of it the pulpit contributed its argument. Negro preachers with wives scattered throughout the community urged their fellow bondsmen to drop upon their knees and thank God for the privilege of following a mule in a Christian land. The merciless work of driving the negroes to their tasks was performed by men from the North. Many a son of New England, who, with emotion, had listened to Phillips and to Garrison, had afterward hired his harsh energies to the slave owner. And it was this hard driving that taught the negro vaguely to despise the abolitionist. But as a class the slaves were not unhappy. They were ignorant, but the happiest song is sometimes sung by ignorance. They believed the Bible as read to them by the preachers, and the Bible told them that God had made them slaves; so, at evening, they twanged rude strings and danced the "buck" under the boughs of the cottonwood tree. On the vine-shaded veranda the typical old planter was wont to sit, looking up and down the road, watching for a friend or a stranger--any one worthy to drink a gentleman's liquor, sir. His library was stocked with romances. He knew English history as handed down to him by the sentimentalist. He hated the name of king, but revered an aristocracy. No business was transacted under his roof; the affairs of his estate were administered in a small office, situated at the corner of the yard. His wife and daughters, arrayed in imported finery, drove about in a carriage. New Orleans was his social center, and he had been known to pay as much as a thousand dollars for a family ticket to a ball at the St. Charles hotel. His hospitality was known everywhere. He was slow to anger, except when his honor was touched upon, and then he demanded an apology or forced a fight. He was humorous, and yet the consciousness of his own dignity often restrained his enjoyment of the ludicrous. When the cotton was in bloom his possessions were beautiful. On a knoll he could stand and imagine that the world was a sea of purple. That was the Arkansas planter years ago, before the great sentimental storm swept down upon him, before an evening's tea-table talk in Massachusetts became a tornado of iron in Virginia. When ragged and heart-sore he returned from the army, from as brave a fight as man ever engaged in, he sat down to dream over his vanished greatness. But his dream was short. He went to work, not to re-establish his former condition of ease--for that hope was beyond him--but to make a living for his family. On a knoll overlooking the Arkansas River stood the Cranceford homestead. The site was settled in 1832, by Captain Luke Cranceford, who had distinguished himself in an Indian war. And here, not long afterward, was born John Cranceford, who years later won applause as commander of one of the most stubborn batteries of the Confederate Army. The house was originally built of cypress logs, but as time passed additions of boards and brick were made, resulting in a formless but comfortable habitation, with broad passage ways and odd lolling places set to entrap cool breezes. The plantation comprised about one thousand acres. The land for the most part was level, but here and there a hill arose, like a sudden jolt. From right to left the tract was divided by a bayou, slow and dark. The land was so valuable that most of it had been cleared years ago, but in the wooded stretches the timber was thick, and in places the tops of the trees were laced together with wild grape vines. Far away was a range of pine-covered hills, blue cones in the distance. And here lived the poorer class of people, farmers who could not hope to look to the production of cotton, but who for a mere existence raised thin hogs and nubbins of corn. In the lowlands the plantations were so large and the residences so far apart that the country would have appeared thinly settled but for the negro quarters here and there, log villages along the bayous. In this neighborhood Major John Cranceford was the most prominent figure. The county was named in honor of his family. He was called a progressive man. He accepted the yoke of reconstruction and wore it with a laugh, until it pinched, and then he said nothing, except to tell his neighbors that a better time was coming. And it came. The years passed, and a man who had been prominent in the Confederate council became Attorney-General of the American Nation, and men who had led desperate charges against the Federal forces made speeches in the old capitol at Washington. And thus the world was taught a lesson of forgiveness--of the true greatness of man. In New Orleans the Major was known as a character, and his nerve was not merely a matter of conjecture. Courage is supposed to hold a solemn aspect, but the Major was the embodiment of heartiness. His laugh was catching; even the negroes had it, slow, loud and long. Sometimes at morning when a change of season had influenced him, he would slowly stride up and down the porch, seeming to shake with joviality as he walked. Years ago he had served as captain of a large steamboat, and this at times gave him an air of bluff authority. He was a successful river man, and was therefore noted for the vigor and newness of his profanity. His wife was deeply religious, and year after year she besought him to join the church, pleaded with him at evening when the two children were kissed good night--and at last he stood the rector's cross-examination and had his name placed upon the register. It was a hard struggle, but he weeded out his oaths until but one was left--a bold "by the blood." He said that he would part even with this safety valve but that it would require time; and it did. The Major believed in the gradual moral improvement of mankind, but he swore that the world intellectually was going to the devil. And for this conviction he had a graded proof. "Listen to me a minute," he was wont to say. "I'll make it clear to you. My grandfather was graduated with great honors from Harvard, my father was graduated with honor, I got through all right, but my son Tom failed." CHAPTER II. One hot afternoon the Major sat in his library. The doors were open and a cool breeze, making the circuitous route of the passage ways, swept through the room, bulging a newspaper which he held opened out in front of him. He was scanning the headlines to catch the impulsive moods of the world. The parlor was not far away, down the hall, and voices reached him. And then there came the distressing hack, hack, of a hollow cough. He put down the newspaper, got up, and slowly strode about the room, not shaking with joviality as he walked. In the parlor the voices were hushed, there was a long silence, and then came the hollow cough. He sat down and again took up the newspaper, but the cough, hack, hack, smote him like the recurrence of a distressing thought, and he crumpled the paper and threw it upon the floor. Out in the yard a negro woman was singing; far down the stream a steamboat whistled. And again came the hollow cough. There was another long silence, and then he heard light footsteps in the hall. A young woman halted at the door and stood looking at him. Her face was pale and appeared thin, so eager was her expression. She was slight and nervous. "Well," he said. She smiled at him and said, "Well." Then she slowly entered the room, and with a sigh took a seat near him. The cough from the parlor was more distressful, and she looked at him, and in her eyes was a beseeching sadness. "Louise." "Yes, sir." "What did I tell you?" "I don't know, sir." "Don't say that, for you do know." "You've told me so many things--" "Yes, I know. But what did I tell you about Carl Pennington?" "I don't know, sir." "Yes you do. I told you that I didn't want him to come here. Didn't I?" "Yes, sir." "Then why is he here?" "I met him and invited him to come." "Ah, ha. But I don't want him here; don't want you to see him." She sat looking at him as if she would study every line of his face. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and looked down. The cough came again, and he looked at the girl. "You know the reason I don't want you to see him. Don't you?" "Yes, sir, and I know the reason why I do want to see him." "The devil--pardon me," he quickly added, withdrawing his hands from his pockets and bowing to her. She slightly inclined her head and smiled sadly. He looked hard at her, striving to read her thoughts; and she was so frail, her face was so thin and her eyes so wistful that she smote him with pity. He reached over and took one of her hands, and affectionately she gave him the other one. She tried to laugh. The cough came again, and she took her hands away. He reached for them, but she put them behind her. "No, not until I have told you," she said, and he saw her lip tremble. "He was afraid to come in here to see you," she went on, speaking with timid slowness. "He is so weak and sick that he can't stand to be scolded, so I have come to--" She hesitated. He shoved himself back and looked hard at her, and his eyebrows stuck out fiercely. "To ask me what?" His voice was dry and rasping. "What can you ask me? To let him come here to see you? No, daughter. I can't permit that. And I don't intend to be cruel when I say this. I am sorry for him, God knows I deeply sympathize with him, but he must not hope to--" "I was not going to ask you to let him come," she broke in. "I am going to ask you to let me go--go with him." "By the blood!" the Major exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "What do you mean? Marry him?" "Yes, sir," she quietly answered. He looked at her, frowning, his face puffed, his brows jagged. And then appearing to master himself he sat down and strove to take her hand, but she held it behind her. "My daughter, I want to talk to you, not in anger, but with common sense. It actually horrifies me to think of your marriage--I can't do it, that's all. Why, the poor fellow can't live three months; he is dead on his feet now. Listen at that cough. Louise, how can you think of marrying him? Haven't you any judgment at all? Is it possible that you have lost--but I won't scold you; I must reason with you. There is time enough for you to marry, and the sympathetic fancy that you have for that poor fellow will soon pass away. It must. You've got plenty of chances. Jim Taylor--" "Why do you speak of him, father?" "I speak of him because he loves you--because he is as fine a young fellow as walks the face of the earth." "But, father, he is so big and strong that he doesn't need any one to love him." At this the Major appeared not to know whether to laugh or to frown. But he did neither; he sat for a time with his hands on his knees, looking wonderingly, almost stupidly at her; and then he said: "Nonsense. Where did you pick up that preposterous idea? So strong that he doesn't need love! Why, strength demands love, and to a big man the love of a little woman--" She drew back from him as he leaned toward her and he did not complete the sentence. Her impatience made him frown. "Won't you let me reason with you?" he asked. "Won't you help me to suppress all appearance of displeasure?" "It is of no use," she replied. "What is of no use? Reason?" "Argument." "What! Do you mean--" "I mean that I am going to marry him." In her eyes there was no appeal, no pleading, for the look that she gave him was hard and determined. Harsh words flew to the Major's mind, and he shook with the repression of them; but he was silent. He shoved his hands into his pockets and she heard his keys rattling. He arose with a deep sigh, and now, with his hands behind him, walked up and down the room. Suddenly he faced about and stood looking down upon her, at the rose in her hair. "Louise, one night on a steamboat there was a rollicking dance. It was a moonlight excursion. There was a splash and a cry that a woman had fallen overboard. I leaped into the river, grasped her, held her head above the stream, fighting the current. A boat was put out and we were taken on board, and then by the light of a lantern I found that I had saved the life of my own daughter. So, upon you, I have more than a father's claim--the claim of gallantry, and this you cannot disregard, and upon it I base my plea." She looked up straight at him; her lips were half open, but she said nothing. "You don't seem to understand," he added, seeming to stiffen his shoulders in resentment at the calmness with which she regarded him. "I tell you that I waive the authority of a father and appeal to your gratitude; I remind you that I saved your life--leaped into the cold water and seized you, not knowing whose life I was striving to save at the risk of losing my own. Isn't that worth some sort of return? Isn't it worth even the sacrifice of a whim? Louise, don't look at me that way. Is it possible that you don't grasp--" He hesitated and turned his face toward the parlor whence came again the cough, hollow and distressing. The sound died away, echoing down the hall, and a hen clucked on the porch and a passage door slammed. "Louise," he said, looking at her. "Yes, sir." "Do you catch--" "I catch everything, father. It was noble of you to jump into the river when you didn't know but that you might be drowned, and recognizing that you risked your life, and feeling a deep gratitude, it is hard to repay you with disobedience. Wait a moment, please. You must listen to me. It is hard to repay you with disobedience, but it cannot be helped. You say that Mr. Pennington is dying and I know that you speak the truth. He knows that he is dying, and he appeals to me not to let him die alone--not alone in words," she quickly added, "but with something stronger than words, his helplessness, his despair. Other people have appeared to shun him because he is dying, but--" "Hold on," he broke in. "I deny that. No one has shunned him because he is dying. Everybody is sorry for him, and you know that I would do anything for him." "Would you? Then let him die under this roof as my husband. Oh, look how poor and thin he is, so helpless, and dying day by day, with no relatives near him, with nothing in prospect but long nights of suffering. Please don't tell me that I shan't take care of him, for I feel that it is the strongest duty that will ever come to me. Listen how he coughs. Doesn't it appeal to you? How can you refuse--how can you remind me of the gratitude I owe you?" Tears were streaming down her face. He bent over her, placed his hands upon her cheeks and kissed her, but instantly he drew back with his resentful stiffening of the shoulders. "Louise, it can't be. No argument and no appeal can bring it about. It makes me shudder to think of it. Really I can't understand it. The situation to me is most unnatural. But I won't be harsh with you. But I must say that I don't know where you get your stubbornness. No, I won't be harsh. Let me tell you what I will agree to do. He may come to this house and stay here until--may stay here and the best of care shall be taken of him, and you may nurse him, but you must not bear his name. Will you agree to this?" She shook her head. She had wiped away her tears and her eyes were strong and determined. "After conceding so much I don't see why you should refuse the vital point," she said. "I can tell you why, and I am afraid that I must." "Don't be afraid; simply tell me." "But, daughter, it would seem cruel." "Not if I demand it." "Then you do demand it? Well, you shall know. His father served a term in the Louisiana penitentiary for forgery. And now you may ask why I ever let him come into this house. I will tell you. He had been teaching school here some time and I said nothing. One day during a rainstorm he stopped at the gate. He was sick and I invited him to come in. After that I could not find enough firmness to tell him not to come, he was so pale and weak. I see now that it was a false sympathy. Do you understand me? His father was a convict." "Yes, I understand. He told me." "By the blood on the Cross! Do you mean to say--Louise," he broke off, gazing upon her, "your mind is unsettled. Yes, you are crazy, and, of course, all your self-respect is gone. You needn't say a word, you are crazy. You are--I don't know what you are, but I know what I am, and now, after the uselessness of my appeal to your gratitude, I will assert the authority of a father. You shall not marry him." "And would you kill a dying man?" she quietly asked. The question jolted him, and he shouted out: "What do you mean by such nonsense? You know I wouldn't." "Then I will marry him." For a moment the Major's anger choked him. With many a dry rasp he strove to speak, and just as he had made smoother a channel for his words, he heard the hollow cough drawing nearer. He motioned toward a door that opened in an opposite direction, and the girl, after hesitating a moment, quickly stepped out upon a veranda that overlooked the river. The Major turned his eyes toward the other door, and there Pennington stood with a handkerchief tightly pressed to his mouth. For a time they were silent, one strong and severe, the other tremulous and almost spectral in the softened light. "There is a chair, sir," said the Major, pointing. "I thank you, sir; I don't care to sit down. I--I am very sorry that you are compelled to look upon me as--as you do, sir. And it is all my fault, I assure you, and I can't defend myself." He dropped his handkerchief and looked down as if he were afraid to stoop to pick it up. The Major stepped forward, caught up the handkerchief, handed it to him and stepped back. "Thank you, sir," Pennington said, bowing, and then, after a short pause, he added: "I don't know what to say in explanation of--of myself. But I should think, sir, that the strength of a man's love is a sufficient defense of any weakness he may possess--I mean a sufficient defense of any indiscretion that his love has led him to commit. This situation stole upon me, and I was scarcely aware of its coming until it was here. I didn't know how serious--" He coughed his words, and when he became calmer, repeated his plea that love ought to excuse any weakness in man. "Your daughter is an angel of mercy," he said. "When I found myself dying as young as I was and as hopeful as I had been my soul filled up with a bitter resentment against nature and God, but she drew out the bitterness and instilled a sweetness and a prayer. And now to take her from me would be to snatch away the prospect of that peaceful life that lies beyond the grave. Sir, I heard you tell her that she was crazy. If so, then may God bless all such insanity." He pressed the handkerchief to his mouth, racking, struggling; and when the convulsive agony had passed he smiled, and there in the shadow by the door the light that crossed his face was ghastly, like a dim smear of phosphorus. And now the Major's shoulders were not stiffened with resentment; they were drooping with a pity that he could not conceal, but his face was hard set, the expression of the mercy of one man for another, but also the determination to protect a daughter and the good name of an honored household. "Mr. Pennington, I was never so sorry for any human being as I am for you at this moment, but, sir, the real blessings of this life come through justice and not through impulsive mercy. In thoughtless sympathy a great wrong may lie, and out of a marriage with disease may arise a generation of misery. We are largely responsible for the ailments of those who are to follow us. The wise man looks to the future; the weak man hugs the present. You say that my daughter is an angel of mercy. She has ever been a sort of sister of charity. I confess that I have never been able wholly to understand her. At times she has even puzzled her mother, and a daughter is odd, indeed, when a mother cannot comprehend her. I am striving to be gentle with you, but I must tell you that you cannot marry her. I don't want to tell you to go, and yet it is better that this interview should come to a close." He bowed to Pennington and turned toward the veranda that overlooked the river, but a supplicating voice called him back. "I wish to say," said the consumptive, "that from your point of view you are right. But that does not alter my position. You speak of the misery that arises from a marriage with disease. That was very well put, but let me say, sir, that I believe that I am growing stronger. Sometimes I have thought that I had consumption, but in my saner moments I know that I have not. I can see an improvement from day to day. Several days ago I couldn't help coughing, but now at times I can suppress it. I am growing stronger." "Sir," exclaimed the Major, "if you were as strong as a lion you should not marry her. Good day." CHAPTER III. Slowly and heavily the Major walked out upon the veranda. He stood upon the steps leading down into the yard, and he saw Louise afar off standing upon the river's yellow edge. She had thrown her hat upon the sand, and she stood with her hands clasped upon her brown head. A wind blew down the stream, and the water lapped at her feet. The Major looked back into the library, at the door wherein Pennington had stood, and sighed with relief upon finding that he was gone. He looked back toward the river. The girl was walking along the shore, meditatively swinging her hat. He stepped to the corner of the house, and, gazing down the road, saw Pennington on a horse, now sitting straight, now bending low over the horn of the saddle. The old gentleman had a habit of making a sideward motion with his hand as if he would put all unpleasant thoughts behind him, and now he made the motion not only once, but many times. And it seemed that his thoughts would not obey him, for he became more imperative in his pantomimic demand. At one corner of the large yard, where the smooth ground broke off into a steep slope to the river, there stood a small office built of brick. It was the Major's executive chamber, and thither he directed his steps. Inside this place his laugh was never heard; at the door his smile always faded. In this commercial sanctuary were enforced the exactions that made the plantation thrive. Outside, in the yard, in the "big house," elsewhere under the sky, a plea of distress might moisten his eyes and soften his heart to his own financial disadvantage, but under the moss-grown shingles of the office all was business, hard, uncompromising. It was told in the neighborhood that once, in this inquisition of affairs, he demanded the last cent possessed by a widowed woman, but that, while she was on her way home, he overtook her, graciously returned the money and magnanimously tore to pieces a mortgage that he held against her small estate. Just as he entered the office there came across the yard a loud and impatient voice. "Here, Bill, confound you, come and take this horse. Don't you hear me, you idiot? You infernal niggers are getting to be so no-account that the last one of you ought to be driven off the place. Trot, confound you. Here, take this horse to the stable and feed him. Where is the Major? In the office? The devil he is." Toward the office slowly strode old Gideon Batts, fanning himself with his white slouch hat. He was short, fat, and bald; he was bowlegged with a comical squat; his eyes stuck out like the eyes of a swamp frog; his nose was enormous, shapeless, and red. To the Major's family he traced the dimmest line of kinship. During twenty years he had operated a small plantation that belonged to the Major, and he was always at least six years behind with his rent. He had married the widow Martin, and afterward swore that he had been disgracefully deceived by her, that he had expected much but had found her moneyless; and after this he had but small faith in woman. His wife died and he went into contented mourning, and out of gratitude to his satisfied melancholy, swore that he would pay his rent, but failed. Upon the Major he held a strong hold, and this was a puzzle to the neighbors. Their characters stood at fantastic and whimsical variance; one never in debt, the other never out of debt; one clamped by honor, the other feeling not its restraining pinch. But together they would ride abroad, laughing along the road. To Mrs. Cranceford old Gid was a pest. With the shrewd digs of a woman, the blood-letting side stabs of her sex, she had often shown her disapproval of the strong favor in which the Major held him; she vowed that her husband had gathered many an oath from Gid's swollen store of execration (when, in truth, Gid had been an apt pupil under the Major), and she had hoped that the Major's attachment to the church would of necessity free him from the humiliating association with the old sinner, but it did not, for they continued to ride abroad, laughing along the road. Like a skittish horse old Gid shied at the office door. Once he had crossed that threshold and it had cost him a crop of cotton. "How are you, John?" was Gid's salutation as he edged off, still fanning himself. "How are you, sir?" was the Major's stiff recognition of the fact that Gid was on earth. "Getting hotter, I believe, John." "I presume it is, sir." The Major sat with his elbow resting on a desk, and about him were stacked threatening bundles of papers; and old Gid knew that in those commercial romances he himself was a familiar character. "Are you busy, John?" "Yes, but you may come in." "No, I thank you. Don't believe I've got time." "Then take time. I want to talk to you. Come in." "No, not to-day, John. Fact is I'm not feeling very well. Head's all stopped up with a cold, and these summer colds are awful, I tell you. It was a summer cold that took my father off." "How's your cotton in that low strip along the bayou?" "Tolerable, John; tolerable." "Come in. I want to talk to you about it." "Don't believe I can stand the air in there, John. Head all stopped up. Don't believe I'm going to live very long." "Nonsense. You are as strong as a buck." "You may think so, John, but I'm not. I thought father was strong, too, but a summer cold got him. I am getting along in years, John, and I find that I have to take care of myself. But if you really want to talk to me about that piece of cotton, come out under the trees where it's cool." The Major shoved back his papers and arose, but hesitated; and Gid stood looking on, fanning himself. The Major stepped out and Gid's face was split asunder with a broad smile. "I gad. I've been up town and had a set-to with old Baucum and the rest of them. Pulled up fifty winner at poker and jumped. Devilish glad to see you; miss you every minute of the time I'm away. Let's go over there and sit down on that bench." They walked toward a bench under a live-oak tree, and upon Gid's shoulder the Major's hand affectionately rested. They halted to laugh, and old Gid shoved the Major away from him, then seized him and drew him back. They sat down, still laughing, but suddenly the Major became serious. "Gid, I'm in trouble," he said. "Nonsense, my boy, there is no such thing as trouble. Throw it off. Look at me. I've had enough of what the world calls trouble to kill a dozen ordinary men, but just look at me--getting stronger every day. Throw it off. What is it, anyway?" "Louise declares that she is going to marry Pennington!" "What!" old Gid exclaimed, turning with a bouncing flounce and looking straight at the Major. "Marry Pennington! Why, she shan't, John. That's all there is of it. We object and that settles it. Why, what the deuce can she be thinking about?" "Thinking about him," the Major answered. "Yes, but she must quit it. Why, it's outrageous for as sensible a girl as she is to think of marrying that fellow. You leave it to me; hear what I said? Leave it to me." This suggested shift of responsibility did not remove the shadow of sadness that had fallen across the Major's countenance. "You leave it to me and I'll give her a talk she'll not forget. I'll make her understand that she's a queen, and a woman is pretty devilish skittish about marrying anybody when you convince her that she's a queen. What does your wife say about it?" "She hasn't said anything. She's out visiting and I haven't seen her since Louise told me of her determination to marry him." "Don't say determination, John. Say foolish notion. But it's all right." "No, it's not all right." "What, have you failed to trust me? Is it possible that you have lost faith in me? Don't do that, John, for if you do it will be a never failing source of regret. You don't seem to remember what my powers of persuasion have accomplished in the past. When I was in the legislature, chairman of the Committee on County and County Lines, what did my protest do? It kept them from cutting off a ten-foot strip of this county and adding it to Jefferson. You must remember those things, John, for in the factors of persuasion lie the shaping of human life. I've been riding in the hot sun and I think that a mint julep would hit me now just about where I live. Say, there, Bill, bring us some mint, sugar and whisky. And cold water, mind you. Oh, everything will come out all right. By the way, do you remember that Catholic priest that came here with a letter of introduction to you?" "Yes, his name is Brennon." "Yes, that's it. But how did he happen to bring a letter to you?" "He came from Maryland with a letter given him by a relative of mine." "Yes, and he has gone to work, I tell you. Do you know what he's doing? Reaching out quietly and gathering the negroes into his church. And there are some pretty wise men behind him. They didn't send an Irishman or a Dutchman or an Italian, but an American from an old family. He's already got three negroes on my place, and Perdue tells me that he's nipping one now and then over his way. There's a scheme in it, John." "There is a scheme in all human affairs, and consequently in all church movements," the Major replied, and the impulse of a disquisition straightened him into a posture more dignified, for he was fond of talking and at times he strove to be logical and impressive; but at this moment Bill arrived with mint from the spring; and with lighter talk two juleps were made. "Ah," said old Gideon, sipping his scented drink, "virtue may become wearisome, and we may gape during the most fervent prayer, but I gad, John, there is always the freshness of youth in a mint julep. Pour just a few more drops of liquor into mine, if you please--want it to rassle me a trifle, you know. Recollect those come-all ye songs we used to sing, going down the river? Remember the time I snatched the sword out of my cane and lunged at a horse trader from Tennessee? Scoundrel grabbed it and broke it off and it was all I could do to keep him from establishing a close and intimate relationship with me. Great old days, John; and I Gad, they'll never come again." "I remember it all, Gid, and it was along there that you fell in love with a woman that lived at Mortimer's Bend." "Easy, now, John. A trifle more liquor, if you please. Thank you. Yes, I used to call her the wild plum. Sweet thing, and I had no idea that she was married until her lout of a husband came down to the landing with a double-barrel gun. Ah, Lord, if she had been single and worth money I could have made her very happy. Fate hasn't always been my friend, John." "Possibly not, Gid, but you know that fate to be just should divide her favors, and this time she leaned toward the woman." "Slow, John. I Gad, there's your wife." A carriage drew up at the yard gate and a woman stepped out. She did not go into the house, but seeing the Major, came toward him. She was tall, with large black eyes and very gray hair. In her step was suggested the pride of an old Kentucky family, belles, judges and generals. She smiled at the Major and bowed stiffly at old Gid. The two men arose. "Thank you, I don't care to sit down," she said. "Where is Louise?" "I saw her down by the river just now," the Major answered. "I wish to see her at once," said his wife. "Shall I go and call her, madam?" Gid asked. She gave him a look of surprise and answered: "No, I thank you." "No trouble, I assure you," Gid persisted. "I am pleased to say that age has not affected my voice, except to mellow it with more of reverence when I address the wife of a noble man and the mother of a charming girl." She had dignity, but humor was never lost upon her, and she smiled. This was encouraging and old Gid proceeded: "I was just telling the Major of my splendid prospects for a bountiful crop this year, and I feel that with this blessing of Providence I shall soon be able to meet all my obligations. I saw our rector, Mr. Mills, this morning, and he spoke of how thankful I ought to be--he had just passed my bayou field--and I told him that I would not only assert my gratitude but would prove it with a substantial donation to the church at the end of the season." In the glance which she gave him there was refined and gentle contempt; and then she looked down upon the decanter of whisky. Old Gideon drew down the corners of his mouth, as was his wont when he strove to excite compassion. "Yes," he said with a note of pity forced upon his voice, "I am exceedingly thankful for all the blessings that have come to me, but I haven't been very well of late, rather feeble to-day, and the kind Major, noticing it, insisted upon my taking a little liquor, the medicine of our sturdy and gallant fathers, madam." The Major sprawled himself back with a roaring laugh, and hereupon Gid added: "It takes the Major a long time to get over a joke. Told him one just now and it tickled him mighty nigh to death. Well, I must be going now, and, madam, if I should chance to see anything of your charming daughter, I will tell her that you desire a conference with her. William," he called, "my horse, if you please." CHAPTER IV. Mrs. Cranceford had met Pennington in the road, and on his horse, in the shade of a cottonwood tree, he had leaned against the carriage window to tell her of his interview with the Major. He had desperately appealed to the sympathy which one with so gentle a nature must feel for a dying man, and had implored her to intercede with her husband; but with compassionate firmness she had told him that no persuasion could move her husband from the only natural position he could take, and that she herself was forced to oppose the marriage. The Major, with his hands behind him, was now walking up and down the short stretch of shade. "I don't wonder that the absurdity of it does not strike him," he said, "for he is a drowning sentimentalist, catching at a fantastic straw." He paused in his walk to look at his wife as if he expected to find on her face a commendation of this simile. She nodded, knowing what to do, and the Major continued, resuming his walk: "I say that I can't blame him so much, but Louise ought to have better sense. I'll swear I don't know where she gets her stubbornness. Oh, but there is no use worrying ourselves with a discussion of it. You may talk to her, but I have had my say." Louise, meanwhile, was strolling along a shaded lane that led from the ferry. Iron weeds grew in the corners of the fence, and in one hand she carried a bunch of purple blooms; with the other hand she slowly swung her hat, holding the strings. A flock of sheep came pattering down the road. With her hat she struck at the leader, a stubborn dictator demanding the whole of the highway. His flock scampered off in a fright, leaving him doggedly eyeing the disputer of his progress. But now she was frightened, with such fierceness did the old ram lower his head and gaze at her, and she cried out, "Go on back, you good-for-nothing thing." "He won't hurt you," a voice cried in the woods, just beyond the fence. "Walk right up to him." An enormous young fellow came up to the fence and with climbing over broke the top rail. "Don't you see he's scared?" "But he would have knocked me over if you hadn't come." "No, he wouldn't; he was just trying to make friends with you." "But I don't want such a friend." Together they slowly walked along. With tenderness in his eyes he looked down upon her, and when he spoke, which he did from time to time, his voice was deep and heavy but with a mellowness in it. She addressed him as Mr. Taylor and asked him if he had been away. And he said that he had, but that was not a sufficient reason for the formality of Mister--his name was Jim. She looked up at him--and her eyes were so blue that they looked black--and admitted that his name had been Jim but that now it must be Mr. Taylor. She laughed at this but his face was serious. "Why, I haven't called you Jim since----" "Since I asked you to marry me." "No, not since then. And now you know it wouldn't be right to call you Jim." In his slowness of speech he floundered about, treading down the briars that grew along the edge of the road, walking with heavy tread but tenderly looking down upon her. "That ought not to make any difference," he said. "I knew you before you--before you knew anything, and now it doesn't sound right to hear you call me anything but Jim. It is true that the last time I saw you--seems a long time, but it wasn't more than a week ago--you said that you wouldn't marry me, and really the time seems so long that I didn't know but you might have changed your mind." "No, not yet," she replied. "But you might." "No, I couldn't." "Is it as bad as that?" "It's worse; it would be impossible for me to change." "I don't suppose you know why?" "Yes, I do. I am going to be married." "What!" He stopped, expecting her to obey his own prompting and halt also, but she walked on. With long strides he overtook her, passed her, stood in front of her. She stepped aside and passed on. But again he overtook her, but this time he did not seek to detain her. "I can't believe it," he said, stripping the leaves from the thorn bushes and briars that came within touch of his swinging hand. "I don't believe that you would marry a man unless you loved him and who--who----" "Somebody," she said. "Please don't tantalize me in this way. Tell me all about it." "You know Mr. Pennington----" "Who, that poor fellow!" he cried. "You surely don't think of marrying him. Louise, don't joke with me. Why, he can't live more than three months." Now she halted and there was anger in her eyes as she looked at him, and resentful rebuke was in her voice when she spoke. "And you, too, fix the length of time he is to live. Why do you all agree to give him three months? Is that all the time you are willing to allow him?" He stepped back from her and stood fumbling with his great hands. "I didn't know that any one else had given him three months," he replied. "I based my estimate merely on my recollection of how he looked the last time I saw him. I am willing to allow him all the time he wants and far more than Nature seems willing to grant." "No, you are not. You all want him to die." "Don't say that, Louise. You know that I ain't that mean. But I acknowledge that I don't want you to marry him." "What need you care? If I refuse to marry you what difference does it make to you whom I marry?" "It makes this difference--that I would rather see you the wife of a man that can take care of you. Louise, they say that I'm slow about everything, and I reckon I am, but when a slow man loves he loves for all time." "I don't believe it; don't believe that any man loves for all time." "Louise, to hear you talk one might think that you have been grossly deceived, but I know you haven't, and that is what forces me to say that I don't understand you." "You don't have to understand me. Nobody has asked you to." She walked on and he strode beside her, stripping the leaves off the shrubs, looking down at her, worshipping her; and she, frail and whimsical, received with unconcern the giant's adoration. "I told the Major that I loved you--" "Told him before you did me, didn't you?" she broke in, glancing up at him. "No, but on the same day. I knew he was my friend, and I didn't know but--" "That he would order me to marry you?" "No, not that, but I thought he might reason with you." "That's just like a stupid man. He thinks that he can win a woman with reason." He pondered a long time, seeming to feel that this bit of observation merited well-considered reply, and at last he said: "No, I didn't think that a woman could be won by something she didn't understand." "Oh, you didn't. That was brilliant of you. But let us not spat with each other, Jim." "I couldn't spat with you, Louise; I think too much of you for that, and I want to say right now that no matter if you do marry I'm going to keep on loving you just the same. I have loved you so long now that I don't know how to quit. People say that I am industrious, and they compliment me for keeping up my place so well, and for not going to town and loafing about of a Sunday and at night, but the truth is there ain't a dog in this county that's lazier than I am. During all these years my mind has been on you so strong that I have been driven to work." She had thrown down her iron weed blossoms and had put her hands to her ears to shut out his words as if they were a reproach to her, but she heard him and thus replied: "It appears that I have been of some service at any rate." "Yes, but now you are going to undo it all." "I thought you said you were going to keep on loving me just the same." "What! Do you want me to?" There was eagerness in his voice, and with hope tingling in his blood he remembered that a few moments before she had called him Jim. "Do you want me to?" "I want you always to be my friend." Under these words he drooped and there was no eagerness in his voice when he replied: "Friendship between a great big man and a little bit of a woman is nonsense. They must love or be nothing to each other." They had now reached the road that led past the Major's house. She turned toward home. "Wait a moment," he said, halting. She stopped and looked back at him. "Did you hear what I said?" "What about?" "Hear what I said about a big man and a little woman?" "No, what did you say?" He fumbled with his hands and replied: "No matter what I said then. What I say now is good-bye." "Good-bye." She tripped along as if she were glad to be rid of him, but after a time she walked slower as if she were deeply musing. She heard the brisk trotting of a horse, and, looking up, recognized Gideon Batts, jogging toward her. He saw her, and, halting in the shade, he waited for her to come up, and as she drew near he cried out, "Helloa, young rabbit." She wrinkled her Greek nose at him, but she liked his banter, and with assumed offense she replied: "Frog." "None of that, my lady." "Well, then, what made you call me a young rabbit?" "Because your ears stick out." "I don't care if they do." "Neither does a young rabbit." "I call you a frog because your eyes stick out and because you are so puffy." "Slow, now, my lady, queen of the sunk lands. Oh, but they are laying for you at home and you are going to catch it. I'd hate to be in your fix." "And I wouldn't be in yours." "Easy, now. You allude to my looks, eh? Why, I have broken more than one heart." "Why, I didn't know you had been married but once." He winced. "Look here, you mustn't talk that way." "But you began it. You called me a young rabbit." "That's right, and now we will call it off. What a memory you've got. I gad, once joke with a woman and her impudence--which she mistakes for wit--leaps over all difference in ages. But they are laying for you at home and you are going to catch it. I laughed at them; told them it was nonsense to suppose that the smartest girl in the state was going to marry--" "You've said enough. I don't need your championship." "But you've got it and can't help yourself. Why, so far as brains are concerned, the average legislator can't hold a candle to you." "That's no compliment." "Slow. I was in the legislature." "Yes, one term, I hear." "Why did you hear one term?" "Because they didn't send you back, I suppose." "Easy. But I tell you that the Major and your mother are furious. Your mother said--" "She said very little in your presence." "Careful. She said a great deal. But I infer from your insinuation that she doesn't think very well of me." "You ought to know." "I do; I know that she is wrong in her estimate of me. And I also know that I am right in my estimate of her. She is the soul of gentleness and quiet dignity. But you like me, don't you?" "I am ashamed to say that I like you in spite of my judgment." "Easy. That's good, I must say. Ah, the influence I have upon people is somewhat varied. Upon a certain type of woman, the dignified lady of a passing generation, I exercise no particular influence, but I catch the over-bright young women in spite of themselves. The reason you think so much of me is because you are the brightest young woman I ever saw. And this puts me at a loss to understand why you are determined to marry that fellow Pennington. Wait a moment. I gad, if you go I'll ride along with you. Answer me one question: Is your love for him so great that you'll die if you don't marry him? Or is it that out of a perversity that you can't understand you are determined to throw away a life that could be made most useful? Louise, we have joked with each other ever since you were a child. In my waddling way I have romped with you, and I can scarcely realize that you are nearly twenty-four years old. Think of it, well advanced toward the age of discretion, and yet you are about to give yourself to a dying man. I don't know what to say." "It seems not," she replied. And after a moment's pause she added: "If I am so well advanced toward the age of discretion I should be permitted to marry without the advice of an entire neighborhood." She was now standing in the sun, looking up at him, her half-closed eyes glinting like blue-tempered steel. "Is marriage wholly a matter of selfishness?" she asked. "Slow. If you are putting that to me as a direct question I am, as a man who never shies at the truth, compelled to say that it is. But let me ask you if it is simply a matter of accommodation? If it is, why not send out a collection of handsome girls to marry an aggregation of cripples?" Her eyes were wide open now and she was laughing. "No one could be serious with you, Mr. Gid." "And no one could make you serious with yourself." "Frog." "Young rabbit." She put her hands to her ears. "I would rather be a young rabbit than a frog." "Wait a moment," he called as she turned away. "Well." "When you go home I wish you'd tell your mother that I talked to you seriously concerning the foolishness of your contemplated marriage. Will you do that much for your old playmate?" She made a face at him and trippingly hastened away. He looked after her, shook his head, gathered up his bridle reins, and jogged off toward his home. CHAPTER V. At home Louise made known her arrival by singing along the hallway that led to her room. She knew that not a very pleasant reception awaited her, and she was resolved to meet it with the appearance of careless gayety. She entered her room, drew back the curtains to admit the light, deftly touched her hair at the mirror, and sat down in a rocking chair. She took up a book, an American fad built upon a London failure, and was aimlessly turning the leaves when she heard her mother's voice. "Are you in there, Louise?" "Yes, come." In the mother's appearance there was no suggestion of a stored rebuke; her gray hair, faultlessly parted, was smoothed upon her brow, her countenance bespoke calmness, and her sad eyes were full of tender love. "Oh, you look so cool and sweet," said the girl. "Have this chair." "No, thank you, I prefer to sit here." She sat upon a straight-back chair. In her "day" only grandmothers were supposed to sit in rockers; younger women were thought to preserve their health and their grace of form by sitting with rigid dignity upon chairs which might now be exhibited as relics of household barbarism. "Did you have a pleasant visit?" the girl asked. "Yes, very; but it was so warm over there under the hills that I was glad when the time came to leave." "Does that Englishman still live alone on the Jasper place?" "Yes, with his straight pipe and Scotch whisky. Perdue says that he appears to be perfectly contented there all alone." "Have they found out anything about him?" "No, only what he has been pleased to tell, and that isn't much. It seems that he is the younger son of a good family strayed off from home to better his condition." "But why should he try to raise cotton when they say there is so little money in it, and especially when it requires experience? And the climate must be trying on him?" "No, he says that the climate agrees with him. He has lived in India. He is reading American history and is much taken with the part the South has borne, so I learned from Mr. Perdue. He did not expect to find so little prejudice against foreigners. I could have told him that, in the South, an Englishman is scarcely looked upon as a foreigner--that is, among the best people." They talked about many things that concerned them but little, of a new steamboat that had just entered upon the commerce of the lower river, of a cotton gin that was burned the night before, of the Catholic priest who had come to gather the negroes into his church; and surely they were far from a mention of Pennington. But suddenly Louise moved with uneasiness, for she had caught something that had not been said, that had not been looked, and, springing to her feet, she almost threw herself upon her mother, and with her arms about her, she cried: "Please don't say a word; please don't. I can argue with father, but I can't argue with you, for you take everything so to heart and suffer so much. Please don't speak anybody's name--don't say that father has said anything to you about anybody. You mustn't cry, either. Leave it all to me, and if I was born to wring your dear heart--there, let us hush." She straightened up, putting the hair out of her eyes, and the silent and stately woman sat there with the tears rolling down her face. "Please don't, mother. You'll make me think I'm the meanest creature in the world. And I don't know but that I am, but I can't help it. Just call me unnatural, as you have done so many times, and let it all go. There, just listen at father walking up and down the porch; and I know he's mad at me." "No, my child, he is not angry; he is hurt." "Please don't say that. I don't want to hurt him. I would rather make him mad than to hurt him. Oh, I don't know what ails me, I am so restless and unhappy. I have tried every way to cure myself, but can't--I have read and read until I haven't any sense, and now I don't know what to do. But don't you tell me what not to do; don't say anything, but be your own sweet self." She took up a brush from the dresser, touched her mother's hair, and said: "Let me, please." She loosened the thick coil. "Beautiful," she said. "Don't you know how I used to tease you to let me comb it, a long time ago? But it wasn't as pretty then as it is now." Through her fingers the white hair streamed, glinting in the light now sobered by the falling of dusk. The Major's step was heard at the door. "Come in, father. See, I am at my old employment." And in their faces and in the hair streaming through his daughter's fingers the old man read that all was well. He stood smiling at them. Out in the yard the fox-hounds began to yelp, and a galloping horse stopped with a loud, jolting "gluck" at the gate. Then came authoritative commands, and then a jar as if some one had leaped upon the porch. There was brisk walking, the opening and slamming of doors, and then at Louise's door a voice demanded: "What are you all doing here in the dark? Ain't supper ready? I'm as hungry as a she bear." The Major's son Tom had arrived. And just at that moment, and before any one replied to him, the supper bell began to ring. "Takes me to bring things about, eh? You people might have waited here hungry for an hour. What are you doing here, anyway? Lou brushing mam's hair and pap looking on like a boy at a show." "Thomas," said his mother, "I wish you wouldn't be so rough. There, daughter, that will do. Just coil it. That's it; thank you. Major, I do wish you wouldn't laugh at the brusqueness of your son; you encourage him." Tom took his mother by the shoulders and turned her face toward the door. He was a clean-looking, blondish fellow, younger than his sister--an athlete, a boxer, with far more restlessness of muscle than absorption of mind. He had failed at Harvard, where his great-grandfather had distinguished himself; he had, with the influence of a Congressman, secured a West Point cadetship, and there had fallen under the rapid fire of a battery of mathematics, and had come home scouting at the humiliation which he had put upon his parents, and was now ready to submit himself to any other test that might present itself--was ready to borrow, to lend, or to fight. He picked negro tunes on a banjo, and had been heard hoarsely to sing a love song under a cypress tree. He had now just returned from the capital of the state, where he had spent two days watching the flank movements of a military drill. "You people seem to be mighty solemn," was Tom's observation as they sat down to supper, glancing from one to another, and finally directing a questioning look at his father. "What's the trouble? What's happened? Is it possible that old Gideon has paid his rent?" Louise laughed, a wrinkle crept across Mrs. Cranceford's brow and the Major sprawled back with a loud "haw." Gid's rent was a standing joke; and nothing is more sacredly entitled to instant recognition than a joke that for years has been established in a Southern household. "I notice that he never goes into the Major's office," Mrs. Cranceford remarked; and Tom quickly replied: "And I don't blame him for that. I went in there about a month ago and haven't had a dollar since." The Major did not laugh at this. The reputed exaction of his executive chamber was a sore spot to him. "How you robbers, young and old, would like to fleece me," he said. "And if I didn't turn to defensive stone once in a while you'd pull out my eye teeth." "Don't see how anybody could get hold of your eye teeth, dad," Tom replied. "You are always busy cutting them when I come round. Oh, by the way," he added with sudden seriousness, "you remember that fellow Mayo, the one that ran for County Clerk down here some time ago?" "The scoundrel who swore he was elected?" "That's the man. He disappeared, you know, after his trouble down here, then he went on from one community to another, a Democrat one season and a Republican the next, and now he has returned as a labor leader. I met him yesterday in Little Rock, and I never have seen a more insolent ruffian. He makes no secret of his plans, and he says that blood is bound to flow. I asked him if he had any to spare, and he cocked his eye at me and replied that he didn't know but he had." The Major was silent, abstractedly balancing his knife on the rim of his plate. Mayo, an adventurer, a scoundrel with a brutish force that passed for frankness, had at one time almost brought about an uprising among the negroes of Cranceford County, and eager ears in the North, not the ears of the old soldier, but of the politician, shutting out the suggestions of justice, heard only the clamor of a political outrage; and again arose the loud cry that the South had robbed the inoffensive negro of his suffrage. But the story, once so full of alarm, was beginning to be a feeble reminiscence; Northern men with business interests in the South had begun to realize that the white man, though often in the wrong, could sometimes be in the right. But now a problem--graver than the over-thrashed straw of political rights, was about to be presented. "I was in hopes that somebody had killed that fellow," said the Major, and his wife looked up with gentle reproof. "Don't say that, dear. The Lord will take him in His own good time." The old gentleman winked at Tom. "I don't know about that," he replied. "I am afraid that the Lord in His management of the universe has forgotten him." "John, please don't talk that way." When she was very serious she called him John. "When you speak so lightly you make me afraid that your relationship with the church is not very sacred to you." "It's serious at any rate, Margaret." "What do you mean by that, John?" "Why," Tom cried, "it means that you dragged him into the pow-wow." "Thomas"--and this time her reproof was not very gentle--"I won't stand that from you. And daughter," she added, speaking to Louise, "it is not a laughing matter. It all comes from so close an association with that good-for-nothing old Gideon. I know it does, and you needn't say a word. Nothing is sacred to him; he has no respect for God and cares nothing for man except to the extent that he can use him." The Major strove to wink at Tom, but there was a hitch in his eye. "My dear, you don't understand the old fellow," said he. "And therefore you misjudge him. I know that he is weak, but I also know that he is strong, and he is quite as necessary to me as I am to him. He rests me, and rest is as essential as work. Sometimes the perfect gentleman is a bore; sometimes the perfect lady is tiresome. In man there is a sort of innocent evil, a liking for the half depraved and an occasional feeding of this appetite heightens his respect for the truly virtuous." "I don't believe it, John." "Of course you don't. You are the truly virtuous, and--" he spread himself back with a loud "haw," and sat there shaking under her cool gaze. "There, Margaret," he said, wiping his eyes, "don't take it to heart. I am doing the best I can and that is all the excuse I have to offer. I'm getting old; do you realize that? The things that used to amuse me are flat now and I can't afford to kill an amusement when one does happen to come along. Don't you worry about Gid. Why, Margaret, he has stood by me when other men turned their backs. The river was dangerous during my day, and the pop of a pistol was as natural as the bark of a dog. But old Gid was there by me." "Oh, I don't doubt that he has some good qualities," she admitted. "But why doesn't he mend his ways?" "Oh, he hasn't time for that, Margaret. He's too busy with other matters. There, now, we won't talk about him. But I promise you, my dear, that he shall not unduly influence me. I don't exactly know what I mean by that, either. I mean that you need have no fear of my permitting him to weaken my respect for the church. Yes, I think that's about what I mean. But the fact is he has never tried to do that. But what's the use of this talk. I can sum up the whole situation by reminding you that I am the master. There, now, don't sigh--don't look so worried." "But, John, it grieves me to hear you say that you need him." "Had to step back to pick that up, didn't you? Tom, after you're married you'll find that your wife will look with coldness or contempt upon your most intimate friend. It's the absurdest jealousy in woman's nature." "Thomas," said his mother, "you will find nothing of the sort; but I'll tell you what you may expect from the right sort of a wife--contempt for a coarse, low-bred fellow, should you insist upon holding him as your closest companion." "Mother," Louise spoke up, "I think you are too severe. Mr. Batts is hemmed in with faults, but he has many good points. And I can understand why he is necessary to father. I am fond of him, and I am almost ready to declare that at times he is almost necessary to me. No, I won't make it as strong as that, but I must say that at times it is a keen pleasure to jower with him." "To do what?" Mrs. Cranceford asked. "Jower with him? Where did you get that word?" "It's one of his, picked up from among the negroes, I think, and it means more than dispute or wrangle. We jower at times--quarrel a little more than half in earnest." "Well," said the mother, "perhaps I ought not to say anything, but I can't help it when I am so often hurt by that man's influence. Why, last Sunday afternoon your father left the rector sitting here and went away with that old sinner, and we heard them haw-hawing over in the woods. But I won't say any more." "You never do, Margaret," the Major replied, winking at Louise. "But let us drop him. So you saw Mayo, eh?" he added, turning to Tom. "Yes, sir, and I understand that he is coming back down here to prove to the negroes that we are cheating them out of their earnings." The Major tossed a cigar to Tom, lighted one, and had begun to talk with a rhetorical and sententious balancing of periods--which, to his mind, full of the oratory of Prentiss, was the essence of impressiveness--when a negro woman entered the room. And hereupon he changed the subject. When bedtime came the old gentleman stood on a rug in front of a large fire-place, meditatively winding his watch. His wife sat on a straight-back chair, glancing over the harmless advertisements in a religious newspaper. In the parlor they had spent an agreeable evening, with music and with never an allusion to an unpleasant subject, but there was something finer than an allusion, and it had passed from husband to wife and back again--a look at each other and a glance toward Louise. But they had laughed at the girl's imitation of a cakewalk, and yet in the minds of the father and the mother was the low echo of a hollow cough. Affectionately she had kissed them good night, and had started off down the hall in mimicry of a negro belle's walk, but they had heard her door shut with a quick slam as if she were at last impelled to be truthful with herself, to close herself in with her own meditations. The Major hung his watch on a nail above the mantel-piece. From a far-off nook of the sprawling old house came the pling-plang of the boy's banjo. "Margaret?" "Yes, dear." "What did you say to her?" She began to fold the newspaper. "I didn't say anything. She wouldn't permit me." "What do you think?" "That she will do as she pleases." "Consoling, by the--consoling, I must say. But I tell you she won't. I will shame her out of it." CHAPTER VI. The top of the cotton stalk glimmered with a purple bloom, but down between the rows, among the dying leaves, the first bolls were opening. The air was still hot, for at noontime the glare in the sandy road was fierce, but the evening was cool, and from out in the gleaming dew came a sweetly, lonesome chirrup, an alarm in the grass, the picket of the insect army, crying the approach of frost. In the atmosphere was felt the influence of a reviving activity; new cotton pens were built along the borders of the fields, and the sounds of hammer and saw were heard in the neighborhood of the gin-house. With the dusk of Saturday evening "new" negroes came. In the city they had idled the summer away, gambling, and had now come with nimble fingers to pick cotton during the day and with tricky hands to throw dice at night. Gaunt, long-legged birds flew from the North and awkwardly capered on a sand-bar. Afar off there appeared to hover over the landscape a pall of thin, pale smoke; but, like the end of the rainbow, it stole back from closer view, was always afar off, lying low to the earth. The autumn rains had not yet set in, and the water in the bayou was low and yellow. The summer grapes were ripe, and in the cool, shaded coves at the base of the hills the muscadine was growing purple. The mules, so over-worked during plow-time, now stumbled down the lane, biting at one another. The stiffening wind, fore-whistle of the season's change of tune, was shrill amid the rushes at the edge of the swamp. It was a time to work, but also to muse and dream while working. In the air was something that invited, almost demanded reverie. Upon the fields there might lie many a mortgage, but who at such a time could worry over the harsh exactions of debt? Nearly three weeks had passed, and not again in the Major's household had Pennington's name been mentioned. But once, alone with his wife, the Major was leading up to it when she held up her hands and besought him to stop. "I can't bear to think of it," she said. "It stuns and stupefies me. But it is of no use to say anything to her. She is of age and she is head-strong." There was a dry rasp in the Major's throat. "Don't you think that to say she is a crank would be hitting nearer the mark?" "No, I don't," his wife answered. "She is not a crank. She is a remarkably bright woman." "Yes, she shows it. When a man does a fool thing he is weak, off, as they say; but when a woman jumps out of the enclosure of common sense we must say that she is bright." "I thought you were going to shame her out of it?" "I will, but she hasn't given me a chance. But we'll let it go. I believe she has repented of her folly and is too much humiliated to make a confession." His wife smiled sadly. "Don't you think so?" he asked. "No, I don't." "Well, I must say that you are very calm over the situation." "Didn't I tell you that I was stunned and stupefied by it?" "Yes, that's all right, and there's no use in worrying with it. Common sense says that when you can't help a thing the best plan is to let it go until a new phase is presented." And so they ceased to discuss the subject, but like a heavy weight it lay upon them, and under it they may have sighed their worry, but they spoke it not. From Tom this sentimental flurry had remained securely hidden. Sometimes the grave tone of his father's words, overheard at night, and his mother's distressful air, during the day, struck him with a vague apprehension, but his mind was not keen enough to cut into the cause of what he might have supposed to be a trouble; and so, he gave it none of his time, so taken up with his banjo, his dogs, his sporting newspaper, and his own sly love affair. In Louise's manner no change was observed. One afternoon the Major, old Gid, and an Englishman named Anthony Low were sitting on the porch overlooking the river when the Catholic priest from Maryland, Father Brennon, stopped to get a drink of water. And he was slowly making his way across the yard to the well when the Major called him, urging him to come upon the porch and rest himself. "Wait," the Major added, "and I'll have some water drawn for you." "I thank you," the priest replied, bowing, "but I prefer to draw it." When he had drunk out of the bucket, he took a seat on the porch. He was a man of middle age, grave, and sturdy. His eyes were thoughtful and his smile was benevolent; his brow was high and broad, his nose large and strong, and a determined conviction seemed to have molded the shape of his mouth. His speech was slow, resonant, dignified; his accent of common words was Southern, but in some of his phrases was a slight burr, the subdued echo of a foreign tongue. The Englishman was a stocky young fellow, with light hair and reddish side whiskers, a man of the world, doggedly careful in his use of superlatives, but with a habit of saying, "most extraordinary." He had rented an old plantation and lived alone in a dilapidated log house, with his briar pipe, Scotch whisky, sole leather hatbox, and tin bathtub. He had thought that it would be a sort of lark to grow a crop of cotton, and had hired three sets of negroes, discharging them in turn upon finding that they laughed at his ways and took advantage of his inexperience. He had made his first appearance by calling one morning at the Major's house and asking to be shown about the place. The Major gladly consented to do this, and together they set out on horseback. The planter knew much of English hospitality, gathered from old romances, and now was come the time to show a Britain what an American gentleman could do. They rode down a lane, crossed a small field, and halted under a tree; and there was a negro with whisky, mint and sugar. They crossed a bayou, passed the "quarters," turned into the woods; and there was another negro with whisky, mint and sugar. They rode across a large field, and went through a gate, came to a spring; and there waiting for them was a negro with liquor for a julep. They turned into the "big" road, trotted along until they came to another spring, at least three miles from the starting point; and there was a negro with whisky, sugar and mint. But the Englishman's only comment was, "Ah, most extraordinary, how that fellow can keep ahead of us, you know." Several months had elapsed, and the Major had called on Mr. Low, had shouted at the yard-gate, had supposed that no one was at home, had stalked into the wide open house and there had found the Englishman sitting in his bathtub, reading Huxley. And to-day Mr. Low had come to acknowledge the receipt of that visit. "You are on the verge of your busy season," said the priest. "Yes," the Major replied, "we begin picking to-morrow." "A beautiful view across the whitening fields," said the priest. "You ought to see my bayou field," old Gid spoke up. "It would make you open your eyes--best in the state. Don't you think so, John?" "Well," the Major answered, "it is as good as any, I suppose." "I tell you it's the best," Gid insisted. "And as a man of varied experience I ought to know what best is. Know all about cotton. I gad, I can look at a boll and make it open." "Tell me," said the Englishman, "have you had any trouble with your labor?" "With the negroes?" Gid asked. "Oh, no; they know what they've got to do and they do it. But let a cog slip and you can have all the trouble you want. I gad, you can't temporize with a negro. He's either your servant or your boss." "All the trouble you want," said the Englishman. "By Jove, I don't want any. Your servant or your master. Quite remarkable." "Don't know how remarkable it is, but it's a fact all the same," Gid replied. "You've had trouble, I understand." "Yes, quite a bit. I've had to drive them off a time or two; the rascals laughed at me. Quite full of fun they were, I assure you. I had thought that they were a solemn race. They are everywhere else except in America." "It is singular," the Major spoke up, "but it is nevertheless true that the American negro is the only species of the African race that has a sense of humor. There's no humor in the Spanish negro, nor in the English negro, nor in fact in the American negro born north of the Ohio river, but the Southern negro is as full of drollery as a black bear." "Ah, yes, a little too full of it, I fancy," Mr. Low replied. "I threatened them with the law, but they laughed the more and were really worse in every respect after that." "With the law!" old Gid snorted. "What the deuce do they care about the law, and what sort of law do you reckon could keep a man from laughing? You ought to threatened them with a snake bone or a rabbit's foot." "I beg pardon. A snake bone or a rabbit's foot, did you say? I really don't understand." "Yes, threaten to conjure them. That might have fetched them." "Ah, I see. Quite extraordinary, I assure you." The priest began to talk, and with profound attention they turned to him. He sat there with the mystery of the medieval ages about him, with a great and silent authority behind him. "Have you gentlemen ever considered the religious condition of the negro? Have you not made his religion a joke? Is it not a popular belief that he will shout at his mourners' bench until midnight and steal a chicken before the dawn? He has been taught that religion is purely an emotion and not a matter of duty. He does not know that it means a life of inward humanity and outward obedience. I have come to teach him this, to save him; for in our church lies his only salvation, not alone of his soul, but of his body and of his rights as well as of his soul. I speak boldly, for I am an American, the descendant of American patriots. And I tell you that the Methodist negro and the Baptist negro and the Presbyterian negro are mere local issues; but the Catholic negro is international--he belongs to the great nervous system of Rome; and whenever Rome reaches out and draws him in, he is that moment removed as a turbulent element from politics. Although slavery was long ago abolished, there existed and to some small extent still exists a bond between the white man and the black man of the South--a sort of family tie; but this tie is straining and will soon be broken; a new generation is coming, and the negro and the white man will be two antagonistic forces, holding in common no sunny past--one remembering that his father was a master, the other that his father was a slave. When that time comes, and it is almost at hand, there will be a serious trouble growing out of a second readjustment. The Anglo-Saxon race cannot live on a perfect equality with any other race; it must rule; it demands complete obedience. And the negro will resent this demand, more and more as the old family ties are weakened. He has seen that his support at the North was merely a political sentiment, and must know that it will not sustain him in his efforts against capital, for capital, in the eye of capital, is always just, and labor, while unfortunate, is always wrong. And when the negro realizes this, remembering all his other wrongs, he will become desperate. That is the situation. But is there no way to avert this coming strife? I am here to say that there is. As communicants of the Catholic Church the negroes will not listen to the labor agitator. He will listen to the church, which will advise peace and submission to proper authority." The priest had not gone far into his discourse before the Major began to walk up and down the porch in front of him, nodding at him each time as he passed. And when the clergyman ceased to speak, the Major, halting and facing him, thus replied: "There may be some truth, sir, in what you have said--there is some little truth in the wildest of speculation--but I should like to ask you why is not a Protestant negro in a Protestant country as safe as a Catholic negro in a Protestant country? You tell me that your religion will protect the negro, and I ask you why it does not protect the laborer in the North? You say that the Protestant negro in the South is a local issue, and I ask you why is not a Catholic laborer in the North an international issue? If the negro of the South, yielding to your persuasion, is to become a part of the great nervous system of Rome, why are not Catholic laborers everywhere a part of that system? I think, sir, that you have shrewdly introduced a special plea. Your church, with its business eyes always wide open, sees a chance to make converts and is taking advantage of it. And I will not say that I will oppose your cause. If the negro thinks that your church is better for him than the Protestant churches have proved themselves to be, why I say let him be taken in. I admit that we are not greatly concerned over the negro's religion. We are satisfied with the fact that he has his churches and that he has always been amply provided with preachers agreeing with him in creed and color of skin. I will concede that his professions of faith are regarded more or less in the light of a joke. But I want to tell you one thing--that the negro's best friends live here in the South. From us he knows exactly what to expect. He knows that he cannot rule us--knows that he must work for a living. The lands belong to the white man and the white man pays the taxes, and the white man would be a fool to permit the negro to manage his affairs. Men who dig in the coal mines of Pennsylvania don't manage the affairs of the company that owns the mines. I cannot question the correctness of one of your views--that the old tie is straining and may soon be broken. The old negroes still regard us with a sort of veneration, but if the younger ones show respect it is out of fear. Into this county a large number of negroes have lately come from Mississippi and South Carolina. They have been brought up on large plantations and have but a limited acquaintance with the white man. Instinctively they hate him. And these newcomers will listen to the voice of the agitator and by their example will lead their brethren into trouble. You are right when you say that the Anglo-Saxon race must rule. It will rule a community as it must eventually rule the civilized world. But I don't see how your church is to be the temporal as well as the spiritual salvation of the negro." The Major sat down; the priest smiled gravely, showing the shape into which conviction and determination had molded his mouth. "My church is not at all times able to prevent labor troubles in the North," said he, "but it has often prevented the shedding of blood." "Ah," the Major broke in, "that may be true; and so has the influence of the other churches. But what I want to know is this: How can you protect a negro here more than you protect an Italian in the North?" "My dear sir, the Italian in the North is protected." "I grant you, but by the law rather than by the church." "But is not the church behind the law?" There was a shrewd twinkle in the priest's eyes, and he was about to proceed with his talk when old Gid snorted: "I gad, I hear that the public schools of the North are in the hands of the Catholics, and if that's the case I reckon they've got a pretty good hold on the court house. I understand that they daresn't open a Bible in the public schools of Chicago; and they also tell me that the children there have to learn Dutch. Zounds, ain't that enough to make old Andy Jackson rattle his bones in his grave? I wish I had my way for a few weeks. I'd show the world that this is America. I'd catch low-browed wretches carrying all sorts of spotted and grid-ironed flags through the streets. Dutch! Now, I'd just like to hear a child of mine gabbling Dutch." The priest addressed himself to the Major: "You ask how we are to protect the negro in the South. I will tell you--by teaching him that except in the Catholic Church he cannot hope to find perfect equality. Our communion knows no color--save red, and that is the blood of Christ. Our religion is the only true democracy, but a democracy which teaches that a man must respect himself before he should expect others to respect him. But, my dear Major, I am not here to convince you, but to convince the negro. He has been buffeted about by political parties, and now it remains for the church to save him. One of these days an act rather than a word may convince you." Tom had come out upon the porch. For a time he stood, listening, then quickly stepping down into the yard, he gazed toward the dairy house, into which, accompanied by a negro woman, had gone a slim girl, wearing a gingham sun-bonnet. The girl came out, carrying a jug, and hastened toward the yard gate. Tom heard the gate-latch click and then stepped quickly to the corner of the house; and when out of sight he almost ran to overtake the girl. She had reached the road, and she pretended to walk faster when she heard his footsteps. She did not raise her eyes as he came up beside her. "Let me carry the jug, Sallie." "No, I can carry it." "Give it to me." He took the jug and she looked up at him with a smile. "How's your uncle, Sallie?" "He ain't any better." Her uncle was Wash Sanders. Twenty years had passed since he had first issued a bulletin that he was dying. He had liver trouble and a strong combination of other ailments, but he kept on living. At first the neighbors had confidence in him, and believed that he was about to pass away, but as the weeks were stretched into years, as men who had been strong and hearty were one by one borne to the grave, they began to lose faith in Wash Sanders. All day long he would sit on his shaky verandah, built high off the ground, and in answer to questions concerning his health would answer: "Can't keep up much longer; didn't sleep a wink last night. Don't eat enough to keep a chicken alive." His cows appeared always to be dry, and every day he would send his niece, Sallie Pruitt, for a jug of buttermilk. He had but one industry, the tending and scraping of a long nail on the little finger of his left hand. He had a wife, but no children. His niece had recently come from the pine woods of Georgia. Her hair looked like hackled flax and her eyes were large and gray. "I didn't think you could see me," said the girl, taking off her bonnet and swinging it as she walked, keeping a sort of time with it. "Why, you couldn't possibly come and get away without my seeing you." "Yes, I could if it was night." "Not much. I could see you in the dark, you are so bright." "I'm not anything of the sort. Give me the jug and let me go on by myself if you are goin' to make fun of me." She reached for the jug and he caught her hand, and walking along, held it. "I wouldn't want to hold anybody's hand that I'd made fun of," she said, striving, though gently, to pull it away. "I didn't make fun of you. I said you were bright and you are. To me you are the brightest thing in the world. Whenever I dream of you I awake with my eyes dazzled." "Oh, you don't, no such of a thing." They saw a wagon coming, and he dropped her hand. He stepped to the right, she to the left, and the wagon passed between them. She looked at him in alarm. "That's bad luck," she said. "What is?" "To let anything pass between us." "Oh, it doesn't make any difference." "Yes, it does," she insisted. "No, you mustn't take my hand again--you've let something pass between us." He awkwardly grabbed after her hand. She held it behind her, and about her waist he pressed his arm. "Oh, don't do that. Somebody might see us." "I don't care if the whole world sees us." "You say that now, but after awhile you'll care." "Never as long as I live. You know I love you." "No, I don't." "Yes, you do." "You might say you do, but you don't. But even if you do love me now you won't always." "Yes, as long as I live." She looked up at him, and her eyes were full of beauty and tenderness. "Your mother----" "None of that," he broke in. "I am my own master. To me you are the most beautiful creature in the world, and----" "Somebody's comin'," she said. A horseman came round a bend in the road, and he stepped off from her, but they did not permit the horseman to pass between them. He did not put his arm about her again, for now they were within sight of her uncle's desolate house. They saw Wash Sanders sitting on the verandah. Tom carried the jug as far as the yard gate. "Won't you come in?" Sanders called. "I ought to be getting back, I guess." "Might come in and rest awhile." Tom hesitated a moment and then passed through the gate. The girl had run into the house. "How are you getting along?" the young man asked as he began slowly to tramp up the steps. "Porely, mighty porely. Thought I was gone last night--didn't sleep a wink. And I don't eat enough to keep a chicken alive." "Wouldn't you like a mess of young squirrels?" Tom asked, as he sat down in a hickory rocking chair. Of late he had become interested in Wash Sanders, and had resented the neighbors' loss of confidence in him. "Well, you might bring 'em if it ain't too much trouble, but I don't believe I could eat 'em. Don't eat enough to keep a chicken alive." He lifted his pale hand, and with his long finger nail scratched his chin. "What's the doctor's opinion?" Tom asked, not knowing what else to say and feeling that at that moment some expression was justly demanded of him. "The doctors don't say anything now; they've given me up. From the first they saw that I was a dead man. Last doctor that gave me medicine was a fellow from over here at Gum Springs, and I wish I may die dead if he didn't come in one of finishin' me right there on the spot." There came a tap at a window that opened out upon the verandah, and the young fellow, looking around, saw the girl sitting in the "best room." She tried to put on the appearance of having accidentally attracted his attention. He moved his chair closer to the window. "How did you know I was in here?" she asked, looping back the white curtain. "I can always tell where you are without looking." "Are you goin' to make fun of me again?" "If I could even eat enough to keep a chicken alive I think I'd feel better," said Wash Sanders, looking far off down the road. "I never did make fun of you," the young fellow declared in a whisper, leaning close to the window. "And I wish you wouldn't keep on saying that I do." "I won't say it any more if you don't want me to." "But I can't eat and can't sleep, and that settles it," said Wash Sanders. "Of course I don't want you to say it. It makes me think that you are looking for an excuse not to like me." "Would you care very much if I didn't like you?" "If I had taken another slug of that Gum Springs doctor's stuff I couldn't have lived ten minutes longer," said Wash Sanders. And thus they talked until the sun was sinking into the tops of the trees, far down below the bend in the river. CHAPTER VII. At the Major's house the argument was still warm and vigorous. But the evening was come, and the bell-cow, home from her browsing, was ringing for admittance at the barn-yard gate. The priest arose to go. At that moment there was a heavy step at the end of the porch, the slow and ponderous tread of Jim Taylor. He strode in the shadow and in the gathering dusk recognition of him would not have been easy, but by his bulk and height they knew him. But he appeared to have lost a part of his great strength, and he drooped as he walked. "Where is the Major?" he asked, and his voice was hoarse. "Here, my boy. Why, what's the trouble?" "Let me see you a moment," he said, halting. The Major arose, and the giant, with one stride forward, caught him by the arm and led him away amid the black shadows under the trees. Mrs. Cranceford came out upon the porch and stood looking with cool disapproval upon the priest. At a window she had sat and heard him enunciate his views. Out in the yard Jim Taylor said something in a broken voice, and the Major, madly bellowing, came bounding toward the house. "Margaret," he cried, "Louise is married!" The woman started, uttered not a sound, but hastening to meet him, took him by the hand. Jim Taylor came ponderously walking from amid the black shadows. The Englishman and old Gid stole away. The priest stood calmly looking upon the old man and his wife. "John, come and sit down," she said. "Raving won't do any good. We must be seemly, whatever we are." She felt the eye of the priest. "Who told you, Mr. Taylor?" "The justice of the peace. They were married about an hour ago, less than half a mile from here." She led the Major to a chair, and he sat down heavily. "She shall never darken my door again," he declared, striving to stiffen his shoulders, but they drooped under his effort. "Don't say that, dear; don't say that. It is so cold and cruel." "But I do say it--ungrateful little wretch. It rises up within me and I can't keep from saying it." The priest stepped forward and raised his hand. "May the blessings of our Heavenly Father rest upon this household," he said. The woman looked a defiance at him. He bowed and was gone. Jim Taylor stood with his head hung low. Slowly he began to speak. "Major, you and your wife are humiliated, but I am heart-broken. You are afflicted with a sorrow, but I am struck down with grief. But I beg of you not to say that she shan't come home again. Her marriage doesn't alter the fact that she is your daughter. Her relationship toward you may not be so much changed, but to me she is lost. I beg you not to say she shan't come home again." Mrs. Cranceford tenderly placed her hand on the giant's arm. He shook under her touch. "I will say it and I mean it. She has put her feet on our love and has thrown herself away, and I don't want to see her again. I do think she is the completest fool I ever saw in my life. Yes, and we loved her so. And Tom--it will break his heart." In the dusk the wife's white hand was gleaming--putting back the gray hair from her husband's eyes. "And we still love her so, dear," she said. "What!" he cried, and now his shoulders stiffened. "What! do you uphold her?" "Oh, no, but I am sorry for her, and I am not going to turn against her simply because she has made a mistake. She has acted unwisely, but she has not disgraced herself." "Yes, she has disgraced herself and the rest of us along with her. She has married the dying son of a convict. I didn't want to tell you this--I told her----" This was like a slap in the face, and for a moment she was bereft of the cool dignity that had been so pronounced a characteristic of her quiet life. "If you didn't tell me before why do you tell me now?" was her reply. She stood back from him, regathering her scattered reserve, striving to be calm. "But it can't be helped now, John." Her gentle dignity reasserted itself. "Let time and the something that brightens hopes and softens fears gradually soothe our affliction." She had taken up the Major's manner of speech. "Mr. Taylor, I have never intimated such a thing to you before," she added, "but it was my hope that she might become your wife. There, my dear man, don't let it tear you so." The giant was shaken, appearing to be gnarled and twisted by her words, like a tree in a fierce wind. "I talked to her about you," she continued, "and it was my hope--but now let us be kind to her memory, if indeed we are to regard her simply as a memory." "Margaret," said the Major, getting up and throwing back his leonine head, "you are enough to inspire me with strength--you always have. But while you may teach me to bear a trouble, you can't influence me to turn counter to the demands of a just resentment. She shan't put her foot in this house again. Jim, you can find a more suitable woman, sir. Did you hear what became of them after that scoundrel married them? Who performed the ceremony? Morris? He must never put his foot in my yard again. I'll set the dogs on him. What became of them, Jim?" "I didn't hear, but I think that they must have driven to town in a buggy." "Well, it really makes no difference what became of them. Are you going, Jim?" "Yes, sir." "Won't you stay with us to-night?" "No, I thank you. It's better for me to be alone." He hesitated. "If you want me to I'll find out to-night where they've gone." "Oh, no, do nothing of the sort, for I assure you that it makes no difference. Let them go to the devil." "John, don't say that, please," his wife pleaded. "But I have said it. Well, if you are determined to go, good-night." "Good-night." Jim strode off into the darkness, but halted and turned about. "Major, if I can forgive her you ought to," he said. "You've got common sense to help you, but common sense was never known to help a man that's in my fix." They heard the gate open, heard the latch click behind him as he passed out into the road. Toward his lonely home he trod his heavy way, in the sand, in the rank weeds, picking not his course, stumbling, falling once to his knees. The air was full of the pungent scent of the walnut, turning yellow, and in it was a memory of Louise. Often had he seen her with her apron full of nuts that had fallen from the trees under which he now was passing. He halted and looked about him. The moon was rising and he saw some one sitting on a fence close by the road side. "Is that you, Jim?" a voice called. "Yes. Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Batts?" "Yep, just about. Hopped up here to smell the walnuts. Takes me away back. They took it pretty hard, didn't they?" "Yes, particularly the Major. His wife has more control over herself." "Or may be less affection," Gid replied. "They say she's strong, but I call her cold. Hold on and I'll walk with you." He got down off the fence and walked beside the giant. "She's a mighty strange woman to me," the old man said when they had walked for a time in silence. "But there's no question of the fact that she's strong, that is, as some people understand strength. To me, I gad, there is more force in affection than in restraint. She loves her children--no doubt about that--and of course she thinks the world of the Major, but somehow she misjudges people. She doesn't understand me at all. But I reckon the majority of men are too deep for a woman. I didn't want to see them in the throes of their trouble, and I says to the Englishman, 'it's time to git,' and we got. He wanted me to go over to his house and get some Scotch whisky. I told him that the last rain must have left some water in a hollow stump near my house, and that I preferred it to his out-landish drink. And hanged if he didn't think I was in earnest. Yes, sir, I knew that girl would marry him; and let me tell you, if I was a youngster I would rather have her love than the love of any woman I ever saw. There's something about her I never saw in any other woman--I gad, she's got character; understand me? She ain't beautiful, hardly handsome, but there's something about her, hanged if I know what it is. But it's something; and I've always found that the strongest charm about a woman is a something that you can't exactly catch--something that is constantly on the dodge. And you bet I've had lots of experience. The Major could tell you many a story on me. Yes, sir. Say, Jim, I know how you feel over this affair, and I want you to understand that I'm your friend, first, last and all the time. I've been trying to talk up to the right place, but now I don't exactly know what to say." "Don't say anything, Uncle Gideon." "I reckon that would be about the wisest plan. Just wanted to let you know where to find me. Strange things happen even in this quiet community, don't they? But I'm woefully sorry that this special thing has happened. I gad, the Major snorted so loud that my horse broke loose from the post, and that's the reason I'm stepping around here like a blind dog in a meat house. Begin pickin' to-morrow, I reckon?" "I don't know. I had made all my arrangements, but now after what's happened I don't care whether there's a boll picked or not. I'm let down." "Don't feel that way, old fellow. You'll be all right in a day or two." "Mr. Batts, if I didn't know that you were trying to soothe me I would take that remark as an insult. If I thought I wasn't any more steadfast than to be all right in a day or two--if I really believed my character that light, I swear I'd go this minute and drown myself." "Why, my dear boy, you know I didn't mean to infer that your heart had no more memory than that. What I meant was that your sense of resignation would demand a hearing, so to speak. Let me tell you something. I understand that girl better than her father or mother does--I have made her a special study, and I want to tell you that when I take the trouble to throw my mind on a woman a mystery has to be cleared right then and there. And this is what I want to say: She has married that fellow out of pity. I don't believe she loves him. Always was ruled by pity. Recollect hearing the Major tell of a sudden streak of misfortune that overtook his family when he was a child. His father had to sell several of his slaves, and his old black mammy stood on the block with him in her arms while they were auctioning her off. Well, sir, Louise cried about that fit to kill herself. We told her how long ago it had happened, and impressed on her the fact that the old woman was soon bought back, but she kept on crying over the cruelty of the thing. Yes, sir. Well, I turn off here. Good night." In the dark the Major walked about the yard mournfully calling Tom. A negro woman said that she had seen him going down the road, and the old gentleman returned to the porch and sat down. In the sitting room a lamp was burning, and a patch of light fell about his chair. He wanted to tell the young man of the trouble that had fallen upon the household, and yet he dreaded to hear his footstep. Tom was so proud of his sister, had always looked up to her, had regarded her whims as an intellectual diversion; and now what a disappointment. How sadly would his heart be wrung. From a distant room came the pling-plang of a banjo. "There's Tom, Margaret. Will you please tell him to come here? I don't want to see him in the light." Mrs. Cranceford hastened to obey, and the Major sat listening. He pushed his chair back out of the patch of light. The banjo hushed its twanging, and then he heard Tom coming. The young man stepped out upon the porch. His mother halted in the doorway. "Tom," said the Major, "I have a desperate piece of news, and I wish I could break it to you gently, but there is no way to lead up to it. Your sister has married Carl Pennington." "Yes, so Jim Taylor told me. Met him in the road a while ago. I didn't know that there was anything of the sort on hand. Must have kept it mighty quiet. I suppose----" "What, you suppose! What the deuce can you suppose! Stand there supposing when I tell you that she has married a dying man." The old gentleman flounced in his chair. "She has thrown herself away and I tell you of it and you want to suppose. What's the matter with you? Have you lost all your pride and your sense? She has married a dying man, I tell you." The young fellow began awkwardly to twist himself about. He looked at his mother, standing in the door with the light pouring about her, but her eyes were turned from him, gazing far away into the deepening night. "I know they might think he's dying," he said, "but they might be mistaken. Sometimes they believe a man's dying and he keeps on living. Wash Sanders----" "Go back to your banjo, you idiot!" the Major shouted. "I'll swear this beats any family on the face of the earth." He got up, knocking over his chair. "Go on. Don't stand there trying to splutter an explanation of your lack of sense! No wonder you have always failed to pass an examination. Not a word, Margaret. I know what you are going to say: Beats any family on the face of the earth." CHAPTER VIII. On the morrow there was a song and a chant in the cotton fields. Aged fingers and youthful hands were eager with grabbing the cool, dew-dampened fleece of the fields. The women wore bandana handkerchiefs, and picturesquely down the rows their red heads were bobbing. Whence came their tunes, so quaintly weird, so boisterous and yet so full of melancholy? The composer has sought to catch them, has touched them with his refining art and has spoiled them. The playwright has striven to transfer from the field to the stage a cotton-picking scene and has made a travesty of it. To transfer the passions of man and to music-riddle them is an art with stiff-jointed rules, but the charm of a cotton-picking scene is an essence, and is breathed but cannot be caught. Here seems to lie a sentiment that no other labor invites, and though old with a thousand endearments, it is ever an opera rehearsed for the first time. But this is the view that may be taken only by the sentimentalist, the poet loitering along the lane. To him it is a picture painted to delight the eye, to soothe the nerves, to inspire a pastoral ode. There is, however, another side. At the edge of the field where the cotton is weighed, stands the planter watching the scales. His commercial instincts might have been put to dreamy sleep by the appearance of the purple bloom, but it is keenly aroused by the opening boll. He is influenced by no song, by no color fantastically bobbing between the rows. He is alert, determined not to be cheated. Too much music might cover a rascally trick, might put a clod in the cotton to be weighed. Sentiment is well enough, and he can get it by turning to Walter Scott. None of the planters was shrewder than the Major. In his community he was the business as well as the social model. He was known to be brave and was therefore expected to be generous. His good humor was regarded as an echo of his prosperity, and a lucky negro, winning at dice, would strive to imitate his manner. At planting, at plowing and at gathering, no detail was too small or too illusive to escape his eye. His interests were under a microscopic view and all plans that were drawn in the little brick office at the corner of the yard, were rigorously carried out in the fields. In the one place he was all business; in the other there was in him an admixture of good humor and executive thoroughness. He knew how many pounds of cotton a certain man or woman was likely to pick within the working hours of a day, and he marked the clean and the trashy pickers; and the play of his two-colored temperament was seen in his jovial banter of the one and his harsh reprimand of the other. But to-day a hired man stood at the scales to see the cotton weighed. The Major walked abroad throughout the fields. As he drew near, the negroes hushed their songs and their swaggering talk. They bowed respectfully to him and to one another whispered his affliction. At noon, when he returned home, the housekeeper told him that his wife was away. He sat down in the library to wait for her. Looking out he saw Sallie Pruitt carrying a jug across the yard. A few moments later he asked for Tom and was told that he had just left the house. He tried to read, but nothing interested him. There was nothing but dullness in the newspaper and even Ivanhoe had lost his charm. It was nearly three o'clock when Mrs. Cranceford returned. He did not ask whither she had gone; he waited to be told. She sat down, taking off her gloves. "Did you see Mr. Perdue?" she asked. "No, I have seen no one. Don't care much to see any one." "I didn't know but you might have met him. He was here this morning. Told me about Louise." "What does he know about her?" "He told me where she had gone to live--in that old log house at the far end of the Anthony place." "Well, go on, I'm listening." "I didn't know that you cared to hear." "Then why did you begin to tell me?" She did not answer this question. She waited for him to say more. "Of course I'd like to know what has become of her." "I went over to see her," said Mrs. Cranceford. "The deuce you did." "John, don't talk that way." "I won't. You went to see her." "Yes, and in that miserable house, all open, she is nursing her dying husband." The Major got up and began to walk about the room. "Don't, Margaret, I'd rather not hear about it." "But you must hear. No place could be more desolate. The wind was moaning in the old plum thicket. The gate was down and hogs were rooting in the yard. Louise did not hear me as I drove up, the wind was moaning so distressfully among the dead plum bushes--she did not know that I was on the place until I entered the room where she sat at the bedside of her husband. She jumped up with a cry and----" "Margaret, please don't." "I must tell you, John. I will tell you. She jumped up with a cry and ran to me, and started to take off my cloak, but remembering that there was no fire in the damp room, she let it stay on. She tried to speak, but couldn't. Her husband held out his waxen hand, and when I took it I shuddered with the cold chill it sent through me." "Margaret, I am going out," said the Major, turning toward the door. "If you do, John, I will go with you and tell you as we walk along. Please sit down." He sat down with an air of helplessness. He fumbled with his fingers, which seemed to have grown thicker; he moved his foot as if it were a heavy weight. His wife continued: "In the room there was scarcely any furniture, nothing to soften the appearance of bleakness. I asked why no fire had been made, and Louise said that she had engaged a negro to cut some wood, but that he had gone away. She had paid him in advance. She would herself have kindled a fire, but there was no axe on the place, and she was afraid to leave her husband long enough to go to the woods to gather sticks. I went out and found the negro dozing in the sun. He was impudent when I spoke to him, but when I told him my name and threatened him with you, he scuffled to his feet and sauntered off, and I thought that we should see no more of him, but soon we heard the lazy strokes of his axe. And shortly afterward we had a fire. Louise was in one of her silent moods, but Pennington talked as much as his cough would permit him. He said that it was all his fault. 'I told her,' said he, 'that unless she married me I would die blaspheming the name of God, and that if she would save me from hell she must be my wife. I know that it was selfish and mean, but I couldn't help it. And so she has married me to save my soul.' He grew excited and I tried to calm him. I told him that you were angry at first, but that now you were in a better humor toward him." "Margaret----" "This appeared to help him, but I saw that Louise did not believe me. However, I commanded her to come home and bring her husband with her. But she shook her head and declared that she would never again enter your house until she could in some way discharge the debt of gratitude with which you reproached her, which she says you flaunted in her face at a time when she was greatly distressed." "What! I don't exactly understand." "Yes, you do, dear. You reminded her that you had saved her life, and told her that you based your plea for obedience upon your own gallantry." "Oh, that was a piece of mere nonsense, a theatrical trick. Of course I don't deserve any credit for having saved the life of my own child." "It may have been a theatrical trick with you, but it wasn't with her. She keenly feels your reproach." "Confound it, you are both making a monster of me." "No, dear, that is not our design." "Our design! Have you too, set yourself against me? Let me go to old Gideon. He's the only friend I've got." "John, you mustn't say that. And why, at this time, should you refer to that old sinner? But let me go on. While I was there the doctor came, and shortly afterward we heard a heavy tread on the flapping boards of the passageway that divides the two sections of the old house." "Jim Taylor," said the Major. "Yes, Jim Taylor. Louise jumped up in a flutter. He didn't take any notice of her excitement. 'I heard that you were living here,' he said, 'and knowing what sort of an old place it is, I've come to see if I can be of any use to you.' Here he looked about at the cracks in the walls and the holes in the roof. 'And you'll pardon me,' he went on, 'but I took the liberty to bring a carpenter along to patch up things a little. That's him out there at work on the gate.' Louise began to cry. He pretended not to notice her. 'It won't take long to make this a very comfortable place,' he went on, 'and I hope you won't feel offended, but I have brought some young chickens and a squirrel or two--in a basket out there in the kitchen. I always was a sort of a neighborly fellow you know.' 'You are the best man in the world,' Louise broke out. 'No, not in the world, but I reckon I can stand flat-footed and lift with the most of them,' he replied, assuming that he thought she referred to his strength. 'Yes,' he continued, 'and the boys will be here pretty soon with the wagon to haul you some wood. And I hope you'll pardon me again, but nothing would do old Aunt Nan but she must come over to cook for you and help you take care of Mr. Pennington until he gets about again. She's the best cook in the whole country. You know the governor of the state once said that she could beat anybody frying a chicken, and----'" "Confound his impudence!" exclaimed the Major, grinding the floor as he wheeled about, "he's performing the offices that belong to me. And I won't stand it." "The offices that did belong to you, dear, but you have washed your hands of them." "Have I? Well, we'll see about that. I'll send over there and have everything put to rights. No, I'll send the carriage and have them brought home. I'll be--I say I won't be made a scape-goat of in this way. Why, confound----" "John." "Yes, I understand, but I won't put up with it any longer. I'll send Tom over there--I'll send the law over there and bring them home under arrest." She shook her head. "No, it will be of no use to send for them. Louise will not come, and you know she won't. Besides, we can make her just as comfortable there as here. It will not be for long, so let her have her own way." "By the blood, she has had it!" "John, have you forgotten that you are a member of the church?" "That's all right. But do you mean by member of the church that I am to draw in my head like a high-land terrapin every time anything is said to me? Am I to be brow-beaten by everybody just because I belong to the church? Oh, it's a happy day for a woman when she can squash her husband with the church. I gad, it seems that all a married woman wants with a church is to hit her husband on the head with it." "John, now you are the echo of old Gid." "I'm not and you know it, but there are times when a man would be excusable for being the echo of the devil. But for gracious sake don't cry. Enough to make a man butt his head against the wall. Just as a man thinks a woman is stronger than a lion she tunes up and cries. There, Margaret, let it all go. There." He put his arm about her. "Everything will come out all right. I am wrong and I confess it. I am bull-headed and as mean as a dog." "No, you are not," she protested, wiping her eyes. "Yes, I am and I see it now. You are always right. And you may manage this affair just as you see fit. Poor little girl. But never mind, it will all come right. Let us walk down the lane. It is beautiful down there. The frost has painted things up for you; the sumac bushes are flaming and the running briars on the fences are streams of fire. Come on." He took her by the hand and led her away. CHAPTER IX. Within a few days a great change was wrought in the appearance of the old log house. The roof, which had been humped in the middle like the back of a lean, acorn-hunting hog, was straightened and reshingled; the yard was enclosed with a neat fence; and the stack chimney which had leaned off from the house as if it would fall, was shoved back and held in place with strong iron bands. And the interior was transformed. Soft carpets were spread, easy chairs provided, the rough walls were papered and the windows were curtained. The fire-light fell upon pictures, and a cat had come to take her place at the corner of the hearth; but in the dead of night, when all the birds were hushed, when the wind moaned in the plum thicket, the hollow and distressing cough echoed throughout the house. At evening sorrowful-looking cows would come down the lane, and standing at the gate would low mournfully, an attention which they ever seek to pay a dismal place, but Jim Taylor entered a complaint, threatened violence and finally compelled their owners to have them driven home before the arrival of their time for lonesome lowing. It was Jim's custom to call at morning and at evening. Sometimes, after looking about the place, he would merely come to the door and ask after Mr. Pennington and then go away. One morning when Louise answered his tap at the door, she told him that the sufferer was much better and that she believed he was going to get well. "I'm mighty glad to hear it," he replied. "The doctors can't always tell." "Won't you come in?" "No, I might worry him." "Oh, not in the least. He's asleep anyway, and I'm lonesome. Come in, please." He followed her into the house, trying to lessen his weight as if he were walking on thin ice; and the old house cracked its knuckles, but his foot-fall made not a sound. She placed a chair for him and sat down with her hands in her lap, and how expressive they were, small and thin, but shapely. She was pale and neat in a black gown. To him she had never looked so frail, and her eyes had never appeared so deeply blue, but her hands--he could not keep his eyes off them--one holding pity and the other full of appeal. "Don't you need a little more wood on?" he asked. "No, it's not cold enough for much fire." "Where did you get that cat?" "She came crying around the other day and I let her in, and she has made herself at home." "The negroes say it's good luck for a cat to come to the house." She sighed. "I don't believe in luck." "I do. I believe in bad luck, for it's generally with me. Does your mother come every day?" "Yes, although I beg her not to." "I reckon she'll do about what she wants to. Has the Major----" She held up her hand and he sat looking at her with his mouth half open. But at the risk of offending her, he added: "I didn't know but he might have come over." "He would, but I won't let him." "And do you think it's exactly right not to let him?" "I think it is exactly right to do as a something within me dictates," she answered. "He placed me in a certain position----" "But he is more than willing to take you out of it," Taylor broke in. "He doesn't want you to remain in that position." "No, he can't take me out of it. He charged me with ingratitude, and I would rather he had driven me off the place. Nothing can be much crueler than to remind one of ingratitude; it is like shooting from behind a rock; it is having one completely at your mercy." Now she sat leaning forward with her hands clasped over her knees. Pennington coughed slightly in his sleep and she looked toward the bed. She straightened up and put the hair back out of her eyes and Taylor followed the motion of her hand. "Did he eat the squirrel?" "Yes, and enjoyed it." The cat got up, stretched, and rubbing against the tongs, knocked them down with a clatter. Pennington awoke. Louise was beside him in a moment. "Ah, it's you, Mr. Taylor," he said. "Yes, but it wasn't me that made the noise." "Oh, it didn't disturb me, I assure you. I was just about waking up anyway. That will do, thank you." Louise had begun to arrange the pillows. "I'll sit up. See how strong I am. Give me a pipe. I believe I can smoke a little." She went to fill a pipe for him, and turning to Taylor, he said: "I'm getting stronger now every day; good appetite, sleep first-rate. And I'll be able to walk about pretty soon. Oh, they had me dead, you know, but I knew better all the time." Louise placed a coal upon his pipe and handed it to him. She said that she was afraid it might make him cough, but it did not. "I have always maintained that there was nothing the matter with my lungs," he said, contentedly blowing rings of smoke. "Why, I hadn't a symptom of consumption except the cough, and that's about gone. And my prospects were never better than they are this minute. Received a letter yesterday from over in Alabama--want me to take a professorship in a college. The first thing you know I shall have charge of the entire institution. And when I get up in the world I want it understood, Mr. Taylor, that I shall never forget you. Your kindness----" "Don't speak of it," Taylor put in, holding up his hand in imitation of Louise. "I've known this little lady, sir, all her life, and I'd be a brute to forget her in time of trouble." "Yon are a true-hearted man, Mr. Taylor, and I shall never forget you, sir." And after a short silence, he added: "All I desire is a chance, for with it, I can make Louise happy. I need but little money, I should not know how to disport a large fortune, but I do desire a comfortable home with pictures and books. And I thank the Lord that I appreciate the refinements of this life." In silence he smoked, looking up at the rings. "Ah, but it was dark for me a short time ago, Mr. Taylor. They made me believe that I was going to die. We hear a great deal of resignation, of men who welcome the approach of death, but I was in despair. And looking upon a strong man, a man whose strength was thrown upon him, a man who had never thought to take even the slightest care of himself, I was torn with blasphemous rage. It wasn't right. But thank God, I lived through that dark period, and am now getting well. Don't you think so?" "Why, yes, I can see it. And I'll tell you what we'll do: I'll bring over the dogs pretty soon and we'll go hunting. How does that strike you?" Pennington propped himself higher in the bed and put his pipe on a chair. "It has been a long time since I went hunting," he said, musingly. "It seems a long time since I have done anything, except to brood over my failing health. But I will have no more of that. Yes, I will go hunting with you." He shoved up the sleeve of his shirt and called his wife's attention. "Don't you think I'm getting more flesh on my arm? Look here. No dying man has this much muscle. Louise, I'm going to get up. There is really no use of my lying here." He threw off the covers and the giant arose and stood looking upon him, smiling sadly. He asked for his clothes, and when Louise had brought them he picked at a worn spot and said: "I must get some clothes with the first money I earn. I didn't know that this coat was so far gone. Why, look, it is almost threadbare; and the trousers are not much better. Let a man get sick and he feels that the world is against him; let him get well and wear poor clothes, and he will find that the world doesn't think enough of him to set itself against him--find that the world does not know him at all." Taylor ventured upon the raveled platitude that clothes do not make the man. Pennington shook his head, still examining his trousers. "That will do in a copy-book, but not in life," said he. And then looking up as Taylor moved toward the door, he asked: "Are you going?" "Yes, I must get back to see how things are getting along. Be over again to-morrow." Louise went with him out into the passage. He halted at the log step and stood there, looking at her. "Mr. Taylor, I can never forget your kindness," she said. "All right, but I hope you won't remember to mention it again." He looked at her hands, looked into her eyes; and frankly she returned his gaze, for it was a gaze long and questioning. "Your friendship----" he held up his hand to stop her. "Won't you let me speak of that, either?" "You may speak of it, but you must know that it does not exist," he answered, leaning against a corner of the house, still looking at her. "But you don't mean that you are not my friend?" "I mean what I told you some time ago--that there can be no friendship between a big man and a little woman." "Oh, I had forgotten that." "No, you hadn't; you thought of it just then as you spoke." "Why, Mr. Taylor, how can you say that?" "I can say it because it is true. No, there can be no friendship between us." "You surely don't mean that there can be anything else." She had drawn back from him and was stiffly erect with her arms folded, her head high; and so narrow was the hard look she gave him that her eyes appeared smaller. Her lips were so tightly compressed that dimples showed in her cheeks; and thus with nature's soft relics of babyhood, she denied her own resentment. "On your part I don't presume that there can be anything else," he answered, speaking the words slowly, as if he would weigh them one at a time on the tip of his tongue. "You may think of me as you please, as circumstances now compel you to think, and I will think of you not as I please, but as I must." "Please don't talk that way. Don't reproach me when I am in such need of--of friendship. One of these days you may know me better, but now you can regard me only as a freak. Yes, I am a freak." "You are an angel." "Mr. Taylor!" Again her head was high, and in her eyes was the same suggestion of a sharp squint. "You didn't tell me that I shouldn't think of you as I please." "But I didn't tell you to speak what you might be pleased to think. There, Carl is calling me. Good-bye." CHAPTER X. Jim Taylor, too humane to impose the burden of his weight upon a horse, always made his visits on foot, and this day while trudging homeward, he met Mrs. Cranceford. She had of late conceived so marked a sympathy for him, that her manner toward him was warmly gentle. Taylor stepped to the road-side and halted there as she drove up alone in a buggy. With a sorrowful reverence he took off his hat, and she smiled sympathetically; and the lazy old horse, appearing to understand it all, stopped of his own accord. "Good morning, Jim. Have you been over to the house?" "Yes, ma'm, just left there." "How is he?" "So much better that I believe he's going to get well." "You don't say so! Why, I am----" she was about to say that she was delighted to hear it, but on the giant's face she thought she saw a deeper shadow lying, heard in his voice a softer note of sorrow; and considerately she checked her intended utterance. Then they looked at each other and were ashamed. "He was up dressing himself when I left." "You surprise me." "And he has surprised us all, ma'm. I don't believe he's got consumption; his cough has left him. Why, he's thinking of taking a place in a college over in Alabama." "He is? But I hope he won't take Louise so far from home." He shifted his position and sunk his hands deep into his pockets. "I guess he thinks she can't be so very far from home as long as she is with him." "But it makes no difference what he thinks." Mrs. Cranceford persisted. "He must not take her over there. Why, I should think he could find employment here." Jim looked far away, and she added: "Is your cotton turning out well?" "First-rate, and I want to sell it as soon as I can. I've got to go away." "Go away!" she repeated. "You don't mean it?" "Yes, ma'm, I do. If he gets well they won't have any more use for me and I might as well go off somewhere and take a fresh start; and besides, I can't keep from showing that I love her, and no matter how cool she might be toward me it couldn't help but pain him. And there are people in this neighborhood mean enough to talk about it: No longer ago than yesterday that strapping Alf Joyner threw out a hint of this sort, and although he meant it in fun, maybe, I snatched him off the fence where he was sitting, and walloped him in the road. No, I can't keep from showing how much I think of her; there is so much of me," he added, with a smile, "that I can't be a hypercrite all over at once." At this she smiled, but her countenance grew serious and she said: "I am sorry you have been compelled to resent an insinuation." She gathered up the lines. "But perhaps you imagine more than is intended. It is easy, and also natural that you should." Jim made no reply. She bowed to him, shook the lines, and the old horse moved on. Just before reaching a bend in the road, she looked back at him. How powerful was his bearing, how strong his stride; and with all his bigness he was not ungraceful. Everywhere, in the fields, along the fences, lay October's wasteful ripeness, but the season was about to turn, for the bleak corner of November was in sight. A sharp wind blew out of a cloud that hung low over the river, and far away against the darkening sky was a gray triangle traced, the flight of wild geese from the north. With the stiffening and the lagging of the breeze came lower and then louder the puffing of a cotton gin. Under a persimmon tree Jim Taylor halted, and with his arms resting on a fence he stood dreamily looking across a field. Afar off the cotton pickers were bobbing between the rows. The scene was more dull than bright; to a stranger it would have been dreary, the dead level, the lone buzzard away over yonder, sailing above the tops of the ragged trees; but for this man the view was overspread with a memory of childhood. He was meditating upon leaving his home; he felt that his departure was demanded. And yet he knew that not elsewhere could he find contentment. Amid such scenes he had been born and reared. He was like the deer--would rather feed upon the rough oak foliage of a native forest than to feast upon the rich grasses of a strange land. But he had made up his mind to go. He had heard of the charm of the hills, the valleys and the streams in the northern part of the state, and once he had gone thither to acquaint himself with that paradise, but in disappointment he had come back, bringing the opinion that the people were cold and unconcerned in the comfort and the welfare of a stranger. So, with this experience fresh in his mind, he was resolved not to re-settle in his own commonwealth, but to go to a city, though feeling his unfitness for urban life. But he thought, as so many men and women have been forced to think, that life in a crowd would invite forgetfulness, that his slow broodings would find a swift flow into the tide that swallows the sad thoughts of men. A sudden noise in the road broke the web of his musing, and looking about, he recognized Low, the Englishman. Between his teeth the Briton held his straight-stem pipe, and on his shoulder he carried his bath tub. "Moving?" Taylor asked. "Ah, good morning. No--not moving. An outrage has been committed. During the night someone punched a hole in the bottom of my bath. Don't know who could have done it; most extraordinary, I assure you. One of those ungrateful blacks, I warrant. Going this way? I shall be glad of your company. Ah, do you happen to know of a tinker?" he asked, as together they walked along the road. "A what?" "A tinker to mend my bath?" "Haven't any such thing about here, but I guess the blacksmith can mend your tub. Here, let me carry it for you a ways. You must be tired of it by this time." He protested, but Taylor took the tub. "Thank you. You are very kind, I'm sure. I would have sent it, but these rascals are so untrustworthy. Ah, how long do you conjecture it would take one to make his fortune in this community?" "It depends more upon the man than the community," Taylor answered. "I know one that never could." "And by Jove, I fancy I have a very intimate acquaintance with another. But I rather like it here, you know. I have plenty of room and no one is much disposed to interfere with me except those rascally blacks, and upon my honor I believe they tried to ruin my bath. Don't you think you'd better let me take it now?" "No; I'll carry it. Wouldn't have known I had it if you hadn't reminded me." "You are very kind, I'm sure. Ah, by the way, a very singular man called on me yesterday. Mayo, I believe, is his name." "Yes, we know him down here. Came very near getting a dose of rope once. He tries to be a Moses among the negroes, but instead of leading them out of the wilderness he's going to lead them into trouble." "I dare say as much, if they listen to him. But he avers that he doesn't want an office--wants only to see that the blacks get what they are entitled to." "And about the first thing that will be done for him after he gets what he's entitled to," Jim replied, "will be the sending of his measure to a coffin maker." "I surmise as much, I assure you. I didn't encourage him to prolong his visit; indeed, I told him that I preferred to be alone." They turned out of the lane into a wood, crossed a bayou, and pursuing their way a short distance further, Taylor halted, and handing the Englishman his tub, pointed to a path that crossed the road. "That will take you to the blacksmith shop," he said. "Ah, you are very kind," Low replied, shouldering his treasure. He turned down the path, but after going a short distance stopped and faced about. "I say, there!" he cried. "Oh, Taylor. Just a moment. I wouldn't mind having you over any evening, you know. You are a devilish decent fellow." "All right; you may look for me most any time. Take you out 'possum hunting some night." Low was now humping himself down the path, and Taylor turned to pursue his way homeward, when once more the Englishman faced about and shouted: "You are very kind, I'm sure. I shall be delighted." Jim Taylor was master of a small plantation and sole inhabiter of the house wherein he was born. In the garden, under a weeping-willow tree, were the graves of his parents and of his sister, a little girl, recalled with emotion--at night when a high wind was blowing, for she had ever been afraid of a storm; and she died on a day when a fierce gale up the river blew down a cottonwood tree in the yard. She and Louise were as sisters. At her grave the giant often sat, for she was a timid little creature, afraid to be alone; and sometimes at night when the wind was hard, when a cutting sleet was driving, he would get out of his bed and stand under the tree to be near her. It was so foolishly sentimental of so strong a man that he would not have dared to tell anyone, but to the child in the grave he told his troubles. So, on this morning, when the wind was gathering its forces as it swept the fields, as the clouds were thickening far away among the whitish tops of the dead cypress trees, he went straightway to the weeping-willow, passed the grave of his father, his mother, and sat down beside the stone that bore the name and the age of the little one. CHAPTER XI. When Mrs. Cranceford returned home early in the afternoon, she told the Major, whom she found pacing up and down the long porch, that Pennington was up and walking about the house. She told him, also, that he was resolved upon taking Louise to Alabama, and added that she herself would oppose this determination up to the very moment of departure. The Major grunted. "What right have you to do that?" he asked. "Why should you meddle with the affairs of a man that is seeking to make a living for his wife?" "John, you are laughing at me and I know it. Here lately you make light of everything I say." The season was changing, he felt its influence, and he shook with good humor as he walked. "John, you are so tickled that you can't answer me." "Why, I could answer you very easily if I only knew what you want me to say." This broke her whimsical resentment of his droll playfulness; she laughed with him, and taking his arm, walked up and down the porch. They talked of many things--of Louise's persistent stubbornness, and of a growing change in the conduct of Tom--his abstraction and his gentleness. He had left uncut the leaves of a sporting review, had taken to romances, and in his room had been found, sprawled on foolscap, an ill-rhymed screed in rapturous praise of soulful eyes and flaxen hair. Mrs. Cranceford knew that he must be in love; so did the Major, but he could not conjecture the object of so fervid a passion. But his wife had settled upon the object and was worried, though of her distress she had not spoken to Tom, so recent had been the discovery of the tell-tale blotch of ink. But she would as soon as an opportunity offered. "It will soon pass," said the Major. "I don't think he intends to marry her." "Marry her!" his wife exclaimed. "I would rather see him dead than married into a family of white trash. She may be a most amiable young person and all that, but he shan't marry her. It would break my heart, and I vow she shall never come here. Why, she came from the pine woods and is a cracker." "But the cracker may have a most gallant and well-born origin, my dear," the Major replied. "The victim of a king's displeasure is not insignificant; he must have been a force." "What! Do you approve of it?" she demanded, pulling away from him. "Is it possible that you would not oppose his marriage into such a family as hers must be?" "I don't think, my dear, that her father was in the penitentiary." "John, that is unworthy of you. I was grieved at Louise's marriage, and you know it." In prankishness he sought a refuge; he laughed, but she did not follow him. For a moment her black eyes were hard, then came a look of distress--and tears. He put his arm about her. "Why, my dear, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings; bless your life, I didn't. Why, of course, he shan't marry her. Who ever heard of such a thing? I'll talk to him--thrash him if you say the word. There, it's all right. Why, here comes Gid." She went into the house as Batts came up, glancing back at him as she passed through the door; and in her eyes there was nothing as soft as a tear. The old fellow winced, as he nearly always did when she gave him a direct look. "Are you all well?" Gideon asked, lifting the tails of his long coat and seating himself in a rocking chair. "First-rate," the Major answered, drawing forward another rocker; and when he had sat down, he added: "Somewhat of an essence of November in the air." "Yes," Gid assented; "felt it in my joints before I got up this morning." From his pocket he took a plug of tobacco. "I thought you'd given up chewing," said the Major. "Last time I saw you I understood you to say that you had thrown your tobacco away." "I did, John; but, I gad, I watched pretty close where I threw it. Fellow over here gave me some stuff that he said would cure me of the appetite, and I took it until I was afraid it would, and then threw it away. I find that when a man quits tobacco he hasn't anything to look forward to. I quit for three days once, and on the third day, about the time I got up from the dinner table, I asked myself: 'Well, now, got anything to come next?' And all I could see before me was hours of hankering; and I gad, I slapped a negro boy on a horse and told him to gallop over to the store and fetch me a hunk of tobacco. And after I broke my resolution I thought I'd have a fit there in the yard waiting for that boy to come back. I don't believe that it's right for a man to kill any appetite that the Lord has given him. Of course I don't believe in the abuse of a good thing, but it's better to abuse it a little sometimes than not to have it at all. If virtue consists in deadening the nervous system to all pleasurable influences, why, you may just mark my name off the list. There was old man Haskill. I sat up with him the night after he died, and one of the men with me was harping upon the great life the old fellow had lived--never chewed, never smoked, never was drunk, never gambled, never did anything except to stand still and be virtuous--and I couldn't help but feel that he had lost nothing by dying. Haven't seen Louise, have you?" "No; but I have about made up my mind to go over there, whether she wants me or not." "I believe I would, John. We haven't long to stay here, and nothing sweetens our sojourn like forgiveness. I don't mean it in sacrilege, but Christ was greatest and closest to His Father when he forgave the thief." "That's true," said the Major. "You may not be able to think very coherently, Gid, but sometimes you stroll into a discussion and bark the shins of thought." "Easy, John. I am a thinker. My mind is full of pictures when your fancy is checkered with red and blue lines. So you are willing to forgive her?" he added after a pause. "Yes, more than willing. But she isn't ready to be forgiven. She has some very queer notions, and I'll be hanged if I know where she picked them up. At times she's most unnatural." "Don't say that, John. I gad, sir, what right has one person to say that another person is unnatural? Who of us is appointed to set up the standard and gauge of naturalness? Who is wholly consistent? You may say the average man. Ah, but if everyone conformed to the average there would be nothing great in the world. There is no greater bore than the well-balanced man. He wears us out with his evenness. You know what he's going to say before he says it." "I grant you all that; but the well-balanced man made it possible for the genius to make the world great. Genius is the bloom that bursts out at the top of commonplace humanity." "Yes, that's all very well; but just at present I'd like to have a little liquor. Be easy, though, and don't let the madam know what you're after." "There's not a drop in the house, Gid, but there's a demijohn in the office. Let's step out there." "No, I believe not, John," the old fellow replied, with a shudder. "Can't you bring it out?" "She'll see me if I do. You must go with me. Whisky that's not worth going after is not worth drinking." "You are right, John; but you have stated one of those truths that are never intended to be used except in the absence of something else that might have been said. Plain truths are tiresome, John. They never lend grace to a conversation." "What do you know about the graces of conversation? You are better fitted to talk of the disgraces of conduct." "Slow, John. But I know that a truth to be interesting must be whimsical or so blunt that it jolts." "But didn't it jolt you when I said that you must go into the office after the liquor?" "Yes; but cruelly, John. You must never jolt cruelly. I gad, I'm getting old. Do you realize that we have known each other intimately for thirty-five years?" Mrs. Cranceford came out upon the porch. "Ah," said old Gid, without changing his tone, and as if he were continuing a moral discourse, "thirty-five years ago we heard an old circuit-rider preach at Gum Springs, and while we could not subscribe to his fiery doctrine, being inclined to the broader and more enlightened faith of the Episcopal church, yet the fervor and sincerity of his utterances made a lasting impression on us. Madam, I hear with much pleasure that Mr. Pennington is better." "Yes, he is feeling quite improved," she replied, merely glancing at him. "Did the Major think enough of him to tell you?" The Major looked at Gid, winked at him, and the old fellow believing that he knew what was wanted, thus answered: "Yes, ma'am, but I first heard it from the priest. He knows everything, it seems. I met him down the road and had quite a talk with him. By the way, I read a number of years ago a most edifying book, 'The Prince of the House of David.' You doubtless have it in your collection, and may I ask you to lend it to me?" She had but small faith in the old fellow's sincerity, and yet she was pleased to see him manifest an interest in so godly a book. "Yes, and I will get it for you," she answered, going straightway to look for it; and when she had passed through the door, Gid snatched a bottle out of his pocket and held it out toward the Major. "Here, John, hurry out there and fill this up while she's gone. Meet me around at the gate. Quick!" "Why, you old rascal, do you suppose me capable of complicity in such a fraud?" "Oh, that's all right, John. Hurry up. I could get liquor, plenty of it, but yours always hits me where I live. I'm sick, I tell you, and hang it, I'm getting old. You don't seem to realize that I'm an old man, not long for this vain world. Take it, John, and hurry up. Confound it, you won't be deceiving her; it would be an advantage taken of her unreasonable prejudice. You never saw me drunk and never will. Thunderation, here she comes!" He stuffed the bottle back into his hip pocket and the Major threw himself back with a loud laugh. Mrs. Cranceford, handing the book to Gid, cast a suspicious look at the Major, who continued to shake. "Why, what has amused you so?" she asked. And now old Gid was nodding and chuckling in hypocritical diversion. "I was just telling him of the first time I borrowed a copy of this book," he said. "Walked four miles to get it, and when I returned, some rascal had greased the foot-log and I slipped off into the creek. Oh, it's very funny now, but it wasn't then; had to fight to keep from losing the book and came within one of drowning. Well, I must go. Ma'am, I'm a thousand times obliged to you for this store-house of faith, and I assure you that I'll take the best of care that it shall come back to you in good condition. By the way, John, is your office locked? I'll step out there and get that paper." "Yes, it's locked. I'll go with you." "Oh, never mind. Let me have the key." "But you can't find the paper." "Well, let it go; I can get it some other time." The Major, slyly shaking, walked with him to the end of the porch. "You've played thunder," the old fellow whispered. "I didn't think it of you. I gad, every chance you get you hoist me on your hip and slam the life out of me. Sick as a dog, too. Again, ma'am," he added, turning about, "let me thank you for this book. And Major," he said aloud, and "damn you," he breathed, "I hope to see you over my way soon." He swore at his horse as he mounted, and throwing back a look of reproach, he jogged off down the road. But he had not proceeded more than a mile when a boy, urging a galloping horse, overtook him and gave him a bundle; and therein he found a bottle of whisky, with these words written in red ink and pasted on the glass: "You are an old fool." CHAPTER XII. All day the clouds had been gathering, hanging low over the fields. At evening came a downpour of rain, and at night a fitful wind was blowing--one moment of silence and then a throb of rain at the windows. In his office the Major sat, looking over the affairs of his estate. It was noted that he preferred a stormy night thus to apply himself; the harshness of figures, the unbending stubbornness of a date, in his mind seemed to find a unity with the sharp whistle of the wind and the lashes of rain on the moss-covered roof. Before him, on yellowing paper, was old Gid's name, and at it he slowly shook his head, for fretfully he nursed the consciousness of having for years been the dupe of that man's humorous rascality. The plantation was productive, the old fellow had gathered many a fine crop, and for his failure to pay rent there could be no excuse, except the apologies devised by his own trickish invention. Year after year, in his appeals for further indulgence, he had set up the plea of vague obligations pressing upon him, some old debt that he was striving to wipe out and from which he would soon be freed; and then, no longer within the tightening grasp of merciless scoundrels, he would gratefully devote the proceeds of his energies to the discharge of the obligations held so lightly over him by the noblest man on earth. Once he returned from New Orleans, whither he had gone to sell his cotton, with the story that he had been knocked senseless and robbed of his wallet, and in proof of this he produced a newspaper account of the midnight outrage, and exhibited a wound on the head, inflicted by the bludgeon of the footpad. And with such drollery did he recite this story that the Major laughed at him, which meant, of course, that his tenure of the old plantation was not to be disturbed. The memory of this rascally trick came back to the Major as he sat there looking over his papers. He recounted it all as a reminiscence of his own weakness, and he was firmly and almost angrily resolved that this season the old fellow should not waddle from under his obligations. Amusement was well enough; to laugh at a foible was harmless, but constantly to be cheated was a crime against his wife and his children. Children? Yes, for out of no calculation for the future did he leave Louise. There came a tap at the door. Mrs. Cranceford had sent a negro boy with an umbrella and a lantern. The night was wild, and the slanting rain hit hard. Before he reached the house the wind puffed out his lantern, leaving him to stumble through the dark. As he stepped upon the porch there was a loud "halloa" at the gate, and just at that moment he heard his wife's voice. "John, go out there and see who that is," she said. He went round to the gate. His wife stood on the porch waiting for him. Presently he came back, walking rapidly. "Who is it, dear?" "A negro man. Margaret, we must go at once to Louise. Pennington is dying." With an inarticulate note of astonishment she fled to her room, to prepare herself for the journey, and the Major loudly commanded the carriage to be brought out. Lanterns flashed across the yard, under the streaming trees, and flickered in the gale that howled about the barn. Pale, impatient, and wrapped in a waterproof, Mrs. Cranceford stood at the front doorway. The carriage drew up at the gate. "Are you ready?" the Major asked, speaking from the darkness in the midst of the rain. "Yes," she answered, stepping out and closing the door. "Where is Tom?" the Major inquired. "He hasn't come home." "He ought to go. I wonder where he can be." "He could be most any place," she answered; and as she stepped under the umbrella to walk with him to the gate, she added: "But I think he is at Wash Sanders' house." He helped her into the carriage, took a seat beside her, and shut the door with a slam. "As fast as you can!" he shouted to the driver. They sat a long time in silence, listening to the rain and the hoofs of the horses sloshing in the wet sand. The carriage stopped. "What's the matter?" "De bayou, sah." "Drive on." "De bridge is full o' holes." "Drive through." "De water's mighty high." "Drive through." Down they went with a splash. The carriage swayed, was lifted, was swung round--the horses lunged; one of the doors was burst open and the water poured in. Mrs. Cranceford clung to the Major, but she uttered not a word. Up the slippery bank the horses strained. One of them fell, but he was up in a moment. Firmer footing was gained, and the road was reached. Now they were in a lane. The Major struck a match and looked at his watch. It was nearly two o'clock. Across the fields came a light--from Louise's window. The carriage drew up at the gate. "That you, Major?" a voice asked. "Yes. Why, how did you get here, Jim?" "Tore down the fences and rode across the fields." "How is he?" the Major asked, helping his wife to the ground. "I haven't been in--been walking up and down out here. Thought I'd wait for you." At the entrance of the passageway Louise met them. She kissed her mother, saying not a word. The Major held out his arms toward her. She pretended not to notice this complete surrender; she took his hand and turned her face from him. "My poor little girl, I----" She dropped his hand, opened the door of a room opposite the dying man's chamber and said: "Step in here, please. Mother, you and Jim may come with me." The old man broke down. "My precious child, God knows----" "Will you please step in here? I will come with you. Mother, you and Jim----" She pointed to the door of her husband's room. In sorrowful obedience the Major bowed his head and crossed the threshold. In the room was a fire and on the mantel-piece a lamp was burning. "Sit down," she said. "Louise, I have not deserved this." "Take the rocking chair, please." He stood with his hands resting on the back of the chair. "Why do you hold me off with such stubbornness? Why continue to be so unnatural a child, so incomprehensible a woman?" Even now he did not forget to measure his sentences, but with the depth of his earnestness his voice was wavering, "You know----" "Yes, I know," she broke in, looking full at him, and her face smote him with pity. "But this is no time for explanations." She turned toward the door. "Are you going to leave me?" he asked, following her. "Yes. Mother will tell you all that is to be told." She went out and closed the door. The Major walked softly up and down the room, listening, but he heard nothing save the creaking of the house and the moaning of the wind in the old plum thicket. A long time passed, and then Mrs. Cranceford entered. Her eyes were wet with tears. "It is all over," she said. At the moment the Major made no reply. He led her to a chair, and when she had sat down, looking up at him, he leaned over her and said: "Margaret, I know you can't help appreciating my position; and I feel that I am the keenest sufferer under this roof, for to me all consolation is denied. Now, what is expected of me? I am going to make no more protests--I am going to do as I am instructed. What is expected of me?" "Go home, dear, and wait until I come," she answered. "But doesn't that seem hard, Margaret?" "Yes; but it is her wish and we must not oppose it." "I will do as you say," he replied, and kissing her he added: "If you can, make her feel that I love her. Tell her that I acknowledge all the wrong." He stepped out into the passage, but he came back to the door, and standing there for a moment, he said: "Make her feel that I love her." CHAPTER XIII. Pennington was buried in the yard of the church wherein he had taught school. No detail of the arrangements was submitted to the Major. For a time he held out that the family burial ground was the proper place for the interment, under the trees where his father and his mother were laid to rest, but Louise stood in strong opposition to this plan, even though appearances called for its adoption. So, after this, the Major offered no suggestion. At the grave there was no hysterical grief. The day was bleak and the services were short. When all had been done, the Major gently put his arm about his daughter and said that she must go home with him. "Not now," she replied; and she did not look up at him. "But please don't worry over me; don't feel that you have to do something. Mother is going with me, and after that you may know what I intend to do. Please don't urge me. Let me have my way just a little longer." He stepped back from her and Mrs. Cranceford took her arm and led her away. The Major slowly followed them. He felt the inquisitive look of a neighbor, and his shoulders stiffened. In a buggy the mother and the daughter had followed the hearse; the Major, Tom and big Jim Taylor were driven in the family carriage. Louise was to go back to the desolate house. The Major stoutly opposed this, pleaded with her after she had seated herself in the buggy, clutched the spoke of a muddy wheel as if he would hold her back. She took the lines from her mother, tossed them upon the horse, folded her arms, and in silence waited. "John, dear," said Mrs. Cranceford, "let us drive on. There, please don't attract the attention of those people. You know what gossips they are." The Major spoke to Louise. "Will you answer me one question?" "Yes, sir." "Is it your intention to live alone in that wretched house?" "No, sir; but I must go there to think." The Major stepped back, and with a handkerchief wiped his muddy hand. "Margaret, I leave her with you," he said. Shortly after the Major reached home his wife arrived, but Louise was not with her. "I could do nothing," she said. "When we drove up to the gate she jumped out and declared that I must come on home. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn't yield. Two old women were in the house and she said that they were company enough; she wanted to think and they would not distract her thoughts. I told her that if she would agree to let me stay I would not say a word, but she shook her head. 'You shall hear from me to-morrow,' were her words, 'but you must leave me to myself to-night. It is of no use to urge me.' I saw that it wasn't, and I drove away. I declare I can't make her out." "Most unreasonable creature I ever saw," the Major replied, uneasily walking up and down the room. "She has made me contemptible in the eyes of this neighborhood, and now appears determined to disgrace herself." "Don't say that, John." "Why not? It's a fact." "It is not a fact. I am not afraid of a daughter of mine disgracing herself. It's only bad blood that disgraces itself." "I am not so sure about that when women throughout the entire country are striving to be unnatural. By the blood----" "John." He wheeled about and looked at her. "But I ask you if it isn't enough to make a saint pull out his hair? Simply opposed her marriage, used legitimate argument, and afterward begged like a dog. Isn't it enough to make me spurn the restraints of the church and take up the language of the mud-clerk?" "No, dear; nothing should prompt you to do that. You have a soul to be saved." "But is it necessary that my life should be tortured out of me in order that my soul may be saved? I don't care to pay such a price. Is it put down that I must be a second Job? Is a boil the sign of salvation?" "For goodness' sake don't talk that way," she pleaded, but she had to turn her face away to hide her smile from him. "But I've got to talk some way. Just reflect on her treatment of me and how I have humbled myself and whined at her feet. And I ask what may we not expect of such a creature? Is it that she wants to be different from anyone else? Let me tell you one thing: The woman who seeks to be strongly individualized may attain her aim, but it leads to a sacrifice of her modesty. I say she is in danger of disgracing herself." Mrs. Cranceford shook her head. "You wait and we shall see. No member of my family was ever disgraced. I may be distressed at her peculiarities, at times, but I shall never be afraid for her conduct." Early the next morning a negro brought a letter from Louise. Mrs. Cranceford hastened to the office to read it to the Major. It appeared to have been written with care and thus was it worded: "My Dear Mother:--I am thankful that I am not to look upon the surprise and sorrow you must feel in reading this letter. I hardly know how to rake together and assort what I desire to say, but I will do the best I can, and if you fail to understand me, do not charge it against yourself, but list it with my other faults. What I have recently gone through with is quite enough to unstring the nerves of a stronger woman than I am, and what must be my condition? Worn out and weary of any life that I could conceive of here--don't you see how I am floundering about? But give me time and in all honesty you shall know the true state of my mind. Many a time father has said that he did not understand me, and more than once you have charged me with being strange. But I am sure that I have never tried to be mysterious. I have had thoughts that would not have appeared sane, had I written them, but I have never been foolishly romantic, although my education has been far from practical. The first thing I remember was a disappointment, and that was not being a boy. It may be a vanity, but at that early age I seemed to recognize the little privileges given to a boy and denied a girl. But as I grew older I was shocked by the roughness and cruelty of boys, and then I was pleased to reflect that I was of gentler mold. At some time of life I suppose we are all enigmas unto ourselves; the mystery of being, the ability to move, and the marvelous something we call emotion, startles us and drives us into a moody and speculative silence. I give this in explanation of my earlier strangeness. I could always talk readily, but never, not even to you, could I tell completely what I thought. Most young people are warned against the trash that finds its way--no one appears to know how--into the library of the home, but I remember to have been taken to task for reading mannish books. And in some measure I heeded the lecture thus delivered, but it is to mannish books that I owe my semblance of common sense." "What is she trying to get at?" the Major broke in. "Have you read it? If you have, tell me what she says." "I am reading it now," his wife replied; and thus she continued: "The strongest emotion of my life has been pity, and you know that I never could keep a doll nor a trinket if a strong appeal was made for it. I grew up to know that this was a weakness rather than a virtue, but never has my judgment been strong enough to prevail against it. And this leads me to speak of my marriage. That was the result of pity and fear. Let me see if I can make you understand me. That poor man's condition smote my heart as never before had it been smitten. And when he made his appeal to me, hollowed-eyed and coughing, I trembled, for I knew that my nature would prompt me to yield, although I might fully estimate the injustice to myself. So my judgment fought with my sense of pity, and in the end, perhaps, might have conquered it, but for the element of fear which was then introduced. The question of his soul was brought forward, and he swore that I would send it to heaven or to hell. In the light of what I have read, and in the recollection of what I have often heard father say in his arguments with preachers, perhaps I should have been strong enough to scout the idea of a literal torment, but I could not. You remember old Aunt Betsy Taylor, Jim's black mammy. When I was very young she was still living on the place, and was to me a curiosity, the last of her race, I was told. I did not know what this meant, but it gave her words great weight. Once she pictured hell for me, the roaring furnace, the writhing of the damned, and no reason and no reading has ever served to clear my mind of her awful painting. With her as the advocate I could hear the groans of lost souls; and in my childish way I believed that the old woman was inspired to spread the terrors of perdition; nor has education and the little I have seen of society, wholly changed this belief. So when Mr. Pennington swore to me that if I refused to marry him he would die blaspheming the name of God, my judgment tottered and fell. I sit here now, looking at the bed whereon he died. You saw him breathe his last, saw his smile of peace and hope. That smile was my reward. For it I had wrung the heart of my father and wiped my feet upon his pride. But I had sent a soul above. I have set myself to the task of perfect frankness, and I must tell you that in my heart there was not the semblance of love for him, love as you know it; there was only pity and I can say that pity is not akin to love. Yes. I sold myself, not as many a woman has, not as I would have been praised and flattered for doing--not for money, but to save a soul. This is written at night, with a still clock above me, the hands recording the hour and the minute of his death, and the light of the sun may fade my words and make them ghastly, but I am revealing, to my mother, my inner self." Mrs. Cranceford paused to wipe her eyes, and the Major, who had been walking up and down the room, now stood looking through the window at the sweep of yellow river, far away. "But does she say when she is coming home?" he asked without turning his head. "Read on, please." The sheets were disarranged and it was some time before she obeyed. "Read on, please," he repeated, and he moved from the window and stood with his hands resting on the back of a chair. Mrs. Cranceford read on: "There is one misfortune of mine that has always been apparent to you and that is my painful sensitiveness. It was, however, not looked upon as a misfortune, but rather as a fault which at will I might correct, but I could no more have obviated it than I could have changed my entire nature. When father charged me with ingratitude I realized the justice of the rebuke (from his point of view), while feeling on my side the injustice of the imputation, for I was not ungrateful, but simply in a desperate state of mind. I am afraid that I am not making myself clear. But let me affirm that I do not lose sight of the debt I owe him, the debt of gallantry. I had always admired him for his bravery, and hundreds of times have I foolishly day-dreamed of performing a life-saving office for him. But the manner--and pardon me for saying it--the arrogance which he assumed over me, wounded me, and the wound is still slowly bleeding. But in time it will heal, and when it does I will go to him, but now I cannot." "But she must come to me or let me go to her!" the Major broke in. "I confess that I didn't understand her. Why, there is heroism in her composition. Go ahead, Margaret. She's got more sense than all of us. Go ahead." Mrs. Cranceford continued: "I can conceive of nothing more useless than my life at home would be. The truth is, I must do something, see something, feel the throb rather than the continuous pressure of life. Thousands of women are making their way in the world. Why should not I? And it is not that I mean wholly to desert you or to love you less, but I must go away, and before this letter reaches you I shall be on my journey----" Mrs. Cranceford's trembling hands let the paper fall. The Major grabbed it up, fumbled with it, put it upon the desk and sat down. In silence they looked at each other, and their vision was not clear. "Read on," he said. "We can stand anything now." She wiped her eyes and obeyed him: "Shall be on my journey. I have in mind a certain place, but what place it is I must not tell you. If I succeed I shall let you know, and if I fail--but I will base nothing upon the probability of failure. I know that you will look upon this almost as an act of insanity, and carrying out my resolve to be frank, I must say that I do not know but that it is. It is, though, the only course that promises relief and therefore I must take it. You must not charge me with a lack of love for you and never must you lose faith in me. It is singular that after all these years, after all our confidences, I should choose a pen wherewith to make myself known to you, and you may call me a most unnatural daughter, but you must charge my unnaturalness to nature, and nothing that nature does should appear unnatural when once we have come to understand it. I have money enough to last me until I can secure employment. I hope that I know what sort of employment it may be, but as there is in my hope a fear of failure, I will not tell you. My training has not been systematic enough to enable me to be a school teacher, for I know a little of many things, but am thorough in nothing. But in some other line the mannish books may help me. In reading this over I realize that I am vain and affected. But put it down as another frankness. God bless you and good-bye." "I told you she would disgrace herself," the Major exclaimed, slapping his hand upon the desk. "She has done nothing of the sort," his wife replied, stepping out and closing the door. CHAPTER XIV. The neighbors were curious to know why Louise had left home and whither she was gone. Day and night they came to ask questions, and though told that she was visiting relatives in Kentucky, they departed suspecting that something must be wrong. The gossips were more or less busy, and Jim Taylor snatched another idler off the fence and trounced him in the sand. Weeks passed and no letter came from Louise. The Major worried over her until at last he forbade the mention of her name. During the day Mrs. Cranceford was calm and brave, but many a time in the night the Major heard her crying. Every Sunday afternoon Jim Taylor's tread was heard on the porch. To the Major he talked of various things, of the cotton which was nearly all picked, of the weakening or strengthening tendency of the market, but when alone with Mrs. Cranceford his talk began and ended with Louise. But in this he observed the necessity for great care, lest the Major might hear him, and he chose occasions when the old gentleman was in his office or when with Gid he strolled down into the woods. In the broad parlor, in the log part of the house, Jim and Mrs. Cranceford would sit, hours at a time; and never did she show an impatience of his long lapses of silence nor of his monotonous professions of faith in the run-away. And upon taking his leave he would never fail to say: "I believe we'll hear from her to-morrow; I am quite sure of it." In the midst of the worry that followed the young woman's departure, there had been but one mention of the young man's affair with the niece of Wash Sanders. Mrs. Cranceford had spoken to him, not directly, but with gentle allusion, and he had replied with an angry denunciation of such meddlesomeness. "I'm not going to marry a dying woman," he declared; "and I'm not going to take up any faded ninny that you and father may pick out. I'm going to please myself, and when you decide that I mustn't, just say the word and I'll hull out. And I don't want to hear anything about crackers or white trash, either. That's me." His mother must have agreed that it was, for the weeks went by and not again did she drop a hint of her anxiety. One rainy afternoon the Major and old Gid were sitting on a tool-box under the barn shed, when Father Brennon came riding down the road. "As they say over the creek, light and look at your saddle!" the Major shouted. With a nod and a smile the priest rode through the gate, dismounted, gave his horse over to a negro who, in answer to a shout, had come forward from some mysterious precinct of the barn-yard, shook hands with the Major and Gid, and gracefully declining a seat on the tool-box, rolled a barrel from against the wall and upon it seated himself. "More in accordance with the life of a priest," he said, tapping the barrel with his knuckles. "It is rolling." "Ah," replied the Major, "and a barrel may also typify the reckless layman. It is often full." The priest gave to this remark the approval of a courteous laugh. Even though he might stand in a slippery place, how well he knew his ground. To call forth a weak joke and then to commend it with his merriment--how delightful a piece of flattery. And it can, in truth, be said that in his heart he was sincere. To be pleasing was to him an art, and this art was his second nature. "Mr. Brennon," said the Major (and under no compulsion would he have said father), "I have thought a great deal of the argument we had some time ago; and I have wondered, sir, that in coming to this community to proselyte the negro, you did not observe the secrecy with which the affairs of your church are usually conducted. But understand, please, that I do not mean to reflect upon the methods of your creed, but simply wonder that you have not followed a recognized precedent." The priest had taken hold of the chine at each end of the barrel and was slowly rolling himself backward and forward. "I fail to see why any secrecy should be observed in my work," he replied. "The Catholic church has never made a secret of doing good--for we believe in the potency of example. If we elevate the moral condition of one man, it is well that another man should know it. The Methodist holds his revival and implores the sinner to come forward and kneel at the altar. And as it were, I am holding a revival--I am persuading the negro and the white man as well to kneel under the cross. Should there be any secrecy in such a work?" "Well, no, not when you put it that way. But you know that we look upon the Catholic religion as a foreign religion. It does not somehow seem native to this soil. It is red with the pomp of monarchy, it has the ceremonious restraint of the king's court; it hasn't the free noise of a republic. I will not question its sincerity or the fact that it has in view the betterment of man, but to us it will always seem an importation." "It was here first," the priest replied, gravely smiling. "It discovered this country." "We must grant that," the Major rejoined, "but still I insist that the native born American regards it as a foreign institution, foreign to his nature, to his sense of liberty, if not to his soul." "My dear Major, Christ is foreign to no soil. The earth is His Father's foot-stool. The soul of man is the abiding place of the love of the Saviour, and no heart is out-landish. What you may call liberty is an education, but the soul as God's province is not made so by training, but came with the first twinkling of light, of reason, the dawn of time." "That's about as straight as any man can give it," old Gid joined in. "But what puzzles me is why God is more at home in one man's heart than in another. He fills some hearts with love and denies it to others; and the heart that has been denied is cursed, through no fault of its own--simply because it has not received--while the other heart is blessed. I reckon the safest plan is to conclude that we don't know anything about it. I don't, and that settles it so far as I'm concerned. I can't accept man's opinion, for man doesn't know any more about it than I do; so I say to myself, 'Gideon Batts, eat, drink and be merry, for the first thing you know they will come along and lay you out where the worm is whetting his appetite.' You have raked up quite a passle of negroes, haven't you, colonel?" The priest looked at him, but not resentfully. "My work has not been without a fair measure of success," he answered, now sitting upright and motionless. "You must have noticed that we are building quite a large church." "So I see," said the Major. "And you still believe that you are going to preserve the negro's body as well as save his soul." "We are going to save his soul, and a soul that is to be saved serves to protect its habitation." "But you foresee a race war?" "I foresee racial troubles, which in time may result in a war of extermination." "I agree with you, Mr. Brennon," the Major replied. "As time passes it will become more and more clear that the whites and the negroes cannot live together. Their interests may be identical, but they are of a different order and can never agree. And now let us face the truth. What sowed the seeds of this coming strife? Emancipation? No, enfranchisement. The other day Mr. Low gave me a copy of the London Spectator, calling my attention to a thoughtful paper on this very subject. It deeply impressed me, so much so that I read parts of it a number of times. Let me see if I can recall one observation that struck me. Yes, and it is this: 'We want a principle on which republicans can work and we believe that the one which would be the most fruitful is that the black people should be declared to be foreign immigrants, guests of the state, entitled to the benefit of every law and every privilege, education, for example, but debarred from political power and from sitting on juries, which latter, indeed, in mixed cases, ought to be superseded by properly qualified magistrates and judges.' The paper goes on to show that this would not be oppressive, and that the blacks would be in the position of a majority of Englishmen prior to 1832, a position compatible with much happiness. But the trouble is we have gone too far to retrace our steps. It was easy enough to grant suffrage to the negro, but to take it away would be a difficult matter. So what are we to do? To let the negro exercise the full and unrestrained measure of his suffrage, would, in some communities, reduce the white man to the position of political nonentity. And no law, no cry about the rights of a down-trodden race, no sentiment expressed abroad, could force the white man to submit quietly to this degradation. Upon the negro's head the poetry of New England has placed a wreath of sentiment. No poet has placed a wreath upon the brow of the California Chinaman, nor upon the head of any foreign element in any of the northern states. Then why this partiality? Is the negro so gentle that he must always be defended, and is the white man of the south so hard of heart that he must always be condemned?" "What you say is perfectly clear to me," the priest replied, "and it is natural that you should defend your position." "It is the only position and the only course left to a thinking and a self-respecting white man," the Major rejoined. "Yes, I will agree to that, too." "Ah, and that's the trouble, Mr. Brennon. You agree while you oppose." "My dear Major, I am not here to oppose, nor to destroy, but to save fragments when the hour of destruction shall have come." "But if your church believes that it can save fragments why doesn't it exert itself to save the whole?" "Major, salvation comes of persuasion and persuasion is slow." "Yes, and let me tell you that your form of religion will never become popular among the negroes. The negro is emotional, and to make a display of his religious agitation is too great a luxury to be given up. Your creed entails too much belief and too little excitement; upon the layman it doesn't confer sufficient importance. The negro must shout and hug. The quiet mysticism of the divine spirit does not satisfy him. He wants to be exorcised; he wants what is known as the mourners'-bench jerks. If his brother loves him he doesn't want a quiet assurance of that fact, conveyed by a year of conduct; he demands a noisy proof, the impulse of a moment of joy." With a slow shake of his head old Gid confirmed this view, and the priest looked on, gravely smiling. "You have now touched upon a mistaken phase of the negro's character," said he. "And to make my point clear, I must speak plainly with regard to the appearance of our form of worship. I must present it as it impresses the ignorant and the superstitious. In doing so I make myself appear almost irreverent, but in no other way can I show you the possibilities of my work among the colored race. Mystery appeals to the negro. Behind all mystery there is power. Under the influence of the sensationalist the negro may shout, demand an impulsive proof of love, hug his brother; but in his heart God is a fearful and silent mystery. And the Catholic church shows him that the holy spirit is without noise. In the creation of the great tree there has not been a sound; all has been the noiseless will of God. It is not difficult to show him that ours was the first church; it may be shown that the Protestant Bible held him a slave; and above all we prove to him that in the Catholic church there is no discrimination against his color, that a negro may become a Cardinal. We convince him that shouting is but a mental agitation and a physical excitement. I have know many a negro, on the scaffold, to renounce the religion which for years he had practiced, and with cool discernment embrace the parent church. The germ of Catholicism is in his blood. He cannot be a free thinker. The barbarian is subdued by the solemn and majestic form of the Church of Rome, while he might regard with disdain the intricate reason of the Presbyterian faith. And in this respect the negro is akin to the barbarian. He is moved by music and impressed by ceremony." "You are plain-spoken, indeed," the Major replied. "The boldness with which you recount your shams is most surprising. I didn't expect it." "I told you that I would be bold." "But you didn't say that you would acknowledge your insincerity." "Nor have I done so. I have simply shown you why our church appeals to the superstitious blood of the African. To accomplish a good we must use the directest means. If I were seeking to convert you, I should adopt a different method. I would appeal to your reason; convince you of a truth which the wisest men have known and still know--that the Catholic church is God's church. It is now time for me to go," he added, after a short pause. "Please tell your man that I want my horse." CHAPTER XV. At the close of a misty day Jim Taylor stood at the parlor door to take his leave of Mrs. Cranceford. During the slow hours of the afternoon they had talked about Louise, or sitting in silence had thought of her; and now at parting there was nothing to be added except the giant's hopeful remark, "I believe we'll hear from her to-morrow; I am quite sure of it." Repetition may make a sentiment trite, and into a slangish phrase may turn a wise truism, but words spoken to encourage an anxious heart do not lose their freshness. "Yes, I am quite sure of it," he repeated. And the next day a letter came. It bore no post mark; the captain of a steamboat had sent it over from a wood-yard. The boat was an unimportant craft and its name was new even to the negroes at the landing, which, indeed, must have argued that the vessel was making its first trip on the Arkansas. The communication was brief, but it was filled with expressions of love. "I am beginning to make my way," the writer said, "and when I feel that I have completely succeeded, I will come home. My ambition now is to surprise you, and to do this I must keep myself in the dark just a little longer. I have tried to imagine myself a friendless woman, such as I have often read about, and I rather enjoy it. Love to Jim." The Major was in his office when the letter was brought, and thither his wife hastened to read it to him. "What is it?" he asked as she entered the room. "A letter from Louise? I don't want to hear it." "John." "I don't want to hear another crazy screed from her. Where is she? Is she coming home? Read it." During the reading he listened with one hand cupped behind his ear--though his hearing was not impaired--and when the last word had been pronounced, he said: "Likes to be mysterious, doesn't she? Well, I hope she'll get enough of it. If her life has been so much influenced by sympathy why has she felt none of that noble quality for us? Where is she?" "The letter doesn't say. It is not even dated, and it is not post-marked." "Did it come in a gale? Was it blown out of a mysterious cloud?" "It came from the wood-yard, and the man who brought it said that it had been left by the captain of the Mill-Boy, a new boat, they say." "Well, it's devilish----" "John." "I say it's very strange. Enjoys being mysterious. I wonder if she equally enjoys having the neighbors talk about her? Sends love to Jim. Well, that isn't so bad. You'd better have some one take the letter over to him." "I sent him word by the man who brought the letter that we had heard from her." No further did the Major question her, but taking up a handful of accounts, he settled himself into the preoccupation in which she had found him, but the moment she went out and closed the door, he got out of his chair and with his hands behind him, walked up and down the room. At the window he halted, and standing there, looked down the river, in the direction of the cape of sand whereon Louise had stood, that day when Pennington coughed in the library door; and in his mind the old man saw her, with her hands clasped over her brown head. He mused over the time that had passed since then, the marriage, the death, the dreary funeral; and though he did not reproach himself, yet he felt that could he but recall that day he would omit his foolish plea of gallantry. For the coming of Jim, Mrs. Cranceford had not long to wait. She was in the parlor when he tapped at the door. After she had called, "Come in," he continued to stand there as if he were afraid of meeting a disappointment. But when he had peeped in and caught sight of her smiling face, his cold fear was melted. "Here it is," she said, holding the letter out to him. Almost at one stride he crossed the room and seized the letter. In the light of the window he stood to read it, but it fluttered away from him the moment he saw that there was a greeting in it for himself. He grabbed at it as if, possessing life, it were trying to escape, and with a tight grip upon it he said: "I knew she would write and I am sure she would have written sooner if--if it had been necessary." Mrs. Cranceford was laughing tearfully. "Oh, you simple-hearted man, so trustful and so big of soul, what is your love not worth to a woman?" "Simple-hearted? I am nothing of the sort. I try to be just and that's all there is to it." "No, Jim Taylor, there's more to it than that. A man may be just and his sense of justice may demand a stricter accounting than you ask for." "I guess you mean that I'm weak." "Oh, no," she hastened to reply, "I don't mean that. The truth is I mean that you give something that but few men have ever given--a love blind enough and great enough to pardon a misdeed committed against yourself. It is a rare charity." He did not reply, but in the light of the window he stood, reading the letter; and Mrs. Cranceford, sitting down, gave him the attention of a motherly fondness, smiling upon him; and he, looking up from the letter which a pleasurable excitement caused to shake in his hand, wondered why any one should ever have charged this kindly matron with a cold lack of sympathy. So interested in his affairs was she, so responsive to a sentiment, though it might be clumsily spoken, so patient of his talk and of his silence, that to him she was the Roman mother whom he had met in making his way through a short-cut of Latin. "Jim." "Yes, ma'm." "I want to ask you something. Have you talked much with Tom lately?" "Not a great deal. He was over at my place the other night and we talked of first one thing and then another, but I don't remember much of what was said. Why do you want to know?" "Can't you guess?" "Don't know that I can. I was always rather slow at guessing. And don't let me try; tell me what you mean?" "You are as stupid as you are noble." "What did you say, ma'm?" Again he had given his attention to the letter. "Oh, nothing." "But you must have said something," he replied, pressing the letter into narrow folds, and appearing as if he felt that he had committed a crime in having failed to catch the meaning of her remark. "Oh, it amounted to nothing." He stupidly accepted this decree, and smoothing out the letter and folding it again, requested that he might be permitted to take it home; and with this reply she gladdened him: "I intended that you should." At evening old Gid came, with many a snort and many a noisy stamp at the dogs prancing upon the porch. Into the library he bustled, puffing and important, brisk with the air of business. "John," he said, as he sat down, "the last bale of my cotton has been hauled to the landing. It will be loaded to-night and to-morrow morning I'm going with it down to New Orleans; and I gad, I'll demand the last possible cent, for it's the finest staple I ever saw." "I thought you were going to bunch in and sell with me," the Major replied. "I intended to, John, but you see I'm too far ahead of you to wait. I don't like to discount my industry by waiting. The truth is, I want the money as soon as I can get it. I am chafing to discharge my debts. It may be noble to feel and acknowledge the obligations of friendship, but the consciousness of being in debt, a monied debt, even to a friend, is blunting to the higher sensibilities and hampering to the character. Now, you've never been in debt, and therefore you don't know what slavery is." "What! I've owed fifty thousand dollars at a time." "Yes, but you had a way of getting out from under it, John. We don't deserve any credit for paying a debt if it comes easy, if it's natural to us. Why, a man with the faculty of getting out from under a debt is better off and is more to be envied than the man who has never known what it is to walk under a weight of obligations, for to throw off the burden brings him a day of real happiness, while the more prudent and prosperous person is acquainted merely with contentment. You've had a good time in your life, John. On many an occasion when other men would have been at the end of the string you have reached back, grabbed up your resources and enjoyed them. Yes, sir. And you have more education than I have, but you can never hope to rival me in wisdom." The Major was standing on the hearth, and leaning his head back against the mantel-piece, he laughed; and from Mrs. Cranceford's part of the house came the impatient slam of a door. "It's a fact, John. And within me there is just enough of rascality to sweeten my wisdom." "There is no doubt as to the rascality, Gid. The only question is with regard to the wisdom." "Easy, John. The wisdom is sometimes hidden; modesty covers it up, and if the rascality is always apparent it is my frankness that holds it up to view. Yes, sir. But my wisdom lacks something, is in want of something to direct it. Pure wisdom can't direct itself, John; it is like gold--it must have an alloy. You've got that alloy, and it makes you more successful as a man, but sometimes less charming as a companion. The part of a man that means business is disagreeable to a gentle, humor-loving nature like mine. I perceive that I've got my speculative gear on, and I'm bold; yes, for I am soon to discharge a sacred obligation and then to walk out under the trees a free man. But I'm naturally bold. Did you ever notice that a sort of self-education makes a man adventurous in his talk when a more systematic training might hold him down with the clamps of too much care?" "Yes, might inflict him with the dullness of precision," the Major suggested, smiling upon his guest. "That's it, and for this reason half-educated men are often the brightest. I read a book--and I reckon I'm as fond of a good book as any man--without bringing to bear any criticisms that scholars have passed upon it. But with you it is different." "Gid, you ascribe scholarship to me when in fact you are far more bookish than I am. You sit in your den all alone and read while I'm shut up in my office going over my accounts. From care you have a freedom that I can never hope to find." "John, in comparison with me you don't know what care is." The Major leaned against the mantel-piece and laughed. "It's a fact, John. Why, I have care enough to kill a statesman or strain a philosopher. Look at me; I'm old and don't amount to anything, and that is one of the heaviest cares that can settle down upon man. Wise? Oh, yes, we'll grant that, but as I before remarked, my wisdom lacks proper direction. It is like ill-directed energy, and that, you know, counts for nothing. I once knew a fellow that expended enough energy in epileptic fits to have made him a fortune. He'd fall down and kick and paw the air--a regular engine of industry, but it was all wasted. But he had a brother, a lazy fellow, and he conceived the idea of a sort of gear for him, so that his jerkings and kicks operated a patent churn. So, if I only had some ingenious fool to harness me I might do something." "Why," said the Major, "I wouldn't have you otherwise than what you are. Suppose you were to become what might be termed a useful citizen, truthful and frugal----" "Hold on, John," Gid broke in, holding up his hands. "You distress me with your picture. When I hear of a frugal man I always imagine he's hungry. Yes, sir. But let me tell you, I'll be a man of affairs when I come back from New Orleans. You may be assured of that. I'm going to scatter money about this neighborhood. Why, every lout within ten miles square, if he's got fifteen dollars, holds his opinion above mine. Ah, by a lucky chance I see that your demijohn is in here. And now just fill up this bottle," he added, producing a flask as if by a sleight-of-hand trick, "and I will bid you good-night." CHAPTER XVI. A neighboring planter, having just returned from New Orleans, told the Major that in the French market he had met Gid, who had informed him that for his cotton he had received a premium above the highest price, in recognition of its length of fibre and the care with which it had been handled. The part of the statement that bore upon the length of fibre was accepted by the Major, but he laughed at the idea that Gid's care should call for reward. But so good a report was pleasing to him and he told his wife that her denunciation of the old fellow must soon be turned into praise. And with cool thoughtfulness she thus replied: "John, is it possible that at this late day you are still permitting that man to fill your eyes with dust? Has he again wheedled you into the belief that he is going to pay you? It does seem to me that your good sense ought to show you that man as he really is." They were at the dinner table. The Major shoved back his chair and looked at his wife long and steadily. "Margaret," said he, "there is such a thing as persecution, and you are threatened with a practice of it. But do I believe he is going to pay me? I do. And naturally you want to know my reason for thinking so." "Yes, I should like to know. I suppose your kindness rather than your judgment has found a reason. It always does." "Good; and the reason which a kindness discovers, though the search for it may be a mistake, is better than the spirit that inspires a persecution. However, we won't indulge in any fine-drawn argument; we will----" "Search for another reason when one is exploded," she suggested, victoriously smiling upon him. "Oh, you mean that I really haven't found one. To tell you the truth I haven't a very strong one. But in some way he has convinced me of his sincerity. I have forced upon him the understanding that at least a good part of the money must be paid, and the fact that he took me seriously, forms, perhaps, the basis of my belief in his desire to face his obligations. We shall see." Several days passed, but they saw nothing of Gid. It was known that he was at home, for Jim Taylor had told the news of his return. At this neglect the Major was fretted, and one morning he sent word to Gid that he must come at once and give an account of himself. It was nearly noon when the old fellow arrived. Clumsily he dismounted from his horse, and meekly he made his way into the yard, tottering as he walked. He appeared to have lost flesh, and his skin was yellow with worry and with want of sleep. The Major came forward and they met and shook hands under a tree. From an upper window Mrs. Cranceford looked upon them. "Gid, I didn't know what had become of you. I heard of you after you had received for your cotton more than the market price, and----" "It was a fine shipment, John. Have you a rope handy? I want to hang myself. And why? Because I don't expect anyone to believe my statement; but John, as sure as I am alive this minute, my pocket was picked in the French market. Hold on, now. I don't ask you to believe me, for I won't be unreasonable, but I hope I may drop dead this moment if I wasn't robbed. And that's the reason I have held back. Get the rope and I'll hang myself. I don't want to live any longer. I am no account on the face of the earth. I sang like a cricket when I might have been more in earnest, and now when my condition is desperate, the fact that I have been foolish and careless takes all weight from my words. As I came along my old horse stumbled, and I didn't try to check him--I wanted him to fall and kill me. Get me the rope." The Major took off his hat and leaned against the tree. With humility, with drooping patience, Gid waited for him to speak, and his ear was strained to catch the familiar word of hope, or mayhap the first bar of a resounding laugh. The first words escaped him; he heard only their cold tone without comprehending their meaning: "I want you to get off that place just as soon as you can; and I want you to go as you came--with nothing. I have laughed at you while you were cheating me; I have placed a premium upon your worthlessness and rascality. There is no good in you. Get off that place just as soon as you can." "John----" "Don't call me John. You are a hypocrite and a deadbeat. Yes, you have sung like a cricket and I have paid dearly for your music. Don't say a word to me; don't open your lying mouth, but get out of this yard as soon as your wretched legs can carry you, and get off that place at once." The Major turned his back upon him, and the old fellow tottered to the gate. With an effort he scrambled upon his horse and was gone. He looked back as if he expected to see a hand upraised, commanding him to stop; he listened for a voice inviting him to return; but he saw no hand, heard no voice, and onward down the road he went. In the highway he met a man and the man spoke to him, but he replied not, neither did he lift his heavy eyes, but rode onward, drooping over the horse's neck. He passed the house of Wash Sanders, and from the porch the invalid hailed him, but he paid no heed. Upon reaching home, or the cypress log house which for him had so long been a free and easy asylum, he feebly called a negro to take his horse. Into the house he went, into the only habitable room. It was at best a desolate abode; the walls were bare, the floor was rotting, but about him he cast a look of helpless affection, at the bed, at a shelf whereon a few books were piled. He opened a closet and took therefrom a faded carpet-bag and into it he put Rousseau's Confessions, then an old book on logic, and then he hesitated and looked up at the shelf. All were dear to him, these thumbed and dingy books; many a time at midnight had they supped with him beside the fire of muttering white-oak coals, and out into the wild bluster of a storm had they driven care and loneliness. But he could not take them all. Painfully he made his selections, nearly filled his bag, leaving barely room for an old satin waistcoat and two shirts; and these he stuffed in hastily. He put the bag upon the bed, when with fumbling he had fastened it, and stood looking about the room. Yes, that was all, all except a hickory walking cane standing in a corner. Onward again he went with his cane on his shoulder and his bag on his back. At the bars down the lane a dog ran up to him. "Go to the house, Jack," he said, and the dog understood him and trotted away, but in the old man's voice he heard a suspicious note and he turned before reaching the house and followed slowly and cautiously, stopping whenever the old fellow turned to look back. At the corner of a field Gid halted and put down his bag, and the dog turned about, pretending to be on his way home. In the field was a pecan tree, tall and graceful. Year after year had the old man tended it, and to him it was more than a tree, it was a friend. Upon the fence he climbed, sitting for a moment on the top rail to look about him; to the tree he went, and putting his arms about it, pressed his wrinkled cheek against its bark. He turned away, climbed the fence, took up his bag and resumed his journey toward the steamboat landing. Far behind, on a rise in the road, the dog sat, watching him. The old man turned a bend in the road, and the dog, running until his master was again in sight, sat down to gaze after him. Far ahead was the charred skeleton of a gin house, burned by marauders many years ago, and here he was to turn into the road that led to the landing. He looked up as he drew near and saw a horse standing beside the road; and then from behind the black ruin stepped a man--the Major. "Gid," he said, coming forward, "I believe we're going to have more rain." The old man dropped his bag, and the dog far down the road turned back. "Wind's from the northwest, Gid." He put his hand on the old fellow's shoulder. "Don't touch me, John; let me go." "Why, I can't let you go. Look here, old man, you have stood by me more than once--you stood when other men ran away--and you are more to me than money is." "Let me go, John. I am an old liar and an old hypercrite. My pocket was not picked--I lost the money gambling. Let me go; I am a scoundrel." He stooped to take up his bag, but the Major seized it. "I'll carry it for you," he said. "Too heavy for as old a man as you are. Come on back and raise another crop." "I haven't a thing to go on, John. Can't even get feed for the mules. Give me the satchel." "You shall have all the feed you want." "But your wife----" "I will tell her that the debt is paid." "John, your gospel would take the taint out of a thief on a cross. And I was never so much of a man as you now make me, and, I gad, I'm going to be worthy of your friendship. Let me remind you of something: That old uncle of mine in Kentucky will leave me his money. It's cold-blooded to say it, but I understand that he can't live but a short time. I am his only relative, and have a hold on him that he can't very well shake off. He'll beat me out of my own as long as he can, but old Miz Nature's got her eye on him. Yes, I'll try it again and next year I'll let you sell the crop. But say, John, at one time I had them fellows on the hip, and if I had cashed in at the right time I would have hit 'em big. Get your horse and we'll hook the satchel over the horn of the saddle." Along the road they walked toward home, the Major leading the horse. For a time they were silent, and then the Major said: "As I came along I was thinking of that bully from Natchez. He would have killed me with his Derringer if you hadn't broken his arm with your cane." "Oh, yes; that red-headed fellow. It has been a long time since I thought of him. How the pleasant acquaintances of our younger days do slip away from us." "Yes," the Major laughed, "and our friends fall back as we grow old. Friendship is more a matter of temperament than----" "Of the honesty of the other party," Gid suggested. "Yes, you are right. Honesty doesn't always inspire friendship, for we must be interested in a man before we can become his friend; and mere honesty is often a bore." When they reached the gate that opened into Gid's yard, the Major shook hands with the old fellow and told him to resume his authority as if nothing had happened to interrupt it. "I will, John; but something has happened to interrupt it, and that interruption has been my second birth, so to speak. I passed away at twelve o'clock and was born again just now. I won't try to express my feelings, I am still so young; for any profession of gratitude would be idle in comparison with what I am going to do. I've got your friendship and I'm going to have your respect. Come in and sit awhile, won't you?" "Not now, but I'll come over to-night." "Good. And remember this, John; I'm going to have your respect." CHAPTER XVII. With a generous and perhaps weak falsehood the Major sought to assure his wife that Gid had paid a part of his debt, and that a complete settlement was not far off, but with a cool smile she looked at him and replied: "John, please don't tax your conscience any further. It's too great a strain on you. Let the matter drop. I won't even say I told you so." "And as much as you might want the subject to be dropped you can't let it fall without reminding me--but we will let it drop; we'll throw it down. But you have your rights, Margaret, and they shall be respected. I will tell him that out of respect to you he must stay away from here." "That is very thoughtful, dear; but does it occur to you that your continued intimacy with him, whether he comes here or not, will show a want of respect for me?" "You don't give a snap whether he pays his debts or not. You simply don't want me to associate with him. No, it has not occurred to me that I am not showing you proper respect and neither is it true. Margaret, do you know what is the most absurd and insupportable tyranny that woman can put upon man? It is to choose a companion for her husband." "With me, dear, it is not tyranny; it is judgment." "Oh, yes; or rather, it is the wonderful intuition which we are taught to believe that woman possesses. I admit that she is quick to see evil in a man, but she shuts her eyes to the good quality that stands opposite to offset it." "Oh, I know that I haven't shrewdness enough to discover a good trait; I can recognize only the bad, for they are always clearly in view. It is a wonder that you can respect so stupid a creature as I am, and I know that you have ceased to have a deeper feeling for me." "Now, Margaret, for gracious sake don't talk that way. Oh, of course you've got me now, and I have to flop or be a brute. Yes, you've got me. You know I respect your good sense and love you, so what's the use of this wrangle. There, now, it's all right. I'll promise not to go near him if you say so. And I have made up my mind to attend church with more regularity. I acknowledge that I can go wrong oftener than almost any man. Respect for you!" he suddenly broke out. "Why, you are the smartest woman in this state, and everybody knows it. Come on out to the office and sit with me." Sometimes the Major, with a pretense of having business to call him away at night, would go over to old Gid's house, and together they would chuckle by the fire or nod over roasting potatoes. They talked of their days on the river, and of their nights at Natchez under the hill. To be wholly respectable, a man must give up many an enjoyment, but when at last he has become virtuous, he fondly recounts the escapades of former years; and thus the memory of hot blood quickens the feeble pulse of age. Sometimes old Gid would meet the Major at the gin house and joke with him amid the dust and lint, but he always came and departed in a roundabout way, so that Mrs. Cranceford, sitting at the window, might not be offended by his horse and his figure in the road. A time came when there was an interval of a week, and the old fellow had not shown himself at the gin house, and one night the Major went to the cypress log home to invade his retirement, but the place was dark. He pushed open the door and lighted the lamp. The fireplace was cheerless with cold ashes. He went to a cabin and made inquiry of a negro, and was told that Mr. Batts had been gone more than a week, and that he had left no word as to when he intended to return. Greatly worried, the Major went home; wide awake he pondered during long hours in bed, but no light fell upon the mystery of the old man's absence; nor in the night nor at breakfast did the Major speak of it to his wife, but silently he took his worry with him to his office. One morning while the planter was at his desk, there came a storming at the dogs in the yard. "Get down, boys. Don't put your muddy paws on me. Hi, there, Bill, you seven years' itch of a scoundrel, take my horse to the stable." The Major threw open the door. "Don't come out, John!" Gid shouted, coming forward among the prancing dogs. "Don't come out, for I want to see you in there." He appeared to have gained flesh; his cheeks were ruddy, and his grasp was strong as he seized the Major's hand. "How are you, John?" "Why, old man, where on earth have you been?" "I have been in the swamp for many years, but now I touch the ground only in high places." He boldly stepped into the office, and as he sat down the sweep of his coat-tails brushed chattel mortgages and bills of sale from the desk. "Only in high places do my feet touch the ground, John. I have just returned from Kentucky. And I bring the news that my old uncle is no more to this life, but is more to me than ever." "And you were summoned to his bedside," said the Major, striving to be serious, but smiling upon him. "Not exactly. You might say that I was summoned by a lawyer to his chest-side. He left me no word of affection, but his money is mine, and on many a half-dollar of it I warrant you there is the print of his tooth. Give me your check-book, John." "Wait a while, Gid. Let us accustom ourselves to the situation." "No; let us get down to business. I am impatient to pay a mildewed debt. God's love was slow, John, but it came. How much do I owe?" "I don't believe I'd pay it all at once, Gid. Leave a part to be met by the next crop." "All right; but it's yours at any time. The only way I can use money is to get rid of it as soon as possible. Make out a check for two-thirds of the amount and I'll put my strong hand to it. But you haven't congratulated me." "No," the Major replied, with a drawl, "for I felt that it would have too much the appearance of my own greed. I have hounded you--" The old fellow seized him, and stopped his utterance. "Don't say that, John. You have kept me out of hell and you ought to complete my heaven with a congratulation." They shook hands, looking not into each other's eyes, but downward; the Major pretended to laugh, and old Gid, dropping his hand, blustered about the room, whistled and stormed at a dog that poked his head in at the door. Then he sat down, crossed his legs; but finding this uncomfortable, sprawled himself into an easier position and began to moralize upon the life and character of his uncle. "He always called me a fool with an uproarious fancy, an idiot with wit, and a wise man lacking in sense. He denied himself everything, and it strikes me that he must have been the fool. I wish he had gathered spoil enough to make me rich, but I reckon he did the best he could, and I forgive him. We must respect the dead, and sometimes the sooner they are dead the sooner we respect them. Let me sign that thing. Oh, he hasn't left me so much, but I won't quarrel with him now. What was it the moralist said?" he asked, pressing a blotting pad upon his name. "Said something about we must educate or we must perish. That's all right, but I say we must have money. Without money you may be honest," he went on, handing the check to the Major, "but your honesty doesn't show to advantage. Money makes a man appear honorable whether he is or not. It gives him courage, and nothing is more honorable than courage. The fact that a man pays a debt doesn't always argue that he's honest--it more often argues that he's got money. Accident may make a man honest just as it may make him a thief." "Your log fire and your old books haven't done you any harm, Gid." "They have saved my life, John. And let me tell you, that a man who grows gray without loving some old book is worse than a fool. The quaint thought of an old thinker is a cordial to aged men who come after him. I used to regret that I had not been better educated, but now I'm glad that my learning is not broader--it might give me too many loves--might make me a book polygamist. I have wondered why any university man can't sit down and write a thing to startle the world; but the old world herself is learned, and what she demands is originality. We may learn how to express thought, John, but after all, thought itself must be born in us. There, I have discharged an obligation and delivered a moral lecture, and I want to tell you that you are the best man I ever saw." "Now you are talking nonsense, Gid. Why, you have been just as necessary to me as I have to you. In a manner you have been the completion of myself." "Ah," Gid cried, scuffling to his feet and bowing, "I have the pleasure of saluting Mrs. Cranceford. Some time has passed since I saw you, ma'am, and I hope you will pardon my absence." The Major sprawled himself back with a laugh. Mrs. Cranceford, standing on the door sill, gave Gid a cool stare. "Won't you please come in?" he asked, courteously waving his hand over the chair which he had just quitted. "No, I thank you." "Ah, I see you are surprised to see me in here. There was a time when it would have strained my boldness, but now it is a pleasure. I am here on business. To me business is a sweet morsel, and I delight myself with rolling it under my tongue. Ma'am, I have just signed a check. My dear old uncle, one of the most humane and charming of men, has been cruelly snatched from this life; and as he found it impossible to take his money with him, he left it to me." "I hope you will make good use of it," she replied, with never a softening toward him. "I am beginning well," he rejoined, surprised that she did not give him a kindlier look. "I am discharging my obligations, and before night I'll call on the rector and give him a check." She smiled, but whether in doubt as to his sincerity or in commendation of his purpose he could not determine. But he took encouragement. "Yes, ma'am, and as I have now become a man of some importance, I am going to act accordingly. I am free to confess that my first endeavor shall be to gain your good opinion." "And I'll freely give it, Mr. Batts, when I believe you merit it." "To desire it, ma'am, is of itself a merit." She laughed at this, and the Major laughed, too, for he saw that no longer should he be compelled to defend his fondness for the old fellow. "I am more than willing to confess my mountain of faults," Gid went on, smiling, and his smile was not disagreeable. "I am more than willing to do this, and when I have--and which I now do--your Christian heart must forgive me." She laughed and held out her hand, and with a gallantry that would have been reminiscent, even in old Virginia, he touched it with his lips. "Come here, Margaret," said the Major, and when she turned toward him, smiling, he put his arms about her, pressed her to his breast and fondly kissed her. CHAPTER XVIII. Mrs. Cranceford's surrender was not as complete as Gid's fancy had fore-pictured it; he had expected to see her bundle of prejudices thrown down like Christian's load; and therefore the dignity with which she looked upon the establishment of his honor was a disappointment to him, but she invited him to stay for dinner, and this argued that her reserve could not much longer maintain itself. With pleasure he recalled that she had given him her hand, but in this he feared that there was more of haughtiness than of generosity. And at the table, and later in the library, he was made to feel that after all she had accepted him merely on probation; still, her treatment of him was so different from what it had been, that he took the courage to build up a hope that he might at last subdue her. To what was passing the Major was humorously alive, and, too keenly tickled to sit still, he walked up and down the room, slyly shaking himself. Mrs. Cranceford asked Gid if he had read the book which she had loaned him, the "Prince of the House of David," and he answered that when at last he had fallen asleep the night before, the precious volume had dropped beside his pillow. There were some books which he read while sitting by the fire, and some whose stirring qualities moved him to walk about as he gulped their contents; but with a godly book he must lay himself down so that he might be more receptive of its soothing influence. Then he reviewed the book in question, and did it shrewdly. With the Jewish maiden and the Roman centurion going to see the strange man perform the novel rite of baptism in the river of Jordan, he looked back upon the city of Jerusalem; and further along he pointed out Judas, plodding the dusty road--squat, sullen, and with a sneer at the marvel he was destined to see. "I believe you have read it," the Major spoke up, still slyly shaking himself. "Read it! Why, John, I have eaten it. I gad, sir--Pardon me, ma'am." With a nod she pronounced her forgiveness. The slip was but a pretense, foisted to change the talk to suit his purpose. "Ah," said he, "I have not yet weeded out all my idle words, and it grieves me when I am surprised by the recurrence of one which must be detestable; but, ma'am, I try hard, and there is always merit in a sincere trial." "Yes, in a sincere trial," she agreed. "Yes, ma'am; and--now there's John laughing at me fit to kill himself; and bless me, ma'am, you are laughing, too. Am I never to be taken seriously? Are you thus to titter true reformation out of countenance? But I like it. But we are never tired of a man so long as we can laugh at him; we may cry ourselves to sleep, but who laughs himself to slumber? Ma'am, are you going to leave us?" he asked, seeing that Mrs. Cranceford was on her feet. "But of course you have duties to look after, even though you might not be glad to escape an old man's gabble. I _call_ it gabble, but I know it to be wisdom. But I beg pardon for seeming vanity." A dignified smile was the only reply she made, but in the smile was legible the progress his efforts were making. "John," he said, when she was gone, "that sort of a woman would have made a man of me." "But perhaps that sort of a woman wouldn't have undertaken the job," the Major replied. "Slow, John; but I guess you're right." "I think so. Women may be persistent, but they are generally quick to recognize the impossible." "Easy. But again I guess you're right. I gad, when the teachings of a man's mother leave him unfinished there isn't a great deal of encouragement for the wife. A man looks upon his wife as a part of himself, and a man will lie even to himself, John." "By the way," the Major asked, sitting down, "have you seen that fellow Mayo since he came back?" "Yes; I met him in the road once, but had no words with him." "It would hardly do for me to have words with him," the Major replied; and after a moment of musing he added: "I understand that he's organizing the negroes, and that's the first step toward trouble. The negro has learned to withdraw his faith from the politician, but labor organization is a new thing to him, and he will believe in it until the bubble bursts. That fellow is a shrewd scoundrel and there's no telling what harm he may not project." "Then why not hang him before he has time to launch his trouble? There's always a way to keep the cat from scratching you. Shoot the cat." "No," said the Major, "that won't do. It would put us at a disadvantage." "Yes; but I gad, our disadvantage wouldn't be as great as his. Nobody would be willing to swap places with a man that's hanged." "That's all very well, but we would be the aggressors, and distant eyes would look upon him as a martyr." "Yes, I know; but isn't it better to have one man looked on as a martyr than to have a whole community bathed in blood?" "It might be better for us, but not for our children. A blood-bath may be forgotten, but martyrdom lives in the minds of succeeding generations." "John, there spoke the man of business. You are always looking out for the future. I have agreed with myself to make the most of the present, and so far as the future is concerned, it will have to look out for itself--it always has. Was there ever a future that was not prepared to take care of itself? And is there a past that can be helped? Then let us fasten our minds to the present. Let me see. I wonder if we couldn't train a steer to gore that fellow to death. And I gad, that would do away with all possibility of martyrdom. What do you say?" "Nothing more on that subject; but I can say something concerning another matter, and it will interest you more than the martyrdom of all history." "Then out with it. I demand to be interested. But don't trifle with me, John. Remember that an old man's hide is thin." "I'll not trifle with you; I'll startle you. Sixty years ago, the grandfather of Admiral Semmes made whisky in the Tennessee Mountains." "But, John, that was a long time ago, and the old man is dead, and here we are alive. But he made whisky sixty years ago. What about it?" "The brother of the admiral lives in Memphis," the Major continued, "and the other day he sent me a bottle of that whisky, run through a log before you were born." Gid's mouth flew open and his eyes stuck out. "John," he said, and the restraint he put upon his voice rippled it, "John, don't tamper with the affections of an old and infirm man. Drive me off the bayou plantation, compel me to acknowledge and to feel that I am a hypercrite and a liar, but don't whet a sentiment and then cut my throat with it. Be merciful unto a sinner who worships the past." He sat there looking upward, a figure of distress, fearing the arrival of despair. The Major laughed at him. "Don't knock me down with a stick of spice-wood, John." The Major went to a sideboard, took therefrom a quaint bottle and two thin glasses, and placing them upon a round table, bowed to the bottle and said: "Dew of an ancient mountain, your servant, sir." And old Gid, with his mouth solemnly set, but with his eyes still bulging, arose, folded his arms, bowed with deep reverence, and thus paid his respects: "Sunshine, gathered from the slopes of long ago, your slave." Mrs. Cranceford stepped in to look for something, and the play improvised by these two old boys was broken short off. The Major sat down, but Gid edged up nearer the table as if preparing to snatch the bottle. Upon the odd-shaped flask she cast a look of passing interest, and speaking to the Major she said: "Oh, that's the whisky you got from Memphis. Don't drink it all, please. I want to fill up the camphor bottle----" Gid sat down with a jolt that jarred the windows, and she looked at him in alarm, fearing at the instant that death must have aimed a blow at him. "Camphor bottle!" he gasped. "Merciful heavens, ma'am,' fill up your camphor bottle with my heart's blood!" At this distress the Major laughed, though more in sympathy than in mirth; and Mrs. Cranceford simply smiled as if with loathness she recognized that there was cause for merriment, but when she had quitted the room and gone to her own apartment, she sat down, and with the picture in her mind, laughed in mischievous delight. "Help yourself," said the Major. Gid had spread his hands over the whisky as if to warm them in this liquidized soul of the past. "Pour it out for me, John. And I will turn my back so as not to see how much you pour." "Go ahead," the Major insisted. "But I am shaken with that suggested profanation, that camphor bottle, and I'm afraid that I might spill a drop. But wait. I am also bold and will attempt it. Gods, look at that--a shredded sunbeam." "Don't be afraid of it." "I was waiting for you to say that, John. But it is reverence, and not fear. That I should have lived to see this day is a miracle. Shall I pour yours? There you are." They stood facing each other. With one hand Gid held high his glass, and with the other hand he pressed his heart. Their glasses clinked, and then they touched the liquor with their lips, sipped it, and Gid stretched his neck like a chicken. To have spoken, to have smacked his mouth, would have been profane. There is true reverence in nothing save silence, and in silence they stood. Gid was the first to speak, not that he had less reverence, but that he had more to say and felt, therefore, that he must begin earlier. "Like the old man of Israel, I am now ready to die," he said, as he put down his glass. "Not until you have had another drink," suggested the Major. "A further evidence, John, of your cool judgment. You are a remarkable man. Most anyone can support a sorrow, but you can restrain a joy, and in that is shown man's completest victory over self. No, I am not quite ready to die. But I believe that if a drop of this liquor, this saint-essence, had been poured into a camphor bottle, I should have dropped dead, that's all, and Peter himself would have complimented me upon the exquisite sensitiveness of my organization. Pour me just about two fingers--or three. That's it. If the commander of the Alabama had taken a few drinks of his grandfather's nectar, the Confederacy would have wanted a blockade runner." "You don't mean to say that it would have softened his nerve, do you?" "Oh, no; but his heart, attuned to sweet melody, would have turned from frowning guns to a beautiful nook in some river's bend, there to sing among flowers dripping with honey-dew. I gad, this would make an old man young before it could make him drunk." The Major brought two pipes and an earthen jar of tobacco; and with the smoke came musings and with the liquor came fanciful conceits. To them it was a pride that they could drink without drunkenness; in moderation was a continuous pleasure. When Gid arose to go, he took an oath that never had he passed so delightful a time. The Major pressed him to stay to supper. "Oh, no, John," he replied; "supper would spoil my spiritual flow. And besides, I am expecting visitors to-night." He hummed a tune as he cantered down the road; and the Major in his library hummed the same tune as he stretched out his feet to the fire. As Gid was passing the house of Wash Sanders, the endless invalid came out upon the porch and called him: "Won't you 'light?" "No, don't believe I've got time," Gid answered, slacking the pace of his horse. "How are you getting along?" "Not at all. Got no relish for victuals. Don't eat enough to keep a chicken alive. Can't stand it much longer." "Want to bet on it?" Gid cried. "What's that?" "I say I'm sorry to hear it." "Glad to know that somebody sympathizes with me. Well, drop in some time and we'll take a chaw of tobacco and spit the fire out." Nothing could have been more expressive of a welcome to Wash's house. To invite a man to sit until the fire was extinguished with the overflow of the quid was with him the topknot of courtesy. "All right," Gid shouted back; and then to himself he said: "If I was sure that a drink of that old whisky would thrill him to death I'd steal it for him, but I'd have to be sure; I'd take no chances." A horse came galloping up behind him. Dusk was falling and the old man did not at once recognize Mayo, the labor organizer of the negroes. But he knew the voice when the fellow spoke: "What's the weather about to do?" "About to quit, I reckon," Gid answered. "Quit what?" "Quit whatever it's doing." "Pretty smart as you go along, ain't you?" "Yes, and when I stop, too." "Strains you to answer a civil question, I see." The old man turned in his saddle and jogged along facing the fellow, and some distance was covered before either of them spoke. "Are you trying to raise a row with me?" Gid asked. "I want to know for if you are I can save you a good deal of time and trouble." "Sort of a time-saver," said Mayo. "Yes, when I'm not a recruiter for eternity." "I don't believe I follow you." "Wish you would, or ride on ahead. Now look here," he added, "I just about know you when I see you, and as I don't make friends half as fast as I do enemies--in other words, as I am able to grasp a man's bad points quicker than I can catch his good ones--I would advise you not to experiment with me. You haven't come back here for the benefit of the community, and if we were not the most easy-going people in the world, we'd hang you and then speculate leisurely as to what might have been your aim in coming here." Mayo grunted. He was a tall, big, stoop-shouldered fellow. He rode with his knees drawn up. He had a sort of "ducking" head, and his chin was long and pointed. He grunted and replied: "I guess this is a free country or at least it ought to be." "Yes," Gid rejoined, still facing him, "but it won't be altogether free for such as you until the penitentiaries are abolished." "Oh, I understand you, Mr. Batts. You are trying to work up a chance to kill me." "Good guess; and you are trying to help me along." "But I want to tell you that if you were to kill me you wouldn't live to tell the tale. I don't want any trouble with you. I'm not here to have trouble unless it's shoved on me. I am going to do one thing, however, trouble or no trouble; I am going to demand that the colored people shall have their rights." "And at the same time I suppose you are going to demand that the white man shall not have his." "No, won't demand that he shan't have his rights, but that he shan't have his way." "Not have his way with his own affairs? Good. And now let me tell you something. Want to hear it?" "I'm not aching to hear it." "Well, I'll give it to you anyway. It's this: The first thing you know a committee of gentlemen will call on you and offer you the opportunity to make a few remarks, and after you have made them you will thereafter decline all invitations to speak. At the end of a rope the most talkative man finds a thousand years of silence. Long time for a man to hush, eh? Well, our roads split here." "How do you know?" "Because I turn to the right." "But may be my business calls me over that way." "Don't know about that, but I'm going to turn into this lane and I don't want you to come with me. Do you hear?" Mayo did not answer. Gid turned into a road leading to the right, and looking back he saw that Mayo was riding straight ahead. "At any rate he ain't afraid to say what he thinks," the old man mused. "Got more nerve than I thought he had, and although it may make him more dangerous, yet it entitles him to more respect." His horse's hoof struck into a patch of leaves, heaped beneath a cottonwood, and from the rustling his ears, warmed by the old liquor, caught the first bars of a tune he had known in his youth; and lifting high his voice he sang it over and over again. He passed a negro cabin whence often had proceeded at night the penetrating cry of a fiddle, and it was night now but no fiddle sent forth its whine. A dog shoved open the door, and by the fire light within the old man saw a negro sitting with a gun across his lap, and beside him stood two boys, looking with rapture upon their father's weapon. Throughout the neighborhood had spread a report that the negroes were meeting at night to drill, and this glance through a door gave life to what had been a shadow. He rode on, and his horse's hoof struck into another patch of leaves, but no tune arose from the rustle. The old man was thinking. In a field of furrowed clouds the moon was struggling, and down the sandy road fell light and darkness in alternating patches. Far away he saw a figure stepping from light into darkness and back again into light. Into the deep shadow of a vine-entangled tree he turned his horse, and here he waited until he heard footsteps crunching in the sand, until he saw a man in the light that lay for a moment in the road, and then he cried: "Hello, there, Jim Taylor!" "Is that you, Uncle Gideon?" "Yes, Gideon's band of one. Come over here a moment." "I will as soon as I can find you. What are you doing hiding out in the dark? The grand jury ain't in session." "No, I gad, but something else is," he replied. Jim came forward and put his hand on the horn of the old man's saddle, which as an expert he did in spite of the shying of the horse; and then he asked: "Well, what is it, Uncle Gideon?" "You've heard the rumor that the negroes are drilling at night." "Yes, what of it?" "It's a fact, that's what there is of it. Just now I rode quite a ways with Mayo and he was inclined to be pretty sassy; and right back there I looked into Gabe Little's cabin and saw him with a gun across his lap." "Well, what of that? Haven't the negroes had guns ever since the war, and hasn't a man got the right to sit with his gun across his lap? Uncle Gideon, I'm afraid you've been putting too much new wine into an old bottle." "Soft, Jimmie; it was old liquor, sixty years at least. But I gad, it strikes me that you are pretty glib to-night. You must have heard something." "No, not since Mrs. Cranceford got the letter, but that was enough to last me a good while." "Didn't hear about my bereavement, did you?" "What, you bereaved, Uncle Gideon? How did it happen?" "At the imperious beck and call of nature, Jimmie. My uncle died and inflicted on me money enough to make a pretense of paying my debts, and I've made such a stagger that even Mrs. Cranceford has admitted me into the out-lying districts of her good opinion. But that's got nothing to do with the business in hand. Let's go back yonder and find out why that negro sits there suckling his gun to sleep." "But if he suckles it to sleep there's no harm in it, Uncle Gideon." "Ah, clod-head, but it may have bad dreams and wake up with a cry. Let's go back there." "Are you in earnest?" "As earnest as a last will and testament." "Then let me tell you that I'll do nothing of the sort. You don't catch me prowling about a man's house at night, and you wouldn't think of such a thing if you were strictly sober." "Jimmie, you never saw me drunk." "No, but I've seen you soberer that you are now." "An unworthy insinuation, Jimmie. But having great respect for your plodding judgment, I will not go to the negro's cabin, but will proceed rather to my own shanty. And I want you to come with me. Tom Cranceford and Sallie Pruitt will be there and in the shine of the fire we'll cut many a scollop. What do you say?" "Uncle Gideon, don't you know how strongly opposed Mrs. Cranceford is to Tom's----" "Bah, law-abiding calf. They are going to marry anyway, so what's the difference? Jimmie, the most useless man in the world is the fellow that keeps just within the law. But perhaps it isn't your law-abiding spirit so much as it is your fear. In blind and stupid obedience there is a certain sort of gallantry, and in trotting to Mrs. Cranceford's cluck you may be wise." "It's not that I'm afraid of offending her," the giant said. "The girl is too good for Tom any day, or for any of us when it comes to that, but the distress of his mother haunts me, and I don't want that girl's affection for Tom to haunt me too. I don't want to see them together if I can help it. One haunt at a time is enough. But I tell you this, if it should come to a question I would decide in favor of the girl." "Jimmie, you are improving. Yes, I am doing you great good. I found your mind an insipid dish and I have sprinkled it with salt and pepper. You are right. Always decide in favor of the young, for the old have already had their disappointments. Well, I'll go. Lift your paw. My horse can't move out from under its weight." "All right," said the giant, laughing and stepping back. "By the way," he added, "tell Tom to be sure and meet me at the landing at two o'clock to-morrow. We are going down to New Orleans." "What, alone? I ought to go along to take care of you. I could steer you away from all the bad places and by this means you would naturally stumble on the good ones. I'll see you when you get back." At home the old man had lighted his fire and was listening to its cheerful crackle when his visitors came, laughing. With a boisterous shout Tom kicked the door open, and when the girl remonstrated with him, he grabbed her and kissed her. "That's all right," old Gid cried. "One of these days the penitentiary doors will open for you without being kicked in. Ah, delightful to see you, my dear," he said, bowing to the girl; "refreshing to see you, although you come with a scamp. Sit down over there. I gad, you are a bit of sunshine that has lost its way in the night." About her head she had wound a scarf of red yarn, and as she stood taking it off, with the fire-light dancing among the kinks of her flax-like hair, the old man stepped forward to help her. "Hands off," said Tom. "Don't touch her." "Wolfish protector of a lamb," the old man replied, "I ought to throw you out; but it is not my mission to cast out devils." The girl sat down on a bench and Tom took a seat beside her; and with many a giggle and a "quit that, now," they picked at each other. Old Gid, in his splint-bottomed chair, leaned back against the wall and feasted his eyes upon their antics. "Kittens," said he, "I will get you a string and a button. Ah, Lord, I was once a delicious idiot." "And you've simply lost your deliciousness," Tom replied. "Ah, and in its place took up age. But with it came wisdom, Thomas." "But didn't it come too late?" "The wise utterance of a foolish youth," said the old man. "Yes, Thomas, it came too late. Wisdom is not of much use to an old codger. He can't profit by it himself and nobody wants his advice. Did I ever tell you about the girl I loved? Ah, she was glorious. June was in her mouth and October fell out of her hair." "And you didn't marry her because she was poor, eh?" "No, but because she was rich, Jimmie. She wanted me not; and she married a wealthy fool and the imbecile made her happy. I could almost forgive her for not loving me, for I was a mate on a steamboat, but to let that fool make her happy--it was too much and I cast her out of my mind. But when is your wedding to take place? In the sweet light of a distant moon or within the sunshine of a few days?" "Hanged if I know." "Tom!" cried the girl, putting her hands over his mouth, "that's no way to talk." "I said it to make you do that," he replied, his voice latticed by her fingers and sounding afar off. He took her hands and pressed them to his cheek. "A pretty picture, and I'll long remember you as you now sit on that bench," said the old man. "Sallie, how old are you?" he asked. "I don't know, sir. Pap and mother couldn't put it down 'cause they didn't know how to figger, and when I got so I could figger a little they had dun forgot the year and the day of the month. Most of the time when I'm by myself I feel old enough, but sometimes Uncle Wash calls me foolish and then I'm awful young. But Aunt Martha never calls me foolish 'cause I help her in the kitchen." There came a scratching at the threshold. The old man got out of his tilted chair and opened the door, and a dog, prancing in, lay down in front of the fire, with his nose between his outstretched paws. "What a pretty dog," said the girl, and with a look out of one eye and with a slight wag of the tail the dog acknowledged the compliment. "Oh, he's gallant," Gid replied, sitting down. "And he knows when a truth has been told about him." "No good at hunting, is he?" Tom asked. "He is not a sportsman," Gid answered. "He pays his keep with companionship. I sit here and read him to sleep nearly every night. He tries to keep awake, but he can't. But as long as I read a lively book he'll lie there and look up at me as if he enjoys it, and I believe he does, but 'Benton's Thirty Years in the American Senate' will knock him most any time. And old Whateley's logic makes him mighty drowsy. I reckon you cubs have been to supper. If you haven't you may make yourselves at home and cook something. Old Aunt Liza cooks for me, out there in the other room, but she's generally away in the service of her church and then I have to shift for myself." "We've been to supper," the girl spoke up, "but if you want something to eat I'll cook it." "Bless your life, not a bite," the old man protested. "To eat now would canker a memory. I took sacrament over at the Major's. Now, I'm going to lean back here and I may talk or I may drop off to sleep, and in either event just let me go. But if I doze off don't wake me, not even when you get ready to leave. Just pull the door to and that's all." "Ain't you afraid to sleep here all by yourself?" the girl asked. "I'd be afraid somebody'd slip in and grab me." "I could scarcely blame any one for grabbing you, my dear," the old man replied, smiling upon her, "but as for myself, the grabber would get the worst of it." A long time they sat and talked of neighborhood happenings, the death of a burly man who it was never supposed could die before Wash Sanders was laid away; they talked of the growing dissatisfaction among the negroes, of the church built by Father Brennon, of the trip to be taken to New Orleans by Jim and Tom. The fire-light died down. A chunk fell and the dog jumped up with a sniff and a sneeze. Old Gideon took no notice, for leaning back against the wall he was softly snoring. "Let us leave him just as he is," said Tom. "But it looks cruel," the girl replied. "He suffers from sleeplessness; to wake him would be more cruel. Let's do as he told us." The girl put the bench out of the way, that he might not fall over it in the dark; and out of the room they tip-toed and silently they closed the door. By the hand he led her to the road, and with a coo and a song they strolled homeward. The clouds were scattered and acres of light lay on the cleared land; but the woods were dark and the shadows were black, and he walked with his arm about her. They heard the galloping of a horse and stepped aside to let the rider pass, and when he had passed, with his head in the moonlight and his horse in the dark, the young man said: "I know that fellow." "Why didn't you speak to him?" she asked. "Because it wouldn't do for me to have any words with him. He's the man that's trying to organize the negroes." He left her at Wash Sanders' gate; he heard her feet upon the steps, and looking back he caught the kiss she threw at him. CHAPTER XIX. A steamboat ride to New Orleans will never lose its novelty. Romance lies along the lower river. The land falls away and we look down upon fields bounded by distant mist, and beyond that dim line one's fancy gallops riotously. Not alone the passenger, but the seasoned captain of the boat stands musing and motionless, gazing upon the scene. In his mind he could carry the form and the rugged grandeur of a mountain; upon a crag he could hang his recollection, but this flat endlessness is ever an unencompassed mystery. The wind from the gulf was soft, and the two friends stood on the hurricane-deck, charmed with a familiar view. "It is just as new to me now as it was when I was a boy, coming along here with my father," said the giant. "And yet I don't see what makes it interesting, no woods, nothing but a house here and there." "It always makes me think I'm going over the flat side of the globe, and I catch myself wondering what's just beyond," Tom replied. "There's the city 'way round yonder. How long do you want to stay?" "I don't know exactly." "Got any particular business down here?" "No," he said, hesitatingly. "None that I know of." "Just pleasure, is it?" "Well, I reckon we might call it that." "Might call it that? But I know why I'm here. I've come because you wanted me to. There is nothing going on that I care to see. What is it you're after?" "Oh, just want to look around a little." "All right, old fellow, I'm with you, but as soon as you get tired of looking around I wish you'd let me know. It seems to me that I've been gone a month already. You know why." "Yes, I know; but you've got a consolation that I never had--you know what to expect when you get back." "Yes, that's true, and may be you'll know what to expect one of these days." From the museful distance the giant removed his gaze and upon the boy at his side he bent a kindly look. "I have been reading a good deal of late," he said, "and old Gid has told me that I am improving, but I have found no book to speak a word of comfort to me. I took the heartache away back yonder--but we won't talk about it. We'll poke around down here a day or two and then go home." "But hang it, I thought you came to enjoy yourself and not to conjure up things to make you sad." "You are right, and you shan't hear any more sad talk out of me." It was early in the forenoon when they stepped ashore and stood upon the old levee. The splendid life of the Mississippi steamboat is fading, but here the glow lingers, the twilight at the close of a fervid day. No longer are seen the gilded names of famous competitors, "The Lee," "The Natchez," but unheralded boats are numerous, and the deck-hands' chorus comes with a swell over the water, and the wharf is a jungle of trade. In the French market they drank black coffee, listening to the strange chatter about them, and then aimlessly they strolled away. "What's your programme?" the boy asked. "Haven't any." "Do you want to call on any of the cotton buyers?" "No, don't care to see them." "All right; I'll walk until you say quit." And thus they passed the day, with strolling about, halting to look at an old tiled roof, a broken iron gate, a wrought iron balcony, a snail-covered garden wall; and when evening was come they went to a hotel to rest; but no sooner had night fallen than they went out again to resume their walk. "Look here," said Tom, beginning to lag, "I don't want to kick, but I'd just like to know why I am fool enough to walk all day like a mule on a tread-mill?" "You said you'd walk with me." "Said I would! Haven't I?" "Yes," the giant drawled, "in a manner." "If I haven't walked I don't know what you call walking. You have made a machine of me, a corn-planter. Would you mind telling me where we are going now?" "I confess I don't know," the giant answered. "Then let us look around and find out. Right now I'd rather be in old Gid's house, sitting with somebody on a bench--and I'm going back to-morrow. What fun is there in poking about this way like a couple of gawks? You even pull me away from the supper table to tramp up and down these streets. Hang it, I don't want to see people. Every face I see is----" "A disappointment," said the giant. "Then why do you take the crowded side of the street? Let's go in here and sit down a moment." They had halted in front of a music hall. From within proceeded the husky song of a worn-out negro minstrel. "You may go in but I'll walk on," Jim replied. "It's nothing but a dive. I'll go on down to the corner and wait for you. Don't stay long." Jim strode away and Tom went into the beer hall. At the far end was a stage, and on it stood the minstrel, dimmed by intervening tobacco smoke. The floor was covered with damp saw-dust. The place was thronged with a motley crowd, sailors, gamblers, with here and there a sprinkle of wayward respectability. Painted girls attended the tables and everywhere was the slopping of beer and the stench of the cigarette. Tom was about to turn away when the sight of a company gathered about a table halted him; and through the smoke his vision leaped and rested upon--Louise. There was a rush, an over-turning of a table, the toppling over of a tipsy man, and Tom stood confronting her. In a loud voice he cried: "What the devil are you doing here?" She got up and held out her hand, but resentment entered her mind and she drew it back. "What are _you_ doing here?" she replied. "I've as much right here as you have." "I'll show you about that!" he roared, his anger lifting his voice high above the grumble and the sharp clack of the place. "I'll drag you out!" Beside her sat a solemnly-respectable man, and up he got and quietly said: "Your language is most insulting, sir." Tom did not wait to weigh the remark; indeed he did not hear it, for like a bull-dog in a fury he lunged at the quiet man's throat, laid hold of his collar, shoved him off to arm's length, and struck him, but the blow glanced and the man jerked away. And then amid loud cries, the over-turning of tables and the smashing of glasses, the furious youngster felt himself seized by many hands. But he was a tiger and they could not bear him to the floor. He broke loose and sprawled one man upon the saw-dust. Others rushed upon him and again he was in a tangle and a tug, but he tore himself from their hands, got a square blow at the proprietor of the house and knocked him senseless. For a moment he was free, and this moment was not left unimproved. From an upturned table he wrenched a leg, and swinging it above his head he cleared his way to a side door, and snatching it open, he sprung out into a small court, just as the police were entering at the front of the house. In the court a dim light was burning; at the end, but a few yards away, was a rusty iron gate, and whether or not it was locked he never knew, for throwing down his weapon he laid hold of a bar and with a jerk he tore the gate from its rust-eaten hinges, threw it against a wall and was out in the street. Now he ran, through an open space, into another street, and then he walked, panting, looking back. It must have been difficult to explain the cause of the disturbance for the police had not followed him. He halted under a lamp hung above a narrow doorway. His hat was gone, his coat was torn, and the bosom of his shirt was in shreds. The short street was deserted, but he fancied that he heard footsteps, and quickly he walked to a corner, and turning, saw Jim standing under a lamp-post not far away. The giant was not looking toward him, and not hearing his easy approach, did not turn his head until Tom was almost within the shade-rim of the lamp. "Why, what the deuce have you been doing?" the giant cried, reaching him at a stride. "You look like a drowned rat, and your neck is clawed. What have you been doing?" "Row," the boy panted. "In that place? Come back and we'll clean it out. Come on." "No," said Tom, "let's get away from here. I've got something to tell you. Let's circle round here somewhere and get a hat. I'll tell you when we get back to the hotel, and you won't care to walk any more to-night after I've told you." Jim might have been burning to know more, but he said nothing, for dogged patience was a part of his heroism. He took the boy's arm and led him away, to a place where a hat was bought, and thence to the hotel; and not until they were shut in a room did Tom attempt to tell his story. And it was even then some minutes before he could proceed. His anger was gone and sorrow was upon him. Several times he choked. And then he told his story. With hard steps the giant walked about the room, saying not a word; but he drooped as he halted at the window, as he stood looking out upon the glimmering lights, far below. "You said I wouldn't want to walk to-night, but I must," he spoke, and his voice had a smothered sound. "I am going out to look for her. And now you know why I have been walking all day, gazing at the faces in the crowd." He had turned from the glimmering lights and was looking at Tom. "I traced that letter she wrote, and in my mind I settled that it must have come from this place. But I didn't tell your mother what I suspected; I kept it to myself." "If you go out again I'll go with you, Jim." "No, I insist upon going alone." He went out; and when he returned, just before the dawn, he found the boy asleep on a chair. He took him up, put him upon a bed and sat himself down at a window; and when Tom awoke, along toward ten o'clock, the giant was still sitting there. "Jim." "Well." "How long have you been in?" "Don't know." "You didn't--didn't find her?" "No. I went to the place where you had the fight--wish to the Lord I had been with you--but of course couldn't learn anything. I was--was afraid to ask about her. But I tramped around all night, and I went into all sorts of places, looking for her, and all the time afraid that I might find her. God, what am I talking about! Afraid of finding her! Why, she couldn't be in a place where--where she oughtn't to be." "But she was!" the boy cried, bounding out upon the floor. "She was and--Great God, I can hardly believe it, I don't realize it! I have been so swallowed up that I haven't thought about her much lately--she's crazy, Jim. Oh, she must be. She was the purest-minded girl----" The giant stopped him with an uplifting of his ponderous hand. "Don't say any more. Don't say she _was_ pure-minded. She _is_ pure-minded. I will find her and she shall tell me----" "She can't tell you anything to clear herself, Jim. She's lost--she's crazy." "She's an angel," said the giant. "My dear Jim, she's my sister and I loved her, but angels can't go----" "Don't say it." "I won't, but don't you be foolish. Truth is truth, and we have to look at it whether we want to or not." He walked up and down the room. "Who would have thought that such a thing could happen?" he went on. "It's a dream. But why did she leave home when she knew how much we all loved her? What made her run away from you when she knew how you loved her? Jim, I'm going home to-day. Are you coming with me?" "No, I'm going to stay here and look for her." "And when you have found her she'll treat you as she did me. She'll say she has as much right there as you have. I don't believe it's any use. Better come home with me." "No, I'm going to look for her, and if she'll marry me I'll bring her home." "Jim, she is my sister, but--I won't say it. I love her, but I would rather have seen her dead than where I saw her last night. I'm going home." "Wait a moment." For a time he pondered and then he said: "You may tell your mother, but don't tell the Major." "But why should it be kept from him? He ought to know it. We'll have to tell him some time." "Some time, may be, but not now, and don't you even hint it to him, and don't you tell Sallie. Don't tell any one but your mother. Do you hear?" "Yes, and I reckon you're right. I'll do as you tell me. Well, it's time and I'm going." Jim went with him to the levee, saw him on a boat and then resumed his search throughout the town. But he asked no questions; and three days later when he went aboard the home-bound boat, he knew no more than he had known the night when the boy had told his story. CHAPTER XX. The night was rainy and a fierce wind was blowing. The Major and his wife were by the fire in the sitting-room, when there came a heavy tread upon the porch, but the knock that fell upon the door was gentle. They knew who had come, and the door was opened for Jim Taylor. Quietly he responded to their greeting, and with both hands he took off his slouch hat, went to the fireplace and over the blaze shook it. "Put myself in mind of a wet dog," he said. "Didn't think to shake outside. How are you all getting along?" He was looking at Mrs. Cranceford, but the Major answered him. "In the same old way. Tilt that cat out of the rocking-chair and sit down." "Have you heard of the death of Mrs. Wash Sanders?" Mrs. Cranceford asked, fearing that the Major might get ahead of her with this piece of news, but all along determined that he should not. "No, I haven't," he said; but his want of surprise was not satisfying, and Mrs. Cranceford said: "I mean Mrs. Wash Sanders." "Yes, I know; but this is the first I've heard of it. I came from the boat right up here. So the poor woman's dead? She never knew anything but hard work. How long was she sick? Shouldn't think she could take the time to be sick long, poor soul." "She was not in bed more than two days. It was awful, the way she suffered. And all the time Wash was whining that he couldn't eat anything, as if anybody cared. I never was so provoked at a man in my life. I'd like to know who cares whether he eats another bite or not. Actually, I believe he thought the neighbors had come to sympathize with him instead of to nurse his wife. And when she was dead he went about blubbering that he couldn't live but a few days." "He'll outlive us all," said the Major. "He told us yesterday that he was threatened with convulsions, and Gid swore that a convulsion was about the last thing he ought to fear, that he was too lazy to entertain such an exertion." In this talk Jim felt not even the slightest interest. He wanted to talk about Louise. But not in Mrs. Cranceford's manner nor in her eyes when she looked straight at him was there a hint that Tom had told her that the girl had been seen. Perhaps the boy had decided to elect him to this unenviable office. The Major asked him about his trip, but he answered as if he cared not what he said; but when shortly afterward the Major went out, Taylor's unconcern fell from him and he stood up and in tremulous anxiousness looked at Mrs. Cranceford, expecting her to say something. Surely Tom had told her nothing, for she quietly smiled at him as he stood there, awkwardly and distressfully fumbling with himself. "I have a letter from her," she said. Taylor sat down hard. "A letter from her!" "Yes; received it this morning." "But has Tom told you anything?" "Yes; everything." "And she has written to you since then?" "Yes; I will show you." On a corner of the mantel-piece was a work-box, and unlocking it, she took out a letter and handed it to him. "Read it," she said, "and if you hear the Major coming, put it away. Some references in it would have to be explained, and so I have decided not to let him see it." He took the letter, and standing where the light from the hanging lamp fell brightest, read the following: "My Dear Mother:--By this time Tom must have told you of our meeting. And what a meeting it was. He was worse than an orang-outang, but I must say that I admire his courage, and I struggled to help him when he was in the thick of his fight, but my friends tore me away, realizing that flight was our only redemption. Of course you will wonder why I was in such a place, and I don't know that I can explain in a satisfactory manner to you, and surely not to father. I would have introduced Tom to my friends had he given me time, but it appears that he was in too much of a hurry to attend upon the demands of politeness. Fight was boiling in his blood and it had to bubble out. Mother, I was with a slumming party. Do you know what a slumming party is? It is a number of respectable people whom curiosity leads into the resorts of crime and vice. Society thinks that it makes one wiser, and that to know the aspect of depravity does not make one less innocent. But I know that you will not approve of a slumming party, and I cannot say that I do. The Rev. H. Markham, whose sermons you must have read, was with me. As the champion of virtue he has planned and executed an invasion of the haunts of iniquity, and his weekly discourses here are very popular, particularly with women. Well, he was sitting beside me, and I have since thought that it must have been a great shock to his dignity when Tom struck him; but his greatest solicitude was the fear that the occurrence might be spread by the newspapers, and to keep it out was his first care. That night on business I left the city, and I write this in a quiet, Arcadian neighborhood. It is with pleasure that I feel myself a success in the work which I have chosen. What work? you naturally ask. But that is my secret, and I must hold it just a little longer." Here several lines were erased and a fresh start taken. "I have longed to look upon the dear faces at home; but mingled with my love is a pride. I am determined to make something of myself. Simply to be an honest, patient, upright woman, in love with her home, is no longer enough. Life demands more than this, or at least woman demands it of life. And to be somebody calls for sacrifice as well as ability and determination. Absence from home is my sacrifice, and what my effort is you shall know in due time. It will surprise you, and in this to me will lie a delight. My associates tell me that I am different from anyone else, but this difference they put down as an individuality, and success in my field is won only by the individual. Within two weeks from this day I shall be with you, and then my little ant-hill of mystery will be torn to pieces. I am going to show you all how I love you; I am going to prove to you that what has appeared odd and unlady-like were but leadings to my development." More lines were erased, and then the letter thus proceeded: "For some time I have had it in mind to make Sallie Pruitt a present, but as I have no idea as to what she might like best, I enclose twenty dollars, which you will please give to her. Do you see my hero often? I think of him, dream of him, and my heart will never know a perfect home until his love has built a mansion for it." The letter was fluttering in the giant's hand. "Who--who--what does she mean?" "She means you, stupid!" Mrs. Cranceford cried. He looked up, dazed; he put out his hand, he grabbed his hat, he snatched the door open and was out in the wind and the rain. CHAPTER XXI. With rain-soaked sand the road was heavy, and to walk was to struggle, but not so to the giant treading his way homeward. Coming, he had felt the opposition of the wind, the rain and the mushy sand, but returning he found neither in the wind nor in the sand a foe to progress. His heart was leaping, and with it his feet were keeping pace. In his hand he held the letter; and feeling it begin to cool in his grasp, he realized that the rain was beating upon it; so, holding in common with all patient men the instincts of a woman, he put the wet paper in his bosom and tightly buttoned his coat about it. Suddenly he halted; the pitiful howling of a dog smote his ear. At the edge of a small field lying close to the road was a negro's cabin, and from that quarter came the dog's distressful outcry. Jim stepped up to the fence and listened for any human-made noise that might proceed from the cabin, but there came none--the place was dark and deserted. "They have gone away and left him shut up somewhere," he mused, as he began to climb the fence. The top rail broke under his weight, and his mind flew back to the day when he had seen Louise in the road, confronted by the burly leader of a sheepfold, for then with climbing a fence he had broken the top rail. He found the dog shut in a corn-crib, and the door was locked. But with a jerk he pulled out the staple, thinking not upon the infraction of breaking a lock, but glad to be of service even to a hound. "Come out, old fellow," he called, and he heard the dog's tail thrashing the corn husks. "Come on." The dog came to the door, licking at the hand of his rescuer; and Jim was about to help him to the ground when a lantern flashed from a corner of the crib. "What are you doing here?" a voice demanded. A white man stepped forward and close behind him a negro followed. "What are you doing here?" the white man again demanded. "Getting a dog out of trouble." "Getting yourself into trouble, you'd better say. What right have you to poke about at night, breaking people's locks?" "None at all, I am forced to acknowledge. I hardly thought of what I was doing. My only aim was to help the dog." "That will do to tell." "Yes, I think so. And by the way, what right have you to ask so many questions? You don't live here." "But he does," the white man replied, swinging his lantern toward the negro. "Gabe Little lives here." "That you, Gabe?" Taylor asked. "Yas, whut de white folks has left o' me." "All right. You are well enough acquainted with me to know that I wouldn't break a lock----" "But you have, sir," the white man insisted. "Not exactly; but I have drawn the staple. By the way, whose dog is this?" The dog had jumped out and was frisking about Taylor's legs. "It's a setter and doesn't belong to you, Gabe." "Dat's fur me ter say, sah," the negro sullenly replied. "That so? Well, I guess I'll keep him until I find out his owner." "That's neither here nor there!" the white man almost shouted. "The question is, what right have you got to go to a man's house at night and break his lock?" "None, I tell you; and I'm not only willing to pay all damages, but will answer to the law." "The law!" and this time he shouted. "Law to protect a negro's lock? Let us hear no more about the law. What we want is justice, and we're going to have it, sooner or later." "Who are you, anyway?" the giant asked. "Oh, yes, you are Mr. Mayo, I believe. Well, I'll bid you good-night." "Wait. You have invaded this man's premises and committed a violence." "That's a fact, and I'm sorry for it." "Yes, you are now, but how will you feel about it to-morrow? You'll forget all about it, and that's the way the colored man is treated in this infernal state. No, Gabe," he quickly added, taking hold of the negro's arm, "Put it up. The time ain't ripe." The negro had drawn a knife, opening it with a spring, and with a loud snap he closed it. "We mustn't be the first to strike, although they break into our houses," Mayo said; and then speaking to Taylor he added: "You may go." The giant threw back his head and laughed. "I may go. Why, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm feeling particularly happy to-night, I'd mash your mouth for that. I should think that your poor fool there would teach you better than to talk to me that way. But I'll be a better friend to you than you have taught him to be--I'll give you some very useful advice. If you should ever see me coming along the road, turn back or climb the fence, for I might not be in as good humor as I'm in now." He whistled and strode away, with the dog trotting at his heels; and by the time he gained the road the occurrence had almost wholly passed out of his mind, so fondly did his heart leap at the thought of the letter in his bosom. Upon reaching a gate that opened into his meadow, he looked about and whistled for the dog, but the setter was gone. "You were howling for your master," the giant said, "and the greatest service I could do you was to let you go to him. All right, old fellow, we are both happier for having met." He went into the house, lighted his lamp, sat down, read the letter; he went out and stood under the weeping-willow. "If I am foolish," he said, "it is delicious to be a fool, and God pity the wise. But I don't know what to do with myself. Yes, I do; I'll go over and see old Gideon." He considered not the increasing rain, the dreariness of the road, the moanful wind in the tops of the trees; he felt that to be alone was to suppress a part of his happiness, that his light and talkative heart must seek a hearing for the babbling of its joy. So off he strode, and as he climbed over a fence, he laughingly jolted himself upon the top rail to see whether it would break. It did not, and he laughed to find a stick of old timber strong enough to support his weight. He called himself a lumbering fool and laughed again, sitting there with the rain beating upon him. A short distance down the road was a wagon-maker's shop, and against the outside wall a ladder was leaned. He thought of the ladder as he bore to the edge of the road to avoid the deep ruts cut by the cotton-wagons, and fearful that he might pass under it and thus invite ill luck, he crossed to the other side. He smiled at this weakness, instilled by the negroes, but he did not recross the road until he had passed far beyond the shop. The old black mammy was lovable and affectionate, but she intimidated man with many a superstition. CHAPTER XXII. In old Gid's house a light was burning, and as the giant drew near, he caught a fragment of a flat-boatman's song. He made no noise, but a dog inside scented his approach and announced it with a whimsical bark. Gid opened the door. "Why, here's Jim Taylor, as wet as a drowned bear. Come in." Sitting by the fire was the Major, with his coat off and his shirt collar unbuttoned. "Why, James," said he, "you are making the rounds to-night. Sit down here and dry yourself. And look at you, mud up to your knees. Why do you tramp about this way? Why don't you ride?" "Too heavy," the giant answered. "Then, I gad," Gid replied, dragging his bench from against the wall and sitting down upon it, "I know I'd ride. Do men ride for their own comfort or for the horse's? And what difference do a few extra pounds make to a horse? Why, if you were a horse somebody would ride you. You are not fat, Jim; you are just big. And a horse doesn't mind a well-proportioned fellow; it's the wabbling fat man that riles him. I owned a horse once that would have been willing to go without corn a whole week for a chance to kick a fat man; and I put it down as an unreasonable cruelty until I found out that he had once belonged to a fellow that weighed three hundred pounds." "And you afterward owned him," said the Major, winking at Jim. "That's what I said, John." "Now, Gid, I don't want to appear captious, but are you sure you ever owned a horse?" "I bought that horse, John. I confess that it was with borrowed money, but under the law he was mine. Ah, Lord," he sighed, "self-imposed frankness will be gone when I am taken from you. And yet I get no credit." "No credit!" cried the Major. "Credit has kept you from starving." "Tip-toe, John; my nerves are tight-strung. Would have starved! A befitting reproach thrown at genius. Look up there!" he shouted, waving his hand at the shelf whereon were piled his dingy books. "They never owned a horse and they lived on credit, but they kept the world from starving to death. And this reminds me that those sweet potatoes must be about done. Your name is among the coals, Jim; we've got enough for all hands. Wish we had some milk, but I couldn't get any. Dogs couldn't catch the cow. You hear of cows giving milk. Mine don't--I gad, I have to grab her and take it away from her; and whenever you see milk in my house you may know it's the record of a fight and that the cow got the worst of it." Jim sat striving to think of something to say. The presence of the Major had imposed a change in his forecast. His meeting of Mayo and the negro suddenly recurred to him, and quietly he related the adventure. But the Major and Gid were not quiet with hearing it. "You ought to have cut his throat!" Gid exclaimed. "To-morrow get your gun and shoot him down--both of them, like dogs. Who ever heard of such a thing, saying to a gentleman, 'now you may go!' I gad, I'll go with you, and we'll shoot 'em down." "No," said the Major, and now with his hands behind him he was slowly pacing the floor. "That won't do." "Why won't it do?" Gid cried. "Has the time come when a white man must stand all sorts of abuse simply because he is white? Must he stand flat-footed and swallow every insult that a scoundrel is pleased to stuff into his mouth?" The Major sat down. "Let me remind you of something," he said. "For the average man, under ordinary circumstances, it is enough to have simple justice on his side, but on our side we must have more than justice. No people in the world were ever situated as we now are, for even by our brothers we shall be deemed wrong, no matter which way we turn." "Ah," Gid cried, "then what's the use of calculating our turn? If we are to be condemned anyway, what's the----" "Hold on a moment," the Major struck in, "and I will tell you. Sentiment is against us; literature, with its roots running back into the harsh soil of politics, is against us; and----" "No measured oratory, John. Get down on the ground." "Wait, I tell you!" the Major demanded. "I must get to it in my own way. If your advice were followed, we should never be able to elect another president. The bloody shirt would wave from every window in the North, and from the northern point of view, justly so; and reviewed even by the disinterested onlooker, we have not been wholly in the right." "The deuce we haven't!" Gid shouted, his eyes bulging. "No, not wholly; we couldn't be," the Major continued. "As self-respecting men, as Anglo-Saxons, we could not submit to the domination of former slaves. It was asking too much. We had ruled the nation, and though we were finally overpowered, we could not accept the negro as a ruler." "John, I know all that as well as you do; we have talked it many a time, but what I want to get at is this: Has a man the right to resent an insult? I was never cruel to a negro. I like him in his place, like him better than I do the average white man, to tell the plain truth, for between him and me there is the tie of irresponsibility, of shiftlessness; but I don't want him to insult me; don't want to stand any more from him than I would from a white man. You spoke of not being able to elect another president. Why should we put up with so much merely to say that a democrat is president? It doesn't make much difference who's president, foreign nations keep on insulting us just the same. I'd like to see a chief magistrate with nerve enough to say to the South, 'Boys, go over and grab off Mexico.' That's me." The Major laughed. "That's me, too," he replied. "We ought to sweeten this country with Cuba," said Jim, with his mind on the letter in his bosom. "Yes," Gid replied, raising his hand, "that's what we ought to do, and----" His hand fell, and he wheeled about and seized a poker. "I'll bet a thousand dollars the potatoes are burned up," he said. "Just look there," he added, raking out the charred remains of what was to be a feast. "That's the way it goes. The devil titters when men argue. Well, it can't be helped," he went on. "I did my part. If we had settled upon killing that fellow Mayo, everything would have been all right. He has not only insulted us but has robbed us as well." "To tell you the truth," said the Major, "I'm glad I'm relieved of the trouble of eating." "John, don't say that, for when a Southern man loses his appetite for roasted sweet potatoes, he's a degenerate." The Major was about to say something, but looking at his watch he jumped up. "Gracious, Gid, you not only kill your own time but murder mine. It's nearly two o'clock." "Sit down, John. Don't be snatched." "Snatched! Wind-bag, you counsel me to blow my life away. Hold your lamp out here so that I can see to get on my horse." When Gid returned from the passage wherein he had stood to shelter the light, he found Jim on the bench, with no apparent intention of taking his leave; and this he construed to mean that the giant had something on his mind. "Out with it, Jimmie," he said, as he put the lamp upon the mantel-piece. "I'll sit down here as if it was only early candle-lighting, and let you tell me all about it." "How do you know I've got anything to say, Uncle Gideon?" "How do I know when a dog itches? I see him scratch. You have been sitting there in an itching silence and now you begin to scratch. You are more patient than a dog, for you don't scratch until you have itched for some time. Let the fur fly, Jimmie." Jim laughed, raised his leg and clasped his hands over his knee. "Uncle Gideon, I reckon I'm the happiest man in Cranceford County." The old man sat leaning back against the wall. His coat was off and under his suspenders he had hooked his thumbs. "Go on, Jimmie; I'm listening." "She has written another letter--Did Tom tell you anything?" he broke off. "Did Tom ever tell me anything? Did Tom ever tell anybody anything? Did he ever know anything to tell?" "She has written another letter and in it she confesses--I don't know how to say it, Uncle Gideon." "Well, tell me and I'll say it for you. Confesses that she can be happy with no one but you. Go on." "Who told you? Did Mrs. Cranceford?" "My dear boy, did Mrs. Cranceford ever tell me anything except to keep off the grass? Nobody has told me anything. Confesses that you are the only man that can make her happy. Now shoot your dye-stuff." "But that's all there is. She says that her heart will never have a home until my love builds a mansion for it." "Jimmie, if the highest market price for a fool was one hundred dollars, you'd fetch two hundred." "Why? Because I believe her when she talks that way--when she gives me to understand that she loves me?" "No; but because you didn't believe all along that she loved you." "How could I when she refused to marry me and married another man?" "That marriage is explained. You've seen the letter she wrote the night before she went away, haven't you?" "Yes, her mother showed it to me." "I didn't read it," said Gid, "but the Major gave me the points, and I know that she married that fellow believing that she was saving his soul." "Yes, I read that," said Jim, "but I didn't know whether she meant it or not. I reckon I was afraid to believe it." "Well, I know it to be a fact--know it because I know her nature. She's just crank enough----" "Don't say that," Jim protested, unclasping his hands from his knee and straightening up. "Don't call her a crank when she's an angel." "That's all right, my dear boy, but heaven is full of the right sort of cranks. Who serves God deeper than the religious crank, and if he's not to be rewarded, who is? By crank I don't mean a weak-minded person; I come nearer meaning a genius." "I reckon you mean all right," the giant agreed; and after pondering in silence he asked: "Do you reckon she would marry me?" "I know it. And why not? You are a gentleman and a devilish good-looking fellow. Why, any woman interested in a fine stock show would be proud of you." At this the giant rubbed his hands together and softly chuckled; but sobering, he said that he could never hope to equal her in thought and quickness of expression, though by reading he would make an effort to attain that end. "Don't worry about that, Jimmie; and don't you fool yourself that books are everything. They smooth knots, but they don't make timber. Oh, you are smart enough--for a woman." "I'm not an idiot," said the giant. "Sometimes I can talk without any trouble, and then again I can't say a thing. It's different with you." The old man's egotism awoke--it never more than dozed. "Jimmie," said he, "it is violating no compact to tell you that I'm no common man. Other men have a similar opinion of themselves and are afraid to spit it out, but I'm bold as well as wise. I know that my opinion doesn't go for much, for I'm too good-humored, too approachable. The blitheness of my nature invites familiarity. You go to a house and make too much of the children, and the first thing you know they'll want to wallow on you all the time. Well, I have made too much of the children of the world, and they wallow on me. But I pinch them sometimes and laugh to hear them squeal. There's only one person that I'm afraid of--Mrs. Cranceford. She chills me and keeps me on the frozen dodge. I always feel that she is reading me, and that makes me more of a rascal--trying to give her something that she can't read. Look here, if we expect to get any sleep we'd better be at it." "You go to bed, Uncle Gideon; I'm going to sit up." "All right; sit there as long as you please." The old fellow got up, and walking stiffly went to the window, drew aside the red calico curtain and looked out. "Don't see much promise of a clear-up," he said. "Not a star in sight. I always dread the rainy season; it makes people look sad, and I want to see them bright--I am most agreeable to them when they're bright. Still, I understand that nothing is more tiresome than eternal sunshine. I wonder if I locked the smokehouse," he went on, turning from the window. "But, come to think, I don't believe I've locked it since about a week ago, when some rascal slipped in and stole nearly all my hams and a bushel of meal. I gad, my old joints work like rusty hinges. Well, I'll lie down now. Good night, Jimmie. Don't slip off before breakfast." The giant did not hear him. He sat leaning forward, gazing at the cliffs, the mountains, the valleys in the fire. The rain had ceased, but now and then came a dashing shower, like a scouting party, a guerrilla band sweeping through the dark. To the muser there was no time; time had dribbled out and reverie had taken its place. The fire was dying. He saw the red cliffs grow gray along the edges, age creeping over the rocks; he saw a mountain fall into a whitening valley, and he looked up. It was daylight. He went to the door and looked out, and far across the river the brilliant morning sun was rising from a bath of steam. "You here yet, Jimmie?" The bed loudly creaked, and the giant, looking about, found old Gid sitting on the edge of his couch, rubbing his eyes. "Don't go, for we'll have breakfast now in a minute. I am always glad to look up and find a picture of manliness and strength. It takes me back to my own early days, when I didn't know the meaning of weakness. But I know now--I can feel it all over me. I do think I can dream more foolish things during three to half a dozen winks of sleep than any man that ever lived. Now, what could have put it into my mind to dream that I was born with one leg and was trying at a county fair to swap it off for two? Well, I hear the old woman setting the table out there. Wait till I jump into my clothes and I'll pour a gourd of water for you to wash your face and hands. Had a wash-basin round here somewhere, but don't know what became of it. Had intended to get another, but have been so busy. But I'll tell you there's nothing like a good wash under a pouring gourd. How's your appetite this morning?" "I don't know." "Well, you may find it when you sniff old Liza's corn cakes. Now what the deuce became of that other suspender? We used to call them galluses in my day. And now where is that infernal gallus? Beats anything I ever saw in my life. Ah, there it is, over by the window. But how it could have jumped off I don't know. Now let me shove into my old shoes and I'll be with you." Out in the yard, in a fabulous net of gilded mist they stood, to bathe under the spouting gourd, the mingling of a new day's poetry and the shiftlessness of an old man. "Stream of silver in the gold of a resurrected sun," he said, bareheaded and blinking. "Who'd want a wash-pan? I gad, Jimmie, folks are forgetting how to live. They are putting too much weight on what they can buy for money, unmindful of the fact that the best things of this life are free. Look at that gourd, old, with a sewed-up crack in it, and yet to my mind it serves its purpose better than a china basin. Well, let's go in now and eat a bite. I'm always hungry of a morning. An old fellow is nearer a boy when he first gets up, you know; but he grows old mighty fast after he's had breakfast." The giant, saying never a word, followed him, the loose boards of the passageway between the two sections of the house creaking and groaning as he trod upon them; and coming to the door he had to stoop, so low had it been cut. "That's right, Jimmie, duck or you'll lay yourself out. I gad, the world's full of traps set for big fellows. Now sit down there and fall to. Don't feel very brash this morning, do you?" "I feel first-rate," Jim answered, sitting down. "Youth and love mixed," said the old man, placing himself at the head of the board. "And ah, Lord, when we grow out of one and forget the other, there's not much left to live for. I'd rather be a young fellow in love than to be an emperor. Help yourself to a slab of that fried ham. She'll bring the coffee pretty soon. Here she comes now. Waiting for you, Aunt Liza. Have some hoe-cake, Jimmie. Yes, sir; youth and love constitute the world, and all that follows is a mere makeshift. Thought may come, but thought, after all, is but a dull compromise, Jimmie, a cold potato instead of a hot roll. Love is noon, and wisdom at its best is only evening. There are some quince preserves in that jar. Help yourself. Thought about her all night, didn't you?" "I think about her all the time, Uncle Gideon." "And Jimmie, it wouldn't surprise me if the world should think about her after a while. That woman's a genius." "I hope not," the giant replied, looking up, and in his voice was a note of distress, and in his eyes lay the shadow of a fear. "And why not, Jimmie?" "Because if she should turn out to be a genius she won't marry me." "That's where your perception is broken off at the end, Jimmie. In the matter of marriage genius is mighty skittish of genius--it seeks the constancy of the sturdy and commonplace. I'll try a dip of those preserves. Now let me see. After breakfast you'd better lie down on my bed and take a nap." "No, I must go. The Major is going over to Brantly to-day and I want him to bring me a box of cartridges. I forgot to tell him last night." "Oh, you're thinking about Mayo, eh?" "Well, I don't know but he did cross my mind. It occurred to me that he might waylay me some night, and I don't want to stand out in the road and dance while he's shooting at me." "That's right," said the old man. "A fellow cuts a mighty sorry figure dancing under such circumstances. I've tried it." He shoved his chair back from the table and Jim got up to take his leave. "Look out for the door, Jimmie. Duck as you go under or it will lay you out. Traps set all through life for fellows of your size." Jim was not oppressed with weariness as he strode along the highway, for in the crisp air a tonic was borne, but loss of sleep had made his senses dreamy, and all things about him were touched with the spirit of unreality--the dead leaves fluttering on the underbrush, the purple mist rising from the fields, the water-mirrors flashing in the road; and so surrendered was he to a listless brooding, forgetful even that he moved along, that he did not notice, up the road, a man leap aside into the woods. The man hid behind a tree, with his eye on the giant and with the barrel of a pistol pressed hard against the bark. Jim passed on, with his hands in his pockets, looking down; and when a clump of bushes, red with frost-dyed leaves, hid him from view, Mayo came out from behind the tree and resumed his journey down the road. The Major had mounted his horse at the gate and was on the point of riding forth when Jim came up. "Why, good-morning, James," the old gentleman heartily greeted him. "Have you just crawled out of that old man's kennel? I see that the old owl must have kept you up all night. Why, sir, if I were to listen to him I'd never get another wink of sleep." "I kept myself up," said the giant; and then he added: "I wanted to see you this morning, not very bad, but just to ask you to get me a box of forty-fours when you go to Brantly to-day." "I'm glad to find you so thoughtful," said the Major. "And I want to tell you right now that you've got to look out for yourself. But staying up all night is no way to begin. Go on into Tom's room and take a nap." The Major whistled as he rode along, not for want of serious reflection, for he could easily have reached out and drawn in trouble, but because the sharp air stirred his spirits. Nowhere was there a cloud--a speckless day in the middle of a week that had threatened to keep the sky besmirched. Roving bands of negro boys were hunting rabbits in the fields, with dogs that leaped high in low places where dead weeds stood brittle. The pop-eyed hare was startled from his bed among brambly vines, and fierce shouts arose like the remembered yell of a Confederate troop. The holidays were near, the crops were gathered, the winter's wood was up, the hunting season open, but no negro fired a gun. At this time of the year steamboatmen and tavern-keepers in the villages were wont to look to Titus, Eli, Pompey, Sam, Caesar and Bill for their game, and it was not an unusual sight to see them come loaded down with rabbits and quails caught in traps, but now they sat sullen over the fire by day, but were often met prowling about at night. This crossed the Major's mind and drove away his cheerful whistling; and he was deeply thinking when someone riding in haste reined in a horse abreast of him. Looking up he recognized the priest. "Why, good morning, Mr. Brennon; how are you?" "Well, I thank you. How far do you go?" "To Brantly." "That's fortunate," said the priest, "for I am selfish enough to let you shorten the journey for me." "I can't do that," the Major laughed, "but we can divide it. I remember overtaking a man one miserable day out in the Indian Territory. He was ignorant, but he was quaint; he couldn't argue, but he could amuse, and he did until he called me a liar, and there our roads split. Don't think, from my telling you this, that I am in the least doubt as to the desirability of your company on the road to Brantly. Been some time since I've seen you, Mr. Brennon." "Yes; I have been very busy." "And successfully so, I suppose." "I am not in a position to complain," said the priest. "By the way, will you answer a few questions?" "Gladly, if they're answerable." "I think they are. Now, the negroes that come into your communion tell you many things, drop idle gossip that may mean much. Did any of them ever drop a hint of preparations which their brethren may or may not be making to demand some unreasonable concession from the white people of this community?" "What I have seen I am free to relate to you," the priest answered, "but as to what has been told--well, that is quite another matter. I have seen no preparations, but you doubtless remember a conversation we had some time ago, and on that occasion I think we agreed that we might have trouble sooner or later." "Yes, we were agreed upon that point," the Major replied, "but neither of us professed to see trouble close at hand. For some time I have heard it rumored that the negroes are meeting at night to drill, but I have paid but little attention, giving them credit for more sense than to believe that their uprising could be more than a short, and, to themselves, a disastrous, struggle; but there is one aspect that impresses me, the fact that they are taking no notice of the coming of Christmas; for when this is the case you must know that the negro's nature must have undergone a complete change. I don't quite understand it. Why, sir, at present they can find no possible excuse for revolt. The crops are gathered and they can make no demand for higher wages; no election is near and they can't claim a political cause for disaffection. If they want better pay for their labor, why didn't they strike in the midst of the cotton-picking? That would have been their time for trouble, if that's what they want." "Perhaps they hadn't money enough to buy equipment, guns and ammunition," the priest suggested. "Perhaps they needed the money that the gathering of the crops would bring them." The Major looked at him. "I hadn't thought of that," he said. "But surely the negroes have sense enough to know that the whites would exterminate them within a week." It was some time before Father Brennon replied. His deliberation led the Major to believe that he would speak from his abundant resources; and the planter listened eagerly with his head turned to one side and with his hand behind his ear. "It is possible," the priest began, "that the negro had been harangued to the conviction that he is to begin a general revolt against capital, that labor organizations everywhere will rise up when they hear that he has been bold enough to fire his gun." The Major's shoulders stiffened. "Sir, if you have known this, why haven't you as a white man and a Southern gentleman told us of it? Why haven't you warned us?" The priest smiled. "Your resentment is just," said he. "But the truth is, it was not formulated as an opinion until late last night. I called at your house this morning and was told that you had set out for the county-seat. And I have overtaken you." The Major reined up his horse. Both horses stopped. "Mr. Brennon, you are a gentleman, sir. My hand." They shook hands and rode on. The Major was deep in thought. "It has all been brought about by that scoundrel Mayo," he said at last. "He has instilled a most deadly poison into the minds of those people. I will telegraph the governor and request him to send the state militia into this community. The presence of the soldiers will dissolve this threatened outbreak; and by the blood, sir, Mayo shall be convicted of treason against the state and hanged on the public square in Brantly. And that will be an end of it." The priest said nothing, and after a time the Major asked: "How are you getting on with your work?" "I am greatly encouraged, and I wish I had more time." "What do you mean by that?" "I have told you that the church can save the negro. Do you know a negro named Bob Hackett?" "Yes; he was a worthless politician, but they tell me that he has withdrawn from active politics and gone to work. What about him?" "He is now a communicant of the church," the priest answered. "He acknowledges a moral authority; and I make bold to say that should trouble come, he will take no part in it. And I make still bolder to say that the church, the foster mother of the soul of man, can in time smooth all differences and establish peace and brotherly regard between the white man and the negro. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, but true religion whitens his soul and makes him our brother." "Your sentiment is good," replied the Major, "but religion must recognize an impossibility. The white man and the negro can never hold each other in brotherly regard. Never." "Don't say never, Major. Men pass from fixed prejudices; the church is eternal in its purpose. Don't say never." "Well, then, sir," cried the Major, standing in his stirrups, "I will not say never; I will fix a time, and it shall be when the pyramids, moldered to dust, are blown up and down the valley of the Nile." He let himself down with a jolt, and onward in silence they rode. And now from a rise of ground the village of Brantly was in sight. The priest halted. "I turn back here," he said. "Mr. Brennon," the Major replied, "between you and me the question of creed should not arise. You are a white man and a gentleman. My hand, sir." CHAPTER XXIII. Brantly long ago was a completed town. For the most part it was built of wood, and its appearance of decay was so general and so even as to invite the suspicion that nearly all its building had been erected on the same day. In the center of the town was the public square, and about it were ranged the business houses, and in the midst of it stood the court house with its paint blistered and its boards warping. It was square, with a hall and offices below. Above was the court room, and herein was still heard the dying echo of true oratory. On the top of this building, once the pride of the county, was a frail tower, and in it was a clock, always slow. It was never known to record an hour until that hour had long since been due. Sometimes it would save up its strokes upon the bell until fifty or more were accumulated, and then, in the midst of an intense jury trial, it would slowly turn them loose. A mathematician, a man who kept the dates of late and early frosts, had it in his record that the hammer struck the bell sixty-eight times on the afternoon when John Maffy was sentenced to be hanged, and that the judge had to withhold his awful words until this flood of gathered time was poured out. Once or twice the county court had appropriated money to have the clock brought back within the bounds of reason, but a more pressing need had always served to swallow up the sum thus set aside. A stone planted at one corner of the public square marked the site of a bit of bloody history. Away back in the fifties a man named Antrem, from New England, came to Brantly and, standing where the stone now stands, made an abolition speech. It was so bold an impudence that the citizens stood agape, scarcely able to believe their ears. At last the passive astonishment was broken by a slave-owner named Peel. He drew two pistols, handed one to the speaker, stepped off and told him to defend himself. The New Englander had nerve. He did defend himself, and with deadly effect. Both men were buried on the public square. A railway had skipped Brantly by ten long and sandy miles, and a new town springing up about a station on the line--an up-start of yesterday, four-fifths of it being a mere paper town, and the other fifth consisting of cheap and hastily built stores, saloons, boarding houses, a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, and a few roughly constructed dwellings--clamored for the county seat; and until this question was finally settled old Brantly could not look with confidence toward any improvement. Indeed, some of her business men stood ready to desert her in the event that she should be beaten by the new town, and while all were bravely willing to continue the fight against the up-start, every one was slow to hazard his money to improve his home or his place of business. Whenever a young man left Brantly it was predicted that he would come to no good, and always there came a report that he was gambling, or drinking himself to death. The mere fact that he desired to leave the old town was fit proof of his general unworthiness to succeed in life. The Major rode into town, nodding at the loungers whom he saw on the corners of the streets, and tying his horse to the rack on the square, went straightway to the shop of the only hardware dealer and asked for cartridges. "My stock is running pretty low," said the dealer, wrapping up the paste-board box. "I've sold more lately than I ever sold in any one season before, and yet there's no game in the market." The Major whistled. "Who has been buying them?" he asked. "Come to think of it I have sold the most to a Frenchman named Larnage--lives over on the Potter place, I believe. And that reminds me that I'll have a new lot in to-day, ordered for him." "Do you know anything about that fellow?" the Major asked. "Not very much." "Well, don't let him have another cartridge. Keep all you get. We'll need them to protect life and property." "What! I don't understand." "I haven't time to explain now, for I'm reminded that I must go at once to the telegraph office. Come over to the court-house." The Major sent a dispatch to the governor and then went to the county clerk's office where he found the hardware dealer and a number of men waiting for him. The report that he was charged with serious news was already spread about; and when he entered, the clerk of the county court, an old fellow with an ink-blot on his bald head, came forward with an inquiry as to what had been meant when the Major spoke of the cartridges. The Major explained his cause for alarm. Then followed a brief silence, and then the old fellow who kept the records of the frosts and the clock, spoke up with the assertion that for some time he had expected it. "Billy," he said, speaking to the clerk, "I told you the other day that we were going to have trouble mighty soon. Don't you recollect?" "Don't believe I do, Uncle Parker." "But I said so as sure as you are standing there this minute. Let me try a little of your tobacco." The clerk handed him a plug, and biting off a chew, the old man continued: "Yes, sir, I've had it in mind for a long time." "Everybody has talked more or less about it," said the clerk. "Oh, I know they have, Billy, but not p'intedly, as I have. Yes, sir, bound to come." "The thing to do is to over-awe them," said the Major. "I have just telegraphed the governor to send the militia down here. And by the way, that fellow Mayo ought to be arrested without delay. Billy, is the sheriff in his office?" "No, Major, he's gone down to Sassafras to break up a gang of negro toughs that have opened a gambling den. He'll be back this evening and I'll have the warrant ready for him by the time he gets back. Any of us can swear it out--reckon all our names better go to it." "Yes," the Major agreed, "we'd better observe the formalities of the law. The militia will undo all that has been done, and as for the fellow that brought about the inquietude, we'll see him hanged in front of this door." Old man Parker, who kept the records, nudged his neighbor and said: "Inquietude is the word. I told my wife last night, says I, 'Nancy, whenever you want the right word, go to John Cranceford.' That's what I said. Major; and I might have said go to your father if he was alive, for he stood 'way up among the pictures, I tell you; and I reckon I knowd him as well as any man in the county. I ricollect his duel with Dabney." "He was to have fought a man named Anderson Green," replied the Major, "but a compromise was effected." "Yes," said Parker, "Green's the man I was tryin' to think of. It was Shelton that fought Dabney." "Shelton fought Whitesides," said the Major. The men began to titter, "Well, then, who was it fought Dabney?" "Never heard of Dabney," the Major answered. "Well, I have, and somebody fought him, but it makes no difference. So, in your father's case a compromise was effected. The right word again; and that's what makes me say to my wife, 'Nancy, whenever you want the right word go to John Cranceford;' and, as I said a while ago, your father either, for I knowd him as well as any man, and was present at the time he bought a flat-boat nigger named Pratt Boyce." "My father was once forced to sell, but he never bought a negro," the Major replied. "That so? Well, now, who was it bought Pratt Boyce? You fellers shut up your snortin'. I reckon I know what I'm talkin' about." The county judge and several other men came in and the talk concerning the threatened negro outbreak was again taken up. "It seems rather singular," said the Judge, "that we should worry through a storm of politics and escape any very serious bloodshed and reach a climax after all these years. Of course when two races of people, wholly at variance in morals and social standing, inhabit the same community, there is always more or less danger, still I don't think that the negroes have so little sense----" "Ah, the point I made," the Major broke in. "But you see a labor plank has been added to their platform of grievance." Parker nudged his neighbor. "I says, says I, 'Nancy, John Cranceford for the right word.'" "There's something in that," the Judge replied. "Nothing can be madder than misled labor. We have been singularly free from that sort of disturbances, but I suppose our time must come sooner or later. But I think the militia will have a good effect so far as the negroes themselves are concerned. But of course if the soldiers come and the trouble blows over without any demonstration whatever, there will be considerable dissatisfaction among the people as to why such a step should have been taken. Uncle Parker," he added, turning to the record-keeper, "think we'll have much cold weather this winter?" Parker did not answer at once. He knew that glibness would argue against due meditation. "I see a good many signs," he slowly answered. "Hornets hung their nests on the low limbs of the trees, and there are other indications, still it largely depends on the condition of the wind. Sometimes a change of wind knocks out all calculations, still, I feel assured in saying that we are goin' to have a good deal of frost first and last; but if the militia don't get here in time we are mighty apt to have it hotter before we have it colder. Last night while I sat at home by the fire a smokin' of my pipe, and Nancy a-settin' there a-nittin' a pair of socks for a preacher, I looks up and I says, 'there's goin' to be trouble in this community before many changes of the moon,' I says, and I want at all surprised to-day when the Major here come a-ridin' in with his news. Don't reckon any of you ricollect the time we come mighty nigh havin' a nigger uprisin' before the war. But we nipped it in the bud; and I know they hung a yaller feller that cost me fifteen hundred dollars in gold." The old man was so pleased to find himself listened to by so large a company that he squared himself for a longer discourse upon happenings antedating the memory of any one present, but attention split off and left him talking to a neighbor, who long ago was weary of the sage's recollections. Wisdom lends its conceit to the aged, and Parker was very old; and when his neighbor gave him but a tired ear, he turned from him and boldly demanded the Major's attention, but at this moment the telegraph operator came in with a dispatch. And now all interests were centered. The Major tore open the envelope and read aloud the following from the governor: "Troops are at competitive drill in Mississippi. Have ordered them home." The Major stood leaning with his elbow on the top of the clerk's tall desk. He looked again at the dispatch, reading it to himself, and about him was the sound of shuffling feet. "Well, it won't take them more than twenty-four hours to get home," he said, "and that will be time enough. But Billy, we'd better not swear out that warrant till they come." "That's wise," said the Judge, a cautious man. "His followers would not stand to see him taken in by the civil authorities; it's not showy enough." And Parker, speaking up, declared the Judge was right. "I ricollect the militia come down here once durin' the days of the carpet-baggers, and----" "But let no one speak of the dispatch having been sent to the governor," said the Judge. "Billy, when the sheriff comes back you'd better tell him to appoint forthwith at least a hundred deputies." "In fact," the Major replied, "every law-abiding man in the county might be declared a deputy." Old Parker found his neighbor and nudged him. "I says to my wife, 'Nancy,' says I, 'whenever you want the right idee, go to John Cranceford and you'll get it.'" "That's all right, Uncle Parker," the irritated man replied. "I don't give a continental and you needn't keep on coming to me with it." "You don't? Then what sort of a man are you?" "You boys quit your mowling over there," the county clerk commanded. "Major," said the Judge, "the troops will doubtless come by boat and land near your place. Don't you think it would be a good idea for you to come over with them? The truth is you know our people are always more or less prejudiced against militia, and it is therefore best to have a well-known citizen come along with them." "I don't know but that you are right," said the Major. "Yes, I will come with them." He bade the men good day and turned to go, and out into the hall the Judge came following him. "By the way, Major," said he, "you are of course willing to take all responsibility; and I'd a little rather you wouldn't mention my name in connection with the militia's coming down here, for the ordering out of troops is always looked upon as a sort of snap judgment." "I thought you said that you were not going to run for office again," the Major bluntly replied. The Judge stammered and though the hall was but dimly lighted, the Major saw that his face was growing red. "I have reconsidered that," confessed the politician, "and next season I shall be a candidate for re-election." "And I will oppose you, sir." "Oppose me? And why so?" "Because you've got no nerve. I believe, sir, that in your smooth way you once took occasion to say that Gideon Batts was a loud-mouth and most imprudent man. But, sir, there is more merit in the loud bark of a dog than in the soft tread of a cat. I will oppose you when the time comes, but I will shoulder the responsibility of martial law in this community. Good day, sir." "Major----" "I said good day, sir." The old gentleman strode hotly out to the rack where his horse was tied, and thereabout was gathered a number of boys, discussing the coming danger which in their shrewdness they had keenly sniffed. Among them he distributed pieces of money, wherewith to buy picture books, he said, but they replied that they were going to buy powder and he smiled upon them as he mounted his horse to ride away. In the road not far distant from the town he met Larnage, the Frenchman. The day before he would have passed him merely with a nod, as he scarcely knew him by sight and had forgotten his name; but the hardware dealer had recalled it and upon it had put an emphasis; so, reining up his horse, he motioned the man to stop. "How long have you been in this neighborhood?" the Major asked. At this abruptness the Frenchman was astonished. "I do not understand," he replied. "Yes you do. How long have you been here?" "Oh, I understand that, but I do not understand why you should ask." "But can't you tell me?" "I can be so obliging. I have lived here two years." "And how long in the United States?" "Ten years. And now will you have the goodness to tell me why you wish to know? Will you be so kind as I have been?" "Well, to be frank, I don't hear a very good report of you." "But who is appointed to make a report of me? I attend to my own business, and is this a bad report to make of a citizen of the country? If you will have the goodness to pardon me I will ride on." "Wait a moment. Why are you buying so many cartridges?" The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. "Has not the citizen of the country a right to spend his money? I have heard that the Major is polite. He must not be well to-day. Shall I ride on now? Ah, I thank you." Onward the Frenchman rode, and gazing back at him the Major mused: "The frog-eater gave me the worst of it. But I believe he's a scoundrel all the same. I didn't get at him in the right way. Sorry I said anything to him." CHAPTER XXIV. Upon reaching home shortly after nightfall the Major found visitors waiting for him in the library--Wash Sanders, old Gid, Jim Taylor, Low, and a red bewhiskered neighbor named Perdue. A bright fire was crackling in the great fire-place; and with stories of early steamboat days upon the Mississippi, Gid was regaling the company when the hero of the yarn opened the door and looked in. Getting to their feet with a scuffle and a clatter of shovel and tongs (which some one knocked down) they cried him a welcome to his own house. "Gentlemen," said the Major, "just wait till I eat a bite and I'll be with you. Have you all been to supper?" "We have all been stuffed," Gid took the liberty to answer, "all but Wash Sanders and he----" "Don't eat enough to keep a chicken alive," Sanders struck in. "Wish I could eat with you, Major, but I ain't got no relish for vidults. But I'm glad to know that other folks ain't that bad off. Jest go on and take your time like we want here waitin' for you." While the Major was in the dining-room, Gid came out and told him that the priest had said to him and to others that it might be well to call at the Major's house immediately upon his return from Brantly. "He's all right," said the Major, getting up and taking the lead toward the library. And when he had sat down in his chair, bottomed with sheep-skin, he told his friends of his fears of a negro insurrection, of the dispatch and of the answer from the governor; and he related his talk with the Frenchman, whereupon Low, the Englishman, spoke up: "I know that chap. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he put some rascally black up to the trick of punching that hole in my bath. For a time he came about my place quite a bit, you know, but I gave him to understand one day that I vastly preferred to choose my own associates. And you may rest with the assurance that he will be against the whites. Ah, with a Frenchman it is never a question as to which side he shall take. By jove, he always finds out which side the Englishman is on and then takes the other. I have brought with me a bit of Scotch whisky and I shall be pleased to have you gentlemen join me." "Wait a minute," said the Major. "I have some liquor that was distilled sixty years ago by the grandfather of the commander of the Alabama. We'll try that first." "Good!" cried the Briton. "I can't deny the Alabama claim, you know." And then he added: "Most extraordinary, I assure you." "Just wait till you smack your mouth on it," said Gid. "Why, sir, there's the smile of a goddess in each drop and a 'Paradise Regained' in a swallow. Sit down, Wash Sanders--a swig of it would shoot you into the air like a rocket." "But really, Mr. Gid, I think a little of it would help my appetite," Sanders replied, looking anxiously toward the Major. "Appetite!" Gid cried. "You can eat the hind leg of a rhinoceros right now." "Do you mean to insult me, sir?" Sanders retorted, weakly bristling up; and the Major turning from the sideboard, with the odd-shaped bottle and several glasses in his hands, looked at Batts and said: "Don't, Gid." "All right, but I was joking," the old rascal declared. "Wash and I always prank with each other. You can take a joke, can't you, Wash?" "With the best of them," Sanders answered. "Yes, sir, and before the doctors proved to me that I couldn't get well I was joking all the time." He raised his hand and with his long finger nail scratched his chin. "But they showed me that I couldn't get well and if that ain't enough to sadden a man's life I don't know what is." "Now, gentlemen," said the Major, "I want you to help yourselves, and not be afraid, for the glasses are shallow and the bottle is deep." The red bewhiskered man Perdue, who had said nothing, took out his quid of tobacco and with a loud "spat," threw it against the chimney-back. "I'll join you," he said, grinning. "Never saw any liquor too old for me." They stood and touched glasses. Gid walled his eyes like a steer, and with a rub of his breast and an "ah-hah," he nodded at Low. "What do you think of that?" he cried. "Isn't it a miracle?" "Ah, it is very smooth," Low answered, sipping. "Most uncommon I should think." "Smooth," said Gid. "Did you say smooth? It is as silk woven in the loom of a dream. Wash, how does it strike you?" "I think it will help me," Sanders answered. "Help you!" And under his breath Gid added: "Ought to kill you." "What did you say?" Sanders asked. "Said it wouldn't kill you." "Oh, I think not. Really, after a while I might be tempted to go out and eat something. How are you gettin' along, Perdue?" "Shakin' hands with my grandfather in the speret," Perdue declared, and running his fingers through his fiery whiskers he laughed with a hack that cut like the bleat of a sheep. "Jim," said the Major, turning to Taylor, who had not left his seat, "you'd better try a little. It won't hurt you." "No, thank you, Major, I'm afraid of it." "Let him alone," Gid spoke. "One drink of this and he'd carry off the gate, posts and all and leave them on the hill. Don't tempt him." "Gentlemen," said Perdue, "I have always made it a rule never to repeat anything that my children say, for I know how such a thing bores folks, but I will tell you what my son Ab said the other night. His mother was gettin' him ready for bed--just a little more, Major. There, that's a plenty. Mother was gettin' him ready for bed and he looked up----" "I feel the blood of youth mounting from the feet of the past to the head of the present," Gid broke in. "I can jump a ten rail fence, staked and ridered." "And I'm pretty jumpy myself," the Major declared. "But what were you going to say, Perdue?" "I was goin' to say that I always make it a rule never to repeat anything that my children say, for I have often had fellers bore me with the smart sayin's of their children--and I know that most every man thinks that his children are the brightest in the country and all that--but the other night as my wife was gettin' Ab ready for bed he looked up----" "We never had any children at our house," said Wash Sanders, scratching his chin with his polished finger-nail, "but I jest as good as raised one nephew. You remember Dan, don't you, Major?" "Mighty well. Went to Texas, didn't he?" "Yes, and got to cowboyin' around and was killed." "I recall that he was a very bright young man," said the Major. "But what were you going to say, Perdue?" "I was goin' to say that I always make it a rule never to tell anything that my children say, knowin' how it seems to pester folks, for I have been nearly bored to death by fellers breakin' in and tellin' what they of course thought was a powerful smart thing, said by one of their children--so I am mighty keerful about such things, makin' it a rule never to repeat anything said by my children, but the other night as my wife was gettin' Ab ready for bed----" "Somebody's hollering helloa at the gate," said Jim. "Hush a minute. There it is again." The Major went out and presently returned, bringing with him a large blue envelope. "It's from the county clerk," he said, sitting down and breaking the seal. "Brought by a deputy sheriff, and he said that he had ridden hard all the way and was in a great hurry to get back. Let's see what old Billy has to say." And now having put on his spectacles, he read aloud the following: "Marcus T. Berry, sheriff of this the county of Cranceford, in the State of Arkansas, did on this day seek to break up a den of negro gamblers at Sassafras, in the before mentioned county of Cranceford, and State as above set forth, and while in the discharge of his duty, was then and there fired upon and so desperately wounded that in his home in the town of Brantly, seat of the said county of Cranceford, State as before mentioned, he now lies at the point of death. The negroes claimed that they were not gambling, but engaged in lawful merchandise; but be that as it may, the sheriff and his posse were there and then fired upon, and besides the wounding of the sheriff, two men were killed outright, to-wit, one James Mattox and one Leon Smyers, and the same were left there. The sheriff managed to make his escape, albeit he was followed and repeatedly fired upon. And be it known that the report now reaches here that the atrocity did not cease with the firing on of the sheriff's posse, but that a sharp fight afterward took place between negroes and white men near by; and we are now informed that a strong force of negroes, at the instance of one Mayo, is now gathering in the southwestern part of the county, preparatory to a march upon this, the seat of the county of Cranceford. Therefore, it behooves all good citizens to meet in the before mentioned town for the defense of life and property, as it is here that the blow is to fall. William N. Haines, Clerk of the County of Cranceford, in the State of Arkansas." Scarcely observing a pause the Major had read the letter, and no word of surprise had been spoken by his listeners; and now in silence they looked at one another, Gid with his mouth open, Sanders with an expression of pain. "Well," said the Major, "that settles it." "By jove," the Englishman burst out, "I should rather say unsettles it. I can't conceive of a settlement on that basis, you know. Those blacks are positively annoying. First they punch a hole in my bath and then they fire on a sheriff's party. I should call it a most extraordinary approach toward the settlement of a difficult problem. But now, gentlemen, if you'll join me we'll take a bit of Scotch whisky." Old Gid looked hard at him. "What?" said he, "insult old Semmes' liquid music with a hot breath of peat smoke! Never, sir. And consequently I'll take another glimpse at this mountain sunrise." The Englishman laughed. "You have a most extraordinary way of boasting, you know. You may take your sunrise on the mountain, but I prefer this moonlight in the heather. A glass about half full of water, please. Thank you, very kind I assure you." The Briton sat and sipped his Scotch while the Major paced up and down the room, hands behind him, deep in thought. But soon he took his chair again, a proof that what now was to come was not a speculation but the outline of a plan of action. "Where's Tom?" he asked, nodding at Gid, but with an eye upon Wash Sanders. "Over at my house," Wash Sanders answered. "Well, when you go home, take this message to him. Say that I said go at once to the neighbors for five miles below your house, along the county road, and tell them that trouble of a serious nature has come--tell them to meet, men, women and children, at my house by daylight in the morning. Have him remind them that his house, on account of its situation high above the river, is the easiest to defend, and that it will accommodate more people than any other house in the neighborhood. Tell the men, of course, to bring their arms and all the ammunition they have. Explain that a sufficient number of men will be left here to protect the women and children, while the large majority of us will make all possible haste to the county seat. Tell the men to come mounted. Now is it clear to you?" "Major," Wash Sanders spoke up with more than his usual show of spirit, "the doctors have condemned my body but they hain't condemned my mind. It is clear to me, sir, and I will go now." "All right," said the Major. "And Jim," he added, "you do the same with the upper end of the road." The giant was smoking. He stood his pipe against a corner of the fire-place, got up and without saying a word, strode away. Wash Sanders was soon gone, after halting at the door to say that he might not be able to eat enough to keep a setting hen alive, but that he reckoned he could pull a trigger with any man that ever came over the pike. And now the Major, old Gid and the Englishman sat looking into the fire. "War time, Gid," said the Major. "Yes, without banners and without glory," the old fellow replied. "You are right. In the opinion of the majority of Americans, bravery on our part will be set down as a cruelty and a disgrace. The newspaper press of the north will condemn us. But we can't help that, for a man must protect his home. Mr. Low, there is nothing so unjust as politics." "We have had many examples of it in England, sir." "Yes," said the Major, "there have been examples of it everywhere. In this country political influences have narrowed some of the broadest minds." "In England political prejudices have killed poets," the Englishman said. "And now," Gid put in, "while you are discussing the evil I will try a little more of the good. John, have another peep at the blue dome above?" "No, I must go and give Mrs. Cranceford old Billy's letter." "Won't it alarm her?" the Englishman asked. "Oh, not in the least," the Major answered, and old Gid smiled. "You couldn't scare her with a bell-mouth blunderbuss," he declared. The Major now had reached the door, but turning back he said: "You gentlemen better sleep here to-night." In a state of apparent alarm the Englishman sprang to his feet. "My bath," he cried. "No, I can't stop. I must have my bath." "But you can bathe here." "Oh, no, I must have my own tub, you know. But I shall be here early at morning. I must go now. Good night," he added, reaching the door. "You are very kind, I assure you." And when thus he had taken his leave, the Major, pointing at a lamp, said to Gid: "End room down the porch. Go to bed." CHAPTER XXV. Early at morning, just as the dawn began to pale the sandy bluffs along the shore, and while the cypress bottoms still lay under the blackness of night, there came the trampling of horses, the low tones of men, the sharp, nervous voices of women, and the cries of children untimely gathered from their trundle-beds. The Major and his wife were ready to receive this overflow of company. A spliced table was stretched nearly the full length of the long hall, and a great kettle of coffee was blubbering on the fire. There were but three negroes on the place, one man and two women--the others had answered a call at midnight and had gone away. But the remaining ones were faithful; at a drowsy hour they left their beds and with no word of complaint took it upon themselves to execute a new and hurried task. "Bill," said the Major, "I want you and your wife and Polly to understand that I never forget such faithfulness as you are now showing, and when I come back--but now is the best time. Here are ten dollars apiece for you and you must remember that as long as I live you shall never want for anything." Fifty men arrived before the east was flushed with the sun. It was decided that ten of these, including Wash Sanders, should be left to protect the women and children. The least active were chosen. All but the younger ones had followed Lee through the dark days of his last campaign. The Major took command and martial law prevailed. He buckled on no sword but he looked like a soldier; and short, sharp sentences that he had forgotten at the close of the war now came back to him. "Make ready, men. Time passes. Mount." There were pale faces in the hall and at the gate where the men sat their horses, ready to ride, but there was bravery and no tears. The command was drawn up; the Major, not yet mounted, stood talking to Wash Sanders, when suddenly down the road a chant arose. All eyes were turned that way, and strange to them was the sight they beheld--the Catholic priest, with slow and solemn pace, treading the middle of the road, holding high aloft a black crucifix; and behind him followed the negro members of his church, men, women and children. He was leading his people to the hills--out of danger. As the head of this weird procession came opposite the gate, where now the Major stood with folded arms, the priest gravely smiled and higher held his crucifix. And then, silently, and looking neither to the right nor to the left, came out the three negroes who had remained at home; and taking up the chant they joined their brothers and sisters. They marched solemnly onward, turned into a road that led to the hills, the wind hushing their chant, but the black cross still seen high above their dusky, upturned faces. For full five minutes the Major stood in silence, gazing, and then hastily mounting, he shouted: "Forward!" and his troop swept down the road. He chose the nearest course and it lay by the old house wherein Louise had lived; and again he heard the wind moaning in the ragged plum thicket. Along the road the scattered houses were deserted, and in many a cabin the fire-place was cold, and many a door stood open. Not a negro was seen--yes, one, an old man drawn with rheumatism, sitting on a bench, waiting for the sun to warm his joints. When the Major and his troop rode into the town they found it quiet--under the weight of a heavy dread. They were looked upon from windows, where men were posted, waiting; and obeying a shouted instruction, the Major led his men to a long, low shed not far from the scene of expected blood-flow, to stable their horses. Following them came old Billy, the county clerk; and when the horses had been put away, he came up and thus addressed the Major: "You are to take command." "All right. What has been done?" "Not much of anything. Nothing could be done except to wait." "How many men have we?" "It is surprising how few," old Billy answered. "We didn't realize how weak the white population was until danger came. We have about three hundred, and more than a thousand negroes are marching on the town. We held a sort of council this morning and agreed that we'd better post as many as we can in the court-house. It commands all the streets and besides we must save the records." They were now marching toward the court-house. "Where are the women and children?" the Major inquired. "In the brick warehouse with a force of men near." "Well, I suppose you've done all you can. It would be nonsense to engage them in the open, but with our men posted about the square not more than two-thirds of them can get action at once. Those poor devils are as well armed as we and are wrought upon by fanaticism. It is going to be desperate for a time. At first they'll be furious. Has any one heard of Mayo?" "He's at their head and the Frenchman is with him." "How is the sheriff?" "Dead." They filed into the court-house, where a number of men were already gathered, posted above and below. "Bring an axe and cut loop-holes," the Major commanded. "When the fight begins you can't very well fire from the windows. How are you, Uncle Parker?" "Able to be about, Major. You wan't old enough for the Mexican War, was you? No, of course not. But I was there and this here fightin' agin such odds puts me in mind of it." "Good morning, Major." It was the voice of the County Judge. "Good morning, sir. I see you have a gun. Don't you think it impolitic? But pardon me. This is no time for ill-humored banter." The Judge bowed. "Now I recall John Cranceford, the soldier," said he. "This is a great pity that has come upon us, Major," he added. "Worse than that," the Major replied. "It is a curse. The first man who landed a slave in America ought to have been hanged." "And what about the men who freed them?" "They were American soldiers, sir, as brave a body of men as ever trod the face of the earth. Captain Batts, what are you trying to do there?" "Thought I'd take a nap," old Gid answered. "You can wake me up when the fight begins--don't want to miss it." "If you go to sleep I will court-martial you, sir. Superintend the cutting of the loop-holes." "All right, don't believe I'm very sleepy anyway;" and as he shuffled away the Englishman turned to the Major and asked: "And is he game, sir?" "As a lion," the Major answered. "But he blows, you know," said the Englishman. "And so does a lion roar, sir," the Major rejoined. The Major inspected the other posts, to the right and left of the square, and then took active command of the lower floor of the court-house; and when the holes had been cut Gid was told to command the floor above. Tom Cranceford was ordered to serve on the floor above. At this he began to grumble, pouting that he couldn't be in the rush if one should come; but the Major stormed at him. "It is more dangerous up there if that's what you want, and I'll be with you now and then to see that you are kept busy. March this instant or I'll drive you to home duty under Wash Sanders." From the windows and the loop-holes guns could be seen bristling everywhere, and the minutes that passed were slow and weary with waiting. Directly across from the court-house was a broad and low brick store house, with but a single window above, facing the square; and the Major looking at it for a time, turned to the old clerk and said: "That building is the strongest one in town, but no men appear to be posted in it. Why so?" "The rear wall is torn out and the men would be unprotected from behind," the clerk answered. "The wall was pulled down about a month ago. Evans was going to have the house built deeper into the lot so he could use it as a cotton shed, but hasn't." "Bad that it was left that way. How long since the last scout came in?" "About an hour and a half." "And where was the enemy then?" "In the neighborhood of Gum Springs." "That's bad. The militia won't have time to get here." The Major went above, where he found Gid's men posted at the windows and the loop-holes. "How is everything?" he asked. "Lovely, John." "Don't call me John." "All is well, Major." "Good." And after a time he added: "The south road is so crooked that we don't command it very far, therefore look sharp. Back to your post!" he stormed as Perdue looked up from his loop-hole. "This is no time for idleness." "I wonder what time we eat," said Gid. "You may never eat another bite," the Major answered. "Then I don't reckon there's any use to worry about it, John, or Major, I mean." The Major returned to the floor below. "This is getting to be quite a lark," said the Englishman. "It's beastly cruel to fight, but after all it is rather jolly, you know." "I'm glad you think so, sir; I can't," the Major replied. "I regard it as one of the worst calamities that ever befell this country." "Do you think there will be much pillage by the blacks--much burning of houses?" "Possibly, but to sustain their cause their commander will hold them in some sort of check. He is looking out for the opinion of labor unions, the scoundrel. He is too sharp to give his war a political cast." "Ah, but to butcher is a beastly way to look after good opinion. What's that?" the Englishman cried. From afar, through the stillness that lay along the south road, came the popping of rifles; and then all was still. Then came the sounds of hoofs, and then a riderless horse dashed across the square. "Steady, men, they are upon us!" the Major shouted, and then all again was still. From the windows nothing could be seen down the road, and yet the advance guard must be near, for a gun was fired much closer than before. Now upon the square a rider dashed, and waving his hat he cried: "They are coming through the fields!" He dismounted, struck his horse with his hat to drive him out of danger and ran into the court-house. The Major met him. "They will be here in no time," the man said. "But how they got so close without my seeing them is a mystery to me. But of course I expected to see them in the road and didn't look for them in the fields. And that ain't all. They've got a cannon." "What!" the Major exclaimed, and the men at the loop-holes looked back at him. "Yes," the scout went on, "and I know all about it. Just before the war ended an enormous gun was spiked, dismantled and thrown into a well way down on the Dinkler place. It was got out a good while afterward and the spike drilled out, and since then it has been used for a Christmas gun. Well, they've got that thing on an ox wagon, but they've got no way to fire it for----" The guns to the right and left of the square blurted out, then came a roar and a yell, and in an instant the opposite side of the square was black with negroes pouring out from behind the low brick building. With a howl and a rush they came, but from three sides volley after volley was poured into them, the white men using their shot guns. The effect was terrible, and soon the square was cleared of all but the dead and the wounded. A cessation fell, and Mayo's voice could be heard, shouting at his men. He saw that to attempt to take the house by storm was certain death, so to comparative safety behind the house and into a deep-cut road a little farther back he withdrew his men. He had not expected so early to find such opposition, and his aim was to crush with the senseless weight of force, but the shot-guns were too deadly. Now he was cool and cautious. The fire from the whites was straggling. Suddenly out from behind the brick building rushed three black giants, torches in hand, making desperately for the court-house. It was indeed a forlorn hope, for one by one they fell, the last, so death-defying was he, that he fell upon the steps and his torch flew from his hand into the hallway and crackled on the floor. A man reached out to grasp it, but a shattered arm was drawn back. "Not you, Major!" cried old Parker. Outward he leaned, grabbing at the torch, but Mayo's guns swept the hall. And when they drew the old man back, he brought the snapping pine, but left his life. They laid him out upon the floor, stood for a moment sadly to view him; and through a hole a bullet zipped and beside him fell a neighbor. "Back to your places!" the Major commanded. Now the guns on the opposite side of the square were silent. "They are lying low and our men can't reach them," said the Major. "What are they up to now? Preparing for another charge?" "Worse than that," said the man who had seen them in the fields. "They have hoisted that cannon up into the brick building and are going to poke it through the window. See there! See that big log up-ended? That's to brace it. From where I lay I saw them just now breaking up an old stove out in the lot and they are going to load with the fragments. I killed two of them, but they got the stove away. Listen, don't you hear them pounding it up?" "And this house will afford no more protection that so much paper," said the Major, speaking low. "We have badly planned our defense. We are ill protected from bullets, and a cannon will blow us into the air." And then, moving from one to another, he looked through the loop-holes. "Train every gun on that window," he commanded, "and shoot if a finger is seen." Up the stairs he bounded. Old Gid was walking up and down the room, softly whistling. "Pretty peppery, Major," he said, pointing to three bodies stretched upon the floor. "Yes," the Major replied, "and it will be worse. We are doomed." "How so? Keep on rushing till they wear us out? I reckon not. It would take five thousand men. God, but look at them lying out there. They were desperate, but they are toned down." "They've got a cannon loaded with the fragments of a stove and will fire it from that window," said the Major. Gid whistled and resumed his walk. The firing about the square was slow and steady. From across the way there came no gun shot. "Got a cannon, eh?" old Gid mused. "I wondered why they were so still," and then to the Major he said: "They'll shell us out and mow us down at their leisure. Who built this infernal court-house?" "I don't remember," the Major answered, "but he ought to be in here now. Train your guns on that window." The Major went below. Just as he reached the bottom of the stairway he leaped forward with a cry. He saw Jim Taylor jump from a window out upon the square. The Major ran to a loop-hole, pushed a man aside and looked out. And now there was a belching of guns on the other side. Jim Taylor caught up a child in his arms, and with bullets pecking up the dirt about him and zipping against the wall, he dodged behind a corner of the house. Then he ran across the protected side of the square. Near by, in the door of a warehouse, a woman stood, shrieking. When she saw the giant with her little boy in his arms she ran out to meet him, breaking loose from the hands that strove to hold her, and snatching the little fellow, she cried: "God bless you for this. I have so many little ones to see to that he got out and went to look for his grandpa Parker. God bless you, sir." The giant had seen old Parker lying dead on the floor, but he said nothing; he turned about, and entering the court-house from the protected side, was soon at his post. The Major stormed at him. "You've lost all your sense," he cried. "You are a bull-calf, sir. Now see that you don't leave your post again. Did they hit you?" he anxiously asked. "Don't believe they did," the giant grimly answered. "Well, they will in a minute. Look there!" The mouth of the cannon showed above the window, shoved through and now rested on the ledge; and behind it arose an enormous log. From the loop-holes in the court-house the gun was raked with buck-shot, but all the work was done from below and no one stood exposed. Once a hand, like a black bat, was seen upon the gun, but instantly it flew away, leaving a blotch of blood. And now the old bell, so quiet all the morning, began to strike--one, two, ten, thirty--slowly, with dread and solemn pauses. "Look!" the Major cried. A red-hot poker glowed above the cannon. Buckshot hailed from a hundred guns, and the poker fell, but soon it came again and this time flat upon the gun. The hand that held it was nervous and fumbling. Suddenly the breech of the gun slipped lower down the upright log. Up went the muzzle, and then came a deafening boom. There was a crash over-head. The cupola of the court-house was shattered, and down came the bell upon the roof, and off it rolled and fell upon the ground with a clang. Out surged Mayo's men, but a fearful volley met them, and amid loud cries and with stumbling over the dead and the dying, torn and bleeding, they were driven back. But they set up a yell when they saw the damage their gun had wrought. They could foresee the havoc of a better managed fire. Now the yells were hushed. The Major's men could hear a black Vulcan hammering his iron; then a lesser noise--they were driving the scraps into the gun. "It will be worse this time," said the Major. "They have cut a deeper niche in the log to hold the breech and there'll be no chance of its slipping. These walls will be shattered like an eggshell. Steady, they are at it." Again the gun lay across the window ledge. The red-hot poker bobbed up, glowing in the dim light, but there was a crash and a rain of shot and it flew back out of sight; and it must have been hurled through the rear opening of the wall, for they were a long time in getting it. But it came again, this time sparkling with white heat. The guns about the square kept up an incessant fire, but over the powder the poker bobbed, and then--the whole town shook with the terrific jar, and windows showered their glass upon the street, and through the smoke a thrilling sight was seen--the roof of the brick building was blown into splinters and in the air flew boots, hats and the fragments of men--the gun had exploded. "Out and charge!" the Major shouted. "Forward, Captain Batts!" he cried at the foot of the stairs, and the men came leaping down. The cry was taken up, and from every building about the square the men were pouring. Mayo had no time to rally his force; indeed, it was beyond his power, for his men were panic-smitten. Into the fields and toward the woods they ran for their lives. It was now a chase. Bang, to right and the left, and in the fields the fleeing blacks were falling, one by one. Once or twice they strove to make a stand, but hell snorted in their faces--and death barked at their heels. In their terror they were swift, but from afar the rifles sucked their blood. The woods were gained and now they were better protected in their flight, dodging from tree to tree; some of them faced about and white men fell, and thus was caution forced upon the pursuers. So much time was gained that Mayo rallied the most of his men, but not to stand and fight. He had another plan. In a small open space, once a cotton patch, stood a large church, built of logs, and thither he hastened his men, and therein they found a fortress. The Major called in his scattered forces. They gathered in the woods about the church. "Are you going to charge them?" old Gideon asked. "No, sir, that would be certain death to many of us. Hemmed in as they now are they'll be deadly desperate. We'll have to manage it some other way." A shower of buck-shot flew from the church. "I gad, Major, they've got buck-shot," said Gid. "And they could mow us down before we could cross that place. They still outnumber us two to one--packed in there like sardines. Don't you think we'd better scatter about and peck at 'em when they show an eye? I'd like to know who built that church. Confound him, he cut out too many windows to suit me." "Dodge down, men!" cried the Major. "Mr. Low, get back there, sir!" "Be so kind as to oblige me with the time," said Low. "The rascals have smashed my watch. Punch a hole in my bath and then ruin my watch, you know. Most extraordinary impudence, I assure you." "It is half-past three," said the Major. "And what a day it has been and it is not done yet." Jim Taylor came forward. "Look out," said the Major. "They'll get you the first thing you know. Why don't you pick up a few grains of sense as you go along?" "Why don't some one scatter a few grains?" "Hush, sir. I want no back talk from you." "But I've got an idea," said the giant, with a broad grin. "Out with it." "Why, right over yonder is the Nelson plantation store-house," said Jim, "and at the front end is the biggest door I ever saw, double oak and so thickly studded with wrought-iron nails that their broad heads touch. And my idea is this: Take that door, cut a round hole in the center with a cold-chisel, cut down a good-sized cypress tree, round off one end, fit it in the hole, with about five feet sticking through; let a lot of us strong fellows gather up the tree and, protected by the door, use it for a battering ram and punch that house down. Then we can work them freely, as the fellow says." "Jim," the Major cried, "you are learning something. This day has developed you. I believe that can be done. At least it is worth trying. But, men, if it should be effective, let there be as little unnecessary slaughter as possible. We are compelled to kill--well, we can't help it. However, take Mayo alive if you possibly can. I want to see him hanged on the public square. Now get the door. Here, Tom, you and Low cut down a cypress tree. Here, Lacy, you help. Low doesn't know how to handle an ax. We'd better begin operations over there on the left. There are fewer windows on that side. We can batter down the door. No, there is a high window above the door and they could shoot down upon us. That won't do. We'll take the left side. See, there are but two windows, both close together near the end. Look out, boys. Keep behind the trees. I wonder how solid those logs are. When was that church built, Captain Batts?" "Don't remember the exact time, but not so very long ago. I recollect that there was talk of a probable extension, the time that new revivalist was having the house built, and that must account for the few windows toward this end on the left. They've got a first-rate place to shoot from, but what astonishes me is that Mayo should want to make a stand when he must know that we'll get him sooner or later." "That's easily explained," said the scout who had dashed upon the public square. "They are looking for a large body of reinforcements from the south, and Mayo knows what to expect if he should run, panic-stricken, into them. His only hope was in making a stand." "Where is Perdue?" the Major asked, looking about, from one tree to another. "He fell back yonder in the field," old Gid answered. "I ran to him, but he must have been dead by the time he hit the ground." The Major said nothing. He stood leaning against a tree looking toward Jim and four other men coming with the heavy door. "And old Billy," said Gid, "is----" The Major turned about. "Well," he broke in. "You know," said Gid, "we used to say that he always had a blot of ink on his head. But now he's lying back yonder with a spot of blood where the ink was." The Major called to Jim: "Put it down there." And then speaking to Gid he added: "That scoundrel must pay for this. Don't shoot him--don't even break his legs--I want to see them dangle in front of the court-house door." With a chisel and a hammer the giant worked, on his knees, and it was almost like cutting through solid iron. The echo of his heavy blows rumbled afar off throughout the timber-land. The detail of men came with the log, the body of a cypress tree, one end smoothly rounded. Jim took his measurements and proceeded with his work. Once he had to drag the door to a better-sheltered spot. Bullets from the church were pecking up the dirt about him. Three times the piece of timber was tried, to find that the hole in the door was not quite large enough, but at last it went through and the giant smiled at the neatness of the work. And now the ram was ready. The firing from the church had fallen and all was silent. "It will take about eight men, four on a side--all strong young fellows," said Taylor. "You old men stand back. Major, order Captain Batts to let go the log." "Captain Batts, turn loose," the Major commanded. "You are too old for such work." With a sigh old Gid stepped back, and sadly he looked upon the young men as they took their places. "Yes, I'm getting old, John, but you needn't keep telling me of it." "Sir, didn't I tell you not to call me John?" "Yes, but I thought you'd forgotten it." Taylor and the Englishman were side by side, the log between them. Auger holes had been bored in the shaft and strong oak pins had been driven in to serve for handles. "Remember to keep a tight grip on your handle," said Jim. "I warrant that," the Briton replied. "Are we all ready? Really quite a lark, you know." A stable had stood at the left boundary of the field, and one wall, cut down, was now a part of the fence. Circling about to avoid the undergrowth and at the same time to keep out of Mayo's range, the men with the ram came up behind the old wall; and here they were halted to wait until the Major properly placed his marksmen. He made the circuit of the field, and coming back, announced that all was ready. A score of shot-guns were trained upon the two windows that looked out upon the space between the stable wall and the church. Over the wall the door was lifted, and the shot-guns roared, for the negroes had opened fire from the windows, but necessary caution marred the effect of their aim. Without a mishap the ram was lowered into the field. And now forward it went, slowly at first, but faster and faster, the men on a run, the lower edge of the door sweeping the old cotton stalks. Faster, with a yell, and the men about the field stood ready to charge. Shot-guns blazed from the windows, and shot like sharp sleet rattled off the heavy nail-heads in the door. Faster, and with a stunning _bim_ the ram was driven against the house. But the logs lay firm. Back again, thirty feet, another run and a ram, but the logs were firm. From the windows, almost directly in front, the buck-shot poured, and glancing about, plucked up the dirt like raindrops in a dusty road. Once more, back still further, and again they drove with head-long force. The house shook, the roof trembled, but the logs were sound and stubbornly lay in place. Back again, but this time not to stop. "To the fence," Jim ordered. A shout came from the church. The Major stamped the ground. "Keep your places and wait for me," said Jim to his men. He leaped the stable wall. "Here, young fellow," he called, "run over to that store-house and bring a can of coal-oil. I was a fool not to think of this before. Why, even if we were to batter down the house they would kill us before our men could get there. Where is that axe?" He seized the axe and began to split a dry pine log. Every one understood his plan; no one spoke. He split his kindling fine, whittled off shavings with his knife, and gathering up his faggots waited for the oil. The young fellow returned, running. Jim snatched the can and sprang over the fence. The Englishman smiled when he took his place. "Really you have quite an odd fancy, you know," he said. "Once more and easy," Jim commanded. "And may the Lord have mercy on them. But it has to be done." Onward they went, leaning inward, treading slowly, and shot was sleeted at them from the windows. But there was no quickening step as the house was neared--it was a dead march. At a corner of the church they halted, and Jim, putting down his oil can, close to the wall, piled his faggots about it, and then, striking a match, set fire to the shavings. "Back!" he commanded. They reached the stable wall and stood there. The guns were silent. Eagerly every one was gazing. Was the fire dying down? One long minute, and then a dull explosion. A column of flame shot high into the air, a rain of fire spattered down upon the church, and the roof was ablaze. The white men, ready with their guns, heard a trampling and the smothered cries of horror; and then the church door flew open and out poured Mayo and his men. Three times they charged an opening in the line about the fence, but unseen foes sprang up and mowed them down. But at the last, fighting, desperate, yelling, they broke out of the slaughter-pen and once more were in the woods. And now it was not even a chase. It was a still-hunt. CHAPTER XXVI.--CONCLUSION. Late in the afternoon, the news of the rout and the slaughter was received at the Cranceford home. All day Wash Sanders and his men had been sitting about, speculating, with but one stir of excitement, the boom of Mayo's cannon. But this soon died away and they sat about, swapping lies that were white with the mildew of time. But when news came they sprang astir for now they knew that each man must look after his own home, to protect it from fire. Some of them offered to remain, but Mrs. Cranceford dismissed them, assuring them that her house, being so public, was in no danger. So she was left, not alone, but with a score of women and children. Afar off the guns could be heard, not in volleys, but the slow and fatal firing of men taking aim. The sun was nearly down when a man climbed over the fence and cautiously walked toward the house. In his hand he held a pine torch. Mrs. Cranceford grabbed a gun and ran out upon the porch. "What are you doing there?" she demanded. Larnage, the Frenchman, looked up at her and politely bowed. "What are you doing there?" she repeated. "Ah, is it possible that Madam does not suspect?" he replied, slowly turning his fire-brand, looking at the blaze as it licked the stewing turpentine. "Yes, I do suspect, you villain, and if you don't throw down that torch this instant I'll blow your head off." She brought the gun to her shoulder. He saw her close one eye, taking aim, and he stepped back and let his torch fall to the ground. "It shall be as Madam wishes," he said. "Now you get out of this yard." "Madam has but to command." He passed through the gate and turned down the road; and upon him she kept a steady eye. She saw him leave the road and go into the woods. Not far away was a potato-house, built over a cellar. To this frail structure he set fire. The dry timbers soon fell into the pit, and he stood there as if to warm himself. Night was his time for real work and he would wait. The sun was almost down. He turned away, and looking along the road that wound through the woods, he saw old Gideon coming. Quickly he hastened to the road-side and stood behind a tree, with a knife in his hand. Gid came slowly along. And just as he came abreast of the tree, his pop-eyes saw the fellow. He threw up his arm and caught the knife on the barrel of his gun; then leaping, with the gun clubbed, he struck at the Frenchman, but the fellow was too quick for him. "Oh, if I only had a cartridge!" the old man said with a groan, running after him. "I'd rather have a load of shot right now than a mortgage on Jerusalem. But I'll follow you--I'll get you." Larnage was running, looking back, expecting to be shot; and stubbing his toe he fell--head-long into the potato-cellar, into the pit of red-hot coals. Ashes and a black smoke arose, and with frightful cries he scrambled out, and with his charred clothes falling off him, he ran to the bayou and plunged headforemost into the water. Gid saw him sink and rise; saw him sink again; and long he waited, but the man did not rise again. * * * * * Down along the bayou where negro cabins were thickly set, fires were springing up; and there, running from place to place, following white men who bore torches, was Father Brennon. "Don't burn this house!" he cried. "It belongs to the church." "Damn the church!" a man replied. "But this house belongs to an innocent man--he would not seek to kill the whites--he's gone to the hills." "I reckon you are right," said the man, and onward he ran, waving his torch, the priest keeping close behind him. * * * * * From the woods the men were coming, and as Gid drew near to the Cranceford house he saw Jim Taylor passing through the gate; and a few moments later, turning a corner of the porch, he found the giant standing there with his arm about--Louise. "Ho, the young rabbit!" the old man cried. "Frog," she laughed, running forward and giving him both her hands. "Why, how did you get here?" he asked. "I heard that the militia had been ordered home and I got here as soon as I could. I have been home about two hours and mother and I--but where is father?" "Hasn't he come yet? Why, I thought he was here. We've all been scattered since the last stand." "I will go and look for him," said the giant, taking up his gun from against the wall. "I'm going with you," Louise declared. "Go on in the house, Uncle Gideon, and don't tell mother where I'm gone. Now, you needn't say a word--I'm going." Down the road they went, and out into the woods. Far away they saw the cabins blazing, on the banks of the bayou, and occasionally a gun was heard, a dull bark, deep in the woods. "You'd better go back," said Jim. "No, I'm going with you. Oh, but this must have been an awful day--but let us not talk about it now." And after a time she said: "And you didn't suspect that I was doing newspaper work. They tell me that I did it well, too." "I read a story in a newspaper that reminded me of you," he said. "It was called 'The Wing of a Bird.' It was beautiful." "I didn't think so," she replied. "Probably you didn't read it carefully," said he. "I didn't read it carefully enough before I handed it in, I'm afraid," she replied. "Oh, and did you write it?" He looked down at her and she nodded her head. "Yes, and I find that I do better with stories than at anything else," she said. "I have three accepted in the North and I have a book under way. That was the trouble with me, Jim; I wanted to write and I didn't know what ailed me, I was a crank." "You are an angel." He was leading her by the hand, and she looked up at him, but said nothing. Just in front of them they saw the dying glow of a cabin in coals. A long clump of bushes hid the spot from view. They passed the bushes, looking to the left, and suddenly the girl screamed. Not more than twenty yards away stood the Major, with his back against a tree--gripping the bent barrel of a gun; and ten feet from him stood Mayo, slowly raising a pistol. She screamed and snatched the giant's gun and fired it. Mayo wheeled about, dropped his pistol, clutched his bare arm, and with the blood spouting up between his fingers he turned to flee. Two white men sprang out in from of him, and the Major shouted: "Don't kill him--he is to be hanged on the public square. I was trying to take him alive--and had to knock down two of his men. Tie him." He held out his arms to Louise, and with her head on his breast and with mischief in her eyes, she looked up and said: "I have more than a daughter's claim on you. I have the claim of gallantry and upon this I base my plea." He rebuked her with a hug and a kiss, saying not a word; but big Jim, standing there, turned about, laughing. "What are you snorting at, Goliath? Has a David at last sunk a joke into your head? Come, let us go to the house." "Father," said Louise, "I am going to show you how much I love you. And oh, how I longed to rest in your arms the time you held them out to me, in that desolate hall, the night of death; but I knew that if I yielded I would go back to the nest with my wings untried. I had to go away. I will tell you all about it, and I know that you will not be ashamed of me." Silently they took their way homeward, choosing a shorter route; and coming upon an oozy place in the woods, Jim said to Louise: "I'm going to carry you in my arms." He did not wait for her to protest, but gathered her in his arms, and her head lay upon his shoulder. "Do you want my love to build a mansion for your heart?" he whispered. She put her arm about his neck. They came out into the hard road, and still he carried her, with her arms tight about his neck. The Major looked on with a sad smile, for the sights of the day were still red before his eyes. But banteringly, he said: "First time I ever saw this hard road so muddy." Louise laughed, whispered to Jim and he eased her to the ground. "Why, they've burnt Wash Sanders' house!" the Major cried. "See, over there?" They came opposite the place where the house had stood, and the Major suddenly drawing back, said to Jim: "Lead her around that way. She mustn't see this and she mustn't ask what it is." Jim led her away, and the Major looked at Wash Sanders. Across a low rail fence his body lay, his hands drooping to the ground, and in front of him lay a gun that had fallen from his grasp; and a short distance away the Major found a mulatto, lying dead beside the road. At the Major's house the women were preparing supper. The hungry men, some of them bleeding, had assembled in the yard. Darkness had fallen. "Father," said Tom, coming forward, leading Sallie Pruitt by the hand, "mother says that this girl shall live with us." "Yes," said the old man, putting his hands on Sallie's cheeks and kissing her. "Yes, my dear, you shall live with us." And turning to Low, he said: "You are a brave man. My hand, sir." And Low, grasping the old man's hand, replied: "I am an Englishman, and my father is a gentleman." "Gid," said the Major, "my name is John, God bless you." Down the road arose sharp words of command, and the burning top of a tall pine snag threw its light upon bayonets in the highway. The soldiers were come. "I wonder what is to be the end of this day's beginning," said the Englishman. "God only knows," the Major replied. THE END. 
34016	----	[Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: "_I seen he eye light on her as she came down the steps smilin'._"] UNC' EDINBURG A PLANTATION ECHO BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE ILLUSTRATED BY B. WEST CLINEDINST CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK, 1897 Copyright, 1889, 1895, by Charles Scribner's Sons TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "_I seen he eye light on her as she came down the steps smilin'._" . . . . . . Frontispiece. "_I got de ker'idge heah for you._" "_We come 'way next mornin'._" "_Mars George lead her out on de porch._" "_Hit begin so low evybody had to stop talkin'._" "_Miss Charlotte she 'mos' 'stracted._" "_An' Marse George he ain' answer._" [Illustration: "_I got de ker'idge heah for you._"] "Well, suh, dat's a fac--dat's what Marse George al'ays said. 'Tis hard to spile Christmas anyways." The speaker was "Unc' Edinburg," the driver from Werrowcoke, where I was going to spend Christmas; the time was Christmas Eve, and the place the muddiest road in eastern Virginia--a measure which, I feel sure, will, to those who have any experience, establish its claim to distinction. A half-hour before he had met me at the station, the queerest-looking, raggedest old darkey conceivable, brandishing a cedar-staffed whip of enormous proportions in one hand, and clutching in the other a calico letter-bag with a twisted string; and with the exception of a brief interval of temporary suspicion on his part, due to the unfortunate fact that my luggage consisted of only a hand-satchel instead of a trunk, we had been steadily progressing in mutual esteem. "Dee's a boy standin' by my mules; I got de ker'idge heah for you," had been his first remark on my making myself known to him. "Mistis say as how you might bring a trunk." I at once saw my danger, and muttered something about "a short visit," but this only made matters worse. "Dee don' nobody nuver pay short visits dyah," he said, decisively, and I fell to other tactics. "You couldn' spile Christmas den noways," he repeated, reflectingly, while his little mules trudged knee-deep through the mud. "Twuz Christmas den, sho' 'nough," he added, the fires of memory smouldering, and then, as they blazed into sudden flame, he asserted, positively: "Dese heah free-issue niggers don' know what Christmas is. Hawg meat an' pop crackers don' meck Christmas. Hit tecks ole times to meck a sho'-'nough, tyahin'-down Christmas. Gord! I's seen 'em! But de wuss Christmas I ever seen tunned out de best in de een," he added, with sudden warmth, "an' dat wuz de Christmas me an' Marse George an' Reveller all got drownded down at Braxton's Creek. You's hearn 'bout dat'?" As he was sitting beside me in solid flesh and blood, and looked as little ethereal in his old hat and patched clothes as an old oak stump would have done, and as Colonel Staunton had made a world-wide reputation when he led his regiment through the Chickahominy thickets against McClellan's intrenchments, I was forced to confess that I had never been so favored, but would like to hear about it now; and with a hitch of the lap blanket under his outside knee, and a supererogatory jerk of the reins, he began: "Well, you know, Marse George was jes' eighteen when he went to college. I went wid him, 'cause me an' him wuz de same age; I was born like on a Sat'day in de Christmas, an' he wuz born in de new year on a Chuesday, an' my mammy nussed us bofe at one breast. Dat's de reason maybe huccome we took so to one nurr. He sutney set a heap o' sto' by me; an' I ain' nuver see nobody yit wuz good to me as Marse George." The old fellow, after a short reverie, went on: "Well, we growed up togerr, jes as to say two stalks in one hill. We cotch ole hyahs togerr, an' we hunted 'possums togerr, an' 'coons. Lord! he wuz a climber! I 'member a fight he had one night up in de ve'y top of a big poplar tree wid a coon, whar he done gone up after, an' he flung he hat over he head; an' do' de varmint leetle mo' tyah him all to pieces, he fotch him down dat tree 'live; an' me an' him had him at Christmas. 'Coon meat mighty good when dee fat, you know?" As this was a direct request for my judgment, I did not have the moral courage to raise an issue, although my views on the subject of 'coon meat are well known to my family; so I grunted something which I doubt not he took for assent, and he proceeded: "Dee warn' nuttin he didn' lead de row in; he wuz de bes' swimmer I ever see, an' he handled a skiff same as a fish handle heself. An' I wuz wid him constant; wharever you see Marse George, dyah Edinburg sho', jes' like he shadow. So twuz, when he went to de university; 'twarn' nuttin would do but I got to go too. Marster he didn' teck much to de notion, but Marse George wouldn' have it no urrway, an' co'se mistis she teck he side. So I went 'long as he body-servant to teck keer on him an' help meck him a gent'man. An' he wuz, too. From time he got dyah tell he cum 'way he wuz de head man. "Dee warn' but one man dyah didn' compliment him, an' dat wuz Mr. Darker. But he warn' nuttin! not dat he didn' come o' right good fambly--'cep' dee politics; but he wuz sutney pitted, jes' like sometimes you see a weevly runty pig in a right good litter. Well, Mr. Darker he al'ays 'ginst Marse George; he hate me and him bofe, an' he sutney act mischeevous todes us; 'cause he know he warn' as we all. De Stauntons dee wuz de popularitiest folks in Virginia; an' dee wuz high-larnt besides. So when Marse George run for de medal, an' wuz to meck he gret speech, Mr. Darker he speak 'ginst him. Dat's what Marse George whip him 'bout. 'Ain' nobody nuver told you 'bout dat?" I again avowed my misfortune; and although it manifestly aroused new doubts, he worked it off on the mules, and once more took up his story: "Well, you know, dee had been speakin' 'ginst one nurr ev'y Sat'dy night; and ev'ybody knowed Marse George wuz de bes' speaker, but dee give him one mo' sho', an' dee was bofe gwine spread deeselves, an' dee wuz two urr gent'mens also gwine speak. An' dat night when Mr. Darker got up he meck sich a fine speech ev'ybody wuz s'prised; an' some on 'em say Mr. Darker done beat Marse George. But, shuh! I know better'n dat; an' Marse George face look so curious; but, suh, when he riz I knowed der wuz somen gwine happen--I wuz leanin' in de winder. He jes step out in front an' throwed up he head like a horse wid a rank kyurb on him, and den he begin; an' twuz jes like de river when hit gits out he bank. He swep' ev'ything. When he fust open he mout I knowed twuz comin'; he face wuz pale, an' he wuds tremble like a fiddle-string, but he eyes wuz blazin', an' in a minute he wuz jes reshin'. He voice soun' like a bell; an' he jes wallered dat turr man, an' wared him out; an' when he set down dee all yelled an' hollered so you couldn' heah you' ears. Gent'-mans, twuz royal! "Den dee tuck de vote, an' Marse George got it munanimous, an' dee all hollered agin, all 'cep' a few o' Mr. Darker's friends. An' Mr. Darker he wuz de second. An' den dee broke up. An' jes den Marse George walked thoo de crowd straight up to him, an' lookin' him right in de eyes, says to him, 'You stole dat speech you made to-night.' Well, suh, you ought to 'a hearn 'em; hit soun' like a mill-dam. You couldn' heah nuttin 'cep' roarin', an' you couldn' see nuttin 'cep' shovin'. But, big as he wuz, Marse George beat him; an' when dee pull him off, do' he face wuz mighty pale, he stan' out befo' 'em all, dem whar wuz 'ginst him, an' all, jes as straight as an arrow, an' say: 'Dat speech wuz written an' printed years ago by somebody or nurr in Congress, an' this man stole it; had he beat me only, I should not have said one word; but as he has beaten others, I shall show him up!' Gord, suh, he voice wuz clear as a game rooster. I sutney wuz proud on him. "He did show him up, too, but Mr. Darker ain' wait to see it; he lef' dat night. An' Marse George he wuz de popularitiest gent'man at dat university. He could handle dem students dyah same as a man handle a hoe. "Well, twuz de next Christmas we meet Miss Charlotte an' Nancy. Mr. Braxton invite we all to go down to spen' Christmas wid him at he home. An' sich a time as we had! "We got dyah Christmas Eve night--dis very night--jes befo' supper, an' jes natchelly froze to death," he pursued, dealing in his wonted hyperbole, "an' we jes had time to git a apple toddy or two when supper was ready, an' wud come dat dee wuz waitin' in de hall. I had done fix Marse George up gorgeousome, I tell you; an when he walk down dem stairs in dat swaller-tail coat, an' dem paten'-leather pumps on, dee warn nay one dyah could tetch him; he looked like he own 'em all. I jes rest my mind. I seen him when he shake hands wid 'em all roun', an' I say, 'Um-m-m! he got 'em.' "But he ain' teck noticement o' none much tell Miss Charlotte come. She didn' live dyah, had jes come over de river dat evenin' from her home, 'bout ten miles off, to spen' Christmas like we all, an' she come down de stairs jes as Marse George finish shakin' hands. I seen he eye light on her as she come down de steps smilin', wid her dim blue dress trainin' behind her, an' her little blue foots peepin' out so pretty, an' holdin' a little hankcher, lookin' like a spider-web, in one hand, an' a gret blue fan in turr, spread out like a peacock tail, an' jes her roun' arms an' th'oat white, an' her gret dark eyes lightin' up her face. I say, 'Dyah 'tis!' and when de ole Cun'l stan' aside an' interduce 'em, and Marse George step for'ard an' meck he grand bow, an' she sort o' swing back an' gin her curtchy, wid her dress sort o' dammed up 'ginst her, an' her arms so white, an' her face sort o' sunsetty, I say, 'Yes, Lord! Edinburg, dyah you mistis.' Marse George look like he think she done come down right from de top o' de blue sky an' bring piece on it wid her. He ain' nuver took he eyes from her dat night. Dee glued to her, mun! an' she--well, do' she mighty rosy, an' look mighty unconsarned, she sutney ain' hender him. Hit look like kyarn nobody else tote dat fan an' pick up dat hankcher skusin o' him; an' after supper, when dee all playin' blind-man's-buff in de hall--I don' know how twuz--but do' she jes as nimble as a filly, an' her ankle jes as clean, an' she kin git up her dress an' dodge out o' de way o' ev'ybody else, somehow or nurr she kyarn help him ketchin' her to save her life; he al'ays got her corndered; an' when dee'd git fur apart, dat ain' nuttin, dee jes as sure to come togerr agin as water is whar you done run you hand thoo. An' do' he kiss ev'ybody else under de mistletow, 'cause dee be sort o' cousins, he ain' nuver kiss her, nor nobody else ain't nurr, 'cep' de ole Cun'l. I wuz standin' down at de een de hall wid de black folks, an' I notice it 'tic'lar, 'cause I done meck de 'quaintance o' Nancy; she wuz Miss Charlotte's maid; a mighty likely young gal she wuz den, an' jes as impident as a fly. She see it too, do' she ain' 'low it. "Fust thing I know I seen a mighty likely light-skinned gal standin' dyah by me, wid her hyah mos' straight as white folks, an' a mighty good frock on, an' a clean apron, an' her hand mos' like a lady, only it brown, an' she keep on 'vidin' her eyes twix me an' Miss Charlotte; when I watchin' Miss Charlotte she watchin' me, an' when I steal my eye 'roun' on her she noticin' Miss Charlotte; an' presney I sort o' sidle 'longside her, an' I say, 'Lady, you mighty sprightly to-night.' An' she say she 'bleeged to be sprightly, her mistis look so good; an' I ax her which one twuz, an' she tell me, 'Dat queen one over dyah,' an' I tell her dee's a king dyah too, she got her eye set for; an' when I say her mistis tryin' to set her cap for Marse George, she fly up, an' say she an' her mistis don' have to set dee cap for nobody; _dee_ got to set dee cap an' all dee clo'es for dem, an' den dee ain' gwine cotch 'em cause dee ain' studyin' 'bout no up-country folks whar dee ain' nobody know nuttin 'bout. "Well, dat oudaciousness so aggrivate me, I lite into dat nigger right dyah. I tell her she ain' been nowhar 'tall ef she don' know we all; dat we wuz de bes' of quality, de ve'y top de pot; an' den I tell her 'bout how gret we wuz; how de ker'idges wuz al'ays hitched up night an' day, an' niggers jes thick as weeds; an' how Unc' Torm he wared he swaller-tail ev'y day when he wait on de table; and Marse George he won' wyah a coat mo'n once or twice anyways, to save you life. Oh! I sutney 'stonish dat nigger, 'cause I wuz teckin up for de fambly, an' I meck out like dee use gold up home like urr folks use wood, an' sow silver like urr folks sow wheat; an' when I got thoo dee wuz all on 'em listenin', an' she 'lowed dat Marse George he were ve'y good, sho 'nough, 'ef twarn for he nigger; but I ain' tarrifyin' myself none 'bout dat, 'cause I know she jes projickin, an' she couldn' help bein' impident ef you wuz to whup de frock off her back. "Jes den dee struck up de dance. Dee had wheel de pianer out in de hall, an' somebody say Jack Forester had come cross de river, an' all on 'em say dee mus' git Jack; an' presney he come in wid he fiddle, grinnin' and scrapin', 'cause he wuz a notable fiddler, do' I don' think he wuz equal to we all's Tubal, an' I know he couldn' tech Marse George, 'cause Marse George wuz a natchel fiddler, jes like 'coons is natchel pacers, an' mules an' womens is natchel kickers. Howsomever, he sutney jucked a jig sweet, an' when he shake dat bow you couldn' help you foot switchin' a leetle--not ef you wuz a member of de chutch. He wuz a mighty sinful man, Jack wuz, an' dat fiddle had done drawed many souls to torment. "Well, in a minute dee wuz all flyin', an' Jack he wuz rockin' like boat rockin' on de water, an' he face right shiny, an' he teef look like ear o' corn he got in he mout, an' he big foot set way out keepin' time, an' Marse George he was in de lead row dyah too; ev'y chance he git he tunned Miss Charlotte--'petchel motion, right hand across, an' cauliflower, an' croquette--dee croquette plenty o' urrs, but I notice dee ain' nuver fail to tun one nurr, an' ev'y tun he gin she wrappin' de chain roun'him. Once when dee wuz 'prominadin-all' down we all's een o' de hall, as he tunned her somebody step on her dress an' to' it. I heah de screech o' de silk, an' Nancy say, 'O Lord!' den she say, 'Nem mine! now I'll git it!' an' dee stop for a minute for Marse George to pin 't up, while turrers went on, an' Marse George wuz down on he knee, an' she look down on him mighty sweet out her eyes, an' say, 'Hit don' meck no difference,' an' he glance up an' cotch her eye, an', jes 'dout a wud, he tyah a gret piece right out de silk an' slipt it in he bosom, an' when he got up, he say, right low, lookin' in her eyes real deep, 'I gwine wyah dis at my weddin',' an' she jes look sweet as candy; an' ef Nancy ever wyah dat frock I ain' see it. "Den presney dee wuz talkin' 'bout stoppin'. De ole Cun'l say hit time to have prars, an' dee wuz beggin' him to wait a leetle while; an' Jack Forester lay he fiddle down nigh Marse George, an' he picked 't up an' drawed de bow 'cross it jes to try it, an' den jes projickin' he struck dat chune 'bout 'You'll ermember me.' He hadn' mo'n tech de string when you couldn' heah a pin drap. Marse George he warn noticin', an' he jes lay he face on de fiddle, wid he eyes sort o' half shet, an' drawed her out like he'd do some nights at home in dee moonlight on de gret porch, tell on a sudden he looked up an' cotch Miss Charlotte eye leanin' for'ards so earnest, an' all on 'em list'nin', an' he stopt, an' dee all clapt dee hands, an' he sudney drapt into a jig. Jack Forester ain' had to play no mo' dat night. Even de ole Cun'l ketched de fever, an' he stept out in de flo' in he long-tail coat an' high collar, an' knocked 'em off de 'Snowbud on de Ash-bank,' an' 'Chicken in de Bread-tray,' right natchel. "Oh, he could jes plank 'em down! "Oh, dat wuz a Christmas like you been read 'bout! An' twuz hard to tell which gittin cotch most, Marse George or me; 'cause dat nigger she jes as confusin' as Miss Charlotte. An' she sutney wuz sp'ilt dem days; ev'y nigger on dat place got he eye on her, an' she jes az oudacious an' aggravatin as jes womens kin be. "Dees monsus 'ceivin critters, womens is, jes as onreliable as de hind-leg of a mule; a man got to watch 'em all de time; you kyarn break 'em like you kin horses. "Now dat off mule dyah" (indicating, by a lazy but not light lash of his whip the one selected for his illustration), "dee ain' no countin' on her at all; she go 'long all day, or maybe a week, jes dat easy an' sociable, an' fust thing you know you ain' know nuttin she done knock you brains out; dee ain' no 'pendence to be placed in 'em 'tall, suh; she jes as sweet as a kiss one minute, an' next time she come out de house she got her head up in de air, an' her ears backed, an' goin' long switchin'herself like I ain' good 'nough for her to walk on. "'Fox-huntin's?' oh, yes, suh, ev'y day mos'; an' when Marse George didn't git de tail, twuz 'cause twuz a bob-tail fox--you heah me! He play de fiddle for he pastime, but he fetched up in de saddle--dat he cradle! "De fust day dee went out I heah Nancy quoilin 'bout de tail layin' on Miss Charlotte dressin'-table gittin' hyahs over ev'ything. "One day de ladies went out too, Miss Charlotte 'mongst 'em, on Miss Lucy' gray myah Switchity, an' Marse George he rid Mr. Braxton's chestnut Willful. "Well, suh, he stick so close to dat gray myah, he leetle mo' los' dat fox; but, Lord! he know what he 'bout--he monsus 'ceivin' 'bout dat--he know de way de fox gwine jes as well as he know heself; an' all de time he leadin' Miss Charlotte whar she kin heah de music, but he watchin' him too, jes as narrow as a ole hound. So, when de fox tun de head o' de creek, Marse George had Miss Charlotte on de aidge o' de flat, an' he de fust man see de fox tun down on turr side wid de hounds right rank after him. Dat sort o' set him back, 'cause by rights de fox ought to a' double an' come back dis side: he kyarn git out dat way; an' two or three gent'mens dee had see it too, an' wuz jes layin de horses to de groun' to git roun' fust, 'cause de creek wuz heap too wide to jump, an' wuz 'way over you head, an hit cold as Christmas, sho 'nough; well, suh, when dee tunned, Mr. Clarke he wuz in de lead (he wuz ridin' for Miss Charlotte too), an' hit fyah set Marse George on fire; he ain' said but one wud, 'Wait,' an' jes set de chestnut's head straight for de creek, whar de fox comin' wid he hyah up on he back, an' de dogs ravlin mos' on him. "De ladies screamed, an' some de gent'mens hollered for him to come back, but he ain' mind; he went 'cross dat flat like a wild-duck; an' when he retch de water he horse tried to flinch, but dat hand on de bridle, an' dem rowels in he side, an' he 'bleeged to teck it. "Lord! suh, sich a screech as dee set up! But he wuz swimmin' for life, an' he wuz up de bank an' in de middle o' de dogs time dee tetched ole Gray Jacket; an' when Mr. Clarke got dyah Marse George wuz stan'in' wid ice on him, holdin' up de tail for Miss Charlotte to see, turr side de creek, an' de hounds wuz wallerin' all over de body, an' I don' think Mr. Clarke done got up wid 'em yit. "He cotch de fox, an' he cotch some'n else besides, is my 'pinion, 'cause when de ladies went upstairs dat night Miss Charlotte had to wait on de steps for a glass o' water, an' couldn' nobody git it but Marse George; an' den when she tell him good-night over de banisters, he couldn' say it good enough; he got to kiss her hand; an' she ain' do nuttin but jes peep upstairs ef anybody dyah lookin'; an' when I come thoo de do' she juck her hand 'way an' run upstairs jes as farst as she could. Marse George look at me sort o' laughin', an' say: 'Confound you! Nancy couldn' been very good to you.' An' I say, 'She le' me squench my thirst a leetle kissin' her hand;' an' he sort o' laugh an' tell me to keep my mouf shet. "But dat ain' de on'y time I come on 'em. Dee al'ays gittin' corndered; an' de evenin' befo' we come 'way I wuz gwine in thoo de conservity, an' dyah dee wuz sort o' hide 'way. Miss Charlotte she wuz settin' down, an' Marse George he wuz leanin' over her, got her hand to he face, talkin' right low an' lookin' right sweet, an' she ain' say nuttin; an' presney he drapt on one knee by her, an' slip he arm roun' her, an' try to look in her eyes, an' she so 'shamed to look at him she got to hide her face on he shoulder, an' I slipt out. "We come 'way next mornin'. When marster heah 'bout it he didn' teck to de notion at all, 'cause her pa--dat is, he warn' her own pa, 'cause he had married her ma when she wuz a widder after Miss Charlotte pa died--an' he politics warn' same as ourn. 'Why, you kin never stand him, suh,' he said to Marse George. 'We won't mix any mo'n fire and water; you ought to have found that out at college; dat fellow Darker is his son.'" [Illustration: "_We come 'way next mornin'._"] "Marse George he say he know dat; but he on'y de step-brurr of de young lady, an' ain' got a drap o' her blood in he veins, an' he didn' know it when he meet her, an' anyhow hit wouldn' meck any diffence; an, when de mistis see how sot Marse George is on it she teck he side, an' dat fix it; 'cause when ole mistis warn marster to do a thing, hit jes good as done. I don' keer how much he rar roun' an' say he ain' gwine do it, you jes well go 'long an' put on you hat; you gwine see him presney doin' it jes peaceable as a lamb. She tun him jes like she got bline-bridle on him, an' he ain' nuver know it. "So she got him jes straight as a string. An' when de time come for Marse George to go, marster he mo' consarned 'bout it 'n Marse George; he ain' say nuttin 'bout it befo'; but now he walkin' roun' an' roun' axin mistis mo' questions 'bout he cloes an' he horse an' all; an' dat mornin' he gi' him he two Sunday razors, an' gi' me a pyah o' boots an' a beaver hat, 'cause I wuz gwine wid him to kyar he portmanteau, an' git he shavin' water, sence marster say ef he wuz gwine marry a Locofoco, he at least must go like a gent'man; an' me an' Marse George had done settle it 'twixt us, cause we al'ays set bofe we traps on de same hyah parf. "Well, we got 'em. When I ax dat gal out on de wood-pile dat night, she say bein' as her mistis gwine own me, an' we bofe got to be in de same estate, she reckon she ain' nuver gwine to be able to git shet o' me; an' den I clamp her. Oh, she wuz a beauty!" A gesture and guffaw completed the recital of his conquest. "Yes, suh, we got 'em sho!" he said, presently. "Dee couldn' persist us; we crowd 'em into de fence an' run 'em off dee foots. "Den come de 'gagement; an' ev'ything wuz smooth as silk. Marse George an' me wuz ridin' over dyah constant, on'y we nuver did git over bein' skeered when we wuz ridin' up dat turpentine road facin' all dem winders. Hit 'pears like ev'ybody in de wull 'mos' wuz lookin' at us. "One evenin' Marse George say, 'Edinburg, d'you ever see as many winders p'intin' one way in you' life? When I git a house,' he say, 'I gwine have all de winders lookin' turr way.' "But dat evenin' when I see Miss Charlotte come walkin' out de gret parlor wid her hyah sort o' rumpled over her face, an' some yaller roses on her bres, an' her gret eyes so soft an' sweet, an' Marse George walkin' 'long hinst her, so peaceable, like she got chain 'roun' him, I say, 'Or--or, winders ain' nuttin.' "Oh, twuz jes like holiday all de time! An' den Miss Charlotte come over to see mistis, an' of co'se she bring her maid wid her, 'cause she 'bleeged to have her maid, you know, an' dat wuz de bes' of all. "Dat evenin', bout sunset, dee come drivin' up in de big ker'idge, wid de gret hyah trunk stropped on de seat behind, an' Nancy she settin' by Billy, an' Marse George settin' inside by he rose-bud, 'cause he had done gone down to bring her up; an' marster he done been drest in he blue coat an' yallow westket ever sence dinner, an' walkin' roun', watchin' up de road all de time, an' tellin' de mistis he reckon dee ain' comin', an ole mistis she try to pacify him, an' she come out presney drest, an' rustlin' in her stiff black silk an' all; an' when de ker'idge come in sight, ev'ybody wuz runnin'; an' when dee draw up to de do', Marse George he help her out an' in'duce her to marster an' ole mistis; an' marster he start to meck her a gret bow, an' she jes put up her mouf like a little gal to be kissed, an' dat got him. An' mistis teck her right in her arms an' kiss her twice, an' de servants dee wuz all peepin' an' grinnin'. "Ev'ywhar you tun you see a nigger teef, 'cause dee all warn see de young mistis whar good 'nough for Marse George. "Dee ain' gwine be married tell de next fall, 'count o' Miss Charlotte bein' so young; but she jes good as b'longst to we all now; an' ole marster an' mistis dee jes as much in love wid her as Marse George. Hi! dee warn pull de house down an' buil' it over for her! An' ev'y han' on de place he peepin' to try to git a look at he young mistis whar he gwine b'longst to. One evenin' dee all on 'em come roun' de porch an' send for Marse George, an' when he come out, Charley Brown (he al'ays de speaker, 'cause he got so much mouf, kin' talk pretty as white folks), he say dee warn interduce to de young mistis, an' pay dee bespects to her; an' presney Marse George lead her out on de porch laughin' at her, wid her face jes rosy as a wine-sop apple, an' she meck 'em a beautiful bow' an' speak to 'em ev'y one, Marse George namin' de names; an' Charley Brown he meck her a pretty speech, an' tell her we mighty proud to own her; an' one o' dem impident gals ax her to gin her dat white frock when she git married; an' when she say, 'Well, what am I goin' wear?' Sally say, 'Lord, honey, Marse George gwine dress you in pure gol'!' an' she look up at him wid sparks flashin' out her eyes, while he look like dat ain' good 'nough for her. An' so twuz, when she went 'way, Sally Marshall got dat frock, an' proud on it I tell you." [Illustration: "_Marse George lead her out on de porch._"] "Oh, yes; he sutney mindin' her tender. Hi! when she go to ride in evenin' wid him, de ain' no horse-block good 'nough for her! Marse George got to have her step in he hand; an' when dee out walkin' he got de umbrellar holdin' 't over her all de time, he so feared de sun'll kiss her; an' dee walk so slow down dem walks in de shade you got to sight 'em by a tree to tell ef dee movin' 'tall. She use' to look like she used to it too, I tell you, 'cause she wuz quality, one de white-skinned ones; an' she'd set in dem big cheers, wid her little foots on de cricket whar Marse George al'ays set for her, he so feared dee'd tech de groun', jes like she on her throne; an' ole marster he'd watch her 'mos' edmirin as Marse George; an' when she went 'way hit sutney wuz lonesome. Hit look like daylight gone wid her. I don' know which I miss mos', Miss Charlotte or Nancy. "Den Marse George wuz 'lected to de Legislature, an' ole Jedge Darker run for de Senator, an' Marse George vote gin him and beat him. An' dat commence de fuss; an' den dat man gi' me de whuppin, an' dat breck 'tup and breck he heart. "You see, after Marse George wuz 'lected ('Lections wuz 'lections dem days; dee warn' no baitgode 'lections, wid e'vy sort o' wurrms squirmin' up 'ginst one nurr, wid piece o' paper d' ain' know what on, drappin' in a chink; didn' nuttin but gent'mens vote den, an' dee took dee dram, an' vote out loud, like gent'mens)--well, arter Marse George was 'lected, de parties wuz jes as even balanced as stilyuds, an' wen dee ax Marse George who wuz to be de Senator, he vote for de Whig, 'ginst de old jedge, an' dat beat him, of co'se. An' dee ain' got sense to know he 'bleeged to vote wid he politics. Dat he sprinciple; he kyarn vote for Locofoco, I don' keer ef he is Miss Charlotte pa, much less her step-pa. Of co'se de ole jedge ain' speak to him arter dat, nur is Marse George ax him to. But who dat g'wine s'pose women-folks got to put dee mouf in too? Miss Charlotte she write Marse George a letter dat pester him mightily; he set up all night answerin' dat letter, an' he mighty solemn, I tell you. An' I wuz gettin' right grewjousome myself, 'cause I studyin' 'bout dat gal down dyah whar I done gi' my wud to, an' when dee ain' no letters come torectly hit hard to tell which one de anxiouser, me or Marse George. Den presney I so 'straughted 'long o' it I ax Aunt Haly 'bouten it: (She know all sich things, 'cause she 'mos' a hunderd years ole, an' seed evil speerits, an' got skoripins up her chimley, an' knowed conjure); an' she ax me what wuz de signication, an' I tell her I ain' able nuther to eat nor to sleep, an' dat gal come foolin' 'long me when I sleep jes as natchel as ef I see her sho' 'nough. An' she say I done conjured; dat de gal done tricked me. "Oh, Gord! dat skeered me! "You white folks, marster, don' b'lieve nuttin like dat; y' all got too much sense, 'cause y' all kin read; but niggers dee ain' know no better, an' I sutney wuz skeered, 'cause Aunt Haly say my coffin done seasoned, de planks up de chimley. "Well, I got so bad Marse George ax me 'bout it, an' he sort o' laugh an' sort o' cuss, an' he tell Aunt Haly ef she don' stop dat foolishness skeerin' me he'll sell her an' tyah her ole skoripin house down. Well, co'se he jes talkin', an' he ax me next day how'd I like to go an' see my sweetheart. Gord! suh, I got well torectly. So I set off next evenin', feelin' jes big as ole marster, wid my pass in my pocket, which I warn' to show nobody 'douten I 'bleeged to, 'cause Marse George didn't warn nobody to know he le' me go. An' den dat rascallion teck de shut off my back. But ef Marse George didn' pay him de wuth o' it! "I done git 'long so good, too. "When Nancy see me she sutney wuz 'stonished. She come roun' de cornder in de back yard whar I settin' in Nat's do' (he wuz de gardener), wid her hyah all done ontwist, an' breshed out mighty fine, an' a clean ap'on wid fringe on it, meckin' out she so s'prised to see me (whar wuz all a lie, 'cause some on 'em done notify her I dyah), an' she say, 'Hi! what dis black nigger doin' heah?' "An' I say, 'Who you callin' nigger, you impident, kercumber-faced thing, you?' Den we shake hands, an' I tell her Marse George done set me free--dat I done buy myself; dat's de lie I done lay off to tell her. "An' when I tole her dat, she bust out laughin', an' say, well, I better go 'long 'way, den, dat she don' warn no free nigger to be comp'ny for her.' Dat sort o' set me back, an' I tell her she kickin' 'fo' she spurred, dat I ain' got her in my mine; I got a nurr gal at home whar grievin' 'bout me dat ve'y minute. An' after I tell her all sich lies as dat presney she ax me ain' I hongry; an' ef dat nigger didn' git her mammy to gi' me de bes' supter! Umm-m! I kin mos' tas'e it now. Wheat bread off de table, an' zerves, an' fat bacon, tell I couldn' put a nurr moufful nowhar sep'n I'd teck my hat. Dat night I tote Nancy water for her, an' I tell her all 'bout ev'ything, an' she jes sweet as honey. Next mornin', do', she done sort o' tunned some, an' ain' so sweet. You know how milk gits sort o' bonny-clabberish? An' when she see me she 'gin to 'buse me--say I jes' tryin' to fool her, an' all de time got nurr wife at home, or gittin' ready to git one, for all she know, an' she ain' know wherr Marse George ain' jes 'ceivin' as I is; an' nem mine, she got plenty warn marry her; an' as to Miss Charlotte, she got de whole wull; Mr. Darker he ain' got nobody in he way now, dat he deah all de time, an' ain' gwine West no mo'. Well, dat aggrivate me so I tell her ef she say dat 'bout Marse George I gwine knock her; an' wid dat she got so oudacious I meck out I gwine 'way, an' lef' her, an' went up todes de barn; an' up dyah, fust thing I know, I come across dat ar man Mr. Darker. Soon as he see me he begin to cuss me, an' he ax me what I doin' on dat land, an' I tell him 'Nuttin'.' An' he say, well, he gwine gi' me some'n; he gwine teach me to come prowlin' round gent'men's houses. An' he meck me go in de barn an' teck off my shut, an' he beat me wid he whup tell de blood run out my back. He sutney did beat me scandalous, 'cause he done hate me an' Marse George ever since we wuz at college togurr. An' den he say: 'Now you git right off dis land. Ef either you or you marster ever put you foot on it, you'll git de same thing agin.' An' I tell you, Edinburg he come way, 'cause he sutney had worry me. I ain' stop to see Nancy or nobody; I jes come 'long, shakin' de dust, I tell you. An' as I come 'long de road I pass Miss Charlotte walkin' on de lawn by herself, an' she call me: 'Why, hi! ain' dat Edinburg?' "She look so sweet, an' her voice soun' so cool, I say, 'Yes'm; how you do, missis?' An' she say, she ve'y well, an' how I been, an' whar I gwine? I tell her I ain' feelin' so well, dat I gwine home. 'Hi!' she say, 'is anybody treat you bad?' An' I tell her, 'Yes'm'. An' she say, 'Oh! Nancy don' mean nuttin by dat; dat you mus'n mine what womens say, an' do, 'cause dee feel sorry for it next minute; an' sometimes dee kyarn help it, or maybe hit you fault; an' anyhow, you ought to be willin' to overlook it; an' I better go back an' wait till to-morrow--ef--ef I ain' 'bleeged to git home to-day.' "She got mighty mixed up in de een part o' dat, an' she looked mighty anxious 'bout me an' Nancy; an' I tell her, 'No'm, I 'bleeged to git home.' "Well, when I got home Marse George he warn know all dat gwine on; but I mighty sick--dat man done beat me so; an' he ax me what de marter, an' I upped an' tell him. "Gord! I nuver see a man in sich a rage. He call me in de office an' meck me teck off my shut, an' he fyah bust out cryin'. He walked up an' down dat office like a caged lion. Ef he had got he hand on Mr. Darker den, he'd 'a kilt him, sho! "He wuz most 'stracted. I don't know what he'd been ef I'd tell him what Nancy tell me. He call for Peter to get he horse torectly, an' he tell me to go an' git some'n from mammy to put on my back, an' to go to bed torectly, an' not to say nuttin to nobody, but to tell he pa he'd be away for two days, maybe; an' den he got on Reveller an' galloped 'way hard as he could, wid he jaw set farst, an' he heaviest whup clamped in he hand. Gord! I wuz most hopin' he wouldn' meet dat man, 'cause I feared ef he did he'd kill him; an' he would, sho, ef he had meet him right den; dee say he leetle mo' did when he fine him next day, an' he had done been ridin' den all night; he cotch him at a sto' on de road, an' dee say he leetle mo' cut him all to pieces; he drawed a weepin on Marse George, but Marse George wrench it out he hand an' flung it over de fence; an' when dee got him 'way he had weared he whup out on him; an' he got dem whelps on him now, ef he ain' dead. Yes, suh, he ain' let nobody else do dat he ain' do heself, sho! "Dat done de business! "He sont Marse George a challenge, but Marse George sont him wud he'll cowhide him agin ef he ever heah any mo' from him, an' he 'ain't. Dat perrify him, so he shet he mouf. Den come he ring an' all he pictures an' things back--a gret box on 'em', and not a wud wid 'em. Marse George, I think he know'd dee wuz comin', but dat ain' keep it from huttin him, 'cause he done been 'gaged to Miss Charlotte, an' got he mine riveted to her; an' do' befo' dat dee had stop writin', an' a riff done git 'twixt 'em, he ain' satisfied in he mine dat she ain't gwine 'pologizee--I know by Nancy; but now he got de confirmation dat he done for good, an' dat de gret gulf fixed 'twix him an' Aberham bosom. An', Gord, suh, twuz torment, sho 'nough! He ain' say nuttin 'bout it, but I see de light done pass from him, an' de darkness done wrap him up in it. In a leetle while you wouldn' a knowed him. "Den ole mistis died. "B'lieve me, ole marster he 'most much hut by Miss Charlotte as Marse George. He meck a 'tempt to buy Nancy for me, so I find out arterward, an' write Jedge Darker he'll pay him anything he'll ax for her, but he letter wuz sont back 'dout any answer. He sutney was mad 'bout it--he say he'd horsewhip him as Marse George did dat urr young puppy, but ole mistis wouldn' le' him do nuttin, and den he grieve heself to death. You see he mighty ole, anyways. He nuver got over ole mistis' death. She had been failin' a long time, an' he ain' tarry long 'hinst her; hit sort o' like breckin up a holler--de ole 'coon goes 'way soon arter dat; an' marster nuver could pin he own collar or buckle he own stock--mistis she al'ays do dat; an' do' Marse George do de bes' he kin, an' mighty willin', he kyarn handle pin like a woman; he hand tremble like a p'inter dog; an' anyways he ain' ole mistis. So ole marster foller her dat next fall, when dee wuz gittin in de corn, an' Marse George he ain' got nobody in de wull left; he all alone in dat gret house, an' I wonder sometimes he ain' die too, 'cause he sutney wuz fond o' old marster. "When ole mistis wuz dyin', she tell him to be good to ole marster, an' patient wid him, 'cause he ain' got nobody but him now (ole marster he had jes step out de room to cry); an' Marse George he lean over her an' kiss her an' promise her faithful he would. An' he sutney wuz tender wid him as a woman; an' when ole marster die, he set by him an' hol' he hand an' kiss him sort, like he wuz ole mistis. "But, Gord! twuz lonesome arter dat, an' Marse George eyes look wistful, like he al'ays lookin' far 'way. "Aunt Haly say he see harnts whar walk 'bout in de gret house. She say dee walk dyah constant of nights sence ole marster done alterate de rooms from what dee wuz when he gran'pa buil' 'em, an' dat dee huntin' for dee ole chambers an' kyarn git no rest 'cause dee kyarn fine 'em. I don't know how dat wuz. I know Marse George _he_ used to walk about heself mightily of nights. All night long, all night long, I'd heah him tell de chickens crowin' dee second crow, an' some mornin's I'd go dyah an' he ain' even rumple de bed. I thought sho he wuz gwine die, but I suppose he done 'arn he days to be long in de land, an' dat save him. But hit sutney wuz lonesome, an' he nuver went off de plantation, an' he got older an' older, tell we all thought he wuz gwine die. "An' one day come jes befo' Christmas, 'bout nigh two year arfter marster die, Mr. Braxton ride up to de do'. He had done come to teck Marse George home to spen' Christmas wid him. Marse George warn git out it, but Mr. Braxton won' teck no disapp'intment; he say he gwine baptize he boy, an' he done name him after Marse George (he had marry Marse George cousin, Miss Peggy Carter, an' he vite Marse George to de weddin', but he wouldn' go, do' I sutney did want him to go, 'cause I heah Miss Charlotte was nominated to marry Mr. Darker, an' I warn know what done 'come o' dat bright-skinned nigger gal whar I used to know down dyah); an' he say Marse George got to come an' stan' for him, an' gi' him a silver cup an' a gol' rattle. So Marse George he finally promise to come an' spend Christmas Day, an' Mr. Braxton went 'way next mornin', an' den hit tun in an' rain so I feared we couldn' go, but hit cler off de day befo' Christmas Eve an' tun cold. Well, suh, we ain' been nowhar for so long I wuz skittish as a young filly; an' den you know twuz de same ole place. "We didn' git dyah till supper-time, an' twuz a good one too, 'cause seventy miles dat cold a weather hit whet a man's honger jes like a whetstone. "Dee sutney wuz glad to see we all. We rid roun' by de back yard to gi' Billy de horses, an' we see dee wuz havin' gret fixin's; an' den we went to de house, jest as some o' de folks run in an' tell 'em we wuz come. When Marse George stept in de hall, dee all clustered roun' him like dee gwine hug him, dee faces fyah dimplin' wid pleasure, an' Miss Peggy she jes reched up an' teck him in her arms an' hug him. "Dee tell me in de kitchen dat dee wuz been 'spectin' of Miss Charlotte over to spend Christmas too, but de river wuz so high dee s'pose dee couldn' git cross. Chile, dat sutney disapp'int me! "Well, after supper de niggers had a dance. Hit wuz down in de wash-house, an' de table wuz set in de carpenter shop jes' by. Oh, hit sutney wuz beautiful! Miss Lucy an' Miss Ailsy dee had superintend ev'ything wid dee own hands. So dee wuz down dyah wid dee ap'ons up to dee chins, an' dee had de big silver strandeliers out de house, two on each table, an' some o' ole mistis's best damas' tablecloths, an' ole marster's gret bowl full o' egg-nog; hit look big as a mill-pond settin' dyah in de cornder; an' dee had flowers out de greenhouse on de table, an' some o' de chany out de gret house, an' de dinin'-room cheers set roun' de room. Oh! oh! nuttin warn too good for niggers dem times; an' de little niggers wuz runnin' roun' right 'stracted, squealin' an' peepin' an' gittin in de way onder you foots; an' de mens dee wuz totin' in de wood--gret hickory logs, look like stock whar you gwine saw--an' de fire so big hit look like you gwine kill hawgs, 'cause hit sutney wuz cold dat night. Dis nigger ain' nuver gwine forgit it! Jack Forester he had come 'cross de river to lead de fiddlers, an' he say he had to put he fiddle onder he coat an' poke he bow in he breeches leg to keep de strings from poppin', an' dat de river would freeze over sho ef twarn so high; but twuz jes snortin', an' he had hard wuck to git over in he skiff, an' Unc' Jeems say he ain' gwine come out he boat-house no mo' dat night--he done tempt Providence often 'nough for one day. "Den ev'ything wuz ready, an' de fiddlers got dee dram an' chuned up, an' twuz lively, I tell you! Twuz jes as thick in dyah as blackberries on de blackberry bush, 'cause ev'y gal on de plantation wuz dyah shakin' her foot for some young buck, an' back-steppin' for to go 'long. Dem ole sleepers wuz jes a-rockin', an' Jack Forester he wuz callin' de figgers for to wake 'em up. I warn' dancin', 'cause I done got 'ligion an 'longst to de chutch sence de trouble done tech us up so rank; but I tell you my foots wuz pintedly eechchin for a leetle sop on it, an' I had to come out to keep from crossin' 'em onst, anyways. Den, too, I had a tetch o' misery in my back, an' I lay off to git a tas'e o' dat egg-nog out dat big bowl, wid snowdrift on it, from Miss Lucy--she al'ays mighty fond o' Marse George; so I slip into de carpenter shop, an' ax her kyarn I do nuttin for her, an' she laugh an' say, yes, I kin drink her health, an' gi' me a gret gobletful, an' jes den de white folks come in to 'spec' de tables, Marse George in de lead, an' dee all fill up dee glasses an' pledge dee health, an' all de servants', an' a merry Christmas; an' den dee went in de wash-house to see de dancin', an' maybe to teck a han deeself, 'cause white folks' 'ligion ain' like niggers', you know; dee got so much larnin dee kin dance, an' fool de devil too. An' I stay roun' a little while, an' den went in de kitchen to see how supper gittin' on, 'cause I wuz so hongry when I got dyah I ain' able to eat 'nough at one time to 'commodate it, an' de smell o' de tuckeys an' de gret saddlers o' mutton in de tin-kitchens wuz mos' 'nough by deeself to feed a right hongry man; an' dyah wuz a whole parcel o' niggers cookin' an' tunnin 'bout for life, an' dee faces jes as shiny as ef dee done bas'e 'em wid gravy; an' dyah, settin' back in a cheer out de way, wid her clean frock up off de flo', wuz dat gal! I sutney did feel curiousome. "I say, 'Hi! name o' Gord! whar'd you come from?' She say, 'Oh, Marster! ef heah ain' dat free nigger agin!' An' ev'ybody laughed. "Well, presny we come out, cause Nancy warn see de dancin', an' we stop a leetle while 'hind de cornder out de wind while she tell me 'bout ev'ything. An' she say dat's all a lie she tell me dat day 'bout Mr. Darker an' Miss Charlotte; an' he done gone 'way now for good 'cause he so low down an' wuthless dee kyarn nobody stand him; an' all he warn marry Miss Charlotte for is to git her niggers. But Nancy say Miss Charlotte nuver could abide him; he so 'sateful, 'spressly sence she fine out what a lie he told 'bout Marse George. You know, Mr. Darker he done meck 'em think Marse George sont me dyah to fine out ef he done come home, an' den dat he fall on him wid he weepin when he ain' noticin' him, an' sort o' out de way too, an' git two urr mens to hold him while he beat him, all 'cause he in love wid Miss Charlotte. D'you ever, ever heah sich a lie? An' Nancy say, do' Miss Charlotte ain' b'lieve it all togerr, hit look so reasonable she done le' de ole jedge an' her ma, who wuz 'pending on what she heah, 'duce her to send back he things; an' dee ain' know no better not tell after de ole jedge die; den dee fine out 'bout de whuppin me, an' all; an' den Miss Charlotte know huccome I ain' gwine stay dat day; an' she say dee was sutney outdone 'bout it, but it too late den; an' Miss Charlotte kyarn do nuttin but cry 'bout it, an' dat she did, pintedly, 'cause she done lost Marse George, an' done 'stroy he life; an' she nuver keer 'bout nobody else sep Marse George, Nancy say. Mr. Clarke he hangin' on, but Miss Charlotte she done tell him pintedly she ain' nuver gwine marry nobody. An' dee jes done come, she say, 'cause dee had to go 'way roun by de rope ferry 'long o' de river bein' so high, an' dee ain' know tell dee done git out de ker'idge an' in de house dat we all wuz heah; an' Nancy say she glad dee ain', 'cause she 'feared ef dee had, Miss Charlotte wouldn' 'a come. "Den I tell her all 'bout Marse George, 'cause I know she 'bleeged to tell Miss Charlotte. Twuz powerful cold out dyah, but I ain' mine dat, chile. Nancy she done had to wrop her arms up in her ap'on an' she kyarn meck no zistance 'tall, an' dis nigger ain' keerin' nuttin 'bout cold den. "An' jes den two ladies come out de carpenter shop an' went 'long to de wash-house, an' Nancy say, 'Dyah Miss Charlotte now;' an' twuz Miss Lucy an' Miss Charlotte; an' we heah Miss Lucy coaxin' Miss Charlotte to go, tellin' her she kin come right out; an' jes den dee wuz a gret shout, an' we went in hinst 'em. Twuz Marse George had done teck de fiddle, an ef he warn' natchelly layin' hit down! he wuz up at de urr een o' de room, 'way from we all, 'cause we wuz at de do', nigh Miss Charlotte whar she wuz standin' 'hind some on 'em, wid her eyes on him mighty timid, like she hidin' from him, an' ev'y nigger in de room wuz on dat flo'. Gord! suh, dee wuz grinnin' so dee warn' a toof in dat room you couldn' git you tweezers on; an' you couldn' heah a wud, dee so proud o' Marse George playin' for 'em. "Well, dee danced tell you couldn' tell which wuz de clappers an' which de back-steppers; de whole house look like it wuz rockin'; an' presney somebody say supper, an' dat stop 'em, an' dee wuz a spell for a minute, an' Marse George standin' dyah wid de fiddle in he hand. He face wuz tunned away, an' he wuz studyin'--studyin' 'bout dat urr Christmas so long ago--an' sudney he face drapt down on de fiddle, an' he drawed he bow 'cross de strings, an' dat chune 'bout 'You'll ermember me' begin to whisper right sort. Hit begin so low ev'ybody had to stop talkin' an' hold dee mouf to heah it; an' Marse George he ain' know nuttin 'bout it, he done gone back, an' standin' dyah in de gret hall playin' it for Miss Charlotte, whar done come down de steps wid her little blue foots an' gret fan, an' standin' dyah in her dim blue dress an' her fyah arms, an' her gret eyes lookin' in he face so earnest, whar he ain' gwine nuver speak to no mo'. I see it by de way he look--an' de fiddle wuz jes pleadin'. He drawed it out jes as fine as a stran' o' Miss Charlotte's hyah." [Illustration: "_Hit begin so low ev'ybody had to stop talkin'._"] "Hit so sweet, Miss Charlotte, mun, she couldn' stan' it; she made to de do'; an' jes while she watchin' Marse George to keep him from seein' her he look dat way, an' he eyes tall right into hern. "Well, suh, de fiddle drapt down on de flo'--perlang!--an' he face wuz white as a sycamore limb. "Dee say twuz a swimmin' in de head he had; an' Jack say de whole fiddle warn wuff de five dollars. "Me an' Nancy followed 'em tell dee went in de house, an' den we come back to de shop whar de supper wuz gwine on, an' got we all supper an' a leetle sop o' dat yaller gravy out dat big bowl, an' den we all rejourned to de wash-house agin, an' got onder de big bush o' misseltow whar hangin' from de jice, an' ef you ever see scufflin' dat's de time. "Well, me an' she had jes done lay off de whole Christmas, when wud come dat Marse George want he horses. "I went, but it sutney breck me up; an' I wonder whar de name o' Gord Marse George gwine sen' me dat cold night, an' jes as I got to de do' Marse George an' Mr. Braxton come out, an' I know torectly Marse George wuz gwine 'way. I seen he face by de light o' de lantern, an' twuz set jes rigid as a rock. "Mr. Braxton he wuz baiggin him to stay; he tell him he ruinin' he life, dat he sho dee's some mistake, an' twill be all right. An' all de answer Marse George meck wuz to swing heself up in de saddle, an' Reveller he look like he gwine fyah 'stracted. He al'ays mighty fool anyways when he git cold, dat horse wuz. "Well, we come 'long 'way, an' Mr. Braxton an' two mens come down to de river wid lanterns to see us cross, 'cause twuz dark as pitch, sho 'nough. "An' jes 'fo' I started I got one o' de mens to hol' my horses, an' I went in de kitchen to git warm, an' dyah Nancy wuz. An' she say Miss Charlotte upsteairs cryin' right now, 'cause she think Marse George gwine cross de river 'count o' her, an' she whimper a little herself when I tell her good-by. But twuz too late den. "Well, de river wuz jes natchelly b'ilin', an' hit soun' like a mill-dam roarin' by; an' when we got dyah Marse George tunned to me an' tell me he reckon I better go back. I ax him whar he gwine, an' he say, 'Home.' 'Den I gwine wid you,' I says. I wuz mighty skeered, but me an' Marse George wuz boys togerr; an' he plunged right in, an' I after him. "Gord! twuz cold as ice; an' we hadn' got in befo' bofe horses wuz swimmin' for life. He holler to me to byah de myall head up de stream; an' I did try, but what's a nigger to dat water! Hit jes pick me up an' dash me down like I ain' no mo'n a chip, an' de fust thing I know I gwine down de stream like a piece of bark, an' water washin' all over me. I knowed den I gone, an' I hollered for Marse George for help. I heah him answer me not to git skeered, but to hold on; but de myah wuz lungin' an' de water wuz all over me like ice, an' den I washed off de myah back, an' got drownded. "I 'member comin' up an' hollerin' agin for help, but I know den' 'tain' no use, dee ain' no help den, an' I got to pray to Gord, an' den some'n hit me an' I went down agin, an'--de next thing I know I wuz in de bed, an' I heah 'em talkin' 'bout wherr I dead or not, an' I ain' know myself tell I taste de whiskey dee po'rin' down my jugular. "An' den dee tell me 'bout how when I hollered Marse George tun back an' struck out for me for life, an' how jes as I went down de last time he cotch me an' helt on to me tell we wash down to whar de bank curve, an' dyah de current wuz so rapid hit yuck him off Reveller back, but he helt on to de reins tell de horse lunge so he hit him wid he fo' foot an' breck he collar-bone, an' den he had to let him go, an' jes helt on to me; an' den we wash up agin de bank an' cotch in a tree, an' de mens got dyah quick as dee could, an' when dee retched us Marse George wuz holdin' on to me, an' had he arm wrapped roun' a limb, an' we wuz lodged in de crotch, an' bofe jes as dead as a nail; an' de myah she got out, but Reveller he wuz drownded, wid his foot cotch in de rein an' de saddle tunned onder he side; an' dee ain' know wherr Marse George ain' dead too, 'cause he not only drownded, but he lef' arm broke up nigh de shoulder. "An' dee say Miss Charlotte she 'mos' 'stracted; dat de fust thing anybody know 'bout it wuz when some de servants bust in de hall an' holler, an' say Marse George an' me bofe done washed 'way an' drownded, an' dat she drapt down dead on de flo', an' when dee bring her to she 'low to Miss Lucy dat she de 'casion on he death; an' dee say dat when de mens wuz totin' him in de house, an' wuz shufflin' de feets not to meck no noige, an' a little piece o' wet blue silk drapt out he breast whar somebody picked up an' gin Miss Lucy, Miss Charlotte breck right down agin; an' some on 'em say she sutney did keer for him; an' now when he layin' upstairs dyah dead, hit too late for him ever to know it." [Illustration: "_Miss Charlotte she 'mos 'stracted._"] "Well, suh, I couldn' teck it in dat Marse George and Reveller wuz dead, an' jes den somebody say Marse George done comin' to an' dee gi' me so much whiskey I went to sleep. "An' next mornin' I got up an' went to Marse George room, an' see him layin' dyah in de bed, wid he face so white an' he eyes so tired-lookin', an' he ain' know me no mo' 'n ef he nuver see me, an' I couldn' stan' it; I jes drap down on de flo' an' bust out cryin'. Gord! suh, I couldn' help it, 'cause Reveller wuz drownded, an' Marse George he wuz mos' gone. "An' he came nigher goin' yit, 'cause he had sich a strain, an' been so long in de water, he heart done got numbed, an' he got 'lirium, an' all de time he thought he tryin' to git 'cross de river to see Miss Charlotte, an' hit so high he kyarn git dyah. "Hit sutney wuz pitiful to see him layin' dyah tossin' an' pitchin', not knowin' whar he wuz, tell it teck all Mr. Braxton an' me could do to keep him in de bed, an' de doctors say he kyarn hol' out much longer. "An' all dis time Miss Charlotte she wuz gwine 'bout de house wid her face right white, an' Nancy say she don' do nuttin all day long in her room but cry an' say her pra'rs, prayin' for Marse George, whar dyin' upsteairs by 'count' o' not knowin' she love him, an' I tell Nancy how he honin' all de time to see her, an' how he constant cravin' her name. "Well, so twuz, tell he mos' done wyah heself out; an' jes lay dyah wid his face white as de pillow, an' he gret pitiful eyes rollin' 'bout so restless, like he still lookin' for her whar he all de time callin' her name, an' kyarn git 'cross dat river to see. "An' one evenin' 'bout sunset he 'peared to be gwine; he weaker'n he been at all, he ain' able to scuffle no mo', an' jes layin' dyah so quiet, an' presney he say, lookin' mighty wistful: "'Edinburg, I'm goin' to-night; ef I don't git 'cross dis time, I'll gin't up.' "Mr. Braxton wuz standin' nigh de head o' de bed, an' he say, 'Well, by Gord! he shell see her!'--jes so. An' he went out de room, an' to Miss Charlotte do', an' call her, an' tell her she got to come, ef she don't, he'll die dat night; an' fust thing I know, Miss Lucy bring Miss Charlotte in, wid her face right white, but jes as tender as a angel's, an' she come an' stan' by de side de bed, an' lean down over him, an' call he name, 'George!'--jes so. "An' Marse George he ain' answer; he jes look at her study for a minute, an' den he forehead got smooth, an' he tun he eyes to me, an' say, 'Edinburg, I'm 'cross.'" [Illustration: "_An' Marse George he ain' answer._"] 
12422	----	Proofreading Team. With thanks to the Ryan Memorial Library of the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. _In the press, by the same Author, complete in One Volume_, AN ENGLISH TRAGEDY: A PLAY, IN FIVE ACTS. MARY STUART. TRANSLATED FROM SCHILLER. A PLAY, IN FIVE ACTS. MLLE. DE BELLISLE. TRANSLATED FROM DUMAS. A PLAY, IN FIVE ACTS. JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE ON A GEORGIAN PLANTATION 1838-1839. By FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. * * * * * SLAVERY THE CHIEF CORNER STONE. 'This stone (Slavery), which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice.'--_Speech of_ ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS _Vice-president of the Confederate States; delivered March 21, 1861._ * * * * * 1863 TO ELIZABETH DWIGHT SEDGWICK THIS JOURNAL, ORIGINALLY KEPT FOR HER, IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. PREFACE. The following diary was kept in the winter and spring of 1838-9, on an estate consisting of rice and cotton plantations, in the islands at the entrance of the Altamaha, on the coast of Georgia. The slaves in whom I then had an unfortunate interest were sold some years ago. The islands themselves are at present in the power of the Northern troops. The record contained in the following pages is a picture of conditions of human existence which I hope and believe have passed away. LONDON: _January 16, 1863._ JOURNAL. Philadelphia: December 1838. My Dear E----. I return you Mr. ----'s letter. I do not think it answers any of the questions debated in our last conversation at all satisfactorily: the _right_ one man has to enslave another, he has not the hardihood to assert; but in the reasons he adduces to defend that act of injustice, the contradictory statements he makes appear to me to refute each other. He says, that to the continental European protesting against the abstract iniquity of slavery, his answer would be, 'the slaves are infinitely better off than half the continental peasantry.' To the Englishman, 'they are happy compared with the miserable Irish.' But supposing that this answered the question of original injustice, which it does not, it is not a true reply. Though the negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freeman--the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will--are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them. Ask the thousands of ragged destitutes who yearly land upon these shores to seek the means of existence--ask the friendless, penniless foreign emigrant, if he will give up his present misery, his future uncertainty, his doubtful and difficult struggle for life, at once, for the secure, and as it is called, fortunate dependance of the slave: the indignation with which he would spurn the offer will prove that he possesses one good beyond all others, and that his birthright as a man is more precious to him yet than the mess of pottage for which he is told to exchange it because he is starving. Of course the reverse alternative cannot be offered to the slaves, for at the very word the riches of those who own them would make themselves wings and flee away. But I do not admit the comparison between your slaves and even the lowest class of European free labourers, for the former are _allowed_ the exercise of no faculties but those which they enjoy in common with the brutes that perish. The just comparison is between the slaves and the useful animals to whose level your laws reduce them; and I will acknowledge that the slaves of a kind owner may be as well cared for, and as happy, as the dogs and horses of a merciful master; but the latter condition--i.e. that of happiness--must again depend upon the complete perfection of their moral and mental degradation. Mr. ----, in his letter, maintains that they _are_ an inferior race, and, compared with the whites, '_animals_, incapable of mental culture and moral improvement:' to this I can only reply, that if they are incapable of profiting by instruction, I do not see the necessity for laws inflicting heavy penalties on those who offer it to them. If they really are brutish, witless, dull, and devoid of capacity for progress, where lies the _danger_ which is constantly insisted upon of offering them that of which they are incapable. We have no laws forbidding us to teach our dogs and horses as much as they can comprehend; nobody is fined or imprisoned for reasoning upon knowledge, and liberty, to the beasts of the field, for they are incapable of such truths. But these themes are forbidden to slaves, not because they cannot, but because they can and would seize on them with avidity--receive them gladly, comprehend them quickly; and the masters' power over them would be annihilated at once and for ever. But I have more frequently heard, not that they were incapable of receiving instruction, but something much nearer the truth--that knowledge only makes them miserable: the moment they are in any degree enlightened, they become unhappy. In the letter I return to you Mr. ---- says that the very slightest amount of education, merely teaching them to read, 'impairs their value as slaves, for it instantly destroys their contentedness, and since you do not contemplate changing their condition, it is surely doing them an ill service to destroy their acquiescence in it;' but this is a very different ground of argument from the other. The discontent they evince upon the mere dawn of an advance in intelligence proves not only that they can acquire but combine ideas, a process to which it is very difficult to assign a limit; and there indeed the whole question lies, and there and nowhere else the shoe really pinches. A slave is ignorant; he eats, drinks, sleeps, labours, and is happy. He learns to read; he feels, thinks, reflects, and becomes miserable. He discovers himself to be one of a debased and degraded race, deprived of the elementary rights which God has granted to all men alike; every action is controlled, every word noted; he may not stir beyond his appointed bounds, to the right hand or to the left, at his own will, but at the will of another he may be sent miles and miles of weary journeying--tethered, yoked, collared, and fettered--away from whatever he may know as home, severed from all those ties of blood and affection which he alone of all human, of all living creatures on the face of the earth may neither enjoy in peace nor defend when they are outraged. If he is well treated, if his master be tolerably humane or even understand his own interest tolerably, this is probably _all_ he may have to endure: it is only to the consciousness of these evils that knowledge and reflection awaken him. But how is it if his master be severe, harsh, cruel--or even only careless--leaving his creatures to the delegated dominion of some overseer, or agent, whose love of power, or other evil dispositions, are checked by no considerations of personal interest? Imagination shrinks from the possible result of such a state of things; nor must you, or Mr. ----, tell me that the horrors thus suggested exist only in imagination. The Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision, insult, menace--the handcuff, the lash--the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives--the weary trudging in droves along the common highways, the labour of body, the despair of mind, the sickness of heart--these are the realities which belong to the system, and form the rule, rather than the exception, in the slave's experience. And this system exists here in this country of your's, which boasts itself the asylum of the oppressed, the home of freedom, the one place in all the world where all men may find enfranchisement from all thraldoms of mind, soul, or body--the land elect of liberty. Mr. ---- lays great stress, as a proof of the natural inferiority of the blacks, on the little comparative progress they have made in those States where they enjoy their freedom, and the fact that, whatever quickness of parts they may exhibit while very young, on attaining maturity they invariably sink again into inferiority, or at least mediocrity, and indolence. But surely there are other causes to account for this besides natural deficiency, which must, I think, be obvious to any unprejudiced person observing the condition of the free blacks in your Northern communities. If, in the early portion of their life, they escape the contempt and derision of their white associates--if the blessed unconsciousness and ignorance of childhood keeps them for a few years unaware of the conventional proscription under which their whole race is placed (and it is difficult to walk your streets, and mark the tone of insolent superiority assumed by even the gutter-urchins over their dusky cotemporaries, and imagine this possible)--as soon as they acquire the first rudiments of knowledge, as soon as they begin to grow up and pass from infancy to youth, as soon as they cast the first observing glance upon the world by which they are surrounded, and the society of which, they are members, they must become conscious that they are marked as the Hebrew lepers of old, and are condemned to sit, like those unfortunates, without the gates of every human and social sympathy. From their own sable colour, a pall falls over the whole of God's universe to them, and they find themselves stamped with a badge of infamy of Nature's own devising, at sight of which all natural kindliness of man to man seems to recoil from them. They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs; debarred from all fellowship save with their own despised race--scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not tolerated as companions even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society; they are free from the chain, the whip, the enforced task and unpaid toil of slavery; but they are not the less under a ban. Their kinship with slaves for ever bars them from a full share of the freeman's inheritance of equal rights, and equal consideration and respect. All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues--the most vulgar, as well as the self-styled most refined--have learnt to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach. How, in the name of all that is natural, probable, possible, should the spirit and energy of any human creature support itself under such an accumulation of injustice and obloquy? Where shall any mass of men be found with power of character and mind sufficient to bear up against such a weight of prejudice? Why, if one individual rarely gifted by heaven were to raise himself out of such a slough of despond, he would be a miracle; and what would be his reward? Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights?--would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors?--would any of you give your daughter to his son, or your son to his daughter?--would you, in any one particular, admit him to the footing of equality which any man with a white skin would claim, whose ability and worth had so raised him from the lower degrees of the social scale. You would turn from such propositions with abhorrence, and the servants in your kitchen and stable--the ignorant and boorish refuse of foreign populations, in whose countries no such prejudice exists, imbibing it with the very air they breathe here--would shrink from eating at the same table with such a man, or holding out the hand of common fellowship to him. Under the species of social proscription in which the blacks in your Northern cities exist, if they preserved energy of mind, enterprise of spirit, or any of the best attributes and powers of free men, they would prove themselves, instead of the lowest and least of human races, the highest and first, not only of all that do exist, but of all that ever have existed; for they alone would seek and cultivate knowledge, goodness, truth, science, art, refinement, and all improvement, purely for the sake of their own excellence, and without one of those incentives of honour, power, and fortune, which are found to be the chief, too often the only, inducements which lead white men to the pursuit of the same objects. You know very well dear E----, that in speaking of the free blacks of the North I here state nothing but what is true and of daily experience. Only last week I heard, in this very town of Philadelphia, of a family of strict probity and honour, highly principled, intelligent, well-educated, and accomplished, and (to speak the world's language) respectable in every way--i.e. _rich_. Upon an English lady's stating it to be her intention to visit these persons when she came to Philadelphia, she was told that if she did nobody else would visit _her_; and she probably would excite a malevolent feeling, which might find vent in some violent demonstration against this family. All that I have now said of course bears only upon the condition of the free coloured population of the North, with which I am familiar enough to speak confidently of it. As for the slaves, and their capacity for progress, I can say nothing, for I have never been among them to judge what faculties their unhappy social position leaves to them unimpaired. But it seems to me, that no experiment on a sufficiently large scale can have been tried for a sufficient length of time to determine the question of their incurable inferiority. Physiologists say that three successive generations appear to be necessary to produce an effectual change of constitution (bodily and mental), be it for health or disease. There are positive physical defects which produce positive mental ones; the diseases of the muscular and nervous systems descend from father to son. Upon the agency of one corporal power how much that is not corporal depends; from generation to generation internal disease and external deformity, vices, virtues, talents, and deficiencies are transmitted, and by the action of the same law it must be long indeed before the offspring of slaves--creatures begotten of a race debased and degraded to the lowest degree, themselves born in slavery, and whose progenitors have eaten the bread and drawn the breath of slavery for years--can be measured, with any show of justice, by even the least favoured descendants of European nations, whose qualities have been for centuries developing themselves under the beneficent influence of freedom, and the progress it inspires. I am rather surprised at the outbreak of violent disgust which Mr. ---- indulges in on the subject of amalgamation; as that formed no part of our discussion, and seems to me a curious subject for abstract argument. I should think the intermarrying between blacks and whites a matter to be as little insisted upon if repugnant, as prevented if agreeable to the majority of the two races. At the same time, I cannot help being astonished at the furious and ungoverned execration which all reference to the possibility of a fusion of the races draws down upon those who suggest it; because nobody pretends to deny that, throughout the South, a large proportion of the population is the offspring of white men and coloured women. In New Orleans, a class of unhappy females exists whose mingled blood does not prevent their being remarkable for their beauty, and with whom no man, no _gentleman_, in that city shrinks from associating; and while the slaveowners of the Southern States insist vehemently upon the mental and physical inferiority of the blacks, they are benevolently doing their best, in one way at least, to raise and improve the degraded race, and the bastard population which forms so ominous an element in the social safety of their cities certainly exhibit in their forms and features the benefit they derive from their white progenitors. It is hard to conceive that some mental improvement does not accompany this physical change. Already the finer forms of the European races are cast in these dusky moulds: the outward configuration can hardly thus improve without corresponding progress in the inward capacities. The white man's blood and bones have begotten this bronze race, and bequeathed to it in some degree qualities, tendencies, capabilities, such as are the inheritance of the highest order of human animals. Mr. ---- (and many others) speaks as if there were a natural repugnance in all whites to any alliance with the black race; and yet it is notorious, that almost every Southern planter has a family more or less numerous of illegitimate coloured children. Most certainly, few people would like to assert that such connections are formed because it is the _interest_ of these planters to increase the number of their human property, and that they add to their revenue by the closest intimacy with creatures that they loathe, in order to reckon among their wealth the children of their body. Surely that is a monstrous and unnatural supposition, and utterly unworthy of belief. That such connections exist commonly, is a sufficient proof that they are not abhorrent to nature; but it seems, indeed, as if marriage (and not concubinage) was the horrible enormity which cannot be tolerated, and against which, moreover, it has been deemed expedient to enact laws. Now it appears very evident that there is no law in the white man's nature which prevents him from making a coloured woman the mother of his children, but there _is_ a law on his statute books forbidding him to make her his wife; and if we are to admit the theory that the mixing of the races is a monstrosity, it seems almost as curious that laws should be enacted to prevent men marrying women towards whom they have an invincible natural repugnance, as that education should by law be prohibited to creatures incapable of receiving it. As for the exhortation with which Mr. ---- closes his letter, that I will not 'go down to my husband's plantation prejudiced against what I am to find there,' I know not well how to answer it. Assuredly I _am_ going prejudiced against slavery, for I am an Englishwoman, in whom the absence of such a prejudice would be disgraceful. Nevertheless, I go prepared to find many mitigations in the practice to the general injustice and cruelty of the system--much kindness on the part of the masters, much content on that of the slaves; and I feel very sure that you may rely upon the carefulness of my observation, and the accuracy of my report, of every detail of the working of the thing that comes under my notice; and certainly, on the plantation to which I am going, it will be more likely that I should some things extenuate, than set down aught in malice. Yours ever faithfully. * * * * * Darien, Georgia. Dear E----. Minuteness of detail, and fidelity in the account of my daily doings, will hardly, I fear, render my letters very interesting to you now; but cut off as I am here from all the usual resources and amusements of civilised existence, I shall find but little to communicate to you that is not furnished by my observations on the novel appearance of external nature, and the moral and physical condition of Mr. ----'s people. The latter subject is, I know, one sufficiently interesting in itself to you, and I shall not scruple to impart all the reflections which may occur to me relative to their state during my stay here, where enquiry into their mode of existence will form my chief occupation, and, necessarily also, the staple commodity of my letters. I purpose, while I reside here, keeping a sort of journal, such as Monk Lewis wrote during his visit to his West India plantations. I wish I had any prospect of rendering my diary as interesting and amusing to you as his was to me. In taking my first walk on the island, I directed my steps towards the rice mill, a large building on the banks of the river, within a few yards of the house we occupy. Is it not rather curious that Miss Martineau should have mentioned the erection of a steam mill for threshing rice somewhere in the vicinity of Charleston as a singular novelty, likely to form an era in Southern agriculture, and to produce the most desirable changes in the system of labour by which it is carried on? Now, on this estate alone, there are three threshing mills--one worked by steam, one by the tide, and one by horses; there are two private steam mills on plantations adjacent to ours, and a public one at Savannah, where the planters who have none on their own estates are in the habit of sending their rice to be threshed at a certain percentage; these have all been in operation for some years, and I therefore am at a loss to understand what made her hail the erection of the one at Charleston as likely to produce such immediate and happy results. By the bye--of the misstatements, or rather mistakes, for they are such, in her books, with regard to certain facts--her only disadvantage in acquiring information was not by any means that natural infirmity on which the periodical press, both here and in England, has commented with so much brutality. She had the misfortune to possess, too, that unsuspecting reliance upon the truth of others which they are apt to feel who themselves hold truth most sacred: and this was a sore disadvantage to her in a country where I have heard it myself repeatedly asserted--and, what is more, much gloried in--that she was purposely misled by the persons to whom she addressed her enquiries, who did not scruple to disgrace themselves by imposing in the grossest manner upon her credulity and anxiety to obtain information. It is a knowledge of this very shameful proceeding, which has made me most especially anxious to avoid _fact hunting_. I might fill my letters to you with accounts received from others, but as I am aware of the risk which I run in so doing, I shall furnish you with no details but those which come under my own immediate observation. To return to the rice mill: it is worked by a steam-engine of thirty horse power, and besides threshing great part of our own rice, is kept constantly employed by the neighbouring planters, who send their grain to it in preference to the more distant mill at Savannah, paying, of course, the same percentage, which makes it a very profitable addition to the estate. Immediately opposite to this building is a small shed, which they call the cook's shop, and where the daily allowance of rice and corn grits of the people is boiled and distributed to them by an old woman, whose special business this is. There are four settlements or villages (or, as the negroes call them, camps) on the island, consisting of from ten to twenty houses, and to each settlement is annexed a cook's shop with capacious cauldrons, and the oldest wife of the settlement for officiating priestess. Pursuing my walk along the river's bank, upon an artificial dyke, sufficiently high and broad to protect the fields from inundation by the ordinary rising of the tide--for the whole island is below high water mark--I passed the blacksmith's and cooper's shops. At the first all the common iron implements of husbandry or household use for the estate are made, and at the latter all the rice barrels necessary for the crop, besides tubs and buckets large and small for the use of the people, and cedar tubs of noble dimensions and exceedingly neat workmanship, for our own household purposes. The fragrance of these when they are first made, as well as their ample size, renders them preferable as dressing-room furniture, in my opinion, to all the china foot-tubs that ever came out of Staffordshire. After this I got out of the vicinity of the settlement, and pursued my way along a narrow dyke--the river on one hand, and on the other a slimy, poisonous-looking swamp, all rattling with sedges of enormous height, in which one might lose one's way as effectually as in a forest of oaks. Beyond this, the low rice-fields, all clothed in their rugged stubble, divided by dykes into monotonous squares, a species of prospect by no means beautiful to the mere lover of the picturesque. The only thing that I met with to attract my attention was a most beautiful species of ivy, the leaf longer and more graceful than that of the common English creeper, glittering with the highest varnish, delicately veined, and of a rich brown green, growing in profuse garlands from branch to branch of some stunted evergreen bushes which border the dyke, and which the people call salt-water bush. My walks are rather circumscribed, inasmuch as the dykes are the only promenades. On all sides of these lie either the marshy rice-fields, the brimming river, or the swampy patches of yet unreclaimed forest, where the huge cypress trees and exquisite evergreen undergrowth spring up from a stagnant sweltering pool, that effectually forbids the foot of the explorer. As I skirted one of these thickets to-day, I stood still to admire the beauty of the shrubbery. Every shade of green, every variety of form, every degree of varnish, and all in full leaf and beauty in the very depth of winter. The stunted dark-coloured oak; the magnolia bay (like our own culinary and fragrant bay), which grows to a very great size; the wild myrtle, a beautiful and profuse shrub, rising to a height of six, eight, and ten feet, and branching on all sides in luxuriant tufted fullness; most beautiful of all, that pride of the South, the magnolia grandiflora, whose lustrous dark green perfect foliage would alone render it an object of admiration, without the queenly blossom whose colour, size, and perfume are unrivalled in the whole vegetable kingdom. This last magnificent creature grows to the size of a forest tree in these swamps, but seldom adorns a high or dry soil, or suffers itself to be successfully transplanted. Under all these the spiked palmetto forms an impenetrable covert, and from glittering graceful branch to branch hang garlands of evergreen creepers, on which the mocking-birds are swinging and singing even now; while I, bethinking me of the pinching cold that is at this hour tyrannising over your region, look round on this strange scene--on these green woods, this unfettered river, and sunny sky--and feel very much like one in another planet from yourself. The profusion of birds here is one thing that strikes me as curious, coming from the vicinity of Philadelphia, where even the robin redbreast, held sacred by the humanity of all other Christian people, is not safe from the _gunning_ prowess of the unlicensed sportsmen of your free country. The negroes (of course) are not allowed the use of firearms, and their very simply constructed traps do not do much havoc among the feathered hordes that haunt their rice-fields. Their case is rather a hard one, as partridges, snipes, and the most delicious wild ducks abound here, and their allowance of rice and Indian meal would not be the worse for such additions. No day passes that I do not, in the course of my walk, put up a number of the land birds, and startle from among the gigantic sedges the long-necked water-fowl by dozens. It arouses the killing propensity in me most dreadfully, and I really entertain serious thoughts of learning to use a gun, for the mere pleasure of destroying these pretty birds as they whirr from their secret coverts close beside my path. How strong an instinct of animal _humanity_ this is, and how strange if one be more strange than another. Reflection rebukes it almost instantaneously, and yet for the life of me I cannot help wishing I had a fowling-piece whenever I put up a covey of these creatures; though I suppose, if one were brought bleeding and maimed to me, I should begin to cry, and be very pathetic, after the fashion of Jacques. However, one must live, you know; and here our living consists very mainly of wild ducks, wild geese, wild turkeys, and venison. Nor, perhaps, can one imagine the universal doom overtaking a creature with less misery than in the case of the bird who, in the very moment of his triumphant soaring, is brought dead to the ground. I should like to bargain for such a finis myself, amazingly, I know; and have always thought that the death I should prefer would be to break my neck off the back of my horse at a full gallop on a fine day. Of course a bad shot should be hung--a man who shatters his birds' wings and legs; if I undertook the trade, I would learn of some Southern duellist, and always shoot my bird through the head or heart--as an expert murderer knows how. Besides these birds of which we make our prey, there are others that prey upon their own fraternity. Hawks of every sort and size wheel their steady rounds above the rice-fields; and the great turkey buzzards--those most unsightly carrion birds--spread their broad black wings, and soar over the river like so many mock eagles. I do not know that I ever saw any winged creature of so forbidding an aspect as these same turkey buzzards; their heavy flight, their awkward gait, their bald-looking head and neck, and their devotion to every species of foul and detestable food, render them almost abhorrent to me. They abound in the South, and in Charleston are held in especial veneration for their scavenger-like propensities, killing one of them being, I believe, a fineable offence by the city police regulations. Among the Brobdignagian sedges that in some parts of the island fringe the Altamaha, the nightshade (apparently the same as the European creeper) weaves a perfect matting of its poisonous garlands, and my remembrance of its prevalence in the woods and hedges of England did not reconcile me to its appearance here. How much of this is mere association I cannot tell; but whether the wild duck makes its nest under its green arches, or the alligators and snakes of the Altamaha have their secret bowers there, it is an evil-looking weed, and I shall have every leaf of it cleared away. I must inform you of a curious conversation which took place between my little girl and the woman who performs for us the offices of chambermaid here--of course one of Mr. ----'s slaves. What suggested it to the child, or whence indeed she gathered her information, I know not; but children are made of eyes and ears, and nothing, however minute, escapes their microscopic observation. She suddenly began addressing this woman. 'Mary, some persons are free and some are not (the woman made no reply). I am a free person (of a little more than three years old). I say, I am a free person, Mary--do you know that?' 'Yes, missis.' 'Some persons are free and some are not--do you know that, Mary?' 'Yes, missis, _here_,' was the reply; 'I know it is so here, in this world.' Here my child's white nurse, my dear Margery, who had hitherto been silent, interfered, saying, 'Oh, then you think it will not always be so?' 'Me hope not, missis.' I am afraid, E----, this woman actually imagines that there will be no slaves in Heaven; isn't that preposterous now? when by the account of most of the Southerners slavery itself must be Heaven, or something uncommonly like it. Oh, if you could imagine how this title 'Missis,' addressed to me and to my children, shocks all my feelings! Several times I have exclaimed, 'For God's sake do not call me that!' and only been awakened, by the stupid amazement of the poor creatures I was addressing, to the perfect uselessness of my thus expostulating with them; once or twice indeed I have done more--I have explained to them, and they appeared to comprehend me well, that I had no ownership over them, for that I held such ownership sinful, and that, though I was the wife of the man who pretends to own them, I was in truth no more their mistress than they were mine. Some of them I know understood me, more of them did not. Our servants--those who have been selected to wait upon us in the house--consist of a man, who is quite a tolerable cook (I believe this is a natural gift with them, as with Frenchmen); a dairywoman, who churns for us; a laundrywoman; her daughter, our housemaid, the aforesaid Mary; and two young lads of from fifteen to twenty, who wait upon us in the capacity of footmen. As, however, the latter are perfectly filthy in their persons and clothes--their faces, hands, and naked feet being literally encrusted with dirt--their attendance at our meals is not, as you may suppose, particularly agreeable to me, and I dispense with it as often as possible. Mary, too, is so intolerably offensive in her person that it is impossible to endure her proximity, and the consequence is that, amongst Mr. ----'s slaves, I wait upon myself more than I have ever done in my life before. About this same personal offensiveness, the Southerners you know insist that it is inherent with the race, and it is one of their most cogent reasons for keeping them as slaves. But as this very disagreeable peculiarity does not prevent Southern women from hanging their infants at the breasts of negresses, nor almost every planter's wife and daughter from having one or more little pet blacks sleeping like puppy dogs in their very bedchamber, nor almost every planter from admitting one or several of his female slaves to the still closer intimacy of his bed--it seems to me that this objection to doing them right is not very valid. I cannot imagine that they would smell much worse if they were free, or come in much closer contact with the delicate organs of their white, fellow countrymen; indeed, inasmuch as good deeds are spoken of as having a sweet savour before God, it might be supposed that the freeing of the blacks might prove rather an odoriferous process than the contrary. However this may be, I must tell you that this potent reason for enslaving a whole race of people is no more potent with me than most of the others adduced to support the system, inasmuch as, from observation and some experience, I am strongly inclined to believe that peculiar ignorance of the laws of health and the habits of decent cleanliness are the real and only causes of this disagreeable characteristic of the race--thorough ablutions and change of linen, when tried, having been perfectly successful in removing all such objections; and if ever you have come into anything like neighbourly proximity with a low Irishman or woman, I think you will allow that the same causes produce very nearly the same effects. The stench in an Irish, Scotch, Italian, or French hovel are quite as intolerable as any I ever found in our negro houses, and the filth and vermin which abound about the clothes and persons of the lower peasantry of any of those countries as abominable as the same conditions in the black population of the United States. A total absence of self-respect begets these hateful physical results, and in proportion as moral influences are remote, physical evils will abound. Well-being, freedom, and industry induce self-respect, self-respect induces cleanliness and personal attention, so that slavery is answerable for all the evils that exhibit themselves where it exists--from lying, thieving, and adultery, to dirty houses, ragged clothes, and foul smells. But to return to our Ganymedes. One of them--the eldest son of our laundrywoman, and Mary's brother, a boy of the name of Aleck (Alexander)--is uncommonly bright and intelligent; he performs all the offices of a well-instructed waiter with great efficiency, and anywhere out of slave land would be able to earn fourteen or fifteen dollars a month for himself; he is remarkably good tempered and well disposed. The other poor boy is so stupid that he appears sullen from absolute darkness of intellect; instead of being a little lower than the angels, he is scarcely a little higher than the brutes, and to this condition are reduced the majority of his kind by the institutions under which they live. I should tell you that Aleck's parents and kindred have always been about the house of the overseer, and in daily habits of intercourse with him and his wife; and wherever this is the case the effect of involuntary education is evident in the improved intelligence of the degraded race. In a conversation which Mr. ---- had this evening with Mr. O----, the overseer, the latter mentioned that two of our carpenters had in their leisure time made a boat, which they had disposed of to some neighbouring planter for sixty dollars. Now, E----, I have no intention of telling you a one-sided story, or concealing from you what are cited as the advantages which these poor people possess; you, who know that no indulgence is worth simple justice, either to him who gives or him who receives, will not thence conclude that their situation thus mitigated is, therefore, what it should be. On this matter of the sixty dollars earned by Mr. ----'s two men much stress was laid by him and his overseer. I look at it thus: if these men were industrious enough out of their scanty leisure to earn sixty dollars, how much more of remuneration, of comfort, of improvement might they not have achieved were the price of their daily labour duly paid them, instead of being unjustly withheld to support an idle young man and his idle family--i.e. myself and my children. And here it may be well to inform you that the slaves on this plantation are divided into field hands and mechanics or artisans. The former, the great majority, are the more stupid and brutish of the tribe; the others, who are regularly taught their trades, are not only exceedingly expert at them, but exhibit a greater general activity of intellect, which must necessarily result from even a partial degree of cultivation. There are here a gang (for that is the honourable term) of coopers, of blacksmiths, of bricklayers, of carpenters--all well acquainted with their peculiar trades. The latter constructed the wash-hand stands, clothes presses, sofas, tables, &c, with which our house is furnished, and they are very neat pieces of workmanship--neither veneered or polished indeed, nor of very costly materials, but of the white pine wood planed as smooth as marble--a species of furniture not very luxurious perhaps, but all the better adapted therefore to the house itself, which is certainly rather more devoid of the conveniences and adornments of modern existence than anything I ever took up my abode in before. It consists of three small rooms, and three still smaller, which would be more appropriately designated as closets, a wooden recess by way of pantry, and a kitchen detached from the dwelling--a mere wooden outhouse, with no floor but the bare earth, and for furniture a congregation of filthy negroes, who lounge in and out of it like hungry hounds at all hours of the day and night, picking up such scraps of food as they can find about, which they discuss squatting down upon their hams, in which interesting position and occupation I generally find a number of them whenever I have sufficient hardihood to venture within those precincts, the sight of which and its tenants is enough to slacken the appetite of the hungriest hunter that ever lost all nice regards in the mere animal desire for food. Of our three apartments, one is our sitting, eating, and _living_ room, and is sixteen feet by fifteen. The walls are plastered indeed, but neither painted nor papered; it is divided from our bed-room (a similarly elegant and comfortable chamber) by a dingy wooden partition covered all over with hooks, pegs, and nails, to which hats, caps, keys, &c. &c., are suspended in graceful irregularity. The doors open by wooden latches, raised by means of small bits of packthread--I imagine, the same primitive order of fastening celebrated in the touching chronicle of Red Riding Hood; how they shut I will not pretend to describe, as the shutting of a door is a process of extremely rare occurrence throughout the whole Southern country. The third room, a chamber with sloping ceiling, immediately over our sitting-room and under the roof, is appropriated to the nurse and my two babies. Of the closets, one is Mr. ---- the overseer's bed-room, the other his office or place of business; and the third, adjoining our bed-room, and opening immediately out of doors, is Mr. ----'s dressing room and cabinet d'affaires, where he gives audiences to the negroes, redresses grievances, distributes red woollen caps (a singular gratification to a slave), shaves himself, and performs the other offices of his toilet. Such being our abode, I think you will allow there is little danger of my being dazzled by the luxurious splendours of a Southern slave residence. Our sole mode of summoning our attendants is by a packthread bell-rope suspended in the sitting-room. From the bed-rooms we have to raise the windows and our voices, and bring them by power of lungs, or help ourselves--which, I thank God, was never yet a hardship to me. I mentioned to you just now that two of the carpenters had made a boat in their leisure time. I must explain this to you, and this will involve the mention of another of Miss Martineau's mistakes with regard to slave labour, at least in many parts of the Southern States. She mentions that on one estate of which she knew, the proprietor had made the experiment, and very successfully, of appointing to each of his slaves a certain task to be performed in the day, which once accomplished, no matter how early, the rest of the four and twenty hours were allowed to the labourer to employ as he pleased. She mentions this as a single experiment, and rejoices over it as a decided amelioration in the condition of the slave, and one deserving of general adoption. But in the part of Georgia where this estate is situated, the custom of task labour is universal, and it prevails, I believe, throughout Georgia, South Carolina, and parts of North Carolina; in other parts of the latter State, however--as I was informed by our overseer, who is a native of that State--the estates are small, rather deserving the name of farms, and the labourers are much upon the same footing as the labouring men at the North, working from sunrise to sunset in the fields with the farmer and his sons, and coming in with them to their meals, which they take immediately after the rest of the family. In Louisiana and the new South-western Slave States, I believe, task labour does not prevail; but it is in those that the condition of the poor human cattle is most deplorable, as you know it was there that the humane calculation was not only made, but openly and unhesitatingly avowed, that the planters found it upon the whole their most profitable plan to work off (kill with labour) their whole number of slaves about once in seven years, and renew the whole stock. By the bye, the Jewish institution of slavery is much insisted upon by the Southern upholders of the system; perhaps this is their notion of the Jewish jubilee, when the slaves were by Moses' strict enactment to be all set free. Well, this task system is pursued on this estate; and thus it is that the two carpenters were enabled to make the boat they sold for sixty dollars. These tasks, of course, profess to be graduated according to the sex, age, and strength of the labourer; but in many instances this is not the case, as I think you will agree when I tell you that on Mr. ----'s first visit to his estates he found that the men and the women who laboured in the fields had the same task to perform. This was a noble admission of female equality, was it not?--and thus it had been on the estate for many years past. Mr. ----, of course, altered the distribution of the work, diminishing the quantity done by the women. I had a most ludicrous visit this morning from the midwife of the estate--rather an important personage both to master and slave, as to her unassisted skill and science the ushering of all the young negroes into their existence of bondage is entrusted. I heard a great deal of conversation in the dressing-room adjoining mine, while performing my own toilet, and presently Mr. ---- opened my room-door, ushering in a dirty fat good-humoured looking old negress, saying, 'The midwife, Rose, wants to make your acquaintance.' 'Oh massa!' shrieked out the old creature in a paroxysm of admiration, 'where you get this lilly alablaster baby!' For a moment I looked round to see if she was speaking of my baby; but no, my dear, this superlative apostrophe was elicited by the fairness of _my skin_--so much for degrees of comparison. Now, I suppose that if I chose to walk arm in arm with the dingiest mulatto through the streets of Philadelphia, nobody could possibly tell by my complexion that I was not his sister, so that the mere quality of mistress must have had a most miraculous effect upon my skin in the eyes of poor Rose. But this species of outrageous flattery is as usual with these people as with the low Irish, and arises from the ignorant desire, common to both the races, of propitiating at all costs the fellow-creature who is to them as a Providence--or rather, I should say, a fate--for 't is a heathen and no Christian relationship. Soon after this visit, I was summoned into the wooden porch or piazza of the house, to see a poor woman who desired to speak to me. This was none other than the tall emaciated-looking negress who, on the day of our arrival, had embraced me and my nurse with such irresistible zeal. She appeared very ill to-day, and presently unfolded to me a most distressing history of bodily afflictions. She was the mother of a very large family, and complained to me that, what with child-bearing and hard field labour, her back was almost broken in two. With an almost savage vehemence of gesticulation she suddenly tore up her scanty clothing, and exhibited a spectacle with which I was inconceivably shocked and sickened. The facts, without any of her corroborating statements, bore tolerable witness to the hardships of her existence. I promised to attend to her ailments and give her proper remedies; but these are natural results, inevitable and irremediable ones, of improper treatment of the female frame--and though there may be alleviation, there cannot be any cure when once the beautiful and wonderful structure has been thus made the victim of ignorance, folly, and wickedness. After the departure of this poor woman, I walked down the settlement towards the infirmary or hospital, calling in at one or two of the houses along the row. These cabins consist of one room about twelve feet by fifteen, with a couple of closets smaller and closer than the state-rooms of a ship, divided off from the main room and each other by rough wooden partitions in which the inhabitants sleep. They have almost all of them a rude bedstead, with the grey moss of the forests for mattress, and filthy, pestilential-looking blankets, for covering. Two families (sometimes eight and ten in number) reside in one of these huts, which are mere wooden frames pinned, as it were, to the earth by a brick chimney outside, whose enormous aperture within pours down a flood of air, but little counteracted by the miserable spark of fire, which hardly sends an attenuated thread of lingering smoke up its huge throat. A wide ditch runs immediately at the back of these dwellings, which is filled and emptied daily by the tide. Attached to each hovel is a small scrap of ground for a garden, which, however, is for the most part untended and uncultivated. Such of these dwellings as I visited to-day were filthy and wretched in the extreme, and exhibited that most deplorable consequence of ignorance and an abject condition, the inability of the inhabitants to secure and improve even such pitiful comfort as might yet be achieved by them. Instead of the order, neatness, and ingenuity which might convert even these miserable hovels into tolerable residences, there was the careless, reckless, filthy indolence which even the brutes do not exhibit in their lairs and nests, and which seemed incapable of applying to the uses of existence the few miserable means of comfort yet within their reach. Firewood and shavings lay littered about the floors, while the half-naked children were cowering round two or three smouldering cinders. The moss with which the chinks and crannies of their ill-protecting dwellings might have been stuffed, was trailing in dirt and dust about the ground, while the back-door of the huts, opening upon a most unsightly ditch, was left wide open for the fowls and ducks, which they are allowed to raise, to travel in and out, increasing the filth of the cabin, by what they brought and left in every direction. In the midst of the floor, or squatting round the cold hearth, would be four or five little children from four to ten years old, the latter all with babies in their arms, the care of the infants being taken from the mothers (who are driven a-field as soon as they recover from child labour), and devolved upon these poor little nurses, as they are called, whose business it is to watch the infant, and carry it to its mother whenever it may require nourishment. To these hardly human little beings, I addressed my remonstrances about the filth, cold, and unnecessary wretchedness of their room, bidding the elder boys and girls kindle up the fire, sweep the floor, and expel the poultry. For a long time my very words seemed unintelligible to them, till when I began to sweep and make up the fire, &c., they first fell to laughing, and then imitating me. The encrustations of dirt on their hands, feet, and faces, were my next object of attack, and the stupid negro practice (by the bye, but a short time since nearly universal in enlightened Europe), of keeping the babies with their feet bare, and their heads, already well capped by nature with their woolly hair, wrapped in half-a-dozen hot filthy coverings. Thus I travelled down the 'street,' in every dwelling endeavouring to awaken a new perception, that of cleanliness, sighing, as I went, over the futility of my own exertions, for how can slaves be improved? Nathless, thought I, let what can be done; for it may be, that, the two being incompatible, improvement may yet expel slavery--and so it might, and surely would, if, instead of beginning at the end, I could but begin at the beginning of my task. If the mind and soul were awakened, instead of mere physical good attempted, the physical good would result, and the great curse vanish away; but my hands are tied fast, and this corner of the work is all that I may do. Yet it cannot be but, from my words and actions, some revelations should reach these poor people; and going in and out amongst them perpetually, I shall teach, and they learn involuntarily a thousand things of deepest import. They must learn, and who can tell the fruit of that knowledge alone, that there are beings in the world, even with skins of a different colour from their own, who have sympathy for their misfortunes, love for their virtues, and respect for their common nature--but oh! my heart is full almost to bursting, as I walk among these most poor creatures. The infirmary is a large two-story building, terminating the broad orange-planted space between the two rows of houses which form the first settlement; it is built of white washed wood, and contains four large-sized rooms. But how shall I describe to you the spectacle which was presented to me, on my entering the first of these? But half the casements, of which there were six, were glazed, and these were obscured with dirt, almost as much as the other windowless ones were darkened by the dingy shutters, which the shivering inmates had fastened to, in order to protect themselves from the cold. In the enormous chimney glimmered the powerless embers of a few sticks of wood, round which, however, as many of the sick women as could approach, were cowering; some on wooden settles, most of them on the ground, excluding those who were too ill to rise; and these last poor wretches lay prostrate on the floor, without bed, mattress, or pillow, buried in tattered and filthy blankets, which, huddled round them as they lay strewed about, left hardly space to move upon the floor. And here, in their hour of sickness and suffering, lay those whose health and strength are spent in unrequited labour for us--those who, perhaps even yesterday, were being urged onto their unpaid task--those whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, were even at that hour sweating over the earth, whose produce was to buy for us all the luxuries which health can revel in, all the comforts which can alleviate sickness. I stood in the midst of them, perfectly unable to speak, the tears pouring from my eyes at this sad spectacle of their misery, myself and my emotion alike strange and incomprehensible to them. Here lay women expecting every hour the terrors and agonies of child-birth, others who had just brought their doomed offspring into the world, others who were groaning over the anguish and bitter disappointment of miscarriages--here lay some burning with fever, others chilled with cold and aching with rheumatism, upon the hard cold ground, the draughts and dampness of the atmosphere increasing their sufferings, and dirt, noise, and stench, and every aggravation of which sickness is capable, combined in their condition--here they lay like brute beasts, absorbed in physical suffering; unvisited by any of those Divine influences which may ennoble the dispensations of pain and illness, forsaken, as it seemed to me, of all good; and yet, O God, Thou surely hadst not forsaken them! Now, pray take notice, that this is the hospital of an estate, where the owners are supposed to be humane, the overseer efficient and kind, and the negroes, remarkably well cared for and comfortable. As soon as I recovered from my dismay, I addressed old Rose, the midwife, who had charge of this room, bidding her open the shutters of such windows as were glazed, and let in the light. I next proceeded to make up the fire, but upon my lifting a log for that purpose, there was one universal outcry of horror, and old Rose, attempting to snatch it from me, exclaimed, 'Let alone, missis--let be--what for you lift wood--you have nigger enough, missis, to do it!' I hereupon had to explain to them my view of the purposes for which hands and arms were appended to our bodies, and forthwith began making Rose tidy up the miserable apartment, removing all the filth and rubbish from the floor that could be removed, folding up in piles the blankets of the patients who were not using them, and placing, in rather more sheltered and comfortable positions, those who were unable to rise. It was all that I could do, and having enforced upon them all my earnest desire that they should keep their room swept, and as tidy as possible, I passed on to the other room on the ground floor, and to the two above, one of which is appropriated to the use of the men who are ill. They were all in the same deplorable condition, the upper rooms being rather the more miserable, inasmuch as none of the windows were glazed at all, and they had, therefore, only the alternative of utter darkness, or killing draughts of air, from the unsheltered casements. In all, filth, disorder and misery abounded; the floor was the only bed, and scanty begrimed rags of blankets the only covering. I left this refuge for Mr. ----'s sick dependants, with my clothes covered with dust, and full of vermin, and with a heart heavy enough, as you will well believe. My morning's work had fatigued me not a little, and I was glad to return to the house, where I gave vent to my indignation and regret at the scene I had just witnessed, to Mr. ---- and his overseer, who, here, is a member of our family. The latter told me that the condition of the hospital had appeared to him, from his first entering upon his situation (only within the last year), to require a reform, and that he had proposed it to the former manager, Mr. K----, and Mr. ----'s brother, who is part proprietor of the estate, but receiving no encouragement from them, had supposed that it was a matter of indifference to the owners, and had left it in the condition in which he had found it, in which condition it has been for the last nineteen years and upwards. This new overseer of ours has lived fourteen years with an old Scotch gentleman, who owns an estate adjoining Mr. ----'s, on the island of St. Simons, upon which estate, from everything I can gather, and from what I know of the proprietor's character, the slaves are probably treated with as much humanity as is consistent with slavery at all, and where the management and comfort of the hospital, in particular, had been most carefully and judiciously attended to. With regard to the indifference of our former manager upon the subject of the accommodation for the sick, he was an excellent overseer, _videlicet_, the estate returned a full income under his management, and such men have nothing to do with sick slaves--they are tools, to be mended only if they can be made available again,--if not, to be flung by as useless, without further expense of money, time, or trouble. I am learning to row here, for, circumscribed as my walks necessarily are, impossible as it is to resort to my favourite exercise on horseback upon these narrow dykes, I must do something to prevent my blood from stagnating; and this broad brimming river, and the beautiful light canoes which lie moored, at the steps, are very inviting persuaders to this species of exercise. My first attempt was confined to pulling an oar across the stream, for which I rejoiced in sundry aches and pains altogether novel, letting alone a delightful row of blisters on each of my hands. I forgot to tell you that in the hospital were several sick babies, whose mothers were permitted to suspend their field labour, in order to nurse them. Upon addressing some remonstrances to one of these, who, besides having a sick child, was ill herself, about the horribly dirty condition of her baby, she assured me that it was impossible for them to keep their children clean, that they went out to work at daybreak, and did not get their tasks done till evening, and that then they were too tired and worn out to do anything but throw themselves down and sleep. This statement of hers I mentioned on my return from the hospital, and the overseer appeared extremely annoyed by it, and assured me repeatedly that it was not true. In the evening Mr. ----, who had been over to Darien, mentioned that one of the storekeepers there had told him that, in the course of a few years, he had paid the negroes of this estate several thousand dollars for moss, which is a very profitable article of traffic with them--they collect it from the trees, dry and pick it, and then sell it to the people in Darien for mattresses, sofas, and all sorts of stuffing purposes,--which, in my opinion, it answers better than any other material whatever that I am acquainted with, being as light as horse hair, as springy and elastic, and a great deal less harsh and rigid. It is now bed-time, dear E----, and I doubt not it has been sleepy time with you over this letter, long ere you came thus far. There is a preliminary to my repose, however, in this agreeable residence, which I rather dread, namely, the hunting for, or discovering without hunting, in fine relief upon the white-washed walls of my bed-room, a most hideous and detestable species of _reptile_, called centipedes, which come out of the cracks and crevices of the walls, and fill my very heart with dismay. They are from an inch to two inches long, and appear to have not a hundred, but a thousand legs. I cannot ascertain very certainly from the negroes whether they sting or not, but they look exceedingly as if they might, and I visit my babies every night, in fear and tremblings lest I should find one or more of these hateful creatures mounting guard over them. Good night; you are well to be free from centipedes--better to be free from slaves. * * * * * Dear E----. This morning I paid my second visit to the infirmary, and found there had been some faint attempt at sweeping and cleaning, in compliance with my entreaties. The poor woman Harriet, however, whose statement, with regard to the impossibility of their attending properly to their children, had been so vehemently denied by the overseer, was crying bitterly. I asked her what ailed her, when, more by signs and dumb show than words, she and old Rose informed me that Mr. O---- had flogged her that morning, for having told me that the women had not time to keep their children clean. It is part of the regular duty of every overseer to visit the infirmary at least once a day, which he generally does in the morning, and Mr. O----'s visit had preceded mine but a short time only, or I might have been edified by seeing a man horsewhip a woman. I again and again made her repeat her story, and she again and again affirmed that she had been flogged for what she told me, none of the whole company in the room denying it, or contradicting her. I left the room, because I was so disgusted and indignant, that I could hardly restrain my feelings, and to express them could have produced no single good result. In the next ward, stretched upon the ground, apparently either asleep or so overcome with sickness as to be incapable of moving, lay an immense woman,--her stature, as she cumbered the earth, must have been, I should think, five feet seven or eight, and her bulk enormous. She was wrapped in filthy rags, and lay with her face on the floor. As I approached, and stooped to see what ailed her, she suddenly threw out her arms, and, seized with violent convulsions, rolled over and over upon the floor, beating her head violently upon the ground, and throwing her enormous limbs about in a horrible manner. Immediately upon the occurrence of this fit, four or five women threw themselves literally upon her, and held her down by main force; they even proceeded to bind her legs and arms together, to prevent her dashing herself about; but this violent coercion and tight bandaging seemed to me, in my profound ignorance, more likely to increase her illness, by impeding her breathing, and the circulation of her blood, and I bade them desist, and unfasten all the strings and ligatures, not only that they had put round her limbs, but which, by tightening her clothes round her body, caused any obstruction. How much I wished that, instead of music and dancing and such stuff, I had learned something of sickness and health, of the conditions and liabilities of the human body, that I might have known how to assist this poor creature, and to direct her ignorant and helpless nurses! The fit presently subsided, and was succeeded by the most deplorable prostration and weakness of nerves, the tears streaming down the poor woman's cheeks in showers, without, however, her uttering a single word, though she moaned incessantly. After bathing her forehead, hands, and chest with vinegar, we raised her up, and I sent to the house for a chair with a back (there was no such thing in the hospital,) and we contrived to place her in it. I have seldom seen finer women than this poor creature and her younger sister, an immense strapping lass, called Chloe--tall, straight, and extremely well made--who was assisting her sister, and whom I had remarked, for the extreme delight and merriment which my cleansing propensities seemed to give her, on my last visit to the hospital. She was here taking care of a sick baby, and helping to nurse her sister Molly, who, it seems, is subject to those fits, about which I spoke to our physician here--an intelligent man, residing in Darien, who visits the estate whenever medical assistance is required. He seemed to attribute them to nervous disorder, brought on by frequent child bearing. This woman is young, I suppose at the outside not thirty, and her sister informed me that she had had ten children--ten children, E----! Fits and hard labour in the fields, unpaid labour, labour exacted with stripes--how do you fancy that? I wonder if my mere narration can make your blood boil, as the facts did mine? Among the patients in this room was a young girl, apparently from fourteen to fifteen, whose hands and feet were literally rotting away piecemeal, from the effect of a horrible disease, to which the negroes are subject here, and I believe in the West Indies, and when it attacks the joints of the toes and fingers, the pieces absolutely decay and come off, leaving the limb a maimed and horrible stump! I believe no cure is known for this disgusting malady, which seems confined to these poor creatures. Another disease, of which they complained much, and which, of course, I was utterly incapable of accounting for, was a species of lock-jaw, to which their babies very frequently fall victims, in the first or second week after their birth, refusing the breast, and the mouth gradually losing the power of opening itself. The horrible diseased state of head, common among their babies, is a mere result of filth and confinement, and therefore, though I never anywhere saw such distressing and disgusting objects as some of these poor little woolly skulls presented, the cause was sufficiently obvious. Pleurisy, or a tendency to it, seems very common among them; also peri-pneumonia, or inflammation of the lungs, which is terribly prevalent, and generally fatal. Rheumatism is almost universal; and as it proceeds from exposure, and want of knowledge and care, attacks indiscriminately the young and old. A great number of the women are victims to falling of the womb and weakness in the spine; but these are necessary results of their laborious existence, and do not belong either to climate or constitution. I have ingeniously contrived to introduce bribery, corruption, and pauperism, all in a breath, upon this island, which, until my advent, was as innocent of these pollutions, I suppose, as Prospero's isle of refuge. Wishing, however, to appeal to some perception, perhaps a little less dim in their minds than the abstract loveliness of cleanliness, I have proclaimed to all the little baby nurses, that I will give a cent to every little boy or girl whose baby's face shall be clean, and one to every individual with clean face and hands of their own. My appeal was fully comprehended by the majority, it seems, for this morning I was surrounded, as soon as I came out, by a swarm of children carrying their little charges on their backs and in their arms, the shining, and, in many instances, wet faces and hands of the latter, bearing ample testimony to the ablutions which had been inflicted upon them. How they will curse me and the copper cause of all their woes, in their baby bosoms! Do you know that little as grown negroes are admirable for their personal beauty (in my opinion, at least), the black babies of a year or two old are very pretty; they have for the most part beautiful eyes and eyelashes, the pearly perfect teeth, which they retain after their other juvenile graces have left them; their skins are all (I mean of blacks generally) infinitely finer and softer than the skins of white people. Perhaps you are not aware that among the white race the _finest grained_ skins generally belong to persons of dark complexion. This, as a characteristic of the black race, I think might be accepted as some compensation for the coarse woolly hair. The nose and mouth, which are so peculiarly displeasing in their conformation in the face of a negro man or woman, being the features least developed in a baby's countenance, do not at first present the ugliness which they assume as they become more marked; and when the very unusual operation of washing has been performed, the blood shines through the fine texture of the skin, giving life and richness to the dingy colour, and displaying a species of beauty which I think scarcely any body who observed it would fail to acknowledge. I have seen many babies on this plantation, who were quite as pretty as white children, and this very day stooped to kiss a little sleeping creature, that lay on its mother's knees in the infirmary--as beautiful a specimen of a sleeping infant as I ever saw. The caress excited the irrepressible delight of all the women present--poor creatures! who seemed to forget that I was a woman, and had children myself, and bore a woman's and a mother's heart towards them and theirs; but, indeed, the Honourable Mr. Slumkey could not have achieved more popularity by his performances in that line than I, by this exhibition of feeling; and had the question been my election, I am very sure nobody else would have had a chance of a vote through the island. But wisely is it said, that use is second nature; and the contempt and neglect to which these poor people are used, make the commonest expression of human sympathy appear a boon and gracious condescension. While I am speaking of the negro countenance, there is another beauty which is not at all unfrequent among those I see here--a finely shaped oval face--and those who know (as all painters and sculptors, all who understand beauty do) how much expression there is in the outline of the head, and how very rare it is to see a well-formed face, will be apt to consider this a higher matter than any colouring of which, indeed, the red and white one so often admired is by no means the most rich, picturesque, or expressive. At first the dark colour confounded all features to my eye, and I could hardly tell one face from another. Becoming, however, accustomed to the complexion, I now perceive all the variety among these black countenances that there is among our own race, and as much difference in features and in expression as among the same number of whites. There is another peculiarity which I have remarked among the women here--very considerable beauty in the make of the hands; their feet are very generally ill made, which must be a natural, and not an acquired defect, as they seldom injure their feet by wearing shoes. The figures of some of the women are handsome, and their carriage, from the absence of any confining or tightening clothing, and the habit they have of balancing great weights on their heads, erect and good. At the upper end of the row of houses, and nearest to our overseer's residence, is the hut of the head driver. Let me explain, by the way, his office. The negroes, as I before told you, are divided into troops or gangs, as they are called; at the head of each gang is a driver, who stands over them, whip in hand, while they perform their daily task, who renders an account of each individual slave and his work every evening to the overseer, and receives from him directions for their next day's tasks. Each driver is allowed to inflict a dozen lashes upon any refractory slave in the field, and at the time of the offence; they may not, however, extend the chastisement, and if it is found ineffectual, their remedy lies in reporting the unmanageable individual either to the head driver or the overseer; the former of whom has power to inflict three dozen lashes at his own discretion, and the latter as many as he himself sees fit, within the number of fifty; which limit, however, I must tell you, is an arbitrary one on this plantation, appointed by the founder of the estate, Major ----, Mr. ----'s grandfather, many of whose regulations, indeed I believe most of them, are still observed in the government of the plantation. Limits of this sort, however, to the power of either driver, head driver, or overseer, may or may not exist elsewhere; they are, to a certain degree, a check upon the power of these individuals; but in the absence of the master, the overseer may confine himself within the limit or not, as he chooses--and as for the master himself, where is his limit? He may, if he likes, flog a slave to death, for the laws which pretend that he may not are a mere pretence--inasmuch as the testimony of a black is never taken against a white; and upon this plantation of ours, and a thousand more, the overseer is the _only_ white man, so whence should come the testimony to any crime of his? With regard to the oft-repeated statement, that it is not the owner's interest to destroy his human property, it answers nothing--the instances in which men, to gratify the immediate impulse of passion, sacrifice not only their eternal, but their evident, palpable, positive worldly interest, are infinite. Nothing is commoner than for a man under the transient influence of anger to disregard his worldly advantage; and the black slave, whose preservation is indeed supposed to be his owner's interest, may be, will be, and is occasionally sacrificed to the blind impulse of passion. To return to our head driver, or, as he is familiarly called, head man, Frank--he is second in authority only to the overseer, and exercises rule alike over the drivers and the gangs, in the absence of the sovereign white man from the estate, which happens whenever Mr. O---- visits the other two plantations at Woodville and St. Simons. He is sole master and governor of the island, appoints the work, pronounces punishments, gives permission to the men to leave the island (without it they never may do so), and exercises all functions of undisputed mastery over his fellow slaves, for you will observe that all this while he is just as much a slave as any of the rest. Trustworthy, upright, intelligent, he may be flogged to-morrow if Mr. O---- or Mr. ---- so please it, and sold the next day like a cart horse, at the will of the latter. Besides his various other responsibilities, he has the key of all the stores, and gives out the people's rations weekly; nor is it only the people's provisions that are put under his charge--meat, which is only given out to them occasionally, and provisions for the use of the family are also entrusted to his care. Thus you see, among these _inferior_ creatures, their own masters yet look to find, surviving all their best efforts to destroy them--good sense, honesty, self-denial, and all the qualities, mental and moral, that make one man worthy to be trusted by another. From the imperceptible, but inevitable effect of the sympathies and influences of human creatures towards and over each other, Frank's intelligence has become uncommonly developed by intimate communion in the discharge of his duty with the former overseer, a very intelligent man, who has only just left the estate, after managing it for nineteen years; the effect of this intercourse, and of the trust and responsibility laid upon the man, are that he is clear-headed, well judging, active, intelligent, extremely well mannered, and, being respected, he respects himself. He is as ignorant as the rest of the slaves; but he is always clean and tidy in his person, with a courteousness of demeanour far removed from servility, and exhibits a strong instance of the intolerable and wicked injustice of the system under which he lives, having advanced thus far towards improvement, in spite of all the bars it puts to progress; and here being arrested, not by want of energy, want of sense, or any want of his own, but by being held as another man's property, who can only thus hold him by forbidding him further improvement. When I see that man, who keeps himself a good deal aloof from the rest, in his leisure hours looking, with a countenance of deep thought, as I did to-day, over the broad river, which is to him as a prison wall, to the fields and forest beyond, not one inch or branch of which his utmost industry can conquer as his own, or acquire and leave an independent heritage to his children, I marvel what the thoughts of such a man may be. I was in his house to-day, and the same superiority in cleanliness, comfort, and propriety exhibited itself in his dwelling, as in his own personal appearance, and that of his wife--a most active, trustworthy, excellent woman, daughter of the oldest, and probably most highly respected of all Mr. ----'s slaves. To the excellent conduct of this woman, and indeed every member of her family, both the present and the last overseer bear unqualified testimony. As I was returning towards the house, after my long morning's lounge, a man rushed out of the blacksmith's shop, and catching me by the skirt of my gown, poured forth a torrent of self-gratulations on having at length found the 'right missis.' They have no idea, of course, of a white person performing any of the offices of a servant, and as throughout the whole Southern country the owner's children are nursed and tended, and sometimes _suckled_ by their slaves (I wonder how this inferior milk agrees with the lordly _white_ babies?) the appearance of M---- with my two children had immediately suggested the idea that she must be the missis. Many of the poor negroes flocked to her, paying their profound homage under this impression; and when she explained to them that she was not their owner's wife, the confusion in their minds seemed very great--Heaven only knows whether they did not conclude that they had two mistresses, and Mr. ---- two wives; for the privileged race must seem, in their eyes, to have such absolute masterdom on earth, that perhaps they thought polygamy might be one of the sovereign white men's numerous indulgences. The ecstacy of the blacksmith on discovering the 'right missis' at last was very funny, and was expressed with such extraordinary grimaces, contortions, and gesticulations, that I thought I should have died of laughing at this rapturous identification of my most melancholy relation to the poor fellow. Having at length extricated myself from the group which forms round me whenever I stop but for a few minutes, I pursued my voyage of discovery by peeping into the kitchen garden. I dared do no more; the aspect of the place would have rejoiced the very soul of Solomon's sluggard of old--a few cabbages and weeds innumerable filled the neglected looking enclosure, and I ventured no further than the entrance into its most uninviting precincts. You are to understand that upon this swamp island of ours we have quite a large stock of cattle, cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry in the most enormous and inconvenient abundance. The cows are pretty miserably off for pasture, the banks and pathways of the dykes being their only grazing ground, which the sheep perambulate also, in earnest search of a nibble of fresh herbage; both the cows and sheep are fed with rice flour in great abundance, and are pretty often carried down for change of air and more sufficient grazing to Hampton, Mr. ----'s estate, on the island of St. Simons, fifteen miles from this place, further down the river--or rather, indeed, I should say in the sea, for 'tis salt water all round, and one end of the island has a noble beach open to the vast Atlantic. The pigs thrive admirably here, and attain very great perfection of size and flavour; the rice flour, upon which they are chiefly fed, tending to make them very delicate. As for the poultry, it being one of the few privileges of the poor blacks to raise as many as they can, their abundance is literally a nuisance--ducks, fowls, pigeons, turkeys (the two latter species, by the bye, are exclusively the master's property), cluck, scream, gabble, gobble, crow, cackle, fight, fly, and flutter in all directions, and to their immense concourse, and the perfect freedom with which they intrude themselves even into the piazza of the house, the pantry, and kitchen, I partly attribute the swarms of fleas, and other still less agreeable vermin, with which we are most horribly pestered. My walk lay to-day along the bank of a canal, which has been dug through nearly the whole length of the island, to render more direct and easy the transportation of the rice from one end of the estate to another, or from the various distant fields to the principal mill at Settlement No. 1. It is of considerable width and depth, and opens by various locks into the river. It has, unfortunately, no trees on its banks, but a good footpath renders it, in spite of that deficiency, about the best walk on the island. I passed again to-day one of those beautiful evergreen thickets, which I described to you in my last letter; it is called a reserve, and is kept uncleared and uncultivated in its natural swampy condition, to allow of the people's procuring their firewood from it. I cannot get accustomed, so as to be indifferent to this exquisite natural ornamental growth, and think, as I contemplate the various and beautiful foliage of these watery woods, how many of our finest English parks and gardens owe their chiefest adornments to plantations of these shrubs, procured at immense cost, reared with infinite pains and care, which are here basking in the winter's sunshine, waiting to be cut down for firewood! These little groves are peopled with wild pigeons and birds, which they designate here as blackbirds. These sometimes rise from the rice fields with a whirr of multitudinous wings, that is almost startling, and positively overshadow the ground beneath like a cloud. I had a conversation that interested me a good deal, during my walk to-day, with my peculiar slave Jack. This lad, whom Mr. ---- has appointed to attend me in my roamings about the island, and rowing expeditions on the river, is the son of the last head driver, a man of very extraordinary intelligence and faithfulness--such, at least, is the account given of him by his employers (in the burial-ground of the negroes is a stone dedicated to his memory, a mark of distinction accorded by his masters, which his son never failed to point out to me, when we passed that way). Jack appears to inherit his quickness of apprehension; his questions, like those of an intelligent child, are absolutely inexhaustible; his curiosity about all things beyond this island, the prison-house of his existence, is perfectly intense; his countenance is very pleasing, mild, and not otherwise than thoughtful; he is, in common with the rest of them, a stupendous flatterer, and, like the rest of them, also seems devoid of physical and moral courage. To-day, in the midst of his torrent of enquiries about places and things, I suddenly asked him if he would like to be free. A gleam of light absolutely shot over his whole countenance, like the vivid and instantaneous lightning--he stammered, hesitated, became excessively confused, and at length replied--'Free, missis? what for me wish to be free? Oh! no, missis, me no wish to be free, if massa only let we keep pig.' The fear of offending, by uttering that forbidden wish--the dread of admitting, by its expression, the slightest discontent with his present situation--the desire to conciliate my favour, even at the expense of strangling the intense natural longing that absolutely glowed in his every feature--it was a sad spectacle, and I repented my question. As for the pitiful request which he reiterated several times adding, 'No, missis, me no want to be free--me work till me die for missis and massa,' with increased emphasis; it amounted only to this, that the negroes once were, but no longer are, permitted to keep pigs. The increase of filth and foul smells, consequent upon their being raised, is, of course, very great; and, moreover, Mr. ---- told me, when I preferred poor Jack's request to him, that their allowance was no more than would suffice their own necessity, and that they had not the means of feeding the animals. With a little good management they might very easily obtain them, however; their little 'kail-yard' alone would suffice to it, and the pork and bacon would prove a most welcome addition to their farinaceous diet. You perceive at once (or if you could have seen the boy's face, you would have perceived at once), that his situation was no mystery to him, that his value to Mr. ----, and, as he supposed, to me, was perfectly well known to him, and that he comprehended immediately that his expressing even the desire to be free, might be construed by me into an offence, and sought by eager protestations of his delighted acquiescence in slavery, to conceal his soul's natural yearning, lest I should resent it. 'T was a sad passage between us, and sent me home full of the most painful thoughts. I told Mr. ----, with much indignation, of poor Harriet's flogging, and represented that if the people were to be chastised for anything they said to me, I must leave the place, as I could not but hear their complaints, and endeavour, by all my miserable limited means, to better their condition while I was here. He said he would ask Mr. O---- about it, assuring me, at the same time, that it was impossible to believe a single word any of these people said. At dinner, accordingly, the enquiry was made as to the cause of her punishment, and Mr. O---- then said it was not at all for what she had told me, that he had flogged her, but for having answered him impertinently, that he had ordered her into the field, whereupon she had said she was ill and could not work, that he retorted he knew better, and bade her get up and go to work; she replied, 'Very well, I'll go, but I shall just come back again!' meaning, that when in the field, she would be unable to work, and obliged, to return to the hospital. 'For this reply,' Mr. O---- said, 'I gave her a good lashing; it was her business to have gone into the field without answering me, and then we should have soon seen whether she could work or not; I gave it to Chloe too, for some such impudence.' I give you the words of the conversation, which was prolonged to a great length, the overseer complaining of sham sicknesses of the slaves, and detailing the most disgusting struggle which is going on the whole time, on the one hand to inflict, and on the other, to evade oppression and injustice. With this sauce I ate my dinner, and truly it tasted bitter. Towards sunset I went on the river to take my rowing lesson. A darling little canoe which carries two oars and a steersman, and rejoices in the appropriate title of the 'Dolphin,' is my especial vessel; and with Jack's help and instructions, I contrived this evening to row upwards of half a mile, coasting the reed-crowned edge of the island to another very large rice mill, the enormous wheel of which is turned by the tide. A small bank of mud and sand covered with reedy coarse grass divides the river into two arms on this side of the island; the deep channel is on the outside of this bank, and as we rowed home this evening, the tide having fallen, we scraped sand almost the whole way. Mr. ----'s domain, it seems to me, will presently fill up this shallow stream, and join itself to the above-mentioned mud-bank. The whole course of this most noble river is full of shoals, banks, mud, and sand-bars, and the navigation, which is difficult to those who know it well, is utterly baffling to the inexperienced. The fact is, that the two elements are so fused hereabouts, that there are hardly such things as earth or water proper; that which styles itself the former, is a fat, muddy, slimy sponge, that, floating half under the turbid river, looks yet saturated with the thick waves which every now and then reclaim their late dominion, and cover it almost entirely; the water, again, cloudy and yellow, like pea-soup, seems but a solution of such islands, rolling turbid and thick with alluvium, which it both gathers and deposits as it sweeps along with a swollen, smooth rapidity, that almost deceives the eye. Amphibious creatures, alligators, serpents, and wild fowl, haunt these yet but half-formed regions, where land and water are of the consistency of hasty-pudding--the one seeming too unstable to walk on, the other almost too thick to float in. But then, the sky, if no human chisel ever yet cut breath, neither did any human pen ever write light; if it did, mine should spread out before you the unspeakable glories of these southern heavens, the saffron brightness of morning, the blue intense brilliancy of noon, the golden splendour and the rosy softness of sunset. Italy and Claude Lorraine may go hang themselves together! Heaven itself does not seem brighter or more beautiful to the imagination, than these surpassing pageants of fiery rays, and piled-up beds of orange, golden clouds, with edges too bright to look on, scattered wreaths of faintest rosy bloom, amber streaks and pale green lakes between, and amid sky all mingled blue and rose tints, a spectacle to make one fall over the boat's side, with one's head broken off, with looking adoringly upwards, but which, on paper, means nothing. At six o'clock our little canoe grazed the steps at the landing. These were covered with young women, and boys, and girls, drawing water for their various household purposes. A very small cedar pail--a piggin, as they termed it--serves to scoop up the river water, and having, by this means, filled a large bucket, they transfer this to their heads, and thus laden, march home with the purifying element--what to do with it, I cannot imagine, for evidence of its ever having been introduced into their dwellings, I saw none. As I ascended the stairs, they surrounded me with shrieks and yells of joy, uttering exclamations of delight and amazement at my rowing. Considering that they dig, delve, carry burthens, and perform many more athletic exercises than pulling a light oar, I was rather amused at this; but it was the singular fact of seeing a white woman stretch her sinews in any toilsome exercise which astounded them, accustomed as they are to see both men and women of the privileged skin eschew the slightest shadow of labour, as a thing not only painful but degrading. They will learn another lesson from me, however, whose idea of Heaven was pronounced by a friend of mine, to whom I once communicated it, to be 'devilish hard work'! It was only just six o'clock, and these women had all done their tasks. I exhorted them to go home and wash their children, and clean their houses and themselves, which they professed themselves ready to do, but said they had no soap. Then began a chorus of mingled requests for soap, for summer clothing, and a variety of things, which, if 'Missis only give we, we be so clean for ever!' This request for summer clothing, by the by, I think a very reasonable one. The allowance of clothes made yearly to each slave by the present regulations of the estate, is a certain number of yards of flannel, and as much more of what they call plains--an extremely stout, thick, heavy woollen cloth, of a dark grey or blue colour, which resembles the species of carpet we call drugget. This, and two pair of shoes, is the regular ration of clothing; but these plains would be intolerable to any but negroes, even in winter, in this climate, and are intolerable to them in the summer. A far better arrangement, in my opinion, would be to increase their allowance of flannel and under clothing, and give them dark chintzes instead of these thick carpets, which are very often the only covering they wear at all. I did not impart all this to my petitioners, but disengaging myself from them, for they held my hands and clothes, I conjured them to offer us some encouragement to better their condition, by bettering it as much as they could themselves,--enforced the virtue of washing themselves and all belonging to them, and at length made good my retreat. As there is no particular reason why such a letter as this should ever come to an end, I had better spare you for the present. You shall have a faithful journal, I promise you, henceforward, as hitherto, from your's ever. * * * * * Dear E----. We had a species of fish this morning for our breakfast, which deserves more glory than I can bestow upon it. Had I been the ingenious man who wrote a poem upon fish, the white mullet of the Altamaha should have been at least my heroine's cousin. 'Tis the heavenliest creature that goes upon fins. I took a long walk this morning to Settlement No. 3, the third village on the island. My way lay along the side of the canal, beyond which, and only divided from it by a raised narrow causeway, rolled the brimming river with its girdle of glittering evergreens, while on my other hand a deep trench marked the line of the rice fields. It really seemed as if the increase of merely a shower of rain might join all these waters together, and lay the island under its original covering again. I visited the people and houses here. I found nothing in any respect different from what I have described to you at Settlement No. 1. During the course of my walk, I startled from its repose in one of the rice-fields, a huge blue heron. You must have seen, as I often have, these creatures stuffed in museums; but 't is another matter, and far more curious, to meet them stalking on their stilts of legs over a rice-field, and then on your near approach, see them spread their wide heavy wings, and throw themselves upon the air, with their long shanks flying after them in a most grotesque and laughable manner. They fly as if they did not know how to do it very well; but standing still, their height (between four and five feet) and peculiar colour, a dusky, greyish blue, with black about the head, render their appearance very beautiful and striking. In the afternoon, I and Jack rowed ourselves over to Darien. It is Saturday--the day of the week on which the slaves from the island are permitted to come over to the town, to purchase such things as they may require and can afford, and to dispose, to the best advantage, of their poultry, moss, and eggs. I met many of them paddling themselves singly in their slight canoes, scooped out of the trunk of a tree, and parties of three and four rowing boats of their own building, laden with their purchases, singing, laughing, talking, and apparently enjoying their holiday to the utmost. They all hailed me with shouts of delight, as I pulled past them, and many were the injunctions bawled after Jack, to 'mind and take good care of Missis!' We returned home through the glory of a sunset all amber-coloured and rosy, and found that one of the slaves, a young lad for whom Mr. ---- has a particular regard, was dangerously ill. Dr. H---- was sent for; and there is every probability that he, Mr. ----and Mr. O---- will be up all night with the poor fellow. I shall write more to-morrow. To-day being Sunday, dear E----, a large boat full of Mr. ----'s people from Hampton came up, to go to church at Darien, and to pay their respects to their master, and see their new 'Missis.' The same scene was acted over again that occurred on our first arrival. A crowd clustered round the house door, to whom I and my babies were produced, and with every individual of whom we had to shake hands some half-a-dozen times. They brought us up presents of eggs (their only wealth), beseeching us to take them, and one young lad, the son of head-man Frank, had a beautiful pair of chickens, which he offered most earnestly to S----. We took one of them, not to mortify the poor fellow, and a green ribbon being tied round its leg, it became a sacred fowl, 'little missis's chicken.' By the by, this young man had so light a complexion, and such regular straight features, that, had I seen him anywhere else, I should have taken him for a southern European, or, perhaps, in favour of his tatters, a gipsy; but certainly it never would have occurred to me that he was the son of negro parents. I observed this to Mr. ----, who merely replied, 'He is the son of head-man Frank and his wife Betty, and they are both black enough, as you see.' The expressions of devotion and delight of these poor people are the most fervent you can imagine. One of them, speaking to me of Mr. ----, and saying that they had heard that he had not been well, added, 'Oh! we hear so, missis, and we not know what to do. Oh! missis, massa sick, all him people _broken_!' Dr. H---- came again to-day to see the poor sick boy, who is doing much better, and bidding fair to recover. He entertained me with an account of the Darien society, its aristocracies and democracies, its little grandeurs and smaller pettinesses, its circles higher and lower, its social jealousies, fine invisible lines of demarcation, imperceptible shades of different respectability, and delicate divisions of genteel, genteeler, genteelest. 'For me,' added the worthy doctor, 'I cannot well enter into the spirit of these nice distinctions; it suits neither my taste nor my interest, and my house is, perhaps, the only one in Darien, where you would find all these opposite and contending elements combined.' The doctor is connected with the aristocracy of the place, and, like a wise man, remembers, notwithstanding, that those who are not, are quite as liable to be ill, and call in medical assistance, as those who are. He is a shrewd, intelligent man, with an excellent knowledge of his profession, much kindness of heart, and apparent cheerful good temper. I have already severely tried the latter, by the unequivocal expression of my opinions on the subject of slavery, and, though I perceived that it required all his self-command to listen with anything like patience to my highly incendiary and inflammatory doctrines, he yet did so, and though he was, I have no doubt, perfectly horror-stricken at the discovery, lost nothing of his courtesy or good-humour. By the by, I must tell you, that at an early period of the conversation, upon my saying, 'I put all other considerations out of the question, and first propose to you the injustice of the system alone,' 'Oh!' replied my friend, the Doctor, 'if you put it upon that ground, you _stump_ the question at once; I have nothing to say to that whatever, but,' and then followed the usual train of pleadings--happiness, tenderness, care, indulgence, &c., &c., &c.--all the substitutes that may or may not be put in the place of _justice_, and which these slaveholders attempt to persuade others, and perhaps themselves, effectually supply its want. After church hours the people came back from Darien. They are only permitted to go to Darien to church once a month. On the intermediate Sundays they assemble in the house of London, Mr. ----'s head cooper, an excellent and pious man, who, Heaven alone knows how, has obtained some little knowledge of reading, and who reads prayers and the Bible to his fellow slaves, and addresses them with extemporaneous exhortations. I have the greatest desire to attend one of these religious meetings, but fear to put the people under any, the slightest restraint. However, I shall see, by and by, how they feel about it themselves. You have heard, of course, many and contradictory statements as to the degree of religious instruction afforded to the negroes of the South, and their opportunities of worship, &c. Until the late abolition movement, the spiritual interests of the slaves were about as little regarded as their physical necessities. The outcry which has been raised with threefold force within the last few years against the whole system, has induced its upholders and defenders to adopt, as measures of personal extenuation, some appearance of religious instruction (such as it is), and some pretence at physical indulgences (such as they are), bestowed apparently voluntarily upon their dependants. At Darien, a church is appropriated to the especial use of the slaves, who are almost all of them Baptists here; and a gentleman officiates in it (of course white), who, I understand, is very zealous in the cause of their spiritual well-being. He, like most Southern men, clergy or others, jump the present life in their charities to the slaves, and go on to furnish them with all requisite conveniences for the next. There were a short time ago two free black preachers in this neighbourhood, but they have lately been ejected from the place. I could not clearly learn, but one may possibly imagine, upon what grounds. I do not think that a residence on a slave plantation is likely to be peculiarly advantageous to a child like my eldest. I was observing her to-day among her swarthy worshippers, for they follow her as such, and saw, with dismay, the universal eagerness with which they sprang to obey her little gestures of command. She said something about a swing, and in less than five minutes head-man Frank had erected it for her, and a dozen young slaves were ready to swing little 'missis.' ----, think of learning to rule despotically your fellow creatures before the first lesson of self-government has been well spelt over! It makes me tremble; but I shall find a remedy, or remove myself and the child from this misery and ruin. You cannot conceive anything more grotesque than the Sunday trim of the poor people; their ideality, as Mr. Combe would say, being, I should think, twice as big as any rational bump in their head. Their Sabbath toilet really presents the most ludicrous combination of incongruities that you can conceive--frills, flounces, ribbands, combs stuck in their woolly heads, as if they held up any portion of the stiff and ungovernable hair, filthy finery, every colour in the rainbow, and the deepest possible shades blended in fierce companionship round one dusky visage, head handkerchiefs, that put one's very eyes out from a mile off, chintzes with sprawling patterns, that might be seen if the clouds were printed with them--beads, bugles, flaring sashes, and above all, little fanciful aprons, which finish these incongruous toilets with a sort of airy grace, which I assure you is perfectly indescribable. One young man, the eldest son and heir of our washerwoman Hannah, came to pay his respects to me in a magnificent black satin waistcoat, shirt gills which absolutely engulphed his black visage, and neither shoes nor stockings on his feet. Among our visitors from St. Simons to-day was Hannah's mother (it seems to me that there is not a girl of sixteen on the plantations but has children, nor a woman of thirty but has grandchildren). Old House Molly, as she is called, from the circumstance of her having been one of the slaves employed in domestic offices during Major ----'s residence on the island, is one of the oldest and most respected slaves on the estate, and was introduced to me by Mr. ---- with especial marks of attention and regard; she absolutely embraced him, and seemed unable sufficiently to express her ecstacy at seeing him again. Her dress, like that of her daughter, and all the servants who have at any time been employed about the family, bore witness to a far more improved taste than the half savage adornment of the other poor blacks, and upon my observing to her how agreeable her neat and cleanly appearance was to me, she replied, that her old master (Major ----) was extremely particular in this respect, and that in his time all the house servants were obliged to be very nice and careful about their persons. She named to me all her children, an immense tribe; and, by the by, E----, it has occurred to me that whereas the increase of this ill-fated race is frequently adduced as a proof of their good treatment and well being, it really and truly is no such thing, and springs from quite other causes than the peace and plenty which a rapidly increasing population are supposed to indicate. If you will reflect for a moment upon the overgrown families of the half-starved Irish peasantry and English manufacturers, you will agree with me that these prolific shoots by no means necessarily spring from a rich or healthy soil. Peace and plenty are certainly causes of human increase, and so is recklessness; and this, I take it, is the impulse in the instance of the English manufacturer, the Irish peasant, and the negro slave. Indeed here it is more than recklessness, for there are certain indirect premiums held out to obey the early commandment of replenishing the earth, which do not fail to have their full effect. In the first place, none of the cares, those noble cares, that holy thoughtfulness which lifts the human above the brute parent, are ever incurred here by either father or mother. The relation indeed resembles, as far as circumstances can possibly make it do so, the short-lived connection between the animal and its young. The father, having neither authority, power, responsibility, or charge in his children, is of course, as among brutes, the least attached to his offspring; the mother, by the natural law which renders the infant dependent on her for its first year's nourishment, is more so; but as neither of them is bound to educate or to support their children, all the unspeakable tenderness and solemnity, all the rational, and all the spiritual grace and glory of the connection is lost, and it becomes mere breeding, bearing, suckling, and there an end. But it is not only the absence of the conditions which God has affixed to the relation, which tends to encourage the reckless increase of the race; they enjoy, by means of numerous children, certain positive advantages. In the first place, every woman who is pregnant, as soon as she chooses to make the fact known to the overseer, is relieved of a certain portion of her work in the field, which lightening of labour continues, of course, as long as she is so burthened. On the birth of a child certain additions of clothing and an additional weekly ration are bestowed on the family; and these matters, small as they may seem, act as powerful inducements to creatures who have none of the restraining influences actuating them which belong to the parental relation among all other people, whether civilised or savage. Moreover, they have all of them a most distinct and perfect knowledge of their value to their owners as property; and a woman thinks, and not much amiss, that the more frequently she adds to the number of her master's live stock by bringing new slaves into the world, the more claims she will have upon his consideration and goodwill. This was perfectly evident to me from the meritorious air with which the women always made haste to inform me of the number of children they had borne, and the frequent occasions on which the older slaves would direct my attention to their children, exclaiming, 'Look, missis! little niggers for you and massa, plenty little niggers for you and little missis!' A very agreeable apostrophe to me indeed, as you will believe. I have let this letter lie for a day or two, dear, E---- from press of more immediate avocations. I have nothing very particular to add to it. On Monday evening I rowed over to Darien with Mr. ---- to fetch over the doctor, who was coming to visit some of our people. As I sat waiting in the boat for the return of the gentlemen, the sun went down, or rather seemed to dissolve bodily into the glowing clouds, which appeared but a fusion of the great orb of light; the stars twinkled out in the rose-coloured sky, and the evening air, as it fanned the earth to sleep, was as soft as a summer's evening breeze in the north. A sort of dreamy stillness seemed creeping over the world and into my spirit, as the canoe just tilted against the steps that led to the wharf, raised by the scarce perceptible heaving of the water. A melancholy, monotonous boat-horn sounded from a distance up the stream, and presently, floating slowly down with the current, huge, shapeless, black relieved against the sky, came one of those rough barges piled with cotton, called, hereabouts, Ocone boxes. The vessel itself is really nothing but a monstrous square box, made of rough planks, put together in the roughest manner possible to attain the necessary object of keeping the cotton dry. Upon this great tray are piled the swollen apoplectic looking cotton bags, to the height of ten, twelve, and fourteen feet. This huge water-waggon floats lazily down the river, from the upper country to Darien. They are flat bottomed, and, of course, draw little water. The stream from whence they are named is an up country river, which, by its junction with the Ocmulgee, forms the Altamaha. Here at least, you perceive the Indian names remain, and long may they do so, for they seem to me to become the very character of the streams and mountains they indicate, and are indeed significant to the learned in savage tongues, which is more than can be said of such titles as Jones's Creek, Onion Creek, &c. These Ocone boxes are broken up at Darien, where the cotton is shipped either for the Savannah, Charleston or Liverpool markets, and the timber, of which they are constructed, sold. We rowed the doctor over to see some of his patients on the island, and before his departure a most animated discussion took place upon the subject of the President of the United States, his talents, qualifications, opinions, above all, his views with regard to the slave system. Mr. ----, who you know is no abolitionist, and is a very devoted Van Buren man, maintained with great warmth the President's straight-forwardness, and his evident and expressed intention of protecting the rights of the South. The doctor, on the other hand, quoted a certain speech of the President's, upon the question of abolishing slavery in the district of Columbia, which his fears interpreted into a mere evasion of the matter, and an indication that, at some future period, he (Mr. Van Buren), might take a different view of the subject. I confess, for my own part, that if the doctor quoted the speech right, and if the President is not an honest man, and if I were a Southern slave holder, I should not feel altogether secure of Mr. Van Buren's present opinions or future conduct upon this subject. These three _ifs_, however, are material points of consideration. Our friend the doctor inclined vehemently to Mr. Clay, as one on whom the slave holders could depend. Georgia, however, as a state, is perhaps the most democratic in the Union; though here, as well as in other places, that you and I know of, a certain class, calling themselves the first, and honestly believing themselves the best, set their faces against the modern fashioned republicanism, professing, and, I have no doubt, with great sincerity, that their ideas of democracy are altogether of a different kind. I went again to-day to the Infirmary, and was happy to perceive that there really was an evident desire to conform to my instructions, and keep the place in a better condition than formerly. Among the sick I found a poor woman suffering dreadfully from the ear-ache. She had done nothing to alleviate her pain but apply some leaves, of what tree or plant I could not ascertain, and tie up her head in a variety of dirty cloths, till it was as large as her whole body. I removed all these, and found one side of her face and neck very much swollen, but so begrimed with filth that it was really no very agreeable task to examine it. The first process, of course, was washing, which, however, appeared to her so very unusual an operation, that I had to perform it for her myself. Sweet oil and laudanum, and raw cotton, being then applied to her ear and neck, she professed herself much relieved, but I believe in my heart that the warm water sponging had done her more good than anything else. I was sorry not to ascertain what leaves she had applied to her ear. These simple remedies resorted to by savages, and people as ignorant, are generally approved by experience, and sometimes condescendingly adopted by science. I remember once, when Mr. ---- was suffering from a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism, Doctor C---- desired him to bind round his knee the leaves of the tulip-tree--poplar, I believe you call it--saying that he had learnt that remedy from the negroes in Virginia, and found it a most effectual one. My next agreeable office in the Infirmary this morning was superintending the washing of two little babies, whose mothers were nursing them with quite as much ignorance as zeal. Having ordered a large tub of water, I desired Rose to undress the little creatures and give them a warm bath; the mothers looked on in unutterable dismay, and one of them, just as her child was going to be put into the tub, threw into it all the clothes she had just taken off it, as she said, to break the unusual shock of the warm water. I immediately rescued them, not but what they were quite as much in want of washing as the baby, but it appeared, upon enquiry, that the woman had none others to dress the child in, when it should have taken its bath; they were immediately wrung and hung by the fire to dry, and the poor little patients having undergone this novel operation were taken out and given to their mothers. Anything, however, much more helpless and inefficient than these poor ignorant creatures you cannot conceive; they actually seemed incapable of drying or dressing their own babies, and I had to finish their toilet myself. As it is only a very few years since the most absurd and disgusting customs have become exploded among ourselves, you will not, of course, wonder that these poor people pin up the lower part of their infants, bodies, legs and all, in red flannel as soon as they are born, and keep them in the selfsame envelope till it literally falls off. In the next room I found a woman lying on the floor in a fit of epilepsy, barking most violently. She seemed to excite no particular attention or compassion; the women said she was subject to these fits, and took little or no notice of her, as she lay barking like some enraged animal on the ground. Again I stood in profound ignorance, sickening with the sight of suffering, which I knew not how to alleviate, and which seemed to excite no commiseration, merely from the sad fact of its frequent occurrence. Returning to the house, I passed up the 'street.' It was between eleven o'clock and noon, and the people were taking their first meal in the day. By the by, E----, how do you think Berkshire county farmers would relish labouring hard all day upon _two meals_ of Indian corn or hominy? Such is the regulation on this plantation, however, and I beg you to bear in mind that the negroes on Mr. ----'s estate, are generally considered well off. They go to the fields at daybreak, carrying with them their allowance of food for the day, which towards noon, _and not till then_, they eat, cooking it over a fire, which they kindle as best they can, where they are working. Their second meal in the day is at night, after their labour is over, having worked, at the _very least_, six hours without intermission of rest or refreshment since their noon-day meal (properly so called, for 'tis meal, and nothing else). Those that I passed to-day, sitting on their doorsteps, or on the ground round them eating, were the people employed at the mill and threshing-floor. As these are near to the settlement, they had time to get their food from the cook-shop. Chairs, tables, plates, knives, forks, they had none; they sat, as I before said, on the earth or doorsteps, and ate either out of their little cedar tubs, or an iron pot, some few with broken iron spoons, more with pieces of wood, and all the children with their fingers. A more complete sample of savage feeding, I never beheld. At one of the doors I saw three young girls standing, who might be between sixteen and seventeen years old; they had evidently done eatings and were rudely playing and romping with each other, laughing and shouting like wild things. I went into the house, and such another spectacle of filthy disorder I never beheld. I then addressed the girls most solemnly, showing them that they were wasting in idle riot the time in which they might be rendering their abode decent, and told them that it was a shame for any woman to live in so dirty a place, and so beastly a condition. They said they had seen buckree (white) women's houses just as dirty, and they could not be expected to be cleaner than white women. I then told them that the only difference between themselves and buckree women was, that the latter were generally better informed, and, for that reason alone, it was more disgraceful to them to be disorderly and dirty. They seemed to listen to me attentively, and one of them exclaimed, with great satisfaction, that they saw I made no difference between them and white girls, and that they never had been so treated before. I do not know anything which strikes me as a more melancholy illustration of the degradation of these people, than the animal nature of their recreations in their short seasons of respite from labour. You see them, boys and girls, from the youngest age to seventeen and eighteen, rolling, tumbling, kicking, and wallowing in the dust, regardless alike of decency, and incapable of any more rational amusement; or, lolling, with half-closed eyes, like so many cats and dogs, against a wall, or upon a bank in the sun, dozing away their short leisure hour, until called to resume their labours in the field or the mill. After this description of the meals of our labourers, you will, perhaps, be curious to know how it fares with our house servants in this respect. Precisely in the same manner, as far as regards allowance, with the exception of what is left from our table, but, if possible, with even less comfort, in one respect, inasmuch as no time whatever is set apart for their meals, which they snatch at any hour, and in any way that they can--generally, however, standing, or squatting on their hams round the kitchen fire. They have no sleeping-rooms in the house, but when their work is over, retire, like the rest, to their hovels, the discomfort of which has to them all the addition of comparison with our mode of living. Now, in all establishments whatever, of course some disparity exists between the comforts of the drawing-room and best bed-rooms, and the servant's hall and attics, but here it is no longer a matter of degree. The young woman who performs the office of lady's-maid, and the lads who wait upon us at table, have neither table to feed at nor chair to sit down upon themselves. The boys sleep at night on the hearth by the kitchen fire, and the women upon a rough board bedstead, strewed with a little tree moss. All this shows how very torpid the sense of justice is apt to lie in the breasts of those who have it not awakened by the peremptory demands of others. In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live. I received a visit this morning from some of the Darien people. Among them was a most interesting young person, from whose acquaintance, if I have any opportunity of cultivating it, I promise myself much pleasure. The ladies that I have seen since I crossed the southern line, have all seemed to me extremely sickly in their appearance--delicate in the refined term, but unfortunately sickly in the truer one. They are languid in their deportment and speech, and seem to give themselves up, without an effort to counteract it, to the enervating effect of their warm climate. It is undoubtedly a most relaxing and unhealthy one, and therefore requires the more imperatively to be met by energetic and invigorating habits both of body and mind. Of these, however, the southern ladies appear to have, at present, no very positive idea. Doctor ---- told us to-day of a comical application which his negro man had made to him for the coat he was then wearing. I forget whether the fellow wanted the loan, or the absolute gift of it, but his argument was (it might have been an Irishman's) that he knew his master intended to give it to him by and by, and that he thought he might as well let him have it at once, as keep him waiting any longer for it. This story the Doctor related with great glee, and it furnishes a very good sample of what the Southerners are fond of exhibiting, the degree of licence to which they capriciously permit their favourite slaves occasionally to carry their familiarity. They seem to consider it as an undeniable proof of the general kindness with which their dependents are treated. It is as good a proof of it as the maudlin tenderness of a fine lady to her lap-dog is of her humane treatment of animals in general. Servants whose claims to respect are properly understood by themselves and their employers, are not made pets, playthings, jesters, or companions of, and it is only the degradation of the many that admits of this favouritism to the few--a system of favouritism which, as it is perfectly consistent with the profoundest contempt and injustice, degrades the object of it quite as much, though it oppresses him less, than the cruelty practised upon his fellows. I had several of these favourite slaves presented to me, and one or two little negro children, who their owners assured me were quite pets. The only real service which this arbitrary goodwill did to the objects of it was quite involuntary and unconscious on the part of their kind masters--I mean the inevitable improvement in intelligence, which resulted to them from being more constantly admitted to the intercourse of the favoured white race. I must not forget to tell you of a magnificent bald-headed eagle which Mr. ---- called me to look at early this morning. I had never before seen alive one of these national types of yours, and stood entranced as the noble creature swept, like a black cloud, over the river, his bald white head bent forward and shining in the sun, and his fierce eyes and beak directed towards one of the beautiful wild ducks on the water, which he had evidently marked for his prey. The poor little duck, who was not ambitious of such a glorification, dived, and the eagle hovered above the spot. After a short interval, its victim rose to the surface several yards nearer shore. The great king of birds stooped nearer, and again the watery shield was interposed. This went on until the poor water-fowl, driven by excess of fear into unwonted boldness, rose, after repeatedly diving, within a short distance of where we stood. The eagle, who, I presume, had read how we were to have dominion over the fowls of the air (bald-headed eagles included), hovered sulkily awhile over the river, and then sailing slowly towards the woods on the opposite shore, alighted and furled his great wings on a huge cypress limb, that stretched itself out against the blue sky, like the arm of a giant, for the giant bird to perch upon. I am amusing myself by attempting to beautify, in some sort, this residence of ours. Immediately at the back of it runs a ditch, about three feet wide, which empties and fills twice a day with the tide. This lies like a moat on two sides of the house. The opposite bank is a steep dyke, with a footpath along the top. One or two willows droop over this very interesting ditch, and I thought I would add to their company some magnolias and myrtles, and so make a little evergreen plantation round the house. I went to the swamp reserves I have before mentioned to you, and chose some beautiful bushes--among others, a very fine young pine, at which our overseer and all the negroes expressed much contemptuous surprise; for though the tree is beautiful, it is also common, and with them, as with wiser folk 'tis 'nothing pleases but rare accidents.' In spite of their disparaging remarks, however, I persisted in having my pine tree planted; and I assure you it formed a very pleasing variety among the broad smooth leaved evergreens about it. While forming my plantation I had a brand thrown into a bed of tall yellow sedges which screen the brimming waters of the noble river from our parlour window, and which I therefore wished removed. The small sample of a southern conflagration which ensued was very picturesque, the flames devouring the light growth, absolutely licking it off the ground, while the curling smoke drew off in misty wreaths across the river. The heat was intense, and I thought how exceedingly and unpleasantly warm one must feel in the midst of such a forest burning, as Cooper describes. Having worked my appointed task in the garden, I rowed over to Darien and back, the rosy sunset changing meantime to starry evening, as beautiful as the first the sky ever was arrayed in. I saw an advertisement this morning in the paper, which occasioned me much thought. Mr. J---- C---- and a Mr. N----, two planters of this neighbourhood, have contracted to dig a canal, called the Brunswick canal, and not having hands enough for the work, advertise at the same time for negroes on hires and for Irish labourers. Now the Irishmen are to have twenty dollars a month wages, and to be 'found' (to use the technical phrase,) which finding means abundant food, and the best accommodations which can be procured for them. The negroes are hired from their masters, who will be paid of course as high a price as they can obtain for them--probably a very high one, as the demand for them is urgent--they, in the meantime, receiving no wages, and nothing more than the miserable negro fare of rice and corn grits. Of course the Irishmen and these slaves are not allowed to work together, but are kept at separate stations on the canal. This is every way politic, for the low Irish seem to have the same sort of hatred of negroes which sects, differing but little in their tenets, have for each other. The fact is, that a condition in their own country nearly similar, has made the poor Irish almost as degraded a class of beings as the negroes are here, and their insolence towards them, and hatred of them, are precisely in proportion to the resemblance between them. This hiring out of negroes is a horrid aggravation of the miseries of their condition, for, if on the plantations, and under the masters to whom they belong, their labour is severe, and their food inadequate, think what it must be when they are hired out for a stipulated sum to a temporary employer, who has not even the interest which it is pretended an owner may feel in the welfare of his slaves, but whose chief aim it must necessarily be to get as much out of them, and expend as little on them, as possible. Ponder this new form of iniquity, and believe me ever your most sincerely attached. * * * * * Dearest E----. After finishing my last letter to you, I went out into the clear starlight to breathe the delicious mildness of the air, and was surprised to hear rising from one of the houses of the settlement a hymn sung apparently by a number of voices. The next morning I enquired the meaning of this, and was informed that those negroes on the plantation who were members of the Church, were holding a prayer-meeting. There is an immensely strong devotional feeling among these poor people. The worst of it is, that it is zeal without understanding, and profits them but little; yet light is light, even that poor portion that may stream through a key-hole, and I welcome this most ignorant profession of religion in Mr. ----'s dependents, as the herald of better and brighter things for them. Some of the planters are entirely inimical to any such proceedings, and neither allow their negroes to attend worship, or to congregate together for religious purposes, and truly I think they are wise in their own generation. On other plantations, again, the same rigid discipline is not observed; and some planters and overseers go even farther than toleration; and encourage these devotional exercises and professions of religion, having actually discovered that a man may become more faithful and trustworthy even as a slave, who acknowledges the higher influences of Christianity, no matter in how small a degree. Slave-holding clergymen, and certain piously inclined planters, undertake, accordingly, to enlighten these poor creatures upon these matters, with a safe understanding, however, of what truth is to be given to them, and what is not; how much they may learn to become better slaves, and how much they may not learn, lest they cease to be slaves at all. The process is a very ticklish one, and but for the northern public opinion, which is now pressing the slaveholders close, I dare say would not be attempted at all. As it is, they are putting their own throats and their own souls in jeopardy by this very endeavour to serve God and Mammon. The light that they are letting in between their fingers will presently strike them blind, and the mighty flood of truth which they are straining through a sieve to the thirsty lips of their slaves, sweep them away like straws from their cautious moorings, and overwhelm them in its great deeps, to the waters of which man may in nowise say, thus far shall ye come and no farther. The community I now speak of, the white population of Darien, should be a religious one, to judge by the number of Churches it maintains. However, we know the old proverb, and, at that rate, it may not be so godly after all. Mr. ---- and his brother have been called upon at various times to subscribe to them all; and I saw this morning a most fervent appeal, extremely ill-spelled, from a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of the town, and whose slaves are notoriously ill-treated; reminding Mr. ---- of the precious souls of his human cattle, and requesting a further donation for the Baptist Church, of which most of the people here are members. Now this man is known to be a hard master; his negro houses are sheds, not fit to stable beasts in, his slaves are ragged, half-naked and miserable--yet he is urgent for their religious comforts, and writes to Mr. ---- about 'their souls, their precious souls.' He was over here a few days ago, and pressed me very much to attend his church. I told him I would not go to a church where the people who worked for us were parted off from us, as if they had the pest, and we should catch it of them. I asked him, for I was curious to know, how they managed to administer the Sacrament to a mixed congregation? He replied, Oh! very easily; that the white portion of the assembly received it first, and the blacks afterwards. 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.' Oh, what a shocking mockery! However, they show their faith at all events, in the declaration that God is no respecter of persons, since they do not pretend to exclude from His table those whom they most certainly would not admit to their own. I have as usual allowed this letter to lie by, dear E----, not in the hope of the occurrence of any event--for that is hopeless--but until my daily avocations allowed me leisure to resume it, and afforded me, at the same time, matter wherewith to do so. I really never was so busy in all my life, as I am here. I sit at the receipt of custom (involuntarily enough) from morning till night--no time, no place, affords me a respite from my innumerable petitioners, and whether I be asleep or awake, reading, eating, or walking; in the kitchen, my bed-room, or the parlour, they flock in with urgent entreaties, and pitiful stories, and my conscience forbids my ever postponing their business for any other matter; for, with shame and grief of heart I say it, by their unpaid labour I live--their nakedness clothes me, and their heavy toil maintains me in luxurious idleness. Surely the least I can do is to hear these, my most injured benefactors; and, indeed, so intense in me is the sense of the injury they receive from me and mine, that I should scarce dare refuse them the very clothes from my back, or food from my plate, if they asked me for it. In taking my daily walk round the banks yesterday, I found that I was walking over violet roots. The season is too little advanced for them to be in bloom, and I could not find out whether they were the fragrant violet or not. Mr. ---- has been much gratified to-day by the arrival of Mr. K----, who, with his father, for nineteen years was the sole manager of these estates, and discharged his laborious task with great ability and fidelity towards his employers. How far he understood his duties to the slaves, or whether indeed an overseer can, in the nature of things, acknowledge any duty to them, is another question. He is a remarkable man and is much respected for his integrity and honourable dealing by everybody here. His activity and energy are wonderful, and the mere fact of his having charge of for nineteen years, and personally governing, without any assistance whatever, seven hundred people scattered over three large tracts of land, at a considerable distance from each other, certainly bespeaks efficiency and energy of a very uncommon order. The character I had heard of him from Mr. ---- had excited a great deal of interest in me, and I was very glad of this opportunity of seeing a man who, for so many years, had been sovereign over the poor people here. I met him walking on the banks with Mr. ----, as I returned from my own ramble, during which nothing occurred or appeared to interest me--except, by the by, my unexpectedly coming quite close to one of those magnificent scarlet birds which abound here, and which dart across your path, like a winged flame. Nothing can surpass the beauty of their plumage, and their voice is excellently melodious--they are lovely. My companions, when I do not request the attendance of my friend Jack, are a couple of little terriers, who are endowed to perfection with the ugliness and the intelligence of their race--they are of infinite service on the plantation, as, owing to the immense quantity of grain, and chaff, and such matters, rats and mice abound in the mills and storehouses. I crossed the threshing floor to-day--a very large square, perfectly level, raised by artificial means, about half a foot from the ground, and covered equally all over, so as to lie quite smooth, with some preparation of tar. It lies immediately between the house and the steam mill, and on it much of the negroes' work is done--the first threshing is given to the rice, and other labours are carried on. As I walked across it to-day, passing through the busy groups, chiefly of women, that covered it, I came opposite to one of the drivers, who held in his hand his whip, the odious insignia of his office. I took it from him; it was a short stick of moderate size, with a thick square leather thong attached to it. As I held it in my hand, I did not utter a word; but I conclude, as is often the case, my face spoke what my tongue did not, for the driver said, 'Oh! Missis, me use it for measure--me seldom strike nigger with it.' For one moment I thought I must carry the hateful implement into the house with me. An instant's reflection, however, served to show me how useless such a proceeding would be. The people are not mine, nor their drivers, nor their whips. I should but have impeded, for a few hours, the man's customary office, and a new scourge would have been easily provided, and I should have done nothing, perhaps worse than nothing. After dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. K----. Among other subjects, he gave me a lively and curious description of the Yeomanry of Georgia--more properly termed pine-landers. Have you visions now of well-to-do farmers with comfortable homesteads, decent habits, industrious, intelligent, cheerful, and thrifty? Such, however, is not the Yeomanry of Georgia. Labour being here the especial portion of slaves, it is thenceforth degraded, and considered unworthy of all but slaves. No white man, therefore, of any class puts hand to work of any kind soever. This is an exceedingly dignified way of proving their gentility, for the lazy planters who prefer an idle life of semi-starvation and barbarism to the degradation of doing anything themselves; but the effect on the poorer whites of the country is terrible. I speak now of the scattered white population, who, too poor to possess land or slaves, and having no means of living in the towns, squat (most appropriately is it so termed) either on other men's land or government districts--always here swamp or pine barren--and claim masterdom over the place they invade, till ejected by the rightful proprietors. These wretched creatures will not, for they are whites (and labour belongs to blacks and slaves alone here), labour for their own subsistence. They are hardly protected from the weather by the rude shelters they frame for themselves in the midst of these dreary woods. Their food is chiefly supplied by shooting the wild fowl and venison, and stealing from the cultivated patches of the plantations nearest at hand. Their clothes hang about them in filthy tatters, and the combined squalor and fierceness of their appearance is really frightful. This population is the direct growth of slavery. The planters are loud in their execrations of these miserable vagabonds; yet they do not see that, so long as labour is considered the disgraceful portion of slaves, these free men will hold it nobler to starve or steal than till the earth with none but the despised blacks for fellow-labourers. The blacks themselves--such is the infinite power of custom--acquiesce in this notion, and, as I have told you, consider it the lowest degradation in a white to use any exertion. I wonder, considering the burthens they have seen me lift, the digging, the planting, the rowing, and the walking I do, that they do not utterly contemn me, and indeed they seem lost in amazement at it. Talking of these pine-landers--gypsies, without any of the romantic associations that belong to the latter people--led us to the origin of such a population, slavery; and you may be sure I listened with infinite interest to the opinions of a man of uncommon shrewdness and sagacity, who was born in the very bosom of it, and has passed his whole life among slaves. If any one is competent to judge of its effects, such a man is the one; and this was his verdict, 'I hate slavery with all my heart; I consider it an absolute curse wherever it exists. It will keep those states where it does exist fifty years behind the others in improvement and prosperity.' Further on in the conversation, he made this most remarkable observation, 'As for its being an irremediable evil--a thing not to be helped or got rid of--that's all nonsense; for as soon as people become convinced that it is their interest to get rid of it, they will soon find the means to do so, depend upon it.' And undoubtedly this is true. This is not an age, nor yours a country, where a large mass of people will long endure what they perceive to be injurious to their fortunes and advancement. Blind as people often are to their highest and truest interests, your country folk have generally shown remarkable acuteness in finding out where their worldly progress suffered let or hindrance, and have removed it with laudable alacrity. Now, the fact is not at all as we at the north are sometimes told, that the southern slaveholders deprecate the evils of slavery quite as much as we do; that they see all its miseries; that, moreover, they are most anxious to get rid of the whole thing, but want the means to do so, and submit most unwillingly to a necessity from which they cannot extricate themselves. All this I thought might be true, before I went to the south, and often has the charitable supposition checked the condemnation which was indignantly rising to my lips against these murderers of their brethren's peace. A little reflection, however, even without personal observation, might have convinced me that this could not be the case. If the majority of Southerners were satisfied that slavery was contrary to their worldly fortunes, slavery would be at an end from that very moment; but the fact is--and I have it not only from observation of my own, but from the distinct statement of some of the most intelligent southern men that I have conversed with--the only obstacle to immediate abolition throughout the south is the immense value of the human property, and, to use the words of a very distinguished Carolinian, who thus ended a long discussion we had on the subject, 'I'll tell you why abolition is impossible: because every healthy negro can fetch a thousand dollars in the Charleston market at this moment.' And this opinion, you see, tallies perfectly with the testimony of Mr. K----. He went on to speak of several of the slaves on this estate, as persons quite remarkable for their fidelity and intelligence, instancing old Molly, Ned the engineer, who has the superintendence of the steam-engine in the rice-mill, and head-man Frank, of whom indeed, he wound up the eulogium by saying, he had quite the principles of a white man--which I thought most equivocal praise, but he did not intend it as such. As I was complaining to Mr. ---- of the terribly neglected condition of the dykes, which are in some parts so overgrown with gigantic briars that 'tis really impossible to walk over them, and the trench on one hand, and river on the other, afford one extremely disagreeable alternatives. Mr. K---- cautioned me to be particularly on my guard not to step on the thorns of the orange tree. These, indeed, are formidable spikes, and he assured me, were peculiarly poisonous to the flesh. Some of the most painful and tedious wounds he had ever seen, he said, were incurred by the negroes running these large green thorns into their feet. This led him to speak of the glory and beauty of the orange trees on the island, before a certain uncommonly severe winter, a few years ago, destroyed them all. For five miles round the banks grew a double row of noble orange trees, as large as our orchard apple trees, covered with golden fruit, and silver flowers. It must have been a most magnificent spectacle, and Captain F----, too, told me, in speaking of it, that he had brought Basil Hall here in the season of the trees blossoming, and he had said it was as well worth crossing the Atlantic to see that, as to see the Niagara. Of all these noble trees nothing now remains but the roots, which bear witness to their size, and some young sprouts shooting up, affording some hope that, in the course of years, the island may wear its bridal garland again. One huge stump close to the door is all that remains of an enormous tree that overtopped the house, from the upper windows of which oranges have been gathered from off its branches, and which, one year, bore the incredible number of 8,542 oranges. Mr. K---- assured me of this as a positive fact, of which he had at the time made the entry in his journal, considering such a crop from a single tree well worthy of record. Mr. ---- was called out this evening to listen to a complaint of over work, from a gang of pregnant women. I did not stay to listen to the details of their petition, for I am unable to command myself on such occasions, and Mr. ---- seemed positively degraded in my eyes, as he stood enforcing upon these women the necessity of their fulfilling their appointed tasks. How honorable he would have appeared to me begrimed with the sweat and soil of the coarsest manual labour, to what he then seemed, setting forth to these wretched, ignorant women, as a duty, their unpaid exacted labour! I turned away in bitter disgust. I hope this sojourn among Mr. ----'s slaves may not lessen my respect for him, but I fear it; for the details of slave holding are so unmanly, letting alone every other consideration, that I know not how anyone, with the spirit of a man, can condescend to them. I have been out again on the river, rowing. I find nothing new. Swamps crowned with perfect evergreens are the only land (that's Irish!) about here, and, of course, turn which way I will, the natural features of river and shore are the same. I do not weary of these most exquisite watery woods, but you will of my mention of them, I fear. Adieu. * * * * * Dearest E----. Since I last wrote to you I have been actually engaged in receiving and returning visits; for even to this _ultima thule_ of all civilisation do these polite usages extend. I have been called upon by several families residing in and about Darien, and rowed over in due form to acknowledge the honour. How shall I describe Darien to you? The abomination of desolation is but a poor type of its forlorn appearance, as, half buried in sand, its straggling, tumble-down wooden houses peer over the muddy bank of the thick slimy river. The whole town lies in a bed of sand--side walks, or mid walks, there be none distinct from each other; at every step I took my feet were ankle deep in the soil, and I had cause to rejoice that I was booted for the occasion. Our worthy doctor, whose lady I was going to visit, did nothing but regret that I had not allowed him to provide me a carriage, though the distance between his house and the landing is not a quarter of a mile. The magnitude of the exertion seemed to fill him with amazement, and he over and over again repeated how impossible it would be to prevail on any of the ladies there to take such a walk. The houses seemed scattered about here and there, apparently without any design, and looked, for the most part, either unfinished or ruinous. One feature of the scene alone recalled the villages of New England--the magnificent oaks, which seemed to add to the meanness and insignificance of the human dwellings they overshadowed by their enormous size and grotesque forms. They reminded me of the elms of Newhaven and Stockbridge. They are quite as large, and more picturesque, from their sombre foliage and the infinite variety of their forms--a beauty wanting in the New England elm, which invariably rises and spreads in a way which, though the most graceful in the world, at length palls on the capricious human eye, which seeks, above all other beauties, variety. Our doctor's wife is a New England woman; how can she live here? She had the fair eyes and hair and fresh complexion of your part of the country, and its dearly beloved snuffle, which seemed actually dearly beloved when I heard it down here. She gave me some violets and narcissus, already blossoming profusely--in January--and expressed, like her husband, a thousand regrets at my having walked so far. A transaction of the most amusing nature occurred to-day with regard to the resources of the Darien Bank, and the mode of carrying on business in that liberal and enlightened institution, the funds of which I should think quite incalculable--impalpable, certainly, they appeared by our experience this morning. The river, as we came home, was covered with Ocone boxes. It is well for them they are so shallow-bottomed, for we rasped sand all the way home through the cut, and in the shallows of the river. I have been over the rice-mill, under the guidance of the overseer and head-man Frank, and have been made acquainted with the whole process of threshing the rice, which is extremely curious; and here I may again mention another statement of Miss Martineau's, which I am told is, and I should suppose from what I see here must be, a mistake. She states that the chaff of the husks of the rice is used as a manure for the fields; whereas the people have to-day assured me that it is of so hard, stony, and untractable a nature, as to be literally good for nothing. Here I know it is thrown away by cart-loads into the river, where its only use appears to be to act like ground bait, and attract a vast quantity of small fish to its vicinity. The number of hands employed in this threshing-mill is very considerable, and the whole establishment, comprising the fires and boilers and machinery of a powerful steam engine, are all under negro superintendence and direction. After this survey, I occupied myself with my infant plantation of evergreens round the dyke, in the midst of which interesting pursuit I was interrupted by a visit from Mr. B----, a neighbouring planter, who came to transact some business with Mr. ---- about rice which he had sent to our mill to have threshed, and the price to be paid for such threshing. The negroes have presented a petition to-day that they may be allowed to have a ball in honour of our arrival, which demand has been acceded to, and furious preparations are being set on foot. On visiting the Infirmary to-day, I was extremely pleased with the increased cleanliness and order observable in all the rooms. Two little filthy children, however, seemed to be still under the _ancien régime_ of non-ablution; but upon my saying to the old nurse Molly, in whose ward they were, 'Why, Molly, I don't believe you have bathed those children to-day,' she answered, with infinite dignity, 'Missis no b'lieve me wash um piccaninny! and yet she tress me wid all um niggar when 'em sick.' The injured innocence and lofty conscious integrity of this speech silenced and abashed me; and yet I can't help it, but I don't believe to this present hour that those children had had any experience of water, at least not washing water, since they first came into the world. I rowed over to Darien again, to make some purchases, yesterday; and enquiring the price of various articles, could not but wonder to find them at least three times as dear as in your northern villages. The profits of these southern shopkeepers (who, for the most part, are thoroughbred Yankees, with the true Yankee propensity to trade, no matter on how dirty a counter, or in what manner of wares) are enormous. The prices they ask for everything, from coloured calicoes for negro dresses to pianofortes (one of which, for curiosity sake, I enquired the value of), are fabulous, and such as none but the laziest and most reckless people in the world would consent to afford. On our return we found the water in the cut so extremely low that we were obliged to push the boat through it, and did not accomplish it without difficulty. The banks of this canal, when they are thus laid bare, present a singular appearance enough,--two walls of solid mud, through which matted, twisted, twined, and tangled, like the natural veins of wood, runs an everlasting net of indestructible roots, the thousand toes of huge cypress feet. The trees have been cut down long ago from the soil, but these fangs remain in the earth without decaying for an incredible space of time. This long endurance of immersion is one of the valuable properties of these cypress roots; but though excellent binding stuff for the sides of a canal, they must be pernicious growth in any land used for cultivation that requires deep tillage. On entering the Altamaha, we found the tide so low that we were much obstructed by the sand banks, which, but for their constant shifting, would presently take entire possession of this noble stream, and render it utterly impassable from shore to shore, as it already is in several parts of the channel at certain seasons of the tide. On landing, I was seized hold of by a hideous old negress, named Sinda, who had come to pay me a visit, and of whom Mr. ---- told me a strange anecdote. She passed at one time for a prophetess among her fellow slaves on the plantation, and had acquired such an ascendancy over them that, having given out, after the fashion of Mr. Miller, that the world was to come to an end at a certain time, and that not a very remote one, the belief in her assertion took such possession of the people on the estate, that they refused to work; and the rice and cotton fields were threatened with an indefinite fallow, in consequence of this strike on the part of the cultivators. Mr. K----, who was then overseer of the property, perceived the impossibility of arguing, remonstrating, or even flogging this solemn panic out of the minds of the slaves. The great final emancipation which they believed at hand had stripped even the lash of its prevailing authority, and the terrors of an overseer for once were as nothing, in the terrible expectation of the advent of the universal Judge of men. They were utterly impracticable--so, like a very shrewd man as he was, he acquiesced in their determination not to work; but he expressed to them his belief that Sinda was mistaken, and he warned her that if, at the appointed time, it proved so, she would be severely punished. I do not know whether he confided to the slaves what he thought likely to be the result if she was in the right; but poor Sinda was in the wrong. Her day of judgement came indeed, and a severe one it proved, for Mr. K---- had her tremendously flogged, and her end of things ended much like Mr. Miller's; but whereas he escaped unhanged, in spite of his atrocious practices upon the fanaticism and credulity of his country people, the spirit of false prophecy was mercilessly scourged out of her, and the faith of her people of course reverted from her to the omnipotent lash again. Think what a dream that must have been while it lasted, for those infinitely oppressed people,--freedom without entering it by the grim gate of death, brought down to them at once by the second coming of Christ, whose first advent has left them yet so far from it! Farewell; it makes me giddy to think of having been a slave while that delusion lasted, and after it vanished. * * * * * Dearest E----. I received early this morning a visit from a young negro, called Morris, who came to request permission to be baptised. The master's leave is necessary for this ceremony of acceptance into the bosom of the Christian Church; so all that can be said is, that it is to be hoped the rite itself may _not_ be indispensable for salvation, as if Mr. ---- had thought proper to refuse Morris' petition, he must infallibly have been lost, in spite of his own best wishes to the contrary. I could not, in discoursing with him, perceive that he had any very distinct ideas of the advantages he expected to derive from the ceremony; but perhaps they appeared all the greater for being a little vague. I have seldom seen a more pleasing appearance than that of this young man; his figure was tall and straight, and his face, which was of a perfect oval, rejoiced in the grace, very unusual among his people, of a fine high forehead, and the much more frequent one of a remarkably gentle and sweet expression. He was, however, jet black, and certainly did not owe these personal advantages to any mixture in his blood. There is a certain African tribe from which the West Indian slave market is chiefly recruited, who have these same characteristic features, and do not at all present the ignoble and ugly negro type, so much more commonly seen here. They are a tall, powerful people, with remarkably fine figures, regular features, and a singularly warlike and fierce disposition, in which respect they also differ from the race of negroes existing on the American plantations. I do not think Morris, however, could have belonged to this tribe, though perhaps Othello did, which would at once settle the difficulties of those commentators who, abiding by Iago's very disagreeable suggestions as to his purely African appearance, are painfully compelled to forego the mitigation of supposing him a Moor and not a negro. Did I ever tell you of my dining in Boston, at the H----'s, on my first visit to that city, and sitting by Mr. John Quincy Adams, who, talking to me about Desdemona, assured me, with a most serious expression of sincere disgust, that he considered all her misfortunes as a very just judgement upon her for having married a 'nigger?' I think if some ingenious American actor of the present day, bent upon realising Shakespeare's finest conceptions, with all the advantages of modern enlightenment, could contrive to slip in that opprobrious title, with a true South-Carolinian anti-Abolitionist expression, it might really be made quite a point for Iago, as, for instance, in his first soliloquy--'I hate the nigger,' given in proper Charleston or Savannah fashion, I am sure would tell far better than 'I hate the Moor.' Only think, E----, what a very new order of interest the whole tragedy might receive, acted throughout from this standpoint, as the Germans call it in this country, and called 'Amalgamation, or the Black Bridal.' On their return from their walk this afternoon, the children brought home some pieces of sugar-cane, of which a small quantity grows on the island. When I am most inclined to deplore the condition of the poor slaves on these cotton and rice plantations, the far more intolerable existence and harder labour of those employed on the sugar estates occurs to me, sometimes producing the effect of a lower circle in Dante's 'Hell of Horrors,' opening beneath the one where he seems to have reached the climax of infernal punishment. You may have seen this vegetable, and must, at any rate, I should think, be familiar with it by description. It is a long green reed, like the stalk of the maize, or Indian corn, only it shoots up to a much more considerable height, and has a consistent pith, which, together with the rind itself, is extremely sweet. The principal peculiarity of this growth, as perhaps you know, is that they are laid horizontally in the earth when they are planted for propagation, and from each of the notches or joints of the recumbent cane a young shoot is produced at the germinating season. A very curious and interesting circumstance to me just now in the neighbourhood is the projection of a canal, to be called the Brunswick Canal, which, by cutting through the lower part of the mainland, towards the southern extremity of Great St. Simon's Island, is contemplated as a probable and powerful means of improving the prosperity of the town of Brunswick, by bringing it into immediate communication with the Atlantic. The scheme, which I think I have mentioned to you before, is, I believe, chiefly patronised by your States' folk--Yankee enterprise and funds being very essential elements, it appears to me, in all southern projects and achievements. This speculation, however, from all I hear of the difficulties of the undertaking, from the nature of the soil, and the impossibility almost of obtaining efficient labour, is not very likely to arrive at any very satisfactory result; and, indeed, I find it hard to conceive how this part of Georgia can possibly produce a town which can be worth the digging of a canal, even to Yankee speculators. There is one feature of the undertaking, however, which more than all the others excites my admiration, namely, that Irish labourers have been advertised for to work upon the canal, and the terms offered them are twenty dollars a month per man and their board. Now these men will have for fellow labourers negroes who not only will receive nothing at all for their work, but who will be hired by the contractors and directors of the works from their masters, to whom they will hand over the price of their slaves' labour; while it will be the interest of the person hiring them not only to get as much work as possible out of them, but also to provide them as economically with food, combining the two praiseworthy endeavours exactly in such judicious proportions as not to let them neutralize each other. You will observe that this case of a master hiring out his slaves to another employer, from whom he receives their rightful wages, is a form of slavery which, though extremely common, is very seldom adverted to in those arguments for the system which are chiefly founded upon the master's presumed regard for his human property. People who have ever let a favourite house to the temporary occupation of strangers, can form a tolerable idea of the difference between one's own regard and care of one's goods and chattels and that of the most conscientious tenant; and whereas I have not yet observed that ownership is a very effectual protection to the slaves against ill usage and neglect, I am quite prepared to admit that it is a vastly better one than the temporary interest which a lessee can feel in the live stock he hires, out of whom it is his manifest interest to get as much, and into whom to put as little, as possible. Yet thousands of slaves throughout the southern states are thus handed over by the masters who own them to masters who do not; and it does not require much demonstration to prove that their estate is not always the more gracious. Now you must not suppose that these same Irish free labourers and negro slaves will be permitted to work together at this Brunswick Canal. They say that this would be utterly impossible; for why?--there would be tumults, and risings, and broken heads, and bloody bones, and all the natural results of Irish intercommunion with their fellow creatures, no doubt--perhaps even a little more riot and violence than merely comports with their usual habits of Milesian good fellowship; for, say the masters, the Irish hate the negroes more even than the Americans do, and there would be no bound to their murderous animosity if they were brought in contact with them on the same portion of the works of the Brunswick Canal. Doubtless there is some truth in this--the Irish labourers who might come hither, would be apt enough, according to a universal moral law, to visit upon others the injuries they had received from others. They have been oppressed enough themselves, to be oppressive whenever they have a chance; and the despised and degraded condition of the blacks, presenting to them a very ugly resemblance of their own home, circumstances naturally excite in them the exercise of the disgust and contempt of which they themselves are very habitually the objects; and that such circular distribution of wrongs may not only be pleasant, but have something like the air of retributive right to very ignorant folks, is not much to be wondered at. Certain is the fact, however, that the worst of all tyrants is the one who has been a slave; and for that matter (and I wonder if the southern slaveholders hear it with the same ear that I do, and ponder it with the same mind?) the command of one slave to another is altogether the most uncompromising utterance of insolent truculent despotism that it ever fell to my lot to witness or listen to. 'You nigger--I say, you black nigger,--you no hear me call you--what for you no run quick?' All this, dear E----, is certainly reasonably in favour of division of labour on the Brunswick Canal; but the Irish are not only quarrelers, and rioters, and fighters, and drinkers, and despisers of niggers--they are a passionate, impulsive, warm-hearted, generous people, much given to powerful indignations, which break out suddenly when they are not compelled to smoulder sullenly--pestilent sympathisers too, and with a sufficient dose of American atmospheric air in their lungs, properly mixed with a right proportion of ardent spirits, there is no saying but what they might actually take to sympathy with the slaves, and I leave you to judge of the possible consequences. You perceive, I am sure, that they can by no means be allowed to work together on the Brunswick Canal. I have been taking my daily walk round the island, and visited the sugar mill and the threshing mill again. Mr. ---- has received another letter from Parson S---- upon the subject of more church building in Darien. It seems that there has been a very general panic in this part of the slave states lately, occasioned by some injudicious missionary preaching, which was pronounced to be of a decidedly abolitionist tendency. The offensive preachers, after sowing, God only knows what seed in this tremendous soil, where one grain of knowledge may spring up a gigantic upas tree to the prosperity of its most unfortunate possessors, were summarily and ignominiously expulsed; and now some short sighted, uncomfortable Christians in these parts, among others this said Parson S----, are possessed with the notion that something had better be done to supply the want created by the cessation of these dangerous exhortations, to which the negroes have listened, it seems, with complacency. Parson S---- seems to think that, having driven out two preachers, it might be well to build one church where, at any rate, the negroes might be exhorted in a safe and salutary manner, 'qui ne leur donnerait point d'idées,' as the French would say. Upon my word, E----, I used to pity the slaves, and I do pity them with all my soul; but oh dear! oh dear! their case is a bed of roses to that of their owners, and I would go to the slave block in Charleston to-morrow cheerfully to be purchased, if my only option was to go thither as a purchaser. I was looking over this morning, with a most indescribable mixture of feelings, a pamphlet published in the south upon the subject of the religious instruction of the slaves; and the difficulty of the task undertaken by these reconcilers of God and Mammon really seems to me nothing short of piteous. 'We must give our involuntary servants,' (they seldom call them slaves, for it is an ugly word in an American mouth, you know,) 'Christian enlightenment,' say they; and where shall they begin? 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them?' No--but, 'Servants, obey your masters;' and there, I think, they naturally come to a full stop. This pamphlet forcibly suggested to me the necessity for a slave church catechism, and also, indeed, if it were possible, a slave Bible. If these heaven-blinded negro enlighteners persist in their pernicious plan of making Christians of their cattle, something of the sort must be done, or they will infallibly cut their own throats with this two-edged sword of truth, to which they should in no wise have laid their hand, and would not, doubtless, but that it is now thrust at them so threateningly that they have no choice. Again and again, how much I do pity them! I have been walking to another cluster of negro huts, known as Number Two, and here we took a boat and rowed across the broad brimming Altamaha to a place called Woodville, on a part of the estate named Hammersmith, though why that very thriving suburb of the great city of London should have been selected as the name of the lonely plank house in the midst of the pine woods which here enjoys that title I cannot conceive, unless it was suggested by the contrast. This settlement is on the mainland, and consists apparently merely of this house, (to which the overseer retires when the poisonous malaria of the rice plantations compels him to withdraw from it,) and a few deplorably miserable hovels, which appeared to me to be chiefly occupied by the most decrepid and infirm samples of humanity it was ever my melancholy lot to behold. The air of this pine barren is salubrious compared with that of the rice islands, and here some of the oldest slaves who will not die yet, and cannot work any more, are sent, to go, as it were, out of the way. Remote recollections of former dealings with civilised human beings, in the shape of masters and overseers, seemed to me to be the only idea not purely idiotic in the minds of the poor old tottering creatures that gathered to stare with dim and blear eyes at me and my children. There were two very aged women, who had seen different, and to their faded recollections better, times, who spoke to me of Mr. ----'s grandfather, and of the early days of the plantation, when they were young and strong, and worked as their children and grandchildren were now working, neither for love nor yet for money. One of these old crones, a hideous, withered, wrinkled piece of womanhood, said that she had worked as long as her strength had lasted, and that then she had still been worth her keep, for, said she, 'Missus, tho' we no able to work, we make little niggers for massa.' Her joy at seeing her present owner was unbounded, and she kept clapping her horny hands together and exclaiming, 'while there is life there is hope; we seen massa before we die.' These demonstrations of regard were followed up by piteous complaints of hunger and rheumatism, and their usual requests for pittances of food and clothing, to which we responded by promises of additions in both kinds; and I was extricating myself as well as I could from my petitioners, with the assurance that I would come by-and-bye and visit them again, when I felt my dress suddenly feebly jerked, and a shrill cracked voice on the other side of me exclaimed, 'Missus, no go yet--no go away yet; you no see me, missus, when you come by-and-bye; but,' added the voice in a sort of wail, which seemed to me as if the thought was full of misery, 'you see many, many of my offspring.' These melancholy words, particularly the rather unusual one at the end of the address, struck me very much. They were uttered by a creature which _was_ a woman, but looked like a crooked ill-built figure set up in a field to scare crows, with a face infinitely more like a mere animal's than any human countenance I ever beheld, and with that peculiar wild restless look of indefinite and, at the same time, intense sadness that is so remarkable in the countenance of some monkeys. It was almost with an effort that I commanded myself so as not to withdraw my dress from the yellow crumpled filthy claws that griped it, and it was not at last without the authoritative voice of the overseer that the poor creature released her hold of me. We returned home certainly in the very strangest vehicle that ever civilised gentlewoman travelled in--a huge sort of cart, made only of some loose boards, on which I lay supporting myself against one of the four posts which indicated the sides of my carriage; six horned creatures, cows or bulls, drew this singular equipage, and a yelping, howling, screaming, leaping company of half-naked negroes ran all round them, goading them with sharp sticks, frantically seizing hold of their tails, and inciting them by every conceivable and inconceivable encouragement to quick motion: thus, like one of the ancient Merovingian monarchs, I was dragged through the deep sand from the settlement back to the river, where we reembarked for the island. As we crossed the broad flood, whose turbid waters always look swollen as if by a series of freshets, a flight of birds sprang from the low swamp we were approaching, and literally, as it rose in the air, cast a shadow like that of a cloud, which might be said, with but little exaggeration, to darken the sun for a few seconds. How well I remember my poor aunt Whitelock describing such phenomena as of frequent occurrence in America, and the scornful incredulity with which we heard without accepting these legends of her Western experience! how little I then thought that I should have to cry peccavi to her memory from the bottom of such ruts, and under the shadow of such flights of winged creatures as she used to describe from the muddy ways of Pennsylvania and the muddy waters of Georgia! The vegetation is already in an active state of demonstration, sprouting into lovely pale green and vivid red-brown buds and leaflets, though 'tis yet early in January. After our return home we had a visit from Mr. C----, one of our neighbours, an intelligent and humane man, to whose account of the qualities and characteristics of the slaves, as he had observed and experienced them, I listened with great interest. The Brunswick Canal was again the subject of conversation, and again the impossibility of allowing the negroes and Irish to work in proximity was stated, and admitted as an indisputable fact. It strikes me with amazement to hear the hopeless doom of incapacity for progress pronounced upon these wretched slaves, when in my own country the very same order of language is perpetually applied to these very Irish, here spoken of as a sort of race of demigods, by negro comparison. And it is most true that in Ireland nothing can be more savage, brutish, filthy, idle, and incorrigibly and hopelessly helpless and incapable, than the Irish appear; and yet, transplanted to your northern states, freed from the evil influences which surround them at home, they and their children become industrious, thrifty, willing to learn, able to improve, and forming, in the course of two generations, a most valuable accession to your labouring population. How is it that it never occurs to these emphatical denouncers of the whole negro race that the Irish at home are esteemed much as they esteem their slaves, and that the sentence pronounced against their whole country by one of the greatest men of our age, an Irishman, was precisely, that nothing could save, redeem, or regenerate Ireland unless, as a preparatory measure, the island were submerged and all its inhabitants drowned off? I have had several women at the house to-day asking for advice and help for their sick children: they all came from No. 2, as they call it, that is, the settlement or cluster of negro huts nearest to the main one, where we may be said to reside. In the afternoon I went thither, and found a great many of the little children ailing; there had been an unusual mortality among them at this particular settlement this winter. In one miserable hut I heard that the baby was just dead; it was one of thirteen, many of whom had been, like itself, mercifully removed from the life of degradation and misery to which their birth appointed them: and whether it was the frequent repetition of similar losses, or an instinctive consciousness that death was indeed better than life for such children as theirs, I know not, but the father and mother, and old Rose, the nurse, who was their little baby's grandmother, all seemed apathetic, and apparently indifferent to the event. The mother merely repeated over and over again, 'I've lost a many, they all goes so;' and the father, without word or comment, went out to his enforced labour. As I left the cabin, rejoicing for them at the deliverance out of slavery of their poor child, I found myself suddenly surrounded by a swarm of young ragamuffins in every stage of partial nudity, clamouring from out of their filthy remnants of rags for donations of scarlet ribbon for the ball, which was to take place that evening. The melancholy scene I had just witnessed, and the still sadder reflection it had given rise to, had quite driven all thoughts of the approaching festivity from my mind; but the sudden demand for these graceful luxuries by Mr. ----'s half-naked dependants reminded me of the grotesque mask which life wears on one of its mysterious faces; and with as much sympathy for rejoicing as my late sympathy for sorrow had left me capable of, I procured the desired ornaments. I have considerable fellow-feeling for the passion for all shades of red, which prevails among these dusky fellow-creatures of mine--a savage propensity for that same colour in all its modifications being a tendency of my own. At our own settlement (No. 1) I found everything in a high fever of preparation for the ball. A huge boat had just arrived from the cotton plantation at St. Simons, laden with the youth and beauty of that portion of the estate who had been invited to join the party; and the greetings among the arrivers and welcomers, and the heaven-defying combinations of colour in the gala attire of both, surpass all my powers of description. The ball, to which of course we went, took place in one of the rooms of the Infirmary. As the room had, fortunately, but few occupants, they were removed to another apartment, and, without any very tender consideration for their not very remote, though invisible, sufferings, the dancing commenced, and was continued. Oh, my dear E----! I have seen Jim Crow--the veritable James: all the contortions, and springs, and flings, and kicks, and capers you have been beguiled into accepting as indicative of him are spurious, faint, feeble, impotent--in a word, pale northern reproductions of that ineffable black conception. It is impossible for words to describe the things these people did with their bodies, and, above all, with their faces, the whites of their eyes, and the whites of their teeth, and certain outlines which either naturally and by the grace of heaven, or by the practice of some peculiar artistic dexterity, they bring into prominent and most ludicrous display. The languishing elegance of some, the painstaking laboriousness of others, above all, the feats of a certain enthusiastic banjo-player, who seemed to me to thump his instrument with every part of his body at once, at last so utterly overcame any attempt at decorous gravity on my part that I was obliged to secede; and, considering what the atmosphere was that we inhaled during the exhibition, it is only wonderful to me that we were not made ill by the double effort not to laugh, and, if possible, not to breathe. * * * * * Monday, 20th. My Dearest E----. A rather longer interval than usual has elapsed since I last wrote to you, but I must beg you to excuse it. I have had more than a usual amount of small daily occupations to fill my time; and, as a mere enumeration of these would not be very interesting to you, I will tell you a story which has just formed an admirable illustration for my observation of all the miseries of which this accursed system of slavery is the cause, even under the best and most humane administration of its laws and usages. Pray note it, my dear friend, for you will find, in the absence of all voluntary or even conscious cruelty on the part of the master, the best possible comment on a state of things which, without the slightest desire to injure and oppress, produces such intolerable results of injury and oppression. We have, as a sort of under nursemaid and assistant of my dear M----, whose white complexion, as I wrote you, occasioned such indignation to my southern fellow-travellers, and such extreme perplexity to the poor slaves on our arrival here, a much more orthodox servant for these parts, a young woman named Psyche, but commonly called Sack, not a very graceful abbreviation of the divine heathen appellation: she cannot be much over twenty, has a very pretty figure, a graceful gentle deportment, and a face which, but for its colour (she is a dingy mulatto), would be pretty, and is extremely pleasing, from the perfect sweetness of its expression; she is always serious, not to say sad and silent, and has altogether an air of melancholy and timidity, that has frequently struck me very much, and would have made me think some special anxiety or sorrow must occasion it, but that God knows the whole condition of these wretched people naturally produces such a deportment, and there is no necessity to seek for special or peculiar causes to account for it. Just in proportion as I have found the slaves on this plantation intelligent and advanced beyond the general brutish level of the majority, I have observed this pathetic expression of countenance in them, a mixture of sadness and fear, the involuntary exhibition of the two feelings, which I suppose must be the predominant experience of their whole lives, regret and apprehension, not the less heavy, either of them, for being, in some degree, vague and indefinite--a sense of incalculable past loss and injury, and a dread of incalculable future loss and injury. I have never questioned Psyche as to her sadness, because, in the first place, as I tell you, it appears to me most natural, and is observable in all the slaves, whose superior natural or acquired intelligence allows of their filling situations of trust or service about the house and family; and, though I cannot and will not refuse to hear any and every tale of suffering which these unfortunates bring to me, I am anxious to spare both myself and them the pain of vain appeals to me for redress and help, which, alas! it is too often utterly out of my power to give them. It is useless, and indeed worse than useless, that they should see my impotent indignation and unavailing pity, and hear expressions of compassion for them, and horror at their condition, which might only prove incentives to a hopeless resistance on their part to a system, under the hideous weight of whose oppression any individual or partial revolt must be annihilated and ground into the dust. Therefore, as I tell you, I asked Psyche no questions, but, to my great astonishment, the other day M---- asked me if I knew to whom Psyche belonged, as the poor woman had enquired of her with much hesitation and anguish if she could tell her who owned her and her children. She has two nice little children under six years old, whom she keeps as clean and tidy, and who are sad and as silent, as herself. My astonishment at this question was, as you will readily believe, not small, and I forthwith sought out Psyche for an explanation. She was thrown into extreme perturbation at finding that her question had been referred to me, and it was some time before I could sufficiently reassure her to be able to comprehend, in the midst of her reiterated entreaties for pardon, and hopes that she had not offended me, that she did not know herself who owned her. She was, at one time, the property of Mr. K----, the former overseer, of whom I have already spoken to you, and who has just been paying Mr. ---- a visit. He, like several of his predecessors in the management, has contrived to make a fortune upon it (though it yearly decreases in value to the owners, but this is the inevitable course of things in the southern states), and has purchased a plantation of his own in Alabama, I believe, or one of the south-western states. Whether she still belonged to Mr. K---- or not she did not know, and entreated me if she did to endeavour to persuade Mr. ---- to buy her. Now, you must know that this poor woman is the wife of one of Mr. B----'s slaves, a fine, intelligent, active, excellent young man, whose whole family are among some of the very best specimens of character and capacity on the estate. I was so astonished at the (to me) extraordinary state of things revealed by poor Sack's petition, that I could only tell her that I had supposed all the negroes on the plantation were Mr. ----'s property, but that I would certainly enquire, and find out for her if I could to whom she belonged, and if I could, endeavour to get Mr. ---- to purchase her, if she really was not his. Now, E----, just conceive for one moment the state of mind of this woman, believing herself to belong to a man who, in a few days, was going down to one of those abhorred and dreaded south-western states, and who would then compel her, with her poor little children, to leave her husband and the only home she had ever known, and all the ties of affection, relationship, and association of her former life, to follow him thither, in all human probability never again to behold any living creature that she had seen before; and this was so completely a matter of course that it was not even thought necessary to apprise her positively of the fact, and the only thing that interposed between her and this most miserable fate was the faint hope that Mr. ---- _might have_ purchased her and her children. But if he had, if this great deliverance had been vouchsafed to her, the knowledge of it was not thought necessary; and with this deadly dread at her heart she was living day after day, waiting upon me and seeing me, with my husband beside me, and my children in my arms in blessed security, safe from all separation but the one reserved in God's great providence for all His creatures. Do you think I wondered any more at the woe-begone expression of her countenance, or do you think it was easy for me to restrain within prudent and proper limits the expression of my feelings at such a state of things? And she had gone on from day to day enduring this agony, till I suppose its own intolerable pressure and M----'s sweet countenance and gentle sympathising voice and manner had constrained her to lay down this great burden of sorrow at our feet. I did not see Mr. ---- until the evening; but in the meantime, meeting Mr. O----, the overseer, with whom, as I believe I have already told you, we are living here, I asked him about Psyche, and who was her proprietor, when to my infinite surprise he told me that _he_ had bought her and her children from Mr. K----, who had offered them to him, saying that they would be rather troublesome to him than otherwise down where he was going; 'and so,' said Mr. O----, 'as I had no objection to investing a little money that way, I bought them.' With a heart much lightened I flew to tell poor Psyche the news, so that at any rate she might be relieved from the dread of any immediate separation from her husband. You can imagine better than I can tell you what her sensations were; but she still renewed her prayer that I would, if possible, induce Mr. ---- to purchase her, and I promised to do so. Early the next morning, while I was still dressing, I was suddenly startled by hearing voices in loud tones in Mr. ----'s dressing-room, which adjoins my bed-room, and the noise increasing until there was an absolute cry of despair uttered by some man. I could restrain myself no longer, but opened the door of communication, and saw Joe, the young man, poor Psyche's husband, raving almost in a state of frenzy, and in a voice broken with sobs and almost inarticulate with passion, reiterating his determination never to leave this plantation, never to go to Alabama, never to leave his old father and mother, his poor wife and children, and dashing his hat, which he was wringing like a cloth in his hands, upon the ground, he declared he would kill himself if he was compelled to follow Mr. K----. I glanced from the poor wretch to Mr. ----, who was standing, leaning against a table with his arms folded, occasionally uttering a few words of counsel to his slave to be quiet and not fret, and not make a fuss about what there was no help for. I retreated immediately from the horrid scene, breathless with surprise and dismay, and stood for some time in my own room, with my heart and temples throbbing to such a degree that I could hardly support myself. As soon as I recovered myself I again sought Mr. O----, and enquired of him if he knew the cause of poor Joe's distress. He then told me that Mr. ----, who is highly pleased with Mr. K----'s past administration of his property, wished, on his departure for his newly-acquired slave plantation, to give him some token of his satisfaction, and _had made him a present_ of the man Joe, who had just received the intelligence that he was to go down to Alabama with his new owner the next day, leaving father, mother, wife, and children behind. You will not wonder that the man required a little judicious soothing under such circumstances, and you will also, I hope, admire the humanity of the sale of his wife and children by the owner who was going to take him to Alabama, because _they_ would be incumbrances rather than otherwise down there. If Mr. K---- did not do this after he knew that the man was his, then Mr. ---- gave him to be carried down to the South after his wife and children were sold to remain in Georgia. I do not know which was the real transaction, for I have not had the heart to ask; but you will easily imagine which of the two cases I prefer believing. When I saw Mr. ---- after this most wretched story became known to me in all its details, I appealed to him for his own soul's sake not to commit so great a cruelty. Poor Joe's agony while remonstrating with his master was hardly greater than mine while arguing with him upon this bitter piece of inhumanity--how I cried, and how I adjured, and how all my sense of justice and of mercy and of pity for the poor wretch, and of wretchedness at finding myself implicated in such a state of things, broke in torrents of words from my lips and tears from my eyes! God knows such a sorrow at seeing anyone I belonged to commit such an act was indeed a new and terrible experience to me, and it seemed to me that I was imploring Mr. ---- to save himself, more than to spare these wretches. He gave me no answer whatever, and I have since thought that the intemperate vehemence of my entreaties and expostulations perhaps deserved that he should leave me as he did without one single word of reply; and miserable enough I remained. Towards evening, as I was sitting alone, my children having gone to bed, Mr. O---- came into the room. I had but one subject in my mind; I had not been able to eat for it. I could hardly sit still for the nervous distress which every thought of these poor people filled me with. As he sat down looking over some accounts, I said to him, 'Have you seen Joe this afternoon, Mr. O----?' (I give you our conversation as it took place.) 'Yes, ma'am; he is a great deal happier than he was this morning.' 'Why, how is that?' asked I eagerly. 'Oh, he is not going to Alabama. Mr. K---- heard that he had kicked up a fuss about it (being in despair at being torn from one's wife and children is called _kicking up a fuss_; this is a sample of overseer appreciation of human feelings), and said that if the fellow wasn't willing to go with him, he did not wish to be bothered with any niggers down there who were to be troublesome, so he might stay behind.' 'And does Psyche know this?' 'Yes, ma'am, I suppose so.' I drew a long breath; and whereas my needle had stumbled through the stuff I was sewing for an hour before, as if my fingers could not guide it, the regularity and rapidity of its evolutions were now quite edifying. The man was for the present safe, and I remained silently pondering his deliverance and the whole proceeding, and the conduct of everyone engaged in it, and above all Mr. ----'s share in the transaction, and I think for the first time almost a sense of horrible personal responsibility and implication took hold of my mind, and I felt the weight of an unimagined guilt upon my conscience; and yet God knows this feeling of self-condemnation is very gratuitous on my part, since when I married Mr. ---- I knew nothing of these dreadful possessions of his, and even if I had, I should have been much puzzled to have formed any idea of the state of things in which I now find myself plunged, together with those whose well-doing is as vital to me almost as my own. With these agreeable reflections I went to bed. Mr. ---- said not a word to me upon the subject of these poor people all the next day, and in the meantime I became very impatient of this reserve on his part, because I was dying to prefer my request that he would purchase Psyche and her children, and so prevent any future separation between her and her husband, as I supposed he would not again attempt to make a present of Joe, at least to anyone who did not wish to be _bothered_ with his wife and children. In the evening I was again with Mr. O---- alone in the strange bare wooden-walled sort of shanty which is our sitting-room, and revolving in my mind the means of rescuing Psyche from her miserable suspense, a long chain of all my possessions, in the shape of bracelets, necklaces, brooches, ear-rings, &c., wound in glittering procession through my brain, with many hypothetical calculations of the value of each separate ornament, and the very doubtful probability of the amount of the whole being equal to the price of this poor creature and her children; and then the great power and privilege I had foregone of earning money by my own labour occurred to me; and I think, for the first time in my life, my past profession assumed an aspect that arrested my thoughts most seriously. For the last four years of my life that preceded my marriage, I literally coined money; and never until this moment, I think, did I reflect on the great means of good, to myself and others, that I so gladly agreed to give up for ever, for a maintenance by the unpaid labour of slaves--people toiling not only unpaid, but under the bitter conditions the bare contemplation of which was then wringing my heart. You will not wonder that, when in the midst of such cogitations I suddenly accosted Mr. O----, it was to this effect. 'Mr. O----, I have a particular favour to beg of you. Promise me that you will never sell Psyche and her children without first letting me know of your intention to do so, and giving me the option of buying them.' Mr. O---- is a remarkably deliberate man, and squints, so that, when he has taken a little time in directing his eyes to you, you are still unpleasantly unaware of any result in which you are concerned; he laid down a book he was reading, and directed his head and one of his eyes towards me and answered, 'Dear me, ma'am, I am very sorry--I have sold them.' My work fell down on the ground, and my mouth opened wide, but I could utter no sound, I was so dismayed and surprised; and he deliberately proceeded: 'I didn't know, ma'am, you see, at all, that you entertained any idea of making an investment of that nature; for I'm sure, if I had, I would willingly have sold the woman to you; but I sold her and her children this morning to Mr. ----.' My dear E----, though ---- had resented my unmeasured upbraidings, you see they had not been without some good effect, and though he had, perhaps justly, punished my violent outbreak of indignation about the miserable scene I witnessed by not telling me of his humane purpose, he had bought these poor creatures, and so, I trust, secured them from any such misery in future. I jumped up and left Mr. O---- still speaking, and ran to find Mr. ----, to thank him for what he had done, and with that will now bid you good bye. Think, E----, how it fares with slaves on plantations where there is no crazy Englishwoman to weep and entreat and implore and upbraid for them, and no master willing to listen to such appeals. Dear E----. There is one privilege which I enjoy here which I think few cockneyesses have ever had experience of, that of hearing my own extemporaneous praises chaunted bard-fashion by our negroes, in rhymes as rude and to measures as simple as ever any illustrious female of the days of King Brian Boroihme listened to. Rowing yesterday evening through a beautiful sunset into a more beautiful moonrise, my two sable boatmen entertained themselves and me with alternate strophe and anti-strophe of poetical description of my personal attractions, in which my 'wire waist' recurred repeatedly, to my intense amusement. This is a charm for the possession of which M---- (my white nursemaid) is also invariably celebrated; and I suppose that the fine round natural proportions of the uncompressed waists of the sable beauties of these regions appear less symmetrical to eyes accustomed to them than our stay-cased figures, since 'nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.' Occasionally I am celebrated in these rowing chants as 'Massa's darling,' and S---- comes in for endless glorification on account of the brilliant beauty of her complexion; the other day, however, our poets made a diversion from the personal to the moral qualities of their small mistress, and after the usual tribute to her roses and lilies came the following rather significant couplet:-- Little Missis Sally, That's a ruling lady. At which all the white teeth simultaneously lightened from the black visages, while the subject of this equivocal commendation sat with infantine solemnity (the profoundest, I think, that the human countenance is capable of), surveying her sable dependants with imperturbable gravity. Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women. My education in France--where, in some important respects, I think girls are better trained than with us--had sent me home to England, at sixteen, an adept in the female mystery of needlework. Not only owing to the Saturday's discipline of clothes mending by all the classes--while l'Abbé Millot's history (of blessed, boring memory) was being read aloud, to prevent 'vain babblings,' and ensure wholesome mental occupation the while--was I an expert patcher and mender, darner and piecer (darning and marking were my specialities), but the white cotton embroidery of which every French woman has always a piece under her hand _pour les momens perdus_, which are thus anything but _perdus_, was as familiar to us as to the Irish cottagers of the present day, and cutting out and making my dresses was among the more advanced branches of _the_ female accomplishment to which I attained.[1] The luxury of a lady's maid of my own, indulged in ever since the days of my 'coming out,' has naturally enough caused my right hand to forget its cunning, and regret and shame at having lost any useful lore in my life made me accede, for my own sake, to the request of one of our multitudinous Dianas and innumerable Chloes to cut out dresses for each of them, especially as they (wonderful to relate) declared themselves able to stitch them if I would do the cutting. Since I have been on the plantation I have already spent considerable time in what the French call 'confectioning' baby bundles, i.e. the rough and very simple tiny habiliments of coarse cotton and scarlet flannel which form a baby's layette here, and of which I have run up some scores; but my present task was far more difficult. Chloe was an ordinary mortal negress enough, but Diana might have been the Huntress of the Woods herself, done into the African type. Tall, large, straight, well-made, profoundly serious, she stood like a bronze statue, while I, mounted on a stool, (the only way in which I could attain to the noble shoulders and bust of my lay figure), pinned and measured, and cut and shaped, under the superintendence of M----, and had the satisfaction of seeing the fine proportions of my black goddess quite becomingly clothed in a high tight fitting body of the gayest chintz, which she really contrived to put together quite creditably. [Footnote 1: Some of our great English ladies are, I know, exquisite needlewomen; but I do not think, in spite of these exceptional examples, that young English ladies of the higher classes are much skilled in this respect at the present day; and as for the democratic daughters of America, who for many reasons might be supposed likely to be well up in such housewifely lore, they are for the most part so ignorant of it that I have heard the most eloquent preacher of the city of New York advert to their incapacity in this respect, as an impediment to their assistance of the poor; and ascribe to the fact that the daughters of his own parishioners did not know how to sew, the impossibility of their giving the most valuable species of help to the women of the needier classes, whose condition could hardly be more effectually improved than by acquiring such useful knowledge. I have known young American school girls, duly instructed in the nature of the parallaxes of the stars, but, as a rule, they do not know how to darn their stockings. Les Dames du Sacré Coeur do better for their high-born and well-bred pupils than this.] I was so elated with my own part of this performance that I then and there determined to put into execution a plan I had long formed of endowing the little boat in which I take what the French call my walks on the water, with cushions for the back and seat of the benches usually occupied by myself and Mr. ----; so putting on my large straw hat, and plucking up a paper of pins, scissors, and my brown holland, I walked to the steps, and jumping into the little canoe, began piecing, and measuring, and cutting the cushions, which were to be stuffed with the tree moss by some of the people who understand making a rough kind of mattress. My inanimate subject, however, proved far more troublesome to fit than my living lay figure, for the little cockle-shell ducked, and dived, and rocked, and tipped, and curtseyed, and tilted, as I knelt first on one side and then on the other fitting her, till I was almost in despair; however, I got a sort of pattern at last, and by dint of some pertinacious efforts--which, in their incompleteness, did not escape some sarcastic remarks from Mr. ---- on the capabilities of 'women of genius' applied to common-place objects--the matter was accomplished, and the little Dolphin rejoiced in very tidy back and seat cushions, covered with brown holland, and bound with green serge. My ambition then began to contemplate an awning, but the boat being of the nature of a canoe--though not a real one, inasmuch as it is not made of a single log--does not admit of supports for such an edifice. I had rather a fright the other day in that same small craft, into which I had taken S----, with the intention of paddling myself a little way down the river and back. I used to row tolerably well, and was very fond of it, and frequently here take an oar, when the men are rowing me in the long boat, as some sort of equivalent for my riding, of which, of course, I am entirely deprived on this little dykeland of ours; but paddling is a perfectly different process, and one that I was very anxious to achieve. My first strokes answered the purpose of sending the boat off from shore, and for a few minutes I got on pretty well; but presently I got tired of shifting the paddle from side to side, a manoeuvre which I accomplished very clumsily and slowly, and yet, with all my precautions, not without making the boat tip perilously. The immense breadth and volume of the river suddenly seized my eyes and imagination as it were, and I began to fancy that if I got into the middle of the stream I should not be able to paddle myself back against it--which, indeed, might very well have proved the case. Then I became nervous, and paddled all on one side, by which means, of course, I only turned the boat round. S---- began to fidget about, getting up from where I had placed her, and terrifying me with her unsteady motions and the rocking of the canoe. I was now very much frightened, and saw that I _must_ get back to shore before I became more helpless than I was beginning to feel; so laying S---- down in the bottom of the boat as a preliminary precaution, I said to her with infinite emphasis, 'Now lie still there, and don't stir, or you'll be drowned,' to which, with her clear grey eyes fixed on me, and no sign whatever of emotion, she replied deliberately, 'I shall lie still here, and won't stir, for I should not like to be drowned,' which, for an atom not four years old, was rather philosophical. Then I looked about me, and of course having drifted, set steadily to work and paddled home, with my heart in my mouth almost till we grazed the steps, and I got my precious freight safe on shore again, since which I have taken no more paddling lessons without my slave and master, Jack. We have had a death among the people since I last wrote to you. A very valuable slave called Shadrach was seized with a disease which is frequent, and very apt to be fatal here--peri-pneumonia; and in spite of all that could be done to save him, sank rapidly, and died after an acute illness of only three days. The doctor came repeatedly from Darien, and the last night of the poor fellow's life ---- himself watched with him. I suppose the general low diet of the negroes must produce some want of stamina in them; certainly, either from natural constitution or the effect of their habits of existence, or both, it is astonishing how much less power of resistance to disease they seem to possess than we do. If they are ill, the vital energy seems to sink immediately. This rice cultivation, too, although it does not affect them as it would whites--to whom, indeed, residence on the rice plantation after a certain season is impossible--is still, to a certain degree, deleterious even to the negroes. The proportion of sick is always greater here than on the cotton plantation, and the invalids of this place are not unfrequently sent down to St. Simon's to recover their strength, under the more favourable influences of the sea air and dry sandy soil of Hampton Point. Yesterday afternoon the tepid warmth of the air and glassy stillness of the river seemed to me highly suggestive of fishing, and I determined, not having yet discovered what I could catch with what in these unknown waters, to try a little innocent paste bait--a mystery his initiation into which caused Jack much wonderment. The only hooks I had with me, however, had been bought in Darien--made, I should think, at the North expressly for this market; and so villanously bad were they that, after trying them and my patience a reasonable time, I gave up the attempt and took a lesson in paddling instead. Amongst other items Jack told me of his own fishing experience was, that he had more than once caught those most excellent creatures Altamaha shad by the fish themselves leaping out of the water and _landing_, as Jack expressed it, to escape from the porpoises, which come in large schools up the river to a considerable distance, occasioning, evidently, much emotion in the bosoms of the legitimate inhabitants of these muddy waters. Coasting the island on our return home we found a trap, which the last time we examined it was tenanted by a creature called a mink, now occupied by an otter. The poor beast did not seem pleased with his predicament; but the trap had been set by one of the drivers, and, of course, Jack would not have meddled with it except upon my express order, which, in spite of some pangs of pity for the otter, I did not like to give him, as in the extremely few resources of either profit or pleasure possessed by the slaves I could not tell at all what might be the value of an otter to his captor. Yesterday evening the burial of the poor man Shadrach took place. I had been applied to for a sufficient quantity of cotton cloth to make a winding-sheet for him, and just as the twilight was thickening into darkness I went with Mr. ---- to the cottage of one of the slaves whom I may have mentioned to you before--a cooper of the name of London, the head of the religious party of the inhabitants of the island, a methodist preacher of no small intelligence and influence among the people--who was to perform the burial service. The coffin was laid on trestles in front of the cooper's cottage, and a large assemblage of the people had gathered round, many of the men carrying pine-wood torches, the fitful glare of which glanced over the strange assembly, where every pair of large white-rimmed eyes turned upon ---- and myself; we two poor creatures on this more solemn occasion, as well as on every other when these people encounter us, being the objects of admiration and wonderment, on which their gaze is immovably riveted. Presently the whole congregation uplifted their voices in a hymn, the first high wailing notes of which--sung all in unison, in the midst of these unwonted surroundings--sent a thrill through all my nerves. When the chant ceased, cooper London began a prayer, and all the people knelt down in the sand, as I did also. Mr. ---- alone remained standing in the presence of the dead man, and of the living God to whom his slaves were now appealing. I cannot tell you how profoundly the whole ceremony, if such it could be called, affected me, and there was nothing in the simple and pathetic supplication of the poor black artisan to check or interfere with the solemn influences of the whole scene. It was a sort of conventional methodist prayer, and probably quite as conventional as all the rest was the closing invocation of God's blessing upon their master, their mistress, and our children; but this fairly overcame my composure, and I began to cry very bitterly; for these same individuals, whose implication in the state of things in the midst of which we are living, seemed to me as legitimate a cause for tears as for prayers. When the prayer was concluded we all rose, and the coffin being taken up, proceeded to the people's burial-ground, when London read aloud portions of the funeral service from the prayer-book--I presume the American episcopal version of our Church service, for what he read appeared to be merely a selection from what was perfectly familiar to me; but whether he himself extracted what he uttered I did not enquire. Indeed I was too much absorbed in the whole scene, and the many mingled emotions it excited of awe and pity, and an indescribable sensation of wonder at finding myself on this slave soil, surrounded by MY slaves, among whom again I knelt while the words proclaiming to the living and the dead the everlasting covenant of freedom, 'I am the resurrection and the life,' sounded over the prostrate throng, and mingled with the heavy flowing of the vast river sweeping, not far from where we stood, through the darkness by which we were now encompassed (beyond the immediate circle of our torch-bearers). There was something painful to me in ----'s standing while we all knelt on the earth, for though in any church in Philadelphia he would have stood during the praying of any minister, here I wished he would have knelt, to have given his slaves some token of his belief that--at least in the sight of that Master to whom we were addressing our worship--all men are equal. The service ended with a short address from London upon the subject of Lazarus, and the confirmation which the story of his resurrection afforded our hopes. The words were simple and rustic, and of course uttered in the peculiar sort of jargon which is the habitual negro speech; but there was nothing in the slightest degree incongruous or grotesque in the matter or manner, and the exhortations not to steal, or lie, or neglect to work well for massa, with which the glorious hope of immortality was blended in the poor slave preacher's closing address, was a moral adaptation, as wholesome as it was touching, of the great Christian theory to the capacities and consciences of his hearers. When the coffin was lowered the grave was found to be partially filled with water--naturally enough, for the whole island is a mere swamp, off which the Altamaha is only kept from sweeping by the high dykes all round it. This seemed to shock and distress the people, and for the first time during the whole ceremony there were sounds of crying and exclamations of grief heard among them. Their chief expression of sorrow, however, when Mr. ---- and myself bade them good night at the conclusion of the service, was on account of my crying, which appeared to affect them very much, many of them mingling with their 'Farewell, good night, massa and missis,' affectionate exclamations of 'God bless you, missis; don't cry!' 'Lor, missis, don't you cry so!' Mr. ---- declined the assistance of any of the torch-bearers home, and bade them all go quietly to their quarters; and as soon as they had dispersed, and we had got beyond the fitful and unequal glaring of the torches, we found the shining of the stars in the deep blue lovely night sky quite sufficient to light our way along the dykes. I could not speak to ----, but continued to cry as we walked silently home; and whatever his cogitations were, they did not take the unusual form with him of wordy demonstration, and so we returned from one of the most striking religious ceremonies at which I ever assisted. Arrived at the door of the house we perceived that we had been followed the whole way by the naked noiseless feet of a poor half-witted creature, a female idiot, whose mental incapacity, of course, in no respect unfits her for the life of toil, little more intellectual than that of any beast of burthen, which is her allotted portion here. Some small gratification was given to her, and she departed gibbering and muttering in high glee. Think, E----, of that man London--who, in spite of all the bitter barriers in his way, has learnt to read, has read his Bible, teaches it to his unfortunate fellows, and is used by his owner and his owner's agents, for all these causes, as an effectual influence for good over the slaves of whom he is himself the despised and injured companion. Like them, subject to the driver's lash; like them, the helpless creature of his master's despotic will, without a right or a hope in this dreary world. But though the light he has attained must show him the terrible aspects of his fate hidden by blessed ignorance from his companions, it reveals to him also other rights, and other hopes--another world, another life--towards which he leads, according to the grace vouchsafed him, his poor fellow-slaves. How can we keep this man in such a condition? How is such a cruel sin of injustice to be answered? Mr. ----, of course, sees and feels none of this as I do, and I should think must regret that he ever brought me here, to have my abhorrence of the theory of slavery deepened, and strengthened every hour of my life, by what I see of its practice. This morning I went over to Darien upon the very female errands of returning visits and shopping. In one respect (assuredly in none other) our life here resembles existence in Venice; we can never leave home for any purpose or in any direction but by boat--not, indeed, by gondola, but the sharp cut, well made, light craft in which we take our walks on the water is a very agreeable species of conveyance. One of my visits this morning was to a certain Miss ----, whose rather grandiloquent name and very striking style of beauty exceedingly well became the daughter of an ex-governor of Georgia. As for the residence of this princess, it was like all the planters' residences that I have seen, and such as a well-to-do English farmer would certainly not inhabit. Occasional marks of former elegance or splendour survive sometimes in the size of the rooms, sometimes in a little carved wood-work about the mantelpieces or wainscoatings of these mansions; but all things have a Castle Rackrent air of neglect, and dreary careless untidiness, with which the dirty bare-footed negro servants are in excellent keeping. Occasionally a huge pair of dazzling shirt gills, out of which a black visage grins as out of some vast white paper cornet, adorns the sable footman of the establishment, but unfortunately without at all necessarily indicating any downward prolongation of the garment; and the perfect tulip bed of a head handkerchief with which the female attendants of these 'great families' love to bedizen themselves, frequently stands them instead of every other most indispensable article of female attire. As for my shopping, the goods or rather 'bads,' at which I used to grumble, in your village emporium at Lenox, are what may be termed 'first rate,' both in excellence and elegance, compared with the vile products of every sort which we wretched southerners are expected to accept as the conveniences of life in exchange for current coin of the realm. I regret to say, moreover, that all these infamous articles are Yankee made--expressly for this market, where every species of _thing_ (to use the most general term I can think of), from list shoes to pianofortes, is procured from the North--almost always New England, utterly worthless of its kind, and dearer than the most perfect specimens of the same articles would be anywhere else. The incredible variety and ludicrous combinations of goods to be met with in one of these southern shops beats the stock of your village omnium-gatherum hollow to be sure, one class of articles, and that probably the most in demand here, is not sold over any counter in Massachussetts--cow-hides, and man-traps, of which a large assortment enters necessarily into the furniture of every southern shop. In passing to-day along the deep sand road, calling itself the street of Darien, my notice was attracted by an extremely handsome and intelligent-looking poodle, standing by a little wizen-looking knife-grinder, whose features were evidently European, though he was nearly as black as a negro who, strange to say, was discoursing with him in very tolerable French. The impulse of curiosity led me to accost the man at the grindstone, when his companion immediately made off. The itinerant artisan was from Aix in Provence; think of wandering thence to Darien in Georgia! I asked him about the negro who was talking to him; he said he knew nothing of him, but that he was a slave belonging to somebody in the town. And upon my expressing surprise at his having left his own beautiful and pleasant country for this dreary distant region, he answered, with a shrug and a smile, 'Oui, madame, c'est vrai; c'est un joli pays, mais dans ce pays-là, quand un homme n'a rien, c'est rien pour toujours.' A property which many no doubt have come hither, like the little French knife-grinder, to increase, without succeeding in the struggle much better than he appeared to have done. * * * * * Dear E----, Having made a fresh and, as I thought, more promising purchase of fishing-tackle, Jack and I betook ourselves to the river, and succeeded in securing some immense cat-fish, of which, to tell you the truth, I am most horribly afraid when I have caught them. The dexterity necessary for taking them off the hook so as to avoid the spikes on their backs, and the spikes on each side of their gills, the former having to be pressed down, and the two others pressed up, before you can get any purchase on the slimy beast (for it is smooth skinned and without scales, to add to the difficulty)--these conditions, I say, make the catching of cat-fish questionable sport. Then too, they hiss, and spit, and swear at one, and are altogether devilish in their aspect and demeanour; nor are they good for food, except, as Jack with much humility said this morning, for coloured folks--'Good for coloured folks, missis; me 'spect not good enough for white people.' That 'spect, meaning _ex_pect, has sometimes a possible meaning of _sus_pect, which would give the sentence in which it occurs a very humorous turn, and I always take the benefit of that interpretation. After exhausting the charms of our occupation, finding that cat-fish were likely to be our principal haul, I left the river and went my rounds to the hospitals. On my way I encountered two batches of small black fry, Hannah's children and poor Psyche's children, looking really as neat and tidy as children of the bettermost class of artisans among ourselves. These people are so quick and so imitative that it would be the easiest thing in the world to improve their physical condition by appealing to their emulative propensities. Their passion for what is _genteel_ might be used most advantageously in the same direction; and indeed, I think it would be difficult to find people who offered such a fair purchase by so many of their characteristics to the hand of the reformer. Returning from the hospital I was accosted by poor old Teresa, the wretched negress who had complained to me so grievously of her back being broken by hard work and child-bearing. She was in a dreadful state of excitement, which she partly presently communicated to me, because she said Mr. O---- had ordered her to be flogged for having complained to me as she did. It seems to me that I have come down here to be tortured, for this punishing these wretched creatures for crying out to me for help is really converting me into a source of increased misery to them. It is almost more than I can endure to hear these horrid stories of lashings inflicted because I have been invoked; and though I dare say Mr. ----, thanks to my passionate appeals to him, gives me little credit for prudence or self-command, I have some, and I exercise it too when I listen to such tales as these with my teeth set fast and my lips closed. Whatever I may do to the master, I hold my tongue to the slaves, and I wonder how I do it. In the afternoon I rowed with Mr. ---- to another island in the broad waters of the Altamaha, called Tunno's Island, to return the visit of a certain Dr. T----, the proprietor of the island, named after him, as our rice swamp is after Major ----. I here saw growing in the open air the most beautiful gardinias I ever beheld; the branches were as high and as thick as the largest clumps of Kalmia, that grow in your woods, but whereas the tough, stringy, fibrous branches of these gives them a straggling appearance, these magnificent masses of dark shiny glossy green leaves were quite compact; and I cannot conceive anything lovelier or more delightful than they would be starred all over with their thick-leaved cream-white odoriferous blossoms. In the course of our visit a discussion arose as to the credibility of any negro assertion, though, indeed, that could hardly be called a discussion that was simply a chorus of assenting opinions. No negro was to be believed on any occasion or any subject. No doubt they are habitual liars, for they are slaves, but there are some thrice honourable exceptions who, being slaves, are yet not liars; and certainly the vice results much more from the circumstances in which they are placed than from any natural tendency to untruth in their case. The truth is that they are always considered as false and deceitful, and it is very seldom that any special investigation of the facts of any particular case is resorted to in their behalf. They are always prejudged on their supposed general characteristics, and never judged after the fact on the merit of any special instance. A question which was discussed in the real sense of the term, was that of ploughing the land instead of having it turned with the spade or hoe. I listened to this with great interest, for Jack and I had had some talk upon this subject, which began in his ardently expressed wish that massa would allow his land to be ploughed, and his despairing conclusion that he never would, ''cause horses more costly to keep than coloured folks,' and ploughing, therefore, dearer than hoeing or digging. I had ventured to suggest to Mr. ----- the possibility of ploughing some of the fields on the island, and his reply was that the whole land was too moist and too much interrupted with the huge masses of the Cypress yam roots, which would turn the share of any plough. Yet there is land belonging to our neighbour Mr. G----, on the other side of the river, where the conditions of the soil must be precisely the same, and yet which is being ploughed before our faces. On Mr. ----'s adjacent plantation the plough is also used extensively and successfully. On my return to our own island I visited another of the hospitals, and the settlements to which it belonged. The condition of these places and of their inhabitants is, of course, the same all over the plantation, and if I were to describe them I should but weary you with a repetition of identical phenomena: filthy, wretched, almost naked, always bare-legged and bare-footed children; negligent, ignorant, wretched mothers, whose apparent indifference to the plight of their offspring, and utter incapacity to alter it, are the inevitable result of their slavery. It is hopeless to attempt to reform their habits or improve their condition while the women are condemned to field labour; nor is it possible to overestimate the bad moral effect of the system as regards the women entailing this enforced separation from their children and neglect of all the cares and duties of mother, nurse, and even house-wife, which are all merged in the mere physical toil of a human hoeing machine. It seems to me too--but upon this point I cannot, of course, judge as well as the persons accustomed to and acquainted with the physical capacities of their slaves--that the labour is not judiciously distributed in many cases; at least, not as far as the women are concerned. It is true that every able-bodied woman is made the most of in being driven a-field as long as under all and any circumstances she is able to wield a hoe; but on the other hand, stout, hale, hearty girls and boys, of from eight to twelve and older, are allowed to lounge about filthy and idle, with no pretence of an occupation but what they call 'tend baby,' i.e. see to the life and limbs of the little slave infants, to whose mothers, working in distant fields, they carry them during the day to be suckled, and for the rest of the time leave them to crawl and kick in the filthy cabins or on the broiling sand which surrounds them, in which industry, excellent enough for the poor babies, these big lazy youths and lasses emulate them. Again, I find many women who have borne from five to ten children rated as workers, precisely as young women in the prime of their strength who have had none; this seems a cruel carelessness. To be sure, while the women are pregnant their task is diminished, and this is one of the many indirect inducements held out to reckless propagation, which has a sort of premium offered to it in the consideration of less work and more food, counterbalanced by none of the sacred responsibilities which hallow and ennoble the relation of parent and child; in short, as their lives are for the most part those of mere animals, their increase is literally mere animal breeding, to which every encouragement is given, for it adds to the master's live stock, and the value of his estate. * * * * * Dear E----. To-day, I have the pleasure of announcing to you a variety of improvements about to be made in the infirmary of the island. There is to be a third story--a mere loft indeed--added to the buildings, but by affording more room for the least distressing cases of sickness to be drafted off into, it will leave the ground-floor and room above it comparatively free for the most miserable of these unfortunates. To my unspeakable satisfaction these destitute apartments are to be furnished with bedsteads, mattresses, pillows, and blankets; and I feel a little comforted for the many heart-aches my life here inflicts upon me: at least some of my twinges will have wrought this poor alleviation of their wretchedness for the slaves, when prostrated by disease or pain. I had hardly time to return from the hospital home this morning before one of the most tremendous storms I ever saw burst over the island. Your northern hills, with their solemn pine woods, and fresh streams and lakes, telling of a cold rather than a warm climate, always seem to me as if undergoing some strange and unnatural visitation, when one of your heavy summer thunder-storms bursts over them. Snow and frost, hail and, above all, wind, trailing rain clouds and brilliant northern lights, are your appropriate sky phenomena; here, thunder and lightning seem as if they might have been invented. Even in winter (remember, we are now in February) they appear neither astonishing nor unseasonable, and I should think in summer (but Heaven defend me from ever making good my supposition) lightning must be as familiar to these sweltering lands and slimy waters as sunlight itself. The afternoon cleared off most beautifully, and Jack and I went out on the river to catch what might be caught. Jack's joyful excitement was extreme at my announcing to him the fact that Mr. ---- had consented to try ploughing on some of the driest portions of the island instead of the slow and laborious process of hoeing the fields; this is a disinterested exultation on his part, for at any rate as long as I am here, he will certainly be nothing but 'my boy Jack,' and I should think after my departure will never be degraded to the rank of a field-hand or common labourer. Indeed the delicacy of his health, to which his slight slender figure and languid face bear witness, and which was one reason of his appointment to the eminence of being 'my slave,' would, I should think, prevent the poor fellow's ever being a very robust or useful working animal. On my return from the river I had a long and painful conversation with Mr. ---- upon the subject of the flogging which had been inflicted on the wretched Teresa. These discussions are terrible: they throw me into perfect agonies of distress for the slaves, whose position is utterly hopeless; for myself, whose intervention in their behalf sometimes seems to me worse than useless; for Mr. ----, whose share in this horrible system fills me by turns with indignation and pity. But, after all, what can he do? how can he help it all? Moreover, born and bred in America, how should he care or wish to help it? and of course he does not; and I am in despair that he does not: et voilà, it is a happy and hopeful plight for us both. He maintained that there had been neither hardship nor injustice in the case of Teresa's flogging; and that, moreover, she had not been flogged at all for complaining to me, but simply because her allotted task was not done at the appointed time. Of course this was the result of her having come to appeal to me, instead of going to her labour; and as she knew perfectly well the penalty she was incurring, he maintained that there was neither hardship nor injustice in the case; the whole thing was a regularly established law, with which all the slaves were perfectly well acquainted; and this case was no exception whatever. The circumstance of my being on the island could not of course be allowed to overthrow the whole system of discipline established to secure the labour and obedience of the slaves; and if they chose to try experiments as to that fact, they and I must take the consequences. At the end of the day, the driver of the gang to which Teresa belongs reported her work not done, and Mr. O---- ordered him to give her the usual number of stripes; which order the driver of course obeyed, without knowing how Teresa had employed her time instead of hoeing. But Mr. O---- knew well enough, for the wretched woman told me that she had herself told him she should appeal to me about her weakness and suffering and inability to do the work exacted from her. He did not, however, think proper to exceed in her punishment the usual number of stripes allotted to the non-performance of the appointed daily task, and Mr. ---- pronounced the whole transaction perfectly satisfactory and _en règle_. The common drivers are limited in their powers of chastisement, not being allowed to administer more than a certain number of lashes to their fellow slaves. Head man Frank, as he is called, has alone the privilege of exceeding this limit; and the overseer's latitude of infliction is only curtailed by the necessity of avoiding injury to life or limb. The master's irresponsible power has no such bound. When I was thus silenced on the particular case under discussion, I resorted in my distress and indignation to the abstract question, as I never can refrain from doing; and to Mr. ----'s assertion of the justice of poor Teresa's punishment, I retorted the manifest injustice of unpaid and enforced labour; the brutal inhumanity of allowing a man to strip and lash a woman, the mother of ten children; to exact from her toil which was to maintain in luxury two idle young men, the owners of the plantation. I said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly or humane man. Mr. ---- said he thought it was _disagreeable_, and left me to my reflections with that concession. My letter has been interrupted for the last three days; by nothing special, however. My occupations and interests here of course know no change; but Mr. ---- has been anxious for a little while past that we should go down to St. Simon's, the cotton plantation. We shall suffer less from the heat, which I am beginning to find oppressive on this swamp island; and he himself wished to visit that part of his property, whither he had not yet been since our arrival in Georgia. So the day before yesterday he departed to make the necessary arrangements for our removal thither; and my time in the meanwhile has been taken up in fitting him out for his departure. In the morning Jack and I took our usual paddle, and having the tackle on board, tried fishing. I was absorbed in many sad and serious considerations, and wonderful to relate (for you know ---- how keen an angler I am), had lost all consciousness of my occupation, until after I know not how long a time elapsing without the shadow of a nibble, I was recalled to a most ludicrous perception of my ill-success by Jack's sudden observation, 'Missis, fishing berry good fun when um fish bite.' This settled the fishing for that morning, and I let Jack paddle me down the broad turbid stream, endeavouring to answer in the most comprehensible manner to his keen but utterly undeveloped intellects the innumerable questions with which he plied me about Philadelphia, about England, about the Atlantic, &c. He dilated much upon the charms of St. Simon's, to which he appeared very glad that we were going; and among other items of description mentioned, what I was very glad to hear, that it was a beautiful place for riding, and that I should be able to indulge to my heart's content in my favourite exercise, from which I have, of course, been utterly debarred in this small dykeland of ours. He insinuated more than once his hope and desire that he might be allowed to accompany me, but as I knew nothing at all about his capacity for equestrian exercises, or any of the arrangements that might or might not interfere with such a plan, I was discreetly silent, and took no notice of his most comically turned hints on the subject. In our row we started a quantity of wild duck, and he told me that there was a great deal of game at St. Simon's, but that the people did not contrive to catch much, though they laid traps constantly for it. Of course their possessing firearms is quite out of the question; but this abundance of what must be to them such especially desirable prey, makes the fact a great hardship. I almost wonder they don't learn to shoot like savages with bows and arrows, but these would be weapons, and equally forbidden them. In the afternoon I saw Mr. ---- off for St. Simon's; it is fifteen miles lower down the river, and a large island at the very mouth of the Altamaha. The boat he went in was a large, broad, rather heavy, though well-built craft, by no means as swift or elegant as the narrow eight-oared long boat in which he generally takes his walks on the water, but well adapted for the traffic between the two plantations, where it serves the purpose of a sort of omnibus or stage-coach for the transfer of the people from one to the other, and of a baggage waggon or cart for the conveyance of all sorts of household goods, chattels, and necessaries. Mr. ---- sat in the middle of a perfect chaos of such freight; and as the boat pushed off, and the steersman took her into the stream, the men at the oars set up a chorus, which they continued to chaunt in unison with each other, and in time with their stroke, till the voices and oars were heard no more from the distance. I believe I have mentioned to you before the peculiar characteristics of this veritable negro minstrelsy--how they all sing in unison, having never, it appears, attempted or heard anything like part-singing. Their voices seem oftener tenor than any other quality, and the tune and time they keep something quite wonderful; such truth of intonation and accent would make almost any music agreeable. That which I have heard these people sing is often plaintive and pretty, but almost always has some resemblance to tunes with which they must have become acquainted through the instrumentality of white men; their overseers or masters whistling Scotch or Irish airs, of which they have produced by ear these _rifacciamenti_. The note for note reproduction of 'Ah! vous dirai-je, maman?' in one of the most popular of the so-called Negro melodies with which all America and England are familiar, is an example of this very transparent plagiarism; and the tune with which Mr. ----'s rowers started him down the Altamaha, as I stood at the steps to see him off, was a very distinct descendant of 'Coming through the Rye.' The words, however, were astonishingly primitive, especially the first line, which, when it burst from their eight throats in high unison, sent me into fits of laughter. Jenny shake her toe at me, Jenny gone away; Jenny shake her toe at me, Jenny gone away. Hurrah! Miss Susy, oh! Jenny gone away; Hurrah! Miss Susy, oh! Jenny gone away. What the obnoxious Jenny meant by shaking her toe, whether defiance or mere departure, I never could ascertain, but her going away was an unmistakable subject of satisfaction; and the pause made on the last 'oh!' before the final announcement of her departure, had really a good deal of dramatic and musical effect. Except the extemporaneous chaunts in our honour, of which I have written to you before, I have never heard the negroes on Mr. ----'s plantation sing any words that could be said to have any sense. To one, an extremely pretty, plaintive, and original air, there was but one line, which was repeated with a sort of wailing chorus-- Oh! my massa told me, there's no grass in Georgia. Upon enquiring the meaning of which, I was told it was supposed to be the lamentation of a slave from one of the more northerly states, Virginia or Carolina, where the labour of hoeing the weeds, or grass as they call it, is not nearly so severe as here, in the rice and cotton lands of Georgia. Another very pretty and pathetic tune began with words that seemed to promise something sentimental-- Fare you well, and good-bye, oh, oh! I'm goin' away to leave you, oh, oh! but immediately went off into nonsense verses about gentlemen in the parlour drinking wine and cordial, and ladies in the drawing-room drinking tea and coffee, &c. I have heard that many of the masters and overseers on these plantations prohibit melancholy tunes or words, and encourage nothing but cheerful music and senseless words, deprecating the effect of sadder strains upon the slaves, whose peculiar musical sensibility might be expected to make them especially excitable by any songs of a plaintive character, and having any reference to their particular hardships. If it is true, I think it a judicious precaution enough--these poor slaves are just the sort of people over whom a popular musical appeal to their feelings and passions would have an immense power. In the evening, Mr. ----'s departure left me to the pleasures of an uninterrupted _tête-à-tête_ with his crosseyed overseer, and I endeavoured, as I generally do, to atone by my conversibleness and civility for the additional trouble which, no doubt, all my outlandish ways and notions are causing the worthy man. So suggestive (to use the new-fangled jargon about books) a woman as myself is, I suspect, an intolerable nuisance in these parts; and poor Mr. O---- cannot very well desire Mr. ---- to send me away, however much he may wish that he would; so that figuratively, as well as literally, I fear the worthy master _me voit d'un mauvais oeil_, as the French say. I asked him several questions about some of the slaves who had managed to learn to read, and by what means they had been able to do so. As teaching them is strictly prohibited by the laws, they who instructed them, and such of them as acquired the knowledge, must have been not a little determined and persevering. This was my view of the case, of course, and of course it was not the overseer's. I asked him if many of Mr. ----'s slaves could read. He said 'No; very few, he was happy to say, but those few were just so many too many.' 'Why, had he observed any insubordination in those who did?' And I reminded him of Cooper London, the methodist preacher, whose performance of the burial service had struck me so much some time ago--to whose exemplary conduct and character there is but one concurrent testimony all over the plantation. No; he had no special complaint to bring against the lettered members of his subject community, but he spoke by anticipation. Every step they take towards intelligence and enlightenment lessens the probability of their acquiescing in their condition. Their condition is not to be changed--ergo, they had better not learn to read; a very succinct and satisfactory argument as far as it goes, no doubt, and one to which I had not a word to reply, at any rate, to Mr. O----, as I did not feel called upon to discuss the abstract justice or equity of the matter with him; indeed he, to a certain degree, gave up that part of the position, starting with 'I don't say whether it's right or wrong;' and in all conversations that I have had with the southerners upon these subjects, whether out of civility to what may be supposed to be an Englishwoman's prejudices, or a forlorn respect to their own convictions, the question of the fundamental wrong of slavery is generally admitted, or at any rate certainly never denied. That part of the subject is summarily dismissed, and all its other aspects vindicated, excused, and even lauded, with untiring eloquence. Of course, of the abstract question I could judge before I came here, but I confess I had not the remotest idea how absolutely my observation of every detail of the system, as a practical iniquity, would go to confirm my opinion of its abomination. Mr. O---- went on to condemn and utterly denounce all the preaching and teaching and moral instruction upon religious subjects, which people in the south, pressed upon by northern opinion, are endeavouring to give their slaves. The kinder and the more cowardly masters are anxious to evade the charge of keeping their negroes in brutish ignorance, and so they crumble what they suppose and hope may prove a little harmless, religious enlightenment, which, mixed up with much religious authority on the subject of submission and fidelity to masters, they trust their slaves may swallow without its doing them any harm--i.e., that they may be better Christians and better slaves--and so, indeed, no doubt they are; but it is a very dangerous experiment, and from Mr. O----'s point of view I quite agree with him. The letting out of water, or the letting in of light, in infinitesimal quantities, is not always easy. The half-wicked of the earth are the leaks through which wickedness is eventually swamped; compromises forerun absolute surrender in most matters, and fools and cowards are, in such cases, the instruments of Providence for their own defeat. Mr. O---- stated unequivocally his opinion that free labour would be more profitable on the plantations than the work of slaves, which, being compulsory, was of the worst possible quality and the smallest possible quantity; then the charge of them before and after they are able to work is onerous, the cost of feeding and clothing them very considerable, and upon the whole he, a southern overseer, pronounced himself decidedly in favour of free labour, upon grounds of expediency. Having at the beginning of our conversation declined discussing the moral aspect of slavery, evidently not thinking that position tenable, I thought I had every right to consider Mr. ----'s slave-driver a decided abolitionist. I had been anxious to enlist his sympathies on behalf of my extreme desire, to have some sort of garden, but did not succeed in inspiring him with my enthusiasm on the subject; he said there was but one garden that he knew of in the whole neighbourhood of Darien, and that was our neighbour, old Mr. C----'s, a Scotchman on St. Simon's. I remembered the splendid gardinias on Tunno's Island, and referred to them as a proof of the material for ornamental gardening. He laughed, and said rice and cotton crops were the ornamental gardening principally admired by the planters, and that, to the best of his belief, there was not another decent kitchen or flower garden in the State, but the one he had mentioned. The next day after this conversation, I walked with my horticultural zeal much damped, and wandered along the dyke by the broad river, looking at some pretty peach trees in blossom, and thinking what a curse of utter stagnation this slavery produces, and how intolerable to me a life passed within its stifling influence would be. Think of peach trees in blossom in the middle of February! It does seem cruel, with such a sun and soil, to be told that a garden is worth nobody's while here; however, Mr. O---- said that he believed the wife of the former overseer had made a 'sort of a garden' at St. Simon's. We shall see 'what sort' it turns out to be. While I was standing on the dyke, ruminating above the river, I saw a beautiful white bird of the crane species alight not far from me. I do not think a little knowledge of natural history would diminish the surprise and admiration with which I regard the, to me, unwonted specimens of animal existence that I encounter every day, and of which I do not even know the names. Ignorance is an odious thing. The birds here are especially beautiful, I think. I saw one the other day, of what species of course I do not know, of a warm and rich brown, with a scarlet hood and crest--a lovely creature, about the size of your northern robin, but more elegantly shaped. This morning, instead of my usual visit to the infirmary, I went to look at the work and workers in the threshing mill--all was going on actively and orderly under the superintendence of head-man Frank, with whom, and a very sagacious clever fellow, who manages the steam power of the mill, and is honourably distinguished as Engineer Ned, I had a small chat. There is one among various drawbacks to the comfort and pleasure of our intercourse with these coloured 'men and brethren,' at least in their slave condition, which certainly exercises my fortitude not a little,--the swarms of fleas that cohabit with these sable dependants of ours are--well--incredible; moreover they are by no means the only or most objectionable companions one borrows from them, and I never go to the infirmary, where I not unfrequently am requested to look at very dirty limbs and bodies in very dirty draperies, without coming away with a strong inclination to throw myself into the water, and my clothes into the fire, which last would be expensive. I do not suppose that these hateful consequences of dirt and disorder are worse here than among the poor and neglected human creatures who swarm in the lower parts of European cities; but my call to visit them has never been such as that which constrains me to go daily among these poor people, and although on one or two occasions I have penetrated into fearfully foul and filthy abodes of misery in London, I have never rendered the same personal services to their inhabitants that I do to Mr. ----'s slaves, and so have not incurred the same amount of entomological inconvenience. After leaving the mill, I prolonged my walk, and came, for the first time, upon one of the 'gangs,' as they are called, in full field work. Upon my appearance and approach there was a momentary suspension of labour, and the usual chorus of screams and ejaculations of welcome, affection, and infinite desires for infinite small indulgences. I was afraid to stop their work, not feeling at all sure that urging a conversation with me would be accepted as any excuse for an uncompleted task, or avert the fatal infliction of the usual award of stripes; so I hurried off and left them to their hoeing. On my way home I was encountered by London, our Methodist preacher, who accosted me with a request for a prayer-book and Bible, and expressed his regret at hearing that we were so soon going to St. Simon's. I promised him his holy books, and asked him how he had learned to read, but found it impossible to get him to tell me. I wonder if he thought he should be putting his teacher, whoever he was, in danger of the penalty of the law against instructing the slaves, if he told me who he was; it was impossible to make him do so, so that, besides his other good qualities, he appears to have that most unusual one of all in an uneducated person--discretion. He certainly is a most remarkable man. After parting with him, I was assailed by a small gang of children, clamouring for the indulgence of some meat, which they besought me to give them. Animal food is only allowed to certain of the harder working men, hedgers and ditchers, and to them only occasionally, and in very moderate rations. My small cannibals clamoured round me for flesh, as if I had had a butcher's cart in my pocket, till I began to laugh and then to run, and away they came, like a pack of little black wolves, at my heels, shrieking, 'Missis, you gib me piece meat, missis, you gib me meat,' till I got home. At the door I found another petitioner, a young woman named Maria, who brought a fine child in her arms, and demanded a present of a piece of flannel. Upon my asking her who her husband was, she replied, without much hesitation, that she did not possess any such appendage. I gave another look at her bonny baby, and went into the house to get the flannel for her. I afterwards heard from Mr. ---- that she and two other girls of her age, about seventeen, were the only instances on the island of women with illegitimate children. After I had been in the house a little while, I was summoned out again to receive the petition of certain poor women in the family-way to have their work lightened. I was, of course, obliged to tell them that I could not interfere in the matter, that their master was away, and that, when he came back, they must present their request to him: they said they had already begged 'massa,' and he had refused, and they thought, perhaps, if 'missis' begged 'massa' for them, he would lighten their task. Poor 'missis,' poor 'massa,' poor woman, that I am to have such prayers addressed to me! I had to tell them, that if they had already spoken to their master, I was afraid my doing so would be of no use, but that when he came back I would try; so, choking with crying, I turned away from them, and re-entered the house, to the chorus of 'Oh, thank you, missis! God bless you, missis!' E----, I think an improvement might be made upon that caricature published a short time ago, called the 'Chivalry of the South.' I think an elegant young Carolinian, or Georgian gentleman, whip in hand, driving a gang of 'lusty women,' as they are called here, would be a pretty version of the 'Chivalry of the South'--a little coarse, I am afraid you will say. Oh! quite horribly coarse, but then so true--a great matter in works of art, which, now-a-days, appear to be thought excellent only in proportion to their lack of ideal elevation. That would be a subject, and a treatment of it, which could not be accused of imaginative exaggeration, at any rate. In the evening I mentioned the petitions of these poor women to Mr. O----, thinking that perhaps he had the power to lessen their tasks. He seemed evidently annoyed at their having appealed to me; said that their work was not a bit too much for them, and that constantly they were _shamming_ themselves in the family-way, in order to obtain a diminution of their labour. Poor creatures! I suppose some of them do; but again, it must be a hard matter for those who do not, not to obtain the mitigation of their toil which their condition requires; for their assertion and their evidence are never received--they can't be believed, even if they were upon oath, say their white taskmasters; why? because they have never been taught the obligations of an oath, to whom made, or wherefore binding; and they are punished both directly and indirectly for their moral ignorance, as if it were a natural and incorrigible element of their character, instead of the inevitable result of their miserable position. The oath of any and every scoundrelly fellow with a white skin is received, but not that of such a man as Frank, Ned, old Jacob, or Cooper London. * * * * * Dearest E----. I think it right to begin this letter with an account of a most prosperous fishing expedition Jack and I achieved the other morning. It is true we still occasionally drew up huge cat-fish, with their detestable beards and spikes, but we also captivated some magnificent perch, and the Altamaha perch are worth one's while both to catch and to eat. On a visit I had to make on the mainland, the same day, I saw a tiny strip of garden ground, rescued from the sandy road, called the street, perfectly filled with hyacinths, double jonquils, and snowdrops, a charming nosegay for February 11. After leaving the boat on my return home, I encountered a curious creature walking all sideways, a small cross between a lobster and a crab. One of the negroes to whom I applied for its denomination informed me that it was a land crab, with which general description of this very peculiar multipede you must be satisfied, for I can tell you no more. I went a little further, as the nursery rhyme says, and met with a snake, and not being able to determine, at ignorant first sight, whether it was a malignant serpent or not, I ingloriously took to my heels, and came home on the full run. It is the first of these exceedingly displeasing animals I have encountered here; but Jack, for my consolation, tells me that they abound on St. Simon's, whither we are going--'rattlesnakes, and all kinds,' says he, with an affluence of promise in his tone that is quite agreeable. Rattlesnakes will be quite enough of a treat, without the vague horrors that may be comprised in the additional 'all kinds.' Jack's account of the game on St. Simon's is really quite tantalising to me, who cannot carry a gun any more than if I were a slave. He says that partridges, woodcocks, snipe, and wild duck abound, so that, at any rate, our table ought to be well supplied. His account of the bears that are still to be found in the woods of the mainland, is not so pleasant, though he says they do no harm to the people, if they are not meddled with, but that they steal the corn from the fields when it is ripe, and actually swim the river to commit their depredations on the islands. It seems difficult to believe this, looking at this wide and heavy stream--though, to be sure, I did once see a young horse swim across the St. Lawrence, between Montreal and Quebec; a feat of natation which much enlarged my belief in what quadrupeds may accomplish when they have no choice between swimming and sinking. You cannot imagine how great a triumph the virtue next to godliness is making under my auspices and a judicious system of small bribery. I can hardly stir now without being assailed with cries of 'Missis, missis me mind chile, me bery clean,' or the additional gratifying fact, 'and chile too, him bery clean.' This virtue, however, if painful to the practisers, as no doubt it is, is expensive, too, to me, and I shall have to try some moral influence equivalent in value to a cent current coin of the realm. What a poor chance, indeed, the poor abstract idea runs! however, it is really a comfort to see the poor little woolly heads, now in most instances stripped of their additional filthy artificial envelopes. In my afternoon's row to-day I passed a huge dead alligator, lying half in and half out of the muddy slime of the river bank--a most hideous object it was, and I was glad to turn my eyes to the beautiful surface of the mid stream, all burnished with sunset glories, and broken with the vivacious gambols of a school of porpoises. It is curious, I think, that these creatures should come fifteen miles from the sea to enliven the waters round our little rice swamp. While rowing this evening, I was led by my conversation with Jack to some of those reflections with which my mind is naturally incessantly filled here, but which I am obliged to be very careful not to give any utterance to. The testimony of no negro is received in a southern court of law, and the reason commonly adduced for this is, that the state of ignorance in which the negroes are necessarily kept, renders them incapable of comprehending the obligations of an oath, and yet with an inconsistency which might be said to border on effrontery, these same people are admitted to the most holy sacrament of the Church, and are certainly thereby supposed to be capable of assuming the highest Christian obligations, and the entire fulfilment of God's commandments--including, of course, the duty of speaking the truth at all times. As we were proceeding down the river, we met the flat, as it is called, a huge sort of clumsy boat, more like a raft than any other species of craft, coming up from St. Simon's with its usual swarthy freight of Mr. ----'s dependants from that place. I made Jack turn our canoe, because the universal outcries and exclamations very distinctly intimated that I should be expected to be at home to receive the homage of this cargo of 'massa's people.' No sooner, indeed, had I disembarked and reached the house, than a dark cloud of black life filled the piazza and swarmed up the steps, and I had to shake hands, like a popular president, till my arm ached at the shoulder-joint. When this tribe had dispersed itself, a very old woman with a remarkably intelligent, nice-looking young girl, came forward and claimed my attention. The old woman, who must, I think, by her appearance, have been near seventy, had been one of the house servants on St. Simon's Island in Major ----'s time, and retained a certain dignified courtesy and respectfulness of manner which is by no means an uncommon attribute of the better class of slaves, whose intercourse with their masters, while tending to expand their intelligence, cultivates, at the same time, the natural turn for good manners which is, I think, a distinctive peculiarity of negroes, if not in the kingdom of Dahomey, certainly in the United States of America. If it can be for a moment attributed to the beneficent influence of slavery on their natures (and I think slaveowners are quite likely to imagine so), it is curious enough that there is hardly any alloy whatever of cringing servility, or even humility, in the good manners of the blacks, but a rather courtly and affable condescension which, combined with their affection for, and misapplication of, long words, produces an exceedingly comical effect. Old-house Molly, after congratulating herself, with many thanks to heaven, for having spared her to see 'massa's' wife and children, drew forward her young companion, and informed me she was one of her numerous grandchildren. The damsel, ycleped Louisa, made rather a shame-faced obeisance, and her old grandmother went on to inform me that she had only lately been forgiven by the overseer for an attempt to run away from the plantation. I enquired the cause of her desire to do so--a 'thrashing' she had got for an unfinished task--'but lor, missis,' explained the old woman, 'taint no use--what use nigger run away?--de swamp all round; dey get in dar, an dey starve to def, or de snakes eat em up--massa's nigger, dey don't neber run away;' and if the good lady's account of their prospects in doing so is correct (which, substituting biting for eating, on the part of the snakes, it undoubtedly is), one does not see exactly what particular merit the institution of slavery as practised on Mr. ----'s plantation derives from the fact that his 'nigger don't neber run away.' After dismissing Molly and her grand-daughter, I was about to re-enter the house, when I was stopped by Betty, head-man Frank's wife, who came with a petition that she might be baptised. As usual with all requests involving anything more than an immediate physical indulgence, I promised to refer the matter to Mr. ----, but expressed some surprise that Betty, now by no means a young woman, should have postponed a ceremony which the religious among the slaves are apt to attach much importance to. She told me she had more than once applied for this permission to Massa K---- (the former overseer), but had never been able to obtain it, but that now she thought she would ask 'de missis.'[2] [Footnote 2: Of this woman's life on the plantation, I subsequently learned the following circumstances:--She was the wife of head-man Frank, the most intelligent and trustworthy of Mr. ----'s slaves; the head driver--second in command to the overseer, and indeed second to none during the pestilential season, when the rice swamps cannot with impunity be inhabited by any white man, and when, therefore, the whole force employed in its cultivation on the island remains entirely under his authority and control. His wife--a tidy, trim, intelligent woman, with a pretty figure, but a decidedly negro face--was taken from him by the overseer left in charge of the plantation by the Messrs. ----, the all-efficient and all-satisfactory Mr. K----, and she had a son by him, whose straight features and diluted colour, no less than his troublesome, discontented and insubmissive disposition, bear witness to his Yankee descent. I do not know how long Mr. K----'s occupation of Frank's wife continued, or how the latter endured the wrong done to him. When I visited the island, Betty was again living with her husband--a grave, sad, thoughtful-looking man, whose admirable moral and mental qualities were extolled to me by no worse a judge of such matters than Mr. K---- himself, during the few days he spent with Mr. ----, while we were on the plantation. This outrage upon this man's rights was perfectly notorious among all the slaves; and his hopeful offspring, Renty, alluding very unmistakably to his superior birth on one occasion when he applied for permission to have a gun, observed that, though the people in general on the plantation were not allowed firearms, he thought he might, _on account of his colour_, and added that he thought Mr. K---- might have left him his. This precious sample of the mode in which the vices of the whites procure the intellectual progress of the blacks to their own endangerment, was, as you will easily believe, a significant chapter to me in the black history of oppression which is laid before my eyes in this place.] Yesterday afternoon I received a visit from the wife of our neighbour Dr. T----. As usual, she exclaimed at my good fortune in having a white woman with my children when she saw M----, and, as usual, went on to expatiate on the utter impossibility of finding a trustworthy nurse anywhere in the South, to whom your children could be safely confided for a day or even an hour; as usual too, the causes of this unworthiness or incapacity for a confidential servant's occupation were ignored, and the fact laid to the natural defects of the negro race. I am sick and weary of this cruel and ignorant folly. This afternoon I went out to refresh myself with a row on the broad Altamaha and the conversation of my slave Jack, which is, I assure you, by no means devoid of interest of various kinds, pathetic and humorous. I do not know that Jack's scientific information is the most valuable in the world, and I sometimes marvel with perhaps unjust incredulity at the facts in natural history which he imparts to me; for instance, to-day he told me as we rowed past certain mud islands, very like children's mud puddings on a rather larger scale than usual, that they were inaccessible, and that it would be quite impossible to land on one of them even for the shortest time. Not understanding why people who did not mind being up to their knees in mud should not land there if they pleased, I demurred to his assertion, when he followed it up by assuring me that there were what he called sand-sinks under the mud, and that whatever was placed on the surface would not only sink through the mud, but also into a mysterious quicksand of unknown depth and extent below it. This may be true, but sounds very strange, although I remember that the frequent occurrence of large patches of quicksand was found to be one of the principal impediments in the way of the canal speculators at Brunswick. I did not, however, hear that these sinks, as Jack called them, were found below a thick stratum of heavy mud. In remonstrating with him upon the want of decent cleanliness generally among the people, and citing to him one among the many evils resulting from it, the intolerable quantity of fleas in all the houses, he met me full with another fact in natural history which, if it be fact and not fiction, certainly gave him the best of the argument: he declared, with the utmost vehemence, that the sand of the pine woods on the mainland across the river literally swarmed with fleas--that in the uninhabited places the sand itself was full of them, and that so far from being a result of human habitation, they were found in less numbers round the negro huts on the mainland than in the lonely woods around them. The ploughing is at length fairly inaugurated, and there is a regular jubilee among the negroes thereat. After discoursing fluently on the improvements likely to result from the measure, Jack wound up by saying he had been afraid it would not be tried on account of the greater scarcity, and consequently greater value, of horses over men in these parts--a modest and slave-like conclusion. * * * * * Dearest E----. I walked up to-day, _February 14th_, to see that land of promise the ploughed field: it did not look to me anything like as heavy soil as the cold wet sour stiff clay I have seen turned up in some of the swampy fields round Lenox; and as for the cypress roots which were urged as so serious an impediment, they are not much more frequent, and certainly not as resisting, as the granite knees and elbows that stick out through the scanty covering of the said clay, which mother earth allows herself as sole garment for her old bones in many a Berkshire patch of corn. After my survey, as I walked home, I came upon a gang of lusty women, as the phrase is here for women in the family-way; they were engaged in burning stubble, and I was nearly choked while receiving the multitudinous complaints and compliments with which they overwhelmed me. After leaving them, I wandered along the river side on the dyke homeward, rejoicing in the buds and green things putting forth their tender shoots on every spray, in the early bees and even the less amiable wasps busy in the sunshine with flowers--(weeds I suppose they should be called), already opening their sweet temptations to them, and giving the earth a spring aspect, such as it does not wear with you in Massachusetts till late in May. In the afternoon I took my accustomed row: there had been a tremendous ebb tide, the consequence of which was to lay bare portions of the banks which I had not seen before. The cypress roots form a most extraordinary mass of intertwined wood-work, so closely matted and joined together, that the separate roots, in spite of their individual peculiarities, appeared only like divisions of a continuous body; they presented the appearance in several places of jagged pieces of splintered rock, with their huge teeth pointing downward into the water. Their decay is so slow that the protection they afford the soft spongy banks against the action of the water, is likely to be prolonged until the gathering and deposit of successive layers of alluvium will remove them from the margin of which they are now most useful supports. On my return home, I was met by a child (as she seemed to me) carrying a baby, in whose behalf she begged me for some clothes. On making some enquiry, I was amazed to find that the child was her own: she said she was married and fourteen years old, she looked much younger even than that, poor creature. Her mother, who came up while I was talking to her, said she did not herself know the girl's age;--how horridly brutish it all did seem, to be sure. The spring is already here with her hands full of flowers. I do not know who planted some straggling pyrus japonica near the house, but it is blessing my eyes with a hundred little flame-like buds, which will presently burst into a blaze; there are clumps of narcissus roots sending up sheaves of ivory blossoms, and I actually found a monthly rose in bloom on the sunny side of one of the dykes; what a delight they are in the slovenly desolation of this abode of mine! what a garden one might have on the banks of these dykes, with the least amount of trouble and care! In the afternoon I rowed over to Darien, and there procuring the most miserable vehicle calling itself a carriage that I had ever seen (the dirtiest and shabbiest London hackney-coach were a chariot of splendour and ease to it), we drove some distance into the sandy wilderness that surrounds the little town, to pay a visit to some of the resident gentry who had called upon us. The road was a deep wearisome sandy track, stretching wearisomely into the wearisome pine forest--a species of wilderness more oppressive a thousand times to the senses and imagination than any extent of monotonous prairie, barren steppe, or boundless desert can be; for the horizon there at least invites and detains the eye, suggesting beyond its limit possible change; the lights and shadows and enchanting colours of the sky afford some variety in their movement and change, and the reflections of their tints; while in this hideous and apparently boundless pine barren, you are deprived alike of horizon before you and heaven above you: nor sun nor star appears through the thick covert, which, in the shabby dinginess of its dark blue-green expanse, looks like a gigantic cotton umbrella stretched immeasurably over you. It is true that over that sandy soil a dark green cotton umbrella is a very welcome protection from the sun, and when the wind makes music in the tall pine-tops and refreshment in the air beneath them. The comparison may seem ungrateful enough: to-day, however, there was neither sound above nor motion below, and the heat was perfectly stifling, as we ploughed our way through the resinous-smelling sand solitudes. From time to time a thicket of exquisite evergreen shrubs broke the monotonous lines of the countless pine shafts rising round us, and still more welcome were the golden garlands of the exquisite wild jasmine, hanging, drooping, trailing, clinging, climbing through the dreary forest, joining to the warm aromatic smell of the fir trees a delicious fragrance as of acres of heliotrope in bloom. I wonder if this delightful creature is very difficult of cultivation out of its natural region; I never remember to have seen it, at least not in blossom, in any collection of plants in the Northern States or in Europe, where it certainly deserves an honourable place for its grace, beauty, and fragrance. On our drive we passed occasionally a tattered man or woman, whose yellow mud complexion, straight features, and singularly sinister countenance bespoke an entirely different race from the negro population in the midst of which they lived. These are the so-called pine-landers of Georgia, I suppose the most degraded race of human beings claiming an Anglo-Saxon origin that can be found on the face of the earth,--filthy, lazy, ignorant, brutal, proud, penniless savages, without one of the nobler attributes which have been found occasionally allied to the vices of savage nature. They own no slaves, for they are almost without exception abjectly poor; they will not work, for that, as they conceive, would reduce them to an equality with the abhorred negroes; they squat, and steal, and starve, on the outskirts of this lowest of all civilised societies, and their countenances bear witness to the squalor of their condition and the utter degradation of their natures. To the crime of slavery, though they have no profitable part or lot in it, they are fiercely accessory, because it is the barrier that divides the black and white races, at the foot of which they lie wallowing in unspeakable degradation, but immensely proud of the base freedom which still separates them from the lash-driven tillers of the soil.[3] [Footnote 3: Of such is the white family so wonderfully described in Mrs. Stowe's 'Dred'--whose only slave brings up the orphaned children of his masters with such exquisitely grotesque and pathetic tenderness. From such the conscription which has fed the Southern army in the deplorable civil conflict now raging in America has drawn its rank and file. Better 'food for powder' the world could scarcely supply. Fierce and idle, with hardly one of the necessities or amenities that belong to civilised existence, they are hardy endurers of hardship, and reckless to a savage degree of the value of life, whether their own or others. The soldier's pay, received or promised, exceeds in amount per month anything they ever earned before per year, and the war they wage is one that enlists all their proud and ferocious instincts. It is against the Yankees--the northern sons of free soil, free toil and intelligence, the hated abolitionists whose success would sweep away slavery and reduce the southern white men to work--no wonder they are ready to fight to the death against this detestable alternative, especially as they look to victory as the certain promotion of the refuse of the 'poor white' population of the South, of which they are one and all members, to the coveted dignity of slaveholders.] The house at which our call was paid was set down in the midst of the Pine Barren with half-obliterated roads and paths round it, suggesting that it might be visited and was inhabited. It was large and not unhandsome, though curiously dilapidated considering that people were actually living in it; certain remnants of carving on the cornices and paint on the panels bore witness to some former stage of existence less neglected and deteriorated than the present. The old lady mistress of this most forlorn abode amiably enquired if so much exercise did not fatigue me; at first I thought she imagined I must have walked through the pine forest all the way from Darien, but she explained that she considered the drive quite an effort; and it is by no means uncommon to hear people in America talk of being dragged over bad roads in uneasy carriages as exercise, showing how very little they know the meaning of the word, and how completely they identify it with the idea of mere painful fatigue, instead of pleasurable exertion. Returning home, my reflections ran much on the possible future destiny of these vast tracts of sandy soil. It seems to me that the ground capable of supporting the evergreen growth, the luxuriant gardenia bushes, the bay myrtle, the beautiful magnolia grandiflora, and the powerful and gnarled live oaks, that find their sustenance in this earth and under this same sky as the fir trees, must be convertible into a prosperous habitation for other valuable vegetable growth that would add immensely to the wealth of the Southern States. The orange thrives and bears profusely along this part of the sea-board of Georgia; and I cannot conceive that the olive, the mulberry, and the vine might not be acclimated and successfully and profitably cultivated throughout the whole of this region, the swampy lower lands alone remaining as rice plantations. The produce of these already exceeds in value that of the once gold-growing cotton-fields, and I cannot help believing that silk and wine and oil may, and will, hereafter, become, with the present solitary cotton crop, joint possessors of all this now but half-reclaimed wilderness. The soil all round Sorrento is very nearly as light and dry and sandy as this, and vineyards and olive orchards and cocooneries are part of the agricultural wealth there. Our neighbour Mr. C---- has successfully cultivated the date-palm in his garden on the edge of the sea, at St. Simon's, and certainly the ilex, orange, and myrtle abounding here suggest natural affinities between the Italian soil and climate and this. I must tell you something funny which occurred yesterday at dinner, which will give you some idea of the strange mode in which we live. We have now not unfrequently had mutton at table, the flavour of which is quite excellent, as indeed it well may be, for it is raised under all the conditions of the famous _Pré salé_ that the French gourmands especially prize, and which are reproduced on our side of the channel in the peculiar qualities of our best South Down. The mutton we have here grazes on the short sweet grass at St. Simon's within sea-salt influence, and is some of the very best I have ever tasted, but it is invariably brought to table in lumps or chunks of no particular shape or size, and in which it is utterly impossible to recognise any part of the quadruped creature sheep with which my eyes have hitherto become acquainted. Eat it, one may and does thankfully; name it, one could not by any possibility. Having submitted to this for some time, I at length enquired why a decent usual Christian joint of mutton--leg, shoulder, or saddle--was never brought to table: the reply was that the _carpenter_ always cut up the meat, and that he did not know how to do it otherwise than by dividing it into so many thick square pieces, and proceeding to chop it up on that principle; and the consequence of this is that _four lumps_ or _chunks_ are all that a whole sheep ever furnishes to our table by this artistic and economical process. This morning I have been to the hospital to see a poor woman who has just enriched Mr. ---- by _borning_ him another slave. The poor little piccaninny, as they called it, was not one bit uglier than white babies under similarly novel circumstances, except in one particular, that it had a head of hair like a trunk, in spite of which I had all the pains in the world in persuading its mother not to put a cap upon it. I bribed her finally, by the promise of a pair of socks instead, with which I undertook to endow her child, and, moreover, actually prevailed upon her to forego the usual swaddling and swathing process, and let her poor baby be dressed at its first entrance into life as I assured her both mine had been. On leaving the hospital I visited the huts all along the street, confiscating sundry refractory baby caps among shrieks and outcries, partly of laughter and partly of real ignorant alarm for the consequence. I think if this infatuation for hot head-dresses continues, I shall make shaving the children's heads the only condition upon which they shall be allowed to wear caps. On Sunday morning I went over to Darien to church. Our people's church was closed, the minister having gone to officiate elsewhere. With laudable liberality I walked into the opposite church of a different, not to say opposite sect: here I heard a sermon, the opening of which will, probably, edify you as it did me, viz., that if a man was _just in all his dealings_ he was apt to think he did all that could be required of him,--and no wide mistake either one might suppose. But is it not wonderful how such words can be spoken here, with the most absolute unconsciousness of their tremendous bearing upon the existence of every slaveholder who hears them? Certainly the use that is second nature has made the awful injustice in the daily practice of which these people live, a thing of which they are as little aware as you or I of the atmospheric air that we inhale each time we breathe. The bulk of the congregation in this church was white. The negroes are, of course, not allowed to mix with their masters in the house of God, and there is no special place set apart for them. Occasionally one or two are to be seen in the corners of the singing gallery, but any more open pollution by them of their owners' church could not be tolerated. Mr. ----'s people have petitioned very vehemently that he would build a church for them on the island. I doubt, however, his allowing them such a luxury as a place of worship all to themselves. Such a privilege might not be well thought of by the neighbouring planters; indeed, it is almost what one might call a whity-brown idea, dangerous, demoralising, inflammatory, incendiary. I should not wonder if I should be suspected of being the chief corner-stone of it, and yet I am not: it is an old hope and entreaty of these poor people, which am afraid they are not destined to see fulfilled. * * * * * Dearest E----. Passing the rice-mill this morning in my walk, I went in to look at the machinery, the large steam mortars which shell the rice, and which work under the intelligent and reliable supervision of Engineer Ned. I was much surprised, in the course of conversation with him this morning, to find how much older a man he was than he appeared. Indeed his youthful appearance had hitherto puzzled me much in accounting for his very superior intelligence and the important duties confided to him. He is, however, a man upwards of forty years old, although he looks ten years younger. He attributed his own uncommonly youthful appearance to the fact of his never having done what he called field work, or been exposed, as the common gang negroes are, to the hardships of their all but brutish existence. He said his former master had brought him up very kindly, and he had learnt to tend the engines, and had never been put to any other work, but he said this was not the case with his poor wife. He wished she was as well off as he was, but she had to work in the rice-fields and was 'most broke in two' with labour and exposure and hard work while with child, and hard work just directly after child-bearing; he said she could hardly crawl, and he urged me very much to speak a kind word for her to massa. She was almost all the time in hospital, and he thought she could not live long. Now, E----, here is another instance of the horrible injustice of this system of slavery. In my country or in yours, a man endowed with sufficient knowledge and capacity to be an engineer would, of course, be in the receipt of considerable wages; his wife would, together with himself, reap the advantages of his ability, and share the well-being his labour earned; he would be able to procure for her comfort in sickness or in health, and beyond the necessary household work, which the wives of most artisans are inured to, she would have no labour to encounter; in case of sickness even these would be alleviated by the assistance of some stout girl of all work, or kindly neighbour, and the tidy parlour or snug bed-room would be her retreat if unequal to the daily duties of her own kitchen. Think of such a lot compared with that of the head engineer of Mr. ----'s plantation, whose sole wages are his coarse food and raiment and miserable hovel, and whose wife, covered with one filthy garment of ragged texture and dingy colour, bare-footed and bare-headed, is daily driven a-field to labour with aching pain-racked joints, under the lash of a driver, or lies languishing on the earthen floor of the dismal plantation hospital in a condition of utter physical destitution and degradation such as the most miserable dwelling of the poorest inhabitant of your free Northern villages never beheld the like of. Think of the rows of tidy tiny houses in the long suburbs of Boston and Philadelphia, inhabited by artisans of just the same grade as this poor Ned, with their white doors and steps, their hydrants of inexhaustible fresh flowing water, the innumerable appliances for decent comfort of their cheerful rooms, the gay wardrobe of the wife, her cotton prints for daily use, her silk for Sunday church-going; the careful comfort of the children's clothing, the books and newspapers in the little parlour, the daily district school, the weekly parish church: imagine if you can--but you are happy that you cannot--the contrast between such an existence and that of the best mechanic on a Southern plantation. Did you ever read (but I am sure you never did, and no more did I), an epic poem on fresh-water fish? Well, such a one was once written, I have forgotten by whom, but assuredly the heroine of it ought to have been the Altamaha shad--a delicate creature, so superior to the animal you northerners devour with greedy thankfulness when the spring sends back their finny drove to your colder waters, that one would not suppose these were of the same family, instead of being, as they really are, precisely the same fish. Certainly the mud of the Altamaha must have some most peculiar virtues; and, by the by, I have never anywhere tasted such delicious tea as that which we make with this same turbid stream, the water of which duly filtered, of course, has some peculiar softness which affects the tea (and it is the same we always use) in a most curious and agreeable manner. On my return to the house I found a terrible disturbance in consequence of the disappearance from under cook John's safe keeping, of a ham Mr. ----- had committed to his charge. There was no doubt whatever that the unfortunate culinary slave had made away in some inscrutable manner with the joint intended for our table: the very lies he told about it were so curiously shallow, child-like, and transparent, that while they confirmed the fact of his theft quite as much if not more than an absolute confession would have done, they provoked at once my pity and my irrepressible mirth to a most painful degree. Mr. ---- was in a state of towering anger and indignation, and besides a flogging sentenced the unhappy cook to degradation from his high and dignified position (and, alas! all its sweets of comparatively easy labour and good living from the remains of our table) to the hard toil, coarse scanty fare, and despised position of a common field hand. I suppose some punishment was inevitably necessary in such a plain case of deliberate theft as this, but, nevertheless, my whole soul revolts at the injustice of visiting upon these poor wretches a moral darkness which all possible means are taken to increase and perpetuate. In speaking of this and the whole circumstance of John's trespass to Mr. ---- in the evening, I observed that the ignorance of these poor people ought to screen them from punishment. He replied, that they knew well enough what was right and wrong. I asked how they could be expected to know it? He replied, by the means of Cooper London, and the religious instruction he gave them. So that, after all, the appeal is to be made against themselves to that moral and religious instruction which is withheld from them, and which, if they obtain it at all, is the result of their own unaided and unencouraged exertion. The more I hear, and see, and learn, and ponder the whole of this system of slavery, the more impossible I find it to conceive how its practisers and upholders are to justify their deeds before the tribunal of their own conscience or God's law. It is too dreadful to have those whom we love accomplices to this wickedness; it is too intolerable to find myself an involuntary accomplice to it. I had a conversation the next morning with Abraham, cook John's brother, upon the subject of his brother's theft; and only think of the _slave_ saying that 'this action had brought disgrace upon the family.' Does not that sound very like the very best sort of free pride, the pride of character, the honourable pride of honesty, integrity, and fidelity? But this was not all, for this same Abraham, a clever carpenter and much valued _hand_ on the estate, went on, in answer to my questions, to tell me such a story that I declare to you I felt as if I could have howled with helpless indignation and grief when he departed and went to resume his work. His grandfather had been an old slave in Darien, extremely clever as a carpenter, and so highly valued for his skill and good character that his master allowed him to purchase his liberty by money which he earned by working for himself at odd times, when his task work was over. I asked Abraham what sum his grandfather paid for his freedom: he said he did not know, but he supposed a large one, because of his being a 'skilled carpenter,' and so a peculiarly valuable chattel. I presume, from what I remember Major M---- and Dr. H---- saying on the subject of the market value of negroes in Charleston and Savannah, that such a man in the prime of life would have been worth from 1,500 to 2,000 dollars. However, whatever the man paid for his ransom, by his grandson's account, fourteen years after he became free, when he died, he had again amassed money to the amount of 700 dollars, which he left among his wife and children, the former being a slave on Major ----'s estate, where the latter remained by virtue of that fact slaves also. So this man not only bought his own freedom at a cost of _at least_ 1,000 dollars, but left a little fortune of 700 more at his death: and then we are told of the universal idleness, thriftlessness, incorrigible sloth, and brutish incapacity of this inferior race of creatures, whose only fitting and Heaven-appointed condition is that of beasts of burthen to the whites. I do not believe the whole low white population of the state of Georgia could furnish such an instance of energy, industry, and thrift, as the amassing of this laborious little fortune by this poor slave, who left, nevertheless, his children and grandchildren to the lot from which he had so heroically ransomed himself: and yet the white men with whom I live and talk tell me, day after day, that there is neither cruelty nor injustice in this accursed system. About half-past five I went to walk on the dykes, and met a gang of the field-hands going to the tide-mill, as the water served them for working then. I believe I have told you that besides the great steam mill there is this, which is dependent on the rise and fall of the tide in the river, and where the people are therefore obliged to work by day or night at whatever time the water serves to impel the wheel. They greeted me with their usual profusion of exclamations, petitions, and benedictions, and I parted from them to come and oversee my slave Jack, for whom I had bought a spade, and to whom I had entrusted the task of turning up some ground for me, in which I wanted to establish some of the Narcissus and other flowers I had remarked about the ground and the house. Jack, however, was a worse digger than Adam could have been when first he turned his hand to it, after his expulsion from Paradise. I think I could have managed a spade with infinitely more efficiency, or rather less incapacity, than he displayed. Upon my expressing my amazement at his performance, he said the people here never used spades, but performed all their agricultural operations with the hoe. Their soil must be very light and their agriculture very superficial, I should think. However, I was obliged to terminate Jack's spooning process and abandon, for the present, my hopes of a flower-bed created by his industry, being called into the house to receive the return visit of old Mrs. S----. As usual, the appearance, health, vigour, and good management of the children were the theme of wondering admiration; as usual, my possession of a white nurse the theme of envious congratulation; as usual, I had to hear the habitual senseless complaints of the inefficiency of coloured nurses. If you are half as tired of the sameness and stupidity of the conversation of my southern female neighbours as I am, I pity you; but not as much as I pity them for the stupid sameness of their most vapid existence, which would deaden any amount of intelligence, obliterate any amount of instruction, and render torpid and stagnant any amount of natural energy and vivacity. I would rather die--rather a thousand times--than live the lives of these Georgia planters' wives and daughters. Mrs. S---- had brought me some of the delicious wild jasmine that festoons her dreary pine-wood drive, and most grateful I was for the presence of the sweet wild nosegay in my highly unornamental residence. When my visitors had left me, I took the refreshment of a row over to Darien; and as we had the tide against us coming back, the process was not so refreshing for the rowers. The evening was so extremely beautiful, and the rising of the moon so exquisite, that instead of retreating to the house when I reached the island, I got into the Dolphin, my special canoe, and made Jack paddle me down the great river to meet the Lily, which was coming back from St. Simon's with Mr. ---- who has been preparing all things for our advent thither. My letter has been interrupted, dear E----, by the breaking up of our residence on the rice plantation, and our arrival at St. Simon's, whence I now address you. We came down yesterday afternoon, and I was thankful enough of the fifteen miles' row to rest in, from the labour of leave-taking, with which the whole morning was taken up, and which, combined with packing and preparing all our own personalities and those of the children, was no sinecure. At every moment one or other of the poor people rushed in upon me to bid me good-bye; many of their farewells were grotesque enough, some were pathetic, and all of them made me very sad. Poor people! how little I have done, how little I can do for them. I had a long talk with that interesting and excellent man, Cooper London, who made an earnest petition that I would send him from the North a lot of Bibles and Prayer Books; certainly the science of reading must be much more common among the negroes than I supposed, or London must look to a marvellously increased spread of the same hereafter. There is, however, considerable reticence upon this point, or else the poor slaves must consider the mere possession of the holy books as good for salvation and as effectual for spiritual assistance to those who cannot as to those who can comprehend them. Since the news of our departure has spread, I have had repeated eager entreaties for presents of Bibles and Prayer Books, and to my demurrer of 'But you can't read; can you?' have generally received for answer a reluctant acknowledgement of ignorance, which, however, did not always convince me of the fact. In my farewell conversation with London I found it impossible to get him to tell me how he had learned to read: the penalties for teaching them are very severe, heavy fines, increasing in amount for the first and second offence, and imprisonment for the third.[4] Such a man as London is certainly aware that to teach the slaves to read is an illegal act, and he may have been unwilling to betray whoever had been his preceptor even to my knowledge; at any rate, I got no answers from him but 'Well, missis, me learn; well, missis, me try,' and finally, 'Well, missis, me 'spose Heaven help me;' to which I could only reply, that I knew Heaven was helpful, but very hardly to the tune of teaching folks their letters. I got no satisfaction. Old Jacob, the father of Abraham, cook John, and poor Psyche's husband, took a most solemn and sad leave of me, saying he did not expect ever to see me again. I could not exactly tell why, because, though he is aged and infirm, the fifteen miles between the rice plantation and St. Simon's do not appear so insuperable a barrier between the inhabitants of the two places, which I represented to him as a suggestion of consolation. [Footnote 4: These laws have been greatly increased in stringency and severity since these letters were written, and _death_ has not been reckoned too heavy a penalty for those who should venture to offer these unfortunate people the fruit of that forbidden tree of knowledge, their access to which has appeared to their owners the crowning danger of their own precarious existence among their terrible dependents.] I have worked my fingers nearly off with making, for the last day or two, innumerable rolls of coarse little baby clothes, layettes for the use of small new-born slaves; M---- diligently cutting and shaping, and I as diligently stitching. We leave a good supply for the hospitals, and for the individual clients besides who have besieged me ever since my departure became imminent. Our voyage from the rice to the cotton plantation was performed in the Lily, which looked like a soldier's baggage wagon and an emigrant transport combined. Our crew consisted of eight men. Forward in the bow were miscellaneous live stock, pots, pans, household furniture, kitchen utensils, and an indescribable variety of heterogeneous necessaries. Enthroned upon beds, bedding, tables, and other chattels, sat that poor pretty chattel Psyche, with her small chattel children. Midships sat the two tiny free women, and myself, and in the stern Mr. ---- steering. And 'all in the blue unclouded weather' we rowed down the huge stream, the men keeping time and tune to their oars with extemporaneous chaunts of adieu to the rice island and its denizens. Among other poetical and musical comments on our departure recurred the assertion, as a sort of burthen, that we were 'parted in body, but not in mind,' from those we left behind. Having relieved one set of sentiments by this reflection, they very wisely betook themselves to the consideration of the blessings that remained to them, and performed a spirited chaunt in honour of Psyche and our bouncing black housemaid, Mary. At the end of a fifteen miles' row we entered one among a perfect labyrinth of arms or branches, into which the broad river ravels like a fringe as it reaches the sea, a dismal navigation along a dismal tract, called 'Five Pound,' through a narrow cut or channel of water divided from the main stream. The conch was sounded, as at our arrival at the rice island, and we made our descent on the famous long staple cotton island of St. Simon's, where we presently took up our abode in what had all the appearance of an old half-decayed rattling farm-house. This morning, Sunday, I peeped round its immediate neighbourhood, and saw, to my inexpressible delight, within hail, some noble-looking evergreen oaks, and close to the house itself a tiny would-be garden, a plot of ground with one or two peach-trees in full blossom, tufts of silver narcissus and jonquils, a quantity of violets and an exquisite myrtle bush; wherefore I said my prayers with especial gratitude. * * * * * Dearest E----. The fame of my peculiar requisitions has, I find, preceded me here, for the babies that have been presented to my admiring notice have all been without caps; also, however, without socks to their opposite little wretched extremities, but that does not signify quite so much. The people, too, that I saw yesterday were remarkably clean and tidy; to be sure, it was Sunday. The whole day, till quite late in the afternoon, the house was surrounded by a crowd of our poor dependents, waiting to catch a glimpse of Mr. ----, myself, or the children; and until, from sheer weariness, I was obliged to shut the doors, an incessant stream poured in and out, whose various modes of salutation, greeting, and welcome were more grotesque and pathetic at the same time than anything you can imagine. In the afternoon I walked with ---- to see a new house in process of erection, which, when it is finished, is to be the overseer's abode and our residence during any future visits we may pay to the estate. I was horrified at the dismal site selected, and the hideous house erected on it. It is true that the central position is the principal consideration in the overseer's location, but both position and building seemed to me to witness to an inveterate love of ugliness, or at any rate a deadness to every desire of beauty, nothing short of horrible; and for my own part, I think it is intolerable to have to leave the point where the waters meet, and where a few fine picturesque old trees are scattered about, to come to this place even for the very short time I am ever likely to spend here. In every direction our view, as we returned, was bounded by thickets of the most beautiful and various evergreen growth, which beckoned my inexperience most irresistibly. ---- said, to my unutterable horror, that they were perfectly infested with rattlesnakes, and I must on no account go 'beating about the bush' in these latitudes, as the game I should be likely to start would be anything but agreeable to me. We saw quantities of wild plum-trees all silvery with blossoms, and in lovely companionship and contrast with them a beautiful shrub covered with delicate pink bloom like flowering peach-trees. After that life in the rice-swamp, where the Altamaha kept looking over the dyke at me all the time as I sat in the house writing or working, it is pleasant to be on _terra firma_ again, and to know that the river is at the conventional, not to say natural, depth below its banks, and under my feet instead of over my head. The two plantations are of diametrically opposite dispositions--that is all swamp, and this all sand; or to speak more accurately, that is all swamp, and all of this that is not swamp, is sand. On our way home we met a most extraordinary creature of the negro kind, who, coming towards us, halted, and caused us to halt straight in the middle of the path, when bending himself down till his hands almost touched the ground, he exclaimed to Mr. ----, 'Massa ----, your most obedient;' and then, with a kick and a flourish altogether indescribable, he drew to the side of the path to let us pass, which we did perfectly shouting with laughter, which broke out again every time we looked at each other and stopped to take breath--so sudden, grotesque, uncouth, and yet dexterous a gambado never came into the brain or out of the limbs of anything but a 'niggar.' I observed, among the numerous groups that we passed or met, a much larger proportion of mulattoes than at the rice-island; upon asking Mr. ---- why this was so, he said that there no white person could land without his or the overseer's permission, whereas on St. Simon's, which is a large island containing several plantations belonging to different owners, of course the number of whites, both residing on and visiting the place, was much greater, and the opportunity for intercourse between the blacks and whites much more frequent. While we were still on this subject, a horrid-looking filthy woman met us with a little child in her arms, a very light mulatto, whose extraordinary resemblance to Driver Bran (one of the officials, who had been duly presented to me on my arrival, and who was himself a mulatto) struck me directly. I pointed it out to Mr. ----, who merely answered, 'Very likely his child.' 'And,' said I, 'did you never remark that Driver Bran is the exact image of Mr. K----?' 'Very likely his brother,' was the reply: all which rather unpleasant state of relationships seemed accepted as such a complete matter of course, that I felt rather uncomfortable, and said no more about who was like who, but came to certain conclusions in my own mind as to a young lad who had been among our morning visitors, and whose extremely light colour and straight handsome features and striking resemblance to Mr. K----, had suggested suspicions of a rather unpleasant nature to me, and whose sole-acknowledged parent was a very black negress of the name of Minda. I have no doubt at all, now, that he is another son of Mr. K----, Mr. ----'s paragon overseer. As we drew near the house again we were gradually joined by such a numerous escort of Mr. ----'s slaves that it was almost with difficulty we could walk along the path. They buzzed, and hummed, and swarmed round us like flies, and the heat and dust consequent upon this friendly companionship were a most unpleasant addition to the labour of walking in the sandy soil through which we were ploughing. I was not sorry when we entered the house and left our bodyguard outside. In the evening I looked over the plan of the delightful residence I had visited in the morning, and could not help suggesting to Mr. ---- the advantage to be gained in point of picturesqueness by merely turning the house round. It is but a wooden frame one after all, and your folks 'down east' would think no more of inviting it to face about than if it was built of cards; but the fact is, here nothing signifies except the cotton crop, and whether one's nose is in a swamp and one's eyes in a sand-heap, is of no consequence whatever either to oneself (if oneself was not I) or anyone else. I find here an immense proportion of old people; the work and the climate of the rice plantation require the strongest of the able-bodied men and women of the estate. The cotton crop is no longer by any means as paramount in value as it used to be, and the climate, soil, and labour of St. Simon's are better adapted to old, young, and feeble cultivators, than the swamp fields of the rice-island. I wonder if I ever told you of the enormous decrease in value of this same famous sea-island long staple cotton. When Major ----, Mr. ----'s grandfather, first sent the produce of this plantation where we now are to England, it was of so fine a quality that it used to be quoted by itself in the Liverpool cotton market, and was then worth half a guinea a pound; it is now not worth a shilling a pound. This was told me by the gentleman in Liverpool who has been factor for this estate for thirty years. Such a decrease as this in the value of one's crop and the steady increase at the same time of a slave population, now numbering between 700 and 800 bodies to clothe and house,--mouths to feed, while the land is being exhausted by the careless and wasteful nature of the agriculture itself, suggests a pretty serious prospect of declining prosperity; and, indeed, unless these Georgia cotton planters can command more land or lay abundant capital (which they have not, being almost all of them over head and ears in debt) upon that which has already spent its virgin vigour, it is a very obvious thing that they must all very soon be eaten up by their own property. The rice plantations are a great thing to fall back upon under these circumstances, and the rice crop is now quite as valuable, if not more so, than the cotton one on Mr. ----'s estates, once so famous and prosperous through the latter. I find any number of all but superannuated men and women here, whose tales of the former grandeur of the estate and family are like things one reads of in novels. One old woman who crawled to see me, and could hardly lift her poor bowed head high enough to look in my face, had been in Major ----'s establishment in Philadelphia, and told with infinite pride of having waited upon his daughters and grand-daughters, Mr. ----'s sisters. Yet here she is, flung by like an old rag, crippled with age and disease, living, or rather dying by slow degrees in a miserable hovel, such as no decent household servant would at the North, I suppose, ever set their foot in. The poor old creature complained bitterly to me of all her ailments and all her wants. I can do little, alas! for either. I had a visit from another tottering old crone called Dorcas, who all but went on her knees as she wrung and kissed my hands; with her came my friend Molly, the grandmother of the poor runaway girl, Louisa, whose story I wrote you some little time ago. I had to hear it all over again, it being the newest event evidently in Molly's life; and it ended as before with the highly reasonable proposition: 'Me say, missis, what for massa's niggar run away? Snake eat em up, or dey starve to def in a swamp. Massa's niggars dey don't nebbar run away.' If I was 'massa's niggars,' I 'spose' I shouldn't run away either, with only those alternatives, but when I look at these wretches and at the sea that rolls round this island, and think how near the English West Indies and freedom are, it gives me a pretty severe twinge at the heart. * * * * * Dearest E----. I am afraid my letters must be becoming very wearisome to you, for if, as the copy-book runs, 'variety is charming,' they certainly cannot be so, unless monotony is also charming, a thing not impossible to some minds, but of which the copy-book makes no mention. But what will you? as the French say; my days are no more different from one another than peas in a dish, or sands on the shore: 'tis a pleasant enough life to live, for one who, like myself, has a passion for dulness, but it affords small matter for epistolary correspondence. I suppose it is the surfeit of excitement that I had in my youth that has made a life of quiet monotony so extremely agreeable to me; it is like stillness after loud noise, twilight after glare, rest after labour. There is enough strangeness too in everything that surrounds me here to interest and excite me agreeably and sufficiently, and I should like the wild savage loneliness of the far away existence extremely, if it were not for the one small item of 'the slavery.' I had a curious visit this morning from half a dozen of the women, among whom were Driver Morris's wife and Venus (a hideous old goddess she was, to be sure), Driver Bran's mother. They came especially to see the children, who are always eagerly asked for, and hugely admired by their sooty dependents. These poor women went into ecstasies over the little white piccaninnies, and were loud and profuse in their expressions of gratitude to massa ---- for getting married and having children, a matter of thankfulness which, though it always makes me laugh very much, is a most serious one to them; for the continuance of the family keeps the estate and slaves from the hammer, and the poor wretches, besides seeing in every new child born to their owners a security against their own banishment from the only home they know, and separation from all ties of kindred and habit, and dispersion to distant plantations, not unnaturally look for a milder rule from masters who are the children of their fathers' masters. The relation of owner and slave may be expected to lose some of its harsher features, and, no doubt, in some instances, does so, when it is on each side the inheritance of successive generations. And so ----'s slaves laud, and applaud, and thank, and bless him for having married, and endowed their children with two little future mistresses. One of these women, a Diana by name, went down on her knees and uttered in a loud voice a sort of extemporaneous prayer of thanksgiving at our advent, in which the sacred and the profane were most ludicrously mingled; her 'tanks to de good Lord God Almighty that missus had come, what give de poor niggar sugar and flannel,' and dat 'massa ----, him hab brought de missis and de two little misses down among de people,' were really too grotesque; and yet certainly more sincere acts of thanksgiving are not often uttered among the solemn and decorous ones that are offered up to heaven for 'benefits received.' I find the people here much more inclined to talk than those on the rice-island; they have less to do and more leisure, and bestow it very liberally on me; moreover, the poor old women, of whom there are so many turned out to grass here, and of whom I have spoken to you before, though they are past work, are by no means past gossip, and the stories they have to tell of the former government of the estate under old Massa K---- are certainly pretty tremendous illustrations of the merits of slavery as a moral institution. This man, the father of the late owner, Mr. R---- K----, was Major ----'s agent in the management of this property; and a more cruel and unscrupulous one as regards the slaves themselves, whatever he may have been in his dealings with the master, I should think it would be difficult to find, even among the cruel and unscrupulous class to which he belonged. In a conversation with old 'House Molly,' as she is called, to distinguish her from all other Mollies on the estate, she having had the honour of being a servant in Major ----'s house for many years, I asked her if the relation between men and women who are what they call married, i.e., who have agreed to live together as man and wife (the only species of marriage formerly allowed on the estate, I believe now London may read the Marriage Service to them), was considered binding by the people themselves and by the overseer. She said 'not much, formerly,' and that the people couldn't be expected to have much regard to such an engagement, utterly ignored as it was by Mr. K----, whose invariable rule, if he heard of any disagreement between a man and woman calling themselves married, was immediately to bestow them in 'marriage' on other parties, whether they chose it or not, by which summary process the slightest 'incompatibility of temper' received the relief of a divorce more rapid and easy than even Germany could afford, and the estate lost nothing by any prolongation of celibacy on either side. Of course, the misery consequent upon such arbitrary destruction of voluntary and imposition of involuntary ties was nothing to Mr. K----. I was very sorry to hear to-day, that Mr. O----, the overseer at the rice-island, of whom I have made mention to you more than once in my letters, had had one of the men flogged very severely for getting his wife baptised. I was quite unable, from the account I received, to understand what his objection had been to the poor man's desire to make his wife at least a formal Christian; but it does seem dreadful that such an act should be so visited. I almost wish I was back again at the rice-island; for though this is every way the pleasanter residence, I hear so much more that is intolerable of the treatment of the slaves from those I find here, that my life is really made wretched by it. There is not a single natural right that is not taken away from these unfortunate people, and the worst of all is, that their condition does not appear to me, upon further observation of it, to be susceptible of even partial alleviation as long as the fundamental evil, the slavery itself, remains. My letter was interrupted as usual by clamours for my presence at the door, and petitions for sugar, rice, and baby clothes, from a group of women who had done their tasks at three o'clock in the afternoon, and had come to say, 'Ha do missis?' (How do you do?), and beg something on their way to their huts. Observing one among them whose hand was badly maimed, one finger being reduced to a mere stump, she told me it was in consequence of the bite of a rattlesnake, which had attacked and bitten her child, and then struck her as she endeavoured to kill it; her little boy had died, but one of the drivers cut off her finger, and so she had escaped with the loss of that member only. It is yet too early in the season for me to make acquaintance with these delightful animals; but the accounts the negroes give of their abundance is full of agreeable promise for the future. It seems singular, considering how very common they are, that there are not more frequent instances of the slaves being bitten by them; to be sure, they seem to me to have a holy horror of ever setting their feet near either tree or bush, or anywhere but on the open road, and the fields where they labour; and of course the snakes are not so frequent in open and frequented places, as in their proper coverts. The Red Indians are said to use successfully some vegetable cure for the bite, I believe the leaves of the slippery ash or elm; the only infallible remedy, however, is suction, but of this the ignorant negroes are so afraid, that they never can be induced to have recourse to it, being of course immovably persuaded that the poison which is so fatal to the blood, must be equally so to the stomach. They tell me that the cattle wandering into the brakes and bushes are often bitten to death by these deadly creatures; the pigs, whose fat it seems does not accept the venom into its tissues with the same effect, escape unhurt for the most part--so much for the anti-venomous virtue of adipose matter--a consolatory consideration for such of us as are inclined to take on flesh more than we think graceful. _Monday morning, 25th._--This letter has been long on the stocks, dear E----. I have been busy all day, and tired, and lazy in the evening latterly, and, moreover, feel as if such very dull matter was hardly worth sending all the way off to where you are happy to be. However, that is nonsense; I know well enough that you are glad to hear from me, be it what it will, and so I resume my chronicle. Some of my evenings have been spent in reading Mr. Clay's anti-abolition speech, and making notes on it, which I will show you when we meet. What a cruel pity and what a cruel shame it is that such a man should either know no better or do no better for his country than he is doing now! Yesterday I for the first time bethought me of the riding privileges of which Jack used to make such magnificent mention when he was fishing with me at the rice-island; and desiring to visit the remoter parts of the plantation and the other end of the island, I enquired into the resources of the stable. I was told I could have a mare with foal; but I declined adding my weight to what the poor beast already carried, and my only choice then was between one who had just foaled, or a fine stallion used as a plough horse on the plantation. I determined for the latter, and shall probably be handsomely shaken whenever I take my rides abroad. _Tuesday, the 26th._--My dearest E----. I write to you to-day in great depression and distress. I have had a most painful conversation with Mr. ----, who has declined receiving any of the people's petitions through me. Whether he is wearied with the number of these prayers and supplications which he would escape but for me, as they probably would not venture to come so incessantly to him, and I of course feel bound to bring every one confided to me to him; or whether he has been annoyed at the number of pitiful and horrible stories of misery and oppression under the former rule of Mr. K----, which have come to my knowledge since I have been here, and the grief and indignation caused, but which cannot by any means always be done away with, though their expression may be silenced by his angry exclamations of 'Why do you listen to such stuff?' or 'Why do you believe such trash; don't you know the niggers are all d----d liars?' &c. I do not know; but he desired me this morning to bring him no more complaints or requests of any sort, as the people had hitherto had no such advocate, and had done very well without, and I was only kept in an incessant state of excitement with all the falsehoods they 'found they could make me believe.' How well they have done without my advocacy, the conditions which I see with my own eyes even more than their pitiful petitions demonstrate; it is indeed true, that the sufferings of those who come to me for redress, and still more the injustice done to the great majority who cannot, have filled my heart with bitterness and indignation that have overflowed my lips, till, I suppose, ---- is weary of hearing what he has never heard before, the voice of passionate expostulation, and importunate pleading against wrongs that he will not even acknowledge, and for creatures whose common humanity with his own I half think he does not believe;--but I must return to the North, for my condition would be almost worse than theirs--condemned to hear and see so much wretchedness, not only without the means of alleviating it, but without permission even to represent it for alleviation--this is no place for me, since I was not born among slaves, and cannot bear to live among them. Perhaps after all what he says is true: when I am gone they will fall back into the desperate uncomplaining habit of suffering, from which my coming among them, willing to hear and ready to help, has tempted them; he says that bringing their complaints to me, and the sight of my credulous commiseration, only tend to make them discontented and idle, and brings renewed chastisement upon them; and that so, instead of really befriending them, I am only preparing more suffering for them whenever I leave the place, and they can no more cry to me for help. And so I see nothing for it but to go and leave them to their fate; perhaps, too, he is afraid of the mere contagion of freedom which breathes from the very existence of those who are free; my way of speaking to the people, of treating them, of living with them, the appeals I make to their sense of truth, of duty, of self-respect, the infinite compassion and the human consideration I feel for them,--all this of course makes my intercourse with them dangerously suggestive of relations far different from anything they have ever known, and as Mr. O---- once almost hinted to me, my existence among slaves was an element of danger to the 'institution.' If I should go away, the human sympathy that I have felt for them will certainly never come near them again. I was too unhappy to write any more, my dear friend, and you have been spared the rest of my paroxysm, which hereabouts culminated in the blessed refuge of abundant tears. God will provide. He has not forgotten, nor will He forsake these His poor children; and if I may no longer minister to them, they yet are in His hand, who cares for them more and better than I can. Towards the afternoon yesterday, I rowed up the river to the rice-island, by way of refreshment to my spirits, and came back to-day, Wednesday the 27th, through rather a severe storm. Before going to bed last night I finished Mr. Clay's speech, and ground my teeth over it. Before starting this morning I received from head-man Frank a lesson on the various qualities of the various sorts of rice, and should be (at any rate till I forget all he told me, which I 'feel in my bones' will be soon) a competent judge and expert saleswoman. The dead white speck, which shows itself sometimes in rice as it does in teeth, is in the former, as in the latter, a sign of decay; the finest quality of rice is what may be called flinty, clear and unclouded, and a pretty clean sparkling-looking thing it is. I will tell you something curious and pleasant about my row back. The wind was so high and the river so rough when I left the rice-island, that just as I was about to get into the boat I thought it might not be amiss to carry my life-preserver with me, and ran back to the house to fetch it. Having taken that much care for my life, I jumped into the boat, and we pushed off. The fifteen miles' row with a furious wind, and part of the time the tide against us, and the huge broad turbid river broken into a foaming sea of angry waves, was a pretty severe task for the men. They pulled with a will, however, but I had to forego the usual accompaniment of their voices, for the labour was tremendous, especially towards the end of our voyage, where, of course, the nearness of the sea increased the roughness of the water terribly. The men were in great spirits, however (there were eight of them rowing, and one behind was steering); one of them said something which elicited an exclamation of general assent, and I asked what it was; the steerer said they were pleased because there was not another planter's lady in all Georgia who would have gone through the storm all alone with them in a boat; i.e. without the protecting presence of a white man. 'Why,' said I, 'my good fellows, if the boat capsized, or anything happened, I am sure I should have nine chances for my life instead of one;' at this there was one shout of 'So you would, missis! true for dat, missis,' and in great mutual good-humour we reached the landing at Hampton Point. As I walked home I pondered over this compliment of Mr. ----'s slaves to me, and did not feel quite sure that the very absence of the fear which haunts the southern women in their intercourse with these people and prevents them from trusting themselves ever with them out of reach of white companionship and supervision was not one of the circumstances which makes my intercourse with them unsafe and undesirable. The idea of apprehending any mischief from them never yet crossed my brain; and in the perfect confidence with which I go amongst them, they must perceive a curious difference between me and my lady neighbours in these parts; all have expressed unbounded astonishment at my doing so. The spring is fast coming on; and we shall, I suppose, soon leave Georgia. How new and sad a chapter of my life this winter here has been! * * * * * Dear E----. I cannot give way to the bitter impatience I feel at my present position, and come back to the north without leaving my babies; and though I suppose their stay will not in any case be much prolonged in these regions of swamp and slavery, I must, for their sakes, remain where they are, and learn this dreary lesson of human suffering to the end. The record, it seems to me, must be utterly wearisome to you, as the instances themselves I suppose in a given time (thanks to that dreadful reconciler to all that is evil--habit) would become to me. This morning I had a visit from two of the women, Charlotte and Judy, who came to me for help and advice for a complaint, which it really seems to me every other woman on the estate is cursed with, and which is a direct result of the conditions of their existence; the practice of sending women to labour in the fields in the third week after their confinement is a specific for causing this infirmity, and I know no specific for curing it under these circumstances. As soon as these poor things had departed with such comfort as I could give them, and the bandages they especially begged for, three other sable graces introduced themselves, Edie, Louisa, and Diana; the former told me she had had a family of seven children, but had lost them all through 'ill luck,' as she denominated the ignorance and ill treatment which were answerable for the loss of these, as of so many other poor little creatures their fellows. Having dismissed her and Diana with the sugar and rice they came to beg, I detained Louisa, whom I had never seen but in the presence of her old grandmother, whose version of the poor child's escape to, and hiding in the woods, I had a desire to compare with the heroine's own story. She told it very simply, and it was most pathetic. She had not finished her task one day, when she said she felt ill, and unable to do so, and had been severely flogged by Driver Bran, in whose 'gang' she then was. The next day, in spite of this encouragement to labour, she had again been unable to complete her appointed work; and Bran having told her that he'd tie her up and flog her if she did not get it done, she had left the field and run into the swamp. 'Tie you up, Louisa!' said I, 'what is that?' She then described to me that they were fastened up by their wrists to a beam or a branch of a tree, their feet barely touching the ground, so as to allow them no purchase for resistance or evasion of the lash, their clothes turned over their heads, and their backs scored with a leather thong, either by the driver himself, or if he pleases to inflict their punishment by deputy, any of the men he may choose to summon to the office; it might be father, brother, husband, or lover, if the overseer so ordered it. I turned sick, and my blood curdled listening to these details from the slender young slip of a lassie, with her poor piteous face and murmuring pleading voice. 'Oh,' said I, 'Louisa; but the rattlesnakes, the dreadful rattlesnakes in the swamps; were you not afraid of those horrible creatures?' 'Oh, missis,' said the poor child, 'me no tink of dem, me forget all 'bout dem for de fretting.' 'Why did you come home at last?' 'Oh, missis, me starve with hunger, me most dead with hunger before me come back.' 'And were you flogged, Louisa?' said I, with a shudder at what the answer might be. 'No, missis, me go to hospital; me almost dead and sick so long, 'spec Driver Bran him forgot 'bout de flogging.' I am getting perfectly savage over all these doings, E----, and really think I should consider my own throat and those of my children well cut, if some night the people were to take it into their heads to clear off scores in that fashion. The Calibanish wonderment of all my visitors at the exceedingly coarse and simple furniture and rustic means of comfort of my abode is very droll. I have never inhabited any apartment so perfectly devoid of what we should consider the common decencies of life; but to them my rude chintz-covered sofa and common pine-wood table, with its green baize cloth, seem the adornings of a palace; and often in the evening, when my bairns are asleep, and M---- up-stairs keeping watch over them, and I sit writing this daily history for your edification,--the door of the great barn-like room is opened stealthily, and one after another, men and women come trooping silently in, their naked feet falling all but inaudibly on the bare boards as they betake themselves to the hearth, where they squat down on their hams in a circle,--the bright blaze from the huge pine logs, which is the only light of this half of the room, shining on their sooty limbs and faces, and making them look like a ring of ebony idols surrounding my domestic hearth. I have had as many as fourteen at a time squatting silently there for nearly half an hour, watching me writing at the other end of the room. The candles on my table give only light enough for my own occupation, the fire light illuminates the rest of the apartment; and you cannot imagine anything stranger than the effect of all these glassy whites of eyes and grinning white teeth turned towards me, and shining in the flickering light. I very often take no notice of them at all, and they seem perfectly absorbed in contemplating me. My evening dress probably excites their wonder and admiration no less than my rapid and continuous writing, for which they have sometimes expressed compassion, as if they thought it must be more laborious than hoeing; sometimes at the end of my day's journal I look up and say suddenly, 'Well, what do you want?' when each black figure springs up at once, as if moved by machinery, they all answer, 'Me come say ha do (how d'ye do), missis;' and then they troop out as noiselessly as they entered, like a procession of sable dreams, and I go off in search, if possible, of whiter ones. Two days ago I had a visit of great interest to me from several lads from twelve to sixteen years old, who had come to beg me to give them work. To make you understand this you must know, that wishing very much to cut some walks and drives through the very picturesque patches of woodland not far from the house, I announced, through Jack, my desire to give employment in the wood-cutting line, to as many lads as chose, when their unpaid task was done, to come and do some work for me, for which I engaged to pay them. At the risk of producing a most dangerous process of reflection and calculation in their brains, I have persisted in paying what I considered wages to every slave that has been my servant; and these my labourers must, of course, be free to work or no, as they like, and if they work for me must be paid by me. The proposition met with unmingled approbation from my 'gang;' but I think it might be considered dangerously suggestive of the rightful relation between work and wages; in short, very involuntarily no doubt, but, nevertheless, very effectually I am disseminating ideas among Mr. ----'s dependents, the like of which have certainly never before visited their wool-thatched brains. _Friday, March 1._--Last night after writing so much to you I felt weary, and went out into the air to refresh my spirit. The scene just beyond the house was beautiful, the moonlight slept on the broad river which here is almost the sea, and on the masses of foliage of the great southern oaks; the golden stars of German poetry shone in the purple curtains of the night, and the measured rush of the Atlantic unfurling its huge skirts upon the white sands of the beach (the sweetest and most awful lullaby in nature) resounded through the silent air. I have not felt well, and have been much depressed for some days past. I think I should die if I had to live here. This morning, in order not to die yet, I thought I had better take a ride, and accordingly mounted the horse which I told you was one of the equestrian alternatives offered me here; but no sooner did he feel my weight, which, after all, is mere levity and frivolity to him, than he thought proper to rebel, and find the grasshopper a burthen, and rear and otherwise demonstrate his disgust. I have not ridden for a long time now, but Montreal's opposition very presently aroused the Amazon which is both natural and acquired in me, and I made him comprehend that, though I object to slaves, I expect obedient servants; which views of mine being imparted by a due administration of both spur and whip, attended with a judicious combination of coaxing pats on his great crested neck, and endearing commendations of his beauty, produced the desired effect. Montreal accepted me as inevitable, and carried me very wisely and well up the island to another of the slave settlements on the plantation, called Jones's Creek. On my way I passed some magnificent evergreen oaks,[5] and some thickets of exquisite evergreen shrubs, and one or two beautiful sites for a residence, which made me gnash my teeth when I thought of the one we have chosen. To be sure, these charming spots, instead of being conveniently in the middle of the plantation, are at an out of the way end of it, and so hardly eligible for the one quality desired for the overseer's abode, viz. being central. [Footnote 5: The only ilex trees which I have seen comparable in size and beauty with those of the sea-board of Georgia are some to be found in the Roman Campagna, at Passerano, Lunghegna, Castel Fusano, and other of its great princely farms, but especially in the magnificent woody wilderness of Valerano.] All the slaves' huts on St. Simon's are far less solid, comfortable, and habitable than those at the rice-island. I do not know whether the labourer's habitation bespeaks the alteration in the present relative importance of the crops, but certainly the cultivators of the once far-famed long staple sea-island cotton of St. Simon's are far more miserably housed than the rice-raisers of the other plantation. These ruinous shielings, that hardly keep out wind or weather, are deplorable homes for young or aged people, and poor shelters for the hardworking men and women who cultivate the fields in which they stand. Riding home I passed some beautiful woodland with charming pink and white blossoming peach and plum-trees, which seemed to belong to some orchard that had been attempted, and afterwards delivered over to wildness. On enquiry I found that no fruit worth eating was ever gathered from them. What a pity it seems! for in this warm delicious winter climate any and every species of fruit might be cultivated with little pains and to great perfection. As I was cantering along the side of one of the cotton fields I suddenly heard some inarticulate vehement cries, and saw what seemed to be a heap of black limbs tumbling and leaping towards me, renewing the screams at intervals as it approached. I stopped my horse, and the black ball bounded almost into the road before me, and suddenly straightening itself up into a haggard hag of a half-naked negress, exclaimed, with panting eager breathlessness, 'Oh missis, missis! you no hear me cry, you no hear me call. Oh missis! me call, me cry, and me run; make me a gown like dat. Do, for massy's sake, only make me a gown like dat.' This modest request for a riding habit in which to hoe the cotton fields served for an introduction to sundry other petitions for rice and sugar and flannel, all which I promised the petitioner, but not the 'gown like dat;' whereupon I rode off, and she flung herself down in the middle of the road to get her wind and rest. The passion for dress is curiously strong in these people, and seems as though it might be made an instrument in converting them, outwardly at any rate, to something like civilisation; for though their own native taste is decidedly both barbarous and ludicrous, it is astonishing how very soon they mitigate it in imitation of their white models. The fine figures of the mulatto women in Charleston and Savannah are frequently as elegantly and tastefully dressed as those of any of their female superiors; and here on St. Simon's, owing, I suppose, to the influence of the resident lady proprietors of the various plantations, and the propensity to imitation in their black dependents, the people that I see all seem to me much tidier, cleaner, and less fantastically dressed than those on the rice plantation, where no such influences reach them. On my return from my ride I had a visit from Captain F----, the manager of a neighbouring plantation, with whom I had a long conversation about the present and past condition of the estate, the species of feudal magnificence in which its original owner, Major ----, lived, the iron rule of old overseer K---- which succeeded to it, and the subsequent sovereignty of his son, Mr. R---- K----, the man for whom Mr. ---- entertains such a cordial esteem, and of whom every account I receive from the negroes seems to me to indicate a merciless sternness of disposition that may be a virtue in a slave-driver, but is hardly a Christian grace. Captain F---- was one of our earliest visitors at the rice plantation on our arrival, and I think I told you of his mentioning, in speaking to me of the orange trees which formerly grew all round the dykes there, that he had taken Basil Hall there once in their blossoming season, and that he had said the sight was as well worth crossing the Atlantic for as Niagara. To-day he referred to that again. He has resided for a great many years on a plantation here, and is connected with our neighbour, old Mr. C----, whose daughter, I believe, he married. He interested me extremely by his description of the house Major ---- had many years ago on a part of the island called St. Clair. As far as I can understand there must have been an indefinite number of 'masters'' residences on this estate in the old Major's time; for what with the one we are building, and the ruined remains of those not quite improved off the face of the earth, and the tradition of those that have ceased to exist, even as ruins, I make out no fewer than seven. How gladly would I exchange all that remain and all that do not, for the smallest tenement in your blessed Yankee mountain village! Captain F---- told me that at St. Clair General Oglethorpe, the good and brave English governor of the State of Georgia in its colonial days, had his residence, and that among the magnificent live oaks which surround the site of the former settlement, there was one especially venerable and picturesque, which in his recollection always went by the name of General Oglethorpe's Oak. If you remember the history of the colony under his benevolent rule, you must recollect how absolutely he and his friend and counsellor, Wesley, opposed the introduction of slavery in the colony. How wrathfully the old soldier's spirit ought to haunt these cotton fields and rice swamps of his old domain, with their population of wretched slaves! I will ride to St. Clair and see his oak; if I should see him, he cannot have much to say to me on the subject that I should not cry amen to. _Saturday, March 2._--I have made a gain, no doubt, in one respect in coming here, dear E----, for, not being afraid of a rearing stallion, I can ride; but, on the other hand, my aquatic diversions are all likely, I fear, to be much curtailed. Well may you, or any other Northern Abolitionist, consider this a heaven-forsaken region,--why? I cannot even get worms to fish with, and was solemnly assured by Jack this morning that the whole 'point,' i.e. neighbourhood of the house, had been searched in vain for these useful and agreeable animals. I must take to some more sportsman-like species of bait; but in my total ignorance of even the kind of fish that inhabit these waters, it is difficult for me to adapt my temptations to their taste. Yesterday evening I had a visit that made me very sorrowful--if anything connected with these poor people can be called more especially sorrowful than their whole condition; but Mr. ----'s declaration that he will receive no more statements of grievances or petitions for redress through me, makes me as desirous now of shunning the vain appeals of these unfortunates as I used to be of receiving and listening to them. The imploring cry, 'Oh missis!' that greets me whichever way I turn, makes me long to stop my ears now; for what can I say or do any more for them? The poor little favours--the rice, the sugar, the flannel--that they beg for with such eagerness, and receive with such exuberant gratitude, I can, it is true, supply, and words and looks of pity and counsel of patience and such instruction in womanly habits of decency and cleanliness, as may enable them to better, in some degree, their own hard lot; but to the entreaty, 'Oh missis, you speak to massa for us! Oh missis, you beg massa for us! Oh missis, you tell massa for we, he sure do as you say!'--I cannot now answer as formerly, and I turn away choking and with eyes full of tears from the poor creatures, not even daring to promise any more the faithful transmission of their prayers. The women who visited me yesterday evening were all in the family-way, and came to entreat of me to have the sentence (what else can I call it?) modified, which condemns them to resume their labour of hoeing in the fields three weeks after their confinement. They knew, of course, that I cannot interfere with their appointed labour, and therefore their sole entreaty was that I would use my influence with Mr. ---- to obtain for them a month's respite from labour in the field after child-bearing. Their principal spokeswoman, a woman with a bright sweet face, called Mary, and a very sweet voice, which is by no means an uncommon excellence among them, appealed to my own experience; and while she spoke of my babies, and my carefully tended, delicately nursed, and tenderly watched confinement and convalescence, and implored me to have a kind of labour given to them less exhausting during the month after their confinement, I held the table before me so hard in order not to cry that I think my fingers ought to have left a mark on it. At length I told them that Mr. ---- had forbidden me to bring him any more complaints from them, for that he thought the ease with which I received and believed their stories only tended to make them discontented, and that, therefore, I feared I could not promise to take their petitions to him; but that he would be coming down to 'the point' soon, and that they had better come then some time when I was with him, and say what they had just been saying to me: and with this, and various small bounties, I was forced, with a heavy heart, to dismiss them, and when they were gone, with many exclamations of, 'Oh yes, missis, you will, you will speak to massa for we; God bless you, missis, we sure you will!' I had my cry out for them, for myself, for us. All these women had had large families, and _all_ of them had lost half their children, and several of them had lost more. How I do ponder upon the strange fate which has brought me here, from so far away, from surroundings so curiously different--how my own people in that blessed England of my birth would marvel if they could suddenly have a vision of me as I sit here, and how sorry some of them would be for me! I am helped to bear all that is so very painful to me here by my constant enjoyment of the strange wild scenery in the midst of which I live, and which my resumption of my equestrian habits gives me almost daily opportunity of observing. I rode to-day to some new cleared and ploughed ground that was being prepared for the precious cotton crop. I crossed a salt marsh upon a raised causeway that was perfectly alive with land-crabs, whose desperately active endeavours to avoid my horse's hoofs were so ludicrous that I literally laughed alone and aloud at them. The sides of this road across the swamp were covered with a thick and close embroidery of creeping moss or rather lichens of the most vivid green and red: the latter made my horse's path look as if it was edged with an exquisite pattern of coral; it was like a thing in a fairy tale, and delighted me extremely. I suppose, E----, one secret of my being able to suffer as acutely as I do without being made either ill or absolutely miserable, is the childish excitability of my temperament, and the sort of ecstacy which any beautiful thing gives me. No day, almost no hour, passes without some enjoyment of the sort this coral-bordered road gave me, which not only charms my senses completely at the time, but returns again and again before my memory, delighting my fancy, and stimulating my imagination. I sometimes despise myself for what seems to me an inconceivable rapidity of emotion, that almost makes me doubt whether anyone who feels so many things can really be said to feel anything; but I generally recover from this perplexity, by remembering whither invariably every impression of beauty leads my thoughts, and console myself for my contemptible facility of impression by the reflection that it is, upon the whole, a merciful system of compensation by which my whole nature, tortured as it was last night, can be absorbed this morning, in a perfectly pleasurable contemplation of the capers of crabs and the colour of mosses as if nothing else existed in creation. One thing, however, I think, is equally certain, and that is, that I need never expect much sympathy; and perhaps this special endowment will make me, to some degree, independent of it; but I have no doubt that to follow me through half a day with any species of lively participation in my feelings would be a severe breathless moral calisthenic to most of my friends,--what Shakspeare calls 'sweating labour.' As far as I have hitherto had opportunities of observing, children and maniacs are the only creatures who would be capable of sufficiently rapid transitions of thought and feeling to keep pace with me. And so I rode through the crabs and the coral. There is one thing, however, I beg to commend to your serious consideration as a trainer of youth, and that is, the expediency of cultivating in all the young minds you educate an equal love of the good, the beautiful, and the absurd (not an easy task, for the latter is apt in its developement to interfere a little with the two others): doing this, you command all the resources of existence. The love of the good and beautiful of course you are prepared to cultivate--that goes without saying, as the French say; the love of the ludicrous will not appear to you as important, and yet you will be wrong to undervalue it. In the first place, I might tell you that it was almost like cherishing the love of one's fellow-creatures--at which no doubt you shake your head reprovingly; but, leaving aside the enormous provision for the exercise of this natural faculty which we offer to each other, why should crabs scuttle from under my horse's feet in such a way as to make me laugh again every time I think of it, if there is not an inherent propriety in laughter, as the only emotion which certain objects challenge--an emotion wholesome for the soul and body of man? After all, _why_ are we contrived to laugh at all, if laughter is not essentially befitting and beneficial? and most people's lives are too lead-coloured to afford to lose one sparkle on them, even the smallest twinkle of light gathered from a flash of nonsense. Hereafter point out for the 'appreciative' study of your pupils all that is absurd in themselves, others, and the universe in general; 't is an element largely provided, of course, to meet a corresponding and grateful capacity for its enjoyment. After my crab and coral causeway I came to the most exquisite thickets of evergreen shrubbery you can imagine. If I wanted to paint paradise I would copy this undergrowth, passing through which I went on to the settlement at St. Annie's, traversing another swamp on another raised causeway. The thickets through which I next rode were perfectly draped with the beautiful wild jasmine of these woods. Of all the parasitical plants I ever saw, I do think it is the most exquisite in form and colour, and its perfume is like the most delicate heliotrope. I stopped for some time before a thicket of glittering evergreens, over which hung, in every direction, streaming garlands of these fragrant golden cups, fit for Oberon's banqueting service. These beautiful shrubberies were resounding with the songs of mocking birds. I sat there on my horse in a sort of dream of enchantment, looking, listening, and inhaling the delicious atmosphere of those flowers; and suddenly my eyes opened, as if I had been asleep, on some bright red bunches of spring leaves on one of the winter-stripped trees, and I as suddenly thought of the cold northern skies and earth, where the winter was still inflexibly tyrannising over you all, and, in spite of the loveliness of all that was present, and the harshness of all that I seemed to see at that moment, no first tokens of the spring's return were ever more welcome to me than those bright leaves that reminded me how soon I should leave this scene of material beauty and moral degradation, where the beauty itself is of an appropriate character to the human existence it surrounds: above all, loveliness, brightness, and fragrance; but below! it gives one a sort of melusina feeling of horror--all swamp and poisonous stagnation, which the heat will presently make alive with venomous reptiles. I rode on, and the next object that attracted my attention was a very startling and by no means agreeable one--an enormous cypress tree which had been burnt stood charred and blackened, and leaning towards the road so as to threaten a speedy fall across it, and on one of the limbs of this great charcoal giant hung a dead rattlesnake. If I tell you that it looked to me at least six feet long you will say you only wonder I did not say twelve; it was a hideous-looking creature, and some negroes I met soon after told me they had found it in the swamp, and hung it dead on the burning tree. Certainly the two together made a dreadful trophy, and a curious contrast to the lovely bowers of bloom I had just been contemplating with such delight. This settlement at St. Annie's is the remotest on the whole plantation, and I found there the wretchedest huts, and most miserably squalid, filthy and forlorn creatures I had yet seen here--certainly the condition of the slaves on this estate is infinitely more neglected and deplorable than that on the rice plantation. Perhaps it may be that the extremely unhealthy nature of the rice cultivation makes it absolutely necessary that the physical condition of the labourers should be maintained at its best to enable them to abide it; and yet it seems to me that even the process of soaking the rice can hardly create a more dangerous miasma than the poor creatures must inhale who live in the midst of these sweltering swamps, half sea, half river slime. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the climate on St. Simon's is generally considered peculiarly mild and favourable, and so less protection of clothes and shelter is thought necessary here for the poor residents; perhaps, too, it may be because the cotton crop is now, I believe, hardly as valuable as the rice crop, and the plantation here, which was once the chief source of its owner's wealth, is becoming a secondary one, and so not worth so much care or expense in repairing and constructing negro huts and feeding and clothing the slaves. More pitiable objects than some of those I saw at the St. Annie's settlement to-day I hope never to see: there was an old crone called Hannah, a sister, as well as I could understand what she said, of old house Molly, whose face and figure seamed with wrinkles and bowed and twisted with age and infirmity really hardly retained the semblance of those of a human creature, and as she crawled to me almost half her naked body was exposed through the miserable tatters that she held on with one hand, while the other eagerly clutched my hand, and her poor blear eyes wandered all over me as if she was bewildered by the strange aspect of any human being but those whose sight was familiar to her. One or two forlorn creatures like herself, too old or too infirm to be compelled to work, and the half-starved and more than half-naked children apparently left here under their charge, were the only inmates I found in these wretched hovels. I came home without stopping to look at anything, for I had no heart any longer for what had so charmed me on my way to this place. Galloping along the road after leaving the marshes, I scared an ox who was feeding leisurely, and to my great dismay saw the foolish beast betake himself with lumbering speed into the 'bush:' the slaves will have to hunt after him, and perhaps will discover more rattlesnakes six or twelve feet long. After reaching home I went to the house of the overseer to see his wife, a tidy, decent, kind-hearted, little woman, who seems to me to do her duty by the poor people she lives among, as well as her limited intelligence and still more limited freedom allow. The house her husband lives in is the former residence of Major ----, which was the great mansion of the estate. It is now in a most ruinous and tottering condition, and they inhabit but a few rooms in it; the others are gradually mouldering to pieces, and the whole edifice will, I should think, hardly stand long enough to be carried away by the river, which in its yearly inroads on the bank on which it stands has already approached within a perilous proximity to the old dilapidated planter's palace. Old Molly, of whom I have often before spoken to you, who lived here in the days of the prosperity and grandeur of 'Hampton,' still clings to the relics of her old master's former magnificence and with a pride worthy of old Caleb of Ravenswood showed me through the dismantled decaying rooms and over the remains of the dairy, displaying a capacious fish-box or well, where, in the good old days, the master's supply was kept in fresh salt water till required for table. Her prideful lamentations over the departure of all this quondam glory were ludicrous and pathetic; but while listening with some amusement to the jumble of grotesque descriptions through which her impression of the immeasurable grandeur and nobility of the house she served was the predominant feature, I could not help contrasting the present state of the estate with that which she described, and wondering why it should have become, as it undoubtedly must have done, so infinitely less productive a property than in the old Major's time. Before closing this letter, I have a mind to transcribe to you the entries for to-day recorded in a sort of daybook, where I put down very succinctly the number of people who visit me, their petitions and ailments, and also such special particulars concerning them as seem to me worth recording. You will see how miserable the physical condition of many of these poor creatures is; and their physical condition, it is insisted by those who uphold this evil system, is the only part of it which is prosperous, happy, and compares well with that of northern labourers. Judge from the details I now send you; and never forget, while reading them, that the people on this plantation are well off, and consider themselves well off, in comparison with the slaves on some of the neighbouring estates. _Fanny_ has had six children, all dead but one. She came to beg to have her work in the field lightened. _Nanny_ has had three children, two of them are dead; she came to implore that the rule of sending them into the field three weeks after their confinement might be altered. _Leah_, Caesar's wife, has had six children, three are dead. _Sophy_, Lewis' wife, came to beg for some old linen; she is suffering fearfully, has had ten children, five of them are dead. The principal favour she asked was a piece of meat, which I gave her. _Sally_, Scipio's wife, has had two miscarriages and three children born, one of whom is dead. She came complaining of incessant pain and weakness in her back. This woman was a mulatto daughter of a slave called Sophy, by a white man of the name of Walker, who visited the plantation. _Charlotte_, Renty's wife, had had two miscarriages, and was with child again. She was almost crippled with rheumatism, and showed me a pair of poor swollen knees that made my heart ache. I have promised her a pair of flannel trowsers, which I must forthwith set about making. _Sarah_, Stephen's wife,--this woman's case and history were, alike, deplorable, she had had four miscarriages, had brought seven children into the world, five of whom were dead, and was again with child. She complained of dreadful pains in the back, and an internal tumour which swells with the exertion of working in the fields; probably, I think, she is ruptured. She told me she had once been mad and ran into the woods, where she contrived to elude discovery for some time, but was at last tracked and brought back, when she was tied up by the arms and heavy logs fastened to her feet, and was severely flogged. After this she contrived to escape again, and lived for some time skulking in the woods, and she supposes mad, for when she was taken again she was entirely naked. She subsequently recovered from this derangement, and seems now just like all the other poor creatures who come to me for help and pity. I suppose her constant child-bearing and hard labour in the fields at the same time may have produced the temporary insanity. _Sukey_, Bush's wife, only came to pay her respects. She had had four miscarriages, had brought eleven children into the world, five of whom are dead. _Molly_, Quambo's wife, also only came to see me; hers was the best account I have yet received; she had had nine children, and six of them were still alive. This is only the entry for to-day, in my diary, of the people's complaints and visits. Can you conceive a more wretched picture than that which it exhibits of the conditions under which these women live? Their cases are in no respect singular, and though they come with pitiful entreaties that I will help them with some alleviation of their pressing physical distresses, it seems to me marvellous with what desperate patience (I write it advisedly, patience of utter despair) they endure their sorrow-laden existence. Even the poor wretch who told that miserable story of insanity and lonely hiding in the swamps and scourging when she was found, and of her renewed madness and flight, did so in a sort of low, plaintive, monotonous murmur of misery, as if such sufferings were all 'in the day's work.' I ask these questions about their children because I think the number they bear as compared with the number they rear a fair gauge of the effect of the system on their own health and that of their offspring. There was hardly one of these women, as you will see by the details I have noted of their ailments, who might not have been a candidate for a bed in an hospital, and they had come to me after working all day in the fields. * * * * * Dearest E----. When I told you in my last letter of the encroachments which the waters of the Altamaha are daily making on the bank at Hampton Point and immediately in front of the imposing-looking old dwelling of the former master, I had no idea how rapid this crumbling process has been of late years; but to-day, standing there with Mrs. G----, whom I had gone to consult about the assistance we might render to some of the poor creatures whose cases I sent you in my last letter, she told me that within the memory of many of the slaves now living on the plantation, a grove of orange trees had spread its fragrance and beauty between the house and the river. Not a vestige remains of them. The earth that bore them was gradually undermined, slipped, and sank down into the devouring flood, and when she saw the astonished incredulity of my look she led me to the ragged and broken bank, and there, immediately below it and just covered by the turbid waters of the in-rushing tide, were the heads of the poor drowned orange trees, swaying like black twigs in the briny flood which had not yet dislodged all of them from their hold upon the soil which had gone down beneath the water wearing its garland of bridal blossom. As I looked at those trees a wild wish rose in my heart that the river and the sea would swallow up and melt in their salt waves the whole of this accursed property of ours. I am afraid the horror of slavery with which I came down to the south, the general theoretic abhorrence of an Englishwoman for it, has gained, through the intensity it has acquired, a morbid character of mere desire to be delivered from my own share in it. I think so much of these wretches that I see, that I can hardly remember any others, and my zeal for the general emancipation of the slave, has almost narrowed itself to this most painful desire that I and mine were freed from the responsibility of our share in this huge misery,--and so I thought:--'Beat, beat, the crumbling banks and sliding shores, wild waves of the Atlantic and the Altamaha! Sweep down and carry hence this evil earth and these homes of tyranny, and roll above the soil of slavery, and wash my soul and the souls of those I love clean from the blood of our kind!' But I have no idea that Mr. ---- and his brother would cry amen to any such prayer. Sometimes, as I stand and listen to the roll of the great ocean surges on the further side of little St. Simon's Island, a small green screen of tangled wilderness that interposes between this point and the Atlantic, I think how near our West Indian islands and freedom are to these unfortunate people, many of whom are expert and hardy boatmen, as far as the mere mechanical management of a boat goes; but unless Providence were compass and steersman too it avails nothing that they should know how near their freedom might be found, nor have I any right to tell them if they could find it, for the slaves are not mine, they are Mr. ----'s. The mulatto woman, Sally, accosted me again to-day, and begged that she might be put to some other than field labour. Supposing she felt herself unequal to it, I asked her some questions, but the principal reason she urged for her promotion to some less laborious kind of work was, that hoeing in the field was so hard to her on '_account of her colour_,' and she therefore petitions to be allowed to learn a trade. I was much puzzled at this reason for her petition, but was presently made to understand that being a mulatto, she considered field labour a degradation; her white bastardy appearing to her a title to consideration in my eyes. The degradation of these people is very complete, for they have accepted the contempt of their masters to that degree that they profess, and really seem to feel it for themselves, and the faintest admixture of white blood in their black veins appears at once, by common consent of their own race, to raise them in the scale of humanity. I had not much sympathy for this petition. The woman's father had been a white man who was employed for some purpose on the estate. In speaking upon this subject to Mrs. G----, she said that, as far as her observation went, the lower class of white men in the south lived with coloured women precisely as they would at the north with women of their own race; the outcry that one hears against amalgamation appears therefore to be something educated and acquired, rather than intuitive. I cannot perceive in observing my children, that they exhibit the slightest repugnance or dislike to these swarthy dependents of theirs, which they surely would do if, as is so often pretended, there is an inherent, irreconcilable repulsion on the part of the white towards the negro race. All the southern children that I have seen seem to have a special fondness for these good-natured childish human beings, whose mental condition is kin in its simplicity and proneness to impulsive emotion to their own, and I can detect in them no trace of the abhorrence and contempt for their dusky skins which all questions of treating them with common justice is so apt to elicit from American men and women. To-day, for the first time since I left the Rice Island, I went out fishing, but had no manner of luck. Jack rowed me up Jones's Creek, a small stream which separates St. Simon's from the main, on the opposite side from the great waters of the Altamaha. The day was very warm. It is becoming almost too hot to remain here much longer, at least for me, who dread and suffer from heat so much. The whole summer, however, is passed by many members of the Georgia families on their estates by the sea. When the heat is intense, the breeze from the ocean and the salt air, I suppose, prevent it from being intolerable or hurtful. Our neighbour Mr. C---- and his family reside entirely, the year round, on their plantations here without apparently suffering in their health from the effects of the climate. I suppose it is the intermediate region between the sea-board and the mountains that becomes so pestilential when once the warm weather sets in. I remember the Belgian minister, M. de ----, telling me that the mountain country of Georgia was as beautiful as paradise, and that the climate, as far as his experience went, was perfectly delicious. He was, however, only there on an exploring expedition, and, of course, took the most favourable season of the year for the purpose. I have had several women with me this afternoon more or less disabled by chronic rheumatism. Certainly, either their labour or the exposure it entails must be very severe, for this climate is the last that ought to engender rheumatism. This evening I had a visit from a bright young woman, calling herself Minda, who came to beg for a little rice or sugar. I enquired from which of the settlements she had come down, and found that she has to walk three miles every day to and from her work. She made no complaint whatever of this, and seemed to think her laborious tramp down to the Point after her day of labour on the field well-rewarded by the pittance of rice and sugar she obtained. Perhaps she consoled herself for the exertion by the reflection which occurred to me while talking to her, that many women who have borne children, and many women with child, go the same distance to and from their task ground--that seems dreadful! I have let my letter lie from a stress of small interruptions. Yesterday, Sunday 3rd, old Auber, a stooping, halting hag, came to beg for flannel and rice. As usual, of course, I asked various questions concerning her condition, family, &c.; she told me she had never been married, but had had five children, two of whom were dead. She complained of flooding, of intolerable back-ache, and said that with all these ailments, she considered herself quite recovered, having suffered horribly from an abscess in her neck, which was now nearly well. I was surprised to hear of her other complaints, for she seemed to me like quite an old woman; but constant child-bearing, and the life of labour, exposure, and privation which they lead, ages these poor creatures prematurely. Dear E----, how I do defy you to guess the novel accomplishment I have developed within the last two days; what do you say to my turning butcher's boy, and cutting up the carcase of a sheep for the instruction of our butcher and cook, and benefit of our table? You know, I have often written you word, that we have mutton here--thanks to the short salt grass on which it feeds--that compares with the best south down or _pré salé_; but such is the barbarous ignorance of the cook, or rather the butcher who furnishes our kitchen supplies, that I defy the most expert anatomist to pronounce on any piece (joints they cannot be called) of mutton brought to our table to what part of the animal sheep it originally belonged. I have often complained bitterly of this, and in vain implored Abraham the cook to send me some dish of mutton to which I might with safety apply the familiar name of leg, shoulder, or haunch. These remonstrances and expostulations have produced no result whatever, however, but an increase of eccentricity in the _chunks_ of sheeps' flesh placed upon the table; the squares, diamonds, cubes, and rhomboids of mutton have been more ludicrously and hopelessly unlike anything we see in a Christian butcher's shop, with every fresh endeavour Abraham has made to find out 'zackly wot de missis do want;' so the day before yesterday, while I was painfully dragging S---- through the early intellectual science of the alphabet and first reading lesson, Abraham appeared at the door of the room brandishing a very long thin knife, and with many bows, grins, and apologies for disturbing me, begged that I would go and cut up a sheep for him. My first impulse of course was to decline the very unusual task offered me with mingled horror and amusement. Abraham, however, insisted and besought, extolled the fineness of his sheep, declared his misery at being unable to cut it as I wished, and his readiness to conform for the future to whatever _patterns_ of mutton 'de missis would only please to give him.' Upon reflection I thought I might very well contrive to indicate upon the sheep the size and form of the different joints of civilised mutton, and so for the future save much waste of good meat; and moreover the lesson once taught would not require to be repeated, and I have ever held it expedient to accept every opportunity of learning to do anything, no matter how unusual, which presented itself to be done; and so I followed Abraham to the kitchen, when, with a towel closely pinned over my silk dress, and knife in hand, I stood for a minute or two meditating profoundly before the rather unsightly object which Abraham had pronounced 'de beautifullest sheep de missis eber saw.' The sight and smell of raw meat are especially odious to me, and I have often thought that if I had had to be my own cook, I should inevitably become a vegetarian, probably, indeed, return entirely to my green and salad days. Nathless, I screwed my courage to the sticking point, and slowly and delicately traced out with the point of my long carving-knife two shoulders, two legs, a saddle, and a neck of mutton; not probably in the most thoroughly artistic and butcherly style, but as nearly as my memory and the unassisted light of nature would enable me; and having instructed Abraham in the various boundaries, sizes, shapes and names of the several joints, I returned to S---- and her belles-lettres, rather elated upon the whole at the creditable mode in which I flattered myself I had accomplished my unusual task, and the hope of once more seeing roast mutton of my acquaintance. I will confess to you, dear E----, that the _neck_ was not a satisfactory part of the performance, and I have spent some thoughts since in trying to adjust in my own mind its proper shape and proportions. As an accompaniment to 'de beautifullest mutton de missis ever see,' we have just received from my neighbour Mr. C---- the most magnificent supply of fresh vegetables, green peas, salad, &c. He has a garden and a Scotchman's real love for horticulture, and I profit by them in this very agreeable manner. I have been interrupted by several visits, my dear E----, among other, one from a poor creature called Judy, whose sad story and condition affected me most painfully. She had been married, she said, some years ago to one of the men called Temba, who however now has another wife, having left her because she went mad. While out of her mind she escaped into the jungle, and contrived to secrete herself there for some time, but was finally tracked and caught, and brought back and punished by being made to sit, day after day, for hours in the stocks--a severe punishment for a man, but for a woman perfectly barbarous. She complained of chronic rheumatism, and other terrible ailments, and said she suffered such intolerable pain while labouring in the fields, that she had come to entreat me to have her work lightened. She could hardly crawl, and cried bitterly all the time she spoke to me. She told me a miserable story of her former experience on the plantation under Mr. K----'s overseership. It seems that Jem Valiant (an extremely difficult subject, a mulatto lad, whose valour is sufficiently accounted for now by the influence of the mutinous white blood) was her firstborn, the son of Mr. K----, who forced her, flogged her severely for having resisted him, and then sent her off, as a further punishment, to Five Pound--a horrible swamp in a remote corner of the estate, to which the slaves are sometimes banished for such offences as are not sufficiently atoned for by the lash. The dismal loneliness of the place to these poor people, who are as dependent as children upon companionship and sympathy, makes this solitary exile a much-dreaded infliction; and this poor creature said, that bad as the flogging was, she would sooner have taken that again than the dreadful lonely days and nights she spent on the penal swamp of Five Pound. I make no comment on these terrible stories, my dear friend, and tell them to you as nearly as possible in the perfectly plain unvarnished manner in which they are told to me. I do not wish to add to, or perhaps I ought to say take away from, the effect of such narrations by amplifying the simple horror and misery of their bare details. * * * * * My dearest E----. I have had an uninterrupted stream of women and children flowing in the whole morning to say, 'Ha de missis!' Among others, a poor woman called Mile, who could hardly stand for pain and swelling in her limbs; she had had fifteen children and two miscarriages, nine of her children had died; for the last three years she had become almost a cripple with chronic rheumatism, yet she is driven every day to work in the field. She held my hands and stroked them in the most appealing way, while she exclaimed, 'Oh my missis! my missis! me neber sleep till day for de pain,' and with the day her labour must again be resumed. I gave her flannel and sal volatile to rub her poor swelled limbs with; rest I could not give her--rest from her labour and her pain--this mother of fifteen children. Another of my visitors had a still more dismal story to tell; her name was Die; she had had sixteen children, fourteen of whom were dead; she had had four miscarriages, one had been caused by falling down with a very heavy burthen on her head, and one from having her arms strained up to be lashed. I asked her what she meant by having her arms tied up; she said their hands were first tied together, sometimes by the wrists, and sometimes, which was worse, by the thumbs, and they were then drawn up to a tree or post, so as almost to swing them off the ground, and then their clothes rolled round their waist, and a man with a cow-hide stands and stripes them. I give you the woman's words; she did not speak of this as of anything strange, unusual or especially horrid and abominable; and when I said, 'Did they do that to you when you were with child?' she simply replied, 'Yes, missis.' And to all this I listen--I, an English woman, the wife of the man who owns these wretches, and I cannot say, 'That thing shall not be done again; that cruel shame and villany shall never be known here again.' I gave the woman meat and flannel, which were what she came to ask for, and remained choking with indignation and grief long after they had all left me to my most bitter thoughts. I went out to try and walk off some of the weight of horror and depression which I am beginning to feel daily more and more, surrounded by all this misery and degradation that I can neither help nor hinder. The blessed spring is coming very fast, the air is full of delicious wild wood fragrances, and the wonderful songs of southern birds; the wood paths are as tempting as paths into Paradise, but Jack is in such deadly terror about the snakes, which are now beginning to glide about with a freedom and frequency certainly not pleasing, that he will not follow me off the open road, and twice to-day scared me back from charming wood paths I ventured to explore with his exclamations of terrified warning. I gathered some exquisite pink blossoms, of a sort of waxen texture, off a small shrub which was strange to me, and for which Jack's only name was dye-bush; but I could not ascertain from him whether any dyeing substance was found in its leaves, bark, or blossoms. I returned home along the river side, stopping to admire a line of noble live oaks beginning, alas! to be smothered with the treacherous white moss under whose pale trailing masses their verdure gradually succumbs, leaving them, like huge hoary ghosts, perfect mountains of parasitical vegetation, which, strangely enough, appears only to hang upon and swing from their boughs without adhering to them. The mixture of these streams of grey-white filaments with the dark foliage is extremely beautiful as long as the leaves of the tree survive in sufficient masses to produce the rich contrast of colour; but when the moss has literally conquered the whole tree, and after stripping its huge limbs bare, clothed them with its own wan masses, they always looked to me like so many gigantic Druid ghosts, with flowing robes and beards, and locks all of one ghastly grey, and I would not have broken a twig off them for the world, lest a sad voice, like that which reproached Dante, should have moaned out of it to me, Non hai tu spirto di pietade alcuno? A beautiful mass of various woodland skirted the edge of the stream, and mingled in its foliage every shade of green, from the pale stiff spikes and fans of the dwarf palmetto to the dark canopy of the magnificent ilex--bowers and brakes of the loveliest wildness, where one dare not tread three steps for fear--what a tantalisation! it is like some wicked enchantment. * * * * * Dearest E----. I have found growing along the edge of the dreary enclosure where the slaves are buried such a lovely wild flower; it is a little like the euphrasia or eye-bright of the English meadows; but grows quite close to the turf, almost into it, and consists of clusters of tiny white flowers that look as if they were made of the finest porcelain; I took up a root of it yesterday, with a sort of vague idea that I could transplant it to the north--though I cannot say that I should care to transplant anything thither that could renew to me the associations of this place--not even the delicious wild flowers, if I could. The woods here are full of wild plum-trees, the delicate white blossoms of which twinkle among the evergreen copses, and besides illuminating them with a faint starlight, suggest to my mind a possible liqueur like kirsch, which I should think could quite as well be extracted from wild plums as wild cherries, and the trees are so numerous that there ought to be quite a harvest from them. You may, and, doubtless, have seen palmetto plants in northern green and hot houses, but you never saw palmetto roots; and what curious things they are! huge, hard, yellowish-brown stems, as thick as my arm, or thicker, extending and ramifying under the ground in masses that seem hardly justified or accounted for by the elegant, light, spiky fans of dusky green foliage with which they fill the under part of the woods here. They look very tropical and picturesque, but both in shape and colour suggest something metallic rather than vegetable, the bronze green hue and lance-like form of their foliage has an arid hard character that makes one think they could be manufactured quite as well as cultivated. At first I was extremely delighted with the novelty of their appearance; but now I feel thirsty when I look at them, and the same with their kinsfolk the yuccas and their intimate friends, if not relations, the prickly pears, with all of which once strange growth I have grown, contemptuously familiar now. Did it ever occur to you what a strange affinity there is between the texture and colour of the wild vegetables of these sandy southern soils, and the texture and colour of shells? The prickly pear, and especially the round little cactus plants all covered with hairy spikes, are curiously suggestive of a family of round spiked shells, with which you, as well as myself, are, doubtless, familiar; and though the splendid flame colour of some cactus blossoms never suggests any nature but that of flowers, I have seen some of a peculiar shade of yellow pink, that resembles the mingled tint on the inside of some elaborately coloured shell, and the pale white and rose flowers of another kind have the colouring and almost texture of shell, much rather than of any vegetable substance. To-day I walked out without Jack, and in spite of the terror of snakes with which he has contrived slightly to inoculate me, I did make a short exploring journey into the woods. I wished to avoid a ploughed field, to the edge of which my wanderings had brought me; but my dash into the woodland, though unpunished by an encounter with snakes, brought me only into a marsh as full of land-crabs as an ant-hill is of ants, and from which I had to retreat ingloriously, finding my way home at last by the beach. I have had, as usual, a tribe of visitors and petitioners ever since I came home. I will give you an account of those cases which had anything beyond the average of interest in their details. One poor woman, named Molly, came to beg that I would, if possible, get an extension of their exemption from work after child-bearing. The close of her argument was concise and forcible. 'Missis, we hab um piccaninny--tree weeks in de ospital, and den right out upon the hoe again--_can we strong_ dat way, missis? No!' And truly I do not see that they can. This poor creature had had eight children and two miscarriages. All her children were dead but one. Another of my visitors was a divinely named but not otherwise divine Venus; it is a favourite name among these sable folk, but, of course, must have been given originally in derision. The Aphrodite in question was a dirt-coloured (convenient colour I should say for these parts) mulatto. I could not understand how she came on this property, for she was the daughter of a black woman and the overseer of an estate to which her mother formerly belonged, and from which I suppose she was sold, exchanged, or given, as the case may be, to the owners of this plantation. She was terribly crippled with rheumatism, and came to beg for some flannel. She had had eleven children, five of whom had died, and two miscarriages. As she took her departure the vacant space she left on the other side of my writing table was immediately filled by another black figure with a bowed back and piteous face, one of the thousand 'Mollies' on the estate, where the bewildering redundancy of their name is avoided by adding that of their husband; so when the question, 'Well, who are you?' was answered with the usual genuflexion, and 'I'se Molly, missis!' I, of course, went on with 'whose Molly?' and she went on to refer herself to the ownership (under Mr. ---- and heaven) of one Tony, but proceeded to say that he was not her _real_ husband. This appeal to an element of reality in the universally accepted fiction which passes here by the title of marriage surprised me; and on asking her what she meant, she replied that her real husband had been sold from the estate for repeated attempts to run away; he had made his escape several times, and skulked starving in the woods and morasses, but had always been tracked and brought back, and flogged almost to death, and finally sold as an incorrigible runaway. What a spirit of indomitable energy the wretched man must have had to have tried so often that hideously hopeless attempt to fly! I do not write you the poor woman's jargon, which was ludicrous; for I cannot write you the sighs, and tears, and piteous looks, and gestures, that made it pathetic; of course she did not know whither or to whom her _real_ husband had been sold; but in the meantime Mr. K----, that merciful Providence of the estate, had provided her with the above-named Tony, by whom she had had nine children, six of whom were dead; she, too, had miscarried twice. She came to ask me for some flannel for her legs, which are all swollen with constant rheumatism, and to beg me to give her something to cure some bad sores and ulcers, which seemed to me dreadful enough in their present condition, but which she said break out afresh and are twice as bad every summer. I have let my letter lie since the day before yesterday, dear E----, having had no leisure to finish it. Yesterday morning I rode out to St. Clair's, where there used formerly to be another negro settlement and another house of Major ----'s. I had been persuaded to try one of the mares I had formerly told you of, and to be sure a more 'curst' quadruped, and one more worthy of a Petruchio for a rider I did never back. Her temper was furious, her gait intolerable, her mouth, the most obdurate that ever tugged against bit and bridle. It is not wise anywhere--here it is less wise than anywhere else in the world--to say 'Jamais de cette eau je ne boirai;' but I _think_ I will never ride that delightful creature Miss Kate again. I wrote you of my having been to a part of the estate called St. Clair's, where there was formerly another residence of Major ----'s; nothing remains now of it but a ruined chimney of some of the offices, which is standing yet in the middle of what has become a perfect wilderness. At the best of times, with a large house, numerous household, and paths, and drives of approach, and the usual external conditions of civilisation about it, a residence here would have been the loneliest that can well be imagined; now it is the shaggiest desert of beautiful wood that I ever saw. The magnificent old oaks stand round the place in silent solemn grandeur; and among them I had no difficulty in recognising, by the description Captain F---- had given me of it, the crumbling shattered relic of a tree called Oglethorpe's oak. That worthy valiant old governor had a residence here himself in the early days of the colony; when, under the influence of Wesley, he vainly made such strenuous efforts to keep aloof from his infant province the sore curse of slavery. I rode almost the whole way through a grove of perfect evergreen. I had with me one of the men of the name of Hector, who has a good deal to do with the horses, and so had volunteered to accompany me, being one of the few negroes on the estate who can sit a horse. In the course of our conversation, Hector divulged certain opinions relative to the comparative gentility of driving in a carriage, and the vulgarity of walking; which sent me into fits of laughing; at which he grinned sympathetically, and opened his eyes very wide, but certainly without attaining the least insight into what must have appeared to him my very unaccountable and unreasonable merriment. Among various details of the condition of the people on the several estates in the island, he told me that a great number of the men on all the different plantations had _wives_ on the neighbouring estates, as well as on that to which they properly belonged. 'Oh, but,' said I, 'Hector, you know that cannot be, a man has but one lawful wife.' Hector knew this, he said, and yet seemed puzzled himself, and rather puzzled me to account for the fact, that this extensive practice of bigamy was perfectly well known to the masters and overseers, and never in any way found fault with, or interfered with. Perhaps this promiscuous mode of keeping up the slave population finds favour with the owners of creatures who are valued in the market at so much per head. This was a solution which occurred to me, but which I left my Trojan hero to discover, by dint of the profound pondering into which he fell. Not far from the house as I was cantering home, I met S----, and took her up on the saddle before me, an operation which seemed to please her better than the vicious horse I was riding, whose various demonstrations of dislike to the arrangement afforded my small equestrian extreme delight and triumph. My whole afternoon was spent in shifting my bed and bed-room furniture from a room on the ground-floor to one above; in the course of which operation, a brisk discussion took place between M---- and my boy Jack, who was nailing on the vallence of the bed; and whom I suddenly heard exclaim in answer to something she had said--'Well den, I do tink so; and dat's the speech of a man, whether um bond or free.' A very trifling incident, and insignificant speech; and yet it came back to my ears very often afterward--'the speech of a _man_, whether bond or free.' They might be made conscious--some of them are evidently conscious--of an inherent element of manhood superior to the bitter accident of slavery; and to which, even in their degraded condition, they might be made to refer that vital self-respect which can survive all external pressure of mere circumstance, and give their souls to that service of God, which is perfect freedom, in spite of the ignoble and cruel bondage of their bodies. My new apartment is what I should call decidedly airy; the window, unless when styled by courtesy, shut, which means admitting of draught enough to blow a candle out, must be wide open, being incapable of any intermediate condition; the latch of the door, to speak the literal truth, does shut; but it is the only part of it that does; that is, the latch and the hinges; everywhere else its configuration is traced by a distinct line of light and air. If what old Dr. Physic used to say be true, that a draught which will not blow out a candle will blow out a man's life, (a Spanish proverb originally I believe) my life is threatened with extinction in almost every part of this new room of mine, wherein, moreover, I now discover to my dismay, having transported every other article of bed-room furniture to it, it is impossible to introduce the wardrobe for my clothes. Well, our stay here is drawing to a close, and therefore these small items of discomfort cannot afflict me much longer. Among my visitors to-day was a poor woman named Oney, who told me her husband had gone away from her now for four years; it seems he was the property of Mr. K----, and when that gentleman went to slave-driving on his own account, and ceased to be the overseer of this estate, he carried her better half, who was his chattel, away with him, and she never expects to see him again. After her departure I had a most curious visitor, a young lad of the name of Renty, whose very decidedly mulatto tinge accounted, I suppose, for the peculiar disinvoltura of his carriage and manner; he was evidently in his own opinion a very superior creature; and yet, as his conversation with me testified, he was conscious of some flaw in the honour of his 'yellow' complexion. 'Who is your mother, Renty?' said I (I give you our exact dialogue); 'Betty, head-man Frank's wife.' I was rather dismayed at the promptness of this reply, and hesitated a little at my next question, 'Who is your father?' My sprightly young friend, however, answered, without an instant's pause, 'Mr. K----.' Here I came to a halt, and, willing to suggest some doubt to the lad, because for many peculiar reasons this statement seemed to me shocking, I said, 'What, old Mr. K----?' 'No, massa R----.' 'Did your mother tell you so?' 'No, missis, me ashamed to ask her; Mr. C----'s children told me so, and I 'spect they know it.' Renty, you see, did not take Falconbridge's view of such matters; and as I was by no means sorry to find that he considered his relation to Mr. K---- a disgrace to his mother, which is an advance in moral perception not often met with here, I said no more upon the subject. _Tuesday, March 3._--This morning, old House Molly, coming from Mr. G----'s upon some errand to me, I asked her if Renty's statement was true; she confirmed the whole story, and, moreover, added that this connection took place after Betty was married to head-man Frank. Now, he, you know, E----, is the chief man at the Rice Island, second in authority to Mr. O----, and indeed, for a considerable part of the year, absolute master and guardian during the night, of all the people and property at the rice plantation, for, after the early spring, the white overseer himself is obliged to betake himself to the mainland to sleep, out of the influence of the deadly malaria of the rice swamp, and Frank remains sole sovereign of the island, from sunset to sunrise, in short, during the whole period of his absence. Mr. ---- bestowed the highest commendations upon his fidelity and intelligence, and, during the visit Mr. R---- K---- paid us at the island, he was emphatic in his praise of both Frank and his wife, the latter having, as he declared, by way of climax to his eulogies, quite the principles of a white woman. Perhaps she imbibed them from his excellent influence over her. Frank is a serious, sad, sober-looking, very intelligent man; I should think he would not relish having his wife borrowed from him even by the white gentleman, who admired her principles so much; and it is quite clear from poor Renty's speech about his mother, that by some of these people (and if by any, then very certainly by Frank), the disgrace of such an injury is felt and appreciated much after the fashion of white men. This old woman Molly is a wonderfully intelligent, active, energetic creature, though considerably over seventy years old; she was talking to me about her former master, Major ----, and what she was pleased to call the _revelation_ war (i.e. revolution war), during which that gentleman, having embraced the side of the rebellious colonies in their struggle against England, was by no means on a bed of roses. He bore King George's commission, and was a major in the British army, but having married a great Carolina heiress, and become proprietor of these plantations, sided with the country of his adoption, and not that of his birth, in the war between them, and was a special object of animosity on that account to the English officers who attacked the sea-board of Georgia, and sent troops on shore and up the Altamaha, to fetch off the negroes, or incite them to rise against their owners. 'De British,' said Molly 'make old massa run about bery much in de great revelation war.' He ran effectually, however, and contrived to save both his life and property from the invader. Molly's account was full of interest, in spite of the grotesque lingo in which it was delivered, and which once or twice nearly sent me into convulsions of laughing, whereupon she apologized with great gravity for her mispronunciation, modestly suggesting that _white words_ were impossible to the organs of speech of black folks. It is curious how universally any theory, no matter how absurd, is accepted by these people, for anything in which the contemptuous supremacy of the dominant race is admitted, and their acquiescence in the theory of their own incorrigible baseness is so complete, that this, more than any other circumstance in their condition, makes me doubtful of their rising from it. In order to set poor dear old Molly's notions straight with regard to the negro incapacity for speaking plain the noble white words, I called S---- to me and set her talking; and having pointed out to Molly how very imperfect her mode of pronouncing many words was, convinced the worthy old negress that want of training, and not any absolute original impotence, was the reason why she disfigured the _white words_, for which she had such a profound respect. In this matter, as in every other, the slaves pay back to their masters the evil of their own dealings with usury, though unintentionally. No culture, however slight, simple, or elementary, is permitted to these poor creatures, and the utterance of many of them is more like what Prospero describes Caliban's to have been, than the speech of men and women in a Christian and civilised land: the children of their owners, brought up among them, acquire their negro mode of talking;--slavish speech surely it is--and it is distinctly perceptible in the utterances of all southerners, particularly of the women, whose avocations, taking them less from home, are less favourable to their throwing off this ignoble trick of pronunciation, than the more varied occupation, and the more extended and promiscuous business relations of men. The Yankee twang of the regular down Easter is not more easily detected by any ear, nice in enunciation and accent, than the thick negro speech of the southerners: neither is lovely or melodious; but though the Puritan snuffle is the harsher of the two, the slave _slobber_ of the language is the more ignoble, in spite of the softer voices of the pretty southern women who utter it. I rode out to-day upon Miss Kate again, with Jack for my esquire. I made various vain attempts to ride through the woods, following the cattle tracks; they turned round and round into each other, or led out into the sandy pine barren, the eternal frame in which all nature is set here, the inevitable limit to the prospect, turn landward which way you will. The wood paths which I followed between evergreen thickets, though little satisfactory in their ultimate result, were really more beautiful than the most perfect arrangement of artificial planting that I ever saw in an English park; and I thought if I could transplant the region which I was riding through bodily into the midst of some great nobleman's possessions on the other side of the water, how beautiful an accession it would be thought to them. I was particularly struck with the elegant growth of a profuse wild shrub I passed several times to-day, the leaves of which were pale green underneath, and a deep red, varnished brown above. I must give you an idea of the sort of service one is liable to obtain from one's most intelligent and civilised servants hereabouts, and the consequent comfort and luxury of one's daily existence. Yesterday, Aleck, the youth who fulfils the duties of what you call a waiter, and we in England a footman, gave me a salad for dinner, mixed with so large a portion of the soil in which it had grown, that I requested him to-day to be kind enough to wash the lettuce before he brought it to table. M---- later in the day told me that he had applied to her very urgently for soap and a brush 'as missis wished de lettuce scrubbed,' a fate from which my second salad was saved by her refusal of these desired articles, and further instructions upon the subject. * * * * * Dearest E----. I have been long promising poor old House Molly to visit her in her own cabin, and so the day before yesterday I walked round the settlement to her dwelling; and a most wretched hovel I found it. She has often told me of the special directions left by her old master for the comfort and well-being of her old age; and certainly his charge has been but little heeded by his heirs, for the poor faithful old slave is most miserably off in her infirm years. She made no complaint, however, but seemed overjoyed at my coming to see her. She took me to the hut of her brother, Old Jacob, where the same wretched absence of every decency and every comfort prevailed; but neither of them seemed to think the condition that appeared so wretched to me one of peculiar hardship--though Molly's former residence in her master's house might reasonably have made her discontented with the lot of absolute privation to which she was now turned over--but, for the moment, my visit seemed to compensate for all sublunary sorrows, and she and poor old Jacob kept up a duet of rejoicing at my advent, and that I had brought 'de little missis among um people afore they die.' Leaving them, I went on to the house of Jacob's daughter Hannah, with whom Psyche, the heroine of the Rice Island story, and wife of his son Joe, lives. I found their cabin as tidy and comfortable as it could be made, and their children, as usual, neat and clean; they are capital women, both of them, with an innate love of cleanliness and order most uncommon among these people. On my way home, I overtook two of my daily suppliants, who were going to the house in search of me, and meat, flannel, rice, and sugar, as the case might be; they were both old and infirm-looking women, and one of them, called Scylla, was extremely lame, which she accounted for by an accident she had met with while carrying a heavy weight of rice on her head; she had fallen on a sharp stake, or snag, as she called it, and had never recovered the injury she had received. She complained also of falling of the womb. Her companion (who was not Charybdis however, but Phoebe) was a cheery soul who complained of nothing, but begged for flannel. I asked her about her family and children; she had no children left, nothing but grandchildren; she had had nine children, and seven of them died quite young; the only two who grew up left her to join the British when they invaded Georgia in the last war, and their children, whom they left behind, were all her family now. In the afternoon, I made my first visit to the hospital of the estate, and found it, as indeed I find everything else here, in a far worse state even than the wretched establishments on the Rice Island, dignified by that name; so miserable a place for the purpose to which it was dedicated I could not have imagined on a property belonging to Christian owners. The floor (which was not boarded, but merely the damp hard earth itself,) was strewn with wretched women, who, but for their moans of pain and uneasy restless motions, might very well have each been taken for a mere heap of filthy rags; the chimney refusing passage to the smoke from the pine wood fire, it puffed out in clouds through the room, where it circled and hung, only gradually oozing away through the windows, which were so far well adapted to the purpose that there was not a single whole pane of glass in them. My eyes, unaccustomed to the turbid atmosphere, smarted and watered, and refused to distinguish at first the different dismal forms, from which cries and wails assailed me in every corner of the place. By degrees I was able to endure for a few minutes what they were condemned to live their hours and days of suffering and sickness through; and, having given what comfort kind words and promises of help in more substantial forms could convey, I went on to what seemed a yet more wretched abode of wretchedness. This was a room where there was no fire because there was no chimney, and where the holes made for windows had no panes or glasses in them. The shutters being closed, the place was so dark that, on first entering it, I was afraid to stir lest I should fall over some of the deplorable creatures extended upon the floor. As soon as they perceived me, one cry of 'Oh missis!' rang through the darkness; and it really seemed to me as if I was never to exhaust the pity and amazement and disgust which this receptacle of suffering humanity was to excite in me. The poor dingy supplicating sleepers upraised themselves as I cautiously advanced among them; those who could not rear their bodies from the earth held up piteous beseeching hands, and as I passed from one to the other, I felt more than one imploring clasp laid upon my dress to solicit my attention to some new form of misery. One poor woman, called Tressa, who was unable to speak above a whisper from utter weakness and exhaustion, told me she had had nine children, was suffering from incessant flooding, and felt 'as if her back would split open.' There she lay, a mass of filthy tatters, without so much as a blanket under or over her, on the bare earth in this chilly darkness. I promised them help and comfort, beds and blankets, and light and fire--that is, I promised to ask Mr. ---- for all this for them; and, in the very act of doing so, I remembered with a sudden pang of anguish, that I was to urge no more petitions for his slaves to their master. I groped my way out, and emerging on the piazza, all the choking tears and sobs I had controlled broke forth, and I leaned there crying over the lot of these unfortunates, till I heard a feeble voice of 'Missis, you no cry; missis, what for you cry?' and looking up, saw that I had not yet done with this intolerable infliction. A poor crippled old man, lying in the corner of the piazza, unable even to crawl towards me, had uttered this word of consolation, and by his side (apparently too idiotic, as he was too impotent, to move,) sat a young woman, the expression of whose face was the most suffering and at the same time the most horribly repulsive I ever saw. I found she was, as I supposed, half-witted; and on coming nearer to enquire into her ailments and what I could do for her, found her suffering from that horrible disease--I believe some form of scrofula--to which the negroes are subject, which attacks and eats away the joints of their hands and fingers--a more hideous and loathsome object I never beheld; her name was Patty, and she was grand-daughter to the old crippled creature by whose side she was squatting. I wandered home, stumbling with crying as I went, and feeling so utterly miserable that I really hardly saw where I was going, for I as nearly as possible fell over a great heap of oyster shells left in the middle of the path. This is a horrid nuisance, which results from an indulgence which the people here have and value highly; the waters round the island are prolific in shell fish, oysters, and the most magnificent prawns I ever saw. The former are a considerable article of the people's diet, and the shells are allowed to accumulate, as they are used in the composition of which their huts are built, and which is a sort of combination of mud and broken oyster shells, which forms an agglomeration of a kind very solid and durable for such building purposes. But instead of being all carried to some specified place out of the way, these great heaps of oyster shells are allowed to be piled up anywhere and everywhere, forming the most unsightly obstructions in every direction. Of course, the cultivation of order for the sake of its own seemliness and beauty is not likely to be an element of slave existence; and as masters have been scarce on this plantation for many years now, a mere unsightliness is not a matter likely to trouble anybody much; but after my imminent overthrow by one of these disorderly heaps of refuse, I think I may make bold to request that the paths along which I am likely to take my daily walks may be kept free from them. On my arrival at home--at the house--I cannot call any place here my home!--I found Renty waiting to exhibit to me an extremely neatly made leather pouch, which he has made by my order, of fitting size and dimensions, to receive Jack's hatchet and saw. Jack and I have set up a sort of Sir Walter and Tom Purdie companionship of clearing and cutting paths through the woods nearest to the house; thinning the overhanging branches, clearing the small evergreen thickets which here and there close over and across the grassy track. To me this occupation was especially delightful until quite lately, since the weather began to be rather warmer and the snakes to slide about. Jack has contrived to inoculate me with some portion of his terror of them; but I have still a daily hankering after the lovely green wood walks; perhaps when once I have seen a live rattlesnake my enthusiasm for them will be modified to the degree that his is. * * * * * Dear E----. This letter has remained unfinished, and my journal interrupted for more than a week. Mr. ---- has been quite unwell, and I have been travelling to and fro daily between Hampton and the Rice Island in the long boat to visit him; for the last three days I have remained at the latter place, and only returned here this morning early. My daily voyages up and down the river have introduced me to a great variety of new musical performances of our boatmen, who invariably, when the rowing is not too hard, moving up or down with the tide, accompany the stroke of their oars with the sound of their voices. I told you formerly that I thought I could trace distinctly some popular national melody with which I was familiar in almost all their songs; but I have been quite at a loss to discover any such foundation for many that I have heard lately, and which have appeared to me extraordinarily wild and unaccountable. The way in which the chorus strikes in with the burthen, between each phrase of the melody chanted by a single voice, is very curious and effective, especially with the rhythm of the rowlocks for accompaniment. The high voices all in unison, and the admirable time and true accent with which their responses are made, always make me wish that some great musical composer could hear these semi-savage performances. With a very little skilful adaptation and instrumentation, I think one or two barbaric chants and choruses might be evoked from them that would make the fortune of an opera. The only exception that I have met with, yet among our boat voices to the high tenor which they seem all to possess is in the person of an individual named Isaac, a basso profondo of the deepest dye, who nevertheless never attempts to produce with his different register any different effects in the chorus by venturing a second, but sings like the rest in unison, perfect unison, of both time and tune. By-the-by, this individual _does_ speak, and therefore I presume he is not an ape, ourang-outang, chimpanzee, or gorilla; but I could not, I confess, have conceived it possible that the presence of articulate sounds, and the absence of an articulate tail, should make, externally at least, so completely the only appreciable difference between a man and a monkey, as they appear to do in this individual 'black brother.' Such stupendous long thin hands, and long flat feet, I did never see off a large quadruped of the ape species. But, as I said before, Isaac _speaks_, and I am much comforted thereby. You cannot think (to return to the songs of my boatmen) how strange some of their words are: in one, they repeatedly chanted the 'sentiment' that 'God made man, and man makes'--what do you think?--'money!' Is not that a peculiar poetical proposition? Another ditty to which they frequently treat me they call Caesar's song; it is an extremely spirited war-song, beginning 'The trumpets blow, the bugles sound--Oh, stand your ground!' It has puzzled me not a little to determine in my own mind whether this title of Caesar's song has any reference to the great Julius, and if so what may be the negro notion of him, and whence and how derived. One of their songs displeased me not a little, for it embodied the opinion that 'twenty-six black girls not make mulatto yellow girl;' and as I told them I did not like it, they have omitted it since. This desperate tendency to despise and undervalue their own race and colour, which is one of the very worst results of their abject condition, is intolerable to me. While rowing up and down the broad waters of the Altamaha to the music of these curious chants, I have been reading Mr. Moore's speech about the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia; and I confess I think his the only defensible position yet taken, and the only consistent argument yet used in any of the speeches I have hitherto seen upon the subject. I have now settled down at Hampton again; Mr. ---- is quite recovered, and is coming down here in a day or two for change of air; it is getting too late for him to stay on the rice plantation even in the day, I think. You cannot imagine anything so exquisite as the perfect curtains of yellow jasmine with which this whole island is draped; and as the boat comes sweeping down towards the point, the fragrance from the thickets hung with their golden garlands greets one before one can distinguish them; it is really enchanting. I have now to tell you of my hallowing last Sunday by gathering a congregation of the people into my big sitting-room, and reading prayers to them. I had been wishing very much to do this for some time past, and obtained Mr. ----'s leave while I was with him at the Rice Island, and it was a great pleasure to me. Some of the people are allowed to go up to Darien once a month to church; but, with that exception, they have no religious service on Sunday whatever for them. There is a church on the Island of St. Simon, but they are forbidden to frequent it, as it leads them off their own through neighbouring plantations, and gives opportunities for meetings between the negroes of the different estates, and very likely was made the occasion of abuses and objectionable practices of various kinds; at any rate, Mr. K---- forbade the Hampton slaves resorting to the St. Simon's church; and so, for three Sundays in the month they are utterly without Christian worship or teaching, or any religious observance of God's day whatever. I was very anxious that it should not be thought that I _ordered_ any of the people to come to prayers, as I particularly desired to see if they themselves felt the want of any Sabbath service, and would of their own accord join in any such ceremony; I therefore merely told the house servants that if they would come to the sitting-room at eleven o'clock, I would read prayers to them, and that they might tell any of their friends or any of the people that I should be very glad to see them if they liked to come. Accordingly, most of those who live at the Point, i.e. in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, came, and it was encouraging to see the very decided efforts at cleanliness and decorum of attire which they had all made. I was very much affected and impressed myself by what I was doing, and I suppose must have communicated some of my own feeling to those who heard me. It is an extremely solemn thing to me to read the Scriptures aloud to any one, and there was something in my relation to the poor people by whom I was surrounded that touched me so deeply while thus attempting to share with them the best of my possessions, that I found it difficult to command my voice, and had to stop several times in order to do so. When I had done, they all with one accord uttered the simple words, 'We thank you, missis,' and instead of overwhelming me as usual with petitions and complaints, they rose silently and quietly, in a manner that would have become the most orderly of Christian congregations accustomed to all the impressive decorum of civilised church privileges. Poor people! They are said to have what a very irreligious young English clergyman once informed me I had--a '_turn_ for religion.' They seem to me to have a 'turn' for instinctive good manners too; and certainly their mode of withdrawing from my room after our prayers bespoke either a strong feeling of their own or a keen appreciation of mine. I have resumed my explorations in the woods with renewed enthusiasm, for during my week's absence they have become more lovely and enticing than ever: unluckily, however, Jack seems to think that fresh rattlesnakes have budded together with the tender spring foliage, and I see that I shall either have to give up my wood walks and rides, or go without a guide. Lovely blossoms are springing up everywhere, weeds, of course, wild things, impertinently so called. Nothing is cultivated here but cotton; but in some of the cotton fields, beautiful creatures are peeping into blossom, which I suppose will all be duly hoed off the surface of the soil in proper season: meantime I rejoice in them, and in the splendid magnificent thistles, which would be in flower-gardens in other parts of the world, and in the wonderful, strange, beautiful butterflies that seem to me almost as big as birds, that go zig-zagging in the sun. I saw yesterday a lovely monster, who thought proper, for my greater delectation, to alight on a thistle I was admiring, and as the flower was purple, and he was all black velvet, fringed with gold, I was exceedingly pleased with his good inspiration. This morning I drove up to the settlement at St. Annie's, having various bundles of benefaction to carry in the only equipage my estate here affords,--an exceedingly small, rough, and uncomfortable cart, called the sick house waggon, inasmuch as it is used to convey to the hospital such of the poor people as are too ill to walk there. Its tender mercies must be terrible indeed for the sick, for I who am sound could very hardly abide them; however, I suppose Montreal's pace is moderated for them: to-day he went rollicking along with us behind him, shaking his fine head and mane, as if he thought the more we were jolted the better we should like it. We found, on trying to go on to Cartwright's Point, that the state of the tide would not admit of our getting thither, and so had to return, leaving it unvisited. It seems to me strange that where the labour of so many hands might be commanded, piers, and wharves, and causeways, are not thrown out (wooden ones, of course, I mean), wherever the common traffic to or from different parts of the plantation is thus impeded by the daily rise and fall of the river; the trouble and expense would be nothing, and the gain in convenience very considerable. However, perhaps the nature of the tides, and of the banks and shores themselves, may not be propitious for such constructions, and I rather incline upon reflection to think this may be so, because to go from Hampton to our neighbour Mr. C----'s plantation, it is necessary to consult the tide in order to land conveniently. Driving home to-day by Jones' Creek, we saw an immovable row of white cranes, all standing with imperturbable gravity upon one leg. I thought of Boccaccio's cook, and had a mind to say, Ha! at them to try if they had two. I have been over to Mr. C----, and was very much pleased with my visit, but will tell you of it in my next. * * * * * Dear E----. I promised to tell you of my visit to my neighbour Mr. C----, which pleased and interested me very much. He is an old Glasgow man, who has been settled here many years. It is curious how many of the people round this neighbourhood have Scotch names; it seems strange to find them thus gathered in the vicinity of a new Darien; but those in our immediate neighbourhood seem to have found it a far less fatal region than their countrymen did its namesake of the Isthmus. Mr. C----'s house is a roomy, comfortable, handsomely laid out mansion, to which he received me with very cordial kindness, and where I spent part of a very pleasant morning, talking with him, hearing all he could tell me of the former history of Mr. ----'s plantation. His description of its former master, old Major ----, and of his agent and overseer Mr. K----, and of that gentleman's worthy son and successor the late overseer, interested me very much; of the two latter functionaries his account was terrible, and much what I had supposed any impartial account of them would be; because, let the propensity to lying of the poor wretched slaves be what it will, they could not invent, with a common consent, the things that they one and all tell me with reference to the manner in which they have been treated by the man who has just left the estate, and his father, who for the last nineteen years have been sole sovereigns of their bodies and souls. The crops have satisfied the demands of the owners, who, living in Philadelphia, have been perfectly contented to receive a large income from their estate without apparently caring how it was earned. The stories that the poor people tell me of the cruel tyranny under which they have lived are not complaints, for they are of things past and gone, and very often, horridly as they shock and affect me, they themselves seem hardly more than half conscious of the misery their condition exhibits to me, and they speak of things which I shudder to hear of, almost as if they had been matters of course with them. Old Mr. C---- spoke with extreme kindness of his own people, and had evidently bestowed much humane and benevolent pains upon endeavours to better their condition. I asked him if he did not think the soil and climate of this part of Georgia admirably suited to the cultivation of the mulberry and the rearing of the silk-worm; for it has appeared to me that hereafter, silk may be made one of the most profitable products of this whole region: he said that that had long been his opinion, and he had at one time had it much at heart to try the experiment, and had proposed to Major ---- to join him in it, on a scale large enough to test it satisfactorily; but he said Mr. K---- opposed the scheme so persistently that of course it was impossible to carry it out, as his agency and cooperation were indispensable; and that in like manner he had suggested sowing turnip crops, and planting peach trees for the benefit and use of the people on the Hampton estate, experiments which he had tried with excellent success on his own; but all these plans for the amelioration and progress of the people's physical condition had been obstructed and finally put entirely aside by old Mr. K---- and his son, who, as Mr. C---- said, appeared to give satisfaction to their employers, so it was not his business to find fault with them; he said, however, that the whole condition and treatment of the slaves had changed from the time of Major ----'s death, and that he thought it providential for the poor people that Mr. K---- should have left the estate, and the young gentleman, the present owner, come down to look after the people. He showed me his garden, from whence come the beautiful vegetables he had more than once supplied me with; in the midst of it was a very fine and flourishing date palm tree, which he said bore its fruit as prosperously here as it would in Asia. After the garden, we visited a charming nicely-kept poultry yard, and I returned home much delighted with my visit and the kind good humour of my host. In the afternoon, I sat as usual at the receipt of custom, hearing of aches and pains, till I ached myself sympathetically from head to foot. Yesterday morning, dear E----, I went on horseback to St. Annie's, exploring on my way some beautiful woods, and in the afternoon I returned thither in a wood waggon with Jack to drive and a mule to draw me, Montreal being quite beyond his management; and then and there, the hatchet and saw being in company, I compelled my slave Jack, all the rattlesnakes in creation to the contrary notwithstanding, to cut and clear a way for my chariot through the charming copse. My letter has been lying unfinished for the last three days. I have been extraordinarily busy, having emancipated myself from the trammels of Jack and all his terror, and as I fear no serpents on horseback, have been daily riding through new patches of woodland without any guide, taking my chance of what I might come to in the shape of impediments. Last Tuesday, I rode through a whole wood, of burned and charred trees, cypresses and oaks, that looked as if they had been each of them blasted by a special thunderbolt, and whole thickets of young trees and shrubs perfectly black and brittle from the effect of fire, I suppose the result of some carelessness of the slaves. As this charcoal woodland extended for some distance, I turned out of it, and round the main road through the plantation, as I could not ride through the blackened boughs and branches without getting begrimed. It had a strange wild desolate effect, not without a certain gloomy picturesqueness. In the afternoon, I made Israel drive me through Jack's new-made path to break it down and open it still more, and Montreal's powerful trampling did good service to that effect, though he did not seem to relish the narrow wood road with its grass path by any means as much as the open way of what may be called the high road. After this operation, I went on to visit the people at the Busson Hill settlement. I here found, among other noteworthy individuals, a female named Judy, whose two children belong to an individual called (not Punch) but Joe, who has another wife, called Mary, at the Rice Island. In one of the huts I went to leave some flannel and rice and sugar for a poor old creature called Nancy, to whom I had promised such indulgences: she is exceedingly infirm and miserable, suffering from sore limbs and an ulcerated leg so cruelly that she can hardly find rest in any position from the constant pain she endures, and is quite unable to lie on her hard bed at night. As I bent over her to-day, trying to prop her into some posture where she might find some ease, she took hold of my hand, and with the tears streaming over her face, said, 'I have worked every day through dew and damp, and sand and heat, and done good work; but oh, missis, me old and broken now, no tongue can tell how much I suffer.' In spite of their curious thick utterance and comical jargon, these people sometimes use wonderfully striking and pathetic forms of speech. In the next cabin, which consisted of an enclosure, called by courtesy a room, certainly not ten feet square, and owned by a woman called Dice--that is, not owned, of course, but inhabited by her--three grown up human beings and eight children stow themselves by day and night, which may be called close packing, I think. I presume that they must take turns to be inside and outside the house, but they did not make any complaint about it, though I should think the aspect of my countenance, as I surveyed their abode and heard their numbers, might have given them a hint to that effect; but I really do find these poor creatures patient of so much misery, that it inclines me the more to heed as well as hear their petitions and complaints, when they bring them to me. After my return home, I had my usual evening reception, and, among other pleasant incidents of plantation life, heard the following agreeable anecdote from a woman named Sophy, who came to beg for some rice. In asking her about her husband and children, she said she had never had any husband, that she had had two children by a white man of the name of Walker, who was employed at the mill on the rice island; she was in the hospital after the birth of the second child she bore this man, and at the same time two women, Judy and Sylla, of whose children Mr. K---- was the father, were recovering from their confinements. It was not a month since any of them had been delivered, when Mrs. K---- came to the hospital, had them all three severely flogged, a process which _she_ personally superintended, and then sent them to Five Pound--the swamp Botany Bay of the plantation, of which I have told you--with further orders to the drivers to flog them every day for a week. Now, E----, if I make you sick with these disgusting stories, I cannot help it--they are the life itself here; hitherto I have thought these details intolerable enough, but this apparition of a female fiend in the middle of this hell I confess adds an element of cruelty which seems to me to surpass all the rest. Jealousy is not an uncommon quality in the feminine temperament; and just conceive the fate of these unfortunate women between the passions of their masters and mistresses, each alike armed with power to oppress and torture them. Sophy went on to say that Isaac was her son by driver Morris, who had forced her while she was in her miserable exile at Five Pound. Almost beyond my patience with this string of detestable details, I exclaimed--foolishly enough, heaven knows--'Ah, but don't you know, did nobody ever tell or teach any of you, that it is a sin to live with men who are not your husbands?' Alas, E----, what could the poor creature answer but what she did, seizing me at the same time vehemently by the wrist: 'Oh yes, missis, we know--we know all about dat well enough; but we do anything to get our poor flesh some rest from de whip; when he made me follow him into de bush, what use me tell him no? he have strength to make me.' I have written down the woman's words; I wish I could write down the voice and look of abject misery with which they were spoken. Now, you will observe that the story was not told to me as a complaint; it was a thing long past and over, of which she only spoke in the natural course of accounting for her children to me. I make no comment; what need, or can I add, to such stories? But how is such a state of things to endure?--and again, how is it to end? While I was pondering, as it seemed to me, at the very bottom of the Slough of Despond, on this miserable creature's story, another woman came in (Tema), carrying in her arms a child the image of the mulatto Bran; she came to beg for flannel. I asked her who was her husband. She said she was not married. Her child is the child of bricklayer Temple, who has a wife at the rice island. By this time, what do you think of the moralities, as well as the amenities, of slave life? These are the conditions which can only be known to one who lives among them; flagrant acts of cruelty may be rare, but this ineffable state of utter degradation, this really _beastly_ existence, is the normal condition of these men and women, and of that no one seems to take heed, nor have I ever heard it described so as to form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into it;--where and how is one to begin the cleansing of this horrid pestilential immondezzio of an existence? It is Wednesday, the 20th of March; we cannot stay here much longer; I wonder if I shall come back again! and whether, when I do, I shall find the trace of one idea of a better life left in these poor people's minds by my sojourn among them. One of my industries this morning has been cutting out another dress for one of our women, who had heard of my tailoring prowess at the rice island. The material, as usual, was a miserable cotton, many-coloured like the scarf of Iris. While shaping it for my client, I ventured to suggest the idea of the possibility of a change of the nethermost as well as the uppermost garment. This, I imagine, is a conception that has never dawned upon the female slave mind on this plantation. They receive twice a year a certain supply of clothing, and wear them (as I have heard some nasty fine ladies do their stays, for fear they should get out of shape), without washing, till they receive the next suit. Under these circumstances I think it is unphilosophical, to say the least of it, to speak of the negroes as a race whose unfragrance is heaven-ordained, and the result of special organisation. I must tell you that I have been delighted, surprised, and the very least perplexed, by the sudden petition on the part of our young waiter, Aleck, that I will teach him to read. He is a very intelligent lad of about sixteen, and preferred his request with an urgent humility that was very touching. I told him I would think about it. I mean to do it. I will do it,--and yet, it is simply breaking the laws of the government under which I am living. Unrighteous laws are made to be broken,--_perhaps_,--but then, you see, I am a woman, and Mr. ---- stands between me and the penalty. If I were a man, I would do that and many a thing besides, and doubtless should be shot some fine day from behind a tree by some good neighbour, who would do the community a service by quietly getting rid of a mischievous incendiary; and I promise you in such a case no questions would be asked, and my lessons would come to a speedy and silent end; but teaching slaves to read is a fineable offence, and I am _feme couverte_, and my fines must be paid by my legal owner, and the first offence of the sort is heavily fined, and the second more heavily fined, and for the third, one is sent to prison. What a pity it is I can't begin with Aleck's third lesson, because going to prison can't be done by proxy, and that penalty would light upon the right shoulders! I certainly intend to teach Aleck to read. I certainly won't tell Mr. ---- anything about it. I'll leave him to find it out, as slaves, and servants and children, and all oppressed, and ignorant, and uneducated and unprincipled people do; then, if he forbids me I can stop--perhaps before then the lad may have learnt his letters. I begin to perceive one most admirable circumstance in this slavery: you are absolute on your own plantation. No slaves' testimony avails against you, and no white testimony exists but such as you choose to admit. Some owners have a fancy for maiming their slaves, some brand them, some pull out their teeth, some shoot them a little here and there (all details gathered from advertisements of runaway slaves in southern papers); now they do all this on their plantations, where nobody comes to see, and I'll teach Aleck to read, for nobody is here to see, at least nobody whose seeing I mind; and I'll teach every other creature that wants to learn. I haven't much more than a week to remain in this blessed purgatory, in that last week perhaps I may teach the boy enough to go on alone when I am gone. _Thursday, 21st._--I took a long ride to-day all through some new woods and fields, and finally came upon a large space sown with corn for the people. Here I was accosted by such a shape as I never beheld in the worst of my dreams; it looked at first, as it came screaming towards me, like a live specimen of the arms of the Isle of Man, which, as you may or may not know, are three legs joined together, and kicking in different directions. This uncouth device is not an invention of the Manxmen, for it is found on some very ancient coins,--Greek, I believe; but at any rate it is now the device of our subject Island of Man, and, like that set in motion, and nothing else, was the object that approached me, only it had a head where the three legs were joined, and a voice came out of the head to this effect, 'Oh missis, you hab to take me out of dis here bird field, me no able to run after birds, and ebery night me lick because me no run after dem.' When this apparition reached me and stood as still as it could, I perceived it consisted of a boy who said his name was 'Jack de bird driver.' I suppose some vague idea of the fitness of things had induced them to send this living scarecrow into the cornfield, and if he had been set up in the midst of it, nobody, I am sure, would have imagined he was anything else; but it seems he was expected to run after the feathered fowl who alighted on the grain field, and I do not wonder that he did not fulfil this expectation. His feet, legs, and knees were all maimed and distorted, his legs were nowhere thicker than my wrist, his feet were a yard apart from each other, and his knees swollen and knocking together. What a creature to ran after birds! He implored me to give him some meat, and have him sent back to Little St. Simon's Island, from which he came, and where he said his poor limbs were stronger and better. Riding home, I passed some sassafras trees, which are putting forth deliciously fragrant tassels of small leaves and blossoms, and other exquisite flowering shrubs, which are new to me, and enchant me perhaps all the more for their strangeness. Before reaching the house, I was stopped by one of our multitudinous Jennies, with a request for some meat, and that I would help her with some clothes for Ben and Daphne, of whom she had the sole charge; these are two extremely pretty and interesting-looking mulatto children, whose resemblance to Mr. K---- had induced me to ask Mr. ----, when first I saw them, if he did not think they must be his children? He said they were certainly like him, but Mr. K---- did not acknowledge the relationship. I asked Jenny who their mother was. 'Minda.' 'Who their father?' 'Mr. K----.' 'What! old Mr. K----?' 'No, Mr. R. K----.' 'Who told you so?' 'Minda, who ought to know.' 'Mr. K---- denies it.' 'That's because he never has looked upon them, nor done a thing for them.' 'Well, but he acknowledged Renty as his son, why should he deny these?' 'Because old master was here then, when Renty was born, and he made Betty tell all about it, and Mr. K---- had to own it; but nobody knows anything about this, and so he denies it'--with which information I rode home. I always give you an exact report of any conversation I may have with any of the people, and you see from this that the people on the plantation themselves are much of my worthy neighbour Mr. C----'s mind, that the death of Major ---- was a great misfortune for the slaves on his estate. I went to the hospital this afternoon, to see if the condition of the poor people was at all improved since I had been last there; but nothing had been done. I suppose Mr. G---- is waiting for Mr. ---- to come down in order to speak to him about it. I found some miserable new cases of women disabled by hard work. One poor thing, called Priscilla, had come out of the fields to-day scarcely able to crawl; she has been losing blood for a whole fortnight without intermission, and, until to-day, was labouring in the fields. Leah, another new face since I visited the hospital last, is lying quite helpless from exhaustion; she is advanced in her pregnancy, and doing task work in the fields at the same time. What piteous existences to be sure! I do wonder, as I walk among them, well fed, well clothed, young, strong, idle, doing nothing but ride and drive about all day, a woman, a creature like themselves, who have borne children too, what sort of feeling they have towards me. I wonder it is not one of murderous hate--that they should lie here almost dying with unrepaid labour for me. I stand and look at them, and these thoughts work in my mind and heart, till I feel as if I must tell them how dreadful and how monstrous it seems to me myself, and how bitterly ashamed and grieved I feel for it all. To-day I rode in the morning round poor Cripple Jack's bird field again, through the sweet spicy-smelling pine land, and home by my new road cut through Jones's wood, of which I am as proud as if I had made instead of found it--the grass, flowering shrubs, and all. In the afternoon, I drove in the wood wagon back to Jones's, and visited Busson Hill on the way, with performances of certain promises of flannel, quarters of dollars, &c. &c. At Jones's, the women to-day had all done their work at a quarter past three, and had swept their huts out very scrupulously for my reception. Their dwellings are shockingly dilapidated and over-crammed--poor creatures!--and it seems hard that, while exhorting them to spend labour in cleaning and making them tidy, I cannot promise them that they shall be repaired and made habitable for them. In driving home through my new wood cut, Jack gave me a terrible account of a flogging that a negro called Glasgow had received yesterday. He seemed awfully impressed with it; so I suppose it must have been an unusually severe punishment; but he either would not or could not tell me what the man had done. On my return to the house, I found Mr. ---- had come down from the rice plantation, whereat I was much delighted on all accounts. I am sure it is getting much too late for him to remain in that pestilential swampy atmosphere; besides I want him to see my improvements in the new wood paths, and I want him to come and hear all these poor people's complaints and petitions himself. They have been flocking in to see him ever since it was known he had arrived. I met coming on that errand Dandy, the husband of the woman for whom I cut out the gown the other day; and asking him how it had answered, he gave a piteous account of its tearing all to pieces the first time she put it on; it had appeared to me perfectly rotten and good for nothing, and, upon questioning him as to where he bought it and what he paid for it, I had to hear a sad account of hardship and injustice. I have told you that the people collect moss from the trees and sell it to the shopkeepers in Darien for the purpose of stuffing furniture; they also raise poultry, and are allowed to dispose of the eggs in the same way. It seems that poor Dandy had taken the miserable material Edie's gown was made of as payment for a quantity of moss and eggs furnished by him at various times to one of the Darien storekeepers, who refused him payment in any other shape, and the poor fellow had no redress; and this, he tells me, is a frequent experience with all the slaves both here and at the rice island. Of course, the rascally shopkeepers can cheat these poor wretches to any extent they please with perfect impunity. Mr. ---- told me of a visit Renty paid him, which was not a little curious in some of its particulars. You know none of the slaves are allowed the use of fire arms; but Renty put up a petition to be allowed Mr. K----'s gun, which it seems that gentleman left behind him. Mr. ---- refused this petition, saying at the same time to the lad that he knew very well that none of the people were allowed guns. Renty expostulated on the score of his _white blood_, and finding his master uninfluenced by that consideration, departed with some severe reflections on Mr. K----, his father, for not having left him his gun as a keepsake, in token of (paternal) affection, when he left the plantation. It is quite late, and I am very tired, though I have not done much more than usual to-day, but the weather is beginning to be oppressive to me, who hate heat; but I find the people, and especially the sick in the hospital, speak of it as cold. I will tell you hereafter of a most comical account Mr. ---- has given me of the prolonged and still protracted pseudo-pregnancy of a woman called Markie, who for many more months than are generally required for the process of continuing the human species, pretended to be what the Germans pathetically and poetically call 'in good hope,' and continued to reap increased rations as the reward of her expectation, till she finally had to disappoint the estate and receive a flogging. He told me too, what interested me very much, of a conspiracy among Mr. C----'s slaves some years ago. I cannot tell you about it now; I will some other time. It is wonderful to me that such attempts are not being made the whole time among these people to regain their liberty; probably because many are made ineffectually, and never known beyond the limits of the plantation where they take place. * * * * * Dear E----. We have been having something like northern March weather--blinding sun, blinding wind, and blinding dust, through all which, the day before yesterday, Mr. ---- and I rode together round most of the fields, and over the greater part of the plantation. It was a detestable process, the more so that he rode Montreal and I Miss Kate, and we had no small difficulty in managing them both. In the afternoon we had an equally detestable drive through the new wood paths to St. Annie's, and having accomplished all my errands among the people there, we crossed over certain sounds, and seas, and separating waters, to pay a neighbourly visit to the wife of one of our adjacent planters. How impossible it would be for you to conceive, even if I could describe, the careless desolation which pervaded the whole place; the shaggy unkempt grounds we passed through to approach the house; the ruinous, rackrent, tumble-down house itself, the untidy, slatternly all but beggarly appearance of the mistress of the mansion herself. The smallest Yankee farmer has a tidier estate, a tidier house, and a tidier wife than this member of the proud southern chivalry, who, however, inasmuch as he has slaves, is undoubtedly a much greater personage in his own estimation than those capital fellows W---- and B----, who walk in glory and in joy behind their ploughs upon your mountain sides. The Brunswick canal project was descanted upon, and pronounced, without a shadow of dissent, a scheme the impracticability of which all but convicted its projectors of insanity. Certainly, if, as I hear the monied men of Boston have gone largely into this speculation, their habitual sagacity must have been seriously at fault; for here on the spot nobody mentions the project but as a subject of utter derision. While the men discussed about this matter, Mrs. B---- favoured me with the congratulations I have heard so many times on the subject of my having a white nursery maid for my children. Of course, she went into the old subject of the utter incompetency of negro women to discharge such an office faithfully; but in spite of her multiplied examples of their utter inefficiency, I believe the discussion ended by simply our both agreeing that ignorant negro girls of twelve years old are not as capable or trustworthy as well-trained white women of thirty. Returning home our route was changed, and Quash the boatman took us all the way round by water to Hampton. I should have told you that our exit was as wild as our entrance to this estate and was made through a broken wooden fence, which we had to climb partly over and partly under, with some risk and some obloquy, in spite of our dexterity, as I tore my dress, and very nearly fell flat on my face in the process. Our row home was perfectly enchanting; for though the morning's wind and (I suppose) the state of the tide had roughened the waters of the great river, and our passage was not as smooth as it might have been, the wind had died away, the evening air was deliciously still, and mild, and soft. A young slip of a moon glimmered just above the horizon, and 'the stars climbed up the sapphire steps of heaven,' while we made our way over the rolling, rushing, foaming waves, and saw to right and left the marsh fires burning in the swampy meadows, adding another coloured light in the landscape to the amber-tinted lower sky and the violet arch above, and giving wild picturesqueness to the whole scene by throwing long flickering rays of flame upon the distant waters. _Sunday, the 14th._--I read service again to-day to the people. You cannot conceive anything more impressive than the silent devotion of their whole demeanour while it lasted, nor more touching than the profound thanks with which they rewarded me when it was over, and they took their leave; and to-day they again left me with the utmost decorum of deportment, and without pressing a single petition or complaint, such as they ordinarily thrust upon me on all other occasions, which seems to me an instinctive feeling of religious respect for the day and the business they have come upon, which does them infinite credit. In the afternoon I took a long walk with the chicks in the woods; long at least for the little legs of S---- and M----, who carried baby. We came home by the shore, and I stopped to look at a jutting point, just below which a small sort of bay would have afforded the most capital position for a bathing house. If we stayed here late in the season, such a refreshment would become almost a necessary of life, and anywhere along the bank just where I stopped to examine it to-day, an establishment for that purpose might be prosperously founded. I am amused, but by no means pleased, at an entirely new mode of pronouncing which S---- has adopted. Apparently the negro jargon has commended itself as euphonious to her infantile ears, and she is now treating me to the most ludicrous and accurate imitations of it every time she opens her mouth. Of course I shall not allow this, comical as it is, to become a habit. This is the way the southern ladies acquire the thick and inelegant pronunciation which distinguishes their utterances from the northern snuffle; and I have no desire that S---- should adorn her mother tongue with either peculiarity. It is a curious and sad enough thing to observe, as I have frequent opportunities of doing, the unbounded insolence and tyranny (of manner, of course it can go no farther), of the slaves towards each other. 'Hi! you boy!' and 'Hi! you girl!' shouted in an imperious scream, is the civillest mode of apostrophising those at a distance from them; more frequently it is 'You niggar, you hear? hi! you niggar!' And I assure you no contemptuous white intonation ever equalled the _prepotenza_ of the despotic insolence of this address of these poor wretches to each other. I have left my letter lying for a couple of days, dear E----. I have been busy and tired; my walking and riding is becoming rather more laborious to me, for, though nobody here appears to do so, I am beginning to feel the relaxing influence of the spring. The day before yesterday I took a disagreeable ride, all through swampy fields and charred blackened thickets, to discover nothing either picturesque or beautiful; the woods in one part of the plantation have been on fire for three days, and a whole tract of exquisite evergreens has been burnt down to the ground. In the afternoon I drove in the wood wagon to visit the people at St. Annie's. There had been rain these last two nights, and their wretched hovels do not keep out the weather; they are really miserable abodes for human beings. I think pigs who were at all particular might object to some of them. There is a woman at this settlement called Sophy, the wife of a driver, Morris, who is so pretty that I often wonder if it is only by contrast that I admire her so much, or if her gentle, sweet, refined face, in spite of its dusky colour, would not approve itself anywhere to any one with an eye for beauty. Her manner and voice too are peculiarly soft and gentle; but, indeed, the voices of all these poor people, men as well as women, are much pleasanter and more melodious than the voices of white people in general. Most of the wretched hovels had been swept and tidied out in expectation of my visit, and many were the consequent petitions for rations of meat, flannel, osnaburgs, etc. Promising all which, in due proportion to the cleanliness of each separate dwelling, I came away. On my way home I called for a moment at Jones' settlement to leave money and presents promised to the people there, for similar improvement in the condition of their huts. I had not time to stay and distribute my benefactions myself; and so appointed a particularly bright intelligent looking woman, called Jenny, pay-mistress in my stead; and her deputed authority was received with the utmost cheerfulness by them all. I have been having a long talk with Mr. ---- about Ben and Daphne, those two young mulatto children of Mr. K----'s, whom I mentioned to you lately. Poor pretty children! they have refined and sensitive faces as well as straight regular features; and the expression of the girl's countenance, as well as the sound of her voice, and the sad humility of her deportment, are indescribably touching. Mr. B---- expressed the strongest interest in and pity for them, _because of their colour_: it seems unjust almost to the rest of their fellow unfortunates that this should be so, and yet it is almost impossible to resist the impression of the unfitness of these two forlorn young creatures, for the life of coarse labour and dreadful degradation to which they are destined. In any of the southern cities the girl would be pretty sure to be reserved for a worse fate; but even here, death seems to me a thousand times preferable to the life that is before her. In the afternoon I rode with Mr. ---- to look at the fire in the woods. We did not approach it, but stood where the great volumes of smoke could be seen rising steadily above the pines, as they have now continued to do for upwards of a week; the destruction of the pine timber must be something enormous. We then went to visit Dr. and Mrs. G----, and wound up these exercises of civilized life by a call on dear old Mr. C----, whose nursery and kitchen garden are a real refreshment to my spirits. How completely the national character of the worthy canny old Scot is stamped on the care and thrift visible in his whole property, the judicious successful culture of which has improved and adorned his dwelling in this remote corner of the earth! The comparison, or rather contrast, between himself and his quondam neighbour Major ----, is curious enough to contemplate. The Scotch tendency of the one to turn everything to good account, the Irish propensity of the other to leave everything to ruin, to disorder, and neglect; the careful economy and prudent management of the mercantile man, the reckless profusion, and careless extravagance of the soldier. The one made a splendid fortune and spent it in Philadelphia, where he built one of the finest houses that existed there, in the old-fashioned days, when fine old family mansions were still to be seen breaking the monotonous uniformity of the Quaker city. The other has resided here on his estate ameliorating the condition of his slaves and his property, a benefactor to the people and the soil alike--a useful and a good existence, an obscure and tranquil one. Last Wednesday we drove to Hamilton--by far the finest estate on St. Simon's Island. The gentleman to whom it belongs lives, I believe, habitually in Paris; but Captain F---- resides on it, and, I suppose, is the real overseer of the plantation. All the way along the road (we traversed nearly the whole length of the island) we found great tracts of wood, all burnt or burning; the destruction had spread in every direction, and against the sky we saw the slow rising of the smoky clouds that showed the pine forest to be on fire still. What an immense quantity of property such a fire must destroy! The negro huts on several of the plantations that we passed through were the most miserable human habitations I ever beheld. The wretched hovels at St. Annie's, on the Hampton estate, that had seemed to me the _ne plus ultra_ of misery, were really palaces to some of the dirty, desolate, dilapidated dog kennels which we passed to-day, and out of which the negroes poured like black ants at our approach, and stood to gaze at us as we drove by. The planters' residences we passed were only three. It makes one ponder seriously when one thinks of the mere handful of white people on this island. In the midst of this large population of slaves, how absolutely helpless they would be if the blacks were to become restive! They could be destroyed to a man before human help could reach them from the main, or the tidings even of what was going on be carried across the surrounding waters. As we approached the southern end of the island, we began to discover the line of the white sea sands beyond the bushes and fields,--and presently, above the sparkling, dazzling line of snowy white,--for the sands were as white as our English chalk cliffs,--stretched the deep blue sea line of the great Atlantic Ocean. We found that there had been a most terrible fire in the Hamilton woods--more extensive than that on our own plantation. It seems as if the whole island had been burning at different points for more than a week. What a cruel pity and shame it does seem to have these beautiful masses of wood so destroyed! I suppose it is impossible to prevent it. The 'field hands' make fires to cook their mid-day food wherever they happen to be working; and sometimes through their careless neglect, but sometimes too undoubtedly on purpose, the woods are set fire to by these means. One benefit they consider that they derive from the process is the destruction of the dreaded rattlesnakes that infest the woodland all over the island; but really the funeral pyre of these hateful reptiles is too costly at this price. Hamilton struck me very much,--I mean the whole appearance of the place; the situation of the house, the noble water prospect it commanded, the magnificent old oaks near it, a luxuriant vine trellis, and a splendid hedge of Yucca gloriosa, were all objects of great delight to me. The latter was most curious to me, who had never seen any but single specimens of the plant, and not many of these. I think our green house at the north boasts but two; but here they were growing close together, and in such a manner as to form a compact and impenetrable hedge, their spiky leaves striking out on all sides like _chevaux de frise_, and the tall slender stems that bear those delicate ivory-coloured bells of blossoms, springing up against the sky in a regular row. I wish I could see that hedge in blossom. It must be wonderfully strange and lovely, and must look by moonlight like a whole range of fairy Chinese pagodas carved in ivory. At dinner we had some delicious green peas, so much in advance of you are we down here with the seasons. Don't you think one might accept the rattlesnakes, or perhaps indeed the slavery, for the sake of the green peas? 'Tis a world of compensations--a life of compromises, you know; and one should learn to set one thing against another if one means to thrive and fare well, i.e. eat green peas on the twenty-eighth of March. After dinner I walked up and down before the house for a long while with Mrs. F----, and had a most interesting conversation with her about the negroes and all the details of their condition. She is a kind-hearted, intelligent woman; but though she seemed to me to acquiesce, as a matter of inevitable necessity, in the social system in the midst of which she was born and lives, she did not appear to me, by several things she said, to be by any means in love with it. She gave me a very sad character of Mr. K----, confirming by her general description of him the impression produced by all the details I have received from our own people. As for any care for the moral or religious training of the slaves, that, she said, was a matter that never troubled his thoughts; indeed, his only notion upon the subject of religion, she said, was, that it was something _not bad_ for white women and children. We drove home by moonlight; and as we came towards the woods in the middle of the island, the fire-flies glittered out from the dusky thickets as if some magical golden veil was every now and then shaken out into the darkness. The air was enchantingly mild and soft, and the whole way through the silvery night delightful. My dear friend, I have at length made acquaintance with a live rattlesnake. Old Scylla had the pleasure of discovering it while hunting for some wood to burn. Israel captured it, and brought it to the house for my edification. I thought it an evil-looking beast, and could not help feeling rather nervous while contemplating it, though the poor thing had a noose round its neck and could by no manner of means have extricated itself. The flat head, and vivid vicious eye, and darting tongue, were none of them lovely to behold; but the sort of threatening whirr produced by its rattle, together with the deepening and fading of the marks on its skin, either with its respiration or the emotions of fear and anger it was enduring, were peculiarly dreadful and fascinating. It was quite a young one, having only two or three rattles in its tail. These, as you probably know, increase in number by one annually; so that you can always tell the age of the amiable serpent you are examining--if it will let you count the number of joints of its rattle. Captain F---- gave me the rattle of one which had as many as twelve joints. He said it had belonged to a very large snake which had crawled from under a fallen tree trunk on which his children were playing. After exhibiting his interesting captive, Israel killed, stuffed, and presented it to me for preservation as a trophy, and made me extremely happy by informing me that there was a nest of them where this one was found. I think with terror of S---- running about with her little socks not reaching half-way up her legs, and her little frocks not reaching half-way down them. However, we shall probably not make acquaintance with many more of these natives of Georgia, as we are to return as soon as possible now to the north. We shall soon be free again. This morning I rode to the burnt district, and attempted to go through it at St. Clair's, but unsuccessfully: it was impossible to penetrate through the charred and blackened thickets. In the afternoon I walked round the point, and visited the houses of the people who are our nearest neighbours. I found poor Edie in sad tribulation at the prospect of resuming her field labour. It is really shameful treatment of a woman just after child labour. She was confined exactly three weeks ago to-day, and she tells me she is ordered out to field work on Monday. She seems to dread the approaching hardships of her task-labour extremely. Her baby was born dead, she thinks in consequence of a fall she had while carrying a heavy weight of water. She is suffering great pain in one of her legs and sides, and seems to me in a condition utterly unfit for any work, much less hoeing in the fields; but I dare not interfere to prevent this cruelty. She says she has already had to go out to work three weeks after her confinement with each of her other children, and does not complain of it as anything special in her case. She says that is now the invariable rule of the whole plantation, though it used not to be so formerly. I have let my letter lie since I wrote the above, dear E----; but as mine is a story without beginning, middle, or end, it matters extremely little where I leave it off or where I take it up; and if you have not, between my wood rides and sick slaves, come to Falstaff's conclusion that I have 'damnable iteration,' you are patient of sameness. But the days are like each other; and the rides and the people, and, alas! their conditions, do not vary. To-day, however, my visit to the infirmary was marked by an event which has not occurred before--the death of one of the poor slaves while I was there. I found on entering the first ward,--to use a most inapplicable term for the dark, filthy, forlorn room I have so christened,--an old negro called Friday lying on the ground. I asked what ailed him, and was told he was dying. I approached him, and perceived, from the glazed eyes and the feeble rattling breath, that he was at the point of expiring. His tattered shirt and trousers barely covered his poor body; his appearance was that of utter exhaustion from age and feebleness; he had nothing under him but a mere handful of straw that did not cover the earth he was stretched on; and under his head, by way of pillow for his dying agony, two or three rough sticks just raising his skull a few inches from the ground. The flies were all gathering around his mouth, and not a creature was near him. There he lay,--the worn-out slave, whose life had been spent in unrequited labour for me and mine,--without one physical alleviation, one Christian solace, one human sympathy, to cheer him in his extremity,--panting out the last breath of his wretched existence, like some forsaken, over-worked, wearied-out beast of burthen, rotting where it falls! I bent over the poor awful human creature in the supreme hour of his mortality; and while my eyes, blinded with tears of unavailing pity and horror, were fixed upon him, there was a sudden quivering of the eyelids and falling of the jaw,--and he was free. I stood up, and remained long lost in the imagination of the change that creature had undergone, and in the tremendous overwhelming consciousness of the deliverance God had granted the soul whose cast-off vesture of decay lay at my feet. How I rejoiced for him--and how, as I turned to the wretches who were calling to me from the inner room, whence they could see me as I stood contemplating the piteous object, I wished they all were gone away with him, the delivered, the freed by death from bitter bitter bondage. In the next room, I found a miserable, decrepid, old negress, called Charity, lying sick, and I should think near too to die; but she did not think her work was over, much as she looked unfit for further work on earth; but with feeble voice and beseeching hands implored me to have her work lightened when she was sent back to it from the hospital. She is one of the oldest slaves on the plantation, and has to walk to her field labour, and back again at night, a distance of nearly four miles. There were an unusual number of sick women in the room to-day; among them quite a young girl, daughter of Boatman Quash's, with a sick baby, who has a father, though she has no husband. Poor thing! she looks like a mere child herself. I returned home so very sad and heart-sick that I could not rouse myself to the effort of going up to St. Annie's with the presents I had promised the people there. I sent M---- up in the wood wagon with them, and remained in the house with my thoughts, which were none of the merriest. * * * * * Dearest E----. On Friday, I rode to where the rattlesnake was found, and where I was informed by the negroes there was a _nest_ of them--a pleasing domestic picture of home and infancy that word suggests, not altogether appropriate to rattlesnakes, I think. On horseback I felt bold to accomplish this adventure, which I certainly should not have attempted on foot; however, I could discover no sign of either snake or nest--(perhaps it is of the nature of a mare's nest, and undiscoverable); but, having done my duty by myself in endeavouring to find it, I rode off and coasted the estate by the side of the marsh, till I came to the causeway. There I found a new cleared field, and stopped to admire the beautiful appearance of the stumps of the trees scattered all about it, and wreathed and garlanded with the most profuse and fantastic growth of various plants--wild roses being among the most abundant. What a lovely aspect one side of nature presents here, and how hideous is the other! In the afternoon, I drove to pay a visit to old Mrs. A----, the lady proprietress whose estate immediately adjoins ours. On my way thither, I passed a woman called Margaret walking rapidly and powerfully along the road. She was returning home from the field, having done her task at three o'clock; and told me, with a merry beaming black face, that she was going 'to clean up de house, to please de missis.' On driving through my neighbour's grounds, I was disgusted more than I can express with the miserable negro huts of her people; they were not fit to shelter cattle--they were not fit to shelter anything, for they were literally in holes, and, as we used to say of our stockings at school, too bad to darn. To be sure, I will say, in excuse for their old mistress, her own habitation was but a very few degrees less ruinous and disgusting. What would one of your Yankee farmers say to such abodes? When I think of the white houses, the green blinds, and the flower plots, of the villages in New England, and look at these dwellings of lazy filth and inert degradation, it does seem amazing to think that physical and moral conditions so widely opposite should be found among people occupying a similar place in the social scale of the same country. The Northern farmer, however, thinks it no shame to work, the Southern planter does; and there begins and ends the difference. Industry, man's crown of honour elsewhere, is here his badge of utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here surrounded--pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance, squalor, dirt, and ineffable abasement. When I returned home, I found that Mrs. F---- had sent me some magnificent prawns. I think of having them served singly, and divided as one does a lobster--their size really suggests no less respect. _Saturday, 31st._--I rode all through the burnt district and the bush to Mrs. W----'s field, in making my way out of which I was very nearly swamped, and, but for the valuable assistance of a certain sable Scipio who came up and extricated me, I might be floundering hopelessly there still. He got me out of my Slough of Despond, and put me in the way to a charming wood ride which runs between Mrs. W----'s and Colonel H----'s grounds. While going along this delightful boundary of these two neighbouring estates, my mind not unnaturally dwelt upon the terms of deadly feud in which the two families owning them are living with each other. A horrible quarrel has occurred quite lately upon the subject of the ownership of this very ground I was skirting, between Dr. H---- and young Mr. W----; they have challenged each other, and what I am going to tell you is a good sample of the sort of spirit which grows up among slaveholders. So read it, for it is curious to people who have not lived habitually among savages. The terms of the challenge that has passed between them have appeared like a sort of advertisement in the local paper, and are to the effect that they are to fight at a certain distance with certain weapons--firearms, of course; that there is to be on the person of each a white paper, or mark, immediately over the region of the heart, as a point for direct aim; and whoever kills the other is to have the privilege of _cutting off his head, and sticking it up on a pole on the piece of land which was the origin of the debate_; so that, some fine day, I might have come hither as I did to-day and found myself riding under the shadow of the gory locks of Dr. H---- or Mr. W----, my peaceful and pleasant neighbours. I came home through our own pine woods, which are actually a wilderness of black desolation. The scorched and charred tree trunks are still smoking and smouldering; the ground is a sort of charcoal pavement, and the fire is still burning on all sides, for the smoke was rapidly rising in several directions on each hand of the path I pursued. Across this dismal scene of strange destruction, bright blue and red birds, like living jewels, darted in the brilliant sunshine. I wonder if the fire has killed and scared away many of these beautiful creatures. In the afternoon I took Jack with me to clear some more of the wood paths; but the weather is what I call hot, and what the people here think warm, and the air was literally thick with little black points of insects, which they call sand flies, and which settle upon one's head and face literally like a black net; you hardly see them or feel them at the time, but the irritation occasioned by them is intolerable, and I had to relinquish my work and fly before this winged plague as fast as I could from my new acquaintance the rattlesnakes. Jack informed me, in the course of our expedition, that the woods on the island were sometimes burnt away in order to leave the ground in grass for fodder for the cattle, and that the very beautiful ones he and I had been clearing paths through were not unlikely to be so doomed, which strikes me as a horrible idea. In the evening, poor Edie came up to the house to see me, with an old negress called Sackey, who has been one of the chief nurses on the island for many years. I suppose she has made some application to Mr. G---- for a respite for Edie, on finding how terribly unfit she is for work; or perhaps Mr. ----, to whom I represented her case, may have ordered her reprieve; but she came with much gratitude to me (who have, as far as I know, had nothing to do with it), to tell me that she is not able to be sent into the field for another week. Old Sackey fully confirmed Edie's account of the terrible hardships the women underwent in being thus driven to labour before they had recovered from child-bearing. She said that old Major ---- allowed the women at the rice island five weeks, and those here four weeks, to recover from a confinement, and then never permitted them for some time after they resumed their work to labour in the fields before sunrise or after sunset; but Mr. K---- had altered that arrangement, allowing the women at the rice island only four weeks, and those here only three weeks, for their recovery; 'and then, missis,' continued the old woman, 'out into the field again, through dew and dry, as if nothing had happened; that is why, missis, so many of the women have falling of the womb, and weakness in the back; and if he had continued on the estate, he would have utterly destroyed all the breeding women.' Sometimes, after sending them back into the field, at the expiration of their three weeks, they would work for a day or two, she said, and then fall down in the field with exhaustion, and be brought to the hospital almost at the point of death. Yesterday, Sunday, I had my last service at home with these poor people; nearly thirty of them came, all clean, neat, and decent, in their dress and appearance. S---- had begged very hard to join the congregation, and upon the most solemn promise of remaining still she was admitted; but in spite of the perfect honour with which she kept her promise, her presence disturbed my thoughts not a little, and added much to the poignancy of the feeling with which I saw her father's poor slaves gathered round me. The child's exquisite complexion, large grey eyes, and solemn and at the same time eager countenance, was such a wonderful piece of contrast to their sable faces, so many of them so uncouth in their outlines and proportions, and yet all of them so pathetic, and some so sublime in their expression of patient suffering and religious fervour; their eyes never wandered from me and my child, who sat close by my knee, their little mistress, their future providence, my poor baby! Dear E----, bless God that you have never reared a child with such an awful expectation: and at the end of the prayers, the tears were streaming over their faces, and one chorus of blessings rose round me and the child--farewell blessings, and prayers that we would return; and thanks so fervent in their incoherency, it was more than I could bear, and I begged them to go away and leave me to recover myself. And then I remained with S----, and for quite a long while even her restless spirit was still in wondering amazement at my bitter crying. I am to go next Sunday to the church on the island, where there is to be service; and so this is my last Sunday with the people. When I had recovered from the emotion of this scene, I walked out with S---- a little way, but meeting M---- and the baby, she turned home with them, and I pursued my walk alone up the road, and home by the shore. They are threatening to burn down all my woods to make grass land for the cattle, and I have terrified them by telling them that I will never come back if they destroy the woods. I went and paid a visit to Mrs. G----; poor little, well-meaning, helpless woman! what can she do for these poor people, where I who am supposed to own them can do nothing? and yet how much may be done, is done, by the brain and heart of one human being in contact with another! We are answerable for incalculable opportunities of good and evil in our daily intercourse with every soul with whom we have to deal; every meeting, every parting, every chance greeting, and every appointed encounter, are occasions open to us for which we are to account. To our children, our servants, our friends, our acquaintances,--to each and all every day, and all day long, we are distributing that which is best or worst in existence,--influence: with every word, with every look, with every gesture, something is given or withheld of great importance it may be to the receiver, of inestimable importance to the giver. Certainly the laws and enacted statutes on which this detestable system is built up are potent enough; the social prejudice that buttresses it is almost more potent still; and yet a few hearts and brains well bent to do the work, would bring within this almost impenetrable dungeon of ignorance, misery, and degradation, in which so many millions of human souls lie buried, that freedom of God which would presently conquer for them their earthly liberty. With some such thoughts I commended the slaves on the plantation to the little overseer's wife; I did not tell my thoughts to her, they would have scared the poor little woman half out of her senses. To begin with, her bread, her husband's occupation, has its root in slavery; it would be difficult for her to think as I do of it. I am afraid her care, even of the bodily habits and sicknesses of the people left in Mrs. G----'s charge, will not be worth much, for nobody treats others better than they do themselves; and she is certainly doing her best to injure herself and her own poor baby, who is two and a-half years old, and whom she is still suckling. This is, I think, the worst case of this extraordinary delusion so prevalent among your women that I have ever met with yet; but they all nurse their children much longer than is good for either baby or mother. The summer heat, particularly when a young baby is cutting teeth, is, I know, considered by young American mothers an exceedingly critical time, and therefore I always hear of babies being nursed till after the second summer; so that a child born in January would be suckled till it was eighteen or nineteen months old, in order that it might not be weaned till its second summer was over. I am sure that nothing can be worse than this system, and I attribute much of the wretched ill health of young American mothers to over nursing; and of course a process that destroys their health and vigour completely must affect most unfavourably the child they are suckling. It is a grievous mistake. I remember my charming friend F---- D---- telling me that she had nursed her first child till her second was born--a miraculous statement, which I can only believe because she told it me herself. Whenever anything seems absolutely impossible, the word of a true person is the only proof of it worth anything. * * * * * Dear E----. I have been riding into the swamp behind the new house; I had a mind to survey the ground all round it before going away, to see what capabilities it afforded for the founding of a garden, but I confess it looked very unpromising. Trying to return by another way, I came to a morass, which, after contemplating, and making my horse try for a few paces, I thought it expedient not to attempt. A woman called Charlotte, who was working in the field, seeing my dilemma and the inglorious retreat I was about to make, shouted to me at the top of her voice, 'You no turn back, missis! if you want to go through, send, missis, send! you hab slave enough, nigger enough, let 'em come, let 'em fetch planks, and make de bridge; what you say dey must do,--send, missis, send, missis!' It seemed to me, from the lady's imperative tone in my behalf, that if she had been in my place, she would presently have had a corduroy road through the swamp of prostrate 'niggers,' as she called her family in Ham, and ridden over the same dry-hoofed; and to be sure, if I pleased, so might I, for, as she very truly said, 'what you say, missis, they must do.' Instead of summoning her sooty tribe, however, I backed my horse out of the swamp, and betook myself to another pretty woodpath, which only wants widening to be quite charming. At the end of this, however, I found swamp the second, and out of this having been helped by a grinning facetious personage, most appropriately named Pun, I returned home in dudgeon, in spite of what dear Miss M---- calls the 'moral suitability' of finding a foul bog at the end of every charming wood path or forest ride in this region. In the afternoon, I drove to Busson Hill, to visit the people there. I found that both the men and women had done their work at half-past three. Saw Jema with her child, that ridiculous image of Driver Bran, in her arms, in spite of whose whitey brown skin she still maintains that its father is a man as black as herself--and she (to use a most extraordinary comparison I heard of a negro girl making with regard to her mother) is as black as 'de hinges of hell.' Query: Did she really mean hinges--or angels? The angels of hell is a polite and pretty paraphrase for devils, certainly. In complimenting a woman, called Joan, upon the tidy condition of her house, she answered, with that cruel humility that is so bad an element in their character, 'Missis no 'spect to find coloured folks' house clean as white folks.' The mode in which they have learned to accept the idea of their own degradation and unalterable inferiority, is the most serious impediment that I see in the way of their progress, since assuredly, 'self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.' In the same way yesterday, Abraham the cook, in speaking of his brother's theft at the rice island, said 'it was a shame even for a coloured man to do such things.' I labour hard, whenever any such observation is made, to explain to them that the question is one of moral and mental culture,--not the colour of an integument,--and assure them, much to my own comfort, whatever it may be to theirs, that white people are as dirty and as dishonest as coloured folks, when they have suffered the same lack of decent training. If I could but find one of these women, on whose mind the idea had dawned that she was neither more nor less than my equal, I think I should embrace her in an ecstacy of hopefulness. In the evening, while I was inditing my journal for your edification, Jema made her appearance with her Bran-brown baby, having walked all the way down from Busson Hill to claim a little sugar I had promised her. She had made her child perfectly clean, and it looked quite pretty. When I asked her what I should give her the sugar in, she snatched her filthy handkerchief off her head; but I declined this sugar basin, and gave it to her in some paper. Hannah came on the same errand. After all, dear E----, we shall not leave Georgia so soon as I expected; we cannot get off for at least another week. You know, our movements are apt to be both tardy and uncertain. I am getting sick in spirit of my stay here; but I think the spring heat is beginning to affect me miserably, and I long for a cooler atmosphere. Here, on St. Simon's, the climate is perfectly healthy, and our neighbours, many of them, never stir from their plantations within reach of the purifying sea influence. But a land that grows magnolias is not fit for me--I was going to say magnolias and rattlesnakes; but I remember K----'s adventure with her friend the rattlesnake of Monument Mountain, and the wild wood-covered hill half-way between Lenox and Stockbridge, which your Berkshire farmers have christened Rattlesnake Mountain. These agreeable serpents seem, like the lovely little humming birds which are found in your northernmost as well as southernmost States, to have an accommodating disposition with regard to climate. Not only is the vicinity of the sea an element of salubrity here; but the great masses of pine wood growing in every direction indicate lightness of soil and purity of air. Wherever these fragrant, dry, aromatic fir forests extend, there can be no inherent malaria, I should think, in either atmosphere or soil. The beauty and profusion of the weeds and wild flowers in the fields now is something, too, enchanting. I wish I could spread one of these enamelled tracts on the side of one of your snow-covered hills now--for I daresay they are snow-covered yet. I must give you an account of Aleck's first reading lesson, which took place at the same time that I gave S---- hers this morning. It was the first time he had had leisure to come, and it went off most successfully. He seems to me by no means stupid. I am very sorry he did not ask me to do this before; however, if he can master his alphabet before I go, he may, if chance favour him with the occasional sight of a book, help himself on by degrees. Perhaps he will have the good inspiration to apply to Cooper London for assistance; I am much mistaken if that worthy does not contrive that Heaven shall help Aleck, as it formerly did him--in the matter of reading. I rode with Jack afterwards, showing him where I wish paths to be cut and brushwood removed. I passed the new house, and again circumvented it meditatingly to discover its available points of possible future comeliness, but remained as convinced as ever that there are absolutely none. Within the last two days, a perfect border of the dark blue Virginicum has burst into blossom on each side of the road, fringing it with purple as far as one can look along it; it is lovely. I must tell you of something which has delighted me greatly. I told Jack yesterday, that if any of the boys liked, when they had done their tasks, to come and clear the paths that I want widened and trimmed, I would pay them a certain small sum per hour for their labour; and behold, three boys have come, having done their tasks early in the afternoon, to apply for _work_ and _wages_: so much for a suggestion not barely twenty-four hours old, and so much for a prospect of compensation! In the evenings I attempted to walk out when the air was cool, but had to run precipitately back into the house to escape from the clouds of sand-flies that had settled on my neck and arms. The weather has suddenly become intensely hot; at least, that is what it appears to me. After I had come in I had a visit from Venus and her daughter, a young girl of ten years old, for whom she begged a larger allowance of food as, she said, what she received for her was totally inadequate to the girl's proper nourishment. I was amazed, upon enquiry, to find that three quarts of grits a week--that is not a pint a day--was considered a sufficient supply for children of her age. The mother said her child was half-famished on it, and it seemed to me terribly little. My little workmen have brought me in from the woods three darling little rabbits which they have contrived to catch. They seemed to me slightly different from our English bunnies; and Captain F----, who called to-day, gave me a long account of how they differed from the same animal in the northern States. I did not like to mortify my small workmen by refusing their present; but the poor little things must be left to run wild again, for we have no conveniences for pets here, besides we are just weighing anchor ourselves. I hope these poor little fluffy things will not meet any rattlesnakes on their way back to the woods. I had a visit for flannel from one of our Dianas to-day,--who had done her task in the middle of the day, yet came to receive her flannel,--the most horribly dirty human creature I ever beheld, unless indeed her child, whom she brought with her, may have been half a degree dirtier. The other day, Psyche (you remember the pretty under nurse, the poor thing whose story I wrote you from the rice plantation) asked me if her mother and brothers might be allowed to come and see her when we are gone away. I asked her some questions about them, and she told me that one of her brothers, who belonged to Mr. K----, was hired by that gentleman to a Mr. G---- of Darien, and that, upon the latter desiring to purchase him, Mr. K---- had sold the man without apprising him or any one member of his family that he had done so--a humane proceeding that makes one's blood boil when one hears of it. He had owned the man ever since he was a boy. Psyche urged me very much to obtain an order permitting her to see her mother and brothers. I will try and obtain it for her, but there seems generally a great objection to the visits of slaves from neighbouring plantations, and, I have no doubt, not without sufficient reason. The more I see of this frightful and perilous social system, the more I feel that those who live in the midst of it must make their whole existence one constant precaution against danger of some sort or other. I have given Aleck a second reading lesson with S----, who takes an extreme interest in his newly acquired alphabetical lore. He is a very quick and attentive scholar, and I should think a very short time would suffice to teach him to read; but, alas! I have not even that short time. When I had done with my class, I rode off with Jack, who has become quite an expert horseman, and rejoices in being lifted out of the immediate region of snakes by the length of his horse's legs. I cantered through the new wood paths, and took a good sloping gallop through the pine land to St. Annie's. The fire is actually still burning in the woods. I came home quite tired with the heat, though my ride was not a long one. Just as I had taken off my habit and was preparing to start off with M----and the chicks for Jones's, in the wood wagon, old Dorcas, one of the most decrepid, rheumatic, and miserable old negresses from the further end of the plantation, called in to beg for some sugar. She had walked the whole way from her own settlement, and seemed absolutely exhausted then, and yet she had to walk all the way back. It was not otherwise than slightly meritorious in me, my dear E----, to take her up in the wagon and endure her abominable dirt and foulness in the closest proximity, rather than let her drag her poor old limbs all that way back; but I was glad when we gained her abode and lost her company. I am mightily reminded occasionally in these parts of Trinculo's soliloquy over Caliban. The people at Jones's had done their work at half-past three. Most of the houses were tidy and clean, so were many of the babies. On visiting the cabin of an exceedingly decent woman called Peggy, I found her, to my surprise, possessed of a fine large bible. She told me her husband, Carpenter John, can read, and that she means to make him teach her. The fame of Aleck's literature has evidently reached Jones's, and they are not afraid to tell me that they can read or wish to learn to do so. This poor woman's health is miserable; I never saw a more weakly sickly looking creature. She says she has been broken down ever since the birth of her last child. I asked her how soon after her confinement she went out into the field to work again. She answered very quietly, but with a deep sigh: 'Three weeks, missis; de usual time.' As I was going away, a man named Martin came up, and with great vehemence besought me to give him a prayer-book. In the evening, he came down to fetch it, and to show me that he can read. I was very much pleased to see that they had taken my hint about nailing wooden slats across the windows of their poor huts, to prevent the constant ingress of the poultry. This in itself will produce an immense difference in the cleanliness and comfort of their wretched abodes. In one of the huts I found a broken looking-glass; it was the only piece of furniture of the sort that I had yet seen among them. The woman who owned it was, I am sorry to say, peculiarly untidy and dirty, and so were her children: so that I felt rather inclined to scoff at the piece of civilized vanity, which I should otherwise have greeted as a promising sign. I drove home, late in the afternoon, through the sweet-smelling woods, that are beginning to hum with the voice of thousands of insects. My troop of volunteer workmen is increased to five; five lads working for my wages after they have done their task work; and this evening, to my no small amazement, Driver Bran came down to join them for an hour, after working all day at Five Pound, which certainly shows zeal and energy. Dear E----, I have been riding through the woods all the morning with Jack, giving him directions about the clearings, which I have some faint hope may be allowed to continue after my departure. I went on an exploring expedition round some distant fields, and then home through the St. Annie's woods. They have almost stripped the trees and thickets along the swamp road since I first came here. I wonder what it is for: not fuel surely, nor to make grass land of, or otherwise cultivate the swamp. I do deplore these pitiless clearings; and as to this once pretty road, it looks 'forlorn,' as a worthy Pennsylvania farmer's wife once said to me of a pretty hill-side from which her husband had ruthlessly felled a beautiful grove of trees. I had another snake encounter in my ride this morning. Just as I had walked my horse through the swamp, and while contemplating ruefully its naked aspect, a huge black snake wriggled rapidly across the path, and I pulled my reins tight and opened my mouth wide with horror. These hideous-looking creatures are, I believe, not poisonous, but they grow to a monstrous size, and have tremendous _constrictive_ power. I have heard stories that sound like the nightmare, of their fighting desperately with those deadly creatures, rattlesnakes. I cannot conceive, if the black snakes are not poisonous, what chance they have against such antagonists, let their squeezing powers be what they will. How horrid it did look, _slithering_ over the road! Perhaps the swamp has been cleared on account of its harbouring these dreadful worms. I rode home very fast, in spite of the exquisite fragrance of the wild cherry blossoms, the carpets and curtains of wild flowers, among which a sort of glorified dandelion glowed conspicuously; dandelions such as I should think grew in the garden of Eden, if there were any at all there. I passed the finest magnolia that I have yet seen; it was magnificent, and I suppose had been spared for its beauty, for it grew in the very middle of a cotton field; it was as large as a fine forest tree, and its huge glittering leaves shone like plates of metal in the sun; what a spectacle that tree must be in blossom, and I should think its perfume must be smelt from one end of the plantation to the other. What a glorious creature! Which do you think ought to weigh most in the scale, the delight of such a vegetable, or the disgust of the black animal I had just met a few minutes before? Would you take the one with the other? Neither would I. I have spent the whole afternoon at home; my 'gang' is busily at work again. Sawney, one of them, came to join it nearly at sun-down, not having got through his day's task before. In watching and listening to these lads, I was constantly struck with the insolent tyranny of their demeanour towards each other. This is almost a universal characteristic of the manner of the negroes among themselves. They are diabolically cruel to animals too, and they seem to me as a rule hardly to know the difference between truth and falsehood. These detestable qualities, which I constantly hear attributed to them as innate and inherent in their race, appear to me the direct result of their condition. The individual exceptions among them are, I think, quite as many as would be found under similar circumstances, among the same number of white people. In considering the whole condition of the people on this plantation, it appears to me that the principal hardships fall to the lot of the women; that is, the principal physical hardships. The very young members of the community are of course idle and neglected; the very very old, idle and neglected too; the middle-aged men do not appear to me over-worked, and lead a mere animal existence, in itself not peculiarly cruel or distressing, but involving a constant element of fear and uncertainty, and the trifling evils of unrequited labour, ignorance the most profound, (to which they are condemned by law); and the unutterable injustice which precludes them from all the merits and all the benefits of voluntary exertion, and the progress that results from it. If they are absolutely unconscious of these evils, then they are not very ill-off brutes, always barring the chance of being given or sold away from their mates or their young--processes which even brutes do not always relish. I am very much struck with the vein of melancholy, which assumes almost a poetical tone in some of the things they say. Did I tell you of that poor old decrepid creature Dorcas, who came to beg some sugar of me the other day? saying as she took up my watch from the table and looked at it, 'Ah? I need not look at this, I have almost done with time!' Was not that striking from such a poor old ignorant crone? * * * * * Dear E----. This is the fourth day that I have had a 'gang' of lads working in the woods for me after their task hours, for pay; you cannot think how zealous and energetic they are; I daresay the novelty of the process pleases them almost as much as the money they earn. I must say they quite deserve their small wages. Last night I received a present from Mrs. F---- of a drum fish, which animal I had never beheld before, and which seemed to me first cousin to the great Leviathan. It is to be eaten, and is certainly the biggest fish food I ever saw; however, everything is in proportion, and the prawns that came with it are upon a similarly extensive scale; this magnificent piscatorial bounty was accompanied by a profusion of Hamilton green peas, really a munificent supply. I went out early after breakfast with Jack hunting for new paths; we rode all along the road by Jones's Creek, and most beautiful it was. We skirted the plantation burial ground, and a dismal place it looked; the cattle trampling over it in every direction--except where Mr. K---- had had an enclosure put up round the graves of two white men who had worked on the estate. They were strangers, and of course utterly indifferent to the people here; but by virtue of their white skins, their resting-place was protected from the hoofs of the cattle, while the parents and children, wives, husbands, brothers and sisters, of the poor slaves, sleeping beside them, might see the graves of those they loved trampled upon and browsed over, desecrated and defiled, from morning till night. There is something intolerably cruel in this disdainful denial of a common humanity pursuing these wretches even when they are hid beneath the earth. The day was exquisitely beautiful, and I explored a new wood path, and found it all strewed with a lovely wild flower not much unlike a primrose. I spent the afternoon at home. I dread going out twice a-day now, on account of the heat and the sand flies. While I was sitting by the window, Abraham, our cook, went by with some most revolting looking 'raw material' (part I think of the interior of the monstrous drum fish of which I have told you). I asked him with considerable disgust what he was going to do with it, he replied, 'Oh! we coloured people eat it, missis;' said I, 'Why do you say we coloured people?' 'Because, missis, white people won't touch what we too glad of.' 'That,' said I, 'is because you are poor, and do not often have meat to eat, not because you are coloured, Abraham; rich white folks will not touch what poor white folks are too glad of; it has nothing in the world to do with colour, and if there were white people here worse off than you (amazing and inconceivable suggestion, I fear), they would be glad to eat what you perhaps would not touch.' Profound pause of meditation on the part of Abraham, wound up by a considerate 'Well, missis, I suppose so.' After which he departed with the horrid looking offal. To-day--Saturday--I took another ride of discovery round the fields by Jones's. I think I shall soon be able to survey this estate, I have ridden so carefully over it in every direction; but my rides are drawing to a close and even were I to remain here this must be the case unless I got up and rode under the stars in the cool of the night. This afternoon I was obliged to drive up to St. Annie's: I had promised the people several times that I would do so. I went after dinner and as late as I could, and found very considerable improvement in the whole condition of the place; the houses had all been swept, and some of them actually scoured. The children were all quite tolerably clean; they had put slats across all their windows, and little chicken gates to the doors to keep out the poultry. There was a poor woman lying in one of the cabins in a wretched condition. She begged for a bandage, but I do not see of what great use that can be to her, as long as she has to hoe in the fields so many hours a day, which I cannot prevent. Returning home, Israel undertook to pilot me across the cotton fields into the pine land; and a more excruciating process than being dragged over that very uneven surface in that wood wagon without springs I did never endure, mitigated and soothed though it was by the literally fascinating account my charioteer gave me of the rattlesnakes with which the place we drove through becomes infested as the heat increases. I cannot say that his description of them, though more demonstrative as far as regarded his own horror of them, was really worse than that which Mr. G---- was giving me of them yesterday. He said they were very numerous, and were found in every direction all over the plantation, but that they did not become really vicious until quite late in the summer; until then, it appears that they generally endeavour to make off if one meets them, but during the intense heats of the latter part of July and August they never think of escaping, but at any sight or sound which they may consider inimical, they instantly coil themselves for a spring. The most intolerable proceeding on their part, however, that he described, was their getting up into the trees, and either coiling themselves in or depending from the branches. There is something too revolting in the idea of serpents looking down upon one from the shade of the trees to which one may betake oneself for shelter in the dreadful heat of the southern midsummer; decidedly I do not think the dog-days would be pleasant here. The mocassin snake, which is nearly as deadly as the rattlesnake, abounds all over the island. In the evening, I had a visit from Mr. C---- and Mr. B----, who officiates to-morrow at our small island church. The conversation I had with these gentlemen was sad enough. They seem good and kind and amiable men, and I have no doubt are conscientious in their capacity of slaveholders; but to one who has lived outside this dreadful atmosphere, the whole tone of their discourse has a morally muffled sound, which one must hear to be able to conceive. Mr. B---- told me that the people on this plantation not going to church was the result of a positive order from Mr. K----, who had peremptorily forbidden their doing so, and of course to have infringed that order would have been to incur severe corporal chastisement. Bishop B----, it seems, had advised that there should be periodical preaching on the plantations, which, said Mr. B----, would have obviated any necessity for the people of different estates congregating at any given point at stated times, which might perhaps be objectionable, and at the same time would meet the reproach which was now beginning to be directed towards the southern planters as a class, of neglecting the eternal interest of their dependents. But Mr. K---- had equally objected to this. He seems to have held religious teaching a mighty dangerous thing--and how right he was! I have met with conventional cowardice of various shades and shapes in various societies that I have lived in; but anything like the pervading timidity of tone which I find here on all subjects, but above all on that of the condition of the slaves, I have never dreamed of. Truly slavery begets slavery, and the perpetual state of suspicion and apprehension of the slaveholders is a very handsome offset, to say the least of it, against the fetters and the lash of the slaves. Poor people, one and all, but especially poor oppressors of the oppressed! The attitude of these men is really pitiable; they profess (perhaps some of them strive to do so indeed) to consult the best interests of their slaves, and yet shrink back terrified from the approach of the slightest intellectual or moral improvement which might modify their degraded and miserable existence. I do pity these deplorable servants of two masters more than any human beings I have ever seen--more than their own slaves a thousand times! To-day is Sunday, and I have been to the little church on the island. It is the second time since I came down to the south that I have been to a place of worship. A curious little incident prefaced my going thither this morning. I had desired Israel to get my horse ready and himself to accompany me, as I meant to ride to church; and you cannot imagine anything droller than his horror and dismay when he at length comprehended that my purpose was to attend divine service in my riding habit. I asked him what was the trouble, for though I saw something was creating a dreadful convulsion in his mind, I had no idea what it was till he told me, adding, that he had never seen such a thing on St. Simon's in his life--as who should say, such a thing was never seen in Hyde Park or the Tuileries before. You may imagine my amusement, but presently I was destined to shock something much more serious than poor Israel's sense of _les convénances et bienséances_, and it was not without something of an effort that I made up my mind to do so. I was standing at the open window speaking to him about the horses, and telling him to get ready to ride with me, when George, another of the men, went by with a shade or visor to his cap exactly the shape of the one I left behind at the north, and for want of which I have been suffering severely from the intense heat and glare of the sun for the last week. I asked him to hand me his cap, saying, 'I want to take the pattern of that shade.' Israel exclaimed, 'Oh missis, not to-day; let him leave the cap with you to-morrow, but don't cut pattern on de Sabbath day!' It seemed to me a much more serious matter to offend this scruple than the prejudice with regard to praying in a riding habit; still it had to be done. 'Do you think it wrong, Israel,' said I, 'to work on Sunday?' 'Yes, missis, parson tell we so.' 'Then, Israel, be sure you never do it. Did your parson never tell you that your conscience was for yourself and not for your neighbours, Israel?' 'Oh yes, missis, he tell we that too.' 'Then mind that too, Israel.' The shade was cut out and stitched upon my cap, and protected my eyes from the fierce glare of the sun and sand as I rode to church. On our way, we came to a field where the young corn was coming up. The children were in the field--little living scarecrows--watching it, of course, as on a weekday, to keep off the birds. I made Israel observe this, who replied, 'Oh missis, if de people's corn left one whole day not watched, not one blade of it remain to-morrow; it must be watched, missis.' 'What, on the Sabbath day, Israel?' 'Yes, missis, or else we lose it all.' I was not sorry to avail myself of this illustration of the nature of works of necessity, and proceeded to enlighten Israel with regard to what I conceive to be the genuine observance of the Sabbath. You cannot imagine anything wilder or more beautiful than the situation of the little rustic temple in the woods where I went to worship to-day, with the magnificent live oaks standing round it and its picturesque burial ground. The disgracefully neglected state of the latter, its broken and ruinous enclosure, and its shaggy weed-grown graves, tell a strange story of the residents of this island, who are content to leave the resting-place of their dead in so shocking a condition. In the tiny little chamber of a church, the grand old litany of the Episcopal Church of England was not a little shorn of its ceremonial stateliness; clerk there was none, nor choir, nor organ, and the clergyman did duty for all, giving out the hymn and then singing it himself, followed as best might be by the uncertain voices of his very small congregation, the smallest I think I ever saw gathered in a Christian place of worship, even counting a few of the negroes who had ventured to place themselves standing at the back of the church--an infringement on their part upon the privileges of their betters--as Mr. B---- generally preaches a second sermon to them after the _white_ service, to which as a rule they are not admitted. On leaving the church, I could not but smile at the quaint and original costumes with which Israel had so much dreaded a comparison for my irreproachable London riding habit. However, the strangeness of it was what inspired him with terror; but, at that rate, I am afraid a Paris gown and bonnet might have been in equal danger of shocking his prejudices. There was quite as little affinity with the one as the other in the curious specimens of the 'art of dressing' that gradually distributed themselves among the two or three indescribable machines (to use the appropriate Scotch title) drawn up under the beautiful oak trees, on which they departed in various directions to the several plantations on the island. I mounted my horse, and resumed my ride and my conversation with Israel. He told me that Mr. K----'s great objection to the people going to church was their meeting with the slaves from the other plantations; and one reason, he added, that he did not wish them to do that was, that they trafficked and bartered away the cooper's wares, tubs, piggins, &c., made on the estate. I think, however, from everything I hear of that gentleman, that the mere fact of the Hampton people coming in contact with the slaves of other plantations would be a thing he would have deprecated. As a severe disciplinarian, he was probably right. In the course of our talk, a reference I made to the Bible, and Israel's answer that he could not read, made me ask him why his father had never taught any of his sons to read; old Jacob, I know, can read. What followed I shall never forget. He began by giving all sorts of childish unmeaning excuses and reasons for never having tried to learn--became confused and quite incoherent,--and then, suddenly stopping, and pulling up his horse, said, with a look and manner that went to my very heart; 'Missis, what for me learn to read? me have no prospect!' I rode on without venturing to speak to him again for a little while. When I had recovered from that remark of his, I explained to him that, though indeed 'without prospect' in some respects, yet reading might avail him much to better his condition, moral, mental, and physical. He listened very attentively, and was silent for a minute; after which he said:--'All you say very true, missis, and me sorry now me let de time pass; but you know what de white man dat goberns de estate him seem to like and favour, dat de people find out bery soon and do it; now, Massa K----, him neber favour our reading, him not like it; likely as not he lick you if he find you reading, or if you wish to teach your children, him always say, "Pooh, teach 'em to read--teach 'em to work." According to dat, we neber paid much attention to it, but now it will be different; it was different in former times. De old folks of my father and mother's time could read more than we can, and I expect de people will dare to give some thought to it again now.' There's a precious sample of what one man's influence may do in his own sphere, dear E----! This man Israel is a remarkably fine fellow in every way, with a frank, open, and most intelligent countenance, which rises before me with its look of quiet sadness whenever I think of those words (and they haunt me), 'I have no prospect.' On my arrival at home, I found that a number of the people, not knowing I had gone to church, had come up to the house, hoping that I would read prayers to them, and had not gone back to their homes, but waited to see me. I could not bear to disappoint them, for many of them had come from the farthest settlements on the estate; and so, though my hot ride had tired me a good deal, and my talk with Israel troubled me profoundly, I took off my habit, and had them all in, and read the afternoon service to them. When it was over, two of the women--Venus and Trussa--asked if they might be permitted to go to the nursery and see the children. Their account of the former condition of the estate was a corroboration of Israel's. They said that the older slaves on the plantation had been far better off than the younger ones of the present day; that Major ---- was considerate and humane to his people; and that the women were especially carefully treated. But they said Mr. K---- had ruined all the young women with working them too soon after their confinements; and as for the elder ones, he would kick them, curse them, turn their clothes over their heads, flog them unmercifully himself, and abuse them shamefully, no matter what condition they were in. They both ended with fervent thanks to God that he had left the estate, and rejoicing that we had come, and, above all, that we 'had made young missis for them.' Venus went down on her knees, exclaiming, 'Oh, missis, I glad now; and when I am dead, I glad in my grave that you come to us and bring us little missis.' * * * * * Dear E----. I still go on exploring, or rather surveying, the estate, the aspect of which is changing every day with the unfolding of the leaves and the wonderful profusion of wild flowers. The cleared ground all round the new building is one sheet of blooming blue of various tints; it is perfectly exquisite. But in the midst of my delight at these new blossoms, I am most sorrowfully bidding adieu to that paragon of parasites, the yellow jasmine; I think I must have gathered the very last blossoms of it to-day. Nothing can be more lovely, nothing so exquisitely fragrant. I was surprised to recognise by their foliage, to-day, some fine mulberry trees, by Jones's Creek; perhaps they are the remains of the silk-worm experiment that Mr. C---- persuaded Major ---- to try so ineffectually. While I was looking at some wild plum and cherry trees that were already swarming with blight in the shape of multitudinous caterpillars' nests, an ingenuous darkie, by name Cudgie, asked me if I could explain to him why the trees blossomed out so fair, and then all 'went off into a kind of dying.' Having directed his vision and attention to the horrid white glistening webs, all lined with their brood of black devourers, I left him to draw his own conclusions. The afternoon was rainy, in spite of which I drove to Busson Hill, and had a talk with Bran about the vile caterpillar blights on the wild plum trees, and asked him if it would not be possible to get some sweet grafts from Mr. C---- for some of the wild fruit trees, of which there are such quantities. Perhaps, however, they are not worth grafting. Bran promised me that the people should not be allowed to encumber the paths and the front of their houses with unsightly and untidy heaps of oyster shells. He promised all sorts of things. I wonder how soon after I am gone they will all return into the condition of brutal filth and disorder in which I found them. The men and women had done their work here by half-past three. The chief labour in the cotton fields, however, is both earlier and later in the season. At present they have little to do but let the crop grow. In the evening I had a visit from the son of a very remarkable man, who had been one of the chief drivers on the estate in Major ----'s time, and his son brought me a silver cup which Major ---- had given his father as a testimonial of approbation, with an inscription on it recording his fidelity and trustworthiness at the time of the invasion of the coast of Georgia by the English troops. Was not that a curious reward for a slave who was supposed not to be able to read his own praises? And yet, from the honourable pride with which his son regarded this relic, I am sure the master did well so to reward his servant, though it seemed hard that the son of such a man should be a slave. Maurice himself came with his father's precious silver cup in his hand, to beg for a small pittance of sugar, and for a prayer-book, and also to know if the privilege of a milch cow for the support of his family, which was among the favours Major ---- allowed his father, might not be continued to him. He told me he had ten children 'working for massa,' and I promised to mention his petition to Mr. ----. On Sunday last, I rode round the woods near St. Annie's and met with a monstrous snake, which Jack called a chicken snake; but whether because it particularly affected poultry as its diet, or for what other reason, he could not tell me. Nearer home, I encountered another gliding creature, that stopped a moment just in front of my horse's feet, as if it was too much afraid of being trampled upon to get out of the way; it was the only snake animal I ever saw that I did not think hideous. It was of a perfectly pure apple green colour, with a delicate line of black like a collar round its throat; it really was an exquisite worm, and Jack said it was harmless. I did not, however, think it expedient to bring it home in my bosom, though if ever I have a pet snake, it shall be such an one. In the afternoon, I drove to Jones's with several supplies of flannel for the rheumatic women and old men. We have ridden over to Hamilton again, to pay another visit to the F----s, and on our way passed an enormous rattlesnake, hanging dead on the bough of a tree. Dead as it was, it turned me perfectly sick with horror, and I wished very much to come back to the north immediately, where these are not the sort of blackberries that grow on every bush. The evening air now, after the heat of the day, is exquisitely mild, and the nights dry and wholesome, the whole atmosphere indescribably fragrant with the perfume of flowers; and as I stood, before going to bed last night, watching the slow revolving light on Sapelo Island, that warns the ships from the dangerous bar at the river's mouth, and heard the measured pulse of the great Atlantic waters on the beach, I thought no more of rattlesnakes--no more, for one short while, of slavery. How still, and sweet, and solemn, it was! We have been paying more friendly and neighbourly visits, or rather returning them; and the recipients of these civilised courtesies on our last calling expedition were the family one member of which was a party concerned in that barbarous challenge I wrote you word about. Hitherto that very brutal and bloodthirsty cartel appears to have had no result. You must not on that account imagine that it will have none. At the north, were it possible for a duel intended to be conducted on such savage terms to be matter of notoriety, the very horror of the thing would create a feeling of grotesqueness, and the antagonists in such a proposed encounter would simply incur an immense amount of ridicule and obloquy. But here nobody is astonished and nobody ashamed of such preliminaries to a mortal combat between two gentlemen, who propose firing at marks over each other's hearts, and cutting off each other's heads; and though this agreeable party of pleasure has not come off yet, there seems to be no reason why it should not at the first convenient season. Reflecting upon all which, I rode not without trepidation through Colonel H----'s grounds, and up to his house. Mr. W----'s head was not stuck upon a pole anywhere within sight, however, and as soon as I became pretty sure of this, I began to look about me, and saw instead a trellis tapestried with the most beautiful roses I ever beheld, another of these exquisite southern flowers--the Cherokee rose. The blossom is very large, composed of four or five pure white petals, as white and as large as those of the finest Camellia with a bright golden eye for a focus; the buds and leaves are long and elegantly slender, like those of some tea roses, and the green of the foliage is dark and at the same time vivid and lustrous; it grew in masses so as to form almost a hedge, all starred with these wonderful white blossoms, which, unfortunately, have no perfume. We rode home through the pine land to Jones's, looked at the new house which is coming on hideously, saw two beautiful kinds of trumpet honeysuckle already lighting up the woods in every direction with gleams of scarlet, and when we reached home found a splendid donation of vegetables, flowers, and mutton from our kind neighbour Mrs. F----, who is a perfect Lady Bountiful to us. This same mutton, however--my heart bleeds to say it--disappeared the day after it was sent to us. Abraham the cook declares that he locked the door of the safe upon it, which I think may be true, but I also think he unlocked it again. I am sorry; but, after all, it is very natural these people should steal a little of our meat from us occasionally, who steal almost all their bread from them habitually. I rode yesterday to St. Annie's with Mr. ----. We found a whole tract of marsh had been set on fire by the facetious negro called Pun, who had helped me out of it some time ago. As he was set to work in it, perhaps it was with a view of making it less damp; at any rate, it was crackling, blazing, and smoking cheerily, and I should think would be insupportable for the snakes. While stopping to look at the conflagration, Mr. ---- was accosted by a three parts naked and one part tattered little she slave--black as ebony, where her skin was discoverable through its perfect incrustation of dirt--with a thick mat of frizzly wool upon her skull, which made the sole request she preferred to him irresistibly ludicrous:--'Massa, massa, you please to buy me a comb to tick in my head?' Mr. ---- promised her this necessary of life, and I promised myself to give her the luxury of one whole garment. Mrs. ---- has sent me the best possible consolation for the lost mutton, some lovely flowers, and these will not be stolen. * * * * * _Saturday, the 13th._--Dear E----, I rode to-day through all my woodpaths for the last time with Jack, and I think I should have felt quite melancholy at taking leave of them and him, but for the apparition of a large black snake, which filled me with disgust and nipped my other sentiments in the bud. Not a day passes now that I do not encounter one or more of these hateful reptiles; it is curious how much more odious they are to me than the alligators that haunt the mud banks of the river round the rice plantation. It is true that there is something very dreadful in the thick shapeless mass, uniform in colour almost to the black slime on which it lies basking, and which you hardly detect till it begins to move. But even those ungainly crocodiles never sickened me as those rapid, lithe, and sinuous serpents do. Did I ever tell you that the people at the rice plantation caught a young alligator and brought it to the house, and it was kept for some time in a tub of water? It was an ill-tempered little monster; it used to set up its back like a cat when it was angry, and open its long jaws in a most vicious manner. After looking at my new path in the pine land, I crossed Pike Bluff, and breaking my way all through the burnt district, returned home by Jones's. In the afternoon, we paid a long visit to Mr. C----. It is extremely interesting to me to talk with him about the negroes; he has spent so much of his life among them, has managed them so humanely, and apparently so successfully, that his experience is worthy of all attention. And yet it seems to me that it is impossible, or rather, perhaps, for those very reasons it is impossible, for him ever to contemplate them in any condition but that of slavery. He thinks them very like the Irish, and instanced their subserviency, their flattering, their lying, and pilfering, as traits common to the character of both peoples. But I cannot persuade myself that in both cases, and certainly in that of the negroes, these qualities are not in great measure the result of their condition. He says that he considers the extremely low diet of the negroes one reason for the absence of crimes of a savage nature among them; most of them do not touch meat the year round. But in this respect they certainly do not resemble the Irish, who contrive upon about as low a national diet as civilisation is acquainted with, to commit the bloodiest and most frequent outrages with which civilisation has to deal. His statement that it is impossible to bribe the negroes to work on their own account with any steadiness may be generally true, but admits of quite exceptions enough to throw doubt upon its being natural supineness in the race rather than the inevitable consequence of denying them the entire right to labour for their own profit. Their laziness seems to me the necessary result of their primary wants being supplied, and all progress denied them. Of course, if the natural spur to exertion, necessity, is removed, you do away with the will to work of a vast proportion of all who do work in the world. It is the law of progress that a man's necessities grow with his exertions to satisfy them, and labour and improvement thus continually act and react upon each other to raise the scale of desire and achievement; and I do not believe that, in the majority of instances among any people on the face of the earth, the will to labour for small indulgences would survive the loss of freedom and the security of food enough to exist upon. Mr. ---- said that he had offered a bribe of twenty dollars apiece, and the use of a pair of oxen, for the clearing of a certain piece of land, to the men on his estate, and found the offer quite ineffectual to procure the desired result; the land was subsequently cleared as usual task work under the lash. Now, certainly, we have among Mr. ----'s people instances of men who have made very considerable sums of money by boat-building in their leisure hours, and the instances of almost life-long persevering stringent labour by which slaves have at length purchased their own freedom and that of their wives and children, are on record in numbers sufficient to prove that they are capable of severe sustained effort of the most patient and heroic kind for that great object, liberty. For my own part, I know no people who doat upon labour for its own sake; and it seems to me quite natural to any absolutely ignorant and nearly brutish man, if you say to him, 'No effort of your own can make you free, but no absence of effort shall starve you,' to decline to work for anything less than mastery over his whole life, and to take up with his mess of porridge as the alternative. One thing that Mr. ---- said seemed to me to prove rather too much. He declared that his son, objecting to the folks on his plantation going about bare-headed, had at one time offered a reward of a dollar to those who should habitually wear hats without being able to induce them to do so, which he attributed to sheer careless indolence; but I think it was merely the force of the habit of going uncovered rather than absolute laziness. The universal testimony of all present at this conversation was in favour of the sweetness of temper and natural gentleness of disposition of the negroes; but these characteristics they seemed to think less inherent than the result of diet and the other lowering influences of their condition; and it must not be forgotten that on the estate of this wise and kind master a formidable conspiracy was organised among his slaves. We rowed home through a world of stars, the stedfast ones set in the still blue sky, and the flashing swathes of phosphoric light turned up by our oars and keel in the smooth blue water. It was lovely. * * * * * _Sunday, 14th._--My dear E----. That horrid tragedy with which we have been threatened, and of which I was writing to you almost jestingly a few days ago, has been accomplished, and apparently without exciting anything but the most passing and superficial sensation in this community. The duel between Dr. H---- and Mr. W---- did not take place, but an accidental encounter in the hotel at Brunswick did, and the former shot the latter dead on the spot. He has been brought home and buried here by the little church close to his mother's plantation; and the murderer, if he is even prosecuted, runs no risk of finding a jury in the whole length and breadth of Georgia who could convict him of anything. It is horrible. I drove to church to-day in the wood wagon, with Jack and Aleck, Hector being our charioteer, in a gilt guard-chain and pair of slippers to match as the Sabbatic part of his attire. The love of dirty finery is not a trait of the Irish in Ireland, but I think it crops out strongly when they come out here; and the proportion of their high wages put upon their backs by the young Irish maid-servants in the north, indicates a strong addiction to the female passion for dress. Here the tendency seems to exist in men and women alike; but I think all savage men rejoice, even more than their women, in personal ornamentation. The negroes certainly show the same strong predilection for finery with their womenkind. I stopped before going into church to look at the new grave that has taken its place among the defaced stones, all overgrown with briers, that lie round it. Poor young W----! poor widowed mother, of whom he was the only son! What a savage horror! And no one seems to think anything of it, more than of a matter of course. My devotions were anything but satisfactory or refreshing to me. My mind was dwelling incessantly upon the new grave under the great oaks outside, and the miserable mother in her home. The air of the church was perfectly thick with sand-flies; and the disgraceful carelessness of the congregation in responding and singing the hymns, and their entire neglect of the prayer-book regulations for kneeling, disturbed and displeased me even more than the last time I was at church; but I think that was because of the total absence of excitement or feeling among the whole population of St. Simon's upon the subject of the bloody outrage with which my mind was full, which has given me a sensation of horror towards the whole community. Just imagine--only it is impossible to imagine--such a thing taking place in a New England village; the dismay, the grief, the shame, the indignation, that would fill the hearts of the whole population. I thought we should surely have some reference to the event from the pulpit, some lesson of Christian command over furious passions. Nothing--nobody looked or spoke as if anything unusual had occurred; and I left the church, rejoicing to think that I was going away from such a dreadful state of society. Mr. B---- remained to preach a second sermon to the negroes--the duty of submission to masters who intermurder each other. I had service at home in the afternoon, and my congregation was much more crowded than usual; for I believe there is no doubt at last that we shall leave Georgia this week. Having given way so much before when I thought I was praying with these poor people for the last time, I suppose I had, so to speak, expended my emotion; and I was much more composed and quiet than when I took leave of them before. But, to tell you the truth, this dreadful act of slaughter done in our neighbourhood by one man of our acquaintance upon another, impresses me to such a degree that I can hardly turn my mind from it, and Mrs. W---- and her poor young murdered son have taken almost complete possession of my thoughts. After prayers I gave my poor people a parting admonition, and many charges to remember me and all I had tried to teach them during my stay. They promised with one voice to mind and do all that 'missis tell we;' and with many a parting benediction, and entreaties to me to return, they went their way. I think I have done what I could for them--I think I have done as well as I could by them; but when the time comes for ending any human relation, who can be without their misgivings? who can be bold to say, I could have done no more, I could have done no better? In the afternoon I walked out, and passed many of the people, who are now beginning, whenever they see me, to say, 'Good bye, missis!' which is rather trying. Many of them were clean and tidy, and decent in their appearance to a degree that certainly bore strong witness to the temporary efficacy of my influence in this respect. There is, however, of course much individual difference even with reference to this, and some take much more kindly and readily to cleanliness, no doubt to godliness too, than some others. I met Abraham, and thought that, in a quiet tête-à-tête, and with the pathetic consideration of my near departure to assist me, I could get him to confess the truth about the disappearance of the mutton; but he persisted in the legend of its departure through the locked door; and as I was only heaping sins on his soul with every lie I caused him to add to the previous ones, I desisted from my enquiries. Dirt and lying are the natural tendencies of humanity, which are especially fostered by slavery. Slaves may be infinitely wrong, and yet it is very hard to blame them. I returned home, finding the heat quite oppressive. Late in the evening, when the sun had gone down a long time, I thought I would try and breathe the fresh sea air, but the atmosphere was thick with sand-flies, which drove me in at last from standing listening to the roar of the Atlantic on Little St. Simon's Island, the wooded belt that fends off the ocean surges from the north side of Great St. Simon's. It is a wild little sand-heap, covered with thick forest growth, and belongs to Mr. ----. I have long had a great desire to visit it. I hope yet to be able to do so before our departure. I have just finished reading, with the utmost interest and admiration, J---- C----'s narrative of his escape from the wreck of the Poolaski: what a brave, and gallant, and unselfish soul he must be! You never read anything more thrilling, in spite of the perfect modesty of this account of his. If I can obtain his permission, and squeeze out the time, I will surely copy it for you. The quiet unassuming character of his usual manners and deportment adds greatly to his prestige as a hero. What a fine thing it must be to be such a man! * * * * * Dear E----. We shall leave this place next Thursday or Friday, and there will be an end to this record; meantime I am fulfilling all sorts of last duties, and especially those of taking leave of my neighbours, by whom the neglect of a farewell visit would be taken much amiss. On Sunday, I rode to a place called Frederica to call on a Mrs. A----, who came to see me some time ago. I rode straight through the island by the main road that leads to the little church. How can I describe to you the exquisite spring beauty that is now adorning these woods, the variety of the fresh new-born foliage, the fragrance of the sweet wild perfumes that fill the air? Honeysuckles twine round every tree; the ground is covered with a low white-blossomed shrub more fragrant than lilies of the valley. The accacuas are swinging their silver censers under the green roof of these wood temples; every stump is like a classical altar to the sylvan gods, garlanded with flowers; every post, or stick, or slight stem, like a Bacchante's thyrsus, twined with wreaths of ivy and wild vine, waving in the tepid wind. Beautiful butterflies flicker like flying flowers among the bushes, and gorgeous birds, like winged jewels, dart from the boughs,--and--and--a huge ground snake slid like a dark ribbon, across the path while I was stopping to enjoy all this deliciousness, and so I became less enthusiastic, and cantered on past the little deserted churchyard, with the new-made grave beneath its grove of noble oaks, and a little farther on reached Mrs. A----'s cottage, half hidden in the midst of ruins and roses. This Frederica is a very strange place; it was once a town, _the_ town, the metropolis of the island. The English, when they landed on the coast of Georgia in the war, destroyed this tiny place, and it has never been built up again. Mrs. A----'s, and one other house, are the only dwellings that remain in this curious wilderness of dismantled crumbling grey walls compassionately cloaked with a thousand profuse and graceful creepers. These are the only ruins properly so called, except those of Fort Putnam, that I have ever seen in this land of contemptuous youth. I hailed these picturesque groups and masses with the feelings of a European, to whom ruins are like a sort of relations. In my country, ruins are like a minor chord in music, here they are like a discord; they are not the relics of time, but the results of violence; they recall no valuable memories of a remote past, and are mere encumbrances to the busy present. Evidently they are out of place in America, except on St. Simon's Island, between this savage selvage of civilisation and the great Atlantic deep. These heaps of rubbish and roses would have made the fortune of a sketcher; but I imagine the snakes have it all to themselves here, and are undisturbed by camp stools, white umbrellas, and ejaculatory young ladies. I sat for a long time with Mrs. A----, and a friend of hers staying with her, a Mrs. A----, lately from Florida. The latter seemed to me a remarkable woman; her conversation was extremely interesting. She had been stopping at Brunswick, at the hotel where Dr. H---- murdered young W----, and said that the mingled ferocity and blackguardism of the men who frequented the house had induced her to cut short her stay there, and come on to her friend Mrs. A----'s. We spoke of that terrible crime which had occurred only the day after she left Brunswick, and both ladies agreed that there was not the slightest chance of Dr. H----'s being punished in any way for the murder he had committed; that shooting down a man who had offended you was part of the morals and manners of the southern gentry, and that the circumstance was one of quite too frequent occurrence to cause any sensation, even in the small community where it obliterated one of the principal members of the society. If the accounts given by these ladies of the character of the planters in this part of the south may be believed, they must be as idle, arrogant, ignorant, dissolute, and ferocious as that mediaeval chivalry to which they are fond of comparing themselves; and these are southern women, and should know the people among whom they live. We had a long discussion on the subject of slavery, and they took as usual the old ground of justifying the system, _where_ it was administered with kindness and indulgence. It is not surprising that women should regard the question from this point of view; they are very seldom _just_, and are generally treated with more indulgence than justice by men. They were very patient of my strong expressions of reprobation of the whole system, and Mrs. A----, bidding me good-bye, said that, for aught she could tell, I might be right, and might have been led down here by Providence to be the means of some great change in the condition of the poor coloured people. I rode home pondering on the strange fate that has brought me to this place so far from where I was born, this existence so different in all its elements from that of my early years and former associations. If I believed Mrs. A----'s parting words, I might perhaps verify them; perhaps I may yet verify although I do not believe them. On my return home, I found a most enchanting bundle of flowers, sent to me by Mrs. G----; pomegranate blossoms, roses, honeysuckle, everything that blooms two months later with us in Pennsylvania. I told you I had a great desire to visit Little St. Simon's, and the day before yesterday I determined to make an exploring expedition thither. I took M---- and the children, little imagining what manner of day's work was before me. Six men rowed us in the 'Lily,' and Israel brought the wood wagon after us in a flat. Our navigation was a very intricate one, all through sea swamps and marshes, mud-banks and sand-banks, with great white shells and bleaching bones stuck upon sticks to mark the channel. We landed on this forest in the sea by Quash's house, the only human residence on the island. It was larger and better, and more substantial than the negro huts in general, and he seemed proud and pleased to do the honours to us. Thence we set off, by my desire, in the wagon through the woods to the beach; road there was none, save the rough clearing that the men cut with their axes before us as we went slowly on. Presently, we came to a deep dry ditch, over which there was no visible means of proceeding. Israel told me if we would sit still he would undertake to drive the wagon into and out of it; and so, indeed, he did, but how he did it is more than I can explain to you now, or could explain to myself then. A less powerful creature than Montreal could never have dragged us through; and when we presently came to a second rather worse edition of the same, I insisted upon getting out and crossing it on foot. I walked half a mile while the wagon was dragged up and down the deep gulley, and lifted bodily over some huge trunks of fallen trees. The wood through which we now drove was all on fire, smoking, flaming, crackling, and burning round us. The sun glared upon us from the cloudless sky, and the air was one cloud of sand-flies and mosquitoes. I covered both my children's faces with veils and handkerchiefs, and repented not a little in my own breast of the rashness of my undertaking. The back of Israel's coat was covered so thick with mosquitoes that one could hardly see the cloth; and I felt as if we should be stifled, if our way lay much longer through this terrible wood. Presently we came to another impassable place, and again got out of the wagon, leaving Israel to manage it as best he could. I walked with the baby in my arms a quarter of a mile, and then was so overcome with the heat that I sat down in the burning wood, on the floor of ashes, till the wagon came up again. I put the children and M---- into it, and continued to walk till we came to a ditch in a tract of salt marsh, over which Israel drove triumphantly, and I partly jumped and was partly hauled over, having declined the entreaties of several of the men to let them lie down and make a bridge with their bodies for me to walk over. At length we reached the skirt of that tremendous wood, to my unspeakable relief, and came upon the white sand hillocks of the beach. The trees were all strained crooked, from the constant influence of the sea-blast. The coast was a fearful-looking stretch of dismal, trackless sand, and the ocean lay boundless and awful beyond the wild and desolate beach, from which we were now only divided by a patch of low coarse-looking bush, growing as thick and tangled as heather, and so stiff and compact that it was hardly possible to drive through it. Yet in spite of this several lads who had joined our train rushed off into it in search of rabbits, though Israel called repeatedly to them, warning them of the danger of rattlesnakes. We drove at last down to the smooth sea sand; and here, outstripping our guides, was barred farther progress by a deep gully, down which it was impossible to take the wagon. Israel, not knowing the beach well, was afraid to drive round the mouth of it; and so it was determined that from this point we should walk home under his guidance. I sat in the wagon while he constructed a rough foot-bridge of bits of wood and broken planks for us, over the narrow chasm, and he then took Montreal out of the wagon and tied him behind it, leaving him for the other men to take charge of when they should arrive at this point. And so, having mightily desired to see the coast of Little St. Simon's Island, I did see it thoroughly; for I walked a mile and a half round it, over beds of sharp shells, through swamps half knee deep, poor little S---- stumping along with dogged heroism, and Israel carrying the baby, except at one deep _mal passo_, when I took the baby and he carried S----; and so, through the wood round Quash's house, where we arrived almost fainting with fatigue and heat, and where we rested but a short time; for we had to start almost immediately to save the tide home. I called at Mr. C----'s on my way back, to return him his son's manuscript, which I had in the boat for that purpose. I sent Jack, who had come to meet me with the horses, home, being too tired to attempt riding; and, covered with mud literally up to my knees I was obliged to lie down ignominiously all the afternoon to rest. And now I will give you a curious illustration of the utter subserviency of slaves. It seems that by taking the tide in proper season, and going by boat, all that horrible wood journey might have been avoided, and we could have reached the beach, with perfect ease in half the time; but because, being of course absolutely ignorant of this, I had expressed a desire to go through the wood, not a syllable of remonstrance was uttered by any one; and the men not only underwent the labour of cutting a path for the wagon and dragging it through and over all the impediments we encountered, but allowed me and the children to traverse that burning wood, rather than tell me that by waiting and taking another way I could get to the sea. When I expressed my astonishment at their not having remonstrated against my order, and explained how I could best achieve the purpose I had in view, the sole answer I got even from Israel was, 'Missis say so, so me do; missis say me go through the wood, me no tell missis go another way.' You see, my dear E----, one had need bethink oneself what orders one gives, when one has the misfortune to be despotic. How sorry I am that I have been obliged to return that narrative of Mr. C----'s without asking permission to copy it, which I did not do because I should not have been able to find the time to do it! We go away the day after to-morrow. All the main incidents of the disaster the newspapers have made you familiar with--the sudden and appalling loss of that fine vessel laden with the very flower of the south. There seems hardly to be a family in Georgia and South Carolina that had not some of its members on board that ill-fated ship. You know it was a sort of party of pleasure more than anything else; the usual annual trip to the north for change of air and scene, for the gaieties of Newport and Saratoga, that all the wealthy southern people invariably take every summer. The weather had been calm and lovely; and dancing, talking, and laughing, as if they were in their own drawing-rooms, they had passed the time away till they all separated for the night. At the first sound of the exploding boiler, Mr. C---- jumped up, and in his shirt and trousers ran on deck. The scene was one of horrible confusion; women screaming, men swearing, the deck strewn with broken fragments of all descriptions, the vessel leaning frightfully to one side, and everybody running hither and thither in the darkness in horror and dismay. He had left Georgia with Mrs. F---- and Mrs. N----, the two children, and one of the female servants of these ladies under his charge. He went immediately to the door of the ladies' cabin and called Mrs. F----; they were all there half-dressed; he bade them dress as quickly as possible and be ready to follow and obey him. He returned almost instantly, and led them to the side of the vessel, where, into the boats, that had already been lowered, desperate men and women were beginning to swarm, throwing themselves out of the sinking ship. He bade Mrs. F---- jump down into one of these boats which was only in the possession of two sailors; she instantly obeyed him, and he threw her little boy to the men after her. He then ordered Mrs. N----, with the negro woman, to throw themselves off the vessel into the boat, and, with Mrs. N----'s baby in his arms, sprang after them. His foot touched the gunwale of the boat, and he fell into the water; but recovering himself instantly, he clambered into the boat, which he then peremptorily ordered the men to set adrift, in spite of the shrieks, and cries, and commands, and entreaties of the frantic crowds who were endeavouring to get into it. The men obeyed him, and rowing while he steered, they presently fell astern of the ship, in the midst of the darkness and tumult and terror. Another boat laden with people was near them. For some time they saw the heartrending spectacle of the sinking vessel, and the sea strewn with mattresses, seats, planks, &c, to which people were clinging, floating, and shrieking for succour, in the dark water all round them. But they gradually pulled further and further out of the horrible chaos of despair, and, with the other boat still consorting with them, rowed on. They watched from a distance the piteous sight of the ill-fated steamer settling down, the gay girdle of light that marked the line of her beautiful saloons and cabins gradually sinking nearer and nearer to the blackness, in which they were presently extinguished; and the ship, with all its precious human freight engulfed--all but the handful left in those two open boats, to brave the dangers of that terrible coast! They were somewhere off the North Carolina shore, which, when the daylight dawned, they could distinctly see, with its ominous line of breakers and inhospitable perilous coast. The men had continued rowing all night, and as the summer sun rose flaming over their heads, the task of pulling the boat became dreadfully severe; still they followed the coast, Mr. C---- looking out for any opening, creek, or small inlet, that might give them a chance of landing in safety. The other boat rowed on at some little distance from them. All the morning, and through the tremendous heat of the middle day, they toiled on without a mouthful of food--without a drop of water. At length, towards the afternoon, the men at the oars said they were utterly exhausted and could row no longer, and that Mr. C---- must steer the boat ashore. With wonderful power of command, he prevailed on them to continue their afflicting labour. The terrible blazing sun pouring on all their unsheltered heads had almost annihilated them; but still there lay between them and the land those fearful foaming ridges, and the women and children, if not the men themselves, seemed doomed to inevitable death in the attempt to surmount them. Suddenly they perceived that the boat that had kept them company was about to adventure itself in the perilous experiment of landing. Mr. C---- kept his boat's head steady, the men rested on their oars, and watched the result of the fearful risk they were themselves about to run. They saw the boat enter the breakers--they saw her whirled round and capsized, and then they watched, slowly emerging and dragging themselves out of the foaming sea, _some_, and only some, of the people that they knew the boat contained. Mr. C----, fortified with this terrible illustration of the peril that awaited them, again besought them to row yet for a little while further along the coast, in search of some possible place to take the boat safely to the beach, promising at sunset to give up the search; and again the poor men resumed their toil, but the line of leaping breakers stretched along the coast as far as eye could see, and at length the men declared they could labour no longer, and insisted that Mr. C---- should steer them to shore. He then said that he would do so, but they must take some rest before encountering the peril which awaited them, and for which they might require whatever remaining strength they could command. He made the men leave the oars and lie down to sleep for a short time, and then, giving the helm to one of them, did the same himself. When they were thus a little refreshed with this short rest, he prepared to take the boat into the breakers. He laid Mrs. N----'s baby on her breast, and wrapped a shawl round and round her body so as to secure the child to it, and said, in the event of the boat capsizing, he would endeavour to save her and her child. Mrs. F---- and her boy he gave in charge to one of the sailors, and the coloured woman who was with her to the other; and they promised solemnly, in case of misadventure to the boat, to do their best to save these helpless creatures; and so they turned, as the sun was going down, the bows of the boat to the terrible shore. They rose two of the breakers safely, but then the oar of one of the men was struck from his hand, and in an instant the boat whirled round and turned over. Mr. C---- instantly struck out to seize Mrs. N----, but she had sunk, and though he dived twice he could not see her; at last, he felt her hair floating loose with his foot, and seizing hold of it, grasped her securely and swam with her to shore. While in the act of doing so, he saw the man who had promised to save the coloured woman making alone for the beach; and even then, in that extremity, he had power of command enough left to drive the fellow back to seek her, which he did, and brought her safe to land. The other man kept his word of taking care of Mrs. F----, and the latter never released her grasp of her child's wrist, which bore the mark of her agony for weeks after their escape. They reached the sands, and Mrs. N----'s shawl having been unwound, her child was found laughing on her bosom. But hardly had they had time to thank God for their deliverance when Mr. C---- fell fainting on the beach; and Mrs. F----, who told me this, said that for one dreadful moment they thought that the preserver of all their lives had lost his own in the terrible exertion and anxiety that he had undergone. He revived, however, and crawling a little further up the beach, they burrowed for warmth and shelter as well as they could in the sand, and lay there till the next morning, when they sought and found succour. You cannot imagine, my dear E----, how strikingly throughout this whole narrative the extraordinary power of Mr. C----'s character makes itself felt,--the immediate obedience that he obtained from women whose terror might have made them unmanageable, and men whose selfishness might have defied his control; the wise though painful firmness, which enabled him to order the boat away from the side of the perishing vessel, in spite of the pity that he felt for the many, in attempting to succour whom he could only have jeopardized the few whom he was bound to save; the wonderful influence he exercised over the poor oarsmen, whose long protracted labour postponed to the last possible moment the terrible risk of their landing. The firmness, courage, humanity, wisdom, and presence of mind, of all his preparations for their final tremendous risk, and the authority which he was able to exercise while struggling in the foaming water for his own life and that of the woman and child he was saving, over the man who was proving false to a similar sacred charge,--all these admirable traits are most miserably transmitted to you by my imperfect account; and when I assure you that his own narrative, full as it necessarily was of the details of his own heroism, was as simple, modest, and unpretending, as it was interesting and touching, I am sure you will agree with me that he must be a very rare man. When I spoke with enthusiasm to his old father of his son's noble conduct, and asked him if he was not proud of it, his sole reply was,--'I am glad, madam, my son was not selfish.' Now, E----, I have often spoken with you and written to you of the disastrous effect of slavery upon the character of the white men implicated in it; many, among themselves, feel and acknowledge it to the fullest extent, and no one more than myself can deplore that any human being I love should be subjected to such baneful influences; but the devil must have his due, and men brought up in habits of peremptory command over their fellow men, and under the constant apprehension of danger, and awful necessity of immediate readiness to meet it, acquire qualities precious to themselves and others in hours of supreme peril such as this man passed through, saving by their exercise himself and all committed to his charge. I know that the southern men are apt to deny the fact that they do live under an habitual sense of danger; but a slave population, coerced into obedience, though unarmed and half fed, _is_ a threatening source of constant insecurity, and every southern _woman_ to whom I have spoken on the subject, has admitted to me that they live in terror of their slaves. Happy are such of them as have protectors like J---- C----. Such men will best avoid and best encounter the perils that may assail them from the abject subject, human element, in the control of which their noble faculties are sadly and unworthily employed. _Wednesday, 17th April._--I rode to-day after breakfast, to Mrs. D----'s, another of my neighbours, who lives full twelve miles off. During the last two miles of my expedition, I had the white sand hillocks and blue line of the Atlantic in view. The house at which I called was a tumble-down barrack of a dwelling in the woods, with a sort of poverty-stricken pretentious air about it, like sundry 'proud planters' dwellings that I have seen. I was received by the sons as well as the lady of the house, and could not but admire the lordly rather than manly indifference, with which these young gentlemen, in gay guard chains and fine attire, played the gallants to me, while filthy, bare-footed half naked negro women brought in refreshments, and stood all the while fanning the cake, and sweetmeats, and their young masters, as if they had been all the same sort of stuff. I felt ashamed for the lads. The conversation turned upon Dr. H----'s trial; for there has been a trial as a matter of form, and an acquittal as a matter of course; and the gentlemen said, upon my expressing some surprise at the latter event, that there could not be found in all Georgia a jury who would convict him, which says but little for the moral sense of 'all Georgia.' From this most painful subject we fell into the Brunswick canal, and thereafter I took my leave and rode home. I met my babies in the wood-wagon, and took S---- up before me, and gave her a good gallop home. Having reached the house with the appetite of a twenty-four miles' ride, I found no preparation for dinner, and not so much as a boiled potato to eat, and the sole reply to my famished and disconsolate exclamations was--'Being that you order none, missis, I not know.' I had forgotten to order my dinner, and my _slaves_, unauthorised, had not ventured to prepare any. Wouldn't a Yankee have said, 'Wal now, you went off so uncommon quick, I kinder guessed you forgot all about dinner,' and have had it all ready for me? But my slaves durst not, and so I fasted till some tea could be got for me. * * * * * This was the last letter I wrote from the plantation, and I never returned there, nor ever saw again any of the poor people among whom I lived during this winter, but Jack, once, under sad circumstances. The poor lad's health failed so completely, that his owners humanely brought him to the north, to try what benefit he might derive from the change; but this was before the passing of the Fugitive Slave Bill, when touching the soil of the northern states, a slave became free; and such was the apprehension felt lest Jack should be enlightened as to this fact by some philanthropic abolitionist, that he was kept shut up in a high upper room of a large empty house, where even I was not allowed to visit him. I heard at length of his being in Philadelphia; and upon my distinct statement that I considered freeing their slaves the business of the Messrs. ---- themselves, and not mine, I was at length permitted to see him. Poor fellow! coming to the north did not prove to him the delight his eager desire had so often anticipated from it; nor under such circumstances is it perhaps much to be wondered at that he benefited but little by the change,--he died not long after. I once heard a conversation between Mr. O---- and Mr. K----, the two overseers of the plantation on which I was living, upon the question of taking slaves, servants, necessary attendants, into the northern states; Mr. O---- urged the danger of their being 'got hold of,' i.e., set free by the abolitionists, to which Mr. K---- very pertinently replied, 'Oh, stuff and nonsense, I take care when my wife goes north with the children, to send Lucy with her; _her children are down here, and I defy all the abolitionists in creation to get her to stay north_.' Mr. K---- was an extremely wise man. APPENDIX I wrote the following letter after reading several leading articles in the _Times_ newspaper, at the time of the great sensation occasioned by Mrs. Beecher Stowe's novel of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and after the Anti-Slavery Protest which that book induced the women of England to address to those of America, on the subject of the condition of the slaves in the southern states. My dear E----. I have read the articles in the _Times_ to which you refer, on the subject of the inaccuracy of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's book as a picture of slavery in America, and have ascertained who they were written by. Having done so, I do not think it worth while to send my letter for insertion, because, as that is the tone deliberately taken upon the subject by that paper, my counter statement would not, I imagine, be admitted into its columns. I enclose it to you, as I should like you to see how far from true, according to my experience, the statements of the '_Times'_ Correspondent' are. It is impossible of course to know why it erects itself into an advocate for slavery; and the most charitable conjecture I can form upon the subject is, that the Stafford House demonstration may have been thought likely to wound the sensitive national views of America upon this subject; and the statement put forward by the _Times_, contradicting Mrs. Stowe's picture, may be intended to soothe their irritation at the philanthropic zeal of our lady abolitionists. Believe me, dear E----, Yours always truly, F.A.K. * * * * * _Letter to the Editor of the_ 'Times.' Sir,--As it is not to be supposed that you consciously afford the support of your great influence to misstatements, I request your attention to some remarks I wish to make on an article on a book called 'Uncle Tom's Cabin as it is,' contained in your paper of the 11th. In treating Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's work as an exaggerated picture of the evils of slavery, I beg to assure you that you do her serious injustice:--of the merits of her book as a work of art, I have no desire to speak,--to its power as a most interesting and pathetic story, all England and America can bear witness,--but of its truth and moderation as a representation of the slave system in the United States, I can testify with the experience of an eye witness, having been a resident in the Southern States, and had opportunities of observation such as no one who has not lived on a slave estate can have. It is very true that in reviving the altogether exploded fashion of making the hero of her novel 'the perfect monster that the world ne'er saw,' Mrs. Stowe has laid herself open to fair criticism, and must expect to meet with it from the very opposite taste of the present day; but the ideal excellence of her principal character is no argument at all against the general accuracy of her statements with regard to the evils of slavery;--everything else in her book is not only possible, but probable, and not only probable, but a very faithful representation of the existing facts:--faithful, and not, as you accuse it of being, exaggerated; for, with the exception of the horrible catastrophe, the flogging to death of poor Tom, she has pourtrayed none of the most revolting instances of crime produced by the slave system--with which she might have darkened her picture, without detracting from its perfect truth. Even with respect to the incident of Tom's death, it must not be said that if such an event is possible, it is hardly probable; for this is unfortunately not true. It is not true that the value of the slave as property infallibly protects his life from the passions of his master. It is no new thing for a man's passions to blind him to his most obvious and immediate temporal interests, as well as to his higher and everlasting ones,--in various parts of the world and stages of civilisation, various human passions assume successive prominence, and become developed, to the partial exclusion or deadening of others. In savage existence, and those states of civilisation least removed from it, the animal passions predominate. In highly cultivated modern society, where the complicated machinery of human existence is at once a perpetually renewed cause and effect of certain legal and moral restraints, which, in the shape of government and public opinion, protect the congregated lives and interests of men from the worst outrages of open violence, the natural selfishness of mankind assumes a different development; and the love of power, of pleasure, or of pelf, exhibits different phenomena from those elicited from a savage under the influence of the same passions. The channel in which the energy and activity of modern society inclines more and more to pour itself, is the peaceful one of the pursuit of gain. This is preeminently the case with the two great commercial nations of the earth, England and America;--and in either England or the Northern States of America, the prudential and practical views of life prevail so far, that instances of men sacrificing their money interests at the instigation of rage, revenge, and hatred, will certainly not abound. But the Southern slaveholders are a very different race of men from either Manchester manufacturers or Massachusetts merchants; they are a remnant of barbarism and feudalism, maintaining itself with infinite difficulty and danger by the side of the latest and most powerful developement of commercial civilisation. The inhabitants of Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, whose estates lie like the suburban retreats of our city magnates in the near neighbourhood of their respective cities, are not now the people I refer to. They are softened and enlightened by many influences,--the action of city life itself, where human sympathy, and human respect, stimulated by neighbourhood, produce salutary social restraint, as well as less salutary social cowardice. They travel to the Northern States, and to Europe; and Europe and the Northern States travel to them; and in spite of themselves, their peculiar conditions receive modifications from foreign intercourse. The influence, too, of commercial enterprise, which, in these latter days, is becoming the agent of civilisation all over the earth, affects even the uncommercial residents of the Southern cities, and however cordially they may dislike or despise the mercantile tendencies of Atlantic Americans, or transatlantic Englishmen, their frequent contact with them breaks down some of the barriers of difference between them, and humanises the slaveholder of the great cities into some relation with the spirit of his own times and country. But these men are but a most inconsiderable portion of the slaveholding population of the South,--a nation, for as such they should be spoken of, of men whose organisation and temperament is that of the southern European; living under the influence of a climate at once enervating and exciting; scattered over trackless wildernesses of arid sand and pestilential swamp; entrenched within their own boundaries; surrounded by creatures absolutely subject to their despotic will; delivered over by hard necessity to the lowest excitements of drinking, gambling, and debauchery for sole recreation; independent of all opinion; ignorant of all progress; isolated from all society--it is impossible to conceive a more savage existence within the pale of any modern civilisation. The South Carolinan gentry have been fond of styling themselves the chivalry of the South, and perhaps might not badly represent, in their relations with their dependents, the nobility of France before the purifying hurricane of the Revolution swept the rights of the suzerain and the wrongs of the serf together into one bloody abyss. The planters of the interior of the Southern and South-Western States, with their furious feuds and slaughterous combats, their stabbings and pistolings, their gross sensuality, brutal ignorance, and despotic cruelty, resemble the chivalry of France before the horrors of the Jacquerie admonished them that there was a limit even to the endurance of slaves. With such men as these, human life, even when it can be bought or sold in the market for so many dollars, is but little protected by considerations of interest from the effects of any violent passion. There is yet, however, another aspect of the question, which is, that it is sometimes clearly _not_ the interest of the owner to prolong the life of his slaves; as in the case of inferior or superannuated labourers, or the very notorious instance in which some of the owners of sugar plantations stated that they found it better worth their while to _work off_ (i.e. kill with labour) a certain proportion, of their force, and replace them by new hands every seven years, than work them less severely and maintain them in diminished efficiency for an indefinite length of time. Here you will observe a precise estimate of the planter's material interest led to a result which you argue passion itself can never be so blind as to adopt. This was a deliberate economical calculation, openly avowed some years ago by a number of sugar planters in Louisiana. If, instead of accusing Mrs. Stowe of exaggeration, you had brought the same charge against the author of the 'White Slave,' I should not have been surprised; for his book presents some of the most revolting instances of atrocity and crime that the miserable abuse of irresponsible power is capable of producing, and it is by no means written in the spirit of universal humanity which pervades Mrs. Stowe's volumes: but it is not liable to the charge of exaggeration, any more than her less disgusting delineation. The scenes described in the 'White Slave' _do_ occur in the slave States of North America; and in two of the most appalling incidents of the book--the burning alive of the captured runaway, and the hanging without trial of the Vicksburg gamblers--the author of the 'White Slave' has very simply related positive facts of notorious occurrence. To which he might have added, had he seen fit to do so, the instance of a slave who perished in the sea swamps, where he was left bound and naked, a prey to the torture inflicted upon him by the venomous mosquito swarms. My purpose, however, in addressing you was not to enter into a disquisition on either of these publications; but I am not sorry to take this opportunity of bearing witness to the truth of Mrs. Stowe's admirable book, and I have seen what few Englishmen can see--the working of the system in the midst of it. In reply to your 'Dispassionate Observer,' who went to the South professedly with the purpose of seeing and judging of the state of things for himself, let me tell you that, little as he may be disposed to believe it, his testimony is worth less than nothing; for it is morally impossible for any Englishman going into the Southern States, except as a _resident_, to know anything whatever of the real condition of the slave population. This was the case some years ago, as I experienced, and it is now likely to be more the case than ever; for the institution is not _yet_ approved divine to the perceptions of Englishmen, and the Southerners are as anxious to hide its uglier features from any note-making observer from this side the water, as to present to his admiration and approval such as can by any possibility be made to wear the most distant approach to comeliness. The gentry of the Southern States are preeminent in their own country for that species of manner which, contrasted with the breeding of the Northerners, would be emphatically pronounced 'good' by Englishmen. Born to inhabit landed property, they are not inevitably made clerks and counting-house men of, but inherit with their estates some of the invariable characteristics of an aristocracy. The shop is not their element; and the eager spirit of speculation and the sordid spirit of gain do not infect their whole existence, even to their very demeanour and appearance, as they too manifestly do those of a large proportion of the inhabitants of the Northern States. Good manners have an undue value for Englishmen, generally speaking; and whatever departs from their peculiar standard of breeding is apt to prejudice them, as whatever approaches it prepossesses them, far more than is reasonable. The Southerners are infinitely better bred men, according to English notions, than the men of the Northern States. The habit of command gives them a certain self-possession, the enjoyment of leisure a certain ease. Their temperament is impulsive and enthusiastic, and their manners have the grace and spirit which seldom belong to the deportment of a Northern people; but upon more familiar acquaintance, the vices of the social system to which they belong will be found to have infected them with their own peculiar taint; and haughty overbearing irritability, effeminate indolence, reckless extravagance, and a union of profligacy and cruelty, which is the immediate result of their irresponsible power over their dependents, are some of the less pleasing traits which acquaintance developes in a Southern character. In spite of all this, there is no manner of doubt that the 'candid English observer' will, for the season of his sojourning among them, greatly prefer their intercourse to that of their Northern brethren. Moreover, without in the least suspecting it, he will be bribed insidiously and incessantly by the extreme desire and endeavour to please and prepossess him which the whole white population of the slave States will exhibit--as long as he goes only as a 'candid observer,' with a mind not _yet_ made up upon the subject of slavery, and open to conviction as to its virtues. Every conciliating demonstration of courtesy and hospitable kindness will be extended to him, and, as I said before, if his observation is permitted (and it may even appear to be courted), it will be to a fairly bound purified edition of the black book of slavery, in which, though the inherent viciousness of the whole story cannot be suppressed, the coarser and more offensive passages will be carefully expunged. And now, permit me to observe, that the remarks of your traveller must derive much of their value from the scene of his enquiry. In Maryland, Kentucky, and Virginia, the outward aspect of slavery has ceased to wear its most deplorable features. The remaining vitality of the system no longer resides in the interests, but in the pride and prejudices of the planters. Their soil and climate are alike favourable to the labours of a white peasantry: the slave cultivation has had time to prove itself there the destructive pest which, in time, it will prove itself wherever it prevails. The vast estates and large fortunes that once maintained, and were maintained by, the serfdom of hundreds of negroes, have dwindled in size and sunk in value, till the slaves have become so heavy a burthen on the resources of the exhausted soil and impoverished owners of it, that they are made themselves objects of traffic in order to ward off the ruin that their increase would otherwise entail. Thus, the plantations of the Northern slave States now present to the traveller very few of the darker and more oppressive peculiarities of the system; and, provided he does not stray too near the precincts where the negroes are sold, or come across gangs of them on their way to Georgia, Louisiana, or Alabama, he may, if he is a very superficial observer, conclude that the most prosperous slavery is not much worse than the most miserable freedom. But of what value will be such conclusions applied to those numerous plantations where no white man ever sets foot without the express permission of the owner? not estates lying close to Baltimore and Charleston, or even Lesington or Savannah, but remote and savage wildernesses like Legree's estate in 'Uncle Tom,' like all the plantations in the interior of Tennessee and Alabama, like the cotton-fields and rice-swamps of the great muddy rivers of Lousiana and Georgia, like the dreary pine barrens and endless woody wastes of north Carolina. These, especially the islands, are like so many fortresses, approachable for 'observers' only at the owners' will. On most of the rice plantations in these pestilential regions, no white man can pass the night at certain seasons of the year without running the risk of his life; and during the day, the master and overseer are as much alone and irresponsible in their dominion over their black cattle, as Robinson Crusoe was over his small family of animals on his desert habitation. Who, on such estates as these, shall witness to any act of tyranny or barbarity, however atrocious? No black man's testimony is allowed against a white, and who on the dismal swampy rice-grounds of the Savannah, or the sugar-brakes of the Mississippi and its tributaries, or the up country cotton lands of the Ocamulgee, shall go to perform the task of candid observation and benevolent enquiry? I passed some time on two such estates--plantations where the negroes esteemed themselves well off, and, compared with the slaves on several of the neighbouring properties, might very well consider themselves so; and I will, with your permission, contrast some of the items of my observation with those of the traveller whose report you find so satisfactory on the subject of the 'consolations' of slavery. And first, for the attachment which he affirms to subsist between the slave and master. I do not deny that certain manifestations on the part of the slave may suggest the idea of such a feeling; but whether upon better examination it will be found to deserve the name, I very much doubt. In the first place, on some of the great Southern estates, the owners are habitual absentees, utterly unknown to their serfs, and enjoying the proceeds of their labour in residences as remote as possible from the sands and swamps where their rice and cotton grow, and their slaves bow themselves under the eye of the white overseer, and the lash of the black driver. Some of these Sybarites prefer living in Paris, that paradise of American republicans, some in the capitals of the middle states of the union, Philadelphia or New York. The air of New England has a keen edge of liberty, which suits few Southern constitutions; and unkindly as abolition has found its native soil and native skies, that is its birthplace, and there it flourishes, in spite of all attempts to root it out and trample it down, and within any atmosphere poisoned by its influence no slaveholder can willingly draw breath. Some travel in Europe, and few, whose means permit the contrary, ever pass the entire year on their plantations. Great intervals of many years pass, and no master ever visits some of these properties: what species of attachment do you think the slave entertains for him? In other cases, the visits made will be of a few days in one of the winter months; the estate and its cultivators remaining for the rest of the year under the absolute control of the overseer, who, provided he contrives to get a good crop of rice or cotton into the market for his employers, is left to the arbitrary exercise of a will seldom uninfluenced for evil, by the combined effects of the grossest ignorance and habitual intemperance. The temptation to the latter vice is almost irresistible to a white man in such a climate, and leading an existence of brutal isolation, among a parcel of human beings as like brutes as they can be made. But the owner who at these distant intervals of months or years revisits his estates, is looked upon as a returning providence by the poor negroes. They have no experience of his character to destroy their hopes in his goodness, and all possible and impossible ameliorations of their condition are anticipated from his advent, less work, more food, fewer stripes, and some of that consideration which the slave hopes may spring from his positive money value to his owner,--a fallacious dependence, as I have already attempted to show, but one which, if it has not always predominating weight with the master, never can have any with the overseer, who has not even the feeling of regard for his own property to mitigate his absolutism over the slaves of another man. There is a very powerful cause which makes the prosperity and well-being (as far as life is concerned) of most masters a subject of solicitude with their slaves. The only stability of their condition, such as it is, hangs upon it. If the owner of a plantation dies, his estates may fall into the market, and his slaves be sold at public auction the next day; and whether this promises a better, or threatens a worse condition, the slaves cannot know, and no human being cares. One thing it inevitably brings, the uprooting of all old associations; the disruption of all the ties of fellowship in misery; the tearing asunder of all relations of blood and affection; the sale into separate and far distant districts of fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and children. If the estate does not lie in the extreme south, there is the vague dread of being driven thither from Virginia to Georgia, from Carolina to Alabama, or Louisiana, a change which, for reasons I have shown above, implies the passing from a higher into a lower circle of the infernal pit of slavery. I once heard a slave on the plantation of an absentee express the most lively distress at hearing that his master was ill. Before, however, I had recovered from my surprise at this warm 'attachment' to a distant and all but unknown proprietor, the man added, 'massa die, what become of all him people?' On my arrival on the plantation where I resided, I was hailed with the most extravagant demonstrations of delight, and all but lifted off my feet in the arms of people who had never seen me before; but who, knowing me to be connected with their owners, expected from me some of the multitudinous benefits which they always hope to derive from masters. These, until they come to reside among them, are always believed to be sources of beneficence and fountains of redress by the poor people, who have known no rule but the delegated tyranny of the overseer. In these expectations, however, they very soon find themselves cruelly mistaken. Of course, if the absentee planter has received a satisfactory income from his estate, he is inclined to be satisfied with the manager of it, and as subordination to the only white man among hundreds of blacks must be maintained at any and every cost, the overseer is justified and upheld in his whole administration. If the wretched slave ever dared to prefer a complaint of ill-usage the most atrocious, the law which refuses the testimony of a black against a white is not only the law of the land, but of every man's private dealings; and lying being one of the natural results of slavery, and a tendency to shirk compelled and unrequited labour another, the overseer stands on excellent vantage-ground, when he refers to these undoubted characteristics of the system, if called upon to rebut any charge of cruelty or injustice. But pray consider for a moment the probability of any such charge being preferred by a poor creature, who has been for years left to the absolute disposal of this man, and who knows very well that in a few days, or months at furthest, the master will again depart, leaving him again for months, perhaps for years, utterly at the mercy of the man against whom he has dared to prefer a complaint. On the estates which I visited, the owners had been habitually absent, and the 'attachment' of slaves to such masters as these, you will allow, can hardly come under the denomination of a strong personal feeling. Your authority next states that the infirm and superannuated slaves no longer capable of ministering to their masters' luxuries, on the estate that he visited, were ending their lives among all the comforts of home, with kindred and friends around them, in a condition which he contrasts, at least by implication, very favourably with the workhouse, the last refuge provided by the social humanity of England--for the pauper labourer when he has reached that term when 'unregarded age is in corners thrown.' On the plantation where I lived the infirmary was a large room, the walls of which were simply mud and lathes--the floor, the soil itself, damp with perpetual drippings from the holes in the roof, and the open space which served for a window was protected only by a broken shutter, which, in order to exclude the cold, was drawn so near as almost to exclude the light at the same time. Upon this earthen floor, with nothing but its hard damp surface beneath him, no covering but a tattered shirt and trowsers, and a few sticks under his head for a pillow, lay an old man of upwards of seventy, dying. When I first looked at him I thought by the glazed stare of his eyes, and the flies that had gathered round his half open mouth, that he was dead: but on stooping nearer, I perceived that the last faint struggle of life was still going on, but even while I bent over him it ceased; and so, like a worn-out hound, with no creature to comfort or relieve his last agony, with neither Christian solace or human succour near him, with neither wife, nor child, nor even friendly fellow being to lift his head from the knotty sticks on which he had rested it, or drive away the insects that buzzed round his lips and nostrils like those of a fallen beast, died this poor old slave, whose life had been exhausted in unrequited labour, the fruits of which had gone to pamper the pride and feed the luxury of those who knew and cared neither for his life or death, and to whom, if they had heard of the latter, it would have been a matter of absolute though small gain, the saving of a daily pittance of meal, which served to prolong a life no longer available to them. I proceed to the next item in your observer's record. All children below the age of twelve were unemployed, he says, on the estate he visited: this is perhaps a questionable benefit, when, no process of mental cultivation being permitted, the only employment for the leisure thus allowed is that of rolling, like dogs or cats, in the sand and the sun. On all the plantations I visited, and on those where I resided, the infants in arms were committed to the care of these juvenile slaves, who were denominated nurses, and whose sole employment was what they call to 'mind baby.' The poor little negro sucklings were cared for (I leave to your own judgement how efficiently or how tenderly) by these half-savage slips of slavery--carried by them to the fields where their mothers were working under the lash, to receive their needful nourishment, and then carried back again to the 'settlement,' or collection of negro huts, where they wallowed unheeded in utter filth and neglect until the time again returned for their being carried to their mother's breast. Such was the employment of the children of eight or nine years old, and the only supervision exercised over either babies or 'baby minders' was that of the old woman left in charge of the infirmary, where she made her abode all day long and bestowed such samples of her care and skill upon its inmates as I shall have occasion to mention presently. The practice of thus driving the mothers a-field, even while their infants were still dependent upon them for their daily nourishment, is one of which the evil as well as the cruelty is abundantly apparent without comment. The next note of admiration elicited from your 'impartial observer' is bestowed upon the fact that the domestic servants (i.e. house slaves) on the plantation he visited were _allowed_ to live away from the owner's residence, and to marry. But I never was on a southern plantation, and I never heard of one, where any of the slaves were allowed to sleep under the same roof with their owner. With the exception of the women to whose care the children of the planter, if he had any, might be confided, and perhaps a little boy or girl slave, kept as a sort of pet animal and allowed to pass the night on the floor of the sleeping apartment of some member of the family, the residence of _any_ slaves belonging to a plantation night and day in their master's house, like Northern or European servants, is a thing I believe unknown throughout the Southern States. Of course I except the cities, and speak only of the estates, where the house servants are neither better housed or accommodated than the field-hands. Their intolerably dirty habits and offensive persons would indeed render it a severe trial to any family accustomed to habits of decent cleanliness; and, moreover, considerations of safety, and that cautious vigilance which is a hard necessity of the planter's existence, in spite of the supposed attachment of his slaves, would never permit the near proximity, during the unprotected hours of the night, of those whose intimacy with the daily habits and knowledge of the nightly securities resorted to might prove terrible auxiliaries to any attack from without. The city guards, patrols, and night-watches, together with their stringent rules about negroes being abroad after night, and their well fortified lock-up houses for all detected without a pass, afford some security against these attached dependents; but on remote plantations, where the owner and his family and perhaps a white overseer are alone, surrounded by slaves and separated from all succour against them, they do not sleep under the white man's roof, and, for politic reasons, pass the night away from their master's abode. The house servants have no other or better allowance of food than the field labourers, but have the advantage of eking it out by what is left from the master's table,--if possible, with even less comfort in one respect, inasmuch as no time whatever is set apart for their meals, which they snatch at any hour and in any way that they can--generally, however, standing or squatting on their hams round the kitchen fire; the kitchen being a mere outhouse or barn with a fire in it. On the estate where I lived, as I have mentioned, they had no sleeping-rooms in the house; but when their work was over, they retired like the rest to their hovels, the discomfort of which had to them all the additional disadvantage of comparison with their owner's mode of living. In all establishments whatever, of course some disparity exists between the accommodation of the drawing-rooms and best bed-rooms and the servants' kitchen and attics; but on a plantation it is no longer a matter of degree. The young women who performed the offices of waiting and housemaids, and the lads who attended upon the service of their master's table where I lived, had neither table to feed at nor chair to sit down upon themselves; the 'boys' lay all night on the hearth by the kitchen fire, and the women upon the usual slave's bed--a frame of rough boards, strewed with a little moss off the trees, with the addition perhaps of a tattered and filthy blanket. As for the so-called privilege of marrying--surely it is gross mockery to apply such a word to a bond which may be holy in God's sight, but which did not prevent the owner of a plantation where my observations were made from selling and buying men and their so-called wives and children into divided bondage, nor the white overseer from compelling the wife of one of the most excellent and exemplary of his master's slaves to live with him--nor the white wife of another overseer, in her husband's temporary absence from the estate, from barbarously flogging three _married_ slaves within a month of their confinement, their condition being the result of the profligacy of the said overseer, and probably compelled by the very same lash by which it was punished. This is a very disgusting picture of married life on slave estates: but I have undertaken to reply to the statements of your informant, and I regret to be obliged to record the facts by which alone I can do so. 'Work,' continues your authority, 'began at six in the morning, at nine an hour's rest was allowed for breakfast, and by two or three o'clock the day's work was done.' Certainly this was a pattern plantation, and I can only lament that my experience lay amid such far less favourable circumstances. The negroes among whom I lived went to the fields at daybreak, carrying with them their allowance of food, which toward noon, and not till then, they ate, cooking it over a fire which they kindled as best they could where they were working; their _second_ meal in the day was at night after their labour was over, having worked at the _very least_ six hours without rest or refreshment, since their noon-day meal--properly so called, indeed, for it was meal and nothing else, or a preparation something thicker than porridge, which they call hominy. Perhaps the candid observer, whose report of the estate he visited appeared to you so consolatory, would think that this diet contrasted favourably with that of potato and butter-milk fed Irish labourers. But a more just comparison surely would be with the mode of living of the labouring population of the United States, the peasantry of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, or indeed with the condition of those very potato and butter-milk fed Irishmen when they have exchanged their native soil for the fields of the Northern and North-Western States, and when, as one of them once was heard to say, it was no use writing home that he got meat three times a-day, for nobody in Ireland would believe it. The next item in the list of commendation is the hospital, which your informant also visited, and of which he gives the following account--'It consisted of three separate wards, all clean and well ventilated: one was for lying-in women, who were invariably allowed a month's rest after their confinement.' Permit me to place beside this picture that of a Southern infirmary, such as I saw it, and taken on the spot. In the first room that I entered I found only half of the windows, of which there were six, glazed; these were almost as much obscured with dirt as the other windowless ones were darkened by the dingy shutters which the shivering inmates had closed in order to protect themselves from the cold. In the enormous chimney glimmered the powerless embers of a few chips of wood, round which as many of the sick women as had strength to approach were cowering, some on wooden settles (there was not such a thing as a chair with a back in the whole establishment), most of them on the ground, excluding those who were too ill to rise--and these poor wretches lay prostrate on the earth, without bedstead, bed, mattress, or pillow, with no covering but the clothes they had on and some filthy rags of blanket in which they endeavoured to wrap themselves as they lay literally strewing the floor, so that there was hardly room to pass between them. Here in their hour of sickness and suffering lay those whose health and strength had given way under unrequited labour--some of them, no later than the previous day, had been urged with the lash to their accustomed tasks--and their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were even at that hour sweating over the earth whose increase was to procure for others all the luxuries which health can enjoy, all the comforts which can alleviate sickness. Here lay women expecting every hour the terror and agonies of child-birth, others who had just brought their doomed offspring into the world, others who were groaning over the anguish and bitter disappointment of miscarriages--here lay some burning with fever, others chilled with cold and aching with rheumatism, upon the hard cold ground, the draughts and damp of the atmosphere increasing their sufferings, and dirt, noise, stench, and every aggravation of which sickness is capable combined in their condition. There had been among them one or two cases of prolonged and terribly hard labour; and the method adopted by the ignorant old negress, who was the sole matron, midwife, nurse, physician, surgeon, and servant of the infirmary, to assist them in their extremity, was to tie a cloth tight round the throats of the agonised women, and by drawing it till she almost suffocated them she produced violent and spasmodic struggles, which she assured me she thought materially assisted the progress of the labour. This was one of the Southern infirmaries with which I was acquainted; and I beg to conclude this chapter of contrasts to your informant's consolatory views of slavery, by assuring you once more very emphatically that they have been one and all drawn from estates where the slaves esteemed themselves well treated, were reputed generally to be so, and undoubtedly, as far as my observation went, were so, compared with those on several of the adjoining plantations. With regard to the statement respecting the sums of money earned by industrious negroes, there is no doubt that it is perfectly correct. I knew of some slaves on a plantation in the extreme South who had received, at various times, large sums of money from a shopkeeper in the small town near their estate, for the grey moss or lichen collected from the evergreen oaks of Carolina and Georgia, upon which it hangs in vast masses, and after some cleaning process becomes an excellent substitute for horse-hair, for bed, chair, and sofa-stuffing. On another estate, some of the slaves were expert boat makers, and had been allowed by their masters to retain the price (no inconsiderable one) for some that they had found time to manufacture after their day's labour was accomplished. These were undoubtedly privileges, but I confess it appears to me that the juster view of the matter would be this--if these men were industrious enough out of their scanty leisure to earn these sums of money, which a mere exercise of arbitrary will on the part of the master allowed them to keep, how much more of remuneration, of comfort, of improvement, physical and mental, might they not have achieved, had the due price of their daily labour merely been paid to them? It seems to me that this is the mode of putting the case to Englishmen, and all who have not agreed to consider uncertain favour an equivalent for common justice in the dealings of man with man. As the slaves are well known to toil for years sometimes to amass the means of rescuing themselves from bondage, the fact of their being able and sometimes allowed to earn considerable sums of money is notorious. But now that I have answered one by one the instances you have produced, with others--I am sure as accurate and I believe as common--of an entirely opposite description, permit me to ask you what this sort of testimony amounts to. I allow you full credit for yours, allow me full credit for mine, and the result is very simply a nullification of the one by the other statement, and a proof that there is as much good as evil in the details of slavery; but now, be pleased to throw into the scale this consideration, that the principle of the whole is unmitigated abominable evil, as by your own acknowledgement you hold it to be, and add, moreover, that the principle being invariably bad beyond the power of the best man acting under it to alter its execrable injustice, the goodness of the detail is a matter absolutely dependent upon the will of each individual slaveholder, so that though the best cannot make the system in the smallest particular better, the bad can make every practical detail of it as atrocious as the principle itself; and then tell me upon what ground you palliate a monstrous iniquity, which is the rule, because of the accidental exceptions which go to prove it. Moreover, if, as you have asserted, good preponderates over evil in the practice, though not in the theory of slavery, or it would not maintain its existence, why do you uphold to us, with so much complacency, the hope that it is surely if not rapidly approaching its abolishment? Why is the preponderating good, which has, as you say, proved sufficient to uphold the institution hitherto, to become (in spite of the spread of civilisation and national progress, and the gradual improvement of the slaves themselves) inadequate to its perpetuation henceforward? Or why, if good really has prevailed in it, do you rejoice that it is speedily to pass away? You say the emancipation of the slaves is inevitable, and that through progressive culture the negro of the Southern States daily approaches more nearly to the recovery of the rights of which he has been robbed. But whence do you draw this happy augury, except from the hope, which all Christian souls must cherish, that God will not permit much longer so great a wickedness to darken the face of the earth? Surely the increased stringency of the Southern slave-laws, the more than ever vigilant precautions against all attempts to enlighten or educate the negroes, the severer restrictions on manumission, the thrusting forth out of certain States of all free persons of colour, the atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill, one of the latest achievements of Congress, and the piratical attempts upon Cuba, avowedly on the part of all Southerners, abetting or justifying it because it will add slave-territory and 600,000 slaves to their possessions;--surely these do not seem indications of the better state of things you anticipate, except, indeed, as the straining of the chain beyond all endurable tightness significantly suggests the probability of its giving way. I do not believe the planters have any disposition to put an end to slavery, nor is it perhaps much to be wondered at that they have not. To do so is, in the opinion of the majority of them, to run the risk of losing their property, perhaps their lives, for a benefit which they profess to think doubtful to the slaves themselves. How far they are right in anticipating ruin from the manumission of their slaves I think questionable, but that they do so is certain, and self-impoverishment for the sake of abstract principle is not a thing to be reasonably expected from any large mass of men. But, besides the natural fact that the slaveholders wish to retain their property, emancipation is, in their view of it, not only a risk of enormous pecuniary loss, and of their entire social status, but involves elements of personal danger, and above all, disgust to inveterate prejudices, which they will assuredly never encounter. The question is not alone one of foregoing great wealth, or the mere means of subsistence (in either case almost equally hard); it is not alone the unbinding the hands of those who have many a bloody debt of hatred and revenge to settle; it is not alone the consenting suddenly to see by their side, upon a footing of free social equality, creatures towards whom their predominant feeling is one of mingled terror and abhorrence, and who, during the whole of their national existence, have been, as the earth, trampled beneath their feet, yet ever threatening to gape and swallow them alive. It is not all this alone which makes it unlikely that the Southern planter should desire to free his slaves: freedom in America is not merely a personal right, it involves a political privilege. Freemen there are legislators. The rulers of the land are the majority of the people, and in many parts of the Southern States the black free citizens would become, if not at once, yet in process of time, inevitably voters, landholders, delegates to state legislatures, members of assembly--who knows?--senators, judges, aspirants to the presidency of the United States. You must be an American, or have lived long among them, to conceive the shout of derisive execration with which such an idea would be hailed from one end of the land to the other. That the emancipation of the negroes need not necessarily put them in possession of the franchise is of course obvious, but as a general consequence the one would follow from the other; and at present certainly the slaveholders are no more ready to grant the political privilege than the natural right of freedom. Under these circumstances, though the utmost commiseration is naturally excited by the slaves, I agree with you that some forbearance is due to the masters. It is difficult to conceive a more awful position than theirs: fettered by laws which impede every movement towards right and justice, and utterly without the desire to repeal them--dogged by the apprehension of nameless retributions--bound beneath a burthen of responsibility for which, whether they acknowledge it or not, they are held accountable by God and men--goaded by the keen consciousness of the growing reprobation of all civilised Christian communities, their existence presents the miserable moral counterpart of the physical condition of their slaves; and it is one compared with which that of the wretchedest slave is, in my judgement, worthy of envy. * * * * * _Letter to C.G., Esq._ Before entering upon my answer to your questions, let me state that I have no claim to be ranked as an abolitionist in the American acceptation of the word, for I have hitherto held the emancipation of the slaves to be exclusively the business and duty of their owners, whose highest moral interest I thought it was to rid themselves of such a responsibility, in spite of the manifold worldly interests almost inextricably bound up with it. This has been my feeling hitherto with regard to the views of the abolitionists, which I now, however, heartily embrace, inasmuch as I think that from the moment the United States Government assumed an attitude of coercion and supremacy towards the Southern States, it was bound with its fleets and armies to introduce its polity with respect to slavery, and wherever it planted the standard of the Union to proclaim the universal freedom which is the recognised law of the Northern United States. That they have not done so has been partly owing to a superstitious, but honourable veneration for the letter of their great charter, the constitution, and still more to the hope they have never ceased to entertain of bringing back the South to its allegiance under the former conditions of the Union, an event which will be rendered impossible by any attempt to interfere with the existence of slavery. The North, with the exception of an inconsiderable minority of its inhabitants, has never been at all desirous of the emancipation of the slaves. The Democratic party which has ruled the United States for many years past has always been friendly to the slaveholders, who have, with few exceptions, been all members of it (for by a strange perversion both of words and ideas, some of the most Democratic States in the Union are Southern slave States, and in the part of Georgia where the slave population is denser than in any other part of the South, a county exists bearing the satirical title of _Liberty County_). And the support of the South has been given to the Northern Democratic politicians, upon the distinct understanding that their 'domestic institution' was to be guaranteed to them. The condition of the free blacks in the Northern States has of course been affected most unfavourably by the slavery of their race throughout the other half of the Union, and indeed it would have been a difficult matter for Northern citizens to maintain towards the blacks an attitude of social and political equality as far as the borders of Delaware, while immediately beyond they were pledged to consider them as the 'chattels' of their owners, animals no more noble or human than the cattle in their masters' fields. How could peace have been maintained if the Southern slaveholders had been compelled to endure the sight of negroes rising to wealth and eminence in the Northern cities, or entering as fellow-members with themselves the halls of that legislature to which all free-born citizens are eligible? they would very certainly have declined with fierce scorn, not the fellowship of the blacks alone, but of those white men who admitted the despised race of their serfs to a footing of such impartial equality. It therefore was the instinctive, and became the deliberate policy of the Northern people, once pledged to maintain slavery in the South, to make their task easy by degrading the blacks in the Northern States to a condition contrasting as little as possible with that of the Southern slaves. The Northern politicians struck hands with the Southern slaveholders, and the great majority of the most enlightened citizens of the Northern States, absorbed in the pursuit of wealth and the extension and consolidation of their admirable and wonderful national prosperity, abandoned the government of their noble country and the preservation of its nobler institutions to the slaveholding aristocracy of the South--to a mob of politicians by trade, the vilest and most venal class of men that ever disgraced and endangered a country--to foreign emigrants, whose brutish ignorance did not prevent the Democratic party from seizing upon them as voters, and bestowing on the Irish and German boors just landed on their shores the same political privileges as those possessed and intelligently exercised by the farmers and mechanics of New England, the most enlightened men of their class to be found in the world. The gradual encroachment of the Southern politicians upon the liberties of the North, by their unrelaxing influence in Congress and over successive cabinets and presidents, was not without its effect in stimulating some resistance on the part of Northern statesmen of sufficient intelligence to perceive the inevitable results towards which this preponderance in the national counsels was steadily tending; and I need not remind you of the rapidity and force with which General Jackson quelled an incipient rebellion in South Carolina, when Mr. Calhoun made the tariff question the pretext for a threatened secession in 1832, of the life-long opposition to Southern pretensions by John Quincy Adams, of the endeavour of Mr. Clay to stem the growing evil by the conditions of the Missouri compromise, and all the occasional attempts of individuals of more conscientious convictions than their fellow-citizens on the subject of the sin of slavery, from Dr. Channing's eloquent protest on the annexation of Texas, to Mr. Charles Sumner's philippic against Mr. Brooks of South Carolina. The disorganisation of the Democratic party, after a cohesion of so many years, at length changed the aspect of affairs; and the North appeared to be about to arouse itself from its apathetic consent to Southern domination. The Republican party, headed by Colonel Fremont, who was known to be an anti-slavery man, nearly carried the presidential election six years ago, and then every preparation had been made in the South for the process of secession, which was only averted by the election of Mr. Buchanan, a pro-slavery Southern sympathiser, though born in Pennsylvania. Under his presidency, the Southern statesmen, resuming their attitude of apparent friendliness with the North, kept in abeyance, maturing and perfecting by every treasonable practice, for which their preponderating share in the cabinet afforded them fatal facilities, the plan of the violent disruption of the Union, upon which they had determined whenever the Republican party should have acquired sufficient strength, to elect a president with Northern views. Before, however, this event occurred, the war in Kansas rang a prophetic peal of warning through the land; and the struggle there begun between New England emigrants bent on founding a free state, and Missouri border ruffians determined to make the new territory a slaveholding addition to the South, might have roused the whole North and West to the imminence of the peril, by which the safety of the Union was threatened. But neither the struggle in Kansas, nor the strange and piteous episode which grew out of it, of John Brown's attempt to excite an insurrection in Virginia, and his execution by the government of that State, did more than startle the North with a nine days' wonder out of its apathetic indifference. The Republican party, it is true, gained adherents, and acquired strength by degrees; and Mr. Buchanan's term of office approaching its expiration, it became apparent that the Democratic party was about to lose its supremacy, and the slaveholders their dominion; and no sooner was this evident than the latter threw off the mask, and renounced their allegiance to the Union. In a day--in an hour almost--those stood face to face as mortal enemies who were citizens of the same country, subjects of the same government, children of the same soil; and the North, incredulous and amazed, found itself suddenly summoned to retrieve its lost power and influence, and assert the dignity of the insulted Union against the rebellious attempt of the South to overthrow it. But it was late for them to take that task in hand. For years the conduct of the government of the United States had been becoming a more desperate and degraded _jobbery_, one from which day by day the Northern gentlemen of intelligence, influence, and education withdrew themselves in greater disgust, devoting their energies to schemes of mere personal advantage, and leaving the commonweal with selfish and contemptuous indifference to the guidance of any hands less nice and less busy than their own. Nor would the Southern planters--a prouder and more aristocratic race than the Northern merchants--have relished the companionship of their fellow-politicians more than the latter, but _their_ personal interests were at stake, and immediately concerned in their maintaining their predominant influence over the government; and while the Boston men wrote and talked transcendentalism, and became the most accomplished of _aestetische_ cotton spinners and railroad speculators, and made the shoes and cow-hides of the Southerners, the latter made their laws; (I believe New Jersey is really the great cow-hide factory); and the New York men, owners of the fastest horses and finest houses in the land, having made a sort of Brummagem Paris of their city, were the bankers and brokers of the Southerners, while the latter were their legislators. The grip the slaveholders had fastened on the helm of the State had been tightening for nearly half a century, till the government of the nation had become literally theirs, and the idea of their relinquishing it was one which the North did not contemplate, and they would not tolerate. If I have said nothing of the grievances which the South has alleged against the North--its tariff, made chiefly in the interest of the north-eastern manufacturing States, or its inconsiderable but enthusiastic Massachusetts and Pennsylvania Abolition party--it is because I do not believe these causes of complaint would have had the same effect upon any but a community of slaveholders, men made impatient (by the life-long habit of despotism), not only of all control, but of any opposition. Thirty years ago Andrew Jackson--a man of keen sagacity as well as determined energy--wrote of them that they were bent upon destroying the Union, and that, whatever was the pretext of their discontent, that was their aim and purpose. 'To-day,' he wrote, 'it is the tariff, by and by it will be slavery.' The event has proved how true a prophet he was. My own conviction is that the national character produced and fostered by slaveholding is incompatible with free institutions, and that the Southern aristocracy, thanks to the pernicious influences by which they are surrounded, are unfit to be members of a Christian republic. It is slavery that has made the Southerners rebels to their government, traitors to their country, and the originators of the bloodiest civil war that ever disgraced humanity and civilisation. It is for their sinful complicity in slavery, and their shameful abandonment of all their duties as citizens, that the Northerners are paying in the blood of their men, the tears of their women, and the treasure which they have till now held more precious than their birthright. They must now not merely impose a wise restriction upon slavery, they must be prepared to extinguish it. They neglected and despised the task of moderating its conditions and checking its growth; they must now suddenly, in the midst of unparalleled difficulties and dangers, be ready to deal summarily with its entire existence. They have loved the pursuit of personal prosperity and pleasure more than their country; and now they must spend life and living to reconquer their great inheritance, and win back at the sword's point what Heaven had forbidden them to lose. Nor are we, here in England, without part in this tremendous sin and sorrow; we have persisted in feeding our looms, and the huge wealth they coin, with the produce of slavery. In vain our vast Indian territory has solicited the advantage of becoming our free cotton plantation; neither our manufacturers nor our government would venture, would wait, would spend or lose, for that purpose; the slave-grown harvest was ready, was abundant, was cheap--and now the thousand arms of our great national industry are folded in deplorable inactivity; the countless hands that wrought from morn till night the wealth that was a world's wonder are stretched unwillingly to beg their bread; and England has never seen a sadder sight than the enforced idleness of her poor operatives, or a nobler one than their patient and heroic endurance. And now you ask me what plan, what scheme, what project the government of the United States has formed for the safe and successful emancipation of four millions of slaves, in the midst of a country distracted with all the horrors of war, and the male population of which is engaged in military service at a distance from their homes? Most assuredly none. Precipitated headlong from a state of apparent profound security and prosperity into a series of calamitous events which have brought the country to the verge of ruin, neither the nation or its governors have had leisure to prepare themselves for any of the disastrous circumstances they have had to encounter, least of all for the momentous change which the President's proclamation announces as imminent: a measure of supreme importance, not deliberately adopted as the result of philanthropic conviction or far-sighted policy, but (if not a mere feint of party politics) the last effort of the incensed spirit of endurance in the North--a punishment threatened against rebels, whom they cannot otherwise subdue, and which a year ago half the Northern population would have condemned upon principle, and more than half revolted from on instinct. The country being in a state of war necessarily complicates everything, and renders the most plausible suggestions for the settlement of the question of emancipation futile: because from first to last now it will be one tremendous chapter of accidents, instead of a carefully considered and wisely prepared measure of government. But supposing the war to have ceased, either by the success of the Northern arms or by the consent of both belligerents, the question of manumission in the Southern States when reduced to the condition of territories or restored to the sway of their own elected governors and legislatures, though difficult, is by no means one of insuperable difficulty; and I do not believe that a great nation of Englishmen, having once the will to rid itself of a danger and a disgrace, will fail to find a way. The thing, therefore, most to be desired now is, that Americans may unanimously embrace the purpose of emancipation, and, though they have been reluctantly driven by the irresistible force of circumstances to contemplate the measure, may henceforward never avert their eyes from it till it is accomplished. When I was in the South many years ago I conversed frequently with two highly intelligent men, both of whom agreed in saying that the immense value of the slaves as property was the only real obstacle to their manumission, and that whenever the Southerners became convinced that it was their interest to free them they would very soon find the means to do it. In some respects the conditions are more favourable than those we had to encounter in freeing our West India slaves. Though the soil and climate of the Southern States are fertile and favourable, they are not tropical, and there is no profuse natural growth of fruits or vegetables to render subsistence possible without labour; the winter temperature is like that of the Roman States; and even as far south as Georgia and the borders of Florida, frosts severe enough to kill the orange trees are sometimes experienced. The inhabitants of the Southern States, throughout by far the largest portion of their extent, must labour to live, and will undoubtedly obey the beneficent law of necessity whenever they are made to feel that their existence depends upon their own exertions. The plan of a gradual emancipation, preceded by a limited apprenticeship of the negroes to white masters, is of course often suggested as less dangerous than their entire and immediate enfranchisement. But when years ago I lived on a Southern plantation, and had opportunities of observing the miserable results of the system on everything connected with it--the souls, minds, bodies, and estates of both races of men, and the very soil on which they existed together--I came to the conclusion that immediate and entire emancipation was not only an act of imperative right, but would be the safest and most profitable course for the interests of both parties. The gradual and inevitable process of ruin which exhibits itself in the long run on every property involving slavery, naturally suggests some element of decay inherent in the system; the reckless habits of extravagance and prodigality in the masters, the ruinous wastefulness and ignorant incapacity of the slaves, the deterioration of the land under the exhausting and thriftless cultivation to which it is subjected, made it evident to me that there were but two means of maintaining a prosperous ownership in Southern plantations: either the possession of considerable capital wherewith to recruit the gradual waste of the energies of the soil, and supply by all the improved and costly methods of modern agriculture the means of profitable cultivation (a process demanding, as English farmers know, an enormous and incessant outlay of both money and skill), or an unlimited command of fresh soil, to which the slaves might be transferred as soon as that already under culture exhibited signs of exhaustion. Now the Southerners are for the most part men whose only wealth is in their land and labourers--a large force of slaves is their most profitable investment. The great capitalists and monied men of the country are Northern men; the planters are men of large estates but restricted means--many of them are deeply involved in debt, and there are very few who do not depend from year to year for their subsistence on the harvest of their fields and the chances of the cotton and rice crops of each season. This makes it of vital importance to them to command an unrestricted extent of territory. The man who can move a 'gang' of able-bodied negroes to a tract of virgin soil is sure of an immense return of wealth; as sure as that he who is circumscribed in this respect, and limited to the cultivation of certain lands with cotton or tobacco by slaves, will in the course of a few years see his estate gradually exhausted and unproductive, refusing its increase, while its black population propagating and multiplying will compel him eventually, under penalty of starvation, to make _them_ his crop, and substitute, as the Virginians have been constrained to do, a traffic in human cattle for the cultivation of vegetable harvests. The steady decrease of the value of the cotton crop, even on the famous sea island plantations of Georgia, often suggested to me the inevitable ruin of the owners within a certain calculable space of time, as the land became worn out, and the negroes continued to increase in number; and had the estate on which I lived been mine, and the laws of Georgia not made such an experiment impossible, I would have emancipated the slaves on it immediately, and turned them into a free tenantry, as the first means of saving my property from impending destruction. I would have paid them wages, and they should have paid me rent. I would have relinquished the charge of feeding and clothing them, and the burthen of their old, young, and infirm; in short, I would have put them at once upon the footing of free hired labourers. Of course such a process would have involved temporary loss, and for a year or two the income of the estate would, I dare say, have suffered considerably; but, in all such diversions of labour or capital from old into new channels and modes of operation, there must be an immediate sacrifice of present to future profit, and I do not doubt that the estate would have recovered from the momentary necessary interruption of its productiveness, to resume it with an upward instead of a downward tendency, and a vigorous impulse towards progress and improvement substituted for the present slow but sure drifting to stagnation and decay. As I have told you, the land affords no spontaneous produce which will sustain life without labour. The negroes therefore must work to eat; they are used to the soil and climate, and accustomed to the agriculture, and there is no reason at all to apprehend--as has been suggested--that a race of people singularly attached to the place of their birth and residence would abandon in any large numbers their own country, just as the conditions of their existence in it were made more favourable, to try the unknown and (to absolute ignorance) forbidding risks of emigration to the sterner climate and harder soil of the Northern States. Of course, in freeing the slaves, it would be necessary to contemplate the possibility of their becoming eventual proprietors of the soil to some extent themselves. There is as little doubt that many of them would soon acquire the means of doing so (men who amass, during hours of daily extra labour, through years of unpaid toil, the means of buying themselves from their masters, would soon justify their freedom by the intelligent improvement of their condition), as that many of the present landholders would be ready and glad to alienate their impoverished estates by parcels, and sell the land which has become comparatively unprofitable to them, to its enfranchised cultivators. This, the future ownership of land by negroes, as well as their admission to those rights of citizenship which everywhere in America such ownership involves, would necessarily be future subjects of legislation; and either or both privileges might be withheld temporarily, indefinitely, or permanently, as might seem expedient, and the progress in civilisation which might justify such an extension of rights. These, and any other modifications of the state of the black population in the South, would require great wisdom to deal with, but their immediate transformation from bondsmen to free might, I think, be accomplished with little danger or difficulty, and with certain increase of prosperity to the Southern States. On the other hand, it is not impossible that, left to the unimpeded action of the natural laws that govern the existence of various races, the black population, no longer directly preserved and propagated for the purposes of slavery, might gradually decrease and dwindle, as it does at the North--where, besides the unfavourable influence of a cold climate on a race originally African, it suffers from its admixture with the whites, and the amalgamation of the two races, as far as it goes, tends evidently to the destruction of the weaker. The Northern mulattoes are an unhealthy feeble population, and it might yet appear that even under the more favourable influence of a Southern climate, whenever the direct stimulus afforded by slavery to the increase of the negroes was removed, their gradual extinction or absorption by the predominant white race would follow in the course of time. But the daily course of events appears to be rendering more and more unlikely the immediate effectual enfranchisement of the slaves: the President's proclamation will reach with but little efficacy beyond the mere borders of the Southern States. The war is assuming an aspect of indefinite duration; and it is difficult to conceive what will be the condition of the blacks, freed _de jure_ but by no means _de facto_, in the vast interior regions of the Southern States, as long as the struggle raging all round their confines does not penetrate within them. Each of the combatants is far too busily absorbed in the furious strife to afford thought, leisure, or means, either effectually to free the slaves or effectually to replace them in bondage; and in the meantime their condition is the worst possible for the future success of either operation. If the North succeeds in subjugating the South, its earliest business will be to make the freedom of the slaves real as well as nominal, and as little injurious to themselves as possible. If, on the other hand, the South makes good its pretensions to a separate national existence, no sooner will the disseverment of the Union be an established fact than the slaveholders will have to consolidate once more the system of their 'peculiar institution,' to reconstruct the prison which has half crumbled to the ground, and rivet afresh the chains which have been all but struck off. This will be difficult: the determination of the North to restrict the area of slavery by forbidding its ingress into future territories and States has been considered by the slaveholders a wrong, and a danger justifying a bloody civil war; inasmuch as, if under those circumstances they did not abolish slavery themselves in a given number of years, it would infallibly abolish them by the increase of the negro population, hemmed with them into a restricted space by this _cordon sanitaire_ drawn round them. But, bad as this prospect has seemed to slaveholders (determined to continue such), and justifying--as it may be conceded that it does from their point of view--not a ferocious civil war, but a peaceable separation from States whose interests were declared absolutely irreconcileable with theirs, the position in which they will find themselves if the contest terminates in favour of Secession will be undoubtedly more difficult and terrible than the one the mere anticipation of which has driven them to the dire resort of civil war. All round the Southern coast, and all along the course of the great Mississippi, and all across the northern frontier of the Slave States, the negroes have already thrown off the trammels of slavery. Whatever their condition may be--and doubtless in many respects it is miserable enough--they are to all intents and purposes free. Vast numbers of them have joined the Northern invading armies, and considerable bodies of them have become organised as soldiers and labourers, under the supervision of Northern officers and employers; most of them have learned the use of arms, and possess them; all of them have exchanged the insufficient slave diet of grits and rice for the abundant supplies of animal food, which the poorest labourer in that favoured land of cheap provisions and high wages indulges in to an extent unknown in any other country. None of these slaves of yesterday will be the same slaves to-morrow. Little essential difference as may yet have been effected by the President's proclamation in the interior of the South in the condition of the blacks, it is undoubtedly known to them, and they are waiting in ominous suspense its accomplishment or defeat by the fortune of the war; they are watching the issue of the contest of which they well know themselves to be the theme, and at its conclusion, end how it will, they must be emancipated or exterminated. With the North not only not friendly to slavery, but henceforward bitterly hostile to slaveholders, and no more to be reckoned upon as heretofore, it might have been infallibly by the Southern white population in any difficulty with the blacks (a fact of which the negroes will be as well aware as their former masters)--with an invisible boundary stretching from ocean to ocean, over which they may fly without fear of a master's claim following them a single inch--with the hope and expectation of liberty suddenly snatched from them at the moment it seemed within their grasp--with the door of their dungeon once more barred between them and the light into which they were in the act of emerging--is it to be conceived, that these four millions of people, many thousands of whom are already free and armed, will submit without a struggle to be again thrust down into the hell of slavery? Hitherto there has been no insurrection among the negroes, and observers friendly and inimical to them have alike drawn from that fact conclusions unfavourable to their appreciation of the freedom apparently within their grasp; but they are waiting to see what the North will really achieve for them. The liberty offered them is hitherto anomalous, and uncertain enough in its conditions; they probably trust it as little as they know it: but slavery they _do_ know--and when once they find themselves again delivered over to _that_ experience, there will not be ONE insurrection in the South; there will be an insurrection in every State, in every county, on every plantation--a struggle as fierce as it will be futile--a hopeless effort of hopeless men, which will baptise in blood the new American nation, and inaugurate its birth among the civilised societies of the earth, not by the manumission but the massacre of every slave within its borders. Perhaps, however, Mr. Jefferson Davis means to free the negroes. Whenever that consummation is attained, the root of bitterness will have perished from the land; and when a few years shall have passed blunting the hatred which has been excited by this fratricidal strife, the Americans of both the Northern and Southern States will perceive that the selfish policy of other nations would not have so rejoiced over their division, had it not seemed, to those who loved them not, the proof of past failure and the prophecy of future weakness. Admonished by its terrible experiences, I believe the nation will reunite itself under one government, remodel its constitution, and again address itself to fulfill its glorious destiny. I believe that the country sprung from ours--of all our just subjects of national pride the greatest--will resume its career of prosperity and power, and become the noblest as well as the mightiest that has existed among the nations of the earth. 
40767	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. OLD PLANTATION DAYS [Illustration] OLD PLANTATION DAYS BEING RECOLLECTIONS OF SOUTHERN LIFE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR BY MRS. N. B. DE SAUSSURE NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY N. B. DE SAUSSURE THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK AUTHOR'S NOTE The following reminiscences are published at the request of many friends who, after reading the manuscript, have urged that the recollections be given more permanent form and a wider circulation. N. B. DESAUSSURE. OLD PLANTATION DAYS Old Plantation Days MY DEAR GRANDDAUGHTER DOROTHY: Grandmother is growing to be an old lady, and as you are still too young to remember all she has told you of her own and your mother's people, she is going to write down her recollections that you may thus gain a true knowledge of the old plantation days, now forever gone, from one whose life was spent amid those scenes. The South as I knew it has disappeared; the New South has risen from its ashes, filled with the energetic spirit of a new age. You can only know the New South, but there is a generation, now passing away, which holds in loving memory the South as it used to be. Those memories are a legacy to the new generation from the old, and it behooves the old to hand them down to the new. "The days that are no more" come crowding around me, insistent that I interpret them as I knew them; there are the happy plantation days, the recollection of which causes my heart to throb again with youthful pleasure, and near them are the days, the dreadful days, of war and fire and famine. I shrink as the memory of these draws near. The spirit of those early days is what I chiefly desire to leave with you; the bare facts are history, but just as the days come back to my recollection I will write about them, and necessarily the record will be fitful memories woven together but imperfectly. My father, your great-grandfather, was a direct descendant on his mother's side of Landgrave Smith, first Colonial Governor of South Carolina, his mother being Landgrave Smith's granddaughter; his grandfather was Pierre Robert, a Huguenot minister who emigrated to America, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and led the Huguenot colony to South Carolina. My father was born in 1791 in the old homestead situated forty miles up the river from Savannah. He had twelve children, and I was one of the younger members of his large family. His early life was similar to the life of any present-day boy, with school days and holidays. During the holidays he enjoyed the excellent hunting and fishing which our large plantation afforded and which gave him great skill in those sports; later in life he brought up his own sons to enjoy them with him. He used to tell us, to our great entertainment, many incidents of his childhood days. When a little boy he used to drive through the country with his grandmother in a coach and four. After he left South Carolina College he made a trip through the North on horseback, as this was before the time of railroads. It took him a month to reach Pennsylvania and New York State, and as it was in the year of 1812, he happened to ride out of Baltimore as the British rode in. We children were always delighted when father told us of his many adventures, and the strange sights he saw during his travels. One episode always greatly shocked us, which was that of his seeing men in the public bakeries in Pennsylvania mixing bread dough with their bare feet. After father returned home he married a cousin, Miss Robert. He had one son by this marriage, at whose birth the young mother died. This son returning from a Northern college on the first steamboat ever run between Charleston and New York, was drowned; for the vessel foundered and was lost off the coast of North Carolina. Father's second wife was a descendant of the Mays of Virginia, who were descendants of the Earl of Stafford's younger brother. This lady was my own dear mother and your great-grandmother. I must now tell you something about _her_ grandmother, for my mother inherited much of her wonderful character from this stalwart Revolutionary character. My great-grandmother's eldest son, at nineteen, was a captain in the Revolutionary War, and she was left alone, a widow on her plantation. When the British made a raid on her home, carrying off everything, she remained undaunted, and, mounting a horse, rode in hot haste to where the army was stationed, and asked to see the general in command. Her persistence gained admittance. She stated her case and the condition in which the British soldiers had left her home, and pleaded her cause with so much eloquence that the general ordered the spoils returned to her. Dearest child, in the intrepid spirit of this ancestor you will find the keynote to the brave spirit of the women of the South. This old lady, who was your great-great-great-grandmother, lived to be a hundred and six years old; her skin was like parchment and very wrinkled; she died at last from an accident. I have heard my mother say that she was a remarkable character, never idle, and her mind perfectly clear until the day of her death. At her advanced age she knitted socks for my eldest brother, a baby then, thus always finding something useful to employ her mind and her hands. Her son, my mother's father, was one of the most generous and benevolent of men, a pioneer of Methodism in that section of the country. He had a room in his house called "the minister's room." The ministers who went from place to place preaching were called circuit riders. These ministers always stayed at his house, hence "the minister's room" was very seldom vacant, and some ministers lived with him always. Once there was a great scarcity of corn caused by a drought. Grandfather came to the rescue of the neighborhood. He sent a raft down to Savannah, which was the nearest town, and had brought back, at his expense, two thousand bushels of corn. He then sent out word to the poor of the surrounding country to come to him for what corn they needed, making each applicant give him a note for what he received. When he had thus provided for the immediate wants of the people, he generously tore up the notes; for he had only taken them to prevent fraud. You will naturally wish me to tell you something of my mother, your great-grandmother. She was born on March 25, 1801, and was educated at the Moravian School in North Carolina, which is still in existence. I saw a very interesting description of this school in the _Tribune_ of March, 1904. Mother was well educated in all branches taught during her girlhood. Even after she was seventy-five years old she could repeat every rule of grammar and she always wrote with ease and correctness. This shows that what was taught in those days was taught with thoroughness, even if the studies were few and simple compared to the intricate and manifold ones of the present day. Mother was a woman of remarkable sweetness of disposition and intelligence, and had great executive ability, which latter quality was indispensable in the mistress of a large household of children and servants. She gave unceasing care and attention to her children, and personally supervised every detail of their education. Besides these duties, the negroes of the plantation, their food and clothing, care of their infants and the sick, all came under her control. My father and mother inherited most of their negroes, and there was an attachment existing between master and mistress and their slaves which one who had never borne such a relation could never understand. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has set the standard in the North, and it seems useless for those who owned and loved the negroes to say there was any other method used in their management than that of strictest severity; but let me tell you that in one of my rare visits South to my own people, the old-time darkies, our former slaves, walked twenty miles to see "Miss Nancy" and her little daughter, and the latter, your dear mother, would often be surprised, when taken impulsively in their big black arms, and hugged and kissed and cried over "for ol' times' sake." When I would inquire into their welfare and present condition I heard but one refrain, "I'd never known what it was to suffer till freedom came, and we lost our master." Yes, Dorothy dear, a lot of children unprepared to enjoy the Emancipation Proclamation were suddenly confronted with life's problems. I have beside me a letter from a friend, now in South Africa. She says in part: "I am sure you, too, would have thought much on the many problems presented by this black people. It is perfectly appalling when one thinks that they are really human beings! Human beings without any humanity, and not the slightest suggestion that there is any vital spark on which to begin work, for apparently they have no affection for anybody or anything, and it is an insult to a good dog to compare them to animals." Such, my dear child, is the African in his native country at the present day, the twentieth century, and such was the imported African before he was Christianized and humanized by the people of the South. In order to show you that I am not prejudiced in favor of the Southerners' treatment of their slaves I will insert a letter from Dr. Edward Lathrop, whose daughter was an old schoolmate of mine at Miss Bonney's in Philadelphia. JULY 23, 1903. MY DEAR MRS. DE SAUSSURE: I will proceed to answer your inquiries. You know I am Southern born and raised. I am a Georgian, and although never a slaveholder I was nursed by a negro woman to whom I was most fondly attached, and who, I believe, loved me as she would her own son. I have had the opportunity to mingle freely with slaveholders of different characters and dispositions, and while I regard slavery as such an enormous evil and am heartily glad that it has been abolished in this country, I am bound in candor to say that my observation, during all these years of my residence in Georgia and South Carolina, thoroughly convinced me that in the majority of cases slaves were more kindly treated and brought into more intimate and kindly relations to white families than they are now, though free. This, of course, is not given as an apology for slavery, but it is a simple statement of facts. I might refer, for example, to what I witnessed and _felt_, while a guest, on more than one occasion, in the house of your honored father and mother. Your father seemed to me to be as watchful of the interests, both temporal and spiritual, of his slaves as of his own immediate white family. It was, to my mind, a beautiful illustration of patriarchal slavery, as it existed in the days of Abraham. Of course there were exceptions to this treatment of slaves by their owners, but, as a rule, so far as my observation extended, your father's methods were universally approved, while the cruel slaveholder was indignantly condemned and repudiated. You may remember that I was for three years the associate of Rev. Dr. Fuller, then pastor of the Baptist Church in Beaufort, S. C. Beaufort District (now county) was probably the largest slaveholding district in the State. Most that I have stated above, as to the kindly treatment of slaves was emphatically true of Beaufort. The Baptist Church, in addition to its white membership, embraced about two thousand slaves. These slaves, as church members, enjoyed equal privileges with the whites. Dr. Fuller or myself preached to them every Sunday. The Lord's Supper was administered to them and to the whites impartially and at the same time. And any grievance that they complained of, among themselves, was as patiently listened to and adjusted as was the case with the white members. In a word, all that could be done for them, in their circumstances, was promptly and cheerfully done. I could add much more of the same tenor to what I have written, but I will not weary you with a long discourse. Affectionately yours, EDWARD LATHROP. To this let me add this editorial from the New York _Sun_ of February 1, 1907, bearing on the question. "UNCLE REMUS ON THE NEGRO "We see no occasion for the astonishment that has been aroused in this part of the country by the eloquent and touching tribute to the negro's virtues by Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, of Georgia. It is by no means the first time he has spoken to the same effect, nor is he the only Southerner of his class who has proclaimed similar opinions. It ought to be perfectly well known to the entire country that the better class of whites dwell in peace and kindness and good will with their colored fellow-creatures, and that practically all of the so-called 'race conflicts' are the product of an ancient hate dating back far beyond the Civil War and involving, now as always hitherto, no one of whom either race is at all proud. "This is a flagrant truth which Northern people have had the opportunity of assimilating any time during the past forty years. The emancipation of the slaves, effected in reality after the surrender of Lee, Johnson and Kirby Smith, made no change in the purely personal relations between the freedmen and their former masters. Not even the abominable episode of reconstruction availed to eradicate the affectionate entente of the classes and turn them against each other to the evil ends of animosity and vengeance. The old slaveholders knew that their quondam servants and dependents were innocent of vicious purpose. The latter understood full well that when in need of help and sympathy and pitying ministrations the former offered them their only sure refuge and relief. No actor in this mournful tragedy has forgotten anything. No political or social transmutation has changed anything so far as these two are concerned. The quarrels and the violent and bloody clashes of which so much is made in our newspapers, whether through honest ignorance or malign intent, are far outside of the philosophy of any important element of the Southern population. "Joel Chandler Harris tells the simple truth when he says that the negroes of the South are moving onward, accumulating property, making themselves useful citizens and cementing the hallowed ties of respect and confidence between the classes which represent the South's righteousness and civilization. In this section we concern ourselves too much with the insignificant minority. We accept the testimony of the 'educated' few on the negro side--educated to little more than a fruitless smattering of vanity and conceit--and we much too easily imagine that the Southern 'cracker' stands for the ideas and illustrates the methods of the whites. No falser or more misleading hypothesis could be presented. The negro who typifies violence and barbarism is one in ten thousand. The white man who employs the shotgun and the torch is quite as unimportant. We shower our solicitudes on the pestiferous exception and overlook the wholesome rule. "Uncle Remus knows what he is talking about--knows it to its deepest depth." I think if I were to give you an account of one day as spent by my mother, it would best present an idea of the arduous duties of an old-time Southern lady on a plantation. My mother had a magnificent constitution or she could never have accomplished the amount of work required of her. I never knew her to have until her latter years a physician for herself. But for family needs we had colored nurses who, under a physician, were competent and devoted in sickness. The day was always begun with family prayers, for my father's religious principles were his staff in life, and he derived much strength from them. His devotion to Christ was unusual, and I never knew him to doubt for an instant that he himself was a child of God. Having a most affectionate disposition, he loved his wife and children intensely, and lived in and for them. Fortunately, the love he gave them was fully returned, and I doubt if there was ever a more devoted and united family. At sunset it was a sacred custom of his to go into a room in a wing of the house, removed from all noise, and kneel in prayer. Every child and grandchild would follow him to the quiet room, and as we knelt by his side, he would commend us to God's loving care, and rise from his knees to kiss each one of us, sons and daughters alike. No matter what our occupation or pleasures were, we would hasten home that we might not miss this sunset prayer, for then all differences that had grown up between us in the day would be healed, and we felt ourselves drawn into one united family again. My brothers and sisters, old men and women now, can never speak of that sacred hour without tears. I will here copy a letter received not long ago from a dear friend, Miss Morse, for years one of the faculty of Vassar College, that you may see how our home life affected "strangers within our gates." MY PRECIOUS FRIEND: In asking me to give you my recollections of that cultivated consecrated home where I spent a delightful half year, you have given me a privilege. I love to recall that period, so unique in my experience. Your father had arranged for my journey. A son came from Princeton to go with me to the steamer, and at Savannah his factor placed me in your father's boat, going up the river by night, to his plantation home. This was my first acquaintance with negroes. At first I was afraid, being the only white person on board, but as I remembered that it was your father's plan, I knew it must be safe, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of the scene. A happier set of beings than the negroes on board it would be hard to find. The night was dark, but on deck they gathered in groups about their bright fires, roasting corn and singing their quaint and wonderfully sweet plantation songs. At daybreak we reached your father's landing, where you were waiting for me in the carriage, and when we drove up to the beautiful home, there were your parents at the door, ready to give me a truly Southern welcome. Breakfast was served, and as your father asked the blessing, he prayed most earnestly that old Maum Mary might be found that day; every day the prayer was repeated, till he felt she could not be living, and then it was changed to a request that they might find her body to give it burial. She was an old negress, who had lost her mind, and, fearing she might stray away and get lost, your father had placed her daughter-in-law, a bright young negress, in the house with her, to care for her and specially to watch, lest in her mental weakness she might stray away; what he feared happened, for the daughter-in-law proved less tender and faithful than the master, and the old woman escaped. When all hope of finding her alive was gone, the prayer of the master was that they might find her body and give it burial, but even this was not granted him. It was a revelation to me of the tender care that old patriarch gave to his slaves, no wonder that they loved him. You used to ask me, almost daily, to go with you to see some feeble old woman, who might be lonely and would be looking for you to come and see her, and I could hardly help shrinking as you would allow yourself to be gathered into her arms, and the petting would be mutual. If a negro was sick, your father would always send him food from his own table, which was received with great pleasure. At the time I was there your mother had become too feeble to continue her daily rounds among the sick and feeble, taking medicine, looking after bandages on broken limbs, etc., but an older daughter had taken her place to some extent. I enjoyed very much the prayer-meeting evenings of the negroes. The Methodists had one evening and the Baptists another. They always held them in a building especially made for that purpose, and the singing, as it came through our open windows, was very sweet. Your father had to limit the time or they would have continued the services all night. On Sunday they attended the same churches as the family, the galleries being reserved for them. I might have added in telling of their prayer meeting, that when we were present they always prayed for "Ole Massa and Missus," and the various members of the family, including the "young Missus from the North." The little negro children would leave their play to gather around me as they saw me walking about the grounds. As I recall a day in that home, so filled with love and peace, I think of the morning and evening prayers where the dear old patriarch seemed to be talking to a friend whom he trusted and loved. Every morning his horse was brought to the door for him to ride over the plantation. His daughter Nannie never failed to be there to help him on with his coat, and at his return to take off his wraps, bring him his dressing-gown, and cover him as he lay down to rest. In fact, from morning till night she seemed always to have him in her thoughts, to anticipate every wish, and give him most devoted attention. I am sure it must always be a sweet memory to her that she never overlooked a possible opportunity of adding to his happiness. Few fathers receive such devoted attention from their children. Do you remember how I used to enjoy the blaze of the pine knots in the fireplace in your room at night, and how, as they burned out, you would say to Susan, your maid, "Now throw on another knot for Miss Morse?" And do you remember how I used to ride about alone on your pet horse? Oh, what a happy winter that was! The whole atmosphere was one of love--love between parents and children, and love that overflowed till it seemed to me that every negro on the place must feel the effects of it. Certainly every sick or aged one received tenderest care. I remember your mother, in telling me of her heavy duties in caring for so large a family, mentioned an instance in which she had to go every day to dress a broken arm of a negro child, because the mother was too indolent to attend to it. On Sundays your mother and her daughters used to go around to the negroes' houses to read the Bible, and teach the children Bible verses. I hope that the reading of these memories will recall to you something of the sweetness of that dear home, consecrated by your parents' prayers. Lovingly, Your "MORSIE." This has been a long digression from the one day in my mother's life I promised to depict for you, but those early scenes come into my mind so fast that the letter from my dear friend telling of them seemed most appropriately to come into the story just at that point. But to return--after breakfast it was customary for the head nurse to report any cases of sickness on the plantation to my mother. Mother's medicine chest was brought out and together they consulted about the condition of each patient. If anyone were very ill, a man was sent to call in a physician who lived several miles away. My mother then hastened to the negro quarters, and if the invalids could be removed they were brought to the sick house--a large, long building fitted with cots--where they could be better cared for. One of my earliest recollections was to follow mother with my brothers and sisters, each child carrying a plate filled with food from the table for the convalescents, and, although at this day contagious diseases are so carefully avoided, I can remember going fearlessly in and out of the cabins, carrying dainty dishes to many little ones who were suffering with what they then called putrid sore throat. It was really diphtheria, and, strange to say, not one of our family took the disease, though there were forty cases on the plantation. They were taken to the pine land, so that the good air might aid their recovery. After attending the sick, mother's next duty was to give out the daily provisions. She made a pretty picture in her quaint gown carrying a basket of keys on her arm. The Bible verse, "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness," could well have been written of her. With twenty-five house and garden servants and the many little children to be looked after, this daily provisioning took a great deal of time, and thought. The house servants had their own kitchen and cook. The negro children were under the care of a woman in a building apart, in fact, it was like a modern day nursery, where the working mothers could leave their children in safety. The older children about the place helped in the care of the little ones. Mothers with babies were only required to do light work, such as raking leaves, spinning, or sewing, that they might be ready and in condition to nurse their babies. I can remember going to this nursery with mother frequently, for she always wanted to know that the children's food was properly prepared. They had vegetable soups with corn meal "dodgers" or dumplings, of which they were very fond. Sometimes corn bread in place of these, and as much hominy and sweet potatoes as they wanted. Father had hundreds of cattle, cows, sheep, and hogs. We milked sixty cows on the plantation, and all the milk which had been set and skimmed was given to the negroes who came to the dairy to carry it to their homes in great tubs, and the little ones trotted along carrying their "piggins," which was the name for their small wooden buckets. The milk which had turned to clabber, "bonny clabber" as the Scotch call it, was considered a most delightful dish in our hot climate. It is so refreshing when cold that you often see me eating it now for tea. Mother's vegetable gardens were then visited. These gardens were noted; they were so unusual in their beautiful arrangement that all strangers who came to the neighborhood were brought to see them. The walks were graveled and rolled, and myriads of bright flowers formed borders for the beds. The poultry yards required supervision and care and were kept in perfect order. There were many acres, so-called "runs," planted in rye and other grains, for the use of the poultry, where they roved at will with some one to follow and bring them back to the yards at night, to be locked up. I often used to hear mother say "five hundred chickens, one hundred geese, one hundred turkeys, and one hundred ducks, were necessary to be kept on hand for table use." Another care of hers was to provide clothing for all the negroes, of whom there were over five hundred. To accomplish this, seamstresses were at work all the year round; three in the house and five or six in the negro quarters. These made the men's and women's clothing. All the cutting was done under mother's supervision; and during the early part of the war, all the spinning and weaving of cloth, and even of blankets, was done on the plantation. At one time I remember seeing two thousand yards of cloth ready to make up into clothes. Fifteen years after the war, on my visit South, I saw the negro women still wearing some of the dresses which were woven at that time. The cloth went by the name of "homespun." I am giving you a rather minute account, because I want you, my darling, to gain as intimate a knowledge as possible of that life which has forever passed away. I remember seeing my mother come into the house from her morning rounds, tired, but cheered with the consciousness that no duty had been neglected. You will wonder how she found any time to give to her children; but we were busy in school all those hours. We had a schoolhouse on the plantation where we went after breakfast with our governess. In those days, as teachers were not paid well for their services, it was difficult to find refined and cultured people to fill the position. Knowing this, father paid the highest salaries and thus secured the best talent there was to be had for us. One of our teachers afterwards opened a school in Philadelphia, and another held an important position at Vassar College. Besides a governess, we also had a music teacher, so we were expected to devote many hours to practicing music, and thus we were employed while mother was busy housekeeping. The governesses were always astonished at the wonderful energy and ability shown by my mother in managing her household. I have heard them say that if Northern people could only view a Southern woman's daily life, how impressed they would be. As soon as the girls in our family were old enough they were sent North to school to finish their education, and the boys were sent to Northern colleges. I went for a time to a boarding school near Columbia, at the early age of twelve, and at fifteen went North with my sister, your great-aunt Catherine Robert. Father objected to my leaving home again, as he wanted me near him, but mother said education was all important, and the personal sacrifice had to be made. In my seventeenth year, I again went North with three brothers and a sister, thus making five of us studying at Princeton and at Philadelphia. My parents were left alone, and out of their brood of twelve not one remained in the home nest, as six elder ones had married, and one other was dead. Father said he missed us so terribly that he felt as if he could not live without one of us with him. I returned, therefore, and remained with my parents until I was married. This long residence at home will account for my knowledge of everything concerning the dear father and mother, who were so devoted to their children. Right here, speaking of my boarding-school days at Columbia, I must tell you about my pet deer. It is another digression, dear child, but I would like you to know about the pet I thought so much of, and who so dearly loved me. Our plantation was, and still is, famed for game of all kinds, particularly deer. For many miles there were hunting grounds, now owned by Northern men, who have learned how full of game that section of South Carolina is. As a child I was especially fond of pets, and knowing this, my friends often gave me birds, or animals, to which I was very devoted. One day there came to me in this way a young fawn, which had been caught by negroes. So young was this gentle little creature that I had to feed it from a bottle. I spent most of my time with it out of doors, and it became very much attached to me. My mother was always very particular about the complexion of her children, as most Southern little girls are apt to become much freckled by the hot sun. So we were all obliged to wear sunbonnets, and I can see this little deer now running along beside me, with the sunbonnet I should have been wearing tied on its head. As the fawn grew older it still remained so gentle that it would go into the house with me and follow me upstairs and lie down by the bed. As the autumn approached and the evenings grew cold, it would come into the house and lie down before the open fire just as a dog would do. Our dogs never disturbed it by day, but we were afraid to trust them at night, so Willie, for that was my pet's name, was always locked up in a little house we had for her. When she was three months old I went to boarding school, and was gone nine months. It nearly broke my heart to leave Willie, but my father, and in fact, everyone promised to take good care of her, and let nothing happen to her. Regularly I heard from her through them until near the time for my return, when the home letter ceased to speak of her. I looked forward to my home-coming with great delight, and my first question when I arrived was concerning Willie. It was then I learned that she had gone to the swamps and had frequently been seen with other deer. Occasionally she had revisited her adopted home, so they told me, coming in and out past the dogs, not seeming to be at all afraid of them. My father suggested that I should go with him into the fields where she had been most frequently seen feeding with a number of deer, and see if we could obtain a glimpse of her. Mounted on our favorite horses, we started off and rode through the open country. We had gone but a couple of miles when my father pointed in the distance to a group of his negroes, who were working in a field, saying that Willie was likely to be found near them, for he had seen her, at intervals, feeding with other deer in that vicinity. He noticed then that she would leave her companions, and approach the negroes, but would not allow them to touch her. We stopped our horses and looked around over the lovely country. Suddenly my father exclaimed, "Look, Nannie, look!" pointing toward the west. Standing before the setting sun, their graceful forms clearly outlined, were five or six deer. We approached cautiously, not wishing to frighten them. At last I dismounted and as I ventured nearer, I saw the deer lift up their startled heads, and heard the faint tinkle of Willie's bell; for I had placed a heavy leather strap with a bell around her neck, to protect her against the hunters, as no one would knowingly kill a pet deer. Father cried out to me, "Call her by name, as you used to do." I called, "Willie, Willie." At the sound of my voice the beautiful little creature lifted her head and stood still and listened, while the other deer fled; then evidently impelled by recollection, she bounded toward me. I wish I could picture the scene to you, Dorothy, and do justice to it. If anyone has ever seen a deer in full motion, he could never forget it. She came bounding toward me over the high furrows, her feet scarcely touching the ground. I ran forward to meet her, and threw my arms around her neck. The joy she manifested amazed my father. She rubbed her face all over my face and neck, and tried to show me in every way her delight in being with me again. I remained in the field petting her until nearly dark, when my father urged the necessity of our returning home. I bade her farewell for I had no thought that she would follow me, but after mounting my horse, she trotted along by my side just as a dog would do. At the entrance to our place was a high fence with eleven bars. As my father opened the gate for me to pass through, he quickly shut it against Willie, saying he wanted to see what she would do with such a barrier between us. Nothing daunted she immediately bounded over the fence, which was a remarkable jump for any animal, and followed us up to the house. When I dismounted she followed me into the yard, passing fearlessly among the hunting dogs. She remained at home with me as long as my vacation lasted, and became as docile and gentle as she was before, not making any effort to return to her wild life. After my vacation was over and I returned to school, she went back to the woods and spent the winter there. In the spring on my return, I was frequently told by the hunters that they had seen her with her fawns. She was known throughout the entire section, and being belled all could avoid shooting her. One day I was driving to church and saw her on the edge of the deep woods with her two beautiful fawns. I ordered the driver to stop quickly, and jumped out of the carriage, running toward her and calling her by her name. She stood as if she remembered my voice, but her fawns fled in terror and she went bounding after them. That was the last time I ever saw her for she died of black tongue. A hunter found her in the woods, unstrapped her bell and brought it to me, and I kept it for years, until in the war it was lost with everything else. But to return to the plantation life. This life has been written of by many authors, and "Southern hospitality" is proverbial, so you will not be surprised at my description of our way of living. English people who visited us said it was like the English country life. We kept "open house"; everybody was welcome, and our many horses were at the disposal of the guest. My father's stables held thirty horses, many of them work animals, of course, but among them were fine saddle horses, always ready for the use of our friends. Often our stables were emptied of their occupants to make room for "company horses," that is, those brought by our friends when they came to visit us. Near our house there was a two-story building built for the accommodation of gentlemen, strangers. As there were no inns in our country, and plantations were miles apart, some provision had to be made for the entertainment of travelers, who were never turned away. We often had delightful house parties and hunting parties, but our chief enjoyment was riding through the wild and beautiful country. We also went on fishing excursions, and on picnics. We thought nothing of driving ten miles to dine at a neighbor's house. Gentlemen visiting, brought their valets and dogs for hunting, and young ladies came with their own maids. It was a delightful open-hearted, open-handed way of living, my child, but it was brought to an abrupt end, as you will hear. Fortunately my mother had a fine housekeeper who relieved her of the care of the culinary department. This housekeeper was famed as a cook, and her table is still remembered by everyone who sat around it. Perhaps it would be interesting just here to explain how we came to have so competent a person in the house. During my father's early married life preparations were made to build a church in the neighborhood, (Robertville) called after the family. A contractor was engaged from the North to build the church. He brought workmen with him, and among them was a carpenter belonging to a better class of Irish than was usually found in such a trade. He brought his wife and three children with him, and during the summer contracted a violent fever. Father always thought it his duty to visit all the sick in the neighborhood; therefore, he saw him frequently, caring for his needs. When the poor man found that he could not live, he asked my father to provide for his wife and children, which my father consented to do. He kept his promise, and after the husband's death, took the three little ones home with their mother, and made them comfortable in one of the many outbuildings always found on a Southern plantation. In a few weeks the mother gave birth to a little girl and died, leaving the four little orphans in my father's care. Father wished to adopt them all, but my mother, with her usual good judgment, said she was willing to have the care of them, but would not consent to adopting them, as she did not think it well to have children of another nationality brought up as our sisters and brothers. Eventually three of these little people were adopted by those who had no children, and one remained with us. This little girl, Margian Kane, was sent to school, but when old enough to go into higher studies refused further schooling, to learn the art of housekeeping from my mother. She died only two years ago, living to be eighty-four years old. Our family took care of her until her death. She was devoted to my father, and always remembered him with gratitude. I love to linger over those happy, free-from-care days when our hospitable door, always open, brought so many interesting people among us, but I must push on to graver matters. I devoted much of my time to music, especially to the harp which was my favorite instrument. Although I had several masters in music during the years I was at home, I often went to Charleston to take extra lessons. While in Charleston I met your grandfather, Henry William De Saussure, who was a descendant of the Huguenot family of that name, and a grandson of Chancellor Henry William De Saussure. We were married at home in 1859. I have been fortunate in procuring a copy of the wedding article which appeared in the Charleston paper, the _Mercury_, 1859, which is still on file in the library there. The copy is as follows: "On the 4th inst. at Robertville church, Beaufort District, by the Rev. J. M. Bostick, Dr. H. W. De Saussure, Jr., to Miss Nannie W., daughter of B. R. Bostick, Esq. For _THE MERCURY_ THE WEDDING BREAKFAST The Daylight Scene. The Marriage Ceremony. The Surprise. The Parting. "The bright stars had not all disappeared on the morning of the 4th inst., when the sexton of the Robertville church commenced opening the same. The early hour, the studied neatness of his dress, and his hurried manner, all indicated that something unusual was about to occur. He had not yet completed his work, when carriages and buggies in quick succession were rapidly driven up to the church from various directions. The sun had just risen in unusual splendor as if more fully to witness the vows that were appointed to be taken at his appearing, and the company scarcely collected, when your fortunate townsman ---- led to the altar Miss ----. By the altar was seated a young man, who like themselves, had just entered the threshold of life. His countenance, however, would induce the belief that he was accustomed to serious reflection. And one from his appearance pronounced him a minister. He rises, his voice falters not, but betokens a deep and heartfelt emotion, and how could it be otherwise, for he is joining in holy wedlock his sister, the playmate of his childhood hours--the object in later years of his tender solicitude and prayers. And really did it seem that he would have given worlds to insure for that couple the happiness he so devoutly implored of Heaven. "But the marriage ceremony is ended, congratulations of friends over; and again start out a number of the happy company with the bride and groom. "The village is left but a short distance, when our road gradually descended into a wood too damp for cultivation, but so fertile as to grow huge live oak trees, which formed with their boughs, well-nigh a continuous arch over us, from which, in most beautiful clusters almost, but not quite in one's reach, hung the wild grapes of our forest, and as the young and merry people would unsuccessfully snatch at these beautiful bunches as they rapidly passed, we were reminded of how swiftly they would pass through life, and at how many pleasures they would vainly grasp. The fifth mile is accomplished and we are on the banks of the Savannah. We had hardly time to admire the beautiful stream, when turning to the right, imagine our surprise at seeing a beautifully spread table. Curiosity soon carried us to the spot, and our astonishment was only increased when we saw the preparations that had been made. "We soon learned that a lady who had once graced the society of Washington, and afterwards by her intelligence and accomplished manners, had delighted the society of Columbia, had sent on fishermen and cooks, and had spread this repast in honor of the new married couple, which no one would have dreamed could have been got up at such a place. "But the breakfast is over; the dew sparkling in the grass at our feet; the happy chirp of the birds as they, too, make their morning meal on the berries and insects around us, together with the mocking birds seated in the tree above our table and seemingly conscious of their powers, have come to pay their sweet tribute to the bride, all constrain us to linger. That sister too, next to the bride in years, she feels it wrong, but yet she cannot be willing to relinquish her sister to her newly made brother. Well does she remember, how on repeated occasions, that soft voice has comforted her, and she cannot trust herself to say adieu. And little Frank has lifted his blue eyes to his mother as if to inquire, 'Will that man take away my aunty?' That look has reached his mother's heart, it is too full to explain; and she stoops to kiss away the tears from his cheeks. That brother, he is much her senior in years, he is no stranger to life's conflicts, see how his heart trembles when he says 'God bless you Nannie.' "But the iron horse tarries on his way for none, the railroad is to be reached by such an hour and into the waiting boat step the bride and groom, the young minister and his mother. Scarcely had the boat left the shore when the oft-repeated charge is reiterated by that venerable mother to her children on shore, 'My children, take good care of your father.' "It has not been with her one short morning of married life. Forty years ago she stood at the altar with her husband, and with him has she shared life's sorrows and joys; and for him with woman's constancy her heart still beats truest. But adieu, young and happy couple. That your boat, as it crosses the waters of life, may guide you as smoothly as it now does across the beautiful waters of the Savannah, is the sincere wish of V.... August 10, 1859." Such, my dear Dorothy, is the account of my wedding which took place so many years ago, and with it ends the first period of my life. My husband was a physician and as we were obliged, on account of his profession, to live in a central place, my father built us a lovely home in Robertville, which we occupied about three months before the war began. We moved there on December 21, 1860. Your precious mother was born March 1, 1861. It was a turbulent time; the feeling ran high between the North and the South, and we heard rumors of war, but it seemed too far away to invade our peaceful country. When your mother was five weeks old we took her to Charleston to show her to your grandfather's parents--an important visit, as she was the first grand-baby in the family and they were eager to see her. It was an all-day journey with a drive of twenty miles to the railway. We reached Charleston about eight o'clock in the evening. My father-in-law met us, and after a warm greeting to the little stranger and ourselves, said, "You are just in time to see the fight at Fort Sumter, for it begins to-night." I was terrified and begged to be taken home, but there was no train until morning and, therefore, we had to remain. That night I was too frightened to sleep. Toward morning, about four o'clock, the first gun was fired, and it seemed to me as if it were in my room. I sprang up, as I suppose everyone else did in the city. I hurriedly dressed myself and went down to cousin Louis De Saussure's house, which is still standing on the corner of South and East Battery. From its numerous piazzas, which commanded a fine view of the harbor, we watched every gun fired from the two forts, Moultrie and Sumter. The house was crowded with excited mothers and wives, who had sons and husbands in the fight, and every hour added to their distress and excitement, as reports, which afterwards proved false, were brought to them of wounded dear ones. It was a day I can never forget. That night we returned to Grandfather De Saussure's and when morning came we spent another most anxious day following an anxious night, but when Fort Sumter took fire and the white flag was raised, our spirits rose over the Southern victory, to confidence and hope. We little realized the long years of struggle that were to follow ending in defeat, and ruined homes and country. Later on I was in Charleston several times when it was under shot and shell and heard the explosions of the shells as they shrieked over our houses. Those were sad and exciting times, the awful memories of which are still active with me. After a visit of several weeks, we returned to our home in Robertville, and my husband continued his practice, but his restlessness and anxiety to join the army was so great that I ceased to dissuade him. Physicians were needed at home, but he thought the older men should serve there, and the younger go to the front. He joined the Charleston Light Dragoons, and became surgeon of Major Trenholm's brigade. When this brigade was transferred to Virginia, he was, on account of his health, detailed to look after the hospitals on the coast. But before we left our home, the fort below our country town, Beaufort, was taken, and the Northern fleet sailed in while the inhabitants were asleep. This fight at Port Royal was the second battle of the war. When the tidings of the invasions of their town was brought to them, the people, thinking the town would be shelled, fled in their carriages, many of them not waiting to dress themselves, so great was their fright. This long procession of carriages and wagons passed through our village about dusk, the occupants not knowing what to do or where to go. Every house was thrown open to them and these first refugees remained in the neighborhood during the war. They were taken care of, until in turn we had to flee before Sherman's army. When Dr. De Saussure went into service I returned to my father's home and lived there until Sherman drove us out. I made many visits to my husband while he was in camp. I would load a wagon with provisions, and take my trusted butler, who was a good cook and equal to any emergency, and so we would arrive on the scene of action. We lived in a cabin of two rooms not more than twelve by fifteen feet, for whenever my husband was stationed at any special hospital he would tell the convalescent patients that if they would put up a little log cabin he would send for me. The officers would have their tents stationed around our little cabin and we had some pleasant times, though many anxious ones, for we never knew when we would be obliged to flee. Thus I experienced the pleasures and terrors of camp life. Your great-aunt Agnes, whom you met at the South as an old lady, was then a young lady visiting us. She was a beautiful girl with a voice like a bird. She was a great favorite with the officers and married Colonel Colcock, who was acting brigadier general of the coast. The time for her wedding was appointed and invitations sent out for a country wedding. The day came, and hour after hour we heard heavy cannonading. We knew a battle was being fought near us, but could learn no particulars. Evening came, and the wedding guests assembled, but no groom arrived. There was great uneasiness among the guests, and I persuaded Agnes to change her gown and come downstairs to see if her presence would not cheer the party. Although filled with anxiety herself, she followed my persuasion and behaved most admirably, but we had the wedding feast served as soon as possible, and the guests quickly departed. Everyone was anxious, and at two o'clock in the morning we heard the galloping of horses beneath the windows and a soldier called to us that he had some dispatches for us. It proved as we thought; there had been fighting all day and Colonel Colcock was not wounded, but would come as soon as possible. Two days afterwards he appeared in the morning and brought a minister with him. He and Agnes were married at once, and he took his bride away with him; not to the camp, but to a place where she would be more comfortable, and he could sometimes see her. Their bridal trip was spent within fortifications along the coast. Those were days of constant excitement and unrest, as you can well imagine. Husbands and sons were all away, giving their lives in defense of their "hearth fires." The trusted negroes were our only protection and they took every care of us. I well remember a scene that occurred about this time of the war. My youngest brother was a prisoner near Old Point Comfort, and finally received his liberty through the kindness of a fellow Southern soldier. They had been in prison six months together suffering all the hardships of prison life during war. Many times starvation stared them in the face, and upon some of the prisoners the death penalty was inflicted when the men playing together would accidentally slip over the so-called "death line." My brother was only about nineteen and the Benjamin of our family. The soldier with him had consumption and could live only a short time. He came to my brother and said he was going to be released because they knew he would soon die. He then offered to change clothes with my brother and take his place and name, thus letting my brother go free while he remained in prison. I heard one day cries of joy and great excitement among the negroes; hurrying to the back piazza I saw about fifty darkies, men and women crowded together bearing my brother on their shoulders, "Massa Luther, Massa's youngest boy, God bless him, God bless him," they shouted. You can imagine the scene. We hastened down to join in the jubilation, but father and mother could scarcely get near their son, as the servants had taken complete possession of him. When they finally made way for the master and mistress, my parents found that my brother's condition was such that he could not come into the house; he was covered with vermin. He was taken to an outhouse where he bathed, and his clothing was burned. Then he told us of his many adventures and his hard time in prison, where he would indeed have starved had it not been for kind friends at the North, who sent him money which enabled him to buy food, and he told us of the great sacrifice the Southern soldier had made for him. My father immediately forwarded a check for a thousand dollars to the poor family whose husband and father never returned to them. Another war incident in our family was that connected with a brother's son. At the early age of fifteen, he ran away to go into the Southern army. His mother could not make him return, so she called a young colored man, who was a devoted servant of the family, to her and said to him, "John, go with your young master, and whatever happens to him, bring him back to me, wounded or dead, bring him back to me." This young man's bravery made him known throughout the regiment. He was finally wounded, and died in North Carolina in a hospital, John never leaving him. After his death, John put him in a pine coffin roughly knocked together and started home with him. In the month of August the devoted servant reached his mistress, having been two weeks on the way. He would tell his story and beg for help to take his young master home, according to his promise to his mistress. In spite of many misrepresentations by those who can never comprehend the tender attachment existing in those days between master and slave, I want you to have a clear idea of it, and I want you to know that the Southerner understood, and understands to this day, the negro's character better than the Northerner, and is in the main kinder to, and more forbearing with him. There were countless incidents during the war of love and loyalty shown by the negroes to their former owners, which you will read of in the many stories written now by those who know the truth. The year 1864, in the month of December, found me still in the old homestead. Sherman had passed on the Georgia side of the river, to Savannah, which was taken. We wondered what would be his next move, but never for an instant thought he would retrace his steps, and go through South Carolina. The Southern troops which had guarded Savannah retreated to our neighborhood, and we cared for them for several weeks. There were at least five thousand troops on our plantation of nine thousand acres. Barbecues of whole beeves, hogs, and sheep were ordered for them. The officers were fed in the house, there being sometimes two hundred a day. The soldiers had their meals in camp. All planters in South Carolina were restricted by law in planting cotton. Only three acres were allowed to the negro worker, thus causing a large amount of corn and other such grain to be raised, because the Confederate Government wanted this to provide for the Southern army. Thousands of bushels of corn could not be housed, but were harvested and left in pens in the fields. Father had ten thousand bushels of corn on our plantation. We did not sell cotton during the war. For money we had no use, as everything was grown or manufactured on the plantation. We had a steam mill for sawing lumber, and mills for grinding corn and wheat. Sugar was made in quantities for negroes, but there was no way of refining it. Everything was bountiful and we lacked nothing, but coffee and tea. Every known and unknown substitute was used for these drinks, but none were satisfactory; otherwise we never lived with greater abundance. Our swamps yielded us all game bountifully, venison, wild turkeys, partridges, and reed birds. It was a rich country and could feed an army. I met and conversed with many of the chief officers, and consulted them about the advisability of sending my father, who was then seventy years of age, away from his home. The officers urged us to do so, as they feared the Northern army would invade our State and township. So very reluctantly father and mother left their loved home, which they were destined never to see again. They went to live with a married daughter, who had a home in an adjoining county. Some of their negroes pleaded to go with them, and about fifty followed with wagons filled with their effects. It was a wise provision that father was spared the sight of the destruction of his house and property, and possibly personal violence from the hands of the Northern soldiers, for during the raid, my uncle, an old man who was reputed to be wealthy was asked by the soldiers where he had buried his gold; and twice was he hung by them and cut down when unconscious, because he would not confess its hiding place. My child, he had no gold, his wealth lay in his land and negroes. Shortly after father and mother's departure, one morning, early, the remaining negroes came running to the house in a state of wild excitement, and said that Sherman's army was crossing the Savannah River at the next landing below my father's. I was picking oranges when the news came. Green oranges, blossoms, and ripe fruit all hung together on the tree. It was a favorite tree grown to an unusual size by the care given it, as it was always protected in winter. I have only to close my eyes at any time and see plainly the beautiful tree in all its glory of fruit and flower. We had picked from it that day a thousand oranges, the most luscious fruit, but they were left for Sherman's army to devour, for we were thrown into a panic by the news the negroes brought us, and hastily got into our carriages and fled. The negroes followed us in wagons, and we left our lovely home as if we had gone for a drive. Our flight has always reminded me of Jacob's going down into Egypt, a caravan of people, for as we fled we first took with us our dear father and mother, then as the panic spread, one married daughter with all her children joined us, and then another, until we finally numbered about forty persons journeying northward. In order that you may understand how our numbers increased so rapidly, I must tell you that father gave each of his children at marriage a plantation with negroes and a house. These homes were in an adjoining county, that of Barnwell, and as we passed through this county different members of the family would join us. On the second day of our journey your mother was taken with a sore throat and high fever, and as we had no bed to lay her on we took turns in holding her in our arms. Thus we traveled to the upper part of the State fleeing from the army of invaders at whose hands we expected no mercy of any kind. An old school friend of mine, Georgiana Dargan, daughter of the Chancellor of South Carolina, had written me repeatedly during the war to come to her. She had never married and lived in a large Southern colonial mansion situated on a beautiful estate. We, in our need, thought of her and pushed on, hoping she could receive us all. We were not disappointed, the house was thrown open to us and we received a warm welcome. It was a strange fate that Sherman followed us in our flight passing through Columbia and within ten miles of us. His scouts came in and stole all our horses, except a few which we had time to hide in the swamps. The soldiers ordered many of the negroes, choosing the best young men, to mount the horses and go with them. All of them returned to us that night; they had broken away from camp, but were on foot. But let me tell you here, Sherman's army burned Columbia. He denied it, but we know he did it for my husband's sister, Mrs. Thomas Clarkson, who lived there, was ill, and the soldiers lifted her out of bed and laid her in the street while the torch was put to her home. Then, too, only three years ago, the burning of Columbia was admitted to me by a Northern general, General Howard. These were his words: "Sherman did not burn Columbia, but I am sorry to say his troops did." They got hold of liquor and so became mercilessly destructive. Sherman may not have given the order, but he was undoubtedly responsible for the plunder and destruction engaged in by those under his command. The people of Columbia were left without shelter or food, "Only women and children to wage war against," as a venerable judge, Judge William De Saussure, an uncle of Dr. De Saussure, told Sherman in pleading for clemency. We were about fifty miles above Columbia, and as the army passed us they went on to Cheraw, a town lying on the northern border of South Carolina, forty miles above us. There your great-grandfather De Saussure, who was an old man, had fled from his home in Charleston with his five daughters. In a few days news was brought us that Cheraw had been burned, and everybody was starving. I was naturally eager to go to the assistance of my husband's people, and I went to one of my sisters-in-law asking her if she would be willing to accompany me to Cheraw, a drive of forty miles. She said she would go with me. Joe, my butler, to whom I was very much attached, agreed to drive us. We borrowed a pair of mules and started in the early morning with corn meal and bacon and flour for my husband's people. We had driven only a few miles when we came to the road passed over by Sherman only four days before. Such sights as we beheld along that road; dead horses, disemboweled cattle, dead dogs, and as it was in spring they were all decomposed because of our hot climate. At every turn of the road we expected to meet outriders from the Northern army. It was a day of great fatigue and fear. Our mules were lazy and would not move out of a walk. Joe mounted one of them, and strove in vain to urge them on faster. The day seemed endless to us, but the hours wore on, and the sun was just setting as we crawled up a final hill, when we were startled by seeing a number of men on horseback approaching, who we were sure were soldiers. My heart sank, for I expected our carriage would be confiscated as well as the mules, and we left to spend the night unprotected in the woods. As the horsemen drew nearer, I saw to my joy that there was a mixture of blue and gray uniforms. The men were evidently of our army, for Southerners often wore at this stage of the war any kind of clothing they could get hold of to cover them. One of the officers rode up to us, and to my great surprise and delight, I found he was Major Colcock, whom I well knew, as he was a brother of Colonel Colcock, sister Agnes's husband. Our surprise was mutual. He exclaimed, "Why Mrs. De Saussure, what are you doing here?" I replied, "Trying to reach Cheraw to take provisions in to the aid of my husband's father and sisters." "To Cheraw," he exclaimed, "a most difficult journey, madam; the roads are in a dreadful condition and the little flat boat that crosses the river is in such demand I doubt if you can get it." "I will not turn back, Major Colcock," I replied. "I must go on." So we parted, he going his way and I mine. After two hours of weary travel, we reached the river and were fortunate in finding the boat could carry us over the river. We crossed and reached the town of Cheraw at ten o'clock at night. A scene of desolation greeted my eyes the next morning; all the public buildings had been burned, houses alone were standing amid desolate surroundings. The De Saussure family and others had been living on scorched rice and corn, scraped from the ashes. Officers as well as soldiers had gone into houses and taken all food that could be found and burned it in the yards of the various houses; leaving the women and children to starve. My beautiful harp, which after cutting the strings, I had sent to Cheraw for safety in care of Mr. De Saussure, had narrowly escaped being taken by some officers. They asked to have the box opened for them, but Mr. De Saussure told them the harp was out of order, so they passed it by. My harp was safe, but your great-aunt Agnes was not so fortunate with her piano. It was a gift from her father when she left school, and a beautiful Steinway. When she married Colonel Colcock, he said to her: "Ship your piano to Charleston; it will be safer there than in the country." Colonel Colcock was from Charleston and had relatives to whom he wrote asking them to care for the piano, when it arrived. It reached Charleston just about the time the city fell into the hands of the enemy. Colonel Colcock's uncle went down to the station to get it, when he learned that an officer had taken it and shipped it off to the North. Twenty years after the war, this notice published in the _News and Courier_ of Charleston was sent me from different parts of the South: NOTICE A RELIC OF THE WAR Miss Nannie Bostick's Music Book in the Hands of a Federal Soldier. To the editor of the _News and Courier_: Will you insert the following in your paper, as it will be of benefit to one of South Carolina's ladies: If Miss Nannie Bostick will communicate with Captain James B. Rife, Middletown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, she will learn something to her advantage. I have in my possession a music book which was captured or stolen by some one during the war, and I would like to return it to her if she still lives. By so doing you will greatly oblige, Yours very truly, JAS. B. RIFE, Late Capt. U. S. A. MIDDLETOWN, DAUPHIN COUNTY, PA., January 26, 1889. The Miss Nannie Bostick above referred to afterwards married Dr. Henry De Saussure, of this city. After his death she was for a long time employed as an instructor at Vassar College, N. Y., and is now a resident of Brooklyn. The home of Colonel Bostick, the father of Mrs. De Saussure, on Black Swamp, in Beaufort (now Hampton) County, was burned by General Sherman's army in the grand "march to the sea." On reading it I was of course, much excited and wrote immediately to the gentleman in Meadsville, telling him I was the person he was looking for. I waited three weeks most anxiously, and then received a letter from his sister saying that for years her brother had been trying to find me, and that he had something to tell me which was communicated to him by a dying soldier. The sister further wrote that her brother had advertised in New York and Southern papers before, and the cause of his doing so again was that a young niece visiting them, in looking over some old books had come across a music book with my name on it. She went with it into his room, and said, "Uncle, who is Miss Nannie W. Bostick?" He sprang from his chair exclaiming, "What do you know about her?" When he learned that she knew nothing and had merely seen my name on the old music book, he said, "I will try once more to find her," and sent off the notice to the _News and Courier_ of Charleston. As fate would have it the next day, on his way to Harrisburg to make arrangements for a Cleveland procession, his horse took fright from a trolley car, and in the accident he was instantly killed. The music book was returned to me by his sister, but whatever the secret was that he had carried so many years, it died with him, for no one else knew it. After his death his sister asked me to visit her. She said my name was so often on her brother's lips, and she only knew he wanted to communicate something of importance, but what it was he had never told her. He was a prominent man in the army. She sent me his photograph and the notice of his death. You can imagine this incident brought back many memories. What could have been the dying soldier's communication that Captain Rife wished so much to tell me, and which he never intrusted to any other member of his family? And where had this very heavy, old music book, in his possession, been found? My sisters, when I met them, talked the matter over with me, and Agnes said: "I remember putting a lot of books, among them some of yours, with my piano to pack it tightly." When it was shipped North the book was found with the piano, as I have since ascertained. We wondered that the music book had ever come back to me, its rightful owner, but since I have lived at the North, even family Bibles, which were taken from the old homes, have been returned to me. Looting was the order of the day during the Civil War, and wanton destruction followed. I once went South with old Captain Berry, who for twenty years had charge of a steamer plying between Charleston and New York. Your mamma and myself were the only ladies on board, as the time was in July when the tide of travel was northward. The officers of the steamer were exceedingly kind to us, and told us many interesting stories of their seafaring lives. Captain Berry told me of a trip he made from New Orleans to New York, when General Ben Butler was there in command. A division of the army was being transferred and Captain Berry said that besides soldiers the vessel was laden with all kinds of handsome furniture, with pictures, pianos, and trunks filled with women's clothing, from a lady's bonnet to slippers. That division of the army which Captain Berry was bringing North belonged to one of the generals under Butler's command. The vessel was laden, the last soldier had stepped aboard, when just before the gangplank was lowered, a jet-black pony was hurried aboard, a perfect beauty. Then a lady was seen rapidly riding along the wharf; she quickly jumped from her horse, and went on board inquiring for the general; when he was pointed out to her she stepped up to him and said: "General ----, you have taken my husband's last gift to his little boy, the pony; I have come to ask you to return him to me." The general turned a deaf ear to her request, and as he did so, she drew her whip across his face with a stinging lash. Had he lifted his finger to her in return, Captain Berry said, the soldiers would have shot him dead. During that trip North in the silence of the night, the soldiers went down into the hold of the vessel, opened every box, cut strings on pianos, ruined pictures and other things with ashes and water, then nailed up every box carefully and put it in place again. This was done by the Northern soldiers on board who knew of and resented the wrong done to the people of New Orleans. The poor little pony never reached his destination, for he was found dead the next morning; a mysterious death, but the soldiers knew, and had had a hand in his taking off. Thus they avenged the lady to whom their sympathy had gone out. Captain Berry was a Northern man, but his frequent visits to Charleston had thrown him into intimate relations with the Southern people and he admired them greatly. We spent six months, from December, 1864, until June, 1865, at Darlington, our place of retreat. It was a hard winter; food was scarce, and little but the coarsest kind could be bought. By spring we had grown hopeless, and well I remember that while walking in the garden some one called out to me, "The war is over, Lee has surrendered." My feelings were tumultuous; joy and sorrow strove with each other. Joy in the hope of having my husband and the brothers and friends who were left, return to me, but oh, such sorrow over our defeat! In the course of time, the men of our family returned with the exception of your great-uncle Edward, my brother, who had gone through the war, but was finally killed in the last two weeks of fighting around Petersburg, Va. As one after another of the family came back to us, worn out and dispirited, our thoughts turned to the dear old home on the Savannah River, and we longed to go back. Before yielding to our desires, it was considered wise for the men of the family to go first and investigate. They found only ashes and ruin everywhere in our neighborhood, and father's place, except a few negro cabins, was burned to the ground. There were thirty buildings destroyed. The steam mill, blacksmith's shop, carpenter's shop, barns, and house--nothing was left standing except chimney and brick walls to mark the place of our once prosperous, happy home. There was but one fence paling to indicate the site of our little village. The church, too, was burned, and now negro cabins are standing where it once graced the landscape. Our beautiful lawns were plowed up and planted in potatoes and corn by the negroes, who were told we would never return. Sherman left a track of fire for three hundred miles through the State. When you hear the war song "Marching through Georgia," which stirs the hearts of the Northerner, think of the scenes of desolation and heartbreak the song recalls to the Southerner. When I left my own home in Robertville, I took the daguerreotypes of my old schoolmates, Northern girls, of whom I was fond, and opening the clasps I stood them all in a row on the mantel, hoping that should some commander find among them the face of a relative, he would spare the house for the sake of friendship. It was a vain hope, for my lovely house was destroyed with all the others. However, a soldier, brother of one of the girls, did find among the pictures the likeness of his sister and he wrote me after the war about thus seeing amid the roar of battle the likeness of his angel sister, for she was then dead. You will often hear of the "reconstruction period," the period when the situation had to be faced by the beaten Southerner, and everything had to be managed on a new and strange basis. That period in my life had now come, for we all resolved to return home and do the best we could with what we had left. Father had loaned the Confederate Government fifty horses and mules; twenty-five were returned to him, good, bad, and indifferent. We took the journey home by the aid of these animals, and our carriage was drawn by one large "raw-boned" horse helped by a little pony. We camped out at night, and drove all day. Sometimes we were able to get shelter for our parents. It was very rough traveling; the roads were destroyed, and trees had been cut down blocking the way. We finally reached the only house left standing near our former home, at eleven o'clock at night, after ten days of travel. This house was far off from all plantations, situated in a pine forest. It was used by our family for a summer retreat. It had large airy rooms; one measuring twenty-five feet, and one fifty feet. In this house, bereft of all its furniture, our family gathered. We found our negroes scattered and completely demoralized. Starvation seemed imminent. The men of our family went to work to cut timber, to be shipped to Savannah on rafts. In the meantime, before we could expect any monetary return from this industry, what else could we do to better our condition? was the question we asked one another. One of my brother's former negroes came to me and said, "I think you could make money by baking pies and bread for the colored Northern troops." Those soldiers were quartered on my father's plantation. My dear, war was nothing compared to the horrors of that reconstruction period. For six months we never went to bed without bidding one another good-by, not expecting to be alive the next morning. We sold our jewelry, all that was left, to the soldiers, and they would come to the house, march around it with bayonets drawn, and curse us with the vilest oaths. We would gather the little ones around us, bar the door, and wait, for we knew not what. When you are old enough, Dorothy, dear, read "The Leopard's Spots," which gives a better description of what we endured, than I ever can write. However, we needed money to buy food with. I, therefore, set to work making bread, and any number of green-apple pies. Tom, a negro, built us a clay oven and we secured a negro's service for the baking; I got up at four o'clock in the morning, and by ten o'clock Tom was off with the pony and wagon, to sell articles for us. We had enough to live on, but no meat except bacon. By request of every white person the Government removed the colored troops six months after the war, and sent white troops in their place. Poor grandpa would sit all day with bowed head and say over and over, "My poor daughters, my poor daughters." We tried to appear brave and cheerful and would say in reply, "Why we can manage; do not trouble about us." But father's heart was broken and though he appeared well, he instinctively felt that his days were numbered and asked to have our former pastor called. When the minister came, we and some neighbors gathered together in a little supply store that was "thrown up" after the war, and there we stood, or sat on the counters, during service. It was a touching scene. Your mother was a little girl of five years, and she feeling the sadness of it all, wept through the whole service. Father gathered her in his arms and tenderly wiped her tears away. As service closed an old church member and father advanced to shake hands with each other saying simultaneously: "We shall drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until we drink in our Father's Kingdom." It seemed in the nature of a prediction, for three days afterwards father passed peacefully away, without apparent illness. Mother lived until her eighty-seventh year, weary, sad years for her. She lived with her children, but none were able to make her comfortable. Poverty reigned everywhere, and still exists in that once luxurious country. We thanked God that father had not to endure, for long, the sight of our want and distress. Before he died, however, we left the large house in which we first took refuge, and started housekeeping separately in outhouses or cabins in the pinelands, which were formerly used for storerooms, kitchens, laundries, etc. We fitted up one of these cabins as comfortably as we could for father's and mother's use, and in another little house situated about three and a half miles from them, I lived a while with your mamma and Dr. De Saussure. In this little house we had to endure great hardships for many years, and led the most desolate lives. Your precious mother was our only comfort; she was always happy. She had few books, no school, and as my husband was an invalid, he was often too ill to see her, or to be left alone. She would study her lessons and sit outside the door of his darkened room, and when I could leave him she would recite to me what she had learned. Another time we lived in a little cabin, part of which was curtained off for the accommodation of a sister of Dr. De Saussure's and her baby. Our kitchen stove was under an open shed built against the side of the house. Heavy rain would flow over the dirt floor, and remain standing several inches deep. At this time your mother's one delight was her pony Brownie. She would drive the cows up from the swamps, and Brownie soon learned to give them a bite on their backs when they stopped to graze. "Jeff Davis" was also a great pet; he was a young calf we never allowed to leave the yard for fear the negroes would take him. Poor Jeff was sacrificed for food, but your mother's heart was broken for her pet, and she could not be induced to taste any portion of the meat. Before I undertook to make pies and bread for the colored troops, and when we were very hard pressed, as I said before, I went and spent a night with my parents. My adopted sister, the housekeeper of whom I told you, called me out of the house and taking me some distance away so we could not be heard by them, said: "We have but a pint of corn meal in the house, and if I cook that for our supper I have nothing to give father and mother for breakfast." We cried together, and wondered what we could do. One of our negro men from the plantation approached me and said, "Miss Nancy" (they called me by that name, and the grandchildren of our old negroes still use it), "the steamboat has just landed at the dock, and there are lots of boxes for you." Amazed, I exclaimed, "Why, who has sent me anything?" I looked then upon all Northern friends as enemies. I had not heard from any of them in years; the war had separated us. I told the man to take a cart and hasten to the dock. He returned laden. Still in amaze I had the boxes opened, wherein we found all sorts of provisions: hams, sugar, tea, coffee, crackers, etc., etc., and better than all a letter from a gentleman, who wrote that he had read in the papers of the great distress of Southern people; he knew nothing of my condition, but judged of it by what he read of the pitiful state of others, and he wished me to draw whatever amount we needed from his agent in Savannah to relieve our necessities. To me the heavens had opened and from them came these gifts. I saw in this relief when we most needed help the kind care of our heavenly Father, who had put into the heart of this generous man to come to our assistance. We drew enough money to enable us to buy food and to begin work on our own place. With the account of my acquaintance with this gentleman my story will close. He was an Englishman, who had settled with his family in the Bahamas. When I met him I was in my sixteenth year, and was on my way to school in Philadelphia. Agnes and three brothers were with me, one brother going to Princeton to finish his theological course, one to Lawrenceville to school, and the third to Colgate University. On the steamer was this gentleman, taking his son to Philadelphia to school. My eldest brother became acquainted with him, and introduced him to me. It took much longer in those days to make the trip, the journey comprising three and a half to four days. Agnes and I saw a great deal of the father, and the son was with my brother most of the time, so that when we reached Philadelphia, we felt well acquainted. Mr. Saunders, for that was the name of our new friend, said to my brother upon landing: "I shall be in Philadelphia a fortnight, or until my son becomes acquainted in the city. If you will allow me, I will be pleased to take your sisters driving with us, and show them the places of interest." Many pleasant drives we had together, and grew better acquainted each day. At the end of his visit he came to bid us farewell, and said to me: "Miss Nannie, I have a request to make of you, will you grant it?" I replied, "If I can, I will gladly." He had often spoken of his elder son who was studying at Oxford, England, and he continued: "In two years my son will graduate, I want you to promise me that you will wait until you see him before engaging yourself to anyone." I laughingly promised him to wait the two years. When I was seventeen years old I returned home. I had been there perhaps three years, when I went on a brief visit to a friend who lived about twenty miles away from us. My visit ended, I returned home, and as I drove up to the door, my young brother ran out to meet me and said, "Guess who is here to see you," and when I failed in guessing he said, "Mr. Saunders's son." I then met the young gentleman, a handsome, fine young man, who brought letters of introduction from leading men in his own home, and one from his father, who wrote that he had not forgotten my promise to him, but that he had been delayed in fulfilling his desire in having us meet by his son's failing to find me. He had lost the address of my home, and thinking Charleston the nearest town, his son was sent there to inquire for us. The next winter he sent him to Savannah to find me, and from there the young man was directed to my father's home. Mr. Saunders wrote that it had been his dearest wish to have me for his daughter, and he had talked so much to his son about me that he was quite willing to fall in with his father's wishes in the matter. In the meantime I had met your grandfather, and had decided that I would marry him, or no one. My father was bitterly opposed to my marrying at all, as he did not want to part with me, and therefore, I was waiting until he gave his consent. We made Mr. Saunders's visit as pleasant as possible, and I told him at once of my affection for your grandfather, as I did not wish to deceive him. The young man spent some weeks with us, and upon his return home I received another letter from his father saying he could not give up his cherished hope of having me for a daughter, and as his son had fallen in love with me, he hoped I would reconsider my decision. At the same time his son wrote of his attachment, offering himself to me. But it was useless to urge me, and though I felt grateful to be looked upon with so much affection I declined the offer. This was the beginning of a very remarkable friendship which sprang up between the father and myself. Upon receipt of the letter expressing myself as steadfast to Dr. De Saussure, he wrote in reply asking that he might consider himself as a father, and to me and your mother, who always called him grandfather, he was like a father. During the latter part of the war, I wrote to him asking if he would receive cotton through the blockade and arrange to send us in return many necessary things. We were without shoes, and were wearing clothes made from our gay silk dresses carded up and spun with cotton, thus woven into cloth by our own people. We then had an abundance of food, but other things were not to be bought. In reply he said: "Do not send your cotton, you will run a double risk; I will send you all you need, for I have more than enough for my family and yours." Never dreaming we would ever be in a position where we could not repay Mr. Saunders, I wrote to him and sent a list of needed articles, pieces of linen, merino, and silk, and stockings and shoes for us all. He sent us two thousand dollars worth of goods in gold value, thus generously supplying every child and grandchild in our family with clothes. Alas for us, the war ended disastrously, and forgetting all he had previously done for me and mine, he now sent money and provisions to aid us, which help arrived in our darkest hour. I am glad to tell you that these debts were paid, though it took us years to do it. Until Mr. Saunders's death, we corresponded regularly, and fifteen years after the war he came to see me at Vassar College, for after your grandfather's death, I came North with your darling mother who was fifteen years of age, and went first to Philadelphia, placing her in the same school where I had been educated, with the same principals still in charge, the Misses Bonney and Dillaye. I kept house in Philadelphia in a quiet way in two rooms, and had been there two years when I learned that the gentleman whom your grandfather had left in charge of my affairs had speculated and lost every cent I had in the world. Immediately I tried to find some work by which I could support your mother and myself, and through one of my former teachers, Miss Morse, who was then assistant to Dr. Raymond of Vassar College, I was offered the position of assistant principal. There I remained for five years. While at Vassar your mother took up a special course at the College and graduated from the Art Department. One day my dear old friend Mr. Saunders was announced. The last time we met, I was fifteen and he forty-five years old. This latter meeting took place twenty-five years later. It was a sad meeting for both of us. He had lost most of his property, and was comparatively poor. He took me in his arms and said; "My child, if I were able to take care of you and your daughter you would not be here one minute, for I would take you home with me and take care of you both." The last letter I received from him said: "I am nearly home and when I get there I shall watch for your coming." ADDENDUM BEAUFORT, S. C., January 8, 1906. MY DEAR AUNT NANNIE: I fear you have by this time lost all hope of hearing from me, but I have not forgotten my promise. I am afraid, however, you will be very much disappointed, as I have so little information to give about family history, and that little is very scrappy. Our branch of the family have been criminally careless about preserving records. While I have not what we lawyers would consider strict evidence of the fact, still I am quite satisfied from circumstances and inferences, which I shall not undertake in this letter to detail, that our family and the Northern family of Bostick were one and the same. Our American progenitor landed in Plymouth, Mass., sometime about the middle of the seventeenth century, coming from Chester County, England, and being probably a political refugee. His wife also came with him from England. In England the family history was both ancient and distinguished, the founder landing on English soil with William the Conqueror, in whose service he was of distinguished rank, both military and social. In England he became one of the barons of the realm. The title remained for centuries in the family, and may be still in existence, and has been adorned by many distinguished representatives in the English wars especially. The original stock in Massachusetts seems to have migrated, mine northward and some gradually drifting southward. The intermediate links I cannot supply, but finally these brothers settled, two in Carolina, the youngest being our great-grandfather Richard, and one in Georgia. In Jones's history of Georgia mention is made of Captain Littlebury Bostick, a wealthy rice planter near Savannah. He, I think, was the brother, or son of the brother who settled in Georgia. Richard was the youngest of the three. The other brother, John, bought a large landed estate near Columbia on which he lived and died quite an old man. During his life he maintained the style and reputation of a man of great wealth, but at his death it was found that his affairs were financially involved. He never married, but was known as a cultured man of decidedly literary tastes, and was a leading figure in the social life of his section. His most intimate friend was General Hampton, father of the Confederate general of same name. Richard settled in old Blackswamp, where he married three times, the last two wives being sisters, both Roberts. The last, first married Singleton, and at his death our ancestor. By the last marriage there were no children; by the second marriage to Miss Robert, we are descended through your father Benjamin Robert Bostick; by the first marriage the other Blackswamp Bosticks are descended. I have not a copy of the Bostick coat of arms, but the motto is "Always ready to serve," bestowed, or adopted, I presume, in recognition of their martial spirit exhibited on many great battlefields. The Robert family, of whom your grandmother was a member, settled in Sumter. The progenitor, Rev. Pierre Robert, led a colony of Huguenot refugees from France. Many other Huguenot families in the State claim descent on maternal lines from him. He seems to have been a man of wealth and ancient lineage. I have a copy of the French coat of arms. Your mother, who was a Maner, came of no less distinguished line. They were of Welsh descent, and probably more remotely of Norman French descent, as the progenitor was Lord de Maner. Grandma's mother was a May from an old Dutch family. The original May came to Charleston, and founded the first large importing house (tea chiefly) in copartnership with the famous Dutchman, Admiral Gillon. I presume you know, of course, that your great-grandfather, William Maner, and his brother Samuel were both captains in the famous Marion Brigade in the Revolution. Your grandfather was a captain at eighteen years of age. I may mention also, that grandma's mother, who was a May, was on her maternal side a daughter of an English Colonel Stafford. The English Staffords are also of ancient stock, I believe. I am afraid the foregoing very meager account of the family connections will give you very little that you do not know already. While I have stated the main features of the family history, as I know them, the statement is very general. If you desire more of detail with reference to any individual or any part of the family history, I may be able to give you a little more, and will take pleasure in answering any inquiries on this line. I have had to write this very hastily. With love from us all, I remain, Affectionately, A. MCIVER BOSTICK. 
2306	----	Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings By Joel Chandler Harris PREFACE AND DEDICATION TO THE NEW EDITION To Arthur Barbette Frost: DEAR FROST: I am expected to supply a preface for this new edition of my first book--to advance from behind the curtain, as it were, and make a fresh bow to the public that has dealt with Uncle Remus in so gentle and generous a fashion. For this event the lights are to be rekindled, and I am expected to respond in some formal way to an encore that marks the fifteenth anniversary of the book. There have been other editions--how many I do not remember--but this is to be an entirely new one, except as to the matter: new type, new pictures, and new binding. But, as frequently happens on such occasions, I am at a loss for a word. I seem to see before me the smiling faces of thousands of children--some young and fresh, and some wearing the friendly marks of age, but all children at heart--and not an unfriendly face among them. And out of the confusion, and while I am trying hard to speak the right word, I seem to hear a voice lifted above the rest, saying "You have made some of us happy." And so I feel my heart fluttering and my lips trembling, and I have to how silently and him away, and hurry back into the obscurity that fits me best. Phantoms! Children of dreams! True, my dear Frost; but if you could see the thousands of letters that have come to me from far and near, and all fresh from the hearts and hands of children, and from men and women who have not forgotten how to be children, you would not wonder at the dream. And such a dream can do no harm. Insubstantial though it may be, I would not at this hour exchange it for all the fame won by my mightier brethren of the pen--whom I most humbly salute. Measured by the material developments that have compressed years of experience into the space of a day, thus increasing the possibilities of life, if not its beauty, fifteen years constitute the old age of a book. Such a survival might almost be said to be due to a tiny sluice of green sap under the gray bark. where it lies in the matter of this book, or what its source if, indeed, it be really there--is more of a mystery to my middle age than it was to my prime. But it would be no mystery at all if this new edition were to be more popular than the old one. Do you know why? Because you have taken it under your hand and made it yours. Because you have breathed the breath of life into these amiable brethren of wood and field. Because, by a stroke here and a touch there, you have conveyed into their quaint antics the illumination of your own inimitable humor, which is as true to our sun and soil as it is to the spirit and essence of the matter set forth. The book was mine, but now you have made it yours, both sap and pith. Take it, therefore, my dear Frost, and believe me, faithfully yours, Joel Chandler Harris INTRODUCTION I am advised by my publishers that this book is to be included in their catalogue of humorous publications, and this friendly warning gives me an opportunity to say that however humorous it may be in effect, its intention is perfectly serious; and, even if it were otherwise, it seems to me that a volume written wholly in dialect must have its solemn, not to say melancholy, features. With respect to the Folk-Lore scenes, my purpose has been to preserve the legends themselves in their original simplicity, and to wed them permanently to the quaint dialect--if, indeed, it can be called a dialect--through the medium of which they have become a part of the domestic history of every Southern family; and I have endeavored to give to the whole a genuine flavor of the old plantation. Each legend has its variants, but in every instance I have retained that particular version which seemed to me to be the most characteristic, and have given it without embellishment and without exaggeration. The dialect, it will be observed, is wholly different from that of the Hon. Pompey Smash and his literary descendants, and different also from the intolerable misrepresentations of the minstrel stage, but it is at least phonetically genuine. Nevertheless, if the language of Uncle Remus fails to give vivid hints of the really poetic imagination of the negro; if it fails to embody the quaint and homely humor which was his most prominent characteristic; if it does not suggest a certain picturesque sensitiveness--a curious exaltation of mind and temperament not to be defined by words--then I have reproduced the form of the dialect merely, and not the essence, and my attempt may be accounted a failure. At any rate, I trust I have been successful in presenting what must be, at least to a large portion of American readers, a new and by no means unattractive phase of negro character--a phase which may be considered a curiously sympathetic supplement to Mrs. Stowe's wonderful defense of slavery as it existed in the South. Mrs. Stowe, let me hasten to say, attacked the possibilities of slavery with all the eloquence of genius; but the same genius painted the portrait of the Southern slave-owner, and defended him. A number of the plantation legends originally appeared in the columns of a daily newspaper--The Atlanta Constitution and in that shape they attracted the attention of various gentlemen who were kind enough to suggest that they would prove to be valuable contributions to myth-literature. It is but fair to say that ethnological considerations formed no part of the undertaking which has resulted in the publication of this volume. Professor J. W. Powell, of the Smithsonian Institution, who is engaged in an investigation of the mythology of the North American Indians, informs me that some of Uncle Remus's stories appear in a number of different languages, and in various modified forms, among the Indians; and he is of the opinion that they are borrowed by the negroes from the red-men. But this, to say the least, is extremely doubtful, since another investigator (Mr. Herbert H. Smith, author of Brazil and the Amazons) has met with some of these stories among tribes of South American Indians, and one in particular he has traced to India, and as far east as Siam. Mr. Smith has been kind enough to send me the proof-sheets of his chapter on The Myths and Folk-Lore of the Amazonian Indians, in which he reproduces some of the stories which he gathered while exploring the Amazons. In the first of his series, a tortoise falls from a tree upon the head of a jaguar and kills him; in one of Uncle Remus's stories, the terrapin falls from a shelf in Miss Meadows's house and stuns the fox, so that the latter fails to catch the rabbit. In the next, a jaguar catches a tortoise by the hind-leg as he is disappearing in his hole; but the tortoise convinces him he is holding a root, and so escapes; Uncle Remus tells how the fox endeavored to drown the terrapin, but turned him loose because the terrapin declared his tail to be only a stump-root. Mr. Smith also gives the story of how the tortoise outran the deer, which is identical as to incident with Uncle Remus's story of how Brer Tarrypin outran Brer Rabbit. Then there is the story of how the tortoise pretended that he was stronger than the tapir. He tells the latter he can drag him into the sea, but the tapir retorts that he will pull the tortoise into the forest and kill him besides. The tortoise thereupon gets a vine-stem, ties one end around the body of the tapir, and goes to the sea, where he ties the other end to the tail of a whale. He then goes into the wood, midway between them both, and gives the vine a shake as a signal for the pulling to begin. The struggle between the whale and tapir goes on until each thinks the tortoise is the strongest of animals. Compare this with the story of the terrapin's contest with the bear, in which Miss Meadows's bed-cord is used instead of a vine-stem. One of the most characteristic of Uncle Remus's stories is that in which the rabbit proves to Miss Meadows and the girls that the fox is his riding-horse. This is almost identical with a story quoted by Mr. Smith, where the jaguar is about to marry the deer's daughter. The cotia--a species of rodent--is also in love with her, and he tells the deer that he can make a riding-horse of the jaguar. "Well," says the deer, "if you can make the jaguar carry you, you shall have my daughter." Thereupon the story proceeds pretty much as Uncle Remus tells it of the fox and rabbit. The cotia finally jumps from the jaguar and takes refuge in a hole, where an owl is set to watch him, but he flings sand in the owl's eyes and escapes. In another story given by Mr. Smith, the cotia is very thirsty, and, seeing a man coming with a jar on his head, lies down in the road in front of him, and repeats this until the man puts down his jar to go back after all the dead cotias he has seen. This is almost identical with Uncle Remus's story of how the rabbit robbed the fox of his game. In a story from Upper Egypt, a fox lies down in the road in front of a man who is carrying fowls to market, and finally succeeds in securing them. This similarity extends to almost every story quoted by Mr. Smith, and some are so nearly identical as to point unmistakably to a common origin; but when and where? when did the negro or the North American Indian ever come in contact with the tribes of South America? Upon this point the author of Brazil and the Amazons, who is engaged in making a critical and comparative study of these myth-stories, writes: "I am not prepared to form a theory about these stories. There can be no doubt that some of them, found among the negroes and the Indians, had a common origin. The most natural solution would be to suppose that they originated in Africa, and were carried to South America by the negro slaves. They are certainly found among the Red Negroes; but, unfortunately for the African theory, it is equally certain that they are told by savage Indians of the Amazons Valley, away up on the Tapajos, Red Negro, and Tapura. These Indians hardly ever see a negro, and their languages are very distinct from the broken Portuguese spoken by the slaves. The form of the stories, as recounted in the Tupi and Mundurucu' languages, seems to show that they were originally formed in those languages or have long been adopted in them. "It is interesting to find a story from Upper Egypt (that of the fox who pretended to be dead) identical with an Amazonian story, and strongly resembling one found by you among the negroes. Vambagen, the Brazilian historian (now Visconde de Rio Branco), tried to prove a relationship between the ancient Egyptians, or other Turanian stock, and the Tupi Indians. His theory rested on rather a slender basis, yet it must be confessed that he had one or two strong points. Do the resemblances between old and New World stories point to a similar conclusion? It would be hard to say with the material that we now have. "One thing is certain. The animal stories told by the negroes in our Southern States and in Brazil were brought by them from Africa. Whether they originated there, or with the Arabs, or Egyptians, or with yet more ancient nations, must still be an open question. Whether the Indians got them from the negroes or from some earlier source is equally uncertain. We have seen enough to know that a very interesting line of investigation has been opened." Professor Hartt, in his Amazonian Tortoise Myths, quotes a story from the Riverside Magazine of November, 1868, which will be recognized as a variant of one given by Uncle Remus. I venture to append it here, with some necessary verbal and phonetic alterations, in order to give the reader an idea of the difference between the dialect of the cotton plantations, as used by Uncle Remus, and the lingo in vogue on the rice plantations and Sea Islands of the South Atlantic States: "One time B'er Deer an' B'er Cooter (Terrapin) was courtin', and de lady did bin lub B'er Deer mo' so dan B'er Cooter. She did bin lub B'er Cooter, but she lub B'er Deer de morest. So de young lady say to B'er Deer and B'er Cooter bofe dat dey mus' hab a ten-mile race, an de one dat beats, she will go marry him. "So B'er Cooter say to B'er Deer: 'You has got mo longer legs dan I has, but I will run you. You run ten mile on land, and I will run ten mile on de water!' "So B'er Cooter went an' git nine er his fam'ly, an' put one at ebery mile-pos', and he hisse'f, what was to run wid B'er Deer, he was right in front of de young lady's do', in de broom-grass. "Dat mornin' at nine o'clock, B'er Deer he did met B'er Cooter at de fus mile-pos', wey dey was to start fum. So he call: 'Well, B'er Cooter, is you ready? Co long!' As he git on to de nex' mile-pos', he say: 'B'er Cooter!' B'er Cooter say: 'Hullo!' B'er Deer say: 'You dere?' B'er Cooter say: 'Yes, B'er Deer, I dere too.' "Nex' mile-pos' he jump, B'er Deer say: 'Hullo, B'er Cooter!' B'er Cooter say: 'Hullo, B'er Deer! you dere too?' B'er Deer say: 'Ki! it look like you gwine fer tie me; it look like we gwine fer de gal tie!' "W'en he git to de nine-mile pos' he tought he git dere fus, 'cause he mek two jump; so he holler: 'B'er Cooter!' B'er Cooter answer: 'You dere too?' B'er Deer say: 'It look like you gwine tie me.' B'er Cooter say: 'Go long, B'er Deer. I git dere in due season time,' which he does, and wins de race." The story of the Rabbit and the Fox, as told by the Southern negroes, is artistically dramatic in this: it progresses in an orderly way from a beginning to a well-defined conclusion, and is full of striking episodes that suggest the culmination. It seems to me to be to a certain extent allegorical, albeit such an interpretation may be unreasonable. At least it is a fable thoroughly characteristic of the negro; and it needs no scientific investigation to show why he selects as his hero the weakest and most harmless of all animals, and brings him out victorious in contests with the bear, the wolf, and the fox. It is not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness; it is not malice, but mischievousness. It would be presumptuous in me to offer an opinion as to the origin of these curious myth-stories; but, if ethnologists should discover that they did not originate with the African, the proof to that effect should be accompanied with a good deal of persuasive eloquence. Curiously enough, I have found few negroes who will acknowledge to a stranger that they know anything of these legends; and yet to relate one of the stories is the surest road to their confidence and esteem. In this way, and in this way only, I have been enabled to collect and verify the folklore included in this volume. There is an anecdote about the Irishman and the rabbit which a number of negroes have told to me with great unction, and which is both funny and characteristic, though I will not undertake to say that it has its origin with the blacks. One day an Irishman who had heard people talking about "mares' nests" was going along the big road--it is always the big road in contradistinction to neighborhood paths and by-paths, called in the vernacular "nigh-cuts"--when he came to a pumpkin--patch. The Irishman had never seen any of this fruit before, and he at once concluded that he had discovered a veritable mare's nest. Making the most of his opportunity, he gathered one of the pumpkins in his arms and went on his way. A pumpkin is an exceedingly awkward thing to carry, and the Irishman had not gone far before he made a misstep, and stumbled. The pumpkin fell to the ground, rolled down the hill into a "brush--heap," and, striking against a stump, was broken. The story continues in the dialect: "W'en de punkin roll in de bresh--heap, out jump a rabbit; en soon's de I'shmuns see dat, he take atter de rabbit en holler: 'Kworp, colty! kworp, colty!' but de rabbit, he des flew." The point of this is obvious. As to the songs, the reader is warned that it will be found difficult to make them conform to the ordinary rules of versification, nor is it intended that they should so conform. They are written, and are intended to be read, solely with reference to the regular and invariable recurrence of the caesura, as, for instance, the first stanza of the Revival Hymn: "Oh, whar / shill we go / w'en de great / day comes Wid de blow / in' er de trumpits / en de bang / in' er de drums / How man / y po' sin / ners'll be kotch'd / out late En fine / no latch ter de gold / en gate /" In other words, the songs depend for their melody and rhythm upon the musical quality of time, and not upon long or short, accented or unaccented syllables. I am persuaded that this fact led Mr. Sidney Lanier, who is thoroughly familiar with the metrical peculiarities of negro songs, into the exhaustive investigation which has resulted in the publication of his scholarly treatise on The Science of English Verse. The difference between the dialect of the legends and that of the character--sketches, slight as it is, marks the modifications which the speech of the negro has undergone even where education has played in deed, save in the no part reforming it. Indeed, save in the remote country districts, the dialect of the legends has nearly disappeared. I am perfectly well aware that the character sketches are without permanent interest, but they are embodied here for the purpose of presenting a phase of negro character wholly distinct from that which I have endeavored to preserve in the legends. Only in this shape, and with all the local allusions, would it be possible to adequately represent the shrewd observations, the curious retorts, the homely thrusts, the quaint comments, and the humorous philosophy of the race of which Uncle Remus is the type. If the reader not familiar with plantation life will imagine that the myth--stories of Uncle Remus are told night after night to a little boy by an old negro who appears to be venerable enough to have lived during the period which he describes--who has nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery--and who has all the prejudices of caste and pride of family that were the natural results of the system; if the reader can imagine all this, he will find little difficulty in appreciating and sympathizing with the air of affectionate superiority which Uncle Remus assumes as he proceeds to unfold the mysteries of plantation lore to a little child who is the product of that practical reconstruction which has been going on to some extent since the war in spite of the politicians. Uncle Remus describes that reconstruction in his Story of the War, and I may as well add here for the benefit of the curious that that story is almost literally true. J. C. H. CONTENTS LEGENDS OF THE OLD PLANTATION I. Uncle Remus initiates the Little Boy II. The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story III. Why Mr. Possum loves Peace IV. How Mr. Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox V. The Story of the Deluge, and how it came about VI. Mr. Rabbit grossly deceives Mr. Fox VII. Mr. Fox is again victimized VIII. Mr. Fox is "outdone" by Mr. Buzzard IX. Miss Cow falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit X. Mr. Terrapin appears upon the Scene XI. Mr. Wolf makes a Failure XII. Mr. Fox tackles Old Man Tarrypin XIII. The Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf XIV. Mr. Fox and the Deceitful Frogs XV. Mr. Fox goes a-hunting, but Mr. Rabbit bags the Game XVI. Old Mr. Rabbit, he's a Good Fisherman XVII. Mr. Rabbit nibbles up the Butter XVIII. Mr. Rabbit finds his Match at last XIX. The Fate of Mr. Jack Sparrow XX. How Mr. Rabbit saved his Meat XXI. Mr. Rabbit meets his Match again XXII. A Story about the Little Rabbits XXIII. Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bear XXIV. Mr. Bear catches Old Mr. Bull-Frog XXV. How Mr. Rabbit lost his Fine Bushy Tail XXVI. Mr. Terrapin shows his Strength XXVII Why Mr. Possum has no Hair on his Tail XXVIII. The End of Mr. Bear XXIX. Mr. Fox gets into Serious Business XXX. How Mr. Rabbit succeeded in raising a Dust. XXXI. A Plantation Witch XXXII. "Jacky-my-Lantern" XXXIII. Why the Negro is Black XXXIV. The Sad Fate of Mr. Fox Plantation Proverbs His Songs I. Revival Hymn II. Camp-Meeting Song III. Corn-Shucking Song IV. The Plough-hands Song V. Christmas Play-Song VI. Plantation Play-Song VII. Transcriptions: 1. A Plantation Chant 2. A Plantation Serenade VIII. De Big Bethel Church IX. Time goes by Turns A Story of the War His Sayings I. Jeems Rober'son's Last Illness II. Uncle Remus's Church Experience III. Uncle Remus and the Savannah Darkey IV. Turnip Salad as a Text V. A Confession VI. Uncle Remus with the Toothache VII. The Phonograph VIII. Race Improvement IX. In the Role of a Tartar X. A Case of Measles XI. The Emigrants XII. As a Murderer XIII. His Practical View of Things XIV. That Deceitful Jug XV. The Florida Watermelon XVI. Uncle Remus preaches to a Convert XVII. As to Education XVIII. A Temperance Reformer XIX. As a Weather Prophet XX. The Old Man's Troubles XXI. The Fourth of July LEGENDS OF THE OLD PLANTATION I. UNCLE REMUS INITIATES THE LITTLE BOY One evening recently, the lady whom Uncle Remus calls "Miss Sally" missed her little seven-year-old. Making search for him through the house and through the yard, she heard the sound of voices in the old man's cabin, and, looking through the window, saw the child sitting by Uncle Remus. His head rested against the old man's arm, and he was gazing with an expression of the most intense interest into the rough, weather-beaten face, that beamed so kindly upon him. This is what "Miss Sally" heard: "Bimeby, one day, atter Brer Fox bin doin' all dat he could fer ter ketch Brer Rabbit, en Brer Rabbit bein doin' all he could fer ter keep 'im fum it, Brer Fox say to hisse'f dat he'd put up a game on Brer Rabbit, en he ain't mo'n got de wuds out'n his mouf twel Brer Rabbit came a lopin' up de big road, lookin' des ez plump, en ez fat, en ez sassy ez a Moggin hoss in a barley-patch. "'Hol' on dar, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'I ain't got time, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, sorter mendin' his licks. "'I wanter have some confab wid you, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'All right, Brer Fox, but you better holler fum whar you stan'. I'm monstus full er fleas dis mawnin',' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'I seed Brer B'ar yistdiddy, 'sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en he sorter rake me over de coals kaze you en me ain't make frens en live naberly, en I tole 'im dat I'd see you.' "Den Brer Rabbit scratch one year wid his off hinefoot sorter jub'usly, en den he ups en sez, sezee: "'All a settin', Brer Fox. Spose'n you drap roun' ter-morrer en take dinner wid me. We ain't got no great doin's at our house, but I speck de ole 'oman en de chilluns kin sorter scramble roun' en git up sump'n fer ter stay yo' stummick.' "'I'm 'gree'ble, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Den I'll 'pen' on you,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Nex' day, Mr. Rabbit an' Miss Rabbit got up soom, 'fo' day, en raided on a gyarden like Miss Sally's out dar, en got some cabbiges, en some roas'n--years, en some sparrer-grass, en dey fix up a smashin' dinner. Bimeby one er de little Rabbits, playin' out in de back-yard, come runnin' in hollerin', 'Oh, ma! oh, ma! I seed Mr. Fox a comin'!' En den Brer Rabbit he tuck de chilluns by der years en make um set down, en den him and Miss Rabbit sorter dally roun' waitin' for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin' for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin', but no Brer Fox ain't come. Atter 'while Brer Rabbit goes to de do', easy like, en peep out, en dar, stickin' fum behime de cornder, wuz de tip-een' er Brer Fox tail. Den Brer Rabbit shot de do' en sot down, en put his paws behime his years en begin fer ter sing: "'De place wharbouts you spill de grease, Right dar you er boun' ter slide, An' whar you fin' a bunch er ha'r, You'll sholy fine de hide.' "Nex' day, Brer Fox sont word by Mr. Mink, en skuze hisse'f kaze he wuz too sick fer ter come, en he ax Brer Rabbit fer ter come en take dinner wid him, en Brer Rabbit say he wuz 'gree'ble. "Bimeby, w'en de shadders wuz at der shortes', Brer Rabbit he sorter brush up en sa'nter down ter Brer Fox's house, en w'en he got dar, he hear somebody groanin', en he look in de do' an dar he see Brer Fox settin' up in a rockin'-cheer all wrop up wid flannil, en he look mighty weak. Brer Rabbit look all roun', he did, but he ain't see no dinner. De dish-pan wuz settin' on de table, en close by wuz a kyarvin' knife. "'Look like you gwineter have chicken fer dinner, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Yes, Brer Rabbit, dey er nice, en fresh, en tender, 'sez Brer Fox, sezee. "Den Brer Rabbit sorter pull his mustarsh, en say: 'You ain't got no calamus root, is you, Brer Fox? I done got so now dat I can't eat no chicken 'ceppin she's seasoned up wid calamus root.' En wid dat Brer Rabbit lipt out er de do' and dodge 'mong the bushes, en sot dar watchin' for Brer Fox; en he ain't watch long, nudder, kaze Brer Fox flung off de flannil en crope out er de house en got whar he could cloze in on Brer Rabbit, en bimeby Brer Rabbit holler out: 'Oh, Brer Fox! I'll des put yo' calamus root out yer on dish yer stump. Better come git it while hit's fresh,' and wid dat Brer Rabbit gallop off home. En Brer Fox ain't never kotch 'im yit, en w'at's mo', honey, he ain't gwineter." II. THE WONDERFUL TAR BABY STORY "Didn't the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy the next evening. "He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho's you born--Brer Fox did. One day atter Brer Rabbit fool 'im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got 'im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun w'at he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot 'er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer to see what de news wuz gwine ter be. En he didn't hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin' down de road--lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity--dez ez sassy ez a jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come prancin' 'long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz 'stonished. De Tar Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low. "'Mawnin'!' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee--'nice wedder dis mawnin',' sezee. "Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox he lay low. "'How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter segashuate?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'. "'How you come on, den? Is you deaf?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Kaze if you is, I kin holler louder,' sezee. "Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. "'You er stuck up, dat's w'at you is,' says Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I'm gwine ter kyore you, dat's w'at I'm a gwine ter do,' sezee. "Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummick, he did, but Tar- Baby ain't sayin' nothin'. "'I'm gwine ter larn you how ter talk ter 'spectubble folks ef hit's de las' ack,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Ef you don't take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I'm gwine ter bus' you wide open,' sezee. "Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. "Brer Rabbit keep on axin' 'im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin' nothin', twel present'y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis', he did, en blip he tuck 'er side er de head. Right dar's whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis' stuck, en he can't pull loose. De tar hilt 'im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low. "'Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you agin,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch 'er a wipe wid de udder han', en dat stuck. Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low. "'Tu'n me loose, fo' I kick de natchul stuffin' outen you,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'. She des hilt on, en de Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don't tu'n 'im loose he butt 'er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa'ntered fort', lookin' dez ez innercent ez wunner yo' mammy's mockin'- birds. "Howdy, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. 'You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin',' sezee, en den he rolled on de groun', en laft en laft twel he couldn't laff no mo'. 'I speck you'll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain't gwineter take no skuse,' sez Brer Fox, sezee." Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes. "Did the fox eat the rabbit?" asked the little boy to whom the story had been told. "Dat's all de fur de tale goes," replied the old man. "He mout, an den agin he moutent. Some say Judge B'ar come 'long en loosed 'im--some say he didn't. I hear Miss Sally callin'. You better run 'long." III. WHY MR. POSSUM LOVES PEACE "ONE night," said Uncle Remus--taking Miss Sally's little boy on his knee, and stroking the child's hair thoughtfully and caressingly--"one night Brer Possum call by fer Brer Coon, 'cordin' ter 'greement, en atter gobblin' up a dish er fried greens en smokin' a seegyar, dey rambled fort' fer ter see how de ballance er de settlement wuz gittin' long. Brer Coon, he wuz one er deze yer natchul pacers, en he racked 'long same ez Mars John's bay pony, en Brer Possum he went in a han'-gallup; en dey got over heap er groun, mon. Brer Possum, he got his belly full er 'simmons, en Brer Coon, he scoop up a 'bunnunce er frogs en tadpoles. Dey amble long, dey did, des ez sociable ez a basket er kittens, twel bimeby dey hear Mr. Dog talkin' ter hisse'f way off in de woods. "'Spozen he runs up on us, Brer Possum, w'at you gwineter do?' sez Brer Coon, sezee. Brer Possum sorter laugh 'round de cornders un his mouf. "'Oh, ef he come, Brer Coon, I'm gwineter stan' by you,' sez Brer Possum. 'W'at you gwineter do?' sezee. "'Who? me?' sez Brer Coon. 'Ef he run up onter me, I lay I give 'im one twis',' sezee." "Did the dog come?" asked the little boy. "Go 'way, honey!" responded the old man, in an impressive tone. "Go way! Mr. Dog, he come en he come a zoonin'. En he ain't wait fer ter say howdy, nudder. He des sail inter de two un um. De ve'y fus pas he make Brer Possum fetch a grin fum year ter year, en keel over like he wuz dead. Den Mr. Dog, he sail inter Brer Coon, en right dar's whar he drap his money purse, kaze Brer Coon wuz cut out fer dat kinder bizness, en he fa'rly wipe up de face er de yeth wid 'im. You better b'leeve dat w'en Mr. Dog got a chance to make hisse'f skase he tuck it, en w'at der wuz lef' un him went skaddlin' thoo de woods like hit wuz shot outen a muskit. En Brer Coon, he sorter lick his cloze inter shape en rack off, en Brer Possum, he lay dar like he wuz dead, twel bimeby he raise up sorter keerful like, en w'en he fine de coas' cle'r he scramble up en scamper off like sumpin' was atter 'im." Here Uncle Remus paused long enough to pick up a live coal of fire in his fingers, transfer it to the palm of his hand, and thence to his clay pipe, which he had been filling--a proceeding that was viewed by the little boy with undisguised admiration. The old man then proceeded: "Nex' time Brer Possum met Brer Coon, Brer Coon 'fuse ter 'spon' ter his howdy, en dis make Brer Possum feel mighty bad, seein' ez how dey useter make so many 'scurshuns tergedder. "'W'at make you hol' yo' head so high, Brer Coon?' sez Brer Possum, sezee. "'I ain't runnin' wid cowerds deze days,' sez Brer Coon. 'W'en I wants you I'll sen' fer you,' sezee. "Den Brer Possum git mighty mad. "'Who's enny cowerd?' sezee. "'You is,' sez Brer Coon, 'dat's who. I ain't soshatin' wid dem w'at lays down on de groun' en plays dead w'en dar's a free fight gwine on,' sezee. "Den Brer Possum grin en laugh fit to kill hisse'f. "'Lor', Brer Coon, you don't speck I done dat kaze I wuz 'feared, duz you?' sezee. 'W'y I want no mo 'feared dan you is dis minnit. W'at wuz dey fer ter be skeered un?' sezee. 'I know'd you'd git away wid Mr. Dog ef I didn't, en I des lay dar watchin' you shake him, waitin' fer ter put in w'en de time come,' sezee. "Brer Coon tu'n up his nose. "'Dat's a mighty likely tale,' sezee, 'w'en Mr. Dog ain't mo'n tech you 'fo' you keel over, en lay dar stiff,' sezee. "'Dat's des w'at I wuz gwineter tell you 'bout; sez Brer Possum, sezee. 'I want no mo' skeer'd dan you is right now, en' I wuz fixin' fer ter give Mr. Dog a sample er my jaw,' sezee, 'but I'm de most ticklish chap w'at you ever laid eyes on, en no sooner did Mr. Dog put his nose down yer 'mong my ribs dan I got ter laughin', en I laughed twel I ain't had no use er my lim's,' sezee, 'en it's a mussy unto Mr. Dog dat I wuz ticklish, kaze a little mo' en I'd e't 'im up,' sezee. 'I don't mine fightin', Brer Coon, no mo' dan you duz,' sezee, 'but I declar' ter grashus ef I kin stan' ticklin'. Git me in a row whar dey ain't no ticklin' 'lowed, en I'm your man, sezee. "En down ter dis day"--continued Uncle Remus, watching the smoke from his pipe curl upward over the little boy's head--"down ter dis day, Brer Possum's bound ter s'render w'en you tech him in de short ribs, en he'll laugh ef he knows he's gwineter be smashed fer it." IV. HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR MR. FOX "UNCLE REMUS," said the little boy one evening, when he had found the old man with little or nothing to do, "did the fox kill and eat the rabbit when he caught him with the Tar-Baby?" "Law, honey, ain't I tell you 'bout dat?" replied the old darkey, chuckling slyly. "I 'clar ter grashus I ought er tole you dat, but old man Nod wuz ridin' on my eyeleds 'twel a leetle mo'n I'd a dis'member'd my own name, en den on to dat here come yo mammy hollerin' atter you. "W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin? I tole you Brer Rabbit wuz a monstus soon creetur; leas'ways dat's w'at I laid out fer ter tell you. Well, den, honey, don't you go en make no udder calkalashuns, kaze in dem days Brer Rabbit en his fambly wuz at de head er de gang w'en enny racket wuz on han', en dar dey stayed. 'Fo' you begins fer ter wipe yo' eyes 'bout Brer Rabbit, you wait en see whar'bouts Brer Rabbit gwineter fetch up at. But dat's needer yer ner dar. "W'en Brer Fox fine Brer Rabbit mixt up wid de Tar-Baby, he feel mighty good, en he roll on de groun' en laff. Bimeby he up'n say, sezee: "'Well, I speck I got you dis time, Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'maybe I ain't, but I speck I is. You been runnin' roun' here sassin' atter me a mighty long time, but I speck you done come ter de een' er de row. You bin cuttin' up yo' capers en bouncin''roun' in dis neighberhood ontwel you come ter b'leeve yo'se'f de boss er de whole gang. En den you er allers somers whar you got no bizness,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. 'Who ax you fer ter come en strike up a 'quaintance wid dish yer Tar-Baby? En who stuck you up dar whar you iz? Nobody in de roun' worl'. You des tuck en jam yo'se'f on dat Tar-Baby widout waitin' fer enny invite,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, en dar you is, en dar you'll stay twel I fixes up a bresh-pile and fires her up, kaze I'm gwineter bobby-cue you dis day, sho,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble. "'I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'so you don't fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox' sezee, 'but don't fling me in dat brierpatch,' sezee. "'Hit's so much trouble fer ter kindle a fier,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'dat I speck I'll hatter hang you,' sezee. "'Hang me des ez high as you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do fer de Lord's sake don't fling me in dat brier- patch,' sezee. "'I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee. "'Drown me des ez deep ez you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. "'Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee. "'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, 'but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier- patch,' sezee. "Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier-patch. Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call 'im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' crosslegged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out: "'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox--bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers." V. THE STORY OF THE DELUGE AND HOW IT CAME ABOUT "ONE time," said Uncle Remus--adjusting his spectacles so as to be able to see how to thread a large darning-needle with which he was patching his coat--"one time, way back yander, 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed--way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs sorter 'lecshuneer roun' 'mong deyselves, twel at las' dey 'greed fer ter have a 'sembly. In dem days," continued the old man, observing a look of incredulity on the little boy's face, "in dem days creeturs had lots mo' sense dan dey got now; let 'lone dat, dey had sense same like folks. Hit was tech en go wid um, too, mon, en w'en dey make up der mines w'at hatter be done, 'twant mo'n menshun'd 'fo, hit wuz done. Well, dey 'lected dat dey hatter hol' er 'sembly fer ter sorter straighten out marters en hear de complaints, en w'en de day come dey wuz on han'. De Lion, he wuz dar, kase he wuz de king, en he hatter be der. De Rhynossyhoss, he wuz dar, en de Elephant, he wuz dar, en de Cammils, en de Cows, en plum' down ter de Crawfishes, dey wuz dar. Dey wuz all dar. En w'en de Lion shuck his mane, en tuck his seat in de big cheer, den de sesshun begun fer ter commence. "What did they do, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "I can't skacely call to mine 'zackly w'at dey did do, but dey spoke speeches, en hollered, en cusst, en flung der langwidge 'roun' des like w'en yo' daddy wuz gwineter run fer de legislater en got lef'. Howsomever, dey 'ranged der 'fairs, en splained der bizness. Bimeby, w'ile dey wuz 'sputin' 'longer one er nudder, de Elephant trompled on one er de Crawfishes. Co'se w'en dat creetur put his foot down, w'atsumever's under dar wuz boun' fer ter be squshed, en dey wa'n't nuff er dat Crawfish lef' fer ter tell dat he'd bin dar. "Dis make de udder Crawfishes mighty mad, en dey sorter swarmed tergedder en draw'd up a kinder peramble wid some wharfo'es in it, en read her out in de 'sembly. But, bless grashus! sech a racket wuz a gwine on dat nobody ain't hear it, 'ceppin' maybe de Mud Turkle en de Spring Lizzud, en dere enfloons wuz pow'ful lackin'. "Bimeby, w'iles de Nunicorn wuz 'sputin' wid de Lion, en w'ile de Hyener wuz a laughin' ter hisse'f, de Elephant squshed anudder one er de Crawfishes, en a little mo'n he'd er ruint de Mud Turkle. Den de Crawfishes, w'at dey wuz lef' un um, swarmed tergedder en draw'd up anudder peramble wid sum mo' wharfo'es; but dey might ez well er sung Ole Dan Tucker ter a harrycane. De udder creeturs wuz too busy wid der fussin' fer ter 'spon' unto de Crawfishes. So dar dey wuz, de Crawfishes, en dey didn't know w'at minnit wuz gwineter be de nex'; en dey kep' on gittin madder en madder en skeerder en skeerder, twel bimeby dey gun de wink ter de Mud Turkle en de Spring Lizzud, en den dey bo'd little holes in de groun' en went down outer sight." "Who did, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "De Crawfishes, honey. Dey bo'd inter de groun' en kep' on bo'in twel dey onloost de fountains er de yeth; en de waters squirt out, en riz higher en higher twel de hills wuz kivvered, en de creeturs wuz all drownded; en all bekaze dey let on 'mong deyselves dat dey wuz bigger dan de Crawfishes." Then the old man blew the ashes from a smoking yam, and proceeded to remove the peeling. "Where was the ark, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired, presently. "W'ich ark's dat?" asked the old man, in a tone of well-feigned curiosity. "Noah's ark," replied the child. "Don't you pester wid ole man Noah, honey. I boun' he tuck keer er dat ark. Dat's w'at he wuz dar fer, en dat's w'at he done. Leas'ways, dat's w'at dey tells me. But don't you bodder longer dat ark, 'ceppin' your mammy fetches it up. Dey mout er bin two deloojes, en den agin dey moutent. Ef dey wuz enny ark in dish yer w'at de Crawfishes brung on, I ain't heern tell un it, en w'en dey ain't no arks 'roun', I ain't got no time fer ter make um en put um in dar. Hit's gittin' yo' bedtime, honey." VI. MR. RABBIT GROSSLY DECEIVES MR. FOX ONE evening when the little boy, whose nights with Uncle Remus were as entertaining as those Arabian ones of blessed memory, had finished supper and hurried out to sit with his venerable patron, he found the old man in great glee. Indeed, Uncle Remus was talking and laughing to himself at such a rate that the little boy was afraid he had company. The truth is, Uncle Remus had heard the child coming, and, when the rosy-cheeked chap put his head in at the door, was engaged in a monologue, the burden of which seemed to be-- "Ole Molly Har', W'at you doin' dar, Settin' in de cornder Smokin' yo' seegyar?" As a matter of course this vague allusion reminded the little boy of the fact that the wicked Fox was still in pursuit of the Rabbit, and he immediately put his curiosity in the shape of a question. "Uncle Remus, did the Rabbit have to go clean away when he got loose from the Tar-Baby?" "Bless gracious, honey, dat he didn't. Who? Him? You dunno nuthin' 'tall 'bout Brer Rabbit ef dat's de way you puttin' 'im down. W'at he gwine 'way fer? He moughter stayed sorter close twel de pitch rub off'n his ha'r, but tweren't menny days 'fo' he wuz lopin' up en down de neighborhood same ez ever, en I dunno ef he weren't mo' sassier dan befo'. "Seem like dat de tale 'bout how he got mixt up wid de Tar-Baby got 'roun' 'mongst de nabers. Leas'ways, Miss Meadows en de gals got win' un' it, en de nex' time Brer Rabbit paid um a visit Miss Meadows tackled 'im 'bout it, en de gals sot up a monstus gigglement. Brer Rabbit, he sot up des ez cool ez a cowcumber, he did, en let em run on. "Who was Miss Meadows, Uncle Remus?" inquired the little boy. "Don't ax me, honey. She wuz in de tale, Miss Meadows en de gals wuz, en de tale I give you like hi't wer' gun ter me. Brer Rabbit, he sot dar, he did, sorter lam' like, en den bimeby he cross his legs, he did, and wink his eye slow, en up and say, sezee: "'Ladies, Brer Fox wuz my daddy's ridin'-hoss fer thirty year; maybe mo', but thirty year dat I knows un,' sezee; en den he paid um his 'specks, en tip his beaver, en march off, he did, des ez stiff en ez stuck up ez a fire-stick. "Nex' day, Brer Fox cum a callin', and w'en he gun fer ter laugh 'bout Brer Rabbit, Miss Meadows en de gals, dey ups en tells 'im 'bout w'at Brer Rabbit Say. Den Brer Fox grit his tushes sho' nuff, he did, en he look mighty dumpy, but w'en he riz fer ter go he up en say, sezee: "'Ladies, I ain't 'sputin' w'at you say, but I'll make Brer Rabbit chaw up his words en spit um out right yer whar you kin see 'im,' sezee, en wid dat off Brer Fox put. "En w'en he got in de big road, he shuck de dew off'n his tail, en made a straight shoot fer Brer Rabbit's house. W'en he got dar, Brer Rabbit wuz spectin' un 'im, en de do' wuz shet fas'. Brer Fox knock. Nobody ain't ans'er. Brer Fox knock. Nobody ans'er. Den he knock agin--blam! blam! Den Brer Rabbit holler out mighty weak: 'Is dat you, Brer Fox? I want you ter run en fetch de doctor. Dat bait er pusly w'at I e't dis mawnin' is gittin' 'way wid me. Do, please, Brer Fox, run quick,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'I come atter you, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. 'Dar's gwineter be a party up at Miss Meadows's,' sezee. 'All de gals 'll be dere, en I prommus' dat I'd fetch you. De gals, dey 'lowed dat hit wouldn't be no party 'ceppin' I fotch you,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "Den Brer Rabbit say he wuz too sick, en Brer Fox say he wuzzent, en dar dey had it up and down, 'sputin' en contendin'. Brer Rabbit say he can't walk. Brer Fox say he tote 'im. Brer Rabbit say how? Brer Fox say in his arms. Brer Rabbit say he drap 'im. Brer Fox 'low he won't. Bimeby Brer Rabbit say he go ef Brer Fox tote 'im on his back. Brer Fox say he would. Brer Rabbit say he can't ride widout a saddle. Brer Fox say he git de saddle. Brer Rabbit say he can't set in saddle less he have bridle fer ter hol' by. Brer Fox say he git de bridle. Brer Rabbit say he can't ride widout bline bridle, kaze Brer Fox be shyin' at stumps long de road, en fling 'im off. Brer Fox say he git bline bridle. Den Brer Rabbit say he go. Den Brer Fox say he ride Brer Rabbit mos' up ter Miss Meadows's, en den he could git down en walk de balance er de way. Brer Rabbit 'greed, en den Brer Fox lipt out atter de saddle en de bridle. "Co'se Brer Rabbit know de game dat Brer Fox wuz fixin' fer ter play, en he 'termin' fer ter outdo 'im, en by de time he koam his ha'r en twis' his mustarsh, en sorter rig up, yer come Brer Fox, saddle en bridle on, en lookin' ez peart ez a circus pony. He trot up ter de do' en stan' dar pawin' de ground en chompin' de bit same like sho 'nuff hoss, en Brer Rabbit he mount, he did, en dey amble off. Brer Fox can't see behime wid de bline bridle on, but bimeby he feel Brer Rabbit raise one er his foots. "'W'at you doin' now, Brer Rabbit?' sezee. "'Short'nin' de lef stir'p, Brer Fox,' sezee. "Bimeby Brer Rabbit raise up de udder foot. "'W'at you doin' now, Brer Rabbit?' sezee. "'Pullin' down my pants, Brer Fox,' sezee. "All de time, bless grashus, honey, Brer Rabbit wer' puttin' on his spurrers, en w'en dey got close to Miss Meadows's, whar Brer Rabbit wuz to git off, en Brer Fox made a motion fer ter stan' still, Brer Rabbit slap de spurrers into Brer Fox flanks, en you better b'leeve he got over groun'. W'en dey got ter de house, Miss Meadows en all de gals wuz settin' on de peazzer, en stidder stoppin' at de gate, Brer Rabbit rid on by, he did, en den come gallopin' down de road en up ter de hoss-rack, w'ich he hitch Brer Fox at, en den he santer inter de house, he did, en shake han's wid de gals, en set dar, smokin' his seegyar same ez a town man. Bimeby he draw in a long puff, en den let hit out in a cloud, en squar hisse'f back en holler out, he did: "'Ladies, ain't I done tell you Brer Fox wuz de ridin'-hoss fer our fambly? He sorter losin' his gait now, but I speck I kin fetch 'im all right in a mont' er so,' sezee. "En den Brer Rabbit sorter grin, he did, en de gals giggle, en Miss Meadows, she praise up de pony, en dar wuz Brer Fox hitch fas' ter de rack, en couldn't he'p hisse'f." "Is that all, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy as the old man paused. "Dat ain't all, honey, but 'twon't do fer ter give out too much cloff fer ter cut one pa'r pants," replied the old man sententiously. VII. MR. FOX IS AGAIN VICTIMIZED WHEN "Miss Sally's" little boy went to Uncle Remus the next night to hear the conclusion of the adventure in which the Rabbit made a riding-horse of the Fox to the great enjoyment and gratification of Miss Meadows and the girls, he found the old man in a bad humor. "I ain't tellin' no tales ter bad chilluns," said Uncle Remus curtly. "But, Uncle Remus, I ain't bad," said the little boy plaintively. "Who dat chunkin' dem chickens dis mawnin? Who dat knockin' out fokes's eyes wid dat Yallerbammer sling des 'fo' dinner? Who dat sickin' dat pinter puppy atter my pig? Who dat scatterin' my ingun sets? Who dat flingin' rocks on top er my house, w'ich a little mo' en one un em would er drap spang on my head?" "Well, now, Uncle Remus, I didn't go to do it. I won't do so any more. Please, Uncle Remus, if you will tell me, I'll run to the house and bring you some tea-cakes." "Seein' um's better'n hearin' tell un um, replied the old man, the severity of his countenance relaxing somewhat; but the little boy darted out, and in a few minutes came running back with his pockets full and his hands full. "I lay yo' mammy 'll 'spishun dat de rats' stummicks is widenin' in dis neighborhood w'en she come fer ter count up 'er cakes," said Uncle Remus, with a chuckle. "Deze," he continued, dividing the cakes into two equal parts--"dese I'll tackle now, en dese I'll lay by fer Sunday. "Lemme see. I mos' dis'member wharbouts Brer Fox en Brer Rabbit wuz." "The rabbit rode the fox to Miss Meadows's, and hitched him to the horse-rack," said the little boy. "W'y co'se he did," said Uncle Remus. "C'ose he did. Well, Brer Rabbit rid Brer Fox up, he did, en tied 'im to de rack, en den sot out in de peazzer wid de gals a smokin' er his seegyar wid mo' proudness dan w'at you mos' ever see. Dey talk, en dey sing, en dey play on de peanner, de gals did, twel bimeby hit come time fer Brer Rabbit fer to be gwine, en he tell um all good-by, en strut out to de hoss-rack same's ef he wuz de king er de patter- rollers,*1 en den he mount Brer Fox en ride off. "Brer Fox ain't sayin' nuthin' 'tall. He des rack off, he did, en keep his mouf shet, en Brer Rabbit know'd der wuz bizness cookin' up fer him, en he feel monstus skittish. Brer Fox amble on twel he git in de long lane, outer sight er Miss Meadows's house, en den he tu'n loose, he did. He rip en he ra'r, en he cuss, en he swar; he snort en he cavort." "What was he doing that for, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired. "He wuz tryin' fer ter fling Brer Rabbit off'n his back, bless yo' soul! But he des might ez well er rastle wid his own shadder. Every time he hump hisse'f Brer Rabbit slap de spurrers in 'im, en dar dey had it, up en down. Brer Fox fa'rly to' up de groun' he did, en he jump so high en he jump so quick dat he mighty nigh snatch his own tail off. Dey kep' on gwine on dis way twel bimeby Brer Fox lay down en roll over, he did, en dis sorter onsettle Brer Rabbit, but by de time Brer Fox got back on his footses agin, Brer Rabbit wuz gwine thoo de underbresh mo' samer dan a race-hoss. Brer Fox he lit out atter 'im, he did, en he push Brer Rabbit so close dat it wuz 'bout all he could do fer ter git in a holler tree. Hole too little fer Brer Fox fer ter git in, en he hatter lay down en res en gedder his mine tergedder. "While he wuz layin' dar, Mr. Buzzard come floppin' 'long, en seein' Brer Fox stretch out on de groun', he lit en view de premusses. Den Mr. Buzzard sorter shake his wing, en put his head on one side, en say to hisse'f like, sezee: "'Brer Fox dead, en I so sorry,' sezee. "'No I ain't dead, nudder,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. 'I got ole man Rabbit pent up in yer,' sezee, 'en I'm a gwine ter git 'im dis time ef it take twel Chris'mus,' sezee. "Den, atter some mo' palaver, Brer Fox make a bargain dat Mr. Buzzard wuz ter watch de hole, en keep Brer Rabbit dar wiles Brer Fox went atter his axe. Den Brer Fox, he lope off, he did, en Mr. Buzzard, he tuck up his stan' at de hole. Bimeby, w'en all git still, Brer Rabbit sorter scramble down close ter de hole, he did, en holler out: "'Brer Fox! Oh! Brer Fox!' "Brer Fox done gone, en nobody say nuthin'. Den Brer Rabbit squall out like he wuz mad; sezee: "'You needn't talk less you wanter,' sezee; 'I knows you er dar, en I ain't keerin',' sezee. 'I des wanter tell you dat I wish mighty bad Brer Tukkey Buzzard wuz here,' sezee. "Den Mr. Buzzard try ter talk like Brer Fox: "'W'at you want wid Mr. Buzzard?' sezee. "'Oh, nuthin' in 'tickler, 'cep' dere's de fattes' gray squir'l in yer dat ever I see,' sezee, 'en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard wuz 'roun' he'd be mighty glad fer ter git 'im,' sezee. "'How Mr. Buzzard gwine ter git 'im?' sez de Buzzard, sezee. "'Well, dar's a little hole roun' on de udder side er de tree,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard wuz here so he could take up his stan' dar,' sezee, 'I'd drive dat squir'l out,' sezee. "'Drive 'im out, den,' sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee, 'en I'll see dat Brer Tukkey Buzzard gits 'im,' sezee. "Den Brer Rabbit kick up a racket, like he wer' drivin' sumpin' out, en Mr. Buzzard he rush 'roun' fer ter ketch de squir'l, en Brer Rabbit, he dash out, he did, en he des fly fer home." At this point Uncle Remus took one of the teacakes, held his head back, opened his mouth, dropped the cake in with a sudden motion, looked at the little boy with an expression of astonishment, and then closed his eyes, and begun to chew, mumbling as an accompaniment the plaintive tune of "Don't you Grieve atter Me." The seance was over; but, before the little boy went into the "big house," Uncle Remus laid his rough hand tenderly on the child's shoulder, and remarked, in a confidential tone: "Honey, you mus' git up soon Chris'mus mawnin' en open de do'; kase I'm gwineter bounce in on Marse John en Miss Sally, en holler 'Chris'mus gif'' des like I useter endurin' de farmin' days fo' de war, w'en ole Miss wuz 'live. I bound' dey don't fergit de ole nigger, nudder. W'en you hear me callin' de pigs, honey, you des hop up en onfassen de do'. I lay I'll give Marse John one er dese yer 'sprize parties." *1 Patrols. In the country districts, order was kept on the plantations at night by the knowledge that they were liable to be visited at any moment by the patrols. Hence a song current among the negroes, the chorus of which was: "Run, nigger, run; patter-roller ketch you-- Run, nigger, run; hit's almos' day." VIII. MR. FOX IS "OUTDONE" BY MR. BUZZARD "EF I don't run inter no mistakes," remarked Uncle Remus, as the little boy came tripping in to see him after supper, "Mr. Tukkey Buzzard wuz gyardin' de holler whar Brer Rabbit went in at, en w'ich he come out un." The silence of the little boy verified the old man's recollection. "Well, Mr. Buzzard, he feel mighty lonesome, he did, but he done prommust Brer Fox dat he'd stay, en he 'termin' fer ter sorter hang 'roun' en jine in de joke. En he ain't hatter wait long, nudder, kase bimeby yer come Brer Fox gallopin' thoo de woods wid his axe on his shoulder. "'How you speck Brer Rabbit gittin' on, Brer Buzzard?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Oh, he in dar,' sez Brer Buzzard, sezee. 'He mighty still, dough. I speck he takin' a nap,' sezee. "'Den I'm des in time fer ter wake im up, sez Brer Fox, sezee. En wid dat he fling off his coat, en spit in his han's, en grab de axe. Den he draw back en come down on de tree--pow! En eve'y time he come down wid de axe--pow!--Mr. Buzzard, he step high, he did, en holler out: "'Oh, he in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho.' "En eve'y time a chip ud fly off, Mr. Buzzard, he'd jump, en dodge, en hol' his head sideways, he would, en holler: "'He in dar, Brer Fox. I done heerd 'im. He in dar, sho.' "En Brer Fox, he lammed away at dat holler tree, he did, like a man maulin' rails, twel bimeby, atter he done got de tree mos' cut thoo, he stop fer ter ketch his bref, en he seed Mr. Buzzard laughin' behime his back, he did, en right den en dar, widout gwine enny fudder, Brer Fox, he smelt a rat. But Mr. Buzzard, he keep on holler'n: "'He in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho. I done seed 'im.' "Den Brer Fox, he make like he peepin' up de holler, en he say, sezee: "'Run yer, Brer Buzzard, en look ef dis ain't Brer Rabbit's foot hanging down yer.' "En Mr. Buzzard, he come steppin' up, he did, same ez ef he wer treddin' on kurkle-burs, en he stick his head in de hole; en no sooner did he done dat dan Brer Fox grab 'im. Mr. Buzzard flap his wings, en scramble 'roun' right smartually, he did, but 'twant no use. Brer Fox had de 'vantage er de grip, he did, en he hilt 'im right down ter de groun'. Den Mr. Buzzard squall out, sezee: "'Lemme 'lone, Brer Fox. Tu'n me loose,' sezee; 'Brer Rabbit 'll git out. You er gittin' close at 'im,' sezee, 'en leb'm mo' licks'll fetch 'im,' sezee. "'I'm nigher ter you, Brer Buzzard,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'dan I'll be ter Brer Rabbit dis day,' sezee. 'W'at you fool me fer?' sezee. "'Lemme lone, Brer Fox,' sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee; my ole 'oman waitin' fer me. Brer Rabbit in dar,' sezee. "'Dar's a bunch er his fur on dat black-be'y bush,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en dat ain't de way he come,' sezee. "Den Mr. Buzzard up'n tell Brer Fox how 'twuz, en he 'low'd, Mr. Buzzard did, dat Brer Rabbit wuz de lowdownest w'atsizname w'at he ever run up wid. Den Brer Fox say, sezee: "'Dat's needer here ner dar, Brer Buzzard,' sezee. 'I lef' you yer fer ter watch dish yere hole, en I lef' Brer Rabbit in dar. I comes back en I fines you at de 'ole en Brer Rabbit ain't in dar,' sezee. 'I'm gwineter make you pay fer't. I done bin tampered wid twel plum' down ter de sap sucker'll set on a log en sassy me. I'm gwineter fling you in a bresh-heap en burn you up,' sezee. "'Ef you fling me on der fier, Brer Fox, I'll fly 'way,' sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee. "'Well, den, I'll settle yo' hash right now,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, en wid dat he grab Mr. Buzzard by de tail, he did, en make fer ter dash 'im 'gin de groun', but des 'bout dat time de tail fedders come out, en Mr. Buzzard sail off like one er dese yer berloons; en ez he riz, he holler back: "'You gimme good start, Brer Fox,' sezee, en Brer Fox sot dar en watch 'im fly outer sight." "But what became of the Rabbit, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Don't you pester longer Brer Rabbit, honey, en don't you fret 'bout 'im. You'll year whar he went en how he come out. Dish yer col' snap rastles wid my bones, now," continued the old man, putting on his hat and picking up his walking-stick. "Hit rastles wid me monstus, en I gotter rack 'roun' en see if I kin run up agin some Chris'mus leavin's." IX. MISS COW FALLS A VICTIM TO MR. RABBIT "UNCLE REMUS," said the little boy, "what became of the Rabbit after he fooled the Buzzard, and got out of the hollow tree?" "Who? Brer Rabbit? Bless yo' soul, honey, Brer Rabbit went skippin' long home, he did, des ez sassy ez a jay-bird at a sparrer's nes'. He went gallopin' 'long, he did, but he feel mighty fired out, en stiff in his jints, en he wuz mighty nigh dead for sumpin fer ter drink, en bimeby, w'en he got mos' home, he spied ole Miss Cow feedin' roun' in a fiel', he did, en he 'termin' fer ter try his han' wid 'er. Brer Rabbit know mighty well dat Miss Cow won't give 'im no milk, kaze she done 'fuse 'im mo'n once, en w'en his ole 'oman wuz sick, at dat. But never mind dat. Brer Rabbit sorter dance up long side er de fence, he did, en holler out: "'Howdy, Sis Cow,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'W'y, howdy, Brer Rabbit,' sez Miss Cow, sez she. "'How you fine yo'se'f deze days, Sis Cow?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'I'm sorter toler'ble, Brer Rabbit; how you come on?' sez Miss Cow, sez she. "'Oh, I'm des toler'ble myse'f, Sis Cow; sorter linger'n' twix' a bauk en a break-down,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'How yo' fokes, Brer Rabbit?' sez Miss Cow, sez she. "'Dey er des middlin', Sis Cow; how Brer Bull gittin' on?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Sorter so-so,' sez Miss Cow, sez she. "'Dey er some mighty nice 'simmons up dis tree, Sis Cow,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I'd like mighty well fer ter have some un um,' sezee. "'How you gwineter git um, Brer Rabbit?' sez she. "'I 'lowed maybe dat I might ax you fer ter butt 'gin de tree, en shake some down, Sis Cow,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "C'ose Miss Cow don't wanter diskommerdate Brer Rabbit, en she march up ter de 'simmon tree, she did, en hit it a rap wid 'er horns--blam! Now, den," continued Uncle Remus, tearing off the comer of a plug of tobacco and cramming it into his mouth--"now, den, dem 'simmons wuz green ez grass, en na'er one never drap. Den Miss Cow butt de tree--blim! Na'er 'simmon drap. Den Miss Cow sorter back off little, en run agin de tree--blip! No 'simmons never drap. Den Miss Cow back off little fudder, she did, en hi'st her tail on 'er back, en come agin de tree, kerblam! en she come so fas', en she come so hard, twel one 'er her horns went spang thoo de tree, en dar she wuz. She can't go forerds, en she can't go backerds. Dis zackly w'at Brer Rabbit waitin' fer, en he no sooner seed ole Miss Cow all fas'en'd up dan he jump up, he did, en cut de pidjin-wing. "'Come he'p me out, Brer Rabbit,' sez Miss Cow, sez she. "'I can't clime, Sis Cow,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but I'll run'n tell Brer Bull,' sezee; en wid dat Brer Rabbit put out fer home, en 'twan't long 'fo here he come wid his ole 'oman en all his chilluns, en de las' one er de fambly wuz totin' a pail. De big uns had big pails, en de little uns had little pails. En dey all s'roundid ole Miss Cow, dey did, en you hear me, honey, dey milk't 'er dry. De ole uns milk't en de young uns milk't, en den w'en dey done got nuff, Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee: "'I wish you mighty well, Sis Cow. I 'low'd, bein's how dat you'd hatter sorter camp out all night dat I'd better come en swaje yo' bag,' sezee." "Do which, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Go long, honey! Swaje 'er bag. W'en cows don't git milk't, der bag swells, en you k'n hear um a moanin' en a beller'n des like dey wuz gittin' hurtid. Dat's w'at Brer Rabbit done. He 'sembled his fambly, he did, en he swaje ole Miss Cow's bag. "Miss Cow, she stood dar, she did, en she study en study, en strive fer ter break loose, but de horn done bin jam in de tree so tight dat twuz way 'fo day in de mornin' 'fo' she loose it. Anyhow hit wuz endurin' er de night, en atter she git loose she sorter graze 'roun', she did, fer ter jestify 'er stummuck she low'd, ole Miss Cow did, dat Brer Rabbit be hoppin' long dat way fer ter see how she gittin' on, en she tuck'n lay er trap fer 'im; en des 'bout sunrise w'at'd ole Miss Cow do but march up ter de 'simmon tree en stick er horn back in de hole? But, bless yo' soul, honey, w'ile she wuz croppin' de grass she tuck one mou'ful too menny, kaze w'en she hitch on ter de 'simmon tree agin, Brer Rabbit wuz settin' in de fence cornder a watchin' un 'er. Den Brer Rabbit he say ter hisse'f: "'Heyo,' sezee, 'w'at dis yer gwine on now? Hol' yo' hosses, Sis Cow, twel you hear me comin',' sezee. "En den he crope off down de fence, Brer Rabbit did, en bimeby here he come--lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity--des a sailin' down de big road. "'Mornin', Sis Cow,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'bow you come on dis mornin'?' sezee. "Po'ly, Brer Rabbit, poly,' sez Miss Cow, sez she. 'I ain't had no res' all night,' sez she. 'I can't pull loose,' sez she, 'but ef you'll come en ketch holt er my tail, Brer Rabbit,' sez she, 'I reckin may be I kin fetch my horn out,' sez she. Den Brer Rabbit, he come up little closer, but he ain't gittin' too close. "'I speck I'm nigh nuff, Sis Cow,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'I'm a mighty puny man, en I might git trompled,' sezee. 'You do de pullin', Sis Cow,' sezee, en I'll do de gruntin,' sezee. "Den Miss Cow, she pull out 'er horn, she did, en tuck atter Brer Rabbit, en down de big road dey had it, Brer Rabbit wid his years laid back, en Miss Cow wid 'er head down en 'er tail curl. Brer Rabbit kep' on gainin', en bimeby he dart in a brier-patch, en by de time Miss Cow come long he had his head stickin' out, en his eyes look big ez Miss Sally's chany sassers. "'Heyo, Sis Cow! whar you gwine?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Howdy, Brer Big-Eyes,' sez Miss Cow, sez she. 'Is you seed Brer Rabbit go by?' "'He des dis minit pass,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en he look mighty sick,' sezee. "En wid dat, Miss Cow tuck down de road like de dogs wuz atter er, en Brer Rabbit, he des lay down dar in de brier-patch en roll en laugh twel his sides hurtid 'im. He bleedzd ter laff. Fox atter 'im, Buzzard atter 'im, en Cow atter 'im, en dey ain't kotch 'im yet." X. MR. TERRAPIN APPEARS UPON THE SCENE "MISS SALLY'S" little boy again occupying the anxious position of auditor, Uncle Remus took the shovel and "put de noses er de chunks tergedder," as he expressed it, and then began: "One day, atter Sis Cow done run pas' 'er own shadder tryin' fer ter ketch 'im. Brer Rabbit tuck'n 'low dat he wuz gwineter drap in en see Miss Meadows en de gals, en he got out his piece er lookin'-glass en primp up, he did, en sot out. Gwine canterin' long de road, who should Brer Rabbit run up wid but ole Brer Tarrypin--de same ole one-en-sixpunce. Brer Rabbit stop, he did, en rap on de roof er Brer Tarrypin house." "On the roof of his house, Uncle Remus?" interrupted the little boy. "Co'se honey, Brer Tarrypin kyar his house wid 'im. Rain er shine, hot er col', strike up wid ole Brer Tarrypin w'en you will en w'ilst you may, en whar you fine 'im, dar you'll fine his shanty. Hit's des like I tell you. So den! Brer Rabbit he rap on de roof er Brer Tarrypin's house, he did, en ax wuz he in, en Brer Tarrypin 'low dat he wuz, en den Brer Rabbit, he ax 'im howdy, en den Brer Tarrypin he likewise 'spon' howdy, en den Brer Rabbit he say whar wuz Brer Tarrypin gwine, en Brer Tarrypin, he say w'ich he wern't gwine nowhar skasely. Den Brer Rabbit 'low he wuz on his way fer ter see Miss Meadows en de gals, en he ax Brer Tarrypin ef he won't jine in en go long, en Brer Tarrypin 'spon' he don't keer ef he do, en den dey sot out. Dey had plenty er time fer confabbin' 'long de way, but bimeby dey got dar, en Miss Meadows en de gals dey come ter de do', dey did, en ax um in, en in dey went. "W'en dey got in, Brer Tarrypin wuz so flat-footed dat he wuz too low on de flo', en he wern't high nuff in a cheer, but while dey wuz all scrambling' 'roun' tryin' fer ter git Brer Tarrypin a cheer, Brer Rabbit, he pick 'im up en put 'im on de shelf whar de water-bucket sot, en ole Brer Tarrypin, he lay back up dar, he did, des es proud ez a nigger wid a cook possum. "Co'se de talk fell on Brer Fox, en Miss Meadows en de gals make a great 'miration 'bout w'at a gaily ridin'-hoss Brer Fox wuz, en dey make lots er fun, en laugh en giggle same like gals duz deze days. Brer Rabbit, he sot dar in de cheer smokin' his seegyar, en he sorter cle'r up his th'oat, en say, sezee: "I'd er rid 'im over dis mawnin', ladies,' sezee, but I rid 'im so hard yistiddy dat he went lame in de off fo' leg, en I speck I'll hatter swop 'im off yit,' sezee. "Den Brer Tarrypin, he up'n say, sezee: "'Well, ef you gwineter sell 'im, Brer Rabbit,' sezee, 'sell him some'rs out'n dis naberhood, kase he done bin yer too long now,' sezee. 'No longer'n day 'fo' yistiddy,' sezee, 'Brer Fox pass me on de road, en whatter you reckin he say?' sezee: "'Law, Brer Tarrypin,' sez Miss Meadows, sez she, 'you don't mean ter say he cusst?' sez she, en den de gals hilt der fans up 'fo' der faces. "'Oh, no, ma'am,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'he didn't cusst, but he holler out--"Heyo, Stinkin' Jim!"' sezee. "'Oh, my! You hear dat, gals?' sez Miss Meadows, sez she; 'Brer Fox call Brer Tarrypin Stinkin' Jim,' sez she, en den Miss Meadows en de gals make great wonderment how Brer Fox kin talk dat a way 'bout nice man like Brer Tarrypin. "But bless grashus, honey! w'ilst all dis gwine on, Brer Fox wuz stannin' at de back do' wid one year at de cat-hole lissenin'. Eave-drappers don't hear no good er deyse'f, en de way Brer Fox wuz 'bused dat day wuz a caution. "Bimeby Brer Fox stick his head in de do', en holler out: "'Good evenin', fokes, I wish you mighty well,' sezee, en wid dat he make a dash for Brer Rabbit, but Miss Meadows en de gals dey holler en squall, dey did, en Brer Tarrypin he got ter scramblin' roun' up dar on de shelf, en off he come, en blip he tuck Brer Fox on de back er de head. Dis sorter stunted Brer Fox, en w'en he gedder his 'membunce de mos' he seed wuz a pot er greens turnt over in de fireplace, en a broke cheer. Brer Rabbit wuz gone, en Brer Tarrypin wuz gone, en Miss Meadows en de gals wuz gone. "Where did the Rabbit go, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked, after a pause. "Bless yo' soul, honey! Brer Rabbit he skint up de chimbly--dat's w'at turnt de pot er greens over. Brer Tarrypin, he crope under de bed, he did, en got behime de cloze-chist, en Miss Meadows en de gals, dey run out in de yard. "Brer Fox, he sorter look roun' en feel or de back er his head, whar Brer Tarrypin lit, but he don't see no sine er Brer Rabbit. But de smoke en de ashes gwine up de chimbly got de best er Brer Rabbit, en bimeby he sneeze--huckychow! "'Aha!' sez Brer Fox, sezee; 'you er dar, is you?' sezee. 'Well, I'm gwineter smoke you out, ef it takes a mont'. You er mine dis time,' sezee. Brer Rabbit ain't Sayin' nuthin'. "'Ain't you comin' down?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. Brer Rabbit ain't sayin' nuthin'. Den Brer Fox, he went out atter some wood, he did, en w'en he come back he hear Brer Rabbit laughin'. "'W'at you laughin' at, Brer Rabbit?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Can't tell you, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Better tell, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Tain't nuthin' but a box er money somebody done gone en lef' up yer in de chink er de chimbly,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Don't b'leeve you,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Look up en see,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en w'en Brer Fox look up, Brer Rabbit spit his eyes full er terbacker joose, he did, en Brer Fox, he make a break fer de branch, en Brer Rabbit he come down en tole de ladies good-by. "'How you git 'im off, Brer Rabbit?' sez Miss Meadows, sez she. "'Who? me?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'w'y I des tuck en tole 'im dat ef he didn't go 'long home en stop playin' his pranks on spectubble fokes, dat I'd take 'im out and th'ash 'im,' sezee." "And what became of the Terrapin?" asked the little boy. "Oh, well den!" exclaimed the old man, "chilluns can't speck ter know all 'bout eve'ything 'fo' dey git some res'. Dem eyelids er yone wanter be propped wid straws dis minnit." XI. MR. WOLF MAKES A FAILURE "I LAY yo' ma got comp'ny," said Uncle Remus, as the little boy entered the old man's door with a huge piece of mince-pie in his hand, 'en ef she ain't got comp'ny, den she done gone en drap de cubberd key som'ers whar you done run up wid it." "Well, I saw the pie lying there, Uncle Remus, and I just thought I'd fetch it out to you." "Tooby sho, honey," replied the old man, regarding the child with admiration. "Tooby sho, honey; dat changes marters. Chris'mus doin's is outer date, en dey ain't got no bizness layin' roun' loose. Dish yer pie," Uncle Remus continued, holding it up and measuring it with an experienced eye, "will gimme strenk fer ter persoo on atter Brer Fox en Brer Rabbit en de udder creeturs w'at dey roped in 'long wid um." Here the old man paused, and proceeded to demolish the pie--a feat accomplished in a very short time. Then he wiped the crumbs from his beard and began: "Brer Fox feel so bad, en he git so mad 'bout Brer Rabbit, dat he dunner w'at ter do, en he look mighty down-hearted. Bimeby, one day wiles he wuz gwine 'long de road, old Brer Wolf come up wid 'im. W'en dey done howdyin' en axin' atter one nudder's fambly connexshun, Brer Wolf, he 'low, he did, dat der wuz sump'n wrong wid Brer Fox, en Brer Fox, he 'low'd der wern't, en he went on en laugh en make great terdo kaze Brer Wolf look like he spishun sump'n. But Brer Wolf, he got mighty long head, en he sorter broach 'bout Brer Rabbit's kyar'ns on, kaze de way dat Brer Rabbit 'ceive Brer Fox done got ter be de talk er de naberhood. Den Brer Fox en Brer Wolf dey sorter palavered on, dey did, twel bimeby Brer Wolf he up'n say dat he done got plan fix fer ter trap Brer Rabbit. Den Brer Fox say how. Den Brer Wolf up'n tell 'im dat de way fer ter git de drap on Brer Rabbit wuz ter git 'im in Brer Fox house. Brer Fox dun know Brer Rabbit uv ole, en he know dat sorter game done wo' ter a frazzle, but Brer Wolf, he talk mighty 'swadin'. "'How you gwine git 'im dar?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Fool 'im dar,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. "'Who gwine do de foolin'?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'I'll do de foolin',' sez Brer Wolf, sezee, 'ef you'll do de gamin',' sezee. "'How you gwine do it?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'You run 'long home, en git on de bed, en make like you dead, en don't you say nothin' twel Brer Rabbit come en put his han's onter you,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee, 'en ef we don't git 'im fer supper, Joe's dead en Sal's a widder,' sezee. "Dis look like mighty nice game, en Brer Fox 'greed. So den he amble off home, en Brer Wolf, he march off ter Brer Rabbit house. W'en he got dar, hit look like nobody at home, but Brer Wolf he walk up en knock on de do'--blam! blam! Nobody come. Den he lam aloose en knock 'gin--blim! blim! "'Who dar?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Fr'en',' sez Brer Wolf. "'Too menny fr'en's spiles de dinner,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'w'ich un's dis?' sezee. "'I fetch bad news, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. "'Bad news is soon tole,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "By dis time Brer Rabbit done come ter de do', wid his head tied up in a red hankcher. "'Brer Fox died dis mornin',' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. "'Whar yo' mo'nin' gown, Brer Wolf?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Gwine atter it now,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. 'I des call by fer ter bring de news. I went down ter Brer Fox house little bit 'go, en dar I foun' 'im stiff,' sezee. "Den Brer Wolf lope off. Brer Rabbit sot down en scratch his head, he did, en bimeby he say ter hisse'f dat he b'leeve he sorter drap 'roun' by Brer Fox house fer ter see how de lan' lay. No sooner said'n done. Up he jump, en out he went. W'en Brer Rabbit got close ter Brer Fox house, all look lonesome. Den he went up nigher. Nobody stirrin'. Den he look in, en dar lay Brer Fox stretch out on de bed des es big ez life. Den Brer Rabbit make like he talkin' to hisse'f. "'Nobody 'roun' fer ter look atter Brer Fox--not even Brer Tukkey Buzzard ain't come ter de funer'l,' sezee. 'I hope Brer Fox ain't dead, but I speck he is,' sezee. 'Even down ter Brer Wolf done gone en lef' 'im. Hit's de busy season wid me, but I'll set up wid 'im. He seem like he dead, yit he mayn't be,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'W'en a man go ter see dead fokes, dead fokes allers raises up der behime leg en hollers, wahoo!' sezee. "Brer Fox he stay still. Den Brer Rabbit he talk little louder: "'Mighty funny. Brer Fox look like he dead, yit he don't do like he dead. Dead fokes hists der behime leg en hollers wahoo! w'en a man come ter see um, sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Sho' nuff, Brer Fox lif' up his foot en holler wahoo! en Brer Rabbit he tear out de house like de dogs wuz atter 'im. Brer Wolf mighty smart, but nex' time you hear fum 'im, honey, he'll be in trouble. You des hol' yo' breff'n wait." XII. MR. FOX TACKLES OLD MAN TARRYPIN "ONE day," said Uncle Remus, sharpening his knife on the palm of his hand--"one day Brer Fox strike up wid Brer Tarrypin right in de middle er de big road. Brer Tarrypin done heerd 'im comin', en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he'd sorter keep one eye open; but Brer Fox wuz monstus perlite, en he open up de confab, he did, like he ain't see Brer Tarrypin sence de las' freshit. "'Heyo, Brer Tarrypin, whar you bin dis long-come-short?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Lounjun 'roun', Brer Fox, lounjun 'roun',' sez Brer Tarrypin. "'You don't look sprucy like you did, Brer Tarrypin,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Lounjun 'roun' en suffer'n',' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. "Den de talk sorter run on like dis: "'W'at ail you, Brer Tarrypin? Yo' eye look mighty red,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Lor', Brer Fox, you dunner w'at trubble is. You ain't bin lounjun 'roun' en suffer'n',' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. "'Bofe eyes red, en you look like you mighty weak, Brer Tarrypin,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Lor', Brer Fox, you dunner w'at trubble is,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. "'W'at ail you now, Brer Tarrypin?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Tuck a walk de udder day, en man come long en sot de fiel' a-fier. Lor', Brer Fox, you dunner w'at trubble is,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. "'How you git out de fier, Brer Tarrypin?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Sot en tuck it, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. 'Sot en tuck it, en de smoke sif' in my eye, en de fier scorch my back,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. "'Likewise hit bu'n yo' tail off,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Oh, no, dar's de tail, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, en wid dat he oncurl his tail fum under de shell, en no sooner did he do dat dan Brer Fox grab it, en holler out: "'Oh, yes, Brer Tarrypin! Oh, yes! En so you er de man w'at lam me on de head at Miss Meadows's is you? You er in wid Brer Rabbit, is you? Well, I'm gwineter out you.' "Brer Tarrypin beg en beg, but 'twan't no use. Brer Fox done been fool so much dat he look like he termin' fer ter have Brer Tarrypin haslett. Den Brer Tarrypin beg Brer Fox not fer ter drown 'im, but Brer Fox ain't makin' no prommus, en den he beg Brer Fox fer ter bu'n' 'im, kase he done useter fier, but Brer Fox don't say nuthin'. Bimeby Brer Fox drag Brer Tarrypin off little ways b'low de spring-'ouse, en souze him under de water. Den Brer Tarrypin begin fer ter holler: "'Tu'n loose dat stump root en ketch holt er me--tu'n loose dat stump root en ketch holt er me.' "Brer Fox he holler back: "'I ain't got holt er no stump root, en I is got holt er you.' "Brer Tarrypin he keep on holler'n: "'Ketch holt er me--I'm a drownin'--I'm a drownin'--tu'n loose de stump root en ketch holt er me.' "Sho nuff, Brer Fox tu'n loose de tail, en Brer Tarrypin, he went down ter de bottom--kerblunkity-blink!" No typographical combination or description could do justice to the guttural sonorousness--the peculiar intonation--which Uncle Remus imparted to this combination. It was so peculiar, indeed, that the little boy asked: "How did he go to the bottom, Uncle Remus?" "Kerblunkity-blink!" "Was he drowned, Uncle Remus?" "Who? Ole man Tarrypin? Is you drowndid w'en yo' ma tucks you in de bed?" "Well, no," replied the little boy, dubiously. "Ole man Tarrypin 'wuz at home I tell you, honey. Kerblinkity- blunk!" XIII. THE AWFUL FATE OF MR. WOLF UNCLE REMUS was half-soling one of his shoes, and his Miss Sally's little boy had been handling his awls, his hammers, and his knives to such an extent that the old man was compelled to assume a threatening attitude; but peace reigned again, and the little boy perched himself on a chair, watching Uncle Remus driving in pegs. "Folks w'at's allers pesterin' people, en bodderin' 'longer dat w'at ain't der'n, don't never come ter no good een'. Dar wuz Brer Wolf; stidder mindin' un his own bizness, he hatter take en go in pardnerships wid Brer Fox, en dey want skacely a minnit in de day dat he want atter Brer Rabbit, en he kep' on en kep' on twel fus' news you knowed he got kotch up wid--en he got kotch up wid monstus bad." "Goodness, Uncle Remus! I thought the Wolf let the Rabbit alone, after he tried to fool him about the Fox being dead." "Better lemme tell dish yer my way. Bimeby hit'll be yo' bed time, en Miss Sally'll be a hollerin' atter you, en you'll be a whimplin' roun', en den Mars John'll fetch up de re'r wid dat ar strop w'at I made fer im." The child laughed, and playfully shook his fist in the simple, serious face of the venerable old darkey, but said no more. Uncle Remus waited awhile to be sure there was to be no other demonstration, and then proceeded: "Brer Rabbit ain't see no peace w'atsumever. He can't leave home 'cep' Brer Wolf 'ud make a raid en tote off some er de fambly. Brer Rabbit b'ilt 'im a straw house, en hit wuz tored down; den he made a house out'n pine-tops, en dat went de same way; den he made 'im a bark house, en dat wuz raided on, en eve'y time he los' a house he los' one er his chilluns. Las' Brer Rabbit got mad, he did, en cusst, en den he went off, he did, en got some kyarpinters, en dey b'ilt 'im a plank house wid rock foundashuns. Atter dat he could have some peace en quietness. He could go out en pass de time er day 'wid his neighbors, en come back en set by de fier, en smoke his pipe, en read de newspapers same like enny man w'at got a fambly. He made a hole, he did, in de cellar whar de little Rabbits could hide out w'en dar wuz much uv a racket in de neighborhood, en de latch er de front do' kotch on de inside. Brer Wolf, he see how de lan' lay, he did, en he lay low. De little Rabbits was mighty skittish, but hit got so dat col' chills ain't run up Brer Rabbit's back no mo' w'en he heerd Brer Wolf go gallopin' by. "Bimeby, one day w'en Brer Rabbit wuz fixin' fer ter call on Miss Coon, he heerd a monstrus fuss en clatter up de big road, en 'mos' 'fo' he could fix his years fer ter lissen, Brer Wolf run in de do'. De little Rabbits dey went inter dere hole in de cellar, dey did, like blowin' out a cannle. Brer Wolf Wuz far'ly kivver'd wid mud, en mighty nigh outer win'. "'Oh, do pray save me, Brer Rabbit!' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. 'Do please, Brer Rabbit! de dogs is atter me, en dey 'll t'ar me up. Don't you year um comin'? Oh, do please save me, Brer Rabbit! Hide me some'rs whar de dogs won't git me.' "No quicker sed dan done. "'Jump in dat big chist dar, Brer Wolf,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'jump in dar en make yo'se'f at home.' "In jump Brer Wolf, down come the led, en inter de hasp went de hook, en dar Mr. Wolf wuz. Den Brer Rabbit went ter de lookin'- glass, he did, en wink at hisse'f, en den he draw'd de rockin'- cheer in front er de fier, he did, en tuck a big chaw terbacker." "Tobacco, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, incredulously. "Rabbit terbacker, honey. You know dis yer life ev'lastin' w'at Miss Sally puts 'mong de cloze in de trunk; well, dat's rabbit terbacker. Den Brer Rabbit sot dar long time, he did, turnin' his mine over en wukken his thinkin' masheen. Bimeby he got up, en sorter stir 'roun'. Den Brer Wolf open up: "'Is de dogs all gone, Brer Rabbit?' "'Seem like I hear one un um smellin' roun' de chimbly-cornder des now.' "Den Brer Rabbit git de kittle en fill it full er water, en put it on de fier. "'W'at you doin' now, Brer Rabbit?' "'I'm fixin fer ter make you a nice cup er tea, Brer Wolf.' "Den Brer Rabbit went ter de cubberd en git de gimlet, en commence for ter bo' little holes in de chist-lid. "'W'at you doin' now, Brer Rabbit?' "'I'm bo'in' little holes so you kin get bref, Brer Wolf.' "Den Brer Rabbit went out en git some mo' wood, en fling it on de fier. "'W'at you doin' now, Brer Rabbit?' "'I'm a chunkin' up de fier so you won't git col', Brer Wolf.' "Den Brer Rabbit went down inter de cellar en fotch out all his chilluns. "'W'at you doin' now, Brer Rabbit?' "'I'm a tellin' my chilluns w'at a nice man you is, Brer Wolf.' "En de chilluns, dey had ter put der han's on der moufs fer ter keep fum laffin'. Den Brer Rabbit he got de kittle en commenced fer to po' de hot water on de chist-lid. "'W'at dat I hear, Brer Rabbit?' "'You hear de win' a blowin', Brer Wolf.' "Den de water begin fer ter sif' thoo. "'W'at dat I feel, Brer Rabbit?' "'You feels de fleas a bitin', Brer Wolf.' "'Dey er bitin' mighty hard, Brer Rabbit.' "'Tu'n over on de udder side, Brer Wolf.' "'W'at dat I feel now, Brer Rabbit?' "'Still you feels de fleas, Brer Wolf.' "'Dey er eatin' me up, Brer Rabbit,' en dem wuz de las words er Brer Wolf, kase de scaldin' water done de bizness. "Den Brer Rabbit call in his neighbors, he did, en dey hilt a reg'lar juberlee; en ef you go ter Brer Rabbit's house right now, I dunno but w'at you'll fine Brer Wolfs hide hangin' in de back- po'ch, en all bekaze he wuz so bizzy wid udder fo'kses doin's." XIV. MR. FOX AND THE DECEITFUL FROGS WHEN the little boy ran in to see Uncle Remus the night after he had told him of the awful fate of Brer Wolf, the only response to his greeting was: "I-doom-er-ker-kum-mer-ker!" No explanation could convey an adequate idea of the intonation and pronunciation which Uncle Remus brought to bear upon this wonderful word. Those who can recall to mind the peculiar gurgling, jerking, liquid sound made by pouring water from a large jug, or the sound produced by throwing several stones in rapid succession into a pond of deep water, may be able to form a very faint idea of the sound, but it can not be reproduced in print. The little boy was astonished. "What did you say, Uncle Remus?" "I-doom-er-ker-kum-mer-ker! I-doom-er-ker-kum mer-ker!" "What is that?" "Dat's Tarrypin talk, dat is. Bless yo' soul, honey," continued the old man, brightening up, "w'en you git ole ez me--w'en you see w'at I sees, en year w'at I years--de creeturs dat you can't talk wid'll be mighty skase--dey will dat. W'y, der's er old gray rat w'at uses 'bout yer, en time atter time he comes out w'en you all done gone ter bed en sets up dar in de cornder en dozes, en me en him talks by de 'our; en w'at dat old rat dunno ain't down in de spellin' book. Des now, w'en you run in and broke me up, I wuz fetchin' into my mine w'at Brer Tarrypin say ter Brer Fox w'en he turn 'im loose in de branch." "What did he say, Uncle Remus?" "Dat w'at he said--I-doom-er-ker-kum-mer-ker! Brer Tarrypin wuz at de bottom er de pon', en he talk back, he did, in bubbles--I- doom-er-ker-kum-mer-ker! Brer Fox, he ain't sayin' nuthin', but Brer Bull-Frog, settin' on de bank, he hear Brer Tarrypin, he did, en he holler back: "Jug-er-rum-kum-dum! Jug-er-rum-kum-dum!' "Den Brer Frog holler out: 'Knee-deep! Knee-deep!' "Den ole Brer Bull-Frog, he holler back: 'Don'-you-ber-lieve-'im! Don't-you-ber-lieve-'im!' "Den de bubbles come up fum Brer Tarrypin: 'I-doom-er-ker-kum- mer-ker!' "Den Brer Frog sing out: 'Wade in! Wade in!' "Den ole Brer Bull-Frog talk thoo his ho'seness: 'Dar-you'll- fine-yo'-brudder! Dar-you'll-fine-yo'-brudder!' "Sho nuff, Brer Fox look over de bank, he did, en dar wuz n'er Fox lookin' at 'im outer de water. Den he retch out fer ter shake han's, en in he went, heels over head, en Brer Tarrypin bubble out: "'I-doom-er-ker-kum-mer-ker!"' "Was the Fox drowned, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "He weren't zackly drowndid, honey," replied the old man, With an air of cautious reserve. "He did manage fer ter scramble out, but a little mo' en de Mud Turkle would er got 'im, en den he'd er bin made hash un worl' widout een'." XV. MR. FOX GOES A-HUNTING, BUT MR. RABBIT BAGS THE GAME "ATTER Brer Fox hear 'bout how Brer Rabbit done Brer Wolf," said Uncle Remus, scratching his head with the point of his awl, 'he 'low, he did, dat he better not be so brash, en he sorter let Brer Rabbit 'lone. Dey wuz all time seein' one nudder, en 'bunnunce er times Brer Fox could er nab Brer Rabbit, but eve'y time he got de chance, his mine 'ud sorter rezume 'bout Brer Wolf, en he let Brer Rabbit 'lone. Bimeby dey 'gun ter git kinder familious wid wunner nudder like dey useter, en it got so Brer Fox'd call on Brer Rabbit, en dey'd set up en smoke der pipes, dey would, like no ha'sh feelin's 'd ever rested 'twixt um. "Las', one day Brer Fox come 'long all rig out, en ax Brer Rabbit fer ter go huntin' wid 'im, but Brer Rabbit, he sorter feel lazy, en he tell Brer Fox dat he got some udder fish fer ter fry. Brer Fox feel mighty sorry, he did, but he say he bleeve he try his han' enny how, en off he put. He wuz gone all day, en he had a monstus streak er luck, Brer Fox did, en he bagged a sight er game. Bimeby, to'rds de shank er de evenin', Brer Rabbit sorter stretch hisse'f, he did, en 'low hit's mos' time fer Brer Fox fer ter git 'long home. Den Brer Rabbit, he went'n mounted a stump fer ter see ef he could year Brer Fox comin'. He ain't bin dar long, twel sho' enuff, yer come Brer Fox thoo de woods, singing like a nigger at a frolic. Brer Rabbit, he lipt down off'n de stump, he did, en lay down in de road en make like he dead. Brer Fox he come 'long, he did, en see Brer Rabbit layin' dar. He tu'n 'im over, he did, en 'zamine 'im, en say, sezee: "'Dish yer rabbit dead. He look like he bin dead long time. He dead, but he mighty fat. He de fattes' rabbit w'at I ever see, but he bin dead too long. I feard ter take 'im home,' sezee. "Brer Rabbit ain't sayin' nuthin'. Brer Fox, he sorter lick his chops, but he went on en lef' Brer Rabbit layin' in de road. Dreckly he wuz outer sight, Brer Rabbit, he jump up, he did, en run roun' thoo de Woods en git befo Brer Fox agin. Brer Fox, he come up, en dar lay Brer Rabbit, periently col' en stiff. Brer Fox, he look at Brer Rabbit, en he sorter study. Atter while he onslung his game-bag, en say ter hisse'f, sezee: "'Deze yer rabbits gwine ter was'e. I'll des 'bout leave my game yer, en I'll go back'n git dat udder rabbit, en I'll make fokes b'leeve dat I'm ole man Hunter fum Huntsville,' sezee. "En wid dat he drapt his game en loped back up de road atter de udder rabbit, en w'en he got outer sight, ole Brer Rabbit, he snatch up Brer Fox game en put out fer home. Nex' time he see Brer Fox he holler out: "'What you kill de udder day, Brer Fox?' sezee. "Den Brer Fox, he sorter koam his flank wid his tongue, en holler back: "'I kotch a han'ful er hard sense, Brer Rabbit,' sezee. "Den ole Brer Rabbit, he laff, he did, en up en 'spon', sezee: 'Ef I'd a know'd you wuz atter dat, Brer Fox, I'd a loant you some er mine,' sezee." XVI. OLD MR. RABBIT, HE'S A GOOD FISHERMAN "BRER RABBIT en Brer Fox wuz like some chilluns w'at I knows un," said Uncle Remus, regarding the little boy, who had come to hear another story, with an affectation of great solemnity. "Bofe un um wuz allers atter wunner nudder, a prankin' en a pesterin' 'roun', but Brer Rabbit did had some peace, kaze Brer Fox done got skittish 'bout puttin' de clamps on Brer Rabbit. "One day, w'en Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Coon, en Brer B'ar, en a whole lot un um wuz clearin' up a new groun' fer ter plant a roas'n'-year patch, de sun gun ter git sorter hot, en Brer Rabbit he got tired; but he didn't let on, kaze he fear'd de balance un um'd call 'im lazy, en he keep on totin' off trash en pilin' up bresh, twel bimeby he holler out dat he gotter brier in his han', en den he take'n slip off, en hunt fer cool place fer ter res'. Atter w'ile he come crosst a well wid a bucket hangin' in it. "'Dat look cool,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en cool I speck she is. I'll des 'bout git in dar en take a nap,' en wid dat in he jump, he did, en he ain't no sooner fix hisse'f dan de bucket 'gun ter go down." "Wasn't the Rabbit scared, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Honey, dey ain't been no wusser skeer'd beas' sence de worl' begin dan dish yer same Brer Rabbit. He fa'rly had a agur. He know whar he cum fum, but he dunner whar he gwine. Dreckly he feel de bucket hit de water, en dar she sot, but Brer Rabbit he keep mighty still, kaze he dunner w'at minnit gwineter be de nex'. He des lay dar en shuck en shiver. "Brer Fox allers got one eye on Brer Rabbit, en w'en he slip off fum de new groun', Brer Fox he sneak atter 'im. He know Brer Rabbit wuz atter some projick er nudder, en he tuck'n crope off, he did, en watch 'im. Brer Fox see Brer Rabbit come to de well en stop, en den he see 'im jump in de bucket, en den, lo en behol's, he see 'im go down outer sight. Brer Fox wuz de mos' 'stonish Fox dat you ever laid eyes on. He sot off dar in de bushes en study en study, but he don't make no head ner tails ter dis kinder bizness. Den he say ter hisse'f, sezee: "'Well, ef dis don't bang my times,' sezee, 'den Joe's dead en Sal's a widder. Right down dar in dat well Brer Rabbit keep his money hid, en ef 'tain't dat den he done gone en 'skiver'd a gole-mine, en ef 'tain't dat, den I'm a gwineter see w'at's in dar,' sezee. "Brer Fox crope up little nigher, he did, en lissen, but he don't year no fuss, en he keep on gittin' nigher, en yit he don't year nuthin'. Bimeby he git up close en peep down, but he don't see nuthin' en he don't year nuthin'. All dis time Brer Rabbit mighty nigh skeer'd outen his skin, en he fear'd fer ter move kaze de bucket might keel over en spill him out in de water. W'ile he sayin' his pra'rs over like a train er kyars runnin', ole Brer Fox holler out: "'Heyo, Brer Rabbit! Who you wizzitin' down dar?' sezee. "'Who? Me? Oh, I'm des a fishin', Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'I des say ter myse'f dat I'd sorter sprize you all wid a mess er fishes fer dinner, en so here I is, en dar's de fishes. I'm a fishin' fer suckers, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Is dey many un um down dar, Brer Rabbit?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Lots un um, Brer Fox; scoze en scoze un um. De water is natchully 'live wid um. Come down en he'p me haul um in, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'How I gwineter git down, Brer Rabbit?' "'Jump inter de bucket, Brer Fox. Hit'll fetch you down all safe en soun'.' "Brer Rabbit talk so happy en talk so sweet dat Brer Fox he jump in de bucket, he did, en, ez he went down, co'se his weight pull Brer Rabbit up. W'en dey pass one nudder on de half-way growl', Brer Rabbit he sing out: "'Good-by, Brer Fox, take keer yo' cloze, Fer dis is de way de worl' goes; Some goes up en some goes down, You'll git ter de bottom all safe en soun'.' *1 "W'en Brer Rabbit got out, he gallop off en tole de fokes w'at de well blong ter dat Brer Fox wuz down in dar muddyin' up de drinkin' water, en den he gallop back ter de well, en holler down ter Brer Fox: "'Ye come a man wid a great big gun--W'en he haul you up, you jump en run."' "What then, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, as the old man paused. "In des 'bout half 'n hour, honey, bofe un um wuz back in de new groun' wukkin' des like dey never heer'd er no well, ceppin' dat eve'y now'n den Brer Rabbit'd bust out in er laff, en old Brer Fox, he'd git a spell er de dry grins." *1 As a Northern friend suggests that this story may be somewhat obscure, it may be as well to state that the well is supposed to be supplied with a rope over a wheel, or pulley, with a bucket at each end. XVII. MR. RABBIT NIBBLES UP THE BUTTER '"DE animils en de creeturs," said Uncle Remus, shaking his coffee around in the bottom of his tin-cup, in order to gather up all the sugar, 'dey kep' on gittin' mo' en mo' familious wid wunner nudder, twel bimeby, 'twan't long 'fo' Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Possum got ter sorter bunchin' der perwishuns tergedder in de same shanty. Atter w'ile de roof sorter 'gun ter leak, en one day Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Possum, 'semble fer ter see ef dey can't kinder patch her up. Dey had a big day's work in front un um, en dey fotch der dinner wid um. Dey lump de vittles up in one pile, en de butter w'at Brer Fox brung, dey goes en puts in de spring-'ouse fer ter keep cool, en den dey went ter wuk, en 'twan't long 'fo' Brer Rabbit's stummuck 'gun ter sorter growl en pester 'im. Dat butter er Brer Fox sot heavy on his mine, en his mouf water eve'y time he 'member 'bout it. Present'y he say ter hisse'f dat he bleedzd ter have a nip at dat butter, en den he lay his plans, he did. Fus' news you know, w'ile dey wuz all wukkin' long, Brer Rabbit raise his head quick en fling his years forerd en holler out: "'Here I is. W'at you want wid me?' en off he put like sump'n wuz atter 'im. "He sallied 'roun', ole Brer Rabbit did, en atter he make sho dat nobody ain't foller'n un 'im, inter de spring-'ouse he bounces, en dar he stays twel he git a bait er butter. Den he santer on back en go to wuk. "'Whar you bin?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'I hear my chilluns callin' me,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I hatter go see w'at dey want. My ole 'oman done gone en tuck mighty sick,' sezee. "Dey wuk on twel bimeby de butter tas'e so good dat ole Brer Rabbit want some mo'. Den he raise up his head, he did, en holler out: "'Heyo! Hol' on! I'm a comin'!' en off he put. "Dis time he stay right smart w'ile, en w'en he git back Brer Fox ax him whar he bin. "'I been ter see my ole 'oman, en she's a sinkin',' sezee. "Dreckly Brer Rabbit hear um callin' 'im ag'in en off he goes, en dis time, bless yo' soul, he gits de butter out so clean dat he kin see hisse'f in de bottom er de bucket. He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin' mo' samer dan a nigger w'at de patter-rollers bin had holt un. "'How's yo' ole 'oman dis time?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'I'm oblije ter you, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but I'm fear'd she's done gone by now,' en dat sorter make Brer Fox en Brer Possum feel in mo'nin' wid Brer Rabbit. "Bimeby, w'en dinner-time come, dey all got out der vittles, but Brer Rabbit keep on lookin' lonesome, en Brer Fox en Brer Possum dey sorter rustle roun' fer ter see ef dey can't make Brer Rabbit feel sorter splimmy." "What is that, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Sorter splimmy-splammy, honey--sorter like he in a crowd--sorter like his ole 'oman ain't dead ez she mout be. You know how fokes duz w'en dey gits whar people's a moanin'." The little boy didn't know, fortunately for him, and Uncle Remus went on: "Brer Fox en Brer Possum rustle roun', dey did, gittin out de vittles, en bimeby Brer Fox, he say, sezee: "'Brer Possum, you run down ter de spring en fetch de butter, en I'll sail 'roun' yer en set de table,' sezee. "Brer Possum, he lope off atter de butter, en dreckly here he come lopin' back wid his years a trimblin' en his tongue a hangin' out. Brer Fox, he holler out: "'W'at de matter now, Brer Possum?' sezee. "'You all better run yer, fokes,' sez Brer Possum, sezee. 'De las' drap er dat butter done gone!' "'Whar she gone?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Look like she dry up,' sez Brer Possum, sezee. "Den Brer Rabbit, he look sorter sollum, he did, en he up'n say, sezee. "'I speck dat butter melt in somebody mouf,' sezee. Den dey went down ter de spring wid Brer Possum, en sho nuff de butter done gone. W'iles dey wuz sputin' over de wunderment, Brer Rabbit say he see tracks all 'roun' dar, en he p'int out dat ef dey'll all go ter sleep, he kin ketch de chap w'at stole de butter. Den dey all lie down en Brer Fox en Brer Possum dey soon drapt off ter sleep, but Brer Rabbit he stay 'wake, en w'en de time come he raise up easy en smear Brer Possum mouf wid de butter on his paws, en den he run off en nibble up de bes' er de dinner w'at dey lef' layin' out, en den he come back en wake up Brer Fox, en show 'im de butter on Brer Possum mouf. Den dey wake up Brer Possum, en tell 'im 'bout it, but c'ose Brer Possum 'ny it ter de las'. Brer Fox, dough, he's a kinder lawyer, en he argafy dis way--dat Brer Possum wuz de fus one at de butter, en de fus one fer ter miss it, en mo'n dat, dar hang de signs on his mouf. Brer Possum see dat dey got 'im jammed up in a cornder, en den he up en say dat de way fer ter ketch de man w'at stole de butter is ter b'il' a big bresh-heap en set her afier, en all han's try ter jump over, en de one w'at fall in, den he de chap w'at stole de butter. Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox dey is bofe 'gree, dey did, en dey whirl in en b'il' de breshheap, en dey b'il' her high en dey b'il' her wide, en den dey totch her off. W'en she got ter blazin' up good, Brer Rabbit, he tuck de fus turn. He sorter step back, en look 'roun' en giggle, en over he went mo' samer dan a bird flyin'. Den come Brer Fox. He got back little fudder, en spit on his han's, en lit out en made de jump, en he come so nigh gittin' in dat de een' er his tail kotch afier. Ain't you never see no fox, honey?" inquired Uncle Remus, in a tone that implied both conciliation and information. The little boy thought probably he had, but he wouldn't commit himself. "Well, den," continued the old man, "nex' time you see one un um, you look right close en see ef de een' er his tail ain't w'ite. Hit's des like I tell you. Dey b'ars de skyar er dat bresh-heap down ter dis day. Dey er marked--dat's w'at dey is--dey er marked." "And what about Brother Possum?" asked the little boy. "Ole Brer Possum, he tuck a runnin' start, he did, en he come lumberin' 'long, en he lit--kerblam!--right in de middle er de fier, en dat wuz de las' er ole Brer Possum." "But, Uncle Remus, Brother Possum didn't steal the butter after all," said the little boy, who was not at all satisfied with such summary injustice. "Dat w'at make I say w'at I duz, honey. In dis worl', lots er fokes is gotter suffer fer udder fokes sins. Look like hit's mighty wrong; but hit's des dat away. Tribbalashun seem like she's a waitin' roun' de cornder fer ter ketch one en all un us, honey." XVIII. MR. RABBIT FINDS HIS MATCH AT LAST "HIT look like ter me dat I let on de udder night dat in dem days w'en de creeturs wuz santer'n 'roun' same like fokes, none un um wuz brash nuff fer ter ketch up wid Brer Rabbit," remarked Uncle Remus, reflectively. "Yes," replied the little boy, "that's what you said." "Well, den," continued the old man with unction, "dar's whar my 'membunce gin out, kaze Brer Rabbit did git kotched up wid, en hit cool 'im off like po'in' spring water on one er deze yer biggity fices." "How was that, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "One day w'en Brer Rabbit wuz gwine lippity-clippitin' down de road, he meet up wid ole Brer Tarrypin, en atter dey pass de time er day wid wunner nudder, Brer Rabbit, he 'low dat he wuz much 'blije ter Brer Tarrypin fer de han' he tuck in de rumpus dat day down at Miss Meadows's." "When he dropped off of the water-shelf on the Fox's head," suggested the little boy. "Dat's de same time, honey. Den Brer Tarrypin 'low dat Brer Fox run mighty fas' dat day, but dat ef he'd er bin atter 'im stidder Brer Rabbit, he'd er kotch 'im. Brer Rabbit say he could er kotch 'im hisse'f but he didn't keer 'bout leavin' de ladies. Dey keep on talkin', dey did, twel bimeby dey gotter 'sputin' 'bout w'ich wuz de swif'es'. Brer Rabbit, he say he kin outrun Brer Tarrypin, en Brer Tarrypin, he des vow dat he kin outrun Brer Rabbit. Up en down dey had it, twel fus news you know Brer Tarrypin say he got a fifty-dollar bill in de chink er de chimbly at home, en dat bill done tole 'im dat he could beat Brer Rabbit in a fa'r race. Den Brer Rabbit say he got a fifty-dollar bill w'at say dat he kin leave Brer Tarrypin so fur behime, dat he could sow barley ez he went long en hit 'ud be ripe nuff fer ter cut by de time Brer Tarrypin pass dat way. "Enny how dey make de bet en put up de money, en old Brer Tukkey Buzzard, he wuz summonzd fer ter be de jedge, en de stakeholder; en 'twan't long 'fo' all de 'rangements wuz made. De race wuz a five-mile heat, en de groun' wuz medjud off, en at de een' er eve'y mile a pos' wuz stuck up. Brer Rabbit wuz ter run down de big road, en Brer Tarrypin, he say he'd gallup thoo de woods. Fokes tole 'im he could git long faster in de road, but ole Brer Tarrypin, he know w'at he doin'. Miss Meadows en de gals en mos' all de nabers got win' er de fun, en wen de day wuz sot dey 'termin' fer ter be on han'. Brer Rabbit he train hisse'f eve'y day, en he skip over de groun' des ez gayly ez a June cricket. Ole Brer Tarrypin, he lay low in de swamp. He had a wife en th'ee chilluns, old Brer Tarrypin did, en dey wuz all de ve'y spit en image er de ole man. Ennybody w'at know one fum de udder gotter take a spy-glass, en den dey er li'ble fer ter git fooled. "Dat's de way marters stan' twel de day er de race, en on dat day, ole Brer Tarrypin, en his ole 'oman, en his th'ee chilluns, dey got up 'fo' sun-up, en went ter de place. De ole 'oman, she tuck 'er stan' nigh de fus' mile-pos', she did, en de chilluns nigh de udders, up ter de las', en dar old Brer Tarrypin, he tuck his stan'. Bimeby, here come de fokes: Jedge Buzzard, he come, en Miss Meadows en de gals, dey come, en den yer come Brer Rabbit wid ribbons tied 'roun' his neck en streamin' fum his years. De fokes all went ter de udder een' er de track fer ter see how dey come out. W'en de time come Jedge Buzzard strut 'roun' en pull out his watch, en holler out: "'Gents, is you ready?' "Brer Rabbit, he say 'yes,' en old Miss Tarrypin holler 'go' fum de aidge er de woods. Brer Rabbit, he lit out on de race, en old Miss Tarrypin, she put out for home. Jedge Buzzard, he riz en skimmed long fer ter see dat de race wuz runned fa'r. W'en Brer Rabbit got ter de fus' mile-pos' wunner de Tarrypin chilluns crawl out de woods, he did, en make fer de place. Brer Rabbit, he holler out: "'Whar is you, Brer Tarrypin?' "'Yer I come a bulgin',' sez de Tarrypin, sezee. "Brer Rabbit so glad he's ahead dat he put out harder dan ever, en de Tarrypin, he make fer home. W'en he come ter de nex' pos', nudder Tarrypin crawl out er de woods. "'Whar is you, Brer Tarrypin?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'Yer I come a bilin',' sez de Tarrypin, sezee. "Brer Rabbit, he lit out, he did, en come ter nex' pos', en dar wuz de Tarrypin. Den he come ter nex', en dar wuz de Tarrypin. Den he had one mo' mile fer ter run, en he feel like he gittin' bellust. Bimeby, ole Brer Tarrypin look way off down de road en he see Jedge Buzzard sailin' long en he know hit's time fer 'im fer ter be up. So he scramble outen de woods, en roll 'cross de ditch, en shuffle thoo de crowd er folks en git ter de mile-pos' en crawl behime it. Bimeby, fus' news you know, yer come Brer Rabbit. He look 'roun' en he don't see Brer Tarrypin, en den he squall out: "'Gimme de money, Brer Buzzard, Gimme de money!' "Den Miss Meadows en de gals, dey holler and laff fit ter kill deyse'f, en ole Brer Tarrypin, he raise up fum behime de pos' en sez, sezee: "'Ef you'll gimme time fer ter ketch my breff, gents en ladies, one en all, I speck I'll finger dat money myse'f,' sezee, en sho nuff, Brer Tarrypin tie de pu's 'roun' his neck en skaddle*1 off home." "But, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, dolefully, "that was cheating." "Co'se, honey. De creeturs 'gun ter cheat, en den fokes tuck it up, en hit keep on spreadin'. Hit mighty ketchin', en you mine yo' eye, honey, dat somebody don't cheat you 'fo' yo' ha'r git gray ez de ole nigger's." *1 It may he interesting to note here that in all probability the word "skedaddle," about which there was some controversy during the war, came from the Virginia negro's use of "skaddle," which is a corruption of "scatter." The matter, however, is hardly worth referring to. XIX. THE FATE OF MR. JACK SPARROW "You'll tromple on dat bark twel hit won't be fitten fer ter fling 'way, let 'lone make hoss-collars out'n," said Uncle Remus, as the little boy came running into his cabin out of the rain. All over the floor long strips of "wahoo" bark were spread, and these the old man was weaving into horse-collars. "I'll sit down, Uncle Remus," said the little boy. "Well, den, you better, honey," responded the old man, "kaze I 'spizes fer ter have my wahoo trompled on. Ef 'twuz shucks, now, hit mout be diffunt, but I'm a gittin' too ole fer ter be projickin' 'longer shuck collars." For a few minutes the old man went on with his work, but with a solemn air altogether unusual. Once or twice he sighed deeply, and the sighs ended in a prolonged groan, that seemed to the little boy to be the result of the most unspeakable mental agony. He knew by experience that he had done something which failed to meet the approval of Uncle Remus, and he tried to remember what it was, so as to frame an excuse; but his memory failed him. He could think of nothing he had done calculated to stir Uncle Remus's grief. He was not exactly seized with remorse, but he was very uneasy. Presently Uncle Remus looked at him in a sad and hopeless way and asked: "W'at dat long rigmarole you bin tellin' Miss Sally 'bout yo' little brer dis mawnin?" "Which, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, blushing guiltily. "Dat des w'at I'm a axin' un you now. I hear Miss Sally say she's a gwineter stripe his jacket, en den I knowed you bin tellin' on 'im." "Well, Uncle Remus, he was pulling up your onions, and then he went and flung a rock at me, said the child, plaintively. "Lemme tell you dis," said the old man, laying down the section of horse-collar he had been plaiting, and looking hard at the little boy--"lemme tell you dis der ain't no way fer ter make tattlers en tailb'arers turn out good. No, dey ain't. I bin mixin' up wid fokes now gwine on eighty year, en I ain't seed no tattler come ter no good een'. Dat I ain't. En ef ole man M'thoozlum wuz livin' clean twel yit, he'd up'n tell you de same. Sho ez you er settin' dar. You 'member w'at 'come er de bird w'at went tattlin' 'roun' 'bout Brer Rabbit?" The little boy didn't remember, but he was very anxious to know, and he also wanted to know what kind of a bird it was that so disgraced itself. "Hit wuz wunner dese yer uppity little Jack Sparrers, I speck," said the old man; "dey wuz allers bodder'n' longer udder fokes's bizness, en dey keeps at it down ter dis day--peckin' yer, en pickin' dar, en scratchin' out yander. One day, atter he bin fool by ole Brer Tarrypin, Brer Rabbit wuz settin' down in de woods studyin' how he wuz gwineter git even. He feel mighty lonesome, en he feel mighty mad, Brer Rabbit did. Tain't put down in de tale, but I speck he cusst en r'ar'd 'roun' considerbul. Leas'ways, he wuz settin' out dar by hisse'f, en dar he sot, en study en study, twel bimeby he jump up en holler out: "'Well, dog-gone my cats ef I can't gallop 'roun' ole Brer Fox, en I'm gwineter do it. I'll show Miss Meadows en de gals dat I'm de boss er Brer Fox,' sezee. "Jack Sparrer up in de tree, he hear Brer Rabbit, he did, en he sing out: "'I'm gwine tell Brer Fox! I'm gwine tell Brer Fox! Chick-a-biddy-win'-a-blowin'-acuns-fallin'! I'm gwine tell Brer Fox!"' Uncle Remus accompanied the speech of the bird with a peculiar whistling sound in his throat, that was a marvelous imitation of a sparrow's chirp, and the little boy clapped his hands with delight, and insisted on a repetition. "Dis kinder tarrify Brer Rabbit, en he skasely know w'at he gwine do; but bimeby he study ter hisse'f dat de man w'at see Brer Fox fus wuz boun' ter have de inturn, en den he go hoppin' off to'rds home. He didn't got fur w'en who should he meet but Brer Fox, en den Brer Rabbit, he open up: "'W'at dis twix' you en me, Brer Fox?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'I hear tell you gwine ter sen' me ter 'struckshun, en nab my fambly, en 'stroy my shanty,' sezee. "'Den Brer Fox he git mighty mad. 'Who bin tellin' you all dis?' sezee. "Brer Rabbit make like he didn't want ter tell, but Brer Fox he 'sist en 'sist, twel at las' Brer Rabbit he up en tell Brer Fox dat he hear Jack Sparrer say all dis. "'Co'se,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'w'en Brer Jack Sparrer tell me dat I flew up, I did, en I use some langwidge w'ich I'm mighty glad dey weren't no ladies 'round' nowhars so dey could hear me go on, sezee. "Brer Fox he sorter gap, he did, en say he speck he better be sa'nter'n on. But, bless yo' soul, honey, Brer Fox ain't sa'nter fur, 'fo' Jack Sparrer flipp down on a 'simmon-bush by de side er de road, en holler out: "'Brer Fox! Oh, Brer Fox!--Brer Fox!' "Brer Fox he des sorter canter long, he did, en make like he don't hear 'im. Den Jack Sparrer up'n sing out agin: "'Brer Fox! Oh, Brer Fox! Hol' on, Brer Fox! I got some news fer you. Wait Brer Fox! Hit'll 'stonish you.' "Brer Fox he make like he don't see Jack Sparrer, ner needer do he hear 'im, but bimeby he lay down by de road, en sorter stretch hisse'f like he fixin' fer ter nap. De tattlin' Jack Sparrer he flew'd 'long, en keep on callin' Brer Fox, but Brer Fox, he ain't sayin' nuthin'. Den little Jack Sparrer, he hop down on de groun' en flutter 'roun' 'mongst de trash. Dis sorter 'track Brer Fox 'tenshun, en he look at de tattlin' bird, en de bird he keep on callin': "'I got sump'n fer ter tell you, Brer Fox.' "'Git on my tail, little Jack Sparrer,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'kaze I'm de'f in one year, en I can't hear out'n de udder. Git on my tail,' sezee. "Den de little bird he up'n hop on Brer Fox's tail. "'Git on my back, little Jack Sparrer, kaze I'm de'f in one year en I can't hear out'n de udder.' "Den de little bird hop on his back. "'Hop on my head, little Jack Sparrer, kaze I'm de'f in bofe years.' "Up hop de little bird. "'Hop on my toof, little Jack Sparrer, kaze I'm de'f in one year en I can't hear out'n de udder.' "De tattlin' little bird hop on Brer Fox's toof, en den--" Here Uncle Remus paused, opened wide his mouth and closed it again in a way that told the whole story. *1 "Did the Fox eat the bird all--all up?" asked the little boy. "Jedge B'ar come long nex' day," replied Uncle Remus, "en he fine some fedders, en fum dat word went roun' dat ole man Squinch Owl done kotch nudder watzizname." *1 An Atlanta friend heard this story in Florida, but an alligator was substituted for the fox, and a little boy for the rabbit. There is another version in which the impertinent gosling goes to tell the fox something her mother has said, and is caught; and there may be other versions. I have adhered to the middle Georgia version, which is characteristic enough. It may be well to state that there are different versions of all the stories--the shrewd narrators of the mythology of the old plantation adapting themselves with ready tact to the years, tastes, and expectations of their juvenile audiences. XX. HOW MR. RABBIT SAVED HIS MEAT "ONE time," said Uncle Remus, whetting his knife slowly and thoughtfully on the palm of his hand, and gazing reflectively in the fire--"one time Brer Wolf--" "Why, Uncle Remus!" the little boy broke in, "I thought you said the Rabbit scalded the Wolf to death a long time ago." The old man was fairly caught and he knew it; but this made little difference to him. A frown gathered on his usually serene brow as he turned his gaze upon the child--a frown in which both scorn and indignation were visible. Then all at once he seemed to regain control of himself. The frown was chased away by a look of Christian resignation. "Dar now! W'at I tell you?" he exclaimed as if addressing a witness concealed under the bed. "Ain't I done tole you so? Bless grashus! ef chilluns ain't gittin' so dey knows mo'n ole fokes, en dey'll 'spute longer you en 'spute longer you, ceppin' der ma call um, w'ich I speck 'twon't be long 'fo' she will, en den Ill set yere by de chimbly-cornder en git some peace er mine. W'en ole Miss wuz livin'," continued the old man, still addressing some imaginary person, 'hit 'uz mo'n enny her chilluns 'ud dast ter do ter come 'sputin' longer me, en Mars John'll tell you de same enny day you ax 'im." "Well, Uncle Remus, you know you said the Rabbit poured hot water on the Wolf and killed him," said the little boy. The old man pretended not to hear. He was engaged in searching among some scraps of leather under his chair, and kept on talking to the imaginary person. Finally, he found and drew forth a nicely plaited whip-thong with a red snapper all waxed and knotted. "I wuz fixin' up a w'ip fer a little chap," he continued, with a sigh, "but, bless grashus! 'fo' I kin git 'er done de little chap done grow'd up twel he know mo'n I duz." The child's eyes filled with tears and his lips began to quiver, but he said nothing; whereupon Uncle Remus immediately melted. "I 'clar' to goodness," he said, reaching out and taking the little boy tenderly by the hand, "ef you ain't de ve'y spit en image er ole Miss w'en I brung 'er de las' news er de war. Hit's des like skeerin' up a ghos' w'at you ain't fear'd un." Then there was a pause, the old man patting the little child's hand caressingly. "You ain't mad, is you, honey?" Uncle Remus asked finally, "kaze ef you is, I'm gwine out yere en butt my head 'gin de do' jam'." But the little boy wasn't mad. Uncle Remus had conquered him and he had conquered Uncle Remus in pretty much the same way before. But it was some time before Uncle Remus would go on with the story. He had to be coaxed. At last, however, he settled himself back in the chair and began: "Co'se, honey, hit mout er bin ole Brer Wolf, er hit mout er bin er n'er Brer Wolf; it mout er bin 'fo' he got kotch up wid, er it mout er bin atterwards. Ez de tale wer gun to me des dat away I gin it unter you. One time Brer Wolf wuz comm' long home fum a fishin' frolic. He s'anter long de road, he did, wid his string er fish 'cross his shoulder, w'en fus' news you know ole Miss Pa'tridge, she hop outer de bushes en flutter long right at Brer Wolf nose. Brer Wolf he say ter hisse'f dat ole Miss Pa'tridge tryin' fer ter toll 'im 'way fum her nes', en wid dat he lay his fish down en put out inter de bushes whar ole Miss Pa'tridge come fum, en 'bout dat time Brer Rabbit, he happen long. Dar wuz de fishes, en dar wuz Brer Rabbit, en w'en dat de case w'at you speck a sorter innerpen'ent man like Brer Rabbit gwine do? I kin tell you dis, dat dem fishes ain't stay whar Brer Wolf put um at, en w'en Brer Wolf come back dey wuz gone. "Brer Wolf, he sot down en scratch his head, he did, en study en study, en den hit sorter rush inter his mine dat Brer Rabbit bin 'long dar, en den Brer Wolf, he put out fer Brer Rabbit house, en w'en he git dar he hail 'im. Brer Rabbit, he dunno nuthin' tall 'bout no fishes. Brer Wolf he up'n say he bleedzd ter bleeve Brer Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit 'ny it up en down, but Brer Wolf stan' to it dat Brer Rabbit got dem fishes. Brer Rabbit, he say dat if Brer Wolf b'leeve he got de fishes, den he give Brer Wolf lief fer ter kill de bes' cow he got. Brer Wolf, he tuck Brer Rabbit at his word, en go off ter de pastur' en drive up de cattle en kill Brer Rabbit bes' cow. "Brer Rabbit, he hate mighty bad fer ter lose his cow, but he lay his plans, en he tell his chilluns dat he gwineter have dat beef yit. Brer Wolf, he bin tuck up by de patter-rollers 'fo' now, en he mighty skeer'd un um, en fus news you know, yer come Brer Rabbit hollerin' en tellin' Brer Wolf dat de patter-rollers comin'. "'You run en hide, Brer Wolf,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I'll stay yer en take keer er de cow twel you gits back,' sezee. "Soon's Brer Wolf hear talk er de patter-rollers, he scramble off inter de underbrush like he bin shot out'n a gun. En he wa'n't mo'n gone 'fo' Brer Rabbit, he whirl in en skunt de cow en salt de hide down, en den he tuck'n cut up de kyarkiss en stow it 'way in de smoke-'ouse, en den he tuck'n stick de een' er de cow-tail in de groun'. Atter he gone en done all dis, den Brer Rabbit he squall out fer Brer Wolf: "'Run yer, Brer Wolf! Run yer! Yo' cow gwine in de groun'! Run yer!' "W'en ole Brer Wolf got dar, w'ich he come er scootin', dar wuz Brer Rabbit hol'in' on ter de cow-tail, fer ter keep it fum gwine in de groun'. Brer Wolf, he kotch holt, en dey 'gin a pull er two en up come de tail. Den Brer Rabbit, he wink his off eye en say, sezee: "'Dar! de tail done pull out en de cow gone,' sezee. But Brer Wolf he wern't de man fer ter give it up dat away, en he got 'im a spade, en a pick-axe, en a shovel, en he dig en dig fer dat cow twel diggin' wuz pas' all endu'unce, en ole Brer Rabbit he sot up dar in his front po'ch en smoke his seegyar. Eve'y time ole Brer Wolf stuck de pick-axe in de clay, Brer Rabbit, he giggle ter his chilluns: "'He diggy, diggy, diggy, but no meat dar! He diggy, diggy, diggy, but no meat dar!' "Kase all de time de cow wuz layin' pile up in his smoke-'ouse, en him en his chilluns wuz eatin' fried beef an inguns eve'y time dey mouf water. "Now den, honey, you take dis yer w'ip," continued the old man, twining the leather thong around the little boy's neck, "en scamper up ter de big 'ouse en tell Miss Sally fer ter gin you some un it de nex' time she fine yo' tracks in de sugar-bar'l." XXI. MR. RABBIT MEETS HIS MATCH AGAIN "DERE wuz nudder man dat sorter play it sharp on Brer Rabbit," said Uncle Remus, as, by some mysterious process, he twisted a hog's bristle into the end of a piece of thread--an operation which the little boy watched with great interest. "In dem days," continued the old man, "de creeturs kyar'd on marters same ez fokes. Dey went inter fahmin', en I speck ef de troof wuz ter come out, dey kep' sto', en had der camp-meetin' times en der bobbycues w'en de wedder wuz 'greeble." Uncle Remus evidently thought that the little boy wouldn't like to hear of any further discomfiture of Brer Rabbit, who had come to be a sort of hero, and he was not mistaken. "I thought the Terrapin was the only one that fooled the Rabbit," said the little boy, dismally. "Hit's des like I tell you, honey. Dey ain't no smart man, 'cep' w'at dey's a smarter. Ef ole Brer Rabbit hadn't er got kotch up wid, de nabers 'ud er took 'im for a ha'nt, en in dem times dey bu'nt witches 'fo' you could squinch yo' eyeballs. Dey did dat." "Who fooled the Rabbit this time?" the little boy asked. When Uncle Remus had the bristle "sot" in the thread, he proceeded with the story: "One time Brer Rabbit en ole Brer Buzzard 'cluded dey'd sorter go shares, en crap tergedder. Hit wuz a mighty good year, en de truck tu'n out monstus well, but bimeby, w'en de time come fer dividjun, hit come ter light dat ole Brer Buzzard ain't got nuthin'. De crap wuz all gone, en dey want nuthin' dar fer ter show fer it. Brer Rabbit, he make like he in a wuss fix'n Brer Buzzard, en he mope 'roun', he did, like he fear'd dey gwineter sell 'im out. "Brer Buzzard, he ain't sayin' nuthin', but he keep up a monstus thinkin', en one day he come 'long en holler en tell Brer Rabbit dat he done fine rich gol'-mine des 'cross de river. "'You come en go longer me, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Tukkey Buzzard, sezee. 'Ill scratch en you kin grabble, en 'tween de two un us we'll make short wuk er dat gol'-mine,' sezee. "Brer Rabbit, he wuz high up fer de job, but he study en study, he did, how he gwineter git 'cross de water, kaze ev'y time he git his foot wet all de fambly kotch col'. Den he up'n ax Brer Buzzard how he gwine do, en Brer Buzzard he up'n say dat he kyar Brer Rabbit 'cross, en wid dat ole Brer Buzzard, he squot down, he did, en spread his wings, en Brer Rabbit, he mounted, en up dey riz." There was a pause. "What did the Buzzard do then?" asked the little boy. "Dey riz," continued Uncle Remus, "en w'en dey lit, dey lit in de top er de highest sorter pine, en de pine w'at dey lit in wuz growin' on er ilun, en de ilun wuz in de middle er de river, wid de deep water runnin' all 'roun'. Dey ain't mo'n lit 'fo' Brer Rabbit, he know w'ich way de win' 'uz blowin', en by de time ole Brer Buzzard got hisse'f balance on a lim', Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee: "'W'iles we er res'n here, Brer Buzzard, en bein's you bin so good, I got sump'n fer ter tell you,' sezee. 'I got a gol'-mine er my own, one w'at I make myse'f, en I speck we better go back ter mine 'fo' we bodder 'longer yone,' sezee. "Den ole Brer Buzzard, he laff, he did, twel he shake, en Brer Rabbit, he sing out: "'Hol' on, Brer Buzzard! Don't flop yo' wings w'en you laff, kaze den if you duz, sump'n 'ill drap fum up yer, en my gol'-mine won't do you no good, en needer will yone do me no good.' "But 'fo' dey got down fum dar, Brer Rabbit done tole all 'bout de crap, en he hatter prommus fer ter 'vide fa'r en squar. So Brer Buzzard, he kyar 'im back, en Brer Rabbit he walk weak in de knees a mont' atterwuds." XXII. A STORY ABOUT THE LITTLE RABBITS "FIN' um whar you will en w'en you may," remarked Uncle Remus with emphasis, "good chilluns allers gits tuck keer on. Dar wuz Brer Rabbit's chilluns; dey minded der daddy en mammy fum day's een' ter day's een'. W'en ole man Rabbit say scoot,' dey scooted, en w'en ole Miss Rabbit say 'scat,' dey scatted. Dey did dat. En dey kep der cloze clean, en dey ain't had no smut on der nose nudder." Involuntarily the hand of the little boy went up to his face, and he scrubbed the end of his nose with his coat-sleeve. "Dey wuz good chilluns," continued the old man, heartily, "en ef dey hadn't er bin, der wuz one time w'en dey wouldn't er bin no little rabbits--na'er one. Dat's w'at." "What time was that, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked. "De time w'en Brer Fox drapt in at Brer Rabbit house, en didn't foun' nobody dar ceppin' de little Rabbits. Ole Brer Rabbit, he wuz off some'rs raiding on a collard patch, en ole Miss Rabbit she wuz tendin' on a quiltin' in de naberhood, en wiles de little Rabbits wuz playin' hidin'-switch, in drapt Brer Fox. De little Rabbits wuz so fat dat dey fa'rly make his mouf water, but he 'member 'bout Brer Wolf, en he skeer'd fer ter gobble urn up ceppin' he got some skuse. De little Rabbits, dey mighty skittish, en dey sorter huddle deyse'f up tergedder en watch Brer Fox motions. Brer Fox, he sot dar en study w'at sorter skuse he gwineter make up. Bimeby he see a great big stalk er sugar-cane stan'in' up in de cornder, en he cle'r up his th'oat en talk biggity: "'Yer! you young Rabs dar, sail 'roun' yer en broke me a piece er dat sweetnin'-tree,' sezee, en den he koff. "De little Rabbits, dey got out de sugar-cane, dey did, en dey rastle wid it, en sweat over it, but twan't no use. Dey couldn't broke it. Brer Fox, he make like he ain't watchin', but he keep on holler'n: "'Hurry up dar, Rabs! I'm a waitin' on you.' "En de little Rabbits, dey hustle 'roun' en rastle wid it, but they couldn't broke it. Bimeby dey hear little bird singin' on top er de house, en de song w'at de little bird sing wuz dish yer. "'Take yo' toofies en gnyaw it, Take yo' toofies en saw it, Saw it en yoke it, En den you kin broke it.' "Den de little Rabbits, dey git mighty glad, en dey gnyawed de cane mos' 'fo' 'ole Brer Fox could git his legs oncrosst, en w'en dey kyard 'im de cane, Brer Fox, he sot dar en study how he gwineter make some mo' skuse fer nabbin' un um, en bimeby he git up en git down de sifter w'at wuz hangin' on de wall, en holler out: "'Come yer, Rabs! Take dish yer sifter, en run down't de spring en fetch me some fresh water.' "De little Rabbits, dey run down't de spring, en try ter dip up de water wid de sifter, but co'se hit all run out, en hit keep on runnin' out, twel bimeby de little Rabbits sot down en 'gun ter cry. Den de little bird settin' up in de tree he begin fer ter sing, en dish yer's de song w'at he sing: "'Sifter hol' water same ez a tray, Ef you fill it wid moss en dob it wid clay; De Fox git madder de longer you stay-- Fill it wid moss en dob it wid clay.' "Up dey jump, de little Rabbits did, en dey fix de sifter so 'twon't leak, en den dey kyar de water ter ole Brer Fox. Den Brer Fox he git mighty mad, en p'int out a great big stick er wood, en tell de little Rabbits fer ter put dat on de fier. De little chaps dey got 'roun' de wood, dey did, en dey lif' at it so hard twel dey could see der own sins, but de wood ain't budge. Den dey hear de little bird singin', en dish yer's de song w'at he sing: "'Spit in yo' han's en tug it en toll it, En git behime it, en push it, en pole it; Spit in yo' han's en r'ar back en roll it.' "En des 'bout de time dey got de wood on de fier, der daddy, he come skippin' in, en de little bird, he flew'd away. Brer Fox, he seed his game wuz up, en 'twan't long 'fo' he make his skuse en start fer ter go. "'You better Stay en take a snack wid me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Sence Brer Wolf done quite comin' en settin' up wid me, I gittin' so I feels right lonesome dese long nights,' sezee. "But Brer Fox, he button up his coat-collar tight en des put out fer home. En dat w'at you better do, honey, kaze I see Miss Sally's shadder sailin' backerds en forerds 'fo' de winder, en de fus' news you know she'll be spectin' un you." XXIII. MR. RABBIT AND MR. BEAR "DAR wuz one season" said Uncle Remus, pulling thoughtfully at his whiskers, "w'en Brer Fox say to hisse'f dat he speck he better whirl in en plant a goober-patch, en in dem days, mon, hit wuz tech en go. De wud wern't mo'n out'n his mouf 'fo' de groun' 'uz brok'd up en de goobers 'uz planted. Ole Brer Rabbit, he sot off en watch de motions, he did, en he sorter shet one eye en sing to his chilluns: "'Ti-yi! Tungalee! I eat um pea, I pick um pea. Hit grow in de groun', hit grow so free; Ti-yi! dem goober pea.' "Sho' 'nuff w'en de goobers 'gun ter ripen up, eve'y time Brer Fox go down ter his patch, he fine whar somebody bin grabblin' 'mongst de vines, en he git mighty mad. He sorter speck who de somebody is, but ole Brer Rabbit he cover his tracks so cute dat Brer Fox dunner how ter ketch 'im. Bimeby, one day Brer Fox take a walk all roun' de groun'-pea patch, en 'twan't long 'fo' he fine a crack in de fence whar de rail done bin rub right smoove, en right dar he sot 'im a trap. He tuck'n ben' down a hick'ry saplin', growin' in de fence-cornder, en tie one een' un a plow- line on de top, en in de udder een' he fix a loop-knot, en dat he fasten wid a trigger right in de crack. Nex' mawnin' w'en ole Brer Rabbit come slippin' 'long en crope thoo de crack, de loop-knot kotch 'im behime de fo'legs, en de saplin' flew'd up, en dar he wuz 'twix' de heavens en de yeth. Dar he swung, en he fear'd he gwineter fall, en he fear'd he wer'n't gwineter fall. W'ile he wuz a fixin' up a tale fer Brer Fox, he hear a lumberin' down de road, en present'y yer cum ole Brer B'ar amblin' 'long fum whar he bin takin' a bee-tree. Brer Rabbit, he hail 'im: "'Howdy, Brer B'ar!' "Brer B'ar, he look 'roun en bimeby he see Brer Rabbit swingin' fum de saplin', en he holler out: "'Heyo, Brer Rabbit! How you come on dis mawnin'?' "'Much oblije, I'm middlin', Brer B'ar,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Den Brer B'ar, he ax Brer Rabbit w'at he doin' up dar in de elements, en Brer Rabbit, he up'n say he makin' dollar minnit. Brer B'ar, he say how. Brer Rabbit say he keepin' crows out'n Brer Fox's groun' pea patch, en den he ax Brer B'ar ef he don't wanter make dollar minnit, kaze he got big fambly er chilluns fer to take keer un, en den he make sech nice skeercrow. Brer B'ar 'low dat he take de job, en den Brer Rabbit show 'im how ter ben' down de saplin', en 'twan't long 'fo' Brer B'ar wuz swingin' up dar in Brer Rabbit's place. Den Brer Rabbit, he put out fer Brer Fox house, en w'en he got dar he sing out: "'Brer Fox! Oh, Brer Fox! Come out yer, Brer Fox, en I'll show you de man w'at bin stealin' yo' goobers.' "Brer Fox, he grab up his walkin'-stick, en bofe un um went runnin' back down ter der goober-patch, en w'en dey got dar, sho 'nuff, dar wuz ole Brer B'ar. "'Oh, yes! you er kotch, is you?' sez Brer Fox, en 'fo' Brer B'ar could 'splain, Brer Rabbit he jump up en down, en holler out: "'Hit 'im in de mouf, Brer Fox; hit 'im in do mouf'; en Brer Fox, he draw back wid de walkin' cane, en blip he tuck 'im, en eve'y time Brer B'ar'd try ter 'splain, Brer Fox'd shower down on him. "W'iles all dis 'uz gwine on, Brer Rabbit, he slip off en git in a mud-hole en des lef' his eyes stickin' out, kaze he know'd dat Brer B'ar'd be a comin' atter 'im. Sho 'nuff, bimeby here come Brer B'ar down de road, en w'en he git ter de mud-hole, he say: "'Howdy, Brer Frog; is you seed Brer Rabbit go by yer?' "'He des gone by,' sez Brer Rabbit, en ole man B'ar tuck off down de road like a skeer'd mule, en Brer Rabbit, he come out en dry hisse'f in de sun, en go home ter his fambly same ez enny udder man. "The Bear didn't catch the Rabbit, then?" inquired the little boy, sleepily. "Jump up fum dar, honey!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, by way of reply. "I ain't got no time fer ter be settin' yer proppin' yo' eyeleds open." XXIV. MR. BEAR CATCHES OLD MR. BULL-FROG "WELL, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, counting to see if he hadn't lost a marble somewhere, "the Bear didn't catch the Rabbit after all, did he?" "Now you talkin', honey," replied the old man, his earnest face breaking up into little eddies of smiles--"now you talkin' sho. 'Tain't bin proned inter no Brer B'ar fer ter kotch Brer Rabbit. Hit sorter like settin' a mule fer ter trap a hummin'-bird. But Brer B'ar, he tuck'n got hisse'f inter some mo' trubble, w'ich it look like it mighty easy. Ef folks could make der livin' longer gittin' inter trubble," continued the old man, looking curiously at the little boy, "ole Miss Favers wouldn't be bodder'n yo' ma fer ter borry a cup full er sugar eve'y now en den; en it look like ter me dat I knows a nigger dat wouldn't be squattin' 'roun' yer makin' dese yer fish-baskits." "How did the Bear get into more trouble, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Natchul, honey. Brer B'ar, he tuck a notion dat ole Brer Bull-frog wuz de man w'at fool 'im, en he say dat he'd come up wid 'im ef 'twuz a year atterwuds. But 'twan't no year, an 'twan't no mont', en mo'n dat, hit wa'n't skasely a week, w'en bimeby one day Brer B'ar wuz gwine home fum de takin' un a bee-tree, en lo en behol's, who should he see but ole Brer Bull-frog settin' out on de aidge er de mud-muddle fas' 'sleep! Brer B'ar drap his axe, he did, en crope up, en retch out wid his paw, en scoop ole Brer Bull-frog in des dis away." Here the old man used his hand ladle-fashion, by way of illustration. "He scoop 'im in, en dar he wuz. W'en Brer B'ar got his clampers on 'im good, he sot down en talk at 'im. "'Howdy, Brer Bull-frog, howdy! En how yo fambly? I hope dey er well, Brer Bull-frog, kaze dis day you got some bizness wid me w'at'll las' you a mighty long time.' "Brer Bull-frog, he dunner w'at ter say. He dunner w'at's up, en he don't say nuthin'. Ole Brer B'ar he keep runnin' on: "'You er de man w'at tuck en fool me 'bout Brer Rabbit t'er day. You had yo' fun, Brer Bull-frog, en now I'll git mine.' "Den Brer Bull-frog, he gin ter git skeer'd, he did, en he up'n say: "'W'at I bin doin', Brer B'ar? How I bin foolin' you?' "Den Brer B'ar laff, en make like he dunno, but he keep on talkin'. "'Oh, no, Brer Bull-frog! You ain't de man w'at stick yo' head up out'n de water en tell me Brer Rabbit done gone on by. Oh, no! you ain't de man. I boun' you ain't. 'Bout dat time, you wuz at home with yo' fambly, whar you allers is. I dunner whar you wuz, but I knows whar you is, Brer Bull-frog, en hit's you en me fer it. Atter de sun goes down dis day you don't fool no mo' folks gwine 'long dis road.' "Co'se, Brer Bull-frog dunner w'at Brer B'ar drivin' at, but he know sump'n hatter be done, en dat mighty soon, kaze Brer B'ar 'gun to snap his jaws tergedder en foam at de mouf, en Brer Bull-frog holler out: "'Oh, pray, Brer B'ar! Lemme off dis time, en I won't never do so no mo'. Oh, pray, Brer B'ar! do lemme off dis time, en I'll show you de fattes' bee-tree in de woods.' "Ole Brer B'ar, he chomp his toofies en foam at de mouf. Brer Bull-frog he des up'n squall: "'Oh, pray, Brer B'ar! I won't never do so no mo'! Oh, pray, Brer B'ar! Lemme off dis time!' "But ole Brer B'ar say he gwineter make way wid 'im, en den he sot en study, ole Brer B'ar did, how he gwineter squench Brer Bull-frog. He know he can't drown 'im, en he ain't got no fier fer ter bu'n 'im, en he git mighty pestered. Bimeby ole Brer Bull-frog, he sorter stop his cryin' en his boo-hooin', en he up'n say: "'Ef you gwineter kill me, Brer B'ar, kyar me ter dat big flat rock out dar on de aidge er de mill-pon', whar I kin see my fambly, en atter I see um, den you kin take you axe en sqush me.' "Dis look so fa'r and squar' dat Brer B'ar he 'gree, en he take ole Brer Bull-frog by wunner his behime legs, en sling his axe on his shoulder, en off he put fer de big flat rock. When he git dar he lay Brer Bullfrog down on de rock, en Brer Bull-frog make like he lookin' 'roun' fer his folks. Den Brer B'ar, he draw long breff en pick up his axe. Den he spit in his han's en draw back en come down on de rock--pow!" "'Did he kill the Frog, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, as the old man paused to scoop up a thimbleful of glowing embers in his pipe. "'Deed, en dat he didn't, honey. 'Twix' de time w'en Brer B'ar raise up wid his axe en w'en he come down wid it, ole Brer Bull-frog he lipt up en dove down in de mill-pon', kerblink- kerblunk! En w'en he riz way out in de pon' he riz a singin', en dish yer's de song w'at he sing: "'Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy- Ingle-go-jang, my joy! I'm right at home, my joy, my joy- Ingle-go-jang, my joy!'" "That's a mighty funny song," said the little boy. "Funny now, I speck," said the old man, "but 'tweren't funny in dem days, en 'twouldn't be funny now ef folks know'd much 'bout de Bull-frog langwidge ez dey useter. Dat's w'at." XXV. HOW MR. RABBIT LOST HIS FINE BUSHY TAIL "ONE time," said Uncle Remus, sighing heavily and settling himself back in his seat with an air of melancholy resignation-- "one time Brer Rabbit wuz gwine 'long down de road shakin' his big bushy tail, en feelin' des ez scrumpshus ez a bee-martin wid a fresh bug." Here the old man paused and glanced at the little boy, but it was evident that the youngster had become so accustomed to the marvelous developments of Uncle Remus's stories, that the extraordinary statement made no unusual impression upon him. Therefore the old man began again, and this time in a louder and more insinuating tone: "One time ole man Rabbit, he wuz gwine 'long down de road shakin' his long, bushy tail, en feelin' mighty biggity." This was effective. "Great goodness, Uncle Remus!" exclaimed the little boy in open-eyed wonder, "everybody knows that rabbits haven't got long, bushy tails." The old man shifted his position in his chair and allowed his venerable head to drop forward until his whole appearance was suggestive of the deepest dejection; and this was intensified by a groan that seemed to be the result of great mental agony. Finally he spoke, but not as addressing himself to the little boy. "I notices dat dem fokes w'at makes a great 'miration 'bout w'at dey knows is des de fokes w'ich you can't put no 'pennunce in w'en de 'cashun come up. Yer one un um now, en he done come en excuse me er 'lowin dat rabbits is got long, bushy tails, w'ich goodness knows ef I'd a dremp' it, I'd a whirl in en on-dremp it." "Well, but Uncle Remus, you said rabbits had long, bushy tails," replied the little boy. "Now you know you did." "Ef I ain't fergit it off'n my mine, I say dat ole Brer Rabbit wuz gwine down de big road shakin' his long, bushy tail. Dat w'at I say, en dat I stan's by." The little boy looked puzzled, but he didn't say anything. After a while the old man continued: "Now, den, ef dat's 'greed ter, I'm gwine on, en ef tain't 'greed ter, den I'm gwineter pick up my cane en look atter my own intrust. I got wuk lyin''roun' yer dat's des natchully gittin' moldy." The little boy still remained quiet, and Uncle Remus proceeded: "One day Brer Rabbit wuz gwine down de road shakin' his long, bushy tail, w'en who should he strike up wid but ole Brer Fox gwine amblin' long wid a big string er fish! W'en dey pass de time er day wid wunner nudder, Brer Rabbit, he open up de confab, he did, en he ax Brer Fox whar he git dat nice string er fish, en Brer Fox, he up'n 'spon' dat he kotch um, en Brer Rabbit, he say whar'bouts, en Brer Fox, he say down at de babtizin' creek, en Brer Rabbit he ax how, kaze in dem days dey wuz monstus fon' er minners, en Brer Fox, he sot down on a log, he did, en he up'n tell Brer Rabbit dat all he gotter do fer ter git er big mess er minners is ter go ter de creek atter sundown, en drap his tail in de water en set dar twel day-light, en den draw up a whole armful er fishes, en dem w'at he don't want, he kin fling back. "Right dar's whar Brer Rabbit drap his watermillion, kaze he tuck'n sot out dat night en went a fishin'. De wedder wuz sorter col', en Brer Rabbit, he got 'im a bottle er dram en put out fer de creek, en w'en he git dar he pick out a good place, en he sorter squot down, he did, en let his tail hang in de water. He sot dar, en he sot dar, en he drunk his dram, en he think he gwineter freeze, but bimeby day come, en dar he wuz. He make a pull, en he feel like he comin' in two, en he fetch nudder jerk, en lo en beholes, whar wuz his tail?" There was a long pause. "Did it come off, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, presently. "She did dat!" replied the old man with unction. "She did dat, and dat w'at make all deze yer bob-tail rabbits w'at you see hoppin' en skaddlin' thoo de woods." "Are they all that way just because the old Rabbit lost his tail in the creek?" asked the little boy. "Dat's it, honey," replied the old man. "Dat's w'at dey tells me. Look like dey er bleedzd ter take atter der pa." XXVI. MR. TERRAPIN SHOWS HIS STRENGTH "BRER TARRYPIN wuz de out'nes' man," said Uncle Remus, rubbing his hands together contemplatively, and chuckling to himself in a very significant manner; "he wuz de out'nes' man er de whole gang. He wuz dat." The little boy sat perfectly quiet, betraying no impatience when Uncle Remus paused to hunt, first in one pocket and then in another, for enough crumbs of tobacco to replenish his pipe. Presently the old man proceeded: "One night Miss Meadows en de gals dey gun a candy-pullin', en so many er de nabers come in 'sponse ter de invite dat dey hatter put de 'lasses in de wash pot en b'il' de fier in de yard. Brer B'ar, he holp*1 Miss Meadows bring de wood, Brer Fox, he men' de fier, Brer Wolf, he kep' de dogs off, Brer Rabbit, he grease de bottom er de plates fer ter keep de candy fum stickin', en Brer Tarrypin, he klum up in a cheer, en say he'd watch en see dat de 'lasses didn't bile over. Dey wuz all dere, en dey wern't cuttin' up no didos, nudder, kaze Miss Meadows, she done put her foot down, she did, en say dat w'en dey come ter her place dey hatter hang up a flag er truce at de front gate en 'bide by it. "Well, den, w'iles dey wuz all a settin' dar en de 'lasses wuz a bilin' en a blubberin', dey got ter runnin' on talkin' mighty biggity. Brer Rabbit, he say he de swiffes'; but Brer Tarrypin, he rock long in de cheer en watch de 'lasses. Brer Fox, he say he de sharpes', but Brer Tarrypin he rock long. Brer Wolf, he say he de mos' suvvigus, but Brer Tarrypin, he rock en he rock long. Brer B'ar, he say he de mos' stronges', but Brer Tarrypin he rock, en he keep on rockin'. Bimeby he sorter shet one eye, en say, sezee: "'Hit look like 'periently dat de ole hardshell ain't nowhars 'longside er dis crowd, yit yer I is, en I'm de same man w'at show Brer Rabbit dat he ain't de swiffes'; en I'm de same man w'at kin show Brer B'ar dat he ain't de stronges',' sezee. "Den dey all laff en holler, kaze it look like Brer B'ar mo' stronger dan a steer. Bimeby, Miss Meadows, she up'n ax, she did, how he gwine do it. "'Gimme a good strong rope,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'en lemme git in er puddle er water, en den let Brer B'ar see ef he kin pull me out,' sezee. "Den dey all laff 'gin, en Brer B'ar, he ups en sez, sezee: 'We ain't got no rope,' sezee. "'No,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'en needer is you got de strenk,' sezee, en den Brer Tarrypin, he rock en rock long, en watch de 'lasses a bilin' en a blubberin'. "Atter w'ile Miss Meadows, she up en say, she did, dat she'd take'n loan de young men her bed-cord, en w'iles de candy wuz a coolin' in de plates, dey could all go ter de branch en see Brer Tarrypin kyar out his projick. Brer Tarrypin," continued Uncle Remus, in a tone at once confidential and argumentative, "weren't much bigger'n de pa'm er my han', en it look mighty funny fer ter year 'im braggin' 'bout how he kin out-pull Brer B'ar. But dey got de bed-cord atter w'ile, en den dey all put out ter de branch. W'en Brer Tarrypin fine de place he wanter, he tuck one een er de bed-cord, en gun de yuther een' to Brer B'ar. "'Now den, ladies en gents,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'you all go wid Brer B'ar up dar in de woods en I'll stay yer, en w'en you year me holler, den's de time fer Brer B'ar fer ter see ef he kin haul in de slack er de rope. You all take keer er dat ar een',' sezee, 'en I'll take keer er dish yer een',' sezee. "Den dey all put out en lef' Brer Tarrypin at de branch, en w'en dey got good en gone, he dove down inter de water, he did, en tie de bed-cord hard en fas' ter wunner deze yer big clay-roots, en den he riz up en gin a whoop. "Brer B'ar he wrop de bed-cord roun' his han,' en wink at de gals, en wid dat he gin a big juk, but Brer Tarrypin ain't budge. Den he take bof han's en gin a big pull, but, all de same, Brer Tarrypin ain't budge. Den he tu'n 'roun', he did, en put de rope cross his shoulders en try ter walk off wid Brer Tarrypin, but Brer Tarrypin look like he don't feel like walkin'. Den Brer Wolf he put in en holp Brer B'ar pull, but des like he didn't, en den dey all holp 'im, en, bless grashus! w'iles dey wuz all a pullin', Brer Tarrypin, he holler, en ax um w'y dey don't take up de slack. "Den w'en Brer Tarrypin feel um quit pullin', he dove down, he did, en ontie de rope, en by de time dey got ter de branch, Brer Tarrypin, he wuz settin' in de aidge er de water des ez natchul ez de nex' un, en he up'n say, sezee: "'Dat las' pull er yone wuz a mighty stiff un, en a leetle mo'n you'd er had me,' sezee. 'You er monstus stout, Brer B'ar,' sezee, 'en you pulls like a yoke er steers, but I sorter had de purchis on you,' sezee. "Den Brer B'ar, bein's his mouf 'gun ter water atter de sweetnin,' he up'n say he speck de candy's ripe, en off dey put atter it!" "It's a wonder," said the little boy, after a while, "that the rope didn't break." "Break who?" exclaimed Uncle Remus, with a touch of indignation in his tone--"break who? In dem days, Miss Meadows's bed-cord would a hilt a mule." This put an end to whatever doubts the child might have entertained. *1 Help; helped. XXVII. WHY MR. POSSUM HAS NO HAIR ON HIS TAIL "HIT look like ter me," said Uncle Remus, frowning, as the little boy came hopping and skipping into the old man's cabin, "dat I see a young un 'bout yo' size playin' en makin' free wid dem ar chilluns er ole Miss Favers's yistiddy, en w'en I seed dat, I drap my axe, en I come in yer en sot flat down right whar you er settin' now, en I say ter myse'f dat it's 'bout time fer ole Remus fer ter hang up en quit. Dat's des zackly w'at I say." "Well, Uncle Remus, they called me," said the little boy, in a penitent tone. 'They come and called me, and said they had a pistol and some powder over there." "Dar now!" exclaimed the old man, indignantly. "Dar now! w'at I bin sayin'? Hit's des a born blessin' dat you wa'n't brung home on a litter wid bofe eyeballs hangin' out en one year clean gone; dat's w'at 'tis. Hit's des a born blessin'. Hit hope me up might'ly de udder day w'en I hear Miss Sally layin' down de law 'bout you en dem Favers chillun, yit, lo en behol's, de fus news I knows yer you is han'-in-glove wid um. Hit's nuff fer ter fetch ole Miss right up out'n dat berryin'-groun' fum down dar in Putmon County, en w'at yo' gran'ma wouldn't er stood me en yo' ma ain't gwineter stan' nudder, en de nex time I hear 'bout sech a come off ez dis, right den en dar I'm boun' ter lay de case 'fo' Miss Sally. Dem Favers's wa'n't no 'count 'fo' de war, en dey wa'n't no 'count endurin' er de war, en dey ain't no 'count atterwards, en w'iles my head's hot you ain't gwineter go mixin' up yo'se'f wid de riff-raff er creashun." The little boy made no further attempt to justify his conduct. He was a very wise little boy, and he knew that, in Uncle Remus's eyes, he had been guilty of a flagrant violation of the family code. Therefore, instead of attempting to justify himself, he pleaded guilty, and promised that he would never do so any more. After this there was a long period of silence, broken only by the vigorous style in which Uncle Remus puffed away at his pipe. This was the invariable result. Whenever the old man had occasion to reprimand the little boy--and the occasions were frequent--he would relapse into a dignified but stubborn silence. Presently the youngster drew forth from his pocket a long piece of candle. The sharp eyes of the old man saw it at once. "Don't you come a tellin' me dat Miss Sally gun you dat," he exclaimed, "kaze she didn't. En I lay you hatter be monstus sly 'fo' you gotter chance fer ter snatch up dat piece er cannle." "Well, Uncle Remus," the little boy explained, "it was lying there all by itself, and I just thought I'd fetch it out to you. "Dat's so, honey," said Uncle Remus, greatly mollified; "dat's so, kaze by now some er dem yuther niggers 'ud er done had her lit up. Dey er mighty biggity, dem house niggers is, but I notices dat dey don't let nuthin' pass. Dey goes 'long wid der han's en der mouf open, en w'at one don't ketch de tother one do." There was another pause, and finally the little boy said: "Uncle Remus, you know you promised to-day to tell me why the 'Possum has no hair on his tail." "Law, honey! ain't you done gone en fergot dat off'n yo' mine yit? Hit look like ter me," continued the old man, leisurely refilling his pipe, "dat she sorter run like dis: One time ole Brer Possum, he git so hungry, he did, dat he bleedzd fer ter have a mess er 'simmons. He monstus lazy man, old Brer Possum wuz, but bimeby his stummick 'gun ter growl en holler at 'im so dat he des hatter rack 'roun' en hunt up sump'n; en w'iles he wuz rackin' 'roun', who sh'd he run up wid but Brer Rabbit, en dey wuz hail-fellers, kaze Brer Possum, he ain't bin bodder'n Brer Rabbit like dem yuther creeturs. Dey sot down by de side er de big road, en dar dey jabber en confab 'mong wunner nudder, twel bimeby old Brer Possum, he take 'n tell Brer Rabbit dat he mos' pe'sh out, en Brer Rabbit, he lip up in de a'r, he did, en smack his han's tergedder, en say dat he know right whar Brer Possum kin git a bait er 'simmons. Den Brer Possum, he say whar, en Brer Rabbit, he say w'ich 'twuz over at Brer B'ar's 'simmon orchard." "Did the Bear have a 'simmon orchard, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked. "Co'se, honey, kaze in dem days Brer B'ar wuz a bee-hunter. He make his livin' findin' bee trees, en de way he fine um he plant 'im some 'simmon-trees, w'ich de bees dey'd come ter suck de 'simmons en den ole Brer B'ar he'd watch um whar dey'd go, en den he'd be mighty ap' fer ter come up wid um. No matter 'bout dat, de 'simmon patch 'uz dar des like I tell you, en ole Brer Possum mouf 'gun ter water soon's he year talk un um, en mos' 'fo' Brer Rabbit done tellin' 'im de news, Brer Possum, he put out, he did, en 'twa'n't long 'fo' he wuz perch up in de highes' tree in Brer B'ar 'simmon patch. But Brer Rabbit, he done 'termin' fer ter see some fun, en w'iles all dis 'uz gwine on, he run 'roun' ter Brer B'ar house, en holler en tell 'im w'ich dey wuz somebody 'stroyin' un his 'simmons, en Brer B'ar, he hustle off fer ter ketch 'im. "Eve'y now en den Brer Possum think he year Brer B'ar comin', but he keep on sayin', sezee: "'I'll des git one 'simmon mo' en den I'll go; one 'simmon mo' en den I'll go.' "Las' he year Brer B'ar comm' sho nuff, but 'twuz de same ole chune--'One 'simmon mo' en den I'll go'--en des 'bout dat time Brer B'ar busted inter de patch, en gin de tree a shake, en Brer Possum, he drapt out longer de yuther ripe 'simmons, but time he totch de groun' he got his foots tergedder, en he lit out fer de fence same ez a race-hoss, en 'cross dat patch him en Brer B'ar had it, en Brer B'ar gain' eve'y jump, twel time Brer Possum make de fence Brer B'ar grab 'im by de tail, en Brer Possum, he went out 'tween de rails en gin a powerful juk en pull his tail out 'twix Brer B'ar tushes; en, lo en behol's, Brer B'ar hol' so tight en Brer Possum pull so hard dat all de ha'r come off in Brer B'ar's mouf, w'ich, ef Brer Rabbit hadn't er happen up wid a go'd er water, Brer B'ar 'der got strankle. "Fum dat day ter dis," said Uncle Remus, knocking the ashes carefully out of his pipe, "Brer Possum ain't had no ha'r on his tail, en needer do his chilluns." XXVIII. THE END OF MR. BEAR THE next time the little boy sought Uncle Remus out, he found the old man unusually cheerful and good-humoured. His rheumatism had ceased to trouble him, and he was even disposed to be boisterous. He was singing when the little boy got near the cabin, and the child paused on the outside to listen to the vigorous but mellow voice of the old man, as it rose and fell with the burden of the curiously plaintive song--a senseless affair so far as the words were concerned, but sung to a melody almost thrilling in its sweetness: "Han' me down my walkin'-cane (Hey my Lily! go down de road!), Yo' true lover gone down de lane (Hey my Lily! go down de road!)." The quick ear of Uncle Remus, however, had detected the presence of the little boy, and he allowed his song to run into a recitation of nonsense, of which the following, if it be rapidly spoken, will give a faint idea: "Ole M'er Jackson, fines' confraction, fell down sta'rs fer to git satisfaction; big Bill Fray, he rule de day, eve'ything he call fer come one, two by three. Gwine 'long one day, met Johnny Huby, ax him grine nine yards er steel fer me, tole me w'ich he couldn't; den I hist 'im over Hickerson Dickerson's barn-doors; knock 'im ninety-nine miles under water, w'en he rise, he rise in Pike straddle un a hanspike, en I lef' 'im dar smokin' er de hornpipe, Juba reda seda breda. Aunt Kate at de gate; I want to eat, she fry de meat en gimme skin, w'ich I fling it back agin. Juba!" All this, rattled off at a rapid rate and with apparent seriousness, was calculated to puzzle the little boy, and he slipped into his accustomed seat with an expression of awed bewilderment upon his face. "Hit's all des dat away, honey," continued the old man, with the air of one who had just given an important piece of information. "En w'en you bin cas'n shadders long ez de ole nigger, den you'll fine out who's w'ich, en w'ich's who." The little boy made no response. He was in thorough sympathy with all the whims and humors of the old man, and his capacity for enjoying them was large enough to include even those he could not understand. Uncle Remus was finishing an axe-handle, and upon these occasions it was his custom to allow the child to hold one end while he applied sand-paper to the other. These relations were pretty soon established, to the mutual satisfaction of the parties most interested, and the old man continued his remarks, but this time not at random: "W'en I see deze yer swell-head folks like dat 'oman w'at come en tell yo' ma 'bout you chunkin' at her chilluns, w'ich yo' ma make Mars John strop you, hit make my mine run back to ole Brer B'ar. Ole Brer B'ar, he got de swell-headedness hisse'f, en ef der wuz enny swinkin', hit swunk too late fer ter he'p ole Brer B'ar. Leas'ways dat's w'at dey tells me, en I ain't never yearn it 'sputed." "Was the Bear's head sure enough swelled, Uncle Remus?" "Now you talkin', honey!" exclaimed the old man. "Goodness! what made it swell?" This was Uncle Remus's cue. Applying the sand-paper to the axe-helve with gentle vigor, he began. "One time when Brer Rabbit wuz gwine lopin' home fum a frolic w'at dey bin havin' up at Miss Meadows's, who should he happin up wid but ole Brer B'ar. Co'se, atter w'at done pass 'twix um dey wa'n't no good feelin's 'tween Brer Rabbit en ole Brer B'ar, but Brer Rabbit, he wanter save his manners, en so he holler out: "'Heyo, Brer B'ar! how you come on? I ain't seed you in a coon's age. How all down at yo' house? How Miss Brune en Miss Brindle?" "Who was that, Uncle Remus?" the little boy interrupted. "Miss Brune en Miss Brindle? Miss Brune wuz Brer B'ar's ole 'oman, en Miss Brindle wuz his gal. Dat w'at dey call um in dem days. So den Brer Rabbit, he ax him howdy, he did, en Brer B'ar, he 'spon' dat he wuz mighty po'ly, en dey amble 'long, dey did, sorter familious like, but Brer Rabbit, he keep one eye on Brer B'ar, en Brer B'ar, he study how he gwine nab Brer Rabbit. Las' Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee: "'Brer B'ar, I speck I got some bizness cut out fer you,' sezee. "'What dat, Brer Rabbit?' sez Brer B'ar, sezee. "'W'iles I wuz cleanin' up my new-groun' day 'fo' yistiddy,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'I come 'cross wunner deze yer ole time bee- trees. Hit start holler at de bottom, en stay holler plum der de top, en de honey's des natchully oozin' out, en ef you'll drap yo' 'gagements en go longer me,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'you'll git a bait dat'll las' you en yo' fambly twel de middle er nex' mont',' sezee. "Brer B'ar say he much oblije en he bleeve he'll go long, en wid dat dey put out fer Brer Rabbit's new-groun', w'ich 'twa'n't so mighty fur. Leas'ways, dey got dar atter w'ile. Ole Brer B'ar, he 'low dat he kin smell de honey. Brer Rabbit, he 'low dat he kin see de honey-koam. Brer B'ar, he 'low dat he can hear de bees a zoonin'. Dey stan' 'roun' en talk biggity, dey did, twel bimeby Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee: "'You do de clim'in', Brer B'ar, en I'll do de rushin' 'roun'; you clim' up ter de hole, en I'll take dis yer pine pole en shove de honey up whar you kin git 'er,' sezee. "Ole Brer B'ar, he spit on his han's en skint up de tree, en jam his head in de hole, en sho nuff, Brer Rabbit, he grab de pine pole, en de way he stir up dem bees wuz sinful--dat's w'at it wuz. Hit wuz sinful. En de bees dey swawm'd on Brer B'ar's head, twel 'fo' he could take it out'n de hole hit wuz done swell up bigger dan dat dinner-pot, en dar he swung, en ole Brer Rabbit, he dance 'roun' en sing: "Tree stan' high, but honey mighty sweet-- Watch dem bees wid stingers on der feet.' "But dar ole Brer B'ar hung, en ef his head ain't swunk, I speck he hangin' dar yit--dat w'at I speck." XXIX. MR. FOX GETS INTO SERIOUS BUSINESS "HIT turn out one time," said Uncle Remus, grinding some crumbs of tobacco between the palms of his hands, preparatory to enjoying his usual smoke after supper--"hit turn out one time dat Brer Rabbit make so free wid de man's collard-patch dat de man he tuck'n sot a trap fer ole Brer Rabbit." "Which man was that, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Des a man, honey. Dat's all. Dat's all I knows--des wunner dese yer mans w'at you see trollopin 'roun' eve'y day. Nobody ain't never year w'at his name is, en ef dey did dey kep' de news mighty close fum me. Ef dish yer man is bleedzd fer ter have a name, den I'm done, kaze you'll hatter go fudder dan me. Ef you bleedzd ter know mo' dan w'at I duz, den you'll hatter hunt up some er deze yer niggers w'at's sprung up sence I commence fer ter shed my ha'r." "Well, I just thought, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, in a tone remarkable for self-depreciation, "that the man had a name." "Tooby sho," replied the old man, with unction, puffing away at his pipe. "Co'se. Dat w'at make I say w'at I duz. Dish yer man mout a had a name, en den ag'in he moutn't. He mont er bin name Slip-shot Sam, en he mouter bin name ole One-eye Riley, w'ich ef 'twuz hit ain't bin handed roun' ter me. But dish yer man, he in de tale, en w'at we gwine do wid 'im? Dat's de p'int, kase w'en I git ter huntin' 'roun' 'mong my 'membunce atter dish yer Mister W'atyoumaycollum's name, she ain't dar. Now den, le's des call 'im Mr. Man en let 'im go at dat." The silence of the little boy gave consent. "One time," said Uncle Remus, carefully taking up the thread of the story where it had been dropped, "hit turn out dat Brer Rabbit bin makin' so free wid Mr. Man's greens en truck dat Mr. Man, he tuck'n sot a trap for Brer Rabbit, en Brer Rabbit he so greedy dat he tuck'n walk right spang in it, 'fo' he know hisse'f. Well, 'twa'n't long 'fo' yer come Mr. Man, broozin' 'roun', en he ain't no sooner see ole Brer Rabbit dan he smack his han's tergedder en holler out: "'You er nice feller, you is! Yer you bin gobblin' up my green truck, en now you tryin' ter tote off my trap. You er mighty nice chap--dat's w'at you is! But now dat I got you, I'll des 'bout settle wid you fer de ole en de new.' "En wid dat, Mr. Man, he go off, he did, down in de bushes atter han'ful er switches. Ole Brer Rabbit, he ain't sayin' nuthin', but he feelin' mighty lonesome, en he sot dar lookin' like eve'y minnit wuz gwineter be de nex'. En w'iles Mr. Man wuz off prepa'r'n his bresh-broom, who should come p'radin' long but Brer Fox. Brer Fox make a great 'miration, he did, 'bout de fix w'at he fin' Brer Rabbit in, but Brer Rabbit he make like he fit ter kill hisse'f laffin', en he up'n tell Brer Fox, he did, dat Miss Meadows's fokes want 'im ter go down ter der house in 'tennunce on a weddin', en he 'low w'ich he couldn't, en dey 'low how he could, en den bimeby dey take'n tie 'im dar w'iles dey go atter de preacher, so he be dar' w'en dey come back. En mo'n dat, Brer Rabbit up'n tell Brer Fox dat his chillun's mighty low wid de fever, en he bleedzd ter go atter some pills fer'm, en he ax Brer Fox fer ter take his place en go down ter Miss Meadows's en have nice time wid de gals. Brer Fox, he in fer dem kinder pranks, en 'twa'n't no time 'fo' Brer Rabbit had ole Brer Fox harness up dar in his place, en den he make like he got ter make 'as'e en git de pills fer dem sick chilluns. Brer Rabbit wa'n't mo'n out er sight 'fo' yer come Mr. Man wid a han'ful er hick'ries, but w'en he see Brer Fox tied up dar, he look like he 'stonished. "'Heyo!' sez Mr. Man, sezee, 'you done change color, en you done got bigger, en yo' tail done grow out. W'at kin' er w'atzyname is you, ennyhow?' sezee. "Brer Fox, he stay still, en Mr. Man, he talk on: "'Hit's mighty big luck,' sezee, 'ef w'en I ketch de chap w'at nibble my greens, likewise I ketch de feller w'at gnyaw my goose,' sezee, en wid dat he let inter Brer Fox wid de hick'ries, en de way he play rap-jacket wuz a caution ter de naberhood. Brer Fox, he juk en he jump, en he squeal en he squall, but Mr. Man, he shower down on 'im, he did, like fightin' a red was'nes'." The little boy laughed, and Uncle Remus supplemented this indorsement of his descriptive powers with a most infectious chuckle. "'Bimeby," continued the old man, "de switches, dey got frazzle out, en Mr. Man, he put out atter mo', en w'en he done got fa'rly outer yearin', Brer Rabbit, he show'd up, he did, kaze he des bin hidin' out in de bushes lis'nin' at de racket, en he 'low hit mighty funny dat Miss Meadows ain't come 'long, kaze he done bin down ter de doctor house, en dat's fudder dan de preacher, yit. Brer Rabbit make like he hurr'in' on home, but Brer Fox, he open up, he did, en he say: "'I thank you fer ter tu'n me loose, Brer Rabbit, en I'll be 'blije,' sezee, ''caze you done tie me up so tight dat it make my head swim, en I don't speck I'd las' fer ter git ter Miss Meadows's,' sezee. "Brer Rabbit, he sot down sorter keerless like, en begin fer ter scratch one year like a man studyin' 'bout sump'n. "'Dat's so, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'you duz look sorter stove up. Look like sump'n bin onkoamin' yo' ha'rs,' sezee. "Brer Fox ain't sayin' nothin', but Brer Rabbit, he keep on talkin': "'Dey ain't no bad feelin's 'twix' us, is dey, Brer Fox? Kaze ef dey is, I ain't got no time fer ter be tarryin' 'roun' yer.' "Brer Fox say w'ich he don't have no onfrennelness, en wid dat Brer Rabbit cut Brer Fox loose des in time fer ter hear Mr. Man w'isserlin up his dogs, en one went one way en de udder went nudder." XXX. HOW MR. RABBIT SUCCEEDED IN RAISING A DUST "IN dem times," said Uncle Remus, gazing admiringly at himself in a fragment of looking-glass, "Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Coon, en dem yuther creeturs go co'tin' en sparklin' 'roun' de naberhood mo' samer dan folks. 'Twan't no 'Lemme a hoss,' ner 'Fetch me my buggy,' but dey des up'n lit out en tote deyse'f. Dar's ole Brer Fox, he des wheel 'roun' en fetch his flank one swipe wid 'is tongue en he'd be koam up; en Brer Rabbit, he des spit on his han' en twis' it 'roun' 'mongst de roots er his years en his ha'r'd be roach. Dey wuz dat flirtashus," continued the old man, closing one eye at his image in the glass, "dat Miss Meadows en de gals don't se no peace fum one week een' ter de udder. Chuseday wuz same as Sunday, en Friday wuz same as Chuseday, en hit come down ter dat pass dat w'en Miss Meadows 'ud have chicken-fixin's fer dinner, in 'ud drap Brer Fox en Brer Possum, en w'en she'd have fried greens in 'ud pop ole Brer Rabbit, twel las' Miss Meadows, she tuck'n tell de gals dat she be dad-blame ef she gwineter keep no tavvum. So dey fix it up 'mong deyse'f, Miss Meadows en de gals did, dat de nex' time de gents call dey'd gin um a game. De gents, dey wuz a co'tin, but Miss Meadows, she don't wanter marry none un um, en needer duz de gals, en likewise dey don't wanter have um pester'n 'roun.' Las', one Chuseday, Miss Meadows, she tole um dat ef dey come down ter her house de nex' Sat'day evenin', de whole caboodle on um 'ud go down de road a piece, whar der wuz a big flint rock, en de man w'at could take a sludge-hammer en knock de dus' out'n dat rock, he wuz de man w'at 'ud git de pick er de gals. Dey all say dey gwine do it, but ole Brer Rabbit, he crope off whar der wuz a cool place under some jimson weeds, en dar he sot wukkin his mind how he gwineter git dus' out'n dat rock. Bimeby, w'ile he wuz a settin' dar, up he jump en crack his heels tergedder en sing out: "'Make a bow ter de Buzzard en den ter de Crow, Takes a limber-toe gemmun fer ter jump Jim Crow,' "en wid dat he put out for Brer Coon house en borrer his slippers. W'en Sat'day evenin' come, dey wuz all dere. Miss Meadows en de gals, dey wuz dere; en Brer Coon, en Brer Fox, en Brer Possum, en Brer Tarrypin, dey wuz dere." "Where was the Rabbit?" the little boy asked. "You kin put yo' 'pennunce in ole Brer Rabbit," the old man replied, with a chuckle. "He wuz dere, but he shuffle up kinder late, kaze w'en Miss Meadows en de balance on um done gone down ter de place, Brer Rabbit, he crope 'roun' ter de ash-hopper, en fill Brer Coon's slippers full er ashes, en den he tuck'n put um on en march off. He got dar atter 'w'ile, en soon's Miss Meadows en de gals seed 'im, dey up'n giggle, en make a great 'miration kaze Brer Rabbit got on slippers. Brer Fox, he so smart, he holler out, he did, en say he lay Brer Rabbit got de groun'-eatch, but Brer Rabbit, he sorter shet one eye, he did, en say, sezee: "'I bin so useter ridin' hoss-back, ez deze ladies knows, dat I'm gittin' sorter tender-footed;' en dey don't hear much mo' fum Brer Fox dat day, kaze he 'member how Brer Rabbit done bin en rid him; en hit 'uz des 'bout much ez Miss Meadows en de gals could do fer ter keep der snickers fum gittin' up a 'sturbance 'mong de congregashun. But, never mine dat, old Brer Rabbit, he wuz dar, en he so brash dat leetle mo' en he'd er grab up de sludge-hammer en er open up de racket 'fo' ennybody gun de word; but Brer Fox, he shove Brer Rabbit out'n de way en pick up de sludge hisse'f. Now den," continued the old man, with pretty much the air of one who had been the master of similar ceremonies, "de progance wuz dish yer: Eve'y gent wer ter have th'ee licks at de rock, en de gent w'at fetch de dus' he were de one w'at gwineter take de pick er de gals. Ole Brer Fox, he grab de sludge-hammer, he did, en he come down on de rock--blim! No dus' ain't come. Den he draw back en down he come ag'in--blam! No dus' ain't come. Den he spit in his han's, en give 'er a big swing en down she come--kerblap! En yit no dus' ain't flew'd. "Den Brer Possum he make triul, en Brer Coon, en all de balance un um 'cep' Brer Tarrypin, en he 'low dat he got a crick in his neck. Den Brer Rabbit, he grab holt er de sludge, en he lipt up in de a'r en come down on de rock all at de same time--pow!--en de ashes, dey flew'd up so, dey did, dat Brer Fox, he tuck'n had a sneezin' spell, en Miss Meadows en de gals dey up'n koff. Th'ee times Brer Rabbit jump up en crack his heels tergedder en come down wid de sludge-hammer--ker-blam!--en eve'y time he jump up, he holler out: "'Stan' fudder, ladies! Yer come de dus'!' en sho nuff, de dus' come. "Leas'ways," continued Uncle Remus, "Brer Rabbit got one er de gals, en dey had a weddin' en a big infa'r." "Which of the girls did the Rabbit marry?" asked the little boy, dubiously. "I did year tell un 'er name," replied the old man, with a great affectation of interest, "but look like I done gone en fergit it out'n my mine. Ef I don't disremember," he continued, "hit wuz Miss Molly Cottontail, en I speck we better let it go at dat." XXXI. A PLANTATION WITCH The next time the little boy got permission to call upon Uncle Remus, the old man was sitting in his door, with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands, and he appeared to be in great trouble. "What's the matter, Uncle Remus?" the youngster asked. "Nuff de matter, honey--mo' dan dey's enny kyo' fer. Ef dey ain't some quare gwines on 'roun' dis place I ain't name Remus." The serious tone of the old man caused the little boy to open his eyes. The moon, just at its full, cast long, vague, wavering shadows in front of the cabin. A colony of tree-frogs somewhere in the distance were treating their neighbors to a serenade, but to the little boy it sounded like a chorus of lost and long- forgotten whistlers. The sound was wherever the imagination chose to locate it--to the right, to the left, in the air, on the ground, far away or near at hand, but always dim and always indistinct. Something in Uncle Remus's tone exactly fitted all these surroundings, and the child nestled closer to the old man. "Yasser," continued Uncle Remus, with an ominous sigh and mysterious shake of the head, "ef dey ain't some quare gwines on in dish yer naberhood, den I'm de ball-headest creetur 'twix' dis en nex' Jinawerry wuz a year 'go, w'ich I knows I ain't. Dat's what." "What is it, Uncle Remus?" "I know Mars John bin drivin' Cholly sorter hard ter-day, en I say ter myse'f dat I'd drap 'round 'bout dus' en fling nudder year er corn in de troff en kinder gin 'im a techin' up wid de kurrier-koam; en bless grashus! I ain't bin in de lot mo'n a minnit 'fo' I seed sump'n wuz wrong wid de hoss, and sho' nuff dar wuz his mane full er witch-stirrups." "Full of what, Uncle Remus?" "Full er witch-stirrups, honey. Ain't you seed no witch-stirrups? Well, w'en you see two stran' er ha'r tied tergedder in a hoss's mane, dar you see a witch-stirrup, en, mo'n dat, dat hoss done bin rid by um." "Do you reckon they have been riding Charley?" inquired the little boy. "Co'se, honey. Tooby sho dey is. W'at else dey bin doin'?" "Did you ever see a witch, Uncle Remus?" "Dat ain't needer yer ner dar. W'en I see coon track in de branch, I know de coon bin 'long dar." The argument seemed unanswerable, and the little boy asked, in a confidential tone: "Uncle Remus, what are witches like?" "Dey comes diffunt," responded the cautious old darkey. "Dey comes en dey cunjus fokes. Squinch-owl holler eve'y time he see a witch, en w'en you hear de dog howlin' in de middle er de night, one un um's mighty ap' ter be prowlin' 'roun'. Cunjun fokes kin tell a witch de minnit dey lays der eyes on it, but dem w'at ain't cunjun, hit's mighty hard ter tell w'en dey see one, kaze dey might come in de 'pearunce un a cow en all kinder creeturs. I ain't bin useter no cunjun myse'f, but I bin livin' long nuff fer ter know w'en you meets up wid a big black cat in de middle er de road, wid yaller eyeballs, dar's yo' witch fresh fum de Ole Boy. En, fuddermo', I know dat 'tain't proned inter no dogs fer ter ketch de rabbit w'at use in a berryin'-groun'. Dey er de mos' ongodlies' creeturs w'at you ever laid eyes on," continued Uncle Remus, with unction. "Down dar in Putmon County yo' Unk Jeems, he make like he gwineter ketch wunner dem dar graveyard rabbits. Sho nuff, out he goes, en de dogs ain't no mo'n got ter de place fo' up jump de old rabbit right 'mong um, en atter runnin''roun' a time or two, she skip right up ter Mars Jeems, en Mars Jeems, he des put de gun-bar'l right on 'er en lammed aloose. Hit tored up de groun' all 'roun', en de dogs, dey rush up, but dey wa'n't no rabbit dar; but bimeby Mars Jeems, he seed de dogs tuckin' der tails 'tween der legs, en he look up, en dar wuz de rabbit caperin' 'roun' on a toom stone, en wid dat Mars Jeems say he sorter feel like de time done come w'en yo' gran'ma was 'specktin' un him home, en he call off de dogs en put out. But dem wuz ha'nts. Witches is deze yer kinder fokes w'at kin drap der body en change inter a cat en a wolf en all kinder creeturs." "Papa says there ain't any witches," the little boy interrupted. "Mars John ain't live long ez I is," said Uncle Remus, by way of comment. "He ain't bin broozin' roun' all hours er de night en day. I know'd a nigger w'ich his brer wuz a witch, kaze he up'n tole me how he tuck'n kyo'd 'im; en he kyo'd 'im good, mon." "How was that?" inquired the little boy. "Hit seem like," continued Uncle Remus, "dat witch fokes is got a slit in de back er de neck, en w'en dey wanter change derse'f, dey des pull de hide over der head same ez if 'twuz a shut, en dar dey is." "Do they get out of their skins?" asked the little boy, in an awed tone. "Tooby sho, honey. You see yo' pa pull his shut off? Well, dat des 'zackly de way dey duz. But dish yere nigger w'at I'm tellin' you 'bout, he kyo'd his brer de ve'y fus pass he made at him. Hit got so dat fokes in de settlement didn't have no peace. De chilluns 'ud wake up in de mawnins wid der ha'r tangle up, en wid scratches on um like dey bin thoo a brier-patch, twel bimeby one day de nigger he 'low dat he'd set up dat night en keep one eye on his brer; en sho' nuff dat night, des ez de chickens wuz crowin' fer twelve, up jump de brer and pull off his skin en sail out'n de house in de shape un a bat, en w'at duz de nigger do but grab up de hide, and turn it wrong-sudout'ards en sprinkle it wid salt. Den he lay down en watch fer ter see w'at de news wuz gwineter be. Des 'fo' day yer come a big black cat in de do', en de nigger git up, he did, en druv her away. Bimeby, yer come a big black dog snuffin' roun', en de nigger up wid a chunk en lammed 'im side er de head. Den a squinch-owl lit on de koam er de house, en de nigger jam de shovel in de fier en make 'im flew away. Las', yer come a great big black wolf wid his eyes shinin' like fier coals, en he grab de hide and rush out. 'Twa'n't long 'fo' de nigger year his brer holler'n en squallin', en he tuck a light, he did, en went out, en dar wuz his brer des a waller'n on de groun' en squirmin' 'roun', kaze de salt on de skin wuz stingin' wuss'n ef he had his britches lineded wid yallerjackets. By nex' mawnin' he got so he could sorter shuffle long, but he gun up cunjun, en ef dere wuz enny mo' witches in dat settlement dey kep' mighty close, en dat nigger he ain't skunt hisse'f no mo' not endurin' er my 'membunce." The result of this was that Uncle Remus had to take the little boy by the hand and go with him to the "big house," which the old man was not loath to do; and, when the child went to bed, he lay awake a long time expecting an unseemly visitation from some mysterious source. It soothed him, however, to hear the strong, musical voice of his sable patron, not very far away, tenderly contending with a lusty tune; and to this accompaniment the little boy dropped asleep: "Hit's eighteen hunder'd, forty-en-eight, Christ done made dat crooked way straight-- En I don't wanter stay here no longer; Hit's eighteen hunder'd, forty-en-nine, Christ done turn dat water inter wine-- En I don't wanter stay here no longer." XXXII. "JACKY-MY-LANTERN" *1 UPON his next visit to Uncle Remus, the little boy was exceedingly anxious to know more about witches, but the old man prudently refrained from exciting the youngster's imagination any further in that direction. Uncle Remus had a board across his lap, and, armed with a mallet and a shoe-knife, was engaged in making shoe-pegs. "W'iles I wuz crossin' de branch des now," he said, endeavoring to change the subject, "I come up wid a Jacky-my-lantern, en she wuz bu'nin' wuss'n a bunch er lightnin'-bugs, mon. I know'd she wuz a fixin' fer ter lead me inter dat quogmire down in de swamp, en I steer'd cle'r an' er. Yasser. I did dat. You ain't never seed no Jacky-my-lanterns, is you, honey?" The little boy never had, but he had heard of them, and he wanted to know what they were, and thereupon Uncle Remus proceeded to tell him. "One time," said the old darkey, transferring his spectacles from his nose to the top of his head and leaning his elbows upon his peg-board, "dere wuz a blacksmif man, en dish yer blacksmif man, he tuck'n stuck closer by his dram dan he did by his bellus. Monday mawnin' he'd git on a spree, en all dat week he'd be on a spree, en de nex' Monday mawnin' he'd take a fresh start. Bimeby, one day, atter de blacksmif bin spreein''roun' en cussin' might'ly, he hear a sorter rustlin' fuss at de do', en in walk de Bad Man." "Who, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked. "De Bad Man, honey; de Ole Boy hisse'f right fresh from de ridjun w'at you year Miss Sally readin' 'bout. He done hide his hawns, en his tail, en his hoof, en he come dress up like w'ite fokes. He tuck off his hat en he bow, en den he tell de blacksmif who he is, en dat he done come atter 'im. Den de black-smif, he gun ter cry en beg, en he beg so hard en he cry so loud dat de Bad Man say he make a trade wid 'im. At de een' er one year de sperit er de blacksmif wuz to be his'n en endurin' er dat time de blacksmif mus' put in his hottes' licks in de intruss er de Bad Man, en den he put a spell on de cheer de blacksmif was settin' in, en on his sludge-hammer. De man w'at sot in de cheer couldn't git up less'n de blacksmif let 'im, en de man w'at pick up de sludge 'ud hatter keep on knockin' wid it twel de blacksmif say quit; en den he gun 'im money plenty, en off he put. "De blacksmif, he sail in fer ter have his fun, en he have so much dat he done clean forgot 'bout his contrack, but bimeby, one day he look down de road, en dar he see de Bad Man comin', en den he know'd de year wuz out. W'en de Bad Man got in de do', de blacksmif wuz poundin' 'way at a hoss-shoe, but he wa'n't so bizzy dat he didn't ax 'im in. De Bad Man sorter do like he ain't got no time fer ter tarry, but de blacksmif say he got some little jobs dat he bleedzd ter finish up, en den he ax de Bad Man fer ter set down a minnit; en de Bad Man, he tuck'n sot down, en he sot in dat cheer w'at he done conju'd en, co'se, dar he wuz. Den de blacksmif, he 'gun ter poke fun at de Bad Man, en he ax him don't he want a dram, en won't he hitch his cheer up little nigher de fier, en de Bad Man, he beg en he beg, but 'twan't doin' no good, kase de blacksmif 'low dat he gwineter keep 'im dar twel he prommus dat he let 'im off one year mo', en, sho nuff, de Bad Man prommus dat ef de black-smif let 'im up he give 'im a n'er showin'. So den de blacksmif gun de wud, en de Bad Man sa'nter off down de big road, settin' traps en layin' his progance fer ter ketch mo' sinners. "De nex' year hit pass same like t'er one. At de 'p'inted time yer come de Ole Boy atter de blacksmif, but still de blacksmif had some jobs dat he bleedzd ter finish up, en he ax de Bad Man fer ter take holt er de sludge en he he'p 'im out; en de Bad Man, he 'low dat r'er'n be disperlite, he don't keer ef he do hit 'er a biff er two; en wid dat he grab up de sludge, en dar he wuz 'gin, kase he done conju'd de sludge so dat whosomedever tuck 'er up can't put 'er down less'n de blacksmif say de wud. Dey perlaver'd dar, dey did, twel bimeby de Bad Man he up'n let 'im off n'er year. "Well, den, dat year pass same ez t'er one. Mont' in en mont' out dat man wuz rollin' in dram, en bimeby yer come de Bad Man. De blacksmif cry en he holler, en he rip 'roun' en t'ar his ha'r, but hit des like he didn't, kase de Bad Man grab 'im up en cram 'im in a bag en tote 'im off. W'iles dey wuz gwine 'long dey come up wid a passel er fokes w'at wuz havin' wanner deze yer fote er July bobbycues, en de Ole Boy, he 'low dat maybe he kin git some mo' game, en w'at do he do but jine in wid um. He lines in en he talk politics same like t'er fokes, twel bimeby dinnertime come 'roun', en dey ax 'im up, w'ich 'greed wid his stummuck, en he pozzit his bag underneed de table 'longside de udder bags w'at de hongry fokes'd brung. "No sooner did de blacksmif git back on de groun' dan he 'gun ter wuk his way outer de bag. He crope out, he did, en den he tuck'n change de bag. He tuck'n tuck a n'er bag en lay it down whar dish yer bag wuz, en den he crope outer de crowd en lay low in de underbresh. "Las', w'en de time come fer ter go, de Ole Boy up wid his bag en slung her on his shoulder, en off he put fer de Bad Place. W'en he got dar he tuck'n drap de bag off'n his back en call up de imps, en dey des come a squallin' en a caperin', w'ich I speck dey mus' a bin hongry. Leas'ways dey des swawm'd 'roun', hollerin' out: "'Daddy, w'at you brung--daddy, w'at you brung?' "So den dey open de bag, en lo en behol's, out jump a big bull- dog, en de way he shuck dem little imps wuz a caution, en he kep' on gnyawin' un um twel de Ole Boy open de gate en t'un 'im out." "And what became of the blacksmith?" the little boy asked, as Uncle Remus paused to snuff the candle with his fingers. "I'm drivin' on 'roun', honey. Atter 'long time, de blacksmif he tuck'n die, en w'en he go ter de Good Place de man at de gate dunner who he is, en he can't squeeze in. Den he go down ter de Bad Place, en knock. De Ole Boy, he look out, he did, en he know'd de blacksmif de minnit he laid eyes on 'im; but he shake his head en say, sezee: "'You'll hatter skuze me, Brer Blacksmif, kase I dun had 'speunce 'longer you. You'll hatter go some'rs else ef you wanter raise enny racket,' sezee, en wid dat he shet do do'. "En dey do say," continued Uncle Remus, with unction, "dat sense dat day de blacksmif bin sorter huv'rin' 'roun' 'twix' de heavens en de ye'th, en dark nights he shine out so fokes call 'im Jacky-my-lantern. Dat's w'at dey tells me. Hit may be wrong er't maybe right, but dat's w'at I years." *1 This story is popular on the coast and among the rice- plantations, and, since the publication of some of the animal-myths in the newspapers, I have received a version of it from a planter in southwest Georgia; but it seems to me to be an intruder among the genuine myth-stories of the negroes. It is a trifle too elaborate. Nevertheless, it is told upon the plantations with great gusto, and there are several versions in circulation. XXXIII. WHY THE NEGRO IS BLACK ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery. He discovered that the palms of the old man's hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting to ethnologists. "Tooby sho de pa'm er my han's w'ite, honey," he quietly remarked, "en, w'en it come ter dat, dey wuz a time w'en all de w'ite folks 'uz black--blacker dan me, kaze I done bin yer so long dat I bin sorter bleach out." The little boy laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, he resumed: "Yasser. Fokes dunner w'at bin yit, let 'lone w'at gwinter be. Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w'en we 'uz all niggers tergedder." "When was that, Uncle Remus?" "Way back yander. In dem times we 'uz all un us black; we 'uz all niggers tergedder, en 'cordin' ter all de 'counts w'at I years fokes 'uz gittin' 'long 'bout ez well in dem days ez dey is now. But atter 'w'ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon' er water some'rs in de naberhood, w'ich ef dey'd git inter dey'd be wash off nice en w'ite, en den one un um, he fine de place en make er splunge inter de pon', en come out w'ite ez a town gal. En den, bless grashus! w'en de fokes seed it, dey make a break fer de pon', en dem w'at wuz de soopless, dey got in fus' en dey come out w'ite; en dem w'at wuz de nex' soopless, dey got in nex', en dey come out merlatters; en dey wuz sech a crowd un um dat dey mighty nigh use de water up, w'ich w'en dem yuthers come long, de morest dey could do wuz ter paddle about wid der foots en dabble in it wid der han's. Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain't no w'ite 'bout a nigger 'ceppin de pa'ms er der han's en de soles er der foot." The little boy seemed to be very much interested in this new account of the origin of races, and he made some further inquiries, which elicited from Uncle Remus the following additional particulars: "De Injun en de Chinee got ter be 'counted 'long er de merlatter. I ain't seed no Chinee dat I knows un, but dey tells me dey er sorter 'twix' a brown en a brindle. Dey er all merlatters." "But mamma says the Chinese have straight hair," the little boy suggested. "Co'se, honey," the old man unhesitatingly responded, "dem w'at git ter de pon' time nuff fer ter git der head in de water, de water hit onkink der ha'r. Hit bleedzd ter be dat away." XXXIV. THE SAD FATE OF MR. FOX "Now, den," said Uncle Remus, with unusual gravity, as soon as the little boy, by taking his seat, announced that he was ready for the evening's entertainment to begin; "now, den, dish yer tale w'at I'm agwine ter gin you is de las' row er stumps, sho. Dish yer's whar ole Brer Fox los' his breff, en he ain't fine it no mo' down ter dis day." "Did he kill himself, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked, with a curious air of concern. "Hol' on dar, honey!" the old man exclaimed, with a great affectation of alarm; "hol' on dar! Wait! Gimme room! I don't wanter tell you no story, en ef you keep shovin' me forrerd, I mout git some er de facks mix up 'mong deyse'f. You gotter gimme room en you gotter gimme time." The little boy had no other premature questions to ask, and, after a pause, Uncle Remus resumed: "Well, den, one day Brer Rabbit go ter Brer Fox house, he did, en he put up mighty po' mouf. He say his ole 'oman sick, en his chilluns col', en de fier done gone out. Brer Fox, he feel bad 'bout dis, en he tuck'n s'ply Brer Rabbit widder chunk er fier. Brer Rabbit see Brer Fox cookin' some nice beef, en his mouf gun ter water, but he take de fier, he did, en he put out to'rds home; but present'y yer he come back, en he say de fier done gone out. Brer Fox 'low dat he want er invite to dinner, but he don't say nuthin', en bimeby Brer Rabbit he up'n say, sezee: "'Brer Fox, whar you git so much nice beef?' sezee, en den Brer Fox he up'n 'spon', sezee: "'You come ter my house termorrer ef yo' fokes ain't too sick, en I kin show you whar you kin git plenty beef mo' nicer dan dish yer,' sezee. "Well, sho nuff, de nex' day fotch Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox say, sezee: "'Der's a man down yander by Miss Meadows's w'at got heap er fine cattle, en he gotter cow name Bookay,' sezee, 'en you des go en say Bookay, en she'll open her mouf, en you kin jump in en git des as much meat ez you kin tote,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "'Well, I'll go 'long,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en you kin jump fus' en den I'll come follerin' atter,' sezee. "Wid dat dey put out, en dey went promernadin' 'roun' 'mong de cattle, dey did, twel bimeby dey struck up wid de one dey wuz atter. Brer Fox, he up, he did, en holler Bookay, en de cow flung 'er mouf wide open. Sho nuff, in dey jump, en w'en dey got dar, Brer Fox, he say, sezee: "'You kin cut mos' ennywheres, Brer Rabbit, but don't cut 'roun' de haslett,' sezee. "'Den Brer Rabbit, he holler back, he did: I'm a gitten me out a roas'n-piece,' sezee. "'Roas'n, er bakin', er fryin',' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'don't git too nigh de haslett,' sezee. "Dey cut en dey kyarved, en dey kyarved en dey cut, en w'iles dey wuz cuttin' en kyarvin', en slashin' 'way, Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n hacked inter de haslett, en wid dat down fell de cow dead. "'Now, den,' sez Brer Fox, 'we er gone, sho,' sezee. "'W'at we gwine do?' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'I'll git in de maul,' sez Brer Fox, 'en you'll jump in de gall,' sezee. "Nex' mawnin' yer cum de man w'at de cow b'long ter, and he ax who kill Bookay. Nobody don't say nuthin'. Den de man say he'll cut 'er open en see, en den he whirl in, en twan't no time 'fo' he had 'er intruls spread out. Brer Rabbit, he crope out'n de gall, en say, sezee: "'Mister Man! Oh, Mister Man! I'll tell you who kill yo' cow. You look in de maul, en dar you'll fine 'im,' sezee. "Wid dat de man tuck a stick and lam down on de maul so hard dat he kill Brer Fox stone-dead. W'en Brer Rabbit see Brer Fox wuz laid out fer good, he make like he mighty sorry, en he up'n ax de man fer Brer Fox head. Man say he ain't keerin', en den Brer Rabbit tuck'n brung it ter Brer Fox house. Dar he see ole Miss Fox, en he tell 'er dat he done fotch her some nice beef w'at 'er ole man sont 'er, but she ain't gotter look at it twel she go ter eat it. "Brer Fox son wuz name Tobe, en Brer Rabbit tell Tobe fer ter keep still w'iles his mammy cook de nice beef w'at his daddy sont 'im. Tobe he wuz mighty hongry, en he look in de pot he did w'iles de cookin' wuz gwine on, en dar he see his daddy head, en wid dat he sot up a howl en tole his mammy. Miss Fox, she git mighty mad w'en she fine she cookin' her ole man head, en she call up de dogs, she did, en sickt em on Brer Rabbit; en ole Miss Fox en Tobe en de dogs, dey push Brer Rabbit so close dat he hatter take a holler tree. Miss Fox, she tell Tobe fer ter stay dar en mine Brer Rabbit, w'ile she goes en git de ax, en w'en she gone, Brer Rabbit, he tole Tobe ef he go ter de branch en git 'im a drink er water dat he'll gin 'im a dollar. Tobe, he put out, he did, en bring some water in his hat, but by de time he got back Brer Rabbit done out en gone. Ole Miss Fox, she cut and cut twel down come de tree, but no Brer Rabbit dar. Den she lay de blame on Tobe, en she say she gwineter lash 'im, en Tobe, he put out en run, de ole 'oman atter 'im. Bimeby, he come up wid Brer Rabbit, en sot down fer to tell 'im how 'twuz, en w'iles dey wuz a settin' dar, yer come ole Miss Fox a slippin' up en grab um bofe. Den she tell um w'at she gwine do. Brer Rabbit she gwineter kill, en Tobe she gwineter lam ef its de las' ack. Den Brer Rabbit sez, sezee: "'Ef you please, ma'am, Miss Fox, lay me on de grinestone en groun off my nose so I can't smell no mo' w'en I'm dead.' "Miss Fox, she tuck dis ter be a good idee, en she fotch bofe un um ter de grinestone, en set um up on it so dat she could groun' off Brer Rabbit nose. Den Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee: "'Ef you please, ma'am, Miss Fox, Tobe he kin turn de handle w'iles you goes atter some water fer ter wet de grinestone,' sezee. "Co'se, soon'z Brer Rabbit see Miss Fox go atter de water, he jump down en put out, en dis time he git clean away." "And was that the last of the Rabbit, too, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked, with something like a sigh. "Don't push me too close, honey," responded the old man; "don't shove me up in no cornder. I don't wanter tell you no stories. Some say dat Brer Rabbit's ole 'oman died fum eatin' some pizen- weed, en dat Brer Rabbit married ole Miss Fox, en some say not. Some tells one tale en some tells nudder; some say dat fum dat time forrerd de Rabbits en de Foxes make fren's en stay so; some say dey kep on quollin'. Hit look like it mixt. Let dem tell you w'at knows. Dat w'at I years you gits it straight like I yeard it." There was a long pause, which was finally broken by the old man: "Hit's 'gin de rules fer you ter be noddin' yer, honey. Bimeby you'll drap off en I'll hatter tote you up ter de big 'ouse. I hear dat baby cryin', en bimeby Miss Sally'll fly up en be a holler'n atter you" "Oh, I wasn't asleep," the little boy replied. "I was just thinking." "Well, dat's diffunt," said the old man. "Ef you'll clime up on my back," he continued, speaking softly, "I speck I ain't too ole fer ter be yo' hoss fum yer ter de house. Many en many's de time dat I toted yo' Unk Jeems dat away, en Mars Jeems wuz heavier sot dan w'at you is." PLANTATION PROVERBS BIG 'possum clime little tree. Dem w'at eats kin say grace. Ole man Know-All died las' year. Better de gravy dan no grease 'tall. Dram ain't good twel you git it. Lazy fokes' stummucks don't git tired. Rheumatiz don't he'p at de log-rollin'. Mole don't see w'at his naber doin'. Save de pacin' mar' fer Sunday. Don't rain eve'y time de pig squeal. Crow en corn can't grow in de same fiel'. Tattlin' 'oman can't make de bread rise. Rails split 'fo' bre'kfus'll season de dinner. Dem w'at knows too much sleeps under de ash-hopper. Ef you wanter see yo' own sins, clean up a new groun'. Hog dunner w'ich part un 'im'll season de turnip salad. Hit's a blessin' de w'ite sow don't shake de plum-tree. Winter grape sour, whedder you kin reach 'im or not. Mighty po' bee dat don't make mo' honey dan he want. Kwishins on mule's foots done gone out er fashun. Pigs dunno w'at a pen's fer. Possum's tail good as a paw. Dogs don't bite at de front gate. Colt in de barley-patch kick high. Jay-bird don't rob his own nes'. Pullet can't roost too high for de owl. Meat fried 'fo' day won't las' twel night. Stump water won't kyo' de gripes. De howlin' dog know w'at he sees. Blin' hoss don't fall w'en he follers de bit. Hongry nigger won't w'ar his maul out. Don't fling away de empty wallet. Black-snake know de way ter de hin nes'. Looks won't do ter split rails wid. Settin' hens don't hanker arter fresh aigs. Tater-vine growin' w'ile you sleep. Hit take two birds fer to make a nes'. Ef you bleedzd ter eat dirt, eat clean dirt. Tarrypin walk fast 'nuff fer to go visitin'. Empty smoke-house makes de pullet holler. W'en coon take water he fixin' fer ter fight. Corn makes mo' at de mill dan it does in de crib. Good luck say: "Op'n yo' mouf en shet yo' eyes." Nigger dat gets hurt wukkin oughter show de skyars. Fiddlin' nigger say hit's long ways ter de dance. Rooster makes mo' racket dan de hin w'at lay de aig. Meller mush-million hollers at you fum over de fence. Nigger wid a pocket-hankcher better be looked atter. Rain-crow don't sing no chune, but you k'n 'pen' on 'im. One-eyed mule can't be handled on de bline side. Moon may shine, but a lightered knot's mighty handy. Licker talks mighty loud w'en it git loose fum de jug. De proudness un a man don't count w'en his head's cold. Hongry rooster don't cackle w'en he fine a wum. Some niggers mighty smart, but dey can't drive de pidgins ter roos'. You may know de way, but better keep yo' eyes on de seven stairs. All de buzzards in de settlement 'll come to de gray mule's funer'l. You k'n hide de fier, but w'at you gwine do wid de smoke? Termorrow may be de carridge-driver's day for ploughin'. Hit's a mighty deaf nigger dat don't year de dinner-ho'n. Hit takes a bee fer ter git de sweetness out'n de hoar-houn' blossom. Ha'nts don't bodder longer hones' folks, but you better go 'roun' de grave-yard. De pig dat runs off wid de year er corn gits little mo' dan de cob. Sleepin' in de fence-cornder don't fetch Chrismus in de kitchen. De spring-house may freeze, but de niggers 'll keep de shuck-pen warm. 'Twix' de bug en de bee-martin 'tain't hard ter tell w'ich gwineter git kotch. Don't 'sput wid de squinch-owl. Jam de shovel in de fier. You'd see mo' er de mink ef he know'd whar de yard dog sleeps. Troubles is seasonin'. 'Simmons ain't good twel dey 'er fros'-bit. Watch out w'en you'er gittin all you want. Fattenin' hogs ain't in luck. HIS SONGS I. REVIVAL HYMN OH, whar shill we go w'en de great day comes, Wid de blowin' er de trumpits en de bangin' er de drums? How many po' sinners'll be kotched out late En fin' no latch ter de golden gate? No use fer ter wait twel termorrer! De sun mus'n't set on yo' sorrer, Sin's ez sharp ez a bamboo-brier- Oh, Lord! fetch de mo'ners up higher! W'en de nashuns er de earf is a stan'in all aroun, Who's a gwineter be choosen fer ter w'ar de glory-crown? Who's a gwine fer ter stan' stiff-kneed en bol'. En answer to der name at de callin' er de roll? You better come now ef you comin'-- Ole Satun is loose en a bummin'-- De wheels er distruckshun is a hummin'-- Oh, come long, sinner, ef you comin'! De song er salvashun is a mighty sweet song, En de Pairidise win' blow fur en blow strong, En Aberham's bosom, hit's saft en hit's wide, En right dar's de place whar de sinners oughter hide! Oh, you nee'nter be a stoppin' en a lookin'; Ef you fool wid ole Satun you'll git took in; You'll hang on de aidge en get shook in, Ef you keep on a stoppin' en a lookin'. De time is right now, en dish yer's de place-- Let de sun er salvashun shine squar' in yo' face; Fight de battles er de Lord, fight soon en fight late, En you'll allers fine a latch ter de golden gate. No use fer ter wait twel termorrer, De sun musn't set on yo' sorrer-- Sin's ez sharp ez a bamboo-brier, Ax de Lord fer ter fetch you up higher! II. CAMP-MEETING SONG * OH, de worril is roun' en de worril is wide-- Lord! 'member deze chillun in de mornin'-- Hit's a mighty long ways up de mountain side, En dey ain't no place fer dem sinners fer ter hide, En dey ain't no place whar sin kin abide, W'en de Lord shill come in de mornin'! Look up en look aroun', Fling yo' burden on de groun', Hit's a gittin' mighty close on ter mornin'! Smoove away sin's frown-- Retch up en git de crown, W'at de Lord will fetch in de mornin'! De han' er ridem'shun, hit's hilt out ter you-- Lord! 'member dem sinners in de mornin'! Hit's a mighty pashent han', but de days is but few, W'en Satun, he'll come a demandin' un his due, En de stiff-neck sinners 'll be smotin' all fru- Oh, you better git ready for de mornin'! Look up en set yo' face To'ds de green hills of grace 'Fo' de sun rises up in de mornin'-- Oh, you better change yo' base, Hits yo' soul's las' race For de glory dat's a comin' in de mornin'! De farmer gits ready w'en de lan's all plowed For ter sow dem seeds in de mornin' De sperrit may be puny en de flesh may be proud, But you better cut loose fum de scoffin' crowd, En jine dose Christuns w'at's a cryin' out loud Fer de Lord fer ter come in de mornin'! Shout loud en shout long, Let de eckoes ans'er strong, W'en de sun rises up in de mornin'! Oh, you allers will be wrong Twel you choose ter belong Ter de Marster w'at's a comin' in de mornin'! *In the days of slavery, the religious services held by the negroes who accompanied their owners to the camp-meetings were marvels of earnestness and devotion. III. CORN-SHUCKING SONG OH, de fus' news you know de day'll be a breakin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango! *1) An' de fier be a burnin' en' de ash-cake a bakin', (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) An' de ho'n 'll be a hollerin' en de boss 'll be a wakin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Better git up, nigger, en give yo'se'f a shakin'-- (Hi O, Miss Sindy Ann!) Oh, honey! w'en you see dem ripe stars a fallin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Oh, honey! w'en you year de rain-crow a callin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Oh, honey! w'en you year dat red calf a bawlin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Den de day time's a creepin' en a crawlin'-- (Hi O, Miss Sindy Ann!) For de los' ell en yard *2 is a huntin' for de mornin', (Hi O! git long! go 'way!) En she'll ketch up wid dus 'fo' we ever git dis corn in-- (Oh, go 'way, Sindy Ann!) Oh, honey! w'en you year dat tin horn a tootin' (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Oh, honey, w'en you year de squinch owl a hootin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Oh, honey! w'en you year dem little pigs a rootin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Right den she's a comin' a skippin' en a scootin'-- (Hi O, Miss Sindy Ann!) Oh, honey, w'en you year dat roan mule whicker-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) W'en you see Mister Moon turnin' pale en gittin' sicker-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Den hit's time for ter handle dat corn a little quicker-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Ef you wanter git a smell er old Marster's jug er licker-- (Hi O, Miss Sindy Ann!) For de los' ell en yard is a huntin' for de mornin' (Hi O! git long! go 'way!) En she'll ketch up wid dus 'fo' we ever git dis corn in-- (Oh, go 'way, Sindy Ann!) You niggers 'cross dar! you better stop your dancin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) No use for ter come a flingin' un yo' "sha'n'ts" in-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) No use for ter come a flingin' un yo' "can't's" in-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Kaze dey ain't no time for yo' pattin' nor yo' prancin'! (Hi O, Miss Sindy Ann!) Mr. Rabbit see de Fox, en he sass um en jaws um-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Mr. Fox ketch de Rabbit, en he scratch um en he claws um-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) En he tar off de hide, en he chaws um en he gnyaws um-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Same like gal chawin' sweet gum en rozzum-- (Hi O, Miss Sindy Ann!) For de los' ell en yard is a huntin' for de mornin' (Hi O! git 'long! go 'way!) En she'll ketch up wid dus 'fo' we ever git dis corn in-- (Oh, go 'way, Sindy Ann!) Oh, work on, boys! give doze shucks a mighty wringin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) 'Fo' de boss come aroun' a dangin' en a dingin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Git up en move aroun'! set dem big han's ter swingin'-- (Hey O! Hi O! Up'n down de Bango!) Git up'n shout loud! let de w'ite folks year you singin'! (Hi O, Miss Sindy Ann!) For de los' ell en yard is a huntin' for de mornin' (Hi O! git long! go 'way!) En she'll ketch up wid dus 'fo' we ever git dis corn in. (Oh, go 'way Sindy Ann!) *1 So far as I know, "Bango" is a meaningless term, introduced on account of its sonorous ruggedness. *2 The sword and belt in the constellation of Orion. IV. THE PLOUGH-HANDS' SONG (JASPER COUNTY--1860.) NIGGER mighty happy w'en he layin' by co'n-- Dat sun's a slantin'; Nigger mighty happy w'en he year de dinner-ho'n-- Dat sun's a slantin'; En he mo' happy still w'en de night draws on-- Dat sun's a slantin'; Dat sun's a slantin' des ez sho's you bo'n! En it's rise up, Primus! fetch anudder yell: Dat ole dun cow's des a shakin' up 'er bell, En de frogs chunin' up 'fo' de jew done fell: Good-night, Mr. Killdee! I wish you mighty well! --Mr. Killdee! I wish you mighty well! --I wish you mighty well! Do co'n 'll be ready 'g'inst dumplin' day-- Dat sun's a slantin'; But nigger gotter watch, en stick, en stay-- Dat sun's a slantin'; Same ez de bee-martin watchin' un de jay-- Dat sun's a slantin'; Dat sun's a slantin' en a slippin' away! Den it's rise up, Primus! en gin it turn strong; De cow's gwine home wid der ding-dang-dong-- Sling in anudder tetch er de ole-time song: Good-night, Mr. Whipperwill! don't stay long! --Mr. Whipperwill! don't stay long! --Don't stay long! V. CHRISTMAS PLAY-SONG (MYRICK PLACE, PUTNAM COUNTY 1858.) Hi my rinktum! Black gal sweet, Same like goodies w'at de w'ite folks eat; Ho my Riley! don't you take'n tell 'er name, En den ef sumpin' happen you won't ketch de blame; Hi my rinktum! better take'n hide yo' plum; Joree don't holler eve'y time he fine a wum. Den it's hi my rinktum! Don't git no udder man; En it's ho my Riley! Fetch out Miss Dilsey Ann! Ho my Riley! Yaller gal fine; She may be yone but she oughter be mine! Hi my rinktum! Lemme git by, En see w'at she mean by de cut er dat eye! Ho my Riley! better shet dat do'-- De w'ite folks 'll bleeve we er t'arin up de flo'. Den it's ho my Riley! Come a siftin' up ter me! En it's hi my rinktum! Dis de way ter twis' yo' knee! Hi my rinktum! Ain't de eas' gittin' red? De squinch owl shiver like he wanter go ter bed; Ho my Riley! but de gals en de boys, Des now gittin' so dey kin sorter make a noise. Hi my rinktum! let de yaller gal lone; Niggers don't hanker arter sody in de pone. Den it's hi my rinktum! Better try anudder plan; An' it's ho my Riley! Trot out Miss Dilsey Ann! Ho my Riley! In de happy Chris'mus time De niggers shake der cloze a huntin' for a dime. Hi my rinktum! En den dey shake der feet, En greaze derse'f wid de good ham meat. Ho my Riley! dey eat en dey cram, En bimeby ole Miss 'll be a sendin' out de dram. Den it's ho my Riley! You hear dat, Sam! En it's hi my rinktum! Be a sendin' out de dram! VI. PLANTATION PLAY-SONG (PUTNAM COUNTY--1856.) HIT'S a gittin' mighty late, w'en de Guinny-hins squall, En you better dance now, ef you gwineter dance a tall, Fer by dis time termorrer night you can't hardly crawl, Kaze you'll hatter take de hoe ag'in en likewise de maul-- Don't you hear dat bay colt a kickin' in his stall? Stop yo' humpin' up yo' sho'lders do! Dat'll never do! Hop light, ladies, Oh, Miss Loo! Hit takes a heap er scrougin' For ter git you thoo-- Hop light, ladies, Oh, Miss Loo! Ef you niggers don't watch, you'll sing anudder chune, Fer de sun'll rise'n ketch you ef you don't be mighty soon; En de stars is gittin' paler, en de ole gray coon Is a settin' in de grape-vine a watchin' fer de moon. W'en a feller comes a knockin' Des holler--Oh, shoo! Hop light, ladies, Oh, Miss Loo! Oh, swing dat yaller gal! Do, boys, do! Hop light, ladies, Oh, Miss Loo! Oh, tu'n me loose! Lemme 'lone! Go way, now! W'at you speck I come a dancin' fer ef I dunno how? Deze de ve'y kinder footses w'at kicks up a row; Can't you jump inter de middle en make yo' gal a bow? Look at dat merlatter man A follerin' up Sue; Hop light, ladies, Oh, Miss Loo! De boys ain't a gwine W'en you cry boo hoo-- Hop light, ladies, Oh, Miss Loo! VII. TRANSCRIPTIONS *1 1. A PLANTATION CHANT Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-fo', Christ done open dat He'v'mly do'-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer; Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-five, Christ done made dat dead man alive-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. You ax me ter run home, Little childun-- Run home, dat sun done roll-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-six, Christ is got us a place done fix-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer; Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-sev'm Christ done sot a table in Hev'm An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. You ax me ter run home, Little childun-- Run home, dat sun done roll-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-eight, Christ done make dat crooked way straight-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer; Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-nine, Christ done tu'n dat water inter wine-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. You ax me ter run home, Little childun-- Run home, dat sun done roll-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-ten, Christ is de mo'ner's onliest fr'en'-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer; Hit's eighteen hunder'd forty-en-lev'm, Christ 'll be at de do' w'en we all git ter Hev'm-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. You ax me ter run home, Little childun-- Run home, dat sun done roll-- An' I don't wanter stay yer no longer. *1 If these are adaptations from songs the negroes have caught from the whites, their origin is very remote. I have transcribed them literally, and I regard them as in the highest degree characteristic. 2.A PLANTATION SERENADE DE ole bee make de honey-comb, De young bee make de honey, De niggers make de cotton en co'n, En de w'ite folks gits de money. De raccoon he's a cu'us man, He never walk twel dark, En nuthin' never 'sturbs his mine, Twel he hear ole Bringer bark. De raccoon totes a bushy tail, De 'possum totes no ha'r, Mr. Rabbit, he come skippin' by, He ain't got none ter spar'. Monday mornin' break er day, W'ite folks got me gwine, But Sat'dy night, w'en de sun goes down, Dat yaller gal's in my mine. Fifteen poun' er meat a week, W'isky for ter sell, Oh, how can a young man stay at home, Dem gals dey look so well? Met a 'possum in de road-- Bre' 'Possum, whar you gwine? I thank my stars, I bless my life, I'm a huntin' for de muscadine. VIII. THE BIG BETHEL CHURCH DE Big Bethel chu'ch! de Big Bethel chu'ch! Done put ole Satun behine um; Ef a sinner git loose fum enny udder chu'ch, De Big Bethel chu'ch will fine um! Hit's good ter be dere, en it's sweet ter be dere, Wid de sisterin' all aroun' you-- A shakin' dem shackles er mussy en' love Wharwid de Lord is boun' you. Hit's sweet ter be dere en lissen ter de hymns, En hear dem mo'ners a shoutin'-- Dey done reach de place whar der ain't no room Fer enny mo' weepin' en doubtin'. Hit's good ter be dere w'en de sinners all jine Wid de brudderin in dere singin', En it look like Gaberl gwine ter rack up en blow En set dem heav'm bells ter ringin'! Oh, de Big Bethel chu'ch! de Big Bethel chu'ch, Done put ole Satun behine am; Ef a sinner git loose fum enny udder chu'ch De Big Bethel chu'ch will fine um! IX. TIME GOES BY TURNS DAR'S a pow'ful rassle 'twix de Good en de Bad, En de Bad's got de all--under holt; En w'en de wuss come, she come i'on-clad, En you hatter hol' yo' bref for de jolt. But des todes de las' Good gits de knee-lock, En dey draps ter de groun'--ker flop! Good had de inturn, en he stan' like a rock, En he bleedzd for ter be on top. De dry wedder breaks wid a big thunder-clap, For dey ain't no drout' w'at kin las', But de seasons w'at whoops up de cotton crap, Likewise dey freshens up de grass. De rain fall so saf' in de long dark night, Twel you hatter hol' yo' han' for a sign, But de drizzle w'at sets de tater-slips right Is de makin' er de May-pop vine. In de mellerest groun' de clay root 'll ketch En hol' ter de tongue er de plow, En a pine-pole gate at de gyardin-patch Never 'll keep out de ole brindle cow. One en all on us knows who's a pullin' at de bits Like de lead-mule dat g'ides by de rein, En yit, somehow or nudder, de bestest un us gits Mighty sick er de tuggin' at de chain. Hump yo'se'f ter de load en fergit de distress, En dem w'at stan's by ter scoff, For de harder de pullin', de longer de res', En de bigger de feed in de troff. A STORY OF THE WAR WHEN Miss Theodosia Huntingdon, of Burlington, Vermont, concluded to come South in 1870, she was moved by three considerations. In the first place, her brother, John Huntingdon, had become a citizen of Georgia--having astonished his acquaintances by marrying a young lady, the male members of whose family had achieved considerable distinction in the Confederate army; in the second place, she was anxious to explore a region which she almost unconsciously pictured to herself as remote and semi- barbarous; and, in the third place, her friends had persuaded her that to some extent she was an invalid. It was in vain that she argued with herself as to the propriety of undertaking the journey alone and unprotected, and she finally put an end to inward and outward doubts by informing herself and her friends, including John Huntingdon, her brother, who was practicing law in Atlanta, that she had decided to visit the South. When, therefore, on the 12th of October, 1870--the date is duly recorded in one of Miss Theodosia's letters--she alighted from the cars in Atlanta, in the midst of a great crowd, she fully expected to find her brother waiting to receive her. The bells of several locomotives were ringing, a number of trains were moving in and out, and the porters and baggage-men were screaming and bawling to such an extent that for several moments Miss Huntingdon was considerably confused; so much so that she paused in the hope that her brother would suddenly appear and rescue her from the smoke, and dust, and din. At that moment some one touched her on the arm, and she heard a strong, half-confident, half-apologetic voice exclaim: "Ain't dish yer Miss Doshy?" Turning, Miss Theodosia saw at her side a tall, gray-haired negro. Elaborating the incident afterward to her friends, she was pleased to say that the appearance of the old man was somewhat picturesque. He stood towering above her, his hat in one hand, a carriage-whip in the other, and an expectant smile lighting up his rugged face. She remembered a name her brother had often used in his letters, and, with a woman's tact, she held out her hand, and said: "Is this Uncle Remus?" "Law, Miss Doshy! how you know de ole nigger? I know'd you by de faver; but how you know me?" And then, without waiting for a reply: "Miss Sally, she sick in bed, en Mars John, he bleedzd ter go in de country, en dey tuck'n sont me. I know'd you de minnit I laid eyes on you. Time I seed you, I say ter myse'f, 'I lay dar's Miss Doshy,' en, sho nuff, dar you wuz. You ain't gun up yo' checks, is you? Kaze I'll git de trunk sont up by de 'spress waggin." The next moment Uncle Remus was elbowing his way unceremoniously through the crowd, and in a very short time, seated in the carriage driven by the old man, Miss Huntingdon was whirling through the streets of Atlanta in the direction of her brother's home. She took advantage of the opportunity to study the old negro's face closely, her natural curiosity considerably sharpened by a knowledge of the fact that Uncle Remus had played an important part in her brother's history. The result of her observation must have been satisfactory, for presently she laughed, and said: "Uncle Remus, you haven't told me how you knew me in that great crowd." The old man chuckled, and gave the horses a gentle rap with the whip. "Who? Me! I know'd you by de faver. Dat boy er Mars John's is de ve'y spit en immij un you. I'd a know'd you in New 'Leens, let lone down dar in de kyar-shed." This was Miss Theodosia's introduction to Uncle Remus. One Sunday afternoon, a few weeks after her arrival, the family were assembled in the piazza enjoying the mild weather. Mr. Huntingdon was reading a newspaper; his wife was crooning softly as she rocked the baby to sleep; and the little boy was endeavoring to show his Aunt Dosia the outlines of Kennesaw Mountain through the purple haze that hung like a wonderfully fashioned curtain in the sky and almost obliterated the horizon. While they were thus engaged, Uncle Remus came around the corner of the house, talking to himself. "Dey er too lazy ter wuk," he was saying, "en dey specks hones' fokes fer ter stan' up en s'port um. I'm gwine down ter Putmon County whar Mars Jeems is--dat's w'at I'm agwine ter do." "What's the matter now, Uncle Remus?" inquired Mr. Huntingdon, folding up his newspaper. "Nuthin' 'tall, Mars John, 'ceppin deze yer sunshine niggers. Dey begs my terbacker, en borrys my tools, en steals my vittles, en hit's done come ter dat pass dat I gotter pack up en go. I'm agwine down ter Putmon, dat's w'at." Uncle Remus was accustomed to make this threat several times a day, but upon this occasion it seemed to remind Mr. Huntingdon of something. "Very well," he said, "I'll come around and help you pack up, but before you go I want you to tell Sister here how you went to war and fought for the Union.--Remus was a famous warrior," he continued, turning to Miss Theodosia; "he volunteered for one day, and commanded an army of one. You know the story, but you have never heard Remus's version." Uncle Remus shuffled around in an awkward, embarrassed way, scratched his head, and looked uncomfortable. "Miss Doshy ain't got no time fer ter set dar an' year de ole nigger run on." "Oh, yes, I have, Uncle Remus!" exclaimed the young lady; "plenty of time." The upshot of it was that, after many ridiculous protests, Uncle Remus sat down on the steps, and proceeded to tell his story of the war. Miss Theodosia listened with great interest, but throughout it all she observed--and she was painfully conscious of the fact, as she afterward admitted--that Uncle Remus spoke from the standpoint of a Southerner, and with the air of one who expected his hearers to thoroughly sympathize with him. "Co'se," said Uncle Remus, addressing himself to Miss Theodosia, "you ain't bin to Putmon, en you dunner whar de Brad Slaughter place en Harmony Grove is, but Mars John en Miss Sally, dey bin dar a time er two, en dey knows how de lan' lays. Well, den, it 'uz right long in dere whar Mars Jeems lived, en whar he live now. When de war come long he wuz livin' dere longer Ole Miss en Miss Sally. Ole Miss 'uz his ma, en Miss Sally dar 'uz his sister. De war come des like I tell you, en marters sorter rock along same like dey allers did. Hit didn't strike me dat dey wuz enny war gwine on, en ef I hadn't sorter miss de nabers, en seed fokes gwine outer de way fer ter ax de news, I'd a 'lowed ter myse'f dat de war wuz 'way off 'mong some yuther country. But all dis time de fuss wuz gwine on, en Mars Jeems, he wuz des eatchin' fer ter put in. Ole Miss en Miss Sally, dey tuck on so he didn't git off de fus' year, but bimeby news come down dat times wuz gittin' putty hot, en Mars Jeems he got up, he did, en say he gotter go, en go he did. He got a overseer fer ter look atter de place, en he went en jined de army. En he 'uz a fighter, too, mon, Mars Jeems wuz. Many's en many's de time," continued the old man, reflectively, "dat I hatter take'n bresh dat boy on a counter his 'buzin' en beatin' dem yuther boys. He went off dar fer ter fight, en he fit. Ole Miss useter call me up Sunday en read w'at de papers say 'bout Mars Jeems, en it ho'p 'er up might'ly. I kin see 'er des like it 'uz yistiddy. "'Remus,' sez she, 'dish yer's w'at de papers say 'bout my baby,' en den she'd read out twel she couldn't read fer cryin'. Hit went on dis way year in en year out, en dem wuz lonesome times, sho's you bawn, Miss Doshy--lonesome times, sho. Hit got hotter en hotter in de war, en lonesomer en mo' lonesomer at home, en bimeby 'long come de conscrip' man, en he des everlas'nly scoop up Mars Jeems's overseer. W'en dis come 'bout, ole Miss, she sont atter me en say, sez she: "'Remus, I ain't got nobody fer ter look arter de place but you,' sez she, en den I up'n say, sez I: "'Mistiss, you kin des 'pen' on de ole nigger.' "I wuz ole den, Miss Doshy--let lone w'at I is now; en you better b'leeve I bossed dem han's. I had dem niggers up en in de fiel' long 'fo' day, en de way dey did wuk wuz a caution. Ef dey didn't earn der vittles dat season den I ain't name Remus. But dey wuz tuk keer un. Dey had plenty er cloze en plenty er grub, en dey wuz de fattes' niggers in de settlement. "Bimeby one day, Ole Miss, she call me up en say de Yankees done gone en tuck Atlanty--dish yer ve'y town; den present'y I year dey wuz a marchin' on down todes Putmon, en, lo en behol's! one day, de fus news I know'd, Mars Jeems he rid up wid a whole gang er men. He des stop long nuff fer ter change hosses en snatch a mouffle er sump'n ter eat, but 'fo' he rid off, he call me up en say, sez he: "'Daddy'--all Ole Miss's chilluns call me daddy--'Daddy,' he say, ''pears like dere's gwineter be mighty rough times 'roun' yer. De Yankees, dey er done got ter Madison en Mounticellar, en 'twon't be many days 'fo' dey er down yer. 'Tain't likely dey'll pester mother ner sister; but, daddy, ef de wus come ter de wus, I speck you ter take keer un um,' sezee. "Den I say, sez I: 'How long you bin knowin' me, Mars Jeems?' sez I. "'Sence I wuz a baby,' sezee. "'Well, den, Mars Jeems,' sez I, 'you know'd 'twa'nt no use fer ter ax me ter take keer Ole Miss en Miss Sally.' "Den he tuck'n squoze my han' en jump on de filly I bin savin' fer 'im, en rid off. One time he tu'n roun' en look like he wanter say sump'n', but he des waf' his han'--so--en gallop on. I know'd den dat trouble wuz brewin'. Nigger dat knows he's gwineter git thumped kin sorter fix hisse'f, en I tuck'n fix up like de war wuz gwineter come right in at de front gate. I tuck'n got all de cattle en hosses tergedder en driv' um ter de fo'-mile place, en I tuck all de corn en fodder en w'eat, en put um in a crib out dar in de woods; en I bilt me a pen in de swamp, en dar I put de hogs. Den, w'en I fix all dis, I put on my Sunday cloze en groun' my axe. Two whole days I groun' dat axe. De grinestone wuz in sight er de gate en close ter de big 'ouse, en dar I tuck my stan'. "Bimeby one day, yer come de Yankees. Two un um come fus, en den de whole face er de yeath swawm'd wid um. De fus glimpse I kotch un um, I tuck my axe en march inter Ole Miss settin'-room. She done had de sidebo'd move in dar, en I wish I may drap ef 'twuzn't fa'rly blazin' wid silver--silver cups en silver sassers, silver plates en silver dishes, silver mugs en silver pitchers. Look like ter me dey wuz fixin' fer a weddin'. Dar sot Ole Miss des ez prim en ez proud ez ef she own de whole county. Dis kinder ho'p me up, kaze I done seed Ole Miss look dat away once befo' w'en de overseer struck me in de face wid a w'ip. I sot down by de fier wid my axe tween my knees. Dar we sot w'iles de Yankees ransack de place. Miss Sally, dar, she got sorter restless, but Ole Miss didn't skasely bat 'er eyes. Bimeby, we hear steps on de peazzer, en yer come a couple er young fellers wid strops on der shoulders, en der sodes a draggin' on de flo', en der spurrers a rattlin'. I won't say I wuz skeer'd," said Uncle Remus, as though endeavoring to recall something he failed to remember, "I won't say I wuz skeer'd, kaze I wuzzent; but I wuz took'n wid a mighty funny feelin' in de naberhood er de gizzard. Dey wuz mighty perlite, dem young chaps wuz; but Ole Miss, she never tu'n 'er head, en Miss Sally, she look straight at de fier. Bimeby one un um see me, en he say, sezee: "'Hello, ole man, w'at you doin' in yer?' sezee. "'Well, boss,' sez I, 'I bin cuttin' some wood fer Ole Miss, en I des stop fer ter worn my han's a little,' sez I. "'Hit is col', dat's a fack,' sezee. "Wid dat I got up en tuck my stan' behime Ole Miss en Miss Sally, en de man w'at speak, he went up en worn his han's. Fus thing you know, he raise up sudden, en say, sezee: "'W'at dat on yo' axe?' "'Dat's de fier shinin' on it,' sez I. "'Hit look like blood,' sezee, en den he laft. "But, bless yo' soul, dat man wouldn't never laft dat day ef he'd know'd de wukkins er Remus's mine. But dey didn't bodder nobody ner tech nuthin', en bimeby dey put out. Well, de Yankees, dey kep' passin' all de mawnin' en it look like ter me dey wuz a string un um ten mile long. Den dey commence gittin' thinner en thinner, en den atter w'ile we hear skummishin' in de naberhood er Armer's fe'y, en Ole Miss 'low how dat wuz Wheeler's men makin' persoot. Mars Jeems wuz wid dem Wheeler fellers, en I know'd ef dey wuz dat close I wa'n't doin' no good settin' 'roun' de house toas'n my shins at de fier, so I des tuck Mars Jeems's rifle fum behime de do' en put out ter look atter my stock. "Seem like I ain't never see no raw day like dat, needer befo' ner sence. Dey wa'n't no rain, but de wet des sifted down; mighty raw day. De leaves on de groun' 'uz so wet dey don't make no fuss, en I got in de woods, en w'enever I year de Yankees gwine by, I des stop in my tracks en let un pass. I wuz stan'in' dat away in de aidge er de woods lookin' out cross a clearin', w'en-- piff!--out come a little bunch er blue smoke fum de top er wunner dem big lonesome-lookin' pines, en den--pow! "Sez I ter myse'f, sez I: 'Honey, you er right on my route, en I'll des see w'at kinder bird you got roostin' in you,' en w'iles I wuz a lookin' out bus' de smoke--piff! en den--bang! Wid dat I des drapt back inter de woods, en sorter skeerted 'roun' so's ter git de tree 'twixt' me en de road. I slid up putty close, en wadder you speck I see? Des ez sho's you er settin' dar lissenin' dey wuz a live Yankee up dar in dat tree, en he wuz a loadin' en a shootin' at de boys des ez cool es a cowcumber in de jew, en he had his hoss hitch out in de bushes, kaze I year de creetur tromplin' 'roun'. He had a spy-glass up dar, en w'iles I wuz a watchin' un 'im, he raise 'er up en look thoo 'er, en den he lay 'er down en fix his gun fer ter shoot. "I had good eyes in dem days, ef I ain't got um now, en way up de big road I see Mars Jeems a comm'. Hit wuz too fur fer ter see his face, but I know'd 'im by de filly w'at I raise fer 'im, en she wuz a prancin' like a school-gal. I know'd dat man wuz gwineter shoot Mars Jeems ef he could, en dat wuz mo'n I could stan'. Many's en many's de time dat I nuss dat boy, en hilt 'im in dese arms, en toted 'im on dis back, en w'en I see dat Yankee lay dat gun 'cross a lim' en take aim at Mars Jeems I up wid my ole rifle, en shet my eyes en let de man have all she had." "Do you mean to say," exclaimed Miss Theodosia, indignantly, "that you shot the Union soldier, when you knew he was fighting for your freedom?" "Co'se, I know all about dat," responded Uncle Remus, "en it sorter made col' chills run up my back; but w'en I see dat man take aim, en Mars Jeems gwine home ter Ole Miss en Miss Sally, I des disremembered all 'bout freedom en lammed aloose. En den atter dat, me en Miss Sally tuck en nuss de man right straight along. He los' one arm in dat tree bizness, but me en Miss Sally we nuss 'im en we nuss 'im twel he done got well. Des 'bout dat time I quit nuss'n 'im, but Miss Sally she kep' on. She kep' on," continued Uncle Remus, pointing to Mr. Huntingdon, "en now dar he is." "But you cost him an arm," exclaimed Miss Theodosia. "I gin 'im dem," said Uncle Remus, pointing to Mrs. Huntingdon, "en I gin 'im deze"--holding up his own brawny arms. "En ef dem ain't nuff fer enny man den I done los' de way." HIS SAYINGS I. JEEMS ROBER'SON'S LAST ILLNESS A Jonesboro negro, while waiting for the train to go out, met up with Uncle Remus. After the usual "time of day" had been passed between the two, the former inquired about an acquaintance. "How's Jeems Rober'son?" he asked. "Ain't you year 'bout Jim?" asked Uncle Remus. "Dat I ain't," responded the other; "I ain't hear talk er Jem sence he cut loose fum de chain-gang. Dat w'at make I ax. He ain't down wid de biliousness, is he?" "Not dat I knows un," responded Uncle Remus, gravely. "He ain't sick, an' he ain't bin sick. He des tuck'n say he wuz gwineter ride dat ar roan mule er Mars John's de udder Sunday, an' de mule, she up'n do like she got nudder ingagement. I done bin fool wid dat mule befo', an' I tuck'n tole Jim dat he better not git tangle up wid 'er; but Jim, he up'n 'low dat he wuz a hoss- doctor, an' wid dat he ax me fer a chaw terbacker, en den he got de bridle, en tuck'n kotch de mule en got on her--Well," continued Uncle Remus, looking uneasily around, "I speck you better go git yo' ticket. Dey tells me dish yer train goes a callyhootin'." "Hol' on dar, Uncle Remus; you ain't tell me 'bout Jim," exclaimed the Jonesboro negro. "I done tell you all I knows, chile. Jim, he tuck'n light on de mule, an' de mule she up'n hump 'erse'f, an den dey wuz a skuffle, an' w'en de dus' blow 'way, dar lay de nigger on de groun', an' de mule she stood eatin' at de troff wid wunner Jim's gallusses wrop 'roun' her behime-leg. Den atterwuds, de ker'ner, he come 'roun', an' he tuck'n gin it out dat Jim died sorter accidental like. Hit's des like I tell you: de nigger wern't sick a minnit. So long! Bimeby you won't ketch yo' train. I got ter be knockin' long." II. UNCLE REMUS'S CHURCH EXPERIENCE THE deacon of a colored church met Uncle Remus recently, and, after some uninteresting remarks about the weather, asked: "How dis you don't come down ter chu'ch no mo', Brer Remus? We er bin er havin' some mighty 'freshen' times lately." "Hit's bin a long time sence I bin down dar, Brer Rastus, an' hit'll be longer. I done got my dose." "You ain't done gone an' unjined, is you, Brer Remus?" "Not zackly, Brer Rastus. I des tuck'n draw'd out. De members 'uz a blame sight too mutuel fer ter suit my doctrines." "How wuz dat, Brer Remus?" "Well, I tell you, Brer Rastus. W'en I went ter dat chu'ch, I went des ez umbill ez de nex' one. I went dar fer ter sing, an' fer ter pray, an' fer ter wushup, an' I mos' giner'lly allers had a stray shin-plarster w'ich de ole 'oman say she want sont out dar ter dem cullud fokes 'cross de water. Hit went on dis way twel bimeby, one day, de fus news I know'd der was a row got up in de amen cornder. Brer Dick, he 'nounced dat dey wern't nuff money in de box; an' Brer Sim said if dey wern't he speck Brer Dick know'd whar it disappeared ter; an' den Brer Dick 'low'd dat he won't stan' no 'probusness, an' wid dat he haul off an' tuck Brer Sim under de jaw--ker blap!--an' den dey clinched an' drapped on de flo' an' fout under de benches an' 'mong de wimmen. "'Bout dat time Sis Tempy, she lipt up in de a'r, an' sing out dat she done gone an tromple on de Ole Boy, an' she kep' on lippin' up an' slingin' out 'er han's twel bimeby--blip!--she tuck Sis Becky in de mouf, an' den Sis Becky riz an' fetch a grab at Sis Tempy, an' I 'clar' ter grashus ef didn't 'pear ter me like she got a poun' er wool. Atter dat de revivin' sorter het up like. Bofe un um had kin 'mong de mo'ners, an' ef you ever see skufflin' an' scramblin' hit wuz den an' dar. Brer Jeems Henry, he mounted Brer Plato an' rid 'im over de railin', an' den de preacher he start down fum de pulpit, an' des ez he wuz skippin' onter de platform a hym'-book kotch 'im in de bur er de year, an I be bless ef it didn't soun' like a bung-shell'd busted. Des den, Brer Jesse, he riz up in his seat, sorter keerless like, an' went down inter his britches atter his razer, an' right den I know'd sho' nuff trubble wuz begun. Sis Dilsey, she seed it herse'f, an' she tuck'n let off wunner dem hallyluyah hollers, an' den I disremember w'at come ter pass. "I'm gittin' sorter ole, Brer Rastus, an' it seem like de dus' sorter shet out de pannyrammer. Fuddermo', my lim's got ter akin, mo' speshully w'en I year Brer Sim an' Brer Dick a snortin' and a skufflin' under de benches like ez dey wuz sorter makin' der way ter my pew. So I kinder hump myse'f an' scramble out, and de fus man w'at I seed was a pleeceman, an' he had a nigger 'rested, an' de fergiven name er dat nigger wuz Remus." "He didn't 'res' you, did he, Brer Remus?" "Hit's des like I tell you, Brer Rastus, an' I hatter git Mars John fer to go inter my bon's fer me. Hit ain't no use fer ter sing out chu'ch ter me, Brer Rastus. I done bin an' got my dose. W'en I goes ter war, I wanter know w'at I'm a doin'. I don't wanter git hemmed up 'mong no wimmen and preachers. I wants elbow-room, an I'm bleedzd ter have it. Des gimme elbow-room." "But, Brer Remus, you ain't--" "I mout drap in, Brer Rastus, an' den ag'in I moutn't, but w'en you duz see me santer in de do', wid my specs on, you k'n des say to de congergashun, sorter familious like, 'Yer come ole man Remus wid his hoss-pistol, an' ef dar's much uv a skuffle 'roun' yer dis evenin' you er gwineter year fum 'im.' Dat's me, an' dat's what you kin tell um. So long! Member me to Sis Abby." III. UNCLE REMUS AND THE SAVANNAH DARKEY THE notable difference existing between the negroes in the interior of the cotton States and those on the seaboard--a difference that extends to habits and opinions as well as to dialect--has given rise to certain ineradicable prejudices which are quick to display themselves whenever an opportunity offers. These prejudices were forcibly, as well as ludicrously, illustrated in Atlanta recently. A gentleman from Savannah had been spending the summer in the mountains of north Georgia, and found it convenient to take along a body-servant. This body- servant was a very fine specimen of the average coast negro-- sleek, well-conditioned, and consequential--disposed to regard with undisguised contempt everything and everybody not indigenous to the rice-growing region--and he paraded around the streets with quite a curious and critical air. Espying Uncle Remus languidly sunning himself on a corner, the Savannah darkey approached. "Mornin', sah." "I'm sorter up an' about," responded Uncle Remus, carelessly and calmly. "How is you stannin' it?" "Tanky you, my helt' mos' so-so. He mo' hot dun in de mountain. Seem so lak man mus' git need*1 de shade. I enty fer see no rice-bud in dis pa'ts." "In dis w'ich?" inquired Uncle with a sudden affectation of interest. "In dis pa'ts. In dis country. Da plenty in Sawanny." "Plenty whar?" "Da plenty in Sawanny. I enty fer see no crab an' no oscher; en swimp, he no stay 'roun'. I lak some rice-bud now." "You er talkin' 'bout deze yer sparrers, w'ich dey er all head, en 'lev'm un makes one mouffle,*2 I speck," suggested Uncle Remus. "Well, dey er yer," he continued, "but dis ain't no climate whar de rice-birds flies inter yo' pockets en gits out de money an' makes de change derse'f; an' de isters don't shuck off der shells en run over you on de street, an' no mo' duz de s'imp hull derse'f an' drap in yo' mouf. But dey er yer, dough. De scads 'll fetch um." "Him po' country fer true," commented the Savannah negro; "he no like Sawanny. Down da, we set need de shade an' eaty de rice-bud, an' de crab, an' de swimp tree time de day; an' de buckra man drinky him wine, an' smoky him seegyar all troo de night. Plenty fer eat an' not much fer wuk." "Hit's mighty nice, I speck," responded Uncle Remus, gravely. "De nigger dat ain't hope up 'longer high feedin' ain't got no grip. But up yer whar fokes is gotter scramble 'roun' an' make der own livin', de vittles w'at's kumerlated widout enny sweatin' mos' allers gener'ly b'longs ter some yuther man by rights. One hoe- cake an' a rasher er middlin' meat las's me fum Sunday ter Sunday, an' I'm in a mighty big streak er luck w'en I gits dat." The Savannah negro here gave utterance to a loud, contemptuous laugh, and began to fumble somewhat ostentatiously with a big brass watch-chain. "But I speck I struck up wid a payin' job las' Chuseday," continued Uncle Remus, in a hopeful tone. "Wey you gwan do?" "Oh, I'm a waitin' on a culled gemmun fum Savannah--wunner deze yer high livers you bin tellin' 'bout." "How dat?" "I loant 'im two dollars," responded Uncle Remus, grimly, "an' I'm a waitin' on 'im fer de money. Hit's wunner deze yer jobs w'at las's a long time." The Savannah negro went off after his rice-birds, while Uncle Remus leaned up against the wall and laughed until he was in imminent danger of falling down from sheer exhaustion. *1 Underneath. *2 Mouthful. TURNIP SALAD AS A TEXT As Uncle Remus was going down the street recently he was accosted by several acquaintances. "Heyo!" said one, "here comes Uncle Remus. He look like he gwine fer ter set up a bo'din-house." Several others bantered the old man, but he appeared to be in a good humor. He was carrying a huge basket of vegetables. "How many er you boys," said he, as he put his basket down, "is done a han's turn dis day? En yit de week's done commence. I year talk er niggers dat's got money in de bank, but I lay hit ain't none er you fellers. Whar you speck you gwineter git yo' dinner, en how you speck you gwineter git 'long?" "Oh, we sorter knocks 'roun' an' picks up a livin'," responded one. "Dat's w'at make I say w'at I duz," said Uncle Remus. "Fokes go 'bout in de day-time an' makes a livin', an' you come 'long w'en dey er res'in' der bones an' picks it up. I ain't no han' at figgers, but I lay I k'n count up right yer in de san' en number up how menny days hit'll be 'fo' you 'er cuppled on ter de chain- gang." "De ole man's holler'n now sho'," said one of the listeners, gazing with admiration on the venerable old darkey. "I ain't takin' no chances 'bout vittles. Hit's proned inter me fum de fus dat I got ter eat, en I knows dat I got fer ter grub for w'at I gits. Hit's agin de mor'l law fer niggers fer ter eat w'en dey don't wuk, an' w'en you see um 'pariently fattenin' on a'r, you k'n des bet dat ruinashun's gwine on some'rs. I got mustard, en poke salid, en lam's quarter in dat baskit, en me en my ole 'oman gwineter sample it. Ef enny you boys git a invite you come, but ef you don't you better stay 'way. I gotter muskit out dar w'at's used ter persidin' 'roun' whar dey's a cripple nigger. Don't you fergit dat off'n yo' mine." V. A CONFESSION "W'AT'S dis yer I see, great big niggers gwine 'lopin' 'roun' town wid cakes 'n pies fer ter sell?" asked Uncle Remus recently, in his most scornful tone. "That's what they are doing," responded a young man; "that's the way they make a living." "Dat w'at make I say w'at I duz--dat w'at keep me grum'lin' w'en I goes in cullud fokes s'ciety. Some niggers ain't gwine ter wuk nohow, an' hit's flingin' way time fer ter set enny chain-gang traps fer ter ketch um." "Well, now, here!" exclaimed the young man, in a dramatic tone, "what are you giving us now? Isn't it just as honest and just as regular to sell pies as it is to do any other kind of work?" "'Tain't dat, boss:' said the old man, seeing that he was about to be cornered; 'tain't dat. Hit's de nas'ness un it w'at gits me." "Oh, get out!" "Dat's me, boss, up an' down. Ef dere's ruinashun ennywhar in de known wurril, she goes in de comp'ny uv a hongry nigger w'at's a totin' pies 'roun.' Sometimes w'en I git kotch wid emptiness in de pit er de stummuck, an' git ter fairly honin' arter sumpin' w'at got substance in it, den hit look like unto me dat I kin stan' flat-footed an' make more cle'r money eatin' pies dan I could if I wuz ter sell de las' one 'twixt dis an' Chris'mus. An' de nigger w'at k'n trapes 'round wid pies and not git in no alley-way an' sample um, den I'm bleedzd ter say dat nigger out- niggers me an' my fambly. So dar now!" VI. UNCLE REMUS WITH THE TOOTHACHE WHEN Uncle Remus put in an appearance one morning recently, his friends knew he had been in trouble. He had a red cotton handkerchief tied under his chin, and the genial humor that usually makes his aged face its dwelling-place had given way to an expression of grim melancholy. The young men about the office were inclined to chaff him, but his look of sullen resignation remained unchanged. "What revival did you attend last night?" inquired one. "What was the color of the mule that did the hammering?" asked another. "I always told the old man that a suburban chicken coop would fall on him," remarked some one. "A strange pig has been squealing in his ear," suggested some one else. But Uncle Remus remained impassive. He seemed to have lost all interest in what was going on around him, and he sighed heavily as he seated himself on the edge of the trash-box in front of the office. Finally some one asked, in a sympathetic tone: "What is the matter, old man? You look like you'd been through the mill." "Now you 'er knockin'. I ain't bin thoo de mill sence day 'fo' yistiddy, den dey ain't no mills in de lan'. Ef wunner deze yer scurshun trains had runned over me I couldn't er bin wuss off. I bin trompin' 'roun' in de lowgroun's now gwine on seventy-fi' year, but I ain't see no sich times ez dat w'at I done spe'unst now. Boss, is enny er you all ever rastled wid de toofache?" "Oh, hundreds of times! The toothache isn't anything." "Den you des played 'roun' de aidges. You ain't had de kine w'at kotch me on de underjaw. You mout a had a gum-bile, but you ain't bin boddered wid de toofache. I wuz settin' up talkin' wid my ole 'oman, kinder puzzlin' 'roun' fer ter see whar de nex' meal's vittles wuz a gwineter cum fum, an' I feel a little ache sorter crawlin' 'long on my jaw-bone, kinder feelin' his way. But de ache don't stay long. He sorter hankered 'roun' like, en den crope back whar he come fum. Bimeby I feel 'im comin' agin, an' dis time hit look like he come up closer--kinder skummishin' 'roun' fer ter see how de lan' lay. Den he went off. Present'y I feel 'im comin', an' dis time hit look like he kyar'd de news unto Mary, fer hit feel like der wuz anudder wun wid 'im. Dey crep' up an' crep' 'roun', an, den dey crope off. Bimeby dey come back, an' dis time dey come like dey wuzzent 'fear'd er de s'roundin's, fer dey trot right up unto de toof, sorter 'zamine it like, an' den trot all roun' it, like deze yer circuous hosses. I sot dar mighty ca'm, but I 'spected dat sump'n' wuz gwine ter happ'n." "And it happened, did it?" asked some one in the group surrounding the old man. "Boss, don't you fergit it," responded Uncle Remus, fervidly. "W'en dem aches gallop back dey galloped fer ter stay, an' dey wuz so mixed up dat I couldn't tell one fum de udder. All night long dey racked an' dey galloped, an' w'en dey got tired er rackin' an' gallopin', dey all close in on de ole toof an' thumped it an' gouged at it twel it 'peared unto me dat dey had got de jaw-bone loosened up, an' wuz tryin' fer ter fetch it up thoo de top er my head an' out at der back er my neck. An' dey got wuss nex' day. Mars John, he seed I wuz 'stracted, an' he tole me fer ter go roun' yere an' git sump'n' put on it, an' de drug man he 'lowed dat I better have 'er draw'd, an' his wuds wuzzent more'n col' 'fo' wunner deze yer watchyoumaycollums-- wunner deze dentis' mens--had retched fer it wid a pa'r er tongs w'at don't tu'n loose w'en dey ketches a holt. Leas'ways dey didn't wid me. You oughter seed dat toof, boss. Hit wuz wunner deze yer fo'-prong fellers. Ef she'd a grow'd wrong eend out'ard, I'd a bin a bad nigger long arter I jin'd de chu'ch. You year'd my ho'n!" VII. THE PHONOGRAPH "UNC REMUS," asked a tall, awkward-looking negro, who was one of a crowd surrounding the old man, "w'at's dish 'ere w'at dey calls de fonygraf--dish yer inst'ument w'at kin holler 'roun' like little chillun in de back yard?" "I ain't seed um," said Uncle Remus, feeling in his pocket for a fresh chew of tobacco. "I ain't seed um, but I year talk un um. Miss Sally wuz a readin' in de papers las' Chuseday, an' she say dat's it's a mighty big watchyoumaycollum." "A mighty big w'ich?" asked one of the crowd. "A mighty big w'atsizname," answered Uncle Remus, cautiously. "I wuzzent up dar close to whar Miss Sarah wuz a readin', but I kinder geddered in dat it wuz one er deze 'ere w'atzisnames w'at you hollers inter one year an it comes out er de udder. Hit's mighty funny unter me how dese fokes kin go an' prognosticate der eckoes inter one er deze yer i'on boxes, an' dar hit'll stay on twel de man comes long an' tu'ns de handle an' let's de fuss come pilin' out. Bimeby dey'll git ter makin' sho' nuff fokes, an' den dere'll be a racket 'roun' here. Dey tells me dat it goes off like one er deze yer torpedoes." "You year dat, don't you?" said one or two of the younger negroes. "Dat's w'at dey tells me," continued Uncle Remus. "Dat's w'at dey sez. Hit's one er deze yer kinder w'atzisnames w'at sasses back w'en you hollers at it." "W'at dey fix um fer, den?" asked one of the practical negroes. "Dat's w'at I wanter know," said Uncle Remus, contemplatively. "But dat's w'at Miss Sally wuz a readin' in de paper. All you gotter do is ter holler at de box, an' dar's yo' remarks. Dey goes in, an' dar dey er tooken and dar dey hangs on twel you shakes de box, an' den dey draps out des ez fresh ez deze yer fishes w'at you git fum Savannah, an' you ain't got time fer ter look at dere gills, nudder." VIII. RACE IMPROVEMENT "Dere's a kind er limberness 'bout niggers dese days dat's mighty cu'us," remarked Uncle Remus yesterday, as he deposited a pitcher of fresh water upon the exchange table. "I notisses it in de alley-ways an on de street-cornders. Dey er rackin' up, mon, deze yer cullud fokes is." "What are you trying to give us now?" inquired one of the young men, in a bilious tone. "The old man's mind is wandering," said the society editor, smoothing the wrinkles out of his lavender kids. Uncle Remus laughed. I speck I is a gittin' mo frailer dan I wuz 'fo' de fahmin days wuz over, but I sees wid my eyes an' I years wid my year, same ez enny er dese yer young bucks w'at goes a gallopin' roun' huntin' up devilment, an' w'en I sees de limberness er dese yer cullud people, an' w'en I sees how dey er dancin' up, den I gits sorter hopeful. Dey er kinder ketchin' up wid me." "How is that?" "Oh, dey er movin'," responded Uncle Remus. "Dey er sorter comin' 'roun'. Dey er gittin' so dey bleeve dat dey ain't no better dan de w'ite fokes. W'en freedom come out de niggers sorter got dere humps up, an' dey staid dat way, twel bimeby dey begun fer ter git hongry, an' den dey begun fer ter drap inter line right smartually; an' now," continued the old man, emphatically, "dey er des ez palaverous ez dey wuz befo' de war. Dey er gittin' on solid groun', mon." "You think they are improving, then?" "You er chawin' guv'nment now, boss. You slap de law onter a nigger a time er two, an' larn 'im dat he's got fer to look after his own rashuns an' keep out'n udder fokes's chick'n-coops, an' sorter coax 'im inter de idee dat he's got ter feed 'is own chilluns, an' I be blessed ef you ain't got 'im on risin' groun'. An', mo'n dat, w'en he gits holt er de fack dat a nigger k'n have yaller fever same ez w'ite folks, you done got 'im on de mo'ners' bench, an' den ef you come down strong on de p'int dat he oughter stan' fas' by de fokes w'at hope him w'en he wuz in trouble de job's done. W'en you does dat, ef you ain't got yo' han's on a new-made nigger, den my name ain't Remus, an' ef dat name's bin changed I ain't seen her abbertized." IX. IN THE ROLE OF A TARTAR A CHARLESTON negro who was in Atlanta on the Fourth of July made a mistake. He saw Uncle Remus edging his way through the crowd, and thought he knew him. "Howdy, Daddy Ben?" the stranger exclaimed. "I tink I nubber see you no mo'. Wey you gwan? He hot fer true, ain't he?" "Daddy who?" asked Uncle Remus, straightening himself up with dignity. "W'ich?" "I know you in Char'son, an' den in Sewanny. I spec I dun grow away from 'membrance." "You knowed me in Charlstun, and den in Savanny?" "He been long time, ain't he, Daddy Ben?" "Dat's w'at's a pesterin' un me. How much you reckon you know'd me?" "He good while pas'; when I wer' pickaninny. He long time ago. Wey you gwan, Daddy Ben?" "W'at does you season your recollection wid fer ter make it hol' on so?" inquired the old man. "I dunno. He stick hese'f. I see you comin' 'long 'n I say 'Dey Daddy Ben.' I tink I see you no mo', an' I shaky you by de han'. Wey you gwan? Dey no place yer wey we git wine?" Uncle Remus stared at the strange darkey curiously for a moment, and then he seized him by the arm. "Come yer, son, whar dey ain't no folks an' lemme drap some Jawjy 'intment in dem years er yone. You er mighty fur ways fum home, an' you wanter be a lookin' out fer yo'se'f. Fus and fo'mus, you er thumpin' de wrong watermillion. You er w'isslin' up de wrong chube. I ain't tromped roun' de country much. I ain't bin to Charlstun an' needer is I tuck in Savanny; but you couldn't rig up no game on me dat I wouldn't tumble on to it de minit I laid my eyeballs on you. W'en hit come to dat I'm ole man Tumbler, fum Tumblersville--I is dat. Hit takes one er deze yer full-blooded w'ite men fur ter trap my jedgment. But w'en a nigger comes a jabberin' 'roun' like he got a mouf full er rice straw, he ain't got no mo' chance long side er me dan a sick sparrer wid a squinch-owl. You gutter travel wid a circus 'fo' you gits away wid me. You better go long an' git yo' kyarpet-sack and skip de town. You er de freshest nigger w'at I seen yit." The Charleston negro passed on just as a police-man' came up. "Boss, you see dat smart Ellick?" "Yes, what's the matter with him?" "He's one er deze yer scurshun niggers from Charlstun. I seed you a-stannin' over agin de cornder yander, an' ef dat nigger'd a draw'd his monty kyards on me, I wuz a gwineter holler fer you. Would you er come, boss?" "Why, certainly, Uncle Remus." "Dat's w'at I 'low'd. Little more'n he'd a bin aboard er de wrong waggin. Dat's w'at he'd a bin." X. A CASE OF MEASLES "YOU'VE been looking like you were rather under the weather for the past week or two, Uncle Remus," said a gentleman to the old man. "You'd be sorter puny, too, boss, if you'd er bin whar I bin." "Where have you been?" "Pear ter me like eve'ybody done year 'bout dat. Dey ain't no ole nigger my age an' size dat's had no rattliner time dan I is." "A kind of picnic?" "Go long, boss! w'at you speck I be doin' sailin' 'roun' ter dese yer cullud picnics? Much mo' an' I wouldn't make bread by wukkin' fer't, let 'lone follerin' up a passel er boys an' gals all over keration. Boss, ain't you year 'bout it, sho' 'nuff?" "I haven't, really. What was the matter?" "I got strucken wid a sickness, an' she hit de ole nigger a joe- darter 'fo' she tu'n 'im loose." "What kind of sickness?" "Hit look sorter cu'ous, boss, but ole an' steddy ez I is, I tuck'n kotch de meezles." "Oh, get out! You are trying to get up a sensation." "Hit's a natal fack, boss, I declar' ter grashus ef 'tain't. Dey sorter come on wid a col', like--leas'ways dat's how I commence fer ter suffer, an' den er koff got straddle er de col'--one dese yer koffs w'at look like hit goes ter de foundash'n. I kep' on linger'n' 'roun' sorter keepin' one eye on the rheumatiz an' de udder on de distemper, twel, bimeby, I begin fer ter feel de trestle-wuk give way, an' den I des know'd dat I wuz gwineter gitter racket. I slipt inter bed one Chuseday night, an' I never slip out no mo' fer mighty nigh er mont'. "Nex' mornin' de meezles 'd done kivered me, an' den ef I didn't git dosted by de ole 'oman I'm a Chinee. She gimme back rashuns er sassafac tea. I des natchully hankered an' got hongry atter water, an ev'y time I sing out fer water I got b'ilin' hot sassafac tea. Hit got so dat w'en I wake up in de mornin' de ole 'oman 'd des come long wid a kittle er tea an' fill me up. Dey tells me 'roun' town dat chilluns don't git hurted wid de meezles, w'ich ef dey don't I wanter be a baby de nex' time dey hits dis place. All dis yer meezles bizness is bran'-new ter me. In ole times, 'fo' de wah, I ain't heer tell er no seventy-fi'- year-ole nigger grapplin' wid no meezles. Dey ain't ketchin' no mo', is dey, boss?" "Oh, no--I suppose not." "'Kase ef dey is, you k'n des put my name down wid de migrashun niggers." XI. THE EMIGRANTS WHEN Uncle Remus went down to the passenger depot one morning recently, the first sight that caught his eye was an old negro man, a woman, and two children sitting in the shade near the door of the baggage-room. One of the children was very young, and the quartet was altogether ragged and forlorn-looking. The sympathies of Uncle Remus were immediately aroused. He approached the group by forced marches, and finally unburdened his curiosity. "Whar is you m'anderin' unter, pard?" The old negro, who seemed to be rather suspicious, looked at Uncle Remus coolly, and appeared to be considering whether he should make any reply. Finally, however, he stretched himself and said: "We er gwine down in de naberhoods er Tallypoosy, an we ain't makin' no fuss 'bout it, nudder." "I disremember," said Uncle Remus, thoughtfully, "whar Tallypoosy is." "Oh, hit's out yan," replied the old man, motioning his head as if it was just beyond the iron gates of the depot. "Hit's down in Alabam. When we git dar, maybe well go on twel we gits ter Massasip." "Is you got enny folks out dar?" inquired Uncle Remus. "None dat I knows un." "An' you er takin' dis 'oman an' deze chillun out dar whar dey dunno nobody? Whar's yo' perwisions?" eying a chest with a rope around it. "Dem's our bedcloze," the old negro explained, noticing the glance of Uncle Remus. "All de vittles what we got we e't 'fo' we started." "An' you speck ter retch dar safe an soun'? Whar's yo' ticket?" "Ain't got none. De man say ez how dey'd pass us thoo. I gin a man a fi'-dollar bill 'fo' I lef' Jonesboro, an' he sed dat settled it." "Lemme tell you dis," said Uncle Remus, straightening up indignantly: "you go an' rob somebody an' git on de chain-gang, an' let de 'oman scratch 'roun' yer an' make 'er livin'; but don't you git on dem kyars--don't you do it. Yo' bes' holt is de chain-gang. You kin make yo' livin' dar w'en you can't make it no whars else. But don't you git on dem kyars. Ef you do, you er gone nigger. Ef you ain't got no money fer ter walk back wid, you better des b'il' yo' nes' right here. I'm a-talkin' wid de bark on. I done seed deze yer Arkinsaw emmygrants come lopin' back, an' some un 'em didn't have rags nuff on 'em fer ter hide dere nakidness. You leave dat box right whar she is, an, let de 'oman take wun young un an you take de udder wun, an' den you git in de middle er de big road an' pull out fer de place whar you come fum. I'm preachin' now." Those who watched say the quartet didn't take the cars. XII. AS A MURDERER UNCLE Remus met a police officer recently. "You ain't hear talk er no dead nigger nowhar dis mawnin', is you, boss?" asked the old man earnestly. "No," replied the policeman, reflectively. "No, I believe not. Have you heard of any?" "'Pears unter me dat I come mighty nigh gittin' some news bout dat size, an' dat's w'at I'm a huntin' fer. Bekaze ef dey er foun' a stray nigger layin' 'roun' loose, wid 'is bref gone, den I wanter go home an' git my brekfus' an' put on some clean cloze, an' 'liver myse'f up ter wunner deze yer jestesses er de peace, an git a fa'r trial." "Why, have you killed anybody?" "Dat's w'at's I'm a 'quirin' inter now, but I wouldn't be sustonished ef I ain't laid a nigger out some'rs on de subbubs. Hit's done got so it's agin de law fer ter bus' loose an' kill a nigger, ain't it, boss?" "Well, I should say so. You don't mean to tell me that you have killed a colored man, do you?" "I speck I is, boss. I speck I done gone an' done it dis time, sho.' Hit's bin sorter growin' on me, an' it come ter a head dis mawnin', 'less my name ain't Remus, an' dat's w'at dey bin er callin' me sence I wuz ole er 'nuff fer ter scratch myse'f wid my lef' han'." "Well, if you've killed a man, you'll have some fun, sure enough. How was it?" "Hit wuz dis way, boss: I wuz layin' in my bed dis mawnin' sorter ruminatin' 'roun', when de fus news I know'd I year a fus' 'mong de chickens, an' den my brissels riz. I done had lots er trubble wid dem chickens, an' w'en I years wun un um squall my ve'y shoes comes ontied. So I des sorter riz up an' retch fer my ole muskit, and den I crope out er de back do', an' w'atter you reckin I seed?" "I couldn't say." "I seed de biggest, blackest nigger dat you ever laid eyes on. He shined like de paint on 'im was fresh. He hed done grabbed fo' er my forwardes' pullets. I crope up nigh de do', an' hollered an' axed 'im how he wuz a gittin' on, an' den he broke, an' ez he broke I jammed de gun in de small er his back and banged aloose. He let a yell like forty yaller cats a courtin', an' den he broke. You ain't seed no nigger hump hisse'f like dat nigger. He tore down de well shelter and fo' pannils er fence, an' de groun' look like wunner deze yer harrycanes had lit dar and fanned up de yeath." "Why, I thought you killed him?" "He bleedzed ter be dead, boss. Ain't I put de gun right on 'im? Seem like I feel 'im give way w'en she went off." "Was the gun loaded?" "Dat's w'at my ole 'oman say. She had de powder in dar, sho', but I disremember wedder I put de buckshot in, er wedder I lef' um out. Leas'ways, I'm gwineter call on wunner deze yer jestesses. So long, boss." XIII. HIS PRACTICAL VIEW OF THINGS "BRER REMUS, is you heern tell er deze doin's out yer in de udder eend er town?" asked a colored deacon of the church the other day. "W'at doin's is dat, Brer Ab?" "Deze yer signs an' wunders whar dat cullud lady died day 'fo' yistiddy. Mighty quare goin's on out dar, Brer Remus, sho's you bawn." "Sperrits?" inquired Uncle Remus, sententiously. "Wuss'n dat, Brer Remus. Some say dat jedgment day ain't fur off, an' de folks is flockin' 'roun' de house a hollerin' an' a- shoutin' des like dey wuz in er revival. In de winder glass dar you kin see de flags a flyin', an' Jacob's lather is dar, an' dar's writin' on de pane w'at no man can't read--leas'wise dey ain't none read it yit." "W'at kinder racket is dis you er givin' un me now, Brer Ab?" "I done bin dar, Brer Remus; I done seed um wid bofe my eyes. Cullud lady what wuz intranced done woke up an' say dey ain't much time fer ter tarry. She say she meet er angel in de road, an' he p'inted straight fer de mornin' star, an' tell her fer ter prepar'. Hit look mighty cu'us, Brer Remus." "Cum down ter dat, Brer Ab," said Uncle Remus, wiping his spectacles carefully, and readjusting them--"cum down ter dat, an' dey ain't nuthin' dat ain't cu'us. I ain't no spishus nigger myse'f, but I 'spizes fer ter year dogs a howlin' an' squinch- owls havin' de agur out in de woods, an' w'en a bull goes a bellerin' by de house den my bones git col' an' my flesh commences fer ter creep; but w'en it comes ter deze yer sines in de a'r an' deze yer sperrits in de woods, den I'm out--den I'm done. I is, fer a fack. I bin livin' yer more'n seventy year, an' I year talk er niggers seein' ghos'es all times er night an' all times er day, but I ain't never seed none yit; an' deze yer flags an' Jacob's lathers, I ain't seed dem, nudder." "Dey er dar, Brer Remus." "Hit's des like I tell you, Brer Ab. I ain't 'sputin' 'bout it, but I ain't seed um, an' I don't take no chances deze days on dat w'at I don't see, an' dat w'at I sees I got ter 'zamine mighty close. Lemme tell you dis, Brer Ab: don't you let deze sines onsettle you. W'en old man Gabrile toot his ho'n, he ain't gwineter hang no sine out in de winder-panes, an when ole Fadder Jacob lets down dat lather er his'n you'll be mighty ap' fer ter hear de racket. An' don't you bodder wid jedgment-day. Jedgment- day is lierbul fer ter take keer un itse'f." "Dat's so, Brer Remus." "Hit's bleedzed ter be so, Brer Ab. Hit don't bodder me. Hit's done got so now dat w'en I gotter pone er bread, an' a rasher er bacon, an' nuff grease fer ter make gravy, I ain't keerin' much w'edder fokes sees ghos'es er no." XIV. THAT DECEITFUL JUG UNCLE REMUS was in good humor one evening recently when he dropped casually into the editorial room of "The Constitution," as has been his custom for the past year or two. He had a bag slung across his shoulder, and in the bag was a jug. The presence of this humble but useful vessel in Uncle Remus's bag was made the occasion for several suggestive jokes at his expense by the members of the staff, but the old man's good humor was proof against all insinuations. "Dat ar jug's bin ter wah, mon. Hit's wunner deze yer ole timers. I got dat jug down dar in Putmon County w'en Mars 'Lisha Ferryman wuz a young man, an' now he's done growed up, an' got ole an' died, an' his chilluns is growed up an' dey kin count dere gran'chilluns, an' yit dar's dat jug des ez lively an' ez lierbul fer ter kick up devilment ez w'at she wuz w'en she come fum de foundry." "That's the trouble," said one of the young men. "That's the reason we'd like to know what's in it now. "Now you er gittin' on ma'shy groun'," replied Uncle Remus. "Dat's de p'int. Dat's w'at make me say w'at I duz. I bin knowin' dat jug now gwine on sixty-fi' year, an' de jug w'at's more seetful dan dat jug ain't on de topside er de worrul. Dar she sets," continued the old man, gazing at it reflectively, "dar she sets dez ez natchul ez er ambertype, an' yit whar's de man w'at kin tell w'at kinder confab she's a gwineter carry on w'en dat corn-cob is snatched outen 'er mouf? Dat jug is mighty seetful, mon." "Well, it don't deceive any of us up here," remarked the agricultural editor, dryly. "We've seen jugs before." "I boun' you is, boss; I boun' you is. But you ain't seed no seetful jug like dat. Dar she sets a bellyin' out an' lookin' mighty fat an' full, an' yit she'd set dar a bellyin' out ef dere wuzzent nuthin' but win' under dat stopper. You knows dat she ain't got no aigs in her, ner no bacon, ner no grits, ner no termartusses, ner no shellotes, an' dat's 'bout all you duz know. Dog my cats ef de seetfulness er dat jug don't git away wid me," continued Uncle Remus, with a chuckle. "I wuz comm' 'cross de bridge des now, an' Brer John Henry seed me wid de bag slung onter my back, an' de jug in it, an' he ups an' sez, sezee: "'Heyo, Brer Remus, ain't it gittin' late for watermillions?' "Hit wuz de seetfulness er dat jug. If Brer John Henry know'd de color er dat watermillion, I speck he'd snatch me up 'fo' de confunce. I 'clar' ter grashus ef dat jug ain't a caution!" "I suppose it's full of molasses now," remarked one of the young men, sarcastically. "Hear dat!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, triumphantly "hear dat! W'at I tell you? I sed dat jug wuz seetful, an' I sticks to it. I bin knowin' dat--" "What has it got in it?" broke in some one; "molasses, kerosene, or train-oil?" "Well, I lay she's loaded, boss. I ain't shuk her up sence I drapt in, but I lay she's loaded." "Yes," said the agricultural editor, "and it's the meanest bug- juice in town--regular sorghum skimmings." "Dat's needer yer ner dar," responded Uncle Remus. "Po' fokes better be fixin' up for Chris'mus now w'ile rashuns is cheap. Dat's me. W'en I year Miss Sally gwine 'bout de house w'isslin' 'W'en I k'n read my titles cle'r--an' w'en I see de martins swawmin' atter sundown--an' w'en I year de peckerwoods confabbin' togedder dese moonshiny nights in my een er town--en I knows de hot wedder's a breakin' up, an' I know it's 'bout time fer po' fokes fer ter be rastlin' 'roun' and huntin' up dere rashuns. Dat's me, up an down." "Well, we are satisfied. Better go and hire a hall," remarked the sporting editor, with a yawn. "If you are engaged in a talking match you have won the money. Blanket him somebody, and take him to the stable." "An' w'at's mo'," continued the old man, scorning to notice the insinuation, "dough I year Miss Sally w'isslin', an' de peckerwoods a chatterin', I ain't seein' none er deze yer loafin' niggers fixin' up fer ter 'migrate. Dey kin holler Kansas all 'roun' de naberhood, but ceppin' a man come 'long an' spell it wid greenbacks, he don't ketch none er deze yer town niggers. You year me, dey ain't gwine." "Stand him up on the table," said the Sporting editor; "give him room." "Better go down yer ter de calaboose, an' git some news fer ter print," said Uncle Remus, with a touch of irony in his tone. "Some new nigger mighter broke inter jail." "You say the darkeys are not going to emigrate this year?" inquired the agricultural editor, who is interested in these things. "Shoo! dat dey ain't! I done seed an' I knows." "Well, how do you know?" "How you tell w'en crow gwineter light? Niggers bin prom'nadin' by my house all dis summer, holdin' dere heads high up an' de w'ites er dere eyeballs shinin' in de sun. Dey wuz too bigitty fer ter look over de gyardin' palm's. 'Long 'bout den de wedder wuz fetchin' de nat'al sperrits er turkentime outen de pine-trees an' de groun' wuz fa'rly smokin' wid de hotness. Now that it's gittin' sorter airish in de mornin's, dey don't 'pear like de same niggers. Dey done got so dey'll look over in de yard, an' nex' news you know dey'll be tryin' fer ter scrape up 'quaintence wid de dog. W'en dey passes now dey looks at de chicken-coop an' at der tater-patch. W'en you see niggers gittin' dat familious, you kin 'pen' on dere campin' wid you de ballunce er de season. Day 'fo' yistiddy I kotch one un um lookin' over de fence at my shoats, an' I sez, sez I: "'Duz you wanter purchis dem hogs?' "'Oh, no,' sezee, 'I wuz des lookin' at dere p'ints.' "'Well, dey ain't p'intin' yo' way, sez I, 'an', fuddermo', ef you don't bodder longer dem hogs dey ain't gwineter clime outer dat pen an' 'tack you, nudder,'" sez I. "An' I boun'," continued Uncle Remus, driving the corn-cob stopper a little tighter in his deceitful jug and gathering up his bag--"an' I boun' dat my ole muskit 'll go off 'tween me an' dat same nigger yit, an' he'll be at de bad een', an' dis seetful jug'll 'fuse ter go ter de funer'l." XV. THE FLORIDA WATERMELON "LOOK yer, boy," said Uncle Remus yesterday, Stopping near the railroad crossing on Whitehall Street, and gazing ferociously at a small colored youth; "look yer, boy, Ill lay you out flat ef you come flingin' yo' watermillion rimes under my foot--you watch ef I don't. You k'n play yo' pranks on deze yer w'ite fokes, but w'en you come a cuttin' up yo' capers roun me you 'll lan' right in de middle uv er spell er sickness--now you mine w'at I tell you. An' I ain't gwine fer ter put up wid none er yo' sassness nudder--let 'lone flingin' watermillion rimes whar I kin git mixt up wid um. I done had nuff watermillions yistiddy an' de day befo'." "How was that, Uncle Remus?" asked a gentleman standing near. "Hit wuz sorter like dis, boss. Las' Chuseday, Mars John he fotch home two er deze yer Flurridy watermillions, an him an' Miss Sally sot down fer ter eat um. Mars John an' Miss Sally ain't got nuthin' dat's too good fer me, an' de fus news I know'd Miss Sally wuz a hollerin' fer Remus. I done smelt de watermillion on de a'r, an' I ain't got no better sense dan fer ter go w'en I years w'ite fokes a-hollerin'--I larnt dat w'en I wa'n't so high. Leas'ways I galloped up ter de back po'ch, an' dar sot de watermillions dez ez natchul ez ef dey'd er bin raised on de ole Spivey place in Putmon County. Den Miss Sally, she cut me off er slishe--wunner deze yer ongodly slishes, big ez yo' hat, an' I sot down on de steps an' wrop myse'f roun' de whole blessid chunk, 'cep'in' de rime." Uncle Remus paused and laid his hand upon his stomach as if feeling for something. "Well, old man, what then?" "Dat's w'at I'm a gittin' at, boss," said Uncle Remus, smiling a feeble smile. "I santered roun' 'bout er half nour, an den I begin fer ter feel sorter squeemish--sorter like I done bin an, swoller'd 'bout fo' poun's off'n de ruff een' uv er scantlin'. Look like ter me dat I wuz gwineter be sick, an' den hit look like I wuzzent. Bimeby a little pain showed 'is head an' sorter m'andered roun' like he wuz a lookin' fer a good place fer ter ketch holt, an' den a great big pain jump up an' take atter de little one an' chase 'im 'roun' an' 'roun,' an' he mus' er kotch 'im, kaze bimeby de big pain retch down an' grab dis yer lef' leg--so--an' haul 'im up, an' den he retch down an grab de udder one an' pull him up, an' den de wah begun, sho nuff. Fer mighty nigh fo' hours dey kep' up dat racket, an' des ez soon ez a little pain 'ud jump up de big un 'ud light onter it an' gobble it up, an' den de big un 'ud go sailin' roun' huntin' fer mo'. Some fokes is mighty cu'us, dough. Nex' mornin' I hear Miss Sally a laughin', an' singin' an' a w'isslin' des like dey want no watermillions raise in Flurridy. But somebody better pen dis yer nigger boy up w'en I'm on de town--I kin tell you dat." XVI. UNCLE REMUS PREACHES TO A CONVERT "DEY tells me you done jine de chu'ch," said Uncle Remus to Pegleg Charley. "Yes, sir," responded Charley, gravely, "dat's so." "Well, I'm mighty glad er dat," remarked Uncle Remus, with unction. "It's 'bout time dat I wuz spectin' fer ter hear un you in de chain-gang, an', stidder dat, hit's de chu'ch. Well, dey ain't no tellin' deze days whar a nigger's gwineter lan'." "Yes," responded Charley, straightening himself up and speaking in a dignified tone, "yes, I'm fixin' to do better. I'm preparin' fer to shake worldliness. I'm done quit so'shatin' wid deze w'ite town boys. Dey've been a goin' back on me too rapidly here lately, an' now I'm a goin' back on dem." "Well, ef you done had de speunce un it, I'm mighty glad. Ef you got 'lijjun, you better hol' on to it 'twel de las' day in de mornin'. Hit's mighty good fer ter kyar' 'roun' wid you in de day time an' likewise in de night time. Hit'll pay you mo' dan politics, an' ef you stan's up like you oughter, hit'll las' longer dan a bone-fellum. But you wanter have one er deze yer ole-time grips, an' you des gotter shet yo' eyes an' swing on like wunner deze yer bull-tarrier dogs." "Oh, I'm goin' to stick, Uncle Remus. You kin put your money on dat. Deze town boys can't play no more uv dere games on me. I'm fixed. Can't you lend me a dime, Uncle Remus, to buy me a pie? I'm dat hongry dat my stomach is gittin' ready to go in mo'nin." Uncle Remus eyed Charley curiously a moment, while the latter looked quietly at his timber toe. Finally, the old man sighed and spoke: "How long is you bin in de chu'ch, son?" "Mighty near a week," replied Charley. "Well, lemme tell you dis, now, 'fo' you go enny fudder. You ain't bin in dar long nuff fer ter go 'roun' takin' up conterbutions. Wait ontwell you gits sorter seasoned like, an' den I'll hunt 'roun' in my cloze an' see ef I can't run out a thrip er two fer you. But don't you levy taxes too early." Charley laughed, and said he would let the old man off if he would treat to a watermelon. XVII. AS TO EDUCATION As Uncle Remus came up Whitehall Street recently, he met a little colored boy carrying a slate and a number of books. Some words passed between them, but their exact purport will probably never be known. They were unpleasant, for the attention of a wandering policeman was called to the matter by hearing the old man bawl out: "Don't you come foolin' longer me, nigger. You er flippin' yo' sass at de wrong color. You k'n go roun' yer an' sass deze w'ite people, an' maybe dey'll stan' it, but w'en you come a-slingin' yo' jaw at a man w'at wuz gray w'en de fahmin' days gin out, you better go an' git yo' hide greased." "What's the matter, old man?" asked a sympathizing policeman. "Nothin', boss, 'ceppin I ain't gwineter hav' no nigger chillun a hoopin' an' a hollerin' at me w'en I'm gwine long de streets." "Oh, well, school-children--you know how they are. "Dat's w'at make I say w'at I duz. Dey better be home pickin' up chips. W'at a nigger gwineter larn outen books? I kin take a bar'l stave an' fling mo' sense inter a nigger in one minnit dan all de schoolhouses betwixt dis en de State er Midgigin. Don't talk, honey! Wid one bar'l stave I kin fa'rly lif' de vail er ignunce." "Then you don't believe in education?" "Hit's de ruinashun er dis country. Look at my gal. De ole 'oman sont 'er ter school las' year, an' now we dassent hardly ax 'er fer ter kyar de washin' home. She done got beyant 'er bizness. I ain't larnt nuthin' in books, 'en yit I kin count all de money I gits. No use talkin', boss. Put a spellin'-book in a nigger's han's, en right den en dar' you loozes a plow-hand. I done had de speunce un it." XVIII. A TEMPERANCE REFORMER "Yer come Uncle Remus," said a well-dressed negro, who was standing on the sidewalk near James's bank recently, talking to a crowd of barbers. "Yer come Uncle Remus. I boun' he'll sign it." "You'll fling yo' money away ef you bet on it," responded Uncle Remus. "I ain't turnin' nothin' loose on chu'ch 'scriptions. I wants money right now fer ter git a pint er meal." 'Tain't dat." "An' I ain't heppin fer ter berry nobody. Much's I kin do ter keep de bref in my own body." "'Tain't dat, nudder." "An' I ain't puttin' my han' ter no reckommends. I'm fear'd fer ter say a perlite wud 'bout myself, an' I des know I ain't gwine 'roun' flatter'n up deze udder niggers." "An' 'tain't dat," responded the darkey, who held a paper in his hand. "We er gittin' up a Good Tempeler's lodge, an' we like ter git yo' name." "Eh-eh, honey! I done see too much er dis nigger tempunce. Dey stan' up mighty squar' ontwell dere dues commence ter cramp um, an' dey don't stan' de racket wuf a durn. No longer'n yistiddy I seed one er de head men er one er dese Tempeler's s'cieties totin' water fer a bar-room. He had de water in a bucket, but dey ain't no tellin' how much red licker he wuz a totin'. G'long, chile--jine yo' s'ciety an' be good ter yo'se'f. I'm a gittin' too ole. Gimme th'ee er fo' drams endurin' er de day, an' I'm mighty nigh ez good a tempunce man ez de next un. I got ter scuffle fer sump'n t'eat." XIX. AS A WEATHER PROPHET UNCLE REMUS was enlightening a crowd of negroes at the car-shed yesterday. "Dar ain't nuthin'," said the old man, shaking his head pensively, "dat ain't got no change wrote on it. Dar ain't nothin dat ain't spotted befo' hit begins fer ter commence. We all speunces dat p'overdence w'at lifts us up fum one place an' sets us down in de udder. Hit's continerly a movin' an a movin'." "Dat's so!" "You er talkin' now!" came from several of his hearers. "I year Miss Sally readin' dis mawnin," continued the old man, "dat a man wuz comin' down yer fer ter take keer er de wedder-- wunner deze yer Buro mens w'at goes 'roun' a puttin' up an' pullin' down." "W'at he gwine do 'roun' yer?" asked one. "He's a gwineter regelate de wedder," replied Uncle Remus, sententiously. "He's a gwineter fix hit up so dat dere won't be so much worriment 'mong de w'ite fokes 'bout de kinder wedder w'at falls to dere lot." "He gwine dish em up," suggested one of the older ones, "like man dish out sugar. "No," answered Uncle Remus, mopping his benign features with a very large and very red bandana. "He's a gwineter fix um better'n dat. He's a gwineter fix um up so you kin have any kinder wedder w'at you want widout totin' her home." "How's dat?" asked some one. "Hit's dis way," said the old man, thoughtfully. "In co'se you knows w'at kinder wedder you wants. Well, den, w'en de man comes long, w'ich Miss Sally say he will, you des gotter go up dar, pick out yo' wedder an' dere'll be a clock sot fer ter suit yo' case, an' w'en you git home, dere'll be yo' wedder a settin' out in de yard waitin' fer you. I wish he wuz yer now," the old man continued. "I'd take a pa'r er frosts in mine, ef I kotched cold fer it. Dat's me!" There were various exclamations of assent, and the old man went on his way singing, "Don't you Grieve Atter Me." XX. THE OLD MAN'S TROUBLES "WHAT makes you look so lonesome, Brer Remus?" asked a well- dressed negro, as the old man came shuffling down the street by James's corner yesterday. "You er mighty right, I'm lonesome, Brer John Henry. W'en a ole nigger like me is gotter paddle de canoe an' do de fishin' at de same time, an' w'en you bleedzd ter ketch de fish an' dassent turn de paddle loose fer ter bait de hook, den I tell you, Brer John, you er right whar de mink had de goslin'. Mars John and Miss Sally, dey done bin gone down unto Putmon County fer ter see der kinfolks mighty nigh fo' days, an' you better bleeve I done bin had ter scratch 'roun' mighty lively fer ter make de rashuns run out even. "I wuz at yo' house las' night, Brer Remus," remarked Brer John Henry, "but I couldn't roust you outer bed." "Hit was de unseasonableness er de hour, I speck," said Uncle Remus, dryly. "'Pears unto me dat you all chu'ch deacons settin' up mighty late deze col' nights. You'll be slippin' round arter hours some time er nudder, an you'll slip bodaciously inter de calaboose. You mine w'at I tell you." "It's mighty col' wedder," said Brer John Henry, evidently wishing to change the subject. "Col'!" exclaimed Uncle Remus; "hit got pas' col' on der quarter stretch. You oughter come to my house night 'fo' las'. Den you'd a foun' me 'live an' kickin'." "How's dat?" "Well, I tell you, Brer John Henry, de col' wuz so col', an' de kiver wuz so light, dat I thunk I'd make a raid on Mars John's shingle pile, an' out I goes an totes in a whole armful. Den I gits under de kiver an' tells my ole 'oman fer ter lay 'em onto me like she was roofin' a house. Bimeby she crawls in, an' de shingles w'at she put on her side fer ter kiver wid, dey all drap off on de flo'. Den up I gits an' piles 'em on agin, an' w'en I gits in bed my shingles draps off, an' dat's de way it wuz de whole blessid night. Fus' it wuz me up an' den de ole 'oman, an' it kep' us pow'ful warm, too, dat kinder exercise. Oh, you oughter drapt roun' 'bout dat time, Brer John Henry. You'd a year'd sho' nuff cussin'!" "You don't tell me, Brer Remus!" "My ole 'oman say de Ole Boy wouldn't a foun' a riper nigger, ef he wer' ter scour de country fum Ferginny ter de Alabam'" XXI. THE FOURTH OF JULY UNCLE REMUS made his appearance recently with his right arm in a sling and his head bandaged to that extent that it looked like the stick made to accompany the Centennial bass-drum. The old man evidently expected an attack all around, for he was unusually quiet, and fumbled in his pockets in an embarrassed manner. He was not mistaken. The agricultural editor was the first to open fire: "Well, you old villain! what have you been up to now?" "It is really singular," remarked a commencement orator, "that not even an ordinary holiday--a holiday, it seems to me, that ought to arouse all the latent instincts of patriotism in the bosom of American citizens--can occur without embroiling some of our most valuable citizens. It is really singular to me that such a day should be devoted by a certain class of our population to broils and fisticuffs." This final moral sentiment, which was altogether an impromptu utterance, and which was delivered with the air of one who addresses a vast but invisible audience of young ladies in white dresses and blue sashes, seemed to add to the embarrassment of Uncle Remus, and at the same time to make an explanation necessary. "Dey ain't none er you young w'ite men never had no 'casion fer ter strike up wid one er deze Mobile niggers?" asked Uncle Remus. "'Kaze ef you iz, den you knows wharbouts de devilment come in. Show me a Mobile nigger," continued the old man, an I'll show you a nigger dat's marked for de chain-gang. Hit may be de fote er de fif' er July, er hit may be de twelf' er Jinawerry, but w'en a Mobile nigger gits in my naberhood right den an' dar trubble sails in an' 'gages bode fer de season. I speck I'm ez fon' er deze Nunited States ez de nex' man w'at knows dat de Buro is busted up; but long ez Remus kin stan' on his hin' legs no Mobile nigger can't flip inter dis town longer no Wes' P'int 'schushun an' boss 'roun' 'mong de cullud fokes. Dat's me, up an' down, an' I boun' dere's a nigger some'rs on de road dis blessid day dat's got dis put away in his 'membunce." "How did he happen to get you down and maul you in this startling manner?" asked the commencement orator, with a tone of exaggerated sympathy in his voice. "Maul who?" exclaimed Uncle Remus, indignantly. "Maul who? Boss, de nigger dat mauled me ain't bo'nded yit, an' dey er got ter have anudder war 'fo one is bo'nded." "Well, what was the trouble?" "Hit wuz sorter dis way, boss. I wuz stannin' down dere by Mars John Jeems's bank, chattin' wid Sis Tempy, w'ich I ain't seed 'er befo' now gwine on seven year, an' watchin' de folks trompin' by, w'en one er deze yer slick-lookin' niggers, wid a bee-gum hat an' a brass watch ez big ez de head uv a beerbar'l, come long an' bresh up agin me--so. Dere wuz two un um, an' dey went long gigglin' an' laffin' like a nes'ful er yaller-hammers. Bimeby dey come long agin an' de smart Ellick brush up by me once mo'. Den I say to myse'f, 'I lay I fetch you ef you gimme anudder invite.' An', sho' 'nuff, yer he come agin, an' dis time he rub a piece er watermillion rime under my lef' year." "What did you do?" "Me? I'm a mighty long-sufferin' nigger, but he hadn't no mo'n totch me 'fo' I flung dese yer bones in his face." Here Uncle Remus held up his damaged hand triumphantly. "I sorter sprained my han', boss, but dog my cats if I don't bleeve I spattered de nigger's eyeballs on de groun', and w'en he riz his count'nence look fresh like beef-haslett. I look mighty spindlin' an' puny now, don't I, boss?" inquired the old man, with great apparent earnestness. "Rather." "Well, you des oughter see me git my Affikin up. Dey useter call me er bad nigger long 'fo' de war, an hit looks like ter me dat I gits wuss an' wuss. Brer John Henry say dat I oughter subdue my rashfulness, an' I don't 'spute it, but tu'n a Mobile nigger loose in dis town, fote er July or no fote er July, an', me er him, one is got ter lan' in jail. Hit's proned inter me." 
27482	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 27482-h.htm or 27482-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/7/4/8/27482/27482-h/27482-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/7/4/8/27482/27482-h.zip) Transcriber's Note Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Illustrations were all placed in the middle of the original book. In this version, the illustration tags have been moved beside the relevant section of the text. Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. DOMESTIC LIFE IN VIRGINIA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY by ANNIE LASH JESTER Member, Virginia Historical Society Virginia 350Th Anniversary Celebration Corporation Williamsburg, Virginia 1957 Copyright©, 1957 by Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, Williamsburg, Virginia Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 DOMESTIC LIFE IN VIRGINIA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PART I LAYING THE HEARTHSTONES INTRODUCTION Successful colonization, contingent upon a stable domestic life, was quickened in Virginia with the coming of the gentlewoman Mrs. Lucy Forest and her maid Ann Burras, who with Mrs. Forest's husband Thomas, arrived in the second supply, 1608, following the planting of the colony at Jamestown, 13 May 1607. The possibility of finding a source of wealth in the new world, such as the Spanish had found in Mexico and Peru, and the more urgent need of finding a route to the East and securing this through the development of colonies across the seas, had motivated the several expeditions, begun with the unsuccessful settlement at Roanoke Island in 1585. Coupled with these reasons, for colonizing in the new world, was an ever expanding population in England, and the ancient law of entail, which limited possession of large landed estates to the eldest sons; younger sons and the scions of the middle classes were left with exceedingly limited opportunities or means of attaining estates in England, or, for that matter, of ever bettering their condition. Also, if England was to sustain its existing population, the nation must have sources of raw materials other than the dwindling supplies in the land, and it must have also outlets for the wares of the artisans. Thus, while the hope of wealth in one form or another was a factor in the settlement of Virginia, a prerequisite to attainment, also taken into account by the promoters of expeditions, was the establishment of homes in a new land. Homes would serve as stabilizers for permanent bases, from which could be carried on the trade essential to England's rising position as a leading power. Notwithstanding hardship, discouragement and sickness, the firm resolution of the English succeeded. Their determination, as shown in their several attempts at colonization, culminated eventually in a colonial homeland, which offered to gentlemen adventurers the lure of the unknown, as well as the prospect of land, and, to the many unemployed craftsmen a demand for their labor and privileges which could not be had by the average man in England. Withal, the fireside became the bulwark for the great new venture. And, fortunate it was that such a base had been established, for, by the middle of the seventeenth century, many scions of the English upper classes were forced into exile because of the Civil wars, which reached their climax in the beheading of Charles I. A number of the King's loyal subjects found havens in Virginia and not only managed to bring with them some of the family wealth, but also their important connections with the trading enterprises, which gave another impetus to the colonial undertaking. The silent part of women, ever in the background in the colony, but overseeing orderly households, comforting the men in discouragement and, at the same time carrying on the perpetual cycle of child bearing, was an immeasurable contribution. They braved the unknown to be at the sides of their mates and, as the prospering colony during the passing years of the century increased their responsibilities and burdens, they readily assumed the new tasks. Not least among these was that of household executive: managing servants, seeing that they as well as the family were clothed, fed and attended in their sicknesses, supervising spinning, weaving, garment making and generally maintaining a hub for the operation of plantations ranging from 100 acres to those of several thousands. To the Englishman, the basis for wealth and position was a large landed estate. News from Virginia had spread the information that great fertile lands, sparsely inhabited by the natives, were available. Thus, valid expectations sent the women thither, some with their husbands, some to join their husbands, some to follow their sweethearts and, by 1620, some to find husbands among the men who were toiling to establish the Colony firmly and longing for the comforts of their own firesides. The first wedding in Virginia took place in 1608, not long after the arrival of Mrs. Forest and her maid, who, as may be surmised, did not long remain a maid. John Laydon, who had come as a laborer in 1607, took her, a girl fourteen years old, then of marriageable age, for a bride. In 1625, they were living with their four daughters in Elizabeth City Corporation. THE FIRST HOMES The Laydon marriage probably had taken place in the rough little church built at Jamestown within the stockade, which enclosed also the first houses of the settlers along with a guardhouse and a storehouse. The stockade, actually a triangular fort built as protection against the natives, was erected of a succession of upright logs, some twelve feet in height and sharpened to a point. The small buildings within, patterned after the simple homes of the peasantry in England, were built of available material. Beams were cut from the trees in the forests close by, the timbers being held together with pegs. The uprights were interwoven with osiers or stout vines and, on these wattles, was daubed the clay and mud found in the surrounding area, which the colonists had mixed with reeds from the marshes. Coatings of this applied both outside and inside, when dry, made thick, though perhaps fragile walls. Nevertheless, they shut out temporarily, at least, the chill winds and the summer heat. Material for chimneys was not then available, and the colonists made do the ample openings in the roofs thatched with reeds. Sometimes, skins were attached on the outer sides of these openings and flapped over the hole, in a heavy storm, to shut out the rain. Openings for light were closed with sliding panels. Shallow wells within the stockade supplied water, not always unpolluted. The tinder-like material, with which these first buildings were constructed, together with the open central fires, made them a prey to flames in January, 1608, which shortly were out of control. The reeds, with which the roofs were thatched, merely fed the blaze which spread so rapidly that even the palisades were destroyed. The colonists lost practically everything, including arms, clothing, bedding and provisions held by individuals. Reverend Robert Hunt suffered the loss of his collection of books. By 1609, a number of women passengers were included among those who departed from England on nine ships, comprising the largest expedition ever sent to Virginia. Reverend Richard Buck brought with him his wife, and although they were among those marooned for nine months on the Bermuda Islands following the wreck there of the _Seaventure_, both survived the hardships encountered, and established a home at Jamestown and reared a family. Temperance Flowerdieu, aged about fourteen years, arrived in 1609 on the _Falcon_, but presumably returned to England, shortly to come back, in 1618, as the wife of Sir George Yeardley. Thomas Dunthorne's wife came in the _Triall_, 1610, and their servant Elizabeth Joones was among those on the _Seaventure_ who eventually reached Virginia in the _Patience_, 1610. Sisley Jordan, later wife of William Farrar, came in the _Swan_, 1610. By the time the second contingent of women had arrived, America's first industry, glass making, had been established and the colonists had built some twenty houses, providing also for themselves a well of "excellent sweet water" within the fort. The conditions of living were somewhat improved. The fragile walls of the church, having begun to crumble, were renewed and a block house was built on the neck of the Island, to which point the savages were permitted to come for trade, but were prohibited from further passage by a garrison kept there. When not otherwise employed, the men spent their time fashioning clapboard and wainscoting from the trees cut from the surrounding forests. THE COLONISTS LIVE OFF THE LAND Finding their limited food supplies spoiled by mold or eaten by a horde of rats, the offspring of rodents which arrived also on the first ships, the colonists were forced to the necessity of "living off the country." In the spring they planted some thirty or forty acres hoping for a plentiful crop before midsummer. Also, upon taking an inventory of livestock, they found in all sixty odd pigs, the offspring of three sows which they originally possessed; and some 500 chickens roamed around their habitations, feeding from the countryside. Yet, in order not to tax this supply, sixty or eighty of the colonists were sent down the river to live on oysters and other seafood, obtainable at and near Old Point. Sturgeon was plentiful; in fact, there being a greater supply than could be used, some of the surplus was dried, then pounded, mixed with the roe and sorrel to provide both bread and meat. Also, an edible root called _tockwough_ (tuckahoe, a tuberous plant growing in fresh marshes, with a root similar to that of a potato) was gathered, and after the Indian fashion, pounded into a meal from which bread was made. In order to conserve their scarce food supply, the colonists sought to acquaint themselves with the use of the native resources. To this end, a number of the settlers were billetted with the Indians. They not only learned to distinguish the edible roots, berries, leafy plants and fruits, and how to prepare them, but found the whereabouts of Indian trails, the location of their villages, and fields where they cultivated corn, beans, and _apooke_ (tobacco). [Illustration: Photo of a group in the U. S. National Museum, Washington, D. C. Captain John Smith and companions trading with the Indians in Virginia, 1607. The colonists seek corn and furs from the natives in exchange for beads, trinkets, utensils and cloth.] SICKNESS AND DISCOURAGEMENT Yet, a scarce two years in the wilderness hardly equipped the Englishmen to cope with the altogether new situations which they encountered. Aside from the lack of adequate provisions for the heavy diet in beef, mutton and pork to which they were accustomed in England, there were at least two months of hot, humid weather to which they were not acclimated. Moreover, during this period, the "sickness"--probably malaria and yellow fever from the West Indies and diarrhea from polluted drinking-water--was rampant. Also the hostility of certain of the Indians increased the death toll. Debilitated, discouraged and fearful of the savages, the survivors hovered together at Jamestown. By May 1610, all of their livestock had been consumed, including hogs, hens, goats, sheep and even a horse. Finally, the sixty living began to trade their weapons to the savages in exchange for food. This was the state of the colony when 150 adventurers--men, women and children--marooned for nine months on the Bermuda Islands after the wreck of the _Seaventure_, arrived in the _Patience_ and the _Deliverance_ commanded by Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers. The newcomers, who already had passed through a harrowing experience, faced a forlorn situation in the land of their destination; and so their leaders concurred in a decision to return to England. But, Lord De La Warr's timely arrival, with three ships exceedingly well furnished with all necessaries, changed the outlook. Here were not only the means of survival but resources for some stable home life. Several of the women who had sailed in the 1609 expedition reached Jamestown ahead of their shipwrecked husbands, who had accompanied the official party on the _Seaventure_. Among these were Mrs. Joane Peirce, wife of Captain William Peirce, and their daughter Joane, who arrived at Jamestown, 1609, on the _Blessing_. RELIEF One of Lord De La Warr's first commands ordered the building of a number of houses, since he found the fragile buildings erected of unseasoned timbers, after the fire, already in a state of decay. The roofs of these new dwellings were covered with boards and the sides were fortified against the weather with Indian mats. The following May, 1611, Sir Thomas Dale reached Jamestown with three ships, men, cattle and provisions for a year. Four months later, six ships under Sir Thomas Gates, who had carried back to England news of the desperate straits of the colony in 1610, arrived with a complement of 300 men, 100 kine and other livestock, with munitions and all manner of provisions. Dale, a hard taskmaster, in his capacity as Marshal, put the settlers under a military regime and, in requiring a schedule of work for everyone, succeeded in establishing the colony on a firm basis. He ordered at once the repair of the Church, the storehouse and other buildings, adding a munitions house, a building in which to cure sturgeon, a cattle-barn and a stable. In order to broaden the base of the colony, Dale at once set about seeking a suitable location for a new town, which he located on the neck of land since changed into an island by the Dutch Gap canal, and later known as Farrar's Island. At the site of the projected town, laid out on a seven acre enclosed plat, and called Henrico, he raised watchtowers at four corners, built a wooden church and several storehouses, laid off streets on which frame dwellings were erected, with the first stories, probably the foundations, built of brick. This is the earliest mention of the use of bricks for home building in Virginia. Also, five houses were erected on the banks of the James River, the dwellers agreeing to act as sentinels for approach to the town by water. The elements, however, favored the new town no more than Jamestown, and the buildings were constantly in need of repair. A hospital was projected for location at the new town and its building begun. At the site, also, a college for the education of the Indians was planned, and iron works were erected at Falling Creek, a portion of the profits from which, under agreement, was to defray the cost of operation of the proposed college. As is well known, the Indians, in an attempt to wipe out the colony in 1622, practically obliterated the town. PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND Terms agreed upon, in the Virginia Company at the beginning of the settlement, stipulated that there should be no individual assignments of land during the first seven years. The communal plan, under which the colonists lived through these years, was terminated while Dale ruled the colony; a policy was adopted of assigning rights for a hundred acres to every individual who had come to Virginia, before 1616, with the intention of planting (settling). This acreage could be doubled under certain conditions. Those who came, after 1616, were entitled to fifty acres each, provided they paid their own passages. Similarly, each could claim an additional fifty acres in the name of every person whose passage he paid. This was known as the headright system of granting land. Thus, a man with a wife, three children and two servants, was entitled to 350 acres. Not only did these generous provisions, for the acquisition of landed estates, lure settlers to the new world, but they provided a sound base for the beginning of a secure domestic life in the colony. Unfortunately, there is no complete list of the women who came to Virginia prior to 1616, but, in addition to those heretofore named, the presence of others is recorded. Joane Salford, wife of Robert Salford of Elizabeth City, came by 1611, and Salford's sister Sarah reached Virginia at the same time, or just a year or so later. Susan, wife of John Collins of West and Shirley Hundred, came in the _Treasurer_, 1613. Elizabeth, wife of Lieutenant Albiano Lupo, came in the _George_, 1616, and little Susan Old was brought by her cousin Richard Biggs, when she was only two years of age; eight years later she was reported living with the Biggs family in Charles City Corporation. Martha Key was with her husband Thomas by 1616. Rachel Davis joined her husband Captain James Davis before 1616, and their son Thomas later settled in Isle of Wight and Upper Norfolk (Nansemond) Counties, taking out land patents, in the name of his parents as old planters. Mary Flint, wife of Captain Thomas Flint of the area which later became Warwick County, was the widow of Robert Beheathland, who had come to Virginia with the first settlers in 1607. Beheathland's wife arrived some time before 1616 and they had two daughters, Mary and Dorothy, who married and left Virginia descendants. Izabella,--three times married, first to Richard Pace, second, to William Perry and third to George Menefie came to the colony before 1616. THE COMPANY'S TENANTS, THEIR SUPPLIES AND THEIR WIVES After the first settlement at Jamestown, the Virginia Company recognized that youthful, hearty young men were essential in the new land, in order to cope with the wilderness. Inducements were offered, both in passage across the seas at Company expense, and in supplies and equipment furnished each man. Moreover, by 1616, there was the lure of land at the end of the required seven-year tenure of service and the hope of becoming a planter. Probably, articles of indenture were drawn for these tenants as they were later between colonists and their servants. The cost of sending and supplying these young men was a considerable sum. Passage alone cost £6 and, together with supplies furnished and freight on them, the total cost of bringing a youth to Virginia amounted to £20. Even if an adventurer paid his own passage he was advised to come with the same "necessaries." In apparel, each needed a Monmouth cap, three falling bands (large loose collars), three shirts, a waistcoat, a suit of canvas (work clothes), a suit of frieze and a suit of cloth, also three pairs of Irish stockings, four pairs of shoes, a pair of garters, a dozen points, a pair of canvas sheets, canvas to make a bed and a bolster, to be filled in Virginia and serving for two men, canvas to make a bed enroute, also for two men, a coarse rug (covering) at sea for two men. In food the adventurer needed eight bushels of meal, two bushels of peas, eight bushels of oatmeal, a gallon of wine, a gallon of oil and two gallons of vinegar. In armor, he was advised to possess a complete light suit, a musket, a sword, a belt and a bandoleer, twenty pounds of powder and sixty pounds of shot or lead, together with a pistol and goose-shot. For a group of six men the following tools were deemed essential: five broad-hoes, five narrow-hoes, two broadaxes, five felling-axes, four handsaws, a whipsaw with equipment for filing, two hammers, three shovels, two spades, two augers, six chisels, two piercing tools, three gimlets, two hatchets, two frowes, two handbills, a grindstone, nails of all sorts and two pickaxes. Household utensils to be used by six persons included an iron pot, a kettle, a large frying-pan, a gridiron, two skillets, a spit, platters, dishes and spoons of wood. There was a charge for sugar, spice and fruit to be supplied on the voyage. Moreover, if the company was made up of a number of persons, they were advised to bring, in addition to the above: nets, hooks and lines for fishing, cheese, kine and goats. By 1618, the Virginia Company had set aside 3000 acres of land in each of the four corporations, Elizabeth City, James City, Henrico and Charles City, where they settled these young men known as the Company's tenants. Half of the profit from their labors went to the Company to defray costs of Colonial government. However, Governor Sir George Yeardley realized that far too few of these substantial workers, inured to the climate and the wilderness, were satisfied to remain in the Colony. He, forthwith, reported the situation to Sir Edwin Sandys, then Treasurer of the Company, who then proposed that one hundred "maids young and uncorrupt" be sent to the Colony to become wives, stipulating that their passage would be paid by the Company if they married the Company's tenants; otherwise, their passage money should be reimbursed to the Company by the planter-husbands whom they had chosen. [Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Upper Weyanoke--Charles City County Built on the north bank of the James River about the middle of the seventeenth century, the center building of "Upper Weyanoke" originally served also as a stronghold against Indian assault. The wings attached to the dwelling are modern additions.] By 17 May, 1620, ninety young women had come to the Colony under these arrangements, having embarked in the _London Merchant_ and the _Jonathan_. The following year, an additional fifty-seven young women came in three ships, the _Marmaduke_, the _Warwick_ and the _Tiger_. The Virginia Company reported to Governor Yeardley that "extraordinary diligence" and care had been exercised in the choice of the maids, and that none had been received, who had other than excellent reputations in their communities. They further reported that they had provided "young, handsome and honestly educated maids." Evidently, there was no problem in arranging marriages, and report went back to England that among the last fifty-seven sent to Virginia, many had been married, before the ships, on which they arrived, had departed from the Colony for the return voyage. But, whom they and the others married is not known, nor are the fates of the 147 young women who came to fill gaps in home life, known. Some were certainly slain in the massacre, others must have died of the sickness soon after coming, for Governor Berkeley later estimated that four out of five persons died, in the early years, shortly after arrival, especially if they came in late spring or summer when the sickness took its toll. SUPPLIES FOR A PARTICULAR PLANTATION In an effort to reduce the financial burden of colonization resting solely upon the Virginia Company, and at the same time to satisfy some of the shareholders, who were complaining of no profit from their investment, their Council sitting in London, inaugurated a policy of assigning thousands of acres for "particular plantations." These acreages were promised to shareholders and other promoters, who agreed to transport colonists to Virginia and keep them supplied. Usually several promoters joined in assuming the costs of such adventures and, thus, the Company was altogether relieved of the cost and responsibility of settlement. In this category were the plantations at Martin's Hundred, Berkeley, Smith's (Southampton) Hundred and Newport News. Thomas Southey, who outfitted a ship and set out from England with his wife, six children and ten servants, came with great expectations, having indicated his desire that the Company would assign to him a "particular plantation." His ship arrived safely in Virginia but before his hopes were realized, he and three of his children had died. However, one of his surviving daughters was the progenitor of a well known Eastern Shore family. The settlement of Berkeley Hundred as a "particular plantation" was agreed upon, in 1619, with Captain John Woodliffe. The promoters, one of whom was John Smith of Nibley, England, soon became dissatisfied with Woodliffe's management of the project and revoked his commission, assigning a similar commission to William Tracy. In 1620, Tracy booked fifty colonists, twelve of whom were women, to come over in the _Supply_. The ship was exceedingly well furnished with necessaries of every description that might be of use in his undertaking. Every item in the cargo on the ship of sixty tons burden is listed from onions to millstones. A resumé will give some idea of the wealth of commodities brought to Virginia in 1620. Among the implements useful for clearing land were pickaxes, felling-axes, squaring-axes, spades, weeding-hoes, scythes, reap-hooks. Grindstones and two French millstones were brought along with 22,500 nails, an anvil and two sieves for making gunpowder. Material for making garments included linen of several grades, blue linen for facing doublets, dowlas, canvas for sheets and shirts. Ready for use were breeches of russet leather with leather linings, 100 Monmouth caps (round caps without a brim used by soldiers and sailors), 200 pairs of shoes of seven sizes, 100 pairs of knit socks, 100 pairs of Irish stockings, falling-bands, which were the large loose collars that fell about the neck replacing the stiff ruff of the sixteenth century. Accessories included glass beads, buttons, thread, both brown and black, twelve dozen yards of gartering, bone combs, scissors, shears and tailors' shears. Among the utensils were trenchers (wooden plates or trays), bread-baskets, wooden spoons, porridge dishes, saucers and four dozen platters. For food there was wheat, butter, cheese, white peas, dried malt (probably for making beer), oatmeal, sugar, Irish beef, salted beef, pork and codfish, flitches of bacon, biscuit and a separate item of pap (mush) for indentured servants. Spices brought over included pepper, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace, and in the dried fruits there were dates, raisins, currants, prunes. A single variety in nuts is listed in a quantity of almonds, certainly a luxury in the colony in 1620. For the household and various uses on the plantation there were barrels of tar and pitch, six hogsheads of baysalt (i.e. salt evaporated from sea water), 102 pounds of soap, ten gallons of oil, candles, wire candle-holders, lanterns and bellows. There were drugs and physic for the indisposed. Spring planting had not been overlooked for the ship brought a quantity of seeds in parsnips, carrots, cabbage, turnips, lettuce, onions, mustard and garlic. For protection there were corslets, muskets, swords, lead and powder. Six bandoleers were listed; they were belts with loops holding pierced metal cases which held the matches for firing the powder which set off the charge in guns. The matches mentioned were actually slow burning fuses, as the modern match did not come into use until the nineteenth century. Tragedy followed closely upon this auspicious second start for Berkeley Hundred. William Tracy was dead by 8 April 1621 and his wife Mary died the same year. Their daughter Joyce, who had married Captain Nathaniel Powell, was slain with her husband in the Indian massacre of 1622. A son Thomas who survived returned to England. Of the twelve women named in the passenger list of the _Supply_, Joane Greene failed to make the trip and also, probably, Frances Page, whose husband was reported not to have come with the party, although he was booked. Frances Greville, a young gentlewoman, a cousin of the Tracys, was married by 1621 to young Nathaniel West, son of Lord De La Warr. Shortly becoming a widow, she thereafter married, as his second wife, the cape-merchant Abraham Peirsey and upon his death, 1626, she became the wife of Captain Samuel Mathews of "Denbigh" on the Warwick River. William Finch, who brought over his wife and daughter Frances, was dead by 1622, and the widow shortly thereafter became the wife of Captain John Flood and the mother of three sons and a daughter. Jane Rowles, with her husband Richard, was slain and, though Joane Coopey and her son Anthony died, the daughter Elizabeth survived. Elizabeth Webb married in Virginia, and Isabel Gifford had been wed to Adam Raymer while the _Supply_ was on the high seas. THE MAGAZINE SHIPS As has been previously indicated, all supplies, sent to the Colony during the first ten years, were paid for through the Company's treasury, but so great was the financial burden, particularly since the Colony was not yielding the profit anticipated, that a different arrangement was sought, in 1617. There was organized within the Company a "Society of Particular Adventurers for Traffic with the People of Virginia in Joint Stock." This was known as the Magazine, to which members of the Virginia Company contributed such sums as they were willing to venture. In practice, it was an association of private investors who, upon return of the ship that had been sent stocked to Virginia, divided the profits from the sale of goods and the tobacco returned on the ships, according to their investment in the enterprise. The first of these ships to arrive in the Colony was the _Susan_, a vessel of small tonnage, with a cargo restricted to clothing of which the colonists ever stood in great need. Abraham Peirsey was in charge as Cape-Merchant and it was his responsibility also to dispose of the cargo at a price that would bring a profit to the promoters. The exchange, of course, was in tobacco or sassafras, the only two commodities at the time, which could be disposed of in England at a profit. Evidently, Peirsey was successful in his bargaining, for upon his return to England in the _Susan_, he came back the following year with the second magazine ship, the _George_, which was delayed five months and in consequence unloaded a damaged cargo. Although during the remainder of the Company's tenure in Virginia, until June 1624, transportation of supplies, supposedly was restricted to the magazine ships, the vessels of private adventurers often reached the Colony with articles which were in the luxury class such as sweetmeats, sack (wine from southern Europe) and strong waters (liquor). The Dutch probably were the chief promoters of this trade, which England sought unsuccessfully to prohibit, as diverting the tobacco trade from the realm and diminishing the royal customs. THE MUSTER OF THE INHABITANTS OF VIRGINIA, JANUARY, 1625 The dissolution of the Virginia Company in London, May 1624, left the colony without restriction to independent traders, who shortly began to respond to the colonists' eagerness for supplies from overseas. There is, however, a record of the Colony at the conclusion of the Company's administration taken just ahead of the influx of the accelerated trade. As the Company was about to be dissolved, Captain John Harvey (later as Sir John Harvey, Governor of Virginia) was sent over to obtain exact information as to the number of people in Virginia, their names, where they lived and what supplies and arms they possessed. The document preserved in the British Public Record Office shows to what degree the planters had spread their homes along both banks of the James River from Henrico to Elizabeth City and Kecoughtan at the confluence of the James River with the Chesapeake Bay (this point now Hampton Roads) and on the Eastern Shore. In addition to the names of all persons living in the colony, the ages of many are given, together with the times of their arrival, and the names of the ships on which they came. Also, those recently deceased are listed. The 1232 persons living in Virginia, January, 1625, dwelt at twenty-five locations. Several of these were large plantations, such as Peirsey's Hundred, Mr. Treasurer's (George Sandys'), Martin's Hundred, Captain Roger Smith's, Captain Samuel Mathews', Mr. Crowder's, Mr. Blaney's and Newport News, where colonists lived in groups, presumably as employees for the promotion of extensive enterprises. As previously mentioned a number of these colonists at Henrico, James City, Charles City and Elizabeth City were living on the Company's land. Yet, many at this time dwelt upon their own acreages, assigned to them individually in patents of record in a list sent to England the following year. For instance, Lieutenant John Chisman and his brother Edward were living at Kecoughtan on their patent of 200 acres, as was Pharoah Flinton who had been assigned an 150 acre plot, and John Bush with his 300 acres, where he dwelt with his wife, two children and two servants. For protection against the Indians, palisades had been erected at a number of the plantations. Staples on hand are listed for every household, including corn, peas, beans, oatmeal, fish, the latter both smoked and in brine. Besides, many of the planters owned swine, poultry, goats and cattle. A few luxuries were mentioned such as a flitch of bacon, cheese and oil. For protection, the colonists possessed armor such as had been used in England, but which probably proved to be of little use against the stealthy natives in thickly wooded areas. Nevertheless, there were whole suits of armor, including headpieces, coats of mail and coats of plate and jack-coats (thickly padded jackets). The guns were of various types. Many apparently were of the older design and the charge had to be fired by the application of a fuse; others had been fixed with the more up-to-date firing mechanism attached to the gun. There were also matchlocks, snaphaunce pieces, pistols, swords and hangers (cutlasses). For the larger plantation there were small cannon, called murderers, usually placed at the bow of a ship to prevent boarding, falconets and petronels. The matches mentioned were the slow-burning fuses, kept by a soldier in his bandoleer. Once ignited, these "matches" kept a smouldering fire and could be used again and again. Pirates were accustomed to stick them lighted in their beards and hair, not to give a ferocious look, but for convenience. Powder and lead also were on hand in many households, for life, on the edge of a wilderness with stealthy Indians frequently lurking about, was hazardous in the extreme. Men who worked in the fields took fowling pieces with them and, at times, armed guards were stationed to be on the lookout, and warn the workers in case of danger. Among other possessions listed were the houses of the planters, their boats--barks, shallops and skiffs being named--and, at George Sandys' plantation across from Jamestown, a house for silkworms had been framed. The prolific growth of mulberry trees, about the Indian settlements and elsewhere, encouraged the English to conclude that Virginia was an ideal location for development of the silk industry. Greatly encouraged from England, the colonists made earnest efforts, throughout the seventeenth century, to establish the culture and production of silk on a paying basis. However, the lure of profit accruing from the easy tobacco crop, plus the difficulty in obtaining for the Colony skilled silk workers, resulted eventually in the abandonment of the undertaking. ABUNDANT SUPPLIES FOR THE COLONISTS Fearing that their right of assembly, instituted in 1619, would be revoked, the colonists, following the abrogation of the charter of the Virginia Company, opposed the decision of King Charles I, to take over administration of affairs in Virginia, and sent a protest to England, 1625. Nevertheless, facing the inevitable, they acceded to the Royal demands and surrendered the colony to the King. One of the immediate effects of the change in control was a stimulus to trade. So abundant were the supplies brought in by traders, now independent of the requirements formerly placed by the Virginia Company, that the colonists, by 1630, had often become deeply indebted to the English merchants. An account of a trading voyage to Virginia, a venture in which eight Englishmen joined to send both cargo and indentured servants to the Colony and bring back tobacco, not only conveys an idea of commodities and servants sold for domestic purposes, but projects a picture of life along the estuaries flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, as the ship plied from one plantation wharf to another, selling merchandise and human help, both in demand. The _Tristram and Jane_ of London left England in the late summer or early fall of 1636, arriving in Virginia in time for the fall tobacco crop ready for the market in December. Daniel Hopkinson, merchant, was in charge of the cargo, but dying before the ship's return to England, he requested to be "decently" buried at the Kecoughtan (Elizabeth City) Church. At five or more ports of call, both cargo and servants were disposed of. There were a number of items in the luxury class, such as sack (white wine from southern Europe), strong waters (drink high in alcoholic content), candy oil (olive oil from the island of Crete, originally known as Candia), sugar, both powdered and loaf, shelled almonds (least in demand among the items), marmalade of quinces, conserves of sloes (plums), of roses and barberries, raisins, Sussex cheese, vinegar, and handkerchiefs. Among the more useful items were: 87 pairs of shoes, 12 suits of clothing, nails of various sizes, of which there appeared to be never enough in the Colony, peas and oatmeal. In addition to these, a shallop, a pair of steelyards (scales), and three fowling pieces were disposed of. The ship stopped first at Kecoughtan (now Hampton), a populous settlement, having been established by the colonists in 1610, and, here, buried Hopkinson and disposed of some of her cargo of seventy-four white persons who were sold as indentured servants. These persons, before embarking from England, had agreed to serve a term of years, usually seven, in the Colony in return for passage, clothes and supplies, to be furnished them at the conclusion of their service. The major portion of help in the colony, at this period, was of this class, although a few Negroes were brought to Virginia by 1619, and approximately a score are listed in the muster of 1625. Upon departing from Kecoughtan, the ship retraced a portion of her course in the Chesapeake Bay, and entered Back River, on which the Langley Air Force Base and the laboratories for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics are now located, and from there entered the Old Poquoson River, later termed the Northwest Branch of Back River. This very populous area was readily accessible to the port of Kecoughtan both by water and by land. Next, the _Tristram and Jane_ discharged cargo and sold servants on the New Poquoson (now Poquoson) River, which flows into the Bay north of Back River. In this latter area, first settled in 1630, patents had been assigned, one including a large acreage to Christopher Calthrope, and it is reasonable to conclude that both commodities and servants were wanted. From the New Poquoson, the ship sailed across the Chesapeake and traded at Accawmack on the Eastern Shore, and then sailed back towards the mouth of the James River, and entered Chuckatuck Creek and the Nansemond River, where the Gookins, whose father had settled Newport News in 1621, bought two servants. Other ports are not named, but among the purchasers of servants was George Menefie on the James below Jamestown. It is probable that the ship went as far up the River as the mouth of the Appomattox. Prices paid for the servants were not all the same, and a bonus of fifty acres of land accrued to the planter, if the servant's passage money was added to the purchase price. Having unloaded the entire cargo, the _Tristram and Jane_ took on tobacco for the return voyage, loading 99 hogsheads or a total of 31,800 pounds. In addition, the partners in the shipping enterprise loaded two hogsheads on the _Unity_ of Isle of Wight, making a total poundage of 32,350. The _America_ was another of the trading vessels, which made annual voyages to Virginia, between the years 1632 and 1636, and showed a profit, in each of the first three years, of 640 pounds sterling. This was divided among several partners in the enterprise. William Barker was master and part owner of the vessel and made his Virginia headquarters in Norfolk, where brief accounts of the voyages were entered in the Court records, in 1646. BETTER HOMES As commodities began to reach Virginia in quantities, tools and building supplies became available, and skilled workers arrived. Thus, homes could be more sturdily built. By 1620, Reverend Richard Buck, who had reached Virginia, 1610, had purchased from William Fairfax the latter's dwelling house located on twelve acres of land in James City. In 1623, William Claiborne was sent to the colony and laid out an area on Jamestown Island known as New Town, where a number of dwellings were erected. As the colonists had begun to fashion clapboard and wainscoting by 1609, and were using brick made in the Colony by 1612, the houses, built in this newly laid-out area, were far more substantial than the early shelters described. Among those dwelling in New Town, by 1624 were, Richard Stephens, Ralph Hamor, George Menefie, John Chew, Doctor John Pott, Captain John Harvey and Ensign William Spence. In 1624, John Johnson was ordered by the Court to repair the "late dwelling house" of Spence. References to other houses mentioned are found in the early land patents. Abraham Peirsey, the cape-merchant, directed, in his will dated 1626, that he be buried in his garden, where his new frame house stood. Thomas Dunthorne's house is mentioned, in 1625, and in 1627, Sir George Yeardley noted, in his will of that date, his dwelling house and other houses at Jamestown. Since the materials are of record, these recently built homes may be envisioned as having been constructed of hewn timbers, covered with clapboard on the exterior, and wainscoting inside. The foundations and chimneys were of brick, which, while not plentiful, was certainly being supplied within the Colony at the period. Clay from the James River shores and the Chickahominy was available, and reeds from the marshes at hand furnished the necessary straw. It is entirely improbable that bricks were at any time brought from England for building purposes. Cargo space on inbound ships was too valuable and supplies too badly needed to fill ships' holds with bricks, especially when materials for making them were so close at hand. Similar houses were being built in other areas at the same period. Mrs. Rachel Pollentine's house in Warriscoyack (Isle of Wight) is mentioned in 1628. John Bush had two houses at Kecoughtan by 1618. Governor Sir John Harvey reported that Richard Kemp, Secretary of the Colony, had the first brick house built in Virginia, in 1636, and at Jamestown. However, Adam Thoroughgood, who was granted land at Lynnhaven in Lower Norfolk County, is said to have begun construction of his brick house there between 1636 and 1640. This house, which has undergone numerous modifications throughout the years, is believed to be the oldest colonial home now standing in Virginia. Originally, it is believed to have been a one story, single-room house with chimneys at both ends. Access to the loft above was by a ladder-like stairway; the dormer windows were a later addition. A very early house in Virginia, of which there is a clear Court record, is the brick dwelling of the colonial planter Thomas Warren, located on Smith's Fort Plantation, in Surry County. It is sometimes called the Rolfe House, as the land, on which the house was erected, was a gift from the Indian King to Thomas, son of John Rolfe and Pocahontas. [Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Warren House--Surry County Thomas Warren's "fifty foot brick house" on Smith's Fort Plantation was mentioned in a deposition recorded in Surry County as having been, in 1654, "recently completed." The structure now standing is a version of the original house, which apparently was rebuilt about the end of the seventeenth century. Smith's Fort Plantation comprising 1200 acres was purchased by Warren from Thomas Rolfe, son of John Rolfe and Pocahontas.] The dwelling-house of Captain Thomas Bernard on Mulberry Island was mentioned in 1641. The Wills family lived in the same area in a brick house during the 1650's, for, in 1659, Henry Jackson bequeathed, to "my widow's eldest son John Wills, the part that belongs to him of my wife's brick house and lands on Mulberry Island." Before 1627 the first windmill in the colony had been erected and was in operation at Flowerdew Hundred, Governor Yeardley's plantation on the south side of the James River. The more affluent planters like Yeardley, and in keeping with the English customs, maintained homes at the seat of government while operating large plantations on the River not too far distant. William Peirce, captain of the Governor's guard, had a plantation project on Mulberry Island while he and Mrs. Peirce lived at Jamestown. On a visit to England in 1629, Mrs. Peirce reported, that she had lived for 20 years in the Colony, and from her garden of three or four acres at Jamestown, she had gathered about 100 bushels of figs, and that she could keep a better house in Virginia for three or four hundred pounds a year than in London. Young Daniel Gookin, probably with his brother John, was living at Newport News in 1633, where their father had established a home called "Marie's Mount," for the Dutch sea-captain Peter deVries recorded that he stopped there over night. The Gookins also maintained a plantation, directly across from Newport News on the Nansemond River, at which point the _Tristram and Jane_ called in 1637. Richard Kingsmill, who patented land at Archer's Hope, James City, in 1626, planted there a pear orchard, and reported later that he had made from fruit gathered there some forty or fifty butts of perry. In addition to his house at Jamestown, George Menefie maintained a plantation, near Archer's Hope Creek, called "Littletown" where he had orchards of apple, pear, cherry and peach trees, and a flower garden especially noted for its rosemary, thyme and marjoram. Captain Brocas of the Council kept an excellent vineyard on his plantation, in Warwick County, patented in 1638. Richard Bennett, of Nansemond River, developed an apple orchard and, in 1648, reported that he had made from it twenty butts of cider. About 1625, Captain Samuel Mathews moved his seat from the south side of the James River to a location near Blount Point at the mouth of the Warwick River, and across from Mulberry Island, which later was called "Denbigh." He married, a year or two thereafter, the widow of the cape-merchant Abraham Peirsey. A contemporary writer, in 1648, described Mathews' plantation as a miniature village, at the center of which was the manor-house. On surrounding acreage, hemp and flax were sown, and upon being harvested, the flax was spun and woven into cloth in one of the many outbuildings. At a tan-house, eight shoemakers dressed leather and made shoes. There were negro servants, some of whom worked in the fields while others were taught trades. Barley and wheat, grown at "Denbigh," were reported to have been sold at four shillings per bushel. Some of the cattle raised on the place supplied the dairy while others, kept for slaughtering, supplied meat for out-bound vessels. Mathews also kept swine and poultry. Incidentally, Colonel William Cole acquired "Denbigh" from the Mathews family in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In turn, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, descendants of Cole conveyed the original home site and several hundred acres of the plantation to Richard Young, whose descendants still own a portion of it. "Greenspring," Governor Berkeley's home about three miles inland from Jamestown, was built of brick soon after 1642, to which additions were made at different times; recent excavations show that it was ninety-seven feet, five inches in length by twenty-four feet, nine inches in width. The rooms on the ground floor, overhung by a colonnade, were in single file with an ell on the north front at the west end. Only the foundations of the structure remain. The ever-flowing spring, from which the plantation took its name, is maintained within a brick enclosure. "Bacon's Castle," in Surry County, built by Arthur Allen soon after his arrival in Virginia about 1650, passed to his son, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, from whom it was seized by Bacon's followers, 1676, and garrisoned by sympathizers under William Rookings. Bacon is not known to have visited the house, although, since its eventful occupation by his followers, the early Allen home has been known by his name. The cluster chimney is a unique feature of its architecture, as is the gabled end. The bricks were laid in English bond. Of the typical frame homes of the seventeenth century, occupied by the average family, not one remains, which can be dated with authority. However, from extant descriptions, it is known that these modest homes for the most part were one-story structures, with a loft above, to which there was access by means of a ladder-like stairway. Dormer windows, added in the eighteenth century to some of the homes, made of the loft a half-story, providing for more comfortable sleeping quarters for the family. There were chimneys at both ends of these early homes, and meals were prepared on the open hearth of the larger fireplace. The early homes apparently had no partitions, but by the middle of the century, some were divided by one partition on the lower floor. Cellars were not practical in the low-lying areas, for in wet weather the water-table is level with the ground. Inland, for the better homes, in the last half of the century, there were cellars, though some of the more modest structures merely had unbricked excavations below for storage purposes. The size of the modest homes varied, in length, between thirty and forty feet and, in width, between eighteen and twenty feet. In 1679, Major Thomas Chamberlaine, of Henrico, contracted for a frame house forty by twenty feet without a cellar. In 1686, Benjamin Branch's brothers built for him "a home twenty feet long" on the family plantation "Kingsland" in Henrico. THE FOREST PRIMEVAL When the English transported themselves or were transported to Virginia, they brought with them as much of England as possible in their manners, their customs, their pride in family and race, their laws and their possessions. With something of nostalgia for home, they often named their plantations for the family estates in England, and the locales, in which they settled, for the shires or the communities near their old world homes. They did not seek to create a new race, as did the Spanish in settling Louisiana who designated themselves _Criollo_, but to remain Englishmen in the new world. To this end they were willing to struggle and overcome a wilderness. In so doing, they sharpened their native acumen, awakened their inherent resourcefulness, and eventually in the eighteenth century, established themselves as a free and independent people. Their manner of living in Virginia was determined, not so much by design, as by force of circumstances. Available land and tobacco were determining factors in developing large plantations along the main waterways and small plantations in the hinterlands. Self-sufficiency was concomitant with their way of life. Although, in several acts of the Assembly, the first in 1680, efforts were made by authorities to create towns, establish central warehouses, and so bring the people together, such attempts met with only partial success. Towns that were projected, in 1680, in expectation of developing centers of population, were difficult to promote. Once started, they languished, as did Warwicktown in one of the eight original shires. Except for its ports of entry, such as Jamestown, Norfolk and Kecoughtan, Virginia in the seventeenth century was not adapted to urban living. Upon arrival in Virginia, the colonists faced a vast forest. Before them in the April sunshine was a massive wall of shimmering green in the stately pines, cedars and holly, intermingled with the freshly unfolded leaves of the venerable oak, walnut, hickory and beech. There were no grassy plains, no open fields, save the garden plots of small tribes of Indians. Clearing the land, in itself, was a tremendous task. The choice acreage ever in demand by the colonists was, of course, the open land found in and near the Indian villages. Many a land patent later embraced an Indian field. The Company lands in Elizabeth City were the fertile fields of the Kecoughtan Indians, who had been driven from their habitations there, in 1610, after the murder of a colonist, Humphrey Blount. Following the massacre of 1622, the natives were relentlessly driven from their villages and fields--the Warriscoyacks, the Nansemonds, the Chickahominies and in 1630, the Chiskiackes. Then, the white men took over their areas of cleared land. [Illustration: Photo by Virginia State Library Lee House (Chiskiac)--York County The main building here shown was built about 1690 and was the home of the descendants of Henry Lee, who was in Virginia by the middle of the seventeenth century. The site, now within the United States Naval Mine Depot, was, before 1630 the territory of the Chiskiac (Kiskiacke) Indians. The wing attached is a modern addition.] However, these fields were but small open spaces required by the Englishmen who arrived in increasing numbers. There was a constant operation, in the seventeenth century, of clearing and planting new lands. As help in the white indentured servants was never very plentiful, the planters, finally resorted to an available supply of Negro labor, being peddled along the coast of the Americas, and landed wherever the slaveships could gain entry. The muster of 1625 shows that many goats had been brought to the Colony by that time. Multiplying, they provided able assistance during the early seventeenth century in thoroughly clearing away the undergrowth, preparatory to cutting down trees and grubbing stumps. Joseph Ham, in the colony by 1633, resorted to these omnivorous quadrupeds in clearing his land. He lived in the New Poquoson area where growth of all kinds is lush. The region, which has its name from the Indian term for lowlands, had afforded the Kecoughtan Indians a rich hunting-ground. Midst tall pines, oak, walnut, cedar, wild cherry, locust, swamp willow, holly, myrtle and persimmon, entangled with grape vines, reaching the tops of trees, and Virginia creeper, game found a haven. Deer, bears, rabbits, squirrel, opossum, raccoon, foxes, weasels, mink, otter and muskrat were sheltered in the thickets and adjacent swamps, while wild ducks and geese made of the marshes, bordering the waterways, a rendezvous for days and weeks on their flights southward. The Bay at hand, and its estuaries, abounded in trout, hogfish, rock, shad, sturgeon and other edible species in season, not to speak of soft-shell crabs, hard-shell crabs, turtles, terrapin, clams and oysters. Here was food in plenty, but to clear the land for a crop posed a problem to Joseph Ham. He had married a widow with two young children and the family had one servant only--a maid. The heavy work fell to him, but not all of it, for he turned fifty-one goats into the thickets to feast upon the vines and undergrowth. When he died, in 1638, he bequeathed his herd of goats to his stepchildren and to his wife. Although he left other possessions, including a feather bed, two blankets, a rug, a bolster, a warming-pan, a parcel of pewter, three iron pots, two brass kettles, a brass basin, a copper kettle, three pairs of sheets, one dozen napkins, a table-cloth, a looking-glass, a chest, ten barrels of corn and three shoats, along with his plantation, yet the goats had been his first thought. He carefully designated thirty for his stepchildren and twenty-one for his wife. The present may measure the worth of the goats in the early seventeenth century by this scrupulous legacy. THE INDEPENDENT PLANTER In establishing the colony, the Virginia Company had projected the idea that the people who settled the land would, in a short time, be able to supply their daily needs. In addition, they would ship to England raw materials needed there, and absorb in return articles produced by the English craftsmen, and such imports from foreign lands as were surplus in England. Thus, a brisk trade was anticipated, and did develop, but not in the direction forecast in the beginning. As the forests were rapidly being depleted in England, wood and wood products were among the greatest needs. Accordingly, report was made in 1624, that, by 1608 and 1609, such woods as cedar, cypress and black walnut had been exported from the Colony, and both clapboard and wainscoting, fashioned in Virginia, had been sent to the Mother Country, along with soap ashes, yielding the necessary potash, an ingredient for soap-making scarce in England. In addition, pitch, tar, iron ore, sturgeon and glass were exported and sassafras, growing wild in Virginia, was in demand in England for tea making. Ere long, of course, the colonists found that tobacco was a lucrative crop, and put their time, attention and efforts in developing a grade of tobacco, which would bring a good price. Inspection before exportation helped in maintaining the standard. However, in cultivating tobacco, the Virginia planter also promoted assiduously a program of self-sufficiency for his plantation, so that what was needed in daily living was at hand or could be had from a neighbor. Practically every plantation, both large and small, had livestock and produced milk and butter. Sufficient quantities of corn, barley and wheat were grown to supply year-around needs. Very soon the Englishmen abandoned the Indian method of pounding grain into meal for bread-making and established mills on the fresh-water courses and on tidal waters where the dammed streams and the tide furnished water-power. Mill stones were among early shipments to the colony and locations of some of these seventeenth-century mills remain landmarks in Virginia today. Denbigh, on Waters Creek in Warwick County, Chuckatuck in Nansemond, and the headwaters of the Poquoson in York County are among the sites of early mills. John Bates of Skimeno in Upper York County, a large land owner, operated two mills, one on his plantation called "Pease Hill creek mill" and the other, "Okenneck," a water-grist-mill. Brandy for family use often was distilled on the plantation. While Philip Fisher of the Eastern Shore bequeathed both his mill and his still to his son Thomas, he directed that his son John should have the use of both, the mill to grind his corn and the still "to still his own drink." Beer was made from malt, and cider was produced from apples grown on the plantations. The remains of an icehouse uncovered during excavations at Jamestown, and dated about the middle of the seventeenth century, is evidence that the colonists cut ice from the ponds nearby, during a freeze, and stored it for use in summer. These cylindrical structures, usually of brick, erected in a shady spot and reinforced at the base with the cooling earth, were packed ten, fifteen or more feet deep with ice, depending on the supply available. In between the layers, straw and reeds were laid, and the arrangement in general preserved the ice even into the very warm months. Thomas Cocke, of "Pickthorn Farm" and "Malvern Hill," carried on enterprises established by his father, operating at the latter a flour mill, tanneries and looms for making both woolens and linen. For a specimen of linen five ells in length and three-fourths of a yard wide of the first quality, he received an award, in 1695, of 800 pounds of tobacco, offered by the Assembly in 1692. Both Virginia-made stockings and Virginia-made cloth are listed in the Bridger inventory of 1686. A pottery kiln, uncovered at "Greenspring," and in operation prior to 1675, shows the interest of the Virginia Governor in having earthenware fashioned in the colony for domestic uses. Morgan Jones of Westmoreland County is mentioned as a "potter" in 1674. At the same time, Joseph Copeland of Chuckatuck, in Nansemond County, was fashioning pewter. The handle of a spoon bearing the hallmark of this earliest American pewterer, of whom there is a record, is extant and may be seen at the museum at Jamestown. Some of the earliest of the colonists were skilled in boatbuilding, the shipwrecked passengers on the _Seaventure_ having constructed, on the Bermuda Islands in 1609, two pinnaces in which they sailed the 700 miles to Virginia in 1610. The Hansfords maintained a boatyard on Felgate's Creek in York County, where they both built and repaired small vessels. On 17 November 1675, John Allen, Augustine Kneaton and William Hobson of Northumberland County agreed to build a sloop of twenty-four feet by the keel for Andrew Pettigrew and deliver it to his plantation, the sloop to be able "to floor [lay flat] nine hogsheads complete." These brief mentions by no means complete the story of the independent Virginia planter, who acquired the luxuries shipped from England as the proceeds from his tobacco crop permitted, but who generally had at hand the necessities of life regardless of the times. PART II THE VIRGINIA PLANTERS AND THEIR MANNER OF LIVING A YOUNGER SON IN VIRGINIA The progress, from the status of a younger son in England, to that of a landed proprietor in Virginia, is illustrated in the typical case of Christopher Calthrope, third son of Christopher Calthrope Esq. of Blakeney, Norfolk, England. The seniority of two brothers was a limitation upon opportunity for him in England. As a youth of sixteen years of age he was sent to Virginia, in 1622, in company with Lieutenant Thomas Purefoy, the latter named later Commander of Elizabeth City Corporation. Young Calthrope had been well supplied by his family before leaving England, even bringing with him a quantity of "good liquor" which, while it lasted, added considerably to his popularity. In the name of the family attorney, the young man shortly was assigned land on Waters Creek, in the area now the site of the Mariners Museum of Warwick. In 1628, he also owned land in a choice area near Fort Henry and adjacent to Lieutenant Purefoy in Elizabeth City. These tracts, however, provided but small plantations, and so when the area along the York River was opened for settlement in 1630, Christopher Calthrope sought land available in large tracts in the adjacent territory, patenting some 1200 acres on the New Poquoson (now Poquoson) River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay just beyond the mouth of the York. He called his new plantation "Thropland" after the family estate in England. By 1635, a church had been built on his land and New Poquoson Parish (later Charles Parish) was established, the records of which are the earliest extant Parish records in Virginia. As the Parish then embraced the areas on the west side of the river, the Chismans and other families who had settled on Chisman's Creek, sailed over in their sloops or came in their shallops, to worship there on Sundays. Captain Christopher Calthrope, the Virginia planter, served both York and Elizabeth City in the House of Burgesses during the period, 1644-1660, and also was one of the Commissioners for York County. He was replaced in the latter office, 1661, since he had gone _Southward_, the designation then for the area, which lay on the southern border of Virginia and the northern boundary of the present state of North Carolina. Vast tracts of land were available there, and Calthrope, still land hungry, acquired acreage in the Nottoway region, on which his great grandson was living in 1756. Shortly after Calthrope's demise, his widow Anne petitioned the York County Court to grant her administration of his estate, and on 24 April, 1662, she gave bond with very good security in return for her appointment. Six months later the inventory estimated the estate, with several items not then accounted for, at "30,480 pounds of tobacco and casks." The widow, a son and three daughters shared in the estate, which not only included land in York and at the _Southward_, but possessions in a considerable number. Both tobacco and corn were raised on the Calthrope land, hives of bees were kept, and a dairy was in operation. To aid the family enterprise there were nine indentured servants, one of whom, Thomas Ragg, later became the husband of Elinor Calthrope. Four draught oxen did the hauling on the low-lying plantation. Also there were six steers, thirteen milch cows, five heifers, four yearlings and seven calves, the cows obviously supplying the dairy equipped with ten milk trays, a tub and earthenware pan. Three sows, two barrows and four shoats completed the list of livestock. All other possessions are listed in the "outer room, the chamber and the shedd." These three areas constituted the Calthrope home. In the chamber where the family apparently lived and slept, there were two feather beds, with the usual appurtenances of bolsters, sheets, blankets, valances and curtains, and also a couch bed and a couch. In the outer room, apparently a storeroom, there was, in accordance with the practice of planters to keep a supply of materials on hand, a quantity of piece-goods in dowlas, lockram, dimity, coarse Holland, fine Holland and tufted Holland, osnaburg and kersey, and seventeen ells (45 inches in English measure and 27 inches in Dutch measure) of sheeting, as well as yarn stockings. A limited supply of colored calico, East Indian stuff and Norway stuff are evidence that the English merchantmen, tramping to all parts of the world, brought some of their cargoes from remote areas to Virginia. Cooking was carried on in the shed, probably a thinly enclosed area, equipped with a large fireplace and attached to the house. Here, there were andirons, racks, a spit, hooks and bellows. Utensils for preparing food included an iron pot, a gridiron, frying-pan, dripping-pan, two brass kettles, a skimmer, a mortar and pestle, and a grater. Pewter-ware and a supply of three dozen napkins and six tablecloths made meals something of an occasion for the family. Evidently, the Calthrope family had little fear of enemies in their area, from which the Indians had previously been driven away, for they owned but one gun and that was "unfixt," that is, not equipped with a firing mechanism. James Calthrope, only son of Christopher, inherited his father's plantation, served as Justice of York County and, in his will, proved 1690, bequeathed land to New Poquoson Parish, which evidently was that upon which the church had originally been erected. The fourth generation of Calthropes in Virginia maintained title to a portion of the York County grant, more than a century and a quarter, after the progenitor of the family came to the colonies. Thus, did the Englishmen reach out across the seas, and plant branches of their families to carry on in the English tradition in the new world. ROYALISTS IN VIRGINIA By 1644, conditions in England had become difficult because of the Civil Wars. In a correspondence with Daniel Llewellyn of Charles City, William Hallom of England wrote: "if these times hold long amongst us we must all faine come to Virginia." The message sent by Hallom was prophetic, for by 1650, many well-to-do Englishmen, loyal to the Crown, fled to Virginia to escape the wrath of Cromwell's men. Some were so deeply involved politically that they assumed aliases. This was the case of Captain Francis Dade, who, until the Restoration, was known in Virginia as Major John Smith. Many, who came to Virginia during this period, remained. Mrs. Anne Gorsuch, whose husband, a Royalist, was pursued and killed in England, brought seven of her children to Virginia, but on returning to see to her affairs there, died. The children remained and established families in Virginia and Maryland. Daniel Horsmanden later returned to England and died there; however, his daughter Ursula married, as her second husband, William Byrd I and established the well-known Virginia family of that name. Also, representative of the Royalists who migrated to Virginia was Colonel Joseph Bridger of Isle of Wight County. The date of his coming is unknown, but he appeared in the records as a member of the House of Burgesses, 1657; thus, apparently, he had been in the county several years prior to that time. His tombstone, uncovered at the site of his home plantation, "White Marsh," was removed in the late nineteenth century and placed in the chancel of the Old Brick Church (St. Luke's) in the county. Colonel Bridger established in Isle of Wight a large mercantile business, trading Virginia tobacco for commodities needed by the colonists. In addition, on several plantations, aggregating in total over 12000 acres, he raised tobacco and cattle, the latter apparently to supply ships departing for England. As a successful business man he shortly rose to prominence in the colony; he was a member of the Commission to adjust the boundary between Maryland and Virginia, 1664, a member of the Council, 1675, and sat on Governor Berkeley's court at "Greenspring," which condemned to death leaders of Bacon's Rebellion. In 1680, he was commander-in-chief of the militia of Isle of Wight, Surry, Lower Norfolk and Upper Norfolk (Nansemond) Counties, with the title of Major General. Evidently, he maintained a close association with Governor Berkeley, for he was a witness to the latter's will, 2 May 1676. His own will, dated 3 August 1683, with a codicil attached less than two months later, together with the inventory of his extensive estate, taken in 1686, provides interesting information as to the manner of living of the Virginia merchant and planter of the latter half of the seventeenth century. In the settlement, Colonel Bridger's holdings were shared by his wife Hester (Pitt) and six of his seven children. The eldest son was excluded from his inheritance as Colonel Bridger, evidently a martinet with his family as well as in his official capacity, added in the codicil a directive cutting him off with 2000 pounds of tobacco because Joseph Jr. had been disobedient to him and had gone out in "diverse ways." In friendly suits with his brothers, after his father's death, the disinherited son gained possession of a large portion of his rightful heritage. The family lived on the 850 acre plantation which Colonel Bridger had purchased from Captain Upton. There was on the place a brick house when the Bridger inventory was taken. There were four rooms on the first floor, including the children's chamber and the dining room, with two rooms in an upper story. Also a "new house" is listed in which there were the hall, the parlor and the lower chamber on the first floor, and on the upper floor three rooms and a "gallery" (hall). All rooms and the halls in both houses were fully furnished. In the cellar beneath the new house the family supply of drink was kept. The kitchen with two additional chambers was probably separate from the house. The mercantile business was carried on from a store, with an outer room, a supply room in the rear and a storeroom above. Also, there was a brick store, probably a warehouse, with storage space above. Merchandise brought from England was unloaded at the landing, where an unusual item of 800 "painting tiles" is listed. These imported tiles became popular, in the latter part of the century, for facing fireplaces and other uses. A sloop, with a capacity of twenty-eight hogsheads, equipped with "furniture, sails, rigging and ground tackle" is accounted for in the inventory. Tobacco was picked up at the planters' wharfs, as goods shipped from England, through the Bridger agents, Micajah Perry and Thomas Lane, were delivered on the sloop. Livestock was kept at pasture at the home plantation, at John Cahan's and at "Curowoak," the latter an 8000 acre grant. There were fifty-four head of cattle, and seven calves, these probably for butchering, thirteen cows and five yearlings for dairy supplies; eight oxen were used for heavy hauling, and besides there were nine steers and four bulls. Of old hogs, young hogs, sows, shoats and pigs there were fifty-four and, in addition, seven sheep and fourteen horses. Colonel Bridger owned 490 ounces of plate (silver) and had on hand, at the time of his death, Spanish money valued at sixty pounds and English money valued at forty-two pounds ten shillings. In addition to these holdings, obligations due the merchant both in money and tobacco, are recorded, showing the extent of the business he carried on with the planters, who lived for the most part on the James River and its estuaries. Among those indebted to the Bridger estate were Colonel William Byrd for twelve pounds, John Pleasants for five pounds, John Champion for 958 pounds of tobacco, Thomas Pitt for 2000 pounds of tobacco and Colonel Christopher Wormeley in a bill of exchange amounting to eight pounds. Besides, Perry and Lane in London held bills of exchange to Bridger's credit amounting to 654 pounds. Four indentured servants, with existing terms of service, and thirteen Negroes including two small children, are listed by name in the inventory. A Negro, obviously from the West Indies, was called "Monsieur." The enumeration of items in the two houses are of interest, as they show the more elaborate type of furnishings, that began to flow into the colony, after the middle of the century. The houses were heated as customary in the seventeenth century by fireplaces, for numerous andirons, either brass or iron, are listed together with tongs and fire-shovels. Numerous candlesticks, some of brass, some of wire and others of silver, illuminated the rooms in the evening. Chairs, rare in the early part of the century, were not scarce by 1686, for they are mentioned as caned, of leather, or covered either with serge or turkey-work, as were several couches. Tables of various sizes, a great looking-glass, a number of chests, several chests of drawers, and pictures were among the furnishings. The beds were of the usual two types--the bedstead with feather-bedding, bolster and pillows being the more elegant, while the less important folks were assigned flock beds. Both types had curtains and valances, were supplied with blankets and sheets, the latter, either of canvas or Holland, and there were several quilts. The use of rugs mentioned is undetermined, for these often served as covering, or were hung on the walls to keep out the drafts. However, there was a carpet in the "great hall" of the new house, where also stood a clock, and unusual items as, three pairs of steelyards (scales). There was a plentiful supply of table-linen in cloths and napkins of various qualities, the diaper linen (damask) being the best. The tableware for the most part was of pewter, some four dozen plates being listed, together with porringer, chafing-dish, fish-plates and pie-plates. Among the silver was a punch bowl, candlesticks, serving dish, several spoons and the cover of a tobacco box. The family was one of some learning for a parcel of books is listed; and evidently Colonel Bridger was interested in the mysteries of the times, for a book on _Witchcraft_ and another on _Astrology_ are mentioned particularly. In addition to the planter's usual possession of arms for family protection, in a capacity of high ranking officer of the militia, Colonel Bridger had on hand several guns, a case of pistols and holsters, and a pair of pocket pistols, a hanger (type of cutlass), three rapiers, one with a silver hilt, and ammunition. Among the interesting items in his possession were a parcel of Virginia-made cloth and fourteen pairs of Virginia stockings. As these were in the home, it is possible that they were made on the plantation. The size of some of the kitchen utensils and equipment point to a kitchen, with a very large fireplace, occupying an end of the room, where all food was prepared and cooked over the burning coals of a plentiful supply of wood. There were two great copper kettles weighing sixty-one pounds and forty pounds respectively, a brass kettle weighing fifty pounds, and two great andirons weighing 105 pounds, two iron pots weighing forty pounds each, four pot hooks, a heavy mall, three spits and skillets of several sizes. In the room adjoining the kitchen the milk was cared for, as there were eleven milk-pans, an "earthen" pan and three "earthen" butter-pots. In the cellar was the gentleman's supply of drink, cider for family use, a cask of brandy, a cask of old whiskey, and a malt-mill listed as worn out. While it is not practicable to mention here all of the goods carried in the store and the storehouse, certain of the items are of special interest, such as materials used for wearing apparel of the period, accessories of dress, utensils and agricultural tools available in Virginia. About twenty different materials of varying qualities were imported from England. They were woven for the most part of flax, hemp or wool, or combinations, with some cotton, not generally in use, but available in a few materials. _Osnaburg_, a coarse, heavy linen suitable for work clothes, or for sails, was available in quantities, in brown, for the former and white, for the latter; _canvas_, a closely woven cloth, of hemp or flax, was used for various purposes and appears to have been of different weights, for often canvas sheets are mentioned, which undoubtedly were of the lighter grade; _dowlas_, very much in use in the Colony, was a coarse linen made in the north of England and in Scotland, and today replaced in use by calico. Various weights of _serge_ were listed, similar, no doubt, to the serge the present knows, for it was used for suits, coats and dresses. _Linsey_, a coarse cloth, was made of linen and wool, or occasionally of cotton and wool; _kersey_, a knit woolen cloth, usually coarse and ribbed, manufactured in England as early as the thirteenth century, was especially for hose; _lockram_ was a sort of a coarse linen or hempen cloth, and _penniston_, a coarse woolen frieze. _Shalloon_, a woolen fabric of twill weave was used chiefly for linings; _fustian_ was a cotton and linen cloth, and _diaper linen_ was woven of flax with a raised figure such as in damask, and used chiefly for table-linen. In addition, the Bridger store had on its shelves, colored calico, a small amount of flannel, some broadcloth, and a small parcel of silk valued at one pound. There was also thread in brown and other colors, knitting-needles, pins, horn-combs, combs made of ivory and knives of various descriptions. For trimming garments, there was guimpe, colored tape, Holland tape and Hamburg, the latter an embroidered edging, buttons, some silk covered. Other items included skeins of twine, whalebone, scissors, and 132 pounds of soap. Among the building supplies were quantities of nails of all sizes, which ever seemed to be in great demand in the Colony. For the field, there were narrow hoes and weeding-hoes, axes of different types, as well as a whipsaw. For home furnishings, are listed such items as feather bedticks and bolsters, Irish bedticks, plain rugs, matting rugs, the latter showing importations from the Orient to England and thence to the Colony. Also, there were blankets, curtains and valances for tester beds, counterpanes of serge, table-knives with white handles, black handles, and ivory handles; in pewter, the store offered porringers, plates, serving-dishes and candlesticks. Among supplies, in addition to soap and twine, there were fifty-five bushels of salt and a barrel of coarse sugar. The colonists, used to their drink, found an ever-flowing cheap supply from the West Indies in rum, distilled there from molasses produced from sugar cane. This drink was stocked especially for the servants in the Colony. The Bridger store had on hand six barrels and one hogshead of rum, the entire contents being approximately two hundred and fifty-five gallons. In addition, there had been laid aside "for Colonel Powell's hands" sixty-five gallons of rum. In wearing apparel, the store was stocked with shoes for men, women and boys, hose for men and women, hats at various prices, bodices for women, "plaines" for men and boys and "falls" for men and boys. The little pest, the moth, had made its appearance in Virginia, for in goods accounted for, are four pairs of moth-eaten hose and a piece of moth-eaten kersey. No firearms are listed in the salable goods on hand but 106 pounds of shot are valued at 12s 6d. Urban folks, coming to Virginia in the early twentieth century, and visiting rural areas, were wont to comment upon the inevitable horse-collars and harness that usually held a prominent place in the cluttered country store. They were no less indispensable to travel over the dirt roads of that time than were the harness accessories in the Bridger store, such as snaffles and check-bits, stirrup-leathers, halters and girths. While, as hereafter mentioned, the waterways in Virginia served as open travel routes, the use of the horse was more or less general by the latter part of the century, at least among the well-to-do, for riding about the plantation, for visiting, and for sport in racing. As noted, Colonel Bridger owned fourteen horses. The shares in the estate of Colonel Bridger's three married daughters were claimed by their husbands and are recorded by items. It is of interest to note that Thomas Godwin, husband of Martha Bridger, was speaker of the House of Burgesses, in 1676, that Thomas Lear, who married Elizabeth Bridger, was a prominent planter of Nansemond County, and Richard Tibboth, husband of Mary Bridger, was master of the ship _Anne and Mary_, which plied between England and "James River in Virginia." THE STATUS OF WOMEN Notwithstanding the declaration by Virginia's first representative legislative Assembly in session at Jamestown, 30 July 1619, that "in a new plantation it is not known which be the most necessary, man or woman," the plantation representatives saw fit to extend to the married women only one benefit for having come to the colony, and that was the continuation of the bonus of fifty acres of land in control of their husbands. A married woman in the Colony had no title whatsoever to possessions during her husband's lifetime. She could not hold land in her name; any bequest from the estate of her parents became her husband's property, and the receipt of it was acknowledged in Court by him. Colonel Joseph Bridger sought through terms in his will, dated 1683, to prevent the husband of his daughter Martha from coming into possession of her inheritance, stipulating that his bequest to her was for her sole use and, should her husband desire to dispose of it, then, the inheritance should not come into his hands but should remain under control of the executrix. Nevertheless, Thomas Godwin signed a receipt for his wife's portion, according to law, and despite the Colonel's last wishes, it became his sole possession. If a woman married a second or third time, land and possessions held in her name, during her widowhood, immediately became the property of the next husband. For that reason, women, on contemplating a second marriage, and wishing the children by a former husband to have the benefit of their father's holdings, either gave them title to the possessions, just prior to the intended marriage, or exacted from the prospective husband an agreement to give the child or children possession of their rightful inheritance, upon arriving at age. This agreement was duly recorded in the court records. Now and then, a marriage agreement was so drawn, that the prospective husband's plantation was assured to his intended bride and her heirs, and could therefore never come into possession of a second wife or her heirs. A most careful legal maneuvering to this end is recorded in a marriage agreement, 1652, between Frances Culpeper and Captain Samuel Stephens. On the eve of marriage, the intended groom conveyed his 1350 acre plantation, "Bolthrope" on the Warwick River, in trust to Warham Horsmanden and George Hunt, who then according to agreement, reconveyed the land to Stephens during his lifetime. At his death, according to the terms stipulated, Frances (Culpeper) Stephens his wife came into sole possession. About the same time, 1651, John Chew of York County, was able to have drawn a less exacting contract on the eve of his second marriage. While he agreed to give, to his prospective bride Mrs. Rachel Constable, the plantation upon which he then lived, a provision was inserted that should she predecease him without heirs, the contract was void. A marriage contract drawn, 1667, between John Savage of the Eastern Shore and his intended second wife Mary Robins, stipulated that his "home plantation at the bottom of the neck" should go to her heirs. As stated, provision for children of a first husband were often a part of the marriage agreement. Mrs. Sarah Fleete exacted from Colonel John Walker, before the nuptials, a pledge that he would give to her daughter by a first marriage, 400 pounds of lawful money of England within the expiration of six months, or at Mary Burden's arrival at the age of sixteen years. When Mrs. Elizabeth Sheppard of Surry County agreed to a marriage with Thomas Warren, the contract, duly recorded, was very specific. Warren was to have full control of her first husband's estate, with certain exceptions of livestock to be given to Mrs. Sheppard's children. Her stepchildren, as provided in the contract, were to have their full inheritances left them by their father. Mrs. Elizabeth Mihill, widow of Edward Mihill of New Poquoson (later Charles) Parish, was much less generous with her prospective bridegroom in a contract drawn, 1661. Being about to marry William Hay, Gentleman, of the same Parish, Mrs. Mihill placed everything she owned in the hands of her kin, forever barring the third husband from coming into possession of the holdings of the two prior spouses. She deeded to her son Robert Sheild, by her first husband, all the land and buildings left to her by her second husband, and further directed that should her son leave no heirs, then, her brother Arthur Bray of London should have the estate. The only concession which she made to her prospective third husband was an agreement that he should have one acre of land, but the condition of this gift was that he grind for her son Robert, toll free, 100 bushels weekly, and allow her son also the use of the timber on the land. In addition, she gave her cattle and a servant to her son, and assigned gifts of her possessions to other relatives. To these unusual terms, William Hay, evidently an ardent suitor in pursuit of the widow, agreed, and upon her marriage to him shortly thereafter, he dutifully came into Court and acknowledged his assent to the terms of the settlement. As the death rate in Virginia in the seventeenth century was high, remarriages were frequent, both on the part of the men and the women. Colonel Thomas Swann of Surry County had five wives as did Major Joseph Croshaw of York County. Women frequently married three or four times. Upon the decease of their husbands, they often found themselves in possession of large isolated plantations. Often, there were indentured white servants, some negroes, and generally a number of children under age. How to manage alone, and thus encumbered, was the problem, and they solved it frequently by marrying shortly a neighbor. He, probably a widower, took charge of the first husband's holdings, settled the involved estate, and gave much needed protection to the woman in a sparsely settled area. This was the case with Mrs. Elizabeth Hansford of York County, who, at the death of her husband, faced the task of managing a plantation, seeing to cultivation of the land, disposing of his maritime interests, and at the same time, seeing to the interests of seven children. Overwhelmed with possessions, and already having her hands full with her domestic affairs, she knew not where to turn for a solution except to a second husband. Ere long, she married the York County merchant Edward Lockey, who at once began the settlement of her late husband's estate, entering an inventory in York County Court records, 1667. In the very early period of the colony, the grief of the widow was of short duration, for a suitor usually stood at her doorstep almost as the funeral procession ended. The most generally known, of such incidents, was the pursuit of Cicely Jordan, upon the death of her husband Samuel. Within two days Reverend Greville Pooley pressed his suit. The widow tentatively agreeing, but evidently pregnant with the unborn child of her deceased husband, insisted that she would marry no man until she was "delivered." In the meantime, William Farrar, named administrator of her deceased husband's estate, also pressed his suit and gained favor; whereupon, the cleric entered in the Court a suit for breach of promise. The contest over the widow finally was referred to the authorities in London, who declined to pass upon "so delicate a matter." Mr. Pooley, probably then finding his cause hopeless, withdrew his case in Court, and by 1625, the charming widow had married William Farrar. Custom frowned upon the ladies of the seventeenth century going into Court. While the law required that they sign or give assent to their husbands' deeds for sale of land or property, when the time arrived that the deed must be acknowledged in Court, the wife requested some male friend to represent her and acknowledge the deed. Mrs. Elizabeth Sheppard, in 1654, wrote a note asking her "dear brother Cockerham" to represent her in Court. The same year, Daniel Llewellyn acknowledged a deed in Charles City Court, for his stepdaughters Sara Woodward and Anne Gundry. Notwithstanding the limitations put upon women of the seventeenth century, both by custom and by law, their husbands evidently had complete confidence in their discretion and their abilities to direct wisely the disposition of estates, which came into their hands. Their business experience was confined to household management and plantation activities, but these were enterprises of no mean proportions, and the successful handling of such matters by the women impelled the men, very frequently, to name in their wills their wives as executrices. At the same time, overseers were also named to assist in handling the details. Colonel Bridger named his wife Hester as executrix to dispose of his large landed estate and his extensive mercantile business, but directed that her brother and their mutual friend Arthur Smith assist her, which they did very ably. Perhaps, there is no more outstanding example of an astute woman of the seventeenth century and her courage than that which the experiences of Sarah Bland set forth. She was the wife of John Bland of England, and the daughter-in-law of the well known merchant of the same name, who, as an active member of the Virginia Company of London, developed large plantation interests in Virginia, and a thriving mercantile business. Sarah Bland's only surviving son Giles had come to Virginia about the time of the untimely death of Theodorick Bland, who had managed the Bland interests in Virginia. Giles was a young "hot head," joined with the Bacon forces, and upon the collapse of that abortive revolution in the Colony, was apprehended, promptly condemned by Governor Berkeley's Court held at "Greenspring" and executed. Two years after her son's untimely death, and when some of the drastic measures confiscating the holdings of the deceased rebels had been lifted, Mrs. Sarah Bland, armed with power-of-attorney from her husband, crossed the seas alone to look into and settle the huge Bland estate. While she was in Virginia, her husband died in England, and Thomas Povey, who was named joint executor with her of her husband's estate, also conveyed to her power-of-attorney. She gathered the loose ends of the Bland holdings in Virginia and divided them among the heirs. An entry in the Isle of Wight County Court records, listing ten Bland plantations, indicates the proportions of her task. Divorce in Virginia rarely occurred. There was no Ecclesiastical Court and, therefore, no source of authority to which dissatisfied couples might turn. The Governor and Council were vested with the power to grant separations, which were seldom sought. One of the very few cases of separation and remarriage was that of Elizabeth, sister of Colonel William Underwood and ex-wife of Doctor James Taylor. After petitioning the Governor and Council for a separation, she married as her second husband Francis Slaughter, merchant and planter of Rappahannock County, who was deceased by 1656, his will naming his wife and mother-in-law. Incidently, Elizabeth had, in all, four husbands before her death in 1673. Lest conclusion be drawn that all women in Virginia were _ladies_, women whose husbands had large plantations and who were to the manner born, acknowledgement must be made that there were some who were not gentlewomen. Some quarrelled outrageously with one another, some gossiped endlessly, and a few went to the extremes of dragging their husbands into Court to settle disputes with one another, thus, cluttering up the busy calendar of the County Justices. The Court sitting at Westover in Charles City County, 3 August 1664, arrived at a means of disposing of these cases and silencing, perhaps, public display of temper. The ducking stool on Herring Creek had just been equipped, the year before, with new irons and so was in good repair. Whereupon, the Justices ordered that "Goody" Spencer and "Goody" Goodale for their "scurrilous brawls and frivilous litigations" be each ducked three times at the public place prepared for that purpose, at or near the next full tide, and that "each bear his own particular costs and charges." The costs levied, the discomfort of being immersed, not to speak of the ridicule that such an event aroused on the part of the people assembled to witness the punishment, no doubt had a very sobering effect on tempers. There was also a ducking stool on Wormeley's Creek in York County, and another at Lynnhaven in Lower Norfolk. It would thus seem that these and similar cases were not altogether rare in the Colony. SERVANTS To interpret accurately the meaning of the frequently used term _servant_ is a difficult matter. It appears to have covered a wide range of classifications in seventeenth-century Virginia. The designation was often used in the modern sense of employee and, occasionally, members of a family are listed in an enrollment as _servants_ with the obvious meaning of dependents. This was the case in the muster of William Gany, 1625, whose child Anna heads the list of his "servants." Also, with Thomas Palmer and his family, Richard English, aged eleven years, was living in 1625, but is listed as a "servant." Abraham Wood, aged ten years, is listed in 1625 as a "servant" of Captain Samuel Mathews. These children obviously do not come within the twentieth century meaning of the word. Also, when individuals or groups of individuals sought to establish large settlements in Virginia, they sent over a company of men, and these men are listed as "servants," a term used in our modern sense of _employee_. The musters of Edward Bennett, Daniel Gookin and others present such lists. In the Bennett muster, Christopher Reynolds, evidently a head man in overseeing the creation of a plantation, comes under the designation. Also, Adam Thoroughgood, who later was named a member of the Council, is first mentioned in the colony under a list of "servants." [Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Adam Thoroughgood House--Princess Anne County This house, considerably altered, an example of early seventeenth-century architecture, located in that part of Lower Norfolk County which became Princess Anne in 1691, was built by Adam Thoroughgood on land patented by him, 1635. The dormer windows are a later addition.] True it is that many young men bound themselves, by written agreement before departing from England to serve seven years in the colony, in return for passage and other considerations, granted at the conclusion of their terms. However, apprenticeship was the customary means, by which young men acquired knowledge, and some degree of skill from their elders. Young Robert Hallom, about 1640, was sent to England to live with relatives and receive some training. He, forthwith, was apprenticed to his cousin to learn the trade of a _salter_, and was described by the family as a "prettie wittie boy." When Doctor Pott came to Virginia, in 1620, he brought as apprentices to learn the art of apothecary, young Randall Holt and young Richard Townshend. Both youths became dissatisfied, and sought to break their agreements through petitions to the General Court, contending that Doctor Pott was not instructing them. However, the Court held the young men to their agreements. Later, Randall Holt married the heiress Mary Bayly, and became possessed of the large plantation, Hog Island on the James River. Townshend rose to prominence in the colony, also, having been named later a member of the Council. Often such young men were third or fourth sons in a family, and influence from overseas, as in Townshend's case, helped establish them in places of honor and authority in the colony. Youths, who agreed by indenture to serve in Virginia, were the main source of help to the planters in the first half of the century. There was never a sufficient number to fill the needs in the Colony, and planters pleaded with the Company or with friends in England to send them "servants." In letters sent to authorities in England, 1622, the Rev. Richard Buck urgently requested that "servants" be sent to assist him in carrying on the work of his 750 acre plantation. Letters from Kathryne Hunlock of England to her daughter and son by a prior marriage, Margaret and John Edwards, recorded in Northampton County, indicate the class of young people who often bound themselves to come to Virginia. Apparently, mother, son and daughter were educated, for the mother refers to the correspondence with them. In 1648, Kathryne Hunlock lists supplies she had sent to her daughter: eight yards of snuff colored silk mohair, an ell of taffeta, silver lace, four pairs of gloves, thread, hose, two taffeta hoods and two lace hoods with taffeta handkerchiefs, four pairs of shoes, one hundred needles, 5000 pins and "one green scarf for your husband." As the last entry shows, young Margaret did not long remain an apprentice, for she was redeemed from that status by a planter named Stephen Taylor, who, her mother wrote, she understood, was an "honest man and gave a great price" for her. Later, Kathryne Hunlock wrote her daughter and her son regarding the daughter's inheritance from her deceased father. The son, incidentally, served out his time. The correspondence indicates that these were substantial folks, and the young people, probably having little to anticipate in an improved status in England, sought both adventure and a brighter future in Virginia. Young orphans in the Colony, with no one to look to for support, were bound out, this responsibility being accorded the vestry of the parish church. In 1646, the York records note that Ann Snoden, an orphan seven years of age, had no means left for her maintenance. Thereupon, she was bound out to Captain Nicolas Martiau for nine years, with the provision that he supply her with food, clothing, shelter, and give her a cow and a calf and maintain both during her apprenticeship, rendering an account annually to the court. In 1686, little William Hickman, a year old infant, was bound out to William Dods of Isle of Wight County to be in his care and service until he was twenty-one years of age. Fewer than two score Negroes are listed in Virginia in 1625; they were not present in numbers in the Colony until about 1660. By then, they began to supplant white labor and were particularly useful in the tobacco fields, the latter an ever increasing source of revenue to the planter. Not all Negroes worked in the fields, however. In the inventory of Mrs. Elizabeth Digges' estate filed in York County, 1691, three sets of quarters for Negroes are listed: the home quarters where the house servants lived, the Indian field quarters where those working in tobacco lived, and the new ground quarters where were housed the Negroes doing the heavy work of clearing new ground, a constant operation in Virginia as the cultivation of tobacco quickly exhausted the soil. As the Negroes took their places in the Colony as field-hands, house-servants and craftsmen, the white indentured servant vanished from the scene. As heretofore noted, the supply was never enough in the Colony to fill the demand. Moreover, young men, at the conclusion of their five or seven-year terms, received their allotment of clothing and supplies, usually a barrel of corn, agreed upon in the indenture, and joined the small-planter class in the Colony. Especially was this true when the indenture included a clause granting fifty acres upon completion of service. Since Negroes were taught trades on the plantations and some of them became highly skilled in handiwork, the white artisan had a difficult time in establishing himself in Virginia. There was practically no white artisan class. Small planters and their families acquired skills needed in their daily living, the Negroes becoming the craftsmen on the larger plantations. THE HOUSEHOLD The winters in Virginia, mild except for occasional freezes, with now and then snowfall during the three winter months, proved less arduous to the Englishmen than the two months of midsummer, when the mercury reaching into the nineties brought discomfort, especially since the men and women were clothed in the bunglesome garments, necessary in a cool zone frequently overhung with fog. The many open, pleasant months in the Colony made life out of doors a continuing pleasurable experience, when hunting, fishing, horse-racing and games could be indulged in freely. Yet, living indoors in Virginia in the coldest weather was always cheerful. The land, heavily forested, yielded an ample supply of firewood of all sorts, and the necessity of clearing the ground, for the plantation homes and agricultural areas, kept heaps of wood at hand at all times. The earliest open fires of the primitive shelters as well as the great brick fireplaces later in the century, and the smaller hearths in every room of the affluent planters' homes, always diffused that glow of comfort instinctively sought, when the sun retreats. Before the burning logs of hickory and oak the families gathered. There could be no extravagance in the use of the abundant supply of wood, contrasting with the necessity to preserve fuel in England, as the forests there, even in the seventeenth century, were disappearing. Often, there were generous pots of walnuts and hickory nuts to crack on the hearth, as family and friends sipped from their pewter mugs the aging cider, pressed from apples gathered in nearby orchards. In addition to the flaming hearth, the soft glow of the candle, used for illumination in the seventeenth century, lent charm to the evening scene, as wanton shadows stood off in the room. Moreover, there was an elusive aroma from the candles, often made from the wax of berries, taken from the prolific growth of myrtle bushes about the Virginia waterways. This redolence, together with the clear light which the myrtle wax gave forth, made that candle popular in the evening; notwithstanding, both beef and deer suet were in use for candle making, and some candles were imported. All were held in candlesticks, made of wire, brass, pewter, copper, or iron, the more elegant, of silver, with snuffers of the same metals. In the very modest homes, the pine-knot served as a means of illumination, the turpentine in the wood fibers causing it to burn brightly until consumed. [Illustration: From a painting for Colonial National Historical Park by Sidney King. A Domestic Scene at Jamestown About 1625 This representation of seventeenth-century home life was executed by the artist after a detailed study of artifacts and archaeological remains found at Jamestown.] Various house furnishings have been listed in the inventories or are listed hereafter. During the latter part of the century, particularly, it will be seen that these furnishings were as elaborate or as simple as in the comparable home in England. Next to the fireplace, perhaps, the table adds more good feeling among family and friends than any other item of the household. To "gather around the board" was not merely a figurative expression in the early seventeenth century when the first tables were boards laid on trestles and set aside after meals. Table frames and planks were mentioned in a Lower Norfolk County inventory in 1643. Later, permanent legs were attached to the boards, and stretchers, fastened to them with pegs, kept the table steady. However, as the English began to fashion fine pieces of furniture, the table of various types found its way to Virginia and, by the middle and late seventeenth century, there were serving-tables, tea-tables as well as dining-tables. The four-times married Mrs. Amory Butler owned a rare item in an extension table. [Illustration: Early Dining Table Though the first tables in the Colony were boards laid on trestles, the above shows the adaptation of supports for permanent placing of this article in the household.] Even the planter with a modest household owned table-linen. As heretofore noted, Joseph Ham possessed, before 1638, a dozen napkins and a table-cloth. The well-to-do planters, especially after 1650, brought with them, or sent for, a wide variety of table-linen, and both Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Digges owned napkin-presses, that of the former listed in 1673, and that of the latter in 1692. Wooden trenchers and wooden spoons were the earliest tableware in Virginia. Later, pewter-ware supplanted wood and while earthen-ware trays and pots were mentioned, in a few inventories, and were used in the dairy, and while earthen-ware was produced in the Colony by 1675, it did not come into general use for dining during the seventeenth century. Table-knives were not plentiful, nevertheless, various types of such knives are mentioned in inventories by the latter part of the century, black-handled, white-handled and ivory-hafted knives. The one rare item was the table-fork, which was not common even in England during the period. "Eating with the knife," a step beyond the use of the fingers, gradually became an established custom, and the practice has survived among the homely folks, despite the many varieties of forks available and in general use today. The bed was a prominent item and the ticking of the best beds was filled with feathers, which assured a soft, comfortable, cosy resting place, especially in winter. There were no springs. The flock bed so often mentioned was less downy but comfortable, being filled with bits of wool, rags, milkweed or cattail-fluff, the latter in abundant growth near the fresh waterways. This was the "next best bed" which was a sufficiently important item to be left to heirs. Thomas Gibson, in 1652, bequeathed to his daughter his "best flock bed, with rug (used for covering), bolster, pillow and fine pair of Holland sheets." Sheets, variously mentioned, were of canvas or of Holland, generally, the latter, being an unbleached coarse linen. By the middle of the century, valances and curtains around the beds "to shut out the night air" were in general use. As soon as practicable, the English were bringing over their brass warming-pans with long handles. These perforated pans filled with warm embers were run in the beds just before the retiring hour. As the antecedent of the modern American electric blanket, they enticed the drowsy to bed. Retreating from the cheerful hearth, the would-be sleeper, then as now, had no fear of being aroused by the clammy chill of frigid bed-linen. All colonists appear to have possessed chests of one kind or another, some plain, some carved. When the early planter obtained sufficient credit from his tobacco crop to indulge in a luxury, he acquired an innovation in a chest-of-drawers, where was kept the family clothing and the supply of materials on hand. Since dress was an important matter in the Colony, the looking-glass was indispensable. Occasionally, there was "a great looking-glass," but for the most part, the mirrors were small and stood on chests or chests-of-drawers. Stools and benches were in use generally. Chairs, rare in England until the early part of the seventeenth century, nevertheless, found their way to Virginia about the time they came into use in England. However, chairs were scarce, and only the master of the house or his distinguished guest was accorded the privilege of being seated in them. The earliest chairs were cumbersome, being fashioned of oak with solid square backs, often panelled, and thus were known as "wainscot chairs." The seat was of wood and the bracing beneath made this article of furniture exceedingly substantial. Later in the century, a variety of chairs found their way to Virginia, caned chairs, leather chairs and Turkey-work chairs. The latter were those upholstered in hand-woven material imported into England from the Orient and then exported to Virginia. By the middle of the century, couches were listed and they were for the most part of the same construction as the chairs. [Illustration: Wainscot Chair While stools and benches were commonly used for seats in the early seventeenth century, a wainscot chair as shown above was in use at Jamestown before 1623.] Lord De La Warr, who came to Virginia in 1610, sat in the Jamestown church in a green velvet chair. This is the first known mention of a chair in the Colony. In 1623, a wainscot-chair, owned by John Atkins of Jamestown, was bequeathed to his friend Christopher Davison, Secretary of the Colony. In addition to the standard pieces of furniture aforementioned, luxury articles were imported during the latter part of the century. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges owned five Spanish tables, two green carpets and a Turkey-work carpet; Mrs. Elizabeth (Mason) Thelaball, of Lower Norfolk County, had among her possessions a small desk and a writing-slate. In the goods consigned, 1694, by Perry and Lane of London to Mrs. Elizabeth Woory, of Isle of Wight County, was a drugget. The size of the homes varied from the simple one-room structures characteristic of the early part of the century to the Bridger home previously described, and Mrs. Digges' home of six rooms, hall, cellar, garret and detached kitchen. In looking over the inventories of the seventeenth century planters, observation is inevitable that the kitchen area alone maintained its distinct character. Even among the well-to-do, beds were everywhere, irrespective of the number of rooms in use. Guns, swords, pistols, saddles, bridles, steelyards (scales) cluttered up the hall in the Bridger home. Bathing facilities were meager. Copper and pewter basins were in general daily use, and also were employed for sponge baths occasionally taken in winter before the open fires. The chamber pots, frequently listed, served other necessary functions. In the summer months, much of the cooking was done out-of-doors in huge pots slung from a tripod. The food for the servants went into a single pot, and their fare in "pap" was eaten in the open also, when the weather permitted. In the winter and during the cooler months, cooking was done on the hearth of an ample fireplace which customarily took up the greater part of the end of a room. If the family was of modest means, the kitchen area was the heart of the house. Here, in winter, was warmth, food and companionship. As the planter acquired numerous servants and preparation of food became an all-day matter, every day, the kitchen with its companion room, the buttery, was divorced from the house. Under this arrangement, the mistress of the household merely directed the preparation of food, the care of the dairy products, the salting of the meat, and the rendering of the lard. Before the fire on the great hearth, meat on joints and fowl were trussed on spits, and to some small boy fell the task of keeping the spit turning. A drip-pan placed beneath caught the juices. Bakestones, griddles and clay ovens were at hand to stand on the hot embers, and later, ovens were built into the fireplaces. From cranes, simple at first and later with convenient arrangements for tipping, hung the pots for boiling. Bellows were at hand to enliven dying embers. On a rough table stood the brass mortar and iron pestle for mixing, the flesh-hook for handling meats, brass skimmer, rolling-pin, and other handy cooking utensils. Besides, in an adjoining space, there were pans, butter-pots, tubs and trays for the milk and milk products. [Illustration: Courtesy of the artist, Sydney R. Jones from _Old English Household Life_ by Jekyll and Jones, published by B. T. Batsford, Ltd., London. Photo by Thomas L. Williams Seventeenth-Century Kitchen and Cooking Utensils] Water, which had to be drawn by hand from wells, except for an occasional windmill, was not a plentiful commodity. Therefore, the washing of clothes was not the semi-weekly operation carried on today with labor-saving devices. For the most part, it was carried on out-of-doors in clear weather, either at a nearby stream, or in the huge pots or tubs possessed by every family. Soap was brought into the Colony, and also was compounded from the animal fats available and the soap-ashes, which were plentiful. After soaking, the clothes were laid on boards and the grime driven out with "beetles" or paddles; then, the garments were hung up or laid out to dry or bleach in the sun. The few housewives, who owned napkin-presses, had the table-linen carefully folded, and placed, when damp, in the press in a pile. The board, screwed down firmly, eliminated the wrinkles, and the linen in some hours was smooth and ready for use. Also, various smoothing-irons and goffering (crimping)-irons, heated on the hearth were applied to garments. In all, however, laundering was a laborious process. Perfume, therefore, was a popular item in milady's toilet. [Illustration: Courtesy of the artist, Sydney R. Jones from _Old English Household Life_ by Jekyll and Jones, published by B. T. Batsford, Ltd., London. Photo by Thomas L. Williams Wash-day in the Seventeenth Century The women soak the clothes in hot water dipped from the nearby kettle heated over the open fire, beat out the grime with paddles, rinse the articles in the shallow stream and hang them out to dry.] HOSPITALITY From time immemorial, the traveller, in sparsely settled areas in need of food and shelter at the end of the day, has always been made welcome, whether he was known or unknown. Moreover, there were no questions asked. Famed Virginia hospitality had its roots in this age-old custom, particularly as the early seventeenth-century traveller, often from overseas, could be sheltered nowhere else save at the homes of the planters. Although there were few inns, some taverns and ordinaries by the middle of the century, accommodations were poor and the well-to-do gentlemen preferred the warmth of the planters' hospitable homes to meager public accommodations. Nor was the entertainment of the unexpected guest a one-sided proposition, for visitors broke the daily routine of plantation life, bringing news from beyond and reports of what was happening in other parts of the Colony or overseas. Upon departure, the guest was sped on his way by his host or some member of the family, who accompanied him part way on his journey. In case he came by water, he was bade a final farewell from the planter's wharf. Peter deVries, the Dutch sea-captain and trader, has left some early accounts of hospitality in Virginia. Although he recorded that the Englishmen in Virginia drove a close bargain in trade, and their acumen in that respect could not be surpassed, he was ever warm in praise of their hospitality. On his arrival in Virginia, 1633, he anchored off Newport News and visited there the Gookins. Later, when his ship sailed up the James River, he recorded that he stopped at "Littletown," the plantation of George Menefie, an early Virginia attorney, a prosperous planter and, said deVries, "a great merchant, who kept us to dinner and treated us very well." When young Christopher Calthrope, aged sixteen years, came to Virginia in 1622, George Sandys, Treasurer of the Colony, proffered him the entertainment of his home and offered him his own room to lodge in. Although the young man declined, having other friends, Sandys saw to it that he was adequately cared for in the Colony. The hospitality of Captain Samuel Mathews of "Denbigh" was widely known, even in England, where several, who had visited in Virginia, recorded the welcome they had received at his extensive plantation at the mouth of the Warwick River. In 1648, a writer, who signed himself Beauchamp Plantagenet, recounted his visit to Virginia where, upon arrival at Newport News, a few miles below "Denbigh," he was welcomed at the home of Captain Samuel Mathews and given "free quarter everywhere." Virginia proved a haven to numerous Royalists as previously mentioned. Many who found it expedient to flee from England, about 1649, sought refuge in Virginia. Their coming was often kept secret, but they were accorded a warm welcome. Furthermore, when it was safe to make their presence generally known, they were received into official life in the Colony. Among those who came and received welcome on the Eastern Shore at the home of Stephen Charlton were Colonel Henry Norwood, Major Richard Fox and Major Francis Moryson. Later they joined Colonel Mainwaring Hammond, Sir Henry Chicheley, Sir Thomas Lunsford and Colonel Philip Honeywood at Captain Ralph Wormeley's, on the Rappahannock River, and joined in the "feasting and carousing." [Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Rosegill--Middlesex County The first Ralph Wormeley, who died in 1651, at the early age of thirty-one, cordially welcomed refugee royalists to Rosegill. Sir Henry Chicheley, Deputy Governor, made his home at Rosegill and died here Dec. 1, 1682. In 1686, the second Ralph Wormeley was host to the Frenchman Monsieur Durand of Dauphiné, who sought in the Colony a haven for the Huguenots, his forlorn compatriots.] Governor Berkeley, a staunch Royalist, made the Cavaliers from across the seas particularly welcome, and as Colonel Norwood recorded, "house and purse were open to all such." Incidently, the term _Cavalier_ loosely applied at times to all gentlemen who came to Virginia in the seventeenth century, irrespective of date, was a designation strictly applicable to those of a political party, loyal to the cause of Charles I, and it came into use during the Civil Wars in England nearly thirty-five years after Jamestown was settled. Not only were guests from far-away places accorded the utmost in hospitality and given every indication that they were welcome, but visitors from neighboring plantations were often honored guests and they were ever the first consideration of their host. On 3 August 1658, Henry Perry of "Buckland" in Charles City County had been subpoenaed to appear in Court as a witness. On that day he had guests, so he addressed a polite note to the Court stating that he had a "company of friends" and therefore could not be present to testify as summoned to do. His courteous note was recorded in the County Court records. The custom, occasionally adhered to, in the present time, of laying an extra place at the table for the possible coming of an unexpected guest from near or far, had its American origin in the seventeenth century in Virginia. More often then than now the extra place was filled at meal time. FAMILY TRAVEL Since all the early Virginia plantations, both large and small, were located either on the rivers or their estuaries, travel was almost entirely by sloop for distances, and by shallop or skiff for brief journeys. The families used such craft to attend church, and the planters to attend Court, the Council or sessions of the Assembly. In the latter half of the century, travel by horseback to the centers, or to attend funerals, or to visit friends, if not too far distant, became popular, especially as horses bred in the Colony had multiplied. The more affluent planters owned numerous horses mentioned in wills and, also, in inventories along with bridles, bits, stirrups and saddles. In 1679, the Justices of Warwick County noted that a great number of small horses were running wild on "every man's land" and, in consequence, issued an order requiring that horses be penned, in order that the breed in the County "might not be crossed unfavorably." The same year, young Thomas Harris, son of Major William Harris of Henrico County, bequeathed to "my cousin Richard Ligon all my horses, mares or foals that can be proved to be mine ... they not being given by my grandfather into the hands of the overseers." His grandfather, deceased about 1657, was, prior to that time, in possession of horses as the aforesaid entry shows. Colonel Joseph Bridger, of Isle of Wight County, owned fourteen horses at the time of his death. These are shown in the inventory of his estate entered, 1686. Thomas Cocke of Henrico County, who died in 1696, disposed of a large estate in his will, including his horses. The absence of vehicles, except for a coach, a calash and carts, was due perhaps not so much to cost and the necessity for importing them as to the complete lack of passable roads in the Colony. Cartways, which were the worn and widened Indian trails, over which oxen hauled heavy loads, were the open ways over which travel by land could be undertaken. The bodies of the carts were made in the Colony usually and attached to wheels imported from England. Both the pillion and the side-saddle, the latter an item listed in the inventory of Mrs. Elizabeth Digges, 1692, were used by the women in accompanying the men on journeys. A pillion and a pillion cloth were bequeathed in 1652, by Captain John Upton, of Isle of Wight County, to his stepdaughter. Notwithstanding the almost complete lack of highways, two Virginians are known to have owned vehicles for travel in the seventeenth century. The commission sent over from England to look into conditions which brought about Bacon's Rebellion complained, 1677, that Governor Berkeley had sent them from his plantation "Greenspring" to Jamestown, a distance of three miles, in his coach with the common hangman as a postillion. William Fitzhugh, a well-to-do planter of Stafford County, owned a calash, a sort of a cab imported from England. Those who did not own horses considered it no hardship to walk miles to their destinations. Even so, the horse eventually became indispensable to Virginians of all classes, who became very skilled riders at an early age. Their adeptness in this as well as their knowledge in breeding, training and handling horses passed from generation to generation until the twentieth century. When the automobile supplanted the family surrey, and the network of hard surfaced highways succeeded to the shady, "woodsy," dirt roads, Virginia horses were retired from their long and noteworthy service to Colony and to State. THE FASHIONS The earliest reference to a garment maker in Virginia is a petition entered in the General Court, 1626, through which Alice Boyse, widow, sought to reserve for herself and family indefinitely the services of young Joseph Royall, who had been brought to the colony by her late husband to make apparel for the family and such servants as Boyse retained under him. The costumes of the seventeenth century followed precisely the prevailing styles in England though dress, through necessity, often was less elaborate. Travel, by the colonials back and forth to England, and the arrival of ships ladened with merchandise of all sorts, kept the planters and their wives abreast of the changing modes in dress. There were three major styles in the seventeenth century: the Jacobean, the Puritan and the elaborate dress of the Restoration. These styles when reviewed today seem much too elaborate for a wilderness; however, news, circulated in England about the Colony, gave only encouraging accounts of an opulent land; thus, the men and women, who came, brought with them the essentials for a normal home life, and dress was an important aspect of ordinary living in England. Nevertheless, the authorities in Virginia took cognizance of the emphasis on dress, and, in order to encourage expenditures for necessities rather than the luxuries in clothing, the Assembly of 1619 enacted a provision taxing an unmarried man according to his apparel, and a married man according to the clothing possessed by himself and members of his family. [Illustration: Photo by Thomas L. Williams through courtesy of the Jamestown Corporation, Inc. A Lady of Fashion Garbed in a costume typical of the early seventeenth century a lady of fashion displays jewels similar to those brought to Virginia by well-to-do merchants.] During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, men wore less elaborate costumes than the puffed, slashed modes of the Renaissance. The breeches were loose but covered the knee where they were fastened with buttons or a sash of ribbon, which often also decorated the instep of the high-heeled shoe. The doublet had fewer slashes and more padding. A stiff beaver hat, decorated with a white plume, rested on the head, with locks falling around the neck and often over the shoulders. The women as well as the men discarded the huge ruff, replacing it with a flaring collar known as the "falling band." The bodices of the women remained cylindrical in shape with sleeves tight from shoulder to elbow, falling loosely to the wrist where they were often finished with turned back cuffs. The farthingale gave way to the skirt, open from waist to hem in front, to show an elaborate petticoat. Both skirts were short enough to expose the instep and rosette or buckle on the shoe. The women forsook the caps formerly in vogue and adopted also the stiff beaver hats with feathers. [Illustration: Photo by Thomas L. Williams through courtesy of the Jamestown Corporation, Inc. A Gay Mood A young girl displays a seventeenth-century costume with full skirt, cylindrical bodice and falling band (large loose collar).] With the coming of Charles I to the throne, decorative features were added to the fashions. Colored ribbons, displayed in bunches at the knees, on doublets and as ties to hold back flowing locks, came into vogue along with flaring boots elaborately trimmed on the inner side of the flare, which was turned back. The women's costumes also underwent similar elaborations. Gloves appeared, also muffs, and the long circular cape was used as a wrap. The severity of the regime, as established under the Commonwealth, 1649, was reflected in the dress of both men and women when all finery was discarded. Fabrics became somber in color and unpretentious in texture. Men had their locks shorn close to the head, and women returned to the simple caps or hoods, which held the hair close to the head. Virginia authorities took cognizance of England's turn towards simplicity in dress, and enacted a law prohibiting the introduction of clothing containing silk, or of silk goods in pieces, except for scarfs, silver and gold lace or ribbons interwoven with silver or gold. The law further provided for confiscation of silk articles brought into the colony against the law. [Illustration: Photo by Thomas L. Williams through courtesy of the Jamestown Corporation, Inc. A Virginia artisan, in the costume of the early seventeenth century, views a woodland scene in the Jamestown area.] After ten years of this severity in dress, the populace in Virginia was ready for the change, which Charles II brought to England with his restoration as monarch. Having spent his exile in France at the brilliant court of Louis XIV, he brought with him, on his return to England, fashions which the colonials sought to adopt, although they were restricted somewhat because of the limited importations of silks and satins, elaborate colored ribbons, fine linen, beruffled shirts, and jeweled garters for the men. The antecedent of the present-day coat worn by men was introduced in England by Charles II, having been patterned after a Persian coat brought to his attention. This coat, straight and collarless, was buttoned from neck to knees where it ended. The close sleeves were short, and finished with a deep turned back cuff, below which extended the lace ruffles of the shirt sleeve. In cold weather, a greatcoat of frieze (a shaggy-piled woolen fabric) was worn over the costume. As the century wore on, women's dress became increasingly elaborate also. The skirts were looped high at the sides over trailing petticoats, the fronts of which were covered with fancy aprons of silk, linen or lace. The bodice was usually laced across the front with ribbons. Red-heeled shoes added a note of interest to milady's outfit. Children's dress was patterned identically after that of their elders and, as may be imagined, very little freedom of movement was afforded. The inventory of Philip Felgate, Gentleman, of Lower Norfolk County, entered on the records, 1646, shows that some of the more elegant styling in dress had been brought to the Colony at that time. He possessed a black cloth suit, two buff suits and a buff doublet, a short cloth coat and a coat of squirrel skins. To complete his costume there were two pairs of silk stockings, a pair of silk stirrup hose and black silk garters, five pairs of shoes, a beaver hat, a silver hatband. Evidently, Felgate was of the military service, for he had brought with him, to the colonies, a suit of black armor with a headpiece of white armor and a sword with a gold hilt. He owned also a musket and a rest for it, and was outfitted with a "suite of bandoleers," the latter, seldom listed in inventories, was a belt arrangement with loops, usually twelve, in which were fitted small pierced metal cases for carrying the slow matches (actually fuses), by which the charge for firing the gun was ignited. Three Monmouth caps, customarily worn by soldiers and sailors of the period, were among his possessions. Major Croshaw's stepdaughter, upon the eve of departure from England, 1661, for Virginia, had been furnished with a scarf, a white sarcenet and a ducape hood, a white flannel petticoat, two green aprons, three pairs of gloves, along with a riding-scarf, a mask and a pair of shoes. Mrs. Sarah Willoughby of Lower Norfolk County, who died 1673, left a wardrobe valued at 14 pounds, 19 shillings. It included five petticoats, a red silk, a blue silk and a black silk, another of India silk and worsted prunella and a fifth of linen and calico. Also, the lady left a black silk gown, a scarlet waistcoat, a sky-colored satin bodice, a pair of red paragon bodices, a worsted mantle, two hoods, a striped-stuff jacket, seven handkerchiefs, six aprons, three of fine and three of coarse Holland. Daniel Hopkinson, merchant, who died in Virginia, 1636, bequeathed to relatives and friends beaver hats, which had become very much the vogue during the reign of James I. Similarly, Robert Nickolson of London, who died on a voyage to Virginia, bequeathed to relatives in the Colony and to several of his associates, kid gloves, buckskin gloves and cordovan gloves. In the seventeenth century clothes were not discarded as they are today for the garments, particularly for "Sunday wear" were carefully made. The more affluent planters had clothes made in England, William Fitzhugh having ordered from London, 1697, two suits, one for winter and one for summer. It was not uncommon to find clothing bequeathed in wills. In 1676, James Crewes, ill-fated associate of Nathaniel Bacon in the Rebellion, bequeathed to young Daniel Llewellyn, his "best suit and coat." JEWELRY The reader may wonder when and where jewels could be worn in seventeenth-century Virginia when, even at the close of the century, there were no centers, other than church at which a lady might attend to display her ornaments. Yet, the feminine frailty to covet the beautiful, whether in gems, in fine household furnishings, linens or silver, was perhaps even stronger than it is today. Possession of jewels was a mark of distinction, and, even though the precious baubles could be shown at functions but rarely, there was satisfaction in ownership and compensation in the admiration they elicited when worn. The colonials possessed a great deal more jewelry than might be imagined. The opulence of the English merchants, trading in all parts of the world, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, had enabled many to invest their surpluses in jewels, which fluctuated less than the unsteady values in the media of exchange, and, therefore, were an investment rarely decreasing in value. Moreover, jewels could be transported more readily than either gold or silver and, since the goldsmiths in England and Holland were the early bankers, they often advised their customers, particularly those about to embark upon a voyage to Virginia, to invest their profits in gems, easy to carry, not likely to fluctuate and always desirable. The unusual purposes, to which jewels might be put, is recounted in a record of the sale of Mrs. Moseley's jewels to Colonel Francis Yeardley, who desired them as a gift to his wife, Sarah (Offley), widow successively of John Gookin and Adam Thoroughgood. William Moseley, his wife Susan and two sons Arthur and William arrived in Virginia, 1649, from Holland and settled in Lower Norfolk County. By reason of the family's "great want of cattle," Mrs. Moseley, the following year, sold some of her jewels: a gold hat band enameled and set with diamonds, a jewel of gold (probably a pendant) enameled and set with diamonds, and a diamond ring. In a letter to the purchaser, she stated that they were genuine, having been examined by a goldsmith in The Hague, and were worth £11 4_s._ In exchange, the Moseleys received five cows and four oxen. Having still in her possession a ruby ring, a sapphire and an emerald ring, Mrs. Moseley could be gracious in parting with her gems and wrote Colonel Yeardley, she had rather his wife wear them than any gentlewoman she yet knew in the country, and wished her "health and prosperity" in her display of them. At the same time, Mrs. Sarah Yeardley, the daughter of a well-to-do English merchant, and the spouse successively of three prosperous husbands, possessed other jewels. Her will dated, 1657, directed that her "_best_ diamond necklace and jewell" should be sent to England to purchase six diamond rings and two black tombstones, the latter to be placed over her grave and that of her second husband, at the churchyard at Lynnhaven. Since all things ornamental were under a ban during the Commonwealth in England, it is not surprising that Mrs. Yeardley's necklace did not bring even the price of the two tombstones, which cost £19 7_s._, while the diamond ornament brought only £15. Yet, the tombstones, the inscriptions on which are extant, have left to posterity a permanent record of Mrs. Yeardley and her three husbands. After all, values are relative, and could Mrs. Sarah (Offley-Thoroughgood-Gookin) Yeardley view today the position she enjoys in the romance of Virginia's seventeenth century, she likely would not regret having traded diamonds for tombstones. One of the earliest records of jewelry in Virginia is in the will of Mrs. Elizabeth Draper of London, dated 1625, in which she bequeathed to her granddaughters, Elizabeth and Mary Peirsey, daughters of the cape-merchant Abraham Peirsey, each, a diamond ring, Mary's set "after the Dutch fashion." Arthur Smith I of Isle of Wight County made a bequest, 1645, of his "seal ring of gold," to his son Thomas. This much worn ring has passed from generation to generation, and remains today in possession of a descendent in the county in which the testator died. He also bequeathed mourning rings to the overseers of his will. Such bequests, as the latter, were frequently made and were inscribed, or carried a locket in which hair or some other memento could be placed. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges' inventory listed among her possessions: eight gold mourning rings, probably bequeathed to her by deceased relatives, a diamond ring, a small stone ring, a parcel of sea-pearls and a bodkin, the latter an ornamental hairpin. In 1651, Robert Nickolson of London, merchant, dying on a voyage to Virginia, made en route a will with numerous bequests, among them, a diamond ring and a gold ring to Mistress Beheathland Bernard, daughter of Mrs. Mary Bernard and granddaughter of Robert Beheathland, who had come to Virginia with the first settlers in 1607. In 1673, Mrs. Amory Butler, nee Elizabeth Underwood (Taylor-Slaughter-Catlett) left to legatees a collection of jewelry probably assembled, in part, during her four ventures in matrimony. These jewels included her wedding ring--to which husband is not known--two big stone rings, a blue enameled ring, two mourning rings, a small diamond ring and a large diamond ring, a small pearl necklace and a necklace with large pearls, a silver bodkin and a gilded bodkin, a pair of silver buttons, and a pair of silver buckles. The year following, Mrs. Rose Gerrard, widow, of Westmoreland County, made several gifts to her eldest daughter, Sarah, wife of William Fitzhugh, and among them were "one necklace of pearls." Colonel Thomas Pitt, of Isle of Wight County, had the forethought, before he died in 1687, to leave to his wife her wedding ring along with her wearing apparel, and also title to her two diamond rings, an enameled ring, and a necklace of pearls. These items, otherwise, could have been accounted in his estate for division among heirs, for the law gave a woman no title to her possessions during the life of husband. Colonel Bridger also left to his wife, 1683, all "her apparel, rings and jewels." Although clocks are listed in seventeenth century inventories, one of the earliest mentions of a watch was in 1697, when Richard Aubrey of Essex County, bequeathed two silver seals and his "pendilum watch." FESTIVITIES, RECREATION AND SPORTS That Christmas was an occasion to be enjoyed, both with comfort and merriment in the Colony, is indicated in an account, recorded in 1608, when a group of the first settlers in two ships undertook to visit Powhatan at his seat Werowocomoco on the Pamunkey (York) River. Setting sail from Jamestown they encountered rough weather and were forced to put in at Kecoughtan (now Hampton), where they spent Christmas with the Indians. Their scribes recorded that they were "never more merry, nor never had better fires in England than in the dry, warm, smoky houses of Kecoughtan." [Illustration: Drawing by the late Bessie Barclay, based on a study of the original John White drawings made in 1653 and now in the British Museum. Through courtesy of the _Daily Press_, Newport News. Christmas at Kecoughtan 1608 A group of colonists from Jamestown bound for Powhatan's seat on the York River put in at Kecoughtan after encountering adverse weather. There they spent Christmas with the Indians who entertained them in the native arched bark-house with feasting and a tribal dance.] Christmas in the seventeenth century was celebrated on the day known to the present as "Old Christmas," that is the sixth of January. The dry, smoky houses of the Indians were long, arched structures with a framework of bent saplings, over which was secured a close covering of bark, while the roof was covered with mats or reeds. A fire built in the middle of the habitation, with smoke curling through an opening above, afforded both warmth and fuel for cooking. Mats and skins, hung at the entrance and exit, kept in the heat and also some of the smoke, but shut out the rough weather. Several families slept, ate and carried on their indoor activities in these ample shelters. And, here, it was that the colonists, with only the Indian maids to provide feminine company, celebrated the first Christmas, of which there is a record in the new world. After the feasting and the passing of the pipes, as a token of friendship, there was probably a customary Indian oration of welcome. Then, the Indian dancers appeared with their rattles, and beating time to the tom-toms with their feet, they gestured wildly with their arms. As a participant became weary, another took his place and this exhibition, first stimulating in its activity, then soothing in its cadence, carried far into the night, as, one by one, the audience of white men and natives drifted off to the hurdles that served as beds, and to sleep. When the weather broke, and before the colonists resumed their journey, they likely were entertained by their hosts in a deer-hunt staged according to the Indian custom. Several Indian runners left, early in the morning, to drive up the deer and herd them on a narrow peninsula, of which there are many between the James and the York Rivers and elsewhere in Tidewater Virginia. Canoes, with native hunters and their white men guests, awaited in the waters nearby, and when the drivers, pursuing the deer, forced them into the water, the frightened animals were slaughtered in numbers. Ladened with the spoils, hosts and guests returned to the bark houses to cook and feast upon their game. Firearms played an important part in all celebrations in the seventeenth century as every planter possessed one or more "pieces" which were used to give dash to the frolics. A proclamation, issued in 1627, warns against "spending powder at meetings, drinkings, marriages and entertainments." Thus, it is certain that the colonists were wont to assemble and celebrate as occasions warranted. One of the most colorful of these occasions took place at Middle Plantation (later Williamsburg) in 1677; Sir Herbert Jeffreys, having been sent over with 1000 English soldiers to look into the state of affairs in Virginia and to put an end to the Rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon, found Bacon dead and the Rebellion over. Shortly thereafter, Governor Sir William Berkeley, who had caused so much grief by hanging Bacon's chief associates, was summoned back to England, whereupon Jeffreys ordered a celebration. The King's birthday provided the occasion which he promoted, not only to honor the Sovereign but to assemble the people, to heal the wounds and promote peace with the Indians. Not only the colonists and the English troops gathered, but all the leading Indian chieftains and queens of Tidewater and their retinues were invited, and attended in ceremonial regalia. That there was not only formal recognition of the important day, but much firing of arms, drinking and hilarity on the side may be certain. The planters of the Northern Neck, living in widely separated plantations, took steps in 1670, to bring together the families and promote sociability in the section. An agreement was entered into by Mr. Corbin, Mr. Gerrard, Mr. Lee and Mr. Allerton to build a banqueting house "for the continuance of a good neighborhood." Each man or his heirs in turn then would make "an honorable treatment fit to entertain the undertakers thereof, their wives, mistresses and friends, yearly and every year." This appears to be the antecedent of the modern country club. In hunting, fishing, and fowling there was always ample out-of-door recreation at hand. In addition to the deer-hunts, there were often bear-hunts, and 'possum and 'coon-hunts were popular nighttime sports. On the latter occasions a party of men set out, preferably on a moonlight night, with their dogs. Having entered the woods, the dogs shortly took up the trail of their intended victim, while the men on foot followed the yelping dogs through the rough terrain. Finally the exhausted animal was "treed" and there the sport reached a climax. If the dogs were unable to reach their victim the tree was hastily felled, whereupon the pack of dogs made short work of the creature. In case the 'possum sought refuge in a hollow log, he was smoked out and the end was the same. There was less excitement in hunting rabbits and squirrels, and the pursuit of the fox had certainly not attained in the seventeenth century the social status that it enjoys in sections of Virginia today. In fishing, many of the colonists acquired from the natives a skill in spearing fish, though netting them was far more general in the Colony. Horse-racing as a regular sport was inaugurated in the latter half of the seventeenth century, although it does not appear that horses were bred and kept especially for racing in that period as they were during the eighteenth century. At the "race-paths" at "Malvern Hill," the Cocke plantation in Henrico, running the quarter of a mile was a popular contest. Elsewhere, similar races were engaged in. In 1674, James Bullock, a tailor, was fined 100 pounds of tobacco in York County for racing his horse against Mr. Mathew Slader's horse, the decree reciting that it was "contrary to law for a laborer to make a race, being a sport only for gentlemen." Yet, Mr. Slader's intent to cheat at the race brought him a sentence of an "hour in the stocks." On 10 May, 1676, Samuel Morris aged 27 years, deposed in Court about a horse-race run at Rappahannock Church. Richard Ligon, to whom his cousin Thomas Harris bequeathed his "mares and foals" in 1679, was one of the racing enthusiasts of the Colony. He engaged in a horse-race and a controversy over it in 1678, and the following year he ran his horse against that of Alexander Womack, the wager being 300 pounds of tobacco. In 1683, Andrew Martin and Edward Hatcher put their horses in a contest in which the loser's horse was the stake to be won. The colonists often were quarrelsome over their racing, and not infrequently, bets on horses were put in writing and recorded in the County records, that there might be no mistake in regard to the terms. These races elicited a great deal of interest on the part of the people in the countryside where they were staged. For active recreation, bowling and tenpins; and card games of various sorts were engaged in, often at the ordinaries, and, since wagers on the games of which there are a record, were usual, they will be dealt with elsewhere. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Although existing records do not convey information, as to the part music played in the life of the Virginia planter of the seventeenth century, they do provide clues that music was enjoyed, and that a number of instruments were in the colony. Josias Modé, host at the French Ordinary in York County, whose widow, before 1679, married Charles Hansford, of York, owned two violins. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that guests at his hostelry were frequently entertained with music from that instrument. The virginal (a small rectangular spinet without legs) was the most common of instruments known to have been in possession of the colonists, while they also owned and played the fiddle, both small and large, the cornet, the recorder (a flageolet or old type of flute), the flute and the hautboy. These instruments in the hands of music lovers, frequently self-taught for the most part, entertained the planters' families and enlivened gatherings assembled for weddings and birthday celebrations. The hand lyre also was known in Virginia. DRINKING HABITS In their drinking habits the Englishmen in Virginia were no different from the Englishmen "at home." Accustomed to the use of "strong waters," they brought their tastes and their habits to the Colony. Hence, it is not surprising that the idea arose in England that the excessive sickness in Virginia was due to the substitution of water for beer in Virginia. This notion may have had substance at the time, since there were no sanitary precautions in the area of the shallow wells at Jamestown. Polluted water, no doubt, contributed to the prevalent sickness in the summer months, whereas the fermented and distilled waters disposed of impurities before they were ready for consumption and, thus, assured to imbibers a degree of safety from germ-bred diseases. As early as 1609, the Virginia Company advertised for two brewers available to go to Virginia, and, in plans for the third and largest expedition sent under Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers in 1609, provision was made to include experienced men, so that malt liquors could be brewed in the Colony and thus, the necessity of crowding the ships with such supplies generally in demand, could be avoided. Prior to 1625, two brewhouses were being operated in Virginia, and twenty years later there were six. Also, the Virginia Assembly recommended that all immigrants should bring in their own supply of malt to be used in brewing, thus avoiding the use of drinking water, at least until they had become accustomed to the climate. At the same time, various products in the colony were found adaptable for producing drinks--persimmons for beer, sassafras for wine, and both barley and Indian corn were cultivated for brewing purposes. Many of the planters developed their own facilities of one kind or another. Colonel Bridger had a malt-mill, and John Fisher a still. Cider was the established drink for family use and, as is known, gathered a good deal of strength as it aged. In addition, as trade between the Colony and the West Indies became brisk, quantities of rum (made from molasses) was brought in from that source. It became a common drink, was distributed especially for the use of servants, and was generally available in taverns, as was brandy distilled from peaches and apples. The well-to-do planters were able to purchase the imported liquors and wines of a finer grade, sack and "aquavite" being the most popular in the early part of the century, while later, madeira, claret, and Rhenish wine became available. Some of the finest wines were to be had at the taverns, including sherry, malaga, canary, and claret. At meetings of public bodies, a supply of liquor was always provided for, ahead of time; Charles Hansford, of York County, agreed, in 1677, to supply the Justices meeting at the leased home of his deceased brother, a gallon of brandy at each session of the Court. One of the duties of the Auditor General of Virginia was to arrange for the supply of wines and liquors, which the august body of the Governor's Council of State expected to be on hand, while they were in session. While William Byrd I held that office, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, he ordered for their use, twenty dozen bottles of claret, six dozen of canary, sherry, and Rhenish wines, and a quarter of a cask of brandy. Excessive use of liquors became the concern of the first Assembly sitting in 1619, who ordered that persons guilty of a first offense be privately reproved by the minister. In 1624, the churchwardens of every parish were ordered to report to the Commander of the plantations, in which the Parish lay, all persons who had imbibed too freely. By 1632, a fine of five shillings was set to discourage intoxication, and by the middle of the century, heavier fines were imposed. The colonists were aware of the excessive use of liquor, particularly in gatherings. The will, of Edmund Watts of York County, dated 20 February 1675, forbade the serving of drinks at his funeral, the testator reciting that, inasmuch as he had observed "the debauched drinking used at burials, tending to the dishonor of God and religion, my will is that no strong drink be provided or spent at my burial." In 1676, while Nathaniel Bacon held sway in the colony, efforts were made to suppress many long-standing abuses, among them, excessive drinking encouraged by the many taverns and ordinaries in existence. Laws were enacted, at that time, revoking the licenses of all inns, alehouses and drinking establishments, except those at James City, and two at the ferries on the York River, where only beer and cider could be sold. This was the first recorded attempt at prohibition in Virginia. After the Rebellion was over, the enactment was modified, permitting the operation of two ordinaries in each county. Jamestown, the seat of government, was excepted from the limitation. THE MINT JULEP Just when the famous drink of the Virginia gentleman, the mint julep, was first mixed is not known, but the Colony possessed all the requisites during the seventeenth century. As heretofore mentioned, there was an ice house at Jamestown about the middle of the century. The fragrant mint grown in the planters' gardens, along with other herbs, has been known from time immemorial for its cooling refreshment, especially on a hot summer day. Brewed in a tea, mint was used both for a drink and, as a medicine, to induce mild perspiration and so bring down fever. The leaves, at times, made into a poultice, soothed inflammation. Added to "strong waters" and ice, the mint with its delicate flavor, its cooling, soothing qualities, made the perfect drink for Virginia gentlemen during the humid midsummer. It was a favorite all-year-around, and three times a day. A julep before breakfast was usual, and grew into a custom, which lingered into the early twentieth century, in areas where the plantation manners persisted. Although pewter was in general use for tableware during the period, glass was made in the colony, as early as 1609, and imported glasses not infrequently are mentioned in inventories. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges, of the "E D Plantation" in York County, left an estate in 1691 that included both earthenware and glasses. With all the requisites at hand, it seems probable that the mint julep had its origin in the latter half of the century. If there was a company of friends, chilling the glasses ahead probably fell to a servant, who also was trained in the art of crushing the mint leaves with a bit of sugar, in each glass. Into this, at the proper moment was added the crushed ice to the brim and, as a jigger or two of liquor flowed over the ingredients, the glasses frosted and were topped with a sprig of mint. The pleasantness of the drink was not deemed its single virtue, for there was a very sincere belief in the efficacy of this refreshment in the promotion of good health and, particularly, in warding off the current fevers that plagued the lowlands. GAMING The inherent human trait of taking a chance for possible gain led the colonists to amuse themselves at games and sports, in which they invariably added a wager to lend zest to the occasion. This practice, generally prevalent in England, quite naturally was extended to the Colony, as the English established themselves with all their customs and habits in the new land. Betting was general at games and in sports, including horse-racing, heretofore dealt with, and cockfights. Efforts to halt gambling apparently had little effect as most of it was carried on semi-privately. However, in 1646, Richard Smyth and John Bradshaw were fined 100 pounds of tobacco in Lower Norfolk County for "unlawful gaming at cards." Unfortunately, knowledge of games played in the seventeenth century is available largely through the bets placed and subsequent accounts of these in the Court records. Doubtless many games were played among families on the plantations, as they are today, among friends, without wagers, but there was no occasion to record them. Thus, the fact predominates that cards, dice and ninepins were generally sources of amusement--for stakes. Playing ninepins at the ordinary was part of the gentleman's day, when he came to the centers in the Colony, where these public places were established in numbers, after the middle of the century. At Varina, in Henrico County, Richard Cocke of "Bremo" operated the ferry and also the ordinary there, where in 1681, his nephew young Thomas Cocke, Jr. is recorded as having been playing at ninepins for stakes with Richard Rathbone and Robert Sharpe. In 1685, in Henrico also, possibly at the ordinary, Giles Carter won 500 pounds of tobacco at dice from Charles Stewart. A card game called "putt" (put) and a game known as cross and pile (probably similar to "heads and tails") also were the media for bets, the bets no doubt affording the main interest in the game. Luke Thornton and Peter Evans of Richmond County, "having agreed to play at cards at the game of 'putt'," had their arrangements with one another recorded, 7 February 1695, together with the consideration stipulated for the winner. The records do not reveal the outcome of the game nor any provision for enforcing by law the terms agreed upon. Nevertheless, the likelihood is that the winner collected, for, otherwise, the loser could be held up to public scorn. FUNERAL CUSTOMS When Abraham Peirsey, affluent cape-merchant, directed in his will, 1628, that he be buried "without any pomp or vainglory," he probably was protesting the tendency towards elaborate funerals, even in the early days of the Colony. It is not known whether or not his wishes in this respect were carried out; however, he was, no doubt, buried in his garden near his new frame house, as he requested. On the other hand, Daniel Hopkinson, English merchant, who died on a voyage to Virginia, requested that he be "decently" buried at the Kecoughtan (Hampton) church, in accordance with the customs prevailing in the area. The amount spent on his funeral is an item in the accounts of the _Tristram and Jane_, on which he had crossed the seas as supercargo. Arthur Smith of Isle of Wight County, in his will dated 1645, directed that he be "buried by my late beloved wife," and Richard Cocke, of "Bremo" on the lower James River, requested in his will, dated 1665, that he be "interred in the orchard near my first wife." Doubtless, the second wife, mother of several of his younger children, carried out her husband's wishes and permitted her deceased mate whatever comfort there might be in the forethought of resting in the cold, dark ground beside the lovely lady he had first chosen to be his bride. [Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Windsor Castle--Isle of Wight County This home is located on a portion of the original grant of 1450 acres to Arthur Smith I, who came to the Colony in 1622. The town of Smithfield was laid out in 1752 by his great-grandson Arthur Smith IV, to whom the General Assembly granted permission to partition off seventy-five acres of his entailed estate.] At every plantation there was a family burying ground, not far distant from the house, and usually in or near the garden, where the blossoms carefully nurtured, brightened the last resting places of deceased members of the family. The plantation burying-ground originated through necessity rather than in sentiment. In the seventeenth century a real problem would have been posed by any attempt to transport the deceased and the funeral procession to the distant churchyard. The Swann family, living across from Jamestown at "Swann's Point," buried deceased members on the plantation and, for almost three centuries, their graves could be identified. The Travis family living on Jamestown Island and near the church there, nevertheless, interred their dead in the family burying-ground at the lower end of the island, and some of the later marked graves may still be identified. Markers in the Jamestown church, some over unknown graves, indicate the practice of burying persons, probably those of importance, within the church, as was often done in England. The Knight's tomb in the Jamestown churchyard is believed to be that of Sir George Yeardley, appointed Governor of Virginia, 1618, and deceased, 1627. Colonel John Page, who gave the land on which Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg is built, was buried in its churchyard, as were his wife and son Francis. The stone, placed in memory of Colonel Page, was later removed and placed within the Church. While funerals in seventeenth-century Virginia were solemn occasions, there was an inescapable social aspect to the gatherings of family and friends, who assembled from the countryside, both to comfort the bereaved and attend the departed on his last journey. When a planter or a member of his family died, messengers were sent out at once by sloop or shallop up and down the rivers or later, overland, on horseback. If the family bore arms, the hatchment, emblazoned with this emblem, was hung upon the door. Incidentally, the only known hatchment, that has survived in Virginia, is in possession of the Carter family at "Shirley" in Charles City County. At once, preparations were begun to accommodate the relatives and friends who were sure to assemble for the last rites. Coming from a distance, they would be hungry upon arrival, and not only was a great amount of food prepared but the cellar was explored for its contents of drink, which the company expected to be brought forth. Occasionally, a man, in making his will, directed what should be spent for the "funeral meats" and drink, although Edmund Watts of York County, in 1675, forbade the serving of drinks at his funeral. At the final rites for John Smalcomb in 1645, the company consumed a steer and a barrel of strong beer, the cost of which amounted to 960 pounds of tobacco, while the coffin cost only 250 pounds. The gathering assembled in 1678, for the funeral of Mrs. Elizabeth (Worsham) Epes, widow successively of William Worsham and Francis Epes of Henrico County, consumed a steer, three sheep, five gallons of wine, two gallons of brandy, ten pounds of butter and eight pounds of sugar. The firing of guns was accepted as a regular feature of a funeral, and at the Smalcomb rites the powder spent amounted to twenty-four pounds of tobacco. In order to curb the waste of ammunition at entertainments, the Assembly, in 1655, passed an act forbidding its use on occasions except at "marriages and funerals." In addition to expenditures as aforesaid and for the coffin, the latter usually made by some local carpenter, there were costs for notifying the countryside, costs for mourning bands, sitting up with the corpse, and the fee for the funeral sermon. If burial was in the churchyard, there was the cost of digging and filling the grave. The cost of a winding sheet of Holland (coarse unbleached linen), in 1652, was 100 pounds of tobacco. The cost of the funeral sermon in two instances in York County in 1667, was two pounds sterling each and in 1690, five pounds sterling. As there were no undertakers, the laying out of the corpse was a tender ministration for which some close friend of the family volunteered. The technique for this service was passed from generation to generation and only in comparatively recent years has that custom been abandoned altogether. The company of relatives and friends, who gathered for the funeral occasion, remained for several days and were, of course, fed and housed at the expense of the deceased's estate. The law required that servants be buried in public cemeteries established for the purpose. This decree issued in the seventeenth century followed several scandals, occasioned by private funerals of deceased servants. In order to remove all possibility of suspicion, prior to burial, several neighbors were summoned to view the corpse, if death occurred under extraordinary circumstances, and to accompany the body to the grave. That such precautions were taken as early as 1629, so that possible murder would not go undetected, is shown in testimony before the General Court at Jamestown after the newly-born bastard child of a servant girl was found dead. Several persons were called as witnesses, and when evidence was produced that the child might have been born alive, the serving maid's master was required to give bond for her appearance at a higher court. TOMBSTONES The well-to-do planters or their families invariably saw that appropriate tombstones with proper inscriptions--lengthy ones, characteristic of the day--were duly placed. Some of these stones remain with barely legible inscriptions; others, the inscriptions on which, fortunately, were copied in a past era, have disappeared altogether. The oldest tombstone in Virginia with a legible inscription is that of Mrs. Alice Jordan at "Four Mile Tree" in Surry County. The inscription, reciting that she was the wife of George Jordan, gives praise in verse to her virtues. [Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Four Mile Tree--Surry County A seventeenth-century home was the basis for this present structure located on a portion of a 2250 acre grant to Henry Browne in 1637. The estate remained in the family for two hundred years. In the adjacent graveyard may be seen the oldest tomb in Virginia with a legible inscription, that of Alice (Miles) Jordan, who died in 1650.] Tombstones in the seventeenth century were real memorials, often giving parentage of the deceased, the name of wife or husband and the number of children. Furthermore, there was, as aforesaid, a eulogy of the deceased and, for men, an account of public service rendered. With a great deal of pride in family background, those Englishmen in Virginia, whose families were entitled to bear arms, invariably had these cut upon the stones along with the lengthy inscriptions. The stones were ordered from England. As previously mentioned, Mrs. Sarah Yeardley, in 1657, directed that her executor sell her jewels and purchase in England stones for herself and her second husband. Her son, by the first husband, Adam Thoroughgood II of Lower Norfolk County, was equally zealous that proper memorials be placed and directed his executrix (wife), in his will, dated 1679, to have his body interred in the Church at Lynnhaven, and "cause a tombstone of marble to be sent for, with coat of arms of Sir George Yeardley [his wife's father] and myself." Unfortunately, these tombs together with the site of the old Lynnhaven Church, have been washed beneath the waters of Lynnhaven Bay. The tombstones bearing coats of arms of George Read deceased, 1671 and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Nicolas Martiau, uncovered during excavations at Yorktown in 1931 were removed to the graveyard surrounding Christ Church. The inscriptions, badly worn, were recut with information then in hand; however, the dates since have been found to be slightly in error. The tombstone of William Cole II, Secretary of State for the Colony, 1690, erected after his death, 1694, at "Bolthrope," bore the Cole coat of arms, accompanied by a lengthy inscription, reciting in part that the deceased was "unspotted on the bench, untainted at the bar." Unfortunately, when the graveyard lay neglected for many years and overgrown with vines, other ancient stones, placed there, were broken and portions of them, from time to time, carried away by fishermen to be used as mooring stones for their boats. Theodorick Bland, deceased, 1671, was buried in the old churchyard now adjacent to the garden at "Westover." The inscription in Latin on his tombstone recites that it was erected "by his most disconsolate widow, a daughter of Richard Bennett Esq." Lewis Burwell, deceased 1653, was buried at his plantation, "Fairfield," in Gloucester County, and the tombstone erected to his memory, bearing arms, recited that he was descended from the ancient family of Burwell of Bedford and Northampton, England. The tomb of Alice (Lukin) Page, wife of Colonel John Page, stands facing the west entrance to Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg and is unique in that it bears the Lukin arms alone, indicating that the deceased was the sole heir of her father and thus entitled to his arms. Otherwise, the arms cut upon her stone would have been quartered with those of her husband. The inscription on the tombstone of Edward Digges, buried on the "E D Plantation" (later, "Bellefield"), 1676, recited that he was the father of six sons and seven daughters. The broken tomb of Major Miles Cary I in a secluded spot in the area of his former plantation, "Windmill Point," in Warwick, was restored some years ago. The inscription relates, in part, that he was killed by the Dutch, during a foray which they made into Hampton Roads in 1667. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bruce, Philip A. _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ New York, Macmillan, 1895. 2 vols. Hening, W. W. _Statutes at Large of Virginia, 1619-1792._ 13 vols. Jester, Annie Lash, and Martha Woodroof Hiden. _Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1625._ Printed by Princeton University Press. 1956. Smith, John. _Travels and Works._ Edited by Edward Arber. Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Edinburgh, 1910. 2 vols. Stanard, Mary N. _The Story of Virginia's First Century._ Philadelphia. 1928. Strachey, William. _The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britannia._ Edited by Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund. London. 1953. Virginia, Colony. _Council and General Court Minutes, 1622-32, 1670-1676._ Edited by H. R. McIlwaine. Richmond. 1924. _Virginia Company of London._ _Records._ Edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury. Washington, 1906-1935. 4 vols. Virginia County Court Records. Manuscript volumes in Archives Division, Virginia State Library, _passim._ INDEX Accawmack, 19 Allen, Arthur, 24; John, 30 Allerton, Mr., 70 _America_, 20 _Anne and Mary_, 41 Apooke (tobacco), 5 Appomattox River, 19 Archer's Hope, 22 Armor, 16, 64 Arms, 16, 33, 38, 55, 64; _see also_ Firearms Artisans, 29, 30, 50, 51 Assembly 1619, 61 Atkins, John, 55 Aubrey, Richard, 68 Back River, 19; Northwest Branch of, 19 Bacon, Nathaniel, 65, 69, 74 "Bacon's Castle," 24 Bacon's Rebellion, 24, 35, 46, 60, 69, 70, 75 Bandoleers, 17, 64 Barker, William, 20 Bates, John, 28 Bathing facilities, 55 Bayly, Mary, 48 Beds and bedding, 27, 33, 37, 40, 53, 54 Beheathland, Dorothy, 9; Mary, 9; Robert, 9, 67 "Bellefield," 82; _see also_ "E D Plantation" Bennett, Edward, 48; Richard, 23, 82 Berkeley, Governor Sir William, 11, 23, 35, 46, 58, 60, 69 Berkeley Hundred, 11; settlement of, 12-14 Bermuda Islands, 4, 6, 30 Bernard, Mistress Beheathland, 67; Mrs. Mary, 67; Captain Thomas, 22 Biggs, Richard, 8 Blakeney, Norfolk, England, 31 Bland, Giles, 46; John, 46; Mrs. Sarah, 45, 46; Theodorick, 46, 82 Blaney's, Mr., 16 _Blessing_, 6 Blount, Humphrey, 26 Blount Point, 23 Boats: barks, shallops, skiffs, sloops, 17, 36, 59, 79 "Bolthrope," 42, 81 Boyse, Alice, 61 Bradshaw, John, 76 Branch, Benjamin, 24 Bray, Arthur of London, 43 "Bremo," 77, 78 Brew houses, 73 Brick, earliest mention of, 7, 21 Bridger, Elizabeth, 41; Hester (Pitt), 35, 45; Colonel Joseph, 34-41, 45, 55, 60, 68, 73; Joseph Jr., 35; Martha 41; Mary, 41 British Public Record Office, 15 Brocas, Captain, 23 Bruton Parish Church, 78, 82 Buck, Rev. Richard, 4, 20, 49 "Buckland," 59 Bullock, James, 71 Burden, Mary, 43 Burras, Ann, 1 Burwell, Lewis, 82 Bush, John, 16, 21 Butler, Mrs. Amory, 52, 53, 67; _see also_ Underwood, Elizabeth Byrd, William I, 34, 36 Cahan, John, 36 Calthrope, Anne, 32; Christopher, 19, 31-34, 57; Elinor, 32; James, 33 Candia, 18 Carter, Giles, 77 Carter family, 79 Cary, Major Miles I, 82 Cattle, trade jewels for, 66 Cavaliers, 58 Chamberlaine, Major Thomas, 24 Champion, John, 37 Charles I, King, 2, 17, 58, 62 Charles II, King, 63 Charles City: Corporation, 8, 10, 16; County, 34, 45, 47, 59, 79 Charles River Parish, 31, 43 Charlton, Stephen, 58 Chesapeake Bay, 15, 18, 19, 31 Chew, John, 20, 42 Chicheley, Sir Henry, 58 Chickahominy Indians, 26 Chickahominy River, 21 Chiskiacke Indians, 26 Chisman, Edward, 16; Lieutenant John, 16 Chisman's Creek, 32 Christ Church (Yorktown), 81 Christmas 1608, 68, 69 Chuckatuck, 28, 29 Chuckatuck Creek, 19 Claiborne, William, 20 Cocke, Richard, 76, 78; Thomas, 29, 60; Thomas Jr., 77 Cockerham, William, 45 Cole, Colonel William II, 23, 81 College projected, 7 Collins, John, 8; Susan, 8 Colonization, reasons for, 1 Commonwealth (England), 62, 66 Constable, Mrs. Rachel, 42 Coopey, Anthony, 14; Elizabeth, 14; Joane, 14 Copeland, Joseph, 29 Corbin, Mr., 70 Costumes, 61-65 Crete, oil from, 18 Crewes, James, 65 _Criollo_, 25 Croshaw, Major Joseph, 44, 64 Crowder's, Mr., 16 Culpeper, Frances, 42 "Curowoak," 36 Cutlery, 53 Dade, Captain Francis, 34 Dale, Sir Thomas, 7 Davis, Captain James, 8; Rachel, 8; Thomas, 8 Davison, Christopher, 55 De La Warr, Lord, 6, 13, 54 De Vries, Peter, 22, 57 _Deliverance_, 6 "Denbigh," 14, 23, 28, 58 Digges, Edward, 82; Mrs. Elizabeth, 50, 53, 55, 60, 67, 75 Divorce, 46 Dods, William, 50 Draper, Mrs. Elizabeth, 66 Drinking Habits, 72-76 Ducking stool, 47 Dunthorne, Thomas, 4, 20 Dutch foray, 82 Dutch Gap canal, 7 Dutch traders, 15 Eastern Shore, 12, 15, 19, 29, 43 "E D Plantation," 75, 82 Edwards, John, 49; Margaret, 49 Elizabeth City: Church, 18; Corporation, 3, 8, 10, 15, 16, 26, 31; County, 32 English, Richard, 48 Epes, Mrs. Elizabeth (Worsham), 79; Francis, 79 Essex County, 68 Evans, Peter, 77 Fairfax, William, 20 "Fairfield," Gloucester County, 82 _Falcon_, 4 Farrar, William, 4, 44, 45 Farrar's Island, 7 Fashions, 61-65 Felgate, Philip, 63 Felgate's Creek, 30 Festivities, 68-72 Finch, Frances, 14; William, 14 Firearms, 69, 79; _see also_ Arms Fisher, John, 29, 73; Philip, 29; Thomas, 29 Fishing, 71 Fitzhugh, Sarah, 67; William, 60, 64, 67 Fleete, Mrs. Sarah, 43 Flint, Mary, 8; Captain Thomas, 8 Flinton, Pharoah, 16 Flood, Captain John, 14 Flowerdieu, Temperance, 4 Flowerdew Hundred, 22 Food, preparation of, 55, 56 Forest, Mrs. Lucy, 1, 3; Thomas, 1 Forest Primeval, 25-27 Fort Henry, 31 "Four Mile Tree," 81 Fox, Major Richard, 58 French Ordinary, 72 Funeral Customs, 77-80 Furniture, 53-55 Gaming, 76, 77 Gany, Anna, 47; William, 47 Gates, Sir Thomas, 6, 7, 73 _George_, 8, 15 Gerrard, Mr., 70; Mrs. Rose, 67 Gibson, Thomas, 53 Gifford, Isabel, 14 Glassmaking, 4 Gloves: buckskin, cordovan, kid, 64 Godwin, Thomas, 41, 42; Martha (Bridger), 41 Goldsmiths, 65, 66 Goodale, "Goody," 47 Gookin, Daniel, 19, 22, 48, 57; John, 19, 22, 57, 65 Gorsuch, Mrs. Anne, 34 Greene, Joane, 13 "Greenspring," 23, 29, 35, 46, 60 Greville, Frances, 13 Gundry, Anne, 45 Hair Dressing, 62 Hallom, Robert, 48; William, 34 Ham, Joseph, 26, 27, 52 Hammond, Colonel Mainwaring, 58 Hamor, Ralph, 20 Hampton, 18, 68, 77; _see also_ Kecoughtan Hampton Roads, 15 Hansford, Charles, 72, 74; Mrs. Elizabeth, 44; family, 30 Hatcher, Edward, 71 Hatchments, 79 Harris, Thomas, 59, 71; Major William, 59 Harvey, Captain John, 15, 20; also Governor Sir John, 21 Hay, William, 43 Henrico: Corporation, 10, 15, 16; County, 24, 25, 59, 60, 71, 77, 79; Town, 7 Headrights, 8 Heating facilities, 51 Herring Creek, 47 Hickman, William, 50 Hobson, William, 30 Hog Island, 48 Holland, goldsmiths in, 65 Holt, Randall, 48 Homes, 3, 6, 7, 20-25, 55 Honeywood, Colonel Philip, 58 Hopkinson, Daniel, 18, 64, 77 Horses, 59-61; racing of, 71 Horsmanden, Daniel, 34; Ursula, 34; Warham, 42 Hospital, 7 Hospitality, 57-59 Hostelries, 57 Household, 51-57 Hunlock, Kathryne, 49 Hunt, George, 42; Rev. Robert, 4 Hunting, 69, 70 Ice house, 75 Independent Planter, 27-30 Indians, 26, 68, 69, 70 Industries, 28-30 Isle of Wight County, 8, 20, 21, 34, 35, 46, 50, 55, 60, 67, 77 Jackson, Henry, 22 James I, King, 64 James City Corporation, 10, 16, 20, 22 James River, 7, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23, 36, 41, 48, 57, 69, 78 Jamestown, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 17, 19, 21-23, 25, 58, 60, 68, 72, 75, 78; Church, 54, 78; Island, 20, 78 Jeffreys, Sir Herbert, 69 Jewelry, 65-68 Johnson, John, 20 _Jonathan_, 10 Jones, Morgan, 29 Joones, Elizabeth, 4 Jordan, Mrs. Alice, 81 Jordan, Sisley (Ciceley), 4, 44; George, 81; Samuel, 44 Kecoughtan, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 25, 68, 77 Kemp, Richard, 21 Key, Martha, 8; Thomas, 8 "Kingsland," 25 Kingsmill, Richard, 22 Kitchens, 55, 56 Kneaton, Augustine, 30 Land, private ownership of, 8 Lane, Thomas, 36, 37 Langley Air Force Base, 19 Laundering, 56, 57 Laydon, John, 3 Lear, Elizabeth (Bridger), 41; Thomas, 41 Lee, Mr., 70 Lighting facilities, 51, 52 Ligon, Richard, 60, 71 "Littletown," 23, 57 Llewellyn, Daniel, 34, 45, 65 Lockey, Edward, 44 London, 11, 18, 22, 37, 43, 45, 55, 64, 66 _London Merchant_, 10 Louis XIV, 63 Louisiana, 25 Lower Norfolk County, 21, 35, 47, 52, 55, 63-65, 76, 82 Lukin arms, 82 Lunsford, Sir Thomas, 58 Lupo, Lieutenant Albiano, 8; Elizabeth, 8 Lynnhaven, 21, 47, 66, 81; Bay, 81; Church, 81 Magazine Ships, 14, 15 Maids for wives, 10, 11 Malt-mill, 38, 73 "Malvern Hill," 29, 71 "Marie's Mount," 22 Mariners Museum, 31 _Marmaduke_, 11 Marriage, contracts in, 42, 43; first, 3 Martiau, Nicholas, 50, 81 Martin, Andrew, 71 Martin's Hundred, 11, 16 Maryland, 35 Massacre 1622, 7, 13 Matches, slow, 16, 64 Materials, 33, 38, 39 Mathews, Captain Samuel, 14, 16, 23, 48, 58 Menefie, George, 9, 19, 20, 22, 57 Middle Plantation, 69; _see also_ Williamsburg Mihill, Edward, 43; Mrs. Elizabeth, 43 Mint julep, 75, 76 Modé, Josias, 72 Monmouth caps, 9, 12, 64 Morris, Samuel, 71 Moryson, Major Francis, 58 Moseley, Arthur, 65; Mrs. Susan, 65, 66; William, 65 Mulberry Island, 22, 23 Musical Instruments, 72 Muster 1625, 15 Nansemond County, 28, 29, 35, 41; _see also_ Upper Norfolk County Nansemond River, 19, 22, 23 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 19 Negroes, 19, 26, 37, 50 New Poquoson: area, 26; parish, 31, 33, 43 New Poquoson River, 31 New Town, 20 Newport News, 11, 16, 19, 22, 57, 58 Nickolson, Robert, 64, 67 Ninepins, 76, 77 Norfolk, 20, 25 North Carolina, 32 Northampton County, 49 Northern Neck, 70 Northumberland County, 30 Nottoway region, 32 Norwood, Colonel Henry, 58 Offley, Sarah, 65 "Okenneck," 29 Old, Susan, 8 Old Brick Church (St. Luke's), 34 Old Christmas, 68 Old Point, 5 Orchards, 22, 23 Orient, importations from, 40 Pace, Izabella, 9; Richard, 9 Page, Alice (Lukin), 82; Frances, 13; Francis, 78; Colonel John, 78 Palisades, 16 Palmer, Thomas, 47 Pamunkey (York) River, 68 Particular Plantations, 11, 12; Supplies for, 12, 13 _Patience_, 4, 6 Pease Hill Creek Mill, 28 Peirce, Joane, 6; Mrs. Joane, 6, 22; Captain William, 6, 22 Peirsey, Abraham, 14, 20, 23, 66, 77; Elizabeth, 66; Mary, 66 Peirsey's Hundred, 16 Perry, Henry, 59; Micajah, 36, 37; William, 9 Perry and Lane, 55 Peru, 1 Pettigrew, Andrew, 30 "Pickthorn Farm," 29 Pitt, Colonel Thomas, 37, 67 Plantagenet, Beauchamp, 58 Plantation Life: Calthrope, 31-34; Bridger, 34-41 Planters, independence of, 27-30 Pleasants, John, 37 Pocahontas, 22 Pollentine, Mrs. Rachel, 21 Pooley, Rev. Greville, 44, 45 Population 1625, 15 Poquoson, 28; _see also_ New Poquoson Poquoson River, 31; New, 19; Old, 19 Pott, Doctor John, 20, 48 Pottery kiln, 29 Povey, Thomas, 46 Powell, Colonel, 40; Captain Nathaniel, 13 Powhatan, 68 Purefoy, Lieutenant Thomas, 31 Ragg, Thomas, 32 Rappahannock: Church, 71; County, 46; River, 58 Rathbone, Richard, 77 Raymer, Adam, 14 Read, Elizabeth (Martiau), 81; George, 81 Recreation, 68-72 Reynolds, Christopher, 48 Richmond County, 77 Roanoke Island, 1 Robins, Mary, 43 Rolfe, John, 22; Thomas, 22 Rolfe House, 21 Rookings, William, 24 Rowles, Jane, 14; Richard, 14 Royalists, 2, 34, 58 Royall, Joseph, 61 St. Luke's Church, 34 Salford, Joane, 8; Robert, 8; Sarah, 8 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 10; George, 16, 17, 57 Savage, John, 43 Scales, 18, 55 _Seaventure_, 4, 6, 30 Servants, 18, 19, 47-51, 80 Sharpe, Robert, 77 Sheild, Robert, 43 Sheppard, Mrs. Elizabeth, 43, 45 "Shirley," 79 Silk culture, 17 Skimeno, 28 Slader, Mr. Mathew, 71 Slaughter, Elizabeth, 46; Francis, 46 Smalcomb, John, 79 Smith, Arthur, 45; Arthur I, 67, 77; Major John, 34; John of Nibley, 12; Captain Roger, 16; Thomas, 67 Smith's Fort Plantation, 21 Smith's (Southampton) Hundred, 11 Smyth, Richard, 76 Snoden, Ann, 50 Somers, Sir George, 6, 73 Southampton Hundred, 11 Southey, Thomas, 11 _Southward_, 32 Spanish settlement, 25 Spence, Ensign William, 20 Spencer, "Goody," 47 Sports, 68-72 Stafford County, 60 Still, liquor, 29, 73 Steelyards, 18, 55 Stephens, Francis (Culpeper), 42; Richard, 20; Captain Samuel, 42 Stewart, Charles, 77 Stockade, 3 Sturgeon, 5 Supplies 1625, 16; after 1625, 17 _Supply_, 12, 13, 14 Surry County, 21, 24, 35, 43, 44, 81 _Susan_, 14, 15 _Swan_, 4 Swann, Colonel Thomas, 44; family, 78 "Swann's Point," 78 Tableware and table linen, 52, 53 Taylor, Dr. James, 46; Stephen, 49 Tenants of the Virginia Company, 9, 10 The Hague, 66 Thelaball, Mrs. Elizabeth (Mason), 55 Thornton, Luke, 77 Thoroughgood, Adam I, 21, 48, 65; Adam II, 81 "Thropland," 31 Tibboth, Mary (Bridger), 41; Richard, 41 _Tiger_, 11 _Tockwough_, 5 Tombstones, 80-82 Townshend, Richard, 48 Tracy, Joyce, 13; Mary, 13; Thomas, 13; William, 12, 13 Travel, 59-61 Travis family, 78 _Treasurer_, 8 _Triall_, 4 _Tristram and Jane_, 18, 19, 22, 77 Tuckahoe, see _Tockwough_ Turkey-work, 54, 55 Underwood, Elizabeth, 46, 67; Colonel William, 46 _Unity_, 20 Upper Norfolk County, 8, 35; _see also_ Nansemond County Upton, Captain John, 35, 60 Varina, Henrico County, 76 Vehicles, 60 Virginia Company, 9-11, 14-17, 26, 73; land of, 10; tenants of, 9 Wagers, 71 Walker, Colonel John, 43 Warming pans, 27, 53 Warren, Thomas, 21, 43 Warriscoyack, 21; _see also_ Isle of Wight Warriscoyack Indians, 26 _Warwick_, 11 Warwick: City of, 31; County, 9, 23, 28, 59, 82; River, 14, 23, 42, 58 Warwicktown, 25 Watch, "pendilum," 68 Water supply, 3, 4, 56 Waters Creek, 28, 31 Watts, Edmund, 74, 79 Webb, Elizabeth, 14 Werowocomoco, 68 West, Nathaniel, 13 West and Shirley Hundred, 8 West Indies, 6, 37, 40, 73 Westmoreland County, 29, 67 "Westover," 82 Westover, Court at, 47 "White Marsh," 34 Williamsburg, 78, 82; _see also_ Middle Plantation Willoughby, Mrs. Sarah, 64 Wills, John, 22; family, 22 Windmill, 22 "Windmill Point," Warwick County, 82 Womack, Alexander, 71 Women, Status of, 41-47 Wood, Abraham, 48 Woodliffe, Captain John, 12 Woodward, Sara, 45 Woory, Mrs. Elizabeth, 55 Wormeley, Colonel Christopher, 37; Captain Ralph, 58 Wormeley's Creek, 47 Worsham, William, 79 Yeardley, Colonel Francis, 65, 66; Governor Sir George, 4, 10, 11, 21, 22, 78, 81; Mrs. Sarah, 66, 81; _see also_ Offley York: County, 28, 30, 32, 33, 42, 44, 47, 50, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79, 80; River, 31, 69; _see also_ Pamunkey River Yorktown, 81 Young, Richard, 23 * * * * * Transcriber's note The following changes have been made to the text: Page 27: "racoon" changed to "raccoon". Page 41: "no title whatsover" changed to "no title whatsoever". Page 45: "Nothwithstanding the limitations" changed to "Notwithstanding the limitations". Page 50: "usually a barrell" changed to "usually a barrel". Page 52 (in this version of the text): In caption "archeological" changed to "archaeological". Page 73: "made from molassas" changed to "made from molasses". Page 75: "poultice, soothed inflamation" changed to "poultice, soothed inflammation". Page 81: "Bolthorpe" changed to "Bolthrope". 
9941	----	BIOGRAPHY OF A SLAVE Being The Experiences Of Rev. Charles Thompson, A Preacher Of The United Brethren Church, WHILE A SLAVE IN THE SOUTH. Together With Startling Occurrences Incidental To Slave Life. 1875. PREFACE. In publishing this book I hope to do good not only to my own race, but to all who may read it. I am not a book-maker, and make no pretensions to literary attainments; and I have made no efforts to create for myself a place in the literary, book-making ranks. I claim for my book truthfulness and honesty of purpose, and upon that basis it must succeed or fail. The Biography of a Slave is called for by a very large number of my immediate acquaintances, and, I am assured, will meet with such reception as to justify the expense I have incurred in having it printed and bound. To the members of the United Brethren Church, white as well as colored, I look for help in the sale and circulation of my work, yet I am satisfied I will receive commendable patronage from members of all Christian churches everywhere. The book is written in the narrative style, as being much better suited to the tastes and capacities of my colored readers, and I have used simple and plain English language, discarding the idiomatic and provincial language of the southern slaves and ignorant whites, expecting thereby to help educate the blacks in the use of proper language. I am indebted to William H. Rhodes, Esq., attorney at law, of Newman, Douglas County, Illinois, for his valuable assistance in the preparation of my manuscript for the printer. He has re-written the whole of it for me, and has otherwise assisted me in the matter of placing the book before the public. CHARLES THOMPSON. Newman, Illinois, Aug., 1874. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Charles Thompson, born in Atala County, Mississippi--Division of Kirkwood's slaves among his six Children--The writer and his two sisters fall to Mrs. Wilson--The parting between mother and child--Deprived of a fond mother forever--Old Uncle Jack--Wilson buys Uncle Ben from Strucker--Uncle Ben runs away and is hunted with blood-hounds--Two hundred dollars reward. CHAPTER II. Not sent to hell by Wilson--Mrs. Wilson protects me, to whom I belong--Sent to school with the children--The school-children teach me to read and write--What came of it--Mount that mule or I'll shoot you--I mounted the mule--A start for the railroad to work--I dismount and take to the woods--I owe allegiance to God and my country only. CHAPTER III. Caught, tried, and taken back home to James Wilson--My mistress saves me from being whipped--I go to the railroad and work one month precisely--Go back home--Wilson surprised--Left the railroad at 3 o'clock A.M.--Did not want to disturb Leadbitter's rest--Sent to Memphis with a load of cotton--Afraid of the slave-pens and slave-auction--Start for home--Not sold--Pray, sing, and shout--Get home and ordered to hire myself out. CHAPTER IV. Start out on my travels to hunt a new master--Find Mr. Dansley--Hire to him--Thirty dollars per month for my master and five dollars for myself--Wilson astonished--Appointed superintendent of Dansley's farm--Rules and regulations--Peace and tranquillity--My moral labors successful--Prayer and social meetings--Meetings in the woods--Quarrel and fight like very brothers--Time comes to be moved to another field of labor. CHAPTER V. James Wilson comes along--Wants me to go with him to Saulsbury, Tennessee, to help build a house for a grocery-store--Takes me along with him--Wilson taken sick--I take care of him--He gels well--I make another attempt to escape from slavery--What came of it. CHAPTER VI. Was hired to Mr. Thompson, and adopted his name--Opened regular meetings, and preached on the plantation and other places--Took unto myself a wife--Was purchased by Thompson, duly installed on the plantation, and invested with authority--Various means and plans resorted to by the overseer to degrade me in the eyes of Mr. Thompson--Driven, through persecution, to run away--Return back to my master. BIOGRAPHY OF A SLAVE. * * * * * CHAPTER I. Charles Thompson, born in Atala County, Mississippi--Division of Kirkwood's Slaves Among his Six Children--The Writer and his Two Sisters Fall to Mrs. Wilson--The Parting Between Mother and Child--Deprived of a Fond Mother Forever--Old Uncle Jack--Wilson Buys Uncle Ben from Strucker--Uncle Ben Runs Away and is Hunted with Blood-Hounds--Two Hundred Dollars Reward. I was a slave, and was born in Atala County, Mississippi, near the town of Rockford, on the third day of March, 1833. My father and mother both being slaves, of course my pedigree is not traceable, by me, farther back than my parents. Our family belonged to a man named Kirkwood, who was a large slave-owner. Kirkwood died when I was about nine years old, after which, upon the settlement of the affairs of his estate, the slaves belonging to the estate were divided equally, as to value, among the six heirs. There were about seventy-five slaves to be divided into six lots; and great was the tribulation among the poor blacks when they learned that they were to be separated. When the division was completed two of my sisters and myself were cast into one lot, my mother into another, and my father into another, and the rest of the family in the other lots. Young and slave as I was, I felt the pang of separation from my loved and revered mother; child that I was I mourned for mother, even before our final separation, as one dead to me forever. So early to be deprived of a fond mother, by the "law," gave me my first view of the curse of slavery. Until this time I did not know what trouble was, but from then until the tocsin of freedom was sounded through the glorious Emancipation Proclamation by the immortal Abraham Lincoln, I passed through hardship after hardship, in quick succession, and many, many times I have almost seen and tasted death. I bade farewell to my mother, forever, on this earth. Oh! the pangs of that moment. Even after thirty years have elapsed the scene comes vividly to my memory as I write. A gloomy, dark cloud seemed to pass before my vision, and the very air seemed to still with awfulness. I felt bereaved, forlorn, forsaken, lost. Put yourself in my place; feel what I have felt, and then say, God is just; he will protect the helpless and right the wronged, and you will have some idea of my feelings and the hope that sustained me through long and weary years of servitude. My mother, my poor mother! what must she have suffered. Never will I forget her last words; never will I forget the earnest prayers of that mother begging for her child, and refusing to be comforted. She had fallen to the lot of Mrs. Anderson, and she pleaded with burning tears streaming down her cheeks, "He is my only son, my baby child, my youngest and the only son I have; please let me have him to go with me!" Anderson spoke roughly to her and told her to hold her peace; but with her arms around me she clung to me and cried the louder, "Let me have my child; if you will let me have my baby you may have all the rest!" Mothers can realize this situation only, who have parted with children whom they never expected to see again. Imagine parting with your dearest child, never to see it again; to be thrown into life-servitude in one part of the country and your dear child in the same condition six hundred miles away. Although my mother was black, she had a soul; she had a heart to feel just as you have, and I, her child, was being ruthlessly torn from her by inexorable "law." What would you have done if you had been in her place? _She_ prayed to God for help. My kind old father consoled and encouraged my mother all he could, and said to her, "Do not be discouraged, for Jesus is your friend; if you lack for knowledge, he will inform you, and if you meet with troubles and trials on your way, cast all your cares on Jesus, and don't forget to pray." The old man spoke these words while praying, shouting, crying, and saying farewell to my mother. He had, in a manner, raised nearly all the colored people on the plantation; so he had a fatherly feeling for all of them. The old man looked down on me, and said, "My child, you are now without a father and will soon be without a mother; but be a good boy, and God will be father and mother to you. If you will put your trust in him and pray to him, he will take you home to heaven when you die, where you can meet your mother there, where parting will be no more. Farewell." I was then taken from my mother, and have not seen or heard of her since--about twenty-nine years ago. Old Uncle Jack, as my father was called by the plantation people, spoke words of comfort to all of us before we were parted. The lot of human chattels, of which I was one, was taken to their new home on Wilson's plantation, in the same county as the Kirkwood plantation. Wilson told my sisters and myself that our mother and ourselves were about six hundred miles apart. After I had been in my new home about two years, Wilson bought my uncle Ben from a man named Strucker, who lived in the same neighborhood, but he did not buy uncle Ben's wife. Two years later Wilson moved to another plantation he owned in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, about one hundred miles distant from his Atala County plantation. Ben not being willing to go so far from his wife, ran away from his master. Wilson, however, left word that if any one would catch and return Ben to him, he would pay two hundred dollars. This was a bait not to be resisted. The professional slave-hunters, with their blood-hounds, were soon on the track. They failed to get the poor hunted man, though. Ben was a religious, God-fearing man, and placed firm reliance on the help of the Almighty, in his serious trials, and never failed to find help when most needed. He stayed under cover in the woods, in such lurking places as the nature of the country provided, in the day time, and at night would cautiously approach his wife's cabin, when, at an appointed signal, she would let him in and give him such food and care as his condition required. The slaves of the South were united in the one particular of helping each other in such cases as this, and would adopt ingenious telegrams and signals to communicate with each other; and it may well be believed that the inventive genius of the blacks was, as a general thing, equal to all emergencies, and when driven to extremities they were brave to a fault. Ben's wife, in this instance, used the simple device of hanging a certain garment in a particular spot, easily to be seen from Ben's covert, and which denoted that the coast was clear and no danger need be apprehended. The garment and the place of hanging it had to be changed every day, yet the signals thus made were true to the purpose, and saved uncle Ben from capture. Uncle Ben was closely chased by the hounds and inhuman men-hunters; on one occasion so closely that he plunged into a stream and followed the current for more than a mile. Taking to the water threw the hounds off the scent of the track. Before reaching the stream, uncle Ben was so closely pursued that one of the men in the gang shot at him, the bullet passing unpleasantly close to him. His wife heard the hounds and the gun-shot. This race for life and liberty was only one of a continued series, and was repeated as often as blood-hounds could find a track to follow. At night Ben was very much fatigued and hungry, and his only hope of getting anything to eat was to reach his wife's cabin. How to do this without being observed, was the question. As well as he was able, about midnight he left his retreat and approached the cabin. It was too dark to see a signal if one had been placed for him in the usual manner. After waiting for some time a bright light shot through the cracks in the cabin for an instant, and was repeated at intervals of two or three minutes, three or four times. This was the night-signal of "all right" agreed upon between uncle Ben and his wife, and was made by placing the usual grease light under a vessel and raising the vessel for a moment at intervals. Ben approached the cabin and gave _his_ signal by rapping on the door three times, and after a short pause three more raps. Thus they had to arrange to meet; the husband to obtain food to sustain life, and the wife to administer to him. On this particular night their meeting was unusually impressive. She had heard the death-hounds, the sound of the gun-shot, and she knew the yelps of the hounds and the shot were intended for Ben, her husband. With no crime laid to him, he was hunted down as a wild beast. Made in God's own image, he is made a slave, a brute, an outcast, and an outlaw because his skin is black. Thus they met, Ben and his wife. After the usual precautions and mutual congratulations they both kneeled before the throne of God and thanked him for their preservation thus far, and throwing themselves upon his goodness and bounty, asked help in their need and safety in the future. Without rising from his knees, Ben, even in the anguish of his heart, consoled his wife, remarking, "that the darkest hour is always just before daylight." The blacks of the South have their own peculiar moral maxims, applicable to all situations in life, and the slaves not knowing how to read committed such Bible truths as were read to them from time to time. It is true they were generally superstitious in a great degree, as all ignorant persons are; yet their native sense of right led them to adopt the best and most religious principles, dressed in homely "sayings," their circumstances permitted. Ben dare not stay very long at a time in his wife's cabin, as a strict watch was constantly kept, that the runaway might be apprehended. Bidding his wife farewell, Ben hastened back to one of a number of his hiding-places, there to stay through the day, unless routed out by the blood-hounds. He was fortunate, however, in the help of God, for his safety, and the efforts of the hounds and the hounds' followers were futile. Finally, Wilson gave up chasing Ben with blood-hounds, and resolved to try a better and more human method. He bought Ben's wife and left her with Strucker, with instructions to send her and Ben to his plantation if Ben was willing for the arrangement. Ben soon got word of how matters stood with reference to himself, and concluded if he could live with his wife on the same plantation that it was the very best he could do, so he acceded to the wishes of Wilson, and was sent with his wife to Wilson. The happiness of this couple was unbounded when they found they could once more live together as God intended they should, and the poor wife in her great gratitude cried, "God is on our side!" Ben replied that he had told her on one occasion that God was on their side, and that "the darkest hour was just before day." The usual expression used by the blacks when a runaway returned to his master was that he "had come out of the woods;" that is, he had left his hiding place in the woods and returned to the plantation to work. When I heard that uncle Ben had come out of the woods, and was coming to live on our plantation, my joy knew no bounds. On the day when he was expected to arrive I got permission to go out on the road some distance and meet them. Early in the morning I caught a horse and started. Every wagon I met filled me with hope and fear blended; hope that the wagon contained my uncle and aunt, and fear that it did not. I rode on, on, on, all that day, until my heart was sick with hope deferred. I had received orders before starting that if I did not meet them that day to return home. But I was so far from home, and with straining my eyes to catch a glimpse of my uncle, added to my keen disappointment in not seeing them, made me feel tired, sick, and worn out. So I stopped at a friendly cabin that night, after telling the inmates who I was and what my errand was. Early the next morning I was out, and the anxiety to see my uncle was so great I thought I would ride out the road a short distance in the hope of meeting him, notwithstanding my orders to return home. After traveling about an hour I met the wagon containing uncle Ben and his wife. The joy of that moment to me is inexpressible. Having been deprived of mother and father he was the only relative my sisters and myself could ever have any hopes of seeing again. My heart rejoiced exceedingly. I was, as it were, a new boy entirely, so overcome was I. We all arrived home that same day, and it was a much more pleasant trip than I had taken the day before. On that day it was all anxiety, mixed with hope and fear; to-day it was all joy and thanksgiving, again proving uncle Ben's saying that "the darkest hour is always just before day." My sisters were simply wild with joy when we arrived. They ran out the road to meet, us crying, "There comes uncle Ben; we have one more friend!" We were all comforted and rejoiced to a very great extent, and we felt indeed that we had "one more friend" with us. We were as happy as slaves could be, and spent all the time we could together--uncle Ben, his wife, my sisters, and myself. But Wilson harbored a grudge toward uncle Ben because he had to buy his wife in order to get him, and had said that if he ever got Ben after he ran away he would whip him to death. He treated Ben very well for the time being, but about a year after he had got him home he began to put his plans into operation for severely punishing him. He was afraid of Ben's prayers. Although Wilson would not have hesitated a moment to have put any plan into execution he may have conceived, under ordinary circumstances, yet praying Ben, while defending himself by appeals to Almighty God was stronger than with carnal weapons in his hands. Wilson proceeded cautiously and laid snares for Ben. Uncle Ben was one of the best hands on the plantation, and religiously performed the labor alloted him truly and persistently. He obeyed his overseer and Wilson in all things pertaining to his manual occupation, and obeyed God to the very best of his ability in this as in everything else. But Wilson wanted to punish Ben, and was determined to do so. He knew that Ben was a faithful slave to labor, and was reliable, yet he wished to break Ben's spirit--his manhood, the God part of him. Wilson did not seem to know that he was not fighting Ben in his scheme of revenge but that he was fighting God in Ben, and that although he punished Ben to the death he would be conquered himself, and more severely punished than he could ever hope to punish Ben. But Wilson was mad, infatuated, and satanically determined. Precautious preparations were made by Wilson to insure success in his revengeful scheme, and after having obtained the aid of several neighbors who were what might be called professional slave-whippers, he deemed his undertaking to punish and conquer Ben fully ripe for execution. Ben being a field hand was busily employed picking cotton, with a prayerful heart, and a watchful eye on Wilson. From Wilson's actions Ben was sure something was going to occur which would nearly concern him, and having been hunted like a beast he had become suspicious and on his guard all the time. Having a feeling of presentiment, he was uneasy, and, as was usual with him, he kneeled down and asked God to protect him from the machinations of his enemies, and give him heart, courage, and strength to overcome the evil intended him. While praying he was startled by the snort of a horse, and on looking around to ascertain the cause of the noise he discovered himself almost surrounded by armed men on horseback. No time to think now; the time for action had arrived. Ben knew at once the flight was for life. Better, however, was death than to be thus hunted and harassed. Bounding through the field he gained a friendly covert, and seemingly by mere chance he eluded his pursuers and the hounds. Ben thanked God for his deliverance. Wilson with his heartless band were again baffled, and with man-hunting and disappointments in his man-chase he became furious. Ben stayed in the woods about four weeks, and during all this time my sisters, Ben's wife, and myself were kept in close confinement, to keep us from communicating with Ben or rendering him any assistance. Thus all of us had to suffer. But we were only slaves. Wilson finally took Ben's wife to a man in Oxford, about twenty-five miles distant, and came back circulating the word among the blacks that he had sold her. Wilson had made arrangements at Oxford with some professional slave-hunters to catch Ben if he ever came to see his wife, for which purpose she had been taken there. After a time Ben was informed that he and his wife had been sold by Wilson to a man in Oxford, and of course believing such to be the fact, he went there to see her, and make arrangements for the future. His wife was told by the man with whom Wilson had left her that he had bought both her and Ben, and wished her to get Ben to "come out of the woods." Laboring under this delusion, Ben was month. The cabin was surrounded by armed men, when Ben was overpowered, chained, and put in jail for safe keeping until Wilson should come after him. Living in the woods so long and the harsh treatment he was now receiving wore Ben down considerably; yet, believing that "the darkest hour is just before day," he relied on God's help in his misery. Wilson came for Ben in due time, and after chaining him securely around the neck he fastened one end of the chain to the rear of his buggy and literally, a part of the time, dragged him to Holly Springs, about thirty miles from Oxford, where he sold him to a man who had the reputation of being the hardest master in the country. Wilson afterwards took Ben's wife home. Thus they were separated,--Ben and his wife,--never to meet again on this earth. Wilson told me when he got home that he had sent Ben to hell, and that he would send me there too. Infatuated man; he supposed he had done with Ben for the very worst; he thought he had as much power over the souls of his slaves as he had under "the laws" over their bodies. He found, however, in time, that God was with us, and in his good time he delivered us from our bondage and punished our persecutors as they deserved. CHAPTER II. Not sent to hell by Wilson--Mrs. Wilson protects me, to whom I belong--Sent to school with the children--The school-children teach me to read and write--What came of it--Mount that mule or I'll shoot you--I mounted the mule--A start for the railroad to work--I dismount and take to the woods--I owe allegiance to God and my country only. The monotonous tedium of routine slave-labor was very often broken by some scene of cruelty to one or another of the poor blacks, either by the master or his overseer; and woe unto the luckless one if the master should happen to be in a good mood to break bones. Although slaves were worth money in the South at that time, yet the ungovernable passions of some if not most masters found free vent in cruelty to their own property--that is, their slaves. This was the case with Wilson, and no opportunity was missed by him to make a poor black feel the effects of his brutish nature and passions. His wife, on the other hand, made every effort to protect the blacks on the plantation as much as possible. When Wilson threatened to send me to hell, as he had tried to send uncle Ben, Mrs. Wilson came forward in my behalf and saved me from her husband's unwarranted wrath by telling him that she wished "Charles to accompany her children to school and take such care of them as might be required." It was customary in the South for families who owned slaves to send one or more of them with their children when they attended school as waiters, or personal servants, and as I belonged to Mrs. Wilson, being an inherited chattel, Wilson acceded to her demand, and I was sent along with the children when they went to school. I was not allowed to sit with the white children in school, but I "loafed around handy," ready for a call from either of my young mistresses. The "laws," the enlightened laws of the southern states, prohibited, under heavy penalties, the education of a slave, or even a negro, although free; yet some of us, under very disadvantageous circumstances, learned to read and write. It has always been a kind of habit with me to "be doing something" all the time, and when not actually employed in some active work I would make use of my time for some good purpose; and while "loafing around" that school-house it occurred to me as being strange that the white children should be compelled to sit and study hour after hour, while us little darkies "loafed around" and did nothing. Why couldn't we lighten our young masters and mistresses of that labor as well as other kinds of labor? I determined that my young mistresses should not be made slaves of by the school-master, but that I would do that work for them, as they were generally so kind to me. So I proposed the matter to them, and they were tremendously pleased; at least they laughed and chatted a great deal about me getting their lessons for them, which so elated me that I could not avoid turning handsprings and somersaults all the way home that evening, my joy being so great at the idea of doing my mistresses the favor of taking such great labor off their hands as getting their lessons. I did not doubt my ability to perform the work, for I was stout, hearty, and large for my age, and could almost make a full hand in the field. Such was my idea at that time of getting lessons. However, the next day my young mistresses told me the school-master would not allow me to study their lessons for them, but that I might take a book and sit outside of the school-house and study there, but that I must be sure and not let any one see me. Why not? Why should _I_ not study lessons in the school-house for my young mistresses? Because it is against the "law" for slaves to learn to read and write. Well, that is curious. A person, because he is a slave, must not study lessons; must not learn to read and write because it is against the "law." What law? My mistress used often to read to the children from a book which told about Jesus, and Mary, and Lazarus, and Peter, and Paul; and how Jesus was our Savior, and shed his precious blood for the redemption of all who believed him and would obey his commands; and how Jesus said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Did the "law" prohibit me from studying lessons out of a book about Jesus, and learning to read about Jesus as my mistress did? When my mistress sent my young mistresses to Jesus wouldn't she send me along with them just the same as she sent me to school with them? I reckon so. Such was my reasoning; and I determined to assist my young mistresses in getting their lessons, law or no law, let the consequences be what they may. I received the book and went out from the school-house a short distance, and secured myself from observation in a shady place. I opened the book--a spelling-book it was. Hallo! here's a dog and a cat, and here's a sheep too, and right here in the corner is a yoke--a regular ox-yoke. Well, now, this _is_ nice. So I got my first idea of what a book contained by the pictures in a spelling-book. The print in the book meant something, I was sure, and my mind was employed until recess in endeavors to make out what the print and pictures were intended for. The scholars came out at recess, and my mistresses gave me such instructions as they were able, which gave me a start ahead that enabled me to memorize the first six letters of the alphabet by the time school dismissed for noon. I began to be deeply interested in "studying lessons," and was soon, after hard study, complete master of the alphabet. I could repeat it forwards and backwards, and could instantly tell the name of any letter pointed out to me. My mistresses seemed to take great pleasure in teaching me, and I was very anxious to learn. I soon found that I could understand in a great measure the instructions the teacher gave to the different scholars, by which I profited. I sat in the back part of the house, behind the scholars, with my young mistress' old book in my hand, and held it so that nobody could see it, and studied constantly day after day, which soon advanced me beyond some of the white children older than myself in learning. I learned to spell and read; and my appetite for knowledge increasing, my young mistress set copies for me, and by the time the school-term was out I could spell, read, and write. Slaves on large plantations in the South were worked in gangs, under the general supervision of the overseer or slave-owner. The gangs were placed under the immediate supervision of a trusty and intelligent slave, whose duty it was to see that each hand performed his or her allotted task, to weigh cotton during the picking season, and to direct the slaves in their labor, and were called field superintendents or bosses. This was my position on the plantation a short time after school was out for the term. For the first few days after my term at school as waiter for my young mistresses, I was ordered into the field to pick cotton, but was shortly placed over the hands as "boss" and cotton-weigher. Each picker had a "stint" or daily task to perform; that is, each of them was required to pick so many pounds of cotton, and when in default were unmercifully whipped. I had the cotton of each hand to weigh, three times each day, and had to keep the weights of each hand separate and correctly in my mind and report to Wilson every night. I dare not let Wilson or any of the slaves know that I knew anything about figures or could read or write, for a knowledge of those rudiments of education was considered criminal in a slave. The slaves were nearly always jealous and envious of a "boss" of their own color, and left no pretext untried to bring a "boss" into disrepute with the master and consequent corporal punishment. And should I make a misstatement of the weight of any one hand's cotton, that hand would know it. Therefore at the time I am now writing of I had the weights of about three hundred baskets of cotton to report to Wilson every day. This was hard mind-work for me, but I mastered the situation and escaped supersedure and punishment. I held the position of field-superintendent about nine years, and performed my duties faithfully and honestly, to the satisfaction of my master and the hands under me generally. Why was I so faithful and dutiful to my slave master? Simply because I was doing my duty to God and acting in obedience to the commands of Christ; for my book taught me to do good and shun evil--to obey the revealed will of God no matter what position I might be placed in. As a slave I loved to do the will of the Master in heaven; as a responsible human being I could do no less. I improved my knowledge, whenever opportunity occurred, and it was but a short time, comparatively, until I found out for myself, by searching the Scriptures clandestinely, the great truths that Jesus taught. I read, pondered, and began the work of self-regeneration. I read that God required of me to do certain things; that unless I obeyed the commands of Jesus I could expect no help from God. I found that I was commanded to "do," and not stand still and wait for others to "do" for me. The way seemed to open before me plainly and unmistakably, and engraved the command to "do" firmly in my heart, in the simple words, "Do the will of God." I obeyed the commands of our Savior in all the essentials of repentance, baptism, and in everything, and began the real work of my life--of living and being a servant of God and a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. My field of labor was my own heart, which I endeavored to render pure in the sight of God. But a short time elapsed when my work within myself began to bear fruit in my efforts to redeem my fellow-slaves from sin and make them children of God. I labored with them in a spirit of brotherly love, and urged them, in season and out of season, to come to Jesus. My labors were not in vain, for a great many were brought to the altar of prayer through my exertions, and were forgiven. Wilson found out that I could read and write. During the time of cotton-picking, the last season I was superintendent, a protracted meeting was held in the neighborhood, and my master and mistress attended regularly. The only time I could go was on Sunday, and I looked forward to that day with hope and pleasure. On Saturday evening my master stayed to church, and did not expect to return home until Sunday evening. My report of weights were on my mind, and I became somewhat uneasy about the result if I should attempt to remember them until the following Monday. What to do under the circumstances I did not know; yet I knew that "where there was a will there was a way." I was afraid to set the weights down for fear of detection and punishment. I hesitated and tried to think of some safe way out of the dilemma. I knew if I let the matter rest over Sunday I would not remember the weights, for the reason that my mind was so employed and taken up with the religious revival that was then going on in the neighborhood, in which I was very much interested on my own account and on account of my fellow-slaves. I prayed to God to direct me right. The overseer used a slate on which to set down the weights of cotton, which was hanging in his cabin. I took the slate down, made the entries of weights with the names of the pickers, and hung it up again. During the next day (Sunday) the overseer came home, and found the slate with the entries on it I had made. He was somewhat surprised. When Wilson came home he was duly informed of the fact. I was called, and ordered into _the presence_. I knew it was unlawful for me to know how to write, and I dreaded the consequences of my rash act, yet I unhesitatingly, and with a courage that surprised me, went to the house. "Who wrote these names and weights on this slate, Charles?" asked Mr. Wilson. "I did it, sir," I answered. "How and when did you learn to write?" "During the time I attended my young mistresses to school, sir." Wilson looked at me long and angrily, and remarked that I had kept that fact secret for a long time, and that as I had learned to read and write he could not help it. "But you must remember, Charles," he continued, "that the law is that if any negro shall be found writing, his forefinger shall be cut off at the first joint." My time had now come for my first punishment, I thought. A day or two after I heard Wilson, while in conversation with the overseer, say, "It will not do to let Charles stay with the rest of the negroes, or he will learn them all to read and write, and then we might as well set them free." What was to be done with me for my unpardonable crime? All kinds of surmises and speculations entered my mind. What was to be my fate? Belonging to Mrs. Wilson--her property--I was placed in charge of her son James, who employed me at teaming, that is, hauling cotton, lumber, etc. In this occupation I became pretty well acquainted with the surrounding country and the people, and was very well satisfied with matters generally as they then stood. But I was soon to learn that my young master was only anxious to carry out the plans of his father, and was determined to punish, or, as they pleased to term it, "break me," merely because I was related to Ben--because I was able to read and write as well if not better than James Wilson himself. I was told one day by James that he had hired me to a man in Pontotoc to work in a livery-stable, and that I must come to his plantation without delay. When I arrived I was informed that instead of going to Pontotoc I should go to the railroad then building through Mississippi, and work for Mr. Leadbitter. I expostulated with my master, and urged him, with all the pleas and arguments at my command, to allow me to remain on the plantation or go to Pontotoc, but to no avail. He whipped out his six-shooter, raving and swearing, and bade me mount one of two mules instanter or he would shoot me on the spot. I mounted the mule. My reasons for not wanting to go to the railroad to work were good. There was plenty to do on the plantation, and there was no good cause for sending me away. I feared rough usage at the railroad, and rougher associations. I had by this time become the religious teacher of all the well-disposed slaves in the neighborhood, and I was so much interested in my labors that I doomed my great Master's work of too much importance to be driven away from it without a struggle. I was no coward, and was always ready to stand out to the end against all opposition, when my duty as a humble follower of Jesus was in question. Therefore my reluctance to be driven from my place of usefulness. However, I got on the mule and started, in company with a colored man who was going with me to bring the mules back. After traveling four or five miles, and when at a convenient place, I dismounted from the mules and told my companion I was going no farther with him, and that if Wilson wanted any one to go to the railroad to work he might go himself; and I "took to the woods." This was the first time I ever attempted to escape and gain my freedom. Whether I was right or wrong I shall not say, only I ask you to put yourself in my place as I was then situated, and draw your own conclusions. It is true I had formed dear and near associations, and the old neighborhood had been the scene of my trials and triumphs. My master had been uniformly kind, as much so at least as his disposition would allow, yet I felt, although my skin was black, I was entitled to and deserved freedom to worship God according to the dictates of my own conscience, and to teach others the way to everlasting life. I felt that I was a man made after God's own image, and that no one had any right to a property in me as a mere chattel, all human laws to the contrary notwithstanding. I did not deem that I was a criminal, and that I was escaping from penal servitude; but that I was one of God's children, escaping from a worse than Egyptian bondage. I rightfully owed allegiance to God and my country only. So I run away. CHAPTER III. Caught, Tried, and Taken Back Home to James Wilson--My Mistress Saves me from Being Whipped--I go to the Railroad and Work one Month Precisely--Go Back Home--Wilson Surprised--Left the Railroad at 3 o'clock A.M.--Did not Want to Disturb Leadbitter's rest--Sent to Memphis with a Load of Cotton--Afraid of the Slave-pens and Slave-auction--Start for Home--Not Sold--Pray, Sing, and Shout--Get Home and Ordered to Hire myself out. The peculiar feelings one has who is a "runaway" are indescribable. I felt every bit an outcast, and was frightened by the least noise or the sight of any person, and the yelp of a hound was terror to me. I skulked and hid in the woods all day until night, when I concluded to go to town, get something to eat, and make my arrangements for the future. When the "hoy," who was sent by Wilson with me, returned and repeated to him my words, vengeance was sworn against me, and the hounds were turned loose for immediate chase. I went to the town of Pontotoc, and while there refreshing myself in a cabin I heard hounds whining. That was sufficient to inform me that I was trapped. What to do I did not know, but went to the door with the intention of making my escape, if possible, when I was met by James Wilson and five other persons fully armed. Resistance was useless, the hounds would have caught me before I could have run a hundred yards, even if I could have escaped the bullets. I surrendered, and was securely tied by James Wilson and his gang and taken back to the plantation. Dire threats were made against me, but my mistress, James' mother, saved me again. She informed her son that "Charles belonged to her; that Charles' mother had placed him, under the care of God, in her custody, and that she did not intend to have him beaten." James insisted on "breaking" me, as he termed it, and finally prevailed on his mother, with promises, that if she would let him deal with me he would "break" me without whipping me. She consented. James came to the cabin where I was tied and chained, and told me that he did not desire to whip me, but that if I did not go to the railroad to work every slave on the plantation would become demoralized, and they would all do as they pleased. His words and manner were very kind and conciliatory, yet I took them for what they were worth, and did not believe him; for he would have whipped me severely if he had dared do so. His reasoning regarding the poor, ignorant slaves on the plantation, however, was to the point. In their ignorance they would suppose that if I could do as I pleased and not be punished, they could do the same; and they would, in all probability, create an insurrection which would result in their own destruction. For their sakes I acceded to James' wishes. He told me that if I would go to the railroad and work for Leadbitter one month, that I might after that time hire myself out to whom I pleased and for as long a time as I pleased. I was given a letter to Leadbitter, and immediately started on foot for the railroad. When I arrived there I handed the letter to Mr. Leadbitter, who asked me how long I had come to stay with him. I told him one month. He broke the letter open, and after reading it informed me that James Wilson stated in the letter that I was to stay as long as he wanted me. This was a piece of intelligence that learned me that James Wilson would lie, and from that time forward I had no confidence in his truthfulness. I did not know what was best to do, but finally made up my mind to fulfill and make good my promise, and trust to the future to compel James Wilson to perform his. I thought this the right course. I did not deem that I would be justified in breaking my promise because Wilson was unreliable and broke his. I concluded that if Leadbitter kept me longer than one month he would have to be smarter than I gave him credit for being. I asked Leadbitter how many days there were in that month. I went to work, and kept account of the days. I worked carefully. The time passed slowly and wearily. My associations were of the worst character possible, and my co-laborers were of that lowest class of southern blacks whose ignorance and waywardness render them most of the time more than brutal. I made every effort to do good among them, and endeavored to preach to them on several occasions, but was interrupted and deterred by the whites, who forbade my preaching. I talked to the blacks, however, whenever opportunity occurred, and I hope that my labors for Jesus were not in vain. The last day of my month came and passed. It was Friday. On Saturday morning, about three o'clock, I started for home, and with rapid walking I reached my destination about two hours after sunrise. When I reached the plantation I "cut across lots," and passed through the field where Wilson was at work with the hands. I approached, unobserved by him, and spoke to him. He looked at me with astonishment, and in surprise asked, "What are you doing here?" "You told me to stay one month; I done so," I answered. "Did Mr. Leadbitter know when you left?" "I do not know, sir," I replied. "I left at three o'clock this morning, and did not think it worth while to disturb Mr. Leadbitter's rest." "Three o'clock!" exclaimed Wilson. "Yes, sir," I quietly answered. "You ran away, did you?" "No, sir, I did not run away. I stayed as long as you required me to stay, when, in obedience to your expressed promises, I came home." James Wilson made some remark I could not understand, but finally said that as I had come home he had some work for me to do before I could hire myself out. I felt somewhat easy in my mind, and waited to be set to work. But when he afterwards told me he wanted me to take a load of cotton to Memphis, my heart misgave me, I felt sure, in my mind, that I was to be sold from the slave-pens at Memphis. The grand trial time had now come for me, and the teachings of my mother and uncle Ben and uncle Jack before and at our final separation came to me in full force. They taught me, before I could read for myself, that in trouble I should rely implicitly on the help of my Savior, and that I should pray without ceasing. To God I immediately turned for guidance and help, and asked that my every step might be directed by him, and that he should protect me from my enemies and persecutors. I felt that I was being persecuted for Jesus' sake, for I was promised, time and again, that if I would quit preaching and talking to the slaves on religious subjects, I should be advanced and my life made easy and comfortable. I refused the offers, because my Master's work was of more importance than my ease. I was impressed, deeply, with the great responsibilities resting upon me, and was determined to preach and teach while I had strength and opportunity to do so. I may have been mistaken with regard to the cause of my persecution by the Wilsons, but I think not. I do not really believe that any one is persecuted for Christ's sake in this day and age of the world, in a Christian country, except in the South before the rebellion. I have heard men, and, I am almost ashamed to say, preachers, proclaim that they were persecuted because of their adherence to the cause of Christ, when they were not persecuted at all on any account, except probably on account of some wrong act of their own. Paul and the apostles were persecuted, and early Christians were persecuted, but who ever heard of a citizen of the United States being persecuted because he was a follower of Jesus! But slaves in the South were persecuted and punished severely for preaching the gospel of Christ, not on that very account probably, but because it would teach the slaves obedience to a higher power than the inhuman laws of the southern states as they then existed. Paul was persecuted for preaching the redemption of mankind through the blood of the Savior, by pagans and gentiles. I was persecuted for the same reasons by the slave-owners of the South, and for endeavoring to lead the benighted blacks to Jesus. There seems to be some likeness in the positions of Paul and myself. I felt that was the case, at any rate. My mind was distressed with the fear that I was being sent to Memphis only to be sold to the highest bidder. After addressing the throne of God for help and deliverance I felt relieved, and determined that, come what would, I would use my best talents and exertions for my heavenly Master wherever I might be. Relieved, I set about making preparations for my trip to Memphis, with a prayerful heart. Two of us were going in company, each with a load of cotton. We started on Monday morning, and traveled along without unusual trouble or delay for three days over hilly and rough roads, when we camped for the night within a mile of Holly Springs, in Mississippi, and about fifty-five miles from home. It will be remembered that uncle Ben was sold by Wilson to a man who lived in and near Holly Springs. I was anxious to see uncle Ben, if possible, and began making inquiries regarding his whereabouts. A colored man came along the road, driving a team, of whom I inquired. After a little time he said a preacher named Ben Harris lived in a house close by, at the same time pointing to it. Upon further inquiries I learned that Ben had taken another wife. This may seem rather criminal, and may appear to be a clear case of bigamy against uncle Ben; but when it is remembered that masters compelled their slaves to live together as man and wife, without ceremony, for the purpose only of breeding children, and that Ben had no say in the matter, he will be held blameless. The laws of the southern states did not recognize the legal relations of man and wife between slaves, therefore they could not commit the crime of bigamy. If Ben was morally guilty, he was forced into his guilt by law and general custom. I had not seen Ben for about ten years, and was so overjoyed at the prospect of seeing him that I could scarcely wait until night, for I was informed that he would not be at his cabin until night. After attending to my affairs about town I waited until sundown, when I went to the house indicated by my informant. Not being certain that the person who lived in the cabin was my uncle, I necessarily had to make inquiries. A colored woman met me at the door, and answered such questions as I asked, from which I was satisfied that Ben lived here. I informed the woman who I was and that Ben was my uncle, and that I had called, in passing on my way to Memphis, to see him. She cordially invited me to enter the cabin, and told me that Ben was out feeding the horses and would shortly be in. I had to wait but a little while when Ben came in. He supposed me to be some passing stranger, and did not recognize me. After some desultory conversation I told him who I was and how I came to be there. Our meeting, after mutual recognition, was affectionate and cordial. We talked over old times and related our experience since we parted at the Wilson plantation. We kneeled at the family altar, and each poured out his soul's thanksgiving to God for his goodness to us, having, before I left, a season of soul-reviving prayer. Thus we knelt, uncle Ben, his wife, and I, poor slaves in the chains of bondage, really and earnestly thanking God for the many blessings we received. Strange, was it not? when men and women rolling in wealth and all the luxuries and happiness that wealth could purchase, did not even deign to notice the source from whence all their blessings flowed. They had life and liberty, and were unrestrained in the pursuit of happiness, yet not once did they thank the great Giver of all their good. Then what had we, poor wretches, to thank God for? For everything we enjoyed,--for life, for the blessed plan of salvation, for our senses of seeing, hearing, and feeling, for our hearts with which to love him, for our humanity, for the great gifts of sunshine, rain, regulated seasons, the moon, the stars, the earth, the trees, the brooks, the rivers,--everything truly enjoyable we thanked God for. We thanked him for health and strength to do his work. Then we had a great deal to thank Almighty God for, although slaves. How many of you ever think to thank God for sunshine or for reason? Let me illustrate. A gentleman was passing along the highway, when he was met by a poor maniac, who accosted him, saying, "What do you thank God for?" The gentleman being surprised by the abrupt question did not reply immediately, when the maniac continued, "Then thank God for your reason; mine is gone; I'm mad--a maniac." This was something the gentleman had never thought of before, and it opened to his mind an entirely new source of thankfulness. We are apt to forget that we are not slaves, not blind, deaf, or dumb, and not insane; yet should we lose any one of our five senses we would then know how to be thankful for and appreciate that sense should we regain it. Then thank God for everything, your very existence included. Suppose the sun would stop in his course and not shine on the earth but for one day. What consternation and grief there would be throughout the world! Then suppose that after twenty-four hours the sun should burst upon us in all his refulgence and glorious magnificence. What a shout of joy would greet his appearance, and glad hearts would pour out thanks upon thanks to the great Giver for the needful sunshine. Then let us be thankful for all the great blessings bestowed upon us by our heavenly Father, and serve him with all our hearts, in whatever position in life we may be placed. Uncle Ben and I did _then_, and we do _yet_. After a prolonged conversation and a good and refreshing season of prayer I took my departure for my camp, never expecting to meet my relative again, and never have. We started next morning on our way to Memphis, and traveled into Memphis, after three days, on a very fine road for the South, known as the state-line road. We drove to the cotton-yard, unloaded, and received the receipts for the cotton, and put up for the night at a wagon-yard. I spent this night in prayer and supplication that God would save me from the slave-pen and the auctioneer's block; and my prayers were responded to in my protection. The next morning we started for home by what was known as the pigeon-roost route, in order to save toll and other expenses. The weight on my mind was removed, and I felt happy and thankful. I was not sold from the shambles. I prayed, I sung, and I shouted by turns. We arrived at home, and I waited patiently for my next order. My young master soon informed me, however, that I might hire myself out, if I could find and one that would hire me. Good! God was on my side. With a light heart and truly happy I set about my preparations to hire myself out; and the very first thing I did was to go to my cabin and thank God for his goodness, and ask for his protection and guidance. Always praying? Yes, I was always at it. My heart was big with love to God. CHAPTER IV. Start out on my Travels to Hunt a New Master--Find Mr. Dansley--Hire to Him--Thirty Dollars per Month for my Master and Five Dollars for Myself--Wilson Astonished--Appointed Superintendent of Dansley's Farm--Rules and Regulations--Peace and Tranquillity--My Moral Labors Successful--Prayer and Social Meetings--Meetings in the Woods--Quarrel and Fight like very Brothers--Time comes to be Moved to Another Field of Labor. It was customary in the slave states to allow slaves to hire themselves for their masters to such as the slaves themselves desired to work for. Sometimes this arrangement was made to save the master trouble. In my case I was instructed to find a place to work at thirty dollars per month and board, and then to return and report to Wilson, who would then give the necessary permission in writing, which would stand as a contract between him and my employer. My first object was to find a Christian man to hire to who would allow me to pray and preach on all proper occasions, and who would rather assist me than hinder me in my efforts to make Christians of the blacks. I cared nothing for the manual labor I had to do, if I could only be placed in a position to do my great Master's work. His work was my life-labor. On this particular account I was very careful who I applied to. In a day or two I applied to Mr. Dansley, whose plantation was about eighteen miles from Wilson's, and who had been recommended to me as being the kind of man I was hunting for. Mr. Dansley questioned me closely, and examined me as to my reasons for wanting to hire out, and why my master wished me to hire out when there was plenty of work on his own place for me to do. I confessed frankly that I could read and write, and knew something about figures, and was desirous to serve God and do his work by preaching, and in every other way in my power; that my master was afraid that I would demoralize his other slaves by learning them to read and write and by preaching to them, and in order that I might not do that he wanted me off the plantation; that he could not sell me because I was the property of his wife, and that she would not consent to have me sold out of the family. "If those are faults, as considered by Mr. Wilson, I am very well satisfied that you will perform your part of the contract notwithstanding; yet what Mr. Wilson is pleased to consider faults in you I deem good points in your character and disposition, therefore I will hire you, hoping that your duty to God will include your duty to me under the contract of hire." I told him that was my understanding of my duty to God; that it comprised, in my condition of servitude, my duty to my slave-master. I informed Mr. Dansley that my master, Wilson, wanted thirty dollars per month for my services, and that I wanted five dollars per month for myself, making in all thirty-five dollars per month. He was satisfied to pay that amount, and gave me a letter to carry to Wilson stating that he would hire me at thirty dollars per month, yet he agreed with me that he would pay me, besides, five dollars per month. When Wilson gave me instructions to hire myself out at not less than thirty dollars per month, he hoped I would fail, from the fact that wages for field-hands were only twenty-five dollars per month; and when I went back with Mr. Dansley's letter so soon, he was somewhat surprised. He would have opened his eyes with wonder if he had known that Dansley was to pay me five dollars per month extra. He gave me a written permission to work for Mr. Dansley as long as Dansley should want me. I immediately went to Dansley's, and stayed with him nine months--nine months of contented time. I found my new master every way worthy of any confidence I might repose in him. In moderate circumstances, he used prudence and diligence in his business transactions and farm operations. He was one of those kind of men some of which may be found in almost every community--an unassuming, industrious, Christian gentleman. For his farm-force he hired men, both white and black; and when his work pushed him he would require his cook and house-maid, the only slaves he owned, to assist in the fields. At the time of my commencing to work for him he had white men hired who were worse, if any thing, in their habits of shiftless laziness than the lazy blacks. These whites, whom the negroes usually termed "white trash," were, as a general thing, the most vicious, brutal, thieving, shiftless, and lazy human beings imaginable. They were ignorant in the greatest degree, and would not work so long as they could obtain food to sustain life in any other way. They deemed it an honor to be noticed civilly by a respectable negro, and would fawn and truckle to the behests of any one who had the physical courage to command them. Such people can be found in no place except the South. They are a result of the system of slavery and slave-laws, and slave-owners are responsible for their condition. Such were the kind of men I had to work with. These men would quarrel and wrangle among themselves, and would consume time and neglect their work. When the house-servants were at work in the field, they would insult and misuse them in every conceivable manner, and it was with great difficulty that Mr. Dansley could get his work done properly and in season. Knowing I had been a farm-superintendent on Wilson's plantation for a number of years, Mr. Dansley immediately appointed me to the same position on his farm, which accounts for his readiness and willingness to pay me high wages. This was a new kind of position for me, and it required considerable thought and management for me to get matters properly arranged in my mind. "Bossing" white hands and working with them, so as to make their labors profitable for my employer, was no easy task. The farm-work was carried on somewhat similar to the way in which large farms are worked in the northern states, and it required great prudence and watchful care to avoid waste and save all the crops. I arranged my rules of conduct, hours of labor, etc., for the hands, and submitted them to Mr. Dansley for his approval. Mr. Dansley left the matter entirely with me; and, after trial, I found my rules were not sufficiently stringent, and that if I expected to successfully "carry on" that farm I would have to make rules with penalties attached, the men I had to deal with caring little or nothing for mild, persuasive laws. I therefore drew up the following rules, and presented them to Mr. Dansley, and requested him to make them stipulations in the contracts of hire with his men. He approved them, and acceded to my request. 1. Quarreling and using vulgar and profane language is strictly forbidden on the farm, and any hand or hands violating this rule shall be discharged or corrected, in the discretion of the superintendent. 2. Obedience to the just orders of the superintendent is essential to the profitable conduct of the farm; therefore, disobedience to the orders of the superintendent shall be followed by the discharge of the hand or hands so offending, or his or their correction, in the discretion of the superintendent. 3. Each and every hand hereby binds himself to obey the just orders of the superintendent and the rules herein established, and upon the discharge of any hand or hands, by the superintendent, one month's wages shall be forfeited. These rules were signed by the hands, that is, they "made their mark;" but I signed my name, being the only negro hand on the place and the only one who could write. Peace and tranquillity reigned on that farm thereafter, and better crops were not raised in the county. My whole study and aim was to do right--to be just to my hands and do my duty to my employer. I relied on God's help, and prayerfully asked his guidance in every and all difficulties and emergencies, and my success is attributable to that help which is always given when properly asked for. The men I had to deal with were more to be pitied than blamed. They were entirely ignorant of any but the most crude principles of right, and were taught from their childhood only such rude notions as prevailed among the ignorant. When I talked to them of Jesus they seemed astonished. They did not even know that punishment would meet them hereafter for their sins committed in this life, and were puzzled and perplexed with the plan of salvation until after I had repeatedly explained it to them; in fact, I taught them the history of man, from Adam down to the coming of our Savior, and taught them the religion of Jesus. Better-behaved men or better hands were not to be found in the neighborhood after they learned the way to Jesus, and many happy times we did have on that farm at our prayer--meetings and social gatherings. All of us would meet at some convenient place on the farm, every Sabbath-day, and would spend the time profitably, in exhortation and prayer. The master and mistress were always there, and worked with a will in the cause of Christ, and I would exhort and preach to the best of my ability. Sometimes Mr. Dansley would read a chapter from the Bible and comment thereon, and sometimes his wife would read and comment. All of us prayed, and some of the white hands became, in a short time, earnest public prayers. They had found the fount of true happiness, and would drink largely therefrom on all occasions. Our regular Sunday meetings soon became known in the neighborhood, and the neighbors and their slaves would come and worship with us, until our congregations became so large that Mr. Dansley allowed me to take the hands and clear away a nice place in the woods, and make seats and a stand, where we held our meetings regularly thereafter every Sunday, in the forenoon, afternoon, and at night; besides, we held a social prayer-meeting every Wednesday evening. These meetings were productive of great good to the community and to individuals. In this way I brought men and women to God even while in a condition of slavery, and required to labor six days in the week in the grain and cotton fields. If I, a slave, could accomplish this much, how much should the favored preachers of the country accomplish? This is a hard question to answer, however, and I shall not insist on its consideration, as every preacher can not be a Lorenzo Dow, a John Smith, or a James Findley. Among the field-hands under me were two brothers, white men, who, when I first took charge of the farm were maliciously wicked toward each other, and were almost constantly quarreling just like brothers(!). Before three months had elapsed, under my kind of treatment, they were praying, acting Christians, and remained so as long as I knew them. From this time down to the present writing I have been a zealous worker in the Lord's vineyard, and shall remain in the harness as long as God wills. Regarding doctrinal points of theology I knew nothing, and my whole stock of theological works could have been carried in a vest pocket, in the shape of one or two tracts which fell in my way, and which I read, studied, and preserved. I had a Bible, and that alone served me as the guide in my ministry, and furnished me with all the arguments necessary to the conversion of sinners and their redemption. Our congregation at Mr. Dansley's was not organized into a church, and I did not attempt to receive members into the church of Christ. I doubted my authority to do so, and any efforts on my part in that direction would have been immediately stopped by the preachers and members of the white churches. But this did not deter me from preaching and exhorting. I believed firmly that God required of me the labor I performed, and I was so much interested and taken up in my work that I did not stop to consider what the consequences would be to myself. My only consideration was, "Where can I find an opportunity to do good and save souls." I asked no pay for my services as a preacher, and never received any; hence I usually found congregations awaiting me at my appointments made up of all classes, white and black, and from all churches organized in the community. My discourses were sometimes off-hand and sometimes studied. It is true my studied discourses were, in the main, original, and taken wholly from the Bible, yet they were none the less effective, because they were earnest and honest. My language was that of the southern blacks and uneducated whites at the beginning of my labors as an exhorter, but after hard study and training I improved myself greatly in this respect, and gained the reputation of being as correct in my pronunciation of English words as the majority of the white preachers. I am not yet entirely free from dialectic pronunciation, and never expect to be; but I find that this very defect, if so it may be called, adds force to my sermons, and gives them a distinctness not otherwise attainable. Therefore I make use of my very faults to do good. I had hoped to stay with Mr. Dansley as long as he could find it profitable to hire me; and so far I had been of great use to him. I had placed his whole farm in a good state of repair, and had matured and saved his crops in such a manner that his profits were much larger than they ever were before in any one season. I had the goodwill and confidence of the hands, both white and black, who worked under me, and was an instrument in the hands of God in spreading the religion of Jesus Christ in the neighborhood; consequently I was happy and contented, with plenty of all kinds of work to do. But I had accomplished my mission at this place, and it pleased God to remove me to another field of labor, where the harvest was ripe and ready for the reaper. I never complained; on the contrary, I rejoiced that God was not done with me, and had plenty for me to do. When I had thoroughly worked one field of labor, I deemed my immediate services no longer required, and was glad when removed where more work was to be done in God's moral vineyard. Of course I formed intimate associations in every locality in which I was placed, and was prone to leave them; but I was content to do the will of God in every particular, whether that will was expressed through the slave-laws and James Wilson or otherwise. I was a slave, and was compelled to labor for the profit of my owner, which I performed diligently and faithfully; I was a child of God, and owed him duty and obedience, which I performed earnestly and constantly. From my slave-owners I expected and received no reward or remuneration; from God I received no pay as I labored, but my great reward is yet to come. I have been a depositor in God's bank, from which I expect to draw largely at the final settlement. CHAPTER V. James Wilson Comes Along--Wants me to go with Him to Saulsbury, Tennessee, to Help Build a House for a Grocery-Store--Takes me Along with Him--Wilson Taken Sick--I Take Care of Him--He gets Well--I make another Attempt to Escape from Slavery--What Came of it. One day James Wilson came to Mr. Dansley's, and said he had come for me to go with him to Saulsbury, Tennessee, where he was going to start a grocery, and that he wished my assistance in erecting a building therefor. He informed me, at the same time, that as soon as the building was finished, I might return to Mr. Dansley and stay with him as long as he wanted me. He had another colored man with him, and desired to go right away. All I had to do was to obey, so without further ado I bade farewell to the people of the plantation, and went with Wilson. The parting made me feel sad, for a time. The word grocery, as applied in the South, has a far different meaning than that intended in the North. A grocery in the South is a place where whisky and other intoxicating beverages are sold, and, as a general thing, at these places the planters and others congregate to drink, carouse, gamble, quarrel, and fight. This was the kind of grocery James Wilson was going to start in Saulsbury, and the thought of aiding even under protest and unwillingly in the establishment of one of these hells caused me much anxiety. I made every effort to get relieved from this odious work, but without avail. We immediately began the erection of the grocery-building, on our arrival at Saulsbury, and made good progress for a while. The boards we used in the building had to be sawed by us two slaves with a whipsaw. We dug a deep trench in the ground, and laid the log to be sawed into boards lengthwise over the trench, and one of us would stand in the trench under the log and the other on top of the log. In this way we worked, day after day, until we had a sufficient number of boards to accommodate our wants. The Almighty, it seemed to me, interfered with our work. James Wilson was taken down very sick in the midst of our efforts to create this additional devil's den, and was totally unable to leave his bed. I had to take care of him, and the work on the grocery-house was necessarily stopped. As soon as he was able to be moved I took him to the Sulphur Springs, not many miles away, and nursed him carefully and attentively until he was able to be about again. This sickness of Wilson I deemed a warning to him, and endeavored to impress as much on his mind; but I was cursed and reviled for my pains. I availed myself of every opportunity to dissuade him from his evil purpose, but failed. He was determined to start a grocery, and start a grocery he would and did. I cleared my skirts and conscience in the business, however, as far as I could under the circumstances; yet a "still small voice" seemed to whisper to me that I was doing very wicked and sinful acts in helping to further the grocery iniquity. I was, in a manner, forced to work, yet I was uneasy and troubled in my mind. Others may think I was blameless; that I was a slave and not accountable for acts my master commanded me to do. This seemed very specious reasoning, but still I felt guilty, and sent fervent and prayerful petitions to the throne of grace for forgiveness and fortitude to withstand temptation, which enable me to do the will of my great Master regardless of the consequences that might ensue to me from the effects of Wilson's wrath or resentment. We finished the building in about two months from the time we first went to Salisbury, and prepared to return home. It was here that I first saw a complete railroad and a locomotive with a train of cars. My fellow-slave, on hearing the whistle of the locomotive for the first time, was very much frightened, and jumped over the log he was hewing, with the exclamation, "Good God! what is that?" and started to run. I stopped him, and, explaining to him what the loud, shrill shriek meant, quieted his fears. We both went to the depot and examined the locomotive and cars with great curiosity and interest. James Wilson, being still weak with his late sickness, was compelled to ride in the wagon he had brought from home, and I rode his saddle-horse. On the way, Wilson informed me that I was to attend the grocery at Salisbury, and that he expected me to make money out of the concern. My very soul revolted at the bare idea of being a whisky-vender, and my immediate determination was not to be one. My mind was made up to "take to the woods" on the first favorable opportunity. I said nothing, however, but kept my own counsel. We traveled slowly, by reason of the master's sickness; and when we stopped for the night I found that the saddle I had been riding had hurt the horse's back. Wilson was furious, and swore he would take as much hide from my back when we got home as the saddle had taken from the horse's back. The next day after leaving Salisbury we arrived at Mr. Dansley's. In conversation, I heard Wilson tell Mr. Dansley that he intended to take me home with him. I claimed the fulfillment of his promise from Wilson, and asked him if he was not going to let me work for Mr. Dansley, according to agreement. This so enraged Wilson that he pulled out his six-shooter, and exclaimed: "Mount that horse, you ---- black rascal!" I did so. Fearful that the horse's back would become incurably sore if I rode him with his back in the condition it was, I suggested that the horse had better be led. Wilson therefore ordered me into the wagon to drive the team, and required Havely, my fellow-slave, to walk,--intending we should take turns. After awhile Havely exchanged places with me, and while walking along in rear of the wagon it occurred to me that this would be as favorable an opportunity as I would soon again get for making my escape from Wilson and slavery. I "took to the woods" without attracting the attention of either Wilson or Havely, and made good my escape, for the time at least. I made my way back to Mr. Dansley's and told him my reasons for endeavoring to effect my escape from slavery, and that the immediate cause of my present attempt was to keep myself clear of the accursed sin of whisky-selling. My motives were applauded, but my judgment was condemned. How could I ever expect to escape to a country where I could be a free man? Even should I escape to the northern states the fugitive slave law, which was then in full force, would remand me back to slavery, and it was a long, tedious, and perilous journey to Canada. I was going to make the attempt at any rate. It was agreed between us that Mr. Dansley should buy me of Wilson if he could, and that I should stay and work for him at the rate of thirty-five dollars per month until I had re-imbursed Mr. Dansley, when I should have my freedom papers. It would have required about four years for me to pay for myself at those rates, as Wilson "priced" me at sixteen hundred dollars. The negotiations for my purchase by Mr. Dansley failed, and I was left to my exertions to get to Canada the best way I could. I was secreted during this time about Dansley's farm, and was aroused to a sense of my condition one day by reading a hand-bill which was posted on a tree on the road close to Mr. Dansley's house, of which the following is a copy: "ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD!" "Charles, a slave, has disappeared from the plantation of the undersigned, in Pontotoc County. The above reward will be given for his apprehension and return to me alive. "JAMES WILSON." This settled the matter. The reward was soon known over the whole country, and every slave-hunter was on the chase to gain the reward. I "laid close" and waited to escape from that part of the country, so that I might not compromise Mr. Dansley. He was already under surveillance by slave-owners, and was in danger of being driven from the country; in fact, threats of lynching had been made against him. The last day I was there I lay hid in some cotton-pens, close to the house, when two men came on the hunt of me. They had their blood-hounds with them, and demanded permission of Dansley to search his house. The permission was granted, when the men began the search. I could see and hear all that was going on, and trembled for my safety. I put myself on the mercy of the Almighty and resigned myself entirely into his hands. The search was made all over the premises, including the cotton-pens in which I was hid; but God was on my side, and I was saved from their clutches. I earnestly thanked God for my deliverance on this occasion. As soon as dark came I emerged from my hiding-place, and, after being supplied with what provisions I could conveniently carry, I bid good-by to Christian Dansley and his family, and started on my perilous journey to the free states and Canada. My progress was necessarily slow and wearisome, being compelled to travel altogether at night. The first point I designed making on my journey was Memphis, where I hoped to find means of escape to Illinois. I had plenty of time for meditation and prayer, and my thoughts were naturally concentrated on my deplorable condition all the time. My past life came up in review before me, and while sorrowfully wandering through the woods I would compare myself to persecuted Christians in the days of the apostles and the early evaneglists. The blessed Savior was persecuted in his very infancy and had to be hid by his parents. They had to flee for life; I was fleeing for liberty. What had I to complain of? Jesus was with me and would protect me. God had delivered him from the very tomb of death; why need I fear? With these reflections in my mind I would feel revived and refreshed with the consolation that while there was life in me there was hope for me. The words of the poet came to my memory, wherein he says: "Neither will he upbraid you, Though often your request; He'll give you grace to conquer, And take you home to rest." The consolation and help I received from my meditations sustained me through all my trials and hardships, and I plodded my weary way along with God in my heart and bright hopes for the future. I knew if I drew nigh unto God he would draw nigh unto me; and that if I would let the word of Christ dwell in me I would be rich in all wisdom. Yet I was aware I should suffer persecution if I lived godly in Jesus Christ; therefore I determined to continue in the things which I had learned. On Sunday night I arrived at Holly Springs. Uncle Ben lived there, and I was anxious to see him and obtain through his assistance, if possible, rest and food. I had proceeded only a little way toward his house when I met a colored man and began conversation with him. I learned that the reward Wilson had offered for me had arrived at Holly Springs before me, and that persons were on the lookout for me. The colored man seemed to have a suspicion that I was a runaway, and was disposed to aid me all in his power. To keep out of the way of slave-hunters was my object, and I knew that the contemplated visit to Uncle Ben was fraught with too much danger to be further thought of. Fearful that the negro would betray me, yet feeling somewhat safe for the present, I sat down to think and rest myself. I knew that if I was caught Wilson would flay me, as he had threatened to do, for making his saddle-horse's back sore, but that if I could once get through to Memphis I would be enabled, through the assistance of friends, to make my way North. Yet I wanted to see Uncle Ben again, and tried to hit upon some plan to accomplish that object; but I failed, and started on the road again. After traveling a short time I came to a house by the road-side. The kitchen stood about twenty yards from the main building, and had a window in the back part of it. I was very hungry, and debated in my mind as to the manner in which I should proceed to obtain food. To ask for it was too risky, and I was fearful that if I was seen by any of the persons about the house I would be apprehended and put in the nearest jail as a runaway. Looking in at the window I saw a colored woman; and on a table a meal was prepared, which, it seemed, was being held in readiness for the arrival of some one. I waited patiently, hoping the colored woman would leave the kitchen for some purpose; but she sat quietly waiting. After awhile the master and mistress arrived, it seems, from a visit. Shortly the mistress of the house came in and ordered the supper. Fortunately for me the supper was to be carried into the "big house," and the cook, taking her hands full of things, left the kitchen and went into the house. I immediately sprung through the window, promiscuously emptied the meat and bread into my sack, and left the kitchen the same way before the return of the cook, just in time to escape detection. I crouched in the shade of the cabin fearing to move, when I heard the cook exclaim: "Good gracious! some one hab tuk and turned in an' tuk all de bread an' meat." Her cries brought the household to the kitchen, and during the racket I made my escape to the road and a more peaceful neighborhood. I walked briskly for a couple of miles, when I stopped and satisfied my ravenous hunger. This was my first theft of something to eat. Before this I had been fortunate enough to obtain supplies of food from friendly slaves, but for the twenty-four hours previous to my raid on the kitchen I had eaten nothing. I make no excuse for this immoral act, and ask no one to say I did right. I only did what perhaps any one else, under the same circumstances, would have done. I was too weak from hunger and other causes to withstand the temptation of obtaining the food as I did. As soon as my appetite was satisfied, however, my sin rose up before me in all its enormity; I felt distressed; and it came vividly in my mind, "In that Christ hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." Oh, what had I done! I had lost God's help in this my hour of trial. I prayed for forgiveness, and asked God to direct and protect me. Yet I felt uneasy and depressed,--not that my faith in Jesus was any the less, but that my sin would bring its own punishment. "There is many a pang to pursue me; They may crush, but they shall not contemn-- They may torture, but shall not subdue me,-- 'Tis of God I think--not of them." About daylight I reached a forest in which I could conceal myself during the day. I slept soundly, being undisturbed, until dark, when I proceeded onward. While traveling _that night_ I was compelled to pass a large plantation. I was afraid some white person would see me, therefore I avoided every one,--not being able to distinguish, in the dark, a white from a black person. However, about daylight I met a colored boy, who procured some food for me and directed me to a cotton-pen close by, where I could hide and sleep during the day. When night came--it was Thursday night--I crawled out of the pen and started for another night's walk. I made very good time that night, and walked to within nine miles of Memphis. I was afraid to go on into Memphis in the day-time, consequently I slept in the woods that day without anything to eat, my supply of food being exhausted. I was very much exhausted, and suffered greatly from hunger. When night came I started again. After proceeding on my way about two miles I came to the village of Mt. Pleasant, where I thought to obtain something to eat. I had passed nearly through the village without seeing any one; but finally I saw a man who I mistook for a colored man. I accosted him, when, to my chagrin and disappointment, he was a white man. I felt that I had already betrayed myself; and through my fright and want of steadiness I was again in bonds. The man asked me numerous and various questions, as to where I came from, where I was going, who I belonged to, etc. I again sinned, and paid the penalty. I lied to the man. I told him I belonged to a man by the name of Potts, and that I was going to his plantation. Quite a number of persons soon gathered around me, and by repeated questions entrapped me. Inquiries were made as to the health of Mr. Potts' family, and of Mr. Potts in particular. I stated that the family were well and that Mr. Potts was as well as usual. It turned out that several of the persons present knew the Potts family, and that Mr. Potts had died two months previously. I was immediately arrested and placed in a secure place, tied and chained to the floor. Thus sin brought me into trouble. Had I trusted to God and not been in too great haste to get something to eat, he would have helped me. My weakness made me forget that I should not lie to any one, seeing that I had put off the old man with his deeds. In my great need of strengthening food, Christ would have succored me had I not forgotten to pray to him and ask his help, for "a man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven." In nearly all the villages of the South, and on most of the large plantations, were slave-jails, where runaway and refractory slaves were incarcerated. These jails were usually a double pen, the inside pen being covered with a roof, and the top of the outside pen being covered with sharp iron spikes. Between the pens one or more savage dogs were usually kept. This was the kind of place I was now placed in. Hungry, worn out with my journey, and nearly naked, I soon fell asleep from sheer exhaustion and slept soundly until morning. After I had eaten my breakfast I was taken out of jail at Mt. Pleasant and started back to Holly Springs, well ironed and guarded, where I was recognized as Wilson's slave. Wilson was notified of my apprehension. After laying in the jail at Holly Springs about three weeks Wilson came for me. I had made several attempts in that time to escape, but did not succeed. I was ironed and compelled to walk, which, in my exhausted state, was too much for me, and I was taken violently sick on the road, when Wilson procured a conveyance and hauled me the balance of the way home. A physician was immediately summoned, who ordered my shackles removed. After the irons were removed I regained my spirits, and entertained hopes of being able to make another attempt to regain my liberty. I was very sick for several days. About two o'clock on the last morning I stayed there I awoke and felt fresh, and found that my strength had in a great measure returned. Upon looking around the moonlit room I found that I was alone. To escape was my very first intention. Getting out of bed I examined the window to the cabin, when I found I could raise it easily. I gathered what clothes I could find, as well as a blanket from the bed, and climbing through the window made my escape unobserved. I did not stop to put on my clothes until I had got two or three miles from the plantation. I stayed in the woods about three weeks, when I returned to my master and asked his forgiveness, and promised that I would never run away again. I was forgiven. During my three weeks' starving and hiding in the woods I had ample time for reflection and thought. Prayerfully I considered my situation and asked God's help to direct me. I came to the conclusion that I was entirely wrong in my course. God, for his own good purpose, had placed me in bondage, and in his good time he would relieve me either by death or emancipation. My hardships, I felt, were by reason of my disobedience to God's will. Although I was a slave God had given me my task in his vineyard as a slave, and I should have fronted the wrath of my master, Wilson, rather than that of God. I felt that I was doing wrong, and after prayerful consideration I determined to do right, and go back to the plantation and patiently await God's time to set me free. Wilson received me as kindly as his nature would permit, and treated me as he did the other slaves and as if I had never been disobedient to him and ran away. I felt better, and knew then that I was right in the sight of my heavenly Father. My views underwent a change for the better while I was an outcast in the woods, and after that I was better fitted to do my allotted work for God. CHAPTER VI. Was hired to Mr. Thompson, and adopted his name--Opened regular meetings, and preached on the plantation and other places--Took unto myself a wife--Was purchased by Thompson, duly installed on the plantation, and invested with authority--Various means and plans resorted to by the overseer to degrade me in the eyes of Mr. Thompson--Driven, through persecution, to run away--Returned back to my master. A short time after I came in from the woods Wilson determined to hire me to a man named Thompson, who lived about twenty miles away. I made no objection, and was duly hired for the term of three years. I adopted the name "Thompson," from my new master, which I have since retained. The slaves of the South are usually named like brutes, with only one name for a designation, and it became customary among the slaves to adopt the surname of their masters. I had never adopted the name of Wilson, because I disliked the man; but as soon as I was hired to Mr. Thompson I took his name, therefore I was henceforth known as Charles Thompson. The adoption of a name by myself may appear strange to a great many of my readers, yet when it comes to be considered that I was a human chattel, with no rights or privileges of American citizenship, and that I was without a name, except simply "Charles," no surprise will be felt. I labored faithfully and honestly for Mr. Thompson during my term of service, and endeavored in all things to do my duty. I made such efforts as I could to bring the slaves on the plantation to Jesus, and inaugurated regular and stated meetings. I preached and exhorted on the plantation and at other places where I could gather the negroes to hear me; and I felt that I was the means in God's hands of redeeming precious souls. In these meetings I had helpers from among the most intelligent of the slaves, and made such progress that at all our meetings we would have a number of God-fearing whites to pray with us. During my term of hired service with Mr. Thompson I married a colored girl and added the responsibilities of a husband to my various cares. The marriage of slaves was a mere formality among themselves, there being nothing legal, according to the laws of the southern states, about the ceremony or marriage contract. The slaves cohabited together in most instances with the express or implied consent of their masters; and as the masters did not regard the marriage of their slaves as anything, wives and husbands were constantly in danger of being separated forever. But the slaves themselves instituted a ceremony which they considered morally binding, as far as they were concerned; and the slave-owners deemed it prudent to gratify their slaves by a recognition, in some degree, of the marital relations that might exist among them. Therefore a certain set of rules came into operation, by general consent, governing the visits of the husband to the wife when owned by different masters. When the wife of a slave lived not more than five miles from his master he could visit her once a week; when she lived not more than ten miles away, he could go to see her once in two weeks; and when she lived twenty or more miles away he could go to see her only once in two months. At the expiration of my term of service I was loth to leave my wife at Thompson's, and go back to Wilson's, and strenuously objected, knowing that I could get to see her only once in two months. Wilson having learned that I was not desirous of returning to him, wrote to Mr. Thompson to send me home as soon as the last day of my service expired; but Mr. Thompson was desirous of retaining me, and made efforts to that effect. He sent me to Wilson to learn the price set for me. I arrived in due time, when Wilson informed me that he would sell me to Thompson, but that he would not take less than twelve hundred dollars, cash. The proposition did not seem to please Thompson, but after a time he concluded to buy me, and sent his son to Wilson with the purchase money. The purchase at that particular time was lucky for me, as Wilson had written Thompson a very abusive letter, and it was received by Mr. Thompson on the evening of the day on which his son went to Wilson's to buy me. The bargain was made, however, and I was duly transferred to my new master, by delivery and a bill of sale. The personal matter between Wilson and Thompson soon blew over, and I was duly installed on the plantation as one of the chattel fixtures. I seemed to take a new lease of life from this time, and determined, if possible, to profit by former experiences and shun every appearance of ill-nature and evil intentions, and to gain the confidence of my new master, that I might better do the work of my heavenly Master. All nature seemed lovely to me, and I was happy in doing my duty and obliging the will of God. I was invested with authority on the plantation by Mr. Thompson, and was required to keep an eye on the overseer, and to report any enormities that might be committed by him. Mr. Thompson was a wealthy planter and kept a general overseer, besides the usual field bosses; yet there were other slaves on the plantation who had the confidence of the master and were put at such service as required intelligence and integrity. The position in which I was now placed was difficult and onerous; but I did my duty to the very best of my ability, and satisfactorily to my master. The overseer soon found out that I was _his_ overseer; and he used every means, and various plans, to drive me to do something that would degrade me in the eyes of Mr. Thompson. It was only by reason of the greatest forbearance and the very closest attention to my duties that I escaped his machinations; and by attending to everything with the most scrupulous care he could find no fault with me, that had truth for its foundation. But the constant and pertinacious maliciousness of the overseer, and my own weakness, eventually brought me to grief. As a rule, when a bad and wicked man undertakes any species of devilishness he generally prevails, for a time, and is apparently successful in his schemes; and should he meet with failure at the onset his want of success only maddens him to greater exertions and more persistent efforts. Being urged by the devil, and the devil being a hard driver, he either rushes to his own destruction or destroys the happiness or lives of others. Thus I was placed in the crucible for further refinement and regeneration. My humanity gave way for some time; but God was with me, and in the end I prevailed. The overseer's name was Hines, and he belonged to that class of southern whites who are noted for their ignorance and brutality. He could read and write a little,--just enough to make out a negro's pass or a receipt for money paid on account of his employer. In this respect I was far in advance of him, of which my master was aware, and which was one of the causes of Hines' excessive hatred of me, and of his great desire to "put me down and make me know my place," as he termed it. He was very irreligious, and entirely wanting in every attribute of a Christian. He was also what in the South is termed a "bully"--that is, he was free to use his pistols on the slightest occasion, when among his equals, but when in the presence of his superiors he was a cringing sycophant and coward. He was a real coward, at best, in all places. He did not want me on the plantation; and he was determined that he would so harrass me that I would become as reckless and devilish as himself, and thereby compel my master to send me to a slave-market to be sold. Hines concocted various tales and reported them to Mr. Thompson, relating to my alleged insubordination, laziness, refusal to work, etc., but all to no effect. Finally he told my master that I was so disobedient that the rest of the slaves were affected by my conduct, and that I would ruin all the slaves on the plantation unless severe means were used to conquer me. My master informed Hines, after hearing his story, that Jack, a fellow-servant of mine in my younger days, had killed Prince, another fellow-servant, on Wilson's plantation, several years before; that I might be imbued with the same spirit; and that if he undertook to chastise me he might meet with the same fate of Prince. This murder occurred after I had been sold by Wilson to Thompson, but being permitted to return to Wilson's plantation once a year to visit and preach to my old flock, I learned the facts regarding the matter. Jack belonged to a neighbor of Wilson's by the name of Scott, and having done something displeasing to Scott he wished to tie him up and whip him. Jack refused to be whipped by Scott or any one else, when Prince was called upon by his master (Scott) to help him secure Jack. Prince was reluctant, but was commanded two or three times to take hold of Jack and hold him. Jack told him not to approach him at the peril of his life; but not heeding Jack's warning he made the effort to tie Jack, when he was stabbed to the heart with a knife in Jack's hand, and expired almost instantly. Jack made his escape for a short time, but was captured and immediately hanged without a trial or an opportunity to make any defense. Jack was captured in a corn-crib on Wilson's plantation, which made Thompson suppose the murder had been committed there. This recital, which was made in substance to Hines by my master, cowed the overseer considerably, and a house-servant who was present during the conversation afterwards told me that Hines' face turned white as a sheet, and he trembled like a leaf. My master knew his overseer was a coward, and that if he could work upon his fears by supposing me to be too high-spirited to stand a whipping, he would probably save me from Hines' malice, and keep the overseer to his work. Good overseers were hard to get in the South. An intelligent Christian man would not have such a position under any circumstances, and the very best of the "poor white trash" who _would_, were unreliable and brutish; therefore Mr. Thompson had to do the very best he could under the circumstances. He did not believe Hines; yet he had to humor him, in a measure. After a few days Hines reported to Mr. Thompson that he had heard me say that I would never be whipped by him or any other overseer on the plantation, as long as I had life to resist, which was a most malicious falsehood. What I did tell Hines was, that I would so conduct myself and so perform my work that he nor any other overseer on the plantation should never have cause to chastise me. The falsehood inflamed my master, and in his wrath he told Hines to whip me for the first offense I might commit, or kill me in the attempt. Armed with this instruction, Hines was in high glee; yet he dare not attempt anything without first laying well his plans and making sure of sufficient force to carry them out. The next morning he charged me to pick six hundred pounds of cotton and deliver it at the weighing-house at night, under penalty, for a failure, of one hundred lashes on my bare back with a rawhide. This would not have been an extraordinary task in good cotton; but where we had to work that day the cotton was poor, and in that field the crop was not more than half a one. However, I worked hard against fate all day, and prayed to Almighty God to help me in my hour of need, and keep me steadfast. I knew I was to be punished not for any fault or misdoing, but simply to gratify a brute in human shape, and my inferior in intellect, morality, and physical strength. The burden was hard to bear, yet I prayed for strength to bear it. When called from the field to the weighing-house I was kept waiting until all the other slaves had their cotton weighed. When mine was weighed I was told by Hines that I had only picked four hundred pounds. I verily believed this to be untrue, and felt convinced that I had picked at least five hundred pounds, for I was one of the best, if not the best, cotton-pickers in the country; and I had labored faithfully and rapidly all day, and did not lose a minute's time, unnecessarily. Hines turned to me and said, Go to your quarters; I will settle with you in the morning. Now began new trials. My duty and my Christianity instructed me to face the undeserved and unjust punishment manfully. The devil and my human nature told me to run away. I became weak. The fear of the disgrace of a whipping was too much for me, and I succumbed to the evil one. I made such arrangements as I could, and concealed myself on the plantation, before daylight the next morning, so that I could take an early start in the night and travel behind my pursuers instead of before them. My wife knew of my hiding-place, and when night came she sought me and reported what had been done for my capture. Hines seemed, she said, to be more cheerful than usual in the morning when he found I was gone, and hastened to report the good news, as he thought, to Mr. Thompson. After some conversation between them it was determined by my master to obtain the services of a professional slave-hunter, and follow me with hounds. The slave-hunter was sent for and came with his pack of dogs that same day about noon. The hunt was immediately begun, and the country was then being scoured in all directions for my tracks. This information put me on my guard, and gave me time to consider what direction I had better take in my flight. I had provide myself a preparation called "smut" among the negroes, which, when spread thinly on the soles of the shoes or feet, destroyed that peculiar scent by which blood-hounds are enabled to follow the trail of a man or a beast. After bidding my wife farewell I smeared my shoes with "smut" and started in the direction of the hills, beyond which was a large swamp, the refuge of many a poor runaway. On my way I had to pass through innumerable thickets of underbrush and briers, and by reason thereof I tore my already much-worn clothes almost into shreds, and lacerated my flesh severely, especially on my arms and legs. I arrived in the swamp, however, without being followed by the dogs, and while proceeding slowly and dejectedly along, my steps were suddenly stopped by a fierce and loud growl. I was frightened, to be sure, yet I knew scarcely what to do. The growl proceeded from a bear, I felt fully assured, for bears roamed through the hills and swamps of Mississippi. But with presence of mind I retreated slowly from the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Bruin, and not being followed by the bears my fears on that score were removed. About this time it began to rain; and the night was one of those black, foreboding nights that novelists love so well to depict in their descriptions of storms. The lightning flashed with a vividness that lighted up the dismal swamps with a weird and horrible brightness; the thunder rolled peal upon peal, making to me a pandemonium, real and feeling; the pitiless rain pelted me unmercifully and constantly, with that persistence that made it almost unendurable to me. I sat down at the root of a large tree, not to shelter myself from the rain but to protect myself from the attack of any wild animal that should approach me. There I sat the rest of the long night, unfriended, alone, forsaken,--a hunted outcast. "Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn." The condition in which I was now placed rendered me indeed a pitiable object. I waited and longed for morning to come; but the long, slow minutes passed lazily along without regard to my sufferings or wishes. After a long time, to me, I heard a rooster crow, and the welcome sound brought me to my feet in an instant. I started in the direction of the sound, and approached warily. Having walked a short distance I reached the edge of the swamps, or rather a dry spot or oasis in the swamp, and by the faint glimmer of day, which was just breaking, I could see the outlines of a house. The cock continued to crow, which seemed to invite me to approach, and which I construed into a good omen,--at least I really felt good at the sight of the house, even though it might contain those who would chain me and take me back to my master. I noticed that a public road ran along close to the house; and after going on the road, in approaching the house I was discovered by a dog, belonging to the house, who set up a furious barking. Fearing to stay and make my wants known I again sought "cover" in the swamp. I stayed in the swamp that day and ate such berries, roots, and nuts as I could find. I had plenty of time for prayer and meditation. I was alone with God, and prayed to him for help in my distress, and for direction. I became convinced that I had done wrong in running away, and deemed that I had sinned against God. I had been a runaway and an outcast before, and had came to right conclusions; yet I had turned from the path of duty, and was even now being punished for my sin. I determined to return to my master and take the consequences of my acts in running away. I asked God to have mercy on me and pardon my sins, and protect me from the wrath of my master and the maliciousness of Hines. Having fully made up my mind to return to Thompson and make such efforts as I could to allay the punishment I expected to receive, I set about perfecting my plans to get there without being apprehended by the slave-hunters, who were then, I have no doubt, hunting for me. My master had offered a reward for my return to his plantation; and should any one arrest me and take me home, although I might be returning on my own accord, they would receive the reward and I would have to make up the amount to my master in extra labor and extra punishment. To avoid this was now my object. At night I left the swamp and went to the road, intending to travel home that night--thinking I was not more than ten or twelve miles away from there. I was uncertain which way to go; but I finally started off on the road, hoping that I was going in the direction of Thompson's. The rain was pattering down; but I traveled briskly all that night, and about day-break I came to a plantation. I entered one of the slave-cabins and told the inmates I was lost, hungry, and tired, and asked them for something to eat. One of the colored men spoke to a woman who appeared to be his wife, and told her to get me something to eat, and that he would go and get some pine to put on the fire. His actions, and the manner in which he spoke, aroused my suspicions, and being fearful that he intended to betray me, I left the cabin directly after he did, and sought an asylum in the woods, where I stayed during that day. Thus "the wicked flee when no one pursueth." At night I found the same road I had traveled the day before, and started again to try and get to Thompson's. I knew that I was wrong, and that I was traveling away from instead of toward Thompson's; therefore I concluded to make inquiries at the first opportunity. After traveling three or four miles I came to a cabin in which there was a light shining through the cracks between the logs. Approaching the cabin, I intended to enter; but being enabled to see the inmates through the cracks I discovered three white men sitting around the fire, so I turned to leave. As I was passing the corner of the cabin a colored woman came to the door for some purpose, and saw me. She jumped back into the cabin, at the same time exclaiming, "Here's a runaway nigger!" I immediately ran for the road; but a dog--not a blood-hound--followed me, and while getting over the fence between the cabin and the road he caught me by the breeches leg. I shook him off and ran for the woods. The white men were slave-hunters, and were after me particularly, as I learned afterwards. They followed me closely by the sound of the crackling of brush, and put the dogs they had with them on my track. These dogs, fortunately for me, were in the cabin at the time I approached it. As soon as I heard the first yelp of a blood-hound I "smutted" my shoe-soles, and soon threw them off the scent. The white men followed me about three or four miles. Finally, finding I would not get away from them by running, I stopped, and making my way into a dense thicket of briers I sat down. The white men stopped a short distance from me and listened, I suppose, for the sound of brush cracking. After waiting a short time one of them started off in the direction they had come, leaving the others still waiting,--using this ruse in order to throw me off my guard, so as to enable the remaining ones to ascertain where I was by the noise I would make in walking. I was too close to them; and from the noise I heard from where they were standing I knew they had a dog with them, and that they were only waiting for me to move to begin the chase again. I sat perfectly quiet, and waited patiently for the remaining whites and the dog to leave. After a time the men began to move about through the brush, coming still closer to me. I heard them talking, when one of them said, "We ought to catch the nigger if we have to run him all night." "No" said the other, "we should let him alone to-night, and start him up in the morning, when we can have daylight for the chase, and not run him to-night, for we might run him off and never catch him." After a short parley they concluded to get some more dogs and be on the ground before daylight, so as to make sure of me. As soon as they had gone out of my hearing I emerged from the brier thicket. I found my limbs had become sore and benumbed from the exposure and hardships I had undergone, and I was intensely hungry. I worried along, however, to get out of that neighborhood as soon as possible. The sky was now clear, the air frosty, and my rags were but a scant protection to me. After walking awhile I found my soreness began to leave me, when I began to accelerate my pace. I had to walk as fast as I could, and exercise my limbs all I could, in order to keep warm. After walking some time I came to a plantation. Upon reconnoitering, I found an old house, and approaching it with the intention of seeking a little rest in it during the remainder of the night and the next day, I saw a light in it. I went in, however, and found it to be the workshop of the plantation, and five colored men were there putting handles in their axes. I asked them for something to eat, and was about to tell them the truth regarding myself, when one of the negroes hurried me out of the cabin, saying he would get me something to eat. After we got out he told me I was very imprudent, for if I had told the negroes who I was and that I was a runaway, they would have taken me themselves. He got me some meat and bread, and after I had told him who I was and that I wanted to find my way back to Thompson's, he put me on the right road and gave me such directions as I required. I found that I was about fifty miles from Thompson's plantation, and that it would require two nights' hard walking to get there. I felt very much discouraged, and grieved considerably to myself. However, having satisfied the cravings of my appetite, I plucked up courage and started on my long return walk with renewed energy. After traveling about five miles I came to a little town. I was afraid to go through it on account of the liability of being apprehended; and I did not like to go around it for fear of getting lost again. I determined to risk going through the place, and, by avoiding every one, escape detection. There was quite an excitement here by reason of an epidemic sickness among the children, and about every other house had a light in it. I passed through the town with fear; but I escaped arrest and felt like rejoicing over my good fortune, not once thinking of any dangers or hardships that might lay before me. After I got through the town I came to a considerable stream, with a bridge across it, the name of which I am unable to give; but on the opposite end of the bridge from the town there is a road-way, or levee, thrown up across the "bottom" for about two miles. At the time I crossed, the stream was very much swelled from the recent rains, and the water extended all over the bottom on each side of the road-grade, and to within two or three feet of the top of it. This grade I had to cross; and I was greatly afraid that I would meet some one. I started across, and when about half way over the grade, or levee, I heard hounds baying ahead of me; and the sounds seemed to be approaching me, I became very much frightened, and turned and fled back to the bridge, when, just as I was stepping on it, I heard men's voices, and stopped, when I found they were coming across the bridge toward me. I concluded I would rather face the blood-hounds than the white men, so I made my way back over the grade as hurriedly as I could. I reached the end of the grade without meeting the hounds and turned off into the woods. After walking a short distance I heard the hounds again, and the sound of their yelps was nearing me rapidly. I turned my course immediately, and ran as fast as I was able for three or four hundred yards, when I saw distinctly, in the starlight, a man running nearly toward me. My heart leaped into my throat, as it were, and I made ready for battle. But the man proved to be a poor runaway like myself, and the one whom the hounds were after. I had got into a field, and the runaway passed through the same field without noticing me. I kept on in an opposite direction from the one which he had taken, and crossed the fence on the other side of the field just in time to hear one of the slave-hunters say, "There he is now; I heard him getting over the fence." I threw myself on the ground and awaited results. The dogs were "hot" on the other slave's track, and were running at a great rate, which induced the slave-hunters to think their companion was mistaken. So, to my great relief and pleasure, they started on after the hounds. I was nearly exhausted by my exertions during the night, and as it was now nearly morning I lay on the ground for a time to rest and recuperate my worn-out energies a little. In a short time I got up, and after looking around I saw the outlines of plantation houses in the distance. On going to them I found a resting-place in a fodder-loft, in the horse-lot of the plantation. I ensconced myself in the fodder, when I again heard the infernal yelps of the blood-hounds, and the more infernal yelps of the white pursuers urging the hounds after the poor runaway. The hounds soon after caught the poor wretch, whose cries for mercy were heart-rending and piteous. My situation was perilous; yet I had hopes that the other slave being run down and caught would save me, from the fact that the hunters were not aware of the presence of another runaway in the immediate neighborhood. The day wore slowly away, and being very weak from hunger and fatigue I was unable to gain that rest my wasted body required. I slept two or three hours, however, and had ample time for reflection. The bridge where I had been so completely hemmed in the night before was impressed deeply upon my memory; and the agony of mind while on the bridge was still troubling me. I relied on a loving heavenly Father in my troubles and trials, and brought to my mind the condition of the children of Israel when about to be overwhelmed by the hosts of Pharaoh on the shore of the Red Sea. God delivered them, and I believed he would deliver me. My faith was strong. Night came at last, when I cautiously emerged from my hiding-place and continued my journey toward home. I ran and walked about twenty-five miles, and did not find any familiar objects to lead me to suppose I was in the neighborhood of my master's plantation, when I began to look about for a place of concealment in which to spend another weary and lonesome day. Walking slowly along, after a short time my attention was attracted by sounds as if some one was pounding a hard substance. On stopping and listening, I soon heard some person calling hogs. The voice seemed familiar. Upon further investigation I began to recognize objects, and soon ascertained that I was "at home." Now that I had got back "home," new troubles arose in my mind. I would be punished severely, without doubt. Instead of going to "the quarters" I went directly to my master's plantation, in the hope that I could enlist my mistress in my behalf, and thus have the way made smooth for me. My master was not at home, fortunately, and my mistress heard my story and prayers for forgiveness. She promised to intercede with my master for me, but that I must promise not to run away again, which I did. She bade me to go and hide myself in the stable loft, and not to leave there until she sent for me. Soon after, my master came home. In conversation with him my mistress broached the subject as to my whereabouts. He told her that he believed I had got to the free states and was lost to him; however, that if any of the slaves on the plantation knew where I was they should get me word that if I would come back I should not be punished, and that I should be forgiven. In that case my mistress said she would insure my return speedily. Matters were soon arranged, and I was re-instated in my former position on the plantation. But severe trials were soon to overtake me, and what I had already gone through was but an atom in comparison with what I afterwards suffered from the hands of my master, and by reason of my condition of slavery. Thus ended my earlier experiences as a slave, from my earliest recollection down to the time of my return to Thompson's plantation. I propose to continue this biography, and include the whole in book form. This pamphlet is printed for the purpose of enabling me to raise money to continue my work and paying for printing the whole in a book substantially and neatly bound. To the friends of the colored race I appeal for help in this matter, hoping that sufficient interest is taken to insure the accumulation of sufficient funds for my purpose. The remainder will contain my full experience as a minister of the gospel, and incidents relating to my efforts and the efforts of my co-workers in building up the church of Christ among the former slaves of the South, and such suggestions as I may deem proper to aid to raise the standard of intelligence among negroes. 
52782	----	[Illustration: MR. COON INSISTED ON GADDING ABOUT. (Page 46)] Aaron in the Wildwoods BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AUTHOR OF "UNCLE REMUS," ETC. _ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVER HERFORD_ [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1897 COPYRIGHT, 1897 BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AND HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS. PAGE PRELUDE 1 I. THE LITTLE MASTER 23 II. THE SECRETS OF THE SWAMP 38 III. WHAT CHUNKY RILEY SAW AND HEARD 56 IV. BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND DAWN 74 V. THE HUNT BEGINS 92 VI. THE HUNT ENDS 111 VII. AARON SEES THE SIGNAL 129 VIII. THE HAPPENINGS OF A NIGHT 148 IX. THE UPSETTING OF MR. GOSSETT 166 X. CHUNKY RILEY SEES A QUEER SIGHT 185 XI. THE PROBLEM THAT TIMOLEON PRESENTED 202 XII. WHAT THE PATROLLERS SAW AND HEARD 219 XIII. THE APPARITION THE FOX HUNTERS SAW 237 XIV. THE LITTLE MASTER SAYS GOOD NIGHT 253 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE MR. COON INSISTED ON GADDING ABOUT _Frontispiece_. IT WAS A SWAMP 8 THAT'S RANDALL'S SONG 32 MR. RED FOX MEETS MR. GRAY FOX 40 A-STRADDLE OF THE GRUNTER'S BACK 48 THE HORSES WERE RIGHT AT HIS HEELS 72 THE GOBLIN PAIN 76 THE SPRING OF COOL REFRESHING WATER 80 BRINDLE AND AARON 104 IN THE SWAMP 124 RAMBLER'S FIGHT WITH THE MOCCASIN 132 HE STOOD AS STILL AS A STATUE 144 IT WAS THE WHITE-HAIRED MASTER 160 THEY TORE HIM ALL TO FLINDERS 172 THE EXCITED HORSE PLUNGED ALONG 180 HE EDGED AWAY AS FAR AS HE COULD 188 AARON AND LITTLE CROTCHET 212 BEHIND A TREE STOOD GEORGE GOSSETT 216 THE BLACK STALLION 224 IT WAS FINE FOR MR. FOX 238 THE PHANTOM HORSEMAN 242 AARON AND TIMOLEON 250 BIG SAL HOLDS THE LITTLE MASTER 262 THE DEATH OF THE LITTLE MASTER 268 AARON IN THE WILDWOODS. PRELUDE. I. Once upon a time there lived on a large plantation in Middle Georgia a boy who was known as Little Crotchet. It was a very queer name, to be sure, but it seemed to fit the lad to a T. When he was a wee bit of a chap he fell seriously ill, and when, many weeks afterwards, the doctors said the worst was over, it was found that he had lost the use of his legs, and that he would never be able to run about and play as other children do. When he was told about this he laughed, and said he had known all along that he would never be able to run about on his feet again; but he had plans of his own, and he told his father that he wanted a pair of crutches made. "But you can't use them, my son," said his father. "Anyhow, I can try," insisted the lad. The doctors were told of his desire, and these wise men put their heads together. "It is a crotchet," they declared, "but it will be no harm for him to try." "It is a little crotchet," said his mother, "and he shall have the crutches." Thus it came about that the lad got both his name and his crutches, for his father insisted on calling him Little Crotchet after that, and he also insisted on sending all the way to Philadelphia for the crutches. They seemed to be a long time in coming, for in those days they had to be brought to Charleston in a sailing vessel, and then sent by way of Augusta in a stage-coach; but when they came they were very welcome, for Little Crotchet had been inquiring for them every day in the week, and Sunday too. And yet when they came, strange to say, he seemed to have lost his interest in them. His mother brought them in joyously, but there was not even a glad smile on the lad's face. He looked at them gravely, weighed them in his hands, laid them across the foot of the bed, and then turned his head on his pillow, as if he wanted to go to sleep. His mother was surprised, and not a little hurt, as mothers will be when they do not understand their children; but she respected his wishes, darkened the room, kissed her boy, and closed the door gently. When everything was still, Little Crotchet sat up in bed, seized his crutches, and proceeded to try them. He did this every day for a week, and at the end of that time surprised everybody in the house, and on the place as well, by marching out on his crutches, and going from room to room without so much as touching his feet to the floor. It seemed to be a most wonderful feat to perform, and so it was; but Providence, in depriving the lad of the use of his legs, had correspondingly strengthened the muscles of his chest and arms, so that within a month he could use his crutches almost as nimbly and quite as safely as other boys use their feet. He could go upstairs and downstairs and walk about the place with as much ease, apparently, as those not afflicted, and it was not strange that the negroes regarded the performance with wonder akin to awe, declaring among themselves that their young master was upheld and supported by "de sperits." And indeed it was a queer sight to see the frail lad going boldly about on crutches, his feet not touching the ground. The sight seemed to make the pet name of Little Crotchet more appropriate than ever. So his name stuck to him, even after he got his Gray Pony, and became a familiar figure in town and in country, as he went galloping about, his crutches strapped to the saddle, and dangling as gayly as the sword of some fine general. Thus it came to pass that no one was surprised when Little Crotchet went cantering along, his Gray Pony snorting fiercely, and seeming never to tire. Early or late, whenever the neighbors heard the short, sharp snort of the Gray Pony and the rattling of the crutches, they would turn to one another and say, "Little Crotchet!" and that would be explanation enough. There seemed to be some sort of understanding between him and his Gray Pony. Anybody could ride the Gray Pony in the pasture or in the grove around the house, but when it came to going out by the big gate, that was another matter. He could neither be led nor driven beyond that boundary by any one except Little Crotchet. It was the same when it came to crossing water. The Gray Pony would not cross over the smallest running brook for any one but Little Crotchet; but with the lad on his back he would plunge into the deepest stream, and, if need be, swim across it. All this deepened and confirmed in the minds of the negroes the idea that Little Crotchet was upheld and protected by "de sperits." They had heard him talking to the Gray Pony, and they had heard the Gray Pony whinny in reply. They had seen the Gray Pony with their little master on his back go gladly out at the big gate and rush with a snort through the plantation creek,--a bold and at times a dangerous stream. Seeing these things, and knowing the temper of the pony, they had no trouble in coming to the conclusion that something supernatural was behind it all. II. Thus it happened that Little Crotchet and his Gray Pony were pretty well known through all the country-side, for it seemed that he was never tired of riding, and that the pony was never tired of going. What was the rider's errand? Nobody knew. Why should he go skimming along the red road at day dawn? And why should he come whirling back at dusk,--a red cloud of dust rising beneath the Gray Pony's feet? Nobody could tell. This was almost as much of a puzzle to some of the whites as it was to the negroes; but this mystery, if it could be called such, was soon eclipsed by a phenomenon that worried some of the wisest dwellers in that region. This phenomenon, apparently very simple, began to manifest itself in early fall, and continued all through that season and during the winter and on through the spring, until warm weather set in. It was in the shape of a thin column of blue smoke that could be seen on any clear morning or late afternoon rising from the centre of Spivey's Canebrake. This place was called a canebrake because a thick, almost impenetrable, growth of canes fringed the edge of a mile-wide basin lying between the bluffs of the Oconee River and the uplands beyond. Instead of being a canebrake it was a vast swamp, the site of cool but apparently stagnant ponds and of treacherous quagmires, in which cows, and even horses, had been known to disappear and perish. The cowitch grew there, and the yellow plumes of the poison-oak vine glittered like small torches. There, too, the thunder-wood tree exuded its poisonous milk, and long serpent-like vines wound themselves around and through the trees, and helped to shut out the sunlight. It was a swamp, and a very dismal one. The night birds gathered there to sleep during the day, and all sorts of creatures that shunned the sunlight or hated man found a refuge there. If the negroes had made paths through its recesses to enable them to avoid the patrol, nobody knew it but themselves. Why, then, should a thin but steady stream of blue smoke be constantly rising upwards from the centre of Spivey's Canebrake? It was a mystery to those who first discovered it, and it soon grew to be a neighborhood mystery. During the summer the smoke could not be seen, but in the fall and winter its small thin volume went curling upward continually. Little Crotchet often watched it from the brow of Turner's Hill, the highest part of the uplands. Early in the morning or late in the afternoon the vapor would rise from the Oconee; but the vapor was white and heavy, and was blown about by the wind, while the smoke in the swamp was blue and thin, and rose straight in the air above the tops of the trees in spite of the wayward winds. Once when Little Crotchet was sitting on his pony watching the blue smoke rise from the swamp he saw two of the neighbor farmers coming along the highway. They stopped and shook hands with the lad, and then turned to watch the thin stream of blue smoke. The morning was clear and still, and the smoke rose straight in the air, until it seemed to mingle with the upper blue. The two farmers were father and son,--Jonathan Gadsby and his son Ben. They were both very well acquainted with Little Crotchet,--as, indeed, everybody in the county was,--and he was so bright and queer that they stood somewhat in awe of him. "I reckin if I had a pony that wasn't afeard of nothin' I'd go right straight and find out where that fire is, and what it is," remarked Ben Gadsby. This stirred his father's ire apparently. "Why, Benjamin! Why, what on the face of the earth do you mean? Ride into that swamp! Why, you must have lost what little sense you had when you was born! I remember, jest as well as if it was day before yesterday, when Uncle Jimmy Cosby's red steer got in that swamp, and we couldn't git him out. Git him out, did I say? We couldn't even git nigh him. We could hear him beller, but we never got where we could see ha'r nor hide of him. If I was thirty year younger I'd take my foot in my hand and wade in there and see where the smoke comes from." [Illustration: IT WAS A SWAMP] Little Crotchet laughed. "If I had two good legs," said he, "I'd soon see what the trouble is." This awoke Ben Gadsby's ambition. "I believe I'll go in there and see where the fire is." "Fire!" exclaimed old Mr. Gadsby, with some irritation. "Who said anything about fire? What living and moving creetur could build a fire in that thicket? I'd like mighty well to lay my eyes on him." "Well," said Ben Gadsby, "where you see smoke there's obliged to be fire. I've heard you say that yourself." "Me?" exclaimed Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, with a show of alarm in the midst of his indignation. "Did I say that? Well, it was when I wasn't so much as thinking that my two eyes were my own. What about foxfire? Suppose that some quagmire or other in that there swamp has gone and got up a ruction on its own hook? Smoke without fire? Why, I've seed it many a time. And maybe that smoke comes from an eruption in the ground. What then? Who's going to know where the fire is?" Little Crotchet laughed, but Ben Gadsby put on a very bold front. "Well," said he, "I can find bee-trees, and I'll find where that fire is." "Well, sir," remarked Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, looking at his son with an air of pride, "find out where the smoke comes from, and we'll not expect you to see the fire." "I wish I could go with you," said Little Crotchet. "I don't need any company," replied Ben Gadsby. "I've done made up my mind, and I a-going to show the folks around here that where there's so much smoke there's obliged to be some fire." The young man, knowing that he had some warm work before him, pulled off his coat, and tied the sleeves over his shoulder, sash fashion. Then he waved his hand to his father and to Little Crotchet, and went rapidly down the hill. He had undertaken the adventure in a spirit of bravado. He knew that a number of the neighbors had tried to solve the mystery of the smoke in the swamp and had failed. He thought, too, that he would fail; and yet he was urged on by the belief that if he should happen to succeed, all the boys and all the girls in the neighborhood would regard him as a wonderful young man. He had the same ambition that animated the knight of old, but on a smaller scale. III. Now it chanced that Little Crotchet himself was on his way to the smoke in the swamp. He had been watching it, and wondering whether he should go to it by the path he knew, or whether he should go by the road that Aaron, the runaway, had told him of. Ben Gadsby interfered with his plans somewhat; for quite by accident, young Gadsby as he went down the hill struck into the path that Little Crotchet knew. There was a chance to gallop along the brow of the hill, turn to the left, plunge through a shallow lagoon, and strike into the path ahead of Gadsby, and this chance Little Crotchet took. He waved his hand to Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, gave the Gray Pony the rein, and went galloping through the underbrush, his crutches rattling, and the rings of the bridle-bit jingling. To Mr. Jonathan Gadsby it seemed that the lad was riding recklessly, and he groaned and shook his head as he turned and went on his way. But Little Crotchet rode on. Turning sharply to the left as soon as he got out of sight, he went plunging through the lagoon, and was soon going along the blind path a quarter of a mile ahead of Ben Gadsby. This is why young Gadsby was so much disturbed that he lost his way. He was bold enough when he started out, but by the time he had descended the hill and struck into what he thought was a cattle-path his courage began to fail him. The tall canes seemed to bend above him in a threatening manner. The silence oppressed him. Everything was so still that the echo of his own movements as he brushed along the narrow path seemed to develop into ominous whispers, as if all the goblins he had ever heard of had congregated in front of him to bar his way. The silence, with its strange echoes, was bad enough, but when he heard the snorting of Little Crotchet's Gray Pony as it plunged through the lagoon, the rattle of the crutches and the jingling of the bridle-bit, he fell into a panic. What great beast could it be that went helter-skelter through this dark and silent swamp, swimming through the water and tearing through the quagmires? And yet, when Ben Gadsby would have turned back, the rank undergrowth and the trailing vines had quite obscured the track. The fear that impelled him to retrace his steps was equally powerful in impelling him to go forward. And this seemed the easiest plan. He felt that it would be just as safe to go on, having once made the venture, as to turn back. He had a presentiment that he would never find his way out anyhow, and the panic he was in nerved him to the point of desperation. So on he went, not always trying to follow the path, but plunging forward aimlessly. In half an hour he was calmer, and pretty soon he found the ground firm under his feet. His instincts as a bee-hunter came back to him. He had started in from the east side, and he paused to take his bearings. But it was hard to see the sun, and in the recesses of the swamp the mosses grew on all sides of the trees. And yet there was a difference, which Ben Gadsby did not fail to discover and take account of. They grew thicker and larger on the north side, and remembering this, he went forward with more confidence. He found that the middle of the swamp was comparatively dry. Huge poplar-trees stood ranged about, the largest he had ever seen. In the midst of a group of trees he found one that was hollow, and in this hollow he found the smouldering embers of a fire. But for the strange silence that surrounded him he would have given a whoop of triumph; but he restrained himself. Bee-hunter that he was, he took his coat from his shoulders and tied it around a small slim sapling standing near the big poplar where he had found the fire. It was his way when he found a bee-tree. It was a sort of guide. In returning he would take the general direction, and then hunt about until he found his coat; and it was much easier to find a tree tagged with a coat than it was to find one not similarly marked. Thus, instead of whooping triumphantly, Ben Gadsby simply tied his coat about the nearest sapling, nodding his head significantly as he did so. He had unearthed the secret and unraveled the mystery, and now he would go and call in such of the neighbors as were near at hand and show them what a simple thing the great mystery was. He knew that he had found the hiding-place of Aaron, the runaway. So he fixed his "landmark," and started out of the swamp with a lighter heart than he had when he came in. To make sure of his latitude and longitude, he turned in his tracks when he had gone a little distance and looked for the tree on which he had tied his coat. But it was not to be seen. He re-traced his steps, trying to find his coat. Looking about him cautiously, he saw the garment after a while, but it was in an entirely different direction from what he supposed it would be. It was tied to a sapling, and the sapling was near a big poplar. To satisfy himself, he returned to make a closer examination. Sure enough, there was the coat, but the poplar close by was not a hollow poplar, nor was it as large as the tree in which Ben Gadsby had found the smouldering embers of a fire. He sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and scratched his head, and discussed the matter in his mind the best he could. Finally he concluded that it would be a very easy matter, after he found his coat again, to find the hollow poplar. So he started home again. But he had not gone far when he turned around to take another view of his coat. It had disappeared. Ben Gadsby looked carefully around, and then a feeling of terror crept over his whole body--a feeling that nearly paralyzed his limbs. He tried to overcome this feeling, and did so to a certain degree. He plucked up sufficient courage to return and try to find his coat; but the task was indeed bewildering. He thought he had never seen so many large poplars with small slim saplings standing near them, and then he began to wander around almost aimlessly. IV. Suddenly he heard a scream that almost paralyzed him--a scream that was followed by the sound of a struggle going on in the thick undergrowth close at hand. He could see the muddy water splash above the bushes, and he could hear fierce growlings and gruntings. Before he could make up his mind what to do, a gigantic mulatto, with torn clothes and staring eyes, rushed out of the swamp and came rushing by, closely pursued by a big white boar with open mouth and fierce cries. The white boar was right at the mulatto's heels, and his yellow tusks gleamed viciously as he ran with open mouth. Pursuer and pursued disappeared in the bushes with a splash and a crash, and then all was as still as before. In fact, the silence seemed profounder for this uncanny and appalling disturbance. It was so unnatural that half a minute after it happened Ben Gadsby was not certain whether it had occurred at all. He was a pretty bold youth, having been used to the woods and fields all his life, but he had now beheld a spectacle so out of the ordinary, and of so startling a character, that he made haste to get out of the swamp as fast as his legs, weakened by fear, would carry him. More than once, as he made his way out of the swamp, he paused to listen; and it seemed that each time he paused an owl, or some other bird of noiseless wing, made a sudden swoop at his head. Beyond the exclamation he made when this happened the silence was unbroken. This experience was unusual enough to hasten his steps, even if he had had no other motive for haste. When nearly out of the swamp, he came upon a large poplar, by the side of which a small slim sapling was growing. Tied around this sapling was his coat, which he thought he had left in the middle of the swamp. The sight almost took his breath away. He examined the coat carefully, and found that the sleeves were tied around the tree just as he had tied them. He felt in the pockets. Everything was just as he had left it. He examined the poplar; it was hollow, and in the hollow was a pile of ashes. "Well!" exclaimed Ben Gadsby. "I'm the biggest fool that ever walked the earth. If I ain't been asleep and dreamed all this, I'm crazy; and if I've been asleep, I'm a fool." His experience had been so queer and so confusing that he promised himself he'd never tell it where any of the older people could hear it, for he knew that they would not only treat his tale with scorn and contempt, but would make him the butt of ridicule among the younger folks. "I know exactly what they'd say," he remarked to himself. "They'd declare that a skeer'd hog run across my path, and that I was skeer'der than the hog." So Ben Gadsby took his coat from the sapling, and went trudging along his way toward the big road. When he reached that point he turned and looked toward the swamp. Much to his surprise, the stream of blue smoke was still flowing upward. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but there was the smoke. His surprise was still greater when he saw Little Crotchet and the Gray Pony come ambling up the hill in the path he had just come over. "What did you find?" asked Little Crotchet, as he reined in the Gray Pony. "Nothing--nothing at all," replied Ben Gadsby, determined not to commit himself. "Nothing?" cried Little Crotchet. "Well, you ought to have been with me! Why, I saw sights! The birds flew in my face, and when I got in the middle of the swamp a big white hog came rushing out, and if this Gray Pony hadn't been the nimblest of his kind, you'd never have seen me any more." "Is that so?" asked Ben Gadsby, in a dazed way. "Well, I declare! 'Twas all quiet with me. I just went in and come out again, and that's all there is to it." "I wish I'd been with you," said Little Crotchet, with a curious laugh. "Good-by!" With that he wheeled the Gray Pony and rode off home. Ben Gadsby watched Little Crotchet out of sight, and then, with a gesture of despair, surprise, or indignation, flung his coat on the ground, crying, "Well, by jing!" V. That night there was so much laughter in the top story of the Abercrombie house that the Colonel himself came to the foot of the stairs and called out to know what the matter was. "It's nobody but me," replied Little Crotchet. "I was just laughing." Colonel Abercrombie paused, as if waiting for some further explanation, but hearing none, said, "Good-night, my son, and God bless you!" "Good-night, father dear," exclaimed the lad, flinging a kiss at the shadow his father's candle flung on the wall. Then he turned again into his own room, where Aaron the Arab (son of Ben Ali) sat leaning against the wall, as silent and as impassive as a block of tawny marble. Little Crotchet lay back in his bed, and the two were silent for a time. Finally Aaron said:-- "The White Grunter carried his play too far. He nipped a piece from my leg." "I never saw anything like it," remarked little Crotchet. "I thought the White Pig was angry. You did that to frighten Ben Gadsby." "Yes, Little Master," responded Aaron, "and I'm thinking the young man will never hunt for the smoke in the swamp any more." Little Crotchet laughed again, as he remembered how Ben Gadsby looked as Aaron and the White Pig went careening across the dry place in the swamp. There was a silence again, and then Aaron said he must be going. "And when are you going home to your master?" Little Crotchet asked. "Never!" replied Aaron the runaway, with emphasis. "Never! He is no master of mine. He is a bad man." Then he undressed Little Crotchet, tucked the cover about him,--for the nights were growing chill,--whispered good-night, and slipped from the window, letting down the sash gently as he went out. If any one had been watching, he would have seen the tall Arab steal along the roof until he came to the limb of an oak that touched the eaves. Along this he went nimbly, glided down the trunk to the ground, and disappeared in the darkness. I. THE LITTLE MASTER. If you imagine that the book called "The Story of Aaron (so-named), the Son of Ben Ali" tells all the adventures of the Arab while he was a fugitive in the wildwoods, you are very much mistaken. If you will go back to that book you will see that Timoleon the black stallion, Grunter the white pig, Gristle the gray pony, and Rambler the track dog, told only what they were asked to tell. And they were not anxious to tell even that. They would much rather have been left alone. What they did tell they told without any flourishes whatever, for they wanted to get through and be done with it. Story-telling was not in their line, and they knew it very well; so they said what they had to say and that was the end of it so far as they were concerned: setting a worthy example to men and women, and to children, too. It is natural, therefore, that a man such as Aaron was, full of courage and valuable to the man who had bought him from the speculator, should have many adventures that the animals knew nothing of, or, if they knew, had no occasion to relate. In the book you will find that Buster John and Sweetest Susan asked only about such things as they heard of incidentally. But some of the most interesting things were never mentioned by Aaron at all; consequently the children never asked about them. Little Crotchet, it will be remembered, who knew more about the matter than anybody except Aaron, was dead, and so there was nobody to give the children any hint or cue as to the questions they were to ask. You will say they had Aaron close at hand. That is true, but Aaron was busy, and besides that he was not fond of talking, especially about himself. And yet, the most of the adventures Aaron had in the wildwoods were no secret. They were well known to the people in the neighborhood, and for miles around. In fact, they were made the subject of a great deal of talk in Little Crotchet's day, and many men (and women too) who were old enough to be wise shook their heads over some of the events and declared that they had never heard of anything more mysterious. And it so happened that this idea of mystery deepened and grew until it made a very romantic figure of Aaron, and was a great help to him, not only when he was a fugitive in the wildwoods, but afterwards when he "settled down," as the saying is, and turned his attention to looking after affairs on the Abercrombie plantation. All this happened before Buster John and Sweetest Susan were born, while their mother was a girl in her teens. When Little Crotchet was alive things on the Abercrombie plantation were very different from what they were before or afterward. It is true the lad was a cripple and had to go on crutches, except when he was riding Gristle, the Gray Pony. But he was very active and nimble, and very restless, too, for he was here, there, and everywhere. More than that, he was always in a good humor, always cheerful, and most of the time laughing at his own thoughts or at something he had heard. For it was well understood on that plantation, and, indeed, wherever little Crotchet was familiarly known, that, as he was something of an invalid, and such a little bit of a fellow to boot, nothing unpleasant was to come to his ears. If he found out about trouble anywhere he was to find it out for himself, and without help from anybody else. But although little Crotchet was small and crippled, he had a very wise head on his shoulders. One of the first things he found out was that everybody was in a conspiracy to prevent unpleasant things from coming to his ears, and the idea that he was to be humbugged in this way made him laugh, it was so funny. He said to himself that if he could have troubles while everybody was trying to help him along and make life pleasant for him, surely other people who had nobody to look out for them must have much larger troubles. And he found it to be true, although he never said much about it. The truth is that while people thought they were humbugging little Crotchet, he was humbugging everybody except a few who knew what a shrewd little chap he was. These few had found out that little Crotchet knew a great deal more about the troubles that visit the unfortunate in this world than anybody knew about his troubles--and he had many. It was very peculiar. He would go galloping about the plantation on the Gray Pony, and no matter where he stopped there was always a negro ready to let down the bars or the fence. How could this be? Why, it was the simplest matter in the world. It made no difference where the field hands were working, nor what they were doing, they were always watching for their Little Master, as they called him. They were sure to know when he was coming--sure to see him; and no matter how high the fence was, down it would come whenever the Gray Pony was brought to a standstill. It was a sight to see the hoe hands or the plow hands when their Little Master went riding among them. It was hats off and "howdy, honey," with all, and that was something the White-Haired Master never saw unless he was riding with Little Crotchet, which sometimes happened. Once the White-Haired Master said to Little Crotchet, "They all love you because you are good, my son." But Little Crotchet was quick to reply:-- "Oh, no, father; it isn't that. It's because I am fond of them!" Now, wasn't he wise for his age? He had stumbled upon the great secret that makes all the happiness there is in this world. The negroes loved him because he was fond of them. He used to sit on the Gray Pony and watch the hands hoeing and plowing; and although they did their best when he was around, he never failed to find out the tired ones and send them on little errands that would rest them. To one it was "Get me a keen switch." To another, "See if you can find me any flowers." One of the worst negroes on the plantation was Big Sal, a mulatto woman. She had a tongue and a temper that nothing could conquer. Once Little Crotchet, sitting on the Gray Pony, saw her hoeing away with a rag tied around her forehead under her head handkerchief. So he called her out of the gang, and she came with no very good grace, and only then because some of the other negroes shamed her into it. No doubt Little Crotchet heard her disputing with them, but he paid no attention to it. When Big Sal came up, he simply said:-- "Help me off the horse. I have a headache sometimes, and I feel it coming on now. I want you to sit here and rub my head for me if you are not too tired." "What wid?" cried big Sal. "My han's too dirty." "You get the headache out, and I'll get the dirt off," said Little Crotchet, laughing. Big Sal laughed too, cleaned her hands the best she could, and rubbed the youngster's head for him, while the Gray Pony nibbled the crabgrass growing near. But presently, when Little Crotchet opened his eyes, he found that Big Sal was crying. She was making no fuss about it, but as she sat with the child's head in her lap the tears were streaming down her face like water. "What are you crying about?" Little Crotchet asked. "God A'mighty knows, honey. I'm des a-cryin', an' ef de angels fum heav'm wuz ter come down an' ax me, I couldn't tell um no mo' dan dat." This was true enough. The lonely heart had been touched without knowing why. But Little Crotchet knew. "I reckon it's because you had the headache," he said. "I speck so," answered Big Sal. "It looked like my head'd bust when you hollered at me, but de pain all done gone now." "I'm glad," replied Little Crotchet. "I hope my head will quit aching presently. Sometimes it aches all night long." "Well, suh!" exclaimed Big Sal. It was all she could say. Finally, when she had lifted Little Crotchet to his saddle (which was easy enough to do, he was so small and frail) and returned, Uncle Turin, foreman of the hoe hands, remarked:-- "You'll be feelin' mighty biggity now, I speck." "Who? Me?" cried Big Sal. "God knows, I feel so little an' mean I could t'ar my ha'r out by de han'ful." Uncle Turin, simple and kindly old soul, never knew then nor later what Big Sal meant, but ever afterwards, whenever the woman had one of her tantrums, she went straight to her Little Master, and if she sometimes came away from him crying it was not his fault. If she was crying it was because she was comforted, and it all seemed so simple and natural to her that she never failed to express a deep desire to tear her hair out if anybody asked her where she had been or where she was going. It was not such an easy matter to reach the plow hands. The fields were wide and the furrows were long on that plantation, and some of the mules were nimbler than the others, and some of the hands were quicker. So that it rarely happened that they all came down the furrows abreast. But what difference did that make? Let them come one by one, or two by two, or twenty abreast, it was all the same when the Little Master was in sight. It was hats off and "howdy," with "Gee, Beck!" and "Haw, Rhody!" and "Whar you been, Little Marster, dat we ain't seed you sence day 'fo' yistiddy?" And so until they had all saluted the child on the Gray Pony. And why did Susy's Sam hang back and want to turn his mule around before he had finished the furrow? It was easy to see. Susy's Sam, though he was the most expert plowman in the gang, had only one good hand, the other being a mere stump, and he disliked to be singled out from the rest on that account. But it was useless for him to hang back. Little Crotchet always called for Susy's Sam. Sometimes Sam would say that his mule was frisky and wouldn't stand. But the word would come, "Well, drive the mule out in the bushes," and then Susy's Sam would have a long resting spell that did him good, and there would be nobody to complain. And so it was with the rest. Whoever was sick or tired was sure to catch the Little Master's eye. How did he know? Well, don't ask too many questions about that. You might ask how the Gray Pony knew the poison vines and grasses. It was a case of just knowing, without knowing where the knowledge came from. But it was not only the plow hands and the hoe hands that Little Crotchet knew about. At the close of summer there were the cotton pickers and the reapers to be looked after. In fact, this was Little Crotchet's busiest time, for many of the negro children were set to picking cotton, and the lad felt called on to look after these more carefully than he looked after the grown hands. Many a time he had half a dozen holding the Gray Pony at once. This made the older negroes shake their heads, and say that the Little Master was spoiling the children, but you may be sure that they thought none the less of him on that account. [Illustration: THAT'S RANDALL'S SONG] And then there were the reapers, the men who cut the oats and the wheat, and the binders that followed after. At the head of the reapers was Randall, tall, black, and powerful. It was fun to see the blade of his cradle flashing in the sun, and hear it swing with a swish through the golden grain. He led the reapers always by many yards, but when he was making the pace too hot for them he had a way of stopping to sharpen his scythe and starting up a song which spread from mouth to mouth until it could be heard for miles. Aaron, hiding in the wildwoods, could hear it, and at such times he would turn to one of his companions--the White Pig, or Rambler, or that gay joker, the Fox Squirrel--and say: "That's Randall's song. He sees the Little Master coming." The White Pig would grunt, and Rambler would say he'd rather hear a horn; but the Red Squirrel would chatter like mad and declare that he lost one of his ears by sitting on a limb of the live oak and singing when he saw a man coming. But the reapers knew nothing about the experience of the Fox Squirrel, and so they went on singing whenever Randall gave the word. And Little Crotchet was glad to hear them, for he used to sit on the Gray Pony and listen, sometimes feeling happy, and at other times feeling lonely indeed. It may have been the quaint melody that gave him a lonely feeling, or it may have been his sympathy for those who suffer the pains of disease or the pangs of trouble. The negroes used to watch him as they sang and worked, and say in the pauses of their song:-- "Little marster mighty funny!" That was the word,--"funny,"--and yet it had a deeper meaning for the negroes than the white people ever gave it. Funny!--when the lad leaned his pale cheek on the frail hand, and allowed his thoughts (were they thoughts or fleeting aspirations or momentary longings?) to follow the swift, sweet echoes of the song. For the echoes had a thousand nimble feet, and with these they fled away, away,--away beyond the river and its bordering hills; for the echoes had twangling wings, like those of a turtle-dove, and on these they lifted themselves heavenward, and floated above the world, and above the toil and trouble and sorrow and pain that dwell therein. Funny!--when the voice of some singer, sweeter and more powerful than the rest, rose suddenly from the pauses of the song, and gave words, as it seemed, to all the suffering that the Little Master had ever known. Aye! so funny that at such times Little Crotchet would suddenly wave his hand to the singing reapers, and turn the Gray Pony's head toward the river. Was he following the rolling echoes? He could never hope to overtake them. Once when this happened Uncle Fountain stopped singing to say:-- "I wish I wuz a runaway nigger!" "No, you don't!" exclaimed Randall. "Yes, I does," Uncle Fountain insisted. "How come?" "Kaze den I'd have little Marster runnin' atter me ev'y chance he got." "Go 'way, nigger man! You'd have Jim Simmons's nigger dogs atter you, an' den what'd you do?" "Dat ar Aaron had um atter 'im, an' what'd he do?" "De Lord, He knows,--I don't! But don't you git de consate in yo' min' dat you kin do what Aaron done done, kaze you'll fool yo'se'f, sho!" "What Aaron done done?" Fountain was persistent. "He done fool dem ar nigger dogs; dat what he done done." "Den how come I can't fool dem ar dogs?" "How come? Well, you des try um one time, mo' speshully dat ar col'-nose dog, which he name Soun'." "Well, I ain't bleege ter try it when de white folks treat me right," remarked Uncle Fountain, after thinking the matter over. "Dat what make I say what I does," asserted Randall. "When you know 'zactly what you got, an' when you got mighty nigh what you want, dat's de time ter lay low an' say nothin'. Hit's some trouble ter git de corn off'n de cob, but spozen dey want no corn on de cob, what den?" "Honey, ain't it de trufe?" exclaimed Uncle Fountain. Thus the negroes talked. They knew a great deal more about Aaron than the white people did, but even the negroes didn't know as much as the Little Master, and for a very good reason. They had no time to find out things, except at night, and at night--well, you may believe it or not, just as you please, but at night the door of the Swamp was closed and locked--locked hard and fast. The owls, the night hawks, the whippoorwills, and the chuck-will's widows could fly over. Yes, and the Willis Whistlers could creep through or crawl under when they returned home from their wild serenades. But everything else--even that red joker, the Fox Squirrel--must have a key. Aaron had one, and the White Grunter, and Rambler, and all the four-footed creatures that walk on horn sandals or in velvet slippers each had a key. The Little Master might have had one for the asking, but always when night came he was glad to lie on his sofa and read, or, better still, go to bed and sleep, so that he never had the need of a key to open the door of the Swamp after it was closed and locked at night. II. THE SECRETS OF THE SWAMP. However hard and fast the door of the Swamp may be locked at night, however tightly it may be shut, it opens quickly enough to whomsoever carries the key. There is no creaking of its vast and heavy hinges; there is not the faintest flutter of a leaf, nor the softest whisper of a blade of grass. That is the bargain the bearer of the key must make:-- _That which sleeps, disturb not its slumber. That which moves, let it swiftly pass._ Else the Swamp will never reveal itself. The sound of one alien footfall is enough. It is the signal for each secret to hide itself, and for all the mysteries to vanish into mystery. The Swamp calls them all in, covers them as with a mantle, and puts on its every-day disguise,--the disguise that the eyes of few mortals have ever penetrated. But those who stand by the bargain that all key-bearers must make--whether they go on two legs or on four, whether they fly or crawl or creep or swim--find the Swamp more friendly. There is no disguise anywhere. The secrets come swarming forth from all possible or impossible places; and the mysteries, led by their torch-bearer Jack-o'-the-Lantern, glide through the tall canes and move about among the tall trees. The unfathomable blackness of night never sets foot here. It is an alien and is shut out. And this is one of the mysteries. If, when the door of the Swamp is opened to a key-bearer the black night seems to have crept in, wait a moment,--have patience. It is a delusion. Underneath this leafy covering, in the midst of this dense growth of vines and saw-grass and reeds and canes, there is always a wonderful hint of dawn--a shadowy, shimmering hint, elusive and indescribable, but yet sufficient to give dim shape to that which is near at hand. Not far away the frightened squeak of some small bird breaks sharply on the ear of the Swamp. This is no alien note, and Jack-o'-the-Lantern dances up and down, and all the mysteries whisper in concert:-- "We wish you well, Mr. Fox. Don't choke yourself with the feathers. Good-night, Mr. Fox, good-night!" Two minute globules of incandescent light come into sight and disappear, and the mysteries whisper:-- "Too late, Mr. Mink, too late! Better luck next time. Good-night!" A rippling sound is heard in the lagoon as the Leander of the Swamp slips into the water. Jack-o'-the-Lantern flits to the level shore of the pool, and the mysteries come sweeping after, sighing:-- "Farewell, Mr. Muskrat! Good luck and good-night!" Surely there is an alien sound on the knoll yonder,--snapping, growling, and fighting. Have stray dogs crept under the door? Oh, no! The Swamp smiles, and all the mysteries go trooping thither to see the fun. It is a wonderful frolic! Mr. Red Fox has met Mr. Gray Fox face to face. Something tells Mr. Red Fox "Here's your father's enemy." Something whispers to Mr. Gray, "Here's your mother's murderer." And so they fall to, screaming and gnawing and panting and snarling. Mr. Gray Fox is the strongest, but his heart is the weakest. Without warning he turns tail and flies, with Mr. Red Fox after him, and with all the mysteries keeping them company. They run until they are past the boundary line,--the place where the trumpet flower tried to marry the black-jack tree,--and then, of course, the Swamp has no further concern with them. And the mysteries and their torch-bearers come trooping home. [Illustration: MR. RED FOX MEETS MR. GRAY FOX] It is fun when Mr. Red Fox and Mr. Gray Fox meet on the knoll, but the Swamp will never have such a frolic as it had one night when a strange bird came flying in over the door. It is known that the birds that sleep while the Swamp is awake have been taught to hide their heads under their wings. It is not intended that they should see what is going on. Even the Buzzard, that sleeps in the loblolly pine, and the wild turkey, that sleeps in the live oak, conform to this custom. They are only on the edge of the Swamp, but they feel that it would be rude not to put their heads under their wings while the Swamp is awake. But this strange bird--of a family of night birds not hitherto known to that region--was amazed when he beheld the spectacle. "Oho!" he cried; "what queer country is this, where all the birds are headless? If I'm to live here in peace, I must do as the brethren do." So he went off in search of advice. As he went along he saw the Bull-Frog near the lagoon. "Queerer still," exclaimed the stranger. "Here is a bird that has no head, and he can sing." This satisfied him, and he went farther until he saw Mr. Wildcat trying to catch little Mr. Flying-Squirrel. "Good-evening, sir," said the stranger. "I see that the birds in this country have no heads." Mr. Wildcat smiled and bowed and licked his mouth. "I presume, sir, that I ought to get rid of my head if I am to stay here, and I have nowhere else to go. How am I to do it?" "Easy enough," responded Mr. Wildcat, smiling and bowing and licking his mouth. "Birds that are so unfortunate as to have heads frequently come to me for relief. May I examine your neck to see what can be done?" The strange bird fully intended to say, "Why, certainly, sir!" He had the words all made up, but his head was off before he could speak. Being a large bird, he fluttered and shook his wings and jumped about a good deal. As the noise was not alien, the Swamp and all its mysteries came forth to investigate, and oh, what a frolic there was when Mr. Wildcat related the facts! The torch-bearers danced up and down with glee, and the mysteries waltzed to the quick piping of the Willis-Whistlers. Although the Swamp was not a day older when Aaron, the Son of Ben Ali, became a key-bearer, the frolic over the headless bird was far back of Aaron's time. Older! The Swamp was even younger, for it was not a Swamp until old age had overtaken it--until centuries had made it fresh and green and strong. The Indians had camped round about, had tried to run its mysteries down, and had failed. Then came a band of wandering Spaniards, with ragged clothes, and tarnished helmets, and rusty shields, and neighing horses--the first the Swamp had ever seen. The Spaniards floundered in at one side--where the trumpet vine tried to marry the black-jack tree--and floundered out on the other side more bedraggled than ever. This was a great victory for the Swamp, and about that time it came to know and understand itself. For centuries it had been "organizing," and when it pulled De Soto's company of Spaniards in at one side and flung them out at the other, considerably the worse for wear, it felt that the "organization" was complete. And so it was and had been for years and years, and so it remained thereafter--a quiet place when the sun was above the trees, but wonderfully alert and alive when night had fallen. The Swamp that Aaron knew was the same that the Indians and Spaniards had known. The loblolly pine had grown, and the big poplars on the knoll had expanded a trifle with the passing centuries, but otherwise the Swamp was the same. And yet how different! The Indians had not found it friendly, and the Spaniards regarded it as an enemy; but to Aaron it gave shelter, and sometimes food, and its mysteries were his companions. Jack-o'-the-Lantern showed him the hidden paths when the mists of night fell darker than usual. He became as much a part of the Swamp as the mysteries were, entering into its life, and becoming native to all its moods and conditions. And his presence there seemed to give the Swamp new responsibilities. Its thousand eyes were always watching for his enemies, and its thousand tongues were always ready to whisper the news of the coming of an alien. The turkey buzzard, soaring thousands of feet above the top of the great pine, the blue falcon, suspended in the air a mile away, the crow, flapping lazily across the fields, stood sentinel during the day, and the Swamp understood the messages they sent. At night the Willis-Whistlers were on guard, and their lines extended for miles in all directions, and the Swamp itself was awake, and needed no warning message. Sometimes at night the sound of Randall's trumpet fell on the ear of the Swamp, or the voice of Uncle Fountain was heard lifted up in song, as he went over the hills to his fish-baskets in the river; and these were restful and pleasing sounds. Sometimes the trailing cry of hounds was heard. If in the day, Rambler, the track dog, would listen until he knew whether the cry came from Jim Simmons's "nigger dogs," from the Gossett hounds, or from some other pack. If at night, the Swamp cared little about it, for it was used to these things after the sun went down. Mr. Coon insisted on gadding about, and it served him right, the Swamp insisted, when the hounds picked up his drag--as the huntsmen say--and brought him home with a whirl. He was safe when he got there, for let the hounds bay at the door of his house as long as they might, no hunter with torch and axe would venture into the Swamp. They had tried it--oh, many times. _But the door was locked, and the key Was safely kid in a hollow tree._ If it was merely Cousin Coon who lived up the river, well and good. It would teach the incurable vagrant a lesson, and the Swamp enjoyed the fun. The Willis-Whistlers stopped to listen, the mysteries hid behind the trees, and Jack-o'-the-Lantern extinguished his torch as the hounds came nearer with their quavering cries. Was it Mr. Coon or Cousin Coon? Why, Cousin Coon, of course. How did the Swamp know? It was the simplest thing in the world. Wasn't there a splash and a splutter as he ran into the quagmire? Wasn't there a snap and a snarl when the partridge-pea vine caught his foot? Did he know the paths? Didn't he double and turn and go back the way he came, to be caught and killed on dry land? Would Mr. Coon of the Swamp ever be caught on dry land? Don't you believe it! If cut off from home, he would run to the nearest pond and plunge in. Once there, was there a hound that would venture to take a bath with him? The Swamp laughed at the thought of such a thing. Aaron smiled, the White Pig grunted, and Rambler grinned. Cousin Coon is no more, but Mr. Coon is safe at home and the Swamp knows it. _Good luck to all who know the way, By crooked path and clinging vine! For them Night's messengers shall stay, For them the laggard moon shall shine._ But it was not always that aliens and strangers were unwelcome. Occasionally in the still hours between midnight and dawn the Swamp would open its doors to Gossett's Riley. He had no key and he had never come to know and feel that the Swamp was something more than a mixture of mud and water, trees, canes, vines, and all manner of flying, creeping, and crawling things. To him the Swamp was merely a place and not a Thing, but this was ignorance, and the Swamp forgave it for various reasons, forgave it and pitied him as he deserved to be pitied. And yet he had qualities out of the common, and for these the Swamp admired him. He was little more than a dwarf, being "bow-legged and chuckle-headed," as Susy's Sam used to say, and was called Chunky Riley, but he was very much of a man for all that. At a log-rolling there was not a negro for miles around who could pull him down with the handstick. Aaron could do it, but Aaron was not a negro, but an Arab, and that is different. Chunky Riley was even stronger in limb and body than Aaron, but Aaron used his head, as well as body and limb--and that also is different. Riley was not swift of foot, but he could run far, as Gossett's hounds well knew. More than that, he could go on all-fours almost as fast as he could run on two legs, and that was something difficult to do. The Swamp found Chunky Riley out in a very curious way. The first time he came to bring a message to Aaron he waited for no introduction whatever. The Willis-Whistlers warned him, but he paid no attention to their warning; the mysteries whispered to him, but his ears were closed. He searched for no path, and was blind to all the signals. He blundered into the Swamp and floundered toward the knoll as the Spaniards did. He floundered out of the quagmire near where the White Pig lay. He had the scent and all the signs of an alien, and the White Grunter rushed at him with open mouth. The Swamp was now angry from centre to circumference, and poor Chunky Riley's ending would have been swift and sudden but for the fact that he bore some undeveloped kinship to the elements that surrounded him. [Illustration: A-STRADDLE OF THE GRUNTER'S BACK] As the White Pig rushed forward with open mouth, Chunky Riley caught a vague glimpse of him in the darkness, gave one wild yell, leaped into the air, and came down a-straddle of the Grunter's back. This was more than the White Pig had bargained for. He answered Riley's yell with a loud squeal, and went tearing through the swamp to the place where Aaron dwelt. The big owl hooted, Rambler howled, and Jack-o'-the-Lantern threw down his torch and fled. The Swamp that had been angry was amazed and frightened. What demon was this that had seized the White Grunter and was carrying him off? What could the rest hope for if so fierce a creature as the White Pig could be disposed of in this fashion? Even Aaron was alarmed at the uproar, for Chunky Riley continued to yell, and the White Pig kept up its squealing. It was well that the Grunter, when he came to Aaron's place, ran close enough to a tree to rub Chunky Riley off his back, otherwise there is no telling what would have happened. It was well, too, that Chunky Riley called loudly for Aaron when he fell, otherwise he would have been made mincemeat of; for as soon as the White Pig was relieved of his strange burden, his anger rose fiercer than ever, and he came charging at Chunky Riley, who was lying prone on the ground, too frightened to do anything more than try to run to a tree on all-fours. Aaron spoke sharply to the White Pig. "Shall I use a club on you, White Grunter? Shall I make bacon of you? You heard him call my name." The White Pig paused. His small eyes glittered in the dark, and Chunky Riley heard his tusks grate ominously. He knew the creature was foaming with rage. "Ooft! Your name, Son of Ben Ali?" said the White Pig in language that Chunky Riley thought was merely a series of angry grunts and snorts. "Ooft! I heard him call for Aaron, and how long has it been since I heard you say to the Red Chatterer in the hickory-tree that there were a thousand Aarons, but only one Son of Ben Ali? Ooft-Gooft! Am I a horse to be ridden? Humph! No man could ride me--it is what you call a Thing. Umph! let it ride you and then talk about clubs. Ooft!" "Is dat Aaron?" Chunky Riley ventured to inquire. "Ef 't is, I wish you'd be good enough ter run dat ar creetur 'way fum here, kaze I ain't got no knack fer bein' chaw'd up an' spit out, an' trompled on, an' teetotally ruint right 'fo' my own face." "What's your name?" inquired Aaron. "You ought ter know me, but I dunner whedder you does er not. I'm name Riley--dey calls me Chunky Riley fer short." Aaron was silent for a moment, as if trying to remember the name. Presently he laughed and said: "Why, yes; I know you pretty well. Come, we'll kindle a fire." "No suh--not me! Not less'n you'll run dat ar wil' hog off. He mo' servigrous dan a pant'er. Ef I hadn't er straddled 'im des now he'd 'a' e't me bodaciously up an' dey wouldn't 'a' been nothin' lef' but de buttons on my cloze, an' nobody in de roun' worl' would 'a' know'd dey wuz buttons." Aaron laughed while speaking to the White Pig: "Get to bed, Grunter. It is the Lifter--the man that is as strong in the back as a horse." "Gooft-ooft! Let him ride you out as he rode me in--ooft! He's no man! Gooft! No bed for me. When a horse is ridden, he must eat, as I've heard you say, Son of Ben Ali. Gooft-ooft!" The White Pig, still grinding his tusks together, turned and trotted off into the darkness, and presently Aaron and Chunky Riley heard him crashing through the canes and reeds. Then Aaron kindled his fire. "Why did you come?" inquired the Son of Ben Ali when the two had made themselves comfortable. "Des ter fetch word dat Marster wuz layin' off ter git atter you wid Simmons's nigger-dogs 'fo' long." "All the way through the dark for that? When did you come to like me so well?" "Oh, 't ain't 'zackly dat," replied Chunky Riley frankly. "I hear um talkin' 'bout it when marster an' dat ar Mr. Simmons wuz walkin' out in de hoss lot. I wuz in de corn crib, an' dey didn't know it, an' I des sot dar an' lis'n at um. An' den dis mornin' I seed dat ar little Marse Abercrombie, an' he say, 'Go tell Aaron quick ez you kin.'" "The child with the crutches?" queried Aaron. "De ve'y same," replied Chunky Riley. He paused awhile and then added: "I'd walk many a long mile fer dat white chil', day er night, rain er shine." He gazed in the flickering fire a long time, waiting for Aaron to make some comment. Hearing none, he finally turned his eyes on his companion. Aaron was looking skyward, where one small star could be seen twinkling through the ascending smoke from the fire, and his lips were moving, though they framed no words that Chunky Riley could hear. Something in the attitude of the Son of Ben Ali disturbed the negro. "Well, I done what I come ter do," he said, making a pretense of stretching himself and yawning, "an' I speck I'd better be gwine." The Son of Ben Ali still kept his eye fixed on the twinkling star. "What pesters me," Chunky Riley went on, "is de idee dat dat ar wil' hog went 'zackly de way I got ter go. I don't want ter hatter ride 'im no mo' less'n I got a saddle an' bridle." "Come!" exclaimed Aaron suddenly, "I'll go with you. I want to see the Little Master." "De dogs'll fin' yo' track sho, ef dey start out to-morrer," suggested Chunky Riley. The only response the Son of Ben Ali made to this suggestion was to say: "Take the end of my cane in your hand and follow it. We'll take a short cut." Chunky Riley had queer thoughts as he followed his tall conductor, being led as if he were a blind man; but he said nothing. Presently (it seemed but a few minutes to Chunky Riley) they stood on the top of a hill. "Look yonder!" said Aaron. Away to the left a red light glimmered faintly. "What dat?" asked the superstitious negro. "The light in the Little Master's window." "How came it so red, den?" inquired Chunky Riley. "Red curtain," replied Aaron curtly. "Well, de Lord he'p us! Is we dat close?" cried Chunky Riley. "Your way is there," said the Son of Ben Ali; "this is mine." The negro stood watching Aaron until his tall form was lost in the darkness. III. WHAT CHUNKY RILEY SAW AND HEARD Left alone, Chunky Riley stood still and tried to trace in his mind the route he and Aaron had followed in coming from the Swamp. But he could make no mental map--and he knew every "nigh-cut" and by-path for miles around--that would fit in with the time it had taken them to reach the spot where he now stood. He looked back toward the Swamp, but the night covered it, and he could see nothing. Then he looked around him, to see if he knew his present whereabouts. Oh, yes, that was easy; every foot of ground was familiar. The hill on which he had stood had been given over to scrub pines. The hill itself sloped away to the Turner old fields. But still he was puzzled, and still he scratched his head, for he knew that the Swamp was a good four miles away--nearly five--and it seemed to him that he and Aaron had been only a few minutes in making the journey. So he scratched his head and wondered to himself whether Aaron was really a "conjur' man." It was perhaps very lucky for Chunky Riley that he stopped when he did. If he had kept on he would have run into the arms of three men who were going along the plantation path that led from Gossett's negro quarters to the Abercrombie Place. The delay that Chunky Riley made prevented him from meeting them, but it did not prevent him from hearing the murmur of their voices as he struck into the path. They were too far off for Chunky Riley to know whether they were white or black, but just as he turned into the path to go to Gossett's the scent of a cigar floated to his nostrils. He paused and scratched his head again. He knew by the scent of the cigar that the voices he heard belonged to white men: but who were they? If they were the "patterollers" they'd catch Aaron beyond all question; it would be impossible for him to escape. So thought Chunky Riley, and so thinking, he turned and followed the path towards the Abercrombie Place. He moved rapidly but cautiously. The scent of the cigar grew stronger, the sound of men's voices fell more distinctly on his ear. Chunky Riley left the path and skirted through the low pines until he came to the fence that inclosed the spring lot. He knew that if he was heard, the men would think he was a calf, or, mayhap, a mule; for the hill on which Aaron had left him was now a part of a great pasture, in which the calves and dry cattle and (between seasons) the mules were allowed to roam at will. Coming to the fence, Chunky Riley would have crossed it, but the voices were louder now, and he caught a glimpse of the red sparks of lighted cigars. Creeping closer and closer, but ever ready to drop on the ground and run away on all-fours, Chunky Riley was soon able to hear what the men were saying. He knew the voices of his master and young master, Mr. Gossett--Old Grizzle, as he was called--and George, and he rightly judged that the strange voice mingling with theirs belonged to Mr. Jim Simmons, who, with a trained pack of hounds,--"nigger dogs" they were called,--held himself at the service of owners of runaway negroes. Mr. Simmons's average fee was $15--that is to say when he was "called in time." But in special cases his charge was $30. When Chunky Riley arrived within earshot of the group, Mr. Gossett was just concluding a protest that he had made against the charge of $30, which he had reluctantly agreed to pay for the capture of Aaron. "You stayed at my house to-day, you'll stay there to-night, and maybe you'll come back to dinner to-morrow. There's the feeding of you and your dogs. You don't take any account of that at all." Mr. Gossett's voice was sharp and emphatic. His stinginess was notorious in that region, and gave rise to the saying that Gossett loved a dollar better than he did his wife. But he was no more ashamed of his stinginess than he was of the shabbiness of his hat. "But, Colonel," remonstrated Mr. Jim Simmons, "didn't you send for me? Didn't you say, 'Glad to see you, Simmons; walk right in and make yourself at home'? You did, fer a fact." He spoke with a drawl that irritated the snappy and emphatic Mr. Gossett. "Why, certainly, Simmons; certainly I did. I mentioned the matter to show you that your charges are out of all reason in this case. All you have to do is to come here with your dogs in the morning, skirt around the place, pick up his trail, and there you are." "But, Colonel!" insisted Mr. Jim Simmons with his careless, irritating drawl, "ain't it a plum' fact that this nigger's been in the woods a month or sech a matter? Ain't it a plum' fact that you've tracked him and trailed him with your own dogs?--and good dogs they are, and I'll tell anybody so. Now what do you pay me fer? Fer catching the nigger? No, sirree! The nigger's as good as caught now--when it comes to that. You pay me fer knowing how to catch him--that's what you pay me fer. You send fer the doctor. He comes and fumbles around a little, and you have to pay the bill whether he kills or cures. You don't pay him fer killing or curing; you pay him fer knowing how to fumble around. It's some different with me. If I don't catch your nigger, you button up your pocket. If I do catch him you pay me $30 down, not fer catching him, but fer knowing how to fumble around and catch him." The logic of this argument, which was altogether lost on Chunky Riley, silenced Mr. Gossett, but did not convince him. There was a long pause, as if all three of the men were wrestling with peculiar thoughts. Finally Mr. Gossett spoke:-- "It ain't so much the nigger I'm after, but I want to show Abercrombie that I can't be outdone. He's laughing in his sleeve because I can't keep the nigger at home, and I'll be blamed"--here his voice sank to a confidential tone--"I'll be blamed if I don't believe that, between him and that son of his, they are harboring the nigger. Yes, sir, harboring is the word." Mr. Jim Simmons threw down his lighted cigar with such energy as to cause the sparks to fly in all directions. A cigar was an unfamiliar luxury to Mr. Simmons, and he had had enough of it. "Addison Abercrombie harboring a nigger!" exclaimed Mr. Simmons. "Why, Colonel, if every man, woman, and child in the United States was to tell me that I wouldn't believe it. Addison Abercrombie! Why, Colonel, though you're his next-door neighbor, as you may say, you don't know him half as well as I do. You ought to get acquainted with that man." "Humph! I know him well enough, I reckon," responded Mr. Gossett. "I went to school with him. Folks get to know one another at school. He was always stuck up, trying to hold his head higher than anybody else because his daddy had money and a big plantation. I made my prop'ty myself; I earned every dollar; and I know how it came." "But, Colonel!" Mr. Jim Simmons insisted, "Addison Abercrombie would hold his head high if he never seen a dollar, and he'd have the right to do it. Him harbor niggers? Shucks, Colonel! You might as well tell me that the moon ain't nothing but a tater pudding." "What do you see in the man?" Mr. Gossett asked with some irritation in the tones of his voice. There was a pause, as though Mr. Simmons was engaged in getting his thoughts together. Finally he said:-- "Well, Colonel, I don't reckon I can make it plain to you, because when I come to talk about it I can't grab the identical idee that would fit what I've got in my mind. But I'll tell you what's the honest truth, in my opinion--and I'm not by myself, by a long shot--Addison Abercrombie is as fine a man as ever trod shoe leather. That's what." "Humph!" grunted Mr. Gossett. "Yes, sirree!" persisted Mr. Simmons, warming up a little. "It makes no difference where you see him, nor when you see him, nor how you see him, you can up and say: 'The Lord has made many men of many minds, and many men of many kinds, but not sence Adam has he made a better man than Addison Abercrombie.' That's the way I look at it, Colonel. I may be wrong, but if I am I'll never find it out in this world." Plainly, Mr. Gossett was not prepared to hear such a tribute as this paid to Addison Abercrombie, and he winced under it. He hemmed and hawed, as the saying is, and changed his position on the fence. He was thoroughly disgusted. Now there was no disagreement between Mr. Gossett and Mr. Abercrombie,--no quarrel, that is to say,--but Gossett knew that Abercrombie regarded him with a feeling akin to contempt. He treasured in his mind a remark that Abercrombie had made about him the day he bought Aaron from the negro speculator. He never forgot nor forgave it, for it was an insinuation that Mr. Gossett, in spite of his money and his thrifty ways, was not much of a gentleman. On this particular subject Mr. Gossett was somewhat sensitive, as men are who have doubts in their own minds as to their standing. Mr. Gossett had an idea that money and "prop'ty," as he called it, made a gentleman; but it was a very vague idea, and queer doubts sometimes pestered him. It was these doubts that made him "touchy" on this subject. "What has this great man ever done for you, Simmons?" Mr. Gossett asked, with a contemptuous snort. "Not anything, Colonel, on the top of the green globe. I went to him once to borrow some money, and he wanted to lend it to me without taking my note and without charging me any interest. I says to him, says I, 'You'll have to excuse me.'" "That was right; you did perfectly right, Simmons. The man was trying to insult you." "But, Colonel, he didn't go about it that way. Don't you reckon you could tell when anybody was trying to insult you? That was the time I come to you." "I charged you interest, didn't I, Simmons?" "You did, Colonel, fer a fact." "I'm this kind of a man, Simmons," remarked Mr. Gossett, with a touch of sincere pride and gratification in his voice. "When I do business with a man I do business. When I do him a favor it must be outside of business. It's mixing the two things up that keeps so many people poor." "What two things, Colonel?" gravely inquired Simmons. "Why the doing of business and--er--the doing of favors." "Oh, I see," said Mr. Simmons, as if a great light had been turned on the matter. Then he laughed and continued: "Yes, Colonel, I borrowed the money from you and just about that time the fever taken me down, and if it hadn't 'a' been fer Addison Abercrombie the note I give you would have swallowed my house and land." "Is that so?" inquired Mr. Gossett. "Ask my wife," replied Mr. Simmons. "One day while I was out of my head with the fever, Addison Abercrombie, he rid by and saw my wife setting on the front steps, jest a-boohooing,--you know how wimmen will do, Colonel; if they ain't a-jawing they're a-cryin'. So Addison Abercrombie, he ups and asks her what's the matter, and Jennie, she tells him. He got right off his hoss and come in, and set by my bed the better part of the morning. And all that time there I was a-running on about notes and a-firing off my troubles in the air. So the upshot of the business was that Addison Abercrombie left the money there to pay the note and left word for me to pay him back when I got good and ready; and Jennie hadn't hardly dried her eyes before here come a nigger on horseback with a basket on his arm, and in the basket was four bottles of wine. Wine! Why, Colonel, it was worse 'n wine. Jennie says that if arry one of the bottles had 'a' had a load of buckshot in it, the roof would 'a' been blow'd off when the stopper flew out. And, Colonel! if ever you feel like taking a right smart of exercise, jest pass my house some day and stick your head over the palings and tell Jennie that Addison Abercrombie's got a streak of meanness in him." "Have you ever paid Abercrombie?" Mr. Gossett inquired. His voice was harsh and businesslike. "I was laying off to catch this nigger of yours and pay him some on account," replied Mr. Simmons. "Why, it has been three years since you paid me," suggested Mr. Gossett. "Two years or sech a matter," remarked Mr. Simmons complacently. "Then that's the reason you think Abercrombie ain't harboring my nigger?" inquired Mr. Gossett scornfully. "But, Colonel," drawled Mr. Simmons, "what under the sun ever got the idee in your head that Addison Abercrombie _is_ harboring your nigger?" "It's as simple as a-b ab," Mr. Gossett replied with energy. "He tried to buy the nigger off the block and couldn't, and now he thinks I'll sell if the nigger'll stay in the woods long enough. That's the reason he's harboring the nigger. And more than that: don't I know from my own niggers that the yaller rapscallion comes here every chance he gets? He comes, but he don't go in the nigger quarters. Now, where does he go?" "Yes, where?" said Mr. Gossett's son George, who up to that moment had taken no part in the conversation. "Three times this month I've dealt out an extra rasher of bacon to two of our hands, and they tell the same tale." "It looks quare," Mr. Simmons admitted, "but as sure as you're born Addison Abercrombie ain't the man to harbor a runaway nigger. If he's ever had a nigger in the woods, it's more'n I know, and when that's the case you may set it down fer a fact that he don't believe in runaway niggers." This was a lame argument, but it was the best that Mr. Simmons could muster at the moment. "No," remarked Mr. Gossett sarcastically, "his niggers don't take to the woods because they do as they blamed please at home. It sets my teeth on edge to see the way things are run on this plantation. Why, I could take the stuff that's flung away here and get rich on it in five years. It's a scandal." "I believe you!" assented his son George dutifully. Chunky Riley heard this conversation by snatches, but he caught the drift of it. What he remembered of it was that some of his fellow servants were ready to tell all they knew for an extra "rasher" of meat, and that the hunt for Aaron would begin the next morning,--and it was now getting along toward dawn. He wanted to warn Aaron again. He wanted especially to tell Aaron that three men were sitting on the fence waiting for him. But this was impossible. The hour was approaching when Chunky Riley must be in his cabin on the Gossett plantation ready to go to work with the rest of the hands. He had slept soundly the first half of the night, and he would be as fresh in the field when the sun rose as those who had slept the night through. As he turned away from the fence a dog in the path leading from the spring to the stile suddenly began to bay. The men tried to drive him away, and one of them threw a stick at him, but the dog refused to be intimidated. He bayed them more fiercely, but finally retreated toward the spring, stopping occasionally to bark at the men on the fence. "If I'm not mistaken," remarked Mr. Gossett, "that's my dog Rambler. I know his voice, and he's been missing ever since that nigger went to the woods. I wonder if he's taken up over here? George, I wish you'd make it convenient to come over here as soon as you can, and find out whether Rambler is here. Now, there's a dog, Simmons, that's away ahead of anything you've got in the shape of a nigger dog,--nose as cold as ice, and as much sense as the common run of folks." "He ain't doing you much good," responded Mr. Simmons. "That's a fact," said Mr. Gossett. "Till I heard that dog barking I thought Rambler had been killed by that nigger." Chunky Riley struck into the plantation path leading to Gossett's, at the point where the three men had tied their horses. They had ridden as far as they thought prudent, considering the errand they were on, and then they dismounted and made their horses fast to the overhanging limbs of a clump of oaks, which, for some reason or other, had been left standing in the field. One of the horses whinnied when Chunky Riley came near, and the negro paused. Aaron would have known that the horse said, "Please take me home, and be quick about it; I'm hungry;" but Chunky Riley could only guess. And as he guessed a thought struck him--a thought that made him scratch his head and chuckle. He turned in his tracks, went back along the path a little way, and listened. Then he returned, and the horse whinnied again. The creature was growing impatient. Once more Chunky Riley indulged in a hearty laugh, slapping himself softly on the leg. Then he went to the horses one by one, pulled down the swinging limbs to which their bridle reins were fastened, and untied them. This done, he proceeded to make himself "mighty skace," as he expressed it. He started toward home at a rapid trot, without pausing to listen. But even without listening, he could hear the horses coming after him, Mr. Simmons's horse with the others. The faster he trotted the faster the horses trotted; and when Chunky Riley began to run the horses broke into a gallop, and came clattering along the path after him, their stirrups flying wildly about and making a clamor that Chunky Riley had not bargained for. The faster he ran the faster the horses galloped, until at last it seemed to him that the creatures were trying to run him down. This idea took possession of his mind, and at once his fears magnified the situation. He imagined the horses were right at his heels. He could feel the hot breath of one of them on the back of his neck. Fortunately for Chunky Riley there was a fence at the point where the path developed into a lane. Over this he climbed and fell exhausted, fully expecting the horses to climb over or break through and trample him under their feet. But his expectations were not realized; the horses galloped along the lane, and presently he could hear them clattering along the big road toward Gossett's. Chunky Riley was exhausted as well as terror-stricken. The perspiration rolled from his face, and he could hear his heart beat. He lay in the soft grass in the fence corner until he had recovered somewhat from his exertions and his fright. Finally he rose, looked back along the way he had come, then toward the big road, and shook his head. [Illustration: THE HORSES WERE RIGHT AT HIS HEELS] "Is anybody ever see de beat er dat?" he exclaimed. Whereupon he went through the woods instead of going by the road, and was soon in his cabin frying his ration of bacon. IV. BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND DAWN. When Aaron parted from Chunky Riley on the hill after they had come from the Swamp, he went along the path to the spring, stooped on his hands and knees and took a long draught of the cool water. Then he went to the rear of the negro quarters, crossed the orchard fence, and passed thence to the flower garden in front of the great house. At one corner of the house a large oak reared its head above the second story. Some of its limbs when swayed by the wind swept the dormer window that jutted out from Little Crotchet's room. Behind the red curtain of this dormer window a light shone, although it was now past midnight. It shone there at night whenever Little Crotchet was restless and sleepless and wanted to see Aaron. And this was often, for the youngster, with all his activity, rarely knew what it was to be free from pain. But for his journeys hither and yonder on the Gray Pony he would have been very unhappy indeed. All day long he could make some excuse for putting his aches aside; he could even forget them. But at night when everything was quiet, Pain would rap at the door and insist on coming in and getting in bed with him. Little Crotchet had many quaint thoughts and queer imaginings, and one of these was that Pain was a sure-enough something or other that could come in at the door and go out when it chose--a little goblin dressed in red flannel, with a green hat running to a sharp peak at the top, and a yellow tassel dangling from the peak--a red flannel goblin always smelling of camphor and spirits of turpentine. Sometimes--and those were rare nights--the red goblin remained away, and then Little Crotchet could sleep and dream the most beautiful dreams. But usually, as soon as night had fallen on the plantation and there was no longer any noise in the house, the little red goblin, with his peaked green hat, would open the door gently and peep in to see whether the lad was asleep--and he knew at a glance whether Little Crotchet was sleeping or only feigning sleep. Sometimes the youngster would shut his eyes ever so tight, and lie as still as a mouse, hoping that the red goblin would go away. But the trick never succeeded. The red goblin was too smart for that. If there was a blaze in the fireplace he would wink at it very solemnly; if not, he'd wink at the candle. And he never was in any hurry. He'd sit squat on the floor for many long moments. Sometimes he'd run and jump in the bed with Little Crotchet and then jump out again. Sometimes he'd pretend he was going to jump in the bed, when suddenly another notion would strike him, and he'd turn and run out at the door, and not come back again for days. But this was unusual. Night in and night out, the year round, the red goblin rarely failed to show himself in little Crotchet's room, and crawl under the cover with the lad. There was but one person in all that region whom the red goblin was afraid of, and that was Aaron. But he was an obstinate goblin. Frequently he'd stay after Aaron came, and try his best to fight it out with the Son of Ben Ali; but in the end he would have to go. There were times, however, when Aaron could not respond to Little Crotchet's signal of distress,--the light in the dormer window,--and at such times the red goblin would have everything his own way. He would stay till all the world was awake, and then sneak off to his hiding-place, leaving Little Crotchet weak and exhausted. [Illustration: THE GOBLIN PAIN] Thus it happened that, while Chunky Riley was taking an unexpected ride on the White Pig, and afterward while the three men were sitting on the pasture fence beyond the spring, the red goblin was giving Little Crotchet a good deal of trouble. No matter which way he turned in bed, the red goblin was there. He was there when Aaron came into the flower garden. He was there when Aaron stood at the foot of the great oak at the corner of the house. He was there when Aaron put forth his hand, felt for and found one of the iron spikes that had been driven into the body of the oak. The red goblin was in bed with Little Crotchet and tugging at his back and legs when Aaron pulled himself upward by means of the iron spike; when he found another iron spike; when, standing on and holding to these spikes, he walked up the trunk of the tree as if it were a ladder; and when he went into Little Crotchet's room by way of the dormer window. The real name of the red goblin with the green hat was Pain, as we know, and he was very busy with Little Crotchet this night; and though the lad had fallen into a doze, he was moving restlessly about when Aaron entered the room. The Son of Ben Ali stepped to the low bed, and knelt by it, placing his hand that the night winds had cooled on Little Crotchet's brow, touching it with firm but gentle strokes. The lad awoke with a start, saw that Aaron was near, and then closed his eyes again. "It's a long way for you to come," he said. "There's a lot of things for you in the basket there." "If twice as long, it would be short for me," replied Aaron. Then, still stroking Little Crotchet's brow with one hand, and gently rubbing his body with the other, the Son of Ben Ali told of Chunky Riley's ride on the White Pig. With his eyes closed, the lad could see the whole performance, and he laughed with so much heartiness that Aaron laughed in sympathy. This was such a rare event that Little Crotchet opened his eyes to see it, but soon closed them again, for now he felt that the red goblin was preparing to go. "I sent Chunky Riley," said Little Crotchet, after a while. "They're after you to-morrow--Jim Simmons and his hounds. And he has his catch-dog with him. I saw the dog to-day. He's named Pluto. He's big and black, and bob-tailed, and his ears have been cropped. Oh, I'm afraid they'll get you this time, Aaron. Why not stay here with me to-morrow, and the next day?" "Here?" There was a note of surprise in Aaron's voice. "Yes. What's to hinder you? I can keep everybody out of the room, except"-- "Except somebody," said Aaron, smiling. "No, no! The White-Haired Master is a good man. Good to all. He'd shake his head and say, 'Runaway hiding in my house! That's bad, bad!' No, Little Master, they'll not get Aaron. You sleep. To-morrow night I'll come. My clothes will be ripped and snagged. Have me a big needle and some coarse thread. I'll mend 'em here and while I'm mending I may tell a tale. I don't know. Maybe. You sleep." Aaron was no mesmerist, but somehow, the red goblin being gone, Little Crotchet was soon in the land of dreams. Aaron remained by the bed to make sure the sleep was sound, then he rose, tucked the cover about the lad's shoulders (for the morning air was cool), blew out the candle, went out on the roof, closing the window sash after him, and in a moment was standing in the flower garden. There he found Rambler, the track dog, awaiting him, and together they passed out into the lot and went by the spring, where Aaron stooped and took another draught of the cool, refreshing water. All this time the three men had been sitting on the pasture fence at the point where it intersected the path leading from the spring, and they were sitting there still. As Aaron started along this path, after leaving the spring, Rambler trotted on before, and his keen nose soon detected the presence of strangers. With a whine that was more than half a whistle, Rambler gave Aaron the signal to stop, and then went toward the fence. The situation became clear to him at once, and it was then that Chunky Riley and the three men had heard him bark. They called it barking, but it was a message to Aaron saying:-- "Lookout! lookout! Son of Ben Ali, look sharp! I see three--Grizzlies two, and another." [Illustration: THE SPRING OF COOL REFRESHING WATER] There was nothing alarming in the situation. In fact, Aaron might have gone within hailing distance of the three men without discovery, for the spring lot was well wooded. If Mr. Addison Abercrombie had any peculiarity it was his fondness for trees. He could find something to admire in the crookedest scrub oak and in the scraggiest elm. He not only allowed the trees in the spring lot to stand, but planted others. Where Aaron stood a clump of black-jacks, covering a quarter of an acre, had sprung up some years before. They were now well-grown saplings and stood as close together, according to the saying of the negroes, as hairs on a hog's back. Through these Aaron slowly edged his way, moving very carefully, until he reached a point close enough to the three men to see and hear what was going on. Standing in the black shadow of these saplings he made an important discovery. Chunky Riley, it will be remembered, suspected that the two Gossetts and Mr. Simmons were intent on capturing Aaron; but this was far from their purpose. They had no such idea. While Aaron stood listening, watching, he saw a tall shadow steal along the path. He heard the swish of a dress and knew it was a woman. The shadow stole along the path until it came to the three men on the fence and then it stopped. "Well?" said Mr. Gossett sharply. "What did you see? Where did the nigger go? Don't stand there like you are deaf and dumb. Talk out!" "I seed him come fum de spring, Marster, an' go up by de nigger cabins. But atter dat I ain't lay eyes on 'im." "Did he go into the cabins?" "I lis'n at eve'y one, Marster, an' I ain't hear no talkin' in but one." "Was he in that one?" "Ef he wuz, Marster, he wa'n't sayin' nothin'. Big Sal was talkin' wid Randall, suh." "What were they talking about?" "All de words I hear um say wuz 'bout der Little Marster--how good he is an' how he all de time thinkin' mo' 'bout yuther folks dan he do 'bout his own se'f." "Humph!" snorted Mr. Gossett. Mr. Simmons moved about uneasily. "Whyn't you go in an' see whether Aaron was in there?" asked George Gossett. "Bekaze, Marse George, dey'd 'a' know'd right pine-blank what I come fer. 'Sides dat, Big Sal is a mighty bad nigger 'oman when she git mad." "You're as big as she is," suggested Mr. Gossett. "Yes, suh; but I ain't got de ambition what Big Sal got," replied the woman humbly. "I'll tell you, Simmons, that runaway nigger is the imp of Satan," remarked Mr. Gossett. "But, Colonel, if he's that, what do you want him caught for?" inquired Mr. Simmons humorously. "Why, so much the more need for catching him. I want to get my hands on him. If I don't convert him, why, then you may go about among your friends and say that Gossett is a poor missionary. You may say that and welcome." "I believe you!" echoed George. "You may go home now," said Mr. Gossett to the woman. "Thanky, Marster." She paused a moment to wipe her face with her apron, and then climbed over the fence and went toward the Gossett plantation. Aaron slipped away from the neighborhood of the three men, crossed the fence near where Chunky Riley had been standing, went swiftly through the pasture for half a mile, struck into the plantation path some distance ahead of the woman, and then came back along the path to meet her. When he saw her coming he stopped, turned his back to her and stood motionless in the path. The woman was talking to herself as she came up; but when she saw Aaron she hesitated, advanced a step, and then stood still, breathing hard. All her superstitious fears were aroused. "Who is you? Who is dat? Name er de Lord! Can't you talk? Don't be foolin' wid me! Man, who is you?" "One!" replied Aaron. The sound of a human voice reassured her somewhat, but her knees shook so she could hardly stand. "What yo' name?" she asked again. "Too long a name to tell you." "What you doin'?" "Watching a child--looking hard at it." "Wuz you, sho nuff?" She came a step nearer. "How come any chil' out dis time er night?" "A black child," Aaron went on. "Its dress was afire. It went up and down the path here. It went across the hill. Crying and calling--calling and crying, 'Aaron! Aaron! Mammy's hunting for you! Aaron! Aaron! Mammy's telling on you.'" "My Lord fum heaven!" moaned the woman; "dat wuz my chil'--de one what got burnt up kaze I wuz off in de fiel'." She threw her apron over her head, fell on her knees, and moaned and shuddered. "Well, I'm Aaron. You hunted for me in the nigger cabins; you slipped to the fence yonder; you told three men you couldn't find me." "O Lord! I wuz bleege ter do it. It wuz dat er take ter de woods, an' dey ain't no place fer me in de woods. What'd I do out dar by myse'f at night? I know'd dey couldn't ketch you. Oh, dat wuz my chil'!" "Stand up!" Aaron commanded. "What you gwine ter do?" the woman asked, slowly rising to her feet, and holding herself ready to dodge an expected blow--for, as she herself said, she was not at all "ambitious." "Your breakfast is ready, and I've been waiting here to give it to you. Hold your apron." The woman did as she was told, and Aaron took from the basket which Little Crotchet had given him four biscuits and as many slices of ham. "I'll take um, an' thanky, too," said the woman; "but hongry as I is, I don't b'lieve I kin eat a mou'ful un um atter what I done. I'm too mean to live!" "Get home! get home and forget it," Aaron replied. "Oh, I can't go thoo dem woods atter what you tol' me!" cried the woman. "I'll go with you," said Aaron. "Come!" "You!" The woman lifted her voice until it sounded shrill on the moist air of the morning. "You gwine dar to Gossett's? Don't you know dey er gwine ter hunt you in de mornin'? Don't you know dey got de dogs dar? Don't you know some er de niggers'll see you--an' maybe de overseer? Don't you know you can't git away fum dem dogs fer ter save yo' life?" "Come!" said Aaron sharply. "It's late." "Min', now! ef dey ketch you, 't ain't me dat done it," the woman insisted. "Come!--I must be getting along," was Aaron's reply. He went forward along the path, and though he seemed to be walking easily, the woman had as much as she could do to keep near him. Though his body swayed slightly from side to side, he seemed to be gliding along rather than walking. Ahead of him, sometimes near, sometimes far, and frequently out of sight, a dark shadow moved and flitted. It was Rambler going in a canter. A hare jumped from behind a tussock and went skipping away. It was a tempting challenge. But Rambler hardly glanced at him. "Good-by, Mr. Rabbit! I'll see you another day!" Thus Aaron, the woman, and Rambler went to Gossett's. "Man, ain't you tired?" the woman asked when they came in sight of the negro quarters. "Me? I'll go twenty miles before sun-up," replied Aaron. "I'll never tell on you no mo'," said the woman; "not ef dey kills me." She turned to go to her cabin, when Aaron touched her on the shoulder. "Wait!" he whispered. "If it brings more meat for your young ones, tell! Fetch the men here; show 'em where I stood,--if it brings you more meat for your babies." "Sho nuff?" asked the woman, amazed. Aaron nodded his head. "What kind er folks is you?" she cried. "You ain't no nigger. Dey ain't no nigger on top er de groun' dat'd stan' up dar an' talk dat away. Will dey ketch you ef I tell?" The woman was thinking about the meat. Aaron lifted his right hand in the air, turned, and disappeared in the darkness, which was now changing to the gray of dawn. The woman remained where she was standing for some moments as if considering some serious problem. Then she shook her head. "I'd git de meat--but dey mout ketch 'im, an' den what'd I look like?" This remark seemed to please her, for she repeated it more than once before moving out of her tracks. When she did move, she went to her cabin, kindled a fire, cooked something for her children,--she had three,--placed a biscuit and a piece of ham for each, and, although she had not slept a wink, prepared to go to the field. It was almost time, too, for she heard the hog feeder in the horse lot talking angrily to the mules, as he parceled out their corn and forage. Presently she heard him calling the hogs to get a bite of corn,--the fattening hogs that were running about in the horse lot. Soon, too, she heard the sharp voice of Mr. Gossett, her master, calling to the hog feeder. And you may be sure the man went as fast as his legs could carry him. Get out of the way, dogs, chickens, wheelbarrows, woodpile, everything, and let the negro run to his master! Had he seen the horses? Oh, yes, Marster, that he had! They were standing at the lot gate, and they whickered and whinnied so that he was obliged to go and see what the trouble was. And there were the horses, Mr. Simmons's among the rest. Yes, Marster, and the hog feeder was just on the point of alarming the neighborhood, thinking something serious had happened, when the thought came to his mind that the horses had grown tired of waiting and had broken loose from their fastenings. Oh, yes, Marster, they would do that way sometimes, because horses have a heap of sense, especially Marster's horses. When one broke loose the others wanted to follow him, and then they broke loose too. And they were fed,--eating right now, and all fixed up. Saddle 'em by sun-up? Yes, Marster, and before that if you want 'em, for they've already had a right smart snack of corn and good clean fodder. As for Aaron, he had far to go. He had no fear of Mr. Gossett's hounds, but he knew that he would have some difficulty in getting away from those that Mr. Simmons had trained. If he could outmanoeuvre them, that would be the best plan. If not,--well, he would make a stand in the swamp. But there was the crop-eared, bob-tailed cur--the catch dog--that was the trouble. Aaron knew, too, that Mr. Simmons was a professional negro hunter, and that he naturally took some degree of pride in it. Being a professional, with a keen desire to be regarded as an expert, it was to be supposed that Mr. Simmons had made a study of the tactics of fugitive negroes. As a matter of fact, Mr. Simmons was a very shrewd man; he was also, in spite of his calling, a very kind-hearted man. In his soul he despised Mr. Gossett, whose negroes were constantly in the woods, and loved and admired Addison Abercrombie, whose negroes never ran away, and who, if every slave on his plantation were a fugitive, would never call on Mr. Simmons to catch them. Aaron was far afield when, as the sun rose, Mr. Gossett's hog feeder called the house girl and asked her to tell Mr. Gossett that the horses were saddled and ready at the front gate. Then Mr. Simmons's dogs, which had been shut up in the carriage house, were turned out and fed. The hounds were given half-cooked corn meal, but the catch dog, Pluto, must needs have a piece of raw meat, which he swallowed at one gulp. This done, Mr. Simmons blew one short, sharp note on his horn, and the hunt for Aaron began. V. THE HUNT BEGINS. When Aaron left the negro woman at Gossett's he went rapidly through the woods until he came to the old fields that had once been cultivated, but were now neglected for newer and better soil. These deserted fields had been dismally naked of vegetation for years, and where they undulated into hills the storms had cut deep red gashes. But these wounds were now gradually healing. A few years before a company of travelers had camped out one night at Curtwright's factory, not many miles away, and where they fed their horses a grass new to that region--new, in fact, to this country--made its appearance. It grew and spread for miles around and covered the red hills with the most beautiful mantle that the southern summers had ever seen. It refused to wither and parch under the hot sun, but flourished instead. It had crept from Curtwright's factory, and had already begun to carpet the discarded lands through which Aaron was now passing, and the turf felt as soft as velvet under his feet. The touch of it seemed to inspire his movements, for he began to trot; and he trotted until, at the end of half an hour, he struck into the plantation road leading to the Oconee. Aaron was making for the river. Having received fair warning, and guessing something of the character of Mr. Simmons, he had made up his mind that the best plan would be to get away from the dogs if possible. He hoped to find one of the Ward negroes at the river landing, and in this he was not disappointed. Old Uncle Andy, who was almost on the retired list, on account of his age and faithfulness, although he was still strong and vigorous, was just preparing to visit his set-hooks which were down the river. He was about to shove the boat into deep water and jump in when Aaron called him. "Ah-yi," he answered in a tone almost gay, for he had a good master, and he had no troubles except the few that old age had brought on him. "Up or down?" inquired Aaron. "Down, honey; down. All de time down. Den I'll lef' um down dar an' let Rowan Ward" (this was his master whom he talked about so familiarly) "sen' one er his triflin' no 'count nigners atter um wid de waggin'." "I want to go up," said Aaron. "I ain't henderin' you," replied old Uncle Andy. "Whar yo' huffs? Walk. I ain't gwine pull you in dis boat. No. I won't pull Rowan Ward yit, en he know it. I won't pull nobody up stream in his boat less'n it's Sally Ward" (his mistress), "en she'd do ez much fer me. What yo' name, honey?" "Aaron, I'm called." "Ah-yi!" exclaimed Old Uncle Andy, under his breath. "Dey are atter you. Oh, yes! En what's mo' dey'll git you. En mo' dan dat, dey oughter git you! Dem Gossetts is rank pizen, en der niggers is pizen. A nigger what ain't got no better sense dan ter b'long ter po' white trash ain't got no business ter git good treatment. Look at me! Dey ain't nobody dast ter lay de weight er der han' on me. Ef dey do, dey got ter whip Sally Ward en Rowan Ward. You ain't bad ez dem yuther Gossett niggers, kaze you been in de woods en you er dar yit. Kensecontly you got one chance, en it's de onliest chance. Cross dis river en go up dar ter de house, en wake up Sally Ward en tell 'er dat ole Andy say she mus' buy you. Ef she hum en haw, des put yo' foot down en tell her dat ole Andy say she des got ter buy you. She'll do it! She'll know better'n not ter do it. Ah-h-h-h!" Aaron would have laughed at this display of self-importance, but he knew that to laugh would be to defeat the object he had in view. So his reply was very serious. "She's good!" cried old Uncle Andy. "Dey's er heap er good wimmen, but dey ain't no 'oman like Sally Ward,--I don't keer ef she is got a temper. Ef folks is made out'n dus' dey wuz des nuff er de kin' she wuz made out'n fer ter make her. Dey wuz de greates' plenty fer ter make her, but dey wan't a pinch lef' over. How come you got ter go up de river?" "Wait a little while, and Simmons's dog'll tell you," replied Aaron. "Jim Simmons? I wish I had Rowan Ward here ter do my cussin'!" exclaimed old Uncle Andy, striking the edge of the bateau viciously. "Kin you handle dish yer paddle? Git in dis boat, den! Jim Simmons! Much he look like ketchin' anybody. Git in dis boat, I tell you! En take dis paddle en he'p me pull ef you want to go up de river." Aaron lost no time in getting in the bateau. Instead of sitting down he remained standing, and braced himself by placing one foot in advance of the other. In this position he leaned first on one side and then on the other as he swept the long, wide oar through the water. A few strokes carried him into the middle of the Oconee and nearly across. Then, out of the current and in the still water, Aaron headed the boat up stream. It was a long, heavy, unwieldy affair, built for carrying the field hands and the fruits of the harvest across the river, for the Ward plantation lay on both sides of the Oconee. The bateau was unwieldy, but propelled by Aaron's strong arms it moved swiftly and steadily up the stream. Old Uncle Andy had intended to help row the boat, but when he saw how easily Aaron managed it he made himself comfortable by holding his oar across his lap and talking. "I done year tell er you," he said. "Some folks say you er nigger, en some say you ain't no nigger. I'm wid dem what say you ain't no nigger, kaze you don't do like a nigger, en dey ain't no nigger in de roun' worl' what kin stan' up in dis boat an' shove it 'long like you doin'. Dey all weak-kneed en wobbly when dey git on de water. I wish Sally Ward could see you now. She'd buy you terreckly. Don't you want ter b'long ter Sally Ward?" "No,--Abercrombie," replied Aaron. "Yo' sho fly high," remarked old Uncle Andy. "Dey er good folks, dem Abercrombies. Ef dey's anybody anywheres 'roun' dat's mos' ez good ez Sally Ward en Rowan Ward it's de Abercrombies. I'll say dat much an' not begrudge it. Speshally dat ar cripple boy. Dey tells me dat dat chil' don't never git tired er doin' good. En dat's a mighty bad sign; it's de wust kinder sign. You watch. De Lord done put his han' on dat chil', en he gwine take 'im back up dar whar he b'longs at. When folks git good like dey say dat chil' is, dey are done ripe." To this Aaron made no reply. He had had the same or similar thoughts for some time. He simply gave the waters of the river a stronger backward sweep with the oar. The shadows were still heavy on the water, and the overhanging trees helped to make them heavier, but the reflection of dawn caught and became entangled in the ripples made by the boat, and far away in the east the red signal lights of the morning gave forth a dull glow. The fact that Aaron made no comment on his remarks had no effect on Uncle Andy. He continued to talk incessantly, and when he paused for a moment it was to take breath and not to hear what his companion had to say. "Jim Simmons. Huh. I wish Sally Ward could git de chance fer ter lay de law down ter dat man." (Uncle Andy had his wish later in the day). "She'd tell 'im de news. She'd make 'im 'shamed er hisse'f--gwine trollopin' roun' de country huntin' niggers en dem what ain't niggers, en all b'longin' ter Gossett. How come dey ain't no niggers but de Gossett niggers in de woods? Tell me dat. You may go all 'roun' here for forty mile, en holler at eve'y plantation gate en ax 'em how many niggers dey got in de woods, en dey'll tell you na'er one. Dey'll tell you ids twel you holler at de Gossett gate an' dar dey'll holler back: Forty-'leven in de woods an' spectin' mo' ter foller. Now, how come dat? When you stoop in de road fer ter git a drink er water you kin allers tell when dey's sump'n dead up de creek." Still Aaron swept the water back with his oar, and still the bateau went up stream. One mile--two miles--two miles and a half. At last Aaron headed the boat toward the shore. "What you gwine ter lan' on the same side wid Jim Simmons fer?" Uncle Andy inquired indignantly. "Ain't you got no sense? Don't you know he'll ketch you ef you do dat? You reckon he gwine ter foller you ter de landin' en den turn right 'roun' in his tracks en go back?" "I'll hide in the big swamp," replied Aaron. "Hide!" exclaimed Uncle Andy. "Don't you know dey done foun' out whar you stays at? A'er one er dem Gossett niggers'll swap der soul's salvation fer a bellyful er vittles. Ef dey wuz ter ketch you des dry so, I'd be sorry fer you, but ef you gwine ter run right in de trap, you'll hatter fin' some un else fer ter cry atter you. You put me in min' er de rabbit. Man come 'long wid his dogs, en jump de rabbit out er his warm bed, en he done gone. Dogs take atter him, but dey ain't nowhar. He done out er sight. Den dey trail 'im en trail 'im, but dat ain't do no good. Rabbit done gone. De man, he let de dogs trail. He take his stan' right at de place whar rabbit jump fum. He prime he gun, en wink he eye. De dogs trail, en trail, en trail, en it seem like dey gwine out er hearin'. Man stan' right still en wink de t'er eye. En, bless gracious! 'fo' you know it, _bang_ go de gun en down drap de rabbit. Stidder gwine on 'bout his business, he done come back en de man bag 'im. Dat 'zackly de way you gwine do--but go on, go on! De speckled pullet hollered shoo ter hawk, but what good did dat do?" By this time the bateau had floated under a tree that leaned from the river bank over the water. Aaron laid his oar in the boat and steadied it by holding to a limb. Then he turned to Uncle Andy. "Maybe some day I can help you. So long!" He lifted himself into the tree. As he did so a dog ran down the bank whining. "Wait!" cried Uncle Andy. "Wait, en look out! I hear a dog in de bushes dar. Ef it's a Simmons dog drap back in de boat en I'll take you right straight to Sally Ward." "It's my dog," said Aaron. "He's been waiting for me." It was Rambler. "Desso! I wish you mighty well, honey." With that Uncle Andy backed the boat out into the river, headed it down stream, and aided the current by an occasional stroke of his oar, which he knew well how to use. Standing on the hill above the river, Aaron saw that the red signal lights in the east had been put out, and it was now broad day. In the top of a pine a quarter of a mile away a faint shimmer of sunlight glowed a moment and then disappeared. Again it appeared and this time to stay. He stood listening, and it seemed to him that he could hear in the far-off distance the faint musical cry of hounds. Perhaps he was mistaken; perhaps it was a fox-hunting pack, or, perhaps-- He turned and moved rapidly to the Swamp, which he found wide awake and ready to receive him. So vigorous was the Swamp, and so jealous of its possessions, that it rarely permitted the summer sun to shine upon its secrets. If a stray beam came through, very well, but the Swamp never had a fair glimpse of the sun except in winter, when the glare was shorn of its heat, all the shadows pointing to the north, where the cold winds come from. At midday, in the season when the Swamp was ready for business, the shade was dense--dense enough to give the effect of twilight. At sunrise dawn had hardly made its way to the places where the mysteries wandered back and forth, led by Jack-o'-the-Lantern. But the Willis-Whistlers knew when dawn came in the outer world, and they hid their shrill pipes in the canes and disappeared; but the mysteries still had an hour to frolic--an hour in which they might dispense with the services of Jack-o'-the-Lantern. So Aaron found them there--all his old friends and a new one, the old brindle steer to whom he sometimes gave a handful of salt. The brindle steer was supposed to be superannuated, but he was not. He had the hollow horn, as the negroes called it, and this had made him thin and weak for a time, but he was now in fair trim, the Swamp proving to be a well-conducted hospital, stocked with an abundance of pleasant medicine. He was not of the Swamp, but he had been taken in out of charity, and he was the more welcome on that account. Moreover, he had introduced himself to the White Pig in a sugarcane patch, and they got on famously together--one making luscious cuds of the green blades and the other smacking his mouth over the sweets to be found in the stalks. Aaron was glad to see the Brindle Steer, and Brindle was so glad to see Aaron that he must needs hoist his tail in the air and lower his horns, which were remarkably long and sharp, and pretend that he was on the point of charging, pawing the ground and making a noise with his mouth that was something between a bleat and a bellow. It was such a queer sound that Aaron laughed, seeing which Brindle shook his head and capered around the Son of Ben Ali as if trying to find some vulnerable point in his body that would offer small resistance to the long horns. "You are well, Brindle," said Aaron. "No, Son of Ben Ali, not well--only a great deal better," replied Brindle. "That is something, Brindle; be glad, as I am," remarked Aaron. "You may have work to do to-day--with your horns." Brindle drew a long breath that sounded like a tremendous sigh. "It is well you say with my horns, Son of Ben Ali. No cart for me. When the time comes for the cart I shall have--what do you call it?" "The hollow horn," suggested Aaron. "Yes, two hollow horns, Son of Ben Ali. No cart for me. Though there is nothing the matter with my horns, the people shall believe that both are hollow. When I was sick, Son of Ben Ali, something was the matter with all nine of my stomachs." "Nine! You have but three, Brindle," said Aaron. "Only three, Son of Ben Ali? Well, when I was sick I thought there were nine of them. What am I to do to-day?" "Go not too far, Brindle. When you hear hounds running through the fields from the river come to the big poplar. There you will find me and the White Grunter." "I'm here, Son of Ben Ali, and here I stay. All night I have fed on the sprouts of the young cane, and once I waded too far in the quagmire. I'm tired. I'll lie here and chew my cud. But no yoke, Son of Ben Ali, and no cart." Whereupon old Brindle made himself comfortable by lying down and chewing his cud between short pauses. [Illustration: BRINDLE AND AARON] * * * * * Meanwhile Mr. Jim Simmons, accompanied only by George Gossett (the father had turned back in disgust soon after the chase began), was galloping across the country in a somewhat puzzled frame of mind. When Mr. Simmons had given one short blast on his horn to warn his dogs that a hunt was on the programme, the three men rode along the plantation path toward the Abercrombie place. "Now, Colonel," remarked Mr. Simmons as they started out, "I want you to keep your eyes on that red dog. It'll be worth your while." "Is that Sound?" George Gossett asked. "Well, sometimes I call him Sound on account of his voice, and sometimes I call him Sandy on account of his color, but just you watch his motions." Pride was in the tone of Mr. Simmons's voice. The dog was trotting in the path ahead of the horse. Suddenly he put his nose to the ground and seemed to be so delighted at what he found there that his tail began to wag. He lifted his head, and ran along the path for fifty yards or more. Then he put his nose to the ground again, and kept it there as he cantered along the narrow trail. Then he began to trot, and finally, with something of a snort, turned and ran back the way he had come. He had not given voice to so much as a whimper. "Don't he open on track?" asked George Gossett. "He'll cry loud enough and long enough when he gets down to business," Mr. Simmons explained. "Just you keep your eyes on him." "Fiddlesticks. He's tracking us," exclaimed Mr. Gossett contemptuously. "But, Colonel, if he is, I'm willing to take him out and kill him, and, as he stands, I would take no man's hundred dollars for him. I'll see what he's up to." Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Simmons turned his horse's head and galloped after Sound, who was now moving rapidly, followed by all the expectant dogs. Nothing was left for the two Gossetts to do but to follow Mr. Simmons, though the elder plainly showed his indignation, not only by his actions, but by the use of a few words that are either too choice or too emphatic to be found in a school dictionary. Sound ran to the point where Aaron and the woman had stopped. He followed the woman's scent to her cabin; but this not proving satisfactory, he turned and came back to where the two had stood. There he picked up Aaron's scent, ran around in a small circle, and then, with a loud, wailing cry, as if he had been hit with a cudgel, he was off, the rest of the dogs joining in, their cries making a musical chorus that fell on the ear with a lusty, pleasant twang as it echoed through the woods. "Wait," said Mr. Gossett, as Mr. Simmons made a movement to follow the dogs. "This is a fool's errand you are starting on. The nigger we're after wouldn't come in a mile of this place. It's one of the Spivey niggers the dogs are tracking. Or one of the Ward niggers. I'm too old to go galloping about the country just to see the dogs run. George, you can go if you want to, but I'd advise you to go in the house and go to bed. That's what I'll do. Simmons, if you catch the right nigger, well and good. If I thought the dogs were on his track, I'd ride behind them the balance of the week. But it's out of reason. We know where the nigger goes, and the dogs haven't been there." "I'll risk all that, Colonel. If we don't come up with the nigger, why, it costs nobody nothing," remarked Mr. Simmons. "I'll go along and see the fun, pap," said George. "Well, be back by dinner time. I want you to do something for me." Mr. Gossett called a negro and had his horse taken, while George and Mr. Simmons galloped after the hounds, which were now going out of the woods into the old, worn-out fields beyond. As Mr. Simmons put it, they were "running pretty smooth." They were not going as swiftly as the modern hounds go, but they were going rapidly enough to give the horses as much work as they wanted to do. The hounds were really after Aaron. Mr. Simmons suspected it, but he didn't know it. He was simply taking the chances. But his hopes fell as the dogs struck into the plantation road leading to the river. "If they were after the runaway, what on earth did he mean by going in this direction?" Mr. Simmons asked himself. He knew the dogs were following the scent of a negro, and he knew the negro had been to the Abercrombie place, but more than this he did not know. Then it occurred to him that a runaway with some sense and judgment might be expected to go to the river, steal a bateau, and float down stream to avoid the hounds. He had heard of such tricks in his day and time, and his hopes began to rise. But they fell again, for he suddenly remembered that the negro who left the scent which the hounds were following could not possibly have known that he was to be hunted with dogs, consequently he would not be going to the river to steal a boat. But wait! Another thought struck Mr. Simmons. Didn't the Colonel send one of his nigger women to the quarters on the Abercrombie plantation? He surely did. Didn't the woman say she had seen the runaway? Of course she did. Weren't the chances ten to one that when she saw him she told him that Simmons would be after him in the morning? Exactly so! The result of this rapid summing up of the situation was so satisfactory to Mr. Simmons that he slapped the pommel of his saddle and cried:-- "By jing, I've got him!" "Got who?" inquired George Gossett, who was riding close up. "Wait and see!" replied Mr. Simmons. "Oh, I'll wait," said young Gossett, "and so will you." VI. THE HUNT ENDS. It will be seen that Mr. Jim Simmons, in his crude way, was a very shrewd reasoner. He didn't "guess;" he "reckoned," and it cannot be denied that he came very near the truth. You will remember that when we children play hide-the-switch the one that hides it guides those who are hunting for it by making certain remarks. When they are near where the switch is hid, the hider says, "You burn; you are afire," but when they get further away from the hiding-place the word is, "You are cold; you are freezing." In hunting for Aaron, Mr. Jim Simmons was burning, for he had come very close to solving the problem that the fugitive had set for him. Mr. Simmons was so sure he was right in his reasoning that he cheered his dogs on lustily and touched up his horse. George Gossett did the same, and dogs, horses, and men went careering along the plantation road to the river landing. The sun was now above the treetops, and the chill air of the morning was beginning to surrender to its influence. The course of the river was marked out in mid-air by a thin line of white mist that hung wavering above the stream. The dogs ran crying to the landing, and there they stopped. One of the younger hounds was for wading across; but Sound, the leader, knew better than that. He ran down the river bank a hundred yards and then circled back across the field until he reached a point some distance above the landing. Then he returned, his keen nose always to the ground. At the landing he looked across the river and whined eagerly. Mr. Simmons seemed to be very lucky that morning, for just as he and George Gossett galloped to the landing a boatload of field hands started across from the other side, old Uncle Andy coming with it to row it back. On the other side, too, Mr. Simmons saw a lady standing,--a trim figure dressed in black,--and near her a negro boy was holding a horse that she had evidently ridden to the landing. This was the lady to whom Uncle Andy sometimes referred as Sally Ward, and for whom he had a sincere affection. The river was not wide at the landing, and the boatload of field hands, propelled by four muscular arms, was not long in crossing. As the negroes jumped ashore Sound went among them and examined each one with his nose, but he returned to the landing and looked across and whined. They saluted Mr. Simmons and George Gossett politely, and then went on their way, whistling, singing, and cracking jokes, and laughing loudly. "Was a bateau missing from this side this morning?" Mr. Simmons asked Uncle Andy. "Suh?" Uncle Andy put his hand to his ear, affecting to be very anxious to hear what Mr. Simmons had said. The question was repeated, whereat Uncle Andy laughed loudly. "You sho is a witch fer guessin', suh! How come you ter know 'bout de missin' boat?" Mr. Simmons smiled under this flattery. "I thought maybe a boat would be missing from this side this morning," he said. "Dey sho wuz, suh; but I dunner how de name er goodness you come ter know 'bout it, kaze I wuz on de bank cross dar 'fo' 't wuz light, en I ain't see you on dis side. Yes, suh! De boat wuz gone. Dey foun' it 'bout a mile down de river, en on account er de shoals down dar, dey had ter take it out'n de water en fetch it back yer in de waggin. Yes, suh! dish yer de very boat." "Where's the ford?" Mr. Simmons inquired. "I used to know, but I've forgotten." "Right below yer, suh!" replied Uncle Andy. "You'll see de paff whar de stock cross at. B'ar down stream, suh, twel you halfway cross, den b'ar up. Ef you do dat you won't git yo' stirrup wet." The ford was easily found, but the crossing was not at all comfortable. In fact, Uncle Andy had maliciously given Mr. Simmons the wrong directions. The two men rode into the water, bore down the stream, and their horses were soon floundering in deep water. They soon touched bottom again, and in a few moments they were safe on the opposite bank,--safe, but dripping wet and in no very good humor. Mr. Simmons's dogs, obedient to his call, followed his horse into the water and swam across. Sound clambered out, shook himself, and ran back to the landing where the lady was waiting for the boat to return. It had been Mr. Simmons's intention to proceed at once down the river to the point where the boat had been found, and where he was sure the dogs would pick up the scent of the runaway; but he found that the way was impossible for horses. He must needs go to the landing and inquire the way. Uncle Andy had just made the middle seat in the bateau more comfortable for his mistress by placing his coat, neatly folded, on the hard plank, and Mrs. Ward was preparing to accept the old negro's invitation to "git aboard, mistiss," when Mr. Simmons and George Gossett rode up. Both raised their hats as the lady glanced toward them. They were hardly in a condition to present themselves, Mr. Simmons explained, and then he inquired, with as much politeness as he could command, how to reach the place where the missing boat had been found. "The missing boat? Why, I never heard of it till now. Was one of the bateaux missing this morning?" the lady asked Uncle Andy. "Yessum. When de fishin' good en de niggers put out der set-hooks, dey ain't many mornin's in de week dat one er de yuther er deze boats ain't missin'!" "I never heard of it before." "No, mistiss; de boys 'low you wouldn't keer nohow. Dey runs um over de shoals, en dar dey leaves um." "But both bateaux are here." "Yessum. We fetches um back 'roun' by de road in de waggin." "Who carried the bateau over the shoals this morning?" "Me, ma'am. Nobody ain't know nuttin' 'bout it but de two Elliks, en when dat ar gemmun dar ax me des now if dey wa'n't a boat missin' fum 'roun' yer dis mornin' hit sorter flung me back on myse'f. I 'low 'Yes, suh,' but he sho flung me back on myse'f." Uncle Andy began to chuckle so heartily that his mistress asked him what he was laughing at, though she well knew. "I hit myse'f on de funny bone, mistiss, en when dat's de case I bleege ter laugh." At this the lady laughed, and it was a genial, merry, and musical laugh. Mr. Simmons smiled, but so grimly that it had the appearance of a threat. "And so this is Mr. Simmons, the famous negro hunter?" said Mrs. Ward. "Well, Mr. Simmons, I'm glad to see you. I've long had something to say to you. Whenever you are sent for to catch one of my negroes I want you to come straight to the house on the hill yonder and set your dogs on me. When one of my negroes goes to the woods, you may know it's my fault." "Trufe, too!" remarked Uncle Andy, under his breath, but loud enough for all to hear. "That may be so, ma'am," replied Mr. Simmons; "but among a passel of niggers you'll find some bad ones. What little pleasure I get out of this business is in seeing and hearing my dogs run. Somebody's got to catch the runaways, and it might as well be me as anybody." "Why, certainly, Mr. Simmons. You have become celebrated. Your name is trumpeted about in all the counties round. You are better known than a great many of our rising young politicians." The lady's manner was very gracious, but there was a gleam of humor in her eye. Mr. Simmons didn't know whether she was laughing at him or paying him a compliment; but he thought it would be safe to change the subject. "May I ask the old man there a few questions?" he inquired. "Why, certainly," Mrs. Ward responded. "Cross-examine him to your heart's content. But be careful about it, Mr. Simmons. He's old and feeble, and his mind is not as good as it used to be. I heard him telling the house girl last night that he was losing his senses." "De lawsy massy, mistiss! You know I wuz des projickin' wid dat gal. Dey ain't any na'er nigger in de country got any mo' sense dan what I got. You know dat yo'se'f." "Was anybody with you in the bateau when you went down the river this morning?" "Yes, suh, dey wuz," replied Uncle Andy solemnly. "Who was it?" "Well, suh"-- "Don't get excited, now, Andrew," his mistress interrupted. "Tell Mr. Simmons the truth. You know your weakness." If Uncle Andy's skin had been white or even brown, Mr. Simmons would have seen him blushing violently. He knew his mistress was making fun of him, but he was not less embarrassed on that account. He looked at Mrs. Ward and laughed. "Speak right out," said the lady. "Who was with you in the bateau?" "Little Essek, ma'm,--my gran-chil'. I'm bleedge ter have some un long fer ter hol' de boat steady when I go ter look at my set-hooks. Little Essek wuz de fust one I see, en I holler'd at 'im." "Did anybody cross from the other side this morning?" asked Mr. Simmons. "Not dat I knows un, less'n it wuz Criddle's Jerry. He's got a wife at de Abercrombie place. He fotch Marse Criddle's buggy to be worked on at our blacksmif shop, en he rid de mule home dis mornin'. Little Essek had 'er down yer 'bout daylight waitin' fer Jerry, kaze he say he got ter be home soon ef not befo'." Uncle Andy had an imagination. Jerry had brought the buggy and had ridden the mule home. He also had a wife at the Abercrombie place, but his master had given him no "pass" to visit her, thinking it might delay his return. For that reason Jerry did not cross the river the night before. "And here we've been chasing Criddle's Jerry all the morning," remarked George Gossett to Mr. Simmons. "Pap was right." "But what was the nigger doing at your place?" Mr. Simmons was still arguing the matter in his mind. "Don't ask me," replied George Gossett. "Dey ain't no 'countin' fer a nigger, suh," remarked Uncle Andy affably. "Dey ain't no 'countin' fer 'em when dey ol' ez I is, much less when dey young en soople like Criddle's Jerry." Under the circumstances there was nothing for Mr. Simmons and young Gossett to do but to turn short about and recross the river. It was fortunate for them that a negro boy was waiting to take Mrs. Ward's horse across the river. They followed him into the ford, and made the crossing without difficulty. Then the two men held a council of war. Uncle Andy had another name for it. "I wish you'd look at um jugglin'," he said to his mistress, as he helped her from the bateau. George Gossett was wet, tired, and disgusted, and he would not hear to Mr. Simmons's proposition to "beat about the bushes" in the hope that the dogs would strike Aaron's trail. "We started wrong," he said. "Let's go home, and when we try for the nigger again, let's start right." "Well, tell your father I'll be back the day after to-morrow if I don't catch his nigger. I'm obliged to go home now and change my duds if I don't strike a trail. It's a true saying that there's more mud than water in the Oconee. I'll take a short cut. I'll go up the river a mile or such a matter and ride across to Dawson's old mill road. That will take me home by dinner time." As it happened, Mr. Simmons didn't take dinner at home that day, nor did he return to Gossett's at the time he appointed. He called his dogs and turned his horse's head up stream. He followed the course of the river for a mile or more, and then bore away from it. While he was riding along, lost in his reflections, he suddenly heard Sound giving tongue far ahead. That sagacious dog had unexpectedly hit on Aaron's trail, and he lost no time in announcing the fact as loudly as he could. Mr. Simmons was very much surprised. "If that blamed dog is fooling me this time I'll feel like killing him," he remarked to himself. The rest of the dogs joined in, and they were all soon footing it merrily in the direction of the big swamp. The blue falcon, circling high in the air, suddenly closed her wings and dropped into the leafy bosom of the Swamp. This was the first messenger. That red joker, the Fox Squirrel, had heard the wailing cry of the hounds, and scampered down the big pine. Halfway down he made a flying leap into the live oak, and then from tree to tree he went running, scrambling, jumping. But let him go never so fast, the blue falcon was before him, and let the blue falcon swoop never so swiftly, the message was before her. For the White Grunter had ears. Ooft! he had heard the same wailing sound when the hounds were after him before he was old enough to know what his tusks were for. And Rambler had ears. In fact, the Swamp itself had ears, and for a few moments it held its breath (as the saying is) and listened. Listened intently,--and then quietly, cautiously, and serenely began to dispose of its forces. Near the big poplar Aaron had a pile of stones. They had been selected to fit his hand; they were not too large nor too small; they were not too light nor too heavy. This pile of stones was Aaron's ammunition, and he took his stand by it. The White Pig rose slowly from his bed of mud, where he had been wallowing, and shook himself. Then he scratched himself by rubbing his side against a beech-tree. The Brindle Steer slowly dragged himself through the canes and tall grass, and came to Aaron's tree, where he paused with such a loud sigh that Rambler jumped away. "It is the track dogs," he said. "Yes; I'm sorry," replied Aaron. "When the big black dog comes stand aside and leave him to me." "Gooft! not if it's the one that chewed my ear," remarked the White Pig. "I came this morning by the thunder-wood tree," said Aaron. "Hide in the grass near there, and when they pass come charging after them." The dogs came nearer and nearer, and the Swamp could hear Mr. Simmons cheering them on. As for Mr. Simmons, he was sure of one thing--the dogs were trailing either a wildcat or a runaway. He had never trained them not to follow the scent of a wildcat, and he now regretted it; for his keen ear, alive to differences that would not attract the attention of those who had never made a study of the temperament of dogs, detected a more savage note in their cry than he was accustomed to hear. Nor did his ear deceive him. Sound was following the scent of Aaron, but his companions were trailing Rambler, who had accompanied Aaron, and this fact gave a fiercer twang to their cry. When Aaron was going from Gossett's to the river landing, Rambler was not trotting at his heels, but scenting ahead, sometimes far to the right and at other times far to the left. But in going from the river to the Swamp it was otherwise. Rambler had to hold his head high to prevent Aaron's heel from striking him on the under jaw. His scent lay with that of the Son of Ben Ali. For that reason Mr. Simmons was puzzled by the peculiar cry of the dogs. He had trained them not to follow the scent of hares, coons, and foxes, and if they were not trailing a runaway he knew, or thought he knew, that they must be chasing a wildcat. Pluto, the crop-eared catch dog, galloped by his master's horse. He was a fierce-looking brute, but Mr. Simmons knew that he would be no match for a wildcat. [Illustration: IN THE SWAMP] When the dogs entered the Swamp Mr. Simmons tried to follow, but he soon found his way barred by the undergrowth, by the trailing vines, the bending trees, the rank canes. He must needs leave his horse or lead it when he entered the Swamp. He chose to do neither, but sat in his saddle and waited, Pluto waiting with him, ready to go in when the word was given. When the hounds entered the Swamp they were in full cry. They struggled through the vines, the briers, and the canes, and splashed through the spreading arms of the lagoon. Suddenly they ceased to cry. Then Mr. Simmons heard a strange snarling and snapping, an ominous crashing, fierce snorting, and then howls and screams of pain from his hounds. "A cat, by jing!" he exclaimed aloud. Intent on saving his hounds if possible, he gave Pluto the word, and that savage brute plunged into the Swamp with gleaming red jaws and eager eyes. Mr. Simmons never really knew what happened to his hounds, but the Swamp knew. When they splashed past the White Pig that fierce guardian of the Swamp sprang from his lair and rushed after them. They tried hard to escape, but the hindmost was caught. The White Pig ran by his side for the space of three full seconds, then, lowering his head, he raised it again with a toss sidewise, and the hound was done for--ripped from flank to backbone as neatly as a butcher could have done it. Another was caught on the horn of the red steer and flung sheer into the lagoon. Sound, the leader, fell into Rambler's jaws, and some old scores were settled there and then. Pluto came charging blindly in. He saw the White Pig and made for him, experience telling him that a hog will run when a dog is after it; but experience did him small service here. The White Pig charged to meet him, seeing which Pluto swerved to one side, but he was not nimble enough. With a downward swoop and an upward sweep of his snout the White Pig caught Pluto under the shoulder with his tusk and gave him a taste of warfare in the Swamp. Another dog would have left the field, but Pluto had a temper. He turned and rushed at the White Pig, and the Swamp prepared to witness a battle royal. But just then there was a whizzing, zooning sound in the air, a thud, and Pluto tumbled over and fell in a heap. Aaron had ended the cur's career as suddenly as if he had been blown to pieces by a cannon. There was one stone missing from the store of ammunition at the foot of the big poplar. Meanwhile, Rambler was worrying Sound, and the White Pig, seeing no other enemy in sight, went running to the scene of that fray. His onslaught was so furious that Rambler thought it good manners to get out of Grunter's way. So he loosed his hold on Sound, and jumped aside. Sound was still able to do some jumping on his own account, and he turned tail and ran, just as the White Pig was about to trample him under foot. But he was not quick enough to escape with a whole skin. The tusk of the White Pig touched him on the hind leg, and where it touched it tore. Mr. Simmons had five dogs when he came to the Swamp. Sound came out to him after the morning's adventure, but had to be carried home across the saddle bow. Two days later another of the dogs went limping home. Three dogs were left in the Swamp. Mr. Simmons blew his horn, and called for some time, and then he slowly went his way. He had a great tale to tell when he got home. His dogs had jumped a wildcat at the river, chased him to the Swamp, and there they found a den of wildcats. There was a great fight, but three of the dogs were killed, and the cats were so fierce that it was as much as Mr. Simmons could do to escape with his life. Indeed, according to his tale, the biggest cat followed him to the edge of the Swamp. And he told this moving tale so often that he really believed it, and felt that he was a sort of hero. As for the Swamp, it had a rare frolic that night. All the mysteries came forth and danced, and the Willis-Whistlers piped as they had never piped before, and old Mr. Bullfrog joined in with his fine bass voice. And the next morning Mr. Buzzard, who roosted in the loblolly pine, called his sanitary committee together, and soon there was nothing left of Pluto and his companions to pester the Swamp. VII. AARON SEES THE SIGNAL. The Swamp had a fine frolic on the night of the day that it routed Mr. Simmons's dogs, but Aaron was not there to see it. He knew that, for some days at least, he would be free from active pursuit. The only danger he would have to encounter would come from the patrollers,--the negroes called them "patterollers,"--who visited the various plantations at uncertain intervals. If he began to go about with too much confidence it was entirely possible he would run into the arms of the patrollers, and he would have small opportunity to escape. Therefore, while he knew that he would not be hunted by dogs for some time to come, he also knew he must be constantly on the alert to guard against surprises. The most active member of the patrol was George Gossett himself; and after he and his companions had visited Mr. Fullalove's distillery, which they never failed to do when they went patrolling, they were not in a condition to be entirely responsible for their actions. They had nothing to restrain them on such occasions except the knowledge that some of the owners of the negroes would jump at an excuse to hold them to personal account. And this was not a pleasant result to contemplate, especially after a night's spree. For these reasons Aaron was much more anxious to elude George Gossett and the patrollers than he was to escape from Mr. Jim Simmons's hounds. He knew he must avoid the negro cabins, which were traps for the unwary when the patrollers were around, and he knew he must keep off the public road--the "big road," as it was called--and not venture too often on the frequently traveled plantation paths. Young Gossett and his companions had a way of dismounting from their horses out of sight and hearing of the negro quarters on the plantations that lay on their "beat." Leaving the animals in charge of one man, they would cautiously post themselves at the various fence crossings and paths frequented by the negroes, and in this way capture all who were going to the negro quarters or coming away. If a negro had a "pass" or a permit from his master, well and good. If he had none--well, it would be a sorry night's frolic for him. But Aaron had one great advantage over all the slaves who went to and fro between the plantations after nightfall. He had Rambler to warn him; and yet, after an experience that he had on one occasion, he felt that he must be more cautious than ever. It happened not many weeks before he was hunted by Mr. Simmons's hounds. In trying to kill a moccasin, Rambler had the misfortune to be bitten by the serpent. The wound was on his jowl, and in spite of all that Aaron could do the poor dog's head and neck swelled fearfully. When night came the Son of Ben Ali made Rambler as comfortable as possible, bruising herbs and barks and binding them to the wound, and making him a soft bed. On that particular night Aaron felt that he ought to visit the Little Master, and yet he was doubtful about it. He finally concluded to wait until late, and then go to the hill where, a few weeks later, he parted from Chunky Riley. If a light was shining behind the Little Master's curtain he would go and drive the red goblin, Pain, from the room. He went to the hill, and the light was shining. The little red goblin was up to his old tricks. As he went along Aaron fell to thinking about the Little Master, and wondering why the child should be constantly given over to suffering. He forgot all about himself in trying to solve this problem, forgot to be cautious, forgot that he was a fugitive, and went blindly along the path to the fence above the spring lot. There, without warning, he found himself face to face with George Gossett. The rest of the patrollers were posted about at various points. Perhaps George Gossett was as much surprised as Aaron. At any rate, he said nothing. He took a half-consumed cigar from his lips, and flipped the ashes from it. No doubt he intended to say something, yet he was in no hurry. His pistol was in his coat pocket, his hand grasped the handle, and his finger was on the trigger. He felt that he was prepared for any emergency--and so he was, except for the particular emergency that Aaron then and there invented. [Illustration: RAMBLER'S FIGHT WITH THE MOCCASIN] The Son of Ben Ali took off his hat, to show how polite he was in the dark, advanced a step, and then suddenly plunged at young Gossett headforemost. Struck fairly in the pit of the stomach by this battering ram, the young man, who was not too sober to begin with, went down like a log, and Aaron ran away like a deer. The worst of it was that when George Gossett recovered consciousness and was able to call his nearest companion to his assistance, that individual simply laughed at the amazing story. "Why, it don't stand to reason," he said. "There ain't a living nigger that'd dast to do sech a thing, and the dead ones couldn't." "Didn't you hear him when he butted me?" inquired young Gossett feebly. "I heard you when you fell off the fence," replied the other. "I allowed that you had jumped down to let the blood git in your feet." "I tell you," insisted the young man, "he come up so close I could 'a' put my hand on him. He took off his hat as polite as you please, and the next thing I know'd I didn't know nothing." "Shucks!" exclaimed his companion as loudly as he dared to talk; "you jest about set up on the fence there and went to sleep, and fell off. I told you about them low-wines at the still; I told you when you was a-swilling 'em, same as a fattening hog, that if you didn't look out you'd have to be toted home. And here you are!" Young Gossett had to go home, and as he was the leading spirit the rest had to go with him. He managed to sit his horse after a fashion, but it was as much as he could do. Once in the big road, his companions made many rough jokes at his expense, and they advised him never to tell such another tale as that if he didn't want the public at large to "hoot at him." The adventure taught Aaron a new lesson in caution; and even now, after Mr. Simmons's famous pack of "nigger-dogs" had been all but destroyed, he felt that it was necessary to be more cautious than ever, even when Rambler accompanied him. He had no idea that Mr. Simmons thought his dogs had been attacked by wildcats. In fact, he thought that Mr. Simmons had full knowledge of his movements, and he was prepared any day to see Mr. Gossett gather his neighbors together, especially the young men, surround the swamp armed with shotguns, and try in that way to capture him. But when night fell on the day of his experience with Mr. Simmons's dogs, he resolved to visit Little Crotchet. He was tired; he had traveled many miles, and had had little sleep, but sleep could be called at any time, and would come at the call. Only at night could he visit the Little Master. In the daytime he could stretch himself on a bed of fragrant pine-needles, with odorous heart-leaves for his pillow, and take his ease. So now, after all the turmoil and confusion he had experienced in field and wood, he went to the hill from which he could see the light in Little Crotchet's window. Usually it was late before Aaron would venture to climb to the window, but there was one signal that made it urgent for him to go. When the light was suddenly extinguished and as suddenly relit, it was a signal that Aaron must come as soon as he could. This was Little Crotchet's invention and he thought a great deal of it. And it must be admitted that it was very simple and complete. Sitting on the hill, Aaron saw the light shining through the red curtain. Then it disappeared and the window remained dark for a minute. Then the light suddenly shone out again. The Arab glanced at the two stars that revolve around the north star, and judged it was not more than nine o'clock. What could the Little Master want at this early hour? No need to ask that question; Little Crotchet had a great deal of business on hand. In the first place, while Mr. Simmons's hounds were hunting Aaron, Timoleon, the Black Stallion, had escaped from his stable, and he created a great uproar on the place. When the negro who usually fed and groomed him went into the lot to catch the horse, he found that the catcher is sometimes caught. For Timoleon, made furious by his freedom from the confinement of the halter and the four walls of the stable, seized the man by the shoulder and came near inflicting a fatal injury. Nothing saved the unfortunate negro but the fact that Randall, who chanced to be walking about the lot, made a pretense of attacking the horse with a wagon whip. Timoleon dropped the negro and made a furious rush at Randall; but Randall was in reach of the fence, and so made his escape, while the wounded negro took advantage of the opportunity to stagger, stumble, and crawl to a place of safety. This done, he lay as one dead. He was carried to his cabin, and a messenger was sent, hot-foot, for the doctor, who lived in the neighborhood not far away. Little Crotchet witnessed a part of the scene, and, oh! he was angry. It was outrageous, wicked, horrible, that a horse should be so cruel. He sat on the Gray Pony and shook his fist impotently at the Black Stallion. "Oh, if I had you where I could put the lash on you, I'd make you pay for this, you mean, cruel creature!" Singular to say, Timoleon whinnied when he heard the Little Master's voice, and came galloping to the fence where the Gray Pony stood, and put his head over the top rail. "Blest ef I don't b'lieve he know you, honey," said Randall. This somewhat mollified Little Crotchet, but he was still angry. "Why are you so mean and cruel! Oh, I'll make somebody lash you well for this!" The Black Stallion whinnied again in the friendliest way. "Is anybody ever see de beat er dat!" exclaimed Randall. Nothing could be done, and so the Black Stallion roamed about the lot at will, and that night when the mules came in from the field they had to be fed and housed under the ginhouse shelter. The White-Haired Master was away from home on business, but the whole plantation knew that he prized Timoleon above all the other horses on the place, and so neither Turin nor Randall would take harsh measures to recapture the horse. They were careful enough, however, to have the high fence strengthened where they found it weak. This was one of the reasons why Little Crotchet wanted to see Aaron. But there was also another reason. The lad wanted to introduce the runaway to a new friend of his, Mr. Richard Hudspeth, his tutor, who had been employed to come all the way from Massachusetts to take charge of the lad's education, which was already fair for his age. In fact, what Little Crotchet knew about books was astonishing when it is remembered that he never went to school. He had been taught to read and write and cipher by his mother, and this opened the door of his father's library, which was as large as it was well selected. Mr. Hudspeth had been recommended by an old friend who had served two years in Congress with Mr. Abercrombie, and there was no trouble in coming to an agreement, for Mr. Hudspeth had reasons of his own for desiring to visit the South. He belonged to the anti-slavery society, and was an aggressive abolitionist. He was a fair-skinned young man, with a silk-like yellow beard, active in his movements, and had a voice singularly sweet and well modulated. He talked with great nicety of expression, and had a certain daintiness of manner which, in so far as it suggested femininity, was calculated to give the casual observer a wrong idea of Mr. Hudspeth's disposition and temperament. He had been installed as Little Crotchet's tutor for more than a week. The lad did not like him at first. His preciseness seemed to smack too much of method and discipline,--the terror of childhood and youth. And there was a queer inflection to his sentences, and his pronunciation had a strange and an unfamiliar twang. But these things soon became familiar to the lad, as Mr. Hudspeth, little by little, won his attention and commanded his interest. The Teacher (for he was emphatically a Teacher in the best sense, and not a Tutor in any sense) saw at the beginning that the dull routine of the text-books would be disastrous here, both to health and spirits. And so he fell back on his own experience, and became himself the mouthpiece of all good books he had ever read, and of all great thoughts that had ever planted themselves in his mind. And he entered with real enthusiasm into all Little Crotchet's thoughts, and drew him out until the soul of the lad would have been no more clearly defined had every detail been painted on canvas and hung on the wall before the Teacher's eyes. It was this Teacher that Little Crotchet wanted Aaron to see, a fact which, taken by itself, was sufficient evidence that the lad had grown fond of Mr. Hudspeth. Little Crotchet was very cunning about it, too. He invited the Teacher to come to his room after tea, and when Mr. Hudspeth came the lad, lying upon his bed, put the question plumply:-- "Do you want to see my runaway?" "Your runaway? I don't understand you." "Don't you know what a runaway is? Why, of course you do. A runaway negro." "Ah! a fugitive slave. Yes; I have seen a few." "But you've never seen my runaway at all. He isn't a negro. He's an Arab. I'll let you see him if you promise never to tell. It's a great secret. I'm so small, and--and so crippled, you know, nobody would ever think I had a runaway?" "Never fear me. Do you keep him in a box and permit only your best friends to peep at him occasionally?" "Oh, no," said Little Crotchet, laughing at the idea. "He's a sure-enough runaway. He's been advertised in the newspapers. And they had the funniest picture of him you ever saw. They made him look like all the rest of the runaways that have their pictures in the Milledgeville papers,--a little bit of a man, bare-headed and stooped over, carrying a cane on his shoulder with a bundle hanging on the end of it. Sister cut it out for me. I'll show it to you to-morrow." Mr. Hudspeth was very much interested in the runaway, and said he would be glad to see him. "Well, you must do as I tell you. If I could jump up and jump about I wouldn't ask you, you know. Take the candle in your hand, go out on the stair landing, close the door after you, and stand there until you hear me call." Mr. Hudspeth couldn't understand what all this meant, but he concluded to humor the joke. So he did as he was bid. He carried the candle from the room, closed the door, and stood on the landing until he heard Little Crotchet calling. When he reëntered the room he held the candle above his head and looked about him. He evidently expected to see the runaway. "This is equal to joining a secret society," he said. "Where is your runaway? Has he escaped?" "I just wanted to make the window dark a moment and then bright again. That is my signal. If he sees it, he'll come. Don't you think it's cunning?" "I shall certainly think so if the runaway comes," replied Mr. Hudspeth somewhat doubtfully. "He has never failed yet," said Little Crotchet. "If he fails now, it will be because Jim Simmons's hounds have caught him, or else he is too tired to come out on the hill and watch for the signal." "Were the bloodhounds after him?" inquired Mr. Hudspeth, with a frown. "Bloodhounds!" exclaimed Little Crotchet. "I never saw a bloodhound, and I never heard of one around here. If my runaway is caught, the dog that did it could be put in the pocket of that big overcoat you had strapped on your trunk." The lad paused and held up his finger. His ear had caught the sound of Aaron's feet on the shingles. There was a faint grating sound, as the window sash was softly raised and lowered, and then the Son of Ben Ali stepped from behind the curtain. He stood still as a statue when his eye fell on the stranger, and his attitude was one of simple dignity when he turned to the Little Master. He saw the lad laughing and he smiled in sympathy. "He's one of us," said Little Crotchet, "and I wanted him to see you. He's my teacher. Mr. Hudspeth, this is Aaron." Mr. Hudspeth grasped Aaron's hand and shook it warmly, and they talked for some time, the Son of Ben Ali sitting on the side of Little Crotchet's bed, holding the lad's hand in one of his. Aaron told of his day's experiences, and his description of the affair in the Swamp was so vivid and realistic that Mr. Hudspeth exclaimed:-- "If that were put in print, the world would declare it to be pure fiction." "Fiction," said Little Crotchet to Aaron, with an air of great solemnity, "fiction is a story put in a book. A story is sometimes called a fib, but when it is printed it is called fiction." Mr. Hudspeth laughed and so did Aaron, but Aaron's laugh had a good deal of pride in it. "He's crippled here," remarked Aaron, touching Little Crotchet's legs, "but not here,"--touching the boy's head. "But all this is not what I called you for," said Little Crotchet after a while. "Timoleon tore his stable door down to-day and came near killing one of the hands. He is out now. Father will be angry when he comes home and hears about it. Can't you put him in his stable?" "Me? I can lead the grandson of Abdallah all around the plantation by a yarn string," Aaron declared. [Illustration: HE STOOD AS STILL AS A STATUE] "Well, if you had been here to-day you'd have found out different. You don't know that horse," Little Crotchet insisted. "He is certainly as vicious a creature as I ever saw," remarked the Teacher, who had been an amazed witness of the horse's performances. "I'll show you," Aaron declared. "Oh, no!" protested Little Crotchet. "Don't try any tricks on that horse. He's too mean and cruel. If you can get him in his stable, and fasten him in, I'll be glad. But don't go near him; he'll bite your head off." Aaron laughed and then he seemed to be considering something. "I wish"--He paused and looked at Little Crotchet. "You wish what?" asked the lad. "I wish you might go with me. But it is dark. The moon is a day moon. I could tote you to the fence." "And then what?" asked Little Crotchet. "You could see a tame horse--the grandson of Abdallah." "I'll go to the fence if you'll carry me," said Little Crotchet. "The air is not cold--no wind is blowing." "Shall I go too?" asked Mr. Hudspeth. "I'd be glad," said Aaron. So, although the night was not cold, Aaron took a shawl from the bed and wrapped it about Little Crotchet, lifted the lad in his arms, and went softly down the stairway, Mr. Hudspeth following. The night was not so dark after all. Once away from the light, various familiar objects began to materialize. The oaks ceased to be huge shadows. There was a thin, milk-white haze in the sky that seemed to shed a reflection of light on the earth below. A negro passed along the beaten way leading to the cabins, whistling a tune. It was Randall. He heard the others and paused. "It's your turn to tote," said Aaron. "Who?" exclaimed Randall. "The Little Master," replied Aaron. Randall laughed. Who talked of turns where the Little Master was concerned? When it came to carrying that kind of burden, Randall was the man to do it, and it was "Don't le' me hurt you, honey. Ef I squeeze too tight, des say de word;" and then, "Whar we gwine, honey? A'on gwine in dar en put dat ar hoss up? Well, 'fo' he go in dar less all shake han's wid 'im, kaze when we nex' lay eyes on 'im he won't hear us, not ef we stoop down and holler good-by in his year." But following Aaron, they went toward the lot where the Black Stallion had shown his savage temper during the day. VIII. THE HAPPENINGS OF A NIGHT. When Aaron and those who were with him reached the lot fence, which had been made high and strong to keep old Jule, the jumping mule, within bounds, not a sound was heard on the other side. "You er takin' yo' life in yo' han', mon," said Randall in a warning tone, as Aaron placed one foot on the third rail and vaulted over. The warning would have come too late in any event, for by the time the words were off Randall's tongue Aaron was over the fence. Those who were left behind waited in breathless suspense for some sound--some movement--from Timoleon, or some word from the Arab, to guide them. But for a little while (and it seemed to be a long, long while to Little Crotchet) nothing could be heard. Then suddenly there fell on their strained ears the noise that is made by a rushing horse, followed by a sharp exclamation from Aaron. "What a pity if he is hurt!" exclaimed the Teacher. Before anything else could be said, there came a whinnying sound from Timoleon, such as horses make when they greet those they are fond of, or when they are hungry and see some one bringing their food. But Timoleon's whinnying was more prolonged, and in the midst of it they could hear Aaron talking. "Ef horses could talk," remarked Randall, "I'd up 'n' say dey wuz ca'n on a big confab in dar." Little Crotchet said nothing. He had often heard Aaron say that he knew the language of animals, but the matter had never been pressed on the lad's attention as it was years afterwards on the attention of Buster John and Sweetest Susan. Finally Aaron came to the fence, closely followed by the Black Stallion. "Man, what you think?" said the Son of Ben Ali to Randall; "no water, no corn, no fodder since night before last." "De Lord 'a' mercy!" exclaimed Randall. "Is anybody ever hear de beat er dat? No wonder he kotch dat ar nigger an' bit 'im! When de rascal git well I'm gwine ter ax Marster ter le' me take 'im out an' gi' 'im a paddlin'--an' I'll do it right, mon." Mr. Hudspeth made a mental note of this speech, and resolved to find out if Randall meant what he said, or was merely joking. "Man, give me the Little Master," said Aaron from the top of the fence, "and run and fetch two buckets of water from the spring." "Dey's water in de lot dar," Randall explained. "It is dirty," replied Aaron. "The grandson of Abdallah would die before he would drink it." He leaned down and took Little Crotchet in his arms. The muzzle of Timoleon was so near that the lad could feel the hot breath from his nostrils. Involuntarily the Little Master shuddered and shrank closer to Aaron. "He'll not hurt you," said Aaron. He made a queer sound with his lips, and the horse whinnied. "Now you may put your hand on him--so." The Arab took the Little Master's hand and placed it gently on the smooth, sensitive muzzle of the horse. The lad could feel the nervous working of Timoleon's strong upper lip. Then he stroked the horse's head and rubbed the velvety ears, and in less time than it takes to write it down he felt very much at home with the Black Stallion, and had no fear of him then or afterwards. Randall soon returned with cool, fresh water from the spring. The Black Stallion drank all that was brought and wanted more, but Aaron said no. He had placed the Little Master on Randall's shoulder, and Timoleon, when he finished drinking, was taken to his stable and fed, and the broken door propped in such a manner that it could not be forced open from the inside. This done, Aaron returned to the others, relieved Randall of Little Crotchet, though the frail body was not much of a burden, and the three started back to the big house. "You are still anxious to punish the poor man who was hurt by the horse?" asked the Teacher, as Randall bade them good-night. "I is dat, suh. I'm des ez sho ter raise welks on his hide ez de sun is ter shine--leas'ways ef breff stay in his body. Ef I'd 'a' been dat ar hoss an' he'd done me dat away, I'd 'a' trompled de gizzard out 'n 'im. Ef dey's anything dat I do 'spise, suh, it's a low-down, triflin', good-fer-nothin' nigger." Mr. Hudspeth knew enough about human nature to be able to catch the tone of downright sincerity in the negro's voice, and the fact not only amazed him at the time, but worried him no little when he recalled it afterward; for his memory seized upon it and made it more important than it really was. And he saw and noted other things on that plantation that puzzled him no little, and destroyed in his own mind the efficiency of some of his strongest anti-slavery arguments; but it did not, for it could not, reach the essence of the matter as he had conceived it, that human slavery, let it be national or sectional, or paternal and patriarchal, was an infliction on the master as well as an injustice to the negro. So far so good. But Mr. Hudspeth could not see then what he saw and acknowledged when American slavery was happily a thing of the past, namely: That in the beginning, the slaves who were brought here were redeemed from a slavery in their own country worse than the bondage of death; that though they came here as savages, they were brought in close and stimulating contact with Christian civilization, and so lifted up that in two centuries they were able to bear the promotion to citizenship which awaited them; and that, although this end was reached in the midst of confusion and doubt, tumult and bloodshed, it was given to human intelligence to perceive in slavery, as well as in the freedom of the slaves, the hand of an All-wise Providence, and to behold in their bondage here the scheme of a vast university in which they were prepared to enjoy the full benefits of all the blessings which have been conferred on them, and which, though they seem to have been long delayed, have come to them earlier than to any other branch of the human race. The Teacher who played his little part in the adventures of Aaron played a large part in national affairs at a later day. He saw slavery pass away, and he lived long enough after that event to put on record this declaration: "Looking back on the history of the human race, let us hasten to acknowledge, while the acknowledgment may be worth making, that two hundred and odd years of slavery, as it existed in the American republic, is a small price to pay for participation in the inestimable blessings and benefits of American freedom and American citizenship." And as he spoke, the great audience he was addressing seemed to fade before his eyes, and he found himself wandering again on the old plantation with Little Crotchet, or walking under the starlit skies talking to Aaron. And he heard again the genial voice of the gentleman whose guest he was, and lived again through the pleasures and perils of that wonderful year on the Abercrombie place. But all this was twenty-five years in the future, and Mr. Hudspeth had not even a dream of what that future was to bring forth. Indeed, as he followed Aaron and Little Crotchet from the horse lot to the house he was less interested in what the years might hold for him than he was in one incident that occurred while Aaron was preparing to take the Black Stallion back to his stall. He was puzzled and wanted information. How did Aaron know that the horse had gone without water and food? He observed that neither Little Crotchet nor Randall questioned the statement when it was made, but treated it as a declaration beyond dispute. And yet the runaway had been in the woods, and a part of the time was pursued by hounds. He had no means of knowing whether or not the Black Stallion had been attended to. The matter weighed on the Teacher's mind to such an extent that when he and his companions were safe in Little Crotchet's room he put a question to Aaron. "By what means did you know that the horse had been left without food and water?" Aaron glanced at Little Crotchet and smiled. "Well, sir, to tell you would be not to tell you. You wouldn't believe me." "Oh, you go too far,--indeed you do. Why should I doubt your word?" "It don't fit in with things you know." "Try me." "The grandson of Abdallah told me," replied Aaron simply. The Teacher looked from Aaron to Little Crotchet. "You must be joking," he remarked. "Oh, no, he isn't," protested Little Crotchet. "I know he can talk with the animals. He has promised to teach me, but I always forget it when I go to the Swamp; there are so many other things to think about." "Would you teach me?" Mr. Hudspeth asked. His face was solemn, and yet there was doubt in the tone of his voice. Aaron shook his head. "Too old," he explained. "Too old, and know too much." "It's another case of having a child's faith," suggested the Teacher. "Most, but not quite," answered Aaron. "It is like this: The why must be very big, or you must be touched." The Teacher pondered over this reply for some moments, and then said: "There must be some real reason why I should desire to learn the language of animals. Is that it?" "Most, but not quite," Aaron responded. "You must have the sure-enough feeling." "I see. But what is it to be touched? What does that mean?" "You must be touched by the people who live next door to the world." The Teacher shook his head slowly and stroked his beard thoughtfully. He tried to treat the whole matter with due solemnity, so as to keep his footing, and he succeeded. "Where is this country that is next door to the world?" he asked, turning to Little Crotchet. "Under the spring," the lad replied promptly. "Have you ever visited that country?" the Teacher asked. His tone was serious enough now. "No," replied Little Crotchet, with a wistful sigh. "I'm crippled, you know, and walk only on my crutches. It is far to go, and I can't take my pony. But Aaron has told me about it, and I have seen Little Mr. Thimblefinger--once--and he told me about Mrs. Meadows and the rest and brought me a message from old Mr. Rabbit. They all live in the country next door to the world." For several minutes the Teacher sat and gazed into the pale flame of the candle. The wax or tallow had run down on one side, and formed a figure in the semblance of a wee man hanging to the brass mouth of the candlestick with both hands. Glazing thus, queer thoughts came to the Teacher's mind. He tugged at his beard to see whether he was awake or dreaming. Could it be that by some noiseless shifting of the scenery he was even now in the country next door to the world? He rose suddenly, shook hands with Aaron, and, swayed by some sudden impulse, stooped and pressed his lips to the pale brow of the patient lad. Then he went to his room, threw open the window, and sat for an hour, wondering what influence his strange experiences would have on his life. And his reflections were not amiss, for years afterwards his experiences of this night were responsible for his intimacy with the greatest American of our time,--Abraham Lincoln. It was in the early part of the war that Mr. Hudspeth, one of a group of congressmen in consultation with the President, let fall some chance remarks about the country next door to the world. Mr. Lincoln had been telling a humorous story, and was on the point of telling another, when Mr. Hudspeth's chance remark struck his ear. "Whereabouts is that country?" he asked. "Not far from Georgia," replied Mr. Hudspeth. "Who lives there?" "Little Crotchet, Aaron the Arab, Little Mr. Thimblefinger, Mrs. Meadows, and old Mr. Rabbit." Mr. Hudspeth counted them off on his fingers in a humorous manner. Mr. Lincoln, who had been laughing before, suddenly grew serious--melancholy, indeed. He talked with the congressmen awhile longer, but they knew by his manner that they were dismissed. As they were leaving, the President remarked:-- "Wait till your hurry's over, Hudspeth; I want to talk to you." And sitting before the fire in his private office, Mr. Lincoln recalled Mr. Hudspeth's chance remark, and questioned him with great particularity about Aaron and Little Crotchet and all the rest. "Of course you believed in the country next door to the world?" Mr. Lincoln suggested. "To tell you the truth, Mr. President, I felt queerly that night. It seemed as real to me as anything I ever heard of and never saw." "Get the feeling back, Hudspeth; get it back. I can believe everything you told me about it." And after that, when Mr. Hudspeth called on the President, and found him in a mood between extreme mirth and downright melancholy, he would say: "I was with Aaron last night," or "I'm just from the country next door to the world," or "I hope Sherman won't get lost in the country that is next door to the world." But all this was in the future, and, as we all know, Mr. Hudspeth, sitting at his window and gazing at the stars that hung sparkling over the Abercrombie place, could not read the future. If it was too late for him to learn the language of the animals, how could he hope to interpret the prophecies of the constellations? Aaron sat with Little Crotchet until there was no danger that the red goblin, Pain, would put in an appearance, and then he slipped through the window, and was soon at the foot of the oak, where Rambler was taking a nap. He gave the dog some of the food that Little Crotchet had put by for him, ate heartily himself, and then went toward the Swamp. On the hill he turned and looked back in the direction of Little Crotchet's window. As he paused he heard a voice cry "Hello!" Aaron was not startled, for the sound came from a distance, and fell but faintly on his ears. He listened and heard it again:-- [Illustration: IT WAS THE WHITE-HAIRED MASTER] "Hello! Hello!" It seemed to come from the road, half a mile away, and Aaron knew that there was no house in that direction for a traveler or a passer-by to hail. There was something in the tone that suggested distress. Without waiting to listen again, the Arab started for the road in a rapid trot. He thought he heard it again as he ran, and this caused him to run the faster. He climbed the fence that marked the line of the road, and sat there a moment; but all was silence, save the soft clamor of insects and frogs that is a feature of the first half of the night. Aaron had now come to a point from which he could reach the Swamp more conveniently by following the road for half a mile, though he would have another hill to climb. As he jumped from the fence into the road the cry came to his ears again, and this time with startling distinctness: "Hello! Hello! Oh, isn't there some one to hear me?" It was so plainly the call of some one in distress that Aaron shouted an answer of encouragement, and ran as fast as he could in the direction from which the sound came. The situation was so new to Rambler that, instead of making ahead to investigate and report, he stuck to Aaron, whining uneasily. As the Son of Ben Ali ran he saw dimly outlined at the foot of the hill a short distance beyond him a huge something that refused to take a recognizable shape until he stood beside it, and even then it was startling enough. It was the Gray Mare, Timoleon's sister, lying at full length by the side of the road, and underneath her the Son of Ben Ali knew he would find the White-Haired Master. But it was not as bad as it might have been. "Hurt much, Master?" said Aaron, leaning over Mr. Abercrombie and touching him on the shoulder. "Not seriously," replied the White-Haired Master. "But the leg that is under the mare is numb." The Gray Mare, after falling, had done nothing more than whinny. If she had struggled to rise, the White-Haired Master's leg would have needed a doctor: and if she had risen to her feet and started home the doctor would have been unnecessary, for the imprisoned foot was caught in the stirrup. Well for Mr. Abercrombie that Aaron knew the Gray Mare, and that the Gray Mare knew Aaron. She whinnied when the runaway spoke to her. She raised her head and gathered her forefeet under her, and then suddenly, at a word from Aaron, lifted her weight from the leg, while the foot was taken from the stirrup. Again the word was given and the Gray Mare rose easily to her feet and shook herself. "Can you walk, Master?" Aaron asked. "I think so--certainly." Yet it was not an easy thing to do. Though the limb was not broken, owing to the fact that the ground was damp and soft where the Gray Mare fell, yet it had been imprisoned for some time, and it was both numb and bruised. The numbness was in evidence now, as the White-Haired Master rose to his feet and tried to walk; the bruises would speak for themselves to-morrow. "What is your name?" Mr. Abercrombie asked. "I am called Aaron, Master." "I thought so, and I'm glad of it. Some day I'll thank you; but now--pins and needles!" The blood was beginning to circulate in the numb leg, and this was not by any means a pleasant experience. Aaron shortened it somewhat by rubbing the limb vigorously. "Are you still in the woods, Aaron?" "Yes, Master." "Well, I'm sorry. I wish you belonged to me." "I'm wishing harder than you, Master." "What a pity--what a pity!" "Don't get too sorry, Master." "No; it would do no good." "And don't blame the Gray Mare for stumbling, Master. The saddle too high on her shoulders, the belly-band too tight, and her shoes nailed on in the dark." Aaron helped Mr. Abercrombie to mount. "Good-night, Master!" "Good-night, Aaron!" The Arab watched the Gray Mare and her rider until the darkness hid them from view. And no wonder! He was the only man, living or dead, that the Son of Ben Ali had ever called "Master." Why? Aaron tried to make the matter clear to his own mind, and while he was doing his best to unravel the problem he heard buggy wheels rattle on the hilltop. The horse must have shied at something just then, for a harsh voice cried out, followed by the sound of a whip falling cruelly on the creature's back. The wheels rattled louder as the creature leaped frantically from under the whip. The harsh voice cried "Whoa!" three times, twice in anger, and the third time in mortal fear. And then Aaron knew that he had another adventure on his hands. IX. THE UPSETTING OF MR. GOSSETT. If Aaron had known it was Mr. Gossett's voice he heard and Mr. Gossett's hand that brought the buggy whip down on the poor horse's back with such cruel energy, the probability is that he would have taken to his heels; and yet it is impossible to say with certainty. The Son of Ben Ali was such a curious compound that his actions depended entirely on the mood he chanced to be in. He was full of courage, and yet was terribly afraid at times. He was dignified and proud, and yet no stranger to humility. His whole nature resented the idea of serving as a slave, yet he would have asked nothing better than to be Little Crotchet's slave: and he was glad to call Mr. Abercrombie master. So that, after all, it may be that he would have stood his ground, knowing that the voice and hand were Mr. Gossett's when his ears told him, as they now did, that the horse, made furious by the cruel stroke of the whip, was running away, coming down the hill at breakneck speed. Mr. Gossett had been on a fruitless errand. When his son George reached home that morning and told him that Mr. Jim Simmons's dogs had followed the trail to the river and there lost it, Mr. Gossett remarked that he was glad he did not go on a fool's errand, and he made various statements about Mr. Simmons and his dogs that were not at all polite. Later in the day, however (though the hour was still early), when Mr. Gossett was making the customary round of his plantation, he fell in with a negro who had been hunting for some stray sheep. The negro, after giving an account of his movements, made this further remark:-- "I sholy 'spected you'd be over yander wid Mr. Jim Simmons, Marster. His dogs done struck a track leadin' inter de swamp, an' dey sho went a callyhootin'." "When was that?" Mr. Gossett inquired. "Not mo' dan two hours ago, ef dat," responded the negro. "I lis'n at um, I did, an' dey went right spang tor'ds de Swamp. I know'd de dogs, kaze I done hear um soon' dis mornin'." Giving the negro some instructions that would keep him busy the rest of the day if he carried them out, Mr. Gossett turned his horse's head in the direction of the Swamp, and rode slowly thither. The blue falcon soared high in the air and paid no attention to Mr. Gossett. For various reasons that the Swamp knew about the Turkey Buzzard was not in sight. The Swamp itself was full of the reposeful silence that daylight usually brought to it. Mr. Gossett rode about and listened; but if all the dogs in the world had suddenly disappeared, the region round about could not have been freer of their barking and baying than it was at that moment. All that Mr. Gossett could do was to turn about and ride back home. But he was very much puzzled. If Mr. Simmons had trailed a runaway into the Swamp and caught him, or if he had made two failures in one morning, Mr. Gossett would like very much to know it. In point of fact, he was such a practical business man that he felt it was Mr. Simmons's duty to make some sort of report to him. In matters of this kind Mr. Gossett was very precise. But after dinner he felt in a more jocular mood. He informed his son George that he thought he would go over and worry Mr. Simmons a little over his failure to catch Aaron, and he had his horse put to the buggy, and rode six or seven miles to Mr. Simmons's home, smiling grimly as he went along. Mr. Simmons was at home, but was not feeling very well, as his wife informed Mr. Gossett. Mrs. Simmons herself was in no very amiable mood, as Mr. Gossett very soon observed. But she asked him in politely enough, and said she'd go and tell Jimmy that company had come. She went to the garden gate not very far from the house and called out to her husband in a shrill voice:-- "Jimmy! Oh, Jimmy! That old buzzard of a Gossett is in the house. Come see what he wants. And do put on your coat before you come in the house. And wash your hands. They're dirtier than sin. And hit that shock of yours one lick with the comb and brush. Come right on now. If I have to sit in there and talk to the old rascal long I'll have a fit. Ain't you coming? I'll run back before he ransacks the whole house." Mr. Simmons came sauntering in after a while, and his wife made that the excuse for disappearing, though she went no further than the other side of the door, where she listened with all her ears, being filled with a consuming curiosity to know what business brought Mr. Gossett to that house. She had not long to wait, for the visitor plunged into the subject at once. "You may know I was anxious about you, Simmons, or I wouldn't be here." ("The old hypocrite!" remarked Mrs. Simmons, on the other side of the door.) "You didn't come by when your hunt ended, and I allowed maybe that you had caught the nigger and either killed or crippled him, and--ahem!--felt a sort of backwardness in telling me about it. So I thought I would come over and see you, if only to say that whether you caught the nigger or killed him, he's responsible for it and not you." "No, Colonel, I'm not in the practice of killing niggers nor crippling 'em. I've caught a many of 'em, but I've never hurt one yet. But, Colonel! If you'd 'a' gone through with what I've been through this day, you'd 'a' done exactly what I done. You'd 'a' went right straight home without stopping to ask questions or to answer 'em--much less tell tales." Thereupon Mr. Simmons told the story of his adventure in the Swamp, varnishing up the facts as he thought he knew them, and adding some details calculated to make the episode much more interesting from his point of view. It will be remembered that Mr. Simmons was in total ignorance of what really happened in the Swamp. He had conceived the theory that his dogs had hit upon the trail of a wildcat going from the river to its den in the Swamp, and that, when the dogs had followed it there, they had been attacked, not by one wildcat, but by the whole "caboodle" of wildcats, to use Mr. Simmons's expression. Having conceived this theory, Mr. Simmons not only stuck to it, but added various incidents that did credit to his imagination. For instance, he made this statement in reply to a question from Mr. Gossett:-- "What did I think when I heard all the racket and saw Sound come out mangled? Well, I'll tell you, Colonel, I didn't know what to think. I never heard such a terrible racket in all my born days. I says to myself, 'I'll just ride in and see what the trouble is, and if there ain't but one wildcat, why, I'll soon put an end to him.' So I spurred my hoss up, and started in; but before we went anyways, hardly, the hoss give a snort and tried to whirl around and run out. "It made me mad at the time," Mr. Simmons went on, his inventive faculty rising to the emergency, "but, Colonel, it's a mighty good thing that hoss had more sense than I did, because if he hadn't I'd 'a' never been setting here telling you about it. I tried to make the hoss stand, but he wouldn't, and, just then, what should I see but two great big wildcats trying to sneak up on me? And all the time, Colonel, the racket in the Swamp was getting louder and louder. Pluto was in there somewheres, and I know'd he was attending to his business, so I just give the hoss the reins and he went like he was shot out of a gun. "I pulled him in, and turned him around, and then I saw Pluto trying to come out. Now, Colonel, you may know if it was too hot for him it was lots too warm for me. Pluto tried to come, and he was a-fighting like fury; but it was no go. The two cats that had been sneaking up on me lit on him, and right then and there they tore him all to flinders! Colonel, they didn't leave a piece of that dog's hide big enough to make a woman's glove if it had been tanned. And as if that wouldn't do 'em, they made another sally and come at me, tush and claw. And I just clapped spurs to the hoss and cleaned up from there. Do you blame me, Colonel?" [Illustration: THEY TORE HIM ALL TO FLINDERS] "As I understand it, Simmons," remarked Mr. Gossett, after pulling his beard and reflecting a while, "you didn't catch the nigger." ("The nasty old buzzard!" remarked Mrs. Simmons, on the other side of the door. "If I was Jimmy I'd hit him with a cheer.") "Do you think you'd 'a' caught him, Colonel, taking into account all the circumstances and things?" inquired Mr. Simmons, with his irritating drawl. "I didn't say I was going to catch him, did I?" replied Mr. Gossett. "I didn't say he couldn't get away from my dogs, did I?" "Supposing you had," suggested Mr. Simmons, "would you 'a' done it? I ain't never heard of you walking in amongst a drove of wildcats to catch a nigger." "And so you didn't catch him; and your fine dogs are finer now than they ever were?" Mr. Gossett remarked. ("My goodness! If Jimmy don't hit him, I'll go in and do it myself," said Mrs. Simmons, on the other side of the door.) "Well, Colonel, it's just like I tell you." Mr. Simmons would have said something else, but just then the door opened and Mrs. Simmons walked in, fire in her eye. "You've saved your $30, hain't you?" she said to Mr. Gossett. "Why--er--yes'm--but"-- "No buts about it," she snapped. "If you ain't changed mightily, you think a heap more of $30 in your pocket than you do of a nigger in the bushes. Jimmy don't owe you nothin', does he?" "Well--er--no'm." Mr. Gossett had been taken completely by surprise. "No, he don't, and if he did I'd quit him right now--this very minute," Mrs. Simmons declared, gesticulating ominously with her forefinger. "And what Jimmy wants to go trolloping about the country trying to catch the niggers you drive to the woods is more'n I can tell to save my life. Why, if he was to catch your runaway niggers they wouldn't stay at home no longer than the minute you took the ropes off 'em." Mr. Simmons cleared his throat, as if to say something, but his wife anticipated him. "Oh, hush up, Jimmy!" she cried. "You know I'm telling nothing but the truth. There ain't a living soul in this country that don't know a Gossett nigger as far as they can see him." "What are the ear-marks, ma'am?" inquired Mr. Gossett, trying hard to be jocular. In a moment he was heartily sorry he had asked the question. "Ear-marks? Ear-marks? Hide-marks, you better say. Why, they've been abused and half fed till they are ashamed to look folks in the face, and I don't blame 'em. They go sneaking and shambling along and look meaner than sin. And 't ain't their own meanness that shows in 'em. No! Not by a long sight. I'll say that much for the poor creeturs." There was something of a pause here, and Mr. Gossett promptly took advantage of it. He rose, bowed to Mrs. Simmons, who turned her back on him, and started for the door, saying:-- "Well, Simmons, I just called to see what luck you'd had this morning. My time's up. I must be going." Mr. Simmons followed him to the door and out to the gate. Before Mr. Gossett got in his buggy he turned and looked toward the house, remarking to Mr. Simmons in a confidential tone:-- "I say, Simmons! She's a scorcher, ain't she?" "A right warm one, Colonel, if I do say it myself," replied Mr. Simmons, with a touch of pride. "But, Colonel, before you get clean away, let's have a kind of understanding about this matter." "About what matter?" Mr. Gossett stood with one foot on his buggy step, ready to get in. "About this talk of Jenny's," said Mr. Simmons, nodding his head toward the house. "I'll go this far--I'll say that I'm mighty sorry it wasn't somebody else that done the talkin', and in somebody else's house. But sence it was Jenny, it can't be holp. If what she said makes you feel tired--sort of weary like--when you begin to think about it, jest bear in mind, Colonel, that I hold myself both personally and individually responsible for everything Jenny has said to-day, and everything she may say hereafter." Mr. Gossett lowered his eyebrows and looked through them at Mr. Simmons. "Why, of course, Simmons," he said a little stiffly, "we all have to stand by the women folks. I understand that. But blamed if I'd like to be in your shoes." "Well, Colonel, they fit me like a glove." Mr. Gossett seated himself in his buggy and drove away. Mrs. Simmons was standing in the door, her arms akimbo, when her husband returned to the house. "Jimmy, you didn't go and apologize to that old buzzard for what I said, did you?" Mr. Simmons laughed heartily at the idea, and when he repeated what he had said to Mr. Gossett his wife jumped at him, and kissed him, and then ran into the next room and cried a little. It's the one way that all women have of "cooling down," as Mr. Simmons would have expressed it. But it need not be supposed that Mr. Gossett was in a good humor. He felt that Mrs. Simmons, in speaking as she did, was merely the mouthpiece of public opinion, and the idea galled him. He called on a neighbor, on his way back home, to discuss a business matter; and he was in such a bad humor, so entirely out of sorts, as he described it, that the neighbor hastened to get a jug of dram out of the cupboard, and, soothed and stimulated by the contents of the jug, Mr. Gossett thawed out. By degrees his good humor, such as it was, returned, and by degrees he took more of the dram than was good for him. So that when he started home, which was not until after sundown, his toddies had begun to tell on him. His eyes informed him that his horse had two heads, and he realized that he was not in a condition to present himself at home, where his son George could see him. The example would be too much for George, who had already on various occasions shown a fondness for the bottle. What, then, was to be done? A very brilliant idea struck Mr. Gossett. He would not drive straight home; that would never do in the world. He'd go up the road that led to town until he came to Wesley Chapel, and there he'd take the other road that led by the Aikin plantation. This was a drive of about ten miles, and by that time the effects of the dram would be worn off. Mr. Gossett carried out this programme faithfully, and that was why the buggy was coming over the hill as Aaron was going along the road on his way to the Swamp. Contrary to Mr. Gossett's expectations the dram did not exhaust itself. He still felt its influences, but he was no longer good-humored. Instead, he was nervous and irritable. He began to brood over the unexpected tongue-lashing that Mrs. Simmons had given him, and succeeded in working himself into a very ugly frame of mind. When his horse came to the top of the hill, something the animal saw--a stray pig, or maybe a cow lying in the fence corner--caused it to swerve to one side. This was entirely too much for Mr. Gossett's unstrung nerves. He seized the whip and brought it down upon the animal's back with all his might. Maddened by the sudden and undeserved blow, the horse made a terrific lunge forward, causing Mr. Gossett to drop the reins and nearly throwing him from the buggy. Finding itself free, the excited horse plunged along the road. The grade of the hill was so heavy that the animal could not run at top speed, but made long jumps, flirting the buggy about as though it had been made of cork. The swinging and lurching of the buggy added to the animal's excitement, and the climax of its terror was reached when Aaron loomed up in the dark before it. The horse made one wild swerve to the side of the road, but failed to elude Aaron. The sudden swerve, however, threw Mr. Gossett out. He fell on the soft earth, and lay there limp, stunned, and frightened. Aaron, holding to the horse, ran by its side a little way, and soon had the animal under control. He soothed it a moment, talked to it until it whinnied, fastened the lines to a fence corner, and then went back to see about the man who had fallen from the buggy, little dreaming that it was his owner, Mr. Gossett. But just as he leaned over the man, Rambler told him the news; the keen nose of the dog had discovered it, though he stood some distance away. This caused Aaron to straighten himself again, and as he did so he saw something gleam in the starlight. It was Mr. Gossett's pistol, which had fallen from his pocket as he fell. Aaron picked up the weapon, handling it very gingerly, for he was unused to firearms, and placed it under the buggy seat. Then he returned with an easier mind and gave his attention to Mr. Gossett. [Illustration: THE EXCITED HORSE PLUNGED ALONG] "Hurt much?" he asked curtly, shaking the prostrate man by the shoulder. "More scared than hurt, I reckon," replied Mr. Gossett. "What was that dog barking at just now?" "He ain't used to seeing white folks in the dirt," Aaron explained. "Who are you?" Mr. Gossett inquired. "One," answered Aaron. "Well, if I'd seen you a half hour ago I'd 'a' sworn you were Two." Mr. Gossett made this joke at his own expense, but Aaron did not understand it, and therefore could not appreciate it. So he said nothing. "Put your hand under my shoulder here, and help me to sit up. I want to see if any bones are broken." Aided by Aaron Mr. Gossett assumed a sitting posture. While he was feeling of himself, searching for wounds and broken bones, he heard his horse snort. This reminded him (for he was still somewhat dazed) that he had started out with a horse and buggy. "That's your horse, I reckon. Mine's at home by this time with two buggy shafts swinging to him. Lord! what a fool a man can be!" "That's your horse," said Aaron. "Mine? Who stopped him?" "Me," Aaron answered. "You? Why, as near as I can remember, he was coming down this hill like the dogs were after him. Who are you, anyhow?" "One." "Well, you are worth a dozen common men. Give me your hand." Mr. Gossett slowly raised himself to his feet, shook first one leg and then the other, and appeared to be much relieved to find that his body and all of its members were intact. He walked about a little, and then went close to Aaron and peered in his face. "Blamed if I don't believe you are my runaway nigger!" Mr. Gossett exclaimed. "I smell whiskey," said Aaron. "Confound the stuff! I never will get rid of it." Mr. Gossett put his hands in his pocket and walked around again. "Your name is Aaron," he suggested. Receiving no reply, he said: "If your name is Aaron you belong to me; if you belong to me get in the buggy and let's go home. You've been in the woods long enough." "Too long," replied Aaron. "That's a fact," Mr. Gossett assented. "Come on and go home with me. If you're afeard of me you can put that idea out of your mind. I swear you shan't be hit a lick. You are the only nigger I ever had any respect for, and I'll be blamed if I know how I came to have any for you after the way you've treated me. But if you'll promise not to run off any more I'll treat you right. You're a good hand and a good man." Mr. Gossett paused and felt in his pockets, evidently searching for something. "Have you seen a pistol lying loose anywhere around here?" he asked. "It's all safe," replied Aaron. "You've got it. Very well. I was just going to pull it out and hand it to you. Come on; it's getting late." Seeing that Aaron made no movement, Mr. Gossett tried another scheme. "Well, if you won't go home," he said, "and I think I can promise that you'll be sorry if you don't, get in the buggy and drive part of the way for me. I'm afraid of that horse after his caper to-night." "Well, I'll do that," remarked Aaron. He helped Mr. Gossett into the buggy, untied the lines, took his seat by his owner, and the two were soon on their way home. X. CHUNKY RILEY SEES A QUEER SIGHT. There is no doubt that Mr. Gossett was sincere in what he said to Aaron. There is no doubt that he fully intended to carry out the promises he had made in the hope of inducing the runaway to return home with him. Nor can it be doubted that he had some sort of respect for a slave who, although a fugitive with a reward offered for his capture, was willing to go to the rescue of his owner at a very critical moment. Mr. Gossett was indeed a harsh, hard, calculating man, whose whole mind was bent on accumulating "prop'ty," as he called it, to the end that he might be looked up to as Addison Abercrombie and other planters were. But after all, he was a human being, and he admired strength, courage, audacity, and the suggestion of craftiness that he thought he discovered in Aaron. Moreover, he was not without a lurking fear of the runaway, for, at bottom, Mr. Gossett's was essentially a weak nature. This weakness constantly displayed itself in his hectoring, blustering, overbearing manner toward those over whom he had any authority. It was natural, therefore, that Mr. Gossett should have a secret dread of Aaron, as well as a lively desire to conciliate him up to a certain point. More than this, Mr. Gossett had been impressed by the neighborhood talk about the queer runaway. As long as such talk was confined to the negroes he paid no attention to it; but when such a sage as Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, a man of large experience and likewise a justice of the peace, was ready to agree to some of the most marvelous tales told about the agencies that Aaron was able to call to his aid, the superstitious fears of Mr. Gossett began to give him an uneasy feeling. The first proposition that Mr. Gadsby laid down was that Aaron was "not by no means a nigger, as anybody with eyes in their head could see." That fact was first to be considered. Admit it, and everything else that was said would follow as a matter of course. Mr. Gadsby's argument, judicially delivered to whomsoever wanted to hear it, was this: It was plain to be seen that the runaway was no more like a nigger than a donkey is like a race-horse. Now, if he wasn't a nigger what was he trying to play nigger for? What was he up to? Why couldn't the track dogs catch him? When some one said Mr. Simmons's dogs hadn't tried, Mr. Gadsby would answer that when Mr. Simmons's dogs did try they'd make a worse muddle of it than ever. Why? Because the runaway had on him the marks of the men that called the elements to help them. Mr. Gadsby knew it, because he had seen their pictures in the books, and the runaway looked just like them. Mr. Gadsby's memory was exact. The pictures he had seen were in a book called the "Arabian Nights." Mr. Gossett thought of what Mr. Gadsby had said, as he sat with Aaron in the buggy, and cold chills began to creep up his spine. He edged away as far as he could, but Aaron paid no attention to his movement. Once the horse turned its head sidewise and whinnied. Aaron made some sort of reply that was unintelligible to Mr. Gossett. The horse stopped still, Aaron jumped from the buggy, went to the animal's head, and presently came back with a part of the harness in his hand, which he threw on the bottom of the buggy. "What's that?" Mr. Gossett asked. "Bridle. Bit hurt horse's mouth." He then coolly pulled the reins in and placed them with the bridle. "Why, confound it, don't you know this horse is as wild as a buck? Are you fixing to have me killed? What are you doing now?" Aaron had taken the whip from its thimble, laid the lash gently on the horse's back, and held it there. In response to his chirrup the horse whinnied gratefully and shook its head playfully. When Mr. Gossett saw that the horse was going easily and that it seemed to be completely under Aaron's control, he remembered again what Mr. Gadsby had said about people who were able to call the elements to their aid, and it caused a big lump to rise in his throat. What was this going on right before his eyes? A runaway sitting by his side and driving a fractious and easily frightened horse without bit or bridle? And then another thought crossed Mr. Gossett's mind--a thought so direful that it caused a cold sweat to stand on his forehead. Was it the runaway's intention to jump suddenly from the buggy and strike the horse with the whip? But Aaron showed no such purpose or desire. Once he leaned forward, peering into the darkness, and said something to the horse. [Illustration: HE EDGED AWAY AS FAR AS HE COULD] "What is it?" Mr. Gossett asked nervously. "Some buggies coming along," replied Aaron. "Can you pass them here?" "If they give your wheels one inch to spare," replied Aaron. "Tell 'em to bear to the right." "Hello, there!" cried Mr. Gossett. "Hello, yourself!" answered a voice. "That you, Terrell?" "Yes, ain't that Gossett?" "The same. Bear to the right. Where've you been?" "Been to the lodge at Harmony." The attic of the schoolhouse at Harmony was used as a Masonic lodge. "Who's behind you?" Mr. Gossett inquired. "Denham, Aiken, Griffin, and Gatewood." There were, in fact, four buggies, Mr. Griffin being on horseback, and they were all close together. Mr. Gossett had but to seize Aaron, yell for help, and his neighbors would soon have the runaway tied hard and fast with the reins in the bottom of the buggy. That is, if Aaron couldn't call the elements to his aid--but suppose he could? What then? These thoughts passed through Mr. Gossett's mind, and he was strongly tempted to try the experiment; but he refrained. He said good-night, but Mr. Aiken hailed him. "You know that new school teacher at Abercrombie's?" "I haven't seen him," said Mr. Gossett. "Well, he's there. Keep an eye on him. He's a rank abolitionist." "Is that so?" exclaimed Mr. Gossett in a tone of amazement. "So I've heard. He'll bear watching." "Well, well, well!" Mr. Gossett ejaculated. "What's that?" Aaron asked in a low tone, as they passed the last of the four buggies. "What's what?" "Abolitioner." "Oh, that's one of these blamed new-fangled parties. You wouldn't know if I were to tell you." In a little while they began to draw near Mr. Gossett's home, and he renewed his efforts to prevail on Aaron to go to the cabin that had been assigned to him, and to remain as one of the hands. Finally as they came within hailing distance of the house, Mr. Gossett said:-- "If you've made up your mind to stay, you may take the horse and put it up. If you won't stay, don't let the other niggers see you. Stop the horse if you can." Aaron pressed the whip on the horse's flank, and instantly the buggy came to a standstill. The runaway jumped from the buggy, placed the whip in its thimble, and stood a moment as if reflecting. Then he raised his right arm in the air--a gesture that Mr. Gossett could not see, however--and said good-night. "Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Gossett. "Where's my pistol?" "Inside the buggy seat," replied Aaron, and disappeared in the darkness. Mr. Gossett called a negro to take the horse, and it seemed as if one sprang from the ground to answer the call, with "Yes, Marster!" on the end of his tongue. It was Chunky Riley. "How long have you been standing here?" asked Mr. Gossett suspiciously. "No time, Marster. Des come a-runnin' when I hear de buggy wheels scrunchin' on de gravel. I hear you talkin' to de hoss whiles I comin' froo de big gate down yander by de barn." "You're a mighty swift runner, then," remarked Mr. Gossett doubtfully. "Yasser, I'm a right peart nigger. I'm short, but soon." Thereupon Chunky Riley pretended to laugh. Then he made a discovery, and became very serious. "Marster, dey ain't no sign er no bridle on dish yer hoss. An' whar de lines? Is anybody ever see de beat er dat? Marster, how in de name er goodness kin you drive dish yer hoss widout bridle er lines?" "It's easy enough when you know how," replied Mr. Gossett complacently. He was flattered and soothed by the idea that Chunky Riley would believe him to be a greater man than ever. "Give the horse a good feed," commanded Mr. Gossett. "He has traveled far to-night, and he and I have seen some queer sights." "Well, suh!" exclaimed Chunky Riley, with well-affected amazement. He caught the horse by the forelock and led it carefully through the gate into the lot, thence to the buggy-shelter, where he proceeded to take off the harness. He shook his head and muttered to himself all the while, for he was wrestling with the most mysterious problem that had ever been presented to his mind. He had seen Aaron in the buggy with his master; he had heard his master begging Aaron not to stay in the woods; he had seen and heard these things with his own eyes and ears, and they were too mysterious for his simple mind to explain. Didn't Aaron belong to Chunky Riley's master? Wasn't he a runaway? Didn't his master try to catch him? Didn't he have the Simmons nigger-dogs after him that very day? Well, then, why didn't his master keep Aaron while he had him in the buggy? Why did he sit still and allow the runaway to go back to the woods? This was much more mysterious to Chunky Riley than anything he had ever heard of. He could make neither head nor tail of it. He knew that Aaron had some mysterious influence over the animals, both wild and tame. That could be accounted for on grounds that were entirely plausible and satisfactory to the suggestions of Chunky Riley's superstition. But did Aaron have the same power over his own master? It certainly seemed so, for he rode in the buggy with him, and went off into the woods again right before Mr. Gossett's eyes. But wait a minute! If Aaron really had any influence over his own master, why didn't he stay at home instead of going into the woods? This was a problem too complicated for Chunky Riley to work out. But it worried him so that he whispered it among the other negroes on the place, and so it spread through all that region. A fortnight afterwards it was nothing uncommon for negroes to come at night from plantations miles away so that they might hear from Chunky Riley's own lips what he had seen. The tale that Chunky Riley told was beyond belief, but it was all the more impressive on that account. And it was very fortunate for Aaron, too, in one respect. After the story that Chunky Riley told became bruited about, there was not a negro to be found who could be bribed or frightened into spying on Aaron's movements, or who could be induced to say that he had seen him. It was observed, too, by all the negroes, as well as by many of the white people, that Mr. Gossett seemed to lose interest in his fugitive slave. He made no more efforts to capture Aaron, and, when twitted about it by some of his near neighbors, his invariable remark was, "Oh, the nigger'll come home soon enough when cold weather sets in. A nigger can stand everything except cold weather." Yet Mr. Gossett's neighbors all knew that nothing was easier than for a runaway to make a fire in the woods and keep himself fairly comfortable. They wondered, therefore, why the well-known energy of Mr. Gossett in capturing his runaway negroes--and he had a remarkable experience in the matter of runaways--should suddenly cool down with respect to Aaron. But it must not be supposed that this made any real difference. On the contrary, as soon as George Gossett found that his father was willing to allow matters to take their course as far as Aaron was concerned, he took upon himself the task of capturing the fugitive, and in this business he was able to enlist the interest of the young men of the neighborhood, who, without asking anybody's advice, constituted themselves the patrol. George Gossett's explanation to his companions, in engaging their assistance, was, "Pap is getting old, and he ain't got time to be setting up late at night and galloping about all day trying to catch a runaway nigger." These young fellows were quite willing to pledge themselves to George Gossett's plans. They had arrived at the age when the vigor of youth seeks an outlet, and it was merely in the nature of a frolic for them to ride half the night patrolling, and sit out the other half watching for Aaron. But there was one peculiarity about the vigils that were kept on account of Aaron. They were carried on, for the most part, within tasting distance of the stillhouse run by Mr. Fullalove, which was on a small watercourse not far from the Abercrombie place. Mr. Fullalove was employed simply to superintend the distilling of peach and apple brandy and corn whiskey; and although it was his duty to taste of the low wines as they trickled from the spout of the "worm," he could truthfully boast, as he frequently did, that not a drop of liquor had gone down his throat for "forty year." Being a temperance man, and feeling himself responsible for the "stuff" at the still, he was inclined to resent the freedom with which the young men conducted themselves. Sometimes they paid for what they drank, but more often they didn't, and at such times Mr. Fullalove would limp about attending to his business (he had what he called a "game leg") with tight-shut lips, refusing to respond to the most civil question. But usually the young men were very good company, and, occasionally, when Mr. Fullalove was suffering from pains in his "game leg," they would keep up his fires for him. And that was no light task, for the still was of large capacity. Take it all in all, however, one night with another, Mr. Fullalove was perfectly willing to dispense with both the services and the presence of the roystering young men. But one night when they came the old man had something interesting to tell them. "You fellers ought to 'a' been here awhile ago," he said. "I reckon you'd 'a' seed somethin' that'd 'a' made you open your eyes. I was settin' in my cheer over thar, some'rs betwixt a nod an' a dream, when it seems like I heard a dog a-whinin' in the bushes. Then I heard a stick crack, an' when I opened my eyes who should I see but the biggest, strappin'est buck nigger that ever trod shoe leather. I say 'Nigger,'" Mr. Fullalove explained, "bekaze I dunner what else to say, but ef that man's a nigger I'm mighty much mistaken. He's dark enough for to be a nigger, but he ain't got the right color, an' he ain't got the right countenance, an' he ain't got the right kind of ha'r, an' he ain't got the right king of twang to his tongue." Mr. Fullalove paused a moment to see what effect this would have on the young men. Then he went on:-- "I heard a dog whinin' out thar in the bushes, but I didn't pay no attention to it. Then I stoops down for to git a splinter for to light my pipe, an' when I look up thar was this big, tall--well, you can call him 'nigger' ef you want to. I come mighty nigh jumpin' out'n my skin. I drapt splinter, pipe, hat, an' eve'ything else you can think of, an' ef the man hadn't 'a' retched down an' picked 'em up I dunno as I'd 'a' found 'em by now. I ain't had sech a turn,--well, not sence that night when the 'worm' got chugged up an' the cap of the still blow'd off. "'Hello,' says I, 'when did you git in? You might 'a' knocked at the door,' says I. I tried for to make out I wern't skeer'd, but 't wa'n't no go. The man--nigger or ha'nt, whichsomever it might 'a' been--know'd e'en about as well as I did that he'd skeered me. Says he, 'Will you please, sir, give me as much as a spoonful of low-wines for to rub on my legs?' says he. 'I've been on my feet so long that my limbs are sore,' says he. "'Why, tooby shore I will,' says I, 'ef you'll make affydavy that you'll not creep up on me an' skeer me out'n two years' growth,' says I. You may not believe me," Mr. Fullalove continued solemnly, "but that man stood up thar an' never cracked a smile. I got one of them half-pint ticklers an' let the low-wines run in it hot from the worm. He taken it an' set right on that log thar an' poured it in his han' an' rubbed it on his legs. Now, ef that'd 'a' been one of you boys, you'd 'a' swaller'd the low-wines an' rubbed your legs wi' the bottle." George Gossett knew that the man Mr. Fullalove had seen was no other than Aaron, the runaway. "Which way did he go, Uncle Jake?" George inquired. "Make inquirements of the wind, child! The wind knows lot more about it than me. The man bowed, raised his right han' in the a'r, taken a couple of steps, an'--_fwiff_--he was gone! Whether he floated or flew, I'll never tell you, but he done uther one er t' other, maybe both." "I'd give a twenty-dollar bill if I could have been here!" exclaimed George Gossett. "On what bank, Gossett?" asked one of his companions. "On a sandbank," remarked Mr. Fullalove sarcastically. "And I'll give a five-dollar bill to know which way he went," said young Gossett, paying no attention to gibe or sarcasm. "Plank down your money!" exclaimed Mr. Fullalove. The young man pulled a bill from his pocket, unrolled it, and held it in his hand. "He went the way the wind blow'd! Gi' me the money," said Mr. Fullalove solemnly. Whereat the young men laughed loudly, but not louder than Mr. Fullalove. "Some of your low-wines must have slipped down your goozle," remarked George Gossett somewhat resentfully. Later, when the young men were patrolling the plantations in a vain search for Aaron, their leader remarked:-- "The nigger that old Fullalove saw was pap's runaway." "But," said one, "the old man says he wasn't a nigger." "Shucks! Fallalove's so old he couldn't tell a mulatto from a white man at night. You needn't tell me; that nigger hangs around the Abercrombie place, and if we'll hang around there we'll catch him." So they agreed then and there to lay siege, at it were, to the Abercrombie place every night, until they succeeded either in capturing Aaron or in finding out something definite about his movements. This siege was to go on in all sorts of weather and under all sorts of conditions. XI. THE PROBLEM THAT TIMOLEON PRESENTED. When Mr. Abercrombie heard of the capers of the Black Stallion, he determined to place the horse in quarters that were more secure. But where? There was but one building on the place that could be regarded as perfectly secure--the crib in the five-acre lot. This crib was built of logs hewn square and mortised together at the ends. It had been built to hold corn and other grain, and logs were used instead of planks because the nearest sawmill was some distance away, and the logs were cheaper and handier. Moreover, as they were hewn from the hearts of the pines they would last longer than sawn lumber. This building was therefore selected as the Black Stallion's stable, and it was made ready. A trough was fitted up and the edges trimmed with hoop iron to prevent the horse from gnawing it to pieces. The floor was taken away and a new door made, a thick, heavy affair. To guard against all accidents a hole, which could be opened or closed from the outside, was cut through the logs over the trough, so that when the Black Stallion was in one of his tantrums he could be fed and watered without risk to life or limb. When everything was ready, the question arose, how was the horse to be removed to his new quarters? Mr. Abercrombie considered the matter an entire afternoon, and then decided to postpone it until the next day. He said something about it at supper, and this caused Mrs. Abercrombie to remark that she hoped he would get rid of such a savage creature. She said she should never feel safe while the horse remained on the place. But Mr. Abercrombie laughed at this excess of fear, and so did Little Crotchet, who made bold to say that if his father would permit him, he would have Timoleon put in his stable that very night, and it would be done so quietly that nobody on the place would know how or when it happened. Mr. Abercrombie regarded his son with tender and smiling eyes. "And what wonderful person will do this for you, my boy?" "A friend of mine," replied Little Crotchet seriously. "Well, you have so many friends that I'll never guess the name," remarked his father. "Oh, but this is one of the most particular, particularest of my friends," the lad explained. "I suppose you know he is getting up a great reputation among the servants," said Mrs. Abercrombie to her husband, half in jest and half in earnest. "I know they are all very fond of him, my dear." "Of course they are--how can they help themselves?" the lad's mother cried. "But this is 'a most particular, particularest' reputation." She quizzically quoted Little Crotchet's phrase, and he laughed when he heard it fall from her lips. "It is something quite wonderful. Since the time that he issued orders for no one to bother him after nine o'clock at night, the servants say that he talks with 'ha'nts.' They say he has become so familiar with bogies and such things that he can be heard talking with them at all hours of the night." "Your mother has been counting the candles on you, my boy" remarked Mr. Abercrombie jokingly. "Why, father! how can you put such an idea in the child's mind?" protested Mrs. Abercrombie. "He's only teasing you, mama," said Little Crotchet. "I heard him talking to a bogie the other night," remarked Mr. Hudspeth, the Teacher. "Oh, I don't think you're a bogie," cried Little Crotchet. "You would have been one, though, if you had kept me in those awful books." The Teacher had mischievously thrown out this hint about Aaron to see what effect it would have. He was amazed at the lad's self-possession, and at the deft manner in which he had turned the hint aside. "Oh, have you been admitted to the sanctum?" inquired the lad's mother, laughing. "I paused at the door to say good-night and remained until I learned a lesson I never shall forget," said Mr. Hudspeth. "Ah, you're finding our boy out, eh?" exclaimed Mr. Abercrombie with a show of pride. "He possesses already the highest culture the mind of man is capable of," Mr. Hudspeth declared. His tone was so solemn and his manner so earnest that Little Crotchet blushed. "He is cultured in the humanities. That is apart from scholarship," the Teacher explained, "but without it all knowledge is cold and dark and unfruitful." "I know he is very humane," suggested Mr. Abercrombie. "Oh, it is more than that," said Mr. Hudspeth; "far more than that. All sensitive people are tender-hearted. One may read a book and yet not catch the message it conveys. But this lad"--He paused and suddenly changed the subject. "He said he could have Timoleon carried to the new stable, and you are inclined to be doubtful. But he can do more than that: he can have the horse removed without bridle or halter." "Then you know our boy better than we do!" Mrs. Abercrombie's tone was almost reproachful. "I found him out quite by accident," replied Mr. Hudspeth. Little Crotchet in his quaint way called attention to the fact that he was blushing again. "You've made me blush twice," he said, "and I can't stay after that." At a sign, Jemimy, the house girl, who was waiting on the table--the same Jemimy who afterward had a daughter named Drusilla--turned the lad's chair about. He balanced himself on his crutches, and without touching his feet to the floor walked across the room to the hall, and so up the stairway. On the landing he paused. "Shall I have Timoleon put in the new stable to-night?" he asked. "By all means, my boy--if you can," answered Mr. Abercrombie. "If you succeed I'll give you a handsome present." Little Crotchet always paused on the stair landing to say something, but never to say good-night. After a while his mother would go up and sit with him a few minutes, by way of kissing him good-night, and, later, his father would make the same little journey for the same purpose. On this particular night, those whom Little Crotchet had left at the table remained conversing longer than usual. Mr. Hudspeth had something more to say about humanity-culture; and although he employed "the Concord dialect," as Mr. Abercrombie called it, his discourse was both interesting and stimulating. In the midst of it Jemimy dropped a plate and broke it. The crash of the piece of china put a temporary end to the conversation, and the silence that ensued had its humorous side. Jemimy's eyes, big as saucers and as white, were turned toward a door that led to the sitting-room. The door softly opened, and a portly negro woman, with a bunch of keys hanging at her waist, came into the dining-room. This was Mammy Lucy, the housekeeper. She never once glanced toward her master and mistress. "White er blue?" she inquired in a low voice. "Blue," replied Jemimy. "Dat counts fer two," Mammy Lucy remarked. "You've done broke five. One mo', en you'll go whar you b'long. I done say mo' dan once you ain't got no business in dis house. De fiel' 's whar you b'long at." Jemimy couldn't help that. She couldn't help anything. She knew how the Little Master would have the Black Stallion moved from one stable to the other. She knew, and she never would tell. They might send her to the field, they might drown her or strangle her, they might cut off her ears or gouge her eyes out, they might send her to town to the calaboose, they might do anything they pleased, but she never would tell. Not while her name was Jemimy, and she'd be named that until after she was put under the ground and covered up; and even then she wouldn't tell. Later when Mr. Abercrombie went upstairs to say good-night to Little Crotchet, the lad asked if he might have Timoleon trained. He had heard his father talking of getting a trainer from Mobile, and so he made the suggestion that, instead of going to that expense, it might be well to have the horse trained by his "friend," as he called Aaron. Mr. Abercrombie guessed who Little Crotchet's friend was, but, to please the lad, feigned ignorance. He told his son that the training of such a horse as Timoleon was a very delicate piece of business, and should be undertaken by no one but an expert. Now, if Little Crotchet's "friend" was an expert, which was not likely, well and good; if not, he might ruin a good horse. Still, if Little Crotchet was sure that everything would be all right, why, there would be no objection. At any rate, the horse was now old enough to be broken to the saddle, and Little Crotchet's "friend" could do that if no more. So it was settled, and the lad was very happy. He made his signal for Aaron early and often, but, somehow, the Son of Ben Ali was long in coming that night. The reason was plain enough when he did come, but Little Crotchet was very impatient. The moon was shining, and as George Gossett and his companions had refused to raise the siege a single night since Mr. Fullalove had seen the runaway at the stillhouse, Aaron found it difficult to respond promptly when the Little Master signaled him to come. It is not an easy matter to pass a picket line of patrollers when the moon is shining as it shines in Georgia at the beginning of autumn, and as it shone on the Abercrombie place the night that Little Crotchet was so anxious to see Aaron. Rambler was very busy that night trying to find a place where Aaron might pass the patrollers without attracting attention, but he had to give it up for a time. At last, however, three of them, George Gossett among the number, concluded to pay another visit to Mr. Fullalove, and this left the way clear. Aaron was prompt to take advantage of it. Going half bent, he kept in the shadow of the fence, slipped through the small jungle of black-jacks, ran swiftly across an open space to the negro cabins, flitted to the garden fence, and in the shadow of that fled to the front yard, and so up the friendly oak. Oh, but Little Crotchet was impatient! He was almost ready to frown when Aaron made his appearance; but when the runaway told him of the big moon and the patrollers, he grew uneasy; and after telling Aaron about the Black Stallion, how the horse must be removed to the new stable, and how he must be broken to saddle and bridle, Little Crotchet declared that he was sorry he had signaled to Aaron. "They'll catch you to-night, sure," he said. But Aaron shook his head. "No, Little Master, not to-night. Not while I'm with the grandson of Abdallah." "Oh, I see!" laughed Little Crotchet; "you'll stay in his stable. Good! I'll bring you your breakfast in the morning." Aaron smiled, shaking his head and looking at the basket of victuals that Little Crotchet always had ready for him when he came. "No, Little Master! This will do. I'll not take the basket to-night. I'll put the victuals in my wallet." This was a bag suspended from his shoulder by a strap, being made after the manner of the satchels in which the children used to carry their books to school. Aaron had another idea in his head, but he gave no hint of it to little Crotchet, for he didn't know how it would succeed. So he sat by the lad's bedside and drove away the red goblin, Pain, and waited until George Gossett and his companions had time to make another visit to the stillhouse. Then he took the big key of the new stable from the mantel, slipped it on his belt,--a leathern thong that he always wore around his body,--placed in his wallet the substantial lunch that the Little Master had saved for him, and prepared to take his leave. This time he did not snuff out the light, but placed the candlestick on the hearth. When Aaron went out at the window, Little Crotchet was sound asleep, and seemed to be smiling. The Son of Ben Ali was smiling too, and continued to smile even as he descended the oak. [Illustration: AARON AND LITTLE CROTCHET] Rambler was waiting for him, and, instead of being asleep, was wide awake and very much disturbed. One of the patrollers, no less a person than George Gossett,--young Grizzly, as Rambler named him,--had been to the spring for water. This was what disturbed the dog, and it was somewhat disturbing to Aaron; for the high wines or low wines, or whatever it was that was dealt out to them at the stillhouse, might make young Gossett and his companions bold enough to search the premises, even though Mr. Abercrombie had warned them that he could take care of his own place and wanted none of their interference in any way, shape, or form. If Aaron could get to the stable, where the Black Stallion had his temporary quarters, all would be well. He could then proceed to carry out the idea he had in his mind, which was a very bold one, so bold that it might be said to depend on accident for its success. The moon was shining brightly, even brilliantly, as Aaron stood at the corner of the great house and looked toward the horse lot. He could easily reach the negro quarters, he could even reach the black-jack thicket beyond, but he would be farther from the lot than ever, and still have an acre of moonlight to wade through. What he did was both bold and simple, and its very boldness made it successful. He stepped back to the garden gate, threw it wide open, and slammed it to again. The noise was loud enough to be heard all over the place. George Gossett heard it and was sure the noise was made by Mr. Abercrombie. Aaron walked from the house straight toward the horse lot, whistling loudly and melodiously some catchy air he had heard the negroes sing. Rambler was whistling too, but the sound came through his nose, and it was not a tune, but a complaint and a warning. Aaron paid no heed to the warning and cared nothing for the complaint. He went through the moonlight, whistling, and there was a swagger about his gait such as the negroes assume when they are feeling particularly happy. Behind a tree, not twenty-five yards away, George Gossett stood. Rambler caught his scent in the air and announced the fact by a low growl. But this announcement only made Aaron whistle the louder. There was no need for him to whistle, if he had but known it; for when young Gossett heard the garden gate slammed to and saw what seemed to be a negro come away from the house whistling, he at once decided that some one of the hands had been receiving his orders from Mr. Abercrombie. Thus deciding, George Gossett paid no further attention to Aaron, but kept himself more closely concealed behind the tree that sheltered him. He looked at Aaron, and that more than once; but though the moonlight was brilliant, it was only moonlight after all. Aaron disappeared in the deep shadows that fell about the horse lot, and George Gossett forgot in a few minutes that any one had waded through the pond of moonlight that lay shimmering between the garden gate and the lot where Timoleon held sway. Indeed, there was nothing about the incident to attract attention. As he stood leaning against the tree, young Gossett could see the negroes constantly passing to and fro about their cabins. There was no lack of movement. Some of the negroes carried torches of "fat" pine in spite of the fact that the moon was shining, and so made themselves more conspicuous. But this peculiarity was so familiar to the young man's experience that it never occurred to him to remark it. He could even hear parts of their conversation, for they made not the slightest effort to suppress their voices or subdue their laughter, which was loud and long and frequent. It was especially vociferous when Turin came to the door of one of the cabins and cried to Uncle Fountain, who had just gone out:-- "Nigger man! You better not try to slip off to Spivey's dis night." "How come, I like ter know?" said Uncle Fountain. "Patterollers on de hill yander," replied Turin. "How you know?" Uncle Fountain asked. "I done seed um." "What dey doin' out dar?" "Ketchin' grasshoppers, I speck!" From every cabin came a roar of laughter, and the whole plantation seemed to enjoy the joke. The calves in the ginhouse lot bleated, the dogs barked, the geese cackled, and the guinea hens shrieked "Potrack! run here! go back!" as loud as they could, and a peafowl, roosting on the pinnacle of the roof of the great house, joined in with a wailing cry that could be heard for miles. [Illustration: BEHIND A TREE STOOD GEORGE GOSSETT] The lack of respect shown by the Abercrombie negroes for the patrollers irritated George Gossett, but it was a relief to him to know that if the negroes on his "pap's" place were to make any reference to the patrollers they would bow their heads and speak in subdued whispers. From one of the cabins came the sound of "patting" and dancing, and the noise made by the feet of the dancer was so responsive to that made by the hands of the man who was patting that only an expert ear could distinguish the difference. The dance was followed by a friendly tussle, and a negro suddenly ran out at the door, pursued by another. The pursuer halted, however, and cried out:-- "Ef you fool wid me, nigger, I'll make Marster sen' you in de lot dar an' move dat ar' wil' hoss to his new stable." "Marster was made 'fo' you wuz de maker," answered the pursued, who had now stopped running. "Ding 'em!" said young Gossett in a low tone to himself, "they're always and eternally frolicking on this place. No wonder they ain't able to do no more work in the daytime!" Fretting inwardly, the young man changed his position, and continued to watch for the runaway. How long he stood there young Gossett could not say. Whether the spirits he had swallowed at the stillhouse benumbed his faculties so that he fell into a doze, he did not know. He could only remember that he was aroused from apparent unconsciousness by a tremendous clamor that seemed to come from the hill where he had left the most of his companions. It was a noise of rushing and running, squealing horses, and the exclamations of frightened men. Young Gossett did not pause to interpret the clamor that came to his ears, but ran back toward the hill as hard as he could go. XII. WHAT THE PATROLLERS SAW AND HEARD. The scheme which Aaron had conceived, and which he proposed to carry out without delay, was bold, and yet very simple,--simple, that is to say, from his point of view. It came into his mind while he was in Little Crotchet's room, and fashioned itself as he went whistling to the horse lot in full view of George Gossett. He swung himself over the fence, and made directly for Timoleon's stable. The Black Stallion heard some one fumbling about the door, and breathed hard through his nostrils, making a low, fluttering sound, as high-spirited horses do when they are suspicious or angry. It was a fair warning to any and all who might dare to open the door and enter that stable. "So!" said Aaron; "that is the welcome you give to all who may come to make you comfortable." At the sound of that voice, Timoleon snorted cheerfully and whinnied, saying: "Change places with me, Son of Ben Ali, and then see who will warn all comers. Why, the ox has better treatment, and the plow mule is pampered. What am I that my food should be thrown at me through the cracks? The man that fed me comes no more." "He is where your teeth and your temper put him, Grandson of Abdallah. But there is to be a change. This night you go to your new house, where everything is fresh and clean and comfortable. And you are to learn to hold a bit in your mouth and a man on your back, as Abdallah before you did." "That is nothing, Son of Ben Ali. Then I can gallop, and smell the fresh air from the fields. What man am I to carry, Son of Ben Ali?" "Let the White-Haired Master settle that, Grandson of Abdallah. This night, before you go to your new house, you are to have a run with me." Timoleon snorted with delight. He was ready, and more than ready. He was stiff and sore from standing in the stable. "But before we start, Grandson of Abdallah, this must be said: No noise before I give the word; none of the loud screaming that men call whickering. You know my hand. You are to have a frolic, and a fine one, but before you begin it, wait for the word. Now, then, we will go." With his hand on the horse's withers, Aaron guided Timoleon to the gate. They went through the lot in which the Black Stallion's new stable stood, out at the gate through which Buster John and Sweetest Susan rode years afterward, and into the lane that led to the public road. But instead of going toward the road, they followed the lane back into the plantation, until they came to what was called "the double gates." Going through these, they found themselves in the pasture that sloped gradually upward to the hill from which Aaron was in the habit of watching the light in Little Crotchet's window. The hoofs of the Black Stallion hardly made a sound on the soft turf. Guided by Aaron, he ascended the hill until they were on a level with and not far from the fence on which Mr. Gossett, his son George, and Jim Simmons had carried on their controversy about Addison Abercrombie. Here Aaron brought Timoleon to a halt, while Rambler went forward to see what discovery he could make. He soon found where the horses of the patrollers were stationed. There were five. Three had evidently been trained to "stand without tying," as the saying is, while one of the patrollers was sitting against a tree, holding the other two. All this Rambler knew, for he went so near that the patroller saw him, and hurled a pine burr at him. It was a harmless enough missile, but it had not left Rambler in a good humor. Then it was that Aaron spoke to the horse, and gave him the word. "Grandson of Abdallah, the horses and the man are yonder. Give them a taste of your playfulness. Show them what a frolic is, but cover your teeth with your lips,--no blood to-night. Spare the horses. They have gone hungry for hours, but they must obey the bit. Spare the man, too, but if you can strip him of his coat as he flees, well and good. You will see other men come running. They will be filled with fear. Give them also a taste of your playfulness. Let them see the grandson of Abdallah when he is frolicsome. But mind! No blood to-night,--no broken bones!" The situation promised to be so exciting that Timoleon snorted loudly and fiercely, whereupon one of the horses held by the patroller answered with a questioning neigh, which was cut short by a cruel jerk of the bridle rein by the man who held it. The man was dozing under the influence of Mr. Fullalove's low-wines, and the sudden neighing of the horse startled and irritated him. But in the twinkling of an eye terror took the place of irritation, for the Black Stallion, pretending to himself that the neigh was a challenge, screamed fiercely in reply and went charging upon the group with open mouth and eyes that glowed in the dark. The horses knew well what that scream meant. Those that were not held by the patroller ran away panic-stricken, snorting, and whickering. The two that were held by the patroller cared nothing for bits now, but broke away from the man, after dragging him several yards (for he had the reins wrapped about his wrist) and joined the others. They dragged the man right in the Black Stallion's path, and there left him straggling to his hands and knees, with his right arm so severely wrenched that he could hardly use it. But, fortunately for the patroller, Timoleon's eyes were keen, and he saw the man in time to leap over him, screaming wildly as he did so. The man fell over on his side at that instant. Glancing upward he saw the huge hulk of the horse flying over him, and his reason nearly left him. Was it really a horse, or was it that arch-fiend Beelzebub that he had read about in the books, and whose name he had heard thundered from the pulpit at the camp meeting? "Beelzebub is abroad in the land to-day!" the preacher had cried. Was it indeed true? The Black Stallion drove the crazed horses before him hither and yonder, but always turning them back to the point where they had been standing. The stampede was presently joined by three or four mules that had been turned in the pasture. The patrollers, who had been watching and guarding the approaches to the Abercrombie place, came running to see what the trouble was. George Gossett, being farther away from the pasture than the rest, was the last to reach the scene, but he arrived soon enough to see the Black Stallion seize one of his companions by the coat-tails and literally strip him of the garment. [Illustration: THE BLACK STALLION] The terror-stricken horses, when they found an opportunity, ran toward the double gates where they had entered the pasture. Aaron, expecting this, had opened the gates, and the five horses, crowding on one another's heels, went through like a whirlwind, having left the mules far behind. Aaron closed the gates again, and went running to where he heard the Black Stallion still plunging about. By this time the mules were huddled together in a far corner of the field; but Timoleon had paid no attention to them. He could have caught and killed them over and over again. He was now in pursuit of the patrollers. George Gossett, running toward the fence, tripped and fell, and narrowly escaped the Black Stallion's hoofs. He was not far from the fence when he fell, and he rolled and scrambled and crawled fast enough to elude Timoleon, who turned and ran at him again. In one way and another all the patrollers escaped with their lives, and, once the fence was between them and the snorting demon, they made haste to visit Mr. Fullalove's stillhouse, and relate to him the story of their marvelous adventure, consoling themselves, meanwhile, with copious draughts of the warm low-wines. "I believe the thing had wings," said one of the patrollers, "and if I didn't see smoke coming out of his mouth when he ran at me, I'm mighty much mistaken. I never shall believe it wasn't Beelzebub." This was the man who had been set upon so suddenly while watching the horses and dozing. Some of the others were inclined to agree with this view of the case; but George Gossett was sure it was a horse. "I was right at him," he said, "when he pulled off Monk's coat, and it was a horse, even to the mane and tail. I was looking at him when he turned and made for me. Then I tripped and fell, and just did get to the fence in time to save my neck." "You hear that, don't you, Mr. Fullalove?" remarked the man who had been holding the horses. "It pulled Monk's coat off, and then Gossett just had time to get to the fence to save his neck! Why, it's as natchul as pig-tracks. Every hoss you meet tries to pull your coat off, and you have to run for a fence if you want to save your neck. That's Gossett's idee. If that thing was a hoss, I don't want to see no more hosses. I'll tell you that." "Well," said Mr. Fullalove, "there are times and occasions-more espeshually occasions, as you may say--when a hoss mought take a notion for to cut up some such rippit as that. You take that black hoss of Colonel Abercrombie's--not a fortnight ago he got out of his pen and ketched a nigger and like to 'a' killed him." "Maybe it's that same hoss in the field yonder," suggested George Gossett. "No," replied Mr. Fullalove. "That hoss is penned up so he can't git out of his stable--much less the lot--if so be some un ain't took and gone and turned him out and led him to the field. And if that had 'a' been done you could 'a' heard him squealin' every foot of the way." "If anybody wants to call the Old Boy a hoss," said the man who had been first attacked, "they are more than welcome." "Boys," remarked Mr. Fullalove, "if any of you have got the idee that the Old Boy was after you, you'd better stay as fur from this stillhouse as you can, and try to act as if you had souls for to save. What have you done with your hosses?" "We couldn't tote 'em, and so we had to leave 'em," Gossett answered, making a poor effort to laugh. "What I hate about it is that I took a fool notion and rode pap's horse to-night. He'll be hot as pepper." "Ain't you going for to make some sorter effort to git your hosses out of the field?" inquired Mr. Fullalove. "He can have my hoss and welcome," said the man who insisted on the Beelzebub theory. "I wouldn't go in that field, not for forty horses," another patroller protested. "I might go there for forty horses," said George Gossett, "but I'll not go back for one, even though it's pap's." "Well, it's mighty quiet and serene up there now," suggested Mr. Fullalove, listening with his hand to his ear. "He's caught 'em and now he's skinning 'em," said the man who believed Beelzebub was abroad that night. The patrollers stayed at the stillhouse until the low-wines gave them courage, and then they went home with George Gossett. They were bold enough to go by the double gates, to see if they had been opened, but the gates were closed tight. They listened a few moments, but not a sound could be heard, save the loud, wailing cry of the peafowl that rested on the Abercrombie house. As they went along the road they found and caught four of the horses. The horse that George Gossett had ridden was safe at home. The young men agreed on one thing, namely: That they would give the Abercrombie place the go-by for some time to come; while the man that thought he had seen Beelzebub said that he was sick of the whole business and would have no more of it, being more firmly convinced than ever that the scenes they had witnessed were supernatural. Even George Gossett declared that he intended to advise "pap" to sell the runaway, "if he could find anybody fool enough to buy him." It must not be forgotten that though Gossett and his companions were the only ones that witnessed the terrifying spectacle presented by the Black Stallion as he ran screaming about the pasture, they were not the only ones that heard the uproar that accompanied it. The negroes heard it, and every ear was bent to listen. Randall had his hand raised over his head and held it there, as he paused to catch the drift and meaning of the fuss. Big Sal was reaching in a corner for her frying-pan. She paused, half bent, her arm reaching out, while she listened. Turin was singing, but the song was suddenly cut short. Mr. Abercrombie heard it, but his thoughts were far afield, and so he paid little attention to it. The geese, the guinea hens, and the peafowl heard it and joined heartily in with a loud and lusty chorus. Mammy Lucy heard it and came noiselessly to the library door and looked in inquiringly. "What is the noise about, Lucy?" inquired Mr. Abercrombie. "Dat what I wanter know, Marster. It soun' ter me like dat ar hoss done got loose agin." Then the White-Haired Master, remembering that he had consented for Little Crotchet's "friend" to remove the Black Stallion to his new quarters, regretted that he had been so heedless. It was all his own fault, he thought, as he rose hastily and went out into the moonlight bare-headed. He called Randall and Turin, and both came running. "Go out to the pasture there, and see what the trouble is." "Yasser, yasser!" they cried, and both went rapidly toward the field. They ran until they got out of sight of their master, and then they paused to listen. They started again, but not so swiftly as before. "I know mighty well dat Marster don't want us ter run up dar where we might git hurted," said Turin. "Dat he don't!" exclaimed Randall. Consoled by this view of the case, which was indeed the correct one, they moved slower and slower as they came close to the pasture fence. There they stopped and listened, and while they listened the uproar came to a sudden end--to such a sudden end that Randall remarked under his breath that it was like putting out a candle. For a few brief seconds not a sound fell on the ears of the two negroes. Then they heard a faint noise of some one running through the bushes in the direction of the stillhouse. "Ef I could git de notion in my head dat Marster don't keer whedder we gits hurted er no," suggested Turin, "I'd mount dis fence an' go in dar an' see who been kilt an' who done got away." "I speck we better not go," remarked Randall, "kaze ef we wuz ter rush in dar an' git mangled, Marster'd sholy feel mighty bad, an' fer one, I don't want ter be de 'casion er makin' 'im feel bad." By this time Mr. Abercrombie had become impatient, and concluded to find out the cause of the uproar for himself. Randall and Turin heard him coming, and they could see that he was accompanied by some of the negroes. The two cautiously climbed the fence and went over into the field, moving slowly and holding themselves in readiness for instant flight. A cow bug, flying blindly, struck Turin on the head. He jumped as if he had heard the report of a gun, and cried out in a tone of alarm:-- "Who flung dat rock? You better watch out. Marster comin', an' he got his hoss pistol 'long wid 'im." "'Twa'n't nothing but a bug," said Randall. "It de fust bug what ever raised a knot on my head," Turin declared. "What was the trouble, Randall?" inquired Mr. Abercrombie from the fence. His cool, decisive voice restored the courage of the negroes at once. "We des tryin' fer ter fin' out, suh. Whatsomever de racket wuz, it stop, suh, time we got here--an' it seem like we kin hear sump'n er somebody runnin' to'rds de branch over yander," replied Randall heartily. "Some of the mules were in the pasture to-day. See if they are safe." "Yasser!" responded Randall, but his tone was not so hearty. Nevertheless, he and Turin cautiously followed the line of the fence until they found the mules in the corner in which they had taken refuge. And the mules showed they were very glad to see the negroes, following them back to the point where the path crossed the fence. "De mules all safe an' soun', suh," explained Randall when they came to where the master was. "Dey er safe an' soun', but dey er swyeatin' mightily, suh." "What do you suppose the trouble was?" inquired Mr. Abercrombie. Turin and Randall had not the least idea, but Susy's Sam declared that he heard "dat ar hoss a-squealin'!" "What horse?" inquired Mr. Abercrombie. "Dat ar Sir Moleon hoss, suh," replied Susy's Sam. "That's what Lucy said," remarked Mr. Abercrombie. "Marster, ef dat ar hoss had er been in dar, me an' Turin wouldn't er stayed in dar long, an' dese yer mules wouldn't er been stan'in' in de fence corner up yander." But Mr. Abercrombie shook his head. He remembered that he had given Little Crotchet permission to have the horse removed to his new quarters. "Some of you boys see if he is in his stable," he said. They all went running, and before Mr. Abercrombie could get there, though he walked fast, he met them all coming back. "He ain't dar, Marster!" they exclaimed in chorus. "See if he is in his new stable," said Mr. Abercrombie. Again they all went running, Mr. Abercrombie following more leisurely, but somewhat disturbed, nevertheless. And again they came running to meet him, crying out, "Yasser! yasser! He in dar, Marster; he sho is. He in dar an' eatin' away same like he been dar dis long time." "See if the key is in the lock," said Mr. Abercrombie to Randall. Randall ran back to the stable and presently called out:-- "Dey ain't no key in de lock, Marster." Mr. Abercrombie paused as if to consider the matter, and during that pause he and Randall and Turin and Susy's Sam heard a voice saying: "Look on the little Master's mantelpiece!" The voice sounded faint and far away, but every word was clear and distinct. "Where did the voice come from?" asked Mr. Abercrombie. The negroes shook their heads. They didn't know. It might have come from the air above, or the earth beneath, or from any point of the compass. "Ask where the key is," said Mr. Abercrombie to Turin. His curiosity was aroused. Turin cried out: "Heyo, dar! Whar you say de key is?" But no reply came, not even so much as a whisper. The negroes looked at one another, and shook their heads. When Mr. Abercrombie went back to the house he put on his slippers and crept to Little Crotchet's room. Shading the candle he carried, the father saw that his son was fast asleep. And on the mantel was the key of the stable. XIII. THE APPARITION THE FOX HUNTERS SAW. As the fall came on, the young men (and some of the older ones, too) began to indulge in the sport of fox hunting. They used no guns, but pursued Reynard with horse and hound in the English fashion. The foxes in that region were mostly gray, but the red ones had begun to come in, and as they came the grays began to pack up their belongings (as the saying is) and seek homes elsewhere. The Turner old fields, not far from the Abercrombie place, and still closer to the Swamp, were famous for their foxes--first for the grays and afterward for the reds. There seemed to be some attraction for them in these old fields. The scrub pines, growing thickly together, and not higher than a man's waist, and the brier patches scattered about, afforded a fine covert for Mr. Fox, gray or red, being shady and cool in summer time, and sheltered from the cold winter winds. And if it was fine for Mr. Fox, it was finer for the birds; for here Mrs. Partridge could lead her brood in safety out of sight of Man, and here the sparrows and smaller birds were safe from the Blue Falcon, she of the keen eye and swift wing. And Mr. Fox was as cunning as his nose was sharp. He knew that the bird that made its home in the Turner old fields must roost low; and what could be more convenient for Mr. Fox than that--especially at the dead hours of night when he went creeping around as noiselessly as a shadow, pretending that he wanted to whisper a secret in their ears? Indeed, that was the main reason why Mr. Fox lived in the Turner old fields, or went there at night, for he was no tree climber. And so it came to pass that when those who were fond of fox hunting wanted to indulge in that sport, they rose before dawn and went straight to the Turner old fields. Now, when George Gossett and his patrolling companions ceased for a time to go frolicking about the country at night, on the plea that they were looking after the safety of the plantations, they concluded that it would be good for their health and spirits to go fox hunting occasionally. Each had two or three hounds to brag on, so that when all the dogs were brought together they made a pack of more than respectable size. [Illustration: IT WAS FINE FOR MR. FOX] One Sunday, when the fall was fairly advanced, the air being crisp and bracing and the mornings frosty, these young men met at a church and arranged to inaugurate the fox hunting season the next morning. They were to go home, get their dogs, and meet at Gossett's, his plantation lying nearest to the Turner old fields. This programme was duly carried out. The young men stayed all night with George Gossett, ate breakfast before daybreak, and started for the Turner old fields. As they set out, a question arose whether they should go through the Abercrombie place--the nearest way--or whether they should go around by the road. The darkness of night was still over wood and field, but there was a suggestion of gray in the east. If the hunting party had been composed only of those who had been in the habit of patrolling with George Gossett, prompt choice would have been made of the public road; but young Gossett had invited an acquaintance from another settlement to join them--a gentleman who had reached the years of maturity, but who was vigorous enough to enjoy a cross-country ride to hounds. This gentleman had been told of the strange experience of the patrollers in Mr. Abercrombie's pasture lot. Some of the details had been suppressed. For one thing, the young men had not confessed to him how badly they had been frightened. They simply told him enough to arouse his curiosity. When, therefore, the choice of routes lay between the public road and the short cut through the Abercrombie pasture, the gentleman was eager to go by way of the pasture where his young friends had beheld the wonderful vision that had already been described. When they displayed some hesitation in the matter, he rallied them smartly on their lack of nerve, and in this way shamed them into going the nearest way. George Gossett, who had no lack of mere physical courage, consented to lead the way if the others would "keep close behind him." But none of them except the gentleman who was moved by curiosity, and who attributed the mystery of the affair to frequent visits to Mr. Fullalove's still house, had any stomach for the journey through the pasture, for not even George Gossett desired to invite a repetition of the paralyzing scenes through which they had passed on that memorable night. As they came to the double gates, the young man who had insisted that Timoleon was Beelzebub concluded to leave an avenue by which to escape if the necessity arose. So he rode forward, dismounted, and opened the gates. Then he made a great pretense of shutting them, but allowed them to remain open instead. This operation left him somewhat behind his companions, as he intended it should, for he had made up his mind to wheel his horse and run for it if he heard any commotion ahead of him. In that event the delay he purposely made would leave him nearest the gates. Seeing that the young man did not come up as quickly as he should have done, George Gossett, in whom the spirit of mischief had no long periods of repose, suggested that they touch up their horses and give their companion a scare. This suggestion was promptly acted on. The commotion his companions made caused the young man to pause a moment before putting spur to his horses to rejoin them. This delay placed several hundred yards between him and the party with Gossett. He realized this as he rode after them, but was consoled by the fact that, in the event of any trouble, he had a better opportunity to escape than they did. But he had hardly gone fifty yards from the double gates before he heard some sort of noise in that direction. He half turned in his saddle and looked behind him. The vague gray of the morning had become so inextricably mixed and mingled with the darkness of the night that such light as there was seemed to blur the vision rather than aid it. But when the young man turned in his saddle he saw enough to convince him that he was likely to have company in his ride after his companions. He hesitated a moment before urging his horse into a more rapid gait. He wanted to see what it might be that was now so vaguely outlined. He strained his eyes, but could see nothing but a black and shapeless mass, which seemed to be following him. He could see that it was moving rapidly, whatever it was, but the gray light was so dim, and gave such shadowy shape even to objects close at hand, that he found it impossible either to gratify his curiosity or satisfy his fears. So he settled himself firmly in the saddle, clapped spurs to his horse, and rode headlong after his companions. He looked around occasionally, but the black mass was always nearer. The faster his horse went, the faster came the Thing. [Illustration: THE PHANTOM HORSEMAN] Each time he looked back his alarm rose higher, for the Thing was closer whenever he looked. At last his alarm grew to such proportions that he ceased to look back, but addressed himself entirely to the work of urging his horse to higher speed. Presently he heard quick, fierce snorts on his right, and his eye caught sight of the Thing. Its course was parallel with his own, and it was not more than twenty yards away. He saw enough for his alarm to rise to the height of terror. He saw something that had the head and feet of a black horse, but the body was wanting. No! There was a body, and a rider, but the rider wore a long, pale gray robe, and he was headless! If this was the Black Demon that the young man had seen in this pasture on a former occasion, he was now more terrible than ever, for he was guided by a headless rider! The young man would have checked his horse, but the effort was in vain. The horse had eyes. He also had seen the Thing, and had swerved away from it, but he was too frightened to pay any attention to bit or rein. The Black Thing was going faster than the frightened horse, and it soon drew away, the pale gray robe of the rider fluttering about like a fierce signal of warning. The young man's horse was soon under control, and in a few minutes he came up with his companions. He found them huddled together like so many sheep, this manoeuvre having been instinctively made by the horses. The dogs, too, were acting queerly. The men appeared to be somewhat surprised to see their companion come galloping up to them. After riding away from the young man who had taken it upon himself to leave the double gates open, the huntsmen had concluded to wait for him when they came to the bars that opened on the public road. But the gallop of their horses had subsided into a walk when they were still some distance from that point. They were conversing about the merits of their favorite dogs when suddenly they heard from behind them the sound of a galloping horse. They saw, as the young man had seen, a dark, moving mass gradually assume the shape of a black horse, with a headless rider wearing a long, pale gray robe. The apparition was somewhat farther from them when it passed than it had been from their companion, whom, in a spirit of mischief, they had deserted; but the Black Thing threatened to come closer, for when it had gone beyond them it changed its course, described a half circle, and vanished from sight on the side of the pasture opposite to that on which it had first appeared. "What do you think now?" said George Gossett, speaking in a low tone to the gentleman who had been inclined to grow merry when the former experience of the patrollers was mentioned. "What do I think? Why, I think it's right queer if the chap we left at the double gates isn't trying to get even with us by riding around like a wild Indian and waving his saddle blanket," replied the doubting gentleman. "Why, man, he's riding a gray horse!" one of the others explained. This put another face on the matter, and the gentleman made no further remark. In fact, before anything else could be said, the young man in question came galloping up. "Did you fellows see It?" he inquired. But he had no need to inquire. Their attitude and the uneasy movements of their horses showed unmistakably that they had seen It. "Which way did It go?" was the next question. There was no need to make reply. The direction in which the huntsmen glanced every second showed unmistakably which way It went. "Let's get out of here," said the young man in the next breath. And there was no need to make even this simple proposition, for by common consent, and as by one impulse, horses and men started for the bars at a rapid trot. When the bars were taken down they were not left down. Each one was put carefully back in its proper place, for though this was but a slight barrier to interpose between themselves and the terrible Black Thing, yet it was something. Once in the road they felt more at ease--not because they were safer there, but because it seemed that the night had suddenly trailed its dark mantle westward. "Did you notice," said the young man who was first to see the apparition, "that the Thing that was riding the Thing had no head?" "It certainly had that appearance," replied the doubtful gentleman, "but"-- "No 'buts' nor 'ifs' about it," insisted the young man. "It came so close to me that I could 'a' put my hand on it, and I noticed particular that the Thing on the back of the Thing didn't have no sign of head, no more than my big toe has got a head." The exaggeration of the young man was unblushing. If the Thing had come within ten yards of him he would have fallen from his horse in a fit. "And what was you doing all that time?" George Gossett inquired. His tone implied a grave doubt. "Trying to get away from that part of the country," replied the other frankly. "It was the same hoss that got after us that night," the young man continued. "I knowed it by the blaze in his eyes and the red on the inside of his nose. Why, it looked to me like you could 'a' lit a cigar by holding it close to his eyes." "I know how skeery you are," said George Gossett disdainfully, "and I don't believe you took time to notice all these things." "Skeer'd!" exclaimed the other; "why, that ain't no name for it--no name at all. But it was my mind that was skeered and not my eyes. You can't help seeing what's right at you, can you?" This frankness took the edge off any criticism that George Gossett might have made, seeing which the young man gave loose reins to his invention, which was happy enough in this instance to fit the suggestions that fear had made a place for in the minds of his companions. But it was all the simplest thing in the world. The apparition the fox hunters saw was Aaron and the Black Stallion. The Son of Ben Ali had decided that the interval between the first faint glimpse of dawn and daylight was the most convenient time to give Timoleon his exercise, and to fit him in some sort for the vigorous work he was expected to do some day on the race track. Aaron had hit upon that particular morning to begin the training of the Black Stallion, and had selected the pasture as the training-ground. It was purely a coincidence that he rode in at the double gates behind the fox hunters, but it was such a queer one that Little Crotchet laughed until the tears came into his eyes when he heard about it. Aaron's version of the incident was so entirely different from that of the fox hunters that those who heard both would be unable to recognize in them an account of the same affair from different points of view. As Aaron saw it and knew it, the incident was as simple as it could be. As he was riding the horse along the lane leading to the double gates (having left Rambler behind at the stable), Timoleon gave a snort and lifted his head higher than usual. "Son of Ben Ali," he said, "I smell strange men and strange horses. Their scent is hot on the air. Some of them are the men that went tumbling about the pasture the night you bade me play with them." "Not at this hour, Grandson of Abdallah," replied Aaron. "I am not smelling the hour, Son of Ben Ali, but the men. If we find them, shall I use my teeth?" "We'll not see the men, Grandson of Abdallah. This is not their hour." "But if we find them, Son of Ben Ali?" persisted the Black Stallion. "Save your teeth for your corn, Grandson of Abdallah," was the response. As they entered the double gates, which Aaron was surprised to find open, Timoleon gave a series of fierce snorts, which was the same as saying, "What did I tell you, Son of Ben Ali? Look yonder! There is one; the others are galloping farther on." "I am wrong and you are right, Grandson of Abdallah." As much for the horse's comfort as his own, Aaron had folded a large blanket he found hanging in the stable, and was using it in place of a saddle. He lifted himself back toward Timoleon's croup, seized the blanket with his left hand, and, holding it by one corner, shook out the folds. He had no intention whatever of frightening any one, his sole idea being to use the blanket to screen himself from observation. He would have turned back, but in the event of pursuit he would be compelled to lead his pursuers into the Abercrombie place, or along the public road, and either course would have been embarrassing. If he was to be pursued at all, he preferred to take the risk of capture in the wide pasture. As a last resort he could slip from Timoleon's back and give the horse the word to use both teeth and heels. [Illustration: AARON AND TIMOLEON] And this was why the fox hunters saw the apparition of a black horse and a headless rider. "Shall I ride him down, Son of Ben Ali?" snorted the Black Stallion. "Bear to the right, bear to the right, Grandson of Abdallah," was the reply. And so the apparition flitted past the young man who had left the double-gates open, and past his companions who were waiting for him near the bars that opened on the big road; flitted past them and disappeared. Finding that there was no effort made to pursue him, Aaron checked the Black Stallion and listened. He heard the men let down the bars and put them up again, and by that sign he knew they were not patrollers. Later on in the day, the doubting gentleman, returning from the fox hunt, called by the Abercrombie place and stopped long enough to tell the White-Haired Master of the queer sight he saw in the pasture at dawn. "The boys were badly scared," he explained to Mr. Abercrombie, "and I tell you it gave me a strange feeling--a feeling that I can best describe by saying that if the earth had opened at my feet and a red flame shot up, it wouldn't have added one whit to my amazement. That's the honest truth." Mr. Abercrombie could give him no satisfaction, though he might have made a shrewd guess, and Little Crotchet, who could have solved the mystery, had to make an excuse to get out of the way, so that he might have a hearty laugh. And Aaron, when he came to see the Little Master that night, knew for the first time that he had scared the fox hunters nearly out of their wits. XIV. THE LITTLE MASTER SAYS GOOD-NIGHT. After George Gossett's two experiences in the pasture, he came to the conclusion that it would not be profitable to do any more patrolling on the Abercrombie place, but this did not add to his good humor. He had his father's surly temper, and, with it, a vindictive spirit that was entirely lacking in the elder Gossett. Moreover, age had not moderated nor impaired his energies, as it had his father's. The fact that he had failed to capture Aaron struck him as a personal affront. He was stung by it. He felt that he and his father had been wronged by some one, he couldn't say who, but not by the runaway, for what was a "nigger," anyhow? After a while the idea was borne in upon him that somehow he and his family had been "insulted" by the Abercrombies. He arrived at this conclusion by a very circuitous route. The Abercrombies were harboring a Yankee in their house; and if they had the stomach to do that, why wasn't it just as easy for them to harbor "pap's" runaway nigger, especially when they were so keen to buy him? Another thing that stung him, though he never mentioned it, was the sudden and unexplainable attitude of his father toward Aaron. Young Gossett had observed that his father appeared to lose interest in the runaway after Mr. Jim Simmons failed to catch him, but the fact was not impressed upon the young man's mind until the day he told the elder Gossett about the queer sight he saw in Abercrombie's pasture. "Were you hunting the runaway?" his father asked, with some impatience. "Why, no, pap. We weren't doing a thing in the world, but crossing the pasture on our way to the Turner old fields." "Very well, then. Do as I do; let him alone. If you don't you'll get hurt. I know what I'm talking about." This fairly took George's breath away. "Why, pap!" he cried; "ain't he your nigger? Didn't you buy him and pay your money down for him? Don't you want him out of the woods? And who's going to hurt me, pap?" "You mind what I tell you," snapped the elder Gossett. "I'm older than you, and when I know a thing I know it. Let the runaway alone." "If I'm going to be hurt," responded George doggedly, "I'd like to know who'll do it." It would have been better for both if Mr. Gossett had told his son of his experience with Aaron. As it was, George was in danger of losing the little respect he had for his father. When he was warned that he would be hurt if he kept on trying to capture Aaron, he suspected at once that the warning related to Mr. Abercrombie. Who else would dare to hurt him, or even threaten to hurt him? Certainly not the runaway. Who, then, but Abercrombie? The suggestion was enough. It made George Gossett so furious that he never thought to reflect that he himself had invented it. Once invented, however, every circumstance seemed to fit it. His father had suddenly lost interest in the runaway, though he had paid out money for him, and had hardly received a week's work in return. Why? Because Mr. Abercrombie had overawed his father in a crowd, just as he did the day Aaron was sold from the block. The young man had not forgotten that episode, and his resentment was rekindled and grew hotter than ever, for it was now reinforced by inward shame and disgust at the way his father had allowed himself to be overcome--and that, too, in regard to his own property. The first result of George Gossett's resentment was his nearly successful effort to make the Teacher, Richard Hudspeth, the victim of the violent and natural prejudice that existed at that time against abolitionists; an event that has been related in "The Story of Aaron." The rescue of the Teacher by Mr. Abercrombie, and the fact that George Gossett was knocked flat by the Black Stallion, caused his resentment to rise to a white heat. He brooded over the matter until, at last, a desire to injure Mr. Abercrombie became an uncontrollable mania, and it went so far that one night, inflamed by whiskey, he set fire to the dwelling-house of the man he believed to be his father's enemy. Then it was that Aaron rescued Little Crotchet and Free Polly, and fell fainting to the ground. And then it was that Mr. Gossett seized the first plausible opportunity that had presented itself to sell Aaron to Mr. Abercrombie. It is true, he drove a sharp bargain, suspecting that the runaway had seriously injured himself; but he would have sold Aaron in any event, being anxious to get rid of him. George Gossett disappeared that night and was seen no more in that region. Years afterward, a homesick Georgian returning from Texas brought word that George Gossett had made a name for himself in that State, being known as a tough and a terror. It's an ill wind that blows no good to any one. George Gossett little knew, when he applied the torch to the Abercrombie dwelling, that the light of it would call Aaron from the wildwoods and show him the way to a home where he was to live, happy in the love of Little Crotchet and of children as yet unborn, and happy in the respect and confidence of those whose interest he served. Perhaps if George Gossett could have looked into the future, the blaze that produced these results would never have been kindled, and in that event the story of Aaron in the Wildwoods could have been spun out at greater length, but the conclusion would not have been different. Richard Hudspeth remained long enough to see Aaron duly installed in his new home, for the Abercrombie mansion was at once rebuilt on a larger scale than ever, and to see him serve as the major-domo of the establishment. But the departure of the Teacher was not delayed for many months after his experience with the reckless and irresponsible young men who had placed themselves under the leadership of George Gossett. Duties more pressing and more important than those he had assumed in Georgia called him to his Northern home, where a larger career awaited him--a career that made him famous. He became the most intimate adviser of Abraham Lincoln, and that great man found in him what, at the outset, he found in few New England men, the deepest sympathy and highest appreciation. It was characteristic of Richard Hudspeth that the treatment he received at the hands of George Gossett and his night riders bred no resentment against the Southern people, and the trait of character that shut the door of his mind against all petty prejudices and rancorous judgments was precisely the trait that attracted first the notice and finally the friendship of Mr. Lincoln. Aaron was as much of a mystery to the negroes on the Abercrombie place when he came to move about among them as he was when he roamed in the wildwoods. He was as much of a mystery to them years afterwards, when Buster John and Sweetest Susan came upon the scene, as he was when he first made his appearance on the place, but by that time the mystery he presented was a familiar one. The negroes had not solved it, but they were used to it. At first it seemed that they would never cease to wonder. They watched his every movement, and always with increasing awe and respect. He went about among them freely, but not familiarly. He was not of them, and they knew it. He was kind and considerate, especially where the women and children were concerned, but always reserved, always dignified, always serious. Yet he never lost his temper, never frowned, and was never known to utter an angry word or make a gesture of irritation. He had the remarkable gift of patience, that seemed to be so highly developed in some animals. It was Uncle Fountain who drew the parallel between the patience displayed by Aaron and that of the animals, and added this, after turning the matter over in his mind: "Mo' speshually de creeturs what kin see in de dark." On rare occasions Aaron would go into one of the cabins where the negroes were enjoying themselves, and there would be a mighty hustling around in that cabin until he had the most comfortable chair, or stool, or bench, or tub turned bottom-side up. At such times he would say, "Sing!" And then, after some display of shyness, Randall or Turin would strike into a quaint plantation melody, and carry it along; and as their voices died away the powerful and thrilling tenor of Susy's Sam, and Jemimy's quavering soprano would take up the refrain, all the singers joining in at the close. No matter what melody was sung, or what words were employed, the instinct and emotions of the negroes gave to their performance the form and essence of true balladry,--the burden, the refrain, the culmination, and the farewell; or, as the writers of pretty verse now call it, the envoi. Often on such occasions Aaron would enter the negro cabin bearing the Little Master in his arms. And then the negroes were better pleased, for the Little Master somehow seemed to stand between them and the awesome being they knew as Aaron. At such times the arms of Big Sal ached to hold Little Crotchet, the lad seemed to be so pale and frail. Once she made bold to say to Aaron:-- "I kin hol' 'im some ef you tired." "I won't be tired of that till I'm dead," responded Aaron. "I know mighty well how dat is," responded Big Sal humbly. "I des wanted ter hol' 'im. I _has_ helt him." "She wants to hold you," said Aaron to the Little Master. And the reply was, "Well, why not?" Whereupon Big Sal took the lad in her arms, and when the rest began to sing she swayed her strong body back and forth, and joined in the song with a voice so low and soft and sweet that it seemed to be the undertone of melody itself; and the effect of it was so soothing that when the song was ended the Little Master was fast asleep and smiling, and Big Sal leaned over him with such a yearning at her heart that only a word or a look would have been necessary to set her to weeping. Neither then nor ever afterwards did she know the reason why or seek to discover it. Enough for her that it was so. Something in her attitude told the rest of the negroes that the Little Master was asleep, and so when they sang another song they pitched their voices low,--so low that the melody seemed to come drifting through the air and in at the door from far away. When it was ended nothing would do but each negro must come forward on tiptoe and take a look at the Little Master, who was still asleep and smiling. When Aaron rose to go Big Sal was somewhat embarrassed. She didn't want the Little Master awakened, and yet she didn't know how he could be transferred to Aaron's arms without arousing him. But the Son of Ben Ali solved that problem. He nodded to Big Sal and motioned toward the door, and she, carrying the Little Master in her strong arms, went out into the dark. Aaron paused at the threshold, raised his right hand above his head, and followed Big Sal. This gesture he always made by way of salutation and farewell on the threshold of every door he entered or went out of, whether the room was full of people or empty. Whether it was the door of his master's house or of Timoleon's stable, he paused and raised his right hand. [Illustration: BIG SAL HOLDS THE LITTLE MASTER] The negroes noted it, and, simple as it was, it served to deepen the mystery in which Aaron seemed to be enveloped; and among themselves they shook their heads and whispered that he must be a "cunjur" man. But Aaron was not troubled by whisperings that never reached his ears, nor by the strange imaginings of the negroes. He had other things to think of--one thing in particular that seemed to him to be most serious. He could see that Little Crotchet was gradually growing weaker and weaker. It was some time before he discovered this. We know that the trunks of trees slowly expand, but we do not see the process going on. Little Crotchet seemed to be growing weaker day by day, and yet the process was so gradual that only the most careful observation could detect it. The burning of the house was something of a shock to him. He was not frightened by that event, and never for a moment lost his self-possession; but the spectacle of the fierce red flames mounting high in the air, their red tongues darting out and lapping about in space, and then, having found nothing to feed on, curling back and devouring the house, roaring and growling, and snapping and hissing,--this spectacle was so unexpected and so impossible in that place that the energy Little Crotchet lost in trying to fit the awful affair to his experience never came back to him. He never lost the feeling of numbness that came over him as he saw the house disappear in smoke and flame. But it was weeks--months--after that before Aaron made his discovery, a discovery that could only be confirmed by the keenest and most patient watchfulness. For Little Crotchet was never more cheerful. And he was restless, too; always eager to be going. But Aaron soon saw that if the lad went galloping about on the Gray Pony as often as before, he did not go so far. Nor did he use his crutches so freely,--the crutches on which he had displayed such marvelous nimbleness. And so from day to day Aaron saw that the Little Master was slowly failing. The lad found the nights longer, and Aaron had great trouble to drive away the red goblin, Pain. Thus the days slipped by, and the weeks ran into months, and the months counted up a year lacking a fortnight. This fortnight found the Little Master in bed both day and night, still happy and cheerful, but weak and pale. Always at night Aaron was sitting by the bed, and sometimes the lad would send for Big Sal. He was so cheerful that he deceived everybody except the doctor and Aaron as to his condition. But one day the doctor came and sat by the Little Master's bedside longer than usual. The lad was cheerful as ever, but the doctor knew. As he was going away he gave some information to the father and mother that caused them to turn pale. The mother, indeed, would have rushed weeping to her son. Was it for this,--for this,--her darling child had been born? The doctor stayed her. It was indeed for this her darling child had been born. Would she hasten it? Why not let the mystery come to him as a friend and comforter,--as the friend of friends,--as a messenger from our dear Lord, the Prince of Peace and Joy? And so the poor mother dried her eyes as best she could and took her place by the Little Master's bedside. The lad was cheerful and his eyes were as bright as a bird's. Doctors do not know everything, the mother thought, and, taking heart of hope, smiled as Little Crotchet prattled away. Nothing would do but he must have a look at the toys that used to amuse him when he was a little bit of a boy; and in getting out the old toys the mother found a shoe he had worn when he first began to walk,--a little shoe out at the toe and worn at the heel. This interested the lad more than all the toys. He held it in his hand and measured it with his thumb. And was it truly true that he had ever worn a shoe as small as that? The shoe reminded him of something else he had been thinking of. He had dreamed that when he got well he would need his crutches no more, and he wondered how it would feel to walk with his feet on the ground. And there was the old popgun, too, still smelling of chinaberries. If Aaron only but knew it, that popgun had been a wonderful gun. Yes, siree! the bird that didn't want to get hurt when that popgun was in working order had to run mighty fast or fly mighty high. But, heigh-ho! he was too old and too large for popguns now, and when he got well, which would be pretty soon, he would have a sure-enough gun, and then he would get a powder flask and a shot bag and mount the Gray Pony and shoot--well, let's see what he would shoot: not the gray squirrels, they were too pretty; not the shy partridges, they might have nests or young ones somewhere; not the rabbits--they were too funny with their pop eyes and big ears. Well, he could shoot at a mark, and that's just what he would do. And when night fell, the Little Master wanted to hear the negroes sing. And he wanted mother and father and sister to hear them too--not the loud songs, but the soft and sweet ones. But the negroes wouldn't feel like singing at all if everybody was in the room with them, and mother and father and sister could sit in the next room and pretend they were not listening. And so it was arranged. When the negroes arrived and were ushered into the room by Mammy Lucy, they were so embarrassed and felt so much out of place they hardly knew what to do, or say, or how to begin. Aaron was carrying the Little Master in his arms, walking up and down, up and down, and his long strides and supple knees gave a swinging motion to his body that was infinitely soothing and restful to the Little Master. Swinging back and forth, up and down, the Son of Ben Ali paid no attention to the negroes, and they stood confused for a moment, but only for a moment. Suddenly there came streaming into the room the strain of a heart-breaking melody, rising and falling, falling and rising, as the leaves of a weeping willow are blown by the wind; drifting away and floating back, as the foam of the wave is swayed by the sea. Little Crotchet lay still in Aaron's arms for ever so long. Was he listening? Who knows? He was almost within hearing of the songs of the angels. Suddenly he raised his head in the pause of the song-- "Tell them all good-night. Tell mother"-- Aaron stopped his swinging walk and placed the Little Master on the bed and stood beside it, his right hand raised above his head. It might have been a benediction, it might have been a prayer. The negroes interpreted it as a signal of dismissal. One by one they went softly to the bedside and gazed on the Little Master. He might have been asleep, for he was smiling. Each negro looked inquiringly at Aaron, and to each he nodded, his right hand still lifted above his head. [Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE LITTLE MASTER] Big Sal had waited till the last, and she was the only one that said a word. "He look des like he did when he drapt asleep in deze arms," she cried, sobbing as though her heart would break, "an' I thank my God fer dat much! But oh, man, what a pity! What a pity!" And she went out of the house into the yard, and through the yard into the lot, and through the lot to the negro cabins, crying, "_Oh, what a pity! what a pity!_" Not for the Little Master, for he was smiling at the glorious vision of peace and rest that he saw when he said good-night. Not pity for the lad, but for those he had left behind him, for all who loved him; for all who had depended on his thoughtfulness; for all the weary and sorrowful ones. _Oh, what a pity!_ Over and over again, _what a pity!_ And the wind flowing softly about the world took up the poor negro's wailing cry and sent it over the hill and beyond, and the outlying messengers of the Swamp took it up--_What a pity!_ And the Willis-Whistlers piped low, and the mysteries, swaying and slipping through the canes and tall grass, heard the whispered echo and sighed, _Oh, what a pity!_ * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. A number of words in this book had both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants; for those words the variant more frequently used was retained. This book also contains dialect and vernacular conversation. Obvious punctuation errors were fixed. Other printing errors, which were not detected during the revision of the printing process of the original book, have been corrected. It was unclear if in the expression "simple as a-b ab", in page 67, the second "ab" should be hyphenated. It was decided to keep the text unchanged. 
44626	----	Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/plantationremini00burw Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). The author's name on the cover and in the copyright notice seems to be a pseudonym. According to the catalog of the Library of Congress, the author was Letitia M. Burwell. PLANTATION REMINISCENCES by PAGE THACKER. 1878. Copyrighted in 1878 by Page Thacker. DEDICATION. Dedicated to my nieces, who will find in English and American publications such epithets applied to their ancestors as: "Cruel slave-owners;" "inhuman;" "Southern task masters;" "hard-hearted;" "dealers in human souls," &c. From these they will naturally recoil with horror. My own life would have been embittered had I believed myself descended from such; and that those who come after us may know the truth I wish to leave a record of plantation life as it was. The truth may thus be preserved among a few, and the praise they deserve awarded noble men and virtuous women who have passed away. PREFACE. For several years I have felt a desire to write these reminiscences, but did not conclude to do so until receiving, a few months ago, a letter from Mr. Martin F. Tupper--the English poet--in which he wrote: "Let me encourage you in the idea of writing 'Plantation Reminiscences.' It will be a good work; and it is time the world was learning the truth. I myself have learned it and shall not be slow in telling it to others." PLANTATION REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER I. That my birth place should have been a Virginia plantation; my lot in life cast on a Virginia plantation; my ancestors, for nine generations, owners of Virginia plantations, remain facts mysterious and inexplicable but to Him who determined the bounds of our habitations, and said: "Be still, and know that I am God." Confined exclusively to a Virginia plantation, during my earliest childhood, I believed the world one vast plantation bounded by negro quarters. Rows of white cabins with gardens attached; negro men in the fields; negro women sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, house-keeping in the cabins, with negro children dancing, romping, singing, jumping, playing around the doors, formed the only pictures familiar to my childhood. The master's residence--as the negroes called it, the "great house"--occupied a central position, and was handsome and attractive; the overseer's being a plainer house, about a mile from this. Each cabin had as much pine furniture as the occupants desired; pine and oak being abundant, and carpenters always at work for the comfort of the plantation. Bread, meat, milk, vegetables, fruit and fuel were as plentiful as water in the springs near the cabin doors. Among the negroes--one hundred--on our plantation, many had been taught different trades; and there were blacksmiths, carpenters, brick masons, millers, shoemakers, weavers, spinners, all working for themselves. No article of their handicraft ever being sold from the place, their industry resulted in nothing beyond feeding and clothing themselves. My sister and myself, when very small children, were often carried to visit these cabins, on which occasions no young princesses could have received from admiring subjects more adulation. Presents were laid at our feet--not glittering gems--but eggs, chesnuts, popcorn, walnuts, melons, apples, sweet potatoes, all their "cupboards" afforded, with a generosity unbounded. This made us as happy as queens; and filled our hearts with kindness and gratitude to our dusky admirers. Around the cabin doors the young negroes would quarrel as to who should be his or her mistress; some claiming me, and others my sister. All were merry-hearted, and among them I never saw a discontented face. Their amusements were dancing to the music of the banjo, quilting parties, opossum hunting, and, sometimes, weddings and parties. Many could read, and in almost every cabin was a Bible. In one was a Prayer-book, kept by one of the men--a preacher--from which he read the marriage ceremony at the weddings. This man opened a night school--charging twenty-five cents a week--hoping to inspire some literary thirst among the rising generation, who, however, preferred their nightly frolics to the school, so it had few patrons. Our house servants were numerous, polite and well trained. My mother selected those most obliging in disposition and quick at learning, who were brought to the house at ten or twelve years of age, and instructed in the branches of household employment. These small servants were always dressed in the cleanest, whitest long-sleeved aprons, with white or red turbans on their heads. No establishment being considered complete without a multiplicity of these; they might be seen constantly darting about on errands from the house to the kitchen and the cabins; up stairs and down stairs, being indeed omnipresent and indispensable. It was the custom for a lady visitor to be accompanied to her room at night by one of these black, smiling "indispensables," who insisted so good naturedly on performing all offices, combing her hair, pulling off her slippers, &c., that one had not the heart to refuse, although it would have been sometimes more agreeable to have been left alone. The negroes were generally pleased at the appearance of visitors, from whom they were accustomed to receive some present on arriving or departing, the neglect of which was considered a breach of politeness. The old negroes were quite patriarchal; loved to talk about "old times," and exacted great respect from the young negroes, and also from the younger members of the white family. We called the old men "Uncle," and the old women "Aunt," cognomens of respect. The atmosphere of our own home was consideration and kindness. The mere recital of a tale of suffering would make my sister and myself weep with sorrow. And I believe the maltreatment of one of our servants--we had never heard the word "slave"--would have distressed us beyond endurance. We early learned that happiness consisted in dispensing it, and found no pleasure greater than saving our old dolls, toys, beads, bits of cake, or candy for the cabin children, whose delight at receiving them richly repaid us. If any of the older servants became displeased with us, we were miserable until we had restored the old smile by presenting some choice bit of sweet meat, cake or candy. I remember once, when my grand-mother scolded nurse Kitty, saying: "Kitty, the butler tells me you disturb the breakfast cream every morning, dipping out milk to wash your face," I burst in tears, and thought it hard when there were so many cows poor Kitty could not wash her face in milk. Kitty had been told that her dark skin would be improved by a milk bath, which she had not hesitated to dip every morning from the breakfast buckets. At such establishments one easily acquired a habit of being waited upon--there being so many servants with so little to do. It was natural to ask for a drink of water, when the water was right by you, and have things brought which you might easily have gotten yourself. But these domestics were so pleased at such errands one felt no hesitation in requiring them. A young lady would ask black Nancy or Dolly to fan her, whereupon Nancy or Dolly would laugh good naturedly, produce a large palm leaf and fall to fanning her young mistress vigorously, after which she would be rewarded with a bow of ribbon, candy or sweet cakes. The negroes made pocket money by selling their own vegetables, poultry, eggs, &c.--made at the master's expense, of course. I often saw my mother take out her purse and pay them liberally for fowls, eggs, melons, sweet potatoes, brooms, shuck mats and split baskets. The men made small crops of tobacco or potatoes for themselves on any piece of ground they chose to select. My mother and grand-mother were almost always talking over the wants of the negroes,--what medicine should be sent--who they should visit--who needed new shoes, clothes or blankets,--the principle object of their lives seeming to be providing these comforts. The carriage was often ordered for them to ride around to the cabins to distribute light-bread, tea and other necessaries among the sick. And besides employing the best doctor, my grand-mother always saw that they received the best nursing and attention. In this little plantation world of ours was one being--and only one--who inspired awe in every heart, being a special terror to small children. This was the Queen of the Kitchen--Aunt Christian--who reigned supreme. She wore the whitest cotton cap, with the broadest of ruffles; was very black and very portly, and her sceptre was a good sized stick, kept to chastise small dogs and children who invaded her territory. Her character, however, having been long established she had not often occasion to use this weapon, as these enemies kept out of her way. Her pride was great, for, said she: "Haven't I been, long before this here little master whar is was born, bakin' the best light-bread and waffles and biscuit; and in my old master's time managed my own affars!" She was generally left to manage "her own affars," and being a pattern of neatness and industry her fame went abroad from Botetourt, even unto the remotest ends of Mecklenburg county. That this marvellous cooking was all the work of her own hands I am, in later years, inclined to doubt, as she kept several assistants, a boy to chop wood, beat biscuit, scour tables, lift off pots and ovens; one woman to make the pastry and another to compound cakes and jellies. But her fame was great; her pride lofty, and I would not now pluck one laurel from her wreath. This honest woman was appreciated by my mother, but we had no affinity for her, in consequence of certain traditions on the plantation about her severity to children. Having no children of her own, a favorite orphan house-girl, whenever my mother went from home, was left to her care. This girl--now an elderly woman, and still our faithful and loved servant,--says she remembers to this day her joy at my mother's return home, and her release from Aunt Christian. "I will never forget," to use her own words, "how I watched the road every day, hoping that mistress would come back, and when I saw the carriage I would run a mile, shouting and clapping my hands." Smiling faces always welcomed us home as the carriage passed through the plantation, and on reaching the house we were received by the negroes about the yard with liveliest demonstrations of pleasure. CHAPTER II. It was a long time before it dawned upon my mind there were places and people different from these. The plantations we visited seemed exactly like ours. The same hospitality everywhere, the same kindliness existing between the white family and the blacks. Confined exclusively to plantation scenes, the most trifling incidents impressed themselves indelibly upon me. One day while my mother was in the yard attending to the planting of some shrubbery, we saw approaching an old, feeble negro man, leaning upon his stick. His clothes were nearly worn out, and he, haggard and thin. "Good day, Mistess," said he. "Who are you?" asked my mother. "My name is John," he replied, "and I belonged to your husband's uncle. He died a long time ago. Before he died he set me free and gave me a good piece of land near Petersburg, and some money and stock. But all--my money and land--all gone, and I was starving. So I come one hundred miles to beg you and master please let me live and die on your plantation. I don't want to be free no longer. Please don't let me be free." I wondered what was meant by being "free," and supposed from his appearance it must be some very dreadful and unfortunate condition of humanity. My mother heard him very kindly, and directed him to the kitchen where "Aunt Christian" would give him a plenty to eat. Although there were already a number of old negroes to be supported, who no longer considered themselves young enough to work, this old man was added to the number, and a cabin built for him. To the day of his death he expressed gratitude to my mother for taking care of him, and often entertained us with accounts of _his_ "old master's times," which he said were the "grandest of all." By way of apology for certain knotty excrescences on his feet, he used to say: "You see these here knots. Well, they come from my being a monstrous proud young nigger, and squeezin' my feet in de tightest boots to drive my master's carriage 'bout Petersburg. I nuver was so happy as when I was drivin' my coach-an'-four, and crackin' de postillion over de head wid my whip." These pleasant reminiscences were generally concluded with: "Ah! young Misses, _you'll_ nuver see sich times. No more postillions! No more coach-an'-four! And niggers drives _now_ widout they white gloves. Ah! no, young Misses, _you'll_ nuver see nothin'! _Nuver_, in _your_ time." With these melancholy predictions would he shake his head, and sigh that the days of glory had departed. Each generation of blacks vied with the other in extolling the virtues of their particular mistress and master and "_their times_;" but notwithstanding this mournful contrast between the past and present, their reminiscences had a certain charm. Often by their cabin firesides would we listen to the tales of the olden days about our forefathers, of whom they could tell much, having belonged to our family since the landing of the African fathers on the English slave ships, from which their ancestors had been bought by ours. Among these traditions none pleased us so much as that an unkind mistress or master had never been known among our ancestors, which we have always considered a cause for greater pride than the armorial bearings left on their tombstones. We often listened with pleasure to the recollections of an old blind man--the former faithful attendant of our grand-father--whose mind was filled with vivid pictures of the past. He repeated verbatim conversations and speeches heard sixty years before--from Mr. Madison, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Clay, and other statesmen, his master's special friends. "Yes," he used to say, "I staid with your grandpa ten years in Congress, and all the time he was Secretary for President Jefferson. He nuver give me a cross word, and I nuver saw your grandma the least out of temper neither, but once, and that was at a dinner party 'we' give in Washington, when the French Minister said something disrespectful about the United States." Often did he tell us: "The greatest pleasure I expect in heaven, is seeing my old master." And sometimes, "I dream about my master and mistress when I am sleep, and talk with them and see them so plain it makes me so happy that I laugh out right loud." This man was true and honest--a good Christian. Important trusts had been confided to him. He frequently carried the carriage and horses to Washington and Baltimore--a journey of two weeks--and sometimes sent to carry a large sum of money to a distant county. His wife, who had accompanied him in her youth to Washington, also entertained us with gossip about the people of that day, and could tell exactly the size and color of Mrs. Madison's slippers, how she was dressed on certain occasions, "what beautiful manners she had," how Mr. Jefferson received master and mistress when "we" drove up to Monticello, what room they occupied, &c. Although my grand-father's death occurred thirty years before, the negroes still remembered it with sorrow; and one of them, speaking of it, said to me, "Ah, little mistess, 'twas a sorrowful day when de news come from Washington dat our good, kind master was dead. A mighty wail went up from dis plantation, for we know'd we had loss our bes friend." The only negro on the place who did not evince an interest in the white family was a man ninety years old, who, forty years before, announced his intention of not working any longer--although still strong and athletic--because, he said, "the estate had done come down so he hadn't no heart to work no longer." He remembered, he said, "when thar was three and four hundred black folks, but sence de British debt had to be paid over by his old master, and de Macklenbug estate had to be sold, he hadn't had no heart to do nothin' sence." And "he hadn't seen no _real_ fine white folks--what _he_ called real fine white folks--sence he come from Macklenbug." All his interest in life having expired with an anterior generation; we were in his eyes but a poor set, and he refused to have anything to do with us. Not being compelled to work, he passed his life principally in the woods, wore a rabbit-skin cap and a leather apron. Having lost interest in, and connection with the white family, he gradually relapsed into a state of barbarism, refusing towards the end of his life to sleep in his bed, preferring a hard bench in his cabin, upon which he died. Another very old man remembered something of his father, who had come from Africa; and when we asked him to tell us what he remembered of his father's narrations, would say: "My father told us that his mother lived in a hole in the ground, and when the English people come to Africa she sold him for a string of beads. He said ''twas mighty hard for him, when he fus come to dis country, to wear clothes.' Sometimes he would git so mad wid us chillun, my mammy would have to run and hide us to keep him from killin' us. Den sometimes at night he would say: 'He gwine sing he country,' den he would dance and jump and howl and skeer us to death." They spoke always of their forefathers as the "outlandish people." On some plantations it was a custom to buy the wife when a negro preferred to marry on another estate. And in this way we became possessed of a famous termagant, who had married our grand-father's gardener, quarrelled him to death in one year and survived to quarrel forty years longer with the other negroes. She had no children--not even a cat or dog could live with her. She had been offered her freedom, but refused to accept it. Several times had been given away; once to her son--a free man--and to others with whom she fancied she might live, but, like the bad penny, was always returned to us. She always returned in a cart, seated on top of her chest and surrounded by her goods and chattels, dressed in a high hat, long black plume--standing straight up--gay cloth spencer and short petticoat, the costume of a hundred years ago. Although her return was a sore affliction to the plantation, my sister and myself found much amusement in witnessing it. The cold welcome she received seemed not to affect her spirits, but re-establishing herself in her cabin she quickly resumed the turbulent course of her career. Finally one morning the news came that this woman, old Clara, was dead. Two women went to sweep her cabin and perform the last sad offices. They waited all day for the body to get cold. While sitting over the fire in the evening, one of them happening to glance at a small mirror inserted in the wall near the bed, exclaimed: "Old Clara's laughing!" They went nearer and there was a horrible grin on the face of the corpse! Old Clara sprang out of bed exclaiming, "Git me some meat and bread. I'm most perish'd!" "Old woman, what you mean by foolin' us so?" asked the nurses. "I jes want see what you all gwine do wid my _things_ when I _was_ dead!" replied the old woman, whose "things" consisted of all sorts of old and curious spencers, hats, plumes, necklaces, caps and dresses, collected during her various wanderings and worn by a long past generation. Among these old cabin legends we sometimes collected bits of romance, and were often told how, by the coquetry of a certain Richmond belle, we had lost a handsome fortune, which impressed me even then with the fatal consequences of coquetry. This belle engaged herself to our great uncle--a handsome and accomplished gentleman--who, to improve his health, went to Europe; but before embarking made his will, leaving her his estate and negroes. He died abroad, and the lady accepted his property, although she was known to have been engaged to twelve others at the same time! The story in Richmond ran that these twelve gentlemen--my grand-father among them--had a wine party, and towards the close of the evening some of them becoming communicative, began taking each other out to tell a secret when it was discovered they all had the same secret--each was engaged to Miss Betsy M----. This lady's name is still seen on fly leaves of old books in our library--books used during her reign by students at William and Mary College--showing that the young gentlemen, even at that venerable Institution, allowed their classic thoughts sometimes to wander. CHAPTER III. As soon as my sister and myself had learned to read and cipher, we were inspired with a desire to teach the negroes who were about the house and kitchen; and my father promised to reward my sister with a handsome guitar if she would teach two boys--designed for mechanics--arithmetic. Our regular system was every night to place chairs around the dining table, ring a bell and open school; she presiding at one end and I at the other of the table, each propped on books to give us the necessary height and dignity for teachers. Our school proved successful. The boys learned arithmetic and the guitar was awarded. All who tried learned to read, and from that day we have never ceased to teach all who desired to learn. Thus my early life was passed amid scenes cheerful and agreeable, nor did any one seem to have any care except my mother. Her cares and responsibilities were great, with one hundred people continually upon her mind, who were constantly appealing to her in every strait, real or imaginary. But it had pleased God to place her here, and nobly did she perform the duties of her station. She often told us of her distress on realizing for the first time the responsibilities devolving upon the mistress of a large plantation, and the nights of sorrow and tears these thoughts had given her. On her arrival at the plantation after her marriage, the negroes received her with lively demonstrations of joy, clapping their hands and shouting: "Thank God, we got a mistess!" Some of them throwing themselves on the ground at her feet in their enthusiasm. The plantation had been without a master or mistress twelve years; my father--the sole heir--having been off at school and College. During this time the silver had been left in the house, and the servants had kept and used it, but _nothing had been stolen_. The books, too, had been undisturbed in the library, except a few volumes of the poets which had been carried to adorn some of the cabin shelves. It was known by the negroes that their old master's will set them free and gave them a large body of land in the event of my father's death; and some of his College friends suggested he might be killed while passing his vacations on his estate. But this only amused him, for he knew too well in what affection he was held by his negroes, and how each vied with the other in showing him attention--spreading a dinner often for him at their cabins when he returned from hunting or fishing. I think I have written enough to show the mutual affection existing between the white and black races--and the abundant provision generally made for the wants of those whom God had mysteriously placed under our care. The existence of extreme want and poverty had never entered my mind, until one day my mother showing us some pictures, entitled "London Labor and London Poor," we asked her if she believed there were such poor people in the world, and she replied: "Yes, children, there are many in this world who have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat." Still we could not realize what she said, for we had never seen a beggar. But from that time it began to dawn upon us that all the world was not a plantation, with more than enough on it for people to eat. And when we were old enough to read and compare our surroundings with what we learned about other countries, we found that our laboring population was more bountifully supplied than that of any other land. We read about "myriads of poor, starving creatures, with pinched faces and tattered garments," in far off cities and countries. We read of hundreds who, from destitution and wretchedness, committed suicide. We read these things, but could not fully sympathise with such want and suffering; for it is necessary to witness these in order to feel the fullest sympathy, and we had never seen anything of the kind on our own or our neighbor's plantations. Their religious instruction, I found, had not been more neglected than among the lower classes in England, Ireland, France, Russia and elsewhere. Every church--there was one of some denomination near every plantation--had special seats reserved for the negroes. The minister always addressed a portion of his sermon particularly to them, and held service for them exclusively on Sabbath afternoon. Besides, they had their own ministers among themselves, and had night prayer meetings in their cabins whenever they chose. Many prayers ascended from earnest hearts for their conversion, and I knew no home at which some effort was not made for their religious instruction. One of our friends--a Presbyterian minister and earnest Christian--devoted the greater part of his time to preaching and teaching them. And many pious ministers, throughout the State, bestowed upon them time and labor. I once attended a gay party where the young lady of the house--the center of attraction--hearing that one of the negroes was suddenly very ill, excused herself from the company, carried her Prayer-book to the cabin, and passed the night by the bedside of the sick man, reading and repeating verses to him. I have also had young lady friends who declined attending a wedding or party when a favorite servant was ill. On one occasion an English gentleman--Surgeon in the Royal Artillery--visiting at our house, accompanied us to a wedding and hearing that two young ladies had not attended on account of the illness of a negro servant, said to me: "This would not have been in England, and will scarcely be believed when I tell it on my return." The same gentleman expressed astonishment at one of our neighbor's sitting up all night to nurse one of his negroes who was ill. He was amused at the manner of our servants' identifying themselves with the master and his possessions, always speaking of "our horses," "our cows," "our crop," "our mill," "our blacksmith's shop," "our carriage," "our black folks," &c. He told us he observed also a difference between our menials and those of his own country, in that, while here they were individualized, there they were known by the names of "Boots," "'Ostler," "Driver," "Footman," "Cook," "Waiter," "Scullion," &c. On our plantations the most insignificant stable boy felt himself of some importance. When I heard Mr. Dickens read scenes from Nicholas Nickleby, the tone of voice in which he personated Smike sent a chill through me, for I had never before heard the human voice express such hopeless despair. Can there be in England, thought I, human beings afraid of the sound of their own voices? There was a class of men in our State who made a business of buying negroes to sell again farther south. These we never met, and held in horror. But even they, when we reflect, could not have treated them with inhumanity; for what man would pay a thousand dollars for a piece of property, and fail to take the best possible care of it? The "traders" usually bought their negroes when an estate became involved, for the owners could not be induced to part with their negroes until the last extremity--when everything else had been seized by their creditors. Houses, lands, everything went first, before giving up the negroes; the owner preferring to impoverish himself in the effort to keep and provide for these--which was unwise, financially, and would not have been thought of by a mercenary people. But it was hard to part with one's "own people," and see them scattered. Still our debts had to be paid; often security debts after the death of the owner, when all had to be sold. And who of us but can remember the tears of anguish caused by this, and scenes of sorrow to which we can never revert without the keenest grief? Yet, like all events in this chequered human life, even these sometimes turned out best for the negroes, when by this means they exchanged unpleasant for more agreeable homes. Still it appeared to me a great evil, and often did I pray that God would make us a way of escape from it. But His ways are past finding out, and why He had been pleased to order it thus we shall never know. Instances of harsh or cruel treatment were rare. I never heard of more than two or three individuals who were "hard" or unkind to their negroes, and these were ostracised from respectable society, their very names bringing reproach and blight upon their descendants. We knew of but one instance of cruelty on our plantation, and that was when "Uncle Joe," the blacksmith, burnt his nephew's face with a hot iron. The man carries the scar to this day, and in speaking of it, always says: "Soon as my master found out how Uncle Joe treated me he wouldn't let me work no more in his shop." CHAPTER IV. The extent of these estates precluding the possibility of near neighbors, their isolation would have been intolerable but for the custom of visiting which prevailed among us. Many houses were filled with visitors the greater part of the year, usually remaining two or three weeks. Visiting tours were made in our private carriages--each family making at least one such tour a year. Nor was it necessary to announce these visits by message or letter, each house being considered always ready, and "entertaining company" the occupation of the people. Sometimes two or three carriages might be descried in the evening coming up to the door through the Lombardy poplar avenue--the usual approach to many old houses--whereupon ensued a lively flutter among small servants, who speedily got them into their clean aprons, and ran to open gates, and remove parcels from carriages, and becoming generally excited. Lady visitors were always accompanied by colored maids, although sure of finding a superfluity of these at each establishment. The mistress of the house always received her guests in the front porch, with a sincere and cordial greeting. These visiting friends at my own home made an impression upon me that no time can efface. I almost see them now--those dear, gentle faces--my mother's early friends; and those delightful old ladies in close bordered tarletan caps, who used to come to see my grandmother. These last would sit round the fire knitting and talking over their early memories; how they remembered the red coats of the British; how they had seen the Richmond theater burn down, with some of their family burned in it. How they used to wear such beautiful turbans of _crepe lise_ to the Cartersville balls, and how they used to dance the minuet. At mention of this, my grandmother would lay off her spectacles, put aside her knitting, rise with dignity--she was very tall--and show us the step of the minuet, gliding slowly and majestically around the room. Then she would say: "Ah, children, you will never see anything so graceful as the minuet. Such jumping around as _you_ see would not have been considered 'genteel' in _my_ day!" My mother's friends belonged to a later generation, and were types of women, whom to have known I shall ever consider a blessing and privilege. They combined intelligence with exquisite refinement and agreeability; and their annual visits gave my mother the greatest happiness, which we soon learned to share and appreciate. As I consider these ladies models for our sex through all time, I enumerate some of their attractions: Entire absence of pretense made them always agreeable. Having no "parlor" or "company" manners to assume, they preserved at all times a gentle, natural, easy demeanor and conversation. They had not dipped into the sciences, attempted by some of our sex at the present day; but the study of Latin and French, with general reading in their mother tongue rendered them intelligent companions for cultivated men. They also possessed the rare gift of reading well aloud, and wrote letters unsurpassed in penmanship, ease and agreeability of style. Italian and German professors being rare in that day, their musical acquirements did not extend beyond the simplest piano accompaniments to old English and Scotch airs, which they sang in a sweet, natural voice, and which so enchanted the beaux of their time that they--the beaux--never afterwards became reconciled to any higher order of music. These model women also managed their household affairs admirably; and were uniformly kind, but never familiar with their servants. They kept ever before them the Bible as their constant guide and rule in life, and were surely, as nearly as possible, holy in thought, word and deed. I have looked in vain for _exactly such_ women in other lands, but have failed to find them. Then there were old gentlemen visitors--beaux of my grandmother's day--still wearing cues, wide ruffled bosoms, short pants and knee buckles. These pronounced the _a_ very broad; sat a long time over their wine at dinner, and carried in their pockets gold or silver snuff-boxes presented by some distinguished individual at some remote period. Our visiting acquaintance extended from Botetourt county to Richmond, and among them were jolly old Virginia gentlemen and precise old Virginia gentlemen; eccentric old Virginia gentlemen and prosy old Virginia gentlemen; courtly old Virginia gentlemen and plain-mannered old Virginia gentlemen; charming old Virginia gentlemen and uninteresting old Virginia gentlemen. Many of them had graduated years and years ago at William and Mary College. Then we had another set, of a later day--those who graduated in the first graduating class at the University of Virginia, when that institution was first established. These happened--all that we knew--to have belonged to the same class, and often amused us--without intending it--by reverting to that fact in these words: "_That_ was a remarkable class! Every man in that class made his mark in law, letters or politics! Let me see: There was Toombs. There was Charles Mosby. There was Alexander Stuart. There was Burwell. There was R. M. T. Hunter;" and so on, calling each by name except himself, knowing that the others never failed to do that! Edgar Poe and Alexander Stephens, of Georgia, were also at the University with these gentlemen. Although presenting an infinite variety of mind, manner and temperament, all the gentlemen who visited us, young and old, possessed in common certain characteristics; one of which was a deference to ladies, which made us feel that we had been put in the world especially to be waited upon by them. Their standard for woman was high. They seemed to regard her as some rare and costly statue set in a niche to be admired and _never taken_ down. Another peculiarity they had in common, was a habit--which seemed irresistible--of tracing people back to the remotest generation, and appearing inconsolable if ever they failed to find out the pedigree of any given individual for at least four generations. This, however, was an innocent pastime, from which they seemed to derive much pleasure and satisfaction, and which should not be regarded, even in this advanced age, a serious fault. Among our various visitors, was a kinsman--of whom I often heard, but do not recollect--a bachelor of eighty years, always accompanied by his negro servant as old as himself. Both had the same name, Louis,--pronounced like the French--and this aged pair had been so long together they could not exist apart. Black Louis rarely left his master's side; assisting in the conversation if his master became perplexed or forgetful. When his master talked in the parlor, black Louis always planted his chair in the middle of the door-sill, every now and then correcting or reminding with: "Now, master, dat warnt Col. Taylor's horse dat won dat race dat day. You and me was thar." Or, "Now, master you done forgot all 'bout dat. Dat was in de year 1779, and _dis_ is de way it happened," &c., much to the amusement of the company assembled. All this was said, I am told, most respectfully, although the old negro in a manner _possessed_ his master, having entire charge and command of him. The negroes often felt great pride in "_their_ white people," as they called their owners, and loved to brag about what "_their_ white people" did and what "_their_ white people" had. On one occasion it became necessary for my sister and myself to ride a short distance in a public conveyance. A small colored boy, who helped in our dining-room, had to get in the same stage. Two old gentlemen--strangers to us--sitting opposite, supposing we had fallen asleep, when we closed our eyes to keep out the dust, commenced talking about us. Said one to the other: "Now those children will spoil their Sunday bonnets." Whereupon our colored boy spoke up quickly: "Umph! _you_ think _them's_ my mistesses' Sunday bonnets? Umph! you _jes ought_ to see what they got up thar on top the stage in thar band box!" At this we both laughed, for the boy had never seen our "Sunday bonnets," nor did he know that we possessed any. CHAPTER V. English books never fail to make honorable mention of a "roast of beef," "a leg of mutton," "a dish of potatoes," "a dish of tea," &c., while with us the abundance of such things gave them, we thought, not enough importance to be particularized. Still my reminiscences extend to these. Every Virginia housewife knew how to compound all the various dishes in Mrs. Randolph's Cookery book, and our tables were filled with every species of meat and vegetable to be found on a plantation; with every kind of cakes, jellies and blanc-mange to be concocted out of eggs, butter and cream, besides an endless catalogue of preserves, sweet meats, pickles and condiments. So that in the matter of good living, both in abundance and the manner of serving, a Virginia plantation could not be excelled. The first speciality being good loaf bread, there was always a hot loaf for breakfast, hot corn bread for dinner and a hot loaf for supper. Every house was famed for its loaf bread, and, said a gentleman once to me: "Although at each place it is superb, yet each loaf differs from another loaf, preserving distinct characteristics which would enable me to distinguish, instantly, should there be a convention of loaves, the Oaklands loaf from the Greenfield loaf, and the Avenel loaf from the Rustic Lodge loaf." And apropos of this gentleman, whom, it is needless to add, was a celebrated connoisseur in this matter of loaf bread, it was a noticeable fact with our cook, that whenever he came to our house the bread in trying to do its best always did its worst! Speaking of bread, another gentleman expressed his belief that at the last great day, it will be found that more housewives will be punished on account of light bread than anything else; for he knew some who were never out of temper except when the light bread failed! Time would fail me to dwell, as I should, upon the incomparable rice waffles, and beat biscuit, and muffins, and laplands, and Marguerites, and flannel cakes, and French rolls, and velvet rolls, and ladies-fingers constantly brought by relays of small servants, during breakfast, hot and hotter from the kitchen. Then the tea waiters handed at night, with the beef tongue, the sliced ham, the grated cheese, the cold turkey, the dried venison, the loaf bread buttered hot, the batter-cakes, crackers, the quince marmalade, the wafers all pass in review before me. The first time I ever heard of a manner of living different from this, was when it became important for my mother to make a visit to a great aunt in Baltimore, and she went for the first time out of her native State--neither herself nor her mother had ever been out of Virginia. My mother was accompanied by her maid, Kitty, on this expedition, and when they returned both had many astounding things to relate. My grandmother threw up her hands in amazement on hearing that some of the first ladies in the city, who visited old aunt, confined the conversation of a morning call to the subject of the faults of their hired servants. "Is it possible?" exclaimed the old lady. "I never considered it well bred to mention servants or their faults in company." Indeed, in our part of the world, a mistress became offended if the faults of her servants were alluded to, just as persons become displeased when the faults of their children are discussed. Maid Kitty's account of this visit, I will give as well as I can remember in her own words, as she described it to her fellow-servants: "You never see sich a way for people to live! Folks goes to bed in Baltimore 'thout a single mouthful in thar house to eat. And they can't get nothin' neither 'thout they gits up soon in the mornin' and goes to the market after it themselves. Rain, hail or shine, they got to go. 'Twouldn't suit _our_ white folks to live that way! And I wouldn't live thar not for nothin' in this world. In that fine three story house thar ain't but bare two servants, an' they has to do all the work. 'Twouldn't suit _me_, an' I wouldn't live thar not for nothin' in this whole creation. I would git _that_ lonesome I couldn't stan' it. Bare two servants! and they calls themselves rich, too! And they cooks in the cellar. I know mistess couldn't stand that--smellin' everything out the kitchen all over the house. Umph! _them_ folks don't know nothin' _tall_ 'bout good livin', with thar cold bread and thar rusks!" Maid Kitty spoke truly when she said she had never seen two women do all the housework. For, at home, often three women would clean up one chamber. One made the bed, while another swept the floor and a third dusted and put the chairs straight. Labor was divided and subdivided; and I remember one woman whose sole employment seemed to be throwing open the blinds in the morning and rubbing the posts of my grandmother's high bedstead. This rubbing business was carried quite to excess. Every inch of mahogany was waxed and rubbed to the highest state of polish, as were also the floors, the brass fenders, irons and candlesticks. When I reflect upon the degree of comfort arrived at in our homes, I think we should have felt grateful to our ancestors; for as Quincy has written: "In whatever mode of existence man finds himself, be it savage or civilized, he perceives that he is indebted for the greater part of his possessions to events over which he had no control; to individuals whose names, perhaps, never reached his ear; to sacrifices which he never shared. How few of all these blessings do we owe to our own power or prudence! How few on which we can not discern the impress of a long past generation!" So we were indebted for our agreeable surroundings to the heroism and sacrifices of past generations, and not to venerate and eulogize them betrays the want of a truly noble soul. For what courage; what patience; what perseverence; what long suffering; what Christian forbearance, must it have cost our great grandmothers to civilize, Christianize and elevate the naked, savage Africans to the condition of good cooks and respectable maids! They--our great grandmothers--did not enjoy the blessed privilege even of turning their servants off when ineffient or disagreeable, but had to keep them through life. The only thing was to bear and forbear, and ----"be to their virtues very kind, To their faults," a great deal "blind." If in Heaven there be one seat higher than another, it must be reserved for those true Southern matrons, who performed conscientiously their part assigned them by God--civilizing and instructing this race. To the children of Israel God said: "I will give thee the heathen for an inheritance." So He had given _us_ "the heathen for an inheritance," and however bitterly some of us deplored it--as we did--we should have remembered that nothing happens by chance; but that God disposes all events for some purpose of his own. We were instruments in His hand, and if we or our forefathers were chosen by Him to elevate a race in the scale of comfort and intelligence we should not deplore it, but pray that what we have done for them may be a lasting benefit and that God's blessing may follow them in another condition of life. However we may differ in the opinion, there is no greater compliment to Southern slave owners than the idea prevailing in many places that the negro is already sufficiently elevated to hold the highest positions in the gift of our Government. I once met in traveling an English gentleman, who asked me: "How can you bear those miserable black negroes about your houses and about your persons? To me they are horribly repulsive, and I would not endure one about me." "Neither would they have been my choice," I replied. "But God sent them to us. I was born to this inheritance and could not avert it. What would _you_ English have done," I asked, "if God had sent them to you?" "Thrown them into the bottom of the sea!" he replied. Fortunately for the poor negro this sentiment had not prevailed among us. I believe God endowed our people with qualities peculiarly adapted to taking charge of this race and that no other nation could have kept them. Our people did not demand as much work as in other countries is required of servants; and I think had more affection for them than is elsewhere felt for menials. In this connection, I remember an incident during the war which deserves to be recorded as showing the affection entertained for negro dependents: When our soldiers were nearly starved, and only allowed daily a small handfull of parched corn, the Colonel of a Virginia regiment, by accident got some coffee, a small portion of which was daily distributed to each man. In the regiment was a cousin of mine--a young man endowed with the noblest attributes God can give--who, although famishing and needing it, denied himself his portion every day that he might bring it to his black mammy. He made a small bag in which he deposited and carefully saved it. When he arrived at home on furlough, his mother wept to see his tattered clothes, his shoeless feet and starved appearance. Soon producing the little bag of coffee, with a cheerful smile he said: "See what I've saved to bring black mammy!" "Oh! my son," said his mother, "you have needed it yourself. Why did you not use it?" "Well," he replied, "it has been so long since you all had any coffee, and I made out very well on water, when I thought how black mammy missed her coffee, and how glad she would be to get it." CHAPTER VI. The antiquity of the furniture in our homes can scarcely be described--every article appearing to have been purchased during the reign of George III., since which period no new fixtures or household utensils seemed to have been bought. The books in our libraries had been brought from England almost two hundred years before. In our own library there were Hogarth's pictures, in old worm-eaten frames; and among the literary curiosities, one of the earliest editions of Shakespeare--1685--containing under the author's picture the lines by Ben Johnson: "This Figure which thou here seest put It was for gentle Shakespeare cut-- Wherein the Graver had a strife, With Nature to outdo the Life. O, could he but have drawn his Wit As well in Brass, as he has hit His Face; the Paint would then surpass All that was ever writ in Brass. But since he can not, Reader, look Not on his Picture, but his Book." This was a reprint of the first edition of Shakespeare's works collected by John Heminge and Henry Condell, two of his friends in the company of comedians. The perusal of the Arabian Nights, when a small child, possessed me with the idea that their dazzling pictures were to be realized when we emerged from plantation life into the outside world, and the disappointment at not finding Richmond paved with gems and gold like those cities in Eastern story, is remembered to the present time. Brought up amid antiquities, the Virginia girl disturbed herself not about modern fashions, appearing happy in her mother's old silks and satins made over; her grandmother's laces and brooch of untold dimensions, with a weeping willow and tombstone on it--a constant reminder of the past--which had descended from some remote ancestor. She slept in a high bedstead--the bed of her ancestors; washed her face on an old fashioned, spindle-legged washstand; mounted a high chair to arrange her hair before the old fashioned mirror on the high bureau; climbed to the top of a high mantle-piece to take down the old fashioned high candlesticks; climbed a pair of steps to get into the high-swung, old fashioned carriage; perched her feet upon the top of a high brass fender if she wanted to get them warm; and, in short, had to perform so many gymnastics that she felt convinced her ancestors must have been a race of giants, or they could not have required such tall and inaccessible furniture. An occasional visit to Richmond or Petersburg, sometimes animated her with a desire for some style of dress less antique than her own; although she had as much admiration and attention as if she had just received her wardrobe from Paris. Her social outlook might have been considered limited and circumscribed--her parents being unwilling that her acquaintance should extend beyond the descendants of their own old friends. She had never any occasion to make what the world calls a "debut;" the constant flow of company at her father's house having rendered her assistance necessary in entertaining guests, as soon as she could converse and be companionable. So that her manners were early formed, and she remembered not the time when it was anything but very easy and agreeable, to be in the society of ladies and gentlemen. * * * * * In due time we were provided--my sister and myself--with the best instructors--a lady all the way from Bordeaux to teach French, and a German Professor for German and music. The latter opened to us a new world of music. He was a fine linguist, thorough musician and perfect gentleman. He lived with us five years, and remained our sincere and truly valued friend through life. After some years we were thought to have arrived at "sufficient age of discretion" for a trip to New York city. Fancy our feelings on arriving in that world of modern people and modern things! Fancy two young girls suddenly transported from the time of George III. to the largest hotel on Broadway in 1855! All was as strange to us then as we are now to the Chinese. Never had we seen white servants before; and on being attended by them at first felt a sort of embarrassment, but soon found they were accustomed to less consideration and more hard work than were our negro servants at home. Everything and everybody seemed in a mad whirl--the "march of material progress," they told us. It seemed to us more the "perpetual motion of progress." Everybody said that if "old fogy" Virginia did not make haste to join this "march," she would be left a "wreck behind." We found ourselves in the "advanced age;" the land of water-pipes and dumb-waiters; the land of enterprise and money, and at the same time an economy amounting to parsimony. The manners of the people were strange to us, and different from ours. The ladies seemed to have gone ahead of the men in the "march of progress"--their manner being more pronounced. They did not hesitate to "push about" through crowds and public places. Still, we were young; and dazzled with the gloss and glitter, we wondered why old Virginia couldn't join this "march of progress," and have dumb-waiters, and elevators, and water-pipes, and gas fixtures, and baby jumpers, and washing machines. We asked a gentleman who was with us, why old Virginia had not all these, and he replied: "Because, while the people here have been busy working for themselves, old fogy Virginia has been working for negroes. All the money Virginia makes is spent in feeding and clothing negroes. And," he continued, "these people in the North were shrewd enough years ago to sell all their's to the South." All was strange to us; even the table-cloths on the tea and breakfast tables instead of napkins under the plates as we had at home, and which always looked so pretty on the mahogany. But the novelty having worn off after awhile, we found out there was a good deal of "imitation," after all, mixed up in everything. Things did not seem to have been "fixed up" to last as long as our old things at home, and we began to wonder if the "advanced age" really made the people any better, or more agreeable, or more hospitable, or more generous, or more brave, or more self-reliant, or more charitable, or more true, or more pious, than in "old fogy Virginia?" There was one thing most curious to us in New York. No one seemed to do anything by himself or herself. No one had an individuality; all existed in "clubs" or "societies." They had also many "isms" of which we had never heard; some of the people sitting up all night, and going around all day talking about "manifestations," and "spirits," and "affinities," which they told us was "spiritualism." All this impressed us slow, old fashioned Virginians, as a strangely up-side-down, wrong-side-out condition of things. Much of the conversation we heard was confined to asking questions of strangers, and discussing the best means of making money. We were surprised too to hear of "plantation customs" said to exist among us which were entirely new to us; and one of the Magazines published in the city informed us that "dipping" was one of the "characteristics" of Southern women. What could the word "dipping" mean? we wondered, for we had never heard it before. Upon inquiry we found that it meant "rubbing the teeth with snuff on a small stick"--a truly disgusting habit which could not have prevailed in Virginia, or we would have had some tradition of it at least--our acquaintance extending over the State, and our ancestors having settled there two hundred years ago. A young gentleman from Virginia--bright and overflowing with fun, also visiting New York--coming into the parlor one day threw himself on a sofa in a violent fit of laughter. "What is the matter?" we asked. "I am laughing," he replied, "at the absurd questions these people can ask. What do you think? A man asked me just now if we didn't keep blood-hounds in Virginia to chase negroes! I told him, O, yes, every plantation keeps several dozen! And we often have a tender boiled negro infant for breakfast!" "Oh, how could you have told such a story?" we said. "Well," said he, "you know we never saw a blood-hound in Virginia, and I do not expect there is one in the State; but these people delight in believing everything horrible about us, and I thought I might as well gratify them with something marvelous. So the next book published up here will have, I've no doubt, a chapter headed: 'Blood-hounds in Virginia and boiled negroes for breakfast!'" While we were purchasing some trifles to bring home to some of our servants, a lady, who had entertained us most kindly at her house on Fifth Avenue, expressing surprise, said: "_We_ never think of bringing home presents to our 'helps.'" This was the first time we had ever heard, instead of "servant," the word "help," which seemed then--and still seems--misapplied. The dictionaries define "help" to mean aid; assistance; remedy, while "servant" means one who attends another, and acts at his command. When a man pays another to "help" him, it implies he is to do part of the work himself, and is dishonest if he leaves the whole to be performed by his "help." The word servant is an honest Bible word, and distinctly defines a position. Noah did not say: "Cursed be Cain, a 'help' of 'helps' shall he be to his brethren." Nor did Abraham call his eldest "servant," although ruling over all he had, his "help." Neither does the Commandment say thy "man-help" or thy "maid-help." The word "servant" seems, after the lapse of centuries, still applied with the same meaning by St. Paul, who does not say, "Master, give unto your 'helps' that which is equal;" or, "Let as many 'helps' as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor." The words "master and servant" thus lose their true significance. Among other discoveries during this visit we found how much more talent it requires to entertain company in the country than the city. In the latter the guests and family form no "social circle round the blazing hearth" at night, but disperse far and wide, to be entertained at the concert, the opera, the theater or club; while in the country one depends entirely upon native intellect and conversational talent. And oh! the memory of our own fireside circles! The exquisite women; the men of giant intellect, eloquence and wit at sundry times assembled there! Could our andirons but utter speech what could they not tell of mirth and song, eloquence and wit, whose flow made many an evening bright. Well, as all delights must have an end, the time came for us to leave these "scenes enchanting." Bidding adieu forever to the land of "modern appliances" and stale bread, we returned to the land flowing with "old ham and corn cakes," and were soon surrounded by friends who came to hear the marvels we had to relate. How monotonous, how dull, prosy, inconvenient everything seemed after our plunge into modern life! We told old Virginia about all the enterprise we had seen; and how she was left far behind everybody and everything, urging her to join at once the "march of material progress." But the mother of States persisted in sitting contentedly over her old fashioned wood fire with brass andirons, and while thus musing these words fell slowly and distinctly from her lips: "They call me 'old fogy,' and tell me I must get out of my old ruts and come into the 'advanced age.' But I don't care about their 'advanced age;' their water-pipes and elevators. Give me the right sort of men and women! God loving; God serving men and women. Men brave, courteous, true. Women sensible, gentle and retiring. "Have not my 'plantation homes' furnished warriors, statesmen and orators, acknowledged great by the world? I make it a rule to 'keep on hand' men equal to emergencies. Had I not Washington, Patrick Henry, Light-horse Harry Lee, and others, ready for the first Revolution; and if there comes another--which God forbid!--have I not plenty more just like them?" Here she laughed with delight, as she called over their names: "Robert Lee, Jackson, Joe Johnstone, Stuart, Early, Floyd, Preston, the Breckinridges, Scott, and others like them, brave and true as steel. Ha! ha! I know of what stuff to make men! And if my old 'ruts and grooves' produce men like these, should they be abandoned? Can any 'advanced age' produce better? "Then there are my soldiers of the cross. Do I not yearly send out a faithful band to be a 'shining light,' and spread the gospel North, South, East, West, even into foreign lands? Is not the only Christian paper in Athens, Greece, the result of the love and labor of one of my[1] soldiers? "And can I not send out men of science, as well as warriors, statesmen and orators? There is Maury on the seas showing the world what a man of science can do. If my 'old fogy' system has produced men like these must it be abandoned?" Here the old mother of States settled herself back in her chair, a smile of satisfaction resting on her face, and she ceased to think of _change_. Telling our mother of all the wonders and pleasures of New York, she said: "You were so delighted, I expect you would like to sell out everything here and move there!" "It would be delightful!" we exclaimed. "But you would miss many pleasures you have in our present home." "We would have no time to miss anything," said my sister, "in that whirl of excitement!" "But," she continued. "I believe one might as well try to move the Rocky Mountains to Fifth Avenue, as an old Virginian! They have such a horror of selling out and moving." "It is not so easy to sell out and move," replied our mother, "when you remember all the negroes we have to take care of and support." "Yes, the negroes," we said, "are the weight continually pulling us down! Will the time _ever_ come for us to be free of them?" "They were placed here," replied our mother, "by God, for us to take care of, and it does not seem that we can change it. When we emancipate them, it does not better their condition. Those left free and with good farms given them by their masters, soon sink into poverty and wretchedness, and become a nuisance to the community. We see how miserable are Mr. Randolph's[2] negroes, who with their freedom received from their master a large body of the best land in Prince Edward county. My own grandfather also emancipated a large number, having first had them taught lucrative trades that they might support themselves, and giving them money and land. But they were not prosperous or happy. We have also tried sending them to Liberia. You know my old friend, Mrs. L----, emancipated all her's and sent them to Liberia, but she told me the other day she was convinced it had been no kindness to them, for she continually receives letters begging assistance, and yearly supplies them with clothes and money." So it seemed our way was "hedged about" and surrounded by walls of circumstances too thick and solid to be pulled down, and we said no more. But some weeks after this conversation, we had a visit from a friend--"Mozis Addums"--who having lived in New York and hearing us express a wish to live there, said: "What! exchange a home in old Virginia for one on Fifth Avenue? You don't know what you are talking about! They are not even called 'homes' there, but '_house_;' where they turn into bed at midnight; eat stale-bread breakfasts; have brilliant parties--where several thousand people meet who don't care anything about each other. They have no soul life; but shut themselves up in themselves, live for themselves, and never have any social enjoyment like ours." "But," we said, "could not our friends come to see us there as well as anywhere else?" "No indeed!" he answered. "Your hearts would soon be as cold and dead as your marble door-fronts. You wouldn't want to see anybody, and nobody would want to see you." "You are complimentary, certainly!" "I know all about it; and," he continued, "I know you could not find on Fifth Avenue such women as your mother and grandmother, who never think of themselves, but are constantly planning and providing for others, making their homes comfortable and pleasant, and attending to the wants and welfare of so many negroes. And that is what the women all over the South are doing and what the New York women cannot comprehend. How can anybody know, except ourselves, the personal sacrifices of our women?" "Well," said my sister, "you need not be so severe and eloquent because we thought we would like to live in New York! If we should sell all we possess, we could never afford to live there. Besides, you know our mother would as soon think of selling her children as her servants--who indeed are beginning to possess _her_, instead of her possessing them." "But," he replied, "I can't help talking, for I hear our people abused, and called indolent and self-indulgent, when I know they have valor and endurance enough. And I believe so much 'material progress' leaves no leisure for the highest development of heart and mind. Where the whole energy of a people is applied to making money, the souls of men become dwarfed." "We do not feel," we said, "like abusing Northern people, in whose thrift and enterprise we found much to admire; and especially the self-reliance of their women, enabling them to take care of themselves and travel from Maine to the Gulf without an escort, while we find it impossible to travel a day's journey without a special protector." "That is just what I don't like," said he, "to see a woman in a crowd of strangers needing no 'special protector.'" "This dependence upon your sex," we replied, "keeps you so vain." "We would lose our gallantry altogether," said he, "if we found you could get along without us." CHAPTER VII. After some months--ceasing to think and speak of New York--our lives glided back into the old channel, where the placid stream of life had many isles of simple pleasures. We were, in those days, not "whirled with glowing wheel over the iron track in a crowded car," with dirty, shrieking children and repulsive-looking people--on their way to the small pox hospital, for all we knew. We were not jammed against rough, dreadful-looking people, eating dreadful smelling things, out of dreadful-looking baskets and satchels, and throwing the remains of dreadful pies and sausages over the cushioned seats. Oh, no! our journeys were performed in venerable carriages, and our lunch was enjoyed by some cool, shady spring where we stopped in some shady forest at midday. Our own venerable carriage, my sister styled, "The old ship of Zion," saying, "It had carried many thousands, and was likely to carry many more." And our driver we called the "Ancient Mariner." He presided on his seat--a high perch--in a very high hat and with great dignity. Having been driving the same carriage for nearly forty years--no driver being thought safe who had not been on the carriage box at least twenty years--considered himself an oracle, and in consequence of his years and experience kept us in much awe--my sister and myself never daring to ask him to quicken or retard his pace or change the direction of the road, however much we desired it. We will ever remember this thraldom, and how we often wished one of the younger negroes could be allowed to take his place, but my grandmother said "it would wound his feelings, and besides be very unsafe" for us. At every steep hill or bad place in the road it was an established custom to stop the carriage, unfold the high steps and "let us out"--like pictures of the animals coming down out of the ark! This custom had always prevailed in my mother's family, and there was a tradition that my great grandfather's horses being habituated to stop for this purpose, refused to pull up certain hills--even when the carriage was empty--until the driver had dismounted and slammed the door, after which they moved off without further hesitation. This custom of walking at intervals made an agreeable variety, and gave us an opportunity to enjoy fully the beautiful and picturesque scenery through which we were passing. These were the days of leisure and pleasure for travelers; and when we remember the charming summer jaunts annually made in this way, we almost regret the "steam horse," which takes us now to the same places in a few hours. We had two dear friends--Mary and Alice--who with their old carriages and drivers--the fac similes of our own--frequently accompanied us in these expeditions; and no generals ever exercised more entire command over their armies than did these three black coachmen over us. I smile now to think of their ever being called our "slaves." Yet, although they had this "domineering" spirit, they felt at the same time, a certain pride in us, too. On one occasion, when we were traveling together, our friend Alice concluded to dismount from her carriage and ride a few miles with a gentleman of the party in a buggy. She had not gone far before the alarm was given that the buggy horse was running away, whereupon our black generalissimos instantly stopped the three carriages and anxiously watched the result. Old Uncle Edmund--Alice's coachman--stood up in his seat highly excited, and when his young mistress, with admirable presence of mind, seized the reins and stopped the horse, turning him into a by-road, shouted at the top of his voice: "Thar, now! I always knowed Miss Alice was a young 'oman of the most amiable courage!" and over this feat continued to chuckle the rest of the day. The end of these pleasant journeys always brought us to some old plantation home, where we met a warm welcome not only from the white family, but the servants who constituted part of the establishment. One of the most charming to which we made a yearly visit was Oaklands, a lovely spot embowered in vines and shade trees. The attractions of this home and family brought so many visitors every summer, it was necessary to erect cottages about the grounds, although the house itself was quite large. And as the yard was usually filled with persons strolling about, or reading, or playing chess under the trees, it had every appearance--on first approach--of a small watering place. The mistress of this establishment was a woman of rare attraction--possessing all the gentleness of her sex with attributes of greatness enough for a hero. Tall and handsome, she looked a queen as she stood on the portico receiving her guests, and by the first words of greeting, from her warm, true heart, charmed even strangers. Nor in any department of life did she betray qualities other than these. Without the least "variableness or shadow of turning," her excellencies were a perfect continuity, and her deeds of charity a blessing to all in need within her reach. No undertaking seemed too great for her, and no details--affecting the comfort of her home, family, friends or servants--too small for her supervision. The church--a few miles distant, the object of her care and love--received at her hands constant and valuable aid, and its minister generally formed one of her family circle. No wonder then that the home of such a woman should have been a favorite resort with all who had the privilege of knowing her. And no wonder that all who enjoyed her charming hospitality were spell-bound, nor wished to leave the spot. In addition to the qualities I have attempted to describe, this lady inherited from her father--General B.--an executive talent which enabled her to order and arrange perfectly her domestic affairs, so that from the delicious viands upon her table to the highly polished oak of the floors, all gave evidence of her superior management, and the admirable training of her servants. Nor were the hospitalities of this establishment dispensed to the gay and great alone; but shared alike by the homeless, the friendless, and many a weary heart found sympathy and shelter there. Well! Oaklands was famous for many things: its fine light bread; its cinnamon cakes; its beat biscuit; its fricasseed chicken; its butter and cream; its wine sauces; its plum puddings; its fine horses; its beautiful meadows; its sloping green hills, and last, but not least, its refined and agreeable society collected from every part of our own State, and often from others. For an epicure no better place could have been desired. And this reminds me of a retired army officer--an epicure of the first water--we often met there, whose sole occupation was visiting his friends, and only subjects of conversation the best viands and the best manner of cooking them! When asked whether he remembered certain agreeable people at a certain place, he would reply: "Yes, I dined there ten years ago, and the turkey was very badly cooked--not quite done enough!" The turkey evidently having made a more lasting impression than the people. This gentleman lost an eye at the battle of Chapultepec, having been among the first of our gallant men who scaled the walls. But a young girl of his acquaintance always said she knew it was not bravery so much as "curiosity" which led him to "go peeping over the walls, first man!" This was a heartless speech, but everybody repeated it and laughed, for the Colonel _was_ a man of considerable "curiosity!" Like all old homes, Oaklands had its bright as well as its sorrowful days--its weddings and its funerals. Many yet remember the gay wedding of one there whose charms brought suitors by the score, and won hearts by the dozen. The brilliant career of this young lady, her conquests and wonderful fascinations, behold, are they not all written upon the hearts and memories of divers rejected suitors who still survive? And apropos of weddings. An old fashioned Virginia wedding was an event to be remembered. The preparations usually commenced several weeks before, with saving eggs, butter, chickens, &c., after which ensued the liveliest egg-beating; butter-creaming; raisin-stoning; sugar-pounding; cake-icing; salad-chopping; cocoanut-grating; lemon squeezing; egg-frothing; wafer-making; pastry-baking; jelly-straining; paper-cutting; silver-cleaning; floor-rubbing; dress making; hair-curling; lace-washing; ruffle-crimping; tarletan-smoothing; guests-arriving; servants-running; trunk-moving; girls laughing! Imagine all this going on simultaneously several successive days and nights, and you have an idea of "preparations" for an old fashioned Virginia wedding. The guests generally arrived in private carriages a day or two before, and stayed often a week after the affair, being accompanied by quite an army of negro servants, who enjoyed the festivities as much as their masters and mistresses. A great many years ago, after such a wedding as I describe, a dark shadow fell upon Oaklands. The eldest daughter--young and beautiful, soon to marry a gentleman of high-toned character, charming manners and large estate--one night, while the preparations were in progress for her nuptials, saw in a vision vivid pictures of what would befall her if she married. The vision showed her: a gay wedding--herself the bride--the marriage jaunt to her husband's home in a distant county; the incidents of the journey; her arrival at her new home; her sickness and death; the funeral procession back to Oaklands; the open grave; the bearers of her bier--those who a few weeks before had danced at her wedding;--herself a corpse in her bridal dress; her newly turfed grave with a bird singing in the tree above. This vision produced such an impression she awakened her sister, and told it. Three successive nights the vision appeared, which so affected her spirits she determined not to marry. But after some months, persuaded by her family to think no more of the dream which continually haunted her, the marriage took place. All was a realization of the vision; the wedding; the journey to her new home; every incident, however small, had been presented before her in the dream. As the bridal party approached the house of an old lady near Abingdon--who had made preparations for their entertainment,--servants were hurrying to and fro in great excitement, and one was galloping off for a doctor, as the old lady had been suddenly seized with a violent illness. Even this was another picture in the ill-omened vision of the bride, who found every day something occurring to remind her of it, until in six months her own death made the last sad scene of her dream. And the funeral procession back to Oaklands; the persons officiating; the grave, all proved a realization of her vision. After this her husband--a man of true Christian character--sought in foreign lands to disperse the gloom overshadowing his life. But whether on the summit of Mount Blanc or the lava-crusted Vesuvius; among the classic hills of Rome or the palaces of France; in the art galleries of Italy or the regions of the Holy Land, he carried ever in his heart, the image of his fair bride and the quiet grave at Oaklands. This gentleman still survives, and not long ago we heard him relate, in charming voice and style, the incidents of these travels. CHAPTER VIII. Another charming residence, not far from Oaklands, which attracted visitors from various quarters, was Buena Vista, where we passed many happy hours of childhood. This residence--large and handsome--was situated on an eminence, overlooking pastures and sunny slopes, with forests, and mountain views in the distance. The interior of the house accorded with the outside, every article being elegant and substantial. The owner--a gentleman of polished manners, kind and generous disposition, a sincere Christian and zealous churchman--was honored and beloved by all who knew him. His daughters--a band of lovely young girls--presided over his house, dispensing its hospitality with grace and dignity. Their mother's death occurring when they were very young had given them household cares, which would have been considerable, but for the assistance of Uncle Billy, the butler--an all-important character presiding with imposing dignity over domestic affairs. His jet black face was relieved by a head of grey hair with a small round bald centre piece; and the expression of his face was calm and serene, as he presided over the pantry, the table and the tea-waiters. His mission on earth seemed to be keeping the brightest silver urns, sugar-dishes, cream-jugs and spoons; flavoring the best ice creams; buttering the hottest rolls, muffins and waffles; chopping the best salads; folding the whitest napkins; handing the best tea and cakes in the parlor in the evenings, and cooling the best wine for the decanters at dinner. Indeed he was so essentially a part of the establishment, that in recalling those old days at Buena Vista, the form of "Uncle Billy" comes silently back from the past and takes its old place about the parlors, the halls and the dining-room, making the picture complete. And thus upon the canvas of every old home picture come to their accustomed places, the forms of dusky friends, who once shared our homes, our firesides, our affections--and who will share them, as in the past, never more. * * * * * Of all the Plantation Homes we loved and visited, the brightest, sweetest memories cluster around Grove Hill; a grand old place in the midst of scenery lovely and picturesque, to reach which, we made a journey across the Blue Ridge--those giant mountains from whose winding road and lofty heights we had glimpses of exquisite scenery in the valleys below. Thus winding slowly around these mountain heights and peeping down from our old carriage windows we beheld nature in its wildest luxuriance. The deep solitude; the glowing sunlight over rock, forest and glen; the green valleys deep down beneath, diversified by alternate light and shadow--all together photographed on our hearts pictures never to fade. Not all the towers, minarets, obelisks, palaces, gem-studded domes of "art and man's device" can reach the soul like one of these sun-tinted pictures in their convex frames of rock and vines! Arrived at Grove Hill, how enthusiastic the welcome from each member of the family assembled in the front porch to meet us! How joyous the laugh! How deliciously cool the wide halls, the spacious parlor, the dark polished walnut floors! How bright the flowers! How gay the spirits of all assembled there! One was sure of meeting here agreeable society from Virginia, Baltimore, Florida, South Carolina and Kentucky, with whom the house was filled from May 'till November. How delightfully passed the days, the weeks! What merry excursions; fishing parties; riding parties, to the Indian Spring, the Cave, the Natural Bridge! What pleasant music, and tableaux, and dancing in the evenings! For the tableaux, we had only to open an old chest in the garret and help ourselves to rich embroidered, white and scarlet dresses, with other costumery worn by the grandmother of the family nearly a hundred years before, when her husband was in public life and she one of the queens of society. What sprightly "conversazioni" in our rooms at night--young girls _will_ become confidential and eloquent with each other at night, however reserved and quiet during the day! Late in the night these "conversazioni" continued, with puns and laughter, until checked by a certain young gentleman--now a minister--who was wont to bring out his flute in the flower garden under our windows, and give himself up for an hour or more to the most sentimental and touching strains, thus breaking in upon sprightly remarks and repartees, some of which are remembered to this day, especially one which ran thus: "Girls!" said one. "Would it not be charming if we could all take a trip together to Niagara?" "Well, why could we not?" was the response. "Oh!" replied another, "the idea of us poor Virginia girls taking a trip!" "Indeed," said one of the Grove Hill girls, "it would be impossible. For here are we on this immense estate, 4,000 acres, two large, handsome residences--and three hundred negroes--_considered_ wealthy, and yet to save our lives could not raise money enough for a trip to New York!" "Nor get a silk velvet cloak!" said her sister, laughing. "Yes," replied the other. "Girls! I have been longing and longing for a silk velvet cloak, but never could get the money to buy one. But last Sunday, at the village church, what should I see but one of the Joneses sweeping in with a long velvet cloak almost touching the floor! And you could set her father's house in our back hall! But then she is so fortunate as to own no negroes." "What a happy girl she must be!" cried a chorus of voices. "No negroes to support! _We_ could go to New York and Niagara, and have velvet cloaks too, if we only had no negroes to support! But all _our_ money goes to provide for them as soon as the crops are sold!" "Yes," said one of the Grove Hill girls; "here is our large house without an article of modern furniture. The parlor curtains are one hundred years old. The old fashioned mirrors and recess tables one hundred years old, and we long in vain for money to buy something new." "Well!" said one of the sprightliest girls, "we can get up some of our old diamond rings or breastpins which some of us have inherited, and travel on appearances! We have no modern clothes, but the old rings will make us '_look_ rich!' And a party of _poor, rich Virginians_ will attract the commiseration and consideration of the world when it is known that for generations we have not been able to leave our plantations!" After these conversations we would fall asleep and sleep profoundly, until aroused next morning by an army of servants polishing the hall floors, waxing and rubbing them with a long-handle brush, weighted by an oven lid. This made the floor like a "sea of glass," and dangerous to walk upon immediately after the polishing process, being especially disastrous to small children, who were continually slipping and falling before breakfast. The lady presiding over this establishment possessed a cultivated mind, bright conversational powers and gentle temper, with a force of character which enabled her to direct judiciously the affairs of her household, as well as the training and education of her children. She employed always an accomplished gentleman teacher, who added to the agreeability of her home circle. She helped the boys with their Latin and the girls with their compositions. In her quiet way she governed, controlled, suggested everything; so that her presence was required everywhere at once. While in the parlor entertaining her guests with bright, agreeable conversation, she was sure to be wanted by the cooks--there were six!--to "taste or flavor" something in the kitchen; or by the gardener to direct the planting of certain seeds or roots, and so with every department. Even the minister--there was always one living in her house--would call her out to consult over his text and sermon for the next Sunday, saying he could rely upon her judgment and discrimination. Never thinking of herself, her heart overflowing with sympathy and interest for others, she entered into the pleasures of the young as well as the sorrows of the old. If the boys came in from a fox or deer chase, their pleasure was incomplete until it had been described to her and enjoyed with her again. The flower vases were never entirely beautiful until her hand had helped to arrange the flowers. The girls' laces were never perfect until she had gathered and crimped them. Her sons were never so happy as when holding her hand and caressing her. And the summer twilight found her always in the vine-covered porch seated by her husband--a dear, kind old gentleman--her hand resting in his, while he quietly and happily smoked his pipe, after the day's riding over his plantation, interviewing overseers, millers, blacksmiths and settling up accounts. One more reminiscence and the Grove Hill picture will be done. No Virginia home being complete without some prominent negro character, the picture lacking this would be untrue to nature, and without the "finishing touch." And not to have "stepped in" to pay our respects to old "Aunt Betsy" during a visit to Grove Hill, would have been considered--as it should be to omit it here--a great breach of civility; for the old woman always received us at her door with a cordial welcome and a hearty shake of the hand. "Lor' bless de childen!" she would say. "How they does grow! Done grown up young ladies! Set down, honey. I mighty glad to see you. And why didn't your ma (Miss Fanny) come? I would love to see Miss Fanny. She always was so good and so pretty. Seems to me it ain't been no time sence she and Miss Emma"--her own mistress--"used to play dolls together, an' I used to bake sweet cakes for 'em, and cut 'em out wid de pepper-box top, for thar doll parties; an' they loved each other like sisters." "Well, Aunt Betsy," we would ask, "how is your rheumatism now?" "Lor', honey, I nuver specs to git over that. But some days I can hobble out and feed de chickens; and I can set at my window and make de black childen feed 'em, an' I love to think I'm some account to Miss Emma. And Miss Emma's childen can't do without old 'Mammy Betsy,' for I takes care of all thar pet chickens. Me and my old man (Phil) gittin mighty ole now; but Miss Emma and all her childen so good to us we has pleasure in livin' yet." At last the shadows began to fall dark and chill upon this once bright and happy home. Old Aunt Betsy lived to see the four boys--her mistress' brave and noble sons--buckle their armor on and go forth to battle for the home they loved so well; the youngest, still so young that he loved his pet chickens, which were left to "Mammy Betsy's" special care; and when the sad news, at length, came that this favorite young master was killed, amid all the agony of grief, no heart felt more sincerely, than her's, the great sorrow. Another, and still another of these noble youths fell, after deeds of valor unparalleled in the world's history--their graves the battlefield, a place of burial fit for men so brave. Only one--the youngest--was brought home to find a resting place beside the graves of his ancestors. The old man--their father, his mind shattered by grief--continued day after day, for several years, to sit in the vine-covered porch, gazing wistfully out, imagining sometimes he saw in the distance the manly forms of his noble sons, returning home, mounted on their favorite horses, in the gray uniforms and bright armor worn the day they went off. Then, he too followed, where the "din of war, the clash of arms" is heard no more. To recall these scenes so blinds my eyes with tears that I can not write of them. Some griefs leave the heart dumb. They have no language; and are given no language, because no other heart could understand, nor could they if shared, be alleviated. CHAPTER IX. It will have been observed from these reminiscences that the mistress of a Virginia plantation was more conspicuous--although not more important--than the master. In the house she was the mainspring, and to her came all the hundred, or three hundred negroes with their various wants, and constant applications for medicine and every conceivable requirement. Attending to these, with directing her household affairs and entertaining company, occupied busily every moment of her life. While all these devolved upon her, it sometimes seemed to me that the master had nothing to do, but ride around his estate--on the most delightful horse--receive reports from overseers, see that his pack of hounds were fed and order "repairs about the mill"--the mill seemed always needing repairs! This view of the subject, however, being entirely from a feminine standpoint, may have been wholly erroneous; for doubtless his mind was burdened with financial matters too weighty to be grasped and comprehended by our sex. Nevertheless, the mistress held complete sway in her own domain; and that this fact was recognized will be shown by the following incident: A gentleman--an intelligent and successful lawyer--one day discovering a negro boy in some mischief about his house, and determining forthwith to chastise him, took him in the yard for that purpose. Breaking a small switch, and in the act of "coming down with it" upon the boy, he asked: "Do you know, sir, who is master on my place?" "Yes, sir!" quickly replied the boy. "Miss Charlotte, sir!" Throwing aside the switch, the gentleman ran in the house, laughed a half hour, and thus ended his only experiment at interfering in his wife's domain. His wife, "Miss Charlotte," as the negroes called her, was gentle and indulgent to a fault, which made the incident more amusing. It may appear singular, yet it is true, that our women, although having sufficient self-possession at home, and accustomed there to command on a large scale, became painfully timid if ever they found themselves in a promiscuous or public assemblage--shrinking from everything like publicity. Still, these women, to whom a whole plantation looked up for guidance and instruction, could not fail to feel a certain consciousness of superiority, which, although never displayed or asserted in manner, became a part of themselves. They were distinguishable everywhere--for what reason, exactly, I have never been able to find out--for their manners were too quiet to attract attention. Yet a Captain on a Mississippi steamboat said to me: "I always know a Virginia lady as soon as she steps on my boat." "How do you know?" I asked, supposing he would say: "By their plain style of dress and antiquated breastpins." Said he: "I've been running a boat from Cincinnati to New Orleans for twenty-five years, and often have three hundred passengers from various parts of the world. But if there is a Virginia lady among them, I find it out in half an hour. They take things quietly, and don't complain. Do you see that English lady over there? Well, she has been complaining all the way up the Mississippi river. Nobody can please her. The cabin-maid and steward are worn out with trying to please her. She says it is because the mosquitoes bit her so badly coming through Louisiana. But we are almost at Cincinnati now; haven't seen a mosquito for a week, and she is still complaining!" "Then," he continued, "the Virginia ladies look as if they could not push about for themselves, and for this reason I always feel like giving them more attention than the other passengers." "We are inexperienced travelers," I replied. And these remarks of the Captain convinced me--I had thought it before--that Virginia women should never undertake to travel, but content themselves with staying at home. However, such restriction would have been unfair, unless they had felt like the Parisian who, when asked why the Parisians never traveled, replied: "Because all the world comes to Paris!" Indeed, a Virginian had an opportunity of seeing much choice society at home; for our watering places attracted the best people from other States, who often visited us at our houses. On the Mississippi boat to which I have alluded, it was remarked that the negro servants paid the Southerners more constant and deferential attention than the passengers from the non-slaveholding States--although some of the latter were very agreeable and intelligent, and conversed with the negroes on terms of easy familiarity--showing, what I had often observed, that the negro respects and admires those who make a "social distinction" more than those who make none. CHAPTER X. We were surprised to find in an "Ode to the South," by Mr. M. F. Tupper, published recently, the following stanza: "Yes it is slander to say you oppress'd them Does a man squander the prize of his pelf. Was it not often that he who possessed them Rather was owned by his servants himself?" This was true, but that it was known in the outside world we thought impossible, when all the newspaper and book accounts represented us as "miserable sinners" for whom there was no hope here or hereafter, and called upon all nations, Christian and civilized, to "revile, persecute and exterminate us." Such representations, however, differed so widely from the facts around us, that when we heard them they failed to produce a very serious impression, occasioning often only a smile, with the exclamation: "How little those people know about us!" We had not the vanity to think that the European nations cared or thought about us, and if the Americans believed these accounts, they defamed the memory of one held up by them as a model of Christian virtue,--George Washington--a Virginia slave-owner, whose kindness to his "people," as he called his slaves, entitled him to as much honor as did his deeds of prowess. But to return to the two last lines of the stanza: "Was it not often that he who possessed them Rather was owned by his servants himself?" I am reminded of some who were actually held in such bondage; especially an old gentleman who, together with his whole plantation, was literally "possessed by his slaves." This gentleman was a widower, and no lady presided over his house. His figure was of medium height, and very corpulent. His features were regular and handsome. His eyes were soft brown, almost black. His hair was slightly gray. The expression of his countenance was so full of goodness and sympathy, that a stranger meeting him in the road might have been convinced at a glance of his kindness and generosity. He was never very particular about his dress, yet never appeared shabby. Although a graduate in law at the University, an ample fortune made it unnecessary for him to practice this profession. Still his taste for literature made him a constant reader, and his conversation was instructive and agreeable. His house was old and rambling, and--I was going to say his servants kept the keys, when I remembered there were _no keys_ about the establishment. Even the front door had no lock upon it. Everybody retired at night in perfect confidence, however, that everything was secure enough, and it seemed not important to lock the doors. The negro servants who managed the house were very efficient; excelling especially in the culinary department, and serving up dinners which were simply "marvels." The superabundance on the place enabled them not only to furnish their master's table with the choicest meats, vegetables, cakes, pastries, &c., but also to supply themselves bountifully, and to spread in their own cabins sumptuous feasts, wedding and party suppers rich enough for a queen. To this their master did not object, for he told them "if they would supply his table always with an abundance of the best bread, meats, cream and butter, he cared not what became of the rest." Upon this principle the plantation was conducted. The well-filled barns; the stores of bacon, lard, flour, &c., literally belonged to the negroes, they allowing their master a certain share! Doubtless they entertained the sentiment of a negro boy, who on being reproved by his master for having stolen and eaten a turkey, replied: "Well, massa, you see you got less turkey, but you got dat much more nigger!" While we were once visiting at this plantation, the master of the house described to us a dairy just completed on a new plan, which for some weeks had been such a hobby with him, he had actually purchased a lock for it, saying he would keep the key himself--which he never did--and have the fresh mutton always put there. "Come," said he, as he finished describing it, "let us go down and look at it." "Bring me the key," he said to a small African, who soon brought it, and we proceeded to the dairy. Turning the key in the door, the old gentleman said: "Now see what an elegant piece of mutton I have here!" But on entering and looking around no mutton was to be seen, and instead thereof buckets of custard, cream and blanc-mange. The old gentleman greatly disconcerted, called to one of the servants, "Florinda! Where is my mutton I had put here this morning?" Florinda replied: "Nancy took it out, sir, and put it in de ole spring house. She say dat was cool enough place for mutton. And she gwine have a big party to-night, and want her jelly and custards to keep cool!" At this the old gentleman was rapidly becoming provoked, when we laughed so much at Nancy's "cool" proceeding, that his usual good nature was restored. On another occasion we were one evening sitting with this gentleman in his front porch, when a poor woman from the neighboring village came in the yard, and stopping before the door, said to him: "Mr. R. I came to tell you that my cow you gave me has died." "What did you say, my good woman?" asked Mr. R., who was quite deaf. The woman repeated in a louder voice, "The cow you gave me has died. And she died because I didn't have anything to feed her with." Turning to us, his countenance full of compassion, he said: "I ought to have thought about that, and should have sent the food for her cow." Then speaking to the woman: "Well, my good woman, I will give you another cow to-morrow, and send you plenty of provision for her." And the following day he fulfilled his promise. Another incident occurs to me, showing the generous heart of this truly good man. One day on the Virginia and Tennessee train observing a gentleman and lady in much trouble, he ventured to enquire of them the cause, and was informed they--the gentleman and his wife--had lost all their money and their railroad tickets at the last station. He asked the gentleman where he was from, and on "what side he was during the war." "I am from Georgia," replied the gentleman, "and was, of course, with the South." "Well," said Mr. R., pulling from his capacious pocket a capacious purse, which he handed the gentleman, "help yourself, sir, and take as much as will be necessary to carry you home." The astonished stranger thanked him sincerely, and handed his card, saying: "I will return the money as soon as I reach home." Returned to his own home, and relating the incidents of his trip, Mr. R. mentioned this, when one of his nephews laughed and said: "Well, Uncle R., we Virginia people are so easily imposed upon! You don't think that man will ever return your money _do_ you?" "My dear," replied his Uncle, looking at him reproachfully and sinking his voice, "I was fully repaid by the change which came over the man's countenance." It is due to the Georgian to add that on reaching home, he returned the money with a letter of thanks. * * * * * In sight of the hospitable home of Mr. R. was another equally attractive owned by his brother-in-law, Mr. B. These had the same name--Greenfield--the property having descended to two sisters, the wives of these gentlemen. They might have been called twin establishments, as one was almost a fac simile of the other. At both was found the same hospitality; the same polished floors; the same style of loaf-bread and velvet rolls. The only difference between the two being that Mr. B. kept his doors locked at night; observed more system, and kept his buggies and carriages in better repair. These gentlemen were also perfectly congenial. Both had graduated in law; read the same books; were members of the same church; knew the same people; liked and disliked the same people; held the same political opinions; enjoyed the same old Scotch songs; repeated the same old English poetry; smoked the same kind of tobacco, in the same kind of pipes; abhorred alike intoxicating drinks, and deplored the increase of bar-rooms and drunkenness in our land. For forty years they passed together a part of every day or evening, smoking and talking over the same events and people. It was a picture to see them at night over a blazing wood fire, their faces bright with good nature; and a treat to hear all their reminiscences of people and events long passed. With what circumstantiality could they recall old law cases; describe old duels, old political animosities and excitements! What merry laughs they sometimes had! Everything on one of these plantations seemed to belong equally to the other. If the ice gave out at one place, the servants went to the other for it as a "matter of course;" or if the buggies or carriages were out of order at Mr. R.'s--which was often the case--the driver would go over for Mr. B.'s without even mentioning the circumstance, and so with everything. The families lived thus harmoniously with never the least interruption for forty years. Now and then the old gentlemen enjoyed a practical joke on each other, and on one occasion Mr R. succeeded so effectually in quizzing Mr B. that whenever he thought of it afterwards he fell into a dangerous fit of laughter. It happened that a man who had married a distant connection of the Greenfield family concluded to take his wife, children and servants to pass the summer there, dividing the time between the two houses. The manners, character and political proclivities of this visitor became so disagreeable to the old gentleman, they determined he should not repeat his visit, although they liked his wife. One day Mr. B. received a letter signed by this objectionable individual--it had really been written by Mr. R.--informing Mr. B. that, "as one of the children was sick, and the physician advised country air he would be there the following Thursday with his whole family to stay some months." "The impudent fellow!" exclaimed Mr. B. as soon as he read the letter. "He knows how R. and myself detest him! Still I am sorry for his wife. But I will not be dragooned and outgeneraled by that contemptible fellow. No! I will leave home to-day!" Going to the back door he called in a loud voice for his coachman, and ordered his carriage. "I am going" said he, "to Grove Hill for a week and from there to Lexington with my whole family, and don't know when I shall be at home again." "It is very inconvenient," said he to his wife, "but I must leave home." Hurrying up the carriage, and the family they were soon off on their unexpected trip. They stayed at Grove Hill, seven miles off, a week, during which time Mr. B. every morning mounted his horse and rode timidly around the outskirts of his own plantation, peeping over the hills at his house, but afraid to venture nearer, feeling assured it was occupied by the objectionable party. He would not even make enquiries of his negroes whom he met, as to the state and condition of things in his house. Concluding to pursue his journey to Lexington and half way there, he met a young nephew of Mr. R.'s, who happened to know all about the quiz, and immediately suspecting the reason of Mr. B.'s exile from home enquired where he was going, how long he had been from home, &c. Soon guessing the truth and thinking the "joke had been carried far enough," he told the old gentleman he need not travel any further for it was all a quiz of his uncle's, and there was no one at his house. Thereupon, Mr. B. greatly relieved, turned back and went his way home rejoicing, but "determined to pay R." he said, "for such a practical joke, which had exiled him from home and given him such trouble." This caused many a good laugh whenever it was told, throughout the neighborhood. The two estates of which I am writing, were well named--Greenfield, for the fields and meadows were of the freshest green, and with majestic hills around and the fine cattle and horses grazing upon them, formed a noble landscape. This land had descended in the same family since the Indian camp fires ceased to burn there, and the same forests were still untouched, where once stood the Indian's wigwams. In this connection, I am reminded of a tradition in the Greenfield family, which showed the heroism of a Virginia boy: The first white proprietor of this place, the great grandfather of the present owners, had also a large estate in Montgomery county, called Smithfield, where his family lived, and where was a fort for the protection of the whites, when attacked by the Indians. Once, while the owner was at his Greenfield place, the Indians surrounded Smithfield, when the white women and children took refuge in the fort, and the men prepared for battle. They wanted the proprietor of Smithfield to help fight and take command, for he was a brave man, but could not spare a man to carry him the news. So they concluded to send one of his young sons, a lad thirteen years old, who did not hesitate but mounting a fleet horse set off after dark and rode all night through dense forests filled with hostile Indians, reaching Greenfield, a distance of forty miles next morning. He soon returned with his father, and the Indians were repulsed. And I always thought that boy was courageous enough for his name to live in history.[3] The Indians afterwards told that the whole day before the fight several of their chiefs had been concealed near the Smithfield house, under a large hay stack, upon which the white children had been sliding and playing all day, little suspecting the gleaming tomahawks and savage men beneath. From the Greenfield estate in Botetourt and the one adjacent went the ancestors of the Prestons and Breckinridges, who made these names distinguished in South Carolina and Kentucky. And on this place are the graves of the first Breckinridges who emigrated to this country. All who visited at the homesteads just described retained ever after a recollection of the superbly cooked meats, bread, &c., seen upon the tables at both houses--there being at each place five or six negro cooks, who had been taught by their mistresses the highest style of the art. During the summer season several of these cooks were hired at the different watering places, where they acquired great fame and made for themselves a considerable sum of money by selling recipes. A lady of the Greenfield family, who married and went to Georgia, told me she had often tried to make velvet rolls like those she had been accustomed to see at her own home, but never succeeded. Her mother and aunt who had taught these cooks, having died many years before, she had to apply to the negroes for information on such subjects, and they, she said, would never show her the right way to make them. Finally, while visiting at a house in Georgia, this lady was surprised to see the very velvet rolls, like those at her home. "Where did you get the recipe?" she soon asked the lady of the house, who replied, "I bought it from old Aunt Rose, a colored cook, at the Virginia Springs, and paid her five dollars." "One of our own cooks and my mother's recipe," exclaimed the other, "and I had to come all the way to Georgia to get it, for Aunt Rose never would show me exactly how to make them!" CHAPTER XI. Not far from Greenfield was a place called "Rustic Lodge." This house surrounded by a forest of grand old oaks, was not large or handsome. But its inmates were ladies and gentlemen of the old English style. The grandmother, about ninety years of age, had been in her youth one of the belles at the Williamsburg Court in old colonial days. A daughter of Sir Dudley Digges, and descended from English nobility, she had been accustomed to the best society. Her manners and conversation were dignified and attractive. Among reminiscences of colonial times, she remembered Lord Botetourt, of whom she related interesting incidents. The son of this old lady, about sixty years of age, and the proprietor of the estate, was a true picture of the "old English gentleman." His manners, conversation, thread-cambric shirt frills, cuffs and long queue tied with a black ribbon, made the picture complete. His two daughters, young ladies of exquisite refinement, had been brought up by their aunt and grandmother to observe strictly all the proprieties of life. This establishment was proverbial for its order and method, the most systematic rules being in force everywhere. The meals were served punctually at the same instant every day. Old "Aunt Nelly" dressed and undressed her old mistress always at the same hour. A gentle "tapping at the chamber door"--not by the "raven," but the cook--called the mistress to an interview at the same moment every morning with that functionary, which resulted in the choicest dinners, breakfasts and suppers; this interview lasting half an hour and never repeated during the day. Exactly at the same hour every morning the old gentleman's horse was saddled, and he entered the neighboring village so promptly as to enable some of the inhabitants to set their clocks by him. This family had possessed great wealth in Eastern Virginia during the colonial government under which many of its members held high offices. But impoverished by high living, entertaining company and a heavy British debt, they had been reduced in their possessions to about fifty negroes, with only money enough to purchase this plantation upon which they had retired from the gay and charming society of Williamsburg. They carried with them, however, some remains of their former grandeur: old silver, old jewelry, old books, old and well-trained servants, and an old English coach, which was the curiosity of all other vehicular curiosities. How the family ever climbed into it, or got out of it, and how the driver ever reached the dizzy height upon which he sat, was the mystery of my childhood. But although egg-shaped and suspended in mid-air, this coach had doubtless, in its day, been one of considerable renown, drawn by four horses, with footman, postillion and driver in English livery. How sad must have been its reflections on finding itself shorn of these respectable surroundings, and after the revolution drawn by two Republican horses, with footman and driver dressed in Republican jeans! Strange that it could have lived on and on thus Republicanized! A great uncle of this family, unlike the coach never would become Republicanized, and his obstinate loyalty to the English crown, with his devotion to everything English gained for him the title "English Louis," by which name he is spoken of in the family to this day. An old lady told me not long ago that she remembered when a child the arrival of "English Louis" at "Rustic" one night, and his conversation as they sat around the fire, how he deplored a Republican form of government, and the misfortunes which would result from it saying: "All may go smoothly for about seventy years, when civil war will set in. First, it will be about these negro slaves we have around us, and after that it will be something else." And how true "English Louis'" prediction has proven.[4] Doubtless this gentleman was avoided and proscribed on account of his English proclivities. For at that day the spirit of Republicanism and hatred to England ran high; so that an old gentleman--one of our relatives whom I well remember--actually took from his parlor walls his coat of arms which had been brought by his grandfather from England, and carrying it out in his yard built a fire and collecting his children around it, to see it burn, said: "Thus let everything English perish!" Should I say what I think of this proceeding, I would not be considered perhaps a true Republican patriot. * * * * * I cannot forget to mention in the catalogue of pleasant homes, Smithfield in Montgomery county, the county which flows with healing waters. Smithfield, like Greenfield, is owned by the descendants of the first white family who settled there after the Indians, and its verdant pastures, noble forests, mountain streams and springs, with the superb cattle on its hills form a prospect, wondrously beautiful. This splendid estate descended to three brothers, who equally divided it; the eldest keeping the homestead, and the others building attractive homes on their separate plantations. The old homestead was quite antique in appearance. Inside the high mantlepieces reaching nearly to the ceiling, which was also high, and the high wainscotting together with the old furniture made a picture of the olden time. When I first visited this place, the old grandmother, then eighty years of age, was living. She, like the old lady at "Rustic," had been a belle in Eastern Virginia in her youth. When she married the owner of Smithfield sixty years before, she made the "bridal jaunt" from Norfolk to this place on horseback, two hundred miles. Still exceedingly intelligent and interesting, she entertained us with various incidents of her early life, and wished to hear all the old songs which she had then heard and sung herself. "When I was married" said she, "and came first to Smithfield my husband's sisters met me in the porch, and were shocked at my pale and delicate appearance. One of them whispering to her brother, asked, 'Why did you bring that ghost up here?' And now," continued the old lady, "I have outlived all who were in the house that day, and all my own and my husband's family." This was an evidence certainly of the health restoring properties of the water and climate in this region. The houses of these three brothers were filled with company winter and summer, making within themselves a delightful society. The visitors at one house were equally visitors at the others, and the succession of dinner and evening parties from one to the other, made it difficult for a visitor to decide at whose particular house he was staying. One of these brothers had married a lovely lady from South Carolina, whose perfection of character and disposition endeared her to every one who knew her. Everybody felt like loving her the moment they saw her, and the more they knew her the more they loved her. Her warm heart was ever full of other people's troubles or joys, never thinking of herself. In her house many an invalid was cheered by her tender care; and many a drooping heart revived by her bright Christian spirit. She never omitted an opportunity of pointing the way to heaven; and although surrounded by all the allurements which gay society and wealth could bring, she did not depart an instant from the quiet path which leads to heaven. In the midst of bright and happy surroundings, her thoughts and hopes were constantly centered upon the life above; and her conversation--which was the reflex of her heart--reverted ever to this theme, which she made attractive to old and young. CHAPTER XII. In the region of country just described and in the counties beyond abound the finest mineral springs, one or more being found on every plantation. At one place were seven different springs, and the servants had a habit of asking the guests and family whether they would have--before breakfast--a glass of White Sulphur, Yellow Sulphur, Black Sulphur, Alleghany, Alum, or Limestone water! The old Greenbriar White Sulphur was a favorite place of resort for Eastern Virginians and South Carolinians at a very early date, when it was accessible only by private conveyances, and all who passed the summer there went in private carriages. In this way, certain old Virginia and South Carolina families met every season, and these old people told us that society there was never as good, after the railroads and stages brought "all sorts of people, from all sorts of places." This, of course, we knew nothing about from experience, and it sounded rather egotistical in the old people to say so, but that is what they said. Indeed these "old folks" talked so much about what "used to be in their day" at the old White Sulphur, I found it hard to convince myself I had not been bodily present, seeing with my own eyes certain knee-buckled old gentlemen, with long queues, and certain Virginia and South Carolina belles attired in short-waisted, simple white cambrics, who passed the summers there. These white cambrics, we were told, had been carried in minute trunks behind the carriages; and were considered, with a few jewels and a long black or white lace veil thrown over the head and shoulders, a complete outfit for the reigning belles! Another curiosity was, that these white cambric dresses--our grandmothers told us--required very little "doing up;" one such having been worn by Mrs. General Washington--so her granddaughter told me--a whole week without requiring washing! It must have been an age of remarkable women, and remarkable cambrics! How little they dreamed then of an era when Saratoga trunks would be indispensable to ladies of much smaller means than Virginia and South Carolina belles! To reach these counties flowing with mineral waters the families from Eastern Virginia and from South Carolina passed through a beautiful region known as Piedmont, Va., and those who had "kinsfolk or acquaintance" here usually stopped to make them a visit. Consequently the Piedmont Virginians were generally too busy entertaining summer guests to visit the springs themselves. But indeed why should they? For no more salubrious climate could be found than their own; and no scenery more grand and beautiful. But it was necessary for the tide-water Virginians to leave their homes every summer on account of chills and fevers. In the lovely Piedmont region over which the "Peaks of Otter" rear their giant heads, and chains of blue mountains extend as far as eye can reach, were scattered many pleasant and picturesque homes. And in this section my grandfather bought a plantation, when the ancestral estates had been sold, in the Eastern part of the State, to repay the British debt, which estates, homesteads and tombstones with their quaint inscriptions are described in Bishop Meade's "Old Churches and Families of Virginia." While the tide water Virginians were already practicing all the arts and wiles known to the highest English civilization; were sending their sons to be educated in England; receiving brocaded silks and powdered wigs from England; and dancing the minuet at the Williamsburg balls with the families of the noblemen sent over to govern the Colony, Piedmont, Virginia, was still a dense forest, the abode of Indians and wild animals. It was not strange, then, that the Piedmont Virginians never arrived at the opulent manner of living adopted by those on James and York rivers, who, tradition tells us, went to such excess in high living, as to have "hams boiled in champagne," and of whom other traditions have been handed down amusing and interesting. Although the latter were in advance of the Piedmont Virginians in wealth and social advantages, they were not superior to them in honor, virtue, or kindness and hospitality. It has been remarked that, "when natural scenery is picturesque there is in the human character something to correspond; impressions made on the retina are really made on the soul, and the mind becomes what it contemplates." The same author continues: "A man is not only _like_ what he sees, but he _is_ what he sees. The noble old Highlander has mountains in his soul, whose towering peaks point heavenward; and lakes in his bosom, whose glassy surface reflects the skies; and foaming cataracts in his heart to beautify the mountain side and irrigate the vale; and evergreen firs and mountain pines that show life and verdure even under winter skies!" "On the other hand," he writes, "the wandering nomad has a desert in his heart; its dead level reflects heat and hate; a sullen, barren plain--no goodness, no beauty, no dancing wave of joy, no gushing rivulet of love, no verdant hope. And it is an interesting fact that those who live in countries where natural scenery inspires the soul, and where the necessities of life bind to a permanent home, are always patriotic and high minded; and those who dwell in the desert are always pusillanimous and groveling!" If what this author writes be true, and the character of the Piedmont Virginians accords with the scenery around them, how their hearts must be filled with gentleness and charity inspired by the landscape which stretches far and fades in softness against the sky! How must their minds be filled with noble aspirations suggested by the "everlasting mountains!" How their souls must be filled with thoughts of heaven, as they look upon the glorious sunsets bathing the mountains in "rose-colored light;" with the towering peaks ever pointing heavenward and seeming to say: "Behold the glory of a world beyond!"[5] Beneath the shadow of the "Peaks" were many happy homes and true hearts, and among these memory recalls none more vividly than "Otterburn" and its inmates. "Otterburn" was the residence of a gentleman and his wife, who, having no children, devoted themselves to making their home attractive to visitors, in which they succeeded so well that they were rarely without company; for all who went once to see them went again and again. This gentleman's mind, character, accomplishments, manner and appearance marked him "rare"--"one in a century." Above his fellow men in greatness of soul, he could comprehend nothing "mean." His stature was tall and erect; his features bold; his countenance open and impressive; his mind vigorous and cultivated; his bearing dignified, but not haughty; his manners simple and attractive; his conversation so agreeable and enlivening that the dullest company became animated as soon as he came into the room. Truth and high-toned character were so unmistakably stamped upon him, that knowing him a day convinced one he could be trusted forever. Brought up in Scotland--the home of his ancestors--in him were blended the best points of Scotch and Virginia character; strict integrity and accuracy, with whole-souled generosity and hospitality. How many days and nights we passed at his house, and in childhood and youth, how many hours were entertained by his bright and instructive conversation! Especially delightful was it to hear his stories about Scotland, which brought before us vividly pictures of its lakes and mountains and castles. How often did we listen to his account of the wedding tour to Scotland, when he carried his Virginia bride to the old home at Greenock! And how often we laughed about the Scotch children, his nieces and nephews, who on first seeing his wife, clapped their hands and shouted, "Oh! mother, are you not glad uncle did not marry a black woman?" Hearing he was to marry a Virginian, they expected to see a savage Indian or negro! And some of the family who went to Liverpool to meet them, and were looking through spy glasses when the vessel landed, said they "were sure the Virginia lady had not come, because they saw no one among the passengers dressed in a red shawl and gaudy bonnet like an Indian!" From this we thought the Europeans must be very ignorant of our country and its inhabitants--and have learned since that their children are kept purposely ignorant of facts in regard to America and its people. Among many other recollections of this dear old friend of "Otterburn," I shall never forget a dream he told us one night, which so impressed us that before his death we asked him to write it out, which he did, and as the copy is before me in his own handwriting, will insert it here: "About the time I became of age, I returned to Virginia for the purpose of looking after and settling my father's estate. Three years thereafter I received a letter from my only sister, informing me that she was going to be married, and pressing me in the most urgent manner to return to Scotland to be present at her marriage, and to attend to the drawing of the marriage contract. The letter gave me a good deal of trouble, as it did not suit me to leave Virginia at that time. I went to bed one night thinking much on this subject, but soon fell asleep and dreamed that I landed in Greenoch in the night time, and pushed for home, thinking I would take my aunt and sister by surprise. "When I arrived at the door, I found all still and quiet, and the out door locked--I thought, however, that I had in my pocket my check key, with which I quietly opened the door and groped my way into the sitting-room, but finding no one there I concluded they had gone to bed. I then went up stairs to their bed-room, and found that unoccupied. I then concluded they had taken possession of my bed-room in my absence, but not finding them there became very uneasy about them. Then it struck me they might be in the guest's chamber, a room down stairs kept exclusively for company. Upon going there I found the door partially open; I saw my aunt removing the burning coals from the top of the grate preparatory to going to bed. My sister was sitting up in bed, and as I entered the room, she fixed her eyes upon me, but did not seem to recognize me. I approached towards her, and in the effort to make myself known, awoke, and found it all a dream. At breakfast next morning, I felt wearied and sick, and could not eat; and told the family of my (dream) journey the overnight. "I immediately commenced preparing, and in a very short time returned to Scotland. I saw my sister married, and she and her husband set off on their 'marriage jaunt.' About a month thereafter they returned, and at dinner I commenced telling them of my dream, but observing they had quit eating and were staring at me, I laughed, and asked what was the matter; whereupon my brother-in-law very seriously asked me to go on. When I finished they asked me if I remembered the exact time of my dream. I told them it distressed and impressed me so strongly, that I noted it down at the time. I pulled out my pocket-book and shewed them the date, '14th day of May,' written in pencil. They all rose from the table and took me into the bed-room and shewed me written with pencil on the white mantle piece '14th of May.' "I asked them what that meant, and was informed that on that very night--and _the only night_ they ever occupied that room during my absence--my aunt was taking the coals off of the fire, when my sister screamed out, 'brother has come!' "My aunt scolded her, and said she was dreaming; but she said she had not been to sleep, was sitting up in bed, and _saw me_ enter the room, and run out when she screamed. So confident was she that she had seen me, and that I had gone off and hidden, that the whole house was thoroughly searched for me, and as soon as day dawned a messenger was sent to enquire if any vessel had arrived from America, or if I had been seen by any of my friends." No one can forget, who visited Otterburn, the smiling faces of the negro servants about the house, who received the guests with as true cordiality as did their mistress, expressing their pleasure by widespread mouths showing white teeth--very white by contrast with their jet black skin--and when the guests went away always insisted on their remaining longer. One of these negro women was not only an efficient servant, but a valued friend to her mistress. In the absence of her master and mistress she kept the keys, often entertaining their friends, who in passing from distant plantations were accustomed to stop, and who received from her a cordial welcome, finding on the table as many delicacies as if the mistress had been at home. No more sincere attachment could have existed than between this mistress and servant. At last, when the latter was seized with a contagious fever which ended her life, she could not have had a more faithful friend and nurse than was her mistress. The same fever attacked all the negroes on this plantation, and none can describe the anxiety, care and distress of their owners, who watched by their beds day and night, administering medicine and relieving the sick and dying. CHAPTER XIII. Among other early recollections is a visit with my mother to the plantation of a favorite cousin, not far from Richmond, and one of the handsomest seats on James river. This residence--Howard's Neck--was a favorite resort for people from Richmond and the adjacent counties; and, like many others on the river, always full of guests--a round of visiting and dinner parties being kept up from one house to another,--so that the ladies presiding over these establishments had no time to attend to domestic duties, which were left to their housekeepers, while they were employed entertaining visitors. The negroes on the these estates appeared lively and happy; that is, if singing and laughing indicates happiness; for they went to their work in the fields singing, and returned in the evening singing, after which they often spent the whole night visiting from one plantation to another, or dancing until day to the music of the banjo or "fiddle." These dances were wild and boisterous, their evolutions being like those of the savage dances, described by travelers in Africa. Although the most perfect timists, their music with its wild, melancholy cadence, half savage, half civilized, can not be imitated or described. Many a midnight were we wakened by their wild choruses, sung as they returned from a frolic or "corn shucking," sounding at first like some hideous, savage yell, but dying away on the air, echoing a cadence melancholy and indescribable, with a peculiar pathos, and yet without melody or sweetness. "Corn shuckings" were occasions of great hilarity and good eating. The negroes from various plantations assembled at night around a huge pile of corn. Selecting one among them, the most original, amusing and having the loudest voice, they called him "Captain." The "Captain" seated himself on top of the pile--a large lightwood torch burning in front of him--and while he shucked improvised words and music to a wild "recitative," the chorus of which was "caught up" by the army of "shuckers" around. The glare of the torches on the black faces, with the wild music and impromptu words, made a scene curious even to us who were so accustomed to it. After the corn was shucked they assembled around a table laden with roast pigs, mutton, beef, hams, cakes, pies, coffee, and other substantials--many participating in the supper who had not in the work. The laughing and merriment continued until one or two o'clock in the morning. * * * * * On these James river plantations were entertained often distinguished foreigners, who visiting Richmond desired to see something of Virginia country life. Mr. Thackeray was once entertained at one of them. But Dickens never visited them. Could he have passed a month, at any one of the homes I have described, he would have written something more flattering, I am sure, of Americans and American life than is found in "Martin Chuzzlewit" and "Notes on America." However, with these we should not quarrel, as some of the sketches--especially the one on "tobacco chewers," we can recognize. Every nation has a right to its prejudices--certainly the English towards the American--America appearing to the English eye a huge mushroom affair, the growth of a night and unsubstantial. But it is surely wrong to censure a whole nation--as some have done the Southern people--for the faults of a few. For although every nation has a right to its prejudices, none has a right, without thorough examination and acquaintance with the subject, to seize a few exaggerated accounts, of another nation by its enemies, and publish them as facts. The world in this way receives very erroneous impressions. For instance, we have no right to suppose the Germans a cruel race because of the following paragraph clipped from a recent newspaper: "The cruelty of German officers is a matter of notoriety, but an officer in an artillery regiment has lately gone beyond precedent in ingenuity of cruelty. Some of his men being insubordinate, he punished them by means of a 'spurring process,' which consisted in jabbing spurs persistently and brutally into their legs. By this process his men were so severely injured they had to go to the hospital." Neither have we a right to pronounce all Pennsylvanians cruel to their "helps," as they call them, because a Pennsylvania lady told me "the only way she could manage her 'help'"--a white girl fourteen years old--"was by holding her head under the pump and pumping water upon it until she lost her breath;" a process I could not have conceived, and which filled me with horror. But sorrow and oppression, we suppose, may be found in some form in every clime; and in every phase of existence some hearts are "weary and heavy laden." Even Dickens, whose mind naturally sought, and fed upon, the comic, saw wrong and oppression in the "humane institutions" of his own land! And Macaulay gives a painful picture of Madam D'Arblay's life as waiting maid to Queen Charlotte--from which we are not to infer, however, that all Queens are cruel to their waiting maids. Madam D'Arblay--whose maiden name was Frances Burney--was the first female novelist in England, who deserved and received the applause of her countrymen. The most eminent men of London paid homage to her genius. Johnson, Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were her friends and ardent eulogists. In the midst of her literary fame, surrounded by congenial friends, herself a star in this select and brilliant coterie, she was offered the place of waiting maid in the palace. She accepted the position, and bade farewell to all congenial friends and pursuits. "And now began," says Macaulay, "a slavery of five years--of five years taken from the best part of her life, and wasted in menial drudgery. The history of an ordinary day was this: Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she might be ready to answer the royal bell, which rang at half after seven. Till about eight she attended in the Queen's dressing-room, and had the honor of lacing her august mistress' stays, and of putting on the hoop, gown and neckhandkerchief. The morning was chiefly spent in rummaging drawers and laying fine clothes in their proper places. Then the Queen was to be powdered and dressed for the day. Twice a week her Majesty's hair had to be curled and craped; and this operation added a full hour to the business of the toilet. It was generally three before Miss Burney was at liberty. At five she had to attend her colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old toadeater, as illiterate as a chamber-maid, proud, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to conduct herself with common decency in society. With this delightful associate Frances Burney had to dine and pass the evening. The pair generally remained together from five to eleven, and often had no other company the whole time. Between eleven and twelve the bell rang again. Miss Burney had to pass a half hour undressing the Queen, and was then at liberty to retire. "Now and then, indeed, events occurred which disturbed the wretched monotony of Frances Burney's life. The court moved from Kew to Windsor, and from Windsor back to Kew. "A more important occurrence was the King's visit to Oxford. Then Miss Burney had the honor of entering Oxford in the last of a long string of carriages, which formed the royal procession, of walking after the Queen all day through refectories and chapels, and of standing half dead with fatigue and hunger, while her august mistress was seated at an excellent cold collation. At Magdalen College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlor, where she sank down on a chair. A good natured equerry saw that she was exhausted, and shared with her some apricots and bread, which he had wisely put in his pockets. At that moment the door opened, the Queen entered, the wearied attendants sprang up, the bread and fruit were hastily concealed. "After this the King became very ill, and during more than two years after his recovery Frances dragged on a miserable existence at the palace. Madame Schwellenberg became more and more insolent and intolerable, and now the health of poor Frances began to give way; and all who saw her pale face, her emaciated figure and her feeble walk, predicted that her sufferings would soon be over. "The Queen seems to have been utterly regardless of the _comfort_, the _health_, the _life_ of her attendants. Weak, feverish, hardly able to stand, Frances had still to rise before seven, in order to dress the sweet Queen, and sit up 'till midnight, in order to undress the sweet Queen. The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and _did not escape the notice of_ her royal mistress. But the _established doctrine of the court was, that all sickness_ was to be _considered as a pretence until it proved fatal_. The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing, _'till she felt down dead at the royal feet_." Finally Miss Burney's father pays her a visit in this palace prison when "she told him that she was miserable, that she was worn with attendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men remember the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labor, the same recreation, more hateful than labor itself, followed each other without variety, without any interval of liberty or repose." Her father's veneration for royalty amounting to idolatry, he could not bear to remove her from the court--"and, between the dear father and the sweet Queen, there seemed to be little doubt that some day or other Frances _would drop down a corpse_. Six months had elapsed since the interview between the parent and the daughter. The resignation was not sent in. The sufferer grew worse and worse. She took bark, but it soon failed to produce a beneficial effect. She was stimulated with wine; she was soothed with opium, but in vain. Her breath began to fail. The whisper that she was in a decline spread through the court. The pains in her side became so severe that she was forced to crawl from the card table of the old fury, Madame Schwellenberg, to whom she was tethered, three or four times in an evening, for the purpose of taking hartshorn. Had she been a negro slave, a humane planter would have excused her from work. But her Majesty showed no mercy. Thrice a day the accursed bell still rang; the Queen was still to be dressed for the morning at seven, and to be dressed for the day at noon, and to be undressed at midnight." At last Miss Burney's father was moved to compassion and allowed her to write a letter of resignation. "Still I could not," writes Miss Burney in her diary, "summon courage to present my memorial from seeing the Queen's entire freedom from such an expectation. For though I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could hardly stand, I saw she concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers." "At last, with a trembling hand, the paper was delivered. Then came the storm. Madame Schwellenberg raved like a maniac. The resignation was not accepted. The father's fears were aroused, and he declared, in a letter meant to be shown to the Queen, that his daughter must retire. The Schwellenberg raged like a wild cat. A scene almost horrible ensued. "The Queen then promised that, after the next birthday, Miss Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her Majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it." At length, however, the prison door was opened, and Frances was free once more. Her health was restored by traveling, and she returned to London in health and spirits. Macaulay tells us that she went to visit the palace, "her _old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever_." An ignorant and unlettered woman would doubtless not have found this life in the palace tedious, and our sympathy would not have been aroused for her; for as long as the earth lasts there must be human beings fitted for every station, and it is supposed, till the end of all things, there must be cooks, housemaids and dining-room servants, which will make it never possible for the whole human family to stand entirely upon the same platform socially and intellectually. And Miss Burney's wretchedness, which calls forth our sympathy, was not because she had to perform the duties of waiting-maid, but because to a gifted and educated woman these duties were uncongenial; and congeniality means _happiness_; uncongeniality _unhappiness_. CHAPTER XIV. From the sorrows of Miss Burney in the palace--a striking contrast with the menials described in our own country homes--I will return to another charming place on James river--Powhatan Seat--a mile below Richmond, which had descended in the Mayo family two hundred years. Here, it was said, the Indian chief Powhatan had lived, and here was shown the veritable stone supposed to have been the one upon which Captain Smith's head was laid, when the Indian princess Pocahontas rescued him. This historic stone, near the parlor window, was only an ugly, dark, broad, flat stone, but imagination pictured ever around it the Indian group; Smith's head upon it; the infuriated chief with uplifted club in the act of dealing the death blow; the grief and shriek of Pocahontas, as she threw herself upon Smith imploring her father to spare him--a piercing cry to have penetrated the heart of the savage king! Looking out from the parlor window and imagining this savage scene, how strange a contrast with the picture which met the eye within! Around the fireside assembled the loveliest family group, where kindness and affection beamed in every eye, and father, mother, brothers and sisters were linked together by tenderest devotion and sympathy. If natural scenery reflects itself upon the heart no wonder a "holy calm" rested upon this family, for far down the river the prospect was peace and tranquility; and many an evening in the summer house on the river bank, we drank in the beauty of soft blue skies, green isles and white sails floating in the distance. Many in Richmond remember the delightful weddings and parties at Powhatan Seat, where assembled the elite from Richmond, with an innumerable throng of cousins, aunts and uncles from Orange and Culpeper counties. On these occasions the house was illuminated by wax-lights issuing from bouquets of magnolia leaves placed around the walls near the ceiling, and looking prettier than any glass chandelier. We, from a distance, generally stayed a week after the wedding, becoming, as it were, a part of the family circle; and the bride did not rush off on a tour as is the fashion now-a-days, but remained quietly enjoying family, home and friends. Another feature I have omitted in describing our weddings and parties--invariably a part of the picture--was the sea of black faces surrounding the doors and windows to look on the dancing, hear the music and afterwards get a good share of the supper. Tourists often went to walk around the beautiful grounds at Powhatan--so neatly kept with sea shells around the flowers, and pleasant seats under the lindens and magnolias--and to see the historic stone; but I often thought they knew not what was missed in not knowing--as we did--the lovely family within. But, for us, those rare, beautiful days at Powhatan are gone forever; for since the war the property has passed into stranger hands, and the family who once owned it will own it no more. During the late war heavy guns were placed in the family burying ground on this plantation,--a point commanding the river--and here was interred the child of a distinguished General[6] in the Northern army--a Virginian, formerly in the United States army--who had married a member of the Powhatan family. He was expected to make an attack upon Richmond, and over his child's grave was placed a gun to fire upon him. Such are the unnatural incidents of civil war. About two miles from Powhatan Seat was another beautiful old place--Mount Erin--the plantation formerly of a family all of whom, except two sisters had died. The estate becoming involved had to be sold, which so grieved and distressed these sisters that they passed hours weeping, if accidentally the name of their old home was mentioned in their presence. Once when we were at Powhatan--and these ladies were among the guests--a member of the Powhatan family ordered the carriage, and took my sister and myself to Mount Erin, telling us to keep it a secret when we returned, for "the sisters," said she, "would neither eat nor sleep if reminded of their old home." A pleasant drive brought us to Mount Erin, and when we saw the box hedges, gravel-walks and linden trees we were no longer surprised at the grief of the sisters whose hearts entwined around their old home. The house was in charge of an old negro woman--the purchaser not having moved in--who showed us over the grounds; and every shrub and flower seemed to speak of days gone by. Even the ivy on the old bricks looked gloomy as if mourning the light, mirth and song departed from the house forever; and the walks gave back a deadened echo, as if they wished not to be disturbed by stranger tread. All seemed in a reverie, dreaming a long sweet dream of the past--and entering into the grief of the sisters, who lived afterwards many years in a pleasant home, on a pleasant street in Richmond, with warm friends to serve them, yet their tears never ceased to flow at mention of Mount Erin. * * * * * One more plantation picture, and enough will have been described to show the character of the homes and people on our plantations. The last place visited by my sister and myself before the war of 1861, was "Elkwood," a fine estate in Culpeper county, four miles from the railroad station. It was the last of June. The country was a scene of enchantment, as the carriage rolled us through dark, cool forests, green meadows, fields of waving grain; out of the forest into acres of broad leaved corn; across pebbly-bottomed streams, and along the margin of the Rapidan which flowed at the base of the hill leading up to the house. The house was square and white, and the blinds green as the grass lawn and trees in the yard. Inside the house, the polished "dry rubbed" floors clean and cool, refreshed one on entering like a glass of ice-lemonade on a midsummer's day. The old fashioned furniture against the walls looked as if it thought too much of itself to be set about promiscuously over the floor, like modern fauteuils and divans. About everything was an air of dignity and repose corresponding with the manners and appearance of the proprietors, who were called "Uncle Dick" and "Aunt Jenny"--the _a_ in aunt pronounced very broad. "Aunt Jenny" and "Uncle Dick" had no children, but took care of numerous nieces and nephews; kept their house filled to overflowing with friends, relatives and strangers, and were revered and beloved by all. They had no pleasure so great as taking care of other people. They lived for other people, and made everybody comfortable and happy around them. From the time "Uncle Dick" had prayers in the morning until family prayers at bed time they were busy bestowing some kindness. "Uncle Dick's" character and manners were of a type so high that one felt elevated in his presence; and a desire to reach his standard animated those who knew him. His precept and example were such that all who followed them might arrive at the highest perfection of Christian character. "Uncle Dick" had requested "Aunt Jenny" when they were married--forty years before--to have on his table every day, dinner enough for six more persons than were already in the house, "in case," he said, "he should meet friends or acquaintances while riding over his plantation or in the neighborhood, whom he wished to ask home with him to dinner." This having been always a rule, "Aunt Jenny" never sat at her table without dinner enough for six more, and her's were no commonplace dinners; no hasty puddings; no salaratus bread; no soda cakes; no frozen-starch-ice-cream; no modern shorthand recipes--but genuine old Virginia cooking. And all who want to know what that was, can find out all about it in "Aunt Jenny's" book of copied recipes--if it is extant--or in Mrs. Harrison's, of Brandon. But as neither of these books may ever be known to the public, their "sum and substance" may be given in a few words: "Have no shams. Procure an abundance of the freshest, richest, _real_ cream, milk, eggs, butter, lard, best old Madeira wine, all the way from Madeira, and never use a particle of soda or salaratus about anything or under any pressure." These were the ingredients "Aunt Jenny" used--for "Uncle Dick" had rare old wine in his cellar which he had brought from Europe, thirty years before--and every day was a feast day at Elkwood. And the wedding breakfasts "Aunt Jenny" used to "get up" when one of her nieces married at her house--as they sometimes did--were beyond description. While at Elkwood, observing every day, that the carriage went to the depot empty, and returned empty, we enquired the reason, and were informed that "Uncle Dick," ever since the cars had been passing near his plantation, ordered his coachman to have the carriage every day at the station, "in case some of his friends might be on the train, and might like to stop and see him!" Another hospitable rule in "Uncle Dick's" house was, that company must never be kept "waiting" in his parlor, and so anxious was his young niece to meet his approbation in this as in every particular, that she had a habit of dressing herself carefully, arranging her hair beautifully--it was in the days too when smooth hair was fashionable--before laying down for the afternoon siesta, "in case," she said, "some one might call, and 'Uncle Dick' had a horror of visitors waiting." This process of reposing in a fresh muslin dress and fashionably arranged hair, required a particular and uncomfortable position, which she seemed not to mind, but dozed in the most precise manner without rumpling her hair or her dress. Elkwood was a favorite place of resort for Episcopal ministers, whom "Aunt Jenny" and "Uncle Dick" loved to entertain. And here we met the Rev. Mr. S----, the learned divine, eloquent preacher and charming companion. He had just returned from a visit to England, where he had been entertained in palaces. Telling us the incidents of his visit, "I was much embarrassed at first," said he, "at the thought of attending a dinner party given in a palace to me,--a simple Virginian,--but on being announced at the drawing-room door, and entering the company I felt at once at ease, for they were all ladies and gentlemen--such as I had known at home, polite, pleasant and without pretence." This gentleman's conversational powers were not only bright and delightful, but also the means of turning many to righteousness; for religion was one of his chief themes. A proof of his genius and eloquence was given in the beautiful poem recited--without ever having been written--at the centennial anniversary of old Christ church in Alexandria. This was the church in which General Washington and his family had worshiped, and around it clustered many memories. Mr. S., with several others, had been invited to make an address on the occasion, and one night while thinking about it an exquisite poem passed through his mind, picturing scene after scene in the old church. General Washington with his head bowed in silent prayer; infants at the baptismal font; young men and maidens in bridal array at the altar, and funeral trains passing through the open gate. On the night of the celebration when his turn came, finding the hour too late, and the audience too sleepy for his prose address, he suddenly determined to "dash off" the poem, every word of which came back to him, although he had never written it. The audience roused up electrified, and as the recitation proceeded, their enthusiasm reached the highest pitch. Never had there been such a sensation in the old church before. And next morning the house at which he was stopping was besieged by reporters begging "copies" and offering good prices, but the poem remains unwritten to this day. Elkwood--like many other old homes--was burned by the Northern army in 1862, and not a tree or flower remains to mark the spot, for so many years the abode of hospitality and good cheer. In connection with Culpeper it is due here to state that this county excelled all others in ancient and dilapidated buggies and carriages--seeming a regular infirmary for all the disabled vehicles of the Old Dominion. Here their age and infirmities received every care and consideration, being propped up, tied up and bandaged up in every conceivable manner; and strangest of all, rarely depositing their occupants in the road, which was prevented by cautious old gentlemen riding alongside, who watching out, and discovering the weakest points, stopped and securely tied up fractured parts with bits of twine, rope or chain, always carried in buggy or carriage boxes for that purpose. These surgical operations, although not ornamental, strengthened and sustained these venerable vehicles, and produced a longevity miraculous. Many more sketches might be given of pleasant country homes--worthy a better pen than mine--for Brandon, Westover, Shirley, Carter Hall, Lauderdale, Vaucluse, and others, linger in the memory of hundreds who once knew and loved them. Especially Vaucluse, which although far removed from railroads, stage coaches and public conveyances was overflowing with company throughout the year. For the Vaucluse girls were so bright, so fascinating, so bewitchingly pretty, they attracted a concourse of visitors, and were sure to be belles wherever they went. And many remember the owner of Vaucluse--that pure hearted Christian and cultivated gentleman, who, late in life, devoted himself to the Episcopal ministry, and labored faithfully in the Master's cause preaching in country churches, "without money, and without price." Surely his reward is in heaven. * * * * * Besides these well ordered establishments, there were some others owned by inactive men, who smoked their pipes, read their books, left everything very much to the management of their negroes and seemed content to let things tumble down around them. One of these places we used to call "Topsy-Turvy Castle," and another "Haphazard." At such places the negro quarters--instead of neat rows of white cabins in rear of the house, as on other plantations--occupied a conspicuous place near the front, and consisted of a solid, long, ugly brick structure, with swarms of negroes around the windows and doors, appearing to have nothing in the world to do, and never to have done anything. Everything had a "shackling," lazy appearance. The master was always--it appeared to us--reading a newspaper in the front porch, and never observing anything that was going on. The house was so full of idle negroes standing about the halls and stairways, one could scarcely make one's way up or down stairs. Everything needed repair, from the bed you slept upon, to the family coach which took you to church. Few of the chairs had all their rounds and legs; and when completely disabled were sent to the garret, where they accumulated in great numbers, and remained until pressing necessity induced the master to raise his eyes from his paper long enough to order "Dick" to, "take the four-horse-wagon and carry the chairs to be mended." A multitude of "kinsfolk and acquaintance" usually congregated here. And at one place, in order to accommodate so many, there were four beds in a chamber. These high bedsteads presented a remarkable appearance--the head of one going into the side of another, the foot of one into the head of another, and so on, looking as if they had never been "placed," but their curious juxtaposition had been the result of some earthquake. [One of these houses is said to have been greatly improved in appearance during the war by the passage of a cannon ball through the upper story, where a window had been needed for many years.] But the owners of these places were so genuinely good, one could not complain of them even for such carelessness. For everybody was welcome to everything. You might stop the plows if you wanted a horse, or take the carriage and drive for a week's journey, and, in short, impose upon these good people in every conceivable way. Yet in spite of this topsy-turvy management--a strange fact connected with such places--they invariably had good light bread, good mutton, and the usual abundance on their tables. We suppose it must have been a recollection of such plantations which induced the negro to exclaim, on hearing another sing, "Ole Virginny nubber tire." "Umph! ole _Virginny_ nubber tire, kase she nubber done nuthin' fur to furtigue herself!" CHAPTER XV. Confining these reminiscences strictly to plantation life, no mention has been made of the families we knew and visited in some of our cities, whose kindness to their slaves was unmistakable, and who owning only a small number could better afford to indulge them. At one of these houses, this indulgence was such that the white family were very much under the control of their servants. The owner of this house--an eminent lawyer--was a man of taste and learning, whose legal ability attracted many admirers, and whose refinement, culture and generous nature won enthusiastic friends. Although considered the owner of his house, it was a mistake--if ownership means the right to govern one's own property--for beyond his law papers, library and the privilege of paying all the bills, this gentleman had no "rights" there whatever; his house, kitchen and premises being under the entire command of "Aunt Fanny," the cook--a huge mulatto woman whose word was law, and whose voice thundered abuse if any dared to disobey her. The master, mistress, family and visitors all stood in awe of "Aunt Fanny," and yet could not do without her, for she made such unapproachable light bread, and conducted the affairs of the place with such distinguished ability. Her own house was in the yard, and had been built especially for her convenience. Her furniture was polished mahogany, and she kept most delicious preserves, pickles and sweet meats of her own manufacture with which to regale her friends and favorites. As we came under that head, we were often treated to these when we went in to see her after her day's work was over, or on Sundays. Although she "raved and stormed" considerably--which she told us she "was obliged to do, _honey_, to keep things straight"--she had the tenderest regard for her master and mistress, and often said: "If it warnt for _me_, they'd have nuthin' in the world, and things here would go to destruction." So Aunt Fanny "kept up this family," as she said, for many years, and many amusing incidents might be related of her. On one occasion, her master after a long and excited political contest was elected to the Legislature. Before all the precincts had been heard from--believing himself defeated--he retired to rest, and being naturally feeble, was quite worn out. But at midnight a great cry arose at his gate, where a multitude assembled, screaming and hurrahing. At first he was uncertain whether they were friends to congratulate him on his victory, or the opposite party to hang him--as they had threatened--for voting an appropriation to the Danville railroad. It soon appeared they had come to congratulate him, when great excitement prevailed, loud cheers and cries for a speech. The doors were opened and the crowed rushed in. The hero soon appeared and delivered one of his graceful and satisfactory speeches. Still the crowd remained cheering and "storming" about the house, until Aunt Fanny, who had made her appearance in full dress, considering the excitement had been kept up long enough, and that the master's health was too delicate for any further demonstration, determined to disperse them. Rising to her full height, waving her hand and speaking majestically she said: "Gentlemen! Mars Charles is a feeble pusson, and it is time for him to take his res'. He's been kep' 'wake long enough now, and it's time for me to close up dese doors!" With this the crowd dispersed and "Aunt Fanny" remained mistress of the situation, declaring that, "ef she hadn't come forward and 'spersed dat crowd, Mars Charles would have been a dead man befo' mornin'!" "Aunt Fanny" kept herself liberally supplied with pocket money--one of her chief sources of revenue being soap, which she made in large quantities and sold at high prices; especially what she called her "butter soap," which was in great demand, and which was made from all the butter which she did not consider fresh enough for the delicate appetites of her mistress and master. She appropriated one of the largest basement rooms, had it shelved and filled it with soap. In order to carry on business so extensively huge logs were kept blazing on the kitchen hearth under the soap pot day and night. During the war, wood becoming scarce and expensive, "Mars Charles" found it drained his purse to keep the kitchen fire supplied. Thinking the matter over one day in his library, and concluding it would greatly lessen his expenses if Aunt Fanny could be prevailed upon to discontinue her soap trade, he sent for her, and said, _very mildly_: "Fanny, I have a proposition to make you." "What is it, Mars Charles?" "Well Fanny, as my expenses are very heavy now, if you will give up your soap boiling for this year, I will agree to pay you fifty dollars." With arms akimbo, and looking at him with astonishment, but firmness in her eye, she replied: "Couldn't possibly do it, Mars Charles. Because _soap_, sir, _soap's_ my _main_-tain-ance!" With this she strided majestically out of the room. "Mars Charles" said no more but continued paying fabulous sums for wood, while "Aunt Fanny" continued boiling her soap. This woman not only ordered, but kept all the family supplies, her mistress having no disposition to keep the keys or in any way interfere with her. But at last her giant strength gave way, and she sickened and died. Having no children she left her property to one of her fellow servants. Several days before her death, we were sitting with her mistress and master in a room overlooking her house. Her room was crowded with negroes who had come to perform their religious rites around the death bed. Joining hands they performed a savage dance, shouting wildly around her bed. This was horrible to hear and see, especially as in this family every effort had been made to instruct their negro dependents in the truths of religion; and one member of the family, who spent the greater part of her life in prayer, had for years prayed for "Aunt Fanny," and tried to instruct her in the true faith. But although an intelligent woman, she seemed to cling to the superstitions of her race. After the savage dance and rites were over, and while we sat talking about it, a gentleman--the friend and minister of the family--came in. We described to him what we had just witnessed, and he deplored it bitterly with us, saying he had read and prayed with "Aunt Fanny" and tried to make her see the truth in Jesus. He then marked some passages in the Bible, and asked me to go and read them to her. I went, and said to her: "Aunt Fanny, here are some verses Mr. Mitchell has marked for me to read to you, and he hopes you will pray to the Savior as he taught you." Then said I, "we are afraid the noise and dancing have made you worse." Speaking feebly, she replied: "Honey, that kind of religion suits us black folks better than your kind. What suits Mars Charles' mind, don't suit mine." And thus died the most intelligent of her race--one who had been surrounded by pious persons who had been praying for her, and endeavoring to instruct her. She had also enjoyed through life not only the comforts, but many of the luxuries of earth--and when she died, her mistress and master lost a sincere friend. CHAPTER XVI. This chapter will show how "Virginia beat-biscuit" procured for a man a home and friends in Paris. One morning in the spring of 18-- a singular looking man presented himself at our house. He was short of stature, and enveloped in furs although the weather was not cold. Everything about him was gold which could be gold, and so we called him "the gold-tipped-man." He called for my mother, and when she went in the parlor said to her: "Madam I have been stopping several weeks at the hotel in the town of L----, where I met a boy--Robert--who tells me he belongs to you. As I want such a servant, and he is anxious to travel, I come, at his request, to ask if you will let me buy him and take him to Europe. I will pay any price." "I could not think of it," she replied. "I have determined never to sell one of my servants." "But," continued the man, "he is anxious to go, and has sent me to beg you." "It is impossible," said she, "for he is a great favorite with us, and the only child his mother has." Finding her determined, the man took his leave, and went back to the town, twenty-five miles off; but returned next day accompanied by Robert, who entreated his mother and mistress to let him go. Said my mother to him: "Would you leave your mother and go with a stranger to a foreign land?" "Yes, madam. I love my mother, and you and all your family--you have always been so good to me--but I want to travel, and this gentleman says he will give me plenty of money and be very kind to me." Still she refused. But the boy's mother, finally yielding to his entreaty, consented, and persuaded her mistress, saying, "if he is willing to leave me, and so anxious to go I will give him up." Knowing how distressed we all would be at parting with him, he went off without coming to say "good bye," and wrote his mother from New York what day he would sail with his new master for Europe. At first his mother received from him presents and letters, telling her he was very much delighted, and "had as much money as he knew what to do with." But after a few months he ceased to write, and we could hear nothing from him. At length, when eighteen months had elapsed, one day we were astonished to see him return home, dressed in the best Parisian style. We were rejoiced to see him again, and his own joy at getting back cannot be described. He ran over the yard and house examining everything, and said: "Mistress, I have seen many fine places in Europe, but none to me as pretty as this, and I have seen no lady equal to you. And I have had no water to drink as good as this--and I have dreamed about every chair and table in this house, and wondered if I would ever get back here again." He then gave us a sketch of his life since the "gold-tipped" man had become his master. Arrived in Paris, his master and himself took lodgings at the Hotel de Ville. A teacher was employed to come every day and instruct Robert in French. His master kept him well supplied with money, never giving him less than fifty dollars at a time. His duties were light, and he had ample time to study and amuse himself. After enjoying such elegant ease for eight or nine months, he waked one morning and found himself deserted and penniless! His master had absconded in the night, leaving no vestige of himself except a gold dressing case and a few toilette articles of gold, which were seized by the proprietor of the hotel in payment of his bill. Poor Robert, without money and without a friend in this great city, knew not where to turn. In vain he wished himself back in his old home. "If I could only find some Virginian to whom I could appeal," said he to himself. And suddenly it occurred to him that the American Minister, Mr. Mason, was a Virginian. When he remembered this his heart was cheered, and he lost no time in finding Mr. Mason's house. Presenting himself before the American Minister, he related his story, which was not at first believed. "For," said Mr. Mason, "there are so many impostors in Paris, it is impossible to believe you." Robert protested he had been a slave in Virginia--had been deserted by his owner in Paris, and begged Mr. Mason to keep him at his house, and take care of him. Then Mr. M. asked many questions about people and places in Virginia, all which were accurately answered. Finally, he said: "I knew well the Virginia gentleman who was, you say, your master. What was the color of his hair?" This was also satisfactorily answered, and Robert began to hope he was believed, when Mr. Mason continued: "Now there is one thing, which if you can do, will convince me you came from Virginia. Go in my kitchen and make me some old Virginia beat-biscuit, and I will believe everything you have said!" "I think I can do that, sir," said Robert, and going in the kitchen, rolled up his sleeves and set to work. This was a desperate moment, for he had never made a biscuit in his life, although he had often watched the proceeding as "Black Mammy," the cook at home, used to beat, roll and manipulate the dough on her biscuit box. "If I only could make them look like her's!" thought he, as he beat, and rolled, and worked and finally stuck the dough all over with a fork. Then cutting them out, and putting them to bake, he watched them with nervous anxiety until they resembled those he had often placed on the table at home. Astonished and delighted with his success, he carried them to the American Minister, who exclaimed: "Now I _know_ you came from old Virginia!" Robert was immediately installed in Mr. M.'s house, where he remained a faithful attendant until Mr. Mason's death, when he returned with the family to America. Arriving at New York he thought it impossible to get along by himself, and determined to find his master. For this purpose he employed a policeman, and together they succeeded in recovering "the lost master"--this being a singular instance of a "slave in pursuit of his fugitive master." The "gold-tipped" man expressed much pleasure at his servant's fidelity, and handing him a large sum of money desired him to return to Paris, pay his bill, bring back his gold dressing box and toilette articles, and, as a reward for his fidelity, take as much money as he wished and travel over the continent. Robert obeyed these commands, returned to Paris, paid the bills, traveled over the chief places in Europe and then came again to New York. Here he was appalled to learn that his master had been arrested for forgery, and imprisoned in Philadelphia. It was ascertained that the forger was an Englishman and connected with an underground forging establishment in Paris. Finding himself about to be detected in Paris he fled to New York, and other forgeries having been discovered in Philadelphia, he had been arrested. Robert lost no time in reporting himself at the prison, and was grieved to find his master in such a place. Determining to do what he could to relieve the man who had been a good friend to him, he went to a Philadelphia lawyer, and said to him: "Sir, the man who is in prison, bought me in Virginia, and has been a kind master to me; I have no money, but if you will do your best to have him acquitted, I will return to the South, sell myself and send you the money." "It is a bargain," replied the lawyer. "Send me the money, and I will save your master from the penitentiary." Robert returned to Baltimore, sold himself to a Jew in that city, and sent the money to the lawyer in Philadelphia. After this he was bought by a distinguished Southern Senator--afterwards a General in the Southern army--with whom he remained, and to whom he rendered valuable services during the war. * * * * * Other instances were known of negroes who preferred being sold into slavery rather than take care of themselves. There were some in our immediate neighborhood, who finding themselves emancipated by their master's will, begged the owners of neighboring plantations to buy them, saying they preferred having "white people to take care of them." On the "Wheatly" plantation--not far from us--there is still living an old negro who sold himself in this way, and cannot be persuaded _now_ to accept his freedom. After the war, when all the negroes were freed by the Federal Government, and our people too much impoverished longer to clothe and feed them, this old man refused to leave the plantation, but clung to his cabin, although his wife and family moved off and begged him to accompany them. "No," said he, "I nuver will leave this plantation, and go off to starve with free niggers." Not even when his wife was very sick and dying could he be persuaded to go off and stay one night with her. He had long been too old to work, but his former owners indulged him by giving him his cabin, and taking care of him through all the poverty which has fallen upon our land since the war. CHAPTER XVII. O, bright winged peace! Long did'st thou rest o'er the homes of old Virginia; while cheerful wood fires blazed on hearthstones in parlor and cabin, reflecting contented faces with hearts full of "peace and good will towards men!" No thought entered there of harm to others; no fear of evil to ourselves. Whatsoever things were honest; whatsoever things were pure; whatsoever things were gentle; whatsoever things were of good report, we were accustomed to hear 'round these parlor firesides; and often would our grandmothers say: "Children our's is a blessed country! There never will be another war! The Indians have long ago been driven out, and it has been nearly a hundred years since the English yoke was broken!" The history of our country was contained in two pictures: "The last battle with the Indians" and "The surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown." No enemies within or without our borders, and peace established among us forever! Such was our belief. And we wondered that men should get together and talk their dry politics, seeing that General Washington and Thomas Jefferson--two of our Virginia plantation men--had established a government to last as long as the earth, and which could not be improved. Yet they _would_ talk--these politicians--around our parlor fire, where often our patience was exhausted hearing discussions, in which we could not take interest, about the "Protective Tariff;" the "Bankrupt Law;" the "Distribution of Public Lands;" the "Resolutions of '98;" the "Missouri Compromise," and the "Monroe Doctrine." These topics seemed to afford them intense pleasure and satisfaction, for as the "sparks fly upward" the thoughts of men turn to politics. Feeling no ill will towards any tribe, people or nation on the globe, and believing that all felt a friendly regard for us, how could we believe, when we heard it, that a nation not far off--to whom we had yearly "carried up" a tithe of all we possessed, and whose coffers we helped to fill--were subscribing large sums of money to destroy us? We could not, would not believe it. Yet we were told that this nation--towards whom we felt no animosity--brought up their children to believe that they would do God service by reviling and persecuting us. Nay more--that their ministers of the gospel preached unto them thus: "Thou shalt carry fire and sword into the land that lieth South of you. Thou shalt make it a desolate waste. Thou shalt utterly root out and annihilate the people that they be no more a people. Thou shalt write books. Thou shalt form societies for the purpose of planning the best means of attacking secretly and destroying this people. Thou shalt send emissaries. Thou shalt stir up the nations abroad against them. Thou shalt prepare weapons of war, and in every way incite their negroes to rise at night and slay them." Around our firesides we asked: "Can this be true?" Alas! alas! it was true; and the first expedition sent against us was led by a man from the Adirondack Mountains in the North, who in 1859, with a small band armed with pikes, clubs and guns, attacked one of our villages at night.[7] The news of this blanched the cheeks of our maidens, and the children nestled closer round their mother's knee at evening twilight, for who could tell what might befall our plantation homes before morning! The hearts of women and children grew sick and faint. But the hearts of our men and boys grew brave and strong--and would they have been the countrymen of Washington had they not thought of war? About this time we had a visit from two old friends of our family--a distinguished Southern Senator and the Secretary of War--both accustomed to swaying multitudes by the power of their eloquence--which lost none of its force and charm in our little home circle. We listened with admiration as they discussed the political issues of the day--no longer a subject uninteresting or unintelligible to us, for every word was of vital importance. Their theme was, "the best means of protecting our plantation homes and firesides." Even the smallest children now comprehended the greatest politicians. Now came the full flow and tide of Southern eloquence--real, soul-inspiring eloquence! Many possessing this gift were in the habit of visiting us at that time; and all dwelt upon one theme--the secession of Virginia--with glowing words from hearts full of enthusiasm; all agreeing it was better for States, as well as individuals, to separate rather than quarrel or fight. But there was one--our oldest and best friend--who differed with these gentlemen; and his eloquence was gentle and effective. Unlike his friends whose words, earnest and electric, overwhelmed all around, this gentleman's power was in his composure of manner without vehemence. His words were well selected without seeming to have been studied; each sentence was short, but contained a gem, like a solitaire diamond. For several months this gentleman remained untouched by the fiery eloquence of his friends--like the Hebrew children in the burning furnace. Nothing affected him until one day, the President of the United States demanded by telegraph 50,000 Virginians to join an army against South Carolina. And then this gentleman felt convinced it was not the duty of Virginians to join an army against their friends. About this time we had some very interesting letters from the Hon. Edward Everett--who had been for several years a friend and agreeable correspondent--giving us his views on the subject, and very soon after this all communication between the North and South ceased, except through the blockade, for four long years. And then came the long dark days; the days when the sun seemed to shine no more; when the eyes of wives, mothers and sisters were heavy with weeping; when men sat up late in the night studying military tactics; when grief-burdened hearts turned to God in prayer. The intellectual gladiators who had discoursed eloquently of war around our fireside, buckled their armor on and went forth to battle. Band after band of brave-hearted, bright-faced youths from Southern plantation homes came to bleed and die on Virginia soil; and for four long years old Virginia was one great camping ground, hospital and battle field. The roar of cannon and the clash of arms resounded over the land. The groans of the wounded and dying went up from hillside and valley. The hearts of women and children were sad and careworn. But God, to whom they prayed, protected them in our plantation homes--where no white men or even boys remained--all having gone into the army. Only the negro slaves stayed with us, and these were encouraged by our enemies to rise and slay us; but God in His mercy willed otherwise. Although advised to burn our property and incited by the enemy to destroy their former owners, these negro slaves remained faithful, manifesting kindness, and in many instances protecting the white families and plantations during their masters' absence. Oh! the long terrible nights helpless women and children passed, in our plantation homes; the enemy encamped around them; the clash of swords heard against the doors and windows; the report of guns on the air which might be sending death to their loved ones. But why try to describe the horrors of such nights? Who that has not experienced them can know how we felt? Who can imagine the heart sickness, when stealing to an upper window at midnight we watched the fierce flames rising from some neighboring home, expecting our own to be destroyed by the enemy before daylight in the same way? Such pictures, dark and fearful, were the only ones familiar to us in old Virginia those four dreadful years. At last the end came--the end which seemed to us saddest of all. But God knoweth best. Though "through fiery trials" He had caused us to pass, He had not forsaken us. For was not His mercy signally shown in the failure of the enemy to incite our negro slaves to insurrection during the war? Through His mercy those who were expected to become our enemies, remained our friends. And in our own home, surrounded by the enemy those terrible nights, our only guard was a faithful negro servant who slept in the house, and went out every hour to see if we were in immediate danger; while his mother--the kind old nurse--sat all night in a rocking chair in our room, ready to help us. Had we not then amidst all our sorrows much to be thankful for? Among such scenes one of the last pictures photographed on my memory, was that of a negro boy very ill with typhoid fever in a cabin not far off, and who became greatly alarmed when a brisk firing commenced between the contending armies across our house. His first impulse--as it always had been in trouble--was to fly to his mistress for protection; and jumping from his bed--his head bandaged with a white cloth, and looking like one just from the grave--he passed through the firing as fast as he could, screaming: "O, mistress, take care of me! Put me in your closet, and hide me from the Yankees!" He fell at the door exhausted. My mother had him brought in and a bed made for him in the library. She nursed him carefully, but he died in a day or two from fright and exhaustion. Soon after this was the surrender at Appomattox, and negro slavery ended forever. All was ruin around us; tobacco factories burned down, sugar and cotton plantations destroyed. The negroes fled from these desolated places, crowded together in wretched shanties on the outskirts of towns and villages, and found themselves, for the first time in their lives, without enough to eat, and with no class of people particularly interested about their food, health or comfort. Rations were furnished them a short time by the United States Government, with promises of money and land, which were never fulfilled. Impoverished by the war, it was a relief to us no longer to have the responsibility of supporting them. This would indeed have been impossible in our starving condition. Twelve years have passed since they became free, but they have not, during this time, advanced in intelligence or comfort. Wanting the care of their owners, they die more frequently; and, it is thought,--by those who have studied the subject--that abandoned to themselves, they are returning to the superstitions of their forefathers. A missionary recently returned from Africa, and witnessing here their religious rites, says they are the same he saw practiced before the idols in Africa. They still have a strange belief in what they call "tricking," and often the most intelligent, when sick, will say they have been "tricked," for which they have a regular treatment and "trick doctors" among themselves. This "tricking" we cannot explain, and only know that when one negro became angry with another, he would bury in front of his enemy's cabin door a bottle filled with pieces of snakes, spiders, bits of tadpole, and other curious substances; and the party expecting to be "tricked," would hang up an old horse shoe outside of his door to ward off the "evil spirits." Since alienated from their former owners they are, as a general thing, more idle and improvident; and, unfortunately, the tendency of their political teaching has been to make them antagonistic to the better class of white people, which renders it difficult for them to be properly instructed. That such animosity should exist towards those who could best understand and help them, is to be deplored. For the true negro character cannot be fully comprehended or described, but by those who--like ourselves--have always lived with them. At present their lives are devoted to a religious excitement which demoralizes them, there seeming to be no connection between their religion and morals. In one of their Sabbath schools is a teacher, who although often arrested for stealing, continues to hold a high position in the church. Their improvidence has passed into a proverb--many being truly objects of charity; and whoever would now write a true tale of poverty and wretchedness, may take for the hero "Old Uncle Tom without a cabin." For "Uncle Tom" of the olden time in his cabin with a blazing log fire and plenty of corn bread, and the Uncle Tom of to-day, are pictures of very different individuals. And this chapter ends my reminiscences of an era soon to be forgotten, and which will perish under the heel of modern progress. It is a faithful memorial. Would that it might rescue from oblivion some of the characters worthy to be remembered! CHAPTER XVIII. The scenes connected with the late war will recall to the mind of every Southern man and woman the name of Robert E. Lee--a name which will be loved and revered as long as home or fireside remains in old Virginia--and which sets the crowning glory on the list of illustrious men from plantation homes. Admiration and enthusiasm naturally belong to victory; but the man must be rare indeed, who in defeat, like General Lee, received the applause of his countrymen. It was not alone his valor, his handsome appearance, his commanding presence, his perfect manner, which won the admiration of his fellow-men. There was something above and beyond all these--his true Christian character. Trust in God ennobled his every word and action. Among the grandest of human conquerors was he, for early enlisting as a soldier of the cross--to fight against the world, the flesh and the devil--he fought the "good fight" and the victor's crown awaited him in the "kingdom not made with hands." Trust in God kept him calm in victory as in defeat. When I remember General Lee during the war, in his family circle at Richmond--then at the height of his renown--his manner, voice and conversation were the same as when, a year after the surrender, he came to make my mother a visit from his Lexington home. His circumstances and surroundings were now changed--no longer the stars and epaulets adorned his manly form; but dressed in a simple suit of pure white linen, he looked a king, and adversity had wrought no change in his character, manner, or conversation. To reach our house he made a journey--on his old war horse, "Traveler"--forty miles across the mountains, describing which, on the night of his arrival, he said: "To-day an incident occurred which gratified me more than anything that has happened for a long time. As I was riding over the most desolate mountain region, where not even a cabin could be seen, I was surprised to find, on a sudden turn in the road, two little girls playing on a large rock. They were very poorly clad, and after looking a moment at me, began to run away. 'Children,' said I, 'don't run away. If you could know _who_ I am, you would know that I am the last man in the world for anybody to run from now.' "'But we do know you,' they replied. "'You never saw me before,' I said, 'for I never passed along here.' "'But we do know you,' they said, 'And we've got your picture up yonder in the house, and you are General Lee! And we ain't dressed clean enough to see you.' "With this they scampered off to a poor log hut on the mountain side." It was gratifying to him to find that even in this lonely mountain hut the children had been taught to know and revere him. He told us, too, of a man he met the same day in a dense forest who recognized him, and throwing up his hat in the air, said: "General, _please_ let me cheer you," and fell to cheering with all his lungs! * * * * * My last recollections of General Lee, when making a visit of several weeks at his house, the year before his death--although not coming properly under the head of "plantation reminiscences"--may not be inappropriate here. It has been said that a man is never a "hero to his valet;" but this could not have been said of General Lee, for those most intimately connected with him could not fail to see continually in his bearing and character something above the ordinary level, something of the hero. At the time of my visit the commencement exercises of the College, of which he was President, were going on. His duties were necessarily onerous. Sitting up late at night with the board of visitors, and attending to every detail with his conscientious particularity, there was little time for him to rest. Yet every morning of that busy week he was ready, with his prayer-book under his arm, when the church bell called its members to sun-rise service. It is pleasant to recall all he said at the breakfast, dinner and tea table, where in his hospitality he always insisted upon bringing all who chanced to be at his house at those hours--on business or on social call.[8] This habit kept his table filled with guests, who received from him elegant courtesy. Only once did I hear him speak regretfully of the past. It was one night when sitting by him on the porch in the moonlight, he said to me, his thoughts turning to his early childhood: "It was not my mother's wish that I should receive a military education, and I ought to have taken her advice, for," he said very sadly, "my education did not fit me for this civil life." In this no one could agree with him, for it seemed to all that he adorned and satisfactorily filled every position in life, civil or military. There was something in his manner which naturally pleased every one without his making an effort; at the same time a dignity and reserve which commanded respect and precluded anything like undue familiarity. All desirable qualities seemed united in him to render him popular. It was wonderful to observe--in the evenings when his parlors were overflowing with people young and old, from every conceivable place--how by a word, a smile, a shake of the hand he managed to give _all_ pleasure and satisfaction, each going away charmed with him. The applause of men excited in him no vanity; for those around soon learned that the slightest allusion or compliment, in his presence, to his valor or renown, instead of pleasing, rather offended him. Without vanity, he was equally without selfishness. One day, observing several quaint articles of furniture about his house, and asking Mrs. Lee where they came from, she told me that an old lady in New York city--of whom neither herself nor the General had ever before heard--concluded to break up housekeeping. Having no family and not wishing to sell or remove her furniture to a boarding house, she determined to give it to "the _greatest living man_," and that man was General Lee. She wrote a letter asking his acceptance of the present, requesting that, if his house was already furnished and he had no room, he would use the articles about his College. The boxes arrived. But--such was his reluctance at receiving gifts--weeks passed and he neither had them opened or brought to his house from the express office. Finally, as their house was quite bare of furniture, Mrs. Lee begged him to allow her to have them opened, and he consented. First there was among the contents a beautiful carpet large enough for two rooms, at which she was delighted, as they had none. But the General, seeing it, quickly said: "That is the very thing for the floor of the new chapel! It must be put there." Next were two sofas and a set of chairs. "The very things we want," again exclaimed the General, "for the platform of the new chapel!" Then they unpacked a side-board. "This will do _very well_," said the General, "to be placed in the basement of the chapel to hold the College papers!" And so with everything the old lady sent, only keeping for his own house the articles which could not be possibly used for the College or chapel--a quaint work-table, an ornamental clock and some old fashioned preserve dishes--although his own house was then bare enough, and the old lady had particularly requested that only those articles which they did not need should go to the College. The recollection of this visit, although reviving many pleasant hours, is very sad, for it was the last time I saw the dear, kind face of Mrs. Lee; of whom the General once said when one of us, alluding to him, used the word "hero:" "My dear, _Mrs._ Lee is the hero. For although deprived of the use of her limbs, by suffering, and unable for ten years to walk I have never heard her murmur or utter one complaint." And the General spoke truly, Mrs. Lee was a heroine. With gentleness, kindness and true feminine delicacy, she had strength of mind and character a man might have envied. Her mind well stored and cultivated made her interesting in conversation; and a simple cordiality of manner made her beloved by all who met her. During this last visit she loved to tell about her early days at Arlington--her own and her ancestors' plantation home--and in one of these conversations gave me such a beautiful sketch of her mother--Mrs. Custis--that I wish her every word could be remembered that I might write it here. Mrs. Custis was a woman of saintly piety, her devotion to good works having long been a theme with all in that part of Virginia. She had only one child--Mrs. Lee--and possessed a very large fortune. In early life she felt that God had given her a special mission, which was to take care of and teach the three hundred negroes she had inherited. "Believing this," said Mrs. Lee to me, "my mother devoted the best years of her life to teaching these negroes, for which purpose she had a school house built in the yard, and gave her life up to this work; and I think it an evidence of the ingratitude of their race, that although I have long been afflicted, only one of those negroes has written to enquire after me, or offered to nurse me." These last years of Mrs. Lee's life were passed in much suffering, being unable to move any part of her body except her hands and head. Yet her time was devoted to working for her church. Her fingers were always busy with fancy work, painting or drawing--she was quite an accomplished artist--which were sold for the purpose of repairing and beautifying the church in sight of her window, and as much an object of zeal and affection with her, as the chapel was with the General. Indeed the whole family entered into the General's enthusiasm about this chapel--just then completed--especially his daughter Agnes, with whom I often went there, little thinking it was so soon to be her place of burial. In a few short years all three--General Lee, his wife and daughter--were laid here to rest, and this chapel they had loved so well became their tomb. CHAPTER XIX. All plantation reminiscences resemble a certain patch-work, made when we were children, of bright pieces joined with black squares. The black squares were not pretty, but if left out, the character of the quilt was lost. And so with the black faces, if left out of our home pictures of the past, the character of the picture is destroyed. What I have written is a simple record of facts in my experience without an imaginary scene or character; intended for the descendants of those who owned slaves in the South, and who may in future wish to know something of the high-toned character and virtues of their ancestors. The pictures are strictly true, and should it be thought by any that the brightest have alone been selected, I can only say, I knew no others. It would not be possible for any country to be entirely exempt from crime and wickedness; and here, too, these existed; for prisons, penitentiaries and courts of justice were, as elsewhere, important; but it is a sincere belief that the majority of Southern people were true and good. And that they have accomplished more than any other nation towards civilizing and elevating the negro race, may be shown from the following paragraph in a late magazine: "From a very early date the French had their establishment on the Western coast of Africa. In 1364 their ships visited that portion of the world. But with all this long intercourse with the white man the natives have profited little. _Five centuries_ have not civilized them, so as to be able to build up institutions of their own. Yet the French have always succeeded better than the English with the negro and Indian element." Civilization and education are slow; for, says a modern writer: "After the death of Roman intellectual activity, the seventh and eighth centuries were justly called dark. If Christianity was to be one of the factors in producing the present splendid enlightenment, she had no time to lose, and she lost no time. She was the only power at that day that could begin the work of enlightenment. And starting at the very bottom, she wrought for _nine hundred years_ alone. The materials she had to work upon, were stubborn and unmalleable. _For one must be somewhat civilized to have a taste for knowledge at all; and one must know something to be civilized at all._ She had to carry on the double work of civilizing and educating. Her progress was necessarily slow at first. _But after some centuries_ it began to increase in arithmetical progression until the sixteenth century." Then our ancestors performed a great work--the work allotted them by God, civilizing and elevating an inferior race in the scale of intelligence and comfort. That this race may continue to improve, and finally be the means of carrying the gospel into their native Africa, should be the prayer of every earnest Christian. Never again will the negro race find a people so kind and true to them as the Southerners have been. For, said a gentleman the other day, who lives in New York, "In the Northern cities white labor is preferred, and the negroes are to be found on the outskirts, poor, wretched and friendless." There is much in our lives not intended for us to comprehend or explain; but believing that nothing happens by chance, and that our forefathers have done their duty in the "place it had pleased God to call them," let us cherish their memory, and remember that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. For He who rules each wondrous star, And marks the feeble sparrow's fall Controls the destiny of man, And guides events however small. Man's place of birth; his home; his friends, Are planned and fixed by God alone-- "Life's lot is cast"--e'en death He sends For some wise purpose of His own. FOOTNOTES: [1] Rev. G. W. Leyburn. [2] John Randolph, of Roanoke. [3] John Preston, afterwards Governor of Virginia. [4] On the route to "Rustic" was a small village called "Liberty," approaching which, and hearing the name, "English Louis" swore he would not pass through any such "---- little Republican town," and turning his horses travelled many miles out of his way to avoid it. [5] From this vicinity went nine ministers, who were eminent in their several churches; two Episcopal Bishops, one Methodist Bishop, three distinguished Presbyterian and three Baptist divines of talent and fame. [6] General Scott. [7] Harpers Ferry. [8] Here was seen the Mount Vernon silver, which had descended to Mrs. General Washington's great-grandson, General Custis Lee, and which was miraculously preserved during the war, having been concealed in different places--and once was buried near Lexington in a barn, which was occupied by the enemy several days. * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistent hyphenation. The following is a list of changes made to the original. The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. Page 12: small servants, who speedily gat them into their clean aprons, small servants, who speedily got them into their clean aprons, Page 16: Every inch of mahogony was waxed and rubbed to the highest state Every inch of mahogany was waxed and rubbed to the highest state Page 20: and which always looked so pretty on the mahogony. and which always looked so pretty on the mahogany. Page 29: "Oh!" replied another, the idea of us poor Virginia girls taking "Oh!" replied another, "the idea of us poor Virginia girls taking Page 30: or by the gardener to direct the plauting of certain seeds or roots or by the gardener to direct the planting of certain seeds or roots Page 34: not only to furnish their masters table with the choicest meats, not only to furnish their master's table with the choicest meats, Page 39: four horses, with footman, postilion and driver in English livery. four horses, with footman, postillion and driver in English livery. Page 42: of much smaller means than Virginia and South Corolina belles! of much smaller means than Virginia and South Carolina belles! Page 43: who dwell in the desert are always pusilanimous and groveling!" who dwell in the desert are always pusillanimous and groveling!" Page 45: At last, when the latter was seized with a contageous fever At last, when the latter was seized with a contagious fever Page 46: Mr. Thackaray was once entertained at one of them. Mr. Thackeray was once entertained at one of them. Page 48: At Magdalene College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlor, At Magdalen College, Frances was left for a moment in a parlor, Page 49: A scene almost horrible ensued." A scene almost horrible ensued. Page 53: the house at which he was stopping was beseiged by reporters the house at which he was stopping was besieged by reporters Page 54: by the passage of a canon ball through the upper story, by the passage of a cannon ball through the upper story, Page 55: paying all the bills, this genteman had no "rights" there whatever; paying all the bills, this gentleman had no "rights" there whatever; Her furniture was polished mahogony, and she kept most delicious Her furniture was polished mahogany, and she kept most delicious Page 62: of Southern eloquence--real, soul-inspiring eloquence? of Southern eloquence--real, soul-inspiring eloquence! Page 63 Soon after this was the surrender at Appomatox, and negro slavery Soon after this was the surrender at Appomattox, and negro slavery Page 65: To-day an incident occurred which gratified me more than anything "To-day an incident occurred which gratified me more than anything Page 67: that athough I have long been afflicted, only one of those that although I have long been afflicted, only one of those 
4992	----	This eBook was produced by Jim Weiler, xooqi.com DIDDIE, DUMPS, AND TOT OR PLANTATION CHILD-LIFE by LOUISE-CLARKE PYRNELLE TO MY DEAR FATHER DR. RICHARD CLARKE OF SELMA, ALABAMA MY HERO AND MY BEAU IDEAL OF A GENTLEMAN I DEDICATE THIS BOOK WITH THE LOVE OF HIS DAUGHTER PREFACE IN writing this little volume, I had for my primary object the idea of keeping alive many of the old stories, legends, traditions, games, hymns, and superstitions of the Southern slaves, which, with this generation of negroes, will pass away. There are now no more dear old "Mammies" and "Aunties" in our nurseries, no more good old "Uncles" in the workshops, to tell the children those old tales that have been told to our mothers and grandmothers for generations-- the stories that kept our fathers and grandfathers quiet at night, and induced them to go early to bed that they might hear them the sooner. Nor does my little book pretend to be any defence of slavery. I know not whether it was right or wrong (there are many pros and cons on the subject); but it was the law of the land, made by statesmen from the North as well as the South, long before my day, or my father's or grandfather's day; and, born under that law a slave-holder, and the descendant of slave-holders, raised in the heart of the cotton section, surrounded by negroes from my earliest infancy, "I KNOW whereof I do speak"; and it is to tell of the pleasant and happy relations that existed between master and slave that I write this story of Diddie, Dumps, and Tot. The stories, plantation games, and Hymns are just as I heard them in my childhood. I have learned that Mr. Harris, in Uncle Remus, has already given the "Tar Baby"; but I have not seen his book, and, as our versions are probably different, I shall let mine remain just as "Chris" told it to the "chil'en." I hope that none of my readers will be shocked at the seeming irreverence of my book, for that intimacy with the "Lord" was characteristic of the negroes. They believed implicitly in a Special Providence and direct punishment or reward, and that faith they religiously tried to impress upon their young charges, white or black; and "heavy, heavy hung over our heads" was the DEVIL! The least little departure from a marked-out course of morals or manners was sure to be followed by, "Nem' min', de deb'l gwine git yer." And what the Lord 'lowed and what he didn't 'low was perfectly well known to every darky. For instance, "he didn't 'low no singin' uv week-er-day chunes uv er Sunday," nor "no singin' uv reel chunes" (dance music) at any time; nor did he "'low no sassin' of ole pussons." The "chu'ch membahs" had their little differences of opinion. Of course they might differ on such minor points as "immersion" and "sprinklin'," "open" or "close" communion; but when it came to such grave matters as "singin' uv reel chunes," or "sassin' uv ole pussons," Baptists and Methodists met on common ground, and stood firm. Nor did our Mammies and Aunties neglect our manners. To say "yes" or "no" to any person, white or black, older than ourselves was considered very rude; it must always be "yes, mam," "no, mam"; "yes, sir," "no, sir"; and those expressions are still, and I hope ever will be, characteristic of Southerners. The child-life that I have portrayed is over now; for no hireling can ever be to the children what their Mammies were, and the strong tie between the negroes and "marster's chil'en" is broken forever. So, hoping that my book (which claims no literary merit) will serve to amuse the little folks, and give them an insight into a childhood peculiar to the South in her palmy days, without further preface I send out my volume of Plantation Child-life. LOUISE-CLARKE PYRNELLE. COLUMBUS, GA. _________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS I. DIDDIE, DUMPS, AND TOT II. CHRISTMAS ON THE OLD PLANTATION III. MAMMY'S STORY IV. OLD BILLY V. DIDDIE'S BOOK VI. UNCLE SNAKE-BIT BOB'S SUNDAY-SCHOOL VII. POOR ANN VIII. UNCLE BOB'S PROPOSITION IX. AUNT EDY'S STORY X. PLANTATION GAMES XI. DIDDIE IN TROUBLE XII. HOW THE WOODPECKER'S HEAD AND THE ROBIN'S BREAST CAME TO BE RED XIII. A PLANTATION MEETING, AND UNCLE DANIEL'S SERMON XIV. DIDDIE AND DUMPS GO VISITING XV. THE FOURTH OF JULY XVI. "'STRUCK'N UV DE CHIL'EN" XVII. WHAT BECAME OF THEM _________________________________________________________________ DIDDIE, DUMPS AND TOT CHAPTER I DIDDIE, DUMPS AND TOT THEY were three little sisters, daughters of a Southern planter, and they lived in a big white house on a cotton plantation in Mississippi. The house stood in a grove of cedars and live-oaks, and on one side was a flower-garden, with two summer-houses covered with climbing roses and honey-suckles, where the little girls would often have tea-parties in the pleasant spring and summer days. Back of the house was a long avenue of water-oaks leading to the quarters where the negroes lived. Major Waldron, the father of the children, owned a large number of slaves, and they loved him and his children very dearly. And the little girls loved them, particularly "Mammy," who had nursed their mother, and now had entire charge of the children; and Aunt Milly, a lame yellow woman, who helped Mammy in the nursery; and Aunt Edy, the head laundress, who was never too busy to amuse them. Then there was Aunt Nancy, the "tender," who attended to the children for the field-hands, and old Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who could scarcely walk at all, because he had been bitten by a snake when he was a boy: so now he had a little shop, where he made baskets of white-oak splits for the hands to pick cotton in; and he always had a story ready for the children, and would let them help him weave baskets whenever Mammy would take them to the shop. Besides these, there were Riar, Chris, and Dilsey, three little negroes, who belonged to the little girls and played with them, and were in training to be their maids by-and-by. Diddie, the oldest of the children, was nine years of age, and had a governess, Miss Carrie, who had taught her to read quite well, and even to write a letter. She was a quiet, thoughtful little girl, well advanced for her age, and lady-like in her manners. Dumps, the second sister, was five, full of fun and mischief, and gave Mammy a great deal of trouble on account of her wild tomboyish ways. Tot, the baby, was a tiny, little blue-eyed child of three, with long light curls, who was always amiable and sweet-tempered, and was petted by everybody who knew her. Now, you must not think that the little girls had been carried to the font and baptized with such ridiculous names as Diddie, Dumps, and Tot: these were only pet names that Mammy had given them; but they had been called by them so long that many persons forgot that Diddie's name was Madeleine, that Dumps had been baptized Elinor, and that Tot bore her mother's name of Eugenia, for they were known as Diddie, Dumps and Tot to all of their friends. The little girls were very happy in their plantation home. 'Tis true they lived 'way out in the country, and had no museums nor toy-shops to visit, no fine parks to walk or ride in, nor did they have a very great variety of toys. They had some dolls and books, and a baby-house furnished with little beds and chairs and tables; and they had a big Newfoundland dog, Old Bruno; and Dumps and Tot both had a little kitten apiece; and there was "Old Billy," who once upon a time had been a frisky little lamb, Diddie's special pet; but now he was a vicious old sheep, who amused the children very much by running after them whenever he could catch them out-of-doors. Sometimes, though, he would butt them over and hurt them and Major Waldron had several times had him turned into the pasture; but Diddie would always cry and beg for him to be brought back and so Old Billy was nearly always in the yard. Then there was Corbin, the little white pony that belonged to all of the children together, and was saddled and bridled every fair day, and tied to the horse-rack, that the little girls might ride him whenever they chose; and 'twas no unusual sight to see two of them on him at once, cantering down the big road or through the grove. And, besides all these amusements, Mammy or Aunt Milly or Aunt Edy, or some of the negroes, would tell them tales; and once in a while they would slip off and go to the quarters, to Aunt Nancy the tender's cabin, and play with the little quarter children. They particularly liked to go there about dark to hear the little negroes say their prayers. Aunt Nancy would make them all kneel down in a row, and clasp their hands and shut their eyes: then she would say, "Our Father, who art in heaven," and all the little darkies together would repeat each petition after her; and if they didn't all keep up, and come out together, she would give the delinquent a sharp cut with a long switch that she always kept near her. So the prayer was very much interrupted by the little "nigs" telling on each other, calling out "Granny" (as they all called Aunt Nancy), "Jim didn't say his 'kingdom come.'" "Yes I did, Granny; don't yer b'lieve dat gal; I said jes' much 'kingdom come' ez she did." And presently Jim would retaliate by saying, "Granny, Polly nuber sed nuf'n 'bout her 'cruspusses.'" "Lord-ee! jes' lis'n at dat nigger," Polly would say. "Granny, don't yer min' 'im; I sed furgib us cruspusses, jes' ez plain ez anybody, and Ginny hyeard me; didn't yer, Ginny?" At these interruptions Aunt Nancy would stop to investigate the matter, and whoever was found in fault was punished with strict and impartial justice. Another very interesting time to visit the quarters was in the morning before breakfast, to see Aunt Nancy give the little darkies their "vermifuge." She had great faith in the curative properties of a very nauseous vermifuge that she had made herself by stewing some kind of herbs in molasses, and every morning she would administer a teaspoonful of it to every child under her care; and she used to say, "Ef'n hit want fur dat furmifuge, den marster wouldn't hab all dem niggers w'at yer see hyear." Now, I don't know about that; but I do know that the little darkies would rather have had fewer "niggers" and less "furmifuge;" for they acted shamefully every time they were called upon to take a dose. In the first place, whenever Aunt Nancy appeared with the bottle and spoon, as many of the children as could get away would flee for their lives, and hide themselves behind the hen-coops and ash-barrels, and under the cabins, and anywhere they could conceal themselves. But that precaution was utterly useless, for Aunt Nancy would make them all form in a line, and in that way would soon miss any absentees; but there were always volunteers to hunt out and run down and bring back the shirkers, who, besides having to take the vermifuge, would get a whipping into the bargain. And even after Aunt Nancy would get them into line and their hands crossed behind their backs, she would have to watch very closely, or some wicked little "nig" would slip into the place of the one just above him, and make a horrible face, and spit, and wipe his mouth as if he had just taken his dose; and thereby the one whose place he had taken would have to swallow a double portion, while he escaped entirely; or else a scuffle would ensue, and a very animated discussion between the parties as to who had taken the last dose; and unless it could be decided satisfactorily, Aunt Nancy would administer a dose to each one; for, in her opinion, "too much furmifuge wuz better'n none." And so you see the giving of the vermifuge consumed considerable time. After that was through with she would begin again at the head of the line, and making each child open its mouth to its fullest extent, she would examine each throat closely, and, if any of them had their "palates down," she would catch up a little clump of hair right on top of their heads and wrap it around as tightly as she could with a string, and then, catching hold of this "top-knot," she would pull with all her might to bring up the palate. The unlucky little "nig" in the meanwhile kept up the most unearthly yells, for so great was the depravity among them that they had rather have their palates down than up. Keeping their "palate locks" tied was a source of great trouble and worriment to Aunt Nancy. The winter was always a great season with the children; Mammy would let them have so many candy-stews, and they parched "goobers" in the evenings, and Aunt Milly had to make them so many new doll's clothes, to "keep them quiet," as Dumps said; and such romps and games as they would have in the old nursery! There were two rooms included in the nursery-- one the children's bedroom and the other their playroom, where they kept all their toys and litter; and during the winter bright wood fires were kept up in both rooms, that the children might not take cold, and around both fireplaces were tall brass fenders that were kept polished till they shone like gold. Yet, in spite of this precaution, do you know that once Dilsey, Diddie's little maid, actually caught on fire, and her linsey dress was burned off, and Aunt Milly had to roll her over and over on the floor, and didn't get her put out till her little black neck was badly burned, and her little wooly head all singed. After that she had to be nursed for several days. Diddie carried her her meals, and Dumps gave her "Stella," a china doll that was perfectly good, only she had one leg off and her neck cracked; but, for all that, she was a great favorite in the nursery, and it grieved Dumps very much to part with her; but she thought it was her "Christian juty," as she told Diddie; so Aunt Milly made Stella a new green muslin dress, and she was transferred to Dilsey. There was no railroad near the plantation, but it was only fifteen miles to the river, and Major Waldron would go down to New Orleans every winter to lay in his year's supplies, which were shipped by steamboats to the landing and hauled from there to the plantation. It was a jolly time for both white and black when the wagons came from the river; there were always boxes of fruits and candies and nuts, besides large trunks which were carried into the store-room till Christmas, and which everybody knew contained Christmas presents for "all hands." One winter evening in 1853, the children were all gathered at the big gate, on the lookout for the wagons. Diddie was perched upon one gate-post and Dumps on the other, while Tot was sitting on the fence, held on by Riar, lest she might fall. Dilsey and Chris were stationed 'way down the road to catch the first glimpse of the wagons. They were all getting very impatient, for they had been out there nearly an hour, and it was now getting so late they knew Mammy would not let them stay much longer. "I know de reason dey so late, Miss Diddie," said Riar, "dey got dat new mule Sam in de lead in one de wagins, and Unker Bill say he know he gwine cut up, f'um de look in he's eyes." "Uncle Bill don't know everything," answered Diddie. "There are six mules in the wagon, and Sam's jest only one of 'em; I reckon he can't cut up much by hisself; five's more'n one, ain't it?" "I do b'lieve we've been out hyear er hun-der-d hours," said Dumps, yawning wearily; and just then Dilsey and Chris came running towards the gate, waving their arms and crying, "Hyear dey come! hyear dey come!" and, sure enough, the great white-covered wagons came slowly down the road, and Major Waldron on Prince, his black horse, riding in advance. He quickened his pace when he caught sight of the children; for he was very fond of his little daughters, and had been away from them two weeks, trading in New Orleans. He rode up now to the fence, and lifting Tot to the saddle before him, took her in his arms and kissed her. Diddie and Dumps scrambled down from the gate-posts and ran along by the side of Prince to the house, where their mamma was waiting on the porch. And oh! such a joyful meeting! such hugging and kissing all around! Then the wagons came up, and the strong negro men began taking out the boxes and bundles and carrying them to the storeroom. "Hand me out that covered basket, Nelson," said Major Waldron to one of the men; and taking it carefully to the house, he untied the cover, and there lay two little white woolly puppies-- one for Diddie, and one for Dumps. The little girls clapped their hands and danced with delight. "Ain't they lovely?" said Dumps, squeezing hers in her arms. "Lubly," echoed Tot, burying her chubby little hands in the puppy's wool, while Diddie cuddled hers in her arms as tenderly as if it had been a baby. Mammy made a bed for the doggies in a box in one corner of the nursery, and the children were so excited and so happy that she could hardly get them to bed at all; but after a while Tot's blue eyes began to droop, and she fell asleep in Mammy's arms, murmuring, "De booful itty doggie." "De booful itty doggies," however, did not behave very well; they cried and howled, and Dumps insisted on taking hers up and rocking him to sleep. "Hit's er gittin' so late, honey," urged Mammy, "let 'um stay in de box, an' go ter bed now, like good chil'en." "I know I ain't, Mammy," replied Dumps. "You mus' think I ain't got no feelin's ter go ter bed an' leave 'im hollerin'. I'm er goin' ter rock 'im ter sleep in my little rockin'-cheer, an' you needn't be er fussin' at me nuther." "I ain't er fussin' at yer, chile; I'm jes' 'visin' uv yer fur yer good; caze hit's yer bed-time, an' dem puppies will likely holler all night." "Then we will sit up all night," said Diddie, in her determined way. "I'm like Dumps; I'm not going to bed an' leave 'im cryin'." So Mammy drew her shawl over her head and lay back in her chair for a nap, while Diddie and Dumps took the little dogs in their arms and sat before the fire rocking; and Chris and Dilsey and Riar all squatted on the floor around the fender, very much interested in. the process of getting the puppies quiet. Presently Dumps began to sing: "Ef'n 'ligion was er thing that money could buy, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign; De rich would live, an' de po' would die, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign. Chorus O reign, reign, reign, er my Lord, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign: O reign, reign, reign, er my Lord, O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign. But de Lord he 'lowed he wouldn't have it so. O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign; So de rich mus' die jes' same as de po', O reign, Marse Jesus, er reign." This was one of the plantation hymns with which Mammy often used to sing Tot to sleep, and all the children were familiar with the words and air; so now they all joined in the singing, and very sweet music it was. They had sung it through several times, and the puppies, finding themselves so outdone in the matter of noise, had curled up in the children's laps and were fast asleep, when Diddie interrupted the chorus to ask: "Dumps, what are you goin' ter name your doggie?" "I b'lieve I'll name 'im 'Papa,'" replied Dumps, "because he give 'im ter me." "'Papa,' indeed!" said Diddie, contemptuously; "that's no name for a dog; I'm goin' ter name mine after some great big somebody." "Lord-ee! I tell yer, Miss Diddie; name 'im Marse Samson, atter de man w'at Mammy wuz tellin' 'bout totin' off de gates," said Dilsey. "No yer don't, Miss Diddie; don't yer name 'im no sich," said Chris; "le's name im' Marse Whale, w'at swallered de man an' nuber chawed 'im." "No, I sha'n't name him nothin' out'n the Bible," said Diddie, "because that's wicked, and maybe God wouldn't let him live, just for that; I b'lieve I'll name him Christopher Columbus, 'cause if he hadn't discovered America there wouldn't er been no people hyear, an' I wouldn't er had no father nor mother, nor dog, nor nothin'; an', Dumps, sposin' you name yours Pocahontas, that was er beau-ti-ful Injun girl, an' she throwed her arms 'roun' Mr. Smith an' never let the tomahawks kill 'im." "I know I ain't goin' to name mine no Injun," said Dumps, decidedly. "Yer right, Miss Dumps; now yer's er talkin'," said Riar; "I wouldn't name 'im no Injun; have 'im tearin' folks' hyar off, like Miss Diddie reads in de book. I don't want ter hab nuffin 'tall ter do wid no Injuns; no, sar! I don't like' dem folks." "Now, chil'en de dogs is 'sleep," said Mammy, yawning and rubbing her eyes; "go ter bed, won't yer?" And the little girls, after laying the puppies in the box and covering them with an old shawl, were soon fast asleep. But there was not much sleep in the nursery that night; the ungrateful little dogs howled and cried all night. Mammy got up three times and gave them warm milk, and tucked them up in the shawl; but no sooner would she put them back in the box than they would begin to cry and howl. And so at the breakfast-table next morning, when Dumps asked her papa to tell her something to name her puppy, Diddie gravely remarked, "I think, Dumps, we had better name 'um Cherubim an' Seraphim, for they continually do cry." And her papa was so amused at the idea that he said he thought so too; and thus the puzzling question of the names was decided, and the little wooly poodles were called Cherubim and Seraphim, and became great pets in the household. CHAPTER II CHRISTMAS ON THE OLD PLANTATION CHRISTMAS morning, 1853, dawned cold and rainy, and scarcely had the first gray streak appeared when the bolt of the nursery was quietly turned, and Dilsey's little black head peered in through the half-open door. "Chris'mus gif', chil'en!" she called out, and in a twinkling Diddie, Dumps and Tot were all wide awake, and climbing over the side of the bed. Then the three little sisters and Dilsey tip-toed all around to everybody's rooms, catching "Chris'mus gif';" but just as they were creeping down-stairs to papa and mamma two little forms jumped from behind the hall door, and Riar and Chris called out, "Chris'mus gif'!" and laughed and danced to think they had "cotch de white chil'en." As soon as everybody had been caught they all went into the sitting-room to see what Santa Clause had brought, and there were eight stockings all stuffed full! Three long, white stockings, that looked as if they might be mamma's, were for the little girls, and three coarse woolen stockings were for the little nigs; and now whom do you suppose the others were for? Why, for Mammy and Aunt Milly, to be sure! Oh, such lots of things-- candies and nuts, and raisins and fruits in every stocking; then there was a doll baby for each of the children. Diddie's was a big china doll, with kid feet and hands, and dressed in a red frock trimmed with black velvet. Dumps's was a wax baby with eyes that would open and shut; and it had on a long white dress, just like a sure-enough baby, and a little yellow sack, all worked around with white. Tot was so little, and treated her dollies so badly, that "Old Santa" had brought her an India-rubber baby, dressed in pink tarlatan, with a white sash. Dilsey, Chris, and Riar each had an alabaster baby, dressed in white Swiss, and they were all just alike, except that they had different colored sashes on. And Diddie had a book full of beautiful stories, and Dumps had a slate and pencil, and Tot had a "Noah's ark," and Mammy and Aunt Milly had red and yellow head "handkerchiefs," and Mammy had a new pair of "specs" and a nice warm hood, and Aunt Milly had a delaine dress; and 'way down in the toes of their stockings they each found a five-dollar gold piece, for Old Santa had seen how patient and good the two dear old women were to the children, and so he had "thrown in" these gold pieces. How the little folks laughed and chatted as they pulled the things out of their stockings! But pretty soon Mammy made them put them all away, to get ready for breakfast. After breakfast the big plantation bell was rung, and the negroes all came up to the house. And then a great box that had been in the store-room ever since the wagons got back from the river, three weeks before, was brought in and opened, and Mrs. Waldron took from it dresses and hats, and bonnets and coats, and vests and all sorts of things, until every pair of black hands had received a present, and every pair of thick lips exclaimed, "Thankee, mistis! thankee, honey; an' God bless yer!" And then Chris, who had been looking anxiously every moment or two towards the quarters, cried out, "Yon' dey is! I see um! Yon' dey come!" And down the long avenue appeared the funniest sort of a procession. First came Aunt Nancy, the "tender," with her head handkerchief tied in a sharp point that stuck straight up from her head; and behind her, two and two, came the little quarter negroes, dressed in their brightest and newest clothes, All were there-- from the boys and girls of fourteen down to the little wee toddlers of two or three, and some even younger than that; for in the arms of several of the larger girls were little bits of black babies, looking all around in their queer kind of way, and wondering what all this was about. The procession drew up in front of the house, and Diddie, Dumps and Tot went from one end of it to the other distributing candies and apples, and oranges and toys; and how the bright faces did light up with joy as the little darkies laughed and chuckled, and I dare say would have jumped up and clapped their hands but for Aunt Nancy, who was keeping a sharp eye upon them, and who would say, as every present was delivered, "Min' yer manners, now!" At which the little nigs would make a comical little "bob-down" courtesy and say, "Thankee, marm." When the presents were all delivered, Major Waldron told the negroes that their mistress and himself were going to the quarters to take presents to the old negroes and the sick, who could not walk to the house, and after that he would have service in the chapel, and that he hoped as many as could would attend. Then the crowd dispersed, and the children's mamma filled a basket with "good things," and presents for old Aunt Sally, who was almost blind; and poor Jane, who had been sick a long time; and Daddy Jake, the oldest negro on the place, who never ventured out in bad weather for fear of the "rheumatiz;" and then, accompanied by her husband and children, she carried it to the quarters to wish the old negroes a happy Christmas. The quarters presented a scene of the greatest excitement. Men and women were bustling about, in and out of the cabins, and the young folks were busily engaged cleaning up the big barn and dressing it with boughs of holly and cedar; for you see Aunt Sukey's Jim was going to be married that very night, and the event had been talked of for weeks, for he was a great favorite on the place. He was a tall, handsome black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting with all of the negro girls; but at last he had been caught himself by pretty Candace, one of the housemaids, and a merry dance she had led him. She had kept poor Jim six long months on the rack. First she'd say she'd marry him, and then she'd say she wouldn't (not that she ever really meant that she wouldn't), for she just wanted to torment him; and she succeeded so well that Jim became utterly wretched, and went to his master to know "ef'n he couldn't make dat yaller gal 'have herse'f." But his master assured him it was a matter that he had nothing on earth to do with, and even told Jim that it was but fair that he, who had enjoyed flirting so long, should now be flirted with. However, one evening his mistress came upon the poor fellow sitting on the creek bank looking very disconsolate, and overheard him talking to himself, "Yes, sar!" he was saying, as if arguing with somebody. "Yes, sar, by rights dat nigger gal oughter be beat mos' ter deff, she clean bodder de life out'n me, an' marster, he jes' oughter kill dat nigger. I dunno w'at makes me kyar so much er bout'n her no way; dar's plenty er likelier gals'n her, an' I jes' b'lieve dat's er trick nigger; anyhow she's tricked me, sho's yer born; an' ef'n I didn't b'long ter nobody, I'd jump right inter dis creek an' drown myse'f. But I ain't got no right ter be killin' up marster's niggers dat way; I'm wuff er thousan' dollars, an' marster ain't got no thousan' dollars ter was'e in dis creek, long er dat lazy, shif'less, good-fur-nuffin' yaller nigger." The poor fellow's dejected countenance and evident distress enlisted the sympathy of his mistress, and thinking that any negro who took such good care of his master's property would make a good husband, she sought an interview with Candace, and so pleaded with her in behalf of poor Jim that the dusky coquette relented, and went down herself to Aunt Sukey's cabin to tell her lover that she did love him all along, and was "jis' er projeckin' wid 'im," and that she would surely marry him Christmas-night. Their master had had a new cabin built for them, and their mistress had furnished it neatly for the young folks to begin housekeeping, and in mamma's wardrobe was a white dress and a veil and wreath that were to be the bride's Christmas gifts. They were to be married in the parlor at the house, and dance afterwards in the barn, and the wedding supper was to be set in the laundry. So you see it was a busy day, with so much of cake-baking and icing and trimming to be done; and then the girls had to see about their dresses for the evening, and the young men had their shoes to black, and their best clothes to brush, and their hair to unwrap; but notwithstanding all this, when Major Waldron and his family entered the chapel they found a large congregation assembled; indeed, all were there except the sick; and master and slaves, the white children and black, united their hearts and voices to "Laurel and magnify His holy name," and to return thanks to God for his great Christmas gift of a Saviour to the world. As they were leaving the chapel after service, Dumps drew close to her mother and whispered, "Mamma, bein' as this is Chris'mas an' it's rainin', can't we have some of the little quarter niggers to go to the house and play Injuns with us?" Mamma was about to refuse, for the little girls were not allowed to play with the quarter children; but Dumps looked very wistful, and, besides, Mammy would be with them in the nursery, so she consented, and each of the children were told that they might select one of the little negroes to play with them. Diddie took a little mulatto girl named Agnes. Dumps had so many favorites that it was hard for her to decide; but finally she selected Frances, a lively little darky, who could dance and pat and sing and shout, and do lots of funny things. Tot took Polly, a big girl of fourteen, who could, and sometimes did, take the little one on her back and trot around with her. She lifted her now to her shoulders, and, throwing her head up and snorting like a horse, started off in a canter to the house; while Diddie and Dumps, and Chris and Riar, and Agnes and Frances followed on behind, all barking like dogs, and making believe that Tot was going hunting and they were the hounds. "See, Mammy, here's Agnes and Polly and Frances," said Diddie, as they entered the nursery; "mamma let us have them, and they are to stay here a long time and play Injuns with us." "Now, Miss Diddie, honey," said Mammy, "Injuns is sich a sackremenchus play, an' makes so much litter and fuss; git yer dolls, an' play like er little lady." "No, no, no," interrupted Dumps; "we're goin' ter play Injuns! We're goin' ter make out we're travellin' in the big rockin'-cheer, goin' ter New Orleans, an' the little niggers is got ter be Injuns, hid all behin' the trunks an' beds an' door; an' after, we rock an' rock er lo-o-ong time, then we're goin' ter make out it's night, an' stretch mamma's big shawl over two cheers an' make er tent, and be cookin' supper in our little pots an' kittles, an' the little niggers is got ter holler, 'Who-ee, who-eee,' an' jump out on us, an' cut off our heads with er billycrow." "How silly you do talk, Dumps!" said Diddie; "there ain't any Injuns between here and New Orleans; we've got ter be goin' to California, a far ways f'um here. An' I don't b'lieve there's nothin' in this world named er 'billycrow;' it's er tommyhawk you're thinkin' about: an' Injuns don't cut off people's heads; it was Henry the Eighth. Injuns jes' cut off the hair and call it sculpin', don't they, Mammy?" "Lor', chile," replied Mammy, "I dunno, honey; I allers hyeard dat Injuns wuz monstrous onstreperous, an' I wouldn't play no sich er game." But "Injuns, Injuns, Injuns!" persisted all the little folks, and Mammy had to yield. The big chair was put in the middle of the room, and the little girls got in. Chris sat up on the arms to be the driver, and they started off for California. After travelling some time night set in, and the emigrants got out, and pitched a tent and made preparations for cooking supper; little bits of paper were torn up and put into the miniature pots and kettles, and the children were busy stirring them round with a stick for a spoon, when the terrible war-whoop rang in their ears, and from under the bed and behind the furniture jumped out the five little negroes. The travellers ran in every direction, and the Injuns after them. Diddie hid in the wardrobe, and Mammy covered Tot up in the middle of the bed; Chris turned the chip-box over and tried to get under it, but the fierce savages dragged her out, and she was soon tied hand and foot; Dumps jumped into the clothes-basket, and Aunt Milly threw a blanket over her, but Frances had such keen little eyes that she soon spied her and captured her at once. Then a wild yell was sounded, and Polly and Dilsey pounced upon Tot, who had become tired of lying still, and was wriggling about so that she had been discovered; and now all the travellers were captured except Diddie. The injuns looked everywhere for her in vain. "She mus' er gone up fru de chimbly, like Marse Santion Claws," said Agnes; and Diddie thought that was so funny that she giggled outright, and in a moment the wardrobe was opened and she was also taken prisoner. Then the four little captives were laid on their backs, and Polly scalped them with a clothes-brush for a tomahawk. As soon as they were all scalped they started over again, and kept up the fun until the big plantation bell sounded, and then the Injuns deserted in a body and ran off pell-mell to the quarters; for that bell was for the Christmas dinner, and they wouldn't miss that for all the scalps that ever were taken. There were three long tables, supplied with good, well-cooked food, followed by a nice dessert of pudding and cake, and the darkies, one and all, did full justice to it. Up at the house was a grand dinner, with turkey, mince-pie, and plum-pudding, of course. When that was through with, mamma told the little girls that the little quarter negroes were to have a candy stew, and that Mammy might take them to witness the pulling. This was a great treat, for there was nothing the children enjoyed so much as going to the quarters to see the little negroes play. The candy stew had been suggested by Aunt Nancy as a fine device for getting rid of the little darkies for the night. They were to have the frolic only on condition that they would go to bed and not insist on being at the wedding. This they readily agreed to; for they feared they would not be allowed to sit up anyway, and they thought best to make sure of the candy-pulling. When the little girls reached Aunt Nancy's cabin, two big kettles of molasses were on the fire, and, to judge by the sputtering and simmering, the candy was getting on famously. Uncle Sambo had brought his fiddle in, and some of the children were patting and singing and dancing, while others were shelling goobers and picking out scaly-barks to put in the candy; and when the pulling began, if you could have heard the laughing and joking you would have thought there was no fun like a candy stew. As a special favor, the little girls were allowed to stay up and see Candace married; and very nice she looked when her mistress had finished dressing her: her white Swiss was fresh and new, and the wreath and veil were very becoming, and she made quite a pretty bride; at least Jim thought so, and that was enough for her. Jim was dressed in a new pepper-and-salt suit, his Christmas present from his master, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen all looked very fine. Mamma arranged the bridal party in the back parlor, and the folding-doors were thrown open. Both rooms and the large hall were full of negroes. The ceremony was performed by old Uncle Daniel, the negro preacher on the place, and the children's father gave the bride away. After the marriage, the darkies adjourned to the barn to dance. Diddie and Dumps begged to be allowed to go and look at them "just a little while," but it was their bedtime, and Mammy marched hem off to the nursery. About twelve o'clock supper was announced, and old and young repaired to the laundry. The room was festooned with wreaths of holly and cedar, and very bright and pretty and tempting the table looked, spread out with meats and breads, and pickles and preserves, and home-made wine, and cakes of all sorts and sizes, iced and plain; large bowls of custard and jelly; and candies, and fruits and nuts. In the centre of the table was a pyramid, beginning with a large cake at the bottom and ending with a "snowball" on top. At the head of the table was the bride-cake, containing the "ring" and the "dime;" it was handsomely iced, and had a candy Cupid perched over it, on a holly bough which was stuck in a hole in the middle of the cake. It was to be cut after a while by each of the bridesmaids and groomsmen in turns; and whoever should cut the slice containing the ring would be the next one to get married; but whoever should get the dime was to be an old maid or an old bachelor. The supper was enjoyed hugely, particularly a big bowl of eggnog, which so enlivened them all that the dancing was entered into with renewed vigor, and kept up till the gray tints in the east warned them that another day had dawned, and that Christmas was over. But you may be sure that in all Christendom it had been welcomed in and ushered out by no merrier, lighter hearts than those of the happy, contented folks on the old plantation. CHAPTER III MAMMY'S STORY ONE cold, rainy night a little group were assembled around a crackling wood fire in the nursery; Mammy was seated in a low chair, with Tot in her arms; Dumps was rocking her doll back and forth, and Diddie was sitting at the table reading; Aunt Milly was knitting, and the three little darkies were nodding by the fire. "Mammy," said Dumps, "s'posin you tell us a tale." Tot warmly seconded the motion, and Mammy, who was never more delighted than when astonishing the children with her wonderful stories, at once assumed a meditative air. "Lem me see," said the old woman, scratching her head; "I reckon I'll tell yer 'bout de wushin'-stone, ain't neber told yer dat yit. I know yer've maybe hearn on it, leastways Milly has; but den she mayn't have hearn de straight on it, fur 'taint eb'y nigger knows it. Yer see, Milly, my mammy was er 'riginal Guinea nigger, an' she knowed 'bout de wushin'-stone herse'f, an' she told me one Wednesday night on de full er de moon, an' w'at I'm gwine ter tell yer is de truff." Having thus authenticated her story beyond a doubt, Mammy hugged Tot a little closer and began: "Once 'pon er time dar wuz a beautiful gyarden wid all kind er nice blossoms, an' trees, an' brooks, an' things, whar all de little chil'en usen ter go and play, an' in dis gyarden de grass wuz allers green, de blossoms allers bright, and de streams allers clar, caze hit b'longed to er little Fraid, named Cheery." "A 'little Fraid,'" interrupted Diddie, contemptuously. "Why, Mammy, there's no such a thing as a 'Fraid.'" "Lord, Miss Diddie, 'deed dey is," said Dilsey, with her round eyes stretched to their utmost; "I done seed 'em myse'f, an' our Clubfoot Bill he was er gwine 'long one time--" "Look er hyear, yer kinky-head nigger, whar's yer manners?" asked Mammy, "'ruptin' uv eld'ly pussons. I'm de one w'at's 'struck'n dese chil'en, done struck dey mother fuss; I'll tell 'em w'at's becomin' fur 'em ter know; I don't want 'em ter hyear nuf'n 'bout sich low cornfiel' niggers ez Club-foot Bill. "Yes, Miss Diddie, honey," said Mammy, resuming her story, "dar sholy is Fraids; Mammy ain't gwine tell yer nuf'n', honey, w'at she dun know fur er fack; so as I wuz er sayin', dis little Fraid wuz name Cheery, an' she'd go all 'roun' eb'y mornin' an' tech up de grass an' blossoms an' keep 'em fresh, fur she loved ter see chil'en happy, an' w'en dey rolled ober on de grass, an' strung de blossoms, an' waded up an' down de streams, an' peeped roun' de trees, Cheery'd clap 'er han's an' laugh, an' dance roun' an' roun'; an' sometimes dar'd be little po' white chil'en, an' little misfortnit niggers would go dar; an' w'en she'd see de bright look in dey tired eyes, she'd fix things prettier'n eber. "Now dar wuz er nudder little Fraid name Dreary; an' she wuz sad an' gloomy, an' neber dance, nor play, nor nuf'n; but would jes go off poutin', like to herse'f. Well, one day she seed er big flat stone under a tree. She said ter herse'f, 'I ain't gwine ter be like dat foolish Cheery, dancin' an' laughin' foreber, caze she thinks such things ez flowers an' grass kin make folks happy; but I'm gwine ter do er rael good ter eb'ybody," so she laid er spell on de stone, so dat w'en anybody sot on de stone an' wush anything dey'd hab jes w'at dey wush fur; an' so as ter let er heap er folks wush at once, she made it so dat eb'y wush would make de stone twice ez big ez 'twuz befo'. "Po' little Cheery was mighty troubled in her min' w'en she foun' out 'bout'n hit, an' she beg Dreary ter tuck de spell off; but no, she wouldn't do it. She 'lowed, do, ef anybody should eber wush anything fur anybody else, dat den de stone might shrink up ergin; fur who, she sez ter herse'f, is gwine ter wush fur things fur tudder folks? An' she tol' de little birds dat stay in de tree de stone wuz under, when anybody sot on de stone dey mus' sing, 'I wush I had,' an' 'I wush I wuz,' so as ter 'min' 'em 'bout'n de wushin'-stone. Well, 'twan't long fo' de gyarden wuz plum crowded wid folks come ter wush on de stone, an' hit wuz er growin' bigger an' bigger all de time, an' mashin' de blossoms an' grass; an' dar wan't no mo' merry chil'en playin' 'mong de trees an' wadin' in de streams; no soun's ob laughin' and joy in de gyarden; eb'ybody wuz er quarlin, 'bout'n who should hab de nex' place, or wuz tryin' ter study up what dey'd wush fur; an' Cheery wuz jes ez mizer'bul as er free nigger, 'bout her gyarden. "De folks would set on de stone, while de little birds would sing, 'I wush I had," an' dey'd wush dey had money, an' fren's, an' sense, an' happiness, an' 'ligion; an' 'twould all come true jes like dey wush fur. Den de little birds would sing, 'I wush I wuz," an' dey'd wush dey wuz lubly, an' good, an' gran'; un' 'twould all come ter pass jes so. "But all dat time nobody neber wush nobody else was rich, an' good, an' lubly, an' happy; fur don't yer see de birds neber sung, 'I wush you wuz,' 'I wush dey had," but all de time 'I wush I wuz,' 'I wush I had.' At last, one day dar come inter de gyarden er po' little cripple gal, who lived 'way off in er ole tumble-down house. She wuz er little po' white chile, an' she didn't hab no farder nor mudder, nor niggers ter do fur her, an' she had to do all her own wuck herse'f." "Bress de Lord!" ejaculated Aunt Milly, who was becoming very much interested in the story, while tears gathered in Dump's blue eyes; and even Diddie was seen to wink a little at the forlorn condition of "de po' white chile." "Yes, indeed," continued Mammy, "she done all her own wuk herse'f, an' nobody ter say er blessed word ter her, nor he'p her a bit; an' she neber eben hyeard ob de wushin'-stone, but had jes come out fur er little while ter enjoy de birds, an' de fresh air, an' flowers, same as de quality folks; fur she was mos' all de time sick, an, dis wuz jes de same as Christmus ter her. She hobbled erlong on her crutches, an' atter while she got ter de stone; an' hit so happened dar wan't nobody dar, so she sot down ter res'. Well, mun, she hadn't mo'n totch de stone when de little birds began, 'I wush I had,' 'I wush I wuz.' "'Oh, what er sweet, pretty place!' de little gal said; 'an' what nice little birds! I wush dat po' old sick man what libs next ter us could come out here and see it all.' "'I wush I had,' 'I wush I wuz,' sung de little birds. 'I wush all de po' chil'en could come an' spen' de day here,' said de little gal; 'what er nice time dey would hab!' "'I wush I wuz,' 'I wush I had,' sung de birds in er flutter, hoppin' all 'bout 'mong de branches. "'An' all de lame people, an' sick people, an' ole people,' said de little gal, 'I wush dey could all git well, an' strong, an' lib in er beautiful place jes like dis, an' all be happy.' "Oh, de little birds! what er bustle dey wuz in to be sho'! Dey sot upon de bery topes' branches, an' dey sung like dey'd split der troats, "'I wush I had,' 'I wush I wuz.' "But de little gal neber min' 'em. She was rested, an' hobbled on all by herse'f; but now, sence she done wush fur blessin' fur tudder folks, de spell was loosenin' an' de stone all drawerd up ter a little bit er stone, den sunk away in de groun' clar out o' sight. An' dat wuz de last ob de wushin'-stone." "Dar now!" exclaimed Aunt Milly. "De truff, sho'! jes like I ben tellin' yer," said Mammy. "But, Mammy, what about the little girl? did she ever get well an' strong, an' not be lame any more?" asked Dumps. "Well, honey, yer see de Lord, he fixes all dat. He sont fur her one night, an' she jes smiled, bright an' happy like, an' laid right back in de angel's arms; an' he tuck her right along up thu de hebenly gates, an' soon as eber he sot her down, an' her foot totch dem golden streets, de lameness, an' sickness, an' po'ness all come right; an' her fader, an' her mudder, an' her niggers wuz all dar, an' she wuz well an' strong, an' good an' happy. Jes like she wush fur de po' folks, an' de sick folks, de Lord he fixed it jes dat way fur her. He fixed all dat hisse'f." CHAPTER IV OLD BILLY THE gin-house on the plantation was some distance from the house; and in an opposite direction from the quarters. It was out in an open field, but a narrow strip of woods lay between the field and the house, so the gin-house was completely hidden. Just back of the gin-house was a pile of lumber that Major Waldron had had hauled in build a new pick-room, and which was piled so as to form little squares, large enough to hold three of the children at once. During the last ginning season they had gone down once with Mammy to "ride on the gin," but had soon abandoned that amusement to play housekeeping on the lumber, and have the little squares for rooms. They had often since thought of that evening, and had repeatedly begged Mammy to let them go down to the lumber pile; but she was afraid they would tear their clothes, or hurt themselves in some way, and would never consent. So one day in the early spring, when Mammy and Aunt Milly were having a great cleaning-up in the nursery, and the children had been sent into the yard to play, Chris suggested that they should all slip off, and go and play on the lumber pile. "Oh, yes," said Dumps, "that will be the very thing, an' Mammy won't never know it, 'cause we'll be sho' ter come back befo' snack-time." "But something might happen to us, you know," said Diddie, "like the boy in my blue book, who went off fishin' when his mother told him not to, an' the boat upsetted and drownded him." "Tain't no boat there," urged Dumps; "tain't no water even, an' I don't b'lieve we'd be drownded; an' tain't no bears roun' this place like them that eat up the bad little Chil'en in the Bible; and tain't no Injuns in this country, an' tain't no snakes nor lizards till summer-time, an' all the cows is out in the pasture; an' tain't no ghos'es in the daytime, an' I don't b'lieve there's nothin' ter happen to us; an' ef there wuz, I reckon God kin take care of us, can't he?" "He won't do it, though, ef we don't mind our mother," replied Diddie. "Mammy ain't none of our mother, and tain't none of her business not to be lettin' us play on the lumber, neither. Please come, Diddie, we'll have such a fun, an' nothin' can't hurt us. If you'll come, we'll let you keep the hotel, an' me an' Tot 'll be the boarders." The idea of keeping the hotel was too much for Diddie's scruples, and she readily agreed to the plan. Dilsey was then despatched to the nursery to bring the dolls, and Chris ran off to the wood-pile to get the wheelbarrow, which was to be the omnibus for carrying passengers to and from the hotel. These details being satisfactorily arranged, the next thing was to slip off from Cherubim and Seraphim, for they followed the little girls everywhere, and they would be too much trouble on this occasion, since they couldn't climb up on the pile themselves, and would whine piteously if the children left them. The plan finally decided upon was this: Diddie was to coax them to the kitchen to get some meat, while the other children were to go as fast as they could down the avenue and wait for her where the road turned, and she was to slip off while the puppies were eating, and join them. They had only waited a few minutes when Diddie came running down the road, and behind her (unknown to her) came Old Billy. "Oh, what made you bring him?" asked Dumps, as Diddie came up. "I didn't know he was comin'," replied Diddie, "but he won't hurt: he'll just eat grass all about, and we needn't notice him." "Yes, he will hurt," said Dumps; "he behaves jus' dreadful, an' I don't want ter go, neither, ef he's got ter be er comin'." "Well-- I know he shall come," retorted Diddie. "You jes don't like him 'cause he's gettin' old. I'd be ashamed to turn against my friends like that. When he was little and white, you always wanted to be er playin' with him; an' now, jes 'cause he ain't pretty, you don't want him to come anywhere, nor have no fun nor nothin'; yes-- he shall come; an' ef that's the way you're goin' to do, I'm goin' right back to the house, an' tell Mammy you've all slipped off, an' she'll come right after you, an' then you won't get to play on the lumber." Diddie having taken this decided stand, there was nothing for it but to let Old Billy be of the party; and peace being thus restored, the children continued their way, and were soon on the lumber-pile. Diddie at once opened her hotel. Chris was the chambermaid, Riar was the waiter, and Dilsey was the man to take the omnibus down for the passengers. Dumps and Tot, who were to be the boarders, withdrew to the gin-house steps, which was to be the depot, to await the arrival of the omnibus. "I want ter go to the hotel," said Dumps, as Dilsey came up rolling the wheelbarrow-- "me an' my three little chil'en." "Yes, marm, jes git in," said Dilsey, and Dumps, with her wax baby and a rag doll for her little daughters, and a large cotton-stalk for her little boy, took a seat in the omnibus. Dilsey wheeled her up to the hotel, and Diddie met her at the door. "What is your name, madam?" she inquired. "My name is Mrs. Dumps," replied the guest, "an' this is my little boy, an' these is my little girls." "Oh, Dumps, you play so cur'us," said Diddie; "who ever heard of anybody bein' named Mrs. Dumps? there ain't no name like that." "Well, I don't know nothin' else," said Dumps; "I couldn't think of nothin'." "Sposin' you be named Mrs. Washington, after General Washington?" said Diddie, who was now studying a child's history of America, and was very much interested in it. "All right," said Dumps; and Mrs. Washington, with her son and daughters, was assigned apartments, and Chris was sent up with refreshments, composed of pieces of old cotton-bolls and gray moss, served on bits of broken china. The omnibus now returned with Tot and her family, consisting of an India-rubber baby with a very cracked face, and a rag body that had once sported a china head, and now had no head of any kind; but it was nicely dressed, and there were red shoes on the feet; and it answered Tot's purpose very well. "Dese my 'itty dirls," said Tot, as Diddie received her, "an' I tome in de bumberbuss." "What is your name?" asked Diddie. "I name-- I name-- I name-- Miss Gin-house," said Tot, who had evidently never thought of a name, and had suddenly decided upon gin-house, as her eye fell upon that object. "No, no, Tot, that's a thing; that ain't no name for folks," said Diddie. "Let's play you're Mrs. Bunker Hill; that's a nice name." "Yes, I name Miss Unker Bill," said the gentle little girl, who rarely objected to playing just as the others wished. Miss "Unker Bill" was shown to her room; and now Riar came out, shaking her hand up and down, and saying, "Ting-er-ling-- ting-er-ling-- ting-er-ling!" That was the dinner-bell, and they all assembled around a table that Riar had improvised out of a piece of plank supported on two bricks, and which was temptingly set out with mud pies and cakes and green leaves, and just such delicacies as Riar and Diddie could pick up. As soon as Mrs. Washington laid eyes on the mud cakes and pies, she exclaimed, "Oh, Diddie, I'm er goin' ter be the cook, an' make the pies an' things." "I doin' ter be de took an' make de itty mud takes," said Miss Unker Bill, and the table at once became a scene of confusion. "No, Dumps," said Diddie, "somebody's got to be stoppin' at the hotel, an' I think the niggers ought to be the cooks." "But I want ter make the mud cakes," persisted Dumps, an' Tot can be the folks at the hotel-- she and the doll-babies." "No, I doin' ter make de mud takes, too," said Tot, and the hotel seemed in imminent danger of being closed for want of custom, when a happy thought struck Dilsey. "Lor-dy, chil'en! I tell yer: le's play Ole Billy is er gemman what writ ter Miss Diddie in er letter dat he was er comin' ter de hotel, an' ter git ready fur 'im gins he come." "Yes," said Diddie, and lets play Dumps an' Tot was two mo' niggers I had ter bring up from the quarters to help cook; an' we'll make out Ole Billy is some great general or somethin', an' we'll have ter make lots of cakes an' puddin's for 'im. Oh, I know; we'll play he's Lord Burgoyne." All of the little folks were pleased at that idea, and Diddie immediately began to issue her orders. "You, Dumps, an' Tot an' Dilsey, an' all of yer-- I've got er letter from Lord Burgoyne, an' he'll be here to-morrow, an' I want you all to go right into the kitchen an' make pies an' cakes." And so the whole party adjourned to a little ditch where mud and water were plentiful (and which on that account had been selected as the kitchen), and began at once to prepare an elegant dinner. Dear me! how busy the little housekeepers were! and such beautiful pies they made, and lovely cakes all iced with white sand, and bits of grass laid around the edges for trimming! and all the time laughing and chatting as gayly as could be. "Ain't we havin' fun?" said Dumps, who, regardless of her nice clothes, was down on her knees in the ditch, with her sleeves rolled up, and her fat little arms muddy to the elbows; "an' ain't you glad we slipped off, Diddie? I tol' yer there wan't nothin' goin' to hurt us." "And ain't you glad we let Billy come?" said Diddie; "we wouldn't er had nobody to be Lord Burgoyne." "Yes," replied Dumps; "an' he ain't behaved bad at all; he ain't butted nobody, an' he ain't runned after nobody to-day." "'Ook at de take," interrupted Tot, holding up a mudball that she had moulded with her own little hands, and which she regarded with great pride, And now, the plank being as full as it would hold, they all returned to the hotel to arrange the table. But after the table was set the excitement was all over, for there was nobody to be the guest. "Ef Ole Billy wan't so mean," said Chris, "we could fotch 'im hyear in de omnibus. I wush we'd a let Chubbum an' Suppum come; dey'd been Lord Bugon." "I b'lieve Billy would let us haul 'im," said Diddie, who was always ready to take up for her pet; "he's rael gentle now, an' he's quit buttin'; the only thing is, he's so big we couldn't get 'im in the wheelbarrer." "Me 'n Chris kin put 'im in," said Dilsey. "We kin lif' 'im, ef dat's all;" and accordingly the omnibus was dispatched for Lord Burgoyne, who was quietly nibbling grass on the ditch bank at some little distance from the hotel. He raised his head as the children approached, and regarded them attentively. "Billy! Billy! po' Ole Billy!" soothingly murmured Diddie, who had accompanied Dilsey and Chris with the omnibus, as she had more influence over Old Billy than anybody else. He came now at once to her side, and rubbed his head gently against her; and while she caressed him, Dilsey on one side and Chris on the other lifted him up to put him on the wheelbarrow. And now the scene changed. Lord Burgoyne, all unmindful of love or gratitude, and with an eye single to avenging this insult to his dignity, struggled from the arms of his captors, and, planting his head full in Diddie's chest, turned her a somersault in the mud. Then, lowering his head and rushing at Chris, he butted her with such force that over she went headforemost into the ditch! and now, spying Dilsey, who was running with all her might to gain the lumber-pile, he took after her, and catching up with her just as she reached the gin-house, placed his head in the middle of her back, and sent her sprawling on her face. Diddie and Chris had by this time regained their feet, both of them very muddy, and Chris with her face all scratched from the roots and briers in the ditch. Seeing Old Billy occupied with Dilsey, they started in a run for the lumber; but the wily old sheep was on the look-out, and, taking after them full tilt, he soon landed them flat on the ground. And now Dilsey had scrambled up, and was wiping the dirt from her eyes, preparatory to making a fresh start. Billy, however, seemed to have made up his mind that nobody had a right to stand up except himself, and, before the poor little darky could get out of his way, once more he had butted her down. Diddie and Chris were more fortunate this time; they were nearer the lumber than Dilsey, and, not losing a minute, they set out for the pile as soon as Old Billy's back was turned, and made such good time that they both reached it, and Chris had climbed to the top before he saw them; Diddie, however, was only half-way up, so he made a run at her, and butted her feet from under her, and threw her back to the ground. This time he hurt her very much, for her head struck against the lumber, and it cut a gash in her forehead and made the blood come. This alarmed Dumps and Tot, and they both began to cry, though they, with Riar, were safely ensconced on top of the lumber, out of all danger. Diddie, too, was crying bitterly; and as soon as Billy ran back to butt at Dilsey, Chris and Riar caught hold of her hands and drew her up on the pile. Poor little Dilsey was now in a very sad predicament. Billy, seeing that the other children were out of his reach, devoted his entire time and attention to her, and her only safety was in lying flat on the ground. If she so much as lifted her head to reconnoitre, he would plant a full blow upon it. The children were at their wit's end. It was long past their dinner-time, and they were getting hungry; their clothes were all muddy, and Diddie's dress almost torn off of her; the blood was trickling down from the gash in her forehead, and Chris was all scratched and dirty, and her eyes smarted from the sand in them. So it was a disconsolate little group that sat huddled together on top of the lumber, while Old Billy stood guard over Dilsey, but with one eye on the pile, ready to make a dash at anybody who should be foolish enough to venture down. "I tol' yer not to let 'im come," sobbed Dumps, "an' now I spec' we'll hafter stay here all night, an' not have no supper nor nothin'." "I didn't let 'im come," replied Diddie; "he come himself, an' ef you hadn't made us run away fum Mammy, we wouldn't er happened to all this trouble." "I never made yer," retorted Dumps, "you come jes ez much ez anybody; an' ef it hadn't er been fur you, Ole Billy would er stayed at home. You're all time pettin' 'im an' feedin' 'im-- hateful old thing-- tell he thinks he's got ter go ev'rywhere we go. You ought ter be 'shamed er yourse'f. Ef I was you, I'd think myse'f too good ter be always er 'soshatin' with sheeps." "You're mighty fond of 'im sometimes," said Diddie, "an' you was mighty glad he was here jes now, to be Lord Burgoyne: he's jes doin' this fur fun; an' ef Chris was my nigger, I'd make her git down an' drive 'im away." Chris belonged to Dumps, and Mammy had taught the children never to give orders to each other's maids, unless with full permission of the owner. "I ain't gwine hab nuf'n ter do wid 'im," said Chris. "Yes you are, Chris," replied Dumps, who had eagerly caught at Diddie's suggestion of having him driven away. "Get down this minute, an' drive 'im off; ef yer don't, I'll tell Mammy you wouldn't min' me." "Mammy 'll hatter whup me, den," said Chris (for Mammy always punished the little negroes for disobedience to their mistresses); "she'll hatter whup me, caze I ain't gwine ter hab nuf'n tall ter do wid dat sheep; I ain't gwine ter meddle long 'im, hab 'im buttin' me in de ditch." "Riar, you go," said Diddie; "he ain't butted you yet." "He ain't gwine ter, nuther," said Riar, "caze I gwine ter stay up hyear long o' Miss Tot, like Mammy tell me. I 'longs to her, an' I gwine stay wid 'er myse'f, an' nuss 'er jes like Mammy say." It was now almost dark, and Old Billy showed no signs of weariness; his vigilance was unabated, and the children were very miserable, when they heard the welcome sound of Mammy's voice calling "Chil'en! O-o-o-o, chil'en!" "Ma-a-a-m!" answered all of the little folks at once. "Whar is yer?" called Mammy, "On top the lumber-pile," answered the children; and soon Mammy appeared coming through the woods. She had missed the children at snack-time, and had been down to the quarters, and, in fact, all over the place, hunting for them. The children were delighted to see her now, and so, indeed, seemed Old Billy, for, quitting his position at Dilsey's head, he set out at his best speed for Mammy; and Dilsey immediately jumped to her feet, and was soon on the lumber with her companions. "Now yer gwuf fum yer, gwuf fum yer!" said Mammy, furiously waving a cotton-stalk at Old Billy. "Gwuf fum yer, I tell you! I ain't bodern' you. I jes come fur de chil'en, an' yer bet not fool 'long er me, yer low-life sheep." But Old Billy, not caring a fig for Mammy's dignity or importance, planted his head in her breast, and over the old lady went backwards. At this the children, who loved Mammy dearly, set up a yell, and Mammy, still waving the cotton-stalk, attempted to rise, but Billy was ready for her, and, with a well-aimed blow, sent her back to the earth. "Now yer stop dat," said Mammy. "I don't want ter fool wid yer; I lay I'll bus' yer head open mun, ef I git er good lick at yer; yer better gwuf fum yer!" But Billy, being master of the situation, stood his ground, and I dare say Mammy would have been lying there yet, but fortunately Uncle Sambo and Bill, the wagoners, came along the big road, and, hearing the children's cries, they came upon the scene of action, and, taking their whips to Old Billy, soon drove him away. "Mammy, we won't never run away any more," said Diddie, as Mammy came up; "'twas Dumps's fault, anyhow." "Nem min', yer ma's gwine whup yer," said Mammy; "yer'd no business at dis gin-house long o' dat sheep, an' I won'er what you kinky-head niggers is fur, ef yer can't keep de chil'en in de yard: come yer ter me!" And, picking up a cotton-stalk, she gave each of the little darkies a sound whipping. The children were more fortunate. Mamma lectured them on the sin of running away from Mammy; but she put a piece of court-plaster on Diddie's head, and kissed all of the dirty little faces, much to Mammy's disgust, who grumbled a good deal because they were not punished, saying, "Missis is er spilin' dese chil'en, let'n uv 'em cut up all kind er capers. Yer all better hyear me, mun. Yer better quit dem ways yer got, er runnin' off an' er gwine in de mud, an' er gittin' yer cloes tor'd, an' er gittin' me butted wid sheeps; yer better quit it, I tell yer; ef yer don't, de deb'l gwine git yer, sho's yer born." But, notwithstanding her remarks, the little girls had a nice hot supper, and went to bed quite happy, while Mammy seated herself in her rocking-chair, and entertained Aunt Milly for some time with the children's evil doings and their mother's leniency. CHAPTER V DIDDIE'S BOOK ONE morning Diddie came into the nursery with a big blank-book and a lead-pencil in her hand. "What's that, Diddie?" asked Dumps, leaving her paper dolls on the floor where she had been playing with Chris, and coming to her sister's side. "Now don't you bother me, Dumps," said Diddie; "I'm goin' to write a book." "Are you?" said Dumps, her eyes opening wide in astonishment. "Who's goin' ter tell yer what ter say?" "I'm goin' ter make it up out o' my head," said Diddie; "all about little girls and boys and ladies." "I wouldn't have no boys in it," said Dumps; "they're always so hateful: there's Cousin Frank broke up my tea-set, an' Johnnie Miller tied er string so tight roun' Cherubim's neck till hit nyearly choked 'im. Ef I was writin' er book, I wouldn't have no boys in it." "There's boun' ter be boys in it, Dumps; you can't write a book without'n boys;" and Diddie seated herself, and opened the book before her, while Dumps, with her elbows on the table and face in her hands, looked on anxiously. "I'm not goin' ter write jes one straight book," said Diddie; "I'm goin' ter have little short stories, an' little pieces of poetry, an' all kin' of things; an' I'll name one of the stories 'Nettie Herbert:' don't you think that's a pretty name, Dumps?" "Jes' beautiful," replied Dumps; and Diddie wrote the name at the beginning of the book. "Don't you think two pages on this big paper will be long enough for one story?" asked Diddie. "Plenty," answered Dumps. So at the bottom of the second page Diddie wrote "The END of Nettie Herbert." "Now, what would you name the second story?" asked Diddie, biting her pencil thoughtfully. "I'd name it 'The Bad Little Girl,'" answered Dumps. "Yes, that will do," said Diddie, and she wrote "The Bad Little Girl" at the top of the third page; and, allowing two pages for the story, she wrote "The END of The Bad Little Girl" at the bottom of the next page. "And now it's time for some poetry," said Diddie, and she wrote "Poetry" at the top of the fifth page, and so on until she had divided all of her book into places for stories and poetry. She had three stories-- "Nettie Herbert," "The Bad Little Girl," and "Annie's Visit to her Grandma." She had one place for poetry, and two places she had marked "History;" for, as she told Dumps, she wasn't going to write anything unless it was useful; she wasn't going to write just trash. The titles being all decided upon, Dumps and Chris went back to their dolls, and Diddie began to write her first story. "NETTIE HERBERT." "Nettie Herbert was a poor little girl;" and then she stopped and asked, "Dumps, would you have Nettie Herbert a po' little girl?" "No, I wouldn't have nobody er po' little girl," said Dumps, conclusively, and Diddie drew a line through what she had written, and began again. "Nettie Herbert was a rich little girl, and she lived with her pa and ma in a big house in Nu Orlins; and one time her father give her a gold dollar, and she went down town, and bort a grate big wax doll with open and shet eyes, and a little cooking stove with pots and kittles, and a wuck box, and lots uv peices uv clorf to make doll cloes, and a bu-te-ful gold ring, and a lockit with her pas hare in it, and a big box full uv all kinds uv candy and nuts and razens and ornges and things, and a little git-ar to play chunes on, and two little tubs and some little iuns to wash her doll cloes with; then she bort a little wheelbarrer, and put all the things in it, and started fur home. When she was going a long, presently she herd sumbody cryin and jes a sobbin himself most to deaf; and twas a poor little boy all barefooted and jes as hungry as he could be; and he said his ma was sick, and his pa was dead, and he had nine little sisters and seven little bruthers, and he hadnt had a mouthful to eat in two weeks, and no place to sleep, nor nuthin. So Nettie went to a doctors house, and told him she would give him the gold ring fur some fyssick fur the little boys muther; and the doctor give her some castor-oil and parrygorick, and then she went on tell they got to the house, and Nettie give her the fyssick, and some candy to take the taste out of her mouth, and it done her lots uv good; and she give all her nuts and candy to the poor little chillen. And she went back to the man what sold her the things, and told him all about it; and he took back all the little stoves and tubs and iuns and things she had bort, and give her the money, and she carried it strait to the poor woman, and told her to buy some bread and cloes for her chillen. The poor woman thanked her very much, and Nettie told em good-by, and started fur home." Here Diddie stopped suddenly and said, "Come here a little minute, Dumps; I want you to help me wind up this tale." Then, after reading it aloud, she said, "You see, I've only got six mo' lines of paper, an' I haven't got room to tell all that happened to her, an' what become of her. How would you wind up, if you were me?" "I b'lieve I'd say, she furgive her sisters, an' married the prince, an' lived happy ever afterwards, like 'Cinderilla an' the Little Glass Slipper.'" "Oh, Dumps, you're such er little goose; that kind of endin' wouldn't suit my story at all," said Diddie; "but I'll have to wind up somehow, for all the little girls who read the book will want to know what become of her, an' there's only six lines to wind up in; an' she's only a little girl, an' she can't get married; besides, there ain't any prince in Nu Orlins. No, somethin' will have to happen to her. I tell you, I b'lieve I'll make a runaway horse run over her goin' home." "Oh, no, Diddie, please don't," entreated Dumps; "po' little Nettie, don't make the horse run over her." "I'm obliged to, Dumps; you mustn't be so tender-hearted; she's got ter be wound up somehow, an' I might let the Injuns scalp her, or the bears eat her up, an' I'm sure that's a heap worse than jes er horse runnin' over her; an' then you know she ain't no sho' nuff little girl; she's only made up out of my head." "I don't care, I don't want the horse to run over her. I think it's bad enough to make her give 'way all her candy an' little tubs an' iuns an' wheelbarrers, without lettin' the horses run over her; an' ef that's the way you're goin' ter do, I sha'n't have nuthin' 'tall ter do with it." And Dumps, having thus washed her hands of the whole affair, went back to her dolls, and Diddie resumed her writing: "As she was agoin along, presently she herd sumthin cumin book-er-ty-book, book-er-ty-book, and there was a big horse and a buggy cum tearin down the road, and she ran jes hard as she could; but befo she could git out er the way, the horse ran rite over her, and killed her, and all the people took her up and carried her home, and put flowers all on her, and buried her at the church, and played the organ 'bout her; and that's the END of Nettie Herbert." "Oh, dear me!" she sighed, when she had finished, "I am tired of writin' books; Dumps, sposin' you make up 'bout the 'Bad Little Girl,' an' I'll write it down jes like you tell me." "All right," assented Dumps, once more leaving her dolls, and coming to the table. Then, after thinking for a moment, she began, with great earnestness: "Once pun er time there was er bad little girl, an' she wouldn't min' nobody, nor do no way nobody wanted her to; and when her mother went ter give her fyssick, you jes ought ter seen her cuttin' up! she skweeled, an' she holler'd, an' she kicked, an' she jes done ev'y bad way she could; an' one time when she was er goin' on like that the spoon slipped down her throat, an' choked her plum ter death; an' not long after that, when she was er playin' one day--" "Oh, but, Dumps," interrupted Diddie, "you said she was dead." "No, I nuver said nuthin' 'bout her bein' dead," replied Dumps; "an' ef you wrote down that she's dead, then you wrote a story, 'cause she's livin' as anybody." "You said the spoon choked her to death," said Diddie. "Well, hit nuver killed her, anyhow," said Dumps; "hit jes only give her spasums; an' now you've gone and put me all out; what was I sayin'?" "When she was er playin' one day," prompted Diddie. "Oh yes," continued Dumps, "when she was er playin' one day on the side uv the creek with her little sister, she got ter fightin' an' pinchin' an' scrougin', an' the fus thing she knowed, she fell kersplash in the creek, and got drownded. An' one time her mammy tol' 'er not nuber ter clim' up on the fender, an' she neber min' 'er, but clum right upon the fender ter git an apple off'n the mantelpiece; an' the fender turned over, an' she fell in the fire an' burnt all up. An' another time, jes er week after that, she was er foolin' 'long--" "Dumps, what are you talkin' 'bout?" again interrupted Diddie. "She couldn't be er foolin' long o' nothin' ef she's dead." "But she ain't dead, Diddie," persisted Dumps. "Well, you said the fire burned her up," retorted Diddie. "I don't care ef hit did," said Dumps; "she nuver died bout hit; an' ef you're goin' ter keep sayin' she's dead, then I sha'n't tell yer no mo'." "Go on, then," said Diddie, "an I won't bother you." "Well, one time," continued Dumps, "when she was er foolin' 'long o' cow, what she had no business, the cow run his horns right thorough her neck, an' throwed her way-ay-ay up yon'er; an' she nuver come down no mo', an' that's all." "But, Dumps, what become of her?" asked Diddie. "I dunno what become uv her," said Dumps. "She went ter hebn, I reckon." "But she couldn't go ter hebn ef she's so bad," said Diddie; "the angel wouldn't let her come in," "The cow throwed her in," said Dumps, "an' the angel wan't er lookin', an' he nuver knowed nothin' 'bout it." "That's er mighty funny story," said Diddie; "but I'll let it stay in the book-- only you ain't finished it, Dumps. Hyear's fo' mo' lines of paper ain't written yet." "That's all I know," replied Dumps. And Diddie, after considering awhile, said she thought it would be very nice to wind it up with a piece of poetry. Dumps was delighted at that suggestion, and the little girls puzzled their brains for rhymes. After thinking for some time, Diddie wrote, "Once 'twas a little girl, and she was so bad," and read it aloud; then said, "Now, Dumps, sposin' you make up the nex' line." Dumps buried her face in her hands, and remained in deep study for a few moments, and presently said, "And now she is dead, an' I am so glad." "Oh, Dumps, that's too wicked," said Diddie. "You mustn't never be glad when anybody's dead; that's too wicked a poetry; I sha'n't write it in the book." "Well, I nuver knowed nuthin' else," said Dumps. "I couldn't hardly make that up; I jes had ter study all my might; and I'm tired of writin' poetry, anyhow; you make it up all by yourse'f." Diddie, with her brows drawn together in a frown, and her eyes tight shut, chewed the end of her pencil, and, after a few moments, said, "Dumps, do you min' ef the cow was to run his horns through her forrid stid of her neck?" "No, hit don't make no diffrence to me," replied Dumps. "Well, then," said Diddie, "ef 'twas her forrid, I kin fix it." So, after a little more study and thought, Diddie wound up the story thus: "Once 'twas er little girl, so wicked and horrid, Till the cow run his horns right slap through her forrid, And throwed her to hebn all full of her sin, And, the gate bein open, he pitched her right in." And that was "The END of the Bad Little Girl." "Now there's jes one mo' tale," said Diddie, "and that's about 'Annie's Visit,' an I'm tired of makin' up books; Chris, can't you make up that?" "I dunno hit," said Chris, "but I kin tell yer 'bout'n de tar baby, el dat'll do." "Don't you think that'll do jes as well, Dumps?" asked Diddie. 'Certingly!" replied Dumps. So Diddie drew her pencil through "Annie's Visit," and wrote in its place, "THE TAR BABY," and Chris began: "Once pun a time, 'twuz er ole Rabbit an' er ole Fox and er ole Coon: an' dey all lived close togedder; an' de ole Fox he had him er mighty fine goober-patch, w'at he nuber 'low nobody ter tech; an' one mornin' atter he git up, an' wuz er walkin' 'bout in his gyarden, he seed tracks, an' he foller de tracks, an' he see wahr sumbody ben er grabhin' uv his goobers. An' ev'y day he see de same thing; an' he watch, an' he watch, an' he couldn't nubber catch nobody! an' he went, he did, ter de Coon, and he sez, sezee, 'Brer Coon, dar's sumbody stealin' uv my goobers.' "'Well,' sez Brer Coon, sezee, 'I bet yer hit's Brer Rabbit.' "'I lay I'll fix 'im,' sez Brer Fox; so he goes, he does, and he tuck'n made er man out'n tar, an' he sot 'im, he did, right in de middle uv de goober-patch. Well, sar, soon ez eber de moon riz, Brer Rabbit, he stole out'n his house, and he lit right out fur dem goobers; and by'mby he sees de tar man er stanin' dar, an' he hollers out, 'Who's dat er stanin' dar an' er fixin' ter steal Brer Fox's goobers?' Den he lis'en, and nobody nuver anser, and he 'gin ter git mad, and he sez, sezee, 'Yer brack nigger you, yer better anser me wen I speaks ter yer;' and wid dat he hault off, he did, and hit de tar baby side de head, and his han' stuck fas' in de tar. Now yer better turn me er loose,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; I got er nuther han' lef',' and 'ker bum' he come wid his udder han', on de tar baby's tuther jaw, an' dat han' stuck. "'Look er hyear! who yer foolin' wid?' sez Brer Rabbit; 'I got er foot yit.' Den he kick wid all his might, an' his foot stuck. Den he kick wid his udder foot, an' dat stuck. Den Brer Rabbit he 'gun ter git madder'n he wuz, an' sezee, 'Ef yer fool 'long o' me mun I'll butt de life out'n yer," an' he hault off wid his head, an' butt de tar baby right in de chis, an' his head stuck. Dar he wuz! an' dar he had ter stay, till, by'mby, Brer Fox he come er long, an' he seed de Rabbit er stickin' dar, an' he tuck him up, an' he cyard 'im long ter Brer Coon's house, an' he sez, sezee, "'Brer Coon, hyear's de man wat stole my goobers; now wat mus' I do wid 'im?' "Brer Coon tuck de Fox off one side, he did, an' he say, 'Le's give 'im his chice, wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de fire or de brier-patch; an' ef he say de fire, den we'll fling 'im in de briers; an' ef he say de briers, den we'll fling 'im in de fire.' So dey went back ter de Rabbit, an' ax 'im wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de fire or de briers. "'Oh, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'plee-ee-eeze don't tho me in de briers, an' git me all scratched up; plee-ee-eeze tho me in de fire; fur de Lord's sake,' sezee, 'don't tho me in de briers.' "And wid dat, Brer Fox he lif' 'im up, an' tho'd 'im way-ay-ay over in de briers. Den Brer Rabbit he kick up his heels, he did, an' he laugh, an' he laugh, an' he holler out, "'Good-bye, Brer Fox! Far' yer well, Brer Coon! I wuz born an' riz in de briers!' And wid dat he lit right out, he did, an' he nuber stop tell he got clean smack home." The children were mightily pleased with this story; and Diddie, after carefully writing underneath it, "The END of The Tar Baby," said she could write the poetry and history part some other day; so she closed the book, and gave it to Mammy to put away for her, and she and Dumps went out for a ride on Corbin. CHAPTER VI UNCLE SNAKE-BIT BOB'S SUNDAY-SCHOOL THERE, was no more faithful slave in all the Southland than old Uncle Snake-bit Bob. He had been bitten by a rattlesnake when he was a baby, and the limb had to be amputated, and its place was supplied with a wooden peg. There were three or four other "Bobs" on the plantation, and he was called Snake-bit to distinguish him. Though lame, and sick a good deal of his time, his life had not been wasted, nor had he been a useless slave to his master. He made all of the baskets that were used in the cotton-picking season, and had learned to mend shoes; besides that, he was the great horse-doctor of the neighborhood, and not only cured his master's horses and mules, but was sent for for miles around to see the sick stock; and then too, he could re-bottom chairs, and make buckets and tubs and brooms; and all of the money he made was his own: so the old man had quite a little store of gold and silver sewed up in an old bag and buried somewhere-- nobody knew where except himself; for Uncle Snake-bit Bob had never married, and had no family ties; and furthermore, he was old Granny Rachel's only child, and Granny had died long, long ago, ever since the children's mother was a baby, and he had no brothers or sisters. So, having no cause to spend his money, he had laid it up until now he was a miser, and would steal out by himself at night and count his gold and silver, and chuckle over it with great delight. But he was a very good old man; as Mammy used to say, "he wuz de piuses man dar wuz on de place;" and he had for years led in "de pra'r-meetin's, and called up de mo'ners." One evening, as he sat on a hog-pen talking to Uncle Daniel, who was a preacher, they began to speak of the wickedness among the young negroes on the plantation. "Pyears ter me," said Uncle Rob, "ez ef dem niggers done furgot dey got ter die; dey jes er dancin' an' er cavortin' ev'y night, an' dey'll git lef', mun, wheneber dat angel blow his horn. I tell you what I ben er stud'n, Brer Dan'l. I ben er stud'n dat what's de matter wid deze niggers is, dat de chil'en ain't riz right. Yer know de Book hit sez ef yer raise de chil'en, like yer want 'em ter go, den de ole uns dey won't part fum hit; an', sar, ef de Lord spars me tell nex' Sunday, I 'low ter ax marster ter lemme teach er Sunday-school in de gin-house fur de chil'en." Major Waldron heartily consented to Uncle Bob's proposition, and had the gin-house all swept out for him, and had the carpenter to make him some rough benches. And when the next Sunday evening came around, all of the little darkies, with their heads combed and their Sunday clothes on, assembled for the Sunday-school. The white children begged so hard to go too, that finally Mammy consented to take them. So when Uncle Snake-bit Bob walked into the gin-house, their eager little faces were among those of his pupils. "Niw, you all sot down," said Uncle Rob, "an' 'have yerse'fs till I fix yer in er line." Having arranged them to his satisfaction, he delivered to them a short address, setting forth the object of the meeting, and his intentions concerning them. "Chil'en," he began, "I fotch yer hyear dis ebenin fur ter raise yer like yer ought ter be riz. De folks deze days is er gwine ter strucshun er dancin' an' er pickin' uv banjers an' er singin' uv reel chunes an' er cuttin' up uv ev'y kin' er dev'lment. I ben er watchin' 'em; an', min' yer, when de horn hit soun' fur de jes' ter rise, half de niggers gwine ter be wid de onjes'. An' I 'low ter myse'f dat I wuz gwine ter try ter save de chil'en. I gwine ter pray fur yer, I gwine ter struc yer, an' I gwine do my bes' ter lan' yer in hebn. Now yer jes pay tenshun ter de strucshun I gwine give yer-- dat's all I ax uv yer-- an' me an' de Lord we gwine do de res'." After this exhortation, the old man began at the top of the line, and asked "Gus," a bright-eyed little nig, "Who made you?" "I dun no, sar," answered Gus, very untruthfully, for Aunt Nancy had told him repeatedly. "God made yer," said Uncle Bob. "Now, who Inane yer? ' "God," answered Gus. "Dat's right," said the old man; then proceeded to "Jim," the next in order. "What'd he make yer out'n?" demanded the teacher. "I dunno, sar," answered Jim, with as little regard for truth as Gus had shown. "He made yer out'n dut," said Uncle Bob. "Now, what'd he make yer out'n?" "Dut," answered Jim, promptly, and the old man passed on to the next. "What'd he make yer fur?" Again the answer was, "I dunno, sar;" and the old man, after scratching his head and reflecting a moment, said, "Fur ter do de bes' yer kin," which the child repeated after him. "Who wuz de fus man?" was his next question; and the little nig professing ignorance, as usual, the old man replied, "Marse Adum." And so he went all down the line, explaining that "Marse Cain kilt his brudder;" that "Marse Abel wuz de fus man slewed;" that "Marse Noah built de ark;" that "Marse Thuselum wuz de oldes' man," and so on, until he reached the end of the line, and had almost exhausted his store of information. Then, thinking to see how much the children remembered, he began at the top of the line once more, and asked the child, "Who made yer?" "Dut," answered the little negro. "Who?" demanded Uncle Bob, in astonishment. "Dut," replied the child. "Didn' I tell yer God made yer?" asked the old man. "No, sar," replied the boy; "dat'n wat God made done slip out de do'." And so it was. As soon as Uncle Bob's back was turned, Gus, who had wearied of the Sunday-school, slipped out, and the old man had not noticed the change. The confusion resulting from this trifling circumstances was fearful. "Dut" made the first child. The question, "What did he make yer fur?" was promptly answered, "Marse Adum." "Eve wuz de fus man." "Marse Cain wuz de fus 'oman." "Marse Abel kilt his brudder." "Marse Noah wuz de fus one slewed." "Marse Thuselum built de ark." And so on, until the old man had to begin all over again, and give each one a new answer. The catechising through with, Uncle Bob said: "Now, chil'en, I gwine splain de Scripchurs ter yer. I gwine tell yer boutn Dan'l in de lions' den. Dan'l wuz er good Christyun man wat lived in de Bible; and whedder he wuz er white man or whedder he wuz er brack man I dunno; I ain't nuber hyeard nobody say. But dat's neder hyear no dar; he wuz er good man, and he pray tree times eby day. At de fus peepin' uv de day, Brer Dan'l he usen fur ter hop outn his bed and git down on his knees; and soon's eber de horn hit blowed fur de hans ter come outn de field fur dinner, Brer Dan'l he went in his house, he did, and he flop right back on 'is knees. And wen de sun set, den dar he wuz agin er prayin' and er strivin' wid de Lord. "Well, de king uv dat kentry, he 'low he nuber want no prayin' bout 'im; he sez, sezee, 'I want de thing fur ter stop'; but Brer Dan'l, he nuber studid 'im; he jes prayed right on, tell by'mby de king he 'low dat de nex' man wat he cotch prayin' he wuz gwine cas'm in de lions' den. "Well, nex' mornin, soon's Brer Dan'l riz fum 'is bed, he lit right on 'is knees, an' went ter prayin'; an' wile he wuz er wrestlin' in prar de pater-rollers dey come in' an' dey tied 'im han' an' foot wid er rope, an' tuck 'im right erlong tell dey come ter de lions' den; an' wen dey wuz yit er fur ways fum dar dey hyeard de lions er ro'in an' er sayin', 'Ar-ooorrrrar! aroooorrrrrar!' an' all dey hearts 'gun ter quake sept'n Brer Dan'l's; he nuber note's 'em; he jes pray 'long. By'mby dey git ter de den, an' dey tie er long rope roun' Brer Dan'l's was'e, an' tho 'im right in! an' den dey drawed up de rope, an' went back whar dey come fum. "Well, yearly nex' mornin hyear dey come agin, an' dis time de king he come wid 'em; an' dey hyeard de lions er ro'in, 'Ar-ooorrrrar! arooorrrrar!' an' dey come ter de den, an' dey open de do', an' dar wuz de lions wid dey mouf open an' dey eyes er shinin,' jes er trompin' backerds an f'orerds; an' dar in de corner sot an angel smoovin' uv 'is wings; an' right in de middle uv de den was Dan'l, jes er sot'n back dar! Gemmun, he wuzn totch! he nuber so much as had de smell uv de lions bout'n 'im! he wuz jes as whole, mun, as he wuz de day he wuz born! Eben de boots on 'im, sar, wuz ez shiny ez dey wuz wen dey put 'im in dar. "An' he jes clum up de side uv de den, he did; an' soon's uber his feet tech de yeath, he sez ter de king, sezee, 'King, hit ain't no usen fur yer ter fool erlong o' me,' sezee; 'I'm er prayin' man mysef, an I 'low ter live an' die on my knees er prayin' an' er sarvin' de Lord.' Sezee, 'De Lord ain't gwine let de lions meddle long o' me,' sezee; 'I ain't fyeard o' nufn,' sezee. 'De Lord is my strengt an' my rocks, an' I ain't er fyeard o' NO man.' An' wid dat he helt er preachin', sar, right whar he wuz; an' he tol' 'em uv dey sins, an' de goodness uv de Lord. He preach de word, he did, right erlong, an' atter dat he 'gun ter sing dis hymn: "'Dan'l wuz er prayin' man; He pray tree times er day; De Lord he hist de winder, Fur ter hyear po' Dan'l pray.' "Den he 'gun ter call up de mo'ners, an' dey come too! Mun, de whole yeath wuz erlive wid 'em: de white folks dey went up; an' de niggers dey went up; an' de pater-rollers dey went up; an' de king he went up; an' dey all come thu an' got 'ligion; an' fum dat day dem folks is er sarvin' de Lord. "An' now, chil'en, efn yer be like Brer Dan'l, an' say yer prars, an' put yer pen'ence in de Lord, yer needn be er fyeard uv no lions; de Lord, he'll take cyar uv yer, an' he'll be mighty proud ter do it. "Now," continued the old man, "we'll close dis meet'n by singing uv er hymn, an' den yer kin all go. I'll give de hymn out, so's dar needn't be no 'scuse 'bout not know'n uv de words, an' so's yer all kin sing." The children rose to their feet, and Uncle Rob, with great solemnity, gave out the following hymn, which they all, white and black, sang with great fervor: "O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O bless us mo' an' mo'; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We will not let yer go. "My marster, Lord; my marster, Lord-- O Lord, he does his bes', So when yer savin' sinners, Lord, Save him wid all de res'. "O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! An' keep us in yer cyar; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We're gwine ter hol' yer hyear. "My missus, Lord; my missus, Lord, O bless my missus now-- She's tryin' hard ter serve yer, Lord, But den she dunno how. "O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O bless us now, we pray; Unless ye'll come an' bless us, Lord, We won't leave hyear ter day. "Deze chil'en, Lord; deze chil'en, Lord, O keep dey little feet Er gwine straight ter hebn, Lord, Fur ter walk dat golden street. "O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O come in all yer might; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We'll wrestle hyear all night. "Deze niggers, Lord; deze niggers, Lord, Dey skins is black, hit's true, But den dey souls is white, my Lord, So won't yer bless dem too? "O bless us, Lord! O bless us, Lord! O bless us mo' an' mo'; Unless yer'll come an' bless us, Lord, We'll keep yer hyear fur sho. "All folkses, Lord; all folkses, Lord-- O Lord, bless all de same. O bless de good, an' bless de bad, Fur de glory uv dy name. "Now bless us, Lord! now bless us, Lord! Don't fool 'long o' us, no mo'; O sen' us down de blessin', Lord, An' den we'll let yer go." CHAPTER VII POOR ANN "MISS Diddie!" called Dilsey, running into the nursery one morning in a great state of excitement; then, seeing that Diddie was not there, she stopped short, and demanded, "Whar Miss Diddie?" "She's sayin' her lessons," answered Dumps. "What do you want with her?" "De specerlaters is come," said Dilsey; "dey's right down yon'er on de crick banks back er de quarters." In an instant Dumps and Tot had abandoned their dolls, and Chris and Riar had thrown aside their quilt-pieces (for Aunt Milly was teaching them to sew), and they were all just leaving the room when Mammy entered. "Whar yer gwine?" asked Mammy. "Oh, Mammy, de specerlaters is come," said Dumps, "an' we're goin' down to the creek to see 'um." "No yer ain't, nuther," said Mammy. "Yer ain't er gwine er nyear dem specerlaters, er cotchin' uv measles an' hookin'-coffs an' sich, fum dem niggers. Yer ain't gwine er nyear 'um; an' yer jes ez well fur ter tuck off dem bunnits an' ter set yerse'fs right back on de flo' an' go ter playin'. An' efn you little niggers don't tuck up dem quilt-pieces an' go ter patchin' uv 'em, I lay I'll hu't yer, mun! Who dat tell deze chil'en 'bout de specerlaters?" "Hit uz Dilsey," answered Chris and Riar in a breath; and Mammy, giving Dilsey a sharp slap, said, "Now yer come er prancin' in hyear ergin wid all kin' er news, an' I bet yer'll be sorry fur it. Yer know better'n dat. Yer know deze chil'en ain't got no bizness 'long o' specerlaters." In the meanwhile Dumps and Tot were crying over their disappointment. "Yer mean old thing!" sobbed Dumps. "I ain't goin' ter min' yer, nuther; an' I sha'n't nuver go ter sleep no mo', an' let you go to prayer-meetin's; jes all time botherin' me, an' won't lemme see de specerlaters, nor nothin'." "Jes lis'en how yer talkin'," said Mammy, "given' me all dat sass. You're de sassies' chile marster's got. Nobody can't nuver larn yer no manners, allers er sassin ole pussons. Jes keep on, an' yer'll see wat'll happen ter yer; yer'll wake up some er deze mornins, an, yer won't have no hyear on yer head. I knowed er little gal onct wat sassed her mudder, an' de Lord he sent er angel in de night, he did, an' struck her plum' bald-headed." "You ain't none o' my mother," replied Dumps. "You're mos' black ez my shoes; an' de Lord ain't er goin' ter pull all my hair off jes 'boutn you." "I gwine right down-sta'rs an' tell yer ma," said Mammy. "She don't 'low none o' you chil'en fur ter sass me, an' ter call me brack; she nuver done it herse'f, wan she wuz little. I'se got ter be treated wid 'spec myse'f; ef I don't, den hit's time fur me ter quit min'en chil'en: I gwine tell yer ma." And Mammy left the room in high dudgeon, but presently came back, and said Dumps was to go to her mother at once. "What is the matter with my little daughter?" asked her father, as she came slowly downstairs, crying bitterly, and met him in the hall. "Mammy's ben er sa-a-as-sin me," sobbed Dumps; "an' she sa-aid de Lord wuz goin' ter sen' an angel fur ter git my ha-air, an' she won't lem'me go-o-o ter see de spec-ec-ec-erlaters." "Well, come in mamma's room," said her father, "and we'll talk it all over." And the upshot of the matter was that Major Waldron said he would himself take the children to the speculator's camp; and accordingly, as soon as dinner was over, they all started off in high glee-- the three little girls and the three little negroes-- leaving Mammy standing at the top of the stairs, muttering to herself, "Er catchin' uv de measles an' de hookin'-coffs." The speculator's camp was situated on the bank of the creek, and a very bright scene it presented as Major Waldron and his party came up to it. At a little distance from the main encampment was the speculator's tent, and the tents for the negroes were dotted here and there among the trees. Some of the women were sitting at the creek, others were cooking, and some were sitting in front of their tents sewing; numbers of little negroes were playing about, and, altogether, the "speculator's camp" was not the horrible thing that one might suppose. The speculator, who was a jolly-looking man weighing over two hundred pounds, came forward to meet Major Waldron and show him over the encampment. The negroes were well clothed, well fed, and the great majority of them looked exceedingly happy. They came across one group of boys and girls dancing and singing. An old man, in another group, had collected a number of eager listeners around him, and was recounting some marvellous tale; but occasionally there would be a sad face and a tearful eye, and Mr. Waldron sighed as he passed these, knowing that they were probably grieving over the home and friends they had left. As they came to one of the tents, the speculator said, "There is a sick yellow woman in there, that I bought in Maryland. She had to be sold in the settlement of an estate, and she has fretted herself almost to death; she is in such bad health now that I doubt if anybody will buy her, though she has a very likely little boy about two years old." Mr. Waldron expressed a wish to see the woman, and they went in. Lying on a very comfortable bed was a woman nearly white; her eyes were deep-sunken in her head, and she was painfully thin. Mr. Waldron took her hand in his and looked into her sad eyes. "Do you feel much pain?" he asked, tenderly. "Yes, sir," answered the woman, "I suffer a great deal; and I am so unhappy, sir, about my baby; I can't live long, and what will become of him? If I only had a home, where I could make friends for him before I die, where I could beg and entreat the people to be kind to him and take care of him! 'Tis that keeps me sick, sir." By this time Diddie's eyes were swimming in tears, and Dumps was sobbing aloud; seeing which, Tot began to cry too, though she hadn't the slightest idea what was the matter; and Diddie, going to the side of the bed, smoothed the woman's long black hair, and said, "We'll take you home with us, an' we'll be good to your little boy, me an' Dumps an' Tot, an' I'll give 'im some of my marbles." "An' my little painted wagin," put in Dumps. "An' you shall live with us always," continued Diddie; "an' Mammy'll put yer feet into hot water, an' rub turkentine on yer ches', an' give yer 'fermifuge' ev'y mornin', an' you'll soon be well. Papa, sha'n't she go home with us?" Major Waldron's own eyes moistened as he answered, "We will see about it, my daughter;" and, telling the woman whose name was Ann, that he would see her again, he left the tent, and presently the camp. That night, after the little folks were asleep, Major Waldron and his wife had a long talk about the sick woman and her little boy, and it was decided between them that Major Waldron should go the next morning and purchase them both. The children were delighted when they knew of this decision, and took an active part in preparing one room of the laundry for Ann's reception. Their mother had a plain bedstead moved in, and sent down from the house a bed and mattress, which she supplied with sheets, pillows, blankets, and a quilt. Then Uncle Nathan, the carpenter, took a large wooden box and put shelves in it, and tacked some bright-colored calico all around it, and made a bureau. Two or three chairs were spared from the nursery, and Diddie put some of her toys on the mantel-piece for the baby; and then, when they had brought in a little square table and covered it with a neat white cloth, and placed upon it a mug of flowers, and when Uncle Nathan had put up some shelves in one corner of the roof, and driven some pegs to hang clothes on, they pronounced the room all ready. And Ann, who had lived for several months in the camp, was delighted with her new home and the preparations that her little mistresses had made for her. The baby, too, laughed and clapped his hands over the toys the children gave him. His name was Henry, and a very pretty child he was. He was almost as white as Tot, and his black hair curled in ringlets all over his head; but, strange to say, neither he nor his mother gained favor with the negroes on the place. Mammy said openly that she "nuver had no 'pinion uv white niggers," and that "marster sholy had niggers 'nuff fur ter wait on 'im doutn buyen 'em." But, for all that, Ann and her little boy were quite happy. She was still sick, and could never be well, for she had consumption; though she got much better, and could walk about the yard, and sit in front of her door with Henry in her lap. Her devotion to her baby was unusual in a slave; she could not bear to have him out of her sight, and never seemed happy unless he was playing around her or nestling in her arms. Mrs. Waldron, of course, never exacted any work of Ann. They had bought her simply to give her a home and take care of her, and faithfully that duty was performed. Her meals were carried from the table, and she had every attention paid to her comfort. One bright evening, when she was feeling better than usual, she went out for a walk, and, passing Uncle Snake-bit Bob's shop, she stopped to look at his baskets, and to let little Henry pick up some white-oak splits that he seemed to have set his heart on. The old man, like all the other negroes, was indignant that his master should have purchased her; for they all prided themselves on being inherited, and "didn't want no bought folks" among them. He had never seen her, and now would scarcely look at or speak to her. "You weave these very nicely," said Ann, examining one of his baskets. Uncle Bob looked up, and, seeing she was pale and thin, offered her a seat, which she accepted. "Is this always your work?" asked Ann, by way of opening a conversation with the old man. "In cose 'tis," he replied; "who dat gwine ter make de baskits les'n hit's me? I done make baskits 'fo mistiss wuz born; I usen ter 'long ter her pa; I ain't no bort nigger myse'f." "You are certainly very fortunate," answered Ann, "for the slave that has never been on the block can never know the full bitterness of slavery." "Wy, yer talkin' same ez white folks," said Uncle Bob. "Whar yer git all dem fine talkin's fum? ain't you er nigger same ez me?" "Yes, I am a negress, Uncle Bob; or, rather, my mother was a slave, and I was born in slavery; but I have had the misfortune to have been educated." "Kin yer read in de book?" asked the old man earnestly. "Oh yes, as well as anybody." "Who showed yer?" asked Uncle Bob. "My mistress had me taught; but, if it won't bother you, I'll just tell you all about it, for I want to get your interest, Uncle Bob, and gain your love, if I can-- yours, and everybody's on the place-- for I am sick, and must die, and I want to make friends, so they will be kind to my baby. Shall I tell you my story?" The old man nodded his head, and went on with his work, while Ann related to him the sad history of her life. "My mother, who was a favorite slave, died when I was born; and my mistress, who had a young baby only a few days older than myself, took me to nurse. I slept, during my infancy, in the cradle with my little mistress, and afterwards in the room with her, and thus we grew up as playmates and companions until we reached our seventh year, when we both had scarlet fever. My little mistress, who was the only child of a widow, died; and her mother, bending over her death-bed, cried, 'I will have no little daughter now!' when the child placed her arms about her and said, 'Mamma, let Ann be your daughter; she'll be your little girl; I'll go to her mamma, and she'll stay with my mamma.' "And from that time I was no more a slave, but a child in the house. My mistress brought a governess for me from the North, and I was taught as white girls are. I was fond of my books, and my life was a very happy one, though we lived on a lonely plantation, and had but little company. "I was almost white, as you see, and my mistress had taught me to call her mamma. I was devoted to her, and very fond of my governess, and they both petted me as if I really had been a daughter instead of a slave. Four years ago the brother of my governess came out from Vermont to make his sister a visit at our home. He fell in love with me, and I loved him dearly, and, accompanied by my 'mamma' and his sister, we went into Pennsylvania, and were married. You know we could not be married in Maryland, for it is a Slave State, and I was a slave. My mistress had, of course, always intended that I should be free, but neglected from time to time to draw up the proper papers. "For two years after my marriage my husband and I lived on the plantation, he managing the estate until he was called to Washington on business, and, in returning, the train was thrown down an embankment, and he was among the killed. "Soon after that my baby was born, and before he was six months old my mistress died suddenly, when it was found that the estate was insolvent, and everything must be sold to pay the debts; and I and my baby, with the other goods and chattels, were put up for sale. Mr. Martin, the speculator, bought me, thinking I would bring a fancy price; but my heart was broken, and I grieved until my health gave way, so that nobody ever wanted me, until your kind-hearted master bought me to give me a home to die in. But oh, Uncle Bob," she continued, bursting into tears, "to think my boy, my baby, must be a slave! His father's relatives are poor. He had only a widowed mother and two sisters. They are not able to buy my child, and he must be raised in ignorance, to do another's bidding all his life, my poor little baby! His dear father hated slavery, and it seems so hard that his son must be a slave!" "Now don't yer take on like dat, er makin' uv yerse'f sick," said Uncle Bob; "I know wat I gwine do; my min' hit's made up; hit's true, I'm brack, but den my min' hit's made up. Now you go on back ter de house, outn dis damp a'r, an' tuck cyar er yerse'f, an' don't yer be er frettin', nuther, caze my marster, he's de bes' man dey is; an' den, 'sides dat, my min' hit's made up. Hyear, honey," addressing the child, "take deze hyear white-oak splits an' go'n make yer er baskit 'long o' yer ma." Ann and her baby returned to the house, but Uncle Snake-bit Rob, long after the sun went down, still sat on his little bench in front of his shop, his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands; and when it grew quite dark he rose, and put away his splits and his baskets, saying to himself, "Well, I know wat I'm gwine do; my min' hit's made up." CHAPTER VIII UNCLE BOB'S PROPOSITION THE night after Ann's interview with Uncle Bob, Major Waldron was sitting in his library looking over some papers, when some one knocked at the door, and, in response to his hearty "Come in," Uncle Snake-bit Bob entered. "Ebenin' ter yer, marster," said the old man, scraping his foot and bowing his head. "How are you, Uncle Bob?" responded his master. "I'm jes po'ly, thank God," replied Uncle Bob, in the answer invariably given by Southern slaves to the query "How are you?" No matter if they were fat as seals, and had never had a day's sickness in their lives, the answer was always the same-- "I'm po'ly, thank God." "Well, Uncle Bob, what is it now?" asked Major Waldron. "The little negroes been bothering your splits again?" "Dey's all de time at dat, marster, an' dey gwine git hu't, mun, ef dey fool long o' me; but den dat ain't wat I come fur dis time. I come fur ter hab er talk wid yer, sar, ef yer kin spar de ole nigger de time." "There's plenty of time, Uncle Bob; take a seat, then, if we are to have a talk;" and Major Waldron lit his cigar, and leaned back, while Uncle Bob seated himself on a low chair, and said: "Marster, I come ter ax yer wat'll yer take fur dat little boy yer bought fum de specerlaters?" "Ann's little boy?" asked his master; "why, I would not sell him at all. I only bought him because his mother was dying of exposure and fatigue, and I wanted to relieve her mind of anxiety on his account, I would certainly never sell her child away from her," "Yes, sar, dat's so," replied the old man; "but den my min', hit's made up. I've laid me up er little money fum time ter time, wen I'd be er doct'in uv hosses an' mules an' men'-in' cheers, an' all sich ez dat; de folks dey pays me lib'ul; an', let erlone dat, I'm done mighty well wid my taters an' goobers, er sellin' uv 'em ter de steamboat han's, wat takes 'em ter de town, an' 'sposes uv 'em. So I'm got er right smart chance uv money laid up, sar; an' now I wants ter buy me er nigger, same ez white folks, fur ter wait on me an' bresh my coat an' drive my kerridge; an' I 'lowed ef yer'd sell de little white nigger, I'd buy 'im," and Uncle Bob chuckled and laughed. "Why, Bob, I believe you are crazy," said his master, "or drunk." "I ain't neder one, marster; but den I'm er jokin' too much, mo'n de 'lenity uv de cazhun inquires, an' now I'll splain de facks, sar." And Uncle Rob related Ann's story to his master, and wound up by saying: "An' now, marster, my min', hit's made up. I wants ter buy de little chap, an' give 'im ter his mammy, de one wat God give 'im to. Hit'll go mighty hard wid me ter part fum all dat money, caze I ben years pun top er years er layin' uv it up, an' hit's er mighty, cumfut ter me er countin' an' er jinglin' uv it; but hit ain't doin' nobody no good er buried in de groun', an' I don't special need it myse'f, caze you gives me my cloes, an' my shoes, an' my eatin's, an' my backer, an' my wisky, an' I ain't got no cazhun fur ter spen' it; an' let erlone dat, I can't stay hyear fureber, er countin' an' er jinglin' dat money, wen de angel soun' dat horn, de ole nigger he's got ter go; he's boun' fur ter be dar! de money can't hol' 'im! De Lord, he ain't gwine ter say, 'Scuze dat nigger, caze he got money piled up; lef 'im erlone, fur ter count dat gol' an' silver.' No, sar! But, marster, maybe in de jedgmun' day, wen Ole Bob is er stan'in' fo' de Lord wid his knees er trim'lin', an' de angel fotches out dat book er hisn, and' de Lord tell 'im fur ter read wat he writ gins 'im, an' de angel he 'gin ter read how de ole nigger drunk too much wisky, how he stoled watermillions in de night, how he cussed, how he axed too much fur doct'in' uv hosses, an' wen he wuz men'in' cheers, how he wouldn't men' 'em strong, so's he'd git ter men' 'em ergin some time; an' den' wen he read all dat an' shet de book, maybe de Lord he'll say, 'Well, he's er pow'ful sinful nigger, but den he tuck his money, he did, an' buy'd de little baby fur ter give 'im ter his mammy, an' I sha'n't be too hard on' im. "Maybe he'll say dat, an' den ergin maybe he won't. Maybe he'll punish de ole nigger ter de full stent uv his 'greshuns; an' den, ergin, maybe he'll let him off light; but dat ain't neder hyear nur dar. What'll yer take fur de baby, caze my min' hit's made up?" "And mine is too, Uncle Bob," said his master, rising, and grasping in his the big black hand. "Mine is too. I will give Ann her freedom and her baby, and the same amount of money that you give her; that will take her to her husband's relatives, and she can die happy, knowing that her baby will be taken care of." The next day Uncle Bob dug up his money, and the bag was found to contain three hundred dollars. His master put with it a check for the same amount, and sent him into the laundry to tell Ann of her good fortune. The poor woman was overcome with happiness and gratitude, and, throwing her arms around Uncle Bob, she sobbed and cried on his shoulder. She wrote at once to her husband's relatives, and a few weeks after Major Waldron took her to New Orleans, had the requisite papers drawn up for her freedom, and accompanied her on board of a vessel bound for New York; and then, paying her passage himself, so that she might keep her money for future emergencies, he bade adieu to the only slaves he ever bought. CHAPTER IX AUNT EDY'S STORY AUNT Edy was the principal laundress, and a great favorite she was with the little girls. She was never too busy to do up a doll's frock or apron, and was always glad when she could amuse and entertain them. One evening Dumps and Tot stole off from Mammy, and ran as fast as they could clip it to the laundry, with a whole armful of their dollies' clothes, to get Aunt Edy to let them "iun des er 'ittle," as Tot said. "Lemme see wat yer got," said Aunt Edy; and they spread out on the table garments of worsted and silk and muslin and lace and tarlatan and calico and homespun, just whatever their little hands had been able to gather up. "Lor', chil'en, ef yer washes deze fine close yer'll ruint 'em," said Aunt Edy, examining the bundles laid out; "de suds'll tuck all de color out'n 'em; s'posin' yer jes press 'em out on de little stool ober dar wid er nice cole iun," "Yes, that's the very thing," said Dumps; and Aunt Edy folded some towels, and laid them on the little stools, and gave each of the children a cold iron. And, kneeling down, so as to get at their work conveniently, the little girls were soon busy smoothing and pressing the things they had brought. "Aunt Edy," said Dumps, presently, "could'n yer tell us 'bout Po' Nancy Jane O?" "Dar now!" exclaimed Aunt Edy; "dem chil'en nuber is tierd er hyearn' dat tale; pyears like dey like hit mo' an' mo' eb'y time dey hyears hit;" and she laughed slyly, for she was the only one on the plantation who knew about "Po' Nancy Jane O," and she was pleased because it was such a favorite story with the children. "Once pun er time," she began, "dar wuz er bird name' Nancy Jane O, an' she wuz guv up ter be de swif'es'-fly'n thing dar wuz in de a'r. Well, at dat time de king uv all de fishes an' birds, an' all de little beas'es, like snakes an' frogs an' wums an' tarrypins an' bugs, an' all sich ez dat, he wur er mole dat year! an' he wuz blin' in bof 'is eyes, jes same like any udder mole; an', somehow, he had hyear some way dat dar wuz er little bit er stone name' de gol'-stone, way off fum dar, in er muddy crick, an' ef'n he could git dat stone, an' hol' it in his mouf, he could see same ez anybody. "Den he 'gun ter stedy how wuz he fur ter git dat stone. "He stedded an' he stedded, an' pyeard like de mo' he stedded de mo' he couldn' fix no way fur ter git it. He knowed he wuz blin', an' he knowed he trab'l so slow dat he 'lowed 'twould be years pun top er years befo' he'd git ter de crick, an' so he made up in 'is min' dat he'd let somebody git it fur 'im. Den, bein' ez he wuz de king, an' could grant any kin' er wush, he sont all roun' thu de kentry eb'ywhar, an' 'lowed dat any bird or fish, or any kin' er little beas' dat 'oud fotch 'im dat stone, he'd grant 'em de deares' wush er dey hearts. "Well, mun, in er few days de whole yearth wuz er movin'; eb'ything dar wuz in de lan' wuz er gwine. "Some wuz er hoppin' an' some wuz er crawlin' an' some wuz er flyin', jes 'cord'n to dey natur'; de birds dey 'lowed ter git dar fus', on 'count er fly'n so fas'; but den de little stone wuz in de water, an' dey'd hatter wait till de crick run down, so 'twuz jes 'bout broad ez 'twuz long. "Well, wile dey wuz all er gwine, an, de birds wuz in de lead, one day dey hyeard sump'n gwine f-l-u-shsh-- f-l-u-shsh-- an' sump'n streaked by like lightnin', and dey look way erhead, dey did, an' dey seed Nancy Jane O. Den dey hearts 'gun ter sink, an' dey gin right up, caze dey knowed she'd out-fly eb'ything on de road. An' by'mby de crow, wat wuz allers er cunin' bird, sez, 'I tell yer wat we'll do; we'll all gin er feas',' sezee, 'an' git Nancy Jane O ter come, an' den we'll all club togedder an' tie her,' sezee. "Dat took dey fancy, an' dey sont de lark on erhead fur ter catch up wid Nancy Jane O, an' ter ax' er ter de feas'. Well, mun, de lark he nearly kill hese'f er flyin'. He flew an' he flew an' he flew, but pyear'd like de fas'er he went de furder erhead wuz Nancy Jane O. "But Nancy Jane O, bein' so fur er start uv all de res', an' not er dreamin' 'bout no kin' er develment, she 'lowed she'd stop an' take er nap, an' so de lark he come up wid 'er, wile she wuz er set'n on er sweet-gum lim', wid 'er head un'er 'er wing. Den de lark spoke up, an' sezee, 'Sis Nancy Jane O,' sezee, 'we birds is gwinter gin er bug feas', caze we'll be sho' ter win de race anyhow, an' bein' ez we've flew'd so long an' so fur, wy we're gwine ter stop an' res' er spell, an' gin er feas'. An' Brer Crow he 'lowed 'twouldn' be no feas' 'tall les'n you could be dar; so dey sont me on ter tell yer to hol' up tell dey come: dey's done got seeds an' bugs an' wums, an' Brer Crow he's gwine ter furnish de corn.' "Nancy Jane O she 'lowed ter herse'f she could soon git erhead uv 'em ergin, so she 'greed ter wait; an' by'mby hyear day come er flyin'. An' de nex' day dey gin de feas'; an' wile Nancy Jane O wuz er eatin' an' er stuffun' herse'f wid wums an' seeds, an' one thing er nudder, de blue jay he slope up behin' 'er, an' tied 'er fas' ter er little bush. An' dey all laft an' flopped dey wings; an' sez dey, 'Good-bye ter yer, Sis Nancy Jane O. I hope yer'll enjoy yerse'f,' sez dey; an' den dey riz up an' stretched out dey wings, an' away dey flewed. "Wen Po' Nancy Jane O seed de trick wat dey played her, she couldn' hardly stan' still, she wuz so mad; an' she pulled an' she jerked an' she stretched ter git er loose, but de string wuz so strong, an' de bush wuz so fum, she wuz jes er was'en 'er strengt'. An' den she sot down, an' she 'gun ter cry ter herse'f, an' ter sing, "'Please on-tie, please on-tie Po' Nancy Jane O! Please on-tie, please on-tie Po' Nancy Jane O!' An' atter er wile hyear come de ole bullfrog Pigunawaya. He sez ter hisse'f, sezee, 'Wat's dat I hyear? Den he lis'en, an' he hyear sump'n gwine, "'Please on-tie, please on-tie Po' Nancy Jane O!' an' he went whar he hyeard de soun', an' dar wuz de po' bird layin' down all tied ter de bush. "'Umph!' says Pigunawaya, sezee, 'ain't dis Nancy Jane O, de swif'es'-flyin' bird dey is?' sezee; 'wat ail 'long yer, chile? wat yer cryin' 'bout?' An' atter Nancy Jane O she up an' tol' 'im, den de frog sez: "'Now look er yer; I wuz er gwine myse'f ter see ef'n I could'n git dat gol'-stone; hit's true I don't stan' much showin' 'long o' birds, but den ef'n eber I gits dar, wy I kin jes jump right in an' fotch up de stone wile de birds is er waitin' fur de crick ter run down. An' now, s'posin' I wuz ter ontie yer, Nancy Jane O, could yer tuck me on yer back an' cyar me ter de crick? an' den we'd hab de sho' thing on de gol'-stone, caze soon's eber we git dar, I'll git it, an' we'll cyar it bof tergedder ter de king, an' den we'll bof git de deares' wush uv our hearts. Now wat yer say? speak yer min'. Ef'n yer able an' willin' ter tote me fum hyear ter de crick, I'll ontie yer; ef'n yer ain't, den far yer well, caze I mus' be er gittin' erlong.' "Well, Nancy Jane O, she stedded an' stedded in her min', an' by'mby she sez, 'Brer Frog,' sez she, 'I b'lieve I'll try yer; ontie me,' sez she, 'an' git on, an' I'll tuck yer ter de crick.' Den de frog he clum on her back an' ontied her, an' she flopped her wings an' started off. Hit wuz mighty hard flyin' wid dat big frog on her back; but Nancy Jane O wuz er flyer, mun, yer hyeard me! an' she jes lit right out, an' she flew an' she flew, an' atter er wile she got in sight er de birds, an' dey looked, an' dey see her comin', an' den dey 'gun ter holler, "'Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nancy Jane O?' An' de frog he holler back, "'O Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!' "Den, gemmun, yer oughten seed dat race; dem birds dey done dey leb'l bes', but Nancy Jane O, spite er all dey could do, she gaint on 'em, an' ole Pigunawaya he sot up dar, an' he kep' er urg'n an' er urg'n Nancy Jane O. "'Dat's you!' sezee; 'git erhead!' sezee. 'Now we're gwine it!' sezee; an' pres'nly Nancy Jane O shot erhead clean befo' all de res', an' wen de birds dey seed dat de race wuz los', den dey all 'gun ter holler, "'Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nancy Jane O?' An' de frog, he turnt roun,' he did, an' he wave his han' roun' his head, an' he holler back, "'Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!' "Atter Nancy Jane O got erhead er de birds, den de hardes' flyin' wuz thu wid; so she jes went 'long, an' went 'long, kin' er easy like, tell she got ter de stone; an' she lit on er' simmon-bush close ter de crick, an' Pigunawaya he slipt off, he did, an' he hist up his feet, an' he gin er jump, kerchug he went down inter de water; an' by'mby hyear he come wid de stone in his mouf. Den he mount on Nancy Jane O, he did; an', mun, she wuz so proud, she an' de frog bof, tell dey flew all roun' an' roun', an' Nancy Jane O, she 'gun ter sing, "'Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nancy Jane O?' An' de frog he ans'er back, "'Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!' "An' wile dey wuz er singing' an' er j'yin' uv deyselves, hyear come de birds; an' de frog he felt so big, caze he'd got de stone, tell he stood up on Nancy Jane O's back, he did, an' he tuck'n shuck de stone at de birds, an' holler at 'em, "'O Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hoo-hooo!' An' jes ez he said dat, he felt hisse'f slippin', an' dat made him clutch on ter Po' Nancy Jane O, an' down dey bof' went tergedder kersplash, right inter de crick. "De frog he fell slap on ter er big rock, an' bust his head all ter pieces; an' Po' Nancy Jane O sunk down in de water an' got drownded; an' dat's de een'." "Did the king get the stone, Aunt Edy?" asked Dumps. "Wy no, chile; don't yer know de mole he's blin' tell yit? ef'n he could er got dat stone, he could er seen out'n his eyes befo' now. But I ain't got no time ter fool 'long er you chil'en. I mus' git marster's shuts done, I mus'." And Aunt Edy turned to her ironing-table, as if she didn't care for company; and Dumps and Tot, seeing that she was tired of them, went back to the house, Tot singing, "Who on-tied, who on-tied Po' Nanty Dane O?" and Dumps answering back, "Pig-un-a-wa-ya, Pig-un-a-wa-ya, hooo-hooo!" CHAPTER X PLANTATION GAMES "MAMMY, the quarter folks are goin' ter play to-night; can't we go look at 'em?" pleaded Diddie one Saturday evening, as Mammy was busy sorting out the children's clothes and putting them away. "Yer allers want ter be 'long er dem quarter-folks," said Mammy. "Dem ain't de 'soshuts fur you chil'en." "We don't want ter 'soshate with 'em, Mammy; we only want ter look at 'em play 'Monkey Moshuns' and 'Lipto' and 'The Lady You Like Best,' and hear Jim pick the banjo, and see 'em dance; can't we go? PLEASE! It's warm weather now, an' er moonshiny night; can't we go?" And Diddie placed one arm around Mammy's neck, and laid the other little hand caressingly on her cheek; and Mammy, after much persuasion, agreed to take them, if they would come home quietly when she wanted them to. As soon as the little girls had had their supper, they set out for the quarters. Dilsey and Chris and Riar, of course, accompanied them, though Chris had had some difficulty in joining the party. She had come to grief about her quilt patching, having sewed the squares together in such a way that the corners wouldn't hit, and Mammy had made her rip it all out and sew it over again, and had boxed her soundly, and now said she shouldn't go with the others to the quarters; but here Dumps interfered, and said Mammy shouldn't be "all time 'posin' on Chris," and she went down to see her father about it, who interceded with Mammy so effectually that, when the little folks started off, Chris was with them. When they got to the open space back of Aunt Nancy's cabin, and which was called "de play-groun'," they found that a bright fire of light-wood knots had been kindled to give a light, and a large pile of pine-knots and dried branches of trees was lying near for the purpose of keeping it up. Aunt Nancy had a bench moved out of her cabin for "Marster's chil'en" to sit on, while all of the little negroes squatted around on the ground to look on. These games were confined to the young men and women, and the negro children were not allowed to participate. Mammy, seeing that the children were safe and in good hands, repaired to "Sis Haly's house," where "de chu'ch membahs" had assembled for a prayer-meeting. Soon after the children had taken their seats, the young folks came out on the playground for a game of Monkey Motions. They all joined hands, and made a ring around one who stood in the middle, and then began to dance around in a circle, singing, "I ac' monkey moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' monkey moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem monkeys ac'. "I ac' gemmun moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' gemmun moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem gemmums ac'. "I ac' lady moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' lady moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem ladies ac'. "I ac' chil'en moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' chil'en moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac' I ac' jes like dem chil'ens ac'. "I ac' preacher moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' preacher moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem preachers ac'. "I ac' nigger moshuns, too-re-loo; I ac' nigger moshuns, so I do; I ac' 'em well, an' dat's er fac'-- I ac' jes like dem niggers ac'." The song had a lively air, and Jim picked the accompaniment on the banjo. Many of the negroes had good voices, and the singing was indeed excellent. While the dancers were singing the first verse, "I ac' monkey moshuns," the one in the middle would screw up his face and hump his shoulders in the most grotesque manner, to represent a monkey. When they sang "I ac' gemmun moshuns," he would stick his hat on one side of his head, take a walking-cane in his hand, and strut back and forth, to represent a gentleman. In the "lady moshuns," he would take little mincing steps, and toss his head from side to side, and pretend to be fanning with his hand. "I ac' chil'en moshuns" was portrayed by his pouting out his lips and twirling his thumbs, or giggling or crying. When they sang "I ac' preacher moshuns," he straightened himself back, and began to "lay off" his hands in the most extravagant gestures. "I ac' nigger moshuns" was represented by scratching his head, or by bending over and pretending to be picking cotton or hoeing. The representation of the different motions was left entirely to the taste and ingenuity of the actor, though it was the rule of the game that no two people should represent the same character in the same way. If one acted the lady by a mincing walk, the next one must devise some other manner of portraying her, such as sewing, or playing on an imaginary piano, or giving orders to servants, or any thing that his fancy would suggest. The middle man or woman was always selected for his or her skill in taking off the different characters; and when they were clever at it, the game was very amusing to a spectator. After one or two games of "Monkey Moshuns," some one proposed they should play "Lipto," which was readily acceded to. All joined hands, and formed a ring around one in the middle, as before, and danced around, singing, "Lipto, lipto, jine de ring; Lipto, lipto, dance an' sing; Dance an' sing, an' laugh an' play, Fur dis is now er halerday." Then, letting loose hands, they would all wheel around three times, singing, "Turn erroun' an' roun' an' roun';" then they would clap their hands, singing, "Clap yer han's, an' make' em soun';" then they would bow their heads, singing, "Bow yer heads, an' bow 'em low;" then, joining hands again, they would dance around, singing, "All jine han's, an' hyear we go." And now the dancers would drop hands once more, and go to patting, while one of the men would step out with a branch of honeysuckle or yellow jessamine, or something twined to form a wreath, or a paper cap would answer, or even one of the boys' hats-- anything that would serve for a crown; then he would sing, "Lipto, lipto-- fi-yi-yi; Lipto, lipto, hyear am I, Er holdin' uv dis goldin' crown, An' I choose my gal fur ter dance me down." Then he must place the crown on the head of any girl he chooses, and she must step out and dance with him, or, as they expressed it, "set to him" (while all the rest patted), until one or the other "broke down," when the man stepped back in the ring, leaving the girl in the middle, then they all joined hands, and began the game over again, going through with the wheeling around and clapping of hands and the bowing of heads just as before; after which the girl would choose her partner for a "set to," the song being the same that was sung by the man, with the exception of the last line, which was changed to "An' I choose my man fur ter dance me down." "Lipto" was followed by "De One I Like de Bes'," which was a kissing game, and gave rise to much merriment. It was played, as the others were, by the dancers joining hands and forming a ring, with some one in the middle, and singing, "Now while we all will dance an' sing, O choose er partner fum de ring; O choose de lady you like bes'; O pick her out fum all de res,' Fur her hansum face an' figur neat; O pick her out ter kiss her sweet. O walk wid her erroun' an' roun'; O kneel wid her upon de groun'; O kiss her once, an' one time mo'; O kiss her sweet, an' let her go. O lif' her up fum off de groun', An' all jine han's erroun' an' roun', An' while we all will dance an' sing, O choose er partner fum de ring." At the words "choose de lady you like bes'," the middle man must make his selection, and, giving her his hand, lead her out of the ring. At the words "walk wid her erroun' an' roun'," he offers her his arm, and they promenade; at the words "kneel wid her upon de groun'," both kneel; when they sing "kiss her once," he kisses her; and at the words "one time mo," the kiss is repeated; and when the dancers sing "lif' her up fum off de groun'," he assists her to rise; and when they sing "all jine han's erroun' an' roun'," he steps back into the ring, and the girl must make a choice, the dancers singing, "O choose de gemmun you like bes';" and then the promenading and kneeling and kissing were all gone through with again. Some of the girls were great favorites, and were chosen frequently; while others not so popular would perhaps not be in the middle during the game. "De One I Like de Bes'" was a favorite play, and the young folks kept it up for some time, until some one suggested sending for "Uncle Sambo" and his fiddle, and turning it into a sure-enough dance. Uncle Sambo was very accommodating, and soon made his appearance, then partners were taken, and an Old Virginia reel formed. The tune that they danced by was "Cotton-eyed Joe," and, the words being familiar to all of them as they danced they sang, "Cotton-eyed Joe, Cotton-eyed Joe, What did make you sarve me so, Fur ter take my gal erway fum me, An' cyar her plum ter Tennessee? Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd er been married long ergo. "His eyes wuz crossed, an' his nose wuz flat, An' his teef wuz out, but wat uv dat? Fur he wuz tall, an' he wuz slim, An' so my gal she follered him. Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd er been married long ergo. "No gal so hansum could be foun', Not in all dis country roun', Wid her kinky head, an' her eyes so bright, Wid her lips so red an' her teef so white. Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd been married long ergo. "An' I loved dat gal wid all my heart, An' she swo' fum me she'd never part; But den wid Joe she runned away, An' lef' me hyear fur ter weep all day. "O Cotton-eyed Joe, O Cotton-eyed Joe, What did make you sarve me so? O Joe, ef it hadn't er ben fur you, I'd er married dat gal fur true." And what with Uncle Sambo's fiddle and Jim's banjo and all of those fresh, happy young voices, the music was enough to make even the church members want to dance. The children enjoyed the dancing even more than they had the playing, and Diddie and Dumps and Tot and all of the little darkies were patting their hands and singing "Cotton-eyed Joe" at the very top of their voices, when Mammy appeared upon the scene, and said it was time to go home. "No, Mammy," urged Dumps; "we ain't er goin' ter; we want ter sing 'Cotton-eyed Joe," hit ain't late." "Umph-humph! dat's jes wat I 'lowed," said Mammy. "I 'lowed yer wouldn't be willin' fur ter go, er set'n' hyear an' er patt'n' yer han's same ez niggers, an' er singin' uv reel chunes; I dunno wat makes you chil'en so onstrep'rous." "Yes, Dumps, you know we promised," said Diddie, "and so we must go when Mammy tells us." Dumps, finding herself overruled, had to yield, and they all went back to the house, talking very animatedly of the quarter folks and their plays and dances. CHAPTER XI DIDDIE IN TROUBLE DIDDIE was generally a very good and studious little girl, and therefore it was a matter of surprise to everybody when Miss Carrie came down to dinner one day without her, and, in answer to Major Waldron's inquiry concerning her, replied that Diddie had been so wayward that she had been forced to keep her in, and that she was not to have any dinner. Neither Major nor Mrs. Waldron ever interfered with Miss Carrie's management; so the family sat down to the meal, leaving the little girl in the schoolroom. Dumps and Tot, however, were very indignant, and ate but little dinner; and, as soon as their mamma excused them, they ran right to the nursery to tell Mammy about it. They found her overhauling a trunk of old clothes, with a view of giving them out to such of the little negroes as they would fit; but she dropped everything after Dumps had stated the case, and at once began to expatiate on the tyranny of teachers in general, and of Miss Carrie in particular. "I know'd how 'twould be," she said, "wen marster fotch her hyear; she got too much white in her eye to suit me, er shettin' my chile up, an' er starvin' uv her; I an't got no 'pinion uv po' white folks, nohow." "Is Miss Carrie po' white folks, Mammy?" asked Dumps, in horror, for she had been taught by Mammy and Aunt Milly both that the lowest classes of persons in the world were "po' white folks" and "free niggers." "She ain't no rich white folks," answered Mammy, evasively; "caze efn she wuz, she wouldn't be teachin' school fur er livin'; an' den ergin, efn she's so mighty rich, whar's her niggers? I neber seed 'em. An', let erlone dat, I ain't neber hyeard uv 'em yit;" for Mammy could not conceive of a person's being rich without niggers. "But, wedder she's rich or po'," continued the old lady, "she ain't no bizness er shettin' up my chile; an' marster he oughtn't ter 'low it." And Mammy resumed her work, but all the time grumbling, and muttering something about "ole maids" and "po' white folks." "I don't like her, nohow," said Dumps, "an' I'm glad me an' Tot's too little ter go ter school; I don't want never to learn to read all my life. An', Mammy, can't you go an' turn Diddie erloose?" "No, I can't," answered Mammy. "Yer pa don't 'low me fur ter do it; he won't do it hisse'f, an' he won't let dem do it wat wants ter. I dunno wat's gittin' in 'im myse'f. But, you chil'en, put on yer bunnits, an' run an' play in de yard tell I fixes dis chis' uv cloes; an' you little niggers, go wid 'em, an' tuck cyar uv 'em; an' ef dem chil'en git hut, yer'll be sorry fur it, mun; so yer'd better keep em off'n seesaws an' all sich ez dat." Dumps and Tot, attended by their little maids, went out in the yard at Mammy's bidding, but not to play; their hearts were too heavy about poor little Diddie, and the little negroes were no less grieved than they were, so they all held a consultation as to what they should do. "Le's go 'roun' ter de schoolroom winder, an' talk ter her," said Dilsey. And accordingly, repaired to the back of the house, and took their stand under the schoolroom window. The schoolroom was on the first floor, but the house was raised some distance from the ground by means of stone pillars, so none of the children were tall enough to see into the room. Dilsey called Diddie softly, and the little girl appeared at the window. "Have you said your lesson yet?" asked Dumps. "No, an' I ain't ergoin' to, neither," answered Diddie. "An' yer ain't had yer dinner, nuther, is yer, Miss Diddie?" asked Dilsey. "No; but I don't care 'bout that; I sha'n't say my lesson not ef she starves me clean ter death." At this dismal prospect, the tears sprang to Tot's eyes, and saying, "I'll dit it, Diddie; don' yer min', I'll dit it," she ran as fast as her little feet could carry her to the kitchen, and told Aunt Mary, the cook, that "Diddie is sut up; dey lock her all up in de woom, an' s'e neber had no dinner, an' s'e's starve mos' ter def. Miss Tawwy done it, and s'e's des ez mean!" Then, putting her chubby little arms around Aunt Mary's neck, she added, "Please sen' Diddie some dinner." And Aunt Mary, who loved the children, rose from the low chair on which she was sitting to eat her own dinner, and, picking out a nice piece of fried chicken and a baked sweet potato, with a piece of bread and a good slice of ginger pudding, she put them on a plate for the child. Now it so happened that Douglas, the head dining-room servant, was also in the kitchen eating his dinner, and, being exceedingly fond of Tot, he told her to wait a moment, and he would get her something from the house. So, getting the keys from Aunt Delia, the housekeeper, on pretence of putting away something, he buttered two or three slices of light bread, and spread them with jam, and, putting with them some thin chips of cold ham and several slices of cake, he carried them back to the kitchen as an addition to Diddie's dinner. Tot was delighted, and walked very carefully with the plate until she joined the little group waiting under the window, when she called out, joyfully, "Hyear 'tis, Diddie! 'tis des de bes'es kine er dinner!" And now the trouble was how to get it up to Diddie. "I tell yer," said Chris; "me 'n Dilsey'll fotch de step-ladder wat Uncle Douglas washes de winders wid." No sooner said than done, and in a few moments the step-ladder was placed against the house, and Dilsey prepared to mount it with the plate in her hand. But just at this juncture Diddie decided that she would make good her escape, and, to the great delight of the children, she climbed out of the window, and descended the ladder, and soon stood safe among them on the ground. Then, taking the dinner with them, they ran as fast as they could to the grove, where they came to a halt on the ditch bank, and Diddie seated herself on a root of a tree to eat her dinner, while Dumps and Tot watched the little negroes wade up and down the ditch. The water was very clear, and not quite knee-deep, and the temptation was too great to withstand; so the little girls took off their shoes and stockings, and were soon wading too. When Diddie had finished her dinner, she joined them; and such a merry time as they had, burying their little naked feet in the sand, and splashing the water against each other! "I tell yer, Diddie," said Dumps, "I don't b'lieve nuthin' 'bout bad little girls gittin' hurt, an' not havin' no fun when they runs away, an' don't min' nobody. I b'lieve Mammy jes makes that up ter skyeer us." "I don't know," replied Diddie; "you 'member the time' bout Ole Billy?" "Oh, I ain't er countin' him," said Dumps; "I ain't er countin' no sheeps; I'm jes er talkin' 'bout ditches an' things." And just then the little girls heard some one singing, "De jay bird died wid de hookin'-coff, Oh, ladies, ain't yer sorry?" and Uncle Snake-bit Bob came up the ditch bank with an armful of white-oak splits. "Yer'd better git outn dat water," he called, as soon as he saw the children. "Yer'll all be havin' de croup nex'. Git out, I tell yer! Efn yer don't, I gwine straight an' tell yer pa. It needed no second bidding, and the little girls scrambled up the bank, and drying their feet as best they could upon their skirts, they put on their shoes and stockings. "What are you doin', Uncle Bob?" called Diddie. "I'm jes er cuttin' me er few willers fur ter make baskit-handles outn." "Can't we come an' look at yer?" asked Diddie. "Yes, honey, efn yer wants ter," replied Uncle Bob, mightily pleased. "You're all pow'ful fon' er dis ole nigger; you're allers wantin' ter be roun' him." "It's 'cause you always tell us tales, an' don't quar'l with us," replied Diddie, as the children drew near the old man, and watched him cut the long willow branches. "Uncle Bob," asked Dumps, "what was that you was singin' 'bout the jay bird?" "Lor', honey, hit wuz jes 'boutn 'im dyin' wid de hookin'-coff; but yer better lef' dem jay birds erlone; yer needn' be er wantin' ter hyear boutn 'em." "Why, Uncle Bob?" "Caze, honey, dem jay birds dey cyars news ter de deb'l, dey do an' yer better not fool 'long 'em." "Do they tell him everything?" asked Diddie, in some solicitude. "Dat dey do! Dey tells 'im eb'ything dey see you do wat ain't right; dey cyars hit right erlong ter de deb'l." "Uncle Bob," said Dumps, thoughtfully, "s'posin' they wuz some little girls l-o-n-g time ergo what stole ernuther little girl outn the winder, an' then run'd erway, an' waded in er ditch, what they Mammy never would let 'em; efn er jay bird would see 'em, would he tell the deb'l nuthin erbout it?" "Lor', honey, dat 'ud be jes nuts fur 'im; he'd light right out wid it; an' he wouldn't was'e no time, nuther, he'd be so fyeard he'd furgit part'n it." "I don't see none 'bout hyear," said Dumps, looking anxiously up at the trees. "They don't stay 'bout hyear much does they, Uncle Bob?" "I seed one er sittin' on dat sweet-gum dar ez I come up de ditch," said Uncle Bob. "He had his head turnt one side, he did, er lookin' mighty hard at you chil'en, an' I 'lowed ter myse'f now I won'er wat is he er watchin' dem chil'en fur? but, den, I knowed you chil'en wouldn't do nuffin wrong, an' I knowed he wouldn't have nuffin fur ter tell." "Don't he never make up things an' tell 'em?" asked Dumps. "I ain't neber hyeard boutn dat," said the old man. "Efn he do, or efn he don't, I can't say, caze I ain't neber hyeard; but de bes' way is fur ter keep 'way fum 'em." "Well, I bet he do," said Dumps. "I jes bet he tells M-O-O-O-R-E S-T-O-R-I-E-S than anybody. An', Uncle Bob, efn he tells the deb'l sump'n 'boutn three little white girls an' three little niggers runnin' erway fum they teacher an' wadin' in er ditch, then I jes b'lieve he made it up! Now that's jes what I' b'lieve; an' can't you tell the deb'l so, Uncle Bob?" "Who? Me? Umph, umph! yer talkin' ter de wrong nigger now, chile! I don't hab nuffin te do wid 'im mysef! I'se er God-fyearn nigger, I is; an', let erlone dat, I keeps erway fum dem jay birds. Didn' yer neber hyear wat er trick he played de woodpecker?" "No, Uncle Bob," answered Diddie; "what did he do to him?" "Ain't yer neber hyeard how come de wood-pecker's head ter be red, an' wat makes de robin hab er red bres'?" "Oh, I know 'bout the robin's breast," said Diddie. "When the Saviour was on the cross, an' the wicked men had put er crown of thorns on him, an' his forehead was all scratched up an' bleedin', er little robin was sittin' on er tree lookin' at him; an' he felt so sorry 'bout it till he flew down, an' tried to pick the thorns out of the crown; an' while he was pullin' at 'em, one of 'em run in his breast, an' made the blood come, an' ever since that the robin's breast has been red." "Well, I dunno," said the old man, thoughtfully, scratching his head; "I dunno, dat mout be de way; I neber hyeard it, do; but den I ain't sayin' tain't true, caze hit mout be de way; an' wat I'm er stan'in' by is dis, dat dat ain't de way I hyeard hit." "Tell us how you heard it, Uncle Bob," asked Diddie. "Well, hit all come 'long o' de jay bird," said Uncle Bob. "An' efn yer got time fur ter go 'long o' me ter de shop, an' sot dar wile I plats on dese baskits fur de oberseer's wife, I'll tell jes wat I hyear 'boutn hit." Of course they had plenty of time, and they all followed him to the shop, where he turned some baskets bottomside up for seats for the children, and seating himself on his accustomed stool, while the little darkies sat around on the dirt-floor, he began to weave the splits dexterously in an out, and proceeded to tell the story. CHAPTER XII HOW THE WOODPECKER'S HEAD AND THE ROBIN'S BREAST CAME TO BE RED "WELL," began Uncle Bob, "hit wuz all erlong er de jay bird, jes ez I wuz tellin' yer. Yer see, Mr. Jay Bird he fell'd in love, he did, 'long o' Miss Robin, an' he wuz er courtin' her, too; ev'y day de Lord sen', he'd be er gwine ter see her, an' er singin' ter her, an' er cyarin' her berries an' wums; hut, somehow or udder, she didn't pyear ter tuck no shine ter him. She'd go er walkin' 'long 'im, an' she'd sing songs wid 'im, an' she'd gobble up de berries an' de wums wat he fotch, but den w'en hit come ter marry'n uv 'im, she wan't der. "Well, she wouldn't gib 'im no kin' er 'couragement, tell he got right sick at his heart, he did; an' one day, ez he wuz er settin' in his nes' an' er steddin how ter wuck on Miss Robin so's ter git her love, he hyeard somebody er laughin' an' talkin', an' he lookt out, he did, an' dar wuz Miss Robin er prumurradin' wid de Woodpecker. An' wen he seed dat, he got pow'ful mad, an' he 'low'd ter his se'f dat efn de Lord spar'd him, he inten' fur ter fix dat Woodpecker. "In dem times de Woodpecker's head wuz right black, same ez er crow, an' he had er topknot on 'im like er rooster. Gemmun, he wuz er han'sum bird, too. See 'im uv er Sunday, wid his 'go-ter-meetin'' cloze on, an' dar wan't no bird could totch 'im fur looks. "Well, he an' Miss Robin dey went on by, er laffin' an' er talkin' wid one ernudder; an' de Jay he sot dar, wid his head turnt one side, er steddin an' er steddin ter hisse'f; an' by'mby, atter he made up his min', he sot right ter wuck, he did, an' fix him er trap. "He got 'im some sticks, an' he nailt 'em cross'n 'is do' same ez er plank-fence, only he lef' space 'nuff twix' de bottom stick an' de nex' one fur er bird ter git thu; den, stid er nailin' de stick nex' de bottom, he tuck'n prope it up at one een wid er little chip fur ter hole it, an' den jes res' tudder een 'gins de side er de nes'. Soon's eber he done dat, he crawlt out thu de crack mighty kyeerful, I tell yer, caze he wuz fyeared he mout er knock de stick down, an' git his own se'f cotch in de trap; so yer hyeard me, mum, he crawlt thu mighty tick'ler. "Atter he got thu, den he santer 'long, he did, fur ter hunt up de Woodpecker; an' by'mby he hyeard him peckin' at er log; an' he went up ter him kin' er kyeerless, an' he sez, 'Good-mornin',' sezee; 'yer pow'ful busy ter day.' "Den de Woodpecker he pass de kempulmence wid 'im, des same ez any udder gemmun; an' atter dey talk er wile, den de Blue Jay he up'n sez, 'I wuz jes er lookin' fur yer,' sezee; 'I gwine ter hab er party termorrer night, an' I'd like fur yer ter come. All de birds'll be dar, Miss Robin in speshul,' sezee. "An' wen de Woodpecker hyearn dat, he 'lowed he'd try ter git dar. An' den de Jay he tell him good-mornin', an' went on ter Miss Robin's house. Well, hit pyeart like Miss Robin wuz mo' cole dan uzhul dat day, an' by'mby de Jay Bird, fur ter warm her up, sez, 'Yer lookin' mighty hansum dis mornin',' sezee. An' sez she, 'I'm proud ter hyear yer say so; but, speakin' uv hansum,' sez she, 'hev yer seed Mr. Peckerwood lately?' "Dat made de Blue Jay kint er mad; an' sezee, 'Yer pyear ter tuck er mighty intrus' in 'im.' "'Well, I dunno 'bout'n dat,' sez Miss Robin, sez she, kinter lookin' shame. 'I dunno 'boutn dat; but, den I tink he's er mighty hansum bird,' sez she. "Well, wid dat de Jay Bird 'gun ter git madder'n he wuz, an' he 'lowed ter hisse'f dat he'd ax Miss Robin ter his house, so's she could see how he'd fix de Peckerwood; so he sez, "'Miss Robin, I gwine ter hab er party termorrer night; de Woodpecker'll be dar, an' I'd like fur yer ter come.' "Miss Robin 'lowed she'd come, and' de Jay Bird tuck his leave. "Well, de nex' night de Jay sot in 'is nes' er waitin' fur 'is cump'ny; an' atter er wile hyear come de Woodpecker. Soon's eber he seed de sticks ercross de do', he sez, 'Wy, pyears like yer ben er fixin' up,' sezee. 'Ain't yer ben er buildin'?' "'Well,' sez de Jay Bird, 'I've jes put er few 'provemunce up, fur ter keep de scritch-owls outn my nes'; but dar's plenty room fur my frien's ter git thu; jes come in,' sezee; an' de Woodpecker he started thu de crack. Soon's eber he got his head thu, de Jay pullt de chip out, an' de big stick fell right crossn his neck. Den dar he wuz, wid his head in an' his feet out! an' de Jay Bird 'gun ter laff, an' ter make fun atn 'im. Sezee, 'I hope I see yer! Yer look like sparkin' Miss Robin now! hit's er gre't pity she can't see yer stretched out like dat; an' she'll be hyear, too, d'rectly; she's er comin' ter de party,' sezee, 'an' I'm gwine ter gib her er new dish; I'm gwine ter sot her down ter roas' Woodpecker dis ebenin'. An' now, efn yer'll 'scuse me, I'll lef' yer hyear fur ter sorter 'muse yerse'f wile I grin's my ax fur ten' ter yer.' "An' wid dat de Jay went out, an' lef' de po' Woodpecker er lyin' dar; an' by'mby Miss Robin come erlong; an' wen she seed de Woodpecker, she axt 'im 'wat's he doin' down dar on de groun'?' an' atter he up an' tol' her, an' tol' her how de Jay Bird wuz er grin'in' his ax fur ter chop offn his head, den de robin she sot to an' try ter lif' de stick offn him. She straint an' she straint, but her strengt' wan't 'nuff fur ter move hit den; an' so she sez, 'Mr. Woodpecker,' sez she, 's'posin' I cotch hold yer feet, an' try ter pull yer back dis way?' 'All right,' sez de Woodpecker; an' de Robin, she cotch er good grip on his feet, an' she brace herse'f up 'gins er bush, an' pullt wid all her might, an' atter er wile she fotch 'im thu; but she wuz bleeged ter lef' his topnot behin', fur his head wuz skunt des ez clean ez yer han'; 'twuz jes ez raw, honey, ez er piece er beef. "An' wen de Robin seed dat, she wuz mighty 'stressed; an' she tuck his head an' helt it gins her breas' fur ter try an' cumfut him, an' de blood got all ober her breas', an' hit's red plum tell yit. "Well, de Woodpecker he went erlong home, an' de Robin she nusst him tell his head got well; but de topknot wuz gone, an' it pyeart like de blood all settled in his head, caze fum dat day ter dis his head's ben red." "An' did he marry the Robin?" asked Diddie. "Now I done tol' yer all I know," said Uncle Bob. "I gun yer de tale jes like I hyearn it, an' I ain't er gwine ter make up nuffin', an' tell yer wat I dunno ter be de truff. Efn dar's any mo' ter it, den I ain't neber hyearn hit. I gun yer de tale jes like hit wuz gunt ter me, an' efn yer ain't satisfied wid hit, den I can't holp it." "But we are satisfied, Uncle Bob," said Diddie. "It was a very pretty tale, and we are much obliged to you." "Yer mo'n welcome, honey," said Uncle Bob, soothed by Diddie's answer-- "yer mo'n welcome; but hit's gittin' too late fur you chil'en ter be out; yer'd better be er gittin' toerds home." Here the little girls looked at each other in some perplexity, for they knew Diddie had been missed, and they were afraid to go to the house. "Uncle Bob," said Diddie, "we've done er wrong thing this evenin'; we ran away fum Miss Carrie, an' we're scared of papa; he might er lock us all up in the library, an' talk to us, an' say he's 'stonished an' mortified, an' so we're scared to go home." "Umph!" said Uncle Bob; "you chil'en is mighty bad, anyhow." "I think we're heap mo' better'n we're bad," said Dumps. "Well, dat mout er be so," said the old man; "I ain't er 'sputin it, but you chil'en comes fum or mighty high-minded stock uv white folks, an' hit ain't becomin' in yer fur ter be runnin' erway an' er hidin' out, same ez oberseer's chil'en, an' all kin' er po' white trash." "We are sorry about it now, Uncle Bob," said Diddie; "but what would you 'vise us to do?" "Well, my invice is dis," said Uncle Bob, "fur ter go ter yer pa, an' tell him de truff; state all de konkumstances des like dey happen; don't lebe out none er de facks; tell him you're sorry yer 'haved so onstreperous, an' ax him fur ter furgib yer; an' ef he do, wy dat's all right; an' den ef he don't, wy yer mus' 'bide by de kinsequonces. But fuss, do, fo' yer axes fur furgibness, yer mus' turn yer min's ter repintunce. Now I ax you chil'en dis, Is-- you-- sorry-- dat-- you-- runned-- off? an'-- is-- you-- 'pentin'-- uv-- wadin'-- in-- de-- ditch?" Uncle Rob spoke very slowly and solemnly, and in a deep tone; and Diddie, feeling very much as if she had been guilty of murder, replied, "Yes, I am truly sorry, Uncle Bob." Dumps and Tot and the three little darkies gravely nodded their heads in assent. "Den jes go an' tell yer pa so," said the old man. "An', anyway, yer'll hatter be gwine, caze hit's gittin' dark." The little folks walked off slowly towards the house, and presently Dumps said, "Diddie, I don't b'lieve I'm rael sorry we runned off, an' I don't right 'pent 'bout wadin' in the ditch, cause we had er mighty heap er fun; an' yer reckon ef I'm jes sorter sorry, an' jes toler'ble 'pent, that'll do?" "I don't know about that," said Diddie; "but I'm right sorry, and I'll tell papa fur all of us." The children went at once to the library, where Major Waldron was found reading. "Papa," said Diddie, "we've ben very bad, an' we've come ter tell yer 'bout it." "An' the Jay Bird, he tol' the deb'l," put in Dumps, "an' 'twan't none er his business." "Hush up, Dumps," said Diddie, "till I tell papa 'bout it. I wouldn't say my lesson, papa, an' Miss Carrie locked me up, an' the chil'en brought me my dinner." "'Tuz me," chimed in Tot. "I b'ing 'er de besses dinner-- take an' jam an' pud'n in de p'ate. Aunt Mawy dum tum me." "Hush, Tot," said Diddie, "till I get through. An' then, papa, I climbed out the winder on the step-ladder, an' I--" "Dilsey an' Chris got the ladder," put in Dumps. "HUSH UP, Dumps!" said Diddie; "you're all time 'ruptin' me." "I reckon I done jes bad ez you," retorted Dumps, "an' I got jes much right ter tell 'boutn it. You think nobody can't be bad but yerse'f." "Well, then, you can tell it all," said Diddie, with dignity. "Papa, Dumps will tell you." And Dumps, nothing daunted, continued: "Dilsey an' Chris brought the step-ladder, an' Diddie clum out; an' we runned erway in the woods, an' waded in the ditch, an' got all muddy up; an' the Jay Bird, he was settin' on er limb watchin' us, an' he carried the news ter the deb'l; an' Uncle Snake-bit Bob let us go ter his shop, an' tol' us 'bout the Woodpecker's head, an' that's all; only we ain't n-e-v-er goin' ter do it no mo'; an', oh yes, I furgot-- an' Diddie's rael sorry an' right 'pents; an' I'm sorter sorry, an' toler'ble 'pents. An', please, are you mad, papa?" "It was certainly very wrong," said her father, "to help Diddie to get out, when Miss Carrie had locked her in; and I am surprised that Diddie should need to be kept in. Why didn't you learn your lesson, my daughter?" "I did," answered Diddie; "I knew it every word; but Miss Carrie jus' cut up, an' wouldn't let me say it like 'twas in the book; an' she laughed at me; an' then I got mad, an' wouldn't say it at all." "Which lesson was it?" asked Major Waldron. "'Twas er hist'ry lesson, an' the question was, 'Who was Columbus?' an' the answer was, 'He was the son of er extinguished alligator,' an' Miss Carrie laughed, an' said that wan't it." "And I rather think Miss Carrie was right," said the father. "Go and bring me the book." Diddie soon returned with her little history, and, showing the passage to her father, said eagerly, "Now don't you see here, papa?" And Major Waldron read, "He was the son of a distinguished navigator." Then making Diddie spell the words in the book, he explained to her her mistake, and said he would like to have her apologize to Miss Carrie for being so rude to her. This Diddie was very willing to do, and her father went with her to the sitting-room to find Miss Carrie, who readily forgave Diddie for her rebellion, and Dumps and Tot for interfering with her discipline. And that was a great deal more than Mammy did, when she saw the state of their shoes and stockings, and found that they had been wading in the ditch. She slapped the little darkies, and tied red-flannel rags wet with turpentine round the children's necks to keep them from taking cold, and scolded and fussed so that the little girls pulled the covers over their heads and went to sleep, and left her quarrelling. CHAPTER XIII A PLANTATION MEETING AND UNCLE DANIEL'S SERMON "ARE you gwine ter meetin', Mammy?" asked Diddie one Sunday evening, as Mammy came out of the house attired in her best flowered muslin, with an old-fashioned mantilla (that had once been Diddie's grandmother's) around her shoulders. "Cose I gwine ter meetin', honey; I'se er tryin' ter sarve de Lord, I is, caze we ain't gwine stay hyear on dis yearth all de time. We got ter go ter nudder kentry, chile; an' efn yer don't go ter meetin', an' watch an' pray, like de Book say fur yer ter do, den yer mus' look out fur yerse'f wen dat Big Day come wat I hyears 'em talkin' 'bout." "Can't we go with you, Mammy? We'll be good, an' not laugh at 'em shoutin'." "I dunno wat yer gwine loff at 'em shoutin' fur; efn yer don't min' de loff gwine ter be turnt some er deze days, an' dem wat yer loffs at hyear, dem's de ones wat's gwine ter do de loffin' wen we gits up yon'er! But, let erlone dat, yer kin go efn yer wants ter; an' efn yer'll make has'e an' git yer bunnits, caze I ain't gwine wait no gret wile. I don't like ter go ter meetin' atter hit starts. I want ter hyear Brer Dan'l's tex', I duz. I can't neber enj'y de sermon doutn I hyears de tex'." You may be sure it wasn't long before the children were all ready for they knew Mammy would be as good as her word, and would not wait for them. When they reached the church, which was a very nice wooden building that Major Waldron had had built for that purpose, there was a large crowd assembled; for, besides Major Waldron's own slaves, quite a number from the adjoining plantations were there. The younger negroes were laughing and chatting in groups outside the door, but the older ones wore very solemn countenances, and walked gravely in and up to the very front pews. On Mammy's arrival, she placed the little girls in seats at the back of the house, and left Dilsey and Chris and Riar on the seat just behind them, "fur ter min' em'," as she said (for the children must always be under the supervision of somebody), and then she went to her accustomed place at the front; for Mammy was one of the leading members, and sat in the amen corner. Soon after they had taken their seats, Uncle Gabe, who had a powerful voice, and led the singing, struck up: "Roll, Jordan, roll! roll, Jordan, roll! I want ter go ter heb'n wen I die, Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, pray, my brudder, pray! Yes, my Lord; My brudder's settin in de kingdom, Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. Chorus "Roll, Jordan, roll! roll, Jordan, roll! I want ter go ter heb'n wen I die, Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, shout, my sister, shout! Yes, my Lord; My sister she's er shoutin' Caze she hyears sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, moan, you monahs, moan! Yes, my Lord; De monahs sobbin' an' er weepin', Fur ter hyear sweet Jordan roll. "Oh, scoff, you scoffers, scoff! Yes, my Lord; Dem sinners wat's er scoffin' Can't hyear sweet Jordan roll." And as the flood of melody poured through the house, the groups on the outside came in to join the singing. After the hymn, Uncle Snake-bit Bob led in prayer, and what the old man lacked in grammer and rhetoric was fully made up for in fervency and zeal. The prayer ended, Uncle Daniel arose, and, carefully adjusting his spectacles, he opened his Bible with all the gravity and dignity imaginable, and proceeded to give out his text. Now the opening of the Bible was a mere matter of form, for Uncle Daniel didn't even know his letters; but he thought it was more impressive to have the Bible open, and therefore never omitted that part of the ceremony. "My bredren an' my sistren," he began, looking solemnly over his specs at the congregation, "de tex' wat I'se gwine ter gib fur yer 'strucshun dis ebenin' yer'll not fin' in de foremus' part er de Book, nur yit in de hine part. Hit's swotuwated mo' in de middle like, 'boutn ez fur fum one een ez 'tiz fum tudder, an' de wuds uv de tex' is dis: "'Burhol', I'll punish um! dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "My bredren, embracin' uv de sistren, I'se ben 'stressed in my min' 'boutn de wickedness I sees er gwine on. Eby night de Lord sen' dar's dancin' an' loffin' an' fiddlin'; an' efn er man raises 'im er few chickens an' watermillions, dey ain't safe no longer'n his back's turnt; an', let erlone dat, dar's quarlin' 'longer one nudder, an' dar's sassin' uv white folks an' ole pussuns, an' dar's drinkin' uv whiskey, an' dar's beatin' uv wives, an' dar's dev'lin' uv husban's, an' dar's imperrence uv chil'en, an' dar's makin' fun uv 'ligion, an' dar's singin' uv reel chunes, an' dar's slightin' uv wuck, an' dar's stayin' fum meetin', an' dar's swearin' an' cussin', an' dar's eby kin' er wickedness an' dev'lment loose in de land. "An', my bredren, takin' in de sistren, I've talked ter yer, an' I've tol' yer uv de goodness an' de long-suff'rin uv de Lord. I tol' yer outn his Book, whar he'd lead yer side de waters, an' be a Shepherd ter yer; an' yer kep' straight on, an' neber paid no 'tenshun; so tudder night, wile I wuz er layin' in de bed an' er steddin' wat ter preach 'bout, sumpin' kin' er speak in my ear; an' hit sez, 'Brer Dan'l, yer've tol' 'em 'bout de Lord's leadin' uv 'em, an' now tell 'em 'boutn his drivin' uv 'em. An', my bredren, includin' uv de sistren, I ain't gwine ter spare yer feelin's dis day. I'm er stan'in' hyear fur ter 'liver de message outn de Book, an' dis is de message: "'Burhol', I'll punish um! dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Yer all hyear it, don't yer? An' now yer want ter know who sont it. De Lord! Hit's true he sont it by a po' ole nigger, but den hit's his own wuds; hit's in his Book. An', fussly, we'll pursidder dis: IS HE ABLE TER DO IT? Is he able fur ter kill marster's niggers wid de s'ord an' de famine? My bredren, he is able! Didn' he prize open de whale's mouf, an' take Jonah right outn him? Didn' he hol' back de lions wen dey wuz er rampin' an' er tearin' roun' atter Dan'l in de den? Wen de flood come, an' all de yearth wuz drownded, didn' he paddle de ark till he landed her on top de mount er rats? Yes, my bredren, embracin' uv de sistren, an' de same Lord wat done all er dat, he's de man wat's got de s'ords an' de famines ready fur dem wat feels deyse'f too smart ter 'bey de teachin's uv de Book. 'Dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Oh, you chu'ch membahs wat shouts an' prays uv er Sundays an' steals watermillions uv er week-days! Oh, you young men wat's er cussin' an' er robbin' uv henrooses! Oh, you young women wat's er singin' uv reel chunes! Oh, you chil'en wat's er sassin' uv ole folks! Oh, you ole pussons wat's er fussin' an' quarlin'! Oh, you young folks wat's er dancin' an' prancin'! Oh, you niggers wat's er slightin' uv yer wuck! Oh! pay 'tenshun ter de message dis ebenin', caze yer gwine wake up some er deze mornin's, an' dar at yer do's 'll be de s'ord an' de famine. "'Burhol', I'll punish um! dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Bredren, an' likewise sistren, yer dunno wat yer foolin' wid! Dem s'ords an' dem famines is de wust things dey is. Dey's wuss'n de rheumatiz; dey's wuss'n de toof-ache; dey's wuss'n de cramps; dey's wuss'n de lockjaw; dey's wuss'n anything. Wen Adam an' Ebe wuz turnt outn de gyarden, an' de Lord want ter keep 'em out, wat's dat he put dar fur ter skyer 'em? Wuz it er elfunt? No, sar! Wuz it er lion? No, sar! He had plenty beases uv eby kin', but den he didn' cyar 'boutn usen uv 'em. Wuz hit rain or hail, or fire, or thunder, or lightnin'? No, my bredren, hit wuz er s'ord! Caze de Lord knowed weneber dey seed de s'ord dar dey wan't gwine ter facin' it. Oh, den, lis'en at de message dis ebenin'. "'Dey young men shall die by de s'ord.' "An' den, ergin, dar dem famines, my bredren, takin' in de sistren-- dem famines come plum fum Egypt! dey turnt 'em erloose dar one time, mun, an' de Book sez all de lan' wuz sore, an' thousan's pun top er thousan's wuz slaint. "Dey ain't no way fur ter git roun' dem famines. Yer may hide, yer may run in de swamps, yer may climb de trees, but, bredren, efn eber dem famines git atter yer, yer gone! dey'll cotch yer! dey's nuffin like 'em on de face uv de yearth, les'n hit's de s'ord; dar ain't much chice twix dem two. Wen hit comes ter s'ords an' famines, I tell yer, gemmun, hit's nip an' tuck. Yit de message, hit sez, 'dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Now, bredren an' sistren, an' monahs an' sinners, don't le's force de Lord fur ter drive us; le's try fur ter sarve him, an' fur ter git erlong doutn de s'ords an de famines. Come up hyear roun' dis altar, an' wrestle fur 'ligion, an' dem few uv us wat is godly-- me an' Brer Snake-bit Rob an' Sis Haly an' Brer Gabe, an' Brer Lige an' Brer One-eyed Pete, an' Sis Rachel (Mammy) an' Sis Hannah-- we're gwine put in licks fur yer dis ebenin'. Oh, my frens, yer done hyeard de message. Oh, spar' us de s'ords and de famines! don't drive de Lord fur ter use 'em! Come up hyear now dis ebenin', an' let us all try ter hep yer git thu. Leave yer dancin' an' yer singin' an' yer playin', leave yer whiskey an' yer cussin' an' yer swearin', an' tu'n yer min's ter de s'ords an' de famines. "Wen de Lord fotches dem s'ords outn Eden, an' dem famines outn Egyp', an' tu'n 'em erloose on dis plantation, I tell yer, mun, dar's gwine be skyeared niggers hyear. Yer won't see no dancin' den; yer won't hyear no cussin', nor no chickens hollin' uv er night; dey won't be no reel chunes sung den; yer'll want ter go ter prayin', an' yer'll be er callin' on us wat is stedfus in de faith fur ter hep yer; but we can't hep yer den. We'll be er tryin' on our wings an' er floppin' 'em" ("Yes, bless God!" thus Uncle Snake-bit Bob), "an' er gittin' ready fur ter start upuds! We'll be er lacin' up dem golden shoes" ("Yes, marster!" thus Mammy), "fur ter walk thu dem pearly gates. We can't stop den. We can't 'liver no message den; de Book'll be shot. So, bredren, hyear it dis ebenin'. 'Dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.' "Now, I've said ernuff; day's no use fur ter keep er talkin', an' all you backslidin' chu'ch membahs, tremblin' sinners, an' weepin' monahs, come up hyear dis ebenin', an' try ter git erroun' dem s'ords an' dem famines. Now my skyearts is clar, caze I done 'liver de message. I done tol' yer whar hit come fum. I tol' yer 'twas in de Book, 'boutn middle-ways twix' een an' een; an' wedder David writ it or Sam'l writ it, or Gen'sis writ it or Paul writ it, or Phesians writ it or Loshuns writ it, dat ain't nudder hyear nor dar; dat don't make no diffunce; some on 'em writ it, caze hit's sholy in de Book, fur de oberseer's wife she read hit ter me outn dar; an' I tuck 'tickler notice, too, so's I could tell yer right whar ter fin' it. An', bredren, I'm er tellin' yer de truf dis ebenin'; hit's jes 'bout de middle twix' een an' een. Hit's dar, sho's yer born, an' dar aint no way fur ter 'sputin' it, nor ter git roun' it, 'septin' fur ter tu'n fum yer wickedness. An' now, Brudder Gabe, raise er chune; an' sing hit lively, bredren; an' wile dey's singin' hit, I want yer ter come up hyear an' fill deze monahs' benches plum full. Bredren, I want monahs 'pun top er monahs dis ebenin'. Brethren I want 'em in crowds. I want 'em in droves. I want 'em laid 'pun top er one ernudder, bredren, tell yer can't see de bottumus' monahs. I want 'em piled up hyear dis ebenin'. I want 'em packed down, mun, an' den tromped on, ter make room fur de nex' load. Oh, my bredren, come! fur 'dey young men shall die by de s'ord, an' dey sons an' dey daughters by de famine.'" The scene that followed baffles all description. Uncle Gabe struck up-- "Oh, lebe de woods uv damnation; Come out in de fields uv salvation; Fur de Lord's gwine ter bu'n up creation, Wen de day uv jedgment come. "Oh, sinners, yer may stan' dar er laffin', Wile de res' uv us er quaffin' Uv de streams wich de win's is er waffin' Right fresh fum de heb'nly sho'. "But, min', der's er day is er comin', Wen yer'll hyear a mighty pow'ful hummin'; Wen dem angels is er blowin' an' er drummin', In de awful jedgment day. "Oh, monahs, you may stan' dar er weepin', Fur de brooms uv de Lord is er sweepin', An' all de trash dey's er heapin' Outside er de golden gate. "So, sinners, yer'd better be er tu'nin', Er climin' an' er scramblin' an' er runnin', Fur ter 'scape dat drefful burnin' In de awful jedgment day." And while the hymn was being sung, Uncle Daniel had his wish of "monahs 'pun top er monahs," for the benches and aisles immediately around the altar were soon crowded with the weeping negroes. Some were crying, some shouting Glory! some praying aloud, some exhorting the sinners, some comforting the mourners, some shrieking and screaming, and, above all the din and confusion, Uncle Daniel could be heard halloing, at the top of his voice, "Dem s'ords an' dem famines!" After nearly an hour of this intense excitement, the congregation was dismissed, one of them, at least, more dead than alive; for "Aunt Ceely," who had long been known as "er pow'ful sinful ooman," had fallen into a trance, whether real or assumed must be determined by wiser heads than mine; for it was no uncommon occurrence for those "seekin' 'ligion" to lie in a state of unconsciousness for several hours, and, on their return to consciousness, to relate the most wonderful experiences of what had happened to them while in the trance. Aunt Ceely lay as if she were dead, and two of the Christian men (for no sinner must touch her at this critical period) bore her to her cabin, followed by the "chu'ch membahs," who would continue their singing and praying until she "come thu," even if the trance should last all night. The children returned to the house without Mammy, for she was with the procession which had followed Aunt Ceely; and as they reached the yard, they met their father returning from the lot. "Papa," called Dumps, "we're goin' ter have awful troubles hyear." "How, my little daughter?" asked her father. "The Lord's goin' ter sen' s'ords an' famines, an' they'll eat up all the young men, an' ev'ybody's sons an' daughters," she replied, earnestly. "Uncle Dan's said so in meetin'; an' all the folks was screamin' an' shoutin', an' Aunt Ceely is in a trance 'bout it, an' she ain't come thu yet." Major Waldron was annoyed that his children should have witnessed any such scene, for they were all very much excited and frightened at the fearful fate that they felt was approaching them; so he took them into his library, and explained the meaning of the terms "swords and famines," and read to them the whole chapter, explaining how the prophet referred only to the calamities that should befall the Hebrews; but, notwithstanding all that, the children were uneasy, and made Aunt Milly sit by the bedside until they went to sleep, to keep the "swords and the famines" from getting them. CHAPTER XIV DIDDIE AND DUMPS GO VISITING IT was some time in June that, the weather being fine, Mammy gave the children permission to go down to the woods beyond the gin-house and have a picnic. They had a nice lunch put up in their little baskets, and started off in high glee, taking with them Cherubim and Seraphim and the doll babies. They were not to stay all day, only till dinner-time; so they had no time to lose, but set to playing at once. First, it was "ladies come to see," and each of them had a house under the shade of a tree, and spent most of the time visiting and in taking care of their respective families. Dumps had started out with Cherubim for her little boy; but he proved so refractory, and kept her so busy catching him, that she decided to play he was the yard dog, and content herself with the dolls for her children. Riar, too, had some trouble in her family; in passing through the yard, she had inveigled Hester's little two-year-old son to go with them, and now was desirous of claiming him as her son and heir-- a position which he filled very contentedly until Diddie became ambitious of living in more style than her neighbors, and offered Pip (Hester's baby) the position of dining-room servant in her establishment; and he, lured off by the prospect of playing with the little cups and saucers, deserted Riar for Diddie. This produced a little coolness, but gradually it wore off, and the visiting between the parties was resumed. After "ladies come to see" had lost its novelty, they made little leaf-boats, and sailed them in the ditch. Then they played "hide the switch," and at last concluded to try a game of hide-and-seek. This afforded considerable amusement, so they kept it up some time; and once, when it became Dumps's time to hide, she ran away to the gin-house, and got into the pick-room. And while she was standing there all by herself in the dark, she thought she heard somebody breathing. This frightened her very much, and she had just opened the door to get out, when a negro man crawled from under a pile of dirty cotton, and said, "Little missy, fur de Lord's sake, can't yer gimme sump'n t' eat?" Dumps was so scared she could hardly stand; but, notwithstanding the man's haggard face and hollow eyes, and his weird appearance, with the cotton sticking to his head, his tone was gentle, and she stopped to look at him more closely. "Little missy," he said, piteously, "I'se er starvin' ter def. I ain't had er mouf'l ter eat in fo' days." "What's the reason?" asked Dumps. "Are you a runaway nigger?" "Yes, honey; I 'longs ter ole Tight-fis' Smith; an' he wanted ter whup me fur not gittin' out ter de fiel' in time, an' I tuck'n runned erway fum 'im, an' now I'm skyeert ter go back, an' ter go anywhar; an' I can't fin' nuf'n t' eat, an' I'se er starvin' ter def." "Well, you wait," said Dumps, "an' I'll go bring yer the picnic." "Don't tell nobody 'boutn my bein' hyear, honey." "No, I won't," said Dumps, "only Diddie; she's good, an' she won't tell nobody; an' she can read an' write, an' she'll know what to do better'n me, because I'm all the time such a little goose. But I'll bring yer sump'n t' eat; you jes wait er little minute; an' don't yer starve ter def till I come back." Dumps ran back to the ditch where the children were, and, taking Diddie aside in a very mysterious manner, she told her about the poor man who was hiding in the gin-house, and about his being so hungry. "An' I tol' 'im I'd bring 'im the picnic," concluded Dumps; and Diddie, being the gentlest and kindest-hearted little girl imaginable, at once consented to that plan; and, leaving Tot with the little negroes in the woods, the two children took their baskets, and went higher up the ditch, on pretence of finding a good place to set the table; but, as soon as they were out of sight, they cut across the grove, and were soon at the gin-house. They entered the pick-room cautiously, and closed the door behind them. The man came out from his hiding-place, and the little girls emptied their baskets in his hands. He ate ravenously, and Diddie and Dumps saw with pleasure how much he enjoyed the nice tarts and sandwiches and cakes that Mammy had provided for the picnic. "Do you sleep here at night?" asked Diddie. "Yes, honey, I'se skyeert ter go out any-whar; I'se so skyeert uv Tight-fis' Smith." "He's awful mean, ain't he?" asked Dumps. "Dat he is chile," replied the man; "he's cruel an' bad." "Then don't you ever go back to him," said Dumps. "You stay right here an' me'n Diddie'll bring you ev'ything ter eat, an' have you fur our nigger." The man laughed softly at that idea, but said he would stay there for the present, anyway; and the children, bidding him good-bye, and telling him they would be sure to bring him something to eat the next day, went back to their playmates at the ditch. "Tot," said Diddie, we gave all the picnic away to a poor old man who was very hungry; but you don't mind, do you? we'll go back to the house, and Mammy will give you just as many cakes as you want." Tot was a little bit disappointed, for she had wanted to eat the picnic in the woods; but Diddie soon comforted her, and before they reached the house she was as merry and bright as any of them. The next morning Diddie and Dumps were very much perplexed to know how to get off to the gin-house without being seen. There was no difficulty about obtaining the provisions; their mother always let them have whatever they wanted to have tea-parties with, and this was their excuse for procuring some slices of pie and cake, while Aunt Mary gave them bread and meat, and Douglas gave them some cold buttered biscuit with ham between. They wrapped it all up carefully in a bundle, and then, watching their chances, they slipped off from Tot and the little darkies, as well as from Mammy, and carried it to their guest in the pick-room. He was truly glad to see them, and to get the nice breakfast they had brought; and the little girls, having now lost all fear of him, sat down on a pile of cotton to have a talk with him. "Did you always b'long to Mr. Tight-fis' Smith?" asked Diddie. "No, honey; he bought me fum de Powell 'state, an' I ain't b'longst ter him no mo'n 'boutn fo' years." "Is he got any little girls?" asked Dumps. "No, missy; his wife an' two chil'en wuz bu'nt up on de steamboat gwine ter New 'Leans, some twenty years ergo; an' de folks sez dat's wat makes 'im sich er kintankrus man. Dey sez fo' dat he usen ter hab meetin' on his place, an' he wuz er Christyun man hisse'f; but he got mad 'long er de Lord caze de steamboat bu'nt up, an' eber sence dat he's been er mighty wicked man; an' he won't let none er his folks sarve de Lord; an' he don't 'pyear ter cyar fur nuffin' 'cep'n hit's money. But den, honey, he ain't no born gemmun, nohow; he's jes only er oberseer wat made 'im er little money, an' bought 'im er few niggers; an', I tells yer, he makes 'em wuck, too; we'se got ter be in de fiel' long fo' day; an' I ober-slep mysef tudder mornin' an he Wuz cussin' an' er gwine on, an' 'lowed he wuz gwine ter whup me, an' so I des up an' runned erway fum 'im, an' now I'se skyeert ter go back; an', let erlone dat, I'se skyeert ter stay; caze, efn he gits Mr. Upson's dogs, dey'll trace me plum hyear; an' wat I is ter do I dunno; I jes prays constunt ter de Lord. He'll he'p me, I reckon, caze I prays tree times eby day, an' den in 'tween times." "Is your name Brer Dan'l?" asked Dumps, who remembered Uncle Bob's story of Daniel's praying three times a day. "No, honey, my name's Pomp; but den I'm er prayin' man, des same ez Danl' wuz." "Well, Uncle Pomp," said Diddie, "you stay here just as long as you can, an' I'll ask papa to see Mr. Tight-fis' Smith, an' he'll get--" "Lor', chile," interrupted Uncle Pomp, "don't tell yer pa nuf'n 'boutn it; he'll sho' ter sen' me back, an' dat man'll beat me half ter def; caze I'se mos' loss er week's time now, an' hit's er mighty 'tickler time in de crap." "But, s'posin' the dogs might come?" said Dumps. "Well, honey, dey ain't come yit; an' wen dey duz come, den hit'll be time fur ter tell yer pa." "Anyhow, we'll bring you something to eat," said Diddie, "and try and help you all we can; but we must go back now, befo' Mammy hunts for us; so good-bye;" and again they left him to himself. As they neared the house, Dumps asked Diddie how far it was to Mr. "Tight-fis' Smith's." "I don't know exactly," said Diddie; "'bout three miles, I think." "Couldn't we walk there, an' ask him not to whup Uncle Pomp? Maybe he wouldn't, ef we was ter beg him right hard." "Yes, that's jest what we'll do, Dumps; and we'll get Dilsey to go with us, 'cause she knows the way." Dilsey was soon found, and was very willing to accompany them, but was puzzled to know why they wanted to go. The children, however, would not gratify her curiosity, and they started at once, so as to be back in time for dinner. It was all of three miles to Mr. Smith's plantation, and the little girls were very tired long before they got there. Dumps, indeed, almost gave out, and once began to cry, and only stopped with Diddie's reminding her of poor Uncle Pomp, and with Dilsey's carrying her a little way. At last, about two o'clock, they reached Mr. Smith's place. The hands had just gone out into the field after dinner, and of course their master who was only a small planter and kept no overseer, was with them. The children found the doors all open, and went in. The house was a double log-cabin, with a hall between, and they entered the room on the right, which seemed to be the principal living-room. There was a shabby old bed in one corner, with the cover all disarranged, as if its occupant had just left it. A table, littered with unwashed dishes, stood in the middle of the floor, and one or two rude split-bottomed chairs completed the furniture. The little girls were frightened at the unusual silence about the place, as well as the dirt and disorder, but, being very tired, they sat down to rest. "Diddie," asked Dumps, after a little time, "ain't yer scared?" "I don't think I'm scared, Dumps," replied Diddie; "but I'm not right comfor'ble." "I'm scared," said Dumps. "I'm jes ez fraid of Mr. Tight-fis' Smith!" "Dat's hit!" said Dilsey. "Now yer talkin', Miss Dumps; dat's er mean white man, an, he might er get mad erlong us, an' take us all fur his niggers." "But we ain't black, Diddie an' me," said Dumps. "Dat don't make no diffunce ter him; he des soon hab white niggers ez black uns," remarked Diddie, consolingly; and Dumps, being now thoroughly frightened, said, "Well, I'm er goin' ter put my pen'ence in de Lord. I'm er goin' ter pray." Diddie and Dilsey thought this a wise move, and, the three children kneeling down, Dumps began, "Now, I lay me down to sleep." And just at this moment Mr. Smith, returning from the field, was surprised to hear a voice proceeding from the house, and, stepping lightly to the window, beheld, to his amazement, the three children on their knees, with their eyes tightly closed and their hands clasped, while Dumps was saying, with great fervor, "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take; An' this I ask for Jesus' sake." "Amen!" reverently responded Diddie and Dilsey; and they all rose from their knees much comforted. "I ain't 'fraid uv him now," said Dumps, "'cause I b'lieve the Lord'll he'p us, an' not let Mr. Tight-fis' Smith git us." "I b'lieve so too," said Diddie; and, turning to the window, she found Mr. Smith watching them. "Are you Mr. Tight-fis' Smith?" asked Diddie, timidly. "I am Mr. Smith, and I have heard that I am called 'tight-fisted' in the neighborhood," he replied, with a smile. "Well, we are Major Waldron's little girls, Diddie and Dumps, an' this is my maid Dilsey, an' we've come ter see yer on business." "On business, eh?" replied Mr. Smith, stepping in at the low window. "Well, what's the business, little ones?" and he took a seat on the side of the bed, and regarded them curiously. But here Diddie stopped, for she felt it was a delicate matter to speak to this genial, pleasant-faced old man of cruelty to his own slaves. Dumps, however, was troubled with no such scruples; and, finding that Mr. Smith was not so terrible as she hid feared, she approached him boldly, and, standing by his side, she laid one hand on his gray head, and said: "Mr. Smith, we've come ter beg you please not ter whup Uncle Pomp if he comes back. He is runned erway, an me an Diddie know where he is, an' we've ben feedin' him, an' we don't want you ter whup him; will you please don't?" and Dumps's arm slipped down from the old man's head, until it rested around his neck; and Mr. Smith, looking into her eager, childish face, and seeing the blue eyes filled with tears, thought of the little faces that long years ago had looked up to his; and, bending his head, he kissed the rosy mouth. "You won't whup him, will you?" urged Dumps. "Don't you think he ought to be punished for running away and staying all this time, when I needed him in the crop?" asked Mr. Smith, gently. "But, indeed, he is punished," said Diddie; "he was almost starved to death when me and Dumps carried him the picnic; and then he is so scared, he's been punished, Mr. Smith; so please let him come home, and don't whup him." "Yes, PLE-EE-ASE promise," said Dumps, tightening her hold on his neck; and Mr. Smith, in memory of the little arms that once clung round him, and the little fingers that in other days clasped his, said: "Well, I'll promise, little ones. Pomp may come home, and I'll not whip or punish him in any way;" and then he kissed them both, and said they must have a lunch with him, and then he would take them home and bring Pomp back; for he was astonished to learn that they had walked so long a distance, and would not hear of their walking back, though Diddie persisted that they must go, as they had stolen off, and nobody knew where they were. He made the cook bake them some hot corn hoe-cakes and boil them some eggs; and while she was fixing it, and getting the fresh butter and buttermilk to add to the meal, Mr. Smith took them to the June apple-tree, and gave them just as many red apples as they wanted to eat, and some to take home to Tot. And Dumps told him all about "Old Billy" and Cherubim and Seraphim, and the old man laughed, and enjoyed it all, for he had no relatives or friends, and lived entirely alone-- a stern, cold man, whose life had been embittered by the sudden loss of his loved ones, and it had been many weary years since he had heard children's voices chatting and laughing under the apple-tree. After the lunch, which his guests enjoyed very much Mr. Smith had a little donkey brought out for Dilsey to ride, and, taking Diddie behind him on his horse, and Dumps in his arms, he started with them for home. There was but one saddle, so Dilsey was riding "bareback," and had to sit astride of the donkey to keep from falling off, which so amused the children that merry peals of laughter rang out from time to time; indeed, Dumps laughed so much, that, if Mr. Smith had not held her tightly, she certainly would have fallen off. But it was not very funny to Dilsey; she held on with all her might to the donkey's short mane, and even then could scarcely keep her seat. She was highly indignant with the children for laughing at her, and said: "I dunno wat yer kill'n yerse'f laffin' 'bout, got me er settin' on dis hyear beas'; I ain't gwine wid yer no mo'." Major Waldron was sitting on the veranda as the cavalcade came up, and was surprised to see his little daughters with Mr. Smith, and still more so to learn that they had walked all the way to his house on a mission of mercy; but being a kind man, and not wishing to check the germs of love and sympathy in their young hearts, he forbore to scold them, and went with them and Mr. Smith to the gin-house for the runaway. On reaching the pick-room, the children went in alone, and told Uncle Pomp that his master had come for him, and had promised not to punish him; but still the old man was afraid to go out, and stood there in alarm till Mr. Smith called: "Come out, Pomp! I'll keep my promise to the little ones; you shall not be punished in any way. Come out, and let's go home." And Uncle Pomp emerged from his hiding-place, presenting a very ludicrous spectacle, with his unwashed face and uncombed hair, and the dirty cotton sticking to his clothes. "Ef'n yer'll furgib de ole nigger dis time, marster, he ain't neber gwine run erway no mo' an', mo'n dat, he gwine ter make speshul 'spress 'rangemunce fur ter git up sooner in de mornin'; he is dat, jes sho's yer born!" said the old negro, as he came before his master. "Don't make too many promises, Pomp," kindly replied Mr. Smith; "we will both try to do better; at any rate, you shall not be punished this time. Now take your leave of your kind little friends, and let's get towards home; we are losing lots of time this fine day." "Good-bye, little misses," said Uncle Pomp, grasping Diddie's hand in one of his and Dumps's in the other; "good-bye; I gwine pray fur yer bof ev'y night wat de Lord sen'; an', mo'n dat, I gwine fotch yer some pattridge aigs de fus' nes' wat I fin's." And Uncle Pomp mounted the donkey that Dilsey had ridden, and rode off with his master, while Diddie and Dumps climbed on top of the fence to catch the last glimpse of them, waving their sun-bonnets and calling out, "Good-bye, Mr. Tight-fis' Smith and Uncle Pomp." CHAPTER XV THE FOURTH OF JULY "THE glorious Fourth" was always a holiday on every Southern plantation, and, of course, Major Waldron's was no exception to the rule. His negroes not only had holiday, but a barbecue, and it was a day of general mirth and festivity. On this particular "Fourth" the barbecue was to be on the banks of the creek formed by the back-waters of the river, and was to be a "fish-fry" as well as a barbecue. All hands on the plantation were up by daylight, and preparing for the frolic. Some of the negro men, indeed, had been down to the creek all night setting out their fish-baskets and getting the "pit" ready for the meats. The pit was a large hole, in which a fire was kindled to roast the animals, which were suspended over it; and they must commence the barbecuing very early in the morning, in order to get everything ready by dinner-time. The children were as much excited over it as the negroes were and Mammy could hardly keep them still enough to dress them, they were so eager to be off. Major and Mrs. Waldron were to go in the light carriage, but the little folks were to go with Mammy and Aunt Milly in the spring-wagon, along with the baskets of provisions for the "white folks' tables;" the bread and vegetables and cakes and pastry for the negroes' tables had been sent off in a large wagon, and were at the place for the barbecue long before the white family started from home. The negroes, too, had all gone. Those who were not able to walk had gone in wagons, but most of them had walked, for it was only about three miles from the house. Despite all their efforts to hurry up Mammy, it was nearly nine o'clock before the children could get her off; and even then she didn't want to let Cherubim and Seraphim go, and Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who was driving the wagon, had to add his entreaties to those of the little folks before she would consent at all; and after that matter had been decided, and the baskets all packed in, and the children all comfortably seated, and Dilsey and Chris and Riar squeezed into the back of the wagon between the ice-cream freezer and the lemonade buckets, and Cherubim and Seraphim in the children's laps, and Mammy and Aunt Milly on two split-bottomed chairs, just back of the driver's seat, and Uncle Snake-bit Bob, with the reins in his hands, just ready to drive off-- whom should they see but Old Daddy Jake coming down the avenue, and waving his hat for them to wait for him. "Dar now!" said Mammy; "de folks done gone an' lef' Ole Daddy, an' we got ter stuff 'im in hyear somewhar." "They ain't no room in hyear," said Dumps, tightening her gasp on Cherubim, for she strongly suspected that Mammy would insist on leaving the puppies to make room for Daddy. "Well, he ain't got ter be lef'," said Mammy; "I wuz allers larnt ter 'spect ole folks myse'f, an' ef'n dis wagin goes, why den Daddy Jake's got ter go in it;" and, Major and Mrs. Waldron having gone, Mammy was the next highest in command, and from her decision there was no appeal. "How come yer ter git lef', Daddy," asked Uncle Snake-bit Bob, as the old man came up hobbling on his stick. "Well, yer see, chile, I wuz er lightin' uv my pipe, an' er fixin' uv er new stim in it, an' I nuber notus wen de wagins went off. Yer see I'm er gittin' er little deef in deze ole yurs of mine: dey ben er fasten't on ter dis ole nigger's head er long time, uperds uv er hundred years or mo'; an' de time hez ben wen dey could hyear de leaves fall uv er nights; but dey gittin' out'n fix somehow; dey ain't wuckin' like dey oughter; an' dey jus sot up dar, an' let de wagins drive off, an' leave de ole nigger er lightin' uv his pipe; an' wen I got thu, an' went ter de do', den I hyeard er mighty stillness in de quarters, an' bless yer heart, de folks wuz gone; an' I lookt up dis way, an' I seed de wagin hyear, an' I 'lowed yer'd all gimme er lif' some way." "Dem little niggers'll hatter stay at home," said Mammy, sharply, eyeing the little darkies, "or else they'll hatter walk, caze Daddy's got ter come in dis wagin. Now, you git out, you little niggers." At this, Dilsey and Chris and Riar began to unpack themselves, crying bitterly the while, because they were afraid to walk by themselves, and they knew they couldn't walk fast enough to keep up with the wagon; but here Diddie came to the rescue, and persuaded Uncle Bob to go to the stable and saddle Corbin, and all three of the little negroes mounted him, and rode on behind the wagon, while Daddy Jim was comfortably fixed in the space they had occupied; and now they were fairly off. "Mammy, what does folks have Fourf of Julys for?" asked Dumps, after a little while. "I dunno, honey," answered Mammy; "I hyear 'em say hit wuz 'long o' some fightin' or nuther wat de white folks fit one time; but whedder dat wuz de time wat Brer David fit Goliar or not, I dunno; I ain't hyeard 'em say 'bout dat: it mout er ben dat time, an' den ergin it mout er ben de time wat Brer Samson kilt up de folks wid de jawbone. I ain't right sho wat time hit wuz; but den I knows hit wuz some fightin' or nuther." "It was the 'Declination of Independence'," said Diddie. "It's in the little history; and it wasn't any fightin', it was a writin'; and there's the picture of it in the book: and all the men are sittin' roun', and one of 'em is writin'." "Yes, dat's jes wat I hyearn," said Uncle Bob. "I hyearn 'em say dat dey had de fuss' Defemation uv Ondepen'ence on de Fourf uv July, an' eber sence den de folks ben er habin' holerday an' barbecues on dat day." "What's er Defemation, Uncle Bob?" asked Dumps, who possessed an inquiring mind. "Well, I mos' furgits de zack meanin'," said the old man, scratching his head; "hit's some kin' er writin', do, jes like Miss Diddie say; but, let erlone dat, hit's in de squshionary, an' yer ma kin fin' hit fur yer, an' 'splain de zack meanin' uv de word; but de Defemation uv Ondepen'ence, hit happened on de fuss Fourf uv July, an' hit happens ev'ry Fourf uv July sence den; an' dat's 'cordin 'ter my onderstandin' uv hit," said Uncle Rob, whipping up his horses. "What's dat, Brer Bob?" asked Daddy Jake, and as soon as Uncle Bob had yelled at him Dumps's query and his answer to it, the old man said: "Yer wrong, Brer Bob; I 'members well de fus' Fourf uv July; hit wuz er man, honey. Marse Fofer July wuz er man, an' de day wuz name atter him. He wuz er pow'ful fightin' man; but den who it wuz he fit I mos' furgot, hit's ben so long ergo; but I 'members, do, I wuz er right smart slip uv er boy, an' I went wid my ole marster, yer pa's gran'pa, to er big dinner wat dey had on de Jeems Riber, in ole Furginny; an' dat day, sar, Marse Fofer July wuz dar; an' he made er big speech ter de white folks, caze I hyeard 'em clappin' uv dey han's. I nuber seed 'im but I hyeard he wuz dar, do, an' I knows he wuz dar, caze I sho'ly hyeard 'em clappin' uv dey han's; an', 'cordin' ter de way I 'members bout'n it, dis is his birfday, wat de folks keeps plum till yet caze dey ain't no men nowerdays like Marse Fofer July. He wuz er gre't man, an' he had sense, too; an' den, 'sides dat, he wuz some er de fus' famblys in dem days. Wy, his folks usen ter visit our white folks. I helt his horse fur 'im de many er time; an', let erlone dat, I knowed some uv his niggers; but den dat's ben er long time ergo." "But what was he writin' about Daddy?" asked Diddie, who remembered the picture too well to give up the "writing part." "He wuz jes signin' some kin' er deeds or sump'n," said Daddy. "I dunno wat he wuz writin' erbout; but den he wuz er man, caze he lived in my recommembrunce, an' I done seed 'im myse'f." That settled the whole matter, though Diddie was not entirely satisfied; but, as the wagon drove up to the creek bank just then, she was too much interested in the barbecue to care very much for "Marse Fofer July." The children all had their fishing-lines and hooks, and as soon as they were on the ground started to find a good place to fish. Dilsey got some bait from the negro boys, and baited the hooks; and it was a comical sight to see all of the children, white and black, perched upon the roots of trees or seated flat on the ground, watching intently their hooks, which they kept bobbing up and down so fast that the fish must have been very quick indeed to catch them. They soon wearied of such dull sport, and began to set their wits to work to know what to do next. "Le's go 'possum-huntin'," suggested Dilsey. "There ain't any 'possums in the daytime," said Diddie. "Yes dey is, Miss Diddie, lots uv 'em; folks jes goes at night fur ter save time. I knows how ter hunt fur 'possums; I kin tree 'em jes same ez er dog." And the children, delighted at the novelty of the thing, all started off "'possum-hunting," for Mammy was helping unpack the dinner-baskets, and was not watching them just then. They wandered off some distance, climbing over logs and falling into mud-puddles, for they all had their heads thrown back and their faces turned up to the trees, looking for the 'possums, and thereby missed seeing impediments in the way. At length Dilsey called out, "Hyear he is! Hyear de 'possum!" and they all came to a dead halt under a large oak-tree, which Dilsey and Chris, and even Diddie and Dumps, I regret to say, prepared to climb. But the climbing consisted mostly in active and fruitless endeavors to make a start, for Dilsey was the only one of the party who got as much as three feet from the ground; but she actually did climb up until she reached the first limb, and then crawled along it until she got near enough to shake off the 'possum, which proved to be a big chunk of wood that had lodged up there from a falling branch, probably; and when Dilsey shook the limb it fell down right upon Riar's upturned face, and made her nose bleed. "Wat you doin', you nigger you?" demanded Riar, angrily, as she wiped the blood from her face. "I dar' yer ter come down out'n dat tree, an' I'll beat de life out'n yer; I'll larn yer who ter be shakin' chunks on." In vain did Dilsey apologize, and say she thought it was a 'possum; Riar would listen to no excuse; and as soon as Dilsey reached the ground they had a rough-and-tumble fight, in which both parties got considerably worsted in the way of losing valuable hair, and of having their eyes filled with dirt and their clean dresses all muddied; but Tot was so much afraid Riar, her little nurse and maid, would get hurt that she screamed and cried, and refused to be comforted until the combatants suspended active hostilities, though they kept up quarrelling for some time, even after they had recommenced their search for 'possums. "Dilsey don't know how to tree no 'possums," said Riar, contemptuously, after they had walked for some time, and anxiously looked up into every tree they passed. "Yes I kin," retorted Dilsey; "I kin tree 'em jes ez same ez er dog, ef'n dar's any 'possums fur ter tree; but I can't make 'possums, do; an' ef dey ain't no 'possums, den I can't tree 'em, dat's all." "Maybe they don't come out on the Fourf uv July," said Dumps. "Maybe 'possums keeps it same as peoples," "Now, maybe dey duz," said Dilsey, who was glad to have some excuse for her profitless 'possum-hunting; and the children, being fairly tired out, started back to the creek bank, when they came upon Uncle Snake-bit Bob, wandering through the woods, and looking intently on the ground. "What are you looking for, Uncle Bob?" asked Diddie. "Des er few buckeyes, honey," answered the old man. "What you goin' ter du with 'em?" asked Dumps, as the little girls joined him in his search. "Well, I don't want ter die no drunkard, myse'f," said Uncle Bob, whose besetting sin was love of whiskey. "Does buckeyes keep folks from dying drunkards?" asked Dumps. "Dat's wat dey sez; an' I 'lowed I'd lay me in er few caze I've allers hyearn dat dem folks wat totes a buckeye in dey lef' britches pocket, an' den ernudder in de righthan' coat pocket, dat dey ain't gwine die no drunkards." "But if they would stop drinkin' whiskey they wouldn't die drunkards anyhow, would they, Uncle Bob?" "Well, I dunno, honey; yer pinnin' de ole nigger mighty close; de whiskey mout hab sump'n ter do wid it; I ain't 'sputin' dat-- but wat I stan's on is dis: dem folks wat I seed die drunk, dey nuber had no buckeyes in dey pockets; caze I 'members dat oberseer wat Marse Brunson had, he died wid delirums treums, an' he runned, he did, fur ter git 'way fum de things wat he seed atter him; an' he jumped into de riber, an' got drownded; an' I wuz dar wen dey pulled 'im out; an' I sez ter Brer John Small, who wuz er standin' dar, sez I, now I lay yer he ain't got no buckeyes in his pockets; and wid dat me'n Brer John we tuck'n turnt his pockets wrong side outerds; an' bless yer soul, chile, hit wuz jes like I say; DAR WAN'T NO BUCKEYES DAR! Well, I'd b'lieved in de ole sayin' befo', but dat jes kin'ter sot me on it fas'er 'n eber; an' I don't cyar wat de wedder is, nor wat de hurry is; hit may rain an' hit may shine, an' de time may be er pressin', but ole Rob he don't stir out'n his house mornin's 'cep'n he's got buckeyes in his pockets. But I seed 'em gittin' ready fur dinner as I comed erlong, an' you chil'en better be er gittin' toerds de table." That was enough for the little folks, and they hurried back to the creek. The table was formed by driving posts into the ground, and laying planks across them, and had been fixed up the day before by some of the men. The dinner was excellent-- barbecued mutton and shote and lamb and squirrels, and very fine "gumbo," and plenty of vegetables and watermelons and fruits, and fresh fish which the negroes had caught in the seine, for none of the anglers had been successful. Everybody was hungry, for they had had very early breakfast, and, besides, it had been a fatiguing day, for most of the negroes had walked the three miles, and then had danced and played games nearly all the morning, and so they were ready for dinner. And everybody seemed very happy and gay except Mammy; she had been so upset at the children's torn dresses and dirty faces that she could not regain her good-humor all at once; and then, too, Dumps had lost her sun-bonnet, and there were some unmistakable freckles across her little nose, and so Mammy looked very cross, and grumbled a good deal, though her appetite seemed good, and she did full justice to the barbecue. Now Mammy had some peculiar ideas of her own as to the right and proper way for ladies to conduct themselves, and one of her theories was that no white lady should ever eat heartily in company; she might eat between meals, if desired, or even go back after the meal was over and satisfy her appetite; but to sit down with a party of ladies and gentlemen and make a good "square" meal, Mammy considered very ungenteel indeed. This idea she was always trying to impress upon the little girls, so as to render them as ladylike as possible in the years to come; and on this occasion, as there were quite a number of the families from the adjacent plantations present, she was horrified to see Dumps eating as heartily, and with as evident satisfaction, as if she had been alone in the nursery at home. Diddie, too, had taken her second piece of barbecued squirrel, and seemed to be enjoying it very much, when a shake of Mammy's head reminded her of the impropriety of such a proceeding; so she laid aside the squirrel, and minced delicately over some less substantial food. The frowns and nods, however, were thrown away upon Dumps; she ate of everything she wanted until she was fully satisfied, and I grieve to say that her papa encouraged her in such unladylike behavior by helping her liberally to whatever she asked for. But after the dinner was over, and after the darkies had played and danced until quite late, and after the ladies and gentlemen had had several very interesting games of euchre and whist, and after the little folks had wandered about as much as they pleased-- swinging on grape-vines and riding on "saplings," and playing "base" and "stealing goods," and tiring themselves out generally-- and after they had been all duly stowed away in the spring-wagon and had started for home, then Mammy began at Dumps about her unpardonable appetite. "But I was hungry, Mammy," apologized the little girl. "I don't cyer ef'n yer wuz," replied Mammy; "dat ain't no reason fur yer furgittin' yer manners, an' stuffin' yerse'f right fo' all de gemmuns. Miss Diddie dar, she burhavt like er little lady, jes kinter foolin' wid her knife an' fork, an' nuber eatin' nuffin' hardly; an' dar you wuz jes ir pilin' in shotes an' lams an' squ'ls, an' roas'n yurs, an' pickles an' puddin's an' cakes an' watermillions, tell I wuz dat shame fur ter call yer marster's darter!" And poor little Dumps, now that the enormity of her sin was brought home to her, and the articles eaten so carefully enumerated, began to feel very much like a boa-constrictor, and the tears fell from her eyes as Mammy continued: "I done nust er heap er chil'en in my time, but I ain't nuber seed no white chile eat fo de gemmuns like you duz. It pyears like I can't nuber larn you no manners, nohow." "Let de chile erlone, Sis Rachel," interposed Uncle Bob; "she ain't no grown lady, an' I seed marster he'p'n uv her plate hisse'f; she nuber eat none too much, consid'n hit wuz de Fourf uv July." "Didn't I eat no shotes an' lambs, Uncle Bob?" asked Dumps, wiping her eyes. "I don't b'lieve yer did," said Uncle Bob. "I seed yer eat er squ'l or two, an' er few fish, likely; an' dem, wid er sprinklin' uv roas'n yurs an' cakes, wuz de mos' wat I seed yer eat." "An' dat wuz too much," said Mammy, "right befo' de gemmuns." But Dumps was comforted at Uncle Bob's moderate statement of the case, and so Mammy's lecture lost much of its intended severity. As they were driving through the grove before reaching the house it was quite dark, and they heard an owl hooting in one of the trees. "I see yer keep on sayin' yer sass," said Daddy Jake, addressing the owl. "Ef'n I'd er done happen ter all you is 'bout'n hit, I'd let hit erlone myse'f." "What's he sayin'?" asked Diddie. "Wy, don't yer hyear him, honey, er sayin', 'Who cooks fur you-oo-a? Who cooks fur you-oo-a? Ef you'll cook for my folks, Den I'll cook fur y' all-l-lll?' "Well, hit wuz 'long er dat very chune wat he los' his eyes, an' can't see no mo' in de daytime; an' ev'n I wuz him, I'd let folks' cookin' erlone." "Can't you tell us about it, Daddy?" asked Dumps. "I ain't got de time now," said the old man, "caze hyear's de wagin almos' at de do'; an', let erlone dat, I ain't nuber hyeard 'twus good luck ter be tellin' no tales on de Fourf uv July; but ef'n yer kin come ter my cabin some ebenin' wen yer's er airin' uv yerse'fs, den I'll tell yer jes wat I hyearn 'bout'n de owl, an 'struck yer in er many er thing wat yer don't know now." And now the wagon stopped at the back gate, and the little girls and Mammy and the little darkies got out, and Mammy made the children say good-night to Daddy Jake and Uncle Rob, and they all went into the house very tired and very sleepy, and very dirty with their celebration of "Marse Fofer July's burfday." CHAPTER XVI "'STRUCK'N UV DE CHIL'EN" IT was several days before the children could get off to Daddy Jake's cabin to hear about the owl; but on Saturday evening, after dinner, Mammy said they might go; and, having promised to go straight to Daddy Jake's house, and to come home before dark, they all started off. Daddy Jake was the oldest negro on the plantation-- perhaps the oldest in the State. He had been raised by Major Waldron's grandfather in Virginia, and remembered well the Revolutionary War; and then he had been brought to Mississippi by Major Waldron's father, and remembered all about the War of 1812 and the troubles with the Indians. It had been thirty years or more since Daddy Jake had done any work. He had a very comfortable cabin; and although his wives (for the old man had been married several times) were all dead, and many of his children were now old and infirm, he had a number of grandchildren and great-grand-children who attended to his wants; and then, too, his master cared very particularly for his comfort, and saw that Daddy Jake had good fires, and that his clothes were kept clean and mended, and his food nicely cooked; so the old man passed his days in peace and quiet. The children found him now lying stretched out on a bench in front of his cabin, while Polly, his great-grand-daughter, was scratching and "looking" his head. "We've come for you to tell us about the Owl, Daddy," said Diddie, after she had given the old man some cake and a bottle of muscadine wine that her mother had sent to him. "All right, little misses," replied Daddy; and, sitting up on the bench, he lifted Tot beside him, while Diddie and Dumps sat on the door-sill, and Dilsey and Chris and Riar and Polly sat flat on the ground. "Well, yer see de Owl," began Daddy Jake, "he usen fur ter see in de daytime des same ez he do now in de night; an' one time he wuz in his kitchen er cookin' uv his dinner, wen hyear come de Peafowl er struttin' by. Well, in dem days de Peafowl he nuber had none er dem eyes on his tail wat he got now; his tail wuz des er clean blue." "Did you see him, Daddy?" interrupted Dumps. "No, honey, I ain't seed 'im wen he wuz dat way; dat wuz fo' my time; but den I know hit's de truf, do; his tail wuz er clar blue dout'n no eyes on it; an' he wuz er pow'ful proud bird, an', 'stid er him 'ten'in ter his bizness, he des prumeraded de streets an' de roads, an' he felt hisse'f too big fur ter ten' ter his wuck. Well, de Owl knowed dat, an' so wen he seed de Peafowl walkin' by so big, an' him in de kitchen er cookin', it kinter hu't his feelin's, so he tuck'n holler'd at de Peafowl, "'Whooo cooks fur you-oo-a? Whooo cooks fur you-oo-a? I cooks fur my folks, But who cooks fur y' all-ll-l?' "Now he jes done dat out'n pyo' sass'ness, caze he knowed de Peafowl felt hisse'f 'bove cookin'; an' wen de Peafowl hyeard dat, he 'gun ter git mad; an' he 'lowed dat ef'n de Owl said dat ter him ergin dey'd be er fuss on his han's. Well, de nex' day de Owl seed him comin,' an' he 'gun fer ter scrape out'n his pots an' skillets, an' ez he scrape 'em he holler'd out, "'Whoo cooks fur you-oo-a? Whoo cooks fur you-oo-a? Ef you'll cook fur my folks, Den I'll cook fur y' all-l-lll.' "An' wid dat de Peafowl tuck'n bounct him; an' dar dey had it, er scrougin' an' peckin an er clawin' uv one nudder; an' somehow, in de skrummidge, de Owl's eyes dey got skwushed on ter de Peafowl's tail, an' fur er long time he couldn't see nuffin' 'tall; but de rattlesnake doctored on him." "The rattlesnake?" asked Diddie, in horror. "Hit's true, des like I'm tellin' yer," said Daddy; "hit wuz de rattlesnake; an' dey's de bes' doctor dey is 'mongst all de beases. Yer may see him creepin' 'long thu de grass like he don't know nuffin', but he kin doctor den." "How does he doctor, Daddy?" asked Dumps. "Now you chil'en look er hyear," said the old man; "I ain't gwine ter tell yer all I know 'bout'n de rattlesnake; dar's some things fur ter tell, and den ergin dar's some things fur ter keep ter yerse'f; an' wat dey is twix' me an' de rattlesnake, hit's des twix' me'n him; an' you ain't de fust ones wat want ter know an' couldn't. Yer may ax, but axin' ain't findin' out den; an', mo'n dat, ef'n I'm got ter be bothered wid axin' uv questions, den I ain't gwine obstruck yer, dat's all." The children begged his pardon, and promised not to interrupt again, and Daddy Jake continued his story. "Yes, de rattlesnake doctored on him, an' atter er wile he got so he could see some uv nights; but he can't see much in de daytime, do; an' ez fur de Peafowl, he shuck an' he shuck his tail, but dem spots is dar tell yit! An' wen he foun' he couldn't git 'em off, den he g'un ter 'ten like he wuz glad uv 'em on dar, and dat wat makes him spread his tail and ac' so foolish in de spring uv de year. "Dey's er heap uv de beases done ruint deyse'fs wid dey cuttin's up an' gwines on," continued Daddy Jake. "Now dar's de Beaver, he usen fur ter hab er smoove roun' tail des like er 'possum's, wat wuz er heap handier fur him ter tote dan dat flat tail wat he got now; but den he wouldn't let de frogs erlone: he des tored down dey houses an' devilled 'em, till dey 'lowed dey wouldn't stan' it; an' so, one moonshiny night, wen he wuz er stan'in on de bank uv er mighty swif'-runnin' creek, ole Brer Bullfrog he hollered at him, "'Come over! come over!' "He knowed de water wuz too swiff fur de beaver, but den he 'lowed ter pay him back fur tearin' down his house. Well, de Beaver he stood dar er lookin' at de creek, an' by'mby he axes, "'How deep is it?' "'Knee-deep, knee-deep,' answered the little frogs. An' de Bullfrogs, dey kep' er sayin, 'Come over, come over," an' de little frogs kep' er hollin', 'Jus' knee-deep; jus' knee-deep,' tell de Beaver he pitched in fur ter swim 'cross; an', gemmun, de creek wuz so deep, an de water so swiff, tell hit put 'im up ter all he knowed. He had ter strain an' ter wrestle wid dat water tell hit flattent his tail out same ez er shobel, an' er little mo'n he'd er los' his life; but hit larnt him er lesson. I ain't nuber hyeard uv his meddlin' wid nuffin' fum dat time ter dis, but, I tell yer, in de hot summer nights, wen he hatter drag dat flat tail uv his'n atter him ev'ywhar he go, 'stid er havin' er nice handy tail wat he kin turn ober his back like er squ'l, I lay yer, mun, he's wusht er many er time he'd er kep' his dev'lment ter hisse'f, an' let dem frogs erlone." Here Daddy Jake happened to look down, and he caught Polly nodding. "Oh yes!" said the old man, "yer may nod; dat's des wat's de matter wid de niggers now, dem sleepy-head ways wat dey got is de cazhun uv dey hyar bein' kunkt up an' dey skins bein' black." "Is that what makes it, Daddy?" asked Diddie, much interested. "Ub cose hit is," replied Daddy. "Ef'n de nigger hadn't ben so sleepy-headed, he'd er ben white, an' his hyar'd er ben straight des like yourn. Yer see, atter de Lord make 'im, den he lont him up 'gins de fence-corner in de sun fur ter dry; an' no sooner wuz de Lord's back turnt, an' de sun 'gun ter come out kin'er hot, dan de nigger he 'gun ter nod, an' er little mo'n he wuz fas' ter sleep. Well, wen de Lord sont atter 'im fur ter finish uv 'im up, de angel couldn't fin' 'im, caze he didn't know de zack spot whar de Lord sot 'im; an' so he hollered an' called, an' de nigger he wuz 'sleep, an' he nuber hyeard 'im; so de angel tuck de white man, an' cyard him 'long, an' de Lord polished uv 'im off. Well, by'mby de nigger he waked up; but, dar now! he wuz bu'nt black, an' his hyar wuz all swuv'llt up right kinky. "De Lord, seein, he wuz spilte, he didn't 'low fur ter finish 'im, an' wuz des 'bout'n ter thow 'im 'way, wen de white man axt fur 'im; so de Lord he finished 'im up des like he wuz, wid his skin black an' his hyar kunkt up, an' he gun 'im ter de white man, an' I see he's got 'im plum tell yit." "Was it you, Daddy?" asked Dumps. "Wy , no, honey, hit wan't me, hit wuz my forecisters." "What's a forecister, Daddy?" asked Diddie, rather curious about the relationship. "Yer forecisters," explained Daddy, "is dem uv yer way back folks, wat's born'd fo' you is yerse'f, an' fo' yer pa is. Now, like my ole marster, yer pa's gran'pa, wat riz me in ole Furginny, he's you chil'en's forecister; an' dis nigger wat I'm tellin' yer 'bout'n, he waz my fuss forecister; an' dats' de way dat I've allers hyearn dat he come ter be black, an' his hyar kinky; an' I b'lieves hit, too, caze er nigger's de sleepies'-headed critter dey is; an' den, 'sides dat' I've seed er heap er niggers in my time, but I ain't nuber seed dat nigger yit wat's wite, an' got straight hyar on his head. "Now I ain't er talkin' 'bout'n murlatters, caze dey ain't no reg'lar folks 'tall; dey's des er mixtry. Dey ain't white, an' dey ain't black, an' dey ain't nuffin'; dey's des de same kin' er folks ez de muel is er horse! "An' den dar's Injuns; dey's ergin ernudder kin' er folks. "I usen ter hyear 'em say dat de deb'l made de fuss Injun. He seed de Lord er makin' folks, an' he 'lowed he'd make him some; so he got up his dut and his water, an' all his 'grejunces, an' he went ter wuck; an' wedder he cooked him too long, ur wedder he put in too much red clay fur de water wat he had, wy, I ain't nuber hyeard; but den I known de deb'l made 'im, caze I allers hyearn so; an', mo'n dat, I done seed 'em fo' now, an' dey got mighty dev'lish ways. I wuz wid yer gran'pa at Fort Mimms, down erbout Mobile, an' I seed 'em killin' folks an' sculpin' uv 'em; an, mo'n dat, ef'n I hadn't er crope under er log, an' flattent myse'f out like er allergator, dey'd er got me; an' den, ergin, dey don't talk like no folks. I met er Injun one time in de road, an' I axed 'im wuz he de man wat kilt an' sculpt Sis Leah, wat usen ter b'longst ter yer gran'pa, an' wat de Injuns kilt. I axt 'im 'ticklur, caze I had my axe erlong, an' ef'n he wuz de man, I 'lowed fur ter lay him out. But, bless yer life, chile, he went on fur ter say, "'Ump, ump, kinterlosha wannycoola tusky noba, inickskymuncha fluxkerscenuck kintergunter skoop.' "An' wen he sed dat, I tuck'n lef' him, caze I seed hit wouldn't do fur ter fool 'long him; an', mo'n dat, he 'gun fur ter shine his eyes out, an' so I des off wid my hat, an' scrape my lef' foot, an' said, 'Good ebenin', marster,' same ez ef he wuz er white man; an' den I tuck thu de woods tell I come ter de fork-han's een er road, an' I eberlastin' dusted fum dar! I put deze feets in motion, yer hyeard me! an' I kep' 'em er gwine, too, tell I come ter de outskirts uv de quarters; an' eber sence den I ain't stopped no Injun wat I sees in de road, an' I ain't meddled 'long o' who kilt Sis Leah, nudder, caze she's ben in glory deze fifty years or mo', an' hit's all one to her now who sculpt her." But now, as it was getting late, Daddy said he was afraid to stay out in the night air, as it sometimes "gun him de rheumatiz," and wound up his remarks by saying, "Tell yer ma I'm mighty 'bleeged fur de cake an' drinkin's, an' weneber yer gits de time, an' kin come down hyear any ebenin', de ole man he'll 'struck yer, caze he's gwine erway fo' long, an' dem things wat he knows is onbeknownst ter de mos' uv folks." "Where are you going, Daddy," asked Diddie. "I gwine ter de 'kingdum,' honey, an' de Lord knows hit's time; I ben hyear long ernuff; but hit's 'bout time fur me ter be er startin' now, caze las' Sat'dy wuz er week gone I wuz er stretchin' my ole legs in de fiel', an' er rabbit run right ercross de road foreninst me, an' I knowed it wuz er sho' sign uv er death; an' den, night fo' las', de scritch-owls wuz er talkin' ter one ernudder right close ter my do', an' I knowed de time wuz come fur de ole nigger ter take dat trip; so, ef'n yer wants him ter 'struck yer, yer'd better be er ten'in' ter it, caze wen de Lord sen's fur 'im he's er gwine." The children were very much awed at Daddy's forebodings, and Dumps insisted on shaking hands with him, as she felt that she would probably never see him again, and they all bade him good-night, and started for the house "Miss Diddie, did you know ole Daddy wuz er trick nigger?" asked Dilsey, as they left the old man's cabin. "What's er trick nigger?" asked Dumps. "Wy, don't yer know, Miss Dumps? Trick niggers dey ties up snakes' toofs an' frogs' eyes an' birds' claws, an' all kineter charms; an' den, wen dey gits mad 'long o' folks, dey puts dem little bags under dey do's, or in de road somewhar, whar dey'll hatter pass, an' dem folks wat steps ober 'em den dey's tricked; an' dey gits sick, an' dey can't sleep uv nights, an' dey chickens all dies, an' dey can't nuber hab no luck nor nuf'n tell de tricks is tuck off. Didn't yer hyear wat he said 'bout'n de snakes' an' de folks all sez ez how ole Daddy is er trick nigger, an' dat's wat makes him don't die." "Well, I wish I was a trick nigger, then," remarked Dumps, gravely. "Lordy, Miss Dumps, yer'd better not be er talkin' like dat," said Dilsey, her eyes open wide in horror. "Hit's pow'ful wicked ter be trick niggers." "I don't know what's the matter with Dumps," said Diddie; "she's gettin' ter be so sinful; an' ef she don't stop it, I sha'n't sleep with her. She'll be er breakin' out with the measles or sump'n some uv these days, jes fur er judgment on her; an' I don't want ter be catchin' no judgments just on account of her badness." "Well, I'll take it back, Diddie," humbly answered Dumps. "I didn't know it was wicked; and won't you sleep with me now?" Diddie having promised to consider the matter, the little folks walked slowly on to the house, Dilsey and Chris and Riar all taking turns in telling them the wonderful spells and cures and troubles that Daddy Jake had wrought with his "trick-bags." CHAPTER XVII WHAT BECAME OF THEM WELL, of course, I can't tell you all that happened to these little girls. I have tried to give you some idea of how they lived in their Mississippi home, and I hope you have been amused and entertained; and now as "Diddie" said about her book, I've got to "wind up," and tell you what became of them. The family lived happily on the plantation until the war broke out in 1861. Then Major Waldron clasped his wife to his heart, kissed his daughters, shook hands with his faithful slaves, and went as a soldier to Virginia; and he is sleeping now on the slope of Malvern Hill, where he "Nobly died for Dixie." The old house was burned during the war, and on the old plantation where that happy home once stood there are now three or four chimneys and an old tumbled-down gin-house. That is all. The agony of those terrible days of war, together with the loss of her husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs. Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman, with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers, is the once beautiful "mamma" of Diddie, Dumps and Tot. Diddie grew up to be a very pretty, graceful woman, and when the war began was in her eighteenth year. She was engaged to one of the young men in the neighborhood; and though she was so young, her father consented to the marriage, as her lover was going into the army, and wanted to make her his wife before leaving. So, early in '61, before Major Waldron went to Virginia, there was a quiet wedding in the parlor one night; and not many days afterwards the young Confederate soldier donned his gray coat, and rode away with Forrest's Cavalry. "And ere long a messenger came, Bringing the sad, sad story-- A riderless horse: a funeral march: Dead on the field of glory!" After his death her baby came to gladden the young widow's desolate life; and he is now almost grown, handsome and noble, and the idol of his mother. Diddie is a widow still. She was young and pretty when the war ended, and has had many offers of marriage; but a vision of a cold white face, with its fair hair dabbled in blood, is ever in her heart. So Diddie lives for her boy. Their home is in Natchez now; for of course they could never live in the old place any more. When the slaves were free, they had no money to rebuild the houses, and the plantation has never been worked since the war. The land is just lying there useless, worthless; and the squirrels play in and out among the trees, and the mocking-birds sing in the honeysuckles and magnolias and rose-bushes where the front yard used to be. And at the quarters, where the happy slave-voices used to sing "Monkey Motions," and the merry feet used to dance to "Cotton-eyed Joe," weeds and thick underbrush have all grown up, and partridges build their nests there; and sometimes, at dusk, a wild-cat or a fox may be seen stealing across the old playground. Tot, long years ago, before the war even, when she was yet a pure, sinless little girl, was added to that bright band of angel children who hover around the throne of God; and so she was already there, you see, to meet and welcome her "papa" when his stainless soul went up from Malvern Hill. Well, for "Mammy" and "Daddy Jake" and "Aunt Milly" and "Uncle Dan'l," "dat angel" has long since "blowed de horn," and I hope and believe they are happily walking "dem golden streets" in which they had such implicit faith, and of which they never wearied of telling. And the rest of the negroes are all scattered; some doing well, some badly; some living, some dead. Aunt Sukey's Jim, who married Candace that Christmas-night, is a politician. He has been in Legislature, and spends his time in making long and exciting speeches to the loyal leaguers against the Southern whites, all unmindful of his happy childhood, and of the kind and generous master who strove in every way to render his bondage (for which that master was in no way to blame) a light and happy one. Uncle Snake-bit Bob is living still. He has a little candy-store in a country town. He does not meddle with politics. He says, "I don't cas' my suffrins fur de Dimercracks, nur yit fur de 'Publicans. I can't go 'ginst my color by votin' de Dimercrack papers; an' ez fur dem 'Publicans! Well, ole Bob he done hyear wat de Book say 'boutn publicans an' sinners, an' dat's ernuff fur him. He's er gittin' uperds in years now; pretty soon he'll hatter shove off fur dat 'heb'nly sho'," an' wen de Lord sen' atter him, he don't want dat angel ter catch him in no kinwunshuns 'long wid 'publicans an' sinners.'" And so Uncle Bob attends to his store, and mends chairs and tubs, and deals extensively in chickens and eggs; and perhaps he is doing just as well as if he were in Congress. Dilsey and Chris and Riar are all women now, and are all married and have children of their own; and nothing delights them more than to tell their little ones what "us an' de white chil'en usen ter do." And the last I heard of Aunt Nancy, the "tender," she was going to school, but not progressing very rapidly. She did learn her letters once, but, having to stop school to make a living, she soon forgot them, and she explained it by saying: "Yer see, honey, dat man wat larnt me dem readin's, he wuz sich er onstedfus' man, an' gittin' drunk, an' votin' an' sich, tell I furgittin' wat he larnt me; but dey's er colored gemman fum de Norf wat's tuck him up er pay-school ober hyear in de 'catermy, an' ef'n I kin git him fur ter take out'n his pay in dat furmifuge wat I makes, I 'low ter go ter him er time er two, caze he's er membah ub de Zion Chu'ch, an' er mighty stedfus' man, an' dat wat he larns me den I'll stay larnt." And Dumps? Well, the merry, lighthearted little girl is an "old maid" now; and if Mammy could see her, she would think she was "steady" enough at last. Somebody, you know, must attend to the wants and comforts of the gray-haired woman in the asylum; and Diddie had her boy to support and educate, so Dumps teaches school and takes care of her mother, and is doing what Uncle Snake-bit Bob told the Sunday-school children that God had made them to do; for Dumps is doing "DE BES' SHE KIN." THE END 
26429	----	NIGHTS WITH UNCLE REMUS [Illustration: MISS MEADOWS AND BROTHER RABBIT _Frontispiece_] +-------------------------------------------+ | BOOKS BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. | | ______ | | | |LITTLE MR. THIMBLEFINGER AND HIS QUEER | |COUNTRY. Illustrated by OLIVER HERFORD. | | | |MR. RABBIT AT HOME. A Sequel to Little Mr. | |Thimblefinger and His Queer Country. | |Illustrated by OLIVER HERFORD. | | | |THE STORY OF AARON (SO-NAMED) THE SON OF | |BEN ALI. Told by his Friends and | |Acquaintances. Illustrated by OLIVER | |HERFORD. | | | |AARON IN THE WILDWOODS. Illustrated by | |OLIVER HERFORD. | | | |PLANTATION PAGEANTS. Illustrated by E. BOYD| |SMITH. | | | |NIGHTS WITH UNCLE REMUS. Illustrated. | | | |UNCLE REMUS AND HIS FRIENDS. Illustrated. | | | |MINGO, AND OTHER SKETCHES IN BLACK AND | |WHITE. | | | |BALAAM AND HIS MASTER, AND OTHER SKETCHES. | | | |SISTER JANE, HER FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES.| |A Narrative of Certain Events and Episodes | |transcribed from the Papers of the late | |William Wornum. | | | |TALES OF THE HOME FOLKS IN PEACE AND WAR. | |Illustrated. | | | | HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY | | BOSTON AND NEW YORK | +-------------------------------------------+ NIGHTS WITH UNCLE REMUS MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE OLD PLANTATION BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AUTHOR OF "UNCLE REMUS: HIS SONGS AND SAYINGS," "AT TEAGUE POTEET'S," ETC. _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1883, BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY ESTHER LA ROSE HARRIS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. MR. FOX AND MISS GOOSE 3 II. BROTHER FOX CATCHES MR. HORSE 8 III. BROTHER RABBIT AND THE LITTLE GIRL 12 IV. HOW BROTHER FOX WAS TOO SMART 17 V. BROTHER RABBIT'S ASTONISHING PRANK 21 VI. BROTHER RABBIT SECURES A MANSION 26 VII. MR. LION HUNTS FOR MR. MAN 33 VIII. THE STORY OF THE PIGS 38 IX. MR. BENJAMIN RAM AND HIS WONDERFUL FIDDLE 44 X. BROTHER RABBIT'S RIDDLE 51 XI. HOW MR. ROOSTER LOST HIS DINNER 56 XII. BROTHER RABBIT BREAKS UP A PARTY 61 XIII. BROTHER FOX, BROTHER RABBIT, AND KING DEER'S DAUGHTER 68 XIV. BROTHER TERRAPIN DECEIVES BROTHER BUZZARD 74 XV. BROTHER FOX COVETS THE QUILLS 79 XVI. HOW BROTHER FOX FAILED TO GET HIS GRAPES 83 XVII. MR. FOX FIGURES AS AN INCENDIARY 90 XVIII. A DREAM AND A STORY 95 XIX. THE MOON IN THE MILL-POND 100 XX. BROTHER RABBIT TAKES SOME EXERCISE 108 XXI. WHY BROTHER BEAR HAS NO TAIL 113 XXII. HOW BROTHER RABBIT FRIGHTENED HIS NEIGHBOURS 118 XXIII. MR. MAN HAS SOME MEAT 123 XXIV. HOW BROTHER RABBIT GOT THE MEAT 128 XXV. AFRICAN JACK 132 XXVI. WHY THE ALLIGATOR'S BACK IS ROUGH 141 XXVII. BROTHER WOLF SAYS GRACE 146 XXVIII. SPIRITS, SEEN AND UNSEEN 154 XXIX. A GHOST STORY 161 XXX. BROTHER RABBIT AND HIS FAMOUS FOOT 166 XXXI. "IN SOME LADY'S GARDEN" 177 XXXII. BROTHER 'POSSUM GETS IN TROUBLE 185 XXXIII. WHY THE GUINEA-FOWLS ARE SPECKLED 193 XXXIV. BROTHER RABBIT'S LOVE-CHARM 198 XXXV. BROTHER RABBIT SUBMITS TO A TEST 203 XXXVI. BROTHER WOLF FALLS A VICTIM 208 XXXVII. BROTHER RABBIT AND THE MOSQUITOES 214 XXXVIII. THE PIMMERLY PLUM 223 XXXIX. BROTHER RABBIT GETS THE PROVISIONS 230 XL. "CUTTA CORD-LA!" 236 XLI. AUNT TEMPY'S STORY 241 XLII. THE FIRE-TEST 248 XLIII. THE CUNNING SNAKE 255 XLIV. HOW BROTHER FOX WAS TOO SMART 260 XLV. BROTHER WOLF GETS IN A WARM PLACE 268 XLVI. BROTHER WOLF STILL IN TROUBLE 274 XLVII. BROTHER RABBIT LAYS IN HIS BEEF SUPPLY 280 XLVIII. BROTHER RABBIT AND MR. WILDCAT 286 XLIX. MR. BENJAMIN RAM DEFENDS HIMSELF 291 L. BROTHER RABBIT PRETENDS TO BE POISONED 297 LI. MORE TROUBLE FOR BROTHER WOLF 302 LII. BROTHER RABBIT OUTDOES MR. MAN 306 LIII. BROTHER RABBIT TAKES A WALK 311 LIV. OLD GRINNY-GRANNY WOLF 314 LV. HOW WATTLE WEASEL WAS CAUGHT 319 LVI. BROTHER RABBIT TIES MR. LION 325 LVII. MR. LION'S SAD PREDICAMENT 330 LVIII. THE ORIGIN OF THE OCEAN 334 LIX. BROTHER RABBIT GETS BROTHER FOX'S DINNER 339 LX. HOW THE BEAR NURSED THE LITTLE ALLIGATOR 344 LXI. WHY MR. DOG RUNS BROTHER RABBIT 349 LXII. BROTHER WOLF AND THE HORNED CATTLE 353 LXIII. BROTHER FOX AND THE WHITE MUSCADINES 357 LXIV. MR. HAWK AND BROTHER BUZZARD 362 LXV. MR. HAWK AND BROTHER RABBIT 366 LXVI. THE WISE BIRD AND THE FOOLISH BIRD 370 LXVII. OLD BROTHER TERRAPIN GETS SOME FISH 373 LXVIII. BROTHER FOX MAKES A NARROW ESCAPE 377 LXIX. BROTHER FOX'S FISH-TRAP 381 LXX. BROTHER RABBIT RESCUES BROTHER TERRAPIN 386 LXXI. THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 396 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACE PAGE MISS MEADOWS AND BROTHER RABBIT _Frontispiece_ MR. FOX AND MISS GOOSE 4 BROTHER RABBIT AND THE LITTLE GIRL 14 BROTHER RABBIT'S ASTONISHING PRANK 24 MR. BENJAMIN RAM AND HIS WONDERFUL FIDDLE 46 BROTHER FOX, BROTHER RABBIT, AND KING DEER'S DAUGHTER 70 BROTHER FOX COVETS THE QUILLS 82 A DREAM AND A STORY 96 BROTHER RABBIT TAKES SOME EXERCISE 110 WHY BROTHER BEAR HAS NO TAIL 116 WHY THE ALLIGATOR'S BACK IS ROUGH 144 BROTHER WOLF SAYS GRACE 152 WHY THE GUINEA FOWLS ARE SPECKLED 196 BROTHER RABBIT AND THE MOSQUITOES 216 THE PIMMERLY PLUM 228 BROTHER RABBIT GETS THE PROVISIONS 234 BROTHER WOLF STILL IN TROUBLE 278 BROTHER RABBIT AND MR. WILDCAT 288 BROTHER RABBIT TIES MR. LION 328 HOW THE BEAR NURSED THE LITTLE ALLIGATOR 344 GOOD-NIGHT 404 INTRODUCTION The volume[i_1] containing an instalment of thirty-four negro legends, which was given to the public three years ago, was accompanied by an apology for both the matter and the manner. Perhaps such an apology is more necessary now than it was then; but the warm reception given to the book on all sides--by literary critics, as well as by ethnologists and students of folk-lore, in this country and in Europe--has led the author to believe that a volume embodying everything, or nearly everything, of importance in the oral literature of the negroes of the Southern States, would be as heartily welcomed. The thirty-four legends in the first volume were merely selections from the large body of plantation folk-lore familiar to the author from his childhood, and these selections were made less with an eye to their ethnological importance than with a view to presenting certain quaint and curious race characteristics, of which the world at large had had either vague or greatly exaggerated notions. The first book, therefore, must be the excuse and apology for the present volume. Indeed, the first book made the second a necessity; for, immediately upon its appearance, letters and correspondence began to pour in upon the author from all parts of the South. Much of this correspondence was very valuable, for it embodied legends that had escaped the author's memory, and contained hints and suggestions that led to some very interesting discoveries. The result is, that the present volume is about as complete as it could be made under the circumstances, though there is no doubt of the existence of legends and myths, especially upon the rice plantations, and Sea Islands of the Georgia and Carolina seacoast, which, owing to the difficulties that stand in the way of those who attempt to gather them, are not included in this collection. It is safe to say, however, that the best and most characteristic of the legends current on the rice plantations and Sea Islands, are also current on the cotton plantations. Indeed, this has been abundantly verified in the correspondence of those who kindly consented to aid the author in his efforts to secure stories told by the negroes on the seacoast. The great majority of legends and stories collected and forwarded by these generous collaborators had already been collected among the negroes on the cotton plantations and uplands of Georgia and other Southern States. This will account for the comparatively meagre contribution which Daddy Jack, the old African of the rice plantations, makes towards the entertainment of the little boy. The difficulty of verifying the legends which came to hand from various sources has been almost as great as the attempt to procure them at first hand. It is a difficulty hard to describe. It is sometimes amusing, and sometimes irritating, but finally comes to be recognized as the result of a very serious and impressive combination of negro characteristics. The late Professor Charles F. Hartt, of Cornell University, in his admirable monograph[i_2] on the folk-lore of the Amazon regions of Brazil, found the same difficulty among the Amazonian Indians. Exploring the Amazonian valley, Professor Hartt discovered that a great body of myths and legends had its existence among the Indians of that region. Being aware of the great value of these myths, he set himself to work to collect them; but for a long time he found the task an impossible one, for the whites were unacquainted with the Indian folk-lore, and neither by coaxing nor by offers of money could an Indian be persuaded to relate a myth. In most instances, Professor Hartt was met with statements to the effect that some old woman of the neighborhood was the story-teller, who could make him laugh with tales of the animals; but he never could find this old woman. But one night, Professor Hartt heard his Indian steersman telling the Indian boatmen a story in order to keep them awake. This Indian steersman was full of these stories, but, for a long time, Professor Hartt found it impossible to coax this steersman to tell him another. He discovered that the Indian myth is always related without mental effort, simply to pass the time away, and that all the surroundings must be congenial and familiar. In the introduction to the first volume of "Uncle Remus"[i_3] occurs this statement: "Curiously enough, I have found few negroes who will acknowledge to a stranger that they know anything of these legends; and yet to relate one is the surest road to their confidence and esteem." This statement was scarcely emphatic enough. The thirty-four legends in the first volume were comparatively easy to verify, for the reason that they were the most popular among the negroes, and were easily remembered. This is also true of many stories in the present volume; but some of them appear to be known only to the negroes who have the gift of story-telling,--a gift that is as rare among the blacks as among the whites. There is good reason to suppose, too, that many of the negroes born near the close of the war or since, are unfamiliar with the great body of their own folk-lore. They have heard such legends as the "Tar Baby" story and "The Moon in the Mill-Pond," and some others equally as graphic; but, in the tumult and confusion incident to their changed condition, they have had few opportunities to become acquainted with that wonderful collection of tales which their ancestors told in the kitchens and cabins of the Old Plantation. The older negroes are as fond of the legends as ever, but the occasion, or the excuse, for telling them becomes less frequent year by year. With a fair knowledge of the negro character, and long familiarity with the manifold peculiarities of the negro mind and temperament, the writer has, nevertheless, found it a difficult task to verify such legends as he had not already heard in some shape or other. But, as their importance depended upon such verification, he has spared neither pains nor patience to make it complete. The difficulties in the way of this verification would undoubtedly have been fewer if the writer could have had an opportunity to pursue his investigations in the plantation districts of Middle Georgia; but circumstances prevented, and he has been compelled to depend upon such opportunities as casually or unexpectedly presented themselves. One of these opportunities occurred in the summer of 1882, at Norcross, a little railroad station, twenty miles northeast of Atlanta. The writer was waiting to take the train to Atlanta, and this train, as it fortunately happened, was delayed. At the station were a number of negroes, who had been engaged in working on the railroad. It was night, and, with nothing better to do, they were waiting to see the train go by. Some were sitting in little groups up and down the platform of the station, and some were perched upon a pile of cross-ties. They seemed to be in great good-humor, and cracked jokes at each other's expense in the midst of boisterous shouts of laughter. The writer sat next to one of the liveliest talkers in the party; and, after listening and laughing awhile, told the "Tar Baby" story by way of a feeler, the excuse being that some one in the crowd mentioned "Ole Molly Har'." The story was told in a low tone, as if to avoid attracting attention; but the comments of the negro, who was a little past middle age, were loud and frequent. "Dar now!" he would exclaim, or, "He's a honey, mon!" or, "Gentermens! git out de way, an' gin 'im room!" These comments, and the peals of unrestrained and unrestrainable laughter that accompanied them, drew the attention of the other negroes, and before the climax of the story had been reached, where Brother Rabbit is cruelly thrown into the brier-patch, they had all gathered around and made themselves comfortable. Without waiting to see what the effect of the "Tar Baby" legend would be, the writer told the story of "Brother Rabbit and the Mosquitoes," and this had the effect of convulsing them. Two or three could hardly wait for the conclusion, so anxious were they to tell stories of their own. The result was that, for almost two hours, a crowd of thirty or more negroes vied with each other to see which could tell the most and the best stories. Some told them poorly, giving only meagre outlines, while others told them passing well; but one or two, if their language and their gestures could have been taken down, would have put Uncle Remus to shame. Some of the stories told had already been gathered and verified, and a few had been printed in the first volume; but the great majority were either new or had been entirely forgotten. It was night, and impossible to take notes; but that fact was not to be regretted. The darkness gave greater scope and freedom to the narratives of the negroes, and but for this friendly curtain it is doubtful if the conditions would have been favorable to story-telling. But however favorable the conditions might have been, the appearance of a note-book and pencil would have dissipated them as utterly as if they had never existed. Moreover, it was comparatively an easy matter for the writer to take the stories away in his memory, since many of them gave point to a large collection of notes and unrelated fragments already in his possession. Theal, in the preface to his collection of Kaffir Tales,[i_4] lays great stress upon the fact that the tales he gives "have all undergone a thorough revision by a circle of natives. They were not only told by natives, but were copied down by natives." It is more than likely that his carefulness in this respect has led him to overlook a body of folk-lore among the Kaffirs precisely similar to that which exists among the negroes of the Southern States. If comparative evidence is worth anything,--and it may be worthless in this instance,--the educated natives have "cooked" the stories to suit themselves. In the "Story of the Bird that Made Milk," the children of Masilo tell other children that their father has a bird which makes milk.[i_5] The others asked to see the bird, whereupon Masilo's children took it from the place where their father had concealed it, and ordered it to make milk. Of this milk the other children drank greedily, and then asked to see the bird dance. The bird was untied, but it said the house was too small, and the children carried it outside. While they were laughing and enjoying themselves the bird flew away, to their great dismay. Compare this with the story of how the little girl catches Brother Rabbit in the garden (of which several variants are given), and afterwards unties him in order to see him dance.[i_6] There is still another version of this story, where Mr. Man puts a bridle on Brother Rabbit and ties him to the fence. Mr. Man leaves the throat-latch of the bridle unfastened, and so Brother Rabbit slips his head out, and afterwards induces Brother Fox to have the bridle put on, taking care to fasten the throat-latch. The Brother Rabbit of the negroes is the hare, and what is "The Story of Hlakanyana"[i_7] but the story of the hare and other animals curiously tangled, and changed, and inverted? Hlakanyana, after some highly suggestive adventures, kills two cows and smears the blood upon a sleeping boy.[i_8] The men find the cows dead, and ask who did it. They then see the blood upon the boy, and kill him, under the impression that he is the robber. Compare this with the story in the first volume of Uncle Remus, where Brother Rabbit eats the butter, and then greases Brother Possum's feet and mouth, thus proving the latter to be the rogue. Hlakanyana also eats all the meat in the pot, and smears fat on the mouth of a sleeping old man. Hlakanyana's feat of pretending to cure an old woman, by cooking her in a pot of boiling water, is identical with the negro story of how Brother Rabbit disposes of Grinny-Granny Wolf. The new story of Brother Terrapin and Brother Mink, relating how they had a diving-match, in order to see who should become the possessor of a string of fish, is a variant of the Kaffir story of Hlakanyana's diving-match with the boy for some birds. Hlakanyana eats the birds while the boy is under water, and Brother Terrapin disposes of the fish in the same way; but there is this curious difference: while Hlakanyana has aided the boy to catch the birds, Brother Terrapin has no sort of interest in the fish. The negro story of how Brother Rabbit nailed Brother Fox's tail to the roof of the house, and thus succeeded in getting the Fox's dinner, is identical with Hlakanyana's feat of sewing the Hyena's tail to the thatch. When this had been accomplished, Hlakanyana ate all the meat in the pot, and threw the bones at the Hyena. But the most curious parallel of all exists between an episode in "The Story of Hlakanyana," and the story of how the Bear nursed the Alligators (p. 344). This story was gathered by Mrs. Helen S. Barclay, of Darien, Georgia, whose appreciative knowledge of the character and dialect of the coast negro has been of great service to the writer. Hlakanyana came to the house of a Leopardess, and proposed to take care of her children while the Leopardess went to hunt animals. To this the Leopardess agreed. There were four cubs, and, after the mother was gone, Hlakanyana took one of the cubs and ate it. When the Leopardess returned, she asked for her children, that she might suckle them. Hlakanyana gave one, but the mother asked for all. Hlakanyana replied that it was better one should drink and then another; and to this the Leopardess agreed. After three had suckled, he gave the first one back a second time. This continued until the last cub was eaten, whereupon Hlakanyana ran away. The Leopardess saw him, and gave pursuit. He ran under a big rock, and began to cry for help. The Leopardess asked him what the matter was. "Do you not see that this rock is falling?" replied Hlakanyana. "Just hold it up while I get a prop and put under it." While the Leopardess was thus engaged, he made his escape. This, it will be observed, is the climax of a negro legend entirely different from Daddy Jack's story of the Bear that nursed the Alligators, though the rock becomes a fallen tree. In the "Story of the Lion and the Little Jackal,"[i_9] the same climax takes the shape of an episode. The Lion pursues the Jackal, and the latter runs under an overhanging rock, crying "Help! help! this rock is falling on me!" The Lion goes for a pole with which to prop up the rock, and so the Jackal escapes. It is worthy of note that a tortoise or terrapin, which stands next to Brother Rabbit in the folk-lore of the Southern negroes, is the cause of Hlakanyana's death. He places a Tortoise on his back and carries it home. His mother asks him what he has there, and he tells her to take it off his back. But the Tortoise would not be pulled off. Hlakanyana's mother then heated some fat, and attempted to pour it on the Tortoise, but the Tortoise let go quickly, and the fat fell on Hlakanyana and burnt him so that he died. The story concludes: "That is the end of this cunning little fellow." Theal also gives the story of Demane and Demazana,[i_10] a brother and sister, who were compelled to run away from their relatives on account of bad treatment. They went to live in a cave which had a very strong door. Demane went hunting by day, and told his sister not to roast any meat in his absence, lest the cannibals should smell it and discover their hiding-place. But Demazana would not obey. She roasted some meat, a cannibal smelt it, and went to the cave, but found the door fastened. Thereupon he tried to imitate Demane's voice, singing: "_Demazana, Demazana, Child of my mother, Open this cave to me. The swallows can enter it. It has two apertures._" The cannibal's voice was hoarse, and the girl would not let him in. Finally, he has his throat burned with a hot iron, his voice is changed, and the girl is deceived. He enters and captures her. Compare this with the story of the Pigs, and also with the group of stories of which Daddy Jack's "Cutta Cord-la!" is the most characteristic. In Middle Georgia, it will be observed, Brother Rabbit and his children are substituted for the boy and his sister; though Miss Devereux, of Raleigh, North Carolina, who, together with her father, Mr. John Devereux, has laid the writer under many obligations, gathered a story among the North Carolina negroes in which the boy and the sister appear. But to return to the Kaffir story: When the cannibal is carrying Demazana away, she drops ashes along the path. Demane returns shortly after with a swarm of bees which he has captured, and finds his sister gone. By means of the ashes, he follows the path until he comes to the cannibal's house. The family are out gathering wood, but the cannibal himself is at home, and has just put Demazana in a big bag where he intends to keep her until the fire is made. The brother asks for a drink of water. The cannibal says he will get him some if he will promise not to touch his bag. Demane promises; but, while the cannibal is gone for the water, he takes his sister out of the bag and substitutes the swarm of bees. When the cannibal returns with the water, his family also return with the firewood. He tells his wife there is something nice in the bag, and asks her to bring it. She says it bites. He then drives them all out, closes the door, and opens the bag. The bees fly out and sting him about the head and eyes until he can no longer see. Compare this with the negro story (No. LXX.) of how Brother Fox captures Brother Terrapin. Brother Terrapin is rescued by Brother Rabbit, who substitutes a hornet's nest. This story was told to the writer by a colored Baptist preacher of Atlanta, named Robert Dupree, and also by a Henry County negro, named George Ellis. Compare, also, the Kaffir "Story of the Great Chief of the Animals"[i_11] with the negro story of "The Fate of Mr. Jack Sparrow."[i_12] In the Kaffir story, a woman sees the chief of the animals and calls out that she is hunting for her children. The animal replies: "Come nearer; I cannot hear you." He then swallows the woman. In the negro story, Mr. Jack Sparrow has something to tell Brother Fox; but the latter pretends he is deaf, and asks Jack Sparrow to jump on his tail, on his back, and finally on his tooth. There is a variant of this story current among the coast negroes where the Alligator is substituted for the Fox. The Kaffir "Story of the Hare" is almost identical with the story of Wattle Weasel in the present volume. The story of Wattle Weasel was among those told by the railroad hands at Norcross, but had been previously sent to the writer by a lady in Selma, Alabama, and by a correspondent in Galveston. In another Kaffir story, the Jackal runs into a hole under a tree, but the Lion catches him by the tail. The Jackal cries out: "That is not my tail you have hold of. It is a root of the tree. If you don't believe, take a stone and strike it and see if any blood comes." The Lion goes to hunt for a stone, and the Jackal crawls far into the hole. In the first volume of Uncle Remus, Brother Fox tries to drown Brother Terrapin; but the latter declares that his tail is a stump-root, and so escapes. The Amazonian Indians tell of a Jaguar who catches a Tortoise by the hind leg as he is disappearing in his hole; but the Tortoise convinces him that he is holding a tree-root.[i_13] In the Kaffir story of the Lion and the Jackal, the latter made himself some horns from beeswax in order to attend a meeting of the horned cattle. He sat near the fire and went to sleep, and the horns melted, so that he was discovered and pursued by the Lion. In a negro story that is very popular, Brother Fox ties two sticks to his head, and attends the meeting of the horned cattle, but is cleverly exposed by Brother Rabbit. There is a plantation proverb current among the negroes which is very expressive. Thus, when one accidentally steps in mud or filth, he consoles himself by saying "Good thing foot aint got no nose." Among the Kaffirs there is a similar proverb,--"The foot has no nose,"--but Mr. Theal's educated natives have given it a queer meaning. It is thus interpreted: "This proverb is an exhortation to be hospitable. It is as if one said: Give food to the traveller, because when you are on a journey your foot will not be able to smell out a man whom you have turned from your door, but, to your shame, may carry you to his." It need not be said that this is rather ahead of even the educated Southern negroes. To compare the negro stories in the present volume with those translated by Bleek[i_14] would extend this introduction beyond its prescribed limits, but such a comparison would show some very curious parallels. It is interesting to observe, among other things, that the story of How the Tortoise Outran the Deer--current among the Amazonian Indians, and among the negroes of the South,--the deer sometimes becoming the Rabbit in the South, and the _carapato_, or cow-tick, sometimes taking the place of the Tortoise on the Amazonas--has a curious counterpart in the Hottentot Fables.[i_15] One day, to quote from Bleek, "the Tortoises held a council how they might hunt Ostriches, and they said: 'Let us, on both sides, stand in rows, near each other, and let one go to hunt the Ostriches, so that they must flee along through the midst of us.' They did so, and as they were many, the Ostriches were obliged to run along through the midst of them. During this they did not move, but, remaining always in the same places, called each to the other: 'Are you there?' and each one answered: 'I am here.' The Ostriches, hearing this, ran so tremendously that they quite exhausted their strength, and fell down. Then the Tortoises assembled by and by at the place where the Ostriches had fallen, and devoured them." There is also a curious variant[i_16] of the negro story of how Brother Rabbit escapes from Brother Fox by persuading him to fold his hands and say grace. In the Hottentot story, the Jackal catches the Cock, and is about to eat him, when the latter says: "Please pray before you kill me, as the white man does." The Jackal desires to know how the white man prays. "He folds his hands in praying," says the Cock. This the Jackal does, but the Cock tells the Jackal he should also shut his eyes. Whereupon the Cock flies away. In his preface, Bleek says that the Hottentot fable of the White Man and the Snake is clearly of European origin; but this is at least doubtful. The Man rescues the Snake from beneath a rock, whereupon the Snake announces her intention of biting her deliverer. The matter is referred to the Hyena, who says to the Man: "If you were bitten, what would it matter?" But the Man proposed to consult other wise people before being bit, and after a while they met the Jackal. The case was laid before him. The Jackal said he would not believe that the Snake could be covered by a stone so that she could not rise, unless he saw it with his two eyes. The Snake submitted to the test, and when she was covered by the stone the Jackal advised the Man to go away and leave her. Now, there is not only a variant of this story current among the Southern negroes (which is given in the present volume), where Brother Rabbit takes the place of the Man, Brother Wolf the place of the Snake, and Brother Terrapin the place of the Jackal, but Dr. Couto de Magalhães[i_17] gives in modern Tupi a story where the Fox or Opossum finds a Jaguar in a hole. He helps the Jaguar out, and the latter then threatens to eat him. The Fox or Opossum proposes to lay the matter before a wise man who is passing by, with the result that the Jaguar is placed back in the hole and left there. With respect to the Tortoise myths, and other animal stories gathered on the Amazonas, by Professor Hartt and Mr. Herbert Smith, it may be said that all or nearly all of them have their variants among the negroes of the Southern plantations. This would constitute a very curious fact if the matter were left where Professor Hartt left it when his monograph was written. In that monograph[i_18] he says: "The myths I have placed on record in this little paper have, without doubt, a wide currency on the Amazonas, but I have found them only among the Indian population, and they are all collected in the Lingua Geral. All my attempts to obtain myths from the negroes on the Amazonas proved failures. Dr. Couto de Magalhães, who has recently followed me in these researches, has had the same experience. The probability, therefore, seems to be that the myths are indigenous, but I do not yet consider the case proven." Professor Hartt lived to prove just the contrary; but, unfortunately, he did not live to publish the result of his investigations. Mr. Orville A. Derby, a friend of Professor Hartt, writes as follows from Rio de Janeiro: DEAR SIR,--In reading the preface to Uncle Remus,[i_19] it occurred to me that an observation made by my late friend Professor Charles Fred Hartt would be of interest to you. At the time of the publication of his Amazonian Tortoise Myths, Professor Hartt was in doubt whether to regard the myths of the Amazonian Indians as indigenous or introduced from Africa. To this question he devoted a great deal of attention, making a careful and, for a long time, fruitless search among the Africans of this city for some one who could give undoubted African myths. Finally he had the good fortune to find an intelligent English-speaking Mina black, whose only knowledge of Portuguese was a very few words which he had picked up during the short time he had been in this country, a circumstance which strongly confirms his statement that the myths related by him were really brought from Africa. From this man Professor Hartt obtained variants of all or nearly all of the best known Brazilian _animal_ myths, and convinced himself that this class is not native to this country. The spread of these myths among the Amazonian Indians is readily explained by the intimate association of the two races for over two hundred years, the taking character of the myths, and the Indian's love for stories of this class, in which he naturally introduces the animals familiar to him.... Yours truly, ORVILLE A. DERBY. _Caixa em Correio, No. 721, Rio de Janeiro._ Those who are best acquainted with the spirit, movement, and motive of African legends will accept Mr. Derby's statement as conclusive. It has been suspected even by Professor J. W. Powell, of the Smithsonian Institution, that the Southern negroes obtained their myths and legends from the Indians; but it is impossible to adduce in support of such a theory a scintilla of evidence that cannot be used in support of just the opposite theory, namely, that the Indians borrowed their stories from the negroes. The truth seems to be that, while both the Indians and the negroes have stories peculiar to their widely different races and temperaments, and to their widely different ideas of humor, the Indians have not hesitated to borrow from the negroes. The "Tar Baby" story, which is unquestionably a negro legend in its conception, is current among many tribes of Indians. So with the story of how the Rabbit makes a riding-horse of the Fox or the Wolf. This story is also current among the Amazonian Indians. The same may be said of the negro coast story "Why the Alligator's Back is Rough." Mr. W. O. Tuggle, of Georgia, who has recently made an exhaustive study of the folk-lore of the Creek Indians, has discovered among them many legends, which were undoubtedly borrowed from the negroes, including those already mentioned, the story of how the Terrapin outran the Deer, and the story of the discontented Rabbit, who asks his Creator to give him more sense. In the negro legend, it will be observed, the Rabbit seeks out Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, the old Witch-Rabbit. It may be mentioned here, that the various branches of the Algonkian family of Indians allude to the Great White Rabbit as their common ancestor.[i_20] All inquiries among the negroes, as to the origin and personality of Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, elicit but two replies. Some know, or even pretend to know, nothing about her. The rest say, with entire unanimity, "Hit 's des de ole Witch-Rabbit w'at you done year'd talk un 'fo' now." Mrs. Prioleau of Memphis sent the writer a negro story in which the name "Big-Money" was vaguely used. It was some time before that story could be verified. In conversation one day with a negro, casual allusion was made to "Big-Money." "Aha!" said the negro, "now I know. You talkin' 'bout ole Mammy-Bammy Big-Money," and then he went on to tell, not only the story which Mrs. Prioleau had kindly sent, but the story of Brother Rabbit's visit to the old Witch-Rabbit. Mr. Tuggle's collection of Creek legends will probably be published under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, and it will form a noteworthy contribution to the literature of American folk-lore. In the Creek version of the origin of the ocean, the stream which the Lion jumps across is called Throwing-Hot-Ashes-on-You. Another Creek legend, which bears the ear-marks of the negroes, but which the writer has been unable to find among them, explains why the 'Possum has no hair on his tail. It seems that Noah, in taking the animals into the ark, forgot the 'Possums; but a female 'Possum clung to the side of the vessel, and her tail dragging in the water, all the hair came off. No male 'Possum, according to the story, was saved. Mr. Tuggle has also found among the Creeks a legend which gives the origin of fire. One time, in the beginning, the people all wanted fire, and they came together to discuss the best plan of getting it. It was finally agreed that the Rabbit (Chufee) should go for it. He went across the great water to the east, and was there received with acclamation as a visitor from the New World. A great dance was ordered in his honor. They danced around a large fire, and the Rabbit entered the circle dressed very gayly. He had a peculiar cap upon his head, and in this cap, in place of feathers, he had stuck four sticks of resin, or resinous pine. As the people danced, they came near the fire in the centre of the circle, and the Rabbit also approached near the fire. Some of the dancers would reach down and touch the fire as they danced, while the Rabbit, as he came near the fire, would bow his head to the flame. No one thought anything of this, and he continued to bow to the fire, each time bowing his head lower. At last he touched the flame with his cap, and the sticks of resin caught on fire and blazed forth. Away he ran, the people pursuing the sacrilegious visitor. The Rabbit ran to the great water, plunged in, and swam away to the New World; and thus was fire obtained for the people. The student of folk-lore who will take into consideration the widely differing peculiarities and characteristics of the negroes and the Indians, will have no difficulty, after making due allowance for the apparent universality of all primitive folk-stories, in distinguishing between the myths or legends of the two races, though it sometimes happens, as in the case of the negro story of the Rabbit, the Wildcat, and the Turkeys, that the stories are built upon until they are made to fit the peculiarities of the race that borrows them. The Creek version of the Rabbit, Wildcat, and Turkey story is to the effect that the Wildcat pretended to be dead, and the Rabbit persuaded the Turkeys to go near him. When they are near enough, the Rabbit exclaims: "Jump up and catch a red-leg! jump up and catch a red-leg!" The Wildcat catches one, and proceeds to eat it, whereupon the Turkeys pursue the Rabbit, and peck and nip him until his tail comes off, and this is the reason the Rabbit has a short tail. The Creeks, as well as other tribes, were long in contact with the negroes, some of them were owners of slaves, and it is perhaps in this way that the animal stories of the two races became in a measure blended. The discussion of this subject cannot be pursued here, but it is an interesting one. It offers a wide field for both speculation and investigation. The "Cutta Cord-la" story (p. 241) of Daddy Jack is in some respects unique. It was sent to the writer by Mrs. Martha B. Washington, of Charleston, South Carolina, and there seems to be no doubt that it originated in San Domingo or Martinique. The story of how Brother Rabbit drove all the other animals out of the new house they had built, by firing a cannon and pouring a tub of water down the stairway, has its variant in Demerara. Indeed, it was by means of this variant, sent by Mr. Wendell P. Garrison, of "The Nation" (New York), that the negro story was procured. In the introduction to the first volume of Uncle Remus, a lame apology was made for inflicting a book of dialect upon the public. Perhaps a similar apology should be made here; but the discriminating reader does not need to be told that it would be impossible to separate these stories from the idiom in which they have been recited for generations. The dialect is a part of the legends themselves, and to present them in any other way would be to rob them of everything that gives them vitality. The dialect of Daddy Jack, which is that of the negroes on the Sea Islands and the rice plantations, though it may seem at first glance to be more difficult than that of Uncle Remus, is, in reality, simpler and more direct. It is the negro dialect in its most primitive state--the "Gullah" talk of some of the negroes on the Sea Islands, being merely a confused and untranslatable mixture of English and African words. In the introductory notes to "Slave Songs of the United States" may be found an exposition of Daddy Jack's dialect as complete as any that can be given here. A key to the dialect may be given very briefly. The vocabulary is not an extensive one--more depending upon the manner, the form of expression, and the inflection, than upon the words employed. It is thus an admirable vehicle for story-telling. It recognizes no gender, and scorns the use of the plural number except accidentally. "'E" stands for "he" "she" or "it," and "dem" may allude to one thing, or may include a thousand. The dialect is laconic and yet rambling, full of repetitions, and abounding in curious elisions, that give an unexpected quaintness to the simplest statements. A glance at the following vocabulary will enable the reader to understand Daddy Jack's dialect perfectly, though allowance must be made for inversions and elisions. _B'er_, brother. _Beer_, bear. _Bittle_, victuals. _Bret_, breath. _Buckra_, white man, overseer, boss. _Churrah_, _churray_, spill, splash. _Da_, the, that. _Dey_, there. _Dey-dey_, here, down there, right here. _Enty_, ain't he? an exclamation of astonishment or assent. _Gwan_, going. _Leaf_, leave. _Lif_, live. _Lil_, _lil-a_, or _lilly_, little. _Lun_, learn. _Mek_, make. _Neat'_, or _nead_, underneath, beneath. _Oona_, you, all of you. _Sem_, same. _Shum_, see them, saw them. _Tam_, time. _'Tan'_, stand. _Tankee_, thanks, thank you. _Tark_, or _tahlk_, talk. _Teer_, tear. _Tek_, take. _T'ink_, or _t'ought_, think, thought. _T'row_, throw. _Titty_, or _titter_, sissy, sister. _Trute_, truth. _Turrer_, or _tarrah_, the other. _Tusty_, thirsty. _Urrer_, other. _Wey_, where. _Wun_, when. _Wut_, what. _Y'et_ or _ut_, earth. _Yeddy_, or _yerry_, heard, hear. _Yent_, ain't, is n't. The trick of adding a vowel to sound words is not unpleasing to the ear. Thus: "I bin-a wait fer you; come-a ring-a dem bell. Wut mek-a (or mekky) you stay so?" "Yeddy," "yerry," and probably "churry" are the result of this--heard-a, yeard-a, yeddy; hear-a, year-a, yerry; chur-a, churray. When "eye" is written "y-eye," it is to be pronounced "yi." In such words as "back," "ax," _a_ has the sound of _ah_. They are written "bahk," "ahx." Professor J. A. Harrison of the Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, has recently written a paper on "The Creole Patois of Louisiana,"[i_21] which is full of interest to those interested in the study of dialects. In the course of his paper, Professor Harrison says: "Many philologists have noted the felicitous [Greek: _aithiopizein_] of Uncle Remus in the negro dialect of the South. The Creole lends itself no less felicitously to the _récit_ and to the _conte_, as we may say on good authority. The fables of La Fontaine and Perrin, and the Gospel of St. John have, indeed, been translated into the dialect of San Domingo or Martinique; lately we have had a Greek plenipotentiary turning Dante into the idiom of New Hellas; what next? Any one who has seen the delightful 'Chansons Canadiennes' of M. Ernest Gagnon (Quebec, 1880) knows what pleasant things may spring from the naïve consciousness of the people. The Creole of Louisiana lends itself admirably to those _petits poèmes_, those simple little dramatic tales, compositions, improvisations, which, shunning the regions of abstraction and metaphysics, recount the experiences of a story-teller, put into striking and pregnant syllabuses the memorabilia of some simple life, or sum up in pointed monosyllables the humor of plantation anecdote." Professor Harrison alludes to interesting examples of the Creole negro dialect that occur in the works of Mr. George W. Cable, and in "L'Habitation Saint-Ybars," by Dr. Alfred Mercier, an accomplished physician and _litterateur_ of New Orleans. In order to show the possibilities of the Creole negro dialect, the following _Conte Nègre_, after Dr. Mercier, is given. The story is quoted by Professor Harrison, and the literal interlinear version is inserted by him to give a clue to the meaning. The Miss Meadows of the Georgia negro, it will be perceived, becomes Mamzel Calinda, and the story is one with which the readers of the first volume of Uncle Remus are familiar. It is entitled "Mariage Mlle. Calinda." 1. Dan tan lé zote foi, compair Chivreil avé compair Dans temps les autres fois, compère Chevreuil avec compère 2. Torti té tou lé dé apé fé lamou à Mamzel Calinda. Tortue étaient tous les deux après faire l'amour à Mademoiselle Calinda. 3. Mamzel Calinda té linmin mié compair Chivreil, cofair Mlle. Calinda avait aimé mieux compère Chevreuil, [pour] quoi faire 4. li pli vaïan; mé li té linmin compair Torti oucite, le plus vaillant; mais elle avait aimé compère Tortue aussi, 5. li si tan gagnin bon tchor! Popa Mamzel Calinda di li: il si tant gagner bon coeur! Papa Mlle. Calinda dire lui: 6. "Mo fie, li tan to maïé; fo to soizi cila to oulé." Landimin, "Ma fille, il (est) temps te marier; faut te choisir cela tu voulez." Lendemain, 7. compair Chivreil avé compair Torti rivé tou yé dé coté Mlle. C. compère Chevreuil avec compère Tortue arriver tous eux de côté Mlle. C. 8. Mamzel C., qui té zonglé tou la nouite, di yé: "Michié Chivreil avé Mlle. C., qui avait songé toute la nuit, dire eux: "Monsieur Chevreuil avec 9. Michié Torti, mo popa oulé mo maïe. Mo pa oulé di ain Monsieur Tortue, mon papa vouloir me marier. Moi pas vouloir dire un 10. dan ouzote non. Ouzote a galopé ain lacourse dice foi cate dans vous autres non. Vous autres va galopper une la course dix fois quatre 11. narpan; cila qui sorti divan, ma maïe avé li. Apé dimin arpents; cela qui sortir devant, moi va marier avec lui. Après demain 12. dimance, ouzote a galopé." Yé parti couri, compair Chivreil dimanche, vous autres va galopper." Eux partir courir, compère Chevreuil 13. zo tchor contan; compair Torti apé zonglé li-minme: son coeur content; compère Tortue après songer lui-même: 14. "Dan tan pacé, mo granpopa bate compair Lapin pou "Dans temps passé, mon grandpapa battre compère Lapin pour 15. galopé. Pa conin coman ma fé pou bate compair Chivreil." galopper. Pas conner (= connaître) comment moi va faire pour battre compère Chevreuil." 16. Dan tan cila, navé ain vié, vié cocodri qui té gagnin Dans temps cela en avait un vieux, vieux crocodile qui avait gagné 17. plice pacé cincante di zan. Li té si malin, yé té pelé li plus passé cinquante dix ans. Lui était si malin, eux avaient appelé lui 18. compair Zavoca. La nouite vini, compair Torti couri trouvé compère Avocat. La nuit venir, compère Tortue courir trouver 19. compair Zavoca, é conté li coman li baracé pou so compère Avocat, et conter lui comment lui embarrasser pour sa 20. lacourse. Compair Zavoca di compair Torti: "Mo ben la course. Compère Avocat dire compère Tortue: "Moi bien 21. oulé idé toi, mo gaçon; nou proce minme famie; la tair vouloir aider toi, mon garçon; nous proche même famille; la terre 22. avé do lo minme kichoge pou nizote. Mo zonglé zafair avec de l'eau même quelquechose pour nous autres. Moi va songer cette affaire 23. To vini dimin bon matin; ma di toi qui pou fé." Toi venir demain bon matin; moi va dire toi que pour faire." 24. Compair Torti couri coucé; mé li pas dromi boucou, Compère Tortue courir coucher; mais lui pas dormir beaucoup, 25. li té si tan tracassé. Bon matin li parti couri lui était si tant tracassé. Bon matin lui partir courir 26. coté compair Zavoca. Compair Zavoca dija diboute apé côté compère Avocat. Compère Avocat déjà debout après 27. boi so café. "Bonzou, Michié Zavoca." "Bonzou, mo boire son café. "Bonjour, Monsieur Avocat." "Bonjour, mon 28. gaçon. Zafair cila donne moin boucou traca; min mo garçon. Cette affaire cela donne moi beaucoup tracas; mais moi 29. cré ta bate compair Chivreil, si to fé mékié ma di toi." crois toi va battre compère Chevreuil, si toi fais métier moi va dire toi." 30. "Vouzote a pranne jige jordi pou misiré chimin au ra "Vous autres va prendre juge aujourd'hui pour mesurer chemin au ras 31. bayou; chac cate narpan mété jalon. Compair Chivreil a bayou; chaque quatre arpents mettez jalon. Compère Chevreuil va 32. galopé on la tair; toi, ta galopé dan dolo. To ben compranne galopper en la terre; toi, tu va galopper dans de l'eau. Toi bien comprendre 33. ça mo di toi?" "O, oui, compair Zavoca, mo ben cela moi dire toi?" "O, oui, compère Avocat, moi bien 34. couté ton ça vapé di." "A soua, can la nouite vini, écouter tout cela vous après dire." "Le soir, quand la nuit venir, 35. ta couri pranne nef dan to zami, é ta chaché aine dan toi va courir prendre neuf dans tes amis, et toi va cacher un dans 36. zerb au ra chakène zalon yé. Toi, ta couri caché au ra herbe au ras chacun jalon eux. Toi, toi va courir cacher au ras 37. la mison Mamzel Calinda. To ben compranne ça mo di toi?" la maison Mlle. Calinda. Toi bien comprendre cela moi dire toi?" 38. "O, oui, compair Zavoca, mo tou compranne mékié ça vou "O, oui, compère Avocat, moi tout comprendre métier cela vous 39. di." "Eben! couri paré pou sové lonnair nou nachion." dire." "Eh bien! courir préparer pour sauver l'honneur notre nation." 40. Compair Torti couri coté compair Chivreil é rangé tou Compère Tortue courir côté compère Chevreuil et arranger tout 41. kichoge compair Zavoca di li. Compair Chivreil si tan sire quelquechose compère Avocat dire lui. Compère Chevreuil si tant sûr 42. gagnin lacourse, li di oui tou ça compair Torti oulé. gagner la course, lui dire oui tout cela compère Tortue vouloir. 43. Landimin bon matin, ton zabitan semblé pou oua Lendemain bon matin, tous habitants assembler pour voir 44. gran lacourse. Can lhair rivé, compair Chivreil avé grande la course. Quand l'heure arriver, compère Chevreuil avec 45. compair Torti tou lé dé paré. Jige la crié: "Go!" é yé compère Tortue tous les deux préparés. Juge là crier: "Go!" et eux 46. parti galopé. Tan compair Chivreil rivé coté primié partir galopper. Temps compère Chevreuil arriver côté premier 47. zalon, li hélé: "Halo, compair Torti!" "Mo la, compair jalon, lui héler: "Halo, compère Tortue!" "Moi là, compère 48. Chivreil!" Tan yé rivé dézième zalon, compair Chivreil Chevreuil!" Temps eux arriver deuxième jalon, compère Chevreuil 49. siffle: "Fioute!" Compair Torti réponne: "Croak!" Troisième siffler: "Fioute!" Compère Tortue répondre: "Croak!" Troisième 50. zalon bouté, compair Torti tink-à-tink avé compair jalon au bout, compère Tortue tingue-à-tingue avec compère 51. Chivreil. "Diâbe! Torti la galopé pli vite Chevreuil. "Diable! Tortue là galopper plus vite 52. pacé stimbotte; fo mo grouyé mo cor." Tan compair passé steamboat; faut moi grouiller mon corps." Temps compère 53. Chivreil rivé coté névième zalon, li oua compair Torti Chevreuil arriver côté neuvième jalon, lui voir compère Tortue 54. apé patchiou dan dolo. Li mété ton so laforce après _patchiou_! dans de l'eau. Lui mettre toute sa la force 55. dihior pou aïen; avan li rivé coté bite, li tendé dehors pour rien; avant lui arriver côté but, lui entendre 56. ton monne apé hélé: "Houra! houra! pou compair Torti!" tout monde après héler: "Hourra! hourra! pour compère Tortue!" 57. Tan li rivé, li oua compair Torti on la garlie apé Temps lui arriver, lui voir compère Tortue en la galerie après 58. brassé Mamzel Calinda. Ca fé li si tan mal, li embrasser Mlle. Calinda. Cela faire lui si tant mal, lui 59. sapé dan boi. Compair Torti maïé avé Mamzel Calinda s'échapper dans bois. Compère Tortue marier avec Mlle. Calinda 60. samedi apé vini, é tou monne manzé, boi, jika samedi après venir, et tout monde manger, boire jusqu'à 61. y tchiak.[i_22] eux griser. It only remains to be said that none of the stories given in the present volume are "cooked." They are given in the simple but picturesque language of the negroes, just as the negroes tell them. The Ghost-story, in which the dead woman returns in search of the silver that had been placed upon her eyes, is undoubtedly of white origin; but Mr. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) heard it among the negroes of Florida, Missouri, where it was "The Woman with the Golden Arm." Fortunately, it was placed in the mouth of 'Tildy, the house-girl, who must be supposed to have heard her mistress tell it. But it has been negroized to such an extent that it may be classed as a negro legend; and it is possible that the white version is itself based upon a negro story. At any rate, it was told to the writer by different negroes; and he saw no reason to doubt its authenticity until after a large portion of the book was in type. His relations to the stories are simply those of editor and compiler. He has written them as they came to him, and he is responsible only for the setting. He has endeavored to project them upon the background and to give them the surroundings which they had in the old days that are no more; and it has been his purpose to give in their recital a glimpse of plantation life in the South before the war. If the reader, therefore, will exercise his imagination to the extent of believing that the stories are told to a little boy by a group of negroes on a plantation in Middle Georgia, before the war, he will need neither foot-note nor explanation to guide him. In the preparation of this volume the writer has been placed under obligations to many kind friends. But for the ready sympathy and encouragement of the proprietors of "The Atlanta Constitution"--but for their generosity, it may be said--the writer would never have found opportunity to verify the stories and prepare them for the press. He is also indebted to hundreds of kind correspondents in all parts of the Southern States, who have interested themselves in the work of collecting the legends. He is particularly indebted to Mrs. Helen S. Barclay, of Darien, to Mr. W. O. Tuggle, to Hon. Charles C. Jones, Jr., to the accomplished daughters of Mr. Griswold, of Clinton, Georgia, and to Mr. John Devereux, Jr., and Miss Devereux, of Raleigh, North Carolina. J. C. H. ATLANTA, GEORGIA. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [i_1] _Uncle Remus; His Songs and His Sayings._ The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1880. [i_2] _Amazonian Tortoise Myths_, pp. 2, 3. [i_3] Page 10. [i_4] _Kaffir Folk-Lore_; or, _A Selection from the Traditional Tales current among the People living on the Eastern Border of the Cape Colony_. London, 1882. [i_5] _Kaffir Folk-Lore_, p. 43. [i_6] Professor Hartt, in his _Amazonian Tortoise Myths_, relates the story of "The Jabuti that Cheated the Man." The Jabuti is identical with Brother Terrapin. The man carried the Jabuti to his house, put him in a box, and went out. By and by the Jabuti began to sing, just as Brother Rabbit did. The man's children listened, and the Jabuti stopped. The children begged him to continue, but to this he replied: "If you are pleased with my singing, how much more would you be pleased if you could see me dance." The children thereupon took him from the box, and placed him in the middle of the floor, where he danced, to their great delight. Presently, the Jabuti made an excuse to go out, and fled. The children procured a stone, painted it like the tortoise, and placed it in the box. After a while the man returned, took the painted stone from the box and placed it on the fire, where it burst as soon as it became heated. Meantime, the Jabuti had taken refuge in a burrow having two openings, so that, while the man was looking in at one opening, the tortoise would appear at another. Professor Hartt identifies this as a sun-myth--the slow-sun (or tortoise) escaping from the swift-moon (or man). [i_7] _Kaffir Folk-Lore_, p. 84. [i_8] Page 89. [i_9] _Kaffir Folk-Lore_, p. 178. [i_10] Page 111. [i_11] _Kaffir Folk-Lore_, p. 166. [i_12] _Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings_, xix. p. 88. [i_13] _Amazonian Tortoise Myths_, p. 29. [i_14] _Reynard, the Fox, in South Africa_; or, _Hottentot Fables and Tales_. By W. H. I. Bleek, Ph. D. London, 1864. [i_15] Page 32. [i_16] Bleek, p. 23. [i_17] _O'Selvagem_, p. 237. Quoted by Mr. Herbert H. Smith, in his work _Brazil and the Amazons_. [i_18] Page 37. [i_19] The first volume. [i_20] D. G. Brinton's _Myths_, pp. 161-170. [i_21] _The American Journal of Philology_, vol. iii. no. 11. [i_22] _Tchiak_ is the name given by the Creole negroes to the starling, which, Dr. Mercier tells me, is applied adjectively to express various states of spirituous exhilaration.--_Note by Prof. Harrison._ -------------------------------------------------------------------- NIGHTS WITH UNCLE REMUS I MR. FOX AND MISS GOOSE It had been raining all day so that Uncle Remus found it impossible to go out. The storm had begun, the old man declared, just as the chickens were crowing for day, and it had continued almost without intermission. The dark gray clouds had blotted out the sun, and the leafless limbs of the tall oaks surrendered themselves drearily to the fantastic gusts that drove the drizzle fitfully before them. The lady to whom Uncle Remus belonged had been thoughtful of the old man, and 'Tildy, the house-girl, had been commissioned to carry him his meals. This arrangement came to the knowledge of the little boy at supper time, and he lost no time in obtaining permission to accompany 'Tildy. Uncle Remus made a great demonstration over the thoughtful kindness of his "Miss Sally." "Ef she aint one blessid w'ite 'oman," he said, in his simple, fervent way, "den dey aint none un um 'roun' in deze parts." With that he addressed himself to the supper, while the little boy sat by and eyed him with that familiar curiosity common to children. Finally the youngster disturbed the old man with an inquiry: "Uncle Remus, do geese stand on one leg all night, or do they sit down to sleep?" "Tooby sho' dey does, honey; dey sets down same ez you does. Co'se, dey don't cross der legs," he added, cautiously, "kase dey sets down right flat-footed." "Well, I saw one the other day, and he was standing on one foot, and I watched him and watched him, and he kept on standing there." "Ez ter dat," responded Uncle Remus, "dey mought stan' on one foot an' drap off ter sleep en fergit deyse'f. Deze yer gooses," he continued, wiping the crumbs from his beard with his coat-tail, "is mighty kuse fowls; deyer mighty kuse. In ole times dey wuz 'mongs de big-bugs, en in dem days, w'en ole Miss Goose gun a-dinin', all de quality wuz dere. Likewise, en needer wuz dey stuck-up, kase wid all der kyar'n's on, Miss Goose wer'n't too proud fer ter take in washin' fer de neighborhoods, en she make money, en get slick en fat lak Sis Tempy. "Dis de way marters stan' w'en one day Brer Fox en Brer Rabbit, dey wuz settin' up at de cotton-patch, one on one side de fence, en t'er one on t'er side, gwine on wid one er n'er, w'en fus' news dey know, dey year sump'n--_blim_, _blim_, _blim_! "Brer Fox, he ax w'at dat fuss is, en Brer Rabbit, he up'n 'spon' dat it's ole Miss Goose down at de spring. Den Brer Fox, he up'n ax w'at she doin', en Brer Rabbit, he say, sezee, dat she battlin' cloze." [Illustration: MR. FOX AND MISS GOOSE] "Battling clothes, Uncle Remus?" said the little boy. "Dat w'at dey call it dem days, honey. Deze times, dey rubs cloze on deze yer bodes w'at got furrers in um, but dem days dey des tuck'n tuck de cloze en lay um out on a bench, en ketch holt er de battlin'-stick en natally paddle de fillin' outen um. "W'en Brer Fox year dat ole Miss Goose wuz down dar dabblin' in soapsuds en washin' cloze, he sorter lick he chops, en 'low dat some er dese odd-come-shorts he gwine ter call en pay he 'specks. De minnit he say dat, Brer Rabbit, he know sump'n' 'uz up, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he 'speck he better whirl in en have some fun w'iles it gwine on. Bimeby Brer Fox up'n say ter Brer Rabbit dat he bleedzd ter be movin' 'long todes home, en wid dat dey bofe say good-bye. "Brer Fox, he put out ter whar his fambly wuz, but Brer Rabbit, he slip 'roun', he did, en call on ole Miss Goose. Ole Miss Goose she wuz down at de spring, washin', en b'ilin', en battlin' cloze; but Brer Rabbit he march up en ax her howdy, en den she tuck'n ax Brer Rabbit howdy. "'I'd shake han's 'long wid you, Brer Rabbit,' sez she, 'but dey er all full er suds,' sez she. "'No marter 'bout dat, Miss Goose,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'so long ez yo' will's good,' sezee." "A goose with hands, Uncle Remus!" the little boy exclaimed. "How you know goose aint got han's?" Uncle Remus inquired, with a frown. "Is you been sleepin' longer ole man Know-All? Little mo' en you'll up'n stan' me down dat snakes aint got no foots, and yit you take en lay a snake down yer 'fo' de fier, en his foots 'll come out right 'fo' yo' eyes." Uncle Remus paused here, but presently continued: "Atter ole Miss Goose en Brer Rabbit done pass de time er day wid one er n'er, Brer Rabbit, he ax 'er, he did, how she come on deze days, en Miss Goose say, mighty po'ly. "'I'm gittin' stiff en I'm gittin' clumpsy,' sez she, 'en mo'n dat I'm gittin' bline,' sez she. 'Des 'fo' you happen 'long, Brer Rabbit, I drap my specks in de tub yer, en ef you'd 'a' come 'long 'bout dat time,' sez ole Miss Goose, sez she, 'I lay I'd er tuck you for dat nasty, owdashus Brer Fox, en it ud er bin a born blessin' ef I had n't er scald you wid er pan er b'ilin' suds,' sez she. 'I'm dat glad I foun' my specks I dunner w'at ter do,' sez ole Miss Goose, sez she. "Den Brer Rabbit, he up'n say dat bein's how Sis Goose done fotch up Brer Fox name, he got sump'n' fer ter tell 'er, en den he let out 'bout Brer Fox gwine ter call on 'er. "He comin' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'he comin' sho', en w'en he come hit 'll be des 'fo' day,' sezee. "Wid dat, ole Miss Goose wipe 'er han's on 'er apun, en put 'er specks up on 'er forrerd, en look lak she done got trouble in 'er mine. "'Laws-a-massy!' sez she, 'spozen he come, Brer Rabbit! W'at I gwine do? En dey aint a man 'bout de house, n'er,' sez she. "Den Brer Rabbit, he shot one eye, en he say, sezee: "'Sis Goose, de time done come w'en you bleedzd ter roos' high. You look lak you got de dropsy,' sezee, 'but don't mine dat, kase ef you don't roos' high, youer goner,' sezee. "Den ole Miss Goose ax Brer Rabbit w'at she gwine do, en Brer Rabbit he up en tell Miss Goose dat she mus' go home en tie up a bundle er de w'ite folks' cloze, en put um on de bed, en den she mus' fly up on a rafter, en let Brer Fox grab de cloze en run off wid um. "Ole Miss Goose say she much 'blige, en she tuck'n tuck her things en waddle off home, en dat night she do lak Brer Rabbit say wid de bundle er cloze, en den she sont wud ter Mr. Dog, en Mr. Dog he come down, en say he'd sorter set up wid 'er. "Des 'fo' day, yer come Brer Fox creepin' up, en he went en push on de do' easy, en de do' open, en he see sump'n' w'ite on de bed w'ich he took fer Miss Goose, en he grab it en run. 'Bout dat time Mr. Dog sail out fum und' de house, he did, en ef Brer Fox had n't er drapt de cloze, he'd er got kotch. Fum dat, wud went 'roun' dat Brer Fox bin tryin' ter steal Miss Goose cloze, en he come mighty nigh losin' his stannin' at Miss Meadows. Down ter dis day," Uncle Remus continued, preparing to fill his pipe, "Brer Fox b'leeve dat Brer Rabbit wuz de 'casion er Mr. Dog bein' in de neighborhoods at dat time er night, en Brer Rabbit aint 'spute it. De bad feelin' 'twix' Brer Fox en Mr. Dog start right dar, en hits bin agwine on twel now dey aint git in smellin' distuns er one er n'er widout dey's a row." II BROTHER FOX CATCHES MR. HORSE There was a pause after the story of old Miss Goose. The culmination was hardly sensational enough to win the hearty applause of the little boy, and this fact appeared to have a depressing influence upon Uncle Remus. As he leaned slightly forward, gazing into the depths of the great fireplace, his attitude was one of pensiveness. "I 'speck I done wo' out my welcome up at de big house," he said, after a while. "I mos' knows I is," he continued, setting himself resignedly in his deep-bottomed chair. "Kase de las' time I uz up dar, I had my eye on Miss Sally mighty nigh de whole blessid time, en w'en you see Miss Sally rustlin' 'roun' makin' lak she fixin' things up dar on de mantle-shelf, en bouncin' de cheers 'roun', en breshin' dus' whar dey aint no dus', en flyin' 'roun' singin' sorter louder dan common, den I des knows sump'n' done gone en rile 'er." "Why, Uncle Remus!" exclaimed the little boy; "Mamma was just glad because I was feeling so good." "Mought er bin," the old man remarked, in a tone that was far from implying conviction. "Ef 't wa'n't dat, den she wuz gittin' tired er seem' me lounjun' 'roun' up dar night atter night, en ef 't wa'n't dat, den she wuz watchin' a chance fer ter preach ter yo' pa. Oh, I done bin know Miss Sally long fo' yo' pa is!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, in response to the astonishment depicted upon the child's face. "I bin knowin' 'er sence she wuz so high, en endurin' er all dat time I aint seed no mo' up'n spoken' w'ite 'oman dan w'at Miss Sally is. "But dat aint needer yer ner dar. You done got so youk'n rush down yer des like you useter, en we kin set yer en smoke, en tell tales, en study up 'musements same like we wuz gwine on 'fo' you got dat splinter in yo' foot. "I mines me er one time"--with an infectious laugh--"w'en ole Brer Rabbit got Brer Fox in de wuss trubble w'at a man wuz mos' ever got in yit, en dat 'uz w'en he fool 'im 'bout de hoss. Aint I never tell you 'bout dat? But no marter ef I is. Hoe-cake aint cook done good twel hit 's turnt over a couple er times. "Well, atter Brer Fox done git rested fum keepin' out er de way er Mr. Dog, en sorter ketch up wid his rations, he say ter hisse'f dat he be dog his cats ef he don't slorate ole Brer Rabbit ef it take 'im a mont'; en dat, too, on top er all de 'spe'unce w'at he done bin had wid um. Brer Rabbit he sorter git win' er dis, en one day, w'iles he gwine 'long de road studyin' how he gwineter hol' he hand wid Brer Fox, he see a great big Hoss layin' stretch out flat on he side in de pastur'; en he tuck'n crope up, he did, fer ter see ef dish yer Hoss done gone en die. He crope up en he crope 'roun', en bimeby he see de Hoss switch he tail, en den Brer Rabbit know he aint dead. Wid dat, Brer Rabbit lope back ter de big road, en mos' de fus' man w'at he see gwine on by wuz Brer Fox, en Brer Rabbit he tuck atter 'im, en holler: "'Brer Fox! O Brer Fox! Come back! I got some good news fer you. Come back, Brer Fox,' sezee. "Brer Fox, he tu'n 'roun', he did, en w'en he see who callin' 'im, he come gallopin' back, kaze it seem like dat des ez gooder time ez any fer ter nab Brer Rabbit; but 'fo' he git in nabbin' distance, Brer Rabbit he up'n say, sezee: "'Come on, Brer Fox! I done fine de place whar you kin lay in fresh meat 'nuff fer ter las' you plum twel de middle er nex' year,' sezee. "Brer Fox, he ax wharbouts, en Brer Rabbit, he say, right over dar in de pastur', en Brer Fox ax w'at is it, en Brer Rabbit, he say w'ich 'twuz a whole Hoss layin' down on de groun' whar dey kin ketch 'im en tie 'im. Wid dat, Brer Fox, he say come on, en off dey put. "W'en dey got dar, sho' nuff, dar lay de Hoss all stretch out in de sun, fas' 'sleep, en den Brer Fox en Brer Rabbit, dey had a 'spute 'bout how dey gwine ter fix de Hoss so he can't git loose. One say one way en de yuther say n'er way, en dar dey had it, twel atter w'ile Brer Rabbit, he say, sezee: "'De onliest plan w'at I knows un, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'is fer you ter git down dar en lemme tie you ter de Hoss tail, en den, w'en he try ter git up, you kin hol' 'im down,' sezee. 'Ef I wuz big man like w'at you is,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'you mought tie me ter dat Hoss' tail, en ef I aint hol' 'im down, den Joe's dead en Sal's a widder. I des knows you kin hol' 'im down,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but yit, ef you 'feared, we des better drap dat idee en study out some yuther plan,' sezee. "Brer Fox sorter jubus 'bout dis, but he bleedzd ter play biggity 'fo' Brer Rabbit, en he tuck'n 'gree ter de progrance, en den Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n tie Brer Fox ter de Hoss' tail, en atter he git 'im tie dar hard en fas', he sorter step back, he did, en put he han's 'kimbo, en grin, en den he say, sezee: "Ef ever dey wuz a Hoss kotch, den we done kotch dis un. Look sorter lak we done put de bridle on de wrong een',' sezee, 'but I lay Brer Fox is got de strenk fer ter hol' 'im,' sezee. "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit cut 'im a long switch en trim it up, en w'en he get it fix, up he step en hit de Hoss a rap--_pow!_ De Hoss 'uz dat s'prise at dat kinder doin's dat he make one jump, en lan' on he foots. W'en he do dat, dar wuz Brer Fox danglin' in de a'r, en Brer Rabbit, he dart out de way en holler: "'Hol' 'im down, Brer Fox! Hol' 'im down! I'll stan' out yer en see fa'r play. Hol' 'im down, Brer Fox! Hol' 'im down!' "Co'se, w'en de Hoss feel Brer Fox hangin' dar onter he tail, he thunk sump'n' kuse wuz de marter, en dis make 'im jump en r'ar wusser en wusser, en he shake up Brer Fox same like he wuz a rag in de win', en Brer Rabbit, he jump en holler: "'Hol' 'im down, Brer Fox! Hol' 'im down! You got 'im now, sho'! Hol' yo' grip, en hol' 'im down,' sezee. "De Hoss, he jump en he hump, en he rip en he r'ar, en he snort en he t'ar. But yit Brer Fox hang on, en still Brer Rabbit skip 'roun' en holler: "'Hol' 'im down, Brer Fox! You got 'im whar he can't needer back ner squall. Hol' 'im down, Brer Fox!' sezee. "Bimeby, w'en Brer Fox git chance, he holler back, he did: "'How in de name er goodness I gwine ter hol' de Hoss down 'less I git my claw in de groun'?' "Den Brer Rabbit, he stan' back little furder en holler little louder: "'Hol' 'im down, Brer Fox! Hol' 'im down! You got 'im now, sho'! Hol' 'im down!' "Bimeby de Hoss 'gun ter kick wid he behime legs, en de fus' news you know, he fetch Brer Fox a lick in de stomach dat fa'rly make 'im squall, en den he kick 'im ag'in, en dis time he break Brer Fox loose, en sont 'im a-whirlin'; en Brer Rabbit, he keep on a-jumpin' 'roun' en hollerin': "'Hol' 'im down, Brer Fox!'" "Did the fox get killed, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "He wa'n't 'zackly kilt, honey," replied the old man, "but he wuz de nex' do' ter't. He 'uz all broke up, en w'iles he 'uz gittin' well, hit sorter come 'cross he min' dat Brer Rabbit done play n'er game on 'im." III BROTHER RABBIT AND THE LITTLE GIRL "What did Brother Rabbit do after that?" the little boy asked presently. "Now, den, you don't wanter push ole Brer Rabbit too close," replied Uncle Remus significantly. "He mighty tender-footed creetur, en de mo' w'at you push 'im, de furder he lef' you." There was prolonged silence in the old man's cabin, until, seeing that the little boy was growing restless enough to cast several curious glances in the direction of the tool chest in the corner, Uncle Remus lifted one leg over the other, scratched his head reflectively, and began: "One time, atter Brer Rabbit done bin trompin' 'roun' huntin' up some sallid fer ter make out he dinner wid, he fine hisse'f in de neighborhoods er Mr. Man house, en he pass 'long twel he come ter de gyardin-gate, en nigh de gyardin-gate he see Little Gal playin' 'roun' in de san'. W'en Brer Rabbit look 'twix' de gyardin-palin's en see de colluds, en de sparrer-grass, en de yuther gyardin truck growin' dar, hit make he mouf water. Den he take en walk up ter de Little Gal, Brer Rabbit did, en pull he roach,[1] en bow, en scrape he foot, en talk mighty nice en slick. "'Howdy, Little Gal,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'how you come on?' sezee. "Den de Little Gal, she 'spon' howdy, she did, en she ax Brer Rabbit how he come on, en Brer Rabbit, he 'low he mighty po'ly, en den he ax ef dis de Little Gal w'at 'er pa live up dar in de big w'ite house, w'ich de Little Gal, she up'n say 'twer'. Brer Rabbit, he say he mighty glad, kaze he des bin up dar fer to see 'er pa, en he say dat 'er pa, he sont 'im out dar fer ter tell de Little Gal dat she mus' open de gyardin-gate so Brer Rabbit kin go in en git some truck. Den de Little Gal, she jump 'roun', she did, en she open de gate, en wid dat, Brer Rabbit, he hop in, he did, en got 'im a mess er greens, en hop out ag'in, en w'en he gwine off he make a bow, he did, en tell de Little Gal dat he much 'blije', en den atter dat he put out fer home. "Nex' day, Brer Rabbit, he hide out, he did, twel he see de Little Gal come out ter play, en den he put up de same tale, en walk off wid a n'er mess er truck, en hit keep on dis a-way, twel bimeby Mr. Man, he 'gun ter miss his greens, en he keep on a-missin' un um, twel he got ter excusin' eve'ybody on de place er 'stroyin' un um, en w'en dat come ter pass, de Little Gal, she up'n say: "'My goodness, pa!' sez she, 'you done tole Mr. Rabbit fer ter come and make me let 'im in de gyardin atter some greens, en aint he done come en ax me, en aint I done gone en let 'im in?' sez she. "Mr. Man aint hatter study long 'fo' he see how de lan' lay, en den he laff, en tell de Little Gal dat he done gone en disremember all 'bout Mr. Rabbit, en den he up'n say, sezee: "'Nex' time Mr. Rabbit come, you tak'n tu'n 'im in, en den you run des ez fas' ez you kin en come en tell me, kase I got some bizness wid dat young chap dat 's bleedze ter be 'ten' ter,' sezee. "Sho' nuff, nex' mawnin' dar wuz de Little Gal playin' 'roun', en yer come Brer Rabbit atter he 'lowance er greens. He wuz ready wid de same tale, en den de Little Gal, she tu'n 'im in, she did, en den she run up ter de house en holler: "'O pa! pa! O pa! Yer Brer Rabbit in de gyardin now! Yer he is, pa!' [Illustration: BROTHER RABBIT AND THE LITTLE GIRL] "Den Mr. Man, he rush out, en grab up a fishin'-line w'at bin hangin' in de back po'ch, en mak fer de gyardin, en w'en he git dar, dar wuz Brer Rabbit tromplin' 'roun' on de strawbe'y-bed en mashin' down de termartusses. W'en Brer Rabbit see Mr. Man, he squot behime a collud leaf, but 't wa'n't no use. Mr. Man done seed him, en 'fo' you kin count 'lev'm, he done got ole Brer Rabbit tie hard en fas' wid de fishin'-line. Atter he got him tie good, Mr. Man step back, he did, en say, sezee: "'You done bin fool me lots er time, but dis time you er mine. I'm gwine ter take you en gin you a larrupin',' sezee, 'en den I'm gwine ter skin you en nail yo' hide on de stable do',' sezee; 'en den ter make sho dat you git de right kinder larrupin', I'll des step up ter de house,' sezee, 'en fetch de little red cowhide, en den I'll take en gin you brinjer,' sezee. "Den Mr. Man call to der Little Gal ter watch Brer Rabbit w'iles he gone. "Brer Rabbit aint sayin' nothin', but Mr. Man aint mo'n out de gate 'fo' he 'gun ter sing; en in dem days Brer Rabbit wuz a singer, mon," continued Uncle Remus, with unusual emphasis, "en w'en he chuned up fer ter sing he make dem yuther creeturs hol' der bref." "What did he sing, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Ef I aint fergit dat song off'n my min'," said Uncle Remus, looking over his spectacles at the fire, with a curious air of attempting to remember something, "hit run sorter dish yer way: "'_De jay-bird hunt de sparrer-nes', De bee-martin sail all 'roun'; De squer'l, he holler from de top er de tree, Mr. Mole, he stay in de groun'; He hide en he stay twel de dark drop down-- Mr. Mole, he hide in de groun'._' "W'en de Little Gal year dat, she laugh, she did, and she up'n ax Brer Babbit fer ter sing some mo', but Brer Rabbit, he sorter cough, he did, en 'low dat he got a mighty bad ho'seness down inter he win'pipe some'rs. De Little Gal, she swade,[2] en swade, en bimeby Brer Rabbit, he up 'n 'low dat he kin dance mo' samer dan w'at he kin sing. Den de Little Gal, she ax' im won't he dance, en Brer Rabbit, he 'spon' how in de name er goodness kin a man dance w'iles he all tie up dis a-way, en den de Little Gal, she say she kin ontie 'im, en Brer Rabbit, he say he aint keerin' ef she do. Wid dat de Little Gal, she retch down en onloose de fish-line, en Brer Rabbit, he sorter stretch hisse'f en look 'roun'." Here Uncle Remus paused and sighed, as though he had relieved his mind of a great burden. The little boy waited a few minutes for the old man to resume, and finally he asked: "Did the Rabbit dance, Uncle Remus?" "Who? Him?" exclaimed the old man, with a queer affectation of elation. "Bless yo' soul, honey! Brer Rabbit gedder up his foots und' 'im, en he dance outer dat gyardin, en he dance home. He did dat! Sho'ly you don't 'speck' dat a ole-timer w'at done had 'spe'unce like Brer Rabbit gwine ter stay dar en let dat ar Mr. Man sackyfice 'im? _Shoo!_ Brer Rabbit dance, but he dance home. You year me!" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [1] Topknot, foretop. [2] Persuaded. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IV HOW BROTHER FOX WAS TOO SMART Uncle Remus chuckled a moment over the escape of Brother Rabbit, and then turned his gaze upward toward the cobwebbed gloom that seemed to lie just beyond the rafters. He sat thus silent and serious a little while, but finally squared himself around in his chair and looked the little boy full in the face. The old man's countenance expressed a curious mixture of sorrow and bewilderment. Catching the child by the coat-sleeve, Uncle Remus pulled him gently to attract his attention. "Hit look like ter me," he said presently, in the tone of one approaching an unpleasant subject, "dat no longer'n yistiddy I see one er dem ar Favers chillun clim'in' dat ar big red-oak out yan', en den it seem like dat a little chap 'bout yo' size, he tuck'n start up ter see ef he can't play smarty like de Favers's yearlin's. I dunner w'at in de name er goodness you wanter be a-copyin' atter dem ar Faverses fer. Ef you er gwine ter copy atter yuther folks, copy atter dem w'at's some 'count. Yo' pa, he got de idee dat some folks is good ez yuther folks; but Miss Sally, she know better. She know dat dey aint no Favers 'pon de top side er de yeth w'at kin hol' der han' wid de Abercrombies in p'int er breedin' en raisin'. Dat w'at Miss Sally know. I bin keepin' track er dem Faverses sence way back yan' long 'fo' Miss Sally wuz born'd. Ole Cajy Favers, he went ter de po'house, en ez ter dat Jim Favers, I boun' you he know de inside er all de jails in dish yer State er Jawjy. Dey allers did hate niggers kase dey aint had none, en dey hates um down ter dis day. "Year 'fo' las'," Uncle Remus continued, "I year yo Unk' Jeems Abercrombie tell dat same Jim Favers dat ef he lay de weight er he han' on one er his niggers, he'd slap a load er buck shot in 'im; en, bless yo' soul, honey, yo' Unk' Jeems wuz des de man ter do it. But dey er monst'us perlite unter me, dem Faverses is," pursued the old man, allowing his indignation, which had risen to a white heat, to cool off, "en dey better be," he added spitefully, "kase I knows der pedigree fum de fus' ter de las', en w'en I gits my Affikin up, dey aint nobody, 'less it's Miss Sally 'erse'f, w'at kin keep me down. "But dat aint needer yer ner dar," said Uncle Remus, renewing his attack upon the little boy. "W'at you wanter go copyin' atter dem Favers chillun fer? Youer settin' back dar, right dis minnit, bettin' longer yo'se'f dat I aint gwine ter tell Miss Sally, en dar whar youer lettin' yo' foot slip, kaze I'm gwine ter let it pass dis time, but de ve'y nex' time w'at I ketches you in hollerin' distuns er dem Faverses, right den en dar I'm gwine ter take my foot in my han' en go en tell Miss Sally, en ef she don't natally skin you 'live, den she aint de same 'oman w'at she useter be. "All dish yer copyin' atter deze yer Faverses put me in min' er de time w'en Brer Fox got ter copyin' atter Brer Rabbit. I done tole you 'bout de time w'en Brer Rabbit git de game fum Brer Fox by makin' like he dead?"[3] The little boy remembered it very distinctly, and said as much. "Well, den, ole Brer Fox, w'en he see how slick de trick wuk wid Brer Rabbit, he say ter hisse'f dat he b'leeve he'll up'n try de same kinder game on some yuther man, en he keep on watchin' fer he chance, twel bimeby, one day, he year Mr. Man comin' down de big road in a one-hoss waggin, kyar'n some chickens, en some eggs, en some butter, ter town. Brer Fox year 'im comin', he did, en w'at do he do but go en lay down in de road front er de waggin. Mr. Man, he druv 'long, he did, cluckin' ter de hoss en hummin' ter hisse'f, en w'en dey git mos' up ter Brer Fox, de hoss, he shy, he did, en Mr. Man, he tuck'n holler Wo! en de hoss, he tuck'n wo'd. Den Mr. Man, he look down, en he see Brer Fox layin' out dar on de groun' des like he cole en stiff, en w'en Mr. Man see dis, he holler out: "'Heyo! Dar de chap w'at been nabbin' up my chickens, en somebody done gone en shot off a gun at 'im, w'ich I wish she'd er bin two guns--dat I does!' "Wid dat, Mr. Man he druv on en lef Brer Fox layin' dar. Den Brer Fox, he git up en run 'roun' thoo de woods en lay down front er Mr. Man ag'in, en Mr. Man come drivin' 'long, en he see Brer Fox, en he say, sezee;-- "'Heyo! Yer de ve'y chap what been 'stroyin' my pigs. Somebody done gone en kilt 'im, en I wish dey'd er kilt 'im long time ago.' "Den Mr. Man, he druv on, en de waggin-w'eel come mighty nigh mashin' Brer Fox nose; yit, all de same, Brer Fox lipt up en run 'roun' 'head er Mr. Man, en lay down in de road, en w'en Mr. Man come 'long, dar he wuz all stretch out like he big 'nuff fer ter fill a two-bushel baskit, en he look like he dead 'nuff fer ter be skint. Mr. Man druv up, he did, en stop. He look down pun Brer Fox, en den he look all 'roun' fer ter see w'at de 'casion er all deze yer dead Fox is. Mr. Man look all 'roun', he did, but he aint see nothin', en needer do he year nothin'. Den he set dar en study, en bimeby he 'low ter hisse'f, he did, dat he had better 'zamin' w'at kinder kuse zeeze[4] done bin got inter Brer Fox fambly, en wid dat he lit down outer de waggin, en feel er Brer Fox year; Brer Fox year feel right wom. Den he feel Brer Fox neck; Brer Fox neck right wom. Den he feel er Brer Fox in de short ribs; Brer Fox all soun' in de short ribs. Den he feel er Brer Fox lim's; Brer Fox all soun' in de lim's. Den he tu'n Brer Fox over, en, lo en beholes, Brer Fox right limber. W'en Mr. Man see dis, he say ter hisse'f, sezee: "'Heyo, yer! how come dis? Dish yer chicken-nabber look lak he dead, but dey aint no bones broked, en I aint see no blood, en needer does I feel no bruise; en mo'n dat he wom en he limber,' sezee. 'Sump'n' wrong yer, sho'! Dish yer pig-grabber _mought_ be dead, en den ag'in he moughtent,' sezee; 'but ter make sho' dat he is, I'll des gin 'im a whack wid my w'ip-han'le,' sezee; en wid dat, Mr. Man draw back en fotch Brer Fox a clip behime de years--_pow!_--en de lick come so hard en it come so quick dat Brer Fox thunk sho' he's a goner; but 'fo' Mr. Man kin draw back fer ter fetch 'im a n'er wipe, Brer Fox, he scramble ter his feet, he did, en des make tracks 'way fum dar." Uncle Remus paused and shook the cold ashes from his pipe, and then applied the moral: "Dat w'at Brer Fox git fer playin' Mr. Smarty en copyin' atter yuther foks, en dat des de way de whole Smarty fambly gwine ter come out." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [3] _Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings_, p. 70 (New York: D. Appleton & Co.). [4] Disease. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- V BROTHER RABBIT'S ASTONISHING PRANK "I 'speck dat 'uz de reas'n w'at make ole Brer Rabbit git 'long so well, kaze he aint copy atter none er de yuther creeturs," Uncle Remus continued, after a while. "W'en he make his disappearance 'fo' um, hit 'uz allers in some bran new place. Dey aint know wharbouts fer ter watch out fer 'im. He wuz de funniest creetur er de whole gang. Some folks moughter call him lucky, en yit, w'en he git in bad luck, hit look lak he mos' allers come out on top. Hit look mighty kuse now, but 't wa'n't kuse in dem days, kaze hit 'uz done gun up dat, strike 'im w'en you might en whar you would, Brer Rabbit wuz de soopless creetur gwine. "One time, he sorter tuck a notion, ole Brer Rabbit did, dat he'd pay Brer B'ar a call, en no sooner do de notion strike 'im dan he pick hisse'f up en put out fer Brer B'ar house." "Why, I thought they were mad with each other," the little boy exclaimed. "Brer Rabbit make he call w'en Brer B'ar en his fambly wuz off fum home," Uncle Remus explained, with a chuckle which was in the nature of a hearty tribute to the crafty judgment of Brother Rabbit. "He sot down by de road, en he see um go by,--ole Brer B'ar en ole Miss B'ar, en der two twin-chilluns, w'ich one un um wuz name Kubs en de t'er one wuz name Klibs." The little boy laughed, but the severe seriousness of Uncle Remus would have served for a study, as he continued: "Ole Brer B'ar en Miss B'ar, dey went 'long ahead, en Kubs en Klibs, dey come shufflin' en scramblin' 'long behime. W'en Brer Rabbit see dis, he say ter hisse'f dat he 'speck he better go see how Brer B'ar gittin' on; en off he put. En 't wa'n't long n'er 'fo' he 'uz ransackin' de premmuses same like he 'uz sho' 'nuff patter-roller. W'iles he wuz gwine 'roun' peepin' in yer en pokin' in dar, he got ter foolin' 'mong de shelfs, en a bucket er honey w'at Brer B'ar got hid in de cubbud fall down en spill on top er Brer Rabbit, en little mo'n he'd er bin drown. Fum head ter heels dat creetur wuz kiver'd wid honey; he wa'n't des only bedobble wid it, he wuz des kiver'd. He hatter set dar en let de natal sweetness drip outen he eyeballs 'fo' he kin see he han' befo' 'im, en den, atter he look' 'roun' little, he say to hisse'f, sezee: "'Heyo, yer! W'at I gwine do now? Ef I go out in de sunshine, de bumly-bees en de flies dey'll swom up'n take me, en if I stay yer, Brer B'ar'll come back en ketch me, en I dunner w'at in de name er gracious I gwine do.' "Ennyhow, bimeby a notion strike Brer Rabbit, en he tip 'long twel he git in de woods, en w'en he git out dar, w'at do he do but roll in de leafs en trash en try fer ter rub de honey off'n 'im dat a-way. He roll, he did, en de leafs dey stick; Brer Rabbit roll, en de leafs dey stick, en he keep on rollin' en de leafs keep on stickin', twel atter w'ile Brer Rabbit wuz de mos' owdashus-lookin' creetur w'at you ever sot eyes on. En ef Miss Meadows en de gals could er seed 'im den en dar, dey would n't er bin no mo' Brer Rabbit call at der house; 'deed, en dat dey would n't. "Brer Rabbit, he jump 'roun', he did, en try ter shake de leafs off'a 'im, but de leafs, dey aint gwine ter be shuck off. Brer Rabbit, he shake en he shiver, but de leafs dey stick; en de capers dat creetur cut up out dar in de woods by he own-alone se'f wuz scan'lous--dey wuz dat; dey wuz scan'lous. "Brer Rabbit see dis wa'nt gwine ter do, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he better be gittin' on todes home, en off he put. I 'speck you done year talk er deze yer booggers w'at gits atter bad chilluns," continued Uncle Remus, in a tone so seriously confidential as to be altogether depressing; "well, den, des 'zactly dat a-way Brer Rabbit look, en ef you'd er seed 'im you'd er made sho' he de gran'-daddy er all de booggers. Brer Rabbit pace 'long, he did, en ev'y motion he make, de leafs dey'd go _swishy-swushy_, _splushy-splishy_, en, fum de fuss he make en de way he look, you'd er tuck 'im ter be de mos' suvvigus varment w'at disappear fum de face er de yeth sence ole man Noah let down de draw-bars er de ark en tu'n de creeturs loose; en I boun' ef you'd er struck up long wid 'im, you'd er been mighty good en glad ef you'd er got off wid dat. "De fus' man w'at Brer Rabbit come up wid wuz ole Sis Cow, en no sooner is she lay eyes on 'im dan she h'ist up 'er tail in de elements, en put out like a pack er dogs wuz atter 'er. Dis make Brer Rabbit laff, kaze he know dat w'en a ole settle' 'oman like Sis Cow run 'stracted in de broad open day-time, dat dey mus' be sump'n' mighty kuse 'bout dem leafs en dat honey, en he keep on a-rackin' down de road. De nex' man w'at he meet wuz a black gal tollin' a whole passel er plantation shotes, en w'en de gal see Brer Rabbit come prancin' 'long, she fling down 'er basket er corn en des fa'rly fly, en de shotes, dey tuck thoo de woods, en sech n'er racket ez dey kick up wid der runnin', en der snortin', en der squealin' aint never bin year in dat settlement needer befo' ner since. Hit keep on dis a-way long ez Brer Rabbit meet anybody--dey des broke en run like de Ole Boy wuz atter um. [Illustration: BROTHER RABBIT'S ASTONISHING PRANK] "Co'se, dis make Brer Rabbit feel monst'us biggity, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he 'speck he better drap 'roun' en skummish in de neighborhoods er Brer Fox house. En w'iles he wuz stannin' dar runnin' dis 'roun' in he min', yer come old Brer B'ar en all er he fambly. Brer Rabbit, he git crossways de road, he did, en he sorter sidle todes um. Ole Brer B'ar, he stop en look, but Brer Rabbit, he keep on sidlin' todes um. Ole Miss B'ar, she stan' it long ez she kin, en den she fling down 'er parrysol en tuck a tree. Brer B'ar look lak he gwine ter stan' his groun', but Brer Rabbit he jump straight up in de a'r en gin hisse'f a shake, en, bless yo' soul, honey! ole Brer B'ar make a break, en dey tells me he to' down a whole panel er fence gittin' 'way fum dar. En ez ter Kubs en Klibs, dey tuck der hats in der han's, en dey went skaddlin' thoo de bushes des same ez a drove er hosses." "And then what?" the little boy asked. "Brer Rabbit p'raded on down de road," continued Uncle Remus, "en bimeby yer come Brer Fox en Brer Wolf, fixin' up a plan fer ter nab Brer Rabbit, en dey wuz so intents on der confab dat dey got right on Brer Rabbit 'fo' dey seed 'im; but, gentermens! w'en dey is ketch a glimpse un 'im, dey gun 'im all de room he want. Brer Wolf, he try ter show off, he did, kase he wanter play big 'fo' Brer Fox, en he stop en ax Brer Rabbit who is he. Brer Rabbit, he jump up en down in de middle er de road, en holler out: "'I'm de Wull-er-de-Wust.[5] I'm de Wull-er-de-Wust, en youer de man I'm atter!' "Den Brer Rabbit jump up en down en make lak he gwine atter Brer Fox en Brer Wolf, en de way dem creeturs lit out fum dar wuz a caution. "Long time atter dat," continued Uncle Remus, folding his hands placidly in his lap, with the air of one who has performed a pleasant duty,--"long time atter dat, Brer Rabbit come up wid Brer Fox en Brer Wolf, en he git behime a stump, Brer Rabbit did, en holler out: "'I'm de Wull-er-de-Wust, en youer de mens I'm atter!' "Brer Fox en Brer Wolf, dey broke, but 'fo' dey got outer sight en outer yar'n', Brer Rabbit show hisse'f, he did, en laugh fit ter kill hisse'f. Atterwuds, Miss Meadows she year 'bout it, en de nex' time Brer Fox call, de gals dey up en giggle, en ax 'im ef he aint feard de Wull-er-de-Wust mought drap in." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [5] Or Wull-er-de-Wuts. Probably a fantastic corruption of "will-o'-the-wisp," though this is not by any means certain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VI BROTHER RABBIT SECURES A MANSION The rain continued to fall the next day, but the little boy made arrangements to go with 'Tildy when she carried Uncle Remus his supper. This happened to be a waiter full of things left over from dinner. There was so much that the old man was moved to remark: "I cl'ar ter gracious, hit look lak Miss Sally done got my name in de pot dis time, sho'. I des wish you look at dat pone er co'n-bread, honey, en dem ar greens, en see ef dey aint got Remus writ some'rs on um. Dat ar chick'n fixin's, dey look lak deyer good, yet 'taint familious wid me lak dat ar bile ham. Dem ar sweet-taters, dey stan's fa'r fer dividjun, but dem ar puzzuv,[6] I lay dey fit yo' palate mo' samer dan dey does mine. Dish yer hunk er beef, we kin talk 'bout dat w'en de time come, en dem ar biscuits, I des nat'ally knows Miss Sally put um in dar fer some little chap w'ich his name I aint gwine ter call in comp'ny." It was easy to perceive that the sight of the supper had put Uncle Remus in rare good-humor. He moved around briskly, taking the plates from the waiter and distributing them with exaggerated carefulness around upon his little pine table. Meanwhile he kept up a running fire of conversation. "Folks w'at kin set down en have der vittles brung en put down right spang und' der nose--dem kinder folks aint got no needs er no umbrell. Night 'fo' las', w'iles I wuz settin' dar in de do', I year dem Willis-whistlers, en den I des knowed we 'uz gwine ter git a season."[7] "The Willis-whistlers, Uncle Remus," exclaimed the little boy. "What are they?" "Youer too hard fer me now, honey. Dat w'at I knows I don't min' tellin', but w'en you axes me 'bout dat w'at I dunno, den youer too hard fer me, sho'. Deze yer Willis-whistlers, dey bangs my time, en I bin knockin' 'roun' in dish yer low-groun' now gwine on eighty year. Some folks wanter make out deyer frogs, yit I wish dey p'int out unter me how frogs kin holler so dat de nigher you come t'um, de furder you is off; I be mighty glad ef some un 'ud come 'long en tell me dat. Many en many's de time is I gone atter deze yer Willis-whistlers, en, no diffunce whar I goes, deyer allers off yander. You kin put de shovel in de fier en make de squinch-owl hush he fuss, en you kin go out en put yo' han' on de trees en make deze yere locus'-bugs quit der racket, but dem ar Willis-whistlers deyer allers 'way off yander."[8] Suddenly Uncle Remus paused over one of the dishes, and exclaimed: "Gracious en de goodness! W'at kinder doin's is dis Miss Sally done gone sont us?" "That," said the little boy, after making an investigation, "is what mamma calls a floating island." "Well, den," Uncle Remus remarked, in a relieved tone, "dat 's diffunt. I wuz mos' fear'd it 'uz some er dat ar sillerbug, w'ich a whole jugful aint ska'cely 'nuff fer ter make you seem like you dremp 'bout smellin' dram. Ef I'm gwine ter be fed on foam," continued the old man, by way of explaining his position on the subject of syllabub, "let it be foam, en ef I'm gwine ter git dram, lemme git in reach un it w'ile she got some strenk lef'. Dat 's me up an down. W'en it come ter yo' floatin' ilun, des gimme a hunk er ginger-cake en a mug er 'simmon-beer, en dey won't fine no nigger w'ats got no slicker feelin's dan w'at I is. "Miss Sally mighty kuse w'ite 'oman," Uncle Remus went on. "She sendin' all deze doin's en fixin's down yer, en I 'speck deyer monst'us nice, but no longer'n las' Chuseday she had all de niggers on de place, big en little, gwine squallin' 'roun' fer Remus. Hit 'uz Remus yer en Remus dar, en, lo en beholes, w'en I come ter fine out, Miss Sally want Remus fer ter whirl in en cook 'er one er deze yer ole-time ash-cakes. She bleedzd ter have it den en dar; en w'en I git it done, Miss Sally, she got a glass er buttermilk, en tuck'n sot right flat down on de flo', des like she useter w'en she wuz little gal." The old man paused, straightened up, looked at the child over his spectacles, and continued, with emphasis: "En I be bless ef she aint eat a hunk er dat ash-cake mighty nigh ez big ez yo' head, en den she tuck'n make out 't wa'n't cook right. "Now, den, honey, all deze done fix. You set over dar, and I'll set over yer, en 'twix' en 'tween us we'll sample dish yer truck en see w'at is it Miss Sally done gone en sont us; en w'iles we er makin' 'way wid it, I'll sorter rustle 'roun' wid my 'membunce, en see ef I kin call ter min' de tale 'bout how ole Brer Rabbit got 'im a two-story house widout layin' out much cash." Uncle Remus stopped talking a little while and pretended to be trying to remember something,--an effort that was accompanied by a curious humming sound in his throat. Finally, he brightened up and began: "Hit tu'n out one time dat a whole lot er de creeturs tuck a notion dat dey'd go in coboots wid buil'n' un um a house. Ole Brer B'ar, he was 'mongs' um, en Brer Fox, en Brer Wolf, en Brer 'Coon, en Brer 'Possum. I won't make sho', but it seem like ter me dat plum down ter ole Brer Mink 'uz 'mongs' um. Leas'ways, dey wuz a whole passel un um, en dey whirl in, dey did, en dey buil' de house in less'n no time. Brer Rabbit, he make lak it make he head swim fer ter climb up on de scaffle, en likewise he say it make 'im ketch de palsy fer ter wuk in de sun, but he got 'im a squar', en he stuck a pencil behime he year, en he went 'roun' medjun[9] en markin'--medjun en markin'--en he wuz dat busy dat de yuther creeturs say ter deyse'f he doin' monst'us sight er wuk, en folks gwine 'long de big road say Brer Rabbit doin' mo' hard wuk dan de whole kit en bilin' un um. Yit all de time Brer Rabbit aint doin' nothin', en he des well bin layin' off in de shade scratchin' de fleas off'n 'im. De yuther creeturs, dey buil' de house, en, gentermens! she 'uz a fine un, too, mon. She'd 'a' bin a fine un deze days, let 'lone dem days. She had er upsta'rs en downsta'rs, en chimbleys all 'roun', en she had rooms fer all de creeturs w'at went inter cahoots en hope make it. "Brer Rabbit, he pick out one er de upsta'rs rooms, en he tuck'n' got 'im a gun, en one er deze yer brass cannons, en he tuck'n' put um in dar w'en de yuther creeturs aint lookin', en den he tuck'n' got 'im a tub er nasty slop-water, w'ich likewise he put in dar w'en dey aint lookin'. So den, w'en dey git de house all fix, en w'iles dey wuz all a-settin' in de parlor atter supper, Brer Rabbit, he sorter gap en stretch hisse'f, en make his 'skuses en say he b'leeve he'll go ter he room. W'en he git dar, en w'iles all de yuther creeturs wuz a-laughin' en a-chattin' des ez sociable ez you please, Brer Rabbit, he stick he head out er de do' er he room en sing out: "'W'en a big man like me wanter set down, wharbouts he gwine ter set?' sezee. "Den de yuther creeturs dey laugh, en holler back: "'Ef big man like you can't set in a cheer, he better set down on de flo'.' "'Watch out down dar, den,' sez ole Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Kaze I'm a gwine ter set down,' sezee. "Wid dat, _bang!_ went Brer Rabbit gun. Co'se, dis sorter 'stonish de creeturs, en dey look 'roun' at one er n'er much ez ter say, W'at in de name er gracious is dat? Dey lissen en lissen, but dey don't year no mo' fuss, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' dey got ter chattin' en jabberin' some mo'. Bimeby, Brer Rabbit stick he head outer he room do', en sing out: "'W'en a big man like me wanter sneeze, wharbouts he gwine ter sneeze at?' "Den de yuther creeturs, dey tuck'n holler back: "'Ef big man like you aint a-gone gump, he kin sneeze anywhar he please.' "'Watch out down dar, den,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Kaze I'm gwine ter tu'n loose en sneeze right yer,' sezee. "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit let off his cannon--_bulderum-m-m!_ De winder-glass dey shuck en rattle, en de house shuck like she gwine ter come down, en ole Brer B'ar, he fell out de rockin'-cheer--_kerblump!_ W'en de creeturs git sorter settle, Brer 'Possum en Brer Mink, dey up'n 'low dat Brer Rabbit got sech a monst'us bad cole, dey b'leeve dey'll step out and git some fresh a'r, but dem yuther creeturs, dey say dey gwine ter stick it out; en atter w'ile, w'en dey git der h'ar smoove down, dey 'gun ter jower 'mongs' deyse'f. 'Bout dat time, w'en dey get in a good way, Brer Rabbit, he sing out: "'W'en a big man like me take a chaw terbacker, wharbouts he gwine ter spit?' "Den de yuther creeturs, dey holler back, dey did, sorter like deyer mad: "'Big man er little man, spit whar you please.' "Den Brer Rabbit, he squall out: "'Dis de way a big man spit!' en wid dat he tilt over de tub er slop-water, en w'en de yuther creeturs year it come a-sloshin' down de sta'r-steps, gentermens! dey des histed deyse'f outer dar. Some un um went out de back do', en some un um went out de front do', en some un um fell out de winders; some went one way en some went n'er way; but dey all went sailin' out." "But what became of Brother Rabbit?" the little boy asked. "Brer Rabbit, he des tuck'n shot up de house en fassen de winders, en den he got ter bed, he did, en pull de coverled up 'roun' he years, en he sleep like a man w'at aint owe nobody nuthin'; en needer do he owe um, kaze ef dem yuther creeturs gwine git skeer'd en run off fum der own house, w'at bizness is dat er Brer Rabbit? Dat w'at I like ter know." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [6] Preserves. [7] In the South, a rain is called a "season," not only by the negroes, but by many white farmers. [8] It is a far-away sound that might be identified with one of the various undertones of silence, but it is palpable enough (if the word may be used) to have attracted the attention of the humble philosophers of the old plantation. [9] Measuring. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VII MR. LION HUNTS FOR MR. MAN Uncle Remus sighed heavily as he lifted the trivet on the head of his walking-cane, and hung it carefully by the side of the griddle in the cavernous fireplace. "Folks kin come 'long wid der watchermaycollums," he said presently, turning to the little boy, who was supplementing his supper by biting off a chew of shoemaker's-wax, "en likewise dey kin fetch 'roun' der watziznames. Dey kin walk biggity, en dey kin talk biggity, en mo'n dat, dey kin feel biggity, but yit all de same deyer gwine ter git kotch up wid. Dey go 'long en dey go 'long, en den bimeby yer come trouble en snatch um slonchways, en de mo' bigger w'at dey is, de wusser does dey git snatched." The little boy did n't understand this harangue at all, but he appreciated it because he recognized it as the prelude to a story. "Dar wuz Mr. Lion," Uncle Remus went on; "he tuck'n sot hisse'f up fer ter be de boss er all de yuther creeturs, en he feel so biggity dat he go ro'in' en rampin' 'roun' de neighborhoods wuss'n dat ar speckle bull w'at you see down at yo' Unk' Jeems Abercrombie place las' year. He went ro'in' 'roun', he did, en eve'ywhar he go he year talk er Mr. Man. Right in de middle er he braggin', some un 'ud up'n tell 'im 'bout w'at Mr. Man done done. Mr. Lion, he say he done dis, en den he year 'bout how Mr. Man done dat. Hit went on dis a-way twel bimeby Mr. Lion shake he mane, he did, en he up'n say dat he gwine ter s'arch 'roun' en 'roun', en high en low, fer ter see ef he can't fine Mr. Man, en he 'low, Mr. Lion did, dat w'en he do fine 'im, he gwine ter tu'n in en gin Mr. Man sech n'er larrupin' w'at nobody aint never had yit. Dem yuther creeturs, dey tuck'n tell Mr. Lion dat he better let Mr. Man 'lone, but Mr. Lion say he gwine ter hunt 'im down spite er all dey kin do. "Sho' nuff, atter he done tuck some res', Mr. Lion, he put out down de big road. Sun, she rise up en shine hot, but Mr. Lion, he keep on; win', hit come up en blow, en fill de elements full er dust; rain, hit drif' up en drizzle down; but Mr. Lion, he keep on. Bimeby, w'iles he gwine on dis a-way, wid he tongue hangin' out, he come up wid Mr. Steer, grazin' 'long on de side er de road. Mr. Lion, he up'n ax 'im howdy, he did, monst'us perlite, en Mr. Steer likewise he bow en scrape en show his manners. Den Mr. Lion, he do lak he wanter have some confab wid 'im, en he up'n say, sezee: "'Is dey anybody 'roun' in deze parts name Mr. Man?' sezee. "'Tooby sho' dey is,' sez Mr. Steer, sezee; 'anybody kin tell you dat. I knows 'im mighty well,' sezee. "'Well, den, he de ve'y chap I'm atter,' sezee. "'W'at mought be yo' bizness wid Mr. Man?' sez Mr. Steer, sezee. "'I done come dis long ways fer ter gin 'im a larrupin',' sez Mr. Lion, sezee. 'I'm gwine ter show 'im who de boss er deze neighborhoods,' sezee, en wid dat Mr. Lion, he shake he mane, en switch he tail, en strut up en down wuss'n one er deze yer town niggers. "'Well, den, ef dat w'at you come atter,' sez Mr. Steer, sezee, 'you des better slew yo'se'f 'roun' en p'int yo' nose todes home, kaze you fixin' fer ter git in sho' 'nuff trouble,' sezee. "'I'm gwine ter larrup dat same Mr. Man,' sez Mr. Lion, sezee; 'I done come fer dat, en dat w'at I'm gwine ter do,' sezee. "Mr. Steer, he draw long breff, he did, en chaw he cud slow, en atter w'ile he say, sezee: "'You see me stannin' yer front er yo' eyes, en you see how big I is, en w'at long, sharp hawns I got. Well, big ez my heft is, en sharp dough my hawns be, yit Mr. Man, he come out yer en he ketch me, en he put me und' a yoke, en he hitch me up in a kyart, en he make me haul he wood, en he drive me anywhar he min' ter. He do dat. Better let Mr. Man 'lone,' sezee. 'If you fool 'long wid 'im, watch out dat he don't hitch you up en have you prancin' 'roun' yer pullin' he kyart,' sezee. "Mr. Lion, he fotch a roar, en put out down de road, en 't wa'n't so mighty long 'fo' he come up wid Mr. Hoss, w'ich he wuz a-nibblin' en a-croppin' de grass. Mr. Lion make hisse'f know'd, en den he tuck'n ax Mr. Hoss do he know Mr. Man. "'Mighty well,' sez Mr. Hoss, sezee, 'en mo'n dat, I bin a-knowin' 'im a long time. W'at you want wid Mr. Man?' sezee. "'I'm a-huntin' 'im up fer ter larrup 'im,' sez Mr. Lion, sezee. 'Dey tells me he mighty stuck up,' sezee, 'en I gwine take 'im down a peg,' sezee. "Mr. Hoss look at Mr. Lion like he sorry, en bimeby he up'n say: "'I 'speck you better let Mr. Man 'lone,' sezee. 'You see how big I is, en how much strenk w'at I got, en how tough my foots is,' sezee; 'well dish yer Mr. Man, he kin take'n take me en hitch me up in he buggy, en make me haul 'im all 'roun', en den he kin take'n fassen me ter de plow en make me break up all his new groun',' sezee. 'You better go 'long back home. Fus' news you know, Mr. Man'll have you breakin' up his new groun',' sezee. "Spite er all dis, Mr. Lion, he shake he mane en say he gwine ter larrup Mr. Man anyhow. He went on down de big road, he did, en bimeby he come up wid Mr. Jack Sparrer, settin' up in de top er de tree. Mr. Jack Sparrer, he whirl 'roun' en chirp, en flutter 'bout up dar, en 'pariently make a great 'miration. "'Heyo yer!' sezee; 'who'd er 'speckted fer ter see Mr. Lion 'way down yer in dis neighborhoods?' sezee. 'Whar you gwine, Mr. Lion?' sezee. "Den Mr. Lion ax ef Mr. Jack Sparrer know Mr. Man, en Mr. Jack Sparrer say he know Mr. Man mighty well. Den Mr. Lion, he ax ef Mr. Jack Sparrer know whar he stay, w'ich Mr. Jack Sparrer say dat he do. Mr. Lion ax wharbouts is Mr. Man, en Mr. Jack Sparrer say he right 'cross dar in de new groun', en he up'n ax Mr. Lion w'at he want wid 'im, w'ich Mr. Lion 'spon' dat he gwine larrup Mr. Man, en wid dat, Mr. Jack Sparrer, he up'n say, sezee: "'You better let Mr. Man 'lone. You see how little I is, en likewise how high I kin fly; yit, 'spite er dat, Mr. Man, he kin fetch me down w'en he git good en ready,' sezee. 'You better tuck yo' tail en put out home,' sez Mr. Jack Sparrer, sezee, 'kaze bimeby Mr. Man 'll fetch you down,' sezee. "But Mr. Lion des vow he gwine atter Mr. Man, en go he would, en go he did. He aint never see Mr. Man, Mr. Lion aint, en he dunner w'at he look lak, but he go on todes de new groun'. Sho' 'nuff, dar wuz Mr. Man, out dar maulin' rails fer ter make 'im a fence. He 'uz rippin' up de butt cut, Mr. Man wuz, en he druv in his wedge en den he stuck in de glut. He 'uz splittin' 'way, w'en bimeby he year rustlin' out dar in de bushes, en he look up, en dar wuz Mr. Lion. Mr. Lion ax 'im do he know Mr. Man, en Mr. Man 'low dat he know 'im mo' samer dan ef he wer' his twin brer. Den Mr. Lion 'low dat he wanter see' im, en den Mr. Man say, sezee, dat ef Mr. Lion will come stick his paw in de split fer ter hol' de log open twel he git back, he go fetch Mr. Man. Mr. Lion he march up en slap his paw in de place, en den Mr. Man, he tuck'n' knock de glut out, en de split close up, en dar Mr. Lion wuz. Mr. Man, he stan' off en say, sezee: "'Ef you'd 'a' bin a steer er hoss, you mought er run'd, en ef you'd 'a' bin a sparrer, you mought er flew'd, but yer you is, en you kotch yo'se'f,' sezee. "Wid dat, Mr. Man sa'nter out in de bushes en cut 'im a hick'ry, en he let in on Mr. Lion, en he frail en frail 'im twel frailin' un 'im wuz a sin. En down ter dis day," continued Uncle Remus, in a tone calculated to destroy all doubt, "you can't git no Lion ter come up whar dey 's a Man a-maulin' rails en put he paw in de split. Dat you can't!" VIII THE STORY OF THE PIGS Uncle Remus relapsed into silence again, and the little boy, with nothing better to do, turned his attention to the bench upon which the old man kept his shoemaker's tools. Prosecuting his investigations in this direction, the youngster finally suggested that the supply of bristles was about exhausted. "I dunner w'at Miss Sally wanter be sendin' un you down yer fer, ef you gwine ter be stirr'n' en bodderin' 'longer dem ar doin's," exclaimed Uncle Remus, indignantly. "Now don't you scatter dem hog-bristle! De time wuz w'en folks had a mighty slim chance fer ter git bristle, en dey aint no tellin' w'en dat time gwine come ag'in. Let 'lone dat, de time wuz w'en de breed er hogs wuz done run down ter one po' little pig, en it look lak mighty sorry chance fer dem w'at was bleedzd ter have bristle." By this time Uncle Remus's indignation had vanished, disappearing as suddenly and unexpectedly as it came. The little boy was curious to know when and where and how the bristle famine occurred. "I done tole you 'bout dat too long 'go ter talk 'bout," the old man declared; but the little boy insisted that he had never heard about it before, and he was so persistent that at last Uncle Remus, in self-defence, consented to tell the story of the Pigs. "One time, 'way back yander, de ole Sow en er chilluns wuz all livin' 'longer' de yuther creeturs. Hit seem lak ter me dat de ole Sow wuz a widder 'oman, en ef I don't run inter no mistakes, hit look like ter me dat she got five chilluns. Lemme see," continued Uncle Remus, with the air of one determined to justify his memory by a reference to the record, and enumerating with great deliberation,--"dar wuz Big Pig, en dar wuz Little Pig, en dar wuz Speckle Pig, en dar wuz Blunt, en las' en lonesomes' dar wuz Runt. "One day, deze yer Pig ma she know she gwine kick de bucket, and she tuck'n call up all 'er chilluns en tell um dat de time done come w'en dey got ter look out fer deyse'f, en den she up'n tell um good ez she kin, dough 'er breff mighty scant, 'bout w'at a bad man is ole Brer Wolf. She say, sez she, dat if dey kin make der 'scape from ole Brer Wolf, dey'll be doin' monst'us well. Big Pig 'low she aint skeer'd, Speckle Pig 'low she aint skeer'd, Blunt, he say he mos' big a man ez Brer Wolf hisse'f, en Runt, she des tuck'n root 'roun' in de straw en grunt. But ole Widder Sow, she lay dar, she did, en keep on tellin' um dat dey better keep der eye on Brer Wolf, kaz he mighty mean en 'seetful man. "Not long atter dat, sho' 'nuff ole Miss Sow lay down en die, en all dem ar chilluns er hern wuz flung back on deyse'f, en dey whirl in, dey did, en dey buil' um all a house ter live in. Big Pig, she tuck'n buil' 'er a house outer bresh; Little Pig, she tuck'n buil' a stick house; Speckle Pig, she tuck'n buil' a mud house; Blunt, he tuck'n buil' a plank house; en Runt, she don't make no great ter-do, en no great brags, but she went ter wuk, she did, en buil' a rock house. "Bimeby, w'en dey done got all fix, en marters wuz sorter settle, soon one mawnin' yer come ole Brer Wolf, a-lickin' un his chops en a-shakin' un his tail. Fus' house he come ter wuz Big Pig house. Brer Wolf walk ter de do', he did, en he knock sorter saf'--_blim! blim! blim!_ Nobody aint answer. Den he knock loud--_blam! blam! blam!_ Dis wake up Big Pig, en she come ter de do', en she ax who dat. Brer Wolf 'low it's a fr'en', en den he sing out: "'_Ef you'll open de do' en let me in, I'll wom my han's en go home ag'in._' "Still Big Pig ax who dat, en den Brer Wolf, he up'n say, sezee: "'How yo' ma?' sezee. "'My ma done dead,' sez Big Pig, sezee, 'en 'fo' she die she tell me fer ter keep my eye on Brer Wolf. I sees you thoo de crack er de do', en you look mighty like Brer Wolf,' sezee. "Den ole Brer Wolf, he draw a long breff lak he feel mighty bad, en he up'n say, sezee: "I dunner w'at change yo' ma so bad, less'n she 'uz out'n er head. I year tell dat ole Miss Sow wuz sick, en I say ter myse'f dat I'd kinder drap 'roun' en see how de ole lady is, en fetch 'er dish yer bag er roas'n'-years. Mighty well dose I know dat ef yo' ma wuz yer right now, en in 'er min', she 'd take de roas'n'-years en be glad fer ter git um, en mo'n dat, she'd take'n ax me in by de fire fer ter worn my han's,' sez ole Brer Wolf, sezee. "De talk 'bout de roas'n'-years make Big Pig mouf water, en bimeby, atter some mo' palaver, she open de do' en let Brer Wolf in, en bless yo' soul, honey! dat uz de las' er Big Pig. She aint had time fer ter squeal en needer fer ter grunt 'fo' Brer Wolf gobble 'er up. "Next day, ole Brer Wolf put up de same game on Little Pig; he go en he sing he song, en Little Pig, she tuck'n let 'im in, en den Brer Wolf he tuck'n 'turn de compelerments[10] en let Little Pig in." Here Uncle Remus laughed long and loud at his conceit, and he took occasion to repeat it several times. "Little Pig, she let Brer Wolf in, en Brer Wolf, he let Little Pig in, en w'at mo' kin you ax dan dat? Nex' time Brer Wolf pay a call, he drop in on Speckle Pig, en rap at de do' en sing his song: "'_Ef you'll open de do' en let me in, I'll wom my han's en go home ag'in._' "But Speckle Pig, she kinder 'spicion sump'n', en she 'fuse ter open de do'. Yit Brer Wolf mighty 'seetful man, en he talk mighty saf' en he talk mighty sweet. Bimeby, he git he nose in de crack er de do' en he say ter Speckle Pig, sezee, fer ter des let 'im git one paw in, en den he won't go no furder. He git de paw in, en den he beg fer ter git de yuther paw in, en den w'en he git dat in he beg fer ter git he head in, en den w'en he git he head in, en he paws in, co'se all he got ter do is ter shove de do' open en walk right in; en w'en marters stan' dat way, 't wa'n't long 'fo' he done make fresh meat er Speckle Pig. "Nex' day, he make way wid Blunt, en de day atter, he 'low dat he make a pass at Runt. Now, den, right dar whar ole Brer Wolf slip up at. He lak some folks w'at I knows. He'd 'a' bin mighty smart, ef he had n't er bin too smart. Runt wuz de littles' one er de whole gang, yit all de same news done got out dat she 'uz pestered wid sense like grown folks. "Brer Wolf, he crope up ter Runt house, en he got un'need de winder, he did, en he sing out: "'_Ef you'll open de do' en let me in, I'll wom my han's en go home ag'in._' "But all de same, Brer Wolf can't coax Runt fer ter open de do', en needer kin he break in, kaze de house done made outer rock. Bimeby Brer Wolf make out he done gone off, en den atter while he come back en knock at de do'--_blam, blam, blam!_ "Runt she sot by de fier, she did, en sorter scratch 'er year, en holler out: "'Who dat?' sez she. "'Hit 's Speckle Pig,' sez ole Brer Wolf, sezee, 'twix' a snort en a grunt. 'I fotch yer some peas fer yo' dinner!' "Runt, she tuck'n laugh, she did, en holler back: "'Sis Speckle Pig aint never talk thoo dat many toofies.' "Brer Wolf go off 'g'in, en bimeby he come back en knock. Runt she sot en rock, en holler out: "'Who dat?' "'Big Pig,' sez Brer Wolf. 'I fotch some sweet-co'n fer yo' supper.' "Runt, she look thoo de crack un'need de do', en laugh en say, sez she: "'Sis Big Pig aint had no ha'r on 'er huff.' "Den ole Brer Wolf, he git mad, he did, en say he gwine come down de chimbley, en Runt, she say, sez she, dat de onliest way w'at he kin git in; en den, w'en she year Brer Wolf clam'in' up on de outside er de chimbley, she tuck'n pile up a whole lot er broom sage front er de h'a'th, en w'en she year 'im clam'in' down on de inside, she tuck de tongs en shove de straw on de fier, en de smoke make Brer Wolf head swim, en he drap down, en 'fo' he know it he 'uz done bu'nt ter a cracklin'; en dat wuz de las' er ole Brer Wolf. Leas'ways," added Uncle Remus, putting in a cautious proviso to fall back upon in case of an emergency, "leas'ways, hit 'uz de las' er dat Brer Wolf." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [10] Compliments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IX MR. BENJAMIN RAM AND HIS WONDERFUL FIDDLE "I 'speck you done year tell er ole man Benjermun Ram," said Uncle Remus, with a great affectation of indifference, after a pause. "Old man who?" asked the little boy. "Ole man Benjermun Ram. I 'speck you done year tell er him too long 'go ter talk 'bout." "Why, no, I have n't, Uncle Remus!" exclaimed the little boy, protesting and laughing. "He must have been a mighty funny old man." "Dat 's ez may be," responded Uncle Remus, sententiously. "Fun deze days would n't er counted fer fun in dem days; en many's de time w'at I see folks laughin'," continued the old man, with such withering sarcasm that the little boy immediately became serious,--"many's de time w'at I sees um laughin' en laughin', w'en I lay dey aint kin tell w'at deyer laughin' at deyse'f. En 'taint der laughin' w'at pesters me, nudder,"--relenting a little,--"hit 's dish yer ev'lastin' snickle en giggle, giggle en snickle." Having thus mapped out, in a dim and uncertain way, what older people than the little boy might have been excused for accepting as a sort of moral basis, Uncle Remus proceeded: "Dish yer Mr. Benjermun Ram, w'ich he done come up inter my min', wuz one er dezeyer ole-timers. Dey tells me dat he 'uz a fiddler fum away back yander--one er dem ar kinder fiddlers w'at can't git de chune down fine 'less dey pats der foot. He stay all by he own-alone se'f way out in de middle un a big new-groun', en he sech a handy man fer ter have at a frolic dat de yuther creeturs like 'im mighty well, en w'en dey tuck a notion fer ter shake der foot, w'ich de notion tuck'n struck um eve'y once in a w'ile, nuthin' 'ud do but dey mus' sen' fer ole man Benjermun Ram en he fiddle; en dey do say," continued Uncle Remus, closing his eyes in a sort of ecstasy, "dat w'en he squar' hisse'f back in a cheer, en git in a weavin' way, he kin des snatch dem ole-time chunes fum who lay de rail.[11] En den, w'en de frolic wuz done, dey'd all fling in, dem yuther creeturs would, en fill up a bag er peas fer ole Mr. Benjermun Ram fer ter kyar home wid 'im. "One time, des 'bout Christmas, Miss Meadows en Miss Motts en de gals, dey up'n say dat dey 'd sorter gin a blowout, en dey got wud ter ole man Benjermun Ram w'ich dey 'speckted 'im fer ter be on han'. W'en de time done come fer Mr. Benjermun Ram fer ter start, de win' blow cole en de cloud 'gun ter spread out 'cross de elements--but no marter fer dat; ole man Benjermun Ram tuck down he walkin'-cane, he did, en tie up he fiddle in a bag, en sot out fer Miss Meadows. He thunk he know de way, but hit keep on gittin' col'er en col'er, en mo' cloudy, twel bimeby, fus' news you know, ole Mr. Benjermun Ram done lose de way. Ef he'd er kep' on down de big road fum de start, it moughter bin diffunt, but he tuck a nigh-cut, en he aint git fur 'fo' he done los' sho' 'nuff. He go dis a-way, en he go dat a-way, en he go de yuther way, yit all de same he wuz done los'. Some folks would er sot right flat down whar dey wuz en study out der way, but ole man Benjermun Ram aint got wrinkle on he hawn fer nothin', kaze he done got de name er ole Billy Hardhead long 'fo' dat. Den ag'in, some folks would er stop right still in der tracks en holler en bawl fer ter see ef dey can't roust up some er de neighbors, but ole Mr. Benjermun Ram, he des stick he jowl in de win', he did, en he march right on des 'zackly like he know he aint gwine de wrong way. He keep on, but 't wa'n't long 'fo' he 'gun ter feel right lonesome, mo' speshually w'en hit come up in he min' how Miss Meadows en de gals en all de comp'ny be bleedz ter do de bes' dey kin bidout any fiddlin'; en hit kinder make he marrer git cole w'en he study 'bout how he gotter sleep out dar in de woods by hisse'f. [Illustration: MR. BENJAMIN RAM AND HIS WONDERFUL FIDDLE] "Yit, all de same, he keep on twel de dark 'gun ter drap down, en den he keep on still, en bimeby he come ter a little rise whar dey wuz a clay-gall. W'en he git dar he stop en look 'roun', he did, en 'way off down in de holler, dar he see a light shinin', en w'en he see dis, ole man Benjermun Ram tuck he foot in he han', en make he way todes it des lak it de ve'y place w'at he bin huntin'. 'T wa'n't long 'fo' he come ter de house whar de light is, en, bless you soul, he don't make no bones er knockin'. Den somebody holler out: "'Who dat?' "'I'm Mr. Benjermun Ram, en I done lose de way, en I come fer ter ax you ef you can't take me in fer de night,' sezee. "In common," continued Uncle Remus, "ole Mr. Benjermun Ram wuz a mighty rough-en-spoken somebody, but you better b'leeve he talk monst'us perlite dis time. "Den some un on t'er side er de do' ax Mr. Benjermun Ram fer ter walk right in, en wid dat he open de do' en walk in, en make a bow like fiddlin' folks does w'en dey goes in comp'ny; but he aint no sooner make he bow en look 'roun' twel he 'gun ter shake en shiver lak he done bin strucken wid de swamp-ager, kaze, settin' right dar 'fo' de fier wuz ole Brer Wolf, wid his toofies showin' up all w'ite en shiny like dey wuz bran new. Ef ole Mr. Benjermun Ram aint bin so ole en stiff I boun' you he'd er broke en run, but 'mos' 'fo' he had time fer ter study 'bout gittin' 'way, ole Brer Wolf done bin jump up en shet de do' en fassen 'er wid a great big chain. Ole Mr. Benjermun Ram he know he in fer't, en he tuck'n put on a bol' face ez he kin, but he des nat'ally hone[12] fer ter be los' in de woods some mo'. Den he make n'er low bow, en he hope Brer Wolf and all his folks is well, en den he say, sezee, dat he des drap in fer ter wom hisse'f, en 'quire uv de way ter Miss Meadows', en ef Brer Wolf be so good ez ter set 'im in de road ag'in, he be off putty soon en be much 'blige in de bargains. "'Tooby sho', Mr. Ram,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee, w'iles he lick he chops en grin; 'des put yo' walkin'-cane in de cornder over dar, en set yo' bag down on de flo', en make yo'se'f at home,' sezee. 'We aint got much,' sezee, 'but w'at we is got is yone w'iles you stays, en I boun' we'll take good keer un you,' sezee; en wid dat Brer Wolf laugh en show his toofies so bad dat ole man Benjermun Ram come mighty nigh havin' 'n'er ager. "Den Brer Wolf tuck'n flung 'n'er lighter'd-knot on de fier, en den he slip inter de back room, en present'y, w'iles ole Mr. Benjermun Ram wuz settin' dar shakin' in he shoes, he year Brer Wolf whispun' ter he ole 'oman: "'Ole 'oman! ole 'oman! Fling 'way yo' smoke meat--fresh meat fer supper! Fling 'way yo' smoke meat--fresh meat fer supper!' "Den ole Miss Wolf, she talk out loud, so Mr. Benjermun Ram kin year: "'Tooby sho' I'll fix 'im some supper. We er 'way off yer in de woods, so fur fum comp'ny dat goodness knows I'm mighty glad ter see Mr. Benjermun Ram.' "Den Mr. Benjermun Ram year ole Miss Wolf whettin' 'er knife on a rock--_shirrah! shirrah! shirrah!_--en ev'y time he year de knife say _shirrah!_ he know he dat much nigher de dinner-pot. He know he can't git 'way, en w'iles he settin' dar studyin', hit come 'cross he min' dat he des mought ez well play one mo' chune on he fiddle 'fo' de wuss come ter de wuss. Wid dat he ontie de bag en take out de fiddle, en 'gun ter chune 'er up--_plink, plank, plunk, plink! plunk, plank, plink, plunk!_" Uncle Remus's imitation of the tuning of a fiddle was marvellous enough to produce a startling effect upon a much less enthusiastic listener than the little boy. It was given in perfect good faith, but the serious expression on the old man's face was so irresistibly comic that the child laughed until the tears ran down his face. Uncle Remus very properly accepted this as a tribute to his wonderful resources as a story-teller, and continued, in great good-humor: "W'en ole Miss Wolf year dat kinder fuss, co'se she dunner w'at is it, en she drap 'er knife en lissen. Ole Mr. Benjermun Ram aint know dis, en he keep on chunin' up--_plank, plink, plunk, plank!_ Den ole Miss Wolf, she tuck'n hunch Brer Wolf wid 'er elbow, en she say, sez she: "'Hey, ole man! w'at dat?" "Den bofe un um cock up der years en lissen, en des 'bout dat time ole Mr. Benjermun Ram he sling de butt er de fiddle up und' he chin, en struck up one er dem ole-time chunes." "Well, what tune was it, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked, with some display of impatience. "Ef I aint done gone en fergit dat chune off'n my min'," continued Uncle Remus; "hit sorter went like dat ar song 'bout 'Sheep shell co'n wid de rattle er his ho'n,' en yit hit mout er been dat ar yuther one 'bout 'Roll de key, ladies, roll dem keys.' Brer Wolf en ole Miss Wolf, dey lissen en lissen, en de mo' w'at dey lissen de skeerder dey git, twel bimeby dey tuck ter der heels en make a break fer de swamp at de back er de house des lak de patter-rollers wuz atter um. "W'en ole man Benjermun Ram sorter let up wid he fiddlin', he don't see no Brer Wolf, en he don't year no ole Miss Wolf. Den he look in de back room; no Wolf dar. Den he look in de back po'ch; no Wolf dar. Den he look in de closet en de cubberd; no Wolf aint dar yit. Den ole Mr. Benjermun Ram, he tuck'n shot all de do's en lock um, en he s'arch 'roun' en he fine some peas en fodder in de lof', w'ich he et um fer he supper, en den he lie down front er de fier en sleep soun' ez a log. "Nex' mawnin' he 'uz up en stirrin' monst'us soon, en he put out fum dar, en he fine de way ter Miss Meadows' time 'nuff fer ter play at de frolic. W'en he git dar, Miss Meadows en de gals, dey run ter de gate fer ter meet 'im, en dis un tuck he hat, en dat un tuck he cane, en t'er'n tuck he fiddle, en den dey up'n say: "'Law, Mr. Ram! whar de name er goodness is you bin? We so glad you come. Stir 'roun' yer, folks, en git Mr. Ram a cup er hot coffee.' "Dey make a mighty big ter-do 'bout Mr. Benjermun Ram, Miss Meadows en Miss Motts en de gals did, but 'twix' you en me en de bedpos', honey, dey'd er had der frolic wh'er de ole chap 'uz dar er not, kaze de gals done make 'rangerments wid Brer Rabbit fer ter pat fer um, en in dem days Brer Rabbit wuz a patter, mon. He mos' sholy wuz." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [11] That is, from the foundation, or beginning. [12] To pine or long for anything. This is a good old English word, which has been retained in the plantation vocabulary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- X BROTHER RABBIT'S RIDDLE "Could Brother Rabbit pat a tune, sure enough, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, his thoughts apparently dwelling upon the new accomplishment of Brother Rabbit at which the old man had hinted in his story of Mr. Benjamin Ram. Uncle Remus pretended to be greatly surprised that any one could be so unfamiliar with the accomplishments of Brother Rabbit as to venture to ask such a question. His response was in the nature of a comment: "Name er goodness! w'at kinder pass dish yer we comin' ter w'en a great big grow'd up young un axin' 'bout Brer Rabbit? Bless yo' soul, honey! dey wa'n't no chune gwine dat Brer Rabbit can't pat. Let 'lone dat, w'en dey wuz some un else fer ter do de pattin', Brer Rabbit kin jump out inter de middle er de flo' en des nat'ally shake de eyel'ds off'en dem yuther creeturs. En 't wa'n't none er dish yer bowin' en scrapin', en slippin' en slidin', en han's all 'roun', w'at folks does deze days. Hit uz dish yer up en down kinder dancin', whar dey des lips up in de a'r fer ter cut de pidjin-wing, en lights on de flo' right in de middle er de double-shuffle. _Shoo!_ Dey aint no dancin' deze days; folks' shoes too tight, en dey aint got dat limbersomeness in de hips w'at dey uster is. Dat dey aint. "En yit," Uncle Remus continued, in a tone which seemed to imply that he deemed it necessary to apologize for the apparent frivolity of Brother Rabbit,--"en yit de time come w'en ole Brer Rabbit 'gun ter put dis en dat tergedder, en de notion strak 'im dat he better be home lookin' atter de intruss er he fambly, 'stidder trapesin' en trollopin' 'roun' ter all de frolics in de settlement. He tuck'n study dis in he min' twel bimeby he sot out 'termin' fer ter 'arn he own livelihoods, en den he up'n lay off a piece er groun' en plant 'im a tater-patch. "Brer Fox, he see all dish yer gwine on, he did, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he 'speck Brer Rabbit rashfulness done bin supjued kaze he skeer'd, en den Brer Fox make up his min' dat he gwine ter pay Brer Rabbit back fer all he 'seetfulness. He start in, Brer Fox did, en fum dat time forrerd he aggervate Brer Rabbit 'bout he tater-patch. One night he leave de draw-bars down, 'n'er night he fling off de top rails, en nex' night he t'ar down a whole panel er fence, en he keep on dis a-way twel 'pariently Brer Rabbit dunner w'at ter do. All dis time Brer Fox keep on foolin' wid de tater-patch, en w'en he see w'ich Brer Rabbit aint makin' no motion, Brer Fox 'low dat he done skeer'd sho' 'nuff, en dat de time done come fer ter gobble him up bidout lief er license. So he call on Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox did, en he ax 'im will he take a walk. Brer Rabbit, he ax wharbouts. Brer Fox say, right out yander. Brer Rabbit, he ax w'at is dey right out yander? Brer Fox say he know whar dey some mighty fine peaches, en he want Brer Rabbit fer ter go 'long en climb de tree en fling um down. Brer Rabbit say he don't keer ef he do, mo' speshually fer ter 'blige Brer Fox. "Dey sot out, dey did, en atter w'ile, sho' 'nuff, dey come ter de peach-orchud, en Brer Rabbit, w'at do he do but pick out a good tree, en up he clum. Brer Fox, he sot hisse'f at de root er de tree, kaze he 'low dat w'en Brer Rabbit come down he hatter come down backerds, en den dat 'ud be de time fer ter nab 'im. But, bless yo' soul, Brer Rabbit dun see w'at-Brer Fox atter 'fo' he clum up. W'en he pull de peaches, Brer Fox say, sezee: "'Fling um down yer, Brer Rabbit--fling um right down yer so I kin ketch um,' sezee. "Brer Rabbit, he sorter wunk de furdest eye fum Brer Fox, en he holler back, he did: "'Ef I fling um down dar whar you is, Brer Fox, en you misses um, dey'll git squshed,' sezee, 'so I'll des sorter pitch um out yander in de grass whar dey won't git bus',' sezee. "Den he tuck'n flung de peaches out in de grass, en w'iles Brer Fox went atter um, Brer Rabbit, he skint down outer de tree, en hustle hisse'f twel he git elbow-room. W'en he git off little ways, he up 'n holler back ter Brer Fox dat he got a riddle he want 'im ter read. Brer Fox, he ax w'at is it. Wid dat, Brer Rabbit, he gun it out ter Brer Fox lak a man sayin' a speech: "'_Big bird rob en little bird sing, De big bee zoon en little bee sting, De little man lead en big hoss foller-- Kin you tell w'at's good fer a head in a holler?_' "Ole Brer Fox scratch he head en study, en study en scratch he head, but de mo' he study de wuss he git mix up wid de riddle, en atter w'ile he tuck'n tell Brer Rabbit dat he dunno how in de name er goodness ter onriddle dat riddle. "'Come en go 'longer me,' sez ole Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I boun' you I show you how ter read dat same riddle. Hit 's one er dem ar kinder riddle,' sez ole man Rabbit, sezee, 'w'ich 'fo' you read 'er you got ter eat a bait er honey, en I done got my eye sot on de place whar we kin git de honey at,' sezee. "Brer Fox, he ax wharbouts is it, en Brer Rabbit, he say up dar in ole Brer B'ar cotton-patch, whar he got a whole passel er bee-gums. Brer Fox, he 'low, he did, dat he aint got no sweet-toof much, yit he wanter git at de innerds er dat ar riddle, en he don't keer ef he do go 'long. "Dey put out, dey did, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' dey come ter ole Brer B'ar bee-gums, en ole Brer Rabbit, he up'n gun um a rap wid he walkin'-cane, des lak folks thumps water-millions fer ter see ef dey er ripe. He tap en he rap, en bimeby he come ter one un um w'ich she soun' like she plum full, en den he go 'roun' behime it, ole Brer Rabbit did, en he up'n say, sezee: "'I'll des sorter tilt 'er up, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'en you kin put yo' head und' dar en git some er de drippin's,' sezee. "Brer Rabbit, he tilt her up, en, sho' 'nuff, Brer Fox, he jam he head un'need de gum. Hit make me laugh," Uncle Remus continued, with a chuckle, "fer ter see w'at a fresh man is Brer Fox, kaze he aint no sooner stuck he head un'need dat ar bee-gum, dan Brer Rabbit turnt 'er aloose, en down she come--_ker-swosh!_--right on Brer Fox neck, en dar he wuz. Brer Fox, he kick; he squeal; he jump; he squall; he dance; he prance; he beg; he pray; yit dar he wuz, en w'en Brer Rabbit git way off, en tu'n 'roun' fer ter look back, he see Brer Fox des a-wigglin' en a-squ'min', en right den en dar Brer Rabbit gun one ole-time whoop, en des put out fer home. "W'en he git dar, de fus' man he see wuz Brer Fox gran'daddy, w'ich folks all call 'im Gran'sir' Gray Fox. W'en Brer Rabbit see 'im, he say, sezee: "'How you come on, Gran'sir' Gray Fox?' "'I still keeps po'ly, I'm 'blije ter you, Brer Rabbit,' sez Gran'sir' Gray Fox, sezee. 'Is you seed any sign er my gran'son dis mawnin'?' sezee. "Wid dat Brer Rabbit laugh en say w'ich him en Brer Fox bin a-ramblin' 'roun' wid one er'n'er havin' mo' fun dan w'at a man kin shake a stick at. "'We bin a-riggin' up riddles en a-readin' un um,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Brer Fox is settin' off some'rs in de bushes right now, aimin' fer ter read one w'at I gun 'im. I'll des drap you one,' sez ole Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'w'ich, ef you kin read it, hit'll take you right spang ter whar yo' gran'son is, en you can't git dar none too soon,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Den ole Gran'sir' Gray Fox, he up'n ax w'at is it, en Brer Rabbit, he sing out, he did: "'_De big bird rob en little bird sing; De big bee zoon en little bee sting, De little man lead en big hoss foller-- Kin you tell w'at's good fer a head in a holler?_' "Gran'sir' Gray Fox, he tuck a pinch er snuff en cough easy ter hisse'f, en study en study, but he aint make it out, en Brer Rabbit, he laugh en sing: "'_Bee-gum mighty big fer ter make Fox collar, Kin you tell w'at's good fer a head in a holler?_' "Atter so long a time, Gran'sir' Gray Fox sorter ketch a glimpse er w'at Brer Rabbit tryin' ter gin 'im, en he tip Brer Rabbit good-day, en shuffle on fer ter hunt up he gran'son." "And did he find him, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Tooby sho', honey. Brer B'ar year de racket w'at Brer Fox kickin' up, en he go down dar fer ter see w'at de marter is. Soon ez he see how de lan' lay, co'se he tuck a notion dat Brer Fox bin robbin' de bee-gums, en he got 'im a han'ful er hick'ries, Brer B'ar did, en he let in on Brer Fox en he wom he jacket scannerlous, en den he tuck'n tu'n 'im loose; but 't wa'n't long 'fo' all de neighbors git wud dat Brer Fox bin robbin' Brer B'ar bee-gums." XI HOW MR. ROOSTER LOST HIS DINNER It seemed that the rainy season had set in in earnest, but the little boy went down to Uncle Remus's cabin before dark. In some mysterious way, it appeared to the child, the gloom of twilight fastened itself upon the dusky clouds, and the great trees without, and the dismal perspective beyond, gradually became one with the darkness. Uncle Remus had thoughtfully placed a tin pan under a leak in the roof, and the _drip-drip-drip_ of the water, as it fell in the resonant vessel, made a not unmusical accompaniment to the storm. The old man fumbled around under his bed, and presently dragged forth a large bag filled with lightwood knots, which, with an instinctive economy in this particular direction, he had stored away for an emergency. A bright but flickering flame was the result of this timely discovery, and the effect it produced was quite in keeping with all the surroundings. The rain, and wind, and darkness held sway without, while within, the unsteady lightwood blaze seemed to rhyme with the _drip-drip-drip_ in the pan. Sometimes the shadow of Uncle Remus, as he leaned over the hearth, would tower and fill the cabin, and again it would fade and disappear among the swaying and swinging cobwebs that curtained the rafters. "W'en bed-time come, honey," said Uncle Remus, in a soothing tone, "I'll des snatch down yo' pa buggy umbrell' fum up dar in de cornder, des lak I bin a-doin', en I'll take'n take you und' my arm en set you down on Miss Sally h'a'th des ez dry en ez wom ez a rat'-nes' inside a fodder-stack." At this juncture 'Tildy, the house-girl, rushed in out of the rain and darkness with a water-proof cloak and an umbrella, and announced her mission to the little boy without taking time to catch her breath. "Miss Sally say you got ter come right back," she exclaimed. "Kaze she skeerd lightin' gwine strak 'roun' in yer 'mongs' deze high trees some'rs." Uncle Remus rose from his stooping posture in front of the hearth and assumed a threatening attitude. "Well, is anybody year de beat er dat!" was his indignant exclamation. "Look yer, gal! don't you come foolin' 'longer me--now, don't you do it. Kaze ef yer does, I'll take'n hit you a clip w'at'll put you ter bed 'fo' bed-times come. Dat 's w'at!" "Lawdy! w'at I done gone en done ter Unk' Remus now?" asked 'Tildy, with a great affectation of innocent ignorance. "I'm gwine ter put on my coat en take dat ar umbrell', en I'm gwine right straight up ter de big house en ax Miss Sally ef she sont dat kinder wud down yer, w'en she know dat chile sittin' yer 'longer me. I'm gwine ter ax her," continued Uncle Remus, "en if she aint sont dat wud, den I'm gwine ter fetch myse'f back. Now, you des watch my motions." "Well, I year Miss Sally say she 'feard lightnin' gwine ter strak some'rs on de place," said 'Tildy, in a tone which manifested her willingness to compromise all differences, "en den I axt 'er kin I come down yer, en den she say I better bring deze yer cloak en pairsol." "Now you dun brung um," responded Uncle Remus, "you des better put um in dat cheer over dar, en take yo'se'f off. Thunder mighty ap' ter hit close ter whar deze here slick-head niggers is." But the little boy finally prevailed upon the old man to allow 'Tildy to remain, and after a while he put matters on a peace footing by inquiring if roosters crowed at night when it was raining. "Dat dey duz," responded Uncle Remus. "Wet er dry, dey flops der wings en wakes up all de neighbors. Law, bless my soul!" he exclaimed suddenly, "w'at make I done gone en fergit 'bout Mr. Rooster?" "What about him?" inquired the little boy. "One time, 'way back yander," said Uncle Remus, knocking the ashes off his hands and knees, "dey wuz two plan'ations right 'longside one er 'ne'r, en on bofe er deze plan'ations wuz a whole passel of fowls. Dey wuz mighty sociable in dem days, en it tu'n out dat de fowls on one plan'ation gun a party, w'ich dey sont out der invites ter de fowls on de 't'er plan'ation. "W'en de day come, Mr. Rooster, he blow his hawn, he did, en 'semble um all tergedder, en atter dey 'semble dey got in line. Mr. Rooster, he tuck de head, en atter 'im come ole lady Hen en Miss Pullet, en den dar wuz Mr. Peafowl, en Mr. Tukkey Gobbler, en Miss Guinny Hen, en Miss Puddle Duck, en all de balance un um. Dey start off sorter raggedy, but 't wa'n't long 'fo' dey all kotch de step, en den dey march down by de spring, up thoo de hoss-lot en 'cross by de gin-house, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' dey git ter whar de frolic wuz. "'Dey dance, en dey play, en dey sing. Mo' 'speshually did dey play en sing dat ar song w'ich it run on lak dis: "'_Come under, come under, My honey, my love, my own true love; My heart bin a-weepin' Way down in Galilee._' "Dey wuz gwine on dis a-way, havin' der 'musements, w'en, bimeby, ole Mr. Peafowl, he got on de comb er de barn en blow de dinner-hawn. Dey all wash der face en ban's in de back po'ch, en den dey went in ter dinner. W'en dey git in dar, dey don't see nothin' on de table but a great big pile er co'n-bread. De pones was pile up on pones, en on de top wuz a great big ash-cake. Mr. Rooster, he look at dis en he tu'n up he nose, en bimeby, atter aw'ile, out he strut. Ole Miss Guinny Hen, she watchin' Mr. Rooster motions, en w'en she see dis, she take'n squall out, she did: "_'Pot-rack! Pot-rack!_ Mr. Rooster gone back! _Pot-rack! Pot-rack!_ Mr. Rooster gone back!' "Wid dat dey all make a great ter-do. Miss Hen en Miss Pullet, dey cackle en squall, Mr. Gobbler, he gobble, en Miss Puddle Duck, she shake 'er tail en say, _quickity-quack-quack_. But Mr. Rooster, he ruffle up he cape, en march on out. "Dis sorter put a damper on de yuthers, but 'fo' Mr. Rooster git outer sight en year'n dey went ter wuk on de pile w'at wuz 'pariently co'n-bread, en, lo en beholes, un'need dem pone er bread wuz a whole passel er meat en greens, en bake' taters, en bile' turnips. Mr. Rooster, he year de ladies makin' great 'miration, en he stop en look thoo de crack, en dar he see all de doin's en fixin's. He feel mighty bad, Mr. Rooster did, w'en he see all dis, en de yuther fowls dey holler en ax 'im fer ter come back, en he craw, w'ich it mighty empty, likewise, it up'n ax 'im, but he mighty biggity en stuck up, en he strut off, crowin' ez he go; but he 'speunce er dat time done las' him en all er his fambly down ter dis day. En you neenter take my wud fer't, ne'r, kaze ef you'll des keep yo' eye open en watch, you'll ketch a glimse er ole Mr. Rooster folks scratchin' whar dey 'specks ter fine der rations, en mo' dan dat, dey'll scratch wid der rations in plain sight. Since dat time, dey aint none er de Mr. Roosters bin fool' by dat w'at dey see on top. Dey aint res' twel dey see w'at und' dar. Dey'll scratch spite er all creation." "Dat 's de Lord's truth!" said 'Tildy, with unction. "I done seed um wid my own eyes. Dat I is." This was 'Tildy's method of renewing peaceful relations with Uncle Remus, but the old man was disposed to resist the attempt. "You better be up yander washin' up dishes, stidder hoppin' down yer wid er whole packet er stuff w'at Miss Sally aint dreamp er sayin'." XII BROTHER RABBIT BREAKS UP A PARTY As long as Uncle Remus allowed 'Tildy to remain in the cabin, the little boy was not particularly interested in preventing the perfunctory abuse which the old man might feel disposed to bestow upon the complacent girl. The truth is, the child's mind was occupied with the episode in the story of Mr. Benjamin Ram which treats of the style in which this romantic old wag put Mr. and Mrs. Wolf to flight by playing a tune upon his fiddle. The little boy was particularly struck with this remarkable feat, as many a youngster before him had been, and he made bold to recur to it again by asking Uncle Remus for all the details. It was plain to the latter that the child regarded Mr. Ram as the typical hero of all the animals, and this was by no means gratifying to the old man. He answered the little boy's questions as well as he could, and, when nothing more remained to be said about Mr. Ram, he settled himself back in his chair and resumed the curious history of Brother Rabbit: "Co'se Mr. Ram mighty smart man. I aint 'spute dat; but needer Mr. Ram ner yet Mr. Lam is soon creeturs lak Brer Rabbit. Mr. Benjermun Ram, he tuck'n skeer off Brer Wolf en his ole 'oman wid his fiddle, but, bless yo' soul, ole Brer Rabbit he gone en done wuss'n dat." "What did Brother Rabbit do?" asked the little boy. "One time," said Uncle Remus, "Brer Fox, he tuck'n ax some er de yuther creeturs ter he house. He ax Brer B'ar, en Brer Wolf, en Brer 'Coon, but he aint ax Brer Rabbit. All de same, Brer Rabbit got win' un it, en he 'low dat ef he don't go, he 'speck he have much fun ez de nex' man. "De creeturs w'at git de invite, dey tuck'n 'semble at Brer Fox house, en Brer Fox, he ax um in en got um cheers, en dey sot dar en laugh en talk, twel, bimeby, Brer Fox, he fotch out a bottle er dram en lay 'er out on de side-bode, en den he sorter step back en say, sezee: "'Des step up, gentermens, en he'p yo'se'f,' en you better b'lieve dey he'p derse'f. "W'iles dey wuz drinkin' en drammin' en gwine on, w'at you 'speck Brer Rabbit doin'? You des well make up yo' min' dat Brer Rabbit monst'us busy, kaze he 'uz sailin' 'roun' fixin' up his tricks. Long time 'fo' dat, Brer Rabbit had been at a bobbycue whar dey was a muster, en w'iles all de folks 'uz down at de spring eatin' dinner, Brer Rabbit he crope up en run off wid one er de drums. Dey wuz a big drum en a little drum, en Brer Rabbit he snatch up de littles' one en run home. "Now, den, w'en he year 'bout de yuther creeturs gwine ter Brer Fox house, w'at do Brer Rabbit do but git out dis rattlin' drum en make de way down de road todes whar dey is. He tuk dat drum," continued Uncle Remus, with great elation of voice and manner, "en he went down de road todes Brer Fox house, en he make 'er talk like thunner mix up wid hail. Hit talk lak dis: "'_Diddybum, diddybum, diddybum-bum-bum--diddybum!_' "De creeturs, dey 'uz a-drinkin', en a-drammin', en a-gwine on at a terrible rate, en dey aint year de racket, but all de same, yer come Brer Rabbit: "'_Diddybum, diddybum, diddybum-bum-bum--diddybum!_' "Bimeby Brer 'Coon, w'ich he allers got one year hung out fer de news, he up'n ax Brer Fox w'at dat, en by dat time all de creeturs stop en lissen; but all de same, yer come Brer Rabbit: "'_Diddybum, diddybum, diddybum-bum-bum--diddybum!_' "De creeturs dey keep on lis'nin', en Brer Rabbit keep on gittin' nigher, twel bimeby Brer 'Coon retch und' de cheer fer he hat, en say, sezee: "'Well, gents, I 'speck I better be gwine. I tole my ole 'oman dat I won't be gone a minnit, en yer 't is 'way 'long in de day.' "Wid dat Brer 'Coon, he skip out, but he aint git much furder dan de back gate, 'fo' yer come all de yuther creeturs like dey 'uz runnin' a foot-race, en ole Brer Fox wuz wukkin' in de lead." "Dar, now!" exclaimed 'Tildy, with great fervor. "Yasser! dar dey wuz, en dar dey went," continued Uncle Remus. "Dey tuck nigh cuts, en dey scramble over one er 'n'er, en dey aint res' twel dey git in de bushes. "Ole Brer Rabbit, he came on down de road--_diddybum, diddybum, diddybum-bum-bum_--en bless gracious! w'en he git ter Brer Fox house dey aint nobody dar. Brer Rabbit is dat ow-dacious, dat he hunt all 'roun' twel he fine de a'r-hole en de drum, en he put his mouf ter dat en sing out, sezee: "'Is dey anybody home?' en den he answer hisse'f, sezee, 'Law, no, honey--folks all gone.' "Wid dat, ole Brer Rabbit break loose en laugh, he did, fit ter kill hisse'f, en den he slam Brer Fox front gate wide open, en march up ter de house. W'en he git dar, he kick de do' open en hail Brer Fox, but nobody aint dar, en Brer Rabbit he walk in en take a cheer, en make hisse'f at home wid puttin' his foots on de sofy en spittin' on de flo'. "Brer Rabbit aint sot dar long 'fo' he ketch a whiff er de dram--" "You year dat?" exclaimed 'Tildy, with convulsive admiration. "--'Fo' he ketch a whiff er de dram, en den he see it on de side-bode, en he step up en drap 'bout a tumbeler full some'rs down in de neighborhoods er de goozle. Brer Rabbit mighty lak some folks I knows. He tuck one tumbeler full, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he tuck 'n'er'n, en w'en a man do dis a-way," continued Uncle Remus, somewhat apologetically, "he bleedz ter git drammy." "Truth, too!" said 'Tildy, by way of hearty confirmation. "All des time de yuther creeturs wuz down hi de bushes lissenin' fer de _diddybum_, en makin' ready fer ter light out fum dar at de drop uv a hat. But dey aint year no mo' fuss, en bimeby Brer Fox, he say he gwine back en look atter he plunder, en de yuther creeturs say dey b'leeve dey'll go 'long wid 'im. Dey start out, dey did, en dey crope todes Brer Fox house, but dey crope mighty keerful, en I boun' ef somebody'd 'a' shuck a bush, dem ar creeturs 'ud 'a' nat'ally to' up de ye'th gittin' 'way fum dar. Yit dey still aint year no fuss, en dey keep on creepin' twel dey git in de house. "W'en dey git in dar, de fus' sight dey see wuz ole Brer Rabbit stannin' up by de dram-bottle mixin' up a toddy, en he wa'n't so stiff-kneed n'er, kase he sorter swage fum side ter side, en he look lak he mighty limbersome, w'ich, goodness knows, a man bleedz ter be limbersome w'en he drink dat kinder licker w'at Brer Fox perwide fer dem creeturs. "W'en Brer Fox see Brer Rabbit makin' free wid he doin's dat a-way, w'at you 'speck he do?" inquired Uncle Remus, with the air of one seeking general information. "I 'speck he cusst," said 'Tildy, who was apt to take a vividly practical view of matters. "He was glad," said the little boy, "because he had a good chance to catch Brother Rabbit." "Tooby sho' he wuz," continued Uncle Remus, heartily assenting to the child's interpretation of the situation: "tooby sho' he wuz. He stan' dar, Brer Fox did, en he watch Brer Rabbit motions. Bimeby he holler out, sezee: "'Ah yi![13] Brer Rabbit!' sezee. 'Many a time is you made yo' 'scape, but now I got you!' En wid dat, Brer Fox en de yuther creeturs cloze in on Brer Rabbit. "Seem like I done tole you dat Brer Rabbit done gone en tuck mo' dram dan w'at 'uz good fer he wholesome. Yit he head aint swim so bad dat he dunner w'at he doin', en time he lay eyes on Brer Fox, he know he done got in close quarters. Soon ez he see dis, Brer Rabbit make like he bin down in de cup mo' deeper dan w'at he is, en he stagger 'roun' like town gal stannin' in a batteau, en he seem lak he des ez limber ez a wet rag. He stagger up ter Brer Fox, he did, en he roll he eyeballs 'roun', en slap 'im on he back en ax 'im how he ma. Den w'en he see de yuther creeturs," continued Uncle Remus, "he holler out, he did: "'Vents yo' uppance, gentermens! Vents yo' uppance![14] Ef you'll des gimme han'-roomance en come one at a time, de tussle 'll las' longer. How you all come on, nohow?' sezee. "Ole Brer Rabbit talk so kuse dat de yuther creeturs have mo' fun dan w'at you k'n shake a stick at, but bimeby Brer Fox say dey better git down ter business, en den dey all cloze in on Brer Rabbit, en dar he wuz. "In dem days, ole man B'ar wuz a jedge 'mongs' de creeturs, en dey all ax 'im w'at dey gwine do 'long wid Brer Rabbit, en Jedge B'ar, he put on his specks, en cle'r up his th'oat, en say dat de bes' way ter do wid a man w'at kick up sech a racket, en run de neighbors outer der own house, en go in dar en level[15] on de pantry, is ter take 'im out en drown 'im; en ole Brer Fox, w'ich he settin' on de jury, he up'n smack he hands togedder, en cry, en say, sezee, dat atter dis he bleedz ter b'leeve dat Jedge B'ar done got all-under holt on de lawyer-books, kaze dat 'zackly w'at dey say w'en a man level on he neighbor pantry. "Den Brer Rabbit, he make out he skeerd, en he holler en cry, en beg um, in de name er goodness, don't fling 'im in de spring branch, kaze dey all know he dunner how ter swim: but ef dey bleedz fer ter pitch 'im in, den for mussy sake gin' 'im a walkin'-cane, so he kin have sumpin' ter hol' ter w'iles he drownin'. "Ole Brer B'ar scratch his head en say, sezee, dat, fur ez his 'membunce go back, he aint come 'cross nothin' in de lawyer-book ter de contraries er dat, en den dey all 'gree dat Brer Rabbit kin have a walkin'-cane. "Wid dat, dey ketch up Brer Rabbit en put 'im in a wheelborrow en kyar 'im down ter de branch, en fling 'im in." "Eh-eh!" exclaimed 'Tildy, with well-feigned astonishment. "Dey fling 'im in," continued Uncle Remus, "en Brer Rabbit light on he foots, same ez a tomcat, en pick his way out by de helps er de walkin'-cane. De water wuz dat shaller dat it don't mo'n come over Brer Rabbit slipper, en w'en he git out on t'er side, he holler back, sezee: "'So long, Brer Fox!'" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [13] A corruption of "aye, aye." It is used as an expression of triumph and its employment in this connection is both droll and picturesque. [14] Southern readers will recognize this and "han'-roomance" as terms used by negroes in playing marbles,--a favorite game on the plantations Sunday afternoons. These terms were curt and expressive enough to gain currency among the whites. [15] Levy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XIII BROTHER FOX, BROTHER RABBIT, AND KING DEER'S DAUGHTER Notwithstanding Brother Rabbit's success with the drum, the little boy was still inclined to refer to Mr. Benjamin Ram and his fiddle; but Uncle Remus was not, by any means, willing that such an ancient vagabond as Mr. Ram should figure as a hero, and he said that, while it was possible that Brother Rabbit was no great hand with the fiddle, he was a drummer, and a capital singer to boot. Furthermore, Uncle Remus declared that Brother Rabbit could perform upon the quills,[16] an accomplishment to which none of the other animals could lay claim. There was a time, too, the old man pointedly suggested, when the romantic rascal used his musical abilities to win the smiles of a nice young lady of quality--no less a personage, indeed, than King Deer's daughter. As a matter of course, the little boy was anxious to hear the particulars, and Uncle Remus was in nowise loath to give them. "W'en you come ter ax me 'bout de year en day er de mont'," said the old man, cunningly arranging a defence against criticism, "den I'm done, kaze de almanick w'at dey got in dem times won't pass muster deze days, but, let 'lone dat, I 'speck dey aint had none yit; en if dey is, dey aint none bin handed down ter Remus. "Well, den, some time 'long in dar, ole Brer Fox en Brer Rabbit got ter flyin' 'roun' King Deer daughter. Dey tells me she 'uz a monst'us likely gal, en I 'speck may be she wuz; leas'ways, Brer Fox, he hanker atter 'er, en likewise Brer Rabbit, he hanker atter 'er. Ole King Deer look lak he sorter lean todes Brer Fox, kaze ter a settle man like him, hit seem lak dat Brer Fox kin stir 'roun' en keep de pot a-b'ilin', mo' speshually bein's he de bigges'. Hit go on dis a-way twel hardly a day pass dat one er de yuther er dem creeturs don't go sparklin' 'roun' King Deer daughter, en it got so atter w'ile dat all day long Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox keep de front gate a-skreakin', en King Deer daughter aint ska'cely had time fer ter eat a meal vittels in no peace er min'. "In dem days," pursued Uncle Remus, in a tone of unmistakable historical fervor, "w'en a creetur go a-courtin' dey wa'n't none er dish yer bokay doin's mix' up 'longer der co'tship, en dey aint cut up no capers like folks does now. Stidder scollopin' 'roun' en bowin' en scrapin', dey des go right straight atter de gal. Ole Brer Rabbit, he mouter had some bubby-blossoms[17] wrop up in his hankcher, but mostly him en Brer Fox 'ud des drap in on King Deer daughter en 'gin ter cas' sheep-eyes at 'er time dey sot down en cross der legs." "En I bet," said 'Tildy, by way of comment, and looking as though she wanted to blush, "dat dey wa'n't 'shame', nuther." "Dey went 'long dis a-way," continued Uncle Remus, "twel it 'gun ter look sorter skittish wid Brer Rabbit, kaze ole King Deer done good ez say, sezee, dat he gwine ter take Brer Fox inter de fambly. Brer Rabbit, he 'low, he did, dat dis aint gwine ter do, en he study en study how he gwine ter cut Brer Fox out. [Illustration: BROTHER FOX, BROTHER RABBIT, AND KING DEER'S DAUGHTER] "Las', one day, w'iles he gwine thoo King Deer pastur' lot, he up wid a rock en kilt two er King Deer goats. W'en he git ter de house, he ax King Deer daughter whar'bouts her pa, en she up'n say she go call 'im, en w'en Brer Rabbit see 'im, he ax w'en de weddin' tuck place, en King Deer ax w'ich weddin', en Brer Rabbit say de weddin' 'twix' Brer Fox en King Deer daughter. Wid dat, ole King Deer ax Brer Rabbit w'at make he go on so, en Brer Rabbit, he up'n 'spon' dat he see Brer Fox makin' monst'us free wid de fambly, gwine 'roun' chunkin' de chickens en killin' up de goats. "Ole King Deer strak he walkin'-cane down 'pon de flo', en 'low dat he don't put no 'pennunce in no sech tale lak dat, en den Brer Rabbit tell 'im dat ef he'll des take a walk down in de pastur' lot, he kin see de kyarkiss er de goats. Ole King Deer, he put out, en bimeby he come back, en he 'low he gwine ter settle marters wid Brer Fox ef it take 'im a mont'. "Brer Rabbit say he a good frien' ter Brer Fox, en he aint got no room ter talk 'bout 'im, but yit w'en he see 'im 'stroyin' King Deer goats en chunkin' at his chickens, en rattlin' on de palin's fer ter make de dog bark, he bleedz ter come lay de case 'fo' de fambly. "'En mo'n dat,' sez ole Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'I'm de man w'at kin make Brer Fox come en stan' right at de front gate en tell you dat he is kill dem goat; en ef you des wait twel ter-night, I won't ax you ter take my wud,' sezee. "King Deer say ef Brer Rabbit man 'nuff ter do dat, den he kin git de gal en thanky, too. Wid dat, Brer Rabbit jump up en crack he heels tergedder, en put out fer ter fine Brer Fox. He aint git fur 'fo' he see Brer Fox comin' down de road all primp up. Brer Rabbit, he sing out, he did: "'Brer Foxy, whar you gwine?' "En Brer Fox, he holler back: "'Go 'way, Rab; don't bodder wid me. I'm gwine fer ter see my gal.' "Brer Rabbit, he laugh 'way down in his stomach, but he don't let on, en atter some mo' chat, he up'n say dat ole King Deer done tell 'im 'bout how Brer Fox gwine ter marry he daughter, en den he tell Brer Fox dat he done promise King Deer dat dey'd drap 'roun' ter-night en gin 'im some music. "'En I up'n tole 'im,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'dat de music w'at we can't make aint wuth makin',--me wid my quills, en you wid yo' tr'angle.[18] De nex' motion we makes,' sezee, we'll hatter go off some'rs en practise up on de song we'll sing, en I got one yer dat'll tickle um dat bad,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'twel I lay dey'll fetch out a hunk er dat big chicken-pie w'at I see um puttin' in de pot des now,' sezee. "In a 'casion lak dis, Brer Fox say he de ve'y man w'at Brer Rabbit huntin', en he 'low dat he'll des 'bout put off payin' he call ter King Deer house en go wid Brer Rabbit fer ter practise on dat song. "Den Brer Rabbit, he git he quills en Brer Fox he git he tr'angle, en dey went down on de spring branch, en dar dey sing en play, twel dey git it all by heart. Ole Brer Rabbit, he make up de song he own se'f, en he fix it so dat he sing de call, lak de captain er de co'n-pile, en ole Brer Fox, he hatter sing de answer."[19] At this point Uncle Remus paused to indulge in one of his suggestive chuckles, and then proceeded: "Don't talk 'bout no songs ter me. Gentermens! dat 'uz a funny song fum de wud go. Bimeby, w'en dey practise long time, dey gits up en goes 'roun' in de neighborhoods er King Deer house, en w'en night come dey tuck der stan' at de front gate, en atter all got still, Brer Rabbit, he gun de wink, en dey broke loose wid der music. Dey played a chune er two on de quills en tr'angle, en den dey got ter de song. Ole Brer Rabbit, he got de call, en he open up lak dis: "'_Some folks pile up mo'n dey kin tote, En dot w'at de marter wid King Deer goat,_' en den Brer Fox, he make answer: "'_Dat 's so, dat 's so, en I'm glad dat it's so!_' Den de quills en de tr'angle, dey come in, en den Brer Rabbit pursue on wid de call: "'_Some kill sheep en some kill shote, But Brer Fox kill King Deer goat,_' en den Brer Fox, he jine in wid de answer: "'_I did, dat I did, en I'm glad dat I did!_' En des 'bout dat time King Deer, he walk outer de gate en hit Brer Fox a clip wid his walkin'-cane, en he foller it up wid 'n'er'n, dat make Brer Fox fa'rly squall, en you des better b'lieve he make tracks 'way fum dar, en de gal she come out, en dey ax Brer Rabbit in." "Did Brother Rabbit marry King Deer's daughter, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Now, den, honey, you're crowdin' me," responded the old man. "Dey ax 'im in, en dey gun 'im a great big hunk er chicken-pie, but I won't make sho' dat he tuck'n marry de gal. De p'int wid me is de way Brer Rabbit run Brer Fox off fum dar." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [16] The veritable Pan's pipes. A simple but very effective musical instrument made of reeds, and in great favor on the plantations. [17] A species of sweet-shrub growing wild in the South. [18] Triangle. [19] That is to say, Brother Rabbit sang the air and Brother Fox the refrain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XIV BROTHER TERRAPIN DECEIVES BRER BUZZARD There was a pause here, which was finally broken by 'Tildy, whose remark was in the shape of a very undignified yawn. Uncle Remus regarded her for a moment with an expression of undisguised scorn, which quickly expressed itself in words: "Ef you'd er bin outer de house dat whack, you'd er tuck us all in. Pity dey aint some place er 'n'er whar deze yer trollops kin go en l'arn manners." Tildy, however, ignored the old man, and, with a toss of her head, said to the little boy in a cool, exasperating tone, employing a pet name she had heard the child's mother use: "Well, Pinx, I 'speck we better go. De rain done mos' hilt up now, en bimeby de stars'll be a-shinin'. Miss Sally lookin' fer you right now." "You better go whar you gwine, you triflin' huzzy, you!" exclaimed Uncle Remus. "You better go git yo' Jim Crow kyard en straighten out dem wrops in yo' ha'r. I allers year w'ite folks say you better keep yo' eye on niggers w'at got der ha'r wrop up in strings. Now I done gun you fa'r warnin's." "Uncle Remus," said the little boy, when the old man's wrath had somewhat subsided, "why do they call them Jim Crow cards?" "I be bless ef I know, honey, 'ceppin' it's kaze dey er de onliest machine w'at deze yer low-life niggers kin oncomb der kinks wid. Now, den," continued the old man, straightening up and speaking with considerable animation, "dat 'min's me 'bout a riddle w'at been runnin' 'roun' in my head. En dat riddle--it's de outdoin'es' riddle w'at I mos' ever year tell un. Hit go lak dis: Ef he come, he don't come; ef he don't come, he come. Now, I boun' you can't tell w'at is dat." After some time spent in vain guessing, the little boy confessed that he did n't know. "Hit 's crow en co'n," said Uncle Remus sententiously. "Crow and corn, Uncle Remus?" "Co'se, honey. Crow come, de co'n don't come; crow don't come, den de co'n come." "Dat 's so," said 'Tildy. "I done see um pull up co'n, en I done see co'n grow w'at dey don't pull up." If 'Tildy thought to propitiate Uncle Remus, she was mistaken. He scowled at her, and addressed himself to the little boy: "De Crow, he mighty close kin ter de Buzzud, en dat puts me in min' dat we aint bin a-keepin' up wid ole Brer Buzzud close ez we might er done. "W'at de case mout be deze days, I aint a-sayin', but, in dem times, ole Brer Tarrypin love honey mo' samer dan Brer B'ar, but he wuz dat flat-footed dat, w'en he fine a bee-tree, he can't climb it, en he go so slow dat he can't hardly fine um. Bimeby, one day, w'en he gwine 'long down de road des a-honin' atter honey, who should he meet but ole Brer Buzzud. "Dey shuck han's mighty sociable en ax 'bout de news er de neighborhoods, en den, atter w'ile, Brer Tarrypin say ter ole Brer Buzzud, sezee, dat he wanter go inter cahoots wid 'im 'longer gittin' honey, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' dey struck a trade. Brer Buzzud wuz ter fly 'roun' en look fer de bee-tree, en Brer Tarrypin he wuz ter creep en crawl, en hunt on de groun'. "Dey start out, dey did, ole Brer Buzzud sailin' 'roun' in de elements, en ole Brer Tarrypin shufflin' en shamblin' on de groun'. 'Mos' de ve'y fus' fiel' w'at he come ter, Brer Tarrypin strak up wid a great big bumbly-bee nes' in de groun'. He look 'roun', ole Brer Tarrypin did, en bimeby he stick he head in en tas'e de honey, en den he pull it out en look all 'roun' fer ter see ef he kin ketch a glimpse er Brer Buzzud; but Brer Buzzud don't seem lak he nowhar. Den Brer Tarrypin say to hisse'f, sezee, dat he 'speck dat bumbly-bee honey aint de kinder honey w'at dey been talkin' 'bout, en dey aint no great shakes er honey dar nohow. Wid dat, Brer Tarrypin crope inter de hole en gobble up de las' drop er de bumbly-bee honey by he own-alone se'f. Atter he done make 'way wid it, he come out, he did, en he whirl in en lick it all off'n his footses, so ole Brer Buzzud can't tell dat he done bin git a mess er honey. "Den ole Brer Tarrypin stretch out he neck en try ter lick de honey off'n he back, but he neck too short; en he try ter scrape it off up 'g'in' a tree, but it don't come off; en den he waller on de groun', but still it don't come off. Den old Brer Tarrypin jump up, en say ter hisse'f dat he'll des 'bout rack off home, en w'en Brer Buzzud come he kin lie on he back en say he sick, so ole Brer Buzzud can't see de honey. "Brer Tarrypin start off, he did, but he happen ter look up, en, lo en beholes, dar wuz Brer Buzzud huv'rin' right spang over de spot whar he is. Brer Tarrypin know Brer Buzzud bleedz ter see 'im ef he start off home, en mo'n dat, he know he be fine out ef he don't stir 'roun' en do sump'n' mighty quick. Wid dat, Brer Tarrypin shuffle back ter de bumbly-bee nes' swif' ez he kin, en buil' 'im a fier in dar, en den he crawl out en holler: "'Brer Buzzud! O Brer Buzzud! Run yer, fer gracious sake, Brer Buzzud, en look how much honey I done fine! I des crope in a little ways, en it des drip all down my back, same like water. Run yer, Brer Buzzud! Half yone en half mine, Brer Buzzud!' "Brer Buzzud, he flop down, en he laugh en say he mighty glad, kaze he done git hongry up dar whar he bin. Den Brer Tarrypin tell Brer Buzzud fer ter creep in little ways en tas'e en see how he like um, w'iles he take his stan' on de outside en watch fer somebody. But no sooner is Brer Buzzud crope in de bumbly-bee nes' dan Brer Tarrypin take'n roll a great big rock front er de hole. Terreckly, de fier 'gun ter bu'n Brer Buzzud, en he sing out like a man in trouble: "'Sump'n' bitin' me, Brer Tarrypin--sump'n' bitin' me, Brer Tarrypin!' "Den ole Brer Tarrypin, he holler back: "'It's de bumbly-bees a-stingin' you, Brer Buzzud; stan' up en flop yo' wings, Brer Buzzud. Stan' up en flop yo' wings, Brer Buzzud, en you'll drive um off,' sezee. "Brer Buzzud flop en flop he wings, but de mo' w'at he flop, de mo' he fan de fier, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he done bodaciously bu'n up, all 'ceppin' de big een er his wing-fedders, en dem ole Brer Tarrypin tuck en make inter some quills, w'ich he go 'roun' a-playin' un um, en de chune w'at he play was dish yer: "'_I foolee, I foolee, I foolee po' Buzzud; Po' Buzzud I foolee, I foolee, I foolee._'" XV BROTHER FOX COVETS THE QUILLS "That must have been a mighty funny song," said the little boy. "Fun one time aint fun 'n'er time; some folks fines fun whar yuther folks fines trouble. Pig may laugh w'en he see de rock a-heatin', but dey aint no fun dar fer de pig.[20] "Yit, fun er no fun, dat de song w'at Brer Tarrypin play on de quills: "'_I foolee, I foolee, I foolee po' Buzzud; Po' Buzzud I foolee, I foolee, I foolee._' "Nobody dunner whar de quills cum fum, kaze Brer Tarrypin, he aint makin no brags how he git um; yit ev'ybody wants um on account er der playin' sech a lonesome[21] chune, en ole Brer Fox, he want um wuss'n all. He beg en he beg Brer Tarrypin fer ter sell 'im dem quills; but Brer Tarrypin, he hol' on t' um tight, en say eh-eh! Den he ax Brer Tarrypin fer ter loan um t' um des a week, so he kin play fer he chilluns, but Brer Tarrypin, he shake he head en put he foot down, en keep on playin': "'_I foolee, I foolee, I foolee po' Buzzud; Po' Buzzud I foolee, I foolee, I foolee._' "But Brer Fox, he aint got no peace er min' on account er dem quills, en one day he meet Brer Tarrypin en he ax 'im how he seem ter segashuate[22] en he fambly en all he chilluns; en den Brer Fox ax Brer Tarrypin ef he can't des look at de quills, kaze he got some goose-fedders at he house, en if he kin des get a glimpse er Brer Tarrypin quills, he 'speck he kin make some mighty like um. "Brer Tarrypin, he study 'bout dis, but he hate ter 'ny small favors like dat, en bimeby he hol' out dem quills whar Brer Fox kin see um. Wid dat, Brer Fox, he tuck'n juk de quills outen Brer Tarrypin han', he did, and dash off des ez hard ez he kin go. Brer Tarrypin, he holler en holler at 'im des loud ez he kin holler, but he know he can't ketch 'im, en he des sot dar, Brer Tarrypin did, en look lak he done los' all de kin-folks w'at he got in de roun' worrul'. "Atter dis, Brer Fox he strut 'roun' en play mighty biggity, en eve'y time he meet Brer Tarrypin in de road he walk all 'roun' 'im en play on de quills like dis: "'_I foolee, I foolee po' Buzzud; I foolee ole Tarrypin, too._' "Brer Tarrypin, he feel mighty bad, but he aint sayin' nothin'. Las', one day w'iles ole Brer Tarrypin was settin' on a log sunnin' hisse'f, yer come Brer Fox playin' dat same old chune on de quills, but Brer Tarrypin, he stay still. Brer Fox, he come up little nigher en play, but Brer Tarrypin, he keep he eyes shot en he stay still. Brer Fox, he come nigher en git on de log; Brer Tarrypin aint sayin' nothin'. Brer Fox still git up nigher en play on de quills; still Brer Tarrypin aint sayin' nothin'. "'Brer Tarrypin mighty sleepy dis mawnin',' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "Still Brer Tarrypin keep he eyes shot en stay still. Brer Fox keep on gittin' nigher en nigher, twel bimeby Brer Tarrypin open he eyes en he mouf bofe, en he make a grab at Brer Fox en miss 'im. "But hol' on!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, in response to an expression of intense disappointment in the child's face. "You des wait a minnit. Nex' mawnin', Brer Tarrypin take hisse'f off en waller in a mud-hole, en smear hisse'f wid mud twel he look des 'zackly lak a clod er dirt. Den he crawl off en lay down un'need a log whar he know Brer Fox come eve'y mawnin' fer ter freshen[23] hisse'f. "Brer Tarrypin lay dar, he did, en terreckly yer come Brer Fox. Time he git dar, Brer Fox 'gun ter lip backerds en forerds 'cross de log, and Brer Tarrypin he crope nigher en nigher, twel bimeby he make a grab at Brer Fox en kotch him by de foot. Dey tells me," continued Uncle Remus, rubbing his hands together in token of great satisfaction,--"dey tells me dat w'en Brer Tarrypin ketch holt, hit got ter thunder 'fo' he let go. All I know, Brer Tarrypin git Brer Fox by de foot, en he hilt 'im dar. Brer Fox he jump en he r'ar, but Brer Tarrypin done got 'im. Brer Fox, he holler out: "'Brer Tarrypin, please lemme go!' "Brer Tarrypin talk way down in his th'oat: "'Gim' my quills!' "'Lemme go en fetch um.' "'Gim'my quills!' "'Do pray lemme go git um.' "'Gim'my quills!' "En, bless gracious! dis all Brer Fox kin git outer Brer Tarrypin. Las', Brer Fox foot hu't 'im so bad dat he bleedz ter do sump'n', en he sing out fer his ole 'oman fer ter fetch de quills, but he ole 'oman, she busy 'bout de house, en she don't year 'im. Den he call he son, w'ich he name Tobe. He holler en bawl, en Tobe make answer: "'Tobe! O Tobe! You Tobe!' "'W'at you want, daddy?' "'Fetch Brer Tarrypin quills.' "'W'at you say, daddy? Fetch de big tray ter git de honey in?' "'No, you crazy-head! Fetch Brer Tarrypin quills!' "'W'at you say, daddy? Fetch de dipper ter ketch de minners in?' "'No, you fool! Fetch Brer Tarrypin quills!' "'W'at you say, daddy? Water done been spill?' "Hit went on dis a-way twel atter w'ile ole Miss Fox year de racket, en den she lissen, en she know dat 'er ole man holler'n' fer de quills, en she fotch um out en gun um ter Brer Tarrypin, en Brer Tarrypin, he let go he holt. He let go he holt," Uncle Remus went on, "but long time atter dat, w'en Brer Fox go ter pay he calls, he hatter go _hoppity-fetchity, hoppity-fetchity_." [Illustration: BROTHER FOX COVETS THE QUILLS] The old man folded his hands in his lap, and sat quietly gazing into the lightwood fire. Presently he said: "I 'speck Miss Sally blessin' us all right now, en fus' news you know she'll h'ist up en have Mars John a-trapesin' down yer; en ef she do dat, den ter-morrer mawnin' my brekkuss'll be col', en lakwise my dinner, en ef dey's sump'n' w'at I 'spizes hit 's col' vittels." Thereupon Uncle Remus arose, shook himself, peered out into the night to discover that the rain had nearly ceased, and then made ready to carry the little boy to his mother. Long before the chickens had crowed for midnight, the child, as well as the old man, had been transported to the land where myths and fables cease to be wonderful,--the land of pleasant dreams. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [20] An allusion to the primitive mode of cleaning hogs by heating rocks, and placing them in a barrel or tank of water. [21] This word "lonesome," as used by the negroes, is the equivalent of "thrilling," "romantic," etc., and in that sense is very expressive. [22] An inquiry after his health. Another form is: "How does yo' corporosity seem ter segashuate?" [23] Exercise himself. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XVI HOW BROTHER FOX FAILED TO GET HIS GRAPES One night the little boy failed to make his appearance at the accustomed hour, and the next morning the intelligence that the child was sick went forth from the "big house." Uncle Remus was told that it had been necessary during the night to call in two physicians. When this information was imparted to the old man, there was an expression upon his countenance of awe not unmixed with indignation. He gave vent to the latter: "Dar now! Two un um! W'en dat chile rize up, ef rize up he do, he'll des nat'ally be a shadder. Yer I is, gwine on eighty year, en I aint tuck none er dat ar docter truck yit, ceppin' it's dish yer flas' er poke-root w'at ole Miss Favers fix up fer de stiffness in my j'ints. Dey'll come en dey'll go, en dey'll po' in der jollup yer, en slap on der fly-plarster dar, en sprinkle der calomy yander, twel bimeby dat chile won't look like hisse'f. Dat 's w'at! En mo'n dat, hit 's mighty kuse unter me dat ole folks kin go 'long en stan' up ter de rack en gobble up der 'lowance, en yit chilluns is got ter be strucken down. Ef Miss Sally'll des tu'n dem docter mens loose onter me, I lay I lick up der physic twel dey go off 'stonish'd." But no appeal of this nature was made to Uncle Remus. The illness of the little boy was severe, but not fatal. He took his medicine and improved, until finally even the doctors pronounced him convalescent. But he was very weak, and it was a fortnight before he was permitted to leave his bed. He was restless, and yet his term of imprisonment was full of pleasure. Every night after supper Uncle Remus would creep softly into the back piazza, place his hat carefully on the floor, rap gently on the door by way of announcement, and so pass into the nursery. How patient his vigils, how tender his ministrations, only the mother of the little boy knew; how comfortable and refreshing the change from the bed to the strong arms of Uncle Remus, only the little boy could say. Almost the first manifestation of the child's convalescence was the renewal of his interest in the wonderful adventures of Brother Rabbit, Brother Fox, and the other brethren who flourished in that strange past over which this modern �sop had thrown the veil of fable. "Miss Sally," as Uncle Remus called the little boy's mother, sitting in an adjoining room, heard the youngster pleading for a story, and after a while she heard the old man clear up his throat with a great affectation of formality and begin. "Dey aint skacely no p'int whar ole Brer Rabbit en ole Brer Fox made der 'greements side wid one er 'n'er; let 'lone dat, dey wuz one p'int 'twix' 'um w'ich it wuz same ez fier en tow, en dat wuz Miss Meadows en de gals. Little ez you might 'speck, dem same creeturs wuz bofe un um flyin' 'roun' Miss Meadows en de gals. Ole Brer Rabbit, he'd go dar, en dar he'd fine ole Brer Fox settin' up gigglin' wid de gals, en den he'd skuze hisse'f, he would, en gallop down de big road a piece, en paw up de san' same lak dat ar ball-face steer w'at tuck'n tuck off yo' pa' coat-tail las' Feberwary. En lakwise ole Brer Fox, he'd sa'nter in, en fine old man Rab. settin' 'longside er de gals, en den he'd go out down de road en grab a 'simmon-bush in he mouf, en nat'ally gnyaw de bark off'n it. In dem days, honey," continued Uncle Remus, responding to a look of perplexity on the child's face, "creeturs wuz wuss dan w'at dey is now. Dey wuz dat--lots wuss. "Dey went on dis a-way twel, bimeby, Brer Rabbit 'gun ter cas' 'roun', he did, fer ter see ef he can't bus' inter some er Brer Fox 'rangerments, en, atter w'ile, one day w'en he wer' settin' down by de side er de road wukkin up de diffunt oggyment w'at strak pun he mine, en fixin' up he tricks, des 'bout dat time he year a clatter up de long green lane, en yer come ole Brer Fox_toobookity--bookity--bookity-book--_lopin' 'long mo' samer dan a bay colt in de bolly-patch. En he wuz all primp up, too, mon, en he look slick en shiny lak he des come outen de sto'. Ole man Rab., he sot dar, he did, en w'en ole Brer Fox come gallopin' 'long, Brer Rabbit, he up'n hail 'im. Brer Fox, he fotch up, en dey pass de time er day wid one er nudder monst'us perlite; en den, bimeby atter w'ile, Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee, dat he got some mighty good news fer Brer Fox; en Brer Fox, he up'n ax 'im w'at is it. Den Brer Rabbit, he sorter scratch he year wid his behime foot en say, sezee: "'I wuz takin' a walk day 'fo' yistiddy,' sezee, 'w'en de fus' news I know'd I run up gin de bigges' en de fattes' bunch er grapes dat I ever lay eyes on. Dey wuz dat fat en dat big,' sezee, 'dat de natal juice wuz des drappin' fum um, en de bees wuz a-swawmin' atter de honey, en little ole Jack Sparrer en all er his fambly conneckshun wuz skeetin' 'roun' dar dippin' in der bills,' sezee. "Right den en dar," Uncle Remus went on, "Brer Fox mouf 'gun ter water, en he look outer he eye like he de bes' frien' w'at Brer Rabbit got in de roun' worl'. He done fergit all 'bout de gals, en he sorter sidle up ter Brer Rabbit, he did, en he say, sezee: "'Come on, Brer Rabbit,' sezee, 'en less you 'n me go git dem ar grapes 'fo' deyer all gone,' sezee. En den ole Brer Rabbit, he laff, he did, en up'n 'spon', sezee: "'I hungry myse'f, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'but I aint hankerin' atter grapes, en I'll be in monst'us big luck ef I kin rush 'roun' yer some'rs en scrape up a bait er pusley time nuff fer ter keep de breff in my body. En yit,' sezee,' ef you take'n rack off atter deze yer grapes, w'at Miss Meadows en de gals gwine do? I lay dey got yo' name in de pot,' sezee. "'Ez ter dat,' sez ole Brer Fox, sezee, 'I kin drap 'roun' en see de ladies atterwards,' sezee. "'Well, den, ef dat 's yo' game,' sez ole man Rab., sezee, 'I kin squot right flat down yer on de groun' en p'int out de way des de same ez leadin' you dar by de han',' sezee; en den Brer Rabbit sorter chaw on he cud lak he gedder'n up his 'membunce, en he up'n say, sezee: "'You know dat ar place whar you went atter sweetgum fer Miss Meadows en de gals t'er day?' sezee. "Brer Fox 'low dat he know dat ar place same ez he do he own tater-patch. "'Well, den,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'de grapes aint dar. You git ter de sweetgum,' sezee, 'en den you go up de branch twel you come ter a little patch er bamboo brier--but de grapes aint dar. Den you follow yo' lef' han' en strike 'cross de hill twel you come ter dat big red oak root--but de grapes aint dar. On you goes down de hill twel you come ter 'n'er branch, en on dat branch dars a dogwood-tree leanin' 'way over, en nigh dat dogwood dars a vine, en in dat vine, dar you'll fine yo' grapes. Deyer dat ripe,' sez ole Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'dat dey look like deyer done melt tergedder, en I speck you'll fine um full er bugs, but you kin take dat fine bushy tail er yone, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'en bresh dem bugs away.' "Brer Fox 'low he much 'blige, en den he put out atter de grapes in a han'-gallop, en w'en he done got outer sight, en likewise outer year'n, Brer Rabbit, he take'n git a blade er grass, he did, en tickle hisse'f in de year, en den he holler en laff, en laff en holler, twel he hatter lay down fer ter git he breff back 'gin. "Den, atter so long time, Brer Rabbit he jump up, he do, en take atter Brer Fox, but Brer Fox, he aint look ter de right ner de lef', en needer do he look behime; he des keep a-rackin' 'long twel he come ter de sweetgum-tree, en den he tu'n up de branch twel he come ter de bamboo brier, en den he tu'n squar ter de lef' twel he come ter de big red-oak root, en den he keep on down he hill twel he come ter de yuther branch, en dar he see de dogwood; en mo'n dat, dar nigh de dogwood he see de vine, en in dat vine dar wuz de big bunch er grapes. Sho' nuff, dey wuz all kivvud wid bugs. "Ole Brer Rabbit, he'd bin a-pushin' 'long atter Brer Fox, but he des hatter scratch gravel fer ter keep up. Las' he hove in sight, en he lay off in de weeds, he did, fer ter watch Brer Fox motions. Present'y Brer Fox crope up de leanin' dogwood-tree twel he come nigh de grapes, en den he sorter ballunce hisse'f on a lim' en gun um a swipe wid his big bushy tail, fer ter bresh off de bugs. But, bless yo' soul, honey! no sooner is he done dat dan he fetch a squall w'ich Miss Meadows vow atterwards she year plum ter her house, en down he come--_kerblim_!" "What was the matter, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked. "Law, honey! dat seetful Brer Rabbit done fool ole Brer Fox. Dem ar grapes all so fine wuz needer mo' ner less dan a great big was'-nes', en dem bugs wuz deze yer red wassies--deze yer speeshy w'at's rank pizen fum cen' ter cen'. W'en Brer Fox drap fum de tree de wassies dey drap wid 'im, en de way dey wom ole Brer Fox up wuz sinful. Dey aint mo'n tetch' im 'fo' dey had 'im het up ter de b'ilin' p'int. Brer Fox, he run, en he kick, en he scratch, en he bite, en he scramble, en he holler, en he howl, but look lak dey git wuss en wuss. One time, hit seem lak Brer Fox en his new 'quaintance wuz makin' todes Brer Rabbit, but dey aint no sooner p'int dat way, dan ole Brer Rabbit, he up'n make a break, en he went sailin' thoo de woods wuss'n wunner dese whully-win's, en he aint stop twel he fetch up at Miss Meadows. "Miss Meadows en de gals, dey ax 'im, dey did, wharbouts wuz Brer Fox, en Brer Rabbit, he up'n 'spon' dat he done gone a-grape-huntin', en den Miss Meadows, she 'low, she did: "'Law, gals! is you ever year de beat er dat? En dat, too, w'en Brer Fox done say he comin' ter dinner,' sez she. 'I lay I done wid Brer Fox, kaze you can't put no pennunce in deze yer men-folks,' sez she. 'Yer de dinner bin done dis long time, en we bin a-waitin' lak de quality. But now I'm done wid Brer Fox,' sez she. "Wid dat, Miss Meadows en de gals dey ax Brer Rabbit fer ter stay ter dinner, en Brer Rabbit, he sorter make like he wanter be skuze, but bimeby he tuck a cheer en sot um out. He tuck a cheer," continued Uncle Remus, "en he aint bin dar long twel he look out en spy ole Brer Fox gwine 'long by, en w'at do Brer Rabbit do but call Miss Meadows en de gals en p'int 'im out? Soon's dey seed 'im dey sot up a monst'us gigglement, kaze Brer Fox wuz dat swell up twel little mo'n he'd a bus'. He head wuz swell up, en down ter he legs, dey wuz swell up. Miss Meadows, she up'n say dat Brer Fox look like he done gone en got all de grapes dey wuz in de neighborhoods, en one er de yuther gals, she squeal, she did, en say: "'Law, aint you 'shame', en right yer 'fo' Brer Rabbit!' "En den dey hilt der han's 'fo' der face en giggle des like gals duz deze days." XVII BROTHER FOX FIGURES AS AN INCENDIARY The next night the little boy had been thoughtful enough to save some of his supper for Uncle Remus, and to this "Miss Sally" had added, on her own account, a large piece of fruit-cake. The old man appeared to be highly pleased. "Ef ders enny kinder cake w'at I likes de mos', hit 's dish yer kine w'at's got reezins strowed 'mongs' it. Wid sick folks, now," he continued, holding up the cake and subjecting it to a critical examination, "dish yer hunk 'ud mighty nigh las' a mont', but wid a well man lak I is, hit won't las' a minnit." And it did n't. It disappeared so suddenly that the little boy laughed aloud, and wanted Uncle Remus to have some more cake; but the latter protested that he did n't come there "fer ter git founder'd," but merely to see "ef somebody's strenk uz strong 'nuff fer ter stan' 'n'er tale." The little boy said if Uncle Remus meant him, he was sure his health was good enough to listen to any number of stories. Whereupon, the old man, without any tantalizing preliminaries, began: "Brer Fox done bin fool so much by Brer Rabbit dat he sorter look 'roun' fer ter see ef he can't ketch up wid some er de yuther creeturs, en so, one day, w'iles he gwine long down de big road, who should he strak up wid but old Brer Tarrypin. Brer Fox sorter lick his chops, en 'low dat ef he kin fling ennybody en gin um all-under holt, Brer Tarrypin de man, en he march up, mighty biggity, like he gwine ter make spote un 'im. W'en he git up nigh 'nuff, Brer Fox hail 'im: "'How you 'speck you fine yo'se'f dis mawnin', Brer Tarrypin?' sezee. "'Slow, Brer Fox--mighty slow,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. 'Day in en day out I'm mighty slow, en it look lak I'm a-gittin' slower; I'm slow en po'ly, Brer Fox--how you come on?' sezee. "'Oh, I'm slanchindickler, same ez I allers is,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. 'W'at make yo' eye so red, Brer Tarrypin?' sezee. "'Hit 's all 'longer de trouble I see, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. 'I see trouble en you see none; trouble come en pile up on trouble,' sezee. "'Law, Brer Tarrypin!' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'you aint see no trouble yit. Ef you wanter see sho' 'nuff trouble, you des oughter go 'longer me; I'm de man w'at kin show you trouble,' sezee. "'Well, den,' sez ole Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'ef youer de man w'at kin show me trouble, den I'm de man w'at want a glimpse un it,' sezee. "Den Brer Fox, he ax Brer Tarrypin is he seed de Ole Boy, en den Brer Tarrypin, he make answer dat he aint seed 'im yit, but he year tell un 'im. Wid dat, Brer Fox 'low de Ole Boy de kinder trouble he bin talkin' 'bout, en den Brer Tarrypin, he up'n ax how he gwine see 'im. Brer Fox, he tak'n lay out de pogrance, en he up'n tell Brer Tarrypin dat ef he'll step up dar in de middle er dat ole broom-sage fiel', en squot dar a spell, 't won't be no time 'fo' he'll ketch a glimpse er de Ole Boy. "Brer Tarrypin know'd ders sump'n' wrong some'rs, yit he mos' too flat-flooted fer ter have enny scuffle wid Brer Fox, en he say ter hisse'f dat he'll go 'long en des trus' ter luck; en den he 'low dat ef Brer Fox he'p 'im 'cross de fence, he b'lieve he'll go up en resk one eye on de Ole Boy. Co'se Brer Fox hope 'im 'cross, en no sooner is he good en gone, dan Brer Fox, he fix up fer ter make 'im see trouble. He lipt out ter Miss Meadows house, Brer Fox did, en make like he wanter borry a chunk er fier fer ter light he pipe, en he tuck dat chunk, en he run 'roun' de fiel', en he sot de grass a fier, en't wa'n't long 'fo' it look lak de whole face er de yeth waz a-blazin' up." "Did it burn the Terrapin up?" interrupted the little boy. "Don't push me, honey; don't make me git de kyart 'fo' de hoss. W'en ole Brer Tarrypin 'gun ter wade thoo de straw, de ve'y fus' man w'at he strak up wid wuz ole man Rabbit layin' dar sleepin' on de shady side uv a tussock. Brer Rabbit, he one er deze yer kinder mens w'at sleep wid der eye wide open, en he wuz 'wake d'reckly he year Brer Tarrypin scufflin' en scramblin' 'long thoo de grass. Atter dey shuck han's en ax 'bout one er n'er fambly, hit aint take long fer Brer Tarrypin fer ter tell Brer Rabbit w'at fotch 'im dar, en Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee: "'Hit 's des na'tally a born blessin' dat you struck up wid me w'en you did,' sezee, 'kaze little mo' en bofe un us would 'a' bin bobbycu'd,' sezee. "Dis kinder tarrify Brer Tarrypin, en he say he wanter git out fum dar; but Brer Rabbit he 'low he'd take keer un 'im, en he tuck'n tuck Brer Tarrypin in de middle er de fiel' whar dey wuz a big holler stump. Onter dis stump Brer Rabbit lif' Brer Tarrypin, en den he lip up hisse'f en crope in de holler, en, bless yo' soul, honey, w'en de fier come a-snippin' en a-snappin', dar dey sot des ez safe en ez snug ez you iz in yo' bed dis minnit. "W'en de blaze blow over, Brer Tarrypin look 'roun', en he see Brer Fox runnin' up'n down de fence lak he huntin' sump'n'. Den Brer Rabbit, he stick he head up outen de hole, en likewise he seed 'im, and den he holler like Brer Tarrypin" (Here Uncle Remus puckered his voice, so to say, in a most amusing squeak): "'Brer Fox! Brer Fox! O Brer Fox! Run yer--we done kotch Brer Rabbit!' "En den Brer Fox, he jump up on de top rail er de fence en fetch a spring dat lan' 'im 'way out in de bu'nin' grass, en it hurted 'im en sting 'im in de footses dat bad, dat he squeal en he roll, en de mo' he roll de wuss it bu'n him, en Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin dey des holler en laff. Bimeby Brer Fox git out, en off he put down de road, limpin' fus' on one foot en den on de yuther." The little boy laughed, and then there was a long silence--so long, indeed, that Uncle Remus's "Miss Sally," sewing in the next room, concluded to investigate it. An exceedingly interesting tableau met her sight. The little child had wandered into the land of dreams with a smile on his face. He lay with one of his little hands buried in both of Uncle Remus's, while the old man himself was fast asleep, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. "Miss Sally" shook him by the shoulder and held up her finger to prevent him from speaking. He was quiet until she held the lamp for him to get down the back steps, and then she heard him say, in an indignantly mortified tone: "Now den, Miss Sally'll be a-riggin' me 'bout noddin', but stidder dat she better be glad dat I aint bus loose en sno' en 'larm de house--let 'lone dat sick baby. Dat 's w'at!" XVIII A DREAM AND A STORY "I dreamed all about Brother Fox and Brother Rabbit last night, Uncle Remus," exclaimed the little boy when the old man came in after supper and took his seat by the side of the trundle-bed; "I dreamed that Brother Fox had wings and tried to catch Brother Rabbit by flying after him." "I don't 'spute it, honey, dat I don't!" replied the old man, in a tone which implied that he was quite prepared to believe the dream itself was true. "Manys en manys de time, deze long nights en deze rainy spells, dat I sets down dar in my house over ag'in de chimbley-jam--I sets dar en I dozes, en it seem lak dat ole Brer Rabbit, he'll stick he head in de crack er de do' en see my eye periently shot, en den he'll beckon back at de yuther creeturs, en den dey'll all come slippin' in on der tip-toes, en dey'll set dar en run over de ole times wid one er n'er, en crack der jokes same ez dey useter. En den ag'in," continued the old man, shutting his eyes and giving to his voice a gruesome intonation quite impossible to describe,--"en den ag'in hit look lak dat Brer Rabbit'll gin de wink all 'roun', en den dey'll tu'n in en git up a reg'lar juberlee. Brer Rabbit, he'll retch up en take down de trivet, en Brer Fox, he'll snatch up de griddle, en Brer B'ar, he'll lay holt er de pot-hooks, en ole Brer Tarrypin, he'll grab up de fryin' pan en dar dey'll have it, up en down, en' roun' en 'roun'. Hit seem like ter me dat ef I kin git my mine smoove down en ketch up some er dem ar chunes w'at dey sets dar en plays, den I 'd lean back yer in dish yer cheer en I'd intrance you wid um, twel, by dis time termorrer night, you'd be settin' up dar at de supper-table 'sputin' 'longer yo' little brer 'bout de 'lasses pitcher. Dem creeturs dey sets dar," Uncle Remus went on, "en dey plays dem kinder chunes w'at moves you fum 'way back yander; en manys de time w'en I gits lonesome kaze dey aint nobody year um 'ceppin' it's me. Dey aint no tellin' de chunes dey is in dat trivet, en in dat griddle, en in dat fryin'-pan er mine; dat dey aint. W'en dem creeturs walks in en snatches um down, dey lays Miss Sally's pianner in de shade, en Mars John's flute, hit aint nowhars." "Do they play on them just like a band, Uncle Remus?" inquired the little boy, who was secretly in hopes that the illusion would not be destroyed. "Dey comes des lak I tell you, honey. W'en I shets my eyes en dozes, dey comes en dey plays, but w'en I opens my eyes dey aint dar. Now, den, w'en dat 's de shape er marters, w'at duz I do? I des shets my eyes en hol' um shot, en let um come en play dem ole time chunes twel long atter bed-time done come en gone." [Illustration: A DREAM AND A STORY] Uncle Remus paused, as though he expected the little boy to ask some question or make some comment, but the child said nothing, and presently the old man resumed, in a matter-of-fact tone: "Dat dream er yone, honey, 'bout Brer Fox wid wings, fetches up de time w'en Brer Fox en Brer Wolf had der fallin' out wid one er n'er--but I 'speck I done tole you 'bout dat." "Oh, no, you have n't, Uncle Remus! You know you have n't!" the little boy exclaimed. "Well, den, one day, atter so long a time, Brer Wolf en Brer Fox dey got ter 'sputin' 'longer one er n'er. Brer Wolf, he tuck'n 'buse Brer Fox kaze Brer Fox let Brer Rabbit fool 'im, en den Brer Fox, he tuck'n quol back at Brer Wolf, kaze Brer Wolf let ole man Rabbit lakwise fool 'im. Dey keep on 'sputin' en 'sputin', twel bimeby dey clinch, en Brer Wolf, bein' de bigges' man, 't would n't a bin long 'fo' he'd a wool Brer Fox, but Brer Fox, he watch he chance, he did, en he gin 'im leg bail." "Gave him what, Uncle Remus?" "Gin 'im leg bail, honey. He juk loose fum Brer Wolf, Brer Fox did, en, gentermens, he des mosey thoo de woods. Brer Wolf, he tuck atter 'm, he did, en dar dey had it, en Brer Wolf push Brer Fox so close, dat de onliest way Brer Fox kin save he hide is ter fine a hole some'rs, en de fus' holler tree dat he come 'cross, inter it he dove. Brer Wolf fetcht a grab at 'im, but he wuz des in time fer ter be too late. "Den Brer Wolf, he sot dar, he did, en he study en study how he gwine git Brer Fox out, en Brer Fox, he lay in dar, he did, en he study en study w'at Brer Wolf gwine do. Bimeby, Brer Wolf, he tuck'n gedder up a whole lot er chunks, en rocks, en sticks, en den he tuck'n fill up de hole what Brer Fox went in so Brer Fox can't git out. W'iles dis wuz gwine on, ole Brer Tukky Buzzud, he wuz sailin' 'roun' 'way up in de elements, wid he eye peel fer bizness, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he glance lit on Brer Wolf, en he 'low ter hisse'f, sezee: "'I'll des sorter flop down,' sezee, 'en look inter dis, kaze ef Brer Wolf hidin' he dinner dar wid de expeck'shun er findin' it dar w'en he come back, den he done gone en put it in de wrong place,' sezee. "Wid dat ole Brer Tukky Buzzud, he flop down en sail 'roun' nigher, en he soon see dat Brer Wolf aint hidin' no dinner. Den he flop down furder, ole Brer Buzzud did, twel he lit on de top er de holler tree. Brer Wolf, he done kotch a glimpse er ole Brer Buzzud shadder, but he keep on puttin' chunks en rocks in de holler. Den, present'y, Brer Buzzud, he open up: "'W'at you doin' dar, Brer Wolf?' "'Makin' a toom-stone, Brer Buzzud.' "Co'se Brer Buzzud sorter feel like he got intruss in marters like dis, en he holler back: "'Who dead now, Brer Wolf?' "'Wunner yo' 'quaintance, w'ich he name Brer Fox, Brer Buzzud.' "'W'en he die, Brer Wolf?' "'He aint dead yit, but he won't las' long in yer, Brer Buzzud.' "Brer Wolf, he keep on, he did, twel he done stop up de hole good, en den he bresh de trash off'n his cloze, en put out fer home. Brer Tukky Buzzud, he sot up dar, he did, en ontankle his tail fedders, en lissen en lissen, but Brer Fox, he keep dark, en Brer Buzzud aint year nuthin'. Den Brer Buzzud, he flop he wings en sail away. "Bimeby, nex' day, bright en early, yer he come back, en he sail all 'roun' en 'roun' de tree, but Brer Fox he lay low en keep dark, en Brer Buzzud aint year nuthin'. Atter w'ile, Brer Buzzud he sail 'roun' ag'in, en dis time he sing, en de song w'at he sing is dish yer: "'_Boo, boo, boo, my filler-mer-loo, Man out yer wid news fer you!_' Den he sail all 'roun' en 'roun' n'er time en listen, en bimeby he year Brer Fox sing back: "'_Go 'way, go 'way, my little jug er beer, De news you bring, I yeard las' year._'" "Beer, Uncle Remus? What kind of beer did they have then?" the little boy inquired. "Now, den, honey, youer gittin' me up in a close cornder," responded the old man, in an unusually serious tone. "Beer is de way de tale runs, but w'at kinder beer it moughter bin aint come down ter me--en yit hit seem lak I year talk some'rs dat dish yer beer wuz mos' prins'ply 'simmon beer." This seemed to satisfy the small but exacting audience, and Uncle Remus continued: "So, den, w'en Brer Buzzud year Brer Fox sing back, he 'low he aint dead, en wid dat, Brer Buzzud, he sail off en 'ten' ter he yuther business. Nex' day back he come, en Brer Fox, he sing back, he did, des ez lively ez a cricket in de ashes, en it keep on dis way twel Brer Fox stomach 'gun ter pinch him, en den he know dat he gotter study up some kinder plans fer ter git out fum dar. N'er day pass, en Brer Fox, he tuck'n lay low, en it keep on dat a-way twel hit look like ter Brer Fox, pent up in dar, he mus' sholy pe'sh. Las', one day Brer Buzzud come sailin' all 'roun' en 'roun' wid dat "'_Boo, boo, boo, my filler-mer-loo_,' but Brer Fox, he keep dark en Brer Buzzud, he tuck'n spishun dat Brer Fox wuz done dead. Brer Buzzud, he keep on singin', en Brer Fox he keep on layin' low, twel bimeby Brer Buzzud lit en 'gun ter cle'r 'way de trash en truck fum de holler. He hop up, he did, en tuck out one chunk, en den he hop back en lissen, but Brer Fox stay still. Den Brer Buzzud hop up en tuck out n'er chunk, en den hop back en lissen, en all dis time Brer Fox mouf 'uz waterin' w'iles he lay back in dar en des nat'ally honed atter Brer Buzzud. Hit went on dis a-way, twel des 'fo' he got de hole unkivvud, Brer Fox, he break out he did, en grab Brer Buzzud by de back er de neck. Dey wuz a kinder scuffle 'mongs' um, but 't wa'n't fer long, en dat wuz de las' er ole Brer Tukky Buzzud." XIX THE MOON IN THE MILL-POND One night when the little boy made his usual visit to Uncle Remus, he found the old man sitting up in his chair fast asleep. The child said nothing. He was prepared to exercise a good deal of patience upon occasion, and the occasion was when he wanted to hear a story. But, in making himself comfortable, he aroused Uncle Remus from his nap. "I let you know, honey," said the old man, adjusting his spectacles, and laughing rather sheepishly,--"I let you know, honey, w'en I gits my head r'ar'd back dat a-way, en my eyeleds shot, en my mouf open, en my chin p'intin' at de rafters, den dey's some mighty quare gwines on in my min'. Dey is dat, des ez sho' ez youer settin' dar. W'en I fus' year you comin' down de paf," Uncle Remus continued, rubbing his beard thoughtfully, "I 'uz sorter fear'd you mought 'spicion dat I done gone off on my journeys fer ter see ole man Nod." This was accompanied by a glance of inquiry, to which the little boy thought it best to respond. "Well, Uncle Remus," he said, "I did think I heard you snoring when I came in." "Now you see dat!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, in a tone of grieved astonishment; "you see dat! Man can't lean hisse'f 'pun his 'membunce, 'ceppin' dey's some un fer ter come high-primin' 'roun' en 'lowin' dat he done gone ter sleep. _Shoo!_ W'en you stept in dat do' dar I 'uz right in 'mungs some mighty quare notions--mighty quare notions. Dey aint no two ways; ef I uz ter up en let on 'bout all de notions w'at I gits in 'mungs, folks 'ud hatter come en kyar me off ter de place whar dey puts 'stracted people. "Atter I sop up my supper," Uncle Remus went on, "I tuck'n year some flutterments up dar 'mungs de rafters, en I look up, en dar wuz a Bat sailin' 'roun'. 'Roun' en 'roun', en 'roun' she go--und' de rafters, 'bove de rafters--en ez she sail she make noise lak she grittin' 'er toofies. Now, w'at dat Bat atter, I be bless ef I kin tell you, but dar she wuz; 'roun' en 'roun', over en under. I ax 'er w'at do she want up dar, but she aint got no time fer ter tell; 'roun' en 'roun', en over en under. En bimeby, out she flip, en I boun' she grittin' 'er toofies en gwine 'roun' en 'roun' out dar, en dodgin' en flippin' des lak de elements wuz full er rafters en cobwebs. "W'en she flip out I le'nt my head back, I did, en 't wa'n't no time 'fo' I git mix up wid my notions. Dat Bat wings so limber en 'er will so good dat she done done 'er day's work dar 'fo' you could 'er run ter de big house en back. De Bat put me in min' er folks," continued Uncle Remus, settling himself back in his chair, "en folks put me in min' er de creeturs." Immediately the little boy was all attention. "Dey wuz times," said the old man, with something like a sigh, "w'en de creeturs 'ud segashuate tergedder des like dey aint had no fallin' out. Dem wuz de times w'en ole Brer Rabbit 'ud 'ten 'lak he gwine quit he 'havishness, en dey'd all go 'roun' des lak dey b'long ter de same fambly connexion. "One time atter dey bin gwine in cohoots dis a-way, Brer Rabbit 'gun ter feel his fat, he did, en dis make 'im git projecky terreckly. De mo' peace w'at dey had, de mo' wuss Brer Rabbit feel, twel bimeby he git restless in de min'. W'en de sun shine he'd go en lay off in de grass en kick at de gnats, en nibble at de mullen stalk en waller in de san'. One night atter supper, w'iles he 'uz romancin' 'roun', he run up wid ole Brer Tarrypin, en atter dey shuck han's dey sot down on de side er de road en run on 'bout ole times. Dey talk en dey talk, dey did, en bimeby Brer Rabbit say it done come ter dat pass whar he bleedz ter have some fun, en Brer Tarrypin 'low dat Brer Rabbit des de ve'y man he bin lookin' fer. "'Well den,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'we'll des put Brer Fox, en Brer Wolf, en Brer B'ar on notice, en termorrer night we'll meet down by de mill-pon' en have a little fishin' frolic. I'll do de talkin',' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en you kin set back en say _yea_,' sezee. "Brer Tarrypin laugh. "'Ef I aint dar,' sezee, 'den you may know de grasshopper done fly 'way wid me,' sezee. "'En you neenter bring no fiddle, n'er,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'kaze dey aint gwineter be no dancin' dar,' sezee. "Wid dat," continued Uncle Remus, "Brer Rabbit put out fer home, en went ter bed, en Brer Tarrypin bruise 'roun' en make his way todes de place so he kin be dar 'gin de 'p'inted time. "Nex' day Brer Rabbit sont wud ter de yuther creeturs, en dey all make great 'miration, kaze dey aint think 'bout dis deyse'f. Brer Fox, he 'low, he did, dat he gwine atter Miss Meadows en Miss Motts, en de yuther gals. "Sho' nuff, w'en de time come dey wuz all dar. Brer B'ar, he fotch a hook en line; Brer Wolf, he fotch a hook en line; Brer Fox, he fotch a dip-net, en Brer Tarrypin, not ter be outdone, he fotch de bait." "What did Miss Meadows and Miss Motts bring?" the little boy asked. Uncle Remus dropped his head slightly to one side, and looked over his spectacles at the little boy. "Miss Meadows en Miss Motts," he continued, "dey tuck'n stan' way back fum de aidge er de pon' en squeal eve'y time Brer Tarrypin shuck de box er bait at um. Brer B'ar 'low he gwine ter fish fer mud-cats; Brer Wolf 'low he gwine ter fish fer horneyheads; Brer Fox 'low he gwine ter fish fer peerch fer de ladies; Brer Tarrypin 'low he gwine ter fish fer minners, en Brer Rabbit wink at Brer Tarrypin en 'low he gwine ter fish fer suckers. "Dey all git ready, dey did, en Brer Rabbit march up ter de pon' en make fer ter th'ow he hook in de water, but des 'bout dat time hit seem lak he see sump'n'. De t'er creeturs, dey stop en watch his motions. Brer Rabbit, he drap he pole, he did, en he stan' dar scratchin' he head en lookin' down in de water. "De gals dey 'gun ter git oneasy w'en dey see dis, en Miss Meadows, she up en holler out, she did: "'Law, Brer Rabbit, w'at de name er goodness de marter in dar?' "Brer Rabbit scratch he head en look in de water. Miss Motts, she hilt up 'er petticoats, she did, en 'low she monst'us fear'd er snakes. Brer Rabbit keep on scratchin' en lookin'. "Bimeby he fetch a long bref, he did, en he 'low: "'Ladies en gentermuns all, we des might ez well make tracks fum dish yer place, kaze dey aint no fishin' in dat pon' fer none er dish yer crowd.' "Wid dat, Brer Tarrypin, he scramble up ter de aidge en look over, en he shake he head, en 'low: "'Tooby sho'--tooby sho'! Tut-tut-tut!' en den he crawl back, he did, en do lak he wukkin' he min'. "'Don't be skeert, ladies, kaze we er boun' ter take keer un you, let come w'at will, let go w'at mus',' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Accidents got ter happen unter we all, des same ez dey is unter yuther folks; en dey aint nuthin' much de marter, 'ceppin' dat de Moon done drap in de water. Ef you don't b'leeve me you kin look fer yo'se'f,' sezee. "Wid dat dey all went ter de bank en lookt in; en, sho' nuff, dar lay de Moon, a-swingin' an' a-swayin' at de bottom er de pon'." The little boy laughed. He had often seen the reflection of the sky in shallow pools of water, and the startling depths that seemed to lie at his feet had caused him to draw back with a shudder. "Brer Fox, he look in, he did, en he 'low, 'Well, well, well!' Brer Wolf, he look in, en he 'low, 'Mighty bad, mighty bad!' Brer B'ar, he look in, en he 'low, 'Tum, tum, tum!' De ladies dey look in, en Miss Meadows she squall out, 'Aint dat too much?' Brer Rabbit, he look in ag'in, en he up en 'low, he did: "'Ladies en gentermuns, you all kin hum en haw, but less'n we gits dat Moon out er de pon', dey aint no fish kin be ketch 'roun' yer dis night; en ef you'll ax Brer Tarrypin, he'll tell you de same.' "Den dey ax how kin dey git de Moon out er dar, den Brer Tarrypin 'low dey better lef' dat wid Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit he shot he eyes, he did, en make lak he wukkin' he min'. Bimeby, he up'n 'low: "'De nighes' way out'n dish yer diffikil is fer ter sen' 'roun' yer to ole Mr. Mud-Turkle en borry his sane, en drag dat Moon up fum dar,' sezee. "'I 'clar' ter gracious I mighty glad you mention dat,' says Brer Tarrypin, sezee. 'Mr. Mud-Turkle is setch clos't kin ter me dat I calls 'im Unk Muck, en I lay ef you sen' dar atter dat sane you won't fine Unk Muck so mighty disaccomerdatin'.' "Well," continued Uncle Remus, after one of his tantalizing pauses, "dey sont atter de sane, en w'iles Brer Rabbit wuz gone, Brer Tarrypin, he 'low dat he done year tell time en time ag'in dat dem w'at fine de Moon in de water en fetch 'im out, lakwise dey ull fetch out a pot er money. Dis make Brer Fox, en Brer Wolf, en Brer B'ar feel mighty good, en dey 'low, dey did, dat long ez Brer Rabbit been so good ez ter run atter de sane, dey ull do de sanein'. "Time Brer Rabbit git back, he see how de lan' lay, en he make lak he wanter go in atter de Moon. He pull off he coat, en he 'uz fixin' fer ter shuck he wescut, but de yuther creeturs dey 'low dey wa'n't gwine ter let dryfoot man lak Brer Rabbit go in de water. So Brer Fox, he tuck holt er one staff er de sane, Brer Wolf he tuck holt er de yuther staff, en Brer B'ar he wade 'long behime fer ter lif' de sane 'cross logs en snags. "Dey make one haul--no Moon; n'er haul--no Moon; n'er haul--no Moon. Den bimeby dey git out furder fum de bank. Water run in Brer Fox year, he shake he head; water run in Brer Wolf year, he shake he head; water run in Brer B'ar year, he shake he head. En de fus' news you know, w'iles dey wuz a-shakin', dey come to whar de bottom shelfed off. Brer Fox he step off en duck hisse'f; den Brer Wolf duck hisse'f; en Brer B'ar he make a splunge en duck hisse'f; en, bless gracious, dey kick en splatter twel it look lak dey 'uz gwine ter slosh all de water outer de mill-pon'. "W'en dey come out, de gals 'uz all a-snickerin' en a-gigglin', en dey well mought, 'kaze go whar you would, dey wa'n't no wuss lookin' creeturs dan dem; en Brer Rabbit, he holler, sezee: "'I 'speck you all, gents, better go home en git some dry duds, en n'er time we'll be in better luck,' sezee. 'I hear talk dat de Moon'll bite at a hook ef you take fools fer baits, en I lay dat 's de onliest way fer ter ketch 'er,' sezee. "Brer Fox en Brer Wolf en Brer B'ar went drippin' off, en Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin, dey went home wid de gals." XX BROTHER RABBIT TAKES SOME EXERCISE One night while the little boy was sitting in Uncle Remus's cabin, waiting for the old man to finish his hoe-cake, and refresh his memory as to the further adventures of Brother Rabbit, his friends and his enemies, something dropped upon the top of the house with a noise like the crack of a pistol. The little boy jumped, but Uncle Remus looked up and exclaimed, "Ah-yi!" in a tone of triumph. "What was that, Uncle Remus?" the child asked, after waiting a moment to see what else would happen. "News fum Jack Fros', honey. W'en dat hick'y-nut tree out dar year 'im comin' she 'gins ter drap w'at she got. I mighty glad," he continued, scraping the burnt crust from his hoe-cake with an old case-knife, "I mighty glad hick'y-nuts aint big en heavy ez grinestones." He waited a moment to see what effect this queer statement would have on the child. "Yasser, I mighty glad--dat I is. 'Kaze ef hick'y-nuts 'uz big ez grinestones dish yer ole callyboose 'ud be a-leakin' long 'fo' Chris'mus." Just then another hickory-nut dropped upon the roof, and the little boy jumped again. This seemed to amuse Uncle Remus, and he laughed until he was near to choking himself with his smoking hoe-cake. "You does des 'zackly lak ole Brer Rabbit done, I 'clar' to gracious ef you don't!" the old man cried, as soon as he could get his breath; "dez zackly fer de worl'." The child was immensely flattered, and at once he wanted to know how Brother Rabbit did. Uncle Remus was in such good humor that he needed no coaxing. He pushed his spectacles back on his forehead, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and began: "Hit come 'bout dat soon one mawnin' todes de fall er de year, Brer Rabbit wuz stirrin' 'roun' in de woods atter some bergamot fer ter make 'im some h'ar-grease. De win' blow so col' dat it make 'im feel right frisky, en eve'y time he year de bushes rattle he make lak he skeerd. He 'uz gwine on dis a-way, hoppity-skippity, w'en bimeby he year Mr. Man cuttin' on a tree way off in de woods. He fotch up, Brer Rabbit did, en lissen fus' wid one year en den wid de yuther. "Man, he cut en cut, en Brer Rabbit, he lissen en lissen. Bimeby, w'iles all dis was gwine on, down come de tree--_kubber-lang-bang-blam!_ Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n jump des lak you jump, en let 'lone dat, he make a break, he did, en he lipt out fum dar lak de dogs wuz atter 'im." "Was he scared, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Skeerd! Who? _Him?_ Shoo! don't you fret yo'se'f 'bout Brer Rabbit, honey. In dem days dey wa'n't nothin' gwine dat kin skeer Brer Rabbit. Tooby sho', he tuck keer hisse'f, en ef you know de man w'at 'fuse ter take keer hisse'f, I lak mighty well ef you p'int 'im out. Deed'n dat I would!" Uncle Remus seemed to boil over with argumentative indignation. "Well, den," he continued, "Brer Rabbit run twel he git sorter het up like, en des 'bout de time he makin' ready fer ter squot en ketch he win', who should he meet but Brer Coon gwine home atter settin' up wid ole Brer Bull-Frog. Brer Coon see 'im runnin', en he hail 'im. "'W'at yo' hurry, Brer Rabbit?' "'Aint got time ter tarry.' "'Folks sick?' "'No, my Lord! Aint got time ter tarry!' "'Tryin' yo' soopleness?' "'No, my Lord! Aint got time ter tarry!' "'Do pray, Brer Rabbit, tell me de news!' "'Mighty big fuss back dar in de woods. Aint got time ter tarry!' "Dis make Brer Coon feel mighty skittish, 'kaze he fur ways fum home, en he des lipt out, he did, en went a-b'ilin' thoo de woods. Brer Coon aint gone fur twel he meet Brer Fox. "'Hey, Brer Coon, whar you gwine?' "'Aint got time ter tarry!' "'Gwine at'-de doctor?' "'No, my Lord! Aint got time ter tarry.' "'Do pray, Brer Coon, tell me de news.' "'Mighty quare racket back dar in de woods! Aint got time ter tarry!' [Illustration: BROTHER RABBIT TAKES SOME EXERCISE] "Wid dat, Brer Fox lipt out, he did, en fa'rly split de win'. He aint gone fur twel he meet Brer Wolf. "'Hey, Brer Fox! Stop en res' yo'se'f!' "'Aint got time ter tarry!' "'Who bin want de doctor?' "'No'ne, my Lord! Aint got time ter tarry!' "'Do pray, Brer Fox, good er bad, tell me de news.' "'Mighty kuse fuss back dar in de woods! Aint got time ter tarry!' "Wid dat, Brer Wolf shuck hisse'f loose fum de face er de yeth, en he aint git fur twel he meet Brer B'ar. Brer B'ar he ax, en Brer Wolf make ans'er, en bimeby Brer B'ar he fotch a snort en run'd off; en, bless gracious! 't wa'n't long 'fo' de las' one er de creeturs wuz a-skaddlin' thoo de woods lak de Ole Boy was atter um--en all 'kaze Brer Rabbit year Mr. Man cut tree down. "Dey run'd en dey run'd," Uncle Remus went on, "twel dey come ter Brer Tarrypin house, en dey sorter slack up 'kaze dey done mighty nigh los' der win'. Brer Tarrypin, he up'n ax um wharbouts dey gwine, en dey 'low dey wuz a monst'us tarryfyin' racket back dar in de woods. Brer Tarrypin, he ax w'at she soun' lak. One say he dunno, n'er say he dunno, den dey all say dey dunno. Den Brer Tarrypin, he up'n ax who year dis monst'us racket. One say he dunno, n'er say he dunno, den dey all say dey dunno. Dis make ole Brer Tarrypin laff 'way down in he insides, en he up'n say, sezee: "You all kin run 'long ef you feel skittish,' sezee. 'Atter I cook my brekkus en wash up de dishes, ef I gits win' er any 'spicious racket may be I mought take down my pairsol en foller long atter you,' sezee. "W'en de creeturs come ter make inquirements 'mungs one er n'er 'bout who start de news, hit went right spang back ter Brer Rabbit, but, lo en beholes! Brer Rabbit aint dar, en it tu'n out dat Brer Coon is de man w'at seed 'im las'. Den dey got ter layin' de blame un it on one er n'er, en little mo' en dey'd er fit dar scan'lous, but ole Brer Tarrypin, he up'n 'low dat ef dey want ter git de straight un it, dey better go see Brer Rabbit. "All de creeturs wuz 'gree'ble, en dey put out ter Brer Rabbit house. W'en dey git dar, Brer Rabbit wuz a-settin' cross-legged in de front po'ch winkin' he eye at de sun. Brer B'ar, he speak up: "'W'at make you fool me, Brer Rabbit?' "'Fool who, Brer B'ar?' "'Me, Brer Rabbit, dat 's who.' "'Dish yer de fus' time I seed you dis day, Brer B'ar, en you er mo' dan welcome ter dat.' "Dey all ax 'im en git de same ans'er, en den Brer Coon put in: "'W'at make you fool me, Brer Rabbit?' "'How I fool you, Brer Coon?' "'You make lak dey wuz a big racket, Brer Rabbit.' "'Dey sholy wuz a big racket, Brer Coon.' "'W'at kinder racket, Brer Rabbit?' "'_Ah-yi!_ You oughter ax me dat fus', Brer Coon.' "'I axes you now, Brer Rabbit.' "'Mr. Man cut tree down, Brer Coon.' "Co'se dis make Brer Coon feel like a nat'al-born Slink, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' all de creeturs make der bow ter Brer Rabbit en mosey off home." "Brother Rabbit had the best of it all along," said the little boy, after waiting to see whether there was a sequel to the story. "Oh, he did dat a-way!" exclaimed Uncle Remus. "Brer Rabbit was a mighty man in dem days." XXI WHY BROTHER BEAR HAS NO TAIL "I 'clar' ter gracious, honey," Uncle Remus exclaimed one night, as the little boy ran in, "you sholy aint chaw'd yo' vittles. Hit aint bin no time, skacely, sence de supper-bell rung, en ef you go on dis a-way, you'll des nat'ally pe'sh yo'se'f out." "Oh, I wasn't hungry," said the little boy. "I had something before supper, and I wasn't hungry anyway." The old man looked keenly at the child, and presently he said: "De ins en de outs er dat kinder talk all come ter de same p'int in my min'. Youer bin a-cuttin' up at de table, en Mars John, he tuck'n sont you 'way fum dar, en w'iles he think youer off some'rs a-snifflin' en a-feelin' bad, yer you is a-high-primin' 'roun' des lak you done had mo' supper dan de King er Philanders." Before the little boy could inquire about the King of Philanders he heard his father calling him. He started to go out, but Uncle Remus motioned him back. "Des set right whar you is, honey,--des set right still." Then Uncle Remus went to the door and answered for the child; and a very queer answer it was--one that could be heard half over the plantation: "Mars John, I wish you en Miss Sally be so good ez ter let dat chile 'lone. He down yer cryin' he eyes out, en he aint bodderin' 'long er nobody in de roun' worl'." Uncle Remus stood in the door a moment to see what the reply would be, but he heard none. Thereupon he continued, in the same loud tone: "I aint bin use ter no sich gwines on in Ole Miss time, en I aint gwine git use ter it now. Dat I aint." Presently 'Tildy, the house-girl, brought the little boy his supper, and the girl was no sooner out of hearing than the child swapped it with Uncle Remus for a roasted yam, and the enjoyment of both seemed to be complete. "Uncle Remus," said the little boy, after a while, "you know I wasn't crying just now." "Dat 's so, honey," the old man replied, "but 't would n't er bin long 'fo' you would er bin, kaze Mars John bawl out lak a man w'at got a strop in he han', so w'at de diff'unce?" When they had finished eating, Uncle Remus busied himself in cutting and trimming some sole-leather for future use. His knife was so keen, and the leather fell away from it so smoothly and easily, that the little boy wanted to trim some himself. But to this Uncle Remus would not listen. "'T aint on'y chilluns w'at got de consate er doin' eve'ything dey see yuther folks do. Hit 's grown folks w'at oughter know better," said the old man. "Dat 's des de way Brer B'ar git his tail broke off smick-smack-smoove, en down ter dis day he de funnies'-lookin' creetur w'at wobble on top er dry groun'." Instantly the little boy forgot all about Uncle Remus's sharp knife. "Hit seem lak dat in dem days Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin done gone in cohoots fer ter outdo de t'er creeturs. One time Brer Rabbit tuck'n make a call on Brer Tarrypin, but w'en he git ter Brer Tarrypin house, he year talk fum Miss Tarrypin dat her ole man done gone fer ter spen' de day wid Mr. Mud-Turkle, w'ich dey wuz blood kin. Brer Rabbit he put out atter Brer Tarrypin, en w'en he got ter Mr. Mud-Turkle house, dey all sot up, dey did, en tole tales, en den w'en twelf er'clock come dey had crawfish fer dinner, en dey 'joy deyse'f right erlong. Atter dinner dey went down ter Mr. Mud-Turkle mill-pon', en w'en dey git dar Mr. Mud-Turkle en Brer Tarrypin dey 'muse deyse'f, dey did, wid slidin' fum de top uv a big slantin' rock down inter de water. "I 'speck you moughter seen rocks in de water 'fo' now, whar dey git green en slipp'y," said Uncle Remus. The little boy had not only seen them, but had found them to be very dangerous to walk upon, and the old man continued: "Well, den, dish yer rock wuz mighty slick en mighty slantin'. Mr. Mud-Turkle, he'd crawl ter de top, en tu'n loose, en go a-sailin' down inter de water--_kersplash!_ Ole Brer Tarrypin, he'd foller atter, en slide down inter de water--_kersplash!_ Ole Brer Rabbit, he sot off, he did, en praise um up. "W'iles dey wuz a-gwine on dis a-way, a-havin' der fun, en 'joyin' deyse'f, yer come ole Brer B'ar. He year um laffin' en holl'in', en he hail um. "'Heyo, folks! W'at all dis? Ef my eye aint 'ceive me, dish yer's Brer Rabbit, en Brer Tarrypin, en ole Unk' Tommy Mud-Turkle,' sez Brer B'ar, sezee. "'De same,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en yer we is 'joyin' de day dat passes des lak dey wa'n't no hard times.' "'Well, well, well!' sez ole Brer B'ar, sezee, 'a-slippin' en a-slidin' en makin' free! En w'at de matter wid Brer Rabbit dat he aint j'inin' in?' sezee. "Ole Brer Rabbit he wink at Brer Tarrypin, en Brer Tarrypin he hunch Mr. Mud-Turkle, en den Brer Rabbit he up'n 'low, he did: "'My goodness, Brer B'ar! you can't 'speck a man fer ter slip en slide de whole blessid day, kin you? I done had my fun, en now I'm a-settin' out yer lettin' my cloze dry. Hit 's tu'n en tu'n about wid me en deze gents w'en dey's any fun gwine on,' sezee. "'Maybe Brer B'ar might jine in wid us,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee. [Illustration: WHY BROTHER BEAR HAS NO TAIL] "Brer Rabbit he des holler en laff. "'Shoo!' sezee, 'Brer B'ar foot too big en he tail too long fer ter slide down dat rock,' sezee. "Dis kinder put Brer B'ar on he mettle, en he up'n 'spon', he did: "'Maybe dey is, en maybe dey aint, yit I aint a-feared ter try.' "Wid dat de yuthers tuck'n made way fer 'im, en ole Brer B'ar he git up on de rock, he did, en squot down on he hunkers, en quile he tail und' 'im, en start down. Fus' he go sorter slow, en he grin lak he feel good; den he go sorter peart, en he grin lak he feel bad; den he go mo' pearter, en he grin lak he skeerd; den he strack de slick part, en, gentermens! he swaller de grin en fetch a howl dat moughter bin yeard a mile, en he hit de water lak a chimbly a-fallin'. "You kin gimme denial," Uncle Remus continued after a little pause, "but des ez sho' ez you er settin' dar, w'en Brer B'ar slick'd up en flew down dat rock, he break off he tail right smick-smack-smoove, en mo'n dat, w'en he make his disappear'nce up de big road, Brer Rabbit holler out: "'Brer B'ar!--O Brer B'ar! I year tell dat flaxseed poultices is mighty good fer so' places!' "Yit Brer B'ar aint look back." XXII HOW BROTHER RABBIT FRIGHTENED HIS NEIGHBORS When Uncle Remus was in a good humor he turned the most trifling incidents into excuses for amusing the little boy with his stories. One night while he was hunting for a piece of candle on the shelf that took the place of a mantel over the fireplace, he knocked down a tin plate. It fell upon the hearth with a tremendous clatter. "Dar now!" exclaimed Uncle Remus. "Hit 's a blessin' dat dat ar platter is got mo' backbone dan de common run er crockery, 'kaze 't would er bin bust all ter flinderations long time ago. Dat ar platter is got dents on it w'at Miss Sally put dar w'en she 'uz a little bit er gal. Yet dar 't is, en right dis minnit hit'll hol' mo' vittles dan w'at I got ter put in it. "I lay," the old man continued, leaning his hand against the chimney and gazing at the little boy reflectively,--"I lay ef de creeturs had a bin yer w'iles all dat clatterment gwine on dey'd a lef' bidout tellin' anybody good-bye. All 'ceppin' Brer Rabbit. Bless yo' soul, he'd er stayed fer ter see de fun, des lak he did dat t'er time w'en he skeer um all so. I 'speck I done tole you 'bout dat." "When he got the honey on him and rolled in the leaves?" Uncle Remus thought a moment. "Ef I make no mistakes in my 'membunce, dat wuz de time w'en he call hisse'f de Wull-er-de-Wust." The little boy corroborated Uncle Remus's memory. "Well, den, dish yer wuz n'er time, en he lak ter skeer um plum out'n de settlement. En it all come 'bout 'kaze dey wanter play smarty." "Who wanted to play smarty, Uncle Remus?" asked the child. "Oh, des dem t'er creeturs. Dey wuz allers a-layin' traps fer Brer Rabbit en gittin' cotch in um deyse'f, en dey wuz allers a-pursooin' atter 'im day in en day out. I aint 'nyin' but w'at some er Brer Rabbit pranks wuz mighty ha'sh, but w'y'n't dey let 'im 'lone deyse'f?" Naturally, the little boy was not prepared to meet these arguments, even had their gravity been less impressive, so he said nothing. "In dem days," Uncle Remus went on, "de creeturs wuz same lak folks. Dey had der ups en dey had der downs; dey had der hard times, and dey had der saf' times. Some seasons der craps 'ud be good, en some seasons dey'd be bad. Brer Rabbit, he far'd lak de res' un um. W'at he'd make, dat he'd spen'. One season he tuck'n made a fine chance er goobers, en he 'low, he did, dat ef dey fetch 'im anywhars nigh de money w'at he 'speck dey would, he go ter town en buy de truck w'at needcessity call fer. "He aint no sooner say dat dan ole Miss Rabbit, she vow, she did, dat it be a scannul en a shame ef he don't whirl in en git sevin tin cups fer de chilluns fer ter drink out'n, en sevin tin plates fer 'm fer ter sop out 'n, en a coffee-pot fer de fambly. Brer Rabbit say dat des zackly w'at he gwine do, en he 'low, he did, dat he gwine ter town de comin' We'n'sday." Uncle Remus paused, and indulged in a hearty laugh before he resumed: "Brer Rabbit wa'n't mo'n out'n de gate 'fo' Miss Rabbit, she slap on 'er bonnet, she did, en rush 'cross ter Miss Mink house, en she aint bin dar a minnit 'fo' she up'n tell Miss Mink dat Brer Rabbit done promise ter go ter town We'n'sday comin' en git de chilluns sump'n'. Co'se, w'en Mr. Mink come home, Miss Mink she up'n 'low she want ter know w'at de reason he can't buy sump'n' fer his chilluns same ez Brer Rabbit do fer his'n, en dey quo'll en quo'll des lak folks. Atter dat Miss Mink she kyar de news ter Miss Fox, en den Brer Fox he tuk'n got a rakin' over de coals. Miss Fox she tell Miss Wolf, en Miss Wolf she tell Miss B'ar, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' ev'ybody in dem diggin's know dat Brer Rabbit gwine ter town de comin' We'n'sday fer ter git his chilluns sump'n'; en all de yuther creeturs' chilluns ax der ma w'at de reason der pa can't git _dem_ sump'n'. So dar it went. "Brer Fox, en Brer Wolf, en Brer B'ar, dey make up der mines, dey did, dat ef dey gwine ter ketch up wid Brer Rabbit, dat wuz de time, en dey fix up a plan dat dey'd lay fer Brer Rabbit en nab 'im w'en he come back fum town. Dey tuck'n make all der 'rangerments, en wait fer de day. "Sho' nuff, w'en We'n'sday come, Brer Rabbit e't he brekkus 'fo' sun-up, en put out fer town. He tuck'n got hisse'f a dram, en a plug er terbarker, en a pocket-hankcher, en he got de ole 'oman a coffee-pot, en he got de chillun sevin tin cups en sevin tin plates, en den todes sundown he start back home. He walk 'long, he did, feelin' mighty biggity, but bimeby w'en he git sorter tired, he sot down und' a black-jack tree, en 'gun to fan hisse'f wid one er der platters. "W'iles he doin' dis a little bit er teenchy sap-sucker run up'n down de tree en keep on makin' mighty quare fuss. Atter w'ile Brer Rabbit tuk'n shoo at 'im wid de platter. Seem lak dis make de teenchy little sap-sucker mighty mad, en he rush out on a lim' right over Brer Rabbit, en he sing out: "'_Pilly-pee, pilly-wee! I see w'at he no see! I see, pilly-pee, I see, w'at he no see!_' "He keep on singin' dis, he did, twel Brer Rabbit 'gun ter look 'roun', en he aint no sooner do dis dan he see marks in de san' whar sum un done bin dar 'fo' 'im, en he look little closer en den he see w'at de sap-sucker drivin' at. He scratch his head, Brer Rabbit did, en he 'low ter hisse'f: "'Ah-yi! Yer whar Brer Fox bin settin', en dar de print er he nice bushy tail. Yer whar Brer Wolf bin settin', en dar de print er he fine long tail. Yer whar Brer B'ar bin squattin' on he hunkers, en dar de print w'ich he aint got no tail. Dey er all bin yer, en I lay dey er hidin' out in de big gully down dar in de holler.' "Wid dat, ole man Rab. tuck'n put he truck in de bushes, en den he run 'way 'roun' fer ter see w'at he kin see. Sho' nuff," continued Uncle Remus, with a curious air of elation,--"sho' nuff, w'en Brer Rabbit git over agin de big gully down in de holler, dar dey wuz. Brer Fox, he 'uz on one side er de road, en Brer Wolf 'uz on de t'er side; en ole Brer B'ar he 'uz quiled up in de gully takin' a nap. "Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n peep at um, he did, en he lick he foot en roach back he h'ar, en den hol' his han's 'cross he mouf en laff lak some chilluns does w'en dey t'ink dey er foolin' der ma." "Not me, Uncle Remus--not me!" exclaimed the little boy promptly. "Heyo dar! don't kick 'fo' you er spurred, honey! Brer Rabbit, he seed um all dar, en he tuck'n grin, he did, en den he lit out ter whar he done lef he truck, en w'en he git dar he dance 'roun' en slap hisse'f on de leg, en make all sorts er kuse motions. Den he go ter wuk en tu'n de coffee-pot upside down en stick it on he head; den he run he gallus thoo de han'les er de cups, en sling um crosst he shoulder; den he 'vide de platters, some in one han' en some in de yuther. Atter he git good en ready, he crope ter de top er de hill, he did, en tuck a runnin' start, en flew down like a harrycane--_rickety, rackety, slambang!_" The little boy clapped his hands enthusiastically. "Bless yo' soul, dem creeturs aint year no fuss lak dat, en dey aint seed no man w'at look lak Brer Rabbit do, wid de coffee-pot on he head, en de cups a-rattlin' on he gallus, en de platters a-wavin' en a-shinin' in de a'r. "Now, mine you, ole Brer B'ar wuz layin' off up de gully takin' a nap, en de fuss skeer 'im so bad dat he make a break en run over Brer Fox. He rush out in de road, he did, en w'en he see de sight, he whirl 'roun' en run over Brer Wolf. Wid der scramblin' en der scufflin', Brer Rabbit got right on um 'fo' dey kin git away. He holler out, he did: "'Gimme room! Tu'n me loose! I'm ole man Spewter-Splutter wid long claws, en scales on my back! I'm snaggle-toofed en double-j'inted! Gimme room!' "Eve'y time he'd fetch a whoop, he'd rattle de cups en slap de platters tergedder--_rickety, rackety, slambang!_ En I let you know w'en dem creeturs got dey lim's tergedder dey split de win', dey did dat. Ole Brer B'ar, he struck a stump w'at stan' in de way, en I aint gwine tell you how he to' it up 'kaze you won't b'leeve me, but de nex' mawnin' Brer Rabbit en his chilluns went back dar, dey did, en dey got nuff splinters fer ter make um kin'lin' wood all de winter. Yasser! Des ez sho' ez I'm a-settin' by dish yer h'ath." XXIII MR. MAN HAS SOME MEAT The little boy sat watching Uncle Remus sharpen his shoe-knife. The old man's head moved in sympathy with his hands, and he mumbled fragments of a song. Occasionally he would feel of the edge of the blade with his thumb, and then begin to sharpen it again. The comical appearance of the venerable darkey finally had its effect upon the child, for suddenly he broke into a hearty peal of laughter; whereupon Uncle Remus stopped shaking his head and singing his mumbly-song, and assumed a very dignified attitude. Then he drew a long, deep breath, and said: "'W'en folks git ole en stricken wid de palsy, dey mus' 'speck ter be laff'd at. Goodness knows, I bin use ter dat sence de day my whiskers 'gun to bleach." "Why, I was n't laughing at you, Uncle Remus; I declare I was n't," cried the little boy. "I thought maybe you might be doing your head like Brother Rabbit did when he was fixing to cut his meat." Uncle Remus's seriousness was immediately driven away by a broad and appreciative grin. "Now, dat de way ter talk, honey, en I boun' you wa'n't fur wrong, n'er, 'kaze fer all dey'll tell you dat Brer Rabbit make he livin' 'long er nibblin' at grass en greens, hit 't wa'n't dat a-way in dem days, 'kaze I got in my 'membunce right now de 'casion whar Brer Rabbit is tuck'n e't meat." The little boy had learned that it was not best to make any display of impatience, and so he waited quietly while Uncle Remus busied himself with arranging the tools on his shoe-bench. Presently the old man began: "Hit so happen dat one day Brer Rabbit meet up wid Brer Fox, en w'en dey 'quire atter der corporosity, dey fine out dat bofe un um mighty po'ly. Brer Fox, he 'low, he do, dat he monst'us hongry, en Brer Rabbit he 'spon' dat he got a mighty hankerin' atter vittles hisse'f. Bimeby dey look up de big road, en dey see Mr. Man comin' 'long wid a great big hunk er beef und' he arm. Brer Fox he up 'n 'low, he did, dat he lak mighty well fer ter git a tas'e er dat, en Brer Rabbit he 'low dat de sight er dat nice meat all lineded wid taller is nuff fer ter run a body 'stracted. "Mr. Man he come en he come 'long. Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox dey look en dey look at 'im. Dey wink der eye en der mouf water. Brer Rabbit he 'low he bleedz ter git some er dat meat. Brer Fox he 'spon', he did, dat it look mighty fur off ter him. Den Brer Rabbit tell Brer Fox fer ter foller 'long atter 'im in hailin' distuns, en wid dat he put out, he did, en 't wa'nt long 'fo' he kotch up wid Mr. Man. "Dey pass de time er day, en den dey went joggin' 'long de road same lak dey 'uz gwine 'pun a journey. Brer Rabbit he keep on snuffin' de a'r. Mr. Man up'n ax 'im is he got a bad cole, en Brer Rabbit 'spon' dat he smell sump'n' w'ich it don't smell like ripe peaches. Bimeby, Brer Rabbit 'gun to hoi' he nose, he did, en atter w'ile he sing out: "'Gracious en de goodness, Mr. Man! hit 's dat meat er yone. _Phew!_ Whar'bouts is you pick up dat meat at?' "Dis make Mr. Man feel sorter 'shame' hisse'f, en ter make marters wuss, yer come a great big green fly a-zoonin' 'roun'. Brer Rabbit he git way off on t'er side er de road, en he keep on hol'in' he nose. Mr. Man, he look sorter sheepish, he did, en dey aint gone fur 'fo' he put de meat down on de side er de road, en he tuck'n ax Brer Rabbit w'at dey gwine do 'bout it. Brer Rabbit he 'low, he did: "'I year tell in my time dat ef you take'n drag a piece er meat thoo' de dus' hit'll fetch back hits freshness. I aint no superspicious man myse'f,' sezee, 'en I aint got no 'speunce wid no sech doin's, but dem w'at tell me say dey done try it. Yit I knows dis,' says Brer Rabbit, sezee,--'I knows dat 't aint gwine do no harm, 'kaze de grit w'at gits on de meat kin be wash off,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "'I aint got no string,' sez Mr. Man, sezee. "Brer Rabbit laff hearty, but still he hol' he nose. "'Time you bin in de bushes long ez I is, you won't miss strings,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Wid dat Brer Rabbit lipt out, en he aint gone long 'fo' he come hoppin' back wid a whole passel er bamboo vines all tied tergedder. Mr. Man, he 'low: "'Dat line mighty long.' "Brer Rabbit he 'low: "'Tooby sho', you want de win' fer ter git 'twix' you en dat meat.' "Den Mr. Man tuck'n tied de bamboo line ter de meat. Brer Rabbit he broke off a 'simmon bush, he did, en 'low dat he'd stay behime en keep de flies off. Mr. Man he go on befo' en drag de meat, en Brer Rabbit he stay behime, he did, en take keer un it." Here Uncle Remus was compelled to pause and laugh before he could proceed with the story. "En he is take keer un it, mon--dat he is. He tuck'n git 'im a rock, en w'iles Mr. Man gwine 'long bidout lookin' back, he ondo de meat en tie de rock ter de bamboo line, en w'en Brer Fox foller on, sho' nuff, dar lay de meat. Mr. Man, he drug de rock, he did, en Brer Rabbit he keep de flies off, twel atter dey gone on right smart piece, en den w'en Mr. Man look 'roun', whar wuz ole man Rabbit? "Bless yo' soul, Brer Rabbit done gone back en jine Brer Fox, en he wuz des in time, at dat, 'kaze little mo' en Brer Fox would 'a' done bin outer sight en yearin'. En so dat de way Brer Rabbit git Mr. Man meat." The little boy reflected a little, and then said: "Uncle Remus, was n't that stealing?" "Well, I tell you 'bout dat, honey," responded the old man, with the air of one who is willing to compromise. "In dem days de creeturs bleedz ter look out fer deyse'f, mo' speshually dem w'at aint got hawn en huff. Brer Rabbit aint got no hawn en huff, en he bleedz ter be he own lawyer." Just then the little boy heard his father's buggy rattling down the avenue, and he ran out into the darkness to meet it. After he was gone, Uncle Remus sat a long time rubbing his hands and looking serious. Finally he leaned back in his chair, and exclaimed: "Dat little chap gittin' too much fer ole Remus--dat he is!" XXIV HOW BROTHER RABBIT GOT THE MEAT When the little boy next visited Uncle Remus the cabin was dark and empty and the door shut. The old man was gone. He was absent for several nights, but at last one night the little boy saw a welcome light in the cabin, and he made haste to pay Uncle Remus a visit. He was full of questions: "Goodness, Uncle Remus! Where in the world have you been? I thought you were gone for good. Mamma said she reckoned the treatment here did n't suit you, and you had gone off to get some of your town friends to hire you." "Is Miss Sally tell you dat, honey? Well, ef she aint de beatenes' w'ite 'oman dis side er kingdom come, you kin des shoot me. Miss Sally tuck'n writ me a pass wid her own han's fer ter go see some er my kin down dar in de Ashbank settlement. Yo' mammy quare 'oman, honey, sho'! "En yit, w'at de good er my stayin' yer? T'er night, I aint mo'n git good en started 'fo' you er up en gone, en I aint seed ha'r ner hide un you sence. W'en I see you do dat, I 'low ter myse'f dat hit 's des 'bout time fer ole man Remus fer ter pack up he duds en go hunt comp'ny some'r's else." "Well, Uncle Remus," exclaimed the little boy, in a tone of expostulation, "did n't Brother Fox get the meat, and was n't that the end of the story?" Uncle Remus started to laugh, but he changed his mind so suddenly that the little boy was convulsed. The old man groaned and looked at the rafters with a curious air of disinterestedness. After a while he went on with great seriousness: "I dunner w'at kinder idee folks got 'bout Brer Rabbit nohow, dat I don't. S'pozen you lays de plans so some yuther chap kin git a big hunk er goody, is you gwine ter set off some'r's en see 'im make way wid it?" "What kind of goody, Uncle Remus?" "Dish yer kinder goody w'at town folks keeps. Mint draps and reezins, en sweet doin's lak Miss Sally keep und' lock en key. Well, den, if you gits some er dat, er may be some yuther kinder goody, w'ich I wish 't wuz yer right dis blessid minnit, is you gwine ter set quile up in dat cheer en let n'er chap run off wid it? Dat you aint--dat you aint!" "Oh, I know!" exclaimed the little boy. "Brother Rabbit went back and made Brother Fox give him his part of the meat." "Des lak I tell you, honey; dey wa'n't no man 'mungs de creeturs w'at kin stan' right flat-footed en wuk he min' quick lak Brer Rabbit. He tuck'n tie de rock on de string, stidder de meat, en he pursue long atter it, he did, twel Mr. Man tu'n a ben' in de road, en den Brer Rabbit, he des lit out fum dar--_terbuckity-buckity, buck-buck-buckity!_ en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he tuck'n kotch up wid Brer Fox. Dey tuck de meat, dey did, en kyar'd it way off in de woods, en laid it down on a clean place on de groun'. "Dey laid it down, dey did," continued Uncle Remus, drawing his chair up closer to the little boy, "en den Brer Fox 'low dey better sample it, en Brer Rabbit he 'gree. Wid dat, Brer Fox he tuck'n gnyaw off a hunk, en he shut bofe eyes, he did, en he chaw en chaw, en tas'e en tas'e, en chaw en tas'e. Brer Rabbit, he watch 'im, but Brer Fox, he keep bofe eyes shot, en he chaw en tas'e, en tas'e en chaw." Uncle Remus not only furnished a pantomime accompaniment to this recital by shutting his eyes and pretending to taste, but he lowered his voice to a pitch of tragical significance in reporting the dialogue that ensued: "Den Brer Fox smack he mouf en look at de meat mo' closeter, en up'n 'low: "'Brer Rabbit, _hit 's lam'!_' "'_No_, Brer Fox! _sho'ly not!_' "'Brer Rabbit, _hit 's lam'!_' "'Brer Fox, _tooby sho'ly not!_' "Den Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n gnyaw off a hunk, en he shot bofe eyes, en chaw en tas'e, en tas'e en chaw. Den he smack he mouf, en up'n 'low: "'Brer Fox, _hit 's shote!_' "'Brer Rabbit, you foolin' me!' "'Brer Fox, _I vow hit 's shote!_' "'Brer Rabbit, hit des _can't be!_' "'Brer Fox, _hit sho'ly is!_' "Dey tas'e en dey 'spute, en dey 'spute en dey tas'e. Atter w'ile, Brer Rabbit make lak he want some water, en he rush off in de bushes, en d'reckly yer he come back wipin' he mouf en cle'rin' up he th'oat. Den Brer Fox he want some water sho' nuff: "'Brer Rabbit, whar you fin' de spring?' "'Cross de road, en down de hill en up de big gully.' "Brer Fox, he lope off, he did, en atter he gone Brer Rabbit totch he year wid he behime foot lak he flippin' 'im good-bye. Brer Fox, he cross de road en rush down de hill, he did, yit he aint fin' no big gully. He keep on gwine twel he fin' de big gully, yit he aint fin' no spring. "W'iles all dish yer gwine on, Brer Rabbit he tuck'n grabble a hole in de groun', he did, en in dat hole he hid de meat. Atter he git it good en hid, he tuck'n cut 'im a long keen hick'ry, en atter so long a time, w'en he year Brer Fox comin' back, he got in a clump er bushes, en tuck dat hick'ry en let in on a saplin', en ev'y time he hit de saplin', he 'ud squall out, Brer Rabbit would, des lak de patter-rollers had 'im: "_Pow, pow!_ 'Oh, pray, Mr. Man!'--_Pow, pow!_ 'Oh, pray, Mr. Man!'--_Chippy-row, pow!_ 'Oh, Lordy, Mr. Man! Brer Fox tuck yo' meat!'--_Pow!_ 'Oh, pray, Mr. Man! Brer Fox tuck yo' meat!'" Every time Uncle Remus said "_Pow!_" he struck himself in the palm of his hand with a shoe-sole by way of illustration. "Co'se," he went on, "w'en Brer Fox year dis kinder doin's, he fotch up, he did, en lissen, en ev'y time he year de hick'ry come down _pow!_ he tuck'n grin en 'low ter hisse'f, 'Ah-yi! you fool me 'bout de water! Ah-yi! you fool me 'bout de water!' "Atter so long a time, de racket sorter die out, en seem lak Mr. Man wuz draggin' Brer Rabbit off. Dis make Brer Fox feel mighty skittish. Bimeby Brer Rabbit come a-cally-hootin' back des a-hollerin': "'Run, Brer Fox, run! Mr. Man say he gwine to kyar dat meat up de road ter whar he son is, en den he's a-comin' back atter you. Run, Brer Fox, run!' "En I let you know," said Uncle Remus, leaning back and laughing to see the little boy laugh, "I let you know Brer Fox got mighty skace in dat neighborhood!" XXV AFRICAN JACK Usually, the little boy, who regarded himself as Uncle Remus's partner, was not at all pleased when he found the old man entertaining, in his simple way, any of his colored friends; but he was secretly delighted when he called one night and found Daddy Jack sitting by Uncle Remus's hearth. Daddy Jack was an object of curiosity to older people than the little boy. He was a genuine African, and for that reason he was known as African Jack, though the child had been taught to call him Daddy Jack. He was brought to Georgia in a slave-ship when he was about twenty years old, and remained upon one of the sea-islands for several years. Finally, he fell into the hands of the family of which Uncle Remus's little partner was the youngest representative, and became the trusted foreman of a plantation, in the southern part of Georgia, known as the Walthall Place. Once every year he was in the habit of visiting the Home Place in Middle Georgia, and it was during one of these annual visits that the little boy found him in Uncle Remus's cabin. Daddy Jack appeared to be quite a hundred years old, but he was probably not more than eighty. He was a little, dried-up old man, whose weazened, dwarfish appearance, while it was calculated to inspire awe in the minds of the superstitious, was not without its pathetic suggestions. The child had been told that the old African was a wizard, a conjurer, and a snake-charmer; but he was not afraid, for, in any event,--conjuration, witchcraft, or what not,--he was assured of the protection of Uncle Remus. As the little boy entered the cabin Uncle Remus smiled and nodded pleasantly, and made a place for him on a little stool upon which had been piled the odds and ends of work. Daddy Jack paid no attention to the child; his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. "Go en shake han's, honey, en tell Daddy Jack howdy. He lak good chilluns." Then to Daddy Jack: "Brer Jack, dish yer de chap w'at I bin tellin' you 'bout." The little boy did as he was bid, but Daddy Jack grunted ungraciously and made no response to the salutation. He was evidently not fond of children. Uncle Remus glanced curiously at the dwarfed and withered figure, and spoke a little more emphatically: "Brer Jack, ef you take good look at dis chap, I lay you'll see mo'n you speck ter see. You'll see sump'n' dat'll make you grunt wusser dan you grunted deze many long year. Go up dar, honey, whar Daddy Jack kin see you." The child went shyly up to the old African and stood at his knee. The sorrows and perplexities of nearly a hundred years lay between them; and now, as always, the baffled eyes of age gazed into the Sphinx-like face of youth, as if by this means to unravel the mysteries of the past and solve the problems of the future. Daddy Jack took the plump, rosy hands of the little boy in his black, withered ones, and gazed into his face so long and steadily, and with such curious earnestness, that the child did n't know whether to laugh or cry. Presently the old African flung his hands to his head, and rocked his body from side to side, moaning and mumbling, and talking to himself, while the tears ran down his face like rain. "Ole Missy! Ole Missy! 'E come back! I bin shum dey-dey, I bin shum de night! I bin yeddy 'e v'ice, I bin yeddy de sign!" "Ah-yi!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, into whose arms the little boy had fled; "I des know'd dat 'ud fetch 'im. Hit 's bin manys de long days sence Brer Jack seed Ole Miss, yit ef he aint seed 'er dat whack, den I aint settin' yer." After a while Daddy Jack ceased his rocking, and his moaning, and his crying, and sat gazing wistfully into the fireplace. Whatever he saw there fixed his attention, for Uncle Remus spoke to him several times without receiving a response. Presently, however, Daddy Jack exclaimed with characteristic but laughable irrelevance: "I no lakky dem gal wut is bin-a stan' pidjin-toe. Wun 'e fetch pail er water on 'e head, water churray, churray. I no lakky dem gal wut tie 'e wool up wit' string; mekky him stan' ugly fer true. I bin ahx da' 'Tildy gal fer marry me, un 'e no crack 'im bre't' fer mek answer 'cep' 'e bre'k out un lahf by me werry face. Da' gal do holler un lahf un stomp 'e fut dey-dey, un dun I shum done gone pidjin-toe. Oona bin know da' 'Tildy gal?" "I bin a-knowin' dat gal," said Uncle Remus, grimly regarding the old African; "I bin a-knowin' dat gal now gwine on sence she 'uz knee-high ter one er deze yer puddle-ducks; en I bin noticin' lately dat she mighty likely nigger." "Enty!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, enthusiastically, "I did bin mek up ter da' lilly gal troo t'ick un t'in. I bin fetch 'im one fine 'possum, un mo' ez one, two, free peck-a taty, un bumbye I bin fetch 'im one bag pop-co'n. Wun I bin do dat, I is fley 'roun' da' lilly gal so long tam, un I yeddy 'im talk wit' turrer gal. 'E do say: 'Daddy Jack fine ole man fer true.' Dun I is bin talk: 'Oona no call-a me Daddy Jack wun dem preacher man come fer marry we.' Dun da' lilly gal t'row 'e head back; 'e squeal lak filly in canebrake." The little boy understood this rapidly spoken lingo perfectly well, but he would have laughed anyhow, for there was more than a suggestion of the comic in the shrewd seriousness that seemed to focus itself in Daddy Jack's pinched and wrinkled face. "She tuck de truck w'at you tuck'n fotch 'er," said Uncle Remus, with the air of one carefully and deliberately laying the basis of a judicial opinion, "en den w'en you sail in en talk bizness, den she up en gun you de flat un 'er foot en de back un 'er han', en den, atter dat, she tuck'n laff en make spote un you." "Enty!" assented Daddy Jack, admiringly. "Well, den, Brer Jack, youer mighty ole, en yit hit seem lak youer mighty young; kaze a man w'at aint got no mo' speunce wid wimmen folks dan w'at you is neenter creep 'roun' yer callin' deyse'f ole. Dem kinder folks aint ole nuff, let 'lone bein' too ole. W'en de gal tuck'n laff, Brer Jack, w'at 'uz yo' nex' move?" demanded Uncle Remus, looking down upon the shrivelled old man with an air of superiority. Daddy Jack shut his shrewd little eyes tightly and held them so, as if by that means to recall all the details of the flirtation. Then he said: "Da' lilly gal is bin tek dem t'ing. 'E is bin say, 'T'anky, t'anky.' Him eaty da' 'possum, him eaty da' pop-co'n, him roas'n da' taty. 'E do say, 'T'anky, t'anky!' Wun I talk marry, 'e is bin ris 'e v'ice un squeal lak lilly pig stuck in 'e t'roat. 'E do holler: 'Hi, Daddy Jack! wut is noung gal gwan do wit' so ole man lak dis?' Un I is bin say: 'Wut noung gal gwan do wit' ole Chris'mus' cep' 'e do 'joy 'ese'f?' Un da' lil gal 'e do lahff un flut 'ese'f way fum dey-dey." "I know'd a nigger one time," said Uncle Remus, after pondering a moment, "w'at tuck a notion dat he want a bait er 'simmons, en de mo' w'at de notion tuck 'im de mo' w'at he want um, en bimeby, hit look lak he des nat'ally erbleedz ter have um. He want de 'simmons, en dar dey is in de tree. He mouf water, en dar hang de 'simmons. Now, den, w'at do dat nigger do? W'en you en me en dish yer chile yer wants 'simmons, we goes out en shakes de tree, en ef deyer good en ripe, down dey comes, en ef deyer good en green, dar dey stays. But dish yer yuther nigger, he too smart fer dat. He des tuck'n tuck he stan' und' de tree, en he open he mouf, he did, en wait fer de 'simmons fer ter drap in dar. Dey aint none drap in yit," continued Uncle Remus, gently knocking the cold ashes out of his pipe; "en w'at's mo', dey aint none gwine ter drap in dar. Dat des 'zackly de way wid Brer Jack yer, 'bout marryin'; he stan' dar, he do, en he hol' bofe han's wide open en he 'speck de gal gwine ter drap right spang in um. Man want gal, he des got ter grab 'er--dat 's w'at. Dey may squall en dey may flutter, but flutter'n' en squallin' aint done no damage yit ez I knows un, en 't aint gwine ter. Young chaps kin make great 'miration 'bout gals, but w'en dey gits ole ez I is, dey ull know dat folks is folks, en w'en it come ter bein' folks, de wimmen ain gut none de 'vantage er de men. Now dat 's des de plain up en down tale I'm a-tellin' un you." This deliverance from so respectable an authority seemed to please Daddy Jack immensely. He rubbed his withered hands together, smacked his lips and chuckled. After a few restless movements he got up and went shuffling to the door, his quick, short steps causing Uncle Remus to remark: "De gal w'at git ole Brer Jack 'ull git a natchul pacer, sho'. He move mo' one-sideder dan ole Zip Coon, w'ich he rack up de branch all night long wid he nose p'int lak he gwine 'cross." While the little boy was endeavoring to get Uncle Remus to explain the nature of Daddy Jack's grievances, muffled laughter was heard outside, and almost immediately 'Tildy rushed in the door. 'Tildy flung herself upon the floor and rolled and laughed until, apparently, she could laugh no more. Then she seemed to grow severely angry. She arose from the floor and flopped herself down in a chair, and glared at Uncle Remus with indignation in her eyes. As soon as she could control her inflamed feelings, she cried: "W'at is I done ter you, Unk' Remus? 'Fo' de Lord, ef anybody wuz ter come en tole me dat you gwine ter put de Ole Boy in dat ole Affikin nigger head, I would n't er b'leeved um--dat I would n't. Unk' Remus, w'at is I done ter you?" Uncle Remus made no direct response; but he leaned over, reached out his hand, and picked up an unfinished axe-helve that stood in the corner. Then he took the little boy by the arm, and pushed him out of the way, saying in his gentlest and most persuasive tone: "Stan' sorter 'roun' dar, honey, 'kaze w'en de splinters 'gin ter fly, I want you ter be out'n de way. Miss Sally never gimme 'er fergivance in de roun' worl' ef you 'uz ter git hurted on account er de frazzlin' er dish yer piece er timber." Uncle Remus's movements and remarks had a wonderful effect on 'Tildy. Her anger disappeared, her eyes lost their malignant expression, and her voice fell to a conversational tone. "Now, Unk' Remus, you ought n't ter do me dat a-way, 'kaze I aint done nothin' ter you. I 'uz settin' up yon' in Aunt Tempy house, des now, runnin' on wid Riah, en yer come dat ole Affikin Jack en say you say he kin marry me ef he ketch me, en he try ter put he arm 'roun' me en kiss me." 'Tildy tossed her head and puckered her mouth at the bare remembrance of it. "W'at wud did you gin Brer Jack?" inquired Uncle Remus, not without asperity. "W'at I gwine tell him?" exclaimed 'Tildy disdainfully. "I des tuck'n up en tole 'im he foolin' wid de wrong nigger." 'Tildy would have continued her narration, but just at that moment the shuffling of feet was heard outside, and Daddy Jack came in, puffing and blowing and smiling. Evidently he had been hunting for 'Tildy in every house in the negro quarter. "Hi!" he exclaimed, "lil gal, 'e bin skeet sem lak ma'sh hen. 'E no run no mo'." "Pick 'er up, Brer Jack," exclaimed Uncle Remus; "she's yone." 'Tildy was angry as well as frightened. She would have fled, but Daddy Jack stood near the door. "Look yer, nigger man!" she exclaimed, "ef you come slobbun 'roun' me, I'll take one er deze yer dog-iüns en brain you wid it. I aint gwine ter have no web-foot nigger follerin' atter me. Now you des come!--I aint feard er yo' cunjun. Unk' Remus, ef you got any intruss in dat ole Affikin ape, you better make 'im lemme 'lone. G'way fum yer now!" All this time Daddy Jack was slowly approaching 'Tildy, bowing and smiling, and looking quite dandified, as Uncle Remus afterward said. Just as the old African was about to lay hands upon 'Tildy, she made a rush for the door. The movement was so unexpected that Daddy Jack was upset. He fell upon Uncle Remus's shoe-bench, and then rolled off on the floor, where he lay clutching at the air, and talking so rapidly that nobody could understand a word he said. Uncle Remus lifted him to his feet, with much dignity, and it soon became apparent that he was neither hurt nor angry. The little boy laughed immoderately, and he was still laughing when 'Tildy put her head in the door and exclaimed: "Unk' Remus, I aint kilt dat ole nigger, is I? 'Kaze ef I got ter go ter de gallus, I want to go dar fer sump'n' n'er bigger'n dat." Uncle Remus disdained to make any reply, but Daddy Jack chuckled and patted himself on the knee as he cried: "Come 'long, lilly gal! come 'long! I no mad. I fall down dey fer laff. Come 'long, lilly gal, come 'long." 'Tildy went on laughing loudly and talking to herself. After awhile Uncle Remus said: "Honey, I 'speck Miss Sally lookin' und' de bed en axin' whar you is. You better leak out fum yer now, en by dis time termorrer night I'll git Brer Jack all primed up, en he'll whirl in en tell you a tale." Daddy Jack nodded assent, and the little boy ran laughing to the "big house." XXVI WHY THE ALLIGATOR'S BACK IS ROUGH The night after the violent flirtation between Daddy Jack and 'Tildy, the latter coaxed and bribed the little boy to wait until she had finished her work about the house. After she had set things to rights in the dining-room and elsewhere, she took the child by the hand, and together they went to Uncle Remus's cabin. The old man was making a door-mat of shucks and grass and white-oak splits, and Daddy Jack was dozing in the corner. "W'at I tell you, Brer Jack?" said Uncle Remus, as 'Tildy came in. "Dat gal atter you, mon!" "Fer de Lord sake, Unk' Remus, don't start dat ole nigger. I done promise Miss Sally dat I won't kill 'im, en I like ter be good ez my word; but ef he come foolin' longer me I'm des nat'ally gwine ter onj'int 'im. Now you year me say de word." But Daddy Jack made no demonstration. He sat with his eyes closed, and paid no attention to 'Tildy. After awhile the little boy grew restless, and presently he said: "Daddy Jack, you know you promised to tell me a story to-night." "He wukkin' wid it now, honey," said Uncle Remus, soothingly. "Brer Jack," he continued, "wa'n't dey sump'n' n'er 'bout ole man Yalligater?" "Hi!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, arousing himself, "'e 'bout B'er 'Gater fer true. Oona no bin see da' B'er 'Gater?" The child had seen one, but it was such a very little one he hardly knew whether to claim an acquaintance with Daddy Jack's 'Gater. "Dem all sem," continued Daddy Jack. "Big mout', pop-eye, walk on 'e belly; 'e is bin got bump, bump, bump 'pon 'e bahk, bump, bump, bump 'pon 'e tail. 'E dife 'neat' de water, 'e do lif 'pon de lan'. "One tam Dog is bin run B'er Rabbit, tel 'e do git tire; da' Dog is bin run 'im tel him ent mos' hab no bre't' in 'e body; 'e hide 'ese'f by de crik side. 'E come close 'pon B'er 'Gater, en B'er 'Gater, 'e do say: "'Ki, B'er Rabbit! wut dis is mek you blow so? Wut mekky you' bre't' come so?' "'Eh-eh! B'er 'Gater, I hab bin come 'pon trouble. Dog, 'e do run un-a run me.' "'Wey you no fetch 'im 'long, B'er Rabbit? I is bin git fat on all da' trouble lak dem. I proud fer yeddy Dog bark, ef 'e is bin fetch-a me trouble lak dem.' "'Wait, B'er 'Gater! Trouble come bisitin' wey you lif; 'e mekky you' side puff; 'e mekky you' bre't' come so.' "'Gater, he do flup 'e tail un 'tretch 'ese'f, un lahff. 'E say: "'I lak fer see dem trouble. Nuddin' no bodder me. I ketch-a dem swimp, I ketch-a dem crahb, I mekky my bed wey de sun shiün hot, un I do 'joy mese'f. I proud fer see dem trouble.' "''E come 'pon you, B'er 'Gater, wun you bin hab you' eye shed; 'e come 'pon you fum de turrer side. Ef 'e no come 'pon you in da' crik, dun 'e come 'pon you in da' broom-grass.' "'Dun I shekky um by de han', B'er Rabbit; I ahx um howdy.' "'Eh-eh, B'er 'Gater! you bin-a lahff at me; you no lahff wun dem trouble come. Dem trouble bin ketch-a you yit.'" Daddy Jack paused to wipe his face. He had reported the dialogue between Brother Rabbit and Brother Alligator with considerable animation, and had illustrated it as he went along with many curious inflections of the voice, and many queer gestures of head and hands impossible to describe here, but which added picturesqueness to the story. After awhile he went on: "B'er Rabbit, 'e do blow un 'e do ketch urn bre't'. 'E pit one year wey Dog is bin-a bark; 'e pit one eye 'pon B'er 'Gater. 'E lissen, 'e look; 'e look, 'e lissen. 'E no yeddy Dog, un 'e comforts come back. Bumbye B'er 'Gater, 'e come drowsy; 'e do nod, nod, un 'e head sway down, tel ma'sh-grass tickle 'e nose, un 'e do cough sem lak 'e teer up da' crik by da' root. 'E no lak dis place fer sleep at, un 'e is crawl troo da' ma'sh 'pon dry lan'; 'e is mek fer da' broom-grass fiel'. 'E mek 'e bed wid 'e long tail, un 'e is 'tretch 'ese'f out at 'e lenk. 'E is shed 'e y-eye, un opun 'e mout', un tek 'e nap. "B'er Rabbit, 'e do hol' 'e y-eye 'pon B'er 'Gater. Him talk no wud; him wallup 'e cud; him stan' still. B'er 'Gater, 'e do tek 'e nap; B'er Rabbit 'e do watch. Bum-bye, B'er 'Gater bre't', 'e do come _loud_; 'e is bin sno' _hard!_ 'E dream lilly dream; 'e wuk 'e fut un shek 'e tail in 'e dream. B'er Rabbit wink 'e y-eye, un 'e do watch. B'er 'Gater, he do leaf 'e dream bahine, un 'e sleep soun'. B'er Rabbit watch lil, wait lil. Bumbye, 'e do go wey fier bu'n in da' stump, un 'e is fetch some. 'E say, 'Dis day I is mek you know dem trouble; I is mek you know dem well.' 'E hop 'roun' dey-dey, un 'e do light da' broom-grass; 'e bu'n, bu'n--bu'n, bu'n; 'e do bu'n smaht. "B'er 'Gater, 'e is dream some mo' lilly dream. 'E do wuk 'e fut, 'e do shek 'e tail. Broom-grass bu'n, bu'n; B'er 'Gater dream. 'E dream da' sun is shiün' hot; 'e wom 'e back, 'e wom 'e belly; 'e wuk 'e fut, 'e shek 'e tail. Broom-grass bu'n high, 'e bu'n low; 'e bu'n smaht, 'e bu'n hot. Bumbye, B'er 'Gater is wek fum 'e dream; 'e smell-a da' smoke, 'e feel-a da' fier. 'E run dis way, 'e run turrer way; no diffran' wey 'e is run, dey da' smoke, dey da' fier. _Bu'n, bu'n, bu'n!_ B'er 'Gater lash 'e tail, un grine 'e toof. Bumbye, 'e do roll un holler: "'Trouble, trouble, trouble! _Trouble, trouble!_' [Illustration: WHY THE ALLIGATOR'S BACK IS ROUGH] "B'er Rabbit, 'e is stan' pas' da' fier, un 'e do say: "'Ki! B'er 'Gater! Wey you fer l'arn-a dis talk 'bout dem trouble?' "B'er 'Gater, 'e lash 'e tail, 'e fair teer da' ye't,[24] un 'e do holler: "'Oh, ma Lord! Trouble! _Trouble, trouble, trouble!_' "'Shekky um by de han', B'er 'Gater. Ahx um howdy!' "'Ow, ma Lord! _Trouble, trouble, trouble!_' "'Lahff wit' dem trouble, B'er 'Gater, lahff wit' dem! Ahx dem is dey he'lt' bin well! You bin-a cry fer dey 'quaintun',[25] B'er 'Gater; now you mus' beer wit' dem trouble!' "B'er 'Gater come so mad, 'e mek dash troo da' broom-grass; 'e fair teer um down. 'E bin scatter da' fier wide 'part, un 'e do run un dife in da' crik fer squinch da' fier 'pon 'e bahk. 'E bahk swivel, 'e tail swivel wit' da' fier, un fum dat dey is bin stan' so. Bump, bump 'pon 'e tail; bump, bump 'pon 'e bahk, wey da' fier bu'n." "Hit 's des lak Brer Jack tell you, honey," said Uncle Remus, as Daddy Jack closed his eyes and relapsed into silence. "I done seed um wid my own eyes. En deyer mighty kuse creeturs, mon. Dey back is all ruffed up en down ter dis day en time, en mo'n dat, you aint gwineter ketch Brer Rabbit rackin' 'roun' whar de Yallergaters is. En de Yallergaters deyse'f, w'en dey years any crackin' en rattlin' gwine on in de bushes, dey des makes a break fer de creek en splunges in." "Enty!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, with momentary enthusiasm. "'E do tu'n go da' bahnk, un dife 'neat' da' crik. 'E bin so wom wit' da' fier, 'e mek de crik go si-z-z-z!" Here Daddy Jack looked around and smiled. His glance fell on 'Tildy, and he seemed suddenly to remember that he had failed to be as polite as circumstances demanded. "Come-a set nex' em, lilly gal. I gwan tell you one tale." "Come 'long, Pinx," said 'Tildy, tossing her head disdainfully, and taking the little boy by the hand. "Come 'long, Pinx; we better be gwine. I done say I won't kill dat ole nigger man. Yit ef he start atter me dis blessid night, I lay I roust de whole plantation. Come on, honey; less go." The little boy was not anxious to go, but Uncle Remus seconded 'Tildy's suggestion. "Better let dat gal mosey 'long, honey, 'kaze she mout start in fer ter cut up some 'er capers in yer, en I hate mighty bad ter bus' up dis yer axe-helve, w'ich I'm in needs un it eve'y hour er de day." Whereupon the two old negroes were left sitting by the hearth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [24] Tear the earth. [25] Acquaintance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXVII BROTHER WOLF SAYS GRACE 'Tildy, the house-girl, made such a terrible report of the carryings on of Daddy Jack that the little boy's mother thought it prudent not to allow him to visit Uncle Remus so often. The child amused himself as best he could for several nights, but his play-things and picture-books finally lost their interest. He cried so hard to be allowed to go to see Uncle Remus that his mother placed him under the care of Aunt Tempy,--a woman of large authority on the place, and who stood next to Uncle Remus in the confidence of her mistress. Aunt Tempy was a fat, middle-aged woman, who always wore a head-handkerchief, and kept her sleeves rolled up, displaying her plump, black arms, winter and summer. She never hesitated to exercise her authority, and the younger negroes on the place regarded her as a tyrant; but in spite of her loud voice and brusque manners she was thoroughly good-natured, usually good-humored, and always trustworthy. Aunt Tempy and Uncle Remus were secretly jealous of each other, but they were careful never to come in conflict, and, to all appearances, the most cordial relations existed between them. "Well de goodness knows!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, as Aunt Tempy went in with the little boy. "How you come on, Sis Tempy? De rainy season aint so mighty fur off w'en you come a-sojourneyin' in dis house. Ef I'd a-know'd you'd a-bin a-comin' I'd a-sorter steered 'roun' en bresh'd de cobwebs out'n de cornders." "Don't min' me, Brer Remus. Luck in de house whar de cobwebs hangs low. I 'uz des a-passin'--a-passin' 'long--en Miss Sally ax me ef I kin come fur ez de do' wid dat chile dar, but bless you, 't aint in my manners ter tu'n back at de do'. How you come on, Brer Remus?" "Po'ly, Sis Tempy; en yit I aint complainin'. Pain yer, en a ketch yander, wid de cramps th'ow'd in, aint no mo' dan ole folks kin 'speck. How you is, Sis Tempy?" "I thank de Lord I'm able to crawl, Brer Remus, en dat 's 'bout all. Ef I wa'n't so sot in my ways, deze yer niggers would er run me 'stracted d'reckly." Daddy Jack was sitting in the corner laughing and talking to himself, and the little boy watched him not without a feeling of awe. After a while he said: "Uncle Remus, won't Daddy Jack tell us a story to-night?" "Now, den, honey," responded the old man, "we aint got ter push Brer Jack too closte; we ull des hatter creep up on 'im en ketch 'im fer er tale wence he in de humors. Sometimes hoss pull, sometime he aint pull. You aint bin down yer so long, hit sorter look lak it my tu'n; 'kaze it done come 'cross my 'membunce dat dey wuz one time w'en Brer Wolf kotch Brer Rabbit, w'ich I aint never gun it out ter you yit." "Brother Wolf caught Brother Rabbit, Uncle Remus?" exclaimed the little boy, incredulously. "Yasser! dat 's de up en down un it, sho'," responded the old man with emphasis, "en I be mighty glad ef Sis Tempy yer will 'scuze me w'iles I runs over de tale 'long wid you." "Bless yo' soul, Brer Remus, don't pay no 'tention ter me," said Aunt Tempy, folding her fat arms upon her ample bosom, and assuming an attitude of rest and contentment. "I'm bad ez de chillun 'bout dem ole tales, 'kaze I kin des set up yer un lissen at um de whole blessid night, un a good part er de day. Yass, Lord!" "Well, den," said Uncle Remus, "we ull des huddle up yer en see w'at 'come er Brer Rabbit, w'en ole Brer Wolf kotch 'im. In dem days," he continued, looking at Daddy Jack and smiling broadly, "de creeturs wuz constant gwine a-courtin'. Ef 't wa'n't Miss Meadows en de gals dey wuz flyin' 'roun', hit 'uz Miss Motts. Dey wuz constant a-courtin'. En 't wa'n't none er dish yer 'Howdy-do-ma'm-I-'speck-I-better-be-gwine,' n'er. Hit 'uz go atter brekkus en stay twel atter supper. Brer Rabbit, he got tuk wid a-likin' fer Miss Motts, en soon one mawnin', he tuck'n slick hisse'f up, he did, en put out ter call on 'er. W'en Brer Rabbit git ter whar Miss Motts live, she done gone off some'rs. "Some folks 'ud er sot down en wait twel Miss Motts come back, en den ag'in some folks 'ud er tuck der foot in der han' en went back; but ole Brer Rabbit, he aint de man fer ter be outdone, en he des tuck'n go in de kitchen en light he seegyar, en den he put out fer ter pay a call on Miss Meadows en de gals. "W'en he git dar, lo en beholes, he fine Miss Motts dar, en he tipped in, ole Brer Rabbit did, en he galanted 'roun' 'mungs um, same lak one er dese yer town chaps, w'at you see come out ter Harmony Grove meetin'-house. Dey talk en dey laff; dey laff en dey giggle. Bimeby, 'long todes night, Brer Rabbit 'low he better be gwine. De wimmen folks dey all ax 'im fer ter stay twel atter supper, 'kaze he sech lively comp'ny, but Brer Rabbit fear'd some er de yuther creeturs be hidin' out fer 'im; so he tuck'n pay his 'specks, he did, en start fer home. "He aint git fur twel he come up wid a great big basket settin' down by de side er de big road. He look up de road; he aint see nobody. He look down de road; he aint see nobody. He look befo', he look behime, he look all 'roun'; he aint see nobody. He lissen, en lissen; he aint year nothin'. He wait, en he wait; nobody aint come. "Den, bimeby Brer Rabbit go en peep in de basket, en it seem lak it half full er green truck. He retch he han' in, he did, en git some en put it in he mouf. Den he shet he eye en do lak he studyin' 'bout sump'n'. Atter w'ile, he 'low ter hisse'f, 'Hit look lak sparrer-grass, hit feel lak sparrer-grass, hit tas'e lak sparrer-grass, en I be bless ef 't aint sparrer-grass.' "Wid dat Brer Rabbit jump up, he did, en crack he heel tergedder, en he fetch one leap en lan' in de basket, right spang in 'mungs de sparrer-grass. Dar whar he miss he footin'," continued Uncle Remus, rubbing his beard meditatively, "'kaze w'en he jump in 'mungs de sparrer-grass, right den en dar he jump in 'mungs ole Brer Wolf, w'ich he wer' quile up at de bottom." "Dar now!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, enthusiastically. "W'at I tell you? W'at make him pester t'er folks doin's? I boun' Brer Wolf nail't 'im." "Time Brer Wolf grab 'im," continued Uncle Remus, "Brer Rabbit knowed he 'uz a gone case; yit he sing out, he did: "'I des tryin' ter skeer you, Brer Wolf; I des tryin' ter skeer you. I know'd you 'uz in dar, Brer Wolf, I know'd you by de smell!' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Ole Brer Wolf grin, he did, en lick he chops, en up'n say: "'Mighty glad you know'd me, Brer Rabbit, 'kaze I know'd you des time you drapt in on me. I tuck'n tell Brer Fox yistiddy dat I 'uz gwine take a nap 'longside er de road, en I boun' you 'ud come 'long en wake me up, en sho' nuff, yer you come en yer you is,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. "Oh-ho, Mr. Rabbit! How you feel now?" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, her sympathies evidently with Brother Wolf. "W'en Brer Rabbit year dis," said Uncle Remus, paying no attention to the interruption, "he 'gun ter git mighty skeer'd, en he whirl in en beg Brer Wolf fer ter please tu'n 'im loose; but dis make Brer Wolf grin wusser, en he toof look so long en shine so w'ite, en he gum look so red, dat Brer Rabbit hush up en stay still. He so skeer'd dat he bref come quick, en he heart go lak flutter-mill. He chune up lak he gwine cry: "'Whar you gwine kyar me, Brer Wolf?' "'Down by de branch, Brer Rabbit.' "'W'at you gwine down dar fer, Brer Wolf?' "'So I kin git some water ter clean you wid atter I done skunt you, Brer Rabbit.' "'Please, sir, lemme go, Brer Wolf.' "'You talk so young you make me laff, Brer Rabbit.' "'Dat sparrer-grass done make me sick, Brer Wolf.' "'You'll be sicker'n dat 'fo' I git done wid you, Brer Rabbit.' "'Whar I come fum nobody dast ter eat sick folks, Brer Wolf.' "'Whar I come fum dey aint dast ter eat no yuther kin', Brer Rabbit.'" "Ole Mr. Rabbit wuz a-talkin', mon," said Aunt Tempy, with a chuckle that caused her to shake like a piece of jelly. "Dey went on dis a-way," continued Uncle Remus, "plum twel dey git ter de branch. Brer Rabbit, he beg en cry, en cry en beg, en Brer Wolf, he 'fuse en grin, en grin en 'fuse. W'en dey come ter de branch, Brer Wolf lay Brer Rabbit down on de groun' en hilt 'im dar, en den he study how he gwine make way wid 'im. He study en he study, en w'iles he studyin' Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n study some on he own hook. "Den w'en it seem lak Brer Wolf done fix all de 'rangerments, Brer Rabbit, he make lak he cryin' wusser en wusser; he des fa'rly blubber." Uncle Remus gave a ludicrous imitation of Brother Rabbit's wailings. "'Ber--ber--Brer Wooly--ooly--oolf! Is you gwine--is you gwine ter sakerfice-t me right now--ow--ow?' "'Dat I is, Brer Rabbit; dat I is.' "'Well, ef I blee-eedz ter be kilt, Brer Wooly--ooly--oolf, I wants ter be kilt right, en ef I blee-eedz ter be e't, I wants ter be e't ri--ight, too, now!' [Illustration: BROTHER WOLF SAYS GRACE] "'How dat, Brer Rabbit?' "'I want you ter show yo' p'liteness, Brer Wooly--ooly--oolf!' "'How I gwine do dat, Brer Rabbit?' "'I want you ter say grace, Brer Wolf, en say it quick, 'kaze I gittin' mighty weak.' "'How I gwine say grace, Brer Rabbit?' "'Fol' yo' han's und' yo' chin, Brer Wolf, en shet yo' eyes, en say: "Bless us en bine us, en put us in crack whar de Ole Boy can't fine us." Say it quick, Brer Wolf, 'kaze I failin' mighty fas'.'" "Now aint dat des too much!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, as delighted as the little boy. Uncle Remus laughed knowingly and went on: "Brer Wolf, he put up he han's, he did, en shot he eyes, en 'low, 'Bless us en bine us;' but he aint git no furder, 'kaze des time he take up he han's, Brer Rabbit fotch a wiggle, he did, en lit on he foots, en he des nat'ally lef a blue streak behime 'im." "Ah-yi-ee!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, while Aunt Tempy allowed her arms to drop helplessly from her lap as she cried "Dar now!" and the little boy clasped his hands in an ecstasy of admiration. "Oh, I just knew Brother Rabbit would get away," the child declared. "Dat 's right, honey," said Uncle Remus. "You put yo' pennunce in Brer Rabbit en yo' won't be fur out er de way." There was some further conversation among the negroes, but it was mostly plantation gossip. When Aunt Tempy rose to go she said: "Goodness knows, Brer Remus, ef dis de way you all runs on, I'm gwine ter pester you some mo'. Hit come 'cross me like ole times, dat it do." "Do so, Sis Tempy, do so," said Uncle Remus, with dignified hospitality. "You allers fine a place at my h'a'th. Ole times is about all we got lef'." "Trufe, too!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy; and with that she took the child by the hand and went out into the darkness. XXVIII SPIRITS, SEEN AND UNSEEN It was not many nights before the same company was gathered in Uncle Remus's cabin,--Daddy Jack, Aunt Tempy, and the little boy. The conversation took a turn that thrilled the child with mingled fear and curiosity. Uncle Remus had inquired as to the state of Aunt Tempy's health, when the latter came in, and her response was: "I feelin' mighty creepy, Brer Remus, sho'. Look like I bleedz ter hunt comp'ny. W'en I come 'long down I felt dat skittish twel ef a leaf had blow'd 'crost de paff, I'd 'a' des about drapt in my tracks." "How come dat, Sis Tempy?" Uncle Remus inquired. "You know dat little gal er Riah's? Well, I 'uz settin' up dar in my house 'w'ile ergo, w'en, bless gracious! fus' news I know, I year dat chile talkin' in the yuther room. I 'low ter myse'f, she aint talkin' ter Riah, 'kaze Riah aint come yit, un den I crope up, un dar wuz de chile settin' right flat in de middle er de flo', laffin' un talkin' un makin' motions like she see somebody in de cornder. I des stood dar un watch 'er, un I aint a livin' human ef she don't do like dey 'uz somebody er n'er in dar wid 'er. She ax um fer ter stay on dey own side, un den, w'en it seem like dey come todes 'er, den she say she gwine git a switch un drive um back. Hit make me feel so cole un kuse dat I des tuck'n come 'way fum dar, un ef dey's sump'n' n'er dar, hit'll be dem un Riah fer't." "'E do talk wid ghos'; 'e is bin larf wit' harnt," exclaimed Daddy Jack. "I 'speck dat 's 'bout de upshot un it," said Uncle Remus. "Dey tells me dat w'ence you year chilluns talkin' en gwine on periently wid deyse'f, der er bleedz ter see ha'nts." The little boy moved his stool closer to his venerable partner. Daddy Jack roused himself. "Oona no bin-a see dem ghos'? Oona no bin-a see dem harnt? Hi! I is bin-a see plenty ghos'; I no 'fraid dem; I is bin-a punch dem 'way wit' me cane. I is bin-a shoo dem 'pon dey own siëd da' road. Dem is bin walk w'en da' moon stan' low; den I is bin shum. Oona no walk wit' me dun. 'E berry bahd. Oona call, dey no answer. Wun dey call, hol' you' mout' shet. 'E berry bahd fer mek answer, wun da' harnt holler. Dem call-a you 'way fum dis lan'. I yeddy dem call; I shetty me y-eye, I shekkey me head. "Wun I is bin noung mahn, me der go fer git water, un wun I der dip piggin 'neat' da' crik, I yeddy v'ice fer call me--'_Jahck! O Jahck!_' I stan', I lissen, I yeddy de v'ice--'_Jahck! Jahck! O Jahck!_' I t'ink 'e bin Titty Ann;[26] I ahx um: "Wey you bin call-a me, Titty Ann?' Titty Ann 'tretch 'e y-eye big: "'I no bin-a call. Dead ghos' is bin-a call. Dem harnt do call-a you.' "Dun I rise me y-eye, un I is bin shum gwan by sundown; 'e is bin gwan bahckwud. I tell Titty Ann fer look at we nuncle, gwan bahckwud by sundown. Titty Ann pit 'e two han' 'pon me y-eyes, un 'e do bline me. 'E say I bin-a see one dead ghos'." "What then, Daddy Jack?" asked the little boy, as the old African paused. "Ki! nuff dun. 'Kaze bumbye, so long tam, folks come fetch-a we nuncle 'tretch out. 'E is bin-a tek wit' da' _he_cup; 'e t'row 'e head dis way; 'e t'row 'e head dat way." Daddy Jack comically suited the action to the word. "'E is bin tek-a da' _he_cup; da' _he_cup is bin tek um--da' cramp is bin fetch um. I is bin see mo' dead ghos', but me no spot um lak dis." "I boun' you is," said Uncle Remus. "Dey tells me, Brer Jack," he continued, "dat w'en you meets up wid one er deze ha'nts, ef you'll take'n tu'n yo' coat wrong-sud-outerds, dey won't use no time in makin' der disappearance." "Hey!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, "tu'n coat no fer skeer dead ghos'. 'E skeer dem Jack-me-Lantun. One tam I is bin-a mek me way troo t'ick swamp. I do come hot, I do come cole. I feel-a me bahck quake; me bre't' come fahs'. I look; me ent see nuttin'; I lissen; me ent yeddy nuttin'. I look, dey de Jack-me-Lantun mekkin 'e way troo de bush; 'e comin' stret by me. 'E light bin-a flick-flicker; 'e git close un close. I yent kin stan' dis; one foot git heffy, da' heer 'pon me head lif' up. Da' Jack-me-Lantun, 'e git-a high, 'e git-a low, 'e come close. Dun I t'ink I bin-a yeddy ole folks talk _tu'n you' coat-sleef_ wun da' Jack-me-Lantun is bin run you. I pull, I twis', I yerk at dem jacket; 'e yent come. 'E is bin grow on me bahck. Jack-me-Lantun fly close. I say me pray 'pon da' jacket; 'e is bin-a yerk loose; da' sleef 'e do tu'n. Jack-me-Lantun, 'e see dis, 'e lif' up, 'e say '_Phew!_' 'E done gone! Oona no walk in da' swamp 'cep' you is keer you' coat 'cross da' arm. Enty!" "Dat w'at make me say," remarked Aunt Tempy, with a little shiver, "dat 'oman like me, w'at aint w'ar no jacket, aint got no business traipsin' un trollopin' 'roun' thoo the woods atter dark." "You mout tu'n yo' head-hankcher, Sis Tempy," said Uncle Remus, reassuringly, "en ef dat aint do no good den you kin whirl in en gin um leg-bail." "I year tell," continued Aunt Tempy, vouchsafing no reply to Uncle Remus, "dat dish yer Jacky-ma-Lantun is a sho' nuff sperit. Sperits aint gwine to walk un walk less'n dey got sump'n' n'er on der min', un I year tell dat dish yer Jacky-ma-Lantun is 'casioned by a man w'at got kilt. Folks kilt 'im un tuck his money, un now his ha'nt done gone un got a light fer ter hunt up whar his money is. Mighty kuse ef folks kin hone atter money w'en dey done _gone_. I dunner w'at he wanter be ramblin' 'roun' wid a light w'en he done _dead_. Ef anybody got any hard feelin's 'gin' me, I want um ter take it out w'ile deyer in de flesh; w'en dey come a-ha'ntin' me, den I'm done--I'm des _done_." "Are witches spirits?" the little boy asked. The inquiry was not especially directed at Daddy Jack, but Daddy Jack was proud of his reputation as a witch, and he undertook to reply. "None 't all. Witch, 'e no dead ghos'--'e life folks, wey you shekky han' wit'. Oona witch mebbe; how you is kin tell?" Here Daddy Jack turned his sharp little eyes upon the child. The latter moved closer to Uncle Remus, and said he hoped to goodness he was n't a witch. "How you is kin tell diffran 'cep' you bin fer try um?" continued Daddy Jack. "'E good t'ing fer be witch; 'e mek-a dem folks fred. 'E mek-a dem fred; 'e mek-a dem hol' da' bre't', wun dey is bin-a come by you' place." "In de name er de Lord, Daddy Jack, how kin folks tell wh'er dey er witches er no?" asked Aunt Tempy. "Oo! 'e easy nuff. Wun da' moon is shiün low, wet-a you' han' wit' da' pot-licker grease; rub noung heifer 'pon 'e nose; git 'pon 'e bahck. Mus' hol' um by 'e year; mus' go gallop, gallop down da' lane, tel 'e do come 'cross one-a big gully. Mus' holler, '_Double, double, double up! double, double, double up!_' Heifer jump, oona witch; heifer no jump, oona no witch." "Did you ever ride a heifer, Daddy Jack?" asked the little boy. "Mo' tam es dem," replied the old negro, holding up the crooked fingers of one withered hand. "Did--did she jump across the big gully?" The child's voice had dropped to an awed whisper, and there was a glint of malicious mischief in Daddy Jack's shrewd eyes, as he looked up at Uncle Remus. He got his cue. Uncle Remus groaned heavily and shook his head. "Hoo!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, "wun I is bin-a tell all, dey no mo' fer tell. Mus' kip some fer da' Sunday. Lilly b'y no fred dem witch; 'e no bodder lilly b'y. Witch, 'e no rassel wit' 'e ebry-day 'quaintan'; 'e do go pars 'e own place." It was certainly reassuring for the child to be told that witches did n't trouble little boys, and that they committed their depredations outside of their own neighborhood. "I is bin-a yeddy dem talk 'bout ole witch. 'E do leaf 'e skin wey 'e is sta't fum. Man bin-a come pars by; 'e is fine dem skin. 'E say: "'Ki! 'E one green skin; I fix fer dry um.' "Man hang um by da' fier. Skin, 'e do swink, i' do swivel. Bumbye 'e do smell-a bahd; man, 'e hol' 'e nose. 'E do wait. Skin swink, skin stink, skin swivel. 'E do git so bahd, man pitch um in da' ya'd. 'E wait; 'e is wait, 'e is lissen. Bumbye, 'e yeddy da' witch come. Witch, e' do sharp' 'e claw on-a da' fence; 'e is snap 'e jaw--_flick! flick! flick!_ 'E come-a hunt fer him skin. 'E fine un. 'E trey um on dis way; 'e no fit. 'E trey um on dat way; 'e no fit. 'E trey um on turrer way; 'e no fit. 'E pit um 'pon 'e head; skin 'e no fit. 'E pit um 'pon 'e foot; skin 'e no fit. 'E cuss, 'e sweer; skin 'e no fit. 'E cut 'e caper; skin 'e no fit. Bumbye 'e holler: "''Tiss-a me, Skin! wey you no know me? Skin, 'tiss-a me! wey you no know me?' "Skin, 'e no talk nuttin' 'tall. Witch 'e do jump, 'e do holler; à mek no diffran. Skin 'e talk nuttin' 'tall. Man, 'e tekky to'ch, 'e look in ya'd. 'E see big blahck Woolf lay by da' skin. E toof show; 'e y-eye shiün. Man drife um 'way; 'e is come bahck. Man bu'n da' skin; 'e is bin-a come bahck no mo'." The little boy asked no more questions. He sat silent while the others talked, and then went to the door and looked out. It was very dark, and he returned to his stool with a troubled countenance. "Des wait a little minnit, honey," said Uncle Remus, dropping his hand caressingly on the child's shoulder. "I bleedz ter go up dar ter de big house fer ter see Mars John, en I'll take you 'long fer comp'ny." And so, after a while, the old man and the little boy went hand in hand up the path. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [26] Sissy Ann. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXIX A GHOST STORY The next time the little boy visited Uncle Remus he persuaded 'Tildy to go with him. Daddy Jack was in his usual place, dozing and talking to himself, while Uncle Remus oiled the carriage-harness. After a while Aunt Tempy came in. The conversation turned on Daddy Jack's story about "haunts" and spirits. Finally 'Tildy said: "W'en it come ter tales 'bout ha'nts," said she, "I year tell er one dat'll des nat'ally make de kinks on yo' head onquile deyse'f." "W'at tale dat, chile?" asked Aunt Tempy. "Unk' Remus, mus' I tell it?" "Let 'er come," said Uncle Remus. "Well, den," said 'Tildy, rolling her eyes back and displaying her white teeth, "one time dey wuz a 'Oman en a Man. Seem like dey live close ter one er n'er, en de Man he sot his eyes on de 'Oman, en de 'Oman, she des went 'long en 'ten' ter her bizness. Man, he keep his eyes sot on 'er. Bimeby, de 'Oman, she 'ten' ter her bizness so much tel she tuck'n tuck sick en die. Man, he up'n tell de folks she dead, en de folks dey come en fix 'er. Dey lay 'er out, en dey light some candles, en dey sot up wid 'er, des like folks does now; en dey put two great big roun' shiny silver dollars on 'er eyes fer ter hol' 'er eyeleds down." In describing the silver dollars 'Tildy joined the ends of her thumbs and fore-fingers together, and made a figure as large as a saucer. "Dey wuz lots bigger dan dollars is deze days," she continued, "en dey look mighty purty. Seem like dey wuz all de money de 'Oman got, en de folks dey put um on 'er eyeleds fer to hol' um down. Den w'en de folks do dat dey call up de Man en take'n tell 'im dat he mus' dig a grave en bury de 'Oman, en den dey all went off 'bout der bizness. "Well, den, de Man, he tuck'n dig de grave en make ready fer ter bury de 'Oman. He look at dat money on 'er eyeleds, en it shine mighty purty. Den he tuck it off en feel it. Hit feel mighty good, but des 'bout dat time de Man look at de 'Oman, en he see 'er eyeleds open. Look like she lookin' at 'im, en he take'n put de money whar he git it fum. "Well, den, de Man, he take'n git a waggin en haul de 'Oman out ter de buryin'-groun', en w'en he git dar he fix ever'thing, en den he grab de money en kivver up de grave right quick. Den he go home, en put de money in a tin box en rattle it 'roun.' Hit rattle loud en hit rattle nice, but de Man, he aint feel so good. Seem like he know de 'Oman eyeled stretch wide open lookin' fer 'im. Yit he rattle de money 'roun', en hit rattle loud en hit rattle nice. "Well, den, de Man, he take'n put de tin box w'at de money in on de mantel-shel-uf. De day go by, en de night come, en w'en night come de win' 'gun ter rise up en blow. Hit rise high, hit blow strong. Hit blow on top er de house, hit blow und' de house, hit blow 'roun' de house. Man, he feel quare. He set by de fier en lissen. Win' say '_Buzz-zoo-o-o-o-o!_' Man lissen. Win' holler en cry. Hit blow top er de house, hit blow und' de house, hit blow 'roun' de house, hit blow in de house. Man git closte up in de chimbly-jam. Win' fin' de cracks en blow in um. '_Bizzy, bizzy, buzz-zoo-o-o-o-o!_' "Well, den, Man, he lissen, lissen, but bimeby he git tired er dis, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he gwine ter bed. He tuck'n fling a fresh light'd knot in de fier, en den he jump in de bed, en quile hisse'f up en put his head und' de kivver. Win' hunt fer de cracks--_bizzy-buzz, bizzy-buzz, buzz-zoo-o-o-o-o-o!_ Man keep his head und' de kivver. Light'd knot flar' up en flicker. Man aint dast ter move. Win' blow en w'issel _Phew-fee-e-e-e!_ Light'd knot flicker en flar'. Man, he keep his head kivvud. "Well, den, Man lay dar, en git skeer'der en skeer'der. He aint dast ter wink his eye skacely, en seem like he gwine ter have swamp agur. W'iles he layin' dar shakin', en de win' a-blowin', en de fier flickin', he year someyuther kind er fuss. Hit mighty kuse kind er fuss. _Clinkity, clinkalinkle!_ Man 'low: "'Hey! who stealin' my money?' "Yit he keep his head kivvud w'iles he lay en lissen. He year de win' blow, en den he year dat yuther kinder fuss--_Clinkity, clink, clinkity, clinkalinkle!_ Well, den, he fling off de kivver en sot right up in de bed. He look, he aint see nothin'. De fier flicker en flar' en de win' blow. Man go en put chain en bar 'cross de do'. Den he go back to bed, en he aint mo'n totch his head on de piller tel he year de yuther fuss--_clink, clink, clinkity, clinkalinkle!_ Man rise up, he aint see nothin' 'tall. Mighty quare! "Des 'bout time he gwine ter lay down 'g'in, yer come de fuss--_clinkity, clinkalinkle_. Hit soun' like it on de mantel-shel-uf; let 'lone dat, hit soun' like it in de tin box on de mantel-shel-uf; let 'lone dat, hit soun' like it de money in de tin box on de man-tel-shel-uf. Man say: "'Hey! rat done got in box!' "Man look; no rat dar. He shet up de box, en set it down on de shel-uf. Time he do dat yer come de fuss--_clinkity, clinkity, clinkalinkle!_ Man open de box en look at de money. Dem two silver dollars layin' in dar des like he put um. W'iles de man dun dis, look like he kin year sump'n' say 'way off yander: "'_Whar my money? Oh, gim me my money!_' "Man, he sot de box back on de shel-uf, en time he put it down he year de money rattle--_clinkity, clinkalinkle, clink!_--en den fum 'way off yander sump'n' say: "'_Oh, gim me my money! I want my money!_' "Well, den, de Man git skeer'd sho' nuff, en he got er flat-iün en put on de tin box, en den he tuck'n pile all de cheers 'gin' de do', en run en jump in de bed. He des know dey's a booger comin'. Time he git in bed en kivver his head, de money rattle louder, en sump'n' cry way off yander: "'_I want my money! Oh, gim me my money!_' "Man, he shake en he shiver; money, hit clink en rattle; booger, hit holler en cry. Booger come closter, money clink louder. Man shake wusser en wusser. Money say: _'Clinkity, clinkalinkle!'_ Booger cry, _'Oh, gim me my money!'_ Man holler, '_O Lordy, Lordy!_' "Well, den, hit keep on dis a-way, tel dreckly Man year de do' open. He peep fum und' de kivver, en in walk de 'Oman w'at he done bury in de buryin'-groun'. Man shiver en shiver, win' blow en blow, money rattle en rattle, 'Oman cry en cry. '_Buzz-zoo-o-o-o-o!_' sez de win'; '_Clinkalink!_' sez de box; '_Oh, gim me my money!_' sez de 'Oman; '_O Lordy!_' sez de Man. 'Oman year de money, but look like she aint kin see, en she grope 'roun', en grope 'roun', en grope 'roun' wid 'er han' h'ist in de a'r des dis away." Here 'Tildy stood up, pushed her chair back with her foot, raised her arms over her head, and leaned forward in the direction of Daddy Jack. "Win' blow, fier flicker, money rattle, Man shake en shiver, 'Oman grope 'roun' en say, '_Gim me my money! Oh, who got my money?_'" 'Tildy advanced a few steps. "Money look like it gwine ter t'ar de tin box all ter flinders. 'Oman grope en cry, grope en cry, tel bimeby she jump on de man en holler: "'_You got my money!_'" As she reached this climax, 'Tildy sprang at Daddy Jack and seized him, and for a few moments there was considerable confusion in the corner. The little boy was frightened, but the collapsed appearance of Daddy Jack convulsed him with laughter. The old African was very angry. His little eyes glistened with momentary malice, and he shook his cane threateningly at 'Tildy. The latter coolly adjusted her ear-rings, as she exclaimed: "Dar, now! I know'd I'd git even wid de ole vilyun. Come a-callin' me pidjin-toed!" "Better keep yo' eye on 'im, chile," said Aunt Tempy. "He 'witch you, sho'." "'Witch who? Ef he come witchin' roun' me, I lay I break his back. I tell you dat right pine-blank." XXX BROTHER RABBIT AND HIS FAMOUS FOOT The little boy was very glad, one night shortly after he had heard about Daddy Jack's ghosts and witches and 'Tildy's "ha'nts," to find Uncle Remus alone in his cabin. The child liked to have his venerable partner all to himself. Uncle Remus was engaged in hunting for tobacco crumbs with which to fill his pipe, and in turning his pockets a rabbit foot dropped upon the hearth. "Grab it, honey!" he exclaimed. "Snatch it up off'n de h'a'th. In de name er goodness, don't let it git in de embers; 'kaze ef dat ar rabbit foot git singe, I'm a goner, sho'!" It was the hind foot of a rabbit, and a very large one at that, and the little boy examined it curiously. He was in thorough sympathy with all the superstitions of the negroes, and to him the rabbit foot appeared to be an uncanny affair. He placed it carefully on Uncle Remus's knee, and after the pipe had been filled, he asked: "What do you carry that for, Uncle Remus?" "Well, honey," responded the old man, grimly, "ef you want me ter make shorts out'n a mighty long tale, dat rabbit foot is fer ter keep off boogers. W'en I hatter run er'n's fer myse'f all times er night, en take nigh cuts thoo de woods, en 'cross by de buryin'-groun', hits monst'us handy fer ter have dat ar rabbit foot. Keep yo' head studdy, now; mine yo' eye; I aint sayin' deyer any boogers anywhars. Brer Jack kin say w'at he mineter; I aint sayin' nothin'. But yit, ef dey wuz any, en dey come slinkin' atter me, I let you know dey'd fine out terreckly dat de ole nigger heel'd wid rabbit foot. I 'ud hol' it up des dis a-way, en I boun' you I'd shoo um off'n de face er de yeth. En I tell you w'at," continued Uncle Remus, seeing that the little boy was somewhat troubled, "w'en it come to dat pass dat you gotter be dodgin' 'roun' in de dark, ef you'll des holler fer me, I'll loan you dish yer rabbit foot, en you'll be des ez safe ez you is w'en Miss Sally stannin' by yo' bed wid a lit can'le in 'er han'. "Strip er red flannil tied 'roun' yo' arm'll keep off de rheumatis; stump-water 'll kyo 'spepsy; some good fer one 'zeeze,[27] en some good fer n'er, but de p'ints is dat dish yer rabbit foot 'll gin you good luck. De man w'at tote it mighty ap' fer ter come out right een' up w'en dey's any racket gwine on in de neighborhoods, let 'er be whar she will en w'en she may; mo' espeshually ef de man w'at got it know 'zactly w'at he got ter do. W'ite folks may laugh," Uncle Remus went on, "but w'en rabbit run 'cross de big road front er me, w'at does I do? Does I shoo at um? Does I make fer ter kill um? Dat I don't--_dat_ I don't! I des squots right down in de middle er de road, en I makes a cross-mark in de san' des dis way, en den I spits in it."[28] Uncle Remus made a practical illustration by drawing a cross-mark in the ashes on the hearth. "Well, but, Uncle Remus, what good does all this do?" the little boy asked. "Lots er good, honey; bless yo' soul, lots er good. W'en rabbit crosses yo' luck, w'at you gwine do, less'n you sets down en crosses it out, right den en dar? I year talk er folks shootin' rabbit in de big road, yit I notices dat dem w'at does de shootin' aint come ter no good een'--dat w'at I notices." "Uncle Remus," the little boy asked, after a while, "how did people happen to find out about the rabbit's foot?" "Oh, you let folks 'lone fer dat, honey! You des let um 'lone. W'at de wimmen aint up'n tell bidout anybody axin' un um, folks mighty ap' fer ter fine out fer deyse'f. De wimmen, dey does de talkin' en de flyin', en de mens, dey does de walkin' en de pryin', en betwixt en betweenst um, dey aint much dat don't come out. Ef it don't come out one day it do de nex', en so she goes--Ant'ny over, Ant'ny under--up one row en down de udder, en clean acrosst de bolly-patch!" It may be that the child did n't understand all this, but he had no doubt of its wisdom, and so he waited patiently for developments. "Dey's a tale 'bout de rabbit foot," continued Uncle Remus, "but yo' eye look watery, like ole man Nod 'bout ter slip up behime you; en let 'lone dat, I 'speck Miss Sally clock clickin' fer you right now." "Oh, no, it is n't, Uncle Remus," said the child, laughing. "Mamma said she'd make 'Tildy call me." "Dar, now!" exclaimed the old man, indignantly, "'Tildy dis en 'Tildy dat. I dunner w'at yo' mammy dreamin' 'bout fer ter let dat nigger gal be a-holl'in' en a-bawlin' atter you all 'roun' dish yer plan'ation. She de mos' uppity nigger on de hill, en de fus' news you know dey ull all hatter make der bows en call 'er Mistiss. Ef ole Miss wuz 'live, dey would n't be no sech gwines on 'roun' yer. But nummine.[29] You des let 'er come a-cuttin' up front er my do', en I lay you'll year squallin'. Now, den," continued the old man, settling himself back in his chair, "wharbouts wuz I?" "You said there was a tale about the rabbit foot," the little boy replied. "So dey is, honey! so dey is!" Uncle Remus exclaimed, "but she got so many crooks en tu'ns in 'er dat I dunner but w'at I aint done gone en fergotted some un um off'n my min'; 'kaze ole folks lak me knows lots mo' dan w'at dey kin 'member. "In de days w'ence Brer Rabbit wuz sorter keepin' de neighborhoods stirred up, de yuther creeturs wuz studyin' en studyin' de whole blessid time how dey gwine ter nab 'im. Dey aint had no holiday yit, 'kaze w'en de holiday come, dey'd go ter wuk, dey would, en juggle wid one er n'er fer ter see how dey gwine ter ketch up wid Brer Rabbit. Bimeby, w'en all der plans, en der traps, en der jugglements aint do no good, dey all 'gree, dey did, dat Brer Rabbit got some cunjerment w'at he trick um wid. Brer B'ar, he up'n 'low, he did, dat he boun' Brer Rabbit is a nat'al bawn witch; Brer Wolf say, sezee, dat he 'speck Brer Rabbit des in cahoots wid a witch; en Brer Fox, he vow dat Brer Rabbit got mo' luck dan smartness. Den Jedge B'ar, he drap he head one side, he did, en he ax how come Brer Rabbit got all de luck on he own side. De mo' dey ax, de mo' dey git pestered, en de mo' dey git pestered, de wuss dey worry. Day in en day out dey wuk wid dis puzzlement; let 'lone dat, dey sot up nights; en bimeby dey 'gree 'mungs deyse'f dat dey better make up wid Brer Rabbit, en see ef dey can't fine out how come he so lucky. "W'iles all dis gwine on, ole Brer Rabbit wuz a-gallopin' 'roun' fum Funtown ter Frolicville, a-kickin' up de devilment en terrifyin' de neighborhoods. Hit keep on dis a-way, twel one time, endurin' de odd-come-shorts,[30] ole Jedge B'ar sont wud dat one er his chilluns done bin tooken wid a sickness, en he ax won't ole Miss Rabbit drap 'roun' en set up wid 'im. Ole Miss Rabbit, she say, co'se she go, en atter she fill 'er satchy full er yerbs en truck, off she put. "I done fergit," said Uncle Remus, scratching his head gravely, "w'ich one er dem chilluns wuz ailin'. Hit mout er bin Kubs, en hit mout er bin Klibs; but no marter fer dat. W'en ole Miss Rabbit git dar, ole Miss B'ar wuz a-settin' up in de chimbly-cornder des a-dosin' en a-nussin' de young un; en all de wimmin er de neighborhoods wuz dar, a-whispun en a-talkin', des fer all de worl' lak wimmin does deze days. It 'uz: "'Come right in, Sis Rabbit! I mighty proud to see you. I mighty glad you fotch yo' knittin', 'kaze I'm pow'ful po' comp'ny w'en my chillun sick. Des fling yo' bonnet on de bed dar. I'm dat flustrated twel I dunner w'ich een's up, skacely. Sis Wolf, han' Sis Rabbit dat rickin'-cheer dar, 'kaze 't aint no one step fum her house ter mine.' "Dat de way ole Miss B'ar run on," continued Uncle Remus, "en dey set dar en dey chatter en dey clatter. Ole Brer Wolf, he 'uz settin' out on de back peazzer smokin' en noddin'. He 'ud take en draw a long whiff, he would, en den he 'ud drap off ter noddin' en let de smoke oozle out thoo he nose. Bimeby ole Sis Rabbit drap 'er knittin' in 'er lap, en sing out, sez she: "'Law, Sis B'ar! I smells 'barker smoke,' sez she. "Ole Sis B'ar, she jolt up de sick baby, en swap it fum one knee ter de yuther, en 'low: "'My ole man bin smokin' 'roun' yer de whole blessid day, but soon'z dish yer chile tuck sick, I des tuck'n tole 'im, sez I, fer ter take hisse'f off in de woods whar he b'long at, sez I. Yessum! I did dat! I pities any 'oman w'at 'er ole man is fer'verlastin' stuck 'roun' de house w'en dey's any sickness gwine on,' sez she. "Ole Brer Wolf sot out dar on de back peazzer, en he shot one eye, he did, en open um 'g'in, en let de smoke oozle out'n he nose. Sis B'ar, she jolt de sick baby en swap it fum one knee ter de yuther. Dey sot dar en talk twel bimeby der confab sorter slack up. Fus' news dey know Sis Rabbit drap 'er knittin' en fling up 'er han's en squall out: "'De gracious en de goodness! Ef I aint done come traipsin' off en lef' my ole man money-pus, en he got sump'n' in dar w'at he won't take a purty fer, needer! I'm dat fergitful,' sez she, 'twel hit keep me mizerbul mighty nigh de whole time,' sez she. "Brer Wolf, he lif' up he year en open he eye, en let de smoke oozle out'n he nose. Sis B'ar, she jolt de sick baby wuss en wuss, en bimeby, she up'n say, sez she: "'I mighty glad 't aint me, dat I is,' sez she, 'bekaze ef I wuz ter lef' my ole man money-pus layin' 'roun' dat a-way, he'd des nat'ally rip up de planks in de flo', en t'ar all de bark off'n de trees,' sez she. "Ole Miss Rabbit, she sot dar, she did, en she rock en study, en study en rock, en she dunner w'at ter do. Ole Sis B'ar, she jolt en jolt de baby. Ole Brer Wolf, he let de 'barker smoke oozle thoo he nose, he did, en den he open bofe eyes en lay he pipe down. Wid dat, he crope down de back steps en lit out fer Brer Rabbit house. Brer Wolf got gait same lak race-hoss, en it aint take 'im long fer ter git whar he gwine. W'en he git ter Brer Rabbit house, he pull de latch-string en open de do', en w'en he do dis, one er de little Rabs wake up, en he holler out: "'Dat you, mammy?' "Den Brer Wolf wish he kin sing 'Bye-O-Baby,' but 'fo' he kin make answer, de little Rab holler out 'g'in: "'Dat you, mammy?' "Ole Brer Wolf know he got ter do sump'n', so he tuck'n w'isper, he did: "'Sh-sh-sh! Go ter sleep, honey. De boogers'll git you!' en wid dat de little Rab 'gun ter whimple, en he whimple hisse'f off ter sleep. "Den w'en it seem lak de little Rabs, w'ich dey wuz mighty nigh forty-eleven un um, is all gone ter sleep, Brer Wolf, he crope 'roun', he did, en feel on de mantel-shelf, en feel, en feel, twel he come ter ole Brer Rabbit money-pus. Ef he want so light wid he han'," Uncle Remus went on, glancing quizzically at the child, "he'd a knock off de pollygollic vial w'at ole Miss Rabbit put up dar. But nummine! Brer Wolf, he feel, en feel, twel he come ter de money-pus, en he grab dat, he did, en he des flew'd away fum dar. "W'en he git out er sight en year'n', Brer Wolf look at de money-pus, en see w'at in it. Hit 'uz one er deze yer kinder money-pus wid tossle on de een' en shiny rings in de middle. Brer Wolf look in dar fer ter see w'at he kin see. In one een' dey wuz a piece er calamus-root en some collard-seeds, en in de t'er een' dey wuz a great big rabbit foot. Dis make Brer Wolf feel mighty good, en he gallop off home wid de shorance[31] un a man w'at done foun' a gol' mine." Here Uncle Remus paused and betrayed a disposition to drop off to sleep. The little boy, however, touched him upon the knee, and asked him what Brother Rabbit did when he found his foot was gone. Uncle Remus laughed and rubbed his eyes. "Hit 's mighty kuse 'bout Brer Rabbit, honey. He aint miss dat money-pus fer mighty long time, yit w'en he do miss it, he miss it mighty bad. He miss it so bad dat he git right-down sick, 'kaze he know he bleedz ter fine dat ar foot let go w'at may, let come w'at will. He study en he study, yit 't aint do no good, en he go all 'roun' 'lowin' ter hisse'f: "'I know whar I put dat foot, yit I dunner whar I lef' um; I know whar I put dat foot, yit I dunner whar I lef' um.' "He mope en he mope 'roun'. Look lak Brer Wolf got all de luck en Brer Rabbit aint got none. Brer Wolf git fat, Brer Rabbit git lean; Brer Wolf run fas', Brer Rabbit lope heavy lak ole Sis Cow; Brer Wolf feel funny, Brer Rabbit feel po'ly. Hit keep on dis a-way, twel bimeby Brer Rabbit know sump'n' n'er bleedz ter be done. Las' he make up he min' fer ter take a journey, en he fix up he tricks, he do, en he go en see ole Aunt Mammy-Bammy Big-Money." "And who was old Aunt Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired. "Ah-yi!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, in a tone of triumph, "I know'd w'en I fotch dat ole creetur name up, dey wa'n't gwine ter be no noddin' 'roun' dish yer h'a'th. In dem days," he continued, "dey wuz a Witch-Rabbit, en dat wuz her entitlements--ole Aunt Mammy-Bammy Big-Money. She live way off in a deep, dark swamp, en ef you go dar you hatter ride some, slide some; jump some, hump some; hop some, flop some; walk some, balk some; creep some, sleep some; fly some, cry some; foller some, holler some; wade some, spade some; en ef you aint monst'us keerful you aint git dar den. Yit Brer Rabbit he git dar atter so long a time, en he mighty nigh wo' out. "He sot down, he did, fer ter res' hisse'f, en bimeby he see black smoke comin' outer de hole in de groun' whar de ole Witch-Rabbit stay. Smoke git blacker en blacker, en atter w'ile Brer Rabbit know de time done come fer 'im ter open up en tell w'at he want." As Uncle Remus interpreted the dialogue, Brother Rabbit spoke in a shrill, frightened tone, while the voice of the Rabbit-Witch was hoarse and oracular: "'Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, I needs yo' he'p.' "'Son Riley Rabbit, why so? Son Riley Rabbit, why so?' "'Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, I los' de foot you gim me.' "'O Riley Rabbit, why so? Son Riley Rabbit, why so?' "'Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, my luck done gone. I put dat foot down 'pon de groun'. I lef um dar I know not whar.' "'De Wolf done tuck en stole yo' luck, Son Riley Rabbit, Riley. Go fine de track, go git hit back, Son Riley Rabbit, Riley.' "Wid dat," continued Uncle Remus, "ole Aunt Mammy-Bammy Big-Money sucked all de black smoke back in de hole in de groun', and Brer Rabbit des put out fer home. W'en he git dar, w'at do he do? Do he go off in a cornder by hisse'f, en wipe he weepin' eye? Dat he don't--dat he don't. He des tuck'n wait he chance. He wait en he wait; he wait all day, he wait all night; he wait mighty nigh a mont'. He hang 'roun' Brer Wolf house; he watch en he wait. "Bimeby, one day, Brer Rabbit git de news dat Brer Wolf des come back fum a big frolic. Brer Rabbit know he time comin', en he keep bofe eye open en bofe years h'ist up. Nex' mawnin' atter Brer Wolf git back fum de big frolic, Brer Rabbit see 'im come outer de house en go down de spring atter bucket water. Brer Rabbit, he slip up, he did, en he look in. Ole Miss Wolf, she 'uz sailin' 'roun' fryin' meat en gittin' brekkus, en dar hangin' 'cross er cheer wuz Brer Wolf wes'cut where he keep he money-pus. Brer Rabbit rush up ter do' en pant lak he mighty nigh fag out. He rush up, he did, en he sing out: "'Mawnin', Sis Wolf, mawnin'! Brer Wolf sont me atter de shavin'-brush, w'ich he keep it in dat ar money-pus w'at I 'loant 'im.' "Sis Wolf, she fling up 'er han's en let um drap, en she laugh en say, sez she: "'I 'clar' ter gracious, Brer Rabbit! You gimme sech a tu'n, dat I aint got room ter be perlite skacely.' "But mos' 'fo' she gits de wuds out'n 'er mouf, Brer Rabbit done grab de money-pus en gone!" "Which way did he go, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked, after a while. "Well, I tell you dis," Uncle Remus responded emphatically, "Brer Rabbit road aint lay by de spring; I boun' you dat!" Presently 'Tildy put her head in the door to say that it was bedtime, and shortly afterward the child was dreaming that Daddy Jack was Mammy-Bammy Big-Money in disguise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [27] Disease. [28] If, as some ethnologists claim, the animal myths are relics of zoötheism, there can scarcely be a doubt that the practice here described by Uncle Remus is the survival of some sort of obeisance or genuflexion by which the negroes recognized the presence of the Rabbit, the great central figure and wonder-worker of African mythology. [29] Never mind. [30] Sometime, any time, no time. Thus: "Run fetch me de ax, en I'll wait on you one er deze odd-come-shorts." [31] Assurance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXI "IN SOME LADY'S GARDEN" When the little boy next visited Uncle Remus the old man was engaged in the somewhat tedious operation of making shoe-pegs. Daddy Jack was assorting a bundle of sassafras roots, and Aunt Tempy was transforming a meal-sack into shirts for some of the little negroes,--a piece of economy of her own devising. Uncle Remus pretended not to see the child. "Hit 's des lak I tell you all," he remarked, as if renewing a conversation; "I monst'us glad dey aint no bad chilluns on dis place fer ter be wadin' in de spring-branch, en flingin' mud on de yuther little chilluns, w'ich de goodness knows dey er nasty nuff bidout dat. I monst'us glad dey aint none er dat kinder young uns 'roun' yer--I is dat." "Now, Uncle Remus," exclaimed the little boy, in an injured tone, "somebody's been telling you something on me." The old man appeared to be very much astonished. "Heyo! whar you bin hidin', honey? Yer 't is mos' way atter supper en you aint in de bed yit. Well--well--well! Sit over ag'in in de chimbly jam dar whar you kin dry dem shoes. En de ve'y nex' time w'at I see you wadin' in dat branch, wid de sickly season comin' on, I'm a-gwine ter take you 'cross my shoulder en kyar you ter Miss Sally, en ef dat aint do no good, den I'll kyar you ter Mars John, en ef dat aint do no good, den I'm done wid you, so dar now!" The little boy sat silent a long time, listening to the casual talk of Uncle Remus and his guests, and watching the vapor rise from his wet shoes. Presently there was a pause in the talk, and the child said: "Uncle Remus, have I been too bad to hear a story?" The old man straightened himself up and pushed his spectacles back on his forehead. "Now, den, folks, you year w'at he say. Shill we pursue on atter de creeturs? Shill er shan't?" "Bless yo' soul, Brer Remus, I mos' 'shame' myse'f, yit I tell you de Lord's trufe, I'm des ez bad atter dem ar tales ez dat chile dar." "Well, den," said Uncle Remus, "a tale hit is. One time dey wuz a man, en dish yer man he had a gyardin. He had a gyardin, en he had a little gal fer ter min' it. I don't 'speck dish yer gyardin wuz wide lak Miss Sally gyardin, but hit 'uz lots longer. Hit 'uz so long dat it run down side er de big road, 'cross by de plum thicket, en back up de lane. Dish yer gyardin wuz so nice en long dat it tuck'n 'track de 'tention er Brer Rabbit; but de fence wuz built so close en so high, dat he can't git in nohow he kin fix it." "Oh, I know about that!" exclaimed the little boy. "The man catches Brother Rabbit and ties him, and the girl lets him loose to see him dance." Uncle Remus dropped his chin upon his bosom. He seemed to be humbled. "Sis Tempy," he said, with a sigh, "you'll hatter come in some time w'en we aint so crowded, en I'll up en tell 'bout Billy Malone en Miss Janey." "_That_ wasn't the story I heard, Uncle Remus," said the little boy. "_Please_ tell me about Billy Malone and Miss Janey." "Ah-yi!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, with a triumphant smile; "I 'low'd maybe I wa'n't losin' de use er my 'membunce, en sho' nuff I aint. Now, den, we'll des wuk our way back en start fa'r en squar'. One time dey wuz a man, en dish yer man he had a gyardin en a little gal. De gyardin wuz chock full er truck, en in de mawnin's, w'en de man hatter go off, he call up de little gal, he did, en tell 'er dat she mus' be sho' en keep ole Brer Rabbit outer de gyardin. He tell 'er dis eve'y mawnin'; but one mawnin' he tuck en forgit it twel he git ter de front gate, en den he stop en holler back: "'O Janey! You Janey! Min' w'at I tell you 'bout ole Brer Rabbit. Don't you let 'im get my nice green peas.' "Little gal, she holler back: 'Yes, daddy.' "All dis time, Brer Rabbit he 'uz settin' out dar in de bushes dozin'. Yit, w'en he year he name call out so loud, he cock up one year en lissen, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he bleedz ter outdo Mr. Man. Bimeby, Brer Rabbit, he went 'roun' en come down de big road des ez natchul ez ef he bin trafflin' some'rs. He see de little gal settin' by de gate, en he up'n 'low: "'Aint dish yer Miss Janey?' "Little gal say: 'My daddy call me Janey.'" Uncle Remus mimicked the voice and manner of a little girl. He hung his head, looked excessively modest, and spoke in a shrill tone. The effect was so comical that even Daddy Jack seemed to enjoy it. "'My daddy call me Janey; w'at yo' daddy call you?' "Brer Rabbit look on de groun', en sorter study lak folks does w'en dey feels bad. Den he look up en 'low: "I bin lose my daddy dis many long year, but w'en he 'live he call me Billy Malone.' Den he look at de little gal hard en 'low: 'Well, well, well! I aint seed you sence you 'uz a little bit er baby, en now yer you is mighty nigh a grown 'oman. I pass yo' daddy in de road des now, en he say I mus' come en tell you fer ter gimme a mess er sparrer-grass.' "Little gal, she fling de gate wide open, en let Mr. Billy Malone git de sparrer-grass. "Man come back en see whar somebody done bin tromplin' on de gyardin truck, en den he call up de little gal, en up'n ax 'er who bin dar since he bin gone; en de little gal, she 'low, she did, dat Mr. Billy Malone bin dar. Man ax who in de name er goodness is Mr. Billy Malone. Little gal 'low hit 's des a man w'at say 'er daddy sont 'im fer ter git some sparrer-grass on account er ole acquaintance. Man got his 'spicions, but he aint say nothin'. "Nex' day, w'en he start off, he holler en tell de little gal fer ter keep one eye on ole Brer Rabbit, en don't let nobody git no mo' sparrer-grass. Brer Rabbit, he settin' off dar in de bushes, en he year w'at de man say, en he see 'im w'en he go off. Bimeby, he sorter run 'roun', ole Brer Rabbit did, en he come hoppin' down de road, twel he git close up by de little gal at de gyardin gate. Brer Rabbit drapt 'er his biggest bow, en ax 'er how she come on. Den, atter dat, he 'low, he did: "'I see yo' daddy gwine 'long down de road des now, en he gimme a rakin' down 'kaze I make 'way wid de sparrer-grass, yit he say dat bein' 's how I sech a good fr'en' er de fambly I kin come en ax you fer ter gimme a mess er Inglish peas.' "Little gal, she tuck'n fling de gate wide open, en ole Brer Rabbit, he march in, he did, en he git de peas in a hurry. Man come back atter w'ile, en he 'low: "'Who bin tromplin' down my pea-vines?' "'Mr. Billy Malone, daddy.' "Man slap he han' on he forrud;[32] he dunner w'at ter make er all dis. Bimeby, he 'low: "'W'at kinder lookin' man dish yer Mr. Billy Malone?' "'Split lip, pop eye, big year, en bob-tail, daddy.' "Man say he be bless ef he aint gwine ter make de acquaintance er Mr. Billy Malone; en he went ter wuk, he did, en fix 'im up a box-trap, en he put some goobers in dar, en he tell de little gal nex' time Mr. Billy Malone come fer 'vite 'im in. Nex' mawnin', Man git little ways fum de house en tuck'n holler back, he did: "'W'atsumever you does, don't you dast ter let nobody git no mo' sparrer-grass, en don't you let um git no mo' Inglish peas.' "Little gal holler back: 'No, daddy.' "Den, atter dat, 't wa'n't long 'fo' yer come Mr. Billy Malone, hoppin' 'long down de big road. He drapt a bow, he did, en 'low: "'Mawnin', Miss Janey, mawnin'! Met yo' daddy down de big road, en he say dat I can't git no mo' sparrer-grass en green peas but you kin gimme some goobers.' "Little gal, she lead de way, en tell Mr. Billy Malone dar dey is in de box. Mr. Billy Malone, he lick he chops, he did, en 'low: "'You oughter be monst'us glad, honey, dat you got sech a good daddy lak dat.' "Wid dat, Mr. Billy Malone wunk he off eye, en jump in de box." "W'at I done tell you!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy. "He jump in de box," continued Uncle Remus, "en dar he wuz, en ef de little gal hadder bin a minnit bigger, I lay she'd 'a' tuck'n done some mighty tall winkin'. "Man aint gone fur, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' yer he come back. W'en Brer Rabbit year 'im comin' he bounce 'roun' in dar same ez a flea in a piller-case, but 't aint do no good. Trap done fall, en Brer Rabbit in dar. Man look thoo de slats, en 'low: "'Dar you is--same old hoppum-skippum run en jumpum. Youer de ve'y chap I'm atter. I want yo' foot fer ter kyar in my pocket, I want yo' meat fer ter put in de pot, en I want yo' hide fer ter w'ar on my head.' "Dis make cole chill rush up en down Brer Rabbit backbone, en he git more 'umble dan a town nigger w'at been kotch out atter nine erclock.[33] He holler en cry, en cry en holler: "'Do pray, Mr. Man, tu'n me go! I done 'ceive you dis time, but I aint gwine ter 'ceive you no mo'. Do pray, Mr. Man, tu'n me go, des dis little bit er time.' "Man he aint sayin' nothin'. He look lak he studyin' 'bout somep'n' ne'r way off yan', en den he take de little gal by de han' en go off todes de house." "Sho'ly Brer Rabbit time done come now!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, in a tone of mingled awe and expectation. Uncle Remus paid no attention to the interruption, but went right on: "Hit seem lak dat Brer Rabbit got mo' luck dan w'at you kin shake a stick at, 'kaze de man en de little gal aint good en gone skacely twel yer come Brer Fox a-pirootin' 'roun'. Brer Fox year Brer Rabbit holl'in' en he up'n ax w'at de 'casion er sech gwines on right dar in de broad open daylight. Brer Rabbit squall out: "'Lordy, Brer Fox! you better make 'as'e 'way fum yer, 'kaze Mr. Man ull ketch you en slap you in dish yer box en make you eat mutton twel you ull des nat'ally bus' right wide open. Run, Brer Fox, run! He bin feedin' me on mutton the whole blessid mawnin' en now he done gone atter mo'. Run, Brer Fox, run!' "Yit, Brer Fox aint run. He up'n ax Brer Rabbit how de mutton tas'e. "'He tas'e mighty good 'long at fus', but nuff's a nuff, en too much is a plenty. Run, Brer Fox, run! He ull ketch you, sho'!' "Yit, Brer Fox aint run. He up'n 'low dat he b'leeve he want some mutton hisse'f, en wid dat he onloose de trap en let Brer Rabbit out, en den he tuck'n git in dar. Brer Rabbit aint wait fer ter see w'at de upshot gwine ter be, needer--I boun' you he aint. He des tuck'n gallop off in de woods, en he laff en laff twel he hatter hug a tree fer ter keep fum drappin' on de groun'." "Well, but what became of Brother Fox?" the little boy asked, after waiting some time for Uncle Remus to proceed. "Now, den, honey," said the old man, falling back upon his dignity, "hit e'en about takes all my spar' time fer ter keep up wid you en Brer Rabbit, let 'lone keepin' up wid Brer Fox. Ole Brer Rabbit tuck'n tuck keer hisse'f, en now let Brer Fox take keer hisse'f." "I say de word!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [32] Forehead. [33] During slavery, the ringing of the nine-o'clock bell in the towns and villages at night was the signal for all negroes to retire to their quarters. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXII BROTHER 'POSSUM GETS IN TROUBLE When Uncle Remus began his story of Billy Malone and Miss Janey, Daddy Jack sat perfectly quiet. His eyes were shut, and he seemed to be dozing; but, as the story proceeded, he grew more and more restless. Several times he was upon the point of interrupting Uncle Remus, but he restrained himself. He raised his hands to a level with his chin, and beat the ends of his fingers gently together, apparently keeping time to his own thoughts. But his impatience exhausted itself, and when Uncle Remus had concluded, the old African was as quiet as ever. When Brother Fox was left so unceremoniously to his fate, Daddy Jack straightened himself temporarily and said: "Me yent bin-a yerry da tale so. 'E nice, fer true, 'e mek larf come; oona no bin-a yerry um lak me." "No," said Uncle Remus, with grave affability, "I 'speck not. One man, one tale; 'n'er man, 'n'er tale. Folks tell um diffunt. I boun' yo' way de bes', Brer Jack. Out wid it--en we ull set up yer, en hark at you en laff wid you plum twel de chick'ns crow." Daddy Jack needed no other invitation. He clasped his knee in his hands and began: "Dey is bin lif one Màn wut plan' some pea in 'e geerden. 'E plan' some pea, but 'e mek no pea; B'er Rabbit, 'e is fine um. 'E fine um un 'e eat um. Màn mek no pea, B'er Rabbit 'e 'stroy um so. 'E plan' dem pea; dey do grow, un 'e go off. 'E come bahk; pea no dere. B'er Rabbit teer um up un mek 'e cud wit' dem. So long tam, Màn say 'e gwan ketch um, un 'e no ketch um. Màn go, B'er Rabbit come; Màn come, B'er Rabbit go. Bumbye, Màn, 'e is git so mad, 'e y-eye bin-a come red; 'e crack 'e toof, 'e do cuss. 'E oby 'e gwan ketch B'er Rabbit nohow. Dun 'e is bin-a call 'e lilly gal. 'E talk, 'e tell 'im fer let B'er Rabbit go troo da geerden gett. Lil gal say yasser. 'E talk, 'e tell 'im wun B'er Rabbit go troo da gett, dun 'e mus' shed da gett, un no le'm come pas' no mo'. Lil gal say yasser. "Ole Màn is bin-a gone 'bout 'e wuk; lil gal, 'e do lissun. B'er Rabbit, 'e come tippy-toe, tippy-toe; gone in da geerden; eat dem pea tel 'e full up; eat tel he mos' git seeck wit' dem pea. Dun 'e start fer go out; 'e fine da gett shed. 'E shek um, 'e no open; 'e push um, 'e no open; 'e fair grunt, 'e push so hard, 'e no open. 'E bin-a call da lil gal; e' say: "'Lil gal, lil gal! cum y-open da gett. 'T is hu't me feelin' fer fine da gett shed lak dis.' "Lil gal no talk nuttin'. B'er Rabbit say: "''T is-a bin hu't me feelin', lil gal! Come y-open da gett, lil gal, less I teer um loose from da hinch.' "Lil gal v'ice come bahk. 'E talk: "'Daddy say mus'n'.' "B'er Rabbit open 'e mout'. 'E say: "'See me long sha'p toof? 'E bite you troo un troo!' "Lil gal skeer; 'e tu'n loose de gett un fly. B'er Rabbit _gone_! Ole Màn come bahk; 'e ahx 'bout B'er Rabbit. Lil gal say: "''E done gone, daddy. I shed da gett, I hol' um fas'. B'er Rabbit bin show 'e toof; 'e gwan fer bite-a me troo un troo. I git skeer', daddy.' Màn ahx: "'How 'e gwin fer bite you troo un troo, wun 'e toof fix bite grass? B'er Rabbit tell one big tale. 'E no kin bite-a you. Wun 'e come 'g'in, you shed dem gett, you hol' um tight, you no le'm go pas' no mo'.' Lil gal say yasser. "Nex' day mawnin', Màn go 'long 'bout 'e wuk. Lil gal, 'e play 'roun', un 'e play 'roun'. B'er Rabbit, 'e is come tippy-tippy. 'E fine gett open; 'e slip in da geerden. 'E chew dem pea, 'e gnyaw dem pea; 'e eat tel dem pea tas'e bad. Dun 'e try fer go out; gett shed fas'. 'E no kin git troo. 'E push, gett no open; 'e keek wit' um fut, gett no open; 'e butt wit' um head, gett no open. Dun 'e holler: "'Lil gal, lil gal! come y-open da gett. 'E berry bad fer fool wit' ole màn lak me. I no kin hol' me feelin' down wun you is do lak dis. 'E berry bad.' "Lil gal hol' 'e head down; 'e no say nuttin'. B'er Rabbit say: "'Be shame, lil gal, fer do ole màn lak dis. Me feelin' git wusser. Come y-open de gett 'fo' I is teer um down.' "Lil gal say: 'Daddy say mus'n'.' "B'er Rabbit open 'e y-eye wide; 'e is look berry mad. 'E say: "'See me big y-eye? I pop dis y-eye stret at you, me kill-a you dead. Come y-open da gett 'fo' me y-eye pop.' "Lil gal skeer fer true. 'E loose de gett, 'e fair fly. B'er Rabbit done _gone_! Lil gal daddy bahk. 'E ahx wey is B'er Rabbit. Lil gal say: "''E done gone, daddy. I hol' gett fas'; 'e is bin-a 'come berry mad. 'E say he gwan pop 'e y-eye at me, shoot-a me dead.' Màn say: "'B'er Rabbit tell-a too big tale. How 'e gwan shoot-a you wit' 'e y-eye? 'E y-eye sem lak turrer folks y-eye. Wun 'e come some mo', you shed dem gett, you hol' um fas'.' Lil gal say yasser. "Nex' day mawnin', Màn go, B'er Rabbit come. 'E is ma'ch in da gett un eat-a dem pea tel 'e kin eat-a no mo'. 'E sta't out; gett shed. 'E no kin come pas'. 'E shek, 'e push, 'e pull; gett shed. Dun 'e holler: "'Lil gal, lil gal! come y-open da gett. 'Tis berry bad fer treat you' kin lak dis. Come y-open da gett, lil gal. 'Tis full me up wit' sorry wun you do lak dis.' "Lil gal, 'e no say nuttin'. B'er Rabbit say: "''E berry bad fer treat you' kin lak dis. Tu'n go da gett, lil gal.' Lil gal say: "'How you is kin wit' me, B'er Rabbit?' "'You' gran'daddy foller at' me nuncle wit' 'e dog. Da mek we is kin. Come y-open da gett, lil gal.'" "Dat ole Rabbit wuz a-talkin', mon!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, enthusiastically. "Lil gal no say nuttin' 't all!" Daddy Jack went on, with renewed animation. "Dun B'er Rabbit say: "'See me long, sha'p toof, lil gal? Me bite-a you troo un troo.' Lil gal say: "'Me no skeer da toof. 'E bite nuttin' 'tall 'cep' 'e bite grass.' B'er Rabbit say: "'See me big y-eye? I pop um at you, shoot-a you dead.' Lil gal say: "Me no skeer da y-eye. 'E sem lak turrer folks y-eye.' B'er Rabbit say: "'Lil gal, you mek me 'come mad. I no lak fer hu't-a me kin. Look at me ho'n! I run you troo un troo.' "B'er Rabbit lif 'e two year up; 'e p'int um stret at da lil gal. Lil gal 'come skeer da ho'n; 'e do tu'n go da gett; 'e fly fum dey-dey." "Well, ef dat don't beat!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, laughing as heartily as the little boy. "Look at um one way, en Rabbit year does look lak sho' nuff ho'ns." "Lil gal tu'n go da gett," Daddy Jack continued; "B'er Rabbit _gone_! Màn come bahk; 'e ahx wey is B'er Rabbit. Lil gal cry; 'e say 'e skeer B'er Rabbit ho'n. Màn say 'e is hab no ho'n. Lil gal is stan' um down 'e see ho'n. Màn say da ho'n is nuttin' 't all but B'er Rabbit year wut 'e yeddy wit'. 'E tell lil gal nex' tam B'er Rabbit come, 'e mus' shed da gett; 'e mus' run fum dey-dey un leaf um shed. Lil gal say yasser. "Màn gone, B'er Rabbit come. 'E is go in da gett; 'e eat-a dem pea tel 'e tire'. 'E try fer go pas' da gett, gett shed. 'E call lil gal; lil gal _gone_! 'E call, call, call; lil gal no yeddy. 'E try fer fine crack in da palin'; no crack dey. 'E try fer jump over; de palin' too high. 'E 'come skeer; 'e is 'come so skeer 'e squot 'pun da groun'; 'e shek, 'e shiver. "Màn come bahk. 'E ahx wey B'er Rabbit. Lil gal say 'e in da geerden. Màn hug lil gal, 'e is lub um so. 'E go in da geerden; 'e fine B'er Rabbit. 'E ketch um--'e ca' um off fer kill um; 'e mad fer true. Lil gal come holler: "'Daddy, daddy! missus say run dere! 'E wan' you come stret dere!' "Màn tie B'er Rabbit in da bag; 'e hang um on tree lim'. 'E say: "'I gwan come bahk. I l'arn you fer mek cud wit' me green pea.' "Màn gone fer see 'e missus. Bumbye, B'er 'Possum is bin-a come pas'. 'E look up, 'e ketch glimp' da bag 'pun da lim'. 'E say: "'Ki! Wut dis is bin-a hang in da bag 'pun da tree-lim'?' B'er Rabbit say: "'Hush, B'er 'Possum! 'T is-a me. I bin-a lissen at dem sing in da cloud.' "B'er 'Possum lissen. 'E say: "'I no yed dem sing, B'er Rabbit.' "'Hush, B'er 'Possum! How is I kin yeddy dem sing wun you is mek-a da fuss dey-dey?' "B'er 'Possum, 'e hoi' 'e mout' still, 'cep' 'e do grin. B'er Rabbit say: "'I yed dem now! I yed dem now! B'er 'Possum, I wish you is yeddy dem sing!' "B'er 'Possum say 'e mout' water fer yeddy dem sing in da cloud. B'er Rabbit, 'e say 'e is bin-a hab so long tarn 'quaintun wit' B'er 'Possum, 'e le'm yeddy dem sing. 'E say: "'I git fum da bag. I tu'n-a you in tel you is yeddy dem sing. Dun you is git fum da bag, tel I do come bahk un 'joy mese'f.' "B'er 'Possum, 'e do clam up da tree; 'e git dem bag, 'e bring um down. 'E tak off da string; 'e tu'n B'er Rabbit go. 'E crawl in un 'e quile up. 'E say: "'I no yeddy dem sing, B'er Rabbit!' "'Hi! wait tel da bag it tie, B'er 'Possum. You yed dem soon nuff!' 'E wait. "'I no yeddy dem sing, B'er Rabbit!' "'Hi! wait tel I clam da tree, B'er 'Possum. You yed dem soon nuff!' 'E wait. "'I no yeddy dem sing, B'er Rabbit!' "'Wait tel I fix um 'pun da lim', B'er 'Possum. You yed dem soon nuff!' 'E wait. "B'er Rabbit clam down; 'e run 'way fum dey-dey; 'e hide in da bush side. Màn come bahk. 'E see da bag moof. B'er 'Possum say: "'I no yeddy dem sing. I wait fer yed um sing!' "Màn t'ink 'e B'er Rabbit in da bag. 'E say: "'Ah-yi-ee! I mekky you yed dem sing!' "Màn teka da bag fum da tree-lim'; 'e do slam da bag 'gin' da face da ye't'. 'E tek-a 'e walkin'-cane, un 'e beat B'er 'Possum wut is do um no ha'm tel 'e mos' kill um. Màn t'ink B'er Rabbit mus' bin dead by dis. 'E look in da bag; 'e 'tretch 'e y-eye big; 'e 'stonish'. B'er Rabbit, 'e do come fum da bush side; 'e do holler, 'e do laff. 'E say: "'You no is ketch-a me! I t'ief you' green pea,--I t'ief um some mo',--I t'ief um tel I dead!' "Màn, 'e 'come so mad, 'e is fling hatchet at B'er Rabbit un chop off 'e tail." At this moment Daddy Jack subsided. His head drooped forward, and he was soon in the land of Nod. Uncle Remus sat gazing into the fireplace, as though lost in reflection. Presently, he laughed softly to himself, and said: "Dat 's des 'bout de long en de short un it. Mr. Man clip off Brer Rabbit tail wid de hatchet, en it bleed so free dat Brer Rabbit rush off ter de cotton-patch en put some lint on it, en down ter dis day dat lint mos' de fus' t'ing you see w'en Brer Rabbit jump out'n he bed en tell you good-bye." "But, Uncle Remus, what became of Brother 'Possum?" Uncle Remus smacked his lips and looked wise. "Don't talk 'bout Brer 'Possum, honey, ef dat ar Mr. Man wuz nice folks lak we all is, en I aint 'spute it, he tuck'n tuck Brer 'Possum en bobbycue 'im, en I wish I had a great big piece right now. Dat I does." XXXIII WHY THE GUINEA-FOWLS ARE SPECKLED One night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus broil a piece of bacon on the coals, he heard a great commotion among the guinea-fowls. The squawking and _pot-racking_ went on at such a rate that the geese awoke and began to scream, and finally the dogs added their various voices to the uproar. Uncle Remus leaned back in his chair and listened. "I 'speck may be dat 's de patter-rollers gwine by," he said, after a while. "But you can't put no 'pen'unce in dem ar Guinny-hins, 'kaze dey'll wake up en holler ef dey year deyse'f sno'. Dey'll fool you, sho'." "They are mighty funny, anyhow," said the little boy. "Dat 's it!" exclaimed Uncle Remus. "Dey looks quare, en dey does quare. Dey aint do lak no yuther kinder chick'n, en dey aint look lak no yuther kinder chick'n. Yit folks tell me," the old man went on, reflectively, "dat dey er heap mo' kuse lookin' now dan w'at dey use' ter be. I year tell dat dey wuz one time w'en dey wuz all blue, 'stid er havin' all dem ar teenchy little spots on um." "Well, how did they get to be speckled, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, seeing that the old man was disposed to leave the subject and devote his attention to his broiling bacon. Uncle Remus did not respond at once. He turned his meat over carefully, watched it a little while, and then adroitly transferred it to the cover of a tin bucket, which was made to answer the purpose of a plate. Then he searched about in the embers until he found his ash-cake, and in a little while his supper was ready to be eaten. "I aint begrudgin' nobody nothin'," said Uncle Remus, measuring the victuals with his eye; "yit I'm monst'us glad Brer Jack aint nowhar's 'roun', 'kaze dey aint no tellin' de gawm dat ole nigger kin eat. He look shaky, en he look dry up, en he aint got no toof, yit w'ence he set hisse'f down whar dey any vittles, he des nat'ally laps hit up. En let 'lone dat, he ull wipe he mouf en look' roun' des lak he want mo'. Time Miss Sally see dat ole nigger eat one meal er vittles, I boun' you he hatter go back down de country. I aint begrudgin' Brer Jack de vittles," Uncle Remus went on, adopting a more conciliatory tone, "dat I aint, 'kaze folks is got ter eat; but, gentermens! you be 'stonish' w'en you see Brer Jack 'pesterin' 'long er he dinner." The little boy sat quiet awhile, and then reminded Uncle Remus of the guinea-fowls. "Tooby sho', honey, tooby sho'! W'at I doin' runnin' on dis-a-way 'bout ole Brer Jack? W'at he done ter me? Yer I is gwine on 'bout ole Brer Jack, en dem ar Guinny-hins out dar waitin'. Well, den, one day Sis Cow wuz a-grazin' 'bout in de ole fiel' en lookin' atter her calf. De wedder wuz kinder hot, en de calf, he tuck'n stan', he did, in he mammy shadder, so he kin keep cool, en so dat one flip un he mammy tail kin keep the flies off'n bofe un um. Atter w'ile, 'long come a drove er Guinnies. De Guinnies, dey howdied, en Sis Cow, she howdied, en de Guinnies, dey sorter picked 'roun' en sun deyse'f; en Sis Cow, she crap de grass en ax um de news er de neighborhoods. Dey went on dis a-way twel 't wa'n't long 'fo' dey year mighty kuse noise out dar t'er side er de ole fiel'. De Guinnies, dey make great 'miration, des lak dey does deze days, en ole Sis Cow fling up 'er head en look all 'roun'. She aint see nothin'. "Atter w'ile dey year de kuse fuss 'g'in, en dey look 'roun', en bless gracious! stan'in' right dar, 'twix' dem en sundown, wuz a great big Lion!" "A Lion, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, in amazement. "Des ez sho' ez you er settin' dar, honey,--a great big Lion. You better b'leeve dey wuz a monst'us flutterment 'mungs de Guinnies, en ole Sis Cow, she looked mighty skeer'd. De Lion love cow meat mos' better dan he do any yuther kinder meat, en he shake he head en 'low ter hisse'f dat he'll des about ketch ole Sis Cow en eat 'er up, en take en kyar de calf ter he fambly. "Den he tuck'n shuck he head, de Lion did, en make straight at Sis Cow. De Guinnies dey run dis a-way, en dey run t'er way, en dey run all 'roun' en 'roun'; but ole Sis Cow, she des know she got ter stan' 'er groun', en w'en she see de Lion makin' todes 'er, she des tuck'n drapt 'er head down en pawed de dirt. De Lion, he crope up, he did, en crope 'roun', watchin' fer good chance fer ter make a jump. He crope 'roun', he did, but no diffunce which a-way he creep, dar wuz ole Sis Cow hawns p'intin' right straight at 'im. Ole Sis Cow, she paw de dirt, she did, en show de white er her eyes, en beller way down in 'er stomach. "Dey went on dis a-way, dey did, twel bimeby de Guinnies, dey see dat Sis Cow aint so mighty skeer'd, en den dey 'gun ter take heart. Fus' news you know, one un um sorter drap he wings en fuzzle up de fedders en run out 'twix' Sis Cow en de Lion. W'en he get dar, he sorter dip down, he did, en fling up dirt des lak you see um do in de ash-pile. Den he tuck'n run back, he did, en time he git back, 'n'er one run out en raise de dus' 'twix' Sis Cow en de Lion. Den 'n'er one, he run out en dip down en shoo up de dus'; den 'n'er one run out en dip down, en 'n'er one en yit 'n'er one, twel, bless gracious! time dey all run out en dip down en raise de dus', de Lion wuz dat blin' twel he aint kin see he han' befo' 'im. Dis make 'im so mad dat he make a splunge at Sis Cow, en de old lady, she kotch 'im on her hawns en got 'im down, en des nat'ally to' intruls out." "Did she kill the Lion, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy, incredulously. [Illustration: WHY THE GUINEA FOWLS ARE SPECKLED] "Dat she did--dat she did! Yit 't aint make 'er proud, 'kaze atter de Lion done good en dead, she tuck en call up de Guinnies, she did, en she 'low, dey bin so quick fer ter he'p 'er out, dat she wanter pay um back. De Guinnies, dey say, sezee: "'Don't bodder 'long er we all, Sis Cow,' sezee. 'You had yo' fun en we all had ourn, en 'ceppin' dat ar blood en ha'r on yo' hawn,' sezee, 'dey aint none un us any de wuss off,' sezee. "But ole Sis Cow, she stan' um down, she did, dat she got ter pay um back, en den atter w'ile she ax um w'at dey lak bes'. "One un um up en make answer dat w'at dey lak bes', Sis Cow, she can't gi' um. Sis Cow, she up en 'low dat she dunno 'bout dat, en she ax um w'at is it. "Den de Guinnies, dey tuck'n huddle up, dey did, en hol' er confab wid one er 'n'er, en w'iles dey er doin' dis, ole Sis Cow, she tuck'n fetch a long breff, en den she call up 'er cud, en stood dar chawin' on it des lak she aint had no tribalation dat day. "Bimeby one er de Guinnies step out fum de huddlement en make a bow en 'low dat dey all 'ud be mighty proud ef Sis Cow kin fix it some way so dey can't be seed so fur thoo de woods, 'kaze dey look blue in de sun, en dey look blue in de shade, en dey can't hide deyse'f nohow. Sis Cow, she chaw on 'er cud, en shet 'er eyes, en study. She chaw en chaw, en study en study. Bimeby she 'low: "'Go fetch me a pail!' Guinny-hin laff! "'Law, Sis Cow! w'at de name er goodness you gwine do wid a pail?' "'Go fetch me a pail!' "Guinny-hin, she run'd off, she did, en atter w'ile yer she come trottin' back wid a pail. She sot dat pail down," continued Uncle Remus, in the tone of an eye-witness to the occurrence, "en Sis Cow, she tuck 'er stan' over it, en she let down 'er milk in dar twel she mighty nigh fill de pail full. Den she tuck'n make dem Guinny-hins git in a row, en she dip 'er tail in dat ar pail, en she switch it at de fust un en sprinkle 'er all over wid de milk; en eve'y time she switch 'er tail at um she 'low: "'I loves dis un!' Den she 'ud sing: "'_Oh, Blue, go 'way! you shill not stay! Oh, Guinny, be Gray, be Gray!_' "She tuck'n sprinkle de las' one un um, en de Guinnies, dey sot in de sun twel dey git dry, en fum dat time out dey got dem little speckles un um." XXXIV BROTHER RABBIT'S LOVE-CHARM "Dey wuz one time," said Uncle Remus one night, as they all sat around the wide hearth,--Daddy Jack, Aunt Tempy, and the little boy in their accustomed places,--"dey wuz one time w'en de t'er creeturs push Brer Rabbit so close dat he tuck up a kinder idee dat may be he wa'n't ez smart ez he mout be, en he study 'bout dis plum twel he git humble ez de nex' man. 'Las' he low ter hisse'f dat he better make inquirements--" "Ki!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, raising both hands and grinning excitedly, "wut tale dis? I bin yerry da tale wun I is bin wean't fum me mammy." "Well, den, Brer Jack," said Uncle Remus, with instinctive deference to the rules of hospitality, "I 'speck you des better whirl in yer en spin 'er out. Ef you git 'er mix up anywhars I ull des slip in front er you en ketch holt whar you lef' off." With that, Daddy Jack proceeded: "One tam, B'er Rabbit is bin lub one noung leddy." "Miss Meadows, I 'speck," suggested Uncle Remus, as the old African paused to rub his chin. "'E no lub Miss Meadow nuttin' 't all!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, emphatically. "'E bin lub turrer noung leddy fum dat. 'E is bin lub werry nice noung leddy. 'E lub 'um hard, 'e lub 'um long, un 'e is gwan try fer mek dem noung leddy marry wit' 'im. Noung leddy seem lak 'e no look 'pon B'er Rabbit, un dis is bin-a mek B'er Rabbit feel werry bad all da day long. 'E moof 'way off by 'ese'f; 'e lose 'e fat, un 'e heer is bin-a come out. Bumbye, 'e see one ole Affiky mans wut is bin-a hunt in da fiel' fer root en yerrub fer mek 'e met'cine truck. 'E see um, un he go toze um. Affiky mans open 'e y-eye big; 'e 'stonish'. 'E say: "'Ki, B'er Rabbit! you' he'lt' is bin-a gone; 'e bin-a gone un lef' you. Wut mekky you is look so puny lak dis? Who is bin hu't-a you' feelin'?' "B'er Rabbit larf wit' dry grins. 'E say: "'Shoo! I bin got well. Ef you is see me wun I sick fer true, 't will mekky you heer stan' up, I skeer you so.' "Affiky mans, 'e mek B'er Rabbit stick out 'e tongue; 'e is count B'er Rabbit pulse. 'E shekky 'e head; 'e do say: "'Hi, B'er Rabbit! Wut all dis? You is bin ketch-a da gal-fever, un 'e strak in 'pon you' gizzud.' "Den B'er Rabbit, 'e is tell-a da Affiky mans 'bout dem noung leddy wut no look toze 'im, un da Affiky mans, 'e do say 'e bin know gal sem lak dat, 'e is bin shum befo'. 'E say 'e kin fix all dem noung leddy lak dat. B'er Rabbit, 'e is feel so good, 'e jump up high; 'e is bin crack 'e heel; 'e shekky da Affiky mans by de han'. "Affiky mans, 'e say B'er Rabbit no kin git da gal 'cep' 'e is mek 'im one cha'm-bag. 'E say 'e mus' git one el'phan' tush, un 'e mus' git one 'gater toof, un 'e mus' git one rice-bud bill. B'er Rabbit werry glad 'bout dis, un 'e hop way fum dey-dey. "'E hop, 'e run, 'e jump all nex' day night, un bumbye 'e see one great big el'phan' come breakin' 'e way troo da woots. B'er Rabbit, 'e say: "'Ki! Oona big fer true! I bin-a yeddy talk 'bout dis in me y-own countree. Oona big fer true; too big fer be strong.' "El'phan' say: 'See dis!' "'E tek pine tree in 'e snout; 'e pull um by da roots; 'e toss um way off. B'er Rabbit say: "'Hi! dem tree come 'cause you bin high; 'e no come 'cause you bin strong.' "El'phan' say: 'See dis!' "'E rush troo da woots; 'e fair teer um down. B'er Rabbit say: "'Hoo! dem is bin-a saplin' wey you 'stroy. See da big pine? Oona no kin 'stroy dem.' "El'phan' say: 'See dis!' "'E run 'pon da big pine; da big pine is bin too tough. El'phan' tush stick in deer fer true; da big pine hol' um fas'. B'er Rabbit git-a dem tush; 'e fetch um wey da Affiky mans lif. Affiky mans say el'phan' is bin too big fer be sma't. 'E say 'e mus' haf one 'gater toof fer go wit' el'phan' tush. "B'er Rabbit, 'e do crack 'e heel; 'e do fair fly fum dey-dey. 'E go 'long, 'e go 'long. Bumbye 'e come 'pon 'gater. Da sun shiün hot; da 'gater do 'joy 'ese'f. B'er Rabbit say: "'Dis road, 'e werry bad; less we mek good one by da crickside.' "'Gater lak dat. 'E wek 'ese'f up fum 'e head to 'e tail. Dey sta't fer clean da road. 'Gater, 'e do teer da bush wit' 'e toof; 'e sweep-a da trash way wit' 'e tail. B'er Rabbit, 'e do beat-a da bush down wit' 'e cane. 'E hit lef', 'e hit right; 'e hit up, 'e hit down; 'e hit all 'roun'. 'E hit un 'e hit, tel bumbye 'e hit 'gater in 'e mout' un knock-a da toof out. 'E grab um up; 'e gone fum dey-dey. 'E fetch-a da 'gater toof wey da Affiky mans lif. Affiky mans say: "''Gater is bin-a got sha'p toof fer true. Go fetch-a me one rice-bud bill.' "B'er Rabbit gone! 'E go 'long, 'e go 'long, tel 'e see rice-bud swingin' on bush. 'E ahx um kin 'e fly. "Rice-bud say: 'See dis!' "'E wissle, 'e sing, 'e shek 'e wing; 'e fly all 'roun' un 'roun'. "B'er Rabbit say rice-bud kin fly wey da win' is bin blow, but 'e no kin fly wey no win' blow. "Rice-bud say, 'Enty!' "'E wait fer win' stop blowin'; 'e wait, un 'e fly all 'roun' un 'roun'. "B'er Rabbit say rice-bud yent kin fly in house wey dey no win'. "Rice-bud say, 'Enty!' "'E fly in house, 'e fly all 'roun' un 'roun'. B'er Rabbit pull de do' shed; 'e look at dem rice-bud; 'e say, 'Enty!' "'E ketch dem rice-bud; 'e do git um bill, 'e fetch um wey da Affiky mans lif. Affiky mans says dem rice-bud bill slick fer true. 'E tekky da el'phan' tush, 'e tekky da 'gater toof, 'e tekky da rice-bud bill, he pit um in lil bag; 'e swing dem bag 'pon B'er Rabbit neck. Den B'er Rabbit kin marry dem noung gal. Enty!" Here Daddy Jack paused and flung a glance of feeble tenderness upon 'Tildy. Uncle Remus smiled contemptuously, seeing which 'Tildy straightened herself, tossed her head, and closed her eyes with an air of indescribable scorn. "I dunner what Brer Rabbit mout er done," she exclaimed; "but I lay ef dey's any ole nigger man totin' a cunjer-bag in dis neighborhood, he'll git mighty tired un it 'fo' it do 'im any good--I lay dat!" Daddy Jack chuckled heartily at this, and dropped off to sleep so suddenly that the little boy thought he was playing 'possum. XXXV BROTHER RABBIT SUBMITS TO A TEST "Uncle Remus," said the child, "do you reckon Brother Rabbit really married the young lady?" "Bless yo' soul, honey," responded the old man, with a sigh, "hit b'long ter Brer Jack fer ter tell you dat. 'T aint none er my tale." "Was n't that the tale you started to tell?" "Who? Me? _Shoo!_ I aint 'sputin' but w'at Brer Jack tale des ez purty ez dey er any needs fer, yit 't aint none er my tale." At this, the little boy laid his head upon Uncle Remus's knee and waited. "Now, den," said the old man, with an air of considerable importance, "we er got ter go 'way back behime dish yer yallergater doin's w'at Brer Jack bin mixin' us up wid. Ef I makes no mistakes wid my 'membunce, de place wharbouts I lef' off wuz whar Brer Rabbit had so many 'p'intments fer ter keep out de way er de t'er creeturs dat he 'gun ter feel monst'us humblyfied. Let um be who dey will, you git folks in a close place ef you wanter see um shed der proudness. Dey beg mo' samer dan a nigger w'en de patter-rollers ketch 'im. Brer Rabbit aint ko no beggin', 'kaze dey aint kotch; yit dey come so nigh it, he 'gun ter feel he weakness. "W'en Brer Rabbit feel dis a-way, do he set down flat er de groun' en let de t'er creeturs rush up en grab 'im? He mought do it deze days, 'kaze times done change; but in dem days he des tuck'n sot up wid hisse'f en study 'bout w'at he gwine do. He study en study, en las' he up'n tell he ole 'oman, he did, dat he gwine on a journey. Wid dat, ole Miss Rabbit, she tuck'n fry 'im up a rasher er bacon, en bake 'im a pone er bread. Brer Rabbit tied dis up in a bag en tuck down he walkin' cane en put out." "Where was he going, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Lemme 'lone, honey! Lemme sorter git hit up, like. De trail mighty cole 'long yer, sho'; 'kaze dish yer tale aint come 'cross my min' not sence yo' gran'pa fotch us all out er Ferginny, en dat 's a monst'us long time ago. "He put out, Brer Rabbit did, fer ter see ole Mammy-Bammy Big-Money." "Dat 'uz dat ole Witch-Rabbit," remarked Aunt Tempy, complacently. "Yasser," continued Uncle Remus, "de ve'y same ole creetur w'at I done tell you 'bout w'en Brer Rabbit los' he foot. He put out, he did, en atter so long a time he git dar. He take time fer ter ketch he win', en den he sorter shake hisse'f up en rustle 'roun' in de grass. Bimeby he holler: "'Mammy-Bammy Big-Money! O Mammy-Bammy Big-Money! I journeyed fur, I journeyed fas'; I glad I foun' de place at las'.' "Great big black smoke rise up out er de groun', en ole Mammy-Bammy Big-Money 'low: "'Wharfo', Son Riley Rabbit, Riley? Son Riley Rabbit, wharfo'?' "Wid dat," continued Uncle Remus, dropping the sing-song tone by means of which he managed to impart a curious dignity and stateliness to the dialogue between Brother Rabbit and Mammy-Bammy Big-Money,--"wid dat Brer Rabbit up'n tell 'er, he did, 'bout how he fear'd he losin' de use er he min', 'kaze he done come ter dat pass dat he aint kin fool de yuther creeturs no mo', en dey push 'im so closte twel 't won't be long 'fo' dey'll git 'im. De ole Witch-Rabbit she sot dar, she did, en suck in black smoke en puff it out 'g'in, twel you can't see nothin' 't all but 'er great big eyeballs en 'er great big years. Atter w'ile she 'low: "'Dar sets a squer'l in dat tree, Son Riley; go fetch dat squer'l straight ter me, Son Riley Rabbit, Riley.' "Brer Rabbit sorter study, en den he 'low, he did: "'I aint got much sense lef', yit ef I can't coax dat chap down from dar, den hit 's 'kaze I done got some zeeze w'ich it make me fibble in de min',' sezee. "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit tuck'n empty de provender out'n he bag en got 'im two rocks, en put de bag over he head en sot down und' de tree whar he squer'l is. He wait little w'ile, en den he hit de rocks tergedder--_blip!_ "Squer'l he holler, 'Hey!' "Brer Rabbit wait little, en den he tuck'n slap de rocks tergedder--_blap!_ "Squer'l he run down de tree little bit en holler, 'Heyo!' "Brer Rabbit aint sayin' nothin'. He des pop de rocks tergedder--_blop!_ "Squer'l, he come down little furder, he did, en holler, 'Who dat?' "'Biggidy Dicky Big-Bag!' "'What you doin' in dar?' "'Crackin' hick'y nuts.' "'Kin I crack some?' "'Tooby sho', Miss Bunny Bushtail; come git in de bag.' "Miss Bunny Bushtail hang back," continued Uncle Remus, chuckling; "but de long en de short un it wuz dat she got in de bag, en Brer Rabbit he tuck'n kyar'd 'er ter ole Mammy-Bammy Big-Money. De ole Witch-Rabbit, she tuck'n tu'n de squer'l a-loose, en 'low: "'Dar lies a snake in 'mungs' de grass, Son Riley; go fetch 'im yer, en be right fas', Son Riley Rabbit, Riley.' "Brer Rabbit look 'roun', en sho' nuff dar lay de bigges' kinder rattlesnake, all quile up ready fer business. Brer Rabbit scratch he year wid he behime leg, en study. Look lak he gwine git in trouble. Yit atter w'ile he go off in de bushes, he did, en cut 'im a young grape-vine, en he fix 'im a slip-knot. Den he come back. Snake 'periently look lak he sleep. Brer Rabbit ax 'im how he come on. Snake aint say nothin', but he quile up a little tighter, en he tongue run out lak it bin had grease on it. Mouf shot, yit de tongue slick out en slick back 'fo' a sheep kin shake he tail. Brer Rabbit, he 'low, he did: "'Law, Mr. Snake, I mighty glad I come 'cross you,' sezee. 'Me en ole Jedge B'ar bin havin' a turrible 'spute 'bout how long you is. We bofe 'gree dat you look mighty purty w'en youer layin' stretch out full lenk in de sun; but Jedge B'ar, he 'low you aint but th'ee foot long, en I stood 'im down dat you 'uz four foot long ef not mo',' sezee. 'En de talk got so hot dat I come mighty nigh hittin' 'im a clip wid my walkin'-cane, en ef I had I boun' dey'd er bin some bellerin' done 'roun' dar,' sezee. "Snake aint say nothin', but he look mo' complassy[34] dan w'at he bin lookin'. "'I up'n tole ole Jedge B'ar,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'dat de nex' time I run 'cross you I gwine take'n medjer you; en goodness knows I mighty glad I struck up wid you, 'kaze now dey won't be no mo' 'casion fer any 'sputin' 'twix' me en Jedge B'ar,' sezee. "Den Brer Rabbit ax Mr. Snake ef he won't be so good ez ter onquile hisse'f. Snake he feel mighty proud, he did, en he stretch out fer all he wuff. Brer Rabbit he medjer, he did, en 'low: "'Dar one foot fer Jedge B'ar; dar th'ee foot fer Jedge B'ar; en, bless goodness, dar four foot fer Jedge B'ar, des lak I say!' "By dat time Brer Rabbit done got ter snake head, en des ez de las' wud drop out'n he mouf, he slip de loop 'roun' snake neck, en den he had 'im good en fas'. He tuck'n drag 'im, he did, up ter whar de ole Witch-Rabbit settin' at; but w'en he git dar, Mammy-Bammy Big-Money done make 'er disappearance, but he year sump'n' way off yander, en seem lak it say: "'Ef you git any mo' sense, Son Riley, you'll be de ruination ev de whole settlement, Son Riley Rabbit, Riley.' "Den Brer Rabbit drag de snake 'long home, en stew 'im down en rub wid de grease fer ter make 'im mo' 'soopler in de lim's. Bless yo' soul, honey, Brer Rabbit mought er bin kinder fibble in de legs, but he wa'n't no ways cripple und' de hat."[35] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [34] A mixture of "complacent" and "placid." Accent on the second syllable. [35] A version of this story makes Brother Rabbit capture a swarm of bees. Mr. W. O. Tuggle, of Georgia, who has made an exhaustive study of the Creek Indians, has discovered a variant of the legend. The Rabbit (Chufee) becomes alarmed because he has nothing but the nimbleness of his feet to take him out of harm's way. He goes to his Creator and begs that greater intelligence be bestowed upon him. Thereupon the snake test is applied, as in the negro story, and the Rabbit also catches a swarm of gnats. He is then told that he has as much intelligence as there is any need for, and he goes away satisfied. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXVI BROTHER WOLF FALLS A VICTIM "Uncle Remus," said the little boy, one night, when he found the old man sitting alone in his cabin, "did you ever see Mammy-Bammy Big-Money?" Uncle Remus placed his elbows on his knees, rested his chin in the palms of his hands, and gazed steadily in the fire. Presently he said: "W'en folks 'gin ter git ole en no 'count, hit look lak der 'membunce git slack. Some time hit seem lak I done seed sump'n' n'er mighty nigh de make en color er ole Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, en den ag'in seem lak I aint. W'en dat de case, w'at does I do? Does I stan' tiptoe en tetch de rafters en make lak I done seed dat ole Witch-Rabbit, w'en, goodness knows, I aint seed 'er? Dat I don't. No, bless you! I'd say de same in comp'ny, much less settin' in yer 'long side er you. De long en de short un it," exclaimed Uncle Remus, with emphasis, "is des dis. Ef I bin run 'crost ole Mammy-Bammy Big-Money in my day en time, den she tuck'n make 'er disappearance dat quick twel I aint kotch a glimp' un 'er." The result of this good-humored explanation was that the child did n't know whether Uncle Remus had seen the Witch-Rabbit or not, but his sympathies led him to suspect that the old man was thoroughly familiar with all her movements. "Uncle Remus," the little boy said, after a while, "if there is another story about Mammy-Bammy Big-Money, I wish you would tell it to me all by my own-alone self." The idea seemed to please the old man wonderfully, and he chuckled over it for several minutes. "Now, den, honey," he said, after a while, "you hit me whar I'm weak--you mos' sho'ly does. Comp'ny mighty good fer some folks en I kin put up wid it long ez de nex' un, but you kin des take'n pile comp'ny 'pun top er comp'ny, en dey won't kyore de liver complaint. W'en you talk dat a-way you fetches me, sho', en I'll tell you a tale 'bout de ole Witch-Rabbit ef I hatter git down yer on my all-fours en grabble it out'n de ashes. Yit dey aint no needs er dat, 'kaze de tale done come in my min' des ez fresh ez ef 't was day 'fo' yistiddy. "Hit seem lak dat one time atter Brer Wolf tuck'n steal Brer Rabbit foot, dey wuz a mighty long fallin'-out 'twix' um. Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n got ashy 'kaze Brer Wolf tuck'n tuck he foot; en Brer Wolf, he tuck'n got hot 'kaze Brer Rabbit wuk en wuk 'roun' en git he foot ag'in. Hit keep on dis a-way twel bimeby de ole Witch-Rabbit sorter git tired er Brer Wolf, en one day she tuck'n sont wud ter Brer Rabbit dat she lak mighty well fer ter see 'im. "Dey fix up der plans, dey did, en 't wa'n't so mighty long 'fo' Brer Rabbit run inter Brer Wolf house in a mighty big hurry, en he 'low, he did: "'Brer Wolf! O Brer Wolf! I des now come fum de river, en des ez sho' ez youer settin' in dat cheer, ole Big-Money layin' dar stone dead. Less[36] we go eat 'er up.' "'Brer Rabbit, sho'ly youer jokin'!' "'Brer Wolf, I'm a-ginin'[37] un you de fatal fack. Come on, less go!' "'Brer Rabbit, is you sho' she dead?' "'Brer Wolf, she done dead; come on, less go!' "En go dey did. Dey went 'roun' en dey got all de yuther creeturs, en Brer Wolf, livin' so nigh, he let all he chilluns go, en 't wa'n't so mighty long 'fo' dey had a crowd dar des lak camp-meetin' times. "W'en dey git dar, sho' nuff, dar lay ole Big-Money all stretch out on de river bank. Dis make Brer Wolf feel mighty good, en he tuck'n stick he han's in he pocket en strut 'roun' dar en look monst'us biggity. Atter he done tuck'n 'zamine ole Big-Money much ez he wanter, he up'n 'low, he did, dat dey better sorter rustle 'roun' en make a fa'r dividjun. He ax Brer Mink, he ax Brer Coon, he ax Brer 'Possum, he ax Brer Tarrypin, he ax Brer Rabbit, w'ich part dey take, en dey all up'n 'low, dey did, dat bein' ez Brer Wolf de biggest en de heartiest in de neighborhoods er de appetite, dey 'speck he better take de fus' choosement. "Wid dat Brer Wolf, he sot down on a log, en hang he head ter one side, sorter lak he 'shame' er hisse'f. Bimeby, he up'n 'low: "'Now, den, folks en fr'en's, sence you shove it on me, de shortes' way is de bes' way. Brer Coon, we bin good fr'en's a mighty long time; how much er dish yer meat ought a fibble[38] ole man lak me ter take?' sezee. "Brer Wolf talk mighty lovin'. Brer Coon snuff de a'r, en 'low: "'I 'speck you better take one er de fo'-quarters, Brer Wolf,' sezee. "Brer Wolf look lak he 'stonish'. He lif' up he han's, en 'low: "'Law, Brer Coon, I tuck you ter be my fr'en', dat I did. Man w'at talk lak dat aint got no feelin' fer me. Hit make me feel mighty lonesome,' sezee. "Den Brer Wolf tu'n 'roun' en talk mighty lovin' ter Brer Mink: "'Brer Mink, many's de day you bin a-knowin' me; how much er dish yer meat you 'speck oughter fall ter my sheer?' sezee. "Brer Mink sorter study, en den he 'low: "'Bein' ez you er sech a nice man, Brer Wolf, I 'speck you oughter take one er de fo'-quarters, en a right smart hunk off'n de bulge er de neck,' sezee. "Brer Wolf holler out, he did: "'Go 'way, Brer Mink! Go 'way! You aint no 'quaintance er mine!' "Den ole Brer Wolf tu'n 'roun' ter Brer 'Possum en talk lovin': "'Brer 'Possum, I done bin tuck wid a likin' fer you long time 'fo' dis. Look at me, en den look at my fambly, en den tell me, ef you be so good, how much er dish yer meat gwine ter fall ter my sheer.' "Brer 'Possum, he look 'roun', he did, en grin, en he up'n 'low: "'Take half, Brer Wolf, take half!' "Den ole Brer Wolf holler out: "'Shoo, Brer 'Possum! I like you no mo'.' "Den Brer Wolf tu'n to Brer Tarrypin, en Brer Tarrypin say Brer Wolf oughter take all 'cep' one er de behime quarters, en den Brer Wolf 'low dat Brer Tarrypin aint no fr'en' ter him. Den he up'n ax Brer Rabbit, en Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n 'spon', he did: "'Gentermuns all! you see Brer Wolf chillun? Well, dey er all monst'us hongry, en Brer Wolf hongry hisse'f. Now I puts dis plan straight at you: less we all let Brer Wolf have de fus' pass at Big-Money; less tie 'im on dar, en le'm eat much ez he wanter, en den we kin pick de bones,' sezee. "'Youer my pardner, Brer Rabbit!' sez Brer Wolf, sezee; 'youer my honey-pardner!' "Dey all 'gree ter dis plan, mo' 'speshually ole Brer Wolf, so den dey tuck'n tie 'im onter Big-Money. Dey tie 'im on dar, dey did, en den ole Brer Wolf look all 'roun' en wunk at de yuthers. Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n wunk back, en den Brer Wolf retch down en bite Big-Money on de back er de neck. Co'se, w'en he do dis, Big-Money bleedz ter flinch; let 'lone dat, she bleedz ter jump. Brer Wolf holler out: "'Ow! Run yer somebody! Take me off! She aint dead! O Lordy! I feel 'er move!' Brer Rabbit holler back: "'Nummine de flinchin', Brer Wolf. She done dead; I done year 'er sesso[39] 'erse'f. She dead, sho'. Bite er ag'in, Brer Wolf, bite 'er ag'in!' "Brer Rabbit talk so stiff, hit sorter tuck de chill off'n Brer Wolf, en he dipt down en bit ole Big-Money ag'in. Wid dat, she 'gun ter move off, en Brer Wolf he holler des lak de woods done kotch a-fier: "'Ow! O Lordy! Ontie me, Brer Rabbit, ontie me! She aint dead! Ow! Run yer, Brer Rabbit, en ontie me!' "Brer Rabbit, he holler back: "'She er sho'ly dead, Brer Wolf! Nail 'er, Brer Wolf! Bite 'er! gnyaw 'er!' "Brer Wolf keep on bitin', en Big-Money keep on movin' off. Bimeby, she git ter de bank er de river, en she fall in--_cumberjoom!_--en dat 'uz de las' er Brer Wolf." "What did Brother Rabbit do?" the little boy asked, after a while. "Well," responded Uncle Remus, in the tone of one anxious to dispose of a disagreeable matter as pleasantly as possible, "you know w'at kinder man Brer Rabbit is. He des went off some'rs by he own-alone se'f en tuck a big laugh." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [36] Let us; let's; less. [37] G hard. [38] Feeble. [39] Say so. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXVII BROTHER RABBIT AND THE MOSQUITOES The next night Daddy Jack was still away when the little boy went to see Uncle Remus, and the child asked about him. "Bless yo' soul, honey! don't ax me 'bout Brer Jack. He look lak he mighty ole en trimbly, but he mighty peart nigger, mon. He look lak he shufflin' 'long, but dat ole nigger gits over groun', sho'. Forty year ergo, maybe I mought er kep' up wid 'im, but I let you know Brer Jack is away 'head er me. He mos' sho'ly is." "Why, he's older than you are, Uncle Remus!" the child exclaimed. "Dat w'at I year tell. Seem lak hit mighty kuse, but sho' ez youer bawn Brer Jack is a heap mo' pearter nigger dan w'at ole Remus is. He little, yit he mighty hard. Dat 's Brer Jack, up en down." Uncle Remus paused and reflected a moment. Then he went on: "Talkin' 'bout Brer Jack put me in min' 'bout a tale w'ich she sho'ly mus' er happen down dar in dat ar country whar Brer Jack come fum, en it sorter ketch me in de neighborhoods er de 'stonishment 'kaze he aint done up'n tell it. I 'speck it done wuk loose fum Brer Jack 'membunce." "What tale was that, Uncle Remus?" "Seem lak dat one time w'en eve'ything en eve'ybody was runnin' 'long des lak dey bin had waggin grease 'pun um, ole Brer Wolf"-- The little boy laughed incredulously and Uncle Remus paused and frowned heavily. "Why, Uncle Remus! how did Brother Wolf get away from Mammy-Bammy Big-Money?" The old man's frown deepened and his voice was full of anger as he replied: "Now, den, is I'm de tale, er is de tale me? Tell me dat! Is I'm de tale, er is de tale me? Well, den, ef I aint de tale en de tale aint me, den how come you wanter take'n rake me over de coals fer?" "Well, Uncle Remus, you know what you said. You said that was the end of Brother Wolf." "I bleedz ter 'spute dat," exclaimed Uncle Remus, with the air of one performing a painful duty; "I bleedz ter 'spute it. Dat w'at de tale say. Ole Remus is one nigger en de tale, hit 's a n'er nigger. Yit I aint got no time fer ter set back yer en fetch out de oggyments." Here the old man paused, closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and sighed. After a while he said, in a gentle tone: "So den, Brer Wolf done dead, en yer I wuz runnin' on des same lak he wuz done 'live. Well! well! well!" Uncle Remus stole a glance at the little boy, and immediately relented. "Yit," he went on, "ef I'm aint de tale en de tale aint me, hit aint skacely make no diffunce whe'er Brer Wolf dead er whe'er he's a high-primin' 'roun' bodder'n 'longer de yuther creeturs. Dead er no dead, dey wuz one time w'en Brer Wolf live in de swamp down dar in dat ar country whar Brer Jack come fum, en, mo'n dat, he had a mighty likely gal. Look lak all de yuther creeturs wuz atter 'er. Dey 'ud go down dar ter Brer Wolf house, dey would, en dey 'ud set up en court de gal, en 'joy deyse'f. "Hit went on dis a-way twel atter w'ile de skeeters 'gun ter git monst'us bad. Brer Fox, he went flyin' 'roun' Miss Wolf, en he sot dar, he did, en run on wid 'er en fight skeeters des es big ez life en twice-t ez natchul. Las' Brer Wolf, he tuck'n kotch Brer Fox slappin' en fightin' at he skeeters. Wid dat he tuck'n tuck Brer Fox by de off year en led 'im out ter de front gate, en w'en he git dar, he 'low, he did, dat no man w'at can't put up wid skeeters aint gwine ter come a-courtin' his gal. [Illustration: BROTHER RABBIT AND THE MOSQUITOES] "Den Brer Coon, he come flyin' 'roun' de gal, but he aint bin dar no time skacely 'fo' he 'gun ter knock at de skeeters; en no sooner is he done dis dan Brer Wolf show 'im de do'. Brer Mink, he come en try he han', yit he bleedz ter fight de skeeters, en Brer Wolf ax 'im out. "Hit went on dis a-way twel bimeby all de creeturs bin flyin' 'roun' Brer Wolf's gal 'ceppin' it's ole Brer Rabbit, en w'en he year w'at kinder treatments de yuther creeturs bin ketchin' he 'low ter hisse'f dat he b'leeve in he soul he mus' go down ter Brer Wolf house en set de gal out one whet ef it's de las' ack. "No sooner say, no sooner do. Off he put, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he fine hisse'f knockin' at Brer Wolf front do'. Ole Sis Wolf, she tuck'n put down 'er knittin' en she up'n low, she did: "'Who dat?' "De gal, she 'uz stannin' up 'fo' de lookin'-glass sorter primpin', en she choke back a giggle, she did, en 'low: "'Sh-h-h! My goodness, mammy! dat 's Mr. Rabbit. I year de gals say he's a mighty prop-en-tickler[40] gentermun, en I des hope you aint gwine ter set dar en run on lak you mos' allers does w'en I got comp'ny 'bout how much soap-grease you done save up en how many kitten de ole cat got. I gits right 'shame' sometimes, dat I does!'" The little boy looked astonished. "Did she talk that way to her mamma?" he asked. "_Shoo_, chile! 'Mungs' all de creeturs dey aint no mo' kuse creeturs dan de gals. Ole ez I is, ef I wuz ter start in dis minnit fer ter tell you how kuse de gals is, en de Lord wuz ter spar' me plum twel I git done, yo' head 'ud be gray, en Remus 'ud be des twice-t ez ole ez w'at he is right now." "Well, what did her mamma say, Uncle Remus?" "Ole Sis Wolf, she sot dar, she did, en settle 'er cap on 'er head, en snicker, en look at de gal lak she monst'us proud. De gal, she tuck'n shuck 'erse'f 'fo' de lookin'-glass a time er two, en den she tipt ter de do' en open' it little ways en peep out des lak she skeer'd some un gwine ter hit 'er a clip side de head. Dar stood ole Brer Rabbit lookin' des ez slick ez a race-hoss. De gal, she tuck'n laff, she did, en holler: "'W'y law, maw! hit 's Mr. Rabbit, en yer we bin 'fraid it 'uz some 'un w'at aint got no business 'roun' yer!' "Ole Sis Wolf she look over 'er specks, en snicker, en den she up'n 'low: "'Well, don't keep 'im stannin' out dar all night. Ax 'im in, fer goodness sake.' "Den de gal, she tuck'n drap 'er hankcher, en Brer Rabbit, he dipt down en grab it en pass it ter 'er wid a bow, en de gal say she much 'blige, 'kaze dat 'uz mo' den Mr. Fox 'ud er done, en den she ax Brer Rabbit how he come on, en Brer Rabbit 'low he right peart, en den he ax 'er wharbouts 'er daddy, en ole Sis Wolf 'low she go fine 'im. "'T wa'n't long 'fo' Brer Rabbit year Brer Wolf stompin' de mud off'n he foots in de back po'ch, en den bimeby in he come. Dey shuck han's, dey did, en Brer Rabbit say dat w'en he go callin' on he 'quaintunce, hit aint feel natchul 'ceppin' de man er de house settin' 'roun' some'rs. "'Ef he don't talk none,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'he kin des set up ag'in' de chimbly-jam en keep time by noddin'.' "But ole Brer Wolf, he one er deze yer kinder mens w'at got de whimzies,[41] en he up'n 'low dat he don't let hisse'f git ter noddin' front er comp'ny. Dey run on dis a-way twel bimeby Brer Rabbit year de skeeters come zoonin' 'roun', en claimin' kin wid 'im." The little boy laughed; but Uncle Remus was very serious. "Co'se dey claim kin wid 'im. Dey claims kin wid folks yit, let 'lone Brer Rabbit. Manys en manys de time w'en I year um sailin' 'roun' en singin' out '_Cousin! Cousin!'_ en I let you know, honey, de skeeters is mighty close kin w'en dey gits ter be yo' cousin. "Brer Rabbit, he year um zoonin'," the old man continued, "en he know he got ter do some mighty nice talkin', so he up'n ax fer drink er water. De gal, she tuck'n fotch it. "'Mighty nice water, Brer Wolf.' (_De skeeters dey zoon._)[42] "'Some say it too full er wiggletails,[43] Brer Rabbit.' (_De skeeters, dey zoon en dey zoon._) "'Mighty nice place you got, Brer Wolf.' (_Skeeters dey zoon._) "'Some say it too low in de swamp, Brer Rabbit.' (_Skeeters dey zoon en dey zoon._) "Dey zoon so bad," said Uncle Remus, drawing a long breath, "dat Brer Rabbit 'gun ter git skeer'd, en w'en dat creetur git skeer'd, he min' wuk lak one er deze yer flutter-mills. Bimeby, he 'low: "'Went ter town t'er day, en dar I seed a sight w'at I never 'speckted ter see.' "'W'at dat, Brer Rabbit?' "'Spotted hoss, Brer Wolf.' "'_No_, Brer Rabbit!' "'I mos' sho'ly seed 'im, Brer Wolf.' "Brer Wolf, he scratch he head, en de gal she hilt up 'er han's en make great 'miration 'bout de spotted hoss. (_De skeeters dey zoon, en dey keep on zoonin'._) Brer Rabbit, he talk on, he did: "''T wa'n't des one spotted hoss, Brer Wolf, 't wuz a whole team er spotted hosses, en dey went gallin'-up[44] des lak de yuther hosses,' sezee. 'Let 'lone dat, Brer Wolf, my grandaddy wuz spotted,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Gal, she squeal en holler out: "'W'y, Brer Rabbit! aint you 'shame' yo'se'f fer ter be talkin' dat a-way, en 'bout yo' own-'lone blood kin too?' "'Hit 's de naked trufe I'm a-ginin'[45] un you,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. (_Skeeter zoon en come closeter._) "Brer Wolf 'low 'Well--well--well!' Ole Sis Wolf, she 'low 'Tooby sho'ly, tooby sho'ly!' (_Skeeter zoon en come nigher en nigher._) Brer Rabbit 'low: "'Yasser! Des ez sho' ez youer settin' dar, my grandaddy wuz spotted. Spotted all over. (_Skeeter come zoonin' up en light on Brer Rabbit jaw._) He wuz dat. He had er great big spot right yer!'" Here Uncle Remus raised his hand and struck himself a resounding slap on the side of the face where the mosquito was supposed to be, and continued: "No sooner is he do dis dan ne'r skeeter come zoonin' 'roun' en light on Brer Rabbit leg. Brer Rabbit, he talk, en he talk: "'Po' ole grandaddy! I boun' he make you laff, he look so funny wid all dem spots en speckles. He had spot on de side er de head, whar I done show you, en den he had n'er big spot right yer on de leg,' sezee." Uncle Remus slapped himself on the leg below the knee, and was apparently so serious about it that the little boy laughed loudly. The old man went on: "Skeeter zoon en light 'twix' Brer Rabbit shoulder-blades. Den he talk: "'B'leeve me er not b'leeve me ef you min' to, but my grandaddy had a big black spot up yer on he back w'ich look lak saddle-mark.' "_Blip Brer Rabbit tuck hisse'f on de back!_ "Skeeter sail 'roun' en zoon en light down yer beyan de hip-bone. He say he grandaddy got spot down dar. "_Blip he tuck hisse'f beyan de hip-bone._ "Hit keep on dis a-way," continued Uncle Remus, who had given vigorous illustrations of Brer Rabbit's method of killing mosquitoes while pretending to tell a story, "twel bimeby ole Brer Wolf en ole Sis Wolf dey lissen at Brer Rabbit twel dey 'gun ter nod, en den ole Brer Rabbit en de gal dey sot up dar en kill skeeters right erlong." "Did he marry Brother Wolf's daughter?" asked the little boy. "I year talk," replied Uncle Remus, "dat Brer Wolf sont Brer Rabbit wud nex' day dat he kin git de gal by gwine atter 'er, but I aint never year talk 'bout Brer Rabbit gwine. De day atterwuds wuz mighty long time, en by den Brer Rabbit moughter had some yuther projick on han'."[46] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [40] Proper and particular. [41] In these latter days a man with the whimzies, or whimsies, is known simply as a crank. [42] The information in parentheses is imparted in a low, impressive, confidential tone. [43] Is it necessary to say that the wiggletail is the embryo mosquito? [44] Galloping. [45] G hard as in give. [46] This story, the funniest and most characteristic of all the negro legends, cannot be satisfactorily told on paper. It is full of action, and all the interest centres in the gestures and grimaces that must accompany an explanation of Brother Rabbit's method of disposing of the mosquitoes. The story was first called to my attention by Mr. Marion Erwin, of Savannah, and it is properly a coast legend, but I have heard it told by three Middle Georgia negroes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXVIII THE PIMMERLY PLUM One night, when the little boy had grown tired of waiting for a story, he looked at Uncle Remus and said: "I wonder what ever became of old Brother Tarrypin." Uncle Remus gave a sudden start, glanced all around the cabin, and then broke into a laugh that ended in a yell like a view-halloo. "Well, well, well! How de name er goodness come you ter know w'at runnin' on in my min', honey? Mon, you skeer'd me; you sho'ly did; en w'en I git skeer'd I bleedz ter holler. Let 'lone dat, ef I keep on gittin' skeerder en skeerder, you better gimme room, 'kaze ef I can't git 'way fum dar somebody gwine ter git hurted, en deyer gwine ter git hurted bad. I tell you dat right pine-blank.[47] "Ole Brer Tarrypin!" continued Uncle Remus in a tone of exultation. "Ole Brer Tarrypin! Now, who bin year tell er de beat er dat? Dar you sets studyin' 'bout ole Brer Tarrypin, en yer I sets studyin' 'bout ole Brer Tarrypin. Hit make me feel so kuse dat little mo' en I'd 'a' draw'd my Rabbit-foot en shuck it at you." The little boy was delighted when Uncle Remus went off into these rhapsodies. However nonsensical they might seem to others, to the child they were positively thrilling, and he listened with rapt attention, scarcely daring to stir. "Ole Brer Tarrypin? Well, well, well!-- "'_W'en in he prime He tuck he time!_' "Dat w'at make he hol' he age so good. Dey tells me dat somebody 'cross dar in Jasper county tuck'n kotch a Tarrypin w'ich he got marks cut in he back dat 'uz put dar 'fo' our folks went fer ter git revengeance in de Moccasin war. Dar whar yo' Unk' Jeems bin," Uncle Remus explained, noticing the little boy's look of astonishment. "Oh!" exclaimed the child, "that was the Mexican war." "Well," responded Uncle Remus, closing his eyes with a sigh, "I aint one er deze yer kinder folks w'at choke deyse'f wid names. One name aint got none de 'vantage er no yuther name. En ef de Tarrypin got de marks on 'im, hit don't make no diffunce whe'er yo' Unk' Jeems Abercrombie git his revengeance out'n de Moccasin folks, er whe'er he got it out'n de Mackersons." "Mexicans, Uncle Remus." "Tooby sho', honey; let it go at dat. But don't less pester ole Brer Tarrypin wid it, 'kaze he done b'long ter a tribe all by he own-'lone se'f.--I 'clar' ter gracious," exclaimed the old man after a pause, "ef hit don't seem periently lak 't wuz yistiddy!" "What, Uncle Remus?" "Oh, des ole Brer Tarrypin, honey; des ole Brer Tarrypin en a tale w'at I year 'bout 'im, how he done tuck'n do Brer Fox." "Did he scare him, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked, as the old man paused. "No, my goodness! Wuss'n dat!" "Did he hurt him?" "No, my goodness! Wuss'n dat!" "Did he kill him?" "No, my goodness! Lots wuss'n dat!" "Now, Uncle Remus, what _did_ he do to Brother Fox?" "Honey!"--here the old man lowered his voice as if about to describe a great outrage--"Honey! he tuck'n make a fool out'n 'im!" The child laughed, but it was plain that he failed to appreciate the situation, and this fact caused Uncle Remus to brighten up and go on with the story. "One time w'en de sun shine down mighty hot, ole Brer Tarrypin wuz gwine 'long down de road. He 'uz gwine 'long down, en he feel mighty tired; he puff, en he blow, en he pant. He breff come lak he got de azmy 'way down in he win'-pipe; but, nummine! he de same ole Creep-um-crawl-um Have-some-fun-um. He 'uz gwine 'long down de big road, ole Brer Tarrypin wuz, en bimeby he come ter de branch. He tuck'n crawl in, he did, en got 'im a drink er water, en den he crawl out on t'er side en set down und' de shade un a tree. Atter he sorter ketch he win', he look up at de sun fer ter see w'at time er day is it, en, lo en beholes! he tuck'n skivver dat he settin' in de shade er de sycamo' tree. No sooner is he skivver dis dan he sing de ole song: "'_Good luck ter dem w'at come and go, W'at set in de shade er de sycamo'._' "Brer Tarrypin he feel so good en de shade so cool, dat 't wa'n't long 'fo' he got ter noddin', en bimeby he drapt off en went soun' asleep. Co'se, Brer Tarrypin kyar he house wid 'im eve'ywhar he go, en w'en he fix fer ter go ter sleep, he des shet de do' en pull to de winder-shetters, en dar he is des ez snug ez de ole black cat und' de barn. "Brer Tarrypin lay dar, he did, en sleep, en sleep. He dunner how long he sleep, but bimeby he feel somebody foolin' 'long wid 'im. He keep de do' shet, en he lay dar en lissen. He feel somebody tu'nin' he house 'roun' en 'roun'. Dis sorter skeer Brer Tarrypin, 'kaze he know dat ef dey tu'n he house upside down he ull have all sorts er times gittin' back. Wid dat, he open de do' little ways, en he see Brer Fox projickin' wid 'im. He open de do' little furder, he did, en he break out in a great big hoss-laff, en holler: "'Well! well, well! Who'd 'a' thunk it! Ole Brer Fox, cuter dan de common run, is done come en kotch me. En he come at sech a time, too! I feels dat full twel I can't see straight skacely. Ef dey wuz any jealousness proned inter me, I'd des lay yer en pout 'kaze Brer Fox done fine out whar I gits my Pimmerly Plum.' "In dem days," continued Uncle Remus, speaking to the child's look of inquiry, "de Pimmerly Plum wuz monst'us skace. Leavin' out Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin dey wa'n't none er de yuther creeturs dat yuvver got a glimp' un it, let 'lone a tas'e. So den w'en Brer Fox year talk er de Pimmerly Plum, bless gracious! he h'ist up he head en let Brer Tarrypin 'lone. Brer Tarrypin keep on laffin' en Brer Fox 'low: "'Hush, Brer Tarrypin! you makes my mouf water! Whar'bouts de Pimmerly Plum?' "Brer Tarrypin, he sorter cle'r up de ho'seness in he th'oat, en sing: "'_Poun' er sugar, en a pint er rum, Aint nigh so sweet ez de Pimmerly Plum!_' "Brer Fox, he lif' up he han's, he did, en holler: "'Oh, hush, Brer Tarrypin! you makes me dribble! Whar'bouts dat Pimmerly Plum?' "'You stannin' right und' de tree, Brer Fox!' "'Brer Tarrypin, sho'ly not!' "'Yit dar you stan's, Brer Fox!' "Brer Fox look up in de tree dar, en he wuz 'stonish'." "What did he see in the sycamore tree, Uncle Remus?" inquired the little boy. There was a look of genuine disappointment on the old man's face, as he replied: "De gracious en de goodness, honey! Aint you nev' is see dem ar little bit er balls w'at grow on de sycamo' tree?"[48] The little boy laughed. There was a huge sycamore tree in the centre of the circle made by the carriage way in front of the "big house," and there were sycamore trees of various sizes all over the place. The little balls alluded to by Uncle Remus are very hard at certain stages of their growth, and cling to the tree with wonderful tenacity. Uncle Remus continued: "Well, den, w'en ole Brer Tarrypin vouch dat dem ar sycamo' balls wuz de ginnywine Pimmerly Plum, ole Brer Fox, he feel mighty good, yit he dunner how he gwine git at um. Push 'im clos't, en maybe he mought beat Brer Tarrypin clammin' a tree, but dish yer sycamo' tree wuz too big fer Brer Fox fer ter git he arms 'roun'. Den he up'n 'low: "'I sees um hangin' dar, Brer Tarrypin, but how I gwine git um?' "Brer Tarrypin open he do' little ways en holler out: "'Ah-yi! Dar whar ole Slickum Slow-come got de 'vantage! Youer mighty peart, Brer Fox, yit somehow er nudder you aint bin a-keepin' up wid ole Slickum Slow-come.' "'Brer Tarrypin, how de name er goodness does you git um?' "'Don't do no good fer ter tell you, Brer Fox. Nimble heel make restless min'. You aint got time fer ter wait en git um, Brer Fox.' "'Brer Tarrypin, I got all de week befo' me.' "'Ef I tells you, you'll go en tell all de t'er creeturs, en den dat'll be de las' er de Pimmerly Plum, Brer Fox.' "'Brer Tarrypin, dat I won't. Des try me one time en see.' "Brer Tarrypin shet he eye lak he studyin', en den he 'low: [Illustration: THE PIMMERLY PLUM] "'I tell you how I does, Brer Fox. W'en I wants a bait er de Pimmerly Plum right bad, I des takes my foot in my han' en comes down yer ter dish yer tree. I comes en I takes my stan'. I gits right und' de tree, en I r'ars my head back en opens my mouf. I opens my mouf, en w'en de Pimmerly Plum draps, I boun' you she draps right spang in dar. All you got ter do is ter set en wait, Brer Fox.' "Brer Fox aint sayin' nothin'. He des sot down und' de tree, he did, en r'ar'd he head back, en open he mouf, en I wish ter goodness you mought er bin had er chance fer ter see 'im settin' dar. He look scan'lous, dat 's de long en de short un it; he des look scan'lous." "Did he get the Pimmerly Plum, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "_Shoo!_ How he gwine git plum whar dey aint no plum?" "Well, what did he do?" "He sot dar wid he mouf wide open, en eve'y time Brer Tarrypin look at 'im, much ez he kin do fer ter keep from bustin' aloose en laffin'. But bimeby he make he way todes home, Brer Tarrypin did, chucklin' en laffin', en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he meet Brer Rabbit tippin' 'long down de road. Brer Rabbit, he hail 'im. "'W'at 'muze you so mighty well, Brer Tarrypin?' "Brer Tarrypin kotch he breff atter so long a time, en he 'low: "'Brer Rabbit, I'm dat tickle' twel I can't shuffle 'long, skacely, en I'm fear'd ef I up'n tell you de 'casion un it, I'll be tooken wid one er my spells whar folks hatter set up wid me 'kaze I laff so loud en laff so long.' "Yit atter so long a time, Brer Tarrypin up'n tell Brer Rabbit, en dey sot dar en chaw'd terbacker en kyar'd on des lak sho' 'nuff folks. Dat dey did!" Uncle Remus paused; but the little boy wanted to know what became of Brer Fox. "Hit 's mighty kuse," said the old man, stirring around in the ashes as if in search of a potato, "but endurin' er all my days I aint nev' year nobody tell 'bout how long Brer Fox sot dar waitin' fer de Pimmerly Plum." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [47] Point-blank. [48] In another version of this story current among the negroes the sweet-gum tree takes the place of the sycamore. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXIX BROTHER RABBIT GETS THE PROVISIONS The next time the little boy called on Uncle Remus a bright fire was blazing on the hearth. He could see the light shining under the door before he went into the cabin, and he knew by that sign that the old man had company. In fact, Daddy Jack had returned and was dozing in his accustomed corner, Aunt Tempy was sitting bolt upright, nursing her contempt, and Uncle Remus was making a curious-looking box. None of the negroes paid any attention to the little boy when he entered, but somehow he felt that they were waiting for him. After a while Uncle Remus finished his curious-looking box and laid it upon the floor. Then he lifted his spectacles from his nose to the top of his head, and remarked: "Now, den, folks, dar she is, en hit 's bin so long sence I uv made one un um dat she make me sweat. Yasser! She did dat. Howsumev', hit aint make no diffunce wid me. Promise is a promise, dough you make it in de dark er de moon. Long time ago, I tuck'n promise one er my passin' 'quaintance dat some er deze lonesome days de ole nigger 'd whirl in en make 'im a rabbit-trap ef he'd des be so good ez to quit he devilment, en l'arn he behavishness." "Is that my rabbit-trap, Uncle Remus?" exclaimed the child. He would have picked it up for the purpose of examining it, but Uncle Remus waved him off with a dignified gesture. "Don't you dast ter tetch dat ar trap, honey, 'kaze ef you does, dat spiles all. I'll des hatter go ter wuk en make it bran-new, en de Lord knows I aint got no time fer ter do dat." "Well, Uncle Remus, you've had your hands on it." "Tooby sho' I is--tooby sho' I is! En w'at's mo' dan dat, I bin had my han's in tar-water." "I year talk er dat," remarked Aunt Tempy, with an approving nod. "Yasser! in de nat'al tar-water," continued Uncle Remus. "You put yo' han' in a pa'tridge nes', en he'll quit dem premises dough he done got 'lev'm dozen aigs in dar. Same wid Rabbit. Dey aint got sense lak de ole-time Rabbit, but I let you know dey aint gwine in no trap whar dey smell folks' han's--dat dey aint. Dat w'at make I say w'at I does. Don't put yo' han' on it; don't tetch it; don't look at it skacely." The little boy subsided, but he continued to cast longing looks at the trap, seeing which Uncle Remus sought to change the current of his thoughts. "She bin er mighty heap er trouble, mon, yet I mighty glad I tuck'n make dat ar trap. She's a solid un, sho', en ef dey wuz ter be any skaceness er vittles, I lay dat ar trap 'ud help us all out." "De Lord knows," exclaimed Aunt Tempy, rubbing her fat hands together, "I hope dey aint gwine ter be no famishin' 'roun' yer 'mungs we all." "Likely not," said Uncle Remus, "yet de time mought come w'en a big swamp rabbit kotch in dat ar trap would go a mighty long ways in a fambly no bigger dan w'at mine is." "Mo' speshually," remarked Aunt Tempy, "ef you put dat wid w'at de neighbors mought sen' in." "Eh-eh!" Uncle Remus exclaimed, "don't you put no 'pennunce in dem neighbors--don't you do it. W'en famine time come one man aint no better dan no yuther man 'ceppin' he be soopless; en he got ter be mighty soople at dat." The old man paused and glanced at the little boy. The child was still looking longingly at the trap, and Uncle Remus leaned forward and touched him lightly on the shoulder. It was a familiar gesture, gentle and yet rough, a token of affection, and yet a command to attention; for the venerable darkey could be imperious enough when surrendering to the whims of his little partner. "All dish yer talk 'bout folks pe'shin' out," Uncle Remus went on with an indifferent air, "put me in min' er de times w'en de creeturs tuck'n got up a famine 'mungs deyse'f. Hit come 'bout dat one time vittles wuz monst'us skace en high, en money mighty slack. Long ez dey wuz any vittles gwine 'roun', Brer Rabbit, he 'uz boun' ter git he sheer un um, but bimeby hit come ter dat pass dat Brer Rabbit stomach 'gun ter pinch 'im; en w'iles he gettin' hongry de yuther creeturs, dey 'uz gettin' hongry deyse'f. Hit went on dis a-way twel one day Brer Rabbit en Brer Wolf meet up wid one er n'er in de big road, en atter dey holler howdy dey sat down, dey did, en make a bargain. "Dey tuck'n 'gree wid one er n'er dat dey sell der mammy en take de money en git sump'n' n'er ter eat. Brer Wolf, he 'low, he did, dat bein' 's hit seem lak he de hongriest creetur on de face er de yeth, dat he sell his mammy fus', en den, atter de vittles gin out, Brer Rabbit he kin sell he own mammy en git some mo' grub. "Ole Brer Rabbit, he chipt in en 'greed, he did, en Brer Wolf, he tuck'n hitch up he team, en put he mammy in de waggin, en den him en Brer Rabbit druv off. Man come 'long: "'Whar you gwine?' "'_Gwine 'long down ter town, Wid a bag er co'n fer ter sell; We aint got time fer ter stop en talk, Yit we wish you mighty well!_'" "Did they talk poetry that way, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired. "Shoo! lot's wuss dan dat, honey. Dey wuz constant a-gwine on dat a-way, en ef I wa'n't gittin' so mighty weak-kneed in de membunce I'd bust aloose yer en I'd fair wake you up wid de gwines on er dem ar creeturs. "Now, den, dey tuck'n kyar Brer Wolf mammy ter town en sell 'er, en dey start back wid a waggin-load er vittles. De day wuz a-wanin' den de sun wuz a-settin'. De win' tuck'n blow up sorter stiff, en de sun look red when she settin'. Dey druv on, en druv on. De win' blow, en de sun shine red. Bimeby, Brer Wolf scrooch up en shiver, en 'low: "'Brer Rabbit, I'm a-gittin' mighty cole.' "Brer Rabbit, he laugh en 'low: "'I'm gittin' sorter creepy myself, Brer Wolf.' "Dey druv on en druv on. Win' blow keen, sun shine red. Brer Wolf scrooch up in little knot. Bimeby he sing out: "'Brer Rabbit, I'm freezin'! I'm dat cole I dunner w'at ter do!' "Brer Rabbit, he p'int ter de settin' sun en say: "'You see dat great big fier 'cross dar in de woods, Brer Wolf? Well, dey aint nothin' ter hender you fum gwine dar en wommin' yo'se'f en I'll wait yer fer you. Gimme de lines, Brer Wolf, en you go wom yo'se'f all over.' "Wid dat Brer Wolf, he put out des ez hard ez he kin, fer ter see ef he can't fin' de fier; en w'iles he wuz gone, bless goodness, w'at should Brer Rabbit do but cut off de hosses' tails en stick um down deep in de mud--" "Le' 'im 'lone, now! Des le' 'im 'lone!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy in an ecstasy of admiration. [Illustration: BROTHER RABBIT GETS THE PROVISIONS] "He stick de hosses' tails down in de mud," continued Uncle Remus, "en den he tuck'n druv de waggin 'way off in de swamp en hide it. Den he tuck'n come back, ole Brer Rabbit did, fer ter wait fer Brer Wolf. "Atter so long a time, sho' 'nuff, yer come Brer Wolf des a-gallin'-up back. Brer Rabbit he hail 'im. "'Is you wom yo'se'f, Brer Wolf?' "'Brer Rabbit, don't talk! Dat de mos' 'seetful fier w'at I had any speunce un. I run, en I run, en I run, en de mo' w'at I run de furder de fier git. De nigher you come ter dat fier de furder hit 's off.' "Brer Rabbit, he sorter scratch hisse'f behime de shoulder-blade, en 'low: "'Nummine 'bout de fier, Brer Wolf. I got sump'n' yer dat'll wom you up. Ef you aint nev' bin wom befo', I lay you'll get wom dis time.' "Dis make Brer Wolf sorter look 'roun', en w'en he see Brer Rabbit hol'in' on ter de two hoss-tails, he up'n squall out, he did: "'Lawdy mussy, Brer Rabbit! Whar my vittles? Whar my waggin? Whar my hosses?' "'Dey er all right yer, Brer Wolf; dey er all right yer. I stayed dar whar you lef' me twel de hosses gun ter git restless. Den I cluck at um, en, bless gracious, dey start off en lan' in a quicksan'. W'en dey gun ter mire, I des tuck'n tu'n eve'ything a-loose en grab de hosses by de tail, en I bin stan'in' yer wishin' fer you, Brer Wolf, twel I done gone gray in de min'. I 'low ter myse'f dat I'd hang on ter deze yer hoss-tails ef it killt eve'y cow in de islan'. Come he'p me, Brer Wolf, en I lay we'll des nat'ally pull de groun' out but w'at we'll git deze creeturs out.' "Wid dat, Brer Wolf, he kotch holt er one hoss-tail, en Brer Rabbit, he kotch holt er de yuther, en w'en dey pull, co'se de tails come out'n de mud. Dey stood dar, dey did, en dey look at de tails en den dey look at one n'er. Bimeby Brer Rabbit 'low: "'Well, sir, Brer Wolf; we pull so hard twel we pull de tails plum out!' "Ole Brer Wolf, he dunner w'at ter do, but it 'gun ter git dark, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he tell Brer Rabbit good-by, en off he put fer home. Dat ar Brer Rabbit," Uncle Remus went on, "he des tuck'n wait twel Brer Wolf git out'n yearin', en den he went into de swamp en druv de hosses home en git all de vittles, en he aint hatter sell he ole mammy n'er. Dat he aint." XL "CUTTA CORD-LA!" To all appearances Daddy Jack had taken no interest in Uncle Remus's story of the horses' tails, and yet, as soon as the little boy and Aunt Tempy were through laughing at a somewhat familiar climax, the old African began to twist and fidget in his chair, and mumble to himself in a lingo which might have been understood on the Guinea coast, but which sounded out of place in Uncle Remus's Middle Georgia cabin. Presently, however, his uneasiness took tangible shape. He turned around and exclaimed impatiently: "Shuh-shuh! w'en you sta't fer tell-a dem tale, wey you no tell um lak dey stan'? 'E bery bad fer twis' dem tale 'roun' un 'roun'. Wey you no talk um stret?" "Well, Brer Jack," said Uncle Remus, smiling good-humoredly upon the queer little old man, "ef we done gone en got dat ar tale all twis' up, de way fer you ter do is ter whirl in en ontwis' it, en we-all folks 'll set up yer en he'p you out plum twel Mars John comes a-hollerin' en a-bawlin' atter dish yer baby; en atter he done gone ter bed, den me en Sis Tempy yer we ull set up wid you plum twel de chickens crow fer day. Dem's de kinder folk we all is up yer. We aint got many swimps en crabs up yer in Putmon county, but w'en it come ter settin' up wid comp'ny en hangin' 'roun' atter dark fer ter make de time pass away, we er mighty rank. Now den, Brer Jack, I done call de roll wid my eye, en we er all yer 'ceppin' dat ar 'Tildy gal, en 't won't be long 'fo' she'll be a-drappin' in. Run over in yo' min', en whar my tale 'uz wrong, des whirl in en put 'er ter rights." "Shuh-shuh!" exclaimed the old African, "Oona no git dem tale stret. I yed dem wey me lif; 'e soun' lak dis: One tam dem bittle bin git bery skace. Da rice crop mek nuttin'; da fish swim low; da bud fly high. Hard times bin come dey-dey. 'E so hard, dem creeturs do git honkry fer true. B'er Rabbit un B'er Wolf dey come pit bote 'e head tergerrer; dey is mek talk how honkry dey is 'way down in da belly. "Bumbye, B'er Rabbit, 'e shed 'e y-eye, 'e say dey mus' kill dey gran'mammy. B'er Wolf say 'e mek 'e y-eye come wat'ry fer yeddy da talk lak dat. B'er Rabbit say: "'Ki, B'er Wolf! da water come in you' y-eye wun you is bin honkry. Me y-eye done bin-a come wat'ry so long tam befo' I bin talky wit' you 'bout we gran'mammy.' "B'er Wolf, 'e der keep on cryin'; 'e wipe 'e y-eye 'pon 'e coat-sleef. B'er Rabbit, 'e bin say: "'Ef you is bin tek it so ha'd lak dis, B'er Wolf, 'e bery good fer kill-a you' gran'mammy fus', so you is kin come glad ag'in.' "B'er Wolf, 'e go dry 'e y-eye un kill 'e gran'mammy, un dey is bin tek 'im gran'mammy off un sell um fer bittle. Dun dey is bin eat dis bittle day un night tell 'e all done gone. Wun-a tam come fer B'er Rabbit fer kill 'e gran'mammy, B'er Wolf, 'e go bisitin' 'im. 'E say: "'B'er Rabbit, I is bin-a feel honkry troo un troo. Less we kill-a you' gran'mammy.' "B'er Rabbit lif' up 'e head high; 'e lahff. 'E shekky one year, 'e shed-a one eye. 'E say: "'Eh-eh, B'er Wolf, you t'ink I gwan kill-a me gran'mammy? Oh, no, B'er Wolf! Me no kin do dat.' "Dis mek B'er Wolf wuss mad den 'e is bin befo'. 'E fair teer de yet' wit' 'e claw; 'e yowl sem lak Injun mans. 'E say 'e gwan make B'er Rabbit kill 'e gran'mammy nohow. "B'er Rabbit say 'e gwan see 'im 'bout dis. 'E tek 'e gran'mammy by da han'; 'e lead um way off in da woods; 'e hide um in da top one big cocoanut tree: 'e tell um fer stay deer." The mention of a cocoanut tree caused the little boy to glance incredulously at Uncle Remus, who made prompt and characteristic reply: "Dat 's it, honey; dat 's it, sho'. In dem days en in dem countries dey wuz plenty er cocoanut trees. Less we all set back yer en give Brer Jack a livin' chance." "'E hide 'e gran'mammy in top cocoanut tree," continued Daddy Jack, "un 'e gi' um lilly bahskit wit' cord tie on um. In de day-mawnin', B'er Rabbit, 'e is bin go at da foot da tree. 'E make 'e v'ice fine: 'e holler: "'_Granny!--Granny!--O Granny! Jutta cord-la!_' "Wun 'e granny yeddy dis, 'e let bahskit down wit' da cord, un B'er Rabbit 'e fill um wit' bittle un somet'ing t'eat. Ebry day dey is bin-a do dis t'ing; ebry day B'er Rabbit is come fer feed 'e granny. "B'er Wolf 'e watch, 'e lissun; 'e sneak up, 'e creep up, 'e do lissun. Bumbye, 'e do yeddy B'er Rabbit call; 'e see da bahskit swing down, 'e see um go back. Wun B'er Rabbit bin-a go 'way fum dey-dey, B'er Wolf, 'e come by da root da tree. 'E holler; 'e do say: "'_Granny!--Granny!--O Granny! Shoot-a cord-la!_' "Da ole Granny Rabbit lissun; 'e bin lissun well. 'E say: "'Ki! how come dis? Me son is no talky lak dis. 'E no shoot-a da cord lak dat.' "W'en B'er Rabbit come back da granny is bin-a tell um 'bout somet'ing come-a holler shoot-a da cord-la, un B'er Rabbit, 'e lahff tel 'e is kin lahff no mo'. B'er Wolf, 'e hidin' close; 'e yed B'er Rabbit crackin' 'e joke; 'e is git bery mad. "Wun B'er Rabbit is gone 'way, B'er Wolf bin-a come back. 'E stan' by da tree root; 'e holler: "'_Granny!--Granny!--O Granny! Jutta cord-la!_' "Granny Rabbit hol' 'e head 'pon one side; 'e lissun good. 'E say: "'I bery sorry, me son, you bin hab so bad col'. You' v'ice bin-a soun' rough, me son.' "Dun Granny Rabbit is bin peep down; 'e bin say: "'Hi! B'er Wolf! Go 'way fum dey-dey. You no is bin fool-a me lak dis. Go 'way, B'er Wolf!' "B'er Wolf, 'e come bery mad; 'e grin tell 'e tush bin shiün. 'E go in da swamp; 'e scratch 'e head; 'e t'ink. Bumbye, 'e go bisitin' one Blacksmit', un 'e ahx 'im how kin 'e do fer make 'e v'ce come fine lak B'er Rabbit v'ice. Da Blacksmit', 'e say: "'Come, B'er Wolf; I run dis red-hot poker in you' t'roat, 'e mekky you talk easy.' "B'er Wolf say, 'Well, I lak you for mekky me v'ice fine.' "Dun da Blacksmit' run da red-hot poker in B'er Wolf t'roat, un 'e hu't um so bad, 'tiss-a bin long tam befo' B'er Wolf kin tekky da long walk by da cocoanut tree. Bumbye 'e git so 'e kin come by, un wun 'e git dey-dey, 'e holler: "'_Granny!--Granny!--O Granny! Jutta cord-la!_' "Da v'ice soun' so nice un fine da' Granny Rabbit is bin t'ink 'e B'er Rabbit v'ice, un 'e is bin-a let da bahskit down. B'er Wolf, 'e shekky da cord lak 'e is put some bittle in da bahskit, un dun 'e is bin-a git in 'ese'f. B'er Wolf, 'e keep still. Da Granny Rabbit pull on da cord; 'e do say: "'Ki! 'e come he'ffy; 'e he'ffy fer true. Me son, 'e love 'e Granny heap.' "B'er Wolf, 'e do grin; 'e grin, un 'e keep still. Da Granny Rabbit pull; 'e do pull ha'd. 'E pull tel 'e is git B'er Wolf mos' by da top, un dun 'e stop fer res'. B'er Wolf look-a down, 'e head swim; 'e look up, 'e mout' water; 'e look-a down 'g'in, 'e see B'er Rabbit. 'E git skeer, 'e juk on da rope. B'er Rabbit, 'e do holler: "'_Granny!--Granny!--O Granny! Cutta cord-la!_' "Da Granny Rabbit cut da cord, un B'er Wolf is fall down un broke 'e neck." XLI AUNT TEMPY'S STORY The little boy observed that Aunt Tempy was very much interested in Daddy Jack's story. She made no remarks while the old African was telling it, but she was busily engaged in measuring imaginary quilt patterns on her apron with her thumb and forefinger,--a sure sign that her interest had been aroused. When Daddy Jack had concluded--when, with a swift, sweeping gesture of his wrinkled hand, he cut the cord and allowed Brother Wolf to perish ignominiously--Aunt Tempy drew a long breath, and said: "Dat ar tale come 'cross me des like a dream. Hit put me in mine er one w'at I year w'en I wuz little bit er gal. Look like I kin see myse'f right now, settin' flat down on de h'ath lis'nin' at ole Unk Monk. You know'd ole Unk Monk, Brer Remus. You bleeze ter know'd 'im. Up dar in Ferginny. I 'clar' ter goodness, it make me feel right foolish. Brer Remus, I des know you know'd Unk Monk." For the first time in many a day the little boy saw Uncle Remus in a serious mood. He leaned forward in his chair, shook his head sadly, as he gazed into the fire. "Ah, Lord, Sis Tempy!" he exclaimed sorrowfully, "don't less we all go foolin' 'roun' 'mungs' dem ole times. De bes' kinder bread gits sour. W'at's yistiddy wid us wuz 'fo' de worl' begun wid dish yer chile. Dat 's de way I looks at it." "Dat 's de Lord's trufe, Brer Remus," exclaimed Aunt Tempy with unction, "un I mighty glad you call me ter myse'f. Little mo' un I'd er sot right yer un 'a' gone 'way back to Ferginny, un all on 'count er dat ar tale w'at I year long time ago." "What tale was that, Aunt Tempy?" asked the little boy. "Eh-eh, honey!" replied Aunt Tempy, with a display of genuine bashfulness; "eh-eh, honey! I 'fraid you all 'll set up dar un laugh me outer de house. I aint dast ter tell no tale 'long side er Brer Remus un Daddy Jack yer. I 'fraid I git it all mix up." The child manifested such genuine disappointment that Aunt Tempy relented a little. "Ef you all laugh, now," she said, with a threatening air, "I'm des gwine ter pick up en git right out er dish yer place. Dey aint ter be no laughin', 'kaze de tale w'at I year in Ferginny aint no laughin' tale." With this understanding Aunt Tempy adjusted her head-handkerchief, looked around rather sheepishly, as Uncle Remus declared afterwards in confidence to the little boy, and began: "Well, den, in de times w'en Brer Rabbit un Brer Fox live in de same settlement wid one er 'n'er, de season's tuck'n come wrong. De wedder got hot un den a long dry drouth sot in, un it seem like dat de nat'al leaf on de trees wuz gwine ter tu'n ter powder." Aunt Tempy emphasized her statements by little backward and forward movements of her head, and the little boy would have laughed, but a warning glance from Uncle Remus prevented him. "De leaf on de trees look like dey gwine ter tu'n ter powder, un de groun' look like it done bin cookt. All de truck w'at de creeturs plant wuz all parched up, un dey wa'n't no crops made nowhars. Dey dunner w'at ter do. Dey run dis a-way, dey run dat a-way; yit w'en dey quit runnin' dey dunner whar dey bread comin' frun. Dis de way it look ter Brer Fox, un so one day w'en he got a mighty hankerin' atter sumpin' sorter joosy, he meet Brer Rabbit in de lane, un he ax um, sezee: "'Brer Rabbit, whar'bouts our bread comin' frun?' "Brer Rabbit, he bow, he did, un answer, sezee: "'Look like it mought be comin' frun nowhar,' sezee." "You see dat, honey!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, condescending to give the story the benefit of his patronage; "You see dat! Brer Rabbit wuz allus a-waitin' a chance fer ter crack he jokes." "Yas, Lord!" Aunt Tempy continued, with considerable more animation; "he joke, un joke, but bimeby, he aint feel like no mo' jokin', un den he up'n say, sezee, dat him un Brer Fox better start out'n take der fammerlies wid um ter town un swap um off for some fresh-groun' meal; un Brer Fox say, sezee, dat dat look mighty fa'r un squar', un den dey tuck'n make dey 'greements. "Brer Fox wuz ter s'ply de waggin un team, un he promise dat he gwine ter ketch he fammerly un tie um hard un fast wid a red twine string. Brer Rabbit he say, sezee, dat he gwine ter ketch he fammerly un tie um all, un meet Brer Fox at de fork er de road. "Sho' 'nuff, soon in de mawnin', w'en Brer Fox draw up wid he waggin, he holler 'Wo!' un Brer Rabbit he tuck'n holler back, 'Wo yo'se'f!' un den Brer Fox know dey 'uz all dar. Brer Fox, he tuck'n sot up on de seat, un all er he fammerly, dey wuz a-layin' under de seat. Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n put all he fammerly in de behime een' er de waggin, un he say, sezee, dat he 'speck he better set back dar twel dey git sorter usen ter dey surrounderlings, un den Brer Fox crack he whip, un off dey wen' toze town. Brer Fox, he holler ev'y once in a w'ile, sezee: "'No noddin' back dar, Brer Rabbit!' "Brer Rabbit he holler back, sezee: "'Brer Fox, you miss de ruts en de rocks, un I'll miss de noddin'.' "But all dat time, bless yo' soul! Brer Rabbit wuz settin' dar ontyin' he ole 'oman un he childun, w'ich dey wuz sev'm uv um. W'en he git um all ontie, Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n h'ist hisse'f on de seat 'long er Brer Fox, un dey sot dar un talk un laugh 'bout de all-sorts er times dey gwine ter have w'en dey git de co'n meal. Brer Fox sez, sezee, he gwine ter bake hoecake; Brer Rabbit sez, sezee, he gwine ter make ashcake. "Des 'bout dis time one er Brer Rabbit's childun raise hisse'f up easy un hop out de waggin. Miss Fox, she sing out: "'_One frun sev'm Don't leave 'lev'm._' "Brer Fox hunch he ole 'oman wid he foot fer ter make 'er keep still. Bimeby 'n'er little Rabbit pop up un hop out. Miss Fox say, se' she: "'_One frun six Leaves me less kicks._' "Brer Fox go on talkin' ter Brer Rabbit, un Brer Rabbit go on talkin' ter Brer Fox, un 't wa'n't so mighty long 'fo' all Brer Rabbit fammerly done pop up un dive out de waggin, un ev'y time one 'ud go Miss Fox she 'ud fit it like she did de yuthers." "What did she say, Aunt Tempy?" asked the little boy, who was interested in the rhymes. "Des lemme see-- "'_One frun five Leaves four alive_; "'_One frun four Leaves th'ee un no mo'_; "'_One frun th'ee Leaves two ter go free_; "'_One frun one, Un all done gone_.'" "What did Brother Rabbit do then?" inquired the little boy. "Better ax w'at Brer Fox do," replied Aunt Tempy, pleased with the effect of her rhymes. "Brer Fox look 'roun' atter w'ile, un w'en he see dat all Brer Rabbit fammerly done gone, he lean back un holler 'Wo!' un den he say, sezee: "'In de name er goodness, Brer Rabbit! whar all yo' folks?' "Brer Rabbit look 'roun', un den he make like he cryin'. He des fa'rly boo-hoo'd, un he say, sezee: "'Dar now, Brer Fox! I des know'd dat ef I put my po' little childuns in dar wid yo' folks dey'd git e't up. I des know'd it!' "Ole Miss Fox, she des vow she aint totch Brer Rabbit fammerly. But Brer Fox, he bin wantin' a piece un um all de way, un he begrudge um so dat he git mighty mad wid he ole 'oman un de childuns, un he say, sezee: "'You kin des make de most er dat, 'kaze I'm a-gwine ter bid you good riddance dis ve'y day'; un, sho' nuff, Brer Fox tuck'n tuck he whole fammerly ter town un trade um off fer co'n. "Brer Rabbit wuz wid 'em, des ez big ez life un twice ez natchul. Dey start back, dey did, un w'en dey git four er five mile out er town, hit come 'cross Brer Fox min' dat he done come away un lef' a plug er terbacker in de sto', en he say he bleeze ter go back atter it. "Brer Rabbit, he say, sezee, dat he'll stay en take keer er de waggin, w'ile Brer Fox kin run back un git he terbacker. Soon ez Brer Fox git out er sight, Brer Rabbit laid de hosses under line un lash un drove de waggin home, un put de hosses in he own stable, un de co'n in de smoke-house, un de waggin in de barn, un den he put some co'n in he pocket, un cut de hosses tails off, un went back up de road twel he come ter a quog-mire, un in dat he stick de tails un wait fer Brer Fox. "Atter w'ile yer he come, un den Brer Rabbit gun ter holler un pull at de tails. He say, sezee: "'Run yer, Brer Fox! run yer! Youer des in time ef you aint too late. Run yer, Brer Fox! run yer!' "Brer Fox, he run'd en juk Brer Rabbit away, un say, sezee: "'Git out de way, Brer Rabbit! You too little! Git out de way, un let a man ketch holt.' "Brer Fox tuck holt," continued Aunt Tempy, endeavoring to keep from laughing, "un he fetch'd one big pull, un I let you know dat 'uz de onliest pull he make, 'kaze de tails come out un he tu'n a back summerset. He jump up, he did, en 'gun ter grabble in de quog-mire des ez hard ez he kin. "Brer Rabbit, he stan' by, un drop some co'n in onbeknowns' ter Brer Fox, un dis make 'im grabble wuss un wuss, un he grabble so hard un he grabble so long dat 't wa'n't long 'fo' he fall down dead, un so dat 'uz de las' er ole Brer Fox in dat day un time." As Aunt Tempy paused, Uncle Remus adjusted his spectacles and looked at her admiringly. Then he laughed heartily. "I declar', Sis Tempy," he said, after a while, "you gives tongue same ez a lawyer. You'll hatter jine in wid us some mo'." Aunt Tempy closed her eyes and dropped her head on one side. "Don't git me started, Brer Remus," she said, after a pause; "'kaze ef you does you'll hatter set up yer long pas' yo' bedtime." "I b'leeve you, Sis Tempy, dat I does!" exclaimed the old man, with the air of one who has made a pleasing discovery. XLII THE FIRE-TEST "We er sorter bin a-waitin' fer Sis Tempy," Uncle Remus remarked when the little boy made his appearance the next night; "but somehow er n'er look lak she fear'd she hatter up en tell some mo' tales. En yit maybe she bin strucken down wid some kinder ailment. Dey aint no countin' on deze yer fat folks. Dey er up one minnit en down de nex'; en w'at make it dat a-way I be bless ef I know, 'kaze w'en folks is big en fat look lak dey oughter be weller dan deze yer long hongry kinder folks. "Yit all de same, Brer Jack done come," continued Uncle Remus, "en we ull des slam de do' shet, en ef Sis Tempy come she'll des hatter hol' 'er han's 'fo' 'er face en holler out: "'_Lucky de Linktum, chucky de chin, Open de do' en let me in!_' "Oh, you kin laugh ef you wanter, but I boun' you ef Sis Tempy wuz ter come dar en say de wuds w'at I say, de button on dat ar do' 'ud des nat'ally twis' hitse'f off but w'at 't would let 'er in. Now, I boun' you dat!" Whatever doubts the child may have had he kept to himself, for experience had taught him that it was useless to irritate the old man by disputing with him. What effect the child's silence may have had in this instance it is impossible to say, for just then Aunt Tempy came in laughing. "You all kin des say w'at you please," she exclaimed, as she took her seat, "but dat ar _Shucky Cordy_ in de tale w'at Daddy Jack done tole, bin runnin' 'roun' in my min' en zoonin 'in my years all de time." "Yer too!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, with emphasis. "Dat 's me up en down. Look lak dat ar cricket over dar in de cornder done tuck it up, en now he gwine, '_Shucky-cordy! Shucky-cordy!_'" "Shuh-shuh!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, with vehement contempt, "'e _jutta cord-la!_ 'E no 'shucky-cordy' no'n 't all." "Well, well, Brer Jack," said Uncle Remus, soothingly, "in deze low groun's er sorrer, you des got ter lean back en make 'lowances fer all sorts er folks. You got ter 'low fer dem dat knows too much same ez dem w'at knows too little. A heap er sayin's en a heap er doin's in dis roun' worl' got ter be tuck on trus'. You got yo' sayin's, I got mine; you got yo' knowin's, en I got mine. Man come 'long en ax me how does de wum git in de scaly-bark.[49] I tell 'im right up en down, I dunno, sir. N'er man come 'long en ax me who raise de row 'twix' de buzzud en de bee-martin.[50] I tell 'im I dunno, sir. Yit, 'kaze I dunno," continued Uncle Remus, "dat don't hender um. Dar dey is, spite er dat,--wum in de scaly-bark, bee-martin atter de buzzud." "Dat 's so," exclaimed Aunt Tempy, "dat 's de Lord's trufe!" "Dat ar pullin' at de string," Uncle Remus went on, "en dat ar hollerin' 'bout shucky-cordy"-- "_Jutta cord-la!_" said Daddy Jack, fiercely. "'Bout de watsizname," said Uncle Remus, with a lenient and forgiving smile,--"all dish yer hollerin' en gwine on 'bout de watsizname put me in min' er one time w'en Brer Rabbit wuz gwine off fum home fer ter git a mess er green truck. "W'en Brer Rabbit git ready fer ter go, he call all he chilluns up, en he tell um dat w'en he go out dey mus' fas'n de do' on de inside, en dey mus'n' tu'n nobody in, nohow, 'kaze Brer Fox en Brer Wolf bin layin' 'roun' waitin' chance fer ter nab um. En he tuck'n tole um dat w'en he come back, he'd rap at de do' en sing: "'_I'll stay w'en you away, 'Kaze no gol' will pay toll!_' "De little Rabs, dey hilt up der ban's en promise dat dey won't open de do' fer nobody 'ceppin' dey daddy, en wid dat, Brer Rabbit he tuck'n put out, he did, at a han'-gallop, huntin' sump'n' n'er ter eat. But all dis time, Brer Wolf bin hidin' out behime de house, en he year eve'y wud dat pass, en ole Brer Rabbit wa'n't mo'n out'n sight 'fo' Brer Wolf went ter de do', en he knock, he did,--_blip, blip, blip!_ "Little Rab holler out, 'Who dat?' "Brer Wolf he sing: "'_I'll stay w'en you away, 'Kaze no gol' will pay toll!_' "De little Rabs dey laugh fit ter kill deyse'f, en dey up'n 'low: "'Go 'way, Mr. Wolf, go 'way! You aint none er we-all daddy!' "Ole Brer Wolf he slunk off, he did, but eve'y time he thunk er dem plump little Rabs, he des git mo' hongry dan befo', en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he 'uz back at de do'--_blap, blap, blap!_ "Little Rab holler: 'Who dat?' "Brer Wolf, he up'n sing: "'_I'll stay w'en you away, 'Kaze no gol' will pay toll!_' "De little Rabs dey laugh en roll on de flo', en dey up'n 'low: "'Go 'way, Mr. Wolf! We-all daddy aint got no bad col' lak dat.' "Brer Wolf slunk off, but bimeby he come back, en dis time he try mighty hard fer ter talk fine. He knock at de do'--_blam, blam, blam!_ "Little Rab holler: 'Who dat?' "Brer Wolf tu'n loose en sing: "'_I'll stay w'en you away, 'Kaze no gol' will pay toll!_' "Little Rab holler back, he did: "'Go 'way, Mr. Wolf! go 'way! We-all daddy kin sing lots puttier dan dat. Go 'way, Mr. Wolf! go 'way!' "Brer Wolf he slunk off, he did, en he go 'way out in de woods, en he sing, en sing, twel he kin sing fine ez de nex' man. Den he go back en knock at de do', en w'en de little Rabs ax who dat, he sing dem de song; en he sing so nice, en he sing so fine, dat dey ondo de do', en ole Brer Wolf walk in en gobble um all up, fum de fus' ter de las'. "W'en ole Brer Rabbit git back home, he fine de do' stannin' wide open en all de chilluns gone. Dey wa'n't no sign er no tussle; de h'a'th 'uz all swep' clean, en eve'ything wuz all ter rights, but right over in de cornder he see a pile er bones, en den he know in reason dat some er de yuther creeturs done bin dar en make hash outen he chilluns. "Den he go 'roun' en ax um 'bout it, but dey all 'ny it; dey all 'ny it ter de las', en Brer Wolf, he 'ny it wuss'n all un um. Den Brer Rabbit tuck'n lay de case 'fo' Brer Tarrypin. Ole Brer Tarrypin wuz a mighty man in dem days," continued Uncle Remus, with something like a sigh,--"a mighty man, en no sooner is he year de state er de condition dan he up'n call all de creeturs tergedder. He call um tergedder, he did, en den he up'n tell um 'bout how somebody done tuck'n 'stroy all er Brer Rabbit chillun, en he 'low dat de man w'at do dat bleedz ter be kotch, 'kaze ef he aint, dey aint no tellin' how long it'll be 'fo' de same somebody'll come 'long en 'stroy all de chillun in de settlement. "Brer B'ar, he up'n ax how dey gwine fine 'im, en Brer Tarrypin say dey er allers a way. Den he 'low: "'Less dig a deep pit.' "'I'll dig de pit,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. "Atter de pit done dug, Brer Tarrypin say: "'Less fill de pit full er lighter'd knots en bresh.' "'I'll fill de pit,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. "Atter de pit done fill up, Brer Tarrypin say: "'Now, den, less set it a-fier.' "'I'll kindle de fier,' sez Brer Wolf, sezee. "W'en de fier 'gun ter blaze up, Brer Tarrypin 'low dat de creeturs mus' jump 'cross dat, en de man w'at 'stroy Brer Rabbit chilluns will drap in en git bu'nt up. Brer Wolf bin so uppity 'bout diggin', en fillin', en kindlin', dat dey all 'spected 'im fer ter make de fus' trial; but, bless yo' soul en body! Brer Wolf look lak he got some yuther business fer ter 'ten' ter. "De pit look so deep, en de fier bu'n so high, dat dey mos' all 'fear'd fer ter make de trial, but atter w'ile, Brer Mink 'low dat he aint hunted none er Brer Rabbit chilluns, en wid dat, he tuck runnin' start, en lipt across. Den Brer Coon say he aint hunted um, en over he sailed. Brer B'ar say he feel mo' heavy dan he ever is befo' in all he born days, but he aint hurted none er Brer Rabbit po' little chilluns, en wid dat away he went 'cross de fier. Dey all jump, twel bimeby hit come Brer Wolf time. Den he 'gun ter git skeered, en he mighty sorry 'kaze he dig dat pit so deep en wide, en kindle dat fier so high. He tuck sech a long runnin' start, dat time he git ter de jumpin' place, he 'uz done wo' teetotally out, en he lipt up, he did, en fetch'd a squall en drapt right spang in de middle er de fier." "Uncle Remus," said the little boy, after a while, "did Brother Terrapin jump over the fire?" "W'at Brer Tarrypin gwine jump fer?" responded Uncle Remus, "w'en eve'ybody know Tarrypins aint eat Rabbits." "Well, you know you said everything was different then," said the child. "Look yer, Brer Jack," exclaimed Uncle Remus, "ef you got any tale on yo' mine, des let 'er come. Dish yer youngster gittin' too long-headed fer me; dat he is."[51] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [49] A species of hickory-nut. The tree sheds its bark every year, hence the name, which is applied to both tree and fruit. [50] The king-bird. [51] See _Uncle Remus: His Songs and his Sayings_, p. 79. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XLIII THE CUNNING SNAKE Daddy Jack, thus appealed to, turned half round in his seat, winked his bright little eyes very rapidly, and said, with great animation: "Hoo! me bin yeddy one sing-tale; me yeddy um so long tam 'go. One tam dere bin one ole Affiky ooman, 'e call 'im name Coomba. 'E go walky troo da woots, 'e walky troo da fiel. Bumbye 'e is bin come 'pon one snake-nes' fill wit' aig. Snake big snake, aig big aig. Affiky oomans is bin want-a dem aig so bahd; 'e 'fraid fer tek um. 'E gone home; 'e is see dem aig in 'e dream, 'e want um so bahd. Wun da nex' day mornin' come, da Affiky oomans say 'e bleeze fer hab dem aig. 'E go 'way, 'e bin-a see da snake-nes', 'e is git-a da aig; 'e fetch um at 'e own house; 'e cook um fer 'e brekwuss. "Bumbye da snake bin-a come by 'e nes'. Aig done gone. 'E pit 'e nose 'pon da groun', 'e is track da Affiky oomans by 'e own house. Snake come by da Affiky oomans house; 'e ahx 'bout 'e aig. Affiky oomans say 'e no hab bin see no aig. Snake see da skin wut bin 'pon 'e aig; 'e ahx wut is dis. Affiky oomans no say nuttin' 't all. Snake 'e say: "'Wey fer you come brek up me nes' un tekky me aig?' "Affiky oomans 'e no say nuttin' 't all. 'E toss 'e head, 'e mek lak 'e no yeddy da snake v'ice, 'e go 'bout 'e wuk. Snake, 'e say: "'Ooman! you is bin yed me v'ice wun me cry out. You bin tekky me aig; you is bin 'stroy me chillun. Tek keer you' own; tek keer you' own.' "Snake gone 'way; 'e slick out 'e tongue, 'e slide 'way. Bumbye de Affiky oomans, 'e hab one putty lil pickaninny; 'e lub um ha'd all over. 'E is mine wut da snake say; 'e tote da pickaninny 'roun' 'pon 'e bahck. 'E call um Noncy, 'e tote um fur, 'e lub um ha'd. "Snake, 'e bin-a stay in da bush-side; 'e watch all day, 'e wait all night; 'e git honkry fer da pickaninny, 'e want um so bahd. 'E bin slick out 'e tongue, 'e bin slide troo da grass, 'e bin hanker fer da pickaninny. "Bumbye da Affiky oomans tote-a da Noncy til 'e git tire; 'e puff, 'e blow, 'e wuk 'e gill sem lak cat-fish." Aunt Tempy burst into loud laughter at this remarkable statement. "Whoever is year de beat er dat!" she exclaimed. "Daddy Jack, you goes on owdashus 'bout de wimmen, dat you does!" "'E puff, 'e blow, 'e pant; 'e say: "'Da pickaninny, 'e der git-a big lak one bag rice. 'E der git-a so heffy, me yent mos' know wut fer do. Me yent kin tote um no mo'.' "Da Affiky oomans is bin-a pit da pickaninny down 'pon da groun'. 'E mek up one sing[52] in 'e head, un 'e l'arn da lilly gal fer answer da sing. 'E do show um how fer pull out da peg in da do'. Snake, 'e is bin lay quile up in da bush; 'e say nuttin' 't all. "Affiky oomans is l'arn-a da pickaninny fer answer da sing, un wun he sta't fer go off, 'e say: "Pit da peg in da do' un you no y-open um fer nobody 'cep' you is yeddy me sing.' "Lil gal, 'e say yassum, un da Affiky oomans gone off. Snake stay still. 'E quile up in 'e quile; 'e yent moof[53] 'e tail. Bumbye, toze night-time, da Affiky oomans come bahck wey 'e lif. 'E stan' by da do'; 'e talk dis sing: "'_Walla walla witto, me Noncy, Walla walla witto, me Noncy, Walla walla witto, me Noncy!_' "'E v'ice 'come finer toze da las' tel 'e do git loud fer true. Da lilly gal, 'e do mek answer lak dis: "'_Andolee! Andoli! Andolo!_' "'E know 'e mammy v'ice, en 'e bin pull out da peg queek. 'E run to 'e mammy; 'e mammy der hung um up. Nex' day, 'e da sem t'ing; two, t'ree, sev'm day, 'e da sem t'ing. Affiky oomans holler da sing; da lilly gal mek answer 'pon turrer side da do'. Snake, 'e lay quile up in da bush. 'E watch da night, 'e lissun da day; 'e try fer l'arn-a da sing; 'e no say nuttin' 't all. Bumbye, one tam wun Affiky oomans bin gone 'way, snake, 'e wait 'til 'e mos' tam fer oomans fer come bahck. 'E gone by da do'; 'e y-open 'e mout'; 'e say: "'_Wullo wullo widdo, me Noncy, Wullo wullo widdo, me Noncy, Wullo wullo widdo, me Noncy!_' "'E try fer mekky 'e v'ice come fine lak da lil gal mammy; 'e der hab one rough place in 'e t'roat, un 'e v'ice come big. Lilly gal no mek answer. 'E no y-open da do'. 'E say: "'Go 'way fum dey-dey! Me mammy no holler da sing lak dat!' "Snake, 'e try one, two, t'ree time; 'e yent no use. Lilly gal no y-open da do', 'e no mek answer. Snake 'e slick out 'e tongue un slide 'way; 'e say 'e mus' l'arn-a da sing sho' 'nuff. "Bumbye, da Affiky oomans come bahck. 'E holler da sing: "'_Walla walla witto, me Noncy, Walla walla witto, me Noncy, Walla walla witto, me Noncy!_' "Lilly gal say: 'Da' me mammy!' 'E answer da sing: "'_Andolee! Andoli! Andolo!_' "Snake, 'e quile up in da chimmerly-corner; 'e hol' 'e bre't' fer lissun; 'e der l'arn-a da sing. Nex' day mornin' da Affiky oomans bin-a gone 'way un lef' da lilly gal all by 'ese'f. All de day long da snake 'e t'ink about da song; 'e say um in 'e min', 'e say um forwud, 'e say um backwud. Bumbye, mos' toze sundown, 'e come at da do'; 'e come, 'e holler da sing: "'_Walla walla witto, me Noncy, Walla walla witto, me Noncy, Walla walla witto, me Noncy!_' "Da lil gal, 'e t'ink-a da snake bin 'e mammy; 'e is answer da sing: "'Adolee! Andoli! Andolo!' "'E mek answer lak dat, un 'e y-open da do' queek. 'E run 'pon da snake 'fo' 'e is _shum_.[54] Snake, 'e bin-a hug da lilly gal mo' sem dun 'e mammy; 'e is twis' 'e tail 'roun' um; 'e is ketch um in 'e quile. Lilly gal 'e holler, 'e squall; 'e squall, 'e holler. Nobody bin-a come by fer yeddy um. Snake 'e 'quees'[55] um tight, 'e no l'em go; 'e 'quees' um tight, 'e swaller um whole; 'e bre'k-a no bone; 'e tekky da lilly gal lak 'e stan'. "Bumbye da lil mammy come home at 'e house. 'E holler da sing, 'e git-a no answer. 'E come skeer'; 'e v'ice shek, 'e body trimple. 'E lissun, 'e no yeddy no fuss. 'E push de do' y-open, 'e no see nuttin' 't all; da lilly gal gone! Da ooman 'e holler, 'e cry; 'e ahx way 'e lilly gal bin gone; 'e no git no answer. 'E look all 'roun', 'e see way da snake bin-a 'cross da road. 'E holler: "'Ow, me Lard! da snake bin come swaller me lil Noncy gal. I gwan hunt 'im up; I gwan foller da snake pas' da een' da yet'.'[56] "'E go in da swamp, 'e cut 'im one cane; 'e come bahck, 'e fine da snake track, un 'e do foller 'long wey 'e lead. Snake 'e so full wit de lilly gal 'e no walk fas'; lil gal mammy, 'e bin mad, 'e go stret 'long. Snake 'e so full wit' da lilly gal, 'e come sleepy. 'E lay down, 'e shed-a 'e y-eye. 'E y-open um no mo'," continued Daddy Jack, moving his head slowly from side to side, and looking as solemn as he could. "Da ooman come 'pon de snake wun 'e bin lay dar 'sleep; 'e come 'pon 'im, un 'e tekky da cane un bre'k 'e head, 'e mash um flat. 'E cut da snake open, 'e fine da lilly gal sem lak 'e bin 'sleep. 'E tek um home, 'e wash um off. Bumbye da lilly gal y-open 'e y-eye, un soon 'e see 'e mammy, 'e answer da sing. 'E say: "'_Andolee! Andoli! Andolo!_'" "Well, well, well!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, sympathetically. "Un de po' little creetur wuz 'live?" "Enty!" exclaimed Daddy Jack. No reply could possibly have been more prompt, more emphatic, or more convincing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [52] "'E mek up one sing." She composed a song and taught the child the refrain. [53] Move; he aint move he tail; he hasn't even moved his tail. [54] Before he see um. [55] Squeeze. [56] Earth. Uncle Remus would say "Yeth." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XLIV HOW BROTHER FOX WAS TOO SMART "Uncle Remus," said the little boy, one night when he found the old man alone, "I don't like these stories where somebody has to stand at the door and sing, do you? They don't sound funny to me." Uncle Remus crossed his legs, took off his spectacles and laid them carefully on the floor under his chair, and made a great pretence of arguing the matter with the child. "Now, den, honey, w'ich tale is it w'at you aint lak de mos'?" The little boy reflected a moment and then replied: "About the snake swallowing the little girl. I don't see any fun in that. Papa says they have snakes in Africa as big around as his body; and, goodness knows, I hope they won't get after me." "How dey gwine git atter you, honey, w'en you settin' up yer 'long side er me en de snakes 'way 'cross dar in Affiky?" "Well, Daddy Jack, he came, and the snakes might come too." Uncle Remus laughed, more to reassure the child than to ridicule his argument. "Dem ar snakes aint no water-moccasin, not ez I knows un. Brer Jack bin yer mighty long time, en dey aint no snake foller atter 'im yit." "Now, Uncle Remus! papa says they have them in shows." "I 'speck dey is, honey, but who's afear'd er snake stufft wid meal-bran? Not none er ole Miss gran'chillun, sho'!" "Well, the stories don't sound funny to me." "Dat mought be, yit deyer funny ter Brer Jack, en dey do mighty well fer ter pass de time. Atter w'ile you'll be a-gwine 'roun' runnin' down ole-Brer Rabbit en de t'er creeturs, en somehow er n'er you'll take'n git ole Remus mix up wid um twel you won't know w'ich one un um you er runnin' down, en let 'lone dat, you won't keer needer. Shoo, honey! you aint de fus' chap w'at I done tole deze yer tales ter." "Why, Uncle Remus," exclaimed the little boy, in a horrified tone, "I _would n't_; you _know_ I would n't!" "Don't tell me!" insisted the old man, "you er outgrowin' me, en you er outgrowin' de tales. Des lak Miss Sally change de lenk er yo' britches, des dat a-way I got ter do w'ence I whirl in en persoo atter de creeturs. Time wuz w'en you 'ud set down yer by dish yer h'a'th, en you'd take'n holler en laugh en clap yo' han's w'en ole Brer Rabbit 'ud kick outen all er he tanglements; but deze times you sets dar wid yo' eyes wide open, en you don't crack a smile. I say it!" Uncle Remus exclaimed, changing his tone and attitude, as if addressing some third person concealed in the room. "I say it! Stidder j'inin' in wid de fun, he'll take'n lean back dar en 'spute 'long wid you des lak grow'd up folks. I'll stick it out dis season, but w'en Chrismus come, I be bless ef I aint gwine ter ax Miss Sally fer my remoovance papers, en I'm gwine ter hang my bundle on my walkin'-cane, en see w'at kinder dirt dey is at de fur een' er de big road." "Yes!" exclaimed the little boy, triumphantly, "and, if you do, the patter-rollers will get you." "Well," replied the old man, with a curious air of resignation, "ef dey does, I aint gwine ter do lak Brer Fox did w'en Brer Rabbit showed him de tracks in de big road." "How did Brother Fox do, Uncle Remus?" "Watch out, now! Dish yer one er de tales w'at aint got no fun in it." "Uncle Remus, please tell it." "Hol' on dar! Dey mought be a snake some'rs in it--one er deze yer meal-bran snakes." "_Please_, Uncle Remus, tell it." The old man never allowed himself to resist the artful pleadings of the little boy. So he recovered his specks from under the chair, looked up the chimney for luck, as he explained to his little partner, and proceeded: "One day w'en Brer Fox went callin' on Miss Meadows en Miss Motts en de t'er gals, who should he fine settin' up dar but ole Brer Rabbit? Yasser! Dar he wuz, des ez sociable ez you please. He 'uz gwine on wid de gals, en w'en Brer Fox drapt in dey look lak dey wuz mighty tickled 'bout sump'n' n'er Brer Rabbit bin sayin'. Brer Fox, he look sorter jub'ous, he did, des lak folks does w'en dey walks up in a crowd whar de yuthers all a-gigglin'. He tuck'n kotch de dry grins terreckerly. But dey all howdied, en Miss Meadows, she up'n say: "'You'll des hatter skuse us, Brer Fox, on de 'count er dish yer gigglement. Tooby sho', hit monst'us disperlite fer we-all fer to be gwine on dat a-way; but I mighty glad you come, en I sez ter de gals, s'I, "'Fo' de Lord, gals! dar come Brer Fox, en yer we is a-gigglin' en a-gwine on scan'lous; yit hit done come ter mighty funny pass," s'I, "ef you can't run on en laugh 'fo' home folks," s'I. Dat des 'zactly w'at I say, en I leave it ter ole Brer Rabbit en de gals yer ef 't aint.' "De gals, dey tuck'n jine in, dey did, en dey make ole Brer Fox feel right splimmy-splammy, en dey all sot dar en run on 'bout dey neighbors des lak folks does deze days. Dey sot dar, dey did, twel atter w'ile Brer Rabbit look out todes sundown, en 'low: "'Now, den, folks and fr'en's, I bleedz ter say goo' bye. Cloud comin' up out yan, en mos' 'fo' we know it de rain 'll be a-po'in' en de grass 'll be a-growin'.'" "Why, that's poetry, Uncle Remus!" interrupted the little boy. "Tooby sho' 't is, honey! tooby sho' 't is. I des let you know Brer Rabbit 'uz a mighty man in dem days. Brer Fox, he see de cloud comin' up, en he up'n 'low he 'speck he better be gittin' 'long hisse'f, 'kaze he aint wanter git he Sunday-go-ter-meetin' cloze wet. Miss Meadows en Miss Motts, en de gals, dey want um ter stay, but bofe er dem ar creeturs 'uz mighty fear'd er gittin' der foots wet, en atter w'ile dey put out. "W'iles dey 'uz gwine down de big road, jawin' at one er 'n'er, Brer Fox, he tuck'n stop right quick, en 'low: "'Run yer, Brer Rabbit! run yer! Ef my eye aint 'ceive me yer de signs whar Mr. Dog bin 'long, en mo'n dat dey er right fresh.' "Brer Rabbit, he sidle up en look. Den he 'low: "'Dat ar track aint never fit Mr. Dog foot in de roun' worl'. W'at make it mo' bindin',' sezee, 'I done gone en bin 'quainted wid de man w'at make dat track, too long 'go ter talk 'bout,' sezee. "'Brer Rabbit, please, sir, tell me he name.' "Brer Rabbit, he laugh lak he makin' light er sump'n' 'n'er. "'Ef I aint make no mistakes, Brer Fox, de po' creetur w'at make dat track is Cousin Wildcat; no mo' en no less.' "'How big is he, Brer Rabbit?' "'He des 'bout yo' heft, Brer Fox.' Den Brer Rabbit make lak he talkin' wid hisse'f. 'Tut, tut, tut! Hit mighty funny dat I should run up on Cousin Wildcat in dis part er de worl'. Tooby sho', tooby sho'! Many en manys de time I see my ole Grandaddy kick en cuff Cousin Wildcat, twel I git sorry 'bout 'im. Ef you want any fun, Brer Fox, right now de time ter git it.' "Brer Fox up'n ax, he did, how he gwine have any fun. Brer Rabbit, he 'low: "'Easy 'nuff; des go en tackle ole Cousin Wildcat, en lam 'im 'roun'.' "Brer Fox, he sorter scratch he year, en 'low: "'Eh-eh, Brer Rabbit, I fear'd. He track too much lak Mr. Dog.' "Brer Rabbit des set right flat down in de road, en holler en laugh. He 'low, sezee: "'Shoo, Brer Fox! Who'd 'a' thunk you 'uz so skeery? Des come look at dish yer track right close. Is dey any sign er claw anywhar's?' "Brer Fox bleedz ter 'gree dat dey wa'n't no sign er no claw. Brer Rabbit say: "'Well, den, ef he aint got no claw, how he gwine ter hu't you, Brer Fox?' "'W'at gone wid he toofs, Brer Rabbit?' "'Shoo, Brer Fox! Creeturs w'at barks[57] de trees aint gwine bite.' "Brer Fox tuck'n tuck 'n'er good look at de tracks, en den him en Brer Rabbit put out fer ter foller um up. Dey went up de road, en down de lane, en 'cross de turnip patch, en down a dreen,[58] en up a big gully. Brer Rabbit, he done de trackin', en eve'y time he fine one, he up'n holler: "'Yer 'n'er track, en no claw dar! Yer 'n'er track, en no claw dar!' "Dey kep' on en kep' on, twel bimeby dey run up wid de creetur. Brer Rabbit, he holler out mighty biggity: "'Heyo dar! W'at you doin'?' "De creetur look 'roun', but he aint sayin' nothin'. Brer Rabbit 'low: "'Oh, you nee'nter look so sullen! We ull make you talk 'fo' we er done 'long wid you! Come, now! W'at you doin' out dar?' "De creetur rub hisse'f 'gin' a tree des lak you see deze yer house cats rub 'gin' a cheer, but he aint sayin' nothin'. Brer Rabbit holler: "'W'at you come pesterin' 'long wid us fer, w'en we aint bin a-pesterin' you? You got de consate dat I dunner who you is, but I does. Youer de same ole Cousin Wildcat w'at my gran'daddy use ter kick en cuff w'en you 'fuse ter 'spon'. I let you know I got a better man yer dan w'at my gran'daddy ever is bin, en I boun' you he ull make you talk. Dat w'at I boun' you.' "De creetur lean mo' harder 'gin' de tree, en sorter ruffle up he bristle, but he aint sayin' nothin'. Brer Rabbit, he 'low: "'Go up dar, Brer Fox, en ef he 'fuse ter 'spon' slap 'im down! Dat de way my gran'daddy done. You go up dar, Brer Fox, en ef he dast ter try ter run, I'll des whirl in en ketch 'im.' "Brer Fox, he sorter jub'ous, but he start todes de creetur. Ole Cousin Wildcat walk all 'roun' de tree, rubbin' hisse'f, but he aint sayin' nothin'. Brer Rabbit, he holler: "'Des walk right up en slap 'im down, Brer Fox--de owdashus vilyun! Des hit 'im a surbinder, en ef he dast ter run, I boun' you I'll ketch 'im.' "Brer Fox, he went up little nigher. Cousin Wildcat stop rubbin' on de tree, en sot up on he behime legs wid he front paws in de a'r, en he balance hisse'f by leanin' 'gin' de tree, but he aint sayin' nothin'. Brer Rabbit, he squall out, he did: "'Oh, you nee'nter put up yo' han's en try ter beg off. Dat de way you fool my ole gran'daddy; but you can't fool we-all. All yo' settin' up en beggin' aint gwine ter he'p you. Ef youer so humble ez all dat, w'at make you come pesterin' longer we-all? Hit 'im a clip, Brer Fox! Ef he run, I'll ketch 'im!' "Brer Fox see de creetur look so mighty humble, settin' up dar lak he beggin' off, en he sorter take heart. He sidle up todes 'im, he did, en des ez he 'uz makin' ready fer ter slap 'im ole Cousin Wildcat draw'd back en fotch Brer Fox a wipe 'cross de stomach." Uncle Remus paused here a moment, as if to discover some term strong enough to do complete justice to the catastrophe. Presently he went on: "Dat ar Cousin Wildcat creetur fotch Brer Fox a wipe 'cross de stomach, en you mought a yeard 'im squall fum yer ter Harmony Grove. Little mo' en de creetur would er to' Brer Fox in two. W'ence de creetur made a pass at 'im, Brer Rabbit knew w'at gwine ter happen, yit all de same he tuck'n holler: "'Hit 'im ag'in, Brer Fox! Hit 'im ag'in! I'm a-backin' you, Brer Fox! Ef he dast ter run, I'll inabout cripple 'im--dat I will. Hit 'im ag'in!' "All dis time w'iles Brer Rabbit gwine on dis a-way, Brer Fox, he 'uz a-squattin' down, hol'in' he stomach wid bofe han's en des a-moanin': "'I'm ruint, Brer Rabbit! I'm ruint! Run fetch de doctor! I'm teetotally ruint!' "'Bout dat time, Cousin Wildcat, he tuck'n tuck a walk. Brer Rabbit, he make lak he 'stonish' dat Brer Fox is hurted. He tuck'n 'zamin' de place, he did, en he up'n 'low: "'Hit look lak ter me, Brer Fox, dat dat owdashus vilyun tuck'n struck you wid a reapin'-hook.' "Wid dat Brer Rabbit lit out fer home, en w'en he git out er sight, he tuck'n shuck he han's des lak cat does w'en she git water on 'er foots, en he tuck'n laugh en laugh twel it make 'im sick fer ter laugh." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [57] Gnaws the bark from the trees. [58] Drain or ditch. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XLV BROTHER WOLF GETS IN A WARM PLACE The little boy thought that the story of how the wildcat scratched Brother Fox was one of the best stories he had ever heard, and he did n't hesitate to say so. His hearty endorsement increased Uncle Remus's good-humor; and the old man, with a broad grin upon his features and something of enthusiasm in his tone, continued to narrate the adventures of Brother Rabbit. "After Brer Fox git hurted so bad," said Uncle Remus, putting an edge upon his axe with a whetstone held in his hand, "hit wuz a mighty long time 'fo' he could ramble 'roun' en worry ole Brer Rabbit. Der time Cousin Wildcat fetch'd 'im dat wipe 'cross de stomach, he tuck'n lay de blame on Brer Rabbit, en w'en he git well, he des tuck'n juggle wid de yuther creeturs, en dey all 'gree dat dem en Brer Rabbit can't drink out er de same branch, ner walk de same road, ner live in de same settlement, ner go in washin' in de same wash-hole. "Tooby sho' Brer Rabbit bleedz ter take notice er all dish yer kinder jugglements en gwines on, en he des tuck'n strenken he house, in de neighborhoods er de winders, en den he put 'im up a steeple on top er dat. Yasser! A sho' 'nuff steeple, en he rise 'er up so high dat folks gwine 'long de big road stop en say, 'Hey! W'at kinder meetin'-house dat?'" The little boy laughed loudly at Uncle Remus's graphic delineation of the astonishment and admiration of the passers-by. The old man raised his head, stretched his eyes, and seemed to be looking over his spectacles right at Brother Rabbit's steeple. "Folks 'ud stop en ax, but Brer Rabbit aint got time fer ter make no answer. _He_ hammer'd, _he_ nailed, _he_ knock'd, _he_ lamm'd! Folks go by, he aint look up; creeturs come stan' en watch 'im, he aint look 'roun'; wuk, wuk, wuk, from sun-up ter sun-down, twel dat er steeple git done. Den ole Brer Rabbit tuck'n draw long breff, en wipe he forrerd, en 'low dat ef dem t'er creeturs w'at bin atter 'im so long is got any de 'vantage er him, de time done come fer um fer ter show it. "Wid dat he went en got 'im a snack er sump'n' t' eat, en a long piece er plough-line, en he tole he ole 'oman fer ter put a kittle er water on de fire, en stan' 'roun' close by, en eve'yt'ing he tell 'er not ter do, dat de ve'y t'ing she sho'ly mus' do. Den ole Brer Rabbit sot down in he rockin'-cheer en lookt out fum de steeple fer ter see how de lan' lay. "'T wa'n't long 'fo' all de creeturs year talk dat Brer Rabbit done stop wuk, en dey 'gun ter come 'roun' fer ter see w'at he gwine do nex'. But Brer Rabbit, he got up dar, he did, en smoke he seegyar, en chaw he 'backer, en let he min' run on. Brer Wolf, he stan' en look up at de steeple, Brer Fox, he stan' en look up at it, en all de t'er creeturs dey done de same. Nex' time you see a crowd er folks lookin' at sump'n' right hard, you des watch um, honey. Dey'll walk 'roun' one er 'n'er en swap places, en dey'll be constant on de move. Dat des de way de creeturs done. Dey walk 'roun' en punch one er 'n'er en swap places, en look en look. Ole Brer Rabbit, he sot up dar, he did, en chaw he 'backer, en smoke he seegyar, en let he min' run on. "Bimeby ole Brer Tarrypin come 'long, en ole Brer Tarrypin bin in cohoots wid Brer Rabbit so long dat he des nat'ally know dey wuz gwine ter be fun er plenty 'roun' in dem neighborhoods 'fo' de sun go down. He laugh 'way down und' de roof er he house, ole Brer Tarrypin did, en den he hail Brer Rabbit: "'Heyo, Brer Rabbit! W'at you doin' 'way up in de elements lak dat?' "'I'm a-sojourneyin' up yer fer ter res' myse'f, Brer Tarrypin. Drap up en see me.' "''Twix' you en me, Brer Rabbit, de drappin' 's all one way. S'posin' you tu'n loose en come. Man live dat high up bleedz ter have wings. I aint no high-flyer myse'f. I fear'd ter shake han's wid you so fur off, Brer Rabbit.' "'Not so, Brer Tarrypin, not so. My sta'rcase is a mighty limbersome one, en I'll des let it down ter you.' "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit let down de plough-line. "'Des ketch holt er dat, Brer Tarrypin,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en up you comes, _linktum sinktum binktum boo!_' sezee." "What was that, Uncle Remus?" said the little boy, taking a serious view of the statement. "Creetur talk, honey--des creetur talk. Bless yo' soul, chile!" the old man went on, with a laughable assumption of dignity, "ef you think I got time fer ter stop right short off en stribbit[59] out all I knows, you er mighty much mistaken--mighty much mistaken. "Ole Brer Tarrypin know mighty well dat Brer Rabbit aint got nothin' 'gin' 'im, yet he got sech a habit er lookin' out fer hisse'f dat he tuck'n ketch de plough-line in he mouf, he did, en try de strenk un it. Ole Brer Rabbit, he holler 'Swing on, Brer Tarrypin!' en Brer Tarrypin, he tuck'n swung on, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he 'uz settin' up dar side er Brer Rabbit. "But I wish ter goodness you'd 'a' bin dar," continued Uncle Remus, very gracefully leaving it to be inferred that _he_ was there; "I wish ter goodness you'd 'a' bin dar so you could er seed ole Brer Tarrypin w'iles Brer Rabbit 'uz haulin' 'im up, wid he tail a-wigglin' en he legs all spraddled out, en him a-whirlin' 'roun' en 'roun' en lookin' skeer'd. "De t'er creeturs dey see Brer Tarrypin go up safe en soun', en dey see de vittles passin' 'roun', en dey 'gun ter feel lak dey wanter see de inside er Brer Rabbit steeple. Den Brer Wolf, he hail 'im: "'Heyo dar, Brer Rabbit! Youer lookin' mighty scrumptious way up dar! How you come on?' "Brer Rabbit, he look down, he did, en he see who 't is hollerin', en he 'spon': "'Po'ly, mighty po'ly, but I thank de Lord I'm able to eat my 'lowance.[60] Won't you drap up, Brer Wolf?' "'Hit 's a mighty clumsy journey fer ter make, Brer Rabbit, yit I don't keer ef I does.' "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit let down de plough-line, en Brer Wolf kotch holt, en dey 'gun ter haul 'im up. Dey haul en dey haul, en w'en Brer Wolf git mos' ter de top he year Brer Rabbit holler out: "'Stir 'roun', ole 'oman, en set de table; but 'fo' you do dat, fetch de kittle fer ter make de coffee.' "Dey haul en dey haul on de plough-line, en Brer Wolf year Brer Rabbit squall out: "'Watch out dar, ole 'oman! You'll spill dat b'ilin' water on Brer Wolf!' "En, bless yo' soul!" continued Uncle Remus, turning half around in his chair to face his enthusiastic audience of one, "dat 'uz 'bout all Brer Wolf did year, 'kaze de nex' minit down come de scaldin' water, en Brer Wolf des fetch one squall en turn't hisse'f aloose, en w'en he strak de groun' he bounce des same ez one er deze yer injun-rubber balls w'at you use ter play wid 'long in dem times 'fo' you tuck'n broke yo' mammy lookin'-glass. Ole Brer Rabbit, he lean fum out de steeple en 'pollygize de bes' he kin, but no 'pollygy aint gwine ter make ha'r come back whar de b'ilin' water hit." "Did they spill the hot water on purpose, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired. "Now, den, honey, youer crowdin' me. Dem ar creeturs wuz mighty kuse--mo' speshually Brer Rabbit. W'en it come down ter dat," said Uncle Remus, lowering his voice and looking very grave, "I 'speck ef youder s'arch de country fum hen-roost to river-bank,[61] you won't fine a no mo' kuser man dan Brer Rabbit. All I knows is dat Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin had a mighty laughin' spell des 'bout de time Brer Wolf hit de groun'." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [59] Distribute. [60] Allowance; ration. [61] Based on a characteristic negro saying. For instance: "Where's Jim?" "You can't keep up wid dat nigger. Des let night come, en he's runnin' fum hen-roost to river-bank." In other words, stealing chickens and robbing fish baskets. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XLVI BROTHER WOLF STILL IN TROUBLE "En still we er by ourse'fs," exclaimed Uncle Remus, as the little boy ran into his cabin, the night after he had heard the story of how Brother Rabbit scalded Brother Wolf. "We er by ourse'fs en time's a-passin'. Dem ar folks dunner w'at dey er missin'. We er des gittin' ter dat p'int whar we kin keep de run er creeturs, en it keeps us dat busy we aint got time fer ter bolt our vittles skacely. "I done tell you 'bout Brer Rabbit makin' 'im a steeple; but I aint tell you 'bout how Brer Rabbit got ole Brer Wolf out'n er mighty bad fix." "No," said the little boy, "you have n't, and that's just what I have come for now." Uncle Remus looked at the rafters, then at the little boy, and finally broke into a loud laugh. "I 'clar' ter goodness," he exclaimed, addressing the imaginary third person to whom he related the most of his grievances, "I 'clar' ter goodness ef dat ar chile aint gittin' so dat he's eve'y whit ez up-en-spoken ez w'at ole Miss ever bin. Dat he is!" The old man paused long enough to give the little boy some uneasiness, and then continued: "Atter ole Brer Wolf git de nat'al hide tuck off'n 'im on de 'count er Brer Rabbit kittle, co'se he hatter go 'way off by hisse'f fer ter let de ha'r grow out. He 'uz gone so long dat Brer Rabbit sorter 'low ter hisse'f dat he 'speck he kin come down out'n he steeple, en sorter rack 'roun' mungs de t'er creeturs. "He sorter primp up, Brer Rabbit did, en den he start out 'pun he journeys hether en yan.[62] He tuck'n went ter de crossroads, en dar he stop en choose 'im a road. He choose 'im a road, he did, en den he put out des lak he bin sent fer in a hurry. "Brer Rabbit gallop on, he did, talkin' en laughin' wid hisse'f, en eve'y time he pass folks, he'd tu'n it off en make lak he singin'. He 'uz gwine on dis a-way, w'en fus' news you know he tuck'n year sump'n'. He stop talkin' en 'gun ter hum a chune, but he aint meet nobody. Den he stop en lissen en he year sump'n' holler: "'O Lordy! Lordy! Won't somebody come he'p me?'" The accent of grief and despair and suffering that Uncle Remus managed to throw into this supplication was really harrowing. "Brer Rabbit year dis, en he stop en lissen. 'T wa'n't long 'fo' sump'n' n'er holler out: "'O Lordy, Lordy! Please, somebody, come en he'p me.' "Brer Rabbit, he h'ist up he years, he did, en make answer back: "'Who is you, nohow, en w'at de name er goodness de marter?' "'Please, somebody, do run yer!' "Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n stan' on th'ee legs fer ter make sho' er gittin' a good start ef dey 'uz any needs un it, en he holler back: "'Whar'bouts is you, en how come you dar?' "'Do please, somebody, run yer en he'p a po' mizerbul creetur. I'm down yer in de big gully und' dish yer great big rock.' "Ole Brer Rabbit bleedz ter be mighty 'tickler in dem days, en he crope down ter de big gully en look in, en who de name er goodness you 'speck he seed down dar?" Uncle Remus paused and gave the little boy a look of triumph, and then proceeded without waiting for a reply: "Nobody in de roun' worl' but dat ar ole Brer Wolf w'at Brer Rabbit done bin scalted de week 'fo' dat. He 'uz layin' down dar in de big gully, en, bless gracious! 'pun top un 'im wuz a great big rock, en ef you want ter know de reason dat ar great big rock aint teetotally kilt Brer Wolf, den you'll hatter ax some un w'at know mo' 'bout it dan w'at I does, 'kaze hit look lak ter me dat it des oughter mash 'im flat. "Yit dar he wuz, en let 'lone bein' kilt, he got strenk 'nuff lef' fer ter make folks year 'im holler a mile off, en he holler so lonesome dat it make Brer Rabbit feel mighty sorry, en no sooner is he feel sorry dan he hol' he coat-tails out de way en slid down de bank fer ter see w'at he kin do. "W'en he git down dar Brer Wolf ax 'im please, sir, kin he he'p 'im wid de removance er dat ar rock, en Brer Rabbit 'low he 'speck he kin; en wid dat Brer Wolf holler en tell 'im fer mussy sake won't he whirl in en do it, w'ich Brer Rabbit tuck'n ketch holt er de rock en hump hisse'f, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he git a purchis on it, en, bless yo' soul, he lif' 'er up des lak nigger at de log-rollin'. "Hit tu'n out dat Brer Wolf aint hurted much, en w'en he fine dis out, he tuck'n tuck a notion dat ef he ev' gwine git he revengeance out'n Brer Rabbit, right den wuz de time, en no sooner does dat come 'cross he min' dan he tuck'n grab Brer Rabbit by de nap er de neck en de small er de back. "Brer Rabbit he kick en squeal, but 't aint do no manner er good, 'kaze de mo' w'at he kick de mo' tighter Brer Wolf clamp 'im, w'ich he squoze 'im so hard dat Brer Rabbit wuz fear'd he 'uz gwine ter cut off he breff. Brer Rabbit, he 'low: "'Well, den, Brer Wolf! Is dish yer de way you thanks folks fer savin' yo' life?' "Brer Wolf grin big, en den he up'n 'low: "'I'll thank you, Brer Rabbit, en den I'll make fresh meat out'n you.' "Brer Rabbit 'low, he did: "'Ef you talk dat a-way, Brer Wolf, I never is to do yer 'n'er good turn w'iles I live.' "Brer Wolf, he grin some mo' en 'low: "'Dat you won't, Brer Rabbit, dat you won't! You won't do me no mo' good turn tel you er done dead.' "Brer Rabbit, he sorter study ter hisse'f, he did, en den he 'low: "'Whar I come fum, Brer Wolf, hit 's agin' de law fer folks fer to kill dem w'at done done um a good turn, en I 'speck hit 's de law right 'roun' yer.' "Brer Wolf say he aint so mighty sho' 'bout dat. Brer Rabbit say he willin' fer ter lef' de whole case wid Brer Tarrypin, en Brer Wolf say he 'gree'ble. "Wid dat, dey put out, dey did, en make der way ter whar ole Brer Tarrypin stay; en w'en dey git dar, Brer Wolf he tuck'n tell he side, en den Brer Rabbit he tuck'n tell he side. Ole Brer Tarrypin put on he specks en cle'r up he th'oat, en den he 'low: "'Dey's a mighty heap er mixness in dish yer 'spute, en 'fo' I kin take any sides you'll des hatter kyar me fer ter see de place whar'bouts Brer Wolf wuz w'en Brer Rabbit foun' 'im,' sezee. "Sho' 'nuff, dey tuck'n kyar'd ole Brer Tarrypin down de big road twel dey come ter de big gully, en den dey tuck 'im ter whar Brer Wolf got kotch und' de big rock. Ole Brer Tarrypin, he walk 'roun', he did, en poke at de place wid de een' er he cane. Bimeby he shuck he head, he did, en 'low: "'I hates might'ly fer ter put you all gents ter so much trouble; yit, dey aint no two ways, I'll hatter see des how Brer Wolf was kotch, en des how de rock wuz layin' 'pun top un 'im,' sezee. 'De older folks gits, de mo' trouble dey is,' sezee, 'en I aint 'nyin' but w'at I'm a-ripenin' mo' samer dan a 'simmon w'at's bin strucken wid de fros',' sezee. [Illustration: BROTHER WOLF STILL IN TROUBLE] "Den Brer Wolf, he tuck'n lay down whar he wuz w'en Brer Rabbit foun' 'im, en de yuthers dey up'n roll de rock 'pun top un 'im. Dey roll de rock 'pun 'im," continued Uncle Remus, looking over his spectacles to see what effect the statement had on the little boy, "en dar he wuz. Brer Tarrypin, he walk all 'roun' en 'roun', en look at 'im. Den he sot down, he did, en make marks in de san' wid he cane lak he studyin' 'bout sump'n' n'er. Bimeby, Brer Wolf, he open up: "'Ow, Brer Tarrypin! Dish yer rock gittin' mighty heavy!' "Brer Tarrypin, he mark in de san', en study, en study. Brer Wolf holler: "'Ow, Brer Tarrypin! Dish yer rock mashin' de breff out'n me.' "Brer Tarrypin, he r'ar back, he did, en he 'low, sezee: "'Brer Rabbit, you wuz in de wrong. You aint had no business fer ter come bodderin' 'longer Brer Wolf w'en he aint bodderin' 'longer you. He 'uz 'ten'in' ter he own business en you oughter bin 'ten'in' ter yone.' "Dis make Brer Rabbit look 'shame' er hisse'f, but Brer Tarrypin talk right erlong: "'W'en you 'uz gwine down dish yer road dis mawnin', you sho'ly mus' bin a-gwine som'ers. Ef you _wuz_ gwine som'ers you better be gwine on. Brer Wolf, he wa'n't gwine nowhars den, en he aint gwine nowhars now. You foun' 'im und' dat ar rock, en und' dat ar rock you lef 'im.' "En, bless gracious!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, "dem ar creeturs racked off fum dar en lef' ole Brer Wolf und' dat ar rock." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [62] Hither and yon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XLVII BROTHER RABBIT LAYS IN HIS BEEF SUPPLY "I wonder where Daddy Jack is," said the little boy, one night after he had been waiting for some time for Uncle Remus to get leisure to tell him a story. Uncle Remus, who was delightfully human in his hypocrisy, as well as in other directions, leaned back in his chair, looked at the little boy with an air of grieved resignation, and said: "I boun' you does, honey, I boun' you does. Ole Brer Jack look mighty weazly ter de naked eye, but I lay he's a lots mo' likelier nigger dan w'at ole Remus is. De time done gone by w'en a po' ole no-'count nigger lak me kin hol' he han' wid a bran new nigger man lak Brer Jack." The child stared at Uncle Remus with open-eyed astonishment. "Now, Uncle Remus! I did n't mean that; you know I did n't," he exclaimed. "Bless yo' heart, honey! hit don't pester me. I done got de speunce un it. Dat I is. Plough-hoss don't squeal en kick w'en dey puts 'n'er hoss in he place. Brer Jack got de age on 'im but he new ter you. Ole er young, folks is folks, en no longer'n day 'fo' yistiddy, I year you braggin' 'bout how de vittles w'at dey feeds you on up at de big house aint good ez de vittles w'at yuther childun gits. Nummine ole Remus, honey; you en Brer Jack des go right erlong en I'll be much 'blige ef you'll des lemme set in de cornder yer en chunk de fier. Sho'ly I aint pas' doin' dat." The child was troubled to think that Uncle Remus should find it necessary to depreciate himself, and he made haste to explain his position. "I thought that if Daddy Jack was here he could tell me a story while you are working, so you would n't be bothered." A broad grin of appreciation spread over Uncle Remus's face. He adjusted his spectacles, looked around and behind him, and then, seeing no one but the child, addressed himself to the rafters and cobwebs: "Well! well! well! ef dish yer don't beat all! Gentermens! dish yer little chap yer, he puny in de legs, yit he mighty strong in de head." He paused, as if reflecting over the whole matter, and then turned to the child: "Is _dat_ w'at make you hone atter Daddy Jack, honey--des 'kaze you wanter set back dar en lissen at a tale? Now, den, ef you had n't 'a' got me off'n de track, you'd 'a' bin settin' yer lis'nen at one un um dis blessid minnit, 'kaze des time I year talk dat Mars John gwine ter have dat ar long-hornded steer kilt fer beef, hit come 'cross my min' 'bout de time w'ence Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox j'ined in wid one er 'n'er en kilt a cow." "Killed a cow, Uncle Remus?" "Des ez sho' ez youer settin' dar," replied the old man with emphasis. "Look lak dey wa'n't no kinder doin's w'at dem ar creeturs wa'n't up ter, mo' speshually ole Brer Rabbit. Day in en day out, fum mawnin' twel night en fum night twel mawnin', he 'uz constant a-studyin' up some bran new kinder contrapshun fer ter let de yuther creeturs know he 'uz some'rs in de neighborhoods. "Come down ter dat, you kin b'leeve me er not b'leeve me, des ez you er min' ter; you kin take yo' choosement; but ole Brer Rabbit en ole Brer Fox, spite er dey fallin' out, dey tuck'n go inter cahoots en kilt a cow. Seem lak I disremember who de cow b'long ter," continued the old man, frowning thoughtfully, and thus, by a single stroke, imparting an air of reality to the story; "but she sho'ly b'long'd ter some er de neighbors, 'kaze you kin des put it down, right pine-blank, dat Brer Rabbit aint gwine ter kill he own cow, en needer is Brer Fox. "Well, den, dey tuck'n kilt a cow, en 't wa'n't dey own cow, en alter dey done skunt 'er Brer Rabbit, he up'n 'low, he did, dat ef Brer Fox wanter git de good er de game, he better run home en fetch a tray er sump'n fer put de jiblets in." "Jiblets, Uncle Remus?" "Tooby sho', honey. Dats w'at we-all calls de liver, de lights, de heart, en de melt. Some calls um jiblets en some calls um hasletts, but ef you'll lemme take um en kyar um home, you kin des up en call um mos' by any name w'at creep inter yo' min'. You do de namin'," the old man went on, smacking his lips suggestively, "en I'll do de eatin', en ef I'm de loser, I boun' you won't year no complaints fum me. "But, law bless me! w'at is I'm a-doin'? De time's a-passin', en I'm aint skacely got start on de tale. Dey kilt de cow, dey did, en Brer Rabbit tell Brer Fox 'bout de jiblets, en w'iles Brer Fox gwine on home atter de bucket fer ter put um in, he say ter hisse'f dat Brer Rabbit aint bad ez he crackt up ter be. But no sooner is Brer Fox outer sight dan Brer Rabbit cut out de jiblets, he did, en kyar'd um off en hide um. Den he come back en tuck a piece er de meat en drap blood 'way off de udder way. "Bimeby yer come Brer Fox wid he bucket, en w'en he git dar Brer Rabbit wuz settin' down cryin'. Mon, he 'uz des a-boohoo-in'. Brer Fox, he 'low: "'Name er goodness, Brer Rabbit! w'at de marter?' "''Nuff de marter--'nuff de marter. I wish you'd 'a' stayed yer w'iles you wuz yer--dat I does, Brer Fox!' "'How come, Brer Rabbit,--how come?' "'Man come, Brer Fox, en stole all yo' nice jiblets. I bin a-runnin' atter 'im, Brer Fox, but he outrun me.' "'W'ich a-way he go, Brer Rabbit?' "'Yer de way he went, Brer Fox; yer whar he drap de blood. Ef you be right peart, Brer Fox, you'll ketch 'im.' "Brer Fox he drapt de bucket, he did, en put out atter de man w'at tuck de jiblets, en he wa'n't out'n sight good, 'fo' ole Brer Rabbit sail in en cut out all de fat en taller, en kyar' it off en hide it. Atter w'ile, yer come Brer Fox back des a-puffin' en a-pantin'. He aint see no man. Brer Rabbit, he hail 'im: "'You aint come a minnit too soon, Brer Fox, dat you aint. W'iles you bin gone 'n'er man come 'long en kyar'd off all de taller en fat. He went right off dat a-way, Brer Fox, en ef you'll be right peart, you'll ketch 'im.' "Brer Fox, he tuck'n put out, he did, en run, en run, yit he aint see no man. W'iles he done gone Brer Rabbit kyar off one er de behime quarters. Brer Fox come back; he aint see no man. Brer Rabbit holler en tell 'im dat 'ne'r man done come en got a behime quarter en run'd off wid it. "Brer Fox sorter study 'bout dis, 'kaze it look lak nobody yuver see de like er mens folks passin' by dat one lonesome cow. He make out he gwine ter run atter de man w'at steal de behime quarter, but he aint git fur 'fo' he tuck'n tu'n 'roun' en crope back, en he 'uz des in time fer ter see Brer Rabbit makin' off wid de yuther behime quarter. Brer Fox mighty tired wid runnin' hether en yan, en backards en forrerds, but he git so mad w'en he see Brer Rabbit gwine off dat a-way, dat he dash up en ax 'im whar is he gwine wid dat ar beef. "Brer Rabbit lay de beef down, he did, en look lak he feelin's hurted. He look at Brer Fox lak he feel mighty sorry fer folks w'at kin ax foolish questions lak dat. He shake he head, he did, en 'low: "'Well, well, well! Who'd 'a' thunk dat Brer Fox would 'a' come axin' me 'bout dish yer beef, w'ich anybody would er know'd I 'uz a-kyar'n off fer ter save fer 'im, so nobody could n't git it?' "But dish yer kinder talk don't suit Brer Fox, en he tuck'n make a motion 'zef[63] ter ketch Brer Rabbit, but Brer Rabbit he 'gun 'im leg bail, en dar dey had it thoo de woods twel Brer Rabbit come 'pon a holler tree, en inter dat he went, des lak one er deze streaked lizzuds goes inter a hole in de san'." "And then," said the little boy, as Uncle Remus paused, "along came Brother Buzzard, and Brother Fox set him to watch the hole, and Brother Rabbit said he had found a fat squirrel which he would run out on the other side; and then he came out and ran home." This was the climax of a story that Uncle Remus had told a long time before, and he looked at his little partner with astonishment not unmixed with admiration. "I 'clar' ter gracious, honey!" he exclaimed, "ef you hol's on ter yo' pra'rs lak you does ter deze yer tales youer doin' mighty well. But don't you try ter hol' Brer Rabbit down ter one trick, you won't never keep up wid 'im in de 'roun' worl'--dat you won't. "Ole Brer Buzzard wuz dar, en Brer Fox ax 'im fer ter watch de hole, but he aint bin dar long 'fo' Brer Rabbit sing out: "'I got de 'vantage un you, dis whet, Brer Buzzard, I sho'ly is.' "'How dat, Brer Rabbit?' "''Kaze I kin see you, en you can't see me.' "Wid dat Brer Buzzard stuck he head in de hole, en look up; en no sooner is he do dis dan Brer Rabbit fill he eyes full er san', en w'iles he gone ter de branch fer ter wash it out, Brer Rabbit he come down outer de holler, en went back ter whar de cow wuz; en mo' dan dat, Brer Rabbit got de ballunce un de beef." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [63] As if. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XLVIII BROTHER RABBIT AND MR. WILDCAT "Uncle Remus," said the little boy, after a pause, "where did Brother Rabbit go when he got out of the hollow tree?" "Well, sir," exclaimed Uncle Remus, "you aint gwine ter b'leeve me, skacely, but dat owdashus creetur aint no sooner git out er dat ar tree dan he go en git hisse'f mix up wid some mo' trouble, w'ich he git mighty nigh skeer'd out'n he skin. "W'en Brer Rabbit git out'n de holler tree, he tuck'n fling some sass back at ole Brer Buzzard, he did, en den he put out down de big road, stidder gwine 'long back home en see 'bout he fambly. He 'uz gwine 'long--_lickety-clickety, clickety-lickety_--w'en fus' news you know he feel sump'n' 'n'er drap down 'pun 'im, en dar he wuz. Bless yo' soul, w'en Brer Rabbit kin git he 'membunce terge'er, he feel ole Mr. Wildcat a-huggin' 'im fum behime, en w'ispun in he year." "What did he whisper, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "Dis, dat, en de udder, one thing en a nudder." "But what did he say?" "De way un it wuz dis," said Uncle Remus, ignoring the child's question, "Brer Rabbit, he 'uz gallin'-up down de road, en ole Mr. Wildcat, he 'uz layin' stretch' out takin' a nap on a tree-lim' hangin' 'crosst de road. He year Brer Rabbit come a-lickity-clickitin' down de road, en he des sorter fix hisse'f, en w'en Brer Rabbit come a-dancin' und' de lim', all Mr. Wildcat got ter do is ter drap right down on 'im, en dar he wuz. Mr. Wildcat hug 'im right up at 'im, en laugh en w'isper in he year." "Well, Uncle Remus, what did he _say_?" persisted the little boy. The old man made a sweeping gesture with his left hand that might mean everything or nothing, and proceeded to tell the story in his own way. "Ole Mr. Wildcat hug Brer Rabbit up close en w'isper in he year. Brer Rabbit, he kick, he squall. Bimeby he ketch he breff en 'low: "'Ow! O Lordy-lordy! W'at I done gone en done now?' "Mr. Wildcat, he rub he wet nose on Brer Rabbit year, en make cole chill run up he back. Bimeby he say: "'O Brer Rabbit, I des nat'ally loves you! You bin a-foolin' all er my cousins en all er my kinfolks, en 't aint bin so mighty long sence you set Cousin Fox on me, en little mo' en I'd a-to' 'im in two. O Brer Rabbit! I des nat'ally loves you,' sezee. "Den he laugh, en he toofs strak terge'er right close ter Brer Rabbit year. Brer Rabbit, he 'low, he did: "Law, Mr. Wildcat, I thunk maybe you mought lak ter have Brer Fox fer supper, en dat de reason I sent 'im up ter whar you is. Hit done come ter mighty purty pass w'en folks can't be fr'en's 'ceppin' sump'n' 'n'er step in 'twix' en 'tween um, en ef dat de case I aint gwine ter be fr'en's no mo'--dat I aint.' "Mr. Wildcat wipe he nose on Brer Rabbit year, en he do sorter lak he studyin'. Brer Rabbit he keep on talkin'. He 'low: "'Endurin' er all dis time, is I ever pester 'long wid you, Mr. Wildcat?' "'No, Brer Rabbit, I can't say ez you is.' "'No, Mr. Wildcat, dat I aint. Let 'lone dat, I done my level bes' fer ter he'p you out. En dough you done jump on me en skeer me scan'lous, yit I'm willin' ter do you 'n'er good tu'n. I year some wild turkeys yelpin' out yan', en ef you'll des lem me off dis time, I'll go out dar en call um up, en you kin make lak you dead, en dey'll come up en stretch dey neck over you, en you kin jump up en kill a whole passel un um 'fo' dey kin git out de way.' [Illustration: BROTHER RABBIT AND MR WILDCAT] "Mr. Wildcat stop en study, 'kaze ef dey er one kinder meat w'at he lak dat meat is turkey meat. Den he tuck'n ax Brer Rabbit is he jokin'. Brer Rabbit say ef he 'uz settin' off some'rs by he own-'lone se'f he mought be jokin', but how de name er goodness is he kin joke w'en Mr. Wildcat got 'im hug up so tight? Dis look so pleezy-plozzy[64] dat 't wa'n't long 'fo' Mr. Wildcat 'low dat he 'uz mighty willin' ef Brer Rabbit mean w'at he say, en atter w'ile, bless yo' soul, ef you'd 'a' come 'long dar, you'd er seed ole Mr. Wildcat layin' stretch out on de groun' lookin' fer all de wul' des lak he done bin dead a mont', en you'd er yeard ole Brer Rabbit a-yelpin' out in de bushes des lak a sho' 'nuff tukky-hen." The little boy was always anxious for a practical demonstration, and he asked Uncle Remus how Brother Rabbit could yelp like a turkey-hen. For reply, Uncle Remus searched upon his rude mantel-piece until he found a reed, which he intended to use as a pipe-stem. One end of this he placed in his mouth, enclosing the other in his hands. By sucking the air through the reed with his mouth, and regulating the tone and volume by opening or closing his hands, the old man was able to produce a marvellous imitation of the call of the turkey-hen, much to the delight and astonishment of the little boy. "Ah, Lord!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, after he had repeated the call until the child was satisfied, "manys en manys de time is I gone out in de woods wid old marster 'fo' de crack er day en call de wile turkeys right spang up ter whar we could er kilt um wid a stick. W'en we fus' move yer fum Ferginny, dey use ter come right up ter whar de barn sets, en mo'n dat I done seed ole marster kill um right out dar by de front gate. But folks fum town been comin' 'roun' yer wid der p'inter dogs twel hit done got so dat ef you wanter see turkey track you gotter go down dar ter de Oconee, en dat 's two mile off." "Did the Wildcat catch the turkeys?" the little boy inquired, when it seemed that Uncle Remus was about to give his entire attention to his own reminiscences. "De gracious en de goodness!" exclaimed the old man. "Yer I is runnin' on en dar lays Mr. Wildcat waitin' fer Brer Rabbit fer ter help dem turkeys up. En 't aint take 'im long nudder, 'kaze, bless yo' soul, ole Brer Rabbit wuz a yelper, mon. "Sho' 'nuff, atter w'ile yer dey come, ole Brer Gibley Gobbler wukkin' in de lead. Brer Rabbit, he run'd en meet um en gun um de wink 'bout ole Mr. Wildcat, en by de time dey git up ter whar he layin', Brer Gibley Gobbler en all his folks wuz jined in a big 'spute. One 'low he dead, 'n'er one 'low he aint, 'n'er one 'low he stiff, udder one 'low he aint, en t'udder 'low he is. So dar dey had it. Dey stretch out dey neck en step high wid dey foot, yit dey aint git too close ter Mr. Wildcat. "He lay dar, he did, en he aint move. Win' ruffle up he ha'r, yit he aint move; sun shine down 'pun 'im, yit he aint move. De turkeys dey gobble en dey yelp, but dey aint go no nigher; dey holler en dey 'spute, but dey aint go no nigher; dey stretch dey neck en dey lif' dey foot high, yit dey aint go no nigher. "Hit keep on dis a-way, twel bimeby Mr. Wildcat git tired er waitin', en he jump up, he did, en make a dash at de nighest turkey; but dat turkey done fix, on w'en Mr. Wildcat come at 'im, he des riz in de a'r, en Mr. Wildcat run und' 'im. Den he tuck'n run at 'n'er one, en dat un fly up; en dey keep on dat a-way twel 't wa'n't long 'fo' Mr. Wildcat wuz so stiff in de j'ints en so short in de win' dat he des hatter lay down on de groun' en res', en w'en he do dis, ole Brer Gibley Gobler en all er he folks went on 'bout dey own business; but sence dat day deyer constant a-'sputin' 'long wid deyse'f en eve'ybody w'at come by. Ef you don't b'leeve me," with an air of disposing of the whole matter judicially, "you kin des holler at de fus' Gobbler w'at you meets, en ef he 'fuse ter holler back atter you, you kin des use my head fer a hole in de wall; en w'at mo' kin you ax dan dat?" "What became of Brother Rabbit, Uncle Remus?" "Well, sir, Brer Rabbit tuck'n lef' dem low-groun's. W'iles de 'sputin' wuz gwine on, he tuck'n bowed his good-byes, en den he des put out fum dar. Nex' day ole Brer Gibley Gobbler tuck'n sent 'im a turkey wing fer ter make a fan out'n, en Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n sent it ter Miss Meadows en de gals. En I let you know," continued the old man, chuckling heartily to himself, "dey make great 'miration 'bout it." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [64] No doubt this means that Brother Rabbit's proposition was pleasant and plausible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XLIX MR. BENJAMIN RAM DEFENDS HIMSELF "I 'speck we all dun gone en fergot ole Mr. Benjermun Ram off'n our min'," said Uncle Remus, one night, as the little boy went into the cabin with a large ram's horn hanging on his arm. "About his playing the fiddle and getting lost in the woods!" exclaimed the child. "Oh, no, I have n't forgotten him, Uncle Remus. I remember just how he tuned his fiddle in Brother Wolf's house." "Dat 's me!" said Uncle Remus with enthusiasm; "dat 's me up en down. Mr. Ram des ez fresh in my min' now ez he wuz de day I year de tale. Dat ole creetur wuz a sight, mon. He mos' sho'ly wuz. He wrinkly ole hawn en de shaggy ha'r on he neck make 'im look mighty servigous,[65] en w'ence he shake he head en snort, hit seem lak he gwine ter fair paw de yeth fum und' 'im. "Ole Brer Fox bin pickin' up ole Mr. Benjermun Ram chilluns w'en dey git too fur fum home, but look lak he aint never bin git close ter de ole creetur. "So one time w'en he 'uz comin' on down de road, talkin' 'long wid Brer Wolf, he up'n 'low, ole Brer Fox did, dat he mighty hongry in de neighborhoods er de stomach. Dis make Brer Wolf look lak he 'stonish'd, en he ax Brer Fox how de name er goodness come he hongry w'en ole Mr. Benjermun Ram layin' up dar in de house des a-rollin' in fat. "Den Brer Fox tuck'n 'low, he did, dat he done bin in de habits er eatin' Mr. Benjermun Ram chillun, but he sorter fear'd er de ole creetur 'kaze he look so bad on de 'count er he red eye en he wrinkly hawn. "Brer Wolf des holler en laugh, en den he 'low: "'Lordy, Brer Fox! I dunner w'at kinder man is you, nohow! W'y, dat ar ole creetur aint never hurted a flea in all he born days--dat he aint,' sezee. "Brer Fox, he look at Brer Wolf right hard, he did, en den he up'n 'low: "'Heyo, Brer Wolf! manys de time dat you bin hongry 'roun' in deze diggin's en I aint year talk er you makin' a meal off'n Mr. Benjermun Ram,' sezee. "Brer Fox talk so close ter de fatal trufe, dat Brer Wolf got tooken wid de dry grins, yit he up'n 'spon', sezee: "'I des lak ter know who in de name er goodness wanter eat tough creetur lak dat ole Mr. Benjermun Ram--dat w'at I lak ter know,' sezee. "Brer Fox, he holler en laugh, he did, en den he up'n say: "'Ah-yi, Brer Wolf! You ax me w'at I goes hongry fer, w'en ole Mr. Benjermun Ram up dar in he house, yit you done bin hongry manys en manys de time, en still ole Mr. Benjermun Ram up dar in he house. Now, den, how you gwine do in a case lak dat?' sez Brer Fox, sezee. "Brer Wolf, he strak de een' er he cane down 'pun de groun', en he say, sezee: "'I done say all I got ter say, en w'at I say, dat I'll stick ter. Dat ole creetur lots too tough.' "Hongry ez he is, Brer Fox laugh way down in he stomach. Atter w'ile he 'low: "'Well, den, Brer Wolf, stidder 'sputin' 'longer you, I'm gwine do w'at you say; I'm gwine ter go up dar en git a bait er ole Mr. Benjermun Ram, en I wish you be so good ez ter go 'long wid me fer comp'ny,' sezee. "Brer Wolf jaw sorter fall w'en he year dis, en he 'low: "'Eh-eh, Brer Fox! I druther go by my own--'lone se'f,' sezee. "'Well, den,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'you better make 'as'e,' sezee, ''kaze 't aint gwine ter take me so mighty long fer ter go up dar en make hash out'n ole Mr. Benjermun Ram,' sezee. "Brer Wolf know mighty well," said Uncle Remus, snapping his huge tongs in order to silence a persistent cricket in the chimney, "dat ef he dast ter back out fum a banter lak dat he never is ter year de las' un it fum Miss Meadows en Miss Motts en de gals, en he march off todes Mr. Benjermun Ram house. "Little puff er win' come en blow'd up some leafs, en Brer Wolf jump lak somebody shootin' at 'im, en he fly mighty mad w'en he year Brer Fox laugh. He men' he gait, he did, en 't wa'n't 'long 'fo' he 'uz knockin' at Mr. Benjermun Ram do'. "He knock at de do', he did, en co'se he 'speck somebody fer ter come open de do'; but stidder dat, lo' en beholes yer come Mr. Benjermun Ram 'roun' de house. Dar he wuz--red eye, wrinkly hawn en shaggy head. Now, den, in case lak dat, w'at a slim-legged man lak Brer Wolf gwine do? Dey aint no two ways, he gwine ter git 'way fum dar, en he went back ter whar Brer Fox is mo' samer dan ef de patter-rollers wuz atter 'im. "Brer Fox, he laugh en he laugh, en ole Brer Wolf, he look mighty glum. Brer Fox ax 'im is he done kilt en e't Mr. Benjermun Ram, en ef so be, is he lef' any fer him. Brer Wolf say he aint feelin' well, en he don't lak mutton nohow. Brer Fox 'low: "'You may be puny in de min', Brer Wolf, but you aint feelin' bad in de leg, 'kaze I done seed you wuk um.' "Brer Wolf 'low he des a-runnin' fer ter see ef 't won't mak 'im feel better. Brer Fox, he say, sezee, dat w'en he feelin' puny, he aint ax no mo' dan fer somebody fer ter git out de way en let 'im lay down. "Dey went on in dis a-way, dey did, twel bimeby Brer Fox ax Brer Wolf ef he'll go wid 'im fer ter ketch Mr. Benjermun Ram. Brer Wolf, he 'low, he did: "'Eh-eh, Brer Fox! I fear'd you'll run en lef' me dar fer ter do all de fightin'.' "Brer Fox, he 'low dat he'll fix dat, en he tuck'n got 'im a plough-line, en tied one een' ter Brer Wolf en t'er een' ter he own se'f. Wid dat dey put out fer Mr. Benjermun Ram house. Brer Wolf, he sorter hang back, but he 'shame' fer ter say he skeer'd, en dey went on en went on plum twel dey git right spang up ter Mr. Benjermun Ram house. "W'en dey git dar, de ole creetur wuz settin' out in de front po'ch sorter sunnin' hisse'f. He see um comin', en w'en dey git up in hailin' distance, he sorter cle'r up he th'oat, he did, en holler out: "'I much 'blije to you, Brer Fox, fer ketchin' dat owdashus vilyun en fetchin' 'im back. My smoke-'ouse runnin' short, en I'll des chop 'im up en pickle 'im. Fetch 'im in, Brer Fox! fetch 'im in!' "Des 'bout dat time ole Miss Ram see dem creeturs a-comin', en gentermens! you mought er yeard er blate plum ter town. Mr. Benjermun Ram, he sorter skeer'd hisse'f, but he keep on talkin': "'Fetch 'im in, Brer Fox! fetch 'im in! Don't you year my ole 'oman cryin' fer 'im? She aint had no wolf meat now in gwine on mighty nigh a mont'. Fetch 'im in, Brer Fox! fetch 'im in!' "Fus' Brer Wolf try ter ontie hisse'f, den he tuck'n broke en run'd, en he drag ole Brer Fox atter 'im des lak he aint weigh mo'n a poun', en I let you know hit 'uz many a long day 'fo' Brer Fox git well er de thumpin' he got." "Uncle Remus," said the little boy after a while, "I thought wolves always caught sheep when they had the chance." "Dey ketches lam's, honey, but bless yo' soul! dey aint ketch deze yer ole-time Rams wid red eye en wrinkly hawn." "Where was Brother Rabbit all this time?" "Now, den, honey, don't less pester wid ole Brer Rabbit right now. Des less gin 'im one night rest, mo' speshually w'en I year de seven stares say yo' bed-time done come. Des take yo' foot in yo' han' en put right out 'fo' Miss Sally come a-callin' you, 'kaze den she'll say I'm a-settin' yer a-noddin' en not takin' keer un you." The child laughed and ran up the path to the big-house, stopping a moment on the way to mimic a bull-frog that was bellowing at a tremendous rate near the spring. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [65] Wild; fierce; dangerous; courageous. The accent is on the second syllable, ser-_vi_-gous; or, ser-_vi_-gus, and the g is hard. Aunt Tempy would have said "vigrous." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- L BROTHER RABBIT PRETENDS TO BE POISONED Not many nights after the story of how Mr. Benjamin Ram frightened Brother Wolf and Brother Fox, the little boy found himself in Uncle Remus's cabin. It had occurred to him that Mr. Ram should have played on his fiddle somewhere in the tale, and Uncle Remus was called on to explain. He looked at the little boy with an air of grieved astonishment, and exclaimed: "Well, I be bless if I ever year der beat er dat. Yer you bin a-persooin' on atter deze yer creeturs en makin' der 'quaintunce, en yit look lak ef you 'uz ter meet um right up dar in der paff you'd fergit all 'bout who dey is." "Oh, no, I would n't, Uncle Remus!" protested the child, glancing at the door and getting a little closer to the old man. "Yasser! you'd des nat'ally whirl in en fergit 'bout who dey is. 'T aint so mighty long sence I done tole you 'bout ole Mr. Benjermun Ram playin' he fiddle at Brer Wolf house, en yer you come en ax me how come he don't take en play it at 'im 'g'in. W'at kinder lookin' sight 'ud dat ole creetur a-bin ef he'd jump up en grab he fiddle en go ter playin' on it eve'y time he year a fuss down de big road?" The little boy said nothing, but he thought the story would have been a great deal nicer if Mr. Benjamin Ram could have played one of the old-time tunes on his fiddle, and while he was thinking about it, the door opened and Aunt Tempy made her appearance. Her good-humor was infectious. "Name er goodness!" she exclaimed, "I lef' you all settin' yer way las' week; I goes off un I does my wuk, un I comes back, un I fines you settin' right whar I lef' you. Goodness knows, I dunner whar you gits yo' vittles. I dunner whar I aint bin sence I lef' you all settin' yer. I let you know I bin a-usin' my feet un I been a-usin' my han's. Dat 's me. No use ter ax how you all is, 'kaze you looks lots better'n me." "Yas, Sis Tempy, we er settin' yer whar you lef' us, en der Lord, he bin a-pervidin'. W'en de vittles don't come in at de do' hit come down de chimbly, en so w'at de odds? We er sorter po'ly, Sis Tempy, I'm 'blige ter you. You know w'at de jay-bird say ter der squinch owl! 'I'm sickly but sassy.'" Aunt Tempy laughed as she replied: "I 'speck you all bin a-havin' lots er fun. Goodness knows I wish many a time sence I bin gone dat I 'uz settin' down yer runnin' on wid you all. I aint bin gone fur--dat 's so, yit Mistiss put me ter cuttin'-out, un I tell you now dem w'at cuts out de duds fer all de niggers on dis place is got ter wuk fum soon in de mawnin' plum tel bed-time, dey aint no two ways. 'T aint no wuk youk'n kyar' 'bout wid you needer, 'kaze you got ter spread it right out on de flo' un git down on yo' knees. I mighty glad I done wid it, 'kaze my back feel like it done broke in a thous'n pieces. Honey, is Brer Remus bin a-tellin' you some mo' er dem ole-time tales?" Aunt Tempy's question gave the little boy an excuse for giving her brief outlines of some of the stories. One that he seemed to remember particularly well was the story of how Brother Rabbit and Brother Fox killed a cow, and how Brother Rabbit got the most and the best of the beef. "I done year talk uv a tale like dat," exclaimed Aunt Tempy, laughing heartily, "but 't aint de same tale. I mos' 'shame' ter tell it." "You gittin' too ole ter be blushin', Sis Tempy," said Uncle Remus with dignity. "Well den," said Aunt Tempy, wiping her fat face with her apron: "One time Brer Rabbit un Brer Wolf tuck'n gone off som'ers un kilt a cow, un w'en dey come fer ter 'vide out de kyarkiss, Brer Wolf 'low dat bein's he de biggest he oughter have de mos', un he light in, he did, un do like he gwine ter take it all. Brer Rabbit do like he don't keer much, but he keer so bad hit make 'im right sick. He tuck'n walk all 'roun' de kyarkiss, he did, un snuff de air, un terreckly he say: "'Brer Wolf!--O Brer Wolf!--is dis meat smell 'zuckly right ter you?' "Brer Wolf, he cuttin' un he kyarvin' un he aint sayin' nothin'. Brer Rabbit, he walk all 'roun' un 'roun' de kyarkiss. He feel it un he kick it. Terreckly he say: "'Brer Wolf!--O Brer Wolf!--Dis meat feel mighty flabby ter me; how it feel ter you?' "Brer Wolf, he year all dat 's said, but he keep on a-cuttin' un a kyarvin'. Brer Rabbit say: "'You kin talk er not talk, Brer Wolf, des ez youer min' ter, yit ef I aint mistooken in de sign, you'll do some tall talkin' 'fo' youer done wid dis beef. Now you mark w'at I tell you!' "Brer Rabbit put out fum dar, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' yer he come back wid a chunk er fier, un a dish er salt. W'en Brer Wolf see dis, he say: "'W'at you gwine do wid all dat, Brer Rabbit?' "Brer Rabbit laugh like he know mo' dan he gwine tell, un he say: "'Bless yo' soul, Brer Wolf! I aint gwine ter kyar er poun' er dis meat home tel I fin' out w'at de matter wid it. No I aint--so dar now!' "Den Brer Rabbit built 'im a fier un cut 'im off a slishe er steak un br'ilte it good un done, un den he e't little uv it. Fus' he'd tas'e un den he'd nibble; den he'd nibble un den he'd tas'e. He keep on tel he e't right smart piece. Den he went'n sot off little ways like he waitin' fer sump'n'. "Brer Wolf, he kyarve un he cut, but he keep one eye on Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit sot up dar same ez Judge on de bench. Brer Wolf, he watch his motions. Terreckly Brer Rabbit fling bofe han's up ter he head un fetch a groan. Brer Wolf cut un kyarve un watch Brer Rabbit motions. Brer Rabbit sorter sway backerds un forrerds un fetch 'n'er groan. Den he sway fum side to side un holler 'O Lordy!' Brer Wolf, he sorter 'gun ter git skeer'd un he ax Brer Rabbit w'at de matter. Brer Rabbit, he roll on de groun' un holler: "'O Lordy, Lordy! I'm pizen'd, I'm pizen'd! O Lordy! I'm pizen'd! Run yer, somebody, run yer! De meat done got pizen on it. Oh, do run yer!' "Brer Wolf git so skeer'd dat he put out fum dar, un he wa'n't out er sight skacely 'fo' Brer Rabbit jump up fum dar un cut de pidjin-wing, un 't wa'n't so mighty long atter dat 'fo' Brer Rabbit done put all er dat beef in his smoke-house." "What became of Brother Wolf?" the little boy inquired. "Brer Wolf went atter de doctor," continued Aunt Tempy, making little tucks in her apron, "un w'en he come back Brer Rabbit un de beef done gone; un, bless goodness, ef it had n't er bin fer de sign whar Brer Rabbit built de fier, Brer Wolf would er bin mightly pester'd fer ter fine der place whar de cow bin kilt." At this juncture, 'Tildy, the house-girl, came in to tell Aunt Tempy that one of the little negroes had been taken suddenly sick. "I bin huntin' fer you over de whole blessid place," said 'Tildy. "No, you aint--no, you aint. You aint bin huntin' nowhar. You know'd mighty well whar I wuz." "Law, Mam' Tempy, I can't keep up wid you. How I know you down yer courtin' wid Unk Remus?" "Yo' head mighty full er courtin', you nas' stinkin' huzzy!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy. Uncle Remus, strange to say, was unmoved. He simply said: "W'en you see dat ar 'Tildy gal pirootin' 'roun' I boun' you ole Brer Affikin Jack aint fur off. 'T won't be so mighty long 'fo' de ole creetur'll show up." "How you know dat, Unk Remus?" exclaimed 'Tildy, showing her white teeth and stretching her eyes. "Hit 's de Lord's trufe; Mass Jeems done writ a letter ter Miss Sally, en' he say in dat letter dat Daddy Jack ax 'im fer ter tell Miss Sally ter tell me dat he'll be up yer dis week. Dat ole Affikin ape got de impidence er de Ole Boy. He dunner who he foolin' 'longer!" LI MORE TROUBLE FOR BROTHER WOLF The next night the little boy hardly waited to eat his supper before going to Uncle Remus's house; and when Aunt Tempy failed to put in an appearance as early as he thought necessary, he did not hesitate to go after her. He had an idea that there was a sequel to the story she had told the night before, and he was right. After protesting against being dragged around from post to pillar by children, Aunt Tempy said: "Atter Brer Rabbit tuck'n make out he 'uz pizen'd un git all de beef, 't wa'n't long 'fo' he chance to meet ole Brer Wolf right spang in de middle uv de road. Brer Rabbit, he sorter shied off ter one side, but Brer Wolf hail 'im: "'W'oa dar, my colty! don't be so gayly. You better be 'shame' yo'se'f 'bout de way you do me w'en we go inter cahoots wid dat beef.' "Brer Rabbit, he up'n ax Brer Wolf how all his folks. Brer Wolf say: "'You'll fin' out how dey all is 'fo' dis day gone by. You took'n took de beef, un now I'm a-gwine ter take'n take you.' "Wid dis Brer Wolf make a dash at Brer Rabbit, but he des lack a little bit uv bein' quick 'nuff, un Brer Rabbit he des went a-sailin' thoo de woods. Brer Wolf, he tuck atter 'im, un yer dey had it--fus' Brer Rabbit un den Brer Wolf. Brer Rabbit mo' soopler dan Brer Wolf, but Brer Wolf got de 'vantage er de win', un terreckly he push Brer Rabbit so close dat he run in a holler log. "Brer Rabbit bin in dat log befo' un he know dey's a hole at de t'er een', un he des keep on a-gwine. He dart in one een' un he slip out de udder. He aint stop ter say goo'-bye; bless you! he des keep on gwine. "Brer Wolf, he see Brer Rabbit run in de holler log, un he say ter hisse'f: "'Heyo, dey bin callin' you so mighty cunnin' all dis time, un yer you done gone un shot yo'se'f up in my trap.' "Den Brer Wolf laugh un lay down by de een' whar Brer Rabbit went in, un pant un res' hisse'f. He see whar Brer B'ar burnin' off a new groun', un he holler un ax 'im fer ter fetch 'im a chunk er fier, un Brer B'ar he fotch it, en dey sot fier ter de holler log, un dey sot dar un watch it till it burn plum up. Den dey took'n shuck han's, un Brer Wolf say he hope dat atter dat dey'll have some peace in de neighborhoods." Uncle Remus smiled a knowing smile as he filled his pipe, but Aunt Tempy continued with great seriousness: "One time atter dat, Brer Wolf, he took'n pay a call down ter Miss Meadows, un w'en he git dar un see Brer Rabbit settin' up side uv one er de gals, he like to 'a' fainted, dat he did. He 'uz dat 'stonish'd dat he look right down-hearted all endurin' uv de party. "Brer Rabbit, he bow'd his howdies ter Brer Wolf un shuck han's 'long wid 'im, des like nothin' aint never happen 'twixt 'um, un he up'n say: "'Ah-law, Brer Wolf! Youer much mo' my fr'en' dan you ever 'speckted ter be, un you kin des count on me right straight 'long.' "Brer Wolf say he feel sorter dat a-way hisse'f, un he ax Brer Rabbit w'at make 'im change his min' so quick. "'Bless you, Brer Wolf, I had needs ter change it,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Brer Wolf, he ax 'im how come. "'All about bein' burnt up in a holler log, Brer Wolf, un w'en you gits time I wish you be so good ez ter bu'n me up some mo',' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Brer Wolf, he ax 'im how so. Brer Rabbit say: "'I'm fear'd ter tell you, Brer Wolf, 'kaze I don't want de news ter git out.' "Brer Wolf vow he won't tell nobody on de top side er de worl'. Brer Rabbit say: "I done fin' out, Brer Wolf, dat w'en you git in a holler tree un somebody sets it a-fier, dat de nat'al honey des oozles out uv it, un mor'n dat, atter you git de honey all over you, 't aint no use ter try ter burn you up, 'kaze de honey will puzzuv you. Don't 'ny me dis favor, Brer Wolf, 'kaze I done pick me out a n'er holler tree,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Brer Wolf, he wanter put right out den un dar, un Brer Rabbit say dat des de kinder man w'at he bin huntin' fer. Dey took deyse'f off un 't wa'n't long 'fo' dey came ter de tree w'at Brer Rabbit say he done pick out. W'en dey git dar, Brer Wolf, he so greedy fer ter git a tas'e er de honey dat he beg un beg Brer Rabbit fer ter let 'im git in de holler. Brer Rabbit, he hol' back, but Brer Wolf beg so hard dat Brer Rabbit 'gree ter let 'im git in de holler. "Brer Wolf, he got in, he did, un Brer Rabbit stuff de hole full er dry leaves un trash, un den he got 'im a chunk er fier un totch 'er off. She smoked un smoked, un den she bust out in a blaze. Brer Rabbit, he pile up rocks, un brush, un sticks, so Brer Wolf can't git out. Terreckly Brer Wolf holler: "'Gittin' mighty hot, Brer Rabbit! I aint see no honey yit.' "Brer Rabbit he pile on mo' trash, un holler back: "'Don't be in no hurry, Brer Wolf; you'll see it un tas'e it too.' "Fier burn un burn, wood pop like pistol. Brer Wolf, he holler: "'Gittin' hotter un hotter, Brer Rabbit. No honey come yit.' "'Hol' still, Brer Wolf, hit'll come.' "'Gimme a'r, Brer Rabbit; I'm a-chokin'.' "'Fresh a'r make honey sour. Des hol' still, Brer Wolf!' "'_Ow!_ she gittin' hotter en hotter, Brer Rabbit!' "'Des hol' right still, Brer Wolf; mos' time fer de honey!' "'_Ow! ow!_ I'm a-burnin', Brer Rabbit!' "'Wait fer de honey, Brer Wolf.' "'I can't stan' it, Brer Rabbit.' "'Stan' it like I did, Brer Wolf.' "Brer Rabbit he pile on de trash un de leaves. He say: "'I'll gin you honey, Brer Wolf; de same kinder honey you wanted ter gimme.' "Un it seem like ter me," said Aunt Tempy, pleased at the interest the little boy had shown, "dat it done Brer Wolf des right." LII BROTHER RABBIT OUTDOES MR. MAN The little boy had heard Uncle Remus lamenting that his candle was getting rather short, and he made it his business to go around the house and gather all the pieces he could find. He carried these to the old man, who received them with the liveliest satisfaction. "Now dish yer sorter look lak sump'n', honey. W'en ole Brer Jack come back, en Sis Tempy git in de habits er hangin' 'roun', we'll des light some er dese yer, en folks'll come by en see de shine, en dey'll go off en 'low dat hit 's de night des 'fo' camp-meetin' at ole Remus house. "I got little piece dar in my chist w'at you brung me long time ergo, en I 'low ter myse'f dat ef shove ever git ter be push,[66] I'd des draw 'er out en light 'er up." "Mamma says Daddy Jack is coming back Sunday," said the little boy. "Dat w'at I year talk," replied the old man. "What did he go off for, Uncle Remus?" "Bless yo' soul, honey! Brer Jack bleedz ter go en see yo' Unk Jeems. He b'leeve de worl' go wrong ef he aint do dat. Dat ole nigger b'leeve he white mon. He come up yer fum down de country whar de Lord done fersook um too long 'go ter talk 'bout,--he come up yer en he put on mo' a'rs dan w'at I dast ter do. Not dat I'm keerin', 'kaze goodness knows I aint, yit I notices dat w'en I has ter go some'rs, dey's allers a great ter-do 'bout w'at is I'm a-gwine fer, en how long is I'm a-gwine ter stay; en ef I aint back at de ve'y minit, dars Mars John a-growlin', en Miss Sally a-vowin' dat she gwine ter put me on de block."[67] Perhaps Uncle Remus's jealousy was more substantial than he was willing to admit; but he was talking merely to see what the little boy would say. The child, however, failed to appreciate the situation, seeing which the old man quickly changed the subject. "Times is mighty diffunt fum w'at dey use ter wuz, 'kaze de time has bin dat ef ole Brer Rabbit had er run'd up wid Brer Jack w'iles he comin' fum yo' Unk Jeems place, he'd outdone 'im des ez sho' ez de worl' stan's. Deze days de Rabbits has ter keep out de way er folks, but in dem days folks had ter keep out der way er ole Brer Rabbit. Aint I never tell you 'bout how Brer Rabbit whirl in en outdo Mr. Man?" "About the meat tied to the string, Uncle Remus?" "_Shoo!_ Dat aint a drap in de bucket, honey. Dish yer wuz de time w'en ole Brer Rabbit wuz gwine 'long de big road, en he meet Mr. Man drivin' 'long wid a waggin chock full er money." "Where did he get so much money, Uncle Remus?" "Bruisin' 'round en peddlin' 'bout. Mr. Man got w'at lots er folks aint got,--good luck, long head, quick eye, en slick fingers. But no marter 'bout dat, he got de money; en w'en you sorter grow up so you kin knock 'roun', 't won't be long 'fo' some un'll take en take you off 'roun' de cornder en tell you dat 't aint make no diffunce whar de money come fum so de man got it. Dey won't tell you dat in de meeting-house, but dey'll come mighty nigh it. "But dat aint needer yer ner dar. Mr. Man, he come a-drivin' 'long de big road, en he got a waggin full er money. Brer Rabbit, he come a-lippity-clippitin' 'long de big road, en he aint got no waggin full er money. Ole Brer Rabbit, he up'n tuck a notion dat dey's sump'n' wrong some'rs, 'kaze ef dey wa'n't, he 'ud have des ez much waggin en money ez Mr. Man. He study, en study, en he can't make out how dat is. Bimeby he up'n holler out: "'Mr. Man, please, sir, lemme ride.' "Mr. Man, he tuck'n stop he waggin, en 'low: "'Heyo, Brer Rabbit! how come dis? You comin' one way en I gwine nudder; how come you wanter ride?' "Brer Rabbit, he up'n scratch hisse'f on de back er de neck wid he behime foot, en holler out: "'Mr. Man, yo' sho'ly can't be 'quainted 'long wid me. I'm one er dem ar ole-time kinder folks w'at aint a-keerin' w'ich way deyer gwine long ez deyer ridin'.'" The little boy laughed a sympathetic laugh, showing that he heartily endorsed this feature of Brother Rabbit's programme. "Atter so long a time," Uncle Remus went on, "Mr. Man 'gree ter let Brer Rabbit ride a little piece. He try ter git Brer Rabbit fer ter ride upon de seat wid 'im so dey kin git ter 'sputin' 'n'er, but Brer Rabbit say he fear'd he fall off, en he des tuck'n sot right flat down in de bottom er de waggin, en make lak he fear'd ter move. "Bimeby, w'iles dey goin' down hill, en Mr. Man hatter keep he eye on de hosses, Brer Rabbit he tuck'n fling out a great big hunk er de money. Dez ez de money hit de groun' Brer Rabbit holler out: "'_Ow_!' "Mr. Man look 'roun' en ax w'at de marter. Brer Rabbit 'low: "'Nothin' 't all, Mr. Man, 'ceppin' you 'bout ter jolt my jaw-bone a-loose.' "Dey go on little furder, en Brer Rabbit fling out 'n'er hunk er de money. W'en she hit de groun', Brer Rabbit holler: "'_Blam_!' "Mr. Man look 'roun' en ax w'at de marter. Brer Rabbit 'low: "'Nothin' 't all, Mr. Man, 'ceppin' I seed a jaybird flyin' 'long, en I make lak I had a gun.' "Hit keep on dis a-way twel fus' news you know Mr. Man aint got a sign er money in dat waggin. Seem lak Mr. Man aint notice dis twel he git a mighty fur ways fum de place whar Brer Rabbit drap out de las' hunk; but, gentermens! w'en he do fine it out, you better b'leeve he sot up a howl. "'Whar my money? Whar my nice money? Whar my waggin full er purty money? O you long-year'd rascal! Whar my money? Oh, gimme my money!' "Brer Rabbit sot dar en lissen at 'im lak he 'stonish'd. Den he up'n 'low: "'Look out, Mr. Man! folks'll come 'long en year you gwine on dat a-way, en dey'll go off en say you done gone ravin' 'stracted.' "Yit Mr. Man keep on holler'n en beggin' Brer Rabbit fer ter gin 'im de money, en bimeby Brer Rabbit, he git sorter skeer'd en he up'n 'low: "'Sun gittin' low, Mr. Man, en I better be gittin' 'way fum yer. De sooner I goes de better, 'kaze ef you keep on lak you gwine, 't won't be long 'fo' you'll be excusin' me er takin' dat ar money. I'm 'blige' fer de ride, Mr. Man, en I wish you mighty well.' "Brer Rabbit got de money," continued Uncle Remus, gazing placidly into the fire, "en hit 's mighty kuse ter me dat he aint git de waggin en hosses. Dat 't is!" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [66] A plantation saying. It means if hard times get harder. A briefer form is "w'en shove 'come push"--when the worst comes to the worst. [67] That is to say, put him on the block, and sell him. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LIII BROTHER RABBIT TAKES A WALK "Eve'y time I run over in my min' 'bout the pranks er Brer Rabbit," Uncle Remus continued, without giving the little boy time to ask any more embarrassing questions about Mr. Man and his wagon full of money, "hit make me laugh mo' en mo'. He mos' allers come out on top, yit dey wuz times w'en he hatter be mighty spry." "When was that, Uncle Remus?" inquired the little boy. "I min' me er one time w'en de t'er creeturs all git de laugh on 'im," responded the old man, "en dey make 'im feel sorter 'shame'. Hit seem lak dat dey 'uz some kinder bodderment 'mungs' de creeturs en wud went out dat dey all got ter meet terge'er some'rs en ontangle de tanglements. "W'en de time come, dey wuz all un um dar, en dey hilt der confab right 'long. All un um got sump'n' ter say, en dey talk dar, dey did, des lak dey 'uz paid fer talkin'. Dey all had der plans, en dey jabbered des lak folks does w'en dey call deyse'f terge'er. Hit come 'bout dat Mr. Dog git a seat right close by Brer Rabbit, en w'en he open he mouf fer ter say sump'n', he toofs look so long en so strong, en dey shine so w'ite, dat it feel mighty kuse. "Mr. Dog, he'd say sump'n', Brer Rabbit, he'd jump en dodge. Mr. Dog, he'd laugh, Brer Rabbit, he'd dodge en jump. Hit keep on dis a-way, twel eve'y time Brer Rabbit'd dodge en jump, de t'er creeturs dey'd slap der han's terge'er en break out in a laugh. Mr. Dog, he tuck'n tuck a notion dat dey 'uz laughin' at him, en dis make 'im so mad dat he 'gun ter growl en snap right smartually, en it come ter dat pass dat w'en Brer Rabbit'd see Mr. Dog make a motion fer ter say a speech, he'd des drap down en git und' de cheer. "Co'se dis make um laugh wuss en wuss, en de mo' dey laugh de madder it make Mr. Dog, twel bimeby he git so mad he fa'rly howl, en Brer Rabbit he sot dar, he did, en shuck lak he got er ager. "Atter w'ile Brer Rabbit git sorter on t'er side, en he make a speech en say dey oughter be a law fer ter make all de creeturs w'at got tushes ketch en eat der vittles wid der claws. All un um 'gree ter dis 'cep' hit 's Mr. Dog, Brer Wolf, en Brer Fox. "In dem days," continued Uncle Remus, "ef all de creeturs aint 'gree, dey put it off twel de nex' meetin' en talk it over some mo', en dat 's de way dey done wid Brer Rabbit projick. Dey put it off twel de nex' time. "Brer Rabbit got a kinder sneakin' notion dat de creeturs aint gwine do lak he want um ter do, en he 'low ter Brer Wolf dat he 'speck de bes' way fer ter do is ter git all de creeturs ter 'gree fer ter have Mr. Dog mouf sew'd up, 'kaze he toofs look so venomous; en Brer Wolf say dey ull all go in fer dat. "Sho' 'nuff, w'en de day done come, Brer Rabbit he git up en say dat de bes' way ter do is have Mr. Dog mouf sew'd up so he toofs won't look so venomous. Dey all 'gree, en den Mr. Lion, settin' up in de arm-cheer, he ax who gwine do de sewin'. "Den dey all up'n 'low dat de man w'at want de sewin' done, he de man fer ter do it, 'kaze den he ull know it done bin done right. Brer Rabbit, he sorter study, en den he 'low: "'I aint got no needle.' "Brer B'ar, he sorter feel in de flap er he coat collar, en he 'low: "'Yer, Brer Rabbit; yer a great big one!' "Brer Rabbit, he sorter study 'g'in, en den he 'low: "'I aint got no th'ead.' "Brer B'ar, he tuck'n pull a rav'lin' fum de bottom er he wescut, en he 'low: "'Yer, Brer Rabbit; yer a great long one!' "Ef it had er bin anybody in de roun' worl' he'd er 'gun ter feel sorter ticklish," Uncle Remus went on. "But ole Brer Rabbit, he des tuck'n lay he finger 'cross he nose, en 'low: "'Des hol' um dar fer me, Brer B'ar, en I'll be much 'blige ter you. _Hit 's des 'bout my time er day fer ter take a walk!_'" Uncle Remus laughed as heartily as the child, and added: "Some folks say de creeturs had de grins on Brer Rabbit 'bout dat time; but I tell you right pine-blank dey aint grin much w'en dey year Brer Rabbit say dat." LIV OLD GRINNY-GRANNY WOLF At last Daddy Jack returned, and the fact that the little boy had missed him and inquired about him, seemed to give the old African particular pleasure. It was probably a new experience to Daddy Jack, and it vaguely stirred some dim instinct in his bosom that impelled him to greet the child with more genuine heartiness than he had ever displayed in all his life. He drew the little boy up to him, patted him gently on the cheek, and exclaimed: "Ki! I bin want fer see you bery bahd. I bin-a tell you' nunk Jeem' how fine noung màn you is. 'E ahx wey you no come fer shum. Fine b'y--fine b'y!" "Well, ef dat 's de way youer gwine on, Brer Jack, you'll spile dat chap sho'. A whole sack er salt won't save 'im." "I dunno 'bout dat, Brer Remus," said Aunt Tempy, who had come in. "Don't seem like he bad like some yuther childun w'at I seen. Bless you, I know childun w'at'd keep dish yer whole place tarryfied--dat dey would!" "Well, sir," said Uncle Remus, shaking his head and groaning, "you all aint wid dat young un dar much ez I is. Some days w'en dey aint nobody lookin', en dey aint nobody nowhar fer ter take keer un me, dat ar little chap dar 'll come down yer en chunk me wid rocks, en 'buze me en holler at me scan'lous." The little boy looked so shocked that Uncle Remus broke into a laugh that shook the cobwebs in the corners; then, suddenly relapsing into seriousness, he drew himself up with dignity and remarked: "Good er bad, you can't git 'long wid 'im less'n you sets in ter tellin' tales, en, Brer Jack, I hope you got some 'long wid you." Daddy Jack rubbed his hands together, and said: "Me bin yeddy one tale; 'e mekky me lahff tel I is 'come tire'." "Fer de Lord sake less have it den!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, with unction. Whereupon, the small but appreciative audience disposed itself comfortably, and Daddy Jack, peering at each one in turn, his eyes shining between his half-closed lids as brightly as those of some wild animal, began: "One tam B'er Rabbit is bin traffel 'roun' fer see 'e neighbor folks. 'E bin mahd wit' B'er Wolf fer so long tam; 'e mek no diffran, 'e come pas' 'e house 'e no see nuttin', 'e no yeddy nuttin'. 'E holler: "'Hi, B'er Wolf! wey you no fer mek answer wun me ahx you howdy? Wey fer you is do dis 'fo' me werry face? Wut mekky you do dis?' "'E wait, 'e lissun; nuttin' no mek answer. B'er Rabbit, 'e holler: "'Come-a show you'se'f, B'er Wolf! Come-a show you'se'f. Be 'shame' fer not show you'se'f wun you' 'quaintun' come bisitin' wey you lif!' "Nuttin' 't all no mek answer, un B'er Rabbit 'come berry mahd. 'E 'come so mahd 'e stomp 'e fut un bump 'e head 'pon da fence-side. Bumbye 'e tek heart, 'e y-opun da do', 'e is look inside da house. Fier bu'n in da chimbly, pot set 'pon da fier, ole ooman sed by da pot. Fier bu'n, pot, 'e bile, ole ooman, 'e tek 'e nap. "Da ole ooman, 'e ole Granny Wolf; 'e cripple in 'e leg, 'e bline in 'e y-eye, 'e mos' deaf in 'e year. 'E deaf, but 'e bin yeddy B'er Rabbit mek fuss at da do', un 'e is cry out: "'Come-a see you' ole Granny, me gran'son--come-a see you' Granny! Da fier is bin bu'n, da pot is bin b'ile; come-a fix you' Granny some bittle,[68] me gran'son.'" Daddy Jack's representation of the speech and action of an old woman was worth seeing and hearing. The little boy laughed, and Uncle Remus smiled good-humoredly; but Aunt Tempy looked at the old African with open-mouthed astonishment. Daddy Jack, however, cared nothing for any effect he might produce. He told the story for the story's sake, and he made no pause for the purpose of gauging the appreciation of his audience. "B'er Rabbit, 'e is bin mek 'ese'f comfuts by da fier. Bumbye, 'e holler: "'Hi, Granny! I bin cripple mese'f; me y-eye bin-a come bline. You mus' bile-a me in da water, Granny, so me leg is kin come well, un so me y-eye kin come see.' "B'er Rabbit, 'e mighty ha'd fer fool. 'E bin tek 'im one chunk woot, 'e drap da woot in da pot. 'E bin say: "'I is bin feelin' well, me Granny. Me leg, 'e comin' strong, me y-eye 'e fix fer see.' "Granny Wolf, 'e shek 'e head; 'e cry: "'Me one leg cripple, me turrer leg cripple; me one eye bline, me turrer y-eye bline. Wey you no fer pit me in da pot fer mek me well?' "B'er Rabbit laff in 'e belly; 'e say: "'Hol' you'se'f still, me Granny; I fix you one place in da pot wey you is kin fetch-a back da strenk in you' leg un da sight in you' eye. Hol' still, me Granny!' "B'er Rabbit, 'e is bin tekky da chunk y-out da pot; 'e tekky da chunk, un 'e is bin pit Granny Wolf in dey place. 'E tetch da water, 'e holler: "'Ow! tekky me way fum dis!' "B'er Rabbit say 'tiss not da soon 'nuff tam. Granny Wolf, 'e holler: "'Ow! tekky me way fum dis! 'E bin too hot!' "B'er Rabbit, 'e no tekky da Mammy Wolf fum da pot, un bumbye 'e die in dey. B'er Rabbit 'e tek 'e bone un t'row um 'way; 'e leaf da meat. 'E tek Granny Wolf frock, 'e tu'n um 'roun', 'e pit um on; 'e tek Granny Wolf cap, 'e tu'n 'roun', 'e pit um on. 'E sed deer by da fier, 'e hol' 'e'se'f in 'e cheer sem lak Granny Wolf. "Bumbye B'er Wolf is bin-a come back. 'E walk in 'e house, 'e say: "'Me honkry, Grinny-Granny! Me honkry, fer true!' "'You' dinner ready, Grin'son-Gran'son!' "B'er Wolf, 'e look in da pot, 'e smell in da pot, 'e stir in da pot. 'E eat 'e dinner, 'e smack 'e mout'." The little boy shuddered, and Aunt Tempy exclaimed, "In de name er de Lord!" The old African paid no attention to either. "B'er Wolf eat 'e dinner; 'e call 'e chilluns, 'e ahx um is dey no want nuttin' 't all fer eat. 'E holler back: "'We no kin eat we Grinny-Granny!' "B'er Rabbit, 'e run 'way fum dey-dey; 'e holler back: "'B'er Wolf, you is bin eat you' Grinny-Granny.' "B'er Wolf bin-a git so mad 'e yent mos' kin see. 'E yeddy B'er Rabbit holler, un 'e try fer ketch um. 'E feer teer up da grass wey 'e run 'long. Bumbye 'e come 'pon B'er Rabbit. 'E is bin push um ha'd. B'er Rabbit run un-a run tel 'e yent kin run no mo'; 'e hide 'neat' leanin' tree. B'er Wolf, 'e fine um; B'er Rabbit 'e holler: "'Hi! B'er Wolf! mek 'as'e come hol' up da tree, 'fo' 'e is fall dey-dey; come-a hol' um, B'er Wolf, so I is kin prop um up.' "B'er Wolf, 'e hol' up da tree fer B'er Rabbit; 'e hol' um till 'e do come tire'. B'er Rabbit gone!" Daddy Jack paused. His story was ended. The little boy drew a long breath and said: "I did n't think Brother Rabbit would burn anybody to death in a pot of boiling water." "Dat," said Uncle Remus, reassuringly, "wuz endurin' er de dog days. Dey er mighty wom times, mon, dem ar dog days is." This was intended to satisfy such scruples as the child might have, and it was no doubt successful, for the youngster said no more, but watched Uncle Remus as the latter leisurely proceeded to fill his pipe. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [68] Victuals. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LV HOW WATTLE WEASEL WAS CAUGHT Uncle Remus chipped the tobacco from the end of a plug, rubbed it between the palms of his hands, placed it in his pipe, dipped the pipe in the glowing embers, and leaned back in his chair, and seemed to be completely happy. "Hit mought not er bin endurin' er de dog days," said the old man, recurring to Daddy Jack's story, "'kaze dey wuz times dat w'en dey push ole Brer Rabbit so close he 'uz des bleedz ter git he revengeance out'n um. Dat mought er bin de marter 'twix' him en ole Grinny-Granny Wolf, 'kaze w'en ole Brer Rabbit git he dander up, he 'uz a monst'us bad man fer ter fool wid. "Dey tuck atter 'im," continued Uncle Remus, "en dey 'buzed 'im, en dey tried ter 'stroy 'im, but dey wuz times w'en de t'er creeturs bleedz ter call on 'im fer ter he'p 'em out dey trouble. I aint nev' tell you 'bout little Wattle Weasel, is I?" asked the old man, suddenly turning to the little boy. The child laughed. The dogs on the plantation had killed a weasel a few nights before,--a very cunning-looking little animal,--and some of the negroes had sent it to the big house as a curiosity. He connected this fact with Uncle Remus's allusions to the weasel. Before he could make any reply, however, the old man went on: "No, I boun' I aint, en it come 'cross me right fresh en hot time I year talk er Brer Wolf eatin' he granny. Dey wuz one time w'en all de creeturs wuz livin' in de same settlement en usin' out'n de same spring, en it got so dat dey put all dey butter in de same piggin'. Dey put it in dar, dey did, en dey put it in de spring-house, en dey'd go off en 'ten' ter dey business. Den w'en dey come back dey'd fine whar some un been nibblin' at dey butter. Dey tuck'n hide dat butter all 'roun' in de spring-house; dey sot it on de rafters, en dey bury it in de san'; yit all de same de butter 'ud come up missin'. "Bimeby it got so dey dunner w'at ter do; dey zamin' de tracks, en dey fine out dat de man w'at nibble dey butter is little Wattle Weasel. He come in de night, he come in de day; dey can't ketch 'im. Las' de creeturs tuck'n helt er confab, en dey 'gree dat dey hatter set some un fer ter watch en ketch Wattle Weasel. "Brer Mink wuz de fus' man 'p'inted, 'kaze he wa'n't mo'n a half a han'[69] no way you kin fix it. De t'er creeturs dey tuck'n went off ter dey wuk, en Brer Mink he tuck'n sot up wid de butter. He watch en he lissen, he lissen en he watch; he aint see nothin', he aint year nothin'. Yit he watch, 'kaze der t'er creeturs done fix up a law dat ef Wattle Weasel come w'iles somebody watchin' en git off bidout gittin' kotch, de man w'at watchin' aint kin eat no mo' butter endurin' er dat year. "Brer Mink, he watch en he wait. He set so still dat bimeby he git de cramps in de legs, en des 'bout dat time little Wattle Weasel pop he head und' de do'. He see Brer Mink, en he hail 'im: "'Heyo, Brer Mink! you look sorter lonesome in dar. Come out yer en less take a game er hidin'-switch.' "Brer Mink, he wanter have some fun, he did, en he tuck'n jine Wattle Weasel in de game. Dey play en dey play twel, bimeby, Brer Mink git so wo' out dat he aint kin run, skacely, en des soon ez dey sets down ter res', Brer Mink, he draps off ter sleep. Little Wattle Weasel, so mighty big en fine, he goes en nibbles up de butter, en pops out de way he come in. "De creeturs, dey come back, dey did, en dey fine de butter nibbled, en Wattle Weasel gone. Wid dat, dey marks Brer Mink down, en he aint kin eat no mo' butter dat year. Den dey fix up 'n'er choosement en 'p'int Brer Possum fer ter watch de butter. "Brer Possum, he grin en watch, and bimeby, sho' 'nuff, in pop little Wattle Weasel. He come in, he did, en he sorter hunch Brer Possum in de short ribs, en ax 'im how he come on. Brer Possum mighty ticklish, en time Wattle Weasel totch 'im in de short ribs, he 'gun ter laugh. Wattle Weasel totch 'im ag'in en laugh wusser, en he keep on hunchin' 'im dat a-way twel bimeby Brer Possum laugh hisse'f plum outer win', en Wattle Weasel lef 'im dar en nibble up de butter. "De creeturs, dey tuck'n mark Brer Possum down, en 'p'int Brer Coon. Brer Coon, he tuck'n start in all so mighty fine; but w'iles he settin' dar, little Wattle Weasel banter 'im fer a race up de branch. No sooner say dan yer dey went! Brer Coon, he foller de tu'ns er de branch, en little Wattle Weasel he take'n take nigh cuts, en 't wa'n't no time 'fo' he done run Brer Coon plum down. Den dey run down de branch, and 'fo' Brer Coon kin ketch up wid 'im, dat little Wattle Weasel done got back ter de noggin er butter, en nibble it up. "Den de creeturs tuck'n mark Brer Coon down, dey did, en 'p'int Brer Fox fer ter watch de butter. Wattle Weasel sorter 'fear'd 'er Brer Fox. He study long time, en den he wait twel night. Den he tuck'n went 'roun' in de ole fiel' en woke up de Killdees[70] en druv 'roun' todes de spring-house. Brer Fox year um holler, en it make he mouf water. Bimeby, he 'low ter hisse'f dat 't aint no harm ef he go out en slip up on one." "Dar now!" said Aunt Tempy. "Brer Fox tuck'n slip out, en Wattle Weasel he slicked in, en bless yo' soul! dar goes de butter!" "Enty!" exclaimed Daddy Jack. "Brer Fox he git marked down," continued Uncle Remus, "en den de creeturs tuck'n 'p'int Brer Wolf fer ter be dey watcher. Brer Wolf, he sot up dar, he did, en sorter nod, but bimeby he year some un talkin' outside de spring-house. He h'ist up he years en lissen. Look lak some er de creeturs wuz gwine by, en talkin' 'mungs' deysef'; but all Brer Wolf kin year is dish yer: "'I wonder who put dat ar young sheep down dar by de chinkapin tree, en I like ter know wharbouts Brer Wolf is.' "Den it seem lak dey pass on, en ole Brer Wolf, he fergotted w'at he in dar fer, en he dash down ter de chinkapin tree, fer ter git de young sheep. But no sheep dar, en w'en he git back, he see signs whar Wattle Weasel done bin in dar en nibble de butter. "Den de creeturs tuck'n mark Brer Wolf down, en 'p'int Brer B'ar fer ter keep he eye 'pun de noggin er butter. Brer B'ar he tuck'n sot up dar, he did, en lick he paw, en feel good. Bimeby Wattle Weasel come dancin' in. He 'low: "'Heyo, Brer B'ar, how you come on? I 'low'd I yeard you snortin' in yer, en I des drapt in fer ter see.' "Brer B'ar tell him howdy, but he sorter keep one eye on 'im. Little Wattle Weasel 'low: "'En you got ticks on yo' back, Brer B'ar?' "Wid dat Wattle Weasel 'gun ter rub Brer B'ar on de back en scratch 'im on de sides, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he 'uz stretch out fast asleep en sno'in' lak a saw-mill. Co'se Wattle Weasel git de butter. Brer B'ar he got marked down, and den de creeturs aint know w'at dey gwine do skacely. "Some say sen' fer Brer Rabbit, some say sen' fer Brer Tarrypin; but las' dey sent fer Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit, he tuck a notion dat dey 'uz fixin' up some kinder trick on 'im, en dey hatter beg mightily, mon, 'fo' he 'ud come en set up 'longside er dey butter. "But bimeby he 'greed, en he went down ter de spring-house en look 'roun'. Den he tuck'n got 'im a twine string, en hide hisse'f whar he kin keep he eye on de noggin er butter. He aint wait long 'fo' yer come Wattle Weasel. Des ez he 'bout ter nibble at de butter, Brer Rabbit holler out: "'Let dat butter 'lone!' "Wattle Weasel jump back lak de butter bu'nt 'im. He jump back, he did, en say: "'Sho'ly dat mus' be Brer Rabbit!' "'De same. I 'low'd you'd know me. Des let dat butter 'lone.' "'Des lemme git one little bit er tas'e, Brer Rabbit.' "'Des let dat butter 'lone.' "Den Wattle Weasel say he want er run a race. Brer Rabbit 'low he tired. Wattle Weasel 'low he want er play hidin'. Brer Rabbit 'low dat all he hidin' days is pas' en gone. Wattle Weasel banter'd en banter'd 'im, en bimeby Brer Rabbit come up wid a banter er he own. "'I'll take'n tie yo' tail,' sezee, 'en you'll take'n tie mine, en den we'll see w'ich tail de strongest.' Little Wattle Weasel know how weakly Brer Rabbit tail is, but he aint know how strong Brer Rabbit bin wid he tricks. So dey tuck'n tie der tails wid Brer Rabbit twine string. "Wattle Weasel wuz ter stan' inside en Brer Rabbit wuz ter stan' outside, en dey wuz ter pull 'gin' one er n'er wid dey tails. Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n slip out'n de string, en tie de een' 'roun' a tree root, en den he went en peep at Wattle Weasel tuggin' en pullin'. Bimeby Wattle Weasel 'low: "'Come en ontie me, Brer Rabbit, 'kaze you done outpull me.' "Brer Rabbit sot dar, he did, en chaw he cud, en look lak he feel sorry 'bout sump'n'. Bimeby all de creeturs come fer ter see 'bout dey butter, 'kaze dey fear'd Brer Rabbit done make way wid it. Yit w'en dey see little Wattle Weasel tie by de tail, dey make great 'miration 'bout Brer Rabbit, en dey 'low he de smartest one er de whole gang." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [69] That is, could do no more than half the work of a man. [70] Killdeers--a species of plover. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LVI BROTHER RABBIT TIES MR. LION There was some comment and some questions were asked by the little boy in regard to Wattle Weasel and the other animals; to all of which Uncle Remus made characteristic response. Aunt Tempy sat with one elbow on her knee, her head resting in the palm of her fat hand. She gazed intently into the fire, and seemed to be lost in thought. Presently she exclaimed: "Well, de Lord he'p my soul!" "Dat 's de promise, Sis Tempy," said Uncle Remus, solemnly. Aunt Tempy laughed, as she straightened herself in her chair, and said: "I des knowed dey wuz sump'n' 'n'er gwine 'cross my min' w'en I year talk 'bout dat ar sheep by de chinkapin tree." "Out wid it, Sis Tempy," said Uncle Remus, by way of encouragement; "out wid it; free yo' min', en des make yo'se'f welcome." "No longer'n Sunday 'fo' las', I 'uz 'cross dar at de Spivey place un I tuck'n year'd a nigger man tellin' de same tale, un I 'low ter myse'f dat I'd take'n take it un kyar' it home un gin it out w'en I come ter pass de time wid Brer Remus un all uv um. I 'low ter myse'f I'll take it un kyar' it dar, un I'll des tell it my own way." "Well, den," said Uncle Remus, approvingly, "me en dish yer chap, we er willin' en a-waitin', en ez fer Brer Jack over dar, we kin say de same fer him, 'kaze I up en year 'im draw mighty long breff des now lak he fixin' fer ter snort. But you neenter min' dat ole creetur, Sis Tempy. Des push right ahead." "Ah-h-h-e-e!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, snapping his bright little eyes at Uncle Remus with some display of irritation; "you tek-a me fer be sleep ebry tam I shed-a me y-eye, you is mek fool-a you'se'f. _Warrah yarrah garrah tarrah!_"[71] "Brer Remus!" said Aunt Tempy, in an awed whisper, "maybe he's a-cunju'n un you." "No-no!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, snappishly, "me no cuncher no'n' 't all. Wun me cuncher you all you yeddy bone crack. Enty!" "Well, in de name er de Lord, don't come a-cunju'n wid me, 'kaze I'm des as peaceable ez de day's long," said Aunt Tempy. Uncle Remus smiled and closed his eyes with an air of disdain, caught from his old Mistress, the little boy's grandmother, long since dead. "Tell yo' tale, Sis Tempy," he said pleasantly, "en leave de talk er cunju'n ter de little nigger childun. We er done got too ole fer dat kinder foolishness." This was for the ear of the little boy. In his heart Uncle Remus was convinced that Daddy Jack was capable of changing himself into the blackest of black cats, with swollen tail, arched back, fiery eyes, and protruding fangs. But the old man's attitude reassured Aunt Tempy, as well as the child, and forthwith she proceeded with her story: "Hit seem like dat one time w'en Brer Rabbit fine hisse'f way off in de middle er de woods, de win' strike up un 'gun ter blow. Hit blow down on de groun' un it blow up in de top er de timber, un it blow so hard twel terreckerly Brer Rabbit tuck a notion dat he better git out fum dar 'fo' de timber 'gun ter fall. "Brer Rabbit, he broke en run, un, Man--Sir![72] w'en dat creetur run'd he run'd, now you year w'at I tell yer! He broke un run, he did, un he fa'rly flew 'way fum dar. W'iles he gwine 'long full tilt, he run'd ag'in' ole Mr. Lion. Mr. Lion, he hail 'im: "'Heyo, Brer Rabbit! W'at yo' hurry?' "'Run, Mr. Lion, run! Dey's a harrycane comin' back dar in de timbers. You better run!' "Dis make Mr. Lion sorter skeer'd. He 'low: "'I mos' too heavy fer ter run fur, Brer Rabbit. W'at I gwine do?' "'Lay down, Mr. Lion, lay down! Git close ter de groun'!' "Mr. Lion shake his head. He 'low: "'Ef win' lierbul fer ter pick up little man like you is, Brer Rabbit, w'at it gwine do wid big man like me?' "'Hug a tree, Mr. Lion, hug a tree!' "Mr. Lion lash hisse'f wid his tail. He 'low: "'W'at I gwine do ef de win' blow all day un a good part er de night, Brer Rabbit?' "'Lemme tie you ter de tree, Mr. Lion! lemme tie you ter de tree!' "Mr. Lion, he tuk'n 'gree ter dis, un Brer Rabbit, he got 'im a hick'ry split[73] un tie 'im hard un fast ter de tree. Den he tuck'n sot down, ole Brer Rabbit did, un wash his face un han's des same ez you see de cats doin'. Terreckerly Mr. Lion git tired er stan'in' dar huggin' de tree, un he ax Brer Rabbit w'at de reason he aint keep on runnin', un Brer Rabbit, he up'n 'low dat he gwine ter stay der un take keer Mr. Lion. [Illustration: BROTHER RABBIT TIES MR. LION] "Terreckerly Mr. Lion say he aint year no harrycane. Brer Rabbit say he aint needer. Mr. Lion say he aint year no win' a-blowin'. Brer Rabbit say he aint needer. Mr. Lion say he aint so much ez year a leaf a-stirrin'. Brer Rabbit say he aint needer. Mr. Lion sorter study, un Brer Rabbit sot dar, he did, un wash his face un lick his paws. "Terreckerly Mr. Lion ax Brer Rabbit fer ter onloose 'im. Brer Rabbit say he fear'd. Den Mr. Lion git mighty mad, un he 'gun ter beller wuss'n one er deze yer bull-yearlin's. He beller so long un he beller so loud twel present'y de t'er creeturs dey 'gun ter come up fer ter see w'at de matter. "Des soon ez dey come up, Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n 'gun ter talk biggity un strut 'roun', un, Man--Sir! w'en dem yuthers see dat Brer Rabbit done got Mr. Lion tied up, I let you know dey tuck'n walked way 'roun' 'im, un 't wuz many a long day 'fo' dey tuck'n pestered ole Brer Rabbit." Here Aunt Tempy paused. The little boy asked what Brother Rabbit tied Mr. Lion for; but she did n't know; Uncle Remus, however, came to the rescue. "One time long 'fo' dat, honey, Brer Rabbit went ter de branch fer ter git a drink er water, en ole Mr. Lion tuck'n druv 'im off, en fum dat time out Brer Rabbit bin huntin' a chance fer ter ketch up wid 'im." "Dat 's so," said Aunt Tempy, and then she added: "I 'clare I aint gwine tell you all not na'er n'er tale, dat I aint. 'Kaze you des set dar en you aint crack a smile fum de time I begin. Ef dat'd 'a' bin Brer Remus, now, dey'd 'a' bin mo' gigglin' gwine on dan you kin shake a stick at. I'm right down mad, dat I is." "Well, I tell you dis, Sis Tempy," said Uncle Remus, with unusual emphasis, "ef deze yer tales wuz des fun, fun, fun, en giggle, giggle, giggle, I let you know I'd a-done drapt um long ago. Yasser, w'en it come down ter gigglin' you kin des count ole Remus out." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [71] This is simply "gullah" negro talk intended to be unintelligible, and therefore impressive. It means "One or the other is as good as t'other." [72] An expression used to give emphasis and to attract attention; used in the sense that Uncle Remus uses "Gentermens!" [73] Hickory withe. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LVII MR. LION'S SAD PREDICAMENT The discussion over Aunt Tempy's fragmentary story having exhausted itself, Daddy Jack turned up his coat collar until it was as high as the top of his head, and then tried to button it under his chin. If this attempt had been successful, the old African would have presented a diabolical appearance; but the coat refused to be buttoned in that style. After several attempts, which created no end of amusement for the little boy, Daddy Jack said: "Da Lion, 'e no hab bin sma't lak B'er Rabbit. 'E strong wit' 'e fut, 'e strong wit' 'e tush, but 'e no strong wit' 'e head. 'E bery foolish, 'cep' 'e is bin hab chance ter jump 'pon dem creetur. "One tam 'e bin come by B'er Rabbit in da road; 'e ahx um howdy; 'e ahx um wey 'e gwan. B'er Rabbit say 'e gwan git fum front de Buckra Màn wut bin comin' 'long da road. B'er Rabbit say: "'Hide you'se'f, B'er Lion; da Buckra ketch-a you fer true; 'e is bin ketch-a you tam he pit 'e y-eye 'pon you; 'e mekky you sick wit' sorry. Hide fum da Buckra, B'er Lion!' "Da Lion, 'e shekky 'e head; 'e say: "'Ki! Me no skeer da Buckra Màn. I glad fer shum. I ketch um un I kyar um wey I lif; me hab da Buckra Màn fer me bittle. How come you bein' skeer da Buckra Màn, B'er Rabbit?' "B'er Rabbit look all 'bout fer see ef da Buckra bin comin'. 'E say: "'Me hab plenty reason, B'er Lion. Da Buckra Màn shoot-a wit' one gun. 'E r'ise um too 'e y-eye, 'e p'int um stret toze you; 'e say _bang!_ one tam, 'e say _bang!_ two tam: dun you is bin git hu't troo da head un cripple in da leg.' "Lion, 'e shek 'e head; 'e say: "'Me no skeer da Buckra Màn. I grab-a da gun. I ketch um fer me brekwus.' "B'er Rabbit, 'e lahff; 'e say: "'Him quare fer true. Me skeer da Buckra, me no skeer you; but you no skeer da Buckra. How come dis?' "Da Lion lash 'e tail; 'e say: "'Me no skeer da Buckra, but me skeer da Pa'tridge; me berry skeer da Pa'tridge.' "B'er Rabbit, 'e lahff tel 'e kin lahff no mo'. 'E say: "'How come you skeer da Pa'tridge? 'E fly wun you wink-a you' eye; 'e run un 'e fly. Hoo! me no skeer 'bout dem Pa'tridge. Me skeer da Buckra.' "Da Lion, 'e look all 'bout fer see ef da Pa'tridge bin comin'. 'E say: "'I skeer da Pa'tridge. Wun me bin walk in da bushside, da Pa'tridge 'e hol' right still 'pon da groun' tel me come dey-dey, un dun 'e fly up--_fud-d-d-d-d-d-e-e!_ Wun 'e is bin do dat me is git-a skeer berry bahd.'" No typographical device could adequately describe Daddy Jack's imitation of the flushing of a covey of partridges, or quail; but it is needless to say that it made its impression upon the little boy. The old African went on: "B'er Rabbit, 'e holler un lahff; 'e say: "'Me no skeer da Pa'tridge. I bin run dem up ebry day. Da no hu't-a you, B'er Lion. You hol' you' eye 'pon da Buckra Màn. Da Pa'tridge, 'e no hab no gun fer shoot-a you wit'; da Buckra, 'e is bin hab one gun two tam.[74] Let da Pa'tridge fly, B'er Lion; but wun da Buckra Man come you bes' keep in de shady side. I tell you dis, B'er Lion.' "Da Lion, 'e stan' um down 'e no skeer da Buckra Màn, un bimeby 'e say goo'-bye; 'e say 'e gwan look fer da Buckra Màn fer true. "So long tam, B'er Rabbit is bin yeddy one big fuss in da timber; 'e yeddy da Lion v'ice. B'er Rabbit foller da fuss tel 'e is bin come 'pon da Lion wey 'e layin' 'pon da groun'. Da Lion, 'e is moan; 'e is groan; 'e is cry. 'E hab hole in 'e head, one, two, t'ree hole in 'e side; 'e holler, 'e groan. B'er Rabbit, 'e ahx um howdy. 'E say: "'Ki, B'er Lion, wey you hab fine so much trouble?' "Da Lion, 'e moan, 'e groan, 'e cry; 'e say: "'Ow, ma Lord! I hab one hole in me head, one, two, t'ree hole in me side, me leg bin bruk!' "B'er Rabbit bin hol' 'e head 'pon one side; 'e look skeer. 'E say: "'Ki, B'er Lion! I no know da Pa'tridge is so bahd lak dat. I t'ink 'e fly 'way un no hu't-a you. Shuh-shuh! wun I see dem Pa'tridge I mus' git 'pon turrer side fer keep me hide whole.' "Da Lion, 'e groan, 'e moan, 'e cry. B'er Rabbit, 'e say: "'Da Pa'tridge, 'e berry bahd; 'e mus' bin borry da Buckra Màn gun.' "Da Lion, 'e groan, 'e cry: "''E no da Pa'tridge no'n 'tall. Da Buckra Màn is bin stan' way off un shoot-a me wit' 'e gun. Ow, ma Lord!' "B'er Rabbit, 'e h'ist 'e han'; 'e say: "'Wut I bin tell-a you, B'er Lion? Wut I bin tell you 'bout da Buckra Màn? Da Pa'tridge no hu't-a you lak dis. 'E mek-a da big fuss, but 'e no hu't-a you lak dis. Da Buckra Màn, 'e no mek no fuss 'cep' 'e p'int 'e gun at you--_bang!_'" "And what then?" the little boy asked, as Daddy Jack collapsed in his seat, seemingly forgetful of all his surroundings. "No'n 't all," replied the old African, somewhat curtly. "De p'ints er dat tale, honey," said Uncle Remus, covering the brusqueness of Daddy Jack with his own amiability, "is des 'bout lak dis, dat dey aint no use er dodgin' w'iles dey's a big fuss gwine on, but you better take'n hide out w'en dey aint no racket; mo' speshually w'en you see Miss Sally lookin' behine de lookin'-glass fer dat ar peach-lim' w'at she tuck'n make me kyar up dar day 'fo' yistiddy; yit w'en she fine it don't you git too skeer'd, 'kaze I tuck'n make some weak places in dat ar switch, en Miss Sally won't mo'n strak you wid it 'fo' hit'll all come onjinted." Parts of this moral the little boy understood thoroughly, for he laughed, and ran to the big house, and not long afterwards the light went out in Uncle Remus's cabin; but the two old negroes sat and nodded by the glowing embers for hours afterwards, dreaming dreams they never told of. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [74] One gun two times is a double-barrelled gun. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LVIII THE ORIGIN OF THE OCEAN "Uncle Remus," said the little boy, one night shortly after Daddy Jack's story of the lion's sad predicament, "mamma says there are no lions in Georgia, nor anywhere in the whole country." "Tooby sho'ly not, honey; tooby sho'ly not!" exclaimed Uncle Remus. "I dunner who de name er goodness bin a-puttin' dat kinder idee in yo' head, en dey better not lemme fine um out, needer, 'kaze I'll take en put Mars John atter um right raw en rank, dat I will." "Well, you know Daddy Jack said that Brother Rabbit met the Lion coming down the road." "Bless yo' soul, honey! dat 's 'way 'cross de water whar ole man Jack tuck'n come fum, en a mighty long time ergo at dat. Hit 's away off yan, lots furder dan Ferginny yit. We-all er on one side de water, en de lions en mos' all de yuther servigous creeturs, dey er on t'er side. Aint I never tell you how come dat?" The little boy shook his head. "Well, _sir_! I dunner w'at I bin doin' all dis time dat I aint tell you dat, 'kaze dat 's whar de wussest kinder doin's tuck'n happen. Yasser! de wussest kinder doin's; en I'll des whirl in en gin it out right now 'fo' ole man Jack come wobblin' in. "One time way back yander, 'fo' dey wuz any folks a-foolin' 'roun', Mr. Lion, he tuck'n tuck a notion dat he'd go huntin', en nothin' 'ud do 'im but Brer Rabbit must go wid 'im. Brer Rabbit, he 'low dat he up fer any kinder fun on top side er de groun'. Wid dat dey put out, dey did, en dey hunt en hunt clean 'cross de country. "Mr. Lion, he'd lam aloose en miss de game, en den Brer Rabbit, he'd lam aloose en fetch it down. No sooner is he do dis dan Mr. Lion, he'd squall out: "'Hit 's mine! hit 's mine! I kilt it!' "Mr. Lion sech a big man dat Brer Rabbit skeer'd ter 'spute 'long wid 'im, but he lay it up in he min' fer to git even wid 'im. Dey went on en dey went on. Mr. Lion, he'd lam aloose en miss de game, en ole Brer Rabbit, he'd lam aloose en hit it, en Mr. Lion, he'd take'n whirl in en claim it. "Dey hunt all day long, en w'en night come, dey 'uz sech a fur ways fum home dat dey hatter camp out. Dey went on, dey did, twel dey come ter a creek, en w'en dey come ter dat, dey tuck'n scrape away de trash en built um a fire on de bank, en cook dey supper. "Atter supper dey sot up dar en tole tales, dey did, en Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n brag 'bout w'at a good hunter Mr. Lion is, en Mr. Lion, he leant back on he yelbow, en feel mighty biggity. Bimeby, w'en dey eyeleds git sorter heavy, Brer Rabbit, he up'n 'low: "'I'm a monst'us heavy sleeper, Mr. Lion, w'en I gits ter nappin', en I hope en trus' I aint gwine 'sturb you dis night, yit I got my doubts.' "Mr. Lion, he roach he ha'r back outen he eyes, en 'low: "'I'm a monst'us heavy sleeper myse'f, Brer Rabbit, en I'll feel mighty glad ef I don't roust you up in de co'se er de night.' "Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n change his terbacker fum one side he mouf ter de yuther, he did, en he up'n 'low: "'Mr. Lion, I wish you be so good ez ter show me how you sno' des' fo' you git soun' asleep.' "Mr. Lion, he tuck'n draw in he breff sorter hard, en show Brer Rabbit; den Brer Rabbit 'low: "'Mr. Lion, I wish you be so good ez ter show me how you sno' atter yo done git soun' asleep.' "Mr. Lion, he tuck'n suck in he breff, en eve'y time he suck in he breff it soun' des lak a whole passel er mules w'en dey whinney atter fodder. Brer Rabbit look 'stonish'. He roll he eye en 'low: "'I year tell youer mighty big man, Mr. Lion, en you sho'ly is.' "Mr. Lion, he hol' he head one side en try ter look 'shame', but all de same he aint feel 'shame'. Bimeby, he shot he eye en 'gun ter nod, den he lay down en stretch hisse'f out, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he 'gun ter sno' lak he sno' w'en he aint sleepin' soun'. "Brer Rabbit, he lay dar. He aint sayin' nothin'. He lay dar wid one year h'ist up en one eye open. He lay dar, he did, en bimeby Mr. Lion 'gun ter sno' lak he sno' w'en he done gone fas' ter sleep. "W'en ole Brer Rabbit year dis, he git up fum dar, en sprinkle hisse'f wid de cole ashes 'roun' de fier, en den he tuck'n fling er whole passel der hot embers on Mr. Lion. Mr. Lion, he jump up, he did, en ax who done dat, en Brer Rabbit, he lay dar en kick at he year wid he behime foot, en holler '_Ow!_' "Mr. Lion see de ashes on Brer Rabbit, en he dunner w'at ter t'ink. He look all 'roun', but he aint see nothin'. He drap he head en lissen, but he aint year nothin'. Den he lay down 'g'in en drap off ter sleep. Atter w'ile, w'en he 'gun ter sno' lak he done befo', Brer Rabbit, he jump up en sprinkle some mo' cole ashes on hisse'f, en fling de hot embers on Mr. Lion. Mr. Lion jump up, he did, en holler: "'Dar yo is 'g'in!' "Brer Rabbit, he kick en squall, en 'low: "'You oughter be 'shame' yo'se'f, Mr. Lion, fer ter be tryin' ter bu'n me up.' "Mr. Lion hol' up he han's en des vow 't aint him. Brer Rabbit, he look sorter jubous, but he aint say nothin'. Bimeby he holler out: "'Phewee! I smells rags a-bu'nin'!' "Mr. Lion, he sorter flinch, he did, en 'low: "''T aint no rags, Brer Rabbit; hit 's my ha'r a-sinjin'.' "Dey look all 'roun', dey did, but dey aint see nothin' ner nobody. Brer Rabbit, he say he gwine do some tall watchin' nex' time, 'kaze he boun' ter ketch de somebody w'at bin playin' dem kinder pranks on um. Wid dat, Mr. Lion lay down 'g'in, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he drap ter sleep. "Well, den," continued Uncle Remus, taking a long breath, "de ve'y same kinder doin's tuck'n happen. De cole ashes fall on Brer Rabbit, en de hot embers fall on Mr. Lion. But by de time Mr. Lion jump up, Brer Rabbit, he holler out: "'I seed um, Mr. Lion! I seed um! I seed de way dey come fum 'cross de creek! Dey mos' sho'ly did!' "Wid dat Mr. Lion, he fetch'd a beller en he jumped 'cross de creek. No sooner is he do dis," Uncle Remus went on in a tone at once impressive and confidential, "no sooner is he do dis dan Brer Rabbit cut de string w'at hol' de banks togedder, en, lo en beholes, dar dey wuz!" "What was, Uncle Remus?" the little boy asked, more amazed than he had been in many a day. "Bless yo' soul, honey, de banks! Co'se w'en Brer Rabbit tuck'n cut de string, de banks er de creek, de banks, dey fall back, dey did, en Mr. Lion can't jump back. De banks dey keep on fallin' back, en de creek keep on gittin' wider en wider, twel bimeby Brer Rabbit en Mr. Lion aint in sight er one er n'er, en fum dat day to dis de big waters bin rollin' 'twix' um." "But, Uncle Remus, how could the banks of a creek be tied with a string?" "I aint ax um dat, honey, en darfo' yo'll hatter take um ez you git um. Nex' time de tale-teller come 'roun' I'll up'n ax 'im, en ef you aint too fur off, I'll whirl in en sen' you wud, en den you kin go en see fer yo'se'f. But 't aint skacely wuth yo' w'ile fer ter blame me, honey, 'bout de creek banks bein' tied wid a string. Who put um dar, I be bless ef _I_ knows, but I knows who onloose um, dat w'at I knows!" It is very doubtful if this copious explanation was satisfactory to the child, but just as Uncle Remus concluded, Daddy Jack came shuffling in, and shortly afterwards both Aunt Tempy and 'Tildy put in an appearance, and the mind of the youngster was diverted to other matters. LIX BROTHER RABBIT GETS BROTHER FOX'S DINNER After the new-comers had settled themselves in their accustomed places, and 'Tildy had cast an unusual number of scornful glances at Daddy Jack, who made quite a pantomime of his courtship, Uncle Remus startled them all somewhat by breaking into a loud laugh. "I boun' you," exclaimed Aunt Tempy, grinning with enthusiastic sympathy, "I boun' you Brer Remus done fine out some mo' er Brer Rabbit funny doin's; now I boun' you dat." "You hit it de fus' clip, Sis Tempy, I 'clar' ter gracious ef you aint. You nailed it! You nailed it," Uncle Remus went on, laughing as boisterously as before, "des lak ole Brer Rabbit done." The little boy was very prompt with what Uncle Remus called his "inquirements," and the old man, after the usual "hems" and "haws," began. "Hit run'd 'cross my min' des lak a rat 'long a rafter, de way ole Brer Rabbit tuk'n done Brer Fox. 'Periently, atter Brer Rabbit done went en put a steeple on top er he house, all de yuther creeturs wanter fix up dey house. Some put new cellars und' um, some slapped on new winder-blines, some one thing and some er n'er, but ole Brer Fox, he tuck a notion dat he'd put some new shingles on de roof. "Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n year tell er dis, en nothin'd do but he mus' rack 'roun' en see how ole Brer Fox gittin' on. W'en he git whar Brer Fox house is, he year a mighty lammin' en a blammin' en lo en beholes, dar 'uz Brer Fox settin' straddle er de comb er de roof nailin' on shingles des hard ez he kin. "Brer Rabbit cut he eye 'roun' en he see Brer Fox dinner settin' in de fence-cornder. Hit 'uz kivered up in a bran new tin pail, en it look so nice dat Brer Rabbit mouf 'gun ter water time he see it, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he bleedz ter eat dat dinner 'fo' he go 'way fum dar. "Den Brer Rabbit tuck'n hail Brer Fox, en ax 'im how he come on. Brer Fox 'low he too busy to hol' any confab. Brer Rabbit up en ax 'im w'at is he doin 'up dar. Brer Fox 'low dat he puttin' roof on he house 'g'in de rainy season sot in. Den Brer Rabbit up en ax Brer Fox w'at time is it, en Brer Fox, he 'low dat hit 's wukkin time wid him. Brer Rabbit, he up en ax Brer Fox ef he aint stan' in needs er some he'p. Brer Fox, he 'low he did, dat ef he does stan' in needs er any he'p, he dunner whar in de name er goodness he gwine to git it at. "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit sorter pull he mustarsh, en 'low dat de time wuz w'en he 'uz a mighty handy man wid a hammer, en he aint too proud fer to whirl in en he'p Brer Fox out'n de ruts. "Brer Fox 'low he be mighty much erblige, en no sooner is he say dat dan Brer Rabbit snatched off he coat en lipt up de ladder, en sot in dar en put on mo' shingles in one hour dan Brer Fox kin put on in two. "Oh, he 'uz a rattler--ole Brer Rabbit wuz," Uncle Remus exclaimed, noticing a questioning look in the child's face. "He 'uz a rattler, mon, des ez sho' ez youer settin' dar. Dey wa'n't no kinder wuk dat Brer Rabbit can't put he han' at, en do it better dan de nex' man. "He nailed on shingles plum twel he git tired, Brer Rabbit did, en all de time he nailin', he study how he gwine git dat dinner. He nailed en he nailed. He 'ud nail one row, en Brer Fox 'ud nail 'n'er row. He nailed en he nailed. He kotch Brer Fox en pass 'im--kotch 'im en pass 'im, twel bimeby w'iles he nailin' 'long Brer Fox tail git in he way. "Brer Rabbit 'low ter hisse'f, he did, dat he dunner w'at de name er goodness make folks have such long tails fer, en he push it out de way. He aint no mo'n push it out'n de way, 'fo' yer it come back in de way. Co'se," continued Uncle Remus, beginning to look serious, "w'en dat 's de case dat a soon man lak Brer Rabbit git pester'd in he min', he bleedz ter make some kinder accidents some'rs. "Dey nailed en dey nailed, en, bless yo' soul! 't wa'n't long 'fo' Brer Fox drap eve'yt'ing en squall out: "'Laws 'a' massy, Brer Rabbit! You done nail my tail. He'p me, Brer Rabbit, he'p me! You done nail my tail!'" Uncle Remus waved his arms, clasped and unclasped his hands, stamped first one foot and then the other, and made various other demonstrations of grief and suffering. "Brer Rabbit, he shot fus' one eye en den de yuther en rub hisse'f on de forrerd, en 'low: "'Sho'ly I aint nail yo' tail, Brer Fox; sho'ly not. Look right close, Brer Fox, be keerful. Fer goodness sake don' fool me, Brer Fox!' "Brer Fox, _he_ holler, _he_ squall, _he_ kick, _he_ squeal. "'Laws 'a' massy, Brer Rabbit! You done nailed my tail. Onnail me, Brer Rabbit, onnail me!' "Brer Rabbit, he make fer de ladder, en w'en he start down, he look at Brer Fox lak he right down sorry, en he up'n 'low, he did: "'Well, well, well! Des ter t'ink dat I should er lamm'd aloose en nail Brer Fox tail. I dunner w'en I year tell er anyt'ing dat make me feel so mighty bad; en ef I had n't er seed it wid my own eyes I would n't er bleev'd it skacely--dat I would n't!' "Brer Fox holler, Brer Fox howl, yit 't aint do no good. Dar he wuz wid he tail nail hard en fas'. Brer Rabbit, he keep on talkin' w'iles he gwine down de ladder. "'Hit make me feel so mighty bad,' sezee, 'dat I dunner w'at ter do. Time I year tell un it, hit make a empty place come in my stomach,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. "By dis time Brer Rabbit done git down on de groun', en w'iles Brer Fox holler'n, he des keep on a-talkin'. "'Dey's a mighty empty place in my stomach,' sezee, 'en ef I aint run'd inter no mistakes dey's a tin-pail full er vittles in dish yer fence-cornder dat'll des 'bout fit it,' sez ole Brer Rabbit, sezee. "He open de pail, he did, en he eat de greens, en sop up de 'lasses, en drink de pot-liquor, en w'en he wipe he mouf 'pun he coat-tail, he up'n 'low: "'I dunner w'en I bin so sorry 'bout anything, ez I is 'bout Brer Fox nice long tail. Sho'ly, sho'ly my head mus' er bin wool-getherin' w'en I tuck'n nail Brer Fox fine long tail,' sez ole Brer Rabbit, sezee. "Wid dat, he tuck'n skip out, Brer Rabbit did, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he 'uz playin' he pranks in some yuther parts er de settlement." "How did Brother Fox get loose?" the little boy asked. "Oh, you let Brer Fox 'lone fer dat," responded Uncle Remus. "Nex' ter Brer Rabbit, ole Brer Fox wuz mos' de shiftiest creetur gwine. I boun' you he tuck'n tuck keer hisse'f soon ez Brer Rabbit git outer sight en year'n." LX HOW THE BEAR NURSED THE LITTLE ALLIGATOR While the negroes were talking of matters which the little boy took little or no interest in, he climbed into Uncle Remus's lap, as he had done a thousand times before. Presently the old man groaned, and said: "I be bless ef I know w'at de marter, honey. I dunner whe'er I'm a-gittin' fibble in de lim's, er whe'er youer outgrowin' me. I lay I'll hatter sen' out en git you a nuss w'at got mo' strenk in dey lim's dan w'at I is." The child protested that he was n't very heavy, and that he would n't have any nurse, and the old man was about to forget that he had said anything about nurses, when Daddy Jack, who seemed to be desirous of appearing good-humored in the presence of 'Tildy, suddenly exclaimed: "Me bin yeddy one tale 'bout da tam w'en da lil Bear is bin nuss da 'Gator chilluns. 'E bin mek fine nuss fer true. 'E stan' by dem lilly 'Gator tel dey no mo' fer stan' by." [Illustration: HOW THE BEAR NURSED THE LITTLE ALLIGATOR] Seeing that Daddy Jack manifested symptoms of going to sleep, the little boy asked if he would n't tell the story, and, thus appealed to, the old African began: "One tam dey is bin one ole Bear; 'e big un 'e strong. 'E lif way in da swamp; 'e hab nes' in da holler tree. 'E hab one, two lilly Bear in da nes'; 'e bin lub dem chillun berry ha'd. One day, 'e git honkry; 'e tell 'e chillun 'e gwan 'way off fer git-a some bittle fer eat; 'e tell dem dey mus' be good chillun un stay wey dey lif. 'E say 'e gwan fer fetch dem one fish fer dey brekwus. Dun 'e gone off. "Da lil Bear chillun hab bin 'sleep till dey kin sleep no mo'. Da sun, 'e der shine wom, 'e mekky lilly Bear feel wom. Da lil boy Bear, 'e rub 'e y-eye, 'e say 'e gwan off fer hab some fun. Da lil gal Bear, 'e say: "'Wut will we mammy say?' "Lil boy Bear, 'e der lahff. 'E say: "'Me gwan down by da crik side fer ketch some fish 'fo' we mammy come.' "Lil gal Bear, 'e look skeer; 'e say: "'We mammy say somet'ing gwan git-a you. Min' wut 'e tell you.' "Lil boy Bear, 'e keep on lahff. 'E say: "'Shuh-shuh! 'E yent nebber know less you tell um. You no tell um, me fetch-a you one big fish.' "Lil boy Bear, 'e gone! 'E gone by da crik side, 'e tek 'e hook, 'e tek 'e line, 'e is go by da crik side fer ketch one fish. Wun 'e come dey-dey, 'e see somet'ing lay dey in de mud. 'E t'ink it bin one big log. 'E lahff by 'ese'f; 'e say: "''E one fine log fer true. Me 'tan' 'pon da log fer ketch-a da fish fer me lil titty.'[75] "Lil boy Bear, 'e der jump down; 'e git 'pon da log; 'e fix fer fish; 'e fix 'e hook, 'e fix 'e line. Bumbye da log moof. Da lil boy Bear holler: "'Ow ma Lordy!' "'E look down; 'e skeer mos' dead. Da log bin one big 'Gator. Da 'Gator 'e swim 'way wit' da lil boy Bear 'pon 'e bahck. 'E flut 'e tail, 'e knock da lil boy Bear spang in 'e two han'. 'E grin _wide_, 'e feel da lil boy Bear wit' 'e nose; 'e say: "'I tekky you wey me lif; me chillun is hab you fer dey brekwus.' "Da 'Gator, 'e bin swim toze da hole in da bank wey 'e lif. 'E come by da hole, 'e ca' da lil boy Bear in dey. 'E is call up 'e chillun; 'e say: "'Come see how fine brekwus me bin brung you.' "Da ole 'Gator, 'e hab seben chillun in 'e bed. Da lil boy Bear git skeer; 'e holler, 'e cry, 'e beg. 'E say: "'_Please_, Missy 'Gator, gib me chance fer show you how fine nuss me is--_please_, Missy 'Gator. Wun you gone 'way, me min' dem chillun, me min' um well.' "Da 'Gator flut 'e tail; 'e say: "'I try you dis one day; you min' dem lil one well, me luf you be.' "Da ole 'Gator gone 'way; 'e luf da lil boy Bear fer min' 'e chillun. 'E gone git somet'ing fer dey brekwus. Da lil boy Bear, 'e set down dey-dey; 'e min' dem chillun; 'e wait un 'e wait. Bumbye, 'e is git honkry. 'E wait un 'e wait. 'E min' dem chillun. 'E wait un 'e wait. 'E 'come so honkry 'e yent mos' kin hol' up 'e head. 'E suck 'e paw. 'E wait un 'e wait. Da 'Gator no come. 'E wait un 'e wait. Da 'Gator no come some mo'. 'E say: "'Ow! me no gwan starf mese'f wun da planty bittle by side er me!' "Da lil boy Bear grab one da lil 'Gator by 'e neck; 'e tek um off in da bush side; 'e der eat um up. 'E no leaf 'e head, 'e no leaf 'e tail; 'e yent leaf nuttin' 't all. 'E go bahck wey da turrer lil 'Gator bin huddle up in da bed. 'E rub 'ese'f 'pon da 'tomach; 'e say: "'Hoo! me feel-a too good fer tahlk 'bout. I no know wut me gwan fer tell da ole 'Gator wun 'e is come bahck. Ki! me no keer. Me feel too good fer t'ink 'bout dem t'ing. Me t'ink 'bout dem wun da 'Gator is bin come; me t'ink 'bout dem bumbye wun da time come fer t'ink.' "Da lil boy Bear lay down; 'e quile up in da 'Gator bed; 'e shed 'e y-eye; 'e sleep ha'd lak bear do wun ef full up. Bumbye, mos' toze night, da 'Gator come; 'e holler: "'Hey! lil boy Bear! How you is kin min' me chillun wun you is gone fer sleep by um?' "Da lil boy Bear, 'e set up 'pon 'e ha'nch; 'e say: "'Me y-eye gone fer sleep, but me year wide 'wake.' "Da 'Gator flut 'e tail; 'e say: "'Wey me chillun wut me leaf you wit'?' "Da lil boy Bear 'come skeer; 'e say: "'Dey all dey-dey, Missy 'Gator. Wait! lemme count dem, Missy 'Gator. "'_Yarrah one, yarrah narrah, Yarrah two 'pon top er tarrah, Yarrah t'ree pile up tergarrah!_'[76] "Da 'Gator y-open 'e mout', 'e grin wide; 'e say: "'Oona nuss dem well, lil boy Bear; come, fetch-a me one fer wash un git 'e supper.' "Da lil boy Bear, 'e ca' one, 'e ca' nurrer, 'e ca' turrer, 'e ca' um all tel 'e ca' six, den 'e come skeer. 'E t'ink da 'Gator gwan fine um out fer true. 'E stop, 'e yent know wut fer do. Da 'Gator holler: "'Fetch-a me turrer!' "Da lil boy Bear, 'e grab da fus' one, 'e wullup um in da mud, 'e ca' um bahck. Da 'Gator bin wash un feed um fresh; 'e yent know da diffran. "Bumbye, nex' day mornin', da 'Gator gone 'way. Da lil boy Bear stay fer nuss dem lil 'Gator. 'E come honkry; 'e wait, but 'e come mo' honkry. 'E grab nurrer lil 'Gator, 'e eat um fer 'e dinner. Mos' toze night, da 'Gator come. It sem t'ing: "'Wey me chillun wut me leaf you fer nuss?' "'Dey all dey-dey, Missy 'Gator. Me count um out: "'_Yarrah one, yarrah narrah, Yarrah two 'pon top er tarrah, Yarrah t'ree pile up tergarrah!_' "'E ca' um one by one fer wash un git dey supper. 'E ca' two bahck two tam. Ebry day 'e do dis way tel 'e come at de las'. 'E eat dis one, un 'e gone luf da place wey da 'Gator lif. 'E gone down da crik side tel 'e is come by da foot-log, un 'e is run 'cross _queek_. 'E git in da bush, 'e fair fly tel 'e is come by da place wey 'e lil titty bin lif. 'E come dey-dey, un 'e yent go 'way no mo'." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [75] Sissy. [76] Here is one, here's another; here are two on top of t'other; here are three piled up together. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXI WHY MR. DOG RUNS BROTHER RABBIT The little boy was not particularly pleased at the summary manner in which the young Alligators were disposed of; but he was very much amused at the somewhat novel method employed by the Bear to deceive the old Alligator. The negroes, however, enjoyed Daddy Jack's story immensely, and even 'Tildy condescended to give it her approval; but she qualified this by saying, as soon as she had ceased laughing: "I 'clar' ter goodness you all got mighty little ter do fer ter be settin' down yer night atter night lis'nin' at dat nigger man." Daddy Jack nodded, smiled, and rubbed his withered hands together apparently in a perfect ecstasy of good-humor, and finally said: "Oona come set-a by me, lil gal. 'E berry nice tale wut me tell-a you. Come sit-a by me, lil gal;'e berry nice tale. Ef you no want me fer tell-a you one tale, dun you is kin tell-a me one tale." "Humph!" exclaimed 'Tildy, contemptuously, "you'll set over dar in dat cornder en dribble many's de long day 'fo' I tell you any tale." "Look yer, gal!" said Uncle Remus, pretending to ignore the queer courtship that seemed to be progressing between Daddy Jack and 'Tildy, "you gittin' too ole fer ter be sawin' de a'r wid yo 'head en squealin' lak a filly. Ef you gwine ter set wid folks, you better do lak folks does. Sis Tempy dar aint gwine on dat a-way, en she aint think 'erse'f too big fer ter set up dar en jine in wid us en tell a tale, needer." This was the first time that Uncle Remus had ever condescended to accord 'Tildy a place at his hearth on an equality with the rest of his company, and she seemed to be immensely tickled. A broad grin spread over her comely face as she exclaimed: "_Oh!_ I 'clar' ter goodness, Unk Remus, I thought dat ole nigger man wuz des a-projickin' 'long wid me. Ef it come down ter settin' up yer 'long wid you all en tellin' a tale, I aint 'nyin' but w'at I got one dat you all aint never year tell un, 'kaze dat ar Slim Jim w'at Mars Ellick Akin got out'n de speckerlater waggin,[77] he up'n tell it dar at Riah's des 'fo' de patter-rollers tuck'n slipt up on um." "Dar now!" remarked Aunt Tempy. 'Tildy laughed boisterously. "W'at de patter-rollers do wid dat ar Slim Jim?" Uncle Remus inquired. "Done nothin'!" exclaimed 'Tildy, with an air of humorous scorn. "Time dey got in dar Slim Jim 'uz up de chimbly, en Riah 'uz noddin' in one cornder en me in de udder. Nobody never is ter know how dat ar long-leg nigger slick'd up dat chimbly--dat dey aint. He put one foot on de pot-rack,[78] en whar he put de t'er foot _I_ can't tell you." "What was the story?" asked the little boy. "I boun' fer you, honey!" exclaimed Uncle Remus. "Well, den," said 'Tildy, settling herself comfortably, and bridling a little as Daddy Jack manifested a desire to give her his undivided attention,--"well, den, dey wuz one time w'en ole Brer Rabbit 'uz bleedz ter go ter town atter sump'n' 'n'er fer his famerly, en he mos' 'shame' ter go 'kaze his shoes done wo' tetotally out. Yit he bleedz ter go, en he put des ez good face on it ez he kin, en he take down he walkin'-cane en sot out des ez big ez de next un. "Well, den, ole Brer Rabbit go on down de big road twel he come ter de place whar some folks bin camp out de night befo', en he sot down by de fier, he did, fer ter wom his foots, 'kaze dem mawnin's 'uz sorter cole, like deze yer mawnin's. He sot dar en look at his toes, en he feel mighty sorry fer hisse'f. "Well, den, he sot dar, he did, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he year sump'n' 'n'er trottin' down de road, en he tuck'n look up en yer come Mr. Dog a-smellin' en a-snuffin' 'roun' fer ter see ef de folks lef' any scraps by der camp-fier. Mr. Dog 'uz all dress up in his Sunday-go-ter-meetin' cloze, en mo'n dat, he had on a pa'r er bran new shoes. "Well, den, w'en Brer Rabbit see dem ar shoes he feel mighty bad, but he aint let on. He bow ter Mr. Dog mighty perlite, en Mr. Dog bow back, he did, en dey pass de time er day, 'kaze dey 'uz ole 'quaintance. Brer Rabbit, he say: "'Mr. Dog, whar you gwine all fix up like dis?' "'I gwine ter town, Brer Rabbit; whar you gwine?' "'I thought I go ter town myse'f fer ter git me new pa'r shoes, 'kaze my ole uns done wo' out en dey hu'ts my foots so bad I can't w'ar um. Dem mighty nice shoes w'at you got on, Mr. Dog; whar you git um?' "'Down in town, Brer Rabbit, down in town.' "'Dey fits you mighty slick, Mr. Dog, en I wish you be so good ez ter lemme try one un um on.' "Brer Rabbit talk so mighty sweet dat Mr. Dog sot right flat on de groun' en tuck off one er de behime shoes, en loant it ter Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit, he lope off down de road en den he come back. He tell Mr. Dog dat de shoe fit mighty nice, but wid des one un um on, hit make 'im trot crank-sided. "Well, den, Mr. Dog, he pull off de yuther behime shoe, en Brer Rabbit trot off en try it. He come back, he did, en he say: "'Dey mighty nice, Mr. Dog, but dey sorter r'ars me up behime, en I dunner 'zackly how dey feels.' "Dis make Mr. Dog feel like he wanter be perlite, en he take off de befo' shoes, en Brer Rabbit put um on en stomp his foots, en 'low: "'Now dat sorter feel like shoes;' en he rack off down de road, en w'en he git whar he oughter tu'n 'roun', he des lay back he years en keep on gwine; en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he git outer sight. "Mr. Dog, he holler, en tell 'im fer ter come back, but Brer Rabbit keep on gwine; Mr. Dog, he holler, Mr. Rabbit, he keep on gwine. En down ter dis day," continued 'Tildy, smacking her lips, and showing her white teeth, "Mr. Dog bin a-runnin' Brer Rabbit, en ef you'll des go out in de woods wid any Dog on dis place, des time he smell de Rabbit track he'll holler en tell 'im fer ter come back." "Dat 's de Lord's trufe!" said Aunt Tempy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [77] Speculator's wagon. [78] A bar of iron across the fireplace, with hooks to hold the pots and kettles. The original form of the crane. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXII BROTHER WOLF AND THE HORNED CATTLE Daddy Jack appeared to enjoy 'Tildy's story as thoroughly as the little boy. "'E one fine tale. 'E mekky me lahff tell tear is come in me y-eye," the old African said. And somehow or other 'Tildy seemed to forget her pretended animosity to Daddy Jack, and smiled on him as pleasantly as she did on the others. Uncle Remus himself beamed upon each and every one, especially upon Aunt Tempy; and the little boy thought he had never seen everybody in such good-humor. "Sis Tempy," said Uncle Remus, "I 'speck it's yo' time fer ter put in." "I des bin rackin' my min'," said Aunt Tempy, thoughtfully. "I see you fixin' dat ar hawn, un terreckerly hit make me think 'bout a tale w'at I aint year none un you tell yit." Uncle Remus was polishing a long cow's-horn, for the purpose of making a hunting-horn for his master. "Hit come 'bout one time dat all de creeturs w'at got hawns tuck a notion dat dey got ter meet terge'er un have a confab fer ter see how dey gwine take ker deyse'f, 'kaze dem t'er creeturs w'at got tush un claw, dey uz des a-snatchin' um fum 'roun' eve'y cornder." "Tooby sho'!" said Uncle Remus, approvingly. "Dey sont out wud, de hawn creeturs did, un dey tuck'n meet terge'er 'way off in de woods. Man--Sir!--dey wuz a big gang un um, un de muster dey had out dar 't wa'n't b'ar tellin' skacely. Mr. Bull, he 'uz dar, un Mr. Steer, un Miss Cow"-- "And Mr. Benjamin Ram, with his fiddle," suggested the little boy. --"Yes, 'n Mr. Billy Goat, un Mr. Unicorn"-- "En ole man Rinossyhoss," said Uncle Remus. --"Yes, 'n lots mo' w'at I aint know de names un. Man--Sir!--dey had a mighty muster out dar. Ole Brer Wolf, he tuck'n year 'bout de muster, un he sech a smarty dat nothin' aint gwine do but he mus' go un see w'at dey doin'. "He study 'bout it long time, un den he went out in de timber un cut 'im two crooked sticks, un tie um on his head, un start off ter whar de hawn creeturs meet at. W'en he git dar Mr. Bull ax 'im who is he, w'at he want, whar he come frum, un whar he gwine. Brer Wolf, he 'low: "'Ba-a-a! I'm name little Sook Calf!'" "Eh-eh! Look out, now!" exclaimed 'Tildy, enthusiastically. "Mr. Bull look at Brer Wolf mighty hard over his specks, but atter a w'ile he go off some'rs else, un Brer Wolf take his place in de muster. "Well, den, bimeby, terreckerly, dey got ter talkin' un tellin' der 'sperence des like de w'ite folks does at class-meetin'. W'iles dey 'uz gwine on dis a-way, a great big hoss-fly come sailin' 'roun', un Brer Wolf tuck'n fergit hisse'f, un snap at 'im. "All dis time Brer Rabbit bin hidin' out in de bushes watchin' Brer Wolf, un w'en he see dis he tuck'n break out in a laugh. Brer Bull, he tuck'n holler out, he did: "'Who dat laughin' un showin' der manners?' "Nobody aint make no answer, un terreckerly Brer Rabbit holler out: "'_O kittle-cattle, kittle-cattle, whar yo' eyes? Who ever see a Sook Calf snappin' at flies?_' "De hawn creeturs dey all look 'roun' un wonder w'at dat mean, but bimeby dey go on wid dey confab. 'T wa'n't long 'fo' a flea tuck'n bite Brer Wolf 'way up on de back er de neck, un 'fo' he know what he doin', he tuck'n squat right down un scratch hisse'f wid his behime foot." "Enty!" exclaimed Daddy Jack. "Dar you is!" said 'Tildy. "Brer Rabbit, he tuck'n broke out in 'n'er big laugh un 'sturb um all, un den he holler out: "'_Scritchum-scratchum, lawsy, my laws! Look at dat Sook Calf scratchin' wid claws!_' "Brer Wolf git mighty skeer'd, but none er de hawn creeturs aint take no notice un 'im, un 't wa'n't long 'fo' Brer Rabbit holler out ag'in: "'_Rinktum-tinktum, ride 'im on a rail! Dat Sook Calf got a long bushy tail!_' "De hawn creeturs, dey go on wid der confab, but Brer Wolf git skeerder un skeerder, 'kaze he notice dat Mr. Bull got his eye on 'im. Brer Rabbit, he aint gin 'im no rest. He holler out: "'_One un one never kin make six, Sticks aint hawns, un hawns aint sticks!_' "Wid dat Brer Wolf make ez ef he gwine 'way fum dar, un he wa'n't none too soon, needer, 'kaze ole Mr. Bull splunge at 'im, en little mo' un he'd er nat'ally to' 'im in two." "Did Brother Wolf get away?" the little boy asked. "Yas, Lord!" said Aunt Tempy, with unction; "he des scooted 'way fum dar, un he got so mad wid Brer Rabbit, dat he tuck'n play dead, un wud went 'roun' dat dey want all de creeturs fer ter go set up wid 'im. Brer Rabbit, he went down dar fer ter look at 'im, un time he see 'im, he ex: "'Is he grin yit?' "All de creeturs dey up'n say he aint grin, not ez dey knows un. Den Brer Rabbit, he 'low, he did: "'Well, den, gentermuns all, ef he aint grin, den he aint dead good. In all my 'speunce folks aint git dead good tel dey grins.'[79] "W'en Brer Wolf year Brer Rabbit talk dat a-way, he tuck'n grin fum year ter year, un Brer Rabbit, he picked up his hat un walkin'-cane un put out fer home, un w'en he got 'way off in de woods he sot down un laugh fit ter kill hisse'f." Uncle Remus had paid Aunt Tempy the extraordinary tribute of pausing in his work to listen to her story, and when she had concluded it, he looked at her in undisguised admiration, and exclaimed: "I be bless, Sis Tempy, ef you aint wuss'n w'at I is, en I'm bad 'nuff', de Lord knows I is!" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [79] See _Uncle Remus: His Songs and his Sayings_, p. 60. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXIII BROTHER FOX AND THE WHITE MUSCADINES Aunty Tempy did not attempt to conceal the pleasure which Uncle Remus's praise gave her. She laughed somewhat shyly, and said: "Bless you, Brer Remus! I des bin a-settin' yer l'arnin'. 'Sides dat, Chris'mus aint fur off un I 'speck we er all a-feelin' a sight mo' humorsome dan common." "Dat 's so, Sis Tempy. I 'uz comin' thoo de lot des 'fo' supper, en I seed de pigs runnin' en playin' in de win', en I 'low ter myse'f, sez I, 'Sholy dey's a-gwine ter be a harrycane,' en den all at once hit come in my min' dat Chris'mus mighty close at han', en den on ter dat yer come de chickens a-crowin' des now en 't aint nine er'clock. I dunner how de creeturs know Chris'mus comin', but dat des de way it stan's." The little boy thought it was time enough to think about Christmas when the night came for hanging up his stockings, and he asked Uncle Remus if it was n't his turn to tell a story. The old man laid down the piece of glass with which he had been scraping the cow's horn, and hunted around among his tools for a piece of sandpaper before he replied. But his reply was sufficient. He said: "One time w'iles Brer Rabbit wuz gwine thoo de woods he tuck'n strak up wid ole Brer Fox, en Brer Fox 'low, he did, dat he mighty hongry. Brer Rabbit 'low dat he aint feelin' dat a-way hisse'f, 'kaze he des bin en had er bait er w'ite muscadimes, en den he tuck'n smack he mouf en lick he chops right front er Brer Fox. Brer Fox, he ax, sezee: "'Brer Rabbit, whar de name er goodness is deze yer w'ite muscadimes, en how come I'm aint never run 'crosst um?' sezee. "'I dunner w'at de reason you aint never come up wid um,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; 'some folks sees straight, some sees crooked, some sees one thing, some sees 'n'er. I done seed dem ar w'ite muscadimes, en let 'lone dat, I done wipe um up. I done e't all dey wuz on one tree, but I lay dey's lots mo' un um 'roun' in dem neighborhoods,' sezee. "Ole Brer Fox mouf 'gun to water, en he git mighty restless. "'Come on, Brer Rabbit; come on! Come show me whar dem ar w'ite muscadimes grows at,' sezee. "Brer Rabbit, he sorter hang back. Brer Fox, he 'low: "'Come on, Brer Rabbit, come on!' "Brer Rabbit, he hang back, en bimeby he 'low: "'Uh-uh, Brer Fox! You wanter git me out dar in de timber by myse'f en do sump'n' ter me. You wanter git me out dar en skeer me.' "Ole Brer Fox, he hol' up he han's, he do, en he 'low: "'I des 'clar' 'fo' gracious, Brer Rabbit, I aint gwine do no sech uv a thing. I dunner w'at kinder 'pinion you got 'bout me fer ter have sech idee in yo' head. Come on, Brer Rabbit, en less we go git dem ar w'ite muscadimes. Come on, Brer Rabbit.' "'Uh-uh, Brer Fox! I done year talk er you playin' so many prank wid folks dat I fear'd fer ter go 'way off dar wid you.' "Dey went on dat a-way," continued Uncle Remus, endeavoring to look at the little boy through the crooked cow's horn, "twel bimeby Brer Fox promise he aint gwine ter bodder 'long er Brer Rabbit, en den dey tuck'n put out. En whar you 'speck dat ar muscheevous Brer Rabbit tuck'n kyar' Brer Fox?" Uncle Remus paused and gazed around upon his audience with uplifted eyebrows, as if to warn them to be properly astonished. Nobody made any reply, but all looked expectant, and Uncle Remus went on: "He aint kyar 'im nowhars in de roun' worl' but ter one er deze yer great big scaly-bark trees. De tree wuz des loaded down wid scaly-barks, but dey wa'n't ripe, en de green hulls shined in de sun des lak dey ben whitewash'. Brer Fox look 'stonish'. Atter w'ile he up'n 'low: "'Is dem ar de w'ite muscadimes? Mighty funny I aint fine it out 'fo' dis.' "Ole Brer Rabbit, he scratch hisse'f en 'low: "'Dems um. Dey may n't be ripe ez dem w'at I had fer my brekkus, but dems de w'ite muscadimes sho' ez youer bawn. Dey er red bullaces[80] en dey er black bullaces, but deze yer, dey er de w'ite bullaces.' "Brer Fox, sezee, 'How I gwine git um?' "Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'You'll des hatter do lak I done.' "Brer Fox, sezee, 'How wuz dat?' "Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'You'll hatter clam fer 'm.' "Brer Fox, sezee, 'How I gwine clam?' "Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'Grab wid yo' han's, clam wid yo' legs, en I'll push behime!'" "Man--Sir!--he's a-talkin' now!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy, enthusiastically. "Brer Fox, he clum, en Brer Rabbit, he push, twel, sho' 'nuff, Brer Fox got whar he kin grab de lowmos' lim's, en dar he wuz! He crope on up, he did, twel he come ter whar he kin retch de green scaly-bark, en den he tuck'n pull one en bite it, en, gentermens! hit uz dat rough en dat bitter twel little mo' en he'd 'a' drapt spang out'n de tree. "He holler '_Ow!_' en spit it out'n he mouf des same ez ef 't wuz rank pizen, en he make sech a face dat you would n't b'leeve it skacely less'n you seed it. Brer Rabbit, he hatter cough fer ter keep fum laughin', but he make out ter holler, sezee: "'Come down, Brer Fox! Dey aint ripe. Come down en less go some'rs else.' "Brer Fox start down, en he git 'long mighty well twel he come ter de lowmos' lim's, en den w'en he git dar he can't come down no furder, 'kaze he aint got no claw fer cling by, en not much leg fer clamp. "Brer Rabbit keep on hollerin', 'Come down!' en Brer Fox keep on studyin' how he gwine ter come down. Brer Rabbit, he 'low, sezee: "'Come on, Brer Fox! I tuck'n push you up, en ef I 'uz dar whar you is, I'd take'n push you down.' "Brer Fox sat dar on de lowmos' lim's en look lak he skeer'd. Bimeby Brer Rabbit tuck he stan' 'way off fum de tree, en he holler, sezee: "'Ef you'll take'n jump out dis way, Brer Fox, I'll ketch you.' "Brer Fox look up, he look down, he look all 'roun'. Brer Rabbit come little closer, en 'low, sezee: "'Hop right down yer, Brer Fox, en I'll ketch you.' "Hit keep on dis a-way, twel, bimeby, Brer Fox tuck a notion to jump, en des ez he jump Brer Rabbit hop out de way en holler, sezee: "'_Ow!_ Scuze me, Brer Fox! I stuck a brier in my foot! Scuze me, Brer Fox! I stuck a brier in my foot!' "En dat ole Brer Fox," continued Uncle Remus, dropping his voice a little, "dat ole Brer Fox, gentermens! you oughter bin dar! He hit de groun' like a sack er taters, en it des nat'ally knock de breff out'n 'im. W'en he git up en count hisse'f fer ter see ef he all dar, he aint kin walk skacely, en he sat dar en lick de so' places a mighty long time 'fo' he feel lak he kin make he way todes home." When the little boy wanted to know what became of Brother Rabbit Uncle Remus said: "Shoo! don't you pester 'bout Brer Rabbit. He kick up he heels en put out fum dar." Then he added: "Dem ar chick'ns crowin' 'g'in, honey. Done gone by nine er'clock. Scoot out fum dis. Miss Sally'll be a-rakin' me over de coals." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [80] Another name for muscadines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXIV MR. HAWK AND BROTHER BUZZARD One night the little boy ran into Uncle Remus's cabin singing: "_T-u Turkey, t-u Ti, T-u Turkey Buzzard's eye!_" Uncle Remus, Daddy Jack, Aunt Tempy, and 'Tildy were all sitting around the fire, for the Christmas weather was beginning to make itself rather severely felt. As they made room for the child, Daddy Jack flung his head back, and took up the song, beating time with his foot: "'_T-u Tukry, t-u Ti, T-u Tukry-Buzzud y-eye! T-u Tukry, t-u Ting, T-u Tukry-Buzzud wing!_" "Deyer mighty kuse creeturs," said 'Tildy, who was sitting rather nearer to Daddy Jack than had been her custom,--a fact to which Aunt Tempy had already called the attention of Uncle Remus by a motion of her head, causing the old man to smile a smile as broad as it was wise. "Deyer mighty kuse, an' I'm fear'd un um," 'Tildy went on. "Dey looks so lonesome hit makes me have de creeps fer ter look at um." "Dey no hu't-a you," said Daddy Jack, soothingly. "You flut you' han' toze um dey fly 'way fum dey-dey." "I dunno 'bout dat," said 'Tildy. "Deyer bal'-headed, en dat w'at make me 'spize um." Daddy Jack rubbed the bald place on his head with such a comical air that even 'Tildy laughed. The old African retained his good-humor. "You watch dem Buzzud," he said after awhile, addressing himself particularly to the little boy. "'E fly high, 'e fly low, 'e fly 'way 'roun'. Rain come, 'e flup 'e wings, 'e light 'pon dead pine. Rain fall, 'e hug 'ese'f wit' 'e wing, 'e scrooge 'e neck up. Rain come, win' blow, da Buzzud bin-a look ragged. Da Buzzud bin-a wink 'e y-eye, 'e say: "'Wun da win' fer stop blow un da rain fer stop drip, me go mek me one house. Me mek um tight fer keep da rain out; me pit top on strong fer keep da win' out.' "Dun da rain dry up un da win' stop. Da Buzzud, 'e stan' 'pon top da dead pine. Wun da sun bin-a shine, 'e no mek um no house no'n 't all. 'E stay 'pon da dead pine; 'e 'tretch 'e wing wide open; 'e bin dry hisse'f in da sun. 'E hab mek no house sence 'e bin born. 'E one fool bud." "En yit," said Uncle Remus, with a grave, judicial air, "I year tell er one time w'en ole Brer Buzzard wa'n't so mighty fur outer de way wid he notions." "Me yent yeddy tahlk 'bout dis," Daddy Jack explained. "I 'speck not," responded Uncle Remus. "Hit seem lak dat dey wuz one time w'en Mr. Hawk come sailin' 'roun' huntin' fer sump'n' 'n'er t' eat, en he see Brer Buzzard settin' on a dead lim', lookin' mighty lazy en lonesome. "Mr. Hawk, sezee, 'How you come on, Brer Buzzard?' "Brer Buzzard, sezee, 'I'm mighty po'ly, Brer Hawk; po'ly en hongry.' "Mr. Hawk, sezee, 'W'at you waitin' yer fer ef you hongry, Brer Buzzard?' "Brer Buzzard, sezee, 'I'm a-waitin' on de Lord.' "Mr. Hawk, sezee, 'Better run en git yo' brekkus, Brer Buzzard, en den come back en wait.' "Brer Buzzard, sezee, 'No, Brer Hawk, I'll go bidout my brekkus druther den be biggity 'bout it.' "Mr. Hawk, he 'low, sezee, 'Well, den, Brer Buzzard, you got yo' way en I got mine. You see dem ar chick'ns, down dar in Mr. Man hoss-lot? I'm a-gwine down dar en git one un um, un den I'll come back yer en wait 'long wid you.' "Wid dat, Mr. Hawk tuck'n sail off, en Brer Buzzard drop he wings down on de lim' en look mighty lonesome. He sot dar en look mighty lonesome, he did, but he keep one eye on Mr. Hawk. "Mr. Hawk, he sail 'roun' en 'roun', en he look mighty purty. He sail 'roun' en 'roun' 'bove de hoss-lot--'roun' en 'roun'--en bimeby he dart down at chick'ns. He shot up he wings en dart down, he did, des same ef he 'uz fired out'n a gun." "Watch out, pullets!" exclaimed 'Tildy, in a tone of warning. "He dart down, he did," continued Uncle Remus, rubbing his hand thoughtfully across the top of his head, "but stidder he hittin' de chick'ns, he tuck'n hit 'pon de sharp een' un a fence-rail. He hit dar, he did, en dar he stuck." "Ah-yi-ee!" exclaimed Daddy Jack. "Dar he stuck. Brer Buzzard sot en watch 'im. Mr. Hawk aint move. Brer Buzzard sot en watch 'im some mo'. Mr. Hawk aint move. He done stone dead. De mo' Brer Buzzard watch 'im de mo' hongrier he git, en bimeby he gedder up he wings, en sorter clean out he year wid he claw, en 'low, sezee: "'I know'd de Lord 'uz gwineter pervide.'" "Trufe too!" exclaimed Aunt Tempy. "'T aint bin in my min' dat Buzzard got sense lak dat!" "Dar's whar you missed it, Sis Tempy," said Uncle Remus gravely. "Brer Buzzard, he tuck'n drap down fum de dead lim', en he lit on Mr. Hawk, en had 'im fer brekkus. Hit 's a mighty 'roun' about way fer ter git chick'n-pie, yit hit 's lots better dan no way." "I 'speck Hawk do tas'e like chicken," remarked 'Tildy. "Dey mos' sho'ly does," said Uncle Remus, with emphasis. LXV MR. HAWK AND BROTHER RABBIT "I year tell er one time," said 'Tildy, "w'en ole Mr. Hawk tuck'n kotch Brer Rabbit, but 't aint no tale like dem you all bin tellin'." "Tell it, anyhow, 'Tildy," said the little boy. "Well, 't aint no tale, I tell you dat now. One time Brer Rabbit wuz gwine 'long thoo de bushes singin' ter hisse'f, en he see a shadder pass befo' 'im. He look up, en dar 'uz Mr. Hawk sailin' 'roun' en 'roun'. Time he see 'im, Brer Rabbit 'gun ter kick up en sassy 'im. "Mr. Hawk aint pay no 'tention ter dis. He des sail all 'roun' en 'roun'. Eve'y time he sail 'roun', he git little closer, but Brer Rabbit aint notice dis. He too busy wid his devilment. He shuck his fis' at Mr. Hawk, en chunk'd at 'im wid sticks;[81] en atter w'ile he tuck'n make out he got a gun, en he tuck aim at Mr. Hawk, en 'low'd, 'Pow!' en den he holler en laugh. "All dis time Mr. Hawk keep on sailin' 'roun' en 'roun' en gittin' nigher en nigher, en bimeby down he drapt right slambang on Brer Rabbit, en dar he had 'im. Brer Rabbit fix fer ter say his pra'rs, but 'fo' he do dat, he talk to Mr. Hawk, en he talk mighty fergivin'. He 'low he did: "'I 'uz des playin', Mr. Hawk; I 'uz dez a-playin'. You oughtn' ter fly up en git mad wid a little bit er man like me.' "Mr. Hawk ruffle up de fedders on his neck en say: "'I aint flyin' up, I'm a-flyin' down, en w'en I fly up, I'm a-gwine ter fly 'way wid you. You bin a-playin' de imp 'roun' in dis settlement long 'nuff, en now ef you got any will ter make, you better make it quick, 'kaze you aint got much time.' "Brer Rabbit cry. He say: "'I mighty sorry, Mr. Hawk, dat I is. I got some gol' buried right over dar in fence cornder, en I wish in my soul my po' little childuns know whar 't wuz, 'kaze den dey could git long widout me fer a mont' er two.' "Mr. Hawk 'low, 'Whar'bouts is all dis gol'?' "Brer Rabbit low, 'Right over dar in de fence-cornder.' "Mr. Hawk say show it ter 'im. Brer Rabbit say he don't keer ef he do, en he say: "'I'd 'a' done show'd it ter you long 'fo' dis, but you hol' me so tight, I can't wink my eye skacely, much less walk ter whar de gol' is.' "Mr. Hawk say he fear'd he gwineter try ter git 'way. Brer Rabbit say dey aint no danger er dat, 'kaze he one er deze yer kinder mens w'en dey er kotch once deyer kotch fer good. "Mr. Hawk sorter let Brer Rabbit loose, en dey went todes de fence-cornder. Brer Rabbit, he went 'long so good dat dis sorter ease Mr. Hawk min' 'bout he gittin' 'way. Dey got ter de place en Brer Rabbit look all 'roun', en den he frown up like he got some mighty bad disap'intment, en he say: "'You may b'lieve me er not, Mr. Hawk, but we er on de wrong side er de fence. I hid dat gol' some'rs right in dat cornder dar. You fly over en I'll go thoo.' "Tooby sho' dis look fa'r, en Brer Rabbit, he crope thoo' de fence, en Mr. Hawk flew'd 'cross. Time he lit on t'er side, Mr. Hawk year Brer Rabbit laugh." The little boy asked what Brother Rabbit laughed for, as 'Tildy paused to adjust a flaming red ribbon-bow pinned in her hair. "'Kaze dey wuz a brier-patch on t'er side de fence," said 'Tildy, "en Brer Rabbit wuz in dar." "I boun' you!" Aunt Tempy exclaimed. "He 'uz in dar, en dar he stayed tel Mr. Hawk got tired er hangin' 'roun' dar." "Ah, Lord, chile!" said Uncle Remus, with the candor of an expert, "some er dat tale you got right, en some you got wrong." "Oh, I know'd 't wa'n't no tale like you all bin tellin'," replied 'Tildy, modestly. "Tooby sho' 't is," continued Uncle Remus, by way of encouragement; "but w'iles we gwine 'long we better straighten out all de kinks dat'll b'ar straightenin'." "Goodness knows I aint fittin' ter tell no tale," persisted 'Tildy. "Don't run yo'se'f down, gal," said Uncle Remus, encouragingly; "ef dey's to be any runnin' down let yuther folks do it; en, bless yo' soul, dey'll do 'nuff un it bidout waitin' fer yo' lettin'. "Now, den, old man Hawk,--w'ich dey call 'im Billy Blue-tail in my day en time,--ole man Hawk, he tuck'n kotch Brer Rabbit des lak you done said. He kotch 'im en he hilt 'im in a mighty tight grip, let 'lone dat he hilt 'im so tight dat it make Brer Rabbit breff come short lak he des come off'n a long jurney. "He holler en he beg, but dat aint do no good; he squall en he cry, but dat aint do no good; he kick en he groan, but dat aint do no good. Den Brer Rabbit lay still en study 'bout w'at de name er goodness he gwine do. Bimeby he up'n 'low: "'I dunner w'at you want wid me, Mr. Hawk, w'en I aint a mouf full fer you, skacely!' "Mr. Hawk, sezee, 'I'll make way wid you, en den I'll go ketch me a couple er Jaybirds.' "Dis make Brer Rabbit shake wid de allovers, 'kaze ef dey's any kinder creetur w'at he nat'ally 'spize on de topside er de yeth, hit 's a Jaybird. "Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'Do, pray, Mr. Hawk, go ketch dem Jaybirds fus', 'kaze I can't stan' um bein' on top er me. I'll stay right yer, plum twel you come back,' sezee. "Mr. Hawk, sezee, 'Oh-oh, Brer Rabbit, you done bin fool too many folks. You aint fool me,' sezee. "Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'Ef you can't do dat, Mr. Hawk, den de bes' way fer you ter do is ter wait en lemme git tame, 'kaze I'm dat wil' now dat I don't tas'e good.' "Mr. Hawk, sezee, 'Oh-oh!' "Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'Well, den, ef dat won't do, you better wait en lemme grow big so I'll be a full meal er vittles.' "Mr. Hawk, sezee, 'Now youer talkin' sense!' "Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'En I'll rush 'roun' 'mungs' de bushes, en drive out Pa'tridges fer you, en we'll have mo' fun dan w'at you kin shake a stick at.' "Mr. Hawk sorter study 'bout dis, en Brer Rabbit, he beg en he 'splain, en de long en de short un it wuz," said Uncle Remus, embracing his knee with his hands, "dat Brer Rabbit tuck'n git loose, en he aint git no bigger, en needer is he druv no Pa'tridges fer Mr. Hawk." "De Lord he'p my soul!" exclaimed 'Tildy, and this was the only comment made upon this extraordinary story. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [81] That is to say, threw sticks at Mr. Hawk. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXVI THE WISE BIRD AND THE FOOLISH BIRD All this talk about Hawks and Buzzards evidently reminded Daddy Jack of another story. He began to shake his head and mumble to himself; and, finally, when he looked around and found that he had attracted the attention of the little company, he rubbed his chin and grinned until his yellow teeth shone in the firelight like those of some wild animal, while his small eyes glistened under their heavy lids with a suggestion of cunning not unmixed with ferocity. "Talk it out, Brer Jack," said Uncle Remus; "talk it out. All nex' week we'll be a-fixin' up 'bout Chris'mus. Mars Jeems, he's a-comin' up, en Miss Sally'll have lots er yuther comp'ny. 'Tildy yer, she'll be busy, en dish yer little chap, he won't have no time fer ter be settin' up wid de ole niggers, en Sis Tempy, she'll have 'er han's full, en ole Remus, he'll be a-pirootin' 'roun' huntin' fer dat w'at he kin pick up. Time's a-passin', Brer Jack, en we all er passin' wid it. Des whirl in en gin us de upshot er w'at you got in yo' min'." "Enty!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, by way of approval. "One time dey bin two bud. One bin sma't bud; da turrer, 'e bin fool bud. Dey bin lif in da sem countree; da bin use in da sem swamp. Da sma't bud, 'e is bin come 'pon da fool bud; 'e bin tahlk. 'E bin say: "'Ki! you long in da leg, you deep in da craw. You bin 'tan' well; you bin las' long tam.' "Fool bud, 'e look proud, 'e toss 'e head; 'e say: "'Me no mekky no brag.' "Sma't bud, 'e say: "'Less we try see fer how long tam we is kin go 'dout bittle un drink.' "Fool bud, 'e 'tretch 'e neck, 'e toss 'e head; 'e say: "'All-a right; me beat-a you all day ebry day. Me beat-a you all da tam.' "Sma't bud, 'e say: "'Ef you bin 'gree wit' dis, less we tek we place. You git 'pon da crik-side un tekky one ho'n, I git 'pon da tree y-up dey, un tekky nurrer ho'n. Less we 'tan' dey-dey tel we see how long tam we is kin do 'dout bittle un drink. Wun I blow 'pon me ho'n dun you blow 'pon you' ho'n fer answer me; me blow, you blow, dun we bote blow.' "Fool bud walk 'bout big; 'e say: "'Me will do um!' "Nex' day mornin' come. Da sma't bud bin tekky one ho'n un fly 'pon da tree. De fool bud bin tekky one nurrer ho'n un set by da crik-side. Dey bin sta't in fer starf deyse'f. Da fool bud, 'e stay by da crik-side wey dey bin no'n 't all fer eat; 'e no kin fin' no bittle dey-dey. Sma't bud git in da tree da y-ant un da bug swa'm in da bark plenty. 'E pick dem ant, 'e y-eat dem ant; 'e pick dem bug, 'e y-eat dem bug. 'E pick tel 'e craw come full; he feel berry good. "Fool bud, 'e down by da crik-side. 'E set down, 'e come tire'; 'e 'tan' up, 'e come tire'; 'e walk 'bout, 'e come tire'. 'E 'tan' 'pon one leg, he 'tan' 'pon turrer; 'e pit 'e head need 'e wing; still he come tire'. Sma't bud shed 'e y-eye; 'e feel berry good. Wun 'e come hongry, 'e pick ant, 'e pick bug, tel 'e hab plenty, toze dinner-time 'e pick up 'e ho'n, 'e toot um strong-- "'_Tay-tay, tenando wanzando waneanzo!_' "Fool bud craw bin empty, but 'e hab win'. 'E tekky da ho'n, 'e blow berry well; he mek um say: "'_Tay-tay tenando wanzando olando!_' "Sma't bud pick ant plenty; 'e git full up. 'E wait tel mos' toze sundown; 'e blow 'pon da ho'n-- "'_Tay-tay tenando wanzando waneanzo!_' "Fool bud mek answer, but 'e come weak; 'e yent hab eat nuttin' 't all. Soon nex' day mornin' sma't bud tek 'e ho'n un toot um. 'E done bin eat, 'e done bin drink dew on da leaf. Fool bud, 'e toot um ho'n, 'e toot um slow. "Dinner-time, sma't bud bin tek 'e ho'n un blow; 'e yent bin honkry no'n 't all; 'e hab good feelin'. Fool bud toot um ho'n; 'e toot um slow. Night tam come, 'e no toot um no mo'. Sma't bud come down, 'e fin' um done gone dead. "Watch dem 'ceitful folks; 'e bin do you bad."[82] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [82] Mrs. H. S. Barclay, of Darien, who sends this story, says it was told by a native African woman, of good intelligence, who claimed to be a princess. She had an eagle tattoed on her bosom--a sign of royalty. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXVII OLD BROTHER TERRAPIN GETS SOME FISH "Dat tale," said Uncle Remus, "puts me in min' er de time w'en ole Brer Tarrypin had a tussel wid Brer Mink. Hit seem lak," he went on, in response to inquiries from the little boy, "dat dey bofe live 'roun' de water so much en so long dat dey git kinder stuck up long wid it. Leasways dat 'uz de trouble wid Brer Mink. He jump in de water en swim en dive twel he 'gun ter b'leeve dey wa'n't nobody kin hol' der han' long wid 'im. "One day Brer Mink 'uz gwine long down de creek wid a nice string er fish swingin' on he walkin'-cane, w'en who should he meet up wid but ole Brer Tarrypin. De creeturs 'uz all hail feller wid ole Brer Tarrypin, en no sooner is he seed Brer Mink dan he bow 'im howdy. Ole Brer Tarrypin talk 'way down in he th'oat lak he got bad col'. He 'low: "'Heyo, Brer Mink! Whar you git all dem nice string er fish?' "Brer Mink 'uz mighty up-en-spoken in dem days. He 'low, he did: "'Down dar in de creek, Brer Tarrypin.' "Brer Tarrypin look 'stonish'. He say, sezee: "'Well, well, well! In de creek! Who'd er b'leev'd it?' "Brer Mink, sezee: 'Whar I gwine ketch um, Brer Tarrypin, ef I aint ketch um in de creek?' "Ole Brer Tarrypin, sezee: 'Dat 's so, Brer Mink; but a highlan' man lak you gwine in de creek atter fish! Hit looks turrible, Brer Mink--dat w'at it do; hit des looks turrible!' "Brer Mink, sezee: 'Looks er no looks, dar whar I got um.' "Brer Tarrypin sorter sway he head fum side ter side, en 'low: "'Ef dat de case, Brer Mink, den sho'ly you mus' be one er dem ar kinder creeturs w'at usen ter de water.' "'Dat 's me,' sez Brer Mink, sezee. "'Well, den,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'I'm a highlan' man myse'f, en it's bin a mighty long time sence I got my foots wet, but I don't min' goin' in washin' 'long wid you. Ef youer de man you sez you is, you kin outdo me,' sezee. "Brer Mink, sezee: 'How we gwine do, Brer Tarrypin?' "Ole Brer Tarrypin, sezee: 'We 'ull go down dar ter de creek, en de man w'at kin stay und' de water de longest, let dat man walk off wid dat string er fish.' "Brer Mink, sezee: 'I'm de ve'y man you bin lookin' fer.' "Brer Mink say he don't wanter put it off a minnit. Go he would, en go he did. Dey went down ter creek en make der 'rangerments. Brer Mink lay he fish down on der bank, en 'im en ole Brer Tarrypin wade in. Brer Tarrypin he make great 'miration 'bout how col' he water is. He flinch, he did, en 'low: "'Ow, Brer Mink! Dish yer water feel mighty col' and 't aint no mo'n up ter my wais'. Goodness knows how she gwine feel w'en she git up und' my chin.' "Dey wade in, dey did, en Brer Tarrypin say, sezee: "'Now, den, Brer Mink, we'll make a dive, en de man w'at stay und' de water de longest dat man gits de fish.' "Brer Mink 'low dat 's de way he look at it, en den Brer Tarrypin gun de wud, en und' dey went. Co'se," said Uncle Remus, after a little pause, "Brer Tarrypin kin stay down in de water longer'n Brer Mink, en Brer Mink mought er know'd it. Dey stay en dey stay, twel bimeby Brer Mink bleedz ter come up, en he tuck'n kotch he breff, he did, lak he mighty glad fer ter git back ag'in. Den atter w'ile Brer Tarrypin stuck he nose out er de water, en den Brer Mink say Brer Tarrypin kin beat 'im. Brer Tarrypin 'low: "'No, Brer Mink; hit 's de bes' two out er th'ee. Ef I beats you dis time den de fish, deyer mine; ef I gits beated, den we kin take 'n'er trial.' "Wid dat, down dey went, but Brer Tarrypin aint mo'n dove 'fo' up he come, en w'iles Brer Mink 'uz down dar honin' fer fresh a'r, he tuck'n gobble up de las' one er de fish, ole Brer Tarrypin did. He gobble up de fish, en he 'uz fixin' fer ter pick he toof, but by dis time Brer Mink bleedz ter come up, en ole Brer Tarrypin, he tuck'n slid down in de water. He slid so slick," said Uncle Remus, with a chuckle, "dat he aint lef' a bubble. He aint stay down long, n'er, 'fo' he come up en he make lak he teetotally out er win'. "Ole Brer Tarrypin come up, he did, en look 'roun', en 'fo' Brer Mink kin say a wud, he holler out: "'Youer nice man, Brer Mink! Youer mighty nice man!' "'W'at I done now, Brer Tarrypin?' "'Don't ax me. Look up dar whar you bin eatin' dem fish en den ax yo'se'f. Youer mighty nice man!' "Brer Mink look 'roun' en, sho' 'nuff, de fish done gone. Ole Brer Tarrypin keep on talkin': "'You tuck'n come up fust, en w'iles I bin down dar in de water, nat'ally achin' fer lack er win', yer you settin' up chawin' on de fish w'ich dey oughter bin mine!' "Brer Mink stan' 'im down dat he aint eat dem fish; he 'ny it ter de las', but ole Brer Tarrypin make out he don't b'leeve 'im. He say, sezee: "'You'll keep gwine on dis a-way, twel atter w'ile you'll be wuss'n Brer Rabbit. Don't tell me you aint git dem fish, Brer Mink, 'kaze you know you is.' "Hit sorter make Brer Mink feel proud 'kaze ole Brer Tarrypin mix 'im up wid Brer Rabbit, 'kaze Brer Rabbit wuz a mighty man in dem days, en he sorter laugh, Brer Mink did, lak he know mo' dan he gwine tell. Ole Brer Tarrypin keep on grumblin'. "'I aint gwine ter git mad long wid you, Brer Mink, 'kaze hit 's a mighty keen trick, but you oughter be 'shame' yo'se'f fer ter be playin' tricks on a ole man lak me--dat you ought!' "Wid dat ole Brer Tarrypin went shufflin' off, en atter he git outer sight he draw'd back in he house en shot de do' en laugh en laugh twel dey wa'n't no fun in laughin'." LXVIII BROTHER FOX MAKES A NARROW ESCAPE The next time the little boy had an opportunity to visit Uncle Remus the old man was alone, but he appeared to be in good spirits. He was cobbling away upon what the youngster recognized as 'Tildy's Sunday shoes, and singing snatches of a song something like this: "_O Mr. Rabbit! yo' eye mighty big-- Yes, my Lord! dey er made fer ter see; O Mr. Rabbit! yo' tail mighty short-- Yes, my Lord! hit des fits me!_" The child waited to hear more, but the song was the same thing over and over again--always about Brother Rabbit's big eyes and his short tail. After a while Uncle Remus acknowledged the presence of his little partner by remarking: "Well, sir, we er all yer. Brer Jack and Sis Tempy en dat ar 'Tildy nigger may be a-pacin' 'roun' lookin' in de fence-cornders fer Chris'mus, but me en you en ole Brer Rabbit, we er all yer, en ef we aint right on de spot, we er mighty close erroun'. Yasser, we is dat; mo' speshually ole Brer Rabbit, wid he big eye and he short tail. Don't tell me 'bout Brer Rabbit!" exclaimed Uncle Remus, with a great apparent enthusiasm, "'kaze dey aint no use er talkin' 'bout dat creetur." The little boy was very anxious to know why. "Well, I tell you," said the old man. "One time dey wuz a monst'us dry season in de settlement whar all de creeturs live at, en drinkin'-water got mighty skace. De creeks got low, en de branches went dry, en all de springs make der disappearance 'cep'n one great big un whar all de creeturs drunk at. Dey'd all meet dar, dey would, en de bigges' 'ud drink fus', en by de time de big uns all done swaje der thuss[83] dey wa'n't a drap lef' fer de little uns skacely. "Co'se Brer Rabbit 'uz on de happy side. Ef anybody gwine git water Brer Rabbit de man. De creeturs 'ud see he track 'roun' de spring, but dey aint nev' ketch 'im. Hit got so atter w'ile dat de big creeturs 'ud crowd Brer Fox out, en den 't wa'n't long 'fo' he hunt up Brer Rabbit en ax 'im w'at he gwine do. "Brer Rabbit, he sorter study, en den he up 'n tell Brer Fox fer ter go home en rub some 'lasses all on hisse'f en den go out en waller in de leafs. Brer Fox ax w'at he mus' do den, en Brer Rabbit say he mus' go down by de spring, en w'en de creeturs come ter de spring fer ter git dey water, he mus' jump out at um, en den atter dat he mus' waller lak he one er dem ar kinder varment w'at got bugs on um. "Brer Fox, he put out fer home, he did, en w'en he git dar he run ter de cubbud[84] en des gawm hisse'f wid 'lasses, en den he went out in de bushes, he did, en waller in de leafs en trash twel he look mos' bad ez Brer Rabbit look w'en he play Wull-er-de-Wust on de creeturs. "W'en Brer Fox git hisse'f all fix up, he went down ter de spring en hide hisse'f. Bimeby all de creeturs come atter der water, en w'iles dey 'uz a-scuffin' en a-hunchin', en a-pushin' en a-scrougin', Brer Fox he jump out'n de bushes, en sorter switch hisse'f 'roun', en, bless yo' soul, he look lak de Ole Boy. "Brer Wolf tuck'n see 'im fus', en he jump spang over Brer B'ar head. Brer B'ar, he lip back, en ax who dat, en des time he do dis de t'er creeturs dey tuck'n make a break, dey did, lak punkins rollin' down hill, en mos' 'fo' youk'n wink yo' eye-ball, Brer Fox had de range er de spring all by hisse'f. "Yit 't wa'n't fur long, 'kaze 'fo' de creeturs mov'd fur, dey tuck'n tu'n 'roun', dey did, en crope back fer ter see w'at dat ar skeery lookin' varment doin'. W'en dey git back in seein' distuns dar 'uz Brer Fox walkin' up en down switchin' hisse'f. "De creeturs dunner w'at ter make un 'im. Dey watch, en Brer Fox march; dey watch, en he march. Hit keep on dis a-way twel bimeby Brer Fox 'gun ter waller in de water, en right dar," continued Uncle Remus, leaning back to laugh, "right dar 'uz whar Brer Rabbit had 'im. Time he 'gun ter waller in de water de 'lasses 'gun ter melt, en 't wa'n't no time skacely 'fo' de 'lasses en de leafs done all wash off, en dar 'uz ole Brer Fox des ez natchul ez life. "De fus' Brer Fox know 'bout de leafs comin' off, he year Brer B'ar holler on top er de hill: "'You head 'im off down dar, Brer Wolf, en I'll head 'im off 'roun' yer!' "Brer Fox look 'roun' en he see all de leafs done come off, en wid dat he make a break, en he wa'n't none too soon, n'er, 'kaze little mo' en de creeturs 'ud 'a' kotch 'im." Without giving the little boy time to ask any questions, Uncle Remus added another verse to his Rabbit song, and harped on it for several minutes: "_O Mr. Rabbit! yo' year mighty long-- Yes, my Lord! dey made fer ter las'; O Mr. Rabbit! yo' toof mighty sharp-- Yes, my Lord! dey cuts down grass!_" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [83] Assuaged their thirst. [84] Cupboard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXIX BROTHER FOX'S FISH-TRAP The little boy wanted Uncle Remus to sing some more; but before the old man could either consent or refuse, the notes of a horn were heard in the distance. Uncle Remus lifted his hand to command silence, and bent his head in an attitude of attention. "Des listen at dat!" he exclaimed, with some show of indignation. "Dat aint nothin' in de roun' worl' but ole man Plato wid dat tin hawn er his'n, en I boun' you he's a-drivin' de six mule waggin, en de waggin full er niggers fum de River place, en let 'lone dat, I boun' you deyer niggers strung out behime de waggin fer mo'n a mile, en deyer all er comin' yer fer ter eat us all out'n house en home, des 'kaze dey year folks say Chris'mus mos' yer. Hit 's mighty kuse unter me dat ole man Plato aint done toot dat hawn full er holes long 'fo' dis. "Yit I aint blamin' um," Uncle Remus went on, with a sigh, after a little pause. "Dem ar niggers bin livin' 'way off dar on de River place whar dey aint no w'ite folks twel dey er done in about run'd wil'. I aint a-blamin' um, dat I aint." Plato's horn--a long tin bugle--was by no means unmusical. Its range was limited, but in Plato's hands its few notes were both powerful and sweet. Presently the wagon arrived, and for a few minutes all was confusion, the negroes on the Home place running to greet the new-comers, who were mostly their relatives. A stranger hearing the shouts and outcries of these people would have been at a loss to account for the commotion. Even Uncle Remus went to his cabin door, and, with the little boy by his side, looked out upon the scene,--a tumult lit up by torches of resinous pine. The old man and the child were recognized, and for a few moments the air was filled with cries of: "Howdy, Unk Remus! Howdy, little Marster!" After a while Uncle Remus closed his door, laid away his tools, and drew his chair in front of the wide hearth. The child went and stood beside him, leaning his head against the old negro's shoulder, and the two--old age and youth, one living in the Past and the other looking forward only to the Future--gazed into the bed of glowing embers illuminated by a thin, flickering flame. Probably they saw nothing there, each being busy with his own simple thoughts; but their shadows, enlarged out of all proportion, and looking over their shoulders from the wall behind them, must have seen something, for, clinging together, they kept up a most incessant pantomime; and Plato's horn, which sounded again to call the negroes to supper after their journey, though it aroused Uncle Remus and the child from the contemplation of the fire, had no perceptible effect upon the Shadows. "Dar go de vittles!" said Uncle Remus, straightening himself. "Dey tells me dat dem ar niggers on de River place got appetite same ez a mule. Let 'lone de vittles w'at dey gits from Mars John, dey eats oodles en oodles er fish. Ole man Plato say dat de nigger on de River place w'at aint got a fish-baskit in de river er some intruss[85] in a fish-trap aint no 'count w'atsomever." Here Uncle Remus suddenly slapped himself upon the leg, and laughed uproariously; and when the little boy asked him what the matter was, he cried out: "Well, sir! Ef I aint de fergittenest ole nigger twix' dis en Phillimerdelphy! Yer 't is mos' Chris'mus en I aint tell you 'bout how Brer Rabbit do Brer Fox w'ence dey bofe un um live on de river. I dunner w'at de name er sense gittin' de marter 'long wid me." Of course the little boy wanted to know all about it, and Uncle Remus proceeded: "One time Brer Fox en Brer Rabbit live de on river. Atter dey bin livin' dar so long a time, Brer Fox 'low dat he got a mighty hankerin' atter sump'n' 'sides fresh meat, en he say he b'leeve he make 'im a fish-trap. Brer Rabbit say he wish Brer Fox mighty well, but he aint honin' atter fish hisse'f, en ef he is he aint got no time fer ter make no fish-trap. "No marter fer dat, Brer Fox, he tuck'n got 'im out some timber, he did, en he wuk nights fer ter make dat trap. Den w'en he git it done, he tuck'n hunt 'im a good place fer ter set it, en de way he sweat over dat ar trap wuz a sin--dat 't wuz. "Yit atter so long a time, he got 'er sot, en den he tuck'n wash he face en han's en go home. All de time he 'uz fixin' un it up, Brer Rabbit 'uz settin' on de bank watchin' 'im. He sot dar, he did, en play in de water, en cut switches fer ter w'ip at de snake-doctors,[86] en all dat time Brer Fox, he pull en haul en tote rocks fer ter hol' dat trap endurin' a freshet. "Brer Fox went home en res' hisse'f, en bimeby he go down fer ter see ef dey any fish in he trap. He sorter fear'd er snakes, but he feel 'roun' en he feel 'roun', yit he aint feel no fish. Den he go off. "Bimeby, 'long todes de las' er de week, he go down en feel 'roun' 'g'in, yit he aint feel no fish. Hit keep on dis a-way twel Brer Fox git sorter fag out. He go en he feel, but dey aint no fish dar. Atter w'ile, one day, he see de signs whar somebody bin robbin' he trap, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he'll des in 'bout watch en fine out who de somebody is. "Den he tuck'n got in he boat en paddle und' de bushes on de bank en watch he fish-trap. He watch all de mornin'; nobody aint come. He watch all endurin' er atter dinner; nobody aint come. 'Long todes night, w'en he des 'bout makin' ready fer ter paddle off home, he year fuss on t'er side de river, en lo en beholes, yer come Brer Rabbit polin' a boat right todes Brer Fox fish-trap. "Look lak he dunner how to use a paddle, en he des had 'im a long pole, en he'd stan' up in de behime part er he boat, en put de een' er de pole 'gin' de bottom, en shove 'er right ahead. "Brer Fox git mighty mad w'en he see dis, but he watch en wait. He 'low ter hisse'f, he did, dat he kin paddle a boat pearter dan anybody kin pole um, en he say he sho'ly gwine ketch Brer Rabbit dis time. "Brer Rabbit pole up ter de fish-trap, en feel 'roun' en pull out a great big mud-cat; den he retch in en pull out 'n'er big mud-cat; den he pull out a big blue cat, en it keep on dis a-way twel he git de finest mess er fish you mos' ever laid yo' eyes on. "Des 'bout dat time, Brer Fox paddle out fum und' de bushes, en make todes Brer Rabbit, en he holler out: "'Ah-yi! Youer de man w'at bin robbin' my fish-trap dis long time! I got you dis time! Oh, you nee'nter try ter run! I got you dis time sho'!' "No sooner said dan no sooner done. Brer Rabbit fling he fish in he boat en grab up de pole en push off, en he had mo' fun gittin' 'way fum dar dan he y-ever had befo' in all he born days put terge'er." "Why did n't Brother Fox catch him, Uncle Remus?" asked the little boy. "_Shoo!_ Honey, you sho'ly done lose yo' min' 'bout Brer Rabbit." "Well, I don't see how he could get away." "Ef you'd er bin dar you'd er seed it, dat you would. Brer Fox, he wuz dar, en he seed it, en Brer Rabbit, he seed it, en e'en down ter ole Brer Bull-frog, a-settin' on de bank, he seed it. Now, den," continued Uncle Remus, spreading out the palm of his left hand like a map and pointing at it with the forefinger of his right, "w'en Brer Rabbit pole he boat, he bleedz ter set in de behime een', en w'en Brer Fox paddle he boat, _he_ bleedz ter set in de behime een'. Dat bein' de state er de condition, how Brer Fox gwine ketch 'im? I aint 'sputin' but w'at he kin paddle pearter dan Brer Rabbit, but de long en de shorts un it is, de pearter Brer Fox paddle de pearter Brer Rabbit go." The little boy looked puzzled. "Well, I don't see how," he exclaimed. "Well, sir!" continued Uncle Remus, "w'en de nose er Brer Fox boat git close ter Brer Rabbit boat all Brer Rabbit got ter do in de roun' worl' is ter take he pole en put it 'gin' Brer Fox boat en push hisse'f out de way. De harder he push Brer Fox boat back, de pearter he push he own boat forrerd. Hit look mighty easy ter ole Brer Bull-frog settin' on de bank, en all Brer Fox kin do is ter shake he fist en grit he toof, w'iles Brer Rabbit sail off wid de fish." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTES: [85] Interest. [86] Dragon-flies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LXX BROTHER RABBIT RESCUES BROTHER TERRAPIN The arrival of the negroes from the River place added greatly to the enthusiasm with which the Christmas holidays were anticipated on the Home place, and the air was filled with laughter day and night. Uncle Remus appeared to be very busy, though there was really nothing to be done except to walk around and scold at everybody and everything, in a good-humored way, and this the old man could do to perfection. The night before Christmas eve, however, the little boy saw a light in Uncle Remus's cabin, and he interpreted it as in some sort a signal of invitation. He found the old man sitting by the fire and talking to himself: "Ef Mars John and Miss Sally 'specks me fer ter keep all deze yer niggers straight deyer gwine ter be diserp'inted,--dat dey is. Ef dey wuz 'lev'm Remuses 't would n't make no diffunce, let 'long one po' ole cripple creetur lak me. Dey aint done no damage yit, but I boun' you by termorrer night dey'll tu'n loose en tu'n de whole place upside down, en t'ar it up by de roots, en den atter hit 's all done gone en done, yer'll come Miss Sally a-layin' it all at ole Remus do'. Nigger aint got much chance in deze yer low-groun's, mo' speshually w'en dey gits ole en cripple lak I is." "What are they going to do to-morrow night, Uncle Remus?" the little boy inquired. "Now w'at make you ax dat, honey?" exclaimed the old man, in a grieved tone. "You knows mighty well how dey done las' year en de year 'fo' dat. Dey tuck'n cut up 'roun' yer wuss'n ef dey 'uz wil' creeturs, en termorrer night dey'll be a-hollin' en whoopin' en singin' en dancin' 'fo' it git dark good. I wish w'en you go up ter de big house you be so good ez ter tell Miss Sally dat ef she want any peace er min' she better git off'n de place en stay off twel atter deze yer niggers git dey fill er Chris'mus. Goodness knows, she can't 'speck a ole cripple nigger lak me fer ter ketch holt en keep all deze yer niggers straight." Uncle Remus would have kept up his vague complaints, but right in the midst of them Daddy Jack stuck his head in at the door, and said: "Oona bin fix da' 'Tildy gal shoe. Me come fer git dem shoe; me come fer pay you fer fix dem shoe." Uncle Remus looked at the grinning old African in astonishment. Then suddenly the truth dawned upon him and he broke into a loud laugh. Finally he said: "Come in, Brer Jack! Come right 'long in. I'm sorter po'ly myse'f, yit I'll make out ter make you welcome. Dey wuz a quarter dollar gwine inter my britches-pocket on de 'count er dem ar shoes, but ef youer gwine ter pay fer um 't won't be but a sev'mpunce." Somehow or other Daddy Jack failed to relish Uncle Remus's tone and manner, and he replied, with some display of irritation: "Shuh-shuh! Me no come in no'n 't all. Me no pay you se'mpunce. Me come fer pay you fer dem shoe; me come fer tek um 'way fum dey-dey." "I dunno 'bout dat, Brer Jack, I dunno 'bout dat. De las' time I year you en 'Tildy gwine on, she wuz 'pun de p'ints er knockin' yo' brains out. Now den, s'pozen I whirls in en gins you de shoes, en den 'Tildy come 'long en ax me 'bout um, w'at I gwine say ter 'Tildy?" "Me pay you fer dem shoe," said Daddy Jack, seeing the necessity of argument, "un me tek um wey da lil 'Tildy gal bin stay. She tell me fer come git-a dem shoe." "Well, den, yer dey is," said Uncle Remus, sighing deeply as he handed Daddy Jack the shoes. "Yer dey is, en youer mo' dan welcome, dat you is. But spite er dat, dis yer quarter you flingin' 'way on um would er done you a sight mo' good dan w'at dem shoes is." This philosophy was altogether lost upon Daddy Jack, who took the shoes and shuffled out with a grunt of satisfaction. He had scarcely got out of hearing before 'Tildy pushed the door open and came in. She hesitated a moment, and then, seeing that Uncle Remus paid no attention to her, she sat down and picked at her fingers with an air quite in contrast to her usual "uppishness," as Uncle Remus called it. "Unk Remus," she said, after awhile, in a subdued tone, "is dat old Affikin nigger bin yer atter dem ar shoes?" "Yas, chile," replied Uncle Remus, with a long-drawn sigh, "he done bin yer en got um en gone. Yas, honey, he done got um en gone; done come en pay fer 'm, en got um en gone. I sez, sez I, dat I wish you all mighty well, en he tuck'n tuck de shoes en put. Yas, chile, he done got um en gone." Something in Uncle Remus's sympathetic and soothing tone seemed to exasperate 'Tildy. She dropped her hands in her lap, straightened herself up and exclaimed: "Yas, I'm is gwine ter marry dat ole nigger an' I don't keer who knows it. Miss Sally say she don't keer, en t'er folks may keer ef dey wanter, en much good der keerin' 'll do um." 'Tildy evidently expected Uncle Remus to make some characteristic comment, for she sat and watched him with her lips firmly pressed together and her eyelids half-closed,--an attitude of defiance significant enough when seen, but difficult to describe. But the old man made no response to the challenge. He seemed to be very busy. Presently 'Tildy went on: "Somebody bleedz to take keer er dat ole nigger, en I dunner who gwine ter do it ef I don't. Somebody bleedz ter look atter 'im. Good win' come 'long hit 'ud in about blow 'im 'way ef dey wa'n't somebody close 'roun' fer ter take keer un 'im. Let 'lone dat, I aint gwineter have dat ole nigger man f'ever 'n 'ternally trottin' atter me. I tell you de Lord's trufe, Unk Remus," continued 'Tildy, growing confidential, "I aint had no peace er min' sence dat ole nigger man come on dis place. He des bin a-pacin' at my heels de whole blessed time, en I bleedz ter marry 'im fer git rid un 'im." "Well," said Uncle Remus, "hit don't s'prize me. You marry en den youer des lak Brer Fox wid he bag. You know w'at you put in it, but you dunner w'at you got in it." 'Tildy flounced out without waiting for an explanation, but the mention of Brother Fox attracted the attention of the little boy, and he wanted to know what was in the bag, how it came to be there, and all about it. "Now, den," said Uncle Remus, "hit 's a tale, en a mighty long tale at dat, but I'll des hatter cut it short, 'kaze termorrer night you'll wanter be a-settin' up lis'nen at de kyar'n's on er dem ar niggers, w'ich I b'leeve in my soul dey done los' all de sense dey ever bin bornded wid. "One time Brer Fox wuz gwine on down de big road, en he look ahead en he see ole Brer Tarrypin makin' he way on todes home. Brer Fox 'low dis a mighty good time fer ter nab ole Brer Tarrypin, en no sooner is he thunk it dan he put out back home, w'ich 't wa'n't but a little ways, en he git 'im a bag. He come back, he did, en he run up behime ole Brer Tarrypin en flip 'im in de bag en sling de bag 'cross he back en go gallin'-up back home. "Brer Tarrypin, he holler, but 't aint do no good, he rip en he r'ar, but 't aint do no good. Brer Fox des keep on a-gwine, en 't wa'n't long 'fo' he had ole Brer Tarrypin slung up in de cornder in de bag, en de bag tied un hard en fas'. "But w'iles all dis gwine on," exclaimed Uncle Remus, employing the tone and manner of some country preacher he had heard, "whar wuz ole Brer Rabbit? Yasser--dats it, whar wuz he? En mo'n dat, w'at you 'speck he 'uz doin' en whar you reckon he wer' gwine? Dat 's de way ter talk it; whar'bouts wuz he?" The old man brought his right hand down upon his knee with a thump that jarred the tin-plate and cups on the mantel-shelf, and then looked around with a severe frown to see what the chairs and the work-bench, and the walls and the rafters, had to say in response to his remarkable argument. He sat thus in a waiting attitude a moment, and then, finding that no response came from anything or anybody, his brow gradually cleared, and a smile of mingled pride and satisfaction spread over his face, as he continued in a more natural tone: "Youk'n b'leeve me er not b'leeve des ez youer min' ter, but dat ar long-year creetur--dat ar hoppity-skippity--dat ar up-en-down-en- sailin'-'roun' Brer Rabbit, w'ich you bin year me call he name 'fo' dis, he wa'n't so mighty fur off w'iles Brer Fox gwine 'long wid dat ar bag slung 'cross he back. Let 'lone dat, Brer Rabbit 'uz settin' right dar in de bushes by de side er de road, en w'ence he see Brer Fox go trottin' by, he ax hisse'f w'at is it dat creetur got in dat ar bag. "He ax hisse'f, he did, but he dunno. He wunder en he wunder, yit de mo' he wunder de mo' he dunno. Brer Fox, he go trottin' by, en Brer Rabbit, he sot in de bushes en wunder. Bimeby he 'low ter hisse'f, he did, dat Brer Fox aint got no business fer ter be trottin' 'long down de road, totin' doin's w'ich yuther folks dunner w'at dey is, en he 'low dat dey won't be no great harm done ef he take atter Brer Fox en fine out w'at he got in dat ar bag. "Wid dat, Brer Rabbit, he put out. He aint got no bag fer ter tote, en he pick up he foots mighty peart. Mo'n dat, he tuck'n tuck a nigh-cut, en by de time Brer Fox git home, Brer Rabbit done had time fer ter go 'roun' by de watermillion-patch en do some er he devilment, en den atter dat he tuck'n sot down in de bushes whar he kin see Brer Fox w'en he come home. "Bimeby yer come Brer Fox wid de bag slung 'cross he back. He onlatch de do', he did, en he go in en sling Brer Tarrypin down in de cornder, en set down front er de h'ath fer ter res' hisse'f." Here Uncle Remus paused to laugh in anticipation of what was to follow. "Brer Fox aint mo'n lit he pipe," the old man continued, after a tantalizing pause, "'fo' Brer Rabbit stick he head in de do' en holler: "Brer Fox! O Brer Fox! You better take yo' walkin'-cane en run down yan. Comin' 'long des now I year a mighty fuss, en I look 'roun' en dar wuz a whole passel er folks in yo' watermillion-patch des a-tromplin' 'roun' en a-t'arin' down. I holler'd at um, but dey aint pay no 'tention ter little man lak I is. Make 'a'se, Brer Fox! make 'a'se! Git yo' cane en run down dar. I'd go wid you myse'f, but my ole 'oman ailin' en I bleedz ter be makin' my way todes home. You better make 'a'se, Brer Fox, ef you wanter git de good er yo' watermillions. Run, Brer Fox! run!' "Wid dat Brer Rabbit dart back in de bushes, en Brer Fox drap he pipe en grab he walkin'-cane en put out fer he watermillion-patch, w'ich 't wer' down on de branch; en no sooner is he gone dan ole Brer Rabbit come out de bushes en make he way in de house. "He go so easy dat he aint make no fuss; he look 'roun' en dar wuz de bag in de cornder. He kotch holt er de bag en sorter feel un it, en time he do dis, he year sump'n' holler: "'Ow! Go 'way! Lem me 'lone! Tu'n me loose! Ow!' "Brer Rabbit jump back 'stonish'd. Den 'fo' you kin wink yo' eye-ball, Brer Rabbit slap hisse'f on de leg en break out in a laugh. Den he up'n 'low: "'Ef I aint make no mistakes, dat ar kinder fuss kin come fum nobody in de roun' worl' but ole Brer Tarrypin.' "Brer Tarrypin, he holler, sezee: 'Aint dat Brer Rabbit?' "'De same,' sezee. "'Den whirl in en tu'n me out. Meal dus' in my th'oat, grit in my eye, en I aint kin git my breff, skacely. Tu'n me out, Brer Rabbit.' "Brer Tarrypin talk lak somebody down in a well. Brer Rabbit, he holler back: "'Youer lots smarter dan w'at I is, Brer Tarrypin--lots smarter. Youer smarter en pearter. Peart ez I come yer, you is ahead er me. I know how you git in de bag, but I dunner how de name er goodness you tie yo'se'f up in dar, dat I don't.' "Brer Tarrypin try ter splain, but Brer Rabbit keep on laughin', en he laugh twel he git he fill er laughin'; en den he tuck'n ontie de bag en take Brer Tarrypin out en tote 'im 'way off in de woods. Den, w'en he done dis, Brer Rabbit tuck'n run off en git a great big hornet-nes' w'at he see w'en he comin' long--" "A hornet's nest, Uncle Remus?" exclaimed the little boy, in amazement. "Tooby sho', honey. 'T aint bin a mont' sence I brung you a great big hornet-nes', en yer you is axin' dat. Brer Rabbit tuck'n slap he han' 'cross de little hole whar de hornets goes in at, en dar he had um. Den he tuck'n tuck it ter Brer Fox house, en put it in de bag whar Brer Tarrypin bin. "He put de hornet-nes' in dar," continued Uncle Remus, lowering his voice, and becoming very grave, "en den he tie up de bag des lak he fine it. Yit 'fo' he put de bag back in de cornder, w'at do dat creetur do? I aint settin' yer," said the old man, seizing his chair with both hands, as if by that means to emphasize the illustration, "I aint settin' yer ef dat ar creetur aint grab dat bag en slam it down 'g'in de flo', en hit it 'g'in de side er de house twel he git dem ar hornets all stirred up, en den he put de bag back in de cornder, en go out in de bushes ter whar Brer Tarrypin waitin', en den bofe un um sot out dar en wait fer ter see w'at de upshot gwine ter be. "Bimeby, yer come Brer Fox back fum he watermillion-patch en he look lak he mighty mad. He strak he cane down 'pun de groun', en do lak he gwine take he revengeance out'n po' ole Brer Tarrypin. He went in de do', Brer Fox did, en shot it atter 'im. Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin lissen', but dey aint year nothin'. "But bimeby, fus' news you know, dey year de mos' owdashus racket, tooby sho'. Seem lak, fum whar Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin settin' dat dey 'uz a whole passel er cows runnin' 'roun' in Brer Fox house. Dey year de cheers a-fallin', en de table turnin' over, en de crock'ry breakin', en den de do' flew'd open, en out come Brer Fox, a-squallin' lak de Ole Boy wuz atter 'im. En sech a sight ez dem t'er creeturs seed den en dar aint never bin seed befo' ner sence. "Dem ar hornets des swarmed on top er Brer Fox. 'Lev'm dozen un um 'ud hit at one time, en look lak dat ar creetur bleedz ter fine out fer hisse'f w'at pain en suffin' is. Dey bit 'im en dey stung 'im, en fur ez Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin kin year 'im, dem hornets 'uz des a-nailin' 'im. Gentermens! dey gun 'im binjer! "Brer Rabbit en Brer Tarrypin, dey sot dar, dey did, en dey laugh en laugh, twel bimeby, Brer Rabbit roll over en grab he stomach, en holler: "'Don't, Brer Tarrypin! don't! One giggle mo' en you'll hatter tote me.' "En dat aint all," said Uncle Remus, raising his voice. "I know a little chap w'ich ef he set up yer 'sputin' 'longer me en de t'er creeturs, he won't have much fun termorrer night." The hint was sufficient, and the little boy ran out laughing. LXXI THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS The day and the night before Christmas were full of pleasure for the little boy. There was pleasure in the big house, and pleasure in the humble cabins in the quarters. The peculiar manner in which the negroes celebrated the beginning of the holidays was familiar to the child's experience, but strange to his appreciation, and he enjoyed everything he saw and heard with the ready delight of his years,--a delight, which, in this instance, had been trained and sharpened, if the expression may be used, in the small world over which Uncle Remus presided. The little boy had a special invitation to be present at the marriage of Daddy Jack and 'Tildy, and he went, accompanied by Uncle Remus and Aunt Tempy. It seemed to be a very curious affair, but its incongruities made small impression upon the mind of the child. 'Tildy wore a white dress and had a wreath of artificial flowers in her hair. Daddy Jack wore a high hat, which he persisted in keeping on his head during the ceremony, and a coat the tails of which nearly dragged the floor. His bright little eyes glistened triumphantly, and he grinned and bowed to everybody again and again. After it was all over, the guests partook of cake baked by Aunt Tempy, and persimmon beer brewed by Uncle Remus. It seemed, however, that 'Tildy was not perfectly happy; for, in response to a question asked by Aunt Tempy, she said: "Yes'm, I'm gwine down de country 'long wid my ole man, an' I lay ef eve'ything don't go right, I'm gwineter pick up en come right back." "No-no!" exclaimed Daddy Jack, "'e no come bahck no'n 't all. 'E bin stay dey-dey wit' 'e nice ole-a màn." "You put yo' pennunce in dat!" said 'Tildy, scornfully. "Dey aint nobody kin hol' me w'en I takes a notion, 'cep'n hit 's Miss Sally; en, goodness knows, Miss Sally aint gwine ter be down dar." "Who Miss Sally gwine put in de house?" Aunt Tempy asked. "Humph!" exclaimed 'Tildy, scornfully, "Miss Sally say she gwine take dat ar Darkess[87] nigger en put 'er in my place. An' a mighty nice mess Darkess gwine ter make un it! Much she know 'bout waitin' on w'ite folks! Many's en many's de time Miss Sally'll set down in 'er rockin'-cheer en wish fer 'Tildy--many's de time." This was 'Tildy's grievance,--the idea that some one could be found to fill her place; and it is a grievance with which people of greater importance than the humble negro house-girl are more or less familiar. But the preparations for the holidays went on in spite of 'Tildy's grievance. A large platform, used for sunning wheat and seed cotton, was arranged by the negroes for their dance, and several wagon-loads of resinous pine--known as lightwood--were placed around about it in little heaps, so that the occasion might lack no element of brilliancy. At nightfall the heaps of lightwood were set on fire, and the little boy, who was waiting impatiently for Uncle Remus to come for him, could hear the negroes singing, dancing, and laughing. He was just ready to cry when he heard the voice of his venerable partner. "Is dey a'er passenger anywhar's 'roun' yer fer Thumptown? De stage done ready en de hosses a-prancin'. Ef dey's a'er passenger 'roun' yer, I lay he des better be makin' ready fer ter go." The old man walked up to the back piazza as he spoke, held out his strong arms, and the little boy jumped into them with an exclamation of delight. The child's mother gave Uncle Remus a shawl to wrap around the child, and this shawl was the cause of considerable trouble, for the youngster persisted in wrapping it around the old man's head, and so blinding him that there was danger of his falling. Finally, he put the little boy down, took off his hat, raised his right hand, and said: "Now, den, I bin a-beggin' un you fer ter quit yo' 'haveishness des long ez I'm a-gwinter, en I aint gwine beg you no mo', 'kaze I'm des teetotally wo' out wid beggin', en de mo' I begs de wuss you gits. Now I'm done! You des go yo' ways en I'll go mine, en my way lays right spang back ter de big house whar Miss Sally is. Dat 's whar I'm a-gwine!" Uncle Remus started to the house with an exaggerated vigor of movement comical to behold; but, however comical it may have been, it had its effect. The little boy ran after him, caught him by the hand, and made him stop. "Now, Uncle Remus, _please_ don't go back. I was just playing." Uncle Remus's anger was all pretence, but he managed to make it very impressive. "My playin' days done gone too long ter talk 'bout. When I plays, I plays wid wuk, dat w'at I plays wid." "Well," said the child, who had tactics of his own, "if I can't play with you, I don't know who I am to play with." This touched Uncle Remus in a very tender spot. He stopped in the path, took off his spectacles, wiped the glasses on his coat-tail, and said very emphatically: "Now den, honey, des lissen at me. How de name er goodness kin you call dat playin', w'ich er little mo' en I'd er fell down on top er my head, en broke my neck en yone too?" The child promised that he would be very good, and Uncle Remus picked him up, and the two made their way to where the negroes had congregated. They were greeted with cries of "Dar's Unk Remus!" "Howdy, Unk Remus!" "Yer dey is!" "Ole man Remus don't sing; but w'en he do sing--gentermens! des go 'way!" All this and much more, so that when Uncle Remus had placed the little boy upon a corner of the platform, and made him comfortable, he straightened himself with a laugh and cried out: "Howdy, boys! howdy all! I des come up fer ter jine in wid you fer one 'roun' fer de sakes er ole times, ef no mo'." "I boun' fer Unk Remus!" some one said. "Now des hush en let Unk Remus 'lone!" exclaimed another. The figure of the old man, as he stood smiling upon the crowd of negroes, was picturesque in the extreme. He seemed to be taller than all the rest; and, notwithstanding his venerable appearance, he moved and spoke with all the vigor of youth. He had always exercised authority over his fellow-servants. He had been the captain of the corn-pile, the stoutest at the log-rolling, the swiftest with the hoe, the neatest with the plough, and the plantation hands still looked upon him as their leader. Some negro from the River place had brought a fiddle, and, though it was a very feeble one, its screeching seemed to annoy Uncle Remus. "Put up dat ar fiddle!" he exclaimed, waving his hand. "Des put 'er up; she sets my toof on aidje. Put 'er up en les go back ter ole times. Dey aint no room fer no fiddle 'roun' yer, 'kaze w'en you gits me started dat ar fiddle won't be nowhars." "Dat 's so," said the man with the fiddle, and the irritating instrument was laid aside. "Now, den," Uncle Remus went on, "dey's a little chap yer dat you'll all come ter know mighty well one er deze odd-come-shorts, en dish yer little chap aint got so mighty long fer ter set up 'long wid us. Dat bein' de case we oughter take 'n put de bes' foot fo'mus' fer ter commence wid." "You lead, Unk Remus! You des lead en we'll foller." Thereupon the old man called to the best singers among the negroes and made them stand near him. Then he raised his right hand to his ear and stood perfectly still. The little boy thought he was listening for something, but presently Uncle Remus began to slap himself gently with his left hand, first upon the leg and then upon the breast. The other negroes kept time to this by a gentle motion of their feet, and finally, when the thump--thump--thump of this movement had regulated itself to suit the old man's fancy, he broke out with what may be called a Christmas dance song. His voice was strong, and powerful, and sweet, and its range was as astonishing as its volume. More than this, the melody to which he tuned it, and which was caught up by a hundred voices almost as sweet and as powerful as his own, was charged with a mysterious and pathetic tenderness. The fine company of men and women at the big house--men and women who had made the tour of all the capitals of Europe--listened with swelling hearts and with tears in their eyes as the song rose and fell upon the air--at one moment a tempest of melody, at another a heart-breaking strain breathed softly and sweetly to the gentle winds. The song that the little boy and the fine company heard was something like this--ridiculous enough when put in cold type, but powerful and thrilling when joined to the melody with which the negroes had invested it: _MY HONEY, MY LOVE_ _Hit 's a mighty fur ways up de Far'well Lane, My honey, my love! You may ax Mister Crow, you may ax Mr. Crane, My honey, my love! Dey'll make you a bow, en dey'll tell you de same, My honey, my love! Hit 's a mighty fur ways fer to go in de night, My honey, my love! My honey, my love, my heart's delight-- My honey, my love!_ _Mister Mink, he creep twel he wake up de snipe, My honey, my love! Mister Bull-Frog holler,_ Come-a-light my pipe _, My honey, my love! En de Pa'tridge ax,_ Aint yo' peas ripe? My honey, my love! Better not walk erlong dar much atter night, My honey, my love! My honey, my love, my heart's delight-- My honey, my love!_ _De Bully-Bat fly mighty close ter de groun', My honey, my love! Mister Fox, he coax 'er,_ Do come down! My honey, my love! Mister Coon, he rack all 'roun' en 'roun', My honey, my love! In de darkes' night, oh, de nigger, he's a sight! My honey, my love! My honey, my love, my heart's delight-- My honey, my love!_ _Oh, flee, Miss Nancy, flee ter my knee, My honey, my love! 'Lev'm big fat coons lives in one tree, My honey, my love! Oh, ladies all, won't you marry me? My honey, my love! Tu'n lef', tu'n right, we 'ull dance all night, My honey, my love! My honey, my love, my heart's delight-- My honey, my love!_ _De big Owl holler en cry fer his mate, My honey, my love! Oh, don't stay long! Oh, don't stay late! My honey, my love! Hit aint so mighty fur ter de Good-by Gate, My honey, my love! Whar we all got ter go w'en we sing out de night, My honey, my love! My honey, my love, my heart's delight-- My honey, my love!_ After a while the song was done, and other songs were sung; but it was not long before Uncle Remus discovered that the little boy was fast asleep. The old man took the child in his arms and carried him to the big house, singing softly in his ear all the way; and somehow or other the song seemed to melt and mingle in the youngster's dreams. He thought he was floating in the air, while somewhere near all the negroes were singing, Uncle Remus's voice above all the rest; and then, after he had found a resting-place upon a soft warm bank of clouds, he thought he heard the songs renewed. They grew fainter and fainter in his dreams until at last (it seemed) Uncle Remus leaned over him and sang GOOD NIGHT [Illustration: GOOD NIGHT] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOOTNOTE: [87] Dorcas. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- +--------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's Note: | | | |Punctuation and inconsistencies in language | |and dialect found in the original book have | |been retained. In a later edition, "uch ti!"| |on Page 159 appears as "Ki!". | +--------------------------------------------+ 
45631	----	Gutenberg. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) [Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been changed is noted at the end of this ebook.] [Illustration: SOLOMON IN HIS PLANTATION SUIT. Solomon Northup (signed)] FIFTH THOUSAND. TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE. NARRATIVE OF SOLOMON NORTHUP, A CITIZEN OF NEW-YORK, KIDNAPPED IN WASHINGTON CITY IN 1841, AND RESCUED IN 1853, FROM A COTTON PLANTATION NEAR THE RED RIVER, IN LOUISIANA. AUBURN: DERBY AND MILLER. BUFFALO: DERBY, ORTON AND MULLIGAN. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON & COMPANY, 47 LUDGATE HILL. 1853. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, by DERBY AND MILLER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Northern District of New-York. ENTERED IN LONDON AT STATIONERS' HALL. TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE: WHOSE NAME, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, IS IDENTIFIED WITH THE GREAT REFORM: THIS NARRATIVE, AFFORDING ANOTHER Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED "Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone To reverence what is ancient, and can plead A course of long observance for its use, That even servitude, the worst of ills, Because delivered down from sire to son, Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing. But is it fit, or can it bear the shock Of rational discussion, that a man Compounded and made up, like other men, Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust And folly in as ample measure meet, As in the bosom of the slave he rules, Should be a despot absolute, and boast Himself the only freeman of his land?" COWPER. CONTENTS. PAGE. EDITOR'S PREFACE, 15 CHAPTER I. Introductory--Ancestry--The Northup Family--Birth and Parentage--Mintus Northup--Marriage with Anne Hampton--Good Resolutions--Champlain Canal--Rafting Excursion to Canada--Farming--The Violin--Cooking--Removal to Saratoga--Parker and Perry--Slaves and Slavery--The Children--The Beginning of Sorrow, 17 CHAPTER II. The two Strangers--The Circus Company--Departure from Saratoga--Ventriloquism and Legerdemain--Journey to New-York--Free Papers--Brown and Hamilton--The haste to reach the Circus--Arrival in Washington--Funeral of Harrison--The Sudden Sickness--The Torment of Thirst--The Receding Light--Insensibility--Chains and Darkness, 28 CHAPTER III. Painful Meditations--James H. Burch--Williams' Slave Pen in Washington--The Lackey, Radburn--Assert my Freedom--The Anger of the Trader--The Paddle and Cat-o'-nine-tails--The Whipping--New Acquaintances--Ray, Williams, and Randall--Arrival of Little Emily and her Mother in the Pen--Maternal Sorrows--The Story of Eliza, 40 CHAPTER IV. Eliza's Sorrows--Preparation to Embark--Driven Through the Streets of Washington--Hail, Columbia--The Tomb of Washington--Clem Ray--The Breakfast on the Steamer--The happy Birds--Aquia Creek--Fredericksburgh--Arrival in Richmond--Goodin and his Slave Pen--Robert, of Cincinnati--David and his Wife--Mary and Lethe--Clem's Return--His subsequent Escape to Canada--The Brig Orleans--James H. Burch, 54 CHAPTER V. Arrival at Norfolk--Frederick and Maria--Arthur, the Freeman--Appointed Steward--Jim, Cuffee, and Jenny--The Storm--Bahama Banks--The Calm--The Conspiracy--The Long Boat--The Small-Pox--Death of Robert--Manning, the Sailor--The Meeting in the Forecastle--The Letter--Arrival at New-Orleans--Arthur's Rescue--Theophilus Freeman, the Consignee--Platt--First Night in the New-Orleans Slave Pen, 65 CHAPTER VI. Freeman's Industry--Cleanliness and Clothes--Exercising in the Show Room--The Dance--Bob, the Fiddler--Arrival of Customers--Slaves Examined--The Old Gentleman of New-Orleans--Sale of David, Caroline, and Lethe--Parting of Randall and Eliza--Small-Pox--The Hospital--Recovery and Return to Freeman's Slave Pen--The Purchaser of Eliza, Harry, and Platt--Eliza's Agony on Parting from Little Emily, 78 CHAPTER VII. The Steamboat Rodolph--Departure from New-Orleans--William Ford--Arrival at Alexandria, on Red River--Resolutions--The Great Pine Woods--Wild Cattle--Martin's Summer Residence--The Texas Road--Arrival at Master Ford's--Rose--Mistress Ford--Sally and her Children--John, the Cook--Walter, Sam, and Antony--The Mills on Indian Creek--Sabbath Days--Sam's Conversion--The Profit of Kindness--Rafting--Adam Taydem, the Little White Man--Cascalla and his Tribe--The Indian Ball--John M. Tibeats--The Storm approaching, 89 CHAPTER VIII. Ford's Embarrassments--The Sale to Tibeats--The Chattel Mortgage--Mistress Ford's Plantation on Bayou Boeuf--Description of the Latter--Ford's Brother-in-law, Peter Tanner--Meeting with Eliza--She still Mourns for her Children--Ford's Overseer, Chapin--Tibeats' Abuse--The Keg of Nails--The First Fight with Tibeats--His Discomfiture and Castigation--The attempt to Hang me--Chapin's Interference and Speech--Unhappy Reflections--Abrupt Departure of Tibeats, Cook, and Ramsey--Lawson and the Brown Mule--Message to the Pine Woods, 105 CHAPTER IX. The Hot Sun--Yet bound--The Cords sink into my Flesh--Chapin's Uneasiness--Speculation--Rachel, and her Cup of Water--Suffering increases--The Happiness of Slavery--Arrival of Ford--He cuts the Cords which bind me, and takes the Rope from my Neck--Misery--The gathering of the Slaves in Eliza's Cabin--Their Kindness--Rachel Repeats the Occurrences of the Day--Lawson entertains his Companions with an Account of his Ride--Chapin's apprehensions of Tibeats--Hired to Peter Tanner--Peter expounds the Scriptures--Description of the Stocks, 118 CHAPTER X. Return to Tibeats--Impossibility of pleasing him--He attacks me with a Hatchet--The Struggle over the Broad Axe--The Temptation to Murder him--Escape across the Plantation--Observations from the Fence--Tibeats approaches, followed by the Hounds--They take my Track--Their loud Yells--They almost overtake me--I reach the Water--The Hounds confused--Moccasin Snakes--Alligators--Night in the "Great Pacoudrie Swamp"--The Sounds of Life--North-West Course--Emerge into the Pine Woods--Slave and his Young Master--Arrival at Ford's--Food and Rest, 131 CHAPTER XI. The Mistress' Garden--The Crimson and Golden Fruit--Orange and Pomegranate Trees--Return to Bayou Boeuf--Master Ford's Remarks on the way--The Meeting-with Tibeats--His Account of the Chase--Ford censures his Brutality--Arrival at the Plantation--Astonishment of the Slaves on seeing me--The anticipated Flogging--Kentucky John--Mr. Eldret, the Planter--Eldret's Sam--Trip to the "Big Cane Brake"--The Tradition of "Sutton's Field"--Forest Trees--Gnats and Mosquitoes--The Arrival of Black Women in the Big Cane--Lumber Women--Sudden Appearance of Tibeats--His Provoking Treatment--Visit to Bayou Boeuf--The Slave Pass--Southern Hospitality--The Last of Eliza--Sale to Edwin Epps, 146 CHAPTER XII. Personal Appearance of Epps--Epps, Drunk and Sober--A Glimpse of his History--Cotton Growing--The Mode of Ploughing and Preparing Ground--Of Planting, of Hoeing, of Picking, of Treating Raw Hands--The difference in Cotton Pickers--Patsey a remarkable one--Tasked according to Ability--Beauty of a Cotton Field--The Slave's Labors--Fear of Approaching the Gin-House--Weighing--"Chores"--Cabin Life--The Corn Mill--The Uses of the Gourd--Fear of Oversleeping--Fear continually--Mode of Cultivating Corn--Sweet Potatoes--Fertility of the Soil--Fattening Hogs--Preserving Bacon--Raising Cattle--Shooting-Matches--Garden Products--Flowers and Verdure, 162 CHAPTER XIII. The Curious Axe-Helve--Symptoms of approaching Illness--Continue to decline--The Whip ineffectual--Confined to the Cabin--Visit by Dr. Wines--Partial Recovery--Failure at Cotton Picking--What may be heard on Epps' Plantation--Lashes Graduated--Epps in a Whipping Mood--Epps in a Dancing Mood--Description of the Dance--Loss of Rest no Excuse--Epps' Characteristics--Jim Burns--Removal from Huff Power to Bayou Boeuf--Description of Uncle Abram; of Wiley; of Aunt Phebe; of Bob, Henry, and Edward; of Patsey; with a Genealogical Account of each--Something of their Past History, and Peculiar Characteristics-- Jealousy and Lust--Patsey, the Victim, 176 CHAPTER XIV. Destruction of the Cotton Crop in 1845--Demand for Laborers in St. Mary's Parish--Sent thither in a Drove--The Order of the March--The Grand Coteau--Hired to Judge Turner on Bayou Salle--Appointed Driver in his Sugar House--Sunday Services--Slave Furniture; how obtained--The Party at Yarney's, in Centreville--Good Fortune--The Captain of the Steamer--His Refusal to Secrete me--Return to Bayou Boeuf--Sight of Tibeats--Patsey's Sorrows--Tumult and Contention--Hunting the Coon and Opossum--The Cunning of the latter--The Lean Condition of the Slave--Description of the Fish Trap--The Murder of the Man from Natchez--Epps Challenged by Marshall--The Influence of Slavery--The Love of Freedom, 191 CHAPTER XV. Labors on Sugar Plantations--The Mode of Planting Cane--of Hoeing Cane--Cane Ricks--Cutting Cane--Description of the Cane Knife--Winrowing--Preparing for Succeeding Crops--Description of Hawkins' Sugar Mill on Bayou Boeuf--The Christmas Holidays--The Carnival Season of the Children of Bondage--The Christmas Supper--Red, the Favorite Color--The Violin, and the Consolation it afforded--The Christmas Dance--Lively, the Coquette--Sam Roberts, and his Rivals--Slave Songs--Southern Life as it is--Three Days in the Year--The System of Marriage--Uncle Abram's Contempt of Matrimony, 208 CHAPTER XVI. Overseers--How they are Armed and Accompanied--The Homicide--His Execution at Marksville--Slave Drivers--Appointed Driver on removing to Bayou Boeuf--Practice makes perfect--Epps's Attempt to Cut Platt's Throat--The Escape from him--Protected by the Mistress--Forbids Reading and Writing--Obtain a Sheet of Paper after Nine Years' Effort--The Letter--Armsby, the Mean White--Partially confide in him--His Treachery--Epps' Suspicions--How they were quieted--Burning the Letter--Armsby leaves the Bayou--Disappointment and Despair, 223 CHAPTER XVII. Wiley disregards the counsels of Aunt Phebe and Uncle Abram, and is caught by the Patrollers--The Organization and Duties of the latter--Wiley Runs Away--Speculations in regard to him--His Unexpected Return--His Capture on the Red River, and Confinement in Alexandria Jail--Discovered by Joseph B. Roberts--Subduing Dogs in anticipation of Escape--The Fugitives in the Great Pine Woods--Captured by Adam Taydem and the Indians--Augustus killed by Dogs--Nelly, Eldret's Slave Woman--The Story of Celeste--The Concerted Movement--Lew Cheney, the Traitor--The Idea of Insurrection, 236 CHAPTER XVIII. O'Niel, the Tanner--Conversation with Aunt Phebe overheard--Epps in the Tanning Business--Stabbing of Uncle Abram--The Ugly Wound--Epps is Jealous--Patsey is Missing--Her Return from Shaw's--Harriet, Shaw's Black Wife--Epps Enraged--Patsey denies his Charges--She is Tied Down Naked to Four Stakes--The Inhuman Flogging--Flaying of Patsey--The Beauty of the Day--The Bucket of Salt Water--The Dress stiff with Blood--Patsey grows Melancholy--Her Idea of God and Eternity--Of Heaven and Freedom--The Effect of Slave-Whipping--Epps' Oldest Son--"The Child is Father to the Man," 250 CHAPTER XIX. Avery, on Bayou Rouge--Peculiarity of Dwellings--Epps builds a New House--Bass, the Carpenter--His Noble Qualities--His Personal Appearance and Eccentricities--Bass and Epps discuss the Question of Slavery--Epps' Opinion of Bass--I make myself known to him--Our Conversation--His Surprise--The Midnight Meeting on the Bayou Bank--Bass' Assurances--Declares War against Slavery--Why I did not Disclose my History--Bass writes Letters--Copy of his Letter to Messrs. Parker and Perry--The Fever of Suspense--Disappointments--Bass endeavors to cheer me--My Faith in him, 263 CHAPTER XX. Bass faithful to his word--His Arrival on Christmas Eve--The Difficulty of Obtaining an Interview--The Meeting in the Cabin--Non-arrival of the Letter--Bass announces his Intention to proceed North--Christmas--Conversation between Epps and Bass--Young Mistress McCoy, the Beauty of Bayou Boeuf--The "Ne plus ultra" of Dinners--Music and Dancing--Presence of the Mistress--Her Exceeding Beauty--The Last Slave Dance--William Pierce--Oversleep myself--The Last Whipping--Despondency--Cold Morning--Epps' Threats--The Passing Carriage--Strangers approaching through the Cotton-Field--Last Hour on Bayou Boeuf, 279 CHAPTER XXI. The Letter reaches Saratoga--Is forwarded to Anne--Is laid before Henry B. Northup--The Statute of May 14, 1840--Its Provisions--Anne's Memorial to the Governor--The affidavits Accompanying it--Senator Soule's Letter--Departure of the Agent appointed by the Governor--Arrival at Marksville--The Hon. John P. Waddill--The Conversation on New-York Politics--It suggests a Fortunate Idea--The Meeting with Bass--The Secret out--Legal Proceedings instituted--Departure of Northup and the Sheriff from Marksville for Bayou Boeuf--Arrangements on the Way--Reach Epps' Plantation--Discover his Slaves in the Cotton-Field--The Meeting--The Farewell, 289 CHAPTER XXII. Arrival in New-Orleans--Glimpse of Freeman--Genois, the Recorder--His Description of Solomon--Reach Charleston Interrupted by Custom House Officers--Pass through Richmond--Arrival in Washington--Burch Arrested--Shekels and Thorn--Their Testimony--Burch Acquitted--Arrest of Solomon--Burch withdraws the Complaint--The Higher Tribunal--Departure from Washington--Arrival at Sandy Hill--Old Friends and Familiar Scenes--Proceed to Glens Falls--Meeting with Anne, Margaret, and Elizabeth--Solomon Northup Staunton--Incidents--Conclusion, 310 APPENDIX, 323 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PORTRAIT OF SOLOMON IN HIS PLANTATION SUIT, SCENE IN THE SLAVE PEN AT WASHINGTON, SEPARATION OF ELIZA AND HER LAST CHILD, CHAPIN RESCUES SOLOMON FROM HANGING, THE STAKING OUT AND FLOGGING OF THE GIRL PATSEY, SCENE IN THE COTTON FIELD, AND SOLOMON'S DELIVERY, ARRIVAL HOME, AND FIRST MEETING WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN, EDITOR'S PREFACE. When the editor commenced the preparation of the following narrative, he did not suppose it would reach the size of this volume. In order, however, to present all the facts which have been communicated to him, it has seemed necessary to extend it to its present length. Many of the statements contained in the following pages are corroborated by abundant evidence--others rest entirely upon Solomon's assertion. That he has adhered strictly to the truth, the editor, at least, who has had an opportunity of detecting any contradiction or discrepancy in his statements, is well satisfied. He has invariably repeated the same story without deviating in the slightest particular, and has also carefully perused the manuscript, dictating an alteration wherever the most trivial inaccuracy has appeared. It was Solomon's fortune, during his captivity, to be owned by several masters. The treatment he received while at the "Pine Woods" shows that among slaveholders there are men of humanity as well as of cruelty. Some of them are spoken of with emotions of gratitude--others in a spirit of bitterness. It is believed that the following account of his experience on Bayou Boeuf presents a correct picture of Slavery, in all its lights and shadows, as it now exists in that locality. Unbiased, as he conceives, by any prepossessions or prejudices, the only object of the editor has been to give a faithful history of Solomon Northup's life, as he received it from his lips. In the accomplishment of that object, he trusts he has succeeded, notwithstanding the numerous faults of style and of expression it may be found to contain. DAVID WILSON. WHITEHALL, N. Y., May, 1853. NARRATIVE OF SOLOMON NORTHUP. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY--ANCESTRY--THE NORTHUP FAMILY--BIRTH AND PARENTAGE--MINTUS NORTHUP--MARRIAGE WITH ANNE HAMPTON--GOOD RESOLUTIONS--CHAMPLAIN CANAL--RAFTING EXCURSION TO CANADA--FARMING--THE VIOLIN--COOKING--REMOVAL TO SARATOGA--PARKER AND PERRY--SLAVES AND SLAVERY--THE CHILDREN--THE BEGINNING OF SORROW. Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a free State--and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years--it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public. Since my return to liberty, I have not failed to perceive the increasing interest throughout the Northern States, in regard to the subject of Slavery. Works of fiction, professing to portray its features in their more pleasing as well as more repugnant aspects, have been circulated to an extent unprecedented, and, as I understand, have created a fruitful topic of comment and discussion. I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation--only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage. As far back as I have been able to ascertain, my ancestors on the paternal side were slaves in Rhode Island. They belonged to a family by the name of Northup, one of whom, removing to the State of New-York, settled at Hoosic, in Rensselaer county. He brought with him Mintus Northup, my father. On the death of this gentleman, which must have occurred some fifty years ago, my father became free, having been emancipated by a direction in his will. Henry B. Northup, Esq., of Sandy Hill, a distinguished counselor at law, and the man to whom, under Providence, I am indebted for my present liberty, and my return to the society of my wife and children, is a relative of the family in which my forefathers were thus held to service, and from which they took the name I bear. To this fact may be attributed the persevering interest he has taken in my behalf. Sometime after my father's liberation, he removed to the town of Minerva, Essex county, N. Y., where I was born, in the month of July, 1808. How long he remained in the latter place I have not the means of definitely ascertaining. From thence he removed to Granville, Washington county, near a place known as Slyborough, where, for some years, he labored on the farm of Clark Northup, also a relative of his old master; from thence he removed to the Alden farm, at Moss Street, a short distance north of the village of Sandy Hill; and from thence to the farm now owned by Russel Pratt, situated on the road leading from Fort Edward to Argyle, where he continued to reside until his death, which took place on the 22d day of November, 1829. He left a widow and two children--myself, and Joseph, an elder brother. The latter is still living in the county of Oswego, near the city of that name; my mother died during the period of my captivity. Though born a slave, and laboring under the disadvantages to which my unfortunate race is subjected, my father was a man respected for his industry and integrity, as many now living, who well remember him, are ready to testify. His whole life was passed in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, never seeking employment in those more menial positions, which seem to be especially allotted to the children of Africa. Besides giving us an education surpassing that ordinarily bestowed upon children in our condition, he acquired, by his diligence and economy, a sufficient property qualification to entitle him to the right of suffrage. He was accustomed to speak to us of his early life; and although at all times cherishing the warmest emotions of kindness, and even of affection towards the family, in whose house he had been a bondsman, he nevertheless comprehended the system of Slavery, and dwelt with sorrow on the degradation of his race. He endeavored to imbue our minds with sentiments of morality, and to teach us to place our trust and confidence in Him who regards the humblest as well as the highest of his creatures. How often since that time has the recollection of his paternal counsels occurred to me, while lying in a slave hut in the distant and sickly regions of Louisiana, smarting with the undeserved wounds which an inhuman master had inflicted, and longing only for the grave which had covered him, to shield me also from the lash of the oppressor. In the church-yard at Sandy Hill, an humble stone marks the spot where he reposes, after having worthily performed the duties appertaining to the lowly sphere wherein God had appointed him to walk. Up to this period I had been principally engaged with my father in the labors of the farm. The leisure hours allowed me were generally either employed over my books, or playing on the violin--an amusement which was the ruling passion of my youth. It has also been the source of consolation since, affording pleasure to the simple beings with whom my lot was cast, and beguiling my own thoughts, for many hours, from the painful contemplation of my fate. On Christmas day, 1829, I was married to Anne Hampton, a colored girl then living in the vicinity of our residence. The ceremony was performed at Fort Edward, by Timothy Eddy, Esq., a magistrate of that town, and still a prominent citizen of the place. She had resided a long time at Sandy Hill, with Mr. Baird, proprietor of the Eagle Tavern, and also in the family of Rev. Alexander Proudfit, of Salem. This gentleman for many years had presided over the Presbyterian society at the latter place, and was widely distinguished for his learning and piety. Anne still holds in grateful remembrance the exceeding kindness and the excellent counsels of that good man. She is not able to determine the exact line of her descent, but the blood of three races mingles in her veins. It is difficult to tell whether the red, white, or black predominates. The union of them all, however, in her origin, has given her a singular but pleasing expression, such as is rarely to be seen. Though somewhat resembling, yet she cannot properly be styled a quadroon, a class to which, I have omitted to mention, my mother belonged. I had just now passed the period of my minority, having reached the age of twenty-one years in the month of July previous. Deprived of the advice and assistance of my father, with a wife dependent upon me for support, I resolved to enter upon a life of industry; and notwithstanding the obstacle of color, and the consciousness of my lowly state, indulged in pleasant dreams of a good time coming, when the possession of some humble habitation, with a few surrounding acres, should reward my labors, and bring me the means of happiness and comfort. From the time of my marriage to this day the love I have borne my wife has been sincere and unabated; and only those who have felt the glowing tenderness a father cherishes for his offspring, can appreciate my affection for the beloved children which have since been born to us. This much I deem appropriate and necessary to say, in order that those who read these pages, may comprehend the poignancy of those sufferings I have been doomed to bear. Immediately upon our marriage we commenced house-keeping, in the old yellow building then standing at the southern extremity of Fort Edward village, and which has since been transformed into a modern mansion, and lately occupied by Captain Lathrop. It is known as the Fort House. In this building the courts were sometime held after the organization of the county. It was also occupied by Burgoyne in 1777, being situated near the old Fort on the left bank of the Hudson. During the winter I was employed with others repairing the Champlain Canal, on that section over which William Van Nortwick was superintendent. David McEachron had the immediate charge of the men in whose company I labored. By the time the canal opened in the spring, I was enabled, from the savings of my wages, to purchase a pair of horses, and other things necessarily required in the business of navigation. Having hired several efficient hands to assist me, I entered into contracts for the transportation of large rafts of timber from Lake Champlain to Troy. Dyer Beckwith and a Mr. Bartemy, of Whitehall, accompanied me on several trips. During the season I became perfectly familiar with the art and mysteries of rafting--a knowledge which afterwards enabled me to render profitable service to a worthy master, and to astonish the simple-witted lumbermen on the banks of the Bayou Boeuf. In one of my voyages down Lake Champlain, I was induced to make a visit to Canada. Repairing to Montreal, I visited the cathedral and other places of interest in that city, from whence I continued my excursion to Kingston and other towns, obtaining a knowledge of localities, which was also of service to me afterwards, as will appear towards the close of this narrative. Having completed my contracts on the canal satisfactorily to myself and to my employer, and not wishing to remain idle, now that the navigation of the canal was again suspended, I entered into another contract with Medad Gunn, to cut a large quantity of wood. In this business I was engaged during the winter of 1831-32. With the return of spring, Anne and myself conceived the project of taking a farm in the neighborhood. I had been accustomed from earliest youth to agricultural labors, and it was an occupation congenial to my tastes. I accordingly entered into arrangements for a part of the old Alden farm, on which my father formerly resided. With one cow, one swine, a yoke of fine oxen I had lately purchased of Lewis Brown, in Hartford, and other personal property and effects, we proceeded to our new home in Kingsbury. That year I planted twenty-five acres of corn, sowed large fields of oats, and commenced farming upon as large a scale as my utmost means would permit. Anne was diligent about the house affairs, while I toiled laboriously in the field. On this place we continued to reside until 1834. In the winter season I had numerous calls to play on the violin. Wherever the young people assembled to dance, I was almost invariably there. Throughout the surrounding villages my fiddle was notorious. Anne, also, during her long residence at the Eagle Tavern, had become somewhat famous as a cook. During court weeks, and on public occasions, she was employed at high wages in the kitchen at Sherrill's Coffee House. We always returned home from the performance of these services with money in our pockets; so that, with fiddling, cooking, and farming, we soon found ourselves in the possession of abundance, and, in fact, leading a happy and prosperous life. Well, indeed, would it have been for us had we remained on the farm at Kingsbury; but the time came when the next step was to be taken towards the cruel destiny that awaited me. In March, 1834, we removed to Saratoga Springs. We occupied a house belonging to Daniel O'Brien, on the north side of Washington street. At that time Isaac Taylor kept a large boarding house, known as Washington Hall, at the north end of Broadway. He employed me to drive a hack, in which capacity I worked for him two years. After this time I was generally employed through the visiting season, as also was Anne, in the United States Hotel, and other public houses of the place. In winter seasons I relied upon my violin, though during the construction of the Troy and Saratoga railroad, I performed many hard days' labor upon it. I was in the habit, at Saratoga, of purchasing articles necessary for my family at the stores of Mr. Cephas Parker and Mr. William Perry, gentlemen towards whom, for many acts of kindness, I entertained feelings of strong regard. It was for this reason that, twelve years afterwards, I caused to be directed to them the letter, which is hereinafter inserted, and which was the means, in the hands of Mr. Northup, of my fortunate deliverance. While living at the United States Hotel, I frequently met with slaves, who had accompanied their masters from the South. They were always well dressed and well provided for, leading apparently an easy life, with but few of its ordinary troubles to perplex them. Many times they entered into conversation with me on the subject of Slavery. Almost uniformly I found they cherished a secret desire for liberty. Some of them expressed the most ardent anxiety to escape, and consulted me on the best method of effecting it. The fear of punishment, however, which they knew was certain to attend their re-capture and return, in all cases proved sufficient to deter them from the experiment. Having all my life breathed the free air of the North, and conscious that I possessed the same feelings and affections that find a place in the white man's breast; conscious, moreover, of an intelligence equal to that of some men, at least, with a fairer skin, I was too ignorant, perhaps too independent, to conceive how any one could be content to live in the abject condition of a slave. I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of Slavery; and never once, I am proud to say, did I fail to counsel any one who came to me, to watch his opportunity, and strike for freedom. I continued to reside at Saratoga until the spring of 1841. The flattering anticipations which, seven years before, had seduced us from the quiet farm-house, on the east side of the Hudson, had not been realized. Though always in comfortable circumstances, we had not prospered. The society and associations at that world-renowned watering place, were not calculated to preserve the simple habits of industry and economy to which I had been accustomed, but, on the contrary, to substitute others in their stead, tending to shiftlessness and extravagance. At this time we were the parents of three children--Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo. Elizabeth, the eldest, was in her tenth year; Margaret was two years younger, and little Alonzo had just passed his fifth birth-day. They filled our house with gladness. Their young voices were music in our ears. Many an airy castle did their mother and myself build for the little innocents. When not at labor I was always walking with them, clad in their best attire, through the streets and groves of Saratoga. Their presence was my delight; and I clasped them to my bosom with as warm and tender love as if their clouded skins had been as white as snow. Thus far the history of my life presents nothing whatever unusual--nothing but the common hopes, and loves, and labors of an obscure colored man, making his humble progress in the world. But now I had reached a turning point in my existence--reached the threshold of unutterable wrong, and sorrow, and despair. Now had I approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thick darkness whereof I was soon to disappear, thenceforward to be hidden from the eyes of all my kindred, and shut out from the sweet light of liberty, for many a weary year. CHAPTER II. THE TWO STRANGERS--THE CIRCUS COMPANY--DEPARTURE FROM SARATOGA--VENTRILOQUISM AND LEGERDEMAIN--JOURNEY TO NEW-YORK--FREE PAPERS--BROWN AND HAMILTON--THE HASTE TO REACH THE CIRCUS--ARRIVAL IN WASHINGTON--FUNERAL OF HARRISON--THE SUDDEN SICKNESS--THE TORMENT OF THIRST--THE RECEDING LIGHT--INSENSIBILITY--CHAINS AND DARKNESS. One morning, towards the latter part of the month of March, 1841, having at that time no particular business to engage my attention, I was walking about the village of Saratoga Springs, thinking to myself where I might obtain some present employment, until the busy season should arrive. Anne, as was her usual custom, had gone over to Sandy Hill, a distance of some twenty miles, to take charge of the culinary department at Sherrill's Coffee House, during the session of the court. Elizabeth, I think, had accompanied her. Margaret and Alonzo were with their aunt at Saratoga. On the corner of Congress street and Broadway, near the tavern, then, and for aught I know to the contrary, still kept by Mr. Moon, I was met by two gentlemen of respectable appearance, both of whom were entirely unknown to me. I have the impression that they were introduced to me by some one of my acquaintances, but who, I have in vain endeavored to recall, with the remark that I was an expert player on the violin. At any rate, they immediately entered into conversation on that subject, making numerous inquiries touching my proficiency in that respect. My responses being to all appearances satisfactory, they proposed to engage my services for a short period, stating, at the same time, I was just such a person as their business required. Their names, as they afterwards gave them to me, were Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton, though whether these were their true appellations, I have strong reasons to doubt. The former was a man apparently forty years of age, somewhat short and thick-set, with a countenance indicating shrewdness and intelligence. He wore a black frock coat and black hat, and said he resided either at Rochester or at Syracuse. The latter was a young man of fair complexion and light eyes, and, I should judge, had not passed the age of twenty-five. He was tall and slender, dressed in a snuff-colored coat, with glossy hat, and vest of elegant pattern. His whole apparel was in the extreme of fashion. His appearance was somewhat effeminate, but prepossessing, and there was about him an easy air, that showed he had mingled with the world. They were connected, as they informed me, with a circus company, then in the city of Washington; that they were on their way thither to rejoin it, having left it for a short time to make an excursion northward, for the purpose of seeing the country, and were paying their expenses by an occasional exhibition. They also remarked that they had found much difficulty in procuring music for their entertainments, and that if I would accompany them as far as New-York, they would give me one dollar for each day's services, and three dollars in addition for every night I played at their performances, besides sufficient to pay the expenses of my return from New-York to Saratoga. I at once accepted the tempting offer, both for the reward it promised, and from a desire to visit the metropolis. They were anxious to leave immediately. Thinking my absence would be brief, I did not deem it necessary to write to Anne whither I had gone; in fact supposing that my return, perhaps, would be as soon as hers. So taking a change of linen and my violin, I was ready to depart. The carriage was brought round--a covered one, drawn by a pair of noble bays, altogether forming an elegant establishment. Their baggage, consisting of three large trunks, was fastened on the rack, and mounting to the driver's seat, while they took their places in the rear, I drove away from Saratoga on the road to Albany, elated with my new position, and happy as I had ever been, on any day in all my life. We passed through Ballston, and striking the ridge road, as it is called, if my memory correctly serves me, followed it direct to Albany. We reached that city before dark, and stopped at a hotel southward from the Museum. This night I had an opportunity of witnessing one of their performances--the only one, during the whole period I was with them. Hamilton was stationed at the door; I formed the orchestra, while Brown provided the entertainment. It consisted in throwing balls, dancing on the rope, frying pancakes in a hat, causing invisible pigs to squeal, and other like feats of ventriloquism and legerdemain. The audience was extraordinarily sparse, and not of the selectest character at that, and Hamilton's report of the proceeds presented but a "beggarly account of empty boxes." Early next morning we renewed our journey. The burden of their conversation now was the expression of an anxiety to reach the circus without delay. They hurried forward, without again stopping to exhibit, and in due course of time, we reached New-York, taking lodgings at a house on the west side of the city, in a street running from Broadway to the river. I supposed my journey was at an end, and expected in a day or two at least, to return to my friends and family at Saratoga. Brown and Hamilton, however, began to importune me to continue with them to Washington. They alleged that immediately on their arrival, now that the summer season was approaching, the circus would set out for the north. They promised me a situation and high wages if I would accompany them. Largely did they expatiate on the advantages that would result to me, and such were the flattering representations they made, that I finally concluded to accept the offer. The next morning they suggested that, inasmuch as we were about entering a slave State, it would be well, before leaving New-York, to procure free papers. The idea struck me as a prudent one, though I think it would scarcely have occurred to me, had they not proposed it. We proceeded at once to what I understood to be the Custom House. They made oath to certain facts showing I was a free man. A paper was drawn up and handed us, with the direction to take it to the clerk's office. We did so, and the clerk having added something to it, for which he was paid six shillings, we returned again to the Custom House. Some further formalities were gone through with before it was completed, when, paying the officer two dollars, I placed the papers in my pocket, and started with my two friends to our hotel. I thought at the time, I must confess, that the papers were scarcely worth the cost of obtaining them--the apprehension of danger to my personal safety never having suggested itself to me in the remotest manner. The clerk, to whom we were directed, I remember, made a memorandum in a large book, which, I presume, is in the office yet. A reference to the entries during the latter part of March, or first of April, 1841, I have no doubt will satisfy the incredulous, at least so far as this particular transaction is concerned. With the evidence of freedom in my possession, the next day after our arrival in New-York, we crossed the ferry to Jersey City, and took the road to Philadelphia. Here we remained one night, continuing our journey towards Baltimore early in the morning. In due time, we arrived in the latter city, and stopped at a hotel near the railroad depot, either kept by a Mr. Rathbone, or known as the Rathbone House. All the way from New-York, their anxiety to reach the circus seemed to grow more and more intense. We left the carriage at Baltimore, and entering the cars, proceeded to Washington, at which place we arrived just at nightfall, the evening previous to the funeral of General Harrison, and stopped at Gadsby's Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue. After supper they called me to their apartments, and paid me forty-three dollars, a sum greater than my wages amounted to, which act of generosity was in consequence, they said, of their not having exhibited as often as they had given me to anticipate, during our trip from Saratoga. They moreover informed me that it had been the intention of the circus company to leave Washington the next morning, but that on account of the funeral, they had concluded to remain another day. They were then, as they had been from the time of our first meeting, extremely kind. No opportunity was omitted of addressing me in the language of approbation; while, on the other hand, I was certainly much prepossessed in their favor. I gave them my confidence without reserve, and would freely have trusted them to almost any extent. Their constant conversation and manner towards me--their foresight in suggesting the idea of free papers, and a hundred other little acts, unnecessary to be repeated--all indicated that they were friends indeed, sincerely solicitous for my welfare. I know not but they were. I know not but they were innocent of the great wickedness of which I now believe them guilty. Whether they were accessory to my misfortunes--subtle and inhuman monsters in the shape of men--designedly luring me away from home and family, and liberty, for the sake of gold--those who read these pages will have the same means of determining as myself. If they were innocent, my sudden disappearance must have been unaccountable indeed; but revolving in my mind all the attending circumstances, I never yet could indulge, towards them, so charitable a supposition. After receiving the money from them, of which they appeared to have an abundance, they advised me not to go into the streets that night, inasmuch as I was unacquainted with the customs of the city. Promising to remember their advice, I left them together, and soon after was shown by a colored servant to a sleeping room in the back part of the hotel, on the ground floor. I laid down to rest, thinking of home and wife, and children, and the long distance that stretched between us, until I fell asleep. But no good angel of pity came to my bedside, bidding me to fly--no voice of mercy forewarned me in my dreams of the trials that were just at hand. The next day there was a great pageant in Washington. The roar of cannon and the tolling of bells filled the air, while many houses were shrouded with crape, and the streets were black with people. As the day advanced, the procession made its appearance, coming slowly through the Avenue, carriage after carriage, in long succession, while thousands upon thousands followed on foot--all moving to the sound of melancholy music. They were bearing the dead body of Harrison to the grave. From early in the morning, I was constantly in the company of Hamilton and Brown. They were the only persons I knew in Washington. We stood together as the funeral pomp passed by. I remember distinctly how the window glass would break and rattle to the ground, after each report of the cannon they were firing in the burial ground. We went to the Capitol, and walked a long time about the grounds. In the afternoon, they strolled towards the President's House, all the time keeping me near to them, and pointing out various places of interest. As yet, I had seen nothing of the circus. In fact, I had thought of it but little, if at all, amidst the excitement of the day. My friends, several times during the afternoon, entered drinking saloons, and called for liquor. They were by no means in the habit, however, so far as I knew them, of indulging to excess. On these occasions, after serving themselves, they would pour out a glass and hand it to me. I did not become intoxicated, as may be inferred from what subsequently occurred. Towards evening, and soon after partaking of one of these potations, I began to experience most unpleasant sensations. I felt extremely ill. My head commenced aching--a dull, heavy pain, inexpressibly disagreeable. At the supper table, I was without appetite; the sight and flavor of food was nauseous. About dark the same servant conducted me to the room I had occupied the previous night. Brown and Hamilton advised me to retire, commiserating me kindly, and expressing hopes that I would be better in the morning. Divesting myself of coat and boots merely, I threw myself upon the bed. It was impossible to sleep. The pain in my head continued to increase, until it became almost unbearable. In a short time I became thirsty. My lips were parched. I could think of nothing but water--of lakes and flowing rivers, of brooks where I had stooped to drink, and of the dripping bucket, rising with its cool and overflowing nectar, from the bottom of the well. Towards midnight, as near as I could judge, I arose, unable longer to bear such intensity of thirst. I was a stranger in the house, and knew nothing of its apartments. There was no one up, as I could observe. Groping about at random, I knew not where, I found the way at last to a kitchen in the basement. Two or three colored servants were moving through it, one of whom, a woman, gave me two glasses of water. It afforded momentary relief, but by the time I had reached my room again, the same burning desire of drink, the same tormenting thirst, had again returned. It was even more torturing than before, as was also the wild pain in my head, if such a thing could be. I was in sore distress--in most excruciating agony! I seemed to stand on the brink of madness! The memory of that night of horrible suffering will follow me to the grave. In the course of an hour or more after my return from the kitchen, I was conscious of some one entering my room. There seemed to be several--a mingling of various voices,--but how many, or who they were, I cannot tell. Whether Brown and Hamilton were among them, is a mere matter of conjecture. I only remember, with any degree of distinctness, that I was told it was necessary to go to a physician and procure medicine, and that pulling on my boots, without coat or hat, I followed them through a long passage-way, or alley, into the open street. It ran out at right angles from Pennsylvania Avenue. On the opposite side there was a light burning in a window. My impression is there were then three persons with me, but it is altogether indefinite and vague, and like the memory of a painful dream. Going towards the light, which I imagined proceeded from a physician's office, and which seemed to recede as I advanced, is the last glimmering recollection I can now recall. From that moment I was insensible. How long I remained in that condition--whether only that night, or many days and nights--I do not know; but when consciousness returned, I found myself alone, in utter darkness, and in chains. The pain in my head had subsided in a measure, but I was very faint and weak. I was sitting upon a low bench, made of rough boards, and without coat or hat. I was hand-cuffed. Around my ankles also were a pair of heavy fetters. One end of a chain was fastened to a large ring in the floor, the other to the fetters on my ankles. I tried in vain to stand upon my feet. Waking from such a painful trance, it was some time before I could collect my thoughts. Where was I? What was the meaning of these chains? Where were Brown and Hamilton? What had I done to deserve imprisonment in such a dungeon? I could not comprehend. There was a blank of some indefinite period, preceding my awakening in that lonely place, the events of which the utmost stretch of memory was unable to recall. I listened intently for some sign or sound of life, but nothing broke the oppressive silence, save the clinking of my chains, whenever I chanced to move. I spoke aloud, but the sound of my voice startled me. I felt of my pockets, so far as the fetters would allow--far enough, indeed, to ascertain that I had not only been robbed of liberty, but that my money and free papers were also gone! Then did the idea begin to break upon my mind, at first dim and confused, that I had been kidnapped. But that I thought was incredible. There must have been some misapprehension--some unfortunate mistake. It could not be that a free citizen of New-York, who had wronged no man, nor violated any law, should be dealt with thus inhumanly. The more I contemplated my situation, however, the more I became confirmed in my suspicions. It was a desolate thought, indeed. I felt there was no trust or mercy in unfeeling man; and commending myself to the God of the oppressed, bowed my head upon my fettered hands, and wept most bitterly. CHAPTER III. PAINFUL MEDITATIONS--JAMES H. BURCH--WILLIAMS' SLAVE PEN IN WASHINGTON--THE LACKEY, RADBURN--ASSERT MY FREEDOM--THE ANGER OF THE TRADER--THE PADDLE AND CAT-O'-NINETAILS--THE WHIPPING--NEW ACQUAINTANCES--RAY, WILLIAMS, AND RANDALL--ARRIVAL OF LITTLE EMILY AND HER MOTHER IN THE PEN--MATERNAL SORROWS--THE STORY OF ELIZA. Some three hours elapsed, during which time I remained seated on the low bench, absorbed in painful meditations. At length I heard the crowing of a cock, and soon a distant rumbling sound, as of carriages hurrying through the streets, came to my ears, and I knew that it was day. No ray of light, however, penetrated my prison. Finally, I heard footsteps immediately overhead, as of some one walking to and fro. It occurred to me then that I must be in an underground apartment, and the damp, mouldy odors of the place confirmed the supposition. The noise above continued for at least an hour, when, at last, I heard footsteps approaching from without. A key rattled in the lock--a strong door swung back upon its hinges, admitting a flood of light, and two men entered and stood before me. One of them was a large, powerful man, forty years of age, perhaps, with dark, chestnut-colored hair, slightly interspersed with gray. His face was full, his complexion flush, his features grossly coarse, expressive of nothing but cruelty and cunning. He was about five feet ten inches high, of full habit, and, without prejudice, I must be allowed to say, was a man whose whole appearance was sinister and repugnant. His name was James H. Burch, as I learned afterwards--a well-known slave-dealer in Washington; and then, or lately, connected in business, as a partner, with Theophilus Freeman, of New-Orleans. The person who accompanied him was a simple lackey, named Ebenezer Radburn, who acted merely in the capacity of turnkey. Both of these men still live in Washington, or did, at the time of my return through that city from slavery in January last. The light admitted through the open door enabled me to observe the room in which I was confined. It was about twelve feet square--the walls of solid masonry. The floor was of heavy plank. There was one small window, crossed with great iron bars, with an outside shutter, securely fastened. An iron-bound door led into an adjoining cell, or vault, wholly destitute of windows, or any means of admitting light. The furniture of the room in which I was, consisted of the wooden bench on which I sat, an old-fashioned, dirty box stove, and besides these, in either cell, there was neither bed, nor blanket, nor any other thing whatever. The door, through which Burch and Radburn entered, led through a small passage, up a flight of steps into a yard, surrounded by a brick wall ten or twelve feet high, immediately in rear of a building of the same width as itself. The yard extended rearward from the house about thirty feet. In one part of the wall there was a strongly ironed door, opening into a narrow, covered passage, leading along one side of the house into the street. The doom of the colored man, upon whom the door leading out of that narrow passage closed, was sealed. The top of the wall supported one end of a roof, which ascended inwards, forming a kind of open shed. Underneath the roof there was a crazy loft all round, where slaves, if so disposed, might sleep at night, or in inclement weather seek shelter from the storm. It was like a farmer's barnyard in most respects, save it was so constructed that the outside world could never see the human cattle that were herded there. The building to which the yard was attached, was two stories high, fronting on one of the public streets of Washington. Its outside presented only the appearance of a quiet private residence. A stranger looking at it, would never have dreamed of its execrable uses. Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave's chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol! * * * * * Such is a correct description as it was in 1841, of Williams' slave pen in Washington, in one of the cellars of which I found myself so unaccountably confined. "Well, my boy, how do you feel now?" said Burch, as he entered through the open door. I replied that I was sick, and inquired the cause of my imprisonment. He answered that I was his slave--that he had bought me, and that he was about to send me to New-Orleans. I asserted, aloud and boldly, that I was a free man--a resident of Saratoga, where I had a wife and children, who were also free, and that my name was Northup. I complained bitterly of the strange treatment I had received, and threatened, upon my liberation, to have satisfaction for the wrong. He denied that I was free, and with an emphatic oath, declared that I came from Georgia. Again and again I asserted I was no man's slave, and insisted upon his taking off my chains at once. He endeavored to hush me, as if he feared my voice would be overheard. But I would not be silent, and denounced the authors of my imprisonment, whoever they might be, as unmitigated villains. Finding he could not quiet me, he flew into a towering passion. With blasphemous oaths, he called me a black liar, a runaway from Georgia, and every other profane and vulgar epithet that the most indecent fancy could conceive. During this time Radburn was standing silently by. His business was, to oversee this human, or rather inhuman stable, receiving slaves, feeding and whipping them, at the rate of two shillings a head per day. Turning to him, Burch ordered the paddle and cat-o'-ninetails to be brought in. He disappeared, and in a few moments returned with these instruments of torture. The paddle, as it is termed in slave-beating parlance, or at least the one with which I first became acquainted, and of which I now speak, was a piece of hard-wood board, eighteen or twenty inches long, moulded to the shape of an old-fashioned pudding stick, or ordinary oar. The flattened portion, which was about the size in circumference of two open hands, was bored with a small auger in numerous places. The cat was a large rope of many strands--the strands unraveled, and a knot tied at the extremity of each. As soon as these formidable whips appeared, I was seized by both of them, and roughly divested of my clothing. My feet, as has been stated, were fastened to the floor. Drawing me over the bench, face downwards, Radburn placed his heavy foot upon the fetters, between my wrists, holding them painfully to the floor. With the paddle, Burch commenced beating me. Blow after blow was inflicted upon my naked body. When his unrelenting arm grew tired, he stopped and asked if I still insisted I was a free man. I did insist upon it, and then the blows were renewed, faster and more energetically, if possible, than before. When again tired, he would repeat the same question, and receiving the same answer, continue his cruel labor. All this time, the incarnate devil was uttering most fiendish oaths. At length the paddle broke, leaving the useless handle in his hand. Still I would not yield. All his brutal blows could not force from my lips the foul lie that I was a slave. Casting madly on the floor the handle of the broken paddle, he seized the rope. This was far more painful than the other. I struggled with all my power, but it was in vain. I prayed for mercy, but my prayer was only answered with imprecations and with stripes. I thought I must die beneath the lashes of the accursed brute. Even now the flesh crawls upon my bones, as I recall the scene. I was all on fire. My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell! [Illustration: SCENE IN THE SLAVE PEN AT WASHINGTON.] At last I became silent to his repeated questions. I would make no reply. In fact, I was becoming almost unable to speak. Still he plied the lash without stint upon my poor body, until it seemed that the lacerated flesh was stripped from my bones at every stroke. A man with a particle of mercy in his soul would not have beaten even a dog so cruelly. At length Radburn said that it was useless to whip me any more--that I would be sore enough. Thereupon, Burch desisted, saying, with an admonitory shake of his fist in my face, and hissing the words through his firm-set teeth, that if ever I dared to utter again that I was entitled to my freedom, that I had been kidnapped, or any thing whatever of the kind, the castigation I had just received was nothing in comparison with what would follow. He swore that he would either conquer or kill me. With these consolatory words, the fetters were taken from my wrists, my feet still remaining fastened to the ring; the shutter of the little barred window, which had been opened, was again closed, and going out, locking the great door behind them, I was left in darkness as before. In an hour, perhaps two, my heart leaped to my throat, as the key rattled in the door again. I, who had been so lonely, and who had longed so ardently to see some one, I cared not who, now shuddered at the thought of man's approach. A human face was fearful to me, especially a white one. Radburn entered, bringing with him, on a tin plate, a piece of shriveled fried pork, a slice of bread and a cup of water. He asked me how I felt, and remarked that I had received a pretty severe flogging. He remonstrated with me against the propriety of asserting my freedom. In rather a patronizing and confidential manner, he gave it to me as his advice, that the less I said on that subject the better it would be for me. The man evidently endeavored to appear kind--whether touched at the sight of my sad condition, or with the view of silencing, on my part, any further expression of my rights, it is not necessary now to conjecture. He unlocked the fetters from my ankles, opened the shutters of the little window, and departed, leaving me again alone. By this time I had become stiff and sore; my body was covered with blisters, and it was with great pain and difficulty that I could move. From the window I could observe nothing but the roof resting on the adjacent wall. At night I laid down upon the damp, hard floor, without any pillow or covering whatever. Punctually, twice a day, Radburn came in, with his pork, and bread, and water. I had but little appetite, though I was tormented with continual thirst. My wounds would not permit me to remain but a few minutes in any one position; so, sitting, or standing, or moving slowly round, I passed the days and nights. I was heart sick and discouraged. Thoughts of my family, of my wife and children, continually occupied my mind. When sleep overpowered me I dreamed of them--dreamed I was again in Saratoga--that I could see their faces, and hear their voices calling me. Awakening from the pleasant phantasms of sleep to the bitter realities around me, I could but groan and weep. Still my spirit was not broken. I indulged the anticipation of escape, and that speedily. It was impossible, I reasoned, that men could be so unjust as to detain me as a slave, when the truth of my case was known. Burch, ascertaining I was no runaway from Georgia, would certainly let me go. Though suspicions of Brown and Hamilton were not unfrequent, I could not reconcile myself to the idea that they were instrumental to my imprisonment. Surely they would seek me out--they would deliver me from thraldom. Alas! I had not then learned the measure of "man's inhumanity to man," nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain. In the course of several days the outer door was thrown open, allowing me the liberty of the yard. There I found three slaves--one of them a lad of ten years, the others young men of about twenty and twenty-five. I was not long in forming an acquaintance, and learning their names and the particulars of their history. The eldest was a colored man named Clemens Ray. He had lived in Washington; had driven a hack, and worked in a livery stable there for a long time. He was very intelligent, and fully comprehended his situation. The thought of going south overwhelmed him with grief. Burch had purchased him a few days before, and had placed him there until such time as he was ready to send him to the New-Orleans market. From him I learned for the first time that I was in William's Slave Pen, a place I had never heard of previously. He described to me the uses for which it was designed. I repeated to him the particulars of my unhappy story, but he could only give me the consolation of his sympathy. He also advised me to be silent henceforth on the subject of my freedom; for, knowing the character of Burch, he assured me that it would only be attended with renewed whipping. The next eldest was named John Williams. He was raised in Virginia, not far from Washington. Burch had taken him in payment of a debt, and he constantly entertained the hope that his master would redeem him--a hope that was subsequently realized. The lad was a sprightly child, that answered to the name of Randall. Most of the time he was playing about the yard, but occasionally would cry, calling for his mother, and wondering when she would come. His mother's absence seemed to be the great and only grief in his little heart. He was too young to realize his condition, and when the memory of his mother was not in his mind, he amused us with his pleasant pranks. At night, Ray, Williams, and the boy, slept in the loft of the shed, while I was locked in the cell. Finally we were each provided with blankets, such as are used upon horses--the only bedding I was allowed to have for twelve years afterwards. Ray and Williams asked me many questions about New-York--how colored people were treated there; how they could have homes and families of their own, with none to disturb and oppress them; and Ray, especially, sighed continually for freedom. Such conversations, however, were not in the hearing of Burch, or the keeper Radburn. Aspirations such as these would have brought down the lash upon our backs. It is necessary in this narrative, in order to present a full and truthful statement of all the principal events in the history of my life, and to portray the institution of Slavery as I have seen and known it, to speak of well-known places, and of many persons who are yet living. I am, and always was, an entire stranger in Washington and its vicinity--aside from Burch and Radburn, knowing no man there, except as I have heard of them through my enslaved companions. What I am about to say, if false, can be easily contradicted. I remained in Williams' slave pen about two weeks. The night previous to my departure a woman was brought in, weeping bitterly, and leading by the hand a little child. They were Randall's mother and half-sister. On meeting them he was overjoyed, clinging to her dress, kissing the child, and exhibiting every demonstration of delight. The mother also clasped him in her arms, embraced him tenderly, and gazed at him fondly through her tears, calling him by many an endearing name. Emily, the child, was seven or eight years old, of light complexion, and with a face of admirable beauty. Her hair fell in curls around her neck, while the style and richness of her dress, and the neatness of her whole appearance indicated she had been brought up in the midst of wealth. She was a sweet child indeed. The woman also was arrayed in silk, with rings upon her fingers, and golden ornaments suspended from her ears. Her air and manners, the correctness and propriety of her language--all showed, evidently, that she had sometime stood above the common level of a slave. She seemed to be amazed at finding herself in such a place as that. It was plainly a sudden and unexpected turn of fortune that had brought her there. Filling the air with her complainings, she was hustled, with the children and myself, into the cell. Language can convey but an inadequate impression of the lamentations to which she gave incessant utterance. Throwing herself upon the floor, and encircling the children in her arms, she poured forth such touching words as only maternal love and kindness can suggest. They nestled closely to her, as if _there_ only was there any safety or protection. At last they slept, their heads resting upon her lap. While they slumbered, she smoothed the hair back from their little foreheads, and talked to them all night long. She called them her darlings--her sweet babes--poor innocent things, that knew not the misery they were destined to endure. Soon they would have no mother to comfort them--they would be taken from her. What would become of them? Oh! she could not live away from her little Emmy and her dear boy. They had always been good children, and had such loving ways. It would break her heart, God knew, she said, if they were taken from her; and yet she knew they meant to sell them, and, may be, they would be separated, and could never see each other any more. It was enough to melt a heart of stone to listen to the pitiful expressions of that desolate and distracted mother. Her name was Eliza; and this was the story of her life, as she afterwards related it: She was the slave of Elisha Berry, a rich man, living in the neighborhood of Washington. She was born, I think she said, on his plantation. Years before, he had fallen into dissipated habits, and quarreled with his wife. In fact, soon after the birth of Randall, they separated. Leaving his wife and daughter in the house they had always occupied, he erected a new one near by, on the estate. Into this house he brought Eliza; and, on condition of her living with him, she and her children were to be emancipated. She resided with him there nine years, with servants to attend upon her, and provided with every comfort and luxury of life. Emily was his child! Finally, her young mistress, who had always remained with her mother at the homestead, married a Mr. Jacob Brooks. At length, for some cause, (as I gathered from her relation,) beyond Berry's control, a division of his property was made. She and her children fell to the share of Mr. Brooks. During the nine years she had lived with Berry, in consequence of the position she was compelled to occupy, she and Emily had become the object of Mrs. Berry and her daughter's hatred and dislike. Berry himself she represented as a man of naturally a kind heart, who always promised her that she should have her freedom, and who, she had no doubt, would grant it to her then, if it were only in his power. As soon as they thus came into the possession and control of the daughter, it became very manifest they would not live long together. The sight of Eliza seemed to be odious to Mrs. Brooks; neither could she bear to look upon the child, half-sister, and beautiful as she was! The day she was led into the pen, Brooks had brought her from the estate into the city, under pretence that the time had come when her free papers were to be executed, in fulfillment of her master's promise. Elated at the prospect of immediate liberty, she decked herself and little Emmy in their best apparel, and accompanied him with a joyful heart. On their arrival in the city, instead of being baptized into the family of freemen, she was delivered to the trader Burch. The paper that was executed was a bill of sale. The hope of years was blasted in a moment. From the height of most exulting happiness to the utmost depths of wretchedness, she had that day descended. No wonder that she wept, and filled the pen with wailings and expressions of heart-rending woe. Eliza is now dead. Far up the Red River, where it pours its waters sluggishly through the unhealthy low lands of Louisiana, she rests in the grave at last--the only resting place of the poor slave! How all her fears were realized--how she mourned day and night, and never would be comforted--how, as she predicted, her heart did indeed break, with the burden of maternal sorrow, will be seen as the narrative proceeds. CHAPTER IV. ELIZA'S SORROWS--PREPARATION TO EMBARK--DRIVEN THROUGH THE STREETS OF WASHINGTON--HAIL, COLUMBIA--THE TOMB OF WASHINGTON--CLEM RAY--THE BREAKFAST ON THE STEAMER--THE HAPPY BIRDS--AQUIA CREEK--FREDERICKSBURGH--ARRIVAL IN RICHMOND--GOODIN AND HIS SLAVE PEN--ROBERT, OF CINCINNATI--DAVID AND HIS WIFE--MARY AND LETHE--CLEM'S RETURN--HIS SUBSEQUENT ESCAPE TO CANADA--THE BRIG ORLEANS--JAMES H. BURCH. At intervals during the first night of Eliza's incarceration in the pen, she complained bitterly of Jacob Brooks, her young mistress' husband. She declared that had she been aware of the deception he intended to practice upon her, he never would have brought her there alive. They had chosen the opportunity of getting her away when Master Berry was absent from the plantation. He had always been kind to her. She wished that she could see him; but she knew that even he was unable now to rescue her. Then would she commence weeping again--kissing the sleeping children--talking first to one, then to the other, as they lay in their unconscious slumbers, with their heads upon her lap. So wore the long night away; and when the morning dawned, and night had come again, still she kept mourning on, and would not be consoled. About midnight following, the cell door opened, and Burch and Radburn entered, with lanterns in their hands. Burch, with an oath, ordered us to roll up our blankets without delay, and get ready to go on board the boat. He swore we would be left unless we hurried fast. He aroused the children from their slumbers with a rough shake, and said they were d--d sleepy, it appeared. Going out into the yard, he called Clem Ray, ordering him to leave the loft and come into the cell, and bring his blanket with him. When Clem appeared, he placed us side by side, and fastened us together with hand-cuffs--my left hand to his right. John Williams had been taken out a day or two before, his master having redeemed him, greatly to his delight. Clem and I were ordered to march, Eliza and the children following. We were conducted into the yard, from thence into the covered passage, and up a flight of steps through a side door into the upper room, where I had heard the walking to and fro. Its furniture was a stove, a few old chairs, and a long table, covered with papers. It was a white-washed room, without any carpet on the floor, and seemed a sort of office. By one of the windows, I remember, hung a rusty sword, which attracted my attention. Burch's trunk was there. In obedience to his orders, I took hold of one of its handles with my unfettered hand, while he taking hold of the other, we proceeded out of the front door into the street in the same order as we had left the cell. It was a dark night. All was quiet. I could see lights, or the reflection of them, over towards Pennsylvania Avenue, but there was no one, not even a straggler, to be seen. I was almost resolved to attempt to break away. Had I not been hand-cuffed the attempt would certainly have been made, whatever consequence might have followed. Radburn was in the rear, carrying a large stick, and hurrying up the children as fast as the little ones could walk. So we passed, hand-cuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington--through the Capital of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed! Reaching the steamboat, we were quickly hustled into the hold, among barrels and boxes of freight. A colored servant brought a light, the bell rung, and soon the vessel started down the Potomac, carrying us we knew not where. The bell tolled as we passed the tomb of Washington! Burch, no doubt, with uncovered head, bowed reverently before the sacred ashes of the man who devoted his illustrious life to the liberty of his country. None of us slept that night but Randall and little Emmy. For the first time Clem Ray was wholly overcome. To him the idea of going south was terrible in the extreme. He was leaving the friends and associations of his youth--every thing that was dear and precious to his heart--in all probability never to return. He and Eliza mingled their tears together, bemoaning their cruel fate. For my own part, difficult as it was, I endeavored to keep up my spirits. I resolved in my mind a hundred plans of escape, and fully determined to make the attempt the first desperate chance that offered. I had by this time become satisfied, however, that my true policy was to say nothing further on the subject of my having been born a freeman. It would but expose me to mal-treatment, and diminish the chances of liberation. After sunrise in the morning we were called up on deck to breakfast. Burch took our hand-cuffs off, and we sat down to table. He asked Eliza if she would take a dram. She declined, thanking him politely. During the meal we were all silent--not a word passed between us. A mulatto woman who served at table seemed to take an interest in our behalf--told us to cheer up, and not to be so cast down. Breakfast over, the hand-cuffs were restored, and Burch ordered us out on the stern deck. We sat down together on some boxes, still saying nothing in Burch's presence. Occasionally a passenger would walk out to where we were, look at us for a while, then silently return. It was a very pleasant morning. The fields along the river were covered with verdure, far in advance of what I had been accustomed to see at that season of the year. The sun shone out warmly; the birds were singing in the trees. The happy birds--I envied them. I wished for wings like them, that I might cleave the air to where my birdlings waited vainly for their father's coming, in the cooler region of the North. In the forenoon the steamer reached Aquia Creek. There the passengers took stages--Burch and his five slaves occupying one exclusively. He laughed with the children, and at one stopping place went so far as to purchase them a piece of gingerbread. He told me to hold up my head and look smart. That I might, perhaps, get a good master if I behaved myself. I made him no reply. His face was hateful to me, and I could not bear to look upon it. I sat in the corner, cherishing in my heart the hope, not yet extinct, of some day meeting the tyrant on the soil of my native State. At Fredericksburgh we were transferred from the stage coach to a car, and before dark arrived in Richmond, the chief city of Virginia. At this city we were taken from the cars, and driven through the street to a slave pen, between the railroad depot and the river, kept by a Mr. Goodin. This pen is similar to Williams' in Washington, except it is somewhat larger; and besides, there were two small houses standing at opposite corners within the yard. These houses are usually found within slave yards, being used as rooms for the examination of human chattels by purchasers before concluding a bargain. Unsoundness in a slave, as well as in a horse, detracts materially from his value. If no warranty is given, a close examination is a matter of particular importance to the negro jockey. We were met at the door of Goodin's yard by that gentleman himself--a short, fat man, with a round, plump face, black hair and whiskers, and a complexion almost as dark as some of his own negroes. He had a hard, stern look, and was perhaps about fifty years of age. Burch and he met with great cordiality. They were evidently old friends. Shaking each other warmly by the hand, Burch remarked he had brought some company, inquired at what time the brig would leave, and was answered that it would probably leave the next day at such an hour. Goodin then turned to me, took hold of my arm, turned me partly round, looked at me sharply with the air of one who considered himself a good judge of property, and as if estimating in his own mind about how much I was worth. "Well, boy, where did you come from?" Forgetting myself, for a moment, I answered, "From New-York." "New-York! H--l! what have you been doing up there?" was his astonished interrogatory. Observing Burch at this moment looking at me with an angry expression that conveyed a meaning it was not difficult to understand, I immediately said, "O, I have only been up that way a piece," in a manner intended to imply that although I might have been as far as New-York, yet I wished it distinctly understood that I did not belong to that free State, nor to any other. Goodin then turned to Clem, and then to Eliza and the children, examining them severally, and asking various questions. He was pleased with Emily, as was every one who saw the child's sweet countenance. She was not as tidy as when I first beheld her; her hair was now somewhat disheveled; but through its unkempt and soft profusion there still beamed a little face of most surpassing loveliness. "Altogether we were a fair lot--a devilish good lot," he said, enforcing that opinion with more than one emphatic adjective not found in the Christian vocabulary. Thereupon we passed into the yard. Quite a number of slaves, as many as thirty I should say, were moving about, or sitting on benches under the shed. They were all cleanly dressed--the men with hats, the women with handkerchiefs tied about their heads. Burch and Goodin, after separating from us, walked up the steps at the back part of the main building, and sat down upon the door sill. They entered into conversation, but the subject of it I could not hear. Presently Burch came down into the yard, unfettered me, and led me into one of the small houses. "You told that man you came from New-York," said he. I replied, "I told him I had been up as far as New-York, to be sure, but did not tell him I belonged there, nor that I was a freeman. I meant no harm at all, Master Burch. I would not have said it had I thought." He looked at me a moment as if he was ready to devour me, then turning round went out. In a few minutes he returned. "If ever I hear you say a word about New-York, or about your freedom, I will be the death of you--I will kill you; you may rely on that," he ejaculated fiercely. I doubt not he understood then better than I did, the danger and the penalty of selling a free man into slavery. He felt the necessity of closing my mouth against the crime he knew he was committing. Of course, my life would not have weighed a feather, in any emergency requiring such a sacrifice. Undoubtedly, he meant precisely what he said. Under the shed on one side of the yard, there was constructed a rough table, while overhead were sleeping lofts--the same as in the pen at Washington. After partaking at this table of our supper of pork and bread, I was hand-cuffed to a large yellow man, quite stout and fleshy, with a countenance expressive of the utmost melancholy. He was a man of intelligence and information. Chained together, it was not long before we became acquainted with each other's history. His name was Robert. Like myself, he had been born free, and had a wife and two children in Cincinnati. He said he had come south with two men, who had hired him in the city of his residence. Without free papers, he had been seized at Fredericksburgh, placed in confinement, and beaten until he had learned, as I had, the necessity and the policy of silence. He had been in Goodin's pen about three weeks. To this man I became much attached. We could sympathize with, and understand each other. It was with tears and a heavy heart, not many days subsequently, that I saw him die, and looked for the last time upon his lifeless form! Robert and myself, with Clem, Eliza and her children, slept that night upon our blankets, in one of the small houses in the yard. There were four others, all from the same plantation, who had been sold, and were now on their way south, who also occupied it with us. David and his wife, Caroline, both mulattoes, were exceedingly affected. They dreaded the thought of being put into the cane and cotton fields; but their greatest source of anxiety was the apprehension of being separated. Mary, a tall, lithe girl, of a most jetty black, was listless and apparently indifferent. Like many of the class, she scarcely knew there was such a word as freedom. Brought up in the ignorance of a brute, she possessed but little more than a brute's intelligence. She was one of those, and there are very many, who fear nothing but their master's lash, and know no further duty than to obey his voice. The other was Lethe. She was of an entirely different character. She had long, straight hair, and bore more the appearance of an Indian than a negro woman. She had sharp and spiteful eyes, and continually gave utterance to the language of hatred and revenge. Her husband had been sold. She knew not where she was. An exchange of masters, she was sure, could not be for the worse. She cared not whither they might carry her. Pointing to the scars upon her face, the desperate creature wished that she might see the day when she could wipe them off in some man's blood! While we were thus learning the history of each other's wretchedness, Eliza was seated in a corner by herself, singing hymns and praying for her children. Wearied from the loss of so much sleep, I could no longer bear up against the advances of that "sweet restorer," and laying down by the side of Robert, on the floor, soon forgot my troubles, and slept until the dawn of day. In the morning, having swept the yard, and washed ourselves, under Goodin's superintendence, we were ordered to roll up our blankets, and make ready for the continuance of our journey. Clem Ray was informed that he would go no further, Burch, for some cause, having concluded to carry him back to Washington. He was much rejoiced. Shaking hands, we parted in the slave pen at Richmond, and I have not seen him since. But, much to my surprise, since my return, I learned that he had escaped from bondage, and on his way to the free soil of Canada, lodged one night at the house of my brother-in-law in Saratoga, informing my family of the place and the condition in which he left me. In the afternoon we were drawn up, two abreast, Robert and myself in advance, and in this order, driven by Burch and Goodin from the yard, through the streets of Richmond to the brig Orleans. She was a vessel of respectable size, full rigged, and freighted principally with tobacco. We were all on board by five o'clock. Burch brought us each a tin cup and a spoon. There were forty of us in the brig, being all, except Clem, that were in the pen. With a small pocket knife that had not been taken from me, I began cutting the initials of my name upon the tin cup. The others immediately flocked round me, requesting me to mark theirs in a similar manner. In time, I gratified them all, of which they did not appear to be forgetful. We were all stowed away in the hold at night, and the hatch barred down. We laid on boxes, or where-ever there was room enough to stretch our blankets on the floor. Burch accompanied us no farther than Richmond, returning from that point to the capital with Clem. Not until the lapse of almost twelve years, to wit, in January last, in the Washington police office, did I set my eyes upon his face again. James H. Burch was a slave-trader--buying men, women and children at low prices, and selling them at an advance. He was a speculator in human flesh--a disreputable calling--and so considered at the South. For the present he disappears from the scenes recorded in this narrative, but he will appear again before its close, not in the character of a man-whipping tyrant, but as an arrested, cringing criminal in a court of law, that failed to do him justice. CHAPTER V. ARRIVAL AT NORFOLK--FREDERICK AND MARIA--ARTHUR, THE FREEMAN--APPOINTED STEWARD--JIM, CUFFEE, AND JENNY--THE STORM--BAHAMA BANKS--THE CALM--THE CONSPIRACY--THE LONG BOAT--THE SMALL-POX--DEATH OF ROBERT--MANNING, THE SAILOR--THE MEETING IN THE FORECASTLE--THE LETTER--ARRIVAL AT NEW-ORLEANS--ARTHUR'S RESCUE--THEOPHILUS FREEMAN, THE CONSIGNEE--PLATT--FIRST NIGHT IN THE NEW-ORLEANS SLAVE PEN. After we were all on board, the brig Orleans proceeded down James River. Passing into Chesapeake Bay, we arrived next day opposite the city of Norfolk. While lying at anchor, a lighter approached us from the town, bringing four more slaves. Frederick, a boy of eighteen, had been born a slave, as also had Henry, who was some years older. They had both been house servants in the city. Maria was a rather genteel looking colored girl, with a faultless form, but ignorant and extremely vain. The idea of going to New-Orleans was pleasing to her. She entertained an extravagantly high opinion of her own attractions. Assuming a haughty mien, she declared to her companions, that immediately on our arrival in New-Orleans, she had no doubt, some wealthy single gentleman of good taste would purchase her at once! But the most prominent of the four, was a man named Arthur. As the lighter approached, he struggled stoutly with his keepers. It was with main force that he was dragged aboard the brig. He protested, in a loud voice, against the treatment he was receiving, and demanded to be released. His face was swollen, and covered with wounds and bruises, and, indeed, one side of it was a complete raw sore. He was forced, with all haste, down the hatchway into the hold. I caught an outline of his story as he was borne struggling along, of which he afterwards gave me a more full relation, and it was as follows: He had long resided in the city of Norfolk, and was a free man. He had a family living there, and was a mason by trade. Having been unusually detained, he was returning late one night to his house in the suburbs of the city, when he was attacked by a gang of persons in an unfrequented street. He fought until his strength failed him. Overpowered at last, he was gagged and bound with ropes, and beaten, until he became insensible. For several days they secreted him in the slave pen at Norfolk--a very common establishment, it appears, in the cities of the South. The night before, he had been taken out and put on board the lighter, which, pushing out from shore, had awaited our arrival. For some time he continued his protestations, and was altogether irreconcilable. At length, however, he became silent. He sank into a gloomy and thoughtful mood, and appeared to be counseling with himself. There was in the man's determined face, something that suggested the thought of desperation. After leaving Norfolk the hand-cuffs were taken off, and during the day we were allowed to remain on deck. The captain selected Robert as his waiter, and I was appointed to superintend the cooking department, and the distribution of food and water. I had three assistants, Jim, Cuffee and Jenny. Jenny's business was to prepare the coffee, which consisted of corn meal scorched in a kettle, boiled and sweetened with molasses. Jim and Cuffee baked the hoe-cake and boiled the bacon. Standing by a table, formed of a wide board resting on the heads of the barrels, I cut and handed to each a slice of meat and a "dodger" of the bread, and from Jenny's kettle also dipped out for each a cup of the coffee. The use of plates was dispensed with, and their sable fingers took the place of knives and forks. Jim and Cuffee were very demure and attentive to business, somewhat inflated with their situation as second cooks, and without doubt feeling that there was a great responsibility resting on them. I was called steward--a name given me by the captain. The slaves were fed twice a day, at ten and five o'clock--always receiving the same kind and quantity of fare, and in the same manner as above described. At night we were driven into the hold, and securely fastened down. Scarcely were we out of sight of land before we were overtaken by a violent storm. The brig rolled and plunged until we feared she would go down. Some were sea-sick, others on their knees praying, while some were fast holding to each other, paralyzed with fear. The sea-sickness rendered the place of our confinement loathsome and disgusting. It would have been a happy thing for most of us--it would have saved the agony of many hundred lashes, and miserable deaths at last--had the compassionate sea snatched us that day from the clutches of remorseless men. The thought of Randall and little Emmy sinking down among the monsters of the deep, is a more pleasant contemplation than to think of them as they are now, perhaps, dragging out lives of unrequited toil. When in sight of the Bahama Banks, at a place called Old Point Compass, or the Hole in the Wall, we were becalmed three days. There was scarcely a breath of air. The waters of the gulf presented a singularly white appearance, like lime water. In the order of events, I come now to the relation of an occurrence, which I never call to mind but with sensations of regret. I thank God, who has since permitted me to escape from the thralldom of slavery, that through his merciful interposition I was prevented from imbruing my hands in the blood of his creatures. Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances, judge me harshly. Until they have been chained and beaten--until they find themselves in the situation I was, borne away from home and family towards a land of bondage--let them refrain from saying what they would not do for liberty. How far I should have been justified in the sight of God and man, it is unnecessary now to speculate upon. It is enough to say that I am able to congratulate myself upon the harmless termination of an affair which threatened, for a time, to be attended with serious results. Towards evening, on the first day of the calm, Arthur and myself were in the bow of the vessel, seated on the windlass. We were conversing together of the probable destiny that awaited us, and mourning together over our misfortunes. Arthur said, and I agreed with him, that death was far less terrible than the living prospect that was before us. For a long time we talked of our children, our past lives, and of the probabilities of escape. Obtaining possession of the brig was suggested by one of us. We discussed the possibility of our being able, in such an event, to make our way to the harbor of New-York. I knew little of the compass; but the idea of risking the experiment was eagerly entertained. The chances, for and against us, in an encounter with the crew, was canvassed. Who could be relied upon, and who could not, the proper time and manner of the attack, were all talked over and over again. From the moment the plot suggested itself I began to hope. I revolved it constantly in my mind. As difficulty after difficulty arose, some ready conceit was at hand, demonstrating how it could be overcome. While others slept, Arthur and I were maturing our plans. At length, with much caution, Robert was gradually made acquainted with our intentions. He approved of them at once, and entered into the conspiracy with a zealous spirit. There was not another slave we dared to trust. Brought up in fear and ignorance as they are, it can scarcely be conceived how servilely they will cringe before a white man's look. It was not safe to deposit so bold a secret with any of them, and finally we three resolved to take upon ourselves alone the fearful responsibility of the attempt. At night, as has been said, we were driven into the hold, and the hatch barred down. How to reach the deck was the first difficulty that presented itself. On the bow of the brig, however, I had observed the small boat lying bottom upwards. It occurred to me that by secreting ourselves underneath it, we would not be missed from the crowd, as they were hurried down into the hold at night. I was selected to make the experiment, in order to satisfy ourselves of its feasibility. The next evening, accordingly, after supper, watching my opportunity, I hastily concealed myself beneath it. Lying close upon the deck, I could see what was going on around me, while wholly unperceived myself. In the morning, as they came up, I slipped from my hiding place without being observed. The result was entirely satisfactory. The captain and mate slept in the cabin of the former. From Robert, who had frequent occasion, in his capacity of waiter, to make observations in that quarter, we ascertained the exact position of their respective berths. He further informed us that there were always two pistols and a cutlass lying on the table. The crew's cook slept in the cook galley on deck, a sort of vehicle on wheels, that could be moved about as convenience required, while the sailors, numbering only six, either slept in the forecastle, or in hammocks swung among the rigging. Finally our arrangements were all completed. Arthur and I were to steal silently to the captain's cabin, seize the pistols and cutlass, and as quickly as possible despatch him and the mate. Robert, with a club, was to stand by the door leading from the deck down into the cabin, and, in case of necessity, beat back the sailors, until we could hurry to his assistance. We were to proceed then as circumstances might require. Should the attack be so sudden and successful as to prevent resistance, the hatch was to remain barred down; otherwise the slaves were to be called up, and in the crowd, and hurry, and confusion of the time, we resolved to regain our liberty or lose our lives. I was then to assume the unaccustomed place of pilot, and, steering northward, we trusted that some lucky wind might bear us to the soil of freedom. The mate's name was Biddee, the captain's I cannot now recall, though I rarely ever forget a name once heard. The captain was a small, genteel man, erect and prompt, with a proud bearing, and looked the personification of courage. If he is still living, and these pages should chance to meet his eye, he will learn a fact connected with the voyage of the brig, from Richmond to New-Orleans, in 1841, not entered on his log-book. We were all prepared, and impatiently waiting an opportunity of putting our designs into execution, when they were frustrated by a sad and unforeseen event. Robert was taken ill. It was soon announced that he had the small-pox. He continued to grow worse, and four days previous to our arrival in New-Orleans he died. One of the sailors sewed him in his blanket, with a large stone from the ballast at his feet, and then laying him on a hatchway, and elevating it with tackles above the railing, the inanimate body of poor Robert was consigned to the white waters of the gulf. We were all panic-stricken by the appearance of the small-pox. The captain ordered lime to be scattered through the hold, and other prudent precautions to be taken. The death of Robert, however, and the presence of the malady, oppressed me sadly, and I gazed out over the great waste of waters with a spirit that was indeed disconsolate. An evening or two after Robert's burial, I was leaning on the hatchway near the forecastle, full of desponding thoughts, when a sailor in a kind voice asked me why I was so down-hearted. The tone and manner of the man assured me, and I answered, because I was a freeman, and had been kidnapped. He remarked that it was enough to make any one down-hearted, and continued to interrogate me until he learned the particulars of my whole history. He was evidently much interested in my behalf, and, in the blunt speech of a sailor, swore he would aid me all he could, if it "split his timbers." I requested him to furnish me pen, ink and paper, in order that I might write to some of my friends. He promised to obtain them--but how I could use them undiscovered was a difficulty. If I could only get into the forecastle while his watch was off, and the other sailors asleep, the thing could be accomplished. The small boat instantly occurred to me. He thought we were not far from the Balize, at the mouth of the Mississippi, and it was necessary that the letter be written soon, or the opportunity would be lost. Accordingly, by arrangement, I managed the next night to secret myself again under the long-boat. His watch was off at twelve. I saw him pass into the forecastle, and in about an hour followed him. He was nodding over a table, half asleep, on which a sickly light was flickering, and on which also was a pen and sheet of paper. As I entered he aroused, beckoned me to a seat beside him, and pointed to the paper. I directed the letter to Henry B. Northup, of Sandy Hill--stating that I had been kidnapped, was then on board the brig Orleans, bound for New-Orleans; that it was then impossible for me to conjecture my ultimate destination, and requesting he would take measures to rescue me. The letter was sealed and directed, and Manning, having read it, promised to deposit it in the New-Orleans post-office. I hastened back to my place under the long-boat, and in the morning, as the slaves came up and were walking round, crept out unnoticed and mingled with them. My good friend, whose name was John Manning, was an Englishman by birth, and a noble-hearted, generous sailor as ever walked a deck. He had lived in Boston--was a tall, well-built man, about twenty-four years old, with a face somewhat pock-marked, but full of benevolent expression. Nothing to vary the monotony of our daily life occurred, until we reached New-Orleans. On coming to the levee, and before the vessel was made fast, I saw Manning leap on shore and hurry away into the city. As he started off he looked back over his shoulder significantly, giving me to understand the object of his errand. Presently he returned, and passing close by me, hunched me with his elbow, with a peculiar wink, as much as to say, "it is all right." The letter, as I have since learned, reached Sandy Hill. Mr. Northup visited Albany and laid it before Governor Seward, but inasmuch as it gave no definite information as to my probable locality, it was not, at that time, deemed advisable to institute measures for my liberation. It was concluded to delay, trusting that a knowledge of where I was might eventually be obtained. A happy and touching scene was witnessed immediately upon our reaching the levee. Just as Manning left the brig, on his way to the post-office, two men came up and called aloud for Arthur. The latter, as he recognized them, was almost crazy with delight. He could hardly be restrained from leaping over the brig's side; and when they met soon after, he grasped them by the hand, and clung to them a long, long time. They were men from Norfolk, who had come on to New-Orleans to rescue him. His kidnappers, they informed him, had been arrested, and were then confined in the Norfolk prison. They conversed a few moments with the captain, and then departed with the rejoicing Arthur. But in all the crowd that thronged the wharf, there was no one who knew or cared for me. Not one. No familiar voice greeted my ears, nor was there a single face that I had ever seen. Soon Arthur would rejoin his family, and have the satisfaction of seeing his wrongs avenged: my family, alas, should I ever see them more? There was a feeling of utter desolation in my heart, filling it with a despairing and regretful sense, that I had not gone down with Robert to the bottom of the sea. Very soon traders and consignees came on board. One, a tall, thin-faced man, with light complexion and a little bent, made his appearance, with a paper in his hand. Burch's gang, consisting of myself, Eliza and her children, Harry, Lethe, and some others, who had joined us at Richmond, were consigned to him. This gentleman was Mr. Theophilus Freeman. Reading from his paper, he called, "Platt." No one answered. The name was called again and again, but still there was no reply. Then Lethe was called, then Eliza, then Harry, until the list was finished, each one stepping forward as his or her name was called. "Captain, where's Platt?" demanded Theophilus Freeman. The captain was unable to inform him, no one being on board answering to that name. "Who shipped _that_ nigger?" he again inquired of the captain, pointing to me. "Burch," replied the captain. "Your name is Platt--you answer my description. Why don't you come forward?" he demanded of me, in an angry tone. I informed him that was not my name; that I had never been called by it, but that I had no objection to it as I knew of. "Well, I will learn you your name," said he; "and so you won't forget it either, by ----," he added. Mr. Theophilus Freeman, by the way, was not a whit behind his partner, Burch, in the matter of blasphemy. On the vessel I had gone by the name of "Steward," and this was the first time I had ever been designated as Platt--the name forwarded by Burch to his consignee. From the vessel I observed the chain-gang at work on the levee. We passed near them as we were driven to Freeman's slave pen. This pen is very similar to Goodin's in Richmond, except the yard was enclosed by plank, standing upright, with ends sharpened, instead of brick walls. Including us, there were now at least fifty in this pen. Depositing our blankets in one of the small buildings in the yard, and having been called up and fed, we were allowed to saunter about the enclosure until night, when we wrapped our blankets round us and laid down under the shed, or in the loft, or in the open yard, just as each one preferred. It was but a short time I closed my eyes that night. Thought was busy in my brain. Could it be possible that I was thousands of miles from home--that I had been driven through the streets like a dumb beast--that I had been chained and beaten without mercy--that I was even then herded with a drove of slaves, a slave myself? Were the events of the last few weeks realities indeed?--or was I passing only through the dismal phases of a long, protracted dream? It was no illusion. My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. Then I lifted up my hands to God, and in the still watches of the night, surrounded by the sleeping forms of my companions, begged for mercy on the poor, forsaken captive. To the Almighty Father of us all--the freeman and the slave--I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up against the burden of my troubles, until the morning light aroused the slumberers, ushering in another day of bondage. CHAPTER VI. FREEMAN'S INDUSTRY--CLEANLINESS AND CLOTHES--EXERCISING IN THE SHOW ROOM--THE DANCE--BOB, THE FIDDLER--ARRIVAL OF CUSTOMERS--SLAVES EXAMINED--THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF NEW-ORLEANS--SALE OF DAVID, CAROLINE AND LETHE--PARTING OF RANDALL AND ELIZA--SMALL POX--THE HOSPITAL--RECOVERY AND RETURN TO FREEMAN'S SLAVE PEN--THE PURCHASER OF ELIZA, HARRY AND PLATT--ELIZA'S AGONY ON PARTING FROM LITTLE EMILY. The very amiable, pious-hearted Mr. Theophilus Freeman, partner or consignee of James H. Burch, and keeper of the slave pen in New-Orleans, was out among his animals early in the morning. With an occasional kick of the older men and women, and many a sharp crack of the whip about the ears of the younger slaves, it was not long before they were all astir, and wide awake. Mr. Theophilus Freeman bustled about in a very industrious manner, getting his property ready for the sales-room, intending, no doubt, to do that day a rousing business. In the first place we were required to wash thoroughly, and those with beards, to shave. We were then furnished with a new suit each, cheap, but clean. The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes; the women frocks of calico, and handkerchiefs to bind about their heads. We were now conducted into a large room in the front part of the building to which the yard was attached, in order to be properly trained, before the admission of customers. The men were arranged on one side of the room, the women on the other. The tallest was placed at the head of the row, then the next tallest, and so on in the order of their respective heights. Emily was at the foot of the line of women. Freeman charged us to remember our places; exhorted us to appear smart and lively,--sometimes threatening, and again, holding out various inducements. During the day he exercised us in the art of "looking smart," and of moving to our places with exact precision. After being fed, in the afternoon, we were again paraded and made to dance. Bob, a colored boy, who had some time belonged to Freeman, played on the violin. Standing near him, I made bold to inquire if he could play the "Virginia Reel." He answered he could not, and asked me if I could play. Replying in the affirmative, he handed me the violin. I struck up a tune, and finished it. Freeman ordered me to continue playing, and seemed well pleased, telling Bob that I far excelled him--a remark that seemed to grieve my musical companion very much. Next day many customers called to examine Freeman's "new lot." The latter gentleman was very loquacious, dwelling at much length upon our several good points and qualities. He would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase. Sometimes a man or woman was taken back to the small house in the yard, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave's back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale. One old gentleman, who said he wanted a coachman, appeared to take a fancy to me. From his conversation with Burch, I learned he was a resident in the city. I very much desired that he would buy me, because I conceived it would not be difficult to make my escape from New-Orleans on some northern vessel. Freeman asked him fifteen hundred dollars for me. The old gentleman insisted it was too much, as times were very hard. Freeman, however, declared that I was sound and healthy, of a good constitution, and intelligent. He made it a point to enlarge upon my musical attainments. The old gentleman argued quite adroitly that there was nothing extraordinary about the nigger, and finally, to my regret, went out, saying he would call again. During the day, however, a number of sales were made. David and Caroline were purchased together by a Natchez planter. They left us, grinning broadly, and in the most happy state of mind, caused by the fact of their not being separated. Lethe was sold to a planter of Baton Rouge, her eyes flashing with anger as she was led away. The same man also purchased Randall. The little fellow was made to jump, and run across the floor, and perform many other feats, exhibiting his activity and condition. All the time the trade was going on, Eliza was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy him, unless he also bought herself and Emily. She promised, in that case, to be the most faithful slave that ever lived. The man answered that he could not afford it, and then Eliza burst into a paroxysm of grief, weeping plaintively. Freeman turned round to her, savagely, with his whip in his uplifted hand, ordering her to stop her noise, or he would flog her. He would not have such work--such snivelling; and unless she ceased that minute, he would take her to the yard and give her a hundred lashes. Yes, he would take the nonsense out of her pretty quick--if he didn't, might he be d--d. Eliza shrunk before him, and tried to wipe away her tears, but it was all in vain. She wanted to be with her children, she said, the little time she had to live. All the frowns and threats of Freeman, could not wholly silence the afflicted mother. She kept on begging and beseeching them, most piteously, not to separate the three. Over and over again she told them how she loved her boy. A great many times she repeated her former promises--how very faithful and obedient she would be; how hard she would labor day and night, to the last moment of her life, if he would only buy them all together. But it was of no avail; the man could not afford it. The bargain was agreed upon, and Randall must go alone. Then Eliza ran to him; embraced him passionately; kissed him again and again; told him to remember her--all the while her tears falling in the boy's face like rain. Freeman damned her, calling her a blubbering, bawling wench, and ordered her to go to her place, and behave herself, and be somebody. He swore he wouldn't stand such stuff but a little longer. He would soon give her something to cry about, if she was not mighty careful, and _that_ she might depend upon. The planter from Baton Rouge, with his new purchases, was ready to depart. "Don't cry, mama. I will be a good boy. Don't cry," said Randall, looking back, as they passed out of the door. What has become of the lad, God knows. It was a mournful scene indeed. I would have cried myself if I had dared. That night, nearly all who came in on the brig Orleans, were taken ill. They complained of violent pain in the head and back. Little Emily--a thing unusual with her--cried constantly. In the morning a physician was called in, but was unable to determine the nature of our complaint. While examining me, and asking questions touching my symptoms, I gave it as my opinion that it was an attack of small-pox--mentioning the fact of Robert's death as the reason of my belief. It might be so indeed, he thought, and he would send for the head physician of the hospital. Shortly, the head physician came--a small, light-haired man, whom they called Dr. Carr. He pronounced it small-pox, whereupon there was much alarm throughout the yard. Soon after Dr. Carr left, Eliza, Emmy, Harry and myself were put into a hack and driven to the hospital--a large white marble building, standing on the outskirts of the city. Harry and I were placed in a room in one of the upper stories. I became very sick. For three days I was entirely blind. While lying in this state one day, Bob came in, saying to Dr. Carr that Freeman had sent him over to inquire how we were getting on. Tell him, said the doctor, that Platt is very bad, but that if he survives until nine o'clock, he may recover. I expected to die. Though there was little in the prospect before me worth living for, the near approach of death appalled me. I thought I could have been resigned to yield up my life in the bosom of my family, but to expire in the midst of strangers, under such circumstances, was a bitter reflection. There were a great number in the hospital, of both sexes, and of all ages. In the rear of the building coffins were manufactured. When one died, the bell tolled--a signal to the undertaker to come and bear away the body to the potter's field. Many times, each day and night, the tolling bell sent forth its melancholy voice, announcing another death. But my time had not yet come. The crisis having passed, I began to revive, and at the end of two weeks and two days, returned with Harry to the pen, bearing upon my face the effects of the malady, which to this day continues to disfigure it. Eliza and Emily were also brought back next day in a hack, and again were we paraded in the sales-room, for the inspection and examination of purchasers. I still indulged the hope that the old gentleman in search of a coachman would call again, as he had promised, and purchase me. In that event I felt an abiding confidence that I would soon regain my liberty. Customer after customer entered, but the old gentleman never made his appearance. At length, one day, while we were in the yard, Freeman came out and ordered us to our places, in the great room. A gentleman was waiting for us as we entered, and inasmuch as he will be often mentioned in the progress of this narrative, a description of his personal appearance, and my estimation of his character, at first sight, may not be out of place. He was a man above the ordinary height, somewhat bent and stooping forward. He was a good-looking man, and appeared to have reached about the middle age of life. There was nothing repulsive in his presence; but on the other hand, there was something cheerful and attractive in his face, and in his tone of voice. The finer elements were all kindly mingled in his breast, as any one could see. He moved about among us, asking many questions, as to what we could do, and what labor we had been accustomed to; if we thought we would like to live with him, and would be good boys if he would buy us, and other interrogatories of like character. After some further inspection, and conversation touching prices, he finally offered Freeman one thousand dollars for me, nine hundred for Harry, and seven hundred for Eliza. Whether the small-pox had depreciated our value, or from what cause Freeman had concluded to fall five hundred dollars from the price I was before held at, I cannot say. At any rate, after a little shrewd reflection, he announced his acceptance of the offer. As soon as Eliza heard it, she was in an agony again. By this time she had become haggard and hollow-eyed with sickness and with sorrow. It would be a relief if I could consistently pass over in silence the scene that now ensued. It recalls memories more mournful and affecting than any language can portray. I have seen mothers kissing for the last time the faces of their dead offspring; I have seen them looking down into the grave, as the earth fell with a dull sound upon their coffins, hiding them from their eyes forever; but never have I seen such an exhibition of intense, unmeasured, and unbounded grief, as when Eliza was parted from her child. She broke from her place in the line of women, and rushing down where Emily was standing, caught her in her arms. The child, sensible of some impending danger, instinctively fastened her hands around her mother's neck, and nestled her little head upon her bosom. Freeman sternly ordered her to be quiet, but she did not heed him. He caught her by the arm and pulled her rudely, but she only clung the closer to the child. Then, with a volley of great oaths, he struck her such a heartless blow, that she staggered backward, and was like to fall. Oh! how piteously then did she beseech and beg and pray that they might not be separated. Why could they not be purchased together? Why not let her have one of her dear children? "Mercy, mercy, master!" she cried, falling on her knees. "Please, master, buy Emily. I can never work any if she is taken from me: I will die." Freeman interfered again, but, disregarding him, she still plead most earnestly, telling how Randall had been taken from her--how she never would see him again, and now it was too bad--oh, God! it was too bad, too cruel, to take her away from Emily--her pride--her only darling, that could not live, it was so young, without its mother! Finally, after much more of supplication, the purchaser of Eliza stepped forward, evidently affected, and said to Freeman he would buy Emily, and asked him what her price was. "What is her _price_? _Buy_ her?" was the responsive interrogatory of Theophilus Freeman. And instantly answering his own inquiry, he added, "I won't sell her. She's not for sale." The man remarked he was not in need of one so young--that it would be of no profit to him, but since the mother was so fond of her, rather than see them separated, he would pay a reasonable price. But to this humane proposal Freeman was entirely deaf. He would not sell her then on any account whatever. There were heaps and piles of money to be made of her, he said, when she was a few years older. There were men enough in New-Orleans who would give five thousand dollars for such an extra, handsome, fancy piece as Emily would be, rather than not get her. No, no, he would not sell her then. She was a beauty--a picture--a doll--one of the regular bloods--none of your thick-lipped, bullet-headed, cotton-picking niggers--if she was might he be d--d. When Eliza heard Freeman's determination not to part with Emily, she became absolutely frantic. "I will _not_ go without her. They shall _not_ take her from me," she fairly shrieked, her shrieks commingling with the loud and angry voice of Freeman, commanding her to be silent. Meantime Harry and myself had been to the yard and returned with our blankets, and were at the front door ready to leave. Our purchaser stood near us, gazing at Eliza with an expression indicative of regret at having bought her at the expense of so much sorrow. We waited some time, when, finally, Freeman, out of patience, tore Emily from her mother by main force, the two clinging to each other with all their might. "Don't leave me, mama--don't leave me," screamed the child, as its mother was pushed harshly forward; "Don't leave me--come back, mama," she still cried, stretching forth her little arms imploringly. But she cried in vain. Out of the door and into the street we were quickly hurried. Still we could hear her calling to her mother, "Come back--don't leave me--come back, mama," until her infant voice grew faint and still more faint, and gradually died away, as distance intervened, and finally was wholly lost. Eliza never after saw or heard of Emily or Randall. Day nor night, however, were they ever absent from her memory. In the cotton field, in the cabin, always and everywhere, she was talking of them--often _to_ them, as if they were actually present. Only when absorbed in that illusion, or asleep, did she ever have a moment's comfort afterwards. She was no common slave, as has been said. To a large share of natural intelligence which she possessed, was added a general knowledge and information on most subjects. She had enjoyed opportunities such as are afforded to very few of her oppressed class. She had been lifted up into the regions of a higher life. Freedom--freedom for herself and for her offspring, for many years had been her cloud by day, her pillar of fire by night. In her pilgrimage through the wilderness of bondage, with eyes fixed upon that hope-inspiring beacon, she had at length ascended to "the top of Pisgah," and beheld "the land of promise." In an unexpected moment she was utterly overwhelmed with disappointment and despair. The glorious vision of liberty faded from her sight as they led her away into captivity. Now "she weepeth sore in the night, and tears are on her cheeks: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her: they have become her enemies." [Illustration: SEPERATION OF ELIZA AND HER LAST CHILD.] CHAPTER VII. THE STEAMBOAT RODOLPH--DEPARTURE FROM NEW-ORLEANS--WILLIAM FORD--ARRIVAL AT ALEXANDRIA, ON RED RIVER--RESOLUTIONS--THE GREAT PINE WOODS--WILD CATTLE--MARTIN'S SUMMER RESIDENCE--THE TEXAS ROAD--ARRIVAL AT MASTER FORD'S--ROSE--MISTRESS FORD--SALLY, AND HER CHILDREN--JOHN, THE COOK--WALTER, SAM, AND ANTONY--THE MILLS ON INDIAN CREEK--SABBATH DAYS--SAM'S CONVERSION--THE PROFIT OF KINDNESS--RAFTING--ADAM TAYDEM, THE LITTLE WHITE MAN--CASCALLA AND HIS TRIBE--THE INDIAN BALL--JOHN M. TIBEATS--THE STORM APPROACHING. On leaving the New-Orleans slave pen, Harry and I followed our new master through the streets, while Eliza, crying and turning back, was forced along by Freeman and his minions, until we found ourselves on board the steamboat Rodolph, then lying at the levee. In the course of half an hour we were moving briskly up the Mississippi, bound for some point on Red River. There were quite a number of slaves on board beside ourselves, just purchased in the New-Orleans market. I remember a Mr. Kelsow, who was said to be a well known and extensive planter, had in charge a gang of women. Our master's name was William Ford. He resided then in the "Great Pine Woods," in the parish of Avoyelles, situated on the right bank of Red River, in the heart of Louisiana. He is now a Baptist preacher. Throughout the whole parish of Avoyelles, and especially along both shores of Bayou Boeuf, where he is more intimately known, he is accounted by his fellow-citizens as a worthy minister of God. In many northern minds, perhaps, the idea of a man holding his brother man in servitude, and the traffic in human flesh, may seem altogether incompatible with their conceptions of a moral or religious life. From descriptions of such men as Burch and Freeman, and others hereinafter mentioned, they are led to despise and execrate the whole class of slaveholders, indiscriminately. But I was sometime his slave, and had an opportunity of learning well his character and disposition, and it is but simple justice to him when I say, in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery. He never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Looking through the same medium with his fathers before him, he saw things in the same light. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, his notions would undoubtedly have been different. Nevertheless, he was a model master, walking uprightly, according to the light of his understanding, and fortunate was the slave who came to his possession. Were all men such as he, Slavery would be deprived of more than half its bitterness. We were two days and three nights on board the steamboat Rodolph, during which time nothing of particular interest occurred. I was now known as Platt, the name given me by Burch, and by which I was designated through the whole period of my servitude. Eliza was sold by the name of "Dradey." She was so distinguished in the conveyance to Ford, now on record in the recorder's office in New-Orleans. On our passage I was constantly reflecting on my situation, and consulting with myself on the best course to pursue in order to effect my ultimate escape. Sometimes, not only then, but afterwards, I was almost on the point of disclosing fully to Ford the facts of my history. I am inclined now to the opinion it would have resulted in my benefit. This course was often considered, but through fear of its miscarriage, never put into execution, until eventually my transfer and his pecuniary embarrassments rendered it evidently unsafe. Afterwards, under other masters, unlike William Ford, I knew well enough the slightest knowledge of my real character would consign me at once to the remoter depths of Slavery. I was too costly a chattel to be lost, and was well aware that I would be taken farther on, into some by-place, over the Texan border, perhaps, and sold; that I would be disposed of as the thief disposes of his stolen horse, if my right to freedom was even whispered. So I resolved to lock the secret closely in my heart--never to utter one word or syllable as to who or what I was--trusting in Providence and my own shrewdness for deliverance. At length we left the steamboat Rodolph at a place called Alexandria, several hundred miles from New-Orleans. It is a small town on the southern shore of Red River. Having remained there over night, we entered the morning train of cars, and were soon at Bayou Lamourie, a still smaller place, distant eighteen miles from Alexandria. At that time it was the termination of the railroad. Ford's plantation was situated on the Texas road, twelve miles from Lamourie, in the Great Pine Woods. This distance, it was announced to us, must be traveled on foot, there being public conveyances no farther. Accordingly we all set out in the company of Ford. It was an excessively hot day. Harry, Eliza, and myself were yet weak, and the bottoms of our feet were very tender from the effects of the small-pox. We proceeded slowly, Ford telling us to take our time and sit down and rest whenever we desired--a privilege that was taken advantage of quite frequently. After leaving Lamourie and crossing two plantations, one belonging to Mr. Carnell, the other to a Mr. Flint, we reached the Pine Woods, a wilderness that stretches to the Sabine River. The whole country about Red River is low and marshy. The Pine Woods, as they are called, is comparatively upland, with frequent small intervals, however, running through them. This upland is covered with numerous trees--the white oak, the chincopin, resembling chestnut, but principally the yellow pine. They are of great size, running up sixty feet, and perfectly straight. The woods were full of cattle, very shy and wild, dashing away in herds, with a loud snuff, at our approach. Some of them were marked or branded, the rest appeared to be in their wild and untamed state. They are much smaller than northern breeds, and the peculiarity about them that most attracted my attention was their horns. They stand out from the sides of the head precisely straight, like two iron spikes. At noon we reached a cleared piece of ground containing three or four acres. Upon it was a small, unpainted, wooden house, a corn crib, or, as we would say, a barn, and a log kitchen, standing about a rod from the house. It was the summer residence of Mr. Martin. Rich planters, having large establishments on Bayou Boeuf, are accustomed to spend the warmer season in these woods. Here they find clear water and delightful shades. In fact, these retreats are to the planters of that section of the country what Newport and Saratoga are to the wealthier inhabitants of northern cities. We were sent around into the kitchen, and supplied with sweet potatoes, corn-bread, and bacon, while Master Ford dined with Martin in the house. There were several slaves about the premises. Martin came out and took a look at us, asking Ford the price of each, if we were green hands, and so forth, and making inquiries in relation to the slave market generally. After a long rest we set forth again, following the Texas road, which had the appearance of being very rarely traveled. For five miles we passed through continuous woods without observing a single habitation. At length, just as the sun was sinking in the west, we entered another opening, containing some twelve or fifteen acres. In this opening stood a house much larger than Mr. Martin's. It was two stories high, with a piazza in front. In the rear of it was also a log kitchen, poultry house, corncribs, and several negro cabins. Near the house was a peach orchard, and gardens of orange and pomegranate trees. The space was entirely surrounded by woods, and covered with a carpet of rich, rank verdure. It was a quiet, lonely, pleasant place--literally a green spot in the wilderness. It was the residence of my master, William Ford. As we approached, a yellow girl--her name was Rose--was standing on the piazza. Going to the door, she called her mistress, who presently came running out to meet her lord. She kissed him, and laughingly demanded if he had bought "those niggers." Ford said he had, and told us to go round to Sally's cabin and rest ourselves. Turning the corner of the house, we discovered Sally washing--her two baby children near her, rolling on the grass. They jumped up and toddled towards us, looked at us a moment like a brace of rabbits, then ran back to their mother as if afraid of us. Sally conducted us into the cabin, told us to lay down our bundles and be seated, for she was sure that we were tired. Just then John, the cook, a boy some sixteen years of age, and blacker than any crow, came running in, looked steadily in our faces, then turning round, without saying as much as "how d'ye do," ran back to the kitchen, laughing loudly, as if our coming was a great joke indeed. Much wearied with our walk, as soon as it was dark, Harry and I wrapped our blankets round us, and laid down upon the cabin floor. My thoughts, as usual, wandered back to my wife and children. The consciousness of my real situation; the hopelessness of any effort to escape through the wide forests of Avoyelles, pressed heavily upon me, yet my heart was at home in Saratoga. I was awakened early in the morning by the voice of Master Ford, calling Rose. She hastened into the house to dress the children, Sally to the field to milk the cows, while John was busy in the kitchen preparing breakfast. In the meantime Harry and I were strolling about the yard, looking at our new quarters. Just after breakfast a colored man, driving three yoke of oxen, attached to a wagon load of lumber, drove into the opening. He was a slave of Ford's, named Walton, the husband of Rose. By the way, Rose was a native of Washington, and had been brought from thence five years before. She had never seen Eliza, but she had heard of Berry, and they knew the same streets, and the same people, either personally, or by reputation. They became fast friends immediately, and talked a great deal together of old times, and of friends they had left behind. Ford was at that time a wealthy man. Besides his seat in the Pine Woods, he owned a large lumbering establishment on Indian Creek, four miles distant, and also, in his wife's right, an extensive plantation and many slaves on Bayou Boeuf. Walton had come with his load of lumber from the mills on Indian Creek. Ford directed us to return with him, saying he would follow us as soon as possible. Before leaving, Mistress Ford called me into the store-room, and handed me, as it is there termed, a tin bucket of molasses for Harry and myself. Eliza was still ringing her hands and deploring the loss of her children. Ford tried as much as possible to console her--told her she need not work very hard; that she might remain with Rose, and assist the madam in the house affairs. Riding with Walton in the wagon, Harry and I became quite well acquainted with him long before reaching Indian Creek. He was a "born thrall" of Ford's, and spoke kindly and affectionately of him, as a child would speak of his own father. In answer to his inquiries from whence I came, I told him from Washington. Of that city, he had heard much from his wife, Rose, and all the way plied me with many extravagant and absurd questions. On reaching the mills at Indian Creek, we found two more of Ford's slaves, Sam and Antony. Sam, also, was a Washingtonian, having been brought out in the same gang with Rose. He had worked on a farm near Georgetown. Antony was a blacksmith, from Kentucky, who had been in his present master's service about ten years. Sam knew Burch, and when informed that he was the trader who had sent me on from Washington, it was remarkable how well we agreed upon the subject of his superlative rascality. He had forwarded Sam, also. On Ford's arrival at the mill, we were employed in piling lumber, and chopping logs, which occupation we continued during the remainder of the summer. We usually spent our Sabbaths at the opening, on which days our master would gather all his slaves about him, and read and expound the Scriptures. He sought to inculcate in our minds feelings of kindness towards each other, of dependence upon God--setting forth the rewards promised unto those who lead an upright and prayerful life. Seated in the doorway of his house, surrounded by his man-servants and his maid-servants, who looked earnestly into the good man's face, he spoke of the loving kindness of the Creator, and of the life that is to come. Often did the voice of prayer ascend from his lips to heaven, the only sound that broke the solitude of the place. In the course of the summer Sam became deeply convicted, his mind dwelling intensely on the subject of religion. His mistress gave him a Bible, which he carried with him to his work. Whatever leisure time was allowed him, he spent in perusing it, though it was only with great difficulty that he could master any part of it. I often read to him, a favor which he well repaid me by many expressions of gratitude. Sam's piety was frequently observed by white men who came to the mill, and the remark it most generally provoked was, that a man like Ford, who allowed his slaves to have Bibles, was "not fit to own a nigger." He, however, lost nothing by his kindness. It is a fact I have more than once observed, that those who treated their slaves most leniently, were rewarded by the greatest amount of labor. I know it from my own experience. It was a source of pleasure to surprise Master Ford with a greater day's work than was required, while, under subsequent masters, there was no prompter to extra effort but the overseer's lash. It was the desire of Ford's approving voice that suggested to me an idea that resulted to his profit. The lumber we were manufacturing was contracted to be delivered at Lamourie. It had hitherto been transported by land, and was an important item of expense. Indian Creek, upon which the mills were situated, was a narrow but deep stream emptying into Bayou Boeuf. In some places it was not more than twelve feet wide, and much obstructed with trunks of trees. Bayou Boeuf was connected with Bayou Lamourie. I ascertained the distance from the mills to the point on the latter bayou, where our lumber was to be delivered, was but a few miles less by land than by water. Provided the creek could be made navigable for rafts, it occurred to me that the expense of transportation would be materially diminished. Adam Taydem, a little white man, who had been a soldier in Florida, and had strolled into that distant region, was foreman and superintendent of the mills. He scouted the idea; but Ford, when I laid it before him, received it favorably, and permitted me to try the experiment. Having removed the obstructions, I made up a narrow raft, consisting of twelve cribs. At this business I think I was quite skillful, not having forgotten my experience years before on the Champlain canal. I labored hard, being extremely anxious to succeed, both from a desire to please my master, and to show Adam Taydem that my scheme was not such a visionary one as he incessantly pronounced it. One hand could manage three cribs. I took charge of the forward three, and commenced poling down the creek. In due time we entered the first bayou, and finally reached our destination in a shorter period of time than I had anticipated. The arrival of the raft at Lamourie created a sensation, while Mr. Ford loaded me with commendations. On all sides I heard Ford's Platt pronounced the "smartest nigger in the Pine Woods"--in fact I was the Fulton of Indian Creek. I was not insensible to the praise bestowed upon me, and enjoyed, especially, my triumph over Taydem, whose half-malicious ridicule had stung my pride. From this time the entire control of bringing the lumber to Lamourie was placed in my hands until the contract was fulfilled. Indian Creek, in its whole length, flows through a magnificent forest. There dwells on its shore a tribe of Indians, a remnant of the Chickasaws or Chickopees, if I remember rightly. They live in simple huts, ten or twelve feet square, constructed of pine poles and covered with bark. They subsist principally on the flesh of the deer, the coon, and opossum, all of which are plenty in these woods. Sometimes they exchange venison for a little corn and whisky with the planters on the bayous. Their usual dress is buckskin breeches and calico hunting shirts of fantastic colors, buttoned from belt to chin. They wear brass rings on their wrists, and in their ears and noses. The dress of the squaws is very similar. They are fond of dogs and horses--owning many of the latter, of a small, tough breed--and are skillful riders. Their bridles, girths and saddles were made of raw skins of animals; their stirrups of a certain kind of wood. Mounted astride their ponies, men and women, I have seen them dash out into the woods at the utmost of their speed, following narrow winding paths, and dodging trees, in a manner that eclipsed the most miraculous feats of civilized equestrianism. Circling away in various directions, the forest echoing and re-echoing with their whoops, they would presently return at the same dashing, headlong speed with which they started. Their village was on Indian Creek, known as Indian Castle, but their range extended to the Sabine River. Occasionally a tribe from Texas would come over on a visit, and then there was indeed a carnival in the "Great Pine Woods." Chief of the tribe was Cascalla; second in rank, John Baltese, his son-in-law; with both of whom, as with many others of the tribe, I became acquainted during my frequent voyages down the creek with rafts. Sam and myself would often visit them when the day's task was done. They were obedient to the chief; the word of Cascalla was their law. They were a rude but harmless people, and enjoyed their wild mode of life. They had little fancy for the open country, the cleared lands on the shores of the bayous, but preferred to hide themselves within the shadows of the forest. They worshiped the Great Spirit, loved whisky, and were happy. On one occasion I was present at a dance, when a roving herd from Texas had encamped in their village. The entire carcass of a deer was roasting before a large fire, which threw its light a long distance among the trees under which they were assembled. When they had formed in a ring, men and squaws alternately, a sort of Indian fiddle set up an indescribable tune. It was a continuous, melancholy kind of wavy sound, with the slightest possible variation. At the first note, if indeed there was more than one note in the whole tune, they circled around, trotting after each other, and giving utterance to a guttural, sing-song noise, equally as nondescript as the music of the fiddle. At the end of the third circuit, they would stop suddenly, whoop as if their lungs would crack, then break from the ring, forming in couples, man and squaw, each jumping backwards as far as possible from the other, then forwards--which graceful feat having been twice or thrice accomplished, they would form in a ring, and go trotting round again. The best dancer appeared to be considered the one who could whoop the loudest, jump the farthest, and utter the most excruciating noise. At intervals, one or more would leave the dancing circle, and going to the fire, cut from the roasting carcass a slice of venison. In a hole, shaped like a mortar, cut in the trunk of a fallen tree, they pounded corn with a wooden pestle, and of the meal made cake. Alternately they danced and ate. Thus were the visitors from Texas entertained by the dusky sons and daughters of the Chicopees, and such is a description, as I saw it, of an Indian ball in the Pine Woods of Avoyelles. In the autumn, I left the mills, and was employed at the opening. One day the mistress was urging Ford to procure a loom, in order that Sally might commence weaving cloth for the winter garments of the slaves. He could not imagine where one was to be found, when I suggested that the easiest way to get one would be to make it, informing him at the same time, that I was a sort of "Jack at all trades," and would attempt it, with his permission. It was granted very readily, and I was allowed to go to a neighboring planter's to inspect one before commencing the undertaking. At length it was finished and pronounced by Sally to be perfect. She could easily weave her task of fourteen yards, milk the cows, and have leisure time besides each day. It worked so well, I was continued in the employment of making looms, which were taken down to the plantation on the bayou. At this time one John M. Tibeats, a carpenter, came to the opening to do some work on master's house. I was directed to quit the looms and assist him. For two weeks I was in his company, planning and matching boards for ceiling, a plastered room being a rare thing in the parish of Avoyelles. John M. Tibeats was the opposite of Ford in all respects. He was a small, crabbed, quick-tempered, spiteful man. He had no fixed residence that I ever heard of, but passed from one plantation to another, wherever he could find employment. He was without standing in the community, not esteemed by white men, nor even respected by slaves. He was ignorant, withal, and of a revengeful disposition. He left the parish long before I did, and I know not whether he is at present alive or dead. Certain it is, it was a most unlucky day for me that brought us together. During my residence with Master Ford I had seen only the bright side of slavery. His was no heavy hand crushing us to the earth. _He_ pointed upwards, and with benign and cheering words addressed us as his fellow-mortals, accountable, like himself, to the Maker of us all. I think of him with affection, and had my family been with me, could have borne his gentle servitude, without murmuring, all my days. But clouds were gathering in the horizon--forerunners of a pitiless storm that was soon to break over me. I was doomed to endure such bitter trials as the poor slave only knows, and to lead no more the comparatively happy life which I had led in the "Great Pine Woods." CHAPTER VIII. FORD'S EMBARRASSMENTS--THE SALE TO TIBEATS--THE CHATTEL MORTGAGE--MISTRESS FORD'S PLANTATION ON BAYOU BOEUF--DESCRIPTION OF THE LATTER--FORD'S BROTHER-IN-LAW, PETER TANNER--MEETING WITH ELIZA--SHE STILL MOURNS FOR HER CHILDREN--FORD'S OVERSEER, CHAPIN--TIBEAT'S ABUSE--THE KEG OF NAILS--THE FIRST FIGHT WITH TIBEATS--HIS DISCOMFITURE AND CASTIGATION--THE ATTEMPT TO HANG ME--CHAPIN'S INTERFERENCE AND SPEECH--UNHAPPY REFLECTIONS--ABRUPT DEPARTURE OF TIBEATS, COOK AND RAMSAY--LAWSON AND THE BROWN MULE--MESSAGE TO THE PINE WOODS. William Ford unfortunately became embarrassed in his pecuniary affairs. A heavy judgment was rendered against him in consequence of his having become security for his brother, Franklin Ford, residing on Red River, above Alexandria, and who had failed to meet his liabilities. He was also indebted to John M. Tibeats to a considerable amount in consideration of his services in building the mills on Indian Creek, and also a weaving-house, corn-mill and other erections on the plantation at Bayou Boeuf, not yet completed. It was therefore necessary, in order to meet these demands, to dispose of eighteen slaves, myself among the number. Seventeen of them, including Sam and Harry, were purchased by Peter Compton, a planter also residing on Red River. I was sold to Tibeats, in consequence, undoubtedly, of my slight skill as a carpenter. This was in the winter of 1842. The deed of myself from Freeman to Ford, as I ascertained from the public records in New-Orleans on my return, was dated June 23d, 1841. At the time of my sale to Tibeats, the price agreed to be given for me being more than the debt, Ford took a chattel mortgage of four hundred dollars. I am indebted for my life, as will hereafter be seen, to that mortgage. I bade farewell to my good friends at the opening, and departed with my new master Tibeats. We went down to the plantation on Bayou Boeuf, distant twenty-seven miles from the Pine Woods, to complete the unfinished contract. Bayou Boeuf is a sluggish, winding stream--one of those stagnant bodies of water common in that region, setting back from Red River. It stretches from a point not far from Alexandria, in a south-easterly direction, and following its tortuous course, is more than fifty miles in length. Large cotton and sugar plantations line each shore, extending back to the borders of interminable swamps. It is alive with alligators, rendering it unsafe for swine, or unthinking slave children to stroll along its banks. Upon a bend in this bayou, a short distance from Cheneyville, was situated the plantation of Madam Ford--her brother, Peter Tanner, a great landholder, living on the opposite side. On my arrival at Bayou Boeuf, I had the pleasure of meeting Eliza, whom I had not seen for several months. She had not pleased Mrs. Ford, being more occupied in brooding over her sorrows than in attending to her business, and had, in consequence, been sent down to work in the field on the plantation. She had grown feeble and emaciated, and was still mourning for her children. She asked me if I had forgotten them, and a great many times inquired if I still remembered how handsome little Emily was--how much Randall loved her--and wondered if they were living still, and where the darlings could then be. She had sunk beneath the weight of an excessive grief. Her drooping form and hollow cheeks too plainly indicated that she had well nigh reached the end of her weary road. Ford's overseer on this plantation, and who had the exclusive charge of it, was a Mr. Chapin, a kindly-disposed man, and a native of Pennsylvania. In common with others, he held Tibeats in light estimation, which fact, in connection with the four hundred dollar mortgage, was fortunate for me. I was now compelled to labor very hard. From earliest dawn until late at night, I was not allowed to be a moment idle. Notwithstanding which, Tibeats was never satisfied. He was continually cursing and complaining. He never spoke to me a kind word. I was his faithful slave, and earned him large wages every day, and yet I went to my cabin nightly, loaded with abuse and stinging epithets. We had completed the corn mill, the kitchen, and so forth, and were at work upon the weaving-house, when I was guilty of an act, in that State punishable with death. It was my first fight with Tibeats. The weaving-house we were erecting stood in the orchard a few rods from the residence of Chapin, or the "great house," as it was called. One night, having worked until it was too dark to see, I was ordered by Tibeats to rise very early in the morning, procure a keg of nails from Chapin, and commence putting on the clapboards. I retired to the cabin extremely tired, and having cooked a supper of bacon and corn cake, and conversed a while with Eliza, who occupied the same cabin, as also did Lawson and his wife Mary, and a slave named Bristol, laid down upon the ground floor, little dreaming of the sufferings that awaited me on the morrow. Before daylight I was on the piazza of the "great house," awaiting the appearance of overseer Chapin. To have aroused him from his slumbers and stated my errand, would have been an unpardonable boldness. At length he came out. Taking off my hat, I informed him Master Tibeats had directed me to call upon him for a keg of nails. Going into the store-room, he rolled it out, at the same time saying, if Tibeats preferred a different size, he would endeavor to furnish them, but that I might use those until further directed. Then mounting his horse, which stood saddled and bridled at the door, he rode away into the field, whither the slaves had preceded him, while I took the keg on my shoulder, and proceeding to the weaving-house, broke in the head, and commenced nailing on the clapboards. As the day began to open, Tibeats came out of the house to where I was, hard at work. He seemed to be that morning even more morose and disagreeable than usual. He was my master, entitled by law to my flesh and blood, and to exercise over me such tyrannical control as his mean nature prompted; but there was no law that could prevent my looking upon him with intense contempt. I despised both his disposition and his intellect. I had just come round to the keg for a further supply of nails, as he reached the weaving-house. "I thought I told you to commence putting on weather-boards this morning," he remarked. "Yes, master, and I am about it," I replied. "Where?" he demanded. "On the other side," was my answer. He walked round to the other side, examined my work for a while, muttering to himself in a fault-finding tone. "Didn't I tell you last night to get a keg of nails of Chapin?" he broke forth again. "Yes, master, and so I did; and overseer said he would get another size for you, if you wanted them, when he came back from the field." Tibeats walked to the keg, looked a moment at the contents, then kicked it violently. Coming towards me in a great passion, he exclaimed, "G--d d--n you! I thought you _knowed_ something." I made answer: "I tried to do as you told me, master. I didn't mean anything wrong. Overseer said--" But he interrupted me with such a flood of curses that I was unable to finish the sentence. At length he ran towards the house, and going to the piazza, took down one of the overseer's whips. The whip had a short wooden stock, braided over with leather, and was loaded at the butt. The lash was three feet long, or thereabouts, and made of raw-hide strands. At first I was somewhat frightened, and my impulse was to run. There was no one about except Rachel, the cook, and Chapin's wife, and neither of them were to be seen. The rest were in the field. I knew he intended to whip me, and it was the first time any one had attempted it since my arrival at Avoyelles. I felt, moreover, that I had been faithful--that I was guilty of no wrong whatever, and deserved commendation rather than punishment. My fear changed to anger, and before he reached me I had made up my mind fully not to be whipped, let the result be life or death. Winding the lash around his hand, and taking hold of the small end of the stock, he walked up to me, and with a malignant look, ordered me to strip. "Master Tibeats" said I, looking him boldly in the face, "I will _not_." I was about to say something further in justification, but with concentrated vengeance, he sprang upon me, seizing me by the throat with one hand, raising the whip with the other, in the act of striking. Before the blow descended, however, I had caught him by the collar of the coat, and drawn him closely to me. Reaching down, I seized him by the ankle, and pushing him back with the other hand, he fell over on the ground. Putting one arm around his leg, and holding it to my breast, so that his head and shoulders only touched the ground, I placed my foot upon his neck. He was completely in my power. My blood was up. It seemed to course through my veins like fire. In the frenzy of my madness I snatched the whip from his hand. He struggled with all his power; swore that I should not live to see another day; and that he would tear out my heart. But his struggles and his threats were alike in vain. I cannot tell how many times I struck him. Blow after blow fell fast and heavy upon his wriggling form. At length he screamed--cried murder--and at last the blasphemous tyrant called on God for mercy. But he who had never shown mercy did not receive it. The stiff stock of the whip warped round his cringing body until my right arm ached. Until this time I had been too busy to look about me. Desisting for a moment, I saw Mrs. Chapin looking from the window, and Rachel standing in the kitchen door. Their attitudes expressed the utmost excitement and alarm. His screams had been heard in the field. Chapin was coming as fast as he could ride. I struck him a blow or two more, then pushed him from me with such a well-directed kick that he went rolling over on the ground. Rising to his feet, and brushing the dirt from his hair, he stood looking at me, pale with rage. We gazed at each other in silence. Not a word was uttered until Chapin galloped up to us. "What is the matter?" he cried out. "Master Tibeats wants to whip me for using the nails you gave me," I replied. "What is the matter with the nails?" he inquired, turning to Tibeats. Tibeats answered to the effect that they were too large, paying little heed, however, to Chapin's question, but still keeping his snakish eyes fastened maliciously on me. "I am overseer here," Chapin began. "I told Platt to take them and use them, and if they were not of the proper size I would get others on returning from the field. It is not his fault. Besides, I shall furnish such nails as I please. I hope you will understand _that_, Mr. Tibeats." Tibeats made no reply, but, grinding his teeth and shaking his fist, swore he would have satisfaction, and that it was not half over yet. Thereupon he walked away, followed by the overseer, and entered the house, the latter talking to him all the while in a suppressed tone, and with earnest gestures. I remained where I was, doubting whether it was better to fly or abide the result, whatever it might be. Presently Tibeats came out of the house, and, saddling his horse, the only property he possessed besides myself, departed on the road to Cheneyville. When he was gone, Chapin came out, visibly excited, telling me not to stir, not to attempt to leave the plantation on any account whatever. He then went to the kitchen, and calling Rachel out, conversed with her some time. Coming back, he again charged me with great earnestness not to run, saying my master was a rascal; that he had left on no good errand, and that there might be trouble before night. But at all events, he insisted upon it, I must not stir. As I stood there, feelings of unutterable agony overwhelmed me. I was conscious that I had subjected myself to unimaginable punishment. The reaction that followed my extreme ebullition of anger produced the most painful sensations of regret. An unfriended, helpless slave--what could I _do_, what could I _say_, to justify, in the remotest manner, the heinous act I had committed, of resenting a _white_ man's contumely and abuse. I tried to pray--I tried to beseech my Heavenly Father to sustain me in my sore extremity, but emotion choked my utterance, and I could only bow my head upon my hands and weep. For at least an hour I remained in this situation, finding relief only in tears, when, looking up, I beheld Tibeats, accompanied by two horsemen, coming down the bayou. They rode into the yard, jumped from their horses, and approached me with large whips, one of them also carrying a coil of rope. "Cross your hands," commanded Tibeats, with the addition of such a shuddering expression of blasphemy as is not decorous to repeat. "You need not bind me, Master Tibeats, I am ready to go with you anywhere," said I. One of his companions then stepped forward, swearing if I made the least resistance he would break my head--he would tear me limb from limb--he would cut my black throat--and giving wide scope to other similar expressions. Perceiving any importunity altogether vain, I crossed my hands, submitting humbly to whatever disposition they might please to make of me. Thereupon Tibeats tied my wrists, drawing the rope around them with his utmost strength. Then he bound my ankles in the same manner. In the meantime the other two had slipped a cord within my elbows, running it across my back, and tying it firmly. It was utterly impossible to move hand or foot. With a remaining piece of rope Tibeats made an awkward noose, and placed it about my neck. "Now, then," inquired one of Tibeats' companions, "where shall we hang the nigger?" One proposed such a limb, extending from the body of a peach tree, near the spot where we were standing. His comrade objected to it, alleging it would break, and proposed another. Finally they fixed upon the latter. During this conversation, and all the time they were binding me, I uttered not a word. Overseer Chapin, during the progress of the scene, was walking hastily back and forth on the piazza. Rachel was crying by the kitchen door, and Mrs. Chapin was still looking from the window. Hope died within my heart. Surely my time had come. I should never behold the light of another day--never behold the faces of my children--the sweet anticipation I had cherished with such fondness. I should that hour struggle through the fearful agonies of death! None would mourn for me--none revenge me. Soon my form would be mouldering in that distant soil, or, perhaps, be cast to the slimy reptiles that filled the stagnant waters of the bayou! Tears flowed down my cheeks, but they only afforded a subject of insulting comment for my executioners. [Illustration: CHAPIN RESCUES SOLOMON FROM HANGING.] At length, as they were dragging me towards the tree, Chapin, who had momentarily disappeared from the piazza, came out of the house and walked towards us. He had a pistol in each hand, and as near as I can now recall to mind, spoke in a firm, determined manner, as follows: "Gentlemen, I have a few words to say. You had better listen to them. Whoever moves that slave another foot from where he stands is a dead man. In the first place, he does not deserve this treatment. It is a shame to murder him in this manner. I never knew a more faithful boy than Platt. You, Tibeats, are in the fault yourself. You are pretty much of a scoundrel, and I know it, and you richly deserve the flogging you have received. In the next place, I have been overseer on this plantation seven years, and, in the absence of William Ford, am master here. My duty is to protect his interests, and that duty I shall perform. You are not responsible--you are a worthless fellow. Ford holds a mortgage on Platt of four hundred dollars. If you hang him he loses his debt. Until that is canceled you have no right to take his life. You have no right to take it any way. There is a law for the slave as well as for the white man. You are no better than a murderer. "As for you," addressing Cook and Ramsay, a couple of overseers from neighboring plantations, "as for you--begone! If you have any regard for your own safety, I say, begone." Cook and Ramsay, without a further word, mounted their horses and rode away. Tibeats, in a few minutes, evidently in fear, and overawed by the decided tone of Chapin, sneaked off like a coward, as he was, and mounting his horse, followed his companions. I remained standing where I was, still bound, with the rope around my neck. As soon as they were gone, Chapin called Rachel, ordering her to run to the field, and tell Lawson to hurry to the house without delay, and bring the brown mule with him, an animal much prized for its unusual fleetness. Presently the boy appeared. "Lawson," said Chapin, "you must go to the Pine Woods. Tell your master Ford to come here at once--that he must not delay a single moment. Tell him they are trying to murder Platt. Now hurry, boy. Be at the Pine Woods by noon if you kill the mule." Chapin stepped into the house and wrote a pass. When he returned, Lawson was at the door, mounted on his mule. Receiving the pass, he plied the whip right smartly to the beast, dashed out of the yard, and turning up the bayou on a hard gallop, in less time than it has taken me to describe the scene, was out of sight. CHAPTER IX. THE HOT SUN--YET BOUND--THE CORDS SINK INTO MY FLESH--CHAPIN'S UNEASINESS--SPECULATION--RACHEL, AND HER CUP OF WATER--SUFFERING INCREASES--THE HAPPINESS OF SLAVERY--ARRIVAL OF FORD--HE CUTS THE CORDS WHICH BIND ME, AND TAKES THE ROPE FROM MY NECK--MISERY--THE GATHERING OF THE SLAVES IN ELIZA'S CABIN--THEIR KINDNESS--RACHEL REPEATS THE OCCURRENCES OF THE DAY--LAWSON ENTERTAINS HIS COMPANIONS WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS RIDE--CHAPIN'S APPREHENSIONS OF TIBEATS--HIRED TO PETER TANNER--PETER EXPOUNDS THE SCRIPTURES--DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCKS. As the sun approached the meridian that day it became insufferably warm. Its hot rays scorched the ground. The earth almost blistered the foot that stood upon it. I was without coat or hat, standing bare-headed, exposed to its burning blaze. Great drops of perspiration rolled down my face, drenching the scanty apparel wherewith I was clothed. Over the fence, a very little way off, the peach trees cast their cool, delicious shadows on the grass. I would gladly have given a long year of service to have been enabled to exchange the heated oven, as it were, wherein I stood, for a seat beneath their branches. But I was yet bound, the rope still dangling from my neck, and standing in the same tracks where Tibeats and his comrades left me. I could not move an inch, so firmly had I been bound. To have been enabled to lean against the weaving house would have been a luxury indeed. But it was far beyond my reach, though distant less than twenty feet. I wanted to lie down, but knew I could not rise again. The ground was so parched and boiling hot I was aware it would but add to the discomfort of my situation. If I could have only moved my position, however slightly, it would have been relief unspeakable. But the hot rays of a southern sun, beating all the long summer day on my bare head, produced not half the suffering I experienced from my aching limbs. My wrists and ankles, and the cords of my legs and arms began to swell, burying the rope that bound them into the swollen flesh. All day Chapin walked back and forth upon the stoop, but not once approached me. He appeared to be in a state of great uneasiness, looking first towards me, and then up the road, as if expecting some arrival every moment. He did not go to the field, as was his custom. It was evident from his manner that he supposed Tibeats would return with more and better armed assistance, perhaps, to renew the quarrel, and it was equally evident he had prepared his mind to defend my life at whatever hazard. Why he did not relieve me--why he suffered me to remain in agony the whole weary day, I never knew. It was not for want of sympathy, I am certain. Perhaps he wished Ford to see the rope about my neck, and the brutal manner in which I had been bound; perhaps his interference with another's property in which he had no legal interest might have been a trespass, which would have subjected him to the penalty of the law. Why Tibeats was all day absent was another mystery I never could divine. He knew well enough that Chapin would not harm him unless he persisted in his design against me. Lawson told me afterwards, that, as he passed the plantation of John David Cheney, he saw the three, and that they turned and looked after him as he flew by. I think his supposition was, that Lawson had been sent out by Overseer Chapin to arouse the neighboring planters, and to call on them to come to his assistance. He, therefore, undoubtedly, acted on the principle, that "discretion is the better part of valor," and kept away. But whatever motive may have governed the cowardly and malignant tyrant, it is of no importance. There I still stood in the noon-tide sun, groaning with pain. From long before daylight I had not eaten a morsel. I was growing faint from pain, and thirst, and hunger. Once only, in the very hottest portion of the day, Rachel, half fearful she was acting contrary to the overseer's wishes, ventured to me, and held a cup of water to my lips. The humble creature never knew, nor could she comprehend if she had heard them, the blessings I invoked upon her, for that balmy draught. She could only say, "Oh, Platt, how I do pity you," and then hastened back to her labors in the kitchen. Never did the sun move so slowly through the heavens--never did it shower down such fervent and fiery rays, as it did that day. At least, so it appeared to me. What my meditations were--the innumerable thoughts that thronged through my distracted brain--I will not attempt to give expression to. Suffice it to say, during the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped and protected by his master, is happier than the free colored citizen of the North. To that conclusion I have never since arrived. There are many, however, even in the Northern States, benevolent and well-disposed men, who will pronounce my opinion erroneous, and gravely proceed to substantiate the assertion with an argument. Alas! they have never drunk, as I have, from the bitter cup of slavery. Just at sunset my heart leaped with unbounded joy, as Ford came riding into the yard, his horse covered with foam. Chapin met him at the door, and after conversing a short time, he walked directly to me. "Poor Platt, you are in a bad state," was the only expression that escaped his lips. "Thank God!" said I, "thank God, Master Ford, that you have come at last." Drawing a knife from his pocket, he indignantly cut the cord from my wrists, arms, and ankles, and slipped the noose from my neck. I attempted to walk, but staggered like a drunken man, and fell partially to the ground. Ford returned immediately to the house, leaving me alone again. As he reached the piazza, Tibeats and his two friends rode up. A long dialogue followed. I could hear the sound of their voices, the mild tones of Ford mingling with the angry accents of Tibeats, but was unable to distinguish what was said. Finally the three departed again, apparently not well pleased. I endeavored to raise the hammer, thinking to show Ford how willing I was to work, by proceeding with my labors on the weaving house, but it fell from my nerveless hand. At dark I crawled into the cabin, and laid down. I was in great misery--all sore and swollen--the slightest movement producing excruciating suffering. Soon the hands came in from the field. Rachel, when she went after Lawson, had told them what had happened. Eliza and Mary broiled me a piece of bacon, but my appetite was gone. Then they scorched some corn meal and made coffee. It was all that I could take. Eliza consoled me and was very kind. It was not long before the cabin was full of slaves. They gathered round me, asking many questions about the difficulty with Tibeats in the morning--and the particulars of all the occurrences of the day. Then Rachel came in, and in her simple language, repeated it over again--dwelling emphatically on the kick that sent Tibeats rolling over on the ground--whereupon there was a general titter throughout the crowd. Then she described how Chapin walked out with his pistols and rescued me, and how Master Ford cut the ropes with his knife, just as if he was mad. By this time Lawson had returned. He had to regale them with an account of his trip to the Pine Woods--how the brown mule bore him faster than a "streak o'lightnin"--how he astonished everybody as he flew along--how Master Ford started right away--how he said Platt was a good nigger, and they shouldn't kill him, concluding with pretty strong intimations that there was not another human being in the wide world, who could have created such a universal sensation on the road, or performed such a marvelous John Gilpin feat, as he had done that day on the brown mule. The kind creatures loaded me with the expression of their sympathy--saying, Tibeats was a hard, cruel man, and hoping "Massa Ford" would get me back again. In this manner they passed the time, discussing, chatting, talking over and over again the exciting affair, until suddenly Chapin presented himself at the cabin door and called me. "Platt," said he, "you will sleep on the floor in the great house to-night; bring your blanket with you." I arose as quickly as I was able, took my blanket in my hand, and followed him. On the way he informed me that he should not wonder if Tibeats was back again before morning--that he intended to kill me--and that he did not mean he should do it without witnesses. Had he stabbed me to the heart in the presence of a hundred slaves, not one of them, by the laws of Louisiana, could have given evidence against him. I laid down on the floor in the "great house"--the first and the last time such a sumptuous resting place was granted me during my twelve years of bondage--and tried to sleep. Near midnight the dog began to bark. Chapin arose, looked from the window, but could discover nothing. At length the dog was quiet. As he returned to his room, he said, "I believe, Platt, that scoundrel is skulking about the premises somewhere. If the dog barks again, and I am sleeping, wake me." I promised to do so. After the lapse of an hour or more, the dog re-commenced his clamor, running towards the gate, then back again, all the while barking furiously. Chapin was out of bed without waiting to be called. On this occasion, he stepped forth upon the piazza, and remained standing there a considerable length of time. Nothing, however, was to be seen, and the dog returned to his kennel. We were not disturbed again during the night. The excessive pain that I suffered, and the dread of some impending danger, prevented any rest whatever. Whether or not Tibeats did actually return to the plantation that night, seeking an opportunity to wreak his vengeance upon me, is a secret known only to himself, perhaps. I thought then, however, and have the strong impression still, that he was there. At all events, he had the disposition of an assassin--cowering before a brave man's words, but ready to strike his helpless or unsuspecting victim in the back, as I had reason afterwards to know. At daylight in the morning, I arose, sore and weary, having rested little. Nevertheless, after partaking breakfast, which Mary and Eliza had prepared for me in the cabin, I proceeded to the weaving house and commenced the labors of another day. It was Chapin's practice, as it is the practice of overseers generally, immediately on arising, to bestride his horse, always saddled and bridled and ready for him--the particular business of some slave--and ride into the field. This morning, on the contrary, he came to the weaving house, asking if I had seen anything of Tibeats yet. Replying in the negative, he remarked there was something not right about the fellow--there was bad blood in him--that I must keep a sharp watch of him, or he would do me wrong some day when I least expected it. While he was yet speaking, Tibeats rode in, hitched his horse, and entered the house. I had little fear of him while Ford and Chapin were at hand, but they could not be near me always. Oh! how heavily the weight of slavery pressed upon me then. I must toil day after day, endure abuse and taunts and scoffs, sleep on the hard ground, live on the coarsest fare, and not only this, but live the slave of a blood-seeking wretch, of whom I must stand henceforth in continued fear and dread. Why had I not died in my young years--before God had given me children to love and live for? What unhappiness and suffering and sorrow it would have prevented. I sighed for liberty; but the bondman's chain was round me, and could not be shaken off. I could only gaze wistfully towards the North, and think of the thousands of miles that stretched between me and the soil of freedom, over which a _black_ freeman may not pass. Tibeats, in the course of half an hour, walked over to the weaving-house, looked at me sharply, then returned without saying anything. Most of the forenoon he sat on the piazza, reading a newspaper and conversing with Ford. After dinner, the latter left for the Pine Woods, and it was indeed with regret that I beheld him depart from the plantation. Once more during the day Tibeats came to me, gave me some order, and returned. During the week the weaving-house was completed--Tibeats in the meantime making no allusion whatever to the difficulty--when I was informed he had hired me to Peter Tanner, to work under another carpenter by the name of Myers. This announcement was received with gratification, as any place was desirable that would relieve me of his hateful presence. Peter Tanner, as the reader has already been informed, lived on the opposite shore, and was the brother of Mistress Ford. He is one of the most extensive planters on Bayou Boeuf, and owns a large number of slaves. Over I went to Tanner's, joyfully enough. He had heard of my late difficulties--in fact, I ascertained the flogging of Tibeats was soon blazoned far and wide. This affair, together with my rafting experiment, had rendered me somewhat notorious. More than once I heard it said that Platt Ford, now Platt Tibeats--a slave's name changes with his change of master--was "a devil of a nigger." But I was destined to make a still further noise, as will presently be seen, throughout the little world of Bayou Boeuf. Peter Tanner endeavored to impress upon me the idea that he was quite severe, though I could perceive there was a vein of good humor in the old fellow, after all. "You're the nigger," he said to me on my arrival--"You're the nigger that flogged your master, eh? You're the nigger that kicks, and holds carpenter Tibeats by the leg, and wallops him, are ye? I'd like to see you hold me by the leg--I should. You're a 'portant character--you're a great nigger--very remarkable nigger, ain't ye? _I'd_ lash you--_I'd_ take the tantrums out of ye. Jest take hold of my leg, if you please. None of your pranks here, my boy, remember _that_. Now go to work, you _kickin'_ rascal," concluded Peter Tanner, unable to suppress a half-comical grin at his own wit and sarcasm. After listening to this salutation, I was taken charge of by Myers, and labored under his direction for a month, to his and my own satisfaction. Like William Ford, his brother-in-law, Tanner was in the habit of reading the Bible to his slaves on the Sabbath, but in a somewhat different spirit. He was an impressive commentator on the New Testament. The first Sunday after my coming to the plantation, he called them together, and began to read the twelfth chapter of Luke. When he came to the 47th verse, he looked deliberately around him, and continued--"And that servant which knew his lord's _will_,"--here he paused, looking around more deliberately than before, and again proceeded--"which knew his lord's _will_, and _prepared_ not himself"--here was another pause--"_prepared_ not himself, neither did _according_ to his will, shall be beaten with many _stripes_." "D'ye hear that?" demanded Peter, emphatically. "_Stripes_," he repeated, slowly and distinctly, taking off his spectacles, preparatory to making a few remarks. "That nigger that don't take care--that don't obey his lord--that's his master--d'ye see?--that _'ere_ nigger shall be beaten with many stripes. Now, 'many' signifies a _great_ many--forty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty lashes. _That's_ Scripter!" and so Peter continued to elucidate the subject for a great length of time, much to the edification of his sable audience. At the conclusion of the exercises, calling up three of his slaves, Warner, Will and Major, he cried out to me-- "Here, Platt, you held Tibeats by the legs; now I'll see if you can hold these rascals in the same way, till I get back from meetin'." Thereupon he ordered them to the stocks--a common thing on plantations in the Red River country. The stocks are formed of two planks, the lower one made fast at the ends to two short posts, driven firmly into the ground. At regular distances half circles are cut in the upper edge. The other plank is fastened to one of the posts by a hinge, so that it can be opened or shut down, in the same manner as the blade of a pocket-knife is shut or opened. In the lower edge of the upper plank corresponding half circles are also cut, so that when they close, a row of holes is formed large enough to admit a negro's leg above the ankle, but not large enough to enable him to draw out his foot. The other end of the upper plank, opposite the hinge, is fastened to its post by lock and key. The slave is made to sit upon the ground, when the uppermost plank is elevated, his legs, just above the ankles, placed in the sub-half circles, and shutting it down again, and locking it, he is held secure and fast. Very often the neck instead of the ankle is enclosed. In this manner they are held during the operation of whipping. Warner, Will and Major, according to Tanner's account of them, were melon-stealing, Sabbath-breaking niggers, and not approving of such wickedness, he felt it his duty to put them in the stocks. Handing me the key, himself, Myers, Mistress Tanner and the children entered the carriage and drove away to church at Cheneyville. When they were gone, the boys begged me to let them out. I felt sorry to see them sitting on the hot ground, and remembered my own sufferings in the sun. Upon their promise to return to the stocks at any moment they were required to do so, I consented to release them. Grateful for the lenity shown them, and in order in some measure to repay it, they could do no less, of course, than pilot me to the melon-patch. Shortly before Tanner's return, they were in the stocks again. Finally he drove up, and looking at the boys, said, with a chuckle,-- "Aha! ye havn't been strolling about much to-day, any way. _I'll_ teach you what's what. _I'll_ tire ye of eating water-melons on the Lord's day, ye Sabbath-breaking niggers." Peter Tanner prided himself upon his strict religious observances: he was a deacon in the church. But I have now reached a point in the progress of my narrative, when it becomes necessary to turn away from these light descriptions, to the more grave and weighty matter of the second battle with Master Tibeats, and the flight through the great Pacoudrie Swamp. CHAPTER X. RETURN TO TIBEATS--IMPOSSIBILITY OF PLEASING HIM--HE ATTACKS ME WITH A HATCHET--THE STRUGGLE OVER THE BROAD AXE--THE TEMPTATION TO MURDER HIM--ESCAPE ACROSS THE PLANTATION--OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FENCE--TIBEATS APPROACHES, FOLLOWED BY THE HOUNDS--THEY TAKE MY TRACK--THEIR LOUD YELLS--THEY ALMOST OVERTAKE ME--I REACH THE WATER--THE HOUNDS CONFUSED--MOCCASIN SNAKES--ALLIGATORS--NIGHT IN THE "GREAT PACOUDRIE SWAMP"--THE SOUNDS OF LIFE--NORTH-WEST COURSE--EMERGE INTO THE PINE WOODS--THE SLAVE AND HIS YOUNG MASTER--ARRIVAL AT FORD'S--FOOD AND REST. At the end of a month, my services being no longer required at Tanner's I was sent over the bayou again to my master, whom I found engaged in building the cotton press. This was situated at some distance from the great house, in a rather retired place. I commenced working once more in company with Tibeats, being entirely alone with him most part of the time. I remembered the words of Chapin, his precautions, his advice to beware, lest in some unsuspecting moment he might injure me. They were always in my mind, so that I lived in a most uneasy state of apprehension and fear. One eye was on my work, the other on my master. I determined to give him no cause of offence, to work still more diligently, if possible, than I had done, to bear whatever abuse he might heap upon me, save bodily injury, humbly and patiently, hoping thereby to soften in some degree his manner towards me, until the blessed time might come when I should be delivered from his clutches. The third morning after my return, Chapin left the plantation for Cheneyville, to be absent until night. Tibeats, on that morning, was attacked with one of those periodical fits of spleen and ill-humor to which he was frequently subject, rendering him still more disagreeable and venomous than usual. It was about nine o'clock in the forenoon, when I was busily employed with the jack-plane on one of the sweeps. Tibeats was standing by the work-bench, fitting a handle into the chisel, with which he had been engaged previously in cutting the thread of the screw. "You are not planing that down enough," said he. "It is just even with the line," I replied. "You're a d--d liar," he exclaimed passionately. "Oh, well, master," I said, mildly, "I will plane it down more if you say so," at the same time proceeding to do as I supposed he desired. Before one shaving had been removed, however, he cried out, saying I had now planed it too deep--it was too small--I had spoiled the sweep entirely. Then followed curses and imprecations. I had endeavored to do exactly as he directed, but nothing would satisfy the unreasonable man. In silence and in dread I stood by the sweep, holding the jack-plane in my hand, not knowing what to do, and not daring to be idle. His anger grew more and more violent, until, finally, with an oath, such a bitter, frightful oath as only Tibeats could utter, he seized a hatchet from the work-bench and darted towards me, swearing he would cut my head open. It was a moment of life or death. The sharp, bright blade of the hatchet glittered in the sun. In another instant it would be buried in my brain, and yet in that instant--so quick will a man's thoughts come to him in such a fearful strait--I reasoned with myself. If I stood still, my doom was certain; if I fled, ten chances to one the hatchet, flying from his hand with a too-deadly and unerring aim, would strike me in the back. There was but one course to take. Springing towards him with all my power, and meeting him full half-way, before he could bring down the blow, with one hand I caught his uplifted arm, with the other seized him by the throat. We stood looking each other in the eyes. In his I could see murder. I felt as if I had a serpent by the neck, watching the slightest relaxation of my gripe, to coil itself round my body, crushing and stinging it to death. I thought to scream aloud, trusting that some ear might catch the sound--but Chapin was away; the hands were in the field; there was no living soul in sight or hearing. The good genius, which thus far through life has saved me from the hands of violence, at that moment suggested a lucky thought. With a vigorous and sudden kick, that brought him on one knee, with a groan, I released my hold upon his throat, snatched the hatchet, and cast it beyond reach. Frantic with rage, maddened beyond control, he seized a white oak stick, five feet long, perhaps, and as large in circumference as his hand could grasp, which was lying on the ground. Again he rushed towards me, and again I met him, seized him about the waist, and being the stronger of the two, bore him to the earth. While in that position I obtained possession of the stick, and rising, cast it from me, also. He likewise arose and ran for the broad-axe, on the work-bench. Fortunately, there was a heavy plank lying upon its broad blade, in such a manner that he could not extricate it, before I had sprung upon his back. Pressing him down closely and heavily on the plank, so that the axe was held more firmly to its place, I endeavored, but in vain, to break his grasp upon the handle. In that position we remained some minutes. There have been hours in my unhappy life, many of them, when the contemplation of death as the end of earthly sorrow--of the grave as a resting place for the tired and worn out body--has been pleasant to dwell upon. But such contemplations vanish in the hour of peril. No man, in his full strength, can stand undismayed, in the presence of the "king of terrors." Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it. At that moment it was dear to me, enslaved and treated as I was. Not able to unloose his hand, once more I seized him by the throat, and this time, with a vice-like gripe that soon relaxed his hold. He became pliant and unstrung. His face, that had been white with passion, was now black from suffocation. Those small serpent eyes that spat such venom, were now full of horror--two great white orbs starting from their sockets! There was "a lurking devil" in my heart that prompted me to kill the human blood-hound on the spot--to retain the grip on his accursed throat till the breath of life was gone! I dared not murder him, and I dared not let him live. If I killed him, my life must pay the forfeit--if he lived, my life only would satisfy his vengeance. A voice within whispered me to fly. To be a wanderer among the swamps, a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth, was preferable to the life that I was leading. My resolution was soon formed, and swinging him from the work-bench to the ground, I leaped a fence near by, and hurried across the plantation, passing the slaves at work in the cotton field. At the end of a quarter of a mile I reached the wood-pasture, and it was a short time indeed that I had been running it. Climbing on to a high fence, I could see the cotton press, the great house, and the space between. It was a conspicuous position, from whence the whole plantation was in view. I saw Tibeats cross the field towards the house, and enter it--then he came out, carrying his saddle, and presently mounted his horse and galloped away. I was desolate, but thankful. Thankful that my life was spared,--desolate and discouraged with the prospect before me. What would become of me? Who would befriend me? Whither should I fly? Oh, God! Thou who gavest me life, and implanted in my bosom the love of life--who filled it with emotions such as other men, thy creatures, have, do not forsake me. Have pity on the poor slave--let me not perish. If thou dost not protect me, I am lost--lost! Such supplications, silently and unuttered, ascended from my inmost heart to Heaven. But there was no answering voice--no sweet, low tone, coming down from on high, whispering to my soul, "It is I, be not afraid." I was the forsaken of God, it seemed--the despised and hated of men! In about three-fourths of an hour several of the slaves shouted and made signs for me to run. Presently, looking up the bayou, I saw Tibeats and two others on horse-back, coming at a fast gait, followed by a troop of dogs. There were as many as eight or ten. Distant as I was, I knew them. They belonged on the adjoining plantation. The dogs used on Bayou Boeuf for hunting slaves are a kind of blood-hound, but a far more savage breed than is found in the Northern States. They will attack a negro, at their master's bidding, and cling to him as the common bull-dog will cling to a four footed animal. Frequently their loud bay is heard in the swamps, and then there is speculation as to what point the runaway will be overhauled--the same as a New-York hunter stops to listen to the hounds coursing along the hillsides, and suggests to his companion that the fox will be taken at such a place. I never knew a slave escaping with his life from Bayou Boeuf. One reason is, they are not allowed to learn the art of swimming, and are incapable of crossing the most inconsiderable stream. In their flight they can go in no direction but a little way without coming to a bayou, when the inevitable alternative is presented, of being drowned or overtaken by the dogs. In youth I had practised in the clear streams that flow through my native district, until I had become an expert swimmer, and felt at home in the watery element. I stood upon the fence until the dogs had reached the cotton press. In an instant more, their long, savage yells announced they were on my track. Leaping down from my position, I ran towards the swamp. Fear gave me strength, and I exerted it to the utmost. Every few moments I could hear the yelpings of the dogs. They were gaining upon me. Every howl was nearer and nearer. Each moment I expected they would spring upon my back--expected to feel their long teeth sinking into my flesh. There were so many of them, I knew they would tear me to pieces, that they would worry me, at once, to death. I gasped for breath--gasped forth a half-uttered, choking prayer to the Almighty to save me--to give me strength to reach some wide, deep bayou where I could throw them off the track, or sink into its waters. Presently I reached a thick palmetto bottom. As I fled through them they made a loud rustling noise, not loud enough, however, to drown the voices of the dogs. Continuing my course due south, as nearly as I can judge, I came at length to water just over shoe. The hounds at that moment could not have been five rods behind me. I could hear them crashing and plunging through the palmettoes, their loud, eager yells making the whole swamp clamorous with the sound. Hope revived a little as I reached the water. If it were only deeper, they might lose the scent, and thus disconcerted, afford me the opportunity of evading them. Luckily, it grew deeper the farther I proceeded--now over my ankles--now half-way to my knees--now sinking a moment to my waist, and then emerging presently into more shallow places. The dogs had not gained upon me since I struck the water. Evidently they were confused. Now their savage intonations grew more and more distant, assuring me that I was leaving them. Finally I stopped to listen, but the long howl came booming on the air again, telling me I was not yet safe. From bog to bog, where I had stepped, they could still keep upon the track, though impeded by the water. At length, to my great joy, I came to a wide bayou, and plunging in, had soon stemmed its sluggish current to the other side. There, certainly, the dogs would be confounded--the current carrying down the stream all traces of that slight, mysterious scent, which enables the quick-smelling hound to follow in the track of the fugitive. After crossing this bayou the water became so deep I could not run. I was now in what I afterwards learned was the "Great Pacoudrie Swamp." It was filled with immense trees--the sycamore, the gum, the cotton wood and cypress, and extends, I am informed, to the shore of the Calcasieu river. For thirty or forty miles it is without inhabitants, save wild beasts--the bear, the wild-cat, the tiger, and great slimy reptiles, that are crawling through it everywhere. Long before I reached the bayou, in fact, from the time I struck the water until I emerged from the swamp on my return, these reptiles surrounded me. I saw hundreds of moccasin snakes. Every log and bog--every trunk of a fallen tree, over which I was compelled to step or climb, was alive with them. They crawled away at my approach, but sometimes in my haste, I almost placed my hand or foot upon them. They are poisonous serpents--their bite more fatal than the rattlesnake's. Besides, I had lost one shoe, the sole having come entirely off, leaving the upper only dangling to my ankle. I saw also many alligators, great and small, lying in the water, or on pieces of floodwood. The noise I made usually startled them, when they moved off and plunged into the deepest places. Sometimes, however, I would come directly upon a monster before observing it. In such cases, I would start back, run a short way round, and in that manner shun them. Straight forward, they will run a short distance rapidly, but do not possess the power of turning. In a crooked race, there is no difficulty in evading them. About two o'clock in the afternoon, I heard the last of the hounds. Probably they did not cross the bayou. Wet and weary, but relieved from the sense of instant peril, I continued on, more cautious and afraid, however, of the snakes and alligators than I had been in the earlier portion of my flight. Now, before stepping into a muddy pool, I would strike the water with a stick. If the waters moved, I would go around it, if not, would venture through. At length the sun went down, and gradually night's trailing mantle shrouded the great swamp in darkness. Still I staggered on, fearing every instant I should feel the dreadful sting of the moccasin, or be crushed within the jaws of some disturbed alligator. The dread of them now almost equaled the fear of the pursuing hounds. The moon arose after a time, its mild light creeping through the overspreading branches, loaded with long, pendent moss. I kept traveling forwards until after midnight, hoping all the while that I would soon emerge into some less desolate and dangerous region. But the water grew deeper and the walking more difficult than ever. I perceived it would be impossible to proceed much farther, and knew not, moreover, what hands I might fall into, should I succeed in reaching a human habitation. Not provided with a pass, any white man would be at liberty to arrest me, and place me in prison until such time as my master should "prove property, pay charges, and take me away." I was an estray, and if so unfortunate as to meet a law-abiding citizen of Louisiana, he would deem it his duty to his neighbor, perhaps, to put me forthwith in the pound. Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear--dogs, alligators or men! After midnight, however, I came to a halt. Imagination cannot picture the dreariness of the scene. The swamp was resonant with the quacking of innumerable ducks! Since the foundation of the earth, in all probability, a human footstep had never before so far penetrated the recesses of the swamp. It was not silent now--silent to a degree that rendered it oppressive,--as it was when the sun was shining in the heavens. My midnight intrusion had awakened the feathered tribes, which seemed to throng the morass in hundreds of thousands, and their garrulous throats poured forth such multitudinous sounds--there was such a fluttering of wings--such sullen plunges in the water all around me--that I was affrighted and appalled. All the fowls of the air, and all the creeping things of the earth appeared to have assembled together in that particular place, for the purpose of filling it with clamor and confusion. Not by human dwellings--not in crowded cities alone, are the sights and sounds of life. The wildest places of the earth are full of them. Even in the heart of that dismal swamp, God had provided a refuge and a dwelling place for millions of living things. The moon had now risen above the trees, when I resolved upon a new project. Thus far I had endeavored to travel as nearly south as possible. Turning about I proceeded in a north-west direction, my object being to strike the Pine Woods in the vicinity of Master Ford's. Once within the shadow of his protection, I felt I would be comparatively safe. My clothes were in tatters, my hands, face, and body covered with scratches, received from the sharp knots of fallen trees, and in climbing over piles of brush and floodwood. My bare foot was full of thorns. I was besmeared with muck and mud, and the green slime that had collected on the surface of the dead water, in which I had been immersed to the neck many times during the day and night. Hour after hour, and tiresome indeed had they become, I continued to plod along on my north-west course. The water began to grow less deep, and the ground more firm under my feet. At last I reached the Pacoudrie, the same wide bayou I had swam while "outward bound." I swam it again, and shortly after thought I heard a cock crow, but the sound was faint, and it might have been a mockery of the ear. The water receded from my advancing footsteps--now I had left the bogs behind me--now I was on dry land that gradually ascended to the plain, and I knew I was somewhere in the "Great Pine Woods." Just at day-break I came to an opening--a sort of small plantation--but one I had never seen before. In the edge of the woods I came upon two men, a slave and his young master, engaged in catching wild hogs. The white man I knew would demand my pass, and not able to give him one, would take me into possession. I was too wearied to run again, and too desperate to be taken, and therefore adopted a ruse that proved entirely successful. Assuming a fierce expression, I walked directly towards him, looking him steadily in the face. As I approached, he moved backwards with an air of alarm. It was plain he was much affrighted--that he looked upon me as some infernal goblin, just arisen from the bowels of the swamp! "Where does William Ford live?" I demanded, in no gentle tone. "He lives seven miles from here," was the reply. "Which is the way to his place?" I again demanded, trying to look more fiercely than ever. "Do you see those pine trees yonder?" he asked, pointing to two, a mile distant, that rose far above their fellows, like a couple of tall sentinels, overlooking the broad expanse of forest. "I see them," was the answer. "At the feet of those pine trees," he continued, "runs the Texas road. Turn to the left, and it will lead you to William Ford's." Without farther parley, I hastened forward, happy as he was, no doubt, to place the widest possible distance between us. Striking the Texas road, I turned to the left hand, as directed, and soon passed a great fire, where a pile of logs were burning. I went to it, thinking I would dry my clothes; but the gray light of the morning was fast breaking away,--some passing white man might observe me; besides, the heat overpowered me with the desire of sleep: so, lingering no longer, I continued my travels, and finally, about eight o'clock, reached the house of Master Ford. The slaves were all absent from the quarters, at their work. Stepping on to the piazza, I knocked at the door, which was soon opened by Mistress Ford. My appearance was so changed--I was in such a wobegone and forlorn condition, she did not know me. Inquiring if Master Ford was at home, that good man made his appearance, before the question could be answered. I told him of my flight, and all the particulars connected with it. He listened attentively, and when I had concluded, spoke to me kindly and sympathetically, and taking me to the kitchen, called John, and ordered him to prepare me food. I had tasted nothing since daylight the previous morning. When John had set the meal before me, the madam came out with a bowl of milk, and many little delicious dainties, such as rarely please the palate of a slave. I was hungry, and I was weary, but neither food nor rest afforded half the pleasure as did the blessed voices speaking kindness and consolation. It was the oil and the wine which the Good Samaritan in the "Great Pine Woods" was ready to pour into the wounded spirit of the slave, who came to him, stripped of his raiment and half-dead. They left me in the cabin, that I might rest. Blessed be sleep! It visiteth all alike, descending as the dews of heaven on the bond and free. Soon it nestled to my bosom, driving away the troubles that oppressed it, and bearing me to that shadowy region, where I saw again the faces, and listened to the voices of my children, who, alas, for aught I knew in my waking hours, had fallen into the arms of that _other_ sleep, from which they _never_ would arouse. CHAPTER XI. THE MISTRESS' GARDEN--THE CRIMSON AND GOLDEN FRUIT--ORANGE AND POMEGRANATE TREES--RETURN TO BAYOU BOEUF--MASTER FORD'S REMARKS ON THE WAY--THE MEETING WITH TIBEATS--HIS ACCOUNT OF THE CHASE--FORD CENSURES HIS BRUTALITY--ARRIVAL AT THE PLANTATION--ASTONISHMENT OF THE SLAVES ON SEEING ME--THE ANTICIPATED FLOGGING--KENTUCKY JOHN--MR. ELDRET, THE PLANTER--ELDRET'S SAM--TRIP TO THE "BIG CANE BRAKE"--THE TRADITION OF "SUTTON'S FIELD"--FOREST TREES--GNATS AND MOSQUITOS--THE ARRIVAL OF BLACK WOMEN IN THE BIG CANE--LUMBER WOMEN--SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF TIBEATS--HIS PROVOKING TREATMENT--VISIT TO BAYOU BOEUF--THE SLAVE PASS--SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY--THE LAST OF ELIZA--SALE TO EDWIN EPPS. After a long sleep, sometime in the afternoon I awoke, refreshed, but very sore and stiff. Sally came in and talked with me, while John cooked me some dinner. Sally was in great trouble, as well as myself, one of her children being ill, and she feared it could not survive. Dinner over, after walking about the quarters for a while, visiting Sally's cabin and looking at the sick child, I strolled into the madam's garden. Though it was a season of the year when the voices of the birds are silent, and the trees are stripped of their summer glories in more frigid climes, yet the whole variety of roses were then blooming there, and the long, luxuriant vines creeping over the frames. The crimson and golden fruit hung half hidden amidst the younger and older blossoms of the peach, the orange, the plum, and the pomegranate; for, in that region of almost perpetual warmth, the leaves are falling and the buds bursting into bloom the whole year long. I indulged the most grateful feelings towards Master and Mistress Ford, and wishing in some manner to repay their kindness, commenced trimming the vines, and afterwards weeding out the grass from among the orange and pomegranate trees. The latter grows eight or ten feet high, and its fruit, though larger, is similar in appearance to the jelly-flower. It has the luscious flavor of the strawberry. Oranges, peaches, plums, and most other fruits are indigenous to the rich, warm soil of Avoyelles; but the apple, the most common of them all in colder latitudes, is rarely to be seen. Mistress Ford came out presently, saying it was praise-worthy in me, but I was not in a condition to labor, and might rest myself at the quarters until master should go down to Bayou Boeuf, which would not be that day, and it might not be the next. I said to her--to be sure, I felt bad, and was stiff, and that my foot pained me, the stubs and thorns having so torn it, but thought such exercise would not hurt me, and that it was a great pleasure to work for so good a mistress. Thereupon she returned to the great house, and for three days I was diligent in the garden, cleaning the walks, weeding the flower beds, and pulling up the rank grass beneath the jessamine vines, which the gentle and generous hand of my protectress had taught to clamber along the walls. The fourth morning, having become recruited and refreshed, Master Ford ordered me to make ready to accompany him to the bayou. There was but one saddle horse at the opening, all the others with the mules having been sent down to the plantation. I said I could walk, and bidding Sally and John goodbye, left the opening, trotting along by the horse's side. That little paradise in the Great Pine Woods was the oasis in the desert, towards which my heart turned lovingly, during many years of bondage. I went forth from it now with regret and sorrow, not so overwhelming, however, as if it had then been given me to know that I should never return to it again. Master Ford urged me to take his place occasionally on the horse, to rest me; but I said no, I was not tired, and it was better for me to walk than him. He said many kind and cheering things to me on the way, riding slowly, in order that I might keep pace with him. The goodness of God was manifest, he declared, in my miraculous escape from the swamp. As Daniel came forth unharmed from the den of lions, and as Jonah had been preserved in the whale's belly, even so had I been delivered from evil by the Almighty. He interrogated me in regard to the various fears and emotions I had experienced during the day and night, and if I had felt, at any time, a desire to pray. I felt forsaken of the whole world, I answered him, and was praying mentally all the while. At such times, said he, the heart of man turns instinctively towards his Maker. In prosperity, and when there is nothing to injure or make him afraid, he remembers Him not, and is ready to defy Him; but place him in the midst of dangers, cut him off from human aid, let the grave open before him--then it is, in the time of his tribulation, that the scoffer and unbelieving man turns to God for help, feeling there is no other hope, or refuge, or safety, save in his protecting arm. So did that benignant man speak to me of this life and of the life hereafter; of the goodness and power of God, and of the vanity of earthly things, as we journeyed along the solitary road towards Bayou Boeuf. When within some five miles of the plantation, we discovered a horseman at a distance, galloping towards us. As he came near I saw that it was Tibeats! He looked at me a moment, but did not address me, and turning about, rode along side by side with Ford. I trotted silently at their horses' heels, listening to their conversation. Ford informed him of my arrival in the Pine Woods three days before, of the sad plight I was in, and of the difficulties and dangers I had encountered. "Well," exclaimed Tibeats, omitting his usual oaths in the presence of Ford, "I never saw such running before. I'll bet him against a hundred dollars, he'll beat any nigger in Louisiana. I offered John David Cheney twenty-five dollars to catch him, dead or alive, but he outran his dogs in a fair race. Them Cheney dogs ain't much, after all. Dunwoodie's hounds would have had him down before he touched the palmettoes. Somehow the dogs got off the track, and we had to give up the hunt. We rode the horses as far as we could, and then kept on foot till the water was three feet deep. The boys said he was drowned, sure. I allow I wanted a shot at him mightily. Ever since, I have been riding up and down the bayou, but had'nt much hope of catching him--thought he was dead, _sartin_. Oh, he's a cuss to run--that nigger is!" In this way Tibeats ran on, describing his search in the swamp, the wonderful speed with which I had fled before the hounds, and when he had finished, Master Ford responded by saying, I had always been a willing and faithful boy with him; that he was sorry we had such trouble; that, according to Platt's story, he had been inhumanly treated, and that he, Tibeats, was himself in fault. Using hatchets and broad-axes upon slaves was shameful, and should not be allowed, he remarked. "This is no way of dealing with them, when first brought into the country. It will have a pernicious influence, and set them all running away. The swamps will be full of them. A little kindness would be far more effectual in restraining them, and rendering them obedient, than the use of such deadly weapons. Every planter on the bayou should frown upon such inhumanity. It is for the interest of all to do so. It is evident enough, Mr. Tibeats, that you and Platt cannot live together. You dislike him, and would not hesitate to kill him, and knowing it, he will run from you again through fear of his life. Now, Tibeats, you must sell him, or hire him out, at least. Unless you do so, I shall take measures to get him out of your possession." In this spirit Ford addressed him the remainder of the distance. I opened not my mouth. On reaching the plantation they entered the great house, while I repaired to Eliza's cabin. The slaves were astonished to find me there, on returning from the field, supposing I was drowned. That night, again, they gathered about the cabin to listen to the story of my adventure. They took it for granted I would be whipped, and that it would be severe, the well-known penalty of running away being five hundred lashes. "Poor fellow," said Eliza, taking me by the hand, "it would have been better for you if you had drowned. You have a cruel master, and he will kill you yet, I am afraid." Lawson suggested that it might be, overseer Chapin would be appointed to inflict the punishment, in which case it would not be severe, whereupon Mary, Rachel, Bristol, and others hoped it would be Master Ford, and then it would be no whipping at all. They all pitied me and tried to console me, and were sad in view of the castigation that awaited me, except Kentucky John. There were no bounds to his laughter; he filled the cabin with cachinnations, holding his sides to prevent an explosion, and the cause of his noisy mirth was the idea of my outstripping the hounds. Somehow, he looked at the subject in a comical light. "I _know'd_ dey would'nt cotch him, when he run cross de plantation. O, de lor', did'nt Platt pick his feet right up, tho', hey? When dem dogs got whar he was, he was'nt _dar_--haw, haw, haw! O, de lor' a' mity!"--and then Kentucky John relapsed into another of his boisterous fits. Early the next morning, Tibeats left the plantation. In the course of the forenoon, while sauntering about the gin-house, a tall, good-looking man came to me, and inquired if I was Tibeats' boy, that youthful appellation being applied indiscriminately to slaves even though they may have passed the number of three score years and ten. I took off my hat, and answered that I was. "How would you like to work for me?" he inquired. "Oh, I would like to, very much," said I, inspired with a sudden hope of getting away from Tibeats. "You worked under Myers at Peter Tanner's, didn't you?" I replied I had, adding some complimentary remarks that Myers had made concerning me. "Well, boy," said he, "I have hired you of your master to work for me in the "Big Cane Brake," thirty-eight miles from here, down on Red River." This man was Mr. Eldret, who lived below Ford's, on the same side of the bayou. I accompanied him to his plantation, and in the morning started with his slave Sam, and a wagon-load of provisions, drawn by four mules, for the Big Cane, Eldret and Myers having preceded us on horseback. This Sam was a native of Charleston, where he had a mother, brother and sisters. He "allowed"--a common word among both black and white--that Tibeats was a mean man, and hoped, as I most earnestly did also, that his master would buy me. We proceeded down the south shore of the bayou, crossing it at Carey's plantation; from thence to Huff Power, passing which, we came upon the Bayou Rouge road, which runs towards Red River. After passing through Bayou Rouge Swamp, and just at sunset, turning from the highway, we struck off into the "Big Cane Brake." We followed an unbeaten track, scarcely wide enough to admit the wagon. The cane, such as are used for fishing-rods, were as thick as they could stand. A person could not be seen through them the distance of a rod. The paths of wild beasts run through them in various directions--the bear and the American tiger abounding in these brakes, and wherever there is a basin of stagnant water, it is full of alligators. We kept on our lonely course through the "Big Cane" several miles, when we entered a clearing, known as "Sutton's Field." Many years before, a man by the name of Sutton had penetrated the wilderness of cane to this solitary place. Tradition has it, that he fled thither, a fugitive, not from service, but from justice. Here he lived alone--recluse and hermit of the swamp--with his own hands planting the seed and gathering in the harvest. One day a band of Indians stole upon his solitude, and after a bloody battle, overpowered and massacred him. For miles the country round, in the slaves' quarters, and on the piazzas of "great houses," where white children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the "Big Cane," is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated field--serpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture of desolation. Passing "Sutton's Field," we followed a new-cut road two miles farther, which brought us to its termination. We had now reached the wild lands of Mr. Eldret, where he contemplated clearing up an extensive plantation. We went to work next morning with our cane-knives, and cleared a sufficient space to allow the erection of two cabins--one for Myers and Eldret, the other for Sam, myself, and the slaves that were to join us. We were now in the midst of trees of enormous growth, whose wide-spreading branches almost shut out the light of the sun, while the space between the trunks was an impervious mass of cane, with here and there an occasional palmetto. The bay and the sycamore, the oak and the cypress, reach a growth unparalleled, in those fertile lowlands bordering the Red River. From every tree, moreover, hang long, large masses of moss, presenting to the eye unaccustomed to them, a striking and singular appearance. This moss, in large quantities, is sent north, and there used for manufacturing purposes. We cut down oaks, split them into rails, and with these erected temporary cabins. We covered the roofs with the broad palmetto leaf, an excellent substitute for shingles, as long as they last. The greatest annoyance I met with here were small flies, gnats and mosquitoes. They swarmed the air. They penetrated the porches of the ear, the nose, the eyes, the mouth. They sucked themselves beneath the skin. It was impossible to brush or beat them off. It seemed, indeed, as if they would devour us--carry us away piecemeal, in their small tormenting mouths. A lonelier spot, or one more disagreeable, than the centre of the "Big Cane Brake," it would be difficult to conceive; yet to me it was a paradise, in comparison with any other place in the company of Master Tibeats. I labored hard, and oft-times was weary and fatigued, yet I could lie down at night in peace, and arise in the morning without fear. In the course of a fortnight, four black girls came down from Eldret's plantation--Charlotte, Fanny, Cresia and Nelly. They were all large and stout. Axes were put into their hands, and they were sent out with Sam and myself to cut trees. They were excellent choppers, the largest oak or sycamore standing but a brief season before their heavy and well-directed blows. At piling logs, they were equal to any man. There are lumberwomen as well as lumbermen in the forests of the South. In fact, in the region of the Bayou Boeuf they perform their share of all the labor required on the plantation. They plough, drag, drive team, clear wild lands, work on the highway, and so forth. Some planters, owning large cotton and sugar plantations, have none other than the labor of slave women. Such a one is Jim Burns, who lives on the north shore of the bayou, opposite the plantation of John Fogaman. On our arrival in the brake, Eldret promised me, if I worked well, I might go up to visit my friends at Ford's in four weeks. On Saturday night of the fifth week, I reminded him of his promise, when he told me I had done so well, that I might go. I had set my heart upon it, and Eldret's announcement thrilled me with pleasure. I was to return in time to commence the labors of the day on Tuesday morning. While indulging the pleasant anticipation of so soon meeting my old friends again, suddenly the hateful form of Tibeats appeared among us. He inquired how Myers and Platt got along together, and was told, very well, and that Platt was going up to Ford's plantation in the morning on a visit. "Poh, poh!" sneered Tibeats; "it isn't worth while--the nigger will get unsteady. He can't go." But Eldret insisted I had worked faithfully--that he had given me his promise, and that, under the circumstances, I ought not to be disappointed. They then, it being about dark, entered one cabin and I the other. I could not give up the idea of going; it was a sore disappointment. Before morning I resolved, if Eldret made no objection, to leave at all hazards. At daylight I was at his door, with my blanket rolled up into a bundle, and hanging on a stick over my shoulder, waiting for a pass. Tibeats came out presently in one of his disagreeable moods, washed his face, and going to a stump near by, sat down upon it, apparently busily thinking with himself. After standing there a long time, impelled by a sudden impulse of impatience, I started off. "Are you going without a pass?" he cried out to me. "Yes, master, I thought I would," I answered. "How do you think you'll get there?" demanded he. "Don't know," was all the reply I made him. "You'd be taken and sent to jail, where you ought to be, before you got half-way there," he added, passing into the cabin as he said it. He came out soon with the pass in his hand, and calling me a "d--d nigger that deserved a hundred lashes," threw it on the ground. I picked it up, and hurried away right speedily. A slave caught off his master's plantation without a pass, may be seized and whipped by any white man whom he meets. The one I now received was dated, and read as follows: "Platt has permission to go to Ford's plantation, on Bayou Boeuf, and return by Tuesday morning. JOHN M. TIBEATS." This is the usual form. On the way, a great many demanded it, read it, and passed on. Those having the air and appearance of gentlemen, whose dress indicated the possession of wealth, frequently took no notice of me whatever; but a shabby fellow, an unmistakable loafer, never failed to hail me, and to scrutinize and examine me in the most thorough manner. Catching runaways is sometimes a money-making business. If, after advertising, no owner appears, they may be sold to the highest bidder; and certain fees are allowed the finder for his services, at all events, even if reclaimed. "A mean white," therefore,--a name applied to the species loafer--considers it a god-send to meet an unknown negro without a pass. There are no inns along the highways in that portion of the State where I sojourned. I was wholly destitute of money, neither did I carry any provisions, on my journey from the Big Cane to Bayou Boeuf; nevertheless, with his pass in his hand, a slave need never suffer from hunger or from thirst. It is only necessary to present it to the master or overseer of a plantation, and state his wants, when he will be sent round to the kitchen and provided with food or shelter, as the case may require. The traveler stops at any house and calls for a meal with as much freedom as if it was a public tavern. It is the general custom of the country. Whatever their faults may be, it is certain the inhabitants along Red River, and around the bayous in the interior of Louisiana are not wanting in hospitality. I arrived at Ford's plantation towards the close of the afternoon, passing the evening in Eliza's cabin, with Lawson, Rachel, and others of my acquaintance. When we left Washington Eliza's form was round and plump. She stood erect, and in her silks and jewels, presented a picture of graceful strength and elegance. Now she was but a thin shadow of her former self. Her face had become ghastly haggard, and the once straight and active form was bowed down, as if bearing the weight of a hundred years. Crouching on her cabin floor, and clad in the coarse garments of a slave, old Elisha Berry would not have recognized the mother of his child. I never saw her afterwards. Having become useless in the cotton-field, she was bartered for a trifle, to some man residing in the vicinity of Peter Compton's. Grief had gnawed remorselessly at her heart, until her strength was gone; and for that, her last master, it is said, lashed and abused her most unmercifully. But he could not whip back the departed vigor of her youth, nor straighten up that bended body to its full height, such as it was when her children were around her, and the light of freedom was shining on her path. I learned the particulars relative to her departure from this world, from some of Compton's slaves, who had come over Red River to the bayou, to assist young Madam Tanner during the "busy season." She became at length, they said, utterly helpless, for several weeks lying on the ground floor in a dilapidated cabin, dependent upon the mercy of her fellow-thralls for an occasional drop of water, and a morsel of food. Her master did not "knock her on the head," as is sometimes done to put a suffering animal out of misery, but left her unprovided for, and unprotected, to linger through a life of pain and wretchedness to its natural close. When the hands returned from the field one night they found her dead! During the day, the Angel of the Lord, who moveth invisibly over all the earth, gathering in his harvest of departing souls, had silently entered the cabin of the dying woman, and taken her from thence. She was _free_ at last! Next day, rolling up my blanket, I started on my return to the Big Cane. After traveling five miles, at a place called Huff Power, the ever-present Tibeats met me in the road. He inquired why I was going back so soon, and when informed I was anxious to return by the time I was directed, he said I need go no farther than the next plantation, as he had that day sold me to Edwin Epps. We walked down into the yard, where we met the latter gentleman, who examined me, and asked me the usual questions propounded by purchasers. Having been duly delivered over, I was ordered to the quarters, and at the same time directed to make a hoe and axe handle for myself. I was now no longer the property of Tibeats--his dog, his brute, dreading his wrath and cruelty day and night; and whoever or whatever my new master might prove to be, I could not, certainly, regret the change. So it was good news when the sale was announced, and with a sigh of relief I sat down for the first time in my new abode. Tibeats soon after disappeared from that section of the country. Once afterwards, and only once, I caught a glimpse of him. It was many miles from Bayou Boeuf. He was seated in the doorway of a low groggery. I was passing, in a drove of slaves, through St. Mary's parish. CHAPTER XII. PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF EPPS--EPPS, DRUNK AND SOBER--A GLIMPSE OF HIS HISTORY--COTTON GROWING--THE MODE OF PLOUGHING AND PREPARING GROUND--OF PLANTING--OF HOEING, OF PICKING, OF TREATING RAW HANDS--THE DIFFERENCE IN COTTON PICKERS--PATSEY A REMARKABLE ONE--TASKED ACCORDING TO ABILITY--BEAUTY OF A COTTON FIELD--THE SLAVE'S LABORS--FEAR ON APPROACHING THE GIN-HOUSE--WEIGHING--"CHORES"--CABIN LIFE--THE CORN MILL--THE USES OF THE GOURD--FEAR OF OVERSLEEPING--FEAR CONTINUALLY--MODE OF CULTIVATING CORN--SWEET POTATOES--FERTILITY OF THE SOIL--FATTENING HOGS--PRESERVING BACON--RAISING CATTLE--SHOOTING-MATCHES--GARDEN PRODUCTS--FLOWERS AND VERDURE. Edwin Epps, of whom much will be said during the remainder of this history, is a large, portly, heavy-bodied man with light hair, high cheek bones, and a Roman nose of extraordinary dimensions. He has blue eyes, a fair complexion, and is, as I should say, full six feet high. He has the sharp, inquisitive expression of a jockey. His manners are repulsive and coarse, and his language gives speedy and unequivocal evidence that he has never enjoyed the advantages of an education. He has the faculty of saying most provoking things, in that respect even excelling old Peter Tanner. At the time I came into his possession, Edwin Epps was fond of the bottle, his "sprees" sometimes extending over the space of two whole weeks. Latterly, however, he had reformed his habits, and when I left him, was as strict a specimen of temperance as could be found on Bayou Boeuf. When "in his cups," Master Epps was a roystering, blustering, noisy fellow, whose chief delight was in dancing with his "niggers," or lashing them about the yard with his long whip, just for the pleasure of hearing them screech and scream, as the great welts were planted on their backs. When sober, he was silent, reserved and cunning, not beating us indiscriminately, as in his drunken moments, but sending the end of his rawhide to some tender spot of a lagging slave, with a sly dexterity peculiar to himself. He had been a driver and overseer in his younger years, but at this time was in possession of a plantation on Bayou Huff Power, two and a half miles from Holmesville, eighteen from Marksville, and twelve from Cheneyville. It belonged to Joseph B. Roberts, his wife's uncle, and was leased by Epps. His principal business was raising cotton, and inasmuch as some may read this book who have never seen a cotton field, a description of the manner of its culture may not be out of place. The ground is prepared by throwing up beds or ridges, with the plough--back-furrowing, it is called. Oxen and mules, the latter almost exclusively, are used in ploughing. The women as frequently as the men perform this labor, feeding, currying, and taking care of their teams, and in all respects doing the field and stable work, precisely as do the ploughboys of the North. The beds, or ridges, are six feet wide, that is, from water furrow to water furrow. A plough drawn by one mule is then run along the top of the ridge or center of the bed, making the drill, into which a girl usually drops the seed, which she carries in a bag hung round her neck. Behind her comes a mule and harrow, covering up the seed, so that two mules, three slaves, a plough and harrow, are employed in planting a row of cotton. This is done in the months of March and April. Corn is planted in February. When there are no cold rains, the cotton usually makes its appearance in a week. In the course of eight or ten days afterwards the first hoeing is commenced. This is performed in part, also, by the aid of the plough and mule. The plough passes as near as possible to the cotton on both sides, throwing the furrow from it. Slaves follow with their hoes, cutting up the grass and cotton, leaving hills two feet and a half apart. This is called scraping cotton. In two weeks more commences the second hoeing. This time the furrow is thrown towards the cotton. Only one stalk, the largest, is now left standing in each hill. In another fortnight it is hoed the third time, throwing the furrow towards the cotton in the same manner as before, and killing all the grass between the rows. About the first of July, when it is a foot high or thereabouts, it is hoed the fourth and last time. Now the whole space between the rows is ploughed, leaving a deep water furrow in the center. During all these hoeings the overseer or driver follows the slaves on horseback with a whip, such as has been described. The fastest hoer takes the lead row. He is usually about a rod in advance of his companions. If one of them passes him, he is whipped. If one falls behind or is a moment idle, he is whipped. In fact, the lash is flying from morning until night, the whole day long. The hoeing season thus continues from April until July, a field having no sooner been finished once, than it is commenced again. In the latter part of August begins the cotton picking season. At this time each slave is presented with a sack. A strap is fastened to it, which goes over the neck, holding the mouth of the sack breast high, while the bottom reaches nearly to the ground. Each one is also presented with a large basket that will hold about two barrels. This is to put the cotton in when the sack is filled. The baskets are carried to the field and placed at the beginning of the rows. When a new hand, one unaccustomed to the business, is sent for the first time into the field, he is whipped up smartly, and made for that day to pick as fast as he can possibly. At night it is weighed, so that his capability in cotton picking is known. He must bring in the same weight each night following. If it falls short, it is considered evidence that he has been laggard, and a greater or less number of lashes is the penalty. An ordinary day's work is two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings in a less quantity than that. There is a great difference among them as regards this kind of labor. Some of them seem to have a natural knack, or quickness, which enables them to pick with great celerity, and with both hands, while others, with whatever practice or industry, are utterly unable to come up to the ordinary standard. Such hands are taken from the cotton field and employed in other business. Patsey, of whom I shall have more to say, was known as the most remarkable cotton picker on Bayou Boeuf. She picked with both hands and with such surprising rapidity, that five hundred pounds a day was not unusual for her. Each one is tasked, therefore, according to his picking abilities, none, however, to come short of two hundred weight. I, being unskillful always in that business, would have satisfied my master by bringing in the latter quantity, while on the other hand, Patsey would surely have been beaten if she failed to produce twice as much. The cotton grows from five to seven feet high, each stalk having a great many branches, shooting out in all directions, and lapping each other above the water furrow. There are few sights more pleasant to the eye, than a wide cotton field when it is in the bloom. It presents an appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow. Sometimes the slave picks down one side of a row, and back upon the other, but more usually, there is one on either side, gathering all that has blossomed, leaving the unopened bolls for a succeeding picking. When the sack is filled, it is emptied into the basket and trodden down. It is necessary to be extremely careful the first time going through the field, in order not to break the branches off the stalks. The cotton will not bloom upon a broken branch. Epps never failed to inflict the severest chastisement on the unlucky servant who, either carelessly or unavoidably, was guilty in the least degree in this respect. The hands are required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see, and when the moon is full, they often times labor till the middle of the night. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order to halt is given by the driver. The day's work over in the field, the baskets are "toted," or in other words, carried to the gin-house, where the cotton is weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be--no matter how much he longs for sleep and rest--a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short in weight--if he has not performed the full task appointed him, he knows that he must suffer. And if he has exceeded it by ten or twenty pounds, in all probability his master will measure the next day's task accordingly. So, whether he has too little or too much, his approach to the gin-house is always with, fear and trembling. Most frequently they have too little, and therefore it is they are not anxious to leave the field. After weighing, follow the whippings; and then the baskets are carried to the cotton house, and their contents stored away like hay, all hands being sent in to tramp it down. If the cotton is not dry, instead of taking it to the gin-house at once, it is laid upon platforms, two feet high, and some three times as wide, covered with boards or plank, with narrow walks running between them. This done, the labor of the day is not yet ended, by any means. Each one must then attend to his respective chores. One feeds the mules, another the swine--another cuts the wood, and so forth; besides, the packing is all done by candle light. Finally, at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long day's toil. Then a fire must be kindled in the cabin, the corn ground in the small hand-mill, and supper, and dinner for the next day in the field, prepared. All that is allowed them is corn and bacon, which is given out at the corncrib and smoke-house every Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly, allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. That is all--no tea, coffee, sugar, and with the exception of a very scanty sprinkling now and then, no salt. I can say, from a ten years' residence with Master Epps, that no slave of his is ever likely to suffer from the gout, superinduced by excessive high living. Master Epps' hogs were fed on _shelled_ corn--it was thrown out to his "niggers" in the ear. The former, he thought, would fatten faster by shelling, and soaking it in the water--the latter, perhaps, if treated in the same manner, might grow too fat to labor. Master Epps was a shrewd calculator, and knew how to manage his own animals, drunk or sober. The corn mill stands in the yard beneath a shelter. It is like a common coffee mill, the hopper holding about six quarts. There was one privilege which Master Epps granted freely to every slave he had. They might grind their corn nightly, in such small quantities as their daily wants required, or they might grind the whole week's allowance at one time, on Sundays, just as they preferred. A very generous man was Master Epps! I kept my corn in a small wooden box, the meal in a gourd; and, by the way, the gourd is one of the most convenient and necessary utensils on a plantation. Besides supplying the place of all kinds of crockery in a slave cabin, it is used for carrying water to the fields. Another, also, contains the dinner. It dispenses with the necessity of pails, dippers, basins, and such tin and wooden superfluities altogether. When the corn is ground, and fire is made, the bacon is taken down from the nail on which it hangs, a slice cut off and thrown upon the coals to broil. The majority of slaves have no knife, much less a fork. They cut their bacon with the axe at the wood-pile. The corn meal is mixed with a little water, placed in the fire, and baked. When it is "done brown," the ashes are scraped off, and being placed upon a chip, which answers for a table, the tenant of the slave hut is ready to sit down upon the ground to supper. By this time it is usually midnight. The same fear of punishment with which they approach the gin-house, possesses them again on lying down to get a snatch of rest. It is the fear of oversleeping in the morning. Such an offence would certainly be attended with not less than twenty lashes. With a prayer that he may be on his feet and wide awake at the first sound of the horn, he sinks to his slumbers nightly. The softest couches in the world are not to be found in the log mansion of the slave. The one whereon I reclined year after year, was a plank twelve inches wide and ten feet long. My pillow was a stick of wood. The bedding was a coarse blanket, and not a rag or shred beside. Moss might be used, were it not that it directly breeds a swarm of fleas. The cabin is constructed of logs, without floor or window. The latter is altogether unnecessary, the crevices between the logs admitting sufficient light. In stormy weather the rain drives through them, rendering it comfortless and extremely disagreeable. The rude door hangs on great wooden hinges. In one end is constructed an awkward fire-place. An hour before day light the horn is blown. Then the slaves arouse, prepare their breakfast, fill a gourd with water, in another deposit their dinner of cold bacon and corn cake, and hurry to the field again. It is an offence invariably followed by a flogging, to be found at the quarters after daybreak. Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin-house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning. Such is a true, faithful, unexaggerated picture and description of the slave's daily life, during the time of cotton-picking, on the shores of Bayou Boeuf. In the month of January, generally, the fourth and last picking is completed. Then commences the harvesting of corn. This is considered a secondary crop, and receives far less attention than the cotton. It is planted, as already mentioned, in February. Corn is grown in that region for the purpose of fattening hogs and feeding slaves; very little, if any, being sent to market. It is the white variety, the ear of great size, and the stalk growing to the height of eight, and often times ten feet. In August the leaves are stripped off, dried in the sun, bound in small bundles, and stored away as provender for the mules and oxen. After this the slaves go through the field, turning down the ear, for the purpose of keeping the rains from penetrating to the grain. It is left in this condition until after cotton-picking is over, whether earlier or later. Then the ears are separated from the stalks, and deposited in the corncrib with the husks on; otherwise, stripped of the husks, the weevil would destroy it. The stalks are left standing in the field. The Carolina, or sweet potato, is also grown in that region to some extent. They are not fed, however, to hogs or cattle, and are considered but of small importance. They are preserved by placing them upon the surface of the ground, with a slight covering of earth or cornstalks. There is not a cellar on Bayou Boeuf. The ground is so low it would fill with water. Potatoes are worth from two to three "bits," or shillings a barrel; corn, except when there is an unusual scarcity, can be purchased at the same rate. As soon as the cotton and corn crops are secured, the stalks are pulled up, thrown into piles and burned. The ploughs are started at the same time, throwing up the beds again, preparatory to another planting. The soil, in the parishes of Rapides and Avoyelles, and throughout the whole country, so far as my observation extended, is of exceeding richness and fertility. It is a kind of marl, of a brown or reddish color. It does not require those invigorating composts necessary to more barren lands, and on the same field the same crop is grown for many successive years. Ploughing, planting, picking cotton, gathering the corn, and pulling and burning stalks, occupies the whole of the four seasons of the year. Drawing and cutting wood, pressing cotton, fattening and killing hogs, are but incidental labors. In the month of September or October, the hogs are run out of the swamps by dogs, and confined in pens. On a cold morning, generally about New Year's day, they are slaughtered. Each carcass is cut into six parts, and piled one above the other in salt, upon large tables in the smoke-house. In this condition it remains a fortnight, when it is hung up, and a fire built, and continued more than half the time during the remainder of the year. This thorough smoking is necessary to prevent the bacon from becoming infested with worms. In so warm a climate it is difficult to preserve it, and very many times myself and my companions have received our weekly allowance of three pounds and a half, when it was full of these disgusting vermin. Although the swamps are overrun with cattle, they are never made the source of profit, to any considerable extent. The planter cuts his mark upon the ear, or brands his initials upon the side, and turns them into the swamps, to roam unrestricted within their almost limitless confines. They are the Spanish breed, small and spike-horned. I have known of droves being taken from Bayou Boeuf, but it is of very rare occurrence. The value of the best cows is about five dollars each. Two quarts at one milking, would be considered an unusual large quantity. They furnish little tallow, and that of a soft, inferior quality. Notwithstanding the great number of cows that throng the swamps, the planters are indebted to the North for their cheese and butter, which is purchased in the New-Orleans market. Salted beef is not an article of food either in the great house, or in the cabin. Master Epps was accustomed to attend shooting matches for the purpose of obtaining what fresh beef he required. These sports occurred weekly at the neighboring village of Holmesville. Fat beeves are driven thither and shot at, a stipulated price being demanded for the privilege. The lucky marksman divides the flesh among his fellows, and in this manner the attending planters are supplied. The great number of tame and untamed cattle which swarm the woods and swamps of Bayou Boeuf, most probably suggested that appellation to the French, inasmuch as the term, translated, signifies the creek or river of the wild ox. Garden products, such as cabbages, turnips and the like, are cultivated for the use of the master and his family. They have greens and vegetables at all times and seasons of the year. "The grass withereth and the flower fadeth" before the desolating winds of autumn in the chill northern latitudes, but perpetual verdure overspreads the hot lowlands, and flowers bloom in the heart of winter, in the region of Bayou Boeuf. There are no meadows appropriated to the cultivation of the grasses. The leaves of the corn supply a sufficiency of food for the laboring cattle, while the rest provide for themselves all the year in the ever-growing pasture. There are many other peculiarities of climate, habit, custom, and of the manner of living and laboring at the South, but the foregoing, it is supposed, will give the reader an insight and general idea of life on a cotton plantation in Louisiana. The mode of cultivating cane, and the process of sugar manufacturing, will be mentioned in another place. CHAPTER XIII. THE CURIOUS AXE-HELVE--SYMPTOMS OF APPROACHING ILLNESS--CONTINUE TO DECLINE--THE WHIP INEFFECTUAL--CONFINED TO THE CABIN--VISIT BY DR. WINES--PARTIAL RECOVERY--FAILURE AT COTTON PICKING--WHAT MAY BE HEARD ON EPPS' PLANTATION--LASHES GRADUATED--EPPS IN A WHIPPING MOOD--EPPS IN A DANCING MOOD--DESCRIPTION OF THE DANCE--LOSS OF REST NO EXCUSE--EPPS' CHARACTERISTICS--JIM BURNS REMOVAL FROM HUFF POWER TO BAYOU BOEUF--DESCRIPTION OF UNCLE ABRAM; OF WILEY; OF AUNT PHEBE; OF BOB, HENRY, AND EDWARD; OF PATSEY; WITH A GENEALOGICAL ACCOUNT OF EACH--SOMETHING OF THEIR PAST HISTORY, AND PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS--JEALOUSY AND LUST--PATSEY, THE VICTIM. On my arrival at Master Epps', in obedience to his order, the first business upon which I entered was the making of an axe-helve. The handles in use there are simply a round, straight stick. I made a crooked one, shaped like those to which I had been accustomed at the North. When finished, and presented to Epps, he looked at it with astonishment, unable to determine exactly what it was. He had never before seen such a handle, and when I explained its conveniences, he was forcibly struck with the novelty of the idea. He kept it in the house a long time, and when his friends called, was wont to exhibit it as a curiosity. It was now the season of hoeing. I was first sent into the corn-field, and afterwards set to scraping cotton. In this employment I remained until hoeing time was nearly passed, when I began to experience the symptoms of approaching illness. I was attacked with chills, which were succeeded by a burning fever. I became weak and emaciated, and frequently so dizzy that it caused me to reel and stagger like a drunken man. Nevertheless, I was compelled to keep up my row. When in health I found little difficulty in keeping pace with my fellow-laborers, but now it seemed to be an utter impossibility. Often I fell behind, when the driver's lash was sure to greet my back, infusing into my sick and drooping body a little temporary energy. I continued to decline until at length the whip became entirely ineffectual. The sharpest sting of the rawhide could not arouse me. Finally, in September, when the busy season of cotton picking was at hand, I was unable to leave my cabin. Up to this time I had received no medicine, nor any attention from my master or mistress. The old cook visited me occasionally, preparing me corn-coffee, and sometimes boiling a bit of bacon, when I had grown too feeble to accomplish it myself. When it was said that I would die, Master Epps, unwilling to bear the loss, which the death of an animal worth a thousand dollars would bring upon him, concluded to incur the expense of sending to Holmesville for Dr. Wines. He announced to Epps that it was the effect of the climate, and there was a probability of his losing me. He directed me to eat no meat, and to partake of no more food than was absolutely necessary to sustain life. Several weeks elapsed, during which time, under the scanty diet to which I was subjected, I had partially recovered. One morning, long before I was in a proper condition to labor, Epps appeared at the cabin door, and, presenting me a sack, ordered me to the cotton field. At this time I had had no experience whatever in cotton picking. It was an awkward business indeed. While others used both hands, snatching the cotton and depositing it in the mouth of the sack, with a precision and dexterity that was incomprehensible to me, I had to seize the boll with one hand, and deliberately draw out the white, gushing blossom with the other. Depositing the cotton in the sack, moreover, was a difficulty that demanded the exercise of both hands and eyes. I was compelled to pick it from the ground where it would fall, nearly as often as from the stalk where it had grown. I made havoc also with the branches, loaded with the yet unbroken bolls, the long, cumbersome sack swinging from side to side in a manner not allowable in the cotton field. After a most laborious day I arrived at the gin-house with my load. When the scale determined its weight to be only ninety-five pounds, not half the quantity required of the poorest picker, Epps threatened the severest flogging, but in consideration of my being a "raw hand," concluded to pardon me on that occasion. The following day, and many days succeeding, I returned at night with no better success--I was evidently not designed for that kind of labor. I had not the gift--the dexterous fingers and quick motion of Patsey, who could fly along one side of a row of cotton, stripping it of its undefiled and fleecy whiteness miraculously fast. Practice and whipping were alike unavailing, and Epps, satisfied of it at last, swore I was a disgrace--that I was not fit to associate with a cotton-picking "nigger"--that I could not pick enough in a day to pay the trouble of weighing it, and that I should go into the cotton field no more. I was now employed in cutting and hauling wood, drawing cotton from the field to the gin-house, and performed whatever other service was required. Suffice to say, I was never permitted to be idle. It was rarely that a day passed by without one or more whippings. This occurred at the time the cotton was weighed. The delinquent, whose weight had fallen short, was taken out, stripped, made to lie upon the ground, face downwards, when he received a punishment proportioned to his offence. It is the literal, unvarnished truth, that the crack of the lash, and the shrieking of the slaves, can be heard from dark till bed time, on Epps' plantation, any day almost during the entire period of the cotton-picking season. The number of lashes is graduated according to the nature of the case. Twenty-five are deemed a mere brush, inflicted, for instance, when a dry leaf or piece of boll is found in the cotton, or when a branch is broken in the field; fifty is the ordinary penalty following all delinquencies of the next higher grade; one hundred is called severe: it is the punishment inflicted for the serious offence of standing idle in the field; from one hundred and fifty to two hundred is bestowed upon him who quarrels with his cabin-mates, and five hundred, well laid on, besides the mangling of the dogs, perhaps, is certain to consign the poor, unpitied runaway to weeks of pain and agony. During the two years Epps remained on the plantation at Bayou Huff Power, he was in the habit, as often as once in a fortnight at least, of coming home intoxicated from Holmesville. The shooting-matches almost invariably concluded with a debauch. At such times he was boisterous and half-crazy. Often he would break the dishes, chairs, and whatever furniture he could lay his hands on. When satisfied with his amusement in the house, he would seize the whip and walk forth into the yard. Then it behooved the slaves to be watchful and exceeding wary. The first one who came within reach felt the smart of his lash. Sometimes for hours he would keep them running in all directions, dodging around the corners of the cabins. Occasionally he would come upon one unawares, and if he succeeded in inflicting a fair, round blow, it was a feat that much delighted him. The younger children, and the aged, who had become inactive, suffered then. In the midst of the confusion he would slily take his stand behind a cabin, waiting with raised whip, to dash it into the first black face that peeped cautiously around the corner. At other times he would come home in a less brutal humor. Then there must be a merry-making. Then all must move to the measure of a tune. Then Master Epps must needs regale his melodious ears with the music of a fiddle. Then did he become buoyant, elastic, gaily "tripping the light fantastic toe" around the piazza and all through the house. Tibeats, at the time of my sale, had informed him I could play on the violin. He had received his information from Ford. Through the importunities of Mistress Epps, her husband had been induced to purchase me one during a visit to New-Orleans. Frequently I was called into the house to play before the family, mistress being passionately fond of music. All of us would be assembled in the large room of the great house, whenever Epps came home in one of his dancing moods. No matter how worn out and tired we were, there must be a general dance. When properly stationed on the floor, I would strike up a tune. "Dance, you d--d niggers, dance," Epps would shout. Then there must be no halting or delay, no slow or languid movements; all must be brisk, and lively, and alert. "Up and down, heel and toe, and away we go," was the order of the hour. Epps' portly form mingled with those of his dusky slaves, moving rapidly through all the mazes of the dance. Usually his whip was in his hand, ready to fall about the ears of the presumptuous thrall, who dared to rest a moment, or even stop to catch his breath. When he was himself exhausted, there would be a brief cessation, but it would be very brief. With a slash, and crack, and flourish of the whip, he would shout again, "Dance, niggers, dance," and away they would go once more, pell-mell, while I spurred by an occasional sharp touch of the lash, sat in a corner, extracting from my violin a marvelous quick-stepping tune. The mistress often upbraided him, declaring she would return to her father's house at Cheneyville; nevertheless, there were times she could not restrain a burst of laughter, on witnessing his uproarious pranks. Frequently, we were thus detained until almost morning. Bent with excessive toil--actually suffering for a little refreshing rest, and feeling rather as if we could cast ourselves upon the earth and weep, many a night in the house of Edwin Epps have his unhappy slaves been made to dance and laugh. Notwithstanding these deprivations in order to gratify the whim of an unreasonable master, we had to be in the field as soon as it was light, and during the day perform the ordinary and accustomed task. Such deprivations could not be urged at the scales in extenuation of any lack of weight, or in the cornfield for not hoeing with the usual rapidity. The whippings were just as severe as if we had gone forth in the morning, strengthened and invigorated by a night's repose. Indeed, after such frantic revels, he was always more sour and savage than before, punishing for slighter causes, and using the whip with increased and more vindictive energy. Ten years I toiled for that man without reward. Ten years of my incessant labor has contributed to increase the bulk of his possessions. Ten years I was compelled to address him with down-cast eyes and uncovered head--in the attitude and language of a slave. I am indebted to him for nothing, save undeserved abuse and stripes. Beyond the reach of his inhuman thong, and standing on the soil of the free State where I was born, thanks be to Heaven, I can raise my head once more among men. I can speak of the wrongs I have suffered, and of those who inflicted them, with upraised eyes. But I have no desire to speak of him or any other one otherwise than truthfully. Yet to speak truthfully of Edwin Epps would be to say--he is a man in whose heart the quality of kindness or of justice is not found. A rough, rude energy, united with an uncultivated mind and an avaricious spirit, are his prominent characteristics. He is known as a "nigger breaker," distinguished for his faculty of subduing the spirit of the slave, and priding himself upon his reputation in this respect, as a jockey boasts of his skill in managing a refractory horse. He looked upon a colored man, not as a human being, responsible to his Creator for the small talent entrusted to him, but as a "chattel personal," as mere live property, no better, except in value, than his mule or dog. When the evidence, clear and indisputable, was laid before him that I was a free man, and as much entitled to my liberty as he--when, on the day I left, he was informed that I had a wife and children, as dear to me as his own babes to him, he only raved and swore, denouncing the law that tore me from him, and declaring he would find out the man who had forwarded the letter that disclosed the place of my captivity, if there was any virtue or power in money, and would take his life. He thought of nothing but his loss, and cursed me for having been born free. He could have stood unmoved and seen the tongues of his poor slaves torn out by the roots--he could have seen them burned to ashes over a slow fire, or gnawed to death by dogs, if it only brought him profit. Such a hard, cruel, unjust man is Edwin Epps. There was but one greater savage on Bayou Boeuf than he. Jim Burns' plantation was cultivated, as already mentioned, exclusively by women. That barbarian kept their backs so sore and raw, that they could not perform the customary labor demanded daily of the slave. He boasted of his cruelty, and through all the country round was accounted a more thorough-going, energetic man than even Epps. A brute himself, Jim Burns had not a particle of mercy for his subject brutes, and like a fool, whipped and scourged away the very strength upon which depended his amount of gain. Epps remained on Huff Power two years, when, having accumulated a considerable sum of money, he expended it in the purchase of the plantation on the east bank of Bayou Boeuf, where he still continues to reside. He took possession of it in 1845, after the holidays were passed. He carried thither with him nine slaves, all of whom, except myself, and Susan, who has since died, remain there yet. He made no addition to this force, and for eight years the following were my companions in his quarters, viz: Abram, Wiley, Phebe, Bob, Henry, Edward, and Patsey. All these, except Edward, born since, were purchased out of a drove by Epps during the time he was overseer for Archy B. Williams, whose plantation is situated on the shore of Red River, not far from Alexandria. Abram was tall, standing a full head above any common man. He is sixty years of age, and was born in Tennessee. Twenty years ago, he was purchased by a trader, carried into South Carolina, and sold to James Buford, of Williamsburgh county, in that State. In his youth he was renowned for his great strength, but age and unremitting toil have somewhat shattered his powerful frame and enfeebled his mental faculties. Wiley is forty-eight. He was born on the estate of William Tassle, and for many years took charge of that gentleman's ferry over the Big Black River, in South Carolina. Phebe was a slave of Buford, Tassle's neighbor, and having married Wiley, he bought the latter, at her instigation. Buford was a kind master, sheriff of the county, and in those days a man of wealth. Bob and Henry are Phebe's children, by a former husband, their father having been abandoned to give place to Wiley. That seductive youth had insinuated himself into Phebe's affections, and therefore the faithless spouse had gently kicked her first husband out of her cabin door. Edward had been born to them on Bayou Huff Power. Patsey is twenty-three--also from Buford's plantation. She is in no wise connected with the others, but glories in the fact that she is the offspring of a "Guinea nigger," brought over to Cuba in a slave ship, and in the course of trade transferred to Buford, who was her mother's owner. This, as I learned from them, is a genealogical account of my master's slaves. For years they had been together. Often they recalled the memories of other days, and sighed to retrace their steps to the old home in Carolina. Troubles came upon their master Buford, which brought far greater troubles upon them. He became involved in debt, and unable to bear up against his failing fortunes, was compelled to sell these, and others of his slaves. In a chain gang they had been driven from beyond the Mississippi to the plantation of Archy B. Williams. Edwin Epps, who, for a long while had been his driver and overseer, was about establishing himself in business on his own account, at the time of their arrival, and accepted them in payment of his wages. Old Abram was a kind-hearted being--a sort of patriarch among us, fond of entertaining his younger brethren with grave and serious discourse. He was deeply versed in such philosophy as is taught in the cabin of the slave; but the great absorbing hobby of Uncle Abram was General Jackson, whom his young master in Tennessee had followed to the wars. He loved to wander back, in imagination, to the place where he was born, and to recount the scenes of his youth during those stirring times when the nation was in arms. He had been athletic, and more keen and powerful than the generality of his race, but now his eye had become dim, and his natural force abated. Very often, indeed, while discussing the best method of baking the hoe-cake, or expatiating at large upon the glory of Jackson, he would forget where he left his hat, or his hoe, or his basket; and then would the old man be laughed at, if Epps was absent, and whipped if he was present. So was he perplexed continually, and sighed to think that he was growing aged and going to decay. Philosophy and Jackson and forgetfulness had played the mischief with him, and it was evident that all of them combined were fast bringing down the gray hairs of Uncle Abram to the grave. Aunt Phebe had been an excellent field hand, but latterly was put into the kitchen, where she remained, except occasionally, in a time of uncommon hurry. She was a sly old creature, and when not in the presence of her mistress or her master, was garrulous in the extreme. Wiley, on the contrary, was silent. He performed his task without murmur or complaint, seldom indulging in the luxury of speech, except to utter a wish, that he was away from Epps, and back once more in South Carolina. Bob and Henry had reached the ages of twenty and twenty-three, and were distinguished for nothing extraordinary or unusual, while Edward, a lad of thirteen, not yet able to maintain his row in the corn or the cotton field, was kept in the great house, to wait on the little Eppses. Patsey was slim and straight. She stood erect as the human form is capable of standing. There was an air of loftiness in her movement, that neither labor, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy. Truly, Patsey was a splendid animal, and were it not that bondage had enshrouded her intellect in utter and everlasting darkness, would have been chief among ten thousand of her people. She could leap the highest fences, and a fleet hound it was indeed, that could outstrip her in a race. No horse could fling her from his back. She was a skillful teamster. She turned as true a furrow as the best, and at splitting rails there were none who could excel her. When the order to halt was heard at night, she would have her mules at the crib, unharnessed, fed and curried, before uncle Abram had found his hat. Not, however, for all or any of these, was she chiefly famous. Such lightning-like motion was in her fingers as no other fingers ever possessed, and therefore it was, that in cotton picking time, Patsey was queen of the field. She had a genial and pleasant temper, and was faithful and obedient. Naturally, she was a joyous creature, a laughing, light-hearted girl, rejoicing in the mere sense of existence. Yet Patsey wept oftener, and suffered more, than any of her companions. She had been literally excoriated. Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was backward in her work, nor because she was of an unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress. She shrank before the lustful eye of the one, and was in danger even of her life at the hands of the other, and between the two, she was indeed accursed. In the great house, for days together, there were high and angry words, poutings and estrangement, whereof she was the innocent cause. Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see her suffer, and more than once, when Epps had refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp. Gladly would Patsey have appeased this unforgiving spirit, if it had been in her power, but not like Joseph, dared she escape from Master Epps, leaving her garment in his hand. Patsey walked under a cloud. If she uttered a word in opposition to her master's will, the lash was resorted to at once, to bring her to subjection; if she was not watchful when about her cabin, or when walking in the yard, a billet of wood, or a broken bottle perhaps, hurled from her mistress' hand, would smite her unexpectedly in the face. The enslaved victim of lust and hate, Patsey had no comfort of her life. These were my companions and fellow-slaves, with whom I was accustomed to be driven to the field, and with whom it has been my lot to dwell for ten years in the log cabins of Edwin Epps. They, if living, are yet toiling on the banks of Bayou Boeuf, never destined to breathe, as I now do, the blessed air of liberty, nor to shake off the heavy shackles that enthrall them, until they shall lie down forever in the dust. CHAPTER XIV. DESTRUCTION OF THE COTTON CROP IN 1845--DEMAND FOR LABORERS IN ST. MARY'S PARISH--SENT THITHER IN A DROVE--THE ORDER OF THE MARCH--THE GRAND COTEAU--HIRED TO JUDGE TURNER ON BAYOU SALLE--APPOINTED DRIVER IN HIS SUGAR HOUSE--SUNDAY SERVICES SLAVE FURNITURE, HOW OBTAINED--THE PARTY AT YARNEY'S IN CENTREVILLE--GOOD FORTUNE--THE CAPTAIN OF THE STEAMER--HIS REFUSAL TO SECRETE ME--RETURN TO BAYOU BOEUF--SIGHT OF TIBEATS--PATSEY'S SORROWS--TUMULT AND CONTENTION--HUNTING THE COON AND OPOSSUM--THE CUNNING OF THE LATTER--THE LEAN CONDITION OF THE SLAVE--DESCRIPTION OF THE FISH TRAP--THE MURDER OF THE MAN FROM NATCHEZ--EPPS CHALLENGED BY MARSHALL--THE INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY--THE LOVE OF FREEDOM. The first year of Epps' residence on the bayou, 1845, the caterpillars almost totally destroyed the cotton crop throughout that region. There was little to be done, so that the slaves were necessarily idle half the time. However, there came a rumor to Bayou Boeuf that wages were high, and laborers in great demand on the sugar plantations in St. Mary's parish. This parish is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, about one hundred and forty miles from Avoyelles. The Rio Teche, a considerable stream, flows through St. Mary's to the gulf. It was determined by the planters, on the receipt of this intelligence, to make up a drove of slaves to be sent down to Tuckapaw in St. Mary's, for the purpose of hiring them out in the cane fields. Accordingly, in the month of September, there were one hundred and forty-seven collected at Holmesville, Abram, Bob and myself among the number. Of these about one-half were women. Epps, Alonson Pierce, Henry Toler, and Addison Roberts, were the white men, selected to accompany, and take charge of the drove. They had a two-horse carriage and two saddle horses for their use. A large wagon, drawn by four horses, and driven by John, a boy belonging to Mr. Roberts, carried the blankets and provisions. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon, having been fed, preparations were made to depart. The duty assigned me was, to take charge of the blankets and provisions, and see that none were lost by the way. The carriage proceeded in advance, the wagon following; behind this the slaves were arranged, while the two horsemen brought up the rear, and in this order the procession moved out of Holmesville. That night we reached a Mr. McCrow's plantation, a distance of ten or fifteen miles, when we were ordered to halt. Large fires were built, and each one spreading his blanket on the ground, laid down upon it. The white men lodged in the great house. An hour before day we were aroused by the drivers coming among us, cracking their whips and ordering us to arise. Then the blankets were rolled up, and being severally delivered to me and deposited in the wagon, the procession set forth again. The following night it rained violently. We were all drenched, our clothes saturated with mud and water. Reaching an open shed, formerly a gin-house, we found beneath it such shelter as it afforded. There was not room for all of us to lay down. There we remained, huddled together, through the night, continuing our march, as usual, in the morning. During the journey we were fed twice a day, boiling our bacon and baking our corn-cake at the fires in the same manner as in our huts. We passed through Lafayetteville, Mountsville, New-Town, to Centreville, where Bob and Uncle Abram were hired. Our number decreased as we advanced--nearly every sugar plantation requiring the services of one or more. On our route we passed the Grand Coteau or prairie, a vast space of level, monotonous country, without a tree, except an occasional one which had been transplanted near some dilapidated dwelling. It was once thickly populated, and under cultivation, but for some cause had been abandoned. The business of the scattered inhabitants that now dwell upon it is principally raising cattle. Immense herds were feeding upon it as we passed. In the centre of the Grand Coteau one feels as if he were on the ocean, out of sight of land. As far as the eye can see, in all directions, it is but a ruined and deserted waste. I was hired to Judge Turner, a distinguished man and extensive planter, whose large estate is situated on Bayou Salle, within a few miles of the gulf. Bay on Salle is a small stream flowing into the bay of Atchafalaya. For some days I was employed at Turner's in repairing his sugar house, when a cane knife was put into my hand, and with thirty or forty others, I was sent into the field. I found no such difficulty in learning the art of cutting cane that I had in picking cotton. It came to me naturally and intuitively, and in a short time I was able to keep up with the fastest knife. Before the cutting was over, however, Judge Turner transferred me from the field to the sugar house, to act there in the capacity of driver. From the time of the commencement of sugar making to the close, the grinding and boiling does not cease day or night. The whip was given me with directions to use it upon any one who was caught standing idle. If I failed to obey them to the letter, there was another one for my own back. In addition to this my duty was to call on and off the different gangs at the proper time. I had no regular periods of rest, and could never snatch but a few moments of sleep at a time. It is the custom in Louisiana, as I presume it is in other slave States, to allow the slave to retain whatever compensation he may obtain for services performed on Sundays. In this way, only, are they able to provide themselves with any luxury or convenience whatever. When a slave, purchased, or kidnapped in the North, is transported to a cabin on Bayou Boeuf he is furnished with neither knife, nor fork, nor dish, nor kettle, nor any other thing in the shape of crockery, or furniture of any nature or description. He is furnished with a blanket before he reaches there, and wrapping that around him, he can either stand up, or lie down upon the ground, or on a board, if his master has no use for it. He is at liberty to find a gourd in which to keep his meal, or he can eat his corn from the cob, just as he pleases. To ask the master for a knife, or skillet, or any small convenience of the kind, would be answered with a kick, or laughed at as a joke. Whatever necessary article of this nature is found in a cabin has been purchased with Sunday money. However injurious to the morals, it is certainly a blessing to the physical condition of the slave, to be permitted to break the Sabbath. Otherwise there would be no way to provide himself with any utensils, which seem to be indispensable to him who is compelled to be his own cook. On cane plantations in sugar time, there is no distinction as to the days of the week. It is well understood that all hands must labor on the Sabbath, and it is equally well understood that those especially who are hired, as I was to Judge Turner, and others in succeeding years, shall receive remuneration for it. It is usual, also, in the most hurrying time of cotton-picking, to require the same extra service. From this source, slaves generally are afforded an opportunity of earning sufficient to purchase a knife, a kettle, tobacco and so forth. The females, discarding the latter luxury, are apt to expend their little revenue in the purchase of gaudy ribbons, wherewithal to deck their hair in the merry season of the holidays. I remained in St. Mary's until the first of January, during which time my Sunday money amounted to ten dollars. I met with other good fortune, for which I was indebted to my violin, my constant companion, the source of profit, and soother of my sorrows during years of servitude. There was a grand party of whites assembled at Mr. Yarney's, in Centreville, a hamlet in the vicinity of Turner's plantation. I was employed to play for them, and so well pleased were the merry-makers with my performance, that a contribution was taken for my benefit, which amounted to seventeen dollars. With this sum in possession, I was looked upon by my fellows as a millionaire. It afforded me great pleasure to look at it--to count it over and over again, day after day. Visions of cabin furniture, of water pails, of pocket knives, new shoes and coats and hats, floated through my fancy, and up through all rose the triumphant contemplation, that I was the wealthiest "nigger" on Bayou Boeuf. Vessels run up the Rio Teche to Centreville. While there, I was bold enough one day to present myself before the captain of a steamer, and beg permission to hide myself among the freight. I was emboldened to risk the hazard of such a step, from overhearing a conversation, in the course of which I ascertained he was a native of the North. I did not relate to him the particulars of my history, but only expressed an ardent desire to escape from slavery to a free State. He pitied me, but said it would be impossible to avoid the vigilant custom house officers in New-Orleans, and that detection would subject him to punishment, and his vessel to confiscation. My earnest entreaties evidently excited his sympathies, and doubtless he would have yielded to them, could he have done so with any kind of safety. I was compelled to smother the sudden flame that lighted up my bosom with sweet hopes of liberation, and turn my steps once more towards the increasing darkness of despair. Immediately after this event the drove assembled at Centreville, and several of the owners having arrived and collected the monies due for our services, we were driven back to Bayou Boeuf. It was on our return, while passing through a small village, that I caught sight of Tibeats, seated in the door of a dirty grocery, looking somewhat seedy and out of repair. Passion and poor whisky, I doubt not, have ere this laid him on the shelf. During our absence, I learned from Aunt Phebe and Patsey, that the latter had been getting deeper and deeper into trouble. The poor girl was truly an object of pity. "Old Hogjaw," the name by which Epps was called, when the slaves were by themselves, had beaten her more severely and frequently than ever. As surely as he came from Holmesville, elated with liquor--and it was often in those days--he would whip her, merely to gratify the mistress; would punish her to an extent almost beyond endurance, for an offence of which he himself was the sole and irresistible cause. In his sober moments he could not always be prevailed upon to indulge his wife's insatiable thirst for vengeance. To be rid of Patsey--to place her beyond sight or reach, by sale, or death, or in any other manner, of late years, seemed to be the ruling thought and passion of my mistress. Patsey had been a favorite when a child, even in the great house. She had been petted and admired for her uncommon sprightliness and pleasant disposition. She had been fed many a time, so Uncle Abram said, even on biscuit and milk, when the madam, in her younger days, was wont to call her to the piazza, and fondle her as she would a playful Kitten. But a sad change had come over the spirit of the woman. Now, only black and angry fiends ministered in the temple of her heart, until she could look on Patsey but with concentrated venom. Mistress Epps was not naturally such an evil woman, after all. She was possessed of the devil, jealousy, it is true, but aside from that, there was much in her character to admire. Her father, Mr. Roberts, resided in Cheneyville, an influential and honorable man, and as much respected throughout the parish as any other citizen. She had been well educated at some institution this side the Mississippi; was beautiful, accomplished, and usually good-humored. She was kind to all of us but Patsey--frequently, in the absence of her husband, sending out to us some little dainty from her own table. In other situations--in a different society from that which exists on the shores of Bayou Boeuf, she would have been pronounced an elegant and fascinating woman. An ill wind it was that blew her into the arms of Epps. He respected and loved his wife as much as a coarse nature like his is capable of loving, but supreme selfishness always overmastered conjugal affection. "He loved as well as baser natures can, But a mean heart and soul were in that man." He was ready to gratify any whim--to grant any request she made, provided it did not cost too much. Patsey was equal to any two of his slaves in the cotton field. He could not replace her with the same money she would bring. The idea of disposing of her, therefore, could not be entertained. The mistress did not regard her at all in that light. The pride of the haughty woman was aroused; the blood of the fiery southern boiled at the sight of Patsey, and nothing less than trampling out the life of the helpless bondwoman would satisfy her. Sometimes the current of her wrath turned upon him whom she had just cause to hate. But the storm of angry words would pass over at length, and there would be a season of calm again. At such times Patsey trembled with fear, and cried as if her heart would break, for she knew from painful experience, that if mistress should work herself to the red-hot pitch of rage, Epps would quiet her at last with a promise that Patsey should be flogged--a promise he was sure to keep. Thus did pride, and jealousy, and vengeance war with avarice and brute-passion in the mansion of my master, filling it with daily tumult and contention. Thus, upon the head of Patsey--the simple-minded slave, in whose heart God had implanted the seeds of virtue--the force of all these domestic tempests spent itself at last. During the summer succeeding my return from St. Mary's parish, I conceived a plan of providing myself with food, which, though simple, succeeded beyond expectation. It has been followed by many others in my condition, up and down the bayou, and of such benefit has it become that I am almost persuaded to look upon myself as a benefactor. That summer the worms got into the bacon. Nothing but ravenous hunger could induce us to swallow it. The weekly allowance of meal scarcely sufficed to satisfy us. It was customary with us, as it is with all in that region, where the allowance is exhausted before Saturday night, or is in such a state as to render it nauseous and disgusting, to hunt in the swamps for coon and opossum. This, however, must be done at night, after the day's work is accomplished. There are planters whose slaves, for months at a time, have no other meat than such as is obtained in this manner. No objections are made to hunting, inasmuch as it dispenses with drafts upon the smoke-house, and because every marauding coon that is killed is so much saved from the standing corn. They are hunted with dogs and clubs, slaves not being allowed the use of fire-arms. The flesh of the coon is palatable, but verily there is nothing in all butcherdom so delicious as a roasted 'possum. They are a round, rather long-bodied, little animal, of a whitish color, with nose like a pig, and caudal extremity like a rat. They burrow among the roots and in the hollows of the gum tree, and are clumsy and slow of motion. They are deceitful and cunning creatures. On receiving the slightest tap of a stick, they will roll over on the ground and feign death. If the hunter leaves him, in pursuit of another, without first taking particular pains to break his neck, the chances are, on his return, he is not to be found. The little animal has out witted the enemy--has "played 'possum"--and is off. But after a long and hard day's work, the weary slave feels little like going to the swamp for his supper, and half the time prefers throwing himself on the cabin floor without it. It is for the interest of the master that the servant should not suffer in health from starvation, and it is also for his interest that he should not become gross from over-feeding. In the estimation of the owner, a slave is the most serviceable when in rather a lean and lank condition, such a condition as the race-horse is in, when fitted for the course, and in that condition they are generally to be found on the sugar and cotton plantations along Red River. My cabin was within a few rods of the bayou bank, and necessity being indeed the mother of invention, I resolved upon a mode of obtaining the requisite amount of food, without the trouble of resorting nightly to the woods. This was to construct a fish trap. Having, in my mind, conceived the manner in which it could be done, the next Sunday I set about putting it into practical execution. It may be impossible for me to convey to the reader a full and correct idea of its construction, but the following will serve as a general description: A frame between two and three feet square is made, and of a greater or less height, according to the depth of water. Boards or slats are nailed on three sides of this frame, not so closely, however, as to prevent the water circulating freely through it. A door is fitted into the fourth side, in such manner that it will slide easily up and down in the grooves cut in the two posts. A movable bottom is then so fitted that it can be raised to the top of the frame without difficulty. In the centre of the movable bottom an auger hole is bored, and into this one end of a handle or round stick is fastened on the under side so loosely that it will turn. The handle ascends from the centre of the movable bottom to the top of the frame, or as much higher as is desirable. Up and down this handle, in a great many places, are gimlet holes, through which small sticks are inserted, extending to opposite sides of the frame. So many of these small sticks are running out from the handle in all directions, that a fish of any considerable dimensions cannot pass through without hitting one of them. The frame is then placed in the water and made stationary. The trap is "set" by sliding or drawing up the door, and kept in that position by another stick, one end of which rests in a notch on the inner side, the other end in a notch made in the handle, running up from the centre of the movable bottom. The trap is baited by rolling a handful of wet meal and cotton together until it becomes hard, and depositing it in the back part of the frame. A fish swimming through the upraised door towards the bait, necessarily strikes one of the small sticks turning the handle, which displacing the stick supporting the door, the latter falls, securing the fish within the frame. Taking hold of the top of the handle, the movable bottom is then drawn up to the surface of the water, and the fish taken out. There may have been other such traps in use before mine was constructed, but if there were I had never happened to see one. Bayou Boeuf abounds in fish of large size and excellent quality, and after this time I was very rarely in want of one for myself, or for my comrades. Thus a mine was opened--a new resource was developed, hitherto unthought of by the enslaved children of Africa, who toil and hunger along the shores of that sluggish, but prolific stream. About the time of which I am now writing, an event occurred in our immediate neighborhood, which made a deep impression upon me, and which shows the state of society existing there, and the manner in which affronts are oftentimes avenged. Directly opposite our quarters, on the other side of the bayou, was situated the plantation of Mr. Marshall. He belonged to a family among the most wealthy and aristocratic in the country. A gentleman from the vicinity of Natchez had been negotiating with him for the purchase of the estate. One day a messenger came in great haste to our plantation, saying that a bloody and fearful battle was going on at Marshall's--that blood had been spilled--and unless the combatants were forthwith separated, the result would be disastrous. On repairing to Marshall's house, a scene presented itself that beggars description. On the floor of one of the rooms lay the ghastly corpse of the man from Natchez, while Marshall, enraged and covered with wounds and blood, was stalking back and forth, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter." A difficulty had arisen in the course of their negotiation, high words ensued, when drawing their weapons, the deadly strife began that ended so unfortunately. Marshall was never placed in confinement. A sort of trial or investigation was had at Marksville, when he was acquitted, and returned to his plantation, rather more respected, as I thought, than ever, from the fact that the blood of a fellow being was on his soul. Epps interested himself in his behalf, accompanying him to Marksville, and on all occasions loudly justifying him, but his services in this respect did not afterwards deter a kinsman of this same Marshall from seeking his life also. A brawl occurred between them over a gambling-table, which terminated in a deadly feud. Riding up on horseback in front of the house one day, armed with pistols and bowie knife, Marshall challenged him to come forth and make a final settlement of the quarrel, or he would brand him as a coward, and shoot him like a dog the first opportunity. Not through cowardice, nor from any conscientious scruples, in my opinion, but through the influence of his wife, he was restrained from accepting the challenge of his enemy. A reconciliation, however, was effected afterward, since which time they have been on terms of the closest intimacy. Such occurrences, which would bring upon the parties concerned in them merited and condign punishment in the Northern States, are frequent on the bayou, and pass without notice, and almost without comment. Every man carries his bowie knife, and when two fall out, they set to work hacking and thrusting at each other, more like savages than civilized and enlightened beings. The existence of Slavery in its most cruel form among them, has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering--listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave--beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash--bitten and torn by dogs--dying without attention, and buried without shroud or coffin--it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life. It is true there are many kind-hearted and good men in the parish of Avoyelles--such men as William Ford--who can look with pity upon the sufferings of a slave, just as there are, over all the world, sensitive and sympathetic spirits, who cannot look with indifference upon the sufferings of any creature which the Almighty has endowed with life. It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees and hears, that the rod is for the slave's back, he will not be apt to change his opinions in maturer years. There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones--there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not--may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance--discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field--sleep with him in the cabin--feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the _heart_ of the poor slave--learn his secret thoughts--thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man; let them sit by him in the silent watches of the night--converse with him in trustful confidence, of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and they will find that ninety-nine out of every hundred are intelligent enough to understand their situation, and to cherish in their bosoms the love of freedom, as passionately as themselves. CHAPTER XV. LABORS ON SUGAR PLANTATIONS--THE MODE OF PLANTING CANE--OF HOEING CANE--CANE RICKS--CUTTING CANE--DESCRIPTION OF THE CANE KNIFE--WINROWING--PREPARING FOR SUCCEEDING CROPS--DESCRIPTION OF HAWKINS' SUGAR MILL ON BAYOU BOEUF--THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS--THE CARNIVAL SEASON OF THE CHILDREN OF BONDAGE--THE CHRISTMAS SUPPER--RED, THE FAVORITE COLOR--THE VIOLIN, AND THE CONSOLATION IT AFFORDED--THE CHRISTMAS DANCE--LIVELY, THE COQUETTE--SAM ROBERTS, AND HIS RIVALS--SLAVE SONGS--SOUTHERN LIFE AS IT IS--THREE DAYS IN THE YEAR--THE SYSTEM OF MARRIAGE--UNCLE ABRAM'S CONTEMPT OF MATRIMONY. In consequence of my inability in cotton-picking, Epps was in the habit of hiring me out on sugar plantations during the season of cane-cutting and sugar-making. He received for my services a dollar a day, with the money supplying my place on his cotton plantation. Cutting cane was an employment that suited me, and for three successive years I held the lead row at Hawkins', leading a gang of from fifty to an hundred hands. In a previous chapter the mode of cultivating cotton is described. This may be the proper place to speak of the manner of cultivating cane. The ground is prepared in beds, the same as it is prepared for the reception of the cotton seed, except it is ploughed deeper. Drills are made in the same manner. Planting commences in January, and continues until April. It is necessary to plant a sugar field only once in three years. Three crops are taken before the seed or plant is exhausted. Three gangs are employed in the operation. One draws the cane from the rick, or stack, cutting the top and flags from the stalk, leaving only that part which is sound and healthy. Each joint of the cane has an eye, like the eye of a potato, which sends forth a sprout when buried in the soil. Another gang lays the cane in the drill, placing two stalks side by side in such manner that joints will occur once in four or six inches. The third gang follows with hoes, drawing earth upon the stalks, and covering them to the depth, of three inches. In four weeks, at the farthest, the sprouts appear above the ground, and from this time forward grow with great rapidity. A sugar field is hoed three times, the same as cotton, save that a greater quantity of earth is drawn to the roots. By the first of August hoeing is usually over. About the middle of September, whatever is required for seed is cut and stacked in ricks, as they are termed. In October it is ready for the mill or sugar-house, and then the general cutting begins. The blade of a cane-knife is fifteen inches long, three inches wide in the middle, and tapering towards the point and handle. The blade is thin, and in order to be at all serviceable must be kept very sharp. Every third hand takes the lead of two others, one of whom is on each side of him. The lead hand, in the first place, with a blow of his knife shears the flags from the stalk. He next cuts off the top down as far as it is green. He must be careful to sever all the green from the ripe part, inasmuch as the juice of the former sours the molasses, and renders it unsalable. Then he severs the stalk at the root, and lays it directly behind him. His right and left hand companions lay their stalks, when cut in the same manner, upon his. To every three hands there is a cart, which follows, and the stalks are thrown into it by the younger slaves, when it is drawn to the sugar-house and ground. If the planter apprehends a frost, the cane is winrowed. Winrowing is the cutting the stalks at an early period and throwing them lengthwise in the water furrow in such a manner that the tops will cover the butts of the stalks. They will remain in this condition three weeks or a month without souring, and secure from frost. When the proper time arrives, they are taken up, trimmed and carted to the sugar-house. In the month of January the slaves enter the field again to prepare for another crop. The ground is now strewn with the tops, and flags cut from the past year's cane. On a dry day fire is set to this combustible refuse, which sweeps over the field, leaving it bare and clean, and ready for the hoes. The earth is loosened about the roots of the old stubble, and in process of time another crop springs up from the last year's seed. It is the same the year following; but the third year the seed has exhausted its strength, and the field must be ploughed and planted again. The second year the cane is sweeter and yields more than the first, and the third year more than the second. During the three seasons I labored on Hawkins' plantation, I was employed a considerable portion of the time in the sugar-house. He is celebrated as the producer of the finest variety of white sugar. The following is a general description of his sugar-house and the process of manufacture: The mill is an immense brick building, standing on the shore of the bayou. Running out from the building is an open shed, at least an hundred feet in length and forty or fifty feet in width. The boiler in which the steam is generated is situated outside the main building; the machinery and engine rest on a brick pier, fifteen feet above the floor, within the body of the building. The machinery turns two great iron rollers, between two and three feet in diameter and six or eight feet in length. They are elevated above the brick pier, and roll in towards each other. An endless carrier, made of chain and wood, like leathern belts used in small mills, extends from the iron rollers out of the main building and through the entire length of the open shed. The carts in which the cane is brought from the field as fast as it is cut, are unloaded at the sides of the shed. All along the endless carrier are ranged slave children, whose business it is to place the cane upon it, when it is conveyed through the shed into the main building, where it falls between the rollers, is crushed, and drops upon another carrier that conveys it out of the main building in an opposite direction, depositing it in the top of a chimney upon a fire beneath, which consumes it. It is necessary to burn it in this manner, because otherwise it would soon fill the building, and more especially because it would soon sour and engender disease. The juice of the cane falls into a conductor underneath the iron rollers, and is carried into a reservoir. Pipes convey it from thence into five filterers, holding several hogsheads each. These filterers are filled with bone-black, a substance resembling pulverized charcoal. It is made of bones calcinated in close vessels, and is used for the purpose of decolorizing, by filtration, the cane juice before boiling. Through these five filterers it passes in succession, and then runs into a large reservoir underneath the ground floor, from whence it is carried up, by means of a steam pump, into a clarifier made of sheet iron, where it is heated by steam until it boils. From the first clarifier it is carried in pipes to a second and a third, and thence into close iron pans, through which tubes pass, filled with steam. While in a boiling state it flows through three pans in succession, and is then carried in other pipes down to the coolers on the ground floor. Coolers are wooden boxes with sieve bottoms made of the finest wire. As soon as the syrup passes into the coolers, and is met by the air, it grains, and the molasses at once escapes through the sieves into a cistern below. It is then white or loaf sugar of the finest kind--clear, clean, and as white as snow. When cool, it is taken out, packed in hogsheads, and is ready for market. The molasses is then carried from the cistern into the upper story again, and by another process converted into brown sugar. There are larger mills, and those constructed differently from the one thus imperfectly described, but none, perhaps, more celebrated than this anywhere on Bayou Boeuf. Lambert, of New-Orleans, is a partner of Hawkins. He is a man of vast wealth, holding, as I have been told, an interest in over forty different sugar plantations in Louisiana. * * * * * The only respite from constant labor the slave has through the whole year, is during the Christmas holidays. Epps allowed us three--others allow four, five and six days, according to the measure of their generosity. It is the only time to which they look forward with any interest or pleasure. They are glad when night comes, not only because it brings them a few hours repose, but because it brings them one day nearer Christmas. It is hailed with equal delight by the old and the young; even Uncle Abram ceases to glorify Andrew Jackson, and Patsey forgets her many sorrows, amid the general hilarity of the holidays. It is the time of feasting, and frolicking, and fiddling--the carnival season with the children of bondage. They are the only days when they are allowed a little restricted liberty, and heartily indeed do they enjoy it. It is the custom for one planter to give a "Christmas supper," inviting the slaves from neighboring plantations to join his own on the occasion; for instance, one year it is given by Epps, the next by Marshall, the next by Hawkins, and so on. Usually from three to five hundred are assembled, coming together on foot, in carts, on horseback, on mules, riding double and triple, sometimes a boy and girl, at others a girl and two boys, and at others again a boy, a girl and an old woman. Uncle Abram astride a mule, with Aunt Phebe and Patsey behind him, trotting towards a Christmas supper, would be no uncommon sight on Bayou Boeuf. Then, too, "of all days i' the year," they array themselves in their best attire. The cotton coat has been washed clean, the stump of a tallow candle has been applied to the shoes, and if so fortunate as to possess a rimless or a crownless hat, it is placed jauntily on the head. They are welcomed with equal cordiality, however, if they come bare-headed and barefooted to the feast. As a general thing, the women wear handkerchiefs tied about their heads, but if chance has thrown in their way a fiery red ribbon, or a cast-off bonnet of their mistress' grandmother, it is sure to be worn on such occasions. Red--the deep blood red--is decidedly the favorite color among the enslaved damsels of my acquaintance. If a red ribbon does not encircle the neck, you will be certain to find all the hair of their woolly heads tied up with red strings of one sort or another. The table is spread in the open air, and loaded with varieties of meat and piles of vegetables. Bacon and corn meal at such times are dispensed with. Sometimes the cooking is performed in the kitchen on the plantation, at others in the shade of wide branching trees. In the latter case, a ditch is dug in the ground, and wood laid in and burned until it is filled with glowing coals, over which chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and not unfrequently the entire body of a wild ox, are roasted. They are furnished also with flour, of which biscuits are made, and often with peach and other preserves, with tarts, and every manner and description of pies, except the mince, that being an article of pastry as yet unknown among them. Only the slave who has lived all the years on his scanty allowance of meal and bacon, can appreciate such suppers. White people in great numbers assemble to witness the gastronomical enjoyments. They seat themselves at the rustic table--the males on one side, the females on the other. The two between whom there may have been an exchange of tenderness, invariably manage to sit opposite; for the omnipresent Cupid disdains not to hurl his arrows into the simple hearts of slaves. Unalloyed and exulting happiness lights up the dark faces of them all. The ivory teeth, contrasting with their black complexions, exhibit two long, white streaks the whole extent of the table. All round the bountiful board a multitude of eyes roll in ecstacy. Giggling and laughter and the clattering of cutlery and crockery succeed. Cuffee's elbow hunches his neighbor's side, impelled by an involuntary impulse of delight; Nelly shakes her finger at Sambo and laughs, she knows not why, and so the fun and merriment flows on. When the viands have disappeared, and the hungry maws of the children of toil are satisfied, then, next in the order of amusement, is the Christmas dance. My business on these gala days always was to play on the violin. The African race is a music-loving one, proverbially; and many there were among my fellow-bondsmen whose organs of tune were strikingly developed, and who could thumb the banjo with dexterity; but at the expense of appearing egotistical, I must, nevertheless, declare, that I was considered the Ole Bull of Bayou Boeuf. My master often received letters, sometimes from a distance of ten miles, requesting him to send me to play at a ball or festival of the whites. He received his compensation, and usually I also returned with many picayunes jingling in my pockets--the extra contributions of those to whose delight I had administered. In this manner I became more acquainted than I otherwise would, up and down the bayou. The young men and maidens of Holmesville always knew there was to be a jollification somewhere, whenever Platt Epps was seen passing through the town with his fiddle in his hand. "Where are you going now, Platt?" and "What is coming off to-night, Platt?" would be interrogatories issuing from every door and window, and many a time when there was no special hurry, yielding to pressing importunities, Platt would draw his bow, and sitting astride his mule, perhaps, discourse musically to a crowd of delighted children, gathered around him in the street. Alas! had it not been for my beloved violin, I scarcely can conceive how I could have endured the long years of bondage. It introduced me to great houses--relieved me of many days' labor in the field--supplied me with conveniences for my cabin--with pipes and tobacco, and extra pairs of shoes, and oftentimes led me away from the presence of a hard master, to witness scenes of jollity and mirth. It was my companion--the friend of my bosom--triumphing loudly when I was joyful, and uttering its soft, melodious consolations when I was sad. Often, at midnight, when sleep had fled affrighted from the cabin, and my soul was disturbed and troubled with the contemplation of my fate, it would sing me a song of peace. On holy Sabbath days, when an hour or two of leisure was allowed, it would accompany me to some quiet place on the bayou bank, and, lifting up its voice, discourse kindly and pleasantly indeed. It heralded my name round the country--made me friends, who, otherwise would not have noticed me--gave me an honored seat at the yearly feasts, and secured the loudest and heartiest welcome of them all at the Christmas dance. The Christmas dance! Oh, ye pleasure-seeking sons and daughters of idleness, who move with measured step, listless and snail-like, through the slow-winding cotillon, if ye wish to look upon the celerity, if not the "poetry of motion"--upon genuine happiness, rampant and unrestrained--go down to Louisiana, and see the slaves dancing in the starlight of a Christmas night. On that particular Christmas I have now in my mind, a description whereof will serve as a description of the day generally, Miss Lively and Mr. Sam, the first belonging to Stewart, the latter to Roberts, started the ball. It was well known that Sam cherished an ardent passion for Lively, as also did one of Marshall's and another of Carey's boys; for Lively was _lively_ indeed, and a heart-breaking coquette withal. It was a victory for Sam Roberts, when, rising from the repast, she gave him her hand for the first "figure" in preference to either of his rivals. They were somewhat crest-fallen, and, shaking their heads angrily, rather intimated they would like to pitch into Mr. Sam and hurt him badly. But not an emotion of wrath ruffled the placid bosom of Samuel, as his legs flew like drum-sticks down the outside and up the middle, by the side of his bewitching partner. The whole company cheered them vociferously, and, excited with the applause, they continued "tearing down" after all the others had become exhausted and halted a moment to recover breath. But Sam's superhuman exertions overcame him finally, leaving Lively alone, yet whirling like a top. Thereupon one of Sam's rivals, Pete Marshall, dashed in, and, with might and main, leaped and shuffled and threw himself into every conceivable shape, as if determined to show Miss Lively and all the world that Sam Roberts was of no account. Pete's affection, however, was greater than his discretion. Such violent exercise took the breath out of him directly, and he dropped like an empty bag. Then was the time for Harry Carey to try his hand; but Lively also soon out-winded him, amidst hurrahs and shouts, fully sustaining her well-earned reputation of being the "fastest gal" on the bayou. One "set" off, another takes its place, he or she remaining longest on the floor receiving the most uproarious commendation, and so the dancing continues until broad daylight. It does not cease with the sound of the fiddle, but in that case they set up a music peculiar to themselves. This is called "patting," accompanied with one of those unmeaning songs, composed rather for its adaptation to a certain tune or measure, than for the purpose of expressing any distinct idea. The patting is performed by striking the hands on the knees, then striking the hands together, then striking the right shoulder with one hand, the left with the other--all the while keeping time with the feet, and singing, perhaps, this song: "Harper's creek and roarin' ribber, Thar, my dear, we'll live forebber; Den we'll go to de Ingin nation, All I want in dis creation, Is pretty little wife and big plantation. _Chorus._ Up dat oak and down dat ribber, Two overseers and one little nigger." Or, if these words are not adapted to the tune called for, it may be that "Old Hog Eye" _is_--a rather solemn and startling specimen of versification, not, however, to be appreciated unless heard at the South. It runneth as follows: "Who's been here since I've been gone? Pretty little gal wid a josey on. Hog Eye! Old Hog Eye, And Hosey too! Never see de like since I was born, Here come a little gal wid a josey on. Hog Eye! Old Hog Eye! And Hosey too!" Or, may be the following, perhaps, equally nonsensical, but full of melody, nevertheless, as it flows from the negro's mouth: "Ebo Dick and Jurdan's Jo, Them two niggers stole my yo'. _Chorus._ Hop Jim along, Walk Jim along, Talk Jim along," &c. Old black Dan, as black as tar, He dam glad he was not dar. Hop Jim along," &c. During the remaining holidays succeeding Christmas, they are provided with passes, and permitted to go where they please within a limited distance, or they may remain and labor on the plantation, in which case they are paid for it. It is very rarely, however, that the latter alternative is accepted. They may be seen at these times hurrying in all directions, as happy looking mortals as can be found on the face of the earth. They are different beings from what they are in the field; the temporary relaxation, the brief deliverance from fear, and from the lash, producing an entire metamorphosis in their appearance and demeanor. In visiting, riding, renewing old friendships, or, perchance, reviving some old attachment, or pursuing whatever pleasure may suggest itself, the time is occupied. Such is "southern life as it is," _three days in the year_, as I found it--the other three hundred and sixty-two being days of weariness, and fear, and suffering, and unremitting labor. Marriage is frequently contracted during the holidays, if such an institution may be said to exist among them. The only ceremony required before entering into that "holy estate," is to obtain the consent of the respective owners. It is usually encouraged by the masters of female slaves. Either party can have as many husbands or wives as the owner will permit, and either is at liberty to discard the other at pleasure. The law in relation to divorce, or to bigamy, and so forth, is not applicable to property, of course. If the wife does not belong on the same plantation with the husband, the latter is permitted to visit her on Saturday nights, if the distance is not too far. Uncle Abram's wife lived seven miles from Epps', on Bayou Huff Power. He had permission to visit her once a fortnight, but he was growing old, as has been said, and truth to say, had latterly well nigh forgotten her. Uncle Abram had no time to spare from his meditations on General Jackson--connubial dalliance being well enough for the young and thoughtless, but unbecoming a grave and solemn philosopher like himself. CHAPTER XVI. OVERSEERS--HOW THEY ARE ARMED AND ACCOMPANIED--THE HOMICIDE--HIS EXECUTION AT MARKSVILLE--SLAVE-DRIVERS--APPOINTED DRIVER ON REMOVING TO BAYOU BOEUF--PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT--EPPS' ATTEMPT TO CUT PLATT'S THROAT--THE ESCAPE FROM HIM--PROTECTED BY THE MISTRESS--FORBIDS READING AND WRITING--OBTAIN A SHEET OF PAPER AFTER NINE YEARS' EFFORT--THE LETTER--ARMSBY, THE MEAN WHITE--PARTIALLY CONFIDE IN HIM--HIS TREACHERY--EPPS' SUSPICIONS--HOW THEY WERE QUIETED--BURNING THE LETTER--ARMSBY LEAVES THE BAYOU--DISAPPOINTMENT AND DESPAIR. With the exception of my trip to St. Mary's parish, and my absence during the cane-cutting seasons, I was constantly employed on the plantation of Master Epps. He was considered but a small planter, not having a sufficient number of hands to require the services of an overseer, acting in the latter capacity himself. Not able to increase his force, it was his custom to hire during the hurry of cotton-picking. On larger estates, employing fifty or a hundred, or perhaps two hundred hands, an overseer is deemed indispensable. These gentlemen ride into the field on horseback, without an exception, to my knowledge, armed with pistols, bowie knife, whip, and accompanied by several dogs. They follow, equipped in this fashion, in rear of the slaves, keeping a sharp lookout upon them all. The requisite qualifications in an overseer are utter heartlessness, brutality and cruelty. It is his business to produce large crops, and if that is accomplished, no matter what amount of suffering it may have cost. The presence of the dogs are necessary to overhaul a fugitive who may take to his heels, as is sometimes the case, when faint or sick, he is unable to maintain his row, and unable, also, to endure the whip. The pistols are reserved for any dangerous emergency, there having been instances when such weapons were necessary. Goaded into uncontrollable madness, even the slave will sometimes turn upon his oppressor. The gallows were standing at Marksville last January, upon which one was executed a year ago for killing his overseer. It occurred not many miles from Epps' plantation on Red River. The slave was given his task at splitting rails. In the course of the day the overseer sent him on an errand, which occupied so much time that it was not possible for him to perform the task. The next day he was called to an account, but the loss of time occasioned by the errand was no excuse, and he was ordered to kneel and bare his back for the reception of the lash. They were in the woods alone--beyond the reach of sight or hearing. The boy submitted until maddened at such injustice, and insane with pain, he sprang to his feet, and seizing an axe, literally chopped the overseer in pieces. He made no attempt whatever at concealment, but hastening to his master, related the whole affair, and declared himself ready to expiate the wrong by the sacrifice of his life. He was led to the scaffold, and while the rope was around his neck, maintained an undismayed and fearless bearing, and with his last words justified the act. Besides the overseer, there are drivers under him, the number being in proportion to the number of hands in the field. The drivers are black, who, in addition to the performance of their equal share of work, are compelled to do the whipping of their several gangs. Whips hang around their necks, and if they fail to use them thoroughly, are whipped themselves. They have a few privileges, however; for example, in cane-cutting the hands are not allowed to sit down long enough to eat their dinners. Carts filled with corn cake, cooked at the kitchen, are driven into the field at noon. The cake is distributed by the drivers, and must be eaten with the least possible delay. When the slave ceases to perspire, as he often does when taxed beyond his strength, he falls to the ground and becomes entirely helpless. It is then the duty of the driver to drag him into the shade of the standing cotton or cane, or of a neighboring tree, where he dashes buckets of water upon him, and uses other means of bringing out perspiration again, when he is ordered to his place, and compelled to continue his labor. At Huff Power, when I first came to Epps', Tom, one of Roberts' negroes, was driver. He was a burly fellow, and severe in the extreme. After Epps' removal to Bayou Boeuf, that distinguished honor was conferred upon myself. Up to the time of my departure I had to wear a whip about my neck in the field. If Epps was present, I dared not show any lenity, not having the Christian fortitude of a certain well-known Uncle Tom sufficiently to brave his wrath, by refusing to perform the office. In that way, only, I escaped the immediate martyrdom he suffered, and, withal, saved my companions much suffering, as it proved in the end. Epps, I soon found, whether actually in the field or not, had his eyes pretty generally upon us. From the piazza, from behind some adjacent tree, or other concealed point of observation, he was perpetually on the watch. If one of us had been backward or idle through the day, we were apt to be told all about it on returning to the quarters, and as it was a matter of principle with him to reprove every offence of that kind that came within his knowledge, the offender not only was certain of receiving a castigation for his tardiness, but I likewise was punished for permitting it. If, on the other hand, he had seen me use the lash freely, the man was satisfied. "Practice makes perfect," truly; and during my eight years' experience as a driver, I learned to handle the whip with marvelous dexterity and precision, throwing the lash within a hair's breadth of the back, the ear, the nose, without, however, touching either of them. If Epps was observed at a distance, or we had reason to apprehend he was sneaking somewhere in the vicinity, I would commence plying the lash vigorously, when, according to arrangement, they would squirm and screech as if in agony, although not one of them had in fact been even grazed. Patsey would take occasion, if he made his appearance presently, to mumble in his hearing some complaints that Platt was lashing them the whole time, and Uncle Abram, with an appearance of honesty peculiar to himself, would declare roundly I had just whipped them worse than General Jackson whipped the enemy at New-Orleans. If Epps was not drunk, and in one of his beastly humors, this was, in general, satisfactory. If he was, some one or more of us must suffer, as a matter of course. Sometimes his violence assumed a dangerous form, placing the lives of his human stock in jeopardy. On one occasion the drunken madman thought to amuse himself by cutting my throat. He had been absent at Holmesville, in attendance at a shooting-match, and none of us were aware of his return. While hoeing by the side of Patsey, she exclaimed, in a low voice, suddenly, "Platt, d'ye see old Hog-Jaw beckoning me to come to him?" Glancing sideways, I discovered him in the edge of the field, motioning and grimacing, as was his habit when half-intoxicated. Aware of his lewd intentions, Patsey began to cry. I whispered her not to look up, and to continue at her work, as if she had not observed him. Suspecting the truth of the matter, however, he soon staggered up to me in a great rage. "What did you say to Pats?" he demanded, with an oath. I made him some evasive answer, which only had the effect of increasing his violence. "How long have you owned this plantation, _say_, you d----d nigger?" he inquired, with a malicious sneer, at the same time taking hold of my shirt collar with one hand, and thrusting the other into his pocket. "Now I'll cut your black throat; that's what I'll do," drawing his knife from his pocket as he said it. But with one hand he was unable to open it, until finally seizing the blade in his teeth, I saw he was about to succeed, and felt the necessity of escaping from him, for in his present reckless state, it was evident he was not joking, by any means. My shirt was open in front, and as I turned round quickly and sprang from him, while he still retained his gripe, it was stripped entirely from my back. There was no difficulty now in eluding him. He would chase me until out of breath, then stop until it was recovered, swear, and renew the chase again. Now he would command me to come to him, now endeavor to coax me, but I was careful to keep at a respectful distance. In this manner we made the circuit of the field several times, he making desperate plunges, and I always dodging them, more amused than frightened, well knowing that when his sober senses returned, he would laugh at his own drunken folly. At length I observed the mistress standing by the yard fence, watching our half-serious, half-comical manoeuvres. Shooting past him, I ran directly to her. Epps, on discovering her, did not follow. He remained about the field an hour or more, during which time I stood by the mistress, having related the particulars of what had taken place. Now, _she_ was aroused again, denouncing her husband and Patsey about equally. Finally, Epps came towards the house, by this time nearly sober, walking demurely, with his hands behind his back, and attempting to look as innocent as a child. As he approached, nevertheless, Mistress Epps began to berate him roundly, heaping upon him many rather disrespectful epithets, and demanding for what reason he had attempted to cut my throat. Epps made wondrous strange of it all, and to my surprise, swore by all the saints in the calendar he had not spoken to me that day. "Platt, you lying nigger, _have_ I?" was his brazen appeal to me. It is not safe to contradict a master, even by the assertion of a truth. So I was silent, and when he entered the house I returned to the field, and the affair was never after alluded to. Shortly after this time a circumstance occurred that came nigh divulging the secret of my real name and history, which I had so long and carefully concealed, and upon which I was convinced depended my final escape. Soon after he purchased me, Epps asked me if I could write and read, and on being informed that I had received some instruction in those branches of education, he assured me, with emphasis, if he ever caught me with a book, or with pen and ink, he would give me a hundred lashes. He said he wanted me to understand that he bought "niggers" to work and not to educate. He never inquired a word of my past life, or from whence I came. The mistress, however, cross-examined me frequently about Washington, which she supposed was my native city, and more than once remarked that I did not talk nor act like the other "niggers," and she was sure I had seen more of the world than I admitted. My great object always was to invent means of getting a letter secretly into the post-office, directed to some of my friends or family at the North. The difficulty of such an achievement cannot be comprehended by one unacquainted with the severe restrictions imposed upon me. In the first place, I was deprived of pen, ink, and paper. In the second place, a slave cannot leave his plantation without a pass, nor will a post-master mail a letter for one without written instructions from his owner. I was in slavery nine years, and always watchful and on the alert, before I met with the good fortune of obtaining a sheet of paper. While Epps was in New-Orleans, one winter, disposing of his cotton, the mistress sent me to Holmesville, with an order for several articles, and among the rest a quantity of foolscap. I appropriated a sheet, concealing it in the cabin, under the board on which I slept. After various experiments I succeeded in making ink, by boiling white maple bark, and with a feather plucked from the wing of a duck, manufactured a pen. When all were asleep in the cabin, by the light of the coals, lying upon my plank couch, I managed to complete a somewhat lengthy epistle. It was directed to an old acquaintance at Sandy Hill, stating my condition, and urging him to take measures to restore me to liberty. This letter I kept a long time, contriving measures by which it could be safely deposited in the post-office. At length, a low fellow, by the name of Armsby, hitherto a stranger, came into the neighborhood, seeking a situation as overseer. He applied to Epps, and was about the plantation for several days. He next went over to Shaw's, near by, and remained with him several weeks. Shaw was generally surrounded by such worthless characters, being himself noted as a gambler and unprincipled man. He had made a wife of his slave Charlotte, and a brood of young mulattoes were growing up in his house. Armsby became so much reduced at last, that he was compelled to labor with the slaves. A white man working in the field is a rare and unusual spectacle on Bayou Boeuf. I improved every opportunity of cultivating his acquaintance privately, desiring to obtain his confidence so far as to be willing to intrust the letter to his keeping. He visited Marksville repeatedly, he informed me, a town some twenty miles distant, and there, I proposed to myself, the letter should be mailed. Carefully deliberating on the most proper manner of approaching him on the subject, I concluded finally to ask him simply if he would deposit a letter for me in the Marksville post-office the next time he visited that place, without disclosing to him that the letter was written, or any of the particulars it contained; for I had fears that he might betray me, and knew that some inducement must be held out to him of a pecuniary nature, before it would be safe to confide in him. As late as one o'clock one night I stole noiselessly from my cabin, and, crossing the field to Shaw's, found him sleeping on the piazza. I had but a few picayunes--the proceeds of my fiddling performances, but all I had in the world I promised him if he would do me the favor required. I begged him not to expose me if he could not grant the request. He assured me, upon his honor, he would deposit it in the Marksville post-office, and that he would keep it an inviolable secret forever. Though the letter was in my pocket at the time, I dared not then deliver it to him, but stating I would have it written in a day or two, bade him good night, and returned to my cabin. It was impossible for me to expel the suspicions I entertained, and all night I lay awake, revolving in my mind the safest course to pursue. I was willing to risk a great deal to accomplish my purpose, but should the letter by any means fall into the hands of Epps, it would be a death-blow to my aspirations. I was "perplexed in the extreme." My suspicions were well-founded, as the sequel demonstrated. The next day but one, while scraping cotton in the field, Epps seated himself on the line fence between Shaw's plantation and his own, in such a position as to overlook the scene of our labors. Presently Armsby made his appearance, and, mounting the fence, took a seat beside him. They remained two or three hours, all of which time I was in an agony of apprehension. That night, while broiling my bacon, Epps entered the cabin with his rawhide in his hand. "Well, boy," said he, "I understand I've got a larned nigger, that writes letters, and tries to get white fellows to mail 'em. Wonder if you know who he is?" My worst fears were realized, and although it may not be considered entirely creditable, even under the circumstances, yet a resort to duplicity and downright falsehood was the only refuge that presented itself. "Don't know nothing about it, Master Epps," I answered him, assuming an air of ignorance and surprise; "Don't know nothing at all about it, sir." "Wan't you over to Shaw's night before last?" he inquired. "No, master," was the reply. "Hav'nt you asked that fellow, Armsby, to mail a letter for you at Marksville?" "Why, Lord, master, I never spoke three words to him in all my life. I don't know what you mean." "Well," he continued, "Armsby told me to-day the devil was among my niggers; that I had one that needed close watching or he would run away; and when I axed him why, he said you come over to Shaw's, and waked him up in the night, and wanted him to carry a letter to Marksville. What have you got to say to that, ha?" "All I've got to say, master," I replied, "is, there is no truth in it. How could I write a letter without any ink or paper? There is nobody I want to write to, 'cause I haint got no friends living as I know of. That Armsby is a lying, drunken fellow, they say, and nobody believes him anyway. You know I always tell the truth, and that I never go off the plantation without a pass. Now, master, I can see what that Armsby is after, plain enough. Did'nt he want you to hire him for an overseer?" "Yes, he wanted me to hire him," answered Epps. "That's it," said I, "he wants to make you believe we're all going to run away, and then he thinks you'll hire an overseer to watch us. He just made that story out of whole cloth, 'cause he wants to get a situation. It's all a lie, master, you may depend on't." Epps mused awhile, evidently impressed with the plausibility of my theory, and exclaimed, "I'm d--d, Platt, if I don't believe you tell the truth. He must take me for a soft, to think he can come it over me with them kind of yarns, musn't he? Maybe he thinks he can fool me; maybe he thinks I don't know nothing--can't take care of my own niggers, eh! Soft soap old Epps, eh! Ha, ha, ha! D--n Armsby! Set the dogs on him, Platt," and with many other comments descriptive of Armsby's general character, and his capability of taking care of his own business, and attending to his own "niggers," Master Epps left the cabin. As soon as he was gone I threw the letter in the fire, and, with a desponding and despairing heart, beheld the epistle which had cost me so much anxiety and thought, and which I fondly hoped would have been my forerunner to the land of freedom, writhe and shrivel on its bed of coals, and dissolve into smoke and ashes. Armsby, the treacherous wretch, was driven from Shaw's plantation not long subsequently, much to my relief, for I feared he might renew his conversation, and perhaps induce Epps to credit him. I knew not now whither to look for deliverance. Hopes sprang up in my heart only to be crushed and blighted. The summer of my life was passing away; I felt I was growing prematurely old; that a few years more, and toil, and grief, and the poisonous miasmas of the swamps would accomplish their work upon me--would consign me to the grave's embrace, to moulder and be forgotten. Repelled, betrayed, cut off from the hope of succor, I could only prostrate myself upon the earth and groan in unutterable anguish. The hope of rescue was the only light that cast a ray of comfort on my heart. That was now flickering, faint and low; another breath of disappointment would extinguish it altogether, leaving me to grope in midnight darkness to the end of life. CHAPTER XVII. WILEY DISREGARDS THE COUNSELS OF AUNT PHEBE AND UNCLE ABRAM, AND IS CAUGHT BY THE PATROLLERS--THE ORGANIZATION AND DUTIES OF THE LATTER--WILEY RUNS AWAY--SPECULATIONS IN REGARD TO HIM--HIS UNEXPECTED RETURN--HIS CAPTURE ON RED RIVER, AND CONFINEMENT IN ALEXANDRIA JAIL--DISCOVERED BY JOSEPH B. ROBERTS--SUBDUING DOGS IN ANTICIPATION OF ESCAPE--THE FUGITIVES IN THE GREAT PINE WOODS--CAPTURED BY ADAM TAYDEM AND THE INDIANS--AUGUSTUS KILLED BY DOGS--NELLY, ELDRET'S SLAVE WOMAN--THE STORY OF CELESTE--THE CONCERTED MOVEMENT--LEW CHENEY, THE TRAITOR--THE IDEA OF INSURRECTION. The year 1850, down to which time I have now arrived, omitting many occurrences uninteresting to the reader, was an unlucky year for my companion Wiley, the husband of Phebe, whose taciturn and retiring nature has thus far kept him in the background. Notwithstanding Wiley seldom opened his mouth, and revolved in his obscure and unpretending orbit without a grumble, nevertheless the warm elements of sociality were strong in the bosom of that silent "nigger." In the exuberance of his self-reliance, disregarding the philosophy of Uncle Abram, and setting the counsels of Aunt Phebe utterly at naught, he had the fool-hardiness to essay a nocturnal visit to a neighboring cabin without a pass. So attractive was the society in which he found himself, that Wiley took little note of the passing hours, and the light began to break in the east before he was aware. Speeding homeward as fast as he could run, he hoped to reach the quarters before the horn would sound; but, unhappily, he was spied on the way by a company of patrollers. How it is in other dark places of slavery, I do not know, but on Bayou Boeuf there is an organization of patrollers, as they are styled, whose business it is to seize and whip any slave they may find wandering from the plantation. They ride on horseback, headed by a captain, armed, and accompanied by dogs. They have the right, either by law, or by general consent, to inflict discretionary chastisement upon a black man caught beyond the boundaries of his master's estate without a pass, and even to shoot him, if he attempts to escape. Each company has a certain distance to ride up and down the bayou. They are compensated by the planters, who contribute in proportion to the number of slaves they own. The clatter of their horses' hoofs dashing by can be heard at all hours of the night, and frequently they may be seen driving a slave before them, or leading him by a rope fastened around his neck, to his owner's plantation. Wiley fled before one of these companies, thinking he could reach his cabin before they could overtake him; but one of their dogs, a great ravenous hound, griped him by the leg, and held him fast. The patrollers whipped him severely, and brought him, a prisoner, to Epps. From him he received another flagellation still more severe, so that the cuts of the lash and the bites of the dog rendered him sore, stiff and miserable, insomuch he was scarcely able to move. It was impossible in such a state to keep up his row, and consequently there was not an hour in the day but Wiley felt the sting of his master's rawhide on his raw and bleeding back. His sufferings became intolerable, and finally he resolved to run away. Without disclosing his intentions to run away even to his wife Phebe, he proceeded to make arrangements for carrying his plan into execution. Having cooked his whole week's allowance, he cautiously left the cabin on a Sunday night, after the inmates of the quarters were asleep. When the horn sounded in the morning, Wiley did not make his appearance. Search was made for him in the cabins, in the corn-crib, in the cotton-house, and in every nook and corner of the premises. Each of us was examined, touching any knowledge we might have that could throw light upon his sudden disappearance or present whereabouts. Epps raved and stormed, and mounting his horse, galloped to neighboring plantations, making inquiries in all directions. The search was fruitless. Nothing whatever was elicited, going to show what had become of the missing man. The dogs were led to the swamp, but were unable to strike his trail. They would circle away through the forest, their noses to the ground, but invariably returned in a short time to the spot from whence they started. Wiley had escaped, and so secretly and cautiously as to elude and baffle all pursuit. Days and even weeks passed away, and nothing could be heard of him. Epps did nothing but curse and swear. It was the only topic of conversation among us when alone. We indulged in a great deal of speculation in regard to him, one suggesting he might have been drowned in some bayou, inasmuch as he was a poor swimmer; another, that perhaps he might have been devoured by alligators, or stung by the venomous moccasin, whose bite is certain and sudden death. The warm and hearty sympathies of us all, however, were with poor Wiley, wherever he might be. Many an earnest prayer ascended from the lips of Uncle Abram, beseeching safety for the wanderer. In about three weeks, when all hope of ever seeing him again was dismissed, to our surprise, he one day appeared among us. On leaving the plantation, he informed us, it was his intention to make his way back to South Carolina--to the old quarters of Master Buford. During the day he remained secreted, sometimes in the branches of a tree, and at night pressed forward through the swamps. Finally, one morning, just at dawn, he reached the shore of Red River. While standing on the bank, considering how he could cross it, a white man accosted him, and demanded a pass. Without one, and evidently a runaway, he was taken to Alexandria, the shire town of the parish of Rapides, and confined in prison. It happened several days after that Joseph B. Roberts, uncle of Mistress Epps, was in Alexandria, and going into the jail, recognized him. Wiley had worked on his plantation, when Epps resided at Huff Power. Paying the jail fee, and writing him a pass, underneath which was a note to Epps, requesting him not to whip him on his return, Wiley was sent back to Bayou Boeuf. It was the hope that hung upon this request, and which Roberts assured him would be respected by his master, that sustained him as he approached the house. The request, however, as may be readily supposed, was entirely disregarded. After being kept in suspense three days, Wiley was stripped, and compelled to endure one of those inhuman floggings to which the poor slave is so often subjected. It was the first and last attempt of Wiley to run away. The long scars upon his back, which he will carry with him to the grave, perpetually remind him of the dangers of such a step. There was not a day throughout the ten years I belonged to Epps that I did not consult with myself upon the prospect of escape. I laid many plans, which at the time I considered excellent ones, but one after the other they were all abandoned. No man who has never been placed in such a situation, can comprehend the thousand obstacles thrown in the way of the flying slave. Every white man's hand is raised against him--the patrollers are watching for him--the hounds are ready to follow on his track, and the nature of the country is such as renders it impossible to pass through it with any safety. I thought, however, that the time might come, perhaps, when I should be running through the swamps again. I concluded, in that case, to be prepared for Epps' dogs, should they pursue me. He possessed several, one of which was a notorious slave-hunter, and the most fierce and savage of his breed. While out hunting the coon or the opossum, I never allowed an opportunity to escape, when alone, of whipping them severely. In this manner I succeeded at length in subduing them completely. They feared me, obeying my voice at once when others had no control over them whatever. Had they followed and overtaken me, I doubt not they would have shrank from attacking me. Notwithstanding the certainty of being captured, the woods and swamps are, nevertheless, continually filled with runaways. Many of them, when sick, or so worn out as to be unable to perform their tasks, escape into the swamps, willing to suffer the punishment inflicted for such offences, in order to obtain a day or two of rest. While I belonged to Ford, I was unwittingly the means of disclosing the hiding-place of six or eight, who had taken up their residence in the "Great Pine Woods." Adam Taydem frequently sent me from the mills over to the opening after provisions. The whole distance was then a thick pine forest. About ten o'clock of a beautiful moonlight night, while walking along the Texas road, returning to the mills, carrying a dressed pig in a bag swung over my shoulder, I heard footsteps behind me, and turning round, beheld two black men in the dress of slaves approaching at a rapid pace. When within a short distance, one of them raised a club, as if intending to strike me; the other snatched at the bag. I managed to dodge them both, and seizing a pine knot, hurled it with such force against the head of one of them that he was prostrated apparently senseless to the ground. Just then two more made their appearance from one side of the road. Before they could grapple me, however, I succeeded in passing them, and taking to my heels, fled, much affrighted, towards the mills. When Adam was informed of the adventure, he hastened straightway to the Indian village, and arousing Cascalla and several of his tribe, started in pursuit of the highwaymen. I accompanied them to the scene of attack, when we discovered a puddle of blood in the road, where the man whom I had smitten with the pine knot had fallen. After searching carefully through the woods a long time, one of Cascalla's men discovered a smoke curling up through the branches of several prostrate pines, whose tops had fallen together. The rendezvous was cautiously surrounded, and all of them taken prisoners. They had escaped from a plantation in the vicinity of Lamourie, and had been secreted there three weeks. They had no evil design upon me, except to frighten me out of my pig. Having observed me passing towards Ford's just at night-fall, and suspecting the nature of my errand, they had followed me, seen me butcher and dress the porker, and start on my return. They had been pinched for food, and were driven to this extremity by necessity. Adam conveyed them to the parish jail, and was liberally rewarded. Not unfrequently the runaway loses his life in the attempt to escape. Epps' premises were bounded on one side by Carey's, a very extensive sugar plantation. He cultivates annually at least fifteen hundred acres of cane, manufacturing twenty-two or twenty-three hundred hogsheads of sugar; an hogshead and a half being the usual yield of an acre. Besides this he also cultivates five or six hundred acres of corn and cotton. He owned last year one hundred and fifty three field hands, besides nearly as many children, and yearly hires a drove during the busy season from this side the Mississippi. One of his negro drivers, a pleasant, intelligent boy, was named Augustus. During the holidays, and occasionally while at work in adjoining fields, I had an opportunity of making his acquaintance, which eventually ripened into a warm and mutual attachment. Summer before last he was so unfortunate as to incur the displeasure of the overseer, a coarse, heartless brute, who whipped him most cruelly. Augustus ran away. Reaching a cane rick on Hawkins' plantation, he secreted himself in the top of it. All Carey's dogs were put upon his track--some fifteen of them--and soon scented his footsteps to the hiding place. They surrounded the rick, baying and scratching, but could not reach him. Presently, guided by the clamor of the hounds, the pursuers rode up, when the overseer, mounting on to the rick, drew him forth. As he rolled down to the ground the whole pack plunged upon him, and before they could be beaten off, had gnawed and mutilated his body in the most shocking manner, their teeth having penetrated to the bone in an hundred places. He was taken up, tied upon a mule, and carried home. But this was Augustus' last trouble. He lingered until the next day, when death sought the unhappy boy, and kindly relieved him from his agony. It was not unusual for slave women as well as slave men to endeavor to escape. Nelly, Eldret's girl, with whom I lumbered for a time in the "Big Cane Brake," lay concealed in Epps' corn crib three days. At night, when his family were asleep, she would steal into the quarters for food, and return to the crib again. We concluded it would no longer be safe for us to allow her to remain, and accordingly she retraced her steps to her own cabin. But the most remarkable instance of a successful evasion of dogs and hunters was the following: Among Carey's girls was one by the name of Celeste. She was nineteen or twenty, and far whiter than her owner, or any of his offspring. It required a close inspection to distinguish in her features the slightest trace of African blood. A stranger would never have dreamed that she was the descendant of slaves. I was sitting in my cabin late at night, playing a low air on my violin, when the door opened carefully, and Celeste stood before me. She was pale and haggard. Had an apparition arisen from the earth, I could not have been more startled. "Who are you?" I demanded, after gazing at her a moment. "I'm hungry; give me some bacon," was her reply. My first impression was that she was some deranged young mistress, who, escaping from home, was wandering, she knew not whither, and had been attracted to my cabin by the sound of the violin. The coarse cotton slave dress she wore, however, soon dispelled such a supposition. "What is your name?" I again interrogated. "My name is Celeste," she answered. "I belong to Carey, and have been two days among the palmettoes. I am sick and can't work, and would rather die in the swamp than be whipped to death by the overseer. Carey's dogs won't follow me. They have tried to set them on. There's a secret between them and Celeste, and they wont mind the devilish orders of the overseer. Give me some meat--I'm starving." I divided my scanty allowance with her, and while partaking of it, she related how she had managed to escape, and described the place of her concealment. In the edge of the swamp, not half a mile from Epps' house, was a large space, thousands of acres in extent, thickly covered with palmetto. Tall trees, whose long arms interlocked each other, formed a canopy above them, so dense as to exclude the beams of the sun. It was like twilight always, even in the middle of the brightest day. In the centre of this great space, which nothing but serpents very often explore--a sombre and solitary spot--Celeste had erected a rude hut of dead branches that had fallen to the ground, and covered it with the leaves of the palmetto. This was the abode she had selected. She had no fear of Carey's dogs, any more than I had of Epps'. It is a fact, which I have never been able to explain, that there are those whose tracks the hounds will absolutely refuse to follow. Celeste was one of them. For several nights she came to my cabin for food. On one occasion our dogs barked as she approached, which aroused Epps, and induced him to reconnoitre the premises. He did not discover her, but after that it was not deemed prudent for her to come to the yard. When all was silent I carried provisions to a certain spot agreed upon, where she would find them. In this manner Celeste passed the greater part of the summer. She regained her health, and became strong and hearty. At all seasons of the year the howlings of wild animals can be heard at night along the borders of the swamps. Several times they had made her a midnight call, awakening her from slumber with a growl. Terrified by such unpleasant salutations, she finally concluded to abandon her lonely dwelling; and, accordingly, returning to her master, was scourged, her neck meanwhile being fastened in the stocks, and sent into the field again. The year before my arrival in the country there was a concerted movement among a number of slaves on Bayou Boeuf, that terminated tragically indeed. It was, I presume, a matter of newspaper notoriety at the time, but all the knowledge I have of it, has been derived from the relation of those living at that period in the immediate vicinity of the excitement. It has become a subject of general and unfailing interest in every slave-hut on the bayou, and will doubtless go down to succeeding generations as their chief tradition. Lew Cheney, with whom I became acquainted--a shrewd, cunning negro, more intelligent than the generality of his race, but unscrupulous and full of treachery--conceived the project of organizing a company sufficiently strong to fight their way against all opposition, to the neighboring territory of Mexico. A remote spot, far within the depths of the swamp, back of Hawkins' plantation, was selected as the rallying point. Lew flitted from one plantation to another, in the dead of night, preaching a crusade to Mexico, and, like Peter the Hermit, creating a furor of excitement wherever he appeared. At length a large number of runaways were assembled; stolen mules, and corn gathered from the fields, and bacon filched from smoke-houses, had been conveyed into the woods. The expedition was about ready to proceed, when their hiding place was discovered. Lew Cheney, becoming convinced of the ultimate failure of his project, in order to curry favor with his master, and avoid the consequences which he foresaw would follow, deliberately determined to sacrifice all his companions. Departing secretly from the encampment, he proclaimed among the planters the number collected in the swamp, and, instead of stating truly the object they had in view, asserted their intention was to emerge from their seclusion the first favorable opportunity, and murder every white person along the bayou. Such an announcement, exaggerated as it passed from mouth to mouth, filled the whole country with terror. The fugitives were surrounded and taken prisoners, carried in chains to Alexandria, and hung by the populace. Not only those, but many who were suspected, though entirely innocent, were taken from the field and from the cabin, and without the shadow of process or form of trial, hurried to the scaffold. The planters on Bayou Boeuf finally rebelled against such reckless destruction of property, but it was not until a regiment of soldiers had arrived from some fort on the Texan frontier, demolished the gallows, and opened the doors of the Alexandria prison, that the indiscriminate slaughter was stayed. Lew Cheney escaped, and was even rewarded for his treachery. He is still living, but his name is despised and execrated by all his race throughout the parishes of Rapides and Avoyelles. Such an idea as insurrection, however, is not new among the enslaved population of Bayou Boeuf. More than once I have joined in serious consultation, when the subject has been discussed, and there have been times when a word from me would have placed hundreds of my fellow-bondsmen in an attitude of defiance. Without arms or ammunition, or even with them, I saw such a step would result in certain defeat, disaster and death, and always raised my voice against it. During the Mexican war I well remember the extravagant hopes that were excited. The news of victory filled the great house with rejoicing, but produced only sorrow and disappointment in the cabin. In my opinion--and I have had opportunity to know something of the feeling of which I speak--there are not fifty slaves on the shores of Bayou Boeuf, but would hail with unmeasured delight the approach of an invading army. They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees, with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness. A day may come--it _will_ come, if his prayer is heard--a terrible day of vengeance, when the master in his turn will cry in vain for mercy. CHAPTER XVIII. O'NIEL, THE TANNER--CONVERSATION WITH AUNT PHEBE OVERHEARD--EPPS IN THE TANNING BUSINESS--STABBING OF UNCLE ABRAM--THE UGLY WOUND--EPPS IS JEALOUS--PATSEY IS MISSING--HER RETURN FROM SHAW'S--HARRIET, SHAW'S BLACK WIFE--EPPS ENRAGED--PATSEY DENIES HIS CHARGES--SHE IS TIED DOWN NAKED TO FOUR STAKES--THE INHUMAN FLOGGING--FLAYING OF PATSEY--THE BEAUTY OF THE DAY--THE BUCKET OF SALT WATER--THE DRESS STIFF WITH BLOOD--PATSEY GROWS MELANCHOLY--HER IDEA OF GOD AND ETERNITY--OF HEAVEN AND FREEDOM--THE EFFECT OF SLAVE-WHIPPING--EPPS' OLDEST SON--"THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN." Wiley suffered severely at the hands of Master Epps, as has been related in the preceding chapter, but in this respect he fared no worse than his unfortunate companions. "Spare the rod," was an idea scouted by our master. He was constitutionally subject to periods of ill-humor, and at such times, however little provocation there might be, a certain amount of punishment was inflicted. The circumstances attending the last flogging but one that I received, will show how trivial a cause was sufficient with him for resorting to the whip. A Mr. O'Niel, residing in the vicinity of the Big Pine Woods, called upon Epps for the purpose of purchasing me. He was a tanner and currier by occupation, transacting an extensive business, and intended to place me at service in some department of his establishment, provided he bought me. Aunt Phebe, while preparing the dinner-table in the great house, overheard their conversation. On returning to the yard at night, the old woman ran to meet me, designing, of course, to overwhelm me with the news. She entered into a minute repetition of all she had heard, and Aunt Phebe was one whose ears never failed to drink in every word of conversation uttered in her hearing. She enlarged upon the fact that "Massa Epps was g'wine to sell me to a tanner ober in de Pine Woods," so long and loudly as to attract the attention of the mistress, who, standing unobserved on the piazza at the time, was listening to our conversation. "Well, Aunt Phebe," said I, "I'm glad of it. I'm tired of scraping cotton, and would rather be a tanner. I hope he'll buy me." O'Niel did not effect a purchase, however, the parties differing as to price, and the morning following his arrival, departed homewards. He had been gone but a short time, when Epps made his appearance in the field. Now nothing will more violently enrage a master, especially Epps, than the intimation of one of his servants that he would like to leave him. Mistress Epps had repeated to him my expressions to Aunt Phebe the evening previous, as I learned from the latter afterwards, the mistress having mentioned to her that she had overheard us. On entering the field, Epps walked directly to me. "So, Platt, you're tired of scraping cotton, are you? You would like to change your master, eh? You're fond of moving round--traveler--ain't ye? Ah, yes--like to travel for your health, may be? Feel above cotton-scraping, I 'spose. So you're going into the tanning business? Good business--devilish fine business. Enterprising nigger! B'lieve I'll go into that business myself. Down on your knees, and strip that rag off your back! I'll try my hand at tanning." I begged earnestly, and endeavored to soften him with excuses, but in vain. There was no other alternative; so kneeling down, I presented my bare back for the application of the lash. "How do you like _tanning_?" he exclaimed, as the rawhide descended upon my flesh. "How do you like _tanning_?" he repeated at every blow. In this manner he gave me twenty or thirty lashes, incessantly giving utterance to the word "tanning," in one form of expression or another. When sufficiently "tanned," he allowed me to arise, and with a half-malicious laugh assured me, if I still fancied the business, he would give me further instruction in it whenever I desired. This time, he remarked, he had only given me a short lesson in "_tanning_"--the next time he would "curry me down." Uncle Abram, also, was frequently treated with great brutality, although he was one of the kindest and most faithful creatures in the world. He was my cabin-mate for years. There was a benevolent expression in the old man's face, pleasant to behold. He regarded us with a kind of parental feeling, always counseling us with remarkable gravity and deliberation. Returning from Marshall's plantation one afternoon, whither I had been sent on some errand of the mistress, I found him lying on the cabin floor, his clothes saturated with blood. He informed me that he had been stabbed! While spreading cotton on the scaffold, Epps came home intoxicated from Holmesville. He found fault with every thing, giving many orders so directly contrary that it was impossible to execute any of them. Uncle Abram, whose faculties were growing dull, became confused, and committed some blunder of no particular consequence. Epps was so enraged thereat, that, with drunken recklessness, he flew upon the old man, and stabbed him in the back. It was a long, ugly wound, but did not happen to penetrate far enough to result fatally. It was sewed up by the mistress, who censured her husband with extreme severity, not only denouncing his inhumanity, but declaring that she expected nothing else than that he would bring the family to poverty--that he would kill all the slaves on the plantation in some of his drunken fits. It was no uncommon thing with him to prostrate Aunt Phebe with a chair or stick of wood; but the most cruel whipping that ever I was doomed to witness--one I can never recall with any other emotion than that of horror--was inflicted on the unfortunate Patsey. It has been seen that the jealousy and hatred of Mistress Epps made the daily life of her young and agile slave completely miserable. I am happy in the belief that on numerous occasions I was the means of averting punishment from the inoffensive girl. In Epps' absence the mistress often ordered me to whip her without the remotest provocation. I would refuse, saying that I feared my master's displeasure, and several times ventured to remonstrate with her against the treatment Patsey received. I endeavored to impress her with the truth that the latter was not responsible for the acts of which she complained, but that she being a slave, and subject entirely to her master's will, he alone was answerable. At length "the green-eyed monster" crept into the soul of Epps also, and then it was that he joined with his wrathful wife in an infernal jubilee over the girl's miseries. On a Sabbath day in hoeing time, not long ago, we were on the bayou bank, washing our clothes, as was our usual custom. Presently Patsey was missing. Epps called aloud, but there was no answer. No one had observed her leaving the yard, and it was a wonder with us whither she had gone. In the course of a couple of hours she was seen approaching from the direction of Shaw's. This man, as has been intimated, was a notorious profligate, and withal not on the most friendly terms with Epps. Harriet, his black wife, knowing Patsey's troubles, was kind to her, in consequence of which the latter was in the habit of going over to see her every opportunity. Her visits were prompted by friendship merely, but the suspicion gradually entered the brain of Epps, that another and a baser passion led her thither--that it was not Harriet she desired to meet, but rather the unblushing libertine, his neighbor. Patsey found her master in a fearful rage on her return. His violence so alarmed her that at first she attempted to evade direct answers to his questions, which only served to increase his suspicions. She finally, however, drew herself up proudly, and in a spirit of indignation boldly denied his charges. "Missus don't give me soap to wash with, as she does the rest," said Patsey, "and you know why. I went over to Harriet's to get a piece," and saying this, she drew it forth from a pocket in her dress and exhibited it to him. "That's what I went to Shaw's for, Massa Epps," continued she; "the Lord knows that was all." "You lie, you black wench!" shouted Epps. "I _don't_ lie, massa. If you kill me, I'll stick to that." "Oh! I'll fetch you down. I'll learn you to go to Shaw's. I'll take the starch out of ye," he muttered fiercely through his shut teeth. Then turning to me, he ordered four stakes to be driven into the ground, pointing with the toe of his boot to the places where he wanted them. When the stakes were driven down, he ordered her to be stripped of every article of dress. Ropes were then brought, and the naked girl was laid upon her face, her wrists and feet each tied firmly to a stake. Stepping to the piazza, he took down a heavy whip, and placing it in my hands, commanded me to lash her. Unpleasant as it was, I was compelled to obey him. Nowhere that day, on the face of the whole earth, I venture to say, was there such a demoniac exhibition witnessed as then ensued. Mistress Epps stood on the piazza among her children, gazing on the scene with an air of heartless satisfaction. The slaves were huddled together at a little distance, their countenances indicating the sorrow of their hearts. Poor Patsey prayed piteously for mercy, but her prayers were vain. Epps ground his teeth, and stamped upon the ground, screaming at me, like a mad fiend, to strike _harder_. "Strike harder, or _your_ turn will come next, you scoundrel," he yelled. "Oh, mercy, massa!--oh! have mercy, _do_. Oh, God! pity me," Patsey exclaimed continually, struggling fruitlessly, and the flesh quivering at every stroke. When I had struck her as many as thirty times, I stopped, and turned round toward Epps, hoping he was satisfied; but with bitter oaths and threats, he ordered me to continue. I inflicted ten or fifteen blows more. By this time her back was covered with long welts, intersecting each other like net work. Epps was yet furious and savage as ever, demanding if she would like to go to Shaw's again, and swearing he would flog her until she wished she was in h--l. Throwing down the whip, I declared I could punish her no more. He ordered me to go on, threatening me with a severer flogging than she had received, in case of refusal. My heart revolted at the inhuman scene, and risking the consequences, I absolutely refused to raise the whip. He then seized it himself, and applied it with ten-fold greater force than I had. The painful cries and shrieks of the tortured Patsey, mingling with the loud and angry curses of Epps, loaded the air. She was terribly lacerated--I may say, without exaggeration, literally flayed. The lash was wet with blood, which flowed down her sides and dropped upon the ground. At length she ceased struggling. Her head sank listlessly on the ground. Her screams and supplications gradually decreased and died away into a low moan. She no longer writhed and shrank beneath the lash when it bit out small pieces of her flesh. I thought that she was dying! [Illustration: THE STAKING OUT AND FLOGGING OF THE GIRL PATSEY.] It was the Sabbath of the Lord. The fields smiled in the warm sunlight--the birds chirped merrily amidst the foliage of the trees--peace and happiness seemed to reign everywhere, save in the bosoms of Epps and his panting victim and the silent witnesses around him. The tempestuous emotions that were raging there were little in harmony with the calm and quiet beauty of the day. I could look on Epps only with unutterable loathing and abhorrence, and thought within myself--"Thou devil, sooner or later, somewhere in the course of eternal justice, thou shalt answer for this sin!" Finally, he ceased whipping from mere exhaustion, and ordered Phebe to bring a bucket of salt and water. After washing her thoroughly with this, I was told to take her to her cabin. Untying the ropes, I raised her in my arms. She was unable to stand, and as her head rested on my shoulder, she repeated many times, in a faint voice scarcely perceptible, "Oh, Platt--oh, Platt!" but nothing further. Her dress was replaced, but it clung to her back, and was soon stiff with blood. We laid her on some boards in the hut, where she remained a long time, with eyes closed and groaning in agony. At night Phebe applied melted tallow to her wounds, and so far as we were able, all endeavored to assist and console her. Day after day she lay in her cabin upon her face, the sores preventing her resting in any other position. A blessed thing it would have been for her--days and weeks and months of misery it would have saved her--had she never lifted up her head in life again. Indeed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. The burden of a deep melancholy weighed heavily on her spirits. She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step--there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor--the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth, were gone. She fell into a mournful and desponding mood, and oftentimes would start up in her sleep, and with raised hands, plead for mercy. She became more silent than she was, toiling all day in our midst, not uttering a word. A care-worn, pitiful expression settled on her face, and it was her humor now to weep, rather than rejoice. If ever there was a broken heart--one crushed and blighted by the rude grasp of suffering and misfortune--it was Patsey's. She had been reared no better than her master's beast--looked upon merely as a valuable and handsome animal--and consequently possessed but a limited amount of knowledge. And yet a faint light cast its rays over her intellect, so that it was not wholly dark. She had a dim perception of God and of eternity, and a still more dim perception of a Saviour who had died even for such as her. She entertained but confused notions of a future life--not comprehending the distinction between the corporeal and spiritual existence. Happiness, in her mind, was exemption from stripes--from labor--from the cruelty of masters and overseers. Her idea of the joy of heaven was simply _rest_, and is fully expressed in these lines of a melancholy bard: "I ask no paradise on high, With cares on earth oppressed, The only heaven for which I sigh, Is rest, eternal rest." It is a mistaken opinion that prevails in some quarters, that the slave does not understand the term--does not comprehend the idea of freedom. Even on Bayou Boeuf, where I conceive slavery exists in its most abject and cruel form--where it exhibits features altogether unknown in more northern States--the most ignorant of them generally know full well its meaning. They understand the privileges and exemptions that belong to it--that it would bestow upon them the fruits of their own labors, and that it would secure to them the enjoyment of domestic happiness. They do not fail to observe the difference between their own condition and the meanest white man's, and to realize the injustice of the laws which place it in his power not only to appropriate the profits of their industry, but to subject them to unmerited and unprovoked punishment, without remedy, or the right to resist, or to remonstrate. Patsey's life, especially after her whipping, was one long dream of liberty. Far away, to her fancy an immeasurable distance, she knew there was a land of freedom. A thousand times she had heard that somewhere in the distant North there were no slaves--no masters. In her imagination it was an enchanted region, the Paradise of the earth. To dwell where the black man may work for himself--live in his own cabin--till his own soil, was a blissful dream of Patsey's--a dream, alas! the fulfillment of which she can never realize. The effect of these exhibitions of brutality on the household of the slave-holder, is apparent. Epps' oldest son is an intelligent lad of ten or twelve years of age. It is pitiable, sometimes, to see him chastising, for instance, the venerable Uncle Abram. He will call the old man to account, and if in his childish judgment it is necessary, sentence him to a certain number of lashes, which he proceeds to inflict with much gravity and deliberation. Mounted on his pony, he often rides into the field with his whip, playing the overseer, greatly to his father's delight. Without discrimination, at such times, he applies the rawhide, urging the slaves forward with shouts, and occasional expressions of profanity, while the old man laughs, and commends him as a thorough-going boy. "The child is father to the man," and with such training, whatever may be his natural disposition, it cannot well be otherwise than that, on arriving at maturity, the sufferings and miseries of the slave will be looked upon with entire indifference. The influence of the iniquitous system necessarily fosters an unfeeling and cruel spirit, even in the bosoms of those who, among their equals, are regarded as humane and generous. Young Master Epps possessed some noble qualities, yet no process of reasoning could lead him to comprehend, that in the eye of the Almighty there is no distinction of color. He looked upon the black man simply as an animal, differing in no respect from any other animal, save in the gift of speech and the possession of somewhat higher instincts, and, therefore, the more valuable. To work like his father's mules--to be whipped and kicked and scourged through life--to address the white man with hat in hand, and eyes bent servilely on the earth, in his mind, was the natural and proper destiny of the slave. Brought up with such ideas--in the notion that we stand without the pale of humanity--no wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting race. CHAPTER XIX. AVERY, OF BAYOU ROUGE--PECULIARITY OF DWELLINGS--EPPS BUILDS A NEW HOUSE--BASS, THE CARPENTER--HIS NOBLE QUALITIES--HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND ECCENTRICITIES--BASS AND EPPS DISCUSS THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY--EPPS' OPINION OF BASS--I MAKE MYSELF KNOWN TO HIM--OUR CONVERSATION--HIS SURPRISE--THE MIDNIGHT MEETING ON THE BAYOU BANK--BASS' ASSURANCES--DECLARES WAR AGAINST SLAVERY--WHY I DID NOT DISCLOSE MY HISTORY--BASS WRITES LETTERS--COPY OF HIS LETTER TO MESSRS. PARKER AND PERRY--THE FEVER OF SUSPENSE--DISAPPOINTMENTS--BASS ENDEAVORS TO CHEER ME--MY FAITH IN HIM. In the month of June, 1852, in pursuance of a previous contract, Mr. Avery, a carpenter of Bayou Rouge, commenced the erection of a house for Master Epps. It has previously been stated that there are no cellars on Bayou Boeuf; on the other hand, such is the low and swampy nature of the ground, the great houses are usually built upon spiles. Another peculiarity is, the rooms are not plastered, but the ceiling and sides are covered with matched cypress boards, painted such color as most pleases the owner's taste. Generally the plank and boards are sawed by slaves with whip-saws, there being no waterpower upon which mills might be built within many miles. When the planter erects for himself a dwelling, therefore, there is plenty of extra work for his slaves. Having had some experience under Tibeats as a carpenter, I was taken from the field altogether, on the arrival of Avery and his hands. Among them was one to whom I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Only for him, in all probability, I should have ended my days in slavery. He was my deliverer--a man whose true heart overflowed with noble and generous emotions. To the last moment of my existence I shall remember him with feelings of thankfulness. His name was Bass, and at that time he resided in Marksville. It will be difficult to convey a correct impression of his appearance or character. He was a large man, between forty and fifty years old, of light complexion and light hair. He was very cool and self-possessed, fond of argument, but always speaking with extreme deliberation. He was that kind of person whose peculiarity of manner was such that nothing he uttered ever gave offence. What would be intolerable, coming from the lips of another, could be said by him with impunity. There was not a man on Red River, perhaps, that agreed with him on the subject of politics or religion, and not a man, I venture to say, who discussed either of those subjects half as much. It seemed to be taken for granted that he would espouse the unpopular side of every local question, and it always created amusement rather than displeasure among his auditors, to listen to the ingenious and original manner in which he maintained the controversy. He was a bachelor--an "old bachelor," according to the true acceptation of the term--having no kindred living, as he knew of, in the world. Neither had he any permanent abiding place--wandering from one State to another, as his fancy dictated. He had lived in Marksville three or four years, and in the prosecution of his business as a carpenter; and in consequence, likewise, of his peculiarities, was quite extensively known throughout the parish of Avoyelles. He was liberal to a fault; and his many acts of kindness and transparent goodness of heart rendered him popular in the community, the sentiment of which he unceasingly combated. He was a native of Canada, from whence he had wandered in early life, and after visiting all the principal localities in the northern and western States, in the course of his peregrinations, arrived in the unhealthy region of the Red River. His last removal was from Illinois. Whither he has now gone, I regret to be obliged to say, is unknown to me. He gathered up his effects and departed quietly from Marksville the day before I did, the suspicions of his instrumentality in procuring my liberation rendering such a step necessary. For the commission of a just and righteous act he would undoubtedly have suffered death, had he remained within reach of the slave-whipping tribe on Bayou Boeuf. One day, while working on the new house, Bass and Epps became engaged in a controversy, to which, as will be readily supposed, I listened with absorbing interest. They were discussing the subject of Slavery. "I tell you what it is Epps," said Bass, "it's all wrong--all wrong, sir--there's no justice nor righteousness in it. I wouldn't own a slave if I was rich as Croesus, which I am not, as is perfectly well understood, more particularly among my creditors. _There's_ another humbug--the credit system--humbug, sir; no credit--no debt. Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil. But this question of _Slavery_; what _right_ have you to your niggers when you come down to the point?" "What right!" said Epps, laughing; "why, I bought 'em, and paid for 'em." "Of _course_ you did; the law says you have the right to hold a nigger, but begging the law's pardon, it _lies_. Yes, Epps, when the law says that it's a _liar_, and the truth is not in it. Is every thing right because the law allows it? Suppose they'd pass a law taking away your liberty and making you a slave?" "Oh, that ain't a supposable case," said Epps, still laughing; "hope you don't compare me to a nigger, Bass." "Well," Bass answered gravely, "no, not exactly. But I have seen niggers before now as good as I am, and I have no acquaintance with any white man in these parts that I consider a whit better than myself. Now, in the sight of God, what is the difference, Epps, between a white man and a black one?" "All the difference in the world," replied Epps. "You might as well ask what the difference is between a white man and a baboon. Now, I've seen one of them critters in Orleans that knowed just as much as any nigger I've got. You'd call them feller citizens, I s'pose?"--and Epps indulged in a loud laugh at his own wit. "Look here, Epps," continued his companion; "you can't laugh me down in that way. Some men are witty, and some ain't so witty as they think they are. Now let me ask you a question. Are all men created free and equal as the Declaration of Independence holds they are?" "Yes," responded Epps, "but all men, niggers, and monkeys _ain't_;" and hereupon he broke forth into a more boisterous laugh than before. "There are monkeys among white people as well as black, when you come to that," coolly remarked Bass. "I know some white men that use arguments no sensible monkey would. But let that pass. These niggers are human beings. If they don't know as much as their masters, whose fault is it? They are not _allowed_ to know anything. You have books and papers, and can go where you please, and gather intelligence in a thousand ways. But your slaves have no privileges. You'd whip one of them if caught reading a book. They are held in bondage, generation after generation, deprived of mental improvement, and who can expect them to possess much knowledge? If they are not brought down to a level with the brute creation, you slaveholders will never be blamed for it. If they are baboons, or stand no higher in the scale of intelligence than such animals, you and men like you will have to answer for it. There's a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever. There will be a reckoning yet--yes, Epps, there's a day coming that will burn as an oven. It may be sooner or it may be later, but it's a coming as sure as the Lord is just." "If you lived up among the Yankees in New-England," said Epps, "I expect you'd be one of them cursed fanatics that know more than the constitution, and go about peddling clocks and coaxing niggers to run away." "If I was in New-England," returned Bass, "I would be just what I am here. I would say that Slavery was an iniquity, and ought to be abolished. I would say there was no reason nor justice in the law, or the constitution that allows one man to hold another man in bondage. It would be hard for you to lose your property, to be sure, but it wouldn't be half as hard as it would be to lose your liberty. You have no more right to your freedom, in exact justice, than Uncle Abram yonder. Talk about black skin, and black blood; why, how many slaves are there on this bayou as white as either of us? And what difference is there in the color of the soul? Pshaw! the whole system is as absurd as it is cruel. You may own niggers and behanged, but I wouldn't own one for the best plantation in Louisiana." "You like to hear yourself talk, Bass, better than any man I know of. You would argue that black was white, or white black, if any body would contradict you. Nothing suits you in this world, and I don't believe you will be satisfied with the next, if you should have your choice in them." Conversations substantially like the foregoing were not unusual between the two after this; Epps drawing him out more for the purpose of creating a laugh at his expense, than with a view of fairly discussing the merits of the question. He looked upon Bass, as a man ready to say anything merely for the pleasure of hearing his own voice; as somewhat self-conceited, perhaps, contending against his faith and judgment, in order, simply, to exhibit his dexterity in argumentation. He remained at Epps' through the summer, visiting Marksville generally once a fortnight. The more I saw of him, the more I became convinced he was a man in whom I could confide. Nevertheless, my previous ill-fortune had taught me to be extremely cautious. It was not my place to speak to a white man except when spoken to, but I omitted no opportunity of throwing myself in his way, and endeavored constantly in every possible manner to attract his attention. In the early part of August he and myself were at work alone in the house, the other carpenters having left, and Epps being absent in the field. Now was the time, if ever, to broach the subject, and I resolved to do it, and submit to whatever consequences might ensue. We were busily at work in the afternoon, when I stopped suddenly and said-- "Master Bass, I want to ask you what part of the country you came from?" "Why, Platt, what put that into your head?" he answered. "You wouldn't know if I should tell you." After a moment or two he added--"I was born in Canada; now guess where that is." "Oh, I know where Canada is," said I, "I have been there myself." "Yes, I expect you are well acquainted all through that country," he remarked, laughing incredulously. "As sure as I live, Master Bass," I replied, "I have been there. I have been in Montreal and Kingston, and Queenston, and a great many places in Canada, and I have been in York State, too--in Buffalo, and Rochester, and Albany, and can tell you the names of the villages on the Erie canal and the Champlain canal." Bass turned round and gazed at me a long time without uttering a syllable. "How came you here?" he inquired, at length. "Master Bass," I answered, "if justice had been done, I never would have been here." "Well, how's this?" said he. "Who are you? You have been in Canada sure enough; I know all the places you mention. How did you happen to get here? Come, tell me all about it." "I have no friends here," was my reply, "that I can put confidence in. I am afraid to tell you, though I don't believe you would tell Master Epps if I should." He assured me earnestly he would keep every word I might speak to him a profound secret, and his curiosity was evidently strongly excited. It was a long story, I informed him, and would take some time to relate it. Master Epps would be back soon, but if he would see me that night after all were asleep, I would repeat it to him. He consented readily to the arrangement, and directed me to come into the building where we were then at work, and I would find him there. About midnight, when all was still and quiet, I crept cautiously from my cabin, and silently entering the unfinished building, found him awaiting me. After further assurances on his part that I should not be betrayed, I began a relation of the history of my life and misfortunes. He was deeply interested, asking numerous questions in reference to localities and events. Having ended my story I besought him to write to some of my friends at the North, acquainting them with my situation, and begging them to forward free papers, or take such steps as they might consider proper to secure my release. He promised to do so, but dwelt upon the danger of such an act in case of detection, and now impressed upon me the great necessity of strict silence and secresy. Before we parted our plan of operation was arranged. We agreed to meet the next night at a specified place among the high weeds on the bank of the bayou, some distance from master's dwelling. There he was to write down on paper the names and address of several persons, old friends in the North, to whom he would direct letters during his next visit to Marksville. It was not deemed prudent to meet in the new house, inasmuch as the light it would be necessary to use might possibly be discovered. In the course of the day I managed to obtain a few matches and a piece of candle, unperceived, from the kitchen, during a temporary absence of Aunt Phebe. Bass had pencil and paper in his tool chest. At the appointed hour we met on the bayou bank, and creeping among the high weeds, I lighted the candle, while he drew forth pencil and paper and prepared for business. I gave him the names of William Perry, Cephas Parker and Judge Marvin, all of Saratoga Springs, Saratoga county, New-York. I had been employed by the latter in the United States Hotel, and had transacted business with the former to a considerable extent, and trusted that at least one of them would be still living at that place. He carefully wrote the names, and then remarked, thoughtfully-- "It is so many years since you left Saratoga, all these men may be dead, or may have removed. You say you obtained papers at the custom house in New-York. Probably there is a record of them there, and I think it would be well to write and ascertain." I agreed with him, and again repeated the circumstances related heretofore, connected with my visit to the custom house with Brown and Hamilton. We lingered on the bank of the bayou an hour or more, conversing upon the subject which now engrossed our thoughts. I could no longer doubt his fidelity, and freely spoke to him of the many sorrows I had borne in silence, and so long. I spoke of my wife and children, mentioning their names and ages, and dwelling upon the unspeakable happiness it would be to clasp them to my heart once more before I died. I caught him by the hand, and with tears and passionate entreaties implored him to befriend me--to restore me to my kindred and to liberty--promising I would weary Heaven the remainder of my life with prayers that it would bless and prosper him. In the enjoyment of freedom--surrounded by the associations of youth, and restored to the bosom of my family--that promise is not yet forgotten, nor shall it ever be so long as I have strength to raise my imploring eyes on high. "Oh, blessings on his kindly voice and on his silver hair, And blessings on his whole life long, until he meet me there." He overwhelmed me with assurances of friendship and faithfulness, saying he had never before taken so deep an interest in the fate of any one. He spoke of himself in a somewhat mournful tone, as a lonely man, a wanderer about the world--that he was growing old, and must soon reach the end of his earthly journey, and lie down to his final rest without kith or kin to mourn for him, or to remember him--that his life was of little value to himself, and henceforth should be devoted to the accomplishment of my liberty, and to an unceasing warfare against the accursed shame of Slavery. After this time we seldom spoke to, or recognized each other. He was, moreover, less free in his conversation with Epps on the subject of Slavery. The remotest suspicion that there was any unusual intimacy--any secret understanding between us--never once entered the mind of Epps, or any other person, white or black, on the plantation. I am often asked, with an air of incredulity, how I succeeded so many years in keeping from my daily and constant companions the knowledge of my true name and history. The terrible lesson Burch taught me, impressed indelibly upon my mind the danger and uselessness of asserting I was a freeman. There was no possibility of any slave being able to assist me, while, on the other hand, there _was_ a possibility of his exposing me. When it is recollected the whole current of my thoughts, for twelve years, turned to the contemplation of escape, it will not be wondered at, that I was always cautious and on my guard. It would have been an act of folly to have proclaimed my _right_ to freedom; it would only have subjected me to severer scrutiny--probably have consigned me to some more distant and inaccessible region than even Bayou Boeuf. Edwin Epps was a person utterly regardless of a black man's rights or wrongs--utterly destitute of any natural sense of justice, as I well knew. It was important, therefore, not only as regarded my hope of deliverance, but also as regarded the few personal privileges I was permitted to enjoy, to keep from him the history of my life. The Saturday night subsequent to our interview at the water's edge, Bass went home to Marksville. The next day, being Sunday, he employed himself in his own room writing letters. One he directed to the Collector of Customs at New-York, another to Judge Marvin, and another to Messrs. Parker and Perry jointly. The latter was the one which led to my recovery. He subscribed my true name, but in the postscript intimated I was not the writer. The letter itself shows that he considered himself engaged in a dangerous undertaking--no less than running "the risk of his life, if detected." I did not see the letter before it was mailed, but have since obtained a copy, which is here inserted: "Bayou Boeuf, August 15, 1852. "Mr. WILLIAM PERRY or Mr. CEPHAS PARKER: "Gentlemen--It having been a long time since I have seen or heard from you, and not knowing that you are living, it is with uncertainty that I write to you, but the necessity of the case must be my excuse. "Having been born free, just across the river from you, I am certain you must know me, and I am here now a slave. I wish you to obtain free papers for me, and forward them to me at Marksville, Louisiana, Parish of Avoyelles, and oblige "Yours, SOLOMON NORTHUP. "The way I came to be a slave, I was taken sick in Washington City, and was insensible for some time. When I recovered my reason, I was robbed of my free-papers, and in irons on my way to this State, and have never been able to get any one to write for me until now; and he that is writing for me runs the risk of his life if detected." The allusion to myself in the work recently issued, entitled "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," contains the first part of this letter, omitting the postscript. Neither are the full names of the gentlemen to whom it is directed correctly stated, there being a slight discrepancy, probably a typographical error. To the postscript more than to the body of the communication am I indebted for my liberation, as will presently be seen. When Bass returned from Marksville he informed me of what he had done. We continued our midnight consultations, never speaking to each other through the day, excepting as it was necessary about the work. As nearly as he was able to ascertain, it would require two weeks for the letter to reach Saratoga in due course of mail, and the same length of time for an answer to return. Within six weeks, at the farthest, we concluded, an answer would arrive, if it arrived at all. A great many suggestions were now made, and a great deal of conversation took place between us, as to the most safe and proper course to pursue on receipt of the free papers. They would stand between him and harm, in case we were overtaken and arrested leaving the country altogether. It would be no infringement of law, however much it might provoke individual hostility, to assist a freeman to regain his freedom. At the end of four weeks he was again at Marksville, but no answer had arrived. I was sorely disappointed, but still reconciled myself with the reflection that sufficient length of time had not yet elapsed--that there might have been delays--and that I could not reasonably expect one so soon. Six, seven, eight, and ten weeks passed by, however, and nothing came. I was in a fever of suspense whenever Bass visited Marksville, and could scarcely close my eyes until his return. Finally my master's house was finished, and the time came when Bass must leave me. The night before his departure I was wholly given up to despair. I had clung to him as a drowning man clings to the floating spar, knowing if it slips from his grasp he must forever sink beneath the waves. The all-glorious hope, upon which I had laid such eager hold, was crumbling to ashes in my hands. I felt as if sinking down, down, amidst the bitter waters of Slavery, from the unfathomable depths of which I should never rise again. The generous heart of my friend and benefactor was touched with pity at the sight of my distress. He endeavored to cheer me up, promising to return the day before Christmas, and if no intelligence was received in the meantime, some further step would be undertaken to effect our design. He exhorted me to keep up my spirits--to rely upon his continued efforts in my behalf, assuring me, in most earnest and impressive language, that my liberation should, from thenceforth, be the chief object of his thoughts. In his absence the time passed slowly indeed. I looked forward to Christmas with intense anxiety and impatience. I had about given up the expectation of receiving any answer to the letters. They might have miscarried, or might have been misdirected. Perhaps those at Saratoga, to whom they had been addressed, were all dead; perhaps, engaged in their pursuits, they did not consider the fate of an obscure, unhappy black man of sufficient importance to be noticed. My whole reliance was in Bass. The faith I had in him was continually re-assuring me, and enabled me to stand up against the tide of disappointment that had overwhelmed me. So wholly was I absorbed in reflecting upon my situation and prospects, that the hands with whom I labored in the field often observed it. Patsey would ask me if I was sick, and Uncle Abram, and Bob, and Wiley frequently expressed a curiosity to know what I could be thinking about so steadily. But I evaded their inquiries with some light remark, and kept my thoughts locked closely in my breast. CHAPTER XX. BASS FAITHFUL TO HIS WORD--HIS ARRIVAL ON CHRISTMAS EVE--THE DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING AN INTERVIEW--THE MEETING IN THE CABIN--NON-ARRIVAL OF THE LETTER--BASS ANNOUNCES HIS INTENTION TO PROCEED NORTH--CHRISTMAS--CONVERSATION BETWEEN EPPS AND BASS--YOUNG MISTRESS M'COY, THE BEAUTY OF BAYOU BOEUF--THE "NE PLUS ULTRA" OF DINNERS--MUSIC AND DANCING--PRESENCE OF THE MISTRESS--HER EXCEEDING BEAUTY--THE LAST SLAVE DANCE--WILLIAM PIERCE--OVERSLEEP MYSELF--THE LAST WHIPPING--DESPONDENCY--THE COLD MORNING--EPPS' THREATS--THE PASSING CARRIAGE--STRANGERS APPROACHING THROUGH THE COTTON-FIELD--LAST HOUR ON BAYOU BOEUF. Faithful to his word, the day before Christmas, just at night-fall, Bass came riding into the yard. "How are you," said Epps, shaking him by the hand, "glad to see you." He would not have been _very_ glad had he known the object of his errand. "Quite well, quite well," answered Bass. "Had some business out on the bayou, and concluded to call and see you, and stay over night." Epps ordered one of the slaves to take charge of his horse, and with much talk and laughter they passed into the house together; not, however, until Bass had looked at me significantly, as much as to say, "Keep dark, we understand each other." It was ten o'clock at night before the labors of the day were performed, when I entered the cabin. At that time Uncle Abram and Bob occupied it with me. I laid down upon my board and feigned I was asleep. When my companions had fallen into a profound slumber, I moved stealthily out of the door, and watched, and listened attentively for some sign or sound from Bass. There I stood until long after midnight, but nothing could be seen or heard. As I suspected, he dared not leave the house, through fear of exciting the suspicion of some of the family. I judged, correctly, he would rise earlier than was his custom, and take the opportunity of seeing me before Epps was up. Accordingly I aroused Uncle Abram an hour sooner than usual, and sent him into the house to build a fire, which, at that season of the year, is a part of Uncle Abram's duties. I also gave Bob a violent shake, and asked him if he intended to sleep till noon, saying master would be up before the mules were fed. He knew right well the consequence that would follow such an event, and, jumping to his feet, was at the horse-pasture in a twinkling. Presently, when both were gone, Bass slipped into the cabin. "No letter yet, Platt," said he. The announcement fell upon my heart like lead. "Oh, _do_ write again, Master Bass," I cried; "I will give you the names of a great many I know. Surely they are not all dead. Surely some one will pity me." "No use," Bass replied, "no use. I have made up my mind to that. I fear the Marksville post-master will mistrust something, I have inquired so often at his office. Too uncertain--too dangerous." "Then it is all over," I exclaimed. "Oh, my God, how can I end my days here!" "You're not going to end them here," he said, "unless you die very soon. I've thought this matter all over, and have come to a determination. There are more ways than one to manage this business, and a better and surer way than writing letters. I have a job or two on hand which can be completed by March or April. By that time I shall have a considerable sum of money, and then, Platt, I am going to Saratoga myself." I could scarcely credit my own senses as the words fell from his lips. But he assured me, in a manner that left no doubt of the sincerity of his intention, that if his life was spared until spring, he should certainly undertake the journey. "I have lived in this region long enough," he continued; "I may as well be in one place as another. For a long time I have been thinking of going back once more to the place where I was born. I'm tired of Slavery as well as you. If I can succeed in getting you away from here, it will be a good act that I shall like to think of all my life. And I _shall_ succeed, Platt; I'm _bound_ to do it. Now let me tell you what I want. Epps will be up soon, and it won't do to be caught here. Think of a great many men at Saratoga and Sandy Hill, and in that neighborhood, who once knew you. I shall make excuse to come here again in the course of the winter, when I will write down their names. I will then know who to call on when I go north. Think of all you can. Cheer up! Don't be discouraged. I'm with you, life or death. Good-bye. God bless you," and saying this he left the cabin quickly, and entered the great house. It was Christmas morning--the happiest day in the whole year for the slave. That morning he need not hurry to the field, with his gourd and cotton-bag. Happiness sparkled in the eyes and overspread the countenances of all. The time of feasting and dancing had come. The cane and cotton fields were deserted. That day the clean dress was to be donned--the red ribbon displayed; there were to be re-unions, and joy and laughter, and hurrying to and fro. It was to be a day of _liberty_ among the children of Slavery. Wherefore they were happy, and rejoiced. After breakfast Epps and Bass sauntered about the yard, conversing upon the price of cotton, and various other topics. "Where do your niggers hold Christmas?" Bass inquired. "Platt is going to Tanners to-day. His fiddle is in great demand. They want him at Marshall's Monday, and Miss Mary McCoy, on the old Norwood plantation, writes me a note that she wants him to play for her niggers Tuesday." "He is rather a smart boy, ain't he?" said Bass. "Come here, Platt," he added, looking at me as I walked up to them, as if he had never thought before to take any special notice of me. "Yes," replied Epps, taking hold of my arm and feeling it, "there isn't a bad joint in him. There ain't a boy on the bayou worth more than he is--perfectly sound, and no bad tricks. D--n him, he isn't like other niggers; doesn't look like 'em--don't act like 'em. I was offered seventeen hundred dollars for him last week." "And didn't take it?" Bass inquired, with an air of surprise. "Take it--no; devilish clear of it. Why, he's a reg'lar genius; can make a plough beam, wagon tongue--anything, as well as you can. Marshall wanted to put up one of his niggers agin him and raffle for them, but I told him I would see the devil have him first." "I don't see anything remarkable about him," Bass observed. "Why, just feel of him, now," Epps rejoined. "You don't see a boy very often put together any closer than he is. He's a thin-skin'd cuss, and won't bear as much whipping as some; but he's got the muscle in him, and no mistake." Bass felt of me, turned me round, and made a thorough examination, Epps all the while dwelling on my good points. But his visitor seemed to take but little interest finally in the subject, and consequently it was dropped. Bass soon departed, giving me another sly look of recognition and significance, as he trotted out of the yard. When he was gone I obtained a pass, and started for Tanner's--not Peter Tanner's, of whom mention has previously been made, but a relative of his. I played during the day and most of the night, spending the next day, Sunday, in my cabin. Monday I crossed the bayou to Douglas Marshall's, all Epps' slaves accompanying me, and on Tuesday went to the old Norwood place, which is the third plantation above Marshall's, on the same side of the water. This estate is now owned by Miss Mary McCoy, a lovely girl, some twenty years of age. She is the beauty and the glory of Bayou Boeuf. She owns about a hundred working hands, besides a great many house servants, yard boys, and young children. Her brother-in-law, who resides on the adjoining estate, is her general agent. She is beloved by all her slaves, and good reason indeed have they to be thankful that they have fallen into such gentle hands. Nowhere on the bayou are there such feasts, such merrymaking, as at young Madam McCoy's. Thither, more than to any other place, do the old and the young for miles around love to repair in the time of the Christmas holidays; for nowhere else can they find such delicious repasts; nowhere else can they hear a voice speaking to them so pleasantly. No one is so well beloved--no one fills so large a space in the hearts of a thousand slaves, as young Madam McCoy, the orphan mistress of the old Norwood estate. On my arrival at her place, I found two or three hundred had assembled. The table was prepared in a long building, which she had erected expressly for her slaves to dance in. It was covered with every variety of food the country afforded, and was pronounced by general acclamation to be the rarest of dinners. Roast turkey, pig, chicken, duck, and all kinds of meat, baked, boiled, and broiled, formed a line the whole length of the extended table, while the vacant spaces were filled with tarts, jellies, and frosted cake, and pastry of many kinds. The young mistress walked around the table, smiling and saying a kind word to each one, and seemed to enjoy the scene exceedingly. When the dinner was over the tables were removed to make room for the dancers. I tuned my violin and struck up a lively air; while some joined in a nimble reel, others patted and sang their simple but melodious songs, filling the great room with music mingled with the sound of human voices and the clatter of many feet. In the evening the mistress returned, and stood in the door a long time, looking at us. She was magnificently arrayed. Her dark hair and eyes contrasted strongly with her clear and delicate complexion. Her form was slender but commanding, and her movement was a combination of unaffected dignity and grace. As she stood there, clad in her rich apparel, her face animated with pleasure, I thought I had never looked upon a human being half so beautiful. I dwell with delight upon the description of this fair and gentle lady, not only because she inspired me with emotions of gratitude and admiration, but because I would have the reader understand that all slave-owners on Bayou Boeuf are not like Epps, or Tibeats, or Jim Burns. Occasionally can be found, rarely it may be, indeed, a good man like William Ford, or an angel of kindness like young Mistress McCoy. Tuesday concluded the three holidays Epps yearly allowed us. On my way home, Wednesday morning, while passing the plantation of William Pierce, that gentleman hailed me, saying he had received a line from Epps, brought down by William Varnell, permitting him to detain me for the purpose of playing for his slaves that night. It was the last time I was destined to witness a slave dance on the shores of Bayou Boeuf. The party at Pierce's continued their jollification until broad daylight, when I returned to my master's house, somewhat wearied with the loss of rest, but rejoicing in the possession of numerous bits and picayunes, which the whites, who were pleased with my musical performances, had contributed. On Saturday morning, for the first time in years, I overslept myself. I was frightened on coming out of the cabin to find the slaves were already in the field. They had preceded me some fifteen minutes. Leaving my dinner and water-gourd, I hurried after them as fast as I could move. It was not yet sunrise, but Epps was on the piazza as I left the hut, and cried out to me that it was a pretty time of day to be getting up. By extra exertion my row was up when he came out after breakfast. This, however, was no excuse for the offence of oversleeping. Bidding me strip and lie down, he gave me ten or fifteen lashes, at the conclusion of which he inquired if I thought, after that, I could get up sometime in the _morning_. I expressed myself quite positively that I _could_, and, with back stinging with pain, went about my work. The following day, Sunday, my thoughts were upon Bass, and the probabilities and hopes which hung upon his action and determination. I considered the uncertainty of life; that if it should be the will of God that he should die, my prospect of deliverance, and all expectation of happiness in this world, would be wholly ended and destroyed. My sore back, perhaps, did not have a tendency to render me unusually cheerful. I felt down-hearted and unhappy all day long, and when I laid down upon the hard board at night, my heart was oppressed with such a load of grief, it seemed that it must break. Monday morning, the third of January, 1853, we were in the field betimes. It was a raw, cold morning, such as is unusual in that region. I was in advance, Uncle Abram next to me, behind him Bob, Patsey and Wiley, with our cotton-bags about our necks. Epps happened (a rare thing, indeed,) to come out that morning without his whip. He swore, in a manner that would shame a pirate, that we were doing nothing. Bob ventured to say that his fingers were so numb with cold he couldn't pick fast. Epps cursed himself for not having brought his rawhide, and declared that when he came out again he would warm us well; yes, he would make us all hotter than that fiery realm in which I am sometimes compelled to believe he will himself eventually reside. With these fervent expressions, he left us. When out of hearing, we commenced talking to each other, saying how hard it was to be compelled to keep up our tasks with numb fingers; how unreasonable master was, and speaking of him generally in no flattering terms. Our conversation was interrupted by a carriage passing rapidly towards the house. Looking up, we saw two men approaching us through the cotton-field. * * * * * Having now brought down this narrative to the last hour I was to spend on Bayou Boeuf--having gotten through my last cotton picking, and about to bid Master Epps farewell--I must beg the reader to go back with me to the month of August; to follow Bass' letter on its long journey to Saratoga; to learn the effect it produced--and that, while I was repining and despairing in the slave hut of Edwin Epps, through the friendship of Bass and the goodness of Providence, all things were working together for my deliverance. CHAPTER XXI. THE LETTER REACHES SARATOGA--IS FORWARDED TO ANNE--IS LAID BEFORE HENRY B. NORTHUP--THE STATUTE OF MAY 14, 1840--ITS PROVISIONS--ANNE'S MEMORIAL TO THE GOVERNOR--THE AFFIDAVITS ACCOMPANYING IT--SENATOR SOULE'S LETTER--DEPARTURE OF THE AGENT APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNOR--ARRIVAL AT MARKSVILLE--THE HON. JOHN P. WADDILL--THE CONVERSATION ON NEW-YORK POLITICS--IT SUGGESTS A FORTUNATE IDEA--THE MEETING WITH BASS--THE SECRET OUT--LEGAL PROCEEDINGS INSTITUTED--DEPARTURE OF NORTHUP AND THE SHERIFF FROM MARKSVILLE FOR BAYOU BOEUF--ARRANGEMENTS ON THE WAY--REACH EPPS' PLANTATION--DISCOVER HIS SLAVES IN THE COTTON FIELD--THE MEETING--THE FAREWELL. I am indebted to Mr. Henry B. Northup and others for many of the particulars contained in this chapter. The letter written by Bass, directed to Parker and Perry, and which was deposited in the post-office in Marksville on the 15th day of August, 1852, arrived at Saratoga in the early part of September. Some time previous to this, Anne had removed to Glens Falls, Warren county, where she had charge of the kitchen in Carpenter's Hotel. She kept house, however, lodging with our children, and was only absent from them during such time as the discharge of her duties in the hotel required. Messrs. Parker and Perry, on receipt of the letter, forwarded it immediately to Anne. On reading it the children were all excitement, and without delay hastened to the neighboring village of Sandy Hill, to consult Henry B. Northup, and obtain his advice and assistance in the matter. Upon examination, that gentleman found among the statutes of the State an act providing for the recovery of free citizens from slavery. It was passed May 14, 1840, and is entitled "An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnapped or reduced to slavery." It provides that it shall be the duty of the Governor, upon the receipt of satisfactory information that any free citizen or inhabitant of this State, is wrongfully held in another State or Territory of the United States, upon the allegation or pretence that such person is a slave, or by color of any usage or rule of law is deemed or taken to be a slave, to take such measures to procure the restoration of such person to liberty, as he shall deem necessary. And to that end, he is authorized to appoint and employ an agent, and directed to furnish him with such credentials and instructions as will be likely to accomplish the object of his appointment. It requires the agent so appointed to proceed to collect the proper proof to establish the right of such person to his freedom; to perform such journeys, take such measures, institute such legal proceedings, &c., as may be necessary to return such person to this State, and charges all expenses incurred in carrying the act into effect, upon moneys not otherwise appropriated in the treasury.[1] It was necessary to establish two facts to the satisfaction of the Governor: First, that I was a free citizen of New-York; and secondly, that I was wrongfully held in bondage. As to the first point, there was no difficulty, all the older inhabitants in the vicinity being ready to testify to it. The second point rested entirely upon the letter to Parker and Perry, written in an unknown hand, and upon the letter penned on board the brig Orleans, which, unfortunately, had been mislaid or lost. A memorial was prepared, directed to his excellency, Governor Hunt, setting forth her marriage, my departure to Washington city; the receipt of the letters; that I was a free citizen, and such other facts as were deemed important, and was signed and verified by Anne. Accompanying this memorial were several affidavits of prominent citizens of Sandy Hill and Fort Edward, corroborating fully the statements it contained, and also a request of several well known gentlemen to the Governor, that Henry B. Northup be appointed agent under the legislative act. On reading the memorial and affidavits, his excellency took a lively interest in the matter, and on the 23d day of November, 1852, under the seal of the State, "constituted, appointed and employed Henry B. Northup, Esq., an agent, with full power to effect" my restoration, and to take such measures as would be most likely to accomplish it, and instructing him to proceed to Louisiana with all convenient dispatch.[2] The pressing nature of Mr. Northup's professional and political engagements delayed his departure until December. On the fourteenth day of that month he left Sandy Hill, and proceeded to Washington. The Hon. Pierre Soule, Senator in Congress from Louisiana, Hon. Mr. Conrad, Secretary of War, and Judge Nelson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon hearing a statement of the facts, and examining his commission, and certified copies of the memorial and affidavits, furnished him with open letters to gentlemen in Louisiana, strongly urging their assistance in accomplishing the object of his appointment. Senator Soule especially interested himself in the matter, insisting, in forcible language, that it was the duty and interest of every planter in his State to aid in restoring me to freedom, and trusted the sentiments of honor and justice in the bosom of every citizen of the commonwealth would enlist him at once in my behalf. Having obtained these valuable letters, Mr. Northup returned to Baltimore, and proceeded from thence to Pittsburgh. It was his original intention, under advice of friends at Washington, to go directly to New Orleans, and consult the authorities of that city. Providentially, however, on arriving at the mouth of Red River, he changed his mind. Had he continued on, he would not have met with Bass, in which case the search for me would probably have been fruitless. Taking passage on the first steamer that arrived, he pursued his journey up Red River, a sluggish, winding stream, flowing through a vast region of primitive forests and impenetrable swamps, almost wholly destitute of inhabitants. About nine o'clock in the forenoon, January 1st, 1853, he left the steamboat at Marksville, and proceeded directly to Marksville Court House, a small village four miles in the interior. From the fact that the letter to Messrs. Parker and Perry was post-marked at Marksville, it was supposed by him that I was in that place or its immediate vicinity. On reaching this town, he at once laid his business before the Hon. John P. Waddill, a legal gentleman of distinction, and a man of fine genius and most noble impulses. After reading the letters and documents presented him, and listening to a representation of the circumstances under which I had been carried away into captivity, Mr. Waddill at once proffered his services, and entered into the affair with great zeal and earnestness. He, in common with others of like elevated character, looked upon the kidnapper with abhorrence. The title of his fellow parishioners and clients to the property which constituted the larger proportion of their wealth, not only depended upon the good faith in which slave sales were transacted, but he was a man in whose honorable heart emotions of indignation were aroused by such an instance of injustice. Marksville, although occupying a prominent position, and standing out in impressive italics on the map of Louisiana, is, in fact, but a small and insignificant hamlet. Aside from the tavern, kept by a jolly and generous boniface, the court house, inhabited by lawless cows and swine in the seasons of vacation, and a high gallows, with its dissevered rope dangling in the air, there is little to attract the attention of the stranger. Solomon Northup was a name Mr. Waddill had never heard, but he was confident that if there was a slave bearing that appellation in Marksville or vicinity, his black boy Tom would know him. Tom was accordingly called, but in all his extensive circle of acquaintances there was no such personage. The letter to Parker and Perry was dated at Bayou Boeuf. At this place, therefore, the conclusion was, I must be sought. But here a difficulty suggested itself, of a very grave character indeed. Bayou Boeuf, at its nearest point, was twenty-three miles distant, and was the name applied to the section of country extending between fifty and a hundred miles, on both sides of that stream. Thousands and thousands of slaves resided upon its shores, the remarkable richness and fertility of the soil having attracted thither a great number of planters. The information in the letter was so vague and indefinite as to render it difficult to conclude upon any specific course of proceeding. It was finally determined, however, as the only plan that presented any prospect of success, that Northup and the brother of Waddill, a student in the office of the latter, should repair to the Bayou, and traveling up one side and down the other its whole length, inquire at each plantation for me. Mr. Waddill tendered the use of his carriage, and it was definitely arranged that they should start upon the excursion early Monday morning. It will be seen at once that this course, in all probability, would have resulted unsuccessfully. It would have been impossible for them to have gone into the fields and examine all the gangs at work. They were not aware that I was known only as Platt; and had they inquired of Epps himself, he would have stated truly that he knew nothing of Solomon Northup. The arrangement being adopted, however, there was nothing further to be done until Sunday had elapsed. The conversation between Messrs. Northup and Waddill, in the course of the afternoon, turned upon New-York politics. "I can scarcely comprehend the nice distinctions and shades of political parties in your State," observed Mr. Waddill. "I read of soft-shells and hard-shells, hunkers and barnburners, woolly-heads and silver-grays, and am unable to understand the precise difference between them. Pray, what is it?" Mr. Northup, re-filling his pipe, entered into quite an elaborate narrative of the origin of the various sections of parties, and concluded by saying there was another party in New-York, known as free-soilers or abolitionists. "You have seen none of those in this part of the country, I presume?" Mr. Northup remarked. "Never, but one," answered Waddill, laughingly. "We have one here in Marksville, an eccentric creature, who preaches abolitionism as vehemently as any fanatic at the North. He is a generous, inoffensive man, but always maintaining the wrong side of an argument. It affords us a deal of amusement. He is an excellent mechanic, and almost indispensable in this community. He is a carpenter. His name is Bass." Some further good-natured conversation was had at the expense of Bass' peculiarities, when Waddill all at once fell into a reflective mood, and asked for the mysterious letter again. "Let me see--l-e-t m-e s-e-e!" he repeated, thoughtfully to himself, running his eyes over the letter once more. "'Bayou Boeuf, August 15.' August 15--post-marked here. 'He that is writing for me--' Where did Bass work last summer?" he inquired, turning suddenly to his brother. His brother was unable to inform him, but rising, left the office, and soon returned with the intelligence that "Bass worked last summer somewhere on Bayou Boeuf." "He is the man," bringing down his hand emphatically on the table, "who can tell us all about Solomon Northup," exclaimed Waddill. Bass was immediately searched for, but could not be found. After some inquiry, it was ascertained he was at the landing on Red River. Procuring a conveyance, young Waddill and Northup were not long in traversing the few miles to the latter place. On their arrival, Bass was found, just on the point of leaving, to be absent a fortnight or more. After an introduction, Northup begged the privilege of speaking to him privately a moment. They walked together towards the river, when the following conversation ensued: "Mr. Bass," said Northup, "allow me to ask you if you were on Bayou Boeuf last August?" "Yes, sir, I was there in August," was the reply. "Did you write a letter for a colored man at that place to some gentleman in Saratoga Springs?" "Excuse me, sir, if I say that is none of your business," answered Bass, stopping and looking his interrogator searchingly in the face. "Perhaps I am rather hasty, Mr. Bass; I beg your pardon; but I have come from the State of New-York to accomplish the purpose the writer of a letter dated the 15th of August, post-marked at Marksville, had in view. Circumstances have led me to think that you are perhaps the man who wrote it. I am in search of Solomon Northup. If you know him, I beg you to inform me frankly where he is, and I assure you the source of any information you may give me shall not be divulged, if you desire it not to be." A long time Bass looked his new acquaintance steadily in the eyes, without opening his lips. He seemed to be doubting in his own mind if there was not an attempt to practice some deception upon him. Finally he said, deliberately-- "I have done nothing to be ashamed of. I am the man who wrote the letter. If you have come to rescue Solomon Northup, I am glad to see you." "When did you last see him, and where is he?" Northup inquired. "I last saw him Christmas, a week ago to-day. He is the slave of Edwin Epps, a planter on Bayou Boeuf, near Holmesville. He is not known as Solomon Northup; he is called Platt." The secret was out--the mystery was unraveled. Through the thick, black cloud, amid whose dark and dismal shadows I had walked twelve years, broke the star that was to light me back to liberty. All mistrust and hesitation were soon thrown aside, and the two men conversed long and freely upon the subject uppermost in their thoughts. Bass expressed the interest he had taken in my behalf--his intention of going north in the Spring, and declaring that he had resolved to accomplish my emancipation, if it were in his power. He described the commencement and progress of his acquaintance with me, and listened with eager curiosity to the account given him of my family, and the history of my early life. Before separating, he drew a map of the bayou on a strip of paper with a piece of red chalk, showing the locality of Epps' plantation, and the road leading most directly to it. Northup and his young companion returned to Marksville, where it was determined to commence legal proceedings to test the question of my right to freedom. I was made plaintiff, Mr. Northup acting as my guardian, and Edwin Epps defendant. The process to be issued was in the nature of replevin, directed to the sheriff of the parish, commanding him to take me into custody, and detain me until the decision of the court. By the time the papers were duly drawn up, it was twelve o'clock at night--too late to obtain the necessary signature of the Judge, who resided some distance out of town. Further business was therefore suspended until Monday morning. Everything, apparently, was moving along swimmingly, until Sunday afternoon, when Waddill called at Northup's room to express his apprehension of difficulties they had not expected to encounter. Bass had become alarmed, and had placed his affairs in the hands of a person at the landing, communicating to him his intention of leaving the State. This person had betrayed the confidence reposed in him to a certain extent, and a rumor began to float about the town, that the stranger at the hotel, who had been observed in the company of lawyer Waddill, was after one of old Epps' slaves, over on the bayou. Epps was known at Marksville, having frequent occasion to visit that place during the session of the courts, and the fear entertained by Mr. Northup's adviser was, that intelligence would be conveyed to him in the night, giving him an opportunity of secreting me before the arrival of the sheriff. This apprehension had the effect of expediting matters considerably. The sheriff, who lived in one direction from the village, was requested to hold himself in readiness immediately after midnight, while the Judge was informed he would be called upon at the same time. It is but justice to say, that the authorities at Marksville cheerfully rendered all the assistance in their power. As soon after midnight as bail could be perfected, and the Judge's signature obtained, a carriage, containing Mr. Northup and the sheriff, driven by the landlord's son, rolled rapidly out of the village of Marksville, on the road towards Bayou Boeuf. It was supposed that Epps would contest the issue involving my right to liberty, and it therefore suggested itself to Mr. Northup, that the testimony of the sheriff, describing my first meeting with the former, might perhaps become material on the trial. It was accordingly arranged during the ride, that, before I had an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Northup, the sheriff should propound to me certain questions agreed upon, such as the number and names of my children, the name of my wife before marriage, of places I knew at the North, and so forth. If my answers corresponded with the statements given him, the evidence must necessarily be considered conclusive. At length, shortly after Epps had left the field, with the consoling assurance that he would soon return and _warm_ us, as was stated in the conclusion of the preceding chapter, they came in sight of the plantation, and discovered us at work. Alighting from the carriage, and directing the driver to proceed to the great house, with instructions not to mention to any one the object of their errand until they met again, Northup and the sheriff turned from the highway, and came towards us across the cotton field. We observed them, on looking up at the carriage--one several rods in advance of the other. It was a singular and unusual thing to see white men approaching us in that manner, and especially at that early hour in the morning, and Uncle Abram and Patsey made some remarks, expressive of their astonishment. Walking up to Bob, the sheriff inquired: "Where's the boy they call Platt?" "Thar he is, massa," answered Bob, pointing to me, and twitching off his hat. I wondered to myself what business he could possibly have with me, and turning round, gazed at him until he had approached within a step. During my long residence on the bayou, I had become familiar with the face of every planter within many miles; but this man was an utter stranger--certainly I had never seen him before. "Your name is Platt, is it?" he asked. "Yes, master," I responded. Pointing towards Northup, standing a few rods distant, he demanded--"Do you know that man?" I looked in the direction indicated, and as my eyes rested on his countenance, a world of images thronged my brain; a multitude of well-known faces--Anne's, and the dear children's, and my old dead father's; all the scenes and associations of childhood and youth; all the friends of other and happier days, appeared and disappeared, flitting and floating like dissolving shadows before the vision of my imagination, until at last the perfect memory of the man recurred to me, and throwing up my hands towards Heaven, I exclaimed, in a voice louder than I could utter in a less exciting moment-- "_Henry B. Northup!_ Thank God--thank God!" In an instant I comprehended the nature of his business, and felt that the hour of my deliverance was at hand. I started towards him, but the sheriff stepped before me. "Stop a moment," said he; "have you any other name than Platt?" "Solomon Northup is my name, master," I replied. "Have you a family?" he inquired. "I _had_ a wife and three children." "What were your children's names?" "Elizabeth, Margaret and Alonzo." "And your wife's name before her marriage?" "Anne Hampton." "Who married you?" "Timothy Eddy, of Fort Edward." "Where does that gentleman live?" again pointing to Northup, who remained standing in the same place where I had first recognized him. "He lives in Sandy Hill, Washington county, New-York," was the reply. He was proceeding to ask further questions, but I pushed past him, unable longer to restrain myself. I seized my old acquaintance by both hands. I could not speak. I could not refrain from tears. "Sol," he said at length, "I'm glad to see you." I essayed to make some answer, but emotion choked all utterance, and I was silent. The slaves, utterly confounded, stood gazing upon the scene, their open mouths and rolling eyes indicating the utmost wonder and astonishment. For ten years I had dwelt among them, in the field and in the cabin, borne the same hardships, partaken the same fare, mingled my griefs with theirs, participated in the same scanty joys; nevertheless, not until this hour, the last I was to remain among them, had the remotest suspicion of my true name, or the slightest knowledge of my real history, been entertained by any one of them. Not a word was spoken for several minutes, during which time I clung fast to Northup, looking up into his face, fearful I should awake and find it all a dream. "Throw down that sack," Northup added, finally; "your cotton-picking days are over. Come with us to the man you live with." I obeyed him, and walking between him and the sheriff, we moved towards the great house. It was not until we had proceeded some distance that I had recovered my voice sufficiently to ask if my family were all living. He informed me he had seen Anne, Margaret and Elizabeth but a short time previously; that Alonzo was also living, and all were well. My mother, however, I could never see again. As I began to recover in some measure from the sudden and great excitement which so overwhelmed me, I grew faint and weak, insomuch it was with difficulty I could walk. The sheriff took hold of my arm and assisted me, or I think I should have fallen. As we entered the yard, Epps stood by the gate, conversing with the driver. That young man, faithful to his instructions, was entirely unable to give him the least information in answer to his repeated inquiries of what was going on. By the time we reached him he was almost as much amazed and puzzled as Bob or Uncle Abram. Shaking hands with the sheriff, and receiving an introduction to Mr. Northup, he invited them into the house, ordering me, at the same time, to bring in some wood. It was some time before I succeeded in cutting an armful, having, somehow, unaccountably lost the power of wielding the axe with any manner of precision. When I entered with it at last, the table was strewn with papers, from one of which Northup was reading. I was probably longer than necessity required, in placing the sticks upon the fire, being particular as to the exact position of each individual one of them. I heard the words, "the said Solomon Northup," and "the deponent further says," and "free citizen of New-York," repeated frequently, and from these expressions understood that the secret I had so long retained from Master and Mistress Epps, was finally developing. I lingered as long as prudence permitted, and was about leaving the room, when Epps inquired, [Illustration: SCENE IN THE COTTON FIELD, SOLOMON DELIVERED UP.] "Platt, do you know this gentleman?" "Yes, master," I replied, "I have known him as long as I can remember." "Where does he live?" "He lives in New-York." "Did you ever live there?" "Yes, master--born and bred there." "You was free, then. Now you d----d nigger," he exclaimed, "why did you not tell me that when I bought you?" "Master Epps," I answered, in a somewhat different tone than the one in which I had been accustomed to address him--"Master Epps, you did not take the trouble to ask me; besides, I told one of my owners--the man that kidnapped me--that I was free, and was whipped almost to death for it." "It seems there has been a letter written for you by somebody. Now, who is it?" he demanded, authoritatively. I made no reply. "I say, who wrote that letter?" he demanded again. "Perhaps I wrote it myself," I said. "You haven't been to Marksville post-office and back before light, I know." He insisted upon my informing him, and I insisted I would not. He made many vehement threats against the man, whoever he might be, and intimated the bloody and savage vengeance he would wreak upon him, when he found him out. His whole manner and language exhibited a feeling of anger towards the unknown person who had written for me, and of fretfulness at the idea of losing so much property. Addressing Mr. Northup, he swore if he had only had an hour's notice of his coming, he would have saved him the trouble of taking me back to New-York; that he would have run me into the swamp, or some other place out of the way, where all the sheriffs on earth couldn't have found me. I walked out into the yard, and was entering the kitchen door, when something struck me in the back. Aunt Phebe, emerging from the back door of the great house with a pan of potatoes, had thrown one of them with unnecessary violence, thereby giving me to understand that she wished to speak to me a moment confidentially. Running up to me, she whispered in my ear with great earnestness, "Lor a' mity, Platt! what d'ye think? Dem two men come after ye. Heard 'em tell massa you free--got wife and tree children back thar whar you come from. Goin' wid 'em? Fool if ye don't--wish I could go," and Aunt Phebe ran on in this manner at a rapid rate. Presently Mistress Epps made her appearance in the kitchen. She said many things to me, and wondered why I had not told her who I was. She expressed her regret, complimenting me by saying she had rather lose any other servant on the plantation. Had Patsey that day stood in my place, the measure of my mistress' joy would have overflowed. Now there was no one left who could mend a chair or a piece of furniture--no one who was of any use about the house--no one who could play for her on the violin--and Mistress Epps was actually affected to tears. Epps had called to Bob to bring up his saddle horse. The other slaves, also, overcoming their fear of the penalty, had left their work and come to the yard. They were standing behind the cabins, out of sight of Epps. They beckoned me to come to them, and with all the eagerness of curiosity, excited to the highest pitch, conversed with and questioned me. If I could repeat the exact words they uttered, with the same emphasis--if I could paint their several attitudes, and the expression of their countenances--it would be indeed an interesting picture. In their estimation, I had suddenly arisen to an immeasurable height--had become a being of immense importance. The legal papers having been served, and arrangements made with Epps to meet them the next day at Marksville, Northup and the sheriff entered the carriage to return to the latter place. As I was about mounting to the driver's seat, the sheriff said I ought to bid Mr. and Mrs. Epps good bye. I ran back to the piazza where they were standing, and taking off my hat, said, "Good-bye, missis." "Good-bye, Platt," said Mrs. Epps, kindly. "Good-bye, master." "Ah! you d--d nigger," muttered Epps, in a surly, malicious tone of voice, "you needn't feel so cussed tickled--you ain't gone yet--I'll see about this business at Marksville to-morrow." I was only a "_nigger_" and knew my place, but felt as strongly as if I had been a white man, that it would have been an inward comfort, had I dared to have given him a parting kick. On my way back to the carriage, Patsey ran from behind a cabin and threw her arms about my neck. "Oh! Platt," she cried, tears streaming down her face, "you're goin' to be free--you're goin' way off yonder where we'll neber see ye any more. You've saved me a good many whippins, Platt; I'm glad you're goin' to be free--but oh! de Lord, de Lord! what'll become of me?" I disengaged myself from her, and entered the carriage. The driver cracked his whip and away we rolled. I looked back and saw Patsey, with drooping head, half reclining on the ground; Mrs. Epps was on the piazza; Uncle Abram, and Bob, and Wiley, and Aunt Phebe stood by the gate, gazing after me. I waved my hand, but the carriage turned a bend of the bayou, hiding them from my eyes forever. We stopped a moment at Carey's sugar house, where a great number of slaves were at work, such an establishment being a curiosity to a Northern man. Epps dashed by us on horseback at full speed--on the way, as we learned next day, to the "Pine Woods," to see William Ford, who had brought me into the country. Tuesday, the fourth of January, Epps and his counsel, the Hon. H. Taylor, Northup, Waddill, the Judge and sheriff of Avoyelles, and myself, met in a room in the village of Marksville. Mr. Northup stated the facts in regard to me, and presented his commission, and the affidavits accompanying it. The sheriff described the scene in the cotton field. I was also interrogated at great length. Finally, Mr. Taylor assured his client that he was satisfied, and that litigation would not only be expensive, but utterly useless. In accordance with his advice, a paper was drawn up and signed by the proper parties, wherein Epps acknowledged he was satisfied of my right to freedom, and formally surrendered me to the authorities of New-York. It was also stipulated that it be entered of record in the recorder's office of Avoyelles.[3] Mr. Northup and myself immediately hastened to the landing, and taking passage on the first steamer that arrived, were soon floating down Red River, up which, with such desponding thoughts, I had been borne twelve years before. FOOTNOTES: [1] See Appendix A. [2] See Appendix B. [3] See Appendix C. CHAPTER XXII. ARRIVAL IN NEW-ORLEANS--GLIMPSE OF FREEMAN--GENOIS, THE RECORDER--HIS DESCRIPTION OF SOLOMON--REACH CHARLESTON--INTERRUPTED BY CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS--PASS THROUGH RICHMOND--ARRIVAL IN WASHINGTON--BURCH ARRESTED--SHEKELS AND THORN--THEIR TESTIMONY--BURCH ACQUITTED--ARREST OF SOLOMON--BURCH WITHDRAWS THE COMPLAINT--THE HIGHER TRIBUNAL--DEPARTURE FROM WASHINGTON--ARRIVAL AT SANDY HILL--OLD FRIENDS AND FAMILIAR SCENES--PROCEED TO GLENS FALLS--MEETING WITH ANNE, MARGARET AND ELIZABETH--SOLOMON NORTHUP STAUNTON--INCIDENTS--CONCLUSION. As the steamer glided on its way towards New-Orleans, _perhaps_ I was not happy--_perhaps_ there was no difficulty in restraining myself from dancing round the deck--perhaps I did not feel grateful to the man who had come so many hundred miles for me--perhaps I did not light his pipe, and wait and watch his word, and run at his slightest bidding. If I didn't--well, no matter. We tarried at New-Orleans two days. During that time I pointed out the locality of Freeman's slave pen, and the room in which Ford purchased me. We happened to meet Theophilus in the street, but I did not think it worth while to renew acquaintance with him. From respectable citizens we ascertained he had become a low, miserable rowdy--a broken-down, disreputable man. We also visited the recorder, Mr. Genois, to whom Senator Soule's letter was directed, and found him a man well deserving the wide and honorable reputation that he bears. He very generously furnished us with a sort of legal pass, over his signature and seal of office, and as it contains the recorder's description of my personal appearance, it may not be amiss to insert it here. The following is a copy: "_State of Louisiana_--_City of New-Orleans_: Recorder's Office, Second District. "To all to whom these presents shall come:-- "This is to certify that Henry B. Northup, Esquire, of the county of Washington, New-York, has produced before me due evidence of the freedom of Solomon, a mulatto man, aged about forty-two years, five feet, seven inches and six lines, woolly hair, and chestnut eyes, who is a native born of the State of New-York. That the said Northup, being about bringing the said Solomon to his native place, through the southern routes, the civil authorities are requested to let the aforesaid colored man Solomon pass unmolested, he demeaning well and properly. "Given under my hand and the seal of the city of New-Orleans this 7th January, 1853. [L. S.] "TH. GENOIS, Recorder." On the 8th we came to Lake Pontchartrain, by railroad, and, in due time, following the usual route, reached Charleston. After going on board the steamboat, and paying our passage at this city, Mr. Northup was called upon by a custom-house officer to explain why he had not registered his servant. He replied that he had no servant--that, as the agent of New-York, he was accompanying a free citizen of that State from slavery to freedom, and did not desire nor intend to make any registry whatever. I conceived from his conversation and manner, though I may perhaps be entirely mistaken, that no great pains would be taken to avoid whatever difficulty the Charleston officials might deem proper to create. At length, however, we were permitted to proceed, and, passing through Richmond, where I caught a glimpse of Goodin's pen, arrived in Washington January 17th, 1853. We ascertained that both Burch and Radburn were still residing in that city. Immediately a complaint was entered with a police magistrate of Washington, against James H. Burch, for kidnapping and selling me into slavery. He was arrested upon a warrant issued by Justice Goddard, and returned before Justice Mansel, and held to bail in the sum of three thousand dollars. When first arrested, Burch was much excited, exhibiting the utmost fear and alarm, and before reaching the justice's office on Louisiana Avenue, and before knowing the precise nature of the complaint, begged the police to permit him to consult Benjamin O. Shekels, a slave trader of seventeen years' standing, and his former partner. The latter became his bail. At ten o'clock, the 18th of January, both parties appeared before the magistrate. Senator Chase, of Ohio, Hon. Orville Clark, of Sandy Hill, and Mr. Northup acted as counsel for the prosecution, and Joseph H. Bradley for the defence. Gen. Orville Clark was called and sworn as a witness, and testified that he had known me from childhood, and that I was a free man, as was my father before me. Mr. Northup then testified to the same, and proved the facts connected with his mission to Avoyelles. Ebenezer Radburn was then sworn for the prosecution, and testified he was forty-eight years old; that he was a resident of Washington, and had known Burch fourteen years; that in 1841 he was keeper of Williams' slave pen; that he remembered the fact of my confinement in the pen that year. At this point it was admitted by the defendant's counsel, that I had been placed in the pen by Burch in the spring of 1841, and hereupon the prosecution rested. Benjamin O. Shekels was then offered as a witness by the prisoner. Benjamin is a large, coarse-featured man, and the reader may perhaps get a somewhat correct conception of him by reading the exact language he used in answer to the first question of defendant's lawyer. He was asked the place of his nativity, and his reply, uttered in a sort of rowdyish way, was in these very words-- "I was born in Ontario county, New-York, and _weighed fourteen pounds_!" Benjamin was a prodigious baby! He further testified that he kept the Steamboat Hotel in Washington in 1841, and saw me there in the spring of that year. He was proceeding to state what he had heard two men say, when Senator Chase raised a legal objection, to wit, that the sayings of third persons, being hearsay, was improper evidence. The objection was overruled by the Justice, and Shekels continued, stating that two men came to his hotel and represented they had a colored man for sale; that they had an interview with Burch; that they stated they came from Georgia, but he did not remember the county; that they gave a full history of the boy, saying he was a bricklayer, and played on the violin; that Burch remarked he would purchase if they could agree; that they went out and brought the boy in, and that I was the same person. He further testified, with as much unconcern as if it was the truth, that I represented I was born and bred in Georgia; that one of the young men with me was my master; that I exhibited a great deal of regret at parting with him, and he believed "got into tears!"--nevertheless, that I insisted my master had a right to sell me; that he _ought_ to sell me; and the remarkable reason I gave was, according to Shekels, because he, my master, "had been gambling and on a spree!" He continued, in these words, copied from the minutes taken on the examination: "Burch interrogated the boy in the usual manner, told him if he purchased him he should send him south. The boy said he had no objection, that in fact he would like to go south. Burch paid $650 for him, to my knowledge. I don't know what name was given him, but think it was not Solomon. Did not know the name of either of the two men. They were in my tavern two or three hours, during which time the boy played on the violin. The bill of sale was signed in my bar-room. It was a _printed blank, filled up by Burch_. Before 1838 Burch was my partner. Our business was buying and selling slaves. After that time he was a partner of Theophilus Freeman, of New-Orleans. Burch bought here--Freeman sold there!" Shekels, before testifying, had heard my relation of the circumstances connected with the visit to Washington with Brown and Hamilton, and therefore, it was, undoubtedly, he spoke of "two men," and of my playing on the violin. Such was his fabrication, utterly untrue, and yet there was found in Washington a man who endeavored to corroborate him. Benjamin A. Thorn testified he was at Shekels' in 1841, and saw a colored boy playing on a fiddle. "Shekels said he was for sale. Heard his master tell him he should sell him. The boy acknowledged to me he was a slave. I was not present when the money was paid. Will not swear positively this is the boy. The master _came near shedding tears: I think the boy did_! I have been engaged in the business of taking slaves south, off and on, for twenty years. When I can't do that I do something else." I was then offered as a witness, but, objection being made, the court decided my evidence inadmissible. It was rejected solely on the ground that I was a colored man--the fact of my being a free citizen of New-York not being disputed. Shekels having testified there was a bill of sale executed, Burch was called upon by the prosecution to produce it, inasmuch as such a paper would corroborate the testimony of Thorn and Shekels. The prisoner's counsel saw the necessity of exhibiting it, or giving some reasonable explanation for its non-production. To effect the latter, Burch himself was offered as a witness in his own behalf. It was contended by counsel for the people, that such testimony should not be allowed--that it was in contravention of every rule of evidence, and if permitted would defeat the ends of justice. His testimony, however, was received by the court! He made oath that such a bill of sale had been drawn up and signed, _but he had lost it, and did not know what had become of it_! Thereupon the magistrate was requested to dispatch a police officer to Burch's residence, with directions to bring his books, containing his bills of sales for the year 1841. The request was granted, and before any measure could be taken to prevent it, the officer had obtained possession of the books, and brought them into court. The sales for the year 1841 were found, and carefully examined, but no sale of myself, by any name, was discovered! Upon this testimony the court held the fact to be established, that Burch came innocently and honestly by me, and accordingly he was discharged. An attempt was then made by Burch and his satellites, to fasten upon me the charge that I had conspired with the two white men to defraud him--with what success, appears in an extract taken from an article in the New-York Times, published a day or two subsequent to the trial: "The counsel for the defendant had drawn up, before the defendant was discharged, an affidavit, signed by Burch, and had a warrant out against the colored man for a conspiracy with the two white men before referred to, to defraud Burch out of six hundred and twenty-five dollars. The warrant was served, and the colored man arrested and brought before officer Goddard. Burch and his witnesses appeared in court, and H. B. Northup appeared as counsel for the colored man, stating he was ready to proceed as counsel on the part of the defendant, and asking no delay whatever. Burch, after consulting privately a short time with Shekels, stated to the magistrate that he wished him to dismiss the complaint, as he would not proceed farther with it. Defendant's counsel stated to the magistrate that if the complaint was withdrawn, it must be without the request or consent of the defendant. Burch then asked the magistrate to let him have the complaint and the warrant, and he took them. The counsel for the defendant objected to his receiving them, and insisted they should remain as part of the records of the court, and that the court should endorse the proceedings which had been had under the process. Burch delivered them up, and the court rendered a judgment of discontinuance by the request of the prosecutor, and filed it in his office." * * * * * There may be those who will affect to believe the statement of the slave-trader--those, in whose minds his allegations will weigh heavier than mine. I am a poor colored man--one of a down-trodden and degraded race, whose humble voice may not be heeded by the oppressor--but _knowing_ the truth, and with a full sense of my accountability, I do solemnly declare before men, and before God, that any charge or assertion, that I conspired directly or indirectly with any person or persons to sell myself; that any other account of my visit to Washington, my capture and imprisonment in Williams' slave pen, than is contained in these pages, is utterly and absolutely false. I never played on the violin in Washington. I never was in the Steamboat Hotel, and never saw Thorn or Shekels, to my knowledge, in my life, until last January. The story of the trio of slave-traders is a fabrication as absurd as it is base and unfounded. Were it true, I should not have turned aside on my way back to liberty for the purpose of prosecuting Burch. I should have _avoided_ rather than sought him. I should have known that such a step would have resulted in rendering me infamous. Under the circumstances--longing as I did to behold my family, and elated with the prospect of returning home--it is an outrage upon probability to suppose I would have run the hazard, not only of exposure, but of a criminal prosecution and conviction, by voluntarily placing myself in the position I did, if the statements of Burch and his confederates contain a particle of truth. I took pains to seek him out, to confront him in a court of law, charging him with the crime of kidnapping; and the only motive that impelled me to this step, was a burning sense of the wrong he had inflicted upon me, and a desire to bring him to justice. He was acquitted, in the manner, and by such means as have been described. A human tribunal has permitted him to escape; but there is another and a higher tribunal, where false testimony will not prevail, and where I am willing, so far at least as these statements are concerned, to be judged at last. * * * * * We left Washington on the 20th of January, and proceeding by the way of Philadelphia, New-York, and Albany, reached Sandy Hill in the night of the 21st. My heart overflowed with happiness as I looked around upon old familiar scenes, and found myself in the midst of friends of other days. The following morning I started, in company with several acquaintances, for Glens Falls, the residence of Anne and our children. As I entered their comfortable cottage, Margaret was the first that met me. She did not recognize me. When I left her, she was but seven years old, a little prattling girl, playing with her toys. Now she was grown to womanhood--was married, with a bright-eyed boy standing by her side. Not forgetful of his enslaved, unfortunate grand-father, she had named the child Solomon Northup Staunton. When told who I was, she was overcome with emotion, and unable to speak. Presently Elizabeth entered the room, and Anne came running from the hotel, having been informed of my arrival. They embraced me, and with tears flowing down their cheeks, hung upon my neck. But I draw a veil over a scene which can better be imagined than described. When the violence of our emotions had subsided to a sacred joy--when the household gathered round the fire, that sent out its warm and crackling comfort through the room, we conversed of the thousand events that had occurred--the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the trials and troubles we had each experienced during the long separation. Alonzo was absent in the western part of the State. The boy had written to his mother a short time previous, of the prospect of his obtaining sufficient money to purchase my freedom. From his earliest years, that had been the chief object of his thoughts and his ambition. They knew I was in bondage. The letter written on board the brig, and Clem Ray himself, had given them that information. But where I was, until the arrival of Bass' letter, was a matter of conjecture. Elizabeth and Margaret once returned from school--so Anne informed me--weeping bitterly. On inquiring the cause of the children's sorrow, it was found that, while studying geography, their attention had been attracted to the picture of slaves working in the cotton-field, and an overseer following them with his whip. It reminded them of the sufferings their father might be, and, as it happened, actually _was_, enduring in the South. Numerous incidents, such as these, were related--incidents showing they still held me in constant remembrance, but not, perhaps, of sufficient interest to the reader, to be recounted. [Illustration: ARRIVAL HOME, AND FIRST MEETING WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN] * * * * * My narrative is at an end. I have no comments to make upon the subject of Slavery. Those who read this book may form their own opinions of the "peculiar institution." What it may be in other States, I do not profess to know; what it is in the region of Red River, is truly and faithfully delineated in these pages. This is no fiction, no exaggeration. If I have failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader too prominently the bright side of the picture. I doubt not hundreds have been as unfortunate as myself; that hundreds of free citizens have been kidnapped and sold into slavery, and are at this moment wearing out their lives on plantations in Texas and Louisiana. But I forbear. Chastened and subdued in spirit by the sufferings I have borne, and thankful to that good Being through whose mercy I have been restored to happiness and liberty, I hope henceforward to lead an upright though lowly life, and rest at last in the church yard where my father sleeps. ROARING RIVER. A REFRAIN OF THE RED RIVER PLANTATION. [Illustration: Musical score] "Harper's creek and roarin' ribber, Thar, my dear, we'll live forebber; Den we'll go to de Ingin nation, All I want in dis creation, Is pretty little wife and big plantation. CHORUS. Up dat oak and down dat ribber, Two overseers and one little nigger." APPENDIX. A.--Page 291. CHAP. 375. _An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnapped, or reduced to Slavery._ [Passed May 14, 1840.] The People of the State of New-York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: § 1. Whenever the Governor of this State shall receive information satisfactory to him that any free citizen or any inhabitant of this State has been kidnapped or transported away out of this State, into any other State or Territory of the United States, for the purpose of being there held in slavery; or that such free citizen or inhabitant is wrongfully seized, imprisoned or held in slavery in any of the States or Territories of the United States, on the allegation or pretence that such a person is a slave, or by color of any usage or rule of law prevailing in such State or Territory, is deemed or taken to be a slave, or not entitled of right to the personal liberty belonging to a citizen; it shall be the duty of the said Governor to take such measures as he shall deem necessary to procure such person to be restored to his liberty and returned to this State. The Governor is hereby authorized to appoint and employ such agent or agents as he shall deem necessary to effect the restoration and return of such person; and shall furnish the said agent with such credentials and instructions as will be likely to accomplish the object of his appointment. The Governor may determine the compensation to be allowed to such agent for his services besides his necessary expenses. § 2. Such agent shall proceed to collect the proper proof to establish the right of such person to his freedom, and shall perform such journeys, take such measures, institute and procure to be prosecuted such legal proceedings, under the direction of the Governor, as shall be necessary to procure such person to be restored to his liberty and returned to this State. § 3. The accounts for all services and expenses incurred in carrying this act into effect shall be audited by the Comptroller, and paid by the Treasurer on his warrant, out of any moneys in the treasury of this State not otherwise appropriated. The Treasurer may advance, on the warrant of the Comptroller, to such agent, such sum or sums as the Governor shall certify to be reasonable advances to enable him to accomplish the purposes of his appointment, for which advance such agent shall account, on the final audit of his warrant. § 4. This act shall take effect immediately. B.--Page 292. MEMORIAL OF ANNE. _To His Excellency, the Governor of the State of New-York:_ The memorial of Anne Northup, of the village of Glens Falls, in the county of Warren, State aforesaid, respectfully sets forth-- That your memorialist, whose maiden name was Anne Hampton, was forty-four years old on the 14th day of March last, and was married to Solomon Northup, then of Fort Edward, in the county of Washington and State aforesaid, on the 25th day of December, A. D. 1828, by Timothy Eddy, then a Justice of the Peace. That the said Solomon, after such marriage, lived and kept house with your memorialist in said town until 1830, when he removed with his said family to the town of Kingsbury in said county, and remained there about three years, and then removed to Saratoga Springs in the State aforesaid, and continued to reside in said Saratoga Springs and the adjoining town until about the year 1841, as near as the time can be recollected, when the said Solomon started to go to the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, since which time your memorialist has never seen her said husband. And your memorialist further states, that in the year 1841 she received information by a letter directed to Henry B. Northup, Esq., of Sandy Hill, Washington county, New-York, and post-marked at New-Orleans, that said Solomon had been kidnapped in Washington, put on board of a vessel, and was then in such vessel in New-Orleans, but could not tell how he came in that situation, nor what his destination was. That your memorialist ever since the last mentioned period has been wholly unable to obtain any information of where the said Solomon was, until the month of September last, when another letter was received from the said Solomon, post-marked at Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, in the State of Louisiana, stating that he was held there as a slave, which statement your memorialist believes to be true. That the said Solomon is about forty-five years of age, and never resided out of the State of New-York, in which State he was born, until the time he went to Washington city, as before stated. That the said Solomon Northup is a free citizen of the State of New-York, and is now wrongfully held in slavery, in or near Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, in the State of Louisiana, one of the United States of America, on the allegation or pretence that the said Solomon is a slave. And your memorialist further states that Mintus Northup was the reputed father of said Solomon, and was a negro, and died at Fort Edward, on the 22d day of November, 1829; that the mother of said Solomon was a mulatto, or three quarters white, and died in the county of Oswego, New-York, some five or six years ago, as your memorialist was informed and believes, and never was a slave. That your memorialist and her family are poor and wholly unable to pay or sustain any portion of the expenses of restoring the said Solomon to his freedom. Your excellency is entreated to employ such agent or agents as shall be deemed necessary to effect the restoration and return of said Solomon Northup, in pursuance of an act of the Legislature of the State of New-York, passed May 14th, 1840, entitled "An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnappd or reduced to slavery." And your memorialist will ever pray. (Signed,) ANNE NORTHUP. Dated November 19, 1852. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington county, ss. Anne Northup, of the village of Glens Falls, in the county of Warren, in said State, being duly sworn, doth depose and say that she signed the above memorial, and that the statements therein contained are true. (Signed,) ANNE NORTHUP. Subscribed and sworn before me this 19th November, 1852. CHARLES HUGHES, Justice Peace. * * * * * We recommend that the Governor appoint Henry B. Northup, of the village of Sandy Hill, Washington county, New-York, as one of the agents to procure the restoration and return of Solomon Northup, named in the foregoing memorial of Anne Northup. Dated at Sandy Hill, Washington Co., N. Y., November 20, 1852. (Signed.) PETER HOLBROOK, DANIEL SWEET, B. F. HOAG, ALMON CLARK, CHARLES HUGHES, BENJAMIN FERRIS, E. D. BAKER, JOSIAH H. BROWN, ORVILLE CLARK. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss: Josiah Hand, of the village of Sandy Hill, in said county, being duly sworn, says, he is fifty-seven years old, and was born in said village, and has always resided there; that he has known Mintus Northup and his son Solomon, named in the annexed memorial of Anne Northup, since previous to the year 1816; that Mintus Northup then, and until the time of his death, cultivated a farm in the towns of Kingsbury and Fort Edward, from the time deponent first knew him until he died; that said Mintus and his wife, the mother of said Solomon Northup, were reported to be free citizens of New-York, and deponent believes they were so free; that said Solomon Northup was born in said county of Washington, as deponent believes, and was married Dec. 25th, 1828, in Fort Edward aforesaid, and his said wife and three children--two daughters and one son--are now living in Glens Falls, Warren county, New-York, and that the said Solomon Northup always resided in said county of Washington, and its immediate vicinity, until about 1841, since which time deponent has not seen him, but deponent has been credibly informed, and as he verily believes truly, the said Solomon is now wrongfully held as a slave in the State of Louisiana. And deponent further says that Anne Northup, named in the said memorial, is entitled to credit, and deponent believes the statements contained in her said memorial are true. (Signed,) JOSIAH HAND. Subscribed and sworn before me this 19th day of November, 1852, CHARLES HUGHES, Justice Peace. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington county, ss: Timothy Eddy, of Fort Edward, in said county, being duly sworn, says he is now over--years old, and has been a resident of said town more than--years last past, and that he was well acquainted with Solomon Northup, named in the annexed memorial of Anne Northup, and with his father, Mintus Northup, who was a negro,--the wife of said Mintus was a mulatto woman; that said Mintus Northup and his said wife and family, two sons, Joseph and Solomon, resided in said town of Fort Edward for several years before the year 1828, and said Mintus died in said town A. D. 1829, as deponent believes. And deponent further says that he was a Justice of the Peace in said town in the year 1828, and as such Justice of the Peace, he, on the 25th day of Dec'r, 1828, joined the said Solomon Northup in marriage with Anne Hampton, who is the same person who has subscribed the annexed memorial. And deponent expressly says, that said Solomon was a free citizen of the State of New-York, and always lived in said State, until about the year A. D. 1840, since which time deponent has not seen him, but has recently been informed, and as deponent believes truly, that said Solomon Northup is wrongfully held in slavery in or near Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, in the State of Louisiana. And deponent further says, that said Mintus Northup was nearly sixty years old at the time of his death, and was, for more than thirty years next prior to his death, a free citizen of the State of New-York. And this deponent further says, that Anne Northup, the wife of said Solomon Northup, is of good character and reputation, and her statements, as contained in the memorial hereto annexed, are entitled to full credit. (Signed,) TIMOTHY EDDY. Subscribed and sworn before me this 19th day of November, 1852, TIM'Y STOUGHTON, Justice. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss: Henry B. Northup, of the village of Sandy Hill, in said county, being duly sworn, says, that he is forty-seven years old, and has always lived in said county; that he knew Mintus Northup, named in the annexed memorial, from deponent's earliest recollection until the time of his death, which occurred at Fort Edward, in said county, in 1829; that deponent knew the children of said Mintus, viz, Solomon and Joseph; that they were both born in the county of Washington aforesaid, as deponent believes; that deponent was well acquainted with said Solomon, who is the same person named in the annexed memorial of Anne Northup, from his childhood; and that said Solomon always resided in said county of Washington and the adjoining counties until about the year 1841; that said Solomon could read and write; that said Solomon and his mother and father were free citizens of the State of New-York; that sometime about the year 1841 this deponent received a letter from said Solomon, post-marked New-Orleans, stating that while on business at Washington city, he had been kidnapped, and his free papers taken from him, and he was then on board a vessel, in irons, and was claimed as a slave, and that he did not know his destination, which the deponent believes to be true, and he urged this deponent to assist in procuring his restoration to freedom; that deponent has lost or mislaid said letter, and cannot find it; that deponent has since endeavored to find where said Solomon was, but could get no farther trace of him until Sept. last, when this deponent ascertained by a letter purporting to have been written by the direction of said Solomon, that said Solomon was held and claimed as a slave in or near Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, Louisiana, and that this deponent verily believes that such information is true, and that said Solomon is now wrongfully held in slavery at Marksville aforesaid. (Signed,) HENRY B. NORTHUP. Subscribed and sworn to before me this 20th day of November, 1852, CHARLES HUGHES, J. P. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss Nicholas C. Northup, of the village of Sandy Hill, in said county, being duly sworn, doth depose and say, that he is now fifty-eight years of age, and has known Solomon Northup, mentioned in the annexed memorial of Ann Northup, ever since he was born. And this deponent saith that said Solomon is now about forty-five years old, and was born in the county of Washington aforesaid, or in the county of Essex, in said State, and always resided in the State of New-York until about the year 1841, since which time deponent has not seen him or known where he was, until a few weeks since, deponent was informed, and believes truly, that said Solomon was held in slavery in the State of Louisiana. Deponent further says, that said Solomon was married in the town of Fort Edward, in said county, about twenty-four years ago, and that his wife and two daughters and one son now reside in the village of Glens Falls, county of Warren, in said State of New-York. And this deponent swears positively that said Solomon Northup is a citizen of said State of New-York, and was born free, and from his earliest infancy lived and resided in the counties of Washington, Essex, Warren and Saratoga, in the State of New-York, and that his said wife and children have never resided out of said counties since the time said Solomon was married; that deponent knew the father of said Solomon Northup; that said father was a negro, named Mintus Northup, and died in the town of Fort Edward, in the county of Washington, State of New-York, on the 22d day of November, A. D. 1829, and was buried in the grave-yard in Sandy Hill aforesaid; that for more than thirty years before his death he lived in the counties of Essex, Washington and Rensselaer and State of New-York, and left a wife and two sons, Joseph and the said Solomon, him surviving; that the mother of said Solomon was a mulatto woman, and is now dead, and died, as deponent believes, in Oswego county, New-York, within five or six years past. And this deponent further states, that the mother of the said Solomon Northup was not a slave at the time of the birth of said Solomon Northup, and has not been a slave at any time within the last fifty years. (Signed,) N. C. NORTHUP. Subscribed and sworn before me this 19th day of November, 1852. CHARLES HUGHES, Justice Peace. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss. Orville Clark, of the village of Sandy Hill, in the county of Washington, State of New-York, being duly sworn, doth depose and say--that he, this deponent, is over fifty years of age; that in the years 1810 and 1811, or most of the time of those years, this deponent resided at Sandy Hill, aforesaid, and at Glens Falls; that this deponent then knew Mintus Northup, a black or colored man; he was then a free man, as this deponent believes and always understood; that the wife of said Mintus Northup, and mother of Solomon, was a free woman; that from the year 1818 until the time of the death of said Mintus Northup, about the year 1829, this deponent was very well acquainted with the said Mintus Northup; that he was a respectable man in the community in which he resided, and was a free man, so taken and esteemed by all his acquaintances; that this deponent has also been and was acquainted with his son Solomon Northup, from the said year 1818 until he left this part of the country, about the year 1840 or 1841; that he married Anne Hampton, daughter of William Hampton, a near neighbor of this deponent; that the said Anne, wife of said Solomon, is now living and resides in this vicinity; that the said Mintus Northup and William Hampton were both reputed and esteemed in this community as respectable men. And this deponent saith that the said Mintus Northup and his family, and the said William Hampton and his family, from the earliest recollection and acquaintance of this deponent with him (as far back as 1810,) were always reputed, esteemed, and taken to be, and this deponent believes, truly so, free citizens of the State of New-York. This deponent knows the said William Hampton, under the laws of this State, was entitled to vote at our elections, and he believes the said Mintus Northup also was entitled as a free citizen with the property qualification. And this deponent further saith, that the said Solomon Northup, son of said Mintus, and husband of said Anne Hampton, when he left this State, was at the time thereof a free citizen of the State of New-York. And this deponent further saith, that said Anne Hampton, wife of Solomon Northup, is a respectable woman, of good character, and I would believe her statements, and do believe the facts set forth in her memorial to his excellency, the Governor, in relation to her said husband, are true. (Signed,) ORVILLE CLARK. Sworn before me, November 19th, 1852. U. G. PARIS, Justice of the Peace. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss. Benjamin Ferris, of the village of Sandy Hill, in said county, being duly sworn, doth depose and say--that he is now fifty-seven years old, and has resided in said village forty-five years; that he was well acquainted with Mintus Northup, named in the annexed memorial of Anne Northup, from the year 1816 to the time of his death, which occurred at Fort Edward, in the fall of 1829; that he knew the children of the said Mintus, namely, Joseph Northup and Solomon Northup, and that the said Solomon is the same person named in said memorial; that said Mintus resided in the said county of Washington to the time of his death, and was, during all that time, a free citizen of the said State of New-York, as deponent verily believes; that said memorialist, Anne Northup, is a woman of good character, and the statement contained in her memorial is entitled to credit. (Signed) BENJAMIN FERRIS. Sworn before me, November 19th, 1852. U. G. PARIS, Justice of the Peace. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Executive Chamber, Albany, Nov. 30, 1852. I hereby certify that the foregoing is a correct copy of certain proofs filed in the Executive Department, upon which I have appointed Henry B. Northup an Agent of this State, to take proper proceedings in behalf of Solomon Northup, there in mentioned. (Signed,) WASHINGTON HUNT. By the Governor. J. F. R., Private Secretary. * * * * * STATE OF NEW-YORK: Executive Department. WASHINGTON HUNT, _Governor of the State of New-York, to whom it may concern, greeting_: Whereas, I have received information on oath, which is satisfactary to me, that Solomon Northup, who is a free citizen of this State, is wrongfully held in slavery, in the State of Louisiana: And whereas, it is made my duty, by the laws of this State, to take such measures as I shall deem necessary to procure any citizen so wrongfully held in slavery, to be restored to his liberty and returned to this State: Be it known, that in pursuance of chapter 375 of the laws of this State, passed in 1840, I have constituted, appointed and employed Henry B. Northup, Esquire, of the county of Washington, in this State, an Agent, with full power to effect the restoration of said Solomon Northup, and the said Agent is hereby authorized and empowered to institute such proper and legal proceedings, to procure such evidence, retain such counsel, and finally to take such measures as will be most likely to accomplish the object of his said appointment. He is also instructed to proceed to the State of Louisiana with all convenient dispatch, to execute the agency hereby created. In witness whereof, I have hereunto subscribed my name, and [L.S.] affixed the privy seal of the State, at Albany, this 23d day of November, in the year of our Lord 1852. (Signed,) WASHINGTON HUNT. JAMES F. RUGGLES, Private Secretary. C.--Page 309. STATE OF LOUISIANA: Parish of Avoyelles. Before me, Aristide Barbin, Recorder of the parish of Avoyelles, personally came and appeared Henry B. Northup, of the county of Washington, State of New-York, who hath declared that by virtue of a commission to him as agent of the State of New-York, given and granted by his excellency, Washington Hunt, Governor of the said State of New-York, bearing date the 23d day of November, 1852, authorizing and empowering him, the said Northup, to pursue and recover from slavery a free man of color, called Solomon Northup, who is a free citizen of the State of New-York, and who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, in the State of Louisiana, and now in the possession of Edwin Epps, of the State of Louisiana, of the Parish of Avoyelles; he, the said agent, hereto signing, acknowledges that the said Edwin has this day given and surrendered to him as such agent, the said Solomon Northup, free man of color, as aforesaid, in order that he be restored to his freedom, and carried back to the said State of New-York, pursuant to said commission, the said Edwin Epps being satisfied from the proofs produced by said agent, that the said Solomon Northup is entitled to his freedom. The parties consenting that a certified copy of said power of attorney be annexed to this act. Done and signed at Marksville, parish of Avoyelles, this fourth day of January, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, in the presence of the undersigned, legal and competent witnesses, who have also hereto signed. (Signed,) HENRY B. NORTHUP. EDWIN EPPS. ADE. BARBIN, Recorder. Witnesses: H. TAYLOR, JOHN P. WADDILL. * * * * * STATE OF LOUISIANA: Parish of Avoyelles. I do hereby certify the foregoing to be a true and correct copy of the original on file and of record in my office. [L.S.] Given under my hand and seal of office as Recorder in and for the parish of Avoyelles, this 4th day of January, A. D. 1853. (Signed,) ADE. BARBIN, Recorder. THE END * * * * * [Transcriber's Notes: The transcriber made these changes to the text: 1. p. xi., Chalenged --> Challenged 2. p. xiii., Coversation --> Conversation 3. p. xvi, expresssion --> expression 4. p. 53, hight --> height 5. p. 58, susually --> usually 6. p. 86, She's not for sale. --> She's not for sale." 7. p. 97, looded --> looked 8. p, 103, capenter --> carpenter 9. p. 106, aligators --> alligators 10. p. 112, Chenyville --> Cheneyville 11. p. 135, gripe --> grip 12. p. 138, loose --> lose 13. p. 149, listing --> listening 14. p. 156, an one --> a one 15. p. 224, maintin --> maintain 16. p. 244, LEW CHEENEY --> LEW CHENEY 17. p. 274, priviliges --> privileges 18. p. 296, 'bringing down his hand emphatically on the table,' --> bringing down his hand emphatically on the table, 19. p. 314, reppresented --> represented 20. p. 316, offer- --> offered End of Transcriber's Notes] 
40255	----	TRANSCRIBER NOTES: Words or letters contained within underscores, i.e. _Proceedings_, indicate italics in the original. Letters or numbers preceded by ^ (carat) indicate superscripts. Multiple letter superscripts are contained within { } brackets. Initials followed by a period (.) and contained within [ ] brackets indicated a superscript letter above a period. For example: J^[S.]C. Footnotes have been moved to the end of each section. The List of Illustrations has been added to this project as an aid to the reader. It does not appear in the original book. Additional notes can be found at the end of this text. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM [Illustration] BULLETIN 253 WASHINGTON, D.C. 1968 The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia An Archeological and Historical Investigation of the Port Town for Stafford County and the Plantation of John Mercer, Including Data Supplied by Frank M. Setzler and Oscar H. Darter C. MALCOLM WATKINS CURATOR OR CULTURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PRESS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION · WASHINGTON, D.C. · 1968 _Publications of the United States National Museum_ The scholarly and scientific publications of the United States National Museum include two series, _Proceedings of the United States National Museum_ and _United States National Museum Bulletin_. In these series, the Museum publishes original articles and monographs dealing with the collections and work of its constituent museums--The Museum of Natural History and the Museum of History and Technology--setting forth newly acquired facts in the fields of anthropology, biology, history, geology, and technology. Copies of each publication are distributed to libraries, to cultural and scientific organizations, and to specialists and others interested in the different subjects. The _Proceedings_, begun in 1878, are intended for the publication, in separate form, of shorter papers from the Museum of Natural History. These are gathered in volumes, octavo in size, with the publication date of each paper recorded in the table of contents of the volume. In the _Bulletin_ series, the first of which was issued in 1875, appear longer, separate publications consisting of monographs (occasionally in several parts) and volumes in which are collected works on related subjects. _Bulletins_ are either octavo or quarto in size, depending on the needs of the presentation. Since 1902 papers relating to the botanical collections of the Museum of Natural History have been published in the _Bulletin_ series under the heading _Contributions from the United States National Herbarium_, and since 1959, in _Bulletins_ titled "Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology," have been gathered shorter papers relating to the collections and research of that Museum. This work forms volume 253 of the _Bulletin_ series. FRANK A. TAYLOR _Director, United States National Museum_ For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402--Price $3.75 Contents _Page_ Preface vii HISTORY 3 I. Official port towns in Virginia and origins of Marlborough 5 II. John Mercer's occupation of Marlborough, 1726-1730 15 III. Mercer's consolidation of Marlborough, 1730-1740 21 IV. Marlborough at its ascendancy, 1741-1750 27 V. Mercer and Marlborough, from zenith to decline, 1751-1768 49 VI. Dissolution of Marlborough 61 ARCHEOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURE 65 VII. The site, its problem, and preliminary tests 67 VIII. Archeological techniques 70 IX. Wall system 71 X. Mansion foundation (Structure B) 85 XI. Kitchen foundation (Structure E) 101 XII. Supposed smokehouse foundation (Structure F) 107 XIII. Pits and other structures 111 XIV. Stafford courthouse south of Potomac Creek 115 ARTIFACTS 123 XV. Ceramics 125 XVI. Glass 145 XVII. Objects of personal use 155 XVIII. Metalwork 159 XIX. Conclusion 173 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 175 XX. Summary of findings 177 Appendixes 181 A. Inventory of George Andrews, Ordinary Keeper 183 B. Inventory of Peter Beach 184 C. Charges to account of Mosley Battaley 185 D. "Domestick Expenses," 1725 186 E. John Mercer's reading, 1726-1732 191 F. Credit side of John Mercer's account with Nathaniel Chapman 193 G. Overwharton Parish account 194 H. Colonists identified by John Mercer according to occupation 195 I. Materials listed in accounts with Hunter and Dick, Fredericksburg 196 J. George Mercer's expenses while attending college 197 K. John Mercer's library 198 L. Botanical record and prevailing temperatures, 17 209 M. Inventory of Marlborough, 1771 211 Index 213 List of Illustrations Figure John Mercer's Bookplate 1 Survey plates of Marlborough 2 Portrait of John Mercer 3 The Neighborhood of John Mercer 4 King William Courthouse 5 Mother-of-pearl counters 6 John Mercer's Tobacco-cask symbols 7 Wine-bottle seal 8 French horn 9 Hornbook 10 Fireplace mantels 11 Doorways 12 Table-desk 13 Archeological survey plan 14 Portrait of Ann Roy Mercer 15 Advertisement of the services of Mercer's stallion Ranter 16 Page from Maria Sibylla Merian's _Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium efte Veranderung Surinaamsche Insecten_ 17 Aerial Photograph of Marlborough 18 Highway 621 19 Excavation plan of Marlborough 20 Excavation plan of wall system 21 Looking north 22 Outcropping of stone wall 23 Junction of stone Wall A 24 Looking north in line with Walls A and A-II 25 Wall A-II 26 Junction of Wall A-I 27 Wall E 28 Detail of Gateway in Wall E 29 Wall B-II 30 Wall D 31 Excavation plan of Structure B 32 Site of Structure B 33 Southwest corner of Structure B 34 Southwest corner of Structure B 35 South wall of Structure B 36 Cellar of Structure B 37 Section of red-sandstone arch 38 Helically contoured red-sandstone 39 Cast-concrete block 40 Dressed red-sandstone block 41 Fossil-embedded black sedimentary stone 42 Foundation of porch at north end of Structure B 43 Plan of mansion house 44 The Villa of "the magnificent Lord Leonardo Emo" 45 Excavation plan of Structure E 46 Foundation of Structure E 47 Paved floor of Room X, Structure E 48 North wall of Structure E 49 Wrought-iron slab 50 Excavation plan of structures north of Wall D 51 Structure F 52 Virginia brick from Structure B 53 Structure D 54 Refuse found at exterior corner of Wall A-II and Wall D 55 Excavation plan of Structure H 56 Structure H 57 1743 drawing showing location of Stafford courthouse 58 Enlarged detail from figure 58 59 Excavation plan of Stafford courthouse foundation 60 Hanover courthouse 61 Plan of King William courthouse 62 Tidewater-type pottery 63 Miscellaneous common earthenware types 64 Buckley-type high-fired ware 65 Westerwald stoneware 66 Fine English stoneware 67 English Delftware 68 Delft plate 69 Delft plate 70 Whieldon-type tortoiseshell ware 71 Queensware 72 Fragment of Queensware 73 English white earthenwares 74 Polychrome Chinese porcelain 75 Blue-and-white Chinese porcelain 76 Blue-and-white Chinese porcelain 77 Wine bottle 78 Bottle seals 79 Octagonal spirits bottle 80 Snuff bottle 81 Glassware 82 Small metalwork 83 Personal miscellany 84 Cutlery 85 Metalwork 86 Ironware 87 Iron door and chest hardware 88 Tools 89 Scythe 90 Farm gear 91 Illustration Front and back cast-concrete block 1 and 2 Iron tie bar 3 Cross section of plaster cornice molding from Structure B 4 Reconstructed wine bottle 5 Fragment of molded white salt-glazed platter 6 Iron bolt 7 Stone scraping tool 8 Indian celt 9 Milk pan 10 Milk pan 11 Ale mug 12 Cover of jar 13 Base of bowl 14 Handle of pot lid or oven door 15 Buff-earthenware cup 16 High-fired earthenware pan rim 17 High-fired earthenware jar rim 18 Rim and base profiles of high-fired earthenware jars 19 Base sherd from unglazed red-earthenware water cooler 20 Rim of an earthenware flowerpot 21 Base of gray-brown, salt-glazed-stoneware ale mug 22 Stoneware jug fragment 23 Gray-salt-glazed-stoneware jar profile 24 Drab-stoneware mug fragment 25 Wheel-turned cover of white, salt-glazed teapot 26 Body sherds of molded, white salt-glaze-ware pitcher 27 English delftware washbowl sherd 28 English delftware plate 29 English delftware plate 30 Delftware ointment pot 31 Sherds of black basaltes ware 32 Blue-and-white Chinese porcelain saucer 33 Blue-and-white Chinese porcelain plate 34 Beverage bottle 35 Beverage-bottle seal 36 Complete beverage bottle 37 Cylindrical beverage bottle 38 Cylindrical beverage bottle 39 Octagonal, pint-size beverage bottle 40 Square gin bottle 41 Square snuff bottle 42 Wineglass, reconstructed 43 Cordial glass 44 Sherds of engraved-glass wine and cordial glasses 45 Clear-glass tumbler 46 Octagonal cut-glass trencher salt 47 Brass buckle 48 Brass knee buckle 49 Brass thimble 50 Chalk bullet mold 51 Fragments of tobacco-pipe bowl 52 White-kaolin tobacco pipe 53 Slate pencil 54 Fragment of long-tined fork 55 Fragment of long-tined fork 56 Fork with two-part handle 57 Trifid-handle pewter spoon 58 Wavy-end pewter spoon 59 Pewter teapot lid 60 Steel scissors 61 Iron candle snuffers 62 Iron butt hinge 63 End of strap hinge 64 Catch for door latch 65 Wrought-iron hasp 66 Brass drop handle 67 Wrought-iron catch or striker 68 Iron slide bolt 69 Series of wrought-iron nails 70 Series of wrought-iron flooring nails and brads 71 Fragment of clouting nail 72 Hand-forged spike 73 Blacksmith's hammer 74 Iron wrench 75 Iron scraping tool 76 Bit or gouge chisel 77 Jeweler's hammer 78 Wrought-iron colter from plow 79 Hook used with wagon 80 Bolt with wingnut 81 Lashing hook from cart 82 Hilling hoe 83 Iron reinforcement strip from back of shovel handle 84 Half of sheep shears 85 Animal trap 86 Iron bridle bit 87 Fishhook 88 Brass strap handle 89 Preface A number of people participated in the preparation of this study. The inspiration for the archeological and historical investigations came from Professor Oscar H. Darter, who until 1960 was chairman of the Department of Historical and Social Sciences at Mary Washington College, the women's branch of the University of Virginia. The actual excavations were made under the direction of Frank M. Setzler, formerly the head curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. None of the investigation would have been possible had not the owners of the property permitted the excavations to be made, sometimes at considerable inconvenience to themselves. I am indebted to W. Biscoe, Ralph Whitticar, Jr., and Thomas Ashby, all of whom owned the excavated areas at Marlborough; and T. Ben Williams, whose cornfield includes the site of the 18th-century Stafford County courthouse, south of Potomac Creek. For many years Dr. Darter has been a resident of Fredericksburg and, in the summers, of Marlborough Point on the Potomac River. During these years, he has devoted himself to the history of the Stafford County area which lies between these two locations in northeastern Virginia. Marlborough Point has interested Dr. Darter especially since it is the site of one of the Virginia colonial port towns designated by Act of Assembly in 1691. During the town's brief existence, it was the location of the Stafford County courthouse and the place where the colonial planter and lawyer John Mercer established his home in 1726. Tangible evidence of colonial activities at Marlborough Point--in the form of brickbats and potsherds still can be seen after each plowing, while John Mercer's "Land Book," examined anew by Dr. Darter, has revealed the original survey plats of the port town. In this same period and as early as 1938, Dr. T. Dale Stewart (then curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution) had commenced excavations at the Indian village site of Patawomecke, a few hundred yards west of the Marlborough Town site. The aboriginal backgrounds of the area including Marlborough Point already had been investigated. As the result of his historical research connected with this project, Dr. Stewart has contributed fundamentally to the present undertaking by foreseeing the excavations of Marlborough Town as a logical step beyond his own investigation. Motivated by this combination of interests, circumstances, and historical clues, Dr. Darter invited the Smithsonian Institution to participate in an archeological investigation of Marlborough. Preliminary tests made in August 1954 were sufficiently rewarding to justify such a project. Consequently, an application for funds was prepared jointly and was submitted by Dr. Darter through the University of Virginia to the American Philosophical Society. In January 1956 grant number 159, Johnson Fund (1955), for $1500 was assigned to the program. In addition, the Smithsonian Institution contributed the professional services necessary for field research and directed the purchase of microfilms and photostats, the drawing of maps and illustrations, and the preparation and publication of this report. Dr. Darter hospitably provided the use of his Marlborough Point cottage during the period of excavation, and Mary Washington College administered the grant. Frank Setzler directed the excavations during a six-week period in April and May 1956, while interpretation of cultural material and the searches of historical data related to it were carried out by C. Malcolm Watkins. At the commencement of archeological work it was expected that traces of the 17th- and early 18th-century town would be found, including, perhaps, the foundations of the courthouse. This expectation was not realized, although what was found from the Mercer period proved to be of greater importance. After completion, a report was made in the 1956 _Year Book_ of the American Philosophical Society (pp. 304-308). After the 1956 excavations, the question remained whether the principal foundation (Structure B) might not have been that of the courthouse. Therefore, in August 1957 a week-long effort was made to find comparative evidence by digging the site of the succeeding 18th-century Stafford County courthouse at the head of Potomac Creek. This disclosed a foundation sufficiently different from Structure B to rule out any analogy between the two. It should be made clear that--because of the limited size of the grant--the archeological phase of the investigation was necessarily a limited survey. Only the more obvious features could be examined within the means at the project's disposal. No final conclusions relative to Structure B, for example, are warranted until the section of foundation beneath the highway which crosses it can be excavated. Further excavations need to be made south and southeast of Structure B and elsewhere in search of outbuildings and evidence of 17th-century occupancy. Despite such limitations, this study is a detailed examination of a segment of colonial Virginia's plantation culture. It has been prepared with the hope that it will provide Dr. Darter with essential material for his area studies and, also, with the wider objective of increasing the knowledge of the material culture of colonial America. Appropriate to the function of a museum such as the Smithsonian, this study is concerned principally with what is concrete--objects and artifacts and the meanings that are to be derived from them. It has relied upon the mutually dependent techniques of archeologist and cultural historian and will serve, it is hoped, as a guide to further investigations of this sort by historical museums and organizations. Among the many individuals contributing to this study, I am especially indebted to Dr. Darter; to the members of the American Philosophical Society who made the excavations possible; to Dr. Stewart, who reviewed the archeological sections at each step as they were written; to Mrs. Sigrid Hull who drew the line-and-stipple illustrations which embellish the report; Edward G. Schumacher of the Bureau of American Ethnology, who made the archeological maps and drawings; Jack Scott of the Smithsonian photographic laboratory, who photographed the artifacts; and George Harrison Sanford King of Fredericksburg, from whom the necessary documentation for the 18th-century courthouse site was obtained. I am grateful also to Dr. Anthony N. B. Garvan, professor of American civilization at the University of Pennsylvania and former head curator of the Smithsonian Institution's department of civil history, for invaluable encouragement and advice; and to Worth Bailey formerly with the Historic American Buildings Survey, for many ideas, suggestions, and important identifications of craftsmen listed in Mercer's ledgers. I am equally indebted to Ivor Noël Hume, director of archeology at Colonial Williamsburg and an honorary research associate of the Smithsonian Institution, for his assistance in the identification of artifacts; to Mrs. Mabel Niemeyer, librarian of the Bucks County Historical Society, for her cooperation in making the Mercer ledgers available for this report; to Donald E. Roy, librarian of the Darlington Library, University of Pittsburgh, for providing the invaluable clue that directed me to the ledgers; to the staffs of the Virginia State Library and the Alexandria Library for repeated courtesies and cooperation; and to Miss Rodris Roth, associate curator of cultural history at the Smithsonian, for detecting Thomas Oliver's inventory of Marlborough in a least suspected source. I greatly appreciate receiving generous permissions from the University of Pittsburgh Press to quote extensively from the _George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia_, and from Russell & Russell to copy Thomas Oliver's inventory of Marlborough. To all of these people and to the countless others who contributed in one way or another to the completion of this study, I offer my grateful thanks. C. MALCOLM WATKINS Washington, D.C. 1967 The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia [Illustration: Figure 1.--JOHN MERCER'S BOOKPLATE.] HISTORY I _Official Port Towns in Virginia and Origins of Marlborough_ ESTABLISHING THE PORT TOWNS The dependence of 17th-century Virginia upon the single crop--tobacco--was a chronic problem. A bad crop year or a depressed English market could plunge the whole colony into debt, creating a chain reaction of overextended credits and failures to meet obligations. Tobacco exhausted the soil, and soil exhaustion led to an ever-widening search for new land. This in turn brought about population dispersal and extreme decentralization. After the Restoration in 1660 the Virginia colonial government was faced not only with these economic hazards but also with the resulting administrative difficulties. It was awkward to govern a scattered population and almost impossible to collect customs duties on imports landed at the planters' own wharves along hundreds of miles of inland waterways. The royal governors and responsible persons in the Assembly reacted therefore with a succession of plans to establish towns that would be the sole ports of entry for the areas they served, thus making theoretically simple the task of securing customs revenues. The towns also would be centers of business and manufacture, diversifying the colony's economic supports and lessening its dependence on tobacco. To men of English origin this establishment of port communities must have seemed natural and logical. The first such proposal became law in 1662, establishing a port town for each of the major river valleys and for the Eastern Shore. But the law's sponsors were doomed to disappointment, for the towns were not built.[1] After a considerable lapse, a new act was passed in 1680, this one better implemented and further reaching. It provided for a port town in each county, where ships were to deliver their goods and pick up tobacco and other exports from town warehouses for their return voyages.[2] One of its most influential supporters was William Fitzhugh of Stafford County, a wealthy planter and distinguished leader in the colony.[3] "We have now resolved a cessation of making Tob^o next year," he wrote to his London agent, Captain Partis, in 1680. "We are also going to make Towns, if you can meet with any tradesmen that will come and live at the Town, they may have privileges and immunitys."[4] [Illustration: Potomack River] [Illustration: Figure 2.--Survey plats of Marlborough as copied in John Mercer's Land Book showing at bottom, John Savage's, 1731; and top, William Buckner's and Theodorick Bland's, 1691. (The courthouse probably stood in the vicinity of lot 21.)] Some of these towns actually were laid out, each on a 50-acre tract of half-acre lots, but only 9 tracts were built upon. The Act soon lagged and collapsed. It was unpopular with the colonists, who were obliged to transport their tobacco to distant warehouses and to pay storage fees; it was ignored by shipmasters, who were in the habit of dealing directly with planters at their wharves and who were not interested in making it any easier for His Majesty's customs collectors.[5] Nevertheless, efforts to come up with a third act began in 1688.[6] William Fitzhugh, especially, was articulate in his alarm over Virginia's one-crop economy, the effects of which the towns were supposed to mitigate. At this time he referred to tobacco as "our most despicable commodity." A year later, he remarked, "it is more uncertain for a Planter to get money by consigned Tob^o then to get a prize in a lottery, there being twenty chances for one chance."[7] In April 1691 the Act for Ports was passed, the House, significantly, recording only one dissenting vote.[8] Unlike its predecessor, which encouraged trades and crafts, this Act was justified purely on the basis of overcoming the "great opportunity ... given to such as attempt to import or export goods and merchandises, without entering or paying the duties and customs due thereupon, much practised by greedy and covetous persons." It provided that all exports and imports should be taken up or set down at the specified ports and nowhere else, under penalty of forfeiting ship, gear, and cargo, and that the law should become effective October 1, 1692. The towns again were to be surveyed and laid out in 50-acre tracts. Feoffees, to be appointed, would grant half-acre lots on a pro rata first-cost basis. Grantees "shall within the space of four months next ensueing such grant begin and without delay proceed to build and finish on each half acre one good house, to containe twenty foot square at the least, wherein if he fails to performe them such grant to be void in law, and the lands therein granted lyable to the choyce and purchase of any other person." Justices of the county courts were to fill vacancies among the feoffees and to appoint customs collectors.[9] FOOTNOTES: [1] WILLIAM WALLER HENING, _The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia_ (New York, 1823), vol. 2, pp. 172-176. [2] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 471-478. [3] William Fitzhugh was founder of the renowned Virginia family that bear his name. As chief justice of the Stafford County court, burgess, merchant, and wealthy planter, he epitomized the landed aristocrat in 17th-century Virginia. See "Letters of William Fitzhugh," _Virginia Magazine of History & Biography_ (Richmond, 1894), vol. 1, p. 17 (hereinafter designated _VHM_), and _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_ (1676-1701), edit. Richard Beale Davis (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, for the Virginia Historical Society, 1963). [4] _VHM_, op. cit., p. 30. [5] ROBERT BEVERLEY, _The History and Present State of Virginia_, edit. Louis B. Wright (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 88; PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE, _Economic History of Virginia_, 2nd ed. (New York: P. Smith, 1935), vol. 2, pp. 553-554. [6] _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia_ (hereinafter designated _JHB_) 1659/60-1693, edit. H. R. McIlwaine (Richmond, Virginia: Virginia State Library, 1914), pp. 303, 305, 308, 315. [7] "Letters of William Fitzhugh," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1895), vol. 2, pp. 374-375. [8] _JHB 1659/60-1693_, op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 351. [9] HENING, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 3, pp. 53-69. THE PORT TOWN FOR STAFFORD COUNTY The difficulties confronting the central and local governing bodies in putting the Acts into effect are illustrated by the attempts to establish a port town for Stafford County. Under the act of 1680 a town was to be built at "Peace Point," where the Catholic refugee Giles Brent had settled nearly forty years before, but there is no evidence that even so much as a survey was made there. The 1691 Act for Ports located the town at Potomac Neck, where Accokeek Creek and Potomac Creek converge on the Potomac River. Situated about three miles below the previously designated site, it was again on Brent property, lying within a tract leased for life to Captain Malachi Peale, former high sheriff of Stafford. On October 9, 1691, the Stafford Court "ordered that Mr. William Buckner deputy Surveyor of this County shall on Thursday next ... repair to the Malachy Peale neck being the place allotted by act of assembly for this Town and Port of this County and shall then and there Survey and Lay Out the said Towne or Port ... to the Interest that all the gentlemen of and all other of the Inhabitants may take up such Lot and Lots as be and they desire...." On the same day John Withers and Matthew Thompson, both justices of the peace, were appointed "Feoffees in Trust." Young Giles Brent, "son and heir of Giles Brent Gent. late of this county dec^{ed}" and not yet 21, selected Francis Hammersley as his guardian. Hammersley in this capacity became the administrator of Brent's affairs, and accordingly it was agreed that 13,000 pounds of tobacco should be paid to him in exchange for the 50 acres of town land owned by Brent.[10] Actually, 52 acres were surveyed, "two of the said acres being the Land belonging to and laid out for the Court House according to a former Act of Assembly and the other fifty acres pursuant to the late Act for Ports." The "former Act of Assembly" which had been passed in 1667 had stipulated the allotment of two-acre tracts for churches and court houses, which in case the lots "be deserted y^e land shall revert to y^e 1st proprietor...."[11] For the extra two acres Hammersley was given 800 pounds of tobacco in addition. Of the total of 13,800 pounds, 3450 were set aside to compensate Malachi Peale for the loss of his leasehold. The order for the survey to be made was a formality, since the plat had actually been drawn ahead of time by Buckner on August 16, nearly two months before; clearly the Staffordians were eager to begin their town. Buckner's plat was copied by his superior, Theodorick Bland, and entered in the now-missing Stafford Survey Book. John Savage, a later surveyor, in 1731 provided John Mercer with a duplicate of Bland's copy, which has survived in John Mercer's Land Book (fig. 2).[12] On February 11, 1692, the feoffees granted 27 lots to 15 applicants. John Mercer's later review of the town's history in this period states that "many" of the lots were "built on and improved."[13] Two ordinaries were licensed, one in 1691 and one in 1693, but no business activity other than the Potomac Creek ferry seems to have been conducted.[14] Any future the town might have had was erased by the same adverse reactions that had killed the previous port acts. The merchants and shippers used their negative influence and on March 22, 1693, a "bill for suspension of y^e act for Ports &c till their Maj^{ts} pleasure shall be known therein or till y^e next assembly" passed the house. In due course the act was reviewed and returned unsigned for further consideration. William Fitzhugh, on October 17, 1693, dutifully read the recommendation of the Committee of Grievances and Properties "That the appointment of Ports & injoyneing the Landing and Shipping of all goods imported or to be exported at & from the same will (considering the present circumstances of the Country) be very injurious & burthensome to the Inhabitants thereof and traders thereunto."[15] Doubtless dictated by the Board of Trade in London, the recommendation was a defeat for those who, like Fitzhugh, sought by the establishment of towns to break tobacco's strangle-hold on Virginia. FOOTNOTES: [10] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694 (MS bound with order book for 1664-1688, but paginated separately), pp. 175, 177, 180, 189. [11] "Mills," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1903), vol. 10, pp. 147-148. [12] John Mercer's Land Book (MS., Virginia State Library). [13] _JHB, 1742-1747; 1748-1749_ (Richmond, 1909), pp. 285-286. [14] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, pp. 184, 357. [15] HENING, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 3, pp. 108-109. THE ACT FOR PORTS OF 1705 AND THE NAMING OF MARLBOROUGH Nevertheless, the town idea was hard to kill. In 1705 Stafford's port town, along with those in the other counties, was given a new lease on life when still another Act for Ports, introduced by Robert Beverley, was passed. This Act repeated in substance the provisions of its immediate forerunner, but provided in addition extravagant inducements to settlement. Those who inhabited the towns were exempted from three-quarters of the customs duties paid by others; they were freed of poll taxes for 15 years; they were relieved from military mustering outside the towns and from marching outside, excepting the "exigency" of war (and then only for a distance of no more than 50 miles). Goods and "dead provision" were not to be sold outside within a 5-mile radius, and ordinaries (other than those within the towns) were not permitted closer than 10 miles to the towns' boundaries, except at courthouses and ferry landings. Each town was to be a free "burgh," and, when it had grown to 30 families "besides ordinary keepers," "eight principal inhabitants" were to be chosen by vote of the "freeholders and inhabitants of the town of twenty-one years of age and upwards, not being servants or apprentices," to be called "benchers of the guild-hall." These eight "benchers" would govern the town for life or until removal, selecting a "director" from among themselves. When 60 families had settled, "brethren assistants of the guild hall" were to be elected similarly to serve as a common council. Each town was to have two market days a week and an annual five-day fair. The towns listed under the Act were virtually the same as before, but this time each was given an official name, the hitherto anonymous town for Stafford being called Marlborough in honor of the hero of the recent victory at Blenheim.[16] The elaborate vision of the Act's sponsors never was realized in the newly christened town, but there was in due course a slight resumption of activity in it. George Mason and William Fitzhugh, Jr. (the son of William Fitzhugh of Stafford County) were appointed feoffees in 1707, and a new survey was made by Thomas Gregg. The following year seven more lots were granted, and for an interval of two years Marlborough functioned technically as an official port.[17] Inevitably, perhaps, history repeated itself. In 1710 the Act for Ports, like its predecessors, was rescinded. The reasons given in London were brief and straightforward; the Act, it was explained, was "designed to Encourage by great Priviledges the settling in Townships." These settlements would encourage manufactures, which, in turn, would promote "further Improvement of the said manufactures, And take them off from the Planting of Tobacco, which would be of Very Ill consequence," thus lessening the colony's dependence on the Kingdom, affecting the import of tobacco, and prejudicing shipping.[18] Clearly, the Crown did not want the towns to succeed, nor would it tolerate anything which might stimulate colonial self-dependence. The Virginia colonists' dream of corporate communities was not to be realized. Most of the towns either died entirely or struggled on as crossroads villages. A meager few have survived to the present, notably Norfolk, Hampton, Yorktown, and Tappahannock. Marlborough lasted as a town until about 1720, but in about 1718 the courthouse and several dwellings were destroyed by fire and "A new Court House being built at another Place, all or most of the Houses that had been built in the said Town, were either burnt or suffered to go to ruin."[19] The towns were artificial entities, created by acts of assembly, not by economic or social necessity. In the few places where they filled a need, notably in the populous areas of the lower James and York Rivers, they flourished without regard to official status. In other places, by contrast, no law or edict sufficed to make them live when conditions did not warrant them. In sparsely settled Stafford especially there was little to nurture a town. It was easier, and perhaps more exciting, to grow tobacco and gamble on a successful crop, to go in debt when things were bad or lend to the less fortunate when things were better. In the latter case land became an acceptable medium for the payment of debts. Land was wealth and power, its enlargement the means of greater production of tobacco--tobacco again the great gamble by which one would always hope to rise and not to fall. When one could own an empire, why should one worry about a town? FOOTNOTES: [16] Ibid., pp. 404-419. [17] "Petition of John Mercer" (1748), (Ludwell papers, Virginia Historical Society), _VHM_ (Richmond, 1898), vol. 5, pp. 137-138. [18] _Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscdit. William P. Palmer, M.D. (Richmond, 1875), vol. 1, pp. 137-138. [19] _JHB, 1742-1747; 1748-1749_ (Richmond, 1909), pp. 285-286. ESTABLISHING COURTHOUSES The administrative problems that contributed to the establishment of the port towns also called for the erection of courthouses. As early as 1624 lower courts had been authorized for Charles City and Elizabeth City in recognition of the colony's expansion, and ten years later the colony had been divided into eight counties, with a monthly court established in each. By the Restoration the county courts possessed broadly expanded powers and were the administrative as well as the judicial sources of local government. In practice they were largely self-appointive and were responsible for filling most local offices. Since the courts were the vehicles of royal authority, it followed that the physical symbols of this authority should be emphasized by building proper houses of government. At Jamestown orders were given in 1663 to build a statehouse in lieu of the alehouses and ordinaries where laws had been made previously.[20] In the same year, four courthouses annually were ordered for the counties, the burgesses having been empowered to "make and Signe agreements w^{th} any that will undertake them to build, who are to give good Caution for the effecting thereof with good sufficient bricks, Lime, and Timber, and that the same be well wrought and after they are finished to be approved by an able surveyor, before order be given them for their pay."[21] Such buildings were to take the place of private dwellings and ordinaries in the same way as did the statehouse at Jamestown. It was no accident that legislation for houses of government coincided with that for establishing port towns. Each reflected the need for administering the far-flung reaches of the colony and for maintaining order and respect for the crown in remote places. FOOTNOTES: [20] HENING, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 2, pp. 204-205. [21] _JHB, (1659/60-1693)_, op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 28. THE COURTHOUSE IN THE PORT TOWN FOR STAFFORD COUNTY Stafford County, which had been set off from Westmoreland in 1664, was provided with a courthouse within a year of its establishment. Ralph Happel in _Stafford and King George Courthouses and the Fate of Marlborough, Port of Entry_, has given us a detailed chronicle of the Stafford courthouses, showing that the first structure was situated south of Potomac Creek until 1690, when it presumably burned.[22] The court, in any event, began to meet in a private house on November 12, 1690, while on November 14 one Sampson Darrell was appointed chief undertaker and Ambrose Bayley builder of a new courthouse. A contract was signed between them and the justices of the court to finish the building by June 10, 1692, at a cost of 40,000 pounds of tobacco and cash, half to be paid in 1691 and the remainder upon completion.[23] With William Fitzhugh the presiding magistrate of the Stafford County court as well as cosponsor of the Act for Ports, it was foreordained that the new courthouse should be tied in with plans for the port town. The Act for Ports, however, was still in the making, and it was not possible to begin the courthouse until after its passage in the spring. On June 10, 1691, it was "Ordered by this Court that Capt. George Mason and Mr. Blande the Surveyor shall immediately goe and run over the ground where the Town is to Stand and that they shall then advise and direct M^r Samson Darrell the Cheife undertaker of the Court house for this County where he shall Erect and build the same."[24] The court's order was followed by a hectic sequence that reflects, in general, the irresponsibilities, the lack of respect for law and order, and the frontier weaknesses which made it necessary to strengthen authority. It begins with Sampson Darrell himself, whose moral shortcomings seem to have been legion (hog-stealing, cheating a widow, and refusing to give indentured servants their freedom after they had earned it, to name a few). Darrell undoubtedly had the fastidious Fitzhugh's confidence, for certainly without that he would not have been appointed undertaker at all. In his position in the court, Fitzhugh would have been instrumental in selecting both architect and architecture for the courthouse, and Darrell seems to have met his requirements. Fitzhugh, in fact, had sufficient confidence in Darrell to entrust him with personal business in London in 1688.[25] Although several months elapsed before a site was chosen, enough of the new building was erected by October to shelter the court for its monthly assembly. In the course of this session, there occurred a "most mischievous and dangerous Riot,"[26] which rather violently inaugurated the new building. During this disturbance, the pastor of Potomac Parish, Parson John Waugh,[27] upbraided the court while it was "seated" and took occasion to call Fitzhugh a Papist. The court, taking cognizance of "disorders, misrules and Riots" and "the Fatal consequences of such unhappy malignant and Tumultuous proceeding," thereupon restricted the sale of liquor on court days (thus revealing what was at least accessory to the disturbance).[28] Fitzhugh's letter to the court concerning this episode mentions the "Court House" and the "Court house yard," adding to Happel's ample documentation that the new building was by now in use. During the November session, James Mussen was ordered into custody for having "dangerously wounded M^r. Sampson Darrell."[29] This suggests that the sequence of disturbances may have been associated with the unfinished state of the courthouse, which, like the town, symbolized the purposes of Fitzhugh and the property-owning aristocracy. Certain it is that Darrell, publicly identified with Fitzhugh, was violently assaulted and that "a complaint was made to this Court that Sampson Darrell the chief undertaker of the building and Erecting of a Court house for this county had not performed the same according to articles of agreement." He and Bayley accordingly were put under bond to finish the building by June 10, 1692. By February Bayley was complaining that he had not been paid for his work, "notwithstanding your pet^r as is well known to the whole County hath done all the carpenters work thereof and is ready to perform what is yet wanting." On May 12, less than a month from the deadline for completion, Darrell was ordered to pay Bayley the money owing, and Bayley was instructed to go on with the work. Nearly six months later, on November 10, Darrell again was directed to pay Bayley the full balance of his wages, but only "after the said Ambrose Bayley shall have finished and Compleatly ended the Court house."[30] No description of the courthouse has been found. The Act of 1663 seems to have required a brick building, although its wording is ambiguous. Even if it did stipulate brick, the law was 28 years old in 1691, and its requirements probably were ignored. Although Bayley, the builder, was a carpenter, this would not preclude the possibility that he supervised bricklayers and other artisans. Brick courthouses were not unknown; one was standing in Warwick when the Act for Ports was passed in 1691. Yet, the York courthouse, built in 1692, was a simple building, probably of wood.[31] In any case, the Stafford courthouse was a structure large enough to have required more than a year and a half to build, but not so elaborate as to have cost more than 40,000 pounds of tobacco. FOOTNOTES: [22] RALPH HAPPEL, "Stafford and King George Courthouses and the Fate of Marlborough, Port of Entry," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1958), vol. 66, pp. 183-194. [23] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, p. 187. [24] Ibid., p. 122. [25] _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World (1676-1701)_, op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 241. [26] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, p. 194. [27] Ibid., p. 182. [28] In Virginia recurrent English fears of Catholic domination were reflected at this time in hysterical rumors that the Roman Catholics of Maryland were plotting to stir up the Indians against Virginia. In Stafford County these suspicions were inflamed by the harangues of Parson John Waugh, minister of Stafford Parish church and Chotank church. Waugh, who seems to have been a rabble rouser, appealed to the same small landholders and malcontents as those who, a generation earlier, had followed Nathaniel Bacon's leadership. So seriously did the authorities at Jamestown regard the disturbance at Stafford courthouse that they sent three councillors to investigate. See "Notes," _William & Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine_ (Richmond, 1907), 1st ser., vol. 15, pp. 189-190 (hereinafter designated _WMQ_) [1]; and Richard Beale Davis' introduction to _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_, op. cit. (footnote 3), pp. 35-39, and p. 251. [29] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, p. 167. [30] Ibid., pp. 194, 267, 313. [31] HENING, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 3, p. 60; EDWARD M. RILEY, "The Colonial Courthouses of York County, Virginia," _William & Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine_ (Williamsburg, 1942), 2nd ser., vol. 22, pp. 399-404 (hereinafter designated _WMQ_ [2]). LOCATION OF THE STAFFORD COURTHOUSE The location of the building is indicated by a notation on Buckner's plat of the port town: "The fourth course (runs) down along by the Gutt between Geo: Andrew's & the Court house to Potomack Creek." A glance at the plat (fig. 2) will disclose that the longitudinal boundaries of all the lots south of a line between George Andrews' "Gutt" run parallel to this fourth course. Plainly, the courthouse was situated near the head of the gutt, where the westerly boundary course changed, near the end of "The Broad Street Across the Town." It may be significant that the foundation (Structure B) on which John Mercer's mansion was later built is located in this vicinity. In or about the year 1718 the courthouse "burnt Down,"[32] while it was reported as "being become ruinous" in 1720, with its "Situation very inconvenient for the greater part of the Inhabitants." It was then agreed to build a new courthouse "at the head of Ocqua Creek."[33] Aquia Creek was probably meant, but this must have been an error and the "head of Potomac Creek" intended instead. Happel shows that it was built on the south side of Potomac Creek. Thus, the burning of the Marlborough courthouse in 1718 merely speeded up the forces that led to the end of the town's career. FOOTNOTES: [32] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17). [33] _Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia_ (Richmond, 1930), vol. 2, p. 527. MARLBOROUGH PROPERTY OWNERS Not only was Marlborough foredoomed by external decrees and adverse official decisions, but much of its failure was rooted in the local elements by which it was constituted. The great majority of lot holders were the "gentlemen" who were so carefully distinguished from "all other of the Inhabitants" in the order to survey the town in 1691. Most were leading personages in Stafford, and we may assume that their purchases of lots were made in the interests of investment gains, not in establishing homes or businesses. Only three or four yeomen and ordinary keepers seem to have settled in the town. Sampson Darrell, for example, held two lots, but he lived at Aquia Creek.[34] Francis Hammersley was a planter who married Giles Brent's widow and lived at "The Retirement," one of the Brent estates.[35] George Brent, nephew of the original Giles Brent, was law partner of William Fitzhugh, and had been appointed Receiver General of the Northern Neck in 1690. His brother Robert also was a lot holder. Both lived at Woodstock, and presumably they did not maintain residences at the port town.[36] Other leading citizens were Robert Alexander, Samuel Hayward, and Martin Scarlett, but again there is little likelihood that they were ever residents of the town. John Waugh, the uproarious pastor of Potomac Parish, also was a lot holder, but he lived on the south side of Potomac Creek in a house which belonged to Mrs. Anne Meese of London. His failure to pay for that house after 11 years' occupancy of it, which led to a suit in which Fitzhugh was the prosecutor, does not suggest that he ever arrived at building a house in the port town.[37] Captain George Mason was a distinguished individual who lived at "Accokeek," about a mile and a half from Marlborough. He certainly built in the town, for in 1691 he petitioned for a license to "keep an ordinary at the Town or Port for this county." The petition was granted on condition that he "find a good and Sufficient maintenance and reception both for man and horse." Captain Mason was grandfather of George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, and was, at one time or another, sheriff, lieutenant colonel and commander in chief of the Stafford Rangers, and a burgess. He participated in putting down the uprising of Nanticoke Indians in 1692, bringing in captives for trial at the unfinished courthouse in March of that year.[38] Despite his interest in the town, however, it is unlikely that he ever lived there. Another lot owner was Captain Malachi Peale, whose lease of the town land from the Brents had been purchased when the site was selected. He also was an important figure, having been sheriff. He may well have lived on one of his three lots, since he was a resident of the Neck to begin with. John Withers, one of the first feoffees and a justice of the peace, was a lot holder also. George Andrews and Peter Beach, somewhat less distinguished, were perhaps the only full-time residents from among the first grantees. After 1708 Thomas Ballard and possibly William Barber were also householders. Thus, few of the ingredients of an active community were to be found at Marlborough, the skilled craftsmen or ship's chandlers or merchants who might have provided the vitality of commerce and trade not having at any time been present. FOOTNOTES: [34] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, p. 251. [35] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12); _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_, op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 209. [36] Ibid., pp. 76, 93, 162, 367. [37] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, p. 203; _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_, op. cit. (footnote 3), pp. 209, 211. [38] Ibid., pp. 184, 230; John Mercer's Land Book, op. cit. (footnote 12); _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_, op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 38. HOUSING It is likely that most of the houses in the town conformed to the minimum requirements of 20 by 20 feet. They were probably all of wood, a story and a half high with a chimney built against one end. Forman describes a 20-foot-square house foundation at Jamestown, known as the "House on Isaac Watson's Land." This had a brick floor and a fireplace large enough to take an 8-foot log as well as a setting for a brew copper. The ground floor consisted of one room, and there was probably a loft overhead providing extra sleeping and storage space.[39] The original portion of the Digges house at Yorktown, built following the Port Act of 1705 and still standing, is a brick house, also 20 feet square and a story and a half high. Yet, brick houses certainly were not the rule. In remote Stafford County, shortly before the port town was built, the houses of even well-placed individuals were sometimes extremely primitive. William Fitzhugh wrote in 1687 to his lawyer and merchant friend Nicholas Hayward in London, "Your brother Joseph's building that Shell, of a house without Chimney or partition, & not one tittle of workmanship about it more than a Tobacco house work, carry'd him into those Arrears with your self & his other Employees, as you found by his Accots. at his death."[40] Ancient English puncheon-type construction, with studs and posts set three feet into the ground, was still in use at Marlborough in 1691, as we know from the contract for building a prison quoted by Happel.[41] No doubt the houses there varied in quality, but we may be sure that most were crude, inexpertly built, of frame or puncheon-type construction, and subject to deterioration by rot and insects. FOOTNOTES: [39] HENRY CHANDLEE FORMAN, _Jamestown and St. Mary's_ (Baltimore, 1938), pp. 135-137. [40] _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_, op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 203. [41] HAPPEL, op. cit. (footnote 22), p. 186; Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, pp. 210-211. FURNISHINGS OF TWO MARLBOROUGH HOUSES Like George Mason, George Andrews ran an ordinary at the port town, having been licensed in 1693, and he also kept the ferry across Potomac Creek.[42] He died in 1698, leaving the property to his grandson John Cave. From the inventory of his estate recorded in the Stafford County records (Appendix A) we obtain a picture not only of the furnishings of a house in the port town, but also of what constituted an ordinary.[43] We are left with no doubt that as a hostelry Andrews' house left much to be desired. There were no bedsteads, although six small feather beds with bolsters and one old and small flock bed are listed. (Flock consisted of tufted and fragmentary pieces of wool and cotton, while "Bed" referred not to a bedframe or bedstead but to the tick or mattress.) There were two pairs of curtains and valances. In the 17th century a valance was "A border of drapery hanging around the canopy of a bed."[44] Curtains customarily were suspended from within the valance from bone or brass curtain rings on a rod or wire, and were drawn around the bed for privacy or warmth. Where high post bedsteads were used, the curtains and valances were supported on the rectangular frame of the canopy or tester. Since George Andrews did not list any bedsteads, it is possible that his curtains and valances were hung from bracketed frames above low wooden frames that held the bedding. Six of his beds were covered with "rugs," one of which was "Turkey work." There is no indication of sheets or other refinements for sleeping. Andrews' furniture was old, but apparently of good quality. Four "old" cane chairs, which may have dated back as far as 1660, were probably English, of carved walnut. The "old" table may have had a turned or a joined frame, or possibly may have been a homemade trestle table. An elegant touch was the "carpet," which undoubtedly covered it. Chests of drawers were rare in the 17th century, so it is surprising to find one described here as "old." A "cupboard" was probably a press or court cupboard for the display of plates and dishes and perhaps the pair of "Tankards" listed in the inventory. The latter may have been pewter or German stoneware with pewter mounts. The "couch" was a combination bed and settee. As in every house there were chests, but of what sort or quality we can only surmise. A "great trunk" provided storage. Andrews' hospitality as host is symbolized by his _lignum vitae_ punchbowl. Punch itself was something of an innovation and had first made its appearance in England aboard ships arriving from India early in the 1600's. It remained a sailor's drink throughout most of the century, but had begun to gain in general popularity before 1700 in the colonies. What is more remarkable here, however, is the container. Edward M. Pinto states that such _lignum vitae_ "wassail" bowls were sometimes large enough to hold five gallons of punch and were kept in one place on the table, where all present took part in the mixing. They were lathe-turned and usually stood on pedestals.[45] George Andrews' nutmeg graters, silver spoons, and silver dram cup for tasting the spirits that were poured into the punch were all elegant accessories. Another resident whose estate was inventoried was Peter Beach.[46] One of his executors was Daniel Beach, who was paid 300 pounds of tobacco annually from 1700 to 1703 for "sweeping" and "cleaning" the courthouse (Appendix B). Beach's furnishings were scarcely more elaborate than Andrews'. Unlike Andrews, he owned four bedsteads, which with their curtains and fittings (here called "furniture") varied in worth from 100 to 1500 pounds of tobacco. Here again was a cupboard, while there were nine chairs with "flag" seats and "boarded" backs (rush-seated chairs, probably of the "slat-back" or "ladder-back" variety). Eight more chairs and five stools were not described. A "parcel of old tables" was listed, but only one table appears to have been in use. There were pewter and earthenware, but a relatively few cooking utensils. An "old" pewter tankard was probably the most elegant drinking vessel, while one candlestick was a grudging concession to the need for artificial light. The only books were two Bibles; the list mentions a single indentured servant. FOOTNOTES: [42] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, p. 195. [43] Stafford County Will Book, Liber Z, pp. 168-169. [44] _A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles_ (Oxford, 1928), vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 18. [45] EDWARD H. PINTO, _Treen, or Small Woodware Throughout the Ages_ (London, 1949), p. 20. [46] Stafford County Will Book, Liber Z, pp. 158-159. THE GREGG SURVEY In 1707, after the revival of the Port Act, the new county surveyor, Thomas Gregg, made another survey of the town. This was done apparently without regard to Buckner's original survey. Since Gregg adopted an entirely new system of numbering, and since his survey was lost at an early date, it is impossible to locate by their description the sites of the lots granted in 1708 and after. Forty years later John Mercer wrote: It is certain that Thomas Gregg (being the Surveyor of Stafford County) did Sep 2^d 1707 make a new Survey of the Town.... it is as certain that Gregg had no regard either to the bounds or numbers of the former Survey since he begins his Numbers the reverse way making his number 1 in the corner at Buckner's 19 & as his Survey is not to be found its impossible to tell how he continued his Numbers. No scheme I have tried will answer, & the Records differ as much, the streets according to Buckner's Survey running thro the House I lived in built by Ballard tho his whole lot was ditched in according to the Bounds made by Gregg.[47] Whatever the intent may have been in laying out formal street and lot plans, Marlborough was essentially a rustic village. If Gregg's plat ran streets through the positions of houses on the Buckner survey, and vice versa, it is clear that not much attention was paid to theoretical property lines or streets. Ballard apparently dug a boundary ditch around his lot, according to Virginia practice in the 17th century, but the fact that this must have encroached on property assigned to somebody else on the basis of the Buckner survey seems not to have been noted at the time. Rude houses placed informally and connected by lanes and footpaths, the courthouse attempting to dominate them like a village schoolmaster in a class of country bumpkins, a few outbuildings, a boat landing or two, some cultivated land, and a road leading away from the courthouse to the north with another running in the opposite direction to the creek--this is the way Marlborough must have looked even in its best days in 1708. FOOTNOTES: [47] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12). THE DEATH OF MARLBOROUGH AS A TOWN Could this poor village have survived had the courthouse not burned? It was an unhappy contrast to the vision of a town governed by "benchers of the guild hall," bustling with mercantile activity, swarming on busy market days with ordinaries filled with people. This fantasy may have pulsated briefly through the minds of a few. But, after the abrogation of the Port Act in 1710, there was little left to justify the town's existence other than the courthouse. So long as court kept, there was need for ordinaries and ferries and for independent jacks-of-all-trades like Andrews. But with neither courthouse nor port activity nor manufacture, the town became a paradox in an economy and society of planters. Remote and inaccessible, uninhabited by individuals whose skills could have given it vigor, Marlborough no longer had any reason for being. It lingered on for a short time, but when John Mercer came to transform the abandoned village into a flourishing plantation, "Most of the other Buildings were suffered to go to Ruin, so that in the year 1726, when your Petitioner [i.e., Mercer] went to live there, but one House twenty-feet square was standing."[48] FOOTNOTES: [48] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17). II _John Mercer's Occupation of Marlborough, 1726-1730_ MERCER'S ARRIVAL IN STAFFORD COUNTY By 1723 Marlborough lay abandoned. George Mason (III), son of the late sheriff and ordinary keeper in the port town, held the now-empty title of feoffee, together with Rice Hooe. In that year Mason and Hooe petitioned the General Court "that Leave may be given to bring in a Bill to enable them to sell the said Land [of the town] the same not being built upon or Inhabited." The petition was put aside for consideration," but within a week--on May 21, 1723--it was "ordered That Rice Hooe & George Mason be at liberty to withdraw their petition ... and that the Committee to whom it was referred be discharged from proceeding thereon."[49] This curious sequence remains unexplained. Had the committee informally advised the feoffees that their cause would be rejected, suggesting, therefore, that they withdraw their petition? Or had something unexpected occurred to provide an alternative solution to the problem of Marlborough? Possibly it was the latter, and the unexpected occurrence may have been the arrival in Stafford County of young John Mercer. There is no direct evidence that Mercer was in the vicinity as early as 1723; but we know that he appeared before 1725, that he had by then become well acquainted with George Mason, and that he settled in Marlborough in 1726. Mercer's remarkable career began with his arrival in Virginia at the age of 16. Born in Dublin in 1704, the son of a Church Street merchant of English descent--also named John Mercer--and of Grace Fenton Mercer, John was educated at Trinity College, and then sailed for the New World in 1720.[50] How Mercer arrived in Virginia or what means he brought with him are lost to the record. From his own words written toward the end of his life we know that he was not overburdened with wealth: "Except my education I never got a shilling of my fathers or any other relations estate, every penny I ever got has been by my own industry & with as much fatigue as most people have undergone."[51] From his second ledger (the first, covering the years 1720-1724, having been lost) we learn that he was engaged in miscellaneous trading, sailing up and down the rivers in his sloop and exchanging goods along the way. Where his home was in these early years we do not know, but it would appear that he had been active in the Stafford County region for some time, judging from the fact that by 1725 he had accumulated £322 4s. 5-1/2d. worth of tobacco in a warehouse at the falls of the Rappahannock.[52] He certainly had encountered George Mason before then, and probably Mason's uncles, John, David, and James Waugh, the sons of Parson John Waugh, all of whom owned idle Marlborough properties. Mercer's friendship with the Masons was sufficiently well established by 1725 that on June 10 of that year he married George's sister Catherine. This marriage, most advantageous to an aspiring young man, was celebrated at Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh's in King George County with the Reverend Alexander Scott of Overwharton Parish in Stafford County officiating.[53] Thus, allied to an established family that was "old" by standards of the time and sponsored socially by a representative of the Fitzhughs, Mercer was admitted at the age of 21 to Virginia's growing aristocracy. In this animated and energetic youth, the Masons and Waughs probably saw the means of bringing Marlborough back to life. Mercer, for his part, no doubt recognized the advantages that Marlborough offered, with its sheltered harbor and landing, its fertile, flat fields, and airy situation. That it could be acquired piecemeal at a minimum of investment through the provisions of the Act for Ports was an added inducement. FOOTNOTES: [49] _JHB, 1712-1726_ (Richmond, 1912), pp. 336, 373. [50] "Journals of the Council of Virginia in Executive Session 1737-1763," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1907), vol. 14, pp. 232-235. [51] _George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia_, comp. and edit. by Lois Mulkearn (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1954), p. 204. [52] John Mercer's Ledger B is the principal source of information for this chapter. It was begun in 1725 and ended in 1732. The original copy is in the library of the Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a photostatic copy being in the Virginia State Library. Further footnoted references to the ledger are omitted, since the source in each case is recognizable. [53] JAMES MERCER GARNET, "James Mercer," _WMQ_ [1] (Richmond, 1909), vol. 17, pp. 85-98. Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh was the widow of William Fitzhugh III, who died in 1713/14. She was the daughter of Richard Lee and lived at "Eagle's Nest" in King George County (see "The Fitzhugh Family," VHM [Richmond, 1900], vol. 7, pp. 317-318). JOHN MERCER AS A TRADER During 1725 Mercer pressed ahead with his trading enterprises. From his ledger we learn that he sold Richard Ambler of Yorktown 710 pounds of "raw Deerskins" for £35 10s. and bought £200 worth of "sundry goods" from him. Between October 1725 and February 1726 he sold a variety of furnishings and equipment to Richard Johnson, ranging from a "horsewhip" and a "silk Rugg" to "1/2 doz. Shoemaker's knives" and an "Ivory Comb." In return he received two hogsheads of tobacco, "a Gallon of syder Laceground," and raw and dressed deerskins. He maintained a similar long account with Mosley Battaley (Battaille) (Appendix C). From William Rogers of Yorktown[54] he bought £12 3s. 6d. worth of earthenware, presumably for resale. The tobacco which he had accumulated at the falls of the Rappahannock he sold for cash to the Gloucester firm of Whiting & Montague, paying Peter Kemp two pounds "for the extraordinary trouble of y^r coming up so far for it." [Illustration: Figure 3.--PORTRAIT OF JOHN MERCER, artist unknown. About 1750. (_Courtesy of Mrs. Thomas B. Payne._)] His sloop was the principal means by which Mercer conducted his business. Occasionally he rented it for hire, once sharing the proceeds of a load of oystershells with George Mason and one Edgeley, who had sailed the sloop to obtain the shells. Only one item shows that Mercer extended his mercantile activities to slaves: on February 18, 1726, he sold a mulatto woman named Sarah to Philemon Cavanaugh "to be paid in heavy tobacco each hhd to weigh 300 Neat." That Mercer was turning in the direction of a legal career is revealed in his first account of "Domestick Expenses" for the fall of 1725 (Appendix D). We find that he was attending court sessions far and wide: "Cash for Exp^s at Stafford & Spotsylvania," "Cash for Exp^s Urbanna," the same for "Court Ferrage at Keys." He already was reading in the law, and lent "March's Actions of Slander," "Washington's Abridgm^t of y^e Statutes," and "an Exposition of the Law Terms" to Mosley Battaley. FOOTNOTES: [54] William Rogers, who died in 1739, made earthenware and stoneware at Yorktown after 1711. See C. MALCOLM WATKINS and IVOR NOËL HUME, "The 'Poor Potter' of Yorktown" (paper 54 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 249, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution), 1967. SETTING UP HOUSEKEEPING Mercer's domestic-expense account is full of evidence that he was preparing to set up housekeeping. He bought "1 China punch bowl," 10s.; "6 glasses," 3s.; "1 box Iron & heaters," 2s. 6d.; "1 p^r fine blankets," 1s. 13d.; "Earthen ware," 10s.; "5 Candlesticks," 17s. 6d.; "1 Bed Cord," 2s.; "3 maple knives & forks," 2s.; "1 yew haft knife & fork & 1 p^r Stilds [steelyards?]," 1s. 10-1/2d.; "1 p^r Salisbury Scissors," 2s. 6d.; and "1 speckled knife & fork," 5d. In addition, he accepted as payment for various cloth and materials sold to Mrs. Elizabeth Russell the following furniture and furnishings: Ster. £ s. d. By a writing desk D^o 5 By a glass & Cover D^o 7 6 By 18^l Pewter at 1/4 D^o 1 4 By 6 tea Cups & Sawcers 2/ D^o 12 By 2 Chocolate Cups 1/ D^o 2 By 2 Custard Cups 9^d D^o 1 6 By 1 Tea Table painted with fruit D^o 14 By 6 leather Chairs @ 7/ 2 2 By a small walnut eating table 8 By 1/2 doz. Candlemoulds 10 By a Tea table 18 By a brass Chafing dish 5 By 6 copper tart pans 6 At the time of this purchase, the only house standing at Marlborough was that built by Thomas Ballard in 1708. It was inherited by his godson David Waugh,[55] who now apparently offered to let his niece Catherine and her new husband occupy it. Mercer later referred to it as "the House I lived in built by Ballard."[56] From his own records we know that he moved to Marlborough in 1726. He did so probably in the summer, since on June 11 he settled with Charles McClelland for "cleaning out y^e house." Unoccupied for years and small in size, it was a humble place in which to set up housekeeping, and indeed must have needed "cleaning out." It also must have needed extensive repairs, since Mercer purchased 1500 tenpenny nails "used about it." Throughout 1726 Mercer acquired household furnishings, made repairs and improvements, and obtained the necessities of a plantation. On February 1 he acquired "3 Ironbacks" (cast-iron firebacks for fireplaces) for £8 4s. 2d., as well as "2 p^r hand Irons" for 15s. 5d., from Edmund Bagge. From George Rust he bought "3 Cows & Calves" for £7 10s., a featherbed for £3 10s., and an "Iron pot" for 5s. His reckoning with John Dogge opens with a poignant note, "By a Child's Coffin": Mercer's first-born child had died. On the same account was "an Oven," bought for 17 shillings. Dogge also was credited with "bringing over 10 sheep from Sumners" (a plantation at Passapatanzy, south of Potomac Creek). Rawleigh Chinn was paid for "plowing up & fencing in my yard" and for "fetching 3 horses over the Creek." Also credited to Chinn was an item revealing Mercer's sporting enthusiasm: "went on y^e main race ... 15/." From Alexander Buncle, Mercer acquired one dozen table knives, three chamber-door locks, two pairs of candle snuffers, and two broad axes. His account with Alexander McFarlane in 1726, the credit side of which is quoted here in part, is a further illustration of the variety of hardware and consumable goods that he required: £ s. d. 2 p^r men's Shooes 9 1 Razor & penknife 2 6 2-1/4 gall Rum 6 9 9 gals. molasses 13 12^1 brown Sugar 6 6-1/4 double refined D^o 20^d 10 5 1 felt hat 2 4 1 q^t Limejuice 1 2 doz. Claret 1 10 2 lanthorns 6 1 funnell 7-1/2 1 quart & 1 pint tin pot 1 10-1/2 * * * By 2 doz & 8 bottles Claret 2 8 By a woman's horsewhip 3 By 1^{oz} Gunpowder By 10^l Shot By 1 wom^s bound felt [hat] Mercer's comments, added three years later to this record, signify the complexities of credit accounting in the plantation economy: "In July 1729 I settled Accounts w^{th} M^r M^cFarlane & paid him off & at the same time having Ed Barry's note on him for 1412^l Tob^o (his goods being extravagantly dear) I paid him 1450^l Tob^o to M^r Thos Smith to ball^{ns} accts." Another of Mercer's accounts was with Edward Simm. From Simm, Mercer acquired the following in 1726: £ s. d. 1 horsewhip 4 1 fine hat 12 9 y^{ds} bedtick 3/4 1 10 1 p^r Spurs 8 1 Curry Comb & brush 2 9 2 p^r mens Shooes 5/ 10 1 p^r Chelloes 1 10 2 p^r wom^s gloves 2/ 4 2 p^r D^o thread hose 9 2 p^r mens worsted d^o 8 2 p^r ch^{kr} yarn 3 4 1 Sifter 2 1 frying pan 4 6 7 quire of paper 1-1/4 9 8 6 silk Laces 4^d 2 FOOTNOTES: [55] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12). [56] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17). ACQUIRING LAND AND BUILDING A NEW HOUSE Mercer's first actual ownership of property came as a result of his marriage. In 1725 he purchased from his wife Catherine 885 acres of land near Potomac Church for £221 5s. and another tract of 1610 acres on Potomac Run for £322.[57] His occupancy of the Ballard house, meanwhile, was arranged on a most informal basis, three years having been allowed to pass before he paid his first and only rent--a total of 12 shillings--to his uncle-in-law David Waugh. In January 1730 the following appears under "Domestick Expenses": "To bringing the frame of my house from Jervers to Marlbro ... 40/." Associated with this are items for 2000 tenpenny nails, 2000 eightpenny nails, and 1000 sixpenny nails, together with "To Chandler Fowke for plank," "To J^{no} Chambers &c bring board from Landing," and "To John Chambers & Robt Collins for bringing Bricks & Oyster Shells." In the same month the account of Anthony Linton and Henry Suddath includes the following: By building a house at Marlborough when finished by agreement £10.0.0 By covering my house & building a Chimney 3.0.0 Clearly, the Mercers had outgrown the temporary shelter which the little Ballard house had given them. Now a new house was under construction, with the steps plainly indicated. To obtain timber of sufficient size to frame the house it was necessary to go where the trees grew. The nearest thickly forested area was north of Potomac Creek and Potomac Run. The appropriate timbers apparently grew on property owned by Mercer but occupied by the widow of James Jervis (or "Jervers"). Not only did the trees grow there, but we may be sure that there they were also felled, hewn, and cut, and the finished members fitted together on the ground to form the frame of the new house. It was a time-honored English building practice to prepare the timbers where they were felled, shaping them, drilling holes for "trunnels" (wooden pegs or "tree nails"), inscribing coded numbers with lumber markers, and then knocking the prefabricated members apart and transporting them to the building site.[58] Oystershells and bricks for the chimney were brought from Cedar Point and Boyd's Hole, south of Marlborough, by Chambers and Collins. Shells were probably burned at the house site to make lime for mortar. Chambers was paid 12 pence a day for 32-1/2 days' work spread over a period from October 1730 to February 1731. Hugh French had been paid for 1000 bricks on August 24, 1730, while James Jones, on October 3, 1730, was recompensed three shillings for "9 days of work your Man plaistering my House & making 2 brick backs." [Illustration: Figure 4.--THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF JOHN MERCER. Detail from J. Dalrymple's revision (1755) of the map of Virginia by Joseph Fry and Peter Jefferson. Marlborough is incorrectly designated "New Marleboro." (_Courtesy of the Library of Congress._)] The new house was thus brought to completion early in 1731. That it was a plain and simple house is apparent from the small amount of labor and the relatively few quantities of material. It appears to have had two fireplaces only and one chimney. Although the house was wooden, there is no evidence that it had any paint whatsoever, inside or out. FOOTNOTES: [57] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12). [58] CHARLES F. INNOCENT, _The Development of English Building Construction_ (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1916), pp. 23-61. FURNISHING THE HOUSE Other than a child's chair and a bedstead costing 10 shillings, purchased from Enoch Innes in 1729, little furniture was acquired before 1730. Listed in "Domestick Expenses" for 1729-1730 are minor accessories for the new house, such as HL hinges, closet locks, a "scimmer," a pair of brass candlesticks, milk pans, pestle and mortar, "1/2 doz plates," a "Cullender," a candlebox, earthenware, and a pepperbox, together with several handtools. MERCER'S VARIED ACTIVITIES AND INTERESTS The agricultural aspects of a plantation were increasingly in evidence. In 1729 Rawleigh Chinn was paid for "helping to kill the Hogs," "pasturage of my cattle," and "making a gate." Edward Floyd was credited with £4 6s. 7-1/2d. for "Wintering Cattle, taking care of my horse & Sheep to Aug. 1729." John Chinn seems to have been Mercer's jockey, for as early as 1729 he was entering the races which abounded in Virginia, and "went on y^e race w^{th} Colt 1729." In this early period we find considerable evidence of a typical young Virginian's fondness for gaming and sport. One finds scattered through Mercer's account with Robert Spotswood such items as "To won at the Race ... 8.9" and "To won at Liew at Col^o Mason's ... 7.3." (Loo was an elegant 18th-century game played with Chinese-carved mother-of-pearl counters.) Mercer participated in several sporting events at Stafford courthouse, for court sessions continued, as in the previous century, to be social as well as legal and political occasions. This is illustrated in a credit to Joseph Waugh: "By won at a horse race at Stafford Court and Attorney's fee ... £1."; on the debit side of Enoch Innes's account: "To won at Quoits & running with you ... 1/3"; and in Thomas Hudson's account, where four shillings were marked up "To won pitching at Stafford Court." Mercer's diversions were few enough, nevertheless, and it is apparent that he devoted more time to reading than to gaming. In 1726 he borrowed from John Graham (or Graeme) a library of 56 volumes belonging to the "Hon^{ble} Col^o Spotswood"[59] (Appendix E). Ranging from the Greek classics to English history, and including Milton, Congreve, Dryden, Cole's Dictionary, "Williams' Mathematical Works," and "Present State of Russia," they were the basis for a solid education. That they included no lawbooks at a time when Mercer was preparing for the law is an indication of his broad taste for literature and learning. Marlborough, we can see, was occupied by a young man of talent, energy, and creativity. He alone, of the many men who had envisioned a center of enterprise on Potomac Neck, was possessed of the drive and the simple directness to make it succeed. For George Mason and the Waughs, Mercer was the ideal solution for their Marlborough difficulties. FOOTNOTES: [59] Col. Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Virginia and a resident of Spotsylvania County, was at this time living in London. He authorized John Graham (or Graeme) of St. James, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, to "take possession of his iron works in Virginia, with plantations, negroes, stocks, and manage the same." By 1732 Spotswood regretted that he had "committed his affairs to the care of a mathematician, whose thoughts were always among the stars." In 1737 Graham became professor of natural philosophy and mathematics in the College of William and Mary. See "Historical & Genealogical Notes," WMQ [1] (Richmond, 1909), vol. 17, p. 301 (quoting Basset, _Writings of William Byrd_, p. 378). III _Mercer's Consolidation of Marlborough, 1730-1740_ MERCER THE YOUNG LAWYER The 1730's opened a golden age in the Virginia colony. There was an interval of peace in which trade might flourish; there were new laws which favored the tobacco planter and led to the building of resplendent mansions along Virginia's shores. John Mercer wasted no time in grasping the opportunities that lay about him. With shrewd foresight he made law his major objective, thus raising himself above most of his contemporaries. At the same time he began an extensive purchasing of property, so that within a decade he was to become one of the major landed proprietors in the colony. Planting and legal practice each augmented the other in Mercer's prosperity, which was assured by a classic combination of energy, ability, and outgoing personality. As with many successful men, Mercer had an eye for meticulous detail; the documents he left behind were a treasury of methodically kept records. His Ledger B reveals that as early as 1730 his legal career was becoming firmly established. It records fee accounts, charges for drawing deeds, writing bonds, and representing clients in various courts. In that year he "subscribed to Laws of Virginia" through William Parks, the Williamsburg printer and stationer, and began to build up a substantial law library, which was augmented by the purchase of 40 lawbooks from Robert Beverley. DIFFICULTIES IN ACQUIRING MARLBOROUGH On October 13, 1730, Mercer obtained title from David Waugh to the Ballard house and lots on the basis of the "Statute for transforming uses into possessions." At the same time he acquired the three lots originally granted to John Waugh, while nine months later he was given the release of the three lots inherited by George Mason from his father.[60] Mercer's foothold in Marlborough was now secure. Following these developments, he "employed the County Surveyor to lay off the several Lots he had purchased," which led to the discovery of the previously mentioned disparities and conflicts between the Buckner survey of 1691 and the missing Gregg survey of 1707. For some reason the town now lacked feoffees, so Mercer "applied to the County Court of Stafford on the tenth day of June one thousand seven hundred and thirty-one and the said Court then appointed Henry Fitzhugh Esquire and James Markham Gent. Feofees of the said Town." Mercer stated that he "proposed making great Improvements ... and wanted to take up several other Lots to build on." The court thereupon ordered John Savage, the county surveyor, to make a new survey, "having regard to the Buildings and Improvements then standing"--a significant instruction, intended no doubt to permit the reconciling of conflicting titles with respect to what actually was built.[61] The new survey was laid out July 23, 1731, "in the presence of the said Feoffees," and drawn with the same plan and numbering as Buckner's, except that an additional row of lots was applied along the western border of the town, compressing slightly the former lots as planned by Buckner and pushing them eastward (fig. 2). This extra row, we have reason to believe, was added with "regard to the Buildings and Improvements then standing." At the time of the survey, the feoffees told Mercer "that he might proceed in his Buildings and Improvements on any the said Lots not before granted," promising that they would at any time make him "any Title they could lawfully pass." A proposal by Fitzhugh to give title to any lots already purchased or any which Mercer might take up under terms of the Port Act of 1705 was discouraged by Mercer's lawyer, Mr. Hopkins, who took the view that, since the three surveys conflicted, the deeds would not be good. Accordingly, Fitzhugh and Mercer applied for an "amicable Bill," or suit in chancery, in the General Court, in order "to have Savage's or any particular Survey established." The request was shelved, however, and still was unanswered in 1748. The extra row of lots and the court's instructions to Savage to make his survey with "Regard to the Buildings and Improvements then Standing" seem to be correlated. Savage made a significant notation on his survey plat: "The lots marked 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, & 21 joining to the Creek are in possession of Mr. John Mercer who claims them under Robinson, Berryman, Pope & Parry, & under Ballard & under John Waugh dec^{ed}, all w^{ch} he says have been built on and saved." On the Buckner plat the lots bearing these numbers comprise a block of six in the southwest corner of the town, extending up from the creek in two 3-tiered rows (fig. 2). The plat included the lots near the head of the "gutt" where the courthouse appears to have stood, as well as the land on which Structure B (the foundation of Mercer's mansion) was excavated. The lots appear in the same relationship on Savage's survey, except that the new row bounds them on the west. We know that the Robinson-Berryman-Pope-Parry lot was the same lot originally granted to Robert Alexander in 1691, numbered 19 on Buckner's plat. It was granted to its later owners according to the Gregg survey in 1707, and was then described as "being the first Lott known in the Survey Platt by number 1." From Mercer we have learned already that Gregg made "his number 1 in the corner at Buckner's 19." The other five lots were claimed under Ballard and John Waugh. Waugh was granted one lot in 1691--Buckner's number 20--and acquired two more in 1707. All three appear to have been in the corner block of six lots. In any case, these six lots equal the number of lots known to have been granted the above-listed lot holders. Both of Ballard's lots were granted in 1707. His lot number 19 (Gregg survey), where Mercer first lived, is described as "bounding Easterly with a lott surveyed for Mr. John Waugh Westerly with a Narrow street Northerly with a lott not yet surveyed, Southerly with the first main Street which is parallel with Potomac Creek." We do not know which of Waugh's lots is meant, nor do we know Gregg's street plan, except that it was at odds with Buckner's. But it is probable that Ballard's lot (Gregg's number 19) was the same as Buckner's number 21, that the crosstown street on Gregg's plat lay to the south of the lot rather than to the north of it, as on Buckner's plat, and that one of Waugh's lots lay to the east of it.[62] Assuming that the two acres for the courthouse were located near the head of the "gutt" and that Ballard's lot 19 was approximately the same as Buckner's 21, it is apparent that Ballard's lot must have overlapped the courthouse lots in the confusion between the two surveys. Since Mercer was living on Ballard's lot, he probably infringed on the courthouse property. Even though the courthouse had been burned and abandoned, the two acres assigned to it were required to revert to the original owner, as provided in the Act of 1667, concerning church and courthouse lands. In this case, the courthouse land, having been "deserted," had reverted to the heir of Giles Brent. Mercer's embarrassment at this state of affairs must have been great. However, the addition by Savage of a whole new row of lots along the westerly border of the town created new acreage, sufficient both to reconcile the conflict and to provide compensatory land to satisfy the Brents. Unfortunately, the Savage survey, as we have noted, was not made official, and Mercer was forced to continue his questionable occupancy of properties whose titles were in doubt. [Illustration: Figure 5.--KING WILLIAM COURTHOUSE, about 1725. Mercer often pleaded cases here. (From a Civil War period negative.) (_Courtesy of Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress._)] What is most significant to us in all this is the inference that the courthouse, the Ballard house which Mercer occupied, and the Structure B foundation were all in close proximity. FOOTNOTES: [60] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12). [61] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17). [62] Stafford County Will Book, Liber Z, pp. 407, 431, 497. LARGE PROPERTY ACQUISITIONS Mercer's next purchase of Marlborough property was on July 28, 1737, when he bought the three lots granted in 1691 to George Andrews from Andrews' grandson, John Cave. Meanwhile, he began large-scale acquisitions of lands elsewhere. By 1733 he had acquired an aggregate of 8096 acres in Prince William County. In addition, he obtained a "Lease for three Lives" on three large tracts belonging to William Brent, adjoining Marlborough, so that he controlled virtually all of Potomac Neck.[63] Thus, after 1730 we find Mercer's fortune already well established and increasing. No longer a youthful trader plying the Potomac in his sloop, he was now a gentleman planter and influential lawyer. He lived in a new house, owned some parts of Marlborough, and was building "improvements" on others. Almost overnight he had become a landed proprietor. FOOTNOTES: [63] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12). SUCCESS AT LAW AND CONFLICTS WITH LAWYERS The source of Mercer's newly made wealth is easily discovered. His ledger shows an income from legal fees in 1730 amounting to £291 10s. 10-1/2d. In 1731 the figure climbed to £643 18s. 2d., then leveled off to £639 11s. 2-1/2d. the following year. For a young man still in his twenties and self-trained in the law, this was a remarkable achievement. His success perhaps is attributable to a single event that stemmed from youthful brashness and vigorous outspokenness. Early in 1730, in a daring gesture on behalf of property owners and taxpayers, he protested against privileges granted in an act passed by the Assembly the previous year "for encouraging Adventurers in Iron Works." Presented in the form of a proposition, the protest was read before the Stafford court by Peter Hedgman. The reaction to it in Williamsburg, once it had reached the ears of the Assembly, was immediate and angry. The House of Burgesses _Resolv'd_ That the Proposition from _Stafford_ County in relation to the Act past in the last Session of this Assembly for encouraging Adventurers in Iron Works is a scandalous and Seditious Libel Containing false and scandalous Reflections upon the Legislature and the Justices of the General Court and other Courts of this Colony. _Resolv'd_ That _John Mercer_ the Author and Writer of that paper and _Peter Hedgman_ one of the Subscribers who presented the same to the Court of Stafford County to be certified to the General Assembly are guilty of a high Misdemeanour. _Order'd_ That the said _John Mercer_ and _Peter Hedgman_ be sent for in Custody of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House to answer their said Offence at the Bar of this House.[64] Mercer and Hedgman made their apologies to the House, received their reprimands, and paid their fines. But this protest, so offensive to the dignity of the lawmakers, had its effect in forcing amendments to the act, particularly in removing the requirement for building public roads leading from the ironworks to the ore supplies and shipping points. To those living in Stafford, particularly in the neighborhood of the proposed Accokeek Ironworks, near Marlborough, this concession must have elevated Mercer to the level of a hero.[65] Mercer's frank disposition led him into other difficulties during the first years of his practice. His insistence on the prompt payment of debts and his opposition to stays of execution following suits had won him enemies at Prince William court. Charges of improper legal activities were brought against him; these were investigated at Williamsburg, with the result that on June 13, 1734, he was suspended from practicing law in Virginia for a period of six months.[66] FOOTNOTES: [64] _JHB, 1727-1734; 1736-1740_ (Richmond, 1910), p. 66. [65] Ibid., p. xxi. [66] _Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia_ (Richmond, Virginia: D. Bottom, superintendent of public printing, 1925), vol. 4, p. 328. TEMPORARY RETIREMENT, THE ABRIDGMENT, AND GUARDIANSHIP OF GEORGE MASON Deprived temporarily of his principal livelihood, Mercer set out to write an _Abridgment of the Laws of Virginia_. The task completed, he petitioned the General Court on April 23, 1735, for "leave to Print an Abridgment compil'd by him of all the Laws of this Colony & to have the benefit of the Sale thereof." On the same day he petitioned for a renewal of his license, which was granted with the exception of the right to practice in Prince William, where he was to remain _persona non grata_ generally thereafter.[67] Soon after these events his brother-in-law and old acquaintance, George Mason, drowned. Mercer was designated co-guardian of 10-year-old George Mason IV, who came to live at Marlborough. Young George later grew up to be the master of Gunston Hall and, as the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, to stand among the intellectuals whose ideas influenced the Revolution and the framing of the Constitution. In these formative years, young George Mason surely must have been affected by the strong legal mind and cultivated tastes of his uncle.[68] On October 14, 1737, the _Virginia Gazette_ carried the following advertisement: _This Day is Published_ An Exact Abridgment of the Laws of VIRGINIA, in Force and Use, to this present time. By John Mercer. At long last, after innumerable delays, the _Abridgment_ was in print. From a financial point of view it was a conspicuous failure. Too few Virginians, apparently, were sufficiently interested to buy it. FOOTNOTES: [67] Ibid., p. 348. [68] KATE MASON ROWLAND, _The Life of George Mason_ (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892), vol. 1, p. 49. DOMESTIC FURNISHINGS AND SERVANTS During this eventful decade of the 1730's Mercer acquired the things needed for the proper maintenance of his house and properties. One requisite was Negro servants. From Pat Reyant he bought "a Girl named Margaret" for 43 pounds of tobacco in 1730. In 1731 he bought Deborah, Phillis, Peter, Nan, and Bob. The following year he obtained Lucy, Will, and George, and, in 1733, Nero. His purchases increased as his landholdings increased. In 1736 he bought five slaves, three of whom he aptly named Dublin, Marlborough, and Stafford. To help feed his slaves during this early period, Mercer apparently depended in part upon Stafford's wealth of natural resources. At least we find a record of wild game entered on the same page and under the same heading as his "Negroes" account in the ledger. There it is noted that he purchased 42 ducks from Natt Hedgman on November 19, 1730, and 20 ducks from Rawleigh Chinn the same day, paying for them in powder and shot. Two swans and a goose, as well as venison, appear on the list. Payment for these was made in powder, shot, and wool. He continued, meanwhile, to equip his house. From John Foward (or Foard), a London merchant, he bought a "frying pan" and "2 doz. bottles," "1 tomahawk," "2 stock-locks," "1 padlock," "2 best padlocks," "1 drawingknife," "9 p^r hinges," "3 clasp knives," and "1 gall. Maderas." In April 1731, he bought from Captain Foward: £ s. d. 1 bellmettle skillet 4-1/2^{oz} at 2/ 9 1 copper Sausepan 7 1 Small D^o 5 4 1 hunting whip 5 1 halfcheck bridle 7 1 fine hat 12 1 wig Comb 6 Also in 1731 he bought "6 rush bottom Chairs" for 17 shillings and a spinning wheel for 10 shillings from William Hamitt. The "writing desk" which he had bought in 1725 apparently needed extensive and expensive repairs, for in March 1731 there appears an item under "Domestick Expenses," "To W^m Walker for mending Scoutore £1." (_Scoutore_ was one of many corrupt spellings of _escritoire_, a slant-top desk.) William Walker was a Stafford County cabinetmaker and builder, about whom we shall hear much more. One of the most active accounts was that of Nathaniel Chapman,[69] who directed the newly established Accokeek Ironworks. In 1731 he sold Mercer several hundred nails of different descriptions, a variety of hoes, ploughs, wedges, door latches, and heaters for smoothing irons. One item is "By putting a leg in an old Iron Pott"; another is "By Col Mason p^d for mending a snuff box. 2.6" (Appendix F). In 1732 he paid Thomas Staines £1 for "a Cradle," "two Bedsteads," and "a weekes work." From John Blane, during the same year, he purchased 2500 tenpenny nails and the same quantity of eightpenny nails. He also bought from Blane 4 "basons," a porringer, 100 needles, 2 penknives, a gross of "thread buttons," and a pair of large "Scissars." Again, in 1732 he obtained from William Nisbett a quantity of miscellaneous goods, including 10 parcels of earthenware and a pewter dish weighing 4 to 5 ounces. He also settled with Samuel Stevens for "your share in making a Canoe." FOOTNOTES: [69] Nathaniel Chapman headed the Accokeek Ironworks, referred to by Mercer in Ledger G as "Chapman's Works at Head of Bay." Although Mercer had opposed the act, which gave privileges to the ironworks, he was a lifelong friend of Chapman, who testified in his behalf in 1734 and served with him on the Ohio Company Committee in the 1750's and 1760's. Chapman was executor for the estates of Lawrence and Augustine Washington. TOBACCO WAREHOUSES The Tobacco Act of 1730 provided for the erection of public tobacco warehouses, and Marlborough was selected as one of the sites.[70] In 1731 Mercer's account with John Waugh included "Timber for 2500 boards @25/.£3.2.6" and "Posts & Ceils for two Warehouses, 12 shillings." In April 1732 he settled accounts with Captain Henry Fitzhugh for "building a Warehouse & Wharf & 6 prizes" at 3000 pounds of tobacco, or £15. The prizes probably were "incentive awards" for the workmen. Included in Fitzhugh's account were "3 days work of Caesar & Will," ten shillings, and "4319 very bad Clapboards at 1/2^d y^e board." On March 25 he paid Anthony Linton for 1820 clapboards, allowing him eight shillings for "sawing of Boards." The warehouses were in operation in 1732, as we learn from Mercer's "Account of Inspectors," but they suffered the fate of all official enterprises at Marlborough, for in 1734 "the same were put down, as being found very inconvenient."[71] The actual date of their termination was November 16, 1735, when a new warehouse was scheduled for completion at the mouth of Aquia Creek.[72] The expression "put down" does not seem to mean that the warehouses were torn down, but that they were officially discontinued. He apparently, however, continued to use them for his own purposes. FOOTNOTES: [70] HENING, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 4, p. 268. [71] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17). [72] _JHB, 1727-1734; 1736-1740_, op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 202. PERSONAL ACTIVITIES During the 1730's Mercer recorded a minimum of recreational activities. Those that he did list are representative of the society of which he was a part. Making wagers was a favorite amusement. For example, he was owed £7 16s. by "Col^o George Braxton To a Wager you laid me at Cap^t Rob^t Brooke's house before M^r James Reid, Will^m Brooke &c Six Guineas to one that Col^o Spotswood would not during the Reign of K. George that now is, procure a Commission as Chief or Lieu^t Gov^r of Virginia." In 1731 he paid William Brent "By a pistole won of me about Hedgman's wrestling with and throwing Fra^s Dade. £1.1.12." He also paid £2 10s. to James Markham "By [my] part on the Race on Stotham's horse." There are other scattered references to wagers on horseraces. Mercer had become a vestryman in Overwharton Parish as early as 1730, and appears to have been made responsible for all legal matters pertaining to that church. His account, shown in detail in Appendix G, is of interest in showing that violations of moral law were held accountable to the church and that fines for convictions were paid to the church. Mercer, representing the parish, collected a portion of each fine as his fee. Most of his energies now seem to have been divided between the law and the substantial responsibilities for managing his plantations. The increasing extent of tobacco cultivation is revealed in the tobacco account with "M^r Jonathan Foward, Merchant in London" (presumably John Foward, mentioned earlier), extending from 1733 to 1743. This account lists shipments of 129 hogsheads of tobacco, totaling £643 1s. 11d. (if we include a few extraneous items, such as "To an over charge in Lemons" and "To a Still charg'd never sent"). Several similar accounts involve proceeds from tobacco. In 1734 and 1738, for example, he shipped 54 hogsheads to William Stevenson, another London merchant, for £207 7d. on the ships _Triton_, _Snake_, _Brooks_, and _Elizabeth_. [Illustration: Figure 6.--MOTHER-OF-PEARL COUNTERS, or "fish," used in playing 18th-century games, including Loo, at which Mercer once won 7s. 3d. from Col. George Mason (III). These examples, collected in Massachusetts, are probably late 18th century. (USNM 61.399.)] Marlborough's full transition to a seat of tobacco-planting empire is now clearly discernible. In so becoming, it was typical of the consolidation of wealth, property, and power in Virginia as the mid-century approached. Land had become both a substitute for tobacco in lean years and the means for paying off debts. The same land in better years yielded crops to its new owners, so that a relatively few dynamic men were able to amass great wealth and form a ruling aristocracy. The varieties of talents in men like Mercer--who, besides being a planter, was an accomplished lawyer and able administrator--placed them in the ascendancy over their less able fellows. The vigor and ability with which such men were endowed fostered the remarkable class of leaders of the succeeding generation, who had so much to do with founding the nation. IV _Marlborough at its Ascendancy, 1741-1750_ TRAVEL On April 12, 1741, Mercer was admitted to practice at the General Court in Williamsburg.[73] His trip there on that occasion was typical of the journeys which took him at least twice yearly to the capital. On the first day of this Williamsburg trip he rode "To Col^o Taliaferro's," a distance of 19 miles. The following day "To Caroline Court" (18 miles), the next "To M^r Hubbard's" (30 miles), then as far as "M^r J^{no} Powers" (24 miles), and finally "To Furneas & Williamsburg" (30 miles). The route was usually to West Point, or Brick House on the opposite shore in New Kent County, and thence either directly to Williamsburg, or by way of New Kent courthouse. Stopovers were made either at ordinaries or at the houses of friends.[74] Mercer's travels, summarized in the journal that he kept in the back of Ledger B from 1730 until his death in 1768, were prodigious. In 1735, for example, he journeyed a total of 4202 miles and was home only 119 days. This pace had slackened considerably in the period we are now considering, but, nevertheless, he was not at home more than 218 days out of any one year of the decade 1741-1750. This energetic and restless moving about was common among the leading planters, but in Mercer's case it seems to have reached its ultimate. Practicing law, playing politics, acquiring property, and becoming acquainted with people led him all over Virginia. A representative sample from the journal covers the period of September and October 1745. It will be noted that the days of the week are indicated alphabetically, a through g, as in the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer. The mileage traveled each day is entered at the right. 1 F to Potomack Church & home 10 2 g at home 3 a to Tylers & Spotsylvania Court 14 4 b to M^r Daniels[75] & home 14 5 c to M^r Moncure's,[76] my Survey & home 20 6 d to King George Court & W^m Walkers'[77] 24 7 e to M^{rs}. Spoore's[78] my Survey & home 20 8 F at home 9 g M^r Moncure's my Survey & home 20 10 a to Stafford Court & home 20 11 b at home 12 c to M^{rs} Mason's[79] Survey 18 13 d at D^o 10 14 e at D^o 15 15 F to Potomack Church & M^r Moncure's 18 16 g home 6 17 a at home 18 b D^o 19 c to M^{rs} Spoore & M^{rs} Taliaferro's 17 20 d at M^r Taliaferro's 14 21 e To Fredericksburg & M^{rs} Taliaferro's 22 F To Doctor Potter's[80] & M^{rs} Taliaferro's. Lost my horses 2 23 g To M^r Moncure's 9 24 a home 10 25 b at home 26 c D^o 27 d D^o 28 e to M^r Moncure's, Vestry & home 16 29 F at home 30 g D^o October 1 a at home 2 b to M^r Moncure's & Fredericksburg Fair 15 3 c at the Fair 4 d to M^r Moncure's & home 15 5 e at home 6 F to M^{rs} Taliaferro's 17 7 g to Caroline Court h^o & George Hoomes's[81] 20 8 a to Newcastle 50 9 b to M^r Anderson's & M^r Gray's [82] 14 10 c to New Kent Courth^s & M^r Gray's 14 11 d to Furnau's & Williamsburg 17 12 e at Williamsburg [He remained at Williamsburg until November 6.] Such itineraries were punctuated by periods of staying at Marlborough, but even then there were day-long journeys to Stafford courthouse, to church, or to a survey. The courthouse, which succeeded that at Marlborough, was situated on the south side of Potomac Creek, about three miles upstream from the old site. Mercer almost invariably took the 10-mile-long land route through the site of the present village of Brook, along the Fredericksburg road past Potomac Church, then along the headwaters of Potomac Run on a now-disused road leading to Belle Plains. Just before reaching the courthouse, which stood on a rise of land some distance back from the creek, he passed "Salvington," the mansion of Joseph Selden.[83] Near the water, and in sight of the courthouse, stood the house of John Cave, whose grandfather in 1707 had bought his land from Sampson Darrell, undertaker of the Marlborough courthouse.[84] Near it, on a foundation still visible, Cave built the warehouse that bore his name, and through him passed much of the tobacco that Mercer raised locally. Occasionally, when he had business to do at Cave's, Mercer would return home by water, as he did on August 14, 1746: to Stafford Court & M^r Cave's 11 home by water 5 FOOTNOTES: [73] John Mercer's journal, kept in the back of Ledger B. [74] Col. John Taliaferro was a justice of Spotsylvania County court and one of the original trustees of Fredericksburg. He lived at the "Manor Plantation," Snow Creek, Spotsylvania County, and died in 1744 ("Virginia Council Journals, 1726-1753," _VHM_ [Richmond, 1927], vol. 35, p. 415). Benjamin Hubbard lived in Caroline County ("The Lovelace Family and its Connections," _VHM_ [Richmond, 1921], vol. 29, p. 367); John Powers was apparently a resident of King William County (Ida J. Lee, "Abstracts from King William County Records," WMQ [2] [Williamsburg, 1926], vol. 6, p. 72); "Furnea's" seems to have been an ordinary between Williamsburg and New Kent. [75] Peter Daniel was a burgess and leading citizen of Stafford County, who, as vestryman, signed the advertisement for bids to build a new Aquia Church in 1751. _Virginia Gazette_, June 6, 1751. [76] The Reverend Mr. John Moncure was minister of Overwharton Parish. [77] See pp. 25, 35-36, 46-47 and footnote 95 for further references to William Walker. Mercer's visit on this occasion probably relates to Walker's tentative appointment to rebuild Aquia Church. [78] Mrs. Ann Spoore of Stafford County. [79] Probably Mercer's sister-in-law, Mrs. Ann Mason, mother of George Mason of Gunston Hall. [80] Dr. Henry Potter lived in Spotsylvania County. His estate was advertised for sale the following April 17 in the _Virginia Gazette_. [81] George Hoomes was a justice of Caroline County court. He was appointed in 1735, the same year in which John Mercer qualified to practice law at the same court. "Extracts from the Records of Caroline County," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1912), vol. 20, p. 203. [82] Probably Thomas Anderson (see p. 35 and footnote 93); William Gray was justice of New Kent County. [83] Joseph Selden's estate passed to his son Samuel, who married Mercer's eldest daughter, Sarah Ann Mason Mercer. See John Melville Jennings, ed., "Letters of James Mercer to John Francis Mercer," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1951), vol. 59, pp. 89-91. [84] Fredericksburg district-court papers, file 571, bundle F, nos. 36-43 (through George F. S. King, Fredericksburg); Stafford County Will Book, Liber Z, p. 383 (August 5, 1707). VEHICLES During the 1740's Mercer's travels were often by chaise or chariot. We learn from Ledger G that he bought "a fourwheel Chaise" from Charles Carter[85] in September 1744, a significant step in emulating the manners and ways of Virginia's established aristocrats. Three years later he purchased "a Sett of Chaisewheels" from Francis Hogans, a Caroline County wheelwright, and in June 1748 he discounted as an overcharge the cost of "a Chaise worth nothing" in his account with the English mercantile firm of Sydenham & Hodgson.[86] A "chaise" could have been one of several types of vehicles, but it was probably "a carriage for traveling, having a closed body and seated for one to three persons," according to Murray's _A New Oxford Dictionary_. [Illustration: Figure 7.--JOHN MERCER'S TOBACCO-CASK SYMBOLS, drawn in his Ledger G. The "home plantation" (Marlborough) is symbolized by the initial C, probably in honor of his wife Catherine. Sumner's quarters at Passapatanzy is indicated by S, and Bull Run quarters by B. (_Courtesy of Bucks County Historical Society._)] In 1749 Mercer bought a "chariot" from James Mills of Tappahannock for £80. Doubtless an elegant piece of equipage, this was, we learn from Murray, "a light four-wheeled carriage with only back seats, and differing from the post-chaise in having a coach-box." In November 1750 he paid John Simpson, a Fredericksburg wheelwright, 10 shillings for "wedging & hooping the Chariotwheels" and 9 shillings for "mending 3 fillys & 3 Spokes in D^o."[87] At the same time he bought a "p^r Cartwheels" for £2 and a "Tumbling Cart" for £1 6s. from Simpson. Murray tells us that a "tumble cart" or a "tumbril cart" was a dung cart, designed to dump the load. FOOTNOTES: [85] Ledger G (original at Bucks County Historical Society) covers the period 1744-1750, with some entries in 1751 and a few summary accounts covering Mercer's career. Further footnoted references to this ledger will be omitted. Charles Carter lived at "Cleve" in King George County, near Port Royal, fronting on the Rappahannock. See FAIRFAX HARRISON, "The Will of Charles Carter of Cleve," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1923), vol. 31, pp. 42-43. [86] Sydenham & Hodgson was a London mercantile firm, represented in Virginia by Jonathan Sydenham. Mercer identified the firm in Ledger G as "Merchants King George" and noted in his journal on January 20, 1745, that he visited at "Mr. Sydenham's." In 1757 the two men were referred to elsewhere as "Messrs. Sydenham & Hodgson of London." See "Proceedings of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence, 1759-67," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1905), vol. 12, pp. 2-4. [87] Extensive research has been conducted by Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., on the forms of vehicles used by such Virginians as Mercer and his contemporaries. TOBACCO CASK BRANDS Hogsheads and casks of tobacco were branded with the symbols or initials of the original owners. Many of the brands are recorded explicitly in the ledger. Mercer, at the beginning of his career, used a symbol M. As his plantations multiplied, however, three symbols were adopted, based on his own two initials. Tobacco casks from Bull Run were marked I^[B.]M. Those from Sumner's Quarters bore the brand I^[S.]M, while the "Home Plantation" at Marlborough had casks marked I^[C.]M (fig. 8). The interpretation of these symbols warrants some digression. In the 17th century, and indeed in the 18th century also, the triangular cipher to indicate the initials of man and wife was commonly used to mark silver, pewter, china, delftware, linens, and other objects needing owners' identifications. The common surname initial was placed at the top, the husband's first-name initial at the lower left, and the wife's at the lower right. This arrangement was used consistently in the 17th century. In the 18th century, however, variations began to appear in the colonies, although not, apparently, in England. Silver made in New York and Philadelphia during the 1700's presents the initials reading from left to right, with the husband's at the lower left, the wife's at top center, and the surname initial at the lower right. The large keystone of the Carlyle house in Alexandria, built in 1751, bears a triangular arrangement of John and Sarah Carlyle's initials: J^[S.]C.[88] Like Carlyle, Mercer used initials in this fashion, but also, as we have seen, in two other combinations in which "J. M." remains constant, the upper center initial having a subordinate significance. "S" signifies Sumner's Quarters, and "B," Bull Run Quarters. "C" on seals and brands having to do with Marlborough apparently refers to Catherine, honoring her as Mercer's wife and mistress of the home plantation. The possibility that "C" stands for Cave's warehouse may be dismissed as being inconsistent with the other two marks, the tobacco from Sumner's Quarters having also been shipped through Cave's, and that from Bull Run Quarters having been stored at the Occaquan warehouse.[89] John Withers also used the left-to-right arrangement, I^[H.]W, although Henry Tyler, a planter whose account is mentioned in Mercer's Ledger, used the conventional three-letter cipher, H^[T.]M. These marks occurred on casks transmitted to Mercer as payments, and are recorded in Ledger G (fig. 7). FOOTNOTES: [88] GAY MONTAGUE MOORE, _Seaport in Virginia_ (Richmond, 1949), p. 62. [89] C. MALCOLM WATKINS, "The Three-initial Cipher: Exceptions to the Rule," _Antiques_ (June 1958), vol. 73, no. 6, pp. 564-565. TOBACCO EXCHANGE Tobacco, before being transferred to another owner, was examined by official inspectors. Mercer kept a special "Inspector's Notes" account where he kept track of fees due the inspectors. Direct payments of tobacco were made in transactions with William Hunter and Charles Dick, the Fredericksburg merchants from whom Mercer bought most of his goods and supplies. To others, however, payments were made in a complexity of tobacco notes, legal-fee payments, and plain barter. Tobacco shipped overseas was usually handled by Sydenham & Hodgson. Also involved with tobacco transactions in England were two Virginia merchants, Major John Champe, a distinguished resident of King George County who lived at Lamb's Creek plantation, and William Jordan, of Richmond County, both of whom arranged for purchases of books, furniture, and other English imports for Mercer. The following are excerpts from Sydenham & Hodgson's account in Ledger G: 1745 £ s. d. June To 8 hhds. tob^o consigned 63 5 5 you by the Pri[n]ce of Denmark November To 6 hhds by the 29 15 9 Harrington 1746 May To 5 hhds by Cap^n Lee LOST Feb To 10 hhds by Cap^t 51 14 8 Perry 1747 Septemb^r To 10 hhds by Cap^t 35 9 8 Perryman 1748 June To 10 hhds by Cap^n Donaldson LOST 1749 Septemb^r To 24 hhds tob^o sold 162 17 14 Mr. Jordan Revealed in this account are the hazards of shipping goods overseas in the 18th century. A partnership apparently figured in the second loss at sea, however, as the following entry in Ledger G shows: June 1747 By Profit & Loss for the half £75.15.3-3/4 of 20 hhds by Donaldson in the Cumberland & Lost By William Jordan for the other half. Between 1747 and 1750 Mercer lost a total of 107 hogsheads of tobacco. Over and above this, however, he shipped overseas tobacco to the amount of £385 11s. 7d., during the same period. CLIENTS Mercer's success was gained despite the failures of a great many persons to pay the fees they owed him. In 1745 he listed 303 "Insolvents, bad & doubtful debts." That matters were no worse may be attributed to a high average of responsible clients. Among them were such well-known Virginians as Daniel Dulaney, William and Henry Fitzhugh, William Randolph, Augustine, John, and Lawrence Washington, Gerard Fowke, Richard Taliaferro, John and Daniel Parke Custis, Andrew and Thomas Monroe, George Tayloe, George Lee, George Wythe, and William Ramsay. [Illustration: Figure 8.--WINE-BOTTLE SEAL on bottle excavated at Marlborough, with same arrangement of initials used in the Marlborough tobacco seal.] CLOTHING By the early 1740's Mercer was in a position to surround himself with symbols of wealth and prestige. Clothes, a traditional measure of affluence, were now a growing concern for himself and his family. Between 1741 and 1744, the ledger reveals, he purchased from William Hunter a greatcoat, women's stockings, women's calf shoes, morocco pumps, a "fine hat," three felt hats, two dozen "plaid hose," two pairs of men's shoes, one pair of "Women's Spanish Shoes," and "2 p^r Calf D^o." In 1744 and 1745 he bought from Charles Dick two pairs of "women's coll'^d lamb gloves," two pairs of silk stockings, "1 velvet laced hood," a "laced hat," a "Castor" (i.e., beaver) hat, "fine thread stockings," silk handkerchiefs, a "flower'd pettycoat," worsted stockings, and buckskin gloves. From Hugh MacLane, a Stafford tailor, he obtained a suit in 1745. The rise in Mercer's wealth and prestige is reflected in his patronizing Williamsburg tailors, beginning in 1745 when he settled with George Charleston for a tailor's bill of £6 10s. In 1748 he paid Charleston four shillings for "Collar lining a Velvet Waistcoat." In 1749 he purchased a "full trimm'd velvet Suit" from Charles Jones, the work and materials totaling £7 7s. 4-1/4d., while in 1750 he spent £11 2s. 1-1/2d. on unitemized purchases from the same tailor. In that year he bought also from Robert Crichton, a Williamsburg merchant, "a flower'd Velvet Waistcoat, £5." As the decade advanced, Mercer played with increasing consciousness the role of wealthy gentleman, as his choice of tailors shows. MATERIALS Textile materials, as seen under "General Expenses" and in the accounts of Hunter and Dick, ran the gamut of the usual imported fabrics, as well as rare, expensive elegancies. An alphabetical list of the materials mentioned in these accounts, with definitions, is given in Appendix I. From this list we gain an impression of great diversity and refinement in the materials used for clothing and interior decoration, as well as of a tremendous amount of sewing, embroidering, and making of clothes at home, probably typical of most of the great plantations in the middle of the century. WEAVING In addition to fine imported materials, there were needed blankets, work clothes for slaves, and fabrics for other practical purposes. To these ends Mercer employed several weavers in various parts of Virginia. In 1747 William Threlkeld wove 109 yards of woolen cloth at fourpence a yard. During that year and the next, John Booth of King George County wove an indeterminate amount for a total of £2 4d. In 1748 John Fitzpatrick wove 480 yards of cotton at fourpence a yard, and William Mills wove 30 yards of "cloath." Much of the work appears to have been done in payment for legal services. Weaving and spinning evidently were done at Marlborough, as they were at most plantations. In 1744 Mercer recorded under "General Charges" that he had sold a loom to Joseph Foxhall. In 1746 he bought a spinning wheel from Captain Wilson of Whitehaven, England, purchasing three more from him in 1748. Wool cards also appear in the accounts. In January 1748 Mercer charged William Mills with "3 months Hire of Thuanus the Weaver, £3," which suggests that Thuanus was an indentured white servant (his name does not occur on the list of slaves) employed at Marlborough and hired out to Mills, a Stafford County weaver. PERSONAL ACCESSORIES In contrast to the elegancies of dress materials and clothing, Mercer left little evidence of jewelry, toilet articles, or other personal objects. In Ledger G we find "2 horn combs" bought for fivepence, an ivory comb for tenpence, two razors, two strops, snuff-boxes, bottles of snuff, "a smelling bottle," and "buck-handled" and silver-handled penknives. From John Hyndman, a Williamsburg merchant, Mercer acquired a set of silver buckles for £1 10s., and from William Woodford he bought "a gold watch, Chain & Swivel" for the not-trifling sum of £64 6s. 3d. Like most successful men, Mercer had his portrait painted. During the General Court sessions held in the spring and fall of 1748 in Williamsburg, he lodged with William Dering, the dancing master and portrait painter. Dering lived in the house still standing on the capitol green, now known as the Brush-Everard house. In Dering's account we find: "by drawing my picture, £9.2.9."[90] FOOTNOTES: [90] See J. HALL PLEASANTS, "William Dering, a mid-eighteenth-century Williamsburg Portrait Painter," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1952), vol. 60, pp. 53-63. FOOD AND DRINK Good food and drink played an important part in Mercer's life, as it did in the lives of most Virginia planters. In the ledger accounts are found both double-refined and single-refined sugar, bohea tea, coffee, nutmegs, cinnamon, mace, and chocolate. Most meats were provided by the plantation and thus are not mentioned, while fish were caught from the plantation sloop or by fixed nets. However, Thomas Tyler of the Eastern Shore sold Mercer a barrel of drumfish and four and one-half bushels of oysters, while Thomas Jones, also of the Eastern Shore, provided a barrel of pork for 47s. 6d. in 1749. Earlier there appeared a ledger item under "General Charges" for 1775 pounds of pork. Molasses was an important staple, and Mercer bought a 31-gallon barrel of it from one "Captain Fitz of the Eastern Shore of Maryland" in 1746 and 30 gallons the next year, charging both purchases to his wife. In 1750 he received 88 gallons of molasses and 255 pounds of "muscovy sugar" from Robert Todd. Muscovy sugar was the same as "muscavado" sugar, the unrefined brown sugar of the West Indies, known in Spanish as _mascabado_. [Illustration: Figure 9.--FRENCH HORN dated 1729. Mercer purchased a "french horn" like this from Charles Dick in 1743. (USNM 95.269.)] Beverages and the fruits to go with them were bought in astonishing quantities between 1744 and 1750. Major Robert Tucker, a Norfolk merchant, exchanged a "Pipe of Wine" worth £26 and a 107-1/2-gallon hogshead of rum valued at £22 in return for Mercer's legal services. Again as a legal fee, Mercer received 55 gallons of "Syder" from Janet Holbrook of Stafford and bought 11 limes from John Mitchelson of York for 12 shillings. From William Black he purchased "11 dozen and 11 bottles of Ale" at 13 shillings, and from John Harvey "5-1/12 dozen of Claret" for £11 6d. "Mark Talbott of the Kingdom of Ireland E^{sq}" sold Mercer a pipe of wine for £3 3s. LIFE OF THE CHILDREN During the 1740's Mercer's first four surviving children, George, John Fenton, James, and Sarah Ann Mason Mercer,[91] were growing up, and the accounts are scattered through with items pertaining to their care and upbringing. There are delightful little hints of Mercer's role as the affectionate father. On May 17, 1743, "By Sundry Toys" appears in Hunter's account; an item of "1 horses 1^d" in Dick's account for 1745 was undoubtedly a toy. Most charming of all the entries in the latter account is "1 Coach in a box 6^d. 4 Toys. 8^d, 2 Singing birds." The birds may have occupied a birdcage and stand bought from George Rock, the account for which was settled a year later. [Illustration: Figure 10.--MERCER LISTED A HORNBOOK in his General Account in 1743. It probably resembled this typical hornbook in the collection of Mrs. Arthur M. Greenwood.] "1 french horn" and "3 trumpets" are listed in the Dick account. The horn was probably used in hunting; the three trumpets were bought perhaps for the three boys. Mercer's library contained one book of music entitled _The Musical Miscellany_, which may have furnished the scores for a boyish trio of trumpets. Music and dancing were a part of the life at Marlborough, and in 1745 an entry under "General Charges" reads "To DeKeyser for a years dancing four children £16," while in the following year ninepence was paid William Allan "for his Fidler." In 1747 "Fiddle strings" were bought from Fielding Lewis in Fredericksburg for 2s. 4-1/2d. From the ledger we also learn much about the children's clothing: child's mittens and child's shoes, boy's pumps, boy's shoes, girl's shoes, boy's collared lamb gloves, two pairs of "girl's clock'd Stocking," "2 p^r large boys Shoes 6^l 2 p^r smaller 5/ ... 1 p^r girls 22^d, 1 p^r smaller 20^d," boy's gloves, and "Making a vest and breeches for George" in October 1745. In 1748 Captain Wilson brought from England "a Wig for George," worth 12 shillings. George then had reached the age of 15 and young manhood. Hugh MacLane, the Stafford tailor, was employed to make clothes for the three boys--a suit for George, and a suit, vest, coat, and breeches each for James and John. That the children were educated according to time-honored methods is revealed in the "General Expenses" account for May 1743, where "1 hornbook 3^d" is entered. The hornbook was an ancient instructional device consisting of a paddle-shaped piece of wood with the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer printed or otherwise lettered on paper that was glued to the wood and covered for protection with thin sheets of transparent horn. Elaborate examples sometimes were covered with tooled leather, or were made of ivory, silver, or pewter. The mention of hornbooks in colonial records is a great rarity, although they were commonplace in England until about 1800. The Mercer children were taught by private tutors. One, evidently engaged in England, was the Reverend John Phipps, who was paid a salary of £100 annually and, presumably, his board and lodging. Mercer noted in his journal on November 18, 1746, that "Mr Phipps came to Virginia." That Mr. Phipps left something to be desired was revealed years later in the letter written in 1768 by John to George Mercer, who was then in England, asking him to find a tutor for his younger children: "... the person you engage may not pretend, as M^r Phipps did that tho' he undertook to instruct my children he intended boys only, & I or my wife might teach the girls. As I have mentioned M^r Phipps, it must remind you that a tutor's good nature & agreeable temper are absolutely necessary both for his own ease & that of the whole family."[92] In 1750 George entered the College of William and Mary. He had a room at William Dering's house, and the account of "Son's Maintenance at Williamsburg" provides an interesting picture of a well-to-do college-boy's expenses, chargeable to his father. Such items as "To Cash p^d for Lottery Tickets" (£7 10s. 6d.), "To Covington the Dancing Master ... 2.3," "To W^m Thomson for Taylor's work" (£1 9s. 6d.), "To p^d for Washing" (£1 1s.), and "To Books for sundrys" (£22 4s. 7-1/2d.) show a variety of obligations comparable to those sometimes encountered on a modern campus. The entire account appears in Appendix J. FOOTNOTES: [91] Born 1733, 1735, 1736, and 1738, respectively. [92] _George Mercer Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 202. BUILDING THE MANOR HOUSE As early as 1742 the ledger shows that Mercer was building steadily, although the nature of what he built is rarely indicated. Hunter's account for 1742 lists 2500 tenpenny nails and 1000 twenty-penny nails, while in the following year the same account shows a total of 4200 eightpenny nails, 5000 tenpenny, 2000 fourpenny, and 1000 threepenny nails. The following tools were bought from Hunter in 1744: paring chisel, 1-1/2-inch auger, 3/4-inch auger, socket gouge, broad axe, adze, drawing knife, mortice chisel, a "square Rabbit plane," and "plough Iron & plains." In Charles Dick's account we find purchases in 1745 of 16,000 flooring brads, 4000 twenty-penny nails, 2000 each of fourpenny, sixpenny, eightpenny, and tenpenny brads, and 60,000 fourpenny nails. Beginning in 1744 Mercer made great purchases of lumber. Thomas Tyler of the Eastern Shore sold him 2463 feet of plank in that year, and in 1745 made several transactions totaling 5598 feet of 1-, 1-1/2-, and 2-inch plank, as well as 23,170 shingles. In 1746 Charles Waller of Stafford sold Mercer 5193 feet of 1-, 1-1/4-, and 1-1/2-inch plank. In the same year James Waughhop of Maryland provided "4000 foot of Plank of different thicknesses for £12," and in May 1749, "2300 foot of 1-1/2 Inch Plank at 7/." Mercer made several similar purchases, including 14,700 shingles, from Robert Taylor of the Eastern Shore. Where all these materials were used is a matter for conjecture. We know that Mercer made "Improvements" to the extent of "saving" 40 lots under the terms of the Act for Ports and Towns, and that a great deal of construction work, therefore, was going on. One building was probably a replacement for a warehouse, for a laconic entry in his journal on New Year's day of 1746 notes that "My warehouses burnt." These were doubtless the buildings erected in 1732 and officially vacated in 1735. That at least one eventually was rebuilt for Mercer's own use is known from an overseer's report of 1771 (Appendix M). The windmill, the foundations of which still remain in part near the Potomac shore, was probably built in 1746. Mercer's cash account for that year includes an item of 2s. 6d. for "Setting up Mill," which apparently meant adjusting the millstones for proper operation. In August he paid Nathaniel Chapman £22 19s. 8-3/4d. "in full for Smith's work." A windmill, with its bearings, levers, lifts, and shafts, would seem to have been the only structure requiring such a costly amount of ironwork. The most elaborate project of all, however, is clearly discernible in the ledger. In 1746 Thomas Anderson,[93] in consideration of cash and legal services, charged for "making & burning 40^m Stock bricks" at 4 pounds 6 pence per 1000. In the same year David Minitree, described by Mercer as a "Bricklayer," came to Marlborough from Williamsburg. Minitree was more than an ordinary bricklayer, however, for he had worked on the Mattaponi church, and later, between 1750 and 1753, was to build Carter's Grove for Carter Burwell.[94] The credit side of Minitree's account in Ledger G is as follows: £ s. d. 1746 Decemb^r 5 By making & burning 9 5 7-1/2 41,255 Bricks at 4/6 1747 Septemb^r By stacking & burning 16 9-1/2 11,200 D^o at 1/6 By making & burning 14 2 10 62,849 D^o at 4/6 By making & burning 4 6 1000 D^o at 4/6 By short paid of my 9-1/2 Order on Maj^r Champe By building part of 10-1/2 my House The last item, in particular, is clear indication that an architectural project of importance was underway and that Mercer had set about to make Marlborough the equal of Virginia's great plantations. Only "part of my house" was built by Minitree, yet his bill was more than five times the total cost of Mercer's previous house, completed in 1730! Since it was customary in Virginia to make bricks on the site of a new house, utilizing the underlying clay excavated from the foundation, Minitree, as well as Anderson, made his bricks at Marlborough before using them. Mortar for laying bricks was made of lime from oystershells. In 1747 and 1748, we learn from the ledger, 61-1/2 hogsheads of oystershells were bought from Abraham Basnett, an "Oysterman," payment having been made in cash, meat, and brandy. "Flagstones &c" were obtained in 1747 through Major John Champe at a cost of £36 4s. 6d. These may have been the same stones brought up as "a load of stone" by "Boatswain Davis" of Boyd's Hole in Passapatanzy in October 1747 for £4 5s. 5d. Early in 1748 a new set of developments concerning the house took place. Major William Walker of Stafford, revealed in the journal and the ledgers as an old acquaintance of Mercer's, then became the "undertaker," or contractor, for the house. Walker was a talented man who had started out as a cabinetmaker, a craft in which his brother Robert still continued. Whiffen (_The Public Buildings of Williamsburg_) shows that he both designed and built a glebe house for St. Paul's Parish, Hanover County, in 1739-1740, and the steeple for St. Peter's Church in New Kent the latter year. Also in 1740 he built a bridge across the Pamunkey for Hanover County. At the same time that he was engaged on Mercer's mansion, he undertook in March 1749 to rebuild the burned capitol at Williamsburg. He died 11 months later before bringing either of these major projects to completion.[95] Walker's carpenter was William Monday. Mercer settled with Monday in March 1748 for a total bill of £126 16s. 2-1/2d., but with a protest addressed to himself in the ledger: "By work done about my House which is not near the value as by Maj^r Walker's Estimate below, yet to avoid Disputes & as he is worth nothing I give him Credit to make a full Ballance." Meanwhile, William Bromley, a joiner, had gone to work on the interior finish. Like Minitree and Walker, Bromley represented the highest caliber of artisanship in the colony. Eighteen years later Mercer referred to Bromley, "who," he said, "I believe was the best architect that ever was in America."[96] Bromley employed several apprentices, among them an Irishman named Patterson.[97] For the interval from July 9, 1748, to December 25, 1750, Bromley was paid £140 1s. 1/2d., almost entirely for wages. The payment included "3 p^r hollows & rounds / 6 plane irons / 1 gallon Brandy." For the same period Andrew Beaty, also a joiner, received £113 5s. 1-1/2d. On June 19, 1749, Mercer noted in his journal, "Beaty's apprentice came to work." These men were specialists in framing woodwork and in making paneling, doors, wainscoting, and exterior architectural elements of wood. The opulence of the building's finish is indicated by a charge on Walker's account for "his Carver's work 69 days at 5/, £17. 15...." Previously, while Minitree was still working on the house, an item had been entered in August 1747, "To Cash paid for cutting the Chimneypiece ... 6.3." A chimneypiece was usually the ornamental trim or facing around a fireplace opening, although in this instance the overpanel may have been meant. Jacob Williams, a plasterer, worked 142-1/2 days for a total of £22 4s. 4d., while his helper Joseph Burges was employed 43 days for £5 7s. 6d. Walker charged £3 8s. 11d. for "his Painters work about my house," and a purchase of "42 gallons of Linseed Oyl" was recorded in the general charges account. Three books of goldleaf, which Mercer had obtained from George Gilmer, the Williamsburg apothecary, were charged, together with paint, to Walker. In May 1750, a charge by George Elliot, "Turner, Stafford," was recorded, "By turning 162 Ballusters at 6^d, £4.1...." Another item, for supplying "341-1/2 feet Walnut Plank at 2^d," settled in October, may have been for the wood of which the balusters were made. Thomas Barry, "Bricklayer," carried on the work that Minitree had not completed. His account for 1749 follows: £ s. d. By Building the Addition to my House 26 22 Arches at 6/ 6 12 900 Coins & Returns at 6/ 2 14 A Frontispiece 3 10 Underpinning & altering the Cellar 2 raising a Chimney 1 5 building an Oven 15 building a Kiln 1 building a Kitchen 9 10 3 Arches at 6/ 18 2 Plain D^o at 2/6 5 500 Coins & returns at 6/ 1 10 -- -- -- 55 19 0 Expensive stone was imported for the house by Captain Roger Lyndon, master of the _Marigold_, whose account occurs in the ledger: £ s. d. 1749 April By 630 Bricks at 20/ p^r m. 10 Dec^r By Gen'l Charges for hewn Stone from M^r Nicholson[98] 65 16 4 1750 June By Gen'l Charges for sundrys by the Marigold By Do for freight of Stones to my House 5 It is interesting to note that bricks, probably carried from England as ballast, were brought by Captain Lyndon. [Illustration: Figure 11.--FIREPLACE MANTELS illustrated in William Salmon's _Palladio Londonensis_. (_Courtesy of the Library of Congress._)] Not all the hewn stone was fashioned in England. William Copein, a Prince William County mason, and Job Wigley were employed together in 1749 to the amount of £2 8s. In 1750 Copein was paid by Mercer for 64 days of work at 3s. 1d. per day, totaling £9 17s. 4d. Copein was another accomplished craftsman, the marks of whose skill still are to be seen in the carved stone doorways of Aquia Church in Stafford County and in the baptismal font at Pohick Church in Fairfax. The design of the house will be considered in more detail later in the light of both archeological and documentary evidence. It is already quite clear, however, that the new mansion was remarkably elaborate, reflecting the workmanship of some of Virginia's best craftsmen. The most significant clues to its inspiration are found in the titles of four books which Mercer purchased in 1747. These are listed in the inventory of his books in Ledger G as follows: "Hoppne's Architecture." This was probably _The Gentlemans and Builders Repository on Architecture Displayed. Designs Regulated and Drawn by E. Hoppus, and engraved by B. Cole. Containing useful and requisite problems in geometry ... etc_, (1738). Edward Hoppus was "Surveyor to the Corporation of the London Assurance." He also edited Salmon's _Palladio Londonensis_. We find no writer on architecture named Hoppne and assume this was a mistake. "Salmon's Palladio Londonensis." _Palladio Londonensis: or the London Art of Building_, by William Salmon, which appeared in at least two editions, in 1734 and in 1738, had a profound influence on the formal architecture of the colonies during the mid-century. "Palladio's Architecture." The Italian Andrea Palladio was the underlying source of English architectural thought from Christopher Wren down to Robert Adam. Under the patronage of Lord Burlington, this book was brought out in London in an English translation by Giacomo Leoni under the title _The Architecture of A. Palladio; in Four Books_. It had appeared in three editions prior to this inventory, in 1715, 1721, and 1742, according to Fiske Kimball (_Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic_; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924, p. 58). Mercer probably owned one of these. "Langley's City & Country Builder." _City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Design_ by Battey Langley, 1740, 1745. This was another copybook much used by builders and provincial architects. [Illustration: Figure 12.--DOORWAYS ILLUSTRATED IN WILLIAM SALMON'S _Palladio Londonensis_ (the London Art of Building), one of the books used by William Bromley, the chief joiner who worked on Mercer's mansion. (_Courtesy of the Library of Congress._)] All four of these books were listed in succession in the ledger and bracketed together. Next to the bracket are the initials "WB," to indicate that the books had been lent to someone who bore those initials. In this case it is virtually certain that the initials are those of William Bromley, to whom the books would have been of utmost importance in designing the woodwork of the house. Door hardware was purchased from William Jordan in June 1749, according to an item for "Locks & Hinges" that amounted to the large sum of £13 8s. 8d. FOOTNOTES: [93] Probably the same Thomas Anderson whose appointment as tobacco inspector at Page's warehouse, Hanover County, was unsuccessfully protested on the basis that the job required "a person skilled in writing and expert in accounts" (_Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 18), vol. 1, pp. 233-234). A letter to Thomas Anderson of Hanover County was listed as uncalled for at the Williamsburg Post Office in August, 1752 (_Virginia Gazette_; all references to the _Gazettes_ result from use of LESTER J. CAPPON and STELLA F. DUFF, _Virginia Gazette Index 1736-1780_ [Williamsburg, 1950], and microfilm published by The Institute of Early American History and Culture [Williamsburg, 1950]). [94] See THOMAS TILESTON WATERMAN, _The Mansions of Virginia, 1706-1776_ (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1946), pp. 183-184, and MARCUS WHIFFEN, _The Public Buildings of Williamsburg_ (Williamsburg, Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., 1958), pp. 84, 133, 218. [95] WHIFFEN, ibid., pp. 134-137, 217; _JHB, 1742-1747; 1748-1749_ op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 312; _JHB, 1752-1755; 1756-1758_ (Richmond, 1909), p. 28. [96] Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_, September 26, 1766. Mercer spelled the name _Brownley_ in Ledger G, but in the _Gazette_ article it is printed consistently as _Bromley_. As published in the _George Mercer Papers_ it is spelled, and perhaps miscopied, _Bramley_. We have chosen _Bromley_ as the most likely spelling, in the absence of other references to him. [97] _George Mercer Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 204. [98] Captain Timothy Nicholson was a London merchant and shipmaster engaged in the Virginia trade with whom Mercer arranged several transactions. DOMESTIC FURNISHINGS As the mansion progressed, so did the acquisition of furnishings suitable to its elegance. As early as 1742, doubtless in anticipation of the new house, Mercer had bought from Hunter a "lanthorn," three porringers, two cotton counterpanes at 27s., a plate warmer for 7s. 6d., a half-dozen plates for 3s. 6d., a half-dozen deep plates for 6s., a dozen "Stone Coffee cups" for 18d., a dozen knives and forks for 3s., two tin saucepans at 4d. each, and "4 Dishes, 19-1/2 lib." (obviously large pewter chargers). In 1743 he bought "5 gallon Basons 4/7" and "2 pottle Basons at 2/4" (for toilet use), "1 Soop Spoon 1/," and "1 Copper Chocolate pot 7/6 & mull Stick 6^d," "2 blew & W^t Jugs 2/" (probably Westerwald stoneware), and "1 Flanders Bed Bunt, 25" (colored cotton or linen used for bedcovers). In 1744 Mercer acquired from Charles Dick 4 candlesticks for a penny each, 2 pairs of large hinges, a "hair sifter," "2 kitchen buck hand knives," 12 cups and saucers for 2s., "1 milkmaid 2^d" (probably a shoulder yoke), and "1 bucket 1/2^d." In 1745 a 5-gallon "Stone bottle" for 3s. 6d., "1 doz. butcher knives," a hearthbroom, six spoons for a shilling, a pair of scissors, "8 Chamberdoor Locks w^{th} brass knobs £2," and "1 Sett finest China 35/, 2 punch bowls ... 2.7" were purchased. The following year Mercer paid a total of £23 for a silver sugar dish, weighing 8 oz., 5 dwt.; one dozen teaspoons and tray, 8 oz., 7 dwt.; a teapot and frame, 26 oz., 8 dwt. This lot of silver probably was bought at second hand, having been referred to as "Pugh's Plate p^d Edw^d Wright as by Rec^t." He paid John Coke, a Williamsburg silversmith, £1 6s. for engraving and cleaning it. In the meanwhile, in 1745, he had sold Coke £6 worth of old silver. He also sold a quantity of "old Plate" for £15 17s. 3d. to Richard Langton in England through Sydenham & Hodgson. In 1747 he made a large purchase of silver from the silversmith William King[99] of Williamsburg: oz. dwt. £ s. d. May 1747 By Bernard Moore for 1 Cup 51 1 30 8 3 By James Power for 1 Waiter 8 7-1/2 4 14 2-1/2 By a pair of Sauceboats 25 8 By a large Waiter 29 3 48 11 3-1/2 By a smaller D^o 23 8 By a small D^o 8 8 -------------------------------- 148 15-1/2 @ 11/3 84 13 9 In March 1748, Mercer settled with Captain Lyndon for the following: £ s. d. 1 superfine large gilt Sconce glass 6 16 1 D^o 5 5 1 Walnut & gold D^o 2 10 1 Marble Sideboard 32/6 Bragolo [sic] 32/6 3 5 The following June he bought a marble table from William Jordan and in October "4 looking Glasses," which Jordan obtained from Sydenham & Hodgson. Meanwhile, William Walker's brother Robert made 14 chairs for Mercer, on which William's carver spent 54 days. The total cost was £30 8s. The quality of Mercer's furniture is illustrated further by a purchase in 1750 from Lyonel Lyde,[100] a London merchant, of £43 13s. worth of "Cabinet Ware from Belchier." Belchier was a leading London furniture maker, whose shop in 1750 was located on the "south side of St. Paul's, right against the clock." Sir Ambrose Heal, in _The London Furniture Makers_, illustrates a superb japanned writing cabinet in green and gold chinoiserie made by Belchier in 1730.[101] Belchier also supplied Shalstone Manor, the Buckinghamshire estate of Henry Purefoy, with a table-desk in 1749 (fig. 13).[102] The ledger notes other occasional purchases of furniture during this period. In 1746 Mercer paid cash "for oysters & a bedsteed," in the amount of 10s. 6d. In September 1748, he bought "an Escritoire" from tutor John Phipps, for which he paid £5. FOOTNOTES: [99] Probably William King, who married Elizabeth Edwards in Stafford in 1738. He was the son of Alfred King, whose parents were William King (d. 1702) and Judith Brent of Stafford. His account with Mercer seems to indicate that he was a silversmith. "Notes and Queries," _The King Family, VHM_ (Richmond, 1916), vol. 24, p. 203. [100] The _Virginia Gazette_ on January 27, 1738, announced that Major Cornelius Lyde, "Son of Mr. _Lionel Lyde_, an eminent merchant in Bristol, died at his House in _King William_ County." Later it referred to "Capt. Lyonel Lyde of Bristol, [master of] the _Gooch_." Mercer's account with Lyde in Ledger G is headed "M^r Lyonel Lyde, Merch^t in London." Lyde died in 1749 before Mercer settled his account. Elsewhere in the ledger is an account with "Mess^{rs} Cooper, Macartney, Powel, & Lyde. E^{xrs} of Lyonel Lyde." Another Lyonel Lyde, who became "Sir Lyonel" by 1773, was evidently heir to the business. [101] SIR AMBROSE HEAL, _The London Furniture Makers from the Restoration to the Victorian Era, 1660-1840_ (London: Batsford, 1953), pp. 6, 13, 236, 237. [102] GEORGE E. ELAND, _The Purefoy Letters_ (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., 1931), vol. 1, pp. 98, 107, 111, 177, and pl. 11. LIGHTING DEVICES Artificial lighting for the manor house receives sparse mention. The four candlesticks bought in 1744 for a penny each were probably of iron or tin for kitchen use. Candlesticks purchased earlier probably remained in use, sufficing for most illumination. It is a modern misconception that colonial houses were ablaze at night with lamplight and candlelight. Candles were expensive to buy and time-consuming to make, while lamps rarely were used before the end of the century in the more refined areas of households. The principal use of candles was in guiding one's way to bed or in providing the minimum necessary light to carry on an evening's conversation. During cold weather, fireplaces were a satisfactory supplement. In general, early to bed and early to rise was the rule, as William Byrd has shown us, and artificial light was only a minor necessity. [Illustration: Figure 13.--TABLE-DESK made in 1749 for Henry Purefoy of Shalstone Manor in Buckinghamshire by John Belchier of London. In the following year, John Mercer received £43 13s. worth of "Cabinet Ware" from that noted cabinetmaker. (_Reproduced from_ Purefoy Letters, 1735-1753, _G. Bland, ed., Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., London, 1931, by courteous permission of the publisher_.)] Nevertheless, some illumination was needed in the halls and great rooms of colonial plantation houses, especially when guests were present--as they usually were. The three sconce glasses which Captain Lyndon delivered to Mercer in 1748 were doubtless elegant answers to this requirement. These glasses were mirrors with one or more candle branches, arranged so that the light would be reflected and multiplied. On special occasions, these, and perhaps some candelabra and a scattering of candlesticks to supplement them, provided concentrations of light; for such affairs the use of ordinary tallow candles, with their drippings and smoke, was out of the question. A pleasant alternative is indicated by the purchase in April 1749 of "11-1/2 lib. Myrtle Wax att 5d ... 14.4-1/2" and "4 lib Beeswax 6/" from Thomas Jones of the Eastern Shore. Similar purchases also are recorded. Myrtle wax came from what the Virginians called the myrtle bush, better known today as the bayberry bush. Its gray berries yielded a fragrant aromatic wax much favored in the colonies. In making candles it was usually mixed with beeswax, as was evidently the case here. A clean-burning, superior light source, it was nonetheless an expensive one. Burning in the brackets of the sconce glasses at Marlborough, heightening the shadows of the Palladian woodwork and, when snuffed, emitting its faint but delicious fragrance, it must have been a delight to the eyes and the nostrils alike. NEGROES Negroes played an increasingly important part in the life of Marlborough, particularly after the manor house was built. Between 1731 and 1750 Mercer purchased 89 Negroes. Most of these are listed by name in the ledger accounts. Forty-six died in this period, while 25 were born, leaving a total of 66 Negroes on his staff in 1750. In 1746 he bought 6 men and 14 women at £21 10s. from Harmer & King in Williamsburg. The new house and the expanded needs for service were perhaps the reasons for this largest single purchase of slaves. There is no indication that Mercer treated his slaves other than well, or that they caused him any serious difficulties. On the other hand, his frequent reference to them by name, the recording of their children's names and birth dates in his ledger, and the mention in his journal of new births among his slave population all attest to an essentially paternalistic attitude that was characteristic of most Virginia planters during the 18th century. Good physical care of the Negroes was motivated perhaps as much by self-interest in protecting an investment as by humane considerations, but, nonetheless, we find such items in the ledger as "To Cash p^d Doctor Lynn for delivering Deborah." That discipline served for the Negroes as it usually did for all colonials, whether the lawbreaker were slave, bondsman, or free citizen, is indicated by an entry in the Dick account: "2 thongs w^{th} Silk lashes 1/3." One must bear in mind that corporal punishment was accepted universally in the 18th century. Its application to slaves, however, usually was left to the discretion of the slave owner, so that the restraint with which it was administered depended largely upon the humanity and wisdom of the master. The use of the lash was more often than not delegated to the overseer, who was hired to run, or help run, the plantation. It was the overseer who had a direct interest in eliciting production from the field hands; a sadistic overseer, therefore, might create a hell for the slaves under him. It is clear from Mercer's records that some of his overseers caused problems for him and that at least one was a brutal man. For October 1747 a chilling entry appears in the account of William Graham, an overseer at Bull Run Quarters: "To Negroes for one you made hang himself. £35." Entered in the "Negroes" account, it reappears, somewhat differently: "To William Graham for Frank (Hanged) £35 Sterling. £50. 15." This is one of several instances on record of Negroes driven to suicide as the only alternative to enduring cruelties.[103] In this case, Graham was fined 50 shillings and 1293 pounds of tobacco. We do not know, of course, whether other Negroes listed as dead in Mercer's account died of natural causes or whether cruel treatment contributed to their deaths. In the case of a homesick Negro named Joe, who ran away for the third time in 1745, Mercer seems reluctantly to have resorted to an offer of reward and an appeal to the law. Even so, he declined to place all the blame on Joe. Joe had been "Coachman to Mr. Belfield of Richmond County" and in the reward offer Mercer states that Joe ... was for some time after he first ran away lurking about the Widow Belfield's Plantation.... He is a short, well-set Fellow, about 26 Years of Age, and took with him several cloaths, among the rest a Suit of Blue, lined and faced with Red, with White Metal Buttons, Whoever will secure and bring home the said Negroe, shall receive Two Pistoles Reward, besides what the Law allows: And as I have a great Reason to believe, that he is privately encouraged to run away, and then harboured and concealed, so that the Person or Persons so harbouring him may be thereof convicted, I will pay to such Discoverer Ten Pistoles upon Conviction. This being the third Trip he has made since I bought him in _January_ last, I desire he may receive such Correction in his Way home as the Law directs, when apprehended.[104] Whether Joe received the harsh punishment his offense called for is not recorded. However, in 1748 Mercer accounted for cash paid for "Joe's Lodging & burial £3. 10.," suggesting that Joe enjoyed death-bed care and a decent burial, even though he may have succumbed to "such correction ... as the law directs." As has already been suggested, his overseers seem to have given Mercer more trouble than his slaves. One was Booth Jones of Stafford, about whom Mercer confided in his ledger, "By allowed him as Overseer tho he ran away about 5 weeks before his time was out by w^{ch} I suffered more damage than his whole wages. £3. 11." Meanwhile, in 1746 William Wheeland, an overseer at Bull Run Quarters, "imbezilled" 40 barrels of corn. James Savage was one of the principal overseers and seems to have been in charge first at Sumner's Quarters and then at Bull Run Quarters. John Ferguson succeeded him at the former place. William Torbutt was also at Bull Run, while Mark Canton and Nicholas Seward were overseers at Marlborough. The outfitting of slaves with proper clothes, blankets, and coats was an important matter. It called for such purchases as 121 ells of "ozenbrigs" from Hunter in 1742. "Ozenbrigs" was a coarse cloth of a type made originally in Oznabruck, Germany,[105] and was traditionally the Negro field hand's raiment. Many purchases of indigo point to the dying of "Virginia" cloth, woven either on the plantation or by the weavers mentioned earlier. Presumably, shoes for the Negroes were made at Marlborough, judging from a purchase from Dick of 3-1/4 pounds of shoe thread. The domestic servants were liveried, at least after the mansion was occupied. William Thomson, a Fredericksburg tailor, made "a Coat & Breeches [for] Bob, 11/." Bob was apparently Mercer's personal manservant, who had served him since 1732. Thomson also was paid £4 16s. 2d. for "Making Liveries." The listing of such materials as "scarlet duffel" and "scarlet buttons" points to colorful outfitting of slaves. FOOTNOTES: [103] _Virginia Gazette_, July 10, 1752; BRUCE, op. cit. (footnote 5), vol. 2, pp. 107-108; ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS, _American Negro Slavery_ (New York & London: D. Appleton, 1918), pp. 271, 272, 381. [104] _Virginia Gazette_, September 12, 1745. [105] GEORGE FRANCIS DOW, _Everyday Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony_ (Boston: The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1935), p. 78. SAILING, FISHING, HUNTING Water transportation was essential to all the planters, most of whom owned sloops. We have seen that Mercer used a sloop for his earliest trading activities before he settled at Marlborough, and it is apparent that in the 1740's either this same sloop or another which may have replaced it still was operated by him. Hauling tobacco to Cave's warehouse, picking up a barrel of rum in Norfolk or a load of lumber on the Eastern Shore were vital to the success of the plantation. To equip the sloop, 14 yards of topsail, ship's twine, and a barrel of tar were purchased in 1747. Mercer had two Negroes named "Captain" and "Boatswain," and we may suppose that they had charge of the vessel. Such an arrangement would not have been unique, for many years after this, in 1768, Mercer wrote that "a sloop of M^r Ritchie's that came around from Rapp^a for a load of tobacco stopped at my landing; his negro skipper brought me a letter from M^r Mills...."[106] That there was considerable hunting at Marlborough is borne out by repeated references to powder, shot, gunpowder, and gunflints. Fishing may have been carried on from the sloop and also in trap-nets of the same sort still used in Potomac Creek off the Marlborough Point shore. In 1742 purchases were made of a 40-fathom seine and 3 perch lines, and in 1744 of 75 fishhooks and 2 drumlines. FOOTNOTES: [106] _George Mercer Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 208. BOOKS In Ledger G, Mercer listed all the books of his library before 1746. He then listed additions as they occurred through 1750 (Appendix K). This astonishing catalog, disclosing one of the largest libraries in Virginia at that time, reveals the catholicity of Mercer's tastes and the inquiring mind that lay behind them. Included in the catalog are the titles of perhaps the most important law library in the colony. The names of all sorts of books on husbandry and agriculture are to be found in the list: "Practice of farming," "Houghton's Husbandry," "Monarchy of the Bees," "Flax," "Grass," and Evelyn's "A Discourse of Sallets." Mercer's interest in brewing, which later was to launch a full-scale, if abortive, commercial enterprise is reflected in "London Brewer," "Scott's Distilling and Fermentation," "Hops," and the "Hop Gardin," while "The Craftsman," "Woollen Manufacture," and "New Improvements" indicate his concern with the efficiency of other plantation activities. He displayed an interest in nature and science typical of an 18th-century man: "Bacon's Natural History," "Gordon's Cosmography," "Gordon's Geography," "Atkinson's Epitome of Navigation," "Ozamun's Mathematical Recreations," "Keill's Astronomy," and "Newton's Opticks." Two others were "Baker's Microscope" and "Description of the Microscope &c." It may be significant that in 1747 Mercer bought three microscopes from one "Doctor Spencer" of Fredericksburg, the books on the subject and the instruments themselves possibly having been intended for the education of the three boys. "150 Prints of Ovid's Metamorphosis" appears, in addition to "Ovid's Metamorphosis and 25 Sins," for which Mercer paid £8 6s. to William Parks in 1746. "Catalog of Plants" and "Merian of Insects" are other titles related to natural science. Many books on history and biography are listed--for example, "Life of Oliver Cromwell," "Lives of the Popes," "Life of the Duke of Argyle," "Hughes History of Barbadoes," "Catholick History," "History of Virginia," "Dr. Holde's History of China," "The English Acquisitions in Guinea," "Purchas's Pilgrimage." There are 25 titles under "Physick & Surgery," reflecting the planter's need to know the rudiments of medical care for his slaves and family. Art, architecture, and travel interested him also, and we find such titles as "Noblemen's Seats by Kip," "Willis's Survey of the Cathedrals," "8 Views of Scotland," "Perrier's Statues," "Pozzo's Perspective," "100 Views of Brabant & Flanders," "History of Amphitheatres." There was but one title on music--"The Musical Miscellany," mentioned previously. "Report about Silver Coins" was probably an English report on the exchange rate of silver coinage in the various British colonies. Mercer kept abreast of English literature of his own and preceding generations: "Swift's Sermons," the "Spectator" and the "Tatler," "Pope's Works," "Turkish Spy," "Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living," "Pamela," "David Simple," "Joseph Andrews," "Shakespeare's Plays," "Ben Jonson's Works," "Wycherley's Plays," "Prior's Works," "Savage's Poems," "Cowley's Works," and "Select Plays" (in 16 volumes), to mention but a few. The classics are well represented--"Lauderdale's Virgil," "Ovid's Art of Love," "Martial" (in Greek), as well as a Greek grammar and a Greek testament. There were the usual sermons and religious books, along with such diverse subjects as "Alian's Tacticks of War," "Weston's Treatise of Shorthand" and "Weston's Shorthand Copybook," and "Greave's Origin of Weights, &c." He subscribed to the _London Magazine_ and the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and received regularly the _Virginia Gazette_. While most of Mercer's books were for intellectual edification or factual reference, a few must have served the purpose of sheer visual pleasure. Such was Merian's magnificent quarto volume of hand-colored engraved plates of Surinam insects, with descriptive texts in Dutch. The 18th-century gentleman's taste for the elegant, the "curious," and the aesthetically delightful were all satisfied in this luxurious book, which would have been placed appropriately on a table for the pleasure of Mercer's guests.[107] FOOTNOTES: [107] MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN, _Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium efte Veranderung Surinaamsche Insecten_ (Antwerp, 1705). THE PETITION Although overseeing the construction of his mansion, buying the furniture for it, and assembling a splendid library would have been sufficient to keep lesser men busy, Mercer was absorbed in other activities as well. On May 10, 1748, for example, he recorded in his journal that he went "to Raceground by James Taylor's & Wid^o Taliaferro's,"[108] traveling 50 miles to do so. On December 13, 1748, he went "to Stafford Court & home. Swore to the Commission of the Peace," thus becoming a justice of the peace for Stafford County. [Illustration: Figure 14.--ARCHEOLOGICAL SURVEY PLAN superimposed over detail of 1691 plat, showing southwest corner of town developed by Mercer. It can be seen that the mansion foundation was in the area near the change of course "by the Gutt between Geo. Andrew's & the Court house," hence in the vicinity of the courthouse site.] In the meanwhile, years had gone by, and no action had been taken on the suit in chancery brought in the 1730's to establish Savage's survey of Marlborough as the official one. During this time, Mercer had continued to build on various lots other than those he owned, "relying on the Lease and Consent of [the feoffees], at the Expense of above Fifteen Hundred Pounds, which Improvements would have saved forty lots." Finally, "judging the only effectual way to secure his Title would be to procure an Act of General Assembly for that purpose,"[109] Mercer applied to the Stafford court to purchase the county's interest in the town, to which the court agreed on August 11, 1747, the price to be 10,000 pounds of tobacco. Since this transaction required legislative approval, Mercer filed with the House of Burgesses the petition which has served so often in these pages to tell the history of Marlborough. Mercer argued in the petition that the county had nothing to lose--that it "had received satisfaction" for at least 30 lots, some of which he might be obliged to buy over again; that, considering the history of the town, no one but himself would be likely to take up any other lots, the last having been subscribed to in 1708; and that his purchase of the town would be not to the county's disadvantage but rather to his own great expense. He was willing to accept an appraisal from "any one impartial person of Credit" who would say the town was worth more, and to pay "any Consideration this worshipful House shall think just." He pointed out that the two acres set aside for the courthouse were excluded and that they "must revert to the Heir of the former Proprietor, (who is now an Infant)." He did not indicate in the petition that he himself was the guardian of William Brent, infant heir to the courthouse property. It is most significant, therefore, that in asking for favorable action he added, "except the two acres thereof, which were taken in for a Courthouse, as aforesaid and which he is willing to lay of as this worshipful House may think most for the Benefit of Mr. William Brent, the Infant, to whom the same belongs, _or to pay him double or treble the worth of the said two acres, if the same is also vested in your Petitioner_." (Italics supplied.) Plainly, Mercer had much at stake in obtaining title to the courthouse land. This supports the hypothesis that the Gregg survey of 1707 infringed on the courthouse land, that Ballard's lot 19 on the Gregg survey overlapped it, and that Mercer's first two houses, and now his mansion, were partly on land that rightfully belonged to his ward, William Brent. Mercer apparently had so built over all the lower part of Marlborough without regard to title of ownership, and had so committed himself to occupancy of the courthouse site, that he was now in the embarrassing position of having to look after William Brent's interests when they were in conflict with his own. Likely it is that he had depended too much on acceptance of the still-unauthorized Savage survey to correct the previous discrepancies by means of its extra row of lots. Still further indication that the courthouse land was at issue is found in the proceedings that followed the petition. In these, there are repeated references to Mercer's having been called upon to testify "as the Guardian of William Brent." Clearly, the legislators were concerned with the effect the acceptance of the petition would have on Brent's interests. If Mercer, as seems likely, was building his mansion on the courthouse land, the burgesses had reason to question him. In any case, the House resolved in the affirmative "That the said Petition be rejected".[110] This setback was only temporary, however. The wider problems of Marlborough had at least been brought to light, so that by the time the next fall session was held Mercer's 18-year-old suit to have Savage's designated the official survey finally was acted upon: "At a General Court held at the Court House in Williamsburg the 12th October 1749" the John Savage survey of 1731 was "Decreed & Ordered" to be "the only Survey" of Marlborough. The problem of overlapping boundaries occasioned by the conflicts between the first two surveys was solved neatly. Mercer agreed to accept lots 1 through 9, 22 and 25, and 33, 34, 42, and 43, "instead of the s^d 17 lots so purchased." The new lots extended up the Potomac River shore, while the "s^d 17 lots" were those which he had originally purchased and had built upon. Since he had "saved" these 17 lots by building on them, according to the old laws for the town, "it is further decreed & ordered that the said Town of Marlborough grant & convey unto the s^d John Mercer in fee such & so many other Lotts in the said Town as shall include the Houses & Improvm^{ts} made by the said John Mercer according to the Rate of 400 square feet of Housing for each Lot so as the Lots to be granted for any House of greater Dimensions be contiguous & are not separated from the said House by any of the Streets of the said Town."[111] Thus, Mercer's original titles to 17 lots were made secure by substituting new lots for the disputed ones he had occupied. This device enabled the feoffees to sell back the original lots--at £182 per lot--with new deeds drawn on the basis of the Savage survey. The final provision that lots be contiguous when a house larger than the minimum 400 square feet was built on them, and that the house and lots should not be separated by streets from each other, guaranteed the integrity of the mansion and its surrounding land. No mention was made here, or in subsequent transfers, of the courthouse land. Presumably it was conveniently forgotten, Mercer perhaps having duly recompensed his ward. FOOTNOTES: [108] James Taylor lived in Caroline County; the "Wid^o Taliaferro" was probably Mrs. John Taliaferro of Spotsylvania. [109] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17). [110] _JHB, 1742-1747; 1748-1749_, op. cit. (footnote 6), pp. 285-286. [111] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12). HEALTH AND MEDICINE Three weeks before his petition was read in the House, Mercer became ill. On October 26, 1748, he noted in his journal, "Very ill obliged to keep my bed." This was almost his first sickness after years of apparently robust health. Such indispositions as he occasionally suffered had occurred, like this one, at Williamsburg, where conviviality and rich food caused many another colonial worthy to founder. In this case, anxiety over the outcome of his petition may have brought on or aggravated his ailment. In any event, he stayed throughout the court session at the home of Dr. Kenneth McKenzie, who treated him. On November 3 he noted that he was "On Recovery," and two days later "went out to take the air." The following appears in his account with Dr. McKenzie: October 1748: By Medicines & Attendance myself & Ice £7.19.11 By Lodging &c 7 weeks 6. 6. 7 From William Parks, on another occasion, he bought "Rattlesnake root," which was promoted in 18th-century Virginia as a specific against the gout, smallpox, and "Pleuritick and Peripneumonic Fevers."[112] Twice he bought "British oyl," a favorite popular nostrum sold in tall, square bottles, and on another occasion "2 bottles of Daffy's Elixir."[113] In 1749 he settled his account with George Gilmer, apothecary of Williamsburg, for such things as oil of cinnamon, Holloways' Citrate, "Aqua Linnaean," rhubarb, sago, "Sal. Volat.," spirits of lavender, and gum fragac. The final item in the account was for April 22, 1750, for "a Vomit." The induced vomit, usually by a tartar emetic, was an accepted cure for overindulgence and a host of supposed ailments. That inveterate valetudinarian and amateur physician, William Byrd, was in the habit of "giving" vomits to his sick slaves.[114] In November and December 1749 Mercer sustained his first long illness, during which he was attended by "Doctor Amson." "Taken sick" at home on November 13, he evidently did not begin to recover until December 11. Whatever improvement he may have made must have received a setback on the last day of the year, when he recorded in his journal: "Took about 60 grains of Opium & 60 grains of Euphorbium by mistake instead of a dose of rhubarb." FOOTNOTES: [112] Ten years earlier a vogue for rattlesnake root had been established, apparently by those interested in promoting it. On June 16, 1738, Benjamin Waller wrote to the editor of the _Virginia Gazette_ extolling the virtues of rattlesnake root in a testimonial. He claimed it cured him quickly of the gout, and, he wrote, "I am also fully convinced this Medicine has saved the Lives of many of my Negroes, and others in that Disease, which rages here, and is by many called a _Pleurisy_; And that it is a sure Cure in a Quartan Ague." Two weeks later the _Gazette_ carried "Proposals for Printing by Subscription a _Treatise_ on the DISEASES of _Virginia_ and the Neighbouring Colonies ... To which is annexed, An Appendix, showing the strongest Reasons, _a priori_, that the Seneca Rattle-Snake Root must be of more use than any Medicine in the _Materia Medica_." [113] See GEORGE B. GRIFFENHAGEN and JAMES HARVEY YOUNG, "Old English Patent Medicines in America," (paper 10 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 1-11_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 218, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1959). [114] _The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712_, edit. Louis B. Wright and Marian Tingling. (Richmond, Virginia: The Dietz Press, 1941), p. 188 (for example). RELIGION AND CHARITIES Mercer's religious observances were irregular, although usually when he was home he attended Potomac Church. At the same time he continued as a vestryman in Overwharton Parish (which included Potomac and Aquia churches). On September 28, 1745, the vestry met to decide whether to build a new Aquia church or to repair the old one. They "then proceeded to agree with one _William Walker_, an Undertaker to build a new brick Church, Sixty Feet Square in the Clear, for One Hundred and Fifty Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty Pounds of Transfer Tobacco."[115] In October Mercer entered in Ledger G, under the Overwharton Parish account, "To drawing articles with Walker." In December he charged the parish with "2 bottles claret" and "To Robert Jackson for mending the Church Plate." Jackson was a Fredericksburg silversmith.[116] The following March, the proprietors of the Accokeek Ironworks petitioned the Committee on Propositions and Grievances with an objection to the vestry's decision to rebuild, claiming that "as the said Iron-Works lie in the Parish aforesaid, and employ many Tithables in carrying on the same, they will labour under great Hardships thereby...."[117] The petition was rejected, but nothing seems to have been done on the new church until three months after Walker's death in February 1750, when Mourning Richards was appointed undertaker.[118] Mercer's charities in this decade form a short list. His only outright gift was his "Subscription to Protestant working-Schools in Ireland. To my annual Subscription for Sterling £5.5." In 1749 he did £12 3s. worth of legal work for the College of William and Mary, which he converted into "Subscriptions to Schools" of equal value; in other words, he donated his services. FOOTNOTES: [115] Op. cit. (footnote 19), p. 203. [116] _Virginia Gazette_, October 20, 1752; RALPH BARTON CUTTEN, _The Silversmiths of Virginia_ (Richmond, 1953), pp. 39-40. [117] Op. cit. (footnote 19), p. 199. [118] WHIFFEN, op. cit. (footnote 94), p. 142. CATHERINE MERCER'S DEATH AND ANN ROY'S ARRIVAL On April 1, 1750, Mercer went to Williamsburg for the spring session and stopped en route to visit his friend Dr. Mungo Roy at Port Royal in Caroline County. He remained at Williamsburg until the seventh, except for going on the previous day to "Greenspring" to be entertained by Philip Ludwell in the Jacobean mansion built a century earlier by Governor Berkeley. Again stopping off at Port Royal, he returned home on May 10. He remained there until June 15, when he made the laconic entry in his journal: "My wife died between 3 & 4 at noon." What time this denotes is unclear. Following this loss--Catherine Mercer was only 43--Mercer remained at home for five days, then visited his sister-in-law Mrs. Ann Mason. The next night he stayed with the pastor of Aquia Church, Mr. Moncure, then returned to Marlborough and remained there for nearly a month. Meanwhile, he purchased from Fielding Lewis, at a cost of £3 18s. 7-1/2d., "sundrys for mourning." William Thomson, the Stafford tailor, made his mourning clothes. The preparations for the funeral must have been elaborate; it was not held until July 13. [Illustration: Figure 15.--PORTRAIT OF ANN ROY MERCER, John Mercer's second wife and the daughter of Dr. Mungo Roy of Port Royal, painted in 1750 or shortly thereafter. (_Courtesy of Mrs. Thomas B. Payne._)] At the end of July Mercer went to Williamsburg, thence to Yorktown, and from there to Hampton and Norfolk by water on an "Antigua Ship," returning to Hampton on August 5 on a "Negro Ship," evidently having caught passage on oceangoing traders. The younger children remained in Williamsburg with George and a nurse. On September 8 he went to Port Royal and stayed "at Dr. Roy's." He returned home on the 10th, then went back to Port Royal on the 14th, staying at Dr. Roy's until the 20th, attending Sunday church services during his visit. He returned home again on the 23rd, only to visit Dr. Roy once more on the 28th. The October court session drew him to Williamsburg, where he remained until November 7. While there, he purchased the following from James Craig,[119] a jeweler: £ s. d. By a pair of Earrings 2 12 By a pair of Buttons 2 12 By a plain Ring 1 1 6 On November 8 he returned to Dr. Roy's. On the 10th he added a characteristically sparse note to his chronicle, "Married to Ann Roy." The period for mourning poor Catherine was short indeed. But the mansion at Marlborough needed a mistress, and Mercer's children, a mother. A new chapter was about to open as the decade closed. From the meticulous records that Mercer kept, it has been possible to see Mercer as a dynamic cosmopolite, accomplishing an incredible amount in a few short years. His constant physical movement from place to place, his reading of the law and of even a fraction of his hundreds of books in science, literature, and the arts, his managing of four plantations, attending two monthly court sessions a year at Williamsburg, looking after the legal affairs of hundreds of clients, concerning himself with the design and construction of a remarkable house and selecting the furnishings for it--all this illustrates a personality of enormous capacity. Marlborough was now a full-fledged plantation. Although the legacy of an earlier age still nagged at Mercer and prevented him from holding title to much of the old town, he had, nevertheless, transformed it, gracing it with the outspread grandeur of a Palladian great house. FOOTNOTES: [119] "James CRAIG, _Jeweller_, from LONDON Makes all sorts Jeweller's Work, in the best Manner at his Shop in _Francis_ Street (facing the Main Street) opposite to Mr. Hall's new Store." _Virginia Gazette_, September 25, 1746. V _Mercer and Marlborough, from Zenith to Decline, 1751-1768_ THE OHIO COMPANY The long last period of Mercer's life and of the plantation he created began at a time of growing concern about the western frontier and the wilderness beyond it. In 1747 this concern had been expressed in the founding of the Ohio Company of Virginia by a group of notable colonial leaders: Thomas Cresap, Augustine Washington, George Fairfax, Lawrence Washington, Francis Thornton, and Nathaniel Chapman. George Mason was an early member, and so, not surprisingly, was John Mercer, whose prestige as a lawyer was the primary reason for his introduction to the company. We learn from the minutes of the meeting on December 3, 1750. "[Resolved] That it is absolutely necessary to have proper Articles to bind the Company that Mason ..., Scott & Chapman or any two of them, apply to John Mercer to consider and draw such Articles and desire him attend the next general meeting of the Company at Stafford Courthouse...."[120] At the meeting in May 1751, Mercer presented the Articles and was "admitted as a Partner on advancing his twentieth part of the whole Expence."[121] From then on he was virtually secretary of the company, as well as its chief driving force. He was made a committee member with Lawrence Washington, Nathaniel Chapman, James Scott, and George Mason, who was treasurer. The "Committee" was the central or executive board. With the leading members living in Stafford County or nearby, most of the meetings of both the company and the committee were held at Stafford courthouse, and occasionally in private houses of the members. We can imagine with what pride Mercer noted in his journal for February 5-7, 1753, "Ohio Committee met at my house." The important role played by the Ohio Company in the Mercers' lives--and by them in the Company--is fully recounted in the _George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia_. FOOTNOTES: [120] _The George Mercer Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 5. [121] Ibid. GEORGE, JOHN, AND JAMES Mercer doubtless threw himself into the Ohio Company's affairs with characteristic drive and enthusiasm. We may surmise that there was heady talk at Marlborough about the frontier and of dangerous exploits against the Indians and the French--enough, at least, to have stirred youthful cravings for adventure among the Mercer boys. Certain it is that George and John Fenton, aged 19 and 18, respectively, joined the frontier regiment of their neighbor Colonel Fry as young officers "upon the first incursions of the French."[122] James, aged 16 and too young for soldiering, exhibited an unusual aptitude for architecture. His talent was noticed by William Bromley, the master joiner on the mansion house, who told Mercer that James "had a most extraordinary turn to mechanicks." On the strength of this, Mercer decided that James should become a master carpenter or joiner, then synonymous with "architect." In America in 1753 professional architects, as we know them, did not exist; gentlemen, some very talented, designed and drafted, while skilled joiners or carpenters followed general directions, executing, engineering, and inventing as they went along. Mercer's decision was as unconventional as it was prescient, being made at a time when gentlemen were not expected to learn a trade, yet at a moment when the respected place the professional architect was later to have could be envisioned. Indeed, he explained his feeling that those who possessed architectural skills "were more beneficial members of society, and more likely to make a fortune, with credit, than the young Gentlemen of those times, who wore laced jackets attended for improvement at ordinaries, horse races, cock matches, and gaming tables." Motivated by this honest sense of values, forged in the experience of a self-made man, Mercer proceeded to bind James "apprentice to Mr. Waite, a master carpenter and undertaker (of Alexandria), who covenanted to instruct him in all the different branches of that business. At the same time I bound four young Negro fellows (which I had given him) to Mr. Waite, who covenanted to instruct each of them in a particular branch. These, I expected, when they were out of their time, would place him in such a situation as might enable him to provide for himself, if I should not be able to do any more for him. It is notorious that I received the compliments of the Governour, several of the Council, and many of the best Gentlemen in the country, for having set such an example, which, they said, they hoped would banish that false pride that too many of their countrymen were actuated by." On June 25, 1753, Mercer noted in his journal, "At home. Bound son James & Peter & Essex to W^m Waite for 5 y^{rs}." However commendable this effort to banish "false pride" may have been, it was probably not a realistic solution for James' career. James, as we shall see, was to make his own choice later and was to follow with great distinction in his father's footsteps as a lawyer. FOOTNOTES: [122] All the foregoing quotations in this section are from Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_, September 26, 1766. GROWING BURDENS, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND DEBTS Meanwhile, Mercer had announced his intention to publish a new edition of the _Abridgment_. In doing so, he adopted a hostile, testy approach that was unusual even in 18th-century advertising. Implying that he was doing a favor to an ungrateful populace, he stated in the Virginia _Gazette_ on August 16, 1751, "I have been prevail'd upon to print it, if I have a prospect of saving myself, though the Treatment I met from the Subscribers to the last had determined me never to be again concerned in an Undertaking of this Kind." On the following February 20, he announced in the _Gazette_ that if there were 600 subscribers by the last of the next General Court he would send the copy to press. If not, he would return the money to those who had subscribed, "which I should not have troubled myself with, if I could have thought of any other Expedient to secure myself against the base Usage I met with from the Subscribers to my former _Abridgment_, who left above 1200 of them on my Hands." This kind of advertising had its predictable response: publication of the new _Abridgment_ was postponed indefinitely. The first suggestion that all was not well in Mercer's financial affairs was given in an advertisement in the _Gazette_ on April 10, 1752. In this he noted that he had agreed to pay the debts of one Francis Wroughton, a London merchant, out of Wroughton's effects. However, although Wroughton's effects had not materialized, he promised to make payment anyway, "notwithstanding a large Ballance due to myself." He concluded, "Besides Mr. _Wroughton's_ Debts, I have some of my own (and not inconsiderable) to pay, therefore I hope that such Gentlemen as are indebted to me will, without putting me to the Blush which a Dunn will occasion, discharge their Debts...." Perhaps to alleviate these difficulties, he had advertised in the Gazette on the previous March 15 that he would lease "3,000 Acres of extraordinary good fresh Land, in Fairfax and Prince William," but there is no evidence that he was successful. Signs of irritability became increasingly noticeable. In 1753 he outraged his fellow justices at Stafford court--so much so that they brought charges against him before the Executive Council "for misbehavior as a Justice."[123] It was decided that, although "his Conduct had been in some Respects blameable, particularly by his Intemperance, opprobrious Language on the Bench, and indecent Treatment of the other Justices, ... that in Consideration of his having been a principal Instrument in a due Administration of Justice, and expediting the Business of the County, it has been thought proper to continue him Judge of the Court."[124] A growing burden of debt, in contrast to the prosperity of the preceding decade, clearly affected Mercer's attitude, as we can see in a Gazette advertisement on November 7, 1754: "I will not undertake any new, or finish any old Cause, 'til I receive my Fee, or Security for it to my liking: And I hope such Gentlemen as for above these seven years past have put me off with Promises every succeeding General Court will think it reasonable now to discharge their accounts." Concurrent with indebtedness was an almost annual increase in the size of his family. In 1752 Grace Fenton Mercer was born, the next year Mungo Roy, and in 1754 Elinor. At the same time, he still pursued the restless activity that characterized his earlier years. On July 24, 1753, Mercer went "to Balthrop's, Smith's Ordin^{ry} & Vaulx's,"[125] a distance of 27 miles, during which he "Overset." On the 25th he went on eight miles farther "to Col^o Phil Lee's"[126] for a three-day meeting of the Ohio Company, then went the whole 35 miles home on the 28th. On September 6 he was called eight miles away "to Boyd's hole on Inquest as Coroner & home by 4 in the morn^g," while the next day he was "at home. Son Mungo Roy born ab^t 2 in the morning." On the 19th Mungo Roy was christened. Four days later he went 15 miles to Fredericksburg for the christening of William Dick's son Alexander, returning home the next day. The following day Mercer journeyed 14 miles and back to "Holdbrook's Survey" by way of Mountjoy's, and repeated the trip the next day, stopping at Major Hedgman's[127] coming and going. On October 5 he made a three-day trip to Williamsburg, covering the distance in stretches of 16, 52, and 42 miles per day, respectively. He went by way of Port Royal, where he "Met M^r Wroughton," presumably the London merchant whose creditors he had agreed to pay. The second day took him by way of King William courthouse. On the return on November 4-6, he came via Chiswell's Ordinary[128] and New Kent courthouse (which he noted had "Burnt"), covering a total of 110 miles. On June 3, 1754, his clerk reported to duty, according to a journal entry: "Rogers came here at £50 p^r annum." Rogers remained in Mercer's employ until 1768. Mercer seems to have been driving himself to the limit, not to achieve success as in the prior decades, but rather to hold secure what he already had. The specter of debt now hung over him, as it did over nearly every planter, under the increasing burdens of the French and Indian War. The 17th-century wisdom of William Fitzhugh and Robert Beverley in seeking to lead the colony away from complete dependence upon tobacco was apparent to those who would remember. Marlborough, although still technically a town, was now in reality a tobacco plantation, and Mercer, despite his status as a lawyer, was as irretrievably committed to the success or failure of tobacco as was Fitzhugh 70 years earlier. The hard years were now upon all, and, like his equally hard-pressed debtors, Mercer was suffering from them. FOOTNOTES: [123] _Executive Journals of the Council_, op. cit. (footnote 66), vol. 5, p. 410. [124] Ibid., p. 434. [125] The Balthrop family lived in King George County; Smith's ordinary has not been identified; "Vaulx's" probably refers to the home of Robert Vaulx of Pope's Creek, Westmoreland County. Vaulx was father-in-law of Lawrence Washington and died in 1755. [126] Philip Ludwell Lee, proprietor of "Stratford," Westmoreland County, 1751-1775, grandfather of General Robert E. Lee. "Old Stratford and the Lees who Lived There," _Magazine of the Society of Lees of Virginia_ (Richmond, May 1925), vol. 3, no. 1, p. 15. [127] Peter Hedgman was another Stafford County leader. He was burgess from 1742 to 1755. "Members of the House of Burgesses," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1901), vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 249. [128] George Fisher visited Chiswell's ordinary: "On Monday May the 12th 1755, at Day Break, about half an hour after Four in the morning, I left Williamsburg to proceed to Philadelphia.... About Eight o'clock, by a slow Pace, I arrived at Chiswell's Ordinary. Two Planters in the Room, I went into, were at Cards (all Fours) but on my arrival, returned into an inner Room." "Narrative of George Fisher," _WMQ_ [1] (Richmond, 1909), vol. 17, pp. 164-165. LIFE AT MARLBOROUGH DURING THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS On March 11, 1755, after nearly 30 years of uncertainty about his titles to Marlborough, Mercer at last was granted the entire 52-acre town in a release from the feoffees, Peter Daniel and Gerard Fowke. This was made with the provision that he should be "Eased from making improvements on the other twenty-six Lots (those not built upon), to prevent their forfeiture and the County will be wholly reimbursed, which it is not probable it ever will be otherwise as only one Lot has been taken up in forty-seven years last past and there is not one House in the said town which has not been built by the said Mercer."[129] While the day-to-day events of Marlborough went on much as ever, the conflict between the British and the French spread from Canada southward along the western ridge of the Appalachians. This expansion, inevitably, was reflected in the Mercers' activities in many ways, both great and small. As the struggle approached its climax, Braddock's troops came to Virginia in March 1755, and were quartered in Alexandria. Among them was John Mercer's brother, Captain James Mercer, who was a professional soldier. On March 25 John left Marlborough for Alexandria, probably to greet James and to have him billeted at William Waite's house where young son James already was living as Waite's apprentice. This bringing together of two far-flung members of the Mercer family had unanticipated results. Captain James was a British gentlemen-officer, untouched by the leveling influences of colonial life and therefore untempted to banish "false pride" by any such radical means as John had employed with young James. Indeed, the sight of his nephew learning a mechanical trade must have been a rude shock, for we learn from John Mercer that Captain James "found means to make his nephew uneasy under his choice; and I was from that time incessantly teazed, by those who well knew their interest over me, until I was brought to consent very reluctantly that he should quit the plumb and square" and become a lawyer.[130] Mercer returned to Marlborough by way of George Mason's, near the place where a few months later William Buckland was to begin work on "Gunston Hall." He remained there all day on April 1--"at M^r Mason's wind bound," he wrote in his journal. The next day he went "home through a very great gust." The problems of managing a plantation went on through peace and through war. Besides a multitude of Negroes, there were also indentured white servants at Marlborough. One of these ran away and was advertised in the _Virginia Gazette_ on May 2, 1755: ... a Servant Man named _John Clark_, he pretends sometimes to be a Ship-Carpenter by Trade, at other Times a Sawyer or a Founder ... he is about 5 feet 7 inches high, round Shoulders, a dark Complexion, grey eyes, a large Nose and thick Lips, an _Englishman_ by birth; had on when he went away, a blue Duffil Frock with flat white Metal Buttons and round Cuffs, red corded Plush Breeches, old grey Worsted Stockings, old Shoes, and broad Pewter Buckles, brown Linen wide Trousers, some check'd Shirts, and a Muslin Neckcloth; had also an old Beaver Hat bound round with Linen. On October 24, the _Gazette_ carried another advertisement related to Mercer's problems of personnel: A Miller that understands the Management of a Wind-mill, and can procure a proper Recommendation, may have good Wages, on applying to the Subscriber during the General Court, at _Williamsburg_, or afterwards, at his House in _Stafford_ County, before the last Day of November, or if any such Person will enclose his Recommendation, and let me know his Terms by the Post from _Williamsburg_, he may depend on meeting an Answer at the Post-Office there, without Charge, the first Post after his Letter comes to my Hands. _John Mercer_ In the meanwhile, the war had broken out in full scale, and the disaster at Fort Duquesne had taken place. Mercer apparently learned the bad news at a Stafford court session, for he noted in his journal on July 9, after observing his attendance at court, "General Braddock defeated." We can imagine his concern, for both George and John Fenton were participants in the campaign. On April 18, 1756, John Fenton was killed in action while fighting under Washington.[131] Curiously, his death was not mentioned in the journal. Instead, we learn of the death of John Mercer's horse on the way to Williamsburg in April and of the fact that, on his return in May, Mercer lost his way and traveled 46 miles in a day. He tells us that he went "to M^r Moncure's by water" on May 26, a distance of 15 miles, and that he made a round trip from Mr. Moncure's to Aquia Church for a total of 12 miles. On July 14, he noted that he went "to Maj^r Hedgman's & returning thrown out of the chaise & very much bruised." The demands of the war are revealed in journal entries made in June 1757. On the 20th he wrote, "to Court to prick Soldiers & home," and on the 27th, "to Court to draft Soldiers & home." As at other times in the journal, birth and death, in their tragic immediacy and repetitiveness, were juxtaposed in September: on the 24th, "Son John born"; on the 27th, "Brother James died at Albany"; on the 28th, "Son John died." In 1758 George Mason ran for the office of burgess from both Stafford and Fairfax. On July 11, Mercer went to the Stafford elections, where "Lee & Mason" were chosen. On the 15th, he went "to M^r Selden's & home by water to see M^r Mason," who evidently had come to Marlborough for a visit. Four days later, he traveled to Alexandria for the elections there and saw "Johnston & Mason" elected. In the fall of 1758 he went, as usual, to Williamsburg. His route this time was long and devious, taking him to both Caroline and King William County courthouses on the way, for a total of 121 miles in five days. We learn of one of the hazards of protracted journeys in the 18th century from a notation repeated daily in his journal for four days following his arrival: "at Williamsburg Confined to Bed with the Piles." On November 15, soon after his return to Marlborough, Mercer was sworn to the new commission of Stafford justices. Five days previously his son Catesby had been buried, but, as usually happened, new life came to take the place of that which had survived so briefly. On May 17, 1759, Mercer recorded, "Son John Francis born at 7 in the Evening." John Francis evidently was given an auspicious start in life by a christening of more than ordinary formality: "May 28. to Col^o Harrison's with the Gov^r Son christened." During 1759 the second edition of the _Abridgment_ was published in Glasgow, Scotland, this time with neither public notice nor recrimination.[132] On November 25, Mercer met the growing problem of his indebtedness by deeding equal shares of some of his properties, as well as whole amounts of others, to George and James Mercer, Marlborough and a few other small holdings excepted. Fifty Negroes were included in the transaction. This action was followed immediately by the release of the properties under their new titles to Colonel John Tayloe and Colonel Presley Thornton for a year, thus providing cash by which George and James could pay £3000 of John Mercer's debts.[133] The Ohio Company was experiencing its difficulties also. Mercer's importance in it was demonstrated by his appointment to "draw up a full State of the Company's Case setting forth the Hardships We labour under and the Reasons why the Lands have not been settled and the Fort finished according to Royal Instructions...."[134] This was his most responsible assignment during his activity in the company. Indebtedness throughout these years lurked constantly in the background, now and then breaking through acutely. In 1760, for example, William Tooke, a London merchant, brought suit to collect £331 1s. 6d. which Mercer owed him. Two years later Capel Hanbury sued Mercer for £31 10s.[135] In 1761 George Washington and George Mercer ran for burgesses from Frederick County in the Shenandoah Valley, and both were elected. John Mercer, evidently anxious to be present for the election, undertook the arduous journey to Winchester, leaving Marlborough on May 15. His itinerary was as follows: May 15 to Fredericksburg 15 16 to Nevill's Ordinary 37 17 to Ashby's Combe's & Winchester 32 18 at Winchester (Frederick Election) (Geo Washington and Geo Mercer elected) 19 to M^r Dick's Quarter 18 20 to Pike's M^r Wormley's Quarter 12 21 to Snickers's Little River Quarters & Nevill's 60 22 to Fallmouth & home 50 In the previous year Anna had been born, and now, on December 14, 1761, Maria arrived. Between the 8th and the 20th of August, 1762, entries were made that suggest that there was an epidemic of sorts at Marlborough: "Cupid died // Tom (Poll's) died // Daughter Elinor died // Miss B. Roy died." In his long letter to George, written in 1768, he reflected on the fact that, although through the years 98 Negroes had been born at Marlborough, he, at that time, had fewer than the total of all he had ever bought. "Your sister Selden," he wrote "attributes it to the unhealthiness of Patomack Neck, which there may be something in.... I thank God, however, that my own family has been generally as healthy as other people's."[136] FOOTNOTES: [129] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12). [130] Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_, September 26, 1766. [131] John Clement Fitzpatrick, ed., _The Writings of George Washington_ (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931), vol. 1, p. 318. [132] "Journals of the Council of Virginia in Executive Sessions, 1737-1763," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1907), vol. 14, p. 232 (footnote). [133] _The George Mercer Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 190. [134] Ibid., p. 179. [135] "Proceedings of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence 1759-67," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1905), vol. 12, p. 4. [136] _The George Mercer Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 213. THE END OF THE WAR AND THE STAMP ACT The year 1763 marked the end of the war. It also signaled a turning point in the colonies' relations with England. In a royal proclamation the King prohibited the colonies from expanding westward past the Appalachian ridge, in effect nullifying the Ohio Company's claims and objectives. George Mercer was appointed agent of the company and was dispatched to England to plead its cause. By this time Britain was beginning to apply the other allegedly oppressive measures which preceded the Revolution. Antismuggling laws were enforced, implemented by "writs of assistance," thus increasing colonial burdens which had been avoided previously by widespread smuggling. The South was particularly hard hit by parliamentary orders forbidding the colonies the use of paper money as legal tender for payment of debts. In a part of the world where a credit economy and chronic indebtedness made a flexible currency essential, this measure was a disastrous matter. Despite the ominousness of the times, Mercer continued with the daily routine, the minutiae of which filled his journal. He noted on January 9, 1763, that he went to Potomac Church--"Neither Minister or clerk there." On February 21 he went a mile--probably up Potomac Creek--to watch "John Waugh's halling the Saine & home." On March 1 his merchant friend John Champe was buried. After the funeral Mercer went directly to Selden's for an Ohio Company meeting. From December 10 until March 1765, Mercer was sick. Of this interval, he wrote George in 1768 that "My business had latterly so much encreased, together with my slowness in writing, & Rogers, tho a tolerable good clerk, was so incapable of assisting me out of the common road, that when you saw me at Williamsburg, I was reduced by my fatigue, to a very valetudinary state."[137] Indebtedness, overwork, advancing age, and the reverses of the times had evidently caused a crisis. Passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, to raise revenues to support an army of occupation in the colonies, struck close to John Mercer, for George, while in England, had been designated stamp officer for Virginia. George returned to Williamsburg, little expecting the hostile greeting he was to receive from a crowd of angry planters. Quickly disavowing his new office, he returned the stamps the following day. Many made the most of George's tactical blunder in accepting the stamp-officer appointment. Indeed, the Mercers seem to have been made the scapegoats for the frustrations and turmoil into which the mother country's actions had plunged the colony. George Mercer was hanged in effigy at Westmoreland courthouse, and James Mercer took to the _Gazettes_ to defend him. There were counterattacks on James while he was absent in Frederick County, and Mercer himself rushed in with a lengthy satirical diatribe entitled "Prophecy from the East." Occupying all the space normally devoted to foreign news in Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_ for September 26, 1766, this struck out at anonymous attackers whom Mercer scathingly nicknamed Gibbet, Scandal, Pillory, and Clysterpipe. He later explained to George that James' "antagonist was backed by so many anonymous scoundrels, that I was drawn in during his abscence at the springs in Frederick to answer I did not know whom tho it since appears D^r Arthur Lee was the principal, if not the only assassin under different vizors, & he was so regardless of truth that he invented & published the most infamous lies as indisputable facts: on your brother's return I got out of the scrape but from a paper war it turned to a challenge, which produced a skirmish, in which your bro. without receiving any damage broke the Doctors head, & closed his eyes in such a manner as obliged him to keep his house sometime...."[138] Of John Mercer's own attitude towards the Stamp Act there can be no question. On November 1, 1765, he noted in his journal, "The damned Stamp Act was to have taken place this day but was proved initially disappointed." He is said to have written a tract against the Stamp Act, although no copy has survived. FOOTNOTES: [137] Ibid., p. 187. [138] Ibid. THE CLOSING YEARS[139] The elements of tragedy mark Mercer's final years--the tragedy of John Mercer and Marlborough interwoven with the epic failures of the colonial experiment. Prompted by his illness, he quit his legal practice in the courts in 1765. In the same year he "gave notice to the members of the Ohio Company, that my health & business would not longer allow me to concern myself in their affairs which they had entirely flung upon my hands." He also "on account of my deafness, refused to act as a justice, which I should not have done otherwise, as I have the satisfaction to know that I have done my country some service in this station." Heavily in debt, disillusioned and embittered by the dwindling results of his struggles, he wrote that "I have attended the bar thirty-six years, through a perpetual hurry and uneasiness, and have been more truly a slave than any one I am, or ever was, master of; yet have not been able, since the first day of last January, to command ten pounds, out of near ten thousand due me." Recoiling from his situation, he desperately sought a way out and a means to recover his losses. With self-deceptive optimism he seized upon the idea of establishing a brewery at Marlborough, since "our Ordinaries abound & daily increase (for drinking will continue longer than anything but eating)." Accordingly, he built a brewhouse and a malthouse, each 100 feet long, of brick and stone, together with "Cellars, Cooper's house & all the buildings, copper & utensils whatever, used about the brewery." He depended at first on his windmill for grinding the malt, but to avoid delays on windless days, "I have now a hand-mill fixed in my brewhouse loft that will grind 50 bushels of malt (my coppers complement) every morning they brew." To get his project under way, Mercer plunged further into the depths of debt by buying 40 Negroes "to enable me to make Grain sufficient to carry on my brewery with my own hands." These cost £8000, "a large part of which was unpaid, for payment of which I depended on the Brewery itself & the great number of Debts due to me." But the external fate which was driving him closer and closer to destruction now struck with the death of John Robinson, treasurer of the colony, who, having lent public funds promiscuously to debtor friends, had left a deficiency of £100,000 in the colonial treasury. A chain reaction of suits developed, threatening James Hunter of Fredericksburg, Mercer's security for purchase of the slaves. The brewery lumbered and stumbled. Mercer's first brewer, a young Scot named Wales, prevailed upon him to spend £100 to alter the new malthouse. On September 16, 1765, William King, evidently a master brewer, arrived. He immediately found fault with Wales' changes in the malthouse. Within three weeks, however, King died. King's nephew, named Bailey, then came unannounced with a high recommendation as a brewer from a man he had served only as a gardener. Mercer was impressed: "You may readily believe I did not hesitate to employ Bailey on such a recommendation, more especially as he agreed with King in blaming the alteration of the malt house & besides found great fault with Wales's malting." Faced with rival claims as to which could brew better beer, Mercer allowed each to brew separately. "Yet though Bailey found as much fault with Wales's brewing as he did with his malting, that brewed by Wales was the only beer I had that Season fit to drink." Wales, however, brewed only £40 worth of beer, barely enough to pay his wages, let alone maintenance for himself and his wife. Although Bailey brewed enough to send a schooner load of it to Norfolk, it was of such "bad character" that only two casks were sold, the remainder having been stored with charges for two months, then brought back to Marlborough, where an effort to distill it failed. In 1766 there was a similar tale. Five hundred fifty bushels of malt were produced, but much of the beer and ale was bad. In January 1766, Andrew Monroe[140] was employed as overseer. "Wales complains of my Overseer & says that he is obliged to wait for barley, coals & other things that are wanted which, if timely supplied with he could with six men & a boy manufacture 250 bushels a week which would clear £200.... My Overseer is a very good one & I believe as a planter equal to any in Virginia but you are sensible few planters are good farmers and barley is a farmer's article," Mercer wrote to George. Besides the overhead of slaves and nonproductive brewers, the establishment required the services of two coopers at £20 per year. Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_ for April 10, 1766, carried the advertisement of Mercer's brewery: To be SOLD, at the MARLBOROUGH BREWERY STRONG BEER AND PORTER at 18d. and ALE at 1s. the gallon, _Virginia_ currency, in cask, equal in goodness to any that can be imported from any part of the world, as nothing but the genuine best MALT and HOPS will be used, without any mixture or substitute whatsoever; which, if the many treaties of brewing published in _Great Britain_ did not mention to be frequently used there, the experience of those who have drunk those liquors imported from thence would point out to be the case, from their pernicious effects. The severe treatment we have lately received from our Mother Country, would, I should think, be sufficient to recommend my undertaking (though I should not be able to come up to the English standard, which I do not question constantly to do) yet, as I am satisfied that the goodness of every commodity is its best recommendation, I principally rely upon that for my success; and my own interest, having expended near 8000 l. to bring my brewery to its present state, is the best security I can give the publick to assure them of the best usage, without which such an undertaking cannot be supported with credit. The casks to be paid for at the rate of 4s. for barrels, 5s. for those between 40 and 50 gallons, and a penny the gallon for all above 50 gallons; but if they are returned in good order, and sweet, by having been well scalded as soon as emptied, the price of them shall be returned or discounted. Any person who sends bottles and corks may have them carefully filled and corked with beer or porter at 6s. or with ale at 4s. the dozen. I expect, in a little time, to have constant supply of bottles and corks; and if I meet the encouragement I hope for, propose setting up a glasshouse for making bottles, and to provide proper vessels to deliver to such customers as favour me with their orders such liquors as they direct, at the several landings they desire, being determined to give all the satisfaction in the power of Their most humble servant, JOHN MERCER Foolhardy though the brewery was, a glass factory would have been the pinnacle of folly. Yet it was seriously on Mercer's mind. In his letter to George he wrote: A Glass house to be built here must I am satisfied turn to great profit, they have some in New England & New York or the Jerseys & find by some resolves the New England men are determined to increase their number. Despite his manifest failure, Mercer confidently attempted to persuade George of the possibilities of the brewery and even the glasshouse. Shifting from one proposal to another, he suggested that he could "rent out all my houses and conveniences at a reasonable rate," or take in a partner, although "I have so great a dislike for all partnerships, nothing but my inability to carry it on my self could induce me to enter into one." In spite of these desperate thrashings about in a struggle to survive, Mercer's empire was collapsing. When Monroe arrived as overseer, he found [according to Mercer] but 8 barrels of corn upon my plantation, not enough at any of my quarters to maintain my people, a great part of my Stock dead (among them some of my English colts & horses in the 2 last years to the am^t of £ 375. 10. --) & the rest of them dying, which would have infallibly have been their fate if it had not been for the straw of 1000 bushels of barley & the grains from the brewhouse.... Convinced of his [Monroe's] integrity, I have been forced to submit the entire management of all the plantation to him. The following passage from the letter summarizes Mercer's financial predicament: "I reced in 1764 £1548 ... 4 ... 3-1/2 & in 1765 £961 ... 5 ... 4-1/2 but since I quitted my practice I reced in 1766 no more than £108 ... 16 ... 1 of which I borrowed £24.10.--& 7 ... 1 ... 6 was re'ced for the Governor's fees. £20 ... 8 ... 4 I got for Opinions &c and from the brewery £28 ... 3 ... the remaining £28 ... 16 is all I received out of several thousands due for all my old & new debts. In 1767 I reced £159 ... 9 ... 3 of which borrowed £5 ... 15 ...--the governor's fees £10 ... 7 ... 6 reced for opinions &c £49 ... 6 ...--from the brewhouse £66 ... 14 ... of which £94 ... 14 ... 3 was from the brewery & 9 in 1766 I gave a collector £20 besides his board ferrage & expences & finding him horses & his whole collection during the year turned out to be £27 ... 2 ... 10. In the two years my taxes levied and quitrents amounted to £199 ... 8 ... 1 which would have left a ballance of £1 . 13 . 3 in my favour in that time from the brewery & my practice (if it could be so called) & all my debts, in great part of which you and your brother are jointly & equally interested. What then remained to support me & a family consisting of about 26 white people & 122 negroes? Nothing but my crops, after that I had expended above £100, for corn only to support them, besides rice & pork to near that value & the impending charge of £125 for rent, of £140 to overseers yearly, remained, & £94 ... 14 ... 3 out of those crops, as I have already mentioned, proceeding from the brewery, was swallowed up in taxes (tho the people in England say we pay none, but I can fatally prove that my estate from which I did not receive sixpence has, since the commencement of the war, paid near a thousand pounds in taxes only)." On December 25, 1766, Mercer made public his situation in Rind's _Virginia Gazette_: The great Number of Debts due to me for the last seven Years of my Practice, and the Backwardness of my Clients (in attending whose Business, I unhappily neglected my own) to make me Satisfaction, would of itself, if I had had no other Reason, have obliged me to quit my Practice. And when I found that by such partial Payments as I chanced to receive I was able to keep up my Credit, I can appeal to the Public, whether any Person, who had so many outstanding Debts, was less importunate, or troublesome, to his Debtors, But when I found, upon my quitting the Bar, all Payments cease, and that I would not personally wait upon my Clients, I could not approve of the Method of Demand, by the Sheriff, too commonly in Practice, without Necessity. I therefore employed a Receiver, who, ever since the first day of _January_ last, has been riding through the _Northern Neck_, and even as far as _Williamsburg_, and who to this Time has not been able, out of near ten thousand Pounds, to collect as much as will pay his own Wages, and discharge my public taxes (for Proof of which I will produce my Books to any Gentleman concerned or desirous to see them). This too, at a Time when my own Debts contracted by the large Expences I have been at for some Years past for establishing a Brewery, has disabled me by any other Means from discharging them, (except when they would take lands, Assignments of Debts, or any thing I can spare, without Detriment to my Plantations or Brewery). Selling Lands avail nothing, I have bonds for some sold four or five Years ago but I can't get the Money for them. I therefore cannot be thought too unreasonable to give this public Notice (which the Circumstances of the Country make most disagreeable to me) that I shall be against my inclination obliged to bring Suits, immediately after next _April_ General Court, against all persons indebted to me who do not before that Time, discharge their Debts to me or my Son _James Mercer_, who will have my Books during the said Court to settle with every Person applying to him. And as some Persons have since my quitting the Practice, sent to me for Opinions and to settle Accounts without sending my Fees, to prevent any more Applications of that Sort, I give this Public Notice, that tho' I shall always be ready to do any Thing of that Kind (which can be done at my own House) upon receiving an adequate Satisfaction for it, it will be in vain to expect it be any Messenger they may send without they send the Money. There are some Gentlemen who must know that nothing in this Advertisement can relate to them but that any of their Commands will at any Time, be readily complied with by their and the Public's humble Servant JOHN MERCER Dec. 8, 1766 [Illustration: Figure 16.--ADVERTISEMENT of the services of Mercer's stallion Ranter. Andrew Monroe, grandfather of the President, was Mercer's overseer. (Purdie's _Virginia Gazette_, April 18, 1766.)] Andrew Monroe, as manager of the plantation, advertised over his own name in Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_, of April 18, 1766, the services of "The well known Horse RANTER," an English stallion imported by Mercer in 1762 (fig. 16). One senses that without Monroe, Marlborough would have collapsed completely. In spite of his ministrations, however, there were difficulties with the staff. Purdie & Dixon's _Gazette_ carried the following on June 6, 1766: MARLBOROUGH, STAFFORD county, May 26, 1766. Run away from the subscriber, some time last _February_, a Negro man named TEMPLE, about 35 years old, well set, about 5 feet 6 inches high, has a high forehead, and thick bush beard; he took a gun with him, and wore a blue double breasted jacket with horn buttons. I suspect he is harboured about _Bull Run_, in _Fauquier_ county, where he formerly lived. I bought him, with his mother and sister, from Mr. _Barradall's_ executors in _Williamsburg_ above 20 years ago, and expected he would have returned home; but as he has been so long gone, I am doubtful he may endeavour to get out of the country by water, of which he may understand something, as he was two years on board the _Wolf_ sloop of war in the _West Indies_, and carries the marks of the discipline he underwent on board. Likewise run away last Whitsun holydays two indented servants, imported from LONDON last September, viz. JOSEPH WAIN of Bucknell, in the county of Oxford, aged 22 years, about 5 feet 4 inches high, round shouldered, stoops pretty much in his walk, has a down look, and understands ploughing. WILLIAM CANTRELL of Warwickshire, aged 19, about the same height, and stoops a little, but not so much as WAIN, has a scar under one of his eyes, but which is uncertain, has some marks of the smallpox, his hair is of a dark brown and short, but Wain's is cut off, he pretends to understand ploughing and country business, and has drove a waggon since he has been in my service; they both have fresh look. The clothes they left home in were jackets of red plaids, brown linen shirts, _Russia_ drill breeches with white metal buttons, and thread stockings; _Cantrell_ with an old hat and new shoes, and _Wain_ with a new hat and old shoes; But as it is supposed that they were persuaded to elope with four _Scotch_ servants belonging to the widow _Strother_, on _Potowmack_ run in this county, whom they went to see, and who went off at the same time, it is probable that they may exchange their clothes, or have provided some other. It is supposed that they will make for _Carolina_, where it is said an uncle of one of Mr. _Strother's_ servants lives; and as several horses are missing about the same time in these parts, it is very probable they did not choose to make such a journey on foot. Whoever secures my servants and Negro, or any of them shall, besides the reward allowed by law, be paid any reasonable satisfaction, in proportion to the distance and extraordinary trouble they may be put to. JOHN MERCER Mercer seems to have been concerned principally with his brewers and with the wasteful scheme they furthered with their incompetencies. Even they seem to have been beyond his strength, for he became ill in January 1766, and suffered recurrently the rest of the year. From his journal we can detect a once-strong man's struggle against the first warnings of approaching death: August 26 Rode 6 m. & home had a fever 12 27 sick 28 Rode 5 m. & home 10 29 2 m. & D^o had an Ague 4 30 D^o 31 D^o Sept 1 Had an Ague 2 Rode 5 m. & home 10 * * * Sept 22 to M^r Selden's & ret'^d abo^t a mile but went back 12 23 home by 12 and went to bed 10 24 Confined to my bed (remained so rest of month) Oct 1 Confined to my bed and very ill 5 D^o Sat up a little 6 D^o Better 7 D^o D^o 8 Drove out 3 m & home 6 He informed George that after his return from Mr. Selden's on September 23 he was for "several days under strong delerium and had the rattles." By the beginning of 1768, however, he was able to boast that "I think I may safely aver that I have not been in a better [state of health] any time these twenty years past, & tho' I am not so young, my youngest daughter ... was born the 20th day of last January." On April 22, 1766, he noted in the journal that the "Kitchen roof catched fire" and on May 15 that he "Took Possion [sic] of my summer house." The latter was probably located in the garden, where, during his convalescence in the spring, he was able to make a meticulous record of the blooming of each plant, flower, tree, and shrub, constituting a most interesting catalog of the wild and cultivated flora of 18th-century Marlborough. The catalog is indicative of Mercer's ranging interests and his knowledge of botanical terms (see Appendix L). That the garden was perhaps as interesting as the house is borne out by the fact that in 1750, as the house was reaching completion, Mercer had brought from England a gardener named William Blacke, paying Captain Timothy Nicholson for his passage. Mercer's close attention to the natural phenomena around him began with his illness in 1766. On January 4, only a few days after he had become ill, he installed a thermometer in his room, and eight days later moved it to his office. Regularly, from then until the close of his journal, except when he was absent from Marlborough, he recorded the minimum and maximum readings. One has only to look at the figures for the winter months to realize that "heated" rooms, as we understand them, were little known in the 18th century. Only on Christmas Eve in 1767 did the temperature range from a low of 41° to as high as 63°, because, as Mercer noted, "A good fire raised the Thermometer so high." Although Mercer apparently found surcease from his cares in the peaceful surroundings at Marlborough, his responsibilities went on nevertheless. The cost of keeping slaves remained an enormous and wasteful one: "Every negroes cloaths, bedding, corn, tools, levies & taxes will stand yearly at least in £5," he wrote to George. In his letter he placed an order through George for clothing, which included 25 welted jackets "for my tradesmen & white servants," indicating the large number of white workmen on his staff. It also included 20 common jackets, 45 pair of woolen breeches, 1 dozen greatcoats, 5 dozen stockings, 1-1/2 dozen for boys and girls, 4 dozen "strong felt hats & 600 Ells of ozenbrigs. We shall make Virg^a cloth enough to cloath the women and children, but shall want 50 warm blankets & 2 doz of the Russia drab breeches." Against the advice of his merchant friend Jordan, he declined to order a superior grade of jacket for his Negroes that would last two years, since "most negroes are so careless of their cloathes & rely so much on a yearly support that I think such jackets as I had are cheapest & last the year very well." He ordered George to buy new sheeting for family use, including "84 yds of such as is fit for comp^a," inasmuch as "my wife is ashamed of her old sheets when any strangers come to the house." He also placed an order for windmill sails, which, he observed, were costly in the colony, and could be made only at Norfolk. My millwrights directions were The Drivers 3 foot 6 inches broad } } 23 feet long. The leaders 3 3 } A Suit I had made at Norfolk by those dimensions proved too long, something, they should be of Duck N^o. 2. In addition, he ordered nails, 50 yards of haircloth, a yard wide, for the malt kiln, a "drill plow with brass seed boxes for wheat, turnips, lucarn pease &c," and a considerable number of books, particularly for his children. "Bob. Newbery at the Bible & Sun in S^t. Paul's churchyard can best furnish you at the cheapest rate with books best adapted to the real instruction as well as amusement of children from two to six feet high." The long letter was finally finished on January 28, 1768, its great length partly dictated by the fact that the river had frozen, immobilizing the posts. He noted in his journal that on February 16 he was in Fredericksburg and "dined at my Sons being my birthday and 63 y^{rs} old." On the 24th he attended a meeting of the Ohio Company at Stafford courthouse and on March 14 returned there for a court session. The next day he went home to Marlborough, perhaps never to leave again. The journal ended at the close of the month. The next that we hear of him appeared in Rind's _Virginia Gazette_ on October 27: On Friday, the 14th instant, died at his house in Stafford County, John Mercer, Esq., who had practiced the law with great success in this colony upwards of forty years. He was a Gentleman of great natural abilities inspired by an extensive knowledge, not only in his profession, but in several other branches of polite literature. He was of a humane, generous and chearful disposition, a facetious companion, a warm friend, an affectionate husband, a tender parent, and an indulgent master. [Illustration: Figure 17.--PLATE FROM MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN'S _Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium efte Veranderung Surinaamsche Insecten_ (Antwerp, 1705), an elegant work in Mercer's Library.] FOOTNOTES: [139] All quotations and sources not otherwise identified in this section are from John Mercer's letter to George, December 22, 1767-January 28, 1768. _The George Mercer Papers_, op. cit. (footnote 51), pp. 186-220. [140] Grandfather of President James Monroe. "Tyler-Monroe-Grayson-Botts," _Tyler's Quarterly Historical Genealogical Magazine_ (Richmond, 1924), vol. 5, p. 252. VI _Dissolution of Marlborough_ JAMES MERCER'S ADMINISTRATION OF THE ESTATE James Mercer was now "manager" of John Mercer's estate. George, heavily in debt, remained in England never returning to Virginia. The staggering task of rescuing the estate from bankruptcy was left to James. The immediate necessity was to reduce wasteful overhead at Marlborough and to liquidate non-essential capital investment. On December 15, 1768, James advertised in Rind's _Virginia Gazette_: A large and well chosen collection of BOOKS, being all the library of the late _John Mercer_, Esq., deceased, except such as are reserved for the use of his children. Those to be sold consist of more than 1200 volumes now at home, with which it is hoped may be reckoned upwards of 400 volumes which appear to be missing by the said _Mercer's_ catalogue.... The borrowers are hereby requested to return them before the 19th of _December_ next, the day appointed for the appraising of the estate.... Also to be sold, about 20 mares and colts, and 40 pair of cows and calves. The colts are the breed of the beautiful _horse Ranter_, who is for sale; his pedigree has been formerly published in this Gazette, by which it will appear he is as well related as any horse on the continent. He cost 330 l. currency at his last sale, about 4 years ago, and is nothing worse except in age, and that can be but little in a horse kept for the sole use of covering.... Except for attempting to dispose of the library and the horses and livestock, no significant changes were undertaken until after September 7, 1770, when John Mercer's widow, Ann Roy Mercer, died. Reduction of the plantation to simpler terms then began in earnest. Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_ published the following advertisement on October 25, 1770: _To be SOLD on MONDAY the 19th of NOVEMBER, if fair, otherwise next fair day, at MARLBOROUGH, the seat of the late JOHN MERCER Esq: deceased._ The greatest part of his personal estate (except slaves) consisting of a variety of household furniture too tedious to mention; a number of well chosen books, in good condition; a very large and choice flock of horses, brood mares, and colts, all blooded, and mostly from that very beautiful and high bred horse _Ranter_ a great number of black cattle, esteemed the best in the colony, equal in size to any beyond the Ridge, but superiour to them, because they will thrive in shorter pastures; also 700 ounces of fashionable plate, and a genteel family coach, not more than seven years old, seldom used, with harness for six horses. Those articles were appraised, in December 1768, to 1738 l. The horses and black cattle are since increased, and now are in very good order; so that any person inclinable to purchase may depend on having enough to choose out of. Also will then be sold several articles belonging to a BREWERY, _viz._ a copper that boils 500 gallons, several iron bound buts that contain a whole brewing each, coolers, &c. &c. and a quantity of new iron hoops and rivets for casks of different forms, lately imported. Purchasers above 6 l. will have credit until the _Fredericksburg September_ fair, on giving bond with security, with interest from the day of sale; but if the money is paid when due, the interest will be abated. Proper vessels will attend at _Pasbytansy_, for the conveyance of such as come from that side of _Potomack_ Creek. It is clear that Ranter and his colts, as well as the cattle, had not been disposed of at the former sale. Further, it is obvious that there was an end to brewing at Marlborough, a result which James must have been all too glad to bring about. This sale, however, was also unsuccessful. In the May 9, 1771, issue of Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_ we learn that "The wet Weather last _November_ having stopped the Sale of the personal Estate of the late _John Merser_, Esquire, the Remainder ... will be sold at _Marlborough_, on Monday, the 27th of this Month, if fair...." We learn that the family beds, apparently alone of the furniture, had been sold, and that the chariot had been added to the sales list. Apparently the library still remained largely intact, as "a great Collection of well chosen Books" was included. Ranter was still for sale, now at a five percent discount "allowed for ready money." But again--so an advertisement of June 13 reads in the same paper--the sale was "prevented by bad Weather." June 20 was appointed the day for the postponed sale. This time an additional item consisted of 200 copies of Mercer's "old Abridgment" (doubtless the 1737 edition), to be sold at five shillings each. In the meanwhile, James had employed one Thomas Oliver, apparently of King George County, as overseer for the four plantations which were in his custody--Aquia, Accokeek, Belvedere, and Marlborough. On May 31, 1771, Oliver made a detailed report to Mercer on "the true state & Condition of the whole Estate and its Contents as they appear'd when this return was fill'd up".[141] Included in it was an inventory of every tool, outbuilding, vehicle, and servant. The Marlborough portion of this is given in Appendix M. Oliver added an N.B. summarizing the condition of the animals and the physical properties. The following of his remarks are applicable to Marlborough: ... The work of the Mill going on as well as Can be Expected till M^r. Drains is better, the Schoo and Boat unfit for any Sarvice whatsoever till repair'd. if Capable of it. the foundation of the Malt house wants repairing. the Manor house wants lead lights in some of the windows. the East Green House wants repairing. the west d^o wants buttments as a security to the wall on the south side. The barn, tobacco houses at Marlbrough & Acquia must be repaired as soon as possible.... five stables at Marlbrough plantation must be repair'd before winter. we have sustai'd no damage from Tempest or Floods. it will Expedient to hyer a Carpinder for the woork wanted can not be accomplish'd in time, seeing the Carpenders must be taken of for harvest which is Like to be heavy. I will advertise the sale at Stafford Court and the two parish Churches to begin on the 20th of June 1771.... P.S. The Syder presses at Each plantation & Syder Mill at Marlborough totally expended.... Negro Sampson Marlbro Company Sick of the Gravel.... Negro Jas Pemberton at Marlb^h Sick Worme Fever. The sale as advertised and, presumably, as posted by Oliver was again a failure. Apparently no one attended. The situation must have been regarded then as desperate, for James advertised on August 29, 1771, in Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_ substantially the same material as before. This time, however, it was "To be SOLD, at the Townhouse in _Fredericksburg_, on the 24th day of _September_ next (being the second Day of the Fair)." Added to the former list were "About two Hundred Weight of HOPS of last Crop," "About four hundred Weight of extraordinary good WOOL with a variety of Woollen and Linen Wheels, Reels, &c.," as well as "A Number of GARDEN FLOWER POTS of different forms. Some ORANGE, LEMON and other EVERGREENS, in Boxes and Pots." The valuable but unwanted Ranter was again put up. But once more bad luck and an apathetic (and probably impecunious) populace brought failure to the sale. On October 24, 1771, Purdie & Dixon's _Virginia Gazette_ printed the following advertisement and James Mercer's final public effort to convert some of his father's estate into cash: _To be SOLD to the highest Bidders, some Time Next Week, before the RALEIGH Tavern in Williamsburg,_ The beautiful Horse RANTER, a genteel FAMILY COACH, with Harness for six Horses, also several Pieces of FASHIONABLE PLATE, yet remaining of the Estate of the late John Mercer, Esquire, deceased. Credit will be allowed until the 25th of April next, the Purchasers giving Bond and Security, with Interest from the Sale; but if the Money is paid when due, the Interest will be abated. Any Person inclinable to purchase RUSHWORTH'S COLLECTION may see them at the Printing Office, and know the Terms. At the same Place are lodged several Copies of the old Abridgment of the VIRGINIA LAWS, containing so many Precedents for Magistrates that they are esteemed well worth five Shillings, the Price asked for them. JAMES MERCER _Williamsburg, October 24._ N.B. The Plate is lodged with Mr. Craig, and may be seen by any inclinable to purchase. James did not attempt to sell the plantation itself or the slaves, but evidently sought to reestablish Marlborough on an efficient and profitable basis. That he failed to do so is brought out in a letter that George Mason wrote to George Washington on December 21, 1773. In it is expressed the whole tragic sequence of debt compounding debt in the plantation economy and the insurmountable burden of inherited obligations: The embarrass'd Situation of my Friend Mr. Jas. Mercer's Affairs gives Me much more Concern than Surprize. I always feared that his Aversion to selling the Lands & Slaves, in Expectation of paying the Debts with the Crops & Profits of the Estate, whilst a heavy Interest was still accumulating, wou'd be attended with bad Consequences, independent of his Brother's Difficulties in England; having never, in a single Instance, seen these sort of Delays answer the Hopes of the Debtor. When Colo. [George] Mercer was first married, & thought in affluent circumstances by his Friends here, considerable purchases of Slaves were made for Him, at high prices (& I believe mostly upon Credit) which must now be sold at much less than the cost: He was originally burthened with a proportionable part of his Father's Debts: most of which, as well as the old Gentleman's other Debts, are not only still unpaid, but must be greatly increased by Interest; so that even if Colo. Mercer had not incurr'd a large Debt in England, He wou'd have found his Affairs here in a disagreeable Situation. I have Bye me Mr. James Mercer's Title-Papers for his Lands on Pohick Run & on Four-mile Run, in this County; which I have hitherto endeavoured to sell for Him in Vain: for as he Left the Price entirely to Me, I cou'd not take less for them than if they had been my own.[142] FOOTNOTES: [141] _A Documentary History of American Industrial Society_, edit. John P. Commons (New York: Russell & Russell, 1958), vol. 1, facsimile opp. p. 236. [142] _Letters to Washington_, and _Accompanying Papers_, edit. S. M. Hamilton (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901), vol. 4, p. 286. MARLBOROUGH DURING AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION Despite the seeming unwisdom of doing so, James Mercer held on to Marlborough until his death. He was an active patriot in the Revolution, serving as a member of the Virginia Committee of Safety. Marlborough, too, seems to have been a participant in the war, when Lord Dunmore, on a last desperate foray, sailed his ships up the Potomac and attacked several plantations. That Marlborough was a target we learn from the widow of Major George Thornton of the Virginia militia, who "was at the bombardment of Marlborough, the seat of Judge Mercer, on the Potomac...."[143] In Purdie's _Virginia Gazette_ of August 2, 1776, we read: Lord Dunmore, with his motley band of pirates and renegradoes, have burnt the elegant brick house of William Brent, esq., at the mouth of Acquia Creek, in Stafford county, as also two other houses lower down the Potowmack River, both the property of widow ladies. Marlborough was no longer the property of a "widow lady," but accurate reporting even today is not universal, and Marlborough may have been meant. In any case, the mansion was not destroyed, although we do not know whether any other buildings at Marlborough were damaged or not. John Francis Mercer, James' half brother, appears to have lived at Marlborough after his return from the Revolution. He served with distinction, becoming aide-de-camp to the eccentric and difficult General Charles Lee in 1778. When Lee was court-martialed after the Battle of Monmouth, John Francis resigned, but reentered the war in 1780.[144] He apparently settled at Marlborough after the surrender at Yorktown, at which he was present. In 1782 he was elected to both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Continental Congress. General Lee died the same year, stipulating in his will: To my friend John [Francis] Mercer, Esq., of Marlborough, in Virginia, I give and bequeath the choice of two brood mares, of all my swords and pistols and ten guineas to buy a ring. I would give him more, but, as he has a good estate and a better genius, he has sufficient, if he knows how to make good use of them.[145] It is not probable that John Francis' "genius" was sufficient to make profitable use of Marlborough. He moved to Maryland in 1785, and later became its Governor.[146] James Mercer died on May 23, 1791. In 1799 the Potomac Neck properties were advertised for sale or rent by John Francis Mercer in _The Examiner_ for September 6. We learn from it that there were overseer's houses, Negro quarters and cornhouses, and that "the fertility of the soil is equal to any in the United States, besides which the fields all lay convenient to banks (apparently inexhaustible) of the richest marle, which by repeated experiments made there, is found to be superiour to any other manure whatever." "30 or 40 Virginia born slaves, in families, who are resident on the lands" were made "available." FOOTNOTES: [143] GEORGE BROWN GOODE, _Virginia Cousins_ (Richmond, 1887), p. 213. [144] Ibid. [145] "Berkeley County, West Virginia," _Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine_ (Richmond, 1921), vol. 3, p. 46. [146] Ibid. THE COOKE PERIOD: MARLBOROUGH'S FINAL DECADES The plantation was bought by John Cooke of Stafford County. Cooke took out an insurance policy on the mansion house on June 9, 1806, with the Mutual Assurance Society of Virginia.[147] From this important document (fig. 43) we learn that the house had a replacement value of $9000, and, after deducting $3000, was "actually worth six thousand Dollars in ready money." The policy shows a plan with a description: "Brick Dwelling House one Story high covered with wood, 108 feet 8 Inches long by 28-1/2 feet wide, a Cellar under about half the House." Running the length of the house was a "Portico 108 feet 8 Inches by 8 feet 4 Inches." A "Porch 10 by 5 f." stood in front of the "portico," and another was located at the northeast corner of the building, "8 by 6 feet." The policy informs us that the house was occupied not by Cooke, but by John W. Bronaugh, a tenant or overseer. The records do not reveal how long the mansion survived. That by the beginning of the century it had already lost the dignity with which Mercer had endowed it and was heading toward decay is quite evident. After John Cooke's death Marlborough was again put up for sale in 1819, but this time nothing was said of any buildings, only that the land was adapted to the growth of red clover, that the winter and spring fisheries produced $2500 per annum, and that "Wild Fowl is in abundance."[148] Undoubtedly as the buildings disintegrated, their sites were leveled. There remained only level acres of grass, clover, and grain where once a poor village had been erected and where John Mercer's splendid estate had risen with its Palladian mansion, its gardens, warehouses, and tobacco fields. Even in the early 19th century the tobacco plantation, especially in northern Virginia, had become largely a thing of the past. Within the memory of men still alive, the one structure still standing from Mercer's time was the windmill. Except for the present-day fringe of modern houses, Marlborough must look today much as it did after its abandonment and disintegration. FOOTNOTES: [147] Policy no. 1134. On microfilm, Virginia State Library. [148] _Virginia Herald_, December 15, 1819. ARCHEOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURE [Illustration: Figure 18.--AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH OF MARLBOROUGH. The outlines of the excavated wall system and Structure B foundation can be seen where Highway 621 curves to the east.] VII _The Site, its Problem, and Preliminary Tests_ The preceding chapters have presented written evidence of Marlborough's history and of the human elements that gave it life and motivation. Assembled mostly during the years following the excavations, this information was not, for the most part, available in 1956 to guide the archeological survey recounted here. Neither was there immediate evidence on the surface of the planted fields to indicate the importance and splendor of Marlborough as it existed in the 18th century. In 1954, when Dr. Darter proposed that the Smithsonian Institution participate in making excavations, he presented a general picture of colonial events at Marlborough. He also provided photostats of the two colonial survey plats so frequently mentioned in Part I (fig. 2). From information inscribed on the 1691 plat, it was clear that a town had been laid out in that year, that it had consisted of 52 acres divided into half-acre lots, and that two undesignated acres had been set aside for a courthouse near its western boundary. It was known also that John Mercer had occupied the town in the 18th century, that he had built a mansion there, that a circular ruin of dressed lime-sandstone was the base of his windmill, and that erosion along the Potomac River bank had radically changed the shoreline since the town's founding 263 years earlier. But nobody in 1954 could point out with any certainty the foundation of Mercer's mansion, nor was anyone aware of the brick and the stone wall system, the two-room kitchen foundation, or the trash pits and other structures that lay beneath the surface, along with many 18th-century household artifacts. It remained for the archeologist to recover such nonperishable data from the ground. In August 1954 Messrs. Setzler, Darter, and Watkins spent three days at Marlborough examining the site, making tests, and, in general, determining whether there was sufficient evidence to justify extended excavations. The site is located in the southeastern portion of what was known in the 17th century as Potowmack Neck (now Marlborough Point), with the Potomac River on the east and Potomac Creek on the south (map, front endpaper). It is approached from the northeast on Highway 621, which branches from Highway 608 about 2-1/2 miles from the site. Highway 608 runs from Aquia Creek westward to the village of Brooke, situated on the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad about four miles east of the present Stafford courthouse on U.S. Route 1. Highway 621 takes a hilly, winding course through the woods until it debouches onto the flat, open peninsula of the point. The river is visible to the east, as the road travels slightly east of due south, passing an intersecting secondary road that runs west and south and then west again. The latter road ends at the southwestern extremity of the Neck, where Accokeek Creek, which meanders along the western edge of the Neck, feeds into Potomac Creek. At the point near the Potomac Creek shore where this road takes its second westerly course lies the site of the Indian village of Patawomecke, excavated between 1938 and 1940 by T. D. Stewart. [Illustration: Figure 19.--HIGHWAY 621, looking north from the curve in the road, with site of Structure B at right.] Beyond this secondary road, Highway 621 continues southward to a small thicket and clump of trees where it curves sharply to the east, its southerly course stopped by fenced-in lots of generous size (with modern houses built on them) that slope down to Potomac Creek. After the highway makes its turn, several driveways extend from it toward the creek. One of these driveways, obviously more ancient than the others, leaves the highway about 200 feet east of the clump of trees, cutting deeply through high sloping banks, where vestiges of a stone wall crop out from its western boundary (fig. 22), and ending abruptly at the water's edge. Highway 621 continues to a dead end near the confluence of creek and river. Some 200 feet west of the turn in the highway around the clump of trees, is a deep gully (or "gutt" in 17th-century terminology) that extends northward from Potomac Creek almost as far as the intersecting road that passes the site of the Indian village. This gully is overgrown with trees and brush, and it forms a natural barrier that divides the lower portion of the point into two parts. A few well-spaced modern houses fringe the shores of the point, while the flat land behind the houses is given over almost entirely to cultivation. Since the two colonial land surveys were not drawn to scale, some confusion arose in 1954 as to their orientation to the surviving topographic features. However, the perimeter measurements given on the 1691 plat make it clear that the town was laid out in the southeastern section of the point, and that the "gutt" so indicated on the plat is the tree-lined gully west of the turn in the highway. Bordering the clump of trees at this turn could be seen in 1954 a short outcropping of brick masonry. A few yards to the north, on the opposite side of the road, crumbled bits of sandstone, both red and gray, were concentrated in the ditch cut by a highway grader. In the fields at either side of the highway, plow furrows disclosed a considerable quantity of brick chips, 18th-century ceramics, and glass sherds. In the field east of the clump of trees and north of the highway, opposite the steep-banked side road leading down to Potomac Creek, could be seen in a row the tops of two or three large pieces of gray stone. These stones were of the characteristic lime-sandstone once obtained from the Aquia quarries some four miles north, as well as from a long-abandoned quarry above the head of Potomac Creek. It was decided to start work at this point by investigating these stones, in preference to exploring the more obvious evidence of a house foundation at the clump of trees. This was done in the hope of finding clues to lot boundaries and the possible orientation of the survey plats. Excavation around these vertically placed stones disclosed that they rested on a foundation layer of thick slabs laid horizontally at the undisturbed soil level. Enough of this wall remained _in situ_ to permit sighting along it toward Potomac Creek. The sight line, jumping the highway, picked up the partly overgrown stone wall that extends along the western edge of the old roadway to the creek, indicating that a continuous wall had existed prior to the present layout of the fields and before the construction of the modern highway. The excavation along the stone wall was extended northward. At a distance of 18.5 feet from the highway the stone wall ended at a junction of two brick wall foundations, one running north in line with the stone wall and the other west at a 90° angle. These walls, each a brick and a half thick, were bonded in oystershell lime mortar. Test trenches were dug to the north and west to determine whether they were enclosure walls or house foundations. Since it was soon evident that they were the former, the next question was whether they were lot boundaries matching those on the plat. If so, it was reasoned, then a street must have run along the east side of the north-south coursing wall. Accordingly, tests were made, but no supporting evidence for this inference was found. Nevertheless, the indications of an elaborate wall system, a probable house foundation, and a wealth of artifacts in the soil were enough to support a full-scale archeological project, the results of which would have considerable historical and architectural significance. Determining the meaning of the walls and whether they were related to the town layout or to Mercer's plantation, learning the relationship of the plantation to the town, discovering the sites of the 1691 courthouse and Mercer's mansion, and finding other house foundations and significant artifacts--all these were to be the objectives of the project. The problem, broadly considered, was to investigate in depth a specific locality where a 17th-century town and an 18th-century plantation had successively risen and fallen and to evaluate the evidence in the light of colonial Virginia's evolving culture and economy. Accordingly, plans were made, a grant was obtained from the American Philosophical Society, as recounted in the introduction, and intensive work on the site was begun in 1956. VIII _Archeological Techniques_ The archeologist must adopt and, if necessary, invent the method of excavation best calculated to produce the results he desires, given the conditions of a particular site. The Marlborough site required other techniques than those conventionally employed, for instance, in excavating prehistoric American Indian sites. Moreover, because the Marlborough excavations constituted a limited exploratory survey, the grid system used customarily in colonial-site archeology was not appropriate here, and a different system had to be substituted. It was decided in 1956 to begin, as in 1954, at obvious points of visible evidence and to follow to their limits the footings of walls and buildings as they were encountered, rather than to remove all of the disturbed soil within a limited area. By itself this was a simple process, but to record accurately what was found by this method and relate the features to each other required the use mainly of an alidade and a stadia rod. Only to a limited extent were some exploratory trenches dug and careful observations made of the color and density of soil, so as to detect features such as wooden house foundations, postholes, and trash pits. Once located, such evidence had to be approached meticulously with a shaving or slicing technique, again taking careful note of soil changes in profile. All this required the establishment of an accurate baseline and a number of control points by means of alidade and stadia-rod measurements. Then eight points for triangulation purposes in the form of iron pipes were established at intervals along the south side of the highway, east of its turn at the clump of trees, on the basis of which the accompanying maps were plotted. The full extent of the excavations is not shown in detail on these maps, particularly in connection with the walls and structures. The walls, for example, were exposed in trenches 5 feet wide. Similar trenches were dug around the house foundations as evidence of them was revealed. IX _Wall System_ DESCRIPTIONS OF EXCAVATIONS On April 2, 1956, the junction point of the three walls found in the 1954 test was reexcavated. The bottom layer of horizontally placed stones 1.8-1.9 feet wide was found _in situ_, while most of the vertical stones from the second course had been broken or knocked off by repeated plowing. Construction of the highway had completely removed a section of the wall. The corner of the two brick walls was revealed to have been superimposed on the northernmost foundation block of the stone wall, thus indicating that the stone wall preceded the building of the brick ones. The upper stone block that had been removed to make room for this brick corner still lay a few feet to the east where it had been cast aside in the 18th century. This part of the stone wall, together with its continuation beyond the highway to the creek, was designated Wall A (figs. 21 and 24). Exposure of the brick wall running westward from Wall A (designated Wall A-I) disclosed broken gaps in the brickwork, the gaps ranging from 1.8 to 3 feet in length, and the intervening stretches of intact wall, from 7.33 to 8 feet. Eight-foot spacings are normal for the settings of modern wooden fence posts, as such a fence south of the highway illustrated. It is assumed, therefore, that, following the destruction of the exposed part of the brick wall, a wooden fence was built along the same line, requiring the removal of bricks to permit the setting of fence posts (fig. 26). Wall A-I intersected the modern highway at an acute angle, disappeared thereunder and reappeared beyond. South of the clump of trees it abutted another wall of different construction which ran continuously in the same direction for 28 feet. Because of their manner of construction, the two walls at their point of juncture were not integrated and, hence, probably were constructed at different times. The 28-foot section later proved to be the south wall of the mansion, designated as B. (This wall will be considered when that structure is described, as will another section that continued for less than 4 feet to the point where a 12-foot modern driveway crossed over it.) To the west of the driveway another wall (B-I), still in line with Wall A-I, extended toward the "gutt." Of this only one brick course remained, a brick and a half thick. About midway in its length were slight indications that the wall footings had been expanded for a short distance, as though for a gate; however, the crumbled condition of the brick and mortar fragments made this inference uncertain. Near the edge of the "gutt," 146 feet from the southwest corner of the Structure B main foundation, Wall B-I terminated in an oblique-angled corner, the other side of which was designated Wall B-II. This wall ran 384 feet in a southwesterly direction under trees and beneath a boathouse along the "gutt," ending at the back of Potomac Creek. It was constructed of rough blocks of the fossil-imbedded marl that underlies Marlborough and crops out along the Potomac shore. Walls A, A-I, B-I, and B-II, together with the creek bank, form an enclosure measuring a little over two acres. Returning to the point of beginning excavation, the brick wall which is extended north from stone wall A (designated as Wall A-II) was followed for a distance of 175 feet. Like Wall A-I, it was a brick and a half thick (a row of headers lying beside a row of stretchers), and was represented for a distance of 36 feet by two courses. Beyond this point for another 30 feet, a shift in the contour of the land, allowing deeper plowing in relation to the original height of the wall, had caused the second course of bricks to be knocked off. From there on, only occasional clusters of bricks remained, the evidence of the wall consisting otherwise of a thin layer of mortar and brick. Wall A-II terminated in a corner. The other side of the corner was of the same construction and ran westerly at right angles for a total distance of 264.5 feet, passing beneath the highway (north of the turn) and stopping against the southeast corner of a structure designated E. Extending south from Structure E was an 84-foot wall (Wall E) a brick and a half thick, laid this time in Flemish bond (header-stretcher-header) in several courses. Another east-west wall, of which only remnants were found, joined Wall E and its southern terminus. Six feet west of Wall E this fragmentary wall widened from three to four bricks in thickness in what appeared to be the foundation of a wide gate, with a heavy iron hinge-pintle _in situ_; beyond this it disappeared in a jumble of brickbats. Upon completion of the wall excavations, a return was made to Wall A, where a visible feature had been observed, although not investigated. This feature was a three-sided, westward projection from Wall A, similarly built of Aquia-type stone, forming with Wall A a long, narrow enclosure. The southern east-west course of this structure meets Wall A approximately 62 feet north of the creek-side terminus of Wall A and extends 59 feet to the west. The north-south course runs 100 feet to its junction with the northern east-west segment. The latter segment is only 55 feet long, so the enclosure is not quite symmetrical. No excavations were made here. However, in line with the north cross wall of the enclosure, trenches were dug at four intervals in a futile effort to locate evidence of a boundary wall in the present orchard lying to the east of the road to the creek. SIGNIFICANT ARTIFACTS ASSOCIATED WITH WALLS _Date_ _Artifact_ _of Manufacture_ _Provenience_ Wine-bottle base. Diameter, 1735-1750 Adjacent to junction 5-1/8 inches. of Walls A, A-I, (USNM 59.1717 fig. 29; ill. 35) A-II, 13 inches above wall base and undisturbed soil. Wine-bottle base. Diameter, 1750-1770 Surface 4-5/8 inches. (USNM 60.117) Polychrome Chinese-porcelain 1730-1770 In disturbed soil teacup base. between junction of Blue-and-white porcelain sherds. Walls A, A-I, A-II, (USNM 60.118; 60.121) and modern Highway 621. Buckley coarse earthenware. (USNM Surface 60.80; 60.108; 60.136; 60.140) Staffordshire white salt-glazed ca. 1760 Surface ware. (USNM 60.106) Brass knee buckle. (USNM 60.139; ca. 1760 Surface fig. 83e; ill. 49) Hand-forged nails. Surface Scraping tool. (USNM 60.133; fig. Surface 89b; ill. 76) Fragment of bung extractor. (USNM Surface 60.134; fig. 89d) Sherds of heavy lead-glass decanter ca. 1720 Trenches beside Wall and knop of large wineglass or B-2. pedestal-bowlstem. (USNM 60.149) Westerwald stoneware. before 1750 Surface (USNM 60.104; 60.121) Tidewater-type earthenware. (USNM 60.141; 60.154) Iron gate pintle. (USNM 60.90; figs. Wall E gateway, 6 29 and 88) inches from west end, south side, 13 inches above undisturbed soil, in bricks in second course. Brass harness ring. (USNM 60.53; 2 inches west of figs. 29 and 83i) Wall E gateway, on top of third course of bricks, 7 inches above undisturbed soil. Bridle bit. (USNM 60.67; figs. 29 5 inches west of and 91c) Wall E gateway, first course, 4 inches above undisturbed soil. Bottle seal, marked with "I^[C.]M" (See matching Underneath bridle and first three digits of date seal dated 1737 bit (see above). "173...." (USNM 60.68) on wine bottle, USNM 59.1688; fig. 78; ill. 37) Fragment of iron potlid (USNM 60.69; Southwest corner of fig. 87a) Wall E gateway, 7 inches above undisturbed soil, at lowest brick course. Indian celt, with hole drilled for 16 inches east of use as pendant. (USNM 60.87) southwest corner of Wall E gateway, at undisturbed soil, 7 inches below wall base. Iron loop from swingletree. (USNM 30 inches east of 60.86) southwest corner of Wall E gateway, at undisturbed soil, 7 inches below wall base. Wine-bottle base. Diameter 4-1/2 1735-1750 Wall E gateway. Top inches (USNM 60.83) course of bricks, 16 inches north of pintle (see above). Iron plow colter. (USNM 60.88, Wall E gateway. Top ill. 79) course of bricks, 5.5 feet east of pintle (see above). In addition to the artifacts listed above numerous others were excavated from the trenches, although few of these have archeological value for purposes of analyzing the structures. Only the finds accompanied by depth and provenience data are significant in evaluating these structures, and in the case of the gateway few are helpful to any degree. The fragmentary bottle seal found there matches exactly a whole seal that occurs on a wine bottle described in a subsequent section. That seal is dated 1737, and thus this seal must have been similarly dated. Its presence near the lowest level suggests that the wall was in construction at the time the seal was deposited. Bottles were used for a long time, however, so the seal may have reached its final resting place years later than 1737. The Indian celt no doubt fell from the topsoil while the trench in which the wall was built was being excavated. The swingletree gear next to it probably was left there during the construction. The colter, although it appears to be of early 18th-century origin, may have been in use late in the 18th century after the wall had been removed. Since the colter is badly bent, it may have struck the top of the underground wall foundation, and, having been torn off from the plow, perhaps was left on the bricks where it fell. [Illustration: Figure 20.--EXCAVATION PLAN of Marlborough.] [Illustration: Figure 21.--EXCAVATION PLAN of wall system.] [Illustration: Figure 22.--LOOKING NORTH up the old road leading to the creek side.] [Illustration: Figure 23.--OUTCROPPING OF STONE WALL along old road from creek side.] [Illustration: Figure 24.--JUNCTION OF STONE WALL A, running from creek side to this point, with brick Wall A-I at top left, Wall A-II at right.] [Illustration: Figure 25.--LOOKING NORTH in line with Walls A and A-II, Wall A-I joining at right angles.] [Illustration: Figure 26.--WALL A-II. Breaks in wall date from subsequent placement of fence posts.] [Illustration: Figure 27.--JUNCTION OF WALL A-I with southeast corner of Structure B.] [Illustration: Figure 28.--WALL E, south of kitchen, showing gateway foundation.] [Illustration: Figure 29.--DETAIL OF GATEWAY in Wall E, showing iron pintle for gate hinge in place; also bridle bit (see fig. 91c), harness ring, and bottle base (see ill. 35).] [Illustration: Figure 30.--WALL B-II looking toward Potomac Creek, with "Gutt," shown in 1691 survey, at right.] [Illustration: Figure 31.--WALL D, looking east toward Potomac River from Structure E (kitchen).] HISTORICAL DATA AND INTERPRETATION OF WALL SYSTEM John Mercer commented with exasperation in his Land Book about the unresolved discrepancies between the Buckner survey of 1691 and the missing Gregg survey of 1707 (p. 14). There are as many disparities between Buckner's plat and the plat resulting from the Savage survey of 1731. In the latter a new row of lots is added along the western boundary, pushing the Buckner lots eastward. Where in the Buckner plat the lots and streets in the lower part of the town west of George Andrews' lots turn westerly 1° from the indicated main axis of the town, paralleling the 30-pole fourth course of the town bounds which runs to the creek's edge, the Savage map shows no such change. Yet Savage, in describing the courses of the survey in a written note on the plat, shows that he followed the original bounds. He does note a 4°, 10-pole error in the course along Potomac Creek, "which difference gives several Lots more than was in the old survey making one Row of Lots more than was contained therein each containing two thirds of an Acre." This was doubtless a contrivance designed to reconcile the Gregg and Buckner surveys and also to benefit John Mercer. In any case, it is clear that the plats themselves are both unreliable and inaccurate. What was actual was shown in the archeological survey of 1956 with its record of boundary walls and at least one street. An attempt has been made in figure 14 to give scale to the Buckner survey by superimposing the archeological map over it. There, Wall B-II, if extended north for 111 feet beyond its length of 384 feet to equal the 30 poles (495 feet) of the fourth course, would exactly touch the southwest corner of lot 21 where the fourth course began. But, in spite of this congruence, the other features of the plat are distorted and disagree with the slightly northwest-southeast basic orientation of the street and wall system. The simplest explanation might be that the layout was made on the basis of the 1707 Gregg survey. Since it was following the second Act for Ports of 1705 that the town achieved what little growth it made prior to Mercer's occupancy, it is probable that the town's orientation was made according to this survey. Whether or not this is the case, the road to the creek side was fundamental to the town, and probably was built early in its history and maintained after the town itself was abandoned. We know from archeological evidence that Wall A antedates the brick walls that were connected with it. Further evaluation of the wall system in relation to the entire site will be made later. It may be concluded for now that Wall A and the road beside it represent the main axis of the town as it was laid out before Mercer's arrival, that the stone walls were built before that event, that Wall B-II follows the fourth course somewhat according to Buckner's plat, and that the brick walls may date as late as 1750, as some of the associated artifacts suggest. [Illustration: Figure 32.--EXCAVATION PLAN of Structure B.] X _Mansion Foundation_ (_Structure B_) DESCRIPTION OF EXCAVATIONS With the exception of Wall A, the protruding bit of brickwork near the clump of trees (where Highway 621 makes its turn to the southeast) was the only evidence remaining above ground in 1956 of Marlborough's past grandeur. Designated Structure B, it was plainly the remains of a cellar foundation, which the tangled thicket of vines and trees adjacent to it tended to confirm. Since its location corresponded with the initially estimated position of the courthouse, it seemed possible that the foundation might have survived from that structure. Excavation of Structure B began accidentally when the excavators began following the westward course of Wall A-I, as described in the preceding section on the "Wall System." Wall A-I abutted, but did not mesh with, the corner of two foundation walls, one of which ran northward and the other continued on for 28 feet in the same direction as Wall A-I. The brickwork in the 28-foot stretch of Wall A-I was laid in a step-back, buttress-type construction. At the bottom course the wall was 2.65 feet thick, diminishing upward for five successive courses to a minimum of 1.5 feet. A wall running northward--the east foundation wall--was exposed for 16 feet from the point of its junction with Wall A-I until it disappeared under the highway. It was found to have the same buttress-type construction. There was no evidence of a cellar within the area enclosed by the foundation walls south of the highway. Excavation of the east foundation wall was resumed north of the highway, but here no buttressing was found, with evidence of a cellar visible instead. This evidence consisted of a curious complex of features, comprising remnants of two parallel cross walls only 4.5 feet apart with a brick pavement between 4.8 feet below the surface. The east wall and the cross walls had flush surfaces. The northerly cross wall was tied into the brickwork of the east wall, showing that it was built integrally with the foundation. The northerly cross wall had been knocked down, however, to within five courses on the floor level. The pavement was fitted against it. The southerly cross wall was not tied into the brickwork of the east wall, and the pavement had been torn up next to it. Thus it was evident that this wall had been erected subsequent to the building of the foundation, that it had shortened the cellar by 4.5 feet, and that the cellar extended southward to a point beneath the highway where it was impossible to excavate. Documentary evidence to confirm this alteration will be shown below (p. 91). Extending 12.5 feet north of the original cross wall was another cellarless section, with step-back buttressing again featuring the foundation wall. Another paved cellar was in evidence north of this, extending for 26 feet, with a final 14.25-foot cellarless portion as far as the north wall of the structure. The interior of the cellar, to the extent that inviolate trees and shrubs made it possible to determine, was filled with brickbats and debris, large portions of which were removed. Evidence, however, of construction of cross walls and of floor treatment remained concealed. [Illustration: Figure 33.--SITE OF STRUCTURE B before excavating, looking northeast.] The entire length of this extraordinary foundation totaled 108 feet. The northwest corner of Structure B was not excavated because it was hidden beneath a group of cedar trees which could not be disturbed. South of the trees, however, the section of the west-wall foundation was exposed to a length of 15.5 feet. This section was situated partly in, and partly north of, the north cellar area. The cross measurement, from outer edge to outer edge, was 28 feet, the same as the length of the south foundation wall. Another short section of the west foundation wall also was exposed from the southwest corner as far as a private driveway which limited the excavation. Abutting the exterior of the north wall of the foundation a flagstone pavement was found, extending 8.45 feet northward and 16 feet westward from the northeast corner. Against the foundation, within this space, was a U-shaped brick wall, forming a hollow rectangle 5 feet by 3.6 feet (inside). The space was filled with ashes, loose bricks, and other refuse. This brickwork was the foundation for a small porch, the lime-sandstone slabs surrounding it having been an apron or a small terrace. Extending westward from the cedar trees, beyond the projected 28-foot length of the north wall, was a short section of brick wall foundation, the outer surface of which was faced with slabs of red sandstone and dressed on the top with a cyma-reversa molding. The tops of the slabs were rough, but each had slots and channels for receiving iron tie bars (ill. 3) that were still in place. This wall was inset four inches to the south of the alignment of the main north foundation wall. [Illustration: Figure 34.--SOUTHWEST CORNER OF STRUCTURE B. Piazza foundation extends to left, with red sandstone block at junction of piazza with main foundation. To the left of top of sign, molded red-sandstone trim can be seen which apparently surrounded the piazza. Bricks in front of trim appear to have been added later as step foundation. Brick buttressing of main-foundation footing appears at right.] The northwest corner of this additional structure was hidden under the highway. Even now, however, the discerning eye can pick up the contour of a wall running parallel with the west foundation wall under the blacktop pavement. For a brief distance, between the point where the road swings eastward from it and the private driveway covers it again, excavation exposed this wall. Designated Wall C, it was 22 inches thick, entirely of brick, with no evidence remaining of red sandstone on the outside. The exterior surface was 9.5 feet beyond the west foundation wall. At the southwest corner of the foundation, evidence matching that at the northwest corner was found. Here, again inset 4 inches from the line of the main south foundation wall, were to be seen the tops of red-sandstone slabs like those found at the north end (fig. 36), in this case with one tie rod still in place. The driveway obscured the point to which the corner of this extending structure could presumably be projected. Subsequent construction against the sandstone slabs had covered their surfaces with a rubble of brick and mortar that appeared to be the foundation for masonry steps (fig. 35). Projecting out from the southwest corner of the foundation was a rectangular red-sandstone block which appeared to be the corner of these superimposed steps. Although situated under the driveway, it was apparent by projection that Wall B-I joined the southwest corner of Wall C. It will be demonstrated from surviving records that Wall C, with its connecting sections, was the foundation of a full-length veranda. The belief which persisted for a time that Structure B might have been the courthouse was dispelled by documentary evidence showing that it was John Mercer's mansion. [Illustration: Figure 35.--SOUTHWEST CORNER OF STRUCTURE B, showing molded-sandstone trim with added brickwork in front. Bricks also covered red-sandstone block, lower right. (Diagonally placed bricks at left are not part of structure.)] SIGNIFICANT ARTIFACTS ASSOCIATED WITH STRUCTURE B _Date _Artifact_ of Manufacture_ _Provenience_ 2 rim sherds from ca. 1730 Beneath flagstone in brown-banded; porch apron north "drab," stoneware of Structure B. mug (USNM 59.1754; fig. 67b) Iron candle-snuffer 1730-1750 Debris at south end (USNM 59.1825; ill. 62) of Structure B. Small crescent-shaped Debris at south end chopping knife of Structure B. (USNM 59.1837; fig. 85a) Silver teaspoon ca. 1730-1750 Wall debris near (USNM 59.1827; fig. 86d) north end. In addition, there was the usual variety of 18th-century delftware, Nottingham and white salt-glazed stoneware, pieces of a Westerwald stoneware chamber pot, and much miscellaneous iron, of which only a hinge fragment and a supposed shutter fastener probably were associated with the house. None of this material has provenience data, nearly all of it having turned up in the process of trenching. Little of it, therefore, throws much light on the history of the structure. The most important artifacts found in and around Structure B are those of an architectural nature, and these will be considered primarily in the following section. ARCHITECTURAL DATA AND ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURE B That the "manor house," as Thomas Oliver called it in 1771, was an extraordinary building is both revealed in the Structure B foundation and confirmed by the insurance-policy sketch of 1806. Long, low, and narrow, fronted by a full-length veranda and adorned with stone trim for which we can find no exact parallel in 18th-century America, it was as individualistic as John Mercer himself. Yet, far from being a vernacular anachronism or a mere eccentricity, it was apparently rich with the Georgian mannerisms that made it very much an expression of its age. [Illustration: Figure 36.--SOUTH WALL OF STRUCTURE B, looking east. Base of veranda extends to bottom of picture at left. Molded-sandstone trim appears through brick rubble that has been attached to it, evidently as base for steps.] The measurements made of the foundation when excavated, as we have seen, show a length of 108 feet and a width of 28 feet for the main structure, with an overall width, including the projecting Wall C, of 37 feet 6 inches. The insurance policy states a length of 108 feet 8 inches and a width of 29 feet 6 inches for the main foundation, plus a separate width for the "portico" (as the structure above Wall C was called) of 8 feet 4 inches. These small discrepancies probably lie in the differences between measuring a standing house and a foundation. Despite the fact that the foundation was far from fully excavated because of the presence of trees and highway, it is clear, nevertheless, that two cellars of unequal size were situated within the main foundation, separated by sections where there were no cellars. These findings correspond with the notation on the insurance-policy plan, "a Cellar under about half the House." [Illustration: Figure 37.--CELLAR OF STRUCTURE B, showing remains of original cross wall at left and added cross wall at right. Mercer probably referred to the latter in 1749 in his account with Thomas Barry: "Underpinning and altering the cellar."] The partly destroyed cross wall extends about midway across the foundation, acting as a retaining wall. As described above, this cross wall was found to be tied into the brick pavement that abutted it on the south side. The bricks in the main foundation walls and in the partly destroyed cross wall and pavement, on the basis of sample measurements, show a usual dimension of about 8-1/2 by 2-3/4 by 4 inches. An occasional 9-inch brick occurs--about 10 percent of the sample. In contrast, the bricks in the second cross wall are all 9 inches long, except two that are 8-1/2 inches and one that is 8-3/4 inches. Similar sizes prevail in the bricks exposed in the "portico" foundation (Wall C) at the south end. The significance of these brick sizes will be discussed later. It is clear that Wall C was the foundation of the "portico," and that by "portico" the writer of the insurance policy meant veranda or loggia. The policy also shows a "Porch 10 by 5 f." extending from the middle of the veranda. The highway now covers this spot. In the space between the two parallel cross walls within the main foundation, the debris yielded a large section of a heavy, red-sandstone arch, 14 inches wide, 9 inches thick, and 3 feet 2 inches long. This arch was roughhewn on the flat surfaces and on about half of the outer curved surface, or extrados. The inner surface, or intrados, and the remainder of the extrados are smoothly dressed (fig. 38). At the south end of the main foundation another curved red-sandstone piece was recovered. This piece curves laterally and has a helically sloped top surface. It is 25 inches long, 14-1/2 inches high at the highest point, and 9 inches thick. Presumably, it was part of a flanker for a formal outdoor stair or steps (fig. 39). Also at the south end was found a cast-mortar block with grooves on the back for metal or wooden fastenings (USNM 59.1823; fig. 40). This was perhaps part of a simulated ashlar doorframe. A few gauged or "rubbed" bricks occur that are slightly wedge shaped. [Illustration: Figure 38.--SECTION OF RED-SANDSTONE ARCH found in cellar, presumably from an arcade surrounding the veranda.] Turning to the documentary evidence, one may recall that an item dated September 1747, "By building part of my House," appeared in David Minitree's account in Ledger G. Two years later, in 1749, several items related to the house appeared in the account of Thomas Barry, "By Building the Addition to my House/ By 22 Arches/ By 900 Coins & Returns/ By a Frontispiece/ By Underpinning & altering the Cellar." In 1749 and 1750 William Copein was paid for mason's work. [Illustration: Figure 39.--HELICALLY CONTOURED red sandstone, possibly a flanker for the steps at the south end of the veranda, near which it was found.] [Illustration: Figure 40.--CAST-CONCRETE BLOCK, probably part of a rusticated door enframement. Found at south end of Structure B. (See ills. 1 and 2.)] [Illustration: Figure 41.--DRESSED RED-SANDSTONE SLAB (originally in one piece), molded on both edges. Although last used as a doorstep in Structure E, this slab was probably designed as trim for the sides of steps connected with the main house (Structure B).] [Illustration: Illustrations 1 and 2.--Front and back of cast-concrete block, probably part of a rusticated door enframement (fig. 40). One-fourth. (USNM 59.1823.)] [Illustration: Figure 42.--FOSSIL-EMBEDDED black sedimentary stone, used for hearths and fireplace surrounds in the mansion.] There is a clear sequence here. "Building part of my house" referred to the basic brick structure built in 1747 by Minitree on the main foundation. The work of William Monday, the carpenter, followed in 1748. This doubtless included building the roof, setting beams, laying floors, and building partitions. Then in 1749 Barry built the "Addition to my House"--almost certainly the veranda. The item for 22 arches is difficult to understand unless one relates it to the veranda and divides the figure in two. The veranda was probably an arcade having 11 arched openings, with arched facings of rubbed brick both inside and outside the arcade. Thus, for the bricklayer, each actual arch would have required two arches of brick. The intrados, or undersurfaces, of the arches were probably red sandstone, like the fragmentary arch found in the site; the basic element of the arch was then faced on each side with bricks also arranged in an arch formation. The arcade at Hanover courthouse seems to have been built in a somewhat similar fashion, except that there the brick facing appears on the exterior of the arch only. The "900 Coins and Returns" probably are gauged bricks, that is, bricks ground smooth on a grindstone to provide a different texture and richer red color to contrast with the ordinary wall brick. They were widely used in Virginia mansions of the 18th century for corner and arch decoration. At Marlborough over 600 rubbed bricks would have been required to trim the piers of 11 arches, while the remainder may have decorated the porch. The porch, we may be sure, was the "Frontispiece." [Illustration: Illustration 3.--Iron tie bar used to secure dressed red-sandstone slabs to each other. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1833.)] [Illustration: Figure 43.--FOUNDATION OF PORCH at north end of Structure B, surrounded by flagstone pavement.] The item for "Underpinning & altering the cellar" probably refers to the knocked-out original cross wall and the added parallel cross wall, although the reasons for the change will always remain a mystery. As has been noted, the average brick sizes in the main foundation, on the one hand, and those of bricks in the new cellar cross wall and in the veranda were mostly different. Probably the distinctions represent the differences between Minitree's and Barry's bricks. [Illustration: Figure 44.--PLAN OF MANSION HOUSE drawn on a Mutual Assurancy Society of Virginia policy of 1806 after the house was acquired by John Cooke. (_Courtesy of Virginia State Library._)] The detailed sequence of joiners', plasterers', and painters' work during the 1748-1750 period has already been given attention in the historical section, enough to indicate that the mansion was one of luxurious appointments. The insurance policy describes it as a "Brick Dwelling House one Story high covered with wood." In modern parlance this would be called a story-and-a-half house with a wood-shingled roof. The veranda, probably in the form of an arcade, was trimmed with dressed red sandstone and perhaps paved with the squares and oblongs of this material found scattered around the site. The small projecting porch mentioned in the insurance policy provided a central pavilion. The appearance of the house from here on must be left wholly to speculation with only hints to guide us. We know, for instance, that a considerable amount--three books--of gold leaf was employed. Was there, perhaps, a small gilded cupola to break the long expanse of roof line? Were the 162 ballusters, purchased from George Elliott towards the time of completion, made for staircases indoors or for a balustrade along the roof? Or did they border the roof of the veranda? To these questions there can be no answer. Another question is whether the house, described as one story high, was built over a high basement or near ground level. Here we have evidence pointing to the latter, since the foundation had two separate cellars, equalling "a Cellar under about half the House." A high or English basement, by contrast, would have been continuous. Furthermore, the veranda was at, or near, the ground level. The ground floor thus might have been as much as 3 feet higher, reached by steps from the veranda--but not a whole story higher. The depth of the cellars, ranging from about 4 to 5 feet below ground level, implies that the first floor was not more than 3 feet above ground level. Suggestions as to details of trim and finish are made here and there, again in fragmentary hints. Several broken pieces of a dark-gray, fossil-embedded marble survive from the "chimney-pieces" and hearths of fireplaces (fig. 42). They may be the "hewn stone from Mr. Nicholson" paid for in 1749. A piece of plaster cyma-recta cornice molding shows that some rooms, at least, had plaster rather than wooden ceiling trim (USNM 59.1829, ill. 4). Thomas Oliver's statement that "the Manor house wants lead lights in some of the windows" suggests an unparalleled anachronism, since the term "lead light" is an ancient one referring to casement sashes of leaded glass. But it is inconceivable, in the context of colonial architectural history, that this house should have had leaded-casement windows, and it is very probable, therefore, that the semiliterate Oliver was indulging in a rural archaism to which he had transferred the meaning of "sash lights." The latter term was used commonly to denote double-hung, wooden-sash windows, such as Georgian houses still feature. In support of this inference is the complete lack of archeological evidence of leaded-glass windows. [Illustration: Illustration 4.--Cross section of plaster cornice molding from Structure B. Same size. (USNM 59.1829.)] The cellarless areas of the foundation may have provided the footings for chimneys. These probably stood several feet from the ends, perhaps serving clusters of four corner fireplaces each, for each floor. One may surmise that there was a hip roof, with a chimney rising through each hip. A porch at the north end had a rectangular brick base 4 by 6 feet, surrounded by a flagstone area 16 feet wide and 8 feet 5 inches in extent from the house. This evidence, however, differs from the figures given in the insurance plan which shows a "Porch 8 by 6 feet." The mansion embodied some characteristics which are traditional in Virginia house design and others which are without parallel. The elongated plan indicated by the foundation was more frequently encountered in Virginia dwellings of the late 17th and early 18th centuries than in the "high Georgian" mansions of the 1740's and 1750's. Turkey Island, for example, built in Henrico County in the 17th century, was 103 feet long, 5 feet less than Marlborough.[149] The additions to Governor Berkeley's Green Spring Plantation, built during the late 17th century, consisted of an informal series of rooms, one room in depth for the most part. Waterman is of the opinion that Green Spring was "in a sense an overgrown cottage without the real attributes of a mansion."[150] The excavations conducted in 1954 by Caywood have altered the basis for this opinion somewhat, but, with its 150-foot length, Green Spring remains an early example of the elongated plan.[151] Aside from being elongated, Marlborough derives from the ubiquitous informal brick cottage of Virginia. So indigenous is this vernacular form that it is often found in houses of considerable pretension, even in the 18th century. Such are the Abingdon glebe house in Gloucester County, Gunston Hall in Fairfax, and the Chiswell Plantation, known as "Scotchtown," in Hanover. Robert Beverley noted the Virginians' fondness for this style, commenting that they built many rooms on a floor because frequent high winds would "incommode a towering Fabrick"--an explanation as delightful as it is absurd.[152] That these one-story houses could be completely formal is demonstrated in the unique early 18th-century addition to Fairfield (Carter's Creek Plantation) in Gloucester County, which burned in 1897. This dwelling had a full hip roof, with dormers to light the attic rooms, and a high basement. Its classical cornice was bracketed with heavy modillions, while a massive chimney protruded from the slope of the hip.[153] Gunston Hall, on the other hand, reverted to the gable-end form. Although essentially a Virginia cottage, it is richly adorned with Georgian architectural detail. Completed in 1758, only eight years after Marlborough, and owned by Mercer's nephew George Mason, this building may be more closely related to Marlborough than any other existing house.[154] [Illustration: Figure 45.--THE VILLA of "the magnificent Lord Leonardo Emo" at "_Fanzolo_, in the _Trevigian_;" illustrated in _The Architecture of A. Palladio_ (Giacomo Leoni, ed., 3rd edition, corrected, London, 1742). Palladio's was one of the works owned by Mercer and probably used by Bromley. The arcaded loggias of the one-story wings of this building may have contributed to the inspiration of Marlborough. (_Courtesy of the Library of Congress._)] Of all the one-story Virginia houses that have come to our attention, only Marlborough has a full-length veranda. To be sure, there are multiple-story houses with full-length verandas, the most notable being Mount Vernon. Elmwood, built just before the Revolution in Essex County, is another, having a foundation plan similar to Marlborough's.[155] The Mount Vernon veranda is part of the remodeling of 1784, so that neither house reached its finished state until a quarter of a century after Marlborough's completion. Marlborough may thus at the outset have been unique among Virginia dwellings in having such a veranda. However, full-length verandas on buildings other than dwellings were not unknown in Virginia prior to the construction of Marlborough, for they occurred in an almost standard design in the form of arcaded loggias in county courthouses. Typical were King William and Hanover County courthouses, both built about 1734 (figs. 5 and 61). The arcaded loggia is Italian in origin and is traceable here to Palladio, whose influence was diffused to England and the colonies in a variety of ways. We know that _The Architecture of A. Palladio_ was one of four architectural works acquired by Mercer in 1748 and apparently lent to his "architect," joiner William Bromley. The direct influence of this work on the overall plan of Marlborough probably was negligible. However, Palladio illustrates the villa of "the magnificent Lord Leonardo Emo" at "_Fanzolo_, in the _Trevigian_" (fig. 45), which may have caught Mercer's eye. This building had a central, raised pavilion with two one-story wings, each approximately 100 feet long. Each wing had a full-length, arcaded veranda. The wings were intended for stables, granaries, and so forth. Palladio commented: "People may go under shelter every where about this House, which is one of the most considerable conveniences that ought to be desir'd in a Country-house."[156] Mercer may have been impressed by this argument and by the arcade in the design. He was already familiar with arcades at the capitol at Williamsburg and at the College of William and Mary, as well as at outlying courthouses where he practiced, the courthouse at Stafford probably included. In any case, he did not have the veranda built until 1748 or 1749, after the main structure had been completed. It is significant, in this regard, that it was not until March 1748 that he settled accounts with Sydenham & Hodgson for the four architectural books (including Palladio). A formal garden apparently was laid out in the nearly square, walled enclosure behind the mansion. It is perhaps wholly a coincidence that Palladio, writing about the villa at Fanzolo, commented, "On the back of this Building there is a square Garden." [Illustration: Figure 46.--EXCAVATION PLAN of Structure E, looking southwest.] FOOTNOTES: [149] HENRY CHANDLEE FORMAN, _The Architecture of the Old South_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), pp. 74-75. [150] Op. cit. (footnote 94), p. 21. [151] LOUIS CAYWOOD, _Excavations at Green Spring Plantation_ (Yorktown, 1955), pp. 11, 12, maps nos. 3 and 4. [152] ROBERT BEVERLEY, op. cit. (footnote 5), p. 289. [153] WATERMAN, op. cit. (footnote 94), pp. 23-26; FISKE KIMBALL, _Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927), p. 42. [154] ROSAMOND RANDALL BEIRNE and JOHN HENRY SCARFF, _William Buckland, 1734-1774; Architect of Virginia and Maryland_ (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1958). [155] WATERMAN, op. cit. (footnote 94), p. 298. [156] ANTONIO PALLADIO, _The Architecture of A. Palladio ... Revis'd, Design'd, and Publish'd By Giacomo Leoni ... The Third Edition, Corrected ..._ (London, 1742), p. 61, pl. 40. XI _Kitchen Foundation_ (_Structure E_) DESCRIPTION OF EXCAVATIONS Structure E was a brick foundation, 17 feet by 32 feet, situated at the northwest corner of the enclosure-wall system. Its south wall was continuous with Wall D, which joined it, and was at right angles to Wall E. The latter abutted it in line with an interior foundation wall which bisected the structure into two room areas, designated X and Y. Thus it once stood like a bastion extending outside the enclosure walls, but remaining integral with them and affording a controlled entrance to the enclosure (fig. 46). The east end of Structure E extended under a modern boundary fence to the present edge of the highway. Ditching of the highway had cut into the foundation and exposed the debris and slabs of stone in place, which indeed had provided the first clues to the existence of the structure. Clearance of the easterly area, Room X, revealed a pavement of roughly rectangular slabs of mixed Aquia-type lime-sandstone and red sandstone. These slabs were flaked, eroded, and discolored, as though they had been exposed to great heat. The pavement was not complete, some stones having apparently been removed. The scattered locations of the stones remaining _in situ_ implied that the entire room was originally paved. Between the northwest corner of Room X and a brick abutment 5 feet to the south was a rectangular area where the clay underlying the room had been baked to a hard, red, bricklike mass (fig. 49). Wood ash was admixed with the clay. This was clearly the site of a large fireplace, where constant heat from a now-removed hearth had penetrated the clay. Extending north 3.8 feet beyond the bounds of the room at this point was a U-shaped brick foundation 4.75 feet wide. Near the southeast corner of the room, just outside of the foundation, which it abutted, was a well-worn red-sandstone doorstep, which located the site of the door communicating between Structure E and the interior of the enclosure--and, of course, between Structure E and Structure B, the distance between which was 100 feet. Room Y, extending west beyond the corner of the enclosure walls was perhaps an addition to the original structure. The disturbed condition of the bricks where this area joined Room X, however, obscured any evidence in this respect. In the northeast corner, against the opposite side of the fireplace wall in Room X, was another area of red-burned clay. Lying across this was a long, narrow slab of wrought iron, 34.5 by 6 inches (fig. 50), which may have served in some fashion as part of a stove or fire frame. In any case, a small fireplace seems to have been located here. Approximately midway in the west wall of Room Y, against the exterior, lay a broken slab of red sandstone, which obviously also served as a doorstone. That it had been designed originally for a more sophisticated purpose is evident in the architectural treatment of the stone, which is smoothly dressed with a torus molding along each edge and a diagonal cut across one end (fig. 41). No evidence of floor remained in this room, except for a smooth surface of yellow clay which became sticky when exposed to rain. [Illustration: Figure 47.--FOUNDATION of Structure E (kitchen).] The north half of Room Y was filled with broken bricks, mortar, plaster, nails, and--significantly--small bits of charred wood and burned hornets' nests. The concentration of debris here could be explained by the collapse of the chimney as well as the interior wall into the room. The crumbly condition of the southwest portion of the exterior-wall foundation also may indicate a wall collapse. Few artifacts were recovered in this area. North of Room X lay a large amount of rubble and artifacts, suggesting that the north wall had fallen away from the building, perhaps carrying with it shelves of dishes and utensils. Both rooms contained ample evidence in the form of ash, charcoal, burned hornets' nests, and scorched flagstones to demonstrate that a fire of great heat had destroyed the building. ARCHITECTURAL DATA AND INTERPRETATION John Mercer's account with Thomas Barry (Ledger G) itemizes for 1749, "building a Kitchen/ raising a Chimney/ building an oven." It is clear from the features of Structure E, its relation to Structure B, and the custom prevalent in colonial Virginia of building separate dependencies for the preparation of food, that Structure E was the kitchen referred to in Barry's account. Like this building, kitchens elsewhere were almost invariably two rooms in plan--a cooking room and a pantry or storage room. One of the earliest--at Green Spring--had a large fireplace for the kitchen proper, and in the second room a smaller fireplace, both served by a central chimney. An oven stood inside the building between the larger fireplace and the wall.[157] At Stratford (ca. 1725) the kitchen is similarly planned, as it is at Mannsfield (Spotsylvania County).[158] Mount Vernon has an end chimney in its kitchen, and only one fireplace. The floor of the kitchen proper is paved with square bricks, while the second room has a clay floor. The Stratford kitchen is paved with ordinary bricks. Such examples can be multiplied several times. [Illustration: Figure 48.--PAVED FLOOR OF ROOM X, Structure E, showing HL door hinge in foreground. (See fig. 88a.)] The physical relationship of the kitchen to the main house in Virginia plantations was dictated in part by convenience and in part by the Palladian plans that governed the architecture of colonial mansions. Structure E's relationship to Structure B is representative of that existing between most kitchens and their main buildings. Mount Vernon, Stratford, Blandfield, Nomini Hall, Rosewell, and many other plantations have, or had, kitchens located at points diagonal to the house and on axes at right angles to them. Usually each was balanced by a dependency placed in a similar relationship to the opposite corner of the house. Sometimes covered walkways connected the pairs of dependencies, curved as at Mount Vernon, Mount Airy, and Mannsfield, or straight as at Blandfield in Essex County (1771). Marlborough, as we shall see, was not typical in its layout, but the relationship between kitchen and house was the customary one. The thickness of the foundations in Structure E was the width of four bricks--approximately 17 inches. As usual in the case of the lower courses of a foundation, the bricks were laid in a somewhat random fashion. The intact portions of the south and west walls revealed corners of bricks laid end to end so as to expose headers on both sides. The east wall showed pairs of bricks placed at right angles to each other, so that headers and stretchers appeared alternately. On the north wall of Room X bricks were laid as headers on the outside and as stretchers, one behind the other, on the inside. These variations probably are due to different bricklayers having worked on the building simultaneously. Since oddly assorted courses would have been below ground level, care for their appearance was minimal. Finished exterior brickwork was required only above the lowest point visible to the eye. [Illustration: Figure 49.--NORTH WALL of Structure E, looking east. Sign stands on partition wall between Rooms X and Y and in front of rectangular section of burnt red clay, upon which fireplace hearth stood. Projecting foundation at left may have supported an oven. Iron slab (see fig. 50) lies _in situ_ with trowel on top.] Brick sizes ran from 9 to 9-1/2 inches long, 4 to 4-1/2 inches wide, and 2-1/4 to 2-3/4 inches thick. These measurements are similar to those of bricks in the veranda foundation and the added cellar cross wall of Structure B. It is apparent from Ledger G that the elements in Structure B, as well as the kitchen, were all built by Thomas Barry. Barry probably used bricks that he himself made, according to the custom of Virginia bricklayers, so that the archeological and documentary evidences of the extent of his work in the two buildings reinforce each other. The protruding rectangle of bricks at the north end of Structure E resembles the foundation for steps in Structure B. However, its position directly adjacent to what must be assumed to have been the fireplace precludes the possibility of its having been the location for a step. Moreover, the pavement and doorstones at the west and south demonstrate that the floor of the kitchen was at ground level, so that a raised step at the north side would have been not only unnecessary, but impossible. [Illustration: Figure 50.--WROUGHT-IRON SLAB, found in Room Y, Structure E, behind fireplace. Purpose unknown. Size, 6 by 35 inches.] We know from the ledger that Barry built an oven and raised a chimney. That the latter was a central chimney may be assumed on the basis of the evidence of the two fireplaces placed back to back. There is, however, no archeological evidence that there was an oven within the structure, and every negative indication that there was not. The rectangular protrusion, exactly in line with the end of the fireplace thus was apparently the foundation for a brick oven, the domed top of which extended outside the building, with its opening made into the north end of the fireplace. Protruding ovens are known in New York and New England, but none in Virginia has come to the writer's attention. On the other hand, protruding foundations like the one here are also unknown in Virginia kitchens, except where slanting ground, as at Mount Vernon, has made steps necessary. It may be concluded that Structure E was the plantation kitchen, that it was built in 1749, that it had two rooms (a cookroom with fireplace paving and a large fireplace, and a second room with a smaller fireplace), that an oven built against the exterior of the building opened into the north end of the fireplace, and that the first, and probably the only, floor was at ground level. Archeological evidence points to final destruction of the building by fire. (Mercer indicated that fire had threatened it previously in the entry in his journal for April 22, 1765, which noted "kitchen roof catch'd fire.") In the form of datable artifacts, it also shows that the structure was destroyed in the early 19th century, since the latest ceramic artifacts date from about 1800. [Illustration: Figure 51.--EXCAVATION PLAN of structures north of Wall D.] FOOTNOTES: [157] CAYWOOD, loc. cit. (footnote 151). [158] WATERMAN, loc. cit. (footnote 94). XII _Supposed Smokehouse Foundation_ (_Structure F_) DESCRIPTION OF EXCAVATIONS A nearly square foundation, measuring 18.3 feet by 18.6 feet, with a narrow extended brick structure protruding from it, was situated some 45 feet north of Wall D, about midway in the wall's length. It was oriented on a north-northwest--south-southeast axis, quite without reference to the wall system. The foundation walls and the narrow extension were exposed by excavation, but the interior area within the walls was not excavated, except for 2-foot-wide trenches along the edges of the walls. The foundation itself, about 2 feet thick, consisted of brick rubble--tumbled and broken bricks, not laid in mortar and for the most part matching bricks found elsewhere in Marlborough structures. Scattered among the typical Virginia bricks and brickbats were several distinctively smaller and harder dark-red bricks measuring 7-1/4 inches by 3-1/2 inches (fig. 53). The most interesting feature of the structure was its narrow extension. This had survived in the form of two parallel walls laid in three brick courses without mortar, the whole projecting from the southeasterly wall. The interior measurement between the walls was 1.75 feet and the exterior overall width was 4 feet. Its southern extremity had an opening narrowed to 1 foot in width by bricks placed at right angles to the walls. Approximately 5 feet to the north the passage formed by the walls was narrowed to 1 foot by three tiers of one brick, each tier laid parallel to the passage on each side. At 8.7 feet from its southern terminus the extension intersected the main foundation. Just north of this intersection, bricks laid within the passage were stepped up to form a platform two courses high and one course lower than the top of the foundation. A fluelike opening was formed by two rows of brick laid on top of the platform, narrowing the passage to a width of 5 inches. North of the southeast foundation wall there remained a strip of four bricks in two courses at the level of the opening, forming a thin continuation of the platform for 3.25 feet. SIGNIFICANT ARTIFACTS IN STRUCTURE F The narrow extension contained several bushels of unburned oystershells and some coals. There was limited evidence of burning, although the shells were not affected by fire. A small variety of artifacts was found, few of which dated later than the mid-18th century. The flue or fire chamber yielded the following artifacts: 59.1717 Wine-bottle basal fragments, 5-5-1/2 inches, mid-18th-century form 59.1721 Stem of a taper-stem, teardrop wineglass, misshapen from having been melted, ca. 1730-1740 59.1723 Green window glass, one sherd with rolled edge of crown sheet 59.1724 Blue-and-white Chinese porcelain 59.1725 "Yellowware" sherd, probably made before 1750 59.1727 Westerwald gray-and-blue salt-glazed stoneware 59.1728 Buckley black-glazed ware 59.1730 Miscellaneous late 17th- and early 18th-century delftware fragments 59.1731 Staffordshire salt-glazed white stoneware, some with molded rims, ca. 1760 59.1734 Half of sheep shears (ill. 85) 59.1735 Convex copper escutcheon plate (fig. 83g) 59.1736 Brass-hinged handle or pull for strap (fig. 83j, ill. 89) [Illustration: Figure 52.--STRUCTURE F (supposed smokehouse foundation). Firing chamber in foreground.] Elsewhere, in the trenches next to the foundation walls, artifacts typical of those occurring in other parts of the site were found. Worth mentioning are pieces of yellow-streaked, red earthen "agate" ware, sometimes attributed to Astbury or Whieldon, and sherds of cord-impressed Indian pottery. ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS Since the interior of this structure was not excavated, many uncertainties remain as to its identity. The peculiar fluelike structure passing through its foundation, the rubble of bricks used to form the foundation, the huge quantities of oystershells in the flue, with partly burnt coals underneath, give rise to various speculations. So does the orientation of the structure, which is off both the true and polar axes and is also unrelated to the mansion or the wall system. The most likely explanation seems to be that Structure F was the foundation of a smokehouse. A recently excavated foundation in what was known as Brunswick Town, North Carolina, is almost identical (except for the use of ballast stone in the fire chamber and the building foundation). This also is believed to be a smokehouse foundation, since similar structures are still remembered from the days of their use.[159] [Illustration: Figure 53.--VIRGINIA BRICK from Structure B (left) 9 by 4 by 2-3/4 inches. Right, small brick from Structure F, probably imported, 7-1/4 by 3-1/2 by 1-3/4 inches. Perhaps one of the 630 bricks brought on the _Marigold_ by Captain Roger Lyndon and purchased by John Mercer.] The position of the Marlborough structure, outside of the enclosure wall but not far from the kitchen, the relative crudeness of its construction, and its off-axis orientation, support the likelihood of its being a utilitarian structure. The firing chamber and the flue show unquestionably that it was a building requiring heat or smoke. Marlborough had two greenhouses, according to Thomas Oliver's inventory, and these would have required heating equipment. But the small size of this structure and the absence of any indication of tile flooring or other elaboration suggested by contemporary descriptions of greenhouses seem to rule out this possibility. [Illustration: Figure 54.--STRUCTURE D, an unidentified structure with debris-filled refuse pit at left.] FOOTNOTES: [159] STANLEY SOUTH, "An Unusual Smokehouse is Discovered at Brunswick Town," _Newsletter_, Brunswick County Historical Society (Charlotte, N.C., August 1962), vol. 2, no. 3. XIII _Pits and Other Structures_ STRUCTURE D An exploratory trench was dug northward several yards from a point on Wall D, on axis with Structure B. An irregularly shaped remnant of unmortared-brick structure, varying between two and three bricks wide and one course high was discovered at the undisturbed level. This measured 8.5 feet by 6 feet. Adjacent to it, extending 5.8 feet and having a width varying from 6.5 to 7 feet, was a pit 2 feet 8 inches deep, dug 2 feet below the undisturbed clay level, and filled with a heavy deposit of artifacts, oystershells, and animal bones. The artifact remains were the richest in the entire site. Some of the most significant of these are the following: 59.1656 Key (fig. 88) 59.1942 Iron bolt (ill. 69) 59.1663} 59.2029} Two-tined forks (ill. 55-57) 59.1939} 59.1664 Jeweler's hammer (ill. 78) 59.1665 Fragments of a penknife (fig. 85c) 59.1668 Knife blade and Sheffield handle (fig. 86b) 59.1669} 59.1670} Pewter trifid-handle spoons (fig. 86f and g, ill. 58) 59.1672 Pewter "wavy-end" spoon (fig. 86e, ill. 59) 59.1675 Fragments of reeded-edge pewter plate (fig. 86a) 59.1676 Pewter teapot lid (fig. 86c, ill. 60) 59.1678 Brass rings (fig. 83i) 59.1680 Steel scissors (ill. 61) 59.1681 Large fishhook (ill. 88) 59.1682 Chalk bullet mold (fig. 84b, ill. 51) 59.1685 Slate pencil (fig. 85d, ill. 54) 59.1687 Octagonal spirits bottle (fig. 80) 59.1688 Wine bottle: seal "I^[C.]M 1737" (fig. 78, ill. 37) 59.1679 Handle sherd of North Devon gravel-tempered earthenware (ill. 15) 59.1698 Buckley high-fired, black-glazed earthenware (fig. 65) 59.1699 Buckley high-fired, amber-glazed earthenware pan sherds (fig. 65, ills. 17 and 18) 59.1700 Brown-decorated yellowware cup or posset-pot sherds (fig. 64c, ill. 16) 59.1701 Nottingham-type brown-glazed fine stoneware sherds (fig. 67a) 59.1762 Sherd of Westerwald blue-and-gray stoneware, with part of "GR" medallion showing (fig. 66d) 59.1704 Large sherds of brown-glazed Tidewater-type earthenware pan (fig. 63a, ill. 11) 59.1706 Blue-and-white delft plate, Lambeth, ca. 1720 (fig. 69) 59.1707 Blue-and-white delft plate, [?]Bristol, ca. 1750 (fig. 70) 59.1714 Kaolin tobacco-pipe bowls, and one wholly reconstructed pipe (fig. 84f, ill. 53) 59.1715 Steel springtrap for small animals (ill. 86) (Also numerous sherds of Staffordshire white salt-glazed ware and creamware. A single disparate sherd of pink, transfer-printed Staffordshire ware, dating from about 1835, is the only intrusive artifact in the deposit.) The bones were virtually all pork refuse, except for a few rabbit bones. The oystershells, found in every refuse deposit, reflect the universal taste for the then-abundant oyster. [Illustration: Figure 55.--REFUSE FOUND AT EXTERIOR CORNER of Wall A-II and Wall D.] The significance of the structure is not clear. It was probably the site of a privy, the remaining bricks having been part of a brick floor in front of the pit. STRUCTURE G A few feet southeast of Structure D, another much smaller pit was found, surrounded on two sides by a partial-U-shaped single row and single course of bricks. This brickwork measured 5 feet in length, with a 4-foot appendage at one end and a 7-foot appendage at the other. The pit was small and shallow. Typical ceramic artifacts were found, as well as fragments of black basaltes ware (ill. 32) and some early 19th-century whiteware. The function of this pit is unknown. PIT AT JUNCTION OF WALLS A-II AND D Just north of the northeast corner of the wall system a small trash pit was uncovered. It contained a scattering of wine- and gin-bottle sherds, a few miscellaneous, small, ceramic-tableware fragments, and about one-third of a blue-and-white Chinese porcelain plate (figs. 55 and 77). UNIDENTIFIED FOUNDATION NEAR POTOMAC CREEK (STRUCTURE H) About 60 feet from the shore of Potomac Creek, at the southeast corner of the old road that runs from the highway to the creek, bordered by Wall A, were indications of a brick foundation. This structure was explored to the extent of its width (about 15 feet) for a distance northward of 17 feet, then the east wall was traced 22 feet farther north until it disappeared into the bankside and a thicket. The excavated area disclosed quantities of brickbats, a layer of soil, a number of burnt bricks, a layer of black charcoal ash, and a 6-inch deposit of clay. The brick walls were 1.5 feet thick. The structure had been built into the hillside, so that the north end was presumably a deep basement. [Illustration: Figure 56.--EXCAVATION PLAN of Structure H.] [Illustration: Figure 57.--STRUCTURE H, from Potomac Creek shore, looking northeast.] Artifacts were few. A complete scythe (fig. 90) was found embedded in the clay above the brickwork on the east side of the structure, and next to it a large body sherd of black-glazed Buckley ware. A few small ceramic sherds occurred--pieces of redware with trailed slip (fig. 64), and small bits of delft, salt glaze, and Chinese porcelain. The location and implied shape of the building suggest that it had a utilitarian purpose. Near the waterfront, it would conveniently have served as a warehouse, or possibly as either the brewhouse or malthouse, each described by Mercer as having been 100 feet long, of brick and stone. Whether one was of brick and the other of stone, or both were brick and stone in combination, is not clear. There was no evidence of stonework in Structure H. On the other hand, the 100-foot-long rectangular stone enclosure, of which Wall A formed a part, shows no evidence of brickwork. The purposes of both these structures must, for now, remain unexplained, but association with the brewery seems plausible. XIV _Stafford Courthouse South of Potomac Creek_ INTRODUCTION The chief archeological problem of Marlborough at the time of excavation was whether or not Structure B had served as the foundation for both the courthouse and for John Mercer's mansion. Although the possibility still remains that the sites of the two buildings overlapped, preceding chapters have demonstrated that the foundation was constructed by Mercer for his house, and that it did not stand beneath the courthouse. However, in 1957 it was thought that exploration of the late-18th-century courthouse site, located upstream on the south side of Potomac Creek, might reveal a structure of similar dimensions which would help to confirm the possibility that Structure B had originated with the Marlborough courthouse. Furthermore, the Potomac Creek site was of interest by itself and was closely related to John Mercer's legal and judicial career. The location of the site is depicted in surveys included with suit papers of 1743 and 1805.[160] These papers were brought to our attention by George H. S. King of Fredericksburg, and were mentioned in Happel's carefully documented history of the Stafford and King George courthouses.[161] Previously, we had been led to the site by a former sheriff of Stafford County, who recalled listening as a boy to descriptions of the old courthouse building by an ancient whose memory went back to the early years of the 19th century. The old man's recollections, in turn, were reinforced by similar recountings of elders in his own youth. Unscientific though the value of such information may be, it emerges from folk memories that often remain sharp and clear in rural areas, spanning in the minds of two or three individuals the periods of several conventional generations. As clues, at least, they are never to be ignored. In this case we were taken to a rubble-strewn site on an eminence that overlooks Potomac Creek. At the foot of a declivity below, on the old Belle Plains road, we were shown another obvious evidence of structure, which we were told had been the jail. Just to the east of this where a road leads away to the site of Cave's tobacco warehouse (now the "Stone Landing"), we were informed that the stocks had once stood. Of the latter two sites we have no confirming evidence, although both claims are plausible enough. No archeological effort was made to investigate them, since funds were limited. The surveys of 1743 and 1805 are sufficient to confirm with accuracy the courthouse site. Accordingly, an archeological exploration was made between August 19 and August 23, 1957, revealing unmistakably the footings of a courthouse. As will be shown, these footings in no way bore a resemblance to the Structure B foundation. FOOTNOTES: [160] Fredericksburg Suit Papers, 1745-1805 (MS., Fredericksburg, Virginia, courthouse). [161] HAPPEL, op. cit. (footnote 22), pp. 183-194. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The history of the Potomac Creek courthouse site has been presented thoroughly by Happel, but a brief review is in order here. Happel shows that a courthouse was ordered built in 1665, a year after the establishment of Stafford as a county. He quotes a court reference in 1667 to the road along the south shore of Potomac Creek, running from the "said Ferry," near the head of the Creek, "to the Court house to the horse Bridge," which he identifies as having spanned Passapatanzy Gut. In his opinion, this courthouse was near the mouth of the Creek, but he fails to show that it equally well may have been near the site of the later 18th-century structures. [Illustration: Figure 58.--DRAWING MADE IN 1743, showing location of Stafford courthouse south of Potomac Creek (orientation to south). (Fredericksburg Suit Papers.)] [Illustration: Figure 59.--ENLARGED DETAIL from lower right portion of figure 58, showing location of Stafford courthouse south of Potomac Creek.] We have seen that in 1690 court was first held in Thomas Elzey's house, seemingly located near the 18th-century courthouse site, and that orders were given that it continue to meet there until the new courthouse was ready. The history of the new courthouse at Marlborough has already been recounted, its final demise occurring about 1718. The court's official removal from Marlborough was agreed upon July 20, 1720, and, as already noted, "the head of Ocqua Creek" was designated for the new site, although obviously by error, since Potomac Creek plainly was intended. Happel tells us that the Potomac Creek building burned in 1730 or early 1731 and that the justices were ordered on April 27, 1731, to rebuild at the same place. It is this next building that was depicted on the 1743 survey plat (see fig. 58). In 1744 a bill was presented in the Assembly to relieve persons who had suffered or "may suffer" from the loss of Stafford County records "lately consumed by Fire";[162] apparently the courthouse had again burned. There seems to have been a delay of about five years in rebuilding it this time. Pressures to relocate it were exerted in the meanwhile and hearings were held by the Governor's Council on a petition to "remove the Court House lower down."[163] The Council listened, then "Ordered, that the new Court House be built where the old one stood."[164] [Illustration: Figure 60.--EXCAVATION PLAN of Stafford courthouse foundation.] This settled, Nathaniel Harrison and Hugh Adie contracted in 1749 with the justices of Stafford court to build a "Brick Courthouse, for the Consideration of 44500 lb. of Tobacco, to be furnished by the last of October, 1750."[165] Harrison was a distinguished member of the colony who, as a widower, had moved to Stafford County the previous year and had married Lucy, the daughter of Robert ("King") Carter of "Corotoman" and widow of Henry Fitzhugh of "Eagle's Nest."[166] Harrison, who later built "Brandon" for himself in King George County, probably provided the capital and the materials, and perhaps the design, of the courthouse. Adie, of whom nothing is known, was doubtless the carpenter or bricklayer who actually did the work. [Illustration: Figure 61.--HANOVER COURTHOUSE, whose plan dimensions correspond closely to the Stafford foundation.] The construction was delayed by "many Disappointments, and the Badness of the Weather." Finally, in the spring of 1751, it was about to be brought to completion, "when it was feloniously burnt to the Ground."[167] In April 1752 a special act was passed in order to permit a levy to be made which would allow the Stafford court to reimburse Harrison and Adie for the amount of work which they had accomplished on the courthouse and the value of the materials they had provided.[168] No record exists of the contract for the next--and last--courthouse building on the Potomac Creek site. Quite possibly Harrison and Adie again did the work. This building was used until removal of the court to a new building completed between 1780 and 1783 on a site near the present Stafford courthouse. It remained standing throughout most of the 19th century, according to local memory. In surveys of 1804 and 1805 the structure was identified as the "old court house." FOOTNOTES: [162] _JHB_, 1742-1749 (Richmond, 1909), p. 127. [163] Ibid. [164] _Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia_ [November 1, 1739-May 7, 1754], (Richmond, 1945), p. 282. [165] _JHB, 1752-1755; 1756-1758_ (Richmond, 1939), p. 55. [166] "Harrison of James River," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1924), vol. 32, p. 200. [167] See footnote 165. [168] HENING, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 6, pp. 280-281. DESCRIPTION OF EXCAVATIONS Excavations were conducted in the simplest manner possible, in order to arrive at the objective of determining the dimensions of the courthouse without exceeding available funds. An exploratory trench soon exposed a line of rubble and disturbed soil. This line was followed until the entire outline of the building was revealed. At several points bricks in mortar still remained _in situ_, especially at the south end. Two brick piers extended 4 feet 5 inches into the structure, midway along the south wall at a distance of 5 feet 9 inches apart. [Illustration: Illustration 5.--Above, left, reconstructed wine bottle from Potomac Creek courthouse site. One-fourth.] [Illustration: Illustration 6.--Top, right, fragment of molded white salt-glazed-ware platter from Potomac Creek courthouse site. One-half.] [Illustration: Illustration 7.--Lower, right, iron bolt from Potomac Creek courthouse site. One-half.] The emerging evidence indicated that the structure was rectangular, approximately 52 feet long and 26 feet wide, with a T-shaped projection 25 feet wide extending out a distance of 14 feet 5 inches from the center of the east wall of the building. SIGNIFICANT ARTIFACTS ASSOCIATED WITH POTOMAC CREEK COURTHOUSE Few artifacts occurred in the small area excavated at the courthouse site. Those which did, significantly, related either to the structure itself or to the eating and drinking that probably occurred either alfresco or within the courthouse building. We know that the Ohio Company Committee met there for many years, beginning in 1750, and doubtless lunches and refreshments were served to the members during the day, before they returned to the tavern or to neighboring plantations to dine and spend the night. Portions of wine bottles (of the same dimensions as the Mercer "1737" bottle from Marlborough) were found (ill. 5), along with small fragments of late 18th-century types. A section of the rim of a large, octagonal, white, salt-glazed-ware platter with a wreath and lattice design was recovered from the north-wall footings (ill. 86), and fragments of a salt-glazed-ware dinner plate occurred in the south trench. An oystershell found nearby suggests how the platter may have been used. Two pieces of a white salt-glazed-ware posset pot round out a picture of elegant eating and drinking in the 1760's, as do the fragments of polished, agate octagonal-handled knives and forks. The latter were badly damaged by fire. [Illustration: Illustration 8.--Above, left, stone scraping tool. One-half.] [Illustration: Illustration 9.--Above, right, Indian celt. Found near gate in Wall E. One-half.] Pieces of blue-and-white delft punch bowls were found, as well as a sherd of polychrome delft which dated apparently from 1740 to 1760. Two sherds of creamware plates with wavy edges in the "Catherine" shape reflect the last years of official use of the courthouse. A tantalizing find is a small fragment of cobalt-blue glass, blown in a mold to make panels or oval indentations. This piece may have come from a large bowl or sweetmeat dish. Three sherds of black-glazed red earthenware are the only evidence of utilitarian equipment. Pipe-stems belong to the mid- and late-18th-century category. A George II copper penny is dated 1746. A large mass of pewter, melted beyond recognition, was found near the south end of the structure. Bits of charcoal are held within it. The pewter originally may have been in the form of mugs or tankards. [Illustration: Figure 62.--PLAN OF KING WILLIAM COURTHOUSE, whose plan dimensions correspond closely to the Stafford foundation. (_Courtesy of Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress._)] Evidence of the structure is found in a large number of hand-forged nails, in quantities of window glass melted and distorted, and in pieces of plaster. The last is the typical hard, coarse oystershell plaster of the area, having a smooth surface coat, except for fine lines left by the trowel. There is no evidence of paint. A small slide bolt of wrought iron probably fitted on a cupboard door, or possibly the gate in the bar (ill. 87). Another iron fixture is not identified. Two kinds of window glass occurred. One, the earliest type, is a thin, yellowish glass which is coated with irridescent scale caused by the breakdown of the glass surface. None of this glass shows signs of fire or, at least, of melting. The remainder is a grayish-blue aquamarine, much of it melted and distorted, and some of it accumulated in thick masses where tremendous heat caused the panes literally to fold up. A fragment of yellowish-green glass pane, related to the early type and again coated with scale, varies in thickness and was apparently from a bullseye. No evidence exists of diamond-shaped panes, but, as should be expected, there is indication of square-cornered panes in both types of glass. ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS The plan of the footings (fig. 60) shows a T-shaped foundation. This was an immediate clue to the nature of the structure, for the T-shaped courthouse was virtually a standard 18th-century form in Virginia. This foundation, in fact, is almost a replica of the plans of both King William and Hanover County courthouses, each built about 1734[169] (figs. 5, 61, and 62). The King William courthouse measures 50 feet 4-1/4 inches long and 26 feet 4 inches wide in the main structure. Its T section extends 14 feet 9 inches to the original end (to which an extension has been added) and has a width of 23 feet 10-1/4 inches. The Stafford foundation is 52 feet long and 26 feet wide in the main structure. The T-section is 14 feet 5 inches long and 25 feet wide. A closer comparison could scarcely be expected. Hanover's length is 52 feet 4-1/2 inches, the width of the main section 27 feet 10 inches, while the T-section is 15 feet 2-1/2 inches long (in its original part) and 26 feet 7 inches wide. A third example, completed in 1736, is the Charles City County courthouse.[170] The measurements of this building are not available to us, but close examination of photographs discloses a building of about the same size. The earliest of these T-shaped buildings thus far recorded was the York County courthouse, completed in 1733. Destroyed in 1814, its site has been excavated by the National Park Service. Its foundation, measuring 59 feet 10 inches in length and 52 feet in full depth, including the T, was somewhat larger than the others known to us. The records show that it was rather elaborate, with imported-stone floors and compass-head windows.[171] All these buildings had arcaded verandas. Marcus Whiffen raises the question as to which of them, if any, was the prototype, then concludes by speculating that none was, and that all four may have derived from the 1715 courthouse at Williamsburg, the dimensions of which, however, remain unknown. The introduction of the loggia first at the College of William and Mary and then at the capitol led him to postulate that its use in a courthouse also would have originated in Williamsburg.[172] The Stafford foundation showed no trace of stone paving where an arcade might have been, but, since virtually all the bricks had been taken away, it is likely that such a valuable commodity as flagstones also would have been removed as soon as the building was destroyed or dismantled. Two brick piers at the west end of the structure (fig. 36) remain a mystery. They are equidistant from the longitudinal walls, and may have been the foundations for a chimney. However, their positions do not relate to the floor or chimney plans at Hanover or King William courthouses, the other features of which are so nearly comparable. One would suppose every basic characteristic of the Stafford building would have been the same as in these buildings. The piers were perhaps late additions or modifications. The roof was apparently of wood; there were no evidences of slate shingles. The bricks were approximately 8-1/2 inches by 4 inches by 2-3/4 inches, and were probably laid in a patterned Flemish bond, as at Hanover or King William, since some of the bricks were glazed. No lead or other signs of "calmes" used in leaded sash were found, so we must assume that the 1665 courthouse was built elsewhere. FOOTNOTES: [169] MARCUS WHIFFEN, "The Early County Courthouses of Virginia," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (Amherst, Mass., 1959), vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 2-10. [170] Ibid. [171] RILEY, op. cit. (footnote 31), pp. 402 ff. [172] WHIFFEN, op. cit. (footnote 169), p. 4. CONCLUSION It may be assumed that the Potomac Creek courthouse, which was built of brick, resembled the courthouses of Hanover, King William, and Charles City, and that its architecture, symbolizing the authority of Virginia's government, reflected the official style expressed in the government buildings at Williamsburg. All the successive Stafford courthouses from 1722 on probably were built on the old foundations; if so, the Stafford building was the earliest T-form courthouse yet known in Virginia. Its similarity to the three structures built in the 1730's shows that an accepted form had developed, possibly, as Whiffen suggests, deriving from a prototype in Williamsburg. The courthouse bears no resemblance, either in its shape or the absence of a basement, to the Structure B foundation at Marlborough. The site, reached more easily than Marlborough from any direction, dictated the removal to it of the courthouse in 1722, thus contributing to the demise of Marlborough as a town. The last structure, especially, was historically important because of the meetings of the Ohio Company held in it. It is of particular interest to the story of Marlborough because John Mercer was, for most of its existence, the senior justice of the Stafford court. ARTIFACTS [Illustration: Figure 63.--TIDEWATER-TYPE POTTERY: a, milk pan (ill. 11); b, base of bowl (ill. 14); c, pan-rim sherds; d, base of ale mug (ill. 12).] XV _Ceramics_ Most of the ceramic artifacts found at Marlborough can be dated within John Mercer's period of occupancy (1726-1768). A meager scattering of late 18th- and early 19th-century whitewares and stonewares reflects the John Francis Mercer and Cooke ownerships (1768-1819). COARSE EARTHENWARE TIDEWATER TYPE.--Mercer's purchase in 1725 of £12 3s. 6d. worth of earthenware from William Rogers (p. 16, footnote 54) probably was made for trading purposes, judging from the sizable cost. Rogers operated a stoneware and earthenware pottery in Yorktown, which evidently was continued for a considerable time after his death in 1739.[173] An abundance of waster sherds (unglazed, underfired, overfired, or misshapen fragments cast aside by the potter), supposedly from Rogers' output, has been found as street ballast and fill in Yorktown and its environs. Microscopic and stylistic comparison with these sherds relates numerous Marlborough sherds to them in varying degrees. For purposes of tentative identification, the ware will be designated "Tidewater type." Some of the ware may have been produced in Rogers' shop, while other articles resembling the Yorktown products may have been made of similar clay and fired under conditions comparable to those at Yorktown. A Marlborough milk pan (USNM 59.1961, ill. 11, and USNM 59.1580) has a salmon-colored body and a lustrous mahogany glaze with fine manganese streaking. Another milk pan (USNM 59.2039, ill. 2, fig. 63a) has a buff body and a glaze of uneven thickness that ranges in color from thin brown with black flecking to a glutinous dark brown approaching black. The most typical glaze color, influenced by the underlying predominant pinkish-buff body, is a light mahogany with black specks or blotches. It occurs at Marlborough on a small sherd (USNM 60.201). A variant glaze occurring on pottery found in Yorktown appears here in a yellowish-buff sherd flecked with black (USNM 60.154). The flecking is only in part applied with manganese; it is also the effect of ocherous and ferruginous particles which protrude through the surface of the body, assuming a dark color. Occasionally the manganese is spread liberally, so that the natural body color shows through only as flecks in a reverse effect (USNM 59.1855); now and then the vessel is uniformly black (USNM 60.141). Tidewater-type forms found at Marlborough include milk pans 15 inches in diameter and about 4-1/4 inches deep (in 1729 Mercer bought "2 milk pans" for 5d. and 5 "gallon basons" for 4s. 7d.), a black-glazed jar cover with indicated diameter of 6-1/2 inches (USNM 59.2013), and fragments of other pans and bowls of indeterminate sizes. A portion of an ale mug has a tooled base and black glaze (USNM 59.2043, fig. 63d, ill. 12). Its diameter is 3-5/8 inches. MOLDED-RIM TYPE.--This is a type of redware with a light-red body and transparent, ginger-brown lead glaze. It is characterized by a rolled rim and a tooled platform or channel above the junction of rim and side. A small number of pan and bowl rims was found at Marlborough. The ware is usually associated with early 18th-century materials from such sites as Jamestown, Kecoughtan, Williamsburg, and Rosewell. It may have originated in England. NORTH DEVON GRAVEL-TEMPERED WARE.--The coarse kitchenware made in Bideford and Barnstaple and in the surrounding English villages of North Devon is represented by only two sherds. This ware is characterized by a dull, reddish-pink body, usually dark-gray at the core, and by a gross waterworn gravel temper. It occurs in contexts as early as 1650 at Jamestown and as late as 1740-1760 at Williamsburg. One of the Marlborough sherds is part of a large pan. It is glazed with a characteristic amber lead glaze (USNM 60.202). The other sherd is a portion of an unglazed handle, probably from a potlid (USNM 59.1679, ill. 15).[174] SLIP-LINED REDWARE.--Numerous 18th-century sites from Philadelphia to Williamsburg have yielded a series of bowls and porringers characterized by interior linings of slip that is streaked and mottled with manganese. These are glazed on both surfaces, the outer surface and a border above the slip on the inner surface usually ginger-brown in color. Comparative examples are a bowl from the Russell site at Lewes, Delaware, dating from the first half of the 18th century, and several pieces from pre-Revolutionary contexts at Williamsburg. A deposit excavated by H. Geiger Omwake near the south end of the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal in Delaware included sherds from a context dated late 17th- to mid-18th centuries.[175] Several fragments of bowls occur in the Marlborough material (USNM 59.1613, 59.1856, fig. 64g). ENGLISH YELLOWWARE.--The few sherds of so-called combed ware occurring at Marlborough, although only the base fragments connect, all seem to have come from a single cup or posset pot having a buff body and characteristically decorated with spiraled bands of dark-brown slip that were created by combing through an outer coating of white slip, revealing an underlayer of red slip. The vessel was glazed with a clear lead glaze (USNM 59.1700, fig. 64c, ill. 16). Comparative dated examples of this ware include a posset pot dated 1735.[176] A chamber pot bearing the same kind of striping was excavated by the National Park Service at Fort Frederica, Georgia (1736-ca. 1750). A piece similar to that from Marlborough was found in the Rosewell deposit, and another in the Lewis Morris house site, Morrisania, New York.[177] Although this type of ware was introduced in England about 1680, its principal use in America seems to have occurred largely between 1725 and 1775. Archeological evidence is corroborated by newspaper advertisements. In 1733 the _Boston Gazette_ advertised "yellow ware Hollow and Flat by the Crate" and again in 1737 "yellow and Brown Earthenware." In 1763 the _Gazette_ mentioned "Crates of Yellow Liverpool Ware," Liverpool being the chief place of export for pottery made in Staffordshire, the principal source for the combed wares.[178] BUCKLEY WARE.--I. Noël Hume has identified a class of high-fired, black-glazed earthenware found in many 18th-century sites in Virginia. He has done so by reference to _The Buckley Potteries_, by K. J. Barton,[179] and to waster sherds in his possession from the Buckley kiln sites in Flintshire, North Wales. The ware probably was made in other potteries of the region also. This durable pottery, more like stoneware than earthenware, is represented by a large number of jar and pan fragments. Two body types occur, each characterized by a mixture of red and buff clay. In the more usual type the red clay dominates, with laminations and striations of buff clay running through it in the manner of a coarse sort of agateware. The other is usually grayish buff with red streaks, although sometimes the body is almost entirely buff, still showing signs of lamination. The glaze is treacly black, often applied unevenly and sometimes pitted with air bubbles. The body surfaces have conspicuous turning ridges. Rims are usually heavy and flat, sometimes as wide as 1-1/2 inches. A variant of the ware is represented in a milk pan with a dominantly red body which has a clear-amber, rather than black, glaze. (USNM 59.1887, ills. 17, 18, and 19 and fig. 65). [Illustration: Illustration 10.--Milk pan. Salmon-red earthenware. Lustrous black lead glaze. Tidewater type. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1961.)] [Illustration: Illustration 11.--Milk pan. Salmon-red earthenware. Dull-brown glaze. Tidewater type. See figure 63a. One-fourth. (USNM 59.2039.)] [Illustration: Illustration 12.--Ale mug. Salmon-red earthenware. Lustrous black lead glaze. Tidewater type. See figure 63d. One-half. (USNM 59.2043.)] [Illustration: Illustration 13.--Cover of jar (profile). Salmon-red earthenware. Brownish-black lead glaze. Tidewater type. Same size. (USNM 59.2013.)] [Illustration: Illustration 14.--Base of bowl. Salmon-red earthenware. Light reddish-brown glaze speckled with black. Virginia type. One-half. See figure 63b. (USNM 59.2025.)] [Illustration: Illustration 15.--Handle of pot lid or oven door. North Devon gravel-tempered ware. One-half. (USNM 59.1679.)] [Illustration: Illustration 16.--Buff-earthenware cup with combed decoration in brown slip. Lead glaze. (Conjectural reconstruction.) One-fourth. See figure 64c. (USNM 59.1700.)] [Illustration: Illustration 17.--High-fired earthenware pan rim. Buff paste laminated with red. Red slip on exterior. Black glaze inside. Type made in Buckley, Flintshire, North Wales. One-half.] [Illustration: Figure 64.--MISCELLANEOUS COMMON EARTHENWARE TYPES, probably all imported from England: a, "molded-rim" types of redware; b, handle of large redware storage jar, probably English; c, base of brown-striped Staffordshire yellowware cup; d, sherd of black-glazed ware; e and f, two slip-decorated sherds; g, redware crimped-edge baking pan, coated with slip; and h, slip-lined manganese-streaked sherds.] MISCELLANEOUS.--Several unique specimens and groups of sherds are represented: 1. A large, outstanding, horizontal, loop handle survives from a storage jar with a rich red body. Two thumb-impressed reinforcements, splayed at each end, secure the handle to the body wall. The top of the handle has four finger impressions for gripping; the lead glaze appears in a finely speckled ginger color (USNM 59.2049, fig. 64b). 2. A single fragment remains from a slip-decorated bowl or open vessel. The body is hard and dark red, the glaze dark olive-brown. The fragment is glazed and slipped on both sides (USNM 59.1614, fig. 64e). Other small sherds of a similar ware are redder in color and without slip. Another, with lighter red body and olive-amber glaze, is slip decorated (USNM 60.161, fig. 64f). [Illustration: Illustration 19.--Rim and base profiles of high-fired-earthenware jars. Buff paste, laminated with red. Black glaze. Buckley type, Flintshire, North Wales. One-half. (USNM 59.2032, 59.1611, and 59.1782.)] 3. A unique sherd has a gray-buff body and shiny black glaze on both surfaces (USNM 59.1815). 4. A group of pale-red unglazed fragments is from the bottom of a water cooler. A sherd which preserves parts of the base and lower body wall has a hole in which a spigot could be inserted (USNM 59.2061, ill. 20). 5. Fragments of a flowerpot have a body similar to the foregoing, but are lined with slip under a lead glaze. A rim fragment has an ear handle with thumb-impressed indentations attached to it (USNM 60.203, ill. 21). 6. Two sherds of a redware pie plate, notched on the edge and lined with overglazed slip decorated with brown manganese dots, imitate Staffordshire yellowware, but are probably of American origin (USNM 59.1612, fig. 64g). [Illustration: Illustration 18.--High-fired-earthenware jar rim. Red paste, laminated with buff. Black glaze. Buckley type. One-half. (USNM 59.2067.)] [Illustration: Illustration 20.--Base sherd from unglazed red-earthenware water cooler, with spigot hole. One-half. (USNM 59.2061.)] [Illustration: Illustration 21.--Rim of an earthenware flowerpot, handle with thumb impressions attached. Slip-decorated, olive-amber lead glaze. One-fourth. (USNM 60.203.)] FOOTNOTES: [173] WATKINS and NOËL HUME, op. cit. (footnote 54). [174] C. MALCOLM WATKINS, "North Devon Pottery and Its Export to America in the 17th Century," (paper 13 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), 1960. [175] The Russell site was excavated by members of the Sussex Archeological Society of Lewes, Delaware. Artifacts from the site are now in the Smithsonian Institution, as are those found by H. Geiger Omwake at the end of the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal. [176] JOHN ELIOT HODGKINS, F.S.A., and EDITH HODGKINS, _Examples of Early English Pottery, Named, Dated, and Inscribed_ (London, 1897), p. 57, fig. 128. [177] J. E. MESSHAM, B.A., and K. J. BARTON, "The Buckley Potteries," _Flintshire Historical Society Publications_, vol. 16, pp. 31-87. [178] GEORGE FRANCIS DOW, _The Arts and Crafts in New England, 1764-1775_ (Topsfield, Mass., 1927), pp. 84, 85, 92. [179] MESSHAM and BARTON, loc. cit. (footnote 177). STONEWARE RHENISH STONEWARES.--The stoneware potters who worked in the vicinity of Grenzhausen in the Westerwald in a tributary of the Rhine Valley held a far-flung market until the mid-18th century. It was not until the Staffordshire potters brought out their own salt-glazed whitewares that the colorful blue-and-gray German products suffered a decline. Before that, Rhenish stonewares were widely used in England and the colonies; those for the British market frequently were decorated with medallions in which the reigning English monarch's initial appeared. Elaborate incising and blue-cobalt coloring gave a highly decorative character to the ware, while salt thrown into the kiln during the firing combined with the clay to provide a hard, clean surface matched only by porcelain. [Illustration: Figure 65.--BUCKLEY-TYPE HIGH-FIRED WARE with laminated body. Four pieces at top have predominantly red body, streaked with buff. All have black glaze, except two at lower right, which have amber glaze.] John Mercer, like so many of his fellow colonials, owned Westerwald stoneware. From Ledger G, we know that in 1743 he bought "2 blew & W^t Jugs 2/." From the artifacts it is clear that he not only had large globose jugs, but also numerous cylindrical mugs and chamber pots. A small group of sherds has a gray-buff paste, more intricately incised than most. Internally the paste surface is a light-pinkish buff. These sherds are probably of the late 17th century, or at least earlier than the predominantly gray wares of the 18th century, which have hastily executed designs.[180] Only two "GR" emblems (_Guglielmus_ or _Georgius Rex_), both from mugs, were recovered (fig. 66d). [Illustration: Illustration 22.--Base of gray-brown, salt-glazed-stoneware ale mug. Rust-brown slip inside. Same size. (USNM 59.1780.)] [Illustration: Illustration 23.--Stoneware jug fragment. Dull red with black dots. Same size. (USNM 59.1840.)] [Illustration: Illustration 24.--Gray, salt-glazed-stoneware jar profile. Probably first quarter, 19th century. Same size. (USNM 59.1615.)] MISCELLANEOUS GRAY-AND-BROWN SALT-GLAZED STONEWARE.--The shop of William Rogers apparently made stoneware of fine quality in the style of the London stoneware produced in the Thames-side potteries.[181] Wasters from Yorktown streets and foundations indicate many varieties of colors and glaze textures, some of which are matched in the Marlborough sherds. Admittedly, it is not possible to distinguish with certainty the fragments of Yorktown stoneware from their English counterparts. Sherds of a pint mug, externally gray in the lower half and mottled-brown in the upper, may be a Yorktown product (USNM 59.1780, ill. 22). The interior is a rusty brown. Fragments of the shoulder of a very large jug, mottled-brown externally and lined in a dull red like that often found on Yorktown wasters, also have body resemblances. (Mercer bought a five-gallon "stone bottle" from Charles Dick in 1745.) [Illustration: Figure 66.--WESTERWALD STONEWARE: a, chamber-pot sherds and handle fragments; b, sherds having yellowish body, probably late 17th or early 18th century; c, sherds of curve-sided flagon; d, sherds of cylindrical mugs including one with "GR" seal.] There are numerous other types of coarse stoneware of unknown origins, including one sherd with a dull-red glaze and black decorative spots (USNM 59.1840, ill. 23). NOTTINGHAM-TYPE STONEWARE.--Several sherds of stoneware of the type usually ascribed to Nottingham appeared at Marlborough. This ware is characterized by a smooth, lustrous, metallic-brown glaze. The fragments are apparently from different vessels. One is a foot rim of a posset pot or jug. Several body sherds have fluting or paneling formed by molding, with turning lines on the interior showing that the molding was executed after the forms were shaped. One sherd is decorated with shredded clay applied before firing when the clay was wet. It appears to come from the globose portion of a small drinking jug with a vertical collar. A handle section comes from a pitcher or posset pot. Interior colors range from a brownish mustard to a reddish brown. Nottingham stoneware was made throughout the 18th century,[182] but these sherds correspond to middle-of-the-century forms (fig. 67a). [Illustration: Figure 67.--FINE ENGLISH STONEWARE: a, Nottingham type; b, "drab" stoneware covered with white slip--brown-bordered mug sherds in _upper left_ came from beneath flagstone north of mansion-house porch, about 1725, "scratch-blue" stoneware, _below_, is about 1750; c, "degenerate scratch-blue" stoneware is about 1790; d, "white salt-glaze" ware _at bottom_ is hand-thrown; _upper right_ is molded, about 1760; e, plate and platter fragments.] DRAB STONEWARE.--The dominant position attained by the Staffordshire potters in the 18th century is due to unremitting efforts to achieve the whiteness of porcelain in their native products. Improvements in stoneware were mostly in this direction, with the first steps plainly evidencing what they failed to achieve. One of the earlier attempts has a gray body coated with white pipe-clay slip obtained at Bideford in North Devon. This slip created the superficial appearance of porcelain, as did tin enamel on the surface of delftware. Although some Burslem potters were making "dipped white stoneware" by 1710,[183] it does not seem to have occurred generally until about 1725. Salt glaze was applied in the same manner as on the earlier and coarser stonewares. Mugs in this ware were banded with an iron-oxide slip, presumably to cover up defects around the rims. [Illustration: Figure 68.--ENGLISH DELFTWARE: a, 17th- and early 18th-century sherds; b, blue-and-white sherd of the first half of the 18th century; c, polychrome fragments, third quarter of the 18th century; d, ointment pots with pink body, 18th century.] Several sherds of this drab stoneware were found at Marlborough, including the base of a jug with curving sides and pieces of tall mugs with brown rims (USNM 59.1893, fig. 67b, ill. 25). The body is characteristically gray, while the slip, although sometimes dull white, is usually a pleasant cream tone. Two sherds were found beneath the flagstones around the north porch of Structure B, where they probably fell before 1746 (USNM 59.1754). One of the Burslem stoneware potters between 1710 and 1715 made what he called "freckled ware."[184] Possibly this describes a sherd of a thin-walled mug from Marlborough (USNM 59.1636) which is coated with white slip inside and is finely speckled, or "freckled," in brown on the outside. Its body is the gray of the drab stoneware, but with a high content of micaceous and siliceous sand. Simeon Shaw, the early 19th-century historian of the Staffordshire potteries, asserted that what he called "Crouch" ware was first made of brick clay and fine sand in 1690, and by 1702 of dark-gray clay and sand.[185] Although his dates are questioned by modern authorities, his order of the progressive degrees of refinement in the paste are acceptable as he suggests them. In respect to the Marlborough sherd, although it is coarser than the white-coated fragments described above, it answers very well Shaw's description of sandy-gray "Crouch" ware. [Illustration: Illustration 25.--Drab-stoneware mug fragment, rim coated with iron oxide. Staffordshire, 1720-30. Same size. (USNM 59.1893.)] [Illustration: Illustration 26.--Wheel-turned cover of white, salt-glazed teapot. Staffordshire. Same size. (USNM 59.1622.)] [Illustration: Illustration 27.--Body sherds of molded, white salt-glazed-ware pitcher or milk jug. Staffordshire. Same size. (USNM 59.1894.)] WHITE SALT-GLAZED WARE.--About 1720 calcined flints were added to the body of the Staffordshire stoneware, thus making possible a homogeneous white body that did not require a coating of slip between the body and the glazed surface.[186] With this ware the Staffordshire potters came closer to their goal of emulating porcelain. At Marlborough the earliest examples of this improved ware are found in two sherds with incised decorations that were scratched into the wet clay (USNM 59.1819, Fig. 67b); the incised lines next were filled with powdered cobalt before firing. This technique is known as "scratch blue," dated examples of which, existing elsewhere, range from 1724 to 1767. The body in the Marlborough specimens is still rather drab, the whiteness of the later ware not yet having been achieved. No slip was used, however, so that the surface color is a pleasant pale gray. One sherd is from a cup with a slightly flaring rim. The exterior decoration is in the form of floral sprigs, while the inside has a row of double-scalloped lines below the rim. The other fragment is from a saucer. Possibly the cup is part of Mercer's purchase in 1742 of a dozen "Stone Coffee cups," for which he paid 18d. In Boston "White stone Tea-Cups and Saucers" were advertised in 1745, and "blue and white ... Stone Ware" in 1751.[187] A later variant on the "scratch blue" is a class of salt-glazed ware that resembles Westerwald stoneware. Here loops, sworls, and horizontal grooves are scratched into the paste. The cobalt is smeared more or less at random, some of it lying on the surface, some running into the incised channels. This style of decoration was applied mostly to chamber pots but also to small bowls and cups. Fragments of all these forms occurred at Marlborough (fig. 67c). After 1740 the body was greatly improved, resulting in an attractive whiteware. Many wheel-turned forms were produced, and these were liberally represented at Marlborough in fragments of pitchers, mugs, teapots, teacups, bowls, posset pots, and casters (fig. 67d). [Illustration: Figure 69.--DELFT PLATE. Lambeth, about 1720. (See ill. 29.)] In the middle of the 18th century a process was developed for making multiple plaster-of-paris molds from brass or alabaster matrices[188] and then casting plates and other vessels in them by pouring in the stoneware clay, diluted in the form of slip. The slip was allowed to dry, and the formed utensil was removed for firing. This molded salt-glazed ware occurs in quantity in the Marlborough finds, suggesting that there were large sets of it. One design predominates in plates, platters, and soup dishes: wavy edges, borders consisting of panels of diagonal lattices--with stars or dots within the lattices framed in rococo scrolls, and areas of basket-weave designs between the panels. On a large platter rim the lattice-work is plain, somewhat reminiscent of so-called Chinese Chippendale design. The pattern is presumably the design referred to in the _Boston News Letter_ for May 29, 1764: "To be sold very cheap. Two or three Crates of white Stone Ware, consisting chiefly of the new fashioned basket Plates and Oblong Dishes."[189] One fragment comes from a cake plate with this border design and a heavily decorated center (fig. 67e). [Illustration: Figure 70.--DELFT PLATE. Probably Lambeth, about 1730 to 1740. (See ill. 30.)] Other molded patterns include gadrooning combined with scalloping on a plate-rim sherd. A rim section with molded rococo-scrolled edge is from a "basket weave" sauceboat. Considerably earlier are pieces of a pitcher or milk jug with a shell design (USNM 59.1894, ill. 27). One rare sherd appears to come from a rectangular teapot or tray. All the white salt-glazed ware from Marlborough represents the serviceable but decorative tableware of everyday use. It must have been purchased during the last 10 years of Mercer's life. TIN-ENAMELED EARTHENWARE.--The art of glazing earthenware with opaque tin oxide and decorating it with colorful designs was an Islamic innovation which spread throughout the Mediterranean and northward to Holland and England. Practiced in England before the close of the 16th century, it became in the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries a significant source of English tableware, both at home and in America. Because of its close similarity to the Dutch majolica of Delft, the English version was popularly called "delftware," even though made in London, Bristol, or Liverpool. [Illustration: Illustration 28.--English-delftware washbowl sherd. Blue-dash decoration inside. See figure 68b. Same size. (USNM 60.75.)] Surprisingly, a minimum of tin-enameled wares was found at Marlborough, with several sherds reflecting the Port Town period. One of the latter shows the lower portion of a heavy, dark-blue floral spray, growing up, apparently, from a flowerpot. A section of foot rim and the contour of the sherd show that this was a 17th-century charger, probably dating from about 1680 (USNM 60.177, fig. 68a). The leaves are painted in the same manner as on a Lambeth fuddling cup.[190] A section of a plate with no foot rim includes an inner border which encircles the central panel design. It consists of two parallel lines with flattened spirals joined in a series between the lines. The glaze is crackled. This probably dates from the same period as the preceding sherd (USNM 60.99, fig. 68a). Sherds from a larger specimen, without decoration, have the same crackled enamel (USNM 59.2059). There is also a fragment decorated with small, blue, fernlike fronds, again suggesting late 17th-century origin (USNM 59.1756, fig. 68a). A small handle, the glaze of which has a pinkish cast, is decorated with blue dashes, and probably was part of a late 17th-century cup (USNM 59.1730, fig. 68a). [Illustration: Illustration 29.--English delftware plate. One-half. See figure 69. (USNM 59.1707.)] [Illustration: Illustration 30.--English delftware plate. One-half. See figure 70. (USNM 59.1706.)] Several fragments of narrow rims from plates with blue bands probably date from the first quarter of the 18th century. A reconstructed plate with the simplest of stylized decoration was made at Lambeth about 1720 (USNM 59.1707, fig. 69). This plate has a wavy vine motif around its upward-flaring rim, in which blossoms are suggested by stylized pyramids of three to four blocks formed by brush strokes about 1/4-inch wide, alternating with single blocks. The central motif consists of two crossed stems with a pyramid at each end and two diagonal, block brush strokes intersecting the crossed stems. A large fragment of a washstand bowl also has similar plain, block brush strokes along a border defined by horizontal lines--in this case a triplet of three strokes, one above two, alternating with a single block. Edges of similar brush strokes on the lower portion of the bowl remain on the fragment. Garner shows a Lambeth mug embodying this style of decoration combined with a suggestion of Chinoiserie around the waist. He ascribes to it a date of "about 1700," although the block-brush-stroke device, with variations, was practiced until the 1760's at Lambeth.[191] The Marlborough bowl fragment may be from one of the "2 pottle Basons" bought by Mercer in 1744 (fig. 68b, ill. 28). [Illustration: Illustration 31.--Delftware ointment pot. Bluish-white tin-enamel glaze. One-half. (USNM 59.1842.)] [Illustration: Illustration 32.--Sherds of black basaltes ware. Same size. (USNM 59.2021.)] Another reconstructed plate, probably a Lambeth piece, has blue decoration in the Chinese manner. It dates from about 1730 to 1740 (USNM 59.1706, fig. 70). Several small bowl sherds seem to range from the early to the middle 18th century. Polychrome delft is represented by only three sherds, all apparently from bowls, and none well enough defined to permit identification. There are several fragments of ointment pots, all 18th-century in shape. Three sherds of tin-enameled redware are probably continental European. Two of these have counterparts from early 17th-century contexts at Jamestown. A blue-decorated handle sherd from a large jug or posset pot is also 17th century. The predominance of early dating of tin-enamel sherds and the relatively few examples of it from any period suggest that much of what was found either was used in the Port Town or was inherited by the Mercers, probably by Catherine, and used when they were first married. It also points up the fact that delftware early went out of fashion among well-to-do families. ENGLISH FINE EARTHENWARES.--The fine earthen tablewares introduced in Staffordshire early in the 18th century, largely in response to the new tea-drinking customs, are less well represented in the Marlborough artifacts than are those made later in the century. Apparently, the contemporary white salt-glazed ware was preferred. [Illustration: Figure 71.--WHIELDON-TYPE tortoiseshell ware, about 1760.] MARBLED WARE.--The Staffordshire factories of Thomas Astbury and Thomas Whieldon were responsible for numerous innovations, including fine "marbled" wares in which clays of different colors were mixed together so as to form a veined surface. The technique itself was an old one, but its application in delicate tablewares was a novelty. Although Astbury was the earlier, it was Whieldon who exploited the technique after starting his potworks at Little Fenton about 1740.[192] From Marlborough come three meager sherds of marbled ware, probably from three different vessels (USNM 59.1625, 59.1748, 59.1851). They are brownish red with white veining under an amber lead glaze. A posset pot of these colors in the Victoria and Albert Museum is supposed, by Rackham, to date from about 1740.[193] [Illustration: Figure 72.--QUEENSWARE, about 1800.] BLACK-GLAZED FINE REDWARE.--Whieldon made a black-glazed, fine redware, as did Maurice Thursfield at Jackfield in Shropshire.[194] A fragment of a black-glazed teapot handle was found at Marlborough, although the body is more nearly a hard grayish brown than red (USNM 59.1638). TORTOISESHELL WARE.--Cream-colored earthenware was introduced as early as 1725, supposedly by Thomas Astbury, Jr. It was not until the middle of the century, however, that Whieldon began the use of clouded glaze colors over a cream-colored body. After 1756 Josiah Wedgwood became his partner and helped to perfect the coloring of glazes. In 1759 Wedgwood established his own factory, and both firms made tortoiseshell ware in the same molds used for making salt-glazed whiteware.[195] From Marlborough there are several sherds of gadroon-edge plates and basket-weave-and-lattice plates, as well as a piece of a teapot cover. Tortoiseshell ware was advertised in Boston newspapers from 1754 to 1772 (fig. 71).[196] QUEENSWARE.--Josiah Wedgwood brought to perfection the creamware body about 1765, naming it "Queensware" after receiving Queen Charlotte's patronage. Wedgwood took out no patents, so that a great many factories followed suit, notably Humble, Green & Company at Leeds in Yorkshire (later Hartley, Green & Company).[197] [Illustration: Figure 73.--FRAGMENT OF QUEENSWARE PLATTER with portion of Wedgwood mark.] [Illustration: Figure 74.--ENGLISH WHITE EARTHENWARES: a, "pearlware" with blue-and-white chinoiserie decoration, late 18th century; b, two whiteware sherds, one "sponged" in blue and touched with yellow, the other "sponged" in gray; c, shell-edge and polychrome wares, early 19th century; and d, polychrome Chinese porcelain.] [Illustration: Figure 75.--POLYCHROME Chinese porcelain.] The Marlborough creamware sherds are all plain (with one exception), consisting of fragments of wavy-edge plates, bowls, and platters in Wedgwood's "Catherine shape," introduced about 1770, as well as mugs and pitchers (fig. 72). A piece of a large platter has impressed in it the letters WEDG, running up to the fracture. Below this is the number 1 (USNM 59.1997, fig. 73). WHITEWARES USED IN THE FEDERAL PERIOD.--During the late 1770's Wedgwood introduced his "pearlware,"[198] in which the yellow cast of the cream body was offset by a touch of blue. With the use of a nearly colorless glaze that was still slightly bluish, it was now possible to make a successful underglaze-blue decoration. These whitewares were made in three principal styles by Wedgwood's many imitators, as well as by Wedgwood himself. The most familiar of these styles is the molded shell-edge ware, which was used in virtually every place to which Staffordshire wares penetrated after 1800. In a plain creamware version, this was another Wedgwood innovation of about 1765.[199] After 1780, the ware was white, with blue or green borders. The Wedgwood shell-edge design has a slightly wavy edge, and the shell ridges vary in depth and length. At least one Leeds version has a regular scalloped edge, like those found on several other Marlborough sherds. In the 19th century the ware became coarser and heavier, as well as whiter, and in some cases the shell edge was no longer actually molded but simply suggested by a painted border. Some variants were introduced that were not intended to be shell edge in design, but merely blue or green molded patterns. A Marlborough sherd from one of these has a gadrooned edge and molded swags and palmettes. Except for two late rims, painted but not molded, the shell-edge wares from Marlborough probably date from John Francis Mercer's period in the late 1700's and from John Bronaugh's occupancy of the mansion during the Cooke period in the first decade of the 19th century (fig. 74c). [Illustration: Figure 76.--BLUE-AND-WHITE Chinese porcelain.] The success of the new whiteware in permitting the use of underglaze blue resulted in a second class that is decorated in the Chinese manner, after the style of English delft and porcelain. This type was popular between 1780 and 1790, especially in the United States, where many whole specimens have survived above ground. Several sherds are among the Marlborough artifacts and appear to have come entirely from hollow forms, such as bowls and pitchers.[200] Sherds from a blue-and-white mug with molded designs, including the shell motif around the handle, have been found also. [Illustration: Figure 77.--BLUE-AND-WHITE Chinese porcelain.] The third class of whiteware, which was heavily favored in the export trade, consisted of a gay, hand-decorated product, popular at the end of the 18th, and well into the 19th, century. It had pleasing variety, with floral designs in soft orange, green, brown, and blue, often with brown or green borders. A few examples of this later whiteware occur among the Marlborough artifacts (fig. 74b). One sherd from a small bowl is mottled in blue and touched with yellow (USNM 59.1805, fig. 74b). Another is also mottled, but in gray and blue. Such wares as the latter were made by Hartley, Green & Company at Leeds before the factory's demise in 1820 (USNM 59.1950, fig. 74b).[201] The transfer-printed wares that were so popular in America after 1820 are represented by a mere eight sherds, which is in accord with evidence that the mansion house was unoccupied or destroyed after 1819. Of these sherds, only five can be dated before 1830. Two are pink, transfer-printed sherds of about 1835-45, and one is gray-blue, dating from about 1840-1850. BLACK BASALTES WARE.--Another late 18th-century innovation by Wedgwood, imitated by his competitors, was a fine stoneware with a black body, called black basaltes because of its resemblance to that mineral. A few sherds of this were found at Marlborough. Typically, they are glazed on the insides only. They postdate John Mercer by twenty or thirty years. [Illustration: Illustration 33.--Blue-and-white Chinese-porcelain saucer (fig. 76, top left). One-half.] [Illustration: Illustration 34.--Blue-and-white Chinese-porcelain plate (fig. 77, top left). One-fourth. (USNM 60.122.)] CHINESE PORCELAIN.--Oriental porcelain was introduced to the English colonies at a very early date, as we know from 17th-century contexts at Jamestown. As early as 1725 John Mercer acquired "1 China Punch bowl." Presumably the "6 tea cups & Sawcers," "2 chocolate cups," and "2 custard cups" obtained by him the same year were also porcelain. Even before 1740, porcelain was occurring with increasing frequency in America. We are told that in 1734, for example, it can be calculated that about one million pieces of it left Canton for Europe.[202] Doubtless a large proportion was reexported to the colonists. William Walker, Mercer's undertaker for the mansion, left at his death in 1750: "1 Crack'd China bowl," "1 Quart Bowl 6/, 1 large D^o 12.6," "6 China cups & Sawcers 5/," and "12 China plates 15/." It is not surprising, therefore, that 18th-century China-trade porcelain sherds occurred with high incidence at Marlborough. Mercer's accounts show that he acquired from Charles Dick in 1745 "1 Sett finest China" and "2 punch bowls." From the archeological evidence it would appear that he had supplemented this several times over, perhaps after 1750 in the period for which we have no ledgers. Most of the porcelain is blue and white. One group has cloudy, blurred houses and trees, impressionistic landscapes, and flying birds. This pattern occurs in fragments of teacups, small bowls, and a coffee cup. Another type has a border of diamonds within diamonds, elaborate floral designs delicately drawn, and a fine thin body. Similar sherds were found at Rosewell. At Marlborough the design survived in teacups, coffee cups, and saucers. There are several additional border designs, some associated with Chinese landscape subjects or human figures (figs. 76, ill. 24, and fig. 77, ill. 25). A coarse type with a crudely designed border hastily filled in with solid blue is represented in a partly reconstructed plate (USNM 60.122, fig. 77). Polychrome porcelain is found in lesser amounts, although in almost as much variety. Three sherds of a very large punchbowl are decorated in red and blue. Fragments of a small bowl have delicate red medallions with small red and black human figures in their centers. Fine borders occur in red and black. Gold, yellow, and green floral patterns constitute another class (fig. 75). Almost all the porcelain is of high quality, probably reaching a peak during Mercer's middle and prosperous years between 1740 and 1760. We cannot expect to find any porcelain purchased after his death in 1768, and certainly none appears to be connected with the Federal period or with the so-called "Lowestoft" imported in the American China trade after the Revolution. FOOTNOTES: [180] See BERNARD RACKHAM, _Catalogue of the Glaisher Collection of Pottery & Porcelain in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge_ [England] Cambridge, England: (Cambridge University Press, 1935), vol. 2, pl. 150 B no. 2053; and vol. 1, p. 264. [181] I. NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell, Gloucester County, Virginia, 1957-1959," (paper 18 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), 1962. J. PAUL HUDSON, "Earliest Yorktown Pottery," _Antiques_ (New York, May 1958), vol. 73, no. 5, pp. 472-473; WATKINS and NOËL HUME, loc. cit. (footnote 173). [182] RACKHAM, op. cit. (footnote 180), vol. 1, p. 158. [183] W. B. HONEY, "English Salt Glazed Stoneware," [abstract] _English Ceramic Circle Transactions_ (London, 1933), no. 1, p. 14. [184] Ibid. [185] Ibid.; BERNARD RACKHAM, _Early Staffordshire Pottery_ (London, n.d.), p. 20. [186] BERNARD RACKHAM and HERBERT READ, _English Pottery_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924), p. 88. [187] DOW, op. cit. (footnote 178), pp. 86-87. [188] RACKHAM, op. cit. (footnote 185), p. 92. [189] DOW, op. cit. (footnote 178), p. 92. [190] A. M. GARNER, _English Delftware_ (New York: D. Van Nostrand and Co., Inc., 1948), fig. 23B. [191] Ibid., fig. 37. [192] RACKHAM, op. cit. (footnote 185), p. 28. [193] Ibid., pl. 57. [194] RACKHAM and READ, op. cit. (footnote 186), p. 96. [195] Ibid., p. 97. [196] DOW, op. cit. (footnote 178), pp. 85-95. [197] RACKHAM, op. cit. (footnote 185), p. 29; RACKHAM and READ, op. cit. (footnote 186), pp. 107-109. [198] W. B. HONEY, _English Pottery and Porcelain_ (London: 1947), p. 89. [F99] _Wedgwood Catalogue of Bodies, Glazes and Shapes Current for 1940-1960_ (Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent: Warwick Savage, n.d.), pp. M1, M2. [200] "The Editor's Attic" and cover: _Antiques_ (New York, June 1928), vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 474-475. [201] RACKHAM and READ, op. cit. (footnote 186), p. 110. [202] J. A. LLOYD HYDE, _Oriental Lowestoft_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), p. 23. XVI _Glass_ BOTTLES ROUND BEVERAGE BOTTLES.--Bottles of dark-green glass were used in the colonial period for wine, beer, rum, and other potables. Although some wines and liquors were shipped in the bottle, they were distributed for the most part in casks, hogsheads, and "pipes" before 1750. John Mercer recorded the purchases of several pipes of wine--kinds unspecified--a pipe being a large or even double-size hogshead. He purchased rum by the gallon, in quantities that ranged from 2 quarts in 1744 to "5 galls Barbadoes Spirits" in 1745 and a "hhd 107-1/2 gall Rum" in 1748. Bottles were used largely for household storage and for the serving of liquors. They were kept filled in the buttery as a convenience against going to the cellar each time a drink was wanted. Bottles usually were brought directly to the table,[203] although the clear-glass decanter was apparently regarded as a more genteel dispenser. Mercer, like his contemporaries, bought his own bottles, as when he purchased "2 doz bottles" from John Foward in 1730. The previous year he had acquired a gross of corks, which would customarily have been inserted in his bottles and secured by covering with cloth, tying around the lips or string rings with packthread, and sealing with warm resin and pitch. Some wines were purchased in the bottle. In 1726 Mercer bought "2 doz & 8 bottles Claret" and "1 doz Canary" from Alexander McFarlane. In 1745 he charged Overwharton Parish for "2 bottles Claret to Acquia," apparently for communion wine. Whether all this was shipped from the vineyards in bottles, or whether Mercer brought his own bottles to be filled from the storekeepers' casks is not revealed. An insight into the kinds of alcoholic drinks consumed in Virginia in Mercer's early period is given in the official price-list for the sale of alcoholic beverages set forth in the York County Court Orders in 1726:[204] This Court do Sett the Rate Liquors as followeth: £ s. d. Liquors Rated Each diet 1 Lodging for each person 7-1/2 Stable Room & Fodder for each horse p^r night 11-1/4 Each Gallon corn 7-1/2 Wine of Virg^a produce p Quart 5 French Brandy p Quart 4 Sherry & Canary Wine p Quart 4 4-1/2 Red & white Lisbon p^r Quart & Claret 3 1-1/2 Madera Wine p Quart 1 10-1/2 Fyall wine p Quart 1 3 French Brandy Punch p Quart 2 Rum & Virg^a Brandy p^r Quart 3-3/4 Rum punch & flip p^r Quart 7-1/2^d made with white sugar 9 Virg^a midling beer & Syder p^r Quart 3-3/4 Fine bottled Syder p^r Quart 1 3 Bristoll Beer Bottles 1 Arrack p^r Quart 10 [Illustration: Figure 78.--WINE BOTTLE, sealed with initials of John and Catherine Mercer, dated 1737 (see p. 148). Found in Structure D refuse pit. Height, 8 inches. (See also ill. 37.)] It will be noted that Bristol beer was sold by the bottle, probably just as it was shipped, and "Fine bottled Syder" apparently came in quart bottles. Probably the wines were dispensed from casks in wine measures. Mercer bought Citron water in bottles, a half dozen at a time, as he did "Mint, Orange flower & Tansey D^o," in 1744. Round beverage bottles ranged in shape from, roughly, the form of a squat onion at the beginning of the 18th century to narrow cylindrical bottles towards the end of the century. The earliest bottles were free-blown without the constraint of a mold, hence there were many variations in shape. After about 1730 bottles were blown into crude clay molds which imparted a roughly cylindrical or taper-sided contour below sloping shoulders and necks. These marked the first recognition of binning as a way of storing wines in bottles laid on their sides. About 1750 the Bristol glasshouses introduced cylindrical brass molds.[205] From then on the problem of stacking bottles in bins was solved and virtually all round beverage bottles thenceforward were cylindrical with long necks. [Illustration: Illustration 35.--Beverage bottle. First quarter, 18th century. Reconstruction based on whole bottle found at Rosewell. One-half. (USNM 59.1717.)] [Illustration: Illustration 36.--Above, beverage-bottle seal, with initials of John and Catherine Mercer, matching the tobacco-cask mark used for tobacco grown at the "home plantation" (Marlborough). See figures 8 and 79. Same size. (USNM 59.1689.)] [Illustration: Illustration 37.--At right, complete beverage bottle, dated 1737, with initials of John and Catherine Mercer (fig. 78). Same size. (USNM 59.1688.)] At Marlborough the earliest form of wine bottle is represented by a squat neck and a base fragment (USNM 59.1717, ill. 35), both matching onion-shaped bottles of the turn of the century, such as one excavated at Rosewell (USNM 60.660). Except for these fragments, the oldest form from Marlborough may be seen in the complete bottle found in refuse pit D (USNM 59.1688; fig. 78, ill. 37). This bottle is typical of the transitional form, sealed examples of which regularly occur bearing dates in the 1730's. Its sides are straight for about three inches above the curve of the base, tapering slightly to the irregular shoulder that curves in and up to a neck with wedge-shaped string ring. Two inches above the base is a seal, bearing the initials I^[C.]M above a decorative device and the date 1737. The arrangement of initials exactly matches that found on Mercer's tobacco-cask seals (p. 30 and footnote 89) indicating the "home plantation" at Marlborough. [Illustration: Figure 79.--BOTTLE SEALS. (See ill. 36.)] Seals were applied by dropping a gather of glass on the hot surface of a newly blown bottle, then pressing into this deposit of glass a brass stamp bearing a design, initials, date, etc. Three similar seals from broken bottles also were found. The same arrangement of initials, but with no date or device of any kind, occurs on seven different seals (fig. 79, ills. 36 and 37). The diameter of the base of the sealed beverage bottle is 5-1/2 inches, the widest diameter occurring on any bottle fragments from Marlborough, excepting the early specimen mentioned above. Bases in gradually decreasing dimensions vary from this size to 2-3/4 inches. Six bases run from 5 inches to 5-1/2 inches; 11 are over 4-1/2 inches and up to 5 inches; 4 are over 4 inches and up to 4-1/2 inches; 3 are over 3-1/2 inches and up to 4 inches; none, except the smallest of 2-3/4 inches, found in a mid-19th-century deposit, is less than 3-3/4 inches. FOOTNOTES: [203] LADY SHEELAH RUGGLES-BRISE, _Sealed Bottles_ (London: Country Life, Ltd.; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), p. 18. [204] _York County (Virginia) Orders & Wills 1716-1726_ (in York County courthouse, Yorktown, Va.), no. 15, p. 571. [205] "Old English Wine Bottles," _The Wine and Spirit Trade Record_ (London, December 17, 1951), pp. 1570-1571. BEVERAGE-BOTTLE BASES _USNM_ _Inches in_ _No._ _Diameter_ _Provenience_ 59.1688 5-1/2 Refuse pit D 59.1717 6 Structure F, firing chamber 59.1717 4-1/2 Structure F, firing chamber 59.1717 4-3/4 Structure F, firing chamber 59.1717 4-7/8 Structure F, firing chamber 59.1717 5 Structure F, firing chamber 59.1717 5-1/8 Structure F, firing chamber 59.1793 2-3/4 S.W. corner, Structure B 59.1870 5-1/4 Wall D, trench 59.1918 4 Structure E, N. side, Room X 59.1921 3-3/4 Debris area, N.E. corner, Structure E 59.1957 5 Structure F, N.E. corner of pavement 59.1957 5 Structure F, N.E. corner of pavement 59.1998 4-3/4 Structure E, N. of fireplace, Room X 59.1998 4-3/4 Structure E, N. of fireplace, Room X 59.2007 3-7/8 North of Structure E, lowest level 59.2007 4-1/4 North of Structure E, lowest level 60.83 4-1/2 Wall E, gateway 60.103 4-3/4 Trench along Wall E 60.117 5-1/8 Junction of Walls A-I and A-II 60.117 4-5/8 Junction of Walls A-I and A-II 60.120 5-1/2 Trash pit no. 2 60.123 5-1/2 Trash pit no. 2 Since beverage-bottle diameters diminished from about 5 inches in the 1750's and 1760's to about 4 inches in the 1770's and 1780's and to 3-1/2 inches in the 1790's and early 1800's, the peak of their incidence at Marlborough occurs between 1750 and 1770, the period of greatest opulence in the Mercer household. [Illustration: Illustration 38.--Upper left, cylindrical beverage bottle, about 1760. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1998.)] [Illustration: Illustration 39.--Upper right, cylindrical beverage bottle, late 18th or early 19th century. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1976, 59.2007.)] OCTAGONAL BEVERAGE BOTTLES.--A rarely seen variation from the round beverage bottle is a club-shaped, octagonal, molded type with long neck, perhaps so shaped in order to permit packing in cases. Cider is said to have been put up in such bottles, and it is also possible that brandies and liqueurs were delivered in them. A quart-size bottle of this shape at Colonial Williamsburg bears the seal "I. Greenhow WmsBgh. 1769." Another, purchased in England, in the G. H. Kernodle collection at the Smithsonian Institution, also has a seal with the name "Jn^o Collings, 1736" (USNM 59.2170). A pint-size example, 9 inches high and dated 1736, is illustrated in plate 95e in the Wine Trade Loan Exhibition catalog.[206] A restored bottle of this form from Marlborough (USNM 59.1687, fig. 80, ill. 40) is 8 inches high, but bears no seal. Among the glass found at Marlborough are also three bases and other fragments of similar bottles. [Illustration: Illustration 40.--Octagonal, pint-size beverage bottle. See figure 80. Half size. (USNM 59.1687.)] SQUARE "GIN" BOTTLES.--Square bottles, usually called "gin" bottles, occur in the Marlborough material. Two base sections and lower pieces of the flat sides have been partly restored (USNM 59.1685, 59.1686, ill. 41), and a neck and shoulder have survived. The bases are 4 inches square, and the whole bottles were probably about 10 inches high. They did not taper but maintained a continuous dimension from shoulder to base. The bases, which are rounded on the corners, have a slightly domed kick-up with a ring-shaped pontil mark. The glass is olive green. The necks are squat--barely 7/8 inch--and have wide string rings midway in their length. [Illustration: Figure 80.--OCTAGONAL SPIRITS BOTTLE.] [Illustration: Illustration 41.--Square gin bottle. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1686, base; 59.1685, top.)] [Illustration: Illustration 42.--Square snuff bottle. One-half. See figure 81. (USNM 59.1680.)] [Illustration: Figure 81.--SNUFF BOTTLE. (See ill. 42.)] Square "gin" bottles were designed for shipment in wooden boxes with compartments in which the bottles fit snugly. Although Dutch gin customarily was shipped in bottles of this shape, indications are that the square bottles may have been used for other purposes than holding gin. For one thing, Mercer's ledgers mention no purchases of gin. There is, in fact, almost no evidence of the sale of gin in Virginia; a single announcement of Holland gin available in Williamsburg in 1752 is the exception until 1773, when gin was again advertised in the _Virginia Gazette_.[207] Its sale had been prohibited in England in 1736.[208] For another thing, square bottles were both imported and manufactured in America for sale new. In 1760 the Germantown glassworks in Braintree, Massachusetts, made "Round and square Bottles, from one to four Quarts; also Cases of Bottles of all Sizes ...,"[209], while George Ball, of New York, in 1775 advertised that he imported "Green glass Gallon square bottles, Two quart ditto, Pint ditto."[210] [Illustration: Illustration 43.--Upper left, wineglass, reconstructed from base fragment having enamel twist for stem. One-half. (USNM 59.1761.)] [Illustration: Illustration 44.--Upper right, cordial glass. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1607.)] A smaller base (USNM 59.1642) has a high kick-up, the dome of which intersects the sides of the base so that the bottle rests on four points separated by arcs. This fragment measures 3 inches square. An even smaller version (USNM 59.1977) is 2-3/4 inches. SNUFF BOTTLES.--Several items in Mercer's ledgers record the purchase of snuff, such as one for a "bottle of snuff" in 1731 for 15d., another in 1743 for 3s., and a third in 1744 for 1s. 6d. Among the artifacts is a partly restored bottle of olive-green glass, shaped like a gin bottle but of smaller dimensions, with a 2-1/4-inch-wide mouth (USNM 59.1686, fig. 81). The bottle is 3-3/4 inches square and 7 inches tall. It has a low kick-up and a smooth pontil mark. Also among the artifacts are a matching base and several sherds of similar bottles. [Illustration: Illustration 45.--Sherds of engraved-glass wine and cordial glasses (fig. 82c). Same size. (USNM 59.1634, 59.1864.)] MEDICINE BOTTLES.--Only a few fragments of medicine bottles occurred in the Marlborough artifacts. This is surprising, in view of Mercer's many ailments and his statements that he had purchased "British Oyl," "Holloway's Citrate," and other patent nostrums of his day. A round base from a greenish, cylindrical bottle (USNM 59.2056) seems to represent an Opadeldoc bottle. Another base is rectangular with notched corners. The last, as well as the base of a molded, basket-pattern scent bottle (USNM 59.2093) may be early 19th century in date. Other medicine-bottle fragments are all 19th century, some quite late (fig. 82). FOOTNOTES: [206] _Wine Trade Loan Exhibition of Drinking Vessels_ [catalog] (London, 1933), no. 226, p. 26, pl. 95. [207] CAPPON & DUFF, _Virginia Gazette Index 1736-1780_, op. cit. (footnote 93), vol. 1, p. 451. [208] ANDRE SIMON, _Drink_ (New York: Horizon Press, Inc., 1953), pp. 139-140. [209] DOW, op. cit. (footnote 178), p. 104. [210] RITA SUSSWEIN, _The Arts & Crafts in New York, 1726-1776_ (New York: J. J. Little and Ives Co., 1938), p. 99. (Printed for the New-York Historical Society.) TABLE GLASS A minimum of table-glass sherds was recovered, and these were fragmentary. Glass is scarcely mentioned in Mercer's accounts, although there is no reason to suppose that Marlborough was any less well furnished with fine crystal than with other elegant objects that we know about. Three sherds of heavy lead glass have the thickness and contours of early 18th-century English decanters, matching more complete fragments from Rosewell and a specimen illustrated in plate 98a in the Wine Trade Loan Exhibition catalog.[211] Two fragments are body sherds; the third is from a lip and neck. [Illustration: Illustration 46.--Clear-glass tumbler blown in a ribbed mold (fig. 82b). Same size. (USNM 59.1864.)] [Illustration: Illustration 47.--Octagonal cut-glass trencher salt (fig. 82a). Same size. (USNM 59.1830.)] [Illustration: Figure 82.--GLASSWARE: a, cut-glass salt (ill. 47); b, tumbler base (ill. 46); c, engraved sherds (ill. 45); d, tumbler and wineglass sherds; e, part of candle arm (see p. 154); f, mirror fragment; g, window glass; and h, medicine-bottle sherds.] Several forms of drinking glasses are indicated. A fragment of a foot from a long-stemmed cordial glass shows the termini of white-enamel threads that were comprised in a double enamel-twist stem. The twists consisted of a spiral ribbon of fine threads near the surface of the stem, with a heavy single spiral at the core. The indicated diameter of the foot is 3-1/4 inches (USNM 59.1761, ill. 43). Fragments of large knops are probably from heavy baluster wineglasses dating from Mercer's early period before 1750. A teardrop stem from a trumpet-bowl wineglass has been melted past recognition in a fire. The stem of a bucket-bowl cordial glass has suffered in the same manner (USNM 59.1607). Still with their shapes intact are two stems and base sections of bucket-bowl wineglass. Two engraved bowl sherds from similar-shaped cordial glasses and a rim sherd from another engraved piece are the only fragments with surface decoration (USNM 59.1634, 59.1864, ill. 45). Several sherds of foot rims, varying in diameter, were found, including one with a folded or "welted" edge. Tumblers, depending on their sizes, were used for strong spirits, toddy, flip, and water. The base and body sherds of a molded tumbler from Marlborough are fluted in quadruple ribs that are separated by panels 1/4-inch wide (USNM 59.1864, fig. 82c, ill. 46). Plain, blown tumbler bases have indicated diameters of 3 inches. A few unusual, as well as more typical, forms are indicated by the Marlborough glass sherds. One small fragment comes from a large flanged cover, probably from a sweetmeat bowl or a posset pot. A specimen of more than usual interest is a pressed or cast cut-glass octagonal trencher salt (USNM 59.1830, fig. 82a, ill. 47). This artifact reflects silver and pewter salt forms of about 1725. A curved section of a heavy glass rod is apparently from a chandelier, candelabrum, or sconce glass (USNM 59.1696, fig. 82e). We have seen that Mercer, in 1748, bought "1 superfine large gilt Sconce glass." Although precise dates cannot be ascribed to any of this glass, it all derives without much question from the period of Mercer's occupancy of Marlborough. FOOTNOTES: [211] Op. cit. (footnote 206), no. 244, p. 66, pl. 68. MIRROR AND WINDOW GLASS We know from the ledgers that there were sconce and looking glasses at Marlborough. Archeological refuse supplies us with confirmation in pieces of clear lead glass with slight surviving evidence of the tinfoil and mercury with which the backs originally were coated. One piece (USNM 59.1693) has a beveled edge 7/8 inch wide, characteristic of plate-glass wall mirrors of the colonial period. A curved groove on this piece, along which the fracture occurred, is probable evidence of engraved decoration. Window glass is of two principal types. One has a pale-olive cast. A few fragments of this type have finished edges, indicating that they are from the perimeters of sheets of crown glass and that Mercer purchased whole crown sheets and had them cut up. It may be assumed that this greenish glass is the oldest, perhaps surviving from Mercer's early period. The other type is the more familiar aquamarine window glass still to be found in 18th-century houses. A large corner of a rectangular pane has the slightly bent contour of crown glass, which is the English type of window glass made by blowing great bubbles of glass which were spun to form huge discs. The discs sometimes were cut up into panes of stock sizes and then shipped to America, or else were sent in whole sheets, to be cut up by storekeepers here or to be sold directly to planters and other users of window glass in quantity. The centers of these sheets increased in thickness and bore large scars where the massive pontil rods which had held the sheets during their manipulation were broken off. The center portions also were cut into panes, which were used in transom lights and windows where light was needed but a view was not. Hence they served not only to utilize an otherwise useless part of the crown-glass sheets, but also to impart a decorative quality to the window. They are still known to us as "bullseyes." A piece of a bullseye pane of aquamarine glass occurs in the Marlborough finds. The pontil scar itself is missing, but the thick curving section leaves little doubt as to its original appearance. A similar fragment was found at Rosewell. XVII _Objects of Personal Use_ Costume accessories recovered at Marlborough are extremely few. There are six metal buttons, all of them apparently 18th century. One of flat brass (USNM 59.2004) has traces of gilt adhering to the surface; another of similar form (USNM 60.85) is silver; a third (USNM 59.2004) is copper. The silver button, 7/8 inch in diameter, could be one of two dozen vest buttons bought by Mercer for 18 pence each in 1741. A brass button with silver surface was roll-plated in the Sheffield manner (USNM 59.2004), thus placing its date at some time after 1762. "White metal"--a white brass--was commonly used for buttons in the 18th century, and is seen here in a fragmentary specimen (USNM 59.2004). One hollow button of sheet brass shows the remains of gilding (USNM 60.73). Only one example was found--a dark-gray shell button--that was used on under-garments (USNM 59.1819). Among the personal articles are two brass buckles, one a simple half buckle (USNM 70.72, fig. 83d, ill. 48), the other a knee buckle (USNM 60.139, fig. 83e, ill. 49). Except possibly for a pair of scissors to be mentioned later, a brass thimble is the only artifactual evidence of sewing (USNM 60.74, fig. 83b, ill. 50). Four thimbles, mentioned in Ledger B, were purchased in 1729, and four in 1731.) Parts of a penknife that were found consist of ivory-casing fragments, steel frame, knife blade, single-tined fork, and other pieces (USNM 50.1665, fig. 85). Two chalk marbles attest to the early appeal of that traditional game, as well as to the ingenuity that went into making the marbles of this material (USNM 59.1682). Chalk also was used to make a bullet mold, half of which, bearing an M on the side, has survived (USNM 59.1682, fig. 84b, ill. 51). A musket ball (USNM 59.1682) from the site could have been made in it. Two gun flints (USNM 59.1629 and 59.1647, fig. 84a) are of white chert. [Illustration: Illustration 48.--Left, brass buckle (see fig. 83d). Same size. (USNM 60.72.)] [Illustration: Illustration 49.--Center, brass knee buckle (fig. 83e). Same size. (USNM 60.139.)] [Illustration: Illustration 50.--Right, brass thimble (fig. 83b). Same size. (USNM 60.74.)] An English halfpenny, dated 1787, was found near the surface in the kitchen debris of Structure E (USNM 59.2041, fig. 83c). Considerably worn, it may have been dropped after the destruction of the building. Two fragments of flat slate were found (USNM 60.95 and 60.113), as well as a hexagonal slate pencil (USNM 59.1685, fig. 85, ill. 54). It is clear that slates were used at Marlborough, probably when Mercer's children were receiving their education from the plantation tutors. [Illustration: Illustration 51.--Chalk bullet mold with initial "M" (fig. 84b). Same size. (USNM 59.1682.)] [Illustration: Figure 83.--SMALL METALWORK: a, copper and white metal buttons; b, brass thimble; c, English halfpenny, 1787; d, brass buckle; e, brass knee buckle; f, brass harness ornament; g, escutcheon plates for drawer pulls and keyholes; h, drop handle; i, curtain and harness rings; and j, brass strap handle.] [Illustration: Illustration 52.--Left, fragments of tobacco-pipe bowl with decoration molded in relief. Same size. (USNM 59.2003.)] [Illustration: Illustration 53.--Above, white-kaolin tobacco pipe (fig. 84f). One-half. (USNM 59.1714.)] [Illustration: Figure 84.--PERSONAL MISCELLANY: a, chert gun "flint;" b, chalk bullet mold and bullet; c, bullet; d, marble; e, piece of chalk; and f, white clay pipes and fragment of terra-cotta pipestem.] [Illustration: Figure 85.--CUTLERY: a, chopping knife; b, table-knife blades; c, parts of penknife; and d, pieces of slate and slate pencil.] [Illustration: Illustration 54.--Slate pencil (see fig. 85d). Same size. (USNM 59.1685.)] As usual in colonial sites, quantities of pipestem and bowl fragments were recovered. Virtually all the bowls reflect the typical Georgian-period white-clay pipe form, with only minor variations. Most of the stems have bores ranging from 4/64 inch (1750-1800) to 6/64 inch (1650-1750). A single stem fragment from a terra cotta pipe of a kind found at Jamestown and Kecoughtan, probably dropped by an Indian or early white trader, is early 17th century (fig. 84f), while two white-clay stem fragments have bores of 1/8 inch (1620-1650). A fragment of a pipe bowl has molded decoration in relief, with what appear to be masonic emblems framed on a vine wreath (USNM 59.2003, ill. 52). XVIII _Metalwork_ SILVER [Illustration: Illustration 55.--Left, fragment of long-tined fork. Second-half (?), 17th century. One-half. (USNM 59.1663.)] [Illustration: Illustration 56.--Center, fragment of long-tined fork. Early 18th century. One-half. (USNM 59.2029.)] [Illustration: Illustration 57.--Right, fork which had two-part handle of wood, bone, or silver. One-half. (USNM 59.1939.)] Mercer, as we have seen, had a lavish supply of plate. Little of this, understandably, was likely to have been thrown away or lost, except for an occasional piece of flatware. One such exception is a teaspoon from the Structure B foundation (USNM 59.1827, fig. 86). It has a typical early Georgian form--ribbed handle, elliptical bowl, and leaf-drop handle attachment on back of the bowl. As in the case of small objects worked after the marks were applied, this has evidence of two distorted marks. Corrosion has obliterated such details as may have been visible originally, although there are fairly clear indications of the leopard's head crowned and lion passant found on London silver. TABLE CUTLERY.--Fragmentary knives and forks from the site date mostly from before 1750. Forks are all of the long, double-tine variety. One, which may date back to the second half of the 17th century, has a delicate shank, widening to a tooled, decorative band, with shaft extending downward which was originally enclosed in a handle of horn, bone, or wood (USNM 59.1663, ill. 55). A fragment of a narrow-bladed knife (USNM 59.1882, fig. 85) may be of the same period as the fork. Two forks, each with one long tine intact, show evidence of having had flat cores for wood or silver handles (USNM 59.2029, 59.1939, ills. 56 and 57). The shanks, differing in length from each other, are turned in an ogee shape. Three blades, varying in completeness, are of the curved type used with "pistol-grip" handles (USNM 59.1667-1668, 59.1939). A straight blade fragment (USNM 59.1999) is probably contemporary with them. Only two knife fragments (USNM 59.1799 and 59.2082) appear to be 19th century (fig. 85). One of the most unusual artifacts is a half section of a hollow Sheffield-plated pistol-grip knife handle. Sheffield plate was introduced in 1742 by a process that fused sheets of silver to sheets of copper under heat and pressure.[212] The metal, as here, was sometimes stamped (USNM 59.1668, fig. 86b). [Illustration: Figure 86.--METALWORK: a, rim of pewter dish; b, table knife with Sheffield-plated handle; c, lid of pewter teapot (ill. 60); d, silver teaspoon; e, wavy-end pewter spoon, early 18th-century shape; f and g, two trifid-end pewter spoons, late 17th-century shape (holes in g were probably drilled to hold cord for suspension from neck).] FOOTNOTES: [212] SEYMOUR B. WYLER, _The Book of Sheffield Plate_ (New York: Crown Publishers, 1949), pp. 4-5. PEWTER Three, whole pewter spoons, as well as several fragments of spoons, were salvaged from the large trash pit (Structure D). Two whole specimens and a fragment of a third are trifid-handle spoons cast in a mold that was probably made about 1690. One of these (USNM 59.1669, fig. 86g, ill. 58) has had two holes bored at the top of the handle, probably to enable the user to secure it by a cord to his person or to hang it from a loop. This circumstance, plus the presence of such an early type of spoon in an 18th-century context, suggests that the spoons were made during the Mercer period for kitchen or slave use from a mold dating back to the Port Town period. The spoons themselves may, of course, have survived from the Port Town time and have been relegated to humble use on the plantation. A somewhat later spoon, with "wavy-end" handle, comes from a mold of about 1710. It has the initial N scratched on the handle (USNM 59.1672, fig. 86e, ill. 59). Another fragmentary example has a late type of wavy-end handle, dating perhaps ten years later (USNM 59.1672). [Illustration: Illustration 58.--Trifid-handle pewter spoon (fig. 86g). One-half. (USNM 59.1669.)] A pewter teapot lid with tooled rim and the remains of a finial may be as early as 1740 (USNM 59.1676, fig. 86c, ill. 60). Two rim fragments of a pewter plate also were found (USNM 59.1675, fig. 86a). KITCHEN AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS CUTLER'S WORK.--In 1725 Mercer bought a pair of "Salisbury Scissors"; there is no clue as to what is meant by the adjectival place name. He purchased another pair of scissors in 1744. In any case, a pair of embroidery scissors, with turned decoration that one would expect to find on early 18th-century scissors, was found in the site (USNM 59.1680, ill. 61). [Illustration: Illustration 59.--Wavy-end pewter spoon (fig. 86e). One-half. (USNM 59.1672.)] [Illustration: Illustration 60.--Pewter teapot lid (fig. 86c). Same size. (USNM 59.1676.)] [Illustration: Illustration 61.--Steel scissors. One-half. (USNM 59.1680.)] [Illustration: Figure 87.--IRONWARE: a, lid for iron pot; b, cooking-pot fragments; c, andiron leg; d, iron ladle; and e, two beaters for box-irons.] IRONWARE.--Pieces of two types of iron pot were found. One type is a large-capacity version, holding possibly five gallons. It has horizontal ribbing and vertical mold seams (USNM 59.1645, 59.1845, 59.60.147, fig. 87). Such, perhaps, was the "gr[ea]t pot" weighing 36 pounds which Mercer bought from Nathaniel Chapman of the Accokeek Iron Works in 1731. Two other fragments are from a smaller pot. The inventory taken in 1771 (Appendix M) lists five "Iron Potts for Negroes," that were probably smaller than those used in the plantation kitchen. Two heaters for box irons were found in the kitchen debris. A heavy layer of mortar adhered to one, suggesting that it may have been built into the brickwork--whether by accident or design there is no way of telling. In that case, however, the specimen would antedate 1749 (USNM 59.2024, 59.2026, fig. 87). Box irons were hollow flatirons into which pre-heated cast-iron slugs or "heaters" were inserted. Two or more heaters were rotated in the fire, one always being ready to replace the other as it cooled. In 1725 Mercer bought a "box Iron & heaters," and in 1731, from Chapman, "2 heaters." Other kitchen iron includes the fragmentary bowl and stem of a long-handled iron stirring spoon (USNM 59.1812), an iron kettle cover (USNM 60.69), and the leg of a large, heavy pair of andirons (USNM 59.1826, fig. 87). A small, semicircular chopping knife has a thin steel blade and an iron shank that originally was inserted in a wooden handle. Lettering, now almost obliterated, was impressed in the metal of the blade: "SHEFFIELD WORKS 6 ENGLISH...." (USNM 59.1834, fig. 85a). [Illustration: Illustration 62.--Iron candle snuffers. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1825.)] FURNITURE HARDWARE.--A few metal furniture fittings were recovered. Six curtain rings, cut from sheet brass and trimmed with a file, vary from 7/8 inches to 1-1/4 inches. On tubular ring (USNM 60.53, fig. 83) may have been used as a curtain ring, although signs of wear suggest that it perhaps may have been a drawer pull. A small, brass, circular escutcheon (USNM 59.1735, fig. 83) comes from a teardrop-handle fixture of the William and Mary style. A round keyhole escutcheon has tooled grooves and holes for four nails (USNM 59.1630, fig. 83), and dates from about 1750. The handsomest specimen of furniture trim found is an escutcheon plate with engraved linear decoration dating from about 1720 (USNM 60.71, fig. 83). An iron bale handle was probably on a trunk or chest (USNM 60.130, fig. 88e). A small strap hinge (USNM 59.1657, fig. 88) is like those found on the lids of 18th-century wooden chests, while a butt hinge may have served on the lid of the escritoire which Mercer owned in 1731 (ill. 63). [Illustration: Figure 88.--IRON DOOR AND CHEST HARDWARE: a, large HL hinge; b, plate from box lock; c, small H hinge for cupboard; d, part of H door hinge; e, bale handle from trunk; f, latch bar or striker; g, small hinges; h, keys; i, latch catch; j, staples; k, part of latch handle; and l, pintles for strap hinges.] [Illustration: Illustration 63.--Iron butt hinge of type used on escritoire lids and other similar items. Same size.] [Illustration: Illustration 64.--End of strap hinge. One-half. (USNM 60.146.)] [Illustration: Illustration 65.--Catch for door latch. Same size. (USNM 59.1801.)] [Illustration: Illustration 66.--Wrought-iron hasp. One-half. (USNM 59.1655.)] [Illustration: Illustration 67.--Brass drop handle. Same size. (USNM 59.1944.)] [Illustration: Illustration 68.--Wrought-iron catch or striker from door latch. One-half. (USNM 59.1768.)] [Illustration: Illustration 69.--Iron slide bolt. One-half. (USNM 59.1942.)] [Illustration: Illustration 70.--Series of wrought-iron nails. One-half.] ARCHITECTURAL AND STRUCTURAL HARDWARE Iron was a fundamental material in the construction of any 18th-century building. Mercer's ledgers make repeated references to the purchase of hinges, locks, latches, and other related iron equipment. Most of this material was obtained from local merchants and was probably English in origin. However, the ledger records numerous purchases from Nathaniel Chapman of iron that was undoubtedly made at his ironworks. It is probable also that many simple appliances were made at Marlborough by slaves or indentured servants trained as blacksmiths. HINGES.--Hand-forged strap hinges were employed throughout the colonies from the first period of settlement to the middle of the 19th century. In addition to the many fragments that probably came from such hinges, one artifact is a typical spearhead strap-hinge terminal with a square hole for nailing (USNM 60.146, ill. 64). Three pintles--L-shaped pivots on which strap hinges swung--were recovered. One was found at the site of a gate or door in the wall south of the kitchen (USNM 60.59, fig. 88l). [Illustration: Illustration 71.--Series of wrought-iron flooring nails and brads. One-half.] [Illustration: Illustration 72.--Fragment of clouting nail. Same size.] [Illustration: Illustration 73.--Hand-forged spike. One-half. (USNM 59.1811.)] Fragments from at least four different H and HL hinges occur. Several entries in the ledgers refer to the purchase of such hinges. A nearly complete HL hinge, probably used on a large door, recalls an item in the account with Charles Dick for June 14, 1744, "2 p^r large hinges 9/" (USNM 59.1945, fig. 88). A piece of a smaller H or HL hinge is of the type used on interior doors (USNM 59.1767, fig. 88), while a still smaller section of an H hinge was perhaps used on a cupboard door. H hinges were more properly known as "side hinges," and we find Mercer using that term in 1729 when he bought a pair of "Sidehinges" for 9d. "Cross-garnet" hinges, where a sharply tapering, spear-headed strap section is pivoted by a pin inserted in a stationary, rectangular butt section, are represented by three imperfect specimens (USNM 59.1657 and 59.1881, fig. 88). Both these types are named, described, and illustrated by Moxon.[213] [Illustration: Figure 89.--TOOLS: a, block-plane blade; b, scraping tool (ill. 76); c, gouge chisel (ill. 77); d, part of bung extractor; e, fragment of ax; f, three dogs or hooks; g, pothook; and h, shim or pin.] LOCKS, LATCHES, AND KEYS.--Only one remnant of the ubiquitous 18th-century "Suffolk" thumb-press door latch was found at Marlborough. This fragment comprises the handle but not the cusps at the ends, by which the age might be determined (USNM 60.137, fig. 88). Mercer purchased an "Iron door latch" from Nathaniel Chapman for ninepence in 1731. In a complete assemblage for these latches, a thumb press lifts a latch bar on the reverse side of the door, disengaging it from a catch driven into the edge of the jamb. One large latch bar was recovered (USNM 59.1972, fig. 88f), as well as two catches (USNM 59.1644, fig. 88i, and 59.1801, ill. 65). Sliding bolts were the usual locking devices when simple thumb latches were used. A survival of one of these is seen in a short iron rod with a shorter segment of rod attached to it at right angles (USNM 59.1942, ill. 69). Purchases of padlocks are recorded, but there is no archeological evidence for them. However, a well-made hasp (USNM 59.1655, ill. 66) has survived, and also three staples (USNM 59.1644, 59.1659, 59.2027, fig. 88j). Mercer bought six staples in 1742 at a penny each. Apparently the principal doors of both the 1730 house and the mansion were fitted with box locks, or "stock-locks," in which wood and iron were usually combined. A heavy iron plate comes from such a lock (USNM 59.1943, fig. 88). Two stock-locks were bought from John Foward in 1731. Another was purchased from William Hunter in 1741. In the same year Mercer acquired from Charles Dick "8 Chamberdoor Locks w^{th} brass knobs." If by knob was meant a drop handle, then a fine brass specimen may be one of these (USNM 59.1944, fig. 83h, ill. 67). Fragments of three iron keys have survived, the smallest of which may have been used with a furniture lock (USNM 59.1644 and 59.1656, fig. 88h). [Illustration: Illustration 74.--Left, blacksmith's hammer. One-half. (USNM 59.2081.)] [Illustration: Illustration 75.--Center, iron wrench. One-half. (USNM 60.91.)] [Illustration: Illustration 76.--Right, iron scraping tool (fig. 89b). One-half. (USNM 60.133.)] NAILS AND SPIKES.--The ledgers point to a constant purchasing of nails which is reflected in the great quantity recovered from the excavations. A 1731 purchase from Chapman comprised 2-, 3-, 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, and 20-penny nails, while in the 1740's not only nails but 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-penny brads were purchased, as well as 20-penny flooring brads. Excepting the last, nearly all these sizes occur in the artifacts. There is also a variety of heavy spikes, ranging from 3 inches to 7 inches in length (see ills. 70-73). [Illustration: Illustration 77.--Left, bit or gouge chisel (see fig. 89c). One-half. (USNM 59.1644.)] [Illustration: Illustration 78.--Right, jeweler's hammer. Same size. (USNM 59.1664.)] FOOTNOTES: [213] ALBERT H. SONN, _Early American Wrought Iron_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928), vol. 2, p. 9. HANDCRAFT TOOLS Marlborough, like most 18th-century plantations, was to a large extent self-sufficient, and therefore it is not surprising to find handtools of several kinds. A blacksmith's hammer (USNM 59.2081, ill. 74), for example, strengthens the view that there may have been blacksmiths at Marlborough. Other tools include a smoothing-plane blade of iron with a 1-inch steel tip (USNM 59.1897, fig. 89a); a set wrench for a 3/4-inch square nut or bolt (possibly for bed bolts), equipped originally with a wooden handle (USNM 60.91, ill. 75); a steel scraping tool or chisel with handle set at an angle (USNM 60.133, fig. 89b, ill. 76); a small half-round bit or gouge chisel (USNM 59.1644, fig. 89c, ill. 77). Three crude lengths of iron with stubby L-shaped ends appear to be work-bench dogs (fig. 89f). One fine tool is from the equipment of a jeweler or a clockmaker (USNM 59.1664, ill. 78). It is a very small hammer with a turned, bell-shaped striking head. Originally balanced by a sharp wing-shaped peen, which was, however, badly rusted and which disintegrated soon after being found, the tool has a tubular, tinned, sheet-iron shaft handle which is secured by a brass ferrule to the head and brazed together with brass. The lower end is plugged with brass, where a longer handle perhaps was attached. In 1748 Sydenham & Hodgson, through William Jordan, imported for Mercer "A Sett Clockmakers tools." This entry is annotated, "Return'd to M^r Jordan." Although the hammer cannot be related to this particular set of tools, the ledger item suggests that fine work like clockmaking may have been conducted at Marlborough. This tool may have been used in the process. [Illustration: Figure 90.--SCYTHE found against outside of east wall, Structure H.] FARMING, HORSE, AND VEHICLE GEAR The 1771 inventory is in some ways a more significant summary of 18th-century plantation equipment than are the artifacts found at Marlborough, since its list of tools is longer than the list of tool artifacts and is pin-pointed in time. However, artifacts define themselves concretely and imply far more of such matters as workmanship, suitability to purpose, source of origin, or design and form, than do mere names. The Marlborough tools and equipment, moreover, correspond, as far as they go, very closely with the items in the inventory, thus becoming actualities experienced by us tactually and visually. [Illustration: Illustration 79.--Wrought-iron colter from plow. One-fourth. (USNM 60.88.)] [Illustration: Illustration 80.--Hook used with wagon or oxcart gear. One-half. (USNM 60.9.)] [Illustration: Illustration 81.--Left, bolt with wingnut. One-half. (USNM 60.145.)] [Illustration: Illustration 82.--Right, lashing hook from cart or agricultural equipment. One-half. (USNM 59.2030.)] For instance, the inventory lists 22 plows at Marlborough. Among the finds is an iron colter from a colonial plow in which the colter was suspended from the beam and locked into the top of the share (USNM 60.88, ill. 79). The colter is bent and torn from exhaustive use (Chapman, in 1731, fitted a plow "w^{th} Iron" for Mercer). From it we learn a good deal about the size of the plow on which it was used and the shallow depth of the furrows it made. [Illustration: Figure 91.--FARM GEAR: a, part of collapsible-top fitting from carriage; b, chain, probably from whiffletree; c, part of bridle bit; d, iron stiffener from a saddle; e, worn chain link; f, base of handle of a currycomb; g, rivet and washer; h, piece of iron harness gear; i and j, two horseshoes; and k, chain to which a strap was attached--probably harness gear.] Four chain traces were on the list, one of which is represented by a length of flat links attached to a triangular loop to which the leather portion of the traces was fastened (USNM 60.64, fig. 91b). The halves of two snaffle bits (USNM 59.2078, 60.67, fig. 91c; ill. 87) correspond to an item for eight "Bridle Bitts." (A "snafflebit" costing 1s. 8d. was among Mercer's purchases for 1743.) A third bit, crudely made of twisted wire attached to odd-sized rings, is a makeshift device probably dating from the 19th century. Three ox chains listed in the inventory are not distinctly in evidence in the artifacts, although a heavy hook, broken at the shank, is of the type used to fasten an ox chain to the yoke (USNM 60.9, ill. 80). Archeological evidence of the two oxcarts and one wagon listed in the inventory is confined to nuts and bolts that might have been used on such vehicles. A long axle bolt (USNM 59.1802) measures 23 inches. A small bolt or staple, split at one end and threaded at the other, has a wingnut (USNM 60.145, ill. 81). A hook with a heavy, diamond-shaped backplate and a bolt hole was perhaps used on a wagon to secure lashing (USNM 59.2030, ill. 82). A heavy, curved piece of iron with a large hole, probably for a clevice pin, appears to be from the end of a wagon tongue, while a carefully made bolt with hand-hammered head (USNM 59.1821) and a short rivet with washer (USNM 59.1881, fig. 91g) in place seem also to be vehicle parts. [Illustration: Illustration 83.--Hilling hoe. One-fourth. (USNM 59.1848.)] [Illustration: Illustration 84.--Iron reinforcement strip from back of shovel handle. One-half. (USNM 59.1847.)] The inventory listed four complete harnesses, the remains of which are probably to be found in four square iron buckles (USNM 59.1644, 59.1901, 60.131, fig. 91h), a brass ring (USNM 59.1678, fig. 83), and an ornamental brass boss (USNM 59.1878, fig. 83j). Twelve "Swingle trees" (whippletree, whiffletree, singletree) are listed in the inventory. The artifacts include three iron loops or straps designed to be secured to the swingletrees. One (USNM 59.2042, fig. 91b) still has two large round links attached. (In 1731 Chapman fitted ironwork to a swingletree.) Ten "Hillinghows," 17 "Weeding hows," and 8 "Grubbing hows" are listed. In the long Chapman account for 1731 we see that Mercer then purchased "5 narrow hoes" and "2 grubbing hoes." The only archeological evidence of hoes is a fragmentary broad hoe (probably a hilling hoe) (USNM 59.1848, ill. 83) and the collar of another. [Illustration: Illustration 85.--Half of sheep shears. One-half. (USNM 59.1734.)] Thirteen axes are listed in the inventory. Again we find Nathaniel Chapman providing a "new axe" in 1731 for five shillings, while William Hunter sold Mercer "2 narrow axes" and "4 Axes" in 1743. One broken ax head occurs among the artifacts, worn back from repeated grinding and split at the eye (USNM 59.1740, fig. 89e). There were four spades and an iron shovel at Marlborough in 1771. An iron reinforcement from a shovel handle occurred in the site (USNM 59.1847, ill. 84), while a slightly less curved strip of iron may have been attached to a spade handle (USNM 59.1662). Once more in Chapman's account we find evidence of local workmanship in an item for "1 Spade." [Illustration: Illustration 86.--Animal trap. One-third. (USNM 59.1715.)] Thirteen scythes were listed in 1771; perhaps the one excavated from the foundation of Structure H on Potomac Creek may have been among these (USNM 59.2400, fig. 90). There were eight sheep shears; half of a sheep shears was found in Structure G (USNM 59.1734, ill. 85). Of the other items on the list, a few, such as stock locks and hammers, have already been mentioned, while the remainder of the list is not matched by artifacts. An item for a chalk-line is supported by a piece of chalk (USNM 59.1683, fig. 84). [Illustration: Illustration 87.--Iron bridle bit (see fig. 91c). Same size.] [Illustration: Illustration 88.--Fishhook. One-half. (USNM 59.1681.)] [Illustration: Illustration 89.--Brass strap handle (see fig. 83j). Same size. (USNM 59.1736.)] A few specimens are not matched in the inventory. One is a springtrap of hand-forged, hand-riveted iron (USNM 59.1715, ill. 86) for catching animals. Another is a fishhook (USNM 59.1681, ill. 88), possibly one of 95 bought in 1744. An iron stiffener for the framework of a saddle is fitted with 10 rivets for securing the leather and upholstery (USNM 59.1847, fig. 91d). The third artifact is an elegantly designed brass fitting for a leather curtain or strap (USNM 59.1736, fig. 83j, ill. 89). It is fitted with a copper rivet at the stationary end for securing leather or cloth; just below the rivet is a recessed groove and shelf, perhaps to receive a reinforced edge; to the lower part of this is hinged a long handle cut in a leaf design. An iron hinge bar is part of the equipment for folding back the top of a chaise (USNM 60.178, fig. 91a). There are several horseshoes, two whole shoes and numerous fragments (fig. 91i and j). Finally, the handle shaft and decorative attachment of an iron currycomb (USNM 59.2077, fig. 91f) recalls Mercer's purchase of "1 curry comb and brush" in 1726. XIX _Conclusions_ Almost no exclusively 17th century artifacts were found at Marlborough; at least, there were very few sherds or objects that could not have originated equally well in the 18th century. The exceptions are the following: Westerwald blue-and-white stoneware with gray-buff paste; several sherds of delft and other tin-enameled ware, late 17th century in type, and an early 17th-century terra cotta pipestem. Otherwise, we find a scattering of things belonging to types that occurred in both centuries: North Devon gravel-tempered ware, which was imported both in the late 17th and early 18th centuries; yellow-and-brown "combed" ware, which elsewhere occurs most commonly in 18th century contexts; pewter trifid-handle spoons, the form of which dates from about 1690 but which may have been cast at a later date in an old mold (a wavy-end spoon in the style of 1710 may also have been cast later). Fragments of an onion-shaped wine bottle may date from the first decade of the 18th century, but the presence of such bottles in the Rosewell trash pit shows that bottles, being too precious to throw away, were kept around until they were broken--in the case of Rosewell for 60 or 70 years. Thus the Marlborough sherds cannot be excluded from the Mercer period. The same may be said of a late 17th-century type of fork. Thus, there is virtually no evidence of the Port Town occupation, especially as the few 17th-century artifacts that were found may well have belonged to the Mercers rather than to Marlborough's previous occupants. The ceramics and glass are the most readily datable artifacts, and these coincide almost altogether with the period of John Mercer's lifetime. Common earthenwares are predominantly Tidewater and Buckley types, with a scattering of others, most of which are recurrent among other Virginia and Maryland historic-site artifacts. No distinct type emerges to suggest that there may have been a local Stafford potter. Common stonewares occur in such a variety of types that no source or date can be attributed, although there is some evidence of the work of William Rogers' shop in Yorktown. Westerwald stonewares are predominantly of the blue-and-gray varieties commonest in the second quarter of the 18th century. There is only a small quantity of delftware, but a great deal of Chinese porcelain. Evidences are that the first kinds of English refined wares, such as drab stoneware, Nottingham stoneware, and agateware, were used at Marlborough, thus pointing to an awareness of current tastes and innovations. The large quantity of white salt-glazed ware suggests that, although it was a cheap commercial product, it was regarded as handsome and congenial to the environment of a plantation house that was maintained in formal style. Except for the white salt-glazed ware, which was probably acquired in the 1760's, most of the table ceramics date from about 1740 to 1760. Bottles and the few datable table-glass fragments are also primarily from this period. Creamwares and late 18th- and early 19th-century whitewares diminish sharply in numbers, reflecting a more austere life at Marlborough in its descent to an overseer's quarters. Later 19th-century wares are insignificant in quantity or in their relation to the history of Marlborough. Tool and hardware forms are less diagnostic. Most of them correspond to ledger entries and to the 1771 inventory, so, without contradictory evidence, they may be assumed to date from John Mercer's period. In general, the artifacts illustrate the best of household equipment available in 18th-century Virginia, and the tools and hardware indicate the extensiveness of the plantation's activities and its heavy reliance on blacksmith work. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS XX _Summary of Findings_ Marlborough's beginnings as a town in 1691 cast the shape that has endured in a few vestiges even until today. The original survey of Bland and Buckner remains as evidence, and by it we are led to believe that the courthouse was located near the "Gutt" to the west of the town, near a change of course that affected the western boundary and all the north-south streets west of George Andrews' lots. Archeological excavation in the area disclosed Structure B, which subsequent evidence proved to be the foundation of Mercer's mansion, built at the pinnacle of his career between 1746 and 1750. No evidence exists that this foundation was associated earlier with the courthouse. Two years after the second Act for Ports was passed in 1705, the second survey was made and was lost soon thereafter. There is evidence that the house built by William Ballard in 1708, on a lot "ditched in" according to this plat, was also in the vicinity of the courthouse. After Mercer moved into this house in 1726, it became clear that the two surveys were at odds, and a new survey was ordered and made in 1731. The maneuvers which followed make it fairly clear that Mercer's residence was encroaching upon the two acres that had been set aside for the courthouse, which by Act of Assembly had reverted to the heirs of Giles Brent after the courthouse had burned and been abandoned about 1718. The 1731 plat provided a whole new row of lots along the western boundary of the town, while pushing the original lots slightly to the east. This device would have assured the integrity of the courthouse land, while relieving Mercer of the uncertainty of his title. When Mercer's petition to acquire Marlborough was submitted in 1747 (the 1731 plat still remained unaccepted), he offered to buy the courthouse land for three times its worth. Since Mercer was guardian of the heir, "Mr. William Brent, the Infant," he was called upon to testify in this capacity at the hearings on his petition. Thus the courthouse, Ballard's house, and Mercer's mansion all appear to have been involved in a boundary difficulty, and we may assume, therefore, that the courthouse during its brief career stood close to the spot where Mercer later built his mansion. This difficulty, in particular, was influential in determining the shape of the town, the manner in which Mercer developed the property and the peculiarities that made Marlborough unique. It was not until 1755 that he was permitted to acquire all the town and by that time Marlborough's character had already been fixed. We have seen that its outstanding feature, the mansion, was architecturally sophisticated, that leading craftsmen worked on it, and that it was as highly individualistic as its master. It was lavishly furnished not only with material elegancies but with a library embracing more than a thousand volumes. Aside from the mansion, the area most actively developed by Mercer lay between it and Potomac Creek, with some construction to the north and the east. In 1731, Mercer built two warehouses which probably stood near the waterside at Potomac Creek where his sloop and schooner and visiting vessels found sheltered anchorage. These burned in 1746, but must subsequently have been rebuilt, since Thomas Oliver in his 1771 report to James Mercer commented that the "tobacco houses" must be repaired as soon as possible. They were probably among the buildings that Mercer had constructed up to 1747, when he reported that he had "saved" 17 of the town's lots by building on them. These lots comprised 8-1/2 acres in the southwest portion of the town. The windmill was built on land near the river shore, east of the mansion. It was probably located a considerable distance from the shore, although erosion in recent times has eaten back the cliff. In the fall of 1958, half of the stone foundations collapsed, leaving a well-defined profile of the stone construction. Fragments of mid-century-type wine bottles found in the lower course of the stones support other evidence that the mill was built in 1746. Mercer mentioned his "office" in 1766. This may have been a detached building used for a law office. Oliver in 1771 listed a barn, a cider mill, two "grainerys," three cornhouses, five stables, and tobacco houses. He mentioned also that "the East Green House wants repairing, the west d^o wants buttments as a security to the wall on the south side." Besides the malthouse and brewhouse built in 1765 (which may have been situated at Structure H and the 100-foot-long stone-wall enclosure attached to Wall A), John Mercer in his 1768 letter mentioned "Cellars, Cooper's house and all the buildings, copper & utensil whatever used about the brewery," as well as the "neat warm" house built for the brewer. When the property was advertised in 1791, "Overseers houses," "Negroe quarters," and "Corn houses" also were mentioned. The development of the area in the southwest portion of the plantation probably sustained--or established for the first time--the character originally intended for Marlborough Town. The situation of the mansion was undoubtedly affected by this, as indeed must have been the whole plantation plan. The archeological evidence alone shows that the plan was abnormal in terms of the typical 18th-century Virginia plantation. The rectangular enclosure formed by the brick walls east of the mansion doubtless framed the formal garden over which the imported English gardener, William Black, presided. It connected at the northwest with the kitchen in such a way that the kitchen formed a corner of the enclosure, becoming in effect a gatehouse, protecting the mansion's privacy at the northwest from the utilitarian slave quarter and agricultural precincts beyond. Walls A-I and A-II, however, related the mansion directly to this plantation-business area and caused it to serve also as a gate to the enclosure. The position of the kitchen dependency northwest of the house is the only suggestion of Palladian layout, other than the garden. The southern aspect of the house and the rigid boundary to domestic activity imposed by Walls A-I and A-II probably prevented construction of a balancing unit to the southwest. Slave quarters, stables, and perhaps the barn apparently were located to the north. Since it was not until 1755 that Mercer came into full title to the town, the town plan and its legal restrictions were influential in determining the way in which the plantation was to grow. The house and the surrounding layout were, therefore, wholly peculiar to the special circumstances of Marlborough and probably also to the individuality of its owner. The approach to the house from the waterside was to the south end of the building, leading up to it by the still-existing road from the creek and along the old "Broad Street across the Town," which probably bordered Walls A-I and B-I. The mansion thus had a little of the character of a feudal manor house, as well as some of the appearance of an English townhouse that abuts the street, with the seclusion of its yards and gardens defended by walls. In many respects it only slightly resembled, in its relationship to surrounding structures, the more representative plantations of its period. The house was well oriented to view, ventilation, and dominant location. The veranda, which afforded communication from one part to another out-of-doors, as well as a place to sit, was exposed to the prevailing southwesterly summer winds. In the winter it was equally well placed so as to be in the lee of northeast storms sweeping down the Potomac. The view, hidden today by trees, included Accokeek Creek and a lengthy vista up Potomac Creek. Presumably, a road or driveway skirted the kitchen at the west and perhaps ended in a driveway in front of the house. The gate in Wall E south of the kitchen would have been a normal entrance for horses and vehicles. Within the garden was the summerhouse built by Mercer in 1765. From the east windows and steps of the house and from the garden could be seen the Potomac, curving towards the bay, and the flailing "drivers" of the windmill near the Potomac shore. The excavated and written records of Marlborough are a microcosm of Virginia colonial history. They depict the emergence of central authority in the 17th century in the establishment of the port town as a device to diversify the economy and control the collecting of duties. In the failure of the town, they demonstrate also the failure of colonial government to overcome the tyranny of tobacco and the restrictive policies of the mother country. They go on to show in great detail the emergence in the 18th century of a familiar American theme--the self-directed rise of an individual from obscure beginnings to high professional rank, social leadership, personal wealth, and cultural influence. They demonstrate in Mercer's career the inherent defects of the tobacco economy as indebtedness mounted and economic strains stiffened. In Mercer's concern with the Ohio Company and westward expansion they reflect a colony-wide trend as population increased and the need grew for more arable land and areas in which to invest and escape from economic limitations. They show that the war with the French inevitably ensued, with its demands on income and manpower, while following this came the enforcement of trade laws and the immediate irritants which led to rebellion. So Marlborough gives a sharp reflection of Virginia's history prior to the Revolution. It was touched by most of what was typical and significant in the period, yet in its own details it was unique and individual. In this seeming anomaly Marlborough is a true illustration of its age, when men like Mercer were strong individuals but at the same time typifying and expressing the milieu in which they lived. Mercer's rise to wealth and leadership occurred at a time when favorable laws held out the promise of prosperity, while boundless lands offered unparalleled opportunities for investment. It remained for those best able to take advantage of the situation; Mercer's self-training in the law, his driving energy, and his ability to organize placed him among these. The importance of his position is signified by the justice-ship that he held for so many years in Stafford County court; the brick courthouse on the hill overlooking the upper reaches of Potomac Creek was the architectural symbol of this position. Although most of his income was derived from legal practice, it was his plantation that was the principal expression of his interests and his energies. Mercer was in this respect typical of his peers, whose intellectual and professional leadership, on the one hand, and agricultural and business enterprise, on the other, formed a partnership within the individual. The great plantation house with its sophisticated elegancies, its outward formalities, and its rich resort for the intellect in the form of a varied library, was the center and spirit of the society of which men like Mercer were leaders. With the death of the system came the death of the great house, and the rise and fall of Marlborough symbolizes, as well as anything can, the life cycle of Virginia's colonial plantation order. Appendixes APPENDIX A Inventory of George Andrews, Ordinary Keeper [Stafford County Will Book--Liber Z--1699-1709--p. 168 ff.] An Inventory of the Estate of George Andrews taken the (six) October 1698. 6 small feather beads with Bolsters 5 Ruggs 1 Turkey Work 1 Carpet 1 old small Flock Bed boulster Rugg 4 pair Canvis Shooks 2 pair Curtains and valleins 4 Chests 1 old Table 1 Couch 1 Great Trunk 1 small ditto 1 Cupboard 2 Brass Kettles 1 pieis Dowlas 2 spits 1 Driping pan & fender 6 Iron Pots 5 pair Pot-hooks 6 dishes 1 bason 2 dozen of plates 4 old chairs made of kain 9 head horses + mares 3 Colts of 1 year old each 4 head Oxen 2 Chaine Staples 8 Yoaks 7 Cows + calves 1 Bull 2 barron cows 2 five year old stears 6 Beasts of a year old each 30 head of sheep being yews and lambs 4 Silver spoons 1 Silver dram cup 1 Lignum vitae punch Bowl 1 Chaffing Dish 1 Brass Mortar & Iron Pestle 2 ditto & 1 great iron pestle 1 broad ax 2 narrow D^o 1 Tennant Saw 1 Whipsaw 1 drawing knife 2 augurs 1 Frow 1 pair Stilliards & too with Canhooks 1 Saddle & Curb bridle 3 servants 2 Men 1 Woman 3 years + 6 months to serve 1 Welshman 4 years to serve the other servant named Garrard Moore 13 months to serve 1 old Chest drawers 1 old plow 1 old pair Cart wheels w^{th} a Cart 2 old Course Table Cloths & 8 Napkins 4 Towels 1 Gall^n Pott 1 Paile Pott 2 Chamber Potts 2 tankards a parsil of old Bottles 1 old Looking Glass 1 Grid Iron 1 Flesh fork & Skimmer 1 pair Spit hooks Iron square 3 pair Iron tongs 2 Nutmeg graters 3 Candlesticks 1 old Great Boat old Sails Hawsers Graplin 1 Box Iron 1 Warming pan 2 pair Pot racks Jurat in Curia Returned by John Waugh Jun^r APPENDIX B Inventory of Peter Beach [Stafford County Will Book--Liber Z--1699-1709--p. 158-159.] Estate of Peter Beach. Inventory taken by William Downham, Edward Mountjoy, W^m Allen "having mett together at the house of Mr. Peter Beach." "Dan'l Beach Alex and Mary Waugh executors Nov. 20, 1702" To 4 three year old heifers. at 350 Tob^o p 1400 To 1 stear 6 years old at 600 To 5 D^o 4 year old at 2000 2600 To the 2 yr old at 2800 To 2 Bulls at 600 3400 To 8 Cows & Calves at 4000 To 2 Barron Cows 900 4900 To 1 Mare & Mare Filly at 1200 To 1 two year old horse 400 1600 To 1 D^o 5 years old at 1000 To 1 very old D^o at 150 1150 To 1 Feather bedd + Bedstead + furniture 1500 To 1 do at 1200 2700 To 2 D^o at 2000 To 1 Old Flock Bed + Feather pillow at 300 2300 To one servant Bot 9 years to serve 3000 to 4 stoolth 8 Chairs @ 160- 3160 To 9 old flagg & boarded Chairs 130 To 1 small old table & stool 100 230 To 1 old Standing Cupboard 150 To Looking Glass at 30 100 To 1 pair small Stilliards at 60 to 1 Iron Spit+Dripping pan at 80 140 To 1 pair old Tongs and fire shovel at 30 To 2 Ladles+Chafing Dish 50 80 To 1 old Narrow Ax + frow at 30 To 1 Box Iron & Heaters at 25 55 To a passel of Glass Bottles at 40 To a Parcel of old Iron at 50 90 To 8 old Pewter Dishes and three Basons Ditto at 228 To 1 small Table Cloth + 6 Napkins at 50 to 4 Tinpanns 1 Copper Sawspan at 150 100 To 2 2 quart Potts 1 Pewter Tankard Old 20 To 1 old Warming Pan 20 To 1 Brass candlestick 1 Skimmer Old 15 35 To pasl of Earthen Ware 50 To 3 Iron Potts 2 p^r potthooks 250 To 1 Brass Kettle at 300 600 To 1 Brass kettle at 60 To 23 pewter plates old 110 To 4 old Chests 250 420 To 1 Frying Pan 1 Meal Sifter 15 To a parcel of old Tables and Cyder Cask 350 365 To 1 Pewter Sheaf[214] 50 To 1 old Gun 100 To 2 Bibles at 40 190 To 1 Pewter Chamber Pott 10 To 3 Pewter Salts 1 Dram Cup 15 25 To 1 pair Iron Spansils[215] at 50 ----- Total [_sic_] 26010 Daniel Beach was janitor of the Court House, being paid 200 pounds tobacco annually 1700-1703: 1700 and 1701--"To Daniel Beach for cleaning the Court House" 1702 and 1703--"To Daniel Beach for Sweeping the Courthouse." FOOTNOTES: [214] A cluster or bundle of things tied up together; a quantity of things set thick together. [New Oxford Dictionary] [215] SPANCEL: A rope or fetter for hobbling cattle, horses, etc.; especially, a short, round rope used for fettering the hind legs of a cow during milking. [New Oxford Dictionary] APPENDIX C Charges to Account of Mosley Battaley for Goods Sold by Mercer [From Ledger B, p. 1] £ s. d. 1725 October 12^{th} To Ball^{ns}. y^r Acco^{tt} Book A for (75) 3 10 3 To a Sword & Belt 14 To 1 Snuff 8 To 1 best worsted Cap 5 To 1 p^r Neats Leather Saddlebags 12 9 To 2 silk Romall handkerchiefs @ 3/ 6 To 1 p^r Seersuckers 1 13 To 1 fine Hat N^o 7 13 6 To Cornelius Tacitus in fol. 7 13^{th} To 1 p^r mens white topt Gloves 1 6 To 50 4^p Nails 2 14^{th} To 5-1/4 y^{ds} Broadcloath at 9/ 2 7 3 To 7 y^{ds} Shalloone at 2/ 14 To 8 Sticks Mohair at 3^d 2 To 7 doz Coatbuttons at 7-1/2^d 4 4-1/2 To 4 doz. breast d^o at 3-3/4 1 3 To 3 hanks Silk at 9^d 2 3 To 1-1/4 y^{ds} Wadding at 10^d 1 3 To 1 p^r Stone buttons set in Silver 5 15^{th} To 1 p^r large Scissars 7-1/2 To 1 p coll^d binding 1 7-1/2 To 1 p holland tape 1 6 To 6 ells broad Garlix N^o F at 2/11 17 6 To 1 p^r womens wash gloves 1 6 19^{th} To 1 y^d black ribband 10 To 1 horn & Ivory knife & fork 1 21 To 1 fine hat N^o 7 13 6 To 1/4 y^d Persian 1 3 To 2 y^{ds} silk Ferritting at 5^d 10 22 To Cash won on the Race against Cobler 5 29 To 1/4 y^d broadcloath 2 3 To 1 q^t Rum 1 3 To a Sword & Belt 14 3 To Club in Punch 2 To 1^£ sugar & 1 q^t Rum 2 30 To Club with Quarles 9 Novb^r 20 To 1 quire best paper 1 6 Dec^r 13 To 1 narrow axe 2 3 16 To 1200 10^d Nails 5 30 To 1 p^r Shooebuckles 7-1/2 To 100 6^d Nails 9 To y^r Stafford Clks notes 162^£ tob^o 1 3 Feb 5 To Cash on Acc^t Thomas Harwood 10 ------------------- Mar 5 To D^o 18 6 11-1/2 ------------------- 21 To 1 q^t Rum & 1^£ Sugar 2 3 Ap^l 3 To 2 q^{ts} D^o & 1 y^d Muslin 6 26 To 1 q^t D^o to Tho^s Benson 1 6 Sept^r 16^{th} To 1/2 y^ Druggett 1 10-1/2 To 2 y^{ds} Wadding 1 6 To p^d for rolling down Thomson's hhd. tob^o 10 ------------------- £19 10 1 APPENDIX D "Domestick Expenses" [From Ledger B] £ s. d. 1725 Sept^r 9^{th} To Cash for Exp^s at Stafford & Spotsylvania 1 3 To 7-1/2 y^{ds} Grown Linnen Sarah & Pitts 7 6 To 11 fowls & 1 quarter beef 17 6 To 100^£ Sugar to this day expended 2 16 6 To Cash for Exp^s Urbanna 3 1-1/2 To Horsehire &c 6 To p^d John Marnix for bringing my Sloop 2^d 10 To p^d his ferrage 1 3 To Cash for Exp^s Poplar Spring 1 3 To Exp^s at Bowcocks 10 To Exp^s at M^{rs}. Powers's 1 5 7-1/2 To a man to cart down Cook & barber 1 3 To Exp^s at Gibbons's 2 To Exp^s at Dalton's 15 To given Serv^{ts} at Col^o Page's 2 6 To 1-1/2 doz. red Port at 22/6 1 13 9 To 1-1/2 doz. mountain at 30/ [Note 1] 2 5 To Exp^s poplar Spring 2 3 To 1 bar^l tar & pitch for the Sloop 1 6 6 To 50^1 pork 8 4 To 25^l bisquet 3 6 To 1 China punch bowl 10 To 6 Glasses 3 To 8^l Candles 6 To given Servants at M^r Standard's 3 1-1/2 To Ferrage & Exp^s Piscattaway & Hob's Hole 4 4-1/2 To Exp^s Essex Court & Ferrage at Keys 1 3 To p^d William Warrell Wages 1 To p^d Patrick Cowan D^o 1 2 11 To horsehire from York 2 To a Trunk 6 To a Saddle & Furniture self 3 15 To 1-1/2 y^d Cotton 2 5-1/4 To 1 horsewhip 6 9 To 1 p^r Shooes & buckles Pitts 6 7-1/2 Oct^r 2 To 2 silk Romall handkerchiefs [Note 2] 6 To 6 loaves 9^s 38-3/4^£ double refin'd Sugar 2 18 7-1/2 To 2^l Tea at 15/ 1 10 To 6^l Chocolate 15 To 15-1/4^l Castile Soap at 13^d 17 1-3/4 To 15^l Gunpowder at 9^d 11 3 To 1 mans worsted Cap 3 10-1/2 To 1 Wig Comb & Case 9 To 1 purse wrought with Silver 2 3 To 2 p^r buttons set in Silver at 3/ 6 To 1 p^c 9^d 14-3/4 Ells bag holland at 7/10-1/2 5 14 2 To 2 p^r mens fine worsted hose at 6/ 12 To 2 p^r mens fine thread D^o at 5/ 10 To 1 p^r womens silk D^o 12 To 1 p^r womens fine worsted D^o 5 6 To 1 p^r Scissars with silver Chain 10 6 To 1 box Iron & heaters 9 9 To 1 fine hat n^o 6 12 To 1 fine Dandriff Comb 1 6 To 1 ounce fine thread 7-1/2 To 1 fine hat N^o 7 9 To 30 y^{ds} fine Dutch Check at 2/6 3/15 To 1 m^s pins 1 6 To 2 p^c tape 2 4 To 1 hat N^o 5 gave Sam 2 6 To 1 quire best paper 1 3 To 1 Storebook 1 5 To 1 p^r Seersuckers 1 13 To 1 hoop petticoat 1 1 To 1 womans side Saddle & furniture 3 11 3 To 2 y^{ds} silver ribband at 22-1/2 3 9 To 1 hat N^o 12 9 To 1 y^d fine strip't muslin 6 To 1 y^d fine Kenting [Note 3] 4 To 4-1/2 y^{ds} white Cotton Sarah at 18^d 5 9 To 4-1/2 y^{ds} filletting D^o at 3^d [Note 4] 1 1-1/2 To 2 skeins thread 2 To 1 p^r wom^s wash gloves 1 6 To 1/4^l w^t bio: thread 1 5 To 1/2 doz: plates 7 6 To 2 porringers 2 6 To 1 p^r fine blankets 1 13 To 1 y^d fine strip'd muslin 6 To 1 Cadow Sarah [Note 5] 3 6 To Earthen Ware 10 To 1-1/2 bushel Wheat 4 6 To 2 fowls 10 To Battalay's Account for Rum both in day 2 1 3 To 1-1/2 y^d red Cotton 2 5-1/4 To 1 p^r womens Shooes 3 6 To 1 p^r patterdashers [Note 6] 14 3 To 5 Candlesticks 17 6 To 1 Bed Cord 2 To 3 maple knives & forks 2 Oct^r 22 To Cash lost at a Race 2 To Tho^s Watts for Ditto 10 To Expences there 1 4 To 6 y^{ds} silk ferriting at 5^d [Note 7] 2 6 25 To 16-1/2 y^{ds} Cantaloons at 7-1/2 for Pease [Note 8] 10 3-3/4 To 1 P^r mens thread hose 5 To 1 p^r mens silk Ditto 1 1 To 2-1/4 y^{ds} fine Kenting at 4/6 10 1-1/2 26 To 1 p^r wom^s worsted hose 3 To 1 knife & fork 8 27 To a Steer 1 11 9 To 2 yew haft knives & forks 1 3 28 To 2 q^{ts} Rum 4 6 To 1 yew haft knife & fork & 1 p^r Studds 1 10-1/2 29 To 1 p^r Salisbury Scissars 2 6 To 1-1/2 Gallon Rum 4 6 To 1 speckled knife & fork 5 Nov^r 4 To 1 writing Desk 5 16 8 To 1 Glass & Cover 8 9 To 18^l Pewter at 1 8 To 6 tea Cups & Saucers 14 To 2 Chocolate Cups 2 4 To 2 Custard Cups 1 9 To 1 Tea Table painted with fruit 16 4 To 6 leather Chairs at 7/ 2 2 To 1 sm^l walnut eating table 8 To 1/2 doz Candlemoulds 10 GLOSSARY 1. "Mountain: 5. (In full _mountain wine_). A variety of Malaga wine, made from grapes grown on the mountains."--_A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles,_ Sir James A. H. Murray, ed., vol. 6 (Oxford, 1908), p. 711. 2. "Romal: 1. A silk or cotton square or handkerchief, sometimes used as a head-dress; a thin silk or cotton fabric with a handkerchief pattern."--Ibid., vol. 8, pt. 1 (Oxford, 1910), p. 764. 3. "Kenting: A kind of fine linen cloth."--Ibid., vol. 5, (Oxford, 1901), p. 673. 4. "Filleting: 2. a. A woven material for binding; tape; a piece of the same; a band or bandage."--Ibid., vol. 4 (Oxford, 1901), p. 217. 5. "Caddow: A rough woolen covering ... 1880. _Antrim & Down Gloss._ (E. D. S.) _Cadda_, _Caddaw_, a quilt or coverlet, a cloak or cover; a small cloth which lies on a horse's back."--Ibid., vol. 2 (Oxford, 1893), p. 13. 6. Patterdashers. Probably the same as "spatter-dash. A legging or gaiter extending to the knee, worn as a protection from water and mud." Webster's _New International Dictionary of the English Language_, second ed., unabridged; Springfield, Mass., G. & C. Merriam Co., 1958. 7. Ferreting. Same as "Ferret. 2. A stout tape most commonly made of cotton, but also of silk; then known as Italian ferret." Murray, _op. cit._, (no. 1) vol. 4 (Oxford, 1901), p. 165. 8. "Cantoloon. _Obs._ A wollen stuff manufactured in the 18th c. in the west of England." Ibid., vol. 2: (Oxford, 1893), p. 79. 9. "Soosy ... 1858. Simmond's _Dictionary of Trade._ Soocey, a mixed striped fabric of silk and cotton in India."--Ibid., vol. 9. pt. 1 (Oxford, 1919), p. 428. £ s. d. To 1 Tea table 18 To 1 brass chaffing dish 5 To 6 copper tart pans 6 Nov^r 4^{th} To 1 p^r mens yarn hose 2 To 1 silk Romal 3 To Expences Spotsylvania Court &C 1 7 4 To 1 p^r bellows To 2 funnells To Coffeepot, teapots, &c 7 To 1 Seabed Sheets Table Linnen &c 3 10 To Cash to Pitts to bear Expences at Court 2 9 To a pack of Cards 9 To 1 pair mens Shooes 5 6 To 1 silk Romall handkerchief 3 11 To 6-1/2 y^{ds} Cantaloons @ 9^d 4 8-1/2 17 To 16 q^r 22 y^{ds} Scotch Cloth @20^d-1/4 1 17 1-1/2 20 To p^d William Warrell Wages for this day 1 6 8-1/2 22 To 6-1/4^l tallow @ 6^d 3 16 To 3-1/2 y^{ds} Cantaloons & 40^l coll'd thread 3 4 To 1 maple knife & fork 1 25 To 154^l pork at 1-1/2 19 3 To 91^l D^o at 1-1/2 11 4-1/2 Dec^r 19 To 2 p^r wom^s Shooes 11 X^tmas To Cash for Lost at Cards & sundry Expenses 1 18 19 To p^d Thomas Morris for pork 6 7 5 To p^d Pitts Wages till February 4 19 9-1/2 To p^d Thomas Collins D^o till March 18 2 To 3 Ells y^d w^d Garlix 3/ 9 To sundrys from M^r Crompton p^r Acc^t 1 19 1-1/2 Feb 26 To 1 q^t rum 27 4 q^{ts} D^o 7 6 Mar 2 To 2 q^{ts} D^o 5. 1 q^{ts} D^o 7 2 q^{ts} D^o 8^{th}. 5 q^{ts} D^o 15 9 To 2 q^{ts} D^o To sundry Exp^s to this Day 1 10 To 2 q^t Rum 12th 2 q^{ts} D^o 15th 2 q^{ts} D^o 9 15 To 5 p^{ts} Rum 1^l Sugar & 2 y^{ds} Check 7 6 18 To 7 gall^s Rum & 16^l Sugar 2 9 6 To Cash for taking up W^m Hall's horse 10 To D^o at Stafford Court 4 To Sundrys to W^m Dunn 1 17 6 June 11 To cleaning out the house 6 9 To 1500 10^d Nails used about it. 11 3 To 1 doz. Canary 1 10 To p^d Tho^s Collins his Wages to May 11 3 To 2 doz & 8 bottles Claret 2 8 To 3 Cows & Calves & 1 featherbed 11 To 1 [?] Chints 18 To 21-1/2y^{ds} coll^d blew at 2.6 2 13 1-1/2 To 15 y^{ds} course Check at 16^d 1 To 12 y^{ds} best D^o 18 To Account Rum &c to this day 2 10 To Wheat Corn fowls &c 3 2 3 To sundrys of M^c farlane as p^r Acc^t 5 11 1-1/2 To sundrys of Alex^r Buncle as p^r D^o 15 17 9-1/2 To 7-1/2 y^{ds} y^d w^d Check @ 2/ to W^m Dunn 15 To 2-1/2 y^{ds} brown linnen @ 10^d to D^o 2 1 To p^d M^{rs} Bourne for sundrys 5 To p^d for a Coffin & digging ye Child's grave 1 5 To sundry Expences for fowls &c 17 4 To John Chinn's Acc^t ferrages &c for going to W^{ms}burgh 2 5 6 To 2 p^r Andirons 2 Trunks &c 2 7 6 To 2 dishes & 4-3/4 y^{ds} India Persian 1 13 1-1/2 To 1 p^r Shooes & buckles 6 To Cash to Bates to go for my horse 7 2 To D^o lost at Race & gave Scarlett Handcock 2 12 To Cash for Exp^s 3 9 To John Barber for going to Gloucester 11 6 To gave W^m Johnson 7-1/2 To paid for Apples 6 To paid Eliz^a Rowsey Wages 6 9 To 5 gall^s Rum 1 5 To sundrys bought of Thomas Hudson as by his account 12 6 10 To 1 y^d princes Linnen W^m Johnson 1 3 To Cash for 1/2 doz. Spoons &c 4 10-1/2 To D^o for Exp^s on a Journey to W^{ms}burgh 1 19 3-1/2 To Mosley Battaley's Acc^t for his fee for 1726 2 10 To allowed him for extraordinary service 4 15 1 To Peter Whitings Account Palms & Sail Needles 2 6 56^1 Cordage 1 8 3 To Cha^s McClelland's Account for sundrys Going to Col^o Mason's for Eliz Rowsey 10 Going to York & sundrys 1 5 6 Going to Nich^o Smith's 10 To Rob^t Spotswood's Account for sundrys 1 10 To Geo. Rust's Acc^t for 1 Ironpot 5 To John Dagge's Acc^t of sundrys 1 Oven 17 6 Bringing over 10 Sheep from Sumn^{rs} 5 To John Randolph's Acc^t for Lawyers fees 4 2 To Esme Stewart's D^o for Toys 2 To George Walker D^o for Law Charges 4 15 5 To 2 Gall^s Rum of Simon Peirson 10 To John Maulpus's Acc^t for 2 bar^{ls} Corn 1 1 To Thomas Hudson's D^o for 2 bar^{ls} D^o 15 To Joshua Davis's D^o for paid Thomas Jefferies for a Gun 2 To M^r Graeme's Acc^t for sundry books 2 9 3 To Jn^o Quarles's D^o for 1 p^r sm^l Stilliards 7 6 To Hen Woodcock's D^o for Ferrages 9 To Harry Beverley's D^o for Lawyer's fees 4 2 To Rob^t Wills's Acc^t for sundrys 18 8 To Rose Dinwiddie's Acc^t for 1 p^r mens yarn hose & 2 bush^{ls} Wheat 7 6 To Peter Hedgman's D^o for sundrys 2 2 7 To Mary Fitzhugh's D^o for 8 bus^{ls} Wheat 9 To Lazarus Pepper's D^o for Quitrent of 187 Acres of Land 4 6 To Quitrents of 2087 Acres of Land for the year 1725 2 8 To Cash Account for sundrys 11 8 To Rawleigh Chinn's Acc^t for sundrys 0 0 0 Keeping my horse for a Race 15 1-1/2 barr^l Corn 15 1 Shoat 18 Fodder 17^d 5 Geese 7/6 10 5 4 days hire Moll 1 3 Dressing Deerskins for Will Dunn 4 Plowing & fencing my Garden 1 4 A Gun 18 To Alexand^r M^cfarlane's Acc^t A Caddow & 1 p^r blankets 16 1 wom^s horsewhip 6 1£ Gunpowder & 10^£ Shot 5 10 1 womans bound felt 4 6 To 12^l Gunpowder & 20^l Shot 2 To Henry Floyd's Acc^t for 5 pecks Corn 2 6 To Ja^s Whalley's D^o for 7 fowls 3 To Ja^s Horsenaile's D^o for sundrys 1 19 9 To John Holdbrook's Acc^t for taylor's work 2 11 6 To John Tinsley's Acc^t for Fodder & tallow 14 To Hugh French's Acc^t for a Serv^t woman 12 To D^r Roy for a visit & medicines my Child 12 6 To Edw^d Snoxall's Acc^t for 1 bush^l hommonybeans 4 To Edw^d Simm's Acc^t for sundrys 6 11 11 To Ralph Falconer's D^o for D^o 1 10 To Tho^s Eves for fowls 4 6 To 1 olives 5 To 1 pair mens Shooes W^m Dunn 5 To 3 Ells Dowlass D^o 5 6 To 1-1/2 bush^l Corn 3 To 3-3/4 y^{ds} Check for finding my Saddle 5 To 10 y^{ds} fustian 2/6 1 5 To 5-1/4 doz Coat Buttons 10^d 4 2 To 3 hanks silk & 2 hanks mohair 3 2 To 4 Soosey handkerchiefs [Note 9] 12 To 12 yd^s Check & 1 p^r mens gloves 4 To 2 yd^s Wadding 1 6 To 6-1/4 bush^{ls} Corn 13 To 2-3/4 bush^{ls} pease 11 To 2 bush^{ls} potatoes 4 -------------------- £285 2 3-1/4 APPENDIX E Mercer's Reading 1726-1732 [From Ledger B] _Mr. John Graeme_ 1726 By sundry Book bo^d of him belong^s to the Hon^{ble} Col^o Spotswood. Viz. The History of England 3 vols £4. 2 Clarendon's History 6 vols 2. 2 Tillotson's Works 15 vols 5.15 Plutarch's Lives 5 vols 1.10 Dryden's Virgil 3 vols 17.6 Cowley's Works 2 vols 13. Milton's Paradise Lost 6.6 Secret Memories 7.7 Chamberlayne's State of England 6.6 Wilkin's Mathematical Works 5.6 Petronius 5. Tilly's Orations 5.6 [Symbol: dagger]Bible 4 Hudibras 2 vol 5.3 Callipoedia 2. Dunster's Horace 6. De Gennes Voyage 3. Banquet of Xenophon 3. Congreve's Plays 4. Lock's Essays 12. Evelyn's Gardening 1. [Symbol: dagger]Littleton's Dictionary } [Symbol: dagger]Present State of Russia } [Symbol: dagger]Sedley's Works } 1. [Symbol: dagger]New Voyages } [Symbol: dagger]New Travels } [Symbol: dagger]Cole's Dictionary } [All except those marked by [Symbol: dagger] are listed as returned on the debit side] * * * * * Law Books Bought of Mat Stotham May 1732 Salkeld's Reports 1.18. Ventris's Reports 1.15. Jacob's Law Dictionary 1. 8. Maxims of Equity 10. Cursus Cancellaris 6. Hearn's Pleader 1. 5. Lilly's Practical Register 2 vol 14. Treatise of Trespasses 6. Laws of Evidence 8. Laws of Ejectments 8. The 5 last extraordinary scarce _Account of Books lent & to whom_ (1730) History of the Netherlands Jn^o Savage July 13 Coles's Dictionary History of the Royal Society Col^o Fitzhugh Rochesters Works Andrew Forbes Evelyn's Sylva Ralph Falkner Woods Institutes 1^{st} Vol. Parson Rose Mathesis Juvenilia } Ozenam's Mathem. Recreations } Edmund Bagge Cockers Arithmetick Robert Jones 30 Mariners Compass rectified M^r Savage Travels thro' Italy &c Cap^t Hedgman Daltons Justice D^o _A Catalogue of the Books bought March 1730 of Mr Rob^t Beverley_ Coke's Reports temp Eliz^a Reg 1.10 Dalton's Officium Vicecomitum 1. Coke upon Littleton 1. Cokes 2^d, 3^d & 4^{th} Institutes 2. 4 Cooks Reports 1. Laws of Virginia fol^o printed two 1. 4 Compleat Clerk 12. Swinburne [18th-century author] 12. Laws of the Sea 14. Godolphin's Orphans Legacy 9. Symboleography 14. Sheppards Grand Abridgment 1.10. Three Sets of Wingates Abridgm^t of Statutes 15. Instructor Clericalis in 7 parts 1.15. Woods Institutes 2 vol 8vo 12. Placita Generalia 5. Tryals per pair 5. Practical Register 6. Law of Obligations & Conditions 3.6 Reads Declarations 4. Clerks Tutor 6. Prasca Cancellaria 6. Fitzherberts new Naturabrevium 6. Brownlows Declarations 6. Clerks Guide 3.6 Melloy de Jure maritime 6. Grounds of the Law 3. Compleat Attorney 5. Terms of the Law 5. Finch's Law 3. Doctor & Student 3. Greenwood of Courts 3.6 Law of Conveyances 3. Practice of Chancery 5. English Liberties 2. Reports in Chancery 3. Meriton 3. Exact Constable 1. Littletons Tenures 2. Written Laws of Virginia 25. --------- £46. 7.6 Woodbridge of Agriculture The Compleat Angler Salmons Dispensatory The accomplished Cook History of the Royal Society March y^e 4th 1730, I promise to deliver the above mentioned books being fifty two in number to M^rJohn Mercer or his Order on demand. Witness my hand the day & year abovewritten. Rob^t Beverley Test John Chew Copy APPENDIX F Credit side of Mercer's account with Nathaniel Chapman [From Ledger B. Nathaniel Chapman was Superintendent of the Accokeek Iron Works.] 1731 Sep 9 By Ball^[a.] bro^[t.] from fol 36 £ . 2.4 By 500 2^d Nails @ 2/5 p m . 2.5 By 500 3^d D 3/ 3. By 1^m 4^d D^o 4/ 4. By 6^m 6^d D^o 5/ 10. By 4^m 8^d D^o 7/9 1.11. By 4^m 10^d D^o 9/6 1.18. By 8^m 12^d D^o 12/ 1.16. By 2^m 20^d D^o 14/ 1. 8. By 1 handsaw file 5^d .5 By 1 p^r mens wood heel shooes 6/6 6.6 By 1 half Curb bridle 6/ 6. By 1 halter 2/4 2.4 By 1 boys hat 2/ 2. 25 By 1 coll^d thread 3/ 3. Oct 29 By 16 1-1/2 20^d } Nailes }2000 20^d @ 1. 6. By 27 1-1/2 24^d D^o } 13/ By 2^m 8^d D^o 7/ 15.6 By 4^m 10^d D^o 9/6 1.16. By 5^m 12^d D^o 12/ 3. January 1 By 1 p^r girls Shooes By 4y^{ds} Cotton 2/4 9.4 By 1 double Girth 2/ 2. By 1 Garden hoe By 2-1/2 y^{ds} Kersey 4/1-1/2 10.3-3/4 By 1-1/2 y^{ds} Shalloone 1/9 2.7-1/2 By my Ord^r in favour of W^m Holdbrook 4. 1.3-1/2 By 2 hanks sowing Silk 9^d 1.6 By Cash overpaid 1.2 By 1-1/2 y^d Garlix N^o 24 2.5 10 By 1 Iron pot g^t 36^l-1/2 at 4^d 12.2 By 1 bushel Salt 2.6 By 1 new Axe 5. By 1 p^r pothooks & wedges 16^l-1/2 at 8^d 11. Feb. 7 By 1 plough & Swingle tree fitted of w^{th} Iron 9.6 By 5 narrow hoes 12.6 By 2 grubbing hoes 10^l-1/2 at 8^d 7. By 1 Ironwedge 4^l-1/2 at 8^d 3. By 2 new horse Collars 8. By 2 p^r Hames & Ironwork 1.6 By 2 p^r Iron traces g^t 19^{lb} at 8^d 12.8 By Iron door Latch 9 By 1 Ironrake 1.6 By 2 Heaters By putting a leg in an old Iron pott Mar By 17-1/2 double refin'd Sugar @ 16^d 1. 3. By 100^l Sugar 35/& 3 gall^s Rum 7/6 2. 2.6 -------------- £28.15.8-3/4 APPENDIX G Overwharton Parish Account [From Ledger B] ------------------------------------+--------------------------------- | Overwharton Parish Dr. | Contra | 1730 |1730 March | March 15 To a Book to keep the | By W^m Holdbrook's fine Parish Register £1.11. | for Adultery £5 To drawing Bonds between | By Ebenezer Moss's for Blackburn & the | swearing & Sabbath Churchwardens ab^t | breaking 1.15. building the Church 1. | By Edward Franklyn's for To fee v Moss 11.8 | swearing when reced 3. Ballenger | Cabnet | -------- | £9.15. | 15 | To 1/3 W^m Holdbrooks's | fine 1.13.4 | To 1/3 Eliz^a Bear's D^o | To fee v Franklyn 1. | To paid Burr Harrison by | Ord^o Vestry 2.10. | ------- | £8.11 | £1.4 | ------- | £9.15 | 1732 |1732 April | To fee v Coulter £ .15. | March 25 | By Ball^a 1.4 | By Eliz^a Ballengers fine | for a bastard | By Alice Jefferies' D^o | By Ann Holt's D^o APPENDIX H Colonists Identified by Mercer According to Occupation [From Ledger G] William Hunter Merchant Fredericksburg Jonathan Foward Merchant London William Stevenson Merchant London Robert Rae Merchant Falmouth Robert Tucker Merchant Norfolk David Minitree Bricklayer [Williamsburg] Thomas Ross Merchant Alexandria William Monday Carpenter Abraham Basnett Oysterman John Booth Weaver John Pagan Merchant Fairfax John Grigsby Smith Stafford Francis Hogans Wheelwright Caroline Doctor Spencer [Physician] Fredericksburg William Threlkeld Weaver Elliott Benger Loftmaster Gen'l. William Brownley [Bromley] Joiner Andrew Beaty Joiner George Wythe Attorney-at-Law Williamsburg William Jackson Wheelwright Stafford James Griffin Carpenter William Thomson Tailor Fredericksburg Jacob Williams Plasterer Joseph Burges Plasterer Henry Threlkeld Merchant Quantico Cavan Dulany Attorney-at-law [Prince William?] Peter Murphy Sawyer John Fitzpatrick Weaver Cuthbert Sandys Merchant Fredericksburg Henry Mitchell Merchant Occaquan John Harnett Ship Carpenter Nanjemoy John Graham Merchant Essex Fielding Lewis Merchant Fredericksburg Robert Duncanson Merchant Fredericksburg John Fox Smith Fredericksburg Robert Gilchrist Merchant Port Royal Robert Jones Attorney-at-Law Surrey [Jonathan] Sydenham & Hodgson Merchants King George Watson & Cairnes Merchants Nansemond William Prentis Merchant Williamsburg William Mills Weaver Stafford Thomas Barry Bricklayer Edward Powers Shoemaker Caroline Clement Rice Shoemaker King George William Ramsay Merchant Fairfax Andrew Sproul Merchant Norfolk Richard Savage Merchant Falmouth Charles Dick Merchant Fredericksburg William Miller Horse Jockey Augusta Charles Jones Tailor Williamsburg Peter Scott Joiner Williamsburg William Copen [Copein] Mason Prince William John Blacke Gardener Marlborough Richard Gamble Barber Williamsburg Launcelot Walker Merchant John Rider Waterman Maryland John Proby Pilot Hampton John Hyndman Merchant Williamsburg James Craig Jeweler Williamsburg Robert Crichton Merchant Williamsburg John Simpson Wheelwright Fredericksburg George Charleton Tailor Williamsburg Hugh MacLane Tailor Stafford William Kelly Attorney Prince William Walter Darcy Harnessmaker John Carlyle Merchant Fairfax ---- Kirby Mason King George APPENDIX I Materials Listed in Accounts with Hunter and Dick, Fredericksburg Alphabetical Summary of Materials listed in Ledger G in Mercer's accounts with William Hunter and Charles Dick, merchants of Fredericksburg. Definitions are based on information in _A New Oxford Dictionary_, Webster's _New International Dictionary_ (second edition, unabridged), _Every Day Life in the Massachusetts_ Bay Colony, by George F. Dow (Boston, 1935), and a series of articles by Hazel E. Cummin in _Antiques_: vol. 38, pp. 23-25, 111-112; vol. 39, pp. 182-184; vol. 40, pp. 153-154, 309-312. ALLAPINE: A mixed stuff of wool and silk, or mohair and cotton. BOMBAYS: Raw cotton. BOMBAZINE: A twilled or corded dress material of silk and worsted, sometimes also of cotton and worsted, or of worsted alone. In black, used for mourning. BROADCLOTH: A fine, smooth woolen cloth of double width. BUCKRAM: A kind of coarse linen or cotton fabric, stiffened with gum or paste. Murray quotes Berkeley, _Alicphr_ ... (1832), "One of our ladies ... stiffened with hoops and whalebone and buckram." CALAMANCO: A light-weight material of wool or mohair and wool, sometimes figured or striped, sometimes dyed in clear, bright colors, and calendered to a silky gloss to resemble satin. CALICO: Murray defers to Chambers' _Cyclopaedia_ definition (1753): "An Indian stuff made of cotton, sometimes stained with gay and beautiful colours ... Calicoes are of divers kinds, plain, printed, painted, stain'd, dyed, chints, muslins, and the like." It is not to be confused with the modern material of the same name. CAMBRIC: A fine white linen or cotton fabric, much used for handkerchiefs and shirts, originally made at Cambray in Flanders. CAMLET: A class of fine-grained material of worsted or mohair and silk, sometimes figured, sometimes "watered." _Moreen_ is one of its subtypes. CHECK: Any checked, woven or printed, material. DUFFEL: A woven cloth with a thick nap, synonymous with _shag_. Made originally at Duffel, near Antwerp. In a passage quoted by Murray, Defoe (_A Tour of Great Britain_) mentions its manufacture at Witney, "a Yard and three quarters wide, which are carried to New England and Virginia." FRIEZE: A coarse woolen cloth with a nap on one side. GARLIX: Linen made in Gorlitz, Silesia, in several shades of blue-white and brown. HOLLAND: A linen material, sometimes glazed, first made in Holland. KERSEY (often spelled "Cresoy" by Mercer): A coarse, long-fiber woolen cloth, usually ribbed, used for stockings, caps, etc. SHALLOON: A closely woven woolen material used for linings. PRUNELLA: A stout, smooth material, used for clergymen's gowns, and later for the uppers of women's shoes. TAMMY: A plain-woven worsted material, with open weave. Used plain, it served for flour bolts, soup and milk strainers, and sieves. Dyed and glazed, and sometimes quilted, it was used for curtains, petticoat linings, and coverlets. TARTAN: Woolen cloth woven in Scotch plaids. In addition to these fabrics, there are listed "China Taffety," "Silv^r Vellum," "worsted," "Pomerania Linnen," "Russia Bedtick," "Irish linnen," "1 yd. India Persian," "worsted Damask," "Mechlin lace" (a costly Belgian pillow lace, of which Mercer purchased nine yards of "No. 3" at five shillings, and eight yards of "N^o 4" at six shillings), "sprig Linnen," and "6 silk laces at 4-1/2." For trimming and finishing, one finds white thread, black thread, nun's thread, brown thread, blue thread, red thread, colored thread (all bought by the pound), gingham and hair buttons, "gold gimp ribband," "pair Womens buckles," fringe, coat buttons, vest buttons, scarlet buttons, silver coat buttons, shirt buttons, "mettle" vest buttons, "fine" shirt buttons, "course" shirt buttons, "Card sleeve buttons," silver sleeve buttons, and cording. There were several purchases of haircloth, used principally in stiffening lapels and other parts of men's clothing, but used also for towels, tents, and for drying malt and hops. APPENDIX J Account of George Mercer's Expenses while Attending the College of William and Mary [From Ledger G] Son's Maintenance at Williamsburg, Dr. 1750 April 5 To Cash £ 1. 7.6 To D^o p^d M^r. Robinson for Entranc £4.12. M^r. Graeme D^o 4.12. M^r. Preston D^o 4. 6. 8 M^r. Davenport D^o 1.12. 6 Housekeeper 3.10. for Candles 15.10 for Pocket money 3. 6. 4 22.15.4 -------- To Cash p^d for Lottery Tickets 7.10.6 To D^o p^d for washing 1. 1. To M^r Dering for Board 5. To Peter Scott for mending a Table 2.6 To Housekeeping at Williamsburg for sundrys Viz A Featherbed & furniture £8. A Desk 1. 1. 6 An oval Table 1. 1. 3 Chairs 7/ 1. 1. 11. 3.6 --------- -------- July To General Charges for sundrys Viz To Cash p^d M^r Preston as advanced for George £2. 3 to George 2. 3 to the Usher 1.11. 3 5.17.3 --------- August To Cash p^d the Nurse attending J^{no} & Ja^s £2. 3. to John & James 1. 1. 6 3. 4.6 --------- To W^m Thomson for Taylors work 3.10.6 Septemb^r To Cash to George 1. 1.6 October To D^o to D^o to John James & Nurse 6. 9. To John Holt for sundrys 4. 5.7-1/2 To James Cocke for D^o 1.15.9 To Covington the dancing master 2. 3. To James Power for Cash to George 2.3 To William Prentis for sundrys 18. 1.3-1/2 To Rich^d Gamble for two wigs & shaving 5. 7.3 To Books for sundrys 22. 4.7-1/2 To W^m Thomson for Taylors work 1. 9.6 -------------- £126.13.1-1/2 APPENDIX K John Mercer's Library [From Ledger G] "The prices are the first Cost in Sterling money exclusive of Commission, Shipping or other Charges." Sterling LAW BOOKS _Abridgments_ Cases in Equity abridged £ 18. Danvers's Abridgment 3 vol 3.10. Viner's Abridgment 6 vol 8. 8. Davenport's Abridgm^t of Coke on Littleton 2. Hughes's Abridgm^t 2 vol 10. Ireland's Abridgm^t of Dyer's Reports 2. Rolle's Abridgm^t interleaved 2 vol 5. Salmon's Abridgm^t of the State trials 1.15. Statutes abridged by Cay 2 vol 2.10. State trials abridged 1 vol 5.6 Virginia Laws Abridged 8. _Conveyancing_ Ars Clericalis 1 vol 4.6 Compleat Conveyancer 5. Clerk's Guide 5. Clerk & Scriveners Guide 8. Herne's Law of Conveyances 2. Lawyer's Library 3.6 West's Symboleography 5. _Courts & Courtkeeping_ Attorneys Practise in C B 6. Attorney's Practise in B R 2 vol 12. Coke's Institutes 4^{th} Part 15. RK Crown Circuit Companion 6. History of the Chancery 2.6 AR Practise in Chancery 2 vol 7. Practick Part of the Law 6. GI Rules of Practise commonplaced 4. Practise of Chancery 1672 1.6 AR Harrison's Chancery Practiser 6. _Crown_ Coke's Institutes 3rd Part 15. Hale's History of the Pleas of the Crown 2.10. 2 vol/ Hawkins Pleas of the Crown 1.10. Hale's Continuation of the Crown Laws 2.6 Sutton de Pace Regis 5. _Dictionaries_ Consell's Interpreter 10. Jacobus's Law Dictionary 1. 8. Law French Dictionary 6. RI Students Law Dictionary 5. AR Term's de la Loy 5. _Entries_ Aston's 3. TA Brown Lows' Declarations 12. AR Bohun's Declarations 6. Brown's modus intrandi, 2 vol 12. Clift's 1.10. Coke's 1. 1. Lilly's 1. 5. Mallory's Quarer Impedit 17. Placila generalia & specialia 3. Rastallo 1. 1. Robinson's 10. Read's Declarations 3. Vidiano 10. Thompson's 1. _Justices of Peace_ Justicio vade mecum 2. Keble's Assistant to Justices 5. Manual for Justices 1641 2. _Maxims_ Doctor & Student 3.6 Finch's Law 4. Francis's Maxims of Equity 8. Hale's History & Analysis of the Laws 6. Hale's Hereditary Descants 1.6 Hawks's Grounds of the Laws of England 3. Perkins's Laws 2.6 Treatise of Equity 8.6 Woods Institutes of the Laws of England 1. 5. _Miscellanies_ Booth's Real Actions 8. GI Baron & ferne 6. Billinghurst of Bankrupts 1.6 Britton 5. Brown of fines & Recoveries 5. Coke's Institutes. Comments on Littleton Part 2 3. GI Cane's English Liberties 2. GI Curson's Laws of Estates tail 4.6 Domat's Civil Law 2 vol 2. 0. Dugdale's Origine's Judiciales 2. Duncomb's Trials perpais 6. Ejectments, Law of 5. GI Errors, Law of 6. GI Everyman his own Lawyer 5. Evidence, Laws of 6. GI Jacoba's Lex Mercatoria 5. GI Jus or Law of Masters & Servants 3. Landlord's Laws 3. GI Law Quibbles 4.6 Laws of Liberty & Property 2. March's Actions for Slander & Arbitrations 4. Molloy de jura maritimi & navali 7. GI Obligations Laws of 5. Sea Laws 12. GI Treatise of Trover & Conversion 2. GI Trespasses (Law of) Vi & armis 6. Virginia Laws Purvis's 12. Virginia Laws by Parks 2 Vol 2. Uses & Trials (Law of) 6. GI Usury (Law of) 2.6 Freeholders Companion 5. Turnbull's System of the Civil Law 2 vol 12. Jacobs's Collection of Steads for commonplaces 1.6 Chronica Iuridicialia abridged 4. Naval Trade 2 vol. 10. GI Law & Lawyers laid open 2.6 Freeholders Companion 5. Law of Devises & Revocations 3.6 Piffendorf's Law of Nature & Nations 1. 8. Views of Civil & Ecclesiastical Law 2.6 Study & Body of the Law 3. Treatise of Bills of Exchange 2.6 _Parliament_ Cases in Parliament 16. Hunt's Postscript 4. _Readings_ Alleyne's 9. Anderson's 1.15. Barnardiston's 1. 1. Bentses & Dalison's 10. Bridgman's 18. Bulstrode's 4. 4. Brownlow's & Goldenborough's 7. Carter's 8. Carthero's 1. 2. Cases in Chancery 3 P^{ts} 1.10. Cases in B R & B C from 2^d W^m 12 Mod 1.10. Cases in Law & Equity by Macclesfield 10 Mod 1. 4. Coke's 11 Parts 15. 12 & 13 Parts 7. Comberbach's 17. Croke's 3 vol 2.12.6 Cary's 3. Clayton's 3.6 Davis's 11. Dyer's 1.11.6 Farraday's 7 Mod 9. FitzGibbons's 14. Gilbert's Rep^{ts} in Equity & Excheq^r 15. Godbolt's 1. 1. Hardres's 2.10. Hetley's 10. Hobart's 16. Holt's 1.10. Hutton's 13. Jenkins's Centuries 16. Jones's (D^r. W^m.) 2. 5. Jones's (Tho^s.) 15. Keble's 3 vol 1.15. Keilway's 14. Keylings 9. Lane's 16. Latch's 8. Leonard's 4. 4. Loving's 3 Parts 2 vol 2. . Ley's 7. Lilly's 9. Littleton's 11. Lutneyche's 2 vol 4. 4. Modern Cases in Law & Equity 8 & 9 Mod 1. 4. Modern Reports 6 vol 5. 5. Moore's 18. Marsh's 3. Noy's 16. Owens 16. Palmer's 12. Plowden's 2. 5. Pollersten's 2. 2. Popham's 14. Precedents in Chancery 1. 5. Raymond's (D^r. Tho^s.) 2.10. Reports in Chancery in Finch's time 16. Rolles' Reports 2.10. Reports in Chancery 4 vol 15. Salkeld's 3 vol 2.16. Savile's 6. Saunders's 1. 7.6 Sherver's 2 vol 2. Select Cases in Can S. in Ld. King's time . 8. Siderfin's 2. Skinner's 1.10. Styles's 1.10. Talbot's Cases in Equity 15. Tothill's Transactions in Chancery 1.6 Vaughan's 2.10. Ventris's 1.15. Vernon's 2 vol 2. 5. Wynch's 16. William's 2 vol 2.16. Year Books 9 vol 3. 7.6 Yelverton's 5. Zouch's Cases in the Civil Law 2.6 Cases in Chan & B R in Ld Hardwick's time 12. Special & Select Law Cases 1641 6. _Sheriffs_ Treatise of Replevins 3. _Statutes_ Keble's Statutes 2.10. Statutes concerning Bankrupts 2.6 _Tables_ Index to the Reports 12. Repertorium Iuridicum 2. _Tithes & Laws of the Clergy_ Hughes's Parson's Law 1.6 _Wills Ex^{rs} &c_ Godolphin's Orphan's Legacy 12. Meriton's Touchstone of Wills 1.6 AR Nelson's Lex Testimentaria 7. GI Swinburne of last Wills 6. Wentworth's Office of Executors 2. _Writs_ AR Bohun's English Lawyer 5. Fitzherbert with Hale's Notes 16. Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium 6. Registrum Brevium 1. 1. _Omitted_ Laws of Maryland 1. Statutes of Excise 1.6 OTHER BOOKS _Arts & Sciences_ Alian's Tacticks of War 8. Smith's Distilling & Fermentation 5. Weston's Treatise of Shorthand 1. 1. Weston's Shorthand Copybook 4. _Classicks_ {Greek Grammar 2.6 GM {Greek Testament 3.6 Martial 2.6 _Dictionaries_ Colgrave's French Dictionary 15. Salmon's Family Dict. 6. Bailey's English Diet 7. GM Schrevelii Lexicon 7.6 Echard's Gazetteer's Interpreter 3.6 Cole's English Dictionary 2.6 _Divinity_ Tillotson's Sermons 3 vol 2.10. Bibles trua 1.10. Leigh of Religion & Learning 10. Stillingfleck's Origines Sacra 1. Life of King David 6. Newton on Daniel 3. The Sum of Christian Religion 10. Weeks Preparation 2.6 Whole Duty of Man 2.6 The Sacrament explained 2. The Country Parson's Advice 1.6 Addy's Shorthand Bible .10. Atterbury Lewis's Sermons 2 vol 10.6 Atterbury Francis's Sermons 4 vol 1. 2. South's Sermons 6 vol 1.12.6 AS Warburton's divine Legation of Moses 2 vol 16.6 Revelation examin'd with Candour 2 vol 9.6 Scott's Christian Life 1. _History_ Universal History 4 vol 9.11.6 Rushworth's Collections 8 vol 8.16. Rapin's History of England 2 vol 2.10. Keating's History of Ireland 1. 1. Burnet's History of his own Times 2 vol 2.10. Purchas's Pilgrimage 1. Cop's History of Ireland 2 vol 2.10. History of Europe 13 vol at 5/ 3. 5. Historical Register 26 vol at 3/ 3.18. Antiquitatum variarum Auctores 2.6 History of the Turks 4^{th} vol 4.6 Jeffery of Monmouth 4. Burnet's History 3 vol 9. Bladen's Caesar's Commentaries 4.6 History of the Fifth General Council 12. Machiavel's History of Florence 4. Roman History Echard's 5^{th} vol 4. Lehontan's Voyages 2^d vol 4. Description of the 17 Provinces 2. The English Acquisitions in Guinea &c 2. Burnet's Travels 1.6 Heylyn's Help to English History 3.6 History of Spain 1.6 Catholick History 2. History of Virginia 2.6 DuStalde's History of China 4 vol 1. _Husbandry & Gardening_ Quintinye's Gardener 1. Woodbridge of Agriculture 8. Evelyn's Sylvia 12. Houghton's Husbandry 4 vol 1. 2. Bradley's Husbandry 3 vol 15. Gardening 2 vol 6. new Improvements 6. ancient husbandry 4. practical Discourses 8. Farmer's Director 2.6 Ladies Director 2.6 Hop Garden 1.6 Dictionarium Rusticum 6. CD Monarchy of the Bees 1.6 A Discourse of Sallets 1. Pocket Farrier 1. Miscellanies of the Dublin Society 5. {Spectator 8 vol 1. GM {Tatler 4 vol 10. {Addison's Works 4 vol 10. {Guardian 2 vol 5. Pope's Letters 2 vol 5. Present State of Great Britain 6. Persian Letters 2 vol 5. Sedley's Works 1 vol 5. Carson's Lucubrations 2. Acc^t of Society for Reformation of Manners 2.6 Aristarchus Anti Bentlianus 2. Dissertation on the Thebaan Legion 2.6 Secret History of Whitehall 2. The Western Martyrology 2.6 GM Memoria Technica 2.6 Erasmus's Praise of Folly 2.6 Turkish Spy 5 & 6 vol 4. Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living 2.6 The Intelligencer 2.6 Rone's Lives 4. The Dublin Almanack 1. Maxims & Reflections on Plays 2. Report about Silver Coins 1.6 Essay for Amendment of them 2. Feltham's Resolves 4. The Minister of State 6. Treatise of Honour 5. Lyropadia 6. Hutchinson on Virtue 4. T. Scott on the Passions 2. Lansdowne's Works 3 vol 7.6 Works of the Learned 13 vol 4.11. Boyle's Adventures 3. Leisure Hours Amusement 3. _News & Politicks_ London Magazine 11 vol 3.17. Gentlemen's Magazine 4 vol 1. 6. The Britton 2.6 Common Sense 2 vol 6. The Freeholder 2.6 The Craftsman 6 vol 18. Pues Occurrences 5. The True Britton 2 vol 12. _Philosophy & Mathematicks_ Rarities of Gresham Colledge 16. Bacon's natural History 10. Physiologia 12. GF Derham's Physico Theology 5. Astro Theology 4. Sturmy's Mariners Magazine 14. Gordon's Cosmography 5. Geography 5. Ozanam's Mathematical Recreations 5. Atkinson's Epitome of Navigation 5. General Steads for natural History 1.6 Seaman's Calendar RI Newton's Opticks 6. Keill's Astronomy 6. Baker's Microscope 5.6 Mathew's Invenitis 3 vol 15. _Physick & Surgery_ JM Salmon's Herbal 2 vol 2.12. {Dispensatory 6. JM {Synopsis Medicina 8. {Ars Chirurgica 8. {Medicina Practica 6. JM Beerhaave's Method of the dying Physic 4. JM Sydehamii Opuscula 4. JM Wiseman's Surgery 2 vol 10. JM Sanctorius's Aphorisms 5. Quiney's Dispensatory 6.6 JM Strother on Sickness & Health 3.6 JM on Causes & Cures 2.6 JM Criticon Febrium 2.6 Shaw's Practises of Physick 2 vol 10. Arbuthnot of Aliment 3.6 JM London Dispensatory 3.6 AS Andrey on Worms 4. JM Friends Emmencologia 3. JM Pitcarn's Dissertationes 6. JM Friends' Praelectioned Chymica 2.6 AS Short's Dissertation on Coffee & Tea 2.6 JM Robinson Consumptions 5.6 JM Drake's Anatomy 2 vol 10. JM History of Physic 2 vol 8. JM Mead on Poysons 4. _Plays & Poetry_ Killigrew's Plays 10. Ignoramus Latin & English 3.6 Shakespears Plays 8 vol 1. 5. Ben Johnsons Works 10. Wycherley's Plays 5. Blackmore's Elize 8. DuBartas's Works 12. Prior's Works 3. Pope's Works 9 vol 1. 5. GM Homers Iliad 6 vol 15. Homers Odyssey 5 vol 12.6 Savage's Poems 2.6 GM Thomsons Seasons 2.6 Rochesters Poems 2^d vol 3. Caroley's Works 3 vol 9. Lauderdale's Virgil 2 vol 5. Theocritus 1.6 Broome's Poems 3.6 Ovid's Art of Love 3. Creech's Lucretius 2 vol 8. Barbers Poems 5. Wallace 2. Sandys' Paraphrase on the divine Poems 6. _Trade_ Roberts's Map of Commerce 1. Davenant on Trade & Plantations 2 vol 8. _Omitted_ GB Annesley's Trial 5.6 Speeches at Atterbury's Trial 5. Ladies Physical Directory 2.6 Calvins Sermons 2.6 Nunnery Tales 4. Wingate's Arithmetick 4. Lloyd's Consent of time 7.6 Memoirs of secret Service 2.6 Views of France 2. Account of the Treaty of Uxbridge 2.6 May's Cookery 3. The Triumphs of Peace 1.6 S^r. Walter Raleigh of a War with Spain 2.6 The Romish Horseleech 2.6 Conjectura Cabbalistica 2. Miscellanies by Swift & Pope 4 vol 3. The Syren 4. The Musical Miscellany 6 vol 18. [The following are evidently subsequent additions to the library, which seems thus far to have been cataloged before 1746. The following books listed are referred to the accounts on which they were purchased.] 1746 April To Maj^r. John Champe for sundrys viz. Viner's Abridgment 4 vol £5.16. Ld. Raymond's Reports 2 vol 3. Freeman's Reports 1.15. Lilly's Conveyancer 1.15. Comyn's Reports 1.10. Dalton's Officium Vicic 1. 2. Swinburne [18th-century author] of Wills 1. Herne's Pleader 19. Petyt's Ius Parliamentarium. 18. Tremaine's Pleas of the Crown 15. Wood's Institutes of the Civil Law 13. Trott's Plantation Laws 12. Reports B R 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 Ann 12. Duke's Law of Charitable Uses 10. GI Abridg^t State Tryals 9 vol 1.16. AR Practising Attorney 2 vol 9. GI Naval Trade 2 vol 9. AR Attorney & Pleaders' Treasury 2 vol 10. Compleat Sheriff 5.6 Orders of the Court of Chancery 5.6 GI Law of Testaments & Last Wills 5.6 Ex^{rs}. & Adm^{rs} 5. Trespasses 5. Merchants 5. GI Awards 4.6 Ejectments 4.6 GI Actions upon the Cse 4.6 Tenures 4.6 Errors 4. Trials in high Treason 4. Mortgages 4. Covenants 4. GI Executions 4. Estates Tail 3.6 GI Securities 3.6 Infants 3.6 Last Wills 3.6 Obligations 3. Master & Servant 3. GI Landlords 2.8 Actions 2.6 Inheritances 2.6 Pledges 2.6 Bastardy 1.6 Non compos 1.6 Trover & Conversion 1.6 Appeals 2. GI Select Trials at the Old Baily 4 vol 11. New Retorna Brevium 4.6 Bacon's Law Tracts 4.6 History & Practise of Common Pleas 4. Doctrina placitandi 4. AR Wentworth's Office of Ex^{rs} 4. Notes of Cses in C B in points of Practise 4. Treasures of Ireland 3.6 English Liberties 3.6 Treatise of Frauds 2.6 Book of Oaths 2.6 Blunt's Fragments Antiquitatis 2.6 Woman's Lawyer 2. Judgments in C B & B R 2. Essay for regulating the Laws 2. Philips's Grandeur of the Laws 2. Special Law Cases 1.6 Bellew's Cases from Statham 1.6 Lawyer's Light 1.6 Ius Tratrum 1. Critica Iuris Genissa 1. Bibliotheca Legum 1. Chambers's Dictionary 2 vol 4. 4. Milton's Works 2 vol 2. 2. Universal History 5^{th}. 39/ 6^{th} 44 7^{th} 57 6. 7.6 Arbuthnot's Tables 16. History of Europe 5 vol 15. Grays Hudibras 2 vol 13. History of Peter the Great 3 vol 13. Nature displayed 4 vol 12. Treatise of Money & Exchanges 10.6 English Compendium 2 vol 10.6 Irish & Scotch each 7.6 15. London Magazine for 1743 & 1744 13.2 Present State of Great Britain 5.6 GF Dycke's Dictionary 5.6 Blandy's Tables 4.6 Geography reformed 3.6 Hewit's Tables 1.8 Trunk Matt & Cord 14. --------- 53.13.6 Sterling Curr^t Entry 2/ Cartage 1/ Searchers 1/ Shipping & Warfage 2/6 Waterage 2/6 Gill Lad 6^d . 9.6 Commission at 2 pr Cent 1. 1.10 Freight & Primage 2-1/2 p^r Cent 1. 7.7-1/4 Insurance Policy & 1/2 p^r Cent Commission to pay 98 in case of Loss 11. 6.6-3/4 67.18. November To M^r William Jordan for Sundrys Viz Broughton's Dictionary 2 vol fol £1. 5. WW Grey's Hudibras 2 11. 6 Modern Husbandman 3 13. GM Rollins Belles Lettres 2 sets 4 1. 1. Pamela 4 8. 8 David Simple 1 2. 2 Joseph Andrews 2. 2 {Harskey's Virgil 2. 8-1/2 GM { Terence 2. 8-1/2 { Horace 2. 8-1/2 Epistle on drinking 5-1/2 Pleasures of Imagination 11 Swift's Sermons 5-l/2 Bulingbroke's Remarks 2. 4 GM Rollins Ancient History 13 vol 2. 5. 6 Irish Historical Library 3. 7. 4.3-1/2 9.11. ---------- 1747 April To Cash pd for 2 of Stith's Histories of Virg^a 1. 1. 8 Debates in Parliament 21 3.18. A Common prayer book 10. 5. 9. 8 ---------- GM To William Parks for Ainsworth's Dictionary 2.10. Memoirs of Pope's Life &c 12. 6 3. 2. 6 ---------- To Doctor McKenzie for the History of London 3.14. 3 CD Lives of the Admirals 4 vol 2. 2. 3 5.16. 6 IP To M^r Jordan for 20 vol Universal History 7.14. October IS To Doctor McKenzie for Costlogon's 2 vol D^o 8. 1. 4 {To Cash paid for Bustorf's Herbron Lexicon .13. GM{ Heereboord's Burgersdicius 4. March To Mrs. Grace Mercer for sundrys Viz {Clark's Romer 2 vol .13. {Murphy's Leucian. Lucian 3. 6 {Robertson's Lexicon 1. {Passons Lexicon 3. 6 GM {Trapp's Virgil 3 vol 9. {Kennet's Antiquities . 5. {Potter's Antiquities 2 vol 10.10 {Salust Minellii 2. 6 {Rowe's Salust 2. 2 {Brown's Roman History 2. 2 Ainsworth's Dictionary 1. 7. {Geographia Classica 4. 6 {Button's Introduction 2. 8-1/2 GM {Erhard's Terence 2. 6 {Plutarch's Lives 8 vol 2. {Francis's Horace 4 vol 13. Gay's Tables 2. 2 GB Tom Brown's Works 4 vol 13. PS Delaney's Sermons 3. 3 Subscription to Shakespear 10.10 9.10. 7-1/2 --------- To D^o for Residue of Subscription to Shakespear 10.10 To Sydenham & Hdgson for sundrys Viz AM Conduct of the Dutchess of Marlborough 4. The other side of the Question 5. Practise of the Ecclesiastical Courts 3. 6 IR Motts Geography 2 vol. fol. maps bound 4.14. Continuation of Rapin 3 vol fol 5.10. Salmon's modern History 3 vol 4^o 3. 3. {Hoppnes Architecture 4^o 10. {Salmon's Palladio Londonensis 4^o 7. WB {Palladio's Architecture 4^o 4. {Langley's City & Country Builder 14. London Magazine 1745, 6, 7 19. 6 Winer's Abridgment 3 vol fol 4.10. Milton's Political Works 2 vol fol 2. 6. A Box 2. 6 ---------- £23.11. 6 Commission Insurance &c 26 pc^t 6. 2. 7 Exchange at 40 pc^t 11.17. 7-1/2 41.11. 8-1/2 To William Jordan for sundrys Viz {London Magazine 1745, 6. 7. 8 1.12. 6 not {Salmon's Gazetteer 3. 6 [?] { Chronology 10. recd {A large Map of the World 2. 6 ---------- 1749 Oct. To Nath Walthoe for the Harleian Miscellany 8 vol 6. 6. To D^o for Guthrie's History of England in Sheets 4. 4. To Cash for Popple's Maps 1.11. 3 1750 May To W^m Parks for sundrys 7.19 Aug To Lyonel Lyde for sundrys £49.8 sterl^g 26 pC^t 49. 8 ------------------------------- 439. 7. 9 91.13.11-1/2 25 pC^t 109.16.11-1/4 549. 4. 8-1/4 ------------------------------- 640.18. 7-3/4 1746 [Currency] Feb. 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Talbot's Reports 1. 2. 6 Shower's Cases in Parliament 19. 6 10.10. ------------- 662. 9. 2-1/4 --------------- £706. .11-3/4 APPENDIX L Botanical Record and Prevailing Temperatures Dates when flowers, trees, and plants bloomed in 1767, with temperatures, extracted from John Mercer's journal, in back of Ledger B _Temp._ March 21 46-63 Daffodil Hyacinths 6 Violet Narcissous 22 60-69 Almond Apricot 24 37-47 Plum sm^l 30 45-48 May Cherry Cucumber hotbed 31 44-52 Beans Pease April 1 47-48 Dwarf Iris 2 41-52 Peach Hyacinth s d 10 D^od 5 Cowslips 3 44-50 rain all night & morn 6 44-46 D^o all night & day 7 44-50 Cherry y & b D^o all night Plum Comm. Wild currant 9 48-32 Peach d bl Asparagus Radishes Crown Imperial 12 44-54 Tulip early 13 54-62 Pear Wall flower 15 48-53 Frittillary rain all night 16 46-60 Green Sagia 17 48-55 Prickson 18 48-60 Columbine Tulips Strawberry 20 34-60 Lilac Catchfly Julia April 22 46-51 Jonquil 24 46-62 Formantil 26 70-78 Syringa Persian Lilac Honeysuckle Virg^a Hyacinth dw ... purp. 28 60-65 Iris la^r blue Narcissus w. 30 64-70 Parrot Tulip May 1 54-60 Rose 3 53-57 Mourn^g bride rain in the night Peony w^t Hyacinth dou. bl. 4 55-63 Purple Stocks D^o in the night & morn. 5 59-66 White D^o 6 54-67 Agerolis Peony red 7 60-72 Honeysuckle 8 59-72 Spiderwort Horsechestnut Snow drop 9 59-65 Yellow Lilly Borage 10 59-65 Fraxinella 11 66-68 Yellow s Rose Fringe tree 12 64-68 Grass pinks 13 63-70 Annual stock 14 65-72 Madeira Iris Sweet w^m 15 60-76 Corn Hay fine rain in the night 16 60-70 Spiraea frietus 17 56-74 Feath^r Hyacinth May 18 67-80 Corn Hay Whitsunday 19 70-82 White rose 20 72-83 Poppy Bladder Senna 21 75-80 Foxglove Swamp Laurel Sm^l bl. Iris Scorzancea Monthly Rose Orange Lemon Citron 22 73-84 Indian Pink a fine rain 23 72-76 Larkspur 24 63-68 Queen's july fl. 25 61-70 Wing'd pea 26 63-70 Monks hood 27 65-72 Catch fly 28 68-79 Apscynum Sago 29 71-79 Sparrow Wistle L. Weymouth's world 30 75-77 Sp Broom A fine rain Dorch. yell Rose 31 73-80 Great Poppy June 1 73-70 Pinks 2 64-73 Gumbogia 3 64-79 W^r Lilly Apscinum vine June 4 74-76 Prickly pear 5 70-64 Jessamine A fine rain 6 60-71 Holyock 7 63-73 Crysanthemum Virg^a Spike Sweet Sultan Orange Lilly 9 65-70 Cat Spa 14 70-81 Flos Adonis 15 72-82 Pleurisy root 17 75-82 Yucca African Marigold 19 70-78 Southern wood 23 70-82 Elacampana 24 74-82 Rock Rose Oriental Asmart 29 82-92 Afr marigold y. July 3 Althaea frutea 5 70 Coxcomb rain all day 7 72-84 Amaranth ordes 8 74-80 Virg^a Saffron 9 75-87 Partridge berr^s 11 84-84 Passion flow^r 16 73-76 Marvel of Peru 18 76-84 Swamp Sweet 20 76-86 Martagon Virg. 23 76-85 Cardinal fl. Sunflower APPENDIX M Inventory of Marlborough, 1771 [John Mercer's widow, Ann Roy Mercer, died at Marlborough September 2, 1770. By the next spring, James Mercer was operating Marlborough as one of four plantations owned by him. The overseer was Thomas Oliver. At the end of May 1771 Oliver drew up a statement of the conditions of the plantations and made a detailed inventory. This document has been reproduced in facsimile in _A Documentary History of American Industrial Society_.[216] The following excerpts consist of the inventory, as it applied to Marlborough only, and of Oliver's statement at the end. The "return," as he called it, covered the period from May 1 to May 31, 1771. The reference to advertising the "sale" is apparently concerned with one of the unsuccessful public sales of John Mercer's personal property.] 56 Horn Cattle 28 Cavallrey 128 Sheap . Swine 22 Plowes 8 Clevices 8 Clevispins 11 leading lines 4 Chaine traces 4 Roap traces 8 Bridle Bitts 8 Back bands 8 Haimes 6 Ox Yoaks 3 Ox Chains 2 Ox Carts 1 Waggons Compleat 4 Horse Harness d^o 4 Horse Collers 12 Swingle trees . Threshing Instruments 4 Fanns 2 Sieves 1 Riddles 1 Halfe bushel Measure 1 Halfe Barrel Measure 1 Harrows 10 Hillinghows 17 Weeding hows 8 Grubbing hows 1 Syder press 1 Syder Mill 15 Axes 4 Wedges 1 Iron Shovels 4 Spades 3 Hay forks . Hay Rakes 2 Dung forks 13 Scythes 4 Cradles . Sickles 8 Sheap Shears 1 Barns 2 Grainerys 3 Corn Houses 5 Stables 4 Stock locks 1 Padlocks 6 Mealbags 1 Boats 1 Schoos 1 Cannow 1 Seaines 2 Cross cutt Saws 1 Whip Saws 2 Hand Saws 3 Adzes 5 Chisels 1 Hammers 1 Frows 2 Gimblets 2 Drawing knives 7 Broad Axes 1 Gouges 1 Compasses 3 Augers 2 2 Yard Rules 1 Chalk lines 3 Sawfiles 1 Curriers knives 1 Tanners knives 1 Tobacco Cask Branding Irons 5 Iron Potts for Negroes 1 Grinding Stoans 6 Scyth stoans 1 Sarvants 29 Negroes in Crop 25 Negroes out of Crop 9 Hyerd out 63 Total amount of Negroes N.B. the Casuality in sheap are 11 sold to M^r Lowery. 1 to Doct^r Clemense. 1 held for the house. dy'd a little time after being Castrated 5 (18) as in the Collem of decress. 1 Calfe dy'd five days after Being Cutt. the remainder of the stock in good Condition. two mares excepted. the work of the Mill going on as well as Can be Expected till M^r. Drains is better. the Schoo and Boat unfit for Any Sarvice whatsoever till repair'd. if Capable of it. the foundation of the Malt house wants repairing. the Manor house wants lead lights in some of the windows. the East Green House wants repairing, the west d^o wants buttments as a security to the wall on the south side. the Barn, tobacco houses at Marlborough & Acquia must be repaired as soon as possible. The two tobacco houses at Belvaderra are in good order. five stables on Marlborough plantation must also be repair'd before winter. we have sustai'd no damage from Tempests or Floods. it will Expedient to hyer a Carpinder for the woork wanted can not be accomplish'd in time, seeing the Carpenders must be taken of for harvest which is Like to be heavy. I will advertise the sale at Stafford Court and the two parish Churches to begin on the 20th of June 1771. this is all the intelligence this month requiers. P.S. The Syder presses at each plantation & Syder Mill at Marlbrough to tally Expended ... Negro Sampson Marlbro Company Sick of the Gravel. Negress Deborah Sick of a Complication of dis^s. Negro Tarter acqui Company Sick plurisy. Negress Phillis sick Accokeeck Company Kings Evil Negro Jas Pemberton at Marlb^h Sick Worme fever. ThS. Oliver For Ja^s. Mercer Esq^r FOOTNOTES: [216] Edit. John P. Commons (New York: Russell & Russell, 1958), vol. 1, facsimile opp. p. 236. Quoted through kind permission of Russell & Russell, publishers. Index _Abridgment of the Laws of Virginia_, 24, 62-63; second edition, 50, 53 Accokeek: plantation, 12, 62; ironworks, 23, 24, 25, 47, 162, 193 Act for Encouraging Adventurers in Ironworks, Mercer's protest against, 23 Acts for Towns (1662), 5; (1680), 5, 7 Act for Ports (1691), 7, 10, 34; suspension of, 8 Act for Ports (1705), 8, 12, 22, 45, 83, 177; suspension of, 9 Adie, Hugh, 118 agricultural implements: hoe, 25, 170 (illustr.) plow, 25; drill plow, 59; iron for, 34; colter for, 73, 168-169 (illustr.) scythe, iron, 113, 114, 168 (illustr.), 171 spade, 170-171 Alexander, Robert, 12, 22 Alexandria, 50, 52, 53 Alexandria Library, viii Allan, William, 34 Allen, William, 184 Ambler, Richard, 16 American Philosophical Society, vii, viii, 69; _Year Book_ of, viii Amson, Doctor, 46 amusements: cards, 51 dancing, 33, 34 game counters, 26 (illustr.) horse racing, 20, 26, 43 loo, 20, 26 lottery, 34 music, 33, 34; books on, 43 pitching, 20 quoits, 20 racing (unspecified), 17 wagers, 26 wrestling, 26 Anderson, Thomas (brickmaker,) 28, 35 andirons, 17, 162 (illustr.) Andrews, George (ordinary keeper), 11, 12, 13, 23, 44, 82, 177; inventory of, 183 "Antigua Ship," 47 apothecary, 36 (_See also_ medicine) Aquia (plantation), 62 Aquia Church (_See under_ church) Aquia Creek, 11, 12 archeological techniques, 70 arches, 36, 91, 94 architect, 36 (_See also_ joiner; carpenter) architecture, books on, 37, 38, 43, 98 _Architecture of A. Palladio_, 98 (illustr. from) art, books on, 43, 200 Ashby, ----, 53 Ashby, Thomas, vii Astbury, Thomas (Staffordshire potter), 108, 138, 139 Astbury, Thomas, Jr. (Staffordshire potter), 139 Bacon, Nathaniel, 10 Bagge, Edmund, 17, 192 Bailey, ---- (brewer), 55 Bailey, Worth, viii ball, musket, 155, 157 (illustr.) Ballard, Thomas, 12, 14, 17, 22 Ballard, William, 177 Balthrop, ----, 51 Barber, William, 12 Barradall, Mr., 58 Barry, Ed, 18 Barry, Thomas (bricklayer), 36, 91, 95, 102, 104, 105 basaltes ware (_See under_ stoneware) basins, 25, 39; earthenware, 125; pottle, 39, 138 Basnett, Abraham ("oysterman"), 35 Battaley (Battaille), Mosley, 16, 17; Mercer's account for, 185 Bayley, Ambrose, 10, 11 Beach, Daniel, 184 Beach, Peter, 12, 13; inventory of, 184 Beaty, Andrew (joiner), 36 bed (_See under_ furniture) bed cord, 17 Belchier, John (cabinetmaker), 40 Belfield, Mr., 42 Belle Plains, 28 Belvedere (plantation), 62 Bensen, Thomas, 185 Berkeley, Governor, 47, 97 Berryman, ----, 22 beverages: ale, 33, 55, 56; arrack, 145; Barbadoes spirits, 145; beer, 55, 145, 146 (Bristol); bottles for, 145-152; brandy, 36, 145; chocolate, 32; cider, 16, 33, 62, 145, 146, 149; citron water, 146; claret, 17, 18, 33, 46, 145; coffee, 32; corn, 145; gin, 150-151; lime juice, 17; Lisbon, 145; Madeira, 25, 145; "Mint [water]," 146; "Orange flower [water]," 146; porter, 56; punch, 13 145; rum, 17, 33, 42, 145; sherry, 145; "Tansey,' 146; tea, 32; wine, 33, 145, 145 (Fyall) (_See also_ bottle; cup; glass; chocolate pot; teapot) Beverley, Robert, 8, 21, 51, 97, 192 biography, books of, 43 birds, singing, 33; birdcage, 33 Biscoe, W., vii Black, William, 33, 178 Blacke, William (gardener), 58 blacksmith, 35, 167, 174 (_See also_ ironworks) Bland, Theodorick, 7, 8. 10, 177 Blane, John, 25 boat, 62; canoe, 25; "Schoo" (schooner), 62, 177; sloop, 15, 16, 32, 42, 177 bones, animal, 111 bookplate, John Mercer's, iv (illustr.) books, 14, 17, 20, 33, 34, 36, 42; Mercer's reading, 191; purchase of, 191-192, 198-208; sale of, 61-62 Booth, John (weaver), 32 botanical record, 209-210 (_See also_ garden) bottles, 25, 56, 145-152; canary, 145; cider, 149; closure for, 145; gin, 112, 150-151 (illustr.); medicine, 152, 153 (illustr.); methods of making, 146-149; octagonal, 149 (illustr.); scent, 152; smelling, 32; snuff, 32, 151 (illustr.), 152; spirits, 111, 150 (illustr.); stoneware, 39; wine, 72, 107, 111, 112, 119 (illustr.), 145-149 (illustr.), 173, 178; wine, seal for, 31 (illustr.), 73, 111, 146-149 (illustr.) bowl: creamware, 141; delftware, 137 (illustr.); earthenware, 124 (illustr.), 127 (illustr.); porcelain, 144; redware, 125, 126, 128; stoneware, 136; whiteware, 143 box iron, heaters for, 17, 162 (illustr.) (_See also_ smoothing iron) Boyd's Hole, 18, 35, 51 Braddock, General, 52 Braintree (Mass.), 151 brands, on tobacco casks, 29-30 brass, 17, 39, 59, 72, 73, 108, 155 (_See also_ specific forms) Braxton, Colonel, 26 Brent, George, 12 Brent, Giles, 7, 12, 22; widow of, 12; heirs of, 177 Brent, Giles, Jr., 7 Brent, Robert, 12 Brent, William, 23, 26 Brent, William (infant), 45, 177; house burned, 63 brewer, 55, 58; house for, 178 brewery, 55, 56-57, 61, 178; sale at, 56; sale of, 61; still, 26, 61 (_See also_ Marlborough, buildings) brewing, books on, 43 Brick House (village in New Kent County), 27 bricklayers, 35, 36, 103-104, 118 bricklaying, 94-95; 103-104, 111, 112; Flemish bond, 72, 121 brickmaking, 35 (_See also_ building materials) bridge, 35 bridle, 25; bit for, 73, 169 (illustr.), 171 (illustr.) Bromley, William (turner), 36, 38, 39, 50, 98 Bronough, John W., 64 Brook (village), 28, 67 Brooke, William, 26 _Brooks_ (ship), 26 broom, hearth, 39 Brunswick Town (North Carolina), 108 brush, curry, 18, 172 bucket, 39 Buckland, William, 52 buckle: brass, 72, 155 (illustr.), 156 (illustr.); iron, 170; pewter, 52; silver, 32 Buckley ware (_See under_ earthenware) Bucknell (Oxford County), 58 Buckner, William, 7, 8, 21, 22, 177 (_See also_ Marlborough, survey 1691) Bucks County Historical Society, viii, 28 building materials: ballusters, 36, 96 bricks, 9, 11, 18, 35, 36, 67, 68, 71, 72, 91, 94, 102, 107, 109 (illustr.), 112; sizes of, 90, 95, 104, 121 clapboards, 25 concrete, 92 (illustr.), 93 (illustr.) flagstones, 35, 86, 97, 101, 102, 121 gold leaf, 36, 95 lime, 9, 35, 69 linseed oil, 36 lumber, 9, 18, 25, 34, 36 marble, 96 mortar, 35, 69, 102, 162 oystershells, 16, 18, 35, 69, 107, 108, 111 paint, 36 plaster, 96, 97 (illustr.), 102, 121 shingles, 34 stone, 35, 36, 68, 71, 72, 86, 87, 89, 91 (illustr.), 92 (illustr.), 94 (illustr.), 101 Bull Run Quarters, 29, 30, 42; slaves at, 41, 58 bullet (_See_ ball) Buncle, Alexander, 17 Burges, Joseph (house painter), 36 Burwell, Carter, 35 buttons, 25, 42, 47, 52, 155; brass, 155; copper, 155, 156 (illustr.); horn, 58; Sheffield-plated, 155; shell, 155; silver, 155; white metal, 42, 58, 156 (illustr.) Byrd, William, 46 cabinetmakers, 25, 35, 40 candle, 40; beeswax for, 41; myrtle wax for, 41; tallow, 41 candle box, 20 candlemolds, 17 candlestick, 14, 17, 20 (brass), 39, 40, 41, 153 (glass, illustr.) (_See also_ sconce) canoe, 25 Canton, Mark, 42 Cantrell, William (servant), 58 Carlyle, John, 30 Carlyle, Sarah, 30 Caroline Courthouse, 27, 28 carpenter, 36, 50, 62, 91, 118; apprentices, 50 carpet, 13 cart (_See under_ vehicle) Carter, Charles, 28 Carter, Lucy, 118; marriage to Nathaniel Harrison, 118 Carter, Robert ("King"), 118 carver, 36, 40 casks, 29, 30, 55, 56, 61, 145, 146; hogsheads, 26, 30, 31, 33, 145; "pipes," 33, 145 Cavanaugh, Philemon, 17 Cave, John, 13, 23, 28, 42 Caywood, Louis, 97 Cedar Point, 18 celt, Indian, 73, 119 (illustr.) ceramics, 68, 105, 125-144; Indian, 108; methods of manufacture, 135-136 (_See also_ specific forms and types) chair (_See under_ furniture) chaise (_See under_ vehicle) chalk, 155, 171 chamberpots: stoneware, 88, 132 (illustr.); yellowware, 126 Chambers, John, 18 Champe, Major John (merchant), 31, 35, 54 Chapman, Nathaniel, 25, 35, 49, 162, 166, 169, 170-171; Mercer's account with, 193 charger, delftware, 137; pewter, 39 chariot (_See under_ vehicle) charities, John Mercer's, 47 Charles City Courthouse, 9 Charleston, George (tailor), 32 chelloes, 18 chest (_See under_ furniture) Chew, John, 192 chimney, 12, 20, 36, 97, 102, 105 (_See also_ mantel; fireplace) china, 39, 144 (_See also_ porcelain) Chinn, John, 20 Chinn, Rawleigh, 17, 20, 25 chinoiserie, 136, 137, 140 (illustr.), 142 Chiswell's Ordinary, 51 Chiswell Plantation, 97 chocolate pot, copper, 39 Chotank Church, 10 church: Aquia, 27, 37, 46-47, 52, 145; undertaker for, 46, 47; church plate, 46 (_See also_ Overwharton Parish) Chotank, 10 Hanover, 35 Mattaponi, 35 New Kent, 35 Pohick (Fairfax), 37 Potomac, 27, 28, 46, 54 (_See also_ Overwharton Parish) Stafford Parish, 10 church, brick, 46 cider press, 62 (_See also_ beverages) Clark, John (servant), 52 Cleve (plantation), 28 clothing, 31-32; breeches, 34, 42, 52, 58, 59; "Russia," 59 children's, 34 coat, 42; greatcoat, 31, 59 gloves, 18, 31, 34; mittens, 34 handkerchief, 31 hat, 17, 18, 25, 31, 52, 58, 59; "Castor," 31; hood, 31 hose, 18 indentured servant apparel, 52, 59 jacket, 58, 59 liveries, 42 mourning, 47 neckcloth, 52 petticoat, 31 shirts, 52, 58 shoes, 17, 18, 31, 34, 42, 52, 58 slave apparel, 42, 58, 59 stockings, 31, 34, 52, 58, 59 suit, 31, 32 trousers, 52 vest, 34 waistcoat, 32 (_See also_ textiles) coach (_See under_ vehicle) coachman, 42 coal, 56, 107, 108 coffin, child's, 17 coins, 119, 155-156 (illustr.) Coke, John (silversmith), 39 colander, 20 College of William and Mary, 20, 34, 47, 99, 121; account of George Mercer's expenses while attending, 197 Collings, Jn^o, 149 Collins, Robert, 18 Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., viii, 30, 149 comb: curry, 18, 169, 172 (and brush); horn, 32; ivory, 16, 32; wig, 25 Combe, ----, 53 combed ware (_See under_ earthenware) Cooke, John, 64, 96, 125 cooper, 56; house for, 55 Cooper, Macartney, Powel & Lyde, 40 Copein, William (mason), 37, 91 copper, 17, 55, 103, 119, 178 (_See also_ specific items) corks, 56, 145 court: Spotsylvania, 27; Williamsburg, 27 courthouse: Caroline, 27, 28, 53 Charles City, 9, 121, 122 Elizabeth City, 9 Hanover, 98, 118 (illustr.), 121, 122 King William, 23 (illustr.), 51, 53, 98, 120 (illustr. floor plan), 121, 122 Marlborough, vii, 8, 11, 45; (1691), 28; cleaning, 13, 184; construction of, 11; contract to build, 10; destruction of, 9, 11; location of, 11, 44, 67; trial in, 12; New Kent, 27, 28, 51 Potomac Creek, vii, viii, 7, 10, 11, 20, 28, 49, 99, 177; architectural analysis of, 121; artifacts from, 119-121; burning of, 118; excavations, 115-122; excavation plan of, 118; historical background, 115-118; map showing location of, 116, 117; surveys, 115 Stafford (_See_ Potomac Creek) Warwick, 11 Westmoreland, 54 Williamsburg, 121 York (1692), 11, 121 courthouses, brick, 11, 118 Covington, ---- (dancing master), 34 cows, 17, 20, 61 Craig, James (jeweler), 47 creamware (_See under_ earthenware) Cresap, Thomas, 49 Crichton, Robert (merchant), 32 crops: barley, 56; corn, 42, 56, 57; hops, 56, 62; malt, 55, 56; peas, 59; rice, 57; turnips, 59; wheat, 59 (_See also_ food; tobacco) _Cumberland_ (ship), 31 cup, 39; chocolate, 17, 144; coffee, 39, 144; custard, 17, 144; dram, 13; fuddling, 137; handle, 137; tea, 17, 72, 136, 144; delftware, 137; earthenware, 127 (illustr.), porcelain, 72, 144; silver, 13, 39; stoneware, 39, 144; yellowware, 128 (illustr.) curry comb, 18, 169 (illustr.), 172 (and brush) curtains, 13; bed, 13; fittings, 172; rings for, 13, 156 (illustr.), 162-163 Custis, Daniel Parke, 31 Custis, John, 31 Dade, Francis, 26 dancing master, 32, 33, 34 Daniel, Peter, 27, 52 Darlington Library, viii Darrell, Sampson, 10, 11, 28 Darter, Oscar H., vii, viii, 67 Davis, Boatswain, 35 Dekeyser, ---- (dancing master), 33 delftware, 88, 107, 114, 136-137, 173; English, 111, 134 (illustr.), 136, 138 (_See also_ specific forms) Dering, William (dancing master), 32, 34 Dick: "Mr. Dick's Quarter," 53 Dick, Alexander, 51 Dick, Charles (merchant), 31, 34, 39, 132, 144, 165, 167; textiles listed in Mercer's accounts with, 196 Dick, William, 51 dish, 39; chafing, 17; oblong, 136; sugar, 39; brass, 17; pewter, 25, 39, 160 (illustr.); silver, 39; stoneware, 136 doctor, 41, 46 (_See also_ medicine) Dogge, John, 17 Donaldson, Captain, 31 door knobs, 39; brass, 167 doors, 37, 38 (illustr.) Downham, William, 184 Drains, Mr., 62 ducks, 25 Dulaney, Daniel, 31 Dunmore, Lord, 63 earthenware, 13, 16, 17, 20, 25, 129 "agate," 108, 173 black-glazed, 119, 139 Buckley, 72, 107, 111, 113, 114, 126-128, 130 (illustr.), 173 combed ware, 126, 173 creamware, 111, 141, 173 marbled, 138-139 molded-rim type, 125-126 North Devon gravel-tempered, 111, 126, 173 pearlware, 140 (illustr.), 141 polychrome, 140, 143 queensware, 139 (illustr.), 140 redware, 114, 125-126, 128 shell-edged, 140, 141-142 Tidewater type, 73, 111, 124-125 (illustr.), 173 tortoiseshell ware, 128 (illustr.), 139 transfer-printed, 143-144 whiteware, 112, 140 (illustr.), 173 yellowware, 107, 111, 126, 128 (illustr.) (_See also_ specific forms) Edgeley, ----, 16 education, 34; hornbook, 33, 34; slate, 156, 158; slate pencil, 111, 156, 158; tutor, 34 (_See also_ College of William and Mary) Edwards, Elizabeth, 39 _Elizabeth_ (ship), 26 Elizabeth City Courthouse, 9 Elliot, George (turner), 36, 96 Elzey, Thomas, 117 Emo, Lord Leonardo, 98 Fairfax, George, 49 Falkner, Ralph, 192 Falmouth (Virginia), 53 Ferguson, John (overseer), 42 ferry, Potomac Creek, 8, 13 fiddler, 34 fireback, iron, 17 fireplaces, 12, 20, 41, 94, 96, 97, 101, 102, 104, 105 (_See also_ chimney; mantel) Fisher, George, 51 fishhooks, 42, 111, 171 (illustr.) fishing, 32, 42, 54, 64; drumlines, 42; perch lines, 42; seine, 42, 54 Fitz, Captain, 32 Fitzhugh, Colonel, 192 Fitzhugh, Ann, 16 Fitzhugh, Henry, 21, 25, 31, 118; widow of, 118 Fitzhugh, William, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 31, 51 Fitzhugh, William, Jr., 9 Fitzhugh, William III, 16 Fitzpatrick, John (weaver), 32 flagon, stoneware, 132 (illustr.) floors (_See_ pavement) flower pots, 62; earthenware, 129 (illustr.) Foard (Foward), John, 25 food, 192; cinnamon, 32; fish, 32; lemons, 26; limes, 33; lime juice, 17; mace, 32; molasses, 17, 32-33; nutmegs, 32; oysters, 32, 40; pork, 32, 57; spices, 32; sugar, 17, 32, 33 (muscovy); venison, 25; wild game, 25 (_See also_ crops) Forbes, Andrew, 192 forks, 111, 159 (illustr.); wooden handled, 17 Forman, Henry Chandlee, 12 Fort Frederica (Georgia), 126 Foward (Foard), John (merchant), 25, 26, 167 Foward, Jonathan, 26 Fowke, Chandler, 18 Fowke, Gerard, 31, 52 Foxhall, Joseph, 32 Fredericksburg, vii, 28, 30, 31, 34, 42, 43, 46, 53, 55, 59, 62, 196 freckled ware (_See under_ stoneware) French, Hugh, 18 Fry, Colonel, 49 funnel, 17 Furnea's (Furnau's) Ordinary, 27, 28 furniture: beds, 13, 20, 25, 40; bolsters, 13; covers, 39; feather, 13, 17; flock, 13; tick, 18 chairs, cane, 13; child's, 20; leather, 17; rush seat, 13, 25 chest, handle for, 163 (illustr.), 165; chest of drawers, 13 cradle, 25 cupboard, 13 couch, 13 desk, 17; repair of, 25 escritoire, 25, 40, 165 looking glass, 39 painted, 17 sale of, 61-62 sconce glass, 39, 41 sideboard, 39 stools, 13 table, 13, 17; marble, 39 garden, 99; botanical record of, 209-210 gardener, 58, 178 Garner, A. M., 137 Garvan, Anthony N. B., viii gateway, 80, 81; pintle for, 73, 81 _George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia_, viii, 15, 59 Gilmer, George (apothecary), 36 glass, 17 (and cover), 68, 145-154; bowl, 119, 154; candelabrum, 153 (illustr.), 154; decanter, 73, 145, 152-154; mirror, 153 (illustr.), 154; posset pot, 154; salt, 153 (illustr.), 154; window, 62, 96, 107, 121, 153 (illustr.), 154 (_See also_ bottle) glasses, 17; cordial, 152 (illustr.), 154; looking, 39; sconce, 39, 41, 154; tumbler, 152, 153 (illustr.), 154; wine, 73, 107, 152 (illustr.), 153 (illustr.), 154 glasshouse, 56; Bristol, 148; Germantown, 151 glassmaking techniques, 146, 148-149, 151-152, 154 _Gooch_ (ship), 40 goose, 25 Graham (Graeme), John, 20, 191 Graham, William (overseer), 41 grater, nutmeg, 13 Gray, William, 28 greenhouse, 62, 109, 178 Gregg, Thomas (surveyor), 9, 14, 21, 22 (_See also_ Marlborough, survey 1707) Grenzhausen (Germany), 129 gun flints, 42, 155, 157 (illustr.) gunpowder, 18, 25, 42 Hamitt, William, 25 Hammersley, Francis, 7, 12 Hampton (Virginia), 9, 47 Hanbury, Capel, 53 hand mill, 55 Hanover Church, 35 Hanover County, 35 Happel, Ralph, 10, 115 hardware, 193 bolt, 111, 119 (illustr.), 121, 164 (illustr.), 166, 167, 168 (illustr.), 170 brad, 34, 165, 167 chain, 169; for door, 39 escutcheon plate, 108, 156 (illustr.), 163 handle or pull, 108, 156 (illustr.), 163 (illustr.), 164 (illustr.), 165, 167, 171 (illustr.) hasp, 164 (illustr.), 166 hinge, 25, 39, 163 (illustr.), 164 (illustr.), 165-166; butt, 164 (illustr.); HL, 20, 103, 163 (illustr.), 165; H, 163 (illustr.), 165 hook, 166 (illustr.), 168 (illustr.), 170 key, 111, 163 (illustr.), 167 latches, 25, 163 (illustr.), 164 (illustr.), 166 locks, 17, 20, 25, 39, 163 (illustr.), 166-167 nails, 17, 18, 25, 34, 72, 102, 121, 165 (illustr.), 167 nuts and bolts, 170 pin, 166 (illustr.) pintle, gate, 73 rivet and washer, 169 (illustr.) shutter fastener, 88 slab, 105 (illustr.) spike, 165, 167 staples, 163 (illustr.), 166 swingletree loop, 73, 170; chain, 169 tie bar, 87, 94 (illustr.) Harmer & King, 41 harnesses, 61, 170; fittings for, 73, 156 (illustr.), 169 (illustr.), 170 _Harrington_ (ship), 31 Harrison, Colonel, 53 Harrison, Lucy Carter, 118 Harrison, Nathaniel, 118 Hartley, Green & Company, 140-141, 143 Harvey, John, 33 Harwood, Thomas, 185 Hayward, Joseph, 12; house of, 12 Hayward, Nicholas, 12 Hayward, Samuel, 12 hearth (_See_ fireplace) Hedgman, Major Peter, 23, 24, 51, 53 Historic American Buildings Survey, viii, 120 history, books on, 20, 43, 191, 200 Hogans, Francis (wheelwright), 30 hogs, 20 Holbrook, Janet, 33 Holdbrook, ----, 51 Hooe, Rice, 15 Hoomes, George, 28 Hopkins, Mr., 22 Hoppus, Edward, 37 horn, objects made from, 32, 58 (_See also_ specific items; musical instruments) hornbook, 33 (illustr.), 34 horses, 17, 20, 26, 56 (and colts), 61, 63; Ranter, 57, 61-62 (sale of) horseshoes, 169 (illustr.), 172 houses: Alexandria, Carlyle house, 30 Carter's Grove, 35 Corotoman, 118 Eagle's Nest, 118 Essex County--Elmwood, 98; Blandfield, 103 Gloucester County--Abingdon glebe house, 97; Fairfield, 97 Greenspring, 47, 97, 102 Gunston Hall, 12, 52, 97 Hanover, Scotchtown, 97 Henrico County, Turkey Island, 97 Jamestown, Isaac Watson's, 12 Joseph Hayward's, 12 King George County, Brandon, 118 Marlborough, 9, 12-13, 17 John Mercer's (1730), 18, 22, 45 John Mercer's "Manor House," 45; construction of, 34-38, 62, 177, 178; excavation of, 84-99; insurance policy for, 64, 96; inventory of, viii, 62, 88, 96, 109, 168, 177, 211-212; plan of, 96 (illustr.) Morrisania (New York), Lewis Morris House, 126 Mount Airy, 103 Mount Vernon, 98, 103, 105 Salvington, 28 Shalstone Manor, 40 Stratford, 51, 102, 103 Spotsylvania County, Mannsfield, 102, 103 Williamsburg, Brush-Everard House, 32 Yorktown, Digges house, 12 house, brick, 12, 63 house, glebe, 35, 97 house, wooden, 12, 20 Hubbard, Benjamin, 27 Hudson, J. Paul, 131 Hudson, Thomas, 20 Hull, Sigrid, viii Humble, Green & Co., 140-141 Hunter, James, 55 Hunter, William (merchant), 30-31, 33, 34, 39, 42, 167, 170; textiles listed in Mercer's account with, 196 hunting, 42; hunting horn, 33 husbandry, books on, 43 Hyndman, John (merchant), 32 indentured servants, 14, 32, 52, 53, 58; apparel of, 52, 58, 59; Thuanus (weaver), 32 Indian, 158; celt, 73, 119; pottery, 108; trial of Nanticoke Indians, 12 indigo, 42 Innes, Enoch, 20 insurance policy, 64, 88-89, 95, 97; house plan drawn on, 96 (illustr.) inventory: George Andrews, 183; Peter Beach, 184; Marlborough (taken by Thomas Oliver, 1771), viii, 62, 88, 96, 109, 168, 177, 211-212 iron, 121, 161-167; slab, 104, 105 (_See also_ specific items; hardware; tools) ironworks: Accokeek, 23, 24, 25, 47, 162, 193; Mercer's protest against Act for Encouraging Adventures in, 23-24 ivory, 16, 32 Jackson, Robert (silversmith), 46 Jamestown, 9, 12, 126, 158 jar: cover, 125, 127 (illustr.); storage, 128 (illustr.); earthenware, 125, 127, 128; Buckley ware, 126, 129 (illustr.); stoneware, 131 (illustr.) Jervers, 18 Jervis, James (widow of), 18 jeweler, 47, 167-168; jeweler's tools, 111, 167-168 jewelry: earrings, 47; ring, 47, 63 jockey, 20 Johnson Fund, vii Johnson, Richard, 16 Johnston, ----, elected as burgess, 53 Joiner, 36, 38, 50 Jones, Booth (overseer), 42 Jones, Charles, 32 Jones, James, 18 Jones, Robert, 192 Jones, Thomas, 32, 41 Jordan, William (merchant), 31, 39, 168 jugs, 39; delftware, 138; stoneware, 131 (illustr.), 134; white salt-glazed, 135 (illustr.), 136 Kecoughtan, 126, 158 Kemp, Peter, 16 Kernodle, G. H., 149 kiln, 36; malt kiln, 59 King, George Harrison Sanford, viii, 115 King, William (silversmith), 39, 55 King, William (brewer), 55 King William Courthouse (_See under_ courthouse) kitchen (_See_ Marlborough, buildings) knife, 17, 111, 158 (illustr.), 160 butcher, 39 chopping, 88, 158 (illustr.), 162 clasp, 25 and fork, 17, 39, 159 pen, 17, 25, 32, 111, 155, 158 (illustr.) shoemaker's, 16 agate-handled, 119 horn-handled, 39 Sheffield-handled, 111, 160 (illustr.) silver-handled, 32 wooden-handled, 17 laces, 18 ladle, iron, 162 (illustr.) Lamb's Creek (plantation), 31 Land Book, John Mercer's, vii, 6, 8, 45, 82 Langley, Battey, 39 Langton, Richard, 39 lanterns, 17, 39 laundry irons, heaters for, 17, 25, 162 law, books on, 17, 21, 191-192, 198-200 ledgers, John Mercer's, 15, 16; Ledger B, 16, 209; Ledger G, 28, 29, 32, 102, 104, 105, 129; contents of, 185-208; accounts for domestic expenses, 186-190 Lee, Captain, 31 Lee, Dr. Arthur, 54 Lee, General Charles, 63; death of, 63; will of, 63 Lee, George, 31 Lee, Colonel Philip Ludwell, 51 Leoni, Giacomo, 98 Lewes (Delaware), 126 Lewis, Fielding, 34, 47 library: Colonel Spotswood's, 20; John Mercer's, 21, 42-43, 61-62 (sale of), 198-208 (purchase of) (_See also_ books) lighting devices, 40, 41 (_See also_ candle; candlestick; sconce) _lignum vitae_, 13 Linton, Anthony, 18, 25 literature, English, books of, 43 Little River Quarters, 53 loom, 32 (_See also_ weavers) Ludwell, Philip, 47 Lyde, Major Cornelius, 40 Lyde, Lyonel (merchant), 40 Lyndon, Captain Roger, 36, 39, 41, 109 Lynn, Doctor, 41 MacLane, Hugh (tailor), 31 malt, 55, 56; malt kiln, 59; malt house, 55, 62 mantels, 36, 37 (illustr.) (_See also_ fireplace) maps, 6, 19, 44, 116, 117 marbles, chalk, 155, 157 (illustr.) _Marigold_ (ship), 36, 109 Markham, James, 21, 26 Marlborough: abandonment of, 14 aerial photograph, 66 buildings-- barn, 62, 113, 178 brewhouse, 55, 114, 178 cider mill, 62, 178 cooper's house, 55, 178 corn houses, 64, 178 grainery, 178 greenhouse, 62, 109, 178 houses, 9, 12-13, 17 kitchen, 36, 58, 67, 101-105, 109, 178 malt house, 55, 62, 114, 178 Negro quarters, 64 office, 178 overseers' houses, 64, 178 privy, 112 prison, 12-13 smokehouse, 106-109 stables, 62, 178 summer house, 58, 178 warehouses, tobacco, 62, 113, 114, 115, 177-178 windmill, 35, 52, 64, 67, 178 excavation plans, 44, 74, 75, 84, 100, 106, 113, 118 inventory, viii, 62, 88, 96, 109, 168, 177, 211-212 maps, 6 naming, 9 surveys-- (1691), 6, 21, 44, 67, 68, 82-83, 177 (1707), 9, 14, 21, 22, 45, 82-83 (1731), 6, 21, 22, 45, 82, 177 (1743), 117 (_See also_ houses, Marlborough; slaves) Mary Washington College, vii mason, 37, 91 Mason, Ann, 28, 47 Mason, Catharine, 16 Mason, George, 9, 12, 13 Mason, Captain George, 10, 12 Mason, Colonel George III, 15, 16, 20, 21, 24, 26, 28 Mason, George IV, 24, 52, 53, 63, 97; elected as burgess, 53 mathematics, books on, 43 Mattaponi church, 35 McClelland, Charles, 17 McFarlane, Alexander, 17, 18 McKenzie, Doctor Kenneth, 46 medicine, 41, 46; books on, 43, 201; bottles for, 152; Aqua Linnaean, 46; British oyl, 46, 152; Daffy's Elixir, 46; Euphorbium, 46; gum fragac, 46; Holloway's Citrate, 46, 152; oil of cinnamon, 46; Opadeldoc, 152; opium, 46; rattlesnake root, 46; rhubarb, 46; spirits of lavender, 46; sago, 46 (_See also_ doctors; apothecary) Mercer, Ann Roy, 48; death of, 61, 211; portrait of, 47 (illustr.) Mercer, Anna, birth of, 53 Mercer, Catesby, death of, 53 Mercer, Catherine, 17, 18, 146, 147; death of, 47 Mercer, Elinor, 51; death of, 53 Mercer, George, 33, 34, 49, 52, 53 (elected as burgess), 54, 56, 59 (_See also George Mercer Papers ..._) Mercer, Grace Fenton, 15, 51 Mercer, James, 33, 34, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 57, 61, 62, 63; death of, 64 Mercer, Captain James, 52; death of, 53 Mercer, John, _passim_; portrait of, 47 (illustr.); death of, 59 Mercer, John (father of John Mercer of Marlborough), 15 Mercer, John III, birth and death of, 53 Mercer, John Fenton, 33, 34, 49, 52; death of, 52 Mercer, John Francis, birth of, 53, 63, 64, 142 Mercer, Maria, birth of, 53 Mercer, Mungo Roy, 51 Mercer, Sarah Ann Mason, 28, 33 Meese, Anne, 12 microscopes, 43 mill, 35, 62; windmill, 35, 52; hand mill, 55 Mills, James, 30 Mills, William (weaver), 32 Minitree, David (bricklayer), 35, 36, 91, 95 Mitchelson, John, 33 mold: bullet, chalk, 111, 155, 156 (illustr.), 157 (illustr.); candle, 17; tart, copper, 17 Moncure, Reverend John, 27, 28, 47, 52 Monday, William (carpenter), 36, 91 Monroe, Andrew (overseer), 31, 55, 57 Monroe, James, 55 Monroe, Thomas, 31 Moore, Bernard, 39 mortar and pestle, 20 mother-of-pearl, 26 Mountjoy, ----, 51 Mountjoy, Edward, 184 mug: creamware, 141; delftware, 137; earthenware, 124 (illustr.), 125, 127 (illustr.); stoneware, 88, 131 (illustr.), 132 (illustr.), 134, 135 (illustr.), 136 mull stick, 39 music, book on, 33 musical instruments: horn, French, 33 (illustr.); fiddle strings, 34; trumpet, 33 Mussen, James, 11 Mutual Assurance Society of Virginia, 64, 96 (_See also_ insurance policy) Nanticoke Indians, 12 National Park Service, 121, 126 needles, 25 Negroes, 25, 41; "Negro Ship," 47; skipper, 42 (_See also_ slaves) Nevill's Ordinary, 53 Newbery, Bob (London bookseller), 59 New Kent Church, 35 New Kent Courthouse (_See under_ courthouse) Nicholson, Captain Timothy, 36, 58 Niemeyer, Mabel, viii Nisbett, William, 25 Noël Hume, Ivor, viii, 126, 131 Norfolk, 9, 33, 47, 55, 59 Occaquan warehouse, 30 occupations, colonists identified by Mercer according to, 195 (_See also_ specific occupations) Ohio Company of Virginia, 25, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 59, 119, 122 (_See also George Mercer Papers...._) Oliver, Thomas (overseer), inventory by, viii, 62, 88, 96, 109, 168, 177, 211-212 Omwake, H. Geiger, 126 ordinaries, 8, 11, 12, 13, 27, 28, 51, 53; inventory of ordinary keeper, 183 oven, 17, 36, 102, 104, 105 Overwharton Parish, 16, 26, 27, 46, 145; John Mercer's account for, 194 (_See also_ churches, Potomac and Aquia) painter: house, 36; portrait, 16, 32 painting, 36 (_See also_ portrait) Palladio, Andrea, 37, 98-99 _Palladio Londonensis_ (book), 37, 38 Pamunkey River, 35 pan: baking, 128 (illustr.); frying, 18, 25; milk, 20, 124 (illustr.), 125, 127 (illustr.); sauce, 25, 39; Buckley ware, 126, 127 (illustr.); copper, 25; redware, 125 (illustr.); Tidewater-type earthenware, 124 (illustr.), 125; tin, 39 paper, 18 Parks, William, 21, 43 Parry, ----, 22 Partis, Captain, 5 Passapatanzy, 17, 29, 35, 61 Patterson, ----, 36 pavement, 104, 105; brick, 85, 102-103; stone, 86, 97, 101, 121 Peace Point, 7 Peale, Captain Malachi, 7, 8, 12 Pemberton, James, 62 pepper box, 20 Perry, Captain, 31 Perryman, Captain, 31 pestle, 20 pewter, 13, 17, 52, 119, 160-161 (_See also_ specific items) Phipps, Reverend John (tutor), 34, 40 Pipe, ----, 53 pipe (_See_ tobacco pipe) pistols, 63 pitcher: creamware, 141; stoneware, 133, 135 (illustr.), 136; whiteware, 143 plasterer, 36 plastering, 18; plaster cornice molding, 96, 97 (illustr.) (_See also_ building materials) plates, 20, 39; "basket," 136; cake, 136; pie, 129; creamware, 119, 141; delftware, English, 136 (illustr.), 137; pewter, 111, 161; porcelain, 144; tortoiseshell ware, 140; white salt-glazed, 119 plate warmer, 39 platter: creamware, 141; queensware, 140 (illustr.); white salt-glazed, 119 (illustr.) Pohick Church (Fairfax), 37 Pope, ----, 22 porcelain, Chinese, 107, 112, 114, 140, 144, 173; blue and white, 142 (illustr.), 143 (illustr.); importation of, 144; Lowestoft, 144; polychrome, 140 (illustr.), 141 (illustr.), 144 (_See also_ specific forms) porringer, 25, 39 Port Royal (Virginia), 28, 47, 51 port towns, 5 (_See also_ Acts for Towns) portrait, 32; of John Mercer, 16 (illustr.); of Ann Roy Mercer, 47 (illustr.) posset pot: delftware, 138; glass, 154; marbled, 139; stoneware, 119, 132, 133, 136; yellowware, 126 pot: lid, 73, 162 (illustr.), 126, 127 (illustr.); ointment, 134 (illustr.), 138 (illustr.); repair of, 25; delftware, 134; iron, 17, 161-162 (illustr.); tin, 18 Potawomake (Indian village), vii, 67 Potomac Church (_See under_ church) Potomac Creek (_See_ courthouse, Potomac Creek) Potter, Doctor Henry, 28 potteries: Burslem, 133, 134; Little Fenton, 128; Staffordshire, 135, 138; Yorktown, 125, 131, 173 powder (_See_ gunpowder) Power, James, 39 Powers, John, 27 prison, 12 punchbowl, 39, 119; delftware, 119; _lignum vitae_, 13; porcelain, 17, 144 Purefoy, Henry, 40 Ramsay, William, 31 Randolph, William, 31 razor, 17, 32; strop, 32 Reid, James, 26 "Retirement, The" (plantation), 12 Reyant, Pat, 24 Richards, Mourning, 47 rings: brass, 111, 170; curtain, 13, 156 (illustr.), 162-163 (_See also_ jewelry) Ritchie, Mr., 42 Robinson, ----, 22 Robinson, Berryman, Pope & Parry, 22 Robinson, John, 55 Rock, George, 33 Rogers, ---- (clerk), 51, 54 Rogers, William (potter), 16, 125, 131, 173 Rose, Parson 192 Rosewell (plantation), 126, 131, 144, 147, 148, 152, 154, 173 Roth, Rodris, viii Roy, Ann, marriage to John Mercer, 48 Roy, Mrs. B., death of, 53-54 Roy, Donald E., viii Roy, Doctor Mungo 47, 48 rug, silk, 16; "Turkey work," 13 Russell, Elizabeth, 17 Russell & Russell, viii Russell site (Lewes, Delaware), 126 Rust, George, 17 saddle stiffener, 169 (illustr.), 171 sail, 42; for windmill, 59 sale, John Mercer's estate, 61-63 Salmon, William, 37, 38 sauceboat: silver, 39; stoneware, 136 saucer, 17, 39, 144; Chinese porcelain, 144 (illustr.) Savage, James (overseer), 42 Savage John, 7, 8, 21, 82, 116, 192 (_See also_ Marlborough, survey 1731 and 1743) Scarlett, Martin, 12 Schumacher, Edward G., viii science, books on, 43, 192, 200 scissors, 25, 39, 155; "Salisbury," 17, 161; steel, 111, 161 (illustr.) (_See also_ shears) "sconce glass," 39, 41 Scott, Reverend Alexander, 16 Scott, Jack, viii Scott, James, 49 seal: wine bottle, 31 (illustr.), 73, 146-149; "G R," 131, 132 (illustr.); tobacco cask, 30, 148 seed boxes, 59 Selden, Mr., 53, 54, 58 Selden, Joseph, 28 Selden, Samuel, 28 Setzler, Frank M., vii, 67 Seward, Nicholas (overseer), 42 Shaw, Simeon, 135 shears, sheep, 108, 170 (illustr.), 171 sheep, 17, 20 sheets, 59 shipping, 15, 16 (_See also_ boat) shot, 18, 25, 42 sifter, 18; hair sifter, 39 silver, 32, 39, 159; church plate, 46; sale of, 61, 62-63; Sheffield, 111, 155, 159 (_See also_ specific items) silversmith, 39, 46 Simm, Edward, 18 Simpson, John (wheelwright), 30 skillet, bell metal, 25 skimmer, 20 skins, deer, 16, 31 (buckskin) slate, 156, 158 (illustr.); slate pencil, 111, 156, 158 (illustr.) slaves, 16, 25, 41, 57; carpenter's apprentices, 50; clothing, 32, 42, 58, 59; expenses regarding, 59, 160, 162; number of Negroes born at Marlborough, 54; punishment of, 41; purchase of, 24, 53, 55, 58; quarters of, 64, 178; sale of, 16-17, 64; suicide of, 41; Bob, 24, 42; Boatswain, 42; Caesar, 25; Captain, 42; Cupid, death of, 53; Deborah, 24, 41; Dublin, 24; Essex, 50; Frank, 41; George, 24; Joe, 41-42; Lucy, 24; Margaret, 24; Marlborough, 24; Nan, 24; Nero, 24; Peter, 24, 50; Phillis, 24; Poll, 53; Sampson, 62; Sarah, 17; Stafford, 24; Temple, 58; Tom (death of), 53; Will, 24, 25 sloop (_See under_ boat) Smith, Thomas, 18 Smith's ordinary, 51 smoothing iron, heaters, for, 25 (_See also_ box iron) _Snake_ (ship), 26 Snicker's Little River Quarters, 53 snuff: bottle, 32; box, 32, 25 (repair of) snuffers, candle, 17; iron, 88, 163 (illustr.) Spencer, Doctor, 43 spices (_See_ food) spinning: reel, 62; wheel, 25, 32, 62 spoons: soup, 39; tea, 39, 88, 160; iron, 162; pewter, 111, 160 (illustr.), 161 (illustr.), 173; silver, 13, 39, 88, 159, 160 (illustr.) Spoore, Ann, 28 Spotswood, Colonel Alexander, 20, 26, 191 Spotswood, Robert, 20 spurs, 18 stables, 62 Stafford County, port town for, 7 Stafford Parish Church, 10 Stafford Rangers, 12 Stafford Survey Book, 8 Stamp Act, 54, 55; George Mercer, stamp office, 54 steelyards, 17 Stevens, Samuel, 25 Stevenson, William (merchant), 26 Stewart, T. Dale, vii, viii, 67 still, 26 stoneware, 39, 125, 129, 131-136; basaltes ware, 112, 138 (illustr.), 142; brown-banded, 88; "Crouch" ware, 135 drab, 133 "freckled ware," 134 Nottingham, 88, 111, 132-133, 173 salt-glazed, 114, 131-132 "scratch-blue," 133 (illustr.), 135 Westerwald, 39, 73, 88, 107, 111, 129, 131, 132, 173 white salt-glazed, 72, 88, 108, 111, 133 (illustr.), 135-136, 173 Stotham, Mat, 191 Strother, Widow, 58 Suddath, Henry, 18 Sumner's Quarters (plantation at Passapatanzy), 17, 29, 30 surveys (_See under_ Marlborough) Sussex Archeological Society, 126 swans, 25 swords, 63 Sydenham & Hodgson, 30, 31, 39, 99, 168 Sydenham, Jonathan, 30 tailors, 31, 32-34, 42, 47 Talbott, Mark, 33 Taliaferro, Colonel John, 27, 28; wife of, 43 Taliaferro, Richard, 31 tankard, pewter, 13 Tappahannock (town), 9, 30 tar, 42 Tayloe, George, 31 Tayloe, Colonel John, 53 Taylor, James, 43 Taylor, Robert, 34 teapot: and frame, 39; handle, 139; lid for, 111, 135 (illustr.), 140, 160 (illustr.), 161 (illustr.); earthenware, 139; pewter, 111, 160, 161; silver, 39; stoneware, 135; tortoiseshell ware, 140 temperatures, 209 textiles, 32; listed in accounts, 193, 196; blankets, 17, 42, 59; cotton, 32; counterpanes, 39; drill, 58; duffel, 42; haircloth, 59; linen, 39, 58; "ozenbrigs," 42, 59; sheets, 59; silk, 31; velvet, 32; wool, 25, 32, 62; worsted, 31 (_See also_ clothing; weaving; spinning) thermometer, 59 thimble, 155 (illustr.), 156 (illustr.) Thompson, Matthew, 7 Thomson, William (tailor), 34, 42, 47 Thornton, Francis, 49 Thornton, Major George, widow of, 63 Thornton, Colonel Presley, 53 Threlkeld, William (weaver), 32 tobacco, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26, 30, 31, 41, 42, 45, 46, 51, 118 (_See also_ warehouses) tobacco cask symbols, 29 (illustr.), 30 tobacco pipe, 119, 156, 157 (illustr.); kaolin, 111, 157 (illustr.); terra-cotta, 157 (illustr.), 158, 173 Todd, Robert, 33 Tooke, William (merchant), 53 tools, 193; adze, 34 auger, 34 ax, 17, 34, 166 (illustr.), 170 bung extractor, 72, 166 (illustr.) chisel, gouge, 166 (illustr.), 167 (illustr.); mortice, 34; paring, 34 hammer, blacksmith's, 167 (illustr.); jeweler's, 111, 167 (illustr.) hollows and rounds, 36 knife, draw, 25, 34 plane, 34, 36, 166 (illustr.), 167 scraping, iron, 72, 166 (illustr.), 167 (illustr.); stone, 119 (illustr.) shovel, 170 (illustr.) socket gouge, 34 tomahawk, 25 wedges, 25 wrench, 167 Torbutt, William (overseer), 42 toys, 33; marbles, 155, 157 (illustr.) trap, animal, 111, 171 (illustr.) tray, 39; silver, 39; stoneware, 136 trees, 62 Trinity College, 15 _Triton_ (ship), 26 trunk, 13; handle for, 163 (illustr.), 165 Tucker, Major Robert (merchant), 33 "Turkey work," 13 turner, 36 twine, ship's, 42 Tyler, Henry, 30 Tyler, Thomas, 32, 34 Tylers, 27 University of Pennsylvania, viii University of Pittsburgh, Darlington Library, viii University of Pittsburgh Press, viii University of Virginia, Mary Washington College, vii Vaulx, Robert, 51 vehicles: carriage, fitting for, 169 (illustr.) cart, tumbling, 30; ox, 169 chaise, 28, 30, 53; hinge for, 172 chariot, 28, 30; sale of, 62 coach, 61, 62 wagon, 58, 170 (_See also_ sloop) veranda, 90, 91, 95, 96, 97, 178 Victoria and Albert Museum, 139 Virginia, map of, 19 (illustr.) Virginia Committee of Safety, 63 Virginia State Library, viii wagon (_See under_ vehicle) Wain, Joseph (servant), 58 Waite, William (carpenter), 50, 52 waiter, (_See_ tray) Wales, Mr. (brewer), 55 Walker, Robert (cabinetmaker), 40 Walker, Major William (cabinetmaker), 25, 28, 35-36, 40, 46, 144 Waller, Benjamin, 46 Waller, Charles, 34 warehouse: Occaquan, 30; tobacco, 25, 34, 42, 62, 113, 115, 177, 178 Warwick Courthouse, 11 Washington, Augustine, 25, 31, 49 Washington, George, 53, 63 Washington, John, 31 Washington, Lawrence, 25, 31, 49 watch, gold, 32 water cooler, earthenware, 129 (illustr.) Watson, Isaac, 12 Waugh, Alex, 184 Waugh, David, 16, 17, 18, 21 Waugh, James, 16 Waugh, John (Parson), 10, 12, 16 Waugh, John, Jr., 16, 21, 22, 25, 54, 183 Waugh, Joseph, 20 Waugh, Mary, 184 Waughhop, James, 34 weavers, 32, 42, 59 Wedgwood, Josiah, 139, 140, 141, 142 West Point (Virginia), 27 wharf, 25 Wheeland, William, 42 wheels, 30 wheelwright, 30 Whieldon, Thomas, 108, 138, 139 Whiffen, Marcus, 35, 121 whip: horse, 16, 17, 18; hunting, 25; thong, 41 Whitehaven (England), 32 whiteware (_See under_ earthenware) Whiting & Montague, 16 Whitticar, Ralph, Jr., vii wig, 34; comb for, 25 Wigley, Job (mason), 37 Williams, Jacob (plasterer), 36 Williams, T. Ben, vii Williamsburg, 27, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 41, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 126; capitol, 35, 99, 121; courthouse, 121; General Court, 27; student life in, 34, 197 (_See also_ College of William and Mary) Wilson, Captain, 32, 34 Winchester (Virginia), 53 windmill, 35, 52, 64, 67, 178; sails for, 59 windows, 38 (illustr.), 62, 96-97 (_See also_ glass, window) wine (_See_ beverages) Wine Trade Loan Exhibition, 149, 154 Withers, John, 7, 12, 30 _Wolf_ (sloop of war), 58 Woodford, William, 32 Woodstock, 12 wool cards, 32 Wormley, Mr., 53 Wright, Edward, 39 Wroughton, Francis (merchant), 50, 51 Wythe, George, 31 yarn, 18 yellowware (_See under_ earthenware) yoke, 39 York (County), 33; courthouse (1692), 11 Yorktown, 9, 16, 47, 125, 173 * * * * * TRANSCRIBER NOTES: Missing punctuation has been added and obvious punctuation errors have been corrected. Archaic spellings and typographical errors have been retained with the exception of those listed below. Page 9: "bee" changed to "be" (to be approved by an able surveyor). Page 21: "thiry-one" changed to "thirty-one" (one thousand seven hundred and thirty-one). Page 39: "an" changed to "a" (he made a large purchase of silver). Page 55: deleted duplicate "as" (as I have the satisfaction to). Footnote 123: incorrectly references Footnote 115. This has been corrected to reference Footnote 66. Footnote 140: "Geneaological" changed to "Genealogical" (Tyler's Quarterly Historical Genealogical Magazine). Page 88: "18-century" changed to "18th-century" (we can find no exact parallel in the 18th-century America). Page 96: "expance" changed to "expanse" (a small gilded cupola to break the long expanse of the roof). Page 124, Illustration caption: "plan" changed to "pan" (a, milk pan). Page 135: "homogenous" changed to "homogeneous" (thus making possible a homogeneous white body). Page 144: "18-century" changed to "18th-century" (that 18th-century China-trade porcelain sherds). Page 154: "chows" changed to "shows" (from a long-stemmed cordial glass shows the termini). Page 154: "somprised" changed to "comprised" (threads that were comprised in a double enamel-twist). Page 169, illustration caption: "probaby" changed to "probably" (b, chain, probably from whiffletree). Page 173: "expecially" changed to "especially" (especially as the few 17th-century artifacts). Page 178: "acitvity" changed to "activity" (the rigid boundar to domestic activity). Page 178: "apparrently" changed to "apparently" (perhaps the bar apparently were located to the north.) Page 188: "romall" changed to "Romal" for consistency (To 1 Romall handkerchief). Page 188: "handkercheif" changed to "handkerchief" (To 1 silk Romall handkerchief). Page 190: "handkercheifs" changed to "handkerchiefs" (To 4 Soosey handkerchiefs). Page 209: "curran" changed to "currant" (Wild currant). Page 217: "Fallmouth" changed to "Falmouth" (Falmouth (Virginia)). Page 217: "Grorge" changed to "George" (George Mercer Papers Relating to). 
18687	----	DAISY BY ELIZABETH WETHERELL AUTHOR OF "THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD," "QUEECHY," ETC., ETC. LONDON : WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE CONTENTS CHAPTER I. MISS PINSHON CHAPTER II. MY HOME CHAPTER III. THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE CHAPTER IV. SEVEN HUNDRED PEOPLE CHAPTER V. IN THE KITCHEN CHAPTER VI. WINTER AND SUMMER CHAPTER VII. SINGLEHANDED CHAPTER VIII. EGYPTIAN GLASS CHAPTER IX. SHOPPING CHAPTER X. SCHOOL CHAPTER XI. A PLACE IN THE WORLD CHAPTER XII. FRENCH DRESSES CHAPTER XIII. GREY COATS CHAPTER XIV. YANKEES CHAPTER XV. FORT PUTNAM CHAPTER XVI. HOPS CHAPTER XVII. OBEYING ORDERS CHAPTER XVIII. SOUTH AND NORTH CHAPTER XIX. ENTERED FOR THE WAR CHAPTER I. MISS PINSHON. I want an excuse to myself for writing my own life; an excuse for the indulgence of going it all over again, as I have so often gone over bits. It has not been more remarkable than thousands of others. Yet every life has in it a thread of present truth and possible glory. Let me follow out the truth to the glory. The first bright years of my childhood I will pass. They were childishly bright. They lasted till my eleventh summer. Then the light of heavenly truth was woven in with the web of my mortal existence; and whatever the rest of the web has been, those golden threads have always run through it all the rest of the way. Just as I reached my birthday that summer and was ten years old, I became a Christian. For the rest of that summer I was a glad child. The brightness of those days is a treasure safe locked up in a chamber of my memory. I have known other glad times too in my life; other times of even higher enjoyment. But among all the dried flowers of my memory, there is not one that keeps a fresher perfume or a stronger scent of its life than this one. Those were the days without cloud; before life shadows had begun to cast their blackness over the landscape. And even though such shadows do go as well as come, and leave the intervals as sun- lit as ever; yet, after that change of the first life shadow is once seen, it is impossible to forget that it may come again and darken the sun. I do not mean that the days, of that summer were absolutely without things to trouble me; I had changes of light and shade; but on the whole, nothing that did not heighten the light. They were pleasant days I had in Juanita's cottage at the time when my ankle was broken; there were hours of sweetness with crippled Molly; and it was simply delight I had all alone with my pony Loupe, driving over the sunny and shady roads, free to do as I liked and go where I liked. And how I enjoyed studying English history with my cousin Preston. It is all stowed away in my heart, as fresh and sweet as at first. I will not pull it out now. The change, and my first real life shadow came, when my father was thrown from his horse and injured his head. Then the doctors decided he must go abroad and travel, and mamma decided it was best that I should go to Magnolia with aunt Gary and have a governess. There is no pleasure in thinking of those weeks. They went very slowly, and yet very fast; while I counted every minute and noted every step in the preparations. They were all over at last; my little world was gone from me; and I was left alone with aunt Gary. Her preparations had been made too; and the day after the steamer sailed we set off on our journey to the south. I do not know much about that journey. For the most part the things by the way were like objects in a mist to me and no more clearly discerned. Now and then there came a rift in the mist; something woke me up out of my sorrow-dream; and of those points and of what struck my eyes at those minutes I have a most intense and vivid recollection. I can feel yet the still air of one early morning's start, and hear the talk between my aunt and the hotel people about the luggage. My aunt was a great traveller and wanted no one to help her or manage for her. I remember acutely a beggar who spoke to us on the sidewalk at Washington. We staid over a few days in Washington, and then hurried on; for when she was on the road my aunt Gary lost not a minute. We went, I presume, as fast as we could without travelling all night; and our last day's journey added that too. By that time my head was getting steadied, perhaps, from the grief which had bewildered it; or grief was settling down and taking its proper place at the bottom of my heart, leaving the surface as usual. For twelve hours that day we went by a slow railway train through a country of weary monotony. Endless forests of pine seemed all that was to be seen; scarce ever a village; here and there a miserable clearing and forlorn- looking house; here and there stoppages of a few minutes to let somebody out or take somebody in; once, to my great surprise, a stop of rather more than a few minutes to accommodate a lady who wanted some flowers gathered for her. I was surprised to see flowers wild in the woods at that time of year, and much struck with the politeness of the railway train that was willing to delay for such a reason. We got out of the car for dinner, or for a short rest at dinner-time. My aunt had brought her lunch in a basket. Then the forests and the rumble of the cars began again. At one time the pine forests were exchanged for oak, I remember; after that, nothing but pine. It was late in the day, when we left the cars at one of those solitary wayside station-houses. I shall never forget the look and feeling of the place. We had been for some miles going through a region of swamp or swampy woods, where sometimes the rails were laid on piles in the water. This little station- house was in the midst of such a region. The woods were thick and tangled with vines everywhere beyond the edge of the clearing; the ground was wet beneath them and in places showed standing water. There was scarcely a clearing; the forest was all round the house; with only the two breaks in it where on one side and on the other the iron rail track ran off into the distance. It was a lonely place; almost nobody was there waiting for the train; one or two forlorn coloured people and a long lank-looking countryman, were all. Except what at first prevented my seeing anything else � my cousin Preston. He met me just as I was going to get down from the car; lifted me to the platform; and then with his looks and words almost broke up the composure which for several days had been growing upon me. It was not hardened yet to bear attacks. I was like a poor shell-fish, which having lost one coat of armour and defence, craves a place of hiding and shelter for itself until its new coat be grown. While he was begging me to come into the station-house and rest, I stood still looking up the long line of railway by which we had come, feeling as if my life lay at the other end of it, out of sight and quite beyond reach. Yet I asked him not to call me "poor" Daisy. I was very tired, and I suppose my nerves not very steady. Preston said we must wait at that place for another train; there was a fork in the road beyond, and this train would not go the right way. It would not take us to Baytown. So he had me into the station-house. It wearied me, and so did all that my eyes lighted upon, strange though it was. The bare room, not clean; the board partition, with swinging doors, behind which, Preston said, were the cook and the baker; the untidy waiting girls that came and went, with scant gowns and coarse shoes, and no thread of white collar to relieve the dusky throat and head rising out of the dark gown; and no apron at all. Preston did what he could. He sent away the girls with their trays of eatables; he had a table pulled out from the wall and wiped off; and then he ordered a supper of eggs, and johnny cake, and all sorts of things. But I could not eat. As soon as supper was over I went out on the platform to watch the long lines of railway running off through the forest, and wait for the coming train. The evening fell while we looked; the train was late; and at last when it came I could only know it in the distance by the red spark of its locomotive gleaming like a firefly. It was a freight train; there was but one passenger car, and that was full. We got seats with difficulty, and apart from each other. I hardly know whether that, or anything, could have made me more forlorn. I was already stiff and weary with the twelve hours of travelling we had gone through that day; inexpressibly weary in heart. It seemed to me that I could not endure long the rumble and the jar and the closeness of this last car. The passengers, too, had habits which made me draw my clothes as tight around me as I could, and shrink away mentally into the smallest compass possible. I had noticed the like, to be sure, ever since we left Washington; but to-night, in my weary, faint, and tired-out state of mind and body, every unseemly sight or sound struck my nerves with a sense of pain that was hardly endurable. I wondered if the train would go on all night; it went very slowly. And I noticed that nobody seemed impatient or had the air of expecting that it would soon find its journey's end. I felt as if I could not bear it many half hours. My next neighbour was a fat, good- natured old lady, who rather made matters worse by putting her arm round me and hugging me up, and begging me to make a pillow of her and go to sleep. My nerves were twitching with impatience and the desire for relief; when suddenly the thought came to me that I might please the Lord by being patient. I remember what a lull the thought of Him brought; and yet how difficult it was not to be impatient, till I fixed my mind on some Bible words, � they were the words of the twenty-third psalm, � and began to think and pray them over. So good they were, that by and by they rested me. I dropped asleep and forgot my aches and weariness until the train arrived at Baytown. They took me to a hotel then, and put me to bed, and I did not get up for several days. I must have been feverish; for my fancies wandered incessantly in unknown places with papa, in regions of the old world; and sometimes, I think, took both him and myself to rest and home where wanderings are over. After a few days this passed away. I was able to come downstairs; and both Preston and his mother did their best to take good care of me. Especially Preston. He brought me books, and fruit and birds to tempt me to eat; and was my kind and constant companion when his mother was out, and indeed when she was in, too. So I got better, by the help of oranges and rice-birds. I could have got better faster, but for my dread of a governess which was hanging over me. I heard nothing about her, and could not bear to ask. One day Preston brought the matter up and asked if Daisy was going to have a schoolmistress? "Certainly," my aunt Gary said. "She must be educated, you know." "_I_ don't know," said Preston; "but if they say so, I suppose she must. Who is it to be, mamma?" "You do not know anything about it," said aunt Gary. "If my son was going to marry the greatest heiress in the State � and she is very nearly that; � goodness! I did not see you were there, Daisy, my dear; but it makes no difference; � I should think it proper that she should be educated." "I can't see what her being an heiress should have to do with it," said Preston, � "except rather to make it unnecessary as well as a bore. Who is it, mamma?" "I have recommended Miss Pinshon." "Oh, then, it is not fixed yet." "Yes, it is fixed. Miss Pinshon is coming as soon as we get to Magnolia." "I'll be off before that," said Preston. "Who is Miss Pinshon?" "How should _you_ know? She has lived at Jessamine Bank, � educated the Dalzell girls." "What sort of a person, mamma?" "What sort of a person?" said my aunt Gary; "why, a governess sort of person. What sort should she be?" "Any other sort in the world," said Preston, "for my money. That is just the sort to worry poor little Daisy out of her life." "You are a foolish boy!" said aunt Gary. "Of course, if you fill Daisy's head with notions, she will not get them out again. If you have anything of that sort to say, you had better say it where she will not hear." "Daisy has eyes � and a head," said Preston. As soon as I was able for it Preston took me out for short walks; and as I grew stronger he made the walks longer. The city was a strange place to me; very unlike New York; there was much to see and many a story to hear; and Preston and I enjoyed ourselves. Aunt Gary was busy making visits, I think. There was a beautiful walk by the sea, which I liked best of all; and when it was not too cold my greatest pleasure was to sit there looking over the dark waters and sending my whole soul across them to that unknown spot where my father and mother were. "Home," that spot was to me. Preston did not know what I liked the Esplanade for; he sometimes laughed at me for being poetical and meditative; when I was only sending my heart over the water. But he was glad to please me in all that he could; and whenever it was not too cold, our walks always took me there. One day, sitting there, I remember we had a great argument about studying. Preston began with saying that I must not mind this governess that was coming, nor do anything she bade me unless I liked it. As I gave him no answer, he repeated what he had said. "You know, Daisy, you are not obliged to care what she thinks." I said I thought I was. "What for?" said Preston. "I have a great deal to learn, you know," I said, feeling it very gravely indeed in my little heart. "What do you want to know so much?" said Preston. I said, "everything". I was very ignorant. "You are no such thing," said Preston. "Your head is full this minute. I think you have about as much knowledge as is good for you. I mean to take care that you do not get too much." "Oh, Preston," said I, "that is very wrong. I have not any knowledge scarcely." "There is no occasion," said Preston stoutly. "I hate learned women." "Don't you like to learn things?" "That's another matter," said he. "A man must know things, or he can't get along. Women are different." "But I think it is nice to know things too," said I. "I don't see how it is different." "Why, a woman need not be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a professor," said Preston; "all she need do, is to have good sense and dress herself nicely." "Is dressing so important?" said I, with a new light breaking over me. "Certainly. Ribbands of the wrong colour will half kill a woman. And I have heard aunt Randolph say that a particular lady was ruined by her gloves." "Ruined by her gloves!" said I. "Did she buy so many?" Preston went into such a laugh at that, I had to wait some time before I could go on. I saw I had made some mistake, and I would not renew that subject. "Do _you_ mean to be anything of that sort?" I said, with some want of connection. "What sort? Ruined by my gloves? Not if I know it." "No, no! I mean, a lawyer or a doctor or a professor?" "I should think not!" said Preston, with a more emphatic denial. "Then, what are you studying for?" "Because, as I told you, Daisy, a man must know things, or he cannot get on in the world." I pondered the matter, and then I said, I should think good sense would make a woman study too. I did not see the difference. "Besides, Preston," I said, "if she didn't, they would not be equal." "Equal!" cried Preston. "Equal! Oh, Daisy, you ought to have lived in some old times. You are two hundred years old, at least. Now don't go to studying that, but come home. You have sat here long enough." It was my last hour of freedom. Perhaps for that reason I remember every minute so distinctly. On our way home we met a negro funeral. I stopped to look at it. Something, I do not know what, in the long line of dark figures, orderly and even stately in their demeanour, the white dresses of the women, the peculiar faces of men and women both, fascinated my eyes. Preston exclaimed at me again. It was the commonest sight in the world, he said. It was their pride to have a grand funeral. I asked if this was a grand funeral. Preston said "Pretty well; there must be several hundred of them and they were well dressed." And then he grew impatient and hurried me on. But I was thinking; and before we got to the hotel where we lodged, I asked Preston if there were many coloured people at Magnolia. "Lots of them," he said. "There isn't anything else." "Preston," I said presently, "I want to buy some candy somewhere." Preston was very much pleased, I believe, thinking that my thoughts had quite left the current of sober things. He took me to a famous confectioner's; and there I bought sweet things till my little stock of money was all gone. "No more funds?" said Preston. Never mind, � go on, and I'll help you. Why, I never knew you liked sugarplums so much. What next? burnt almonds? this is good, Daisy, � this confection of roses. But you must take all this sugar in small doses, or I am afraid it wouldn't be just beneficial." "Oh, Preston!" I said, � "I do not mean to eat all this myself." "Are you going to propitiate Miss Pinshon with it? I have a presentiment that sweets wont sweeten her, Daisy." "I don't know what "propitiate" means," I said, sighing. "I will not take the almonds, Preston." But he was determined I should; and to the almonds he added a quantity of the delicate confection he spoke of, which I had thought too delicate and costly for the uses I purposed; and after the rose he ordered candied fruits; till a great package of varieties was made up. Preston paid for them � I could not help it � and desired them sent home; but I was bent on taking the package myself. Preston would not let me do that, so he carried it; which was a much more serious token of kindness, in him, than footing the bill. It was but a little way, however, to the hotel. We were in the hall, and I was just taking my sugars from Preston to carry them upstairs, when I heard aunt Gary call my name from the parlour. Instinctively, I cannot tell how, I knew from her tone what she wanted me for. I put back the package in Preston's hands, and walked in; my play over. How well I knew my play was over, when I saw my governess. She was sitting by my aunt on the sofa. Quite different from what I had expected, so different that I walked up to her in a maze, and yet seemed to recognise in that first view all that was coming after. Probably that is fancy; but it seems to me now that all I ever knew or felt about Miss Pinshon in the years that followed, was duly begun and betokened in those. first five minutes. She was a young-looking lady, younger- looking than she was. She had a dark, rich complexion, and a face that I suppose would have been called handsome; it was never handsome to me. Long black curls on each side of her face, and large black eyes, were the features that first struck one; but I immediately decided that Miss Pinshon was not born a lady. I do not mean that I think blood and breeding are unseverable; or that half a dozen lady ancestors in a direct line secure the character to the seventh in descent; though they _do_ often secure the look of it; nevertheless, ladies are born who never know all their lives how to make a curtsey, and curtseys are made with infinite grace by those who have nothing of a lady beyond the trappings. I never saw Miss Pinshon do a rude or an awkward thing, that I remember; nor one which changed my first mind about her. She was handsomely dressed; but there again I felt the same want. Miss Pinshon's dresses made me think always of the mercer's counter and the dressmaker's shop. My mother's robes always seemed part of her own self; and so in a certain true sense they were. My aunt introduced me. Miss Pinshon studied me. Her first remark was that I looked very young. My aunt excused that, on the ground of my having been always a delicate child. Miss Pinshon observed further that the way I wore my hair produced part of the effect. My aunt explained _that_ to be my father's and mother's fancy; and agreed that she thought cropped heads were always ungraceful. If my hair were allowed to fall in ringlets on my neck, I would look very different. Miss Pinshon next inquired how much I knew? turning her great black eyes from me to aunt Gary. My aunt declared she could not tell; delicate health had also here interfered; and she appealed to me to say what knowledge I was possessed of. I could not answer. I could not say. It seemed to me I had not learned anything. Then Preston spoke for me. "Modesty is apt to be silent on its own merits," he said. "My cousin has learned the usual rudiments; and in addition to those the art of driving." "Of _what?_ What did you say?" inquired my governess. "Of driving, ma'am. Daisy is an excellent whip, for her years and strength." Miss Pinshon turned to Preston's mother. My aunt confirmed and enlarged the statement, again throwing the blame on my father and mother. For herself, she always thought it very dangerous for a little girl like me to go about the country in a pony- chaise all alone. Miss Pinshon's eyes could not be said to express anything, but to my fancy they concealed a good deal. She remarked that the roads were easy. "Oh, it was not here," said my aunt; "it was at the North, where the roads are not like our pine forests. However, the roads were not dangerous there, that I know of; not for anybody but a child. But horses and carriages are always dangerous." Miss Pinshon next applied herself to me. What did I know? "beside this whip accomplishment," as she said. I was tongue- tied. It did not seem to me that I knew anything. At last I said so. Preston exclaimed. I looked at him to beg him to be still; and I remember how he smiled at me. "You can read, I suppose?" my governess went on. "Yes, ma'am." "And write, I suppose?" "I do not think you would say I know how to write," I answered. "I cannot do it at all well; and it takes me a long time." "Come back to the driving, Daisy," said Preston. "That is one thing you do know. And English history, I will bear witness." "What have you got there, Preston?" my aunt asked. "Some hoarhound drops, mamma." "You haven't a sore throat?" she asked eagerly. "No, ma'am � not just now, but I had yesterday; and I thought I would be provided." "You seem provided for a long time �" Miss Pinshon remarked. "Can't get anything up at Magnolia � except rice," said Preston, after making the lady a bow which did not promise good fellowship. "You must take with you what you are likely to want there." "You will not want all that," said his mother. "No, ma'am, I hope not," said Preston, looking at his package demurely. "Old uncle Lot, you know, always has a cough; and I purpose delighting him with some of my purchases. I will go and put them away." "Old uncle Lot!" my aunt repeated. "What uncle Lot? I did not know you had been enough at Magnolia to get the servants' names. But I don't remember any uncle Lot." Preston turned to leave the room with his candy, and in turning gave me a look of such supreme fun � and mischief that at another time I could hardly have helped laughing. But Miss Pinshon was asking me if I understood arithmetic? "I think � I know very little about it," I said hesitating. "I can do a sum." "In what?" "On the slate, ma'am." "Yes, but in what?" "I don't know, ma'am � it is adding up the columns." "Oh, in _addition_, then. Do you know the multiplication and division tables?" "No, ma'am." "Go and get off your things, and then come back to me; and I will have some more talk with you." I remember to this day how heavily my feet went up the stairs. I was not very strong yet in body, and now the strength seemed to have gone out of my heart. "I declare," said Preston, who waited for me on the landing, "she falls into position easy! Does she think she is going to take _that_ tone with you?" I made no answer. Preston followed me into my room. "I won't have it, little Daisy. Nobody shall be mistress at Magnolia but you. This woman shall not. See, Daisy � I am going to put these things in my trunk for you, until we get where you want them. That will be safe." I thanked him. "What are you going to do now?" "I am going downstairs, as soon as I am ready." "Do you expect to be under all the commands this High Mightiness may think proper to lay upon you?" I begged him to be still and leave me. "She will turn you into stone!" he exclaimed. "She is a regular Gorgon, with those heavy eyes of hers. I never saw such eyes. I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, Daisy, � not one, do you hear?" I heard too well. I faced round upon him and begged him to remember that it was my _mother_ I must obey in Miss Pinshon's orders; and said that he must not talk to me. Whereupon Preston threw down his candies, and pulled my cloak out of my unsteady hands, and locked his arms about me; kissing me and lamenting over me that it was "too bad." I tried to keep my self-command; but the end was a great burst of tears; and I went down to Miss Pinshon with red eyes and at a disadvantage. I think Preston was pleased. I had need of all my quiet and self-command. My governess stretched out her hand, drew me to her side and kissed me; then with the other hand went on to arrange the ruffle round my neck, stroking it and pulling it into order, and even taking out a little bit of a pin I wore, and putting it in again to suit herself. It annoyed me excessively. I knew all was right about my ruffle and pin; I never left them carelessly arranged; no fingers but mamma's had ever dared to meddle with them before. But Miss Pinshon arranged the ruffle and the pin, and still holding me, looked in my face with those eyes of hers. I began to feel that they were "heavy." They did not waver. They did not seem to wink, like other eyes. They bore down upon my face with a steady power, that was not bright but ponderous. Her first question was, whether I was a good girl? I could not tell how to answer. My aunt answered for me, that she believed Daisy meant to be a good girl, though she liked to have her own way. Miss Pinshon ordered me to bring up a chair and sit down; and then asked if I knew anything about mathematics; told me it was the science of quantity; remarked to my aunt that it was the very best study for teaching children to think, and that she always gave them a great deal of it in the first years of their pupilage. "It puts the mind in order," the black-eyed lady went on; "and other things come so easily after it. Daisy, do you know what I mean by 'quantity'?" I knew what _I _ meant by quantity; but whether the English language had anything in common for Miss Pinshon and me, I had great doubts. I hesitated. "I always teach my little girls to answer promptly when they are asked anything. I notice that you do not answer promptly. You can always tell whether you know a thing or whether you do not." I was not so sure of that. Miss Pinshon desired me now to repeat the multiplication table. Here at least there was certainty. I had never learned it. "It appears to me," said my governess, "you have done very little with the first ten years of your life. It gives you a great deal to do for the next ten." "Health has prevented her applying to her studies," said my aunt. "The want of health. Yes, I suppose so. I hope Daisy will be very well now, for we must make up for lost time." "I do not suppose so much time need have been lost," said my aunt; "but parents are easily alarmed, you know; they think of nothing but one thing." So now there was nobody about me who would be easily alarmed. I took the full force of that. "Of course," said Miss Pinshon, "I shall have a careful regard to her health. Nothing can be done without that. I shall take her out regularly to walk with me, and see that she does not expose herself in any way. Study is no hindrance to health; learning has no malevolent effect upon the body. I think people often get sick for want of something to think of." How sure I felt, as I went up to bed that night, that no such easy cause of sickness would be mine for long years to come! CHAPTER II. MY HOME. The next day we were to go to Magnolia. It was a better day than I expected. Preston kept me with him, away from aunt Gary and my governess; who seemed to have a very comfortable time together. Magnolia lay some miles inland, up a small stream or inlet called the Sands river; the banks of which were studded with gentlemen's houses. The houses were at large distances from one another, miles of plantation often lying between. We went by a small steamer which plied up and down the river; it paddled along slowly, made a good many landings, and kept us on board thus a great part of the day. At last Preston pointed out to me a little wooden pier or jetty ahead, which he said was my landing; and the steamer soon drew up to it. I could see only a broken bank, fifteen feet high, stretching all along the shore. However, a few steps brought us to a receding level bit of ground, where there was a break in the bank; the shore fell in a little, and a wooded dell sloped back from the river. A carriage and servants were waiting here. Preston and I had arranged that we would walk up and let the ladies ride. But as soon as they had taken their places I heard myself called. We declared our purpose, Preston and I; but Miss Pinshon said the ground was damp and she preferred I should ride; and ordered me in. I obeyed, bitterly disappointed; so much disappointed that I had the utmost trouble not to let it be seen. For a little while I did not know what we were passing. Then curiosity recovered itself. The carriage was slowly making its way up a rough road. On each side the wooded banks of the dell shut us in; and these banks seemed to slope upward as well as the road, for though we mounted and mounted, the sides of the dell grew no lower. After a little, then, the hollow of the dell began to grow wider, and its sides softly shelving down; and through the trees on our left we could see a house, standing high above us, but on ground which sloped towards the dell, which rose and widened and spread out to meet it. This sloping ground was studded with magnificent live oaks; each holding its place in independent majesty, making no interference with the growth of the rest. Some of these trees had a girth that half a dozen men with their arms outstretched in a circle could not span; they were green in spite of the winter; branching low, and spreading into stately, beautiful heads of verdure, while grey wreaths of moss hung drooping from some of them. The house was seen not very distinctly among these trees; it showed low, and in a long extent of building. I have never seen a prettier approach to a house than that at Magnolia. My heart was full of the beauty, this first time. "This is Magnolia, Daisy," said my aunt. "This is your house." "It appears a fine place," said Miss Pinshon. "It is one of the finest on the river. This is your property, Daisy." "It is papa's," I answered. "Well, � it belongs to your mother, and so you may say it belongs to your father; but it is yours for all that. The arrangement was, as I know," my aunt went on, addressing Miss Pinshon, � "the arrangement in the marriage settlements was, that the sons should have the father's property, and the daughters the mother's. There is one son and one daughter; so they will each have enough." "But it is mamma's and papa's," I pleaded. "Oh, well � it will be yours. That is what I mean. Ransom will have Melbourne and the Virginia estates; and Magnolia is yours. You ought to have a pretty good education." I was so astonished at this way of looking at things, that again I lost part of what was before me. The carriage went gently along, passing the house, and coming up gradually to the same level; then making a turn we drove at a better pace back under some of those great evergreen oaks, till we drew up at the house door. This was at a corner of the building, which stretched in a long, low line towards the river. A verandah skirted all that long front. As soon as I was out of the carriage I ran to the furthest end. I found the verandah turned the corner; the lawn too. All along the front, it sloped to the dell; at the end of the house, it sloped more gently and to greater distance down to the banks of the river. I could not see the river itself. The view of the dell at my left hand was lovely. A little stream which ran in the bottom had been coaxed to form a clear pool in an open spot, where the sunlight fell upon it, surrounded by a soft wilderness of trees and climbers. Sweet branches of jessamine waved there in their season; and a beautiful magnolia had been planted or cherished there, and carefully kept in view of the house windows. But the wide lawns, on one side and on the other, grew nothing but the oaks; the gentle slope was a playground for sunshine and shadow, as I first saw it; for then the shadows of the oaks were lengthening over the grass, and the waving grey wreaths of moss served sometimes as a foil, sometimes as an her, to the sunbeams. I stood in a trance of joy and sorrow; they were fighting so hard for the mastery; till I knew that my aunt and Miss Pinshon had come up behind me. "This is a proud place!" my governess remarked. I believe I looked at her. My aunt laughed; said she must not teach me that; and led the way back to the entrance of the house. All along the verandah I noticed that the green blinded long windows made other entrances for whoever chose them. The door was open for us already, and within was a row of dark faces of men and women, and a show of white teeth that looked like a welcome. I wondered aunt Gary did not say more to answer the welcome; she only dropped a few careless words as she went in, and asked if dinner was ready. I looked from one to another of the strange faces and gleaming rows of teeth. These were my mother's servants; that was something that came near to my heart. I heard inquiries after "Mis' Felissy," and "Mass' Randolph," and then the question, "Mis' 'Lizy, is this little missis?" It was asked by an old, respectable-looking, grey-haired negress. I did not hear my aunt's answer; but I stopped and turned to the woman and laid my little hand in her withered palm. I don't know what there was in that minute; only I know that whereas I touched one hand, I touched a great many hearts. Then and there began my good understanding with all the coloured people on my mother's estate of Magnolia. There was a general outburst of satisfaction and welcome. Some of the voices blessed me; more than one remarked that I was "like Mass' Randolph;" and I went into the parlour with a warm spot in my heart, which had been very cold. I was oddly at home at once. The room indeed was a room I had never seen before; yet according to the mystery of such things, the inanimate surroundings bore the mark of the tastes and habits I had grown up among all my life. A great splendid fire was blazing in the chimney; a rich carpet was on the floor; the furniture was luxurious though not showy, and there was plenty of it. So there was a plenty of works of art, in home and foreign manufacture. Comfort, elegance, prettiness, all around; and through the clear, glass of the long windows the evergreen oaks on the lawn showed like guardians of the place. I stood at one of them, with the pressure of that joy and sorrow filling my childish heart. My aunt presently called me from the window, and bade me let Margaret take off my things. I got leave to go up stairs with Margaret and take them off there. So I ran up the low easy flight of stairs � they were wooden and uncarpeted � to a matted gallery lit from the roof, with here and there a window in a recess looking upon the lawn. Many rooms opened into this gallery. I went from one to another. Here were great wood fires burning too; here were snowy white beds, with light muslin hangings; and dark cabinets and wardrobes; and mats on the floors, with thick carpets and rugs laid down here and there. And on one side and on the other side the windows looked out upon the wide lawn, with its giant oaks hung with grey wreaths of moss. My heart grew sore straitened. It was a hard evening, that first evening at Magnolia; with the loveliness and the brightness, the warm attraction, and the bitter cold sense of loneliness. I longed to throw myself down and cry. What I did, was to stand by one of the windows and fight myself not to let the tears come. If _they_ were here, it would be so happy! If they were here � oh, if they were here! I believe the girl spoke to me without my hearing her. But then came somebody whom I was obliged to hear, shouting "Daisy" along the gallery. I faced him with a great effort. He wanted to know what I was doing, and how I liked it, and where my room was. "Not found it yet?" said Preston. "Is this it? Whose room is this, hey? � you somebody?" "Maggie, massa," said the girl, dropping a curtsey. "Maggie, where is your mistress's room?" "This is Mis' 'Liza's room, sir." "Nonsense! Mis' 'Liza is only here on a visit � _this_ is your mistress. Where is her room, hey?" "Oh, stop, Preston!" I begged him. "I am not mistress." "Yes, you are. I'll roast anybody who says you ain't. Come along, and you shall choose which room you will have; and if it isn't ready they will get it ready. Come!" I made him understand my choice might depend on where other people's rooms were; and sent him off. Then I sent the girl away � she was a pleasant-faced mulatto, very eager to help me � and left to myself I hurriedly turned the key in the lock. I _must_ have some minutes to myself, if I was to bear the burden of that afternoon; and I knelt down with as heavy a heart, almost, as I ever knew. In all my life I had never felt so castaway and desolate. When my father and mother first went from me, I was at least among the places where they had been; June was with me still, and I knew not Miss Pinshon. The journey had had its excitements and its interest. Now I was alone; for June had decided, with tears and woeful looks, that she would not come to Magnolia; and Preston would be soon on his way back to college. I knew of only one comfort in the world; that wonderful, "Lo, I am with you." Does anybody know what that means, who has not made it the single plank bridge over an abyss? No one found out that anything was the matter with me, except Preston. His caresses were dangerous to my composure. I kept him off; and he ate his dinner with a thundercloud face which foretold war with all governesses. For me, it was hard work enough to maintain my quiet; everything made it hard. Each new room, every arrangement of furniture, every table appointment, though certainly not what I had seen before, yet seemed so like home that I was constantly missing what would have made it home indeed. It was the shell without the kernel. The soup ladle seemed to be by mistake in the wrong hands; Preston seemed to have no business with my father's carving knife and fork; the sense of desolation pressed upon me everywhere. After dinner, the ladies went up stairs to choose their rooms, and Miss Pinshon avowed that she wished to have mine within hers; it would be proper and convenient, she said. Aunt Gary made no objection; but there was some difficulty, because all the rooms had independent openings into the gallery. Miss Pinshon hesitated a moment between one of two that opened into each other and another that was pleasanter and larger but would give her less facility for overlooking my affairs. For one moment I drew a breath of hope; and then my hope was quashed. Miss Pinshon chose one of the two that opened into each other; and my only comfort was in the fact that my own room had two doors and I was not obliged to go through Miss Pinshon's to get to it. Just as this business was settled, Preston called me out into the gallery and asked me to go for a walk. I questioned with myself a second, whether I should ask leave; but I had an inward assurance that to ask leave would be not to go. I felt I must go. I ran back to the room where my things lay, and in two minutes I was out of the house. My first introduction to Magnolia! How well I remember every minute and every foot of the way. It was delicious, the instant I stepped out among the oaks and into the sunshine. Freedom was there, at all events. "Now Daisy, we'll go to the stables," Preston said, "and see if there is anything fit for you. I am afraid there isn't; though Edwards told me he thought there was." "Who is Edwards?" I asked, as we sped joyfully away through the oaks, across shade and sunshine. "Oh, he is the overseer." "What is an overseer?" "What is an overseer? � why, he is the man that looks after things." "What things?" I asked. "All the things � everything, Daisy; all the affairs of the plantation; the rice-fields and the cotton-fields, and the people, and everything." "Where are the stables? and where are we going?" "Here � just here � a little way off. They are just in a dell over here � the other side of the house, where the quarters are." "Quarters"? I repeated. "Yes. Oh, you don't know anything down here, but you'll learn. The stables and quarters are in this dell we are coming to; nicely out of sight. Magnolia is one of the prettiest places on the river." We had passed through the grove of oaks on the further side of the house, and then found the beginning of a dell which, like the one by which we had come up a few hours before, sloped gently down to the river. In its course it widened out to a little low sheltered open ground, where a number of buildings stood. "So the house is between two dells," I said. "Yes; and on that height up there, beyond the quarters, is the cemetery; and from there you can see a great many fields and the river and have a beautiful view. And there are capital rides all about the place, Daisy." When we came to the stables, Preston sent a boy in search of "Darius." Darius, he told me, was the coachman, and chief in charge of the stable department. Darius came presently. He was a grey-headed, fine-looking, most respectable black man. He had driven my mother and my mother's mother; and being a trusted and important man on the place, and for other reasons, he had a manner and bearing that were a model of dignified propriety. Very grave "uncle Darry" was; stately and almost courtly in his respectful courtesy; but he gave me a pleasant smile when Preston presented him. "We's happy to see Miss Daisy at her own home. Hope de Lord bress her." My heart warmed at these words like the ice-bound earth in a spring day. They were not carelessly spoken, nor was the welcome. My feet trod the greensward more firmly. Then all other thoughts were for the moment put to flight by Preston's calling for the pony and asking Darius what he thought of him, and Darry's answer. "Very far, massa; very far. Him no good for not'ing." While I pondered what this judgment might amount to, the pony was brought out. He was larger than Loupe, and had not Loupe's peculiar symmetry of mane and tail; he was a fat dumpy little fellow, sleek and short, dapple grey, with a good long tail and a mild eye. Preston declared he had no shape at all and was a poor concern of a pony; but to my eyes he was beautiful. He took one or two sugarplums from my hand with as much amenity as if we had been old acquaintances. Then a boy was put on him, who rode him up and down with a halter. "He'll do, Darius," said Preston. "For little missis? Just big enough, massa. Got no tricks at all, only he no like work. Not much spring in him." "Daisy must take the whip, then. Come and let us go look at some of the country where you will ride. Are you tired, Daisy?" "Oh, no," I said. "But wait a minute, Preston. Who lives in all those houses?" "The people. The hands. They are away in the fields at work now." "Does Darius live there?" "Of course. They all live here." "I should like to go nearer, and see the houses." "Daisy, it is nothing on earth to see. They are all just alike; and you see them from here." "I want to look in," � I said, moving down the slope. "Daisy," said Preston, you are just as fond of having your own way as �" "As what? I do not think I am, Preston." "I suppose nobody thinks he is," grumbled Preston, following me, � "except the fellows who can't get it." I had by this time almost forgotten Miss Pinshon. I had almost come to think that Magnolia might be a pleasant place. In the intervals, when the pony was out of sight, I had improved my knowledge of the old coachman; and every look added to my liking. There was something I could not read that more and more drew me to him. A simplicity in his good manners, a placid expression in his gravity, a staid reserve in his humility, were all there; and more yet. Also the scene in the dell was charming to me. The ground about the negro cottages was kept neat; they were neatly built of stone and stood round the sides of a quadrangle; while on each side and below the wooded slopes of ground closed in the picture. Sunlight was streaming through and brightening up the cottages and resting on uncle Darry's swarth face. Down through the sunlight I went to the cottages. The first door stood open, and I looked in. At the next I was about to knock, but Preston pushed open the door for me; and so he did for a third and a fourth. Nobody was in them. I was a good deal disappointed. They were empty, bare, dirty, and seemed to me very forlorn. What a set of people my mother's hands must be, I thought. Presently I came upon a ring of girls, a little larger than I was, huddled together behind one of the cottages. There was no manners about them. They were giggling and grinning, hopping on one foot, and going into other awkward antics; not the less that most of them had their arms filled with little black babies. I had got enough for that day, and turning about left the dell with Preston. At the head of the dell, Preston led off in a new direction, along a wide avenue that ran through the woods. Perfectly level and smooth, with the woods closing in on both sides and making long vistas through their boles and under their boughs. By and by we took another path that led off from this one, wide enough for two horses to go abreast. The pine trees were sweet overhead and on each hand, making the light soft and the air fragrant. Preston and I wandered on in delightful roaming; leaving the house and all that it contained at an unremembered distance. Suddenly we came out upon a cleared field. It was many acres large; in the distance a number of people were at work. We turned back again. "Preston," I said, after a silence of a few minutes, � "there seemed to be no women in those cottages. I did not see any." "I suppose not," said Preston; "because there were not any to see." "But had all those little babies no mothers?" "Yes, of course, Daisy; but they were in the field." "The mothers of those little babies?" "Yes. What about it? Look here � are you getting tired?" I said no; and he put his arm round me fondly, so as to hold me up a little; and we wandered gently on, back to the avenue, then down its smooth course further yet from the house, then off by another wood path through the pines on the other side. This was a narrower path, amidst sweeping pine branches and hanging creepers, some of them prickly, which threw themselves all across the way. It was not easy getting along. I remarked that nobody seemed to come there much. "I never came here myself," said Preston, "but I know it must lead out upon the river somewhere, and that's what I am after. � Hollo! we are coming to something. There is something white through the trees. I declare, I believe �" Preston had been out in his reckoning, and a second time had brought me where he did not wish to bring me. We came presently to an open place, or rather a place where the pines stood a little apart; and there in the midst was a small enclosure. A low brick wall surrounded a square bit of ground, with an iron gate in one side of the square; within, the grassy plot was spotted with the white marble of tombstones. There were large and small. Overhead, the great pine trees stood and waved their long branches gently in the wind. The place was lonely and lovely. We had come, as Preston guessed, to the river, and the shore was here high; so that we looked down upon the dark little stream far below us. The sunlight, getting low by this time, hardly touched it; but streamed through the pine trees and over the grass and gilded the white marble with gold. "I did not mean to bring you here," said Preston. "I did not know I was bringing you here. Come, Daisy � we'll go and try again." "Oh, stop!" I said � "I like it. I want to look at it." "It is the cemetery," said Preston. "That tall column is the monument of our great � no, of our great-great-grandfather; and this brown one is for mamma's father. Come, Daisy! �" "Wait a little," I said. "Whose is that with the vase on top?" "Vase?" said Preston � "it's an urn. It is an urn, Daisy. People do not put vases on tombstones." I asked what the difference was. "The difference? Oh, Daisy, Daisy! Why vases are to put flowers in; and urns � I'll tell you, Daisy, � I believe it is because the Romans used to burn the bodies of their friends and gather up the ashes and keep them in a funeral urn. So an urn comes to be appropriate to a tombstone." "I do not see how," I said. "Why, because an urn comes to be an emblem of mortality and all that. Come, Daisy; let us go." "I think a vase of flowers would be a great deal nicer," I said. "We do not keep the ashes of our friends." "We don't put signs of joy over their graves either," said Preston. "I should think we might," I said, meditatively. "When people have gone to Jesus � they must be very glad!" Preston burst out with an expression of hope that Miss Pinshon would "do something" for me; and again would have led me away; but I was not ready to go. My eye, roving beyond the white marble and the low brick wall, had caught what seemed to be a number of meaner monuments, scattered among the pine trees and spreading down the slope of the ground on the further side, where it fell off towards another dell. In one place a bit of board was set up; further on, a cross; then I saw a great many bits of board and crosses; some more and some less carefully made; and still as my eye roved about over the ground they seemed to start up to view in every direction; too low and too humble and too near the colour of the fallen pine leaves to make much show unless they were looked for. I asked what they all were? "Those? Oh, those are for the people, you know." "The people?" � I repeated. "Yes, the people � the hands." "There are a great many of them!" I remarked. "Of course," said Preston. "You see, Daisy, there have been I don't know how many hundreds of hands here for a great many years, ever since mother's grandfather's time." "I should think," said I, looking at the little board slips and crosses among the pine cones on the ground, � "I should think they would like to have something nicer to put up over their graves." "Nicer? those are good enough," said Preston. "Good enough for them." "I should think they would like to have something better," I said. "Poor people at the North have nicer monuments, I know. I never saw such monuments in my life." "Poor people!" cried Preston. "Why, these are the _hands_, Daisy, � the coloured people. What do they want of monuments?" "Don't they care?" said I, wondering. "Who cares if they care? I don't know whether they care," said Preston, quite out of patience with me, I thought. "Only, if they cared, I should think they would have something nicer," I said. "Where do they all go to church, Preston?" "Who?" said Preston. "These people?" "What people? The families along the river, do you mean?" "No, no," said I; "I mean _our_ people � these people; the hands. You say there are hundreds of them. Where do they go to church?" I faced Preston now in my eagerness; for the little board crosses and the forlorn look of the whole burying ground on the side of the hill had given me a strange feeling. "Where do they go to church, Preston?" "Nowhere, I reckon." I was shocked, and Preston was impatient. How should he know, he said; he did not live at Magnolia. And he carried me off. We went back to the avenue and slowly bent our steps again towards the house; slowly, for I was tired, and we both, I think, were busy with our thoughts. Presently I saw a man, a negro, come into the avenue a little before us with a bundle of tools on his back. He went as slowly as we, with an indescribable, purposeless gait. His figure had the same look too, from his lop-sided old white hat to every fold of his clothing, which seemed to hang about him just as if it would as lieve be off as on. I begged Preston to hail him and ask him the question about church going, which sorely troubled me. Preston was unwilling and resisted. "What do you want me to do that for, Daisy?" "Because aunt Gary told Miss Pinshon that we have to drive six miles to go to church. Do ask him where they go!" "They don't go _anywhere_, Daisy," said Preston impatiently; "they don't care a straw about it, either. All the church they care about is when they get together in somebody's house and make a great muss." "Make a muss!" said I. "Yes; a regular muss; shouting and crying and having what they call a good time. That's what some of them do; but I'll wager if I were to ask him about going to church, this fellow here would not know what I mean." This did by no means quiet me. I insisted that Preston should stop the man; and at last he did. I The fellow turned and came back towards us, ducking his old white hat. His face was just like the rest of him: there was no expression in it but an expression of limp submissiveness. "Sambo, your mistress wants to speak to you." "Yes, massa. I's George, massa." "George," said I, "I want to know where you go to church?" "Yes, missis. What missis want to know?" "Where do you and all the rest go to church?" "Reckon don't go nowhar, missis." "Don't you ever go to church?" "Church for white folks, missis; bery far; long ways to ride." "But you and the rest of the people � don't you go anywhere to church? to hear preaching?" "Reckon not, missis. De preachin's don't come dis way, likely." "Can you read the Bible, George?" "Dunno read, missis. Never had no larnin'." "Then don't you know anything about what is in the Bible? don't you know about Jesus?" "Reckon don't know not'ing, missis." "About Jesus?" said I again. " 'Clar, missis, dis nigger don't know not'ing, but de rice and de corn. Missis talk to Darry; he most knowin' nigger on plantation; knows a heap." "There!" exclaimed Preston � "that will do. You go off to your supper, George � and Daisy, you had better come on if you want anything pleasant at home. What on earth have you got now by that? What is the use? Of course they do not know anything; and why should they? They have no time and no use for it." "They have time on Sundays �" I said. "Time to sleep. That is what they do. That is the only thing a negro cares about, to go to sleep in the sun. It's all nonsense, Daisy." "They would care about something else, I dare say," I answered, "if they could get it." "Well, they can't get it. Now, Daisy, I want you to let these fellows alone. You have nothing to do with them, and you did not come to Magnolia for such work. You have nothing on earth to do with them." I had my own thoughts on the subject, but Preston was not a sympathising hearer. I said no more. The evergreen oaks about the house came presently in sight; then the low verandah that ran round three sides of it; then we came to the door, and my walk was over. CHAPTER III. THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE. My life at Magnolia might be said to begin when I came down stairs that evening. My aunt and Miss Pinshon were sitting in the parlour, in the light of a glorious fire of light wood and oak sticks. Miss Pinshon called me to her at once; inquired where I had been; informed me I must not for the future take such diversion without her leave first asked and obtained; and then put me to reading aloud, that she might see how well I could do it. She gave me a philosophical article in a magazine for my proof piece; it was full of long words that I did not know and about matters that I did not understand. I read mechanically, of course; trying with all my might to speak the long words right, that there might be no room for correction; but Miss Pinshon's voice interrupted me again and again. I felt cast away � in a foreign land; further and further from the home feeling every minute; and it seemed besides as if the climate had some power of petrifaction. I could not keep Medusa out of my head. It was a relief at last when the tea was brought in. Miss Pinshon took the magazine out of my hand. "She has a good voice, but she wants expression," was her remark. "I could not understand what she was reading," said my aunt Gary. "Nor anybody else," said Preston. "How are you going to give expression, when there is nothing to express?" "That is where you feel the difference between a good reader and one who is not trained," said my governess. "I presume Daisy has never been trained." "No, not in anything," said my aunt. "I dare say she wants a good deal of it." "We will try �" said Miss Pinshon. It all comes back to me as I write, that beginning of my Magnolia life. I remember how dazed and disheartened I sat at the tea-table, yet letting nobody see it; how Preston made violent efforts to change the character of the evening; and did keep up a stir that at another time would have amused me. And when I was dismissed to bed, Preston came after me to the upper gallery and almost broke up my power of keeping quiet. He gathered me in his arms, kissed me and lamented over me, and denounced ferocious threats against "Medusa;" while I in vain tried to stop him. He would not be sent away, till he had come into my room and seen that the fire was burning and the room warm, and Margaret ready for me. With Margaret there was also an old coloured woman, dark and wrinkled, my faithful old friend Mammy Theresa; but indeed I could scarcely see her just then, for my eyes were full of big tears when Preston left me; and I had to stand still before the fire for some minutes before I could fight down the fresh tears that were welling up and let those which veiled my eyesight scatter away. I was conscious how silently the two women waited upon me. I had a sense even then of the sympathy they were giving. I knew they served me with a respect which would have done for an Eastern princess; but I said nothing hardly, nor they, that night. If the tears came when I was alone, so did sleep too at last; and I waked up the next morning a little revived. It was a cool morning! and my eyes opened to see Margaret on her knees making my fire. Two good oak sticks were on the fire dogs, and a heap of light wood on the floor. I watched her piling and preparing, and then kindling the wood with a splinter of light wood which she lit in the candle. It was all very strange to me. The bare painted and varnished floor; the rugs laid down here and there; the old cupboards in the wall; the unwonted furniture. It did not feel like home. I lay still, until the fire blazed up and Margaret rose to her feet, and seeing my eyes open dropped her curtsey. "Please, missis, may I be Miss Daisy's girl?" "I will ask aunt Gary," I answered; a good deal surprised. "Miss Daisy is the mistress. We all belong to Miss Daisy. It will be as she say." I thought to myself that very little was going to be "as I said." I got out of bed, feeling terribly slim-hearted, and stood in my night-gown before the fire, trying to let the blaze warm me. Margaret did her duties with a zeal of devotion that reminded me of my old June. "I will ask aunt Gary," I said; "and I think she will let you build my fire, Margaret." "Thank'e, ma'am. First rate fires, I'll make, Miss Daisy. We'se all so glad Miss Daisy come to Magnoly." Were they? I thought, and what did she mean by their all "belonging to me"? I was not accustomed to quite so much deference. However, I improved my opportunity by asking Margaret my question of the day before about church. The girl half laughed. "Aint any church big enough to hold all de people," she said. "Guess we coloured folks has to go widout." "But where _is_ the church?" I said. "Aint none, Miss Daisy. People enough to make a church full all himselves." "And don't you want to go?" "Reckon it's o' no consequence, missis. It's a right smart chance of a way to Bo'mbroke, where de white folks' church is. Guess they don't have none for poor folks nor niggers in dese parts." "But Jesus died for poor people," I said, turning round upon my attendant. She met me with a gaze I did not understand, and said nothing. Margaret was not like my old June. She was a clear mulatto, with a fresh colour and rather a handsome face; and her eyes, unlike June's little anxious, restless, almond shaped eyes, were liquid and full. She went on care- fully with the toilet duties which busied her; and I was puzzled. "Did you never hear of Jesus?" I said presently. "Don't you know that He loves poor people?" "Reckon He loves rich people de best, Miss Daisy," the girl said, in a dry tone. I faced about to deny this, and to explain how the Lord had a special love and care for the poor. I saw that my hearer did not believe me. "She had heerd so," she said. The dressing-bell sounded long and loud, and I was obliged to let Margaret go on with my dressing; but in the midst of my puzzled state of mind, I felt childishly sure of the power of that truth, of the Lord's love, to break down any hardness and overcome any coldness. Yet, "how shall they hear without a preacher?" and I had so little chance to speak. "Then, Margaret," said I at last, "is there no place where you can go to hear about the things in the Bible?" "No, missis; I never goes." "And does not anybody, except Darry when he goes with the carriage?" "Can't, Miss Daisy; it's miles and miles; and no place for niggers neither." "Can you read the Bible, Margaret?" "Guess not, missis; we's too stupid; aint good for coloured folks to read." "Does _nobody_, among all the people, read the Bible?" said I, once more stopping Margaret in my dismay. "Uncle Darry � he does," said the girl; "and he � do 'spoun some; but I don't make no count of his 'spoundations." I did not know quite what she meant; but I had no time for anything more. I let her go, locked my door and kneeled down; with the burden on my heart of this new revelation; that there were hundreds of people under the care of my father and mother, who were living without church and without Bible, in desperate ignorance of everything worth knowing. If I papa had only been at Magnolia with me! I thought I could have persuaded him to build a church and let somebody come and teach the people. But now � what could I do? And I asked the Lord, what could I do? but I did not see the answer. Feeling the question on my two shoulders, I went down stairs. To my astonishment, I found the family all gathered in solemn order; the house servants at one end of the room, my aunt, Miss Pinshon and Preston at the other, and before my aunt a little table with books. I got a seat as soon as I could, for it was plain that something was waiting for me. Then my aunt opened the Bible and read a chapter, and followed it with a prayer read out of another book. I was greatly amazed at the whole proceeding. No such ceremony was ever gone through at Melbourne; and certainly nothing had ever given me the notion that my aunt Gary was any more fond of sacred things than the rest of the family. "An excellent plan," said Miss Pinshon, when we had risen from our knees and the servants had filed off. "Yes," my aunt said, somewhat as if it needed an apology; � "it was the custom in my father's and grandfather's time; and we always keep it up. I think old customs always should be kept up." "And do you have the same sort of thing on Sundays, for the out-of-door hands?" "What?" said my aunt. It was somewhat more abrupt than polite; but she probably felt that Miss Pinshon was a governess. "There were only the house servants gathered this morning." "Of course; part of them." "Have you any similar system of teaching for those who are outside? I think you told me they have no church to go to." "I should like to know what "system" you would adopt," said my aunt, "to reach seven hundred people." "A church and a minister would not be a bad thing." "Or we might all turn missionaries," said Preston; "and go among them with bags of Bibles round our necks. We might all turn missionaries." "Colporteurs," said Miss Pinshon. Then I said in my heart, "I will be one." But I went on eating my breakfast and did not look at anybody; only I listened with all my might. "I don't know about that" said my aunt. "I doubt whether a church and a minister would be beneficial." "Then you have a nation of heathen at your doors," said Miss Pinshon. "I don't know but they are just as well off," said my aunt. "I doubt if more light would do them any good. They would not understand it." "They must be very dark, if they could not understand light," said my governess. "Just as people that are very light cannot understand darkness," said Preston. "I think so," my aunt went on. "Our neighbour Colonel Joram, down below here at Crofts, will not allow such a thing as preaching or teaching on his plantation. He says it is bad for them. We always allowed it; but I don't know." "Colonel Joram is a heathen himself, you know, mother," said Preston. "Don't hold _him_ up." "I will hold him up for a gentleman, and a very successful planter," said Mrs. Gary. "No place is better worked or managed than Crofts. If the estate of Magnolia were worked and kept as well, it would be worth half as much again as it ever has been. But there is the difference of the master's eye. My brother-in-law never could be induced to settle at Magnolia, nor at his own estates either. He likes it better in the cold North." Miss Pinshon made no remark whatever in answer to this statement; and the rest of the talk at the breakfast-table was about rice. After breakfast my school life at Magnolia began. It seems as if all the threads of my life there were in a hurry to get into my hand. Ah, I had a handful soon! But this was the fashion of my first day with my governess. � All the days were not quite so bad; however it gave the key of them all. Miss Pinshon bade me come with her to the room she and my aunt had agreed should be the schoolroom. It was the book room of the house, though it had hardly books enough to be called a library. It had been the study or private room of my grandfather; there was a leather-covered table with an old bronze standish; some plain book-cases; a large escritoire; a terrestrial globe; a thermometer and barometer; and the rest of the furniture was an abundance of chintz-covered chairs and lounges. These were very easy and pleasant for use; and long windows opening on the verandah looked off among the evergreen oaks and their floating grey drapery; the light in the room and the whole aspect of it was agreeable. If Miss Pinshon had not been there! But she was there, with a terrible air of business; setting one or two chairs in certain positions by a window, and handling one or two books on the table. I stood meek and helpless, expectant. "Have you read any history, Daisy?" I said no; then I said yes, I had; a little. "What?" "A little of the history of England last summer." "Not of your own country?" "No, ma'am." "And no ancient history?" "No, ma'am." "You know nothing of the Division of the nations, of course?" I answered, nothing. I had no idea what she meant; except that England, and America, and France, were different, and of course divided. Of Peleg the son of Eber and the brother of Joktan, I then knew nothing. "And arithmetic is something you do not understand," pursued Miss Pinshon. "Come here and let me see how you can write." With trembling, stiff little fingers � I feel them yet � I wrote some lines under my governess' eye. "Very unformed," was her comment. "And now, Daisy, you may sit down there in the window and study the multiplication table. See how much of it you can get this morning." Was it to be a morning's work? My heart was heavy as lead. At this hour, at Melbourne, my task would have been to get my flat hat and rush out among the beds of flowers; and a little later, to have up Loupe and go driving whither I would, among the meadows and cornfields. Ah, yes; and there was Molly who might be taught, and Juanita who might be visited; and Dr. Sandford who might come like a pleasant gale of wind into the midst of whatever I was about. I did not stop to think of them now, though a waft of the sunny air through the open window brought a violent rush of such images. I tried to shut them out of my head and gave myself wistfully to "three times one is three; three times two is six." Miss Pinshon helped me by closing the window. I thought she might have let so much sweetness as that come into the multiplication table. However I studied its threes and fours steadily for some time dry; then my attention flagged. It was very uninteresting. I had never in all my life till then been obliged to study what gave me no pleasure. My mind wandered, and then my eyes wandered, to where the sunlight lay so golden under the live oaks. The wreaths of grey moss stirred gently with the wind. I longed to be out there. Miss Pinshon's voice startled me. "Daisy, where are your thoughts?" I hastily brought my eyes and wits home and answered, "Out upon the lawn, ma'am." "Do you find the multiplication table there?" It was so needless to answer! I was mute. I would have come to the rash conclusion that nature and mathematics had nothing to do with each other. "You must learn to command your attention," my governess went on. "You must not let it wander. That is the first lesson you have to learn. I shall give you mathematics till you have learnt it. You can do nothing without attention." I bent myself to the threes and fours again. But I was soon weary; my mind escaped; and without turning my eyes off my book, it swept over the distance between Magnolia and Melbourne, and sat down by Molly Skelton to help her in getting her letters. It was done and I was there. I could hear the hesitating utterances; I could see the dull finger tracing its way along the lines. And then would come the reading _to_ Molly, and the interested look of waiting attention, and once in a while the strange softening of the poor hard face. From there my mind went off to the people around me at Magnolia; were there some to be taught here perhaps? and could I get at them? and was there no other way � could it be there was no other way but by my weak little voice � through which some of them were ever to learn about my dear Saviour? I had got very far from mathematics, and my book fell. I heard Miss Pinshon's voice. "Daisy, come here." I obeyed, and came to the table, where my governess was installed in the leather chair of my grandfather. She always used it. "I should like to know what you are doing." "I was thinking �" I said. "Did I give you thinking to do?" "No, ma'am; not of that kind." "What kind was it?" "I was thinking, and remembering �" "Pray, what were you remembering?" "Things at home � and other things." "Things and things," said Miss Pinshon. "That is not a very elegant way of speaking. Let me hear how much you have learned." I began. About all of the "threes" was on my tongue; the rest had got mixed up hopelessly with Molly Skelton and teaching Bible reading. Miss Pinshon was not pleased. "You must learn attention," she said. "I can do nothing with you until you have succeeded in that. You _must_ attend. Now I shall give you a motive for minding what you are about. Go and sit down again and study this table till you know the threes and the fours and the fives and the sixes, perfectly. Go and sit down." I sat down, and the life was all out of me. Tears in the first place had a great mind to come, and would put themselves between me and the figures in the multiplication table. I governed them back after a while. But I could not study to purpose. I was tired and down-spirited; I had not energy left to spring to my task and accomplish it. Over and over again I tried to put the changes of the numbers in my head; it seemed like writing them in sand. My memory would not take hold of them; could not keep them; with all my trying I grew only more and more stupefied and fagged, and less capable of doing what I had to do. So dinner came, and Miss Pinshon said I might get myself ready for dinner and after dinner come back again to my lesson. The lesson must be finished before anything else was done. I had no appetite. Preston was in a fume of vexation, partly roused by my looks, partly by hearing that I was not yet free. He was enraged beyond prudent speaking, but Miss Pinshon never troubled herself about his words; and when the first and second courses were removed, told me I might go to my work. Preston called to me to stay and have some fruit; but I went on to the study, not caring for fruit or for anything else. I felt very dull and miserable. Then I remembered that my governess probably did care for some fruit and would be delayed a little while; and then I tried what is the best preparation for study or anything else. I got down on my knees, to ask that help which is as willingly given to a child in her troubles as to the general of an army. I prayed that I might be patient and obedient and take disagreeable things pleasantly and do my duty in the multiplication table. And a breath of rest came over my heart, and a sort of perfume of remembered things which I had forgotten; and it quite changed the multiplication table to think that God had given it to me to learn, and so that some good would certainly come of learning it; at least the good of pleasing Him. As long as I dared I staid on my knees; then � I was strong for the fives and sixes. But it was not quick work; and though my patience did not flag again nor my attention fail, the afternoon was well on the way before I was dismissed. I had then permission to do what I liked. Miss Pinshon said she would not go to walk that day; I might follow my own pleasure. I must have been very tired; for it seemed to me there was hardly any pleasure left to follow. I got my flat and went out. The sun was westing; the shadows stretched among the evergreen oaks; the outer air was sweet. I had tried to find Preston first, in the house; but he was not to be found; and all alone I went out into the sunshine. It wooed me on. Sunshine and I were always at home together. Without knowing that I wanted to go anywhere, some secret attraction drew my steps towards the dell where I had seen Darry. I followed one of several well beaten paths that led towards the quarters through the trees, and presently came out upon the stables again. All along the dell the sunshine poured. The ground was kept like a pleasure ground, it was so neat; the grass was as clean as the grass of a park; the little stone houses scattered away down towards the river, with shade trees among them, and oaks lining the sides of the dell. I thought surely Magnolia was a lovely place! if only my father and mother had been there. But then, seeing the many cottages, my trouble of the morning pressed upon me afresh. So many people, so many homes, and the light of the Bible not on them, nor in them? And, child as I was, and little as I knew, I knew the name of Christ too unspeakably precious, for me to think without a sore heart, that all these people were without what was the jewel of my life. � And they my mother's servants! my father's dependents! What could I do? The dell was alone in the yellow sunlight which poured over the slope from the west; and I went musing on till getting to the corner of the stables I saw Darry just round the corner grooming a black horse. He was working energetically and humming to himself as he worked a refrain which I learned afterwards to know well. � "All I could make out was, I'm going home" � several times repeated. I came near before he saw me, and he started; then bid me good evening and "hoped I found Magnolia a pleasant place." Since I have grown older I have read that wonderful story of Mrs. Stowe's _Uncle Tom_; he reminded me of Darry then, and now I never think of the one without thinking of the other. But Darry, having served a different class of people from Uncle Tom's first owners, had a more polished style of manners, which I should almost call courtly; and he was besides a man of higher natural parts, and somewhat more education. But much commerce in the Court which is above all earthly dignities, no doubt had more to do with his peculiarities than any other cause. I asked him what he was singing about home? and where his home was? He turned his face full on me, letting me see how grave and gentle his eye was, and at the same time there was a wistful expression in it that I felt. "Home aint nowheres here, missie," he said. "I'm 'spectin' to go by and by." "Do you mean home up _there?_" said I, lifting my finger towards the sky. Darry fairly laughed. " 'Spect don't want no other home, missie. Heaven good enough." I stood watching him as he rubbed down the black horse, feeling surely that he and I would be friends. "Where is your home here, Darry?" "I got a place down there, little missie � not fur." "When you have done that horse, will you show me your place? I want to see where you live." "Missie want to see Darry's house?" said he, showing his white teeth. "Missie shall see what she mind to. I allus keeps Saddler till the last, 'cause he's ontractable.". The black horse was put in the stable, and I followed my black groom down among the lines of stone huts, to which the working parties had not yet returned. Darry's house was one of the lowest in the dell, out of the quadrangle, and had a glimpse of the river. It stood alone, in a pretty place, but something about it did not satisfy me. It looked square and bare. The stone walls within were rough as the stone-layer had left them; one little four-paned window, or rather casement, stood open; and the air was sweet; for Darry kept his place scrupulously neat and clean. But there was not much to be kept. A low bedstead; a wooden chest; an odd table made of a piece of board on three legs; a shelf with some kitchen ware; that was all the furniture. On the odd table there lay a Bible, that had, I saw, been turned over many a time. "Then you can read, uncle Darry," I said, pitching on the only thing that pleased me. "De good Lord, He give me dat happiness," the man answered gravely. "And you love Jesus, Darry," I said, feeling that we had better come to an understanding as soon as possible. His answer was an energetic � "Bress de Lord! Do Miss Daisy love Him, den?" I would have said yes; I did say yes, I believe; but I did not know how or why, at this question there seemed a coming together of gladness and pain which took away my breath. My head dropped on Darry's little window-sill, and my tears rushed forth, like the head of water behind a broken mill-dam. Darry was startled and greatly concerned. He wanted to know if I was not well � if I would send him for "su'thing" � I could only shake my head and weep. I think Darry was the only creature at Magnolia before whom I would have so broken down. But somehow I felt safe with Darry. The tears cleared away from my voice after a little; and I went on with my inquiries again. It was a good chance. "Uncle Darry, does no one else but you read the Bible?" He looked dark and troubled. "Missie sees � de folks for most part got no learnin'. Dey no read, sure." "Do you read the Bible to them, Darry?" "Miss Daisy knows, dere aint no great time. Dey's in de field all day, most days, and dey hab no time for to hear." "But Sundays? �" I said. "Do try," � he said, looking graver yet. "Me do 'tempt su'thin'. But missie knows, de Sabbat' be de only day de people hab, and dey tink mostly of oder tings." "And there is no church for you all to go to?" "No, missis; no church." There was a sad tone in this answer. I did not know how to go on. I turned to something else. "Uncle Darry, I don't think your home looks very comfortable." Darry almost laughed at that. He said it was good enough; would last very well a little while longer. I insisted that it was not _comfortable_. It was cold. "Sun warm, Miss Daisy. De good Lord, He make His sun warm. And dere be fires enough." "But it is very empty," I said. "You want something more in it, to make it look nice." "It never empty, Miss Daisy, when de Lord Hisself be here. And He not leave His chil'n alone. Miss Daisy know dat?" I stretched forth my little hand and laid it in Darry's great � black palm. There was an absolute confidence established between us. "Uncle Darry" � I said, "I do love him � but sometimes, I want to see papa! �" And therewith my self-command was almost gone. I stood with full eyes and quivering lips, my hand still in Darry's, who on his part was speechless with sympathy. "De time pass quick, and Miss Daisy see her pa'," � he said at last. I did not think the time passed quick. I said so. "Do little missie ask de Lord for help?" Darry said, his eyes by this time as watery as mine. "Do Miss Daisy know, it nebber lonesome where de Lord be? He so good." I could not stand any more. I pulled away my hand and stood still, looking out of the window and seeing nothing, till I could make myself quiet. Then I changed the subject and told Darry I should like to go and see some of the other houses again. I know now, I can see, looking back, how my childish self-control and reserve made some of those impulsive natures around me regard me with something like worshipful reverence. I felt it then, without thinking of it or reasoning about it. From Darry, and from Margaret, and from Mammy Theresa, and from several others, I had a loving, tender reverence, which not only felt for me as a sorrowful child, but bowed before me as something of higher and stronger nature than themselves. Darry silently attended me now from house to house of the quarters; introducing and explaining and doing all he could to make my progress interesting and amusing. Interested I was; but most certainly not amused. I did not like the look of things any better than I had done at first. The places were not "nice;" there was a coarse, uncared-for air of everything within, although the outside was in such well dressed condition. No litter on the grass, no, untidiness of walls or chimneys; and no seeming of comfortable homes when the door was opened. The village, for it amounted to that, was almost deserted at that hour; only a few crooning old women on the sunny side of a wall, and a few half-grown girls, and a quantity of little children, depending for all the care they got upon one or the other of these. "Haven't all these little babies got mothers?" I asked. "For sure, Miss Daisy � dey's got modders." "Where _are_ the mothers of all these babies, Darry?" I asked. "Dey's in de field, Miss Daisy. Home d'rectly." "Are they working like _men_, in the fields?" I asked. "Dey's all at work," said Darry. "Do they do the same work as the men?" "All alike, Miss Daisy." Darry's answers were not hearty. "But don't their little babies want them?" said I, looking at a group of girls in whose hands were some very little babies indeed. I think Darry made me no answer. "But if the men and women both work out," I went on, "papa must give them a great deal of money; I should think they would have things more comfortable, Darry. Why don't they have little carpets, and tables and chairs, and cups and saucers? Hardly anybody has teacups and saucers. Have you _got_ any, uncle Darry?" " 'Spect I'se no good woman to brew de tea for her ole man," said Darry; but I thought he looked at me very oddly. "Couldn't you make it for yourself, uncle Darry?" "Poor folks don't live just like de rich folks," he answered quietly, after a minute's pause. "And I don't count fur to want no good t'ing, missie." I went on with my observations; my questions I thought I would not push any further at that time. I grew more and more dissatisfied, that my father's workpeople should live in no better style and in no better comfort. Even Molly Skelton had a furnished and appointed house, compared with these little bare stone huts; and mothers that would leave their babies for the sake of more wages must, I thought, be very barbarous mothers. This was all because, no doubt, of having no church and no Bible. I grew weary. As we were going up the dell towards the stables, I suddenly remembered my pony; and I asked to see him. Darry was much relieved, I fancy, to have me come back to a child's sphere of action. He had out the fat little grey pony and talked it over to me with great zeal. It came into my head to ask for a saddle. "Dere be a saddle" � Darry said doubtfully � "Massa Preston he done got a saddle dis very day. Dunno where massa Preston can be." I did not heed this. I begged to have the saddle and be allowed to try the pony. Now Preston had laid a plan that nobody but himself should have the pleasure of first mounting me; but I did not know of this plan. Darry hesitated, I saw, but he had not the power to refuse me. The saddle was brought out, put on, and carefully arranged. "Uncle Darry, I want to get on him � may I ?" "O' course � Miss Daisy do what she mind to. Him bery good, only some lazy." So I was mounted. Preston, Miss Pinshon, the servants' quarters, the multiplication table, all were forgotten and lost in a misty distance. I was in the saddle for the first time, and delight held me by both hands. My first moment on horseback! If Darry had guessed it he would have been terribly concerned; but, as it happened, I knew how to take my seat; I had watched my mother so often mounting her horse that every detail was familiar to me; and Darry naturally supposed I knew what I was about after I was in my seat. The reins were a little confusing; however, the pony walked off lazily with me to the head of the glen, and I thought he was an improvement upon the old pony chaise. Finding myself coming out upon the avenue, which I did not wish, it became necessary to get at the practical use of my bridle. I was at some pains to do it; finally I managed to turn the pony's head round, and we walked back in the same sober style we had come up. Darry stood by the stables, smiling and watching me; down among the quarters the children and old people turned out to look after me; I walked down as far as Darry's house, turned and came back again. Darry stood ready to help me dismount; but it was too pleasant. I went on to the avenue. Just as I turned there, I caught, as it seemed to me, a glimpse of two ladies, coming towards me from the house. Involuntarily I gave a sharper pull at the bridle, and I suppose touched the pony's shoulder with the switch Darry had put into my hand. The touch so woke him up, that he shook off his laziness and broke into a short galloping canter to go back to the stables. This was a new experience. I thought for the first minute that I certainly should be thrown off; I seemed to have no hold of anything, and I was tossed up and down on my saddle in a way that boded a landing on the ground every next time. I was not timid with animals, whatever might be true of me in other relations. My first comfort was finding that I did not fall off; then I took heart, and settled myself in the saddle more securely, gave myself to the motion, and began to think I should like it by and by. Nevertheless, for this time I was willing to stop at the stables; but the pony had only just found how good it was to be moving, and he went by at full canter. Down the dell, through the quarters, past the cottages, till I saw Darry's house ahead of me, and began to think how I _should_ get round again. At that pace I could not. Could I stop the fellow? I tried, but there was not much strength in my arms; one or two pulls did no good, and one or two pulls more did no good; pony cantered on, and I saw we were making straight for the river. I knew then I must stop him; I threw so much good will into the handling of my reins that, to my joy, the pony paused, let himself be turned about placidly, and took up his leisurely walk again. But now I was in a hurry, wanting to be dismounted before anybody should come; and I was a little triumphant, having kept my seat and turned my horse. Moreover, the walk was not good after that stirring canter. I would try it again. But it took a little earnestness now and more than one touch of my whip before the pony would mind me. Then he obeyed in good style and we cantered quietly up to where Darry was waiting. The thing was done. The pony and I had come to an understanding. I was a rider from that time, without fear or uncertainty. The first gentle pull on the bridle was obeyed and I came to a stop in front of Darry and my cousin Preston. I have spent a great deal of time to tell of my ride. Yet not more than its place in my life then deserved. It was my last half-hour of pleasure for I think many a day. I had cantered up the slope, all fresh in mind and body, excited and glad with my achievement and with the pleasure of brisk motion; I had forgotten everybody and everything disagreeable, or what I did not forget I disregarded; but just before I stopped I saw what sent another thrill than that of pleasure tingling through all my veins. I saw Preston, who had but a moment before reached the stables, I saw him lift his hand with a light riding switch he carried, and draw the switch across Darry's mouth. I shall never forget the coloured man's face, as he stepped back a pace or two. I understood it afterwards; I _felt_ it then. There was no resentment; there was no fire of anger, which I should have expected; there was no manly and no stolid disregard of what had been done. There was instead a slight smile, which to this day I cannot bear to recall; it spoke so much of patient and helpless humiliation; as of one wincing at the galling of a sore and trying not to show he winced. Preston took me off my horse, and began to speak. I turned away from him to Darry, who now held two horses, Preston having just dismounted; and I thanked him for my pleasure, throwing into my manner all the studied courtesy I could. Then I walked up the dell beside Preston, without looking at him. Preston scolded. He had prepared a surprise for me, and was excited by his disappointment at my mounting without him. Of course I had not known that; and Darry, who was in the secret, had not known how to refuse me. I gave Preston no answer to his charges and reproaches. At last I said I was tired and I wished he would not talk. "Tired! you are something besides tired," he said. "I suppose I am," I answered with great deliberation. He was eager to know what it was; but then we came out upon the avenue and were met flush by my aunt and Miss Pinshon. My aunt inquired, and Preston, who was by no means cool yet, accused me about the doings of the afternoon. I scarcely heeded one or the other; but I did feel Miss Pinshon's taking my I hand and leading me home all the rest of the way. It was not that I wanted to talk to Preston, for I was not ready to talk to him; but this holding me like a little child was excessively distasteful to my habit of freedom. My governess would not loose her clasp when we got to the house; but kept fast hold and led me up stairs to my own room. CHAPTER IV. SEVEN HUNDRED PEOPLE. "Do you think that was a proper thing to do, Daisy?" my governess asked when she released me. "What thing, ma'am?" I asked. "To tear about alone on that great grey pony." "Yes, ma'am," I said. "You think it _was_ proper?" said Miss Pinshon, coolly. "Whom had you with you?" "Nobody was riding with me." "Your cousin was there?" "No, ma'am." "Who then?" "I had Uncle Darry. I was only riding up and down the dell." "The coachman! And were you riding up and down through the quarters all the afternoon?" "No, ma'am." "What were you doing the rest of the time?" "I was going about �" I hesitated. "About where?" "Through the place there." "The quarters? Well, you think it proper amusement for your mother's daughter? You are not to make companions of the servants, Daisy. You are not to go to the quarters without my permission, and I shall not give it frequently. Now get yourself ready for tea." I did feel as if Preston's prophecy were coming true and I in a way to be gradually petrified; some slow, chill work of that kind seemed already to be going on. But a little thing soon stirred all the life there was in me. Miss Pinshon stepped to the door which led from her room into mine, unlocked it, took out the key, and put it on her own side of the door. I sprang forward at that, with a word, I do not know what; and my governess turned her lustrous, unmoved eyes calmly upon me. I remember now how deadening their look was, in their very lustre and moveless calm. I begged, however, for a reversal of her last proceeding; I wanted my door locked sometimes, I said. "You can lock the other door." "But I want both locked." "I do not. This door remains open, Daisy. I must come in here when I please. Now make haste and get ready." I had no time for anything but to obey. I went down stairs, I think, like a machine; my body obeying certain laws, while my mind and spirit were scarcely present. I suppose I behaved myself as usual; save that I would have nothing to do with Preston, nor would I receive anything whatever at the table from his hand. This, however, was known only to him and me. I said nothing; not the less every word that others said fastened itself in my memory. I was like a person dreaming. "You have just tired yourself with mounting that wild thing, Daisy," said my aunt Gary. "Wild!" said Preston. "About as wild as a tame sloth." "I always heard that was very wild indeed," said Miss Pinshon. "The sloth cannot be tamed, can it?" "Being stupid already, I suppose not," said Preston. "Daisy looks pale at any rate," said my aunt. "A little overdone," said Miss Pinshon. "She wants regular exercise; but irregular exercise is very trying to any but a strong person. I think Daisy will be stronger in a few weeks." "What sort of exercise do you think will be good for her, ma'am?" Preston said, with an expression out of all keeping with his words, it was so fierce. "I shall try different sorts," my governess answered, composedly. "Exercise of patience is a very good thing, Master Gary. I think gymnastics will be useful for Daisy, too. I shall try them." "That is what I have often said to my sister," said aunt Gary. "I have no doubt that sort of training would establish Daisy's strength more than anything in the world. She just wants that, to develop her and bring out the muscles." Preston almost groaned; pushed his chair from the table, and I knew sat watching me. I would give him no opportunity, for my opportunity I could not have then. I kept quiet till the ladies moved; I moved with them; and sat all the evening abstracted in my own meditations, without paying Preston any attention; feeling indeed very old and grey, as no doubt I looked. When I was ordered to bed, Miss Pinshon desired I would hold no conversation with anybody. Whereupon Preston took my candle and boldly marched out of the room with me. When we were upstairs, he tried to make me disobey my orders. He declared I was turning to stone already; he said a great many hard words against my governess; threatened he would write to my father; and when he could not prevail to make me talk, dashed off passionately and left me. I went trembling into my room. But my refuge there was gone. I had fallen upon evil times. My door must not be locked, and Miss Pinshon might come in any minute. I could not pray. I undressed and went to bed; and lay there, waiting, all things in order, till my governess looked in. Then the door was closed, and I hear her steps moving about in her room. I lay and listened. At last the door was softly set open again; and then after a few minutes the sound of regular slow breathing proclaimed that those wide-open black eyes were really closed for the night. I got up, went to my governess's door and listened. She was sleeping profoundly. I laid hold of the handle of the door and drew it towards me; pulled out the key softly, put it in my own side of the lock and shut the door. And after all I was afraid to turn the key. The wicked sound of the lock might enter those sleeping ears. But the door was closed; and I went to my old place, the open window. It was not my window at Melbourne, with balmy summer air, and the dewy scent of the honeysuckle coming up, and the moonlight flooding all the world beneath me. But neither was it in the regions of the North. The night was still and mild, if not balmy; and the stars were brilliant; and the evergreen oaks were masses of dark shadow all over the lawn. I do not think I saw them at first; for my look was up to the sky, where the stars shone down to greet me, and where it was furthest from all the troubles on the surface of the earth; and with one thought of the Friend up there, who does not forget the troubles of even His little children, the barrier in my heart gave way, my tears gushed forth; my head lay on the windowsill at Magnolia, more hopelessly than in my childish sorrow it had ever lain at Melbourne. I kept my sobs quiet; I must; but they were deep, heart-breaking sobs, for a long time. Prayer got its chance after a while. I had a great deal to pray for; it seemed to my child's heart now and then as if it could hardly bear its troubles. And very much I felt I wanted patience and wisdom. I thought there was a great deal to do, even for my little hands; and promise of great hindrance and opposition. And the only one pleasant thing I could think of in my new life at Magnolia, was that I might tell of the truth to those poor people who lived in the negro quarters. Why I did not make myself immediately ill, with my night's vigils and sorrow, I cannot tell; unless it were that great excitement kept off the effects of chill air and damp. However, the excitement had its own effects; and my eyes were sadly heavy when they I opened the next morning to look at Margaret lighting my fire. "Margaret," I said, "shut Miss Pinshon's door, will you?" She obeyed, and then turning to look at me, exclaimed that I was not well. "Did you say you could not read, Margaret?" was my answer. "Read"! no, missis, Guess readin' aint no good for servants. Seems like Miss Daisy aint lookin' peart, this mornin'." "Would you _like_ to read?" "Reckon don't care about it, Miss Daisy. Where'd us get books, most likely?" I said I would get the books; but Margaret turned to the fire and made me no answer. I heard her mutter some ejaculation. "Because, Margaret, don't you know," I said, raising myself on my elbow, "God would like to have you learn to read, so that you might know the Bible and come to heaven." "Reckon folks aint a heap better that knows the Bible," said the girl. "Pears as if it don't make no difference. Aint nobody good in _this_ place, 'cept uncle Darry." In another minute I was out of bed and standing before the fire, my hand on her shoulder. I told her I wanted _her_ to be good too, and that Jesus would make her good, if she would let Him. Margaret gave me a hasty look and then finished her fire making; but to my great astonishment, a few minutes after, I saw that the tears were running down the girl's face. It astonished me so much that I said no more; and Margaret was as silent; only dressed me with the greatest attention and tenderness. "Ye want your breakfast bad, Miss Daisy," she remarked then in a subdued tone; and I suppose my looks justified her words. They created some excitement when I went down stairs. My aunt exclaimed; Miss Pinshon inquired; Preston inveighed, at things in general. He wanted to get me by myself, I knew; but he had no chance. Immediately after breakfast Miss Pinshon took possession of me. The day was less weary than the day before, only I think because I was tired beyond impatience or nervous excitement. Not much was done; for though I was very willing I had very little power. But the multiplication table, Miss Pinshon said, was easy work; and at that and reading and writing, the morning crept away. My hand was trembling, my voice was faint; my memory grasped nothing so clearly as Margaret's tears that morning, and Preston's behaviour the preceding day. My cheeks were pale of course. Miss Pinshon said we would begin to set that right with a walk after dinner. The walk was had; but with my hand clasped in Miss Pinshon's I only wished myself at home all the way. At home again, after a while of lying down to rest, I was tried with a beginning of calisthenics. A trial it was to me. The exercises, directed and overseen by Miss Pinshon, seemed to me simply intolerable; a weariness beyond all other weariness. Even the multiplication table I liked better. Miss Pinshon was tired perhaps herself at last. She let me go. It was towards the end of the day. With no life left in me for anything, I strolled out into the sunshine; aimlessly at first; then led by a secret inclination I hardly knew or questioned, my steps slowly made their way round by the avenue to the stables. Darry was busy there as I had found him yesterday. He looked hard at me as I came up; and asked me earnestly how I felt that afternoon? I told him I was tired; and then I sat down, on a huge log which lay there and watched him at his work. By turns I watched the sunlight streaming along the turf and lighting the foliage of the trees on the other side of the dell; looking in a kind of dream, as if I were not Daisy nor this Magnolia in any reality. I suddenly started and awoke to realities as Darry began to sing � "My Father's house is built on high, Far, far above the starry sky; And though like Lazarus sick and poor, My heavenly mansion is secure. I'm going home, � I'm going home, � I'm going home To die no more! To die no more � To die no more � I'm going home To die no more!" The word "home" at the end of each line was dwelt upon in a prolonged sonorous note. It filled my ear with its melodious, plaintive breath of repose; it rested and soothed me. I was listening in a sort of trance, when another sound at my side both stopped the song and quite broke up the effect. It was Preston's voice. Now for it. He was all ready for a fight; and I felt miserably battered and shaken and unfit to fight anything. "What are you doing here, Daisy?" "I am doing nothing," I said. "It is almost tea-time. Hadn't you better be walking come, before Medusa comes looking out for you?" I rose up, and bade uncle Darry good night. "Good night, missis!" he said heartily � "and de morning dat hab no night, for my dear little missis, by'm by." I gave him my hand, and walked on. "Stuff!" muttered Preston, by my side. "You will not think it 'stuff' when the time comes," I said, no doubt very gravely. Then Preston burst out. "I only wish aunt Felicia was here! You will spoil these people, Daisy, that's one thing; or you would if you were older. As it is, you are spoiling yourself." I made no answer. He went on with other angry and excited words, wishing to draw me out perhaps; but I was in no mood to talk to Preston in any tone but one. I went steadily and slowly on, without even turning my head to look at him. I had hardly life enough to talk to him in that tone. "Will you tell me what is the matter with you?" he said, at last, very impatiently. "I am tired, I think." "Think? Medusa is stiffening the life out of you. _Think_ you are tired! You are tired to death; but that is not all. What ails you?" "I do not think anything ails me." "What ails _me_, then? What is the matter? what makes you act so? Speak, Daisy � you must speak!" I turned about and faced him, and I know I did not speak then as a child, but with a gravity befitting fifty years. "Preston, did you strike Uncle Darry yesterday?" "Pooh!" said Preston. But I stood and waited for his answer. "Nonsense, Daisy!" he said again. "What is nonsense?" "Why, _you_. What are you talking about?" "I asked you a question." "A ridiculous question. You are just absurd." "Will you please to answer it?" "I don't know whether I will. What have you to do with it?" "In the first place, Preston, Darry is not your servant." "Upon my word!" said Preston. "But, yes, he is; for mamma is regent here now. He must do what I order him, anyhow." "And then, Preston, Darry is better than you, and will not defend himself; and somebody ought to defend him; and there is nobody but me." "Defend himself!" echoed Preston. "Yes. You insulted him yesterday." "Insulted him!" "You know you did. You know, Preston, some men would not have borne it. If Darry had been like some men, he would have knocked you down." "Knock me down!" cried Preston. "The sneaking old scoundrel! He knows that I would shoot him if he did." "I am speaking seriously, Preston. It is no use to talk that way." "I am speaking very seriously," said my cousin. "I would shoot him, upon my honour." "Shoot him!" "Certainly." "What right have you to shoot a man for doing no worse than you do? I would _rather_ somebody would knock me down, than do what you did yesterday!" And my heart swelled within me. "Come, Daisy, be a little sensible!" said Preston, who was in a fume of impatience. "Do you think there is no difference between me and an old nigger?" "A great deal of difference," I said. "He is old and good; and you are young, and I wish you were as good as Darry. And then he can't help himself without perhaps losing his place, no matter how you insult him. I think it is cowardly." "Insult!" said Preston. "Lose his place! Heavens and earth, Daisy! are you such a simpleton?" "You insulted him very badly yesterday. I wondered how he bore it of you; only Darry is a Christian." "A fiddlestick!" said Preston impatiently. "He knows he must bear whatever I choose to give him; and therein he is wiser than you are." "Because he is a Christian," said I. "I don't know whether he is a Christian or not; and it is nothing to the purpose. I don't care what he is." "Oh, Preston! he is a good man � he is a servant of God; he will wear a crown of gold in heaven; � and you have dared to touch him!" "Why, hoity toity!" said Preston. "What concern of mine is all that! All I know is, that he did not do what I ordered him." "What did you order him?" "I ordered him not to show you the saddle I had got for you, till I was there. I was going to surprise you. I am provoked at him!" "I am surprised �" I said. But feeling how little I prevailed with Preston, and being weak in body as well as mind, I could not keep back the tears. I began to walk on again, though they blinded me. "Daisy, don't be foolish. If Darry is to wear two crowns in the other world, he is a servant in this, all the same; and he must do his duty." "I asked for the saddle �" I said. "Why, Daisy, Daisy!" Preston exclaimed � "don't be such a child. You know nothing about it. I didn't touch Darry to hurt him." "It was a sort of hurt that if he had not been a Christian he would have made you sorry for." "He knows I would shoot him if he did," said Preston coolly. "Preston, don't speak so!" I pleaded. "It is the simple truth. Why shouldn't I speak it?" "You do not mean that you would do it?" I said, scarce opening my eyes to the reality of what he said. "I give you my word, I do! If one of these black fellows laid a hand on me I would put a bullet through him, as quick as a partridge." "But then you would be a murderer �" said I. The ground seemed taken away from under my feet. We were standing still now, and facing each other. "No, I shouldn't," said Preston. "The law takes better care of us than that." "The law would hang you," said I. "I tell you, Daisy, it is no such thing! Gentlemen have a right to defend themselves against the insolence of these black fellows." "And have not the black fellows a right to defend themselves against the insolence of gentlemen?" said I. "Daisy? you are talking the most unspeakable non- sense," said Preston, quite put beyond himself now. "_Don't_ you know any better than that? These people are our servants � they are our property � we are to do what we like with them; and of course the law must see that we are protected, or the blacks and the whites could not live together." "A man may be your servant, but he cannot be your property," I said. "Yes, he can! They are our property, just as much as the land is; our goods, to do what we like with. Didn't you know that?" "Property is something that you can buy and sell," I answered. "And we sell these people, and buy them too, as fast as we like." "_Sell_ them!" I echoed, thinking of Darry. "Certainly." "And who would buy them?" "Why, all the world; everybody. There has been nobody sold off the Magnolia estate, I believe, in a long time; but nothing is more common, Daisy; everybody is doing it everywhere, when he has got too many servants, or when he has got too few." "And do you mean," said I, "that Darry and Margaret and Theresa and all the rest here, have been _bought?_" "No; almost all of them have been born on the place." "Then it is not true of these," I said. "Yes, it is; for their mothers and fathers were bought. It is the same thing." "Who bought them?" I asked hastily. "Why! our mothers, and grandfather and great-grandfather." "_Bought_ the fathers and mothers of all these hundreds of people?" said I, a slow horror creeping into my veins, that yet held childish blood, and but half comprehended. "Certainly � ages ago," said Preston. "Why, Daisy, I thought you knew all about it." "But who sold them first?" said I, my mind in its utter rejection of what was told me, seeking every refuge from accepting it. "Who sold them at first?" "Who first? Oh, the people that brought them over from Africa, I suppose; or the people in their own country that sold them to _them_." "They had no right to sell them," I said. "Can't tell about that," said Preston. "We bought them. I suppose we had a right to do that." "But if the fathers and mothers were bought," I insisted, "that gives us no right to have their children." "I would like you to ask aunt Felicia or my uncle Randolph such a question," said Preston. "Just see how they would like the idea of giving up all their property! Why you would be as poor as Job, Daisy." "The land would be here all the same." "Much good the land would do you, without people to work it." "But other people could be hired as well as these," I said, "if any of these wanted to go away." "No they couldn't. White people cannot bear the climate nor do the work. The crops cannot be raised without coloured labour." "I do not understand," said I, feeling my child's head puzzled. "Maybe none of our people would like to go away?" "I dare say they wouldn't," said Preston carelessly. "They are better off here than on most plantations. Uncle Randolph never forbids his hands to have meat; and some planters do." "Forbid them to have meat!" I said in utter bewilderment. "Yes." "Why?" "They think it makes them fractious, and not so easy to manage. Don't you know, it makes a dog savage to feed him on raw meat? I suppose cooked meat has the same effect on men." "But don't they get what they choose to eat?" "Well, I should think not!" said Preston. "Fancy their asking to be fed on chickens and pound cake. That is what they would like." "But cannot they spend their wages for what they like?" "Wages!" said Preston. "Yes," said I. "My dear Daisy," said Preston, "you are talking of what you just utterly don't understand; and I am a fool for bothering you with it. Come! let us make it up and be friends." He stooped to kiss me, but I stepped back. "Stop," I said. "Tell me � can't they do what they like with their wages?" "I don't think they have wages enough to 'do what they like' exactly," said Preston. "Why, they would 'Iike' to do nothing. These black fellows are the laziest things living. They would 'like' to lie in the sun all day long." "What wages does Darry have?" I asked. "Now, Daisy, this is none of your business. Come, let us go into the house and let it alone." "I want to know, first," said I. "Daisy, I never asked. What have I to do with Darry's wages?" "I will ask himself," I said; and I turned about to go to the stables. "Stop, Daisy," cried Preston. "Daisy, Daisy! you are the most obstinate Daisy that ever was, when once you have taken a thing in your head. Daisy, what have you to do with all this. Look here � these people don't want wages." "Don't want wages!" I repeated. "No; they don't want them. What would they do with wages? they have everything they need given them already; their food and their clothing and their houses. They do not want anything more." "You said they did not have the food they liked," I objected. "Who does?" said Preston. "I am sure I don't, � not more than one day in seven, on an average." "But don't they have any wages at all?" I persisted. "Our coachman at Melbourne had thirty dollars a month; and Logan had forty dollars, and his house and garden. Why shouldn't Darry have wages too? Don't they have any wages at all, Preston?" "Why, yes! they have plenty of corn bread and bacon, I tell you; and their clothes. Daisy, they _belong_ to you, these people do." Corn bread and bacon was not much like chickens and pound cake, I thought; and I remembered our servants at Melbourne were very, very differently dressed from the women I saw about me here; even in the house. I stood bewildered and pondering. Preston tried to get me to go on. "Why shouldn't they have wages?" I asked at length, with lips which I believe were growing old with my thoughts. "Daisy, they are your servants; they _belong_ to you. They have no right to wages. Suppose you had to pay all these creatures � seven hundred of them � as you pay people at Melbourne; how much do you suppose you would have left to live upon yourselves? What nonsense it is to talk!" "But they work for us," I said. "Certainly. There would not be anything for any of us if they didn't. Here, at Magnolia, they raise rice crops and corn, as well as cotton; at our place we grow nothing but cotton and corn." "Well, what pays them for working?" "I told you! they have their living and clothing and no care; and they are the happiest creatures the sun shines on." "Are they willing to work for only that?" I asked. "Willing!" said Preston. "Yes," said I, feeling myself grow sick at heart. "I fancy nobody asks them that question. They have to work, I reckon, whether they like it or no." "You said they _like_ to lie in the sun. What makes them work?" "Makes them!" said Preston, who was getting irritated as well as impatient. "They get a good flogging if they do not work � that is all. They know, if they don't do their part, the lash will come down; and it don't come down easy." I suppose I must have looked as if it had come down: on me. Preston stopped talking and began to take care of me; putting his arm round me to support my steps homeward. In the verandah my aunt met us. She immediately decided that I was ill, and ordered me to go to bed at once. It was the thing of all others I would have wished to do. It saved me from the exertion of trying to hold myself up and of speaking and moving and answering questions. I went to bed in dull misery, longing to go to sleep and forget all my troubles of mind and body together; but while the body vested, the mind would not. That kept the consciousness of its burden; and it was that, more than any physical ail, which took away my power of eating, and created instead a wretched sort of half nausea, which made even rest unrefreshing. As for rest in my mind and heart, it seemed at that time as if I should never know it again. Never again! I was a child � I had but vague ideas respecting even what troubled me; nevertheless I had been struck, where may few children be struck! in the very core and quick of my heart's reverence and affection. It had come home to me that papa was somehow doing wrong. My father was in my childish thought and belief, the ideal of chivalrous and high- bred excellence; � and _papa_ was doing wrong. I could not turn my eyes from the truth; it was before me in too visible a form. It did not arrange itself in words, either; not at first; it only pressed upon my heart and brain that seven hundred people on my father's property were injured, and by his will, and for his interests. Dimly the consciousness came to me; slowly it found its way and spread out; its details before me; bit by bit one point after another came into my mind to make the whole good; bit by bit one item after another came in to explain and be explained and to add its quota of testimony; all making clear and distinct and dazzling before me the truth which at first it was so hard to grasp. And this is not the less true because my childish thought at first took everything vaguely and received it slowly. I was a child and a simple child; but once getting hold of a clue of truth, my mind never let it go. Step by step, as a child could, I followed it out. And the balance of the golden rule, to which I was accustomed, is an easy one to weigh things in; and even little hands can manage it. For an hour after they put me to bed my heart seemed to grow chill from minute to minute; and my body, in curious sympathy, shook as if I had an ague. My aunt and Miss Pinshon came and went and were busy about me; making me drink negus and putting hot bricks to my feet. Preston stole in to look at me; but I gathered that neither then nor afterwards did he reveal to any one the matter of our conversation the hour before. "Wearied" � "homesick" � "feeble" � "with no sort of strength to bear anything" � they said I was. All true, no doubt; and yet I was not without powers of endurance, even bodily, if my mind gave a little help. Now the trouble was, that all such help was wanting. The dark figures of the servants came and went too, with the others; came and stayed; Margaret and Mammy Theresa took post in my room, and when they could do nothing for me, crouched by the fire and spent their cares and energies in keeping that in full blast. I could hardly bear to see them; but I had no heart to speak even to ask that they might be sent away, or for anything else; and I had a sense besides that it was a gratification to them to be near me; and to gratify any one of the race I would have borne a good deal of pain. It smites my heart now, to think of those hours. The image of them is sharp and fresh as if the time were but last night. I lay with shut eyes, taking in as it seemed to me, additional loads of trouble with each quarter of an hour; as I thought and thought and put one and another thing together, of things past and present, to help my understanding. A child will carry on that process fast and to far-off results; give her but the key and set her off on the track of truth with a sufficient impetus. My happy childlike ignorance and childlike life was in a measure gone; I had come into the world of vexed questions, of the oppressor and the oppressed, the full and the empty, the rich and the poor. I could make nothing at all of Preston's arguments and reasonings. The logic of expediency and of consequences carried no weight with me, and as little the logic of self-interest. I sometimes think a child's vision is clearer, even in worldly matters, than the eyes of those can be who have lived long among the fumes and vapours which rise in these low grounds. Unless the eyes be washed day by day in the spring of truth, and anointed with unearthly ointment. The right and the wrong, were the two things that presented themselves to my view; and oh, my sorrow and heartbreak was, that papa was in the wrong. I could not believe it, and yet I could not get rid of it. There were oppressors and oppressed at the world; and he was one of the oppressors. There is no sorrow that a child can bear, keener and more gnawingly bitter than this. It has a sting all its own, for which there is neither salve nor remedy; and it had the aggravation, in my case, of the sense of personal dishonour. The wrong done and the oppression inflicted were not the whole; there was besides the intolerable sense of living upon other's gains. It was more than my heart could bear. I could not write as I do, � I could not recall these thoughts and that time, � if I had not another thought to bring to bear upon them; a thought which at that time I was not able to comprehend. It came to me later with its healing, and I have seen and felt it more clearly as I grew older. I see it very clearly now. I had not been mistaken in my childish notions of the loftiness and generosity of my father's character. He was what I had thought him. Neither was I a whit wrong in my judgment of the things which it grieved me that he did and allowed. But I saw afterwards how he, and others, had grown up and been educated in a system and atmosphere of falsehood, till he failed to perceive that it was false. His eyes had lived in the darkness till it seemed quite comfortably light to him; while to a fresh vision, accustomed to the sun, it was pure and blank darkness, as thick as night. He followed what others did and his father had done before him, without any suspicion that it was an abnormal and morbid condition of things they were all living in; more especially without a tinge of misgiving that it might not be a noble, upright and dignified way of life. But I, his little unreasoning child, bringing the golden rule of the gospel only to judge of the doings of hell, shrank back and fell to the ground, in my heart, to find the one I loved best in the world concerned in them. So when I opened my eyes that night, and looked into the blaze of the firelight, the dark figures that were there before it stung me with pain every time; and a every soft word and tender look on their faces � and I had many a one, both words and looks � racked my heart in a way that was strange for a child. The negus put me to sleep at last, or exhaustion did; I think the latter, for it was very late; and the rest of that night wore away. When I awoke, the two women were there still, just as I had left them when I went to sleep. I do not know if they sat there all night, or if they had slept on the floor by my side; but there they were, and talking softly to one another about something that caught my attention. I bounced out of bed � though I was so weak I remember I reeled as I went from my bed to the fire � and steadied myself by laying my a hand on Mammy Theresa's shoulder. I demanded of Margaret _what_ she had been saying? The women both started, with expressions of surprise, alarm, and tender affection, raised by my ghostly looks, and begged me to get back into bed again. I stood fast, bearing on Theresa's shoulder. "What was it?" I asked. " 'Twarn't nothin', Miss Daisy, dear!" said the girl. "Hush! Don't tell me that," I said. "Tell me what it was � tell me what it was. Nobody shall know; you need not be afraid; nobody shall know." For I saw a cloud of hesitation in Margaret's face. " 'Twarn't nothin', Miss Daisy � only about Darry." "What about Darry?" I said, trembling. "He done went and had a praise-meetin'," said Theresa; "and he knowed it war agin the rules; he knowed that. 'Course he did. Rules mus' be kep'." "Whose rules?" I asked. "Laws, honey, 'taint 'cording to rules for we coloured folks to hold meetin's no how. 'Course, we's ought to 'bey de rules; dat's clar." "Who made the rules?" "Who make 'em? Mass' Ed'ards � he make de rules on dis plantation. Reckon Mass' Randolph, he make 'em a heap different." "Does Mr. Edwards make it a rule that you are not to hold prayer-meetings?" "Can't spec' for to have everyt'ing jus' like de white folks," said the old woman. "We's no right to 'spect it. But Uncle Darry, he sot a sight by his praise-meetin'. He's cur'ous, he is. S'pose Darry's cur'ous." "And does anybody say that you shall not have prayer- meetings?" "Laws, honey! What's we got to do wid praise-meetin's or any sort o' meetin's? We'se got to work. Mass' Ed'ards, he say dat de meetin's dey makes coloured folks onsettled; and dey don't hoe de corn good if dey has too much prayin' to do." "And does he forbid them then? Doesn't he let you have prayer- meetings?" " 'Taint Mr. Edwards alone, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, speaking low. "It's agin the law for us to have meetin's anyhow � 'cept we get leave, and say what house it shall be, and who's a comin', and what we'se a comin' for. And it's no use asking Mr. Edwards, 'cause he don't see no reason why black folks should have meetin's." "Did Darry have a prayer-meeting without leave?" I asked. " 'Twarn't no count of a meetin'!" said Theresa, a little touch of scorn, or indignation, coming into her voice; � "and Darry, he war in his own house prayin'. Dere warn't nobody dere, but Pete and ole 'Liza, and Maria cook, and dem two Johns dat come from de lower plantation. Dey couldn't get a strong meetin' into Uncle Darry's house; 'taint big enough to hold 'em." "And what did the overseer do to Darry?" I asked. "Laws, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, with a quick look at the other woman, � "he didn't do nothin' to hurt Darry; he only want to scare de folks." "Dey's done scared �" said Theresa under her breath. "What is it?" I said, steadying myself by my hold on Theresa's shoulder, and feeling that I must stand till I had finished my enquiry � how did he know about the meeting? and what did he do to Darry? � Tell me! I must know. I must know, Margaret." " 'Spect he was goin' through the quarters, and he heard Darry at his prayin'," said Margaret. "Darry, he don't mind to keep his prayers secret, he don't," � she added with a half laugh. " 'Spect nothin' but they'll bust the walls o' that little house some day." "Dey's powerful!" added Theresa. "But he warn't prayin' no harm; he was just prayin', 'Dy will be done, on de eart' as it be in de heaven' � Pete, he tell me. Darry warn't saying not'ing � he just pray 'Dy will be done.'!" "Well?" I said, for Margaret kept silent. "And de oberseer, he say � leastways he swore, he did, � dat his will should be what is done on dis plantation, and he wouldn't have no such work. He say, dere's nobody to come togedder after it be dark, if it's two or t'ree, 'cept dey gets his leave, Mass' Ed'ards, he say; and dey won't get it." "But what did he do to Darry?" I could scarcely hold myself on my feet by this time. "He whipped him, I reckon," � said Margaret in a low tone, and with a dark shadow crossing her face, very different from its own brown duskiness. "He don't have a light hand, Mass' Ed'ards," went on Theresa; "and he got a sharp new whip. De second stripe, � Pete, he tell me, � he tell me dis evenin' � and it war wet; and it war wet enough before he got through. He war mad, I reckon; certain Mass' Ed'ards, he war mad." "_Wet?_" said I. "Laws, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, " 'tain't nothin'. Them whips, they draws the blood easy. Darry, he don't mind." I have a recollection of the girl's terrified face, but I heard nothing more. Such a deadly sickness came over me that for a minute I must have been near fainting; happily it took another turn amid the various confused feelings which oppressed me, and I burst into tears. My eyes had not been wet through all the hours of the evening and night; my heartache had been dry. I think I was never very easy to move to tears, even as a child. But now, well for me perhaps, some element of the pain I was suffering found the unguarded point � or broke up the guard. I wept as I have done very few times in my life. I had thrown myself into Mammy Theresa's lap, in the weakness which could not support itself, and in an abandonment of grief which was careless of all the outside world; and there I lay, clasped in her arms and sobbing. Grief, horror, tender sympathy, and utter helplessness, striving together; there was nothing for me at that moment but the woman's refuge and the child's remedy of weeping. But the weeping was so bitter, so violent, and so uncontrollable that the women were frightened. I believe they shut the doors, to keep the sound of my sobs from reaching other ears; for when I recovered the use of my senses I saw that they were closed. The certain strange relief which tears do bring, they gave to me. I cannot tell why. My pain was not changed, my helplessness was not done away; yet at least I had washed my causes of sorrow in a flood of heart drops, and cleansed them so somehow from any personal stain. Rather, I was perfectly exhausted. The women put me to bed, as soon as I would let them; and Margaret whispered an earnest, "Do, don't, Miss Daisy, don't say nothin' about the prayer-meetin'!" � I shook my head; I knew better than to say anything about it. All the better not to betray them, and myself, I shut my eyes, and tried to let my face grow quiet. I had succeeded, I believe, before my aunt Gary and Miss Pinshon came in. The two stood looking at me; my aunt in some consternation, my governess reserving any expression of what she thought. I fancied she did not trust my honesty. Another time I might have made an effort to right myself in her opinion; but I was past that and everything now. It was decided by my aunt that I had better keep my bed as long as I felt like doing so. So I lay there during the long hours of that day. I was glad to be still, to keep out of the way in a corner, to hear little and see nothing of what was going on; my own small world of thoughts was enough to keep me busy. I grew utterly weary at last of thinking, and gave it up, so far as I could; submitting passively, in a state of pain sometimes dull and sometimes acute, to what I had no power to change or remedy. But my father had, I thought; and at those times my longing was unspeakable to see him. I was very quiet all that day, I believe, in spite of the rage of wishes and sorrows within me; but it was not to be expected I should gain strength. On the contrary, I think I grew feverish. If I could have laid down my troubles in prayer! but at first, these troubles, I could not. The core and root of them being my father's a share in the rest. And I was not alone; and I had a certain consciousness that if I allowed myself to go to my little Bible for help, it would unbar my self-restraint with its sweet and keen words, and I should give way again before Margaret and Theresa; and I did not wish that. "What shall we do with her?" said my aunt Gary, when she came to me towards the evening. "She looks like a mere shadow. I never saw such a change in a child in four weeks � never!" "Try a different regimen to-morrow, I think," said my governess, whose lustrous black eyes looked at me sick, exactly as they had looked at me well. "I shall send for a doctor, if she isn't better," said my aunt. "She's feverish now." "Keeping her bed all day," � said Miss Pinshon. "Do you think so?" said my aunt. "I have no doubt of it. It is very weakening." "Then we will let her get up to-morrow, and see how that will do." They had been gone half an hour, when Preston stole in and came to the side of my bed, between me and the firelight. "Come, Daisy, let us be friends!" he said. And he was stooping to kiss me; but I put out my hand to keep him back. "Not till you have told Darry you are sorry," I said. Preston was angry instantly, and stood upright. "Ask pardon of a servant!" he said. "You would have the world upside down directly." I thought it was upside down already; but I was too weak and downhearted to say so. "Daisy, Daisy!" said Preston � "And there you lie, looking like a poor little wood flower that has hardly strength to hold up its head; and with about as much colour in your cheeks. Come, Daisy, � kiss me, and let us be friends." "If you will do what is right �" I said. "I will � always," said Preston; "but this would be wrong, you know." And he stooped again to kiss me. And again I would not suffer him. "Daisy, you are absurd," said Preston, vibrating between pity and anger, I think, as he looked at me. "Darry is a servant, and accustomed to a servant's place. What hurt you so much, did not hurt him a bit. He knows where he belongs." "You don't," � said I. "What?" "Know anything about it." I remember I spoke very feebly. I had hardly energy left to speak at all. My words must have come with a curious contrast between the meaning and the manner. "Know anything, about what, Daisy? You are as oracular and as immoveable as one of Egypt's monuments; only they are very hard, and � you are very soft, my dear little Daisy! � and they are very brown, according to all I have heard, and you are as white as a wind-flower. One can almost see through you. What is it I don't know anything about?" "I am so tired, Preston!" "Yes, but what is it I don't know anything about?" "Darry's place � and yours," I said. "His place and mine! His place is a servant's, I take it, belonging to Rudolf Randolph, of Magnolia. I am the unworthy representative of an old Southern family, and a gentleman. What have you to say about that?" "He is a servant of the Lord of lords," I said; "and his Master loves him. And He has a house of glory preparing for him, and a crown of gold, and a white robe, such as the King's children wear. And he will sit on a throne himself by and by. Preston, where will _you_ be?" These words were said without the least heat of manner � almost languidly; but they put Preston in a fume. I could not catch his excitement in the least; but I saw it. He stood up again, hesitated, opened his mouth to speak and shut it without speaking, turned and walked away and came back to me. I did not wait for him then. "You have offended one of the King's children," I said; "and the King is offended." "Daisy!" said Preston, in a sort of suppressed fury, "one would think you had turned Abolitionist; only you never heard of such a thing." "What is it?" said I, shutting my eyes. "It is just the meanest and most impudent shape a Northerner can take; it is the lowest end of creation, an Abolitionist is; and a Yankee is pretty much the same thing." "Dr. Sandford is a Yankee," I remarked. "Did you get it from _him?_" Preston asked fiercely. "What?" said I, opening my eyes. "Your nonsense. Has he taught you to turn Abolitionist?" "I have not _turned_ at all," I said. "I wish you would. It is only the people who are in the wrong that ought to turn." "Daisy," said Preston, "you ought never to be away from aunt Felicia and my uncle. Nobody else can manage you. I don't know what you will become or what you will do, before they get back." I was silent; and Preston, I suppose, cooled down. He waited awhile, and then again begged that I would kiss and be friends. "You see, I am going away to- morrow morning, little Daisy." "I wish you had gone two days ago," I said. And my mind did not change, even when the morning came. CHAPTER V. IN THE KITCHEN. I was ill for days. It was not due to one thing, doubtless, nor one sorrow; but the whole together. My aunt sent to Baytown for the old family physician. He came up and looked at me; and decided that I ought to "play" as much as possible! "She isn't a child that likes play," said my aunt. "Find some play that she does like, then. Where are her father and mother?" "Just sailed for Europe, a few weeks ago." "The best thing would be, for her, to sail after them," said the old doctor. And he went. "We shall have to let her do just as they did at Melbourne," said my aunt. "How was that?" said Miss Pinshon. "Let her have just her own way." "And what was that ?" "Oh, queer," said my aunt. "She is not like other children. But anything is better than to have her mope to death." "I shall try and not have her mope," said Miss Pinshon. But she had little chance to adopt her reforming regimen for some time. It was plain I was not fit for anything but to be let alone; like a weak plant struggling for its existence. All you can do with it is to put it in the sun; and my aunt and governess tacitly agreed upon the same plan of treatment for me. Now the only thing wanting was sunshine; and it was long before that could be had. After a day or two I left my bed, and crept about the house, and out of the house under the great oaks; where the material sunshine was warm and bright enough, and caught itself in the grey wreaths of moss that waved over my head, and seemed to come bodily to woo me to life and cheer. It lay in the carpet under my feet; it lingered in the leaves of the thick oaks; it wantoned in the wind, as the long draperies of moss swung and moved gently to and fro; but the very sunshine is cold where the ice meets it; I could get no comfort. The thoughts that had so troubled me the evening after my long talk with Preston, were always present with me; they went out and came in with me; I slept with them, and they met me when I woke. The sight of the servants was wearying. I shunned Darry and the stables. I had no heart for my pony. I would have liked to get away from Magnolia. Yet, be I where I might, it would not alter my father's position towards these seven hundred people. And towards how many more? There were his estates in Virginia. One of the first things I did, as soon as I could command my fingers to do it, was to write to him. Not a remonstrance. I knew better than to touch that. All I ventured, was to implore that the people who desired it might be allowed to hold prayer-meetings whenever they liked, and Mr. Edwards be forbidden to interfere. Also I complained that the inside of the cabins was not comfortable; that they were bare and empty. I pleaded for a little bettering of them. It was not a long letter that I wrote. My sorrow I could not tell, and my love and my longing were equally beyond the region of words. I fancy it would have I been thought by Miss Pinshon a very cold little epistle; but Miss Pinshon did not see it. I wrote it with weak trembling fingers, and closed it and sealed it and sent it myself. Then I sank into a helpless, careless, listless state of body and mind, which was very bad for me; and there was no physician who could minister to me. I went wandering about, mostly out of doors, alone with myself and my sorrow. When I seemed a little stronger than usual, Miss Pinshon tried the multiplication table; and I tried; but the spring of my mind was for the time broken. All such trials came to an end in such weakness and weariness, that my governess herself was fain to take the book from my hands and send me out into the sunshine again. It was Darry at last who found me one day, and, distressed at my looks, begged that I would let him bring up my pony. He was so earnest that I yielded. I got leave, and went to ride. Darry saddled another horse for himself and went with me. That first ride did not help me much; but the second time, a little tide of life began to steal into my veins. Darry encouraged and instructed me; and when we came, cantering up to the door of the house, my aunt who was watching there, cried out that I had a bit of a tinge in my cheeks; and charged Darry to bring the horses up every day. With a little bodily vigour a little strength of mind seemed to come; a little more power of bearing up against evils, or of quietly standing under them. After the third time I went to ride, having come home refreshed, I took my Bible and sat down on the rug before the fire in my room to read. I had not been able to get comfort in my Bible all those days; often I had not liked to try. Right and wrong never met me in more brilliant colours or startling shadows than within the covers of that book. But to-day, soothed somehow, I went along with the familiar words as one listens to old music, with the soothing process going on all along. Right _was_ right, and glorious, and would prevail some time; and nothing could hinder it. And then I came to words which I knew, yet which had never taken such hold of me before. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." "_That_ is what I have to do!" I thought immediately. "That is my part. That is clear. What _I_ have to do, is to let my light shine. And if the light shines, perhaps it will fall on something. But what I have to do, is to shine. God has given me nothing else." It was a very simple, child's thought; but it brought wonderful comfort with it. Doubtless, I would have liked another part to play. I would have liked � if I could � to have righted all the wrong in the world; to have broken every yoke; to have filled every empty house, and built up a fire on every cold hearth; but that was not what God had given me. All He had given me, that I could see at the minute, was to shine. What a little morsel of a light mine was, to be sure! It was a good deal of a puzzle to me for days after that, _how_ I was to shine. What could I do? I was a little child; my only duties some lessons to learn; not much of that, seeing I had not strength for it. Certainly, I had sorrows to bear; but bearing them well did not seem to me to come within the sphere of _shining_. Who would know that I bore them well? And shining is meant to be seen. I pondered the matter. "When's Christmas, Miss Daisy?" Margaret asked this question one morning as she was on her knees making my fire. Christmas had been so shadowed a point to me in the distance, I had not looked at it. I stopped to calculate the days. "It will be two weeks from Friday, Margaret." "And Friday's to-morrow?" she asked. "The day after to-morrow. What do you do at Christmas, Margaret? all the people?" "There aint no great doings, Miss Daisy. The people gets four days, most of 'em." "Four days � for what? �" "For what they likes; they don't do no work, those days." "And is that all?" "No, Miss Daisy, 'taint just all; the women comes up to the house � it's to the overseer's house now � and every one gets a bowl o' flour, more or less, 'cordin' to size of family � and a quart of molasses, and a piece o' pork." "And what do they do to make the time pleasant?" I asked. "Some on 'em's raised eggs and chickens; and they brings 'em to the house and sells 'em; and they has the best dinner. Most times they gets leave to have a meetin'." "A prayer-meeting?" I said. "Laws, no, Miss Daisy! not 'cept it were uncle Darry and _his_ set. The others don't make no count of a prayer-meetin'. They likes to have a white-folks' meetin' and 'joy theirselves." I thought very much over these statements; and for the next two weeks, bowls of flour and quarts of molasses, as Christmas doings, were mixed up in my mind with the question, how I was to shine? or rather, alternated with it; and plans began to turn themselves over and take shape in my thoughts. "Margaret," said I, a day or two before Christmas, "can't the people have those meetings you spoke of, without getting leave of Mr. Edwards?" "Can't have meetin's no how!" Margaret replied decidedly. "But, if _I_ wanted to see them, couldn't they, some of them, come together to see me?" "To see Miss Daisy! Reckon Miss Daisy do what she like. 'Spect Mass' Ed'ards let Miss Daisy 'lone!" I was silent, pondering. "Maria cook wants to see Miss Daisy bad. She bid me tell Miss Daisy won't she come down in de kitchen, and see all the works she's a-doin' for Christmas, and de glorifications?" "I? I'll come if I can," I answered. I asked my aunt and got easy leave; and Christmas eve I went down to the kitchen. That was the chosen time when Maria wished to see me. There was an assembly of servants gathered in the room, some from out of the house. Darry was there; and one or two other fine-looking men who were his prayer-meeting friends. I supposed they were gathered to make merry for Christmas eve; but, at any rate, they were all eager to see we, and looked at me with smiles as gentle as have ever fallen to my share. I felt it and enjoyed it. The effect was of entering a warm, genial atmosphere, where grace and good will were on every side; a change very noticeable from the cold and careless habit of things up stairs. And _grace_ is not a misapplied epithet; for these children of a luxurious and beauty-loving race, even in their bondage had not forgotten all traces of their origin. As I went in, I could not help giving my hand to Darry; and then, in my childish feeling towards them and in the tenderness of the Christmas-tide, I could not help doing the same by all the others who were present. And I remember now the dignity of mien in some, the frank ease in others, both graceful and gracious, with which my civility was met. If a few were a little shy, the rest more than made it up by their welcome of me and a sort of politeness which had almost something courtly in it. Darry and Maria together gave me a seat, in the very centre and glow of the kitchen light and warmth; and the rest made a half circle around, leaving Maria's end of the room free for her operations. The kitchen was all aglow with the most splendid of fire of pine knots it was ever my lot to see. The illumination was such as threw all gaslights into shade. We were in a great, stone-flagged room, low-roofed, with dark cupboard doors; not cheerful, I fancy, in the mere light of day; but nothing could resist the influence of those pine-knot flames. Maria herself was a portly fat woman, as far as possible from handsome; but she looked at me with a whole world of kindness in her dark face. Indeed, I saw the same kindness more or less shining out upon me in all the faces there. I cannot tell the mixed joy and pain that it, and they, gave me. I suppose I showed little of either, or of anything. Maria entertained me with all she had. She brought out for my view her various rich and immense stores of cakes and pies and delicacies for the coming festival; told me what was good and what I must be sure and eat; and what would be good for me. And then, when that display was over, she began to be very busy with beating of eggs in a huge wooden bowl; and bade Darry see to the boiling of the kettle at the fire; and sent Jem the waiter, for things he was to get up stairs; and all the while talked to me. She and Darry and one or two more talked, but especially she and Theresa and Jem; while all the rest listened and laughed and exclaimed, and seemed to find me as entertaining as a play. Maria was asking me about my own little life and experiences before I came to Magnolia; what sort of a place Melbourne was, and how things there differed from the things she and the rest knew and were accustomed to at the South; and about my old June, who had once been an acquaintance of hers. Smiling at me the while, between the thrusts of her curiosity, and over my answers, as if for sheer pleasure she could not keep grave. The other faces were as interested and as gracious. There was Pete, tall and very black, and very grave, as Darry was also. There was Jem, full of life and waggishness, and bright for any exercise of his wits; and grave shadows used to come over his changeable face often enough too. There was Margaret, with her sombre beauty; and old Theresa with her worn old face. I think there was a certain indescribable reserve of gravity upon them all, but there was not one whose lips did not part in a white line when looking at me, nor whose eyes and ears did not watch me with an interest as benign as it was intent. I had been little while seated before the kitchen fire of pine knots before I felt that I was in the midst of a circle of personal friends; and I feel it now, as I look back and remember them. They would have done much for me, every one. Meanwhile Maria beat and mixed and stirred the things in her wooden bowl; and by and by ladled out a glassful of rich- looking, yellow, creamy froth � I did not know what it was, only it looked beautiful � and presented it to me. "Miss Daisy mus' tell Mis' Felissy Maria haint forgot how to make it � 'spect she haint, anyhow. Dat's for Miss Daisy's Christmas." "It's very nice!" I said. "Reckon it is," was the capable answer. "Won't you give everybody some, Maria?" For Jem had gone up stairs with a tray of glasses, and Maria seemed to be resting upon her labours. "Dere'll come down orders for mo', chile; and 'spose I gives it to de company, what'll Mis' Lisa do wid Maria? I have de 'sponsibility of Christmas." "But you can make some more," I said, holding my glass in waiting. "Do, Maria." " 'Spose haint got de 'terials, hey?" "What do you want? Aunt Gary will give it to you." And I begged Jem to go up again and prefer my request to her for the new filling of Maria's bowl. Jem shrugged his shoulders, but he went; and I suppose he made a good story of it; for he came down with whatever was wanted � my aunt Gary was in a mood to refuse me nothing then � and Maria went anew about the business of beating and mixing and compounding. There was great enjoyment in the kitchen. It was a time of high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as much as it amused. It was very unlike the enjoyment of a set of white people holding the same social and intellectual grade. It was the manifestation of another race, less coarse and animal in their original nature, more sensitive and more demonstrative, with a strange touch of the luxurious and refined, for a people whose life has had nothing to do with luxury and whom refinement leaves on one side as quite beyond its sphere. But blood is a strange thing; and Ham's children will show luxurious and aesthetic tastes, take them where you will. "Chillen, I hope you's enjoyed your supper," Maria said, when the last lingering drops had been secured, and mugs and glasses were coming back to the kitchen table. Words and smiles answered her. "We's had a splendid time, aunt Maria," said one young man as he set down his glass. He was a worker in the garden. "Den I hope we's all willin' to gib de Lord t'anks for his goodness. Dere aint a night in de year when it's so proper to gib de Lord t'anks, as it be dis precious night." "It's to-morrow night, aunt Maria," said Pete. "To-morrow's Christmas night." "I don't care! One night's jus' as good as another, you Pete. And now we's all together, you see, and comfortable together; and I feel like giving t'anks, I do, to de Lord, for all his mercies." "What's Christmas, anyhow?" asked another. "It's jus' de crown o' all de nights in de year. You Solomon, it's a night dat dey keeps up in heaven. You know nothin' about it, you poor critter. I done believe you never hearn no one tell about it. Maybe Miss Daisy wouldn't read us de story, and de angels, and de shepherds, and dat great light what come down, and make us feel good for Christmas; and uncle Darry, he'll t'ank de Lord." The last words Were put in a half-questioning form to me, rather taking for granted that I would readily do what was requested. And hardly anything the world, I suppose, could have given me such deep gratification at the moment. Margaret was sent up stairs to fetch my Bible; the circle closed in around the fire and me; a circle of listening, waiting, eager, interested faces; some few of them shone with pleasure or grew grave with reverent love, while, I read slowly the chapters that tell of the first Christmas night. I read them from all the gospels; picking the story out first in one, then in another; answered sometimes by low words of praise that echoed but did not interrupt me; � words that were but some dropped notes of the song that began that night in heaven, and has been running along the ages since, and is swelling and will swell into a great chorus of earth and heaven, by and by. And how glad I was in the words of the story myself, as I went along. How heart-glad that here, in this region of riches and hopes not earthly, those around me had as good welcome and as open entrance, and as free right as I. "There is neither bond nor free." "And base things of this world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are." I finished my reading at last, amid the hush of my listening audience. Then Maria called upon Darry to pray, and we all kneeled down. It comes back to me now as I write � the hush, and the breathing of the fire, and Darry's low voice and imperfect English. Yes, and the incoming tide of rest and peace and gladness which began to fill the dry places in my heart, and rose and swelled till my heart was full. I lost my troubles and forgot my difficulties. I forgot that my father and mother were away, for the sense of loneliness was gone. I forgot that those around me were in bonds, for I felt them free as I, and inheritors of the same kingdom. I have not often in my life listened to such a prayer, unless from the same lips. He was one of those that make you feel that the door is open to their knocking, and that they always find it so. His words were seconded � not interrupted, even to my feeling � by low- breathed echoes of praise and petition; too soft and deep to leave any doubt of the movement that called them forth. There was a quiet gravity upon the company when we rose to our feet again. I knew I must go; but the kitchen had been the pleasantest place to me in all Magnolia. I bade them good night, answered with bows and curtseys and hearty wishes; and as I passed out of the circle, tall black Pete, looking down upon me with just a glimmer of white between his lips, added, "Hope you'll come again." A thought darted into my head which brought sunshine with it. I seemed to see my way begin to open. The hope was warm at my heart as soon as I was awake the next morning. With more comfort than for many days I had known, I lay and watched Margaret making my fire. Then suddenly I remembered it was Christmas, and what thanksgivings had been in heaven about it, and what should be on earth; and a lingering of the notes of praise I had heard last night made a sort of still music in the air. But I did not expect at all that any of the ordinary Christmas festivities would come home to me, seeing that my father and mother were away. Where should Christmas festivities come from? So, when Margaret rose up and showed all her teeth at me, I only thought last night had given her pleasure; and I suspected nothing, even when she stepped into the next room and brought in a little table covered with a shawl, and set it close by my bedside. "Am I to have breakfast in bed?" I asked. "What is this for?" "Dunno, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, with all her white teeth sparkling; � 'spose Miss Daisy take just a look, and see what 'pears like." I felt the colour come into my face. I raised myself on my elbow and lifted up cautiously one corner of the shawl. Packages � white paper and brown paper � long and short, large and small! "O Margaret, take off the shawl, won't you!" I cried; � "and let me see what is here." There was a good deal. But "From papa" caught my eye on a little parcel. I seized it and unfolded. From papa, and he so far away! But I guessed the riddle before I could get to the last of the folds of paper that wrapped and enwrapped a little morocco case. Papa and mamma, leaving me alone, had made provision beforehand, that when this time came I might miss nothing except themselves. They had thought and cared and arranged for me; and now they were thinking about it, perhaps, far away somewhere over the sea. I held the morocco case in my hand a minute or two before I could open it. Then I found a little watch; my dear little watch! which has gone with me ever since, and never failed nor played tricks with me. My mother had put in one of her own chains for me to wear with it. I lay a long time looking and thinking, raised up on my elbow as I was, before I could leave the watch and go on to anything else. Margaret spread round my shoulders the shawl which had covered the Christmas table; and then she stood waiting, with a good deal more impatience and curiosity than I showed. But such a world of pleasure and pain gathered round that first "bit of Christmas" � so many, many thoughts of one and the other kind � that I for awhile had enough with that. At last I closed the case, and keeping it yet in one hand, used the other to make more discoveries. The package labelled "From mamma," took my attention next; but I could make nothing of it. An elegant little box, that was all, which I could not open; only it felt so very heavy that I was persuaded there must be something extraordinary inside. I could make nothing of it; it was a beautiful box; that was all. Preston had brought me a little riding whip; both costly and elegant. I could not but be much pleased with it. A large, rather soft package marked with aunt Gary's name, unfolded a riding cap to match; at least it was exceeding rich and stylish, with a black feather that waved away in curves that called forth Margaret's delighted admiration. Nevertheless, I wondered, while I admired, at my aunt Gary's choice of a present. I had a straw hat which served all purposes, even of elegance, for my notions. I was amazed to find that Miss Pinshon had not forgotten me. There was a decorated pen, wreathed with a cord of crimson and gold twist, and supplemented with two dangling tassels. It was excessively pretty, as I thought of aunt Gary's cap; and _not_ equally convenient. I looked at all these things while Margaret was dressing me; but the case with the watch, for the most part, I remember I kept in my hand. "Aint you goin' to try it on and see some how pretty it looks, Miss Daisy?" said my unsatisfied attendant. "The cap?" said I. "Oh, I dare say it fits. Aunt Gary knows how big my head is." "Mass' Preston come last night," she went on; "so I reckon Miss Daisy'll want to wear it by and by." "Preston come last night!" I said. "After I was in bed?" � and feeling that it was indeed Christmas, I finished getting ready and went down stairs. I made up my mind I might as well be friends with Preston, and not push any further my displeasure at his behaviour. So we had a comfortable breakfast. My aunt was pleased to see me, she said, look so much better. Miss Pinshon was not given to expressing what she felt; but she looked at me two or three times without saying anything, which I suppose meant satisfaction. Preston was in high feather; making all sorts of plans for my divertisement during the next few days. I for my part had my own secret cherished plan, which made my heart beat quicker whenever I thought of it. But I wanted somebody's counsel and help; and on the whole I thought my aunt Gary's would be the safest. So after breakfast I consulted Preston only about my mysterious little box, which would not open. Was it a paper weight? Preston smiled, took up the box and performed some conjuration upon it, and then � I cannot describe my entranced delight � as he set it down again on the table, the room seemed to grow musical. Softest, most liquid sweet notes came pouring forth one after the other, binding my ears as if I had been in a state of enchantment. Binding feet and hands and almost my breath, as I stood hushed and listening to the liquid warbling of delicious things, until the melody had run itself out. It was a melody unknown to me; wild and dainty; it came out of a famous opera I was told afterward. When the fairy notes sunk into silence, I turned mutely towards Preston. Preston laughed. "I declare!" he said, � "I declare! Hurra! you have got colour in your cheeks, Daisy; absolutely, my little Daisy! there is a real streak of pink there where it was so white before." "_What_ is it?" said I. "Just a little good blood coming up under the skin." "Oh, no, Preston � _this_; what is it?" "A musical box." "But where does the music come from?" "Out of the box. See, Daisy; when it has done a tune and is run out, you must wind it up, so, � like a watch." He wound it up and set it on the table again. And again a melody came forth, and this time it was different; not plaintive and thoughtful, but jocund and glad; a little shout and ring of merriment, like the feet of dancers scattering the drops of dew in a bright morning; or like the chime of a thousand little silver bells rung for laughter. A sort of intoxication came into my heart. When Preston would have wound up the box again, I stopped him. I was full of the delight. I could not hear any mote just then. "Why, Daisy, there are ever so many more tunes." "Yes. I am glad. I will have them another time," I answered. "How very kind of mamma!" "Hit the right thing this time, didn't she? How's the riding cap, Daisy?" "It is very nice," I said. "Aunt Gary is very good; and I like the whip very much, Preston." "That fat little rascal will want it. Does the cap fit, Daisy?" "I don't know," I said. "Oh, yes, I suppose so." Preston made an exclamation, and forthwith would have it tried on to see how it looked. It satisfied him; somehow it did not please me as well; but the ride did, which we had soon after; and I found that my black feather certainly suited everybody else. Darry smiled at me, and the house servants were exultant over my appearance. Amid all these distracting pleasures, I kept on the watch for an opportunity to speak to aunt Gary alone. Christmas day I could not. I could not get it till near the end of the next day. "Aunt Gary," I said, "I want to consult you about something." "You have always something turning about in your head," � was her answer. "Do you think," said I slowly, "Mr. Edwards would have any objection to some of the people coming to the kitchen Sunday evenings to hear me read the Bible?" "To hear _you_ read the Bible!" said my aunt. "Yes, aunt Gary; I think they would like it. You know they cannot read it for themselves." "_They_ would like it. And you would be delighted, wouldn't you?" "Yes, aunt Gary. I should like it better than anything." "You are a funny child! There is not a bit of your mother in you � except your obstinacy." And my aunt seemed to ponder my difference. "Would Mr. Edwards object to it, do you think? Would he let them come?" "The question is, whether I will let them come. Mr. Edwards has no business with what is done in the house." "But, aunt Gary, you would not have any objection." "I don't know, I am sure. I wish your father and mother had never left you in my charge; for I don't know how to take care of you." "Aunt Gary," I said, "please don't object! There is nobody to read the Bible to them � and I should like to do it very much." "Yes, I see you would. There � don't get excited about it � every Sunday evening, did you say?" "Yes, ma'am � if you please." "Daisy, it will just tire you; that's what it will do. I know it, just as well as if I had seen it. You are not strong enough." "I am sure it would refresh me, aunt Gary. It did the other night." "The other night?" "Christmas eve, ma'am." "Did you read to them then?" "Yes, ma'am; they wanted to know what Christmas was about." "And you read to them. You are the oddest child!" "But, aunt Gary, never mind, � it would be the greatest pleasure to me. Won't you give leave?" "The servants hear the Bible read, child, every morning and every night." "Yes, but that is only a very few of the house servants. I want some of the others to come � a good many, � as many as can come." "I wish your mother and father were here," sighed my aunt. "Do you think Mr. Edwards would make any objection?" I asked again, presuming on the main question being carried. "Would he let them come?" "Let them!" echoed my aunt. "Mr. Edwards would be well employed, to interfere with anything the family choose to do." "But you know he does not let them meet together, the people, aunt Gary; not unless they have his permission." "No, I suppose so. That is his business." "Then will you speak to him, ma'am, so that he may not be angry with the people when they come?" "I? No," said my aunt. "I have nothing to do with your father's overseer. It would just make difficulty maybe, Daisy; you had better let this scheme of yours alone." I could not, without bitter disappointment. Yet I did not know how further to press the matter. I sat still and said nothing. "I declare, if she isn't growing pale about it!" exclaimed my aunt. "I know one thing, and that is, your father and mother ought to have taken you along with them. I have not the least idea how to manage you; not the least. What is it you want to do, Daisy?" I explained, over again. "And now if you cannot have this trick of your fancy you will just fidget yourself sick! I see it. Just as you went driving all about Melbourne without company to take care of you. I am sure I don't know. It is not in my way to meddle with overseers � How many people do you want to read to at once, Daisy?" "As many as I can, aunt Gary. But Mr. Edwards will not let two or three meet together anywhere." "Well, I dare say he is right. You can't believe anything in the world these people tell you, child. They will lie just as fast as they will speak." "But if they came to see _me_, aunt Gary?" I persisted, waiving the other question. "That's another thing, of course. Well, don't worry. Call Preston. Why children cannot be children, passes my comprehension!" Preston came, and there was a good deal of discussing of my plan; at which Preston frowned and whistled, but on the whole, though I knew against his will, took my part. The end was, my aunt sent for the overseer. She had some difficulty, I judge, in carrying the point; and made capital of my ill-health and delicacy and spoiled-child character. The overseer's unwilling consent was gained at last; the conditions being, that every one who came to hear the reading should have a ticket of leave, written and signed by myself, for each evening; and that I should be present with the assembly from the beginning to the close of it. My delight was very great. And my aunt, grumbling at the whole matter and especially at her share in it, found an additional cause of grumbling in that, she said, I had looked twenty per cent. better ever since this foolish thing got possession of my head. "I am wondering," she remarked to Miss Pinshon, "whatever Daisy will do when she grows up. I expect nothing but she will be � what do you call them? � one of those people who run wild over the human race." "Pirates?" suggested Preston. "Or corsairs?" "Her mother will be disappointed," went on my aunt. "That is what I confidently expect." Miss Pinshon hinted something about the corrective qualities of mathematics; but I was too happy to heed her or care. I was stronger and better, I believe, from that day; though I had not much to boast of. A true tonic had been administered to me; my fainting energies took a new start. I watched my opportunity, and went down to the kitchen one evening to make my preparations. I found Maria alone and sitting in state before the fire � which I believe was always in the kitchen a regal one. I hardly ever saw it anything else. She welcomed me with great suavity; drew up a chair for me; and finding I had something to say, sat then quite grave and still looking into the blaze, while I unfolded my plan. "De Lord is bery good!" was her subdued comment, made when I had done. "He hab sent His angel, sure!" "Now, Maria," I went on, "you must tell me who would like to come next Sundays, you think; and I must make tickets for them. Every one must have my ticket, with his name on it; and then there will be no fault found." "I s'pose not," said Maria, � "wid Miss Daisy's name on it." "Who will come, Maria?" "Laws, chile, dere's heaps. Dere's Darry, and Pete � Pete, he say de meetin' de oder night war 'bout de best meetin' he eber 'tended; he wouldn't miss it for not'ing in de world; he's sure; and dere's ole 'Lize; and de two Jems � no, dere's _tree_ Jems dat is ser'ous; and Stark, and Carl and Sharlim �" "_Sharlim?_" said I, not knowing that this was the Caffir for Charlemagne. "Sharlim," Maria repeated. "He don' know much; but he has a leanin' for de good t'ings. And Darry, he can tell who'll come. I done forget all de folks' names." "Why, Maria," I said, "I did not know there were so many people at Magnolia that cared about the Bible." "What has 'um to care for, chile, I should like fur to know. Dere aint much mo' in _dis_ world." "But I thought there were only very few," I said. " 'Spose um fifty," said Maria. "Fifty aint much, I reckon, when dere's all de rest o' de folks what _don't_ care. De Lord's people is a little people yet, for sure; and de world's a big place. When de Lord come Hisself, to look for 'em, 'spect He have to look mighty hard. De world's awful dark." That brought to my mind my question. It was odd, no doubt, to choose an old coloured woman for my adviser; but indeed I had not much choice; and something had given me a confidence in Maria's practical wisdom, which early as it had been formed, nothing ever happened to shake. So, after considering the fire and the matter a moment, I brought forth my doubt. "Maria," said I, "what is the best way � I mean, how can one let one's light shine?" "What Miss Daisy talkin' about?" "I mean, � you know what the Bible says � 'Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven'?" "For sure, I knows dat. Aint much shinin' in dese yere parts. De people is dark, Miss Daisy; dey don' know. 'Spect dey would try to shine, some on 'em, ef dey knowed. Feel sure dey would." "But that is what I wanted to ask about, Maria. How ought one to let one's light shine?" I remember now the kind of surveying look the woman gave me. I do not know what she was thinking of; but she looked at me, up and down, for a moment, with a wonderfully tender, soft expression. Then turned away. "How let um light shine?" she repeated. "De bestest way, Miss Daisy, is fur to make him burn good." I saw it all immediately; my question never puzzled me again. Take care that the lamp is trimmed; take care that it is full of oil; see that the flame mounts clear and steady towards heaven; and the Lord will set it where its light will fall on what pleases Him, and where it will reach mayhap, to what you never dream of. CHAPTER VI. WINTER AND SUMMER. From the Christmas holidays, I think I began slowly to mend. My aunt watched me, and grumbled that kitchen amusements and rides with Darry should prove the medicines most healing and effectual; but she dared stop neither of them. I believe the overseer remonstrated on the danger of the night gatherings; but my aunt Gary had her answer ready, and warned him not to do anything to hinder me, for I was the apple of my father's eye. Miss Pinshon, sharing to the full my aunt's discontent, would have got on horseback, I verily believe, to be with me in my rides; but she was no rider. The sound of a horse's four feet always, she confessed, stamped the courage out of her heart. I was let alone; and the Sunday evenings in the kitchen, and the bright morning hours in the pine avenues and oak groves, were my refreshment and my pleasure, and my strength. What there was of it; for I had not much strength to boast for many a day. Miss Pinshon tried her favorite recipe whenever she thought she saw a chance, and I did my best with it. But my education that winter was quite in another line. I could not bear much arithmetic. Bending over a desk did not agree with me. Reading aloud to Miss Pinshon never lasted for more than a little while at a time. So it comes, that my remembrance of that winter is not filled with school exercises, and that Miss Pinshon's figure plays but a subordinate part in its pictures. Instead of that, my memory brings back first and chiefest of all, the circle of dark faces round the kitchen light wood fire, and the yellow blaze on the page from which I read; I a little figure in white, sitting in the midst among them all. That picture � those evenings � come back to me, with a kind of hallowed perfume of truth and hope. Truth, it was in my lips and on my heart; I was giving it out to those who had it not. And hope, � it was in more hearts than mine, no doubt; but in mine it beat with as steady a beat as the tickings of my little watch by my side, and breathed sweet as the flowers that start in spring from under the snow. I had often a large circle; and it was part of my plan, and well carried into execution, that these evenings of reading should supply also the place of the missing prayer-meeting. Gradually I drew it on to be so understood; and then my pieces of reading were scattered along between the prayers, or sometimes all came at first, followed by two or three earnest longer prayers from some of those that were present. And then, without any planning of mine, came in the singing. Not too much, lest as Maria said, we should "make de folks up stairs t'ink dere war somethin' oncommon in de kitchen;" but one or two hymns we would have, so full of spirit and sweetness that often now-a-days they come back to me, and I would give very much to hear the like again. So full of music too. Voices untrained by art, but gifted by nature; melodious and powerful; that took different parts in the tune, and carried them through without the jar of a false note or a false quantity; and a love both of song and of the truth which made the music mighty. It was the greatest delight to me, that singing, whether I joined them or only listened. One, � the thought of it comes over me now and brings the water to my eyes, � "Am I a soldier of the cross � Of the cross � Of he cross � A follower of the Lamb; And shall I fear to own his cause, Own his cause � Own his cause, � Or blush to speak His name?" The repetitions at the end of every other line were: both plaintive and strong; there was no weakness, but some recognition of what it costs in certain circumstances to "own His cause." I loved that dearly. But that was only one of many. Also the Bible words were wonderful sweet to me, as I was giving them out to those who else had a "famine of the word." Bread to the hungry, is quite another thing from bread on the tables of the full. The winter had worn well on, before I received the answer to the letter I had written my father about the prayer-meetings and Mr. Edwards. It was a short answer, not in terms but in actual extent; showing that my father was not strong and well yet. It was very kind and tender, as well as short; I felt that in every word. In substance, however, it told me I had better let Mr. Edwards alone. He knew what he ought to do, about the prayer-meetings and about other things; and they were what I could not judge about. So my letter said. It said too, that things seemed strange to me because I was unused to them; and that when I had lived longer at the South they would cease to be strange, and I would understand them and look upon them as every one else did. I studied and pondered this letter; not greatly disappointed, for I had had but slender hopes that my petition could work anything. Yet I had a disappointment to get over. The first practical use I made of my letter, I went where I could be alone with it � indeed, I was that when I read it, � but I went to a solitary lonely place, where I could not be interrupted; and there I knelt down and prayed, that however long I might live at the South, I might never get to look upon evil as anything but evil, nor ever become accustomed to the things I thought ought not to be, so as not to feel them. I shall never forget that half hour. It broke my heart that my father and I should look on such matters with so different eyes; and with my prayer for myself, which came from the very bottom of my heart, I poured out also a flood of love and tears over him, and of petition that he might have better eyesight one day. Ah yes! and before it should be too late to right the wrong he was unconsciously doing. For now I began to see, in the light of this letter first, that my father's eyes were not clear but blind in regard to these matters. And what he said about me led me to think and believe that his blindness was the effect, not of any particular hardness or fault in him, but of long teaching and habit and custom. For I saw that everybody else around me seemed to take the present condition of things as the true and best one; only convenient, but natural and proper. Everybody, that is, who did not suffer by it. I had more than suspicions that the seven hundred on the estate were of a different mind here from the half dozen who lived in the mansion; and that the same relative difference existed on the other plantations in the neighbourhood. We made visits occasionally, and the visits were returned. I was not shut out from them, and so had some chance to observe things within a circle of twenty miles. Our "neighbourhood" reached so far. And child as I was, I could not help seeing; and I could not help looking, half unconsciously, for signs of what lay so close on my heart. My father's letter thus held some material of comfort for me, although it refused my request. Papa would not overset the overseer's decision about the prayer-meetings. It held something else. There was a little scrap of a note to aunt Gary, saying, in the form of an order, that Daisy was to have ten dollars paid to her every quarter; that Mrs. Gary would see it done; and would further see that Daisy was not called upon, by anybody, at any time, to give any account whatever of her way of spending the same. How I thanked papa for this! How I knew the tender affection and knowledge of me which had prompted it. How well I understood what it was meant to do. I had a little private enjoyment of aunt Gary's disconsolate face and grudging hands as she bestowed upon me the first ten dollars. It was not that she loved money so well, but she thought this was another form of my father's unwise indulging and spoiling of me; and that I was spoiled already. But I � I saw in vision a large harvest of joy, to be raised from this small seed crop. At first I thought I must lay out a few shillings of my stock upon a nice purse to keep the whole in. I put the purse down at the head of the list of things I was making out, for purchase, the first time I should go to Baytown, or have any good chance of sending. I had a good deal of consideration whether I would have a purse or a pocket-book. Then I had an odd secret pleasure in my diplomatic way of finding out from Darry and Maria and Margaret what were the wants most pressing of the sick and the old among the people; or of the industrious and the enterprising. Getting Darry to talk to me in my rides, by degrees I came to know the stories and characters of many of the hands; I picked up hints of a want or a desire here and there, which Darry thought there was no human means of meeting, or gratifying. Then, the next time I had a chance, I brought up these persons and cases to Maria, and supplemented Darry's hints with her information. Or I attacked Margaret when she was making my fire, and drew from her what she knew about the persons in whom I was interested. So I learned � and put it down in my notebook accordingly � that Pete could spell out words a little bit, and would like mainly to read; if only he had a Testament in large type. He could not manage little print; it bothered him. Also I learned, that aunt Sarah, a middle-aged woman who worked in the fields, "wanted terrible to come to de Sabbas meetin's, but she war' shamed to come, 'cause her feet was mos' half out of her shoes; and Mr. Ed'ards wouldn't give her no more till de time come roun'." Sarah had "been and gone and done stuck her feet in de fire, for to warm 'em, one time when dey was mighty cold; and she burn her shoes. Learn her better next time." "But does she work every day in the field with her feet only half covered?" I asked. "Laws! she don't care," said Maria. "Taint no use give dem darkies not'ing; dey not know how to keep' um." But this was not Maria's real opinion, I knew. There was often a strange sort of seeming hard edge of feeling put forth, which I learned to know pointed a deep, deep, maybe only half- conscious irony, and was in reality a bitter comment upon facts. So a pair of new shoes for Sarah went down in my list with a large print Testament for Pete. Then I found that some of the people, some of the old ones, who in youth had been accustomed to it, liked nothing so well as tea; it was ambrosia and Lethe mingled; and a packet of tea was put in my list next to the Testament. But the tea must have sugar; and I could not bear that they should drink it out of mugs, without any teaspoons; so to please myself I sent for a little delf ware and a few pewter spoons. Little by little my list grew. I found that Darry knew something about letters; could write a bit; and would prize the means of writing as a very rare treasure and pleasure. And with fingers that almost trembled with delight, I wrote down paper and pens and a bottle of ink for Darry. Next, I heard of an old woman at the quarters, who was ailing and infirm, and I am afraid ill-treated, who at all events was in need of comfort, and had nothing but straw and the floor to rest her poor bones on at night. A soft pallet for her went down instantly on my list; my ink and tears mingling together as I wrote; and I soon found that my purse must be cut off from the head of my list for that time. I never ventured to put it at the head again; nor found a chance to put it in anywhere else. I spent four winters at Magnolia after that; and never had a new purse all the time. I had to wait awhile for an opportunity to make my purchases; then had the best in the world, for Darry was sent to Baytown on business. To him I confided my list and my money, with my mind on the matter; and I was served to a point and with absolute secrecy. For that I had insisted on. Darry and Maria were in my counsels, of course; but the rest of the poor people knew only by guess who their friend was. Old Sarah found her new shoes in her hut one evening, and in her noisy delight declared that "some big angel had come t'rough de quarters." The cups and saucers it was necessary to own, lest more talk should have been made about them than at all suited me; Darry let it be understood that nothing must be said and nobody must know of the matter; and nobody did; but I took the greatest enjoyment in hearing from Maria how the old women (and one or two men) gathered together and were comforted over their cups of tea. And over the _cups_, Maria said: the cups and spoons made the tea twice as good; but I doubt their relish of it was never half so exquisite as mine. I had to give Pete his Testament; he would not think it the same thing if he did not have it from my own hand, Maria said; and Darry's pens and ink likewise. The poor woman for whom I had got the bed, was, I fear, beyond enjoying anything; but it was a comfort to me to know that she was lying on it. The people kept my secret perfectly; my aunt and governess never, I believe, heard anything of all these doings; I had my enjoyment to myself. And the Sunday evening prayer-meeting grew. Little by little. Old Sarah and her new shoes were there of course, at once. Those who first came never failed. And week by week, as I went into the kitchen with my Bible, I saw a larger circle; found the room better lined with dark forms and sable faces. They come up before me now as I write, one and another. I loved them all. I love them still, for I look to meet many of them in glory; "where there is neither bond nor free." Nay, that is _here_ and at present, to all who are in Christ; we do not wait for heaven, to be all one. And they loved me, those poor people. I think Pete had something the same sort of notion about me that those Ephesians had of their image of Diana, which they insisted had fallen from heaven. I used to feel it then, and be amused by it. But I am too long about my story. No wonder I linger, when the remembrance is so sweet. With this new interest that had come into my life, my whole life brightened. I was no longer spiritless. My strength little by little returned. And with the relief of my heart about my father, my happiness sprung back almost to its former and usual state when I was at Melbourne. For I had by this time submitted to my father's and mother's absence as a thing of necessity, and submitted entirely. Yet my happiness was a subdued sort of thing; and my aunt Gary still thought it necessary to be as careful of me, she said, "as if I were an egg-shell." As I grew stronger, Miss Pinshon made more and more demands upon my time with her arithmetic lessons, and other things; but my rides with Darry were never interfered with, nor my Sunday evening readings; and indeed all the winter I continued too delicate and feeble for much school work. My dreaded governess did not have near so much to do with me as I thought she would. The spring was not far advanced before it was necessary for us to quit Magnolia. The climate after a certain day, or rather the air, was not thought safe for white people. We left Magnolia; and went first to Baytown and then to the North. There our time was spent between one and another of several watering-places. I longed for Melbourne; but the house was shut up; we could not go there. The summer was very wearisome to me. I did not like the houses in which our time was spent, or the way of life led in them. Neither did Miss Pinshon, I think; for she was out of her element, and had no chance to follow her peculiar vocation. Of course, in a public hotel, we could not have a schoolroom; and with the coming on of warm weather my strength failed again, so sensibly, that all there was to do was to give me sea air and bathing, and let me alone. The bathing I enjoyed; those curling salt waves breaking over my head, are the one image of anything fresh or refreshing which my memory has kept. I should have liked the beach; I did like it; only it was covered with bathers, or else with promenaders in carriages and on foot, at all times when I saw it; and though they were amusing, the beach was spoiled. The hotel rooms were close and hot; I missed all the dainty freedom and purity of my own home; the people I saw were, it seemed to me, entirely in keeping with the rooms; that is, they were stiff and fussy, not quiet and busy. They were busy after their own fashion indeed; but it always seemed to me, busy about nothing. The children I saw, too, did not attract me; and I fear I did not attract them. I was sober- hearted and low-toned in spirits and strength; while they were as gay as their elders. And I was dressed according to my mother's fancy, in childlike style, without hoops, and with my hair cropped short all over my head. They were stately with crinoline, and rich with embroidery, stiff with fine dresses and plumes; while a white frock and a flat straw were all my adornment, except a sash. I think they did not know what to make of me; and I am sure I had nothing in common with them; so we lived very much apart. There was a little variation in my way of life when Preston came; yet not much. He took me sometimes to drive, and did once go walking with me oil the beach; but Preston found a great deal where I found nothing, and was all the time taken up with people and pleasures; boating and yachting and fishing expeditions; and I believe with hops and balls too. But I was always fast asleep at those times. It was a relief to me when the season came to an end, and we went to New York to make purchases before turning southward. I had once hoped, that this time, the year's end, might see my father and mother come home again. That hope had faded and died a natural death a long while ago. Letters spoke my father's health not restored; he was languid and spiritless and lacked vigour; he would try the air of Switzerland; lie would spend the winter in the Pyrenées! If that did not work well, my mother hinted, perhaps he would have to try the effect of a long sea voyage. Hope shrunk into such small dimensions that it filled but a very little corner of my heart. Indeed, for the present I quite put it by and did not look at it. One winter more must pass, at any rate, and maybe a full year, before I could possibly see my father and mother at home. I locked the door for the present upon hope; and turned my thoughts to what things I had left with me. Chiefest of all theses were my poor friends at Magnolia. My money had accumulated during the summer; I had a nice little sum to lay out for them, and in New York I had chance to do it well, and to do it myself; which was a great additional pleasure. As I could, bit by bit, when I was with aunt Gary shopping, when I could get leave to go out alone with a careful servant to attend me, I searched the shops and catered and bought, for the comfort and pleasure of � seven hundred! I could do little. Nay, but it was for so many of those as I could reach with my weak hands; and I did not despise that good because I could not reach them all. A few more large print Testaments I laid in; some copies of the Gospel of John, in soft covers and good type; a few hymn books. All these cost little. But for Christmas gifts, and for new things to give help and comfort to my poor pensioners, I both plagued and bewitched my brain. It was sweet work. My heart went out towards making all the people happy for once, at Christmas; but my purse would not stretch so far; I had to let that go, with a thought and a sigh. One new thing came very happily into my head, and was worth a Peruvian mine to me, in the pleasure and business it gave. Going into a large greenhouse with my aunt, who wanted to order a bouquet, I went wandering round the place while she made her bargain. For my aunt Gary made a bargain of everything. Wandering in thought as well, whither the sweet breath of the roses and geraniums led me, I went back to Molly in her cottage at Melbourne, and the Jewess geranium I had carried her, and the rose tree; and suddenly the thought started into my head, might not my dark friends at Magnolia, so quick to see and enjoy anything of beauty that came in their way � so fond of bright colour and grace and elegance � a luxurious race, even in their downtrodden condition; might not _they_ also feel the sweetness of a rose, or delight in the petals of a tulip? It was a great idea; it grew into a full formed purpose before I was called to follow aunt Gary out of the greenhouse. The next day I went there on my own account. I was sure I knew what I wanted to do; but I studied a long time the best way of doing it. Roses? I could hardly transport pots and trees so far; they were too cumbersome. Geraniums were open to the same objection, besides being a little tender as to the cold. Flower seeds could not be sown, if the people had them; for no patch of garden belonged to their stone huts, and they had no time to cultivate such a patch if they had it. I must give what would call for no care, to speak of, and make no demands upon overtasked strength and time. Neither could I afford to take anything of such bulk as would draw attention or call out questions and comments. I knew, as well as I know now, what would be thought of any plan or action which supposed _a love of the beautiful_ in creatures the only earthly use of whom was to raise rice and cotton; who in fact were not half so important as the harvests they grew. I knew what unbounded scorn would visit any attempts of mine to minister to an aesthetic taste in these creatures; and I was in no mind to call it out upon myself. All the while I knew better. I knew that Margaret and Stephanie could put on a turban like no white woman I ever saw. I knew that even Marie could take the full effect of my dress when I was decked � as I was sometimes � for a dinner party; and that no fall of lace or knot of ribband missed its errand to her eye. I knew that a _picture_ raised the liveliest interest in all my circle of Sunday hearers; and that they were quick to understand and keen to take its bearings, far more then Molly Skelton would have been, more than Logan, our Scotch gardener at Melbourne, or than my little old friend Hephzibah and her mother. But the question stood, in what form could I carry beauty to them out of a florist's shop? I was fain to take the florist into my partial confidence. It was well that I did. He at once suggested bulbs. Bulbs! would they require much care? Hardly any; no trouble at all. They could be easily transported; easily kept. All they wanted, was a little pot of earth when I was ready to plant them; a little judicious watering; an unbounded supply of sunshine. And what sorts of bulbs were there? I asked diplomatically; not myself knowing, to tell truth, what bulbs were at all. Plenty of sorts, the florist said; there were hyacinths � all colours � and tulips, striped and plain, and very gay; and crocuses, those were of nearly all colours too; and ranunculus, and anemones, and snowdrops. Snowdrops were white; but of several of the other kinds I could have every tint in the rainbow, both alone and mixed. The florist stood waiting my pleasure, and nipped off a dead leaf or two as he spoke, as if there was no hurry and I could tale my time. I went into happy calculation, as to how far my funds would reach; gave my orders, very slowly and very carefully; and went away the owner of a nice little stock of tulips, narcissus, crocuses, and above all, hyacinths. I chose gay tints, and at the same time inexpensive kinds; so that my stock was quite large enough for my purposes; it mattered nothing to me whether a sweet double hyacinth was of a new or an old kind, provided it was of first-rate quality; and I confess it matters almost as little to me now. At any rate, I went home a satisfied child; and figuratively speaking, dined and supped off tulips and hyacinths, instead of mutton and bread and butter. That afternoon it fell out that my aunt took me with her to a milliner's on some business. In the course of it, some talk arose about feathers and the value of them; and my aunt made a remark which, like Wat Tyrrell's arrow, glanced from its aim and did execution in a quarter undreamed of. "That feather you put in the little riding cap you sent me," she said to the milliner, � "your black feather, Daisy, you know, � you charged me but fifteen dollars for that; why is this so much more?" I did not hear the milliner's answer. My whole thought went off upon a track entirely new to me, and never entered before. My feather cost fifteen dollars! Fifteen dollars! Supposing I had that to buy tulips with? or in case I had already tulips enough, suppose I had it to buy print gowns for Christmas presents to the women, which I had desired and could not afford? Or that I had it to lay out in tea and sugar, that my poor old friends might oftener have the one solace that was left to them, or that more might share it? Fifteen dollars! It was equal to one quarter and a half's allowance. My fund for more than a third of the year would be doubled, if I could turn that black feather into silver or gold again. And the feather was of no particular use, that I could see. It made me look like the heiress of Magnolia, my aunt said; but neither could I see any use in _that_. Everybody knew, that is, all the servants and friends of the family knew, that I was that heiress; I needed no black feather to proclaim it. And now it seemed to me as if my riding cap was heavy with undeveloped bulbs, uncrystallised sugar, unweighed green tea. No transformation of the feather was possible; it must wave over my brow in its old fashion, whether it were a misguided feather or not; but my thoughts, once set a going in this train, found a great deal to do. Truth to tell, they have not done it all yet. "Aunt Gary," I said that same evening, musing over the things in my boxes, � "does lace cost much?" "That is like the countryman who asked me once, if it took long to play a piece of music! Daisy, don't you know any more about lace than to ask such a question?" "I don't know what it costs, aunt Gary. I never bought any." "Bought! No; hardly. You are hardly at the age to _buy_ lace yet. But you have worn a good deal of it." "I cannot tell what it costs by looking at it," I answered. "Well, _I_ can. And you will, one day, I hope; if you ever do anything like other people." "Is it costly, ma'am?" "Your lace is rather costly," my aunt said, with a tone which I felt implied satisfaction. "How much?" I asked. "How much does it cost? Why it is the countryman's question over again, Daisy. Lace is all sort of prices. But the lace you wear, is, I judge, somewhere about three and five, and one of your dresses, ten, dollars a yard. That is pretty rich lace for a young lady of your years to wear." I never wore it, I must explain, unless in small quantity, except on state occasions when my mother dressed me as a part of herself. "No, I am wrong," my aunt added presently; "that dress I am thinking of is richer than that; the lace on that robe was never bought for ten dollars, or fifteen either. What do you want to know about it for, Daisy?" I mused a great deal. Three and five, and ten, and fifteen dollars a yard, on lace trimmings for me, and no tea, no cups and saucers, no soft bed, no gardens and flowers, for many, who were near me. I began to fill the meshes of my lace with responsibilities too heavy for the delicate fabric to bear. Nobody liked the looks of it better than I did. I always had a fancy for lace, though not for feathers; its rich, delicate, soft falls, to my notion, suited my mother's form and style better than anything else, and suited me. My taste found no fault. But now that so much gold was wrought into its slight web, and so much silver lay hidden in every embroidered flower, the thing was changed. Graceful, and becoming, and elegant, more than any other adornment; what then? My mother and father had a great deal of money too, to spare; enough, I thought, for lace and for the above tea and sugar too; what then? And what if not enough? I pondered, till my aunt Gary broke out upon me, that I would grow a wizened old woman if I sat musing at that rate; and sent me to bed. It stopped my pondering for that night; but not for all the years since that night. My preparations were quite made before my aunt got her feathers adjusted to her satisfaction; and in the bright days of autumn we went back again to Magnolia. This was a joyful journey and a glad arriving, compared to last year; and the welcome I got was something which puzzled my heart between joy and sorrow many times during the first few days. And now Miss Pinshon's reign fairly began. I was stronger in health, accustomed to my circumstances; there was no longer any reason that the multiplication table and I should be parted. My governess was determined to make up for lost time; and the days of that winter were spent by me between the study table and fire. That is, when I think of that winter my memory finds me there. Multiplication and its correlatives were the staple of existence; and the old book room of my grandfather was the place where my harvests of learning were sown and reaped. Somehow, I do not think the crops were heavy. I tried my best; and Miss Pinshon certainly tried her best. I went through and over immense fields of figures; but I fancy the soil did not suit the growth. I know the fruits were not satisfactory to myself, and indeed were not fruits at all, to my sense of them; but rather dry husks and hard nut shells, with the most tasteless of small kernels inside. Yet Miss Pinshon did not seem unsatisfied; and indeed occasionally remarked that she believed I meant to be a good child. Perhaps that was something out of my governess' former experience; for it was the only style of commendation I ever knew her indulge in, and I always took it as a compliment. It would not do to tell all my childish life that winter. I should never get through. For a child has as many experiences in her little world as people of fifty years old have in theirs; and to her they are not little experiences. It was not a small trial of mind and body to spend the long mornings in the study over the curious matters Miss Pinshon found for my attention; and after the long morning the shorter afternoon session was unmixed weariness. Yet I suffered most in the morning; because then there was some life and energy within me which rebelled against confinement, and panted to be free and in the open air, looking after the very different work I could find or make for myself. My feet longed for the turf; my fingers wanted to throw down the slate pencil and gather up the reins. I had a good fire and a pleasant room; but I wanted to be abroad in the open sunshine, to feel the sweet breath of the air in my face, and see the grey moss wave in the wind. That was what I had been used to all my life; a sweet wild roaming about, to pick up whatever pleasure presented itself. I suppose Miss Pinshon herself had never been used to it nor known it; for she did not seem to guess at what was in my mind. But it made my mornings hard to get through. By the afternoon the spirit was so utterly gone out of me and of everything, that I took it all in a mechanical stupid way; and only my back's aching made me impatient for the time to end. I think I was fond of knowledge and fond of learning. I am sure of it, for I love it dearly still. But there was no joy about it at Magnolia. History, as I found it with my governess, was not in the least like the history I had planned on my tray of sand, and pointed out with red and black headed pins. There was life and stir in that, and progress. Now there was nothing but a string of names and dates to say to Miss Pinshon. And dates were hard to remember, and did not seem to mean anything. But Miss Pinshon's favourite idea was mathematics. It was not my favourite idea; so every day I wandered through a wilderness of figures and signs which were a weariness to my mind and furnished no food for it. Nothing was pleasant to me in my schoolroom, excepting my writing lessons. They were welcomed as a relief from other things. When the studies for the day were done, the next thing was to prepare for a walk. A walk with Miss Pinshon alone, for my aunt never joined us. Indeed, this winter my aunt was not infrequently away from Magnolia altogether; finding Baytown more diverting. It made a little difference to me; for when she was not at home, the whole day, morning, afternoon and evening, meal times and all times, seemed under a leaden grey sky. Miss Pinshon discussed natural history to me when we were walking � not the thing but the science; she asked me questions in geography when we were eating breakfast, and talked over some puzzle in arithmetic when we were at dinner. I think it was refreshing to her; she liked it; but to me, the sky closed over me in lead colour, one unbroken vault, as I said, when my aunt was away. With her at home, all this could not be; and any changes of colour were refreshing. All this was not very good for me. My rides with Darry would have been a great help; but now I only got a chance at them now and then. I grew spiritless and weary. Sundays I would have begged to be allowed to stay at home all day and rest; but I knew if I pleaded fatigue my evenings with the people in the kitchen would be immediately cut off; not my drives to church. Miss Pinshon always drove the six miles to Bolingbroke every Sunday morning, and took me with her. Oh how long the miles were! how weary I was, with my back aching, and trying to find a comfortable corner in the carriage; how I wanted to lie down on the soft cushions in the pew and go to sleep during the service. And when the miles home were finished, it seemed to me that so was I. Then I used to pray to have strength in the evening to read with the people. And I always had it; or at least I always did it. I never failed; though the rest of the Sunday hours were often spent on the bed. But indeed, that Sunday evening reading was the one thing that saved my life from growing, or settling, into a petrifaction. Those hours gave me cheer, and some spirit to begin again on Monday morning. However, I was not thriving. I know I was losing colour, and sinking in strength, day by day; yet very gradually; so that my governess never noticed it. My aunt sometimes on her return from an absence that had been longer than common, looked at me uneasily. "Miss Pinshon, what ails that child?" she would ask. My governess said, "nothing." Miss Pinshon was the most immovable person, I think, I have ever known. At least, so far as one could judge from the outside. "She looks to me," my aunt went on, "exactly like a cabbage, or something else, that has been blanched under a barrel. A kind of unhealthy colour. She is not strong." "She has more strength than she shows," my governess answered. "Daisy has a good deal of strength." "Do you think so ?" said my aunt, looking doubtfully at me. But she was comforted. And neither of them asked me about it. One thing in the early half of the winter was a great help; and for awhile stayed my flitting spirits and strength. My father wrote an order, that Daisy should make arrangements for giving all the people on the plantation a great entertainment at Christmas. I was to do what I liked and have whatever I chose too desire; no one altering or interfering with my word. I shall never forget the overflowing of largest joy, with which my heart swelled as I ran in to tell this news to aunt Gary. But first I had to kneel down and give thanks for it. I never saw my aunt more displeased about anything. Miss Pinshon only lifted up her black eyes and looked me over. They did not express curiosity or anything else; only observation. My aunt spoke out. "I think there must be some mistake, Daisy." "No, aunt Gary; papa says just that." "You mean the house servants, child." "No, ma'am; papa, says everyone; all the people on the place." "He means the white people, you foolish child; everybody's head is not full of the servants, as yours is." "He says, the coloured people, aunt Gary; all of them. It is only the coloured people." "Hear her!" said my aunt. "Now she would rather entertain them, I don't doubt, than the best company that could be gathered of her own sort." I certainly would. Did I not think with joy at that very minute of the words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of _these_, ye have done it unto Me"? I knew what Guest would be among my poor despised company. But I said not a word. "Daisy," said my aunt, "you _must_ be under a mistake; you must let me see what your father says. Why, to give all these hundreds an entertainment, it would cost � have you any idea what it would cost?" I had not indeed. But my father's letter had mentioned a sum which was to be the limit of my expenditure; within which I was to be unlimited. It was a large sum, amounting to several hundreds, and amply sufficient for all I could wish to do. I told my aunt. "Well!" she said, twisting herself round to the fire, "if your father has money to fling about like that, I have of course no more to say." Miss Pinshon looked up again at me. Those black eyes were always the same; the eyelids never drooped over them. "What are you going to do, Daisy?" she asked. Truly I did not know yet. I gave my aunt a note to the overseer from my father, which I begged her to forward; and ran away to take sweet counsel with myself. I had had some little experience of such an entertainment in the strawberry festival at Melbourne. I remembered that good things to eat and drink were sure to be enjoyed, and not these only, but also a pretty and festive air thrown about these things. And much more would this be true among the beauty- loving and luxurious-natured children of the tropics, than with the comparatively barbarous Celtic blood. But between entertaining thirty and seven hundred, there was a difference. And between the season of roses and fruits, and the time of mid-winter, even though in a southern clime, there was another wide difference. I had need of a great deal of counsel-taking with myself; and I took it; and it was very good for me. In every interval between mathematical or arithmetical problems, my mind ran off to this other one, with infinite refreshment. Then I consulted Maria; she was a great help to me. I thought at first I should have to build a place to hold our gatherings in; the home kitchen was not a quarter large enough. But Darry told me of an empty barn not far off, that was roomy and clean. By virtue of my full powers, I seized upon this barn. I had it well warmed with stoves; Darry saw to that for me and that they were well and safely put up; I had it adorned and clothed and made gay with evergreens and flowers, till it was beautiful. The carpenters on the place put up long tables and fitted plenty of seats. Then I had some rough kitchens extemporised outside of it; and sent for loads of turkeys from Baytown; and for days before and after Christmas my band of cooks were busy, roasting and baking and cake-making. Coffee was brewed without measure, as if we had been a nation of Arabs. And then tickets were furnished to all the people on the place, tickets of admission; and for all the holidays, or for Christmas and three days after, I kept open house at the barn. Night and day I kept open house. I went and came myself, knowing that the sight of me hindered nobody's pleasure; but I let in no other white person, and I believe I gained the lasting ill will of the overseer by refusing him. I stood responsible for everybody's good behaviour, and had no forfeits to pay. And enjoyment reigned, during those days in the barn; a gay enjoyment, full of talk and of singing as well as of feasting; full of laughter and jokes, and full of utmost good-humour and kindness from one to another. Again, most unlike a party of Celtic origin. It was enjoyment to me too; very great; � though dashed continually by the thought how rare and strange it was to those around me. Only for my sake, and dependent on my little hand of power; having no guarantee or security else for its ever coming again. As the holiday drew near its end, my heart grew sore often at the thought of all my poor friends going back into their toil, hopeless and spiritless as it was, without one ray to brighten the whole year before them till Christmas should come round again. Ay, and this feeling was quickened every now and then by a word, or a look, or a tone, which told me that I was not the only one who remembered it. "Christmas is almos' gone, Tony," I heard one fine fellow say to another at the end of the third day; and under the words there was a thread of meaning which gave a twitch to my heartstrings. There were bursts of song mingled with all this, which I could not bear to hear. In the prayer-meetings I did not mind them; here, in the midst of festivities, they almost choked me. "I'm going home" � sounded now so much as if it were in a strange land; and once when a chorus of them were singing, deep and slow, the refrain, � "In the morning � Chil'len, in the morning �" I had a great heartbreak, and sat down and cried behind my sugarplums. I can bear to think of it all now. There were years when I could not. After this entertainment was over, and much more stupid ones had been given among polished people at the house, and the New Year had swept in upon us with its fresh breeze of life and congratulations, the winter and Miss Pinshon settled down for unbroken sway. I had little to help me during those months from abroad. That is, I had nothing. My father wrote seldom. My mother's letters had small comfort for me. They said that papa's health mended slowly � was very delicate � he could not bear much exertion � his head would not endure any excitement. They were trying constant changes of scene and air. They were at Spa, at Paris, at Florence, at Vevay, in the Pyrenées; not staying long anywhere. The physicians talked of a long sea voyage. From all which I gradually brought down my hopes into smaller and smaller compass; till finally I packed them up and stowed them away in the hidden furthermost corner of my heart; only to be brought out and looked at when there should be occasion. Spring came without the least prospect that such occasion would be given me soon. My father and mother were making preparation to journey in Norway; and already there was talk of a third winter in Egypt! It was hoped that all these changes were not without some slow and certain effect in the way of improvement. I think on me they had another sort of effect. Spring as usual drove us away from Magnolia. This summer was spent with my aunt Gary, at various pleasant and cool up- country places; where hills were, and brooks, and sweet air, and flowers; and where I might have found much to enjoy. But always Miss Pinshon was with me; and the quiet and freedom of these places, with the comparative cool climate, made it possible for her to carry on all her schemes for my improvement just as steadily as though we had been at Magnolia. And I had not Darry and my pony, which indeed, the latter, had been of small use to me this year; and I had not my band of friends on the Sunday evening; and even my own maid Margaret aunt Gary had chosen to leave behind. Miss Pinshon's reign was absolute. I think some of the Medusa properties Preston used to talk about must have had their effect upon me at this time. I remember little of all that summer, save the work for Miss Pinshon, and the walks with Miss Pinshon, and a general impression of those black eyes and inflexible voice, and mathematics and dates, and a dull round of lesson getting. Not knowledge getting; � that would have been quite another affair. I seemed to be all the while putting up a scaffolding, and never coming to work on the actual Temple of Learning itself. I know we were in beautiful regions that summer; but my recollection is not of them but of rows of figures. And of a very grave, I think dull, and very quiet little personage, who went about like a mouse, for silentness, and gave no trouble to anybody, excepting only to herself. The next winter passed as the winter before had done; only I had no Christmas entertainment. My father and mother were in Egypt; perhaps he did not think of it. Perhaps he did not feel that he could afford it. Perhaps my aunt and the overseer had severally made representations to which my father thought it best to listen. I had no festivities at any rate for my poor coloured people; and it made my own holidays a very shaded thing. I found, however, this winter one source of amusement, and in a measure, of comfort. In the bookcases which held my grandfather's library, there was a pretty large collection of books of travel. I wanted to know just then about Egypt, that I might the better in imagination follow my father and mother. I searched the shelves for Egypt; and was lucky enough to light upon several works of authority and then recent observation. I feasted on these. I began in the middle; then very soon went back to the beginning; and read delightedly, carefully, patiently, through every detail and discussion in which the various authors indulged. Then I turned all their pictures into living panorama; for I fancied my father and mother in every place, looking at every wonder they described; and I enjoyed not merely what they described, but my father's and mother's enjoyment of it. This was a rare delight to me. My favourite place was the corner of the study fire, at dusk, when lessons and tiresome walks for the day were done, and Miss Pinshon was taking her ease elsewhere in some other way. I had the fire made up to burn brightly, and pine knots at hand to throw on if wanted; and with the illumination dancing all over my page, I went off to regions of enchantment, pleasant to me beyond any fairy tale. I never cared much for things that were not true. No chambers of Arabian fancy could have had the fascination for me of those old Egyptian halls; nor all the marvels of magic entranced me like the wonder- working hand of time. Those books made my comfort and my diversion all the winter. For I was not a galloping reader; I went patiently through every page; and the volumes were many enough and interesting enough to last me long. I dreamed under the Sphynx; I wandered over the pyramids; no chamber nor nook escaped me; I could have guided a traveller � in imagination. I knew the prospect from the top, though I never wrote my name there. It seemed to me that _that_ was barbarism. I sailed up the Nile, � delightful journeys on board the Nile boats, � forgetting Miss Pinshon and mathematics, except when I rather pitied the ancient Egyptians for being so devoted to the latter; forgetting Magnolia, and all the home things I could not do and would have liked to do; forgetting everything, and rapt in the enjoyment of tropical airy, and Eastern skies; hearing the plash of water from the everlasting _shadoof_, and watching the tints and colours on the ranges of hills bordering the Nile valley. All _my_ hills were green; the hues of those others were enough of themselves to make an enchanted land. Still more, as I stopped at the various old temples along the way, my feeling of enchantment increased. I threaded the mazes of rubbish, and traced the plans of the ruins of Thebes, till I was at home in every part of them. I studied the hieroglyphics and the descriptions of the sculptures, till the names of Thothmes III, and Amunoph III, and Sethos and Rameses, Miamun and Rameses III, were as well known to me as the names of the friends whom I met every Sunday evening. I even studied out the old Egyptian mythology, the better to be able to understand the sculptures, as well as the character of those ancient people who wrought them; and to be able to fancy the sort of services that were celebrated by the priests in the splendid enclosures of the temples. And then I went higher up the Nile and watched at the uncovering of those wonderful colossal figures which stand, or sit, before the temple of Abou-Simbel. I tried to imagine what manner of things such large statues could be; I longed for one sight of the faces, said to be so superb, which showed what the great Rameses looked like. Mamma and papa could see them; that was a great joy. Belzoni was one of my prime favourites; and I liked particularly to travel with him, both there and at the Tombs of the Kings. There were some engravings scattered through the various volumes, and a good many plans, which helped me. I studied them, faithfully; and got from them all they could give me. In the Tombs of the Kings, my childish imagination found, I think, its highest point of revelling and delight. Those were something stranger, more wonderful, and more splendid, even than Abou-Simbel and Karnak, Many an evening, while the firelight from a Southern pine knot danced on my page, I was gone on the wings of fancy thousands of miles away; and went with discoverers or explorers, up and down the passages and halls and staircases and chambers, to which the entrance is from _Biban el Malook_. I wondered over the empty sarcophagi; held my breath at the pit's sides; and was never tired of going over tile scenes and sculptures done in such brilliant colours upon those white walls. Once in there, I quite forgot that mamma and papa could see them; I was so busy seeing them myself. This amusement of mine was one which nobody interfered with; and it lasted, as I said, all winter. All the winter my father and mother were in Egypt. When spring came, I began to look with trembling eagerness for a letter that should say they would turn now homewards. I was disappointed. My father was so much better that his physicians were encouraged to continue their travelling regimen; and the word came that it was thought best he should try a long sea voyage; he was going to China. My mother would go with him. I think never in my life my spirits sank lower than they did when I heard this news. I was not strong nor very well, which might have been in part the reason. And I was dull-hearted to the last degree under the influence of Miss Pinshon's system of management. There was no power of reaction in me. It was plain that I was failing; and my aunt interrupted the lessons, and took me again to watering places at the North, from one to another, giving me as much change as possible. It was good for me to be taken off study, which Miss Pinshon had pressed and crowded during the winter. Sea bathing did me good, too; and the change of scene and habits was useful. I did not rise to the level of enjoying anything much; only the sea waves when I was in them; at other times I sat on the bank and watched the distant smoke stack of a steamer going out, with an inexpressible longing and soreness of heart. Going, where I would so like to go! But there was no word of that. And indeed it would not have been advisable to take me to China. I did think Egypt would not have been bad for me; but it was a thought which I kept shut up in the furthest stores of my heart. The sea voyage however was delayed. My mother took sick; was very ill; and then unable to undertake the going to China. My father chose to wait for her; so the summer was spent by them in Switzerland and the autumn in Paris. With the first of the New Year they expected now to sail. It suddenly entered my aunt Gary's head that it was a good time for _her_ to see Paris; and she departed, taking Ransom with her, whom my father wished to place in a German University, and meantime in a French school. Preston had been placed at the Military Academy at West Point; my aunt thinking that it made a nice finishing of a gentleman's education, and would keep him out of mischief till he was grown to man's estate. I was left alone with Miss Pinshon to go back to Magnolia and take up my old life there. CHAPTER VII. SINGLEHANDED. As my aunt set sail for the shores of Europe, and Miss Pinshon and I turned our faces towards Magnolia, I seemed to see before me a weary winter. I was alone now; there was nobody to take my part in small or great things; my governess would have her way. I was so much stronger now that no doubt she thought I could bear it. So it was. The full tale of studies and tasks was laid on me; and it lay on me from morning till night. I had expected that. I had looked also for the comfort and refreshment of ministering to my poor friends in the kitchen on the Sunday evenings. I began as usual with them. But as the Sundays came round, I found now and then a gap or two in the circle; and the gaps as time went on did not fill up; or if they did they were succeeded by other gaps. My hearers grew fewer, instead of more; the fact was undoubted. Darry was always on the spot; but the two Jems not always, and Pete was not sure, and Eliza failed sometimes, and others; and this grew worse. Moreover, a certain grave and sad air replaced the enjoying, almost jocund, spirit of gladness which used to welcome me and listen to the reading and join in the prayers and raise the song. The singing was not less good than it used to; but it fell oftener into the minor key, and then pouted along with a steady, powerful volume, deepening and steadying as it went, which somehow swept over my heart like a wind from the desert. I could not well tell why, yet I felt it trouble me; sometimes my heart trembled with the thrill of those sweet and solemn vibrations. I fancied that Darry's prayers had a somewhat different atmosphere from the old. Yet when I once or twice asked Margaret the next morning why such and such a one had not been at the reading, she gave me a careless answer, that she supposed Mr. Edwards had found something for them to do. "But at night, Margaret?" I said. "Mr. Edwards cannot keep them at work at night." To which she made no answer; and I was for some reason unwilling to press the matter. But things went on, not getting better but worse, until I could not bear it. I watched my opportunity and got Maria alone. "What is the matter," I asked, "that the people do not come on Sunday evening as they used? Are they tired of the reading, Maria?" "I 'spect dey's as tired as a fish mus' be of de water," said Maria. She had a fine specimen under her hand at the moment, which I suppose suggested the figure. "Then why do they not come as usual, Maria? there were only a few last night." "Dere was so few, it was lonesome," said Maria. "Then what is the reason?" "Dere is more reasons for t'ings, den Maria can make out," � she said thoughtfully. "Mebbe it's to make 'em love de priv'lege mo'." "But what keeps them away, Maria? what hinders?" "Chile, de Lord hab His angels, and de devil he hab his ministers; and dey takes all sorts o' shapes, de angels and de ministers too. I reckon dere's some work o'dat sort goin'on." Maria spoke in a sort of sententious wisdom which did not satisfy me at all. I thought there was something behind. "Who is doing the work, Maria?" I asked, after a minute. "Miss Daisy," she said, "dere aint no happenin' at all widout de Lord lets it happen. Dere is much contrairy in dis world, � fact, dere is! � but I 'spect de Lord make it all up to us by'm by." And she turned her face full upon me with a smile of so much quiet resting in that truth, that for just a moment it silenced me. "Miss Daisy aint lookin' quite so peart as she use to look," Maria went on. But I slipped away from that diversion. "Maria," I said, "you don't tell me what is the matter; and I wish to know. What keeps the people, Pete, and Eliza and all, from coming? What hinders them, Maria? I wish to know." Maria busied herself with her fish for a minute, turning and washing it; then without looking up from her work she said in a lowered tone, � " 'Spect de overseer, he don't hab no favour to such ways and meetin's." "But, with _me?_" I said; "and with aunt Gary's leave?" "S'pose he like to fix t'ings his own way," said Maria. "Does he forbid them to come?" I asked. "I reckon he do," � she said, with a sigh. Maria was very even-tempered, quiet, and wise, in her own way. Her sigh went through my heart. I stood thinking what plan I could take. "De Lord is bery good, Miss Daisy," she said, cheerily a moment after; "I and dem dat love Him, dcre can be no sort o'separation, no ways." "Does Mr. Edwards forbid them _all_ to come?" I asked. "For a good many do come." " 'Spect he don't like de meetin's, no how," said Maria. "But does he tell all the people they must not come?" "I reckon he make it oncomfor'ble for 'em," Maria answered gravely. "Dere is no end o' de mean ways o' sich folks. Know he aint no gentleman, no how!" "What does he do, Maria?" I said; trembling, yet unable to keep back the question. "He can do what he please, Miss Daisy," Maria said, in the same grave way. " 'Cept de Lord above, dere no one can hinder � now massa so fur. Bes' pray de Lord, and mebbe He sen' his angel, some time." Maria's fish was ready for the kettle; some of the other servants came in; and I went with a heavy heart up the stairs. "Massa so fur" � yes! I knew that; and Mr. Edwards knew it too. Once sailed for China; and it would be long, long, before my cry for help, in the shape of one of my little letters, could reach him and get back the answer. My heart felt heavy as if I could die, while I slowly mounted the stairs to my room. It was not only that trouble was brought upon my poor friends, nor even that their short enjoyment of the Word of life was hindered and interrupted; above this and worse than this was the sense of _wrong_, done to these helpless people, and done by my own father and mother. This sense was something too bitter for a child of my years to bear; it crushed me for a time. Our people had a right to the Bible, as great as mine; a right to dispose of themselves, as true as my father's right to dispose of himself. Christ, my Lord, had died for them as well as for me; and here was my father, � _my father_ � practically saying that they should not hear of it, nor know the message He had sent to them. And if anything could have made this more bitter to me, it was the consciousness that the reason of it all was that we might profit by it. Those unpaid hands wrought that our hands might be free to do nothing; those empty cabins were bare, in order that our houses might be full of every soft luxury; those unlettered minds were kept unlettered that the rarest of intellectual wealth might be poured into our treasury. I knew it. For I had written to my father once to beg his leave to establish schools, where the people on the plantation might be taught to read and write. He had sent a very kind answer, saying it was just like his little Daisy to wish such a thing, and that his wish was not against it, if it could be done; but that the laws of the State, and for wise reasons, forbade it. Greatly puzzled by this, I one day carried my puzzle to Preston. He laughed at me as usual, but at the same time explained that it would not be safe; for that if the slaves were allowed books and knowledge, they would soon not be content with their condition, and would be banding together to make themselves free. I knew all this, and I had been brooding over it; and now when the powerful hand of the overseer came in to hinder the little bit of good and comfort I was trying to give the people, my heart was set on fire with a sense of sorrow and wrong that, as I said, no child ought ever to know. I think it made me ill. I could not eat. I studied like a machine, and went and came as Miss Pinshon bade me; all the while brooding by myself and turning over and over in my heart the furrows of thought, which seemed at first to promise no harvest. Yet those furrows never break the soil for nothing. In due time the seed fell; and the fruit of a ripened purpose came to maturity. I did not give up my Sunday readings; even although the numbers of my hearers grew scantier. As many as could, we met together to read and to pray, yes, and to sing. And I shall never in this world hear such singing again. One refrain comes back to me now � "Oh, had I the wings of the morning � Oh, had I the wings of the morning � Oh, had I the wings of the morning � I'd fly to my Jesus away!" I used to feel so too, as I listened and sometimes sung with them. Meantime, all that I could do with my quarterly ten dollars, I did. And there was many a little bit of pleasure I could give; what with a tulip here and a cup of tea there, and a bright handkerchief, or a pair of shoes. Few of the people had spirit and cultivation enough to care for the flowers. But Maria cherished some red and white tulips and a hyacinth in heir kitchen window, as if they had been her children; and to Darry a white rose-tree I had given him seemed almost to take the place of a familiar spirit. Even grave Pete, whom I only saw now and then this winter at my readings, nursed and tended and watched a bed of crocuses with endless delight and care. All the while, my Sunday circle of friends grew constantly fewer; and the songs that were sung at our hindered meetings had a spirit in them, which seemed to me to speak of a deep-lying fire somewhere in the hearts of the singers, hidden, but always ready to burst into a blaze. Was it because the fire was burning in my own heart? I met one of the two Jems in the pine avenue one day. He greeted me with the pleasantest of broad smiles. "Jem," said I, "why don't you come to the house Sunday evenings, any more?" "It don't 'pear practical, missie." Jem was given to large- sized words, when he could get hold of them. "Mr. Edwards hinders you?" "Mass' Ed'ards bery smart man, Miss Daisy. He want massa's work done up all jus' so." "And he says that the prayer-meeting hinders the work, Jem?" "Clar, missis, Mass' Ed'ards got long head; he see furder den me," Jem said, shaking his own head as, if the whole thing were beyond him. I let him go. But a day or two after I attacked Margaret on the subject. She and Jem, I knew, were particular friends. Margaret was oracular and mysterious, and looked like a thunder cloud. I got nothing from her, except an increase of uneasiness. I was afraid to go further in my inquiries; yet could not rest without. The house servants, I knew, would not be likely to tell me anything that would trouble me, if they could help it. The only exception was mammy Theresa; who with all her love for me had either less tact, or had grown from long habit hardened to the state of things in which she had been brought up. From her, by a little cross questioning, I learned that Jem and others had been forbidden to come to the Sunday readings; and their disobeying had been visited with the lash, not once nor twice; till, as mammy Theresa said, " 'peared like it warn't no use to try to be good agin de devil." And papa was away on his voyage to China, away on the high seas, where no letter could reach him and Mr. Edwards knew that. There was a fire in my heart now, that burned with sharp pain. I felt as if it would burn my heart out. And now took shape and form one single aim and purpose, which became for years the foremost one of my life. It had been growing and gathering. I set it clear before me from this time. Meanwhile, my mother's daughter was not willing to be entirely baffled by the overseer. I arranged with Darry that I would be at the Cemetery hill on all pleasant Sunday afternoons; and that all who wished to hear, me read, or who wished to learn themselves, might meet me there. The Sunday afternoons were often pleasant that winter. I was constantly at my post; and many a one crept round to me from the quarters and made his way through the graves and the trees to where I sat by the iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine leaves. Why not? Are they not all God's voices. And the words of the Book were very precious there, to me and many another. I was rather more left to myself of late. My governess gave me my lessons quite as assiduously as ever; but after lesson time she seemed to have something else to take her attention. She did not walk often with me, as the spring drew near; and my Sunday afternoons were absolutely unquestioned. One day in March, I had gone to my favourite place to get out a lesson. It was not Sunday afternoon of course. I was tired with my day's work, or I was not very strong; for though I had work to do, the witcheries of nature prevailed with me to put down my book. The scent of pine buds and flowers made the air sweet to smell, and the spring sun made it delicious to feel. The light won its way tenderly among the trees, touching the white marble tombstones behind me, but resting with a more gentle ray upon the moss and turf where only little bits of rough board marked the sleeping places of our dependants. Just out of sight, through the still air I could hear the river, in its rippling, flow past the bank at the top of which I sat. My book hung in my hand, and the course of Universal History was forgotten; while I mused and mused over the two sorts of graves that lay around me, the two races, the diverse fate that attended them; while one blue sky was over, and one sunlight fell down. And "while I was musing, the fire burned," more fiercely than ever. David's had occasion when he wrote those words. "Then spake I with my tongue." I would have liked to do that. But I could do nothing; only pray. I was very much startled while I sat in my muse, to bear a footstep coming. A steady, regular, footstep; no light trip of children; and the hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My first thought was, the overseer! come to spy me out. The next minute I saw through the trees and the iron railings behind me, that it was not the overseer. I knew _his_ wide-awake; and this head was crowned with some sort of a cap. I turned my head again and sat quiet; willing to be overlooked, if that might be. The steps never slackened. I heard them coming round the railing � then just at the corner � I looked up, to see the cap lifted, and a smile coming upon features that I knew; but my own thoughts were so very far away that my visitor had almost reached my side before I could recollect who it was. I remember I got up then in a little hurry. "It is Doctor Sandford!" I exclaimed, as his hand took mine. "Is it Daisy?" answered the doctor. "I think so," I said. "And I _think so_," he said, looking at me after the old fashion. "Sit down, and let me make sure." "You must sit on the grass, then," I said. "Not a bad thing, in such a pleasant place," he rejoined, sending his blue eye all round my prospect. "But it is not so pleasant a place as White Lake, Daisy." Such a flood of memories and happy associations came rushing into my mind at these words, � he had not given them time to come in slowly, � I suppose my face showed it. The doctor looked at me and smiled. "I see it _is_ Daisy," he said. "I think it certainly Daisy. So you do not like Magnolia?" "Yes, I do," I said, wondering where he got that conclusion. "I like the _place_ very much, if �" "I should like to have the finishing of that 'if' � if you have no objection." "I like the _place_," I repeated. "There are some things about it I do not like." "Climate, perhaps?" "I did not mean the climate. I do not think I meant anything that belonged to the place itself." "How do you do?" was the doctor's next question. "I am very well, sir." "How do you know it?" "I suppose I am," I said. "I am not sick. I always say I am well." "For instance, you are so well that you never get tired?" "Oh, I get tired very often. I always did." "What sort of things make you tired? Do you take too long drives in your pony-chaise?" "I have no pony-chaise now, Dr. Sandford. Loupe was left at Melbourne. I don't know what became of him." "Why didn't you bring him along? But any other pony would do, Daisy." "I don't drive at all, Dr. Sandford. My aunt and governess do not like to have me drive as I used to do. � I wish I could!" "You would like to use your pony-chaise again?" "Very much. I know it would rest me." "And you have a governess, Daisy? That is something you had not at Melbourne." "No �" I said. "A governess is a very nice thing," said the doctor, taking off his hat and leaning back against the iron railing, � "if she knows properly how to set people to play." "To play!" I echoed. I don't know whether Miss Pinshon approves of play." "Oh! She approves of work then, does she?" "She likes work," I answered. "Keeps you busy?" "Most of the day, sir." "The evenings you have to yourself?" "Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes I cannot get through with my lessons, and they stretch on into the evening." "How many lessons does this lady think a person of your age and capacity can manage in the twenty-four hours?" said the doctor, taking out his knife as he spoke and beginning to trim the thorns off a bit of sweet-briar he had cut. I stopped to make the reckoning. "Give me the course of your day, Daisy. And, by the by, when does your day begin?" "It begins at half past seven, Dr. Sandford." "With breakfast?" "No, sir. I have a recitation before breakfast." "Please, of what?" "Miss Pinshon always begins with mathematics." "As a bitters. Do you find that it gives you an appetite?" By this time I was very near bursting into tears. The familiar voice and way, the old time they brought back, the contrasts they forced together, the different days of Melbourne and of my Southern home, the forms and voices of mamma and papa, � they all came crowding and flitting before me. I was obliged to delay my answer. I knew that Dr. Sandford looked at me; then he went on in a very gentle way � "Sweetbriar is sweet, � Daisy" � putting it to my nose. "I should like to know, how long does mathematics last, before you are allowed to have coffee?" "Mathematics only lasts half an hour. But then I have an hour of study in Mental Philosophy before breakfast. We breakfast at nine." "It must take a great deal of coffee to wash down all that," said the doctor lazily trimming his sweetbriar. "Don't you find that you are very hungry when you come to breakfast?" "No, not generally," I said. "How is that? Where there is so much sharpening of the wits, people ought to be sharp otherwise." "My wits do not get sharpened," I said, half laughing. "I think they get dull; and I am often dull altogether by breakfast time." "What time in the day do you walk?" "In the afternoon � when we have done with the schoolroom. But lately Miss Pinshon does not walk much." "So you take the best of the day for philosophy?" "No, sir, for mathematics." "Oh! � Well, Daisy, _after_ philosophy and mathematics have both had their turn; what then? when breakfast is over." "Oh, they have two or three more turns in the course; of the day," I said. "Astronomy comes after breakfast; then Smith's _Wealth of Nations_; then Chemistry. Then I have a long History lesson to recite; then French. After dinner we have Natural Philosophy, and Physical Geography and Mathematics; and then we have generally done." "And then what is left of you goes to walk," said the doctor. "No, not very often now," I said. "I don't know why, Miss Pinshon has very much given up walking of late." "Then what becomes of you?" "I do not often want to do much of anything," I said. "To-day I came here." "With a book," said the doctor. "Is it work or play?" "My History lesson," I said, showing the book. "I had not quite time enough at home." "How much of a lesson, for instance?" said the doctor, taking the book and turning over the leaves. "I had to make a synopsis of the state of Europe from the third century to the tenth; � synchronising the event and the names." "In writing?" "I might write it if I chose, � I often do, � but I have to give the synopsis by memory." "Does it take long to prepare, Daisy?" said the doctor, still turning over the leaves. "Pretty long," I said, "when I am stupid. Sometimes I cannot do the synchronising, my head gets so thick; and I have to take two or three days for it." "Don't you get punished, for letting your head get thick?" "Sometimes I do." "And what is the system of punishment at Magnolia for such deeds?" "I am kept in the house for the rest of the afternoon sometimes," I said; "or I have an extra problem in mathematics to get out for the next morning." "And _that_ keeps you in, if the governess don't." "Oh, no," I said; "I never can work at it then. I get up earlier the next morning." "Do you do nothing for exercise but those walks, which you do not take?" "I used to ride last year," I said; "and this year I was stronger, and Miss Pinshon gave me more studies; and somehow I have not cared to ride so much. I have felt more like being still." "You must have grown tremendously wise, Daisy," said the doctor, looking round at me now with his old pleasant smile. I cannot tell the pleasure and comfort it was to me to see him; but I think I said nothing. "It is near the time now when you always leave Magnolia � is it not?" "Very near now." "Would it trouble you to have the time a little anticipated?" I looked at him, in much doubt what this might mean. The doctor fumbled in his breast pocket and fetched out a letter. "Just before your father sailed for China, he sent me this. It was some time before it reached me; and it was some time longer before I could act upon it." He put a letter in my hand, which I, wondering, read. It said, the letter did, that papa was not at ease about me; that he was not satisfied with my aunt's report of me, nor with the style of my late letters; and begged Dr. Sandford would run down to Magnolia at his earliest convenience and see me, and make enquiry as to my well-being; and if he found things not satisfactory, as my father feared he might and judged that the rule of Miss Pinshon had not been good for me on the whole, my father desired that Dr. Sandford would take measures to have me removed to the North and placed in one of the best schools there to be found; such a one as Mrs. Sandford might recommend. The letter further desired, that Dr. Sandford would keep a regular watch over my health, and suffer no school training nor anything else to interfere with it; expressing the writer's confidence that Dr. Sandford knew better than any one what was good for me. "So you see, Daisy," the doctor said, when I handed him back the letter, "your father has constituted me in some sort your guardian, until such time as he comes back." "I am very glad," I said, smiling. "Are you? That is kind. I am going to act upon my authority immediately, and take you away." "From Magnolia?" I said breathlessly. "Yes. Wouldn't you like to go and see Melbourne again for a little while?" "Melbourne!" said I; and I remember how my cheeks grew warm. "But � will Miss Pinshon go to Melbourne?" "No; she will not. Nor anywhere else, Daisy, with my will and permission, where you go. Will that distress you very much?" I could not say yes, and I believe I made no answer, my thoughts were in such a whirl. "Is Mrs. Sandford in Melbourne � I mean, near Melbourne � now?" I asked at length. "No, she is in Washington. But she will be going to the old place before long. Would you like to go, Daisy?" I could hardly tell him. I could hardly think. It began to rush over me, that this parting from Magnolia was likely to be for a longer time than usual. The river murmured by � the sunlight shone on the groves on the hillside. Who would look after my poor people? "You like Magnolia after all?" said the doctor. "I do not wonder, as far as Magnolia goes. You are sorry to leave it." "No," I said, � "I am not sorry at all to leave Magnolia; I am very glad. I am only sorry to leave � some friends." "Friends �" said the doctor. "Yes." "How many friends?" "I don't know," said I. "I think there are a hundred or more." "Seriously?" "Oh, yes," I said, "They are all on the place here." "How long will you want, Daisy, to take proper leave of these friends?" I had no idea he was in such practical haste; but I found it was so. CHAPTER VIII. EGYPTIAN GLASS. It became necessary for me to think how soon I could be ready, and arrange to get my leave-takings over by a certain time. Dr. Sandford could not wait for me. He was an army surgeon now, I found, and stationed at Washington. He had to return to his post and leave Miss Pinshon to bring me up to Washington. I fancy matters were easily arranged with Miss Pinshon. She was as meek as a lamb. But it never was her way to fight against circumstances. The doctor ordered that I should come up to Washington in a week or two. I did not know till he was gone, what a hard week it was going to be. As soon as he had turned his back upon Magnolia, my leave- takings began. I may say they began sooner: for in the morning after his arrival, when Margaret was in my room, she fell to questioning me about the truth of the rumour that had reached the kitchen. Jim said I was going away, not to come back. I do not know how he had got hold of the notion. And when I told her it was true, she dropped the pine splinters out of her hands, and rising to her feet, besought me that I would take her with me. So eagerly she besought me, that I had much difficulty to answer. "I shall be in a school, Margaret," I said. "I could not have anybody there to wait on me." "Miss Daisy won't never do everything for herself." "Yes, I must," I said. "All the girls do." "I'd hire out then, Miss Daisy, while you don't want me � I'd be right smart � and I'd bring all my earnin's to you regular. 'Deed I will! Till Miss Daisy want me herself." I felt my cheeks flush. She would bring _her_ earnings to _me_. Yes, that was what we were doing. "Clar, Miss Daisy, do don't leave me behind! I could take washin' and do all Miss Daisy's things up right smart � don't believe they knows how to do things up there! � I'll come to no good if I don't go with Miss Daisy, sure." "You can be good here as well as anywhere, Margaret," I said. "Miss Daisy don' know. Miss Daisy, 'spose the devil walkin' round about a place; � think it a nice place fur to be good in?" "The devil is not in Magnolia more than anywhere else," I said. "Dere Mass' Edwards, �" Margaret said half under her breath. Even in my room she would not speak the name out loud. The end of it was, that I wrote up to Washington to Dr Sandford to ask if I might take the girl with me; and his answer came back, that if it were any pleasure to me I certainly might. So that matter was settled. But the parting with the rest was hard. I do not know whether it was hardest for them or for me. Darry blessed me and prayed for me. Maria wept over me. Theresa mourned and lamented. Tears and wailings came from all the poor women who knew me best and used to come to the Sunday readings; and Pete took occasion to make private request, that when I was grown, or when at any time I should want a man servant, I would remember and send for him. He could do anything, he said; he could drive horses or milk cows or take care of a garden, or _cook_. It was said in a subdued voice, and though with a gleam of his white circle of teeth at the last mentioned accomplishment, it was said with a depth of grave earnestness which troubled me. I promised as well as I could; but my heart was very sore for my poor people, left now without anybody, even so much as a child, to look after their comfort and give them any hopes for one world or the other. Those heavy days were done at last. Margaret was speedy with my packing; � a week from the time of Dr. Sandford's coming, I had said my last lesson to Miss Pinshon, read my last reading to my poor people, shaken the last hand-shakings; and we were on the little steamer plying down the Sands river. I think I was wearied out; for I remember no excitement or interest about the journey, which ought to have had so much for me. In a passive state of mind I followed Miss Pinshon from steamer to station; from one train of cars to another; and saw the familiar landscape flit before me as the cars whirled us on. At Baytown we had been joined by a gentleman who went with us all the rest of the way; and I began by degrees to comprehend that my governess had changed her vocation, and instead of taking care, as heretofore, was going to be taken care of. It did not interest me. I saw it, that was all. I saw Margaret's delight, too, shown by every quick and thoughtful movement that could be of any service to me, and by a certain inexpressible air of deliverance which sat on her, I cannot tell how, from her bonnet down to her shoes. But her delight reminded me of those that were not delivered. I think, of all the crushing griefs that a young person can be called to bear, one of the sorest is the feeling of wrong- doing on the part of a beloved father or mother. I was sure that my father, blinded by old habit and bound by the laws of the country, did not in the least degree realise the true state of the matter. I knew that the real colour of his gold had never been seen by him. Not the less, _I_ knew now that it was bloody; and what was worse, though I do not know _why_ it should be worse, I knew that it was soiled. I knew that greed and dishonour were the two collectors of our revenue, and _wrong_ our agent. Do I use strong words? They are not too strong for the feelings which constantly bore upon my heart, nor too bitter; though my childish heart never put them into such words at the time. That my father did not know, saved my love and reverence for him; but it did not change anything else. In the last stage of our journey, as we left a station where the train had stopped, I noticed a little book left on one of the empty seats of the car. It lay there and nobody touched it; till we were leaving the car at Alexandria and almost everybody had gone out, and I saw that it lay there still and nobody would claim it. In passing I took it up. It was a neat little book, with gilt edges; no name in it; and having its pages numbered for the days of the year. And each page was full of Bible words. It looked nice. I put the book in my pocket; and on board the ferryboat opened it again, and looked for the date of the day in March where we were. I found the words � "He preserveth the way of His saints." They were the words heading the page. I had not time for another bit; but as I left the boat this went into my heart like a cordial. It was a damp, dark morning. The air was chill as we left the little boat cabin; the streets were dirty; there was a confusion of people seeking carriages or porters or baggage or custom; then suddenly I felt as if I had lighted on a tower of strength, for Dr. Sandford stood at my side. A good-humoured sort of a tower he looked to me, in his steady, upright bearing; and his military coat helped the impression of that. I can see now his touch of his cap to Miss Pinshon, and then the quick glance which took in Margaret and me. In another minute I had shaken hands with my governess, and was in a carriage with Margaret opposite me; and Dr. Sandford was giving my baggage in charge to somebody. And then he took his place beside me and we drove off. And I drew a long breath. "Punctual to your time, Daisy," said the doctor. "But what made you choose such a time? How much of yourself have you left by the way?" "Miss Pinshon liked better to travel all night," I said, "because there was no place where she liked to stop to spend the night." "What was your opinion on that subject?" "I was more tired than she was, I suppose." "Has she managed things on the same system for the four years past?" The doctor put the question with such a cool gravity, that I could not help laughing. Yet I believe my laughing was very near crying. At first he did so put me in mind of all that was about me when I used to see him in that time long before. And an inexpressible feeling of comfort was in his presence now; a feeling of being taken care of. I had been looked after, undoubtedly, all these years; � sharply looked after; there was never a night that I could go to sleep without my governess coming in to see that I was in my room, or in bed, and my clothes in order, and my light where it ought to be. And my aunt had not forgotten me; nor her perplexities about me. And Preston had petted me, when he was near. But even Preston sometimes lost sight of me in the urgency of his own pleasure or business. There was a great difference in the strong hand of Dr. Sandford's care; and if you had ever looked into his blue eyes, you would know that they forgot nothing. They had always fascinated me; they did now. Mrs. Sandford was not up when we got to the house where she was staying. It was no matter, for a room was ready for me; and Dr. Sandford had a nice little breakfast brought, and saw me eat it, just as if I were a patient. Then he ordered me to bed, and charged Margaret to watch over me, and he went away, as he said, till luncheon time. I drew two or three long breaths as Margaret was undressing me; I felt so comfortable. "Are Miss Pinshon done gone away, Miss Daisy?" my handmaid asked. "From Magnolia? yes." "Where she gwine to?" "I don't know." "Then she don't go no furder along the way we're goin'?" "No. I wonder, Margaret, if they will have any prayer-meetings in Magnolia now?" For with the mention of Magnolia my thoughts swept back. " 'Spect the overseer have his ugly old way!" Margaret uttered with great disgust. "Miss Daisy done promise me, I go 'long with Miss Daisy?" she added anxiously. "Yes. But what makes you want to get away from home more than all the rest of them?" "Reckon I'dc done gone kill myself, s'pose. Miss Daisy leave me there," the girl said gloomily. "If dey send me down South, I _would_." "Send you South!" I said; "they would not do that, Margaret." "Dere was man wantin' to buy me � give mighty high price de overseer said." In excitement Margaret's tongue sometimes grew thick like those of her neighbours. "Mr. Edwards has no right to sell anybody away from the place," I insisted, in mixed unbelief and horror. "Dunno," said Margaret. "Don't make no difference, Miss Daisy. Who care what he do? Dere's Pete's wife �" "Pete's wife?" said I. "I didn't know Pete was married! What of Pete's wife?" "Dat doctor will kill me, for sure!" said Margaret, looking at me. "Do, don't, Miss Daisy! The doctor say you must go right to bed, now. See! you aint got your clothes off." "Stop," said I. "What about Pete's wife?" "I done forget. I thought Miss Daisy knowed. Mebbe it's before Miss Daisy come home." "What?" said I. "What �?" "It's nothin", Miss Daisy. "The overseer he done got mad with Pete's wife and he sold her down South, he did." "Away from Pete?" said I. "Pete, he's to de old place," said Margaret laconically. " 'Spect he forgot all about it by dis time. Miss Daisy please have her clothes off and go to bed?" There was nothing more to wait for. I submitted, was undressed; but the rest and sleep which had been desired were far out of reach now. Pete's wife? � my good, strong, gentle, and I remembered always _grave_, Pete! My heart was on fire with indignation and torn to pieces with sorrow, both at once. Torn with the helpless feeling too that I could not mend the wrong. I do not mean this individual wrong, but the whole state of things under which such wrong was possible. I was restless on my bed, though very weary. I would rather have been up and doing something, than to lie and look at my trouble; only that being there kept me out of the way of seeing people and of talking. Such things done under my father and mother's own authority, � on their own land, � to their own helpless dependants; whom yet it was _they_ made helpless and kept subject to such possibilities. I turned and tossed, feeling that I _must_ do something, while yet I knew I could do nothing. Pete's wife! And where was she now? And _that_ was the secret of the unvarying grave shadow that Pete's brow always wore. And now that I had quitted Magnolia, no human friend for the present remained to all that crowd of poor and ignorant and needy humanity. Even their comfort of prayer forbidden; except such comfort as each believer might take by himself alone. I did not know, I never did know till long after, how to many at Magnolia that prohibition wrought no harm. I think Margaret knew, and even then did not dare tell me. How the meetings for prayer were not stopped. How watch was kept on certain nights, till all stir had ceased in the little community; till lights were out in the overseer's house (and at the great house, while we were there); and how then, silently and softly from their several cabins, the people stole away through the woods, to a little hill beyond the cemetery, quite far out of hearing or ken of anybody; and there prayed, and sang too, and "praised God and shouted," as my informant told me; not neglecting all the while to keep a picket watch about their meeting place, to give the alarm in case anybody should come. So under the soft moonlight skies and at depth of night, the meetings which I had supposed broken up, took new life, and grew, and lived; and prayers did not fail; and the Lord hearkened and heard. It would have comforted me greatly if I could have known this at the time. But as I said, I suppose Margaret dared not tell me. After a long while of weary tossing and heart ache, sleep came at last to me; but it brought Pete and his wife and the overseer and Margaret in new combinations of trouble; and I got little refreshment. "Now you have waked up, Miss Daisy?" said Margaret when I opened my eyes. "That poundin' noise has done waked you!" "What noise?" "It's no Christian noise," said Margaret. "What's the use of turnin' the house into a clap of thunder like that? But a man was makin' it o' purpose, for I went out to see; and he telled me it was to call folks to luncheon. Will you get up, Miss Daisy?" Margaret spoke as if she thought I had much better lie still; but I was weary of the comfort I had found there and disposed to try something else. I had just time to be ready, before Dr. Sandford came for me and took me to his sister-in-law. Mrs. Sandford welcomed me with great kindness, even tenderness; exclaimed at my growth; but I saw by her glance at the doctor that my appearance in other respects struck her unfavourably. He made no answer to that, but carried us off to the luncheon room. There were other people lodging in the house besides my friends; a long table was spread. Dr. Sandford, I saw, was an immense favourite. Questions and demands upon his attention came thick and fast, from both ends and all sides of the table; about all sorts of subjects and in all manner of tones, grave and gay. And he was at home to them all, but in the midst of it never forgot me. He took careful heed to my luncheon; prepared one thing, and called for another; it reminded me of a time long gone by; but it did not help me to eat. I could not eat. The last thing he did was to call for a fresh raw egg, and break it into a half glass of milk. With this in his hand we left the dining-room. As soon as we got to Mrs. Sandford's parlour he gave it to me and ordered me to swallow it. I suppose I looked dismayed. "Poor child!" said Mrs. Sandford. "Let me have it beaten up for her, Grant, with some sugar; she can't take it so." "Daisy has done harder things," he said. I saw he expected me to drink it, and so I did, I do not know how. "Thank you," he said, smiling, as he took the glass. "Now sit down and I will talk to you." "How she is growing tall, Grant!" said Mrs. Sandford. "Yes," said he. "Did you sleep well, Daisy?" "No, sir; I couldn't sleep. And then I dreamed." "Dreaming is not a proper way of resting. So tired you could not sleep?" "I do not think it was that, Dr. Sandford." "Do you know what it was?" "I think I do," � I said, a little unwillingly. "She is getting very much the look of her mother," Mrs. Sandford remarked again. "Don't you see it, Grant?" "I see more than that," he answered. "Daisy, do you think this governess of yours has been a good governess?" I looked wearily out of the window, and cast a weary mental look over the four years of algebraics and philosophy, at the bright little child I saw at the further end of them. "I think I have grown dull, Dr. Sandford," I said. He came up behind me, and put his arms round me, taking my hand in his, and spoke in quite a different tone. "Daisy, have you found many 'wonderful things' at Magnolia?" I looked up, I remember, with the eagerness of a heart full of thoughts, into his face; but I could not speak then. "Have you looked through a microscope since you have been there? and made discoveries?" "Not in natural things, Dr. Sandford." "Ha!" said the doctor. "Do you want to go and take a drive with me?" "Oh, yes!" "Go and get ready then, please." I had a very pleasant, quiet drive; the doctor showing me, as he said, not wonderful things but new things, and taking means to amuse me. And every day for several days I had a drive. Sometimes we went to the country, sometimes got out and examined something in the city. There was a soothing relief in it all, and in the watchful care taken of me at home, and the absence of mathematics and philosophy. All day when not driving or at meals, I lay on Mrs. Sandford's sofa or curled myself up in the depth of a great easy chair, and turned over her books; or studied my own blue book which I had picked up in the car, and which was so little I had Margaret make a big pocket in my frock to hold it. But this life was not to last. A few days was all Mrs. Sandford had to spend in Washington. The place I liked best to go to was the Capitol. Several times Dr. Sandford took me there, and showed me the various great rooms, and paintings, and smaller rooms with their beautiful adornments; and I watched the workmen at work; for the renewing of the building was not yet finished. As long as he had time to spare, Dr. Sandford let me amuse myself as I would; and often got me into talks which refreshed me more than anything. Still, though I was soothed, my trouble at heart was not gone. One day we were sitting looking at the pictures in the great vestibule, when Dr. Sandford suddenly started a subject which put the Capitol out of my head. "Daisy," said he, "was it your wish or Margaret's, that she should go North with you?" "Hers," I said, startled. "Then it is not yours particularly?" "Yes, it is, Dr. Sandford, _very_ particularly." "How is that?" said he. I hesitated. I shrank from the whole subject; it was so extremely sore to me. "I ought to warn you," he went on, "that if you take her further, she may if she likes leave you, and claim her freedom. That is the law. If her owner takes her into the free States, she may remain in them if she will, whether he does or not." I was silent still, for the whole thing choked me. I was quite willing she should have her freedom, get it any way she could; but there was my father, and his pleasure and interest, which might not choose to lose a piece of his property � and my mother and _her_ interest and pleasure; I knew what both would be. I was dumb. "You had not thought of this before?" the doctor went on. "No, sir." "Does it not change your mind about taking her on?" "No, sir." "Did it ever occur to you, or rather, does it not occur to you now, that the girl's design in coming may have been this very purpose of her freedom?" "I do not think it was," I said. "Even if not, it will be surely put in her head by other people before she has been at the North long; and she will know that she is her own mistress." I was silent still. I knew that I wished she might! "Do you not think," Dr. Sandford went on, "that in this view of the case we had better send her back to Magnolia when you leave Washington?" "No," I said. "I think it would be better," he repeated. "Oh, no!" I said. "Oh, no, Dr. Sandford. I can't send her back. You will not send her hack, will you?" "Be quiet," he said, holding fast the hand which in my earnestness I had put in his; "she is not my servant; she is yours; it is for you to say what you will do." "I will not send her back," I said. "But it may be right to consider what would be Mr. Randolph's wish on the subject. If you take her, he may lose several hundred dollars' worth of property; it is right for me to warn you; would he choose to run the risk." I remember now what a fire at my heart sent the blood to my face. But with my hand in Dr. Sandford's, and those blue eyes of his reading me, I could not keep back my thought. "She ought to be her own mistress" � I said. A brilliant flash of expression filled the blue eyes and crossed his face. � I could hardly tell what, before it was gone. Quick surprise � pleasure � amusement - agreement; the first and the two last certainly; and the pleasure I could not help fancying had lent its colour to that ray of light, which had shot for one instant from those impenetrable eyes. He spoke just as usual. "But Daisy, have you studied this question?" "I think, I have studied nothing else, Dr. Sandford!" "You know the girl is not yours, but your father's." "She isn't anybody's �" I said slowly, and with slow tears gathering in my heart. "How do you mean?" said he, with again the quiver of a smile upon his lips. "I mean," I said, struggling with my thoughts and myself, "I mean, that nobody could have a right to her." "Did not her parents belong to your father?" "To my mother." "Then she does." "But, Dr. Sandford," I said, "nobody can belong to anybody in that way." "How do you make it out, Daisy?" "Because, nobody can give anybody a _right_ to anybody else � in that way." "Does it not give your mother a right, that the mother of this girl and probably her grandmother were the property of your ancestors?" "They could not be their property justly," I said, glad to get back to my ancestors. "The law made it so." "Not God's law, Dr. Sandford," I said, looking up at him. "No? Does not that law give a man a right to what he has honestly bought?" "No," I said, "it _can't_ � not if it has been dishonestly sold." "Explain, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, very quietly; but I saw the gleam of that light in his eye again. I had gone too far to stop. I went on, ready to break my heart over the right and the wrong I was separating. "I mean, the _first_ people that sold the first of these coloured people, �" I said. "Well?" said the doctor. "They could not have a right to sell them." "Yes. Well?" "Then the people that bought them could not have a right, any more," I said. "But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "do you know that there are different opinions on this very point?" I was silent. It made no difference to me. "Suppose for the moment that the first people, as you say, had no precise right to sell the men and women they brought to this country; yet those who bought them and paid honest money for them, and possessed them from generation to generation, � had not they a _right_ to pass them off upon other hands, receiving their money back again?" "I don't know how to explain it," I said. "I mean � if at first � Dr. Sandford, hadn't the people that were sold, hadn't they rights too?" "Rights of what sort?" "A right to do what they liked with themselves, and to earn money, and to keep their wives?" "But those rights were lost, you know, Daisy." "But _could_ they be?" I said. "I mean � Dr. Sandford, for instance, suppose somebody stole your watch from you; would you lose the right to it?" "It _seems_ to me that I should not, Daisy." "That is what I mean," I said. "But there is another view of the case, Daisy. Take Margaret, for instance. From the time she was a child, your father's, or your mother's, money has gone to support her; her food and clothing and living have been wholly at their expense. Does not that give them a right to her services? ought they not to be repaid?" I did not want to speak of my father and mother and Margaret. It was coming too near home. I knew the food and clothing Dr. Sandford spoke of; I knew a very few months of a northern servant's wages would have paid for it all; was this girl's whole life to be taken from her, and by my father and mother, and for such a cause? The feeling of grief and wrong and shame got possession of me. I was ready to break my heart in tears; but I could not show Dr. Sandford what I felt, nor confess to what I thought of my father's action. I had the greatest struggle with myself not to give way and cry. I was very weak bodily, but I know I stood still and did not shed a tear; till I felt Dr. Sandford's hands take hold of me. They put me gently back in the chair from which I had risen. "What is the matter, Daisy?" he said. I would not speak, and he did not urge it; but I saw that he watched me, till I gained command of myself again. "Shall we go home now?" he asked. "In a minute. Dr. Sandford, I do not think papa knows about all this � I do not think he knows about it as I do. I am sure he does not; and when he knows, he will think as I do." "Or perhaps you will think as he does." I was silent. I wondered if that could be possible, if I too could have my eyes blinded as I saw other people's were. "Little Daisy," said my friend the doctor, � "but you are getting to be not _little_ Daisy. How old are you?" "I shall be fourteen in June." "Fourteen. Well, it is no wonder that my friend whom I left a philosopher at ten years old, I should find a woman at fourteen � but, Daisy, you must not take it on your heart that you have to teach all the ignorant and help all the distressed that come in your way; because simply you cannot do it." I looked up at him. I could not tell him what I thought, because he would not, I feared, understand it. Christ came to do just such work, and His servants must have it on their heart to do the same. I cannot tell what was in my look; but I thought the doctor's face changed. "One Molly Skelton will do for one four years," he said as he rose up. "Come, Daisy." "But, Dr. Sandford," I said, as I followed him, "you will not do anything about sending Margaret back?" "Nothing, till you do, Daisy." Arrived at home, the doctor made me drink a raw egg, and lie down on Mrs. Sandford's sofa; and he sat down and looked at me. "You are the most troublesome patient that ever I had," said he. "I am?" I exclaimed. "Yes. Quite innocently. You cannot help it, Daisy; and you need not be troubled about it. It is all in the way of my profession. It is as if a delicate vessel of Egyptian glass were put to do the work of an iron smelting furnace; and I have to think of all the possible bands and hardening appliances that can be brought into use for the occasion." "I do not understand �" I said. "No. I suppose not. That is the worst of it." "But why am I all _Egyptian_ glass?" I asked. "I am not very old." The doctor gave me one of those quick, bright glances and smiles, that were very pleasant to get from him and not very common. There came a sort of glow and sparkle in his blue eye then, and a wonderful winsome and gracious trick of the lips. "It is a very doubtful sort of a compliment," said Mrs. Sandford. "I did not mean it for a compliment at all," said the doctor. "I don't believe you did," said his sister; "but what did you mean? Grant, I should like to hear you pay a compliment for once." "You do not know Egyptian glass," said the doctor. "No. What was it?" "Very curious." "Didn't I say that you couldn't pay compliments," said Mrs. Sandford. "And unlike any that is made now-a-days. There were curious patterns wrought in the glass, made, it is supposed, by the fusing together of rods of glass, extremely minute, of different colours; so that the pattern once formed was ineffaceable and indestructible, unless by the destruction of the vessel which contained it. Sometimes a layer of gold was introduced between the layers of glass." "How very curious!" said Mrs. Sandford. "I think I must take you into consultation, Daisy," the doctor went on, turning to me. "It is found, that there must be a little delay before you can go up to take a look at Melbourne. Mrs. Sandford is obliged to stop in New York with a sick sister; how long she may be kept there it is impossible to say. Now you would have a dull time, I am afraid; and I am in doubt whether it would not be pleasanter for you to enter school at once. In about three months the school term will end and the summer vacation begin; by that time Mrs. Sandford will be at home and the country ready to receive you. But you shall do whichever you like best." "Mrs. Sandford will be in New York?" I said. "Yes." "And I would see you constantly, dear, and have you with me all the Saturdays and Sundays and holidays. And if you like it better, you shall be with me all the time; only I should be obliged to leave you alone too much." "How long does the summer vacation last?" I inquired. "Till some time in September. You can enter school now, or then, as you choose." I thought and hesitated, and said I would enter at once. Dr. Sandford said I was not fit for it, but it was on the whole the best plan. So it was arranged; that I should just wait a day or two in New York to get my wardrobe in order and then begin my school experience. But my thoughts went back afterwards, more than once, to the former conversation; and I wondered what it was about me that made Dr. Sandford liken me to Egyptian glass. CHAPTER IX. SHOPPING. It was settled that I should wait a day or two in New York to get my wardrobe arranged, and then begin my school experience. But when we got to New York, we found Mrs. Sandford's sister so ill as to claim her whole time. There was none to spare for me and my wardrobe. Mrs. Sandford said I must attend to it myself as well as I could, and the doctor would go with me. He was off duty, he reported, and at leisure for ladies' affairs. Mrs. Sandford told me what I would need. A warm school dress, she said; for the days would be often cold in this latitude until May, and even later; and schoolrooms not always warm. A warm dress for every day was the first thing. A fine merino, Mrs. Sandford said, would be, she thought, what my mother would choose. I had silks which might be warm enough for other occasions. Then I must have a thick coat or cloak. Long coats, with sleeves, were fashionable then, she told me; the doctor would take me where I would find plenty to choose from. And I needed a hat, or a bonnet. Unless, Mrs. Sandford said, I chose to wear my riding cap with the feather; that was warm, and very pretty, and would do. How much would it all cost? I asked. Mrs. Sandford made a rapid calculation. The merino would be two dollars a yard, she said; the coat might be got for thirty-five or thereabouts sufficiently good; the hat was entirely what I chose to make it. "But you know, my dear," Mrs. Sandford said, "the sort of quality and style your mother likes, and you will be guided by that." Must I be guided by that? � I questioned with myself. Yes, I knew. I knew very well; but I had other things to think of. I pondered. While I was pondering, Dr. Sandford was quietly opening his pocket-book and unfolding a roll of bills. He put a number of them into my hand. "That will cover it all, Daisy," he said. "It is money your father has made over to my keeping, for this and similar purposes." "Oh, thank you !" I said, breathless; and then I counted the bills. "Oh, thank you, Dr. Sandford! but may I spend all this?" "Certainly. Mr. Randolph desired it should go, this and more of it, to your expenses, of whatever kind. This covers my sister's estimate, and leaves something for your pocket besides." "And when shall we go?" I asked. "To spend it? Now, if you like. Why, Daisy, I did now know �" "What, sir?" I said as he paused. "Really, nothing," he said, smiling. "Somehow I had not fancied that you shared the passion of your sex for what they call _shopping_. You are all alike, in some things." "I like it very much to-day," I said. "It would be safe, for you to keep Daisy's money in your own pocket, Grant," Mrs. Sandford said. "It will be stolen from her, certainly." The doctor smiled and stretched out his hand; I put the bills into it; and away we went. My head was very busy. I knew, as Mrs. Sandford said, the sort and style of purchases my mother would make and approve; but then on the other hand the remembrance was burnt into me, whence that money came which I was expected to spend so freely, and what other uses and calls for it there were, even in the case of those very people whose hands had earned it for us. Not to go further, Margaret's wardrobe needed refitting quite as much as mine. She was quite as unaccustomed as I to the chills and blasts of a cold climate, and full as a unfurnished to meet them. I had seen her draw her thin checked shawl around her, when I knew it was not enough to save her from the weather, and that she had no more. And her gowns, of thin cotton stuff, such as she wore about her housework at Magnolia, were a bare provision against the nipping bite of the air here at the North. Yet nobody spoke of any addition to _her_ stock of clothes. It was on my heart alone. But now it was in my hand too, and I felt very glad; though just how to manage Dr. Sandford I did not know. I thought a great deal about the whole matter as we went through the streets; as I had also thought long before; and my mind was clear, that while so many whom I knew needed the money, or while _any_ whom I knew needed it, I would spend no useless dollars upon myself. How should I manage Dr. Sandford? There he was, my cash-keeper; and I had not the least wish to unfold my plans to him. "I suppose the dress is the first thing, Daisy," he said, as we entered the great establishment where everything was to be had; and he inquired for the counter where we should find merinos. I had no objection ready. "What colour, Daisy?" "I want something dark �" "Something dark and bright," said the doctor, seating himself. "And fine quality. Not green, Daisy, if I might advise. It is too cold." "Cold!" said I. "For this season. It is a very nice colour in summer, Daisy," he said, smiling. And he looked on in a kind of amused way, while the clerk of the merinos and I confronted each other. There was displayed now before me a piece of claret-coloured stuff; "dark and bright ;" a beautiful tint, and a very beautiful piece of goods. I knew enough of the matter to know that. Fine and thick and lustrous, it just suited my fancy; I knew it was just what my mother would buy; I saw Dr. Sandford's eye watch me in its amusement with a glance of expectation. But the stuff was two dollars and a quarter a yard. Yes, it suited me exactly; but what was to become of others if I were covered so luxuriously? And how could I save money if I spent it? It was hard to speak, too, before that shopman, who held the merino in his hand expecting me to say I would take it; but I had no way to escape that trouble. I turned from the rich folds of claret stuff, to the doctor at my side. "Dr. Sandford," I said, "I want to get something that will not cost so much. "Does it not please you?" he asked. "Yes; I like it; but I want some stuff that will not cost so much." "This is not far above my sister's estimate, Daisy." "No �" I said. "And the difference is a trifle � if you like the piece." "I like it," I said; "but it is very much above my estimate." "You had one of your own!" said the doctor. "Do you like something else here better? � or what is your estimate, Daisy?" "I do not want a poor merino," I said. "I would rather get some other stuff � if I can. I do not want to give more than a dollar." "The young lady may find what will suit her at the plaid counter," said the shopman, letting fall the rich drapery he had been holding up. � "Just round that corner, sir, to the left." Dr. Sandford led the way, and I followed. There certainly I found a plenty of warm stuffs, in various patterns and colours, and with prices as various. But nothing to match the grave elegance of those claret folds. It was coming down a step, to leave that counter for this. I knew it perfectly well; while I sought out the simplest and prettiest dark small plaid I could find. "Do you like these things better?" the doctor asked me privately. "No, sir," I said. "Then why come here, Daisy? Pardon me, may I ask?" "I have other things to get, Dr. Sandford," I said low. "But, Daisy!" said the doctor, rousing up, � "I have performed my part ill. You are not restricted � your father has not restricted you. I am your banker for whatever sums you may need � for whatever purposes." "Yes," I said; "I know. Oh no, I know papa has not restricted you; but I think I ought not to spend any more. It is my own affair." "And not mine. Pardon me, Daisy; I submit." "Dr. Sandford, don't speak so!" I said. "I don't mean that. I mean, it is my own affair and not papa's." "Certainly, I have no more to say," said the doctor, smiling. "I will tell you about it," � I said; and then I desired the shopman to cut off the dress I had fixed upon; and we went up stairs to look for cloaks; I feeling hot and confused and half perplexed. I had never worn such a dress as this plaid I had bought, in my life. It was nice and good, and pretty too; but it did not match the quality or the elegance of the things my mother always had got for me. _She_ would not have liked it nor let me wear it; I knew that; but then � whence came the wealth that flowed over in such exquisite forms upon her and upon me? were not its original and proper channels bare? And whence were they to be, even in any measure, refilled, if all the supply must, as usual, be led off in other directions? I mused as I went up the stair, feeling perplexed nevertheless at the strangeness of the work I was doing, and with something in my heart giving a pull to my judgment towards the side of what was undoubtedly "pleasant to the eyes." So I followed Dr. Sandford up the stair and into the wilderness of the cloak department; where all manner of elegancies, in silk and velvet and cloth, were displayed in orderly confusion. It was a wilderness to me, in the mood of my thoughts. Was I going to repeat here the process just gone through down stairs? The doctor seated me, asked what I wanted to see, and gave the order. And forthwith my eyes were regaled with a variety of temptations. A nice little black silk pelisse was hung on the stand opposite me; it was nice; a good gloss was upon the silk, the article was in the neatest style, and trimmed with great simplicity. I would have been well satisfied to wear that. By its side was displayed another of velvet; then yet another of very fine dark cloth; perfect in material and make, faultless in its elegance of finish. But the silk was forty- five, and the cloth was forty, and the velvet was sixty dollars. I sat and looked at them. There is no denying that I wanted the silk or the cloth. Either of them would do. Either of them was utterly girl-like and plain, but both of them had the finish of perfection, in make, style, and material. I wanted the one or the other. But, if I had it, what would be left for Margaret? "Are you tired, Daisy?" said Dr. Sandford, bending down to look in my face. "No, sir. At least, that is not what I was thinking of." "What then?" said he. "Will one of these do?" "They would do," I said slowly. "But, Dr. Sandford, I should like to see something else � something that would do for somebody that was poorer than I." "Poorer?" said the doctor, looking funny. "What is the matter, Daisy? Have you suddenly become bankrupt? You need not be afraid, for the bank is in my pocket; and I know it will stand all your demands upon it." "No, but � I would indeed, if you please, Dr. Sandford. These things cost too much for what I want now." "Do you like them?" "I like them very well." "Then take one, whichever you like best. That is my advice to you, Daisy. The bank will bear it." "I think I must not. Please, Dr. Sandford, I should like to see something that would not cost so much. Do they _all_ cost as much as these?" The doctor gave the order, as I desired. The shopman who was serving us cast another comprehensive glance at me � I had seen him give one at the beginning � and tossing off the velvet coat and twisting off the silk one, he walked away. Presently came back with a brown silk which he hung in the place of the velvet one, and a blue cloth, which replaced the black silk. Every whit as costly, and almost as pretty, both of them. "No," said the doctor, � "you mistook me. We want to look at some goods fitted for persons who have not long purses." "Something inferior to these �" said the man. He was not uncivil; he just stated the fact. In accordance with which he replaced the last two coats with a little grey dreadnought, and a black cloth; the first neat and rough, the last not to be looked at. It was not in good taste, and a sort of thing that I neither had worn nor could wear. But the grey dreadnought was simple and warm and neat, and would offend nobody. I looked from it to the pretty black cloth which still hung opposed to it, the one of the first two. Certainly, in style and elegance _this_ looked like my mother's child, and the other did not. But this was forty dollars. The dreadnought was exactly half that sum. I had a little debate with myself � I remember it, for it was my first experience of that kind of thing � and all my mother's training had refined in me the sense of what was elegant and fitting, in dress as well as in other matters. Until now, I had never had my fancy crossed by anything I ever had to wear. The little grey dreadnought � how would it go with my silk dresses? It was like what I had seen other people dressed in; never my mother or me. Yet it was perfectly fitting a lady's child, if she could not afford other; and where was Margaret's cloak to come from? And who had the best right? I pondered and debated, and then I told Dr. Sandford I would have the grey coat. I believe I half wished he would make some objection; but he did not; he paid for the dreadnought and ordered it sent home; and then I began to congratulate myself that Margaret's comfort was secure. "Is that all, Daisy?" my friend asked. "Dr. Sandford," said I, standing up and speaking low, "I want to find � can I find here, do you think? � a good warm cloak and dress for Margaret." "For Margaret!" said the doctor. "Yes; she is not used to the cold, you know; and she has nothing to keep her comfortable." "But, Daisy!" said the doctor, � "Sit down here again; I must understand this. Was _Margaret_ at the bottom of all these financial operations?" "I knew she wanted something, ever since we came from Washington," I said. "Daisy, she could have had it." "Yes, Dr. Sandford; � but �" "But what, if you will be so good?" "I think it was right for me to get it." "I am sorry I do not agree with you at all. It was for _me_ to get it � I am supplied with funds, Daisy � and your father has entrusted to me the making of all arrangements which are in any way good for your comfort. I think, with your leave, I shall reverse these bargains. Have you been all this time pleasing Margaret and not yourself?" "No, sir," I said, � "if you please. I cannot explain it, Dr. Sandford; but I know it is right." "What is right, Daisy? My faculties are stupid." "No, sir; but � let it be as it is, please." "But won't you explain it? I ought to know what I am giving my consent to, Daisy; for just now I am constituted your guardian. What has Margaret to do with your cloaks? There is enough for both." "But," said I, in a great deal of difficulty, � "there is not enough for me and everybody." "Are you going to take care of the wants of everybody?" "I think � I ought to take care of all that I can," I said. "But you have not the power." "I won't do but what I _have_ the power for." "Daisy, what would your father and mother say to such a course of action? would they allow it, do you think?" "But _you_ are my guardian now, Dr. Sandford," � I said, looking up at him. He paused a minute doubtfully. "I am conquered!" he said. "You have absolutely conquered me, Daisy. I have not a word to say. I wonder if that is the way you are going through the world in future? What is it now about Margaret? � for I was bewildered and did not understand." "A warm cloak and dress," I said, delighted; "that is what I want. Can I get them here?" "Doubtful, I should say," the doctor answered; "but we will try." And we did succeed in finding the dress, strong and warm and suitable; the cloak we had to go to another shop for. On the way we stopped at the milliner's. My aunt Gary and Mrs. Sandford employed the same one. "I put it in your hands, Daisy!" Dr. Sandford said, as we went in. "Only let me look on." I kept him waiting a good while, I am afraid; but he was very patient and seemed amused. I was not. The business was very troublesome to me. This was not so easy a matter as to choose between stuffs and have the yards measured off. Bonnets are bonnets, as my aunt always said; and things good in themselves may not be in the least good for you. And I found the thing that suited was even more tempting here than it had been in the cloak ware-room. There was a little velvet hat which I fancied mamma would have bought for me; it was so stylish, and at the same time so simple, and became me so well. But it was of a price corresponding with its beauty. I turned my back on it, though I seemed to see it just as well through the back of my head, and tried to find something else. The milliner would have it there was nothing beside that fitted me. The hat must go on. "She has grown," said the milliner, appealing to Dr. Sandford; "and you see this is the very thing. This tinge of colour inside is just enough to relieve the pale cheeks. Do you see, sir?" "It is without a fault," said the doctor. "Take it off, please," I said. "I want to find something that will not cost so much � something that will not cost near so much." "There is that cap that is too large for Miss Van Allen �" the milliner's assistant remarked. "It would not suit Mrs. Randolph at all," was the answer aside. But I begged to see it. Now this was a comfortable, soft quilted silk cap, with a chinchilla border. Not much style about it, but also nothing to dislike, except its simplicity. The price was moderate, and it fitted me. You are going to be a different Daisy Randolph from what you have been all your life � something whispered to me. And the doctor said, "That makes you look about ten years old again, Daisy." I had a minute of doubt and delay; then I said I would have the cap; and the great business was ended. Margaret's purchases were all found, and we went home, with money still in my bank, Dr. Sandford informed me. I was very tired; but on the whole I was very satisfied. Till my things came home, and I saw that Mrs. Sandford did not like them. "I wish I could have been with you!" she said. "What is the matter?" said the doctor. It was the evening, and we were all together for a few minutes, before Mrs. Sandford went to her sister. "Did you choose these things, Grant?" "What is the matter with them?" "They are hardly suitable." "For the third time, what is the matter with them?" said the doctor. "They are neat, but they are not _handsome_." "They will look handsome when they are on," said Dr. Sandford. "No, they won't; they will look common. I don't mean _vulgar_ � you could not buy anything in bad taste � but they are just what anybody's child might wear." "Then Mrs. Randolph's child might." Mrs. Sandford gave him a look. "That is just the thing," she said. "Mrs. Randolph's child might _not_. I never saw anybody more elegant or more particular about the choice of her dress than Mrs. Randolph; it is always perfect; and Daisy's always was. Mrs. Randolph would not like these." "Shall we change them, Daisy?" said the doctor. I said "no �". "Then I hope they will wear out before Mrs. Randolph comes home," he said. All this, somehow, made me uncomfortable. I went off to the room which had been given to me, where a fire was kept; and I sat down to think. Certainly, I would have liked the other coat and hat better, that I had rejected; and the thought of the rich soft folds of that silky merino were not pleasant to me. The plaid I had bought _did_ wear a common look in comparison. I knew it, quite as well as Mrs. Sandford; and that I had never worn common things; and I knew that in the merino, properly made; I should have looked my mother's child; and that in the plaid my mother would not know me. Was I right? was I wrong? I knelt down before the fire, feeling that the straight path was not always easy to find. Yet I had thought I saw it before me. I knelt before the fire, which was the only light in the room, and opened the page of my dear little book that had the Bible lessons for every day. This day's lesson was headed, "That ye adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." The mist began to clear away. Between adorning and being adorned, the difference was so great, it set my face quite another way directly. I went on. "Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ." And how should that be? Certainly the spirit of that gospel had no regard to self-glorification; and had most tender regard to the wants of others. I began to feel sure that I was in the way and not out of it. Then came � "If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye. But let none of you suffer . . . _as a thief, or as an evildoer_" � "Let your light so shine before men" � "Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck;" � "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are _just_ . . . think on these things." The words came about me, binding up my doubts, making sound my heart, laying a soft touch upon every rough spot in my thoughts. True, honest, just, lovely, and of good report � yes, I would think on these things, and I would not be turned aside from them. And if I suffered as a Christian, I determined that I would not be ashamed; I prayed that I might never; I would take as no dishonour the laughter or the contempt of those who did not see the two sides of the question; but as a _thief_ I would not suffer. I earnestly prayed that I might not. No beauty of dresses or stylishness of coats or bonnets should adorn me, the price of which God saw belonged and was due to the suffering of others; more especially, to the wants of those whose wants made my supply. That my father and mother, with the usage of old habit, and the influence of universal custom, should be blind to what I saw so clearly, made no difference in my duty. I had the light of the Bible rule, which was not yet, I knew, the lamp to their feet. I must walk by it, all the same. And my thought went back now with great tenderness to mammy Theresa's rheumatism, which wanted flannel; to Maria's hyacinths, which were her great earthly interest, out of the things of religion; to Darry's lonely cottage, where he had no lamp to read the Bible o' nights, and no oil to burn in it. To Pete's solitary hut, too, where he was struggling to learn to read well, and where a hymn-book would be the greatest comfort to him. To the old people, whose one solace of a cup of tea would be gone unless I gave it them; to the boys who were learning to read, who wanted testaments; to the bed-ridden and sick who wanted blankets; to the young and well who wanted gowns (not indeed for decency, but for the natural pleasure of looking neat and smart) � and to Margaret, first and last, who was nearest to me, and who, I began to think, might want some other trifles besides a cloak. The girl came in at the minute. "Margaret," I said, "I have got you a warm gown and a good thick warm cloak, to-day." "A cloak! Miss Daisy �" Margaret's lips just parted and showed the white beneath. "Yes. I saw you were not warm in that thin shawl." "It's mighty cold up these ways! �" the girl's shoulders drew together with involuntary expression. "And now, Margaret, what other things do you want, to be nice and comfortable? You must tell me now, because after I go to school I cannot see you often, you know." "Reckon I find something to do at the school, Miss Daisy. Aint there servants?" "Yes, but I am afraid there may not be another wanted. What else ought you to have, Margaret?" "Miss Daisy knows, I'll hire myself out, and reckon I'll get a right smart chance of wages; and then, if Miss Daisy let me take some change, I'd like to get some things �" "You may keep all your wages, Margaret," I said hastily; "you need not bring them to me; but I want to know if you have all you need now, to be nice and warm?" " 'Spect I'd be better for some underclothes �" Margaret said, half under her breath. Of course! I knew it the moment she said it. I knew the scanty, coarse supply which was furnished to the girls and women at Magnolia; I knew that more was needed for neatness as well as for comfort, and something different, now that she was where no evil distinction would arise from her having it. � I said I would get what she wanted; and went away back to the parlour. I mused as I went. If I let Margaret keep her wages � and I was very certain I could not receive them from her � I must be prepared to answer it to my father. Perhaps, � yes, I felt sure as I thought about it � I must contrive to save the amount of her wages out of what was given to myself; or else my grant might be reversed and my action disallowed, or at least greatly disapproved. And my father had given me no right to dispose of Margaret's wages, or of herself. So I came into the parlour. Dr. Sandford alone was there, lying on the sofa. He jumped up immediately; pulled a great arm chair near to the fire, and taking hold of me, put me into it. My purchases were lying on the table, where they had been disapproved; but I knew what to think of them now. I could look at them very contentedly. "How do they seem, Daisy?" said the doctor, stretching himself on the cushions again, after asking my permission and pardon. "Very well" � I said, smiling. "You are satisfied?" I said "yes." "Daisy," said he, "you have conquered me to-day � I have yielded � I own myself conquered; but, won't you enlighten me? As a matter of favour?" "About what, Dr. Sandford?" "I don't understand you." I remember looking at him and smiling. It was so curious a thing, both that he should, in his philosophy, be puzzled by a child like me, and that he should care about undoing the puzzle. "There!" said he, � "that is my old little Daisy of ten years old. Daisy, I used to think she was an extremely dainty and particular little person." "Yes �" said I. "Was that correct?" "I don't know," said I. "I think it was." "Then, Daisy, honestly, � I am asking as a philosopher, and that means a lover of knowledge, you know, � did you choose those articles to-day to please yourself?" "In one way, I did," I answered. "Did they appear to you as they did to Mrs. Sandford, � at the time?" "Yes, Dr. Sandford." "So I thought. � Then, Daisy, will you make me understand it? For I am puzzled." I was sorry that he cared about the puzzle, for I did not want to go into it. I was almost sure he would not make it out if I did. However, he lay there looking at me and waiting. "Those other things cost too much, Dr. Sandford � that was all." "There is the puzzle!" said the doctor. "You had the money in your bank for them, and money for Margaret's things too, and more if you wanted it; and no bottom to the bank at all, so far as I could see. And you like pretty things, Daisy, and you did not choose them." "No, sir." I hesitated, and he waited. How was I to tell him. He would simply find it ridiculous. And then I thought � "If any of you suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed." "I thought I should be comfortable in these things, Dr. Sandford," I then said, glancing at the little chinchilla cap which lay on the table; � "and respectable. And there were other people who needed all the money the other things would have cost." "What other people?" said the doctor. "As I am your guardian, Daisy, it is proper for me to ask, and not impertinent." I hesitated again. "I was thinking," I said, "of some of the people I left at Magnolia." "Do you mean the servants?" "Yes, sir." "Daisy, they are cared for." I was silent. "What do you think they want?" "Some that are sick want comfort," I said; "and others who are not sick want help; and others, I think, want a little pleasure." I would fain not have spoken, but how could I help it? The doctor brought his feet off the sofa and sat up and confronted me. "In the meantime," he said, "you are to be 'comfortable and respectable.' But, Daisy, do you think your father and mother would be satisfied with such a statement of your condition?" "I suppose not," I was obliged to say. "Then do you think it is proper for me to allow such to be the fact?" I looked at him. What there was in my look it is impossible for me to say; but he laughed a little. "Yes," he said, � "I know � you have conquered me to-day. I own myself conquered � but the question I ask you is, whether I am justifiable?" "I think that depends," I answered, on whether I am justifiable." "Can you justify yourself, Daisy?" � he said, bringing his hand clown gently over my smooth hair and touching my cheek. It would have vexed me from anybody else; it did not vex me from him. "Can you justify yourself, Daisy?" he repeated. "Yes, sir," I said; but I felt troubled. "Then do it." "Dr. Sandford, the Bible says, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.' " "Well?" said he, refusing to draw any conclusions for me. "I have more than I want, and they have not enough. I don't think I ought to keep more than I want." "But then arises the question," said he, "how much do you want? Where is the line, beyond which you, or I, for instance, have too much?" "I was not speaking of anybody but myself," I said. "But a rule of action which is the right one for you, would be right for everybody." "Yes, but everybody must apply it for himself," I said. "I was only applying it for myself." "And applying it for yourself, Daisy, is it to cut off for the future � or ought it � all elegance and beauty? Must you restrict yourself to mere 'comfort and respectability'? Are fur and feathers for instance wicked things?" He did not speak mockingly; Dr. Sandford never could do an ungentlemanly thing; he spoke kindly and with a little rallying smile on his face. But I knew what he thought. "Dr. Sandford," said I, "suppose I was a fairy, and that I stripped the gown off a poor woman's back to change it into a feather, and stole away her blankets to make them into fur; what would you think of fur and feathers then?" There came a curious lightning through the doctor's blue eyes. I did not know in the least what it meant. "Do you mean to say, Daisy, that the poor people down yonder at Magnolia want such things as gowns and blankets?" "Some do," I said. "You know, nobody is there, Dr. Sandford, to look after them; and the overseer does not care. It would be different if papa was at home." "I will never interfere with you any more, Daisy," said the doctor, � "any further than by a little very judicious interference; and you shall find in me the best helper I can be to all your plans. You may use me � you have conquered me," � said he, smiling, and laying himself back on his cushions again. I was very glad it had ended so, for I could hardly have withstood Dr. Sandford if he had taken a different view of the matter. And his help, I knew, might be very good in getting things sent to Magnolia. CHAPTER X. SCHOOL. I had another time the next day between Mrs Sandford and the mantua-maker. The mantua-maker came to take orders about making my school dress. "How will you have it trimmed?" she asked. "This sort of stuff will make no sort of an appearance unless it is well trimmed. It wants that. You might have a border of dark green leaves � dark green, like the colour of this stripe � going round the skirt; that would have a good effect; the leaves set in and edged with a very small red cord, or green if you like it better. We trimmed a dress so last week, and it made a very good appearance." "What do you say, Daisy?" "How much will it cost?" I asked. "Oh, the cost is not very much," said the milliner. "I suppose we would do it for you, Mrs. Sandford, for twenty-five dollars." "That is too much," I said. "You wouldn't say so, if you knew the work it is to set those leaves round," said the mantua-maker. "It takes hours and hours; and the cording and all. And the silk, you know, Mrs. Sandford, _that_ costs now-a-days. It takes a full yard of the silk, and no washy lining silk, but good stiff dress silk. Some has 'em made of velvet, but to be sure that would not be suitable for a common stuff like this. It will be very common, Mrs. Sandford, without you have it handsomely trimmed." "Couldn't you put some other sort of trimming?" "Well, there's no other way that looks _distingué_ on this sort of stuff; that's the most stylish. We could put a band of rows of black velvet � an inch wide, or half an inch; if you have it narrower you must put more of them; and then the sleeves and body to match; but I don't think you would like it so well as the green leaves. A great many people has 'em trimmed so; you like it a little out of the common, Mrs. Sandford. Or, you could have a green ribband." "How much would _that_ be?" said Mrs. Sandford. "Oh, really I don't just know," the woman answered; "depends on the ribband; it don't make much difference to you, Mrs. Sandford; it would be � let me see, � Oh, I suppose we could do it with velvet for you for fifteen or twenty dollars. You see, there must be buttons or rosettes at the joinings of the velvets; and those come very expensive." "How much would it be, to make the dress plain?" I asked. "_That_ would be plain," the mantua-maker answered quickly. "The style is, to trim everything very much. Oh, that would be quite plain, with the velvet." "But without any trimming at all?" I asked. "How much would that be?" I felt an odd sort of shame at pressing the question; yet I knew I must. "Without trimming!" said the woman. "Oh, you could not have it _without trimming;_ there is nothing made without trimming; it would have no appearance at all. People would think you had come out of the country. No young ladies have their dresses made without trimming this winter." "Mrs. Sandford," said I, "I should like to know what the dress would be without trimming." "What would it be, Melinda?" The woman was only a forewoman of her establishment. "Oh, well, Mrs. Sandford, the naked dress I have no doubt could be made for you for five dollars." "You would not have it _so_, Daisy, my dear?" said Mrs. Sandford. But I said I would have it so. It cost me a little difficulty, and a little shrinking, I remember, to choose this and to hold to it in the face of the other two. It was the last battle of that campaign. I had my way; but I wondered privately to myself whether I was going to look very unlike the children of other ladies in my mother's position; and whether such severity over myself was really needed. I turned the question over again in my own room, and tried to find out why it troubled me. I could not quite tell. Yet I thought, as I was doing what I knew to be duty, I had no right to feel this trouble about it. The trouble wore off before a little thought of my poor friends at Magnolia. But the question came up again at dinner. "Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "did you ever have anything to do with the Methodists?" "No, ma'am," I said, wondering. "What are the Methodists?" "I don't know, I am sure," she said, laughing; "only they are people who sing hymns a great deal, and teach that nobody ought to wear gay dresses." "Why?" I asked. "I can't say. I believe they hold that the Bible forbids ornamenting ourselves." I wondered if it did; and determined I would look, And I thought the Methodists must be nice people. "What is on the carpet now?" said the doctor. "Singing or dressing? You are attacking Daisy, I see, on some score." "She won't have her dress trimmed," said Mrs. Sandford. The doctor turned round to me, with a wonderful genial pleasant expression of his fine face; and his blue eye, that I always liked to meet full, going through me with a sort of soft power. He was not smiling, yet his look made me smile. "Daisy," said he, "are you going to make yourself unlike other people?" "Only my dress, Dr. Sandford," I said. "L'habit, c'est l'homme! �" he answered gravely, shaking his head. I remembered his question and words many times in the course of the next six months. In a day or two more my dress was done, and Dr. Sandford went with me to introduce me at the school. He had already made the necessary arrangements. It was a large establishment, reckoned the most fashionable, and at the same time one of the most thorough, in the city; the house, or houses, standing in one of the broad clear Avenues, where the streams of human life that went up and down were all of the sort that wore trimmed dresses and rolled about in handsome carriages. Just in the centre and height of the thoroughfare Mme. Ricard's establishment looked over it. We went in at a stately doorway, and were shown into a very elegant parlour; where at a grand piano a young lady was taking a music lesson. The noise was very disagreeable; but that was the only disagreeable thing in the place. Pictures were on the walls, a soft carpet on the floor; the colours of carpet and furniture were dark and rich; books and trinkets and engravings in profusion gave the look of cultivated life and the ease of plenty. It was not what I had expected; nor was Mme. Ricard, who came in noiselessly and stood before us while I was considering the wonderful moustache of the music teacher. I saw a rather short, grave person, very plainly dressed, � but indeed I never thought of the dress she wore. The quiet composure of the figure, was what attracted me, and the peculiar expression of the face. It was sad, almost severe; so I thought it at first; till a smile once for an instant broke upon the lips, like a flitting sunbeam out of a cloudy sky; then I saw that kindliness was quite at home there, and sympathy and a sense of merriment were not wanting; but the clouds closed again, and the look of care, or sorrow, I could not quite tell what it was, only that it was unrest, retook its place on brow and lip. The eye I think never lost it. Yet it was a searching and commanding eye; I was sure it knew how to rule. The introduction was soon made, and Dr. Sandford bid me good bye. I felt as if my best friend was leaving me; the only one I had trusted in since my father and mother had gone away. I said nothing, but perhaps my face showed my thought, for he stooped and kissed me. "Good bye, Daisy. Remember, I shall expect a letter every fortnight." He had ordered me before to write him as often as that, and give him a minute account of myself; how many studies I was pursuing, how many hours I gave to them each day, what exercise I took, and what amusement; and how I throve withal. Mme. Ricard had offered to show me my room, and we were mounting the long stairs while I thought this over. "Is Dr. Sandford your cousin, Miss Randolph?" was the question which came in upon my thoughts. "No, ma'am," I answered in extreme surprise. "Is he any relation to you?" "He is my guardian." "I think Dr. Sandford told me that your father and mother are abroad?" "Yes, ma'am; and Dr. Sandford is my guardian." We had climbed two flights of stairs, and I was panting. As we went up, I had noticed a little unusual murmur of noises which told me I was in a new world. Little indistinguishable noises, the stir and hum of the busy hive into which I had entered. Now and then a door had opened, and a head or a figure came out; but as instantly went back again on seeing Madame, and the door was softly closed. We reached the third floor. There a young lady appeared at the further end of the gallery, and curtseyed to my conductress. "Miss Bentley," said Madame, "this is your new companion, Miss Randolph. Will you be so good as to show Miss Randolph her room?" Madame turned and left us, and the young lady led me into the room she had just quitted. A large room, light and bright, and pleasantly furnished; but the one thing that struck my unaccustomed eyes was the evidence of fulness of occupation. One bed stood opposite the fireplace; another across the head of that, between it and one of the windows; a third was between the doors on the inner side of the room. Moreover, the first and the last of these were furnished with two pillows each. I did not in the moment use my arithmetic; but the feeling which instantly pressed upon me was that of want of breath. "This is the bed prepared for you, I believe," said my companion civilly, pointing to the third one before the window. "There isn't room for anybody to turn, round here now." I began mechanically to take off my cap and gloves, looking hard at the little bed, and wondering what other rights of possession were to be given me in this place. I saw a washstand in one window and a large mahogany wardrobe on one side of the fireplace; a dressing table or chest of drawers between the windows. Everything was handsome and nice; everything was in the neatest order; but � where were my clothes to go? Before I had made up my mind to ask, there came a rush into the room; I supposed, of the other inmates. One was a very large, fat, dull-faced girl; I should have thought her a young woman, only that she was here in a school. Another, bright and pretty and very good-humoured if there was any truth ill her smiling black eyes, was much slighter and somewhat younger; a year or two in advance of myself. The third was a girl about my own age, shorter and smaller than I, with also a pretty face, but an eye that I was not so sure of. She was the last one to come in, and she immediately stopped and looked at me; I thought, with no pleasure. "This is Miss Randolph, girls," said Miss Bentley. "Miss Randolph, Miss Macy." I curtseyed to the fat girl, who gave me a little nod. "I am glad she isn't as big as I am," was her comment on the introduction. I was glad, too. "Miss Lansing �" This was bright-eyes, who bowed and smiled � she always smiled � and said, "How do you do?" Then rushed off to a drawer in search of something. "Miss St. Clair, will you come and be introduced to Miss Randolph?" The St. Clair walked up demurely and took my hand. Her words were in abrupt contrast. "Where are her things going, Miss Bentley?" I wondered that pretty lips could be so ungracious. It was not temper which appeared on them, but cool rudeness. "Madame said we must make some room for her," Miss Bentley answered. "I don't know where," remarked Miss Macy. "_I_ have not two inches." "She can't have a peg nor a drawer of mine," said the St. Clair. "Don't you put her there, Bentley." And the young lady left us with that. "We must manage it somehow," said Miss Bentley. "Lansing, look here, � can't you take your things out of this drawer? Miss Randolph has no place to lay anything. She must have a little place, you know." Lansing looked up with a perplexed face, and Miss Macy remarked that nobody had a bit of room to lay anything. "I am very sorry �" I said. "It is no use being sorry, child," said Miss Macy, "we have got to fix it, somehow. I know who _ought_ to be sorry. Here � I can take this pile of things out of this drawer; that is all I can do. Can't she manage with this half?" But Miss Lansing came and made her arrangements, and then it was found that the smallest of the four drawers was cleared and ready for my occupation. "But if we give you a whole drawer," said Miss Macy, "you must be content with one peg in the wardrobe � will you?" "Oh, and she can have one or two hooks in the closet," said bright-eyes. "Come here, Miss Randolph � I will show you �" And there in the closet I found was another place for washing, with cocks for hot and cold water; and a press and plenty of iron hooks; with also plenty of dresses and hats hanging on them. Miss Lansing moved and changed several of these, till she had cleared a space for me. "There �" she said, "now you'll do, won't you? I don't believe you can get a scrap of a corner in the wardrobe; Macy and Bentley and St. Clair take it up so. _I_ haven't but one dress hanging there, but you've got a whole drawer in the bureau." I was not very awkward and clumsy in my belongings, but an elephant could scarcely have been more bewildered if he had been requested to lay his proboscis up in a glove box. "I cannot put a dress in the drawer," I remarked. "Oh, you can hang one up, here, under your cap; and that is all any of us do. Our things, all except our everyday things, go down stairs in our trunks. Have you many trunks?" I told her no, only one. I did not know why it was a little disagreeable to me to say that. The feeling came and passed. I hung up my coat and cap, and brushed my hair; my new companion looking on. Without any remark, however, she presently rushed off, and I was left alone. I began to appreciate that. I sat down on the side of my little bed, � to my fancy the very chairs were appropriated, � and looked at my new place in the world. Five of us in that room! I had always had the comfort of great space and ample conveniences about me; was it a luxury I had enjoyed? It had seemed nothing more than a necessity. And now, must I dress and undress myself before so many spectators? could I not lock up anything that belonged to me? were all my nice and particular habits to be crushed into one drawer and smothered on one or two clothes pins? Must everything I did be seen? And above all, where could I pray? I looked round in a sort of fright. There was but one closet in the room, and that was a washing closet, and held besides a great quantity of other people's belongings. I could not, even for a moment, shut it against them. In a kind of terror, I looked to make sure that I was alone, and fell on my knees. It seemed to me that all I could do was to pray every minute that I should have to myself. They would surely be none too many. Then hearing a footstep somewhere, I rose again and took from my bag my dear little book. It was so small I could carry it where I had not room for my Bible. I looked for the page of the day, I remember now, with my eyes full of tears. "Be watchful" � were the first words that met me. Ay, I was sure I would need it; but how was a watch to be kept up, if I could never be alone to take counsel with myself? I did not see it; this was another matter from Miss Pinshon's unlocked door. After all, that door had not greatly troubled me; my room had not been of late often invaded. Now I had no room. What more would my dear little book say to me? "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." Was the battle to go so hard against me? and what should I do without that old and well-tried weapon of "all-prayer"? Nothing; I should be conquered. I must have and keep that, I resolved; if I lay awake and got up at night to use it. Dr. Sandford would not like such a proceeding; but there were worse dangers than the danger of lessened health. I _would_ pray; but what next? "Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently." � "What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch." I stood by the side of my bed, dashing the tears from my eyes. Then I heard, as I thought, some one coming, and in haste looked to see what else might be on the page; what further message or warning. And something like a sunbeam of healing flashed into my heart with the next words. "Fear thou not: for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness." "I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand." I was healed. I put up my little book in my bag again, feeling whole and sound. It did not matter that I was crowded and hindered and watched; for it was written also, "He preserveth the way of his saints;" and I was safe. I sat a little while longer alone. Then came a rush and rustle of many feet upon the stairs, many dresses moving, many voices blending in a little soft roar; as ominous as the roar of the sea which one hears in a shell. My four room-mates poured into the room, accompanied by one or two others; very busy and eager about their affairs that they were discussing. Meanwhile they all began to put themselves in order. "The bell will ring for tea directly," said Miss Macy, addressing herself to me, � "are you ready?" "Tisn't much trouble to fix _her_ hair �" said my friend with the black eyes. Six pair of eyes for a moment were turned upon me. "You are too old to have your hair so," remarked Miss Bentley. "You ought to let it grow." "Why don't you?" said Miss Lansing. "She is a Roundhead," said the St. Clair, brushing her own curls; which were beautiful and crinkled all over her head, while my hair was straight. "I don't suppose she ever saw a Cavalier before." "St. Clair, you are too bad!" said Miss Mary. "Miss Randolph is a stranger." St. Clair made no answer, but finished her hair and ran off; and presently the others filed off after her; and a loud clanging bell giving the signal, I thought best to go too. Every room was pouring forth its inmates; the halls and passages were all alive and astir. In the train of the moving crowd, I had no difficulty to find my way to the place of gathering. This was the school parlour; not the one where I had seen Mme. Ricard. Parlours, rather; there was a suite of them, three deep; for this part of the house had a building added in the rear. The rooms were large and handsome; not like school rooms, I thought; and yet very different from my home; for they were bare. Carpets and curtains, sofas and chairs and tables, were in them to be sure; and even pictures; yet they were bare; for books and matters of art and little social luxuries were wanting, such as I had all my life been accustomed to, and such as filled Mme. Ricard's own rooms. However, this first evening I could hardly see how the rooms looked, for the lining of humanity which ran round all the walls. There was a shimmer as of every colour in the rainbow; and a buzz that could only come from a hive full. I, who had lived all my life where people spoke softly, and where many never spoke together, was bewildered. The buzz hushed suddenly, and I saw Mme. Ricard's figure going slowly down the rooms. She was in the uttermost contrast to all her household. Ladylike always, and always dignified, her style was her own, and I am sure that nobody ever felt that she had not enough. Yet Mme. Ricard had nothing about her that was conformed to the fashions of the day. Her dress was of a soft kind of serge, which fell around her or swept across the rooms in noiseless yielding folds. Hoops were the fashion of the day; but Mme. Ricard wore no hoops; she went with ease and silence where others went with a rustle and a warning to clear the way. The back of her head was covered with a little cap as plain as a nun's cap; and I never saw an ornament about her. Yet criticism never touched Mme. Ricard. Not even the criticism of a set of school-girls; and I had soon to learn that there is none more relentless. The tea-table was set in the further room of the three. Mime. Ricard passed down to that. Presently I heard her low voice saying, "Miss Randolph". Low as it always was, it was always heard. I made my way down through the rooms to her presence; and there I was introduced to the various teachers. Mademoiselle Genevieve, Miss Babbitt, Mme. Jupon, and Miss Dumps. I could not examine them just then. I felt I was on exhibition myself. "Is Miss Randolph to come to me, Madame?" the first of these ladies asked. She was young, bright, black-eyed, and full of energy; I saw so much. "I fancy she will come to all of you," said Madame. "Except Miss Babbitt. You can write and read, I dare say, Miss Randolph?" she went on with a smile. I answered of course. "What have been your principal studies for the past year?" I said, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy and history. "Then she is mine!" exclaimed Mlle. Genevieve. "She is older than she looks," said Miss Babbitt. "Her hair is young, but her eyes are not," said the former speaker; who was a lively lady. "French have you studied?" Madame went on. "Not so much," I said. "Mme. Jupon will want you." "I am sure she is a good child," said Mme. Jupon, who was a good-natured, plain-looking Frenchwoman without a particle of a Frenchwoman's grace or address. "I will be charmed to have her." "You may go back to your place, Miss Randolph," said my mistress. "We will arrange all the rest to-morrow." "Shall I go back with you?" asked Mlle. Genevieve. "Do you mind going alone?" She spoke very kindly, but I was at a loss for her meaning. I saw the kindness; why it showed itself in such an offer I could not imagine. "I am very much obliged to you, ma'am," � I began, when a little burst of laughter stopped me. It came from all the teachers; even Mme. Ricard was smiling. "You are out for once, Genevieve," she said. "La charmante!" said Mme. Jupon. "Voyez l'aplomb!" "No, you don't want me," said Mlle. Genevieve nodding. "Go � you'll do." I went back to the upper room, and presently tea was served. I sat alone; there was nobody near me who knew me; I had nothing to do while munching my bread and butter but to examine the new scene. There was a great deal to move my curiosity. In the first place, I was surprised to see the rooms gay with fine dresses. I had come from the quiet of Magnolia, and accustomed to the simplicity of my mother's taste; which if it sometimes adorned me, did it always in subdued fashion, and never flaunted either its wealth or beauty. But on every side of me I beheld startling costumes; dresses that explained my mantua- maker's eagerness about velvet and green leaves. I saw that she was right; her trimmings would have been "quiet" here. Opposite me was a brown merino, bordered with blocks of blue silk running round the skirt. Near it was a dress of brilliant red picked out with black cord and heavy with large black buttons. Then a black dress caught my eye which had an embattled trimming of black and gold, continued round the waist and completed with a large gold buckle. Then there was a grey cashmere with red stars and a bronze-coloured silk with black velvet a quarter of a yard wide let into the skirt; the body all of black velvet. I could go on, if my memory would serve me. The rooms were full of this sort of thing. Yet more than the dresses the heads surprised me. Just at that time the style of hair-dressing was one of those styles which are endurable, and perhaps even very beautiful, in the hands of a first-rate artist and on the heads of the few women who dress well; but which are more and more hideous the further you get from that distant pinnacle of the mode, and the lower down they spread among the ranks of society. I thought, as I looked from one to another, I had never seen anything so ill in taste, so outraged in style, so unspeakable in ugliness as well as in pretension. I supposed then it was the fashion principally which was to blame. Since then, I have seen the same fashion on one of those heads that never wear anything but in good style. It gathered a great wealth of rich hair into a mass at the back of the head, yet leaving the top and front of the hair in soft waves; and the bound up mass behind was loose and soft and flowed naturally from the head; it had no hard outline nor regular shape; it was nature's luxuriance just held in there from bursting down over neck and shoulders; and hardly that, for some locks were almost escaping. The whole was to the utmost simple, natural, graceful, rich. But these caricatures! All that they knew was to mass the hair at the back of the head; and that fact was attained. But some looked as if they had a hard round cannon-ball fastened there; others suggested a stuffed pincushion, ready for pins; others had a mortar shell in place of a cannon-ball, the size was so enormous; in nearly all, the hair was strained tight over or under something; in not one was there an effect which the originator of the fashion would not have abhorred. Girlish grace was nowhere to be seen, either in heads or persons; girlish simplicity had no place. It was a school; but the company looked fitter for the stiff assemblages of ceremony that should be twenty years later in their lives. My heart grew very blank. I felt unspeakably alone; not merely because there was nobody there whom I knew, but because there was nobody whom it seemed to me I ever should know. I took my tea and bits of bread and butter, feeling forlorn. A year in that place seemed to me longer than I could bear. I had exchanged my King Log for King Stork. It was some relief when after tea we were separated into other rooms and sat down to study. But I dreamed over my book. I wondered how heads could study that had so much trouble on the outside. I wandered over the seas to that spot somewhere that was marked by the ship that carried my father and another. Only now going out towards China; and low long months might pass before China would be lone with and the ship be bearing them back again. The lesson given me that night was not difficult enough to bind my attention; and my heart grew very heavy. So heavy, that I felt I must find help somewhere. And when one's need is so shut in, then it looks in the right quarter � the only one left open. My little book was up stairs in my bag; but my thoughts flew to my page of that day and the "Fear thou not, for I am with thee." Nobody knows, who has not wanted them, how good those words are. Nobody else can understand how sweet they were to me. I lost for a little all sight of the study table and the faces round it. I just remembered who was WITH ME; in the freedom and joy of that presence both fears and loneliness seemed to fade away. "I, the Lord, will hold thy right hand." Yes, and I, a poor little child, put my hand in the hand of my great Leader, and felt safe and strong. I found very soon I had enemies to meet that I had not yet reckoned with. The night passed peacefully enough; and the next day I was put in the schoolroom and found my place in the various classes. The schoolrooms were large and pleasant; large they had need to be, for the number of day scholars who attended in them was very great. They were many as well as spacious; different ages being parted off from each other. Besides the schoolrooms proper, there were rooms for recitation, where the classes met their teachers; so we had the change and variety of moving from one part of the house to another. We met Mlle. Genevieve in one room, for mathematics and Italian; Mme. Jupon in another, for French. Miss Dumps seized us in another, for writing and geography, and made the most of us; she was a severe little person in her teaching and in her discipline; but she was good. We called her Miss Maria, in general. Miss Babbitt had the history; and she did nothing to make it intelligible or interesting. My best historical times thus far, by much, had been over my clay map and my red- headed and black-headed pins, studying the changes of England and her people. But Mlle. Genevieve put a new life into mathematics. I could never love the study; but she made it a great deal better than Miss Pinshon made it. Indeed I believe that to learn anything under Mlle. Genevieve, would have been pleasant. She had so much fire and energy; she taught with such a will; her black eyes were so keen both for her pupils and her subject. One never thought of the discipline in Mlle. Genevieve's room, but only of the study. I was young to be there, in the class where she put me; but my training had fitted me for it. With Mme. Jupon also I had an easy time. She was good nature itself, and from the first showed a particular favour and liking for me. And as I had no sort of wish to break rules, with Miss Maria too I got on well. It was out of school and out of study hours that my difficulties came upon me. For a day or two I did not meet them. I was busy with the school routine, and beginning already to take pleasure in it. Knowledge was to be had here; lay waiting to be gathered up; and that gathering I always enjoyed. Miss Pinshon had kept me on short allowance. It was the third or fourth day after my arrival, that going up after dinner to get ready for a walk I missed my chinchilla cap from its peg. I sought for it in vain. "Come, Daisy," said Miss Lansing, make haste. Babbitt will be after you directly if you aren't ready. Put on your cap." "I can't find it," I said. "I left it here, in its place, but I can't find it." There was a burst of laughter from three of my room-mates, as Miss St. Clair danced out from the closet with the cap on her own brows; and then with a caper of agility, taking it off, flung it up to the chandelier, where it hung on one of the burners. "For shame, Faustina, that's too bad. How call she get it?" said Miss Bentley. "I don't want her to get it," said the St. Clair coolly. "Then how can she go to walk?" "I don't want her to go to walk." "Faustina, that isn't right. Miss Randolph is a stranger; you shouldn't play tricks on her." "Roundheads were always revolutionists," said the girl recklessly. "_A la lanterne!_ Heads or hats � it don't signify which. That is an example of what our Madame calls 'symbolism.' " "Hush � sh! Madame would call it something else. Now how are we going to get the cap down?" For the lamp hung high, having been pushed up out of reach for the day. The St. Clair ran off, and Miss Macy followed; but the two others consulted, and Lansing ran down to waylay the chambermaid and beg a broom. By the help of the broom handle my cap was at length dislodged from its perch, and restored to me. But I was angry. I felt the fiery current running through my veins; and the unspeakable saucy glance of St. Clair's eye, as I passed her to take my place in the procession, threw fuel on the fire. I think for years I had not been angry in such a fashion. The indignation I had at different times felt against the overseer at Magnolia was a justifiable thing. Now I was angry and piqued. The feeling was new to me. � I had been without it very long. I swallowed the ground with my feet during that walk; but before the walk came to an end the question began to come up in my mind, what was the matter? and whether I did well? These sprinklings of water on the flame I think made it leap into new life at first; but as they came and came again, I had more to think about than St. Clair, when I got back to the house. Yes, and as we were all taking off our things together I was conscious that I shunned her; that the sight of her was disagreeable; and that I would have liked to visit some gentle punishment upon her careless head. The bustle of business swallowed up the feeling for the rest of the time till we went to bed. But then it rose very fresh, and I began to question myself about it in the silence and darkness. Finding myself inclined to justify myself, I bethought me to try this new feeling by some of the words I had been studying in my little book for a few days past. "The entrance of Thy words giveth light" � was the leading test for the day that had just gone; now I thought I would try it in my difficulty. The very nest words on the page, I remembered were these. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." It came into my mind as soon, that this feeling of anger and resentment which troubled me had to do with darkness, not with the light. In vain I reasoned; to prove the contrary; I _felt_ dark. I could not look up to that clear white light where God dwells, and feel at all that I was "walking in the light as He is in the light." Clearly Daisy Randolph was out of the way. And I went on with bitterness of heart to the next words � "Ye _were_ sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord; walk as children of light." And what then? was I to pass by quietly the insolence of St. Clair? was I to take it quite quietly, and give no sign even of annoyance? take no means of showing my displeasure, or of putting a stop to the naughtiness that called it forth? My mind put these questions impatiently, and still, as it did so, an answer came from somewhere, � "Walk as children of light." I _knew_ that children of light would reprove darkness only with light; and a struggle began. Other words came into my head then, which made the matter only clearer. "If any man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other." "Love your enemies." Ah, but how could I? with what should I put out this fire kindled in my heart, which seemed only to burn the fiercer whatever I threw upon it? And then, other words still came sweeping upon me with their sweetness, and I remembered who had said, "I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee." I softly got out of bed, wrapped the coverlid round me, and knelt down to pray. For I had no time to lose. To-morrow I must meet my little companion, and to-morrow I _must_ be ready to walk as a child of light, and to-night the fires of darkness were burning in my heart. I was long on my knees. I remember, in a kind of despair at last I flung myself on the word of Jesus, and cried to Him as Peter did when he saw the wind boisterous. I remember, how the fire died out in my heart, till the very coals were dead; and how the day and the sunlight came stealing in, till it was all sunshine. I gave my thanks, and got into bed, and slept without a break the rest of the night. CHAPTER XI. A PLACE IN THE WORLD. I was a humbler child when I got out of bed the next morning, I think, than ever I had been in my life before. But I had another lesson to learn. I was not angry any more at Miss St. Clair. That was gone. Even when she did one or two other mischievous things to me, the rising feeling of offence was quickly got under; and I lived in great charity with her. My new lesson was of another sort. Two or three days passed, and then came Sunday. It was never a comfortable day at Mme. Ricard's. We all went to church of course, under the care of one or other of the teachers; and we had our choice where to go. Miss Babbitt went to a Presbyterian church. Miss Maria to a high Episcopal. Mme. Jupon attended a little French Protestant chapel; and Mlle. Genevieve and Mme. Ricard went to the Catholic church. The first Sunday I had gone with them, not knowing at all whither. I found that would not do; and since then I had tried the other parties. But I was in a strait; for Miss Maria's church seemed to me a faded image of Mlle. Genevieve's; the Presbyterian church which Miss Babbitt went to was stiff and dull; I was not at home in either of them, and could not understand or enjoy what was spoken. The very music had an air of incipient petrification, if I can speak so about sounds. At the little French chapel I could as little comprehend the words that were uttered. But in the pulpit there was a man with a shining face; a face full of love and truth and earnestness. He spoke out of his heart, and no set words; and the singing was simple and sweet and the hymns beautiful. I could understand them, for I had the hymn-book in my hands. Also I had the French Bible, and Mme. Jupon, delighted to have me with her, assured me that if I listened I would very soon begin to understand the minister's preaching just as well as if it were English. So I went with Mme. Jupon, and thereby lost some part of Mlle. Genevieve's favour; but that I did not understand till afterwards. We had all been to church as usual, this Sunday, and we were taking off our hats and things up stairs, after the second service. My simple toilet was soon made; and I sat upon the side of my little bed, watching those of my companions. They were a contrast to mine. The utmost that money could do, to bring girls into the fashion, was done for these girls; for the patrons of Mme. Ricard's establishment were nearly all rich. Costly coats and cloaks, heavy trimmed, were surmounted with every variety of showy head gear, in every variety of unsuitableness. To study bad taste, one would want no better field than the heads of Mme. Ricard's seventy boarders dressed for church. Not that the articles which were worn on the heads were always bad; some of them came from irreproachable workshops; but there was everywhere the bad taste of overdressing, and nowhere the tact of appropriation. The hats were all on the wrong heads. Everybody was a testimony of what money can do without art. I sat on my little bed, vaguely speculating on all this as I watched my companions' disrobing; at intervals humming the sweet French melody to which the last hymn had been sung; when St. Clair paused in her talk and threw a glance in my direction. It lighted on my plain plaid frock and undressed hair. "Don't you come from the country, Miss Randolph?" she said, insolently enough. I answered yes. And I remembered what my mantua-maker had said. "Did you have that dress made there?" "For shame, St. Clair!" said Miss Bentley; "let Miss Randolph alone. I am sure her dress is very neat." "I wonder if women don't wear long hair where she came from �" said the girl, turning away from me again. The others laughed. I was as little pleased at that moment with the defence as with the attack. The instant thought in my mind was, that Miss Bentley knew no more how to conduct the one than Miss St. Clair to make the other; if the latter had no civility, the first had no style. Now the St. Clair was one of the best dressed girls in school and came from one of the most important families. I thought, if she knew where I came from, and who my mother was, she would change her tone. Nevertheless, I wished mamma would order me to let my hair grow, and I began to think whether I might not do it without order. And I thought also that the spring was advancing, and warm weather would soon be upon us; and that these girls would change their talk and their opinion about me when they saw my summer frocks. There was nothing like _them_ in all the school. I ran over in my mind their various elegance, of texture, and lace, and fine embroidery, and graceful, simple drapery. And also I thought, if these girls could see Magnolia, its magnificent oaks, and its acres of timber, and its sweeps of rich fields, and its troops of servants, their minds would be enlightened as to me and my belongings. These meditations were a mixture of comfort and discomfort to me; but on the whole I was not comfortable. This process of comparing myself with my neighbours, I was not accustomed to; and even though its results were so favourable, I did not like it. Neither did I quite relish living under a cloud; and my eyes being a little sharpened now, I could see that not by my young companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went about just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by degrees more room in them. It was not till the Sunday came round again, that I got any more light. The afternoon service was over; we had come home and laid off our bonnets and cloaks; for though we were in April it was cold and windy; and my school-fellows had all gone down stairs to the parlour, where they had the privilege of doing what they pleased before tea. I was left alone. It was almost my only time for being alone in the whole week. I had an hour then; and I used to spend it in my bedroom with my Bible. To-day I was reading the first epistle of John, which I was very fond of, and as my custom was, not reading merely, but pondering and praying over the words verse by verse. So I found that I understood them better and enjoyed them a great deal more. I came to these words, � "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." I had dwelt some time upon the first part of the verse, forgetting all my discomforts of the week past; and came in due course to the next words. I never shall forget how they swept in upon me. "_The world knoweth us not_." � What did that mean? "Because it knew Him not." How did it not know Him? He was in the midst of men; He lived no hidden life; the world knew Him well enough as a benefactor, a teacher, a reprover; in what sense did it _not_ know Him? And I remembered, it did not know Him as one of its own party. He was "this fellow," � and "the deceiver;" � "the Nazarene;" "they called the Master of the house Beelzebub." And so, the world knoweth _us_ not; and I knew well enough why; because we must be like Him. And then, I found an unwillingness in myself to have these words true of me. I had been very satisfied under the slighting tones and looks of the little world around me, thinking that they were mistaken and would by and by know it; they would know that in all that they held so dear, of grace and fashion and elegance and distinguished appearance, my mother, and of course I, were not only their match but above them. Now, must I be content to have them never know it? But, I thought, I could not help their seeing the fact; if I dressed as my mother's child was accustomed to dress, they would know what sphere of life I belonged to. And then the words bore down upon me again, with their uncompromising distinctness, � "_the world knoweth us not_." I saw it was a mark and character of those that belonged to Christ. I saw that, if I belonged to Him, the world must not know me. The conclusion was very plain. And to secure the conclusion, the way was very plain too; I must simply not be like the world. I must not be of the world; and I must let it be known that I was not. Face to face with the issue, I started back. For not to be of the world, meant, not to follow their ways. I did not want to follow some of their ways; I had no desire to break the Sabbath, for example; but I did like to wear pretty and elegant and expensive things, and fashionable things. It is very true, I had just denied myself this pleasure, and bought a plain dress and coat that did not charm me; but that was in favour of Margaret and to save money for her. And I had no objection to do the same thing again and again, for the same motive; and to deny myself to the end of the chapter, so long as others were in need. But that was another matter from shaking hands with the world at once, and being willing that for all my life it should never know me as one of those whom it honoured. Never _know_ me, in fact. I must be something out of the world's consciousness, and of no importance to it. And to begin with, I must never try to enlighten my school- fellows' eyes about myself. Let them think that Daisy Randolph came from somewhere in the country, and was accustomed to wear no better dresses in ordinary than her school plaid. Let them never be aware that I had ponies and servants and lands and treasures. Nay, the force of the words I had read went further than that. I felt it, down in my heart. Not only I must take no measures to proclaim my title to the world's regard; but I must be such and so unlike it in my whole way of life, dress and all, that the world would not wish to recognise me, nor have anything to do with me. I counted the cost now, and it seemed heavy. There was Miss Bentley, with her clumsy finery, put on as it were one dollar above the other. She patronised me, as a little country-girl who knew nothing. Must I not undeceive her? There was Faustina St. Clair, really of a good family, and insolent on the strength of it; must I never let her know that mine was as good, and that my mother had as much knowledge of the proprieties and elegancies of life as ever hers had? These girls and plenty of the others looked down upon me as something inferior; not belonging to their part of society; must I be content henceforth to live so simply that these and others who judge by the outside would never be any wiser as to what I really was? Something in me rebelled. Yet the words I had been reading were final and absolute. "The world knoweth us _not_;" and "us," I knew, meant the little band in whose hearts Christ is king. Surely I was one of them. But I was unwilling to slip out of the world's view and be seen by it no more. I struggled. It was something very new in my experience. I had certainly felt struggles of duty in other times, but they had never lasted long. This lasted. With an eye made keen by conscience, I looked now in my reading to see what else I might find that would throw light on the matter and perhaps soften off the uncompromising decision of the words of St. John. By and by I came to these words � "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own. But because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, _therefore the world hateth you_." I shut the book. The issue could not be more plainly set forth. I must choose between the one party and the other. Nay, I had chosen; � but I must agree to belong but to one. Would anybody say that a child could not have such a struggle? that fourteen years do not know yet what "the world" means? Alas, it is a relative term; and a child's "world" may be as mighty for her to face, as any other she will ever know. I think I never found any more formidable. Moreover, it is less unlike the big world than some would suppose. On the corner of the street, just opposite to our windows, stood a large handsome house which we always noticed for its flowers. The house stood in a little green courtyard, exquisitely kept, which at one side and behind gave room for several patches of flower beds, at this time filled with bulbous plants. I always lingered as much as I could in passing the iron railings, to have a peep at the beauty within. The grass was now of a delicious green, and the tulips and hyacinths and crocuses were in full bloom, in their different oval-shaped beds, framed in with the green. Besides these, from the windows of a greenhouse that stretched back along the street, there looked over a brilliant array of other beauty; I could not tell what; great bunches of scarlet and tufts of white and gleamings of yellow, that made me long to be there. "Who lives in that house?" Miss Bentley asked one evening. It was the hour before tea, and we were all at our room windows gazing down into the avenue. "Why don't you know?" said slow Miss Macy. That's Miss Cardigan's house." "I wonder who she is," said Miss Lansing. "It isn't a New York name." "Yes, it is," said Macy. "She's lived there forever. She used to be there, and her flowers, when I was four years old." "I guess she isn't anybody, is she?" said Miss Bentley. "I never see any carriages at her door. Hasn't she a carriage of her own, I wonder, or how does she travel? Such a house ought to have a carriage." "I'll tell you," said the St. Clair, coolly as usual. "She goes out in a wagon with an awning to it. _She_ don't know anything about carriages." "But she must have money, you know," urged Miss Bentley. "She couldn't keep up that house, and the flowers, and the greenhouse and all, without money." "She's got money," said the St. Clair. "Her mother made it selling cabbages in the market. Very likely she sold flowers too." There was a general exclamation and laughter at what was supposed to be one of St. Clair's flights of mischief; but the young lady stood her ground calmly, and insisted that it was a thing well known. "My grandmother used to buy vegetables from old Mrs. Cardigan when we lived in Broadway," she said. "It's quite true. That's why she knows nothing about carriages." "That sort of thing don't hinder other people from having carriages," said Miss Lansing. "There's Mr. Mason, next door to Miss Cardigan, � his father was a tailor; and the Steppes, two doors off, do you know what they were? They were millers, a little way out of town; nothing else; had a mill and ground flour. They made a fortune I suppose, and now here they are in the midst of other people." "Plenty of carriages, too," said Miss Macy; "and everything else." "After all," said Miss Bentley, after a pause, "I suppose everybody's money had to be made somehow, in the first instance. I suppose all the Millers in the world came from real millers once; and the Wheelwrights from wheelwrights." "And what a world of smiths there must have been, first and last," said Miss Lansing. "The world is full of their descendants." "_Everybody's_ money wasn't made, though," said the St. Clair, with an inexpressible attitude, of her short upper lip. "I guess it was, � if you go back far enough," said Miss Macy, whom nothing disturbed. But I saw that while Miss Lansing and Miss St. Clair were at ease in the foregoing conversation, Miss Bentley was not. "You _can't_ go back far enough," said the St. Clair haughtily. "How then?" said the other. "How do you account for it? Where did their money come from?" "It grew," said the St. Clair ineffably. "They were lords of the soil." "Oh! � But it had to be dug out, I suppose," said Miss Macy. "There were others to do that." "After all," said Miss Macy, "how is money that grew any better than money that is made? It is all made by somebody, too." "If it is made by somebody else, it leaves your hands clean," the St. Clair answered, with an insolence worthy of maturer years; for Miss Macy's family had grown rich by trade. She was of a slow temper, however, and did not take fire." "My grandfather's hands were clean," she said; "yet he made his own money. Honest hands always are clean." "Do you suppose Miss Cardigan's were when she was handling her cabbages?" said St. Clair. "I have no doubt Miss Cardigan's house smells of cabbages now." "O St. Clair!" � Miss Lansing said, laughing. "I always smell them when I go past," said the other, elevating her scornful little nose; it was a handsome nose too. "I don't think it makes any difference," said Miss Bentley, "provided people _have_ money, how they came by it. Money buys the same things for one that it does for another." "Now, my good Bentley, that is just what it _don't_," said St. Clair, drumming upon the window-pane with the tips of her fingers. "Why not?" "Because! � people that have always had money know how to use it; and people that have just come into their money, _don't_ know. You can tell the one from the other as far off as the head of the avenue." "But what is to hinder their going to the same milliner and mantua-maker, for instance, or the same cabinet-maker, � and buying the same things?" "Or the same jeweller, or the same � anything? So they could, if they knew which they were." "Which _what_ were? It is easy to tell which is a fashionable milliner, or mantua-maker; everybody knows that." "It don't do some people any good," said St. Clair, turning away. "When they get in the shop, they do not know what to buy; and if they buy it they can't put it on. People that are not fashionable can't _be_ fashionable." I saw the glance that fell, scarcely touching, on my plain plaid frock. I was silly enough to feel it too. I was unused to scorn. St. Clair returned to the window, perhaps sensible that she had gone a little too far. "I can tell you now," she said, "what that old Miss Cardigan has got in her house � just as well as if I saw it." "Did you ever go in?" said Lansing eagerly. "We don't visit," said the other. "But I can tell you, just as well; and you can send Daisy Randolph some day to see if it is true." "Well, go on, St. Clair � what is there?" said Miss Macy. "There's a marble hall of course; that the mason built; it isn't her fault. Then in the parlours there are thick carpets, that cost a great deal of money and are as ugly as they can be, with every colour in the world. The furniture is red satin, or maybe blue, staring bright, against a light green wall panelled with gold. The ceilings are gold and white, with enormous chandeliers. On the wall there are some very big picture frames, with nothing in them � to speak of; there is a table in the middle of the floor with a marble top, and the piers are filled with mirrors down to the floor; and the second room is like the first and the third is like the second, and there is nothing else in any of the rooms but what I have told you." "Well, it is a very handsome house, I should think, if you have told true," said Miss Bentley. St. Clair left the window with a scarce perceptible but most wicked smile at her friend Miss Lansing; and the group scattered. Only I remained to think it over and ask myself, could I let go my vantage ground? could I make up my mind to do forever without the smile and regard of that portion of the world which little St. Clair represented? It is powerful, even in a school! I had seen how carelessly this undoubted child of birth and fashion wielded the lash of her tongue; and how others bowed before it. I had seen Miss Bentley wince, and Miss Macy bite her lip; but neither of them dared affront the daughter of Mrs. St. Clair. Miss Lansing was herself of the favoured class, and had listened lightly. Fashion was power, that was plain. Was I willing to forego it? was I willing to be one of those whom fashion passes by as St. Clair had glanced on my dress � as something not worthy a thought? I was not happy, those days. Something within me was struggling for self-assertion. It was new to me; for until then I had never needed to assert my claims to anything. For the first time, I was looked down upon, and I did not like it. I do not quite know why I was made to know this so well. My dress, if not showy or costly, was certainly without blame in its neatness and niceness, and perfectly becoming my place as a school-girl. And I had very little to do at that time with my schoolmates, and that little was entirely friendly in its character. I am obliged to think, looking back at it now, that some rivalry was at work. I did not then understand it. But I was taking a high place in all my classes. I had gone past St. Clair in two or three things. Miss Lansing was too far behind in her studies to feel any jealousy on that account; but besides that, I was an unmistakeable favourite with all the teachers. They liked to have me do anything for them or with them; if any privilege was to be given, I was sure to be one of the first names called to share it; if I was spoken to for anything, the manner and tone were in contrast with those used towards almost all my fellows. It may have been partly for these reasons that there was a little positive element in the slights which I felt. The effect of the whole was to make a long struggle in my mind. "The world knoweth us not" � gave the character and condition of that party to which I belonged. I was feeling now what those words mean, � and it was not pleasant. This struggle had been going on for several weeks, and growing more and more wearying, when Mrs. Sandford came one day to see me. She said I did not look very well, and obtained leave for me to take a walk with her. I was glad of the change. It was a pleasant, bright afternoon; we strolled up the long avenue, then gay and crowded with passers to and fro in every variety and in the height of the mode; for our avenue was a favourite and very fashionable promenade. The gay world nodded and bowed to each other; the sun streamed on satins and laces, flowers and embroidery; elegant toilettes passed and repassed each other, with smiling recognition; the street was a show. I walked by Mrs. Sandford's side in my chinchilla cap, for I had not got a straw hat yet, though it was time; thinking, � "_The world knoweth us not_" � and carrying on the struggle in my heart all the while. By and by we turned to come down the avenue. "I want to stop a moment here on some business," said Mrs. Sandford, as we came to Miss Cardigan's corner; "would you like to go in with me, Daisy?" I was pleased, and moreover glad that it was the hour for my companions to be out walking. I did not wish to be seen going in at that house and to have all the questions poured on me that would be sure to come. Moreover I was curious to see how far Miss St. Clair's judgment would be verified. The marble hall was undoubted; it was large and square, with a handsome staircase going up from it; but the parlour, into which we were ushered the next minute, crossed all my expectations. It was furnished with dark chintz; no satin, red or blue, was anywhere to be seen; even the curtains were chintz. The carpet was not rich; the engravings on the walls were in wooden frames varnished; the long mirror between the windows, for that was there, reflected a very simple mahogany table, on which lay a large work basket, some rolls of muslin and flannel, work cut and uncut, shears and spools of cotton. Another smaller table held books and papers and writing materials. This was shoved up to the corner of the hearth, where a fire � a real, actual fire of sticks � was softly burning. The room was full of the sweet smell of the burning wood. Between the two tables, in a comfortable large chair, sat the lady we had come to see. My heart warmed at the look of her immediately. Such a face of genial gentle benevolence; such a healthy sweet colour in the old cheeks; such a hearty, kind, and withal shrewd and sound, expression of eye and lip. She was stout and dumpy in figure, rather fat; with a little plain cap on her head and a shawl pinned round her shoulders. Somebody who had never been known to the world of fashion. But oh, how homely and comfortable she and her room looked! she and her room and her cat; for a great white cat sat with her paws doubled under her in front of the fire. "My sister begged that I would call and see you, Miss Cardigan," Mrs. Sandford began, "about a poor family named Whittaker, that live somewhere in Ellen Street." "I know them. Be seated," said our hostess. "I know them well. But I don't know this little lady." "A little friend of mine, Miss Cardigan; she is at school with your neighbour opposite, � Miss Daisy Randolph." "If nearness made neighbourhood," said Miss Cardigan, laughing, "Mme. Ricard and I would be neighbours; but I am afraid the rule of the Good Samaritan would put us far apart. Miss Daisy � do you like my cat; or would you like maybe to go in and look at my flowers? � yes? � Step in that way, dear; just go through that room, and on, straight through; you'll smell them before you come to them." I gladly obeyed her, stepping in through the darkened middle room where already the greeting of the distant flowers met me; then through a third smaller room, light and bright and full of fragrance, and to my surprise, lined with books. From this an open glass door let me into the greenhouse, and into the presence of the beauties I had so often looked up to from the street. I lost myself then. Geraniums breathed over me; roses smiled at me; a daphne at one end of the room filled the whole place with its fragrance. Amaryllis bulbs were magnificent; fuchsias dropped with elegance; jonquils were shy and dainty; violets were good; hyacinths were delicious; tulips were splendid. Over and behind all these and others, were wonderful ferns, and heaths most delicate in their simplicity, and myrtles most beautiful with their shining dark foliage and starry white blossoms. I lost myself at first, and wandered past all these new and old friends in a dream; then I waked up to an intense feeling of homesickness. I had not been in such a greenhouse in a long time; the geraniums and roses and myrtles summoned me back to the years when I was a little happy thing at Melbourne House � or summoned the images of that time back to me. Father and mother and home � the delights and the freedoms of those days � the carelessness, and the care � the blessed joys of that time before I knew Miss Pinshon, or school, and before I was perplexed with the sorrows and the wants of the world, and before I was alone � above all, when papa and mamma and I were _at home_. The geraniums and the roses set me back there so sharply that I felt it all. I had lost myself at first going into the greenhouse; and now I had quite lost sight of everything else, and stood gazing at the faces of the flowers with some tears on my own, and, I suppose, a good deal of revelation of my feeling; for I was unutterably startled by the touch of two hands upon my shoulders and a soft whisper in my ear. "What is it, my bairn?" It was Miss Cardigan's soft Scotch accent, and it was, besides, a question of the tenderest sympathy. I looked at her, saw the kind and strong grey eyes which were fixed on me wistfully; and hiding my face in her bosom I sobbed aloud. I don't know how I came to be there, in her arms, nor how I did anything so unlike my habit; but there I was, and it was done, and Miss Cardigan and I were in each other's confidence. It was only for one moment that my tears came; then I recovered myself. "What sort of discourse did the flowers hold to you, little one?" said Miss Cardigan's kind voice; while her stout person hid all view of me that could have been had through the glass door. "Papa is away," I said, forcing myself to speak, � "and mamma; � and we used to have these flowers �" "Yes, yes; I know. I know very well," said my friend. "The flowers didn't know but you were there yet. They hadn't discretion. Mrs. Sandford wants to go, clear. � Will you come again and see them? They will say something else next time." "Oh, may I?" I said. "Just whenever you like, and as often as you like. So I'll expect you." I went home, very glad at having escaped notice from my schoolmates, and firmly bent on accepting Miss Cardigan's invitation at the first chance I had. I asked about her of Mrs. Sandford in the first place; and learned that she was "a very good sort of person; a little queer, but very kind; a person that did a great deal of good and had plenty of money. Not in society, of course," Mrs. Sandford added; "but I dare say she don't miss that; and she is just as useful as if she were." "Not in society." That meant, I supposed, that Miss Cardigan would not be asked to companies where Mrs. Randolph would be found, or Mrs. Sandford; that such people would not "know" her, in fact. That would certainly be a loss to Miss Cardigan; but I wondered how much? "The world knoweth us not," � the lot of all Christ's people, � could it involve anything in itself very bad? My old Juanita, for example, who held herself the heir to a princely inheritance, was it any harm to her that earthly palaces knew her only as a servant? But then, what did not matter to Juanita or Miss Cardigan, might matter to somebody who had been used to different things. I knew how it had been with myself for a time past. I was puzzled. I determined to wait and see, if I could, how much it mattered to Miss Cardigan. CHAPTER XII. FRENCH DRESSES. My new friend had given me free permission to come and see her whenever I found myself able. Saturday afternoon we always had to ourselves in the school; and the next Saturday found me at Miss Cardigan's door again as soon as my friends and room- mates were well out of my way. Miss Cardigan was not at home, the servant said, but she would be in presently. I was just as well pleased. I took off my cap, and carrying it in my hand I went back through the rooms to the greenhouse. All still and fresh and sweet, it seemed more delightful than ever, because I knew there was nobody near. Some new flowers were out. An azalea was in splendid beauty, and a white French rose, very large and fair, was just blossoming, and with the red roses and the hyacinths and the violets and the daphne and the geraniums, made a wonderful sweet place of the little greenhouse. I lost myself in delight again; but this time the delight did not issue in homesickness. The flowers had another message for me to-day. I did not heed it at first, busy with examining and drinking in the fragrance and the loveliness about me; but even as I looked and drank, the flowers began to whisper to me. With their wealth of perfume, with all their various, glorious beauty, one and another leaned towards me or bent over me with the question � "Daisy are you afraid? � Daisy, are you afraid? � The good God who has made us so rich, do you think He will leave you poor? He loves you, Daisy. You needn't be a bit afraid but that HE is enough, even if the world does not know you. He is rich enough for you as well as for us." I heard no voice, but surely I heard that whisper, plain enough. The roses seemed to kiss me with it. The sweet azalea repeated it. The hyacinths stood witnesses of it. The gay tulips and amaryllis held up a banner before me on which it was blazoned. I was so ashamed, and sorry, and glad, all at once, that I fell down on my knees there, on the stone matted floor, and gave up the world from my heart and for ever, and stretched out my hands for the wealth that does not perish and the blessing that has no sorrow with it. I was afraid to stay long on my knees; but I could hardly get my eyes dry again, I was so glad and so sorry. I remember I was wiping a tear or two away when Miss Cardigan came in. She greeted me kindly. "There's a new rose out, did ye see it?" she said; "and this blue hyacinth has opened its flowers. Isn't that bonny?" "What is _bonny_, ma'am?" I asked. Miss Cardigan laughed, the heartiest, sonsiest low laugh. "There's a many things the Lord has made bonny," she said; "I thank Him for it. Look at these violets � they're bonny; and this sweet red rose." She broke it off the tree and gave it to me. "It's bad that it shames your cheeks so. What's the matter wi' em, my bairn?" Miss Cardigan's soft finger touched my cheek as she spoke; and the voice and tone of the question were so gently, tenderly kind that it was pleasant to answer. I said I had not been very strong. "Nor just well in your mind. No, no. Well, what did the flowers say to you to-day, my dear? Eh? They told you something?" "Oh, yes!" I said. "Did they tell you that 'the Lord is good; a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him'?" "Oh, yes," I said, looking up at her in surprise. "How did you know?" For all answer, Miss Cardigan folded her two arms tight about me and kissed me with earnest good will. "But they told me something else," I said, struggling to command myself; � "they told me that I had _not_ 'trusted in Him.' " "Ah, my bairn!" she said. "But the Lord is good." There was so much both of understanding and sympathy in her tones, that I had a great deal of trouble to control myself. I felt unspeakably happy too, that I had found a friend that could understand. I was silent, and Miss Cardigan looked at me. "Is it all right, noo?" she asked. "Except _me_, �" I said, with my eyes swimming. "Ah, well!" she said. "You've seen the sky all black and covered with the thick clouds � that's like our sins; but, 'I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins.' You know how it is when the wind comes and clears the clouds off, and you can look up through the blue, till it seems as if your eye would win into heaven itself. Keep the sky clear, my darling, so that you can always see up straight to God, with never the fleck of a cloud between. But do you ken what will clear the clouds away?" And I looked up now with a smile and answered, " 'The precious blood of Christ' " � for the two texts had been close together in one of the pages of my little book not long before. Miss Cardigan clapped her hands together softly and laughed. "Ye've got it!" she said. "Ye have gotten the pearl of great price. And where did ye find it, my dear?" "I had a friend, that taught me in a Sunday school, four years ago, �" I said. "Ah, there weren't so many Sunday schools in my day," said Miss Cardigan. "And ye have found, maybe, that this other sort of a school, that ye have gotten to now, isn't helpful altogether? Is it a rough road, my bairn?" "It is my own fault," I said, looking at her gratefully. The tender voice went right into my heart. "Well, noo, ye'll just stop and have tea with me here; and whenever the way is rough, ye'll come over to my flowers and rest yourself. And rest me too; it does me a world o' good to see a young face. So take off your coat, my dear, and let us sit down and be comfortable." I was afraid at first that I could not; I had no liberty to be absent at tea-time. But Miss Cardigan assured me I should be home in good season; the school tea was at seven, and her own was always served at six. So very gladly, with an inexpressible sense of freedom and peace, I took off my coat, and gloves, and followed my kind friend back to the parlour where her fire was burning. For although it was late in April, the day was cool and raw; and the fire one saw nowhere else was delightful in Miss Cardigan's parlour. Every minute of that afternoon was as bright as the fire glow. I sat in the midst of that, on an ottoman, and Miss Cardigan, busy between her two tables, made me very much interested in her story of some distressed families for whom she was working. She asked me very little about my own affairs; nothing that the most delicate good breeding did not warrant; but she found out that my father and mother were at a great distance from me and I almost alone, and she gave me the freedom of her house. I was to come there whenever I could and liked; whenever I wanted to "rest my feet", as she said; especially I might spend as much of every Sunday with her as I could get leave for. And she made this first afternoon so pleasant to me with her gentle beguiling talk, that the permission to come often was like the entrance into a whole world of comfort. She had plenty to talk about; plenty to tell, of the poor people to whom she and others were ministering; of plans and methods to do them good; all which somehow she made exceedingly interesting. There was just a little accent to her words, which made them, in their peculiarity, all the more sweet to me; but she spoke good English; the "noo" which slipped out now and then, with one or two other like words, came only, I found, at times when the fountain of feeling was more full than ordinary, and so flowed over into the disused old channel. And her face was so fresh, rosy, round and sweet, withal strong and sound, that it was a perpetual pleasure to me. As she told her stories of New York needy and suffering, I mentally added my poor people at Magnolia, and began to wonder with myself, was all the world so? Were these two spots but samples of the whole? I got into a brown study, and was waked out of it by Miss Cardigan's "What is it, my dear?" "Ma'am?" I said. "Ye are studying some deep question," she said, smiling. "Maybe it's too big for you." "So it is," said I, sighing. "Is it so everywhere, Miss Cardigan?" "So how, my bairn?" "Is there so much trouble everywhere in the world?" Her face clouded over. "Jesus said, 'The poor ye have always with you, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.' " "But that is what I don't understand about," I said. "_How much_ ought one to do, Miss Cardigan?" There came a ray of infinite brightness over her features; I can hardly describe it; it was warm with love, and bright with pleasure, and � I thought sparkled with a little amusement. "Have you thought upon that?" she said. "Yes," I said, � "very much." "It is a great question!" she said, her face becoming grave again. "I know," I said, "of course one ought to do all one can. But what I want to know is, how much one _can_. How much ought one to spend for such things?" "It's a great question," Miss Cardigan repeated, more gravely than before. "For when the King comes, to take account of His servants, He will want to know what we have done with every penny. Be sure, He will." "Then how can one tell?" said I, hoping earnestly that now I was going to get some help in my troubles. "How can one know? It is very difficult." "I'll no say it's not difficult," said Miss Cardigan, whose thoughts seemed to have gone into the recesses of her own mind. "Dear, it's nigh our tea-time. Let us go in." I followed her, much disappointed, and feeling that if she passed the subject by so, I could not bring it up again. We went through to the inner room; the same from which the glass door opened to the flowers. Here a small table was now spread. This room was cosy. I had hardly seen it before. Low bookcases lined it on every side; and above the bookcases hung maps; maps of the city and of various parts of the world where missionary stations were established. Along with the maps, a few engravings and fine photographs. I remember one of the Colosseum, which I used to study; and a very beautiful engraving of Jerusalem. But the one that fixed my eyes this first evening, perhaps because Miss Cardigan placed me in front of it, was a picture of another sort. It was a good photograph, and had beauty enough besides to hold my eyes. It showed a group of three or four. A boy and girl in front, handsome, careless, and well-to-do, passing along, with wandering eyes. Behind them and disconnected from them by her dress and expression, a tall woman in black robes with a baby on her breast. The hand of the woman was stretched out with a coin which she was about dropping into an iron-bound coffer which stood at the side of the picture. It was "the widow's mite;" and her face, wan, sad, sweet, yet loving and longing, told the story. The two coin were going into the box with all her heart. "You know what it is?" said my hostess. "I see, ma'am," I replied; "it is written under." "That box is the Lord's treasury." "Yes, ma'am," I said, � "I know." "Do you remember how much that woman gave?" "Two mites," � I said. "It was something more than that," said my hostess. "It was more than anybody else gave that day. Don't you recollect? It was _all her living_." I looked at Miss Cardigan, and she looked at me. Then my eyes went back to the picture, and to the sad yet sweet and most loving face of the poor woman there. "Ma'am," said I, "do you think people that are _rich_ ought to give all they have?" "I only know, my Lord was pleased with her," said Miss Cardigan softly; "and I always think I should like to have Him pleased with me too." I was silent, looking at the picture and thinking. "You know what made that poor widow give her two mites?" Miss Cardigan asked presently. "I suppose she wanted to give them," I said. "Ay," said my hostess, turning away, � "she loved the Lord's glory beyond her own comfort. Come, my love, and let us have some tea. She gave all she had, Miss Daisy, and the Lord liked it; do ye think you and me can do less?" "But that is what I do not understand," I said, following Miss Cardigan to the little tea-table, and watching with great comfort the bright unruffled face which promised to be such a help to me. "Now you'll sit down there," said my hostess, "where you can see my flowers while I can see you. It's poor work eating, if we cannot look at something or hear something at the same time; and maybe we'll do the two things. And ye'll have a bit of honey � here it is. And Lotty will bring us up a bit of hot toast � or is the bread better, my dear? Now ye're at home; and maybe you'll come over and drink tea with me whenever you can run away from over there. I'll have Lotty set a place for you. And then, when ye think of the empty place, you will know you had better come over and fill it. See � you could bring your study book and study here in this quiet little corner by the flowers." I gave my very glad thanks. I knew I could often do this. "And now for the 'not understanding,' " said Miss Cardigan, when tea was half over. "How was it, my dear?" "I have been puzzled," I said, "about giving � how much one ought to give, and how much one ought to spend � I mean, for oneself." "Well," said Miss Cardigan brightly, "we have fixed that. The poor woman gave _all her living_." "But one must spend some money for oneself," I said. "One must have bonnets and cloaks and dresses." "And houses, and books, and pictures," said Miss Cardigan, looking around her. "My lamb, let us go to the Bible again. That says, 'whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' So I suppose we must buy cloaks and bonnets on the same principle." I turned this over in mind. Had I done this, when I was choosing my chinchilla cap and grey cloak? A little ray of infinite brightness began to steal in upon their quiet colours and despised forms. "If the rich are to give their all, as well as the poor, it doesn't say � mind you � that they are to give it all to the hungry, or all to the destitute; but only, they are to give it all _to Christ_. Then, he will tell them what to do with it; do ye understand, my dear?" Miss Cardigan's eye was watching me, not more kindly than keen. A wise and clear grey eye it was. "But isn't it difficult to know sometimes what to do?" I said. "I have been so puzzled to know about dresses. Mamma is away, and I had to decide." "It's no very difficult," said Miss Cardigan, � "if once ye set your face in the right _airth_ � as we speak. My dear, there's a great many sorts of dresses and bonnets and things; and I'd always buy just that bonnet and that gown, in which I thought I could do most work for my Master; and that wouldn't be the same sort of bonnet for you and for me," she said with a merry smile. "Now ye'll have another cup of tea, and ye'll tell me if my tea's good." It was wonderfully good to me. I felt like a plant dried up for want of water, suddenly set in a spring shower. Refreshment was all around me, without and within. The faces of the flowers looked at me through the glass, and the sweet breath of them came from the open door. The room where I was sitting pleased me mightily, in its comfortable and pretty simplicity; and I had found a friend, even better than my old Maria and Darry at Magnolia. It was not very long before I told all about these to my new counsellor. For the friendship between us ripened and grew. I often found a chance to fill my place at the dear little tea-table. Sundays I could always be there; and I went there straight from afternoon church, and rested among Miss Cardigan's books and in her sweet society and in the happy freedom and rest of her house, with an intensity of enjoyment which words can but feebly tell. So in time I came to tell her all my troubles and the perplexities which had filled me; I was willing to talk to Miss Cardigan about things that I would have breathed to no other ear upon earth. She was so removed from all the sphere of my past or present life, so utterly disconnected from all the persons and things with which I had had to do, it was like telling about them to a being of another planet. Yet she was not so removed but that her sympathies and her judgment could be living and full grown for my help; all ready to take hold of the facts and to enter into the circumstances, and to give me precious comfort and counsel. Miss Cardigan and I came to be very dear to each other. All this took time. Nobody noticed at first, or seemed to notice, my visits to the "house with the flowers," as the girls called it. I believe, in my plain dress, I was not thought of importance enough to be watched. I went and came very comfortably; and the weeks that remained before the summer vacation slipped away ill quiet order. Just before the vacation, my aunt came home from Europe. With her came the end of my obscurity. She brought me, from my mother, a great supply of all sorts of pretty French dresses, hats, gloves, and varieties. � Chosen by my mother; � as pretty and elegant, and simple too, as they could be; but once putting them on, I could never be unnoticed by my schoolmates any more. I knew it, with a certain feeling that was not displeasure. Was it pride? Was it anything more than my pleasure in all pretty things? I thought it was something more. And I determined that I would not put on any of them till school was broken up. If it _was_ pride, I was ashamed of it. But besides French dresses, my aunt brought me a better thing; a promise from my father. "He said I was to tell you, Daisy my dear, � and I hope you will be a good child and take it as you ought, � but dear me! how she is growing," said Mrs. Gary, turning to Mme. Ricard; "I cannot talk about Daisy as a 'child' much longer. She's tall." "Not too tall," said Madame. "No, but she is going to be tall. She has a right; her mother is tall, and her father. Daisy, my dear, I do believe you are going to look like your mother. You'll be very handsome if you do. And yet, you look different �" "Miss Randolph will not shame anybody belonging to her," said Mme. Ricard, graciously. "Well, I suppose not," said my aunt. "I was going to tell you what your father said, Daisy. He said � you know it takes a long while to get to China and back, and if it does him good he will stay a little while there; and then there's the return voyage, and there may be delays; so altogether it was impossible to say exactly how long he and your mother will be gone. I mean, it was impossible to know certainly that they would be able to come home by next summer; indeed I doubt if your father ever does come home." I waited, in silence. "So altogether," my aunt went on, turning for a moment to Mme. Ricard, "there was a doubt about it; and your father said, he charged me to tell Daisy, that if she will make herself contented � that is, supposing they cannot come home next year, you know, � if she will make herself happy and be patient and bear one or two years more, and stay at school and do the best she can, then, the year after next or the next year, he will send for you, your father says, unless they come home themselves, � they will send, for you; and then, your father says, he will give you any request you like to make of him. Ask anything you can think of, that you would like best, and he will do it or get it, whatever it is. He didn't say like king Herod, 'to the half of his kingdom,' but I suppose he meant that. And meanwhile, you know you have a guardian now, Daisy, and there is no use for me in your affairs; and having conveyed to you your mother's gifts and your father's promises, I suppose there is nothing further for me to do." I was silent yet, thinking. Two years more would be a dear purchase of any pleasure that might come after. Two years! And four were gone already. It seemed impossible to wait or to bear it. I heard no more of what my aunt was saying, till she turned to me again and asked, � "Where are you going to pass the vacation?" I did not know, for Mrs. Sandford was obliged to be with her sister still, so that I could not go to Melbourne. "Well, if your new guardian thinks well of it � you can consult him if it is necessary � and if he does not object, you can be with me if you like. Preston has leave of absence this summer, I believe; and he will be with us." It was in effect arranged so. My aunt took me about the country from one watering place to another; from Saratoga to the White Mountains; and Preston's being with us made it a gay time. Preston had been for two years at West Point; he was grown and improved everybody said; but to me he was just the same. If anything, _not_ improved; the old grace and graciousness of his manner was edged with an occasional hardness or abruptness which did not use to belong to him; and which I did not understand. There seemed to be a latent cause of irritation somewhere. However, my summer went off smoothly enough. September brought me back to Mme. Ricard's, and in view of Miss Cardigan's late roses and budding chrysanthemums. I was not sorry. I had set my heart on doing as much as could be done in these next two years, if two they must be. I was the first in my room; but before the end of the day they all came pouring in; the two older and the two younger girls. "Here's somebody already," exclaimed Miss Macy as she saw me. "Why, Daisy Randolph! is it possible that's you? Is it Daisy Randolph? what have you done to yourself? How you _have_ improved!" "She is very much improved," said Miss Bentley more soberly. "She has been learning the fashions," said Miss Lansing, her bright eyes dancing as good-humouredly as ever. "Daisy, now when your hair gets long you'll look quite nice. That frock is made very well." "She is changed �" said Miss St. Clair, with a look I could not quite make out. "No," I said, � "I hope I am not changed." "Your dress is," said St. Clair. I thought of Dr. Sandford's "_L'habit c'est l'homme_." "My mother had this dress made," I said; "and I ordered the other one; that is all the difference." "You're on the right side of the difference, then," said Miss St. Clair. "Has your mother come back, Daisy?" Miss Lansing asked. "Not yet. She sent me this from Paris." "It's very pretty!" she said; with, I saw, an increase of admiration; but St. Clair gave me another strange look. "How much prettier Paris things are than American!" Lansing went on. "I wish I could have all my dresses from Paris. Why, Daisy, you've grown handsome." "Nonsense!" said Miss Macy; "she always was, only you didn't see it." "Style is more than a face," remarked Miss St. Clair cavalierly. Somehow I felt that this little lady was not in a good mood towards me. I boded mischief; for being nearly of an age, we were together in most of our classes, studied the same things and recited at the same times. There was an opportunity for clashing. They soon ran off, all four, to see their friends and acquaintances and learn the news of the school. I was left alone, making my arrangement of clothes and things in my drawer and my corner of the closet; and I found that some disturbance, in those few moments, had quite disarranged the thoughts in my heart. They were peaceful enough before. There was some confusion now. I could not at first tell what was uppermost; only that St. Clair's words were those that most returned to me. "She has changed. "_Had_ I changed? or was I going to change? was I going to enter the lists of fashion with my young companions, and try who would win the race? No doubt my mother could dress me better than almost any of their mothers could dress them; what then? would this be a triumph? or was this the sort of name and notoriety that became and befitted a servant of Jesus? I could not help my dresses being pretty; no, but I could help making much display of them. I could wear my own school plaid when the weather grew cooler; and one or two others of my wardrobe were all I need show. "Style is more than a face." No doubt. What _then?_ Did I want style and a face too? Was I wishing to confound St. Clair? Was I escaping already from that bond and mark of a Christian, � "The world knoweth us not"? I was startled and afraid. I fell down on my knees by the side of my bed, and tried to look at the matter as God looked at it. And the Daisy I thought He would be pleased with, was one who ran no race for worldly supremacy. I resolved she should not. The praise of God, I thought, was far better than the praise of men. My mind was quite made up when I rose from my knees; but I looked forward to a less quiet school term than the last had been. Something told me that the rest of the girls would take me up now, for good and for evil. My Paris dress set me in a new position, no longer beneath their notice. I was an object of attention. Even that first evening I felt the difference. "Daisy, when is your mother coming home?" � "Oh, she is gone to China; Daisy's mother is gone to China!" � "She'll bring you lots of queer things, won't she?" � "What a sweet dress!" � "_That_ didn't come from China?" � "Daisy, who's head in mathematics, you or St. Clair? I hope you will get before her!" "Why?" I ventured to ask. "Oh, you're the best of the two; everybody knows that. But St. Clair is smart, isn't she?" "She thinks she is," answered another speaker; "she believes she's at the tip top of creation; but she never had such a pretty dress on as that in her days; and she knows it and she don't like it. It's real fun to see St. Clair beat! she thinks she is so much better than other girls, and she has such a way of twisting that upper lip of hers. Do you know how St. Clair twists her upper lip? Look! � she's doing it now." "She's handsome though, aint she?" said Miss Macy. "She'll be beautiful." "No," said Mlle. Genevieve; "not that. Never that. She will be handsome; but beauty is a thing of the soul. She will not be beautiful. Daisy, are you going to work hard this year?" "Yes, mademoiselle." "I believe you," she said, taking my face between her two hands and kissing it. "Who ever saw Mlle. Genevieve do that before!" said Miss Macy, as the other left us. "She is not apt to like the scholars." I knew she had always liked me. But everybody had always liked me, I reflected; this time at school was the first of my knowing anything different. And in this there now came a change. Since my wearing and using the Paris things sent me by my mother, which I dared not fail to use and wear, I noticed that my company was more sought in the school. Also my words were deferred to, in a way they had not been before. I found, and it was lot an unpleasant thing, that I had grown to be a person of consequence. Even with the French and English teachers; I observed that they treated me with more consideration. And so, I reflected within myself again over Dr. Sandford's observation, "_L'habit, c'est l'homme_." Of course, it was a consideration given to my clothes, a consideration also to be given up if I did not wear such clothes. I saw all that. The world _knew me_, just for the moment. Well, the smooth way was very pleasant. I had it with everybody for a time. My little room-mate and classmate St. Clair was perhaps the only exception to the general rule. I never felt that she liked me much. She let me alone, however; until one unlucky day � I do not mean to call it unlucky, either � when we had, as usual, compositions to write, and the theme given out was "Ruins." It was a delightful theme to me. I did not always enjoy writing compositions; this one gave me permission to roam in thoughts and imaginations that I liked. I went back to my old Egyptian studies at Magnolia, and wrote my composition about "Karnak." The subject was full in my memory; I had gone over and over and all through it; I had measured the enormous pillars and great gateways, and studied the sculptures on the walls, and paced up and down the great avenue of sphinxes. Sethos, and Amunoph and Rameses, the second and third, were all known and familiar to me; and I knew just where Shishak had recorded his triumphs over the land of Judea. I wrote my composition with the greatest delight. The only danger was that I might make it too long. One evening I was using the last of the light, writing in the window recess of the school parlour, when I felt a hand laid on my shoulders. "You are so hard at work!" said the voice of Mlle. Genevieve. "Yes, mademoiselle, I like it." "Have you got all the books and all that you want?" "Books, mademoiselle?" � I said, wondering. "Yes; have you got all you want?" "I have not got any books," I said; "there are none that I want in the school library." "Have you never been in Madame's library?" "No, mademoiselle." "Come!" I jumped up and followed her, up and down stairs and through halls and turnings, till she brought me into a pretty room lined with books from floor to ceiling. Nobody was there. Mademoiselle lit the gas with great energy, and then turned to me, her great black eyes shining. "Now what do you want, _mon enfant?_ here is everything." "Is there anything about Egypt?" "Egypt! Are you in Egypt? � See here � look, here is Denon � here is Laborde; here is two or three more. Do you like that? Ah! I see by the way your grey eyes grow big. � Now sit down, and do what you like. Nobody will disturb you. You can come here every evening for the hour before tea." Mademoiselle scarce staid for my thanks, and left me alone. I had not seen either Laborde or Denon in my grandfather's library at Magnolia; they were after his time. The engravings and illustrations also had not been very many or very fine in his collection of travellers' books. It was the greatest joy to me to see some of those things in Mme. Ricard's library, that I had read and dreamed about so long in my head. It was adding eyesight to hearsay. I found a good deal too that I wanted to read, in these later authorities. Evening after evening I was in Madame's library, lost among the halls of the old Egyptian conquerors. The interest and delight of my work quite filled me, so that the fate of my composition hardly came into my thoughts, or the fact that other people were writing compositions too. And when it was done, I was simply very sorry that it was done. I had not written it for honour or for duty, but for love. I suppose that was the reason why it succeeded. I remember I was anything but satisfied with it myself, as I was reading it aloud for the benefit of my judges. For it was a day of prize compositions; and before the whole school and even some visitors, the writings of the girls were given aloud, each by its author. I thought, as I read mine, how poor it was, and how magnificent my subject demanded that it should be. Under the shade of the great columns, before those fine old sphinxes, my words and myself seemed very small. I sat down in my place again, glad that the reading was over. But there was a little buzz; then a dead expectant silence; then Mme. Ricard arose. My composition had been the last one. I looked up, with the rest, to hear the award that she would speak; and was at first very much confounded to hear my own name called. "Miss Randolph �" It did not occur to me what it was spoken for; I sat still a moment in a maze. Mme. Ricard stood waiting; all the room was in a hush. "Don't you hear yourself called?" said a voice behind me. "Why don't you go?" I looked round at Miss Macy, who was my adviser, then doubtfully I looked away from her and caught the eyes of Mlle. Genevieve. She nodded and beckoned me to come forward. I did it hastily then, and found myself curtseying in front of the platform where stood Madame. "The prize is yours, Miss Randolph," she said graciously. "Your paper is approved by all the judges." "Quite artistic," � I heard a gentleman say at her elbow. "And it shows an amount of thorough study and perfect preparation, which I can but hold up as a model to all my young ladies. You deserve this, my dear." I was confounded; and a low curtsey was only a natural relief to my feelings. But Madame unhappily took it otherwise. "This is yours," she said, putting into my hands an elegant little bronze standish; � "and if I had another prize to bestow for grace of good manners, I am sure I would have the pleasure of giving you that too." I bent again before Madame, and got back to my seat as I could. The great business of the day was over, and we soon scattered to our rooms. And I had not been in mine five minutes before the penalties of being distinguished began to come upon me. "Well, Daisy! �" said Miss Lansing � "you've got it. How pretty! Isn't it, Macy?" "It isn't a bit prettier than it ought to be, for a prize in such a school," said Miss Macy. "It will do." "I've seen handsomer prizes," said Miss Bentley. "But you've got it, more ways than one, Daisy," Miss Lansing went on. "I declare! Aren't you a distinguished young lady! Madame, too! Why, we all used to think we behaved pretty well _before company_, � didn't we, St. Clair?" "I hate favour and favouritism!" said that young lady, her upper lip taking the peculiar turn to which my attention had once been called. "Madame likes whatever is French." "But Randolph is not French, are you, Randolph ?" said Black- eyes, who was good-natured through everything. "Madame is not French herself," said Miss Bentley. "I hate everything at school!" St. Clair went on. "It is too bad," said her friend. "Do you know, Daisy, St. Clair always has the prize for compositions. What made you go and write that long stuff about Rameses? the people didn't understand it, and so they thought it was fine." "I am sure there was a great deal finer writing in Faustina's composition," said Miss Bentley. I knew very well that Miss St. Clair had been accustomed to win this half yearly prize for good writing. I had expected nothing but that she would win it this time. I had counted neither o n my own success nor on the displeasure it would raise. I took my hat and went over to my dear Miss Cardigan; hoping that ill-humour would have worked itself out by bedtime. But I was mistaken. St. Clair and I had been pretty near each other in our classes, though once or twice lately I had got an advantage over her; but we had kept on terms of cool social distance until now. Now the spirit of rivalry was awake. I think it began to stir at my Paris dresses and things; Karnak and Mme. Ricard finished the mischief. On my first coming to school I had been tempted, in my horror at the utter want of privacy, to go to bed without prayer; waiting till the rest were all laid down and asleep and the lights out, and then slipping out of bed with great care not to make a noise, and watching that no whisper of my lips should be loud enough to disturb anybody's slumbers. But I was sure, after a while, that this was a cowardly way of doing; and I could not bear the words, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father." I determined in the vacation that I would do so no more, cost what it might the contrary. It cost a tremendous struggle. I think, in all my life I have done few harder things, than it was to me then to kneel down by the side of my bed in full blaze of the gaslights and with four curious pairs of eyes around to look on; to say nothing of the four busy tongues wagging about nothing all the time. I remember what a hush fell upon them the first night; while beyond the posture of prayer I could do little. Only unformed or half formed thoughts and petitions struggled in my mind, through a crowd of jostling regrets and wishes and confusions, in which I could hardly distinguish anything. But no explosion followed, of either ridicule or amusement, and I had been suffered from that night to do as I would, not certainly always in silence, but quite unmolested. I had carried over my standish to Miss Cardigan to ask her to take care of it for me; I had no place to keep it. But Miss Cardigan was not satisfied to see the prize; she wanted to hear the essay read; and was altogether so elated that a little undue elation perhaps crept into my own heart. It was not a good preparation for what was coming. I went home in good time. In the hall, however, Mlle. Genevieve seized upon me; she had several things to say, and before I got up stairs to my room all the rest of its inmates were in bed. I hoped they were asleep. I heard no sound while I was undressing, nor while I knelt, as usual now, by my bedside. But as I rose from my knees I was startled by a sort of grunt that came from St. Clair's corner. "Humph! � Dear me! We're so good, � Grace and Devotion, � Christian grace, too!" "Hold your tongue, St. Clair," said Miss Macy, but not in a way, I thought, to check her; if she could have been checked. "But it's too bad, Macy," said the girl. "We're all so rough, you know. We don't know how to behave ourselves; we can't make curtsies; our mothers never taught us anything, � and dancing masters are no good. We ought to go to Egypt. There isn't anything so truly dignified as a pyramid. There is a great deal of _à plomb_ there!" "Who talked about _à plomb_?" said Miss Bentley. "You have enough of that, at any rate, Faustina," said Lansing. "Mrs. St. Clair's child ought to have that," said Miss Macy. "Ah, but it isn't Christian grace, after all," persisted Faustina. "You want a cross at the top of a pyramid to make it perfect." "Hush, Faustina!" said Miss Macy. "It's fair," said Miss Bentley. "You had better not talk about Christian grace, girls. That isn't a matter of opinion." "Oh, isn't it!" cried St. Clair, half rising up in her bed. "What is it, then?" Nobody answered. "I say! � Macy, what _is_ Christian grace � if you know? If you _don't_ know, I'll put you in the way to find out." "How shall I find out?" "Will you do it, if I show it to you?" "Yes." "Ask Randolph. That's the first step. Ask her, � yes! just ask her, if you want to know. I wish Mme. Ricard was here to hear the answer." "Nonsense!" said Macy. "Ask her! You said you would. Now ask her." "What _is_ Christian grace, Daisy?" said Miss Bentley. I heard, but I would not answer. I hoped the storm would blow over, after a puff or two. But Black-eyes, without any ill- nature, I think, which was not in her, had got into the gale. She slipped out of bed and came to my side, putting her hand on my shoulder and bringing her laughing mouth down near my ear. A very angry impulse moved me before she spoke. "Daisy!" � she said, laughing, in a loud whisper, � "come, wake up! You're not asleep, you know. Wake up and tell us; � everybody knows _you_ know; � what _is_ Christian grace? Daisy! �" She shook me a little. "If you knew, you would not ask me," � I said in great displeasure. But a delighted shout from all my room-mates answered this unlucky speech, which I had been too excited to make logical. "Capital!" cried St. Clair. "That's just it � we _don't_ know; and we only want to find out whether she a does. Make her tell, Lansing � prick a little pin into her � that will bring it out." I was struggling between anger and sorrow, feeling very hurt, and at the same time determined not to cry. I kept absolutely still, fighting the fight of silence with myself. Then Lansing, in a fit of thoughtless mischief, finding her shakes and questions vain, actually put in practice St. Clair's suggestion and attacked me with a pin from the dressing table. The first prick of it overthrew the last remnant of my patience. "Miss Lansing!" � I exclaimed, rousing up in bed and confronting her. They all shouted again. "Now we'll have it!" cried St. Clair. "Keep cool, Black-eyes; let's hear � we'll have an exposition now. Theme, Christian grace." Ah, there rushed through my heart with her words a remembrance of other words � a fluttering vision of something "gentle and easy to be entreated" � "first pure, then peaceable" � "gentleness, goodness, meekness." � But the grip of passion held them all down or kept them all back. After St. Clair's first burst, the girls were still and waited for what I would say. I was facing Miss Lansing, who had taken her hand from my shoulder. "Are you not ashamed of yourself?" I said; and I remember I thought how my mother would have spoken to them. "Miss Lansing's good nature" � I went on slowly, � "Miss Macy's kindness � Miss Bentley's independence � and Miss St. Clair's good breeding!" � "_And_ Miss Randolph's religion!" echoed the last-named, with a quiet distinctness which went into my heart. "What about my independence?" said Miss Bentley. "Now we've got enough, girls, � lie down and go to sleep," said Miss Macy. "There's quite enough of this. There was too much before we began. Stop where you are." They did not stop, however, without a good deal of noisy chaffing and arguing, none of which I heard. Only the words, "Miss Randolph's religion," rung in my ears. I lay down with them lying like lead on my heart. I went to sleep under them. I woke up early, while all the rest were asleep, and began to study them. "Miss Randolph's religion!" If it had been only that, only mine. But the religion I professed was the religion of Christ; the name I was called by was His name; the thing I had brought into discredit was His truth. I hope in all my life I may never know again the heart-pangs that this thought cost me. I studied how to undo the mischief I had done. I could find no way. I had seemed to prove my religion an unsteady, superficial thing; the evidence I had given I could not withdraw; it must stand. I lay thinking, with the heartache, until the rousing bell rang, and the sleepers began to stir from their slumbers. I got up and began, to dress with the rest. "What was it all that happened last night?" said Miss Lansing. "Advancement in knowledge," � said. Miss St. Clair. "Now, girls � don't begin again," said Miss Macy. "Knowledge is a good thing," said the other, with pins in her mouth. "I intend to take every opportunity that offers of increasing mine; especially I mean to study Egyptians and Christians. I haven't any Christians among my own family or acquaintance � so you see, naturally, Macy, I am curious; and when a good specimen offers �" "I am not a good specimen," I said. "People are not good judges of themselves, it is said," the girl went on. "Everybody considers Miss Randolph a sample of what that article ought to be." "You don't use the word right," remarked Miss Macy. "A _sample_ is taken from what is, � not from what ought to be." "I don't care," was St. Clair's reply. "I did not behave like a Christian last night," I forced myself to say. "I was impatient." "Like an impatient Christian then, I suppose," said St. Clair. I felt myself getting impatient again, with all my sorrow and humiliation of heart. And yet more humbled at the consciousness, I hastened to get out of the room. It was a miserable day, that day of my first school triumphs, and so were several more that followed. I was very busy; I had no time for recollection and prayer; I was in the midst of gratulations and plaudits from my companions and the teachers; and I missed, Oh how I missed, the praise of God. I felt like a traitor. In the heat of the fight, I had let my colours come to the ground. I had dishonoured my Captain. Some would say it was a little thing; but I felt then and I know now, there are no little things; I knew I had done harm; how much, it was utterly beyond my reach to know. As soon as I could I seized an opportunity to get to Miss Cardigan. I found her among her flowers, nipping off here a leaf and there a flower that had passed its time; so busy, that for a few moments she did not see that I was different from usual. Then came the question which I had been looking for. "Daisy, you are not right to-day?" "I haven't been right since I got that standish," I burst forth. Miss Cardigan looked at me again, and then did what I had not expected; she took my head between her two hands and kissed me. Not loosing her hold, she looked into my face. "What is it, my pet?" "Miss Cardigan," I said, "can any one be a Christian and yet � yet �" "Do something unworthy a Christian?" she said. "I wot well, they can! But then, they are weak Christians." I knew that before. But somehow, hearing her say it brought the shame and the sorrow more fresh to the surface. The tears came. Miss Cardigan pulled me into the next room and sat down, drawing me into her arms; and I wept there with her arms about me. "What then, Daisy?" she asked at length, as if the suspense pained her. "I acted so, Miss Cardigan," I said; and I told her about it. "So the devil has found a weak spot in your armour," she said. "You must guard it well, Daisy." "How can I?" "How can you? Keep your shield before it, my bairn. What is your shield for? The Lord has given you a great strong shield, big enough to cover you from head to foot, if your hands know how to manage it." "What is that, Miss Cardigan?" "The shield of _faith_, dear. Only believe. According to your faith be it unto you." "Believe what?" I asked, lifting my head at last. "Believe that if you are a weak little soldier, your Captain knows all about it; and any fight that you go into for his sake, he will bear you through. I don't care what. Any fight, Daisy." "But I got impatient," I said, "at the girls' way of talking." "And perhaps you were a wee bit set up in your heart because you had got the prize of the day." "_Proud?_" said I. "Don't it look like it? Even proud of being a Christian, mayhap." "Could I!" � I said. "Was I?" "It wouldn't be the first time one with as little cause had got puffed up a bit. But heavenly charity 'is not puffed up.' " "I know that," � I said; and my tears started afresh. "How shall I help it in future?" I asked after a while, during which my friend had been silent. "Help it?" she said cheerfully. "You can't help it, � but Jesus can." "But my impatience, and � my pride," I said, very downcast. " 'Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; when I fall I shall arise.' But there is no need you should fall, Daisy. Remember, 'The Lord is able to make him stand' � may be said of every one of the Lord's people." "But will He keep me from impatience, and take pride out of my heart? Why, I did not know it was there, Miss Cardigan." "Did He say, 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will do it?' And when He has written 'Whatsoever,' are you going to write it over and put 'anything not too hard'? Neither you nor me, Daisy!" " '_Whatsoever_' � Miss Cardigan?" I said slowly. "He said so. Are you going to write it over again?" "No," I said. "But then, may one have _anything_ one asks for?" "Anything in the world � if it is not contrary to His will � provided we ask in faith, nothing doubting. 'For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.' " "But how can we _know_ what is according to His will?" "_This_ is, at any rate," said Miss Cardigan; "for He has commanded us to be holy as He is holy." "But � other things?" I said. "How can one for everything 'in faith, nothing wavering'? How can one be sure?" "Only just this one way, Daisy my dear," Miss Cardigan answered; � and I remember to this day the accent of her native land which touched every word. "If ye're wholly the Lord's � wholly, mind, � ye'll not like aught but what the Lord likes; ye'll know what to ask for, and ye'll know the Lord will give it to you; � that is, if ye want it _enough_. But a 'double-minded man is unstable in all his ways;' and his prayers can't hit the mark, no more than a gun that's twisted when it's going off." "Then," � I began and stopped, looking at her with my eyes full of tears. "Ay!" she said, � "just so. There's no need that you nor me should be under the power of the evil one, for we're _free_. The Lord's words aren't too good to be true; every one of 'em is as high as heaven; and there isn't a sin nor an enemy but you and I may be safe from, if we trust the Lord." I do not remember any more of the conversation. I only know that the sun rose on my difficulties, and the shadows melted away. I had a happy evening with my dear old friend, and went home quite heart-whole. CHAPTER XIII. GREY COATS. I went back to school comforted. I had got strength to face all that might be coming in the future. And life has been a different thing to me ever since. Paul's words, "I can do all things through Christ," � I have learned are not his words any more than mine. From that time I grew more and more popular in the school. I cannot tell why; but, popularity is a thing that grows upon its own growth. It was only a little while before my companions almost all made a pet of me. It is humbling to know that this effect was hastened by some of the French dresses my mother had sent me, and which convenience obliged me to wear. They were extremely pretty; the girls came round me to know where I got them, and talked about who I was; and "Daisy Randolph," was the name most favoured by their lips from that time until school closed. � With the exception, I must add, of my four room-mates. Miss St. Clair held herself entirely aloof from me, and the others chose her party rather than mine. St. Clair never lost, I think, any good chance or omitted any fair scheme to provoke me; but all she could do had lost its power. I tried to soften her; but Faustina was a rock to my advances. I knew I had done irreparable wrong that evening; the thought of it was almost the only trouble I had during those months. An old trouble was brought suddenly home to me one day. I was told a person wanted to speak to me in the lower hall. I ran down, and found Margaret. She was in the cloak and dress I had bought for her; looking at first very gleeful, and then very business-like, as she brought out from under her cloak a bit of paper folded with something in it. "What is this?" I said, finding a roll of bills. "It's my wages, Miss Daisy. I only kept out two dollars, ma'am � I wanted a pair of shoes so bad � and I couldn't be let go about the house in them old shoes with holes in 'em; there was holes in both of 'em, Miss Daisy." "But your wages, Margaret?" I said; "I have nothing to do with your wages." "Yes, Miss Daisy � they belongs to master, and I allowed to bring 'em to you. They's all there so fur. It's all right." I felt the hot shame mounting to my face. I put the money back in Margaret's hand, and hurriedly told her to keep it; we were not at Magnolia; she might do what she liked with the money; it was her own earnings. I shall never forget the girl's confounded look, and then her grin of brilliant pleasure. I could have burst into tears as I went up the stairs, thinking of others at home. Yet the question came too, would my father like what I had been doing? He held the girl to be his property and her earnings his earnings. Had I been giving Margaret a lesson in rebellion, and preparing her to claim her rights at some future day? Perhaps. And I made up my mind that I did not care. Live upon stolen money I would not, � any more than I could help. But was I not living on it all the while? The old subject brought back! I worried over it all the rest of the day, with many a look forward and back. As the time of the vacation drew near, I looked hard for news of my father and mother, or tidings of their coming home. There were none. Indeed, I got no letters at all. That was nothing to cause uneasiness; the intervals were often long between one packet of letters and the next; but now I wanted to hear of some change, now that the school year was ended. It had been a good year to me. In that little world I had met and faced some of the hardest temptations of the great world; they could never be new to me again; and I had learned both my weakness and my strength. No summons to happiness reached me that year. My vacation was spent again with my aunt Gary, and without Preston. September saw me quietly settled at my studies for another school year; to be gone through with what patience I might. That school year had nothing to chronicle. I was very busy, very popular, kindly treated by my teachers, and happy in a smooth course of life. Faustina St. Clair had been removed from the school; to some other I believe; and with her went all my causes of annoyance. The year rolled round, my father and mother in China or on the high seas; and my sixteenth summer opened upon me. A day or two before the close of school, I was called to the parlour to see a lady. Not my aunt; it was Mrs. Sandford; and the doctor was with her. I had not seen Mrs. Sandford, I must explain, for nearly a year; she had been away in another part of the country, far from New York. "Why, Daisy! � is this Daisy?" she exclaimed. "Is it not?" I asked. "Not the old Daisy. You are so grown, my dear! � so � That's right, Grant; let us have a little light to see each other by." "It is Miss Randolph �" said the doctor, after he had drawn up the window shade. "Like her mother! Isn't she? and yet, not like �" "Not at all like." "She is, though, Grant; you are mistaken; she is like her mother; though as I said, she isn't. I never saw anybody so improved. My dear, I shall tell all my friends to send their daughters to Mme. Ricard." "Dr. Sandford," said I, "Mme. Ricard does not like to have the sun shine into this room." "It's Daisy too," said the doctor, smiling, as he drew clown the shade again. "Don't you like it, Miss Daisy?" "Yes, of course," I said; "but she does not." "It is not at all a matter of course," said he; "except as you are Daisy. Some people, as you have just told me, are afraid of the sun." "Oh, that is only for the carpets," I said. Dr. Sandford gave me a good look, like one of his looks of old times, that carried me right back somehow to Juanita's cottage. "How do you do, Daisy?" "A little pale," said Mrs. Sandford. "Let her speak for herself." I said I did not know I was pale. "Did you know you had headache a good deal of the time?" "Yes, Dr. Sandford, I knew that. It is not very bad." "Does not hinder you from going on with study?" "Oh no, never." "You have a good deal of time for study at night, too, do you not? � after the lights are out?" "At night? how did you know that? But it is not always _study_." "No. You consume also a good deal of beef and mutton, now-a- days? you prefer substantials in food as in everything else?" I looked at my guardian, very much surprised that he should see all this in my face, and with a little of my childish fascination about those steady blue eyes. I could not deny that in these days I scarcely lived by eating. But in the eagerness and pleasure of my pursuits I had not missed it, and amid my many busy and anxious thoughts I had not cared about it. "That will do," said the doctor. "Daisy, have you heard lately from your father or mother?" My breath came short, as I said no. "Nor have I. Failing orders from them, you are bound to respect mine; and I order you change of air, and to go wherever Mrs. Sandford proposes to take you." "Not before school closes, Dr. Sandford?" "Do you care about that?" "My dear child," said Mrs. Sandford, "we are going to West Point � and we want to take you with us. I know you will enjoy it, my dear; and I shall be delighted to have you. But we want to go next week." "Do you care, Daisy?" Dr. Sandford repeated. I had to consider. One week more, and the examination would be over and the school term ended. I was ready for the examination; I expected to keep my standing, which was very high; by going away now I should lose that, and miss some distinction. So at least I thought. I found that several things were at work in my heart that I had not known were there. After a minute I told Mrs. Sandford I would go with her when she pleased. "You have made up your mind that you do not care about staying to the end here?" said the doctor. "Dr. Sandford," I said, "I believe I _do_ care; but not about anything worth while." He took both my hands, standing before me, and looked at me, I thought, as if I were the old little child again. "A course of fresh air," he said, "will do you more good than a course of any other thing just now. And we may find 'wonderful things' at West Point, Daisy." "I expect you will enjoy it, Daisy," Mrs. Sandford repeated. There was no fear. I knew I should see Preston at any rate; and I had been among brick walls for many months. I winced a little at thought of missing all I had counted upon at the close of term; but it was mainly pride that winced, so it was no matter. We left the city three or four days later. It was a June day � can I ever forget it? What a brilliance of remembrance comes over me now! The bustle of the close schoolrooms, the heat and dust of the sunny city streets, were all left behind in an hour; and New York was nowhere! The waves of the river sparkled under a summer breeze; the wall of the palisades stretched along, like the barriers of fairyland; so they seemed to me; only the barrier was open and I was about to enter. So till their grey and green ramparts were passed, and the broader reaches of the river beyond, and as evening began to draw in we came to higher shores and a narrower channel, and were threading our way among the lights and shadows of opposing headlands and hilltops. It grew but more fresh and fair as the sun got lower. Then, in a place where the river seemed to come to an end, the _Pipe of Peace_ drew close, in under the western shore, to a landing. Buildings of grey stone clustered and looked over the bank. Close under the bank's green fringes a little boat-house and large clean wooden pier received us; from the landing a road went steeply sloping up. I see it all now in the colours which clothed it then. I think I entered fairyland when I touched foot to shore. Even down at the landing, everything was clean and fresh and in order. The green branches of that thick fringe which reached to the top of the bank had no dust on them; the rocks were parti-coloured with lichens; the river was bright, flowing and rippling past; the _Pipe of Peace_ had pushed off and sped on, and in another minute or two was turning the point, and then � out of sight. Stillness seemed to fill the woods and the air as the beat of her paddles was lost. I breathed stillness. New York was fifty miles away, physically and morally at the antipodes. I find it hard to write without epithets. As I said I was in fairyland; and how shall one describe fairyland? Dr. Sandford broke upon my reverie by putting me into the omnibus. But the omnibus quite belonged to fairyland too; it did not go rattling and jolting, but stole quietly up the long hill; letting me enjoy a view of the river and the hills of the opposite shore, coloured as they were by the setting sun, and crisp and sharp in the cool June air. Then a great round- topped building came in place of my view; the road took a turn behind it. "What is that?" I asked the doctor. "I am sorry, Daisy, I don't know. I am quite as ignorant as yourself." "That is the riding-hall," I heard somebody say. One omnibus full had gone up before us; and there, were only two or three people in ours besides our own party. I looked round, and saw that the information had been given by a young man in a sort of uniform; he was all in grey, with large round gilt buttons on his coat, and a soldier's cap. The words had been spoken in a civil tone, that tempted me on. "Thank you!" I said. "The riding-hall! � who rides in it?" "We do," he said, and then smiled, � "the cadets." It was a frank smile and a pleasant face and utterly the look of a gentleman. So, though I saw that he was very much amused, either at himself or me, I went on � "And those other buildings ?" "Those are the stables." I wondered at the neat, beautiful order of the place. Then, the omnibus slowly mounting the hill, the riding-hall and stables were lost to sight. Another building, of more pretension, appeared on our left hand, on the brow of the ascent; our road turned the corner round this building, and beneath a grove of young trees the gothic buttresses and windows of grey stone peeped out. Carefully dressed green turf, with gravelled walks leading front different directions to the doors, looked as if this was a place of business. Somebody pulled the string here and the omnibus stopped. "This is the library," my neighbour in grey remarked � and with that rising and lifting his cap, he jumped out. I watched him rapidly walking into the library; he was tall, very erect, with a fine free carriage and firm step. But then the omnibus was moving on and I turned to the other side. And the beauty took away my breath. There was the green plain, girdled with trees and houses, beset with hills, the tops of which I could see in the distance, with the evening light upon them. The omnibus went straight over the plain; green and smooth and fresh, it lay on the one side and on the other side of us, excepting one broad strip on the right. I wondered what had taken off the grass there; but then we passed within a hedge enclosure and drew up at the hotel steps. "Have you met an acquaintance already, Daisy?" Dr. Sandford asked as he handed me out. "An acquaintance?" said I. "No, but I shall fine him soon, I suppose." For I was thinking of Preston. But I forgot Preston the next minute. Mrs. Sandford had seized my hand and drew me up the piazza steps and through the hall, out to the piazza at the north side of the house. I was in fairyland surely! I had thought so before, but I knew it now. Those grand hills, in the evening colours, standing over against each other on the east and on the west, and the full magnificent river lying between them, bright and stately, were like nothing I had ever seen or imagined. My memory goes back now to point after point of delight which bewildered me. There was a dainty little sail sweeping across just at the bend of the river; I have seen many since; I never forget that one. There was a shoulder of one of the eastern hills, thrown out towards the south-west, over which the evening light fell in a mantle of soft gold, with a fold of shadow on the other side. The tops of those eastern hills were warm with sunlight, and here and there a slope of the western hills. There was a point of lower ground, thrust out into the river between me and the eastern shore, which lay wholly in shadow, one soft mass of dusky green, rounding out into a promontory. Above it, beyond it, at the foot of the hills, a white church spire rose sharp as a needle. It is all before me, even the summer stillness in which my senses were rapt. There was a clatter in the house behind me, but I did not hear it then. I was obliged to go away to get ready for tea. The house was full; only one room could be spared for Mrs. Sandford and me. That one had been engaged beforehand, and its window looked over the same view I had seen from the piazza. I took my post at this window while waiting for Mrs. Sandford. Cooler and crisper the lights, cooler and grayer the shadows had grown; the shoulder of the east mountain had lost its mantle of light; just a gleam rested on a peak higher up; and my single white sail was getting small in the distance, beating up the river. I was very happy. My school year, practically, was finished, and I was vaguely expecting some order or turn of affairs which would join me to my father and mother. I remember well what a flood of satisfied joy poured into my heart as I stood at the window. I seemed to myself so very rich, to taste all that delight of hills and river; the richness of God's giving struck me with a sort of wonder. And then, being so enriched, and tasting the deep treasures of heaven and earth which I had been made to know, happy so exceedingly, � it came to my heart with a kind of pang, the longing to make others know what I knew; and the secret determination to use all my strength as Christ's servant, � in bringing others to the joy of the knowledge of him. I was called from my window then, and my view was exchanged for the crowded dining-room, where I could eat nothing. But after tea we got out upon the piazza again, and a soft north- west breeze seemed to be food and refreshment too. Mrs. Sandford soon found a colonel and a general to talk to; but Dr. Sandford sat down by me. "How do you like it, Daisy?" I told him, and thanked him for bringing me. "Are you tired?" "No � I don't think I am tired." "You are not hungry of course, for you can eat nothing. Do you think you shall sleep?" "I don't feel like it now. I do not generally get sleepy till a great while after this." "You will go to sleep somewhere about nine o'clock," said the doctor; "and not wake up till you are called in the morning." I thought he was mistaken, but as I could not prove it I said nothing. "Are you glad to get away from school?" "On some accounts. I like school too, Dr. Sandford; but there are some things I do not like." "That remark might be made, Daisy, about every condition of life with which I am acquainted." "I could not make it just now," I said. He smiled. "Have you secured a large circle of friends among your schoolmates, � that are to last for ever?" "I do not think they love me well enough for that," I said, wondering somewhat at my guardian's questioning mood. "Nor you them?" "I suppose not." "Why, Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "I am surprised! I thought you used to love everybody." I tried to think how that might be, and whether I had changed. Dr. Sandford interrupted my thoughts again � "How is it with friends out of school?" "I have none," I said; thinking only of girls like myself. "None?" he said. "Do you really know nobody in New York?" "Nobody, � but one old lady." "Who is that, Daisy?" He asked short and coolly, like one who had a right to know; and then I remembered he had the right. I gave him Miss Cardigan's name and number. "Who is she? and who lives with her?" "Nobody lives with her; she has only her servants." "What do you know about her then, besides what she has told you? Excuse me, and please have the grace to satisfy me." "I know I must," I said half laughing. "_Must?_" "You know I must too, Dr. Sandford." "I don't know it indeed," said he. "I know I must ask; but I do not know what power can force you to answer." "Isn't it my duty, Dr. Sandford?" "Nobody but Daisy Randolph would have asked that question," he said. "Well, if duty is on my side, I know I am powerful. But, Daisy, you always used to answer me, in times when there was no duty in the case." "I remember," I said, smiling to think of it; "but I was a child then, Dr. Sandford." "Oh! � Well, apropos of duty, you may go on about Miss Cardigan." "I do not know a great deal to tell. Only that she is very good, very kind to me and everybody; very rich, I believe; and very wise, I think. I know nothing more � except the way her money was made." "How was it ?" "I have heard that her mother was a market-woman," I said very unwillingly; for I knew the conclusions that would be drawn. "Is it likely," Dr. Sandford said slowly, "that the daughter of a market-woman should be a good friend in every respect for the daughter of Mrs. Randolph?" "It may not be _likely_," I answered with equal slowness; � "but it is true." "Can you prove your position, Daisy?" "What is your objection to her, Dr. Sandford?" "Simply what you have told me. The different classes of society are better apart." I was silent. If Miss Cardigan was not of my class, I knew I wanted to be of hers. There were certain words running in my head about "a royal priesthood, a peculiar people," and certain other words too � which I thought it was no use to tell Dr. Sandford. "She has no family, you say, nor friends who live with her, or whom you meet at her house?" "None at all. I think she is quite alone." There was silence again. That is, between the doctor and me. Mrs. Sandford and her officers kept up a great run of talk hard by. "Now, Daisy," said the doctor, "you have studied the matter, and I do not doubt have formed a philosophy of your own by this time. Pray make me the wiser." "I have no philosophy of my own, Dr. Sandford." "Your own thus far, that nobody shares it with you." "Is that your notion of me," I said, laughing. "A very good notion. Nothing is worse than commonplace people. Indulge me, Daisy." So I thought I had better. "Dr. Sandford, � if you will indulge me. What is _your_ notion of dignity ?" He passed his hand over his hair, with a comical face. It was a very fine face, as I knew long ago; even a noble face. A steady, clear blue eye like his, gives one a sure impression of power in the character, and of sweetness too. I was glad he had asked me the question, but I waited for him to answer mine first. "My notion of dignity!" he exclaimed. "I don't believe I have any, Daisy." "No, but we are talking seriously." "Very. We always are, when you are one of the talkers." "Then please explain your notion of dignity." "I know it when I see it," said the doctor; "but faith! I don't know what makes it." "Yes, but you think some people, or some classes, are set up above others." "So do you." "What do you think makes the highest class, then?" "You are going too deep, or too high, which is the same thing. All I mean is, that certain feet which fate has planted on lofty levels, ought not to come down from them." "But it is good to know where we stand." "Very," said Dr. Sandford, laughing. That is, in his way of laughing. It was never loud. "I will tell you where I want to stand," I went on. "It is the highest level of all. The Lord Jesus said, 'Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is MY BROTHER, and MY SISTER, and MOTHER.' I want to be one of those." "But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "the society of the world is not arranged on that principle." I knew it very well. I said nothing. "And you cannot, just yet, go out of the world." It was no use to tell Dr. Sandford what I thought. I was silent still. "Daisy," said he, "you are worse than you used to be." And I heard a little concern in his words, only half hid by the tone. "You do not suppose that such words as those you quoted just now, were meant to be a practical guide in the daily affairs of life? Do you ?" "How can I help it, Dr. Sandford?" I answered. "I would like to have my friends among those whom the King will call His sisters and brothers." "And what do you think of correct grammar, and clean hands?" he asked. "Clean hands!" I echoed. "You like them," he said smiling. "The people you mean often go without them � if report says true." "Not the people _I_ mean," I said. "And education, Daisy; and refined manners; and cultivated tastes; what will you do without all these? In the society you speak of they are seldom found." "You do not know the society I speak of, Dr. Sandford; and Miss Cardigan has all these, more or less; besides something a great deal better." Dr. Sandford rose up suddenly and introduced me to a Captain Southgate who came up; and the conversation ran upon West Point things and nothings after that. I was going back over my memory, to find in how far religion had been associated with some other valued things in the instances of my experience, and I heard little of what was said. Mr. Dinwiddie had been a gentleman, as much as any one I ever knew; he was the first. My old Juanita had the manners of a princess, and the tact of a fine lady. Miss Cardigan was a capital compound of sense, goodness, business energies, and gentle wisdom. The others, � well, yes, they were of the despised orders of the world. My friend Darry, at the stables of Magnolia, � my friend Maria, in the kitchen of the great house, � the other sable and sober faces that came around theirs in memory's grouping, � they were not educated nor polished nor elegant. Yet well I knew, that having owned Christ before me, He would own them before the angels of heaven; and what would they be in that day! I was satisfied to be numbered with them. I slept, as Dr. Sandford had prophesied I would, that night. I awoke to a vision of beauty. My remembrance of those days that followed is like a summer morning, with a diamond hanging to every blade of grass. I awoke suddenly, that first day, and rushed to the window. The light had broken, the sun was up; the crown of the morning was upon the heads of the hills; here and there a light wreath of mist lay along their sides, floating slowly off, or softly dispersing; the river lay in quiet beauty waiting for the gilding that should come upon it. I listened � the brisk notes of a drum and fife came to my ear, playing one after another joyous and dancing melody. I thought that never was a place so utterly delightsome as this place. With all speed I dressed myself, noiselessly, so as not to waken Mrs. Sandford; and then I resolved I would go out and see if I could not find a place where I could be by myself; for in the house there was no chance of it. I took Mr. Dinwiddie's Bible and stole down stairs. From the piazza where we had sat last night, a flight of steps led down. I followed it, and found another flight, and still another. The last landed me in a gravelled path; one track went down the steep face of the bank, on the brow of which the hotel stood; another track crossed that and wound away to my right, with a gentle downward slope. I went this way. The air was delicious; the woods were musical with birds the morning light filled my pathway and, glancing from trees or rocks ahead of me, lured me on with a promise of glory. I seemed to gather the promise as I went, and still I was drawn further and further. Glimpses of the river began to show through the trees; for all this bank side was thickly wooded. I left walking and took to running. At last I came out upon another gravelled walk, low down on the hillside, lying parallel with the river and open to it. Nothing lay between but some masses of granite rock, grey and lichened, and a soft fringe of green underbrush and small wood in the intervals. Moreover, I presently found a comfortable seat on a huge grey stone, where the view was uninterrupted, by any wood growth; and if I thought before that this was fairyland, I now almost thought myself a fairy. The broad river was at my feet; the morning light was on all the shores, sparkled from the granite rocks below me and flashed from the polished leaves, and glittered on the water; filling all the blue above with radiance; touching here and there a little downy cloud; entering in and lying on my heart. I shall never forget it. The taste of the air was as one tastes life and strength and vigour. It all rolled in on me a great burden of joy. It was not the worst time or place in the world to read the Bible. But how all the voices of nature seemed to flow in and mix with the reading, I cannot tell, no more than I can number them; the whirr of a bird's wing, the liquid note of a wood thrush, the stir and movement of a thousand leaves, the gurgle of rippling water, the crow's call, and the song-sparrow's ecstasy. Once or twice the notes of a bugle found their way down the hill, and reminded me that I was in a place of delightful novelty. It was just a fillip to my enjoyment, as I looked on and off my page alternately. By and by I heard footsteps, quick yet light footsteps, sounding on the gravel. Measured and quick they came; then two figures rounded a point close by me. There were two, but their footfalls had sounded as one. They were dressed alike, all in grey, like my friend in the omnibus. As they passed me, the nearest one hastily pulled off his cap, and I caught just a flash from a bright eye. It was the same. I looked after them as they left my point and were soon lost behind another; thinking that probably Preston was dressed so and had been taught to walk so; and with renewed admiration of a place where the inhabitants kept such an exquisite neatness in their dress and moved like music. There was a fulness of content in my mind, as at length I slowly went back up my winding path to the hotel, warned by the furious sounds of a gong that breakfast was in preparation. As I toiled up the last flight of steps I saw Dr. Sandford on the piazza. His blue eye looked me all over and looked me through, I felt. I was accustomed to that, both from the friend and the physician, and rather liked it. "What is on the other side of the house?" I asked. "Let us go and see." And as we went, the doctor took my book from my hand to carry it for me. He opened it, too, and looked at it. On the other side or two sides of the house stretched away the level green plain. At the back of it, stood houses half hidden by trees; indeed all round two sides of the plain there vas a border of buildings and of flourishing trees as yell. Down the north side, from the hotel where we were, a road went winding; likewise under arching trees; here and there I could see cannon and a bit of some military work. All the centre of the plain was level and green, and empty; and from the hotel to the library stretched a broad strip of bare ground, brown and dusty, alongside of the road by which we had come across last night. In the morning sun, as indeed under all other lights and at all other hours, this scene was one of satisfying beauty. Behind the row of houses at the western edge of the plain, the hills rose up, green and wooded, height above height; and an old fortification stood out now under the eastern illumination, picturesque and grey, high up among them. As Dr. Sandford and I were silent and looking, I saw another grey figure pass down the road. "Who are those people that wear grey, with a black stripe down the leg?" I asked. "Grey?" said the doctor. "Where?" "There is one yonder under the trees," I said, "and there was one in the omnibus yesterday. Are those the cadets?" "I suppose so." "Then Preston wears that dress. I wonder how I shall find him, Dr. Sandford?" "Find whom?" said the doctor, waking up. "My cousin Preston � Preston Gary. He is here." "Here?" repeated the doctor. "Yes � he is a cadet � didn't you know it? He has been here a long while; he has only one more year, I believe. How can we find him, Dr. Sandford?" "I am ignorant, Daisy." "But we must find him," I said, "for of course he will want to see me, and I want to see him, very much." The doctor was silent, and I remember an odd sense I had that he was not pleased. I cannot tell how I got it; he neither did nor said anything to make me think so; he did not even look anywise different from usual; yet I felt it and was sure of it, and unspeakably mystified at it. Could Preston have been doing anything wrong? Yet the doctor would not know that, for he was not even aware that Preston was in the Military Academy till I told him. "I do not know, Daisy," he said at last; "but we can find out. I will ask Captain Southgate or somebody else." "Thank you," I said. "Who are those, Dr. Sandford, those others dressed in dark frock coats, with bright bars over their shoulders? � like that one just now going out of the gate?" "Those are officers of the army." "There are a good many of them. What are they here for? Are there many soldiers here?" "No �" said the doctor � "I believe not. I think these gentlemen are put here to look after the grey coats � the cadets, Daisy. The cadets are here in training, you know." "But that officer who just went out � who is walking over the plain now � he wore a sword, Dr. Sandford, and a red sash. They do not all wear them. What is that for?" "What is under discussion?" said Mrs. Sandford, coming out. "How well Daisy looks this morning, don't she?" "She has caught the military fever already," said the doctor. "I brought her here for a sedative; but I find it is no such matter." "Sedative!" � said Mrs. Sandford; but at this instant my ears were "caught" by a burst of music on the plain. Mrs. Sandford broke into a fit of laughter. The doctor's hand touched my shoulder. "Get your hat, Daisy," he said. "I will go with you to hear it." I might tell of pleasure from minute to minute of that day, and of the days following. The breath of the air, the notes of the wind instruments, the flicker of sunlight on the gravel, all come back to me as I write, and I taste them again. Dr. Sandford and I went down the road I have described, leading along the edge of the plain at its northern border; from which the view up over the river, between the hills, was very glorious. Fine young trees shaded this road; on one side a deep hollow or cup in the green plain excited my curiosity; on the other, lying a little down the bank, a military work of some odd sort planted with guns. Then one or two little pyramidal heaps of cannon-balls by the side of the road, marked this out as unlike all other roads I had ever traversed. At the further side of the plain we came to the row of houses I had seen from a distance, which ran north and south, looking eastward over all the plain. The road which skirted these houses was shaded with large old trees; and on the edge of the greensward under the trees, we found a number of iron seats placed for the convenience of spectators. And here, among many others, Dr. Sandford and I sat down. There was a long line of the grey uniforms now drawn up in front of us; at some little distance; standing still and doing nothing, that I could see. Nearer to us and facing them stood a single grey figure; I looked hard, but could not make out that it was Preston. Nearer still, stood with arms folded one of those who the doctor had said were army officers; I thought, the very one I had seen leave the hotel; but all like statues, motionless and fixed. Only the band seemed to have some life in them. "What is it, Dr. Sandford?" I whispered, after a few minutes of intense enjoyment. "Don't know, Daisy." "But what are they doing?" "I don't know, Daisy." I nestled down into silence again, listening, almost with a doubt of my own senses, as the notes of the instruments mingled with the summer breeze and filled the June sunshine. The plain looked most beautiful, edged with trees on three sides, and bounded to the east, in front of me, by a chain of hills soft and wooded, which I afterwards found were beyond the river. Near at hand, the order of military array, the flash of a sword, the glitter of an epaulette, the glance of red sashes here and there, the regularity of a perfect machine. I said nothing more to Dr. Sandford; but I gathered drop by drop the sweetness of the time. The statues broke into life a few minutes later, and there was a stir of business of some sort; but I could make out nothing of what they were doing. I took it on trust, and enjoyed everything to the full till the show was over. CHAPTER XIV. YANKEES. For several days I saw nothing of Preston. He was hardly missed. I found that such a parade as that which pleased me the first morning, came off twice daily; and other military displays, more extended and more interesting, were to be looked for every day at irregular times. I failed not of one. So surely as the roll of the drum or a strain of music announced that something of the sort was on hand, I caught up my hat and was ready. And so was Dr. Sandford. Mrs. Sandford would often not go; but the doctor's hat was as easily put on as mine, and as readily; and he attended me, I used to think, as patiently as a great Newfoundland dog. As patient, and as supreme. The evolutions of soldiers and clangour of martial music were nothing to _him;_ but he must wait upon his little mistress. I mean of course the Newfoundland dog; not Dr. Sandford. "Will you go for a walk, Daisy?" he said, the morning of the third or fourth day. "There is nothing doing on the plain, I find." "A walk? Oh, yes!" I said. "Where shall we go?" "To look for wonderful things," he said. "Only don't take the child among the rattlesnakes," said Mrs. Sandford. "_They_ are wonderful, I suppose, but not pleasant. You will get her all tanned, Grant!" But I took these hints of danger as coolly as the doctor himself did; and another of my West-Point delights began. We went beyond the limits of the post, passed out at one of the gates which shut it in from the common world, and forgot for the moment drums and fifes. Up the mountain side, under the shadow of the trees most of the time, though along a good road; with the wild hill at one hand rising sharp above us. Turning round that, we finally plunged down into a grand dell of the hills, leaving all roads behind and all civilisation, and having a whole mountain between us and the West-Point plain. I suppose it might have been a region for rattlesnakes, but I never thought of them. I had never seen such a place in my life. From the bottom of the gorge where we were, the opposite mountain side sloped up to a great height; wild, lonely, green with a wealth of wood, stupendous, as it seemed to me, in its towering expanse. At our backs, a rocky and green precipice rose up more steeply yet, though to a lesser elevation, topped with the grey walls of the old fort, the other face of which I had seen from our hotel. A wilderness of nature it was; � wild and stern. I feasted on it. Dr. Sandford was moving about, looking for something; he helped me over rocks, and jumped me across morasses, and kept watchful guard of me; but else he let me alone; he did lot talk; and I had quite enough without. The strong delight of the novelty, the freedom, the delicious wild things around, the bracing air, the wonderful lofty beauty, made me as happy as I thought I could be. I feasted on the rocks and wild verdure, the mosses and ferns and lichen, the scrub forest and tangled undergrowth, among which we plunged and scrambled; above all, on those vast leafy walls which shut in the glen, and almost took away my breath with their towering lonely grandeur. All this time Dr. Sandford was as busy as a bee, in quest of something. He was a great geologist and mineralogist; a lover of all natural science, but particularly of chemistry and geology. When I stopped to look at him, I thought he must have put his own tastes in his pocket for several days past, that he might gratify mine. I was standing on a rock, high and dry and grey with lichen; he was poking about in some swampy ground. "Are you tired, Daisy?" he said, looking up. "My feet are tired," I said. "That is all of you that can be tired. Sit down where you are � I will come to you directly." So I sat down, and watched him, and looked off between whiles to the wonderful green walls of the glen. The summer blue was very clear overhead; the stillness of the place very deep; insects, birds, a flutter of leaves, and the grating of Dr. Sandford's boot upon a stone, all the sound that could be heard. "Why, you are warm, as well as tired, Daisy," he said, coming up to my rock at last. "It is warm," I answered. "Warm?" said he. "Look here, Daisy!" "Well, what in the world is that?" I said laughing. "A little mud or earth is all that I can see." "Ah, your eyes are not good for much, Daisy � except to look at." "Not good for much for _that_," I said, amused; for his eyes were bent upon the earth in his hand. "I don't know" � said he, getting up on the rock beside me and sitting down. "I used to find strange things in them once. But this is something you will like, Daisy." "Is it?" "If you like wonderful things as well as ever." "Oh, I do!" I said. "What is it, Dr. Sandford?" He carefully wrapped up his treasure in a bit of paper and put it in his pocket; then he cut down a small hickory branch and began to fan me with it; and while he sat there fanning me he entered upon a lecture such as I had never listened to in my life. I had studied a little geology of course, as well as a little of everything else; but no lesson like this had come in the course of my experience. Taking his text from the very wild glen where we were sitting and the mountain sides upon which I had been gazing, Dr. Sandford spread a clear page of nature before me and interpreted it. He answered unspoken questions; he filled great vacancies of my ignorance; into what had been abysms of thought he poured a whole treasury of intelligence and brought floods of light. All so quietly, so luminously, with such a wealth of knowledge and facility of giving it, that it is a simple thing to say no story of Eastern magic was ever given into more charmed ears around an Arabian desert fire. I listened, and he talked and fanned me. He talked like one occupied with his subject and not with me; but he met every half uttered doubt or question, and before he had done he satisfied it fully. I had always liked Dr. Sandford; I had never liked him so much. I had never, since the old childish times, had such a free talk with him. And now, he did not talk to me as a child or a very young girl, except in bending himself to my ignorance; but as one who loves knowledge likes to give it to others, so he gave it to me. Only I do not remember seeing him like to give it in such manner to anybody else. I think the novelty added to the zest when I thought about: it; at the moment I had no time for side thoughts. At the moment my ears could but receive the pearls and diamonds of knowledge which came from the speaker's lips, set in silver of the simplest clear English. I notice that the people who have the most thorough grasp of a subject make ever least difficulty of words about it. The sun was high and hot when we returned, but I cared nothing for that. I was more than ever sure that West Point was fairyland. The old spring of childish glee seemed to have come back to my nerves. "Dinner is just ready," said Mrs. Sandford, meeting us in the hall. "Why, where _have_ you been? And look at the colour of Daisy's face! Oh, Grant, what have you done with her?" "Very good colour �" said the doctor, peering under my hat. "She's all flushed and sunburnt, and overheated." "Daisy is never anything but cool;" he said, "unless when she gets hold of a principle, and somebody else gets hold of the other end. We'll look at these things after dinner, Daisy." "Principles?" half exclaimed Mrs. Sandford, with so dismayed an expression that the doctor and I both laughed. "Not exactly," � said the doctor, putting his hand in his pocket. "Look here." "I see nothing but a little dirt." "You shall see something else by and by � if you will." "You have never brought your microscope here, Grant? Where in the world will you set it up?" "In your room � after dinner � if you permit." Mrs. Sandford permitted; and though she did not care much about the investigations that followed, the doctor and I did. As delightful as the morning had been, the long afternoon stretched its bright hours along; till Mrs. Sandford insisted I must be dressed, and pushed the microscope into a corner and ordered the doctor away. That was the beginning of the pleasantest course of lessons I ever had in my life. From that time Dr. Sandford and I spent a large part of every day in the hills; and often another large part over the microscope. No palace and gardens in the Arabian nights were ever more enchanting, than the glories of nature through which he led me; nor half so wonderful. "A little dirt," as it seemed to ordinary eyes, was the hidden entrance way ofttimes to halls of knowledge more magnificent and more rich than my fancy had ever dreamed of. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sandford found a great many officers to talk to. It was not till the evening of the next day following my first walk into the mountains, that I saw Preston. � It was parade time; and I was sitting as usual on one of the iron settees which are placed for the convenience of spectators. I was almost always there at parade and guard-mounting. The picture had a continual fascination for me, whether under the morning sun, or the evening sunset; and the music was charming. This time I was alone, Dr. and Mrs. Sandford being engaged in conversation with friends at a little distance. Following with my ear the variations of the air the band were playing, my mind was at the same time dwelling on the riches it had just gained in the natural history researches of the day, and also taking in half consciously the colours of the hills and the light that spread over the plain; musing, in short, in a kind of dream of delight; when a grey figure came between me and my picture. Finding that it did not move, I raised my eyes. "The same Daisy as ever!" said Preston, his eyes all alight with fun and pleasure. "The same as ever! And how came you here? and when did you come? and how did you come?" "We have been here ever since Friday. Why haven't you been to see me? Dr. Sandford sent word to you." "Dr. Sandford!" said Preston, taking the place by my side. "How did you come here, Daisy?" "I came by the boat, last Friday. How should I come?" "Who are you with?" "Dr. Sandford � and Mrs. Sandford." "_Mrs_. Sandford, and Dr. Sandford," said Preston, pointedly. "You are not with the doctor, I suppose." "Why, yes, I am," I answered. "He is my guardian � don't you know, Preston? He brought me. How tall you have grown!" "A parcel of Yankees," said Preston. "Poor little Daisy." "What do you mean by 'Yankees'?" I said. "You do not mean just people at the North, for you speak as if it was something bad." "It is. So I do," said Preston. "They are a mean set � fit for nothing but to eat codfish and scrape. I wish you had nothing to do with Yankees." I thought how all the South lived upon stolen earnings. It was a disagreeable turn to my meditations for a moment. "Where have you hid yourself since you have come here?" Preston went on. "I have been to the hotel time and again to find you." "Have you!" I said. "Oh, I suppose I was out walking." "With whom were you walking?" "I don't know anybody here, but those I came with. But Preston, why are you not over yonder with the others?" I was looking at the long grey line formed in front of us on the plain. "I got leave of absence, to come and see you, Daisy. And _you_ have grown, and improved. You're wonderfully improved. Are you the very same Daisy? and what are you going to do here?" "Oh, I'm enjoying myself. Now, Preston, why does that man stand so?" "What man?" "That officer � here in front, standing all alone, with the sash and sword. Why does he stand so?" "Hush. That is Captain Percival. He is the officer in charge." "What is that?" "Oh, he looks after the parade, and things." "But why does he stand so, Preston?" "Stand how?" said Preston, unsympathisingly. "That is good standing." "Why, with his shoulders up to his ears," I said; "and his arms lifted up as if he was trying to put his elbows upon a high shelf. It is _very_ awkward." "They all stand so," said Preston. "That's right enough." "It is ungraceful." "It is military." "Must one be ungraceful in order to be military?" "_He_ isn't ungraceful. That is Percival � of South Carolina." "The officer yesterday stood a great deal better," I went on. "Yesterday? That was Blunt. He's a Yankee." "Well, what then, Preston?" I said, laughing. "I despise them!" "Aren't there Yankees among the cadets?" "Of course; but they are no count � only here and there there's one of good family. Don't you have anything to do with them, Daisy � mind; � not with one of them, unless I tell you who he is." "With one of whom? what are you speaking of?" "The cadets." "Why, I have nothing to do with them," I said. "How should I?" Preston looked at me curiously. "Nor at the hotel, neither, Daisy � more than you can help. Have nothing to say to the Yankees." I thought Preston had taken a strange fancy. I was silent. "It is not fitting," he went on. "We are going to change all that. I want to have nothing to do with Yankees." "What are you going to change?" I asked. "I don't see how you can help having to do with them. They are among the cadets, and they are among the officers." "We have our own set," said Preston. "I have nothing to do with them in the corps." "Now, Preston, look; what are they about? All the red sashes are getting together." "Parade is dismissed. They are coming up to salute the officer in charge." "It is so pretty!" I said, as the music burst out again, and the measured steps of the advancing line of "red sashes" marked it. "And now Captain Percival will unbend his stiff elbows. Why could not all that be done easily, Preston?" "Nonsense, Daisy! � it is military." "Is it? But Mr. Blunt did it a great deal better. Now they are going. � Must you go?" "Yes. What are you going to do to-morrow?" "I don't know � I suppose, we shall go into the woods again." "When the examination is over, I can attend to you. I haven't much time just now. But there is really nothing to be done here, since one can't get on horseback out of the hours." "I don't want anything better than I can get on my own feet," I said joyously. "I find plenty to do." "Look here, Daisy," said Preston � "don't you turn into a masculine, muscular woman, that can walk her twenty miles and wear hob-nailed shoes � like the Yankees you are among. Don't forget that you are the daughter of a Southern gentleman �" He touched his cap hastily and turned away � walking with those measured steps towards the barracks; whither now all the companies of grey figures were in full retreat. I stood wondering, and then slowly returned with my friends to the hotel; much puzzled to account for Preston's discomposure and strange injunctions. The sunlight had left the tops of the hills; the river slept in the gathering grey shadows, soft, tranquil, reposeful. Before I got to the hotel, I had quite made up my mind that my cousin's eccentricities were of no consequence. They recurred to me, however, and were as puzzling as ever. I had no key at the time. The next afternoon was given to a very lively show: the light artillery drill before the Board of Visitors. We sat out under the trees to behold it; and I found out now the meaning of the broad strip of plain between the hotel and the library, which was brown and dusty in the midst of the universal green. Over this strip, round and round, back and forth and across, the light artillery wagons rushed, as if to show what they could do in time of need. It was a beautiful sight, exciting and stirring; with the beat of horses' hoofs, the clatter of harness, the rumble of wheels tearing along over the ground, the flash of a sabre now and then, the ringing words of command, and the soft shrill echoing bugle which repeated them. I only wanted to understand it all; and in the evening I plied Preston with questions. He explained things to me patiently. "I understand," I said, at last, � "I understand what it would do in war time. But we are not at war, Preston." "No." "Nor in the least likely to be." "We can't tell. It is good to be ready." "But what do you mean?" I remember saying. "You speak as if we might be at war. Who is there for us to fight?" "Anybody that wants putting in order," said Preston. "The Indians." "O Preston, Preston!" I exclaimed. "The Indians! when we have been doing them wrong ever since the white men came here; and you want to do them more wrong!" "I want to hinder them from doing us wrong. But I don't care about the Indians, little Daisy. I would just as lief fight the Yankees." "Preston, I think you are very wrong." "You think all the world is," he said. We were silent, and I felt very dissatisfied. What was all this military schooling a preparation for, perhaps? How could we know. Maybe these heads and hands, so gay to-day in their mock fight, would be grimly and sadly at work by and by, in real encounter with some real enemy. "Do you see that man, Daisy?" whispered Preston suddenly in my ear. "That one talking to a lady in blue �" We were on the parade ground, among a crowd of spectators, for the hotels were very full, and the Point very gay now. I said I saw him. "That is a great man." "Is he?" I said, looking and wondering if a great man could hide behind such a physiognomy. "Other people think so, I can tell you," said Preston. "Nobody knows what that man can do. That is Davis of Mississippi." The name meant nothing to me then. I looked at him as I would have looked at another man. And I did not like what I saw. Something of sinister, nothing noble, about the countenance; power there might be � Preston said there was � but the power of the fox and the vulture it seemed to me; sly, crafty, false, selfish, cruel. "If nobody knows what he can do, how is it so certain that he is a great man?" I asked. Preston did not answer. "I hope there are not many great men that look like him," I went on. "Nonsense, Daisy!" said Preston, in an energetic whisper. "That is Davis of Mississippi." "Well?" said I. "That is no more to me than if he were Jones of New York." "Daisy!" said Preston. "If you are not a true Southerner, I will never love you any more." "What do you mean by a true Southerner? I do not understand." "Yes, you do. A true Southerner is always a Southerner, and takes the part of a Southerner in every dispute, � right or wrong." "What makes you dislike Northerners so much?" "Cowardly Yankees!" was Preston's reply. "You must have an uncomfortable time among them, if you feel so," I said. "There are plenty of the true sort here. I wish you were in Paris, Daisy; or somewhere else." "Why?" I said, laughing. "Safe with my mother, or your mother. Yon want teaching. You are too latitudinarian. And you are too thick with the Yankees, by half." I let this opinion alone, as I could do nothing with it; and our conversation broke off with Preston in a very bad humour. The next day, when we were deep in the woods, I asked Dr. Sandford if he knew Mr. Davis of Mississippi. He answered yes, rather drily. I knew the doctor knew everybody. I asked, why Preston called him a great man. "Does he call him a great man?" Dr. Sandford asked. "Do you?" "No, not I, Daisy. But that may not hinder the fact. And I may not have Mr. Gary's means of judging." "What means can he have?" I said. "Daisy," said Dr. Sandford suddenly, when I had forgotten the question in plunging through a thicket of brushwood, � "if the North and the South should split on the subject of slavery, what side would you take?" "What do you mean by a 'split'?" I asked slowly, in my wonderment. "The States are not precisely like a perfect crystal, Daisy; and there is an incipient cleavage somewhere about Mason and Dixon's line." "I do not know what line that is." "No. Well, for practical purposes, you may take it as the line between the slave States and the free." "But how could there be a split?" I asked. "There is a wedge applied even now, Daisy � the question whether the new States forming out of our Western territories, shall have slavery in them or shall be free States." I was silent upon this; and we walked and climbed for a little distance, without my remembering our geological or mineralogical, or any other objects in view. "The North say," Dr. Sandford then went on, "that these States shall be free. The South � or some men at the South � threaten that if they be, the South will split from the North, have nothing to do with us, and set up for themselves." "Who is to decide it?" I asked. "The people. This fall the election will be held for the next President; and that will show. If a slavery man is chosen, we shall know that a majority of the nation go with the Southern view." "If not?" � "Then there may be trouble, Daisy." "What sort of trouble?" I asked hastily. Dr. Sandford hesitated, and then said, "I do not know how far people will go." I mused, and forgot the sweet flutter of green leaves, and smell of moss and of hemlock, and golden bursts of sunshine, amongst which we were pursuing our way. Preston's strange heat and sudden Southernism, Mr. Davis's wile and greatness, a coming disputed election, quarrels between the people where I was born and the people where I was brought up, divisions and jealousies, floated before my mind in unlovely and confused visions. Then, remembering my father and my mother and Gary Mc Farlane, and others whom I had known, I spoke again. "Whatever the Southern people say, they will do, Dr. Sandford." "_Provided_ �" said the doctor. "What, if you please?" "Provided the North will let them, Daisy." I thought privately they could not hinder. I thought they could not. Would there be a trial? Could it be possible there would be a trial? "But you have not answered my question," said the doctor. "Aren't you going to answer it?" "What question?" "As to the side you would take." "I do not want any more slave States, Dr. Sandford." "I thought so. Then you would be with the North." "But people will never be so foolish as to come to what you call a 'split,' Dr. Sandford." "Upon my word, Daisy, as the world is at present, the folly of a thing is no presumptive argument against its coming into existence. Look � here we shall get a nice piece of quartz for your collection." I came back to the primary rocks, and for the present dismissed the subject of the confusions existing on the surface of the earth; hoping sincerely that there would be no occasion for calling it up again. For some time I saw very little of Preston. He was busy, he said. My days flowed on like the summer sunshine, and were as beneficent. I was gaining strength every day. Dr. Sandford decreed that I must stay as long as possible. Then Mr. Sandford came, the doctor's brother, and added his social weight to ours party. Hardly needed, for I perceived that we were very much sought after; at least my companions. The doctor in especial was a very great favourite, both with men and women; who I notice are most ready to bestow their favour where it is least cared for. I don't know but Dr. Sandford cared for it; only he did not show that he did. The claims of society however began to interfere with my geological and other lessons. A few days after his brother's arrival, the doctor had been carried off by a party of gentlemen who were going back in the mountains to fish in the White Lakes. I was left to the usual summer delights of the place; which indeed to me were numberless; began with the echo of the morning gun, (or before) and ended not till the three taps of the drum at night. The cadets had gone into camp by this time; and the taps of the drum were quite near, as well as the shrill sweet notes of the fife at reveille and tattoo. The camp itself was a great pleasure to me; and at guard-mounting or parade I never failed to be in my place. Only to sit in the rear of the guard tents and watch the morning sunlight on the turf, and on the hills over the river, and shining down the camp alleys, was a rich satisfaction. Mrs. Sandford laughed at me; her husband said it was "natural," though I am sure he did not understand it a bit; but the end of all was, that I was left very often to go alone down the little path to the guard-tents among the crowd that twice a day poured out there from our hotel and met the crowd that came up from Cozzens's hotel below. So it was, one morning that I remember. Guard-mounting was always late enough to let one feel the sun's power; and it was a sultry morning, this. We were in July now, and misty, vapourous clouds moved slowly over the blue sky, seeming to intensify the heat of the unclouded intervals. But wonderful sweet it was; and I under the shade of my flat hat, with a little help from the foliage of a young tree, did not mind it at all. Every bit of the scene was a pleasure to me; I missed none of the details. The files of cadets in the camp alleys getting their arms inspected; the white tents themselves, with curtains tightly done up; here and there an officer crossing the camp ground and stopping to speak to an orderly; then the coming up of the band, the music, the marching out of the companies; the leisurely walk from the camp of the officer in charge, drawing on his white gloves; his stand and his attitude; and then the pretty business of the parade. All under that July sky; all under that flicker of cloud and sun, and the soft, sweet breath of air that sometimes stole to us to relieve the hot stillness; and all with that setting and background of cedars and young foliage and bordering hills over which the cloud shadows swept. Then came the mounting guard business. By and by Preston came to me. "Awfully hot, Daisy!" he said. "Yes, you are out in it," I said, compassionately. "What are _you_ out in it for?" "Why, I like it," I said. "How come you to be one of the red sashes this morning?" "I have been an officer of the guard this last twenty-four hours." "Since yesterday morning?" "Yes." "Do you like it, Preston?" "_Like_ it!" he said. "Like guard duty! Why, Daisy, when a fellow has left his shoe-string untied, or something or other like that, they put him on extra guard duty to punish him." "Did you ever do so, Preston?" "Did I ever do so?" he repeated savagely. "Do you think I have been raised like a Yankee, to take care of my shoes? That Blunt is just fit to stand behind a counter and measure inches!" I was very near laughing, but Preston's mood would not bear that. "I don't think it is beneath a gentleman to keep his shoe- strings tied," I said. "A gentleman can't always think of everything!" was Preston's answer. "Then you are glad you have only one year more at the Academy?" "Of course I am glad! I'll never be under Yankee rule again; not if I know it." "Suppose they elect a Yankee President?" I said; but Preston's look was so eager and so sharp at me that I was glad to cover my rash suggestion under another subject as soon as possible. "Are you going to be busy this afternoon?" I asked him. "No, I reckon not." "Suppose you come and go up to the Fort with me?" "What fort?" "Fort Putnam. I have never been there yet." "There is nothing on earth to go there for," said Preston shrugging his shoulders. "Just broil yourself in the sun, and get nothing for it. It's an awful pull up hill; rough, and all that; and nothing at the top but an old stone wall." "But there is the view!" I said. "You have got it down here � just as good. Just climb up the hotel stairs fifty times without stopping, and then look out of the thing at top � and you have been to Fort Putnam." "Why, I want to go to the top of Crow's Nest," I said. "Yes! I was ass enough to try that once," said Preston, "when I was just come, and thought I must do everything; but if anybody wants to insult me, let him just ask me to do it again!" Preston's mood was unmanageable. I had never seen him so in old times. I thought West Point did not agree with him. I listened to the bland, just then playing a fine air, and lamented privately to myself that brass instruments should be so much more harmonious than human tempers. Then the music ceased and the military movements drew my attention again. "They all walk like you," I observed carelessly, as I noticed a measured step crossing the camp ground. "Do they?" said Preston sneeringly. "I flatter myself I do not walk like all of them. If you notice more closely, Daisy, you will see a difference. You can tell a Southerner, on foot or on horseback, from the sons of tailors and farmers � strange if you couldn't!" "I think you are unjust, Preston," I said. "You should not talk so. Major Blunt walks as well and stands much better than any officer I have seen; and he is from Vermont; and Captain Percival is from South Carolina, and Mr. Hunter is from Virginia, and Colonel Forsyth is from Georgia. They are all of them less graceful than Major Blunt." "What do you think of Dr. Sandford?" said Preston in the same tone; but before I could answer I heard a call of "Gary! � Gary!" I looked round. In the midst of the ranks of spectators to our left stood a cadet, my friend of the omnibus. He was looking impatiently our way, and again exclaimed in a sort of suppressed shout � "Gary!" Preston heard him that time; started from my side, and placed himself immediately beside his summoner, in front of the guard tents and spectators. The two were in line, two or three yards separating them, and both facing towards a party drawn up at some little distance on the camp ground, which I believe were the relieving guard. I moved my own position to a place immediately behind them, where I spied an empty camp stool, and watched the two with curious eyes. Uniforms, and military conformities generally, are queer things, if you take the right point of view. Here were these two, a pair, and not a pair. The grey coat, and the white pantaloons, (they had all gone into white now) the little soldier's cap, were a counterpart in each of the other; the two even stood on the ground as if they were bound to be patterns each of the other; and when my acquaintance raised his arms and folded them after the approved fashion, to my great amusement Preston's arms copied the movement; and they stood like two brother statues, still from their heels to their cap rims. Except when once the right arm of my unknown friend was unbent to give a military sign, in answer to some demand or address from somebody, in front of him, which I did not hear. Yet as I watched, I began to discern how individual my two statues really were. I could not see faces, of course. But the grey coat on the one looked as if its shoulders had been more carefully brushed than had been the case with the other; the spotless pantaloons, which seemed to be just out of the laundress's basket, as I suppose they were, sat with a trimmer perfection in one case than in the other. Preston's pocket gaped, and was, I noticed, a little bit ripped; and when my eye got down to the shoes, his had not the black gloss of his companion's. With that one there was not, I think, a thread awry. And then, there was a certain relaxation in the lines of Preston's figure impossible to describe, stiff and motionless though he was; something which prepared one for a lax and careless movement when he moved. Perhaps this was fancy and only arose from my knowledge of the fact; but with the other no such fancy was possible. Still, but alert; motionless, but full of vigour; I expected what came; firm, quick, and easy action, as soon as he should cease to be a statue. So much for a back view of character; which engrossed me till my two statues went away. A little while after Preston came to me. "Are you here yet?" he said. "Don't you like to have me here?" "It's hot. And it is very stupid for you, I should think. Where is Mrs. Sandford?" "She thinks as you do, that it is stupid." "You ought not to be here without some one." "Why not? What cadet was that who called you, Preston?" "Called me? Nobody called me." "Yes he did. When you were sitting with me. Who was it?" "I don't know!" said Preston. "Goodbye. I shall be busy for a day or two." "Then you cannot go to Fort Putnam this afternoon?" "Fort Putnam! I should think not. It is going to be broiling to-day." And he left me. Things had gone wrong with Preston lately, I thought. But before I had made up my mind to move, two other cadets came before me. One of them Mrs. Sandford knew, and I slightly. "Miss Randolph, my friend Mr. Thorold has begged me to introduce him to you." It was _my_ friend of the omnibus. I think we liked each other at this very first moment. I looked up at a manly, well- featured face, just then lighted with a little smile of deference and recognition; but permanently lighted with the brightest and quickest hazel eyes that I ever saw. Something about the face pleased me on the instant. I believe it was the frankness. "I have to apologise for my rudeness, in calling a gentleman away from you, Miss Randolph, in a very unceremonious manner, a little while ago." "Oh, I know," I said. "I saw what you did with him." "Did I do anything with him?" "Only called him to his duty, I suppose." "Precisely. He was very excusable for forgetting it; but it might have been inconvenient." "Do you think it is ever excusable to forget duty?" I asked; and I was rewarded with a swift flash of fun in the hazel eyes, that came and went like forked lightning. "It is not easily pardoned here," he answered. "People don't make allowances?" "Not officers," he said, with a smile. "Soldiers lose the character of men, when they are on duty; they are only reckoned machines." "You do not mean that exactly, I suppose." "Indeed I do!" he said, with another slighter corruscation. "Intelligent machines, of course, but with no more latitude of action. � You would not like that life?" "I should think you would not." "Ah, but we hope to rise to the management of the machines, some day." I thought I saw in his face that he did. I remarked that I should not think the management of mere machines could be very pleasant. "Why not?" "It is degrading to the machines, � and so, I should think, it would not be very elevating to those who make them machines." "That is exactly the use they propose them to serve, though," he said, looking amused; "the elevation of themselves." "I know" � I said, thinking that the end was ignoble too. "You do not approve it?" he said. I felt those brilliant eyes dancing all over me, and, I fancied, over my thoughts too. I felt a little shy of going on to explain myself to one whom I knew so little. He turned the conversation, by asking me if I had seen all the lions yet? I said, I supposed not. "Have you been up to the old fort?" "I want to go there," I said; "but somebody told me to-day, there was nothing worth going for." "Has his report taken away your desire to make the trial?" "No, for I do not believe he is right." "Might I offer myself as a guide? I can be disengaged this afternoon; and I know all the ways to the fort. It would give me great pleasure." I felt it would give me great pleasure too, and so I told him. We arranged for the hour, and Mr. Thorold hastened away. CHAPTER XV. FORT PUTNAM. "I am going to Fort Putnam this afternoon, with Mr. Thorold," � I announced to Mrs. Sandford, after dinner. "Who is Mr. Thorold?" "One of the cadets." "One of the cadets! So it has got hold of you at last, Daisy!" "What, Mrs. Sandford?" "But Fort Putnam? My dearest child, it is very hot!" "Oh, yes, ma'am � I don't mind it." "Well, I am very glad, if you don't," said Mrs. Sandford. "And I am very glad Grant has taken himself off to the White Lakes. He gave nobody else any chance. It will do you a world of good." "What will?" I asked, wondering. "Amusement, dear, � amusement. Something a great deal better than Grant's 'elegies and 'ologies. Now this would never have happened if he had been at home." I did not understand her, but then I knew she did not understand the pursuits she so slighted; and it was beyond my powers to enlighten her. So I did not try. Mr. Thorold was punctual, and so was I; and we set forth at five o'clock, I at least as happy as it was possible to be. Warm � it was, yet; we went slowly down the road, in shadow and sunshine; tasting the pleasantness, it seems to me, of every tree, and feeling the sweetness of each breath; in that slight exhilaration of spirits which loses nothing and forgets nothing. At least I have a good memory for such times. There was a little excitement, no doubt, about going this walk with a cadet and a stranger, which helped the whole effect. I made use of my opportunity to gain a great deal of information which Dr. Sandford could not give. I wanted to understand the meaning and the use of many things I saw about the Point. Batteries and fortifications were a mysterious jumble to me; shells were a horrible novelty; the whole art and trade of a soldier, something well worth studying, but difficult to see as a reasonable whole. The adaptation of parts to an end, I could perceive; the end itself puzzled me. "Yet there has always been fighting," � said my companion. "Yes," � I assented. "Then we must be ready for it." But I was not prepared in this case with my answer. "Suppose we were unjustly attacked?" � said Mr. Thorold; and I thought every one of the gilt buttons on his grey jacket repelled the idea of a peaceable composition. "I don't know," � said I, pondering. "Why should the rule be different for nations and for individual people?" "What is your rule for individual people?" he asked, laughing, and looking down at me, as he held the gate open. I can see the look and the attitude now. "It is not my rule," I said. "_The_ rule, then. What should a man do, Miss Randolph, when he is unjustly attacked?" I felt I was on very untenable ground, talking to a soldier. If I was right, what was the use of his grey coat, or of West Point itself. We were mounting the little steep pitch beyond the gate, where the road turns; and I waited till I got upon level footing. Then catching a bright inquisitive glance of the hazel eyes, I summoned up my courage and spoke. "I have no rule but the Bible, Mr. Thorold." "The Bible! What does the Bible say? It tells of a great deal of fighting." "Of bad men." "Yes, but the Jews were commanded to fight, were they not?" "To punish bad men. But we have got another rule since that." "What is it?" " 'If any man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also.' " "Is it possible you think the Bible means that literally?" he said. "Do you think it would say what it did not mean?" "But try it by the moral effect; what sort of a fellow would a man be who did so, Miss Randolph?" "I think he would be fine!" � I said; for I was thinking of One who, "when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not." But I could not tell all my thought to Mr. Thorold; no more than I could to Dr. Sandford. "And would you have him stand by and see another injured?" my companion asked. "Wouldn't you have him fight in such a case?" I had not considered that question. I was silent. "Suppose he sees wrong done; wrong that a few well planted blows � or shots, if you like; shots are but well directed blows," he said, smiling; � "wrong that a few well planted blows would prevent. � Suppose somebody were to attack you now, for instance; ought I not to fight for it?" "I should like to have you," I said. "Come!" he said, laughing, and stretching out his hand to shake mine, � "I see you will let me keep my profession, after all. And why should not a nation do, on a larger scale, what a man may do?" "Why it may," I said. "Then � West Point is justified." "But very few wars in the world are conducted on that principle," I said. "Very few. In fact I do not at this moment recollect the instances. But you would allow a man, or a nation to fight in self-defence, � would not you?" I pondered the matter. "I suppose � he has a right to protect his life," I said. "But 'if a man smite thee on the cheek,' � _that_ does not touch life." "What would you think of a man," said my companion gravely, � "who should suffer some one to give him such a blow, without taking any notice of it?" "If he did it because he was _afraid_," I said, "of course I shouldn't like that. But if he did it to obey the Bible � I should think it was noble. The Bible says 'it is glory, to pass by a transgression.' " "But suppose he was afraid of being thought afraid?" I looked at my companion, and felt instinctively sure that neither this nor my first supposed case would ever be true of him. Further, I felt sure that no one would ever be hardy enough to give the supposed occasion. I can hardly tell how I knew; it was by some of those indescribable natural signs. We were slowly mounting the hill; and in every powerful, lithe movement, in the very set of his shoulders and head, and as well in the sparkle of the bright eye which looked round at me, I read the tokens of a spirit which I thought neither had known nor ever would know the sort of indignity he had described. He was talking for talk's sake. But while I looked, the sparkle of the eye grew very merry. "You are judging me, Miss Randolph," he said. "Judge me gently." "No indeed," I said. "I was thinking that you are not speaking from experience." "I am not better than you think me," he said, laughing and shaking his head. And the laugh was so full of merriment that it infected me. I saw he was very much amused; I thought he was a little interested too. "You know," he went on, "my education has been unfavourable. I have fought for a smaller matter than that you judge insufficient." "Did it do any good?" I asked. He laughed again; picked up a stone and threw it into the midst of a thick tree to dislodge something � I did not see what; and finally looked round at me with the most genial amusement and good nature mixed. I knew he was interested now. "I don't know how much good it did to anybody but myself," he said. "It comforted me � at the time. Afterwards, I remember thinking it was hardly worth while. But if a fellow should suffer an insult, as you say, and not take any notice of it, what do you suppose would become of him in the corps � or in the world either?" "He would be a noble man, all the same," I said. "But people like to be well thought of by their friends and society." "I know that." "He would be sent to Coventry unmitigatedly." "I cannot help it, Mr. Thorold," I said. "If anybody does wrong because he is afraid of the consequences of doing right, he is another sort of a coward � that is all!" Mr. Thorold laughed, and catching my hand as we came to a turn in the road where the woods fell away right and left, brought me quick round the angle, without letting me go to the edge of the bank to get the view. "You must not look till you get to the top," he said. "What an odd road!" I remarked. "It just goes by zigzags." "The only way to get up at all, without travelling round the hill. That is, for horses." It was steep enough for foot wayfarers, but the road was exceeding comfortable that day. We were under the shade of trees all the way; and talk never lagged. Mr. Thorold was infinitely pleasant to me; as well as unlike any one of all my former acquaintances. There was a wealth of life in him, that delighted my quieter nature; an amount of animal spirits that were just a constant little impetus to me; and from the first I got an impression of strength, such as weakness loves to have near. Bodily strength he had also, in perfection; but I mean now the firm self-reliant nature, quick at resources, ready to act as to decide, and full of the power that has its spring and magazine in character alone. So, enjoying each other, we went slowly up the zigzags of the hill, very steep in places, and very rough to the foot; but the last pitch was smoother, and there the grey old bulwarks of the ruined fortification faced down upon us, just above. "Now," said Mr. Thorold, coming on the outside of me to prevent it, � "don't look!" � and we turned into the entrance of the fort, between two outstanding walls. Going through, we hurried up a little steep rise, till we got to a smooth spread of grass, sloping gently to a level with the top of the wall. Where this slope reached its highest, where the parapet (as Mr Thorold called it) commanded a clear view from the eastern side, there he brought me, and then permitted me to stand still. I do not know how long I stood quite still without speaking. "Will you sit down?" said my companion; and I found he had spread a pocket-handkerchief on the bank for me. The turf in that place was about eighteen inches higher than the top of the wall, making a very convenient seat. I thought of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh; but I also thought the most queenly thing I could do was to take the offered civility, and I sat down. My eyes were bewildered with the beauty; they turned from one point to another with a sort of wondering, insatiable enjoyment. There, beneath our feet, lay the little level green- plain; its roads and trees all before us as in a map, with the lines of building enclosing it on the south and west. A cart and oxen were slowly travelling across the road between the library and the hotel, looking like minute ants dragging a crumb along. Beyond them was the stretch of brown earth, where the cavalry exercises forbade a blade of grass to show itself. And beyond that, at the further edge of the plain, the little white camp; its straight rows of tents and the alleys between all clearly marked out. Round all this the river curved, making a promontory of it; a promontory with fringed banks, and levelled at top, as it seemed, just to receive the Military Academy. On the other side the river, a long sweep of gentle hills, coloured in the fair colours of the evening; curving towards the north-east into a beautiful circle of soft outlines back of the mountain which rose steep and bold at the water's edge. This mountain was the first of the group I had seen from my hotel window. Houses and churches nestled in the curve of tableland, under the mountain. Due north, the parapet of the fort rising sharply at its northern angle a few feet from where I sat, hindered my full view. Southerly, the hills swept down, marking the course of the river for many a mile; but again from where I sat I could not see how far. With a sigh of pleasure my eye came back to the plain and the white tents. "Is guard duty very disagreeable?" I asked, thinking of Preston's talk in the morning. "Why, at mid-day, with the thermometer at 90, it is not exactly the amusement one would choose," said Mr. Thorold. "I like it at night well enough." "What do you do?" "Nothing, but walk up and down, two hours at a time." "What is the use of it?" "To keep order, and make sure that nothing goes in or out that has no business to do it." "And they have to carry their guns," I said. "Their muskets � yes." "Are they very heavy?" "No. Pretty heavy for an arm that is new to it. I never remember I have mine." "Mr. Caxton said," (Mr. Caxton was the cadet who had introduced Mr. Thorold to me) � "Mr. Caxton told Mrs. Sandford that the new cadets are sometimes so exhausted with their tour of duty that they have to be carried off the ground." Mr. Thorold looked at me, a very keen bright look of his hazel eyes; but he said nothing. "And he said, that the little white boxes at the corners of the camp, were monuments to those who had fallen on duty." "Just four of them!" � said Mr. Thorold, settling his cap down over his brows; but then he laughed, and I laughed; how we laughed! "Don't you want to see the rest of it?" he said, jumping up. I did not know there was anything more to see. Now, however, he brought me up to the high angle of the parapet that had intercepted my view to the north. I could hardly get away from there. The full magnificence of the mountains in that quarter; the river's course between them, the blue hills of the distant Shawangunk range, and the woody chasm immediately at my feet, stretching from the height where I stood over to the crest of the Crow's nest; it took away my breath. I sat down again, while Mr. Thorold pointed out localities; and did not move, till I had to make way for another party of visitors who were coming. Then Mr. Thorold took me all round the edge of the fort. At the south, we looked down into the woody gorge where Dr. Sandford and I had hunted for fossil infusoria. From here the long channel of the river running southerly, with its bordering ridge of hills, and above all, the wealth and glory of the woodland and the upheaved rocks before me, were almost as good as the eastern view. The path along the parapet in places was narrow and dizzy; but I did not care for it, and my companion went like a chamois. He helped me over the hard places; hand in hand we ran down the steep slopes; and as we went we got very well acquainted. At last we climbed up the crumbling masonry to a small platform which commanded the view both east and south. "What is this place for?" I asked. "To plant guns on." "They could not reach to the river, could they?" "Much further � the guns of now-a-days." "And the old vaults under here � I saw them as we passed by, � were they prisons, places for prisoners?" "A sort of involuntary prisoners," said Mr. Thorold. "They are only casemates; prisons for our own men occasionally, when shot and shell might be flying too thick; hiding places, in short. Would you like to go to the laboratory some day, where we learn to make different kinds of shot, and fire-works and such things?" "Oh, very much! But, Mr. Thorold, Mr. Caxton told me that André was confined in one of these places under here; he said his name was written upon the stones in a dark corner, and that I would find it." Mr. Thorold looked at me, with an expression of such contained fun that I understood it at once; and we bad another laugh together. I began to wonder whether every one that wore a uniform of grey and white with gilt buttons made it his amusement to play upon the ignorance of uninitiated people; but on reflection I could not think Mr. Thorold had done so. I resolved to be careful how I trusted the rest of the cadets, even Preston; and indeed, my companion remarked that I had better not believe anything I heard without asking him. We ran down and inspected the casemates; and then took our seats again for one last look on the eastern parapet. The river and hills were growing lovely in cooler lights; shadow was stealing over the plain. "Shall I see you to-morrow evening?" my companion asked suddenly. "To-morrow evening?" I said. "I don't know. I suppose we shall be at home." "Then I shall _not_ see you. I meant, at the hop." "The hop?" I repeated. "What is that?" "The cadets' hop. During the encampment we have a hop three times a week � a cotillion party. I hope you will be there. Haven't you received an invitation?" "I think not," I said. "I have heard nothing about it." "I will see that that is set right," Mr. Thorold remarked. "And now, do you know we must go down? � that is, _I_ must; and I do not think I can leave you here." "Oh, you have to be on parade!" I exclaimed, starting up; "and it is almost time! �" It was indeed, and though my companion put his own concerns in the background very politely, I would be hurried. We ran down the hill, Mr. Thorold's hand helping me over the rough way and securing me from stumbling. In very few minutes we were again at the gate and entered upon the post limits. And there were the band, in dark column, just coming up from below the hill. We walked the rest of the way in orderly fashion enough, till we got to the hotel gate; there Mr. Thorold touched his cap and left me, on a run, for the camp. I watched till I saw he got there in time; and then went slowly in; feeling that a great piece of pleasure was over. I had had a great many pieces of pleasure in my life, but rarely a _companion_. Dr. Sandford, Miss Cardigan, my dear Captain Drummond, were all much in advance of my own age; my servants were my servants, at Magnolia; and Preston had never associated with me on just the footing of equality. I went up stairs thinking that I should like to see a great deal more of Mr. Thorold. Mrs. Sandford was on the piazza when I came down, and alone; everybody was gone to parade. She gave me a little billet. "Well, Daisy! � are you walked to death, my dear? Certainly, West Point agrees with you! What a colour! And what a change! You are not the same creature that we brought away from New York. Well, was it worth going for, all the way to see that old ruin? My dear! I wish your father and mother could see you." I stood still, wishing they could. "There is more pleasure for you," � Mrs. Sandford went on. "What is this, ma'am?" "An invitation. The cadets have little parties for dancing, it seems, three times a week, in summer; poor fellows! it is all the recreation they get, I suspect; and, of course, they want all the ladies that can be drummed up, to help them dance. It's quite a charity, they tell me. I expect I shall have to dance myself." I looked at the note, and stood mute, thinking what I should do. Ever since Mr. Thorold had mentioned it, up on the hill, the question had been recurring to me. I had never been to a party in my life, since my childish days at Melbourne. Aunt Gary's parties at Magnolia had been of a different kind from this; not assemblies of young people. At Mme. Ricard's I had taken dancing lessons, at my mother's order; and in her drawing room I had danced quadrilles and waltzes with my schoolfellows; but Mme. Ricard was very particular, and nobody else was ever admitted. I hardly knew what it was to which I was now invited. To dance with the cadets! I knew only three of them; however, I supposed that I might dance with those three. I had an impression that amusements of this kind were rather found in the houses of the gay than the sober-minded; but this was peculiar, to help the cadets dance, Mrs. Sandford said. I thought Mr. Thorold wished I would come. I wondered Preston had not mentioned it. He, I knew, was very fond of dancing. I mused till the people came back from parade and we were called to tea; but all my musings went no further. I did not decide not to go. "Now, Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford the next morning, "if you are going to the hop to-night, I don't intend to have you out in the sun burning yourself up. It will be terribly hot; and you must keep quiet. I am so thankful Grant is away! he would have you all through the woods, hunting for nobody knows what, and bring you home scorched." "Dear Mrs. Sandford," I said, "I can dance just as well, if I _am_ burnt." "That's a delusion, Daisy. You are a woman, after all, my dear, � or you will be; and you may as well submit to the responsibility. And you may not know it, but you have a wonderfully fine skin, my dear; it always puts me in mind of fresh cream." "Cream is yellow," I said. "Not all the cream that ever _I_ saw," said Mrs. Sandford. "Daisy, you need not laugh. You will be a queen, my dear, when you cease to be a child. What are you going to wear to-night?" "I don't know, ma'am; anything cool, I suppose." "It won't matter much," Mrs. Sandford repeated. But yet I found she cared and it did matter, when it came to the dressing time. However she was satisfied with one of the embroidered muslins my mother had sent me from Paris. I think I see myself now, seated in the omnibus and trundling over the plain to the cadets' dancing rooms. The very hot, still July night seems round me again. Lights were twinkling in the camp, and across the plain in the houses of the professors and officers; lights above in the sky too, myriads of them, mocking the tapers that go out so soon. I was happy with a little flutter of expectation; quietly enjoying meanwhile the novel loveliness of all about me, along with the old familiar beauty of the abiding stars and dark blue sky. It was a five minutes of great enjoyment. But all natural beauty vanished from my thoughts when the omnibus drew up at the door of the Academic Building. I was entering on something untried. At first sight, when we went into the room, it burst upon me that it was very pretty. The room was dressed with flags, � and evergreens, � and with uniforms; and undoubtedly there is charm in colour, and a gilt button and a gold strap do light up the otherwise sombre and heavy figures of our Western masculine costume. The white and rosy and blue draperies and scarfs that were floating around the forms of the ladies, were met and set off by the grey and white of the cadets and the heavier dark blue of the officers. I never anywhere else saw so pretty gatherings. I stood quite enchanted with the pleasure of the eye; till to my startled astonishment, Captain Pcrcival came up and asked me to dance the first dance with him. I had not expected to dance with anybody except Preston and Mr. Thorold, and perhaps Mr. Caxton. Mr. Thorold came up before the dance began, and I presented him to Mrs. Sandford. He asked me for the first dance, then for the second. And there was no more time for anything, for the dancing began. I had always liked dancing at school. Here the music was far better and the scene infinitely prettier; it was very pleasant, I thought. That is, when Captain Percival did not talk; for he talked nothings. I did not know how to answer him. Of course it had been very hot to-day; and the rooms were very full; and there were a good many people at the hotel. I had nothing but an insipid affirmative to give to these propositions. Then said Captain Percival insinuatingly � "You are from the South?" I had nothing but an insipid assent again. "I was sure of it," he said. "I could not be mistaken." I wondered how he knew, but it did not suit me to ask him; and we danced on again till the dance came to an end. I was glad when it did. In a minute more I was standing by Mrs. Sandford and introduced to Captain Boulanger, who also asked me to dance, and engaged me for the next but one; and then Mr. Caxton brought up one of his brother cadets and presented him, and he asked me, and looked disappointed when for both the next dances I was obliged to refuse him. I was quite glad when Mr. Thorold came and carried me off. The second quadrille went better than the first; and I was enjoying myself unfeignedly, when in a pause of the dance I remarked to my partner that there seemed to be plenty of ladies here to-night. "Plenty," he said. "It is very kind of them. What then?" "Only �" I said � "so many people came and asked me to dance in the few minutes I stood by Mrs. Sandford, and one of them looked quite disappointed that he could not have me." I was met by a look of the keenest inquiry, followed instantly and superseded by another flash of expression. I could not comprehend it at the time. The eyes, which had startled me by their steely gleam, softened wonderfully with what looked like nothing so much as reverence, along with some other expression which I could neither read at the moment nor fathom afterwards. Both looks were gone before I could ask him what they meant, or perhaps I should have asked; for I was beginning to feel very much at my ease with Mr. Thorold. I trusted him. "Did he want you for this dance?" was all he said. "For this, and for the next," I answered. "Both gone! Well, may I have the third, and so disappoint somebody else?" he said laughing. If I did not talk much with Mr. Thorold in intervals of dancing, at least we did not talk nonsense. In the next pause he remarked that he saw I was fond of this amusement. "I think I like everything," I told him. "Are the hills better than this?" he whispered. "Oh, yes!" I said. "Don't you think so?" He smiled, and said "truly he did." "You have been over the Flirtation walk, of course?" he added. "I do not know which it is." He smiled again, that quick illuminating smile which seemed to sparkle in his hazel eyes; and nodded his head a little. "I had the pleasure to see you there, very early one morning." "Oh, is that it?" I said. "I have been down that way from the hotel very often." "That way leads to it. You were upon it, where you were sitting. You have not been through it yet? May I show it to you some day? To-morrow?" I agreed joyfully; and then asked who were certain of the cadets whom I saw about the room, with rosettes of ribbon and long streamers on the breast of their grey coats? "Those are the Managers," said my companion. "You will see enough of them. It is their duty to introduce poor fellows who want partners." I did not see much of them, however, that evening. As soon as I was released from that dance, Captain Percival brought up Captain Lascelles; and somebody else, Mr. Sandford, I believe, introduced Lt. Vaux, and Major Fairbairn; and Major Pitt was another, I believe. And Colonel Walruss brought up his son, who was in the corps of cadets. They all wanted to dance with me; so it was lucky Mr. Thorold had secured his second dance, or I could not have given it to him. I went over and over again the same succession of topics, in the intervals of standing still. How the day had been warm, and the evening kept up its character; the hotels were full now; the cadets well off to have so many ladies; dancing a pleasant pastime, and West Point a nice place. I got so accustomed to the remarks I might expect, that my mouth was ready with an assenting "yes" before the speaker began. But the talking was a small part of the business after all; and the evening went merrily for me, till on a sudden a shrill piercing summons of drum and fife, rolling as it were into our very ears, put a stop to proceedings. Midway in the movement the dancers stopped; there was a hurried bow and curtsey, and an instant scattering of all the grey-coated part of the assembly. The "hop" was over. We went home in the warm moonlight, I thinking that I had had a very nice time, and glad that Mr. Thorold was coming to take me to walk to-morrow. CHAPTER XVI. HOPS. The afternoon was very sultry; however Mr. Thorold came, and we went for our walk. It was so sultry we went very leisurely, and also met few people; and instead of looking very carefully at the beauties of nature and art we had come to see, we got into a great talk as we strolled along; indeed, sometimes we stopped and sat down to talk. Mr. Thorold told me about himself, or rather, about his home in Vermont and his old life there. He had no mother, and no brothers nor sisters; only his father. And he described to me the hills of his native country, and the farm his father cultivated, and the people, and the life on the mountains. Strong and free and fresh and independent and intelligent � that was the impression his talk made upon me, of the country and people and life alike. Sometimes my thoughts took a private turn of their own, branching off. "Mr. Thorold," said I, "do you know Mr. Davis, of Mississippi?" "Davis? No, I don't know him," he said shortly. "You have seen him?" "Yes, I have seen him often enough; and his wife, too." "Do you like his looks?" "I do not." "He looks to me like a bad man �" I said slowly. I said it to Mr. Thorold; I would hardly have made the remark to another at West Point. "He is about bad business �" was my companion's answer. "And yet � I do not know what he is about; but I distrust the man." "Mr. Thorold," said I, beginning cautiously, "do you want to have slavery go into the territories?" "No," said he. "Do you?" "No. What do you think would happen if a Northern President should be elected in the fall?" "Then slavery would _not_ go into the territories," he said, looking a little surprised at me. "The question would be settled." "But do you know some people say � some people at the South say � that if a Northern President is elected, the Southern States will not submit to him?" "Some people talk a great deal of nonsense," said Mr. Thorold. "How could they help submitting?" "They say � it is said � that they would break off from the North and set up for themselves. It is not foolish people that say it, Mr. Thorold." "Will you pardon me, Miss Randolph, but I think they would be very foolish people that would do it." "Oh, I think so too," I said. "I mean, that some people who are not foolish, believe that it might happen." "Perhaps," said Mr. Thorold. "I never heard anything of it before. You are from the South yourself, Miss Randolph?" he added, looking at me. "I was born there," I said. And a little silence fell between us. I was thinking. Some impression, got I suppose from my remembrance of father and mother, Preston, and others whom I had known, forbade me to dismiss quite so lightly, as too absurd to be true, the rumour I had heard. Moreover, I trusted Dr. Sandford's sources of information, living as he did in habits of close social intercourse with men of influence and position at Washington, both Southern and Northern. "Mr. Thorold" � I broke the silence, � "if the South should do such a thing, what would happen?" "There would be trouble," he said. "What sort of trouble?" "Might be all sorts," said Mr. Thorold, laughing; "it would depend on how far people's folly would carry them." "But suppose the Southern States should just do that; � say they would break off and govern themselves?" "They would be like a bad boy that has to be made to take medicine." "How could you _make_ them?" I asked, feeling unreasonably grave about the question. "You can see, Miss Randolph, that such a thing could not be permitted. A Government that would let any part of its subjects break away at their pleasure from its rule, would deserve to go to pieces. If one part might go, another part might go. There would be no nation left." "But how could you _help_ it?" I asked. "I don't know whether we could help it," he said; "but we would try." "You do not mean, that it would come to _fighting?_" "I do not think they would be such fools. I hope we are supposing a very unlikely thing, Miss Randolph." I hoped so. But that impression of Southern character troubled me yet. Fighting! I looked at the peaceful hills, feeling as if indeed "all the foundations of the earth" would be "out of course." "What would _you_ do in case it came to fighting?" said my neighbour. The words startled me out of my meditations. "I could not do anything." "I beg your pardon. Your favour � your countenance, would do much; on one side or the other. You would fight � in effect � as surely as I should." I looked up. "Not against you," I said; for I could not bear to be misunderstood. There was a strange sparkle in Mr. Thorold's eye; but those flashes of light came and went so like flashes, that I could not always tell what they meant. The tone of his voice however I knew expressed pleasure. "How comes that?" he said. "You _are_ Southern?" "Do I look it?" I asked. "Pardon me � yes." "How, Mr. Thorold?" "You must excuse me. I cannot tell you. But you _are_ South?" "Yes," I said. "At least all my friends are Southern. I was born there." "You have one Northern friend," said Mr. Thorold, as we rose up to go on. He said it with meaning. I looked up and smiled. There was a smile in his eyes, mixed with something more. I think our compact of friendship was made and settled then and at once. He stretched out his hand as if for a further ratification. I put mine in it, while he went on, "How comes it then that you take such a view of such a question?" There had sprung up a new tone in our intercourse, of more familiarity, and more intimate trust. It gave infinite content to me; and I went on to answer, telling him about my Northern life. Drawn on, from question to question, I detailed at length my Southern experience also, and put my new friend in possession not only of my opinions, but of the training under which they had been formed. My hand, I remember, remained in his while I talked, as if he had been my brother; till he suddenly put it down and plunged into the bushes for a bunch of wild roses. A party of walkers came round an angle a moment after; and, waking up to a consciousness of our surroundings, we found, or _I_ did, that we were just at the end of the rocky walk, where we must mount up and take to the plain. The evening was falling very fair over plain and hill when we got to the upper level. Mr. Thorold proposed that I should go and see the camp, which I liked very much to do. So he took me all through it, and showed and explained all sorts of things about the tents and the way of life they lived in them. He said he should like it very much, if he only had more room; but three or four in one little tent nine feet by nine, gave hardly, as he said, "a chance to a fellow." The tents and the camp alleys were full of cadets, loitering about, or talking, or busy with their accoutrements; here and there I saw an officer. Captain Percival bowed, Captain Lascelles spoke. I looked for Preston, but I could see him nowhere. Then Mr. Thorold brought me into his own tent, introduced one or two cadets who were loitering there and who immediately took themselves away; and made me sit down on what he called a "locker." The tent curtains were rolled tight up, as far as they would go, and so were the curtains of every other tent; most beautiful order prevailed everywhere and over every trifling detail. "Well," said Mr. Thorold, sitting down opposite me on a candle-box � "how do you think you would like camp life?" "The tents are too close together," I said. He laughed, with a good deal of amusement. "That will do!" he said. "You begin by knocking the camp to pieces." "But it is beautiful," I went on. "And not comfortable. Well, it is pretty comfortable," he said. "How do you do when it storms very hard � at night?" "Sleep." "Don't you ever get wet?" "_That_ makes no difference." "Sleep in the wet!" said I. And he laughed again at me. It was not banter. The whole look and air of the man testified to a thorough soldierly, manly contempt of little things � of all things that might come in the way of order and his duty. An intrinsic independence and withal control of circumstances, in so far as the mind can control them. I read the power to do it. But I wondered to myself if he never got homesick in that little tent and full camp. It would not do to touch the question. "Do you know Preston Gary?" I asked. "He is a cadet." "I know him." I thought the tone of the words, careless as they were, signified little value for the knowledge. "I have not seen him anywhere," I remarked. "Do you want to see him? He has seen you." "No, he cannot," I said, "or he would have come to speak to me." "He would if he could," replied Mr. Thorold, � "no doubt; but the liberty is wanting. He is on guard. We crossed his path as we came into the camp." "On guard!" I said. "Is he? Why, he was on guard only a day or two ago. Does it come so often?" "It comes pretty often in Gary's case," said my companion. "Does it?" I said. "He does not like it." "No," said Mr. Thorold merrily. "It is not a favourite amusement in most cases." "Then why does he have so much of it?" "Gary is not fond of discipline." I guessed this might be true. I knew enough of Preston for that. But it startled me. "Does he not obey the regulations?" I asked presently, in a lowered tone. Mr. Thorold smiled. "He is a friend of yours, Miss Randolph?" "Yes," I said. "He is my mother's nephew." "Then he is your cousin?" said my companion. Another of those penetrative glances fell on me. They were peculiar; they flashed upon me, or through me, as keen and clear as the flash of a sabre in the sun; and out of eyes in which a sunlight of merriment or benignity was even then glowing. Both glowed upon me just at this moment, so I did not mind the keen investigation. Indeed I never minded it. I learned to know it as one of Mr. Thorold's peculiarities. Now, Dr. Sandford had a good eye for reading people, but it never flashed, unless under strong excitement. Mr. Thorold's were dancing and flashing and sparkling with fifty things by turns; their fund of amusement and power of observation were the first things that struck me, and they attracted me too. "Then he is your cousin?" "Of course, he is my cousin." I thought Mr. Thorold seemed a little bit grave and silent for a moment; then he rose up, with that benign look of his eyes glowing all over me, and told me there was the drum for parade. "Only the first drum," he added; so I need not be in a hurry. Would I go home before parade? I thought I would. If Preston was pacing up and down the side of the camp ground, I thought I did not want to see him nor to have him see me; as he was there for what I called disgrace. Moreover I had a secret presentiment of a breezy discussion with him the next time there was a chance. And I was not disappointed. The next day, in the afternoon he came to see us. Mrs. Sandford and I were sitting on the piazza, where the heat of an excessively sultry day was now relieved a little by a slender breeze coming out of the north- west. It was very hot still. Preston sat down and made conversation in an abstracted way for a little while. "We did not see you at the hop the other night, Mr. Gary," Mrs. Sandford remarked. "No. Were you there?" said Preston. "Everybody was there � except you." "And Daisy? Were _you_ there, Daisy?" "Certainly," Mrs. Sandford responded. "Everybody else could have been better missed." "I did not know you went there," said Preston, in something so like a growl that Mrs. Sandford lifted her eyes to look at him. "I do not wonder you are jealous," she said composedly. "Jealous!" said Preston, with growl the second. "You had more reason than you knew." Preston grumbled something about the hops being "stupid places." I kept carefully still. "Daisy, did _you_ go?" I looked up, and said yes. "Whom did you dance with?" "With everybody," said Mrs. Sandford. "That is, so far as the length of the evening made it possible. Blue and grey, and all colours." "I don't want you to dance with everybody," said Preston, in a more undertone growl. "There is no way to prevent it," said Mrs. Sandford, "but to be there and ask her yourself." I did not thank Mrs. Sandford, privately for this suggestion; which Preston immediately followed up by enquiring "if we were going to the hop to-night?" "Certainly," Mrs. Sandford said. "It's too confounded hot!" "Not for us who are accustomed to the climate," Mrs. Sandford said, with spirit. "It's a bore altogether," muttered Preston. "Daisy, are you going to-night?" "I suppose so." "Well, if you must go, you may as well dance with me as with anybody. So tell anybody else that you are engaged. I will take care of you." "Don't you wish to dance with anybody except me?" "I do not," said Preston slowly. "As I said, it is too hot. I consider the whole thing a bore." "You shall not be bored for me," I said. "I refuse to dance with you. I hope I shall not see you there at all." "Daisy!" "Well?" "Come down and take a little walk with me." "You said, it is too hot." "But you will dance?" "You will not dance." "I want to speak to you, Daisy." "You may speak," I said. I did not want to hear him, for there were no indications of anything agreeable in Preston's manner. "Daisy!" he said, � "I do not know you." "You used to know her," said Mrs. Sandford; "that is all." "Will you come and walk with me?" said Preston, almost angrily. "I do not think it would be pleasant," I said. "You were walking yesterday afternoon." "Yes!" "Come and walk up and down the piazza, anyhow. You can do that." I could, and did not refuse. He chose the sunny western side, because no one was there. However, the sun's rays were obscured under a thick haze and had been all day. "Whom were you with?" Preston enquired, as soon as we were out of earshot. "Do you mean yesterday?" "Of course I mean yesterday! I saw you cross in to the camp. With whom were you going there?" "Why did you not come to speak to me?" I said. "I was on duty. I could not." "I did not see you anywhere." "I was on guard. You crossed my path not ten feet off." "Then you must know whom I was with, Preston," I said, looking at him. "_You_ don't know � that is the thing. It was that fellow Thorold." "How came you to be on guard again so soon? You were on guard just a day or two before." "That is all right enough. It is about military things, that you do not understand. It is all right enough, except these confounded Yankees. And Thorold is another." "Who is _one?_" I said, laughing. "You say he is _another_." "Blunt is one." "I like Major Blunt." "Daisy," said Preston, stopping short, "you ought to be with your mother. There is nobody to take care of you here. How came you to know that Thorold?" "He was introduced to me. What is the matter with him?" "You ought not to be going about with him. He is a regular Yankee, I tell you." "What does that mean?" I said. "You speak it as if you meant something very objectionable. "I do. They are a cowardly set of tailors. They have no idea what a gentleman means, not one of them, unless they have caught the idea from a Southerner. I don't want you to have anything to do with them, Daisy. You must not dance with them, and you must not be seen with this Thorold. Promise me you will not." "Dr. Sandford is another," I said. "I can't help Dr. Sandford. He is your guardian. You must not go again with Thorold!" "Did you ever know _him_ cowardly?" I asked. I was sure that Preston coloured; whether with any feeling beside anger I could not make out; but the anger was certain. "What do you know about it?" he asked. "What do you?" I rejoined. But Preston changed more and more. "Daisy, promise me you will not have anything to do with these fellows. You are too good to dance with them. There are plenty of Southern people here now, and lots of Southern cadets." "Mr. Caxton is one," I said. "I don't like him." "He is of an excellent Georgia family," said Preston. "I cannot help that. He is neither gentlemanly in his habits, nor true in his speech." Preston hereupon broke out into an untempered abuse of Northern things in general and Northern cadets in particular, mingled with a repetition of his demands upon me. At length I turned from him. "This is very tiresome, Preston," I said; "and this side of the house is very warm. Of course I must dance with whoever asks me." "Well, I have asked you for this evening," he said, following me. "You are not to go," I said. "I shall not dance with you once," and I took my former place by Mrs. Sandford. Preston fumed; declared I was just like a piece of marble; and went away. I did not feel quite so impassive as he said I looked. "What are you going to wear to-night, Daisy?" Mrs. Sandford asked presently. "I don't know, ma'am." "But you must know soon, my dear. Have you agreed to give your cousin half the evening?" "No, ma'am � I could not � I am engaged for every dance, and more." "More!" said Mrs. Sandford. "Yes ma'am � for the next time." "Preston has reason!" she said, laughing. "But I think, Daisy, Grant will be the most jealous of all. Do him good. What will become of his sciences and his microscope now?" "Why, I shall be just as ready for them," I said. Mrs. Sandford shook her head. "You will find the hops will take more than that," she said. "But now, Daisy, think what you will wear; for we must go soon and get ready." I did not want to think about it. I expected, of course, to put on the same dress I had worn the last time. But Mrs. Sandford objected very strongly. "You must not wear the same thing twice running," she said; "not if you can help it." I could not imagine why not. "It is quite nice enough," I urged. "It is scarcely the least mussed in the world." "People will think you have not another, my dear." "What matter would that be?" I said, wholly puzzled. "Now, my dear Daisy!" said Mrs. Sandford, half laughing, � "you are the veriest Daisy in the world, and do not understand the world that you grow in. No matter; just oblige me, and put on something else to-night. What have you got?" I had other dresses like the rejected one. I had another still, white like them, but of different make and quality. I hardly knew what it was, for I had never worn it; to please Mrs. Sandford I took it out now. She was pleased. It was, like the rest, out of the store my mother had sent me; a soft India muslin, of beautiful texture, made and trimmed as my mother and a Parisian artist could manage between them. But no Parisian artist could know better than my mother how a thing should be. "That will do!" said Mrs. Sandford approvingly. "Dear me, what lace! What lace you Southern ladies do wear, to be sure! A blue sash, now, Daisy?" "No ma'am, I think not." "Rose? It must be blue or rose." But I thought differently, and kept it white. "_No_ colour?" said Mrs. Sandford. "None at all? Then just let me put this little bit of green in your hair." As I stood before the glass and she tried various positions for some geranium leaves, I felt that would not do either. Any dressing of my head would commonise the whole thing. I watched her fingers and the geranium leaves going from one side of my head to the other, watched how every touch changed the tone of my costume, and felt that I could not suffer it; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I, who a little while before had not cared about my dress for the evening, now did care, and that determinedly. I knew I would wear no geranium leaves, not even to please Mrs. Sandford. And for the first time a question stole into my mind, what was I, Daisy, doing? But then I said to myself, that the dress without this head adorning was perfect in its elegance; it suited me; and it was not wrong to like beauty nor to dislike things in bad taste. Perhaps I was too handsomely dressed, but I could not change that now. Another time I would go back to my embroidered muslins, and stay there. "I like it better without anything, Mrs. Sandford," I said, removing her green decorations and turning away from the glass. Mrs. Sandford sighed, but said "it would do without them," and away we went. I can see it all again; I can almost feel the omnibus roll with me over the plain, that still sultry night. All those nights were sultry. Then as we came near the Academic Building, I could see the lights in the upper windows; here and there an officer sitting in a window-sill, and the figures of cadets passing back and forth. Then we mounted to the hall above, filled with cadets in a little crowd, and words of recognition came, and Preston, meeting us almost before we got out of the dressing room. "Daisy, you dance with me?" "I am engaged, Preston, for the first dance." "Already! The second, then, and all the others?" "I am engaged," � I repeated, and left him, for Mr. Thorold was at my side. I forgot Preston the next minute. It was easy to forget him, for all the first half of the evening I was honestly happy in dancing. In talking too, whenever Thorold was my partner; other people's talk was very tiresome. They went over the platitudes of the day; or they started subjects of interest that were not interesting to me. Bits of gossip � discussions of fashionable amusements with which I could have nothing to do; frivolous badinage, which was of all things most distasteful to me. Yet, amid it all, I believe, there was a subtle incense of admiration which by degrees and insensibly found its way to my senses. But I had two dances with Thorold, and at those times I was myself and enjoyed unalloyed pleasure. And so I thought did he. I saw Preston, when now and then I caught a glimpse of him, looking excessively glum. Midway in the evening it happened that I was standing beside him for a few moments, waiting for my next partner. "You are dancing with nobody but that man whom I hate!" he grumbled. "Who is it now?" "Captain Vaux." "Will you dance with me after that?" "I cannot, Preston. I must dance with Major Banks." "You seem to like it pretty well," he growled. "No wonder," said Mrs. Sandford. "You were quite right about the geranium leaves, Daisy; you do not want them. You do not want anything, my dear," she whispered. At this instant a fresh party entered the room, just as my partner came up to claim me. "There are some handsome girls," said the captain. "Two of them, really!" "People from Cozzens's," said Mrs. Sandford, "who think the cadets keep New York hours." It was Faustina St. Clair and Mary Lansing, with their friends and guardians, I don't know whom. And as I moved to take my place in the dance, I was presently confronted by my school adversary and the partner she had immediately found. The greeting was very slight and cool on her side. "Excessively handsome," whispered the captain. "A friend of yours?" "A schoolfellow," I said. "Must be a pleasant thing, I declare, to have such handsome schoolfellows," said the captain. "Beauty is a great thing, isn't it? I wonder sometimes how the ladies can make up their minds to take up with such great rough ugly fellows as we are, for a set. How do you think it is?" I thought it was wonderful too, when they were like him. But I said nothing. "Dress too," said the captain. "Now look at our dress! Straight and square and stiff; and no variety in it. While our eyes are delighted, on the other side, with soft draperies and fine colours, and combinations of grace and elegance, that are fit to put a man in Elysium!" "Did you notice the colour of the haze in the west, this evening at sunset?" I asked. "Haze? No, really. I didn't know there was any haze, really, except in my head. I get hazy amidst these combinations. Seriously, Miss Randolph, what do you think of a soldier's life?" "It depends on who the soldier is," I said. "Cool, really!" said the captain. "Cool! Ha! ha! �" And he laughed, till I wondered what I could have said to amuse him so much. "Then you have learned to individualise soldiers already?" was his next question, put with a look which seemed to me inquisitive and impertinent. I did not know how to answer it, and left it unanswered; � and the captain and I had the rest of our dance out in silence. Meanwhile, I could not help watching Faustina. � She was so very handsome, with a marked, dashing sort of beauty that I saw was prodigiously admired. She took no notice of me, and barely touched the tips of my fingers with her glove as we passed in the dance. As he was leading me back to Mrs. Sandford, the captain stooped his head to mine. "Forgive me?" � he whispered. "So much gentleness cannot bear revenge. I am only a soldier." "Forgive you what, sir?" I asked. And he drew up his head again, half laughed, muttered that I was worse than grape or round shot, and handed me over to my guardian. "My dear Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "if you were not so sweet as you are, you would be a queen. There, now! do not lift up your grey eyes at me like that, or I shall make you a reverence the first thing I do, and fancy that I am one of your _dames d'honneur_. Who is next? Major Banks? Take care, Daisy, or you'll do some mischief." I had not time to think about her words; the dances went forward, and I took my part in them with great pleasure until the tattoo summons broke us up. Indeed my pleasure lasted until we got home to the hotel, and I heard Mrs. Sandford saying, in an aside to her husband, amid some rejoicing over me, � "I was dreadfully afraid she wouldn't go." The words, or something in them, gave me a check. However, I had too many exciting things to think of to take it up just then; and my brain was in a whirl of pleasure till I went to sleep. CHAPTER XVII. OBEYING ORDERS. As I roomed with Mrs. Sandford, of course I had very scant opportunities of being by myself. In the delightful early mornings I was accustomed to take my book, therefore, and go down where I had gone the first morning, to the rocks by the river's side. Nobody came by that way at so early an hour; I had been seen by nobody except that one time, when Thorold and his companion passed me; and I felt quite safe. It was pleasanter down there than can be told. However sultry the air on the heights above, so near the water there was always a savour of freshness; or else I fancied it, in the hearing of the soft liquid murmur of the little wavelets against the shore. But sometimes it was so still I could hear nothing of that; then birds and insects, or the faint notes of a bugle call, were the only things to break the absolute hush; and the light was my refreshment, on river and tree and rock and hill; one day sharp and clear, another day fairyland- like and dreamy through golden mist. It was a good retiring place in any case, so early in the day. I could read and pray there better than in a room, I thought. The next morning after my second dancing party, I was there as usual. It was a sultry July morning, the yellow light in the haze on the hills threatening a very hot day. I was very happy, as usual; but somehow my thoughts went roaming off into the yellow haze as if the landscape had been my life, and I were trying to pick out points of light here and there, and sporting on the gay surface. I danced my dances over again in the flow of the river; heard soft words of kindness or admiration in the song of the birds; wandered away in mazes of speculative fancy among the thickets of tree stems and under- brush. The sweet wonderful note of a wood thrush, somewhere far out of sight, assured me, what everything conspired to assure me, that I was certainly in fairyland, not on the common earth. But I could not somehow get on with my Bible. Again and again I began to read; then a bird or a bough or a ripple would catch my attention, and straightway I was off on a flight of fancy or memory, dancing over again my dances with Mr. Thorold, dwelling upon the impression of his figure and dress, and the fascination of his brilliant, changing hazel eyes; or recalling Captain Vaux's or somebody else's insipid words and looks, or Faustina St. Clair's manner of ill will; or on the other hand giving a passing thought to the question, how I should dress the next hop night. After a long wandering I would come back and begin at my Bible again, but only for a little; my fancy could not be held to it; and a few scarcely read verses and a few half-uttered petitions were all I had accomplished before the clangour of the hotel gong sounding down even to me, warned me that my time was gone. And the note of the wood-thrush as I slowly mounted the path, struck reproachfully and rebukingly upon the ear of my conscience. How had this come about? I mused as I went up the hill. What was the matter? What had bewitched me? No pleasure in my Bible; no time for prayer; and only the motion of feet moving to music, only the flutter of lace and muslin, and the flashing of hazel eyes, filling my brain? What was wrong? Nay, something! And why had Mrs. Sandford "feared" I would not go to the hops? Were they not places for Christians to go to? What earthly harm? Only pleasure. But what if pleasure that marred better pleasure � that interrupted duty? And why was I ruminating on styles and colours, and proposing to put on another dress that should be more becoming the next time? and thinking that it would be well it should be a contrast to Faustina St. Clair? What! entering the lists with her, on her own field? No, no; I could not think it. But what then? And what was this little flutter at my heart about gentlemen's words and looks of homage and liking? What could it be to me, that such people as Captain Vaux or Captain Lascelles liked me? Captain Lascelles, who when he was not dancing or flirting was pleased to curl himself up on one of the window seats like a monkey, and take a grinning survey of what went on. Was I flattered by such admiration as his? � or _any_ admiration? I liked to have Mr. Thorold like me; yes, I was not wrong to be pleased with that; besides, that was _liking;_ not empty compliments. But for my lace and my India muslin and my "Southern elegance" � I knew Colonel Walrus meant me when he talked about that, � was I thinking of admiration for such things as these, and thinking so much, that my Bible reading had lost its charm? What was in fault? Not the hops? They were too pleasant. It could not be the hops. I mounted the hill slowly and in a great maze, getting more and more troubled. I entering the lists with Faustina St. Clair, going in her ways? I knew these were her ways. I had heard scraps enough of conversation among the girls about these things, which I then did not understand. And another word came therewith into my mind, powerful once before and powerful now to disentangle the false from the true. "The world knoweth us not." Did it not know me, last night? Would it not, if I went there again? But the hops were so pleasant! It almost excites a smile in me now to think how pleasant they were. I was only sixteen. I had seen no dancing parties other than the little school assemblages at Mme. Ricard's; and I was fond of the amusement even there. Here, it seemed to me then as if all prettiness and pleasantness that could come together in such a gathering, met, in the dancing room of the cadets. I think not very differently now, as to that point. The pretty accompaniments of uniform; the simple style and hours; the hearty enjoyment of the occasion; were all a little unlike what is found at other places. And to me, and to increase my difficulty, came a crowning pleasure; I met Thorold there. To have a good dance and talk with him was worth certainly all the rest. Must I give it up? I could not bear to think so, but the difficulty helped to prick my conscience. There had been only two fops, and I was so enthralled already. How would it be if I had been to a dozen? and where might it end? And the word stands, � "the world knoweth us _not_." It must not know me, Daisy Randolph, as in any sort belonging to it or mixed up with it; and therefore � Daisy Randolph must go to the hop no more. I felt the certainty of the decision growing over me, even while I was appalled by it. I staved off consideration all that day. In the afternoon Mr. Thorold came and took me to see the laboratory, and explained for me a number of curious things. I should have had great enjoyment, if Preston had not taken it into his head, unasked, to go along; being unluckily with me when Thorold came. He was a thorough marplot; saying nothing of consequence himself, and only keeping a grim watch � I could take it as nothing else � of everything we said and did. Consequently, Mr. Thorold's lecture was very proper and grave, instead of being full of fun and amusement as well as instruction. I took Preston to task about it when we got home. "You hinder pleasure when you go in that mood," I told him. "What mood?" "You know. You never are pleasant when Mr. Thorold is present or when he is mentioned." "He is a cowardly Yankee!" was Preston's rejoinder. "_Cowardly_, Gary?" � said somebody near; and I saw a cadet whom I did not know, who came from behind us and passed by on the piazza. He did not look at us, and stayed not for any more words; but turning to Preston, I was surprised to see his face violently flushed. "Who was that?" "No matter � impertinence!" he muttered. "But what _is_ the matter? and what did he mean?" "He is one of Thorold's set," said Preston; "and I tell you, Daisy, you shall not have anything to do with them. Aunt Felicia would never allow it. She would not look at them herself. You shall not have anything more to do with them." How could I, if I was going no more to the hops? How could I see Thorold, or anybody? The thought struck to my heart, and I made no answer. Company, however, kept me from considering the matter all the evening. But the next day, early, I was in my usual place; near the river side, among the rocks, with my Bible; and I resolved to settle the question there as it ought to be settled. I was resolved; but to do what I had resolved, was difficult. For I wanted to go to the hop that evening very much. Visions of it floated before me; snatches of music and gleams of light; figures moving in harmony; words, and looks; and � my own white little person. All these made a kind of quaint mosaic with flashes of light on the river, and broad warm bands of sunshine on the hills, and the foliage of trees and bushes, and the grey lichened rocks at my foot. It was confusing; but I turned over the leaves of my Bible to see if I could find some undoubted direction as to what I ought to do, or perhaps rather some clear permission for what I wished to do. I could not remember that the Bible said anything about dancing, _pro_ or _con_; dancing, I thought, could not be wrong; but this confusion in my mind was not right. I fluttered over my leaves a good while with no help; than I thought I might as well take a chapter somewhere and study it through. The whole chapter, it was the third of Colossians, did not seem to me to go favourably for my pleasure; but the seventeenth verse brought me to a point, � "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." There was no loophole here for excuses or getting off, "_Whatsoever ye do_." Did I wish it otherwise? No, I did not. I was content with the terms of service; but now about dancing, or rather the dancing party? "In the name of the Lord Jesus." Could I go there in that name? as the servant of my Master, busy about His work, or taking pleasure that He had given me to take? That was the question. And all my visions of gay words and gay scenes, all the flutter of pleased vanity and the hope of it, rose up and answered me. By that thought of the pretty dress I would wear, I knew I should not wear it "in the name of the Lord Jesus;" for my thought was of honour to myself, not to Him. By the fear which darted into my head, that Mr. Thorold might dance with Faustina if I were not there, I knew I should not go "in the name of the Lord," if I went; but to gratify my own selfish pride and emulation. By the confusion which had reigned in my brain these two days, by the tastelessness of my Bible, by the unaptness for prayer, I knew, I knew, I could not go in the name of my Lord, for it would be to unfit myself for his work. The matter was settled in one way; but the pain of it took longer to come to an end. It is sorrowful to me to remember now how hard it was to get over. My vanity I was heartily ashamed of, and bade that show its head no more; my emulation of Faustina St. Clair gave me some horror; but the pleasure, � the real honest pleasure, of the scene and the music and the excitement and the dancing and the seeing people, � all that, I did not let go forever without a hard time of sorrow and some tears. It was not a _struggle_, for I gave that up at once; only I had to fight pain. � It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. And the worst of all and the, most incurable was, I should miss seeing Mr. Thorold. One or two more walks, possibly, I might have with him; but those long, short, evenings of seeing and talking and dancing! Mrs. Sandford argued, coaxed, and rallied me; and then said, if I would not go, she should not; and she did not. That evening we spent at home together, and alone; for everybody else had drifted over to the hop. I suppose Mrs. Sandford found it dull; for the next hop night she changed her mind and left me. I had rather a sorrowful evening. Dr. Sandford had not come back from the mountains; indeed I did not wish for him; and Thorold had not been near us for several days. My fairyland was getting disenchanted a little bit. But I was quite sure I had done right. The next morning I had hardly been three minutes on my rock by the river, when Mr. Thorold came round the turn of the walk and took a seat beside me. "How do you do?" said he, stretching out his hand. I put mine in it. "What has become of my friend, this seven years?" "I am here �" I said. "I see you. But why have I not _seen_ you, all this while?" "I supposed you had been busy," I answered. "Busy! Of course I have, or I should have been here asking questions. I was not too busy to dance with you; and I was promised � how many dances? Where have you been?" "I have been at home." "Why?" Would Mr. Thorold understand me? Mrs. Sandford did not. My own mother never did. I hesitated, and he repeated his question, and those hazel eyes were sparkling all sorts of queries around me. "I have given up going to the hops," I said. "Given up? Do you mean, you _don't_ mean, that you are never coming any more?" "I am not coming any more." "Don't you sometimes change your decisions?" "I suppose I do," I answered; "but not this one." "I am in a great puzzle," he said. "And very sorry. Aren't you going to be so good as to give me some clue to this mystery? Did you find the hops so dull?" And he looked very serious indeed. "O no! �" I said. "I liked them very much � I enjoyed them very much. I am sorry to stay away." "Then you will not stay away very long." "Yes � I shall." "Why?" � he asked again, with a little sort of imperative curiosity which was somehow very pleasant to me. "I do not think it is right for me to go," I said. Then, seeing grave astonishment and great mystification in his face, I added, "I am a Christian, Mr. Thorold." "A Christian!" he cried, with flashes of light and shadow crossing his brow. "Is _that_ it?" "That is it," I assented. "But, my dear Miss Randolph � you know we are friends?" "Yes," I said, smiling, and glad that he had not forgotten it. "Then we may talk about what we like. Christians go to hops." I looked at him without answering. "Don't you know they do?" "I suppose they may," � I answered slowly. "But they _do_. There was our former colonel's wife � Mrs. Holt; she was a regular church-goer, and a member of the church; she was always at the hop, and her sister; they are both church members. Mrs. Lambkin, General Lambkin's wife, she is another. Major Banks's sisters � those pretty girls, � they are always there; and it is the same with visitors. Everybody comes; their being Christians does not make any difference." "Captain Thorold," said I, � "I mean Mr. Thorold, don't you obey your orders?" "Yes � generally," he said. And he laughed. "So must I." "You are not a soldier." "Yes � I am." "Have you got orders not to come to our hop?" "I think I have. You will not understand me, but this is what I mean, Mr. Thorold. I _am_ a soldier, of another sort from you; and I have orders not to go anywhere that my Captain does not send me or where I cannot be serving Him." "I wish you would show those orders to me." I gave him the open page which I had been studying, that same chapter of Colossians, and pointed out the words. He looked at them, and turned over the page, and turned it back. "I don't see the orders," he said. I was silent. I had not expected he would. "And I was going to say, I never saw any Christians that were soldiers; but I have, one. And so you are another?" And he bent upon me a look so curiously considering, tender, and wondering, at once, that I could not help smiling. "A soldier!" said he, again, � "You? Have you ever been under fire?" I smiled again, and then, I don't know what it was. I cannot tell what, in the question and in the look, touched some weak spot. The question called up such sharp answers; the look spoke so much sympathy. It was very odd for me to do; but I was taken unawares; my eyes fell and filled, and before I could help it were more than full. I do not know, to this day, how � I came to cry before Thorold. It was very soon over, my weakness, whatever it was. It seemed to touch him amazingly. He got hold of my hand, put it to his lips, and kissed it over and over, outside and inside. "I can see it all in your face!" he said, tenderly; "the strength and the truth to do anything, and bear � whatever is necessary. But I am not so good as you. I cannot bear anything unless it _is_ necessary; and this isn't." "Oh, no, nor I!" I said; "but this is necessary, Mr. Thorold." "Prove it � come." "You do not see the orders," I said; "but there they are. 'Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.' I cannot go to that place 'in His name.' " "I do not think I understand what you mean," he said, gently. "A soldier, the best that ever lived, is his own man when he is off duty. We go to the hop to play � not to work." "Ah, but a soldier of Christ is never 'off duty,' " I said. "See, Mr. Thorold � '_whatsoever_ ye do' � 'whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do' � That covers all; don't you see?" "That would make it a very heavy thing to be a Christian," he said; "there would be no liberty at all." "Oh, but it is all liberty!" I said. � "When you love Jesus." He looked at me so enquiringly, so inquisitively, that I went on. "You do not think it hard to do things for anybody you love?" "No," said he. "I would like to do things for you." I remember I smiled at that, for it seemed to me very pleasant to hear him say it; but I went on. "Then you understand it, Mr. Thorold." "No," said he, "I do not understand it; for there is this difficulty. I do not see what in the world such an innocent amusement as that we are talking of, can have to do with Christian duty, one way or another. Every Christian woman that I know comes to it, � that is young enough; and some that aren't." It was very hard to explain. "Suppose they disobey orders," I said slowly; � "that would be another reason why I should obey them." "Of course. But do they?" "I should," I said. "I am not serving Christ when I am there. I am not doing the work He has given me to do. I cannot go." "I came down here on purpose to persuade you," he said. It was not necessary to answer that, otherwise than by a look. "And you are unpersuadable," he said; "unmanageable, of course, by me; strong as a giant, and gentle as a snowflake. But the snowflake melts; and you � you will go up to the hotel as good a crystal as when you came down." This made me laugh, and we had a good laugh together, holding each other's hand. "Do you know," said he, "I must go? There is a roll of a summons that reaches my ear, and I must be at the top of the bank in one minute and a quarter. I had no leave to be here." "Hadn't you?" I said. "Oh, then, go, go directly, Mr. Thorold!" But I could not immediately release, my hand, and holding it and looking at me Thorold laughed again; his hazel eyes sparkling and dancing and varying with what feelings I could not tell. They looked very steadily, too, till I remember mine went down, and then, lifting his cap, he turned suddenly and sprang away. I sat down to get breath and think. I had come to my place rather sober and sorrowful; and what a pleasant morning I had had! I did not mind at all, now, my not going to the dances. I had explained myself to Mr. Thorold, and we were not any further apart for it, and I had had a chance to speak to him about other things too. And though he did not understand me, perhaps he would some day. The warning gong sounded before I had well got to my Bible reading. My Bible reading was very pleasant this morning, and I could not be balked of it; so I spent over it near the whole half hour that remained, and rushed up to the hotel in the last five minutes. Of course I was rather late and quite out of breath; and having no voice and being a little excited, I suppose was the reason that I curtseyed to Dr. Sandford, whom I met at the head of the piazza steps. He looked at me like a man taken aback. "Daisy!" he exclaimed. "Yes, sir," I answered. "Where have you come from?" "From my study," I said. "I have a nice place down by the river which is my study." "Rather a public situation for a private withdrawing place," said the doctor. "Oh, no!" said I. "At this hour �" But there I stopped and began again. "It is really very private. And it is the pleasantest study place I think I ever had." "To study what?" I held up my book. "It agrees with you," said the doctor. "What?" said I, laughing. "Daisy!" said Dr. Sandford � "I left a quiet bud of a flower a few days ago � a little demure bit of a schoolgirl, learning geology; and I have got a young princess here, a full rose, prickles and all, I don't doubt. What has Mrs. Sandford done with you?" "I do not know," said I, thinking I had better be demure again. "She took me to the hop." "The hop? � How did you like that?" "I liked it very much." "You did? You liked it? I did not know that you would go, with your peculiar notions." "I went," I said; "I did not know what it was. How could I help liking it? But I am not going again." "Why not, if you liked it?" "I am not going again," I repeated. "Shall we have a walk to the hills to-day, Dr. Sandford?" "Grant!" said his sister-in-law's voice, "don't you mean the child shall have any breakfast? What made you so late, Daisy? Come in, and talk afterwards. Grant is uneasy if he can't see at least your shadow all the while." We went in to breakfast, and I took a delightful walk with Dr. Sandford afterward, back in the ravines of the hills; but I had got an odd little impression of two things. First, that he, like Preston, was glad to have me give up going to the hops. I was sure of it from his air and tone of voice, and it puzzled me; for he could not possibly have Preston's dislike of Northerners, nor be unwilling that I should know them. The other thing was, that he would not like my seeing Mr. Thorold. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew it. I thought � it was very odd � but I thought he was _jealous;_ or rather, I felt he would be if he had any knowledge of our friendship for each other. So I resolved he should have no such knowledge. Our life went on now as it had done at our first coming. Every day Dr. Sandford and I went to the woods and hills, on a regular naturalist's expedition; and nothing is so pleasant as such expeditions. At home, we were busy with microscopic examinations, preparations, and studies; delightful studies, and beautiful lessons, in which the doctor was the finest of instructors, as I have said, and I was at least the happiest of scholars. Mrs. Sandford fumed a little, and Mr. Sandford laughed; but that did no harm. Everybody went to the hops, except the doctor and me; and every morning and evening, at guard-mounting and at parade, I was on the ground behind the guard tents to watch the things done and listen to the music and enjoy all the various beauty. Sometimes I had a glimpse of Thorold; for many both of cadets and officers used to come and speak to me and rally me on my seclusion, and endeavour to tempt me out of it. Thorold did not that; he only looked at me, as if I were something to be a little wondered at but wholly approved of. It was not a disagreeable look to meet. "I must have it out with you," he said one evening, when he had just a minute to speak to me. "There is a whole world, of things I don't understand, and want to talk about. Let us go Saturday afternoon and take a good, long walk up to 'Number Four' � do you like hills?" "Yes." "Then let us go up there Saturday � will you?" And when Saturday came, we went. Preston luckily was not on hand; and Dr. Sandford, also luckily, was gone to dine at the General's with his brother. There were no more shadows on earth than there were clouds in the sky, as we took our way across the plain and along the bank in front of the officers' quarters looking north, and went out at the gate. Then we left civilisation and the world behind us, and plunged into a wild mountain region; going up by a track which few feet ever used, the rough slope to "Number Four." Yet that a few feet used it was plain. "Do people come here to walk, much?" I asked, as we slowly made our way up. "Nobody comes here � for anything." "Somebody _goes_ here," I said. "This is a beaten path." "Oh, there is a poor woodcutter's family at the top; they do travel up and down occasionally." "It is pretty," I said. "It is pretty at the top; but we are a long way from that. Is it too rough for you?" "Not at all," I said. "I like it." "You are a good walker, for a Southern girl." "Oh, but I have lived at the North," I said; "I am only Southern born." Soon, however, he made me stop to rest. There was a good grey rock under the shadow of the trees; Thorold placed me on that and threw himself on the moss at my feet. We were up so high in the world that the hills on the other side of the river rose beautifully before us through the trees, and a sunny bit of the lower ground of the plain looked like a bit of another world that we were leaving. It was a sunny afternoon and a little hazy; every line softened, every colour made richer under the mellowing atmosphere. "Now you can explain it all to me," said Thorold, as he threw himself down. "You have walked too fast. You are warm." "And you do not look as if it was warm at all." "I! This is nothing to me," he said. "But perhaps it will warm me and cool you, if we get into a talk. I want explanations." "About what, Mr. Thorold?" "Well � if you will excuse me � about you," he said, with a very pleasant look, frank and soft at once. "I am quite ready to explain myself," I said. "But I am afraid, when I have done it, that you will not understand me, Mr. Thorold." "Think I cannot?" said he. "I am afraid not, � without knowing what I know." "Let us see," said Thorold. "I want to know why you judge so differently from other people about the right and the wrong of hops and such things. Somebody is mistaken � that is clear." "But the difficulty is, I cannot give you my point of view." "Please try �" said Thorold contentedly, resting his elbow in a soft cushion of moss. "Mr. Thorold, I told you, I am a soldier." "Yes," he said, looking up at me, and little sparkles of light seeming to come out of his hazel eyes. "I showed you my orders." "But I did not understand them to be what you said." "Suppose you were in an enemy's country," I said; � "a rebel country; and your orders were, to do nothing which could be construed into encouraging the rebels, or which could help them to think that your king would hold friendship with them, or that there was not a perfect gulf of division between you and them." "But this is not such a case?" said Thorold. "That is only part," I said. "Suppose your orders were, to keep constant watch and hold yourself at every minute ready for duty, and to go nowhere and do nothing that would unfit you for instant service, or put you off your watch." "But, Miss Randolph!" said Thorold, a little impatiently � "do these little dances unfit you for duty?" "Yes," I said. "And put me off my watch." "Your watch against what? Oh, pardon me! and _please_ enlighten me. I do not mean to be impertinent." "I mean my watch for orders � my watch against evil." "Won't you explain?" said Thorold, gently and impatiently at once. "What sort of evil can _you_ possibly fear, in connection with such an innocent little recreation? What sort of 'orders' are you expecting?" I hesitated. Should I tell him? would he believe? was it best to unveil the working of my own heart to that degree? And how could I evade or shirk the question? "I should not like to tell you," I said at length, "the thoughts and feelings I found stirring in myself, after the last time I went to the hop. I dare say they are something that belongs especially to a woman, and that a man would not know them." Thorold turned on me again a wonderfully gentle look, for a gay fiery young Vermonter, as I knew him to be. "It wanted only that!" he said. � "And the orders, Miss Randolph � what 'orders' are you expecting? You said, orders." "Orders may be given by a sign," I said. "They need not be in words." He smiled. "I see, you have studied the subject." "I mean, only, that whenever a duty is plainly put before me � something given me to do � I know I have 'orders' to do it. And then, Mr. Thorold, as the orders are not spoken, nor brought to me by a messenger, only made known to me by a sign of some sort, � if I did not keep a good watch, I should be sure to miss the sign sometimes, don't you see?" "This is soldiership!" said Thorold. And getting up, he stood before me in attitude like a soldier as he was, erect, still, with arms folded, only not up to his chin like Captain Percival, but folded manfully. He had been watching me very intently; now he stood as intently looking off over the further landscape. Methought I had a sort of pride in his fine appearance; and yet he did in no wise belong to me. Nevertheless it was pleasant to see, the firm, still attitude, the fine proportions, the military nicety of all his dress, which I had before noticed on the parade ground. For as there is a difference between one walk and another, though all trained; so there is a difference between one neatness and another, though all according to regulation; and Preston never looked like this. He turned round at last, and smiled down at me. "Are you rested?" "Oh, yes!" I said, rising. "I was not fatigued." "Are you tired talking?" "No, not at all. Have I talked so very much?" He laughed at that, but went on. "Will you be out of patience with my stupidity?" I said no. "Because I am not fully enlightened yet. I want to ask further questions; and asking questions is very impertinent." "Not if you have leave," I said. "Ask what you like." "I am afraid, nevertheless. But I can never know, if I do not ask. How is it � this is what puzzles me, � that other people who call themselves Christians do not think as you think about all this matter?" "Soldiership?" I asked. "Well, yes. It comes to that, I suppose." "You know what soldiership ought to be," I said. "But one little soldier cannot be all the rank and file of this army?" he said, looking down at me. "Oh, no!" I said, laughing, � "there are a great many more, � there are a great many more, � only you do not happen to see them." "And these others, that I do see, are not soldiers then?" "I do not know," I said, feeling sadly what a stumbling block it was. "Perhaps. they are. But you know yourself, Mr. Thorold, there is a difference between soldiers and soldiers." He was silent a while, as we mounted the hill, and then suddenly broke out again. "But it makes religion a slavery � a bondage � to be _all_ the while under arms, on guard, watching orders. _Always_ on the watch and expecting to be under fire � it is too much; it would make a gloomy, ugly life of it." "But suppose you _are_ under fire?" I said. "What?" said he, looking and laughing again. "If you are a good soldier in an enemy's country, always with work to do; will you wish to be off your guard, or off duty?" "But what a life!" said Thorold. "If you love your Captain?" said I. He stopped and looked at me with one of the keenest looks of scrutiny I ever met. It seemed to scrutinise not me only, but the truth. I thought he was satisfied; for he turned away without adding anything more at that time. His mind was at work, however; for he broke down a small branch in his way and busied himself with it in sweeping the trunks of the trees as we went by; varying the occupation with a careful clearing away of all stones and sticks that would make my path rougher than it need be. Finally, giving me his hand to help me spring over a little rivulet that crossed our way. "Here is an incongruity, now I think of it," said he, smiling. "How is it that you can be on such good terms with a rebel? Ought you to have anything to do with me?" "I may be friends with anybody in his private capacity," I answered in the same tone. "That does not compromise anything. It is only when � You know what I mean." "When they are assembled for doubtful purposes." "Or gathered in a place where the wrong colours are displayed," I added. "I must not go there." "There was no false banner hung out on the Academic Building the other night," he said humorously. But I knew my King's banner was not either. I knew, people did not think of Him there, nor work for Him, and would have been very much surprised to hear any one speak of Him. Say it was innocent amusement; people did not want Him with them there; and where He was not, I did not wish to be. But I could not tell all this to Mr. Thorold. He was not contented, however, without an answer. "How was it?" he asked. "You cannot understand me," I said, "and you may laugh at me." "Why may I not understand you?" he said gently, with the utmost deference of manner. "I suppose, because you do not understand something else," I said; "and you cannot, Mr. Thorold, until you know what the love of Jesus is, and what it is to care for His honour and His service more than for anything else in the world." "But are they compromised?" he asked. "That is the thing. You see, I want you back at the hop." "I would like to come," said I; "but I must not." "On the ground �?" "I told you, Mr. Thorold. I do not find that my orders allow me to go there. I must do nothing that I cannot do in my King's name." "That is �" "As His servant � on His errands � following where He leads me." "I never heard it put so before," said Thorold. "It bears the stamp of perfection � only an impossible perfection." "No �" said I. "To ordinary mortals," he rejoined, with one of his quick brilliant flashes of the eye. Then as it softened and changed again, � "Miss Randolph, permit me to ask a not irrelevant question � Are you happy?" And with the inquiry came the investigating look, keen as a razor or a rifle ball. I could meet it though; and I told him, it was _this_ made me happy. For the first time his face was troubled. He turned it from me and dropped the conversation. I let it drop too; and we walked side by side and silently the remainder of the steep way; neither of us, I believe, paying much attention to what there was to be seen below or around us. At the top however this changed. We found a good place to rest, and sat there a long time looking at the view; Thorold pointing out its different features, and telling me about them in detail; his visits to them, and exploration of the region generally. And we planned imaginary excursions together; one especially to the top of the Crow's Nest, with an imaginary party, to see the sun rise. We would have to go up of course over night; we must carry a tent along for shelter, and camp beds, and cooking utensils, at least a pot to boil coffee; and plenty of warm wraps and plenty of provisions, for people always eat terribly in cold regions, Thorold said. And although the top of the Crow's Nest is not Arctic by any means, still it is cool enough even in a warm day, and would be certainly cool at night. Also the members of our party we debated; they must be people of good tempers and travelling habits, not to be put out for a little; people with large tastes for enjoyment, to whom the glory of the morning would make amends for all the toil of the night; and good talkers, to keep up the tone of the whole thing. Meanwhile, Thorold and I heartily enjoyed Number Four; as also I did his explanations of fortifications, which I drew from him and made him apply to all the fortifications in sight or which I knew. And when the sun's westing told us it was time to go home, we went down all the way talking. I have but little remembrance of the path. The cool bright freshness of the light in the trees, and its brilliant gleams in the distance after it had left our hillside, � I remember that. I have an impression of the calm clear beauty that was under foot and overhead, that afternoon; but I saw it only as I could see it while giving my thought to something else. Sometimes, holding hands, we took runs down the mountain side; then walked demurely again when we got to easier going. We had come to the lower region at last and were not far from the gate, talking earnestly and walking close together, when I saw Thorold touch his cap. I do not know what made me ask, "Was that anybody I knew?". "I believe it was your friend Dr. Sandford," he said, smiling into my face with a smile of peculiar expression and peculiar beauty. I saw something had pleased him, pleased him very much. It could not have been Dr. Sandford. I cannot say I was pleased, as I had an intuitive assurance the doctor was not. But Thorold's smile almost made amends. That evening the doctor informed us he had got intelligence which obliged him to leave the Point immediately; and as he could go with us part of the way to Niagara, we had better all set off together. I had lost all my wish to go to Niagara; but I said nothing. Mrs. Sandford said there was nothing to be gained by staying at the Point any longer, as I would not go to the hops. So Monday morning we went away. CHAPTER XVIII. SOUTH AND NORTH. We made a round of pleasure after leaving West Point. That is, it was a round of pleasure to the rest of the party. I had left my best pleasure behind me. Certainly I enjoyed Catskill, and Trenton Falls, and Niagara, after some sort; but there was nothing in them all like my walk to Number Four. West Point had enough natural beauty to satisfy; any one, I thought, even for all summer; and there I had besides what I had not elsewhere and never had before, a companion. All my earlier friends were far older than I, or beneath me in station. Preston was the single exception; and Preston and I were now widely apart in our sympathies; indeed always had been. Mr. Thorold and I talked to each other on a level; we understood each other and suited each other. I could let out my thoughts to him with a freedom I never could use with anybody else. It grieved me a little that I had been forced to come away so abruptly that I had no chance of letting him know. Courtesy, I thought, demanded of me that I should have done this; and I could not do it; and this was a constant subject of regret to me. At the end of our journey I came back to school. Letters from my father and mother desired that I would do so, and appointed that I was to join them abroad next year. My mother had decided that it was best not to interfere with the regular course of my education; and my father renewed his promise that I should have any reward I chose to claim, to comfort me for the delay. So I bent myself to study with new energies and new hope. I studied more things than school books that winter. The bits of political matter I had heard talked over at West Point were by no means forgotten; and once in a while, when I had time and a chance, I seized one of the papers from Mme. Ricard's library table and examined it. And every time I did so, something urged me to do it again. I was very ignorant. I had no clue to a great deal that was talked of in these prints; but I could perceive the low threatening growl of coming ill weather, which seemed to rise on the ear every time I listened. And a little anxiety began to grow up in my mind. Mme. Ricard, of course, never spoke on these subjects and probably did not care about them. Dr. Sandford was safe in Washington. I once asked Miss Cardigan what she thought. "There are evil men abroad, dear," she said. "I don't know what they will be permitted to do." "Who do you hope will be elected?" I asked. "I don't vote myself," said Miss Cardigan; "so I do not fash myself much with what I can't help; but I hope the man will be elected that will do the right thing." "And who is that?" I asked. "You do not want slavery to be allowed in the territories?" "I? Not I!" said Miss Cardigan. "And if the people want to keep it out of them, I suppose they will elect Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if he is the right man or no; but he is on the right side. 'Break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.' That is my maxim, Daisy." I pondered this matter by turns more and more. By and by there began to be audible mutterings of a storm in the air around me. The first I heard was when we were all together in the evening with our work, the half hour before tea. "Lincoln is elected" � whispered one of the girls to another. "Who cares?" the other said aloud. "What if he is?" asked a third. "Then," said a gentle, graceful looking girl, spreading her embroidery out on her lap with her slim white fingers, � "_then_ there'll be fighting." It was given, this announcement, with the coolest matter-of- fact assurance. "Who is going to fight?" was the next question. The former speaker gave a glance up to see if her audience was safe, and then replied as coolly as before. "My brother, for one." "What for, Sally?" "Do you think we are going to have these vulgar Northerners rule over us? My cousin Marshall is coming back from Europe on purpose that he may be here and be ready. I know my aunt wrote him word that she would disinherit him if he did not." "Daisy Randolph � you are a Southerner," said one of the girls. "Of course, she is a Southerner," said Sally, going on with her embroidery. "She is safe." But if I was safe, I was very uncomfortable. I hardly knew why I was so uncomfortable. Only, I wished ardently that troubles might not break out between the two quarters of the country. I had a sense that the storm would come near home. I could not recollect my mother and my father, without a dread that there would be opposing electricities between them and me. I began to study the daily news more constantly and carefully. I had still the liberty of Mme.'s library, and the papers were always there. I could give to them only a few minutes now and then; but I felt that the growl of the storm was coming nearer and growing more threatening. Extracts from Southern papers seemed to me very violent and very wrong-headed; at the same time I knew that my mother would endorse them and Preston would echo them. Then South Carolina passed the ordinance of secession. Six days after, Major Anderson took possession of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour, and immediately the fort he had left and Castle Pinckney were garrisoned by the South Carolinians in opposition. I could not tell how much all this signified; but my heart began to give a premonitory beat sometimes. Mississippi followed South Carolina; then United States' forts and Arsenals were seized in North Carolina and Georgia, and Alabama, one after the other. The tone of the press was very threatening, at least of the Southern press. And not less significant, to my ear, was the whisper I occasionally heard among a portion of our own little community. A secret whisper, intense in its sympathy with the seceding half of the nation, contemptuously hostile to the other part, among whom they were at that very moment receiving Northern education and Northern kindness. The girls even listened and gathered scraps of conversation that passed in their hearing, to retail them in letters sent home; "they did not know," they said, "what might be of use." Later, some of these letters were intercepted by the General Government and sent back from Washington to Mme. Ricard. All this told me much of the depth and breadth of feeling among the community of which these girls formed a part; and my knowledge of my own father and mother, aunt Gary and Preston, and others, told me more. I began to pray that God would not let war come in the land. Then there was a day, in January I think, when a bit of public news was read out in presence of the whole family; a thing that rarely happened. It was evening, and we were all in the parlour with our work. I forget who was the reader, but I remember the words. " 'The steamer, "Star of the West," with two hundred and fifty United States troops on board for Fort Sumter, was fired into' (I forget the day) 'by the batteries near Charleston.' Young ladies, do you hear that? The steamer was fired into. That is the beginning." We looked at each other, we girls; startled, sorry, awed, with a strange glance of defiance from some eyes, while some flowed over with tears, and some were eager with a feeling that was not displeasure. All were silent at first. Then whispers began. "I told you so," said Sally. "Well, _they_ have begun it," said Macy, who was a new York girl. "Of course. What business had the 'Star of the West' to be carrying those troops there? South Carolina can take care of her own forts." "Daisy Randolph, you look as solemn as a preacher," said another. "Which side are you on?" "She is on the right side," said another. "Of course," said Sally. "She is the daughter of a Southern gentleman!" "I am not on the side of those who fire the first shot," I said. "There is no other way," said Sally, coolly. "If a rat comes in your way, you must shoot him. I knew it had got to come. I have heard my uncle talk enough about that." "But what will be the end of it?" said another. "Pooh! it will end like smoke. The Yankees do not like fighting � they would rather be excused if you please. Their _forte_ is quite in another line � out of the way of powder." I wondered if that was true. I thought of Thorold, and of Major Blunt. I was troubled; and when I went to see Miss Cardigan, next day, I found she could give me little comfort. "I don't know, my dear," she said, "what they may be left to do. They're just daft down there; clean daft." "If they fight, we shall be obliged to fight," I said, not liking to ask her about Northern courage; and, indeed, she was a Scotswoman, and what should she know? "Ay, just that," she replied; "and fighting between the two parts of one land is even the worst fighting there can be. Pray it may not come, Daisy; but those people are just daft." The next letters from my mother spoke of my coming out to them as soon as the school year should be over. The country was likely to be disturbed, she said; and it would not suit with my father's health to come home just now. As soon as the school year should be over, and Dr. Sandford could find a proper opportunity for me to make the journey, I should come. I was very glad; yet I was not all glad. I wished they could have come to me rather. I was not, I hardly knew why I was not, quite ready to quit America while these troubles threatened. And as days went on, and the cloud grew blacker, my feeling of unwillingness increased. The daily prints were full of fresh instances of the seizure of United States property, of the secession of new States; then the Secession Congress met, and elected Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens their President and Vice President; and rebellion was duly organised. Jefferson Davis! How the name took me back to the summer parade on the West Point plain, and my first view of that smooth, sinister, ill-conditioned face. Now he was heading rebellion. Where would Dr. Sandford, and Mr. Thorold, and Preston be? How far would the rebels carry their work? and what opposition would be made to it? Again I asked Miss Cardigan. "It's beyond _me_, Daisy," she said. "I suppose it will depend very much on whether we've got the right man to head us or no; and that nobody can tell till we try. This man Buchanan, that is over us at present, he is no better than a bit of cotton wool. I am going to take a look at Mr. Lincoln as he comes through, and see what I think of him. "When is he coming?" "They say, to-day," said Miss Cardigan. "There'll be an uncommon crowd; but I'll risk it." A great desire seized me, that I might see him too. I consulted with Miss Cardigan. School hours were over at three; I could get away then, I thought; and by studying the programme of the day we found it possible that it would not be too late then for our object. So it proved; and I have always been glad of it ever since. Miss Cardigan and I went forth and packed ourselves in the dense crowd which had gathered and filled all the way by which the President elect was expected to pass. A quiet and orderly and most respectable crowd it was. Few Irish, few of the miserable of society, who come out only for a spectacle; these were the yeomanry and the middle classes, men of business, men of character and some substance, who were waiting like us, to see what promise for the future there might be in the aspect of our new Chief. Waiting patiently; and we could only wait patiently like them. I thought of Preston's indignation if he could have seen me, and Dr. Sandford's ready negative on my being there, but well were these thoughts put to flight when the little cavalcade for which we were looking hove in sight and drew near. Intense curiosity and then profound satisfaction seized me. The strong, grave, kindly lineaments of the future Head of the Country, gave me instantly a feeling of confidence, which I never lost in all the time that followed. That was confidence in his honesty and goodness; but another sort of trust was awakened by the keen, searching. shrewd glances of those dark eyes, which seemed to penetrate the masses of human intelligences surrounding him, and seek to know what manner of _material_ he might find them at need. He was not thinking of himself, that was plain; and the homely, expressive features got a place in my heart from that time. The little cavalcade passed on from us; the crowd melted away, and Miss Cardigan and I came slowly again up Fifth Avenue. "Yon's a mon!" quoth Miss Cardigan, speaking as she did in moments of strong feeling, with a little reminder of her Scottish origin. "Didn't you like him?" I rejoined. "I always like a man when I see him," said my friend. "He had need be that too, for, he has got a man's work to do." And it soon appeared that she spoke true. I watched every action, and weighed every word of Mr. Lincoln now, with a strange interest. I thought great things depended on him. I was glad when he determined to send supplies into Fort Sumter. I was sure that he was right; but I held my breath as it were to see what South Carolina would do. The twelfth of April told us. "So they have done it, Daisy!" said Miss Cardigan, that evening. "They are doing it, rather. They have been firing at each other all day." "Well, Major Anderson must defend his fort," I said. "That is his duty." "No doubt," said Miss Cardigan; "but you look pale, Daisy, my bairn. You are from those quarters yourself. Is there anybody in that neighbourhood that is dear to you?" I had the greatest difficulty not to burst into tears, by way of answer, and Miss Cardigan looked concerned at me. I told her there was nobody there I cared for, except some poor coloured people who were in no danger. "There'll be many a sore heart in the country if this goes on," she said, with a sigh. "But it will not go on, will it?" I asked. "They cannot take Fort Sumter, do you think so?" "I know little about it," said my friend, soberly. "I am no soldier. And we never know what is best, Daisy. We must trust the Lord, my dear, to unravel these confusions." And the next night the little news-boys in the streets were crying out the "Fall of Fort Sum � ter!" It rang ominously in my heart. The rebels had succeeded so far; and they would go on. Yes, they would go on now, I felt assured; unless some very serious check should be given them. Could the Yankees give that? I doubted it. Yet _their_ cause was the cause of right, and justice, and humanity; but the right does _not_ always at first triumph, whatever it may do in the end; and good swords, and good shots, and the spirit of a soldier, are things that are allowed to carry their force with them. I knew the South had these. What had the North? Even in our school seclusion, we felt the breath of the tremendous excitement which swayed the public mind next day. Not bluster, nor even passion, but the stir of the people's heart. As we walked to church, we could hear it in half-caught words of those we passed by, see it in the grave, intense air which characterised groups and faces; feel it in the atmosphere, which was heavy with indignation and gathering purpose. It was said, no Sunday like that had been known in the city. Within our own little community, if parties ran high, they were like those outside, quiet; but when alone, the Southern girls testified an exultation that jarred painfully upon my ears. "Daisy don't care." "Yes, I care," I said. "For shame not to be glad! You see, it is glorious. We have it all our own way. The impertinence of trying to hold our forts for us!" "I don't see anything glorious in fighting," I said. "Not when you are attacked?" "We were not attacked," I said. "South Carolina fired the first guns." "Good for her!" said Sally. "Brave little South Carolina! Nobody will meddle with her and come off without cutting his fingers." "Nobody did meddle with her," I asserted. "It was _she_ who meddled, to break the laws and fight against the government." "What government?" said Sally. "Are we slaves, that we should be ruled by a government we don't choose? We will have our own. Do you think South Carolina and Virginia _gentlemen_ are going to live under a rail-splitter for a President? and take orders from him?" "What do you mean by a 'rail-splitter'?" "I mean this Abe Lincoln the Northern mudsills have picked up to make a President of. He used to get his living by splitting rails for a Western fence, Daisy Randolph." "But if he is President, he is President," I said. "For those that like him. We won't have him. Jefferson Davis is my President. And all I can do to help him, I will. I can't fight; I wish I could. My brother and my cousins and my uncle will, though, that's one comfort; and what I can do I will." "Then I think you are a traitor," I said. I was hated among the Southern girls from that day. Hated with a bitter violent hatred, which had indeed little chance to show itself, but was manifested in a scornful, intense avoidance of me. The bitterness of it is surprising to me even now. I cared not very much for it. I was too much engrossed with deeper interests of the time, both public and private. The very next day came the President's call for seventy-five thousand men; and the next the answer of the governor of Kentucky, that "Kentucky would furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." I saw this in the paper in the library; the other girls had no access to the general daily news, or I knew there would have been shoutings of triumph over Governor Magoffin. Other governors of other States followed his example. Jefferson Davis declared in a proclamation that letters of marque and reprisal would be issued. Everything wore the aspect of thickening strife. My heart grew very heavy over these signs of evil, fearing I knew not what for those whom I cared about. Indeed, I would not stop to think what I feared. I tried to bury my fears in my work. Letters from my mother became very explicit now; she said that troublesome times were coming in the country, and she would like me to be out of it. After a little while, when the independence of the South should be assured, we would all come home � and be happy together. Meantime, as soon after the close of the school year as Dr. Sandford could find a good chance for me, I was to come out to them at Lausanne, where my mother thought they would be by that time. So I studied with all my strength, with the double motive of gaining all I could and of forgetting what was going on in the political World. Music and French, my mother particularly desired that I should excel in; and I gave many hours to my piano, as many as possible, and talked with Mlle. Genevieve whenever she would let me. And she was very fond of me and fond of talking to me; it was she who kept for me my library privilege. And my voice was good, as it had promised to be. I had the pleasure of feeling that I was succeeding in what I most wished to attain. It was succeeding over the heads of my school-fellows; and that earned me wages that were not pleasant among a portion of my companions. Faustina St. Clair was back among us; she would perhaps have forgiven if she could have forgotten me; but my headship had been declared ever since the time of the bronze standish, and even rivalry had been long out of the question. So the old feud was never healed; and now, between the unfriendliness of her party and the defection of all the Southern girls, I was left in a great minority of popular favour. It could not be helped. I studied the harder. I had unlimited favour with all my teachers, and every indulgence I asked for. The news of the attack in Baltimore upon the Massachusetts troops passing through the city, and Governor Andrew's beautiful telegram, shook me out of my preocupation. It shook me out of all quiet for a day. Indignation, and fear, and sorrow, rolled through my heart. The passions that were astir among men, the mad results to which they were leading, the possible involvement of several of those whom I loved, a general trembling of evil in the air, made study difficult for the moment. What signified the course and fate of nations hundreds of years ago? Our own course and fate filled the horizon. What signified the power or beauty of my voice, when I had not the heart to send it up and down like a bird any longer? Where was Preston, and Dr. Sandford, and Ransom, and what would become of Magnolia? In truth I did not know what had become of Ransom. I had not heard from him or of him in a long time. But these thoughts would not do. I drove them away. I resolved to mind my work and not read the papers, if I could help it, and not think about politics or my friends' course in them. I could do nothing. And in a few months I should be away, out of the land. I kept my resolve pretty well. Indeed, I think nothing very particular happened to disturb it for the next two or three weeks. I succeeded in filling my head with work and being very happy in it. That is, whenever I could forget more important things. CHAPTER XIX. ENTERED FOR THE WAR. One evening, I think before the end of April, I asked permission to spend the evening at Miss Cardigan's. I had on hand a piece of study for which I wanted to consult certain books which I knew were in her library. Mlle. Genevieve gave me leave gladly. "You do study too persevering, m'amie," she said. "Go, and stop to study for a little while. You are pale. I am afraid your doctor � _ce bon Monsieur le docteur_ � will scold us all by and by. Go, and do not study." But I determined to have my play and my study too. As I passed through Miss Cardigan's hall, the parlour door standing half open let me see that a gentleman was with her. Not wishing to interrupt any business that might be going on, and not caring also to be bored with it myself, I passed by and went into the inner room where the books were. I would study now, I thought, and take my pleasure with my dear old friend by and by when she was at leisure. I found my books, and had thrown myself down on the floor with one of them; when a laugh that came from the front room laid a spell upon my powers of study. The book fell from my hands; I sat bolt upright, every sense resolved into that of hearing. What and who had that been? I listened. Another sound of a word spoken, another slight inarticulate suggestion of laughter; and I knew with an assured knowledge that my friend Cadet Thorold, and no other, was the gentleman in Miss Cardigan's parlour with whom she had business. I sat up and forgot my books. The first impulse was to go in immediately and show myself. I can hardly tell what restrained me. I remembered that Miss Cardigan must have business with him, and I had better not interrupt it. But those sounds of laughter had not been very business-like, either. Nor were they business words which came to me next through the open door. I never thought or knew I was listening. I only thought it was Thorold, and held my breath to hear, or rather to feel. My ears seemed sharpened beyond all their usual faculty. "And you haven't gone and fallen in love, callant, meanwhile, just to complicate affairs?" said the voice of Miss Cardigan. "I shall never fall in love," said Thorold, with (I suppose) mock gravity. His voice sounded so. "Why not?" "I require too much." "It's like your conceit!" said Miss Cardigan. "Now, what is it that you require? I would like to know; that is, if you know yourself. It appears you have thought about it." "I have thought, till I have got it all by heart," said Thorold. "The worst is, I shall never find it in this world." "That's likely. Come, lad, paint your picture, and I'll tell you if _I_ know where to look," said Miss Cardigan. "And then, you'll search for me?" "I dinna ken if you deserve it," said Miss Cardigan. "I don't deserve it, of course," said Thorold. "Well � I have painted the likeness a good many times. The first thing is a pair of eyes as deep and grey as our mountain lakes." "I never heard that your Vermont lakes were _grey_," said Miss Cardigan. "Oh, but they are! when the shadow of the mountains closes them in. It is not cold grey, but purple and brown, the shadow of light as it were; the lake is in shadow. Only, if a bit of blue _does_ show itself there, it is the very Heaven." "I hope it is not going to be in poetry?" said Miss Cardigan's voice, sounding dry and amused. "What is the next thing? It is a very good picture of eyes." "The next thing is a mouth that makes you think of nothing but kissing it; the lines are so sweet, and so mobile, and at the same time so curiously subdued. A mouth that has learned to smile when things don't go right; and that has learned the lesson so well, you cannot help thinking it must have often known things go wrong; to get the habit so well, you know." "Eh? � Why, boy!" � cried Miss Cardigan. "Do you know anybody like it?" said Thorold, laughing. "If you do, you are bound to let me know where, you understand." "What lies between the eyes and mouth?" said Miss Cardigan. "There goes more to a picture." "Between the eyes and mouth," said Thorold, "there is sense, and dignity, and delicacy, and refinement to a fastidious point; and a world of strength of character in the little delicate chin." "Character � _that_ shows in the mouth," said Miss Cardigan slowly. "I told you so," said Thorold. "That is what I told you. Truth, and love, and gentleness, all sit within those little red lips; and a great strength of will, which you cannot help thinking has borne something to try it. The brow is like one of our snowy mountain tops with the sun shining on it." "And the lady's figure is like a pine tree, isn't it? It sounds gay as if you'd fallen in love with Nature, and so personified and imaged her in human likeness. Is it real humanity?" Thorold laughed his gay laugh. "The pine-tree will do excellently, aunt Catherine," he said. "No better embodiment of stately grace could be found." My ears tingled. "Aunt Catherine?" _Aunt!_ then Thorold must be her relation, her nephew; then he was not come on business; then he would stay to tea. I might as well show myself. But, I thought, if Thorold had some other lady so much in his mind, (for I was sure his picture must be a portrait) he would not care so very much about seeing me, as I had at first fancied he would. However, I could not go away; so I might as well go in; it would not do to wait longer. The evening had quite fallen now. It was April, as I said, but a cold raw spring day, and had been like that for several days. Houses were chill; and in Miss Cardigan's grate a fine fire of Kennal coals was blazing, making its red illumination all over the room and the two figures who sat in front of it. She had had a grate put in this winter. There was no other light, only that soft red glow and gloom, under favour of which I went in and stood almost beside them before they perceived me. I did not speak to Miss Cardigan. I remember my words were, "How do you do, Mr. Thorold?" � in a very quiet kind of a voice; for I did not now expect him to be very glad. But I was surprised at the change my words made. He sprang up, his eyes flashing a sort of shower of sparks over me, gladness in every line of his face, and surprise, and a kind of inexpressible deference in his manner. "Daisy!" � he exclaimed � "Miss Randolph!" "Daisy!" echoed Miss Cardigan. "My dear! � do you two know each other? Where did you come from?" I think I did not answer. I am sure Thorold did not. He was caring for me, placing his chair nearer his aunt and putting me into it, before he let go the hand he had taken. Then, drawing up another chair on the other side of me, he sat down and looked at me (I thought afterward, I only felt at the moment) as if I had been some precious wonder; the Koh-i-noor diamond, or anything of that sort. "Where did you come from?" was his first question. "I have been in the house a little while," I said. "I thought at first Miss Cardigan had somebody with her on business, so I would not come in." "It is quite true, Daisy," said Miss Cardigan; "it is somebody on business." "Nothing private about it, though," said Thorold, smiling at me. "But where in the world did you and aunt Catherine come together?" "And what call have ye to search into it?" said Miss Cardigan's good-humoured voice. "I know a great many bodies, callant, that you know not." "I know this one though," said Thorold. "Miss Randolph � won't you speak? for aunt Catherine is in no mood to let me. � Have you two known each other long?" "It seems long," I said. "It is not very long." "Since before last summer?" "Certainly!" "If that's the date of _your_ acquaintanceship," said Miss Cardigan, "we're auld friends to that. Is all well, Daisy?" "All quite well, ma'am. I came to do a bit of study I wanted in your books, and to have a nice time with you, besides." "And here is this fellow in the way. But we cannot turn him out, Daisy; he is going fast enough; on what errand, do you think, is he bent?" _I_ had not thought about it till that minute. Something, some thread of the serious, in Miss Cardigan's voice made me look suddenly at Thorold. He had turned his eyes away from me and had bent them upon the fire, all merriment gone out of his face too. It was thoroughly grave. "What are you going to do, Mr. Thorold?" I asked. "Do you remember a talk we had down on Flirtation walk one day last summer, when you asked me about possible political movements at the South, and I asked you what you would do?" "Yes," I said, my heart sinking. "The time has come," he said, facing round upon me. "And you �" "I shall be on my way to Washington in a few days. Men are wanted now � all the men that have any knowledge to be useful. I may not be very useful. But I am going to try." "I thought," � it was not quite easy to speak, for I was struggling with something which threatened to roughen my voice, � "I thought, you did not graduate till June?" "Not regularly; not usually; but things are extraordinary this year. We graduate and go on to Washington at once." I believe we were all silent a few minutes. "Daisy," said Miss Cardigan, "you have nobody that is dear to _you_, likely to be engaged in the fray � if there is one?" "I don't know, �" I said, rather faintly. I remember I said it; I cannot tell why, for I _did_ know. I knew that Preston and Ransom were both likely to be in the struggle, even if Ransom had been at the moment at the opposite side of the world. But then Thorold roused up and began to talk. He talked to divert us, I think. He told us of things that concerned himself and his class personally, giving details to which we listened eagerly; and he went on from them to things and people in the public line, of which and of whom neither Miss Cardigan nor I had known the thousandth part so much before. We sat and listened, Miss Cardigan often putting in a question, while the warm still glow of the firelight shed over us and all the room its assurance of peace and quiet, woven and compounded of life-long associations. Thorold sat before us and talked, and we looked at him and listened in the fire-shine; and my thoughts made swift sideway flights every now and then from this peace and glow of comfort, and from Thorold's talk, to the changes of the camp, and the possible coming strife; spectres of war, guns and swords, exposure and wounds � and sickness � and the battlefield � what could I tell? and Miss Cardigan's servant put another lump of coal on the fire, and Thorold presently broke it, and the jet of illumination sprang forth, mocking and yet revealing in its sweet home glow my visions of terror. They were but momentary visions; I could not bear of course to look steadily at them; they were spectres that came and went with a wave of a hand, in a jet of flame, or the shadow of an opening door; but they went, and came; and I saw many things in Thorold's face that night beside the manly lines of determination and spirit, the look of thought and power, and the hover of light in his eye when it turned to me. I don't know what Miss Cardigan saw; but several times in the evening I heard her sigh; a thing very unusual and notable with her. Again and again I heard it, a soft long breath. I gave it no heed at the time. My eyes and thoughts were fixed on the other member of the party; and I was like one in a dream. I walked in a dream; till we went into the other room to tea, and I heard Miss Cardigan say, addressing her nephew, � "Sit there, Christian." I was like one in a dream, or I should have known what this meant. I did know, two minutes afterwards. But at the moment, falling in with some of my thoughts, the word made me start and look at Thorold. I cannot tell what was in my look; I know what was in my heart; the surprised inquiry and the yearning wish. Thorold's face flushed. He met my eyes with an intense recognition and inquiry in his own, and then, I am almost sure, his were dim. He set my chair for me at the table, and took hold of me and put me in it with a very gentle touch that seemed to thank me. "That is my name, Miss Randolph," he said, � "the name given me by my parents." "You'll earn it yet, boy," said Miss Cardigan. "But the sooner the better." There was after that a very deep gravity upon us all for the first minutes at table. I wondered to myself, how people can go on drinking tea and eating bread and butter through everything; yet they must, and even I was doing it at the moment, and not willing to forego the occupation. By degrees the wonted course of things relieved our minds, which were upon too high a strain. It appeared that Thorold was very hungry, having, missed his dinner somehow; and his aunt ordered up everything in the house for his comfort, in which I suppose she found her own. And then Thorold made me eat with him. I was sure I did not want it, but that made no difference. Things were prepared for me and put upon my plate, and a soft little command laid on me to do with them what I was expected to do. It was not like the way Dr. Sandford used to order me, nor in the least like Preston's imperiousness which I could withstand well enough; there was something in it which nullified all my power and even will to resist, and I was as submissive as possible. Thorold grew very bright again as the meal went on, and began to talk in a somewhat livelier strain than he had been in before tea; and I believe he did wile both his aunt and me out of the sad or grave thoughts we had been indulging. I know that I was obliged to laugh, as I was obliged to eat. Thorold had his own way, and seemed to like it. Even his aunt was amused and interested, and grew lively, like herself. With all that, through the whole supper- time I had an odd feeling of her being on one side; it seemed to be only Thorold and I really there; and in all Thorold was doing and through all he was talking, I had a curious sense that he was occupied only with me. It was not that he said so much directly to me or looked so much at me; I do not know how I got the feeling. There was Miss Cardigan at the head of the table, busy and talking as usual, clever and kind; yet the air seemed to be breathed only by Thorold and me. "And how soon, lad," Miss Cardigan broke out suddenly, when a moment's lull in the talk had given her a chance, "how soon will ye be off to that region of disturbance whither ye are going?" "Washington?" said Thorold. "Just as soon as our examination can be pushed through; � in a very few days now." "You'll come to me by the way, for another look at you, in your officer's uniform?" "Uniform? nobody will have any uniform, I fancy," said Thorold, "nobody has any time to think of that. No, aunt Catherine, and I shall not see you, either. I expect we shall rush through without the loss of a train. I can't stop. I don't care what clothes I wear to get there." "How came you to be here now, if you are in such a hurry?" "Nothing on earth would have brought me, but the thing that did bring me," said Thorold. "I was subpoenaed down, to give my evidence in a trial. I must get back again without loss of a minute; should have one to-night, if there had been a train that stopped. I am very glad there was no train that stopped!" We were all silent for a minute; till the door bell rang, and the servant came announcing Mr. Bunsen, to see Miss Cardigan about the tenant houses. Miss Cardigan went off through the open doors that led to the front parlour; and standing by the fire, I watched her figure diminishing in the long distance till it passed into Mr. Bunsen's presence and disappeared. Mr. Thorold and I stood silently on either side of the hearth, looking into the fire, while the servant was clearing the table. The cheerful, hospitable little table, round which we had been so cheerful at least for the moment, was dismantled already, and the wonted cold gleam of the mahogany seemed to tell me that cheer was all over. The talk of the uniform had overset me. All sorts of visions of what it signified, what it portended, where it would go, what it would be doing, were knocking at the door of my heart, and putting their heads in. Before tea these visions had come and vanished; often enough, to be sure; now they came and stayed. I was very quiet, I am certain of that; I was as certainly very sober, with a great and growing sadness at my heart. I think Thorold was grave, too, though I hardly looked at him. We did not speak to each other, all the time the servant was busy in the room. We stood silent before the fire. The study I had come to do had all passed away out of my mind, though the books were within three feet of me. I was growing sadder and sadder every minute. "Things have changed, since we talked so lightly last summer of what might be," � Thorold said at last. � And he said it in a meditative way, as if he were pondering something. "Yes" � I assented. "The North does not wish for war. The South have brought it upon themselves." "Yes" � I said again; wondering a little what was coming. "However disagreeable my duty may be, it is my duty; and there is no shirking it." "No," I said. "Of course." "And if your friends are on one side and I on the other, � it is not my fault, Miss Randolph." "No," I said; "not at all." "Then you do not blame me for taking the part I _must_ take?" "No," I said. "You must take it." "Are you sorry I take it?" said Thorold with a change of tone, and coming a step nearer. "Sorry?" I said; and I looked up for an instant. "No; how could I be sorry? It is your duty. It is right." But as I looked down again I had the greatest difficulty not to burst into tears. I felt as though my heart would break in two with its burden of pain. It cost a great effort to stand still and quiet, without showing anything. "What is it then?" said Thorold; and with the next words I knew he had come close to my side and was stooping his head down to my face, while his voice dropped. "What is it, Daisy? � Is it � Oh, Daisy, I love you better than anything else in the world, except my duty; � Daisy, do you love me?" Nothing could have been more impossible to me, I think, than to answer a word; but, indeed, Thorold did not seem to want it. As he questioned me, he had put his arm round me and drawn me nearer and nearer, stooping his face to me, till his lips took their own answer at mine; indeed took answer after answer, and then, in a sort of passion of mute joy, kissed my face all over. I could not forbid him; between excitement and sorrow and happiness and shame, I could do nothing; the best I could do was to hide my face, but the breast of that grey coat was a strange hiding-place for it. With that inconsistent mingling of small things with great in one's perceptions, which everybody knows, I remember the soft feel of the fine grey cloth along with the clasp of Thorold's arms and the touch of his cheek resting upon my hair. And we stood so, quite still, for what seemed both a long and a short time, in which I think happiness got the upper hand with me, and pain for the moment was bid into the background. At last Thorold raised his head and bade me, lift up mine. "Look up, darling," he said; "look up, Daisy! let me see your face. Look up, Daisy � we have only a minute, and everything in the world to say to each other. Daisy � I want to see you." I think it was one of the most difficult little things I ever had in my life to do, to raise my face and let him look at it; but I knew it must be done, and I did it. One glance at his I ventured. He was smiling at me; there was a flush upon his cheek; his eye had a light in it, and with that a glow of tenderness which was different from anything I had ever seen; and it was glittering too, I think, with another sort of suffusion. His hand came smoothing down my hair and then touching my cheek while he looked at me. "What are you going to do with yourself now?" he said softly. "I am going on with my studies for another month or two." "And you belong to me, Daisy?" "Yes." He bent his head and kissed my brow. There is an odd difference of effect between a kiss on the lips and on the forehead, or else it was a difference in the manner. This seemed a sort of taking possession or setting a seal; and it gave me a new feeling of something almost like awe, which I had never associated with the grey coat or with its wearer before. Along with that came another impression, that I suppose most women know, and know how sweet it is; the sense of an enveloping protection. Not that I had not been protected all my life; but my mother's had been the protection of authority; my father's also, in some measure; Dr. Sandford's was emphatically that of a _guardian;_ he guarded me a little too well. But this new thing that was stealing into my heart, with its subtle delight, was the protection of a champion; of one who set me and mine above all other interests or claims in the world, and who would guard me as if he were a part of myself, only stronger. Altogether Thorold seemed to me different from what he had been the last summer; there was a gravity now in his face and air at times that was new and even stern; the gravity of a man taking stern life-work upon him. I felt all this in a minute, while Thorold was smiling down into my face. "And you will write to me?" he said. "Yes!" "And I will write to you. And I belong to you, Daisy, and to no other. All I have is yours, and all that I am is yours, � after my duty; you may dispose of me, pretty one, just as you like. _You_ would not have that put second, Daisy." A great yearning came over me, so great and strong that it almost took away my breath. I fancy it spoke in my eyes, for Thorold's face grew very grave, I remember, as he looked at me. But I must speak it more plainly than so, at any costs, breath or no breath, and I must not wait. "Christian," I whispered, � "won't you earn your right to your name?" He pressed his lips upon mine by way of answer first, and then gave me a quick and firm "Yes." I certainly thought he had found the mouth he was talking of a little while ago. But at that instant the sound of the distant house door closing, and then of steps coming out from the parlour, made me know that Miss Cardigan's business was over, and that she was returning to us. I wanted to free myself from Thorold's arm, but he would not let me; on the contrary, held me closer, and half turned to meet Miss Cardigan as she came in. Certainly men are very different from women. There we stood awaiting her; and I felt very much ashamed. "Come on, aunt Catherine," Thorold said, as she paused at the door, � "come in! Come in and kiss her; � this little darling is mine." Miss Cardigan came in slowly. I could not look up. "Kiss her, aunt Catherine," he repeated; "she is mine." And to my great dismay he set her the example; but I think it was partly to reassure me, and cover my confusion, which he saw. "I have kissed Daisy very often before now," said Miss Cardigan. I thought I discerned some concern in her voice. "Then come, do it again," said Thorold, laughing. "You never kissed her as anything belonging to me, aunt Catherine." And he fairly laid me in Miss Cardigan's arms, till we kissed each other as he desired. But Miss Cardigan's gravity roused me out of my confusion. I was not ashamed before her; only before him. "Now, aunt Catherine," he said, pulling up a comfortable armchair to the corner of the hearth, � "sit there. And Daisy, � come here!" He put me into the fellow chair; and then built up the wood in the fireplace till we had a regular illumination. Then drew himself up before the fire, and looked at his aunt. "It's like you!" broke out Miss Cardigan. "Ever since you were born, I think, you did what you liked, and had what you liked; and threw over everything to get at the best." "On the contrary," said Thorold, "I was always of a very contented disposition." "Contented with your own will, then," said his aunt. "And now, do you mean to tell me that you have got this prize � this prize � it's a first-class, Christian � for good and for certain to yourself?" I lifted my eyes one instant, to see the sparkles in Thorold's eyes; they were worth seeing. "You don't think you deserve it?" Miss Cardigan went on. "I do not think I deserve it," said Thorold. "But I think I will." "I know what that means," said his aunt. "You will get worldly glory � just a bit or two more of gold on your coat � to match you with one of the Lord's jewels, that are to be 'all glorious within;' and you think that will fit you to own her." "Aunt Catherine," said Thorold, "I do not precisely think that gold lace is glory. But I mean that I will do my duty. A man can do no more." "Some would have said, 'a man can do no less,' " said Miss Cardigan, turning to me. "But you are right, lad; more than our duty we can none of us do; where _all_ is owing, less will not be overpay. But whatever do you think her father will say to you?" "I will ask him, when the time comes," said Thorold, contentedly. His tone was perfect; both modest and manly. Truth to say, I could not quite share his content, in looking forward to the time he spoke of; but that was far ahead, and it was impossible not to share his confidence. My father and my mother had been practically not my guardians during six and a half long years; I had got out of the habit of looking first to them. "And what are you going to do now in Washington?" said his aunt. "You may as weel sit down and tell us." "I don't know. Probably I shall be put to drill new recruits. All these seventy-five thousand men that the President has called for, won't know how to handle a gun or do anything else." "And what is he going to do with these seventy-fire thousand men, Christian?" "Put down treason, if he can. Don't you realise yet that we have a civil war on our hands, aunt Catherine? The Southern States are mustering and sending their forces; we must meet them, or give up the whole question; that is, give up the Country." "And what is it that _they_ will try to do?" said Miss Cardigan. "It is a mystery to me what they want; but I suppose I know; only bad men are a mystery to me always." "They will try to defy the laws," said Thorold. "We will try to see them executed." "They seem very fierce," said Miss Cardigan; "to judge by what they say." "And do," added Thorold. "I think there is a sort of madness in Southern blood!" He spoke with a manner of disgustful emphasis. I looked up at him, to see an expression quite in keeping with his words. Miss Cardigan cried out, � "Hey, lad! Ye're confident, surely, to venture your opinions so plainly and so soon!" His face changed, as if sunlight had been suddenly poured over it. He came kneeling on one knee before me, taking my hand and kissing it, and laughing. "And I see ye're not confident without reason!" added Miss Cardigan. "Daisy'll just let ye say your mind, and no punish you for it." "But it is _true_, Miss Cardigan," � I said, turning to her. I wished I had held my tongue the next minute, for the words were taken off my lips, as it were. It is something quite different from eating your own words, which I have heard of as not pleasant; mine seemed to be devoured by somebody else. "But is it true they are coming to attack Washington?" Miss Cardigan went on, when we had all done laughing. "I read it in the prints; and it seems to me I read every other thing there." "I am afraid you read too many prints," said Thorold. "You are thinking of 'hear both sides,' aunt Catherine? � you must know there is but one side to this matter. There never are two sides to treason." "That's true," said Miss Cardigan. "But about Washington, lad? I saw an extract from a letter written from that city, by a lady, and she said the place was in terror; she said the President sleeps with a hundred men, armed, in the east room, to protect him from the Southern army; and keeps a sentinel before his bedroom door; and often goes clean out of the White House and sleeps somewhere else, in his fear." I had never seen Thorold laugh as he did then. And he asked his aunt "where she had seen that extract?" "It was in one of the papers � it was in an extract; itself, I'm thinking." "From a Southern paper," said Thorold. "Well, I believe it was." "I have seen extracts too," said Thorold. "They say, Alexander H. Stephens is counselling the rebels to lay hold on Washington." "Well, sit down and tell us what you do know, and how to understand things!" said Miss Cardigan. "I don't talk to anybody, much, about politics." So Thorold did as he was asked. He sat down on the other side of me, and with my hand in his, talked to us both. We went over the whole ground of the few months past, of the work then doing and preparing, of what might reasonably be looked for in both the South and the North. He said he was not very wise in the matter; but he was infinitely more informed than we; and we listened as to the most absorbing of all tales, till the night was far worn. A sense of the gravity and importance of the crisis; a consciousness that we were embarked in a contest of the most stubborn character, the end of which no man might foretell, pressed itself more and more on my mind as the night and the talk grew deeper. If I may judge from the changes in Miss Cardigan's face, it was the same with her. The conclusion was, the North was gathering and concentrating all her forces to meet the trial that was coming; and the young officers of the graduating class at the Military Academy had been ordered to the seat of war a little before their time of study was out; their help being urgently needed. "And where is Preston?" said I, speaking for the first time in a long while. "Preston?" � echoed Thorold. "My cousin Preston, � Gary; your classmate Gary." "Gary! � Oh, he is going to Washington, like the rest of us." "Which side will he take?" "You should know, perhaps, better than I," said Thorold. "He always _has_ taken the Southern side, and very exclusively." "_Has_ taken?" said I. "Do you mean that among the cadets, there has been a South and a North � until now lately?" "Ay, Daisy, always, since I have been in the Academy. The Southern clique and the Northern clique have been well defined; there is always an assumption of superiority on the one side, and some resenting of it on the other side. It was on that ground Gary and I split." "Split!" I repeated. But Thorold laughed and kissed me, and would give me no satisfaction. I began to put things together though. I saw from Christian's eyes that _he_ had nothing to be ashamed of, in looking back; I remembered Preston's virulence, and his sudden flush when somebody had repeated the word "coward," which he had applied to Thorold. I felt certain that more had been between them than mere words, and that Preston found the recollection not flattering, whatever it was; and having come to this settlement of the matter, I looked up at Thorold. "My gentle little Daisy!" he said. "I will never quarrel with him again � if I can help it." "You _must_ quarrel with him, if he is on the wrong side," I answered. "And so must I." "You say, you must go immediately back to West Point," said Miss Cardigan. "Leave thanking Daisy's hand, and tell me _when_ you are going; for the night is far past, children." "I am gone when I bid you good-night," said Thorold. "I must set out with the dawn � to catch the train I must take." "With the dawn! � _this_ morning!" cried Miss Cardigan. "Certainly. I should be there this minute, if the colonel had not given me something to do here that kept me." "And when will ye do it?" "Do it! It is done," said Thorold; "before I came here. But I must catch the first train in the morning." "And you'll want some breakfast before that," she said rising. "No, I shall not," said Thorold, catching hold of her. "I want nothing. I did want my supper. Sit down, aunt Catherine, and be quiet. I want nothing, I tell you, but more time." "We may as well sit up the rest of the night," I said; "it is so far gone now." "Yes, and what will you be good for to-morrow?" said Miss Cardigan. "You must lie down and take a bit of rest." I felt no weariness; but I remember the grave, tender, examination of Thorold's eyes, which seemed to touch me with their love, to find out whether I � and himself � might be indulged or not. It was a bit of the thoughtful, watchful affection, which always surrounded me when he was near. I never had it just so from anybody else. "It won't do, Daisy," said he gaily. "You would not have me go in company with self-reproaches all day to-morrow? You must lie down here on the sofa; and sleep or not, we'll all be still for two hours. Aunt Catherine will thank me to stop talking for that length of time." I was not sleepy, but Miss Cardigan and Thorold would not be resisted. Thorold wheeled up the sofa, piled the cushions, and made me lie down, with the understanding that nobody should speak for the time he had specified. Miss Cardigan, on her part, soon lost herself in her easy chair. Thorold walked perseveringly up and down the room. I closed my eyes and opened my eyes, and lay still and thought. It is all before me now. The firelight fading and brightening; Thorold took care of the fire; the gleam of the gaslight on the rows of books; Miss Cardigan's comfortable figure gone to sleep in the corner of her chair; and the figure which ever and anon came between me and the fire, piling or arranging the logs of wood, and then paced up and down just behind me. There was no sleep for my eyes; of course. How should there be? I seemed to pass all my life in review, and took the bearings of my present position, and got calmed and quieted. I think they were silver hours while I lay there, if time is ever made of such material; not golden, for my happiness was not quite so perfect. There were many things to temper it. I rose up the minute the hours were over, for I could bear the silence no longer, nor the losing any more time. Thorold stopped his walk then, and we had a long talk over the fire by ourselves, while Miss Cardigan slept on. Trust her, though, for waking up when there was anything to be done. Long before dawn she roused herself and went to call her servants and order our early breakfast. "What are you going to do now, Daisy?" said Thorold, turning to me with a weight of earnestness in his eyes, and a flash of that keen inspection which they sometimes gave me. "You know �" I said, "I am going to study as hard as I can for a month or two more, � till my school closes." "Then?" � I was silent. "What then, Daisy? Perhaps you will find some way to come on and see me at Washington � if the rebels don't take it first?" It must be told. "No � I cannot. � My father and mother wish me to come out to them as soon as I get a chance." "Where?" "In Switzerland." "Switzerland! To stay how long?" "I don't know � till the war is over, I suppose. I do not think they would come back before." "I shall come and fetch you, then, Daisy." But it seemed a long way off. And how much might be between. We were both silent. "That is heavy, for me," said Thorold at last. "Little Daisy, you do not know how heavy!" He was caressing my hair, smoothing and stroking it as he spoke. I looked up, and his eyes flashed fire instantly. "Say that in words!" he exclaimed, taking me in his arms. "Say it, Daisy! say it. It will be worth so much to me." But my lips had hardly a chance to speak. "Say what?" "Daisy, you _have_ said it. Put it in words, that is all." But his eyes were so fill of flashing triumph that I thought he had got enough for the time. "Daisy, those eyes of yours are like mountain lakes, deep and still. But when I look quite down to the bottom of them � sometimes I see something � I thought I did then." "What?" I asked, very much amused. "I see it there now, Daisy!" "I was afraid he did, for _his_ eyes were like sunbeams, and I thought they went through everything at that minute. I don't know what moved me, the consciousness of this inspection or the consciousness of what it discovered; but I know that floods of shyness seemed to flush my face and brow, and even to the tips of my fingers. I would have escaped if I could, but I could not; and I think Thorold rather liked what he saw. There was no hiding it, unless I hid it on his shoulder; and I was ashamed to have to do that, but he liked it. I felt that his lips knew just as well as his eyes what state my cheeks were in, and took their own advantage. Though presently their tenderness soothed me too, and even nullified the soft little laugh with which he whispered, "Are you ashamed to show it to _me_, Daisy?" "You know," said I, still keeping my eyes hid, "you have me at advantage. If you were not going � away � so soon, I would not do a great many things." "Daisy!" said he, laughing, � "Daisy!" � And touching my cheek as one who meant to keep his advantage. But then his voice changed, and he repeated, with a deeper and deepening tone with each word � "Daisy! � my Daisy!" I had very nearly burst out into great sobs upon his breast, with the meeting of opposite tides of feeling. Sweet and bitter struggled for the upper hand; struggled, while I was afraid he would feel the laboured breath which went and came, straining me. And the sweetness, for the moment, got the better. I knew he must go, in an hour or little more, away from me. I knew it was for uncertain and maybe dangerous duty. I knew it might at best be long before we could see each other again; and, back of all, the thought of my father and mother was not reassuring. But his arms were round me and my head was on his shoulder; and that was but the outward symbol of the inward love and confidence which filled all my heart with its satisfying content. For the moment happiness was uppermost. Not all the clouds on the horizon could dim the brightness of that one sun-ray which reached me. I do not know what Thorold thought, but he was as still as I for a while. "Daisy," he said at last, "my Daisy, you need not grudge any of your goodness to me. Don't you know, you are to be my light and my watchword in what lies before me?" "Oh, no!" I said, lifting my head; "Oh, no, Christian!" "Why no?" said he. "I want you to have a better watchword and follow a better light. Not me. Oh, Christian, won't you?" "What shall my watchword be?" � said he, looking into my eyes. But I was intent on something else then. "Whatsoever ye do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus," I answered. "A soldier, Daisy? �" "A soldier more than anybody," I said; "for He calls us to be soldiers, and you know what it means." "But you forget," said he, not taking his eyes from my face, � "in my service I must obey as well as command; I am not my own master exactly." "Let Christ be your Master," I said. "How then with this other service?" "Why, it is very plain," I said. "Command in the love of God, and obey in the fear of God; that covers all." I did not see the natural sequence of what followed; for it was a succession of kisses that left no chance for a word to get out of my mouth. Then Thorold rose up, straightened himself, and I saw Miss Cardigan just entering. "I will not forget, Daisy," he said, in a tone as if we had been talking of business. I thought, neither should I. And then came Miss Cardigan, and the servant behind her bringing coffee and bread and eggs and marmalade � I don't know what beside � and we sat down again to the table, knowing that the next move would be a move apart. But the wave of happiness was at the flood with me, and it bore me over all the underlying roughnesses of the shore � for the time. I do not think anybody wanted to eat much; we played with cups of coffee and with each other, and dallied with the minutes till the last one was spent. And then came the parting. That was short. THE END Note by the transcriber : DAISY is the continuation of MELBOURNE HOUSE. There is a further continuation as DAISY IN THE FIELD. 
11490	----	Proofreaders ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control Of Negro Labor As Determined by the Plantation Regime TO MY WIFE CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE EARLY EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA II. THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE III. THE SUGAR ISLANDS IV. THE TOBACCO COLONIES V. THE RICE COAST VI. THE NORTHERN COLONIES VII. REVOLUTION AND REACTION VIII. THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE IX. THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR X. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT XI. THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE XII. THE COTTON RÉGIME XIII. TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS XIV. PLANTATION MANAGEMENT XV. PLANTATION LABOR XVI. PLANTATION LIFE XVII. PLANTATION TENDENCIES XVIII. ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE XIX. BUSINESS ASPECTS OF SLAVERY XX. TOWN SLAVES XXI. FREE NEGROES XXII. SLAVE CRIME XXIII. THE FORCE OF THE LAW INDEX AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY CHAPTER I THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA The Portuguese began exploring the west coast of Africa shortly before Christopher Columbus was born; and no sooner did they encounter negroes than they began to seize and carry them in captivity to Lisbon. The court chronicler Azurara set himself in 1452, at the command of Prince Henry, to record the valiant exploits of the negro-catchers. Reflecting the spirit of the time, he praised them as crusaders bringing savage heathen for conversion to civilization and christianity. He gently lamented the massacre and sufferings involved, but thought them infinitely outweighed by the salvation of souls. This cheerful spirit of solace was destined long to prevail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the colored races. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observed of the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, less than a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they never more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot all about their own country," that "they were very loyal and obedient servants, without malice"; and that "after they began to use clothing they were for the most part very fond of display, so that they took great delight in robes of showy colors, and such was their love of finery that they picked up the rags that fell from the coats of other people of the country and sewed them on their own garments, taking great pleasure in these, as though it were matter of some greater perfection."[1] These few broad strokes would portray with equally happy precision a myriad other black servants born centuries after the writer's death and dwelling in a continent of whose existence he never dreamed. Azurara wrote further that while some of the captives were not able to endure the change and died happily as Christians, the others, dispersed among Portuguese households, so ingratiated themselves that many were set free and some were married to men and women of the land and acquired comfortable estates. This may have been an earnest of future conditions in Brazil and the Spanish Indies; but in the British settlements it fell out far otherwise. [Footnote 1: Gomez Eannes de Azurara _Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_, translated by C.R. Beazley and E.P. Prestage, in the Hakluyt Society _Publications_, XCV, 85.] As the fifteenth century wore on and fleets explored more of the African coast with the double purpose of finding a passage to India and exploiting any incidental opportunities for gain, more and more human cargoes were brought from Guinea to Portugal and Spain. But as the novelty of the blacks wore off they were held in smaller esteem and treated with less liberality. Gangs of them were set to work in fields from which the Moorish occupants had recently been expelled. The labor demand was not great, however, and when early in the sixteenth century West Indian settlers wanted negroes for their sugar fields, Spain willingly parted with some of hers. Thus did Europe begin the coercion of African assistance in the conquest of the American wilderness. Guinea comprises an expanse about a thousand miles wide lying behind three undulating stretches of coast, the first reaching from Cape Verde southeastward nine hundred miles to Cape Palmas in four degrees north latitude, the second running thence almost parallel to the equator a thousand miles to Old Calabar at the head of "the terrible bight of Biafra," the third turning abruptly south and extending some fourteen hundred miles to a short distance below Benguela where the southern desert begins. The country is commonly divided into Upper Guinea or the Sudan, lying north and west of the great angle of the coast, and Lower Guinea, the land of the Bantu, to the southward. Separate zones may also be distinguished as having different systems of economy: in the jungle belt along the equator bananas are the staple diet; in the belts bordering this on the north and south the growing of millet and manioc respectively, in small clearings, are the characteristic industries; while beyond the edges of the continental forest cattle contribute much of the food supply. The banana, millet and manioc zones, and especially their swampy coastal plains, were of course the chief sources of slaves for the transatlantic trade. Of all regions of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst. The climate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of each year is excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoes play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasional blasts from the desert so dry and burning that all nature droops and is grateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat stimulates vegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany trees, and multiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they mosquitoes, elephants or boa constrictors. There would be abundant food but for the superabundant creatures that struggle for it and prey upon one another. For mankind life is at once easy and hard. Food of a sort may often be had for the plucking, and raiment is needless; but aside from the menace of the elements human life is endangered by beasts and reptiles in the forest, crocodiles and hippopotami in the rivers, and sharks in the sea, and existence is made a burden to all but the happy-hearted by plagues of insects and parasites. In many districts tse-tse flies exterminate the cattle and spread the fatal sleeping-sickness among men; everywhere swarms of locusts occasionally destroy the crops; white ants eat timbers and any other useful thing, short of metal, which may come in their way; giant cockroaches and dwarf brown ants and other pests in great variety swarm in the dwellings continuously--except just after a village has been raided by the great black ants which are appropriately known as "drivers." These drivers march in solid columns miles on miles until, when they reach food resources to their fancy, they deploy for action and take things with a rush. To stay among them is to die; but no human being stays. A cry of "Drivers!" will depopulate a village instantly, and a missionary who at one moment has been combing brown ants from his hair will in the next find himself standing safely in the creek or the water barrel, to stay until the drivers have taken their leave. Among less spectacular things, mosquitoes fly in crowds and leave fevers in their wake, gnats and flies are always on hand, chigoes bore and breed under toe-nails, hook-worms hang themselves to the walls of the intestines, and other threadlike worms enter the eyeballs and the flesh of the body. Endurance through generations has given the people large immunity from the effects of hook-worm and malaria, but not from the indigenous diseases, kraw-kraw, yaws and elephantiasis, nor of course from dysentery and smallpox which the Europeans introduced. Yet robust health is fairly common, and where health prevails there is generally happiness, for the negroes have that within their nature. They could not thrive in Guinea without their temperament. It is probable that no people ever became resident on or near the west coast except under compulsion. From the more favored easterly regions successive hordes have been driven after defeat in war. The Fangs on the Ogowe are an example in the recent past. Thus the inhabitants of Guinea, and of the coast lands especially, have survived by retreating and adapting themselves to conditions in which no others wished to dwell. The requirements of adaptation were peculiar. To live where nature supplies Turkish baths without the asking necessitates relaxation. But since undue physical indolence would unfit people for resistance to parasites and hostile neighbors, the languid would perish. Relaxation of mind, however, brought no penalties. The climate in fact not only discourages but prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroes have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the dignitaries.[2] [Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African régime is J.A. Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I. A fuller survey is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of the sources. Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularly notable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture of coast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincing discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A.B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe- and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along the Gold Coast.] No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans the forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive. To invest them with spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was perhaps an obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate system of superstition. Not only did the wind and the rain have their gods but each river and precipice, and each tribe and family and person, a tutelary spirit. These might be kept benevolent by appropriate fetish ceremonies; they might be used for evil by persons having specially great powers over them. The proper course for common-place persons at ordinary times was to follow routine fetish observances; but when beset by witch-work the only escape lay in the services of witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices were called for, and on the greatest occasions nothing short of human sacrifice was acceptable. As to diet, vegetable food was generally abundant, but the negroes were not willingly complete vegetarians. In the jungle game animals were scarce, and everywhere the men were ill equipped for hunting. In lieu of better they were often fain to satisfy their craving for flesh by eating locusts and larvae, as tribes in the interior still do. In such conditions cannibalism was fairly common. Especially prized was an enemy slain in war, for not only would his body feed the hungry but fetish taught that his bravery would pass to those who shared the feast. In African economy nearly all routine work, including agriculture, was classed as domestic service and assigned to the women for performance. The wife, bought with a price at the time of marriage, was virtually a slave; her husband her master. Now one woman might keep her husband and children in but moderate comfort. Two or more could perform the family tasks much better. Thus a man who could pay the customary price would be inclined to add a second wife, whom the first would probably welcome as a lightener of her burdens. Polygamy prevailed almost everywhere. Slavery, too, was generally prevalent except among the few tribes who gained their chief sustenance from hunting. Along with polygamy, it perhaps originated, if it ever had a distinct beginning, from the desire to lighten and improve the domestic service. [3] Persons became slaves through capture, debt or malfeasance, or through the inheritance of the status. While the ownership was absolute in the eyes of the law and captives were often treated with great cruelty, slaves born in the locality were generally regarded as members of their owner's family and were shown much consideration. In the millet zone where there was much work to be done the slaveholdings were in many cases very large and the control relatively stringent; but in the banana districts an easy-going schedule prevailed for all. One of the chief hardships of the slaves was the liability of being put to death at their master's funeral in order that their spirits might continue in his service. In such case it was customary on the Gold Coast to give the victim notice of his approaching death by suddenly thrusting a knife through each cheek with the blades crossing in his mouth so that he might not curse his master before he died. With his hands tied behind him he would then be led to the ceremonial slaughter. The Africans were in general eager traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before the time when the transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raiding and trading, transformed the native economy and deranged the social order. [Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples has been elaborately discussed by H.J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900).] Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in Guinea was wholly on a village basis, each community dwelling in its own clearing and having very slight intercourse with its neighbors. Politically each village was governed by its chief and its elders, oftentimes in complete independence. In occasional instances, however, considerable states of loose organization were under the rule of central authorities. Such states were likely to be the creation of invaders from the eastward, the Dahomans and Ashantees for example; but the kingdom of Benin appears to have arisen indigenously. In many cases the subordination of conquered villages merely resulted in their paying annual tribute. As to language, Lower Guinea spoke multitudinous dialects of the one Bantu tongue, but in Upper Guinea there were many dialects of many separate languages. Land was so abundant and so little used industrially that as a rule it was not owned in severalty; and even the villages and tribes had little occasion to mark the limits of their domains. For travel by land there were nothing but narrow, rough and tortuous foot-paths, with makeshift bridges across the smaller streams. The rivers were highly advantageous both as avenues and as sources of food, for the negroes were expert at canoeing and fishing. Intertribal wars were occasional, but a crude comity lessened their frequency. Thus if a man of one village murdered one of another, the aggrieved village if too weak to procure direct redress might save its face by killing someone in a third village, whereupon the third must by intertribal convention make common cause with the second at once, or else coerce a fourth into the punitive alliance by applying the same sort of persuasion that it had just felt. These later killings in the series were not regarded as murders but as diplomatic overtures. The system was hard upon those who were sacrificed in its operation, but it kept a check upon outlawry. A skin stretched over the section of a hollow tree, and usually so constructed as to have two tones, made an instrument of extraordinary use in communication as well as in music. By a system long anticipating the Morse code the Africans employed this "telegraph drum" in sending messages from village to village for long distances and with great speed. Differences of speech were no bar, for the tom tom code was interlingual. The official drummer could explain by the high and low alternations of his taps that a deed of violence just done was not a crime but a _pourparler_ for the forming of a league. Every week for three months in 1800 the tom toms doubtless carried the news throughout Ashantee land that King Quamina's funeral had just been repeated and two hundred more slaves slain to do him honor. In 1806 they perhaps reported the ending of Mungo Park's travels by his death on the Niger at the hands of the Boussa people. Again and again drummers hired as trading auxiliaries would send word along the coast and into the country that white men's vessels lying at Lagos, Bonny, Loango or Benguela as the case might be were paying the best rates in calico, rum or Yankee notions for all slaves that might be brought. In music the monotony of the tom tom's tone spurred the drummers to elaborate variations in rhythm. The stroke of the skilled performer could make it mourn a funeral dirge, voice the nuptial joy, throb the pageant's march, and roar the ambush alarm. Vocal music might be punctuated by tom toms and primitive wind or stringed instruments, or might swell in solo or chorus without accompaniment. Singing, however, appears not so characteristic of Africans at home as of the negroes in America. On the other hand garrulous conversation, interspersed with boisterous laughter, lasted well-nigh the livelong day. Daily life, indeed, was far from dull, for small things were esteemed great, and every episode was entertaining. It can hardly be maintained that savage life is idyllic. Yet the question remains, and may long remain, whether the manner in which the negroes were brought into touch with civilization resulted in the greater blessing or the greater curse. That manner was determined in part at least by the nature of the typical negroes themselves. Impulsive and inconstant, sociable and amorous, voluble, dilatory, and negligent, but robust, amiable, obedient and contented, they have been the world's premium slaves. Prehistoric Pharaohs, mediaeval Pashas and the grandees of Elizabethan England esteemed them as such; and so great a connoisseur in household service as the Czar Alexander added to his palace corps in 1810 two free negroes, one a steward on an American merchant ship and the other a body-servant whom John Quincy Adams, the American minister, had brought from Massachusetts to St. Petersburg.[4] [Footnote 4: _Writings of John Quincy Adams_, Ford ed., III, 471, 472 (New York, 1914).] The impulse for the enslavement of negroes by other peoples came from the Arabs who spread over northern Africa in the eighth century, conquering and converting as they went, and stimulating the trade across the Sahara until it attained large dimensions. The northbound caravans carried the peculiar variety of pepper called "grains of paradise" from the region later known as Liberia, gold from the Dahomey district, palm oil from the lower Niger, and ivory and slaves from far and wide. A small quantity of these various goods was distributed in southern Europe and the Levant. And in the same general period Arab dhows began to take slave cargoes from the east coast of Africa as far south as Mozambique, for distribution in Arabia, Persia and western India. On these northern and eastern flanks of Guinea where the Mohammedans operated and where the most vigorous of the African peoples dwelt, the natives lent ready assistance in catching and buying slaves in the interior and driving them in coffles to within reach of the Moorish and Arab traders. Their activities, reaching at length the very center of the continent, constituted without doubt the most cruel of all branches of the slave-trade. The routes across the burning Sahara sands in particular came to be strewn with negro skeletons.[5] [Footnote 5: Jerome Dowd, "The African Slave Trade," in the _Journal of Negro History_, II (1917), 1-20.] This overland trade was as costly as it was tedious. Dealers in Timbuctoo and other centers of supply must be paid their price; camels must be procured, many of which died on the journey; guards must be hired to prevent escapes in the early marches and to repel predatory Bedouins in the later ones; food supplies must be bought; and allowance must be made for heavy mortality among the slaves on their terrible trudge over the burning sands and the chilling mountains. But wherever Mohammedanism prevailed, which gave particular sanction to slavery as well as to polygamy, the virtues of the negroes as laborers and as eunuch harem guards were so highly esteemed that the trade was maintained on a heavy scale almost if not quite to the present day. The demand of the Turks in the Levant and the Moors in Spain was met by exportations from the various Barbary ports. Part of this Mediterranean trade was conducted in Turkish and Moorish vessels, and part of it in the ships of the Italian cities and Marseilles and Barcelona. Venice for example had treaties with certain Saracen rulers at the beginning of the fourteenth century authorizing her merchants not only to frequent the African ports, but to go in caravans to interior points and stay at will. The principal commodities procured were ivory, gold, honey and negro slaves.[6] [Footnote 6: The leading authority upon slavery and the slave-trade in the Mediterranean countries of Europe is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempas mas remotas hasta nuestros Dias_ (Barcelona, 1877), vol. III.] The states of Christian Europe, though little acquainted with negroes, had still some trace of slavery as an inheritance from imperial Rome and barbaric Teutondom. The chattel form of bondage, however, had quite generally given place to serfdom; and even serfdom was disappearing in many districts by reason of the growth of towns and the increase of rural population to the point at which abundant labor could be had at wages little above the cost of sustaining life. On the other hand so long as petty wars persisted the enslavement of captives continued to be at least sporadic, particularly in the south and east of Europe, and a considerable traffic in white slaves was maintained from east to west on the Mediterranean. The Venetians for instance, in spite of ecclesiastical prohibitions, imported frequent cargoes of young girls from the countries about the Black Sea, most of whom were doomed to concubinage and prostitution, and the rest to menial service.[7] The occurrence of the Crusades led to the enslavement of Saracen captives in Christendom as well as of Christian captives in Islam. [Footnote 7: W.C. Hazlitt, _The Venetian Republic_(London, 1900), pp. 81, 82.] The waning of the Crusades ended the supply of Saracen slaves, and the Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 destroyed the Italian trade on the Black Sea. No source of supply now remained, except a trickle from Africa, to sustain the moribund institution of slavery in any part of Christian Europe east of the Pyrenees. But in mountain-locked Roussillon and Asturias remnants of slavery persisted from Visigothic times to the seventeenth century; and in other parts of the peninsula the intermittent wars against the Moors of Granada supplied captives and to some extent reinvigorated slavery among the Christian states from Aragon to Portugal. Furthermore the conquest of the Canaries at the end of the fourteenth century and of Teneriffe and other islands in the fifteenth led to the bringing of many of their natives as slaves to Castille and the neighboring kingdoms. Occasional documents of this period contain mention of negro slaves at various places in the Spanish peninsula, but the number was clearly small and it must have continued so, particularly as long as the supply was drawn through Moorish channels. The source whence the negroes came was known to be a region below the Sahara which from its yield of gold and ivory was called by the Moors the land of wealth, "Bilad Ghana," a name which on the tongues of European sailors was converted into "Guinea." To open a direct trade thither was a natural effort when the age of maritime exploration began. The French are said to have made voyages to the Gold Coast in the fourteenth century, though apparently without trading in slaves. But in the absence of records of their activities authentic history must confine itself to the achievements of the Portuguese. In 1415 John II of Portugal, partly to give his five sons opportunity to win knighthood in battle, attacked and captured the Moorish stronghold of Ceuta, facing Gibraltar across the strait. For several years thereafter the town was left in charge of the youngest of these princes, Henry, who there acquired an enduring desire to gain for Portugal and Christianity the regions whence the northbound caravans were coming. Returning home, he fixed his residence at the promontory of Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, and made his main interest for forty years the promotion of maritime exploration southward.[8] His perseverance won him fame as "Prince Henry the Navigator," though he was not himself an active sailor; and furthermore, after many disappointments, it resulted in exploration as far as the Gold Coast in his lifetime and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope twenty-five years after his death. The first decade of his endeavor brought little result, for the Sahara shore was forbidding and the sailors timid. Then in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador and found its dangers imaginary. Subsequent voyages added to the extent of coast skirted until the desert began to give place to inhabited country. The Prince was now eager for captives to be taken who might inform him of the country, and in 1441 Antam Gonsalvez brought several Moors from the southern edge of the desert, who, while useful as informants, advanced a new theme of interest by offering to ransom themselves by delivering on the coast a larger number of non-Mohammedan negroes, whom the Moors held as slaves. Partly for the sake of profit, though the chronicler says more largely to increase the number of souls to be saved, this exchange was effected in the following year in the case of two of the Moors, while a third took his liberty without delivering his ransom. After the arrival in Portugal of these exchanged negroes, ten in number, and several more small parcels of captives, a company organized at Lagos under the direction of Prince Henry sent forth a fleet of six caravels in 1444 which promptly returned with 225 captives, the disposal of whom has been recounted at the beginning of this chapter. [Footnote 8: The chief source for the early Portuguese voyages is Azurara's _Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_, already cited.] In the next year the Lagos Company sent a great expedition of twenty-six vessels which discovered the Senegal River and brought back many natives taken in raids thereabout; and by 1448 nearly a thousand captives had been carried to Portugal. Some of these were Moorish Berbers, some negroes, but most were probably Jolofs from the Senegal, a warlike people of mixed ancestry. Raiding in the Jolof country proved so hazardous that from about 1454 the Portuguese began to supplement their original methods by planting "factories" on the coast where slaves from the interior were bought from their native captors and owners who had brought them down in caravans and canoes. Thus not only was missionary zeal eclipsed but the desire of conquest likewise, and the spirit of exploration erelong partly subdued, by commercial greed. By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460 Portugal was importing seven or eight hundred negro slaves each year. From this time forward the traffic was conducted by a succession of companies and individual grantees, to whom the government gave the exclusive right for short terms of years in consideration of money payments and pledges of adding specified measures of exploration. As new coasts were reached additional facilities were established for trade in pepper, ivory and gold as well as in slaves. When the route round Africa to India was opened at the end of the century the Guinea trade fell to secondary importance, but it was by no means discontinued. Of the negroes carried to Portugal in the fifteenth century a large proportion were set to work as slaves on great estates in the southern provinces recently vacated by the Moors, and others were employed as domestic servants in Lisbon and other towns. Some were sold into Spain where they were similarly employed, and where their numbers were recruited by a Guinea trade in Spanish vessels in spite of Portugal's claim of monopoly rights, even though Isabella had recognized these in a treaty of 1479. In short, at the time of the discovery of America Spain as well as Portugal had quite appreciable numbers of negroes in her population and both were maintaining a system of slavery for their control. When Columbus returned from his first voyage in the spring of 1493 and announced his great landfall, Spain promptly entered upon her career of American conquest and colonization. So great was the expectation of adventure and achievement that the problem of the government was not how to enlist participants but how to restrain a great exodus. Under heavy penalties emigration was restricted by royal decrees to those who procured permission to go. In the autumn of the same year fifteen hundred men, soldiers, courtiers, priests and laborers, accompanied the discoverer on his second voyage, in radiant hopes. But instead of wealth and high adventure these Argonauts met hard labor and sickness. Instead of the rich cities of Japan and China sought for, there were found squalid villages of Caribs and Lucayans. Of gold there was little, of spices none. Columbus, when planting his colony at Isabella, on the northern coast of Hispaniola (Hayti), promptly found need of draught animals and other equipment. He wrote to his sovereigns in January, 1494, asking for the supplies needed; and he offered, pending the discovery of more precious things, to defray expenses by shipping to Spain some of the island natives, "who are a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned and very intelligent, and who when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which they have been accustomed will be better than any other kind of slaves."[9] Though this project was discouraged by the crown, Columbus actually took a cargo of Indians for sale in Spain on his return from his third voyage; but Isabella stopped the sale and ordered the captives taken home and liberated. Columbus, like most of his generation, regarded the Indians as infidel foreigners to be exploited at will. But Isabella, and to some extent her successors, considered them Spanish subjects whose helplessness called for special protection. Between the benevolence of the distant monarchs and the rapacity of the present conquerors, however, the fate of the natives was in little doubt. The crown's officials in the Indies were the very conquerors themselves, who bent their soft instructions to fit their own hard wills. A native rebellion in Hispaniola in 1495 was crushed with such slaughter that within three years the population is said to have been reduced by two thirds. As terms of peace Columbus required annual tribute in gold so great that no amount of labor in washing the sands could furnish it. As a commutation of tribute and as a means of promoting the conversion of the Indians there was soon inaugurated the encomienda system which afterward spread throughout Spanish America. To each Spaniard selected as an encomendero was allotted a certain quota of Indians bound to cultivate land for his benefit and entitled to receive from him tutelage in civilization and Christianity. The grantees, however, were not assigned specified Indians but merely specified numbers of them, with power to seize new ones to replace any who might die or run away. Thus the encomendero was given little economic interest in preserving the lives and welfare of his workmen. [Footnote 9: R.H. Major, _Select Letters of Columbus_, 2d. ed., 1890, p. 88.] In the first phase of the system the Indians were secured in the right of dwelling in their own villages under their own chiefs. But the encomenderos complained that the aloofness of the natives hampered the work of conversion and asked that a fuller and more intimate control be authorized. This was promptly granted and as promptly abused. Such limitations as the law still imposed upon encomendero power were made of no effect by the lack of machinery for enforcement. The relationship in short, which the law declared to be one of guardian and ward, became harsher than if it had been that of master and slave. Most of the island natives were submissive in disposition and weak in physique, and they were terribly driven at their work in the fields, on the roads, and at the mines. With smallpox and other pestilences added to their hardships, they died so fast that before 1510 Hispaniola was confronted with the prospect of the complete disappearance of its laboring population.[10] Meanwhile the same régime was being carried to Porto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba with similar consequences in its train. [Footnote 10: E. g. Bourne, _Spain in America_ (New York, 1904); Wilhelm Roscher, _The Spanish Colonial System_, Bourne ed. (New York, 1904); Konrad Habler, "The Spanish Colonial Empire," in Helmolt, _History of the World_, vol I.] As long as mining remained the chief industry the islands failed to prosper; and the reports of adversity so strongly checked the Spanish impulse for adventure that special inducements by the government were required to sustain any flow of emigration. But in 1512-1515 the introduction of sugar-cane culture brought the beginning of a change in the industrial situation. The few surviving gangs of Indians began to be shifted from the mines to the fields, and a demand for a new labor supply arose which could be met only from across the sea. Apparently no negroes were brought to the islands before 1501. In that year, however, a royal decree, while excluding Jews and Moors, authorized the transportation of negroes born in Christian lands; and some of these were doubtless carried to Hispaniola in the great fleet of Ovando, the new governor, in 1502. Ovando's reports of this experiment were conflicting. In the year following his arrival he advised that no more negroes be sent, because of their propensity to run away and band with and corrupt the Indians. But after another year had elapsed he requested that more negroes be sent. In this interim the humane Isabella died and the more callous Ferdinand acceded to full control. In consequence a prohibition of the negro trade in 1504 was rescinded in 1505 and replaced by orders that the bureau in charge of colonial trade promote the sending of negroes from Spain in large parcels. For the next twelve years this policy was maintained--the sending of Christian negroes was encouraged, while the direct slave trade from Africa to America was prohibited. The number of negroes who reached the islands under this régime is not ascertainable. It was clearly almost negligible in comparison with the increasing demand.[11] [Footnote 11: The chief authority upon the origin and growth of negro slavery in the Spanish colonies is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los Paises Americo-Hispanos_. (Barcelona, 1879.) This book supplements the same author's _Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempos remotos_ previously cited.] The policy of excluding negroes fresh from Africa--"bozal negroes" the Spaniards called them--was of course a product of the characteristic resolution to keep the colonies free from all influences hostile to Catholic orthodoxy. But whereas Jews, Mohammedans and Christian heretics were considered as champions of rival faiths, the pagan blacks came increasingly to be reckoned as having no religion and therefore as a mere passive element ready for christianization. As early as 1510, in fact, the Spanish crown relaxed its discrimination against pagans by ordering the purchase of above a hundred negro slaves in the Lisbon market for dispatch to Hispaniola. To quiet its religious scruples the government hit upon the device of requiring the baptism of all pagan slaves upon their disembarkation in the colonial ports. The crown was clearly not prepared to withstand a campaign for supplies direct from Africa, especially after the accession of the youth Charles I in 1517. At that very time a clamor from the islands reached its climax. Not only did many civil officials, voicing public opinion in their island communities, urge that the supply of negro slaves be greatly increased as a means of preventing industrial collapse, but a delegation of Jeronimite friars and the famous Bartholomeo de las Casas, who had formerly been a Cuban encomendero and was now a Dominican priest, appeared in Spain to press the same or kindred causes. The Jeronimites, themselves concerned in industrial enterprises, were mostly interested in the labor supply. But the well-born and highly talented Las Casas, earnest and full of the milk of human kindness, was moved entirely by humanitarian and religious considerations. He pleaded primarily for the abolition of the encomienda system and the establishment of a great Indian reservation under missionary control, and he favored the increased transfer of Christian negroes from Spain as a means of relieving the Indians from their terrible sufferings. The lay spokesmen and the Jeronimites asked that provision be made for the sending of thousands of negro slaves, preferably bozal negroes for the sake of cheapness and plenty; and the supporters of this policy were able to turn to their use the favorable impression which Las Casas was making, even though his programme and theirs were different.[12] The outcome was that while the settling of the encomienda problem was indefinitely postponed, authorization was promptly given for a supply of bozal negroes. [Footnote 12: Las Casas, _Historio de las Indias_ (Madrid, 1875, 1876); Arthur Helps, _Life of Las Casas_ (London, 1873); Saco, _op. cit_., pp. 62-104.] The crown here had an opportunity to get large revenues, of which it was in much need, by letting the slave trade under contract or by levying taxes upon it. The young king, however, freshly arrived from the Netherlands with a crowd of Flemish favorites in his train, proceeded to issue gratuitously a license for the trade to one of the Flemings at court, Laurent de Gouvenot, known in Spain as Garrevod, the governor of Breza. This license empowered the grantee and his assigns to ship from Guinea to the Spanish islands four thousand slaves. All the historians until recently have placed this grant in the year 1517 and have called it a contract (asiento); but Georges Scelle has now discovered and printed the document itself which bears the date August 18, 1518, and is clearly a license of grace bearing none of the distinctive asiento features.[13] Garrevod, who wanted ready cash rather than a trading privilege, at once divided his license into two and sold them for 25,000 ducats to certain Genoese merchants domiciled at Seville, who in turn split them up again and put them on the market where they became an object of active speculation at rapidly rising prices. The result was that when slaves finally reached the islands under Garrevod's grant the prices demanded for them were so exorbitant that the purposes of the original petitioners were in large measure defeated. Meanwhile the king, in spite of the nominally exclusive character of the Garrevod grant, issued various other licenses on a scale ranging from ten to four hundred slaves each. For a decade the importations were small, however, and the island clamor increased. [Footnote 13: Georges Scelle, _Histoire Politique de la Traité Négrière aux Indes de Castille: Contrats et Traités d'Asíento_ (Paris, 1906), I, 755. Book I, chapter 2 of the same volume is an elaborate discussion of the Garrevod grant.] In 1528 a new exclusive grant was issued to two German courtiers at Seville, Eynger and Sayller, empowering them to carry four thousand slaves from Guinea to the Indies within the space of the following four years. This differed from Garrevod's in that it required a payment of 20,000 ducats to the crown and restricted the price at which the slaves were to be sold in the islands to forty ducats each. In so far it approached the asientos of the full type which became the regular recourse of the Spanish government in the following centuries; but it fell short of the ultimate plan by failing to bind the grantees to the performance of their undertaking and by failing to specify the grades and the proportion of the sexes among the slaves to be delivered. In short the crown's regard was still directed more to the enrichment of courtiers than to the promotion of prosperity in the islands. After the expiration of the Eynger and Sayller grant the king left the control of the slave trade to the regular imperial administrative boards, which, rejecting all asiento overtures for half a century, maintained a policy of granting licenses for competitive trade in return for payments of eight or ten ducats per head until 1560, and of thirty ducats or more thereafter. At length, after the Spanish annexation of Portugal in 1580, the government gradually reverted to monopoly grants, now however in the definite form of asientos, in which by intent at least the authorities made the public interest, with combined regard to the revenue and a guaranteed labor supply, the primary consideration.[14] The high prices charged for slaves, however, together with the burdensome restrictions constantly maintained upon trade in general, steadily hampered the growth of Spanish colonial industry. Furthermore the allurements of Mexico and Peru drained the older colonies of virtually all their more vigorous white inhabitants, in spite of severe penalties legally imposed upon emigration but never effectively enforced. [Footnote 14: Scelle, I, books 1-3.] The agricultural régime in the islands was accordingly kept relatively stagnant as long as Spain preserved her full West Indian domination. The sugar industry, which by 1542 exported the staple to the amount of 110,000 arrobas of twenty-five pounds each, was standardized in plantations of two types--the _trapiche_ whose cane was ground by ox power and whose labor force was generally thirty or forty negroes (each reckoned as capable of the labor of four Indians); and the _inqenio_, equipped with a water-power mill and employing about a hundred slaves.[15] Occasional slave revolts disturbed the Spanish islanders but never for long diminished their eagerness for slave recruits. The slave laws were relatively mild, the police administration extremely casual, and the plantation managements easy-going. In short, after introducing slavery into the new world the Spaniards maintained it in sluggish fashion, chiefly in the islands, as an institution which peoples more vigorous industrially might borrow and adapt to a more energetic plantation régime. [Footnote 15: Saco, pp. 127, 128, 188; Oviedo, _Historia General de las Indias_, book 4. chap. 8.] CHAPTER II THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE At the request of a slaver's captain the government of Georgia issued in 1772 a certificate to a certain Fenda Lawrence reciting that she, "a free black woman and heretofore a considerable trader in the river Gambia on the coast of Africa, hath voluntarily come to be and remain for some time in this province," and giving her permission to "pass and repass unmolested within the said province on her lawfull and necessary occations."[1] This instance is highly exceptional. The millions of African expatriates went against their own wills, and their transporters looked upon the business not as passenger traffic but as trade in goods. Earnings came from selling in America the cargoes bought in Africa; the transportation was but an item in the trade. [Footnote 1: U.B. Phillips, _Plantation and Frontier Documents_, printed also as vols. I and II of the _Documentary History of American Industrial Society_ (Cleveland, O., 1909), II, 141, 142. This publication will be cited hereafter as _Plantation and Frontier_.] The business bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the active assistance of its respective sovereign. The preliminaries to the commercial strife occurred in the Elizabethan age. French traders in gold and ivory found the Portuguese police on the Guinea Coast to be negligible; but poaching in the slave trade was a harder problem, for Spain held firm control of her colonies which were then virtually the world's only slave market. The test of this was made by Sir John Hawkins who at the beginning of his career as a great English sea captain had informed himself in the Canary Islands of the Afro-American opportunity awaiting exploitation. Backed by certain English financiers, he set forth in 1562 with a hundred men in three small ships, and after procuring in Sierra Leone, "partly by the sword and partly by other means," above three hundred negroes he sailed to Hispaniola where without hindrance from the authorities he exchanged them for colonial produce. "And so, with prosperous success, and much gain to himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the month of September, 1563."[2] Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkins again captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, and proceeded to peddle them in the Spanish islands. When the authorities interfered he coerced them by show of arms and seizure of hostages, and when the planters demurred at his prices he brought them to terms through a mixture of diplomacy and intimidation. After many adventures by the way he reached home, as the chronicler concludes, "God be thanked! in safety: with the loss of twenty persons in all the voyage; as with great profit to the venturers in the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bringing home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store. His name therefore be praised for evermore! Amen." Before two years more had passed Hawkins put forth for a third voyage, this time with six ships, two of them among the largest then afloat. The cargo of slaves, procured by aiding a Guinea tribe in an attack upon its neighbor, had been duly sold in the Indies when dearth of supplies and stress of weather drove the fleet into the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulloa. There a Spanish fleet of thirteen ships attacked the intruders, capturing their treasure ship and three of her consorts. Only the _Minion_ under Hawkins and the bark _Judith_ under the young Francis Drake escaped to carry the harrowing tale to England. One result of the episode was that it filled Hawkins and Drake with desire for revenge on Spain, which was wreaked in due time but in European waters. Another consequence was a discouragement of English slave trading for nearly a century to follow. [Footnote 2: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, ed. 1589. This and the accounts of Hawkins' later exploits in the same line are reprinted with a valuable introduction in C.R. Beazley, ed., _Voyages and Travels_ (New York, 1903), I, 29-126.] The defeat of the Armada in 1588 led the world to suspect the decline of Spain's maritime power, but only in the lapse of decades did the suspicion of her helplessness become a certainty. Meantime Portugal was for sixty years an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at their heroic labor for independence. Thus when the Dutch came to prevail at sea in the early seventeenth century the Portuguese posts in Guinea fell their prey, and in 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered to take them over. Closely identified with the Dutch government, this company not only founded the colony of New Netherland and endeavored to foster the employment of negro slaves there, but in 1634 it seized the Spanish island of Curaçao near the Venezuelan coast and made it a basis for smuggling slaves into the Spanish dominions. And now the English, the French and the Danes began to give systematic attention to the African and West Indian opportunities, whether in the form of buccaneering, slave trading or colonization. The revolt of Portugal in 1640 brought a turning point. For a quarter-century thereafter the Spanish government, regarding the Portuguese as rebels, suspended all trade relations with them, the asiento included. But the trade alternatives remaining were all distasteful to Spain. The English were heretics; the Dutch were both heretics and rebels; the French and the Danes were too weak at sea to handle the great slave trading contract with security; and Spain had no means of her own for large scale commerce. The upshot was that the carriage of slaves to the Spanish colonies was wholly interdicted during the two middle decades of the century. But this gave the smugglers their highest opportunity. The Spanish colonial police collapsed under the pressure of the public demand for slaves, and illicit trading became so general and open as to be pseudo legitimate. Such a boom came as was never felt before under Protestant flags in tropical waters. The French, in spite of great exertions, were not yet able to rival the Dutch and English. These in fact had such an ascendency that when in 1663 Spain revived the asiento by a contract with two Genoese, the contractors must needs procure their slaves by arrangement with Dutch and English who delivered them at Curaçao and Jamaica. Soon after this contract expired the asiento itself was converted from an item of Spanish internal policy into a shuttlecock of international politics. It became in fact the badge of maritime supremacy, possessed now by the Dutch, now by the French in the greatest years of Louis XIV, and finally by the English as a trophy in the treaty of Utrecht. By this time, however, the Spanish dominions were losing their primacy as slave markets. Jamaica, Barbados and other Windward Islands under the English; Hayti, Martinique and Guadeloupe under the French, and Guiana under the Dutch were all more or less thriving as plantation colonies, while Brazil, Virginia, Maryland and the newly founded Carolina were beginning to demonstrate that slave labor had an effective calling without as well as within the Caribbean latitudes. The closing decades of the seventeenth century were introducing the heyday of the slave trade, and the English were preparing for their final ascendency therein. In West African waters in that century no international law prevailed but that of might. Hence the impulse of any new country to enter the Guinea trade led to the project of a chartered monopoly company; for without the resources of share capital sufficient strength could not be had, and without the monopoly privilege the necessary shares could not be sold. The first English company of moment, chartered in 1618, confined its trade to gold and other produce. Richard Jobson while in its service on the Gambia was offered some slaves by a native trader. "I made answer," Jobson relates, "we were a people who did not deal in any such commodities; neither did we buy or sell one another, or any that had our own shapes; at which he seemed to marvel much, and told us it was the only merchandize they carried down, and that they were sold to white men, who earnestly desired them. We answered, they were another kind of people, different from us; but for our part, if they had no other commodities, we would return again."[3] This company speedily ending its life, was followed by another in 1631 with a similarly short career; and in 1651 the African privilege was granted for a time to the East India Company. [Footnote 3: Richard Jobson, _The Golden Trade_ (London 1623,), pp. 29, 87, quoted in James Bandinel, _Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa_ (London, 1842), p. 43.] Under Charles II activities were resumed vigorously by a company chartered in 1662; but this promptly fell into such conflict with the Dutch that its capital of £122,000 vanished. In a drastic reorganization its affairs were taken over by a new corporation, the Royal African Company, chartered in 1672 with the Duke of York at its head and vested in its turn with monopoly rights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Cape of Good Hope.[4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, selling some two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cash dividends on its £100,000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300 per cent. But now came reverses through European war and through the competition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaves legitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea. Now came also a clamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and from England also where oppression and abuses were charged against it by would-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697 restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent, on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on certain minor exports carried thence. [Footnote 4: The financial career of the company is described by W.R. Scott, "The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of England till 1720," in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259.] The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evil practices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale at reduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encourage subscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all its trade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyages as compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stock sold as low as 2-1/8 on the £100. A reorganization in 1712 however added largely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it new prosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate traders of all dues, substituting a public grant of £10,000 a year toward the maintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company, managed in the early thirties by James Oglethorpe, kept up the unequal contest until 1751 when it was dissolved. The company régime under the several flags was particularly dominant on the coasts most esteemed in the seventeenth century; and in that century they reached a comity of their own on the basis of live and let live. The French were secured in the Senegal sphere of influence and the English on the Gambia, while on the Gold Coast the Dutch and English divided the trade between them. Here the two headquarters were in forts lying within sight of each other: El Mina of the Dutch, and Cape Coast Castle of the English. Each was commanded by a governor and garrisoned by a score or two of soldiers; and each with its outlying factories had a staff of perhaps a dozen factors, as many sub-factors, twice as many assistants, and a few bookkeepers and auditors, as well as a corps of white artisans and an abundance of native interpreters, boatmen, carriers and domestic servants. The Dutch and English stations alternated in a series east and west, often standing no further than a cannon-shot apart. Here and there one of them had acquired a slight domination which the other respected; but in the case of the Coromantees (or Fantyns) William Bosman, a Dutch company factor about 1700, wrote that both companies had "equal power, that is none at all. For when these people are inclined to it they shut up the passes so close that not one merchant can come from the inland country to trade with us; and sometimes, not content with this, they prevent the bringing of provisions to us till we have made peace with them." The tribe was in fact able to exact heavy tribute from both companies; and to stretch the treaty engagements at will to its own advantage.[5] Further eastward, on the densely populated Slave Coast, the factories were few and the trade virtually open to all comers. Here, as was common throughout Upper Guinea, the traits and the trading practices of adjacent tribes were likely to be in sharp contrast. The Popo (or Paw Paw) people, for example, were so notorious for cheating and thieving that few traders would go thither unless prepared to carry things with a strong hand. The Portuguese alone bore their grievances without retaliation, Bosman said, because their goods were too poor to find markets elsewhere.[6]But Fidah (Whydah), next door, was in Bosman's esteem the most agreeable of all places to trade in. The people were honest and polite, and the red-tape requirements definite and reasonable. A ship captain after paying for a license and buying the king's private stock of slaves at somewhat above the market price would have the news of his arrival spread afar, and at a given time the trade would be opened with prices fixed in advance and all the available slaves herded in an open field. There the captain or factor, with the aid of a surgeon, would select the young and healthy, who if the purchaser were the Dutch company were promptly branded to prevent their being confused in the crowd before being carried on shipboard. The Whydahs were so industrious in the trade, with such far reaching interior connections, that they could deliver a thousand slaves each month.[7] [Footnote 5: Bosman's _Guinea_ (London, 1705), reprinted in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 363.] [Footnote 6: _Ibid_., XVI, 474-476.] [Footnote 7: _Ibid_., XVI, 489-491.] Of the operations on the Gambia an intimate view may be had from the journal of Francis Moore, a factor of the Royal African Company from 1730 to 1735.[8] Here the Jolofs on the north and the Mandingoes on the south and west were divided into tribes or kingdoms fronting from five to twenty-five leagues on the river, while tributary villages of Arabic-speaking Foulahs were scattered among them. In addition there was a small independent population of mixed breed, with very slight European infusion but styling themselves Portuguese and using a "bastard language" known locally as Creole. Many of these last were busy in the slave trade. The Royal African headquarters, with a garrison of thirty men, were on an island in the river some thirty miles from its mouth, while its trading stations dotted the shores for many leagues upstream, for no native king was content without a factory near his "palace." The slaves bought were partly of local origin but were mostly brought from long distances inland. These came generally in strings or coffles of thirty or forty, tied with leather thongs about their necks and laden with burdens of ivory and corn on their heads. Mungo Park when exploring the hinterland of this coast in 1795-1797, traveling incidentally with a slave coffle on part of his journey, estimated that in the Niger Valley generally the slaves outnumbered the free by three to one.[9] But as Moore observed, the domestic slaves were rarely sold in the trade, mainly for fear it would cause their fellows to run away. When captured by their master's enemies however, they were likely to be sent to the coast, for they were seldom ransomed. [Footnote 8: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_ (London, 1738).] [Footnote 9: Mungo Park, _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_ (4th ed., London, 1800), pp. 287, 428.] The diverse goods bartered for slaves were rated by units of value which varied in the several trade centers. On the Gold Coast it was a certain length of cowrie shells on a string; at Loango it was a "piece" which had the value of a common gun or of twenty pounds of iron; at Kakongo it was twelve- or fifteen-yard lengths of cotton cloth called "goods";[10] while on the Gambia it was a bar of iron, apparently about forty pounds in weight. But in the Gambia trade as Moore described it the unit or "bar" in rum, cloth and most other things became depreciated until in some commodities it was not above a shilling's value in English money. Iron itself, on the other hand, and crystal beads, brass pans and spreadeagle dollars appreciated in comparison. These accordingly became distinguished as the "heads of goods," and the inclusion of three or four units of them was required in the forty or fifty bars of miscellaneous goods making up the price of a prime slave.[11] In previous years grown slaves alone had brought standard prices; but in Moore's time a specially strong demand for boys and girls in the markets of Cadiz and Lisbon had raised the prices of these almost to a parity. All defects were of course discounted. Moore, for example, in buying a slave with several teeth missing made the seller abate a bar for each tooth. The company at one time forbade the purchase of slaves from the self-styled Portuguese because they ran the prices up; but the factors protested that these dealers would promptly carry their wares to the separate traders, and the prohibition was at once withdrawn. [Footnote 10: The Abbé Proyart, _History of Loango_ (1776), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 584-587.] [Footnote 11: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, p.45.] The company and the separate traders faced different problems. The latter were less easily able to adjust their merchandise to the market. A Rhode Island captain, for instance, wrote his owners from Anamabo in 1736, "heare is 7 sails of us rume men, that we are ready to devour one another, for our case is desprit"; while four years afterward another wrote after trading at the same port, "I have repented a hundred times ye lying in of them dry goods", which he had carried in place of the customary rum.[12] Again, a veteran Rhode Islander wrote from Anamabo in 1752, "on the whole I never had so much trouble in all my voiges", and particularized as follows: "I have Gott on bord 61 Slaves and upards of thirty ounces of Goold, and have Gott 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet Left on bord, and God noes when I shall Gett Clear of it ye trade is so very Dull it is actuly a noof to make a man Creasey my Cheef mate after making foor or five Trips in the boat was taken Sick and Remains very bad yett then I sent Mr. Taylor, and he got not well, and three more of my men has [been] sick.... I should be Glad I coold Com Rite home with my slaves, for my vesiel will not Last to proceed farr we can see Day Lite al Roond her bow under Deck.... heare Lyes Captains hamlet, James, Jepson, Carpenter, Butler, Lindsay; Gardner is Due; Ferguson has Gone to Leward all these is Rum ships."[13] [Footnote 12: _American Historical Record_, I (1872), 314, 317.] [Footnote 13: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 59, 60.] The separate traders also had more frequent quarrels with the natives. In 1732 a Yankee captain was killed in a trade dispute and his crew set adrift. Soon afterward certain Jolofs took another ship's officers captive and required the value of twenty slaves as ransom. And in 1733 the natives at Yamyamacunda, up the Gambia, sought revenge upon Captain Samuel Moore for having paid them in pewter dollars on his previous voyage, and were quieted through the good offices of a company factor.[14] The company suffered far less from native disorders, for a threat of removing its factory would bring any chief to terms. In 1731, however, the king of Barsally brought a troop of his kinsmen and subjects to the Joar factory where Moore was in charge, got drunk, seized the keys and rifled the stores.[15] But the company's chief trouble was with its own factors. The climate and conditions were so trying that illness was frequent and insanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulent practices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in the reports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildew and white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The expense of the salary list, ship hire, provisions and merchandise was heavy and continuous, while the returns were precarious to a degree. Not often did such great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in 1726[16] and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734[17] to glut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes. As a rule the company's advantage of steady markets and friendly native relations appears to have been more than offset by the freedom of the separate traders from fixed charges and the necessity of dependence upon lazy and unfaithful employees. [Footnote 14: Moore, pp. 112, 164, 182.] [Footnote 15: _Ibid_., p. 82.] [Footnote 16: William Snelgrave, _A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. 8-32.] [Footnote 17: Moore, p. 157.] Instead of jogging along the coast, as many had been accustomed to do, and casting anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by natives who had slaves to sell,[18] the separate traders began before the close of the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the "castles," which were then a relic from the company régime. So advantageous was this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared £500 on her voyage, and next year the sloop _Adventure_, also of Newport, Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade that after losing by death one slave out of the ninety-five in her cargo she landed the remainder in prime order at Barbados and sold them immediately in one lot at £35 per head.[19] [Footnote 18: Snelgrave, introduction.] [Footnote 19: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 398, 429.] In Lower Guinea the Portuguese held an advantage, partly through the influence of the Catholic priests. The Capuchin missionary Merolla, for example, relates that while he was in service at the mouth of the Congo in 1685 word came that the college of cardinals had commanded the missionaries in Africa to combat the slave trade. Promptly deciding this to be a hopeless project, Merolla and his colleagues compromised with their instructions by attempting to restrict the trade to ships of Catholic nations and to the Dutch who were then supplying Spain under the asiento. No sooner had the chiefs in the district agreed to this than a Dutch trading captain set things awry by spreading Protestant doctrine among the natives, declaring baptism to be the only sacrament required for salvation, and confession to be superfluous. The priests then put all the Dutch under the ban, but the natives raised a tumult saying that the Portuguese, the only Catholic traders available, not only paid low prices in poor goods but also aspired to a political domination. The crisis was relieved by a timely plague of small-pox which the priests declared and the natives agreed was a divinely sent punishment for their contumacy,--and for the time at least, the exclusion of heretical traders was made effective.[20] The English appear never to have excelled the Portuguese on the Congo and southward except perhaps about the close of the eighteenth century. [Footnote 20: Jerom Merolla da Sorrente, _Voyage to Congo_ (translated from the Italian), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 253-260.] The markets most frequented by the English and American separate traders lay on the great middle stretches of the coast--Sierra Leone, the Grain Coast (Liberia), the Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, the Oil Rivers as the Niger Delta was then called, Cameroon, Gaboon and Loango. The swarm of their ships was particularly great in the Gulf of Guinea upon whose shores the vast fan-shaped hinterland poured its exiles along converging lines. The coffles came from distances ranging to a thousand miles or more, on rivers and paths whose shore ends the European traders could see but did not find inviting. These paths, always of single-file narrowness, tortuously winding to avoid fallen trees and bad ground, never straightened even when obstructions had rotted and gone, branching and crossing in endless network, penetrating jungles and high-grass prairies, passing villages that were and villages that had been, skirting the lairs of savage beasts and the haunts of cannibal men, beset with drought and famine, storm and flood, were threaded only by negroes, bearing arms or bearing burdens. Many of the slaves fell exhausted on the paths and were cut out of the coffles to die. The survivors were sorted by the purchasers on the coast into the fit and the unfit, the latter to live in local slavery or to meet either violent or lingering deaths, the former to be taken shackled on board the strange vessels of the strange white men and carried to an unknown fate. The only consolations were that the future could hardly be worse than the recent past, that misery had plenty of company, and that things were interesting by the way. The combination of resignation and curiosity was most helpful. It was reassuring to these victims to see an occasional American negro serving in the crew of a slaver and to know that a few specially favored tribesmen had returned home with vivid stories from across the sea. On the Gambia for example there was Job Ben Solomon who during a brief slavery in Maryland attracted James Oglethorpe's attention by a letter written in Arabic, was bought from his master, carried to England, presented at court, loaded with gifts and sent home as a freeman in 1734 in a Royal African ship with credentials requiring the governor and factors to show him every respect. Thereafter, a celebrity on the river, he spread among his fellow Foulahs and the neighboring Jolofs and Mandingoes his cordial praises of the English nation.[21] And on the Gold Coast there was Amissa to testify to British justice, for he had shipped as a hired sailor on a Liverpool slaver in 1774, had been kidnapped by his employer and sold as a slave in Jamaica, but had been redeemed by the king of Anamaboe and brought home with an award by Lord Mansfield's court in London of £500 damages collected from the slaving captain who had wronged him.[22] The bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 shifted the bulk of the separate trading from London to the rival city of Bristol. But the removal of the duties in 1730 brought the previously unimportant port of Liverpool into the field with such vigor that ere long she had the larger half of all the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessary parsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions and extra allowances they gave in their early years were nil.[23] By 1753 her ships in the slave traffic numbered eighty-seven, totaling about eight thousand tons burthen and rated to carry some twenty-five thousand slaves. Eight of these vessels were trading on the Gambia, thirty-eight on the Gold and Slave Coasts, five at Benin, three at New Calabar, twelve at Bonny, eleven at Old Calabar, and ten in Angola.[24] For the year 1771 the number of slavers bound from Liverpool was reported at one hundred and seven with a capacity of 29,250 negroes, while fifty-eight went from London rated to carry 8,136, twenty-five from Bristol to carry 8,810, and five from Lancaster with room for 950. Of this total of 195 ships 43 traded in Senegambia, 29 on the Gold Coast, 56 on the Slave Coast, 63 in the bights of Benin and Biafra, and 4 in Angola. In addition there were sixty or seventy slavers from North America and the West Indies, and these were yearly increasing.[25] By 1801 the Liverpool ships had increased to 150, with capacity for 52,557 slaves according to the reduced rating of five slaves to three tons of burthen as required by the parliamentary act of 1788. About half of these traded in the Gulf of Guinea, and half in the ports of Angola.[26] The trade in American vessels, particularly those of New England, was also large. The career of the town of Newport in fact was a small scale replied of Liverpool's. But acceptable statistics of the American ships are lacking. [Footnote 21: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, pp. 69, 202-203.] [Footnote 22: Gomer Williams, _History of the Liverpool Privateers, with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade_ (London, 1897), pp. 563, 564.] [Footnote 23: _Ibid_., p. 471, quoting _A General and Descriptive History of Liverpool_ (1795).] [Footnote 24: _Ibid_., p. 472 and appendix 7.] [Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), p. 492 note.] [Footnote 26: Corner Williams, Appendix 13.] The ship captains in addition to their salaries generally received commissions of "4 in 104," on the gross sales, and also had the privilege of buying, transporting and selling specified numbers of slaves on their private account. When surgeons were carried they also were allowed commissions and privileges at a smaller rate, and "privileges" were often allowed the mates likewise. The captains generally carried more or less definite instructions. Ambrose Lace, for example, master of the Liverpool ship _Marquis of Granby_ bound in 1762 for Old Calabar, was ordered to combine with any other ships on the river to keep down rates, to buy 550 young and healthy slaves and such ivory as his surplus cargo would purchase, and to guard against fire, fever and attack. When laden he was to carry the slaves to agents in the West Indies, and thence bring home according to opportunity sugar, cotton, coffee, pimento, mahogany and rum, and the balance of the slave cargo proceeds in bills of exchange.[27] Simeon Potter, master of a Rhode Island slaver about the same time, was instructed by his owners: "Make yr Cheaf Trade with The Blacks and little or none with the white people if possible to be avoided. Worter yr Rum as much as possible and sell as much by the short mesuer as you can." And again: "Order them in the Bots to worter thear Rum, as the proof will Rise by the Rum Standing in ye Son."[28] As to the care of the slave cargo a Massachusetts captain was instructed in 1785 as follows: "No people require more kind and tender treatment: to exhilarate their spirits than the Africans; and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, remember that on the other hand too much circumspection cannot be observed by yourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatment by insurrection, etc. When you consider that on the health of your slaves almost your whole voyage depends--for all other risques but mortality, seizures and bad debts the underwriters are accountable for--you will therefore particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her with vinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and to cleanliness among your own people as well as among the slaves."[29] [Footnote 27: Ibid., pp. 486-489.] [Footnote 28: W.B. Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_ (Boston [1890]), II, 465.] [Footnote 29: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 66, 67, citing J.O. Felt, _Annals of Salem_, 2d ed., II, 289, 290.] Ships were frequently delayed for many months on the pestilent coast, for after buying their licenses in one kingdom and finding trade slack there they could ill afford to sail for another on the uncertain chance of a more speedy supply. Sometimes when weary of higgling the market, they tried persuasion by force of arms; but in some instances as at Bonny, in 1757,[30] this resulted in the victory of the natives and the destruction of the ships. In general the captains and their owners appreciated the necessity of patience, expensive and even deadly as that might prove to be. [Footnote 30: Gomer Williams, pp. 481, 482.] The chiefs were eager to foster trade and cultivate good will, for it brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy King George" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace a mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in," a gold mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, pewter plates, brass flagons, knives and forks, bullet and cannon-ball molds, and sailcloth for his canoes, along with many other things for use in trade.[31] [Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 545-547.] The typical New England ship for the slave trade was a sloop, schooner or barkentine of about fifty tons burthen, which when engaged in ordinary freighting would have but a single deck. For a slaving voyage a second flooring was laid some three feet below the regular deck, the space between forming the slave quarters. Such a vessel was handled by a captain, two mates, and from three to six men and boys. It is curious that a vessel of this type, with capacity in the hold for from 100 to 120 hogsheads of rum was reckoned by the Rhode Islanders to be "full bigg for dispatch,"[32] while among the Liverpool slave traders such a ship when offered for sale could not find a purchaser.[33] The reason seems to have been that dry-goods and sundries required much more cargo space for the same value than did rum. [Footnote 32: Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, LXIX, 524.] [Footnote 33: _Ibid_., 500.] The English vessels were generally twice as great of burthen and with twice the height in their 'tween decks. But this did not mean that the slaves could stand erect in their quarters except along the center line; for when full cargoes were expected platforms of six or eight feet in width were laid on each side, halving the 'tween deck height and nearly doubling the floor space on which the slaves were to be stowed. Whatever the size of the ship, it loaded slaves if it could get them to the limit of its capacity. Bosnian tersely said, "they lie as close together as it is possible to be crowded."[34] The women's room was divided from the men's by a bulkhead, and in time of need the captain's cabin might be converted into a hospital. [Footnote 34: Bosnian's _Guinea_, in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 490.] While the ship was taking on slaves and African provisions and water the negroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sake of fresh air. But on departure for the "middle passage," as the trip to America was called by reason of its being the second leg of the ship's triangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and in foul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air and exercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters and swabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant. The negro men were usually kept shackled for the first part of the passage until the chances of mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain's fears gave place to confidence. On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to be repelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense of the vessel.[35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargo was perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport of poverty-stricken white emigrants. Henry Laurens, after withdrawing from African factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted by some of the participants in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw an instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what condition they were landed."[36] [Footnote 35: _E. g_., Gomer Williams, pp. 560, 561.] [Footnote 36: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_ (New York, 1915), pp. 67, 68. For the tragic sufferings of an English convict shipment in 1768 see _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 372-373] William Snelgrave, long a ship captain in the trade, relates that he was accustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through his interpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and not to be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complain to the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if they struck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to be severely punished. Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, "I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death itself." In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of an hour's time. "He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in him to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I should lose all the money I had paid for him.'" When the captain professed himself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments assuring his fellows that his life was safe.[37] [Footnote 37: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. 162-185. Snelgrave's book also contains vivid accounts of tribal wars, human sacrifices, traders' negotiations and pirate captures on the Grain and Slave Coasts.] The discomfort in the densely packed quarters of the slave ships may be imagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added it was wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water or food ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and in epidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limit of human experience. The average voyage however was rapid and smooth by virtue of the steadily blowing trade winds, the food if coarse was generally plenteous and wholesome, and the sanitation fairly adequate. In a word, under stern and often brutal discipline, and with the poorest accommodations, the slaves encountered the then customary dangers and hardships of the sea.[38] [Footnote 38: Voluminous testimony in regard to conditions on the middle passage was published by Parliament and the Privy Council in 1789-1791. Summaries from it may be found in T.F. Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and the Remedy_ (London, 1840), part I, chap. 2; and in W.O. Blake, _History of Slavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10.] Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West India Company's ship _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in April and May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barely enough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island of Amebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile bad food had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died, and the slave cargo was daily diminishing. Five weeks of sailing then carried the ship across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refill her leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near her destination at Curaçao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally a sloop sent by the Curaçao governor to remove the surviving slaves was captured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprising the cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and one leaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 the slave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as high among the men as among the women.[39] About the same time, on the other hand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher, made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave.[40] The mortality on the average ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or ten per cent. [Footnote 39: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N.Y., 1867), pp. 1-13.] [Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515.] Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the New England branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for a projected voyage.[41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at £300 sterling, was to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of £65, and provisioned for £50 more. Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages of £10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eight thousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. per gallon and with forty-five barrels, tierces and hogsheads of bread, flour, beef, pork, tar, tobacco, tallow and sugar--all at an estimated cost of £775--it was to sail for the Gold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some 35 slave men were to be bought at 100 gallons per head, 15 women at 85 gallons, and 15 boys and girls at 65 gallons; and the residue of the rum and miscellaneous cargo was expected to bring some seventy ounces of gold in exchange as well as to procure food supplies for the westward voyage. Recrossing the Atlantic, with an estimated death loss of a man, a woman and two children, the surviving slaves were to be sold in Jamaica at about £21, £18, and £14 for the respective classes. Of these proceeds about one-third was to be spent for a cargo of 105 hogsheads of molasses at 8_d_. per gallon, and the rest of the money remitted to London, whither the gold dust was also to be sent. The molasses upon reaching Newport was expected to bring twice as much as it had cost in the tropics. After deducting factor's commissions of from 2-1/2 to 5 per cent. on all sales and purchases, and of "4 in 104" on the slave sales as the captain's allowance, after providing for insurance at four per cent. on ship and cargo for each leg of the voyage, and for leakage of ten per cent. of the rum and five per cent. of the molasses, and after charging off the whole cost of the ship's outfit and one-third of her original value, there remained the sum of £357, 8s. 2d. as the expected profits of the voyage. [Footnote 41: "An estimate of a voyage from Rhode Island to the Coast of Guinea and from thence to Jamaica and so back to Rhode Island for a sloop of 60 Tons." The authorities of Yale University, which possesses the manuscript, have kindly permitted the publication of these data. The estimates in Rhode Island and Jamaica currencies, which were then depreciated, as stated in the document, to twelve for one and seven for five sterling respectively, are here changed into their approximate sterling equivalents.] As to the gross volume of the trade, there are few statistics. As early as 1734 one of the captains engaged in it estimated that a maximum of seventy thousand slaves a year had already been attained.[42] For the next half century and more each passing year probably saw between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand shipped. The total transportation from first to last may well have numbered more than five million souls. Prior to the nineteenth century far more negro than white colonists crossed the seas, though less than one tenth of all the blacks brought to the western world appear to have been landed on the North American continent. Indeed, a statistician has reckoned, though not convincingly, that in the whole period before 1810 these did not exceed 385,500[43] [Footnote 42: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_, p. 159.] [Footnote 43: H.C. Carey, _The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign_ (Philadelphia, 1853), chap. 3.] In selling the slave cargoes in colonial ports the traders of course wanted minimum delay and maximum prices. But as a rule quickness and high returns were not mutually compatible. The Royal African Company tended to lay chief stress upon promptness of sale. Thus at the end of 1672 it announced that if persons would contract to receive whole cargoes upon their arrival and to accept all slaves between twelve and forty years of age who were able to go over the ship's side unaided they would be supplied at the rate of £15 per head in Barbados, £16 in Nevis, £17 in Jamaica, and £18 in Virginia.[44] The colonists were for a time disposed to accept this arrangement where they could. For example Charles Calvert, governor of Maryland, had already written Lord Baltimore in 1664: "I have endeavored to see if I could find as many responsible men that would engage to take 100 or 200 neigros every year from the Royall Company at that rate mentioned in your lordship's letter; but I find that we are nott men of estates good enough to undertake such a buisnesse, but could wish we were for we are naturally inclined to love neigros if our purses could endure it."[45] But soon complaints arose that the slaves delivered on contract were of the poorest quality, while the better grades were withheld for other means of sale at higher prices. Quarrels also developed between the company on the one hand and the colonists and their legislatures on the other over the rating of colonial moneys and the obstructions placed by law about the collection of debts; and the colonists proceeded to give all possible encouragement to the separate traders, legal or illegal as their traffic might be.[46] [Footnote 44: E.D. Collins, "Studies in the Colonial Policy of England, 1672-1680," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1901, I, 158.] [Footnote 45: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_ no. 28, p. 249.] [Footnote 46: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_ (New York, 1912), part I, vol. I, chap. 5.] Most of the sales, in the later period at least, were without previous contract. A practice often followed in the British West Indian ports was to advertise that the cargo of a vessel just arrived would be sold on board at an hour scheduled and at a uniform price announced in the notice. At the time set there would occur a great scramble of planters and dealers to grab the choicest slaves. A variant from this method was reported in 1670 from Guadeloupe, where a cargo brought in by the French African company was first sorted into grades of prime men, (_pièces d'Inde_), prime women, boys and girls rated at two-thirds of prime, and children rated at one-half. To each slave was attached a ticket bearing a number, while a corresponding ticket was deposited in one of four boxes according to the grade. At prices then announced for the several grades, the planters bought the privilege of drawing tickets from the appropriate boxes and acquiring thereby title to the slaves to which the numbers they drew were attached.[47] [Footnote 47: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant 1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122, 123.] In the chief ports of the British continental colonies the maritime transporters usually engaged merchants on shore to sell the slaves as occasion permitted, whether by private sale or at auction. At Charleston these merchants charged a ten per cent commission on slave sales, though their factorage rate was but five per cent. on other sorts of merchandise; and they had credits of one and two years for the remittance of the proceeds.[48] The following advertisement, published at Charleston in 1785 jointly by Ball, Jennings and Company, and Smiths, DeSaussure and Darrell is typical of the factors' announcements: "GOLD COAST NEGROES. On Thursday, the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the Exchange (if not before disposed of by private contract) the remainder of the cargo of negroes imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consisting chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to this climate. The conditions of the sale will be credit to the first of January, 1786, on giving bond with approved security where required--the negroes not to be delivered till the terms are complied with."[49] But in such colonies as Virginia where there was no concentration of trade in ports, the ships generally sailed from place to place peddling their slaves, with notice published in advance when practicable. The diseased or otherwise unfit negroes were sold for whatever price they would bring. In some of the ports it appears that certain physicians made a practise of buying these to sell the survivors at a profit upon their restoration to health.[50] [Footnote 48: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 75.] [Footnote 49: _The Gazette of the State of South Carolina_, Mch. 10, 1785.] [Footnote 50: C. C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 170.] That by no means all the negroes took their enslavement grievously is suggested by a traveler's note at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1806: "We met ... a number of new negroes, some of whom had been in the country long enough to talk intelligibly. Their likely looks induced us to enter into a talk with them. One of them, a very bright, handsome youth of about sixteen, could talk well. He told us the circumstances of his being caught and enslaved, with as much composure as he would any common occurrence, not seeming to think of the injustice of the thing nor to speak of it with indignation.... He spoke of his master and his work as though all were right, and seemed not to know he had a right to be anything but a slave."[51] [Footnote 51: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1906, p. 882.] In the principal importing colonies careful study was given to the comparative qualities of the several African stocks. The consensus of opinion in the premises may be gathered from several contemporary publications, the chief ones of which were written in Jamaica.[52] The Senegalese, who had a strong Arabic strain in their ancestry, were considered the most intelligent of Africans and were especially esteemed for domestic service, the handicrafts and responsible positions. "They are good commanders over other negroes, having a high spirit and a tolerable share of fidelity; but they are unfit for hard work; their bodies are not robust nor their constitutions vigorous." The Mandingoes were reputed to be especially gentle in demeanor but peculiarly prone to theft. They easily sank under fatigue, but might be employed with advantage in the distillery and the boiling house or as watchmen against fire and the depredations of cattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts as hardy and stalwart of mind and body. Long calls them haughty, ferocious and stubborn; Edwards relates examples of their Spartan fortitude; and it was generally agreed that they were frequently instigators of slave conspiracies and insurrections. Yet their spirit of loyalty made them the most highly prized of servants by those who could call it forth. Of them Christopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward Islands, wrote in 1701 to the English Board of Trade: "The Corramantes are not only the best and most faithful of our slaves, but are really all born heroes. There is a differance between them and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possible for your Lordships to conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of that nation. Intrepid to the last degree, not a man of them but will stand to be cut to pieces without a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kind master, but implacably revengeful when ill-treated. My father, who had studied the genius and temper of all kinds of negroes forty-five years with a very nice observation, would say, noe man deserved a Corramante that would not treat him like a friend rather than a slave."[53] [Footnote 52: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, 403, 404; Bryan Edwards, _History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, various editions, book IV, chap. 3; and "A Professional Planter," _Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies_ (London, 1803), pp. 39-48. The pertinent portion of this last is reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 127-133. For the similar views of the French planters in the West Indies see Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_, pp. 87-90.] [Footnote 53: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies_, 1701, pp. 720, 721.] The Whydahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and submissive. "That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel, and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Pawpaws as the chastisement of legal authority to which it is their duty to submit patiently." As to the Eboes or Mocoes, described as having a sickly yellow tinge in their complection, jaundiced eyes, and prognathous faces like baboons, the women were said to be diligent but the men lazy, despondent and prone to suicide. "They require therefore the gentlest and mildest treatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence be once obtained they manifest as great fidelity, affection and gratitude as can reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery." The "kingdom of Gaboon," which straddled the equator, was the worst reputed of all. "From thence a good negro was scarcely ever brought. They are purchased so cheaply on the coast as to tempt many captains to freight with them; but they generally die either on the passage or soon after their arrival in the islands. The debility of their constitutions is astonishing." From this it would appear that most of the so-called Gaboons must have been in reality Pygmies caught in the inland equatorial forests, for Bosman, who traded among the Gaboons, merely inveighed against their garrulity, their indecision, their gullibility and their fondness for strong drink, while as to their physique he observed: "they are mostly large, robust well shaped men."[54] Of the Congoes and Angolas the Jamaican writers had little to say except that in their glossy black they were slender and sightly, mild in disposition, unusually honest, but exceptionally stupid. [Footnote 54: Bosman in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 509, 510.] In the South Carolina market Gambia negroes, mainly Mandingoes, were the favorites, and Angolas also found ready sale; but cargoes from Calabar, which were doubtless comprised mostly of Eboes, were shunned because of their suicidal proclivity. Henry Laurens, who was then a commission dealer at Charleston, wrote in 1755 that the sale of a shipload from Calabar then in port would be successful only if no other Guinea ships arrived before its quarantine was ended, for the people would not buy negroes of that stock if any others were to be had.[55] [Footnote 55: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 76, 77.] It would appear that the Congoes, Angolas and Eboes were especially prone to run away, or perhaps particularly easy to capture when fugitive, for among the 1046 native Africans advertised as runaways held in the Jamaica workhouses in 1803 there were 284 Eboes and Mocoes, 185 Congoes and 259 Angolas as compared with 101 Mandingoes, 60 Chambas (from Sierra Leone), 70 Coromantees, 57 Nagoes and Pawpaws, and 30 scattering, along with a total of 488 American-born negroes and mulattoes, and 187 unclassified.[56] [Footnote 56: These data were generously assembled for me by Professor Chauncey S. Boucher of Washington University, St. Louis, from a file of the _Royal Gazette_ of Kingston, Jamaica, for the year 1803, which is preserved in the Charleston, S.C. Library.] This huge maritime slave traffic had great consequences for all the countries concerned. In Liverpool it made millionaires,[57] and elsewhere in England, Europe and New England it brought prosperity not only to ship owners but to the distillers of rum and manufacturers of other trade goods. In the American plantation districts it immensely stimulated the production of the staple crops. On the other hand it kept the planters constantly in debt for their dearly bought labor, and it left a permanent and increasingly complex problem of racial adjustments. In Africa, it largely transformed the primitive scheme of life, and for the worse. It created new and often unwholesome wants; it destroyed old industries and it corrupted tribal institutions. The rum, the guns, the utensils and the gewgaws were irresistible temptations. Every chief and every tribesman acquired a potential interest in slave getting and slave selling. Charges of witchcraft, adultery, theft and other crimes were trumped up that the number of convicts for sale might be swelled; debtors were pressed that they might be adjudged insolvent and their persons delivered to the creditors; the sufferings of famine were left unrelieved that parents might be forced to sell their children or themselves; kidnapping increased until no man or woman and especially no child was safe outside a village; and wars and raids were multiplied until towns by hundreds were swept from the earth and great zones lay void of their former teeming population.[58] [Footnote 57: Gomer Williams, chap. 6.] [Footnote 58: C.B. Wadstrom, _Observations on the Slave Trade_ (London, 1789); Lord Muncaster, _Historical Sketches of the Slave Trade and of its Effects in Africa_ (London, 1792); Jerome Dowd, _The Negro Races_, vol. 3, chap. 2 (MS).] The slave trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent. But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors who remained in the African jungle. The only participants who got unquestionable profit were the English, European and Yankee traders and manufacturers. CHAPTER III THE SUGAR ISLANDS As regards negro slavery the history of the West Indies is inseparable from that of North America. In them the plantation system originated and reached its greatest scale, and from them the institution of slavery was extended to the continent. The industrial system on the islands, and particularly on those occupied by the British, is accordingly instructive as an introduction and a parallel to the continental régime. The early career of the island of Barbados gives a striking instance of a farming colony captured by the plantation system. Founded in 1624 by a group of unprosperous English emigrants, it pursued an even and commonplace tenor until the Civil War in England sent a crowd of royalist refugees thither, together with some thousands of Scottish and Irish prisoners converted into indentured servants. Negro slaves were also imported to work alongside the redemptioners in the tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigo crops, and soon proved their superiority in that climate, especially when yellow fever, to which the Africans are largely immune, decimated the white population. In 1643, as compared with some five thousand negroes of all sorts, there were about eighteen thousand white men capable of bearing arms; and in the little island's area of 166 square miles there were nearly ten thousand separate landholdings. Then came the introduction of sugar culture, which brought the beginning of the end of the island's transformation. A fairly typical plantation in the transition period was described by a contemporary. Of its five hundred acres about two hundred were planted in sugar-cane, twenty in tobacco, five in cotton, five in ginger and seventy in provision crops; several acres were devoted to pineapples, bananas, oranges and the like; eighty acres were in pasturage, and one hundred and twenty in woodland. There were a sugar mill, a boiling house, a curing house, a distillery, the master's residence, laborers' cabins, and barns and stables. The livestock numbered forty-five oxen, eight cows, twelve horses and sixteen asses; and the labor force comprised ninety-eight "Christians," ninety-six negroes and three Indian women with their children. In general, this writer said, "The slaves and their posterity, being subject to their masters forever, are kept and preserved with greater care than the (Christian) servants, who are theirs for but five years according to the laws of the island.[1] So that for the time being the servants have the worser lives, for they are put to very hard labor, ill lodging and their dyet very light." [Footnote 1: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] As early as 1645 George Downing, then a young Puritan preacher recently graduated from Harvard College but later a distinguished English diplomat, wrote to his cousin John Winthrop, Jr., after a voyage in the West Indies: "If you go to Barbados, you shal see a flourishing Iland, many able men. I beleive they have bought this year no lesse than a thousand Negroes, and the more they buie the better they are able to buye, for in a yeare and halfe they will earne (with God's blessing) as much as they cost."[2] Ten years later, with bonanza prices prevailing in the sugar market, the Barbadian planters declared their colony to be "the most envyed of the world" and estimated the value of its annual crops at a million pounds sterling.[3] But in the early sixties a severe fall in sugar prices put an end to the boom period and brought the realization that while sugar was the rich man's opportunity it was the poor man's ruin. By 1666 emigration to other colonies had halved the white population; but the slave trade had increased the negroes to forty thousand, most of whom were employed on the eight hundred sugar estates.[4] For the rest of the century Barbados held her place as the leading producer of British sugar and the most esteemed of the British colonies; but as the decades passed the fertility of her limited fields became depleted, and her importance gradually fell secondary to that of the growing Jamaica. [Footnote 2: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, series 4, vol. 6, p. 536.] [Footnote 3: G.L. Beer, _Origins of the British Colonial System_ (New York, 1908), P. 413.] [Footnote 4: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_, part I, vol. 2, pp. 9, 10.] The Barbadian estates were generally much smaller than those of Jamaica came to be. The planters nevertheless not only controlled their community wholly in their interest but long maintained a unique "planters' committee" at London to make representations to the English government on behalf of their class. They pleaded for the colony's freedom of trade, for example, with no more vigor than they insisted that England should not interfere with the Barbadian law to prohibit Quakers from admitting negroes to their meetings. An item significant of their attitude upon race relations is the following from the journal of the Crown's committee of trade and plantations, Oct. 8, 1680: "The gentlemen of Barbados attend, ... who declare that the conversion of their slaves to Christianity would not only destroy their property but endanger the island, inasmuch as converted negroes grow more perverse and intractable than others, and hence of less value for labour or sale. The disproportion of blacks to white being great, the whites have no greater security than the diversity of the negroes' languages, which would be destroyed by conversion in that it would be necessary to teach them all English. The negroes are a sort of people so averse to learning that they will rather hang themselves or run away than submit to it." The Lords of Trade were enough impressed by this argument to resolve that the question be left to the Barbadian government.[5] [Footnote 5: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies_, 1677-1680, p. 611.] As illustrating the plantation régime in the island in the period of its full industrial development, elaborate instructions are extant which were issued about 1690 to Richard Harwood, manager or overseer of the Drax Hall and Hope plantations belonging to the Codrington family. These included directions for planting, fertilizing and cultivating the cane, for the operation of the wind-driven sugar mill, the boiling and curing houses and the distillery, and for the care of the live stock; but the main concern was with the slaves. The number in the gangs was not stated, but the expectation was expressed that in ordinary years from ten to twenty new negroes would have to be bought to keep the ranks full, and it was advised that Coromantees be preferred, since they had been found best for the work on these estates. Plenty was urged in provision crops with emphasis upon plantains and cassava,--the latter because of the certainty of its harvest, the former because of the abundance of their yield in years of no hurricanes and because the negroes especially delighted in them and found them particularly wholesome as a dysentery diet. The services of a physician had been arranged for, but the manager was directed to take great care of the negroes' health and pay special attention to the sick. The clothing was not definitely stated as to periods. For food each was to receive weekly a pound of fish and two quarts of molasses, tobacco occasionally, salt as needed, palm oil once a year, and home-grown provisions in abundance. Offenses committed by the slaves were to be punished immediately, "many of them being of the houmer of avoiding punishment when threatened: to hang themselves." For drunkenness the stocks were recommended. As to theft, recognized as especially hard to repress, the manager was directed to let hunger give no occasion for it.[6] [Footnote 6: Original MS. in the Bodleian Library, A. 248, 3. Copy used through the courtesy of Dr. F.W. Pitman of Yale University.] Jamaica, which lies a thousand miles west of Barbados and has twenty-five times her area, was captured by the English in 1655 when its few hundreds of Spaniards had developed nothing but cacao and cattle raising. English settlement began after the Restoration, with Roundhead exiles supplemented by immigrants from the Lesser Antilles and by buccaneers turned farmers. Lands were granted on a lavish scale on the south side of the island where an abundance of savannahs facilitated tillage; but the development of sugar culture proved slow by reason of the paucity of slaves and the unfamiliarity of the settlers with the peculiarities of the soil and climate. With the increase of prosperity, and by the aid of managers brought from Barbados, sugar plantations gradually came to prevail all round the coast and in favorable mountain valleys, while smaller establishments here and there throve more moderately in the production of cotton, pimento, ginger, provisions and live stock. For many years the legislature, prodded by occasional slave revolts, tried to stimulate the increase of whites by requiring the planters to keep a fixed proportion of indentured servants; but in the early eighteenth century this policy proved futile, and thereafter the whites numbered barely one-tenth as many as the negroes. The slaves were reported at 86,546 in 1734; 112,428 in 1744; 166,914 in 1768; and 210,894 in 1787. In addition there were at the last date some 10,000 negroes legally free, and 1400 maroons or escaped slaves dwelling permanently in the mountain fastnesses. The number of sugar plantations was 651 in 1768, and 767 in 1791; and they contained about three-fifths of all the slaves on the island. Throughout this latter part of the century the average holding on the sugar estates was about 180 slaves of all ages.[7] [Footnote 7: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_, I, 494, Bryan Edwards, _History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, book II, appendix.] When the final enumeration of slaves in the British possessions was made in the eighteen-thirties there were no single Jamaica holdings reported as large as that of 1598 slaves held by James Blair in Guiana; but occasional items were of a scale ranging from five to eight hundred each, and hundreds numbered above one hundred each. In many of these instances the same persons are listed as possessing several holdings, with Sir Edward Hyde East particularly notable for the large number of his great squads. The degree of absenteeism is indicated by the frequency of English nobles, knights and gentlemen among the large proprietors. Thus the Earl of Balcarres had 474 slaves; the Earl of Harwood 232; the Earl and Countess of Airlie 59; Earl Talbot and Lord Shelborne jointly 79; Lord Seaford 70; Lord Hatherton jointly with Francis Downing, John Benbow and the Right Reverend H. Philpots, Lord Bishop of Exeter, two holdings of 304 and 236 slaves each; and the three Gladstones, Thomas, William and Robert 468 slaves jointly.[8] [Footnote 8: "Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims," in the British official _Account: and Papers, 1837-1838_, vol. XLVIII.] Such an average scale and such a prevalence of absenteeism never prevailed in any other Anglo-American plantation community, largely because none of the other staples required so much manufacturing as sugar did in preparing the crops for market. As Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793: "the business of sugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages must engage deeply.... It requires a capital of no less than thirty thousand pounds sterling to embark in this employment with a fair prospect of success." Such an investment, he particularized, would procure and establish as a going concern a plantation of 300 acres in cane and 100 acres each in provision crops, forage and woodland, together with the appropriate buildings and apparatus, and a working force of 80 steers, 60 mules and 250 slaves, at the current price for these last of £50 sterling a head.[9] So distinctly were the plantations regarded as capitalistic ventures that they came to be among the chief speculations of their time for absentee investors. [Footnote 9: Bryan Edwards, _History of the West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] When Lord Chesterfield tried in 1767 to buy his son a seat in Parliament he learned "that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for that the rich East and West Indians had secured them all at the rate of three thousand pounds at the least."[10] And an Englishman after traveling in the French and British Antilles in 1825 wrote: "The French colonists, whether Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast no wistful looks toward France.... In our colonies it is quite different; ... every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging place where they must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgages will let them live elsewhere. They call England their home though many of them have never been there.... The French colonist deliberately expatriates himself; the Englishman never."[11] Absenteeism was throughout a serious detriment. Many and perhaps most of the Jamaica proprietors were living luxuriously in England instead of industriously on their estates. One of them, the talented author "Monk" Lewis, when he visited his own plantation in 1815-1817, near the end of his life, found as much novelty in the doings of his slaves as if he had been drawing his income from shares in the Banc of England; but even he, while noting their clamorous good nature was chiefly impressed by their indolence and perversity.[12] It was left for an invalid traveling for his health to remark most vividly the human equation: "The negroes cannot be silent; they talk in spite of themselves. Every passion acts upon them with strange intensity, their anger is sudden and furious, their mirth clamorous and excessive, their curiosity audacious, and their love the sheer demand for gratification of an ardent animal desire. Yet by their nature they are good-humored in the highest degree, and I know nothing more delightful than to be met by a group of negro girls and to be saluted with their kind 'How d'ye massa? how d'ye massa?'"[13] [Footnote 10: Lord Chesterfield, _Letters to his Son_ (London, 1774), II, 525.] [Footnote 11: H.N. Coleridge, _Six Months in the West Indies_, 4th ed. (London, 1832), pp. 131, 132.] [Footnote 12: Matthew G. Lewis, _Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica_ (London, 1834).] [Footnote 13: H.N. Coleridge, p. 76.] On the generality of the plantations the tone of the management was too much like that in most modern factories. The laborers were considered more as work-units than as men, women and children. Kindliness and comfort, cruelty and hardship, were rated at balance-sheet value; births and deaths were reckoned in profit and loss, and the expense of rearing children was balanced against the cost of new Africans. These things were true in some degree in the North American slaveholding communities, but in the West Indies they excelled. In buying new negroes a practical planter having a preference for those of some particular tribal stock might make sure of getting them only by taking with him to the slave ships or the "Guinea yards" in the island ports a slave of the stock wanted and having him interrogate those for sale in his native language to learn whether they were in fact what the dealers declared them to be. Shrewdness was even more necessary to circumvent other tricks of the trade, especially that of fattening up, shaving and oiling the skins of adult slaves to pass them off as youthful. The ages most desired in purchasing were between fifteen and twenty-five years. If these were not to be had well grown children were preferable to the middle-aged, since they were much less apt to die in the "seasoning," they would learn English readily, and their service would increase instead of decreasing after the lapse of the first few years. The conversion of new negroes into plantation laborers, a process called "breaking in," required always a mingling of delicacy and firmness. Some planters distributed their new purchases among the seasoned households, thus delegating the task largely to the veteran slaves. Others housed and tended them separately under the charge of a select staff of nurses and guardians and with frequent inspection from headquarters. The mortality rate was generally high under either plan, ranging usually from twenty to thirty per cent, in the seasoning period of three or four years. The deaths came from diseases brought from Africa, such as the yaws which was similar to syphilis; from debilities and maladies acquired on the voyage; from the change of climate and food; from exposure incurred in running away; from morbid habits such as dirt-eating; and from accident, manslaughter and suicide.[14] [Footnote 14: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 435; Edwards, _West Indies_, book 4, chap. 5; A Professional Planter, _Rules_, chap. 2; Thomas Roughley, _Jamaica Planter's Guide_ (London, 1823), pp. 118-120.] The seasoned slaves were housed by families in separate huts grouped into "quarters," and were generally assigned small tracts on the outskirts of the plantation on which to raise their own provision crops. Allowances of clothing, dried fish, molasses, rum, salt, etc., were issued them from the commissary, together with any other provisions needed to supplement their own produce. The field force of men and women, boys and girls was generally divided according to strength into three gangs, with special details for the mill, the coppers and the still when needed; and permanent corps were assigned to the handicrafts, to domestic service and to various incidental functions. The larger the plantation, of course, the greater the opportunity of differentiating tasks and assigning individual slaves to employments fitted to their special aptitudes. The planters put such emphasis upon the regularity and vigor of the routine that they generally neglected other equally vital things. They ignored the value of labor-saving devices, most of them even shunning so obviously desirable an implement as the plough and using the hoe alone in breaking the land and cultivating the crops. But still more serious was the passive acquiescence in the depletion of their slaves by excess of deaths over births. This decrease amounted to a veritable decimation, requiring the frequent importation of recruits to keep the ranks full. Long estimated this loss at about two per cent. annually, while Edwards reckoned that in his day there were surviving in Jamaica little more than one-third as many negroes as had been imported in the preceding career of the colony.[15] The staggering mortality rate among the new negroes goes far toward accounting for this; but even the seasoned groups generally failed to keep up their numbers. The birth rate was notoriously small; but the chief secret of the situation appears to have lain in the poor care of the newborn children. A surgeon of long experience said that a third of the babies died in their first month, and that few of the imported women bore children; and another veteran resident said that commonly more than a quarter of the babies died within the first nine days, of "jaw-fall," and nearly another fourth before they passed their second year.[16] At least one public-spirited planter advocated in 1801 the heroic measure of closing the slave trade in order to raise the price of labor and coerce the planters into saving it both by improving their apparatus and by diminishing the death rate.[17] But his fellows would have none of his policy. [Footnote 15: Long, III, 432; Edwards, book 4, chap. 2.] [Footnote 16: _Abridgement of the evidence taken before a committee of the whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), pp. 48, 80.] [Footnote 17: Clement Caines, _Letters on the Cultivation of the Otaheite Cane_ (London, 1801), pp. 274-281.] While in the other plantation staples the crop was planted and reaped in a single year, sugar cane had a cycle extending through several years. A typical field in southside Jamaica would be "holed" or laid off in furrows between March and June, planted in the height of the rainy season between July and September, cultivated for fifteen months, and harvested in the first half of the second year after its planting. Then when the rains returned new shoots, "rattoons," would sprout from the old roots to yield a second though diminished harvest in the following spring, and so on for several years more until the rattoon or "stubble" yield became too small to be worth while. The period of profitable rattooning ran in some specially favorable districts as high as fourteen years, but in general a field was replanted after the fourth crop. In such case the cycles of the several fields were so arranged on any well managed estate that one-fifth of the area in cane was replanted each year and four-fifths harvested. This coördination of cycles brought it about that oftentimes almost every sort of work on the plantation was going on simultaneously. Thus on the Lodge and Grange plantations which were apparently operated as a single unit, the extant journal of work during the harvest month of May, 1801,[18] shows a distribution of the total of 314 slaves as follows: ninety of the "big gang" and fourteen of the "big gang feeble" together with fifty of the "little gang" were stumping a new clearing, "holing" or laying off a stubble field for replanting, weeding and filling the gaps in the field of young first-year or "plant" cane, and heaping the manure in the ox-lot; ten slaves were cutting, ten tying and ten more hauling the cane from the fields in harvest; fifteen were in a "top heap" squad whose work was conjecturally the saving of the green cane tops for forage and fertilizer; nine were tending the cane mill, seven were in the boiling house, producing a hogshead and a half of sugar daily, and two were at the two stills making a puncheon of rum every four days; six watchmen and fence menders, twelve artisans, eight stockminders, two hunters, four domestics, and two sick nurses were at their appointed tasks; and eighteen invalids and pregnant women, four disabled with sores, forty infants and one runaway were doing no work. There were listed thirty horses, forty mules and a hundred oxen and other cattle; but no item indicates that a single plow was in use. [Footnote 18: Printed by Clement Caines in a table facing p. 246 of his _Letters_.] The cane-mill in the eighteenth century consisted merely of three iron-sheathed cylinders, two of them set against the third, turned by wind, water or cattle. The canes, tied into small bundles for greater compression, were given a double squeezing while passing through the mill. The juice expressed found its way through a trough into the boiling house while the flattened stalks, called mill trash or megass in the British colonies and bagasse in Louisiana, were carried to sheds and left to dry for later use as fuel under the coppers and stills. In the boiling house the cane-juice flowed first into a large receptacle, the clarifier, where by treatment with lime and moderate heat it was separated from its grosser impurities. It then passed into the first or great copper, where evaporation by boiling began and some further impurities, rising in scum, were taken off. After further evaporation in smaller coppers the thickened fluid was ladled into a final copper, the teache, for a last boiling and concentration; and when the product of the teache was ready for crystallization it was carried away for the curing. In Louisiana the successive caldrons were called the grande, the propre, the flambeau and the batterie, the last of these corresponding to the Jamaican teache. The curing house was merely a timber framework with a roof above and a great shallow sloping vat below. The sugary syrup from the teache was generally potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, and allowed to cool with occasional stirrings. Most of the sugar stayed in the hogsheads, while some of it trickled with the mother liquor, molasses, through perforations in the bottoms into the vat beneath. When the hogsheads were full of the crudely cured, moist, and impure "muscovado" sugar, they were headed up and sent to port. The molasses, the scum, and the juice of the canes tainted by damage from rats and hurricanes were carried to vats in the distillery where, with yeast and water added, the mixture fermented and when distilled yielded rum. The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of a certain degree of pageantry. Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaves were freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopes of Mont Pélée: "We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding beyond an opening to the west.... Far down we can distinguish a line of field-hands--the whole _atelier_, as it is called, of a plantation--slowly descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go. There is a woman to every two men, a binder (amarreuse): she gathers the canes as they are cut down, binds them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and carries them away on her head;--the men wield their cutlasses so beautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the islands, with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an army;--first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the _ka_, the drum,--with a paid _crieur_ or _crieuse_ to lead the song;--and lastly the black Commandeur, for general."[19] [Footnote 19: Lafcadio Hearn, _Two Years in the French West Indies_ (New York, 1890), p. 275.] After this bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may be abundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation, elaborated expressly for posterity's information. This estate, lying in St. John's parish on the southern slope of the Jamaica mountain chain, comprised not only the plantation proper, which had some 560 acres in sugar cane and smaller fields in food and forage crops, but also Spring Garden, a nearby cattle ranch, and Mickleton which was presumably a relay station for the teams hauling the sugar and rum to Port Henderson. The records, which are available for the years from 1792 to 1796 inclusive, treat the three properties as one establishment.[20] [Footnote 20: These records have been analyzed in U.B. Phillips, "A Jamaica Slave Plantation," in the _American Historical Review_, XIX, 543-558.] The slaves of the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, apparently all seasoned negroes, of whom 150 were in the main field gang. But this force was inadequate for the full routine, and in that year "jobbing gangs" from outside were employed at rates from _2s. 6d_. to _3s_. per head per day and at a total cost of £1832, reckoned probably in Jamaican currency which stood at thirty per cent, discount. In order to relieve the need of this outside labor the management began that year to buy new Africans on a scale considered reckless by all the island authorities. In March five men and five women were bought; and in October 25 men, 27 women, 16 boys, 16 girls and 6 children, all new Congoes; and in the next year 51 males and 30 females, part Congoes and part Coromantees and nearly all of them eighteen to twenty years old. Thirty new huts were built; special cooks and nurses were detailed; and quantities of special foodstuffs were bought--yams, plantains, flour, fresh and salt fish, and fresh beef heads, tongues, hearts and bellies; but it is not surprising to find that the next outlay for equipment was for a large new hospital in 1794, costing £341 for building its brick walls alone. Yaws became serious, but that was a trifle as compared with dysentery; and pleurisy, pneumonia, fever and dropsy had also to be reckoned with. About fifty of the new negroes were quartered for several years in a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the routine even for the able-bodied was much lighter than on Worthy Park. One of the new negroes died in 1792, and another in the next year. Then in the spring of 1794 the heavy mortality began. In that year at least 31 of the newcomers died, nearly all of them from the "bloody flux" (dysentery) except two who were thought to have committed suicide. By 1795, however, the epidemic had passed. Of the five deaths of the new negroes that year, two were attributed to dirt-eating,[21] one to yaws, and two to ulcers, probably caused by yaws. The three years of the seasoning period were now ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still alive. The loss was perhaps less than usual where such large batches were bought; but it demonstrates the strength of the shock involved in the transplantation from Africa, even after the severities of the middle passage had been survived and after the weaklings among the survivors had been culled out at the ports. The outlay for jobbing gangs on Worthy Park rapidly diminished. [Footnote 21: The "fatal habit of eating dirt" is described by Thomas Roughley in his _Planter's Guide_ (London. 1823) pp. 118-120.] The list of slaves at the beginning of 1794 is the only one giving full data as to ages, colors and health as well as occupations. The ages were of course in many cases mere approximations. The "great house negroes" head the list, fourteen in number. They comprised four housekeepers, one of whom however was but eight years old, three waiting boys, a cook, two washerwomen, two gardeners and a grass carrier, and included nominally Quadroon Lizette who after having been hired out for several years to Peter Douglass, the owner of a jobbing gang, was this year manumitted. The overseer's house had its proportionate staff of nine domestics with two seamstresses added, and it was also headquarters both for the nursing corps and a group engaged in minor industrial pursuits. The former, with a "black doctor" named Will Morris at its head, included a midwife, two nurses for the hospital, four (one of them blind) for the new negroes, two for the children in the day nursery, and one for the suckling babies of the women in the gangs. The latter comprised three cooks to the gangs, one of whom had lost a hand; a groom, three hog tenders, of whom one was ruptured, another "distempered" and the third a ten-year-old boy, and ten aged idlers including Quashy Prapra and Abba's Moll to mend pads, Yellow's Cuba and Peg's Nancy to tend the poultry house, and the rest to gather grass and hog feed. Next were listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, to guard against depredations of men, cattle and rats and against conflagrations which might sweep the ripening cane-fields and the buildings. All of these were black but the mulatto foreman, and only six were described as able-bodied. The disabilities noted were a bad sore leg, a broken back, lameness, partial blindness, distemper, weakness, and cocobees which was a malady of the blood. A considerable number of the slaves already mentioned were in such condition that little work might be expected of them. Those completely laid off were nine superannuated ranging from seventy to eighty-five years old, three invalids, and three women relieved of work as by law required for having reared six children each. Among the tradesmen, virtually all the blacks were stated to be fit for field work, but the five mulattoes and the one quadroon, though mostly youthful and healthy, were described as not fit for the field. There were eleven carpenters, eight coopers, four sawyers, three masons and twelve cattlemen, each squad with a foreman; and there were two ratcatchers whose work was highly important, for the rats swarmed in incredible numbers and spoiled the cane if left to work their will. A Jamaican author wrote, for example, that in five or six months on one plantation "not less than nine and thirty thousand were caught."[22] [Footnote 22: William Beckford, _A Discriptive Account of Jamaica_ (London, 1790), I. 55, 56.] In the "weeding gang," in which most of the children from five to eight years old were kept as much for control as for achievement, there were twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house, were manumitted in 1795. Fifty-five, all new negroes except Darby the foreman, and including Blossom the infant daughter of one of the women, comprised the Spring Garden squad. Nearly all of these were twenty or twenty-one years old. The men included Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume and Sheridan; the women Spring, Summer, July, Bashfull, Virtue, Frolic, Gamesome, Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle and Cowslip. Seventeen of this distinguished company died within the year. The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 64 men from nineteen to sixty years old and 73 women from nineteen to fifty years, though but four of the women and nine of the men, including Quashy the "head driver" or foreman, were past forty years. The gang included a "head home wainman," a "head road wainman," who appears to have been also the sole slave plowman on the place, a head muleman, three distillers, a boiler, two sugar potters, and two "sugar guards" for the wagons carrying the crop to port. All of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied and black. A considerable number in it were new negroes, but only seven of the whole died in this year of heaviest mortality. The "second gang," employed in a somewhat lighter routine under Sharper as foreman, comprised 40 women and 27 men ranging from fifteen to sixty years, all black. While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, four were ulcerated, one was "inclined to be bloated," one was "very weak," and Pheba was "healthy but worthless." Finally in the third or "small gang," for yet lighter work under Baddy as driveress with Old Robin as assistant, there were 68 boys and girls, all black, mostly between twelve and fifteen years old. The draught animals comprised about 80 mules and 140 oxen. Among the 528 slaves all told--284 males and 244 females--74, equally divided between the sexes, were fifty years old and upwards. If the new negroes, virtually all of whom were doubtless in early life, be subtracted from the gross, it appears that one-fifth of the seasoned stock had reached the half century, and one-eighth were sixty years old and over. This is a good showing of longevity. About eighty of the seasoned women were within the age limits of childbearing. The births recorded were on an average of nine for each of the five years covered, which was hardly half as many as might have been expected under favorable conditions. Special entry was made in 1795 of the number of children each woman had borne during her life, the number of these living at the time this record was made, and the number of miscarriages each woman had had. The total of births thus recorded was 345; of children then living 159; of miscarriages 75. Old Quasheba and Betty Madge had each borne fifteen children, and sixteen other women had borne from six to eleven each. On the other hand, seventeen women of thirty years and upwards had had no children and no miscarriages. The childbearing records of the women past middle age ran higher than those of the younger ones to a surprising degree. Perhaps conditions on Worthy Park had been more favorable at an earlier period, when the owner and his family may possibly have been resident there. The fact that more than half of the children whom these women had borne were dead at the time of the record comports with the reputation of the sugar colonies for heavy infant mortality. With births so infrequent and infant deaths so many it may well appear that the notorious failure of the island-bred stock to maintain its numbers was not due to the working of the slaves to death. The poor care of the young children may be attributed largely to the absence of a white mistress, an absence characteristic of Jamaica plantations. There appears to have been no white woman resident on Worthy Park during the time of this record. In 1795 and perhaps in other years the plantation had a contract for medical service at the rate of £140 a year. "Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great Britain Esquire" was the absentee owner of Worthy Park. His kinsman Rose Price Esquire who was in active charge was not salaried but may have received a manager's commission of six per cent, on gross crop sales as contemplated in the laws of the colony. In addition there were an overseer at £200, later £300, a year, four bookkeepers at £50 to £60, a white carpenter at £120, and a white plowman at £56. The overseer was changed three times during the five years of the record, and the bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. The bachelor staff was most probably responsible for the mulatto and quadroon offspring and was doubtless responsible also for the occasional manumission of a woman or child. Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the "drivers" or gang foremen. Each of these had for example every year a "doubled milled cloth colored great coat" costing 11$. 6_d_ and a "fine bound hat with girdle and buckle" costing 10$. 6_d_.As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quart of rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, four boilers, two head cattlemen, two head mulemen, the "stoke-hole boatswain," and the black doctor, and to the foremen respectively of the sawyers, coopers, blacksmiths, watchmen, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the head home wainman, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's field nurse. These allowances totaled about three hundred gallons yearly. But a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were recorded of "rum used for the negroes on the estate." Upon the birth of each child the mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver dollar. No record of whippings appears to have been kept, nor of any offenses except absconding. Of the runaways, reports were made to the parish vestry of those lying out at the end of each quarter. At the beginning of the record there were no runaways and at the end there were only four; but during 1794 and 1795 there were eight or nine listed in each report, most of whom were out for but a few months each, but several for a year or two; and several furthermore absconded a second or third time after returning. The runaways were heterogeneous in age and occupation, with more old negroes among them than might have been expected. Most of them were men; but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, and the old pad-mender Abba's Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter. A few of those recovered were returned through the public agency of the workhouse. Some of the rest may have come back of their own accord. In the summer of 1795, when absconding had for some time been too common, the recaptured runaways and a few other offenders were put for disgrace and better surveillance into a special "vagabond gang." This comprised Billy Scott, who was usually a mason and sugar guard, Oxford who as head cooper had enjoyed a weekly quart of rum, Cesar a sawyer, and Moll the old pad-mender, along with three men and two women from the main gangs, and three half-grown boys. The vagabond gang was so wretchedly assorted for industrial purposes that it was probably soon disbanded and its members distributed to their customary tasks. For use in marking slaves a branding iron was inventoried, but in the way of arms there were merely two muskets, a fowling piece and twenty-four old guns without locks. Evidently no turbulence was anticipated. Worthy Park bought nearly all of its hardware, dry goods, drugs and sundries in London, and its herrings for the negroes and salt pork and beef for the white staff in Cork. Corn was cultivated between the rows in some of the cane fields on the plantation, and some guinea-corn was bought from neighbors. The negroes raised their own yams and other vegetables, and doubtless pigs and poultry as well; and plantains were likely to be plentiful. Every October cloth was issued at the rate of seven yards of osnaburgs, three of checks, and three of baize for each adult and proportionately for children. The first was to be made into coats, trousers and frocks, the second into shirts and waists, the third into bedclothes. The cutting and sewing were done in the cabins. A hat and a cap were also issued to each negro old enough to go into the field, and a clasp-knife to each one above the age of the third gang. From the large purchases of Scotch rugs recorded it seems probable that these were issued on other occasions than those of childbirth. As to shoes, however, the record is silent. The Irish provisions cost annually about £300, and the English supplies about £1000, not including such extra outlays as that of £1355 in 1793 for new stills, worms, and coppers. Local expenditures were probably reckoned in currency. Converted into sterling, the salary list amounted to about £500, and the local outlay for medical services, wharfage, and petty supplies came to a like amount. Taxes, manager's commissions, and the depreciation of apparatus must have amounted collectively to £800. The net death-loss of slaves, not including that from the breaking-in of new negroes, averaged about two and a quarter per cent.; that of the mules and oxen ten per cent. When reckoned upon the numbers on hand in 1796 when the plantation with 470 slaves was operating with very little outside help, these losses, which must be replaced by new purchases if the scale of output was to be maintained, amounted to about £900. Thus a total of £4000 sterling is reached as the average current expense in years when no mishaps occurred. The crops during the years of the record averaged 311 hogsheads of sugar, sixteen hundredweight each, and 133 puncheons of rum, 110 gallons each. This was about the common average on the island, of two-thirds as many hogsheads as there were slaves of all ages on a plantation.[23] If the prices had been those current in the middle of the eighteenth century these crops would have yielded the proprietor great profits. But at £15 per hogshead and £10 per puncheon, the prices generally current in the island in the seventeen-nineties, the gross return was but about £6000 sterling, and the net earnings of the establishment accordingly not above £2000. The investment in slaves, mules and oxen was about £28,000, and that in land, buildings and equipment according to the island authorities, would reach a like sum.[24] The net earnings in good years were thus less than four per cent. on the investment; but the liability to hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, epidemics and mutinies would bring the safe expectations considerably lower. A mere pestilence which carried off about sixty mules and two hundred oxen on Worthy Park in 1793-1794 wiped out more than a year's earnings. [Footnote 23: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 433, 439.] [Footnote 24: Edwards, _West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] In the twenty years prior to the beginning of the Worthy Park record more than one-third of all the sugar plantations in Jamaica had gone through bankruptcy. It was generally agreed that, within the limits of efficient operation, the larger an estate was, the better its prospect for net earnings. But though Worthy Park had more than twice the number of slaves that the average plantation employed, it was barely paying its way. In the West Indies as a whole there was a remarkable repetition of developments and experiences in island after island, similar to that which occurred in the North American plantation regions, but even more pronounced. The career of Barbados was followed rapidly by the other Lesser Antilles under the English and French flags; these were all exceeded by the greater scale of Jamaica; she in turn yielded the primacy in sugar to Hayti only to have that French possession, when overwhelmed by its great negro insurrection, give the paramount place to the Spanish Porto Rico and Cuba. In each case the opening of a fresh area under imperial encouragement would promote rapid immigration and vigorous industry on every scale; the land would be taken up first in relatively small holdings; the prosperity of the pioneers would prompt a more systematic husbandry and the consolidation of estates, involving the replacement of the free small proprietors by slave gangs; but diminishing fertility and intensifying competition would in the course of years more than offset the improvement of system. Meanwhile more pioneers, including perhaps some of those whom the planters had bought out in the original colonies, would found new settlements; and as these in turn developed, the older colonies would decline and decay in spite of desperate efforts by their plantation proprietors to hold their own through the increase of investments and the improvement of routine.[25] [Footnote 25: Herman Merivale, _Colonisation and Colonies_ (London, 1841), PP. 92,93.] CHAPTER IV THE TOBACCO COLONIES The purposes of the Virginia Company of London and of the English public which gave it sanction were profit for the investors and aggrandizement for the nation, along with the reduction of pauperism at home and the conversion of the heathen abroad. For income the original promoters looked mainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, and the production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they were on the alert for unexpected opportunities to be exploited. The following of the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At the outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, Virginia was launched with varied hopes and vague expectations. The project was on the knees of the gods, which for a time proved a place of extreme discomfort and peril. The first comers in the spring of 1607, numbering a bare hundred men and no women, were moved by the spirit of adventure. With a cumbrous and oppressive government over them, and with no private ownership of land nor other encouragement for steadygoing thrift, the only chance for personal gain was through a stroke of discovery. No wonder the loss of time and strength in futile excursions. No wonder the disheartening reaction in the malaria-stricken camp of Jamestown. A second hundred men arriving early in 1608 found but forty of the first alive. The combined forces after lading the ships with "gilded dirt" and cedar logs, were left facing the battle with Indians and disease. The dirt when it reached London proved valueless, and the cedar, of course, worth little. The company that summer sent further recruits including two women and several Poles and Germans to make soap-ashes, glass and pitch--"skilled workmen from foraine parts which may teach and set ours in the way where we may set thousands a work in these such like services."[1] At the same time it instructed the captain of the ship to explore and find either a lump of gold, the South Sea passage, or some of Raleigh's lost colonists, and it sent the officials at Jamestown peremptory notice that unless the £2000 spent on the present supply be met by the proceeds of the ship's return cargo, the settlers need expect no further aid. The shrewd and redoubtable Captain John Smith, now president in the colony, opposed the vain explorings, and sent the council in London a characteristic "rude letter." The ship, said he, kept nearly all the victuals for its crew, while the settlers, "the one halfe sicke, the other little better," had as their diet "a little meale and water, and not sufficient of that." The foreign experts had been set at their assigned labors; but "it were better to give five hundred pound a tun for those grosse commodities in Denmarke than send for them hither till more necessary things be provided. For in over-toyling our weake and unskilfull bodies to satisfie this desire of present profit we can scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another.... As yet you must not looke for any profitable returnes."[2] [Footnote 1: Alexander Brown, _The First Republic in America_ (Boston, 1898), p. 68.] [Footnote 2: Capt. John Smith, _Works_, Arber ed. (Birmingham, 1884), pp. 442-445. Smith's book, it should be said, is the sole source for this letter.] This unwelcome advice while daunting all mercenary promoters gave spur to strong-hearted patriots. The prospect of profits was gone; the hope of an overseas empire survived. The London Company, with a greatly improved charter, appealed to the public through sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, and personal canvassing, with such success that subscriptions to its stock poured in from "lords, knights, gentlemen and others," including the trade guilds and the town corporations. In lieu of cash dividends the company promised that after a period of seven years, during which the settlers were to work on the company's account and any surplus earnings were to be spent on the colony or funded, a dividend in land would be issued. In this the settlers were to be embraced as if instead of emigrating each of them had invested £12 10s. in a share of stock. Several hundred recruits were sent in 1609, and many more in the following years; but from the successive governors at Jamestown came continued reports of disease, famine and prostration, and pleas ever for more men and supplies. The company, bravely keeping up its race with the death rate, met all demands as best it could. To establish a firmer control, Sir Thomas Dale was sent out in 1611 as high marshal along with Sir Thomas Gates as governor. Both of these were men of military training, and they carried with them a set of stringent regulations quite in keeping with their personal proclivities. These rulers properly regarded their functions as more industrial than political. They for the first time distributed the colonists into a series of settlements up and down the river for farming and live-stock tending; they spurred the willing workers by assigning them three-acre private gardens; and they mercilessly coerced the laggard. They transformed the colony from a distraught camp into a group of severely disciplined farms, owned by the London Company, administered by its officials, and operated partly by its servants, partly by its tenants who paid rent in the form of labor. That is to say, Virginia was put upon a schedule of plantation routine, producing its own food supply and wanting for the beginning of prosperity only a marketable crop. This was promptly supplied through John Rolfe's experiment in 1612 in raising tobacco. The English people were then buying annually some £200,000 worth of that commodity, mainly from the Spanish West Indies, at prices which might be halved or quartered and yet pay the freight and yield substantial earnings; and so rapid was the resort to the staple in Virginia that soon the very market place in Jamestown was planted in it. The government in fact had to safeguard the food supply by forbidding anyone to plant tobacco until he had put two acres in grain. When the Gates-Dale administration ended, the seven year period from 1609 was on the point of expiry; but the temptation of earnings from tobacco persuaded the authorities to delay the land dividend. Samuel Argall, the new governor, while continuing the stringent discipline, robbed the company for his own profit; and the news of his misdeeds reaching London in 1618 discredited the faction in the company which had supported his régime. The capture of control by the liberal element among the stockholders, led by Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton, was promptly signalized by measures for converting Virginia into a commonwealth. A land distribution was provided on a generous scale, and Sir George Yeardley was dispatched as governor with instructions to call a representative assembly of the people to share in the making of laws. The land warrants were issued at the rate of a hundred acres on each share of stock and a similar amount to each colonist of the time, to be followed in either case by the grant of a second hundred acres upon proof that the first had been improved; and fifty acres additional in reward for the future importation of every laborer. While the company continued as before to send colonists on its own account, notably craftsmen, indigent London children, and young women to become wives for the bachelor settlers, it now offered special stimulus to its members to supplement its exertions. To this end it provided that groups of its stockholders upon organizing themselves into sub-companies or partnerships might consolidate their several grants into large units called particular plantations; and it ordered that "such captaines or leaders of perticulerr plantations that shall goe there to inhabite by vertue of their graunts and plant themselves, their tenants and servants in Virginia, shall have liberty till a forme of government be here settled for them, associatinge unto them divers of the gravest and discreetes of their companies, to make orders, ordinances and constitutions for the better orderinge and dyrectinge of their servants and buisines, provided they be not repugnant to the lawes of England."[3] [Footnote 3: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. (Washington, 1906), I, 303.] To embrace this opportunity some fifty grants for particular plantations were taken out during the remaining life of the London Company. Among them were Southampton Hundred and Martin's Hundred, to each of which two or three hundred settlers were sent prior to 1620,[4] and Berkeley Hundred whose records alone are available. The grant for this last was issued in February, 1619, to a missionary enthusiast, George Thorpe, and his partners, whose collective holdings of London Company stock amounted to thirty-five shares. To them was given and promised land in proportion to stock and settlers, together with a bonus of 1500 acres in view of their project for converting the Indians. Their agent in residence was as usual vested with public authority over the dwellers on the domain, limited only by the control of the Virginia government in military matters and in judicial cases on appeal.[5] After delays from bad weather, the initial expedition set sail in September comprising John Woodleaf as captain and thirty-four other men of diverse trades bound to service for terms ranging from three to eight years at varying rates of compensation. Several of these were designated respectively as officers of the guard, keeper of the stores, caretaker of arms and implements, usher of the hall, and clerk of the kitchen. Supplies of provisions and equipment were carried, and instructions in detail for the building of houses, the fencing of land, the keeping of watch, and the observances of religion. Next spring the settlement, which had been planted near the mouth of the Appomattox River, was joined by Thorpe himself, and in the following autumn by William Tracy who had entered the partnership and now carried his own family together with a preacher and some forty servants. Among these were nine women and the two children of a man who had gone over the year before. As giving light upon indented servitude in the period it may be noted that many of those sent to Berkeley Hundred were described as "gentlemen," and that five of them within the first year besought their masters to send them each two indented servants for their use and at their expense. Tracy's vessel however was too small to carry all whom it was desired to send. It was in fact so crowded with plantation supplies that Tracy wrote on the eve of sailing: "I have throw out mani things of my own yet is ye midill and upper extre[m]li pestered so that ouer men will not lie like men and ye mareners hath not rome to stir God is abel in ye gretest weknes to helpe we will trust to marsi for he must help be yond hope." Fair winds appear to have carried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly took charge of the plantation, displacing Woodleaf whose services had given dissatisfaction. Beyond this point the records are extremely scant; but it may be gathered that the plantation was wrecked and most of its inhabitants, including Thorpe, slain in the great Indian massacre of 1622. The restoration of the enterprise was contemplated in an after year, but eventually the land was sold to other persons. [Footnote 4: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. (Washington, 1906), I, 350.] [Footnote 5: The records of this enterprise (the Smyth of Nibley papers) have been printed in the New York Public Library _Bulletin_, III, 160-171, 208-233, 248-258, 276-295.] The fate of Berkeley Hundred was at the same time the fate of most others of the same sort; and the extinction of the London Company in 1624 ended the granting of patents on that plan. The owners of the few surviving particular plantations, furthermore, found before long that ownership by groups of absentees was poorly suited to the needs of the case, and that the exercise of public jurisdiction was of more trouble than it was worth. The particular plantation system proved accordingly but an episode, yet it furnished a transition, which otherwise might not readily have been found, from Virginia the plantation of the London Company, to Virginia the colony of private plantations and farms. When settlement expanded afresh after the Indians were driven away many private estates gradually arose to follow the industrial routine of those which had been called particular. The private plantations were hampered in their development by dearth of capital and labor and by the extremely low prices of tobacco which began at the end of the sixteen-twenties as a consequence of overproduction. But by dint of good management and the diversification of their industry the exceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried. Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirty years standing," whose establishment was at Blunt Point on the lower James, it was written in 1648: "He hath a fine house and all things answerable to it; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; he keeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, hath eight shoemakers employed in this trade, hath forty negroe servants, brings them up to trades in his house: he yeerly sowes abundance of wheat, barley, etc. The wheat he selleth at four shillings the bushell; kills store of beeves, and sells them to victuall the ships when they come thither; hath abundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poltery. He married the daughter of Sir Tho. Hinton, and in a word, keeps a good house, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia. He is worthy of much honour."[6] Many other planters were thriving more modestly, most of them giving nearly all their attention to the one crop. The tobacco output was of course increasing prodigiously. The export from Virginia in 1619 had amounted to twenty thousand pounds; that from Virginia and Maryland in 1664 aggregated fifty thousand hogsheads of about five hundred pounds each.[7] [Footnote 6: _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649), reprinted in Peter Force _Tracts_, vol. II.] [Footnote 7: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_ (New York, 1896), I, 391.] The labor problem was almost wholly that of getting and managing bondsmen. Land in the colony was virtually to be had for the taking; and in general no freemen arriving in the colony would engage for such wages as employers could afford to pay. Workers must be imported. Many in England were willing to come, and more could be persuaded or coerced, if their passage were paid and employment assured. To this end indentured servitude had already been inaugurated by the London Company as a modification of the long used system of apprenticeship. And following that plan, ship captains brought hundreds, then thousands of laborers a year and sold their indentures to the planters either directly or through dealers in such merchandize. The courts took the occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts to deportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisoners during the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose the supply was further swelled by the agency of professional kidnappers. The bondage varied as to its terms, with two years apparently the minimum. The compensation varied also from mere transportation and sustenance to a payment in advance and a stipulation for outfit in clothing, foodstuffs and diverse equipment at the end of service. The quality of redemptioners varied from the very dregs of society to well-to-do apprentice planters; but the general run was doubtless fairly representative of the English working classes. Even the convicts under the terrible laws of that century were far from all being depraved. This labor in all its grades, however, had serious drawbacks. Its first cost was fairly heavy; it was liable to an acclimating fever with a high death rate; its term generally expired not long after its adjustment and training were completed; and no sooner was its service over than it set up for itself, often in tobacco production, to compete with its former employers and depress the price of produce. If the plantation system were to be perpetuated an entirely different labor supply must be had. "About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars." Thus wrote John Rolfe in a report of happenings in 1619;[8] and thus, after much antiquarian dispute, the matter seems to stand as to the first bringing of negroes to Virginia. The man-of-war, or more accurately the privateer, had taken them from a captured slaver, and it seems to have sold them to the colonial government itself, which in turn sold them to private settlers. At the beginning of 1625, when a census of the colony was made,[9] the negroes, then increased to twenty-three in a total population of 1232 of which about one-half were white servants, were distributed in seven localities along the James River. In 1630 a second captured cargo was sold in the colony, and from 1635 onward small lots were imported nearly every year.[10] Part of these came from England, part from New Netherland and most of the remainder doubtless from the West Indies. In 1649 Virginia was reckoned to have some three hundred negroes mingled with its fifteen thousand whites.[11] After two decades of a somewhat more rapid importation Governor Berkeley estimated the gross population in 1671 at forty thousand, including six thousand white servants and two thousand negro slaves.[12] Ere this there was also a small number of free negroes. But not until near the end of the century, when the English government had restricted kidnapping, when the Virginia assembly had forbidden the bringing in of convicts, and when the direct trade from Guinea had reached considerable dimensions, did the negroes begin to form the bulk of the Virginia plantation gangs. [Footnote 8: John Smith _Works_, Arber ed., p. 541.] [Footnote 9: Tabulated in the _Virginia Magazine_, VII, 364-367.] [Footnote 10: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 72-77.] [Footnote 11: _A New Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649).] [Footnote 12: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, II, 515.] Thus for two generations the negroes were few, they were employed alongside the white servants, and in many cases were members of their masters' households. They had by far the best opportunity which any of their race had been given in America to learn the white men's ways and to adjust the lines of their bondage into as pleasant places as might be. Their importation was, for the time, on but an experimental scale, and even their legal status was during the early decades indefinite. The first comers were slaves in the hands of their maritime sellers; but they were not fully slaves in the hands of their Virginian buyers, for there was neither law nor custom then establishing the institution of slavery in the colony. The documents of the times point clearly to a vague tenure. In the county court records prior to 1661 the negroes are called negro servants or merely negroes--never, it appears, definitely slaves. A few were expressly described as servants for terms of years, and others were conceded property rights of a sort incompatible with the institution of slavery as elaborated in later times. Some of the blacks were in fact liberated by the courts as having served out the terms fixed either by their indentures or by the custom of the country. By the middle of the century several had become free landowners, and at least one of them owned a negro servant who went to court for his freedom but was denied it because he could not produce the indenture which he claimed to have possessed. Nevertheless as early as the sixteen-forties the holders of negroes were falling into the custom of considering them, and on occasion selling them along with the issue of the females, as servants for life and perpetuity. The fact that negroes not bound for a term were coming to be appraised as high as £30, while the most valuable white redemptioners were worth not above £15 shows also the tendency toward the crystallization of slavery before any statutory enactments declared its existence.[13] [Footnote 13: The substance of this paragraph is drawn mainly from the illuminating discussion of J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XXXI, no. 3, Baltimore, 1913), pp. 24-35.] Until after the middle of the century the laws did not discriminate in any way between the races. The tax laws were an index of the situation. The act of 1649, for example, confined the poll tax to male inhabitants of all sorts above sixteen years old. But the act of 1658 added imported female negroes, along with Indian female servants; and this rating of negro women as men for tax purposes was continued thenceforward as a permanent practice. A special act of 1668, indeed, gave sharp assertion to the policy of using taxation as a token of race distinction: "Whereas some doubts have arisen whether negro women set free were still to be accompted tithable according to a former act, it is declared by this grand assembly that negro women, though permitted to enjoy their freedome yet ought not in all respects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and impunities of the English, and are still liable to the payment of taxes."[14] [Footnote 14: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, I, 361, 454; II, 267.] As to slavery itself, the earliest laws giving it mention did not establish the institution but merely recognized it, first indirectly then directly, as in existence by force of custom. The initial act of this series, passed in 1656, promised the Indian tribes that when they sent hostages the Virginians would not "use them as slaves."[15] The next, an act of 1660, removing impediments to trade by the Dutch and other foreigners, contemplated specifically their bringing in of "negro slaves."[16] The third, in the following year, enacted that if any white servants ran away in company with "any negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by addition of time," the white fugitives must serve for the time of the negroes' absence in addition to suffering the usual penalties on their own score.[17] A negro whose time of service could not be extended must needs have been a servant for life--in other words a slave. Then in 1662 it was enacted that "whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, ... all children born in this colony shall be bond or free only according to the condition of the mother."[18] Thus within six years from the first mention of slaves in the Virginia laws, slavery was definitely recognized and established as the hereditary legal status of such negroes and mulattoes as might be held therein. Eighteen years more elapsed before a distinctive police law for slaves was enacted; but from 1680 onward the laws for their control were as definite and for the time being virtually as stringent as those which in the same period were being enacted in Barbados and Jamaica. [Footnote 15: _Ibid_., I, 396.] [Footnote 16: _Ibid_., 540.] [Footnote 17: T Hening, II, 26.] [Footnote 18: _Ibid_., 170.] In the first decade or two after the London Company's end the plantation and farm clearings broke the Virginian wilderness only in a narrow line on either bank of the James River from its mouth to near the present site of Richmond, and in a small district on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. Virtually all the settlers were then raising tobacco, all dwelt at the edge of navigable water, and all were neighbors to the Indians. As further decades passed the similar shores of the parallel rivers to the northward, the York, then the Rappahannock and the Potomac, were occupied in a similar way, though with an increasing predominance of large landholdings. This broadened the colony and gave it a shape conducive to more easy frontier defence. It also led the way to an eventual segregation of industrial pursuits, for the tidewater peninsulas were gradually occupied more or less completely by the planters; while the farmers of less estate, weaned from tobacco by its fall in price, tended to move west and south to new areas on the mainland, where they dwelt in self-sufficing democratic neighborhoods, and formed incidentally a buffer between the plantations on the seaboard and the Indians round about. With the lapse of years the number of planters increased, partly through the division of estates, partly through the immigration of propertied Englishmen, and partly through the rise of exceptional yeomen to the planting estate. The farmers increased with still greater speed; for the planters in recruiting their gangs of indented laborers were serving constantly as immigration agents and as constantly the redemptioners upon completing their terms were becoming yeomen, marrying and multiplying. Meanwhile the expansion of Maryland was extending an identical régime of planters and farmers from the northern bank of the Potomac round the head of the Chesapeake all the way to the eastern shore settlements of Virginia. In Maryland the personal proprietorship of Lord Baltimore and his desire to found a Catholic haven had no lasting effect upon the industrial and social development. The geographical conditions were so like those in Virginia and the adoption of her system so obviously the road to success that no other plans were long considered. Even the few variations attempted assimilated themselves more or less promptly to the régime of the older colony. The career of the manor system is typical. The introduction of that medieval régime was authorized by the charter for Maryland and was provided for in turn by the Lord Proprietor's instructions to the governor. Every grant of one thousand, later two thousand acres, was to be made a manor, with its appropriate court to settle differences between lord and tenant, to adjudge civil cases between tenants where the issues involved did not exceed the value of two pounds sterling, and to have cognizance of misdemeanors committed on the manor. The fines and other profits were to go to the manorial lord. Many of these grants were made, and in a few instances the manorial courts duly held their sessions. For St. Clement's Manor, near the mouth of the Potomac, for example, court records between 1659 and 1672 are extant. John Ryves, steward of Thomas Gerard the proprietor, presided; Richard Foster assisted as the elected bailiff; and the classified freeholders, lease-holders, "essoines" and residents served as the "jury and homages." Characteristic findings were "that Samuell Harris broke the peace with a stick"; that John Mansell illegally entertained strangers; that land lines "are at this present unperfect and very obscure"; that a Cheptico Indian had stolen a shirt from Edward Turner's house, for which he is duly fined "if he can be knowne"; "that the lord of the mannor hath not provided a paire of stocks, pillory and ducking stoole--Ordered that these instruments of justice be provided by the next court by a general contribution throughout the manor"; that certain freeholders had failed to appear, "to do their suit at the lord's court, wherefore they are amerced each man 50l. of tobacco to the lord"; that Joshua Lee had injured "Jno. Hoskins his hoggs by setting his doggs on them and tearing their eares and other hurts, for which he is fined 100l. of tobacco and caske"; "that upon the death of Mr. Robte Sly there is a reliefe due to the lord and that Mr. Gerard Sly is his next heire, who hath sworne fealty accordingly,"[19] [Footnote 19: John Johnson, _Old Maryland Manors_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, I, no, 7, Baltimore, 1883), pp. 31-38.] St. Clement's was probably almost unique in its perseverance as a true manor; and it probably discarded its medieval machinery not long after the end of the existing record. In general, since public land was to be had virtually free in reward for immigration whether in freedom or service, most of the so-called manors doubtless procured neither leaseholders nor essoines nor any other sort of tenants, and those of them which survived as estates found their salvation in becoming private plantations with servant and slave gangs tilling their tobacco fields. In short, the Maryland manors began and ended much as the Virginia particular plantations had done before them. Maryland on the whole assumed the features of her elder sister. Her tobacco was of lower grade, partly because of her long delay in providing public inspection; her people in consequence were generally less prosperous, her plantations fewer in proportion to her farms, and her labor supply more largely of convicts and other white servants and correspondingly less of negroes. But aside from these variations in degree the developments and tendencies in the one were virtually those of the other. Before the end of the seventeenth century William Fitzhugh of Virginia wrote that his plantations were being worked by "fine crews" of negroes, the majority of whom were natives of the colony. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges owned 108 slaves, John Carter 106, Ralph Wormeley 91, Robert Beverly 42, Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., 40, and various other proprietors proportionate numbers.[20] The conquest of the wilderness was wellnigh complete on tidewater, and the plantation system had reached its full type for the Chesapeake latitudes. Broad forest stretches divided most of the plantations from one another and often separated the several fields on the same estate; but the cause of this was not so much the paucity of population as the character of the land and the prevalent industry. The sandy expanses, and the occasional belts of clay likewise, had but a surface fertility, and the cheapness of land prevented the conservation of the soil. Hence the fields when rapidly exhausted by successive cropping in tobacco were as a rule abandoned to broomsedge and scrub timber while new and still newer grounds were cleared and cropped. Each estate therefore, if its owner expected it to last a lifetime, must comprise an area in forestry much larger than that at any one time in tillage. The great reaches of the bay and the deep tidal rivers, furthermore, afforded such multitudinous places of landing for ocean-going ships that all efforts to modify the wholly rural condition of the tobacco colonies by concentrating settlement were thwarted. It is true that Norfolk and Baltimore grew into consequence during the eighteenth century; but the one throve mainly on the trade of landlocked North Carolina, and the other on that of Pennsylvania. Not until the plantation area had spread well into the piedmont hinterland did Richmond and her sister towns near the falls on the rivers begin to focus Virginia and Maryland trade; and even they had little influence upon life on the tidewater peninsulas. [Footnote 20: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 88.] The third tobacco-producing colony, North Carolina, was the product of secondary colonization. Virginia's expansion happened to send some of her people across the boundary, where upon finding themselves under the jurisdiction of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina they took pains to keep that authority upon a strictly nominal basis. The first comers, about 1660, and most of those who followed, were and continued to be small farmers; but in the course of decades a considerable number of plantations arose in the fertile districts about Albemarle Sound. Nearly everywhere in the lowlands, however, the land was too barren for any distinct prosperity. The settlements were quite isolated, the communications very poor, and the social tone mostly that of the backwoods frontier. An Anglican missionary when describing his own plight there in 1711 discussed the industrial régime about him: "Men are generally of all trades and women the like within their spheres, except some who are the posterity of old planters and have great numbers of slaves who understand most handicraft. Men are generally carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, coopers, butchers, tanners, shoemakers, tallow-chandlers, watermen and what not; women, soap-makers, starch-makers, dyers, etc. He or she that cannot do all these things, or hath not slaves that can, over and above all the common occupations of both sexes, will have but a bad time of it; for help is not to be had at any rate, every one having business enough of his own. This makes tradesmen turn planters, and these become tradesmen. No society one with another, but all study to live by their own hands, of their own produce; and what they can spare goes for foreign goods. Nay, many live on a slender diet to buy rum, sugar and molasses, with other such like necessaries, which are sold at such a rate that the planter here is but a slave to raise a provision for other colonies, and dare not allow himself to partake of his own creatures, except it be the corn of the country in hominy bread."[21] Some of the farmers and probably all the planters raised tobacco according to the methods prevalent in Virginia. Some also made tar for sale from the abounding pine timber; but with most of the families intercourse with markets must have been at an irreducible minimum. [Footnote 21: Letter of Rev. John Urmstone, July 7, 1711, to the secretary of the Society for Propagating the Gospel, printed in F.L. Hawks, _History of North Carolina_ (Fayetteville, N.C., 1857, 1858), II, 215, 216.] Tobacco culture, while requiring severe exertion only at a few crises, involved a long painstaking routine because of the delicacy of the plant and the difficulty of producing leaf of good quality, whether of the original varieties, oronoko and sweet-scented, or of the many others later developed. The seed must be sown in late winter or early spring in a special bed of deep forest mold dressed with wood ashes; and the fields must be broken and laid off by shallow furrows into hills three or four feet apart by the time the seedlings were grown to a finger's length. Then came the first crisis. During or just after an April, May or June rain the young plants must be drawn carefully from their beds, distributed in the fields, and each plant set in its hill. Able-bodied, expert hands could set them at the rate of thousands a day; and every nerve must be strained for the task's completion before the ground became dry enough to endanger the seedlings' lives. Then began a steady repetition of hoeings and plowings, broken by the rush after a rain to replant the hills whose first plants had died or grown twisted. Then came also several operations of special tedium. Each plant at the time of forming its flower bud must be topped at a height to leave a specified number of leaves growing on the stalk, and each stalk must have the suckers growing at the base of the leaf-stems pulled off; and the under side of every leaf must be examined twice at least for the destruction of the horn-worms. These came each year in two successive armies or "gluts," the one when the plants were half grown, the other when they were nearly ready for harvest. When the crop began to turn yellow the stalks must be cut off close to the ground, and after wilting carried to a well ventilated tobacco house and there hung speedily for curing. Each stalk must hang at a proper distance from its neighbor, attached to laths laid in tiers on the joists. There the crop must stay for some months, with the windows open in dry weather and closed in wet. Finally came the striking, sorting and prizing in weather moist enough to make the leaves pliable. Part of the gang would lower the stalks to the floor, where the rest working in trios would strip them, the first stripper taking the culls, the second the bright leaves, the third the remaining ones of dull color. Each would bind his takings into "hands" of about a quarter of a pound each and throw them into assorted piles. In the packing or "prizing" a barefoot man inside the hogshead would lay the bundles in courses, tramping them cautiously but heavily. Then a second hogshead, without a bottom, would be set atop the first and likewise filled, and then perhaps a third, when the whole stack would be put under blocks and levers compressing the contents into the one hogshead at the bottom, which when headed up was ready for market. Oftentimes a crop was not cured enough for prizing until the next crop had been planted. Meanwhile the spare time of the gang was employed in clearing new fields, tending the subsidiary crops, mending fences, and performing many other incidental tasks. With some exaggeration an essayist wrote, "The whole circle of the year is one scene of bustle and toil, in which tobacco claims a constant and chief share."[22] [Footnote 22: C.W. Gooch, "Prize Essay on Agriculture in Virginia," in the _Lynchburg Virginian_, July 14, 1833. More detailed is W.W. Bowie, "Prize Essay on the Cultivation and Management of Tobacco," in the U.S. Patent Office _Report_, 1849-1850, pp. 318-324. E.R. Billings, _Tobacco_ (Hartford, 1875) is a good general treatise.] The general scale of slaveholdings in the tobacco districts cannot be determined prior to the close of the American Revolution; but the statistics then available may be taken as fairly representative for the eighteenth century at large. A state census taken in certain Virginia counties in 1782-1783[23] permits the following analysis for eight of them selected for their large proportions of slaves. These counties, Amelia, Hanover, Lancaster, Middlesex, New Kent, Richmond, Surry and Warwick, are scattered through the Tidewater and the lower Piedmont. For each one of their citizens, fifteen altogether, who held upwards of one hundred slaves, there were approximately three who had from 50 to 99; seven with from 30 to 49; thirteen with from 20 to 29; forty with from 10 to 19; forty with from 5 to 9; seventy with from 1 to 4; and sixty who had none. In the three chief plantation counties of Maryland, viz. Ann Arundel, Charles, and Prince George, the ratios among the slaveholdings of the several scales, according to the United States census of 1790, were almost identical with those just noted in the selected Virginia counties, but the non-slaveholders were nearly twice as numerous in proportion. In all these Virginia and Maryland counties the average holding ranged between 8.5 and 13 slaves. In the other districts in both commonwealths, where the plantation system was not so dominant, the average slaveholding was smaller, of course, and the non-slaveholders more abounding. [Footnote 23: Printed in lieu of the missing returns of the first U.S. census, in _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: Virginia_ (Washington, 1908).] The largest slaveholding in Maryland returned in the census of 1790 was that of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, comprising 316 slaves. Among the largest reported in Virginia in 1782-1783 were those of John Tabb, Amelia County, 257; William Allen, Sussex County, 241; George Chewning, 224, and Thomas Nelson, 208, in Hanover County; Wilson N. Gary, Fluvanna County, 200; and George Washington, Fairfax County, 188. Since the great planters occasionally owned several scattered plantations it may be that the censuses reported some of the slaves under the names of the overseers rather than under those of the owners; but that such instances were probably few is indicated by the fact that the holdings of Chewning and Nelson above noted were each listed by the census takers in several parcels, with the names of owners and overseers both given. The great properties were usually divided, even where the lands lay in single tracts, into several plantations for more convenient operation, each under a separate overseer or in some cases under a slave foreman. If the working squads of even the major proprietors were of but moderate scale, those in the multitude of minor holdings were of course lesser still. On the whole, indeed, slave industry was organized in smaller units by far than most writers, whether of romance or history, would have us believe. CHAPTER V THE RICE COAST The impulse for the formal colonization of Carolina came from Barbados, which by the time of the Restoration was both overcrowded and torn with dissension. Sir John Colleton, one of the leading planters in that little island, proposed to several of his powerful Cavalier friends in England that they join him in applying for a proprietary charter to the vacant region between Virginia and Florida, with a view of attracting Barbadians and any others who might come. In 1663 accordingly the "Merry Monarch" issued the desired charter to the eight applicants as Lords Proprietors. They were the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, Earl Craven, Lord Ashley (afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury), Lord Berkeley, Sir George Carteret, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir John Colleton. Most of these had no acquaintance with America, and none of them had knowledge of Carolina or purpose of going thither. They expected that the mere throwing open of the region under their distinguished patronage would bring settlers in a rush; and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offering lands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popular self-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlement at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedingly barren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile in the more southerly region nothing was done beyond exploring the shore. Finding their passive policy of no avail, the Lords Proprietors bestirred themselves in 1669 to the extent of contributing several hundred pounds each toward planting a colony on their southward coast. At the same time they adopted the "fundamental constitutions" which John Locke had framed for the province. These contemplated land grants in huge parcels to a provincial nobility, and a cumbrous oligarchical government with a minimum participation of popular representatives. The grandiloquent feudalism of the scheme appealed so strongly to the aristocratic Lords Proprietors that in spite of their usual acumen in politics they were blinded to its conflicts with their charter and to its utter top-heaviness. They rewarded Locke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with it a grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to the fundamental constitutions, notwithstanding repeated rejections of them by the colonists. The fund of 1669 was used in planting what proved a permanent settlement of English and Barbadians on the shores of Charleston Harbor. Thereafter the Lords Proprietors relapsed into passiveness, commissioning a new governor now and then and occasionally scolding the colonists for disobedience. The progress of settlement was allowed to take what course it might. The fundamental constitutions recognized the institution of negro slavery, and some of the first Barbadians may have carried slaves with them to Carolina. But in the early decades Indian trading, lumbering and miscellaneous farming were the only means of livelihood, none of which gave distinct occasion for employing negroes. The inhabitants, furthermore, had no surplus income with which to buy slaves. The recruits who continued to come from the West Indies doubtless brought some blacks for their service; but the Huguenot exiles from France, who comprised the chief other streamlet of immigration, had no slaves and little money. Most of the people were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows. The Huguenots in particular, settling mainly in the interior on the Cooper and Santee Rivers, labored with extraordinary diligence and overcame the severest handicaps. That many of the settlers whether from France or the West Indies were of talented and sturdy stock is witnessed by the mention of the family names of Legaré, Laurens, Marion and Ravenel among the Huguenots, Drayton, Elliot, Gibbes and Middleton among the Barbadians, Lowndes and Rawlins from St. Christopher's, and Pinckney from Jamaica. Some of the people were sluggards, of course, but the rest, heterogeneous as they were, were living and laboring as best they might, trying such new projects as they could, building a free government in spite of the Lords Proprietors, and awaiting the discovery of some staple resource from which prosperity might be won. Among the crops tried was rice, introduced from Madagascar by Landgrave Thomas Smith about 1694, which after some preliminary failures proved so great a success that from about the end of the seventeenth century its production became the absorbing concern. Now slaves began to be imported rapidly. An official account of the colony in 1708[1] reckoned the population at about 3500 whites, of whom 120 were indentured servants, 4100 negro slaves, and 1400 Indians captured in recent wars and held for the time being in a sort of slavery. Within the preceding five years, while the whites had been diminished by an epidemic, the negroes had increased by about 1,100. The negroes were governed under laws modeled quite closely upon the slave code of Barbados, with the striking exception that in this period of danger from Spanish invasion most of the slave men were required by law to be trained in the use of arms and listed as an auxiliary militia. [Footnote 1: Text printed in Edward McCrady, _South Carolina under the Proprietary Government_ (New York, 1897). pp. 477-481.] During the rest of the colonial period the production of rice advanced at an accelerating rate and the slave population increased in proportion, while the whites multiplied somewhat more slowly. Thus in 1724 the whites were estimated at 14,000, the slaves at 32,000, and the rice export was about 4000 tons; in 1749 the whites were said to be nearly 25,000, the slaves at least 39,000, and the rice export some 14,000 tons, valued at nearly £100,000 sterling;[2] and in 1765 the whites were about 40,000, the slaves about 90,000, and the rice export about 32,000 tons, worth some £225,000.[3] Meanwhile the rule of the Lords Proprietors had been replaced for the better by that of the crown, with South Carolina politically separated from her northern sister; and indigo had been introduced as a supplementary staple. The Charleston district was for several decades perhaps the most prosperous area on the continent. [Footnote 2: Governor Glen, in B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_ (New York, 1836), II, 218, 234, 266.] [Footnote 3: McCrady, _South Carolina under the Royal Government_ (New York, 1899), pp. 389, 390, 807.] While rice culture did not positively require inundation, it was facilitated by the periodical flooding of the fields, a practice which was introduced into the colony about 1724. The best lands for this purpose were level bottoms with a readily controllable water supply adjacent. During most of the colonial period the main recourse was to the inland swamps, which could be flooded only from reservoirs of impounded rain or brooks. The frequent shortage of water in this régime made the flooding irregular and necessitated many hoeings of the crop. Furthermore, the dearth of watersheds within reach of the great cypress swamps on the river borders hampered the use of these which were the most fertile lands in the colony. Beginning about 1783 there was accordingly a general replacement of the reservoir system by the new one of tide-flowing.[4] For this method tracts were chosen on the flood-plains of streams whose water was fresh but whose height was controlled by the tide. The land lying between the levels of high and low tide was cleared, banked along the river front and on the sides, elaborately ditched for drainage, and equipped with "trunks" or sluices piercing the front embankment. On a frame above either end of each trunk a door was hung on a horizontal pivot and provided with a ratchet. When the outer door was raised above the mouth of the trunk and the inner door was lowered, the water in the stream at high tide would sluice through and flood the field, whereas at low tide the water pressure from the land side would shut the door and keep the flood in. But when the elevation of the doors was reversed the tide would be kept out and at low tide any water collected in the ditches from rain or seepage was automatically drained into the river. Occasional cross embankments divided the fields for greater convenience of control. The tide-flow system had its own limitations and handicaps. Many of the available tracts were so narrow that the cost of embankment was very high in proportion to the area secured; and hurricanes from oceanward sometimes raised the streams until they over-topped the banks and broke them. If these invading waters were briny the standing crop would be killed and the soil perhaps made useless for several years until fresh water had leached out the salt. At many places, in fact, the water for the routine flowing of the crop had to be inspected and the time awaited when the stream was not brackish. [Footnote 4: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1809), II, 201-206.] Economy of operation required cultivation in fairly large units. Governor Glen wrote about 1760, "They reckon thirty slaves a proper number for a rice plantation, and to be tended by one overseer."[5] Upon the resort to tide-flowing the scale began to increase. For example, Sir James Wright, governor of Georgia, had in 1771 eleven plantations on the Savannah, Ogeechee and Canoochee Rivers, employing from 33 to 72 slaves each, the great majority of whom were working hands.[6] At the middle of the nineteenth century the single plantation of Governor Aiken on Jehossee Island, South Carolina, of which more will be said in another chapter, had some seven hundred slaves of all ages. [Footnote 5: Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, 202.] [Footnote 6: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, p. 445.] In spite of many variations in the details of cultivation, the tide-flow system led to a fairly general standard of routine. After perhaps a preliminary breaking of the soil in the preceding fall, operations began in the early spring with smoothing the fields and trenching them with narrow hoes into shallow drills about three inches wide at the bottom and twelve or fourteen inches apart. In these between March and May the seed rice was carefully strewn and the water at once let on for the "sprout flow." About a week later the land was drained and kept so until the plants appeared plentifully above ground. Then a week of "point flow" was followed by a fortnight of dry culture in which the spaces between the rows were lightly hoed and the weeds amidst the rice pulled up. Then came the "long flow" for two or three weeks, followed by more vigorous hoeing, and finally the "lay-by flow" extending for two or three months until the crop, then standing shoulder high and thick with bending heads, was ready for harvest. The flowings served a triple purpose in checking the weeds and grass, stimulating the rice, and saving the delicate stalks from breakage and matting by storms. A curious item in the routine just before the grain was ripe was the guarding of the crop from destruction by rice birds. These bobolinks timed their southward migration so as to descend upon the fields in myriads when the grain was "in the milk." At that stage the birds, clinging to the stalks, could squeeze the substance from within each husk by pressure of the beak. Negroes armed with guns were stationed about the fields with instructions to fire whenever a drove of the birds alighted nearby. This fusillade checked but could not wholly prevent the bobolink ravages. To keep the gunners from shattering the crop itself they were generally given charges of powder only; but sufficient shot was issued to enable the guards to kill enough birds for the daily consumption of the plantation. When dressed and broiled they were such fat and toothsome morsels that in their season other sorts of meat were little used. For the rice harvest, beginning early in September, as soon as a field was drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day's drying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief curing. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice flour" and broken grain, and barreled for market.[7] [Footnote 7: The best descriptions of the rice industry are Edmund Ruffin, _Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ (Columbia, S.C. 1843); and R.F.W. Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ (Charleston, 1854), which latter is printed also in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615.] The ditches and pools in and about the fields of course bred swarms of mosquitoes which carried malaria to all people subject. Most of the whites were afflicted by that disease in the warmer half of the year, but the Africans were generally immune. Negro labor was therefore at such a premium that whites were virtually never employed on the plantations except as overseers and occasionally as artisans. In colonial times the planters, except the few quite wealthy ones who had town houses in Charleston, lived on their places the year round; but at the close of the eighteenth century they began to resort in summer to "pine land" villages within an hour or two's riding distance from their plantations. In any case the intercourse between the whites and blacks was notably less than in the tobacco region, and the progress of the negroes in civilization correspondingly slighter. The plantations were less of homesteads and more of business establishments; the race relations, while often cordial, were seldom intimate. The introduction of indigo culture was achieved by one of America's greatest women, Eliza Lucas, afterward the wife of Charles Pinckney (chief-justice of the province) and mother of the two patriot statesmen Thomas and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Her father, the governor of the British island of Antigua, had been prompted by his wife's ill health to settle his family in South Carolina, where the three plantations he acquired near Charleston were for several years under his daughter's management. This girl while attending her father's business found time to keep up her music and her social activities, to teach a class of young negroes to read, and to carry on various undertakings in economic botany. In 1741 her experiments with cotton, guinea-corn and ginger were defeated by frost, and alfalfa proved unsuited to her soil; but in spite of two preliminary failures that year she raised some indigo plants with success. Next year her father sent a West Indian expert named Cromwell to manage her indigo crop and prepare its commercial product. But Cromwell, in fear of injuring the prosperity of his own community, purposely mishandled the manufacturing. With the aid of a neighbor, nevertheless, Eliza not only detected Cromwell's treachery but in the next year worked out the true process. She and her father now distributed indigo seed to a number of planters; and from 1744 the crop began to reach the rank of a staple.[8] The arrival of Carolina indigo at London was welcomed so warmly that in 1748 Parliament established a bounty of sixpence a pound on indigo produced in the British dominions. The Carolina output remained of mediocre quality until in 1756 Moses Lindo, after a career in the indigo trade in London, emigrated to Charleston and began to teach the planters to distinguish the grades and manufacture the best.[9] At excellent prices, ranging generally from four to six shillings a pound, the indigo crop during the rest of the colonial period, reaching a maximum output of somewhat more than a million pounds from some twenty thousand acres in the crop, yielded the community about half as much gross income as did its rice. The net earnings of the planters were increased in a still greater proportion than this, for the work-seasons in the two crops could be so dovetailed that a single gang might cultivate both staples. [Footnote 8: _Journal and Letters of Eliza Lucas_ (Wormesloe, Ga., 1850); Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, _Eliza Pinckney_ (New York, 1896); _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 265, 266.] [Footnote 9: B.A. Elzas, _The Jews of South Carolina_ (Philadelphia, 1905), chap. 3.] Indigo grew best in the light, dry soil so common on the coastal plain. From seed sown in the early spring the plant would reach its full growth, from three to six feet high, and begin to bloom in June or early July. At that stage the plants were cut off near the ground and laid under water in a shallow vat for a fermentation which in the course of some twelve hours took the dye-stuff out of the leaves. The solution then drawn into another vat was vigorously beaten with paddles for several hours to renew and complete the foaming fermentation. Samples were taken at frequent intervals during the latter part of this process, and so soon as a blue tinge became apparent lime water, in carefully determined proportions, was gently stirred in to stop all further action and precipitate the "blueing." When this had settled, the water was drawn off, the paste on the floor was collected, drained in bags, kneaded, pressed, cut into cubes, dried in the shade and packed for market.[10] A second crop usually sprang from the roots of the first and was harvested in August or September. [Footnote 10: B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, 532-535.] Indigo production was troublesome and uncertain of results. Not only did the furrows have to be carefully weeded and the caterpillars kept off the plants, but when the stalks were being cut and carried to the vats great pains were necessary to keep the bluish bloom on the leaves from being rubbed off and lost, and the fermentation required precise control for the sake of quality in the product.[11] The production of the blue staple virtually ended with the colonial period. The War of Independence not only cut off the market for the time being but ended permanently, of course, the receipt of the British bounty. When peace returned the culture was revived in a struggling way; but its vexations and vicissitudes made it promptly give place to sea-island cotton.[12] [Footnote 11: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), pp. 187-189.] [Footnote 12: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_, II, 212; D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 132.] The plantation of the rice-coast type had clearly shown its tendency to spread into all the suitable areas from Winyah Bay to St. John's River, when its southward progress was halted for a time by the erection of the peculiar province of Georgia. The launching of this colony was the beginning of modern philanthropy. Upon procuring a charter in 1732 constituting them trustees of Georgia, James Oglethorpe and his colleagues began to raise funds from private donations and parliamentary grants for use in colonizing English debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates. The beneficiaries, chosen because of their indigence, were transported at the expense of the trust and given fifty-acre homesteads with equipment and supplies. Instruction in agriculture was provided for them at Savannah, and various regulations were established for making them soberly industrious on a small-farming basis. The land could not be alienated, and neither slaves nor rum could be imported. Persons immigrating at their own expense might procure larger land grants, but no one could own more than five hundred acres; and all settlers must plant specified numbers of grape vines and mulberry trees with a view to establishing wine and silk as the staples of the colony. In the first few years, while Oglethorpe was in personal charge at Savannah and supplies from England were abundant, there was an appearance of success, which soon proved illusory. Not only were the conditions unfit for silk and wine, but the fertile tracts were malarial and the healthy districts barren, and every industry suited to the climate had to meet the competition of the South Carolinians with their slave labor and plantation system. The ne'er-do-weels from England proved ne'er-do-weels again. They complained of the soil, the climate, and the paternalistic regulations under which they lived. They protested against the requirements of silk and wine culture; they begged for the removal of all peculiar restrictions and for the institution of self-government They bombarded the trustees with petitions saying "rum punch is very wholesome in this climate," asking fee-simple title to their lands, and demanding most vigorously the right of importing slaves. But the trustees were deaf to complaints. They maintained that the one thing lacking for prosperity from silk and wine was perseverance, that the restriction on land tenure was necessary on the one hand to keep an arms-bearing population in the colony and on the other hand to prevent the settlers from contracting debts by mortgage, that the prohibitions of rum and slaves were essential safeguards of sobriety and industry, and that discontent under the benevolent care of the trustees evidenced a perversity on the part of the complainants which would disqualify them for self-government. Affairs thus reached an impasse. Contributions stopped; Parliament gave merely enough money for routine expenses; the trustees lost their zeal but not their crotchets; the colony went from bad to worse. Out of perhaps five thousand souls in Georgia about 1737 so many departed to South Carolina and other free settlements that in 1741 there were barely more than five hundred left. This extreme depression at length forced even the staunchest of the trustees to relax. First the exclusion of rum was repealed, then the introduction of slaves on lease was winked at, then in 1749 and 1750 the overt importation of slaves was authorized and all restrictions on land tenure were canceled. Finally the stoppage of the parliamentary subvention in 1751 forced the trustees in the following year to resign their charter. Slaveholders had already crossed the Savannah River in appreciable numbers to erect plantations on favorable tracts. The lapse of a few more transition years brought Georgia to the status on the one hand of a self-governing royal province and on the other of a plantation community prospering, modestly for the time being, in the production of rice and indigo. Her peculiarities under the trustee régime were gone but not forgotten. The rigidity of paternalism, well meant though it had been, was a lesson against future submission to outward control in any form; and their failure as a peasantry in competition with planters across the river persuaded the Georgians and their neighbors that slave labor was essential for prosperity. It is curious, by the way, that the tender-hearted, philanthropic Oglethorpe at the very time of his founding Georgia was the manager of the great slave-trading corporation, the Royal African Company. The conflict of the two functions cannot be relieved except by one of the greatest of all reconciling considerations, the spirit of the time. Whatever else the radicals of that period might wish to reform or abolish, the slave trade was held either as a matter of course or as a positive benefit to the people who constituted its merchandise. The narrow limits of the rice and indigo régime in the two colonies made the plantation system the more dominant in its own area. Detailed statistics are lacking until the first federal census, when indigo was rapidly giving place to sea-island cotton; but the requirements of the new staple differed so little from those of the old that the plantations near the end of the century were without doubt on much the same scale as before the Revolution. In the four South Carolina parishes of St. Andrew's, St. John's Colleton, St. Paul's and St. Stephen's the census-takers of 1790 found 393 slaveholders with an average of 33.7 slaves each, as compared with a total of 28 non-slaveholding families. In these and seven more parishes, comprising together the rural portion of the area known politically as the Charleston District, there were among the 1643 heads of families 1318 slaveholders owning 42,949 slaves. William Blake had 695; Ralph Izard had 594 distributed on eight plantations in three parishes, and ten more at his Charleston house; Nathaniel Heyward had 420 on his plantations and 13 in Charleston; William Washington had 380 in the country and 13 in town; and three members of the Horry family had 340, 229 and 222 respectively in a single neighborhood. Altogether there were 79 separate parcels of a hundred slaves or more, 156 of between fifty and ninety-nine, 318 of between twenty and forty-nine, 251 of between ten and nineteen, 206 of from five to nine, and 209 of from two to four, 96 of one slave each, and 3 whose returns in the slave column are illegible.[13] The statistics of the Georgetown and Beaufort districts, which comprised the rest of the South Carolina coast, show a like analysis except for a somewhat larger proportion of non-slaveholders and very small slaveholders, who were, of course, located mostly in the towns and on the sandy stretches of pine-barren. The detailed returns for Georgia in that census have been lost. Were those for her coastal area available they would surely show a similar tendency toward slaveholding concentration. [Footnote 13: _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States, 1790: State of South Carolina_ (Washington, 1908); _A Century of Population Growth_ (Washington, 1909), pp. 190, 191, 197, 198.] Avenues of transportation abundantly penetrated the whole district in the form of rivers, inlets and meandering tidal creeks. Navigation on them was so easy that watermen to the manner born could float rafts or barges for scores of miles in any desired direction, without either sails or oars, by catching the strong ebb and flow of the tides at the proper points. But unlike the Chesapeake estuaries, the waterways of the rice coast were generally too shallow for ocean-going vessels. This caused a notable growth of seaports on the available harbors. Of those in South Carolina, Charleston stood alone in the first rank, flanked by Georgetown and Beaufort. In the lesser province of Georgia, Savannah found supplement in Darien and Sunbury. The two leading ports were also the seats of government in their respective colonies. Charleston was in fact so complete a focus of commerce, politics and society that South Carolina was in a sense a city-state. The towns were in sentiment and interest virtually a part of the plantation community. The merchants were plantation factors; the lawyers and doctors had country patrons; the wealthiest planters were town residents from time to time; and many prospering townsmen looked toward plantation retirement, carrying as it did in some degree the badge of gentility, as the crown of their careers. Furthermore the urban negroes, more numerous proportionately than anywhere else on the continent, kept the citizens as keenly alive as the planters to the intricacies of racial adjustments. For example Charleston, which in 1790 had 8089 whites, 7864 slaves and 586 free negroes, felt as great anxiety as did the rural parishes at rumors of slave conspiracies, and on the other hand she had a like interest in the improvement of negro efficiency, morality and good will. The rice coast community was a small one. Even as measured in its number of slaves it bulked only one-fourth as large, say in 1790, as the group of tobacco commonwealths or the single sugar island of Jamaica. Nevertheless it was a community to be reckoned with. Its people were awake to their peculiar conditions and problems; it had plenty of talented citizens to formulate policies; and it had excellent machinery for uniting public opinion. In colonial times, plying its trade mainly with England and the West Indies, it was in little touch with its continental neighbors, and it developed a sense of separateness. As part of a loosely administered empire its people were content in prosperity and self-government. But in a consolidated nation of diverse and conflicting interests it would be likely on occasion to assert its own will and resist unitedly anything savoring of coercion. In a double sense it was of the _southern_ South. CHAPTER VI THE NORTHERN COLONIES Had any American colony been kept wholly out of touch with both Indians and negroes, the history of slavery therein would quite surely have been a blank. But this was the case nowhere. A certain number of Indians were enslaved in nearly every settlement as a means of disposing of captives taken in war; and negro slaves were imported into every prosperous colony as a mere incident of its prosperity. Among the Quakers the extent of slaveholding was kept small partly, or perhaps mainly, by scruples of conscience; in virtually all other cases the scale was determined by industrial conditions. Here the plantation system flourished and slaves were many; there the climate prevented profits from crude gang labor in farming, and slaves were few. The nature and causes of the contrast will appear from comparing the careers of two Puritan colonies launched at the same time but separated by some thirty degrees of north latitude. The one was planted on the island of Old Providence lying off the coast of Nicaragua, the other was on the shores of Massachusetts bay. The founders of Old Providence were a score of Puritan dignitaries, including the Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye and Sele, and John Pym, incorporated into the Westminster Company in 1630 with a combined purpose of erecting a Puritanic haven and gaining profits for the investors. The soil of the island was known to be fertile, the nearby Spanish Main would yield booty to privateers, and a Puritan government would maintain orthodoxy. These enticements were laid before John Winthrop and his companions; and when they proved steadfast in the choice of New England, several hundred others of their general sort embraced the tropical Providence alternative. Equipped as it was with all the apparatus of a "New England Canaan," the founders anticipated a far greater career than seemed likely of achievement in Massachusetts. Prosperity came at once in the form of good crops and rich prizes taken at sea. Some of the latter contained cargoes of negro slaves, as was of course expected, who were distributed among the settlers to aid in raising tobacco; and when a certain Samuel Rishworth undertook to spread ideas of liberty among them he was officially admonished that religion had no concern with negro slavery and that his indiscretions must stop. Slaves were imported so rapidly that the outnumbered whites became apprehensive of rebellion. In the hope of promoting the importation of white labor, so greatly preferable from the public point of view, heavy impositions were laid upon the employment of negroes, but with no avail. The apprehension of evils was promptly justified. A number of the blacks escaped to the mountains where they dwelt as maroons; and in 1638 a concerted uprising proved so formidable that the suppression of it strained every resource of the government and the white inhabitants. Three years afterward the weakened settlement was captured by a Spanish fleet; and this was the end of the one Puritan colony in the tropics.[1] [Footnote 1: A.P. Newton, _The Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans_ (New Haven, 1914).] Massachusetts was likewise inaugurated by a corporation of Puritans, which at the outset endorsed the institution of unfree labor, in a sense, by sending over from England 180 indentured servants to labor on the company's account. A food shortage soon made it clear that in the company's service they could not earn their keep; and in 1630 the survivors of them were set free.[2] Whether freedom brought them bread or whether they died of famine, the records fail to tell. At any rate the loss of the investment in their transportation, and the chagrin of the officials, materially hastened the conversion of the colony from a company enterprise into an industrial democracy. The use of unfree labor nevertheless continued on a private basis and on a relatively small scale. Until 1642 the tide of Puritan immigration continued, some of the newcomers of good estate bringing servants in their train. The authorities not only countenanced this but forbade the freeing of servants before the ends of their terms, and in at least one instance the court fined a citizen for such a manumission.[3] Meanwhile the war against the Pequots in 1637 yielded a number of captives, whereupon the squaws and girls were distributed in the towns of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a parcel of the boys was shipped off to the tropics in the Salem ship _Desire_. On its return voyage this thoroughly Puritan vessel brought from Old Providence a cargo of tobacco, cotton, and negroes.[4] About this time the courts began to take notice of Indians as runaways; and in 1641 a "blackmore," Mincarry, procured the inscription of his name upon the public records by drawing upon himself an admonition from the magistrates.[5] This negro, it may safely be conjectured, was not a freeman. That there were at least several other blacks in the colony, one of whom proved unamenable to her master's improper command, is told in the account of a contemporary traveler.[6] In the same period, furthermore, the central court of the colony condemned certain white criminals to become slaves to masters whom the court appointed.[7] In the light of these things the pro-slavery inclination of the much-disputed paragraph in the Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641, admits of no doubt. The passage reads: "There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authoritie."[8] [Footnote 2: Thomas Dudley, _Letter_ to the Countess of Lincoln, in Alex. Young, _Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts Boy_ (Boston, 1846), p. 312.] [Footnote 3: _Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 135, 136.] [Footnote 4: Letter of John Winthrop to William Bradford, Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXXIII, 360; Winthrop, _Journal_ (Original Narratives edition, New York, 1908), I, 260.] [Footnote 5: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, p. 118.] [Footnote 6: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 231.] [Footnote 7: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, pp. 78, 79, 86.] [Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 231.] On the whole it seems that the views expressed a few years later by Emanuel Downing in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop were not seriously out of harmony with the prevailing sentiment. Downing was in hopes of a war with the Narragansetts for two reasons, first to stop their "worship of the devill," and "2lie, If upon a just warre the Lord should deliver them into our hands, we might easily have men, women and children enough to exchange for Moores,[9] which wil be more gaynful pilladge for us than wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee get into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children's children will hardly see this great continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages.[10] And I suppose you know verie well how we shall mayntayne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant." [Footnote 9: I. e. negroes.] [Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXXVI. 65.] When the four colonies, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, created the New England Confederation in 1643 for joint and reciprocal action in matters of common concern, they provided not only for the intercolonial rendition of runaway servants, including slaves of course, but also for the division of the spoils of Indian wars, "whether it be in lands, goods or persons," among the participating colonies.[11] But perhaps the most striking action taken by the Confederation in these regards was a resolution adopted by its commissioners in 1646, in time of peace and professedly in the interests of peace, authorizing reprisals for depredations. This provided that if any citizen's property suffered injury at the hands of an Indian, the offender's village or any other which had harbored him might be raided and any inhabitants thereof seized in satisfaction "either to serve or to be shipped out and exchanged for negroes as the cause will justly beare."[12] Many of these captives were in fact exported as merchandise, whether as private property or on the public account of the several colonies.[13] The value of Indians for export was greater than for local employment by reason of their facility in escaping to their tribal kinsmen. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, however, there was some importation of "Spanish Indians" as slaves.[14] [Footnote 11: _New Haven Colonial Records_, 1653-1665, pp. 562-566.] [Footnote 12: _Plymouth Records_, IX, 71.] [Footnote 13: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 30-48.] [Footnote 14: Cotton Mather, "Diary," in Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXVII, 22, 203.] An early realization that the price of negroes also was greater than the worth of their labor under ordinary circumstances in New England led the Yankee participants in the African trade to market their slave cargoes in the plantation colonies instead of bringing them home. Thus John Winthrop entered in his journal in 1645: "One of our ships which went to the Canaries with pipestaves in the beginning of November last returned now and brought wine and sugar and salt, and some tobacco, which she had at Barbadoes in exchange for Africoes which she carried from the Isle of Maio."[15] In their domestic industry the Massachusetts people found by experience that "many hands make light work, many hands make a full fraught, but many mouths eat up all";[16] and they were shrewd enough to apply the adage in keeping the scale of their industrial units within the frugal requirements of their lives. [Footnote 15: Winthrop, _Journal_, II, 227.] [Footnote 16: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 332.] That the laws of Massachusetts were enforced with special severity against the blacks is indicated by two cases before the central court in 1681, both of them prosecutions for arson. Maria, a negress belonging to Joshua Lamb of Roxbury, having confessed the burning of two dwellings, was sentenced by the Governor "yt she should goe from the barr to the prison whence she came and thence to the place of execution and there be burnt.--ye Lord be mercifull to thy soule, sd ye Govr." The other was Jack, a negro belonging to Samuel Wolcott of Weathersfield, who upon conviction of having set fire to a residence by waving a fire brand about in search of victuals, was condemned to be hanged until dead and then burned to ashes in the fire with the negress Maria.[17] [Footnote 17: _Records of the Court of Assistants, 1630-1692_ (Boston, 1901), p. 198.] In this period it seems that Indian slaves had almost disappeared, and the number of negroes was not great enough to call for special police legislation. Governor Bradstreet, for example, estimated the "blacks or slaves" in the colony in 1680 at "about one hundred or one hundred and twenty."[18] But in 1708 Governor Dudley reckoned the number in Boston at four hundred, one-half of whom he said had been born there, and those in the rest of the colony at one hundred and fifty; and in the following decades their number steadily mounted, as a concomitant of the colony's increasing prosperity, until on the eve of the American Revolution they were reckoned at well above five thousand. Although they never exceeded two per cent. of the gross population, their presence prompted characteristic legislation dating from about the beginning of the eighteenth century. This on one hand taxed the importation of negros unless they were promptly exported again on the other hand it forbade trading with slaves, restrained manumission, established a curfew, provided for the whipping of any negro or mulatto who should strike a "Christian," and prohibited the intermarriage of the races. On the other hand it gave the slaves the privilege of legal marriage with persons of their own race, though it did not attempt to prevent the breaking up of such a union by the sale and removal of the husband or wife.[19] Regarding the status of children there was no law enacted, and custom ruled. The children born of Indian slave mothers appear generally to have been liberated, for as willingly would a man nurse a viper in his bosom as keep an aggrieved and able-bodied redskin in his household. But as to negro children, although they were valued so slightly that occasionally it is said they were given to any one who would take them, there can be no reasonable doubt that by force of custom they were the property of the owners of their mothers.[20] [Footnote 18: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 337.] [Footnote 19: Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 52-55.] [Footnote 20: _Ibid_., pp. 20-27.] The New Englanders were "a plain people struggling for existence in a poor wilderness.... Their lives were to the last degree matter of fact, realistic, hard." [21] Shrewd in consequence of their poverty, self-righteous in consequence of their religion, they took their slave-trading and their slaveholding as part of their day's work and as part of God's goodness to His elect. In practical effect the policy of colonial Massachusetts toward the backward races merits neither praise nor censure; it was merely commonplace. [Footnote 21: C.F. Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_ (Boston, 1893), p. 106.] What has been said in general of Massachusetts will apply with almost equal fidelity to Connecticut.[22] The number of negroes in that colony was hardly appreciable before 1720. In that year Governor Leete when replying to queries from the English committee on trade and plantations took occasion to emphasize the poverty of his people, and said as to bond labor: "There are but fewe servants amongst us, and less slaves; not above 30, as we judge, in the colony. For English, Scotts and Irish, there are so few come in that we cannot give a certain acco[un]t. Some yeares come none; sometimes a famaly or two in a year. And for Blacks, there comes sometimes 3 or 4 in a year from Barbadoes; and they are sold usually at the rate of 22l a piece, sometimes more and sometimes less, according as men can agree with the master of vessels or merchants that bring them hither." Few negroes had been born in the colony, "and but two blacks christened, as we know of."[23] A decade later the development of a black code was begun by an enactment declaring that any negro, mulatto, or Indian servant wandering outside his proper town without a pass would be accounted a runaway and might be seized by any person and carried before a magistrate for return to his master. A free negro so apprehended without a pass must pay the court costs. An act of 1702 discouraged manumission by ordering that if any freed negroes should come to want, their former owners were to be held responsible for their maintenance. Then came legislation forbidding the sale of liquors to slaves without special orders from their masters, prohibiting the purchase of goods from slaves without such orders, and providing a penalty of not more than thirty lashes for any negro who should offer to strike a white person; and finally a curfew law, in 1723, ordering not above ten lashes for the negro, and a fine of ten shillings upon the master, for every slave without a pass apprehended for being out of doors after nine o'clock at night.[24] These acts, which remained in effect throughout the colonial period, constituted a code of slave police which differed only in degree and fullness from those enacted by the more southerly colonies in the same generation. A somewhat unusual note, however, was struck in an act of 1730 which while penalizing with stripes the speaking by a slave of such words as would be actionable if uttered by a free person provided that in his defence the slave might make the same pleas and offer the same evidence as a freeman. The number of negroes in the colony rose to some 6500 at the eve of the American Revolution. Most of them were held in very small parcels, but at least one citizen, Captain John Perkins of Norwich, listed fifteen slaves in his will. [Footnote 22: The scanty materials available are summarized in B.C. Steiner, _History of Slavery in Connecticut_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XI, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1893), pp. 9-23, 84. See also W.C. Fowler, "The Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut," in the _Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries_, III, 12-18, 81-85, 148-153, 260-266.] [Footnote 23: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, III, 298.] [Footnote 24: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, IV, 40, 376; V, 52, 53; VI, 390, 391.] Rhode Island was distinguished from her neighbors by her diversity and liberalism in religion, by her great activity in the African slave trade, and by the possession of a tract of unusually fertile soil. This last, commonly known as the Narragansett district and comprised in the two so-called towns of North and South Kingstown, lay on the western shore of the bay, in the southern corner of the colony. Prosperity from tillage, and especially from dairying and horse-breeding, caused the rise in that neighborhood of landholdings and slaveholdings on a scale more commensurate with those in Virginia than with those elsewhere in New England. The Hazards, Champlins, Robinsons, and some others accumulated estates ranging from five to ten thousand acres in extent, each with a corps of bondsmen somewhat in proportion. In 1730, for example, South Kingstown had a population of 965 whites, 333 negroes and 233 Indians; and for a number of years afterward those who may safely be assumed to have been bondsmen, white, red and black, continued to be from a third to a half as many as the free inhabitants.[25] It may be noted that the prevalent husbandry was not such as generally attracted unfree labor in other districts, and that the climate was poorly suited to a negro population. The question then arises, Why was there so large a recourse to negro slave labor? The answer probably lies in the proximity of Newport, the main focus of African trading in American ships. James Browne wrote in 1737 from Providence, which was also busy in the trade, to his brother Obadiah who was then in Southern waters with an African cargo and who had reported poor markets: "If you cannot sell all your slaves to your mind, bring some of them home; I believe they will sell well." [26] This bringing of remainders home doubtless enabled the nearby townsmen and farmers to get slaves from time to time at bargain prices. The whole colony indeed came to have a relatively large proportion of blacks. In 1749 there were 33,773 whites and 3077 negroes; in 1756 there were 35,939 and 4697 respectively; and in 1774, 59,707 and 3668. Of this last number Newport contained 1246, South Kingstown 440, Providence 303, Portsmouth 122, and Bristol 114.[27] [Footnote 25: Edward Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, IV, no. 3, Baltimore, 1886).] [Footnote 26: Gertrude S. Kimball, _Providence in Colonial Times_ (Boston, 1912), p. 247.] [Footnote 27: W.D. Johnston, "Slavery in Rhode Island, 1755-1776," in Rhode Island Historical Society _Publications_, new series, II, 126, 127.] The earliest piece of legislation in Rhode Island concerning negroes was of an anti-slavery character. This was an act adopted by the joint government of Providence and Warwick in 1652, when for the time being those towns were independent of the rest. It required, under a penalty of £40, that all negroes be freed after having rendered ten years of service.[28] This act may be attributed partly perhaps to the liberal influence of Roger Williams, and partly to the virtual absence of negroes in the towns near the head of the bay. It long stood unrepealed, but it was probably never enforced, for no sooner did negroes become numerous than a conservative reaction set in which deprived this peculiar law of any public sanction it may have had at the time of enactment. When in the early eighteenth century legislation was resumed in regard to negroes, it took the form of a slave code much like that of Connecticut but with an added act, borrowed perhaps from a Southern colony, providing that slaves charged with theft be tried by impromptu courts consisting of two or more justices of the peace or town officers, and that appeal might be taken to a court of regular session only at the master's request and upon his giving bond for its prosecution. Some of the towns, furthermore, added by-laws of their own for more thorough police. South Kingstown for instance adopted an order that if any slave were found in the house of a free negro, both guest and host were to be whipped.[29] The Rhode Island Quakers in annual meeting began as early as 1717 to question the propriety of importing slaves, and other persons from time to time echoed their sentiments; but it was not until just before the American Revolution that legislation began to interfere with the trade or the institution. [Footnote 28: _Rhode Island Colonial Records_, I, 243.] [Footnote 29: Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_, p. 11.] The colonies of Plymouth and New Haven in the period of their separate existence, and the colonies of Maine and New Hampshire throughout their careers, are negligible in a general account of negro slavery because their climate and their industrial requirements, along with their poverty, prevented them from importing any appreciable number of negroes. New Netherland had the distinction of being founded and governed by a great slave-trading corporation--the Dutch West India Company--which endeavored to extend the market for its human merchandise whithersoever its influence reached. This pro-slavery policy was not wholly selfish, for the directors appear to have believed that the surest way to promote a colony's welfare was to make slaves easy to buy. In the infancy of New Netherland, when it consisted merely of two trading posts, the company delivered its first batch of negroes at New Amsterdam. But to its chagrin, the settlers would buy very few; and even the company's grant of great patroonship estates failed to promote a plantation régime. Devoting their energies more to the Indian trade than to agriculture, the people had little use for farm hands, while in domestic service, if the opinion of the Reverend Jonas Michaelius be a true index, the negroes were found "thievish, lazy and useless trash." It might perhaps be surmised that the Dutch were too easy-going for success in slave management, were it not that those who settled in Guiana became reputed the severest of all plantation masters. The bulk of the slaves in New Netherland, left on the company's hands, were employed now in building fortifications, now in tillage. But the company, having no adequate means of supervising them in routine, changed the status of some of the older ones in 1644 from slavery to tribute-paying. That is to say, it gave eleven of them their freedom on condition that each pay the company every year some twenty-two bushels of grain and a hog of a certain value. At the same time it provided, curiously, that their children already born or yet to be born were to be the company's slaves. It was proposed at one time by some of the inhabitants, and again by Governor Stuyvesant, that negroes be armed with tomahawks and sent in punitive expeditions against the Indians, but nothing seems to have come of that. The Dutch settlers were few, and the Dutch farmers fewer. But as years went on a slender stream of immigration entered the province from New England, settling mainly on Long Island and in Westchester; and these came to be among the company's best customers for slaves. The villagers of Gravesend, indeed, petitioned in 1651 that the slave supply might be increased. Soon afterward the company opened the trade to private ships, and then sent additional supplies on its own account to be sold at auction. It developed hopes, even, that New Amsterdam might be made a slave market for the neighboring English colonies. A parcel sold at public outcry in 1661 brought an average price of 440 florins,[30] which so encouraged the authorities that larger shipments were ordered. Of a parcel arriving in the spring of 1664 and described by Stuyvesant as on the average old and inferior, six men were reserved for the company's use in cutting timber, five women were set aside as unsalable, and the remaining twenty-nine, of both sexes, were sold at auction at prices ranging from 255 to 615 florins. But a great cargo of two or three hundred slaves which followed in the same year reached port only in time for the vessel to be captured by the English fleet which took possession of New Netherland and converted it into the province of New York.[31] [Footnote 30: The florin has a value of forty cents.] [Footnote 31: This account is mainly drawn from A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 246-254, and from E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of Amsterdam, with additional papers illustrative of the slave trade under the Dutch_ (Albany, 1867), pp. 99-213.] The change of the flag was very slow in bringing any pronounced change in the colony's general régime. The Duke of York's government was autocratic and pro-slavery and the inhabitants, though for some decades they bought few slaves, were nothing averse to the institution. After the colony was converted into a royal province by the accession of James II to the English throne popular self-government was gradually introduced and a light import duty was laid upon slaves. But increasing prosperity caused the rise of slave importations to an average of about one hundred a year in the first quarter of the eighteenth century;[32] and in spite of the rapid increase of the whites during the rest of the colonial period the proportion of the negroes was steadily maintained at about one-seventh of the whole. They became fairly numerous in all districts except the extreme frontier, but in the counties fronting New York Harbor their ratio was somewhat above the average.[33] In 1755 a special census was taken of slaves older than fourteen years, and a large part of its detailed returns has been preserved. These reports from some two-score scattered localities enumerate 2456 slaves, about one-third of the total negro population of the specified age; and they yield unusually definite data as to the scale of slaveholdings. Lewis Morris of Morrisania had twenty-nine slaves above fourteen years old; Peter DeLancy of Westchester Borough had twelve; and the following had ten each: Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, Martinus Hoffman of Dutchess County, David Jones of Oyster Bay, Rutgert Van Brunt of New Utrecht, and Isaac Willett of Westchester Borough. Seventy-two others had from five to nine each, and 1048 had still smaller holdings.[34] The average quota was two slaves of working age, and presumably the same number of slave children. That is to say, the typical slaveholding family had a single small family of slaves in its service. From available data it may be confidently surmised, furthermore, that at least one household in every ten among the eighty-three thousand white inhabitants of the colony held one or more slaves. These two features--the multiplicity of slaveholdings and the virtually uniform pettiness of their scale--constituted a régime never paralleled in equal volume elsewhere. The economic interest in slave property, nowhere great, was widely diffused. The petty masters, however, maintained so little system in the management of their slaves that the public problem of social control was relatively intense. It was a state of affairs conducing to severe legislation, and to hysterical action in emergencies. [Footnote 32: _Documentary History of New York_ (Albany, 1850), I, 482.] [Footnote 33: _Ibid_., I, 467-474.] [Footnote 34: _Documentary History of New York_, III, 505-521.] The first important law, enacted in 1702, repeated an earlier prohibition against trading with slaves; authorized masters to chastise their slaves at discretion; forbade the meeting of more than three slaves at any time or place unless in their masters' service or by their consent; penalized with imprisonment and lashes the striking of a "Christian" by a slave; made the seductor or harborer of a runaway slave liable for heavy damages to the owner; and excluded slave testimony from the courts except as against other slaves charged with conspiracy. In order, however, that undue loss to masters might be averted, it provided that if by theft or other trespass a slave injured any person to the extent of not more than five pounds, the slave was not to be sentenced to death as in some cases a freeman might have been under the laws of England then current, but his master was to be liable for pecuniary satisfaction and the slave was merely to be whipped. Three years afterward a special act to check the fleeing to Canada provided a death penalty for any slave from the city and county of Albany found traveling more than forty miles north of that city, the master to be compensated from a special tax on slave property in the district. And in 1706 an act, passed mainly to quiet any fears as to the legal consequences of Christianization, declared that baptism had no liberating effect, and that every negro or mulatto child should inherit the status of its mother. The murder of a white family by a quartet of slaves in conspiracy not only led to their execution, by burning in one case, but prompted an enactment in 1708 that slaves charged with the murder of whites might be tried summarily by three justices of the peace and be put to death in such manner as the enormity of their crimes might be deemed to merit, and that slaves executed under this act should be paid for by the public. Thus stood the law when a negro uprising in the city of New York in 1712 and a reputed conspiracy there in 1741 brought atrociously numerous and severe punishments, as will be related in another chapter.[35] On the former of these occasions the royally appointed governor intervened in several cases to prevent judicial murder. The assembly on the other hand set to work at once on a more elaborate negro law which restricted manumissions, prohibited free negroes from holding real estate, and increased the rigor of slave control. Though some of the more drastic provisions were afterward relaxed in response to the more sober sense of the community, the negro code continued for the rest of the colonial period to be substantially as elaborated between 1702 and 1712.[36] The disturbance of 1741 prompted little new legislation and left little permanent impress upon the community. When the panic passed the petty masters resumed their customary indolence of control and the police officers, justly incredulous of public danger, let the rigors of the law relapse into desuetude. [Footnote 35: Below, pp. 470, 471.] [Footnote 36: The laws are summarized and quoted in A.J. Northrup "Slavery in New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 254-272. _See also_ E.V. Morgan, "Slavery in New York," in the American Historical Association _Papers_ (New York, 1891), V, 335-350.] As to New Jersey, the eastern half, settled largely from New England, was like in conditions and close in touch with New York, while the western half, peopled considerably by Quakers, had a much smaller proportion of negroes and was in sentiment akin to Pennsylvania. As was generally the case in such contrast of circumstances, that portion of the province which faced the greater problem of control determined the legislation for the whole. New Jersey, indeed, borrowed the New York slave code in all essentials. The administration of the law, furthermore, was about as it was in New York, in the eastern counties at least. An alleged conspiracy near Somerville in 1734 while it cost the reputed ringleader his life, cost his supposed colleagues their ears only. On the other hand sentences to burning at the stake were more frequent as punishment for ordinary crimes; and on such occasions the citizens of the neighborhood turned honest shillings by providing faggots for the fire. For the western counties the published annals concerning slavery are brief wellnigh to blankness.[37] [Footnote 37: H.S. Cooley, _A Study of Slavery in New Jersey_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studios_, XIV, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1896).] Pennsylvania's place in the colonial slaveholding sisterhood was a little unusual in that negroes formed a smaller proportion of the population than her location between New York and Maryland might well have warranted. This was due not to her laws nor to the type of her industry but to the disrelish of slaveholding felt by many of her Quaker and German inhabitants and to the greater abundance of white immigrant labor whether wage-earning or indentured. Negroes were present in the region before Penn's colony was founded. The new government recognized slavery as already instituted. Penn himself acquired a few slaves; and in the first quarter of the eighteenth century the assembly legislated much as New York was doing, though somewhat more mildly, for the fuller control of the negroes both slave and free. The number of blacks and mulattoes reached at the middle of the century about eleven thousand, the great majority of them slaves. They were most numerous, of course, in the older counties which lay in the southeastern corner of the province, and particularly in the city of Philadelphia. Occasional owners had as many as twenty or thirty slaves, employed either on country estates or in iron-works, but the typical holding was on a petty scale. There were no slave insurrections in the colony, no plots of any moment, and no panics of dread. The police was apparently a little more thorough than in New York, partly because of legislation, which the white mechanics procured, lessening negro competition by forbidding masters to hire out their slaves. From travelers' accounts it would appear that the relation of master and slave in Pennsylvania was in general more kindly than anywhere else on the continent; but from the abundance of newspaper advertisements for runaways it would seem to have been of about average character. The truth probably lies as usual in the middle ground, that Pennsylvania masters were somewhat unusually considerate. The assembly attempted at various times to check slave importations by levying prohibitive duties, which were invariably disallowed by the English crown. On the other hand, in spite of the endeavors of Sandiford, Lay, Woolman and Benezet, all of them Pennsylvanians, it took no steps toward relaxing racial control until the end of the colonial period.[38] [Footnote 38: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911); R.R. Wright, Jr., _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, 1912).] In the Northern colonies at large the slaves imported were more generally drawn from the West Indies than directly from Africa. The reasons were several. Small parcels, better suited to the retail demand, might be brought more profitably from the sugar islands whither New England, New York and Pennsylvania ships were frequently plying than from Guinea whence special voyages must be made. Familiarity with the English language and the rudiments of civilization at the outset were more essential to petty masters than to the owners of plantation gangs who had means for breaking in fresh Africans by deputy. But most important of all, a sojourn in the West Indies would lessen the shock of acclimatization, severe enough under the best of circumstances. The number of negroes who died from it was probably not small, and of those who survived some were incapacitated and bedridden with each recurrence of winter. Slavery did not, and perhaps could not, become an important industrial institution in any Northern community; and the problem of racial adjustments was never as acute as it was generally thought to be. In not more than two or three counties do the negroes appear to have numbered more than one fifth of the population; and by reason of being distributed in detail they were more nearly assimilated to the civilization of the dominant race than in southerly latitudes where they were held in gross. They nevertheless continued to be regarded as strangers within the gates, by some welcomed because they were slaves, by others not welcomed even though they were in bondage. By many they were somewhat unreasonably feared; by few were they even reasonably loved. The spirit not of love but of justice and the public advantage was destined to bring the end of their bondage. CHAPTER VII REVOLUTION AND REACTION After the whole group of colonies had long been left in salutary neglect by the British authorities, George III and his ministers undertook the creation of an imperial control; and Parliament was too much at the king's command for opposing statesmen to stop the project. The Americans wakened resentfully to the new conditions. The revived navigation laws, the stamp act, the tea duty, and the dispatch of redcoats to coerce Massachusetts were a cumulation of grievances not to be borne by high-spirited people. For some years the colonial spokesmen tried to persuade the British government that it was violating historic and constitutional rights; but these efforts had little success. To the argument that the empire was composed of parts mutually independent in legislation, it was replied that Parliament had legislated imperially ever since the empire's beginning, and that the colonial assemblies possessed only such powers as Parliament might allow. The plea of no taxation without representation was answered by the doctrine that all elements in the empire were virtually represented in Parliament. The stress laid by the colonials upon their rights as Britons met the administration's emphasis upon the duty of all British subjects to obey British laws. This countering of pleas of exemption with pronouncements of authority drove the complainants at length from proposals of reform to projects of revolution. For this the solidarity of the continent was essential, and that was to be gained only by the most vigorous agitation with the aid of the most effective campaign cries. The claim of historic immunities was largely discarded in favor of the more glittering doctrines current in the philosophy of the time. The demands for local self-government or for national independence, one or both of which were the genuine issues at stake, were subordinated to the claim of the inherent and inalienable rights of man. Hence the culminating formulation in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The cause of the community was to be won under the guise of the cause of individuals. In Jefferson's original draft of the great declaration there was a paragraph indicting the king for having kept open the African slave trade against colonial efforts to close it, and for having violated thereby the "most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." This passage, according to Jefferson's account, "was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also I believe," Jefferson continued, "felt a little tender under these censures, for though their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[1] By reason of the general stress upon the inherent liberty of all men, however, the question of negro status, despite its omission from the Declaration, was an inevitable corollary to that of American independence. [Footnote 1: Herbert Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ (New York, 1904), pp. 130, 272.] Negroes had a barely appreciable share in precipitating the Revolution and in waging the war. The "Boston Massacre" was occasioned in part by an insult offered by a slave to a British soldier two days before; and in that celebrated affray itself, Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was one of the five inhabitants of Boston slain. During the course of the war free negro and slave enlistments were encouraged by law in the states where racial control was not reckoned vital, and they were informally permitted in the rest. The British also utilized this resource in some degree. As early as November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the ousted royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves "appertaining to rebels" who would join him "for the more speedy reducing this colony to a proper sense of their duty to his Majesty's crown and dignity."[2] In reply the Virginia press warned the negroes against British perfidy; and the revolutionary government, while announcing the penalties for servile revolt, promised freedom to such as would promptly desert the British standard. Some hundreds of negroes appear to have joined Dunmore, but they did not save him from being driven away.[3] [Footnote 2: _American Archives_, Force ed., fourth series, III, 1385.] [Footnote 3: _Ibid_., III, 1387; IV, 84, 85; V, 160, 162.] When several years afterward military operations were transferred to the extreme South, where the whites were few and the blacks many, the problem of negro enlistments became at once more pressing and more delicate. Henry Laurens of South Carolina proposed to General Washington in March, 1779, the enrollment of three thousand blacks in the Southern department. Hamilton warmly endorsed the project, and Washington and Madison more guardedly. Congress recommended it to the states concerned, and pledged itself to reimburse the masters and to set the slaves free with a payment of fifty dollars to each of these at the end of the war. Eventually Colonel John Laurens, the son of Henry, went South as an enthusiastic emissary of the scheme, only to meet rebuff and failure.[4] Had the negroes in general possessed any means of concerted action, they might conceivably have played off the British and American belligerents to their own advantage. In actuality, however, they were a passive element whose fate was affected only so far as the master race determined. [Footnote 4: G.W. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_ (New York [1882]), I, 353-362.] Some of the politicians who championed the doctrine of liberty inherent and universal used it merely as a means to a specific and somewhat unrelated end. Others endorsed it literally and with resolve to apply it wherever consistency might require. How could they justly continue to hold men in bondage when in vindication of their own cause they were asserting the right of all men to be free? Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Edmund Randolph and many less prominent slaveholders were disquieted by the question. Instances of private manumission became frequent, and memorials were fairly numerous advocating anti-slavery legislation. Indeed Samuel Hopkins of Rhode Island in a pamphlet of 1776 declared that slavery in Anglo-America was "without the express sanction of civil government," and censured the colonial authorities and citizens for having connived in the maintenance of the wrongful institution. As to public acts, the Vermont convention of 1777 when claiming statehood for its community framed a constitution with a bill of rights asserting the inherent freedom of all men and attaching to it an express prohibition of slavery. The opposition of New York delayed Vermont's recognition until 1791 when she was admitted as a state with this provision unchanged. Similar inherent-liberty clauses but without the expressed anti-slavery application were incorporated into the bills of rights adopted severally by Virginia in 1776, Massachusetts in 1780, and New Hampshire in 1784. In the first of these the holding of slaves persisted undisturbed by this action; and in New Hampshire the custom died from the dearth of slaves rather than from the natural-rights clause. In Massachusetts likewise it is plain from copious contemporary evidence that abolition was not intended by the framers of the bill of rights nor thought by the people or the officials to have been accomplished thereby.[5] One citizen, indeed, who wanted to keep his woman slave but to be rid of her child soon to be born, advertised in the _Independent Chronicle_ of Boston at the close of 1780: "A negro child, soon expected, of a good breed, may be owned by any person inclining to take it, and money with it."[6] The courts of the commonwealth, however, soon began to reflect anti-slavery sentiment, as Lord Mansfield had done in the preceding decade in England,[7] and to make use of the bill of rights to destroy the masters' dominion. The decisive case was the prosecution of Nathaniel Jennison of Worcester County for assault and imprisonment alleged to have been committed upon his absconded slave Quork Walker in the process of his recovery. On the trial in 1783 the jury responded to a strong anti-slavery charge from Chief Justice Cushing by returning a verdict against Jennison, and the court fined him £50 and costs. [Footnote 5: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 181-209.] [Footnote 6: _Ibid_., p. 208. So far as the present writer's knowledge extends, this item is without parallel at any other time or place.] [Footnote 7: The case of James Somerset on _habeas corpus_, in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, §548.] This action prompted the negroes generally to leave their masters, though some were deterred "on account of their age and infirmities, or because they did not know how to provide for themselves, or for some pecuniary consideration."[8] The former slaveholders now felt a double grievance: they were deprived of their able-bodied negroes but were not relieved of the legal obligation to support such others as remained on their hands. Petitions for their relief were considered by the legislature but never acted upon. The legal situation continued vague, for although an act of 1788 forbade citizens to trade in slaves and another penalized the sojourn for more than two months in Massachusetts of negroes from other states,[9] no legislation defined the status of colored residents. In the federal census of 1790, however, this was the only state in which no slaves were listed. [Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 386.] [Footnote 9: Moore, pp. 227-229.] Racial antipathy and class antagonism among the whites appear to have contributed to this result. John Adams wrote in 1795, with some exaggeration and incoherence: "Argument might have [had] some weight in the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the multiplication of labouring white people, who would no longer suffer the rich to employ these sable rivals so much to their injury ... If the gentlemen had been permitted by law to hold slaves, the common white people would have put the negroes to death, and their masters too, perhaps ... The common white people, or rather the labouring people, were the cause of rendering negroes unprofitable servants. Their scoffs and insults, their continual insinuations, filled the negroes with discontent, made them lazy, idle, proud, vicious, and at length wholly useless to their masters, to such a degree that the abolition of slavery became a measure of economy."[10] [Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 402.] Slavery in the rest of the Northern states was as a rule not abolished, but rather put in process of gradual extinction by legislation of a peculiar sort enacted in response to agitations characteristic of the times. Pennsylvania set the pattern in an act of 1780 providing that all children born thereafter of slave mothers in the state were to be the servants of their mothers' owners until reaching twenty-eight years of age, and then to become free. Connecticut followed in 1784 with an act of similar purport but with a specification of twenty-five years, afterward reduced to twenty-one, as the age for freedom; and in 1840 she abolished her remnant of slavery outright. In Rhode Island an act of the same year, 1784, enacted that the children thereafter born of slave mothers were to be free at the ages of twenty-one for males and eighteen for females, and that these children were meanwhile to be supported and instructed at public expense; but an amendment of the following year transferred to the mothers' owners the burden of supporting the children, and ignored the matter of their education. New York lagged until 1799, and then provided freedom for the after-born only at twenty-eight and twenty-five years for males and females respectively; but a further act of 1817 set the Fourth of July in 1827 as a time for the emancipation for all remaining slaves in the state. New Jersey fell into line last of all by an act of 1804 giving freedom to the after-born at the ages of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females; and in 1846 she converted the surviving slaves nominally into apprentices but without materially changing their condition. Supplementary legislation here and there in these states bestowed freedom upon slaves in military service, restrained the import and export of slaves, and forbade the citizens to ply the slave trade by land or sea.[11] [Footnote 11: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 77-85; B.C. Steiner, _Slavery in Connecticut_, pp. 30-32; _Rhode Island Colonial Records_, X, 132, 133; A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 286-298; H.S. Cooley, "Slavery in New Jersey" (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XIV, nos. 9, 10), pp. 47-50; F.B. Lee, _New Jersey as a Colony and as a State_ (New York, 1912), IV, 25-48.] Thus from Pennsylvania eastward the riddance of slavery was procured or put in train, generally by the device of emancipating the _post nati_; and in consequence the slave population in that quarter dwindled before the middle of the nineteenth century to a negligible residue. To the southward the tobacco states, whose industry had reached a somewhat stationary condition, found it a simple matter to prohibit the further importation of slaves from Africa. Delaware did this in 1776, Virginia in 1778, Maryland in 1783 and North Carolina in 1794. But in these commonwealths as well as in their more southerly neighbors, the contemplation of the great social and economic problems involved in disestablishing slavery daunted the bulk of the citizens and impelled their representatives to conservatism. The advocacy of abolition, whether sudden or gradual, was little more than sporadic. The people were not to be stampeded in the cause of inherent rights or any other abstract philosophy. It was a condition and not a theory which confronted them. In Delaware, however, the problem was hardly formidable, for at the time of the first federal census there were hardly nine thousand slaves and a third as many colored freemen in her gross population of some sixty thousand souls. Nevertheless a bill for gradual abolition considered by the legislature in 1786 appears not to have been brought to a vote,[12] and no action in the premises was taken thereafter. The retention of slavery seems to have been mainly due to mere public inertia and to the pressure of political sympathy with the more distinctively Southern states. Because of her border position and her dearth of plantation industry, the slaves in Delaware steadily decreased to less than eighteen hundred in 1860, while the free negroes grew to more than ten times as many. [Footnote 12: J.R. Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789," in J.F. Jameson ed., _Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States, 1775-1789_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 300-302.] In Maryland various projects for abolition, presented by the Quakers between 1785 and 1791 and supported by William Pinckney and Charles Carroll, were successively defeated in the legislature; and efforts to remove the legal restraints on private manumission were likewise thwarted.[13] These restrictions, which applied merely to the freeing of slaves above middle age, were in fact very slight. The manumissions indeed were so frequent and the conditions of life in Maryland were so attractive to free negroes, or at least so much less oppressive than in most other states, that while the slave population decreased between 1790 and 1860 from 103,036 to 87,189 souls the colored freemen multiplied from 8046 to 83,942, a number greater by twenty-five thousand than that in any other commonwealth. [Footnote 13: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_ (Baltimore, 1899), pp. 52-64, 148-155.] Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1785 that anti-slavery men were as scarce to the southward of Chesapeake Bay as they were common to the north of it, while in Maryland, and still more in Virginia, the bulk of the people approved the doctrine and a respectable minority were ready to adopt it in practice, "a minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates against the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of a property which, however, keeps their conscience unquiet." Virginia, he continued, "is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression, a conflict in which the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the principles of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to them that I look with anxiety to turn the fate of the question."[14] Jefferson had already tried to raise the issue by having a committee for revising the Virginia laws, appointed in 1776 with himself a member, frame a special amendment for disestablishing slavery. This contemplated a gradual emancipation of the after-born children, their tutelage by the state, their colonization at maturity, and their replacement in Virginia by white immigrants.[15] But a knowledge that such a project would raise a storm caused even its framers to lay it aside. The abolition of primogeniture and the severance of church from state absorbed reformers' energies at the expense of the slavery question. [Footnote 14: Jefferson, _Writings_, P.L. Ford ed., IV, 82-83.] [Footnote 15: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, various editions, query 14.] When writing his _Notes on Virginia_ in 1781 Jefferson denounced the slaveholding system in phrases afterward classic among abolitionists: "With what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one-half of the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies ... And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."[16] In the course of the same work, however, he deprecated abolition unless it were to be accompanied with deportation: "Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state...? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race ... This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question 'What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans, emancipation required but one effort. The slave when made free might mix without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture."[17] [Footnote 16: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, query 18.] [Footnote 17: _Ibid_., query 14.] George Washington wrote in 1786 that one of his chief wishes was that some plan might be adopted "by which slavery may be abolished by slow, sure and imperceptible degrees." But he noted in the same year that some abolition petitions presented to the Virginia legislature had barely been given a reading.[18] [Footnote 18: Washington, _Writings_, W.C. Ford ed., XI, 20, 62.] Seeking to revive the issue, Judge St. George Tucker, professor of law in William and Mary College, inquired of leading citizens of Massachusetts in 1795 for data and advice, and undaunted by discouraging reports received in reply or by the specific dissuasion of John Adams, he framed an intricate plan for extremely gradual emancipation and for expelling the freedmen without expense to the state by merely making their conditions of life unbearable. This was presented to the legislature in a pamphlet of 1796 at the height of the party strife between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans; and it was impatiently dismissed from consideration.[19] Tucker, still nursing his project, reprinted his "dissertation" as an appendix to his edition of Blackstone in 1803, where the people and the politicians let it remain buried. In public opinion, the problem as to the freedmen remained unsolved and insoluble. [Footnote 19: St. George Tucker, _A Dissertation on Slavery, with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it in the State of Virginia_ (Philadelphia, 1796, reprinted New York, 1860). Tucker's Massachusetts correspondence is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII (Belknap papers), 379-431.] Meanwhile the Virginia black code had been considerably moderated during and after the Revolution; and in particular the previous almost iron-clad prohibition of private manumission had been wholly removed in effect by an act of 1782. In spite of restrictions afterward imposed upon manumission and upon the residence of new freedmen in the state, the free negroes increased on a scale comparable to that in Maryland. As compared with an estimate of less than two thousand in 1782, there were 12,866 in 1790, 20,124 in 1800, and 30,570 in 1810. Thereafter the number advanced more slowly until it reached 58,042, about one-eighth as many as the slaves numbered, in 1860. In the more southerly states condemnation of slavery was rare. Among the people of Georgia, the depressing experience of the colony under a prohibition of it was too fresh in memory for them to contemplate with favor a fresh deprivation. In South Carolina Christopher Gadsden had written in 1766 likening slavery to a crime, and a decade afterward Henry Laurens wrote: "You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery.... The day, I hope is approaching when from principles of gratitude as well as justice every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my negroes produce if sold at public auction tomorrow.... Nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery. Great powers oppose me--the laws and customs of my country, my own and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say if I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest to a better hand. I am not one of those ... who dare trust in Providence for defence and security of their own liberty while they enslave and wish to continue in slavery thousands who are as well entitled to freedom as themselves. I perceive the work before me is great. I shall appear to many as a promoter not only of strange but of dangerous doctrines; it will therefore be necessary to proceed with caution."[20] Had either Gadsden or Laurens entertained thoughts of launching an anti-slavery campaign, however, the palpable hopelessness of such a project in their community must have dissuaded them. The negroes of the rice coast were so outnumbering and so crude that an agitation applying the doctrine of inherent liberty and equality to them could only have had the effect of discrediting the doctrine itself. Furthermore, the industrial prospect, the swamps and forests calling for conversion into prosperous plantations, suggested an increase rather than a diminution of the slave labor supply. Georgia and South Carolina, in fact, were more inclined to keep open the African slave trade than to relinquish control of the negro population. Revolutionary liberalism had but the slightest of echoes there. [Footnote 20: Frank Moore ed., _Correspondence of Henry Laurens_ (New York, 1861), pp. 20, 21. The version of this letter given by Professor Wallace in his _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 446, which varies from the present one, was derived from a paraphrase by John Laurens to whom the original was written. Cf. _South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine_, X. 49. For related items in the Laurens correspondence _see_ D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 445, 447-455.] In North Carolina the prevailing lack of enterprise in public affairs had no exception in regard to slavery. The Quakers alone condemned it. When in 1797 Nathaniel Macon, a pronounced individualist and the chief spokesman of his state in Congress, discussed the general subject he said "there was not a gentleman in North Carolina who did not wish there were no blacks in the country. It was a misfortune--he considered it a curse; but there was no way of getting rid of them." Macon put his emphasis upon the negro problem rather than upon the question of slavery, and in so doing he doubtless reflected the thought of his community.[21] The legislation of North Carolina regarding racial control, like that of the period in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, was more conservative than liberal. [Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, VII, 661. American historians, through preoccupation or inadvertence, have often confused anti-negro with anti-slavery expressions. In reciting the speech of Macon here quoted McMaster has replaced "blacks" with "slaves"; and incidentally he has made the whole discussion apply to Georgia instead of North Carolina. Rhodes in turn has implicitly followed McMaster in both errors. J.B. McMaster, _History of the People of the United States_, II, 359; J.F. Rhodes, _History of the United States_, I, 19.] The central government of the United States during the Revolution and the Confederation was little concerned with slavery problems except in its diplomatic affairs, where the question was merely the adjustment of property in slaves, and except in regard to the western territories. Proposals for the prohibition of slavery in these wilderness regions were included in the first projects for establishing governments in them. Timothy Pickering and certain military colleagues framed a plan in 1780 for a state beyond the Ohio River with slavery excluded; but it was allowed to drop out of consideration. In the next year an ordinance drafted by Jefferson was introduced into Congress for erecting territorial governments over the whole area ceded or to be ceded by the states, from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi and from Canada to West Florida; and one of its features was a prohibition of slavery after the year 1800 throughout the region concerned. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress could enact legislation only by the affirmative votes of seven state delegations. When the ballot was taken on the anti-slavery clause the six states from Pennsylvania eastward voted aye: Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina voted no; and the other states were absent. Jefferson was not alone in feeling chagrin at the defeat and in resolving to persevere. Pickering expressed his own views in a letter to Rufus King: "To suffer the continuance of slaves till they can be gradually emancipated, in states already overrun with them, may be pardonable because unavoidable without hazarding greater evils; but to introduce them into countries where none already exist ... can never be forgiven." King in his turn introduced a resolution virtually restoring the stricken clause, but was unable to bring it to a vote. After being variously amended, the ordinance without this clause was adopted. It was, however, temporary in its provision and ineffectual in character; and soon the drafting of one adequate for permanent purposes was begun. The adoption of this was hastened in July, 1787, by the offer of a New England company to buy from Congress a huge tract of Ohio land. When the bill was put to the final vote it was supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, Abraham Yates. Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland were present, and all of them voted aye. Its enactment gave to the country a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. Applying only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for the erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed in republican government, secured in the freedom of religion, jury trial and all concomitant rights, endowed with public land for the support of schools and universities, and while obligated to render fugitive slaves on claim of their masters in the original states, shut out from the régime of slaveholding itself.[22] "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory," it prescribed, "otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The first Congress under the new constitution reënacted the ordinance, which was the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government in the period. [Footnote 22: A.C. McLaughlin, _The Confederation and the Constitution_ (New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A. Hinsdale, _The Old Northwest_ (New York, 1888), chap. 15.] By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on the principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old régime: matter-of-fact reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. The plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the popular will to procure a general ratification. Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but under local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it continued to lie in the several state governments. The great convention at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all problems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignorance by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in another was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and the secrecy of the convention's proceedings exempted it from any pressure of anti-slavery sentiment from outside. On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises was discredited. Roger Sherman of Connecticut "observed that the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense of the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it." His colleague Oliver Ellsworth said, "The morality or wisdom of slavery are considerations belonging to the states themselves"; and again, "Let us not intermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts "thought we had nothing to do with the conduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it." The agreement was general that the convention keep its hands off so far as might be; but positive action was required upon incidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for the institution itself. These issues concerned the apportionment of representation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition of fugitives. This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of a clause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changed in its phrasing to read: "No person held to service or labour in one state under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due." After some jockeying, the other two questions were settled by compromise. Representation in the lower house of Congress was apportioned among the states "according to their several members, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons ... three fifths of all other persons." As to the foreign slave trade, Congress was forbidden to prohibit it prior to the year 1808, and was merely permitted meanwhile to levy an import duty upon slaves at a rate of not more than ten dollars each. [23] [Footnote 23: Max Farrand ed., _The Records of the Federal Convention_ (New Haven, 1911), _passim_] In the state conventions to which the Constitution was referred for ratification the debates bore out a remark of Madison's at Philadelphia that the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small states but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. The opponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slavery instrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on the ground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carried and that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect of a federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South the opposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of the African trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate, while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmost practicable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved. Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifying conventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered, strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and still were so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending to establish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful to the cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promote and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of slaves of every description."[24] The proposal seems to have received no further attention at the time. [Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H.V. Ames, "Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 208] In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of the few debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positive action. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was never enacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly by Quakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the close of the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a more concrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf of some negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard of legal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committee reported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizance alone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed, the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned at all with slavery was the act of 1793 empowering the master of an interstate fugitive to seize him wherever found, carry him before any federal or state magistrate in the vicinage, and procure a certificate warranting his removal to the state from which he had fled. Proposals to supplement this rendition act on the one hand by safeguarding free negroes from being kidnapped under fraudulent claims and on the other hand by requiring employers of strange negroes to publish descriptions of them and thus facilitate the recovery of runaways, were each defeated in the House. On the whole the glamor of revolutionary doctrines was passing, and self interest was regaining its wonted supremacy. While the rising cotton industry was giving the blacks in the South new value as slaves, Northern spokesmen were frankly stating an antipathy of their people toward negroes in any capacity whatever.[25] The succession of disasters in San Domingo, meanwhile, gave warning against the upsetting of racial adjustments in the black belts, and the Gabriel revolt of 1800 in Virginia drove the lesson home. On slavery questions for a period of several decades the policy of each of the two sections was merely to prevent itself from being overreached. The conservative trend, however, could not wholly remove the Revolution's impress of philosophical liberalism from the minds of men. Slavery was always a thing of appreciable disrelish in many quarters; and the slave trade especially, whether foreign or domestic, bore a permanent stigma. [Footnote 25: _E. g., Annals of Congress_, 1799-1801, pp. 230-246.] CHAPTER VIII THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE The many attempts of the several colonies to restrict or prohibit the importation of slaves were uniformly thwarted, as we have seen, by the British government. The desire for prohibition, however, had been far from constant or universal.[1] The first Continental Congress when declaring the Association, on October 18, 1774, resolved: "We will neither import, nor purchase any slave imported, after the first day of December next; after which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves nor will we hire our vessels nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[2] But even this was mainly a political stroke against the British government; and the general effect of the restraint lasted not more than two or three years.[3] The ensuing war, of course, hampered the trade, and the legislatures of several Northern states, along with Delaware and Virginia, took occasion to prohibit slave importations. The return of peace, although followed by industrial depression, revived the demand for slave labor. Nevertheless, Maryland prohibited the import by an act of 1783; North Carolina laid a prohibitive duty in 1787; and South Carolina in the spring of that year enacted the first of a series of temporary laws which maintained a continuous prohibition for sixteen years. Thus at the time when the framers of the Federal Constitution were stopping congressional action for twenty years, the trade was legitimate only in a few of the Northern states, all of which soon enacted prohibitions, and in Georgia alone at the South. The San Domingan cataclysm prompted the Georgia legislature in an act of December 19, 1793, to forbid the importation of slaves from the West Indies, the Bahamas and Florida, as well as to require free negroes to procure magisterial certificates of industriousness and probity.[4] The African trade was left open by that state until 1798, when it was closed both by legislative enactment and by constitutional provision. [Footnote 1: The slave trade enactments by the colonies, the states and the federal government are listed and summarized in W.E.B. DuBois, _The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638-1870_ (New York, 1904), appendices.] [Footnote 2: W.C. Ford, ed., _Journals of the Continental Congress_ (Washington, 1904), I, 75, 77.] [Footnote 3: DuBois, pp. 44-48.] [Footnote 4: The text of the act, which appears never to have been printed, is in the Georgia archives. For a transcript I am indebted to the Hon. Philip Cook, Secretary of State of Georgia.] The scale of the importation in the period when Georgia alone permitted them appears to have been small. For the year 1796, for example, the imports at Savannah were officially reported at 2084, including some who had been brought coastwise from the northward for sale.[5] A foreign traveler who visited Savannah in the period noted that the demand was light because of the dearth of money and credit, that the prices were about three hundred dollars per head, that the carriers were mainly from New England, and that one third of each year's imports were generally smuggled into South Carolina.[6] [Footnote 5: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, pp. 459, 460.] [Footnote 6: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ (London, 1799), p. 605.] In the impulse toward the prohibitory acts the humanitarian motive was obvious but not isolated. At the North it was supplemented, often in the same breasts, by the inhumane feeling of personal repugnance toward negroes. The anti-slave-trade agitation in England also had a contributing influence; and there were no economic interests opposing the exclusion. At the South racial repugnance was fainter, and humanitarianism though of positive weight was but one of several factors. The distinctively Southern considerations against the trade were that its continuance would lower the prices of slaves already on hand, or at least prevent those prices from rising; that it would so increase the staple exports as to spoil the world's market for them; that it would drain out money and keep the community in debt; that it would retard the civilization of the negroes already on hand; and that by raising the proportion of blacks in the population it would intensify the danger of slave insurrections. The several arguments had varying degrees of influence in the several areas. In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-going comfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer districts the settlers were more confident in their own alertness. Again, where prosperity was declining the planters were fairly sure to favor anything calculated to raise the prices of slaves which they might wish in future to sell, while on the other hand the people in districts of rising industry were tempted by programmes tending to cheapen the labor they needed. The arguments used in South Carolina for and against exclusion may be gathered from scattering reports in the newspapers. In September, 1785, the lower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governor on the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committee of fifteen on the state of the republic. In this committee there was a vigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting slave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it. Since the peace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven thousand slaves had been imported, which at £50 each would be trifling as a cause of the existing stringency; and the closing of the ports would therefore fail to relieve the distress[7] Thomas Pinckney supported Rutledge with an argument that the exclusion of the trade from Charleston would at once drive commerce in general to the ports of Georgia and North Carolina, and that the advantage of low prices, which he said had fallen from a level of £90 in 1783, would be lost to the planters. Judge Pendleton, on the other hand, stressed the need of retrenchment. Planters, he said, no longer enjoyed the long loans which in colonial times had protected them from distress; and the short credits now alone available put borrowers in peril of bankruptcy from a single season of short crops and low prices.[8] The committee reported Izard's bill; but it was defeated in the House by a vote of 47 to 51, and an act was passed instead for an emission of bills of credit by the state. The advocacy of the trade by Thomas Pinckney indicates that at this time there was no unanimity of conservatives against it. [Footnote 7: Charleston _Evening Gazette_, Sept. 26 and 28, 1785.] [Footnote 8: _Ibid_., Oct. 1, 1785.] When two years later the stringency persisted, the radicals in the legislature demanded a law to stay the execution of debts, while the now unified conservatives proposed again the stoppage of the slave trade. In the course of the debate David Ramsay "made a jocose remark that every man who went to church last Sunday and said his prayers was bound by a spiritual obligation to refuse the importation of slaves. They had devoutly prayed not to be led into temptation, and negroes were a temptation too great to be resisted."[9] The issue was at length adjusted by combining the two projects of a stay-law and a prohibition of slave importations for three years in a single bill. This was approved on March 28, 1787; and a further act of the same day added a penalty of fine to that of forfeiture for the illegal introduction of slaves. The exclusion applied to slaves from every source, except those whose masters should bring them when entering the state as residents.[10] [Footnote 9: Charleston _Morning Post_, March 23, 1787.] [Footnote 10: _Ibid_., March 29, 1787; Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at Large of South Carolina_, VII, 430.] Early in the next year an attempt was made to repeal the prohibition. Its leading advocate was Alexander Gillon, a populistic Charleston merchant who had been made a commodore by the State of South Carolina but had never sailed a ship. The opposition was voiced so vigorously by Edward Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, Chancellor Matthews, Dr. Ramsay, Mr. Lowndes, and others that the project was crushed by 93 votes to 40. The strongest weapon in the hands of its opponents appears to have been a threat of repealing the stay-law in retaliation.[11] At the end of the year the prohibitory act had its life prolonged until the beginning of 1793; and continuation acts adopted every two or three years thereafter extended the régime until the end of 1803. The constitutionality of the prohibition was tested before the judiciary of the state in January, 1802, when the five assembled judges unanimously pronounced it valid.[12] [Footnote 11: _Georgia State Gazette_ (Savannah), Feb. 17, 1788.] [Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Jan. 30, 1802.] But at last the advocates of the open trade had their innings. The governor in a message of November 24, 1803, recited that his best exertions to enforce the law had been of no avail. Inhabitants of the coast and the frontier, said he, were smuggling in slaves abundantly, while the people of the central districts were suffering an unfair competition in having to pay high prices for their labor. He mentioned a recently enacted law of Congress reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only to pronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction; and he dismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of smuggled slaves as "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction in servitude."[13] Having thus described the problem as insoluble by prohibitions, he left the solution to the legislature. [Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 5, 1803.] In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward by a statement of William Lowndes in Congress,[14] there is reason to believe that violations of the law had not been committed on a great scale. Slave prices could not have become nearly doubled, as they did during the period of legal prohibition, if African imports had been at all freely made. The governor may quite possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view to bringing the system of exclusion to an end. [Footnote 14: _Annals of Congress_, 1803-1804, p. 992.] However this may have been, a bill was promptly introduced in the Senate to repeal all acts against importations. Mr. Barnwell opposed this on the ground that the immense influx of slaves which might be expected in consequence would cut in half the value of slave property, and that the increase in the cotton output would lower the already falling prices of cotton to disastrous levels. The resumption of the great war in Europe, said he, had already diminished the supply of manufactured goods and raised their prices. "Was it under these circumstances that we ought to lay out the savings of our industry, the funds accumulated in many years of prosperity and peace, to increase that produce whose value had already fallen so much? He thought not. The permission given by the bill would lead to ruinous speculations. Everyone would purchase negroes. It was well known that those who dealt in this property would sell it at a very long credit. Our citizens would purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate crops and favorable markets for making their payments; and it would be found that South Carolina would in a few years, if this trade continued open, be in the same situation of debt, and subject to all misfortunes which that situation had produced, as at the close of the Revolutionary war." The newspaper closed its report of the speech by a concealment of its further burden: "The Hon. member adduced in support of his opinion various other arguments, still more cogent and impressive, which from reasons very obvious we decline making public."[15] It may be surmised that the suppressed remarks dealt with the danger of slave revolts. In the further course of the debate, "Mr. Smith said he would agree to put a stop to the importation of slaves, but he believed it impossible. For this reason he would vote for the bill." The measure soon passed the Senate. [Footnote 15: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 26, 1803.] Meanwhile the lower house had resolved on December 8, in committee of the whole, "that the laws prohibiting the importation of negroes and other persons of colour in this state can be so amended as to prevent their introduction amongst us," and had recommended that a select committee be appointed to draft a bill accordingly.[16] Within the following week, however, the sentiment of the House was swung to the policy of repeal, and the Senate bill was passed. On the test vote the ayes were 55 and the noes 46.[17] The act continued the exclusion of West Indian negroes, and provided that slaves brought in from sister states of the Union must have official certificates of good character; but as to the African trade it removed all restrictions. In 1805 a bill to prohibit imports again was introduced into the legislature, but after debate it was defeated.[18] [Footnote 16: _Ibid_., Dec. 20, 1803.] [Footnote 17: Charleston _City Gazette_, Dec. 22, 1803.] [Footnote 18: "Diary of Edward Hooker" in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] The local effect of the repeal is indicated in the experience of E.S. Thomas, a Charleston bookseller of the time who in high prosperity had just opened a new importation of fifty thousand volumes. As he wrote in after years, the news that the legislature had reopened the slave trade "had not been five hours in the city, before two large British Guineamen, that had been lying on and off the port for several days expecting it, came up to town; and from that day my business began to decline.... A great change at once took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for the coast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were bought up with avidity, not only consuming the large funds that had been accumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit and mortgaging the slaves for payment.... For myself, I was upwards of five years disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more than a half, in all the principal towns from Augusta in Georgia to Boston."[19] [Footnote 19: E.S. Thomas, _Reminiscences_, II, 35, 36.] As reported at the end of the period, the importations amounted to 5386 slaves in 1804; 6790 in 1805; 11,458 in 1806; and 15,676 in 1807.[20] Senator William Smith of South Carolina upon examining the records at a later time placed the total at 39,310, and analysed the statistics as follows: slaves brought by British vessels, 19,449; by French vessels, 1078; by American vessels, operated mostly for the account of Rhode Islanders and foreigners, 18,048.[21] If an influx no greater than this could produce the effect which Thomas described, notwithstanding that many of the slaves were immediately reshipped to New Orleans and many more were almost as promptly sold into the distant interior, the scale of the preceding illicit trade must have been far less than the official statements and the apologies in Congress would indicate. [Footnote 20: _Virginia Argus_, Jan. 19, 1808.] [Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, 1821-1822, pp. 73-77.] South Carolina's opening of the trade promptly spread dismay in other states. The North Carolina legislature, by a vote afterwards described as virtually unanimous in both houses, adopted resolutions in December, 1804, instructing the Senators from North Carolina and requesting her Congressmen to use their utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procure an amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at once to prohibit the further importation of slaves and other persons of color from Africa and the West Indies. Copies were ordered sent not only to the state's delegation in Congress but to the governors of the other states for transmission to the legislatures with a view to their concurrence.[22] In the next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of the time when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of the Constitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme of amendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for the temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of African importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at the beginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on the general question three years afterward. [Footnote 22: Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter of Governor James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.] [Footnote 23: H.V. Ames, _Proposed Amendments to the Constitution_, in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 208, 209.] [Footnote 24: Printed from Senator Plumer's notes, in the _American Historical Review_, XXII, 340-364.] In the winter of 1804-1805 bills were introduced in both Senate and House to prohibit slave importations at large; but the one was postponed for a year and the other was rejected,[25] doubtless because the time was not near enough when they could take effect. At last the matter was formally presented by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens," he said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe. Although no law you can pass can take effect until the day of the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be completed before that day."[26] Next day Senator Bradley of Vermont gave notice of a bill which was shortly afterward introduced and which, after an unreported discussion, was passed by the Senate on January 27. Its conspicuous provisions were that after the close of the year 1807 the importation of slaves was to be a felony punishable with death, and that the interstate coasting trade in slaves should be illegal. [Footnote 25: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, p. 105.] The report of proceedings in the House was now full, now scant. The paragraph of the President's message was referred on December 3 to a committee of seven with Peter Early of Georgia as chairman and three other Southerners in the membership. The committee's bill reported on December 15, proposed to prohibit slave importations, to penalize the fitting out of vessels for the trade by fine and forfeiture, to lay fines and forfeitures likewise upon the owners and masters found within the jurisdictional waters of the United States with slaves from abroad on board, and empowered the President to use armed vessels in enforcement. It further provided that if slaves illegally introduced should be found within the United States they should be forfeited, and any person wittingly concerned in buying or selling them should be fined; it laid the burden of proof upon defendants when charged on reasonable grounds of presumption with having violated the act; and it prescribed that the slaves forfeited should, like other goods in the same status, be sold at public outcry by the proper federal functionaries.[27] [Footnote 26: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 14.] [Footnote 27 _Ibid_., pp. 167, 168.] Mr. Sloan of New Jersey instantly moved to amend by providing that the forfeited slaves be entitled to freedom. Mr. Early replied that this would rob the bill of all effect by depriving it of public sanction in the districts whither slaves were likely to be brought. Those communities, he said, would never tolerate the enforcement of a law which would set fresh Africans at large in their midst. Mr. Smilie, voicing the sentiment and indicating the dilemma of most of his fellow Pennsylvanians, declared his unconquerable aversion to any measure which would make the federal government a dealer in slaves, but confessed that he had no programme of his own. Nathaniel Macon, the Speaker, saying that he thought the desire to enact an effective law was universal, agreed with Early that Sloan's amendment would defeat the purpose. Early himself waxed vehement, prophesying the prompt extermination of any smuggled slaves emancipated in the Southern states. The amendment was defeated by a heavy majority. Next day, however, Mr. Bidwell of Massachusetts renewed Sloan's attack by moving to strike out the provision for the forfeiture of the slaves; but his colleague Josiah Quincy, supported by the equally sagacious Timothy Pitkin of Connecticut, insisted upon the necessity of forfeiture; and Early contended that this was particularly essential to prevent the smuggling of slaves across the Florida border where the ships which had brought them would keep beyond the reach of congressional laws. The House finding itself in an impasse referred the bill back to the same committee, which soon reported it in a new form declaring the illegal importation of slaves a felony punishable with death. Upon Early's motion this provision was promptly stricken out in committee of the whole by a vote of 60 to 41; whereupon Bidwell renewed his proposal to strike out the forfeiture of slaves. He was numerously supported in speeches whose main burden was that the United States government must not become the receiver of stolen goods. The speeches in reply stressed afresh the pivotal quality of forfeiture in an effective law; and Bidwell when pressed for an alternative plan could only say that he might if necessary be willing to leave them to the disposal of the several states, but was at any rate "opposed to disgracing our statute book with a recognition of the principle of slavery." Quincy replied that he wished Bidwell and his fellows "would descend from their high abstract ground to the level of things in their own state--such as have, do and will exist after your laws, and in spite of them." The Southern members, said he, were anxious for nothing so much as a total prohibition, and for that reason were insistent upon forfeiture. For the sake of enforcing the law, and for the sake of controlling the future condition of the smuggled slaves, forfeiture was imperative. Such a provision would not necessarily admit that the importers had had a title in the slaves before capture, but it and it alone would effectively divest them of any color of title to which they might pretend. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 36 to 63. When the bill with amendments was reported to the House by the committee of the whole, on December 31, there was vigorous debate upon the question of substituting imprisonment of from five to ten years in place of the death penalty. Mr. Talmadge of Connecticut supported the provision of death with a biblical citation; and Mr. Smilie said he considered it the very marrow of the bill. Mr. Lloyd of Maryland thought the death penalty would be out of proportion to the crime, and considered the extract from Exodus inapplicable since few of the negroes imported had been stolen in Africa. But Mr. Olin of Vermont announced that the man-stealing argument had persuaded him in favor of the extreme penalty. Early now became furious, and in his fury, frank. In a preceding speech he had pronounced slavery "an evil regretted by every man in the country."[28] He now said: "A large majority of the people in the Southern states do not ... believe it immoral to hold human flesh in bondage. Many deprecate slavery as an evil; as a political evil; but not as a crime. Reflecting men apprehend, at some future day, evils, incalculable evils, from it; but it is a fact that few, very few, consider it as a crime. It is best to be candid on this subject.... I will tell the truth. A large majority of people in the Southern states do not consider slavery as an evil. Let the gentleman go and travel in that quarter of the Union; let him go from neighborhood to neighborhood, and he will find that this is the fact. Some gentlemen appear to legislate for the sake of appearances.... I should like to know what honor you will derive from a law that will be broken every day of your lives."[29] Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf of his state of Rhode Island: "I wish the law made so strong as to prevent this trade in future; but I cannot believe that a man ought to be hung for only stealing a negro. Those who buy them are as bad as those who import them, and deserve hanging quite as much." The yeas and nays recorded at the end of the exhausting day showed 63 in favor and 53 against the substitution of imprisonment. The North was divided, 29 to 37, with the nays coming mostly from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut; the South, although South Carolina as well as Kentucky was evenly divided, cast 34 yeas to 16 nays. Virginia and Maryland, which might have been expected to be doubtful, virtually settled the question by casting 17 yeas against 6 nays. [Footnote 28: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 174.] [Footnote 29: _Ibid_., pp. 238, 239.] When the consideration of the bill was resumed on January 7, Mr. Bidwell renewed his original attack by moving to strike out the confiscation of slaves; and when this was defeated by 39 to 77, he attempted to reach the same end by a proviso "That no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of this act," This was defeated only by the casting vote of the Speaker. Those voting aye were all from Northern states, except Archer of Maryland, Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky and Williams of North Carolina. The noes were all from the South except one from New Hampshire, ten from New York, and one from Pennsylvania. The outcome was evidently unsatisfactory to the bulk of the members, for on the next day a motion to recommit the bill to a new committee of seventeen prevailed by a vote of 76 to 46. Among the members who shifted their position over night were six of the ten from New York, four from Maryland, three from Virginia, and two from North Carolina. In the new committee Bedinger of Kentucky, who was regularly on the Northern side, was chairman, and Early was not included. This committee reported in February a bill providing, as a compromise, that forfeited negroes should be carried to some place in the United States where slavery was either not permitted or was in course of gradual extinction, and there be indentured or otherwise employed as the President might deem best for them and the country. Early moved that for this there be substituted a provision that the slaves be delivered to the several states in which the captures were made, to be disposed of at discretion; and he said that the Southern people would resist the indenture provision with their lives. This reckless assertion suggests that Early was either set against the framing of an effective law, or that he spoke in mere blind rage. Before further progress was made the House laid aside its bill in favor of the one which the Senate had now passed. An amendment to this, striking out the death penalty, was adopted on February 12 by a vote of 67 to 48. The North gave 31 ayes and 36 noes, quite evenly distributed among the states. The South cast 37 ayes to 11 noes, five of the latter coming from Virginia, two from North Carolina, and one each from Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and South Carolina. A considerable shifting of votes appeared since the ballot on the same question six weeks before. Knight of Rhode Island, Sailly and Williams of New York, Helms of New Jersey and Wynns of North Carolina changed in favor of the extreme penalty; but they were more than offset by the opposite change of Bidwell of Massachusetts, Van Cortlandt of New York, Lambert of New Jersey, Clay and Gray of Virginia and McFarland of North Carolina. Numerous members from all quarters who voted on one of these roll-calls were silent at the other, and this variation also had a net result against the infliction of death. The House then filled the blank it had made in the bill by defining the offense as a high misdemeanor and providing a penalty of imprisonment of not less than five nor more than ten years. John Randolph opposed even this as excessive, but found himself unsupported. The House then struck out the prohibition of the coasting trade in slaves, and returned the bill as amended to the Senate. The latter concurred in all the changes except that as to the coastwise trade, and sent the bill back to the House. John Randolph now led in the insistence that the House stand firm. If the bill should pass without the amendment, said he, the Southern people would set the law at defiance, and he himself would begin the violation of so unconstitutional an infringement of the rights of property. The House voted to insist upon its amendment, and sent the bill to conference where in compromise the prohibition as to the coastwise carriage of slaves for sale was made to apply only to vessels of less than forty tons burthen. The Senate agreed to this. In the House Mr. Early opposed it as improper in law and so easy of evasion that it would be perfectly futile for the prevention of smuggling from Florida. John Randolph said: "The provision of the bill touched the right of private property. He feared lest at a future period it might be made the pretext of universal emancipation. He had rather lose the bill, he had rather lose all the bills of the session, he had rather lose every bill passed since the establishment of the government, than agree to the provision contained in this slave bill. It went to blow up the Constitution in ruins."[30] Concurrence was carried, nevertheless, by a vote of 63 to 49, in which the North cast 51 ayes to 12 noes, and the South 12 ayes to 37 noes. The Southern ayes were four from Maryland, four from North Carolina, two from Tennessee, and one each from Virginia and Kentucky. The Northern noes were five from New York, two each from New Hampshire and Vermont, and one each from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. [Footnote 30: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 626.] The bill then passed the House. Its variance from the original House bill was considerable, for it made the importation of slaves from abroad a high misdemeanor punishable with imprisonment; it prohibited the coastwise trade by sea in vessels of less than forty tons, and required the masters of larger vessels transporting negroes coastwise to deliver to the port officials classified manifests of the negroes and certificates that to the best of their knowledge and belief the slaves had not been imported since the beginning of 1808; and instead of forfeiture to the United States it provided that all smuggled slaves seized under the act should be subject to such disposal as the laws of the state or territory in which the seizure might be made should prescribe.[31] Randolph, still unreconciled, offered an explanatory act, February 27, that nothing in the preceding act should be construed to affect in any manner the absolute property right of masters in their slaves not imported contrary to the law, and that such masters should not be liable to any penalty for the coastwise transportation of slaves in vessels of less than forty tons. In attempting to force this measure through, he said that if it did not pass the House at once he hoped the Virginia delegation would wait on the President and remonstrate against his approving the act which had passed.[32] By a vote of 60 to 49 this bill was made the order for the next day; but its further consideration was crowded out by the rush of business at the session's close. The President signed the prohibitory bill on March 2, without having received the threatened Virginia visitation. [Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 1266-1270.] [Footnote 32: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 637.] Among the votes in the House on which the yeas and nays were recorded in the course of these complex proceedings, six may be taken as tests. They were on striking out the death penalty, December 31; on striking out the forfeiture of slaves, January 7; on the proviso that no person should be sold by virtue of the act, January 7; on referring the bill to a new committee, January 8; on striking out the death penalty from the Senate bill, February 12; and on the prohibition of the coasting trade in slaves in vessels of under forty tons, February 26. In each case a majority of the Northern members voted on one side of the question, and a yet larger majority of Southerners voted on the other. Twenty-two members voted in every case on the side which the North tended to adopt. These comprised seven from Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, three from Connecticut, and one or two from each of the other Northern states except Rhode Island and Ohio. They comprised also Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky, and Morrow of Virginia; while Williams of North Carolina was almost equally constant in opposing the policies advocated by the bulk of his fellow Southerners. On the other hand the regulars on the Southern side comprised not only ten Virginians, all of the six South Carolinians, except three of their number on the punishment questions, all of the four Georgians, three North Carolinians, two Marylanders and one Kentuckian, but in addition Tenney of New Hampshire, Schuneman, Van Rensselaer and Verplanck of New York on all but the punishment questions. On the whole, sectional divergence was fairly pronounced, but only on matters of detail. The expressions from all quarters of a common desire to make the prohibition of importations effective were probably sincere without material exception. As regards the Virginia group of states, their economic interest in high prices for slaves vouches for the genuine purpose of their representatives, while that of the Georgians and South Carolinians may at the most be doubted and not disproved. The South in general wished to prevent any action which might by implication stigmatize the slaveholding régime, and was on guard also against precedents tending to infringe state rights. The North, on the other hand, was largely divided between a resolve to stop the sanction of slavery and a desire to enact an effective law in the premises directly at issue. The outcome was a law which might be evaded with relative ease wherever public sanction was weak, but which nevertheless proved fairly effective in operation. When slave prices rose to high levels after the war of 1812 systematic smuggling began to prevail from Amelia Island on the Florida border, and on a smaller scale on the bayous of the Barataria district below New Orleans; but these operations were checked upon the passage of a congressional act in 1818 increasing the rewards to informers. Another act in the following year directed the President to employ armed vessels for police in both African and American waters, and incidentally made provisions contemplating the return of captured slaves to Africa. Finally Congress by an act of 1820 declared the maritime slave trade to be piracy.[33] Smuggling thereafter diminished though it never completely ceased. [Footnote 33: DuBois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, pp. 118-123.] As to the dimensions of the illicit importations between 1808 and 1860, conjectures have placed the gross as high as two hundred and seventy thousand.[34] Most of the documents in the premises, however, bear palpable marks of unreliability. It may suffice to say that these importations were never great enough to affect the labor supply in appreciable degree. So far as the general economic régime was concerned, the foreign slave trade was effectually closed in 1808. [Footnote 34: W.H. Collins, _The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States_ (New York [1904], pp. 12-20). _See also_ W.E.B. DuBois, "Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1891, p. 173.] At that time, however, there were already in the United States about one million slaves to serve as a stock from which other millions were to be born to replenish the plantations in the east and to aid in the peopling of the west. These were ample to maintain a chronic racial problem, and had no man invented a cotton gin their natural increase might well have glutted the market for plantation labor. Had the African source been kept freely open, the bringing of great numbers to meet the demand in prosperous times would quite possibly have so burdened the country with surplus slaves in subsequent periods of severe depression that slave prices would have fallen virtually to zero, and the slaveholding community would have been driven to emancipate them wholesale as a means of relieving the masters from the burden of the slaves' support. The foes of slavery had long reckoned that the abolition of the foreign trade would be a fatal blow to slavery itself. The event exposed their fallacy. Thomas Clarkson expressed the disappointment of the English abolitionists in a letter of 1830: "We certainly have been deceived in our first expectations relative to the fruit of our exertions. We supposed that when by the abolition of the slave trade the planters could get no more slaves, they would not only treat better those whom they then had in their power, but that they would gradually find it to their advantage to emancipate them. A part of our expectations have been realized; ... but, alas! where the heart has been desperately wicked, we have found no change. We did not sufficiently take into account the effect of unlimited power on the human mind. No man likes to part with power, and the more unbounded it is, the less he likes to part with it. Neither did we sufficiently take into account the ignominy attached to a black skin as the badge of slavery, and how difficult it would be to make men look with a favourable eye upon what they had looked [upon] formerly as a disgrace. Neither did we take sufficiently into account the belief which every planter has, that such an unnatural state as that of slavery can be kept up only by a system of rigour, and how difficult therefore it would be to procure a relaxation from the ordinary discipline of a slave estate."[35] [Footnote 35: MS. in private possession.] If such was the failure in the British West Indies, the change in conditions in the United States was even greater; for the rise of the cotton industry concurred with the prohibition of the African trade to enhance immensely the preciousness of slaves and to increase in similar degree the financial obstacle to a sweeping abolition. CHAPTER IX THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR The decade following the peace of 1783 brought depression in all the plantation districts. The tobacco industry, upon which half of the Southern people depended in greater or less degree, was entering upon a half century of such wellnigh constant low prices that the opening of each new tract for its culture was offset by the abandonment of an old one, and the export remained stationary at a little less than half a million hogsheads. Indigo production was decadent; and rice culture was in painful transition to the new tide-flow system. Slave prices everywhere, like those of most other investments, were declining in so disquieting a manner that as late as the end of 1794 George Washington advised a friend to convert his slaves into other forms of property, and said on his own account: "Were it not that I am principled against selling negroes, as you would cattle in a market, I would not in twelve months hence be possessed of a single one as a slave. I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome species of property ere many years have passed over our heads."[1] But at that very time the addition of cotton and sugar to the American staples was on the point of transforming the slaveholders' prospects. [Footnote 1: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, 1898, pp. 14, 15.] For centuries cotton had been among the world's materials for cloth, though the dearth of supply kept it in smaller use than wool or flax. This continued to be the case even when the original sources in the Orient were considerably supplemented from the island of Bourbon and from the colonies of Demarara, Berbice and Surinam which dotted the tropical South American coast now known as Guiana. Then, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the great English inventions of spinning and Weaving machinery so cheapened the manufacturing process that the world's demand for textiles was immensely stimulated. Europe was eagerly inquiring for new fiber supplies at the very time when the plantation states of America were under the strongest pressure for a new source of income. The green-seed, short-staple variety of cotton had long been cultivated for domestic use in the colonies from New Jersey to Georgia, but on such a petty scale that spinners occasionally procured supplies from abroad. Thus George Washington, who amid his many activities conducted a considerable cloth-making establishment, wrote to his factor in 1773 that a bale of cotton received from England had been damaged in transit.[2] The cutting off of the foreign trade during the war for independence forced the Americans to increase their cotton production to supply their necessities for apparel. A little of it was even exported at the end of the war, eight bags of which are said to have been seized by the customs officers at Liverpool in 1784 on the ground that since America could not produce so great a quantity the invoice must be fraudulent. But cotton was as yet kept far from staple rank by one great obstacle, the lack of a gin. The fibers of the only variety at hand clung to the seed as fast as the wool to the sheep's back. It had to be cut or torn away; and because the seed-tufts were so small, this operation when performed by hand was exceedingly slow and correspondingly expensive. The preparation of a pound or two of lint a day was all that a laborer could accomplish. [Footnote 2: MS. in the Library of Congress, Washington letter-books, XVII, 90.] The problem of the time had two possible solutions; the invention of a machine for cleaning the lint from the seed of the sort already at hand, or the introduction of some different variety whose lint was more lightly attached. Both solutions were applied, and the latter first in point of time though not in point of importance. About 1786 seed of several strains was imported from as many quarters by planters on the Georgia-Carolina coast. Experiments with the Bourbon variety, which yielded the finest lint then in the market, showed that the growing season was too short for the ripening of its pods; but seed procured from the Bahama Islands, of the sort which has ever since been known as sea-island, not only made crops but yielded a finer fiber than they had in their previous home. This introduction was accomplished by the simultaneous experiments of several planters on the Georgia coast. Of these, Thomas Spaulding and Alexander Bissett planted the seed in 1786 but saw their plants fail to ripen any pods that year. But the ensuing winter happened to be so mild that, although the cotton is not commonly a perennial outside the tropics, new shoots grew from the old roots in the following spring and yielded their crop in the fall.[3] Among those who promptly adopted the staple was Richard Leake, who wrote from Savannah at the end of 1788 to Tench Coxe: "I have been this year an adventurer, and the first that has attempted on a large scale, in the article of cotton. Several here as well as in Carolina have followed me and tried the experiment. I shall raise about 5000 pounds in the seed from about eight acres of land, and the next year I expect to plant from fifty to one hundred acres."[4] [Footnote 3: Letter of Thomas Spaulding, Sapelo Island, Georgia, Jan. 20, 1844, to W.B. Scabrook, in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ (New York, 1857), pp. 280-286.] [Footnote 4: E.J. Donnell, _Chronological and Statistical History of Cotton_ (New York, 1872), p. 45.] The first success in South Carolina appears to have been attained by William Elliott, on Hilton Head near Beaufort, in 1790. He bought five and a half bushels of seed in Charleston at 14s per bushel, and sold his crop at 10-1/2d per pound. In the next year John Screven of St. Luke's parish planted thirty or forty acres, and sold his yield at from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d. sterling per pound. Many other planters on the islands and the adjacent mainland now joined the movement. Some of them encountered failure, among them General Moultrie of Revolutionary fame who planted one hundred and fifty acres in St. John's Berkeley in 1793 and reaped virtually nothing.[5] [Footnote 5: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, _Memoir on the Origin, Cultivation and Uses of Cotton_ (Charleston, 1844), pp. 19, 20.] The English market came promptly to esteem the long, strong, silky sea-island fiber as the finest of all cottons; and the prices at Liverpool rose before the end of the century to as high as five shillings a pound. This brought fortunes in South Carolina. Captain James Sinkler from a crop of three hundred acres on his plantation, "Belvedere," in 1794 gathered 216 pounds to the acre, which at prices ranging from fifty to seventy-five cents a pound brought him a gross return of $509 per laborer employed.[6] Peter Gaillard of St. John's Berkeley received for his crop of the same year an average of $340 per hand; and William Brisbane of St. Paul's earned so much in the three years from 1796 to 1798 that he found himself rich enough to retire from work and spend several years in travel at the North and abroad. He sold his plantation to William Seabrook at a price which the neighbors thought ruinously high, but Seabrook recouped the whole of it from the proceeds of two years' crops.[7] [Footnote 6: Samuel DuBose, _Address delivered before the Black Oak Agricultural Society, April 28, 1858_, in T.G. Thomas, _The Huguenots of South Carolina_ (New York, 1887).] [Footnote 7: W.B. Seabrook, _Memoir on Cotton_, p. 20.] The methods of tillage were quickly systematized. Instead of being planted, as at first, in separate holes, the seed came to be drilled and plants grown at intervals of one or two feet on ridges five or six feet apart; and the number of hoeings was increased. But the thinner fruiting of this variety prevented the planters from attaining generally more than about half the output per acre which their upland colleagues came to reap from their crops of the shorter staple. A hundred and fifty pounds to the acre and three or four acres to the hand was esteemed a reasonable crop on the seaboard.[8] The exports of the sea-island staple rose by 1805 to nearly nine million pounds, but no further expansion occurred until 1819 when an increase carried the exports for a decade to about eleven million pounds a year. In the course of the twenties Kinsey Burden and Hugh Wilson, both of St. John's Colleton, began breeding superfine fiber through seed selection, with such success that the latter sold two of his bales in 1828 at the unequaled price of two dollars a pound. The practice of raising fancy grades became fairly common after 1830, with the result, however, that for the following decade the exports fell again to about eight million pounds a year.[9] [Footnote 8: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. 132; J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 129, 131.] [Footnote 9: Seabrook, pp. 35-37, 53.] Sea-island cotton, with its fibers often measuring more than two inches in length, had the advantages of easy detachment from its glossy black seed by squeezing it between a pair of simple rollers, and of a price for even its common grades ranging usually more than twice that of the upland staple. The disadvantages were the slowness of the harvesting, caused by the failure of the bolls to open wide; the smallness of the yield; and the necessity of careful handling at all stages in preparing the lint for market. Climatic requirements, furthermore, confined its culture within a strip thirty or forty miles wide along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. In the first flush of the movement some of the rice fields were converted to cotton;[10] but experience taught the community ere long that the labor expense in the new industry absorbed too much of the gross return for it to displace rice from its primacy in the district. [Footnote 10: F.A. Michaux, _Travels_, in R.G. Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, 303.] In the Carolina-Georgia uplands the industrial and social developments of the eighteenth century had been in marked contrast with those on the seaboard. These uplands, locally known as the Piedmont, were separated from the tide-water tract by a flat and sandy region, the "pine barrens," a hundred miles or more in breadth, where the soil was generally too light for prosperous agriculture before the time when commercial fertilizers came into use. The Piedmont itself is a rolling country, extending without a break from Virginia to Alabama and from the mountains of the Blue Ridge to the line of the lowest falls on the rivers. The soil of mingled clay and sand was originally covered with rich forest mold. The climate was moderately suited to a great variety of crops; but nothing was found for which it had a marked superiority until short-staple cotton was made available. In the second half of the eighteenth century this region had come to be occupied in scattered homesteads by migrants moving overland from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, extending their régime of frontier farms until the stubborn Creek and Cherokee Indian tribes barred further progress. Later comers from the same northeastward sources, some of them bringing a few slaves, had gradually thickened the settlement without changing materially its primitive system of life. Not many recruits had entered from the rice coast in colonial times, for the régime there was not such as to produce pioneers for the interior. The planters, unlike those of Maryland and Virginia, had never imported appreciable numbers of indentured servants to become in after years yeomen and fathers of yeomen; the slaves begat slaves alone to continue at their masters' bidding; and the planters themselves had for the time being little inducement to forsake the lowlands. The coast and the Piedmont were unassociated except by a trickle of trade by wagon and primitive river-boat across the barrens. The capture of Savannah and Charleston by the British during the War for Independence, however, doubtless caused a number of the nearby inhabitants to move into the Piedmont as refugees, carrying their slaves with them. The commercial demands of the early settlers embraced hardly anything beyond salt, ammunition and a little hardware. The forest and their half-cleared fields furnished meat and bread; workers in the households provided rude furniture and homespun; and luxuries, except home-made liquors, were unknown. But the time soon came when zealous industry yielded more grain and cattle than each family needed for its own supply. The surplus required a market, which the seaboard was glad to furnish. The road and river traffic increased, and the procurement of miscellaneous goods from the ports removed the need of extreme diversity in each family's work. This treeing of energy led in turn to a search for more profitable market crops. Flax and hemp were tried, and tobacco with some success. Several new villages were founded, indeed, on the upper courses of the rivers to serve as stations for the inspection and shipment of tobacco; but their budding hopes of prosperity from that staple were promptly blighted. The product was of inferior grade, the price was low, and the cost of freightage high. The export from Charleston rose from 2680 hogsheads in 1784 to 9646 in 1799, but rapidly declined thereafter. Tobacco, never more than a makeshift staple, was gladly abandoned for cotton at the first opportunity.[11] [Footnote 11: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860_ (New York, 1908), pp. 46-55.] At the time of the federal census of 1790 there were in the main group of upland counties of South Carolina, comprised then in the two "districts" of Camden and Ninety-six, a total of 91,704 white inhabitants, divided into 15,652 families. Of these 3787 held slaves to the number of 19,934--an average of 5-1/4 slaves in each holding. No more than five of these parcels comprised as many as one hundred slaves each, and only 156 masters, about four per cent, of the whole, had as many as twenty each. These larger holdings, along with the 335 other parcels ranging from ten to nineteen slaves each, were of course grouped mainly in the river counties in the lower part of the Piedmont, while the smallest holdings were scattered far and wide. That is to say, there was already discoverable a tendency toward a plantation régime in the localities most accessible to market, while among the farmers about one in four had one or more slaves to aid in the family's work. The Georgia Piedmont, for which the returns of the early censuses have been lost, probably had a somewhat smaller proportion of slaves by reason of its closer proximity to the Indian frontier. A sprinkling of slaves was enough to whet the community's appetite for opportunities to employ them with effect and to buy more slaves with the proceeds. It is said that in 1792 some two or three million pounds of short-staple cotton was gathered in the Piedmont,[12] perhaps in anticipation of a practicable gin, and that the state of Georgia had appointed a commission to promote the desired invention.[13] It is certain that many of the citizens were discussing the problem when in the spring of 1793 young Eli Whitney, after graduating at Yale College, left his home in Massachusetts intending to teach school in the South. While making a visit at the home of General Greene's widow, near Savannah, he listened to a conversation on the subject by visitors from upland Georgia, and he was urged by Phineas Miller, the manager of the Greene estate, to apply his Yankee ingenuity to the solution. When Miller offered to bear the expenses of the project, Whitney set to work, and within ten days made a model which met the essential requirements. This comprised a box with a slatted side against which a wooden cylinder studded with wire points was made to play. When seed cotton was fed into the box and the cylinder was revolved, the sharp wires passing between the slats would engage the lint and pull it through as they passed out in the further revolution of the cylinder. The seed, which were too large to pass through the grating, would stay within the hopper until virtually all the wool was torn off, whereupon they would fall through a crevice on the further side. The minor problem which now remained of freeing the cylinder's teeth from their congestion of lint found a solution in Mrs. Greene's stroke with a hearth-broom. Whitney, seizing the principle, equipped his machine with a second cylinder studded with brushes, set parallel to the first but revolving in an opposite direction and at a greater speed. This would sweep the teeth clean as fast as they emerged lint-laden from the hopper. Thus was the famous cotton-gin devised.[14] [Footnote 12: Letter of Phineas Miller to the Comptroller of South Carolina, in the _American Historical Review_, III, 115.] [Footnote 13: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_ (New York, 1807), p. 23.] [Footnote 14: Denison Olmstead, _Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esq_. (New Haven, 1846), reprinted in J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 297-320. M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, pp. 25, 26.] Miller, who now married Mrs. Greene, promptly entered into partnership with Whitney not only to manufacture gins but also to monopolize the business of operating them, charging one-third of the cotton as toll. They even ventured into the buying and selling of the staple on a large scale. Miller wrote Whitney in 1797, for example, that he was trying to raise money for the purchase of thirty or forty thousand pounds of seed cotton at the prevailing price of three cents, and was projecting a trade in the lint to far-off Tennessee.[15] By this time the partners had as many as thirty gins in operation at various points in Georgia; but misfortune had already begun to pursue them. Their shop on the Greene plantation had been forced by a mob even before their patent was procured in 1793, and Jesse Bull, Charles M. Lin and Edward Lyons, collaborating near Wrightsboro, soon put forth an improved gin in which saw-toothed iron discs replaced the wire points of the Whitney model.[16] Whitney had now returned to New Haven to establish a gin factory, and Miller wrote him in 1794 urging prompt shipments and saying: "The people of the country are running mad for them, and much can be said to justify their importunity. When the present crop is harvested there will be a real property of at least fifty thousand dollars lying useless unless we can enable the holders to bring it to market," But an epidemic prostrated Whitney's workmen that year, and a fire destroyed his factory in 1795. Meanwhile rival machines were appearing in the market, and Whitney and Miller were beginning their long involvement in lawsuits. Their overreaching policy of monopolizing the operation of their gins turned public sentiment against them and inclined the juries, particularly in Georgia, to decide in favor of their opponents. Not until 1807, when their patent was on the point of expiring did they procure a vindication in the Georgia courts. Meanwhile a grant of $50,000 from the legislature of South Carolina to extinguish the patent right in that state, and smaller grants from North Carolina and Tennessee did little more than counterbalance expenses.[17] A petition which Whitney presented to Congress in 1812 for a renewal of his expired patent was denied, and Whitney turned his talents to the manufacture of muskets. [Footnote 15: _American Historical Review_. Ill, 104.] [Footnote 16: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 289, 290, 293-295.] [Footnote 17: M.B. Hammond, "Correspondence of Eli Whitney relating to the Invention of the Cotton Gin," in the _American Historical Review_, III, 90-127.] In Georgia the contest of lawyers in the courts was paralleled by a battle of advertisers in the newspapers. Thomas Spaulding offered to supply Joseph Eve's gins from the Bahama Islands at fifty guineas each;[18] and Eve himself shortly immigrated to Augusta to contend for his patent rights on roller-gins, for some of his workmen had changed his model in such a way as to increase the speed, and had put their rival gins upon the market.[19] Among these may have been John Currie, who offered exclusive county rights at $100 each for the making, using and vending of his type of gins,[20] also William Longstreet of Augusta who offered to sell gins of his own devising at $150 each,[21] and Robert Watkins of the short-lived town of Petersburg, Georgia, who denounced Longstreet as an infringer of his patent and advertised local non-exclusive rights for making and using his own style of gins at the bargain rate of sixty dollars.[22] All of these were described as roller gins; but all were warranted to gin upland as well as sea-island cotton.[23] By the year 1800 Miller and Whitney had also adopted the practice of selling licenses in Georgia, as is indicated by an advertisement from their agent at Augusta. Meanwhile ginners were calling for negro boys and girls ten or twelve years old on hire to help at the machines;[24] and were offering to gin for a toll of one-fifth of the cotton.[25] As years passed the rates were still further lowered. At Augusta in 1809, for example, cotton was ginned and packed in square bales of 350 pounds at a cost of $1.50 per hundredweight.[26] [Footnote 18: _Columbian Museum_ (Savannah, Ga.), April 26, 1796.] [Footnote 19: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 281.] [Footnote 20: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Dec. 10, 1796.] [Footnote 21: _Southern Sentinel_ (Augusta, Ga.), July 14, 1796.] [Footnote 22: _Ibid_., Feb. 7, 1797; Augusta _Chronicle_, June 10, 1797.] [Footnote 23: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 13, 1800.] [Footnote 24: _Southern Sentinel_, April 23, 1795.] [Footnote 25: Augusta _Chronicle_, Jan. 16, 1796.] [Footnote 26: _Ibid_., Sept. 9, 1809.] The upland people of Georgia and the two Carolinas made prompt response to the new opportunity. By 1800 even Tennessee had joined the movement, and a gin of such excellence was erected near Nashville that the proprietors exacted fees from visitors wishing to view it;[27] and by 1802 not only were consignments being shipped to New Orleans for the European market, but part of the crop was beginning to be peddled in wagons to Kentucky and in pole-boats on the Ohio as far as Pittsburg, for the domestic making of homespun.[28] In 1805 John Baird advertised at Nashville that, having received a commission from correspondents at Baltimore, he was ready to buy as much as one hundred thousand pounds of lint at fifteen cents a pound.[29] In the settlements about Vicksburg in the Mississippi Territory, cotton was not only the staple product by 1809, but was also for the time being the medium of exchange, while in Arkansas the squatters were debarred from the new venture only by the poverty which precluded them from getting gins.[30] In Virginia also, in such of the southerly counties as had summers long enough for the crop to ripen in moderate security, cotton growing became popular. But for the time being these were merely an out-lying fringe of cotton's principality. The great rush to cotton growing prior to the war of 1812 occurred in the Carolina-Georgia Piedmont, with its trend of intensity soon pointing south-westward. [Footnote 27: _Tennessee Gazette_ (Nashville, Tenn.), April 9, 1800.] [Footnote 28: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, 252.] [Footnote 29: _Tennessee Gazette_, March 27, 1805.] [Footnote 30: F. Cuming, _Tour to the Western Country_ (Pittsburg, 1810), in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 272, 280, 298.] A shrewd contemporary observer found special reason to rejoice that the new staple required no large capital and involved no exposure to disease. Rice and indigo, said he, had offered the poorer whites, except the few employed as overseers, no livelihood "without the degradation of working with slaves"; but cotton, stimulating and elevating these people into the rank of substantial farmers, tended "to fill the country with an independent industrious yeomanry."[31] True as this was, it did not mean that producers on a plantation scale were at a disadvantage. Settlers of every type, in fact, adopted the crop as rapidly as they could get seed and ginning facilities, and newcomers poured in apace to share the prosperity. [Footnote 31: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1808), II, 448-9.] The exports mounted swiftly, but the world's market readily absorbed them at rising prices until 1801 when the short-staple output was about forty million pounds and the price at the ports about forty-four cents a pound. A trade in slaves promptly arose to meet the eager demand for labor; and migrants coming from the northward and the rice coast brought additional slaves in their train. General Wade Hampton was the first conspicuous one of these. With the masterful resolution which always characterized him, he carried his great gang from the seaboard to the neighborhood of Columbia and there in 1799 raised six hundred of the relatively light weight bales of that day on as many acres.[32] His crop was reckoned to have a value of some ninety thousand dollars.[33] [Footnote 32: Seabrook, pp. 16, 17.] [Footnote 33: Note made by L. C Draper from the Louisville, Ga., _Gazette_, Draper MSS., series VV, vol. XVI, p. 84, Wisconsin Historical Society.] The general run of the upland cultivators, however, continued as always to operate on a minor scale; and the high cost of transportation caused them generally to continue producing miscellaneous goods to meet their domestic needs. The diversified régime is pictured in Michaux's description of a North Carolina plantation in 1802: "In eight hundred acres of which it is composed, a hundred and fifty are cultivated in cotton, Indian corn, wheat and oats, and dunged annually, which is a great degree of perfection in the present state of agriculture in this part of the country. Independent of this [the proprietor] has built in his yard several machines that the same current of water puts in motion; they consist of a corn mill, a saw mill, another to separate the cotton seeds, a tan-house, a tan-mill, a distillery to make peach brandy, and a small forge where the inhabitants of the country go to have their horses shod. Seven or eight negro slaves are employed in the different departments, some of which are only occupied at certain periods of the year. Their wives are employed under the direction of the mistress in manufacturing cotton and linen for the use of the family."[34] [Footnote 34: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, 292.] The speed of the change to a general slaveholding régime in the uplands may easily be exaggerated. In those counties of South Carolina which lay wholly within the Piedmont the fifteen thousand slaves on hand in 1790 formed slightly less than one-fifth of the gross population there. By 1800 the number of slaves increased by seventy per cent., and formed nearly one-fourth of the gross; in the following decade they increased by ninety per cent., until they comprised one-third of the whole; from 1810 to 1820 their number grew at the smaller rate of fifty per cent, and reached two-fifths of the whole; and by 1830, with a further increase of forty per cent., the number of slaves almost overtook that of the whites. The slaves were then counted at 101,982, the whites at 115,318, and the free negroes at 2,115. In Georgia the slave proportion grew more rapidly than this because it was much smaller at the outset; in North Carolina, on the other hand, the rise was less marked because cotton never throve there so greatly. In its industrial requirements cotton was much closer to tobacco than to rice or sugar. There was no vital need for large units of production. On soils of the same quality the farmer with a single plow, if his family did the hoeing and picking, was on a similar footing with the greatest planter as to the output per hand, and in similar case as to cost of production per bale. The scale of cotton-belt slaveholdings rose not because free labor was unsuited to the industry but because slaveholders from the outside moved in to share the opportunity and because every prospering non-slaveholder and small slaveholder was eager to enlarge his personal scale of operations. Those who could save generally bought slaves with their savings; those who could not, generally continued to raise cotton nevertheless. The gross cotton output, in which the upland crop greatly and increasingly outweighed that of the sea-island staple, rapidly advanced from about forty-eight million pounds in 1801 to about eighty million in 1806; then it was kept stationary by the embargo and the war of 1812, until the return of peace and open trade sent it up by leaps and bounds again. The price dropped abruptly from an average of forty-four cents in the New York market in 1801 to nineteen cents in 1802, but there was no further decline until the beginning of the war with Great Britain.[35] [Footnote 35: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, table following p. 357.] Cotton's absorption of the people's energies already tended to become excessive. In 1790 South Carolina had sent abroad a surplus of corn from the back country measuring well over a hundred thousand bushels. But by 1804 corn brought in brigs was being advertised in Savannah to meet the local deficit;[36] and in the spring of 1807 there seems to have been a dearth of grain in the Piedmont itself. At that time an editorial in the _Augusta Chronicle_ ran as follows: "A correspondent would recommend to the planters of Georgia, now the season is opening, to raise more corn and less cotton ... The dear bought experience of the present season should teach us to be more provident for the future." [37] Under the conditions of the time this excess at the expense of grain was likely to correct itself at once, for men and their draught animals must eat to work, and in the prevailing lack of transportation facilities food could not be brought from a distance at a price within reach. The systematic basis of industry was the production, whether by planters or farmers, of such food as was locally needed and such supplies of cloth together with such other outfit as it was economical to make at home, and the devotion of all further efforts to the making of cotton. [Footnote 36: Savannah _Museum_, April n, 1804.] [Footnote 37: Reprinted in the _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), April 11, 1807.] Coincident with the rise of cotton culture in the Atlantic states was that of sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana. In this triangular district, whose apex is the junction of the Red and Mississippi rivers, the country is even more amphibious than the rice coast. Everywhere in fact the soil is too waterlogged for tillage except close along the Father of Waters himself and his present or aforetime outlets. Settlement must, therefore, take the form of strings of plantations and farms on these elevated riparian strips, with the homesteads fronting the streams and the fields stretching a few hundred or at most a few thousand yards to the rear; and every new establishment required its own levee against the flood. So long as there were great areas of unrestricted flood-plain above Vicksburg to impound the freshets and lower their crests, the levees below required no great height or strength; but the tasks of reclamation were at best arduous enough to make rapid expansion depend upon the spur of great expectations. The original colony of the French, whose descendants called themselves Creoles, was clustered about the town of New Orleans. A short distance up stream the river banks in the parishes of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist were settled at an early period by German immigrants; thence the settlements were extended after the middle of the eighteenth century, first by French exiles from Acadia, next by Creole planters, and finally by Anglo-Americans who took their locations mostly above Baton Rouge. As to the westerly bayous, the initial settlers were in general Acadian small farmers. Negro slaves were gradually introduced into all these districts, though the Creoles, who were the most vigorous of the Latin elements, were the chief importers of them. Their numbers at the close of the colonial period equalled those of the whites, and more than a tenth of them had been emancipated. The people in the later eighteenth century were drawing their livelihoods variously from hunting, fishing, cattle raising and Indian trading, from the growing of grain and vegetables for sale to the boatmen and townsmen, and from the production of indigo on a somewhat narrow margin of profit as the principal export crop. Attempts at sugar production had been made in 1725 and again in 1762, but the occurrence of winter frosts before the cane was fully ripe discouraged the enterprise; and in most years no more cane was raised than would meet the local demand for sirup and rum. In the closing decades of the century, however, worm pests devoured the indigo leaves with such thoroughness as to make harvesting futile; and thereby the planters were driven to seek an alternative staple. Projects of cotton were baffled by the lack of a gin, and recourse was once more had to sugar. A Spaniard named Solis had built a small mill below New Orleans in 1791 and was making sugar with indifferent success when, in 1794-1795, Etienne de Boré, a prominent Creole whose estate lay just above the town, bought a supply of seed cane from Solis, planted a large field with it, engaged a professional sugar maker, and installed grinding and boiling apparatus against the time of harvest. The day set for the test brought a throng of onlookers whose joy broke forth at the sight of crystals in the cooling fluid--for the good fortune of Boré, who received some $12,000 for his crop of 1796, was an earnest of general prosperity. Other men of enterprise followed the resort to sugar when opportunity permitted them to get seed cane, mills and cauldrons. In spite of a dearth of both capital and labor and in spite of wartime restrictions on maritime commerce, the sugar estates within nine years reached the number of eighty-one, a good many of which were doubtless the property of San Domingan refugees who were now pouring into the province with whatever slaves and other movables they had been able to snatch from the black revolution. Some of these had fled first to Cuba and after a sojourn there, during which they found the Spanish government oppressive, removed afresh to Louisiana. As late as 1809 the year's immigration from the two islands was reported by the mayor of New Orleans to the governor of Louisiana at 2,731 whites and 3,102 free persons of color, together with 3,226 slaves warranted as the property of the free immigrants.[38] The volume of the San Domingan influx from first to last was great enough to double the French-speaking population. The newcomers settled mainly in the New Orleans neighborhood, the whites among them promptly merging themselves with the original Creole population. By reason of their previous familiarity with sugar culture they gave additional stimulus to that industry. [Footnote 38: _Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Mch. 24, 1810.] Meanwhile the purchase of Louisiana by the United States in 1803 had transformed the political destinies of the community and considerably changed its economic prospects. After prohibiting in 1804 the importation into the territory of any slaves who had been brought from Africa since 1798, Congress passed a new act in 1805 which, though probably intended to continue the prohibition, was interpreted by the attorney-general to permit the inhabitants to bring in any slaves whatever from any place within the United States.[39] This news was published with delight by the New Orleans newspapers at the end of February, 1806;[40] and from that time until the end of the following year their columns bristled with advertisements of slaves from African cargoes "just arrived from Charleston." Of these the following, issued by the firm of Kenner and Henderson, June 24, 1806, is an example: "The subscribers offer for sale 74 prime slaves of the Fantee nation on board the schooner _Reliance_, I. Potter master, from Charleston, now lying opposite this city. The sales will commence on the 25th. inst. at 9 o'clock A.M., and will continue from day to day until the whole is sold.[41] Good endorsed notes will be taken in payment, payable the 1st. of January, 1807. Also [for sale] the above mentioned schooner _Reliance_, burthen about 60 tons, completely fitted for an African voyage." [Footnote 39: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, pp. 87-90. The acts of 1804 and 1805 are printed in B.P. Poore, _Charters and Constitutions_ (Washington, 1877), I, 691-697.] [Footnote 40: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 28, 1806.] [Footnote 41: _Louisiana Gazette_, July 4, 1806.] Upon the prohibition of the African trade at large in 1808, the slave demand of the sugar parishes was diverted to the Atlantic plantation states where it served to advertise the Louisiana boom. Wade Hampton of South Carolina responded in 1811 by carrying a large force of his slaves to establish a sugar estate of his own at the head of Bayou Lafourche, and a few others followed his example. The radical difference of the industrial methods in sugar from those in the other staples, however, together with the predominance of the French language, the Catholic religion and a Creole social régime in the district most favorable for sugar, made Anglo-Americans chary of the enterprise; and the revival of cotton prices after 1815 strengthened the tendency of migrating planters to stay within the cotton latitudes. Many of those who settled about Baton Rouge and on the Red River with cotton as their initial concern shifted to sugar at the end of the 'twenties, however, in response to the tariff of 1828 which heightened sugar prices at a time when the cotton market was depressed. This was in response, also, to the introduction of ribbon cane which matured earlier than the previously used Malabar and Otaheite varieties and could accordingly be grown in a somewhat higher latitude. The territorial spread was mainly responsible for the sudden advance of the number of sugar estates from 308 operating in 1827, estimated as employing 21,000 able-bodied slaves and having a gross value of $34,000,000, to 691 plantations in 1830,[42] with some 36,000 working slaves and a gross value of $50,000,000. At this time the output was at the rate of about 75,000 hogsheads containing 1,000 pounds of sugar each, together with some forty or fifty gallons of molasses per hogshead as a by-product. Louisiana was at this time supplying about half of the whole country's consumption of sugar and bade fair to meet the whole demand ere long.[43] The reduction of protective tariff rates, coming simultaneously with a rise of cotton prices, then checked the spread of the sugar industry, and the substitution of steam engines for horse power in grinding the cane caused some consolidation of estates. In 1842 accordingly, when the slaves numbered 50,740 and the sugar crop filled 140,000 hogsheads, the plantations were but 668.[44] The raising of the tariff anew in that year increased the plantations to 762 in 1845 and they reached their maximum number of 1,536 in 1849, when more than half of their mills were driven by steam[45] and their slaves numbered probably somewhat more than a hundred thousand of all ages.[46] Thereafter the recovery of the cotton market from the severe depression of the early 'forties caused a strong advance in slave prices which again checked the sugar spread, while the introduction of vacuum pans and other improvements in apparatus[47] promoted further consolidations. The number of estates accordingly diminished to 1,298 in 1859, on 987 of which the mills were steam driven, and on 52 of which the extraction and evaporation of the sugar was done by one sort or another of the newly invented devices. The gross number of slaves in the sugar parishes was nearly doubled between 1830 and 1850, but in the final ante-bellum decade it advanced only at about the rate of natural increase.[48] The sugar output advanced to 200,000 hogsheads in 1844 and to 450,000 in 1853. Bad seasons then reduced it to 74,000 in 1856; and the previous maximum was not equaled in the remaining ante-bellum years.[49] The liability of the crop to damage from drought and early frost, and to destruction from the outpouring of the Mississippi through crevasses in the levees, explains the fluctuations in the yield. Outside of Louisiana the industry took no grip except on the Brazos River in Texas, where in 1858 thirty-seven plantations produced about six thousand hogsheads.[50] [Footnote 42: _DeBow's Review_, I, 55.] [Footnote 43: V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, 1851), pp. 151 ff.] [Footnote 44: E.J. Forstall, _Agricultural Productions of Louisiana_ (New Orleans, 1845).] [Footnote 45: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in Louisiana_ (New Orleans, annual, 1848-1859).] [Footnote 46: DeBow, in the _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 94, estimated the sugar plantation slaves at 150,000; but this is clearly an overestimate.] [Footnote 47: Some of these are described by Judah P. Benjamin in _DeBow's Review_, II, 322-345.] [Footnote 48: _I. e_. from 150,000 to 180,000.] [Footnote 49: The crop of 1853, indeed, was not exceeded until near the close of the nineteenth century.] [Footnote 50: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop ... in 1858-1859_, p. 40.] In Louisiana in the banner year 1853, with perfect weather and no crevasses, each of some 50,000 able-bodied field hands cultivated, besides the incidental food crops, about five acres of cane on the average and produced about nine hogsheads of sugar and three hundred gallons of molasses per head. On certain specially favored estates, indeed, the product reached as much as fifteen hogsheads per hand[51]. In the total of 1407 fully equipped plantations 103 made less than one hundred hogsheads each, while forty produced a thousand hogsheads or more. That year's output, however, was nearly twice the size of the average crop in the period. A dozen or more proprietors owned two or more estates each, some of which were on the largest scale, while at the other extreme several dozen farmers who had no mills of their own sent cane from their few acres to be worked up in the spare time of some obliging neighbor's mill. In general the bulk of the crop was made on plantations with cane fields ranging from rather more than a hundred to somewhat less than a thousand acres, and with each acre producing in an ordinary year somewhat more than a hogshead of sugar. [Footnote 51: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 199, 200.] Until about 1850 the sugar district as well as the cotton belt was calling for labor from whatever source it might be had; but whereas the uplands had work for people of both races and all conditions, the demand of the delta lands, to which the sugar crop was confined, was almost wholly for negro slaves. The only notable increase in the rural white population of the district came through the fecundity of the small-farming Acadians who had little to do with sugar culture. CHAPTER X THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT The flow of population into the distant interior followed the lines of least resistance and greatest opportunity. In the earlier decades these lay chiefly in the Virginia latitudes. The Indians there were yielding, the mountains afforded passes thither, and the climate permitted the familiar tobacco industry. The Shenandoah Valley had been occupied mainly by Scotch-Irish and German small farmers from Pennsylvania; but the glowing reports, which the long hunters brought and the land speculators spread from beyond the further mountains, made Virginians to the manner born resolve to compete with the men of the backwoods for a share of the Kentucky lands. During and after the war for independence they threaded the gorges, some with slaves but most without. Here and there one found a mountain glade so fertile that he made it his permanent home, while his fellows pushed on to the greater promised land. Some of these emerging upon a country of low and uniform hills, closely packed and rounded like the backs of well-fed pigs crowding to the trough, staked out their claims, set up their cabins, deadened their trees, and planted wheat. Others went on to the gently rolling country about Lexington, let the luxuriant native bluegrass wean them from thoughts of tobacco, and became breeders of horses for evermore. A few, settling on the southerly edge of the bluegrass, mainly in and about Garrard County, raised hemp on a plantation scale. The rest, resisting all these allurements, pressed on still further to the pennyroyal country where tobacco would have no rival. While thousands made the whole journey overland, still more made use of the Ohio River for the later stages. The adjutant at Fort Harmar counted in seven months of 1786-1787, 177 boats descending the Ohio, carrying 2,689 persons, 1,333 horses, 766 cattle, 102 wagons and one phaëton, while still others passed by night uncounted.[1] The family establishments in Kentucky were always on a smaller scale, on an average, than those in Virginia. Yet the people migrating to the more fertile districts tended to maintain and even to heighten the spirit of gentility and the pride of type which they carried as part of their heritage. The laws erected by the community were favorable to the slaveholding régime; but after the first decades of the migration period, the superior attractions of the more southerly latitudes for plantation industry checked Kentucky's receipt of slaves. [Footnote 1: _Massachusetts Centinel_ (Boston), July 21, 1787.] The wilderness between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, meanwhile, was attracting Virginia and Carolina emigrants as well as those from the northerly states. The soil there was excellent, and some districts were suited to tobacco culture. The Ordinance of 1787, however, though it was not strictly enforced, made slaveholdings north of the Ohio negligible from any but an antiquarian point of view. The settlement of Tennessee was parallel, though subsequent, to that of the Shenandoah and Kentucky. The eastern intramontane valley, broad and fertile but unsuited to the staple crops, gave homes to thousands of small farmers, while the Nashville basin drew planters of both tobacco and cotton, and the counties along the western and southern borders of the state made cotton their one staple. The scale of slaveholdings in middle and western Tennessee, while superior to that in Kentucky, was never so great as those which prevailed in Virginia and the lower South. Missouri, whose adaptation to the southern staples was much poorer, came to be colonized in due time partly by planters from Kentucky but mostly by farmers from many quarters, including after the first decades a large number of Germans, some of whom entered through the eastern ports and others through New Orleans. This great central region as a whole acquired an agricultural régime blending the features of the two national extremes. The staples were prominent but never quite paramount. Corn and wheat, cattle and hogs were produced regularly nearly everywhere, not on a mere home consumption basis, but for sale in the cotton belt and abroad. This diversification caused the region to wane in the esteem of the migrating planters as soon as the Alabama-Mississippi country was opened for settlement. Preliminaries of the movement into the Gulf region had begun as early as 1768, when a resident of Pensacola noted that a group of Virginians had been prospecting thereabouts with such favorable results that five of them had applied for a large grant of lands, pledging themselves to bring in a hundred slaves and a large number of cattle.[2] In 1777 William Bartram met a group of migrants journeying from Georgia to settle on the lower course of the Alabama River;[3] and in 1785 a citizen of Augusta wrote that "a vast number" of the upland settlers were removing toward the Mississippi in consequence of the relinquishment of Natchez by the Spaniards.[4] But these were merely forerunners. Alabama in particular, which comprises for the most part the basin draining into Mobile Bay, could have no safe market for its produce until Spain was dispossessed of the outlet. The taking of Mobile by the United States as an episode of the war of 1812, and the simultaneous breaking of the Indian strength, removed the obstacles. The influx then rose to immense proportions. The roads and rivers became thronged, and the federal agents began to sell homesteads on a scale which made the "land office business" proverbial.[5] [Footnote 2: Boston, Mass, _Chronicle_, Aug. 1-7, 1768.] [Footnote 3: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), p. 441.] [Footnote 4: _South Carolina Gazette_, May 26, 1785.] [Footnote 5: C.F. Emerick, "The Credit System and the Public Domain," in the Vanderbilt University _Southern History Publications_, no. 3 (Nashville, Tenn., 1899).] The Alabama-Mississippi population rose from 40,000 in round numbers in 1810 to 200,000 in 1820, 445,000 in 1830, 965,000 in 1840, 1,377,000 in 1850, and 1,660,000 in 1860, while the proportion of slaves advanced from forty to forty-seven per cent. In the same period the tide flowed on into the cotton lands of Arkansas and Louisiana and eventually into Texas. Florida alone of the newer southern areas was left in relative neglect by reason of the barrenness of her soil. The states and territories from Alabama and Tennessee westward increased their proportion of the whole country's cotton output from one-sixteenth in 1811 to one-third in 1820, one-half before 1830, nearly two-thirds in 1840, and quite three-fourths in 1860; and all this was in spite of continued and substantial enlargements of the eastern output. In the western cotton belt the lands most highly esteemed in the ante-bellum period lay in two main areas, both of which had soils far more fertile and lasting than any in the interior of the Atlantic states. One of these formed a crescent across south-central Alabama, with its western horn reaching up the Tombigbee River into northeastern Mississippi. Its soil of loose black loam was partly forested, partly open, and densely matted with grass and weeds except where limestone cropped out on the hill crests and where prodigious cane brakes choked the valleys. The area was locally known as the prairies or the black belt.[6] The process of opening it for settlement was begun by Andrew Jackson's defeat of the Creeks in 1814 but was not completed until some twenty years afterward. The other and greater tract extended along both sides of the Mississippi River from northern Tennessee and Arkansas to the mouth of the Red River. It comprised the broad alluvial bottoms, together with occasional hill districts of rich loam, especially notable among the latter of which were those lying about Natchez and Vicksburg. The southern end of this area was made available first, and the hills preceded the delta in popularity for cotton culture. It was not until the middle thirties that the broadest expanse of the bottoms, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, began to receive its great influx. The rest of the western cotton belt had soils varying through much the same range as those of Georgia and the Carolinas. Except in the bottoms, where the planters themselves did most of the pioneering, the choicer lands of the whole district were entered by a pellmell throng of great planters, lesser planters and small farmers, with the farmers usually a little in the lead and the planters ready to buy them out of specially rich lands. Farmers refusing to sell might by their own thrift shortly rise into the planter class; or if they sold their homesteads at high prices they might buy slaves with the proceeds and remove to become planters in still newer districts. [Footnote 6: This use of the term "black belt" is not to be confused with the other and more general application of it to such areas in the South at large as have a majority of negroes in their population.] The process was that which had already been exemplified abundantly in the eastern cotton belt. A family arriving perhaps in the early spring with a few implements and a small supply of food and seed, would build in a few days a cabin of rough logs with an earthen floor and a roof of bark or of riven clapboards. To clear a field they would girdle the larger trees and clear away the underbrush. Corn planted in April would furnish roasting ears in three months and ripe grain in six weeks more. Game was plenty; lightwood was a substitute for candles; and housewifely skill furnished homespun garments. Shelter, food and clothing and possibly a small cotton crop or other surplus were thus had the first year. Some rested with this; but the more thrifty would soon replace their cabins with hewn log or frame houses, plant kitchen gardens and watermelon patches, set out orchards and increase the cotton acreage. The further earnings of a year or two would supply window glass, table ware, coffee, tea and sugar, a stock of poultry, a few hogs and even perhaps a slave or two. The pioneer hardships decreased and the homely comforts grew with every passing year of thrift. But the orchard yield of stuff for the still, and the cotton field's furnishing the wherewithal to buy more slaves, brought temptations. Distilleries and slaves, a contemporary said, were blessings or curses according as they were used or abused; for drunkenness and idleness were the gates of the road to retrogression.[7] [Footnote 7: David Ramsay _History of South Carolina_, II, pp. 246 ff.] The pathetic hardships which some of the poorer migrants underwent in their labors to reach the western opportunity are exemplified in a local item from an Augusta newspaper in 1819: "Passed through this place from Greenville District [South Carolina] bound for Chatahouchie, a man and his wife, his son and his wife, with a cart but no horse. The man had a belt over his shoulders and he drew in the shafts; the son worked by traces tied to the end of the shafts and assisted his father to draw the cart; the son's wife rode in the cart, and the old woman was walking, carrying a rifle, and driving a cow."[8] This example, while extreme, was not unique.[9] [Footnote 8: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 24, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 196.] [Footnote 9: _Niles' Register_, XX, 320.] The call of the west was carried in promoters' publications,[10] in private letters, in newspaper reports, and by word of mouth. A typical communication was sent home in 1817 by a Marylander who had moved to Louisiana: "In your states a planter with ten negroes with difficulty supports a family genteelly; here well managed they would be a fortune to him. With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here the crops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life never for a moment causes the heart to ache--abundance spreads the table of the poor man, and contentment smiles on every countenance."[11] Other accounts told glowingly of quick fortunes made and to be made by getting lands cheaply in the early stages of settlement and selling them at greatly enhanced prices when the tide of migration arrived in force.[12] Such ebullient expressions were taken at face value by thousands of the unwary; and other thousands of the more cautious followed in the trek when personal inquiries had reinforced the tug of the west. The larger planters generally removed only after somewhat thorough investigation and after procuring more or less acquiescence from their slaves; the smaller planters and farmers, with lighter stake in their homes and better opportunity to sell them, with lighter impedimenta for the journey, with less to lose by misadventure, and with poorer facilities for inquiry, responded more readily to the enticements. [Footnote 10: _E. g_., the Washington, Ky., _Mirror_, Sept. 30, 1797.] [Footnote 11: _Niles' Register_, XIII, 38.] [Footnote 12: _E. g., Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), March 11, 1836.] The fever of migration produced in some of the people an unconquerable restlessness. An extraordinary illustration of this is given in the career of Gideon Lincecum as written by himself. In 1802, when Gideon was ten years old, his father, after farming successfully for some years in the Georgia uplands was lured by letters from relatives in Tennessee to sell out and remove thither. Taking the roundabout road through the Carolinas to avoid the Cherokee country, he set forth with a wagon and four horses to carry a bed, four chests, four white and four negro children, and his mother who was eighty-eight years old. When but a few days on the road an illness of the old woman caused a halt, whereupon Lincecum rented a nearby farm and spent a year on a cotton crop. The journey was then resumed, but barely had the Savannah River been crossed when another farm was rented and another crop begun. Next year they returned to Georgia and worked a farm near Athens. Then they set out again for Tennessee; but on the road in South Carolina the wreck of the wagon and its ancient occupant gave abundant excuse for the purchase of a farm there. After another crop, successful as usual, the family moved back to Georgia and cropped still another farm. Young Gideon now attended school until his father moved again, this time southward, for a crop near Eatonton. Gideon then left his father after a quarrel and spent several years as a clerk in stores here and there, as a county tax collector and as a farmer, and began to read medicine in odd moments. He now married, about the beginning of the year 1815, and rejoined his father who was about to cross the Indian country to settle in Alabama. But they had barely begun this journey when the father, while tipsy, bought a farm on the Georgia frontier, where the two families settled and Gideon interspersed deer hunting with his medical reading. Next spring the cavalcade crossed the five hundred miles of wilderness in six weeks, and reached the log cabin village of Tuscaloosa, where Gideon built a house. But provisions were excessively dear, and his hospitality to other land seekers from Georgia soon consumed his savings. He began whipsawing lumber, but after disablement from a gunpowder explosion he found lighter employment in keeping a billiard room. He then set out westward again, breaking a road for his wagon as he went. Upon reaching the Tombigbee River he built a clapboard house in five days, cleared land from its canebrake, planted corn with a sharpened stick, and in spite of ravages from bears and raccoons gathered a hundred and fifty bushels from six acres. When the town of Columbus, Mississippi, was founded nearby in 1819 he sawed boards to build a house on speculation. From this he was diverted to the Indian trade, bartering whiskey, cloth and miscellaneous goods for peltries. He then became a justice of the peace and school commissioner at Columbus, surveyed and sold town lots on public account, and built two school houses with the proceeds. He then moved up the river to engage anew in the Indian trade with a partner who soon proved a drunkard. He and his wife there took a fever which after baffling the physicians was cured by his own prescription. He then moved to Cotton Gin Port to take charge of a store, but was invalided for three years by a sunstroke. Gradually recovering, he lived in the woods on light diet until the thought occurred to him of carrying a company of Choctaw ball players on a tour of the United States. The tour was made, but the receipts barely covered expenses. Then in 1830, Lincecum set himself up as a physician at Columbus. No sooner had he built up a practice, however, than he became dissatisfied with allopathy and went to study herb remedies among the Indians; and thereafter he practiced botanic medicine. In 1834 he went as surgeon with an exploring party to Texas and found that country so attractive that after some years further at Columbus he spent the rest of his long life in Texas as a planter, physician and student of natural history. He died there in 1873 at the age of eighty years.[13] [Footnote 13: F.L. Riley, ed., "The Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum," in the Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, VIII, 443-519.] The descriptions and advice which prospectors in the west sent home are exemplified in a letter of F.X. Martin, written in New Orleans in 1911, to a friend in eastern North Carolina. The lands, he said, were the most remunerative in the whole country; a planter near Natchez was earning $270 per hand each year. The Opelousas and Attakapas districts for sugar, and the Red River bottoms for cotton, he thought, offered the best opportunities because of the cheapness of their lands. As to the journey from North Carolina, he advised that the start be made about the first of September and the course be laid through Knoxville to Nashville. Traveling thence through the Indian country, safety would be assured by a junction with other migrants. Speed would be greater on horseback, but the route was feasible for vehicles, and a traveler would find a tent and a keg of water conducive to his comfort. The Indians, who were generally short of provisions in spring and summer, would have supplies to spare in autumn; and the prevailing dryness of that season would make the streams and swamps in the path less formidable. An alternative route lay through Georgia; but its saving of distance was offset by the greater expanse of Indian territory to be crossed, the roughness of the road and the frequency of rivers. The viewing of the delta country, he thought, would require three or four months of inspection before a choice of location could safely be made.[14] [Footnote 14: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 197-200.] The procedure of planters embarking upon long distance migration may be gathered from the letters which General Leonard Covington of Calvert County, Maryland, wrote to his brother and friends who had preceded him to the Natchez district. In August, 1808, finding a prospect of selling his Maryland lands, he formed a project of carrying his sixty slaves to Mississippi and hiring out some of them there until a new plantation should be ready for routine operation. He further contemplated taking with him ten or fifteen families of non-slaveholding whites who were eager to migrate under his guidance and wished employment by him for a season while they cast about for farms of their own. Covington accordingly sent inquiries as to the prevailing rates of hire and the customary feeding and treatment of slaves. He asked whether they were commonly worked only from "sun to sun," and explained his thought by saying, "It is possible that so much labor may be required of hirelings and so little regard may be had for their constitutions as to render them in a few years not only unprofitable but expensive." He asked further whether the slaves there were contented, whether they as universally took wives and husbands and as easily reared children as in Maryland, whether cotton was of more certain yield and sale than tobacco, what was the cost of clearing land and erecting rough buildings, what the abundance and quality of fruit, and what the nature of the climate. The replies he received were quite satisfactory, but a failure to sell part of his Maryland lands caused him to leave twenty-six of his slaves in the east. The rest he sent forward with a neighbor's gang. Three white men were in charge, but one of the negroes escaped at Pittsburg and was apparently not recaptured. Covington after detention by the delicacy of his wife's health and by duties in the military service of the United States, set out at the beginning of October, 1809, with his wife and five children, a neighbor named Waters and his family, several other white persons, and eleven slaves. He described his outfit as "the damnedest cavalcade that ever man was burdened with; not less than seven horses compose my troop; they convey a close carriage (Jersey stage), a gig and horse cart, so that my family are transported with comfort and convenience, though at considerable expense. All these odd matters and contrivances I design to take with me to Mississippi if possible. Mr. Waters will also take down his waggon and team." Upon learning that the Ohio was in low water he contemplated journeying by land as far as Louisville; but he embarked at Wheeling instead, and after tedious dragging "through shoals, sandbars and ripples" he reached Cincinnati late in November. When the last letter on the journey was written he was on the point of embarking afresh on a boat so crowded, that in spite of his desire to carry a large stock of provisions he could find room for but a few hundredweight of pork and a few barrels of flour. He apparently reached his destination at the end of the year and established a plantation with part of his negroes, leaving the rest on hire. The approach of the war of 1812 brought distress; cotton was low, bacon was high, and the sale of a slave or two was required in making ends meet. Covington himself was now ordered by the Department of War to take the field in command of dragoons, and in 1813 was killed in a battle beyond the Canadian border. The fate of his family and plantation does not appear in the records.[15] [Footnote 15: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 201-208.] A more successful migration was that of Col. Thomas S. Dabney in 1835. After spending the years of his early manhood on his ancestral tide-water estate, Elmington, in Gloucester County, Virginia, he was prompted to remove by the prospective needs of his rapidly growing family. The justice of his anticipations appears from the fact that his second wife bore him eventually sixteen children, ten of whom survived her. After a land-looking tour through Alabama and Louisiana, Dabney chose a tract in Hinds County, Mississippi, some forty miles east of Vicksburg, where he bought the property of several farmers as the beginning of a plantation which finally engrossed some four thousand acres. Returning to Virginia, he was given a great farewell dinner at Richmond, at which Governor Tyler presided and many speakers congratulated Mississippi upon her gain of such a citizen at Virginia's expense.[16] Several relatives and neighbors resolved to accompany him in the migration. His brother-in-law, Charles Hill, took charge of the carriages and the white families, while Dabney himself had the care of the wagons and the many scores of negroes. The journey was accomplished without mishap in two months of perfect autumn weather. Upon arriving at the new location most of the log houses were found in ruins from a recent hurricane; but new shelters were quickly provided, and in a few months the great plantation, with its force of two hundred slaves, was in routine operation. In the following years Dabney made it a practice to clear about a hundred acres of new ground annually. The land, rich and rolling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a general failure of crops was never experienced--the bottoms would thrive in dry seasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosper them all. The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabney at first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty of his slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved while directing their work, the beneficiary and his fellows were less grateful for the service than offended at the undemocratic manner of its rendering. When Dabney, furthermore, made no return calls for assistance, the restraint was increased. The rich might patronize the poor in the stratified society of old Virginia; in young Mississippi such patronage was an unpleasant suggestion that stratification was beginning.[17] With the passage of years and the continued influx of planters ready to buy their lands at good prices, such fanners as did not thrive tended to vacate the richer soils. The Natchez-Vicksburg district became largely consolidated into great plantations,[18] and the tract extending thence to Tuscaloosa, as likewise the district about Montgomery, Alabama, became occupied mostly by smaller plantations on a scale of a dozen or two slaves each,[19] while the non-slaveholders drifted to the southward pine-barrens or the western or northwestern frontiers. [Footnote 16: _Richmond Enquirer_, Sept. 22, 1835, reprinted in Susan D. Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (2d. ed., Baltimore, 1888), pp. 43-47.] [Footnote 17: Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 42-68.] [Footnote 18: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, 1860), pp. 20, 28] [Footnote 19: _Ibid_., pp. 160, 161; Robert Russell, _North America_ (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 207.] The caravans of migrating planters were occasionally described by travelers in the period. Basil Hall wrote of one which he overtook in South Carolina in 1828: "It ... did not consist of above thirty persons in all, of whom five-and-twenty at least were slaves. The women and children were stowed away in wagons, moving slowly up a steep, sandy hill; but the curtains being let down we could see nothing of them except an occasional glance of an eye, or a row of teeth as white as snow. In the rear of all came a light covered vehicle, with the master and mistress of the party. Along the roadside, scattered at intervals, we observed the male slaves trudging in front. At the top of all, against the sky line, two men walked together, apparently hand in hand pacing along very sociably. There was something, however, in their attitude, which seemed unusual and constrained. When we came nearer, accordingly, we discovered that this couple were bolted together by a short chain or bar riveted to broad iron clasps secured in like manner round the wrists. 'What have you been doing, my boys,' said our coachman in passing, 'to entitle you to these ruffles?' 'Oh, sir,' cried one of them quite gaily, 'they are the best things in the world to travel with.' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one of the slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take the matter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, it appeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, not to his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the female not choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The wretched husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man who having no such tie to draw him back might be more safely trusted on the journey."[20] [Footnote 20: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 128, 129. _See also_ for similar scenes, Adam Hodgson, _Letters from North America_ (London, 1854), I, 113.] Timothy Flint wrote after observing many of these caravans: "The slaves generally seem fond of their masters, and as much delighted and interested in their migration as their masters. It is to me a very pleasing and patriarchal sight."[21] But Edwin L. Godkin, who in his transit of a Mississippi swamp in 1856 saw a company in distress, used the episode as a peg on which to hang an anti-slavery sentiment: "I fell in with an emigrant party on their way to Texas. Their mules had sunk in the mud, ... the wagons were already embedded as far as the axles. The women of the party, lightly clad in cotton, had walked for miles, knee-deep in water, through the brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were now crouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree.... The men were making feeble attempts to light a fire.... 'Colonel,' said one of them as I rode past, 'this is the gate of hell, ain't it?' ... The hardships the negroes go through who are attached to one of these emigrant parties baffle description.... They trudge on foot all day through mud and thicket without rest or respite.... Thousands of miles are traversed by these weary wayfarers without their knowing or caring why, urged on by the whip and in the full assurance that no change of place can bring any change to them.... Hard work, coarse food, merciless floggings, are all that await them, and all that they can look to. I have never passed them, staggering along in the rear of the wagons at the close of a long day's march, the weakest furthest in the rear, the strongest already utterly spent, without wondering how Christendom, which eight centuries ago rose in arms for a sentiment, can look so calmly on at so foul and monstrous a wrong as this American slavery."[22] If instead of crossing the Mississippi bottoms and ascribing to slavery the hardships he observed, Godkin had been crossing the Nevada desert that year and had come upon, as many others did, a train of emigrants with its oxen dead, its women and children perishing of thirst, and its men with despairing eyes turned still toward the gold-fields of California, would he have inveighed against freedom as the cause? Between Flint's impression of pleasure and Godkin's of gloom no choice need be made, for either description was often exemplified. In general the slaves took the fatigues and the diversions of the route merely as the day's work and the day's play. [Footnote 21: Timothy Flint, _History and Geography of the Western States_ (Cincinnati, 1828), p. 11.] [Footnote 22: Letter of E.L. Godkin to the _London News_, reprinted in the _North American Review_, CLXXXV (1907), 46, 47.] Many planters whose points of departure and of destination were accessible to deep water made their transit by sea. Thus on the brig _Calypso_ sailing from Norfolk to New Orleans in April, 1819, Benjamin Ballard and Samuel T. Barnes, both of Halifax County, North Carolina, carrying 30 and 196 slaves respectively, wrote on the margins of their manifests, the one "The owner of these slaves is moving to the parish of St. Landry near Opelousas where he has purchased land and intends settling, and is not a dealer in human flesh," the other, "The owner of these slaves is moving to Louisiana to settle, and is not a dealer in human flesh." On the same voyage Augustin Pugh of the adjoining Bertie County carried seventy slaves whose manifest, though it bears no such asseveration, gives evidence that they likewise were not a trader's lot; for some of the negroes were sixty years old, and there were as many children as adults in the parcel. Lots of such sizes as these were of course exceptional. In the packages of manifests now preserved in the Library of Congress the lists of from one to a dozen slaves outnumbered those of fifty or more by perhaps a hundred fold. The western cotton belt not only had a greater expanse and richer lands than the eastern, but its cotton tended to have a longer fiber, ranging, particularly in the district of the "bends" of the Mississippi north of Vicksburg, as much as an inch and a quarter in length and commanding a premium in the market. Its far reaching waterways, furthermore, made freighting easy and permitted the planters to devote themselves the more fully to their staple. The people in the main made their own food supplies; yet the market demand of the western cotton belt and the sugar bowl for grain and meat contributed much toward the calling of the northwestern settlements into prosperous existence.[23] [Footnote 23: G.S. Callender in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, XVII, 111-162.] This thriving of the West, however, was largely at the expense of the older plantation states.[24] In 1813 John Randolph wrote: "The whole country watered by the rivers which fall into the Chesapeake is in a state of paralysis...The distress is general and heavy, and I do not see how the people can pay their taxes." And again: "In a few years more, those of us who are alive will move off to Kaintuck or the Massissippi, where corn can be had for sixpence a bushel and pork for a penny a pound. I do not wonder at the rage for emigration. What do the bulk of the people get here that they cannot have there for one fifth the labor in the western country?" Next year, after a visit to his birthplace, he exclaimed: "What a spectacle does our lower country present! Deserted and dismantled country-houses once the seats of cheerfulness and plenty, and the temples of the Most High ruinous and desolate, 'frowning in portentous silence upon the land,'" And in 1819 he wrote from Richmond: "You have no conception of the gloom and distress that pervade this place. There has been nothing like it since 1785 when from the same causes (paper money and a general peace) there was a general depression of everything."[25] [Footnote 24: Edmund Quincy, _Life of Josiah Quincy_ (Boston, 1869), p. 336.] [Footnote 25: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (Philadelphia, 1851), II, 15; I, 2; II, 105.] The extreme depression passed, but the conditions prompting emigration were persistent and widespread. News items from here and there continued for decades to tell of movement in large volume from Tide-water and Piedmont, from the tobacco states and the eastern cotton-belt, and even from Alabama in its turn, for destinations as distant and divergent as Michigan, Missouri and Texas. The communities which suffered cast about for both solace and remedy. An editor in the South Carolina uplands remarked at the beginning of 1833 that if emigration should continue at the rate of the past year the state would become a wilderness; but he noted with grim satisfaction that it was chiefly the "fire-eaters" that were moving out.[26] In 1836 another South Carolinian wrote: "The spirit of emigration is still rife in our community. From this cause we have lost many, and we are destined, we fear, to lose more, of our worthiest citizens." Though efforts to check it were commonly thought futile, he addressed himself to suasion. The movement, said he, is a mistaken one; South Carolina planters should let well enough alone. The West is without doubt the place for wealth, but prosperity is a trial to character. In the West money is everything. Its pursuit, accompanied as it is by baneful speculation, lawlessness, gambling, sabbath-breaking, brawls and violence, prevents moral attainment and mental cultivation. Substantial people should stay in South Carolina to preserve their pristine purity, hospitality, freedom of thought, fearlessness and nobility.[27] [Footnote 26: Sumterville, S.C., _Whig_, Jan. 5, 1833.] [Footnote 27: "The Spirit of Emigration," signed "A South Carolinian," in the _Southern Literary Journal_, II, 259-262 (June, 1836).] An Alabama spokesman rejoiced in the manual industry of the white people in his state, and said if the negroes were only thinned off it would become a great and prosperous commonwealth.[28] But another Alabamian, A.B. Meek, found reason to eulogize both emigration and slavery. He said the roughness of manners prevalent in the haphazard western aggregation of New Englanders, Virginians, Carolinians and Georgians would prove but a temporary phase. Slavery would be of benefit through its tendency to stratify society, ennoble the upper classes, and give even the poorer whites a stimulating pride of race. "In a few years," said he, "owing to the operation of this institution upon our unparalleled natural advantages, we shall be the richest people beneath the bend of the rainbow; and then the arts and the sciences, which always follow in the train of wealth, will flourish to an extent hitherto unknown on this side of the Atlantic." [29] [Footnote 28: Portland, Ala., _Evening Advertiser_, April 12, 1833.] [Footnote 29: _Southern Ladies' Book_ (Macon, Ga.), April, 1840.] As a practical measure to relieve the stress of the older districts a beginning was made in seed selection, manuring and crop rotation to enhance the harvests; horses were largely replaced by mules, whose earlier maturity, greater hardihood and longer lives made their use more economical for plow and wagon work;[30] the straight furrows of earlier times gave place in the Piedmont to curving ones which followed the hill contours and when supplemented with occasional grass balks and ditches checked the scouring of the rains and conserved in some degree the thin soils of the region; a few textile factories were built to better the local market for cotton and lower the cost of cloth as well as to yield profits to their proprietors; the home production of grain and meat supplies was in some measure increased; and river and highway improvements and railroad construction were undertaken to lessen the expenses of distant marketing.[31] Some of these recourses were promptly adopted in the newer settlements also; and others proved of little avail for the time being. The net effect of the betterments, however, was an appreciable offsetting of the western advantage; and this, when added to the love of home, the disrelish of primitive travel and pioneer life, and the dread of the costs and risks involved in removal, dissuaded multitudes from the project of migration. The actual depopulation of the Atlantic states was less than the plaints of the time would suggest. The volume of emigration was undoubtedly great, and few newcomers came in to fill the gaps. But the birth rate alone in those generations of ample families more than replaced the losses year by year in most localities. The sense of loss was in general the product not of actual depletion but of disappointment in the expectation of increase. [Footnote 30: H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New York, 1916), pp. 166-168.] [Footnote 31: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860_.] The non-slaveholding backwoodsmen formed the vanguard of settlement on each frontier in turn; the small slaveholders followed on their heels and crowded each fertile district until the men who lived by hunting as well as by farming had to push further westward; finally the larger planters with their crowded carriages, their lumbering wagons and their trudging slaves arrived to consolidate the fields of such earlier settlers as would sell. It often seemed to the wayfarer that all the world was on the move. But in the districts of durable soil thousands of men, clinging to their homes, repelled every attack of the western fever. CHAPTER XI THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE In the New England town of Plymouth in November, 1729, a certain Thompson Phillips who was about to sail for Jamaica exchanged a half interest in his one-legged negro man for a similar share in Isaac Lathrop's negro boy who was to sail with Phillips and be sold on the voyage. Lathrop was meanwhile to teach the man the trade of cordwaining, and was to resell his share to Phillips at the end of a year at a price of £40 sterling.[1] This transaction, which was duly concluded in the following year, suggests the existence of a trade in slaves on a small scale from north to south in colonial times. Another item in the same connection is an advertisement in the _Boston Gazette_ of August 17, 1761, offering for sale young slaves just from Africa and proposing to take in exchange "any negro men, strong and hearty though not of the best moral character, which are proper subjects of transportation";[2] and a third instance appears in a letter of James Habersham of Georgia in 1764 telling of his purchase of a parcel of negroes at New York for work on his rice plantation.[3] That the disestablishment of slavery in the North during and after the American Revolution enhanced the exportation of negroes was recited in a Vermont statute of 1787,[4] and is shown by occasional items in Southern archives. One of these is the registry at Savannah of a bill of sale made at New London in 1787 for a mulatto boy "as a servant for the term of ten years only, at the expiration of which time he is to be free."[5] Another is a report from an official at Norfolk to the Governor of Virginia, in 1795, relating that the captain of a sloop from Boston with three negroes on board pleaded ignorance of the Virginia law against the bringing in of slaves.[6] [Footnote 1: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XXIV, 335, 336.] [Footnote 2: Reprinted in Joshua Coffin, _An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860), p. 15.] [Footnote 3: "The Letters of James Habersham," in the Georgia Historical Society _Collections_, VI, 22, 23.] [Footnote 4: _New England Register_, XXIX, 248, citing Vermont _Statutes_, 1787, p. 105.] [Footnote 5: U.B. Phillips, "Racial Problems, Adjustments and Disturbances in the Ante-bellum South," in _The South in the Building of the Nation_, IV, 218.] [Footnote 6: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, VIII, 255.] The federal census returns show that from 1790 onward the decline in the number of slaves in the Northern states was more than counterbalanced by the increase of their free negroes. This means either that the selling of slaves to the southward was very slight, or that the statistical effect of it was canceled by the northward flight of fugitive slaves and the migration of negroes legally free. There seems to be no evidence that the traffic across Mason and Dixon's line was ever of large dimensions, the following curious item from a New Orleans newspaper in 1818 to the contrary notwithstanding: "Jersey negroes appear to be peculiarly adapted to this market--especially those that bear the mark of Judge Van Winkle, as it is understood that they offer the best opportunity for speculation. We have the right to calculate on large importations in future, from the success which hitherto attended the sale."[7] [Footnote 7: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 22, 1818, quoting the New Orleans _Chronicle_, July 14, 1818.] The internal trade at the South began to be noticeable about the end of the eighteenth century. A man at Knoxville, Tennessee, in December, 1795, sent notice to a correspondent in Kentucky that he was about to set out with slaves for delivery as agreed upon, and would carry additional ones on speculation; and he concluded by saying "I intend carrying on the business extensively."[8] In 1797 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt met a "drove of negroes" about one hundred in number,[9] whose owner had abandoned the planting business in the South Carolina uplands and was apparently carrying them to Charleston for sale. In 1799 there was discovered in the Georgia treasury a shortage of some ten thousand dollars which a contemporary news item explained as follows: Mr. Sims, a member of the legislature, having borrowed the money from the treasurer, entrusted it to a certain Speers for the purchase of slaves in Virginia. "Speers accordingly went and purchased a considerable number of negroes; and on his way returning to this state the negroes rose and cut the throats of Speers and another man who accompanied him. The slaves fled, and about ten of them, I think, were killed. In consequence of this misfortune Mr. Sims was rendered unable to raise the money at the time the legislature met."[10] Another transaction achieved record because of a literary effusion which it prompted. Charles Mott Lide of South Carolina, having inherited a fortune, went to Virginia early in 1802 to buy slaves, and began to establish a sea-island cotton plantation in Georgia. But misfortune in other investments forced him next year to sell his land, slaves and crops to two immigrants from the Bahama Islands. Thereupon, wrote he, "I composed the following valedictory, which breathes something of the tenderness of Ossian."[11] Callous history is not concerned in the farewell to his "sweet asylum," but only in the fact that he bought slaves in Virginia and carried them to Georgia. A grand jury at Alexandria presented as a grievance in 1802, "the practice of persons coming from distant parts of the United States into this district for the purpose of purchasing slaves."[12] Such fugitive items as these make up the whole record of the trade in its early years, and indeed constitute the main body of data upon its career from first to last. [Footnote 8: Unsigned MS. draft in the Wisconsin Historical Society, Draper collection, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 55, 56.] [Footnote 9: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_, p. 592.] [Footnote 10: Charleston, S.C., _City Gazette_, Dec. 21, 1799.] [Footnote 11: Alexander Gregg, _History of the Old Cheraws_ (New York, 1877), pp. 480-482.] [Footnote 12: Quoted in a speech in Congress in 1829, _Register of Debates_, V, 177.] As soon as the African trade was closed, the interstate traffic began to assume the aspect of a regular business though for some years it not only continued to be of small scale but was oftentimes merely incidental in character. That is to say, migrating planters and farmers would in some cases carry extra slaves bought with a view to reselling them at western prices and applying the proceeds toward the expense of their new homesteads. The following advertisement by William Rochel at Natchez in 1810 gives an example of this: "I have upwards of twenty likely Virginia born slaves now in a flat bottomed boat lying in the river at Natchez, for sale cheaper than has been sold here in years.[13] Part of said negroes I wish to barter for a small farm. My boat may be known by a large cane standing on deck." [Footnote 13: Natchez, Miss., _Weekly Chronicle_, April 2, 1810.] The heyday of the trade fell in the piping times of peace and migration from 1815 to 1860. Its greatest activity was just prior to the panic of 1837, for thereafter the flow was held somewhat in check, first by the hard times in the cotton belt and then by an agricultural renaissance in Virginia. A Richmond newspaper reported in the fall of 1836 that estimates by intelligent men placed Virginia's export in the preceding year at 120,000 slaves, of whom at least two thirds had been carried by emigrating owners, and the rest by dealers.[14] This was probably an exaggeration for even the greatest year of the exodus. What the common volume of the commercial transport was can hardly be ascertained from the available data. [Footnote 14: _Niles' Register_, LI, 83 (Oct. 8, 1836), quoting the _Virginia Times_.] The slave trade was partly systematic, partly casual. For local sales every public auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in each city there were brokers buying them to sell again or handling them on commission. One of these at New Orleans in 1854 was Thomas Foster who advertised that he would pay the highest prices for sound negroes as well as sell those whom merchants or private citizens might consign him. Expecting to receive negroes throughout the season, he said, he would have a constant stock of mechanics, domestics and field hands; and in addition he would house as many as three hundred slaves at a time, for such as were importing them from other states.[16] Similarly Clark and Grubb, of Whitehall Street in Atlanta, when advertising their business as wholesale grocers, commission merchants and negro brokers, announced that they kept slaves of all classes constantly on hand and were paying the highest market prices for all that might be offered.[16] At Nashville, William L. Boyd, Jr., and R.W. Porter advertised as rival slave dealers in 1854;[17] and in the directory of that city for 1860 E.S. Hawkins, G.H. Hitchings, and Webb, Merrill and Company were also listed in this traffic. At St. Louis in 1859 Corbin Thompson and Bernard M. Lynch were the principal slave dealers. The rates of the latter, according to his placard, were 37-1/2 cents per day for board and 2-1/2 per cent, commission on sales; and all slaves entrusted to his care were to be held at their owners' risk.[18] [Footnote 15: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 163.] [Footnote 16: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Mch. 7, 1860.] [Footnote 17: _Southern Business Directory_, II, 131.] [Footnote 18: H.A. Trexler, _Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865_ (Baltimore, 1914), p. 49.] On the other hand a rural owner disposed to sell a slave locally would commonly pass the word round among his neighbors or publish a notice in the county newspaper. To this would sometimes be appended a statement that the slave was not to be sent out of the state, or that no dealers need apply. The following is one of many such Maryland items: "Will be sold for cash or good paper, a negro woman, 22 years old, and her two female children. She is sold for want of employment, and will not be sent out of the state. Apply to the editor."[19] In some cases, whether rural or urban, the slave was sent about to find his or her purchaser. In the city of Washington in 1854, for example, a woman, whose husband had been sold South, was furnished with the following document: "The bearer, Mary Jane, and her two daughters, are for sale. They are sold for no earthly fault whatever. She is one of the most ladylike and trustworthy servants I ever knew. She is a first rate parlour servant; can arrange and set out a dinner or party supper with as much taste as the most of white ladies. She is a pretty good mantua maker; can cut out and make vests and pantaloons and roundabouts and joseys for little boys in a first rate manner. Her daughters' ages are eleven and thirteen years, brought up exclusively as house servants. The eldest can sew neatly, both can knit stockings; and all are accustomed to all kinds of house work. They would not be sold to speculators or traders for any price whatever." The price for the three was fixed at $1800, but a memorandum stated that a purchaser taking the daughters at $1000 might have the mother on a month's trial. The girls were duly bought by Dr. Edward Maynard, who we may hope took the mother also at the end of the stipulated month.[20] In the cities a few slaves were sold by lottery. One Boulmay, for example, advertised at New Orleans in 1819 that he would sell fifty tickets at twenty dollars each, the lucky drawer to receive his girl Amelia, thirteen years old.[21] [Footnote 19: Charleston, Md., _Telegraph_, Nov. 7, 1828.] [Footnote 20: MSS. in the New York Public Library, MSS. division, filed under "slavery."] [Footnote 21: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Aug. 17, 1819.] The long distance trade, though open to any who would engage in it, appears to have been conducted mainly by firms plying it steadily. Each of these would have an assembling headquarters with field agents collecting slaves for it, one or more vessels perhaps for the coastwise traffic, and a selling agency at one of the centers of slave demand. The methods followed by some of the purchasing agents, and the local esteem in which they were held, may be gathered by an item written in 1818 at Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley: "Several wretches, whose hearts must be as black as the skins of the unfortunate beings who constitute their inhuman traffic, have for several days been impudently prowling about the streets of this place with labels on their hats exhibiting in conspicuous characters the words 'Cash for negroes,'"[22] That this repugnance was genuine enough to cause local sellers to make large concessions in price in order to keep faithful servants out of the hands of the long-distance traders is evidenced by the following report in 1824 from Hillsborough on the eastern shore of Maryland: "Slaves in this county, and I believe generally on this shore, have always had two prices, viz. a neighbourhood or domestic and a foreign or Southern price. The domestic price has generally been about a third less than the foreign, and sometimes the difference amounts to one half."[23] [Footnote 22: _Virginia Northwestern Gazette_, Aug. 15, 1818.] [Footnote 23: _American Historical Review_, XIX, 818.] The slaves of whom their masters were most eager to be rid were the indolent, the unruly, and those under suspicion. A Creole settler at Mobile wrote in 1748, for example, to a friend living on the Mississippi: "I am sending you l'Eveille and his wife, whom I beg you to sell for me at the best price to be had. If however they will not bring 1,500 francs each, please keep them on your land and make them work. What makes me sell them is that l'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of some thirty Mobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this; but since there is rarely smoke without fire I think it well to take the precaution."[24] The converse of this is a laconic advertisement at Charleston in 1800: "Wanted to purchase one or two negro men whose characters will not be required."[25] It is probable that offers were not lacking in response. [Footnote 24: MS. in private possession, here translated from the French.] [Footnote 25: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 8, 1800.] Some of the slaves dealt in were actually convicted felons sold by the states in which their crimes had been committed. The purchasers of these were generally required to give bond to transport them beyond the limits of the United States; but some of the traders broke their pledges on the chance that their breaches would not be discovered. One of these, a certain W.H. Williams, when found offering his outlawed merchandize of twenty-four convict slaves at New Orleans in 1841, was prosecuted and convicted. His penalty included the forfeiture of the twenty-four slaves, a fine of $500 to the state of Louisiana for each of the felons introduced, and the forfeiture to the state of Virginia of his bond in the amount of $1,000 per slave. The total was reckoned at $48,000.[26] [Footnote 26: _Niles' Register_, LX, 189, quoting the New Orleans _Picayune_, May 2, 1841.] The slaves whom the dealers preferred to buy for distant sale were "likely negroes from ten to thirty years old."[27] Faithfulness and skill in husbandry were of minor importance, for the trader could give little proof of them to his patrons. Demonstrable talents in artisanry would of course enhance a man's value; and unusual good looks on the part of a young woman might stimulate the bidding of men interested in concubinage. Episodes of the latter sort were occasionally reported; but in at least one instance inquiry on the spot showed that sex was not involved. This was the case of the girl Sarah, who was sold to the highest bidder on the auction block in the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel at New Orleans in 1841 at a price of eight thousand dollars. The onlookers were set agog, but a newspaper man promptly found that the sale had been made as a mere form in the course of litigation and that the bidding bore no relation to the money which was to change hands.[28] Among the thousands of bills of sale which the present writer has scanned, in every quarter of the South, many have borne record of exceptional prices for men, mostly artisans and "drivers"; but the few women who brought unusually high prices were described in virtually every case as fine seamstresses, parlor maids, laundresses, hotel cooks, and the like. Another indication against the multiplicity of purchases for concubinage is that the great majority of the women listed in these records were bought in family groups. Concubinage itself was fairly frequent, particularly in southern Louisiana; but no frequency of purchases for it as a predominant purpose can be demonstrated from authentic records. [Footnote 27: Advertisement in the _Western Carolinian_ (Salisbury, N. C), July 12, 1834.] [Footnote 28: New Orleans _Bee_, Oct. 16, 1841.] Some of the dealers used public jails, taverns and warehouses for the assembling of their slaves, while others had stockades of their own. That of Franklin and Armfield at Alexandria, managed by the junior member of the firm, was described by a visitor in July, 1835. In addition to a brick residence and office, it comprised two courts, for the men and women respectively, each with whitewashed walls, padlocked gates, cleanly barracks and eating sheds, and a hospital which at this time had no occupants. In the men's yards "the slaves, fifty or sixty in number, were standing or moving about in groups, some amusing themselves with rude sports, and others engaged in conversation which was often interrupted by loud laughter in all the varied tones peculiar to negroes." They were mostly young men, but comprised a few boys of from ten to fifteen years old. In the women's yard the ages ranged similarly, and but one woman had a young child. The slaves were neatly dressed in clothes from a tailor shop within the walls, and additional clothing was already stored ready to be sent with the coffle and issued to its members at the end of the southward journey. In a yard behind the stockade there were wagons and tents made ready for the departure. Shipments were commonly made by the firm once every two months in a vessel for New Orleans, but the present lot was to march overland. Whether by land or sea, the destination was Natchez, where the senior partner managed the selling end of the business. Armfield himself was "a man of fine personal appearance, and of engaging and graceful manners"; and his firm was said to have gained the confidence of all the countryside by its honorable dealings and by its resolute efforts to discourage kidnapping. It was said to be highly esteemed even among the negroes.[29] [Footnote 29: E.A. Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States_ (Boston, 1836), pp. 135, 143, 150.] Soon afterward this traveler made a short voyage on the Potomac with a trader of a much more vulgar type who was carrying about fifty slaves, mostly women with their children, to Fredericksburg and thence across the Carolinas. Overland, the trader said, he was accustomed to cover some twenty-five miles a day, with the able-bodied slaves on foot and the children in wagons. The former he had found could cover these marches, after the first few days, without much fatigue. His firm, he continued, had formerly sent most of its slaves by sea, but one of the vessels carrying them had been driven to Bermuda, where all the negroes had escaped to land and obtained their freedom under the British flag.[30] [Footnote 30: _Ibid_., pp. 145-149.] The scale of the coasting transit of slaves may be ascertained from the ship manifests made under the requirements of the congressional act of 1808 and now preserved in large numbers in the manuscripts division of the Library of Congress. Its volume appears to have ranged commonly, between 1815 and 1860, at from two to five thousand slaves a year. Several score of these, or perhaps a few hundred, annually were carried as body servants by their owners when making visits whether to southern cities or to New York or Philadelphia. Of the rest about half were sent or carried without intent of sale. Thus in 1831 James L. Pettigru and Langdon Cheves sent from Charleston to Savannah 85 and 64 slaves respectively of ages ranging from ninety and seventy years to infancy, with obvious purpose to develop newly acquired plantations in Georgia. Most of the non-commercial shipments, however, were in lots of from one to a dozen slaves each. The traders' lots, on the other hand, which were commonly of considerable dimensions, may be somewhat safely distinguished by the range of the negroes' ages, with heavy preponderance of those between ten and thirty years, and by the recurrence of shippers' and consignees' names. The Chesapeake ports were the chief points of departure, and New Orleans the great port of entry. Thus in 1819 Abner Robinson at Baltimore shipped a cargo of 99 slaves to William Kenner and Co. at New Orleans, whereas by 1832 Robinson had himself removed to the latter place and was receiving shipments from Henry King at Norfolk. In the latter year Franklin and Armfield sent from Alexandria _via_ New Orleans to Isaac Franklin at Natchez three cargoes of 109, 117 and 134 slaves, mainly of course within the traders' ages; R.C. Ballard and Co. sent batches from Norfolk to Franklin at Natchez and to John Hogan and Co. at New Orleans; and William T. Foster, associated with William Rollins who was master of the brig _Ajax_, consigned numerous parcels to various New Orleans correspondents. About 1850 the chief shippers were Joseph Donovan of Baltimore, B.M. and M.L. Campbell of the same place, David Currie of Richmond and G.W. Apperson of Norfolk, each of whom sent each year several shipments of several score slaves to New Orleans. The principal recipients there were Thomas Boudar, John Hogan, W.F. Talbott, Buchanan, Carroll and Co., Masi and Bourk, and Sherman Johnson. The outward manifests from New Orleans show in turn a large maritime distribution from that port, mainly to Galveston and Matagorda Bay. The chief bulk of this was obviously migrant, not commercial; but a considerable dependence of all the smaller Gulf ports and even of Montgomery upon the New Orleans labor market is indicated by occasional manifests bulking heavily in the traders' ages. In 1850 and thereabouts, it is curious to note, there were manifests for perhaps a hundred slaves a year bound for Chagres _en route_ for San Francisco. They were for the most part young men carried singly, and were obviously intended to share their masters' adventures in the California gold fields. Many slaves carried by sea were covered by marine insurance. Among a number of policies issued by the Louisiana Insurance Company to William Kenner and Company was one dated February 18, 1822, on slaves in transit in the brig _Fame_. It was made out on a printed form of the standard type for the marine insurance of goods, with the words "on goods" stricken out and "on slaves" inserted. The risks, specified as assumed in the printed form were those "of the sea, men of war, fire, enemies, pirates, rovers, thieves, jettison, letters of mart and counter-mart, surprisals, taking at sea, arrests, restraints and detainments of all kings, princes or people of what nation, condition or quality soever, barratry of the master and mariners, and all other perils, losses and misfortunes that have or shall come to the hurt, detriment or damage of the said goods or merchandize, or any part thereof." In manuscript was added: "This insurance is declared to be made on one hundred slaves, valued at $40,000 and warranted by the insured to be free from insurrection, elopement, suicide and natural death." The premium was one and a quarter per cent, of the forty thousand dollars.[31] That the insurers were not always free from serious risk is indicated by a New Orleans news item in 1818 relating that two local insurance companies had recently lost more than forty thousand dollars in consequence of the robbery of seventy-two slaves out of a vessel from the Chesapeake by a piratical boat off the Berry Islands.[32] [Footnote 31: Original in private possession.] [Footnote 32: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 23, 1818, quoting the _Orleans Gazette_.] Overland coffles were occasionally encountered and described by travelers. Featherstonhaugh overtook one at daybreak one morning in southwestern Virginia bound through the Tennessee Valley and wrote of it as follows: "It was a camp of negro slave drivers, just packing up to start. They had about three hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding night in chains in the woods. These they were conducting to Natchez on the Mississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana. It resembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had a caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages for the purpose of conducting the white people and any of the blacks that should fall lame.... The female slaves, some of them sitting on logs of wood, while others were standing, and a great many little black children, were warming themselves at the fire of the bivouac. In front of them all, and prepared for the march, stood in double files about two hundred men slaves, manacled and chained to each other." The writer went on to ejaculate upon the horror of "white men with liberty and equality in their mouths," driving black men "to perish in the sugar mills of Louisiana, where the duration of life for a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven years."[33] Sir Charles Lyell, who was less disposed to moralize or to repeat slanders of the Louisiana régime, wrote upon reaching the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, in January, 1846: "The first sight we saw there was a long line of negroes, men, women and boys, well dressed and very merry, talking and laughing, who stopped to look at our coach. On inquiry we were told that it was a gang of slaves, probably from Virginia, going to the market to be sold."[34] Whether this laughing company wore shackles the writer failed to say. [Footnote 33: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion through the Slave States_ (London, 1844), I, 120.] [Footnote 34: Sir Charles Lyell, _A Second Visit to the United States_ (New York, 1849), II, 35.] Some of the slaves in the coffles were peddled to planters and townsmen along the route; the rest were carried to the main distributing centers and there either kept in stock for sale at fixed prices to such customers as might apply, or sold at auction. Oftentimes a family group divided for sale was reunited by purchase. Johann Schoepf observed a prompt consummation of the sort when a cooper being auctioned continually called to the bidders that whoever should buy him must buy his son also, an injunction to which his purchaser duly conformed.[35] Both hardness of heart and shortness of sight would have been involved in the neglect of so ready a means of promoting the workman's equanimity; and the good nature of the competing bidders doubtless made the second purchase easy. More commonly the sellers offered the slaves in family groups outright. By whatever method the sales were made, the slaves of both sexes were subjected to such examination of teeth and limbs as might be desired.[36] Those on the block oftentimes praised their own strength and talents, for it was a matter of pride to fetch high prices. On the other hand if a slave should bear a grudge against his seller, or should hope to be bought only by someone who would expect but light service, he might pretend a disability though he had it not. The purchasers were commonly too shrewd to be deceived in either way; yet they necessarily took risks in every purchase they made. If horse trading is notoriously fertile in deception, slave trading gave opportunity for it in as much greater degree as human nature is more complex and uncertain than equine and harder to fathom from surface indications. [Footnote 35: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), I, 148.] [Footnote 36: The proceedings at typical slave auctions are narrated by Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 143-145; and by William Chambers, _Things as they are in America_ (2d edition, London, 1857), pp. 273-284.] There was also some risk of loss from defects of title. The negroes offered might prove to be kidnapped freemen, or stolen slaves, or to have been illegally sold by their former owners in defraud of mortgagees. The last of these considerations was particularly disquieting in times of financial stress, for suspicion of wholesale frauds then became rife. At the beginning of 1840, for example, the offerings of slaves from Mississippi in large numbers and at bargain prices in the New Orleans market prompted a local editor to warn the citizens against buying cheap slaves who might shortly be seized by the federal marshal at the suit of citizens in other states. A few days afterward the same journal printed in its local news the following: "Many slaves were put up this day at the St. Louis exchange. Few if any were sold. It is very difficult now to find persons willing to buy slaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears entertained that such property may be already mortgaged to the banks of the above named states. Our moneyed men and speculators are now wide awake. It will take a pretty cunning child to cheat them."[37] [Footnote 37: _Louisiana Courier_, Feb. 12 and 15, 1840.] The disesteem in which the slavetraders were held was so great and general in the Southern community as to produce a social ostracism. The prevailing sentiment was expressed, with perhaps a little exaggeration, by D.R. Hundley of Alabama in his analysis of Southern social types: "Preëminent in villainy and a greedy love of filthy lucre stands the hard-hearted negro trader.... Some of them, we do not doubt, are conscientious men, but the number is few. Although honest and honorable when they first go into the business, the natural result of their calling seems to corrupt them; for they usually have to deal with the most refractory and brutal of the slave population, since good and honest slaves are rarely permitted to fall into the unscrupulous clutches of the speculator.... [He] is outwardly a coarse, ill-bred person, provincial in speech and manners, with a cross-looking phiz, a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking eyes, a dirty tobacco-stained mouth, and shabby dress.... He is not troubled evidently with a conscience, for although he habitually separates parent from child, brother from sister, and husband from wife, he is yet one of the jolliest dogs alive, and never evinces the least sign of remorse.... Almost every sentence he utters is accompanied by an oath.... Nearly nine tenths of the slaves he buys and sells are vicious ones sold for crimes and misdemeanors, or otherwise diseased ones sold because of their worthlessness as property. These he purchases for about one half what healthy and honest slaves would cost him; but he sells them as both honest and healthy, mark you! So soon as he has completed his 'gang' he dresses them up in good clothes, makes them comb their kinky heads into some appearance of neatness, rubs oil on their dusky faces to give them a sleek healthy color, gives them a dram occasionally to make them sprightly, and teaches each one the part he or she has to play; and then he sets out for the extreme South.... At every village of importance he sojourns for a day or two, each day ranging his 'gang' in a line on the most busy street, and whenever a customer makes his appearance the oily speculator button-holes him immediately and begins to descant in the most highfalutin fashion upon the virtuous lot of darkeys he has for sale. Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom was not a circumstance to any one of the dozens he points out. So honest! so truthful! so dear to the hearts of their former masters and mistresses! Ah! Messrs. stock-brokers of Wall Street--you who are wont to cry up your rotten railroad, mining, steamboat and other worthless stocks[38]--for ingenious lying you should take lessons from the Southern negro trader!" Some of the itinerant traders were said, however, and probably with truth, to have had silent partners among the most substantial capitalists in the Southern cities.[39] [Footnote 38: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New York, 1860), pp. 139-142.] [Footnote 39: _Ibid_., p.145.] The social stigma upon slave dealing doubtless enhanced the profits of the traders by diminishing the competition. The difference in the scales of prices prevailing at any time in the cheapest and the dearest local markets was hardly ever less than thirty per cent. From such a margin, however, there had to be deducted not only the cost of feeding, clothing, sheltering, guarding and transporting the slaves for the several months commonly elapsing between purchase and sale in the trade, but also allowances for such loss as might occur in transit by death, illness, accident or escape. At some periods, furthermore, slave prices fell so rapidly that the prospect of profit for the speculator vanished. At Columbus, Georgia, in December, 1844, for example, it was reported that a coffle from North Carolina had been marched back for want of buyers.[40] But losses of this sort were more than offset in the long run by the upward trend of prices which was in effect throughout the most of the ante-bellum period. The Southern planters sometimes cut into the business of the traders by going to the border states to buy and bring home in person the slaves they needed.[41] The building of railways speeded the journeys and correspondingly reduced the costs. The Central of Georgia Railroad improved its service in 1858 by instituting a negro sleeping car [42]--an accommodation which apparently no railroad has furnished in the post-bellum decades. [Footnote 40: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 31, 1844.] [Footnote 41: Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade_, p.171.] While the traders were held in common contempt, the incidents and effects of their traffic were viewed with mixed emotions. Its employment of shackles was excused only on the ground of necessary precaution. Its breaking up of families was generally deplored, although it was apologized for by thick-and-thin champions of everything Southern with arguments that negro domestic ties were weak at best and that the separations were no more frequent than those suffered by free laborers at the North under the stress of economic necessity. Its drain of money from the districts importing the slaves was regretted as a financial disadvantage. On the other hand, the citizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being saved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young workmen and women rather than culls who were being sold South, that white immigration was not filling their gaps, and that accordingly land prices were falling as slave prices rose.[45] [Footnote 42: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1859.] [Footnote 43: _National Intelligencer_ (Washington, D.C.), Jan. 19, 1833.] [Footnote 44: R.R. Howison, _History of Virginia_ (Richmond, Va., 1846-1848), II. 519, 520.] [Footnote 45: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in _DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] Delaware alone among the states below Mason and Dixon's line appears to have made serious effort to restrict the outgoing trade in slaves; but all the states from Maryland and Kentucky to Louisiana legislated from time to time for the prohibition of the inward trade.[46] The enforcement of these laws was called for by citizen after citizen in the public press, as demanded by "every principle of justice, humanity, policy and interest," and particularly on the ground that if the border states were drained of slaves they would be transferred from the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery group in politics.[47] The state laws could not constitutionally debar traders from the right of transit, and as a rule they did not prohibit citizens from bringing in slaves for their own use. These two apertures, together with the passiveness of the public, made the legislative obstacles of no effect whatever. As to the neighborhood trade within each community, no prohibition was attempted anywhere in the South. [Footnote 46: These acts are summarized in W.H. Collins, _Domestic Slave Trade_, chap. 7.] [Footnote 47: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1818 and Jan. 29, 1823; _Louisiana Courier_, Jan. 13, 1831; _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 4, 1821, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 67-70; _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Feb. 6, 1847.] On the whole, instead of hampering migration, as serfdom would have done, the institution of slavery made the negro population much more responsive to new industrial opportunity than if it had been free. The long distance slave trade found its principal function in augmenting the westward movement. No persuasion of the ignorant and inert was required; the fiat of one master set them on the road, and the fiat of another set them to new tasks. The local branch of the trade had its main use in transferring labor from impoverished employers to those with better means, from passive owners to active, and from persons with whom relations might be strained to others whom the negroes might find more congenial. That this last was not negligible is suggested by a series of letters in 1860 from William Capers, overseer on a Savannah River rice plantation, to Charles Manigault his employer, concerning a slave foreman or "driver" named John. In the first of these letters, August 5, Capers expressed pleasure at learning that John, who had in previous years been his lieutenant on another estate, was for sale. He wrote: "Buy him by all means. There is but few negroes more competent than he is, and he was not a drunkard when under my management.... In speaking with John he does not answer like a smart negro, but he is quite so. You had better say to him who is to manage him on Savannah." A week later Capers wrote: "John arrived safe and handed me yours of the 9th inst. I congratulate you on the purchase of said negro. He says he is quite satisfied to be here and will do as he has always done 'during the time I have managed him.' No drink will be offered him. All on my part will be done to bring John all right." Finally, on October 15, Capers reported: "I have found John as good a driver as when I left him on Santee. Bad management was the cause of his being sold, and [I] am glad you have been the fortunate man to get him."[48] [Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 337, 338.] Leaving aside for the present, as topics falling more fitly under the economics of slavery, the questions of the market breeding of slaves in the border states and the working of them to death in the lower South, as well as the subject of inflations and depressions in slave prices, it remains to mention the chief defect of the slave trade as an agency for the distribution of labor. This lay in the fact that it dealt only in lifetime service. Employers, it is true, might buy slaves for temporary employment and sell them when the need for their labor was ended; but the fluctuations of slave prices and of the local opportunity to sell those on hand would involve such persons in slave trading risks on a scale eclipsing that of their industrial earnings. The fact that slave hiring prevailed extensively in all the Southern towns demonstrates the eagerness of short term employers to avoid the toils of speculation. CHAPTER XII THE COTTON RÉGIME It would be hard to overestimate the predominance of the special crops in the industry and interest of the Southern community. For good or ill they have shaped its development from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Each characteristic area had its own staple, and those districts which had none were scorned by all typical Southern men. The several areas expanded and contracted in response to fluctuations in the relative prices of their products. Thus when cotton was exceptionally high in the early 'twenties many Virginians discarded tobacco in its favor for a few years,[1] and on the Louisiana lands from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, the planters from time to time changed from sugar to cotton and back again.[2] There were local variations also in scale and intensity; but in general the system in each area tended to be steady and fairly uniform. The methods in the several staples, furthermore, while necessarily differing in their details, were so similar in their emphasis upon routine that each reinforced the influence of the others in shaping the industrial organization of the South as a whole. [Footnote 1: _Richmond Compiler_, Nov. 25, 1825, and _Alexandria Gazette_, Feb. 11, 1826, quoted in the _Charleston City Gazette_, Dec. 1, 1825 and Feb. 20, 1826; _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore, Dec. 29, 1825), VII, 299.] [Footnote 2: _Hunt's Merchant's Magazine_, IX, 149.] At the height of the plantation system's career, from 1815 to 1860, indigo production was a thing of the past; hemp was of negligible importance; tobacco was losing in the east what it gained in the west; rice and sea-island cotton were stationary; but sugar was growing in local intensity, and upland cotton was "king" of a rapidly expanding realm. The culture of sugar, tobacco and rice has been described in preceding chapters; that of the fleecy staple requires our present attention. The outstanding features of the landscape on a short-staple cotton plantation were the gin house and its attendant baling press. The former was commonly a weatherboarded structure some forty feet square, raised about eight feet from the ground by wooden pillars. In the middle of the space on the ground level, a great upright hub bore an iron-cogged pinion and was pierced by a long horizontal beam some three feet from the ground. Draught animals hitched to the ends of this and driven in a circular path would revolve the hub and furnish power for transmission by cogs and belts to the gin on the floor above. At the front of the house were a stair and a platform for unloading seed cotton from the wagons; inside there were bins for storage, as well as a space for operating the gin; and in the rear a lean-to room extending to the ground level received the flying lint and let it settle on the floor. The press, a skeleton structure nearby, had in the center a stout wooden box whose interior length and width determined the height and thickness of the bales but whose depth was more than twice as great as the intended bale's width. The floor, the ends and the upper halves of the sides of the box were built rigidly, but the lower sides were hinged at the bottom, and the lid was a block sliding up and down according as a great screw from above was turned to left or right. The screw, sometimes of cast iron but preferably of wood as being less liable to break under strain without warning, worked through a block mortised into a timber frame above the box, and at its upper end it supported two gaunt beams which sloped downward and outward to a horse path encircling the whole. A cupola roof was generally built on the revolving apex to give a slight shelter to the apparatus; and in some cases a second roof, with the screw penetrating its peak, was built near enough the ground to escape the whirl of the arms. When the contents of the lint room were sufficient for a bale, a strip of bagging was laid upon the floor of the press and another was attached to the face of the raised lid; the sides of the press were then made fast, and the box was filled with cotton. The draught animals at the beam ends were then driven round the path until the descent of the lid packed the lint firmly; whereupon the sides were lowered, the edges of the bagging drawn into place, ropes were passed through transverse slots in the lid and floor and tied round the bale in its bagging, the pressure was released, and the bale was ready for market. Between 1820 and 1860 improvements in the apparatus promoted an increase in the average weight of the bales from 250 to 400 pounds; while in still more recent times the replacement of horse power by steam and the substitution of iron ties for rope have caused the average bale to be yet another hundredweight heavier. The only other distinctive equipment for cotton harvesting comprised cloth bags with shoulder straps, and baskets of three or four bushels capacity woven of white-oak splits to contain the contents of the pickers' bags until carried to the gin house to be weighed at the day's end. Whether on a one-horse farm or a hundred-hand plantation, the essentials in cotton growing were the same. In an average year a given force of laborers could plant and cultivate about twice as much cotton as it could pick. The acreage to be seeded in the staple was accordingly fixed by a calculation of the harvesting capacity, and enough more land was put into other crops to fill out the spare time of the hands in spring and summer. To this effect it was customary to plant in corn, which required less than half as much work, an acreage at least equal to that in cotton, and to devote the remaining energy to sweet potatoes, peanuts, cow peas and small grain. In 1820 the usual crop in middle Georgia for each full hand was reported at six acres of cotton and eight of corn;[3] but in the following decades during which mules were advantageously substituted for horses and oxen, and the implements of tillage were improved and the harvesters grew more expert, the annual stint was increased to ten acres in cotton and ten in corn. [Footnote 3: _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore), II, 359.] At the Christmas holiday when the old year's harvest was nearly or quite completed, well managed plantations had their preliminaries for the new crop already in progress. The winter months were devoted to burning canebrakes, clearing underbrush and rolling logs in the new grounds, splitting rails and mending fences, cleaning ditches, spreading manure, knocking down the old cotton and corn stalks, and breaking the soil of the fields to be planted. Some planters broke the fields completely each year and then laid off new rows. Others merely "listed" the fields by first running a furrow with a shovel plow where each cotton or corn row was to be and filling it with a single furrow of a turn plow from either side; then when planting time approached they would break out the remaining balks with plows, turning the soil to the lists and broadening them into rounded plant beds. This latter plan was advocated as giving a firm seed bed while making the field clean of all grass at the planting. The spacing of the cotton rows varied from three to five feet according to the richness of the soil. The policy was to put them at such distance that the plants when full grown would lightly interlace their branches across the middles. In March the corn fields were commonly planted, not so much because this forehandedness was better for the crop as for the sake of freeing the choicer month of April for the more important planting of cotton. In this operation a narrow plow lightly opened the crests of the beds; cotton seed were drilled somewhat thickly therein; and a shallow covering of earth was given by means of a concave board on a plow stock, or by a harrow, a roller or a small shallow plow. Within two or three weeks, as soon as the young plants had put forth three or four leaves, thinning and cultivation was begun. Hoe hands, under orders to chop carefully, stirred the crust along the rows and reduced the seedlings to a "double stand," leaving only two plants to grow at each interval of twelve or eighteen inches. The plows then followed, stirring the soil somewhat deeply near the rows. In another fortnight the hoes gave another chopping, cutting down the weaker of each pair of plants, thus reducing the crop to a "single stand"; and where plants were missing they planted fresh seed to fill the gaps. The plows followed again, with broad wings to their shares, to break the crust and kill the grass throughout the middles. Similar alternations of chipping and plowing then ensued until near the end of July, each cultivation shallower than the last in order that the roots of the cotton should not be cut.[4] [Footnote 4: Cotton Culture is described by M.W. Philips in the _American Agriculturist_, II (New York, 1843), 51, 81, 117, 149; by various writers in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ (New York, 1856), chap. I; Harry Hammond, _The Cotton Plant_ (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Experiment Station, _Bulletin_ 33, 1896); and in the U.S. Census, 1880, vols. V and VI.] When the blossoms were giving place to bolls in midsummer, "lay-by time" was at hand. Cultivation was ended, and the labor was diverted to other tasks until in late August or early September the harvest began. The corn, which had been worked at spare times previously, now had its blades stripped and bundled for fodder; the roads were mended, the gin house and press put in order, the premises in general cleaned up, and perhaps a few spare days given to recreation. The cotton bolls ripened and opened in series, those near the center of the plant first, then the outer ones on the lower branches, and finally the top crop. If subjected unduly to wind and rain the cotton, drooping in the bolls, would be blown to the ground or tangled with dead leaves or stained with mildew. It was expedient accordingly to send the pickers through the fields as early and as often as there was crop enough open to reward the labor. Four or five compartments held the contents of each boll; from sixty to eighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed; and three or four pounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of lint. When a boll was wide open a deft picker could empty all of its compartments by one snatch of the fingers; and a specially skilled one could keep both hands flying independently, and still exercise the small degree of care necessary to keep the lint fairly free from the trash of the brittle dead calyxes. As to the day's work, a Georgia planter wrote in 1830: "A hand will pick or gather sixty to a hundred pounds of cotton in the seed, with ease, per day. I have heard of some hands gathering a hundred and twenty pounds in a day. The hands on a plantation ought to average sixty-five pounds," [5] But actual records in the following decades made these early pickers appear very inept. On Levin Covington's plantation near Natchez in 1844, in a typical week of October, Bill averaged 220 pounds a day, Dred 205 pounds, Aggy 215, and Delia 185; and on Saturday of that week all the twenty-eight men and boys together picked an average of 160 pounds, and all the eighteen women and girls an average of 125.[6] But these were dwarfed in turn by the pickings on J.W. Fowler's Prairie plantation, Coahoma County, Mississippi, at the close of the ante-bellum period. In the week of September 12 to 17, 1859, Sandy, Carver and Gilmore each averaged about three hundred pounds a day, and twelve other men and five women ranged above two hundred, while the whole gang of fifty-one men and women, boys and girls average 157 pounds each.[7] [Footnote 5: _American Farmer_, II, 359.] [Footnote 6: MS. in the Mississippi Department of History and Archives, Jackson, Miss.] [Footnote 7: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] The picking required more perseverance than strength. Dexterity was at a premium, but the labors of the slow, the youthful and the aged were all called into requisition. When the fields were white with their fleece and each day might bring a storm to stop the harvesting, every boll picked might well be a boll saved from destruction. Even the blacksmith was called from his forge and the farmer's children from school to bend their backs in the cotton rows. The women and children picked steadily unless rains drove them in; the men picked as constantly except when the crop was fairly under control and some other task, such as breaking in the corn, called the whole gang for a day to another field or when the gin house crew had to clear the bins by working up their contents to make room for more seed cotton. In the Piedmont where the yield was lighter the harvest was generally ended by December; but in the western belt, particularly when rains interrupted the work, it often extended far into the new year. Lucien Minor, for example, wrote when traveling through the plantations of northern Alabama, near Huntsville, in December, 1823: "These fields are still white with cotton, which frequently remains unpicked until March or April, when the ground is wanted to plant the next crop."[8] Planters occasionally noted in their journals that for want of pickers the top crop was lost. [Footnote 8: _Atlantic Monthly_, XXVI, 175.] As to the yield, an adage was current, that cotton would promise more and do less and promise less and do more than any other green thing that grew. The plants in the earlier stages were very delicate. Rough stirring of the clods would kill them; excess of rain or drought would be likewise fatal; and a choking growth of grass would altogether devastate the field. Improvement of conditions would bring quick recuperation to the surviving stalks, which upon attaining their full growth became quite hardy; but undue moisture would then cause a shedding of the bolls, and the first frost of autumn would stop the further fruiting. The plants, furthermore, were liable to many diseases and insect ravages. In infancy cut-worms might sever the stalks at the base, and lice might sap the vitality; in the full flush of blooming luxuriance, wilt and rust, the latter particularly on older lands, might blight the leaves, or caterpillars in huge armies reduce them to skeletons and blast the prospect; and even when the fruit was formed, boll-worms might consume the substance within, or dry-rot prevent the top crop from ripening. The ante-bellum planters, however, were exempt from the Mexican boll-weevil, the great pest of the cotton belt in the twentieth century. While every planter had his fat years and lean, and the yield of the belt as a whole alternated between bumper crops and short ones, the industry was in general of such profit as to maintain a continued expansion of its area and a never ending though sometimes hesitating increase of its product. The crop rose from eighty-five million pounds in 1810 to twice as much in 1820; it doubled again by 1830 and more than doubled once more by 1840. Extremely low prices for the staple in the early 'forties and again in 1849 prompted a campaign for crop reduction; and in that decade the increase was only from 830,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 pounds. But the return of good prices in the 'fifties caused a fresh and huge enlargement to 2,300,000,000 pounds in the final census year of the ante-bellum period. While this was little more than one fourth as great as the crops of sixteen million bales in 1912 and 1915, it was justly reckoned in its time, at home and abroad, a prodigious output. All the rest of the world then produced barely one third as much. The cotton sent abroad made up nearly two thirds of the value of the gross export trade of the United States, while the tobacco export had hardly a tenth of the cotton's worth. In competition with all the other staples, cotton engaged the services of some three fourths of all the country's plantation labor, in addition to the labor of many thousands of white farmers and their families. The production and sale of the staple engrossed no less of the people's thought than of their work. A traveler who made a zig-zag journey from Charleston to St. Louis in the early months of 1827, found cotton "a plague." At Charleston, said he, the wharves were stacked and the stores and ships packed with the bales, and the four daily papers and all the patrons of the hotel were "teeming with cotton." At Augusta the thoroughfares were thronged with groaning wagons, the warehouses were glutted, the open places were stacked, and the steamboats and barges hidden by their loads. On the road beyond, migrating planters and slaves bound for the west, "'where the cotton land is not worn out,'" met cotton-laden wagons townward bound, whereupon the price of the staple was the chief theme of roadside conversation. Occasionally a wag would have his jest. The traveler reported a tilt between two wagoners: "'What's cotton in Augusta?' says the one with a load.... 'It's cotton,' says the other. 'I know that,' says the first, 'but what is it?' 'Why,' says the other, 'I tell you it's cotton. Cotton is cotton in Augusta and everywhere else that I ever heard of,' 'I know that as well as you,' says the first, 'but what does cotton bring in Augusta?' 'Why, it brings nothing there, but everybody brings cotton,'" Whereupon the baffled inquirer appropriately relieved his feelings and drove on. At his crossing of the Oconee River the traveler saw pole-boats laden with bales twelve tiers high; at Milledgeville and Macon cotton was the absorbing theme; in the newly opened lands beyond he "found cotton land speculators thicker than locusts in Egypt"; in the neighborhood of Montgomery cotton fields adjoined one another in a solid stretch for fourteen miles along the road; Montgomery was congested beyond the capacity of the boats; and journeying thence to Mobile he "met and overtook nearly one hundred cotton waggons travelling over a road so bad that a state prisoner could hardly walk through it to make his escape." As to Mobile, it was "a receptacle monstrous for the article. Look which way you will you see it, and see it moving; keel boats, steamboats, ships, brigs, schooners, wharves, stores, and press-houses, all appeared to be full; and I believe that in the three days I was there, boarding with about one hundred cotton factors, cotton merchants and cotton planters, I must have heard the word cotton pronounced more than three thousand times." New Orleans had a similar glut. On the journey up the Mississippi the plaint heard by this traveler from fellow passengers who lived at Natchitoches, was that they could not get enough boats to bring the cotton down the Red. The descending steamers and barges on the great river itself were half of them heavy laden with cotton and at the head of navigation on the Tennessee, in northwestern Alabama, bales enough were waiting to fill a dozen boats. "The Tennesseeans," said he, "think that no state is of any account but their own; Kentucky, they say, would be if it could grow cotton, but as it is, it is good for nothing. They count on forty or fifty thousand bales going from Nashville this season; that is, if they can get boats to carry it all." The fleet on the Cumberland River was doing its utmost, to the discomfort of the passengers; and it was not until the traveler boarded a steamer for St. Louis at the middle of March, that he escaped the plague which had surrounded him for seventy days and seventy nights. This boat, at last, "had not a bale of cotton on board, nor did I hear it named more than twice in thirty-six hours...I had a pretty tolerable night's sleep, though I dreamed of cotton."[9] [Footnote 9: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Oct. 11, 1827, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 283-289.] This obsession was not without its undertone of disquiet. Foresighted men were apprehensive lest the one-crop system bring distress to the cotton belt as it had to Virginia. As early as 1818 a few newspaper editors[10] began to decry the régime; and one of them in 1821 rejoiced in a widespread prevalence of rot in the crop of the preceding year as a blessing, in that it staved off the rapidly nearing time when the staple's price would fall below the cost of production.[11] A marked rise of the price to above twenty cents a pound at the middle of the decade, however, silenced these prophets until a severe decline in the later twenties prompted the sons of Jeremiah to raise their voices again, and the political crisis procured them a partial hearing. Politicians were advocating the home production of cloth and foodstuffs as a demonstration against the protective tariff, while the economists pleaded for diversification for the sake of permanent prosperity, regardless of tariff rates. One of them wrote in 1827: "That we have cultivated cotton, cotton, cotton and bought everything else, has long been our opprobrium. It is time that we should be aroused by some means or other to see that such a course of conduct will inevitably terminate in our ultimate poverty and ruin. Let us manufacture, because it is our best policy. Let us go more on provision crops and less on cotton, because we have had everything about us poor and impoverished long enough.... We have good land, unlimited water powers, capital in plenty, and a patriotism which is running over in some places. If the tariff drives us to this, we say, let the name be sacred in all future generations."[12] Next year William Ellison of the South Carolina uplands welcomed even the low price of cotton as a lever[13] which might pry the planters out of the cotton rut and shift them into industries less exhausting to the soil. [Footnote 10: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 23, 1818.] [Footnote 11: _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville), June 5, 1821.] [Footnote 12: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), June 21, 1827.] [Footnote 13: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 13.] But in the breast of the lowlander, William Elliott, the depression of the cotton market produced merely a querulous complaint that the Virginians, by rushing into the industry several years before when the prices were high, had spoiled the market. Each region, said he, ought to devote itself to the staples best suited to its climate and soil; this was the basis of profitable commerce. The proper policy for Virginia and most of North Carolina was to give all their labor spared from tobacco to the growing of corn which South Carolina would gladly buy of them if undisturbed in her peaceful concentration upon cotton.[14] The advance of cotton prices throughout most of the thirties suspended the discussion, and the régime went on virtually unchanged. As an evidence of the specialization of the Piedmont in cotton, it was reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbia alone the purchases of bacon during the preceding year had amounted to three and a half million pounds.[15] [Footnote 14: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 61.] [Footnote 15: _Niles' Register_, LI, 46.] The world-wide panic of 1837 began to send prices down, and the specially intense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so thoroughly that for five years afterward the producers had to take from five to seven cents a pound for their crops. Planters by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously in the inflated southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves afresh to study the means of salvation. Edmund Ruffin, the Virginian enthusiast for fertilizers, was employed by the authority of the South Carolina legislature to make an agricultural survey of that state with a view to recommending improvements. Private citizens made experiments on their estates; and the newspapers and the multiplying agricultural journals published their reports and advice. Most prominent among the cotton belt planters who labored in the cause of reform were ex-Governor James H. Hammond of South Carolina, Jethro V. Jones of Georgia, Dr. N.B. Cloud of Alabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of Mississippi. Of these, Hammond was chiefly concerned in swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase, and livestock improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improved strains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing; and Philips was an all-round experimenter and propagandist. Hammond and Philips, who were both spurred to experiments by financial stress, have left voluminous records in print and manuscript. Their careers illustrate the handicaps under which innovators labored. Hammond's estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, some sixteen miles below Augusta. Impressed by the depletion of his upland soils, he made a journey in 1838 through southwestern Georgia and the adjacent portion of Florida in search of a new location; but finding land prices inflated, he returned without making a purchase,[17] and for the time being sought relief at home through the improvement of his methods. He wrote in 1841: "I have tried almost all systems, and unlike most planters do not like what is old. I hardly know anything old in corn or cotton planting but what is wrong." His particular enthusiasm now was for plow cultivation as against the hoe. The best planter within his acquaintance, he said, was Major Twiggs, on the opposite bank of the Savannah, who ran thirty-four plows with but fourteen hoes. Hammond's own plowmen were now nearly as numerous as his full hoe hands, and his crops were on a scale of twenty acres of cotton, ten of corn and two of oats to the plow. He was fertilizing each year a third of his corn acreage with cotton seed, and a twentieth of his cotton with barnyard manure; and he was making a surplus of thirty or forty bushels of corn per hand for sale.[18] This would perhaps have contented him in normal times, but the severe depression of cotton prices drove him to new prognostications and plans. His confidence in the staple was destroyed, he said, and he expected the next crop to break the market forever and force virtually everyone east of the Chattahoochee to abandon the culture. "Here and there," he continued, "a plantation may be found; but to plant an acre that will not yield three hundred pounds net will be folly. I cannot make more than sixty dollars clear to the hand on my whole plantation at seven cents...The western plantations have got fairly under way; Texas is coming in, and the game is up with us." He intended to change his own activities in the main to the raising of cattle and hogs; and he thought also of sending part of his slaves to Louisiana or Texas, with a view to removing thither himself after a few years if the project should prove successful.[19] In an address of the same year before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, he advised those to emigrate who intended to continue producing cotton, and recommended for those who would stay in the Piedmont a diversified husbandry including tobacco but with main emphasis upon cereals and livestock.[20] Again at the end of 1849, he voiced similar views at the first annual fair of the South Carolina Institute. The first phase of the cotton industry, said he, had now passed; and the price henceforward would be fixed by the cost of production, and would yield no great profits even in the most fertile areas. The rich expanses of the Southwest, he thought, could meet the whole world's demand at a cost of less than five cents a pound, for the planters there could produce two thousand pounds of lint per hand while those in the Piedmont could not exceed an average of twelve hundred pounds. This margin of difference would deprive the slaves of their value in South Carolina and cause their owners to send them West, unless the local system of industry should be successfully revolutionized. The remedies he proposed were the fertilization of the soil, the diversification of crops, the promotion of commerce, and the large development of cotton manufacturing.[21] [Footnote 16: Described in 1846 in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, 113, 114.] [Footnote 17: MS. diary, April 13 to May 14, 1838, in Hammond papers, Library of Congress.] [Footnote 18: Letters of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 27 and Mch. 9, 1841. Hammond's MS. drafts are in the Library of Congress.] [Footnote 19: Letter to Isaac W. Hayne, Jan. 21, 1841.] [Footnote 20: MS. oration in the Library of Congress.] [Footnote 21: James H. Hammond, _An Address delivered before the South Carolina Institute, at the first annual Fair, on the 20th November, 1849_ (Charleston. 1849).] Hammond found that not only the public but his own sons also, with the exception of Harry, were cool toward his advice and example; and he himself yielded to the temptation of the higher cotton prices in the 'fifties, and while not losing interest in cattle and small grain made cotton and corn his chief reliance. He appears to have salved his conscience in this relapse by devoting part of his income to the reclamation of a great marsh on his estate. He operated two plantations, the one at his home, "Silver Bluff," the other, "Cathwood," near by. The field force on the former comprised in 1850 sixteen plow hands, thirty-four full hoe hands, six three-quarter hands, two half hands and a water boy, the whole rated at fifty-five full hands. At Cathwood the force, similarly grouped, was rated at seventy-one hands; but at either place the force was commonly subject to a deduction of some ten per cent, of its rated strength, on the score of the loss of time by the "breeders and suckers" among the women. In addition to their field strength and the children, of whom no reckoning was made in the schedule of employments, the two plantations together had five stable men, two carpenters, a miller and job worker, a keeper of the boat landing, three nurses and two overseers' cooks; and also thirty-five ditchers in the reclamation work. At Silver Bluff, the 385 acres in cotton were expected to yield 330 bales of 400 pounds each; the 400 acres in corn had an expectation of 9850 bushels; and 10 acres of rice, 200 bushels. At Cathwood the plantings and expectations were 370 acres in cotton to yield 280 bales, 280 in corn to yield 5000 bushels, 15 in wheat to yield 100 bushels, 11 in rye to yield 50, and 2 in rice to yield 50. In financial results, after earning in 1848 only $4334.91, which met barely half of his plantation and family expenses for the year, his crop sales from 1849 to 1853 ranged from seven to twenty thousand dollars annually in cotton and from one and a half to two and a half thousand dollars in corn. His gross earnings in these five years averaged $16,217.76, while his plantation expenses averaged $5393.87, and his family outlay $6392.67, leaving an average "clear gain per annum," as he called it, of $4431.10. The accounting, however, included no reckoning of interest on the investment or of anything else but money income and outgo. In 1859 Hammond put upon the market his 5500 acres of uplands with their buildings, livestock, implements and feed supplies, together with 140 slaves including 70 full hands. His purpose, it may be surmised, was to confine his further operations to his river bottoms.[22] [Footnote 22: Hammond MSS., Library of Congress.] Philips, whom a dearth of patients drove early from the practice of medicine, established in the 'thirties a plantation which he named Log Hall, in Hinds County, Mississippi. After narrowly escaping the loss of his lands and slaves in 1840 through his endorsement of other men's notes, he launched into experimental farming and agricultural publication. He procured various fancy breeds of cattle and hogs, only to have most of them die on his hands. He introduced new sorts of grasses and unfamiliar vegetables and field crops, rarely with success. Meanwhile, however, he gained wide reputation through his many writings in the periodicals, and in the 'fifties he turned this to some advantage in raising fancy strains of cotton and selling their seed. His frequent attendance at fairs and conventions and his devotion to his experiments and to his pen caused him to rely too heavily upon overseers in the routine conduct of his plantation. In consequence one or more slaves occasionally took to the woods; the whole force was frequently in bad health; and his women, though remarkably fecund, lost most of their children in infancy. In some degree Philips justified the prevalent scorn of planters for "book farming."[23] [Footnote 23: M.W. Phillips, "Diary," F.L. Riley, ed., in the Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 305-481; letters of Philips in the _American Agriculturist, DeBow's Review_, etc., and in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 98-123.] The newspapers and farm journals everywhere printed arguments in the 'forties in behalf of crop diversification, and _DeBow's Review_, founded in 1846, joined in the campaign; but the force of habit, the dearth of marketable substitutes and the charms of speculation conspired to make all efforts of but temporary avail. The belt was as much absorbed in cotton in the 'fifties as it had ever been before. Meanwhile considerable improvement had been achieved in cotton methods. Mules, mainly bred in Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, largely replaced the less effective horses and oxen; the introduction of horizontal plowing with occasional balks and hillside ditches, checked the washing of the Piedmont soils; the use of fertilizers became fairly common; and cotton seed was better selected. These last items of manures and seed were the subject of special campaigns. The former was begun as early as 1808 by the Virginian John Taylor of Caroline in his "Arator" essays, and was furthered by the publications of Edmund Ruffin and many others. But an adequate available source of fertilizers long remained a problem without solution. Taylor stressed the virtues of dung and rotation; but the dearth of forage hampered the keeping of large stocks of cattle, and soiling crops were thought commonly to yield too little benefit for the expense in labor. Ruffin had great enthusiasm for the marl or phosphate rock of the Carolina coast; but until the introduction in much later decades of a treatment by sulphuric acid this was too little soluble to be really worth while as a plant food. Lime was also praised; but there were no local sources of it in the districts where it was most needed. Cotton seed, in fact, proved to be the only new fertilizer generally available in moderate abundance prior to the building of the railroads. In early years the seed lay about the gins as refuse until it became a public nuisance. To abate it the village authorities of Sparta, Georgia, for example, adopted in 1807 an ordinance "that the owner of each and every cotton machine within the limits of said town shall remove before the first day of May in each year all seed and damaged cotton that may be about such machines, or dispose of such seed or cotton so as to prevent its unhealthy putrefaction."[24] Soon after this a planter in St. Stephen's Parish, South Carolina, wrote: "We find from experience our cotton seed one of the strongest manures we make use of for our Indian corn; a pint of fresh seed put around or in the corn hole makes the corn produce wonderfully",[25] but it was not until the lapse of another decade or two that such practice became widespread. In the thirties Harriet Martineau and J.S. Buckingham noted that in Alabama the seed was being strewn as manure on a large scale.[26] As an improvement of method the seed was now being given in many cases a preliminary rotting in compost heaps, with a consequent speeding of its availability as plant food;[27] and cotton seed rose to such esteem as a fertilizer for general purposes that many planters rated it to be worth from sixteen to twenty-five cents a bushel of twenty-five pounds.[28] As early as 1830, furthermore a beginning was made in extracting cottonseed oil for use both in painting and illumination, and also in utilizing the by-product of cottonseed meal as a cattle feed.[29] By the 'fifties the oil was coming to be an unheralded substitute for olive oil in table use; but the improvements which later decades were to introduce in its extraction and refining were necessary for the raising of the manufacture to the scale of a substantial industry. [Footnote 24: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Jan. 31, 1807.] [Footnote 25: Letter of John Palmer. Dec. 3, 1808, to David Ramsay. MS. in the Charleston Library.] [Footnote 26: Harriet Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_, (London, 1838), I, 218; I.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, 1842), I, 257.] [Footnote 27: D.R. Williams of South Carolina described his own practice to this effect in an essay of 1825 contributed to the _American Farmer_ and reprinted in H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New York, 1916), pp. 226, 227.] [Footnote 28: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 99; Robert Russell, _North America_, p. 269.] [Footnote 29: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 563; _American Farmer_, II, 98; H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_, pp. 197-209.] The importation of fertilizers began with guano. This material, the dried droppings of countless birds, was discovered in the early 'forties on islands off the coast of Peru;[30] and it promptly rose to such high esteem in England that, according to an American news item, Lloyd's listed for 1845 not less than a thousand British vessels as having sailed in search of guano cargoes. The use of it in the United States began about that year; and nowhere was its reception more eager than in the upland cotton belt. Its price was about fifty dollars a ton in the seaports. To stimulate the use of fertilizers, the Central of Georgia Railroad Company announced in 1858 that it would carry all manures for any distance on its line in carload lots at a flat rate of two dollars per ton; and the connecting roads concurred in this policy. In consequence the Central of Georgia carried nearly two thousand tons of guano in 1859, and more than nine thousand tons in 1860, besides lesser quantities of lime, salt and bone dust. The superintendent reported that while the rate failed to cover the cost of transportation, the effect in increasing the amount of cotton to be freighted, and in checking emigration, fully compensated the road.[31] A contributor to the _North American Review_ in January, 1861, wrote: "The use of guano is increasing. The average return for each pound used in the cotton field is estimated to be a pound and a half of cotton; and the planter who could raise but three bales to the hand on twelve acres of exhausted soil has in some instances by this appliance realized ten bales from the same force and area. In North Carolina guano is reported to accelerate the growth of the plant, and this encourages the culture on the northern border of the cotton-field, where early frosts have proved injurious." [Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, III, 283.] [Footnote 31: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Reports_, 1858-1860.] Widespread interest in agricultural improvement was reported by _DeBow's Review_ in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local and general fairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of Alabama, for example, announced success in devising a cotton picking machine; but as in many subsequent cases in the same premises, the proclamation was premature. As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to have begun about 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results from seed newly procured from Mexico. These were in a few years widely distributed under the name of Petit Gulf cotton. Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began to breed strains from selected seed; and others here and there followed his example, most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The more dignified of the planters who prided themselves on selling nothing but cotton, would distribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fine plants they might encounter in their fields, and make little ado about it. Men of a more flamboyant sort, such as M.W. Philips, contemning such "ruffle-shirt cant," would christen their strains with attractive names, publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy seed for sale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was in vogue, selling at many places for five dollars a quart. In 1839 this was eclipsed by the Alvarado strain, which its sponsors computed from an instance of one heavily fruited stalk nine feet high and others not so prodigious, might yield three thousand pounds per acre.[32] Single Alvarado seeds were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160. In the succeeding years Vick's Hundred Seed, Brown's, Pitt's, Prolific, Sugar Loaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan's, Banana, Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, Mammoth, Mastodon and many others competed for attention and sale. Some proved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger bolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test of planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth the cost of carriage. Extreme prices for seed of any strain were of course obtainable only for the first year or two; and the temptation to make fraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not always resisted. Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the succession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a certain Miller of Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered by chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton per acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named it Accidental Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad town Atlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton," he wrote in a public letter, "would run a three million bale crop up to more than four millions; and this would reduce the price probably to four or five cents. Don't you see, Mr. Miller, that we had better let you keep and plant your seed? You say that you had rather plant your crop with them than take a dollar a pint.... Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well--we might do worse."[33] [Footnote 32: _Southern Banner_( Athens, Ga.), Sept. 20, 1839.] [Footnote 33: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 98-128.] In the sea-island branch of the cotton industry the methods differed considerably from those in producing the shorter staple. Seed selection was much more commonly practiced, and extraordinary care was taken in ginning and packing the harvest. The earliest and favorite lands for this crop were those of exceedingly light soil on the islands fringing the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. At first the tangle of live-oak and palmetto roots discouraged the use of the plow; and afterward the need of heavy fertilization with swamp mud and seaweed kept the acreage so small in proportion to the laborers that hoes continued to be the prevalent means of tillage. Operations were commonly on the basis of six or seven acres to the hand, half in cotton and the rest in corn and sweet potatoes. In the swamps on the mainland into which this crop was afterwards extended, the use of the plow permitted the doubling of the area per hand; but the product of the swamp lands was apparently never of the first grade. The fields were furrowed at five-foot intervals during the winter, bedded in early spring, planted in late April or early May, cultivated until the end of July, and harvested from September to December. The bolls opened but narrowly and the fields had to be reaped frequently to save the precious lint from damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to have averaged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The preparation for market required the greatest painstaking of all. First the seed cotton was dried on a scaffold; next it was whipped for the removal of trash and sand; then it was carefully sorted into grades by color and fineness; then it went to the roller gins, whence the lint was spread upon tables where women picked out every stained or matted bit of the fiber; and finally when gently packed into sewn bags it was ready for market. A few gin houses were equipped in the later decades with steam power; but most planters retained the system of a treadle for each pair of rollers as the surest safeguard of the delicate filaments. A plantation gin house was accordingly a simple barn with perhaps a dozen or two foot-power gins, a separate room for the whipping, a number of tables for the sorting and moting, and a round hole in the floor to hold open the mouth of the long bag suspended for the packing.[34] In preparing a standard bale of three hundred pounds, it was reckoned that the work required of the laborers at the gin house was as follows: the dryer, one day; the whipper, two days; the sorters, at fifty pounds of seed cotton per day for each, thirty days; the ginners, each taking 125 pounds in the seed per day and delivering therefrom 25 pounds of lint, twelve days; the moters, at 43 pounds, seven days; the inspector and packer, two days; total fifty-four days. [Footnote 34: The culture and apparatus are described by W.B. Seabrook, _Memoir on Cotton_, pp. 23-25; Thomas Spaulding in the _American Agriculturist_, III, 244-246; R.F.W. Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ (Charleston, 1854), reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615; J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 131-136. The routine of operations is illustrated in the diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, of Woodboo plantation, 1847-1850, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 195-208.] The roller gin was described in a most untechnical manner by Basil Hall: "It consists of two little wooden rollers, each about as thick as a man's thumb, placed horizontally and touching each other. On these being put into rapid motion, handfulls of the cotton are cast upon them, which of course are immediately sucked in.... A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth ... is made to wag up and down with considerable velocity in front of the rollers. This rugged comb, which is equal in length to the rollers, lies parallel to them, with the sharp ends of its teeth almost in contact with them. By the quick wagging motion given to this comb by the machinery, the buds of cotton cast upon the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to be sucked in. The seeds, now released ... fly off like sparks to the right and left, while the cotton itself passes between the rollers."[35] [Footnote 35: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 221, 222.] As to yields and proceeds, a planter on the Georgia seaboard analyzed his experience from 1830 to 1847 as follows: the harvest average per acre ranged from 68 pounds of lint in 1846 to 223 pounds in 1842, with a general average for the whole period of 137 pounds; the crop's average price per pound ranged from 14 cents in 1847 to 41 cents in 1838, with a general average of 23 1/2 cents; and the net proceeds per hand were highest at $137 in 1835, lowest at $41 in 1836, and averaged $83 for the eighteen years.[36] [Footnote 36: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 128, 129.] In the cotton belt as a whole the census takers of 1850 enumerated 74,031 farms and plantations each producing five bales or more,[37] and they reckoned the crop at 2,445,793 bales of four hundred pounds each. Assuming that five bales were commonly the product of one full hand, and leaving aside a tenth of the gross output as grown perhaps on farms where the cotton was not the main product, it appears that the cotton farms and plantations averaged some thirty bales each, and employed on the average about six full hands. That is to say, there were very many more small farms than large plantations devoted to cotton; and among the plantations, furthermore, it appears that very few were upon a scale entitling them to be called great, for the nature of the industry did not encourage the engrossment of more than sixty laborers under a single manager.[38] It is true that some proprietors operated on a much larger scale than this. It was reported in 1859, for example, that Joseph Bond of Georgia had marketed 2199 bales of his produce, that numerous Louisiana planters, particularly about Concordia Parish, commonly exceeded that output; that Dr. Duncan of Mississippi had a crop of 3000 bales; and that L.R. Marshall, who lived at Natchez and had plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, was accustomed to make more than four thousand bales.[39] The explanation lies of course in the possession by such men of several more or less independent plantations of manageable size. Bond's estate, for example, comprised not less than six plantations in and about Lee County in southwestern Georgia, while his home was in the town of Macon. The areas of these, whether cleared or in forest, ranged from 1305 to 4756 acres.[40] But however large may have been the outputs of exceptionally great planters, the fact remains on the other hand that virtually half of the total cotton crop each year was made by farmers whose slaves were on the average hardly more numerous than the white members of their own families. The plantation system nevertheless dominated the régime. [Footnote 37: _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 178] [Footnote 38: _DeBow's Review_, VIII, 16.] [Footnote 39: _Ibid_., XXVI, 581.] [Footnote 40: Advertisement of Bond's executors offering the plantations for sale in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Nov. 8, 1859.] The British and French spinners, solicitous for their supply of material, attempted at various times and places during the ante-bellum period to enlarge the production of cotton where it was already established and to introduce it into new regions. The result was a complete failure to lessen the predominance of the United States as a source. India, Egypt and Brazil might enlarge their outputs considerably if the rates in the market were raised to twice or thrice their wonted levels; but so long as the price held a moderate range the leadership of the American cotton belt could not be impaired, for its facilities were unequaled. Its long growing season, hot in summer by day and night, was perfectly congenial to the plant, its dry autumns permitted the reaping of full harvests, and its frosty winters decimated the insect pests. Its soil was abundant, its skilled managers were in full supply, its culture was well systematized, and its labor adequate for the demand. To these facilities there was added in the Southern thought of the time, as no less essential for the permanence of the cotton belt's primacy, the plantation system and the institution of slavery. CHAPTER XIII TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS The tone and method of a plantation were determined partly by the crop and the lie of the land, partly by the characters of the master and his men, partly by the local tradition. Some communities operated on the basis of time-work, or the gang system; others on piece-work or the task system. The former was earlier begun and far more widely spread, for Sir Thomas Dale used it in drilling the Jamestown settlers at their work, it was adopted in turn on the "particular" and private plantations thereabout, and it was spread by the migration of the sons and grandsons of Virginia throughout the middle and western South as far as Missouri and Texas. The task system, on the other hand, was almost wholly confined to the rice coast. The gang method was adaptable to operations on any scale. If a proprietor were of the great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and his sons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step for step at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe. If there were a dozen or two working hands, the master, and perhaps the son, instead of laboring manually would superintend the work of the plow and hoe gangs. If the slaves numbered several score the master and his family might live in leisure comparative or complete, while delegating the field supervision to an overseer, aided perhaps by one or more slave foremen. When an estate was inherited by minor children or scattered heirs, or where a single proprietor had several plantations, an overseer would be put into full charge of an establishment so far as the routine work was concerned; and when the plantations in one ownership were quite numerous or of a great scale a steward might be employed to supervise the several overseers. Thus in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall on the Potomac had a steward to assist in the administration of his many scattered properties, and Washington after dividing the Mount Vernon lands into several units had an overseer upon each and a steward for the whole during his own absence in the public service. The neighboring estate of Gunston Hall, belonging to George Mason, was likewise divided into several units for the sake of more detailed supervision. Even the 103 slaves of James Mercer, another neighbor, were distributed on four plantations under the management in 1771 of Thomas Oliver. Of these there were 54 slaves on Marlborough, 19 on Acquia, 12 on Belviderra and 9 on Accokeek, besides 9 hired for work elsewhere. Of the 94 not hired out, 64 were field workers. Nearly all the rest, comprising the house servants, the young children, the invalids and the superannuated, were lodged on Marlborough, which was of course the owner's "home place." Each of the four units had its implements of husbandry, and three of them had tobacco houses; but the barn and stables were concentrated on Marlborough. This indicates that the four plantations were parts of a single tract so poor in soil that only pockets here and there would repay cultivation.[1] This presumption is reinforced by an advertisement which Mercer published in 1767: "Wanted soon, ... a farmer who will undertake the management of about 80 slaves, all settled within six miles of each other, to be employed in making of grain."[2] In such a case the superintendent would combine the functions of a regular overseer on the home place with those of a "riding boss" inspecting the work of the three small outlying squads from time to time. Grain crops would facilitate this by giving more frequent intermissions than tobacco in the routine. The Mercer estate might indeed be more correctly described as a plantation and three subsidiary farms than as a group of four plantations. The occurrence of tobacco houses in the inventory and of grain crops alone in the advertisement shows a recent abandonment of the tobacco staple; and the fact of Mercer's financial embarrassment[3] suggests, what was common knowledge, that the plantation system was ill suited to grain production as a central industry. [Footnote 1: Robert Carter's plantation affairs are noted in Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, N.J., 1900); the Gunston Hall estate is described in Kate M. Rowland, _Life of George Mason_ (New York, 1892), I, 98-102; many documents concerning Mt. Vernon are among the George Washington MSS. in the Library of Congress, and Washington's letters, 1793-179, to his steward are printed in the Long Island Historical Society _Memoirs_ v. 4; of James Mercer's establishments an inventory taken in 1771 is reproduced in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 249.] [Footnote 2: _Virginia Gazette_ (Williamsburg, Va.), Oct. 22, 1767, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 133.] [Footnote 3: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 286.] The organization and routine of the large plantations on the James River in the period of an agricultural renaissance are illustrated in the inventory and work journal of Belmead, in Powhatan County, owned by Philip St. George Cocke and superintended by S.P. Collier.[4] At the beginning of 1854 the 125 slaves were scheduled as follows: the domestic staff comprised a butler, two waiters, four housemaids, a nurse, a laundress, a seamstress, a dairy maid and a gardener; the field corps had eight plowmen, ten male and twelve female hoe hands, two wagoners and four ox drivers, with two cooks attached to its service; the stable and pasture staff embraced a carriage driver, a hostler, a stable boy, a shepherd, a cowherd and a hog herd; in outdoor crafts there were two carpenters and five stone masons; in indoor industries a miller, two blacksmiths, two shoemakers, five women spinners and a woman weaver; and in addition there were forty-five children, one invalid, a nurse for the sick, and an old man and two old women hired off the place, and finally Nancy for whom no age, value or classification is given. The classified workers comprised none younger than sixteen years except the stable boy of eleven, a waiter of twelve, and perhaps some of the housemaids and spinners whose ages are not recorded. At the other extreme there were apparently no slaves on the plantation above sixty years old except Randal, a stone mason, who in spite of his sixty-six years was valued at $300, and the following who had no appraisable value: Old Jim the shepherd, Old Maria the dairy maid, and perhaps two of the spinners. The highest appraisal, $800, was given to Payton, an ox driver, twenty-eight years old. The $700 class comprised six plowmen, five field hands, the three remaining ox drivers, both wagoners, both blacksmiths, the carriage driver, four stone masons, a carpenter, and Ned the twenty-eight year old invalid whose illness cannot have been chronic. The other working men ranged between $250 and $500 except the two shoemakers whose rating was only $200 each. None of the women were appraised above $400, which was the rating also of the twelve and thirteen year old boys. The youngest children were valued at $100 each. These ratings were all quite conservative for that period. The fact that an ox driver overtopped all others in appraisal suggests that the artisans were of little skill. The masons, the carpenters and various other specialists were doubtless impressed as field hands on occasion. [Footnote 4: These records are in the possession of Wm. Bridges of Richmond, Va. For copies of them, as well as for many other valuable items, I am indebted to Alfred H. Stone of Dunleith, Miss.] The livestock comprised twelve mules, nine work horses, a stallion, a brood mare, four colts, six pleasure horses and "William's team" of five head; sixteen work oxen, a beef ox, two bulls, twenty-three cows, and twenty-six calves; 150 sheep and 115 swine. The implements included two reaping machines, three horse rakes, two wheat drills, two straw cutters, three wheat fans, and a corn sheller; one two-horse and four four-horse wagons, two horse carts and four ox carts; nine one-horse and twelve two-horse plows, six colters, six cultivators, eight harrows, two earth scoops, and many scythes, cradles, hoes, pole-axes and miscellaneous farm implements as well as a loom and six spinning wheels. The bottom lands of Belmead appear to have been cultivated in a rotation of tobacco and corn the first year, wheat the second and clover the third, while the uplands had longer rotations with more frequent crops of clover and occasional interspersions of oats. The work journal of 1854 shows how the gang dovetailed the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of the several crops and the general upkeep of the plantation. On specially moist days from January to the middle of April all hands were called to the tobacco houses to strip and prize the cured crop; when the ground was frozen they split and hauled firewood and rails, built fences, hauled stone to line the ditches or build walls and culverts, hauled wheat to the mill, tobacco and flour to the boat landing, and guano, land plaster, barnyard manure and straw to the fields intended for the coming tobacco crop; and in milder dry weather they spread and plowed in these fertilizers, prepared the tobacco seed bed by heaping and burning brush thereon and spading it mellow, and also sowed clover and oats in their appointed fields. In April also the potato patch and the corn fields were prepared, and the corn planted; and the tobacco bed was seeded at the middle of the month. In early May the corn began to be plowed, and the soil of the tobacco fields drawn by hoes into hills with additional manure in their centers. From the end of May until as late as need be in July the occurrence of every rain sent all hands to setting the tobacco seedlings in their hills at top speed as long as the ground stayed wet enough to give prospect of success in the process. In the interims the corn cultivation was continued, hay was harvested in the clover fields and the meadows, and the tobacco fields first planted began to be scraped with hoe and plow. The latter half of June was devoted mainly to the harvesting of small grain with the two reaping machines and the twelve cradles; and for the following two months the main labor force was divided between threshing the wheat and plowing, hoeing, worming and suckering the tobacco, while the expert Daniel was day after day steadily topping the plants. In late August the plows began breaking the fallow fields for wheat. Early in September the cutting and housing of tobacco began, and continued at intervals in good weather until the middle of October. Then the corn was harvested and the sowing of wheat was the chief concern until the end of November when winter plowing was begun for the next year's tobacco. Two days in December were devoted to the housing of ice; and Christmas week, as well as Easter Monday and a day or two in summer and fall, brought leisure. Throughout the year the overseer inspected the negroes' houses and yards every Sunday morning and regularly reported them in good order. The greatest of the tobacco planters in this period was Samuel Hairston, whose many plantations lying in the upper Piedmont on both sides of the Virginia-North Carolina boundary were reported in 1854 to have slave populations aggregating some 1600 souls, and whose gardens at his homestead in Henry County, Virginia, were likened to paradise. Of his methods of management nothing more is known than that his overseers were systematically superintended and that his negroes were commonly both fed and clothed with the products of the plantations themselves.[5] [Footnote 5: William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ (London, 1857), pp. 194, 195, quoting a Richmond newspaper of 1854.] In the eastern cotton belt a notable establishment of earlier decades was that of Governor David R. Williams, who began operations with about a hundred slaves in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, near the beginning of the nineteenth century and increased their number fivefold before his death in 1830. While each of his four plantations gave adequate yields of the staple as well as furnishing their own full supplies of corn and pork, the central feature and the chief source of prosperity was a great bottom tract safeguarded from the floods of the Pee Dee by a levee along the river front. The building of this embankment was but one of many enterprises which Williams undertook in the time spared from his varied political and military services. Others were the improvement of manuring methods, the breeding of mules, the building of public bridges, the erection and management of a textile factory, the launching of a cottonseed oil mill, of which his talents might have made a success even in that early time had not his untimely death intervened. The prosperity of Williams' main business in the face of his multifarious diversions proves that his plantation affairs were administered in thorough fashion. His capable wife must have supplemented the husband and his overseers constantly and powerfully in the conduct of the routine. The neighboring plantation of a kinsman, Benjamin F. Williams, was likewise notable in after years for its highly improved upland fields as well as for the excellent specialized work of its slave craftsmen.[6] [Footnote 6: Harvey T. Cooke, _The Life and Legacy of David Rogerson Williams_ (New York, 1916), chaps. XIV, XVI, XIX, XX, XXV. This book, though bearing a New York imprint, is actually published, as I have been at pains to learn, by Mr. J.W. Norwood of Greenville, South Carolina.] In the fertile bottoms on the Congaree River not far above Columbia, lay the well famed estate of Colonel Wade Hampton, which in 1846 had some sixteen hundred acres of cotton and half as much of corn. The traveler, when reaching it after long faring past the slackly kept fields and premises common in the region, felt equal enthusiasm for the drainage and the fencing, the avenues, the mansion and the mill, the stud of blooded horses, the herd of Durham cattle, the flock of long-wooled sheep, and the pens of Berkshire pigs.[7] Senator McDuffie's plantation in the further uplands of the Abbeville district was likewise prosperous though on a somewhat smaller scale. Accretions had enlarged it from three hundred acres in 1821 to five thousand in 1847, when it had 147 slaves of all ages. Many of these were devoted to indoor employments, and seventy were field workers using twenty-four mules. The 750 acres in cotton commonly yielded crops of a thousand pounds in the seed; the 325 acres in corn gave twenty-five or thirty bushels; the 300 in oats, fifteen bushels; and ten acres in peas, potatoes and squashes yielded their proportionate contribution.[8] [Footnote 7: Described by R.L. Allen in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, 20, 21.] [Footnote 8: _DeBow's Review_, VI, 149.] The conduct and earnings of a cotton plantation fairly typical among those of large scale, may be gathered from the overseer's letters and factor's accounts relating to Retreat, which lay in Jefferson County, Georgia. This was one of several establishments founded by Alexander Telfair of Savannah and inherited by his two daughters, one of whom became the wife of W.B. Hodgson. For many years Elisha Cain was its overseer. The first glimpse which the correspondence affords is in the fall of 1829, some years after Cain had taken charge. He then wrote to Telfair that many of the negroes young and old had recently been ill with fever, but most of them had recovered without a physician's aid. He reported further that a slave named John had run away "for no other cause than that he did not feel disposed to be governed by the same rules and regulations that the other negroes on the land are governed by." Shortly afterward John returned and showed willingness to do his duty. But now Cain encountered a new sort of trouble. He wrote Telfair in January, 1830: "Your negroes have a disease now among them that I am fully at a loss to know what I had best to do. Two of them are down with the venereal disease, Die and Sary. Doctor Jenkins has been attending Die four weeks, and very little alteration as I can learn. It is very hard to get the truth; but from what I can learn, Sary got it from Friday." A note appended to this letter, presumably by Telfair, reads: "Friday is the house servant sent to Retreat every summer. I have all the servants examined before they leave Savannah." In a letter of February, 1831, Cain described his winter work and his summer plans. The teams had hauled away nearly all the cotton crop of 205 bales; the hog killing had yielded thirteen thousand pounds of pork, from which some of the bacon and lard was to be sent to Telfair's town house; the cotton seed were abundant and easily handled, but they were thought good for fertilizing corn only; the stable and cowpen manure was embarrassingly plentiful in view of the pressure of work for the mules and oxen; and the encumbrance of logs and brush on the fields intended for cotton was straining all the labor available to clear them. The sheep, he continued, had not had many lambs; and many of the pigs had died in spite of care and feeding; but "the negroes have been healthy, only colds, and they have for some time now done their work in as much peace and have been as obedient as I could wish." One of the women, however, Darkey by name, shortly became a pestilent source of trouble. Cain wrote in 1833 that her termagant outbreaks among her fellows had led him to apply a "moderate correction," whereupon she had further terrorized her housemates by threats of poison. Cain could then only unbosom himself to Telfair: "I will give you a full history of my belief of Darkey, to wit: I believe her disposition as to temper is as bad as any in the whole world. I believe she is as unfaithful as any I have ever been acquainted with. In every respect I believe she has been more injury to you in the place where she is than two such negroes would sell for.... I have tryed and done all I could to get on with her, hopeing that she would mend; but I have been disappointed in every instant. I can not hope for the better any longer." The factor's record becomes available from 1834, with the death of Telfair. The seventy-six pair of shoes entered that year tells roughly the number of working hands, and the ninety-six pair in 1842 suggests the rate of increase. Meanwhile the cotton output rose from 166 bales of about three hundred pounds in 1834 to 407 bales of four hundred pounds in the fine weather of 1841. In 1836 an autumn report from Cain is available, dated November 20. Sickness among the negroes for six weeks past had kept eight or ten of them in their beds; the resort to Petit Gulf seed had substantially increased the cotton yield; and the fields were now white with a crop in danger of ruin from storms. "My hands," he said, "have picked well when they were able, and some of them appear to have a kind of pride in making a good crop." A gin of sixty saws newly installed had proved too heavy for the old driving apparatus, but it was now in operation with shifts of four mules instead of two as formerly. This pressure, in addition to the hauling of cotton to market had postponed the gathering of the corn crop. The corn would prove adequate for the plantation's need, and the fodder was plentiful, but the oats had been ruined by the blast. The winter cloth supply had been spun and woven, as usual, on the place; but Cain now advised that the cotton warp for the jeans in future be bought. "The spinning business on this plantation," said he, "is very ungaining. In the present arrangement there is eight hands regular imployed in spinning and weaving, four of which spin warpe, and it could be bought at the factory at 120 dollars annually. Besides, it takes 400 pounds of cotton each year, leaveing 60 dollars only to the four hands who spin warp.... These hands are not old negroes, not all of them. Two of Nanny's daughters, or three I may say, are all able hands ... and these make neither corn nor meat. Take out $20 to pay their borde, and it leaves them in debt. I give them their task to spin, and they say they cannot do more. That is, they have what is jenerly given as a task." In 1840 Cain raised one of the slaves to the rank of driver, whereupon several of the men ran away in protest, and Cain was impelled to defend his policy in a letter to Mary Telfair, explaining that the new functionary had not been appointed "to lay off tasks and use the whip." The increase of the laborers and the spread of the fields, he said, often required the working of three squads, the plowmen, the grown hoe hands, and the younger hoe hands. "These separate classes are frequently separate a considerable distance from each other, and so soon as I am absent from either they are subject to quarrel and fight, or to idle time, or beat and abuse the mules; and when called to account each negro present when the misconduct took place will deny all about the same. I therefore thought, and yet believe, that for the good order of the plantation and faithful performance of their duty, it was proper to have some faithful and trusty hand whose duty it should be to report to me those in fault, and that is the only dread they have of John, for they know he is not authorized to beat them. You mention in your letter that you do not wish your negroes treated with severity. I have ever thought my fault on the side of lenity; if they were treated severe as many are, I should not be their overseer on any consideration." In the same letter Cain mentioned that the pork made on the place the preceding year had yielded eleven monthly allowances to the negroes at the rate of 1050 pounds per month, and that the deficit for the twelfth month had been filled as usual by a shipment from Savannah. From 407 bales in 1841 the cotton output fell rapidly, perhaps because of restriction prompted by the low prices, to 198 bales in 1844. Then it rose to the maximum of 438 bales in 1848. Soon afterwards Cain's long service ended, and after two years during which I. Livingston was in charge, I.N. Bethea was engaged and retained for the rest of the ante-bellum period. The cotton crops in the 'fifties did not commonly exceed three hundred bales of a weight increasing to 450 pounds, but they were supplemented to some extent by the production of wheat and rye for market. The overseer's wages were sometimes as low as $600, but were generally $1000 a year. In the expense accounts the annual charges for shoes, blankets and oznaburgs were no more regular than the items of "cotton money for the people." These sums, averaging about a hundred dollars a year, were distributed among the slaves in payment for the little crops of nankeen cotton which they cultivated in spare time on plots assigned to the several families. Other expense items mentioned salt, sugar, bacon, molasses, tobacco, wool and cotton cards, loom sleighs, mules and machinery. Still others dealt with drugs and doctor's bills. In 1837, for example, Dr. Jenkins was paid $90 for attendance on Priscilla. In some years the physician's payment was a round hundred dollars, indicating services on contract. In May, 1851, there are debits of $16.16 for a constable's reward, a jail fee and a railroad fare, and of $1.30 for the purchase of a pair of handcuffs, two padlocks and a trace chain. These constitute the financial record of a runaway's recapture. From 1834 to 1841 the gross earnings on Retreat ranged between eight and fifteen thousand dollars, of which from seven to twelve thousand each year was available for division between the owners. The gross then fell rapidly to $4000 in 1844, of which more than half was consumed in expenses. It then rose as rapidly to its maximum of $21,300 in 1847, when more than half of it again was devoted to current expenses and betterments. Thereafter the range of the gross was between $8000 and $17,000 except for a single year of crop failure, 1856, when the 109 bales brought $5750. During the 'fifties the current expenses ranged usually between six and ten thousand dollars, as compared with about one third as much in the 'thirties. This is explained partly by the resolution of the owners to improve the fields, now grown old, and to increase the equipment. For the crop of 1856, for example, purchases were made of forty tons of Peruvian guano at $56 per ton, and nineteen tons of Mexican guano at $25 a ton. In the following years lime, salt and dried blood were included in the fertilizer purchases. At length Hodgson himself gave over his travels and his ethnological studies to take personal charge on Retreat. He wrote in June, 1859, to his friend Senator Hammond, of whom we have seen something in the preceding chapter, that he had seriously engaged in "high farming," and was spreading huge quantities of fertilizers. He continued: "My portable steam engine is the _delicia domini_ and of overseer too. It follows the reapers beautifully in a field of wheat, 130 acres, and then in the rye fields. In August it will be backed up to the gin house and emancipate from slavery eighteen mules and four little nigger drivers."[9] [Footnote 9: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] The factor's books for this plantation continue their records into the war time. From the crop of 1861 nothing appears to have been sold but a single bale of cotton, and the year's deficit was $6,721. The proceeds from the harvests of 1862 were $500 from nineteen bales of cotton, and some $10,000 from fodder, hay, peanuts and corn. The still more diversified market produce of 1863 comprised also wheat, which was impressed by the Confederate government, syrup, cowpeas, lard, hams and vinegar. The proceeds were $17,000 and the expenses about $9000, including the overseer's wages at $1300 and the purchase of 350 bushels of peanuts from the slaves at $1.50 per bushel. The reckonings in the war period were made of course in the rapidly depreciating Confederate currency. The stoppage of the record in 1864 was doubtless a consequence of Sherman's march through Georgia.[10] [Footnote 10: The Retreat records are in the possession of the Georgia Historical Society, trustee for the Telfair Academy of Art, Savannah, Ga. The overseer's letters here used are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 314, 330-336, II, 39, 85.] In the western cotton belt the plantations were much like those of the eastern, except that the more uniform fertility often permitted the fields to lie in solid expanses instead of being sprawled and broken by waste lands as in the Piedmont. The scale of operations tended accordingly to be larger. One of the greatest proprietors in that region, unless his display were far out of proportion to his wealth, was Joseph A.S. Acklen whose group of plantations was clustered near the junction of the Red and Mississippi Rivers. In 1859 he began to build a country house on the style of a Gothic castle, with a great central hall and fifty rooms exclusive of baths and closets.[11] The building was expected to cost $150,000, and the furnishings $125,000 more. Acklen's rules for the conduct of his plantations will be discussed in another connection;[12] but no description of his estate or his actual operations is available. [Footnote 11: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 2, 1859.] [Footnote 12: Below, pp. 262 ff.] Olmsted described in detail a plantation in the neighborhood of Natchez. Its thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of cotton, corn and incidental crops were tilled by a plow gang of thirty and a hoe gang of thirty-seven, furnished by a total of 135 slaves on the place. A driver cracked a whip among the hoe hands, occasionally playing it lightly upon the shoulders of one or another whom he thought would be stimulated by the suggestion. "There was a nursery for sucklings at the quarters, and twenty women at this time left their work four times a day, for half an hour, to nurse the young ones, and whom the overseer counted as half hands--that is, expected to do half an ordinary day's work." At half past nine every night the hoe and plow foremen, serving alternately, sounded curfew on a horn, and half an hour afterward visited each cabin to see that the households were at rest and the fires safely banked. The food allowance was a peck of corn and four pounds of pork weekly. Each family, furthermore, had its garden, fowl house and pigsty; every Christmas the master distributed among them coffee, molasses, tobacco, calico and "Sunday tricks" to the value of from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars; and every man might rive boards in the swamp on Sundays to buy more supplies, or hunt and fish in leisure times to vary his family's fare. Saturday afternoon was also free from the routine. Occasionally a slave would run away, but he was retaken sooner or later, sometimes by the aid of dogs. A persistent runaway was disposed of by sale.[13] [Footnote 13: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, 1860), pp. 46-54.] Another estate in the same district, which Olmsted observed more cursorily, comprised four adjoining plantations, each with its own stables and quarter, each employing more than a hundred slaves under a separate overseer, and all directed by a steward whom the traveler described as cultured, poetic and delightful. An observation that women were at some of the plows prompted Olmsted to remark that throughout the Southwest the slaves were worked harder as a rule than in the easterly and northerly slaveholding states. On the other hand he noted: "In the main the negroes appeared to be well cared for and abundantly supplied with the necessaries of vigorous physical existence. A large part of them lived in commodious and well built cottages, with broad galleries in front, so that each family of five had two rooms on the lower floor and a large loft. The remainder lived in log huts, small and mean in appearance;[14] but those of their overseers were little better, and preparations were being made to replace all of these by neat boarded cottages." [Footnote 14: Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp. 72-92.] In the sugar district Estwick Evans when on his "pedestrious tour" in 1817 found the shores of the Mississippi from a hundred miles above New Orleans to twenty miles below the city in a high state of cultivation. "The plantations within these limits," he said, "are superb beyond description.... The dwelling houses of the planters are not inferior to any in the United States, either with respect to size, architecture, or the manner in which they are furnished. The gardens and yards contiguous to them are formed and decorated with much taste. The cotton, sugar and ware houses are very large, and the buildings for the slaves are well finished. The latter buildings are in some cases forty or fifty in number, and each of them will accommodate ten or twelve persons.... The planters here derive immense profits from the cultivation of their estates.[15] The yearly income from them is from twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars." [Footnote 15: Estwick Evans, _A Pedestrious Tour ... through the Western States and Territories_ (Concord, N.H., 1817), p. 219, reprinted in R.G. Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, VIII, 325, 326.] Gross proceeds running into the tens of thousands of dollars were indeed fairly common then and afterward among Louisiana sugar planters, for the conditions of their industry conduced strongly to a largeness of plantation scale. Had railroad facilities been abundant a multitude of small cultivators might have shipped their cane to central mills for manufacture, but as things were the weight and the perishableness of the cane made milling within the reach of easy cartage imperative. It was inexpedient even for two or more adjacent estates to establish a joint mill, for the imminence of frost in the harvest season would make wrangles over the questions of precedence in the grinding almost inevitable. As a rule, therefore, every unit in cane culture was also a unit in sugar manufacture. Exceptions were confined to the scattering instances where some small farm lay alongside a plantation which had a mill of excess capacity available for custom grinding on slack days. The type of plantation organization in the sugar bowl was much like that which has been previously described for Jamaica. Mules were used as draught animals instead of oxen, however, on account of their greater strength and speed, and all the seeding and most of the cultivation was done with deep-running plows. Steam was used increasingly as years passed for driving the mills, railways were laid on some of the greater estates for hauling the cane, more suitable varieties of cane were introduced, guano was imported soon after its discovery to make the rich fields yet more fertile, and each new invention of improved mill apparatus was readily adopted for the sake of reducing expenses. In consequence the acreage cultivated per hand came to be several times greater than that which had prevailed in Jamaica's heyday. But the brevity of the growing season kept the saccharine content of the canes below that in the tropics, and together with the mounting price of labor made prosperity depend in some degree upon protective tariffs. The dearth of land available kept the sugar output well below the domestic demand, though the molasses market was sometimes glutted. A typical prosperous estate of which a description and a diary are extant[16] was that owned by Valcour Aime, lying on the right bank of the Mississippi about sixty miles above New Orleans. Of the 15,000 acres which it comprised in 1852, 800 were in cane, 300 in corn, 150 in crops belonging to the slaves, and most of the rest in swampy forest from which two or three thousand cords of wood were cut each year as fuel for the sugar mill and the boiling house. The slaves that year numbered 215 of all ages, half of them field hands,[17] and the mules 64. The negroes were well housed, clothed and fed; the hospital and the nursery were capacious, and the stables likewise. The mill was driven by an eighty-horse-power steam engine, and the vacuum pans and the centrifugals were of the latest types. The fields were elaborately ditched, well manured, and excellently tended. The land was valued at $360,000, the buildings at $100,000, the machinery at $60,000, the slaves at $170,000, and the livestock at $11,000; total, $701,000. The crop of 1852, comprising 1,300,000 pounds of white centrifugal sugar at 6 cents and 60,000 gallons of syrup at 36 cents, yielded a gross return of almost $100,000. The expenses included 4,629 barrels of coal from up the river, in addition to the outlay for wages and miscellaneous supplies. [Footnote 16: _Harper's Magasine_, VII, 758, 759 (November, 1853); Valcour Aime, _Plantation Diary_ (New Orleans, 1878), partly reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 214, 230.] [Footnote 17: According to the MS. returns of the U.S. census of 1850 Aime's slaves at that time numbered 231, of whom 58 were below fifteen years old, 164 were between 15 and 65, and 9 (one of them blind, another insane) were from 66 to 80 years old. Evidently there was a considerable number of slaves of working age not classed by him as field hands.] In the routine of work, each January was devoted mainly to planting fresh canes in the fields from which the stubble canes or second rattoons had recently been harvested. February and March gave an interval for cutting cordwood, cleaning ditches, and such other incidentals as the building and repair of the plantation's railroad. Warm weather then brought the corn planting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of the crops gave time for incidentals again. Corn and hay were now harvested, the roads and premises put in order, the cordwood hauled from the swamp, the coal unladen from the barges, and all things made ready for the rush of the grinding season which began in late October. In the first phase of harvesting the main gang cut and stripped the canes, the carters and the railroad crew hauled them to the mill, and double shifts there kept up the grinding and boiling by day and by night. As long as the weather continued temperate the mill set the pace for the cutters. But when frost grew imminent every hand who could wield a knife was sent to the fields to cut the still standing stalks and secure them against freezing. For the first few days of this phase, the stalks as fast as cut were laid, in their leaves, in great mats with the tops turned south to prevent the entrance of north winds, with the leaves of each layer covering the butts of that below, and with a blanket of earth over the last butts in the mat. Here these canes usually stayed until January when they were stripped and strewn in the furrows of the newly plowed "stubble" field as the seed of a new crop. After enough seed cane were "mat-layed," the rest of the cut was merely laid lengthwise in the adjacent furrows to await cartage to the mill.[18] In the last phase of the harvest, which followed this work of the greatest emergency, these "windrowed" canes were stripped and hauled, with the mill setting the pace again, until the grinding was ended, generally in December. [Footnote 18: These processes of matlaying and windrowing are described in L. Bouchereau, _Statement of the Sugar and Rice Crops made in Louisiana in 1870-71_ (New Orleans, 1871), p. xii.] Another typical sugar estate was that of Dr. John P.R. Stone, comprising the two neighboring though not adjacent plantations called Evergreen and Residence, on the right bank of the Mississippi in Iberville Parish. The proprietor's diary is much like Aime's as regards the major crop routine but is fuller in its mention of minor operations. These included the mending and heightening of the levee in spring, the cutting of staves, the shaving of hoops and the making of hogsheads in summer, and, in their fitting interims, the making of bricks, the sawing of lumber, enlarging old buildings, erecting new ones, whitewashing, ditching, pulling fodder, cutting hay, and planting and harvesting corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, peas and turnips. There is occasional remark upon the health of the slaves, usually in the way of rejoicing at its excellence. Apparently no outside help was employed except for an Irish carpenter during the construction of a sugar house on Evergreen in 1850.[19] The slaves on Evergreen in 1850 numbered 44 between the ages of 15 and 60 years and 26 children; on Residence, 25 between 15 and 65 years and 6 children.[20] The joint crop in 1850, ground in the Residence mill, amounted to 312 hogsheads of brown sugar and sold for 4-3/4 to 5 cents a pound; that of the phenomenal year 1853, when the Evergreen mill was also in commission, reached 520 hogsheads on that plantation and 179 on Residence, but brought only 3 cents a pound. These prices were much lower than those of white sugar at the time; but as Valcour Aime found occasion to remark, the refining reduced the weight of the product nearly as much as it heightened the price, so that the chief advantage of the centrifugals lay in the speed of their process. [Footnote 19: Diary of Dr. J.P.R. Stone. MS. in the possession of Mr. John Stone Ware, White Castle, La. For the privilege of using the diary I am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody of the University of Michigan, now Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] [Footnote 20: MS. returns in the U.S. Census Bureau, data procured through the courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Mr.(now Lieutenant) V. Alton Moody.] All of the characteristic work in the sugar plantation routine called mainly for able-bodied laborers. Children were less used than in tobacco and cotton production, and the men and women, like the mules, tended to be of sturdier physique. This was the result partly of selection, partly of the vigorous exertion required. Among the fourteen hundred and odd sugar plantations of this period, the average one had almost a hundred slaves of all ages, and produced average crops of nearly three hundred hogsheads or a hundred and fifty tons. Most of the Anglo-Americans among the planters lived about Baton Rouge and on the Red River, where they or their fathers had settled with an initial purpose of growing cotton. Their fellows who acquired estates in the Creole parishes were perhaps as often as otherwise men who had been merchants and not planters in earlier life. One of these had removed from New York in the eighteenth century and had thriven in miscellaneous trade at Pensacola and on the Mississippi. In 1821 he bought for $140,000 a plantation and its complement of slaves on Bayou Lafourche, and he afterward acquired a second one in Plaquemines Parish. In the conduct of his plantation business he shrewdly bought blankets by the bale in Philadelphia, and he enlarged his gang by commissioning agents to buy negroes in Virginia and Maryland. The nature of the instructions he gave may be gathered from the results, for there duly arrived in several parcels between 1828 and 1832, fully covered by marine insurance for the coastwise voyage, fifty slaves, male and female, virtually all of whom ranged between the ages of ten and twenty-five years.[21] This planter prospered, and his children after him; and while he may have had a rugged nature, his descendants to-day are among the gentlest of Louisianians. Another was Duncan F. Kenner, who was long a slave trader with headquarters at New Orleans before he became a planter in Ascension Parish on a rapidly increasing scale. His crop advanced from 580 hogsheads in 1849 to 1,370 hogsheads in 1853 and 2,002 hogsheads in 1858 when he was operating two mills, one equipped with vacuum pans and the other with Rillieux apparatus.[22] A third example was John Burnside, who emigrated from the North of Ireland in his youth rose rapidly from grocery clerk in upland Virginia to millionaire merchant in New Orleans, and then in the fifties turned his talents to sugar growing. He bought the three contiguous plantations of Col. J.S. Preston lying opposite Donaldsonville, and soon added a fourth one to the group. In 1858 his aggregate crop was 3,701 hogsheads; and in 1861 his fields were described by William H. Russell as exhibiting six thousand acres of cane in an unbroken tract. By employing squads of immigrant Irishmen for ditching and other severe work he kept his literally precious negroes, well housed and fed, in fit condition for effective routine under his well selected staff of overseers.[23] Even after the war Burnside kept on acquiring plantations, and with free negro labor kept on making large sugar crops. At the end of his long life, spent frugally as a bachelor and somewhat of a recluse, he was doubtless by far the richest man in all the South. The number of planters who had been merchants and the frequency of partnerships and corporations operating sugar estates, as well as the magnitude of scale characteristic of the industry, suggest that methods of a strictly business kind were more common in sugar production than in that of cotton or tobacco. Domesticity and paternalism were nevertheless by no means alien to the sugar régime. [Footnote 21: MSS. in private possession, data from which were made available through the kindness of Mr. V.A. Moody.] [Footnote 22: The yearly product of each sugar plantation in Louisiana between 1849 and 1858 is reported in P.A. Champonier's _Annual Statement_ of the crop. (New Orleans, 1850-1859).] [Footnote 23: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp. 268-279] Virtually all of the tobacco, short staple cotton and sugar plantations were conducted on the gang system. The task system, on the other hand, was instituted on the rice coast, where the drainage ditches checkering the fields into half or quarter acre plots offered convenient units of performance in the successive processes. The chief advantage of the task system lay in the ease with which it permitted a planter or an overseer to delegate much of his routine function to a driver. This official each morning would assign to each field hand his or her individual plot, and spend the rest of the day in seeing to the performance of the work. At evening or next day the master could inspect the results and thereby keep a check upon both the driver and the squad. Each slave when his day's task was completed had at his own disposal such time as might remain. The driver commonly gave every full hand an equal area to be worked in the same way, and discriminated among them only in so far as varying conditions from plot to plot would permit the assignment of the stronger and swifter workmen to tracts where the work required was greater, and the others to plots where the labor was less. Fractional hands were given fractional tasks, or were combined into full hands for full tasks. Thus a woman rated at three quarters might be helped by her own one quarter child, or two half-hand youths might work a full plot jointly. The system gave some stimulus to speed of work, at least from time to time, by its promise of afternoon leisure in reward. But for this prospect to be effective the tasks had to be so limited that every laborer might have the hope of an hour or two's release as the fruit of diligence. The performance of every hand tended accordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of the weakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, was almost equally strong in the gang system also. The task acre was commonly not a square of 210 feet, but a rectangle 300 feet long and 150 feet broad, divided into square halves and rectangular quarters, and further divisible into "compasses" five feet wide and 150 feet long, making one sixtieth of an acre. The standard tasks for full hands in rice culture were scheduled in 1843 as follows: plowing with two oxen, with the animals changed at noon, one acre; breaking stiff land with the hoe and turning the stubble under, ten compasses; breaking such land with the stubble burnt off, or breaking lighter land, a quarter acre or slightly more; mashing the clods to level the field, from a quarter to half an acre; trenching the drills, if on well prepared land, three quarters of an acre; sowing rice, from three to four half-acres; covering the drills, three quarters; the first hoeing, half an acre, or slightly less if the ground were lumpy and the drills hard to clear; second hoeing, half an acre, or slightly less or more according to the density of the grass; third hoeing with hand picking of the grass from the drills, twenty compasses; fourth hoeing, half an acre; reaping with the sickle, three quarters, or much less if the ground were new and cumbered or if the stalks were tangled; and threshing with the flail, six hundred sheaves for the men, five hundred for the women.[24] Much of the incidental work was also done by tasks, such as ditching, cutting cordwood, squaring timber, splitting rails, drawing staves and hoop poles, and making barrels. The scale of the crop was commonly five acres of rice to each full hand, together with about half as much in provision crops for home consumption. [Footnote 24: Edmund Ruffin, _Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ (Columbia, 1843), p. 118.] Under the task system, Olmsted wrote: "most of the slaves work rapidly and well...Custom has settled the extent of the task, and it is difficult to increase it. The driver who marks it out has to remain on the ground until it is finished, and has no interest in over-measuring it; and if it should be systematically increased very much there is the danger of a general stampede to the 'swamp'--a danger a slave can always hold before his master's cupidity...It is the driver's duty to make the tasked hands do their work well.[25] If in their haste to finish it they neglect to do it properly he 'sets them back,' so that carelessness will hinder more than it hastens the completion of their tasks." But Olmsted's view was for once rose colored. A planter who lived in the régime wrote: "The whole task system ... is one that I most unreservedly disapprove of, because it promotes idleness, and that is the parent of mischief."[26] Again the truth lies in the middle ground. The virtue or vice of the system, as with the gang alternative, depended upon its use by a diligent master or its abuse by an excessive delegation of responsibility. [Footnote 25: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 435, 436.] [Footnote 26: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 34.] That the tide when taken at the flood on the rice coast as elsewhere would lead to fortune is shown by the career of the greatest of all rice planters, Nathaniel Heyward. At the time of his birth, in 1766, his father was a planter on an inland swamp near Port Royal. Nathaniel himself after establishing a small plantation in his early manhood married Harriett Manigault, an heiress with some fifty thousand dollars. With this, when both lands and slaves were cheap, Heyward bought a tide-land tract and erected four plantations thereon, and soon had enough accrued earnings to buy the several inland plantations of the Gibbes brothers, who had fallen into debt from luxurious living. With the proceeds of his large crops at high prices during the great wars in Europe, he bought more slaves year after year, preferably fresh Africans as long as that cheap supply remained available, and he bought more land when occasion offered. Joseph Manigault wrote of him in 1806: "Mr. Heyward has lately made another purchase of land, consisting of 300 acres of tide swamp, joining one of his Combahee plantations and belonging to the estate of Mrs. Bell. I believe he has made a good bargain. It is uncleared and will cost him not quite £20 per acre. I have very little doubt that he will be in a few years, if he lives, the richest, as he is the best planter in the state. The Cooper River lands give him many a long ride." Heyward was venturesome in large things, conservative in small. He long continued to have his crops threshed by hand, saying that if it were done by machines his darkies would have no winter work; but when eventually he instituted mechanical threshers, no one could discern an increase of leisure. In the matter of pounding mills likewise, he clung for many years to those driven by the tides and operating slowly and crudely; but at length he built two new ones driven by steam and so novel and complete in their apparatus as to be the marvels of the countryside. He necessarily depended much upon overseers; but his own frequent visits of inspection and the assistance rendered by his sons kept the scattered establishments in an efficient routine. The natural increase of his slaves was reckoned by him to have ranged generally between one and five per cent. annually, though in one year it rose to seven per cent. At his death in 1851 he owned fourteen rice plantations with fields ranging from seventy to six hundred acres in each, and comprising in all 4,390 acres in cultivation. He had also a cotton plantation, much pine land and a sawmill, nine residences in Charleston, appraised with their furniture at $180,000; securities and cash to the amount of $200,000; $20,000 worth of horses, mules and cattle; $15,000 worth of plate; and $3000 worth of old wine. His slaves, numbering 2,087 and appraised at an average of $550, made up the greater part of his two million dollar estate. His heirs continued his policy. In 1855, for example, they bought a Savannah River plantation called Fife, containing 500 acres of prime rice land at $150 per acre, together with its equipment and 120 slaves, at a gross price of $135,600.[27] [Footnote 27: MSS. in the possession of Mrs. Hawkins K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C., including a "Memoir of Nathaniel Heyward," written in 1895 by Gabriel E. Manigault.] The history of the estate of James Heyward, Nathaniel's brother, was in striking contrast with this. When on a tour in Ireland he met and married an actress, who at his death in 1796 inherited his plantation and 214 slaves. Two suitors for the widow's hand promptly appeared in Alexander Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and Charles Baring, his cousin. Mrs. Heyward married the latter, who increased the estate to seven or eight hundred acres in rice, yielding crops worth from twelve to thirty thousand dollars. But instead of superintending its work in person Baring bought a large tract in the North Carolina mountains, built a house there, and carried thither some fifty slaves for his service. After squandering the income for nearly fifty years, he sold off part of the slaves and mortgaged the land; and when the plantation was finally surrendered in settlement of Baring's debts, it fell into Nathaniel Heyward's possession.[28] [Footnote 28: Notes by Louis Manigault of a conversation with Nathaniel Heyward in 1846. M.S. in the collection above mentioned.] Another case of absentee neglect, made notorious through Fanny Kemble's _Journal_, was the group of rice and sea-island cotton plantations founded by Senator Pierce Butler on and about Butler's Island near the mouth of the Altamaha River. When his two grandsons inherited the estate, they used it as a source of revenue but not as a home. One of these was Pierce Butler the younger, who lived in Philadelphia. When Fanny Kemble, with fame preceding her, came to America in 1832, he became infatuated, followed her troupe from city to city, and married her in 1834. The marriage was a mistake. The slaveholder's wife left the stage for the time being, but retained a militant English abolitionism. When in December, 1838, she and her husband were about to go South for a winter on the plantations, she registered her horror of slavery in advance, and resolved to keep a journal of her experiences and observations. The resulting record is gloomy enough. The swarms of negroes were stupid and slovenly, the cabins and hospitals filthy, the women overdriven, the overseer callous, the master indifferent, and the new mistress herself, repudiating the title, was more irritable and meddlesome than helpful.[29] The short sojourn was long enough. A few years afterward the ill-mated pair were divorced and Fanny Kemble resumed her own name and career. Butler did not mend his ways. In 1859 his half of the slaves, 429 in number, were sold at auction in Savannah to pay his debts. [Footnote 29: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839_(London, 1863).] A pleasanter picture is afforded by the largest single unit in rice culture of which an account is available. This was the plantation of William Aiken, at one time governor of South Carolina, occupying Jehossee Island near the mouth of the Edisto River. It was described in 1850 by Solon Robinson, an Iowa farmer then on tour as correspondent for the _American Agriculturist_. The two or three hundred acres of firm land above tide comprised the homestead, the negro quarter, the stables, the stock yard, the threshing mill and part of the provision fields. Of the land which could be flooded with the tide, about fifteen hundred acres were diked and drained. About two-thirds of this appears to have been cropped in rice each year, and the rest in corn, oats and sweet potatoes. The steam-driven threshing apparatus was described as highly efficient. The sheaves were brought on the heads of the negroes from the great smooth stack yard, and opened in a shed where the scattered grain might be saved. A mechanical carrier led thence to the threshing machines on the second floor, whence the grain descended through a winnowing fan. The pounding mill, driven by the tide, was a half mile distant at the wharf, whence a schooner belonging to the plantation carried the hulled and polished rice in thirty-ton cargoes to Charleston. The average product per acre was about forty-five bushels in the husk, each bushel yielding some thirty pounds of cleaned rice, worth about three cents a pound. The provision fields commonly fed the force of slaves and mules; and the slave families had their own gardens and poultry to supplement their fare. The rice crops generally yielded some twenty-five thousand dollars in gross proceeds, while the expenses, including the two-thousand-dollar salary of the overseer, commonly amounted to some ten thousand dollars. During the summer absence of the master, the overseer was the only white man on the place. The engineers, smiths, carpenters and sailors were all black. "The number of negroes upon the place," wrote Robinson, "is just about 700, occupying 84 double frame houses, each containing two tenements of three rooms to a family besides the cockloft.... There are two common hospitals and a 'lying-in hospital,' and a very neat, commodious church, which is well filled every Sabbath.... Now the owner of all this property lives in a very humble cottage, embowered in dense shrubbery and making no show.... He and his family are as plain and unostentatious in their manners as the house they live in.... Nearly all the land has been reclaimed and the buildings, except the house, erected new within the twenty years that Governor Aiken has owned the island. I fully believe that he is more concerned to make his people comfortable and happy than he is to make money."[30] When the present writer visited Jehossee in the harvest season sixty years after Robinson, the fields were dotted with reapers, wage earners now instead of slaves, but still using sickles on half-acre tasks; and the stack yard was aswarm with sable men and women carrying sheaves on their heads and chattering as of old in a dialect which a stranger can hardly understand. The ante-bellum hospital and many of the cabins in their far-thrown quadruple row were still standing. The site of the residence, however, was marked only by desolate chimneys, a live-oak grove and a detached billiard room, once elegant but now ruinous, the one indulgence which this planter permitted himself. [Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 187, 188, reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, IX, 201-203.] The ubiquitous Olmsted chose for description two rice plantations operated as one, which he inspected in company with the owner, whom he calls "Mr. X." Frame cabins at intervals of three hundred feet constituted the quarters; the exteriors were whitewashed, the interiors lathed and plastered, and each family had three rooms and a loft, as well as a chicken yard and pigsty not far away. "Inside, the cabins appeared dirty and disordered, which was rather a pleasant indication that their home life was not much interfered with, though I found certain police regulations enforced." Olmsted was in a mellow mood that day. At the nursery "a number of girls eight or ten years old were occupied in holding and tending the youngest infants. Those a little older--the crawlers--were in the pen, and those big enough to toddle were playing on the steps or before the house. Some of these, with two or three bigger ones, were singing and dancing about a fire they had made on the ground.... The nurse was a kind-looking old negro woman.... I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not a baby of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three other plantation nurseries which I have visited." The chief slave functionary was a "gentlemanly-mannered mulatto who ... carried by a strap at his waist a very large bunch of keys and had charge of all the stores of provisions, tools and materials on the plantations, as well as of their produce before it was shipped to market. He weighed and measured out all the rations of the slaves and the cattle.... In all these departments his authority was superior to that of the overseer; ... and Mr. X. said he would trust him with much more than he would any overseer he had ever known." The master explained that this man and the butler, his brother, having been reared with the white children, had received special training to promote their sense of dignity and responsibility. The brothers, Olmsted further observed, rode their own horses the following Sunday to attend the same church as their master, and one of them slipped a coin into the hand of the boy who had been holding his mount. The field hands worked by tasks under their drivers. "I saw one or two leaving the field soon after one o'clock, several about two; and between three and four I met a dozen men and women coming home to their cabins, having finished their day's work." As to punishment, Olmsted asked how often it was necessary. The master replied: "'Sometimes perhaps not once for two or three weeks; then it will seem as if the devil had gotten into them all and there is a good deal of it.'" As to matings: "While watching the negroes in the field, Mr. X. addressed a girl who was vigorously plying a hoe near us: 'Is that Lucy?--Ah, Lucy, what's this I hear about you?' The girl simpered, but did not answer or discontinue her work. 'What is this I hear about you and Sam, eh?' The girl grinned and still hoeing away with all her might whispered 'Yes, sir.' 'Sam came to see me this morning,' 'If master pleases.' 'Very well; you may come up to the house Saturday night, and your mistress will have something for you.'"[31] We may hope that the pair whose prospective marriage was thus endorsed with the promise of a bridal gift lived happily ever after. [Footnote 31: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_,418-448.] The most detailed record of rice operations available is that made by Charles Manigault from the time of his purchase in 1833 of "Gowrie," on the Savannah River, twelve miles above the city of Savannah.[32] The plantation then had 220 acres in rice fields, 80 acres unreclaimed, a good pounding mill, and 50 slaves. The price of $40,000 was analyzed by Manigault as comprising $7500 for the mill, $70 per acre for the cleared, and $37 for the uncleared, and an average of $300 for the slaves. His maintenance expense per hand he itemized at a weekly peck of corn, $13 a year; summer and winter clothes, $7; shoes, $1; meat at times, salt, molasses and medical attention, not estimated. In reward for good service, however, Manigault usually issued broken rice worth $2.50 per bushel, instead of corn worth $1. Including the overseer's wages the current expense for the plantation for the first six years averaged about $2000 annually. Meanwhile the output increased from 200 barrels of rice in 1833 to 578 in 1838. The crop in the latter year was particularly notable, both in its yield of three barrels per acre, or 161-1/2 barrels per working hand, and its price of four cents per pound or $24 per barrel. The net proceeds of the one crop covered the purchase in 1839 of two families of slaves, comprising sixteen persons, mostly in or approaching their prime, at a price of $640 each. [Footnote 32: The Manigault MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. H.K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 134-139 _et passim_.] Manigault and his family were generally absent every summer and sometimes in winter, at Charleston or in Europe, and once as far away as China. His methods of administration may be gathered from his letters, contracts and memoranda. In January, 1848, he wrote from Naples to I.F. Cooper whom his factor had employed at $250 a year as a new overseer on Gowrie: "My negroes have the reputation of being orderly and well disposed; but like all negroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to. I expect the kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been a principal thing with me. I never suffer them to work off the place, or exchange work with any plantation....It has always been my plan to give out allowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, because this has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if they received allowance on Saturday for instance some of them would be off with it that same evening to the shops to trade, and perhaps would not get back until Monday morning. I allow no strange negro to take a wife on my place, and none of mine to keep a boat."[33] [Footnote 33: MS. copy in Manigault letter book.] A few years after this, Manigault bought an adjoining plantation, "East Hermitage," and consolidated it with Gowrie, thereby increasing his rice fields to 500 acres and his slaves to about 90 of all ages. His draught animals appear to have comprised merely five or six mules. A new overseer, employed in 1853 at wages of $500 together with corn and rice for his table and the services of a cook and a waiting boy, was bound by a contract stipulating the duties described in the letter to Cooper above quoted, along with a few additional items. He was, for example, to procure a book of medical instructions and a supply of the few requisite "plantation medicines" to be issued to the nurses with directions as needed. In case of serious injury to a slave, however, the sufferer was to be laid upon a door and sent by the plantation boat to Dr. Bullock's hospital in Savannah. Except when the work was very pressing the slaves were to be sent home for the rest of the day upon the occurrence of heavy rains in the afternoon, for Manigault had found by experience "that always after a complete wetting, particularly in cold rainy weather in winter or spring, one or more of them are made sick and lie up, and at times serious illness ensues."[34] [Footnote 34: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 122-126.] In 1852 and again in 1854 storms and freshets heavily injured Manigault's crops, and cholera decimated his slaves. In 1855 the fields were in bad condition because of volunteer rice, and the overseer was dying of consumption. The slaves, however, were in excellent health, and the crop, while small, brought high prices because of the Crimean war. In 1856 a new overseer named Venters handled the flooding inexpertly and made but half a crop, yielding $12,660 in gross proceeds. For the next year Venters was retained, on the maxim "never change an overseer if you can help it," and nineteen slaves were bought for $11,850 to fill the gaps made by the cholera. Furthermore a tract of pine forest was bought to afford summer quarters for the negro children, who did not thrive on the malarial plantation, and to provide a place of isolation for cholera cases. In 1857 Venters made a somewhat better crop, but as Manigault learned and wrote at the end of the year, "elated by a strong and very false religious feeling, he began to injure the plantation a vast deal, placing himself on a par with the negroes by even joining in with them at their prayer meetings, breaking down long established discipline which in every case is so difficult to preserve, favoring and siding in any difficulty with the people against the drivers, besides causing numerous grievances." The successor of the eccentric Venters in his turn proved grossly neglectful; and it was not until the spring of 1859 that a reliable overseer was found in William Capers, at a salary of $1000. Even then the year's experience was such that at its end Manigault recorded the sage conclusion: "The truth is, on a plantation, to attend to things properly it requires both master and overseer." The affairs of another estate in the Savannah neighborhood, "Sabine Fields," belonging to the Alexander Telfair estate, may be gleaned from its income and expense accounts. The purchases of shoes indicate a working force of about thirty hands. The purchases of woolen clothing and waterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather; but the scale of the doctor's bills suggest either epidemics or serious occasional illnesses. The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeen and eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the record they included both rice and sea-island cotton. The gross receipts were highest at $1,695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied from a surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2,035 in the two years 1853 and 1854 for which the accounting was consolidated. Under E.S. Mell, who was overseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until 1849, losses thereafter. The following items of expense in this latter period, along with high doctor's bills, may explain the reverse: for taking a negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of a boy prosecuted for larceny, $9.26; jail fees of Cesar, $2.69; for the apprehension of a runaway, $5; paid Jones for trying to capture a negro, $5. In February, 1854, Mell was paid off, and a voucher made record of a newspaper advertisement for another overseer. What happened to the new incumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855: "Paid ... amount Jones' bill for capturing negroes, $25. Expenses of Overseer Page's burial as follows, Ferguson's bill, $25; Coroner's, $14; Dr. Kollock's, $5; total $69." A further item in 1856 of twenty-five dollars paid for the arrest of Bing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing of the overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean that disorders continued under Page's successor.[35] [Footnote 35: Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the Telfair MSS. in the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.] Other lowland plantations on a scale similar to that of Sabine Fields showed much better earnings. One of these, in Liberty County, Georgia, belonged to the heirs of Dr. Adam Alexander of Savannah. It was devoted to sea-island cotton in the 'thirties, but rice was added in the next decade. While the output fluctuated, of course, the earnings always exceeded the expenses and sometimes yielded as much as a hundred dollars per hand for distribution among the owners.[36] [Footnote 36: The accounts for selected years are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 150-165.] The system of rice production was such that plantations with less than a hundred acres available for the staple could hardly survive in the competition. If one of these adjoined another estate it was likely to be merged therewith; but if it lay in isolation the course of years would probably bring its abandonment. The absence of the proprietors every summer in avoidance of malaria, and the consequent expense of overseer's wages, hampered operations on a small scale, as did also the maintenance of special functionaries among the slaves, such as drivers, boatswains, trunk minders, bird minders, millers and coopers. In 1860 Louis Manigault listed the forty-one rice plantations on the Savannah River and scheduled their acreage in the crop. Only one of them had as little as one hundred acres in rice, and it seems to have been an appendage of a larger one across the river. On the other hand, two of them had crops of eleven hundred, and two more of twelve hundred acres each. The average was about 425 acres per plantation, expected to yield about 1200 pounds of rice per acre each year.[37] A census tabulation in 1850, ignoring any smaller units, numbered the plantations which produced annually upwards of 20,000 pounds of rice at 446 in South Carolina, 80 in Georgia, and 25 in North Carolina.[38] [Footnote 37: MS. in the possession of Mrs. H.K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C.] [Footnote 38: _Compendium of the Seventh U.S. Census_, p. 178.] Indigo and sea-island cotton fields had no ditches dividing them permanently into task units; but the fact that each of these in its day was often combined with rice on the same plantations, and that the separate estates devoted to them respectively lay in the region dominated by the rice régime, led to the prevalence of the task system in their culture also. The soils used for these crops were so sandy and light, however, that the tasks, staked off each day by the drivers, ranged larger than those in rice. In the cotton fields they were about half an acre per hand, whether for listing, bedding or cultivation. In the collecting and spreading of swamp mud and other manures for the cotton the work was probably done mostly by gangs rather than by task, since the units were hard to measure. In cotton picking, likewise, the conditions of the crop were so variable and the need of haste so great that time work, perhaps with special rewards for unusually heavy pickings, was the common resort. Thus the lowland cotton régime alternated the task and gang systems according to the work at hand; and even the rice planters of course abandoned all thoughts of stinted performance when emergency pressed, as in the mending of breaks in the dikes, or when joint exertion was required, as in log rolling, or when threshing and pounding with machinery to set the pace. That the task system was extended sporadically into the South Carolina Piedmont, is indicated by a letter of a certain Thomas Parker of the Abbeville district, in 1831,[39] which not only described his methods but embodied an essential plantation precept. He customarily tasked his hoe hands, he said, at rates determined by careful observation as just both to himself and the workers. These varied according to conditions, but ranged usually about three quarters of an acre. He continued: "I plant six acres of cotton to the hand, which is about the usual quantity planted in my neighborhood. I do not make as large crops as some of my neighbors. I am content with three to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with my provisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of my neighbors made five bales to the hand. In such cases I have vanity enough, however, to attribute this to better lands. I have no overseer, nor indeed is there one in the neighborhood. We personally attend to our planting, believing that as good a manure as any, if not the best we can apply to our fields, is the print of the master's footstep." [Footnote 39: _Southern Agriculturist_, March. 1831, reprinted in the _American Farmer_, XIII, 105, 106.] CHAPTER XIV PLANTATION MANAGEMENT Typical planters though facile in conversation seldom resorted to their pens. Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form of instructions to their stewards and overseers. These counsels of perfection, drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much in detail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions. Their initial topic was usually the care of the slaves. Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in 1759 for the guidance of his steward: "The care of negroes is the first thing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wants that they may be provided with all necessarys. The breeding wenches more particularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to, and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that will be injurious to them, ... and the children to be well looked after, ... and that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care." P.C. Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856: "The proprietor, in the first place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the negroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty, severity or want of care towards the negroes. For the well being, however, of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed, and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the one hand or harshness on the other." Charles Manigault likewise required of his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindness and consideration in sickness and health." On J.W. Fowler's plantation in the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed in 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline and obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about the Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1] [Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 109-129.] Joseph A.S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2] His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read in part: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for everything and everything done according to rule. In this way labor becomes easy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of his temper." [Footnote 2: They were also printed in _DeBow's Review_, XXII, 617-620, XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).] [Footnote 3: _See above_, p. 239.] James H. Hammond's "plantation manual" which is the fullest of such documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good crop means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land, mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which must be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not be merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value of the rest of the property.... There should be an increase in number and improvement in condition of negroes."[4] [Footnote 4: MS. bound volume, "Plantation Manual," among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] For the care of the sick, of course, all these planters were solicitous. Acklen, Manigault and Weston provided that mild cases be prescribed for by the overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness a doctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwife and general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks and whites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey is the doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, when she thinks she can do no more for the sick, you will employ a physician." Hammond, however, was such a devotee of homeopathy that in the lack of an available physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote in his manual: "No negro will be allowed to remain at his own house when sick, but must be confined to the hospital. Every reasonable complaint must be promptly attended to; and with any marked or general symptom of sickness, however trivial, a negro may lie up a day or so at least.... Each case has to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain the disease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination; ... the directions for treatment, diet, etc., most implicitly followed; the effects and changes cautiously observed.... In cases where there is the slightest uncertainty, the books must be taken to the bedside and a careful and thorough examination of the case and comparison of remedies made before administering them. The overseer must record in the prescription book every dose of medicine administered." Weston said he would never grudge a doctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness under pretence of illness. "Nothing," said he, "is so subversive of discipline, or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposed to do the work of the lazy." Pregnancy, childbirth and the care of children were matters of special concern. Weston wrote: "The pregnant women are always to do some work up to the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field and staying there. If they are sick, they are to go to the hospital and stay there until it is pretty certain their time is near." "Lying-in women are to be attended by the midwife as long as is necessary, and by a woman put to nurse them for a fortnight. They will remain at the negro houses for four weeks, and then will work two weeks on the highland. In some cases, however, it is necessary to allow them to lie up longer. The health of many women has been ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond's rules were as follows: "Sucklers are not required to leave their homes until sunrise, when they leave their children at the children's house before going to field. The period of suckling is twelve months. Their work lies always within half a mile of the quarter. They are required to be cool before commencing to suckle--to wait fifteen minutes at least in summer, after reaching the children's house before nursing. It is the duty of the nurse to see that none are heated when nursing, as well as of the overseer and his wife occasionally to do so. They are allowed forty-five minutes at each nursing to be with their children. They return three times a day until their children are eight months old--in the middle of the forenoon, at noon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twice a day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only...The amount of work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a full hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months are put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required of them. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances as full-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during delivery. The confined woman lies up one month, and the midwife remains in constant attendance for seven days. Each woman on confinement has a bundle given her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of cloth and rag, and some nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice and flour for the mother." The instructions with one accord required that the rations issued to the negroes be never skimped. Corbin wrote, "They ought to have their belly full, but care must be taken with this plenty that no waste is committed." Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, ordered his overseer to "see that their necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing be good and sufficient, their houses comfortable; and be kind and attentive to them in sickness and old age." And further: "There will be stated hours for the negroes to breakfast and dine [in the field], and those hours must be regularly observed. The manager will frequently inspect the meals as they are brought by the cook--see that they have been properly prepared, and that vegetables be at all times served with the meat and bread." At the same time he forbade his slaves to use ardent spirits or to have such about their houses. Weston wrote: "Great care should be taken that the negroes should never have less than their regular allowance. In all cases of doubt, it should be given in favor of the largest quantity. The measure should not be struck, but rather heaped up over. None but provisions of the best quality should be used." Telfair specified as follows: "The allowance for every grown negro, however old and good for nothing, and every young one that works in the field, is a peck of corn each week and a pint of salt, and a piece of meat, not exceeding fourteen pounds, per month...The suckling children, and all other small ones who do not work in the field, draw a half allowance of corn and salt....Feed everything plentifully, but waste nothing." He added that beeves were to be killed for the negroes in July, August and September. Hammond's allowance to each working hand was a heaping peck of meal and three pounds of bacon or pickled pork every week. In the winter, sweet potatoes were issued when preferred, at the rate of a bushel of them in lieu of the peck of meal; and fresh beef, mutton or pork, at increased weights, were to be substituted for the salt pork from time to time. The ditchers and drivers were to have extra allowances in meat and molasses. Furthermore, "Each ditcher receives every night, when ditching, a dram (jigger) consisting of two-thirds whiskey and one-third water, with as much asafoetida as it will absorb, and several strings of red peppers added in the barrel. The dram is a large wine-glass full. In cotton picking time when sickness begins to be prevalent, every field hand gets a dram in the morning before leaving for the field. After a soaking rain all exposed to it get a dram before changing their clothes; also those exposed to the dust from the shelter and fan in corn shelling, on reaching the quarter at night; or anyone at any time required to keep watch in the night. Drams are not given as rewards, but only as medicinal. From the second hoeing, or early in May, every work hand who uses it gets an occasional allowance of tobacco, about one sixth of a pound, usually after some general operation, as a hoeing, plowing, etc. This is continued until their crops are gathered, when they can provide for themselves." The families, furthermore, shared in the distribution of the plantation's peanut crop every fall. Each child was allowed one third as much meal and meat as was given to each field hand, and an abundance of vegetables to be cooked with their meat. The cooking and feeding was to be done at the day nursery. For breakfast they were to have hominy and milk and cold corn bread; for dinner, vegetable soup and dumplings or bread; and cold bread or potatoes were to be kept on hand for demands between meals. They were also to have molasses once or twice a week. Each child was provided with a pan and spoon in charge of the nurse. Hammond's clothing allowance was for each man in the fall two cotton shirts, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket, and in the spring two cotton shirts and two pairs of cotton pants, with privilege of substitution when desired; for each woman six yards of woolen cloth and six yards of cotton cloth in the fall, six yards of light and six of heavy cotton cloth in the spring, with needles, thread and buttons on each occasion. Each worker was to have a pair of stout shoes in the fall, and a heavy blanket every third year. Children's cloth allowances were proportionate and their mothers were required to dress them in clean clothes twice a week. In the matter of sanitation, Acklen directed the overseer to see that the negroes kept clean in person, to inspect their houses at least once a week and especially during the summer, to examine their bedding and see to its being well aired, to require that their clothes be mended, "and everything attended to which conduces to their comfort and happiness." In these regards, as in various others, Fowler incorporated Acklen's rules in his own, almost verbatim. Hammond scheduled an elaborate cleaning of the houses every spring and fall. The houses were to be completely emptied and their contents sunned, the walls and floors were to be scrubbed, the mattresses to be emptied and stuffed with fresh hay or shucks, the yards swept and the ground under the houses sprinkled with lime. Furthermore, every house was to be whitewashed inside and out once a year; and the negroes must appear once a week in clean clothes, "and every negro habitually uncleanly in person must be washed and scrubbed by order of the overseer--the driver and two other negroes officiating." As to schedules of work, the Carolina and Georgia lowlanders dealt in tasks; all the rest in hours. Telfair wrote briefly: "The negroes to be tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work, well done--the task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength of the negro." Weston wrote with more elaboration: "A task is as much work as the meanest full hand can do in nine hours, working industriously.... This task is never to be increased, and no work is to be done over task except under the most urgent necessity; which over-work is to be reported to the proprietor, who will pay for it. No negro is to be put into a task which [he] cannot finish with tolerable ease. It is a bad plan to punish for not finishing tasks; it is subversive of discipline to leave tasks unfinished, and contrary to justice to punish for what cannot be done. In nothing does a good manager so much excel a bad as in being able to discern what a hand is capable of doing, and in never attempting to make him do more." In Hammond's schedule the first horn was blown an hour before daylight as a summons for work-hands to rise and do their cooking and other preparations for the day. Then at the summons of the plow driver, at first break of day, the plowmen went to the stables whose doors the overseer opened. At the second horn, "just at good daylight," the hoe gang set out for the field. At half past eleven the plowmen carried their mules to a shelter house in the fields, and at noon the hoe hands laid off for dinner, to resume work at one o'clock, except that in hot weather the intermission was extended to a maximum of three and a half hours. The plowmen led the way home by a quarter of an hour in the evening, and the hoe hands followed at sunset. "No work," said Hammond, "must ever be required after dark." Acklen contented himself with specifying that "the negroes must all rise at the ringing of the first bell in the morning, and retire when the last bell rings at night, and not leave their houses after that hour unless on business or called." Fowler's rule was of the same tenor: "All hands should be required to retire to rest and sleep at a suitable hour and permitted to remain there until such time as it will be necessary to get out in time to reach their work by the time they can see well how to work." Telfair, Fowler and Hammond authorized the assignment of gardens and patches to such slaves as wanted to cultivate them at leisure times. To prevent these from becoming a cloak for thefts from the planter's crops, Telfair and Fowler forbade the growing of cotton in the slaves' private patches, and Hammond forbade both cotton and corn. Fowler specifically gave his negroes the privilege of marketing their produce and poultry "at suitable leisure times." Hammond had a rule permitting each work hand to go to Augusta on some Sunday after harvest; but for some reason he noted in pencil below it: "This is objectionable and must be altered." Telfair and Weston directed that their slaves be given passes on application, authorizing them to go at proper times to places in the neighborhood. The negroes, however, were to be at home by the time of the curfew horn about nine o'clock each night. Mating with slaves on other plantations was discouraged as giving occasion for too much journeying. "Marriage is to be encouraged," wrote Hammond, "as it adds to the comfort, happiness and health of those who enter upon it, besides insuring a greater increase. Permission must always be obtained from the master before marriage, but no marriage will be allowed with negroes not belonging to the master. When sufficient cause can be shewn on either side, a marriage may be annulled; but the offending party must be severely punished. Where both are in wrong, both must be punished, and if they insist on separating must have a hundred lashes apiece. After such a separation, neither can marry again for three years. For first marriage a bounty of $5.00, to be invested in household articles, or an equivalent of articles, shall be given. If either has been married before, the bounty shall be $2.50. A third marriage shall be not allowed but in extreme cases, and in such cases, or where both have been married before, no bounty will be given." "Christianity, humanity and order elevate all, injure none," wrote Fowler, "whilst infidelity, selfishness and disorder curse some, delude others and degrade all. I therefore want all of my people encouraged to cultivate religious feeling and morality, and punished for inhumanity to their children or stock, for profanity, lying and stealing." And again: "I would that every human being have the gospel preached to them in its original purity and simplicity. It therefore devolves upon me to have these dependants properly instructed in all that pertains to the salvation of their souls. To this end whenever the services of a suitable person can be secured, have them instructed in these things. In view of the fanaticism of the age, it behooves the master or overseer to be present on all such occasions. They should be instructed on Sundays in the day time if practicable; if not, then on Sunday night." Acklen wrote in his usual peremptory tone: "No negro preachers but my own will be permitted to preach or remain on any of my places. The regularly appointed minister for my places must preach on Sundays during daylight, or quit. The negroes must not be suffered to continue their night meetings beyond ten o'clock." Telfair in his rules merely permitted religious meetings on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. Hammond encouraged his negroes to go to church on Sundays, but permitted no exercises on the plantation beyond singing and praying. He, and many others, encouraged his negroes to bring him their complaints against drivers and overseers, and even against their own ecclesiastical authorities in the matter of interference with recreations. Fighting among the negroes was a common bane of planters. Telfair prescribed: "If there is any fighting on the plantation, whip all engaged in it, for no matter what the cause may have been, all are in the wrong." Weston wrote: "Fighting, particularly amongst women, and obscene or abusive language, is to be always rigorously punished." "Punishment must never be cruel or abusive," wrote Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, "for it is absolutely mean and unmanly to whip a negro from mere passion and malice, and any man who can do so is utterly unfit to have control of negroes; and if ever any of my negroes are cruelly or inhumanly treated, bruised, maimed or otherwise injured, the overseer will be promptly discharged and his salary withheld." Weston recommended the lapse of a day between the discovery of an offense and the punishment, and he restricted the overseer's power in general to fifteen lashes. He continued: "Confinement (not in the stocks) is to be preferred to whipping; but the stoppage of Saturday's allowance, and doing whole task on Saturday, will suffice to prevent ordinary offenses. Special care must be taken to prevent any indecency in punishing women. No driver or other negro is to be allowed to punish any person in any way except by order of the overseer and in his presence." And again: "Every person should be made perfectly to understand what they are punished for, and should be made to perceive that they are not punished in anger or through caprice. All abusive language or violence of demeanor should be avoided; they reduce the man who uses them to a level with the negro, and are hardly ever forgotten by those to whom they are addressed." Hammond directed that the overseer "must never threaten a negro, but punish offences immediately on knowing them; otherwise he will soon have runaways." As a schedule he wrote: "The following is the order in which offences must be estimated and punished: 1st, running away; 2d, getting drunk or having spirits; 3d, stealing hogs; 4th, stealing; 5th, leaving plantation without permission; 6th, absence from house after horn-blow at night; 7th, unclean house or person; 8th, neglect of tools; 9th, neglect of work. The highest punishment must not exceed a hundred lashes in one day, and to that extent only in extreme cases. The whip lash must be one inch in width, or a strap of one thickness of leather 1-1/2 inches in width, and never severely administered. In general fifteen to twenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging. The hands in every case must be secured by a cord. Punishment must always be given calmly, and never when angry or excited." Telfair was as usual terse: "No negro to have more than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime." Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sent special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You had best think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the important old plantation maxim, viz: 'never to threaten a negro,' or he will do as you and I would when at school--he will run. But with such a one, ... if you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again.... Mind then and tell him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on himself, for he now sees how easy it is to fix 'a bad disposed nigger.' Then give my compliments to him and tell him that you wrote me of his conduct, and say if he don't change for the better I'll sell him to a slave trader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent several of the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause." In one case Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver brought him up for punishment but allowed him to run before it was administered.[5] [Footnote 5: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 32, 94.] As to rewards, Hammond was the only one of these writers to prescribe them definitely. His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driver three dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each every Christmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for every actual increase of two on the place. Further, "for every infant thirteen months old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, the mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock." "The head driver," Hammond wrote, "is the most important negro on the plantation, and is not required to work like other hands. He is to be treated with more respect than any other negro by both master and overseer....He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all times; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to punish it with discretion on the spot....He is a confidential servant, and may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer." Weston, forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer's order and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance of quiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slaves to the fields each morning, the assignment and supervision of tasks, and the inspection of "such things as the overseer only generally superintends." Telfair informed his overseer: "I have no driver. You are to task the negroes yourself, and each negro is responsible to you for his own work, and nobody's else." Of the master's own functions Hammond wrote in another place: "A planter should have all his work laid out, days, weeks, months, seasons and years ahead, according to the nature of it. He must go from job to job without losing a moment in turning round, and he must have all the parts of his work so arranged that due proportion of attention may be bestowed upon each at the proper time. More is lost by doing work out of season, and doing it better or worse than is requisite, than can readily be supposed. Negroes are harassed by it, too, instead of being indulged; so are mules, and everything else. A halting, vacillating, undecided course, now idle, now overstrained, is more fatal on a plantation than in any other kind of business--ruinous as it is in any."[6] [Footnote 6: Letter of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 21, 1841, from Hammond's MS. copy in the Library of Congress.] In the overseer all the virtues of a master were desired, with a deputy's obedience added. Corbin enjoined upon his staff that they "attend their business with diligence, keep the negroes in good order, and enforce obedience by the example of their own industry, which is a more effectual method in every respect than hurry and severity. The ways of industry," he continued, "are constant and regular, not to be in a hurry at one time and do nothing at another, but to be always usefully and steadily employed. A man who carries on business in this manner will be prepared for every incident that happens. He will see what work may be proper at the distance of some time and be gradually and leisurely preparing for it. By this foresight he will never be in confusion himself, and his business, instead of a labor, will be a pleasure to him." Weston wrote: "The proprietor wishes particularly to impress upon the overseer the criterions by which he will judge of his usefullness and capacity. First, by the general well-being of all the negroes; their cleanly appearance, respectful manners, active and vigorous obedience; their completion of their tasks well and early; the small amount of punishment; the excess of births over deaths; the small number of persons in hospital; and the health of the children. Secondly, the condition and fatness of the cattle and mules; the good repair of all the fences and buildings, harness, boats, flats and ploughs; more particularly the good order of the banks and trunks, and the freedom of the fields from grass and volunteer [rice]. Thirdly, the amount and quality of the rice and provision crops.... The overseer is expressly forbidden from three things, viz.: bleeding, giving spirits to any negro without a doctor's order, and letting any negro on the place have or keep any gun, powder or shot." One of Acklen's prohibitions upon his overseers was: "Having connection with any of my female servants will most certainly be visited with a dismissal from my employment, and no excuse can or will be taken." Hammond described the functions as follows: "The overseer will never be expected to work in the field, but he must always be with the hands when not otherwise engaged in the employer's business.... The overseer must never be absent a single night, nor an entire day, without permission previously obtained. Whenever absent at church or elsewhere he must be on the plantation by sundown without fail. He must attend every night and morning at the stables and see that the mules are watered, cleaned and fed, and the doors locked. He must keep the stable keys at night, and all the keys, in a safe place, and never allow anyone to unlock a barn, smoke-house or other depository of plantation stores but himself. He must endeavor, also, to be with the plough hands always at noon." He must also see that the negroes are out promptly in the morning, and in their houses after curfew, and must show no favoritism among the negroes. He must carry on all experiments as directed by the employer, and use all new implements and methods which the employer may determine upon; and he must keep a full plantation diary and make monthly inventories. Finally, "The negroes must be made to obey and to work, which may be done, by an overseer who attends regularly to his business, with very little whipping. Much whipping indicates a bad tempered or inattentive manager, and will not be allowed." His overseer might quit employment on a month's notice, and might be discharged without notice. Acklen's dicta were to the same general effect. As to the relative importance of the several functions of an overseer, all these planters were in substantial agreement. As Fowler put it: "After taking proper care of the negroes, stock, etc., the next most important duty of the overseer is to make, if practicable, a sufficient quantity of corn, hay, fodder, meat, potatoes and other vegetables for the consumption of the plantation, and then as much cotton as can be made by requiring good and reasonable labor of operatives and teams." Likewise Henry Laurens, himself a prosperous planter of the earlier time as well as a statesman, wrote to an overseer of whose heavy tasking he had learned: "Submit to make less rice and keep my negroes at home in some degree of happiness in preference to large crops acquired by rigour and barbarity to those poor creatures." And to a new incumbent: "I have now to recommend to you the care of my negroes in general, but particularly the sick ones. Desire Mrs. White not to be sparing of red wine for those who have the flux or bad loosenesses; let them be well attended night and day, and if one wench is not sufficient add another to nurse them. With the well ones use gentle means mixed with easy authority first--if that does not succeed, make choice of the most stubborn one or two and chastise them severely but properly and with mercy, that they may be convinced that the end of correction is to be amendment," Again, alluding to one of his slaves who had been gathering the pennies of his fellows: "Amos has a great inclination to turn rum merchant. If his confederate comes to that plantation, I charge you to discipline him with thirty-nine sound lashes and turn him out of the gate and see that he goes quite off."[7] [Footnote 7: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 133, 192.] The published advice of planters to their fellows was quite in keeping with these instructions to overseers. About 1809, for example, John Taylor, of Caroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day, wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows: "The addition of comfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for the advantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by a ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniary point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure to inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations. "A daily allowance of cyder," Taylor continued, "will extend the success of this system for the management of slaves, and particularly its effect of diminishing corporal punishments. But the reader is warned that a stern authority, strict discipline and complete subordination must be combined with it to gain any success at all."[8] [Footnote 8: John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, _Arator, Being a Series of Agricultural Essays_ (2d ed., Georgetown, D. C, 1814), pp. 122-125.] Another Virginian's essay, of 1834, ran as follows: Virginia negroes are generally better tempered than any other people; they are kindly, grateful, attached to persons and places, enduring and patient in fatigue and hardship, contented and cheerful. Their control should be uniform and consistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity. Punishment for real faults should be invariable but moderate. "The best evidence of the good management of slaves is the keeping up of good discipline with little or no punishment." The treatment should be impartial except for good conduct which should bring rewards. Praise is often a better cure for laziness than stripes. The manager should know the temper of each slave. The proud and high spirited are easily handled: "Your slow and sulky negro, although he may have an even temper, is the devil to manage. The negro women are all harder to manage than the men. The only way to get along with them is by kind words and flattery. If you want to cure a sloven, give her something nice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she has on anything tolerably decent." Eschew suspicion, for it breeds dishonesty. Promote harmony and sound methods among your neighbors. "A good disciplinarian in the midst of bad managers of slaves cannot do much; and without discipline there cannot be profit to the master or comfort to the slaves." Feed and clothe your slaves well. The best preventive of theft is plenty of pork. Let them have poultry and gardens and fruit trees to attach them to their houses and promote amenability. "The greatest bar to good discipline in Virginia is the number of grog shops in every farmer's neighborhood." There is no severity in the state, and there will be no occasion for it again if the fanatics will only let us alone.[9] [Footnote 9: "On the Management of Negroes. Addressed to the Farmers and Overseers of Virginia," signed "H. C," in the _Farmer's Register_, I, 564, 565 (February, 1834).] An essay written after long experience by Robert Collins, of Macon, Georgia, which was widely circulated in the 'fifties, was in the same tone: "The best interests of all parties are promoted by a kind and liberal treatment on the part of the owner, and the requirement of proper discipline and strict obedience on the part of the slave ... Every attempt to force the slave beyond the limits of reasonable service by cruelty or hard treatment, so far from extorting more work, only tends to make him unprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation and a curse." The quarters should be well shaded, the houses free of the ground, well ventilated, and large enough for comfort; the bedding and blankets fully adequate. "In former years the writer tried many ways and expedients to economize in the provision of slaves by using more of the vegetable and cheap articles of diet, and less of the costly and substantial. But time and experience have fully proven the error of a stinted policy ... The allowance now given per week to each hand ... is five pounds of good clean bacon and one quart of molasses, with as much good bread as they require; and in the fall, or sickly season of the year, or on sickly places, the addition of one pint of strong coffee, sweetened with sugar, every morning before going to work." The slaves may well have gardens, but the assignment of patches for market produce too greatly "encourages a traffic on their own account, and presents a temptation and opportunity, during the process of gathering, for an unscrupulous fellow to mix a little of his master's produce with his own. It is much better to give each hand whose conduct has been such as to merit it an equivalent in money at the end of the year; it is much less trouble, and more advantageous to both parties." Collins further advocated plenty of clothing, moderate hours, work by tasks in cotton picking and elsewhere when feasible, and firm though kindly discipline. "Slaves," he said, "have no respect or affection for a master who indulges them over much.... Negroes are by nature tyrannical in their dispositions, and if allowed, the stronger will abuse the weaker, husbands will often abuse their wives and mothers their children, so that it becomes a prominent duty of owners and overseers to keep peace and prevent quarrelling and disputes among them; and summary punishment should follow any violation of this rule. Slaves are also a people that enjoy religious privileges. Many of them place much value upon it; and to every reasonable extent that advantage should be allowed them. They are never injured by preaching, but thousands become wiser and better people and more trustworthy servants by their attendance at church. Religious services should be provided and encouraged on every plantation. A zealous and vehement style, both in doctrine and manner, is best adapted to their temperament. They are good believers in mysteries and miracles, ready converts, and adhere with much pertinacity to their opinions when formed."[10] It is clear that Collins had observed plantation negroes long and well. [Footnote 10: Robert Collins, "Essay on the Management of Slaves," reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 421-426, and partly reprinted in F.L. Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 692-697.] Advice very similar to the foregoing examples was also printed in the form of manuals at the front of blank books for the keeping of plantation records;[11] and various planters described their own methods in operation as based on the same principles. One of these living at Chunnennuggee, Alabama, signing himself "N.B.P.," wrote in 1852 an account of the problems he had met and the solutions he had applied. Owning some 150 slaves, he had lived away from his plantation until about a decade prior to this writing; but in spite of careful selection he could never get an overseer combining the qualities necessary in a good manager. "They were generally on extremes; those celebrated for making large crops were often too severe, and did everything by coercion. Hence turmoil and strife ensued. The negroes were ill treated and ran away. On the other hand, when he employed a good-natured man there was a want of proper discipline; the negroes became unmanageable and, as a natural result, the farm was brought into debt," The owner then entered residence himself and applied methods which resulted in contentment, health and prolific increase among the slaves, and in consistently good crops. The men were supplied with wives at home so far as was practicable; each family had a dry and airy house to itself, with a poultry house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly were three and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, together with a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nursery were fed from the master's kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables and bread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women were given time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all hands had to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; and a clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday. The chief distinction of this plantation, however, lay in its device for profit sharing. To each slave was assigned a half-acre plot with the promise that if he worked with diligence in the master's crop the whole gang would in turn be set to work his crop. This was useful in preventing night and Sunday work by the negroes. The proceeds of their crops, ranging from ten to fifty dollars, were expended by the master at their direction for Sunday clothing and other supplies.[12] On a sugar plantation visited by Olmsted a sum of as many dollars as there were hogsheads in the year's crop was distributed among the slaves every Christmas.[13] [Footnote 11: Pleasant Suit, _Farmer's Accountant and Instructions for Overseers_ (Richmond, Va., 1828); _Affleck's Cotton Plantation Record and Account Book_, reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVIII, 339-345, and in Thomas W. Knox, _Campfire and Cotton Field_ (New York, 1865), pp. 358-364. _See also_ for varied and interesting data as to rules, experience and advice; Thomas S. Clay (of Bryan County, Georgia), _Detail of a Plan for the Moral Improvement of Negroes on Plantations_ (1833); and _DeBow's Review_, XII, 291, 292; XIX, 358-363; XXI, 147-149, 277-279; XXIV, 321-326; XXV, 463; XXVI, 579, 580; XXIX, 112-115, 357-368.] [Footnote 12: _Southern Quarterly Review_, XXI, 215, 216.] [Footnote 13: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 660.] Of overseers in general, the great variety in their functions, their scales of operation and their personal qualities make sweeping assertions hazardous. Some were at just one remove from the authority of a great planter, as is suggested by the following advertisement: "Wanted, a manager to superintend several rice plantations on the Santee River. As the business is extensive, a proportionate salary will be made, and one or two young men of his own selection employed under him.[14] A healthful summer residence on the seashore is provided for himself and family." Others were hardly more removed from the status of common field hands. Lawrence Tompkins, for example, signed with his mark in 1779 a contract to oversee the four slaves of William Allason, near Alexandria, and to work steadily with them. He was to receive three barrels of corn and three hundred pounds of pork as his food allowance, and a fifth share of the tobacco, hemp and flax crops and a sixth of the corn; but if he neglected his work he might be dismissed without pay of any sort.[15] Some overseers were former planters who had lost their property, some were planters' sons working for a start in life, some were English and German farmers who had brought their talents to what they hoped might prove the world's best market, but most of them were of the native yeomanry which abounded in virtually all parts of the South. Some owned a few slaves whom they put on hire into their employers' gangs, thereby hastening their own attainment of the means to become planters on their own score.[16] [Footnote 14: _Southern Patriot_ (Charleston, S. C), Jan. 9, 1821.] [Footnote 15: MS. Letter book, 1770-1787, among the Allason papers in the New York Public Library.] [Footnote 16: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 21, 135.] If the master lived on the plantation, as was most commonly the case, the overseer's responsibilities were usually confined to the daily execution of orders in supervising the slaves in the fields and the quarters. But when the master was an absentee the opportunity for abuses and misunderstandings increased. Jurisdiction over slaves and the manner of its exercise were the grounds of most frequent complaint. On the score of authority, for example, a Virginia overseer in the employ of Robert Carter wrote him in 1787 in despair at the conduct of a woman named Suckey: "I sent for hir to Come in the morning to help Secoure the foder, but She Sent me word that She would not come to worke that Day, and that you had ordered her to wash hir Cloaiths and goo to Any meeting She pleased any time in the weke without my leafe, and on monday when I Come to Reken with hir about it She Said it was your orders and She would do it in Defiance of me.... I hope if Suckey is aloud that privilige more than the Rest, that she will bee moved to some other place, and one Come in her Room."[17] On the score of abuses, Stancil Barwick, an overseer in southwestern Georgia, wrote in 1855 to John B. Lamar: "I received your letter on yesterday ev'ng. Was vary sorry to hear that you had heard that I was treating your negroes so cruely. Now, sir, I do say to you in truth that the report is false. Thear is no truth in it. No man nor set of men has ever seen me mistreat one of the negroes on the place." After declaring that miscarriages by two of the women had been due to no requirement of work, he continued: "The reports that have been sent must have been carried from this place by negroes. The fact is I have made the negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, an is the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found among the negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, but not cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on the place. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed by no man on earth,"[18] [Footnote 17: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 325.] [Footnote 18: _Ibid_., I, 312, 313.] To diminish the inducement for overdriving, the method of paying the overseers by crop shares, which commonly prevailed in the colonial period, was generally replaced in the nineteenth century by that of fixed salaries. As a surer preventive of embezzlement, a trusty slave was in some cases given the store-house keys in preference to the overseer; and sometimes even when the master was an absentee an overseer was wholly dispensed with and a slave foreman was given full charge. This practice would have been still more common had not the laws discouraged it.[19] Some planters refused to leave their slaves in the full charge of deputies of any kind, even for short periods. For example, Francis Corbin in 1819 explained to James Madison that he must postpone an intended visit because of the absence of his son. "Until he arrives," Corbin wrote, "I dare not, in common prudence, leave my affairs to the sole management of overseers, who in these days are little respected by our intelligent negroes, many of whom are far superior in mind, morals and manners to those who are placed in authority over them."[20] [Footnote 19: Olmsted, _Seaboard States_, p. 206.] [Footnote 20: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 261.] Various phases of the problem of management are illustrated in a letter of A.H. Pemberton of the South Carolina midlands to James H. Hammond at the end of 1846. The writer described himself as unwilling to sacrifice his agricultural reading in order to superintend his slaves in person, but as having too small a force to afford the employment of an overseer pure and simple. For the preceding year he had had one charged with the double function of working in person and supervising the slaves' work also; but this man's excess of manual zeal had impaired his managerial usefulness. What he himself did was well done, said Pemberton, "and he would do _all_ and leave the negroes to do virtually nothing; and as they would of course take advantage of this, what he did was more than counterbalanced by what they did not." Furthermore, this employee, "who worked harder than any man I ever saw," used little judgment or foresight. "Withal, he has always been accustomed to the careless Southern practice generally of doing things temporarily and in a hurry, just to last for the present, and allowing the negroes to leave plows and tools of all kinds just where they use them, no matter where, so that they have to be hunted all over the place when wanted. And as to stock, he had no idea of any more attention to them than is common in the ordinarily cruel and neglectful habits of the South." Pemberton then turned to lamentation at having let slip a recent opportunity to buy at auction "a remarkably fine looking negro as to size and strength, very black, about thirty-five or forty, and so intelligent and trustworthy that he had charge of a separate plantation and eight or ten hands some ten or twelve miles from home." The procuring of such a foreman would precisely have solved Pemberton's problem; the failure to do so left him in his far from hopeful search for a paragon manager and workman combined.[21] [Footnote 21: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] On the whole, the planters were disposed to berate the overseers as a class for dishonesty, inattention and self indulgence. The demand for new and better ones was constant. For example, the editor of the _American Agriculturist_, whose office was at New York, announced in 1846: "We are almost daily beset with applications for properly educated managers for farms and plantations--we mean for such persons as are up to the improvements of the age, and have the capacity to carry them into effect."[22] Youths occasionally offered themselves as apprentices. One of them, in Louisiana, published the following notice in 1822: "A young man wishing to acquire knowledge of cotton planting would engage for twelve months as overseer and keep the accounts of a plantation.... Unquestionable reference as to character will be given."[23] And a South Carolinian in 1829 proposed that the practice be systematized by the appointment of local committees to bring intelligent lads into touch with planters willing to take them as indentured apprentices.[24] The lack of system persisted, however, both in agricultural education and in the procuring of managers. In the opinion of Basil Hall and various others the overseers were commonly better than the reputation of their class,[25] but this is not to say that they were conspicuous either for expertness or assiduity. On the whole they had about as much human nature, with its merits and failings, as the planters or the slaves or anybody else. [Footnote 22: _American Agriculturist_, V, 24.] [Footnote 23: _Louisiana Herald_ (Alexandria, La.), Jan. 12, 1822, advertisement.] [Footnote 24: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 271.] [Footnote 25: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_, III, 193.] It is notable that George Washington was one of the least tolerant employers and masters who put themselves upon record.[26] This was doubtless due to his own punctiliousness and thorough devotion to system as well as to his often baffled wish to diversify his crops and upbuild his fields. When in 1793 he engaged William Pearce as a new steward for the group of plantations comprising the Mount Vernon estate, he enjoined strict supervision of his overseers "to keep them from running about and to oblige them to remain constantly with their people, and moreover to see at what time they turn out in the morning--for," said he, "I have strong suspicions that this with some of them is at a late hour, the consequences of which to the negroes is not difficult to foretell." "To treat them civilly," Washington continued, "is no more than what all men are entitled to; but my advice to you is, keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow upon familiarity in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not. Pass by no faults or neglects, particularly at first, for overlooking one only serves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some of them, one in particular, will try at first what lengths he may go." Particularizing as to the members of his staff, Washington described their several characteristics: Stuart was intelligent and apparently honest and attentive, but vain and talkative, and usually backward in his schedule; Crow would be efficient if kept strictly at his duty, but seemed prone to visiting and receiving visits. "This of course leaves his people too much to themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side and flogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfaction which it creates, has in one or two instances been productive of serious consequences." McKay was a "sickly, slothful and stupid sort of fellow," too much disposed to brutality in the treatment of the slaves in his charge; Butler seemed to have "no more authority over the negroes ... than an old woman would have"; and Green, the overseer of the carpenters, was too much on a level with the slaves for the exertion of control. Davy, the negro foreman at Muddy Hole, was rated in his master's esteem higher than some of his white colleagues, though Washington had suspicions concerning the fate of certain lambs which had vanished while in his care. Indeed the overseers all and several were suspected from time to time of drunkenness, waste, theft and miscellaneous rascality. In the last of these categories Washington seems to have included their efforts to secure higher wages. [Footnote 26: Voluminous plantation data are preserved in the Washington MSS. in the Library of Congress. Those here used are drawn from the letters of Washington published in the Long Island Historical Society _Memoirs_, vol. IV; entitled _George Washington and Mount Vernon_. A map of the Mount Vernon estate is printed in Washington's _Writings_ (W.C. Ford ed.), XII, 358.] The slaves in their turn were suspected of ruining horses by riding them at night, and of embezzling grain issued for planting, as well as of lying and malingering in general. The carpenters, Washington said, were notorious piddlers; and not a slave about the mansion house was worthy of trust. Pretences of illness as excuses for idleness were especially annoying. "Is there anything particular in the cases of Ruth, Hannah and Pegg," he enquired, "that they have been returned as sick for several weeks together?... If they are not made to do what their age and strength will enable them, it will be a very bad example to others, none of whom would work if by pretexts they can avoid it." And again: "By the reports I perceive that for every day Betty Davis works she is laid up two. If she is indulged in this idleness she will grow worse and worse, for she has a disposition to be one of the most idle creatures on earth, and is besides one of the most deceitful." Pearce seems to have replied that he was at a loss to tell the false from the true. Washington rejoined: "I never found so much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in distinguishing between real and feigned sickness, or when a person is much afflicted with pain. Nobody can be very sick without having a fever, or any other disorder continue long upon anyone without reducing them.... But my people, many of them, will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible change in their countenance nor the loss of an ounce of flesh is discoverable; and their allowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them." Runaways were occasional. Of one of them Washington directed: "Let Abram get his deserts when taken, by way of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, for I have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment in all his corrections." Of another, whom he had previously described as an idler beyond hope of correction: "Nor is it worth while, except for the sake of example, ... to be at much trouble, or any expence over a trifle, to hunt him up." Of a third, who was thought to have escaped in company with a neighbor's slave: "If Mr. Dulany is disposed to pursue any measure for the purpose of recovering his man, I will join him in the expence so far as it may respect Paul; but I would not have my name appear in any advertisement, or other measure, leading to it." Again, when asking that a woman of his who had fled to New Hampshire be seized and sent back if it could be done without exciting a mob: "However well disposed I might be to gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of people (if the latter was in itself practicable), at this moment it would neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow serv'ts who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than herself of favor."[27] Finally: "The running off of my cook has been a most inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeable is that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by purchase. But this resolution I fear I must break. I have endeavored to hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied." As to provisions, the slaves were given fish from Washington's Potomac fishery while the supply lasted, "meat, fat and other things ... now and then," and of meal "as much as they can eat without waste, and no more." The housing and clothing appear to have been adequate. The "father of his country" displayed little tenderness for his slaves. He was doubtless just, so far as a business-like absentee master could be; but his only generosity to them seems to have been the provision in his will for their manumission after the death of his wife. [Footnote 27: Marion G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_( Boston, 1891), p. 36.] Lesser men felt the same stresses in plantation management. An owner of ninety-six slaves told Olmsted that such was the trouble and annoyance his negroes caused him, in spite of his having an overseer, and such the loneliness of his isolated life, that he was torn between a desire to sell out at once and a temptation to hold on for a while in the expectation of higher prices. At the home of another Virginian, Olmsted wrote: "During three hours or more in which I was in company with the proprietor I do not think there were ten consecutive minutes uninterrupted by some of the slaves requiring his personal direction or assistance. He was even obliged three times to leave the dinner table. 'You see,' said he smiling, as he came in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure,'" A third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children, infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate, some fractious, and each class required different treatment. With the daily wants of food, clothing and the like, "the poor man's time and thoughts, indeed every faculty of mind, must be exercised on behalf of those who have no minds of their own."[28] [Footnote 28: F.L. Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 44, 58, 718.] Harriet Martineau wrote on her tour of the South: "Nothing struck me more than the patience of slave-owners ... with their slaves ... When I considered how they love to be called 'fiery Southerners,' I could not but marvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to which they are liable in their homes. Persons from New England, France or England, becoming slaveholders, are found to be the most severe masters and mistresses, however good their tempers may always have appeared previously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half an hour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible manner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, their infants slighted,--themselves deluded by artifices--they cannot, like the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled."[29] It is clear from every sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negro slaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnigh necessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness and patience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financial ruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; the possession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern not vital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns were turned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineau and most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, wrote after a journey to Charleston in 1855: "The change to a Northerner in coming South is always a great one when he steps over the boundary of the free states; and the farther you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness and careless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution and skilful management.... The outside first aspect of slavery has nothing horrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about looking unhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips and chains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in the free as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone ten times as far, I dare say, without seeing the first sign of negro misery or white tyranny."[30] If, indeed, the neatness of aspect be the test of success, most plantations were failures; if the test of failure be the lack of harmony and good will, it appears from the available evidence that most plantations were successful. [Footnote 29: Harriet Martineau, _Society in America_ (London, 1837), II 315, 316.] [Footnote 30: Charles Eliot Norton, _Letters_ (Boston, 1913), I, 121.] The concerns and the character of a high-grade planter may be gathered from the correspondence of John B. Lamar, who with headquarters in the town of Macon administered half a dozen plantations belonging to himself and his kinsmen scattered through central and southwestern Georgia and northern Florida.[31] The scale of his operations at the middle of the nineteenth century may be seen from one of his orders for summer cloth, presumably at the rate of about five yards per slave. This was to be shipped from Savannah to the several plantations as follows: to Hurricane, the property of Howell Cobb, Lamar's brother-in-law, 760 yards; to Letohatchee, a trust estate in Florida belonging to the Lamar family, 500 yards; and to Lamar's own plantations the following: Swift Creek, 486; Harris Place, 360; Domine, 340; and Spring Branch, 229. Of his course of life Lamar wrote: "I am one half the year rattling over rough roads with Dr. Physic and Henry, stopping at farm houses in the country, scolding overseers in half a dozen counties and two states, Florida and Georgia, and the other half in the largest cities of the Union, or those of Europe, living on dainties and riding on rail-cars and steamboats. When I first emerge from Swift Creek into the hotels and shops on Broadway of a summer, I am the most economical body that you can imagine. The fine clothes and expensive habits of the people strike me forcibly.... In a week I become used to everything, and in a month I forget my humble concern on Swift Creek and feel as much a nabob as any of them.... At home where everything is plain and comfortable we look on anything beyond that point as extravagant. When abroad where things are on a greater scale, our ideas keep pace with them. I always find such to be my case; and if I live to a hundred I reckon it will always be so." [Footnote 31: Lamar's MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 167-183, 309-312, II, 38, 41.] Lamar could command strong words, as when a physician demanded five hundred dollars for services at Hurricane in 1844, or when overseers were detected in drunkenness or cruelty; but his most characteristic complaints were of his own short-comings as a manager and of the crotchets of his relatives. His letters were always cheery, and his repeated disappointments in overseers never damped his optimism concerning each new incumbent. His old lands contented him until he found new and more fertile ones to buy, whereupon his jubilation was great. When cotton was low he called himself a toad under the harrow; but rising markets would set him to counting bales before the seed had more than sprouted and to building new plantations in the air. In actual practice his log-cabin slave quarters gave place to frame houses; his mules were kept in full force; his production of corn and bacon was nearly always ample for the needs of each place; his slaves were permitted to raise nankeen cotton on their private accounts; and his own frequent journeys of inspection and stimulus, as he said, kept up an _esprit du corps_. When an overseer reported that his slaves were down with fever by the dozen and his cotton wasting in the fields, Lamar would hasten thither with a physician and a squad of slaves impressed from another plantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. He redistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a better balancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy as far as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate the families. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among his slaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized them to find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and good nature made "Mas John" a favorite recourse. As to crops and management, Lamar indicated his methods in criticizing those of a relative: "Uncle Jesse still builds air castles and blinds himself to his affairs. Last year he tinkered away on tobacco and sugar cane, things he knew nothing about.... He interferes with the arrangements of his overseers, and has no judgment of his own.... If he would employ a competent overseer and move off the plantation with his family he could make good crops, as he has a good force of hands and good lands.... I have found that it is unprofitable to undertake anything on a plantation out of the regular routine. If I had a little place off to itself, and my business would admit of it, I should delight in agricultural experiments." In his reliance upon staple routine, as in every other characteristic, Lamar rings true to the planter type. CHAPTER XV PLANTATION LABOR WHILE produced only in America, the plantation slave was a product of old-world forces. His nature was an African's profoundly modified but hardly transformed by the requirements of European civilization. The wrench from Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting his ancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperament than upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee, Ebo or Angola, he became instead the American negro. The Caucasian was also changed by the contact in a far from negligible degree; but the negro's conversion was much the more thorough, partly because the process in his case was coercive, partly because his genius was imitative. The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit reservation as to limits, that a negro was what a white man made him. The molding, however, was accomplished more by groups than by individuals. The purposes and policies of the masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence the negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagerness for society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person, dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness toward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to superstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for praise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, a healthy human repugnance toward overwork. "It don't do no good to hurry," was a negro saying, "'caze you're liable to run by mo'n you overtake." Likewise painstaking was reckoned painful; and tomorrow was always waiting for today's work, while today was ready for tomorrow's share of play. On the other hand it was a satisfaction to work sturdily for a hard boss, and so be able to say in an interchange of amenities: "Go long, half-priced nigger! You wouldn't fotch fifty dollars, an' I'm wuth a thousand!"[1] [Footnote 1: _Daily Tropic_ (New Orleans), May 18, 1846.] Contrasts were abundant. John B. Lamar, on the one hand, wrote: "My man Ned the carpenter is idle or nearly so at the plantation. He is fixing gates and, like the idle groom in Pickwick, trying to fool himself into the belief that he is doing something.... He is an eye servant. If I was with him I could have the work done soon and cheap; but I am afraid to trust him off where there is no one he fears."[2] On the other hand, M.W. Philips inscribed a page of his plantation diary as follows:[3] [Footnote 2: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 38.] [Footnote 3: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 444.] Sunday July 10, 1853 Peyton is no more Aged 42 Though he was a bad man in many respects yet he was a most excellent field hand, always at his post. On this place for 21 years. Except the measles and its sequence, the injury rec'd by the mule last Nov'r and its sequence, he has not lost 15 days' work, I verily believe, in the remaining 19 years. I wish we could hope for his eternal state. Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the old-fashioned prime negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch the roustabouts at work--those chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging, lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of New Orleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made.[4] Ready at every touching of the shore day and night, resting and sleeping only between landings, they carry their loads almost at running speed, and when returning for fresh burdens they "coonjine" by flinging their feet in semi-circles at every step, or cutting other capers in rhythm to show their fellows and the gallery that the strain of the cotton bales, the grain sacks, the oil barrels and the timbers merely loosen their muscles and lighten their spirits. [Footnote 4: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of Economics, New Orleans, April 11th, 1911, on River Transportation and Its Relation to New Orleans, Past, Present and Future_. [New Orleans, 1911.]] Such an exhibit would have been the despair of the average ante-bellum planter, for instead of choosing among hundreds of applicants and rejecting or discharging those who fell short of a high standard, he had to make shift with such laborers as the slave traders chanced to bring or as his women chanced to rear. His common problem was to get such income and comfort as he might from a parcel of the general run; and the creation of roustabout energy among them would require such vigor and such iron resolution on his own part as was forthcoming in extremely few cases. Theoretically the master might be expected perhaps to expend the minimum possible to keep his slaves in strength, to discard the weaklings and the aged, to drive his gang early and late, to scourge the laggards hourly, to secure the whole with fetters by day and with bolts by night, and to keep them in perpetual terror of his wrath. But Olmsted, who seems to have gone South with the thought of finding some such theory in application, wrote: "I saw much more of what I had not anticipated and less of what I had in the slave states than, with a somewhat extended travelling experience, in any other country I ever visited";[5] and Nehemiah Adams, who went from Boston to Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himself laughing with the laughing ones instead.[6] [Footnote 5: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 179.] [Footnote 6: Nehemiah Adams. _A Southside View of Slavery, or Three Months in the South in 1854_ (Boston, 1854), chap. 2.] The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was as strange to the bulk of the planters as the doctrine and practice of moderation was to those who viewed the régime from afar and with the mind's eye. A planter in explaining his mildness might well have said it was due to his being neither a knave nor a fool He refrained from the use of fetters not so much because they would have hampered the slaves in their work as because the general use of them never crossed his mind. And since chains and bolts were out of the question, the whole system of control must be moderate; slaves must be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might be by loyalty, pride and the prospect of reward. Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional degree. A certain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked success even when his whole force was of fresh Africans. In a pamphlet of the late eighteen-twenties he told of his method as follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settled a plantation on St. John's River in Florida with about fifty new negroes, many of whom I brought from the Coast myself. They were mostly fine young men and women, and nearly in equal numbers. I never interfered in their connubial concerns nor domestic affairs, but let them regulate these after their own manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and what I thought would add to their physical and moral happiness. I encouraged as much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon and night and Sunday morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] was usually employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for the week. Both men and women were very industrious. Many of them made twenty bushels of corn to sell, and they vied with each other in dress and dancing.... They were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared perfectly happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had to apply other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, the punishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing their work well. My object was to excite their ambition and attachment by kindness, not to depress their spirits by fear and punishment.... Perfect confidence, friendship and good understanding reigned between us." During the War of 1812 most of these negroes were killed or carried off in a Seminole raid. When peace returned and Kingsley attempted to restore his Eden with a mixture of African and American negroes, a serpent entered in the guise of a negro preacher who taught the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sunday and eating the catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves "became poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was only to do justice--to take what belonged to them, because I kept them in unjust bondage." They came to believe "that all pastime or pleasure in this iniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of sorrow and repentance, and the sooner they were out of it the better; that they would then go to a good country where they would experience no want of anything, and have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful and would pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and ask forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to the church, etc.... Finally myself and the overseer became completely divested of all authority over the negroes.... Severity had no effect; it only made it worse."[7] [Footnote 7: [Z. Kingsley] _A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society as It exists ... under the Name of Slavery_. By an inhabitant of Florida. Fourth edition (1834), pp. 21, 22. (Copy in the Library of Congress.)] This experience left Kingsley undaunted in his belief that liberalism and profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the plantation régime. To support this contention further he cited an experiment by a South Carolinian who established four or five plantations in a group on Broad River, with a slave foreman on each and a single overseer with very limited functions over the whole. The cotton crop was the master's, while the hogs, corn and other produce belonged to the slaves for their sustenance and the sale of any surplus. The output proved large, "and the owner had no further trouble nor expense than furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying the overseer's wages, so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that he could realize his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without paying the customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on the operation of his slaves." In Kingsley's opinion the system "answered extremely well, and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivating utility, local attachment and moral improvement among the slaves."[8] [Footnote 8: [Z. Kingsley] _Treatise_, p. 22.] The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government by slaves is probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on their plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi. There the slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in every way they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to be inflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with his power of pardon. The régime was maintained for a number of years in full effect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9] [Footnote 9: W.L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro Problem," in the _Sewanee Review_ (October, 1908).] These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend to counterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme. In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, the relation of planter and slave was largely shaped by a sense of propriety, proportion and cooperation. As to food, clothing and shelter, a few concrete items will reinforce the indications in the preceding chapters that crude comfort was the rule. Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776 that a Georgia slaveholder with whom he stopped sold no dairy products from his forty cows in milk. The proprietor explained this by saying: "I have a considerable family of black people who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for Those I have were either chosen for their good qualities or born in the family; and I find from long experience and observation that the better they are fed, clothed and treated, the more service and profit we may expect to derive from their labour. In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or any article of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best advantage amongst my family and slaves." At another place Bartram noted the arrival at a plantation of horse loads of wild pigeons taken by torchlight from their roosts in a neighboring swamp.[10] [Footnote 10: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), pp. 307-310, 467, 468.] On Charles Cotesworth Pinckney's two plantations on the South Carolina coast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a detail of four slaves was shifted from the field work each week for a useful holiday in angling for the huge drumfish which abounded in those waters; and their catches augmented the fare of the white and black families alike.[11] Game and fish, however, were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combined the virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness. On Fowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands numbered a little less than half a hundred, the pork harvest throughout the eighteen-fifties, except for a single year of hog cholera, yielded from eleven to twenty-three hundred pounds; and when the yield was less than the normal, northwestern bacon or barreled pork made up the deficit.[12] In the matter of clothing, James Habersham sent an order to London in 1764 on behalf of himself and two neighbors for 120 men's jackets and breeches and 80 women's gowns to be made in assorted sizes from strong and heavy cloth. The purpose was to clothe their slaves "a little better than common" and to save the trouble of making the garments at home.[13] In January, 1835, the overseer of one of the Telfair plantations reported that the woolen weaving had nearly supplied the full needs of the place at the rate of six or six and a half yards for each adult and proportionately for the children.[14] In 1847, in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrote from Paris to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroes and see how many jackets and trousers you want for the men at Gowrie, ... and then write to Messrs. Matthiessen and Co. of Charleston to send them to you, together with the same quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and a large woolen Scotch cap for each man and youth on the place.... Send back anything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs. Habersham and Son the twilled wool and cotton, called by some 'Hazzard's cloth,' for all the women and children, and get two or three dozen handkerchiefs so as to give each woman and girl one.... The shoes you will procure as usual from Mr. Habersham by sending down the measures in time."[15] Finally, the register of A.L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont contains record of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a steady schedule. Every spring each man drew two cotton shirts and two pair of homespun woolen trousers, each woman a frock and chemises, and each child clothing or cloth in proportion; and every fall the men drew shirts, trousers and coats, the women shifts, petticoats, frocks and sacks, the children again on a similar scale, and the several families blankets as needed.[16] [Footnote 11: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 203-208.] [Footnote 12: MS. records in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] [Footnote 13: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 293, 294.] [Footnote 14: _Ibid_., 192, 193.] [Footnote 15: MS. copy in Manigault's letter book.] [Footnote 16: MS. in the possession of Mrs. J.F. Minis, Savannah, Ga.] As for housing, the vestiges of the old slave quarters, some of which have stood abandoned for half a century, denote in many cases a sounder construction and greater comfort than most of the negroes in freedom have since been able to command. With physical comforts provided, the birth-rate would take care of itself. The pickaninnies were winsome, and their parents, free of expense and anxiety for their sustenance, could hardly have more of them than they wanted. A Virginian told Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fast as they did on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and in Georgia, Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits."[18] In Mississippi M.W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when at the age of thirty she was married by her master to a new husband, and had eight more thereafter, including a set of triplets.[19] But the culminating instance is the following as reported by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERY REMARKABLE. There is now living in the vicinity of Campbell a negro woman belonging to a gentleman by the name of Todd; this woman is in her forty-second year and has had forty-one children and at this time is pregnant with her forty-second child, and possibly with her forty-third, as she has frequently had doublets."[20] Had childbearing been regulated in the interest of the masters, Todd's woman would have had less than forty-one and Amy less than her nineteen, for such excesses impaired the vitality of the children. Most of Amy's, for example, died a few hours or days after birth. [Footnote 17: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 57.] [Footnote 18: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 179.] [Footnote 19: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 439, 443, 447, 480.] [Footnote 20: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 11, 1822, quoting the Lynchburg _Press_.] A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie." Virtually all of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and wives except Caroline who in twenty years bore ten children. Her husband was presumably the slave of some other master. Tom and Milly had nine children in eighteen years; Harry and Jainy had seven in twenty-two years; Fanny had five in seventeen years with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa likewise had five in nineteen years with Bob as the father of all but the first; and Hector and Mary had five in seven years. On the other hand, two old couples and one in their thirties had had no children, while eight young pairs had from one to four each.[21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisiana plantation called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole. The slaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards comprised thirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre des naissances" showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859 distributed among twenty-three women, two of whom were still in their teens when the record ended. Rhodé bore six children between her seventeenth and thirty-fourth years; Henriette bore six between twenty-one and forty; Esther six between twenty-one and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two; Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore from one to three children each, including Celestine who had her first baby when fifteen and her second two years after. None of the matings or paternities appear in the record, though the christenings and the slave godparents are registered.[22] [Footnote 21: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] [Footnote 22: MS. in the Howard Memorial Library, New Orleans.] The death rate was a subject of more active solicitude. This may be illustrated from the journal for 1859-1860 of the Magnolia plantation, forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its record of rations to 138 hands, and of the occasional births, deaths, runaways and recaptures, and of the purchase of a man slave for $2300, it contains the following summary under date of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen months over 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping cough, and then the diphtheria, all of which we have gone through with but little loss save in the whooping cough when we lost some twelve children." This entry was in the spirit of rejoicing at escape from disasters. But on December 18 there were two items of another tone. One of these was entered by an overseer named Kellett: "[I] shot the negro boy Frank for attempting to cut at me and three boys with his cane knife with intent to kill." The other, in a different handwriting, recorded tersely: "J.A. Randall commenst buisnass this mornung. J. Kellett discharged this morning." The owner could not afford to keep an overseer who killed negroes even though it might be in self defence.[23] [Footnote 23: MS. preserved on the plantation, owned by ex-Governor H.C. War-moth.] Of epidemics, yellow fever was of minor concern as regards the slaves, for negroes were largely immune to it; but cholera sometimes threatened to exterminate the slaves and bankrupt their masters. After a visitation of this in and about New Orleans in 1832, John McDonogh wrote to a friend: "All that you have seen of yellow fever was nothing in comparison. It is supposed that five or six thousand souls, black and white, were carried off in fourteen days."[24] The pecuniary loss in Louisiana from slave deaths in that epidemic was estimated at four million dollars.[25] Two years afterward it raged in the Savannah neighborhood. On Mr. Wightman's plantation, ten miles above the city, there were in the first week of September fifty-three cases and eighteen deaths. The overseer then checked the spread by isolating the afflicted ones in the church, the barn and the mill. The neighboring planters awaited only the first appearance of the disease on their places to abandon their crops and hurry their slaves to lodges in the wilderness.[26] Plagues of smallpox were sometimes of similar dimensions. [Footnote 24: William Allen, _Life of John McDonogh_ (Baltimore, 1886), p. 54.] [Footnote 25: _Niles' Register_, XLV, 84] [Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Sept. 14 and 17 and Oct. 22, 1834.] Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin. A series of them drove M.W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation journal: "Oh! my losses almost make me crazy. God alone can help." In short, planters must guard their slaves' health and life as among the most vital of their own interests; for while crops were merely income, slaves were capital. The tendency appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrant labor when available for such work as would involve strain and exposure. The documents bearing on this theme are scattering but convincing. Thus E.J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields, said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantation ditches;[27] T.B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippi in 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planter when describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usual routine.[29] Olmsted noted on the Virginia seaboard that "Mr. W.... had an Irish gang draining for him by contract." Olmsted asked, "why he should employ Irishmen in preference to doing the work with his own hands. 'It's dangerous work,' the planter replied, 'and a negro's life is too valuable to be risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss you know,'"[30] On a Louisiana plantation W.H. Russell wrote in 1860: "The labor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands and hewing down the forests is generally done by Irish laborers who travel about the country under contractors or are engaged by resident gangsmen for the task. Mr. Seal lamented the high prices of this work; but then, as he said, 'It was much better to have Irish do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment,'" Russell added on his own score: "There is a wonderful mine of truth in this observation. Heaven knows how many poor Hibernians have been consumed and buried in these Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshop keeper and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the planter." On another plantation the same traveller was shown the débris left by the last Irish gang and was regaled by an account of the methods by which their contractor made them work.[31] Robert Russell made a similar observation on a plantation near New Orleans, and was told that even at high wages Irish laborers were advisable for the work because they would do twice as much ditching as would an equal number of negroes in the same time.[32] Furthermore, A. de Puy Van Buren, noted as a common sight in the Yazoo district, "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,' straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chief element among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.[33] Likewise Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his boat with cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise confirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chance observations it may be added that many newspaper items and canal and railroad company reports from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that the construction gangs were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attracted those whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor was their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the lives of their slaves. [Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, _The Agricultural Productions of Louisiana_ (New Orleans, 1845).] [Footnote 28: _Harper's Magazine_, VII, 755.] [Footnote 29: _DeBoufs Review_, XI, 401.] [Footnote 30: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 90, 91.] [Footnote 31: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp 272, 273, 278.] [Footnote 32: Robert Russell, _North America, Its Agriculture and Chwate_ (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 272.] [Footnote 33: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 84, 318.] [Footnote 34: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 550, 551.] Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease, disability and death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better than a slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on the plantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely took vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape from bondage altogether. Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a protest against severities. An episode of this sort was recounted in a letter of a Georgia overseer to his absent employer: "Sir: I write you a few lines in order to let you know that six of your hands has left the plantation--every man but Jack. They displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a few lashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were missing. I think they are lying out until they can see you or your uncle Jack, as he is expected daily. They may be gone off, or they may be lying round in this neighbourhood, but I don't know. I blame Tom for the whole. I don't think the rest would of left the plantation if Tom had not of persuaded them of for some design. I give Tom but a few licks, but if I ever get him in my power I will have satisfaction. There was a part of them had no cause for leaving, only they thought if they would all go it would injure me moore. They are as independent a set for running of as I have ever seen, and I think the cause is they have been treated too well. They want more whipping and no protecter; but if our country is so that negroes can quit their homes and run of when they please without being taken they will have the advantage of us. If they should come in I will write to you immediately and let you know." [35] [Footnote 35: Letter of I.E.H. Harvey, Jefferson County, Georgia, April 16, 1837, to H.C. Flournoy, Athens, Ga. MS. in private possession. Punctuation and capitals, which are conspicuously absent in the original, have here been supplied for the sake of clarity.] Such a case is analogous to that of wage-earning laborers on strike for better conditions of work. The slaves could not negotiate directly at such a time, but while they lay in the woods they might make overtures to the overseer through slaves on a neighboring plantation as to terms upon which they would return to work, or they might await their master's posthaste arrival and appeal to him for a redress of grievances. Humble as their demeanor might be, their power of renewing the pressure by repeating their flight could not be ignored. A happy ending for all concerned might be reached by mutual concessions and pledges. That the conclusion might be tragic is illustrated in a Louisiana instance where the plantation was in charge of a negro foreman. Eight slaves after lying out for some weeks because of his cruelty and finding their hardships in the swamp intolerable returned home together and proposed to go to work again if granted amnesty. When the foreman promised a multitude of lashes instead, they killed him with their clubs. The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia, told what they had done, and surrendered themselves. The coroner went to the plantation and found the foreman dead according to specifications.[36] The further history of the eight is unknown. [Footnote 36: _Daily Delta_ (New Orleans), April 17, 1849.] Most of the runaways went singly, but some of them went often. Such chronic offenders were likely to be given exemplary punishment when recaptured. In the earlier decades branding and shackling were fairly frequent. Some of the punishments were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflicted upon talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quite as fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period the more common resorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale. The menace of this last was shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell on earth of any district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise. "They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for they recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turn blackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiable purpose of keeping their own slaves content. Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered more or less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper advertisements for fugitives reinforces the impression that the need of deterrence was vital. Whippings, instead of proving a cure, might bring revenge in the form of sabotage, arson or murder. Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter might prove of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical. The preventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and festivities to create lightness of heart; overtime and overtask payments to promote zeal and satisfaction; kindliness and care to call forth loyalty in return; and the special device of crop patches to give every hand a stake in the plantation. This last raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaves were allowed to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might be stimulated more than industry and punishments become more necessary than before. In the cotton belt a solution was found at last in nankeen cotton.[37] This variety had been widely grown for domestic use as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was left largely in neglect until when in the thirties it was hit upon for negro crops. While the prices it brought were about the same as those of the standard upland staple, its distinctive brown color prevented the admixture of the planter's own white variety without certain detection when it reached the gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations is indicated by the proceeds of $1,969.65 in 1859 from the nankeen of the negroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in Taylor County, Georgia.[38] Such returns might be distributed in cash; but planters generally preferred for the sake of sobriety that money should not be freely handled by the slaves. Earnings as well as gifts were therefore likely to be issued in the form of tickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed the following to the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg in the Christmas season of 1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let the bearer George have ten dollars value in anything he chooses"; and the merchants entered a memorandum that George chose two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a pair of hose, and six shillings in cash.[39] [Footnote 37: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. 128.] [Footnote 38: Macon, Ga., _Telegraph_, Feb. 3, 1859, quoted in _DeBow's Review_, XXIX, 362, note.] [Footnote 39: MS. among the Allen and Ellis papers in the Library of Congress.] In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to avoid the occasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too heavy, the simplest recourse was to reduce the schedule. If jobs were slackly done, acquiescence was easier than correction. The easy-going and plausible disposition of the blacks conspired with the heat of the climate to soften the resolution of the whites and make them patient. Severe and unyielding requirements would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied with geniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization would make plantation life not only tolerable but charming. In the actual régime severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness the rule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote in 1820: "After travelling through three slave states I am obliged to go back to theory to raise any abhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an instance of cruel treatment nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in 'the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and appear at least as independent as their masters; in animal spirits they have greatly the advantage."[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828: "I have no wish, God knows! to defend slavery in the abstract; ... but ... nothing during my recent journey gave me more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I was gradually brought that the planters of the Southern states of America, generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage their estates with the least possible severity. I do not say that undue severity is nowhere exercised; but the discipline, taken upon the average, as far as I could learn, is not more strict than is necessary for the maintenance of a proper degree of authority, without which the whole framework of society in that quarter would be blown to atoms."[41] And Olmsted wrote: "The only whipping of slaves that I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazy children as they are being broke in to work."[42] [Footnote 40: Adlard Welby, _Visit to North America_ (London, 1821 ) reprinted in Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, XII, 289] [Footnote 41: Basil Hall, _Travels in the United States_, III, 227, 228.] [Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 146.] As to the rate and character of the work, Hall said that in contrast with the hustle prevailing on the Northern farms, "in Carolina all mankind appeared comparatively idle."[43] Olmsted, when citing a Virginian's remark that his negroes never worked enough to tire themselves, said on his own account: "This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work--they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps."[44] And Solon Robinson reported tersely from a rice plantation that the negroes plied their hoes "at so slow a rate, the motion would have given a quick-working Yankee convulsions."[45] [Footnote 43: Basil Hall, III, 117.] [Footnote 44: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 91.] [Footnote 45: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 93.] There was clearly no general prevalence of severity and strain in the régime. There was, furthermore, little of that curse of impersonality and indifference which too commonly prevails in the factories of the present-day world where power-driven machinery sets the pace, where the employers have no relations with the employed outside of work hours, where the proprietors indeed are scattered to the four winds, where the directors confine their attention to finance, and where the one duty of the superintendent is to procure a maximum output at a minimum cost. No, the planters were commonly in residence, their slaves were their chief property to be conserved, and the slaves themselves would not permit indifference even if the masters were so disposed. The generality of the negroes insisted upon possessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectful intimacy. While by no means every plantation was an Arcadia there were many on which the industrial and racial relations deserved almost as glowing accounts as that which the Englishman William Faux wrote in 1819 of the "goodly plantation" of the venerable Mr. Mickle in the uplands of South Carolina.[46] "This gentleman," said he, "appears to me to be a rare example of pure and undefiled religion, kind and gentle in manners.... Seeing a swarm, or rather herd, of young negroes creeping and dancing about the door and yard of his mansion, all appearing healthy, happy and frolicsome and withal fat and decently clothed, both young and old, I felt induced to praise the economy under which they lived. 'Aye,' said he, 'I have many black people, but I have never bought nor sold any in my life. All that you see came to me with my estate by virtue of my father's will. They are all, old and young, true and faithful to my interests. They need no taskmaster, no overseer. They will do all and more than I expect them to do, and I can trust them with untold gold. All the adults are well instructed, and all are members of Christian churches in the neighbourhood; and their conduct is becoming their professions. I respect them as my children, and they look on me as their friend and father. Were they to be taken from me it would be the most unhappy event of their lives,' This conversation induced me to view more attentively the faces of the adult slaves; and I was astonished at the free, easy, sober, intelligent and thoughtful impression which such an economy as Mr. Mickle's had indelibly made on their countenances." [Footnote 46: William Faux, _Memorable Days in America_ (London, 1823), p. 68, reprinted in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, XI, 87.] CHAPTER XVI PLANTATION LIFE When Hakluyt wrote in 1584 his _Discourse of Western Planting_, his theme was the project of American colonization; and when a settlement was planted at Jamestown, at Boston or at Providence as the case might be, it was called, regardless of the type, a plantation. This usage of the word in the sense of a colony ended only upon the rise of a new institution to which the original name was applied. The colonies at large came then to be known as provinces or dominions, while the sub-colonies, the privately owned village estates which prevailed in the South, were alone called plantations. In the Creole colonies, however, these were known as _habitations_--dwelling places. This etymology of the name suggests the nature of the thing--an isolated place where people in somewhat peculiar groups settled and worked and had their being. The standard community comprised a white household in the midst of several or many negro families. The one was master, the many were slaves; the one was head, the many were members; the one was teacher, the many were pupils. The scheme of the buildings reflected the character of the group. The "big house," as the darkies loved to call it, might be of any type from a double log cabin to a colonnaded mansion of many handsome rooms, and its setting might range from a bit of primeval forest to an elaborate formal garden. Most commonly the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretense to distinction without nor to luxury within. The two fairly constant features were the hall running the full depth of the house, and the verandah spanning the front. The former by day and the latter at evening served in all temperate seasons as the receiving place for guests and the gathering place for the household at all its leisure times. The house was likely to have a quiet dignity of its own; but most of such beauty as the homestead possessed was contributed by the canopy of live-oaks if on the rice or sugar coasts, or of oaks, hickories or cedars, if in the uplands. Flanking the main house in many cases were an office and a lodge, containing between them the administrative headquarters, the schoolroom, and the apartments for any bachelor overflow whether tutor, sons or guests. Behind the house and at a distance of a rod or two for the sake of isolating its noise and odors, was the kitchen. Near this, unless a spring were available, stood the well with its two buckets dangling from the pulley; and near this in turn the dairy and the group of pots and tubs which constituted the open air laundry. Bounding the back yard there were the smoke-house where bacon and hams were cured, the sweet potato pit, the ice pit except in the southernmost latitudes where no ice of local origin was to be had, the carriage house, the poultry house, the pigeon cote, and the lodgings of the domestic servants. On plantations of small or medium scale the cabins of the field hands generally stood at the border of the master's own premises; but on great estates, particularly in the lowlands, they were likely to be somewhat removed, with the overseer's house, the smithy, and the stables, corn cribs and wagon sheds nearby. At other convenient spots were the buildings for working up the crops--the tobacco house, the threshing and pounding mills, the gin and press, or the sugar house as the respective staples required. The climate conduced so strongly to out of door life that as a rule each roof covered but a single unit of residence, industry or storage. The fields as well as the buildings commonly radiated from the planter's house. Close at hand were the garden, the orchards and the horse lot; and behind them the sweet potato field, the watermelon patch and the forage plots of millet, sorghum and the like. Thence there stretched the fields of the main crops in a more or less solid expanse according to the local conditions. Where ditches or embankments were necessary, as for sugar and rice fields, the high cost of reclamation promoted compactness; elsewhere the prevailing cheapness of land promoted dispersion. Throughout the uplands, accordingly, the area in crops was likely to be broken by wood lots and long-term fallows. The scale of tillage might range from a few score acres to a thousand or two; the expanse of unused land need have no limit but those of the proprietor's purse and his speculative proclivity. The scale of the orchards was in some degree a measure of the domesticity prevailing. On the rice coast the unfavorable character of the soil and the absenteeism of the planter's families in summer conspired to keep the fruit trees few. In the sugar district oranges and figs were fairly plentiful. But as to both quantity and variety in fruits the Piedmont was unequaled. Figs, plums, apples, pears and quinces were abundant, but the peaches excelled all the rest. The many varieties of these were in two main groups, those of clear stones and soft, luscious flesh for eating raw, and those of clinging stones and firm flesh for drying, preserving, and making pies. From June to September every creature, hogs included, commonly had as many peaches as he cared to eat; and in addition great quantities might be carried to the stills. The abandoned fields, furthermore, contributed dewberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild plums in summer, and persimmons in autumn, when the forest also yielded its muscadines, fox grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts and chinquapins, and along the Gulf coast pecans. The resources for edible game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In most localities it required little time for a household, slave or free, to lay forest, field or stream under tribute. The planter's own dietary, while mostly home grown, was elaborate. Beef and mutton were infrequent because the pastures were poor; Irish potatoes were used only when new, for they did not keep well in the Southern climate; and wheaten loaves were seldom seen because hot breads were universally preferred. The standard meats were chicken in its many guises, ham and bacon. Wheat flour furnished relays of biscuit and waffles, while corn yielded lye hominy, grits, muffins, batter cakes, spoon bread, hoe cake and pone. The gardens provided in season lettuce, cucumbers, radishes and beets, mustard greens and turnip greens, string beans, snap beans and butter beans, asparagus and artichokes, Irish potatoes, squashes, onions, carrots, turnips, okra, cabbages and collards. The fields added green corn for boiling, roasting, stewing and frying, cowpeas and black-eyed peas, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, which last were roasted, fried or candied for variation. The people of the rice coast, furthermore, had a special fondness for their own pearly staple; and in the sugar district _strop de batterie_ was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves and jellies were in variety and quantity limited only by the almost boundless resources and industry of the housewife and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breads and relishes would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpected guests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal than would be taken away at the end, never to return. If ever tables had a habit of groaning it was those of the planters. Frugality, indeed, was reckoned a vice to be shunned, and somewhat justly so since the vegetables and eggs were perishable, the bread and meat of little cost, and the surplus from the table found sure disposal in the kitchen or the quarters. Lucky was the man whose wife was the "big house" cook, for the cook carried a basket, and the basket was full when she was homeward bound. The fare of the field hands was, of course, far more simple. Hoecake and bacon were its basis and often its whole content. But in summer fruit and vegetables were frequent; there was occasional game and fish at all seasons; and the first heavy frost of winter brought the festival of hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by brought recreation, but the hog-killing brought fat satisfaction.[1] [Footnote 1: This account of plantation homesteads and dietary is drawn mainly from the writer's own observations in post-bellum times in which, despite the shifting of industrial arrangements and the decrease of wealth, these phases have remained apparent. Confirmation may be had in Philip Fithian _Journal_ (Princeton, 1900); A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859); Susan D. Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (Baltimore, 1887); Mary B. Chestnutt, _A Diary from Dixie_ (New York, 1905); and many other memoirs and traveller's accounts.] The warmth of the climate produced some distinctive customs. One was the high seasoning of food to stimulate the appetite; another was the afternoon siesta of summer; a third the wellnigh constant leaving of doors ajar even in winter when the roaring logs in the chimney merely took the chill from the draughts. Indeed a door was not often closed on the plantation except those of the negro cabins, whose inmates were hostile to night air, and those of the storerooms. As a rule, it was only in the locks of the latter that keys were ever turned by day or night. The lives of the whites and the blacks were partly segregate, partly intertwined. If any special link were needed, the children supplied it. The whites ones, hardly knowing their mothers from their mammies or their uncles by blood from their "uncles" by courtesy, had the freedom of the kitchen and the cabins, and the black ones were their playmates in the shaded sandy yard the livelong day. Together they were regaled with folklore in the quarters, with Bible and fairy stories in the "big house," with pastry in the kitchen, with grapes at the scuppernong arbor, with melons at the spring house and with peaches in the orchard. The half-grown boys were likewise almost as undiscriminating among themselves as the dogs with which they chased rabbits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, when the fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something to envy in the freedom of their fellows' feet from the cramping weight of shoes and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With the approach of maturity came routine and responsibility for the whites, routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, some of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a somewhat distinctive plantation type. In amusements and in religion the activities of the whites and blacks were both mingled and separate. Fox hunts when occurring by day were as a rule diversions only for the planters and their sons and guests, but when they occurred by moonlight the chase was joined by the negroes on foot with halloos which rivalled the music of the hounds. By night also the blacks, with the whites occasionally joining in, sought the canny 'possum and the embattled 'coon; in spare times by day they hied their curs after the fleeing Brer Rabbit, or built and baited seductive traps for turkeys and quail; and fishing was available both by day and by night. At the horse races of the whites the jockeys and many of the spectators were negroes; while from the cock fights and even the "crap" games of the blacks, white men and boys were not always absent. Festivities were somewhat more separate than sports, though by no means wholly so. In the gayeties of Christmas the members of each race were spectators of the dances and diversions of the other. Likewise marriage merriment in the great house would have its echo in the quarters; and sometimes marriages among the slaves were grouped so as to give occasion for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the fiddle, the banjo and the bones were not seldom in requisition. [Footnote 2: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), April 20, 1858.] It was a matter of discomfort that in the evangelical churches dancing and religion were held to be incompatible. At one time on Thomas Dabney's plantation in Mississippi, for instance, the whole negro force fell captive in a Baptist "revival" and forswore the double shuffle. "I done buss' my fiddle an' my banjo, and done fling 'em away," the most music-loving fellow on the place said to the preacher when asked for his religious experiences.[3] Such a condition might be tolerable so long as it was voluntary; but the planters were likely to take precautions against its becoming coercive. James H. Hammond, for instance, penciled a memorandum in his plantation manual: "Church members are privileged to dance on all holyday occasions; and the class-leader or deacon who may report them shall be reprimanded or punished at the discretion of the master."[4] The logic with which sin and sanctity were often reconciled is illustrated in Irwin Russell's remarkably faithful "Christmas in the Quarters." "Brudder Brown" has advanced upon the crowded floor to "beg a blessin' on dis dance:" [Footnote 3: S.D. Smedes. _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 161, 162.] [Footnote 4: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] O Mashr! let dis gath'rin' fin' a blessin' in yo' sight! Don't jedge us hard fur what we does--you knows it's Chrismus night; An' all de balunce ob de yeah we does as right's we kin. Ef dancin's wrong, O Mashr! let de time excuse de sin! We labors in de vineya'd, wukin' hard and wukin' true; Now, shorely you won't notus, ef we eats a grape or two, An' takes a leetle holiday,--a leetle restin' spell,-- Bekase, nex' week we'll start in fresh, an' labor twicet as well. Remember, Mashr,--min' dis, now,--de sinfulness ob sin Is 'pendin' 'pon de sperrit what we goes an' does it in; An' in a righchis frame ob min' we's gwine to dance an' sing, A-feelin' like King David, when he cut de pigeon-wing. It seems to me--indeed it do--I mebbe mout be wrong-- That people raly _ought_ to dance, when Chrismus comes along; Des dance bekase dey's happy--like de birds hops in de trees, De pine-top fiddle soundin' to de blowin' ob de breeze. We has no ark to dance afore, like Isrul's prophet king; We has no harp to soun' de chords, to holp us out to sing; But 'cordin' to de gif's we has we does de bes' we knows, An' folks don't 'spise de vi'let-flower bekase it ain't de rose. You bless us, please, sah, eben ef we's doin' wrong tonight: Kase den we'll need de blessin' more'n ef we's doin' right; An' let de blessin' stay wid us, untel we comes to die, An' goes to keep our Chrismus wid dem sheriffs in de sky! Yes, tell dem preshis anjuls we's a-gwine to jine 'em soon: Our voices we's a-trainin' fur to sing de glory tune; We's ready when you wants us, an' it ain't no matter when-- O Mashr! call yo' chillen soon, an' take 'em home! Amen.[5] [Footnote 5: Irwin Russell, _Poems_ (New York [1888]), pp. 5-7.] The churches which had the greatest influence upon the negroes were those which relied least upon ritual and most upon exhilaration. The Baptist and Methodist were foremost, and the latter had the special advantage of the chain of camp meetings which extended throughout the inland regions. At each chosen spot the planters and farmers of the countryside would jointly erect a great shed or "stand" in the midst of a grove, and would severally build wooden shelters or "tents" in a great square surrounding it. When the crops were laid by in August, the households would remove thither, their wagons piled high with bedding, chairs and utensils to keep "open house" with heavy-laden tables for all who might come to the meeting. With less elaborate equipment the negroes also would camp in the neighborhood and attend the same service as the whites, sitting generally in a section of the stand set apart for them. The camp meeting, in short, was the chief social and religious event of the year for all the Methodist whites and blacks within reach of the ground and for such non-Methodists as cared to attend. For some of the whites this occasion was highly festive, for others, intensely religious; but for any negro it might easily be both at once. Preachers in relays delivered sermons at brief intervals from sunrise until after nightfall; and most of the sermons were followed by exhortations for sinners to advance to the mourners' benches to receive the more intimate and individual suasion of the clergy and their corps of assisting brethren and sisters. The condition was highly hypnotic, and the professions of conversion were often quite as ecstatic as the most fervid ministrant could wish. The negroes were particularly welcome to the preachers, for they were likely to give the promptest response to the pulpit's challenge and set the frenzy going. A Georgia preacher, for instance, in reporting from one of these camps in 1807, wrote: "The first day of the meeting, we had a gentle and comfortable moving of the spirit of the Lord among us; and at night it was much more powerful than before, and the meeting was kept up all night without intermission. However, before day the white people retired, and the meeting was continued by the black people." It is easy to see who led the way to the mourners' bench. "Next day," the preacher continued, "at ten o'clock the meeting was remarkably lively, and many souls were deeply wrought upon; and at the close of the sermon there was a general cry for mercy, and before night there were a good many persons who professed to get converted. That night the meeting continued all night, both by the white and black people, and many souls were converted before day." The next day the stir was still more general. Finally, "Friday was the greatest day of all. We had the Lord's Supper at night, ... and such a solemn time I have seldom seen on the like occasion. Three of the preachers fell helpless within the altar, and one lay a considerable time before he came to himself. From that the work of convictions and conversions spread, and a large number were converted during the night, and there was no intermission until the break of day. At that time many stout hearted sinners were conquered. On Saturday we had preaching at the rising of the sun; and then with many tears we took leave of each other."[6] [Footnote 6: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Aug. 8, 1807, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 285, 286.] The tone of the Baptist "protracted meetings" was much like that of the Methodist camps. In either case the rampant emotionalism, effective enough among the whites, was with the negroes a perfect contagion. With some of these the conversion brought lasting change; with others it provided a garment of piety to be donned with "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes" and doffed as irksome on week days. With yet more it merely added to the joys of life. The thrill of exaltation would be followed by pleasurable "sin," to give place to fresh conversion when the furor season recurred. The rivalry of the Baptist and Methodist churches, each striving by similar methods to excel the other, tempted many to become oscillating proselytes, yielding to the allurements first of the one and then of the other, and on each occasion holding the center of the stage as a brand snatched from the burning, a lost sheep restored to the fold, a cause and participant of rapture. In these manifestations the negroes merely followed and enlarged upon the example of some of the whites. The similarity of practices, however, did not promote a permanent mingling of the two races in the same congregations, for either would feel some restraint upon its rhapsody imposed by the presence of the other. To relieve this there developed in greater or less degree a separation of the races for purposes of worship, white ministers preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantation missions, and home talent among the negroes filling the intervals. While some of the black exhorters were viewed with suspicion by the whites, others were highly esteemed and unusually privileged. One of these at Lexington, Kentucky, for example, was given the following pass duly signed by his master: "Tom is my slave, and has permission to go to Louisville for two or three weeks and return here after he has made his visit. Tom is a preacher of the reformed Baptist church, and has always been a faithful servant."[7] As a rule the greater the proportion of negroes in a district or a church connection, the greater the segregation in worship. If the whites were many and the negroes few, the latter would be given the gallery or some other group of pews; but if the whites were few and the negroes many, the two elements would probably worship in separate buildings. Even in such case, however, it was very common for a parcel of black domestics to flock with their masters rather than with their fellows. [Footnote 7: Dated Aug. 6, 1856, and signed E. McCallister. MS. in the New York Public Library.] The general régime in the fairly typical state of South Carolina was described in 1845 in a set of reports procured preliminary to a convention on the state of religion among the negroes and the means of its betterment. Some of these accounts were from the clergy of several denominations, others from the laity; some treated of general conditions in the several districts, others in detail of systems on the writers' own plantations. In the latter group, N.W. Middleton, an Episcopalian of St. Andrew's parish, wrote that he and his wife and sons were the only religious teachers of his slaves, aside from the rector of the parish. He read the service and taught the catechism to all every Sunday afternoon, and taught such as came voluntarily to be instructed after family prayers on Wednesday nights. His wife and sons taught the children "constantly during the week," chiefly in the catechism. On the other hand R.F.W. Allston, a fellow Episcopalian of Prince George, Winyaw, had on his plantation a place of worship open to all denominations. A Methodist missionary preached there on alternate Sundays, and the Baptists were less regularly cared for. Both of these sects, furthermore, had prayer meetings, according to the rules of the plantation, on two nights of each week. Thus while Middleton endeavored to school his slaves in his own faith, Allston encouraged them to seek salvation by such creed as they might choose. An Episcopal clergyman in the same parish with Allston wrote that he held fortnightly services among the negroes on ten plantations, and enlisted some of the literate slaves as lay readers. His restriction of these to the text of the prayer book, however, seems to have shorn them of power. The bulk of the slaves flocked to the more spontaneous exercises elsewhere; and the clergyman could find ground for satisfaction only in saying that frequently as many as two hundred slaves attended services at one of the parish churches in the district. The Episcopal failure was the "evangelical" opportunity. Of the thirteen thousand slaves in Allston's parish some 3200 were Methodists and 1500 Baptists, as compared with 300 Episcopalians. In St. Peter's parish a Methodist reported that in a total of 6600 slaves, 1335 adhered to his faith, about half of whom were in mixed congregations of whites and blacks under the care of two circuit-riders, and the rest were in charge of two missionaries who ministered to negroes alone. Every large plantation, furthermore, had one or more "so-called negro preachers, but more properly exhorters." In St. Helena parish the Baptists led with 2132 communicants; the Methodists followed with 314 to whom a missionary holding services on twenty plantations devoted the whole of his time; and the Episcopalians as usual brought up the rear with fifty-two negro members of the church at Beaufort and a solitary additional one in the chapel on St. Helena island. Of the progress and effects of religion in the lowlands Allston and Middleton thought well. The latter said, "In every respect I feel encouraged to go on." The former wrote: "Of my own negroes and those in my immediate neighborhood I may speak with confidence. They are attentive to religious instruction and greatly improved in intelligence and morals, in domestic relations, etc. Those who have grown up under religious training are more intelligent and generally, though not always, more improved than those who have received religious instruction as adults. Indeed the degree of intelligence which as a class they are acquiring is worthy of deep consideration." Thomas Fuller, the reporter from the Beaufort neighborhood, however, was as much apprehensive as hopeful. While the negroes had greatly improved in manners and appearance as a result of coming to worship in town every Sunday, said he, the freedom which they were allowed for the purpose was often misused in ways which led to demoralization. He strongly advised the planters to keep the slaves at home and provide instruction there. From the upland cotton belt a Presbyterian minister in the Chester district wrote: "You are all aware, gentlemen, that the relation and intercourse between the whites and the blacks in the up-country are very different from what they are in the low-country. With us they are neither so numerous nor kept so entirely separate, but constitute a part of our households, and are daily either with their masters or some member of the white family. From this circumstance they feel themselves more identified with their owners than they can with you. I minister steadily to two different congregations. More than one hundred blacks attend.... The gallery, or a quarter of the house, is appropriated to them in all our churches, and they enjoy the preached gospel in common with the whites." Finally, from the Greenville district, on the upper edge of the Piedmont, where the Methodists and Baptists were completely dominant among whites and blacks alike, it was reported: "About one fourth of the members in the churches are negroes. In the years 1832, '3 and '4 great numbers of negroes joined the churches during a period of revival. Many, I am sorry to say, have since been excommunicated. As the general zeal in religion declined, they backslid." There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer continued, who were thought to do some good; but the general improvement in negro character, he thought, was mainly due to the religious and moral training given by their masters, and still more largely by their mistresses. From all quarters the expression was common that the promotion of religion among the slaves was not only the duty of masters but was to their interest as well in that it elevated the morals of the workmen and improved the quality of the service they rendered.[8] [Footnote 8: _Proceedings of the Meeting in Charleston, S.C., May 13-15, 1845, on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, together with the Report of the Committee and the Address to the Public_ (Charleston, 1845). The reports of the Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes in Liberty County, Georgia, printed annually for a dozen years or more in the 'thirties and 'forties, relate the career of a particularly interesting missionary work in that county on the rice coast, under the charge of the Reverend C.C. Jones. The tenth report in the series (1845) summarizes the work of the first decade, and the twelfth (1847) surveys the conditions then prevalent. In C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ (Nashville, [1857]) the ninth chapter is made up of reports on the mission activities of that church among the negroes in various quarters of the South.] In general, the less the cleavage of creed between master and man, the better for both, since every factor conducing to solidarity of sentiment was of advantage in promoting harmony and progress. When the planter went to sit under his rector while the slave stayed at home to hear an exhorter, just so much was lost in the sense of fellowship. It was particularly unfortunate that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had no co-religionists except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they had more conflict than community of economic and sentimental interest. On the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsible religious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroes everywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired by consistent self-control in the performance of duty rather man by the alternation of spasmodic reforms and relapses. Occasionally some hard-headed negro would resist the hypnotic suggestion of his preacher, and even repudiate glorification on his death-bed. A Louisiana physician recounts the final episode in the career of "Old Uncle Caleb," who had long been a-dying. "Before his departure, Jeff, the negro preacher of the place, gathered his sable flock of saints and sinners around the bed. He read a chapter and prayed, after which they sang a hymn.... Uncle Caleb lay motionless with closed eyes, and gave no sign. Jeff approached and took his hand. 'Uncle Caleb,' said he earnestly, 'de doctor says you are dying; and all de bredderin has come in for to see you de last time. And now, Uncle Caleb, dey wants to hear from your own mouf de precious words, dat you feels prepared to meet your God, and is ready and willin' to go,' Old Caleb opened his eyes suddenly, and in a very peevish, irritable tone, rebuffed the pious functionary in the following unexpected manner: 'Jeff, don't talk your nonsense to me! You jest knows dat I an't ready to go, nor willin' neder; and dat I an't prepared to meet nobody,' Jeff expatiated largely not only on the mercy of God, but on the glories of the heavenly kingdom, as a land flowing with milk and honey, etc. 'Dis ole cabin suits me mon'sus well!' was the only reply he could elicit from the old reprobate. And so he died."[9] [Footnote 9: William H. Holcombe, "Sketches of Plantation Life," in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, LVII, 631 (June, 1861).] The slaves not only had their own functionaries in mystic matters, including a remnant of witchcraft, but in various temporal concerns also. Foremen, chosen by masters with the necessary sanction of the slaves, had industrial and police authority; nurses were minor despots in sick rooms and plantation hospitals; many an Uncle Remus was an oracle in folklore; and many an Aunt Dinah was arbitress of style in turbans and of elegancies in general. Even in the practice of medicine a negro here and there gained a sage's reputation. The governor of Virginia reported in 1729 that he had "met with a negro, a very old man, who has performed many wonderful cures of diseases. For the sake of his freedom he has revealed the medicine, a concoction of roots and barks.... There is no room to doubt of its being a certain remedy here, and of singular use among the negroes--it is well worth the price (£60) of the negro's freedom, since it is now known how to cure slaves without mercury."[10] And in colonial South Carolina a slave named Caesar was particularly famed for his cure for poison, which was a decoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rum and lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in case of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal which printed it found its copies exhausted by the demand.[11] An example of more common episodes appears in a letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, to Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall, asking that "Brother Tom," Carter's coachman, be sent to see a sick child in his quarter. Dawson continued: "The black people at this place hath more faith in him as a doctor than any white doctor; and as I wrote you in a former letter I cannot expect you to lose your man's time, etc., for nothing, but am quite willing to pay for same."[12] [Footnote 10: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913), p. 53, note.] [Footnote 11: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1751.] [Footnote 12: MS. in the Carter papers, Virginia Historical Society.] Each plantation had a double head in the master and the mistress. The latter, mother of a romping brood of her own and over-mother of the pickaninny throng, was the chatelaine of the whole establishment. Working with a never flagging constancy, she carried the indoor keys, directed the household routine and the various domestic industries, served as head nurse for the sick, and taught morals and religion by precept and example. Her hours were long, her diversions few, her voice quiet, her influence firm.[13] Her presence made the plantation a home; her absence would have made it a factory. The master's concern was mainly with the able-bodied in the routine of the crops. He laid the plans, guessed the weather, ordered the work, and saw to its performance. He was out early and in late, directing, teaching, encouraging, and on occasion punishing. Yet he found time for going to town and for visits here and there, time for politics, and time for sports. If his duty as he saw it was sometimes grim, and his disappointments keen, hearty diversions were at hand to restore his equanimity. His horn hung near and his hounds made quick response on Reynard's trail, and his neighbors were ready to accept his invitations and give theirs lavishly in return, whether to their houses or to their fields. When their absences from home were long, as they might well be in the public service, they were not unlikely upon return to meet such a reception as Henry Laurens described: "I found nobody there but three of our old domestics--Stepney, Exeter and big Hagar. These drew tears from me by their humble and affectionate salutes. My knees were clasped, my hands kissed, my very feet embraced, and nothing less than a very--I can't say fair, but full--buss of my lips would satisfy the old man weeping and sobbing in my face.... They ... held my hands, hung upon me; I could scarce get from them. 'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never thought to see you again; now I am happy; Ah, I never thought to see you again.'"[14] [Footnote 13: Emily J. Putnam, _The Lady_ (New York, 1910), pp. 282-323.] [Footnote 14: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 436.] Among the clearest views of plantation life extant are those of two Northern tutors who wrote of their Southern sojourns. One was Philip Fithian who went from Princeton in 1773 to teach the children of Colonel Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall in the "Northern Neck" of Virginia, probably the most aristocratic community of the whole South: the other was A. de Puy Van Buren who left Battle Creek in the eighteen-fifties to seek health and employment in Mississippi and found them both, and happiness too, amid the freshly settled folk on the banks of the Yazoo River. Each of these made jottings now and then of the work and play of the negroes, but both of them were mainly impressed by the social régime in which they found themselves among the whites. Fithian marveled at the evidences of wealth and the stratification of society, but he reckoned that a well recommended Princeton graduate, with no questions asked as to his family, fortune or business, would be rated socially as on an equal footing with the owner of a £10,000 estate, though this might be discounted one-half if he were unfashionably ignorant of dancing, boxing, fencing, fiddling and cards.[15] He was attracted by the buoyancy, the good breeding and the cordiality of those whom he met, and particularly by the sound qualities of Colonel and Mrs. Carter with whom he dwelt; but as a budding Presbyterian preacher he was a little shocked at first by the easy-going conduct of the Episcopalian planters on Sundays. The time at church, he wrote, falls into three divisions: first, that before service, which is filled by the giving and receiving of business letters, the reading of advertisements and the discussion of crop prices and the lineage and qualities of favorite horses; second, "in the church at service, prayrs read over in haste, a sermon seldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound morality or deep, studied metaphysicks;"[16] third, "after service is over, three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the church among the crowd, in which time you will be invited by several different gentlemen home with them to dinner." [Footnote 15: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), p. 287.] [Footnote 16: Fithian _Journal and Letters_, p. 296.] Van Buren found the towns in the Yazoo Valley so small as barely to be entitled to places on the map; he found the planters' houses to be commonly mere log structures, as the farmers' houses about his own home in Michigan had been twenty years before; and he found the roads so bad that the mule teams could hardly draw their wagons nor the spans of horses their chariots except in dry weather. But when on his horseback errands in search of a position he learned to halloo from the roadway and was regularly met at each gate with an extended hand and a friendly "How do you do, sir? Won't you alight, come in, take a seat and sit awhile?"; when he was invariably made a member of any circle gathered on the porch and refreshed with cool water from the cocoanut dipper or with any other beverages in circulation; when he was asked as a matter of course to share any meal in prospect and to spend the night or day, he discovered charms even in the crudities of the pegs for hanging saddles on the porch and the crevices between the logs of the wall for the keeping of pipes and tobacco, books and newspapers. Finally, when the planter whose house he had made headquarters for two months declined to accept a penny in payment, Van Buren's heart overflowed. The boys whom he then began to teach he found particularly apt in historical studies, and their parents with whom he dwelt were thorough gentlefolk. Toward the end of his narrative, Van Buren expressed the thought that Mississippi, the newly settled home of people from all the older Southern states, exemplified the manners of all. He was therefore prompted to generalize and interpret: "A Southern gentleman is composed of the same material that a Northern gentleman is, only it is tempered by a Southern clime and mode of life. And if in this temperament there is a little more urbanity and chivalry, a little more politeness and devotion to the ladies, a little more _suaviter in modo_, why it is theirs--be fair and acknowledge it, and let them have it. He is from the mode of life he lives, especially at home, more or less a cavalier; he invariably goes a-horseback. His boot is always spurred, and his hand ensigned with the riding-whip. Aside from this he is known by his bearing--his frankness and firmness." Furthermore he is a man of eminent leisureliness, which Van Buren accounts for as follows: "Nature is unloosed of her stays there; she is not crowded for time; the word haste is not in her vocabulary. In none of the seasons is she stinted to so short a space to perform her work as at the North. She has leisure enough to bud and blossom--to produce and mature fruit, and do all her work. While on the other hand in the North right the reverse is true. Portions are taken off the fall and spring to lengthen out the winter, making his reign nearly half the year. This crowds the work of the whole year, you might say, into about half of it. This ... makes the essential difference between a Northerner and a Southerner. They are children of their respective climes; and this is why Southrons are so indifferent about time; they have three months more of it in a year than we have." [17] [Footnote 17: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the South_, pp. 232-236.] A key to Van Buren's enthusiasm is given by a passage in the diary of the great English reporter, William H. Russell: "The more one sees of a planter's life the greater is the conviction that its charms come from a particular turn of mind, which is separated by a wide interval from modern ideas in Europe. The planter is a denomadized Arab;--he has fixed himself with horses and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women with Oriental care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tender and hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming, because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments of womanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudeness about it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents are visible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, in its decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery."[18] The Southerners themselves took its incongruities much as a matter of course. The régime was to their minds so clearly the best attainable under the circumstances that its roughnesses chafed little. The plantations were homes to which, as they were fond of singing, their hearts turned ever; and the negroes, exasperating as they often were to visiting strangers, were an element in the home itself. The problem of accommodation, which was the central problem of the life, was on the whole happily solved. [Footnote 18: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), p. 285.] The separate integration of the slaves was no more than rudimentary. They were always within the social mind and conscience of the whites, as the whites in turn were within the mind and conscience of the blacks. The adjustments and readjustments were mutually made, for although the masters had by far the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by no means devoid of influence. A sagacious employer has well said, after long experience, "a negro understands a white man better than the white man understands the negro."[19] This knowledge gave a power all its own. The general régime was in fact shaped by mutual requirements, concessions and understandings, producing reciprocal codes of conventional morality. Masters of the standard type promoted Christianity and the customs of marriage and parental care, and they instructed as much by example as by precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences, and permitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought the slaves could be trusted not to abuse; they refrained from selling slaves except under the stress of circumstances; they avoided cruel, vindictive and captious punishments, and endeavored to inspire effort through affection rather than through fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderate industrial results. In short their despotism, so far as it might properly be so called was benevolent in intent and on the whole beneficial in effect. [Footnote 19: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of Economics_ [New Orleans, 1911], p. 8.] Some planters there were who inflicted severe punishments for disobedience and particularly for the offense of running away; and the community condoned and even sanctioned a certain degree of this. Otherwise no planter would have printed such descriptions of scars and brands as were fairly common in the newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the recapture of absconders.[20] When severity went to an excess that was reckoned as positive cruelty, however, the law might be invoked if white witnesses could be had; or the white neighbors or the slaves themselves might apply extra-legal retribution. The former were fain to be content with inflicting social ostracism or with expelling the offender from the district;[21] the latter sometimes went so far as to set fire to the oppressor's house or to accomplish his death by poison, cudgel, knife or bullet.[22] [Footnote 20: Examples are reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 79-91.] [Footnote 21: An instance is given in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., [1914]), p. 75.] [Footnote 22: For instances _see Plantation and Frontier_, II, 117-121.] In the typical group there was occasion for terrorism on neither side. The master was ruled by a sense of dignity, duty and moderation, and the slaves by a moral code of their own. This embraced a somewhat obsequious obedience, the avoidance of open indolence and vice, the attainment of moderate skill in industry, and the cultivation of the master's good will and affection. It winked at petty theft, loitering and other little laxities, while it stressed good manners and a fine faithfulness in major concerns. While the majority were notoriously easy-going, very many made their master's interests thoroughly their own; and many of the masters had perfect confidence in the loyalty of the bulk of their servitors. When on the eve of secession Edmund Ruffin foretold[23] the fidelity which the slaves actually showed when the war ensued, he merely voiced the faith of the planter class. [Footnote 23: _Debowfs Review_, XXX, 118-120 (January, 1861).] In general the relations on both sides were felt to be based on pleasurable responsibility. The masters occasionally expressed this in their letters. William Allason, for example, who after a long career as a merchant at Falmouth, Virginia, had retired to plantation life, declined his niece's proposal in 1787 that he return to Scotland to spend his declining years. In enumerating his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing which in your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithful slaves, which perhaps we have raised from their earliest breath. Even this, however, some can do, as with horses, etc., but I must own that it is not in my disposition."[24] [Footnote 24: Letter dated Jan. 22, 1787, in the Allason MS. mercantile books, Virginia State Library.] Others were yet more expressive when they came to write their wills. Thus[25] Howell Cobb of Houston County, Georgia, when framing his testament in 1817 which made his body-servant "to be what he is really deserving, a free man," and gave an annuity along with virtual freedom to another slave, of an advanced age, said that the liberation of the rest of his slaves was prevented by a belief that the care of generous and humane masters would be much better for them than a state of freedom. Accordingly he bequeathed these to his wife who he knew from her goodness of temper would treat them with unflagging kindness. But should the widow remarry, thereby putting her property under the control of a stranger, the slaves and the plantation were at once to revert to the testator's brother who was recommended to bequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he were deemed worthy of the trust. "It is my most ardent desire that in whatsoever hands fortune may place said negroes," the will enjoined, "that all the justice and indulgence may be shown them that is consistent with a state of slavery. I flatter myself with the hope that none of my relations or connections will be so ungrateful to my memory as to treat or use them otherwise." Surely upon the death of such a master the slaves might, with even more than usual unction, raise their melodious refrain: [Footnote 25: MS. copy in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga. The nephew mentioned in the will was Howell Cobb of Confederate prominence.] Down in de cawn fiel' Hear dat mo'nful soun'; All de darkies am aweepin', Massa's in de col', col' ground. CHAPTER XVII PLANTATION TENDENCIES Every typical settlement in English America was in its first phase a bit of the frontier. Commerce was rudimentary, capital scant, and industry primitive. Each family had to suffice itself in the main with its own direct produce. No one could afford to specialize his calling, for the versatility of the individual was wellnigh a necessity of life. This phase lasted only until some staple of export was found which permitted the rise of external trade. Then the fruit of such energy as could be spared from the works of bodily sustenance was exchanged for the goods of the outer world; and finally in districts of special favor for staples, the bulk of the community became absorbed in the special industry and procured most of its consumption goods from without. In the hidden coves of the Southern Alleghanies the primitive régime has proved permanent. In New England where it was but gradually replaced through the influence first of the fisheries and then of manufacturing, it survived long enough to leave an enduring spirit of versatile enterprise, evidenced in the plenitude of "Yankee notions." In the Southern lowlands and Piedmont, however, the pristine advantages of self-sufficing industry were so soon eclipsed by the profits to be had from tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar or cotton, that in large degree the whole community adopted a stereotyped economy with staple production as its cardinal feature. The earnings obtained by the more efficient producers brought an early accumulation of capital, and at the same time the peculiar adaptability of all the Southern staples to production on a large scale by unfree labor prompted the devotion of most of the capital to the purchase of servants and slaves. Thus in every district suited to any of these staples, the growth of an industrial and social system like that of Europe and the Northern States was cut short and the distinctive Southern scheme of things developed instead. This régime was conditioned by its habitat, its products and the racial quality of its labor supply, as well as by the institution of slavery and the traditional predilections of the masters. The climate of the South was generally favorable to one or another of the staples except in the elevated tracts in and about the mountain ranges. The soil also was favorable except in the pine barrens which skirted the seaboard. Everywhere but in the alluvial districts, however, the land had only a surface fertility, and all the staples, as well as their great auxiliary Indian corn, required the fields to be kept clean and exposed to the weather; and the heavy rainfall of the region was prone to wash off the soil from the hillsides and to leach the fertile ingredients through the sands of the plains. But so spacious was the Southern area that the people never lacked fresh fields when their old ones were outworn. Hence, while public economy for the long run might well have suggested a conservation of soil at the expense of immediate crops, private economy for the time being dictated the opposite policy; and its dictation prevailed, as it has done in virtually all countries and all ages. Slaves working in squads might spread manure and sow soiling crops if so directed, as well as freemen working individually; and their failure to do so was fully paralleled by similar neglect at the North in the same period. New England, indeed, was only less noted than the South for exhausted fields and abandoned farms. The newness of the country, the sparseness of population and the cheapness of land conspired with crops, climate and geological conditions to promote exploitive methods. The planters were by no means alone in shaping their program to fit these circumstances.[1] The heightened speed of the consequences was in a sense merely an unwelcome proof of their system's efficiency. Their laborers, by reason of being slaves, must at word of command set forth on a trek of a hundred or a thousand miles. No racial inertia could hinder nor local attachments hold them. In the knowledge of this the masters were even more alert than other men of the time for advantageous new locations; and they were accordingly fain to be content with rude houses and flimsy fences in any place of sojourn, and to let their hills remain studded with stumps as well as to take the exhaustion of the soil as a matter of course.[2] [Footnote 1 Edmund Ruffin, _Address on the opposite results of exhausting and fertilizing systems of agriculture. Read before the South Carolina Institute, November 18, 1852_ (Charleston, 1853), pp. 12, 13.] [Footnote 2 W.L. Trenholm, "The Southern States, their social and industrial history, conditions and needs," in the _Journal of Social Science_, no. IX (January, 1878).] Migration produced a more or less thorough segregation of types, for planters and farmers respectively tended to enter and remain in the districts most favorable to them.[3] The monopolization of the rice and sugar industries by the planters, has been described in previous chapters. At the other extreme the farming régime was without a rival throughout the mountain regions, in the Shenandoah and East Tennessee Valleys and in large parts of Kentucky and Missouri where the Southern staples would not flourish, and in great tracts of the pine barrens where the quality of the soil repelled all but the unambitious. The tobacco and cotton belts remained as the debatable ground in which the two systems might compete on more nearly even terms, though in some cotton districts the planters had always an overwhelming advantage. In the Mississippi bottoms, for example, the solid spread of the fields facilitated the supervision of large gangs at work, and the requirement of building and maintaining great levees on the river front virtually debarred operations by small proprietors. The extreme effects of this are illustrated in Issa-quena County, Mississippi, and Concordia Parish, Louisiana, where in 1860 the slaveholdings averaged thirty and fifty slaves each, and where except for plantation overseers and their families there were virtually no non-slaveholders present. The Alabama prairies, furthermore, showed a plantation predominance almost as complete. In the six counties of Dallas, Greene, Lowndes, Macon, Perry, Sumter and Wilcox, for example, the average slaveholdings ranged from seventeen to twenty-one each, and the slaveholding families were from twice to six times as numerous as the non-slaveholding ones. Even in the more rugged parts of the cotton belt and in the tobacco zone as well, the same tendency toward the engrossment of estates prevailed, though in milder degree and with lesser effects. [Footnote 3 F.V. Emerson, "Geographical Influences in American Slavery," in the American Geographical Society _Bulletin_, XLIII (1911), 13-26, 106-118, 170-181.] This widespread phenomenon did not escape the notice of contemporaries. Two members of the South Carolina legislature described it as early as 1805 in substance as follows: "As one man grows wealthy and thereby increases his stock of negroes, he wants more land to employ them on; and being fully able, he bids a large price for his less opulent neighbor's plantation, who by selling advantageously here can raise money enough to go into the back country, where he can be more on a level with the most forehanded, can get lands cheaper, and speculate or grow rich by industry as he pleases."[4] Some three decades afterward another South Carolinian spoke sadly "on the incompatibleness of large plantations with neighboring farms, and their uniform tendency to destroy the yeoman."[5] Similarly Dr. Basil Manly,[6] president of the University of Alabama, spoke in 1841 of the inveterate habit of Southern farmers to buy more land and slaves and plod on captive to the customs of their ancestors; and C.C. Clay, Senator from Alabama, said in 1855 of his native county of Madison, which lay on the Tennessee border: "I can show you ... the sad memorials of the artless and exhausting culture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking the cream off their lands, unable to restore them by rest, manures or otherwise, are going further west and south in search of other virgin lands which they may and will despoil and impoverish in like manner. Our wealthier planters, with greater means and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, extending their plantations and adding to their slave force. The wealthy few, who are able to live on smaller profits and to give their blasted fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merely independent.... In traversing that county one will discover numerous farm houses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or tenantless, deserted and dilapidated; he will observe fields, once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those evil harbingers fox-tail and broomsedge; he will see the moss growing on the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages; and will find 'one only master grasps the whole domain' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen white families. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty years ago scarce a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is already exhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and the Carolinas; the freshness of its agricultural glory is gone, the vigor of its youth is extinct, and the spirit of desolation seems brooding over it."[7] [Footnote 4: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] [Footnote 5: Quoted in Francis Lieber, _Slavery, Plantations and the Yeomanry_ (Loyal Publication Society, no. 29, New York, 1863), p. 5.] [Footnote 6: _Tuscaloosa Monitor_, April 13, 1842.] [Footnote 7: _DeBow's Review_, XIX, 727.] The census returns for Madison County show that in 1830 when the gross population was at its maximum the whites and slaves were equally numerous, and that by 1860 while the whites had diminished by a fourth the slaves had increased only by a twentieth. This suggests that the farmers were drawn, not driven, away. The same trend may be better studied in the uplands of eastern Georgia where earlier settlements gave a longer experience and where fuller statistics permit a more adequate analysis. In the county of Oglethorpe, typical of that area, the whites in the year 1800 were more than twice as many as the slaves, the non-slaveholding families were to the slaveholders in the ratio of 8 to 5, and slaveholders on the average had but 5 slaves each. In 1820 the county attained its maximum population for the ante-bellum period, and competition between the industrial types was already exerting its full effect. The whites were of the same number as twenty years before, but the slaves now exceeded them; the slaveholding families also slightly exceeded those who had none, and the scale of the average slaveholding had risen to 8.5. Then in the following forty years while the whites diminished and the number of slaves remained virtually constant, the scale of the average slaveholding rose to 12.2; the number of slaveholders shrank by a third and the non-slaveholders by two thirds.[8] The smaller slaveholders, those we will say with less than ten slaves each, ought of course to be classed among the farmers. When this is done the farmers of Oglethorpe appear to have been twice as many as the planters even in 1860. But this is properly offset by rating the average plantation there at four or five times the industrial scale of the average farm, which makes it clear that the plantation régime had grown dominant. [Footnote 8: U.B. Phillips, "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts," in the _American Historical Review_, XI, 810-813 (July, 1906).] In such a district virtually everyone was growing cotton to the top of his ability. When the price of the staple was high, both planters and farmers prospered in proportion to their scales. Those whose earnings were greatest would be eager to enlarge their fields, and would make offers for adjoining lands too tempting for some farmers to withstand. These would sell out and move west to resume cotton culture to better advantage than before. When cotton prices were low, however, the farmers, feeling the stress most keenly, would be inclined to forsake staple production. But in such case there was no occasion for them to continue cultivating lands best fit for cotton. The obvious policy would be to sell their homesteads to neighboring planters and move to cheaper fields beyond the range of planters' competition. Thus the farmers were constantly pioneering in districts of all sorts, while the plantation régime, whether by the prosperity and enlargement of the farms or by the immigration of planters, or both, was constantly replacing the farming scale in most of the staple areas. In the oldest districts of all, however, the lowlands about the Chesapeake, the process went on to a final stage in which the bulk of the planters, after exhausting the soil for staple purposes, departed westward and were succeeded in their turn by farmers, partly native whites and free negroes and partly Northerners trickling in, who raised melons, peanuts, potatoes, and garden truck for the Northern city markets. Throughout the Southern staple areas the plantations waxed and waned in a territorial progression. The régime was a broad billow moving irresistibly westward and leaving a trough behind. At the middle of the nineteenth century it was entering Texas, its last available province, whose cotton area it would have duly filled had its career escaped its catastrophic interruption. What would have occurred after that completion, without the war, it is interesting to surmise. Probably the crest of the billow would have subsided through the effect of an undertow setting eastward again. Belated immigrants, finding the good lands all engrossed, would have returned to their earlier homes, to hold their partially exhausted soils in higher esteem than before and to remedy the depletion by reformed cultivation. That the billow did not earlier give place to a level flood was partly due to the shortage of slaves; for the African trade was closed too soon for the stock to fill the country in these decades. To the same shortage was owing such opportunity as the white yeomanry had in staple production. The world offered a market, though not at high prices, for a greater volume of the crops than the plantation slaves could furnish; the farmers supplied the deficit. Free workingmen in general, whether farmers, artisans or unskilled wage earners, merely filled the interstices in and about the slave plantations. One year in the eighteen-forties a planter near New Orleans, attempting to dispense with slave labor, assembled a force of about a hundred Irish and German immigrants for his crop routine. Things went smoothly until the midst of the grinding season, when with one accord the gang struck for double pay. Rejecting the demand the planter was unable to proceed with his harvest and lost some ten thousand dollars worth of his crop.[9] The generality of the planters realized, without such a demonstration, that each year must bring its crop crisis during which an overindulgence by the laborers in the privileges of liberty might bring ruin to the employers. To secure immunity from this they were the more fully reconciled to the limitations of their peculiar labor supply. Freemen white or black might be convenient as auxiliaries, and were indeed employed in many instances whether on annual contract as blacksmiths and the like or temporarily as emergency helpers in the fields; but negro slaves were the standard composition of the gangs. This brought it about that whithersoever the planters went they carried with them crowds of negro slaves and all the problems and influences to which the presence of negroes and the prevalence of slavery gave rise. [Footnote 9: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_, (London, 1850), II, 162, 163.] One of the consequences was to keep foreign immigration small. In the colonial period the trade in indentured servants recruited the white population, and most of those who came in that status remained as permanent citizens of the South; but such Europeans as came during the nineteenth century were free to follow their own reactions without submitting to a compulsory adjustment. Many of them found the wage-earning opportunity scant, for the slaves were given preference by their masters when steady occupations were to be filled, and odd jobs were often the only recourse for outsiders. This was an effect of the slavery system. Still more important, however, was the repugnance which the newcomers felt at working and living alongside the blacks; and this was a consequence not of the negroes being slaves so much as of the slaves being negroes. It was a racial antipathy which when added to the experience of industrial disadvantage pressed the bulk of the newcomers northwestward beyond the confines of the Southern staple belts, and pressed even many of the native whites in the same direction. This intrenched the slave plantations yet more strongly in their local domination, and by that very fact it hampered industrial development. Great landed proprietors, it is true, have oftentimes been essential for making beneficial innovations. Thus the remodeling of English agriculture which Jethro Tull and Lord Townsend instituted in the eighteenth century could not have been set in progress by any who did not possess their combination of talent and capital.[10] In the ante-bellum South, likewise, it was the planters, and necessarily so, who introduced the new staples of sea-island cotton and sugar, the new devices of horizontal plowing and hillside terracing, the new practice of seed selection, and the new resource of commercial fertilizers. Yet their constant bondage to the staples debarred the whole community in large degree from agricultural diversification, and their dependence upon gangs of negro slaves kept the average of skill and assiduity at a low level. [Footnote 10: R.E. Prothero, _English Farming, past and present_, (London, 1912), chap. 7.] The negroes furnished inertly obeying minds and muscles; slavery provided a police; and the plantation system contributed the machinery of direction. The assignment of special functions to slaves of special aptitudes would enhance the general efficiency; the coördination of tasks would prevent waste of effort; and the conduct of a steady routine would lessen the mischiefs of irresponsibility. But in the work of a plantation squad no delicate implements could be employed, for they would be broken; and no discriminating care in the handling of crops could be had except at a cost of supervision which was generally prohibitive. The whole establishment would work with success only when the management fully recognized and allowed for the crudity of the labor. The planters faced this fact with mingled resolution and resignation. The sluggishness of the bulk of their slaves they took as a racial trait to be conquered by discipline, even though their ineptitude was not to be eradicated; the talents and vigor of their exceptional negroes and mulattoes, on the other hand, they sought to foster by special training and rewards. But the prevalence of slavery which aided them in the one policy hampered them in the other, for it made the rewards arbitrary instead of automatic and it restricted the scope of the laborers' employments and of their ambitions as well. The device of hiring slaves to themselves, which had an invigorating effect here and there in the towns, could find little application in the country; and the paternalism of the planters could provide no fully effective substitute. Hence the achievements of the exceptional workmen were limited by the status of slavery as surely as the progress of the generality was restricted by the fact of their being negroes. A further influence of the plantation system was to hamper the growth of towns. This worked in several ways. As for manufactures, the chronic demand of the planters for means with which to enlarge their scales of operations absorbed most of the capital which might otherwise have been available for factory promotion. A few cotton mills were built in the Piedmont where water power was abundant, and a few small ironworks and other industries; but the supremacy of agriculture was nowhere challenged. As for commerce, the planters plied the bulk of their trade with distant wholesale dealers, patronizing the local shopkeepers only for petty articles or in emergencies when transport could not be awaited; and the slaves for their part, while willing enough to buy of any merchant within reach, rarely had either money or credit. Towns grew, of course, at points on the seaboard where harbors were good, and where rivers or railways brought commerce from the interior. Others rose where the fall line marked the heads of river navigation, and on the occasional bluffs of the Mississippi, and finally a few more at railroad junctions. All of these together numbered barely three score, some of which counted their population by hundreds rather than by thousands; and in the wide intervals between there was nothing but farms, plantations and thinly scattered villages. In the Piedmont, country towns of fairly respectable dimensions rose here and there, though many a Southern county-seat could boast little more than a court house and a hitching rack. Even as regards the seaports, the currents of trade were too thin and divergent to permit of large urban concentration, for the Appalachian water-shed shut off the Atlantic ports from the commerce of the central basin; and even the ambitious construction of railroads to the northwest, fostered by the seaboard cities, merely enabled the Piedmont planters to get their provisions overland, and barely affected the volume of the seaboard trade. New Orleans alone had a location promising commercial greatness; but her prospects were heavily diminished by the building of the far away Erie Canal and the Northern trunk line railroads which diverted the bulk of Northwestern trade from the Gulf outlet. As conditions were, the slaveholding South could have realized a metropolitan life only through absentee proprietorships. In the Roman _latifundia_, which overspread central and southern Italy after the Hannibalic war, absenteeism was a chronic feature and a curse. The overseers there were commonly not helpers in the proprietors' daily routine, but sole managers charged with a paramount duty of procuring the greatest possible revenues and transmitting them to meet the urban expenditures of their patrician employers. The owners, having no more personal touch with their great gangs of slaves than modern stockholders have with the operatives in their mills, exploited them accordingly. Where humanity and profits were incompatible, business considerations were likely to prevail. Illustrations of the policy may be drawn from Cato the Elder's treatise on agriculture. Heavy work by day, he reasoned, would not only increase the crops but would cause deep slumber by night, valuable as a safeguard against conspiracy; discord was to be sown instead of harmony among the slaves, for the same purpose of hindering plots; capital sentences when imposed by law were to be administered in the presence of the whole corps for the sake of their terrorizing effect; while rations for the able-bodied were not to exceed a fixed rate, those for the sick were to be still more frugally stinted; and the old and sick slaves were to be sold along with other superfluities.[11] Now, Cato was a moralist of wide repute, a stoic it is true, but even so a man who had a strong sense of duty. If such were his maxims, the oppressions inflicted by his fellow proprietors and their slave drivers must have been stringent indeed. [Footnote 11: A.H.J. Greenidge, _History of Rome during the later Republic and the early Principate_ (New York, 1905), I, 64-85; M. Porcius Cato, _De Agri Cultura_, Keil ed. (Leipsig, 1882).] The heartlessness of the Roman _latifundiarii_ was the product partly of their absenteeism, partly of the cheapness of their slaves which were poured into the markets by conquests and raids in all quarters of the Mediterranean world, and partly of the lack of difference between masters and slaves in racial traits. In the ante-bellum South all these conditions were reversed: the planters were commonly resident; the slaves were costly; and the slaves were negroes, who for the most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression. Many a city slave in Rome was the boon companion of his master, sharing his intellectual pleasures and his revels, while most of those on the _latifundia_ were driven cattle. It was hard to maintain a middle adjustment for them. In the South, on the other hand, the medium course was the obvious thing. The bulk of the slaves, because they were negroes, because they were costly, and because they were in personal touch, were pupils and working wards, while the planters were teachers and guardians as well as masters and owners. There was plenty of coercion in the South; but in comparison with the harshness of the Roman system the American régime was essentially mild. Every plantation of the standard Southern type was, in fact, a school constantly training and controlling pupils who were in a backward state of civilization. Slave youths of special promise, or when special purposes were in view, might be bound as apprentices to craftsmen at a distance. Thus James H. Hammond in 1859 apprenticed a fourteen-year-old mulatto boy, named Henderson, for four years to Charles Axt, of Crawfordville, Georgia, that he might be taught vine culture. Axt agreed in the indenture to feed and clothe the boy, pay for any necessary medical attention, teach him his trade, and treat him with proper kindness. Before six months were ended Alexander H. Stephens, who was a neighbor of Axt and a friend of Hammond, wrote the latter that Henderson had run away and that Axt was unfit to have the care of slaves, especially when on hire, and advised Hammond to take the boy home. Soon afterward Stephens reported that Henderson had returned and had been whipped, though not cruelly, by Axt.[12] The further history of this episode is not ascertainable. Enough of it is on record, however, to suggest reasons why for the generality of slaves home training was thought best. [Footnote 12: MSS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] This, rudimentary as it necessarily was, was in fact just what the bulk of the negroes most needed. They were in an alien land, in an essentially slow process of transition from barbarism to civilization. New industrial methods of a simple sort they might learn from precepts and occasional demonstrations; the habits and standards of civilized life they could only acquire in the main through examples reinforced with discipline. These the plantation régime supplied. Each white family served very much the function of a modern social settlement, setting patterns of orderly, well bred conduct which the negroes were encouraged to emulate; and the planters furthermore were vested with a coercive power, salutary in the premises, of which settlement workers are deprived. The very aristocratic nature of the system permitted a vigor of discipline which democracy cannot possess. On the whole the plantations were the best schools yet invented for the mass training of that sort of inert and backward people which the bulk of the American negroes represented. The lack of any regular provision for the discharge of pupils upon the completion of their training was, of course, a cardinal shortcoming which the laws of slavery imposed; but even in view of this, the slave plantation régime, after having wrought the initial and irreparable misfortune of causing the negroes to be imported, did at least as much as any system possible in the period could have done toward adapting the bulk of them to life in a civilized community. CHAPTER XVIII ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE In barbaric society slavery is a normal means of conquering the isolation of workers and assembling them in more productive coördination. Where population is scant and money little used it is almost a necessity in the conduct of large undertakings, and therefore more or less essential for the advancement of civilization. It is a means of domesticating savage or barbarous men, analogous in kind and in consequence to the domestication of the beasts of the field.[1] It was even of advantage to some of the people enslaved, in that it saved them from extermination when defeated in war, and in that it gave them touch with more advanced communities than their own. But this was counterbalanced by the stimulus which the profits of slave catching gave to wars and raids with all their attendant injuries. Any benefit to the slave, indeed, was purely incidental. The reason for the institution's existence was the advantage which accrued to the masters. So positive and pronounced was this reckoned to be, that such highly enlightened people as the Greeks and Romans maintained it in the palmiest days of their supremacies. [Footnote 1: This thought was expressed, perhaps for the first time, in T.R. Dew's essay on slavery (1832); it is elaborated in Gabriel Tarde, _The Laws of Imitation_ (Parsons tr., New York, 1903), pp. 278, 279.] Western Europe in primitive times was no exception. Slavery in a more or less fully typical form was widespread. When the migrations ended in the middle ages, however, the rise of feudalism gave the people a thorough territorial regimentation. The dearth of commerce whether in goods or in men led gradually to the conversion of the unfree laborers from slaves into serfs or villeins attached for generations to the lands on which they wrought. Finally, the people multiplied so greatly and the landless were so pressed for livelihood that at the beginning of modern times European society found the removal of bonds conducive to the common advantage. Serfs freed from their inherited obligations could now seek employment wherever they would, and landowners, now no longer lords, might employ whom they pleased. Bondmen gave place to hirelings and peasant proprietors, status gave place to contract, industrial society was enabled to make redistributions and readjustments at will, as it had never been before. In view of the prevailing traits and the density of the population a general return whether to slavery or serfdom was economically unthinkable. An intelligent Scotch philanthropist, Fletcher of Saltoun, it is true, proposed at the end of the seventeenth century that the indigent and their children be bound as slaves to selected masters as a means of relieving the terrible distresses of unemployment in his times;[2] but his project appears to have received no public sanction whatever. The fact that he published such a plan is more a curious antiquarian item than one of significance in the history of slavery. Not even the thin edge of a wedge could possibly be inserted which might open a way to restore what everyone was on virtually all counts glad to be free of. [Footnote 2: W.E.H. Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ (New York, 1879), II, 43,44.] When the American mining and plantation colonies were established, however, some phases of the most ancient labor problems recurred. Natural resources invited industry in large units, but wage labor was not to be had. The Spaniards found a temporary solution in impressing the tropical American aborigines, and the English in a recourse to indented white immigrants. But both soon resorted predominantly for plantation purposes to the importation of Africans, for whom the ancient institution of slavery was revived. Thus from purely economic considerations the sophisticated European colonists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved themselves and their descendants, with the connivance of their home governments, in the toils of a system which on the one hand had served their remote forbears with good effect, but which on the other hand civilized peoples had long and almost universally discarded as an incubus. In these colonial beginnings the negroes were to be had so cheaply and slavery seemed such a simple and advantageous device when applied to them, that no qualms as to the future were felt. At least no expressions of them appear in the records of thought extant for the first century and more of English colonial experience. And when apprehensions did arise they were concerned with the dangers of servile revolt, not with any deleterious effects to arise from the economic nature of slavery in time of peace. Now, slavery and indented servitude are analogous to serfdom in that they may yield to the employers all the proceeds of industry beyond what is required for the sustenance of the laborers; but they have this difference, immense for American purposes, that they permit labor to be territorially shifted, while serfdom keeps it locally fixed. By choosing these facilitating forms of bondage instead of the one which would have attached the laborers to the soil, the founders of the colonial régime in industry doubtless thought they had avoided all economic handicaps in the premises. Their device, however, was calculated to meet the needs of a situation where the choice was between bond labor and no labor. As generations passed and workingmen multiplied in America, the system of indentures for white immigrants was automatically dissolved; but slavery for the bulk of the negroes persisted as an integral feature of economic life. Whether this was conducive or injurious to the prosperity of employers and to the community's welfare became at length a question to which students far and wide applied their faculties. Some of the participants in the discussion considered the problem as one in pure theory; others examined not only the abstract ratio of slave and free labor efficiency but included in their view the factor of negro racial traits and the prospects and probable consequences of abolition under existing circumstances. On the one point that an average slave might be expected to accomplish less in an hour's work than an average free laborer, agreement was unanimous; on virtually every other point the views published were so divergent as to leave the public more or less distracted. Adam Smith, whose work largely shaped the course of economic thought for a century following its publication in 1776, said of slave labor merely that its cost was excessive by reason of its lack of zest, frugality and inventiveness. The tropical climate of the sugar colonies, he conceded, might require the labor of negro slaves, but even there its productiveness would be enhanced by liberal policies promoting intelligence among the slaves and assimilating their condition to that of freemen.[3] To some of these points J.B. Say, the next economist to consider the matter, took exception. Common sense must tell us, said he, that a slave's maintenance must be less than that of a free workman, since the master will impose a more drastic frugality than a freeman will adopt unless a dearth of earnings requires it. The slave's work, furthermore, is more constant, for the master will not permit so much leisure and relaxation as the freeman customarily enjoys. Say agreed, however, that slavery, causing violence and brutality to usurp the place of intelligence, both hampered the progress of invention and enervated such free laborers as were in touch with the régime.[4] [Footnote 3: Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_, various editions, book I, chap. 8; book III, chap. 2; book IV, chaps. 7 and 9.] [Footnote 4: J.B. Say, _Traité d'Economie Politique_ (Paris, 1803), book I, chap. 28; in various later editions, book I, chap. 19.] The translation of Say's book into English evoked a reply to his views on slavery by Adam Hodgson, an Englishman with anti-slavery bent who had made an American tour; but his essay, though fortified with long quotations, was too rambling and ill digested to influence those who were not already desirous of being convinced.[5] More substantial was an essay of 1827 by a Marylander, James Raymond, who cited the experiences of his own commonwealth to support his contentions that slavery hampered economy by preventing seasonal shiftings of labor, by requiring employers to support their operatives in lean years as well as fat, and by hindering the accumulation of wealth by the laborers. The system, said he, could yield profits to the masters only in specially fertile districts; and even there it kept down the growth of population and of land values.[6] [Footnote 5: Adam Hodgson, _A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, on the comparative expense of free and slave labour_ (Liverpool, 1823; New York, 1823).] [Footnote 6: James Raymond, _Prize Essay on the Comparative Economy of Free and Slave Labor in Agriculture_ (Frederick [Md.], 1827), reprinted in the _African Repository_, III, 97-110 (June, 1827).] About the same time Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, wrote: "Slave labour is undoubtedly the dearest kind of labour; it is all forced, and forced too from a class of human beings who have the least propensity to voluntary labour even when it is to benefit themselves alone." The cost of rearing a slave to the age of self support, he reckoned, including insurance, at forty dollars a year for fifteen years. The usual work of a slave field hand, he thought, was barely two-thirds of what a white laborer at usual wages would perform, and from his earnings about forty dollars a year must be deducted for his maintenance. When interest on the investment and a proportion of an overseer's wages were deducted in addition, he thought the prevalent rate, six to eight dollars a month and board valued at forty or fifty dollars a year, for free white farm hands in the Northern states gave a decisive advantage to those who hired laborers over those who owned them. "Nothing will justify slave labour in point of economy," he concluded, "but the nature of the soil and climate which incapacitates a white man from labouring in the summer time, as on the rich lands in Carolina and Georgia extending one hundred miles from the seaboard."[7] [Footnote 7: Thomas Cooper, _Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy_, (Columbia [S.C.], 1826), pp. 94, 95.] The economic vices of slavery as exemplified in Virginia were elaborated in an essay printed in 1832 attributed to Jesse Burton Harrison of that state. Slavery, said this essay, drives away free workmen by stigmatizing labor, for "nothing but the most abject necessity would lead a white man to hire himself to work in the fields under the overseer"; it causes exhaustion of the soil by reason of the negligence it promotes in the workmen and the stress which overseers are fain to put upon immediate returns; it discourages all forms of industry but plantation tillage, furthermore, for although it has not and perhaps cannot be proved that slaves may not be successfully employed in manufactures, the community has gone and tends still to go, on that assumption; it discourages mechanic skill, for the slaves never acquire more than the rudiments of artisanry, and the planters discourage white craftsmen by giving preference uniformly to their own laborers. Slave labor is dearer than free, because of its lack of incentive; the régime costs the community the services of the immigrants who would otherwise enter; and finally it promotes waste instead of frugality on the part of both masters and slaves. The only means by which Virginia could procure profit from slaves, it concluded, was that of raising them for sale to the lower South; but such profit could only be gained systematically at a complete sacrifice of honor.[8] [Footnote 8: [Jesse Burton Harrison], _Review of the Slave Question, extracted from the American Quarterly Review, Dec. 1832_. By a Virginian (Richmond, 1833).] Daniel R. Goodloe of North Carolina wrote in 1846 in a similar tone but with original arguments. Beginning with an exposition of the South's comparative backwardness in economic development, he showed a twofold working of the institution of slavery as the cause. For one thing it lessened the vigor of industry by degrading labor in the estimation of the poor and engendering pride in the rich; but far more important, it required employers to sink large amounts of capital in the purchase of laborers instead of permitting them to pay for work, as the wage system does, out of current proceeds. It thereby particularly hampered the growth of manufactures, for in such lines, as well as in commerce, "the fact that slavery absorbs the bulk of Southern capital must always present an obstacle to extensive operations." The holding of laborers as property, he continued, can contribute nothing to production, for the destruction of the property by the liberation of the slaves would not impair their laboring efficiency. Hence all the individual wealth which has assumed that shape has added nothing to the resources of the community. "Slavery merely serves to appropriate the wages of labor--it distributes wealth, but cannot create it." It involves expenditure in acquiring early population, then operates to prevent land improvements and the diversification of industry, restricting, indeed, even the range of agriculture. The monopoly which the South has enjoyed in the production of the staples has palliated the evils of slavery, but at the same time has expanded the system to the point of great injury to the public. Goodloe accordingly advocated the riddance of the institution, contending that both landowners and laborers would thereby benefit. The continued maintenance of the institution, on the other hand, would bring severe loss to the slaveholders, for within the coming decade the demand of the Southwest for slaves would be sated, he thought, and nothing but a great advancement of cotton prices and an unlimited supply of fertile land for its production could sustain slave prices. "It is evident that the Southern country approaches a period of great and sudden depreciation in the value of slave property."[9] [Footnote 9: [D.R. Goodloe], _Inquiry into the Causes which have retarded the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the Southern States, in which the question of slavery is considered in a politico-economic point of view. By a Carolinian_. (Washington, 1846.) _See also_ a similar essay by the same author in the U.S. Commissioner of Agriculture's _Report_ for 1865, pp. 102-135.] The statistical theme of the South's backwardness was used by many other essayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding régime. With most of these, however, exemplified saliently by H.R. Helper, logic was to such extent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from the proper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy. On the other hand, Thomas R. Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turn of the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery, attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of the United States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency. His central theme was the imperative necessity of maintaining the enslavement of the negroes on hand until a sound plan was devised and made applicable for their peaceful and prosperous disposal elsewhere. Among Dew's disciples, William Harper of South Carolina admitted that slave labor was dear and unskillful, though he thought it essential for productive industry in the tropics and sub-tropics, and he considered coercion necessary for the negroes elsewhere in civilized society. James H. Hammond, likewise, agreed that "as a general rule ... free labor is cheaper than slave labor," but in addition to the factor of race he stressed the sparsity of population in the South as a contributing element in economically necessitating the maintenance of slavery.[10] [Footnote 10: "Essay" (1832), Harper's "Memoir" (1838), and Hammond's "Letters to Clarkson" (1845) are collected in the _Pro-Slavery Argument_ (Philadelphia, 1852).] Most of the foregoing Southern writers were men of substantial position and systematic reasoning. N.A. Ware, on the other hand who in 1844 issued in the capacity of a Southern planter a slender volume of _Notes on Political Economy_ was both obscure and irresponsible. Contending as his main theme that protective tariffs were of no injury to the plantation interests, he asserted that slave labor was incomparably cheaper than free, and attempted to prove it by ignoring the cost of capital and by reckoning the price of bacon at four cents a pound and corn at fifteen cents a bushel. Then, curiously, he delivered himself of the following: "When slavery shall have run itself out or yielded to the changes and ameliorations of the times, the owners and all dependent upon it will stand appalled and prostrate, as the sot whose liquor has been withheld, and nothing but the bad and worthless habit left to remind the country of its ruinous effects. The political economist, as well as all wise statesmen in this country, cannot think of any measure going to discharge slavery that would not be a worse state than its existence." His own remedy for the depression prevailing at the time when he wrote, was to divert a large proportion of the slaves from the glutted business of staple agriculture into manufacturing, for which he thought them well qualified.[11] Equally fantastic were the ideas of H.C. Carey of Pennsylvania who dealt here and there with slavery in the course of his three stout volumes on political economy. His lucubrations are negligible for the present survey. [Footnote 11: [N.A. Ware] _Notes on Political Economy as applicable to the United States_. By a Southern Planter (New York, 1844), pp. 200-204.] All these American writers except Goodloe accomplished little of substantial quality in the field of economic thought beyond adding details to the doctrines of Adam Smith and Say. John Stuart Mill in turn did little more than combine the philosophies of his predecessors. "It is a truism to assert," said he, "that labour extorted by fear of punishment is insufficient and unproductive"; yet some people can be driven by the lash to accomplish what no feasible payment would have induced them to undertake. In sparsely settled regions, furthermore, slavery may afford the otherwise unobtainable advantages of labour combination, and it has undoubtedly hastened industrial development in some American areas. Yet, since all processes carried on by slave labour are conducted in the rudest manner, virtually any employer may pay a considerably greater value in wages to free labour than the maintenance of his slaves has cost him and be a gainer by the change.[12] [Footnote 12: John Stuart Mill, _Principles of Political Economy_ (London, 1848, and later editions), book II, chap. 5.] Partly concurring and partly at variance with Mill's views were those which Edmund Ruffin of Virginia published in a well reasoned essay of 1857, _The Political Economy of Slavery_. "Slave labor in each individual case and for each small measure of time," he said, "is more slow and inefficient than the labor of a free man." On the other hand it is more continuous, for hirelings are disposed to work fewer hours per day and fewer days per year, except when wages are so low as to require constant exertion in the gaining of a bare livelihood. Furthermore, the consolidation of domestic establishments, which slavery promotes, permits not only an economy in the purchase of supplies but also a great saving by the specialization of labor in cooking, washing, nursing, and the care of children, thereby releasing a large proportion of the women from household routine and rendering them available for work in the field. An increasing density of population, however, would depress the returns of industry to the point where slaves would merely earn their keep, and free laborers would of necessity lengthen their hours. Finally a still greater glut of labor might come, and indeed had occurred in various countries of Europe, carrying wages so low that only the sturdiest free laborers could support themselves and all the weaker ones must enter a partial pauperism. At such a stage the employment of slaves could only be continued at a steady deficit, to relieve themselves from which the masters must resort to a general emancipation. In the South, however, there were special public reasons, lying in the racial traits of the slave population, which would make that recourse particularly deplorable; for the industrial collapse ensuing upon emancipation in the British West Indies on the one hand, and on the other the pillage and massacre which occurred in San Domingo and the disorder still prevailing there, were alternative examples of what might be apprehended from orderly or revolutionary abolition as the case might be. The Southern people, in short, might well congratulate themselves that no ending of their existing régime was within visible prospect.[13] [Footnote 13: Edmund Ruffin, _The Political Economy of Slavery_ ([Richmond, 1857]).] About the same time a writer in _DeBow's Review_ elaborated the theme that the comparative advantages of slavery and freedom depended wholly upon the attainments of the laboring population concerned. "Both are necessarily recurring types of social organization, and each suited to its peculiar phase of society." "When a nation or society is in a condition unfit for self-government, ... often the circumstance of contact with or subjection by more enlightened nations has been the means of transition to a higher development." "All that is now needed for the defence of United States negro slavery and its entire exoneration from reproach is a thorough investigation of fact; ... and political economy ... must ... pronounce our system ... no disease, but the normal and healthy condition of a society formed of such mixed material as ours." "The strong race and the weak, the civilized and the savage," the one by nature master, the other slave, "are here not only cast together, but have been born together, grown together, lived together, worked together, each in his separate sphere striving for the good of each.... These two races of men are mutually assistant to each other and are contributing in the largest possible degree consistent with their mutual powers to the good of each other and mankind." A general emancipation therefore could bring nothing but a detriment.[14] [Footnote 14: _DeBow's Review_, XXI, 331-349, 443-467 (October and November, 1856).] What proved to be the last work in the premises before the overthrow of slavery in the United States was _The Slave Power, its Character, Career and Probable Designs_, by J.E. Cairnes, professor of political economy in the University of Dublin and in Queen's College, Galway. It was published in 1862 and reissued with appendices in the following year. Cairnes at the outset scouted the factors of climate and negro racial traits. The sole economic advantage of slavery, said he, consists in its facilitation of control in large units; its defects lay in its causing reluctance, unskilfulness and lack of versatility. The reason for its prevalence in the South he found in the high fertility and the immense abundance of soil on the one hand, and on the other the intensiveness of staple cultivation. A single operative, said he, citing as authority Robert Russell's erroneous assertion, "might cultivate twenty acres in wheat or Indian corn, but could not manage more than two in tobacco or three in cotton; therefore the supervision of a considerable squad is economically feasible in these though it would not be so in the cereals." These conditions might once have made slave labor profitable, he conceded; but such possibility was now doubtless a thing of the distant past. The persistence of the system did not argue to the contrary, for it would by force of inertia persist as long as it continued to be self-supporting. Turning to a different theme, Cairnes announced that slave labor, since it had never been and never could be employed with success in manufacturing or commercial pursuits, must find its whole use in agriculture; and even there it required large capital, at the same time that the unthrifty habits inculcated in the masters kept them from accumulating funds. The consequence was that slaveholding society must necessarily be and remain heavily in debt. The imperative confinement of slave labor to the most fertile soils, furthermore, prevented the community from utilizing any areas of inferior quality; for slaveholding society is so exclusive that it either expels free labor from its vicinity or deprives it of all industrial vigor. It is true that some five millions of whites in the South have no slaves; but these "are now said to exist in this manner in a condition little removed from savage life, eking out a wretched subsistence by hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves for occasional jobs, by plunder." These "mean whites ... are the natural growth of the slave system; ... regular industry is only known to them as the vocation of slaves, and it is the one fate which above all others they desire to avoid."[15] [Footnote 15: First American edition (New York, 1862), pp. 54, 78, 79.] "The constitution of a slave society," he says again, "resolves itself into three classes, broadly distinguished from each other and connected by no common interest--the slaves on whom devolves all the regular industry, the slaveholders who reap all its fruits, and an idle and lawless rabble who live dispensed over vast plains in a condition little removed from absolute barbarism."[16] Nowhere can any factors be found which will promote any progress of civilization so long as slavery persists. The non-slaveholders will continue in "a life alternating between listless vagrancy and the excitement of marauding expeditions." "If civilization is to spring up among the negro race, it will scarcely be contended that this will happen while they are still slaves; and if the present ruling class are ever to rise above the existing type, it must be in some other capacity than as slaveholders."[17] Even as a "probationary discipline" to prepare a backward people for a higher form of civilized existence, slavery as it exists in America cannot be justified; for that effect is vitiated by reason of the domestic slave trade. "Considerations of economy, ... which under a natural system afford some security for humane treatment by identifying the master's interest with the slave's preservation, when once trading in slaves is practised become reasons for racking to the utmost the toil of the slave; for when his place can at once be supplied from foreign preserves the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment than its productiveness while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slave management in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is that which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth."[18] [Footnote 16: Ibid., p. 60.] [Footnote 17: Ibid., p. 83.] [Footnote 18: First American edition (New York, 1862), p. 73.] The force of circumstances gave this book a prodigious and lasting vogue. Its confident and cogent style made skepticism difficult; the dearth of contrary data prevented impeachment on the one side of the Atlantic, and on the other side the whole Northern people would hardly criticise such a vindication of their cause in war by a writer from whose remoteness might be presumed fairness, and whose professional position might be taken as giving a stamp of thoroughness and accuracy. Yet the very conditions and method of the writer made his interpretations hazardous. An economist, using great caution, might possibly have drawn the whole bulk of his data from travelers' accounts, as Cairnes did, and still have reached fairly sound conclusions; but Cairnes gave preference not to the concrete observations of the travelers but to their generalizations, often biased or amateurish, and on them erected his own. Furthermore, he ignored such material as would conflict with his preconceptions. His conclusions, accordingly, are now true, now false, and while always vivid are seldom substantially illuminating. His picture of the Southern non-slaveholders, which, be it observed, he applied in his first edition to five millions or ten-elevenths of that whole white population, and which he restricted, under stress of contemporary criticism, only to four million souls in the second edition,[19] is merely the most extreme of his grotesqueries. The book was, in short, less an exposition than an exposure. [Footnote 19: Ibid., second edition (London, 1863), appendix D.] These criticisms of Cairnes will apply in varying lesser degrees to all of his predecessors in the field. Those who sought the truth merely were in general short of data; those who could get the facts in any fullness were too filled with partisan purpose. What was begun as a study was continued as a dispute, necessarily endless so long as the political issue remained active. Many data which would have been illuminating, such as plantation records and slave price quotations, were never systematically assembled; and the experience resulting from negro emancipation was then too slight for use in substantial generalizations. The economist M'Culloch, for example, concluded from the experience of San Domingo and Jamaica that cane sugar production could not be sustained without slavery;[20] but the industrial careers of Cuba, Porto Rico and Louisiana since his time have refuted him. He, like virtually all his contemporaries in economic thought, confused the several factors of slavery, race traits and the plantation system; the consequent liability to error was inevitable. [Footnote 20: J.R. M'Culloch, _Principles of Political Economy_ (fourth edition, Edinburgh, 1849), p. 439.] Economists of later times have nearly all been too much absorbed in current problems to give attention to a discarded institution. Most of them have ignored the subject of slavery altogether, and the concern of the rest with it has been merely incidental. Nicholson, for example, alludes to it as[21] "one of the earliest and one of the most enduring forms of poverty," and again as "the original and universal form of bankruptcy." Smart deals with it only as concerns the care of workingmen's children: "The one good thing in slavery was the interest of the master in the future of his workers. The children of the slaves were the master's property. They were always at least a valuable asset.... But there is no such continuity in the relation between the employer [of free labor] and his human cattle. The best-intentioned employer cannot be expected to be much concerned about the efficient upkeep of the workman's child when the child is free to go where he likes.... The child's future is bound up with the father's wage. The wage may be enough, even when low, to support the father's efficiency, but it is not necessarily enough to keep up the efficiency of the young laborer on which the future depends."[22] Loria deals more extensively with slavery as affected by the valuation of labor,[23] and Gibson[24] examines elaborately the nature of hypothetically absolute slavery in analyzing the earnings of labor. The contributions of both Loria and Gibson will be used below. The economic bearings of the institution in history still await satisfactory analysis. [Footnote 21: J.S. Nicholson, _Principles of Political Economy_ (New York, 1898), I, 221, 391.] [Footnote 22: William Smart, _The Distribution of Income_ (London, 1899), pp. 296, 297.] [Footnote 23: Achille Loria, _La Costitutione Economica Odierna_ (Turin, 1899), chap. 6, part 2.] [Footnote 24: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909).] CHAPTER XIX BUS An expert accountant has well defined the property of a master in his slave as an annuity extending throughout the slave's working life and amounting to the annual surplus which the labor of the slave produced over and above the cost of his maintenance.[1] Before any profit accrued to the master in any year, however, various deductions had to be subtracted from this surplus. These included interest on the slave's cost, regardless of whether he had been reared by his owner or had been bought for a price; amortization of the capital investment; insurance against the slave's premature death or disability and against his escape from service; insurance also for his support when incapacitated whether by illness, accident or old age; taxes; and wages of superintendence. None of these charges would any sound method of accounting permit the master to escape. [Footnote 1: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909), p. 202. The substance of the present paragraph and the three following ones is mostly in close accord with Gibson's analysis.] The maintenance of the slave at the full rate required for the preservation of lusty physique was essential. The master could not reduce it below that standard without impairing his property as well as lessening its immediate return; and as a rule he could shift none of the charge to other shoulders, for the public would grant his workmen no dole from its charity funds. On the other hand, he was often induced to raise the scale above the minimum standard in order to increase the zeal and efficiency of his corps. In any case, medical attendance and the like was necessarily included in the cost of maintenance. The capital investment in a slave reared by his master would include charges for the insurance of the child's mother at the time of his birth and for her deficit of routine work before and afterward; the food, clothing, nurse's care and incidentals furnished in childhood; the surplus of supplies over earnings in the period of youth while the slave was not fully earning his own keep and his overhead charges; compound interest on all of these until the slave reached adolescence or early manhood; and a proportion of similar charges on behalf of other children in his original group who had died in youth. In his teens the slave's earnings would gradually increase until they covered all his current charges, including the cost of supervision; and shortly before the age of twenty he would perhaps begin to yield a net return to the owner. A slave's highest rate of earning would be reached of course when his physical maturity and his training became complete, and would normally continue until his bodily powers began to flag. This period would extend in the case of male field hands from perhaps twenty-five to possibly fifty years of age, and in the case of artizans from say thirty to fifty-five years. The maximum valuation of the slave as property, however, would come earlier, at the point when the investment in his production was first complete and when his maximum earnings were about to begin; and his value would thereafter decline, first slowly and then more swiftly with every passing year, in anticipation of the decline and final cessation of his earning power. Thus the ratio between the capital value of a slave and his annual net earnings, far from remaining constant, would steadily recede from the beginning to the end of his working life. At the age of twenty it might well be as ten to one; at the age of fifty it would probably not exceed four to one; at sixty-five it might be less than a parity. In the buying and selling of nearly all non-human commodities the cost of production, or of reproduction, bears a definite relation to the market price, in that it fixes a limit below which owners will not continue to produce and sell. In the case of slaves, however, the cost of rearing had no practical bearing upon the market price, for the reason that the owners could not, or at least did not, increase or diminish the production at will.[2] It has been said by various anti-slavery spokesmen that many slaveowners systematically bred slaves for the market. They have adduced no shred of supporting evidence however; and although the present writer has long been alert for such data he has found but a single concrete item in the premises. This one came, curiously enough, from colonial Massachusetts, where John Josslyn recorded in 1636: "Mr. Maverick's negro woman came to my chamber window and in her own country language and tune sang very loud and shril. Going out to her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and willingly would have expressed her grief in English. But I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment, whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, for that I understood before that she had been a queen in her own countrey, and observed a very humble and dutiful garb used towards her by another negro who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a breed of negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield to perswasions to company with a negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, will'd she nill'd she to go to bed to her--which was no sooner done than she kickt him out again. This she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, and this was the cause of her grief."[3] [Footnote 2: This is at variance with Gibson's thesis which, professedly dealing always in pure hypothesis, assumes a state of "perfect" slavery in which breeding is controlled on precisely the same basis as in the case of cattle.] [Footnote 3: John Josslyn, "Account of two Voyages to New England," in the Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections, XXIII_, 231.] As for the ante-bellum South, the available plantation instructions, journals and correspondence contain no hint of such a practice. Jesse Burton Harrison, a Virginian in touch with planters' conversation and himself hostile to slavery,[4] went so far as to write, "It may be that there is a small section of Virginia (perhaps we could indicate it) where the theory of population is studied with reference to the yearly income from the sale of slaves," but he went no further; and this, be it noted, is not clearly to hint anything further than that the owners of multiplying slaves reckoned their own gains from the unstimulated increase. If pressure were commonly applied James H. Hammond would not merely have inserted the characteristic provision in his schedule of rewards: "For every infant thirteen months old and in sound health that has been properly attended to, the mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock."[5] A planter here and there may have exerted a control of matings in the interest of industrial and commercial eugenics, but it is extremely doubtful that any appreciable number of masters attempted any direct hastening of slave increase. The whole tone of the community was hostile to such a practice. Masters were in fact glad enough to leave the slaves to their own inclinations in all regards so long as the day's work was not obstructed and good order was undisturbed. They had of course everywhere and at all times an interest in the multiplication of their slaves as well as the increase of their industrial aptitudes. Thus William Lee wrote in 1778 concerning his plantation in Virginia: "I wish particular attention may be paid to rearing young negroes, and taking care of those grown up, that the number may be increased as much as possible; also putting several of the most promising and ingenious lads apprentices to different trades, such as carpenters, coopers, wheelwrights, sawyers, shipwrights, bricklayers, plasterers, shoemakers and blacksmiths; some women should also be taught to weave."[6] [Footnote 4: _Review of the Slave Question_ (Richmond, 1833), p. 17.] [Footnote 5: See above, p. 272.] [Footnote 6: W.C. Ford, ed., _Letters of William Lee_ (Brooklyn, 1891), II, 363, 364.] But even if masters had stimulated breeding on occasion, that would have created but a partial and one-sided relationship between cost of production and market price. To make the connection complete it would have been requisite for them to check slave breeding when prices were low; and even the abolitionists, it seems, made no assertion to that effect. No, the market might decline indefinitely without putting an appreciable check upon the birth rate; and the master had virtually no choice but to rear every child in his possession. The cost of production, therefore, could not serve as a nether limit for slave prices at any time. An upper limit to the price range was normally fixed by the reckoning of a slave's prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance. The slave may here be likened to a mine operated by a corporation leasing the property. The slave's claim to his maintenance represents the prior claim of the land-owner to his rent; the master's claim to the annual surplus represents the equity of the stockholders in the corporation. But the ore will some day be exhausted and the dividends cease. Purchasers of the stock should accordingly consider amortization and pay only such price as will be covered by the discounted value of the prospective dividends during the life of the mine. The price of the output fluctuates, however, and the rate of any year's earnings can only be conjectured. Precise reckoning is therefore impracticable, and the stock will rise and fall in the market in response to the play of conjectures as to the present value of the total future earnings applicable to dividends. So also a planter entering the slave market might have reckoned in advance the prospect of working life which a slave of given age would have, and the average earnings above maintenance which might be expected from his labor. By discounting each of those annual returns at the prevailing rate of interest to determine their present values, and adding up the resulting sums, he would ascertain the price which his business prospects would justify him in paying. Having bought a slave at such a price, an equally thoroughgoing caution would have led him to take out a life, health and accident insurance policy on the slave; but even then he must personally have borne the risk of the slave's running away. In practice the lives of a few slaves engaged in steamboat operation and other hazardous pursuits were insured,[7] but the total number of policies taken on their lives, except as regards marine insurance in the coasting slave trade, was very small. The planters as a rule carried their own risks, and they generally dispensed with actuarial reckonings in determining their bids for slaves. About 1850 a rule of thumb was current that a prime hand was worth a hundred dollars for every cent in the current price of a pound of cotton. In general, however, the prospective purchaser merely "reckoned" in the Southern sense of conjecturing, at what price he could employ an added slave with probable advantage, and made his bid accordingly. [Footnote 7: J.C. Nott, in J.B.D. DeBow, ed., _Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 299; F.L. Hoffman, in _The South in the Building of the Nation_ (Richmond, Va. [1909]), 638-655. _DeBow's Review_, X, 241, contains an advertisement of a company offering life and accident insurance on slaves. A typical policy is preserved in the MSS. division of the Library of Congress. It was issued Dec. 31, 1851, by the Louisville agent of the Mutual Benefit Fire and Life Insurance Company of Louisiana, to T.P. Linthicum of Bairdstown, Ky., insuring for $650 each the lives of Jack, 26 years old and Alexander, 31 years old, for one year, at the rates of 2 and 2-1/2 per cent, respectively, plus one per cent, for permission to employ the slaves on steamboats during the first half of the period. They were employed as waiters. Jack died Nov. 20, and the insurance was duly paid.] A slave's market price was affected by sex, age, physique, mental quality, industrial training, temper, defects and vices, so far as each of these could be ascertained. The laws of most of the states presumed a seller's warrant of health at the time of sale, unless expressly withheld, and in Louisiana this warrant extended to mental and moral soundness. The period in which the buyer might apply for redress, however, was limited to a few months, and the verdicts of juries were uncertain. On the whole, therefore, if the buyer were unacquainted with the slave's previous career and with his attitude toward the transfer of possession, he necessarily incurred considerable risk in making each purchase. But in general the taking of reasonable precautions would cause the loss through unsuspected vices in one case to be offset by gains through unexpected virtues in another. The scale and the trend of slave prices are essential features of the régime which most economists have ignored and for which the rest have had too little data. For colonial times the quotations are scant. An historian of the French West Indies, however, has ascertained from the archives that whereas the prices ranged perhaps as low as 200 francs for imported Africans there at the middle of the seventeenth century, they rose to 450 francs by the year 1700 and continued in a strong and steady advance thereafter, except in war times, until the very eve of the French Revolution. Typical prices for prime field hands in San Domingo were 650 francs in 1716, 800 in 1728, 1,160 in 1750, 1,400 in 1755, 1,180 in 1764, 1,600 in 1769, 1,860 in 1772, 1,740 in 1777, and 2,200 francs in 1785.[8] [Footnote 8: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant 1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122-127.] In the British West Indies it is apparent from occasional documents that the trend was similar. A memorial from Barbados in 1689, for example, recited that in earlier years the planters had been supplied with Africans at £7 sterling per head, of which forty shillings covered the Guinea cost and £5 paid the freightage; but now since the establishment of the Royal African company, "we buy negroes at the price of an engrossed commodity, the common rate of a good negro on shipboard being twenty pound. And we are forced to scramble for them in so shameful a manner that one of the great burdens of our lives is the going to buy negroes. But we must have them; we cannot be without them."[9] The overthrow of the monopoly, however, brought no relief. In 1766 the price of new negroes in the West Indies ranged at about £26;[10] and in 1788-1790 from £41 to £49. At this time the value of a prime field hand, reared in the islands, was reported to be twice as great as that of an imported African.[11] [Footnote 9: _Groans of the Plantations_ (1679), p. 5, quoted in W. Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1892), II, 278, note.] [Footnote 10: _Abridgement of the Evidence taken before a Committee of the whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), p. 37.] [Footnote 11: "An Old Member of Parliament," _Doubts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade_ (London, 1790), p. 72, quoting Dr. Adair's evidence in the _Privy Council Report_, part 3, Antigua appendix no. II]. In Virginia the rise was proportionate. In 1671 a planter wrote of his purchase of a negro for £26. 10_s_ and said he supposed the price was the highest ever paid in those parts; but a few years afterward a lot of four men brought £30 a head, two women the same rate, and two more women £25 apiece; and before the end of the seventeenth century men were being appraised at £40.[12] An official report from the colony in 1708 noted a great increase of the slave supply in recent years, but observed that the prices had nevertheless risen.[13] In 1754 George Washington paid £52 for a man and nearly as much for a woman; in 1764 he bought a lot at £57 a head; in 1768 he bought two mulattoes at £50 and £61.15_s_ respectively, a negro for £66.10_s_, another at public vendue for £72, and a girl for £49.10_s_. Finally in 1772 he bought five males, one of whom cost £50, another £65, a third £75, and the remaining two £90 each;[14] and in the same year he was offered £80 for a slave named Will Shagg whom his overseer described as an incorrigible runaway.[15] [Footnote 12: P.A. Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_, II, 88-92.] [Footnote 13: _North Carolina Colonial Records_, I, 693.] [Footnote 14: W.C. Ford, _George Washington_ (Paris and New York, 1900), I, 125-127; _Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor_ (Brooklyn, 1889).] [Footnote 15: S.M. Hamilton, ed., _Letters to Washington_. IV, 127.] Scattered items which might be cited from still other colonies make the evidence conclusive that there was a general and substantially continuous rise throughout colonial times. The advances which occurred in the principal British West India islands and in Virginia, indeed, were a consequence of advances elsewhere, for by the middle of the eighteenth century all of these colonies were already passing the zenith of their prosperity, whereas South Carolina, Georgia, San Domingo and Brazil, as well as minor new British tropical settlements, were in course of rapid plantation expansion. Prices in the several communities tended of course to be equalized partly by a slender intercolonial slave trade but mainly by the Guineamen's practice of carrying their wares to the highest of the many competing markets. The war for American independence, bringing hard times, depressed all property values, those of slaves included. But the return of peace brought prompt inflation in response to exaggerated anticipations of prosperity to follow. Wade Hampton, for example, wrote to his brother from Jacksonborough in the South Carolina lowlands, January 30, 1782: "All attempts to purchase negroes have been fruitless, owing to the flattering state of our affairs in this quarter."[16] The sequel was sharply disappointing. The indigo industry was virtually dead, and rice prices, like those of tobacco, did not maintain their expected levels. The financial experience was described in 1786 by Henry Pendleton, a judge on the South Carolina bench, in words which doubtless would have been similarly justified in various other states: "No sooner had we recovered and restored the country to peace and order than a rage for running into debt became epidemical.... A happy speculation was almost every man's object and pursuit.... What a load of debt was in a short time contracted in the purchase of British superfluities, and of lands and slaves for which no price was too high if credit for the purchase was to be obtained!... How small a pittance of the produce of the years 1783, '4, '5, altho' amounting to upwards of 400,000 sterling a year on an average, hath been applied toward lessening old burdens!... What then was the consequence? The merchants were driven to the exportation of gold and silver, which so rapidly followed; ... a diminution of the value of the capital as well as the annual produce of estates in consequence of the fallen price; ... the recovery of new debts as well as old in effect suspended, while the numerous bankruptcies which have happened in Europe amongst the merchants trading to America, the reproach of which is cast upon us, have proclaimed to all the trading nations to guard against our laws and policy, and even against our moral principles."[17] [Footnote 16: MS. among the Gibbes papers In the capitol at Columbia, S.C.] [Footnote 17: _Charleston Morning Post_, Dec. 13, 1786 quoted in the _American Historical Review_, XIV, 537, 538] The depression continued with increasing severity into the following decade, when it appears that many of the planters in the Charleston district were saved from ruin only by the wages happily drawn from the Santee Canal Company in payment for the work of their slaves in the canal construction gangs.[18] The conditions and prospects in Virginia at the same time are suggested by a remark of George Washington in 1794 on slave investments: "I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome species of property ere many years have passed over our heads."[19] [Footnote 18: Samuel DuBose, "Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish," in T.G. Thomas, ed., _History of the Huguenots in South Carolina_ (New York, 1887), pp. 66-68.] [Footnote 19: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, II, 15. This letter has been quoted at greater length at the beginning of chapter VIII above.] Prices in this period were so commonly stated in currency of uncertain depreciation that a definite schedule by years may not safely be made. It is clear, however, that the range in 1783 was little lower than it had been on the eve of the war, while in 1795 it was hardly more than half as high. For the first time in American history, in a period of peace, there was a heavy and disquieting fall in slave prices. This was an earnest of conditions in the nineteenth century when advances and declines alternated. From about 1795 onward the stability of the currency and the increasing abundance of authentic data permit the fluctuations of prices to be measured and their causes and effects to be studied with some assurance. The materials extant comprise occasional travellers' notes, fairly numerous newspaper items, and quite voluminous manuscript collections of appraisals and bills of sale, all of which require cautious discrimination in their analysis.[20] The appraisals fall mainly into two groups: the valuation of estates in probate, and those for the purpose of public compensation to the owners of slaves legally condemned for capital crimes. The former were oftentimes purely perfunctory, and they are generally serviceable only as aids in ascertaining the ratios of value between slaves of the diverse ages and sexes. The appraisals of criminals, however, since they prescribed actual payments on the basis of the market value each slave would have had if his crime had not been committed, may be assumed under such laws as Virginia maintained in the premises to be fairly accurate. A file of more than a thousand such appraisals, with vouchers of payment attached, which is preserved among the Virginia archives in the State Library at Richmond, is particularly copious in regard to prices as well as in regard to crimes and punishments. [Footnote 20: The difficulties to be encountered in ascertaining the values at any time and place are exemplified in the documents pertaining to slave prices in the various states in the year 1815, printed in the _American Historical Review_, XIX, 813-838. In the gleaning of slave prices I have been actively assisted by Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia and Miss Lillie Richardson of New Orleans.] The bills of sale recording actual market transactions remain as the chief and central source of information upon prices. Some thousands of these, originating in the city of Charleston, are preserved in a single file among the state archives of South Carolina at Columbia; other thousands are scattered through the myriad miscellaneous notarial records in the court house at New Orleans; many smaller accumulations are to be found in county court houses far and wide, particularly in the cotton belt; and considerable numbers are in private possession, along with plantation journals and letters which sometimes contain similar data. Now these documents more often than otherwise record the sale of slaves in groups. One of the considerations involved was that a gang already organized would save its purchaser time and trouble in establishing a new plantation as a going concern, and therefore would probably bring a higher gross price than if its members were sold singly. Another motive was that of keeping slave families together, which served doubly in comporting with scruples of conscience and inducing to the greater contentment of slaves in their new employ. The documents of the time demonstrate repeatedly the appreciation of equanimity as affecting value. But group sales give slight information upon individual prices; and even the bills of individual sale yield much less than a statistician could wish. The sex is always presumable from the slave's name, the color is usually stated or implied, and occasionally deleterious proclivities are specified, as of a confirmed drunkard or a persistent runaway; but specifications of age, strength and talents are very often, one and all, omitted. The problem is how may these bare quotations of price be utilized. To strike an average of all prices in any year at any place would be fruitless, since an even distribution of slave grades cannot be assumed when quotations are not in great volume: the prices of young children are rarely ascertainable from the bills, since they were hardly ever sold separately; the prices of women likewise are too seldom segregated from those of their children to permit anything to be established beyond a ratio to some ascertained standard; and the prices of artizans varied too greatly with their skill to permit definite schedules of them. The only market grade, in fact, for which basic price tabulations can be made with any confidence is that of young male prime field hands, for these alone may usually be discriminated even when ages and qualities are not specified. The method here is to select in the group of bills for any time and place such maximum quotations for males as occur with any notable degree of frequency. Artizans, foremen and the like are thereby generally excluded by the infrequency of their sales, while the middle-aged, the old and the defective are eliminated by leaving aside the quotations of lower range. The more scattering bills in which ages and crafts are given will then serve, when supplemented from probate appraisals, to establish valuation ratios between these able-bodied unskilled young men and the several other classes of slaves. Thus, artizans often brought twice as much as field hands of similar ages, prime women generally brought three-fourths or four-fifths as much as prime men; boys and girls entering their teens, and men and women entering their fifties, brought about half of prime prices for their sexes; and infants were generally appraised at about a tenth or an eighth of prime. The average price for slaves of all ages and both sexes, furthermore, was generally about one-half of the price for male prime field hands. The fluctuation of prime prices, therefore, measures the rise and fall of slave values in general. The accompanying chart will show the fluctuations of the average prices of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in middle Georgia, and at New Orleans, a£ well as the contemporary range of average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, that of New York. The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in 1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence of the initial impulse of cotton and sugar production and of the contemporary prohibition of the African slave trade by the several states. At those levels prices remained virtually fixed, in most markets, for nearly a decade as an effect of South Carolina's reopening of her ports and of the hampering of export commerce by the Napoleonic war. The latter factor prevented even the congressional stoppage of the foreign slave trade in 1808 from exerting any strong effect upon slave prices for the time being except in the sugar district. The next general movement was in fact a downward one of about $100 a head caused by the War of 1812. At the return of peace the prices leaped with parallel perpendicularity in all the markets from $400-$500 in 1814 to twice that range in 1818, only to be upset by the world-wide panic of the following year and to descend to levels of $400 to $600 in 1823. Then came a new rise in the cotton and sugar districts responding to a heightened price of their staples, but for once not evoking a sympathetic movement in the other markets. A small decline then ensuing gave place to a soaring movement at New Orleans, in response to the great stimulus which the protective tariff of 1828 gave to sugar production. The other markets began in the early thirties to make up for the tardiness of their rise; and as a feature of the general inflation of property values then prevalent everywhere, slave prices rose to an apex in 1837 of $1,300 in the purchasing markets and $1,100 in Virginia. The general panic of 1837 began promptly to send them down; and though they advanced in 1839 as a consequence of a speculative bolstering of the cotton market that year, they fell all the faster upon the collapse of that project, finding new levels of rest only at a range of $500-$700. A final advance then set in at the middle of the forties which continued until the highest levels on record were attained on the eve of secession and war. [Illustration: PRICES OF SLAVES AND OF COTTON.] There are thus in the slave price diagram for the nineteenth century a plateau, with a local peak rising from its level in the sugar district, and three solid peaks--all of them separated by intervening valleys, and all corresponding more or less to the elevations and depressions in the cotton range. The plateau, 1803-1812, was prevented from producing a peak in the eastern markets by the South Carolina repeal of the slave trade prohibition and by the European imbroglio. The first common peak, 1818, and its ensuing trough came promptly upon the establishment of the characteristic régime of the ante-bellum period, in which the African reservoir could no longer be drawn upon to mitigate labor shortages and restrain the speculative enhancement of slave prices. The trough of the 'twenties was deeper and broader in the upper and eastern South than elsewhere partly because the panic of 1819 had brought a specially severe financial collapse there from the wrecking of mushroom canal projects and the like.[21] It is remarkable that so wide a spread of rates in the several districts prevailed for so long a period as here appears. The statistics may of course be somewhat at fault, but there is reason for confidence that their margin of error is not great enough to vitiate them. [Footnote 21: _E. g., The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey_ (North Carolina Historical Commission _Publications_, Raleigh, 1914), I, 93ff] The next peak, 1837-1839, was in most respects like the preceding one, and the drop was quite as sudden and even more severe. The distresses of the time in the district where they were the most intense were described in a diary of 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in the hope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrin was promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster. "Speculation," said he, "has been making poor men rich and rich men princes." But now "a revulsion has taken place. Mississippi is ruined. Her rich men are poor, and her poor men beggars.... We have seen hard times in North Carolina, hard times in the east, hard times everywhere; but Mississippi exceeds them all.... Lands ... that once commanded from thirty to fifty dollars per acre may now be bought for three or five dollars, and that with considerable improvements, while many have been sold at sheriff's sales at fifty cents that were considered worth ten to twenty dollars. The people, too, are running their negroes to Texas and to Alabama, and leaving their real estate and perishable property to be sold, or rather sacrificed.... So great is the panic and so dreadful the distress that there are a great many farms prepared to receive crops, and some of them actually planted, and yet deserted, not a human being to be found upon them. I had prepared myself to see hard times here, but unlike most cases, the actual condition of affairs is much worse than the report."[22] [Footnote 22: W.H. Wills, "Diary," in the Southern History Association _Publications_, VIII (Washington, 1904), 35.] The fall of Mississippi slaves continued, accompanying that of cotton and even anticipating it in the later phase of the movement, until extreme depths were reached in the middle forties, though at New Orleans and in the Georgia uplands the decline was arrested in 1842 at a level of about $700. The sugar planters began prospering from the better prices established for their staple by the tariff of that year, and were able to pay more than panic prices for slaves; but as has been noted in an earlier chapter, suspicion of fraud in the cases of slaves offered from Mississippi militated against their purchase. A sugar planter would be willing to pay considerably more for a neighbor's negro than for one who had come down the river and who might shortly be seized on a creditor's attachment. At the middle of the forties, with a rising cotton market, there began a strong and sustained advance, persisting throughout the fifties and carrying slave prices to unexampled heights. By 1856 the phenomenon was receiving comment in the newspapers far and wide. In the early months of that year the _Republican_ of St. Louis reported field hand sales in Pike County, Missouri, at from $1,215 to $1,642; the _Herald_ of Lake Providence, Louisiana, recorded the auction of General L.C. Folk's slaves at which "negro men ranged from $1,500 to $1,635, women and girls from $1,250 to $1,550, children in proportion--all cash" and concluded: "Such a sale, we venture to say, has never been equaled in the state of Louisiana." In Virginia, likewise, the Richmond _Despatch_ in January told of the sale of an estate in Halifax County at which "among other enormous prices, one man brought $1,410 and another $1,425, and both were sold again privately the same day at advances of $50. They were ordinary field hands, not considered no. I. in any respect." In April the Lynchburg _Virginian_ reported the sale of men in the auction of a large estate at from $1,120 to $2,110, with most of the prices ranging midway between; and in August the Richmond _Despatch_ noted that instead of the customary summer dullness in the demand for slaves, it was unprecedentedly vigorous, with men's prices ranging from $1,200 to $1,500.[23] The _Southern Banner_ of Athens, Georgia, said as early as January, 1855: "Everybody except the owners of slaves must feel and know that the price of slave labor and slave property at the South is at present too high when compared with the prices of everything else. There must ere long be a change; and ... we advise parties interested to 'stand from under!'"[24] But the market belied the apprehensions. A neighboring journal noted at the beginning of 1858, that in the face of the current panic, slave prices as indicated in newspapers from all quarters of the South held up astonishingly. "This argues a confidence on the part of the planters that there is a good time coming. Well," the editor concluded with a hint of his own persistent doubts, "we trust they may not be deceived in their calculations."[25] The market continued deaf to the Cassandra school. When in March, 1859, Pierce Butler's half of the slaves from the plantations which his quondam wife made notorious were auctioned to defray his debts, bidders who gathered from near and far offered prices which yielded an average rate of $708 per head for the 429 slaves of all ages.[26] And in January and February the still greater auction at Albany, Georgia, of the estate of Joseph Bond, lately deceased, yielded $2,850 for one of the men, about $1,900 as an average for such prime field hands as were sold separately, and a price of $958.64 as a general average for the 497 slaves of all ages and conditions.[27] Sales at similar prices were at about the same time reported from various other quarters.[28] [Footnote 23: These items were reprinted in George M. Weston, _Who are and who may be Slaves in the U.S._ [1856].] [Footnote 24: _Southern Banner_, Jan. 11, 1855, endorsing an editorial of similar tone in the New York _Express_.] [Footnote 25: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 21, 1858.] [Footnote 26: _What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation Auction Sale of Slaves at Savannah, March 2d and 3d, 1859. A Sequel to Mrs. Kemble's Journal_ [1863]. This appears to have been a reprint of an article in the New York _Tribune_. The slaves were sold in family parcels comprising from two to seven persons each.] [Footnote 27: MS. record in the Ordinary's office at Macon, Ga. Probate Returns, vol. 9, pp. 2-7.] [Footnote 28: Edward Ingle, _Southern Sidelights_ (New York [1896]), p. 294. note.] Editorial warnings were now more vociferous than before. The _Federal Union_ of Milledgeville said for example: "There is a perfect fever raging in Georgia now on the subject of buying negroes.... Men are borrowing money at exorbitant rates of interest to buy negroes at exorbitant prices. The speculation will not sustain the speculators, and in a short time we shall see many negroes and much land offered under the sheriff's hammer, with few buyers for cash; and then this kind of property will descend to its real value. The old rule of pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the pound--that is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents a negro man is worth $1,200.00, if at fifteen cents then $1,500.00--does not seem to be regarded. Negroes are 25 per cent. higher now with cotton at ten and one half cents than they were two or three years ago when it was worth fifteen and sixteen cents. Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surely come."[29] [Footnote 29: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Jan. 17, 1860, reprinted with endorsement in the _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 26, 1860, and reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 73, 74.] The fever was likewise raging in the western South,[30] and it persisted until the end of 1860. Indeed the peak of this price movement was evidently cut off by the intervention of war. How great an altitude it might have reached, and what shape its downward slope would have taken had peace continued, it is idle to conjecture. But that a crash must have come is beyond a reasonable doubt. [Footnote 30: Prices at Lebanon, Tenn., and Franklin, Ky., are given in _Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XI, 774 (Dec., 1859).] The Charleston _Mercury_[31] attributed the advance of slave prices in the fifties mainly to the demand of the railroads for labor. This was borne out in some degree by the transactions of the railroad companies whose headquarters were in that city. The president of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad Company, endorsing the arguments which had been advanced by a writer in _DeBows Review_,[32] recommended in his first annual report, 1855, an extensive purchase of slaves for the company's construction gangs, reckoning that at the price of $1,000, with interest at 7 per cent. and life insurance at 2-1/2 per cent. the annual charge would be little more than half the current cost in wages at $180. The yearly cost of maintenance and superintendence, reckoned at $20 for clothing, $15 for corn, molasses and tobacco, $1 for physician's fees, $10 for overseer's wages and $15 for tools and repairs, he said, would be the same whether the slaves were hired or bought.[33] How largely the company adopted its president's plan is not known. For the older and stronger South Carolina Railroad Company, however, whose lines extended from Charleston to Augusta, Columbia and Camden, detailed records in the premises are available. This company was created in 1843 by the merging of two earlier corporations, one of which already possessed eleven slaves. In February, 1845, the new company bought three more slaves, two of which cost $400 apiece and the third $686. At the end of the next year the superintendent reported: "After hands for many years in the company's service have acquired the knowledge and skill necessary to make them valuable, the company are either compelled to submit to higher rates of wages imposed or to pass others at a lower rate of compensation through the same apprenticeship, with all the hazard of a strike, in their turn, by the owners."[34] The directors, after studying the problem thus presented, launched upon a somewhat extensive slave-purchasing programme, buying one in 1848 and seven in 1849 at uniform prices of $900; one in 1851 at $800 thirty-seven in 1852, all but two of which were procured in a single purchase from J.C. Sproull and Company, at prices from $512.50 to $1,004.50, but mostly ranging near $900; and twenty-eight more at various times between 1853 and 1859, at prices rising to $1,500. Finally, when two or three years of war had put all property, of however precarious a nature, at a premium over Confederate currency, the company bought another slave in August, 1863, for $2,050, and thirty-two more in 1864 at prices ranging from $2,450 to $6,005.[35] All of these slaves were males. No ages or trades are specified in the available records, and no statement of the advantages actually experienced in owning rather than hiring slaves. [Footnote 31: Reprinted in William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ (London, 1857), P. 207.] [Footnote 32: _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 76-82.] [Footnote 33: _Ibid_., XVIII, 404-406.] [Footnote 34: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_ (New York, 1908), p. 205.] [Footnote 35: South Carolina Railroad Company _Reports_ for 1860 and 1865.] The Brandon Bank, at Brandon, Mississippi, which was virtually identical with the Mississippi and Alabama Railroad Company, bought prior to 1839, $159,000 worth of slaves for railroad employment, but it presumably lost them shortly after that year when the bank and the railroad together went bankrupt.[36] The state of Georgia had bought about 190 slaves in and before 1830 for employment in river and road improvements, but it sold them in 1834,[37] and when in the late 'forties and the 'fifties it built and operated the Western and Atlantic Railroad it made no repetition of the earlier experiment. In the 'fifties, indeed, the South Carolina Railroad Company was almost unique in its policy of buying slaves for railroad purposes. [Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, LVI, 130 (April 27, 1839).] [Footnote 37: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_, pp. 114, 115; W.C. Dawson, _Compilation of Georgia Laws_, p. 399; O.H. Prince, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 742.] The most cogent reason against such a policy was not that the owned slaves increased the current charges, but that their purchase involved the diversion of capital in a way which none but abnormal circumstances could justify. In the year 1846 when the superintendent of the South Carolina company made his recommendation, slave prices were abnormally low and cotton prices were leaping in such wise as to make probable a strong advance in the labor market. By 1855, however, the price of slaves had nearly doubled, and by 1860 it was clearly inordinate. The special occasion for a company to divert its funds or increase its capital obligations had accordingly vanished, and sound policy would have suggested the sale of slaves on hand rather than the purchase of more. The state of Louisiana, indeed, sold in 1860[38] the force of nearly a hundred slave men which it had used on river improvements long enough for many of its members to have grown old in the service.[39] [Footnote 38: Board of Public Works _Report_ for 1860 (Baton Rouge, 1861), p. 7.] [Footnote 39: State Engineer's _Report_ for 1856 (New Orleans, 1857), p. 7.] Manufacturing companies here and there bought slaves to man their works, but in so doing added seriously to the risks of their business. A news item of 1849 reported that an outbreak of cholera at the Hillman Iron Works near Clarksville, Tenn., had brought the death of four or five slaves and the removal of the remainder from the vicinity until the epidemic should have passed.[40] A more normal episode of mere financial failure was that which wrecked the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company whose plant was located on Broad River in South Carolina. To complete its works and begin operations this company procured a loan of some $92,000 in 1837 from the Bank of the State of South Carolina on the security of the land and buildings and a hundred slaves owned by the company. After several years of operation during which the purchase of additional slaves raised the number to 194, twenty-seven of whom were mechanics, the company admitted its insolvency. When the mortgage was foreclosed in 1845 the bank bought in virtually the whole property to save its investment, and operated the works for several years until a new company, with a manager imported from Sweden, was floated to take the concern off its hands.[41] [Footnote 40: New Orleans _Delta_, Mch. 10, 1849.] [Footnote 41: _Report of the Special Joint Committee appointed to examine the Bank of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1849); _Report of the President and Directors of the Bank of the State of South Carolina, November, 1850_ (Columbia, 1850).] Most of the cotton mills depended wholly upon white labor, though a few made experiments with slave staffs. One of these was in operation in Maury County, Tennessee, in 1827,[42] and another near Pensacola, Florida, twenty years afterward. Except for their foremen, each of these was run by slave operatives exclusively; and in the latter case, at least, all the slaves were owned by the company. These comprised in 1847 some forty boys and girls, who were all fed, and apparently well fed, at the company's table.[43] The career of these enterprises is not ascertainable. A better known case is that of the Saluda Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina. When J. Graves came from New England in 1848 to assume the management of this mill he found several negroes among the operatives, all of whom were on hire. His first impulse was to replace all the negroes with whites; but before this was accomplished the newcomer was quite converted by their "activity and promptness," and he recommended that the number of black operatives be increased instead of diminished. "They are easily trained to habits of industry and patient endurance," he said, "and by the concentration of all their faculties ... their imitative faculties become cultivated to a very high degree, their muscles become trained and obedient to the will, so that whatever they see done they are quick in learning to do."[44] The company was impelled by Graves' enthusiasm to resort to slave labor exclusively, partly on hire from their owners and partly by purchase. At the height of this régime, in 1851, the slave operatives numbered 158.[45] But whether from the incapacity of the negroes as mill hands or from the accumulation of debt through the purchase of slaves, the company was forced into liquidation at the close of the following year.[46] [Footnote 42: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Apr. 24, 1828, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 258.] [Footnote 43: _DeBow's Review_, IV, 256.] [Footnote 44: Letter of J. Graves, May 15, 1849, in the Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, June 1, 1849. Cf. also J.B. D Debow, _Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 339.] [Footnote 45: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 319, 320.] [Footnote 46: _Augusta Chronicle_, Jan. 5, 1853.] Corporations had reason at all times, in fact, to prefer free laborers over slaves even on hire, for in so doing they escaped liabilities for injuries by fellow servants. When a firm of contractors, for example, advertised in 1833 for five hundred laborers at $15 per month to work on the Muscle Shoals canal in northern Alabama, it deemed it necessary to say that in cases of accidents to slaves it would assume financial responsibility "for any injury or damage that may hereafter happen in the process of blasting rock or of the caving of banks."[47] Free laborers, on the other hand, carried their own risks. Except when some planter would take a contract for grading in his locality, to be done under his own supervision in the spare time of his gang, slaves were generally called for in canal and railroad work only when the supply of free labor was inadequate. [Footnote 47: Reprinted in E.S. Abdy, _Journal of a Residence in the United States_ (London, 1835), II, 109.] Slaveowners, on the other hand, were equally reluctant to hire their slaves to such corporations or contractors except in times of special depression, for construction camps from their lack of sanitation, discipline, domesticity and stability were at the opposite pole from plantations as places of slave residence. High wages were no adequate compensation for the liability to contagious and other diseases, demoralization, and the checking of the birth rate by the separation of husbands and wives. The higher the valuation of slave property, the greater would be the strength of these considerations. Slaves were a somewhat precarious property under all circumstances. Losses were incurred not only through disease[48] and flight but also through sudden death in manifold ways, and through theft. A few items will furnish illustration. An early Charleston newspaper printed the following: "On the ninth instant Mr. Edward North at Pon Pon sent a sensible negro fellow to Moon's Ferry for a jug of rum, which is about two miles from his house; and he drank to that excess in the path that he died within six or seven hours."[49] From the Eutaws in the same state a correspondent wrote in 1798 of a gin-house disaster: "I yesterday went over to Mr. Henry Middleton's plantation to view the dreadful effects of a flash of lightning which the day before fell on his machine house in which were about twenty negro men, fourteen of which were killed immediately."[50] In 1828 the following appeared in a newspaper at New Orleans: "Yesterday towards one o'clock P.M., as one of the ferry boats was crossing the river with sixteen slaves on board belonging to General Wade Hampton, with their baggage, a few rods distant from the shore these negroes, being frightened by the motion of the boat, all threw themselves on the same side, which caused the boat to fill; and notwithstanding the prompt assistance afforded, four or five of these unfortunates perished."[51] In 1839 William Lowndes Yancey, who was then a planter in South Carolina, lost his whole gang through the poisoning of a spring on his place, and was thereby bankrupted.[52] About 1858 certain bandits in western Louisiana abducted two slaves from the home of the Widow Bernard on Bayou Vermilion. After the lapse of several months they were discovered in the possession of one Apcher, who was tried for the theft but acquitted. The slaves when restored to their mistress were put in the kitchen, bound together by their hands. But while the family was at dinner the two ran from the house and drowned themselves in the bayou. The narrator of the episode attributed the impulse for suicide to the taste for vagabondage and the hatred for work which the negroes had acquired from the bandit.[53] [Footnote 48: For the effect of epidemics _see_ above, pp. 300, 301.] [Footnote 49: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 12 to 19, 1741.] [Footnote 50: _Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Feb. 4, 1798, supplement.] [Footnote 51: _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 3, 1828.] [Footnote 52: J.W. DuBose, _Life of W.L. Yancey_ (Birmingham, Ala., 1892), p. 39.] [Footnote 53: Alexandra Barbe, _Histoire des Comités de Vigilance aux Attakapas_] (Louisiana, 1861), pp. 182-185. The governor of South Carolina reported the convictions of five white men for the crime of slave stealing in the one year;[54] and in the penitentiary lists of the several states the designation of slave stealers was fairly frequent, in spite of the fact that the death penalty was generally prescribed for the crime. One method of their operation was described in a Georgia newspaper item of 1828 which related that two wagoners upon meeting a slave upon the road persuaded him to lend a hand in shifting their load. When the negro entered the wagon they overpowered him and drove on. When they camped for the night they bound him to the wheel; but while they slept he cut his thongs and returned to his master.[55] The greatest activities in this line, however, were doubtless those of the Murrell gang of desperadoes operating throughout the southwest in the early thirties with a shrewd scheme for victimizing both whites and blacks. They would conspire with a slave, promising him his freedom or some other reward if he would run off with them and suffer himself to be sold to some unwary purchaser and then escape to join them again.[56] Sometimes they repeated this process over and over again with the same slave until a threat of exposure from him led to his being silenced by murder. In the same period a smaller gang with John Washburn as its leading spirit and with Natchez as informal headquarters, was busy at burglary, highway and flatboat robbery, pocket picking and slave stealing.[57] In 1846 a prisoner under arrest at Cheraw, South Carolina, professed to reveal a new conspiracy for slave stealing with ramifications from Virginia to Texas; but the details appear not to have been published.[58] [Footnote 54: H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_ [1914], pp. 110-112.] [Footnote 55: _The Athenian_ (Athens, Ga.), Aug. 19, 1828.] [Footnote 56: H.R. Howard, compiler, _The History of Virgil A. Stewart and his Adventure in capturing and exposing the great "Western Land Pirate" and his Gang_ (New York, 1836), pp. 63-68, 104, _et passim_. The truth of these accounts of slave stealings is vouched for in a letter to the editor of the New Orleans _Bulletin_, reprinted in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Nov. 5, 1835.] [Footnote 57: The manifold felonies of the gang were described by Washburn in a dying confession after his conviction for a murder at Cincinnati. Natchez _Courier_, reprinted in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Feb. 28, 1837. Other reports of the theft of slaves appear in the Charleston _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Nov. 2, 1786; _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), July 19, 1834, advertisement; _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), July 18, 1835; and the following New Orleans journals: _Louisiana Gazette_, Apr. 1 and Sept. 10, 1819; _Mercantile Advertiser_, Sept 29, 1831; _Bee_, Dec. 14, 1841; Mch. 10, 1845, and Aug. 1 and Nov. 11, 1848; _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 29 and Sept. 18, 1840; _Picayune_, Aug. 21, 1845.] [Footnote 58: New Orleans _Commercial Times_, Aug. 26, 1846.] Certain hostile critics of slavery asserted that in one district or another masters made reckonings favorable to such driving of slaves at their work as would bring premature death. Thus Fanny Kemble wrote in 1838, when on the Georgia coast: "In Louisiana ... the humane calculation was not only made but openly and unhesitatingly avowed that the planters found it upon the whole their most profitable plan to work off (kill with labour) their whole number of slaves about once in seven years, and renew the whole stock."[59] The English traveler Featherstonhaugh likewise wrote of Louisiana in 1844, when he had come as close to it as East Tennessee, that "the duration of life for a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven years."[60] William Goodell supported a similar assertion of his own in 1853 by a series of citations. The first of these was to Theodore Weld as authority, that "Professor Wright" had been told at New York by Dr. Deming of Ashland, Ohio, a story that Mr. Dickinson of Pittsburg had been told by Southern planters and slave dealers on an Ohio River steamboat. The tale thus vouched for contained the assertion that sugar planters found that by the excessive driving of slaves day and night in the grinding season they could so increase their output that "they could afford to sacrifice one set of hands in seven years," and "that this horrible system was now practised to a considerable extent." The second citation was likewise to Weld for a statement by Mr. Samuel Blackwell of Jersey City, whose testimonial lay in the fact of his membership in the Presbyterian church, that while on a tour in Louisiana "the planters generally declared to him that they were obliged so to overwork their slaves during the sugar-making season (from eight to ten weeks) as to use them up in seven or eight years." The third was to the Rev. Mr. Reed of London who after a tour in Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky in 1834 published the following: "I was told, confidentially, from excellent authority, that recently at a meeting of planters in South Carolina the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more profitable to the owner if well fed, well clothed and worked lightly, or if made the most of at once and exhausted in some eight years. The decision was in favor of the last alternative"[61] An anonymous writer in 1857 repeated this last item without indication of its date or authority but with a shortening of the period of exhaustion to "some four or five years."[62] [Footnote 59: Frances A. Kemble, _Journal_ (New York, 1863), p. 28.] [Footnote 60: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion Through the Slave States_ (London, 1844), I, 120. Though Featherstonhaugh afterward visited New Orleans his book does not recur to this topic.] [Footnote 61: William Goodell, _The American Slave Code in Theory and Practise_ (New York, 1853), pp. 79-81, citing Theodore Weld, _Slavery as it is_, p 39, and Mattheson, _Visit to the American Churches_, II, 173.] [Footnote 62: _The Suppressed Book about Slavery! Prepared for publication in 1857, never published until the present time_ (New York, 1864), p. 211.] These assertions, which have been accepted by some historians as valid, prompt a series of reflections. In the first place, anyone who has had experience with negro labor may reasonably be skeptical when told that healthy, well fed negroes, whether slave or free, can by any routine insistence of the employer be driven beyond the point at which fatigue begins to be injurious. In the second place, plantation work as a rule had the limitation of daylight hours; in plowing, mules which could not be hurried set the pace; in hoeing, haste would imperil the plants by enhancing the proportion of misdirected strokes; and in the harvest of tobacco, rice and cotton much perseverance but little strain was involved. The sugar harvest alone called for heavy exertion and for night work in the mill. But common report in that regard emphasized the sturdy sleekness as well as the joviality of the negroes in the grinding season;[63] and even if exhaustion had been characteristic instead, the brevity of the period would have prevented any serious debilitating effect before the coming of the more leisurely schedule after harvest. In fact many neighboring Creole and Acadian farmers, fishermen and the like were customarily enlisted on wages as plantation recruits in the months of stress.[64] The sugar district furthermore was the one plantation area within easy reach of a considerable city whence a seasonal supply of extra hands might be had to save the regular forces from injury. The fact that a planter, as reported by Sir Charles Lyell, failed to get a hundred recruits one year in the midst of the grinding season[65] does not weaken this consideration. It may well have been that his neighbors had forestalled him in the wage-labor market, or that the remaining Germans and Irish in the city refused to take the places of their fellows who were on strike. It is well established that sugar planters had systematic recourse to immigrant labor for ditching and other severe work.[66] It is incredible that they ignored the same recourse if at any time the requirements of their crop threatened injury to their property in slaves. The recommendation of the old Roman, Varro, that freemen be employed in harvesting to save the slaves[67] would apply with no more effect, in case of need, to the pressing of oil and wine than to the grinding of sugar-cane. Two months' wages to a Creole, a "'Cajun" or an Irishman would be cheap as the price of a slave's continued vigor, even when slave prices were low. On the whole, however, the stress of the grinding was not usually as great as has been fancied. Some of the regular hands in fact were occasionally spared from the harvest at its height and set to plow and plant for the next year's crop.[68] [Footnote 63: E. g., Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 668.] [Footnote 64: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 606.] [Footnote 65: _See_ above, p. 337.] [Footnote 66: See above, pp. 301, 302.] [Footnote 67: Varro, _De Re Rustica_, I, XVII, 2.] [Footnote 68: _E. g_., items for November, 1849, in the plantation diary of Dr. John P.R. Stone, of Iberville Parish, Louisiana. For the use of this document, the MS. of which is in the possession of Mr. John Stone Ware, White-Castle, La., I am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody, of the University of Michigan, now Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] The further question arises: how could a master who set himself to work a slave to death in seven years make sure on the one hand that the demise would not be precipitated within a few months instead, and on the other that the consequence would not be merely the slave's incapacitation instead of his death? In the one case a serious loss would be incurred at once; in the other the stoppage of the slave's maintenance, which would be the only conceivable source of gain in the premises, would not have been effected, but the planter would merely have an invalid on his hands instead of a worker. Still further, the slaves had recourses of their own, even aside from appeals for legal redress. They might shoot or stab the oppressor, burn his house, or run away, or resort to any of a dozen other forms of sabotage. These possibilities the masters knew as well as the slaves. Mere passive resistance, however, in cases where even that was needed, would generally prove effective enough. Finally, if all the foregoing arguments be dismissed as fallacious, there still remains the factor of slave prices as a deterrent in certain periods. If when slaves were cheap and their produce dear it might be feasible and profitable to exhaust the one to increase the other, the opportunity would surely vanish when the price relations were reversed. The trend of the markets was very strong in that direction. Thus at the beginning of the nineteenth century a prime field hand in the upland cotton belt had the value of about 1,500 pounds of middling cotton; by 1810 this value had risen to 4,500 pounds; by 1820 to 5,500; by 1830 to 6,000; by 1840 to 8,300; from 1843 to 1853 it was currently about 10,000; and in 1860 it reached about 16,000 pounds. Comparison of slave values as measured in the several other staples would show quite similar trends, though these great appreciations were accompanied by no remotely proportionate increase of the slaves' industrial capacities. The figures tell their own tale of the mounting preposterousness of any calculated exhaustion of the human chattels. The tradition in anti-slavery circles was however too strong to die. Various travelers touring the South, keen for corroborative evidence but finding none, still nursed the belief that a further search would bring reward. It was like the rainbow's end, always beyond the horizon. Thus the two Englishmen, Marshall Hall and William H. Russell, after scrutinizing many Southern localities and finding no slave exhaustion, asserted that it prevailed either in a district or in a type of establishment which they had not examined. Hall, who traveled far in the Southern states and then merely touched at Havana on his way home, wrote: "In the United States the life of the slave has been cherished and his offspring promoted. In Cuba the lives of the slaves have been 'used up' by excessive labour, and increase in number disregarded. It is said, indeed, that the slave-life did not extend beyond eight or ten years."[69] Russell recorded his surprise at finding that the Louisiana planters made no reckoning whatever of the cost of their slaves' labor, that Irish gangs nevertheless did the ditching, and that the slave children of from nine to eleven years were at play, "exempted from that cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and manufacturing districts of England"; and then upon glimpsing the homesteads of some Creole small proprietors, he wrote: "It is among these men that, at times, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that slaves are exposed to the severest labor."[70] Johann Schoepf on the other hand while travelling many years before on the Atlantic seaboard had written: "They who have the largest droves [of slaves] keep them the worst, let them run naked mostly or in rags, and accustom them as much as possible to hunger, but exact of them steady work."[71] That no concrete observations were adduced in any of these premises is evidence enough, under the circumstances, that the charges were empty. [Footnote 69: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ (London, 1854), p. 154.] [Footnote 70: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp. 274, 278.] [Footnote 71: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation_, A.J. Morrisson, tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), II, 147. But _see ibid_., pp. 94, 116, for observations of a general air of indolence among whites and blacks alike.] The capital value of the slaves was an increasingly powerful insurance of their lives and their health. In four days of June, 1836, Thomas Glover of Lowndes County, Alabama, incurred a debt of $35 which he duly paid, for three visits with mileage and prescriptions by Dr. Salley to his "wench Rina";[72] and in the winter of 1858 Nathan Truitt of Troup County, Georgia, had medical attendance rendered to a slave child of his to the amount of $130.50.[73] These are mere chance items in the multitude which constantly recur in probate records. Business prudence required expenditure with almost a lavish hand when endangered property was to be saved. The same consideration applied when famines occurred, as in Alabama in 1828[74] and 1855.[75] Poverty-stricken freemen might perish, but slaveowners could use the slaves themselves as security for credits to buy food at famine prices to feed them.[76] As Olmsted said, comparing famine effects in the South and in Ireland, "the slaves suffered no physical want--the peasant starved."[77] The higher the price of slaves, the more stringent the pressure upon the masters to safeguard them from disease, injury and risk of every sort. [Footnote 72: MS. receipt in private possession.] [Footnote 73: MS. probate records at LaGrange, Ga.] [Footnote 74: Charleston, _City Gazette_, May 28, 1828.] [Footnote 75: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 707, 708, quoting contemporary newspapers.] [Footnote 76: Cf. D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 429.] [Footnote 77: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 244.] Although this phase of the advancing valuation gave no occasion for regret, other phases brought a spread of dismay and apprehension. In an essay of 1859 Edmund Ruffin analyzed the effects in Virginia. In the last fifteen years, he said, the value of slaves had been doubled, solely because of the demand from the lower South. The Virginians affected fell into three classes. The first were those who had slaves to be sold, whether through pressure of debt or in the legal division of estates or in the rare event of liquidating a surplus of labor. These would receive advantage from high prices. The second were those who wishing neither to buy nor sell slaves desired merely to keep their estates intact. These were, of course, unaffected by the fluctuations. The third were the great number of enterprising planters and farmers who desired to increase the scale of their industrial operations and who would buy slaves if conditions were propitious but were debarred therefrom by the immoderate prices. When these men stood aside in the bidding the manual force and the earning power of the commonwealth were depleted. The smaller volume of labor then remaining must be more thinly applied; land values must needs decline; and the shrewdest employers must join the southward movement. The draining of the slaves, he continued, would bring compensation in an inflow of white settlers only when the removal of slave labor had become virtually complete and had brought in consequence the most extreme prostration of land prices and of the incomes of the still remaining remnant of the original population. The exporting of labor, at whatever price it might be sold, he likened to a farmer's conversion of his plow teams into cash instead of using them in his work. According to these views, he concluded, "the highest prices yet obtained from the foreign purchasers of our slaves have never left a profit to the state or produced pecuniary benefit to general interests. And even if prices should continue to increase, as there is good reason to expect and to dread, until they reach $2000 or more for the best laborers, or $1200 for the general average of ages and sexes, these prices, though necessarily operating to remove every slave from Virginia, will still cause loss to agricultural and general interests in every particular sale, and finally render the state a desert and a ruin."[78] [Footnote 78: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in _DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] At Charleston a similar plaint was voiced by L.W. Spratt. In early years when the African trade was open and slaves were cheap, said he, in the Carolina lowlands "enterprise found a profitable field, and necessarily therefore the fortunes of the country bloomed and brightened. But when the fertilizing stream of labor was cut off, when the opening West had no further supply to meet its requisitions, it made demands upon the accumulations of the seaboard. The limited amount became a prize to be contended for. Land in the interior offered itself at less than one dollar an acre. Land on the seaboard had been raised to fifty dollars per acre, and labor, forced to elect between them, took the cheaper. The heirs who came to an estate, or the men of capital who retired from business, sought a location in the West. Lands on the seaboard were forced to seek for purchasers; purchasers came to the seaboard to seek for slaves. Their prices were elevated to their value not upon the seaboard where lands were capital but in the interior where the interest upon the cost of labor was the only charge upon production. Labor therefore ceased to be profitable in the one place as it became profitable in the other. Estates which were wealth to their original proprietors became a charge to the descendants who endeavored to maintain them. Neglect soon came to the relief of unprofitable care; decay followed neglect. Mansions became tenantless and roofless. Trees spring in their deserted halls and wave their branches through dismantled windows. Drains filled up; the swamps returned. Parish churches in imposing styles of architecture and once attended by a goodly company in costly equipages, are now abandoned. Lands which had ready sale at fifty dollars per acre now sell for less than five dollars; and over all these structures of wealth, with their offices of art, and over these scenes of festivity and devotion, there now hangs the pall of an unalterable gloom."[79] In a later essay the same writer dealt with developments in the 'fifties in more sober phrases which are corroborated by the census returns. Within the decade, he said, as many as ten thousand slaves had been drawn from Charleston by the attractive prices of the west, and the towns of the interior had suffered losses in the same way. The slaves had been taken in large numbers from all manufacturing employments, and were now being sold by thousands each year from the rice fields. "They are as yet retained by cotton and the culture incident to cotton; but as almost every negro offered in our markets is bid for by the West, the drain is likely to continue." In the towns alone was the loss offset in any degree by an inflow of immigration.[80] [Footnote 79: L.W. Spratt, _The Foreign Slave Trade, the source of political power, of material progress, of social integrity and of social emancipation to the South_ (Charleston, 1858), pp. 7, 8.] [Footnote 80: L.W. Spratt, "Letter to John Perkins of Louisiana," in the Charleston _Mercury_, Feb. 13, 1861.] A similar trend as to slaves but with a sharply contrasting effect upon prosperity was described by Gratz Brown as prevailing in Missouri. The slave population, said he, is in process of rapid decline except in a dozen central counties along the Missouri River. "Hemp is the only staple here left that will pay for investment in negroes," and that can hardly hold them against the call of the cotton belt. Already the planters of the upland counties are beginning to send their slaves to southerly markets in response to the prices there offered. In most parts of Missouri, he continued, slavery could not be said to exist as a system. It accordingly served, not as an appreciable industrial agency, but only as a deterrent hampering the progress of immigration. Brown therefore advocated the complete extirpation of the institution as a means of giving great impetus to the state's prosperity.[81] [Footnote 81: B. Gratz Brown, _Speech in the Missouri Legislature, February 12, 1857 on gradual emancipation in Missouri_ (St. Louis, 1857).] These accounts are colored by the pro-slavery views of Ruffin and Spratt and the opposite predilections of Brown. It is clear nevertheless that the net industrial effects of the exportation of slaves were strikingly diverse in the several regions. In Missouri, and in Delaware also, where plantations had never been dominant and where negroes were few, the loss of slaves was more than counterbalanced by the gain of freemen; in some portions of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky the replacement of the one by the other was at so evenly compensating a rate that the volume of industry was not affected; but in other parts of those states and in the rural districts of the rice coast the depletion of slaves was not in any appreciable measure offset by immigration. This applies also to the older portions of the eastern cotton belt. Throughout the northern and eastern South doubts had often been expressed that slave labor was worth its price. Thus Philip Fithian recorded in his Virginia diary in 1774 a conversation with Mrs. Robert Carter in which she expressed an opinion, endorsed by Fithian, "that if in Mr. Carter's or in any gentleman's estate all the negroes should be sold and the money put to interest in safe hands, and let the land which the negroes now work lie wholly uncultivated, the bare interest of the price of the negroes would be a much greater yearly income than what is now received from their working the lands, making no allowance at all for the trouble and risk of the masters as to crops and negroes."[82] In 1824 John Randolph said: "It is notorious that the profits of slave labor have been for a long time on the decrease, and that on a fair average it scarcely reimburses the expense of the slave," and concluded by prophesying that a continuance of the tendency would bring it about "in case the slave shall not elope from his master, that his master will run away from him."[83] In 1818 William Elliott of Beaufort, South Carolina, had written that in the sea-island cotton industry for a decade past the high valuations of lands and slaves had been wholly unjustified. On the one hand, said he, the return on investments was extremely small; on the other, it was almost impossible to relieve an embarrassed estate by the sale of a part, for the reduction of the scale of operations would cause a more than proportionate reduction of income.[84] [Footnote 82: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), p. 145.] [Footnote 83: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (New York 1851), II, 215.] [Footnote 84: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 151-163.] The remorseless advance of slave prices as measured in their produce tended to spread the adverse conditions noted by Elliott into all parts of the South; and by the close of the 'fifties it is fairly certain that no slaveholders but those few whose plantations lay in the most advantageous parts of the cotton and sugar districts and whose managerial ability was exceptionally great were earning anything beyond what would cover their maintenance and carrying charges. Achille Loria has repeatedly expressed the generalization that slaves have been systematically overvalued wherever the institution has prevailed, and he has attempted to explain the phenomenon by reference to an economic law of his own formulation that capitalists always and everywhere exploit labor by devices peculiarly adapted to each régime in turn. His latest argument in the premises is as follows: Man, who is by nature dispersively individualistic, is brought into industrial coordination only by coercion. Isolated labor if on exceptionally fertile soil or if equipped with specially efficient apparatus or if supernormal in energy may produce a surplus income, but ordinarily it can earn no more than a bare subsistence. Associative labor yields so much greater returns that masters of one sort or another emerge in every progressive society to replace dispersion with concentration and to engross most of the accruing enhancement of produce to themselves as captains of industry. This "persistent and continuous coercion, compelling them to labour in conformity to a unitary plan or in accordance with a concentrating design" is commonly in its earlier form slavery, and slaveholders are thus the first possessors of capital. As capitalists they become perpetually concerned with excluding the laborers from the proprietorship of land and the other means of production. So long as land is relatively abundant this can be accomplished only by keeping labor enslaved, and enslavement cannot be maintained unless the slaves are prevented from buying their freedom. This prevention is procured by the heightening of slave prices at such a rate as to keep the cost of freedom always greater than the generality of the slaves can pay with their own accumulated savings or _peculia_. Slave prices in fact, whether in ancient Rome or in modern America, advanced disproportionately to the advantage which the owners could derive from the ownership. "This shows that an element of speculation enters into the valuation of the slave, or that there is a hypervaluation of the slave. _This is the central phenomenon of_ _slavery_; and it is to this far more than to the indolence of slave labour that is due the low productivity of slave states, the permanently unstable equilibrium of the slaveholding enterprise, and its inevitable ruin." The decline of earnings and of slave prices promotes a more drastic oppression, as in Roman Sicily, to reduce the slave's _peculium_ and continue the prevention of his self-purchase. When this device is about to fail of its purpose the masters may foil the intention of the slaves by changing them into serfs, attaching the lands to the laborers as an additional thing to be purchased as a condition of freedom. The value of the man may now be permitted to fall to its natural level. Finally, when the growth of population has made land so dear that common laborers in freedom cannot save enough to buy farms, the occasion for slavery and serfdom lapses. Laborers may now be freed to become a wage-earning proletariat, to take their own risks. An automatic coercion replaces the systematic; the labor stimulus is intensified, but the stress of the employer is diminished. The laborer does not escape from coercion, but merely exchanges one of its forms for another.[85] [Footnote 85: Achille Loria, _The Economic Synthesis_, M. Eden Paul tr. (London, 1914), PP. 23-26, 91-99.] Now Loria falls into various fallacies in other parts of his book, as when he says that southern lands are generally more fertile than northern and holds that alone, to the exclusion of climate and racial qualities, responsible for the greater prevalence of slavery ancient and modern in southerly latitudes; or when he follows Cairnes in asserting that upon the American slave plantations "the only form of culture practised was spade culture, merely agglomerating upon a single area of land a number of isolated laborers"; or when he contends that either slavery or serfdom since based on force and fraud "destroys the possibility of fiduciary credit by cancelling the conditions [of trust and confidence] which alone can foster it." [86] Such errors disturb one's faith. In the presentation of his main argument, furthermore, he not only exaggerates the cleavage between capitalists and laborers, the class consciousness of the two groups and the rationality of capitalistic purpose, but he falls into calamitous ambiguity and confusion. The central phenomenon of slavery, says he, is speculation or the overvaluation of the slave. He thereupon assumes that speculation always means overvaluation, ignoring its downward possibility, and he accounts for the asserted universal and continuously increasing overvaluation by reference to the desire of masters to prevent slaves from buying their freedom. Here he ignores essential historic facts. In American law a slave's _peculium_ had no recognition; and the proportion of slaves, furthermore, who showed any firm disposition to accumulate savings for the purpose of buying their freedom was very small. Where such efforts were made, however, they were likely to be aided by the masters through facilities for cash earnings, price concessions and honest accounting of instalments, notwithstanding the lack of legal requirements in the premises. Loria's explanation of the "central phenomenon" is therefore hardly tenable. [Footnote 86: _Ibid_., pp. 26, 190, 260.] A far sounder basic doctrine is that of the accountant Gibson, recited at the beginning of this chapter, that the valuation of a slave is theoretically determined by the reckoning of his prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance. In the actual Southern régime, however, this was interfered with by several influences. For one thing, the successful proprietors of small plantations could afford to buy additional slaves at somewhat more than the price reckoned on _per capita_ earnings, because the advance of their establishments towards the scale of maximum efficiency would reduce the proportionate cost of administration. Again, the scale of slaveholdings was in some degree a measure of social rank, and men were accordingly tempted by uneconomic motives to increase their trains of retainers. Both of these considerations stimulated the bidding. On the other hand conventional morality deterred many proprietors from selling slaves except under special stress, and thereby diminished the offers in the market. If the combination of these factors is not adequate as an explanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a new country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On the other hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available as a rule more tempting than slaves as investments. Corporation securities were few and unseasoned; lands were liable to wear out and were painfully slow in liquidation; but slaves were a self-perpetuating stock whose ownership was a badge of dignity, whose management was generally esteemed a pleasurable responsibility, whose labor would yield an income, and whose value could be realized in cash with fair promptitude in time of need. No calculated overvaluation by proprietors for the sake of keeping the slaves enslaved need be invented. Loria's thesis is a work of supererogation. But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices did rise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that in virtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area had been accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog upon material progress. The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its making labor mobile, regular and secure. These qualities accorded remarkably, so far as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the one hand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other. Its vices were more numerous, and in part more subtle. The North was annually acquiring thousands of immigrants who came at their own expense, who worked zealously for wages payable from current earnings, and who possessed all the inventive and progressive potentialities of European peoples. But aspiring captains of industry at the South could as a rule procure labor only by remitting round sums in money or credit which depleted their working capital and for which were obtained slaves fit only for plantation routine, negroes of whom little initiative could be expected and little contribution to the community's welfare beyond their mere muscular exertions. The negroes were procured in the first instance mainly because white laborers were not to be had; afterward when whites might otherwise have been available the established conditions repelled them. The continued avoidance of the South by the great mass of incoming Europeans in post-bellum decades has now made it clear that it was the negro character of the slaves rather than the slave status of the negroes which was chiefly responsible. The racial antipathy felt by the alien whites, along with their cultural repugnance and economic apprehensions, intrenched the negroes permanently in the situation. The most fertile Southern areas when once converted into black belts tended, and still tend as strongly as ever, to be tilled only by inert negroes, the majority of whom are as yet perhaps less efficient in freedom than their forbears were as slaves. The drain of funds involved in the purchase of slaves was impressive to contemporaries. Thus Governor Spotswood wrote from Virginia to the British authorities in 1711 explaining his assent to a £5 tax upon the importation of slaves. The members of the legislature, said he, "urged what is really true, that the country is already ruined by the great number of negros imported of late years, that it will be impossible for them in many years to discharge the debts already contracted for the purchase of those negroes if fresh supplys be still poured upon them while their tobacco continues so little valuable, but that the people will run more and more in debt."[87] And in 1769 a Charleston correspondent wrote to a Boston journal: "A calculation having been made of the amount of purchase money of slaves effected here the present year, it is computed at £270,000 sterling, which sum will by that means be drained off from this province."[88] [Footnote 87: Virginia Historical Society _Collections_, I, 52.] [Footnote 88: Boston _Chronicle_, Mch. 27, 1769.] An unfortunate fixation of capital was likewise remarked. Thus Sir Charles Lyell noted at Columbus, Georgia, in 1846 that Northern settlers were "struck with the difficulty experienced in raising money here by small shares for the building of mills. 'Why,' say they, 'should all our cotton make so long a journey to the North, to be manufactured there, and come back to us at so high a price? It is because all spare cash is sunk here in purchasing negroes.'" And again at another stage of his tour: "That slave labour is more expensive than free is an opinion which is certainly gaining ground in the higher parts of Alabama, and is now professed openly by some Northerners who have settled there. One of them said to me, 'Half the population of the South is employed in seeing that the other half do their work, and they who do work accomplish half what they might do under a better system.' 'We cannot,' said another,[89] 'raise capital enough for new cotton factories because all our savings go to buy negroes, or as has lately happened, to feed them when the crop is deficient." [Footnote 89: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_ (London, 1850), II, 35, 84, 85.] The planters, who were the principal Southern capitalists, trod in a vicious circle. They bought lands and slaves wherewith to grow cotton, and with the proceeds ever bought more slaves to make more cotton; and oftentimes they borrowed heavily on their lands and slaves as collateral in order to enlarge their scale of production the more speedily. When slave prices rose the possessors of those in the cotton belt seldom took profit from the advance, for it was a rare planter who would voluntarily sell his operating force. When crops failed or prices fell, however, the loans might be called, the mortgages foreclosed, and the property sold out at panic levels. Thus while the slaves had a guarantee of their sustenance, their proprietors, themselves the guarantors, had a guarantee of nothing. By virtue, or more properly by vice, of the heavy capitalization of the control of labor which was a cardinal feature of the ante-bellum régime, they were involved in excessive financial risks. The slavery system has often been said to have put so great a stigma on manual labor as to have paralyzed the physical energies of the Southern white population. This is a great exaggeration; and yet it is true that the system militated in quite positive degree against the productivity of the several white classes. Among the well-to-do it promoted leisure by giving rise to an abnormally large number of men and women who whether actually or nominally performing managerial functions, did little to bring sweat to their brows. The proportion of white collars to overalls and of muslin frocks to kitchen aprons was greater than in any other Anglo-Saxon community of equal income. The contrast so often drawn between Southern gentility and Northern thrift had a concrete basis in fact. At the other extreme the enervation of the poor whites, while mainly due to malaria and hookworm, had as a contributing cause the limitation upon their wage-earning opportunity which the slavery system imposed. Upon the middle class and the yeomanry, which were far more numerous and substantial[90] than has been commonly realized, the slavery system exerted an economic influence by limiting the availability of capital and by offering the temptation of an unsound application of earnings. When a prospering farmer, for example, wanted help for himself in his fields or for his wife indoors, the habit of the community prompted him to buy or hire slaves at a greater cost than free labor would normally have required.[91] The high price of slaves, furthermore, prevented many a capable manager from exercising his talents by debarring him from the acquisition of labor and the other means of large-scale production. [Footnote 90: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New York, 1860), pp. 91-100, 193-303; John M. Aughey, _The Iron Furnace, or Slavery and Secession_ (Philadelphia, 1863), p. 231.] [Footnote 91: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, p. 513.] Finally, the force of custom, together with the routine efficiency of slave labor itself, caused the South to spoil the market for its distinctive crops by producing greater quantities than the world would buy at remunerative prices. To this the solicitude of the masters for the health of their slaves contributed. The harvesting of wheat, for example, as a Virginian planter observed in a letter to his neighbor James Madison, in the days when harvesting machinery was unknown, required exertion much more severe than the tobacco routine, and was accordingly, as he put it, "by no means so conducive to the health of our negroes, upon whose increase (_miserabile dictu_!) our principal profit depends."[92] The same letter also said: "Where there is negro slavery there will be laziness, carelessness and wastefulness. Nor is it possible to prevent them. Severity increases the evil, and humanity does not lessen it." [Footnote 92: Francis Corbin to James Madison, Oct. 10, 1819, in the Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 263.] On the whole, the question whether negro labor in slavery was more or less productive than free negro labor would have been is not the crux of the matter. The influence of the slaveholding régime upon the whites themselves made it inevitable that the South should accumulate real wealth more slowly than the contemporary North. The planters and their neighbors were in the grip of circumstance. The higher the price of slaves the greater was the absorption of capital in their purchase, the blacker grew the black belts, the more intense was the concentration of wealth and talent in plantation industry, the more complete was the crystallization of industrial society. Were there any remedies available? Certain politicians masquerading as economists advocated the territorial expansion of the régime as a means of relief. Their argument, however, would not stand analysis. On one hand virtually all the territory on the continent climatically available for the staples was by the middle of the nineteenth century already incorporated into slaveholding states; on the other hand, had new areas been available the chief effects of their exploitation would have been to heighten the prices of slaves and lower the prices of crops. Actual expansion had in fact been too rapid for the best interests of society, for it had kept the population too sparse to permit a proper development of schools and the agencies of communications. With a view to increase the power of the South to expand, and for other purposes mainly political, a group of agitators in the 'fifties raised a vehement contention in favor of reopening the African slave trade in full volume. This, if accomplished, would have lowered the cost of labor, but its increase of the crops would have depressed staple prices in still greater degree; its unsettling of the slave market would have hurt vested interests; and its infusion of a horde of savage Africans would have set back the progress of the negroes already on hand and have magnified permanently the problems of racial adjustment. The prohibition of the interstate slave trade was another project for modifying the situation. It was mooted in the main by politicians alien to the régime. If accomplished it would have wrought a sharp differentiation in the conditions within the several groups of Southern states. An analogy may be seen in the British possessions in tropical America, where, following the stoppage of the intercolonial slave trade in 1807, a royal commission found that the average slave prices as gathered from sale records between 1822 and 1830 varied from a range in the old and stagnant colonies of £27 4_s_. 11-3/4_d_. in Bermuda, £29 18_s_. 9-3/4_d_. in the Bahamas, £47 1_s_. in Barbados and £44 15_s_. 2-1/4_d_. in Jamaica, to £105 4_s_., £114 11_s_. and £120 4_s_. 7-1/2_d_ respectively in the new and buoyant settlements of Trinidad, Guiana and British Honduras.[93] If the interstate transfer had been stopped, the Virginia, Maryland and Carolina slave markets would have been glutted while the markets of every southwestern state were swept bare. Slave prices in the former would have fallen to such levels that masters would have eventually resorted to manumission in self-defence, while in the latter all existing checks to the inflation of prices would have been removed and all the evils consequent upon the capitalization of labor intensified. [Footnote 93: _Accounts and Papers_ [of the British Government], 1837-1838, vol. 48, [p. 329].] Another conceivable plan would have been to replace slavery at large by serfdom. This would have attached the negroes to whatever lands they chanced to occupy at the time of the legislation. By force of necessity it would have checked the depletion of soils; but by preventing territorial transfer it would have robbed the negroes and their masters of all advantages afforded by the virginity of unoccupied lands. Serfdom could hardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparsely settled country such as the South then was. Finally the conversion of slaves into freemen by a sweeping emancipation was a project which met little endorsement except among those who ignored the racial and cultural complications. Financially it would work drastic change in private fortunes, though the transfer of ownership from the masters to the laborers themselves need not necessarily have great effect for the time being upon the actual wealth of the community as a whole. Emancipation would most probably, however, break down the plantation system by making the labor supply unstable, and fill the country partly with peasant farmers and partly with an unattached and floating negro population. Exceptional negroes and mulattoes would be sure to thrive upon their new opportunities, but the generality of the blacks could be counted upon to relax into a greater slackness than they had previously been permitted to indulge in. The apprehension of industrial paralysis, however, appears to have been a smaller factor than the fear of social chaos as a deterrent in the minds of the Southern whites from thoughts of abolition. The slaveholding régime kept money scarce, population sparse and land values accordingly low; it restricted the opportunities of many men of both races, and it kept many of the natural resources of the Southern country neglected. But it kept the main body of labor controlled, provisioned and mobile. Above all it maintained order and a notable degree of harmony in a community where confusion worse confounded would not have been far to seek. Plantation slavery had in strictly business aspects at least as many drawbacks as it had attractions. But in the large it was less a business than a life; it made fewer fortunes than it made men. CHAPTER XX TOWN SLAVES Southern households in town as well as in country were commonly large, and the dwellings and grounds of the well-to-do were spacious. The dearth of gas and plumbing and the lack of electric light and central heating made for heavy chores in the drawing of water, the replenishment of fuel and the care of lamps. The gathering of vegetables from the kitchen garden, the dressing of poultry and the baking of relays' of hot breads at meal times likewise amplified the culinary routine. Maids of all work were therefore seldom employed. Comfortable circumstances required at least a cook and a housemaid, to which might be added as means permitted a laundress, a children's nurse, a seamstress, a milkmaid, a butler, a gardener and a coachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none but the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the gross population was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menial employment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection of householders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate services and gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census of Charleston in 1848,[94] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics as compared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. The slaves were more numerous than the free also in the semi-domestic employments of coachmen and porters, and among the dray-men and the coopers and the unskilled laborers in addition. [Footnote 94: J.L. Dawson and H.W. DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for 1848_ (Charleston, 1849), pp. 31-36. The city's population then comprised some 20,000 whites, a like number of slaves, and about 3,500 free persons of color. The statistics of occupations are summarized in the accompanying table.] MANUAL OCCUPATIONS IN CHARLESTON, 1848 Slaves | Free Negroes| Whites Men | Women Men |Women Men |Women Domestic servants 1,888 | 3,384 9 | 28 13 | 100 Cooks and confectioners 7 | 12 18 | 18 ... | 5 Nurses and midwives ...| 2 ... | 10 ... | 5 Laundresses ...| 33 ... | 45 ... | ... Seamstresses and mantua makers ... | 24 ... | 196 ... | 125 Milliners ... | ... ... | 7 ... | 44 Fruiterers, hucksters and pedlers ... | 18 6 | 5 46 | 18 Gardeners 3 | ... ...| ... 5 | 1 Coachmen 15 | ... 4 | ... 2 | ... Draymen 67 | ... 11 | ... 13 | ... Porters 35 | ... 5 | ... 8 | ... Wharfingers and stevedores 2 | ... 1 | ... 21 | ... Pilots and sailors 50 | ... 1 | ... 176 | ... Fishermen 11 | ... 14 | ... 10 | ... Carpenters 120 | ... 27 | ... 119 | ... Masons and bricklayers 68 | ... 10 | ... 60 | ... Painters and plasterers 16 | ... 4 | ... 18 | ... Tinners 3 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... Ship carpenters and joiners 51 | ... 6 | ... 52 | ... Coopers 61 | ... 2 | ... 20 | ... Coach makers and wheelwrights 3 | ... 1 | ... 26 | ... Cabinet makers 8 | ... ... | ... 26 | ... Upholsterers 1 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... Gun, copper and locksmiths 2 | ... 1 | ... 16 | ... Blacksmiths and horseshoers 40 | ... 4 | ... 51 | ... Millwrights ... | ... 5 | ... 4 | ... Boot and shoemakers 6 | ... 17 | ... 30 | ... Saddle and harness makers 2 | ... 1 | ... 29 | ... Tailors and cap makers 36 | ... 42 | 6 68 | 6 Butchers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... Millers ... | ... 1 | ... 14 | ... Bakers 39 | ... 1 | ... 35 | 1 Barbers and hairdressers 4 | ... 14 | ... ... | 6 Cigarmakers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... Bookbinders 3 | ... ... | ... 10 | ... Printers 5 | ... ... | ... 65 | ... Other mechanics [A] 45 | ... 2 | ... 182 | ... Apprentices 43 | 8 14 | 7 55 | 5 Unclassified, unskilled laborers 838 | 378 19 | 2 192 | ... Superannuated 38 | 54 1 | 5 ... | ... [Footnote A: The slaves and free negroes in this group were designated merely as mechanics. The whites were classified as follows: 3 joiners, 1 plumber, 8 gas fitters, 7 bell hangers, 1 paper hanger, 6 carvers and gilders, 9 sail makers, 5 riggers, 1 bottler, 8 sugar makers, 43 engineers, 10 machinists, 6 boilermakers, 7 stone cutters, 4 piano and organ builders, 23 silversmiths, 15 watchmakers, 3 hair braiders, 1 engraver, 1 cutler, 3 molders, 3 pump and block makers, 2 turners, 2 wigmakers, 1 basketmaker, 1 bleacher, 4 dyers, and 4 journeymen. In addition there were enumerated of whites in non-mechanical employments in which the negroes did not participate, 7 omnibus drivers and 16 barkeepers.] On the other hand, although Charleston excelled every other city in the proportion of slaves in its population, free laborers predominated in all the other industrial groups, though but slightly in the cases of the masons and carpenters. The whites, furthermore, heavily outnumbered the free negroes in virtually all the trades but that of barbering which they shunned. Among women workers the free colored ranked first as seamstresses, washerwomen, nurses and cooks, with white women competing strongly in the sewing trades alone. A census of Savannah in the same year shows a similar predominance of whites in all the male trades but that of the barbers, in which there were counted five free negroes, one slave and no whites.[2] From such statistics two conclusions are clear: first, that the repulsion of the whites was not against manual work but against menial service; second, that the presence of the slaves in the town trades was mainly due to the presence of their fellows as domestics. [Footnote 2: Joseph Bancroft, _Census of the City of Savannah_ (Savannah, 1848).] Most of the slave mechanics and out-of-door laborers were the husbands and sons of the cooks and chambermaids, dwelling with them on their masters' premises, where the back yard with its crooning women and romping vari-colored children was as characteristic a feature as on the plantations. Town slavery, indeed, had a strong tone of domesticity, and the masters were often paternalistically inclined. It was a townsman, for example, who wrote the following to a neighbor: "As my boy Reuben has formed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her for a wife, this is to let you know that I am perfectly willing that he should, with your consent, marry her. His character is good; he is honest, faithful and industrious." The patriarchal relations of the country, however, which depended much upon the isolation of the groups, could hardly prevail in similar degree where the slaves of many masters intermingled. Even for the care of the sick there was doubtless fairly frequent recourse to such establishments as the "Surgical Infirmary for Negroes" at Augusta which advertised its facilities in 1854,[3] though the more common practice, of course, was for slave patients in town as well as country to be nursed at home. A characteristic note in this connection was written by a young Georgia townswoman: "No one is going to church today but myself, as we have a little negro very sick and Mama deems it necessary to remain at home to attend to him."[4] [Footnote 3: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 289, advertisement. The building was described as having accommodations for fifty or sixty patients. The charge for board, lodging and nursing was $10 per month, and for surgical operations and medical attendance "the usual rates of city practice."] [Footnote 4: Mary E. Harden to Mrs. Howell Cobb, Athens, Ga., Nov. 13, 1853. MS. in possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] The town régime was not so conducive to lifelong adjustments of masters and slaves except as regards domestic service; for whereas a planter could always expand his operations in response to an increase of his field hands and could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he might produce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire out or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic establishment. On the other hand a building contractor with an expanding business could not await the raising of children but must buy or hire masons and carpenters where he could find them. Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs. Thus William Elfe, a Charleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial period, had title to four sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and he managed to keep some of their wives and children in his possession also by having a farm on the further side of the harbor for their residence and employment.[5] William Rouse, a Charleston leather worker who closed his business in 1825 when the supply of tan bark ran short, had for sale four tanners, a currier and seven shoemakers, with, however, no women or children;[6] and the seven slaves of William Brockelbank, a plastering contractor of the same city, sold after his death in 1850, comprised but one woman and no children.[7] Likewise when the rope walk of Smith, Dorsey and Co. at New Orleans was offered for sale in 1820, fourteen slave operatives were included without mention of their families.[8] [Footnote 5: MS. account book of William Elfe, in the Charleston Library.] [Footnote 6: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 5, 1826, advertisement.] [Footnote 7: Charleston _Mercury_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 5, 1850. This news item owed its publication to the "handsome prices" realized. A plasterer 28 years old brought $2,135; another, 30, $1,805; a third, 24, $1775; a fourth, 24, $1,100; and a fifth, 20, $730.] [Footnote 8: _Louisiana Advertiser_ (New Orleans), May 13, 1820, advertisement.] Far more frequently such laborers were taken on hire. The following are typical of a multitude of newspaper advertisements: Michael Grantland at Richmond offered "good wages" for the year 1799 by piece or month for six or eight negro coopers.[9] At the same time Edward Rumsey was calling for strong negro men of good character at $100 per year at his iron works in Botetourt County, Virginia, and inviting free laboring men also to take employment with him.[10] In 1808 Daniel Weisinger and Company wanted three or four negro men to work in their factory at Frankfort, Kentucky, saying "they will be taught weaving, and liberal wages will be paid for their services."[11] George W. Evans at Augusta in 1818 "Wanted to hire, eight or ten white or black men for the purpose of cutting wood."[12] A citizen of Charleston in 1821 called for eight good black carpenters on weekly or monthly wages, and in 1825 a blacksmith and wheel-wright of the same city offered to take black apprentices.[13] In many cases whites and blacks worked together in the same employ, as in a boat-building yard on the Flint River in 1836,[14] and in a cotton mill at Athens, Georgia, in 1839.[15] [Footnote 9: _Virginia Gazette_ (Richmond), Nov. 20, 1798.] [Footnote 10: Winchester, Va., _Gazette_, Jan. 30, 1799.] [Footnote 11: The _Palladium_ (Frankfort, Ky.), Dec. 1, 1808.] [Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 1, 1818.] [Footnote 13: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 22, 1825.] [Footnote 14: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 18, 1836, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 356.] [Footnote 15: J.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, [1842]), II, 112.] In some cases the lessor of slaves procured an obligation of complete insurance from the lessee. An instance of this was a contract between James Murray of Wilmington in 1743, when he was departing for a sojourn in Scotland, and his neighbor James Hazel. The latter was to take the three negroes Glasgow, Kelso and Berwick for three years at an annual hire of £21 sterling for the lot. If death or flight among them should prevent Hazel from returning any of the slaves at the end of the term he was to reimburse Murray at full value scheduled in the lease, receiving in turn a bill of sale for any runaway. Furthermore if any of the slaves were permanently injured by willful abuse at the hands of Hazel's overseer, Murray was to be paid for the damage.[16] Leases of this type, however, were exceptional. As a rule the owners appear to have carried all risks except in regard to willful injury, and the courts generally so adjudged it where the contracts of hire had no stipulations in the premises.[17] When the Georgia supreme court awarded the owner a full year's hire of a slave who had died in the midst of his term the decision was complained of as an innovation "signally oppressive to the poorer classes of our citizens--the large majority--who are compelled to hire servants."[18] [Footnote 16: Nina M. Tiffany ed., _Letters of James Murray, Loyalist_ (Boston, 1901), pp. 67-69.] [Footnote 17: J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_ (New York, 1837), pp. 152-155.] [Footnote 18: Editorial in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 12, 1854.] The main supply of slaves for hire was probably comprised of the husbands and sons, and sometimes the daughters, of the cooks and housemaids of the merchants, lawyers and the like whose need of servants was limited but who in many cases made a point of owning their slaves in families. On the other hand, many townsmen whose capital was scant or whose need was temporary used hired slaves even for their kitchen work; and sometimes the filling of the demand involved the transfer of a slave from one town to another. Thus an innkeeper of Clarkesville, a summer resort in the Georgia mountains, published in the distant newspapers of Athens and Augusta in 1838 his offer of liberal wages for a first rate cook.[19] This hiring of domestics brought periodic embarrassments to those who depended upon them. A Virginia clergyman who found his wife and himself doing their own chores "in the interval between the hegira of the old hirelings and the coming of the new"[20] was not alone in his plight. At the same season, a Richmond editor wrote: "The negro hiring days have come, the most woeful of the year! So housekeepers think who do not own their own servants; and even this class is but a little better off than the rest, for all darkeydom must have holiday this week, and while their masters and mistresses are making fires and cooking victuals or attending to other menial duties the negroes are promenading the streets decked in their finest clothes."[21] Even the tobacco factories, which were constantly among the largest employers of hired slaves, were closed for lack of laborers from Christmas day until well into January.[22] [Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1838, advertisement ordering its own republication in the Augusta _Constitutionalist_.] [Footnote 20: T.C. Johnson, _Life of Robert L. Dabney_ (Richmond, 1905), p. 120.] [Footnote 21: Richmond _Whig_, quoted in the _Atlanta Intelligencer_, Jan. 5, 1859.] [Footnote 22: Robert Russell, _North America_ (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 151.] That the bargain of hire sometimes involved the consent of more than two parties is suggested by a New Year's colloquy overheard by Robert Russell on a Richmond street: "I was rather amused at the efforts of a market gardener to hire a young woman as a domestic servant. The price her owner put upon her services was not objected to by him, but they could not agree about other terms. The grand obstacle was that she would not consent to work in the garden, even when she had nothing else to do. After taking an hour's walk in another part of town I again met the two at the old bargain. Stepping towards them, I now learned that she was pleading for other privileges--her friends and favourites must be allowed to visit her.[23] At length she agreed to go and visit her proposed home and see how things looked." That the scruples of proprietors occasionally prevented the placing of slaves is indicated by a letter of a Georgia woman anent her girl Betty and a free negro woman, Matilda: "I cannot agree for Betty to be hired to Matilda--her character is too bad. I know her of old; she is a drunkard, and is said to be bad in every respect. I would object her being hired to any colored person no matter what their character was; and if she cannot get into a respectable family I had rather she came home, and if she can't work out put her to spinning and weaving. Her relations here beg she may not be permitted to go to Matilda. She would not be worth a cent at the end of the year."[24] The coördination of demand and supply was facilitated in some towns by brokers. Thus J. de Bellievre of Baton Rouge maintained throughout 1826 a notice in the local _Weekly Messenger_ of "Servants to hire by the day or month," including both artizans and domestics; and in the Nashville city directory of 1860 Van B. Holman advertised his business as an agent for the hiring of negroes as well as for the sale and rental of real estate. [Footnote 23: _Ibid_.] [Footnote 24: Letter of Mrs. S.R. Cobb, Cowpens, Ga., Jan. 9 1843, to her daughter-in-law at Athens. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] Slave wages, generally quoted for the year and most frequently for unskilled able-bodied hands, ranged materially higher, of course, in the cotton belt than in the upper South. Women usually brought about half the wages of men, though they were sometimes let merely for the keep of themselves and their children. In middle Georgia the wages of prime men ranged about $100 in the first decade of the nineteenth century, dropped to $60 or $75 during the war of 1812, and then rose to near $150 by 1818. The panic of the next year sent them down again; and in the 'twenties they commonly ranged between $100 and $125. Flush times then raised them in such wise that the contractors digging a canal on the Georgia coast found themselves obliged in 1838 to offer $18 per month together with the customary weekly rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quarts of corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitute for life and health insurance.[25] The beginning of the distressful 'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville could get its street gang on a scale of $125;[26] at the middle of the decade slaveowners were willing to take almost any wages offered; and in its final year the Georgia Railroad paid only $70 to $75 for section hands. In 1850, however, this rate leaped to $100 and $110, and caused a partial substitution of white laborers for the hired slaves;[27] but the brevity of any relief procured by this recourse is suggested by a news item from Chattanooga in 1852 reporting that the commonest labor commanded a dollar a day, that mechanics were all engaged far in advance, that much building was perforce being postponed, and that all persons who might be seeking employment were urged to answer the city's call.[28] By 1854 the continuing advance began to discommode rural employers likewise. A Norfolk newspaper of the time reported that the current wages of $150 for ordinary hands and $225 for the best laborers, together with life insurance for the full value of the slaves, were so high that prudent farmers were curtailing their operations.[29] At the beginning of 1856 the wages in the Virginia tobacco factories advanced some fifteen per cent. over the rates of the preceding year;[30] and shortly afterward several of these establishments took refuge in the employment of white women for their lighter processes.[31] In 1860 there was a culmination of this rise of slave wages throughout the South, contemporaneous with that of their purchase prices. First-rate hands were engaged by the Petersburg tobacco factories at $225;[32] and in northwestern Louisiana the prime field hands in a parcel of slaves hired for the year brought from $300 to $360 each, and a blacksmith $430.[33] The general average then prevalent for prime unskilled slaves, however, was probably not much above two hundred dollars. While the purchase price of slaves was wellnigh quadrupled in the three score years of the nineteenth century, slave wages were little more than doubled, for these were of course controlled not by the fluctuating hopes and fears of what the distant future might bring but by the sober prospect of the work at hand. [Footnote 25: Advertisement in the Savannah newspapers, reprinted in J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States_ (London, 1842), I, 137.] [Footnote 26: MS. minutes of the board of aldermen, in the town hall at Milledgeville, Ga. Item dated Feb. 23, 1841.] [Footnote 27: Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1850, p. 13.] [Footnote 28: Chattanooga _Advertiser_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, June 6, 1852.] [Footnote 29: Norfolk _Argus_, quoted in _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 12, 1854.] [Footnote 30: Richmond _Dispatch_, Jan., 1856, quoted in G.M. Weston, _Who are and who may be Slaves in the U.S._ (caption).] [Footnote 31: _Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XL, 522.] [Footnote 32: Petersburg _Democrat_, quoted by the Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Jan., 1860.] [Footnote 33: _DeBow's Review_, XXIX, 374.] The proprietors of slaves for hire appear to have been generally as much concerned with questions of their moral and physical welfare as with the wages to be received, for no wage would compensate for the debilitation of the slave or his conversion into an inveterate runaway. The hirers in their turn had the problem, growing more intense with the advance of costs, of procuring full work without resorting to such rigor of discipline as would disquiet the owners of their employees. The tobacco factories found solution in piece work with bonus for excess over the required stint. At Richmond in the middle 'fifties this was commonly yielding the slaves from two to five dollars a month for their own uses; and these establishments, along with all other slave employers, suspended work for more than a week at the Christmas season.[34] [Footnote 34: Robert Russell, _North America_, p. 152.] The hiring of slaves from one citizen to another did not meet all the needs of the town industry, for there were many occupations in which the regular supervision of labor was impracticable. Hucksters must trudge the streets alone; and market women sit solitary in their stalls. If slaves were to follow such callings at all, and if other slaves were to utilize their talents in keeping cobbler and blacksmith shops and the like for public patronage,[35] they must be vested with fairly full control of their own activities. To enable them to compete with whites and free negroes in the trades requiring isolated and occasional work their masters early and increasingly fell into the habit of hiring many slaves to the slaves themselves, granting to each a large degree of industrial freedom in return for a stipulated weekly wage. The rates of hire varied, of course, with the slave's capabilities and the conditions of business in their trades. The practice brought friction sometimes between slaves and owners when wages were in default. An instance of this was published in a Charleston advertisement of 1800 announcing the auction of a young carpenter and saying as the reason of the sale that he had absconded because of a deficit in his wages.[36] Whether the sale was merely by way of punishment or was because the proprietor could not give personal supervision to the carpenter's work the record fails to say. The practice also injured the interests of white competitors in the same trades, who sometimes bitterly complained;[37] it occasionally put pressure upon the slaves to fill out their wages by theft; and it gave rise in some degree to a public apprehension that the liberty of movement might be perverted to purposes of conspiracy. The law came to frown upon it everywhere; but the device was too great a public and private convenience to be suppressed. [Footnote 35: _E. g_., "For sale: a strong, healthy Mulatto Man, about 24 years of age, by trade a blacksmith, and has had the management of a blacksmith shop for upwards of two years" Advertisement in the Alexandria, Va., _Times and Advertiser_, Sept. 26, 1797.] [Footnote 36: Charleston _City Gazette_, May 12, 1800.] [Footnote 37: _E. g., Plantation and Frontier_, II, 367.] To procure the enforcement of such laws a vigilance committee was proposed at Natchez in 1824;[38] but if it was created it had no lasting effect. With the same purpose newspaper campaigns were waged from time to time. Thus in the spring of 1859 the _Bulletin_ of Columbia, South Carolina, said editorially: "Despite the laws of the land forbidding under penalty the hiring of their time by slaves, it is much to be regretted that the pernicious practice still exists," and it censured the citizens who were consciously and constantly violating a law enacted in the public interest. The nearby Darlington _Flag_ endorsed this and proposed in remedy that the town police and the rural patrols consider void all tickets issued by masters authorizing their slaves to pass and repass at large, that all slaves found hiring their time be arrested and punished, and that their owners be indicted as by law provided. The editor then ranged further. "There is another evil of no less magnitude," said he, "and perhaps the foundation of the one complained of. It is that of transferring slave labor from its legitimate field, the cultivation of the soil, into that of the mechanic arts.... Negro mechanics are an ebony aristocracy into which slaves seek to enter by teasing their masters for permission to learn a trade. Masters are too often seduced by the prospect of gain to yield their assent, and when their slaves have acquired a trade are forced to the violation of the law to realize their promised gain. We should therefore have a law to prevent slave mechanics going off their masters' premises to work. Let such a law be passed, and ... there will no longer be need of a law to prohibit slaves hiring their own time," The _Southern Watchman_ of Athens, Georgia, reprinted all of this in turn, along with a subscriber's communication entitled "free slaves." There were more negroes enjoying virtual freedom in the town of Athens, this writer said, than there were _bona fide_ free negroes in any ten counties of the district. "Everyone who is at all acquainted with the character of the slave race knows that they have great ideas of liberty, and in order to get the enjoyment of it they make large offers for their time. And everyone who knows anything of the negro knows that he won't work unless he is obliged to.... The negro thus set free, in nine cases out of ten, idles away half of his time or gambles away what he does make, and then relies on his ingenuity in stealing to meet the demands pay day inevitably brings forth; and this is the way our towns are converted into dens of rogues and thieves."[39] [Footnote 38: Natchez _Mississippian_, quoted in _Le Courrier de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Aug. 25, 1854.] [Footnote 39: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Apr. 20, 1859.] These arguments had been answered long before by a citizen of Charleston. The clamor, said he, was intended not so much to guard the community against theft and insurrection as to diminish the competition of slaves with white mechanics. The strict enforcement of the law would almost wholly deprive the public of the services of jobbing slaves, which were indispensable under existing circumstances. Let the statute therefore be left in the obscurity of the lawyers' bookshelves, he concluded, to be brought forth only in case of an emergency.[40] And so such laws were left to sleep, despite the plaints of self-styled reformers. [Footnote 40: Letter to the editor in the Charleston _City Gazette_, Nov. 1, 1825. To similar effect was an editorial in the Augusta _Chronicle_, Oct. 16, 1851.] That self-hire may often have led to self-purchase is suggested by an illuminating letter of Billy Procter, a slave at Americus, Georgia, in 1854 to Colonel John B. Lamar of whom something has been seen in a foregoing chapter. The letter, presumably in the slave's own hand, runs as follows: "As my owner, Mr. Chapman, has determined to dispose of all his Painters, I would prefer to have you buy me to any other man. And I am anxious to get you to do so if you will. You know me very well yourself, but as I wish you to be fully satisfied I beg to refer you to Mr. Nathan C. Monroe, Dr. Strohecker and Mr. Bogg. I am in distress at this time, and will be until I hear from you what you will do. I can be bought for $1000--and I think that you might get me for 50 Dolls less if you try, though that is Mr. Chapman's price. Now Mas John, I want to be plain and honest with you. If you will buy me I will pay you $600 per year untill this money is paid, or at any rate will pay for myself in two years.... I am fearfull that if you do not buy me, there is no telling where I may have to go, and Mr. C. wants me to go where I would be satisfied,--I promise to serve you faithfully, and I know that I am as sound and healthy as anyone you could find. You will confer a great favour, sir, by Granting my request, and I would be very glad to hear from you in regard to the matter at your earliest convenience."[41] [Footnote 41: MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 41. The writer must have been well advanced in years or else highly optimistic. Otherwise he could not have expected to earn his purchase price within two years.] The hiring of slaves by one citizen to another prevailed to some extent in country as well as town, and the hiring of them to themselves was particularly notable in the forest labors of gathering turpentine and splitting shingles[42]; but slave hire in both its forms was predominantly an urban resort. On the whole, whereas the plantation system cherished slavery as a wellnigh fundamental condition, town industry could tolerate it only by modifying its features to make labor more flexibly responsive to the sharply distinctive urban needs. [Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 153-155.] As to routine control, urban proprietors were less complete masters even of slaves in their own employ than were those in the country. For example, Morgan Brown of Clarksville, Tennessee, had occasion to publish the following notice: "Whereas my negroes have been much in the habit of working at night for such persons as will employ them, to the great injury of their health and morals, I therefore forbid all persons employing them without my special permission in writing. I also forbid trading with them, buying from or selling to them, without my written permit stating the article they may buy or sell. The law will be strictly enforced against transgressors, without respect to persons[43]." [Footnote 43: _Town Gazette and Farmers' Register_ (Clarksville, Tenn.), Aug. 9, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 45, 46.] When broils occurred in which slaves were involved, the masters were likely to find themselves champions rather than judges. This may be illustrated by two cases tried before the town commissioners of Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1831. In the first of these Edward Gary was ordered to bring before the board his slave Nathan to answer a charge of assault upon Richard Mayhorn, a member of the town patrol, and show why punishment should not be inflicted. On the day set Cary appeared without the negro and made a counter charge supported by testimony that Mayhorn had exceeded his authority under the patrol ordinance. The prosecution of the slave was thereupon dropped, and the patrolman was dismissed from the town's employ. The second case was upon a patrol charge against a negro named Hubbard, whose master or whose master's attorney was one Wiggins, reciting an assault upon Billy Woodliff, a slave apparently of Seaborn Jones. Billy being sworn related that Hubbard had come to the door of his blacksmith shop and "abused and bruised him with a rock." Other evidence revealed that Hubbard's grievance lay in Billy's having taken his wife from him. "The testimony having been concluded, Mr. Wiggins addressed the board in a speech containing some lengthy, strengthy and depthy argument: whereupon the board ordered that the negro man Hubbard receive from the marshall ten lashes, moderately laid on, and be discharged."[44] Even in the maintenance of household discipline masters were fain to apply chastisement vicariously by having the town marshal whip their offending servants for a small fee. [Footnote 44: MS. archives in the town hall at Milledgeville, Ga., selected items from which are printed in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 468, 469.] The variety in complexion, status and attainment among town slaves led to a somewhat elaborate gradation of colored society. One stratum comprised the fairly numerous quadroons and mulattoes along with certain exceptional blacks. The men among these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the cast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread, and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This element was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or less irked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could not cross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes on the other hand, with an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, the women frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors, carrying their burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying as great store in their kerchief turbans as their paler cousins did in their beflowered bonnets. The men of this class wore their shreds and patches with an easy swing, doffed their wool hats to white men as they passed, called themselves niggers or darkies as a matter of course, took the joys and sorrows of the day as they came, improvised words to the music of their work, and customarily murdered the Queen's English, all with a true if humble nonchalance and a freedom from carking care. The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more than rudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work days assumed a grandiloquence of manner when they donned their holiday clothes. The gayeties of the colored population were most impressive to visitors from afar. Thus Adam Hodgson wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "I was pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day in their best attire, and was amused with their manners towards each other. They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, and make the most formal and particular inquiries after each other's families."[45] J.S. Buckingham wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays, when the slaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they move about in every thoroughfare, and are generally more gaily dressed than the whites. The females wear white muslin and light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets, ribbons and feathers; some carry reticules on the arm and many are seen with parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchief before them in the most fashionable style. The young men among the slaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed hats, and carry walking-sticks; and from the bowings, curtseying and greetings in the highway one might almost imagine one's self to be at Hayti and think that the coloured people had got possession of the town and held sway, while the whites were living among them by sufferance."[46] Olmsted in his turn found the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the whites,[47] and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia. The town ordinances, while commonly strict in regard to the police of slaves for the rest of the year, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festive assemblies at Christmas tide. [Footnote 45: Adam Hodgson, _Letters from North America_, I, 97.] [Footnote 46: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States_, II, 427.] [Footnote 47: _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 101, 103. Cf. also _DeBow's Review_, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199.] Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasional complaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, among matters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grog shops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night, in spite of the prohibitions of the law.[48] A citizen of Charleston protested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form of dissipation. "There are," said he, "sometimes every evening in the week, funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes ... who disturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of burying grounds in Pitt street near Boundary street. It appears to be a jubilee for every slave in the city. They are seen eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters, and such is frequently the crowd and noise made by them that carriages cannot safely be driven that way."[49] [Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 153.] [Footnote 49: Letter of a citizen in the _Southern Patriot_, quoted in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., 1914), p. 144.] The operations of urban constables and police courts are exemplified in some official statistics of Charleston. In the year ending September 1, 1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all, were followed in 138 cases by prompt magisterial discharge, by fines in 309 cases, and by punishment in the workhouse or by remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264 of the remainder. The mayor said in summary: "Of the 573 slaves fined or committed to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for being out at night without tickets or being found in the dram shops or other unlawful places. The fines imposed did not in general exceed $1, and where corporal punishment was inflicted it was always moderate. It is worthy to remark that of the 460 cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 were prosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303 cases, and in 118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by a previous examination 421 suits." Arrests of colored freemen in the same period numbered 78, of which 27 were followed by discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentence to the workhouse, and 10 by remandment. In the second year following, the slave and free negro arrests for being "out after the beating of the tattoo without tickets, fighting and rioting in the streets, following military companies, walking on the battery contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or other violation of the city and state laws" advanced for some unexplained reason to an aggregate of 1424. Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged after examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines were paid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners or guardians, 115 were runaways who were duly returned to their masters or otherwise disposed of according to law, and the remaining 252 were delivered on their owners' orders.[50] [Footnote 50: Official reports quoted in H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of Slaves in South Carolina_, pp. 49, 50.] At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the public whipping of negro offenders at prominent points on the city streets, but complaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[51] had brought its discontinuance. For the punishment of misdemeanants under sentences to hard labor a treadmill was instituted in the workhouse;[52] and the ensuing substitution of labor for the lash met warm official commendation.[53] [Footnote 51: _Columbian Herald_ (Charleston), June 26, 1788.] [Footnote 52: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 2, 1826.] [Footnote 53: Grand jury presentments, _ibid_., May 15, 1826.] In church affairs the two races adhered to the same faiths, but their worship tended slowly to segregate. A few negroes habitually participated with the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal rituals, or listened to the long and logical sermons of the Presbyterians. Larger numbers occupied the pews appointed for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptist whites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with their own tastes. But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint. The white preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing of the negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptu eloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when dignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their own manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemly conduct.[54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding of separate congregations to which the white ministers occasionally preached and in which white laymen often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonly filled by blacks alone. There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiar talent for "'rousements" and the prayer leader might beseech the Almighty in tones to reach His ears though afar off. There the sisters might sway and croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur the spokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. There not only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead of the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermon would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm. [Footnote 54: A Methodist preacher wrote of an episode at Wilmington: "On one occasion I took a summary process with a certain black woman who in their love-feast, with many extravagant gestures, cried out that she was 'young King Jesus,' I bade her take her seat, and then publicly read her out of membership, stating that we would not have such wild fanatics among us, meantime letting them all know that such expressions were even blasphemous. Poor Aunt Katy felt it deeply, repented, and in a month I took her back again. The effect was beneficial, and she became a rational and consistent member of the church." Joseph Travis, _Autobiography_ (Nashville, 1855), pp. 71, 72.] In some cases the withdrawal of the blacks had the full character of secession. An example in this line had been set in Philadelphia when some of the negroes who had been attending white churches of various denominations were prompted by the antipathy of the whites and by the ambition of the colored leaders to found, in 1791, an African church with a negro minister. In the course of a few years this was divided into congregations of the several sects. Among these the Methodists prospered to such degree that in 1816 they launched the African Methodist Episcopal Church, with congregations in Baltimore and other neighboring cities included within its jurisdiction.[55] Richard Allen as its first bishop soon entered into communication with Morris Brown and other colored Methodists of Charleston who were aggrieved at this time by the loss of their autonomy. In former years the several thousand colored Methodists, who outnumbered by tenfold the whites in the congregations there, had enjoyed a quarterly conference of their own, with the custody of their collections and with control over the church trials of colored members; but on the ground of abuses these privileges were cancelled in 1815. A secret agitation then ensued which led on the one hand to the increase of the negro Methodists by some two thousand souls, and on the other to the visit of two of their leaders to Philadelphia where they were formally ordained for Charleston pastorates. When affairs were thus ripened, a dispute as to the custody of one of their burial grounds precipitated their intended stroke in 1818. Nearly all the colored class leaders gave up their papers simultaneously, and more than three-quarters of their six thousand fellows withdrew their membership from the white Methodist churches. "The galleries, hitherto crowded, were almost completely deserted," wrote a contemporary, "and it was a vacancy that could be _felt_. The absence of their responses and hearty songs were really felt to be a loss to those so long accustomed to hear them.... The schismatics combined, and after great exertion succeeded in erecting a neat church building.... Their organization was called the African Church," and one of its ministers was constituted bishop. Its career, however, was to be short lived, for the city authorities promptly proceeded against them, first by arresting a number of participants at one of their meetings but dismissing them with a warning that their conduct was violative of a statute of 1800 prohibiting the assemblage of slaves and free negroes for mental instruction without the presence of white persons; next by refusing, on the grounds that both power and willingness were lacking, a plea by the colored preachers for a special dispensation; and finally by the seizure of all the attendants at another of their meetings and the sentencing of the bishop and a dozen exhorters, some to a month's imprisonment or departure from the state, others to ten lashes or ten dollars' fine. The church nevertheless continued in existence until 1822 when in consequence of the discovery of a plot for insurrection among the Charleston negroes the city government had the church building demolished. Morris Brown moved to Philadelphia, where he afterward became bishop of the African Church, and the whole Charleston project was ended.[56] The bulk of the blacks returned to the white congregations, where they soon overflowed the galleries and even the "boxes" which were assigned them at the rear on the main floors. Some of the older negroes by special privilege then took seats forward in the main body of the churches, and others not so esteemed followed their example in such numbers that the whites were cramped for room. After complaints on this score had failed for several years to bring remedy, a crisis came in Bethel Church on a Sunday in 1833 when Dr. Capers was to preach. More whites came than could be seated the forward-sitting negroes refused to vacate their seats for them; and a committee of young white members forcibly ejected these blacks At a "love-feast" shortly afterward one of the preachers criticized the action of the committee thereby giving the younger element of the whites great umbrage. Efforts at reconciliation failing, nine of the young men were expelled from membership, whereupon a hundred and fifty others followed them into a new organization which entered affiliation with the schismatic Methodist Protestant Church.[57] Race relations in the orthodox congregations were doubtless thereafter more placid. [Footnote 55: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911), pp. 134-136.] [Footnote 56: Charleston _Courier_, June 9, 1818; Charleston _City Gazette_, quoted in the _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), July 10, 1818; J.L.E.W. Shecut, _Medical and Philosophical Essays_ (Charleston, 1819), p. 34; C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ (Nashville [1857]), pp. 212-214, 232; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, p. 142.] [Footnote 57: C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_, pp. 215-217.] In most of the permanent segregations the colored preachers were ordained and their congregations instituted under the patronage of the whites. At Savannah as early as 1802 the freedom of the slave Henry Francis was purchased by subscription, and he was ordained by white ministers at the African Baptist Church. After a sermon by the Reverend Jesse Peter of Augusta, the candidate "underwent a public examination respecting his faith in the leading doctrines of Christianity, his call to the sacred ministry and his ideas of church government. Giving entire satisfaction on these important points, he kneeled down, when the ordination prayer with imposition of hands was made by Andrew Bryant The ordained ministers present then gave the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Francis, who was forthwith presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by Mr. Holcombe."[58] The Methodists were probably not far behind the Baptists in this policy. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with much smaller numbers of negro co-religionists to care for, followed the same trend in later decades. Thus the presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of $7,700, a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregation to be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian Church of the city. The building had a T shape, the transepts appropriated to the use of white persons. The Sunday school of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirty white men and women as its teaching staff.[59] [Footnote 58: Henry Holcombe ed., _The Georgia Analytical Repository_ (a Baptist magazine of Savannah, 1802), I, 20, 21. For further data concerning Francis and other colored Baptists of his time see the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 60-92.] [Footnote 59: J.H. Thornwell, D.D., _The Rights and Duties of Masters: a sermon preached at the dedication of a church erected at Charleston, S.C. for the benefit and instruction of the colored population_ (Charleston, 1850).] Such arrangements were not free from objection, however, as the Episcopalians of Charleston learned about this time. To relieve the congestion of the negro pews in St. Michael's and St. Philip's, a separate congregation was organized with a few whites included in its membership. While it was yet occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mob demolished Calvary Church which was being built for its accommodation. When the proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further use of his premises the congregation dispersed. The mob's action was said to be in protest against the doings of the "bands" or burial societies among the Calvary negroes.[60] [Footnote 60: _Public Proceedings relating to Calvary Church and the Religious Instruction of Slaves_ (Charleston, 1850).] The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave and free was obstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that it might be perverted to insurrectionary purposes. Thus when at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two free negroes petitioned the Virginia legislature on behalf of themselves and several hundred slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by the whites had not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanction for the creation of a "Baptist African Church," the legislature withheld its permission. In 1841, however, this purpose was in effect accomplished when it was found that a negro church would not be in violation of the law provided it had a white pastor. At that time the First Baptist Church of Richmond, having outgrown its quarters, erected a new building to accommodate its white members and left its old one to the negroes. The latter were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white minister and with the choice of its deacons vested in a white committee. In 1855, when this congregation had grown to three thousand members, the Ebenezer church was established as an offshoot, with a similar plan of government.[61] [Footnote 61: J.B. Earnest, _The Religious Development of the Negro in Virginia_ (Charlottesville, 1914), pp. 72-83. For the similar trend of church segregation in the Northern cities see J.W. Cromwell, _The Negro in American History_ (Washington, 1914). pp. 61-70.] At Baltimore there were in 1835 ten colored congregations, with slave and free membership intermingled, several of which had colored ministers;[62] and by 1847 the number of churches had increased to thirteen or more, ten of which were Methodist.[63] In 1860 there were two or more colored congregations at Norfolk; at Savannah three colored churches were paying salaries of $800 to $1000 to their colored ministers,[64] and in Atlanta a subscription was in progress for the enlargement of the negro church building to relieve its congestion.[65] By this time a visitor in virtually any Southern city might have witnessed such a scene as William H. Russell described at Montgomery:[66] "As I was walking ... I perceived a crowd of very well-dressed negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brick building which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into which white people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, or persons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated much comfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all were slaves. One of my companions went up to a woman in a straw hat, with bright red and green ribbon trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and a rainbow-like gown blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious crinoline, and asked her 'Whom do you belong to?' She replied, 'I b'long to Massa Smith, sar.'" [Footnote 62: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] [Footnote 63: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 206.] [Footnote 64: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New York, 1860), pp. 350, 351.] [Footnote 65: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, July 13, 1859, editorial commending the purpose.] [Footnote 66: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), p. 167.] CHAPTER XXI FREE NEGROES In the colonial period slaves were freed as a rule only when generous masters rated them individually deserving of liberty or when the negroes bought themselves. Typical of the time were the will of Thomas Stanford of New Jersey in 1722 directing that upon the death of the testator's wife his negro man should have his freedom if in the opinion of three neighbors named he had behaved well,[1] and a deed signed by Robert Daniell of South Carolina in 1759 granting freedom to his slave David Wilson in consideration of his faithful service and of £600 currency in hand paid.[2] So long as this condition prevailed, in which the ethics of slaveholding were little questioned, the freed element remained extremely small. [Footnote 1: _New Jersey Archives_, XXIII, 438.] [Footnote 2: MS. among the probate records at Charleston.] The liberal philosophy of the Revolution, persisting thereafter in spite of reaction, not only wrought the legal disestablishment of slavery throughout the North, but prompted private manumissions far and wide.[3] Thus Philip Graham of Maryland made a deed in 1787 reciting his realization that the holding of his "fellow men in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the golden law of God and the unalienable right of mankind as well as to every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place in America," and converting his slaves into servants for terms, the adults to become free at the close of that year and the children as they reached maturity.[4] In the same period, upon his coming of age, Richard Randolph, brother of the famous John, wrote to his guardian: "With regard to the division of the estate, I have only to say that I want not a single negro for any other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every individual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant an animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."[5] The Randolph estate, however, was so cumbered with debts that the desired manumissions could not then be made. At Richard's death in 1796 he left a will of the expected tenor, providing for a wholesale freeing as promptly as it could legally be accomplished by the clearance of the mortgage.[6] In 1795 John Stratton of Norfolk, asserting his "full persuassion that freedom is the natural right of all men," set free his able-bodied slave, Peter Wakefield.[7] Robert K. Moore of Louisville mingled thrift with liberalism by setting free in 1802 two pairs of married slaves because of his conviction that involuntary servitude was wrong, and at the same time binding them by indenture to serve him for some fourteen years longer in consideration of certain small payments in advance and larger ones at the ends of their terms.[8] [Footnote 3: These were restricted for a time in North Carolina, however, by an act of 1777 which recited the critical and alarming state of public affairs as its occasion.] [Footnote 4: MS. transcript in the file of powers of attorney, I, 243, among the county records at Louisville, Ky.] [Footnote 5: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph of Roanoke_ (New York, 1851), I, 63.] [Footnote 6: _DeBow's Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] [Footnote 7: MS. along with many similar documents among the deed files at Norfolk, Va.] [Footnote 8: MSS. in the powers of attorney files, II, 118, 122, 127, at Louisville, Ky.] Manumissions were in fact so common in the deeds and wills of the men of '76 that the number of colored freemen in the South exceeded thirty-five thousand in 1790 and was nearly doubled in each of the next two decades. The greater caution of their successors, reinforced by the rise of slave prices, then slackened the rate of increase to twenty-five and finally to ten per cent. per decade. Documents in this later period, reverting to the colonial basis, commonly recited faithful service or self purchase rather than inherent rights as the grounds for manumission. Liberations on a large scale, nevertheless, were not wholly discontinued. John Randolph's will set free nearly four hundred in 1833;[9] Monroe Edwards of Louisiana manumitted 160 by deed in 1840;[10] and George W.P. Custis of Virginia liberated his two or three hundred at his death in 1857.[11] [Footnote 9: Garland, _Life of Randolph_, II, 150, 151.] [Footnote 10: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 245.] Still other large proprietors while not bestowing immediate liberty made provisions to bring it after the lapse of years. Prominent among these were three Louisianians. Julien Poydras, who died in 1824, ordered his executors to sell his six plantations with their respective staffs under contracts to secure the manumission of each slave after twenty-five years of service to the purchaser, together with an annual pension of $25 to each of those above sixty years of age; and years afterward a nephew of the testator procured an injunction from the supreme court of the state estopping the sale of some of the slaves by one of their purchasers in such way as would hazard the fulfilment of the purpose.[12] Stephen Henderson, a Scotch immigrant who had acquired several sugar plantations, provided as follows, by will made in 1837 and upheld by the courts: ten and twenty slaves respectively were to be chosen by lot at periods five and ten years after his death to be freed and sent to Liberia, and at the end of twenty-five years the rest were to fare likewise, but any who refused to be deported were to be kept as apprentices on the plantations.[13] John McDonogh, the most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, made a unique bargain with his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively to earn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by the overtime work of Saturday afternoons. This labor was to be done in McDonogh's own service, and he was to keep account of their earnings. They were entitled to draw upon this fund upon approved occasions; but since the contract was with the whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash the others must draw theirs _pro rata_, thereby postponing the common day of liberation. Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of the rest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule, and after some delay in embarkation they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, with their late master's benediction. In concluding his public narration in the premises McDonogh wrote: "They have now sailed for Liberia, the land of their fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more virtuous people does not exist in any country."[14] [Footnote 11: _Daily True Delta_ (New Orleans), Dec. 19, 1857.] [Footnote 12: Poydras _vs_. Mourrain, in _Louisiana Reports_, IX, 492. The will is quoted in the decision.] [Footnote 13: _Niles' Register_, LXVIII, 361. The original MS. is filed in will book no. 6 in the New Orleans court house.] [Footnote 14: J.T. Edwards ed., _Some Interesting Papers of John McDonogh_ (McDonoghville, Md., 1898), pp. 49-58.] Among more romantic liberations was that of Pierre Chastang of Mobile who, in recognition of public services in the war of 1812 and the yellow fever epidemic of 1819 was bought and freed by popular subscription;[15] that of Sam which was provided by a special act of the Georgia legislature in 1834 at a cost of $1,800 in reward for his having saved the state capitol from destruction by fire;[16] and that of Prince which was attained through the good offices of the United States government. Prince, after many years as a Mississippi slave, wrote a letter in Arabic to the American consul at Tangier in which he recounted his early life as a man of rank among the Timboo people and his capture in battle and sale overseas. This led Henry Clay on behalf of the Adams administration to inquire at what cost he might be bought for liberation and return. His master thereupon freed him gratuitously, and the citizens of Natchez raised a fund for the purchase of his wife, with a surplus for a flowing Moorish costume in which Prince was promptly arrayed. The pair then departed, in 1828, for Washington _en route_ for Morocco, Prince avowing that he would soon send back money for the liberation of their nine children.[17] [Footnote 15: D.W. Mitchell, _Ten Years in the United States_ (London, 1862), p. 235.] [Footnote 16: Georgia Senate _Journal_ for 1834, p. 25. At a later period the Georgia legislature had occasion to reward another slave, Ransom by name, who while hired from his master by the state had heroically saved the Western and Atlantic Railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee River from destruction by fire. Since official sentiment was now hostile to manumission, it was resolved in 1849 that he be bought by the state and ensured a permanent home; and in 1853 a further resolution directed the chief engineer of the state-owned railroad to pay him just wages during good behavior. Georgia _Acts, 1849-1850_, pp. 416, 417; _1853-1854_, pp. 538, 539. Old citizens relate that a house was built for Ransom on the Western and Atlantic right of way in Atlanta which he continued to occupy until his death many years after the Civil War. For these data I am indebted to Mr. J. Groves Cohen, Secretary of the Western and Atlantic Railroad Commission, Atlanta, Ga.] [Footnote 17: "Letter from a Gentleman of Natchez to a Lady of Cincinnati," in the _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), May 22, 1828. For a similar instance in colonial Maryland see the present work, p. 31.] Most of the negroes who procured freedom remained in the United States, though all of those who gained it by flight and many of those manumitted had to shift their location at the time of changing their status. At least one of the fugitives, however, made known his preference for his native district in a manner which cost him his liberty. After two years in Ohio and Canada he returned to the old plantation in Georgia, where he was welcomed with a command to take up the hoe. Rejecting this implement, he proposed to buy himself if a thousand dollars would suffice. When his master, declining to negotiate, ordered him into custody he stabbed one of the negroes who seized him. At the end of the episode the returned wanderer lay in jail; but where his money was, or whether in truth he had any, is not recorded.[18] Among some of those manumitted and sent out of their original states as by law required, disappointment and homesickness were distressingly keen. A group of them who had been carried to New York in 1852 under the will of a Mr. Cresswell of Louisiana, found themselves in such misery there that they begged the executor to carry them back, saying he might keep them as slaves or sell them--that they had been happy before but were wretched now.[19] [Footnote 18: Cassville, Ga., _Standard_, May 31, 1858, reprinted in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), June 8, 1858.] [Footnote 19: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 90.] The slaves manumitted for meritorious service and those who bought themselves formed together an element of substantial worth in the Southern free colored population. Testamentary endorsement like that which Abel P. Upshur gave on freeing his man David Rich--"I recommend him in the strongest manner to the respect, esteem and confidence of any community in which he may live"[20]--are sufficiently eloquent in the premises. Those who bought themselves were similarly endorsed in many instances, and the very fact of their self purchase was usually a voucher of thrift and sobriety. Many of those freed on either of these grounds were of mixed blood; and to them were added the mulatto and quadroon children set free by their white fathers, with particular frequency in Louisiana, who by virtue oftentimes of gifts in lands, goods and moneys were in the propertied class from the time of their manumission. The recruits joining the free colored population through all of these channels tended, together with their descendants, to be industrious, well-mannered and respected members of society. [Footnote 20: William C. Nell, _The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution_ (Boston, 1855), pp. 215, 216. For a similar item see Garland's _Randolph_, p. 151.] Each locality was likely to have some outstanding figure among these. In Georgia the most notable was Austin Dabney, who as a mulatto youth served in the Revolutionary army and attached himself ever afterward to the white family who saved his life when he had been wounded in battle. The Georgia legislature by special act gave him a farm; he was welcomed in the tavern circle of chatting lawyers whenever his favorite Judge Dooly held court at his home village; and once when the formality of drawing his pension carried him to Savannah the governor of the state, seeing him pass, dragged him from his horse and quartered him as a guest in his house.[21] John Eady of the South Carolina lowlands by a like service in the War for Independence earned a somewhat similar recognition which he retained throughout a very long life.[22] [Footnote 21: George R. Giltner, _Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia_ (New York, 1855), pp. 212-215.] [Footnote 22: Diary of Thomas P. Porcher. MS. in private possession.] Others were esteemed rather for piety and benevolence than for heroic services. "Such," wrote Bishop Capers of the Southern Methodist Church, "were my old friends Castile Selby and John Bouquet of Charleston, Will Campbell and Harry Myrick of Wilmington, York Cohen of Savannah, and others I might name. These I might call remarkable for their goodness. But I use the word in a broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the father of the Methodist church, white and black, in Fayetteville, and the best preacher of his time in that quarter." Evans, a free-born full-blooded black, as Capers went on to relate, had been a shoemaker and licensed preacher in Virginia, but while journeying toward Charleston in search of better employment he had been so struck by the lack of religion and morality among the negroes in Fayetteville that he determined upon their conversion as his true mission in life. When the town authorities dispersed his meetings he shifted his rude pulpit into the woods outside their jurisdiction and invited surveillance by the whites to prove his lack of offence. The palpable improvement in the morals of his followers led erelong to his being invited to preach within the town again, where the white people began to be numerous among his hearers. A regular congregation comprising members of both races was organized and a church building erected. But the white attendance grew so large as to threaten the crowding out of the blacks. To provide room for these the side walls of the church were torn off and sheds built on either flank; and these were the conditions when Capers himself succeeded the aged negro in its pulpit in 1810 and found him on his own score an inspiration. Toward the ruling race, Capers records, Evans was unfailingly deferential, "never speaking to a white but with his hat under his arm; never allowing himself to be seated in their houses.... 'The whites are kind to me and come to hear me preach,' he would say, 'but I belong to my own sort and must not spoil them.' And yet Henry Evans was a Boanerges; and in his duty feared not the face of man." [23] [Footnote 23: W.W. Wightman, _Life of William Capers_ (Nashville, 1858), pp. 124-129.] In the line of intellectual attainment and the like the principal figures lived in the eighteenth century. One of them was described in a contemporary news item which suggests that some journalists then were akin to their successors of more modern times. "There is a Mr. St. George, a Creole, son to the French governor of St. Domingo, now at Paris, who realizes all the accomplishments attributed by Boyle and others to the Admirable Creighton of the Scotch. He is so superior at the sword that there is an edict of the Parliament of Paris to make his engagement in any duel actual death. He is the first dancer (even before the Irish Singsby) in the world. He plays upon seven instruments of music, beyond any other individual. He speaks twenty-six languages, and maintains public thesises in each. He walks round the various circles of science like the master of each; and strange to be mentioned to white men, this Mr. St. George is a mulatto, the son of an African mother."[24] Less happy was the career of Francis Williams of Jamaica, a plaything of the human gods. Born of negro parents who had earned special privilege in the island, he was used by the Duke of Montague in a test of negro mental capacity and given an education in an English grammar school and at Cambridge University. Upon his return to Jamaica his patron sought his appointment as a member of the governor's council but without success; and he then became a schoolmaster and a poet on occasion in the island capital. Williams described himself with some pertinence as "a white man acting under a black skin." His contempt for his fellow negroes and particularly for the mulattoes made him lonely, eccentric, haughty and morose. A Latin panegyric which is alone available among his writings is rather a language exercise than a poem.[25] On the continent Benjamin Banneker was an almanac maker and somewhat of an astronomer, and Phyllis Wheatley of Boston a writer of verses. Both were doubtless more noted for their sable color than for their positive qualities. The wonder of them lay in their ambition and enterprise, not in their eminence among scientific and literary craftsmen at large.[26] Such careers as these had no equivalent in the nineteenth century until its closing decades when Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar and W.E.B. DuBois set new paces in their several courses of endeavor. [Footnote 24: News item dated Philadelphia, Mch. 28, in the _Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), May 19, 1787.] [Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, 447-485; T.H. MacDermott, "Francis Williams," in the _Journal of Negro History_, II, 147-159. The Latin poem is printed in both of these accounts.] [Footnote 26: John W. Cromwell, _The Negro in American History_ (Washington, 1914), pp. 77-97.] Of a more normal but less conspicuous type was Jehu Jones, the colored proprietor of one of Charleston's most popular hotels who lived in the same manner as his white patrons, accumulated property to the value of some forty thousand dollars, and maintained a reputation for high business talent and integrity.[27] At New Orleans men of such a sort were quite numerous. Prominent among them by reason of his wealth and philanthropy was Thomy Lafon, a merchant and money lender who systematically accumulated houses and lots during a lifetime extending both before and after the Civil War and whose possessions when he died at the age of eighty-two were appraised at nearly half a million dollars.[28] Prosperity and good repute, however, did not always go hand in hand. The keeper of the one good tavern in the Louisiana village of Bayou Sara in 1831 was a colored woman of whom Anne Royall wrote: "This _nigger_ or mulatto was rich, owned the tavern and several slaves, to whom she was a great tyrant. She owned other valuable property and a great deal of money, as report said; and doubtless it is true. She was very insolent, and, I think, drank. It seems one Tague [an Irishman], smitten with her charms and her property, made love to her and it was returned, and they live together as man and wife. She was the ugliest wench I ever saw, and, if possible, he was uglier, so they were well matched."[29] One might ascribe the tone of this description to the tartness of Mrs. Royall's pen were it not that she recorded just afterward that a body-servant of General Ripley who was placed at her command in St. Francisville was "certainly the most accomplished servant I ever saw."[30] [Footnote 27: W.C. Nell, _Colored Patriots_, pp. 244, 245.] [Footnote 28: New Orleans _Picayune_, Dec. 23, 1893. His many charitable bequests are scheduled in the _Picayune_ of a week later.] [Footnote 29: Anne Royall, _Southern Tour_ (Washington, 1831), pp. 87-89.] [Footnote 30: _Ibid_., p. 91.] The property of colored freemen oftentimes included slaves. Such instances were quite numerous in pre-revolutionary San Domingo; and some in the British West Indies achieved notoriety through the exposure of cruelties.[31] On the continent a negro planter in St. Paul's Parish, South Carolina, was reported before the close of the eighteenth century to have two hundred slaves as well as a white wife and son-in-law, and the returns of the first federal census appear to corroborate it.[32] In Louisiana colored planters on a considerable scale became fairly numerous. Among them were Cyprien Ricard who bought at a sheriff's sale in 1851 an estate in Iberville Parish along with its ninety-one slaves for nearly a quarter of a million dollars; Marie Metoyer of Natchitoches Parish had fifty-eight slaves and more than two thousand acres of land when she died in 1840; Charles Roques of the same parish died in 1854 leaving forty-seven slaves and a thousand acres; and Martin Donato of St. Landry dying in 1848 bequeathed liberty to his slave wife and her seven children and left them eighty-nine slaves and 4,500 arpents of land as well as notes and mortgages to a value of $46,000.[33] In rural Virginia and Maryland also there were free colored slaveholders in considerable numbers.[34] [Footnote 31: Reverend Charles Peters, _Two Sermons Preached at Dominica, with an appendix containing minutes of evidence of three trials_ (London, 1802), pp. 36-49.] [Footnote 32: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ (London, 1799), p. 602, giving the negro's name as Pindaim. The census returns of 1790 give no such name, but they list James Pendarvis in a group comprising a white man, a free colored person and 123 slaves, and also a Mrs. Persons, free colored, with 136 slaves. She may have been Pindaim's (or Pendarvis') mulatto daughter, while the white man listed in the Pendarvis item was perhaps her husband or an overseer. _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: South Carolina_ (Washington, 1908), pp. 35, 37.] [Footnote 33: For these and other data I am indebted to Professor E.P. Puckett of Central College, Fayette, Mo., who has permitted me to use his monograph, "_Free Negroes in Louisiana_," in manuscript. The arpent was the standard unit of area in the Creole parishes of Louisiana, the acre in the parishes of Anglo-American settlement.] [Footnote 34: Calvin D. Wilson, "Black Masters," in the _North American Review_, CLXXXI, 685-698, and "Negroes who owned Slaves," in the _Popular Science Monthly_, LXXXI, 483-494; John H. Russell, "Colored Freemen as Slave Owners in Virginia," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 233-242.] Slaveholdings by colored townsmen were likewise fairly frequent. Among the 360 colored taxpayers in Charleston in 1860, for example, 130, including nine persons described as of Indian descent, were listed as possessing 390 slaves.[35] The abundance of such holdings at New Orleans is evidenced by the multiplicity of applications from colored proprietors for authority to manumit slaves, with exemption from the legal requirement that the new freedmen must leave the state.[36] A striking example of such petitions was that presented in 1832 by Marie Louise Bitaud, free woman of color, which recited that in the preceding year she had bought her daughter and grandchild at a cost of $700; that a lawyer had now told her that in view of her lack of free relatives to inherit her property, in case of death intestate her slaves would revert to the state; that she had become alarmed at this prospect; and she accordingly begged permission to manumit them without their having to leave Louisiana. The magistrates gave their consent on condition that the petitioner furnish a bond of $500 to insure the support and education of the grandson until his coming of age. This was duly done and the formalities completed.[37] [Footnote 35: _List of the Taxpayers of Charleston for 1860_(Charleston, 1861), part 2.] [Footnote 36: Many of these are filed in the record books of manumissions in the archive rooms of the New Orleans city hall. Some were denied on the ground that proof was lacking that the slaves concerned were natives of the state or that they would be self-supporting in freedom; others were granted.] [Footnote 37: For the use of this MS. petition with its accompanying certificates I am indebted to Mr. J.F. Schindler of New York.] Evidence of slaveholdings by colored freemen occurs also in the bills of sale filed in various public archives. One of these records that a citizen of Charleston sold in 1828 a man slave to the latter's free colored sister at a price of one dollar, "provided he is kindly treated and is never sold, he being an unfortunate individual and requiring much attention." In the same city a free colored man bought a slave sailmaker for $200.[38] At Savannah in 1818 Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800 to Alex Hunter, guardian of the colored freeman Louis Mirault, in trust for him; and in 1833 Anthony Ordingsell, free colored, having obtained through his guardian an order of court, sold a slave woman to the highest bidder for $385.[39] [Footnote 38: MSS. in the files of slave sales in the South Carolina archives at Columbia.] [Footnote 39: MSS. among the county archives at Savannah, Ga.] It is clear that aside from the practice of holding slave relatives as a means of giving them virtual freedom, an appreciable number of colored proprietors owned slaves purely as a productive investment. It was doubtless a group of these who sent a joint communication to a New Orleans newspaper when secession and war were impending: "The free colored population (native) of Louisiana ... own slaves, and they are dearly attached to their native land, ... and they are ready to shed their blood for her defence. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana.... They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought in 1814-'15.... If they have made no demonstration it is because they have no right to meddle with politics, but not because they are not well disposed. All they ask is to have a chance, and they will be worthy sons of Louisiana."[40] Oral testimony gathered by the present writer from old residents in various quarters of the South supports the suggestion of this letter that many of the well-to-do colored freemen tended to prize their distinctive position so strongly as to deplore any prospect of a general emancipation for fear it would submerge them in the great black mass. [Footnote 40: Letter to the editor, signed "A large number of them," in the New Orleans _Daily Delta_, Dec. 28, 1860. Men of this element had indeed rendered service under Jackson in the defence of the city against Pakenham, as Louisianians well knew.] The types discussed thus far were exceptional. The main body of the free negroes were those who whether in person or through their mothers had been liberated purely from sentiment and possessed no particular qualifications for self-directed careers. The former slaves of Richard Randolph who were colonized in accordance with his will as petty landed proprietors near Farmville, Virginia, proved commonly thriftless for half a century afterward;[41] and Olmsted observed of the Virginia free negroes in general that their poverty was not due to the lack of industrial opportunity.[42] Many of those in the country were tenants. George Washington found one of them unprofitable as such;[43] and Robert Carter in 1792 rented farms to several in spite of his overseer's remonstrance that they had no adequate outfit of tools and teams, and against his neighbors' protests.[44] Not a few indeed were mere squatters on waste lands. A Georgia overseer reported in 1840 that several such families had made clearings in the woods of the plantation under his charge, and proposed that rent be required of them;[45] and travellers occasionally came upon negro cabins in fields which had been abandoned by their proprietors.[46] The typical rural family appears to have tilled a few acres on its own account, and to have been willing to lend a hand to the whites for wages when they needed service. It was this readiness which made their presence in many cases welcome in a neighborhood. A memorial signed by thirty-eight citizens of Essex County, Virginia, in 1842 in behalf of a freedman might be paralleled from the records of many another community: "We would be glad if he could be permitted to remain with us and have his freedom, as he is a well disposed person and a very useful man in many respects. He is a good carpenter, a good cooper, a coarse shoemaker, a good hand at almost everything that is useful to us farmers."[47] Among the free negroes on the seaboard there was a special proclivity toward the water pursuits of boating, oystering and the like.[48] In general they found a niche in industrial society much on a level with the slaves but as free as might be from the pressure of systematic competition. [Footnote 41: F.N. Watkins, "The Randolph Emancipated Slaves," in _DeBow's Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] [Footnote 42: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 126.] [Footnote 43: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 239.] [Footnote 44: Carter MSS. in the Virginia Historical Society.] [Footnote 45: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 155.] [Footnote 46: _E. g_., F. Cumming, _Tour to the West_, reprinted in Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 336.] [Footnote 47: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 153.] [Footnote 48: _Ibid_., p. 150.] Urban freemen had on the average a somewhat higher level of attainment than their rural fellows, for among them was commonly a larger proportion of mulattoes and quadroons and of those who had demonstrated their capacity for self direction by having bought their own freedom. Recruits of some skill in the crafts, furthermore, came in from the country, because of the advantages which town industry, in sharp contrast with that of the plantations, gave to free labor. A characteristic state of affairs is shown by the official register of free persons of color in Richmond County, Georgia, wherein lay the city of Augusta, for the year 1819[49]. Of the fifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, only seven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specific trades or employments. The prosperity of the group must have been but moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and although an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its minister must have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for no designation of a preacher appears in the list. At Charleston, likewise, according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a total of 239 listed in manual occupations were unclassified laborers, while the great majority were engaged in the shop and building trades. The women again were very numerous in sewing and washing employments, and an appreciable number of them were domestic servants outright.[50] [Footnote 49: _Augusta Chronicle_, Mch. 13, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 143-147.] [Footnote 50: Dawson and DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for 1848_, summarized in the table given on p. 403 of the present work.] In the compendium of the United States census of 1850 there are printed in parallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored males above fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans. In the Northern metropolis there were 3337 enumerated, and in the Southern 1792. The former had 4 colored lawyers and 3 colored druggists while the latter had none of either; and the colored preachers and doctors were 21 to 1 and 9 to 4 in New York's favor. But New Orleans had 4 colored capitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 brokers and 2 collectors, with none of any of these at New York; and 64 merchants, 5 jewelers and 61 clerks to New York's 3, 3 and 7 respectively, and 12 colored teachers to 8. New York had thrice New Orleans' number of colored barbers, and twice as many butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrasted with 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers, tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not in much better proportion. One-third of all New York's colored men, indeed, were unskilled laborers and another quarter were domestic servants, not to mention the many cooks, coachmen and other semi-domestic employees, whereas at New Orleans the unskilled were but a tenth part of the whole and no male domestics were listed. This showing, which on the whole is highly favorable to New Orleans, is partly attributable to the more than fourfold excess of mulattoes over the blacks in its free population, in contrast with a reversed proportion at New York; for the men of mixed blood filled all the places above the rank of artisan at New Orleans, and heavily preponderated in virtually all the classes but that of unskilled laborers. New York's poor showing as regards colored craftsmen, however, was mainly due to the greater discrimination which its white people applied against all who had a strain of negro blood. This antipathy and its consequent industrial repression was palpably more severe at the North in general than in the South. De Tocqueville remarked that "the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated." Fanny Kemble, in her more vehement style, wrote of the negroes in the North: "They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own despised race, scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not tolerated even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society.... All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, the most vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach."[51] Marshall Hall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of that prejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, a prejudice unknown in the South, where the domestic relations between the African and the European are so much more intimate."[52] Olmsted recorded a conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red River steamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "He said that colored people could associate with whites much more easily and comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason he preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from white people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North than in Louisiana."[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who after buying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but had promptly returned. When questioned by his former owner this man said: "Oh, I don't like dat Philadelphy, massa; an't no chance for colored folks dere. Spec' if I'd been a runaway de wite folks dere take care o' me; but I couldn't git anythin' to do, so I jis borrow ten dollar of my broder an' cum back to old Virginny."[54] In Ohio, John Randolph's freedmen were prevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors had bought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in the state;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a public meeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place would not be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke up the school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for colored girls. The legislatures of various Northern states, furthermore, excluded free immigrants as well as discriminating sharply against those who were already inhabitants. Wherever the negroes clustered numerously, from Boston to Philadelphia and Cincinnati, they were not only brow-beaten and excluded from the trades but were occasionally the victims of brutal outrage whether from mobs or individual persecutors.[56] [Footnote 51: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal_ (London, 1863), p. 7.] [Footnote 52: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ (London, 1854), p. 17.] [Footnote 53: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 636.] [Footnote 54: _Ibid_., p. 104.] [Footnote 55: F.U. Quillin, _The Color Line in Ohio_ (Ann Arbor, Mich.), p. 20; _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 143.] [Footnote 56: J.P. Gordy, _Political History of the United States_ (New York, 1902), II, 404, 405; John Daniels, _In Freedom's Birthplace_ (Boston, 1914), pp. 25-29; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911), pp. 143-168, 195-204, containing many details; F.U. Quillin, _The Color Line in Ohio_, pp. 11-87; C.G. Woodson, "The Negroes of Cincinnati Prior to the Civil War," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 1-22; N.D. Harris, _Negro Slavery in Illinois_ (Chicago, 1906), pp. 226-240.] In the South, on the other hand, the laws were still more severe but the practice of the white people was much more kindly. Racial antipathy was there mitigated by the sympathetic tie of slavery which promoted an attitude of amiable patronage even toward the freedmen and their descendants.[57] The tone of the memorials in which many Southern townsmen petitioned for legal exemptions to permit specified free negroes to remain in their communities[58] found no echo from the corresponding type of commonplace unromantic citizens of the North. A few Southern petitions were of a contrasting tenor, it is true, one for example presented to the city council of Atlanta in 1859: "We feel aggrieved as Southern citizens that your honorable body tolerates a negro dentist (Roderick Badger) in our midst; and in justice to ourselves and the community it ought to be abated. We, the residents of Atlanta, appeal to you for justice."[59] But it may readily be guessed that these petitioners were more moved by the interest of rival dentists than by their concern as Southern citizens. Southern protests of another class, to be discussed below, against the toleration of colored freedmen in general, were prompted by considerations of public security, not by personal dislike. [Footnote 57: Cf. N.S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 166, 186-191.] [Footnote 58: _E. g_., J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 152-155.] [Footnote 59: J.H. Martin, _Atlanta and its Builders_ ([Atlanta,] 1902), I, 145.] Although the free colored numbers varied greatly from state to state, their distribution on the two sides of Mason and Dixon's line maintained a remarkable equality throughout the antebellum period. The chief concentration was in the border states of either section. At the one extreme they were kept few by the chill of the climate; at the other by stringency of the law and by the high prices of slave labor which restrained the practice of manumission. Wherever they dwelt, they lived somewhat precariously upon the sufferance of the whites, and in a more or less palpable danger of losing their liberty. Not only were escaped slaves liable to recapture anywhere within the United States, but those who were legally free might be seized on fraudulent claims and enslaved in circumvention of the law, or they might be kidnapped outright. One of those taken by fraud described his experience and predicament as follows in a letter from "Boonvill Missouria" to the governor of Georgia: "Mr. Coob Dear Sir I have Embrast this oppertuniny of Riting a few Lines to you to inform you that I am sold as a Slave for 14 hundard dolars By the man that came to you Last may and told you a Pack of lies to get you to Sine the warrant that he Brought that warrant was a forged as I have heard them say when I was Coming on to this Countrey and Sir I thought that I would write and see if I could get you to do any thing for me in the way of Getting me my freedom Back a Gain if I had some Papers from the Clarkes office in the City of Milledgeville and a little Good addvice in a Letter from you or any kind friend that I could get my freedom a Gain and my name can Be found on the Books of the Clarkes office Mr Bozal Stulers was Clarke when I was thear last and Sir a most any man can City that I Charles Covey is lawfuley a free man ... But at the same time I do not want you to say any thing about this to any one that may acquaint my Preseant mastear of these things as he would quickly sell me and there fore I do not want this known and the men that came after me Carried me to Mempears tenessee and after whiping me untill my Back was Raw from my rump to the Back of my neck sent me to this Place and sold me Pleas to ancer this as soon as you Can and Sir as soon as I can Get my time Back I will pay you all charges if you will Except of it yours in beast Charles Covey Borned and Raized in the City of Milledgeville and a Blacksmith by trade and James Rethearfurd in the City of Macon is my Laller [lawyer?] and can tell you all about these things."[60] [Footnote 60: Letter of Charles Covey to Howell Cobb, Nov. 30, 1853. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., for the use of which I am indebted to Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia. For another instance in which Cobb's aid was asked see the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1911, II, 331-334.] In a few cases claims of ownership were resurrected after a long lapse. That of Alexander Pierre, a New Orleans negro who had always passed as free-born, was the consequence of an affray in which he had worsted another black. In revenge the defeated combatant made the fact known that Pierre was the son of a blind girl who because of her lack of market value had been left by her master many years before to shift for herself when he had sold his other slaves and gone to France. Thereupon George Heno, the heir of the departed and now deceased proprietor, laid claim to the whole Pierre group, comprising the blind mother, Alexander himself, his sister, and that sister's two children. Whether Heno's proceedings at law to procure possession succeeded or failed is not told in the available record.[61] In a kindred case not long afterward, however, the cause of liberty triumphed. About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupée Parish had permitted his slave Eulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; and thereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtual freedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to get official sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring and desiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominal sale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this man proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be a runaway or fugitive."[62] [Footnote 61: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, May 25, 1849.] [Footnote 62: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the New Orleans _True Delta_, Dec. 16, 1854.] Kidnappings without pretense of legal claim were done so furtively that they seldom attained record unless the victims had recourse to the courts; and this was made rare by the helplessness of childhood in some cases and in others by the fear of lashes. Indeed when complexion gave presumption of slave status, as it did, and custody gave color of ownership, the prospect of redress through the law was faint unless the services of some white friend could be enlisted. Two cases made conspicuous by the publication of elaborate narratives were those of Peter Still and Solomon Northrup. The former, kidnapped in childhood near Philadelphia, served as a slave some forty years in Kentucky and northern Alabama, until with his own savings he bought his freedom and returned to his boyhood home. The problem which he then faced of liberating his wife and three children was taken off his hands for a time by Seth Concklin, a freelance white abolitionist who volunteered to abduct them. This daring emancipator duly went to Alabama in 1851, embarked the four negroes on a skiff and carried them down the Tennessee and up the Ohio and the Wabash until weariness at the oars drove the company to take the road for further travel. They were now captured and the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; but Concklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohio by the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procured endorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of New York and New England by which he raised funds enough to buy his family's freedom. At the conclusion of the narrative of their lives Peter and his wife were domestics in a New Jersey boardinghouse, one of their two sons was a blacksmith's apprentice in a neighboring town, the other had employment in a Pennsylvania village, and the daughter was at school in Philadelphia.[63] [Footnote 63: Kate E.R. Pickard, _The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, being the personal recollections of Peter Still and his wife Vina after forty years of slavery_ (Syracuse, 1856). The dialogue in which the book abounds is, of course, fictitious, but the outlines of the narrative and the documents quoted are presumably authentic.] Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington. Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans. Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's commission from the governor of New York. With the assistance of the local authorities Northrup's identity was promptly established, his liberty procured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to his wife and children at Saratoga.[64] [Footnote 64: [David Wilson ed.], _Narrative of Solomon Northrup_ (New York, 1853). Though the books of this class are generally of dubious value this one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantation life and labor are of particular interest.] A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had come from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had been offered passage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de Blanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his papers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston was sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houston accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold to one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of title, refused payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F. Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the British consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed his whole narrative that it might "assist the plaintiff to prove his freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave."[65] [Footnote 65: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, June 1, 1850.] Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66] Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally; but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 there were 83,942 of this class in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large. [Footnote 66: Alexandria, Va., _Advertiser_, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of the society's quarterly meeting; J.D. Paxton, _Letters on Slavery_ (Lexington, Ky., 1833), p. 30, note.] A few free negroes were reduced by public authority to private servitude, whether for terms or for life, in punishment for crime. In Maryland under an act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following two years, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictions ranging from arson to petty larceny.[67] Some others were sold in various states under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even to default of jail fees during imprisonment as fugitive suspects. [Footnote 67: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, pp. 231, 232.] A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state petitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband "from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds William Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859, reciting "That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives a thousand times harder and in more destitution than the slaves of many planters in this district." He accordingly asked permission by special act to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any creditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during which protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master to pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginia archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from $300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature. An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July, 1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio than among the whites. [Footnote 68: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 161, 162.] [Footnote 69: _Ibid_., II, 163, 164.] [Footnote 70: In the absence of permissive laws the self-enslavement of negroes was invalid. Texas Supreme Court _Reports_, XXIV, 560. And a negro who had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retain his free status, though the contract between him and his employer was not thereby voided. North Carolina Supreme Court _Reports_, LX, 434.] [Footnote 71: MSS. in the Virginia State Library.] [Footnote 72: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, p. 577.] [Footnote 73: An instance is given in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Aug. 26, 1830, and another in the New Orleans _Commercial Advertiser_, Oct. 25, 1831. The motives are not stated.] Invitations to American free negroes to try their fortunes in other lands were not lacking. Facilities for emigration to Liberia were steadily maintained by the Colonization Society from 1819 onward;[74] the Haytian government under President Boyer offered special inducements from that republic in 1824;[75] in 1840 an immigration society in British Guiana proffered free transportation for such as would remove thither;[76] and in 1859 Hayti once more sent overtures, particularly to the French-speaking colored people of Louisiana, promising free lands to all who would come as well as free transportation to such as could not pay their passage.[77] But these opportunities were seldom embraced. With the great bulk of those to whom they were addressed the dread of an undiscovered country from whose bourne few travellers had returned puzzled their wills, as it had done Hamlet's, and made them rather bear those ills they had than to fly to others that they knew not of. [Footnote 74: J.H.T. McPherson, _History of Liberia_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, IX, no. 10).] [Footnote 75: _Correspondence relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the Free People of Colour in the United States, together with the instructions to the agent sent out by President Boyer_ (New York, 1824); _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 155-157.] [Footnote 76: _Inducements to the Colored People of the United States to Emigrate to British Guiana, compiled from statements and documents furnished by Mr. Edward Carberry, agent of the immigration society of British Guiana and a proprietor in that colony_. By "A friend to the Colored People" (Boston, 1840); The _Liberator_ (Boston), Feb. 28, 1840, advertisement.] [Footnote 77: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the New Orleans _Picayune_, July 16, 1859, and Oct. 21 and 23, 1860.] Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generally at the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from the white schools and poorly provided with schools of their own.[78] Exclusion of the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close of the war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was made complete by the action of the constitutional convention of North Carolina in 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807 and 1838,[79] was a more palpable grievance against which a convention of colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested.[80] Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites was likewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in the North as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required license and registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions upon movement, education and occupations; and several of them required the procurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for good behavior. [Footnote 78: The schooling facilities are elaborately and excellently described and discussed in C.G. Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_ (New York, 1915).] [Footnote 79: Emil Olbrich, _The Development of Sentiment for Negro Suffrage to 1860_ (University of Wisconsin _Bulletin_, Historical Series, III, no, I).] [Footnote 80: _Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of the People of Colour, held in Philadelphia from the sixth to the eleventh of June_, 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831).] These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressions which they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment which colored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that some of them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularly when white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent. Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excess among the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the colored inmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratio to the free colored population but half as high as did the corresponding prisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios were about six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northern whites respectively.[81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess of actual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for the discriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables, magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negro was doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth under circumstances in which white men went free. The more severe industrial discrimination at the North, which drove large numbers to an alternative of destitution or crime, was furthermore contributive to the special excess of negro criminality there. [Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10,000 of the respective populations was about 2.2 for the whites and 13.0 for the free colored (with slave convicts included) at the South, and 2.5 for the whites and 28.7 for the free colored at the North. _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 166. See also _Southern Literary Messenger_, IX, 340-352; _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 593-595; David Christy, _Cotton Is King_ (Cincinnati, 1855), p. 153; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 155-158.] In some instances the violence of mobs was added to the might of the law. Such was the case at Washington in 1835 when following on the heels of a man's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and his trial within the jail as a precaution to keep him from the mob's clutches, a new report was spread that Beverly Snow, the free mulatto proprietor of a saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken in slurring terms of the wives and daughters of white mechanics as a class. "In a very short time he had more customers than both Brown and Gadsby--but the landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made all through the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increased number of guests, but Snow was still absent." The mob then began to search the houses of his associates for him. In that of James Hutton, another free mulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to a magistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held an organized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee was appointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council held session, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out. Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negro hut and breaking the windows of a negro church.[82] Such outrages appear to have been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racial subordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter. [Footnote 82: Washington _Globe_, about August 14, reprinted in the _North Carolina Standard_, Aug. 27, 1835.] Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatly refrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freeman was one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. They submitted to the régime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course, because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because there were solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes had reason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carry themselves with a quiet conservative dignity. The less prosperous blacks, together with such of their mulatto confrères as were similarly inert, had the satisfaction at least of not being slaves; and those in the South commonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic of both African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends among the whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay in fairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarly their own. The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stress upon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they were doubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among the whites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of these institutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers. There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85] [Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, 1909), p. 6.] [Footnote 84: _Ibid_., pp. 68, 69.] [Footnote 85: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New Orleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officers were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month. Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow members, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love," and to wear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrears of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was the duty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of the official mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was to see to the washing of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work from the lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to have charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members as might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extent of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule. Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of a member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpse and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as sociable as an Irish wake. [Footnote 86: _The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society of Orleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace_ (Caption).] Doubtless to some extent in their lodges, and certainly to a great degree in their daily affairs, the lives of the free colored and the slaves intermingled. Colored freemen, except in the highest of their social strata, took free or slave wives almost indifferently. Some indeed appear to have preferred the unfree, either because in such case the husband would not be responsible for the support of the family or because he might engage the protection of his wife's master in time of need.[87] On the other hand the free colored women were somewhat numerously the prostitutes, or in more favored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereabouts particularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon balls," was a systematized practice.[88] When this had persisted for enough generations to produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtless cut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful though clandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions of some of those who to this day take the seats assigned to colored passengers in the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossing the line" has not in all such breasts been a mastering ambition. [Footnote 87: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 130-133.] [Footnote 88: Albert Phelps, _Louisiana_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 212, 213.] The Southern whites were of several minds regarding the free colored element in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealously disposed on the ground of their competition, the interest and inclination of citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon those whose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, these men shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, the freedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services were enlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. One of the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoes and the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousness of the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety and contending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove allies of the whites.[89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. The general discussion at the South in the premises did not concern the virtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as the influence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connection that the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the ground of their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was more than matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. A citizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91] "It is a melancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities of Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equality with the whites, ... they are chiefly noted for their aversion to labor and proneness to villainy. Men of this class are peculiarly dangerous in a community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness of their manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wicked and deep laid plots." [Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States respecting the institution and existence of Slavery among them_. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1822), pp. 84, 85.] [Footnote 90: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 158.] [Footnote 91: Letter to the editor in the _Louisiana Gazette_, Aug. 12, 1819.] CHAPTER XXII SLAVE CRIME The negroes were in a strange land, coercively subjected to laws and customs far different from those of their ancestral country; and by being enslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprived of that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope of individual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected that their conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whites who were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks, however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and the reckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole well founded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave no special concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt. Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they were commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of serious infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict slave régime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in the premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812 Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 Fannie Micklejohn, charged with the murder of an infant was acquitted; and Tom, convicted of murdering a fellow slave was sentenced to branding on each cheek with the letter M and to thirty-nine lashes on his bare back on each of three successive days, after which he was to be discharged. In 1816 John, a slave of William McGeehee, convicted of the theft of a $100 bill was sentenced to whipping in similar fashion. In 1818 Aleck was found guilty of an assault with intent to murder, and received sentence of fifty lashes on three days in succession. In 1819 Rodney was capitally sentenced for arson. In 1821 Peter, charged with murdering a slave, was convicted of manslaughter and ordered to be branded with M on the right cheek and to be given the customary three times thirty-nine lashes; and Edmund, charged with involuntary manslaughter, was dismissed on the ground that the court had no cognizance of such offense. In 1822 Davis was convicted of assault upon a white person with intent to kill, but his sentence is not recorded. In or about the same year John, a slave of William Robertson, convicted of burglary but recommended to mercy, was sentenced to be branded with T on the right cheek and to receive three times thirty-nine lashes; and on the same day the same slave was sentenced to death for assault upon a white man with intent to kill. In 1825 John Ponder's George when convicted of burglary was recommended by the jury to the mercy of the court but received sentence of death nevertheless; and Stephen was sentenced likewise for murderous assault upon a white man. In 1826 Elleck, charged with assault with intent of murder and rape, was convicted on the first part of the charge only, but received sentence of death. In 1828 Elizabeth Smith's George was acquitted of larceny from the house; and next year Caroline was likewise acquitted on a charge of maiming a white person. Finally, in 1832 Martin, upon pleading guilty to a charge of murderous assault, was given a whipping sentence of the customary thirty-nine lashes on three successive days.[2] [Footnote 1: W.E.B. DuBois, in the _Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science_, XVIII, 132.] [Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of Baldwin County on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences." MS. in the court house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 123-125.] A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave circumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky, charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of four days.[3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because the law declared them to be such when committed by persons of that class. The striking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them are examples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were of sorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of the perpetrators. [Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 1, 1864.] In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume of criminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact that in the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slave convicts at a cost of £15,538 for the compensation of their masters,[4] and that in 1816 some forty such were deported from New York to New Orleans, much to the disquiet of the Louisiana authorities.[5] As for the South, state-wide statistical views with any approach to adequacy are available for two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that the laws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerable impartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In its penitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmates comprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All the slaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving life terms.[6] Classed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3 for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 for poisoning, 5 for attempts to poison, 7 for assault with intent to kill, 2 for stabbing, 3 for shooting, 20 for striking or wounding a white person, 1 for wounding a child, 4 for attempts to rape, and 3 for insurrection.[7] This catalogue is notable for its omissions as well as for its content. While there were four white inmates of the prison who stood convicted of rape, there were no negroes who had accomplished that crime. Likewise as compared with 52 whites and 4 free negroes serving terms for larceny, there were no slave prisoners in that category. Doubtless on the one hand the negro rapists had been promptly put to death, and on the other hand the slaves committing mere theft had been let off with whippings. Furthermore there were no slaves committed for counterfeiting or forgery, horse stealing, slave stealing or aiding slaves to escape. [Footnote 4: _Royal Gazette_ (Kingston, Jamaica), Jan. 29, 1803.] [Footnote 5: Message of Governor Claiborne in the _Journal_ of the Louisiana House of Representatives, 3d legislature, 1st session, p, 22. For this note I am indebted to Mr. V.A. Moody.] [Footnote 6: Under an act of 1854, effective at this time, the owner of any slave executed or imprisoned was to receive indemnity from the state to the extent of two-thirds of the slave's appraised value.] [Footnote 7: _Report of the Board of Control of the Louisiana Penitentiary, January, 1861_ (Baton Rouge, 1861). Among the 22 pardoned in 1860 were 2 slaves who had been sentenced for murder, 2 for arson, and 1 for assault with intent to kill.] The uniquely full view which may be had of the trend of serious crimes among the Virginia slaves is due to the preservation of vouchers filed in pursuance of a law of that state which for many decades required appraisal and payment by the public for all slaves capitally convicted and sentenced to death or deportation. The file extends virtually from 1780 to 1864, except for a gap of three years in the late 1850's.[8] The volume of crime rose gradually decade by decade to a maximum of 242 in the 1820's, and tended to decline slowly thereafter. The gross number of convictions was 1,418, all but 91 of which were of males. For arson there were 90 slaves convicted, including 29 women. For burglary there were 257, with but one woman among them. The highway robbers numbered 15, the horse thieves 20, and the thieves of other sorts falling within the purview of the vouchers 24, with no women in these categories. It would be interesting to know how the slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but this the vouchers fail to tell. [Footnote 8: The MS. vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia State Library. They have been statistically analyzed by the present writer, substantially as here follows, in the _American Historical Review_, XX, 336-340.] For murder there were 346, discriminated as having been committed upon the master 56, the mistress 11, the overseer 11; upon other white persons 120; upon free negroes 7; upon slaves 85, including 12 children all of whom were killed by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of the murderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison, including the administering of ground glass, 40 men and 16 women were convicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman for administering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous assault there were 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon male offenders and only two of which were described as having been directed against colored victims. For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This total of 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but the territorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewater district than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slave crime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; and its notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to the contemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroes among them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at least two cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, if one be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicion of rape," they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentioned among the victims is of course far from proving that these were never violated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the private cognizance of the masters.[9] A Delaware instance of the sort attained record through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had run away after being punished. [Footnote 9: Elkton (Md.) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertisement, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122.] For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them in Henrico County in 1800 for participation in Gabriel's revolt, 17 in 1831, mainly in Southampton County as followers of Nat Turner, and the rest mostly scattering. Among miscellaneous and unclassified cases there was one slave convicted of forgery, another of causing the printing of anti-slavery writings, and 301 sentenced without definite specification of their crimes. Among the vouchers furthermore are incidental records of the killing of a slave in 1788 who had been proclaimed an outlaw, and of the purchase and manumission by the commonwealth of Tom and Pharaoh in 1801 for services connected with the suppression of Gabriel's revolt. As to punishments, the vouchers of the eighteenth century are largely silent, though one of them contains the only unusual sentence to be found in the whole file. This directed that the head of a slave who had murdered a fellow slave be cut off and stuck on a pole at the forks of the road. In the nineteenth century only about one-third of the vouchers record execution. The rest give record of transportation whether under the original sentences or upon commutation by the governor, except for the cases which from 1859 to 1863 were more numerous than any others where the commutations were to labor on the public works. The statistics of rape in Virginia, and the Georgia cases already given, refute the oft-asserted Southern tradition that negroes never violated white women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may be drawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester, Massachusetts in 1768.[10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned to death, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt at rape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governor issued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, a slave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in 1844 a jury in Habersham County, after testimony by the victim and others, found a slave named Dave guilty of rape upon Hester An Dobbs, "a free white female in the peace of God and state of Georgia," and the criminal was duly hanged by the sheriff.[12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rape at Tuscaloosa,[13] and another in Washington County confessed after capture that while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from her horse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circumstances too horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben was sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.[15] In Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into the woods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. The criminal had been caught when the report went to press.[16] [Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by a contemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Man who was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed on the body of one Deborah Metcalfe_" (Boston, 1768).] [Footnote 11: Augusta _Chronicle_, Mch. 29, 1811.] [Footnote 12: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 579, 580.] [Footnote 13: Charleston _Observer_, Nov. 24, 1827.] [Footnote 14: _Ibid_., Nov. 10, 1827.] [Footnote 15: New Orleans _Delta_, June 23, 1849.] [Footnote 16: New Orleans _Bee_, Sept. 27, 1842, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 121, 122.] Other examples will show that lynchings were not altogether lacking in those days in sequel to such crimes. Near the village of Gallatin, Mississippi, in 1843, two slave men entered a farmer's house in his absence and after having gotten liquor from his wife by threats, "they forcibly took from her arms the infant babe and rudely throwing it upon the floor, they threw her down, and while one of them accomplished the fiendish design of a ravisher the other, pointing the muzzle of a loaded gun at her head, said he would blow out her brains if she resisted or made any noise." The miscreants then loaded a horse with plunder from the house and made off, but they were shortly caught by pursuing citizens and hanged. The local editor said on his own score when recounting the episode: "We have ever been and now are opposed to any kind of punishment being administered under the statutes of Judge Lynch; but ... a due regard for candor and the preservation of all that is held most sacred and all that is most dear to man in the domestic circles of life impels us to acknowledge the fact that if the perpetrators of this excessively revolting crime had been burned alive, as was at first decreed, their fate would have been too good for such diabolical and inhuman wretches."[17] [Footnote 17: Gallatin, Miss., _Signal_, Feb. 27, 1843, reprinted in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Mch. 1, 1843.] An editorial in the _Sentinel_ of Columbus, Georgia, described and discussed a local occurrence of August 12, 1851,[18] in a different tone: [Footnote 18: Columbus _Sentinel_, reprinted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, Aug. 17, 1851. This item, which is notable in more than one regard, was kindly furnished by Prof. R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia.] "Our community has just been made to witness the most high-handed and humiliating act of violence that it has ever been our duty to chronicle.... At the May term of the Superior Court a negro man was tried and condemned on the charge of having attempted to commit rape upon a little white girl in this county. His trial was a fair one, his counsel was the best our bar afforded, his jury was one of the most intelligent that sat upon the criminal side of our court, and on patient and honest hearing he was found guilty and sentenced to be hung on Tuesday, the 12th inst. This, by the way, was the second conviction. The negro had been tried and convicted before, but his counsel had moved and obtained a new trial, which we have seen resulted like the first in a conviction. "Notwithstanding his conviction, it was believed by some that the negro was innocent. Those who believed him innocent, in a spirit of mercy, undertook a short time since to procure his pardon; and a petition to that effect was circulated among our citizens and, we believe, very numerously signed. This we think was a great error.... It is dangerous for the people to undertake to meddle with the majesty of the jury trial; and strange as it may sound to some people, we regard the unfortunate denouement of this case as but the extreme exemplification of the very principle which actuated those who originated this petition. Each proceeded from a spirit of discontent with the decisions of the authorized tribunals; the difference being that in the one case peaceful means were used for the accomplishment of mistaken mercy, and in the other violence was resorted to for the attainment of mistaken justice. "The petition was sent to Governor Towns, and on Monday evening last the messenger returned with a full and free pardon to the criminal. In the meantime the people had begun to flock in from the country to witness the execution; and when it was announced that a pardon had been received, the excitement which immediately pervaded the streets was indescribable. Monday night passed without any important demonstration. Tuesday morning the crowd in the streets increased, and the excitement with it. A large and excited multitude gathered early in the morning at the market house, and after numerous violent harangues a leader was chosen, and resolutions passed to the effect that the mob should demand the prisoner at four o'clock in the afternoon, and if he should not be given up he was to be taken by force and executed. After this decision the mob dispersed, and early in the afternoon, upon the ringing of the market bell, it reassembled and proceeded to the jail. The sheriff of the county of course refused to surrender the negro, when he was overpowered, the prison doors broken open, and the unfortunate culprit dragged forth and hung. "These are the facts, briefly and we believe accurately, stated. We do not feel now inclined to comment upon them. We leave them to the public, praying in behalf of our injured community all the charity which can be extended to an act so outraging, so unpardonable." A similar occurrence in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1855 was reported with no expression of regret. A negro who had raped and murdered a young girl there was brought before the superior court in regular session. "When the case was called for trial a motion for change of venue to the county of Greene was granted. This so exasperated the citizens of Sumter (many of whom were in favor of summary punishment in the outset) that a large number of them collected on the 23d. ult., took him out of prison, chained him to a stake on the very spot where the murder was committed, and in the presence of two or three thousand negroes and a large number of white people,[19] burned him alive." This mention of negroes in attendance is in sharp contrast with their palpable absence on similar occasions in later decades. They were present, of course, as at legal executions, by the command of their masters to receive a lesson of deterrence. The wisdom of this policy, however, had already been gravely questioned. A Louisiana editor, for example, had written in comment upon a local hanging: "The practice of sending slaves to witness the execution of their fellows as a terror to them has many advocates, but we are inclined to doubt its efficacy. We took particular pains to notice on this occasion the effects which this horrid spectacle would produce on their minds, and our observation taught us that while a very few turned with loathing from the scene, a large majority manifested that levity and curiosity superinduced by witnessing a monkey show."[20] [Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1855.] [Footnote 20: _Caddo Gazette_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, April 5, 1845.] For another case of lynching, which occurred in White County, Tennessee, in 1858, there is available merely the court record of a suit brought by the owners of the slave to recover pecuniary damages from those who had lynched him. It is incidentally recited, with strong reprehension by the court, that the negro was in legal custody under a charge of rape and murder when certain citizens, part of whom had signed a written agreement to "stand by each other," broke into the jail and hanged the prisoner.[21] [Footnote 21: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 336. For lynchings prompted by other crimes than rape see below, p. 474, footnote 60.] In general the slaveholding South learned of crimes by individual negroes with considerable equanimity. It was the news or suspicion of concerted action by them which alone caused widespread alarm and uneasiness. That actual deeds of rebellion by small groups were fairly common is suggested by the numerous slaves convicted of murdering their masters and overseers in Virginia, as well as by chance items from other quarters. Thus in 1797 a planter in Screven County, Georgia, who had recently bought a batch of newly imported Africans was set upon and killed by them, and his wife's escape was made possible only by the loyalty of two other slaves.[22] Likewise in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1844, when a Mr. Stewart threatened one of his slaves, that one and two others turned upon him and beat him to death;[23] and in Arkansas in 1845 an overseer who was attacked under similar circumstances saved his life only with the aid of several neighbors and through the use of powder and ball.[24] Such episodes were likely to grow as the reports of them flew over the countryside. For instance in 1856 when an unruly slave on a plantation shortly below New Orleans upon being threatened with punishment seized an axe and was thereupon shot by his overseer, the rumor of an insurrection quickly ran to and through the city.[25] [Footnote 22: _Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser_ (Savannah, Ga.), Feb. 24, 1797.] [Footnote 23: Paducah _Kentuckian_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, Apr. 3, 1844.] [Footnote 24: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 1, 1845, citing the Arkansas _Southern Shield_.] [Footnote 25: New Orleans _Daily Tropic_, Feb. 16, 1846.] If all such rumors as this, many of which had equally slight basis, were assembled, the catalogue would reach formidable dimensions. A large number doubtless escaped record, for the newspapers esteemed them "a delicate subject to touch";[26] and many of those which were recorded, we may be sure, have not come to the investigator's notice. A survey of the revolts and conspiracies and the rumors of such must nevertheless be attempted; for their influence upon public thought and policy, at least from time to time, was powerful. [Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 23, 1856, editorial.] Early revolts were of course mainly in the West Indies, for these were long the chief plantation colonies. No more than twenty years after the first blacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on the plantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like number from other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until they were all cut down or captured.[27] In the English islands precedents of conspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous. A plot among the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed and the ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had a similar end.[29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar course until 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number. The governor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporary wrote,[30] "for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, and abundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest kept in a more stricter manner." This quietude continued only until 1692 when three negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy. One of these, on promise of pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own participation therein. The two others were condemned "to be hung in chains on a gibbet till they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned." These endured the torture "for four days without making any confession, but then gave in and promised to confess on promise of life. One was accordingly taken down on the day following. The other did not survive." The tale as then gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form six regiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the forts and arsenal through bribery among their custodians. The governor when reporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishment of the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward to future informers, would make the colony secure.[31] There seems to have been no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 when the blacks rose in great mass and burned more than sixty plantations, as well as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived from neighboring islands and suppressed them.[32] [Footnote 27: J.A. Saco, _Esclavitud en el Nuevo Mondo_ (Barcelona, 1879), pp. 131-133.] [Footnote 28: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_, XXXV.] [Footnote 29: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] [Footnote 30: Charles Lincoln ed., _Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675-1699_ (New York, 1913), pp. 71, 72.] [Footnote 31: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1689-1692_, pp. 732-734.] [Footnote 32: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 17, 1816.] In Jamaica a small outbreak in 1677[33] was followed by another, in Clarendon Parish, in 1690. When these latter insurgents were routed by the whites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearby mountain fastnesses where, under the chieftainship of Cudjoe, they became securely established as a community of marooned freemen. Welcoming runaway slaves and living partly from depredations, they made themselves so troublesome to the countryside that in 1733 the colonial government built forts at the mouths of the Clarendon defiles and sent expeditions against the Maroon villages. Cudjoe thereupon shifted his tribe to a new and better buttressed vale in Trelawney Parish, whither after five years more spent in forays and reprisals the Jamaican authorities sent overtures for peace. The resulting treaty, signed in 1738, gave recognition to the Maroons, assigned them lands and rights of hunting, travel and trade, pledged them to render up runaway slaves and criminals in future, and provided for the residence of an agent of the island government among the Maroons as their superintendent. Under these terms peace prevailed for more than half a century, while the Maroon population increased from 600 to 1400 souls. At length Major James, to whom these blacks were warmly attached, was replaced as superintendent by Captain Craskell whom they disliked and shortly expelled. Tumults and forays now ensued, in 1795, the effect of which upon the sentiment of the whites was made stronger by the calamitous occurrences in San Domingo. Negotiations for a fresh accommodation fell through, whereupon a conquest was undertaken by a joint force of British troops, Jamaican militia and free colored auxiliaries. The prowess of the Maroons and the ruggedness of their district held all these at bay, however, until a body of Spanish hunters with trained dogs was brought in from Cuba. The Maroons, conquered more by fright than by force, now surrendered, whereupon they were transported first to Nova Scotia and thence at the end of the century to the British protectorate in Sierra Leone.[34] Other Jamaican troubles of some note were a revolt in St. Mary's Parish in 1765,[35] and a more general one in 1832 in which property of an estimated value of $1,800,000 was destroyed before the rebellion was put down at a cost of some $700,000 more.[36] There were troubles likewise in various other colonies, as with insurgents in Antigua in 1701[37] and[38] 1736 and Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1752;[39] with maroons in Grenada in 1765,[40] Dominica in 1785[41] and Demarara in[42] 1794; and with conspirators in Cuba in 1825[43] and St. Croix[44] and Porto Rico in 1848.[45] [Footnote 33: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1689-1692_, p. 101.] [Footnote 34: R.C. Dallas, _History of the Maroons_ (London, 1803).] [Footnote 35: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXXVI, 135.] [Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, XLIV, 124.] [Footnote 37: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies_, 1701, pp. 721, 722.] [Footnote 38: _South Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Jan. 29, 1837.] [Footnote 39: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXII, 477.] [Footnote 40: _Ibid_., XXXV, 533.] [Footnote 41: Charleston, S.C., _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Jan. 26, 1786.] [Footnote 42: Henry Bolinbroke, _Voyage to the Demerary_ (Philadelphia, 1813), pp. 200-203.] [Footnote 43: _Louisiana Gazette_, Oct. 12, 1825.] [Footnote 44: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 7, 1848.] [Footnote 45: _Ibid_., Aug. 16 and Dec. 15, 1848.] Everything else of such nature, however, was eclipsed by the prodigious upheaval in San Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution. Under the flag of France the western end of that island had been converted in the course of the eighteenth century from a nest of buccaneers into the most thriving of plantation colonies. By 1788 it contained some 28,000 white settlers, 22,000 free negroes and mulattoes, and 405,000 slaves. It had nearly eight hundred sugar estates, many of them on a huge scale. The soil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that on many fields the sugar-cane would grow perennially from the same roots almost without end. Exports of coffee and cotton were considerable, of sugar and molasses enormous; and the volume was still rapidly swelling by reason of the great annual importations of African slaves. The colony was by far the most valued of the French overseas possessions. Some of the whites were descendants of the original freebooters, and retained the temperament of their forbears; others were immigrant fortune seekers. The white women were less than half as numerous as the men, and black or yellow concubines were common substitutes for wives. The colony was the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and more self-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outside control, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that the colored freemen be kept passive. A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under the old régime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projects in France and to demand representation in the coming States General. But the rapid progress of radical republicanism in that assembly threw most of these into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still to endorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_ at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand the National Assembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," together with its decrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to free persons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in the northern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south. When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative Assembly revoked the former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring all control over negro status to the colonial assemblies. Upon receiving news of this the mulattoes and blacks, with the courage of despair, spread ruin in every district. The whites, driven into the few fortified places, begged succor from France; but the Jacobins, who were now in control at Paris, had a programme of their own. By a decree of April 4, 1792, the Legislative Assembly granted full political equality to colored freemen and provided for the dispatch of Republican commissioners to establish the new régime. The administration of the colony by these functionaries was a travesty. Most of the surviving whites emigrated to Cuba and the American continent, carrying such of their slaves as they could command. The free colored people, who at first welcomed the commissioners, unexpectedly turned against them because of a decree of August 29, 1793, abolishing slavery. At this juncture Great Britain, then at war with the French Republic, intervened by sending an army to capture the colony. Most of the colored freemen and the remaining whites rallied to the flag of these invaders; but the slaves, now commanded by the famous Toussaint L'Ouverture, resisted them effectually, while yellow fever decimated their ranks and paralyzed their energies. By 1795 the two colored elements, the mulattoes who had improvised a government on a slaveholding basis in the south, and the negroes who dominated the north, each had the other alone as an active enemy; and by the close of the century the mulattoes were either destroyed or driven into exile; and Toussaint, while still acknowledging a nominal allegiance to France, was virtual monarch of San Domingo. The peace of Amiens at length permitted Bonaparte to send an army against the "Black Napoleon." Toussaint soon capitulated, and in violation of the amnesty granted him was sent to his death in a French dungeon. But pestilence again aided the blacks, and the war was still raging when the breach of the peace in Europe brought a British squadron to blockade and capture the remnant of the French army. The new black leader, Dessalines, now proclaimed the colony's independence, renaming it Hayti, and in 1804 he crowned himself emperor. In the following year any further conflict with the local whites was obviated by the systematic massacre of their small residue. In the other French islands the developments, while on a much smaller scale, were analogous.[46] [Footnote 46: T. Lothrop Stoddard, _The French Revolution in San Domingo_ (Boston, 1914).] In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of 1712 and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy of the public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had been recurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a mission school by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroes who had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable; and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indians or mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as they contended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-three provided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose the dark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afire and slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfire caused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speed that only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when the plotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape capture; but when the woods were beaten and the town searched next day and an emergency court sat upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than the whole conspiracy had comprised. The prosecuting officer, indeed, hounded one of the prisoners through three trials, to win a final conviction after two acquittals. The maxim that no one may twice be put in jeopardy for the same offense evidently did not apply to slaves in that colony. Of those convicted one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in chains; nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake, one of these being sentenced "to be burned with a slow fire, that he may continue in torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in said fire until he be dead and consumed to ashes"; and several others were saved only by the royal governor's reprieve and the queen's eventual pardon. Such animosity was exhibited by the citizens toward the "catechetical school" that for some time its teacher hardly dared show himself on the streets. The furor gradually subsided, however, and Mr. Neau continued his work for a dozen years longer, and others carried it on after his death.[47] [Footnote 47: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York_, V, 341, 342, 346, 356, 357, 371; _New York Genealogical and Biographical Record_, XXI, 162, 163; New Orleans _Daily Delta_, April 1, 1849; J.A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America_ (New York, 1907), V, pp. 258, 259.] The commotion of 1741 was a panic among the whites of high and low degree, prompted in sequel to a robbery and a series of fires by the disclosures of Mary Burton, a young white servant concerning her master John Hughson, and the confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of many aliases but most commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputable house and a prostitute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duress that Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from the negroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had already effected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, the supreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration in bringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters.[48] Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, and likewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a conspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either to the gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of the slaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives; and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations of detail which the increasingly fluent testimony of Mary Burton received. Some of the confessions, however, were of no avail to those who made them. Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror-stricken at the stake, made somewhat stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay the execution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of tumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number of sentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herself by her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turn out there was no guessing where or when there would be an end of impeachments."[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot several persons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religious principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable practices; at which the judges were very much astonished."[50] This farcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stop the tragic proceedings. [Footnote 48: Daniel Horsmanden, one of the magistrates who sat in these trials, published in 1744 the _Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro and other slaves for burning the city of New York in America, and murdering the Inhabitants_; and this, reprinted under the title, _The New York Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot_ (New York, 1810), is the chief source of knowledge in the premises. See also the contemporary letters of Lieutenant-Governor Clarke in E.B. O'Callaghan, ed., _Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York_, VI, 186, 197, 198, 201-203.] [Footnote 49: _Ibid_., pp. 96-100.] [Footnote 50: _Ibid_., pp. 370-372.] In New Jersey in 1734 a slave at Raritan when jailed for drunkenness and insolence professed to reveal a plot for insurrection, whereupon he and a fellow slave were capitally convicted. One of them escaped before execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration. Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the restoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were punished for arson.[52] [Footnote 51: MS. transcript in the New York Public Library from the New York _Gazette_, Mch. 18, 1734.] [Footnote 52: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.] In the Southern colonies there were no outbreaks in the seventeenth century and but two discoveries of plots, it seems, both in Virginia. The first of these, 1663, in which indented white servants and negro slaves in Gloucester County were said to be jointly involved, was betrayed by one of the servants. The colonial assembly showed its gratification not only by freeing the informer and giving him five thousand pounds of tobacco but by resolving in commemoration of "so transcendant a favour as the preserving all we have from so utter ruin," "that the 13th. of September be annually kept holy, being the day those villains intended to put the plot in execution."[53] The other plot, of slaves alone, in the "Northern Neck" of the colony in 1687, appears to have been of no more than local concern.[54] The punishments meted out on either occasion are unknown. [Footnote 53: Hening, _Virginia Statutes at Large_, II, 204.] [Footnote 54: J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1902), p. 79.] The eighteenth century, with its multiplication of slaves, saw somewhat more frequent plots in its early decades. The discovery of one in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, in 1709 brought thirty-nine lashes to each of three slaves and fifty lashes to a free negro found to be cognizant, and presumably more drastic punishments to two other slaves who were held as ringleaders to await the governor's order. Still another slave who at least for the time being escaped the clutches of the law was proclaimed an outlaw.[55] The discovery of another plot in Gloucester and Middlesex Counties of the same colony in 1723 prompted the assembly to provide for the deportation to the West Indies of seven slave participants.[56] [Footnote 55: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, I, 129, 130.] [Footnote 56: _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1712-1726_, p. 36.] In South Carolina, although depredations by runaways gave acute uneasiness in 1711 and thereabouts, no conspiracy was discovered until 1720 when some of the participants were burnt, some hanged and some banished.[57] Matters were then quiet again until 1739 when on a September Sunday a score of Angola blacks with one Jonny as their leader broke open a store, supplied themselves with arms, and laid their course at once for Florida where they had been told by Spanish emissaries welcome and liberty awaited them. Marching to the beat of drums, slaughtering with ease the whites they came upon, and drawing black recruits to several times their initial number, on the Pon Pon road that day the rebels covered ten prosperous miles. But when at evening they halted to celebrate their exploits with dancing and plundered rum they were set upon by the whites whom couriers had collected. Several were killed in the onslaught, and a few more were captured on the spot. Most of the rest fled back to their cabins, but a squad of ten made their way thirty miles farther on the route to Florida and sold their lives in battle when overtaken. Of those captured on the field or in their quarters some were shot but none were tortured. The toll of lives lost numbered twenty-one whites and forty-four[58] blacks. [Footnote 57: Letter of June 24, 1720, among the MS. transcripts in the state capitol at Columbia of documents in the British Public Record Office.] [Footnote 58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, X, 127; South Carolina Historical Society _Collections_, II, 270; Alexander Hewatt, _Historical Account of South Carolina and Georgia_ (London, 1779), II, 72, 73. Joshua Coffin in his _Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860) listed a revolt at Savannah, Ga., in 1728. But Savannah was not founded until 1733, and it contained virtually no negroes prior to 1750.] Following this and the New York panic of two years later, there was remarkable quiet in race relations in general for a full half century. It was not indeed until the spread of the amazing news from San Domingo and the influx thence of white refugees and their slaves that a new series of disturbances began on the continent. At Norfolk in 1792 some negroes were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly discharged for lack of evidence;[59] and close by at Portsmouth in the next year there were such savage clashes between the newly come French blacks and those of the Virginia stock that citizens were alarmed for their own safety.[60] In Louisiana an uprising on the plantation of Julien Poydras in Pointe Coupée Parish in 1796 brought the execution of a dozen or two negroes and sentences to prison of several whites convicted as their accomplices;[61] and as late as 1811 an outbreak in St. Charles and St. James Parishes was traced in part to San Domingo slaves.[62] [Footnote 59: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 540, 541, 546.] [Footnote 60: _Ibid_., VI, 490, letter of a citizen who had just found four strange negroes hanging from the branches of a tree near his door.] [Footnote 61: C.C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 244 ff.; E.P. Puckett, "Free Negroes in Louisiana" (MS.).] [Footnote 62: M Puckett, _op. cit. Le Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Feb. 11, 1811, has mention of the manumission of a mulatto slave at this time on the ground of his recent valiant defence of his master's house against attacking insurgents.] Gabriel's rising in the vicinity of Richmond, however, eclipsed all other such events on the continent in this period. Although this affair was of prodigious current interest its details were largely obscured by the secrecy maintained by the court and the legislature in their dealings with it. Reports in the newspapers of the time were copious enough but were vague except as to the capture of the leading participants; and the reminiscent journalism of after years was romantic to the point of absurdity. It is fairly clear, however, that Gabriel and other slaves on Thomas H. Prosser's plantation, which lay several miles distant from Richmond, began to brew the conspiracy as early as June, 1800, and enlisted some hundreds of confederates, perhaps more than a thousand, before September 1, the date fixed for its maturity. Many of these were doubtless residents of Richmond, and some it was said lived as far away as Norfolk. The few muskets procured were supplemented by cutlasses made from scythe blades and by plantation implements of other sorts; but the plan of onslaught contemplated a speedy increase of this armament. From a rendezvous six miles from Richmond eleven hundred men in three columns under designated officers were to march upon the city simultaneously, one to seize the penitentiary which then served also as the state arsenal, another to take the powder magazine in another quarter of the town, and the third to begin a general slaughter with such weapons as were already at hand. Things progressed with very little hitch until the very eve of the day set. But then two things occurred, either of which happening alone would probably have foiled the project. On the one hand a slave on Moseley Sheppard's plantation informed his master of the plot; on the other hand there fell such a deluge of rain that the swelling of the streams kept most of the conspirators from reaching the rendezvous. Meanwhile couriers had roused the city, and the rebels assembled could only disperse. Scores of them were taken, including eventually Gabriel himself who eluded pursuit for several weeks and sailed to Norfolk as a stowaway. The magistrates, of course, had busy sessions, but the number of death sentences was less than might have been expected. Those executed comprised Gabriel and five other Prosser slaves along with nineteen more belonging to other masters; and ten others, in scattered ownership, were deported. To provide for a more general riddance of suspected negroes the legislature made secret overtures to the federal government looking to the creation of a territorial reservation to receive such colonists; but for the time being this came to naught. The legislature furthermore created a permanent guard for the capitol, and it liberated at the state's expense Tom and Pharaoh, slaves of the Sheppard family, as reward for their services in helping to foil the plot.[63] [Footnote 63: T.W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat," in the _Atlantic Monthly_, X, 337-345, reprinted in the same author's _Travellers and Outlaws_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 185-214; J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_, p. 92; J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 65; MS. vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments for convicted slaves.] Set on edge by Gabriel's exploit, citizens far and wide were abnormally alert for some time thereafter; and perhaps the slaves here and there were unusually restive. Whether the one or the other of these conditions was most responsible, revelations and rumors were for several years conspicuously numerous. In 1802 there were capital convictions of fourteen insurgent or conspiring slaves in six scattered counties of Virginia;[64] and panicky reports of uprisings were sent out from Hartford and Bertie Counties, North Carolina.[65] In July, 1804, the mayor of Savannah received from Augusta "information highly important to the safety, peace and security" of his town, and issued appropriate orders to the local militia.[66] Among rumors flying about South Carolina in this period, one on a December day in 1805 telling of risings above and below Columbia led to the planting of cannon before the state house there and to the instruction of the night patrols to seize every negro found at large. An over-zealous patrolman thereupon shot a slave who was peacefully following his own master, and was indicted next day for murder. The peaceful passing of the night brought a subsidence of the panic with the coming of day.[67] [Footnote 64: Vouchers as above.] [Footnote 65: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, June 26, 1802.] [Footnote 66: Thomas Gamble, Jr., _History of the City Government of Savannah_ [Savannah, 1900], p. 68.] [Footnote 67: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 881, 882.] In Virginia, again, there were disturbing rumors at one place or another every year or two from 1809 to 1814,[68] but no occurrence of tangible character until the Boxley plot of 1816 in Spottsylvania and Louisa Counties. George Boxley, the white proprietor of a country store, was a visionary somewhat of John Brown's type. Participating in the religious gatherings of the negroes and telling them that a little white bird had brought him a holy message to deliver his fellowmen from bondage, he enlisted many blacks in his project for insurrection. But before the plot was ripe it was betrayed by a slave woman, and several negroes were arrested. Boxley thereupon marched with a dozen followers on a Quixotic errand of release, but on the road the blacks fell away, and he, after some time in hiding, surrendered himself. Six of the negroes after conviction were hanged and a like number transported; but Boxley himself broke jail and escaped.[69] [Footnote 68: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, X, 62, 63, 97, 368.] [Footnote 69: _Ibid_., X, 433-436; _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), Apr. 18 and 24 (Reprinting a report from the _Virginia Herald_ of Mch. 9), and July 12, 1816; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments for convicted slaves.] In the lower South a plot at Camden, South Carolina, in 1816[70] and another at Augusta, Georgia,[71] three years afterward had like plans of setting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of the respective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Both plots were betrayed, and several participants in each were executed. These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot at Charleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types involved, the methods of persuasion used by the leading spirits and the sobriety of the whites on the occasion is one of the most notable of such episodes on record. [Footnote 70: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States, with historical notes of insurrections_ (Charleston, 1822), pp. 75-77; H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_, p. 131; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 151, 152.] [Footnote 71: News item from Augusta in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), June 15, 1819.] Denmark Vesey, brought from Africa in his youth, had bought his freedom with part of a $1500 prize drawn by him in a lottery, and was in this period an independent artisan. Harboring a deep resentment against the whites, however, he began to plan his plot some four years before its maturity. He familiarized himself with the Bible account of the deliverance of the children of Israel, and collected pamphlet and newspaper material on anti-slavery sentiment in England and the North and on occurrences in San Domingo, with all of which on fit occasions he regaled the blacks with whom he came into touch. Arguments based on such data brought concurrence of negroes of the more intelligent sort, prominent among whom were certain functionaries of the African Church who were already nursing grievances on the score of the suppression of their ecclesiastical project by the Charleston authorities.[72] The chief minister of that church, Morris Brown, however, was carefully left out of the conspiracy. In appealing to the more ignorant and superstitious element, on the other hand, the services of Gullah Jack, so called because of his Angola origin, were enlisted, for as a recognized conjuror he could bewitch the recalcitrant and bestow charmed crabs' claws upon those joining the plot to make them invulnerable. In the spring of 1822 things were put in train for the outbreak. The Angolas, the Eboes and the Carolina-born were separately organized under appropriate commanders; arrangements were made looking to the support of the plantation slaves within marching distance of the city; and letters were even sent by the negro cook on a vessel bound for San Domingo with view apparently both to getting assistance from that island and to securing a haven there in case the revolt should prove only successful enough to permit the seizure of the ships in Charleston harbor. Meanwhile the coachmen and draymen in the plot were told off to mobilize the horses in their charge, pikes were manufactured, the hardware stores and other shops containing arms were listed for special attention, and plans were laid for the capture of the city's two arsenals as the first stroke in the revolt. This was scheduled for midnight on Sunday, June 16. [Footnote 72: See above, p. 421.] On May 30 George, the body-servant of Mr. Wilson, told his master that Mr. Paul's William had invited him to join a society which was to make a stroke for freedom. William upon being seized and questioned by the city council made something of a confession incriminating two other slaves, Mingo Harth and Peter Poyas; but these were so staunch in their denials that they were discharged, with confidential slaves appointed to watch them. William was held for a week of solitary confinement, at the end of which he revealed the extensive character of the plot and the date set for its maturity. The city guard was thereupon strengthened; but the lapse of several days in quiet was about to make the authorities incredulous, when another citizen brought them word from another slave of information precisely like that which had first set them on the _qui vive_. This caused the local militia to be called out to stiffen the patrol. Then as soon as the appointed Sunday night had passed, which brought no outbreak, the city council created a special court as by law provided, comprising two magistrates together with five citizens carefully selected for their substantial character and distinguished position. These were William Drayton, Nathaniel Heyward, James R. Pringle, James Legaré and Robert J. Turnbull. More sagacious and responsible men could certainly not have been found. A committee of vigilance was also appointed to assist the court. This court having first made its own rules that no negro was to be tried except in the presence of his master or attorney, that everyone on trial should be heard in his own defense, and that no one should be capitally sentenced on the bare testimony of a single witness, proceeded to the trial of Peter Poyas, Denmark Vesey and others against whom charges had then been lodged. By eavesdropping those who were now convicted and confronting them with their own words, confessions were procured implicating many others who in turn were put on trial, including Gullah Jack whose necromancy could not save him. In all 130 negroes were arrested, including nine colored freemen. Of the whole number, twenty-five were discharged by the committee of vigilance and 27 others by the court. Nine more were acquitted with recommendations with which their masters readily complied, that they be transported. Of those convicted, 34 were deported by public authority and 35 were hanged. In addition four white men indicted for complicity, comprising a German peddler, a Scotchman, a Spaniard and a Charlestonian,[73] were tried by a regular court having jurisdiction over whites and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to twelve months. [Footnote 73: _An Account of the late intended Insurrection among a portion of the Blacks of this City. Published by the Authority of the Corporation of Charleston_ (Charleston, 1822); Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker (the presiding magistrates of the special court), _An Official Report of the Trials of sundry Negroes charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection, with a report of the trials of four white persons on indictments for attempting to excite the slaves to insurrection_ (Charleston, 1822); T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, 1909), pp. 130-136.] A number of Charleston citizens promptly memorialized the state assembly recommending that all free negroes be expelled, that the penalties applicable to whites conspiring with negroes be made more severe, and that the control over the blacks be generally stiffened.[74] The legislature complied except as to the proposal for expulsion. Charlestonians also organized an association for the prevention of negro disturbances; but by 1825 the public seems to have begun to lose its ardor in the premises.[75] [Footnote 74: _Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1822), reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 103-116.] [Footnote 75: Address of the association, in the Charleston _City Gazette_, Aug. 5, 1825.] The next salient occurrence in the series was the outbreak which brought fame to Nat Turner and the devoted Virginia county of Southampton. Nat, a slave who by the custom of the country had acquired the surname of his first master, was the foreman of a small plantation, a Baptist exhorter capable of reading the Bible, and a pronounced mystic. For some years, as he told afterward when in custody, he had heard voices from the heavens commanding him to carry on the work of Christ to make the last to be first and the first last; and he took the sun's eclipse in February, 1831, as a sign that the time was come. He then enlisted a few of his fellows in his project, but proceeded to spend his leisure for several months in prayer and brooding instead of in mundane preparation. When at length on Sunday night, August 21, he began his revolt he had but a petty squad of companions, with merely a hatchet and a broad-axe as weapons, and no definite plan of campaign. First murdering his master's household and seizing some additional equipment, he took the road and repeated the process at whatever farmhouses he came upon. Several more negroes joined the squad as it proceeded, though in at least one instance a slave resisted them in defense of his master's family at the cost of his own life. The absence of many whites from the neighborhood by reason of their attendance at a camp-meeting across the nearby North Carolina line reduced the number of victims, and on the other hand made the rally of the citizens less expeditious and formidable when the alarm had been spread. By sunrise the rebels numbered fifteen, part of whom were mounted, and their outfit comprised a few firearms. Throughout the morning they continued their somewhat aimless roving, slaughtering such white households as they reached, enlisting recruits by persuasion or coercion, and heightening their courage by draughts upon the apple-brandy in which the county, by virtue of its many orchards and stills, abounded. By noon there were some sixty in the straggling ranks, but when shortly afterward they met a squad of eighteen rallying whites, armed like themselves mainly with fowling pieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but a score dispersed. The courage of these whites, however, was so outweighed by their caution that Nat and his fellows were able to continue their marauding course in a new direction, gradually swelling their numbers to forty again. That night, however, a false alarm stampeded their bivouac and again dispersed all the faint-hearted. Nat with his remaining squad then attacked a homestead just before daybreak on Tuesday, but upon repulse by the five white men and boys with several slave auxiliaries who were guarding it they retreated only to meet a militia force which completed the dispersal. All were promptly killed or taken except Nat who secreted himself near his late master's home until his capture was accomplished six weeks afterward. The whites slain by the rebels numbered ten men, fourteen women and thirty-one children. The militia in scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and its vindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks along with the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads. The magistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprising all the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys for the defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed his appointed task. Forty-seven negroes all told were brought before the court. As to the five free blacks included in this number the magistrates, who had only preliminary jurisdiction in their cases, discharged one and remanded four for trial by a higher court. Of the slaves four, and perhaps a fifth regarding whom the record is blank, were discharged without trial, and thirteen more were acquitted. Of those convicted seven were sentenced to deportation, and seventeen with the ringleader among them, to death by hanging. In addition there were several slaves convicted of complicity in neighboring counties.[76] [Footnote 76: W.S. Drewry, _Slave Insurrections in Virginia, 1830-1865_ (Washington, 1900), recounts this revolt in great detail, and gives a bibliography. The vouchers in the Virginia archives record only eleven executions and four deportations of Southampton slaves in this period. It may be that the rest of those convicted were pardoned.] This extraordinary event, occurring as it did after a century's lapse since last an appreciable number of whites on the continent had lost their lives in such an outbreak, set nerves on edge throughout the South, and promptly brought an unusually bountiful crop of local rumors. In North Carolina early in September it was reported at Raleigh that the blacks of Wilmington had burnt the town and slaughtered the whites, and that several thousand of them were marching upon Raleigh itself.[77] This and similarly alarming rumors from Edenton were followed at once by authentic news telling merely that conspiracies had been discovered in Duplin and Sampson Counties and also in the neighborhood of Edenton, with several convictions resulting in each locality.[78] [Footnote 77: News item dated Warrenton, N.C., Sept. 15, 1831, in the New Orleans _Mercantile Advertiser_, Oct. 4, 1831.] [Footnote 78: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Oct. 6, 1831, citing the Fayetteville, N.C. _Observer_ of Sept. 14; _Niles' Register_, XLI, 266.] At Milledgeville, the village capital of Georgia where in the preceding year the newspapers and the town authorities had been fluttered by the discovery of incendiary pamphlets in a citizen's possession,[79] a rumor spread on October 4, 1831, that a large number of slaves had risen a dozen miles away and were marching upon the town to seize the weapons in the state arsenal there. Three slaves within the town, and a free mulatto preacher as well, were seized on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly discharged for lack of evidence, and the city council soon had occasion, because there had been "considerable danger in the late excitement ... by persons carrying arms that were intoxicated" to order the marshal and patrols to take weapons away from irresponsible persons and enforce the ordinance against the firing of guns in the streets.[80] Upon the first coming of the alarm the governor had appointed Captain J.A. Cuthbert, editor of the _Federal Union_, to the military command of the town; and Cuthbert, uniformed and armed to the teeth, dashed about the town all day on his charger, distributing weapons and stationing guards. Upon the passing of the baseless panic Seaton Grantland, customarily cool and sardonic, ridiculed Cuthbert in the _Southern Recorder_ of which he was editor. Cuthbert retorted in his own columns that Grantland's conduct in the emergency had proved him a skulking coward.[81] No blood was shed, even among the editors. [Footnote 79: _Federal Union_, Aug. 7, 1830; American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, I. 469.] [Footnote 80: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 469, 470.] [Footnote 81: _Federal Union_, Oct. 6 and 13 and Dec. 1, 1831.] There were doubtless episodes of such a sort in many other localities.[82] It was evidently to this period that the reminiscences afterward collected by Olmsted applied. "'Where I used to live,'" a backwoodsman formerly of Alabama told the traveller, "'I remember when I was a boy--must ha' been about twenty years ago--folks was dreadful frightened about the niggers. I remember they built pens in the woods where they could hide, and Christmas time they went and got into the pens, 'fraid the niggers was risin'.' 'I remember the same time where we were in South Carolina,' said his wife, 'we had all our things put up in bags, so we could tote 'em if we heerd they was comin' our way.'"[83] [Footnote 82: The discovery of a plot at Shelbyville, Tennessee, was reported at the end of 1832. _Niles' Register_, XLI, 340.] [Footnote 83: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, 1863), p. 203.] Another sort of sequel to the Southampton revolt was of course a plenitude of public discussion and of repressive legislation. In Virginia a flood of memorials poured upon the legislature. Petitions signed by 1,188 citizens in twelve counties asked for provision for the expulsion of colored freemen; others with 398 signatures from six counties proposed an amendment to the United States Constitution empowering Congress to aid Virginia to rid herself of all the blacks; others from two colonization societies and 366 citizens in four counties proposed the removal first of the free negroes and then of slaves to be emancipated by private or public procedure; 27 men of Buckingham and Loudon Counties and others in Albemarle, together with the Society of Friends in Hanover and 347 women, prayed for the abolition of slavery, some on the _post nati_ plan and others without specification of details.[84] The House of Delegates responded by devoting most of its session of that winter to an extraordinarily outspoken and wide-ranging debate on the many phases of the negro problem, reflecting and elaborating all the sentiments expressed in the petitions together with others more or less original with the members themselves. The Richmond press reported the debate in great detail, and many of the speeches were given a pamphlet circulation in addition.[85] The only tangible outcome there and elsewhere, however, was in the form of added legal restrictions upon the colored population, slave and free. But when the fright and fervor of the year had passed, conditions normal to the community returned. On the one hand the warnings of wiseacres impressed upon the would-be problem solvers the maxim of the golden quality of silence, particularly while the attacks of the Northern abolitionists upon the general Southern régime were so active. On the other hand the new severities of the law were promptly relegated, as the old ones had been, to the limbo of things laid away, like pistols, for emergency use, out of sight and out of mind in the daily routine of peaceful industry. [Footnote 84: _The Letter of Appomattox to the People of Virginia: Exhibiting a connected view of the recent proceedings in the House of Delegates on the subject of the abolition of slavery and a succinct account of the doctrines broached by the friends of abolition in debate, and the mischievous tendency of those proceedings and doctrines_ (Richmond, 1832). These letters were first published in the Richmond _Enquirer_, February 4, 1832 et seqq.] [Footnote 85: The debate is summarized in Henry Wilson, _History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_ (Boston, 1872), I, 190-207.] In the remaining ante-bellum decades, though the actual outbreaks were negligible except for John Brown's raid, the discoveries, true or false, and the rumors, mostly unwarranted, were somewhat more frequent than before. Revelations in Madison County, Mississippi, in 1835 shortly before July 4, told of a conspiracy of whites and blacks scheduled for that day as a ramification of the general plot of the Murrell gang recently exposed.[86] A mass meeting thereupon appointed an investigating committee of thirteen citizens with power to apply capital punishment; and several whites together with ten or fifteen blacks were promptly put to death.[87] [Footnote 86: See above, pp. 381, 382.] [Footnote 87: _The Liberator_ (Boston, Mass.), Aug. 8, 1835, quoting the Clinton, Miss., _Gazette_ of July 11.] Widespread rumors at the beginning of the following December that a general uprising was in preparation for the coming holiday season caused the summons of citizens in various Georgia counties to mass meetings which with one accord recommended special precautions by masters, patrols and militia, and appointed committees of vigilance. In this series the resolutions adopted in Washington County are notable especially for the tone of their preamble. Mentioning the method recently followed in Mississippi only to disapprove it, this preamble ran: "We would fain hope that the soil of Georgia may never be reddened or her people disgraced by the arbitrary shedding of human blood; for if the people allow themselves but one participation in such lawless proceedings, no human sagacity can foretell where the overwhelming deluge will be staid or what portions of our state may feel its desolating ruin. This course of protection unhinges every tie of social and civil society, dissolves those guards which the laws throw around property and life, and leaves every individual, no matter how innocent, at the sport of popular passion, the probable object of popular indignation, and liable to an ignominious death. Therefore we would recommend to our fellow-citizens that if any facts should be elicited implicating either white men or negroes in any insurrectionary or abolition movements, that they be apprehended and delivered over to the legal tribunals of the country for full and fair judicial trial."[88] At Clarksville, Tennessee, uneasiness among the citizens on the score of the negroes employed in the iron works thereabout was such that they procured a shipment of arms from the state capital in preparation for special guard at the Christmas season.[89] [Footnote 88: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 11, 1835. At Darien on the Georgia coast Edwin C. Roberts, an Englishman by birth, was committed for trial in the following August for having told slaves they ought to be free and that half of the American people were in favor of their freedom. The local editor remarked when reporting the occurrence: "Mr. Roberts should thank his stars that he did not commence his crusade in some quarters where Judge Lynch presides. Here the majesty of the law is too highly respected to tolerate the jurisdiction of this despotic dignitary." Darien _Telegraph_, Aug. 30, quoted in the _Federal Union_, Sept. 6, 1836.] [Footnote 89: MS. petition with endorsement noting the despatch of arms, in the state archives at Nashville.] In various parts of Louisiana in this period there was a succession of plots discovered. The first of these, betrayed on Christmas Eve, 1835, involved two white men, one of them a plantation overseer, along with forty slaves or more. The whites were promptly hanged, and doubtless some of the blacks likewise.[90] The next, exposed in the fall of 1837, was in the neighborhood of Alexandria. Nine slaves and three free negroes were hanged in punishment,[91] and the negro Lewis who had betrayed the conspiracy was liberated at state expense and was voted $500 to provide for his security in some distant community.[92] The third was in Lafayette and St. Landry Parishes, betrayed in August, 1840, by a slave woman named Lecide who was freed by her master in reward. Nine negroes were hanged. Four white men who were implicated, but who could not be convicted under the laws which debarred slave testimony against whites, were severely flogged under a lynch-law sentence and ordered to leave the state.[93] Rumors of other plots were spread in West Feliciana Parish in the summer of 1841,[94] in several parishes opposite and above Natchez in the fall of 1842,[95] and at Donaldsonville at the beginning of 1843;[96] but each of these in turn was found to be virtually baseless. Meanwhile at Augusta, Georgia, several negroes were arrested in February, 1841, and at least one of them was sentenced to death. A petition was circulated for his respite as an inducement for confession; but other citizens, disquieted by the testimony already given, prepared a counter petition asking the governor to let the law take its course. The plot as described contemplated the seizure of the arsenal and the firing of the city in facilitation of massacre.[97] [Footnote 90: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 331.] [Footnote 91: _Ibid_., LIII, 129.] [Footnote 92: Louisiana, _Acts_ of 1838, p. 118.] [Footnote 93: _Niles' Register_, LXIX, 39, 88; E.P. Puckett, "Free Negroes in Louisiana" (MS.).] [Footnote 94: New Orleans _Bee_, July 23, 29 and 31, 1841.] [Footnote 95: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 212.] [Footnote 96: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, 1843.] [Footnote 97: Letter of Mrs. S.A. Lamar, Augusta, Ga., Feb. 25, 1841, to John B. Lamar at Macon. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] The rest of the 'forties and the first half of the 'fifties were a period of comparative quiet; but in 1855 there were rumors in Dorchester and Talbot Counties, Maryland,[98] and the autumn of 1856 brought widespread disturbances which the Southern whites did not fail to associate with the rise of the Republican Party. In the latter part of that year there were rumors afloat from Williamsburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County in the same state, from various quarters of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, from New Orleans, and from Atlanta and Cassville, Georgia.[99] A typical episode in the period was described by a schoolmaster from Michigan then sojourning in Mississippi. One night about Christmas of 1858 when the plantation homestead at which he was staying was filled with house guests, a courier came in the dead of night bringing news that the blacks in the eastern part of the county had risen in a furious band and were laying their murderous course in this direction. The head of the house after scanning the bulletin, calmly told his family and guests that they might get their guns and prepare for defense, but if they would excuse him he would retire again until the crisis came. The coolness of the host sent the guests back to bed except for one who stood sentry. "The negroes never came."[100] [Footnote 98: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 97.] [Footnote 99: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Dec. 18 and 25, 1856. Some details of the Texas disturbance, which brought death to several negroes, is given in documents printed in F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, pp. 503. 504] [Footnote 100: A. DePuy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 121, 122] The shiver which John Brown's raid sent over the South was diminished by the failure of the blacks to join him, and it was largely overcome by the wave of fierce resentment against the abolitionists who, it was said, had at last shown their true colors. The final disturbance on the score of conspiracy among the negroes themselves was in the summer of 1860 at Dallas, Texas, where in the preceding year an abolitionist preacher had been whipped and driven away. Ten or more fires which occurred in one day and laid much of the town in ruins prompted the seizure of many blacks and the raising of a committee of safety. This committee reported to a public meeting on July 24 that three ringleaders in the plot were to be hanged that afternoon. Thereupon Judge Buford of the district court addressed the gathering. "He stated in the outset that in any ordinary case he would be as far from counselling mob law as any other man, but in the present instance the people had a clear right to take the law in their own hands. He counselled moderation, and insisted that the committee should execute the fewest number compatible with the public safety." [101] [Footnote 101: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 21, 1860, quoting the Nashville _Union_.] On the whole it is hardly possible to gauge precisely the degree of popular apprehension in the premises. John Randolph was doubtless more picturesque than accurate when he said, "the night bell never tolls for fire in Richmond that the mother does not hug the infant more closely to her bosom."[102] The general trend of public expressions laid emphasis upon the need of safeguards but showed confidence that no great disasters were to be feared. The revolts which occurred and the plots which were discovered were sufficiently serious to produce a very palpable disquiet from time to time, and the rumors were frequent enough to maintain a fairly constant undertone of uneasiness. The net effect of this was to restrain that progress of liberalism which the consideration of economic interest, the doctrines of human rights and the spirit of kindliness all tended to promote. [Footnote 102: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_, I, 295.] CHAPTER XXIII THE FORCE OF THE LAW In many lawyers' briefs and court decisions it has been said that slavery could exist only by force of positive legislation.[1] This is not historically valid, for in virtually every American community where it existed at all, the institution was first established by custom alone and was merely recognized by statutes when these came to be enacted. Indeed the chief purpose of the laws was to give sanction and assurance to the racial and industrial adjustments already operative. [Footnote 1: The source of this error lies doubtless in Lord Mansfield's famous but fallacious decision of 1772 in the Somerset case, which is recorded in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, § 548. That decision is well criticized in T.R.R. Cobb, _An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America_ (vol. I, all published, Philadelphia and Savannah, 1858), pp. 163-175. Cobb's treatise, though dealing with slaves as persons only and not as property, is the best of the general analyses of the legal phase of the slaveholding régime. A briefer survey is in the _Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure_, William Mack ed., XXXVI (New York, 1910), 465-495. The works of G.M. Stroud, _A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States_ (Philadelphia, 1827), and William Goodell, _The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice_ (New York, 1853), are somewhat vitiated by the animus of their authors. The many statutes concerning slavery enacted in the several colonies, territories and states are listed and many of them summarized in J.C. Hurd, _The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States_ (Boston, 1858), I, 228-311; II, 1-218. Some hundreds of court decisions in the premises are given in J.D. Wheeler, _A Practical Treatise on the Law of Slavery_ (New York and New Orleans, 1837); and all the thousands of decisions of published record are briefly digested in _The Century Edition of the American Digest_, XLIV (St. Paul, 1903), 853-1152. The development of the slave code in Virginia is traced in J.C. Ballagh, _A History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1902), supplemented by J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913); and the legal régime of slavery in South Carolina at the middle of the nineteenth century is described by Judge J.B. O'Neall in _The Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States_, J.B.D. DeBow ed., II (New Orleans, 1853), 269-292.] As a rule each slaveholding colony or state adopted early in its career a series of laws of limited scope to meet definite issues as they were successively encountered. Then when accumulated experience had shown a community that it had a general problem of regulation on its hands its legislature commonly passed an act of many clauses to define the status of slaves, to provide the machinery of their police, and to prescribe legal procedure in cases concerning them whether as property or as persons. Thereafter the recourse was again to specific enactments from time to time to supplement this general or basic statute as the rise of new circumstances or policies gave occasion. The likeness of conditions in the several communities and the difficulty of devising laws to comply with intricate custom and at the same time to guard against apprehended ills led to much intercolonial and interstate borrowing of statutes. A perfect chain of this sort, with each link a basic police law for slaves in a separate colony or state, extended from Barbados through the southeastern trio of commonwealths on the continent. The island of Barbados, as we have seen, was the earliest of the permanent English settlements in the tropics and one of the first anywhere to attain a definite régime of plantations with negro labor. This made its assembly perforce a pioneer in slave legislation. After a dozen minor laws had been enacted, beginning in 1644, for the control of negroes along with white servants and for the recapture of runaways, the culmination in a general statute came in 1688. Its occasion, as recited in the preamble, was the dependence of plantation industry upon great numbers of negro slaves whose "barbarous, wild and savage nature ... renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the laws, customs and practices of our nation," and the "absolutely necessary consequence that such other constitutions, laws and orders should be in this island framed and enacted for the good regulating and ordering of them as may ... restrain the disorders, rapines and inhumanities to which they are naturally prone and inclined, with such encouragements and allowances as are fit and needful for their support, that ... this island through the blessing of God thereon may be preserved, His Majesty's subjects in their lives and fortunes secured, and the negroes and other slaves be well provided for and guarded against the cruelties and insolences of themselves or other ill-tempered people or owners." The statute itself met the purposes of the preamble unevenly. The slaves were assured merely in annual suits of clothing, and the masters were given claim for pecuniary compensation for slaves inveigled away or illegally killed by other freemen; but the main concern of the statute was with routine control and the punishment of slave malfeasances. No slaves were to leave their masters' premises at any time unless in company with whites or when wearing servants' livery or carrying written passes, and offenders in this might be whipped and taken into custody by any white persons encountering them. No slaves were to blow horns or beat drums; and masters were to have their negro houses searched at frequent intervals for such instruments, as well as for weapons, runaway slaves and stolen goods. Runaways when caught were to be impounded, advertised and restored to their masters upon payment of captors' and custodians' fees. Trading with slaves was restricted for fear of encouraging theft. A negro striking a white person, except in lawful defense of his master's person, family or goods, was criminally punishable, though merely with lashes for a first offense; and thefts to the value of more than a shilling, along with all other serious infractions, were capital crimes. Negro transgressors were to be tried summarily by courts comprising two justices of the peace and three freeholders nearest the crime and were to be punished immediately upon conviction. To dissuade masters from concealing the crimes of their negroes the magistrates were to appraise each capitally convicted slave, within a limit of £25, and to estimate also the damage to the person or property injured by the commission of the crime. The colonial treasurer was then to take the amount of the slave's appraisal from the public funds and after making reimbursement for the injury done, pay the overplus, if any, to the criminal's owner. If it appeared to the magistrates, however, that the crime had been prompted by the master's neglect and the slave's consequent necessity for sustenance, the treasurer was to pay the master nothing. A master killing his own slave wantonly was to be fined £15, and any other person killing a slave illegally was to pay the master double the slave's value, to be fined £25, and to give bond for subsequent good behavior. If a slave were killed by accident the slayer was liable only to suit by the owner. The destruction of a slave's life or limb in the course of punishment by his master constituted no legal offense, nor did the killing of one by any person, when found stealing or attempting a theft by night. Ascertained hiding places of runaway slaves were to be raided by constables and posses, and these were to be rewarded for taking the runaways alive or dead.[2] This act was thenceforward the basic law in the premises as long as slavery survived in the island. [Footnote 2: Richard Hall ed., _Acts Passed in the Island of Barbados from 1643 to 1762 inclusive_ (London. 1764), pp. 112-121.] South Carolina, in a sense the daughter of Barbados and in frequent communication with her, had enacted a series of specific laws of her own devising, when the growth of her slave population prompted the adoption of a general statute for negro police. Thereupon in 1712 her assembly copied virtually verbatim the preamble and some of the ensuing clauses of the Barbadian act of 1688, and added further provisions drawn from other sources or devised for the occasion. This served as her basic law until the shock of the Stono revolt in 1739 prompted the legislature to give the statute a greater elaboration in the following year. The new clauses, aside from one limiting the work which might be required by masters to fourteen and fifteen hours per day in winter and summer respectively, and another forbidding all but servants in livery to wear any but coarse clothing, were concerned with the restraint of slaves, mainly with a view to the prevention of revolt. No slaves were to be sold liquors without their masters' approval; none were to be taught to write; no more than seven men in a group were to travel on the high roads unless in company with white persons; no houses or lands were to be rented to slaves, and no slaves were to be kept on any plantation where no white person was resident.[3] [Footnote 3: Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at Large of South Carolina_, VII, 408 ff.] This act, supplemented by curfew and patrol laws and variously amended in after years, as by the enhancement of penalties for negroes convicted of striking white persons and by the requirement that masters provide adequate food as well as clothing, was never repealed so long as slavery continued to exist in South Carolina. Though its sumptuary clauses, along with various others, were from first to last of no effect, the statute as a whole so commended itself to the thought of slaveholding communities that in 1770 Georgia made it the groundwork of her own slave police; Florida in turn, by acts of 1822 and 1828, adopted the substance of the Georgia law as revised to that period; and in lesser degree still other states gave evidence of the same influence. Complementary legislation in all these jurisdictions meanwhile recognized slaves as property, usually of chattel character and with children always following the mother's condition, debarred negro testimony in court in all cases where white persons were involved, and declared the juridical incapacity of slaves in general except when they were suing for freedom. Contemporaneously and by similar methods, a parallel chain of laws, largely analogous to those here noted, was extended from Virginia, herself a pioneer in slave legislation, to Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina and in a fan-spread to the west as far as Missouri and Texas.[4] [Footnote 4: The beginning of Virginia's pioneer slave code has been sketched in chapter IV above; and the slave legislation of the Northern colonies and states in chapters VI and VII.] Louisiana alone in all the Union, because of her origin and formative experience as a Latin colony, had a scheme of law largely peculiar to herself. The foundation of this lay in the _Code Noir_ decreed by Louis XV for that colony in 1724. In it slaves were declared to be chattels, but those of working age were not to be sold in execution of debt apart from the lands on which they worked, and neither husbands and wives nor mothers and young children were to be sold into separate ownership under any circumstances. All slaves, furthermore, were to be baptized into the Catholic church, and were to be exempt from field work on Sundays and holidays; and their marriages were to be legally recognized. Children, of course, were to follow the status and ownership of their mothers. All slaves were to be adequately clothed and fed, under penalty of confiscation, and the superannuated were to be maintained on the same basis as the able-bodied. Slaves might make business contracts under their masters' approval, but could not sue or be sued or give evidence against whites, except in cases of necessity and where the white testimony was in default. They might acquire property legally recognized as their own when their masters expressly permitted them to work or trade on their personal accounts, though not otherwise. Manumission was restricted only by the requirement of court approval; and slaves employed by their masters in tutorial capacity were declared _ipso facto_ free. In police regards, the travel and assemblage of slaves were restrained, and no one was allowed to trade with them without their masters' leave; slaves were forbidden to have weapons except when commissioned by their masters to hunt; fugitives were made liable to severe punishments, and free negroes likewise for harboring them. Negroes whether slave or free, however, were to be tried by the same courts and by the same procedure as white persons; and though masters were authorized to apply shackles and lashes for disciplinary purpose, the killing of slaves by them was declared criminal even to the degree of murder.[5] [Footnote 5: This decree is printed in _Le Code Noir_ (Paris, 1742), pp. 318-358, and in the Louisiana Historical Society _Collections_, IV, 75-90. The prior decree of 1685 establishing a slave code for the French West Indies, upon which this for Louisiana was modeled, may be consulted in L. Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 158-166.] Nearly all the provisions of this relatively liberal code were adopted afresh when Louisiana became a territory and then a state of the Union. In assimilation to Anglo-American practice, however, such recognition as had been given to slave _peculium_ was now withdrawn, though on the other hand slaves were granted by implication a legal power to enter contracts for self-purchase. Slave marriages, furthermore, were declared void of all civil effect; and jurisdiction over slave crimes was transferred to courts of inferior grade and informal procedure. By way of reciprocation the state of Alabama when framing a new slave code in 1852 borrowed in a weakened form the Louisiana prohibition of the separate sale of mothers and their children below ten years of age. This provision met the praise of citizens elsewhere when mention of it chanced to be published; but no other commonwealth appears to have adopted it.[6] [Footnote 6: _E. g_., Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Feb. 27, 1856.] The severity of the slave laws in the commonwealths of English origin, as compared with the mildness of the Louisiana code, was largely due to the historic possession by their citizens of the power of local self-government. A distant autocrat might calmly decree such regulations as his ministers deemed proper, undisturbed by the wishes and apprehensions of the colonial whites; but assemblymen locally elected and responsive to the fears as well as the hopes of their constituents necessarily reflected more fully the desire of social control, and preferred to err on the side of safety. If this should involve severity of legislative repression for the blacks, that might be thought regrettable and yet be done without a moment's qualm. On the eve of the American Revolution a West Indian writer explained the régime. "Self preservation," said he, "that first and ruling principle of human nature, alarming our fears, has made us jealous and perhaps severe in our _threats_ against delinquents. Besides, if we attend to the history of our penal laws relating to slaves, I believe we shall generally find that they took their rise from some very atrocious attempts made by the negroes on the property of their masters or after some insurrection or commotion which struck at the very being of the colonies. Under these circumstances it may very justly be supposed that our legislatures when convened were a good deal inflamed, and might be induced for the preservation of their persons and properties to pass severe laws which they might hold over their heads to terrify and restrain them."[7] In the next generation an American citizen wrote in similar strain and with like truthfulness: "The laws of the slaveholding states do not furnish a criterion for the character of their present white population or the condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted for the most part in seasons of particular alarm produced by attempts at insurrection, or when the black inhabitants were doubly formidable by reason of the greater proportion which they bore to the whites in number and the savage state and unhappy mood in which they arrived from Africa. The real measure of danger was not understood but after long experience, and in the interval the precautions taken were naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. That these have not all been repealed, or that some of them should be still enforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of legislation, since the evils against which they were intended to guard are yet the subject of just apprehension."[8] [Footnote 7: _Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, or a Defence of the West India Planters_. By a West Indian (Philadelphia, 1773), p. 18, note.] [Footnote 8: Robert Walsh, Jr., _An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America_ (Philadelphia, 1819), p. 405.] Wherever colonial statutes were silent the laws of the mother country filled the gap. It was under the common law of England, for example, that the slaves Mark and Phillis were tried in Massachusetts in 1755 for the poisoning of their master, duly convicted of petit treason, and executed--the woman as the principal in the crime by being burned at the stake, the man as an accessory by being hanged and his body thereafter left for years hanging in chains on Charlestown common.[9] The severity of Anglo-American legislation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, furthermore, was in full accord with the tone of contemporary English criminal law. It is not clear, however, that the great mitigation which benefit of clergy gave in English criminal administration[10] was commensurately applied in the colonies when slave crimes were concerned. Even in England, indeed, servants were debarred in various regards, that of petit treason, for example, from this avenue of relief. On the other hand many American slaves were saved from death at the hands of the law by the tolerant spirit of citizens toward them and by the consideration of the pecuniary loss to be suffered through their execution. A Jamaican statute of 1684 went so far as to prescribe that when several slaves were jointly involved in a capital crime one only was to be executed as an example and the loss caused by his death was to be apportioned among the owners of the several.[11] More commonly the mitigation lay not in the laws themselves but in the general disposition to leave to the discipline of the masters such slave misdeeds as were not regarded as particularly heinous nor menacing to the public security. [Footnote 9: A.C. Goodell, Jr., _The Trial and Execution for Petit Treason of Mark and Phillis_ (Cambridge, 1883), reprinted from the Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XX, 132-157.] [Footnote 10: A.L. Cross, "Benefit of Clergy," in the _American Historical Review_, XXII, 544-565.] [Footnote 11: _Abridgement of the Laws in Force in Her Majesty's Plantations_ (London, 1704), pp. 104-108.] Burnings at the stake, breakings on the wheel and other ferocious methods of execution which were occasionally inflicted by the colonial courts were almost universally discontinued soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century. The general trend of moderation discernible at that time, however, was hampered then and thereafter by the series of untoward events beginning with the San Domingo upheaval and ending with John Brown's raid. In particular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuing Nat Turner's revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislation the whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes, stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing the already limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration, however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to have grown milder as the decades passed. The police ordinances of the several cities and other local jurisdictions were in keeping with the state laws which they supplemented and in some degree duplicated. At New Orleans an ordinance adopted in 1817 and little changed thereafter forbade slaves to live off their masters' premises without written permission, to make any clamorous noise, to show disrespect to any white persons, to walk with canes on the streets unless on account of infirmity, or to congregate except at church, at funerals, and at such dances and other amusements as were permitted for them on Sundays alone and in public places. Each offender was to be tried by the mayor or a justice of the peace after due notice to his master, and upon conviction was to be punished within a limit of twenty-five lashes unless his master paid a fine for him instead.[12] [Footnote 12: D. Augustin, _A General Digest of the Ordinances and Resolutions of the Corporation of New Orleans_ ([New Orleans], 1831), pp. 133-137.] At Richmond an ordinance effective in 1859 had provisions much like those of New Orleans regarding residence, clamor, canes, assemblage and demeanor, and also debarred slaves from the capitol square and other specified public enclosures unless in attendance on white persons or on proper errands, forbade them to ride in public hacks without the written consent of their masters, or to administer medicine to any persons except at their masters' residences and with the masters' consent. It further forbade all negroes, whether bond or free, to possess offensive weapons or ammunition, to form secret societies, or to loiter on the streets near their churches more than half an hour after the conclusion of services; and it required them when meeting, overtaking or being overtaken by white persons on the sidewalks to pass on the outside, stepping off the walk if necessary to allow the whites to pass. It also forbade all free persons to hire slaves to themselves, to rent houses, rooms or grounds to them, to sell them liquors by retail, or drugs without written permits from their masters, or to furnish offensive weapons to negroes whether bond or free. Finally, it forbade anyone to beat a slave unlawfully, under fine of not more than twenty dollars if a white person, or of lashes or fine at the magistrate's discretion in case the offender were a free person of color.[13] [Footnote 13: _The Charters and Ordinances of the City of Richmond_ (Richmond, 1859), pp. 193-200.] Of rural ordinances, one adopted by the parish of West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1828 was concerned only with the organization and functions of the citizens' patrol. As many chiefs of patrol were to be appointed as the parish authorities might think proper, each to be in charge of a specified district, with duties of listing all citizens liable to patrol service, dividing them into proper details and appointing a commander for each squad. Every commander in his turn, upon receiving notice from his chief, was to cover the local beat on the night appointed, searching slave quarters, though with as little disturbance as possible to the inmates, arresting any free negroes or strange whites found where they had no proper authority or business to be, whipping slaves encountered at large without passes or unless on the way to or from the distant homes of their wives, and seizing any arms and any runaway slaves discovered.[14] The police code of the neighboring parish of East Feliciana in 1859 went on further to prescribe trials and penalties for slaves insulting or abusing white persons, to restrict their carrying of guns, and their assemblage, to forbid all slaves but wagoners to keep dogs, to restrict citizens in their trading with slaves, to require the seizure of self-styled free negroes not possessing certificates, and to prescribe that all negroes or mulattoes found on the railroad without written permits be deemed runaway slaves and dealt with as the law regarding such directed.[15] [Footnote 14: _Police Regulations of the Parish of West Baton Rouge (La.), passed at a regular meeting held at the Court House of said Parish on the second and third days of June, A.D. 1828_ (Baton Rouge, 1828), pp. 8-11. For a copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Professor W.L. Fleming of Louisiana State University.] [Footnote 15: D.B. Sanford, _Police Jury Code of the Parish of East Feliciana, Louisiana_ (Clinton, La., 1859), pp. 98-101.] In general, the letter of the law in slaveholding states at the middle of the nineteenth century presumed all persons with a palpable strain of negro blood to be slaves unless they could prove the contrary, and regarded the possession of them by masters as presumptive evidence of legal ownership. Property in slaves, though by some of the statutes assimilated to real estate for certain technical purposes, was usually considered as of chattel character. Its use and control, however, were hedged about with various restraints and obligations. In some states masters were forbidden to hire slaves to themselves or to leave them in any unusual way to their self-direction; and everywhere they were required to maintain their slaves in full sustenance whether young or old, able-bodied or incapacitated. The manumission of the disabled was on grounds of public thrift nowhere permitted unless accompanied with provision for their maintenance, and that of slaves of all sorts was restricted in a great variety of ways. Generally no consent by the slave was required in manumission, though in some commonwealths he might lawfully reject freedom in the form bestowed.[16] Masters might vest powers of agency in their slaves, but when so doing the masters themselves became liable for any injuries or derelictions ensuing. In criminal prosecutions, on the other hand, slaves were considered as responsible persons on their own score and punishable under the laws applicable to them. Where a crime was committed at the master's express command, the master was liable and in some cases the slave also. Slave offenders were commonly tried summarily by special inferior courts, though for serious crimes in some states by the superior courts by regular process. Since the slaves commonly had no funds with which to pay fines, and no liberty of which to be deprived, the penalties imposed upon them for crimes and misdemeanors were usually death, deportation or lashes. Frequently in Louisiana, however, and more seldom elsewhere, convicted slaves were given prison sentences. By the intent of the law their punishments were generally more severe than those applied to white persons for the same offenses. In civil transactions slaves had no standing as persons in court except for the one purpose of making claim of freedom; and even this must usually be done through some friendly citizen as a self-appointed guardian bringing suit for trespass in the nature of ravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted; any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to their masters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although the wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person even in self-defense unless his life or limb were endangered, nor might he in his own person apply to the courts for the redress of injuries, nor generally give evidence except where negroes alone were involved. All white persons on the other hand were permitted, and in some regards required, to exercise police power over the slaves; and their masters in particular were vested with full disciplinary power over them in all routine concerns. If they should flee from their masters' dominion, the force of the state and of other states into which they might escape, and of the United States if necessary, might be employed for their capture and resubjection; and any suspected of being fugitives, though professing to be free, might be held for long periods in custody and in the end, in default of proofs of freedom and of masters' claims, be sold by the authorities at public auction. Finally, affecting slaves and colored freemen somewhat alike, and regardless as usual of any distinction of mulattoes or quadroons from the full-blood negroes, there were manifold restraints of a social character buttressing the predominance and the distinctive privileges of the Caucasian caste. [Footnote 16: _E. g_., Jones, _North Carolina Supreme Court Reports_, VI. 272.] It may fairly be said that these laws for the securing of slave property and the police of the colored population were as thorough and stringent as their framers could make them, and that they left an almost irreducible minimum of rights and privileges to those whose function and place were declared to be service and subordination. But in fairness it must also be said that in adopting this legislation the Southern community largely belied itself, for whereas the laws were systematically drastic the citizens in whose interest they were made and in whose hands their enforcement lay were in practice quite otherwise. It would have required a European bureaucracy to keep such laws fully effective; the individualistic South was incapable of the task. If the regulations were seldom relaxed in the letter they were as rarely enforced in the spirit. The citizens were too fond of their own liberties to serve willingly as martinets in the routine administration of their own laws;[17] and in consequence the marchings of the patrol squads were almost as futile and farcical as the musters of the militia. The magistrates and constables tended toward a similar slackness;[18] while on the other hand the masters, easy-going as they might be in other concerns, were jealous of any infringements of their own dominion or any abuse of their slaves whether by private persons or public functionaries. When in 1787, for example, a slave boy in Maryland reported to his master that two strangers by the name of Maddox had whipped him for killing a dog while Mr. Samuel Bishop had stood by and let them do it, the master, who presumably had no means of reaching the two strangers, wrote Bishop demanding an explanation of his conduct and intimating that if this were not satisfactorily forthcoming by the next session of court, proceedings would be begun against him[19]. While this complainant might not have been able to procure a judgment against a merely acquiescent bystander, the courts were quite ready to punish actual transgressors. In sustaining the indictment of a private citizen for such offense the chief-justice of North Carolina said in 1823: "For all purposes necessary to enforce the obedience of the slave and render him useful as property the law secures to the master a complete authority over him, and it will not lightly interfere with the relation thus established. It is a more effectual guarantee of his right of property when the slave is protected from wanton abuse by those who have no power over him, for it cannot be disputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master's service when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violence of every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by the humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an anomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated in the verdict [the striking of a slave] were not indictable."[20] Likewise the South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1850 endorsed the fining of a public patrol which had whipped the slaves at a quilting party despite their possession of written permission from their several masters. The Court said of the quilting party: "The occasion was a perfectly innocent one, even meritorious.... It would simply seem ridiculous to suppose that the safety of the state or any of its inhabitants was implicated in such an assemblage as this." And of the patrol's limitations: "A judicious freedom in the administration of our police laws for the lower order must always have respect for the confidence which the law reposes in the discretion of the master."[21] [Footnote 17: _E. g_., Letter of "a citizen" in the Charleston _City Gazette_, Aug. 17, 1825.] [Footnote 18: _E. g., L'Abeille_ (New Orleans), Aug. 15, 1841, editorial.] [Footnote 19: Letter signed "R.T.," Port Tobacco, Md., Aug. 19, 1787. MS. in the Library of Congress.] [Footnote 20: The State _v_. Hale, in Hawks, _North Carolina Reports_, V, 582. See similarly Munford, _Virginia Reports_, I, 288.] [Footnote 21: The State _v_. Boozer _et al_., in Strobhart, _South Carolina Law Reports_, V, 21. This is quoted at some length in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 146-148.] The masters were on their private score, however, prone to disregard the law where it restrained their own prerogatives. They hired slaves to the slaves themselves whether legally permitted or not; they sent them on responsible errands to markets dozens of miles away, often without providing them with passes; they sanctioned and encouraged assemblies under conditions prohibited by law; they taught their slaves at will to read and write, and used them freely in forbidden employments. Such practices as these were often noted and occasionally complained of in the press, but they were seldom obstructed. When outside parties took legal steps to interfere in the master's routine administration, indeed, they were prompted probably as often by personal animosity as by devotion to the law. An episode of the sort, where the complainants were envious poorer neighbors, was related with sarcasm and some philosophical moralizing by W.B. Hodgson, of whose plantation something has been previously said, in a letter to Senator Hammond: "I am somewhat 'riled' with Burke. The benevolent neighbors have lately had me in court under indictment for cruel treatment of my fat, lazy, rollicking sambos. For fifty years they have eaten their own meat and massa's too; but inasmuch as rich massa did not _buy_ meat, the _poor Benevolens_ indicted him. So was my friend Thomas Foreman, executor of Governor Troup. My suit was withdrawn; he was acquitted. I have some crude notions about that thing slavery in the end. Its tendency, as with landed accumulations in England, or Aaron's rod, is to swallow up other small rods, and inevitably to attract the benevolence of the smaller ones. You may have two thousand acres of land in a body. That is unfeeling--land is. But a body of a thousand negroes appeals to the finer sentiments of the heart. The agrarian battle is hard to fight. But '_les amis des noirs_' in our midst have the vantage ground, particularly when rejected overseers come in as spies. _C'est un peu dégoutant, mon cher ami_; but I can stand the racket."[22] [Footnote 22: Letter of W.B. Hodgson, Savannah, Ga., June 19, 1859, to J.H. Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress. "Burke" is the county in which Hodgson's plantation lay.] The courts exercising jurisdiction over slaves were of two sorts, those of inferior grade and amateurish character which dealt with them as persons, and those of superior rank and genuine magisterial quality which handled them as property and sometimes, on appeal, as persons as well. These lower courts for the trial of slave crimes had vices in plenty. They were informal and largely ignorant of the law, and they were so quickly convened after the discovery of a crime that the shock of the deed had no time to wane. Such virtues as they sometimes had lay merely in their personnel. The slaveholders of the vicinage who commonly comprised the court were intimately and more or less tolerantly acquainted with negro nature in general, and usually doubtless with the prisoner on trial. Their judgment was therefore likely to be that of informed and interested neighbors, not of jurors carefully selected for ignorance and indifference, a judgment guided more by homely common sense than by the particularities of the law. Their task was difficult, as anyone acquainted with the rambling, mumbling, confused and baffling character of plantation negro testimony will easily believe; and the convictions and acquittals were of course oftentimes erroneous. The remodeling of the system was one of the reforms called for by Southerners of the time but never accomplished. Mistaken acquittals by these courts were beyond correction, for in the South slaves like freemen could not be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Their convictions, on the other hand, were sometimes set aside by higher courts on appeal, or their sentences estopped from execution by the governor's pardon.[23] The thoroughness with which some of the charges against negroes were considered is illustrated in two cases tried before the county court at Newbern, North Carolina, in 1826. In one of these a negro boy was acquitted of highway robbery after the jury's deliberation of several hours; in the other the jury on the case of a free negro woman charged with infanticide had been out for forty-six hours without reaching a verdict when the newspaper dispatch was written.[24] [Footnote 23: The working of these courts and the current criticisms of them are illustrated in H.M. Henry _The Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 58-65.] [Footnote 24: News item from Newbern, N.C., in the Charleston _City Gazette_, May 9, 1826.] The circuit and supreme courts of the several states, though the slave cases which they tried were for the most part concerned only with such dry questions as detinue, trover, bailment, leases, inheritance and reversions, in which the personal quality of the negroes was largely ignored, occasionally rendered decisions of vivid human interest even where matters of mere property were nominally involved. An example occurred in the case of Rhame _vs_. Ferguson and Dangerfield, decided by the South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1839 in connection with a statute enacted by the legislature of that state in 1800 restricting manumissions and prescribing that any slaves illegally set free might be seized by any person as derelicts. George Broad of St. John's Parish, Berkeley County, had died without blood relatives in 1836, bequeathing fourteen slaves and their progeny to his neighbor Dangerfield "in trust nevertheless and for this purpose only that the said John R. Dangerfield, his executors and assigns do permit and suffer the said slaves ... to apply and appropriate their time and labor to their own proper use and behoof, without the intermeddling or interference of any person or persons whomsoever further than may be necessary for their protection under the laws of this state"; and bequeathing also to Dangerfield all his other property in trust for the use of these negroes and their descendants forever. These provisions were being duly followed when on a December morning in 1837 Rebecca Rhame, the remarried widow of Broad's late brother-in-law, descended upon the Broad plantation in a buggy with John J. Singletary whom she had employed for the occasion under power of attorney. Finding no white person at the residence, Singletary ordered the negroes into the yard and told them they were seized in Mrs. Rhame's behalf and must go with him to Charleston. At this juncture Dangerfield, the trustee, came up and demanded Singletary's authority, whereupon the latter showed him his power of attorney and read him the laws under which he was proceeding. Dangerfield, seeking delay, said it would be a pity to drag the negroes through the mud, and sent a boy to bring his own wagon for them. While this vehicle was being awaited Colonel James Ferguson, a dignitary of the neighborhood who had evidently been secretly sent for by Dangerfield, galloped up, glanced over the power of attorney, branded the whole affair as a cheat, and told Dangerfield to order Singletary off the premises, driving him away with a whip if necessary, and to shoot if the conspirators should bring reinforcements. "After giving this advice, which he did apparently under great excitement, Ferguson rode off." Singletary then said that for his part he had not come to take or lose life; and he and his employer departed. Mrs. Rhame then sued Ferguson and Dangerfield to procure possession of the negroes, claiming that she had legally seized them on the occasion described. At the trial in the circuit court, Singletary rehearsed the seizure and testified further that Dangerfield had left the negroes customarily to themselves in virtually complete freedom. In rebuttal, Dr. Theodore Gaillard testified that the negroes, whom he described as orderly by habit, were kept under control by the trustee and made to work. The verdict of the jury, deciding the questions of fact in pursuance of the judge's charge as to the law, was in favor of the defendants; and Mrs. Rhame entered a motion for a new trial. This was in due course denied by the Court of Appeals on the ground that Broad's will had clearly vested title to the slaves in Dangerfield, who after Broad's death was empowered to do with them as he pleased. If he, who was by the will merely trustee but by law the full owner, had given up the practical dominion over the slaves and left them to their own self-government they were liable to seizure under the law of 1800. This question of fact, the court concluded, had properly been put to the jury along with the issue as to the effectiveness of the plaintiff's seizure of the slaves; and the verdict for the defendants was declared conclusive.[25] [Footnote 25: Rebecca Rhame _vs_. James Ferguson and John R. Dangerfield, in Rice, _Law Reports of South Carolina_, I, 196-203.] This is the melodrama which the sober court record recites. The female villain of the piece and her craven henchman were foiled by the sturdy but wily trustee and the doughty Carolina colonel who, in headlong, aristocratic championship of those threatened with oppression against the moral sense of the community, charged upon the scene and counseled slaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. And in the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come to judgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assured the so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, the decision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to prove that negroes freed by will in South Carolina might be legally enslaved by any person seizing them, and that the bequest of slaves in trust to an executor as a merely nominal master was contrary to law;[26] and in later times a historian has instanced the traveller's account in support of his own statement that "Persons who had been set free for years and had no reason to suppose that they were anything else might be seized upon for defects in the legal process of manumission."[27] [Footnote 26: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States in America_, II, 32, 33.] [Footnote 27: A.B. Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_ (New York, 1906), p. 88.] Now according to the letter of certain statutes at certain times, these assertions were severally more or less true; but if this particular case and its outcome have any palpable meaning, it is that the courts connived at thwarting such provisions by sanctioning, as a proprietorship valid against the claim of a captor, what was in obvious fact a merely nominal dominion. Another striking case in which the severity of the law was overridden by the court in sanction of lenient custom was that of Jones _vs_. Allen, decided on appeal by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1858. In the fall of the preceding year Jones had called in his neighbors and their slaves to a corn husking and had sent Allen a message asking him to send help. Some twenty-five white men and seventy-five slaves gathered on the appointed night, among them Allen's slave Isaac. After supper, about midnight, Jones told the negroes to go home; but Isaac stayed a while with some others wrestling in the back yard, during which, while Jones was not present, a white man named Hager stabbed Isaac to death. Allen thereupon sued Jones for damages on the ground that the latter had knowingly and unlawfully suffered Isaac, without the legally required authorization, to come with other slaves upon his premises, where he had been slain to his owner's loss. The testimony showed that Allen had not received Jones' message and had given Isaac no permission to go, but that Jones had not questioned Isaac in this regard; that Jones had given spirituous liquors to the slaves while at work, Isaac included, but that no one there was intoxicated except Hager who had come drunk and without invitation. In the trial court, in Rutherford County where the tragedy had occurred, the judge excluded evidence that such corn huskings were the custom of the country without the requirement of written permission for the slaves attending, and he charged the jury that Jones' employment of Isaac and Isaac's death on his premises made him liable to Allen for the value of the slave. But on Jones' appeal the Supreme Court overruled this, asserting that "under our modified form of slavery slaves are not mere chattels but are regarded in the two-fold character of persons and property; that as persons they are considered by our law as accountable moral agents; ... that certain rights have been conferred upon them by positive law and judicial determination, and other privileges and indulgences have been conceded to them by the universal consent of their owners. By uniform and universal usage they are constituted the agents of their owners and sent on business without written authority. And in like manner they are sent to perform those neighborly good offices common in every community.... The simple truth is, such indulgences have been so long and so uniformly tolerated, the public sentiment upon the subject has acquired almost the force of positive law." The judgment of the lower court was accordingly reversed and Jones was relieved of liability for his laxness.[28] [Footnote 28: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 627-639.] There were sharp limits, nevertheless, to the lenity of the courts. Thus when one Brazeale of Mississippi carried with him to Ohio and there set free a slave woman of his and a son whom he had begotten of her, and then after taking them home again died bequeathing all his property to the mulatto boy, the supreme court of the state, in 1838, declared the manumission void under the laws and awarded the mother and son along with all the rest of Brazeale's estate to his legitimate heirs who had brought the suit.[29] In so deciding the court may have been moved by its repugnance toward concubinage as well as by its respect for the statutes. [Footnote 29: Howard's _Mississippi Reports_, II, 837-844.] The killing or injury of a slave except under circumstances justified by law rendered the offender liable both to the master's claim for damages and to criminal prosecution; and the master's suit might be sustained even where the evidence was weak, for as was said in a Louisiana decision, the deed was "one rarely committed in presence of witnesses, and the most that can be expected in cases of this kind are the presumptions that result from circumstances."[30] The requirement of positive proof from white witnesses in criminal cases caused many indictments to fail.[31] A realization of this hindrance in the law deprived convicted offenders of some of the tolerance which their crimes might otherwise have met. When in 1775, for example, William Pitman was found guilty and sentenced by the Virginia General Court to be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the _Virginia Gazette_ said: "This man has justly incurred the penalties of the law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning to others to treat their slaves with more moderation."[32] In the nineteenth century the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to be felonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases where the victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premises the courts felt themselves free to remedy the defect.[33] [Footnote 30: Martin, _Louisiana Reports_, XV, 142.] [Footnote 31: H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 69-79.] [Footnote 32: _Virginia Gazette_, Apr. 21, 1775, reprinted in the _William and Mary College Quarterly_, VIII, 36.] [Footnote 33: The State _vs_. Jones, in Walker, _Mississippi Reports_, p. 83, reprinted in J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_, pp. 252-254.] Despite the ferocity of the statutes and the courts, the fewness and the laxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies were called into play. For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped in Belle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious and lasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgia militia. On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employed was obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcements merely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while the negroes themselves were safely in hiding. Not long afterward, however, the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and Catawba Indians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads.[34] The Seminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as to prompt invasions of their country by the United States army both before and after the Florida purchase.[35] On lesser occasions raids were made by citizen volunteers. The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, were searched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, the capture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as the result.[36] [Footnote 34: _Georgia Colonial Records_, XII, 325, 326; _Georgia Gazette_ (Savannah), Oct. 19, 1786; _Massachusetts Sentinel_ (Boston), June 13, 1787; _Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), June 16, 1787.] [Footnote 35: Joshua R. Giddings, _The Exiles of Florida_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1858).] [Footnote 36: Diary of Dr. Henry Ravenel, Jr., of St. John's Parish, Berkeley County, S.C. MS. in private possession.] More frequent occasions for the creation of vigilance committees were the rumors of plots among the blacks and the reports of mischievous doings by whites. In the same Santee district of the Carolina lowlands, for instance, a public meeting at Black Oak Church on January 3, 1860, appointed three committees of five members each to look out for and dispose of any suspicious characters who might be "prowling about the parish." Of the sequel nothing is recorded by the local diarist of the time except the following, under date of October 25: "Went out with a party of men to take a fellow by the name of Andrews, who lived at Cantey's Hill and traded with the negroes. He had been warned of our approach and run off. We went on and broke up the trading establishment."[37] [Footnote 37: Diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, which is virtually a continuation of the Diary just cited. MS. in private possession.] Such transactions were those of the most responsible and substantial citizens, laboring to maintain social order in the face of the law's desuetude. A mere step further in that direction, however, lay outright lynch law. Lynchings, indeed, while far from habitual, were frequent enough to link the South with the frontier West of the time. The victims were not only rapists[38] but negro malefactors of sundry sorts, and occasionally white offenders as well. In some cases fairly full accounts of such episodes are available, but more commonly the record extant is laconic. Thus the Virginia archives have under date of 1791 an affidavit reciting that "Ralph Singo and James Richards had in January last, in Accomac County, been hung by a band of disguised men, numbering from six to fifteen";[39] and a Georgia newspaper in 1860 the following: "It is reported that Mr. William Smith was killed by a negro on Saturday evening at Bowling Green, in Oglethorpe County. He was stabbed sixteen times. The negro made his escape but was arrested on Sunday, and on Monday morning a number of citizens who had investigated the case burnt him at the stake."[40] In at least one well-known instance the mob's violence was directed against an abuser of slaves. This was at New Orleans in 1834 when a rumor spread that Madame Lalaurie, a wealthy resident, was torturing her negroes. A great crowd collected after nightfall, stormed her door, found seven slaves chained and bearing marks of inhuman treatment, and gutted the house. The woman herself had fled at the first alarm, and made her way eventually to Paris.[41] Had she been brought before a modern court it may be doubted whether she would have been committed to a penitentiary or to a lunatic asylum. At the hands of the mob, however, her shrift would presumably have been short and sure. [Footnote 38: For examples of these see above, pp. 460-463.] [Footnote 39: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 328.] [Footnote 40: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 14, 1860. Other instances, gleaned mostly from _Niles' Register_ and the _Liberator_, are given in J.E. Cutler, _Lynch Law_ (New York, 1905), pp. 90-136.] [Footnote 41: Harriett Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_ (London, 1838), I, 262-267; V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, 1841), p. 155; Alcée Fortier, _History of Louisiana_, III, 223.] The violence of city mobs is a thing peculiar to no time or place. Rural Southern lynch law in that period, however, was in large part a special product of the sparseness of population and the resulting weakness of legal machinery, for as Olmsted justly remarked in the middle 'fifties, the whole South was virtually still in a frontier condition.[42] In _post bellum_ decades, on the other hand, an increase of racial antipathy has offset the effect of the densification of settlement and has abnormally prolonged the liability to the lynching impulse. [Footnote 42: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey in the Back Country_, p. 413.] While the records have no parallel for Madame Lalaurie in her systematic and wholesale torture of slaves, there were thousands of masters and mistresses as tolerant and kindly as she was fiendish; and these were virtually without restraint of public authority in their benevolent rule. Lawmakers and magistrates by personal status in their own plantation provinces, they ruled with a large degree of consent and cooperation by the governed, for indeed no other course was feasible in the long run by men and women of normal type. Concessions and friendly services beyond the countenance and contemplation of the statutes were habitual with those whose name was legion. The law, for example, conceded no property rights to the slaves, and some statutes forbade specifically their possession of horses, but the following characteristic letter of a South Carolina mistress to an influential citizen tells an opposite story: "I hope you will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you on the subject of John, the slave of Professor Henry, Susy his wife, and the orphan children of my faithful servant Pompey, the first husband of Susy. In the first instance, Pompey owned a horse which he exchanged for a mare, which mare I permitted Susy to use after her marriage with John, but told them both I would sell it and the young colt and give Susy a third of the money, reserving the other two thirds for her children. Before I could do so, however, the mare and the colt were exchanged and sent out of my way by this dishonest couple. I then hoped at least to secure forty-five dollars for which another colt was sold to Mr. Haskell, and sent my message to him to say that Susy had no claim on the colt and that the money was to be paid to me for the children of Pompey. A few days since I sent to Mr. Haskell again who informed me that he had paid for the colt, and referred me to you. I do assure you that whatever Susy may affirm, she has no right to the money. It is not my intention to meddle with the law on the occasion, and I infinitely prefer relying on you to do justice to the parties. My manager, who will deliver this to you, is perfectly acquainted with all the circumstances; and [if] after having a conversation with him you should decide in favor of the children I shall be much gratified."[43] [Footnote 43: Letter of Caroline Raoul, Belleville, S.C., Dec. 26, 1829, to James H. Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] Likewise where the family affairs of slaves were concerned the silence and passiveness of the law gave masters occasion for eloquence and activity. Thus a Georgian wrote to a neighbor: "I have a girl Amanda that has your servant Phil for a husband. I should be very glad indeed if you would purchase her. She is a very good seamstress, an excellent cook--makes cake and preserves beautifully--and washes and irons very nicely, and cannot be excelled in cleaning up a house. Her disposition is very amiable. I have had her for years and I assure you that I have not exaggerated as regards her worth.... I will send her down to see you at any time."[44] That offers of purchase were no less likely than those of sale to be prompted by such considerations is suggested by another Georgia letter: "I have made every attempt to get the boy Frank, the son of James Nixon; and in order to gratify James have offered as far as five hundred dollars for him--more than I would pay for any negro child in Georgia were it not James' son."[45] It was therefore not wholly in idyllic strain that a South Carolinian after long magisterial service remarked: "Experience and observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of kindness from the master to the slave. With that ... slavery becomes a family relation, next in its attachments to that of parent and child."[46] [Footnote 44: Letter of E.N. Thompson, Vineville, Ga. (a suburb of Macon), to J.B. Lamar at Macon, Ga., Aug. 7, 1854. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] [Footnote 45: Letter of Henry Jackson, Jan. 11, 1837, to Howell Cobb. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] [Footnote 46: J.B. O'Neall in J.B.D. DeBow ed., _Industrial Resources of the South and West_, II (New Orleans, 1852), 278.] On the whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the Old South have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to their abundance and accessibility. The statutes, copious and easily available, describe a hypothetical régime, not an actual one. The court records are on the one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions of human adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisions were themselves largely controlled by the statutes, perverse for ordinary practical purposes as these often were. It is therefore to the letters, journals and miscellaneous records of private persons dwelling in the régime and by their practices molding it more powerfully than legislatures and courts combined, that the main recourse for intimate knowledge must be had. Regrettably fugitive and fragmentary as these are, enough it may be hoped have been found and used herein to show the true nature of the living order. The government of slaves was for the ninety and nine by men, and only for the hundredth by laws. There were injustice, oppression, brutality and heartburning in the régime,--but where in the struggling world are these absent? There were also gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutual loyalty to a degree hard for him to believe who regards the system with a theorist's eye and a partisan squint. For him on the other hand who has known the considerate and cordial, courteous and charming men and women, white and black, which that picturesque life in its best phases produced, it is impossible to agree that its basis and its operation were wholly evil, the law and the prophets to the contrary notwithstanding. INDEX Acklen, Joseph A.S., plantation home of rules of, for overseers Africa, West, _see_ Guinea Agriculture, _see_ cotton, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture Aiken, William, rice plantation of Aime, Valcour, sugar plantation of Amissa, enslaved and restored to Africa Angolas, tribal traits of revolt of Antipathy, racial, Jefferson's views on in Massachusetts in North and South compared Northern spokesmen of Arabs, in the Guinea trade Asiento Azurara, Gomez E. Baltimore, negro churches in Barbados, emigration from, to Carolina to Jamaica founding of planters' committee of slave laws of, sugar culture in Belmead plantation Benin Black codes, administration of attitude of citizens toward local ordinances origin of, in Barbados in the Northern colonies in Louisiana in South Carolina in Virginia tenor of, in the North in the South Bobolinks, in rice fields Bonny Boré, Etienne de, sugar planter Bosman, William, in the Guinea trade Branding of slaves Bristol, citizens of, in the slave trade Burial societies, negro Burnside, John, merchant and sugar planter Butler, Pierce, the younger, slaves of, sold Cain, Elisha, overseer Cairnes, J.E., views of, on slavery Calabar, New Calabar, Old Cape Coast Castle Capers, William, overseer Capital, investment of, in slaves Charleston, commerce of, free negroes in industrial census of racial adjustments in, problem of slave misdemeanors in Denmark Vesey's plot Churches, racial adjustments in, rural urban Clarkson, Thomas, views of, on the effects of closing the slave trade Columbus, Christopher, policy of Concubinage Congoes, tribal traits of Connecticut, slavery in, disestablishment of Cooper, Thomas, views of, on the economics of slavery Corbin, Richard, plantation rules of Coromantees, conspiracy of, tribal traits of Corporations, ownership of slaves by Cotton culture, sea-island introduction of, methods and scale of upland, engrossment of thought and energy by improvements in methods and scale of stimulates westward migration Cotton gin, invention of Cotton mills slave operatives in Cotton plantations, _see_ plantations, cotton Cotton prices, sea-island, upland, chart facing Cottonseed, oil extracted from used as fertilizer Covington, Leonard, planter, migration of Creoles, Louisiana Criminality among free negroes among slaves Cuba Dabney, Thomas S., planter, migration of Dahomeys Dale, Sir Thomas Davis, Joseph and Jefferson, plantation policy of Delaware, slaves and free negroes in forbids export of slaves Depression, financial, in Mississippi in Virginia Dirt-eating, among Jamaica slaves Discipline, of slaves Diseases, characteristic, in Africa among Jamaica slaves venereal Doctors, black, in Jamaica in South Carolina in Virginia "Doctoress," slave, in Georgia Drivers (plantation foremen) Driving of slaves to death, question of Dutch, in the slave trade Dutch West India Company Early, Peter, debates the closing of the foreign slave trade East India Company, in the slave trade Eboes, tribal traits of El Mina Elliott, William, planter economic views of Ellsworth, Oliver Emancipation, _see_ manumission Encomiendia system, in the Spanish West Indies England, policy of, toward the slave trade Epitaph of Peyton, a slave Evans, Henry, negro preacher Factorage, in planters' dealings Factorage, in the slave trade, in American ports in Guinea Farmers, free negro white, in the Piedmont in the plantation colonies segregation of in the westward movement Federal Convention Festivities, of slaves Fithian, Philip V., observations by Foremen, plantation Foulahs Fowler, J.W., cotton picking records of plantation rules of Franklin and Armfield, slave-dealers Free negroes, antipathy toward criminality among discriminations against emigration projects of endorsements of kidnapping of legal seizure of, attempts at mob violence against occupations of, in Augusta in Charleston in New Orleans and New York prominent characters among processes of procuring freedom by qualities and status of reënslavement of secret societies among slaveholding by French, in the slave trade Fugitive slaves, _see_ slaves, runaway, rendition, in the Federal Constitution, act of 1793 Funerals, negro Gaboons, tribal traits of Gabriel, insurrection led by Gadsden, Christopher Gambia, slave trade on the Gang system, in plantation work Genoese, in the slave trade Georgia, founding of, free negress visits slave imports forbidden in, permitted in restricted by uplands, development of Gerry, Elbridge Gibson, Arthur H., views of, on the economics of slavery Godkin, Edwin L., on the migration of planters Gold Coast Goodloe, Daniel R., views of, on slavery Gowrie, rice plantation Grandy King George, African chief, wants of Guiana, British, invites free negro immigration cotton culture in Dutch Guinea, coastal explorations of life and institutions in slave exports from, beginnings of, volume of tribal traits in _See also_ negroes and slave trade Hairston, Samuel, planter Hammond, James H., planter and writer Hampton, Wade, planter Harrison, Jesse Burton, views of, on slavery Hawkins, Sir John, adventures of, in the slave trade Hayti (Hispaniola) Hearn, Lafcadio, on sugar-cane harvesting Helper, Hinton R., views of, on slavery Hemp Henry, Patrick Henry, Prince, the Navigator Heyward, Nathaniel, planter Hodgson, W.B., planter Holidays, of slaves, plantation urban Hundley D.R., on slave traders Immigrants, in the South _See also_ Irish Importations of slaves prohibition of Indians, enslaved, in New England in South Carolina in West Indies, subjugated by Spaniards Indigo culture, introduction of, in Georgia in South Carolina methods of Insurrection of slaves, _see_ slave plots Irish, labor of, on plantations Jamaica, capture and development of maroons of nabobs, absentee plantations in runaway slaves in, statistics of Jefferson, Thomas, on the foreign slave trade on negroes and slavery Jennison, Nathaniel, prosecution of Job Ben Solomon, enslaved and restored to Africa Joloffs Kentucky, settlement of Kidnapping of free negroes King, Rufus Kingsley, Z., plantation experience of Lace, Ambrose, slave trader Lalaurie, Madame Lamar, John B., planter Las Casas, Bartholomeo de la Laurens, Henry, factor and planter Liberia Lincecum, Gideon, peregrinations of Lindo, Moses, indigo merchant Liverpool, in the slave trade, types of ships employed Loango Lodges, negro London, in the slave trade London Company Loria, Achille, views of, on slavery economics Louisiana, cotton culture in, slave laws of sugar culture in L'Ouverture, Toussaint Lucas, Eliza Lynchings M'Culloch, J.R., views of, on slavery McDonogh, John, manumission by, method of Macon, Nathaniel Madagascar, slaves procured from Malaria, in Africa in South Carolina Mandingoes, tribal traits of Manigault, Charles, planter rules of Manors in Maryland Manumission, of slaves Maroons, negro, in Jamaica on the Savannah River Martinique Maryland, founding of free negroes in manors in plantations in slave imports prohibited by slaveholdings in, scale of slavery in, projects for the disestablishment of Massachusetts, in the slave trade slavery in abolition of Matthews, Samuel, planter Medical attention to slaves Mercer, James, planter Merolla, Jerom, missionary Middle passage, _see_ slave trade, African Midwives, slave Migration Mill, John Stuart, views of, on slavery Miller, Phineas, partner of Eli Whitney Misdemeanors of slaves, in Charleston Missouri, decline of slavery in settlement of Mississippi, depression in product of long-fibre cotton in sale of slaves from Mobs, violence of, toward free negroes Mocoes, tribal traits of Molasses Moore, Francis, Royal African Company factor Moors Mulattoes Mules Nagoes, tribal traits of Negro traits, American Angola Congo Coromantee Ebo Gaboon Mandingo Nago Paw Paw Whydah Negroes, _see_ antipathy, black codes, church adjustments, free negroes, funerals, plantation labor, plantation life, slave plots slave trade, slaveholdings, slavery, slaves New England, in the slave trade, type of ships employed slavery in, disestablishment of New Jersey, slavery in, disestablishment of New Netherlands, slavery in New Orleans, as a slave market, free negroes in New York, negro plots in slavery in, disestablishment of Nicholson, J.S., views of, on slavery Nobility, English, as Jamaica plantation owners North Carolina, early conditions in sentiment on slavery Northrup, a kidnapped free negro, career of Northwest Territory, prohibition of slavery in Oglethorpe, James, administers the Royal African Company founds Georgia restores a slave to Africa Olmsted, Frederick L., observations by Overseers, plantation, functions, salaries, and experiences of Panics, financial, effects on slave prices Park, Mungo, in Guinea "Particular plantations," in Virginia Paths, in Guinea, character of Paw Paws, tribal traits of Pennsylvania, slavery in, disestablishment of Peyton, a slave, epitaph of Philips, Martin W., planter and writer slave epitaph by Pickering, Timothy _Plantation and Frontier_, citation of title in full Plantation labor Plantation life Plantation management Plantation mistress Plantation rules Plantation system, cherishment of slaves in as a civilizing agency gang and task methods in severity in, question of soil exhaustion in towns and factories hampered in growth by westward spread of Plantation tendencies Plantations, cotton, sea island Plantations, cotton, upland, J.H. Hammond estate Retreat indigo rice, Butler's Island Gowrie and East Hermitage Jehossee Island sugar, in Barbados, Drax Hall in Jamaica, Worthy Park in Louisiana, Valcour Aime's estate tobacco, Belmead James Mercer's estate Planters, absenteeism among concern of, for slaves dietary of exemplified, in J.A.S. Acklen in William Aiken in John Burnside in Robert Carter in Christopher Codrington in Thomas S. Dabney in Jefferson and Joseph Davis in Samuel Hairston in James H. Hammond in Wade Hampton in Nathaniel Heywood in W.B. Hodgson in Z. Kingsley in John B. Lamar in Henry Laurens in Charles Manigault in Samuel Matthews in James Mercer in A.H. Pemberton in Martin W. Philips in George Washington in David R. Williams gentility of homesteads of innovations by management by migration of purchases of slaves by rules of sales of slaves by sports of temper of Poor whites, in the South, Cairnes' assertions concerning Portugal, activities of, in Guinea, an appandage of Spain negroes in Preachers, negro Procter, Billy, a slave, letter of Providence, "Old," a Puritan colony in the tropics, career of Puritans, attitude of, toward slavery Quakers, relationship of, to slavery Quincy, Josiah Railroad companies, slave ownership by Randolph, Edmund, disrelishes slavery Randolph, John, of Roanoke, on the coasting trade in slaves on depression in Virginia manumits his slaves Randolph, Richard, provides for the manumission of his slaves Rape, by negroes in the ante-bellum South Rats, a pest in Jamaica Rattoons, of sugar cane Religion, among slaves, rural urban Retreat, cotton plantation Revolution, American, doctrines of effects of, on slavery Negroes in radicalism of, waning of Rhode Island, in the slave trade resolution advocating the stoppage of the slave trade slavery in, disestablishment of Rice birds (bobolinks), damage from Rice culture, introduced into Georgia into South Carolina methods of plantations in, scale of Rishworth, Samuel, early agitator against slavery Rolfe, John, introduces tobacco culture into Virginia Roustabouts, Irish, qualities of negro Royal African Company Ruffin, Edmund, advocates agricultural reforms views of, on slavery Rum, product of, in Jamaica rations issued to slaves, in Jamaica in South Carolina use of, in the Guinea trade Runaway slaves, general problem of George Washington in Georgia in Jamaica in Mississippi Russell, Irwin, "Christmas in the Quarters," Sabine Fields, rice plantation Sahara, slave trade across Saluda factory, slave operatives in San Domingo, emigration from, to Louisiana revolution in Say, J.B., views of, on slavery Sea-island cotton, introduced into the United States methods and scale of culture Seasoning of slaves, in Jamaica Secret societies, negro Senegal, slave trade in Senegalese, tribal traits of Senegambia Serfdom Servants, white indentured, in Barbados in Connecticut in Jamaica in Maryland in Massachusetts in Pennsylvania in South Carolina and Georgia in Virginia revolts by Servitude, indentured, tendencies of Shackles, used on slaves Shenendoah Valley Ships, types of, in the slave trade Sierra' Leone Slave Coast Slave felons Slave plots and insurrections, general survey of disquiet caused by Gabriel's uprising in "Old" Providence in New York proclivity of Coromantees toward San Domingan revolution Stono rebellion Nat Turner's (Southampton), revolt Denmark Vesey's conspiracy Slave trade, African, the asiento barter in chieftains active in closing of, by various states, by Congress effects of drain of funds by Liverpool's prominence in the middle passage reopening, project of Royal African Company ships employed in, types of care and custody of slaves on tricks of Yankee traders in Slave trade, domestic, beginnings of effects of methods in to Louisiana scale of Slave traders, domestic, Franklin and Armfield methods and qualities of reputations of, blackened maritime Slaveholding, vicissitudes of Slaveholdings, by corporations by free negroes, scale of, in the cotton belt in Jamaica in Maryland in New York in towns in Virginia on the South Carolina coast Slavery, in Africa in the American Revolution in ancient Rome in the British West Indies in Europe in Georgia in Louisiana in the North disestablishment of in South Carolina in Spanish America in Virginia _See also_ black codes, negroes, and plantation labor, life and management Slaves, negro, artizans among as factory operatives birth rates of branding of "breaking in" of breeding, forced, question of capital invested in children, care and control of church adjustments of conspiracies of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections crimes of crops of, private dealers in, _see_ slave traders discipline of diseases and death rates of driving of, to death, question of earnings of private felons among, disposal of festivities of food and clothing of foemen among hiring of to themselves holidays of hospitals for labor of, schedule of laws concerning life insurance of manumission of marriages of annulment of medical and surgical care of plots and insurrections of police of preachers among prices of property of protection of, from strain and exposure punishments of purchases of by themselves drain of funds, caused by quarters of sanitation of rape by religion among revolts of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections rewards of rum allowances to running away by sales of shackling of social stratification among speculation in stealing of strikes by suicide of suits by, for freedom, concerning temper of torture of town adjustments of undesirable types of wages of in the westward movement women among, care and control of work, rates of working of, to death, question of Smart, William, views of, on slavery Smith, Adam, views of, on slavery Smith, Captain John Smith, Landgrave Thomas Snelgrave, William, in the maritime slave trade Soil exhaustion Southampton insurrection South Carolina, closing and reopening of the foreign slave trade in cotton culture in emigration from founding of indigo culture in rice culture in slave imports, prohibited by reopened by slave laws of slaveholdings in, scale of uplands, development of Spain, annexation of Portugal by asiento instituted by negroes in police of American dominions by policy of, toward Indians and negroes Spaulding, Thomas, planter Spinners, on plantations Spratt, L.W., views of, on conditions in South Carolina Staples, _see_ cotton, hemp, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture and plantations Steamboat laborers, Irish negro Sugar culture, in Barbados in Jamaica in Louisiana methods and apparatus of plantations in, scale of types of in the Spanish West Indies Task system, in plantation industry Taylor, John, of Caroline, agricultural writings of Telfair, Alexander, plantations of rules of Tennessee, settlement of Texas Thomas, E.S., bookseller, experience of Thorpe, George, Virginia colonist Tobacco culture, in Maryland method of in North Carolina plantations in, scale of types of in the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia in Virginia Towns, Southern, growth of, hampered slaves in Tucker, St. George, project of, for extinguishing slavery in Virginia Turner, Nat, insurrection led by Utrecht, treaty of, grants the asiento to England Van Buren, A. de Puy, observations by Venetians, in the Levantine slave trade Vermont, prohibition of slavery by Vesey, Denmark, conspiracy of Vigilance committees Virginia, founding and early experience of free negroes in plantations in, "particular" private servants, indentured, in slave crimes in slave imports, prohibited by slave laws of slave revolts in slaveholdings in, scale of slavery, introduced in disestablishment in, projects of tobacco culture in Walker, Quork, suits concerning the freedom of Washington, George apprehensions of, concerning slave property desires the gradual abolition of slavery imports cotton as a planter West Indies, British, prosperity and decline in, progression of servile plots and insurrections in slave prices in, on the eve of abolition Spanish, colonization of negro slavery in, introduction of Weston, P.C., plantation rules of Westward movement Whitney, Eli, invents the cotton gin Whydahs, tribal traits of Williams, David R., planter Williams, Francis, a free negro, career of Women, slave, care of, in pregnancy and childbirth difficulties in controlling Working of slaves to death, question of Worthy Park, Jamaica plantation, records of Yeomanry, white, in the South 
16741	----	AUNT PHILLIS'S CABIN; OR, SOUTHERN LIFE AS IT IS. BY MRS. MARY H. EASTMAN. PHILADELPHIA: LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO. 1852. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO. in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Transcriber's note: Minor typos in text corrected. Footnotes moved to end of text. PREFACE. A writer on Slavery has no difficulty in tracing back its origin. There is also the advantage of finding it, with its continued history, and the laws given by God to govern his own institution, in the Holy Bible. Neither profane history, tradition, nor philosophical research are required to prove its origin or existence; though they, as all things must, come forward to substantiate the truth of the Scriptures. God, who created the human race, willed they should be holy like himself. Sin was committed, and the curse of sin, death, was induced: other punishments were denounced for the perpetration of particular crimes--the shedding of man's blood for murder, and the curse of slavery. The mysterious reasons that here influenced the mind of the Creator it is not ours to declare. Yet may we learn enough from his revealed word on this and every other subject to confirm his power, truth, and justice. There is no Christian duty more insisted upon in Scripture than reverence and obedience to parents. "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." The relation of child to parent resembles closely that of man to his Creator. He who loves and honors his God will assuredly love and honor his parents. Though it is evidently the duty of every parent so to live as to secure the respect and affection of his child, yet there is nothing in the Scriptures to authorize a child treating with disrespect a parent, though he be unworthy in the greatest degree. The human mind, naturally rebellious, requires every command and incentive to submission. The first of the ten commandments, insisting on the duty owing to the Creator, and the fifth, on that belonging to our parents, are the sources of all order and good arrangement in the minor relations of life; and on obedience to them depends the comfort of society. Reverence to age, and especially where it is found in the person of those who by the will of God were the authors of their being, is insisted upon in the Jewish covenant--not indeed less required now; but as the Jews were called from among the heathen nations of the earth to be the peculiar people of God, they were to show such evidences of this law in their hearts, by their conduct, that other nations might look on and say, "Ye are the children of the Lord your God." It was after an act of a child dishonoring an aged father, that the prophecy entailing slavery as a curse on a portion of the human race was uttered. Nor could it have been from any feeling of resentment or revenge that the curse was made known by the lips of a servant of God; for this servant of God was a parent, and with what sorrow would any parent, yea, the worst of parents, utter a malediction which insured such punishment and misery on a portion of his posterity! Even the blessing which was promised to his other children could not have consoled him for the sad necessity. He might not resist the Spirit of God: though with perfect submission he obeyed its dictates, yet with what regret! The heart of any Christian parent will answer this appeal! We may well imagine some of the reasons for the will of God in thus punishing Ham and his descendants. Prior to the unfilial act which is recorded, it is not to be supposed he had been a righteous man. Had he been one after God's own heart, he would not have been guilty of such a sin. What must that child be, who would openly dishonor and expose an erring parent, borne down with the weight of years, and honored by God as Noah had been! The very act of disrespect to Noah, the chosen of God, implies wilful contempt of God himself. Ham was not a young man either: he had not the excuse of the impetuosity of youth, nor its thoughtlessness--he was himself an old man; and there is every reason to believe he had led a life at variance with God's laws. When he committed so gross and violent a sin, it may be, that the curse of God, which had lain tranquil long, was roused and uttered against him: a curse not conditional, not implied--now, as then, a mandate of the Eternal. Among the curses threatened by the Levites upon Mount Ebal, was the one found in the 16th verse of the 27th chapter of Deuteronomy: "Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother." By the law of Moses, this sin was punished with death: "Of the son which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother," "all the men of his city shall stone him with stones that he die." (Deut. xxi. 21.) God in his wisdom instituted this severe law in early times; and it must convince us that there were reasons in the Divine mind for insisting on the ordinance exacting the most perfect submission and reverence to an earthly parent. "When, after the deluge," says Josephus, "the earth was settled in its former condition, Noah set about its cultivation; and when he had planted it with vines, and when the fruit was ripe, and he had gathered the grapes in the season, and the wine was ready for use, he offered a sacrifice and feasted, and, being inebriated, fell asleep, and lay in an unseemly manner. When Ham saw this, he came laughing, and showed him to his brothers." Does not this exhibit the impression of the Jews as regards the character of Ham? Could a man capable of such an act deserve the blessing of a just and holy God? "The fact of Noah's transgression is recorded by the inspired historian with that perfect impartiality which is peculiar to the Scriptures, as an instance and evidence of human frailty and imperfection. Ham appears to have been a bad man, and probably he rejoiced to find his father in so unbecoming a situation, that, by exposing him, he might retaliate for the reproofs which he had received from his parental authority. And perhaps Canaan first discovered his situation, and told it to Ham. The conduct of Ham in exposing his father to his brethren, and their behaviour in turning away from the sight of his disgrace, form a striking contrast."--_Scott's Com._ We are told in Gen. ix. 22, "And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without;" and in the 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th verses we read, "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him; and he said, Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant." Is it not preposterous that any man, any Christian, should read these verses and say slavery was not instituted by God as a curse on Ham and Canaan and their posterity? And who can read the history of the world and say this curse has not existed ever since it was uttered? "The whole continent of Africa," says Bishop Newton, "was peopled principally by the descendants of Ham; and for how many ages have the better parts of that country lain under the dominion of the Romans, then of the Saracens, and now of the Turks! In what wickedness, ignorance, barbarity, slavery, misery, live most of the inhabitants! And of the poor negroes, how many hundreds every year are sold and bought like beasts in the market, and conveyed from one quarter of the world to do the work of beasts in another!" But does this curse authorize the slave-trade? God forbid. He commanded the Jews to enslave the heathen around them, saying, "they should be their bondmen forever;" but he has given no such command to other nations. The threatenings and reproofs uttered against Israel, throughout the old Testament, on the subject of slavery, refer to their oppressing and keeping in slavery their own countrymen. Never is there the slightest imputation of sin, as far as I can see, conveyed against them for holding in bondage the children of heathen nations. Yet do the Scriptures evidently permit slavery, even to the present time. The curse on the serpent, ("And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field,") uttered more than sixteen hundred years before the curse of Noah upon Ham and his race, has lost nothing of its force and true meaning. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it, all the days of thy life," said the Supreme Being. Has this curse failed or been removed? Remember the threatened curses of God upon the whole Jewish tribe if they forsook his worship. Have not they been fulfilled? However inexplicable may be the fact that God would appoint the curse of continual servitude on a portion of his creatures, will any one _dare_, with the Bible open in his hands, to say the fact does not exist? It is not ours to decide _why_ the Supreme Being acts! We may observe his dealings with man, but we may not ask, until he reveals it, Why hast thou thus done? "Cursed is every one who loves not the Lord Jesus Christ." Are not all these curses recorded, and will they not all be fulfilled? God has permitted slavery to exist in every age and in almost every nation of the earth. It was only commanded to the Jews, and it was with them restricted to the heathen, ("referring entirely to the race of Ham, who had been judicially condemned to a condition of servitude more than eighteen hundred years before the giving of the law, by the mouth of Noah, the medium of the Holy Ghost.") No others, at least, were to be enslaved "forever." Every book of the Old Testament records a history in which slaves and God's laws concerning them are spoken of, while, as far as profane history goes back, we cannot fail to see proofs of the existence of slavery. "No legislator of history," says Voltaire, "attempted to abrogate slavery. Society was so accustomed to this degradation of the species, that Epictetus, who was assuredly worth more than his master, never expresses any surprise at his being a slave." Egypt, Sparta, Athens, Carthage, and Rome had their thousands of slaves. In the Bible, the best and chosen servants of God owned slaves, while in profane history the purest and greatest men did the same. In the very nation over whose devoted head hung the curse of God, slavery, vindictive, lawless, and cruel slavery, has prevailed. It is said no nation of the earth has equalled the Jewish in the enslaving of negroes, except the negroes themselves; and examination will prove that the descendants of Ham and Canaan have, as God foresaw, justified by their conduct the doom which he pronounced against them. But it has been contended that the people of God sinned in holding their fellow-creatures in bondage! Open your Bible, Christian, and read the commands of God as regards slavery--the laws that he made to govern the conduct of the master and the slave! But again--_we_ live under the glorious and new dispensation of Christ; and He came to establish God's will, and to confirm such laws as were to continue in existence, to destroy such rules as were not to govern our lives! When there was but one family upon the earth, a portion of the family was devoted to be slaves to others. God made a covenant with Abraham: he included in it his slaves. "He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money," are the words of Scripture. A servant of Abraham says, "And the Lord has blessed my master greatly, and he is become great, and he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-servants and maid-servants, and camels and asses." The Lord has called himself the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. These holy men were slaveholders! The existence of slavery then, and the sanction of God on his own institution, is palpable from the time of the pronouncing of the curse, until the glorious advent of the Son of God. When he came, slavery existed in every part of the world. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came from heaven and dwelt upon the earth: his mission to proclaim the will of God to a world sunk in the lowest depths of iniquity. Even the dear and chosen people of God had departed from him--had forsaken his worship, and turned aside from his commands. He was born of a virgin. He was called Emmanuel. He was God with us. Wise men traveled from afar to behold the Child-God--they knelt before him--they opened their treasures--they presented to them gifts. Angels of God descended in dreams, to ensure the protection of his life against the king who sought it. He emerged from infancy, and grew in favour with God and man. He was tempted but not overcome--angels came again from heaven to minister to him. He fulfilled every jot and tittle of the law, and entered upon the duties for which he left the glories of heaven. That mission was fulfilled. "The people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." Look at his miracles--the cleansing of the leper, the healing of the sick, the casting out unclean spirits, the raising of the dead, the rebuking of the winds and seas, the control of those possessed with devils--and say, was he not the Son of God--yea, was he not God? Full of power and goodness he came into the world, and light and glory followed every footstep. The sound of his voice, the glance of his eye, the very touch of the garment in which his assumed mortality was arrayed, was a medicine mighty to save. He came on an errand of mercy to the world, and he was all powerful to accomplish the Divine intent; but, did he emancipate the slave? The happiness of the human race was the object of his coming; and is it possible that the large portion of them then slaves could have escaped his all-seeing eye! Did he condemn the institution which he had made? Did he establish universal freedom? Oh! no; he came to redeem the world from the power of sin; his was no earthly mission; he did not interfere with the organization of society. He healed the sick servant of the centurion, but he did not command his freedom; nor is there a word that fell from his sacred lips that could be construed into a condemnation of that institution which had existed from the early ages of the world, existed then, and is continued now. The application made by the Abolitionist of the golden rule is absurd: it might then apply to the child, who _would have_ his father no longer control him; to the apprentice, who _would_ no longer that the man to whom he is bound should have a right to direct him. Thus the foundations of society would be shaken, nay, destroyed. Christ would have us deal with others, not as they desire, but as the law of God demands: in the condition of life in which we have been placed, we must do what we conscientiously believe to be our duty to our fellow-men. Christ alludes to slavery, but does not forbid it. "And the servant abideth not in the house forever, but the son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, you are free indeed." In these two verses of the Gospel of St. John, there is a manifest allusion to the fact and condition of slaves. Of this fact the Saviour took occasion, to illustrate, by way of similitude, the condition of a wicked man, who is the slave of sin, and to show that as a son who was the heir in a house _could_ set a bondman free, if that son were of the proper age, so he, the Son of God, could set the enslaved soul free from sin, when he would be "free indeed." Show me in the history of the Old Testament, or in the life of Christ, authority to proclaim _as a sin_ the holding of the race of Ham and Canaan in bondage. In the times of the apostles, what do we see? Slaves are still in bondage, the children of Ham are menials as they were before. Christ had come, had died, had ascended to heaven, and slavery still existed. Had the apostles authority to do it away? Had Christ left it to them to carry out, in this instance, his revealed will? "Art thou," said Paul, "called being a slave? care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he is called." "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrines be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren, but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit." It is well known and often quoted that the holy apostle did all he could to restore a slave to his master--one whom he had been the means of making free in a spiritual sense. Yet he knew that God had made Onesimus a slave, and, when he had fled from his master, Paul persuaded him to return and to do his duty toward him. Open your Bible, Christian, and carefully read the letter of Paul to Philemon, and contrast its spirit with the incendiary publications of the Abolitionists of the present day. St. Paul was not a fanatic, and therefore _could not be_ an Abolitionist. The Christian age advanced and slavery continued, and we approach the time when our fathers fled from persecution to the soil we now call our own, when they fought for the liberty to which they felt they had a right. Our fathers fought for it, and our mothers did more when they urged forth their husbands and sons, not knowing whether the life-blood that was glowing with religion and patriotism would not soon be dyeing the land that had been their refuge, and where they fondly hoped they should find a happy home. Oh, glorious parentage! Children of America, trace no farther back--say not the crest of nobility once adorned thy father's breast, the gemmed coronet thy mother's brow--stop here! it is enough that they earned for thee a home--a free, a happy home. And what did they say to the slavery that existed then and had been entailed upon them by the English government? Their opinions are preserved among us--they were dictated by their position and necessities--and they were wisely formed. In the North, slavery was useless; nay, more, it was a drawback to the prosperity of that section of the Union--it was dispensed with. In other sections, gradually, our people have seen their condition would be more prosperous without slaves--they have emancipated them. In the South, they are necessary: though an evil, it is one that cannot be dispensed with; and here they have been retained, and will be retained, unless God should manifest his will (which never yet has been done) to the contrary. Knowing that the people of the South still have the views of their revolutionary forefathers, we see plainly that many of the North have rejected the opinions of theirs. Slaves were at the North and South considered and recognized as property, (as they are in Scripture.) The whole nation sanctioned slavery by adopting the Constitution which provides for them, and for their restoration (when fugitive) to their owners. Our country was then like one family--their souls had been tried and made pure by a united struggle--they loved as brothers who had suffered together. Would it were so at the present day! The subject of slavery was agitated among them; many difficulties occurred, but they were all settled--and, they thought, effectually. They agreed then, on the propriety of giving up runaway slaves, unanimously. Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, "saw no more impropriety in the public seizing and surrendering a slave or servant than a horse!" (Madison's Papers.) This was then considered a compromise between the North and South. Henry Clay and Daniel Webster--the mantle of their illustrious fathers descended to them from their own glorious times. The slave-trade was discontinued after a while. As long as England needed the sons and daughters of Africa to do her bidding, she trafficked in the flesh and blood of her fellow-creatures; but our immortal fathers put an end to the disgraceful trade. They saw its heinous sin, for they had no command to enslave the heathen; but they had no command to emancipate the slave; therefore they wisely forbore farther to interfere. They drew the nice line of distinction between an unavoidable evil and a sin. Slavery was acknowledged, and slaves considered as property all over our country, at the North as well as the South--in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Now, has there been any law reversing this, except in the States that have become free? Out of the limits of these States, slaves are property, according to the Constitution. In the year 1798, Judge Jay, being called on for a list of his taxable property, made the following observation:--"I purchase slaves and manumit them at proper ages, when their faithful services shall have afforded a reasonable retribution." "As free servants became more common, he was gradually relieved from the necessity of purchasing slaves." (See Jay's Life, by his son.) Here is the secret of Northern emancipation: they were _relieved from the necessity_ of slavery. Rufus King, for many years one of the most distinguished statesmen of the country, writes thus to John B. Coles and others:--"I am perfectly anxious not to be misunderstood in this case, never having thought myself at liberty to encourage or assent to any measure that would affect the security of property in slaves, or tend to disturb the political adjustment which the Constitution has made respecting them." John Taylor, of New York, said, "If the weight and influence of the South be increased by the representation of that which they consider a part of their property, we do not wish to diminish them. The right by which this property is held is derived from the Federal Constitution; we have neither inclination nor power to interfere with the laws of existing States in this particular; on the contrary, they have not only a right to reclaim their fugitives whenever found, but, in the event of domestic violence, (which God in his mercy forever avert!) the whole strength of the nation is bound to be exerted, if needful, in reducing it to subjection, while we recognize these obligations and will never fail to perform them." How many more could be brought! opinions of great and good men of the North, acknowledging and maintaining the rights of the people of the South. Everett, Adams, Cambreleng, and a host of others, whose names I need not give. "Time was," said Mr. Fletcher in Boston, (in 1835, at a great meeting in that city,) "when such sentiments and such language would not have been breathed in this community. And here, on this hallowed spot, of all places on earth, should they be met and rebuked. Time was, when the British Parliament having declared 'that they had a right to bind us in all cases whatsoever,' and were attempting to bind our infant limbs in fetters, when a voice of resistance and notes of defiance had gone forth from this hall, then, when Massachusetts, standing for her liberty and life, was alone breasting the whole power of Britain, the generous and gallant Southerners came to our aid, and our fathers refused not to hold communion with slaveholders. When the blood of our citizens, shed by a British soldiery, had stained our streets and flowed upon the heights that surround us, and sunk into the earth upon the plains of Lexington and Concord, then when he, whose name can never be pronounced by American lips without the strongest emotion of gratitude and love to every American heart,--when he, that slaveholder, (pointing to a full-length portrait of Washington,) who, from this canvass, smiles upon his children with paternal benignity, came with other slaveholders to drive the British myrmidons from this city, and in this hall our fathers did not refuse to hold communion with them. "With slaveholders they formed the confederation, neither asking nor receiving any right to interfere in their domestic relations: with them, they made the Declaration of Independence." To England, not to the United States, belongs whatever odium may be attached to the introduction of slavery into our country. Our fathers abolished the slave-trade, but permitted the continuation of domestic slavery. Slavery, authorized by God, permitted by Jesus Christ, sanctioned by the apostles, maintained by good men of all ages, is still existing in a portion of our beloved country. How long it will continue, or whether it will ever cease, the Almighty Ruler of the universe can alone determine. I do not intend to give a history of Abolition. Born in fanaticism, nurtured in violence and disorder, it exists too. Turning aside the institutions and commands of God, treading under foot the love of country, despising the laws of nature and the nation, it is dead to every feeling of patriotism and brotherly kindness; full of strife and pride, strewing the path of the slave with thorns and of the master with difficulties, accomplishing nothing good, forever creating disturbance. The negroes are still slaves--"while the American slaveholders, collectively and individually, ask no favours of any man or race that treads the earth. In none of the attributes of men, mental or physical, do they acknowledge or fear superiority elsewhere. They stand in the broadest light of the knowledge, civilization, and improvement of the age, as much favored of Heaven as any other of the sons of Adam." AUNT PHILLIS'S CABIN. CHAPTER I. There would be little to strike the eye of a traveler accustomed to picturesque scenes, on approaching the small town of L----. Like most of the settlements in Virginia, the irregularity of the streets and the want of similarity in the houses would give an unfavorable first impression. The old Episcopal church, standing at the entrance of the town, could not fail to be attractive from its appearance of age; but from this alone. No monuments adorn the churchyard; head-stones of all sizes meet the eye, some worn and leaning against a shrub or tree for support, others new and white, and glistening in the sunset. Several family vaults, unpretending in their appearance, are perceived on a closer scrutiny, to which the plants usually found in burial-grounds are clinging, shadowed too by large trees. The walls where they are visible are worn and discolored, but they are almost covered with ivy, clad in summer's deepest green. Many a stranger stopped his horse in passing by to wonder at its look of other days; and some, it may be, to wish they were sleeping in the shades of its mouldering walls. The slight eminence on which the church was built, commanded a view of the residences of several gentlemen of fortune who lived in the neighborhood. To the nearest one, a gentleman on horseback was directing his way. The horse required no direction, in truth, for so accustomed was he to the ride to Exeter, and to the good fare he enjoyed on arriving there, that neither whip nor spur was necessary; he traced the familiar road with evident pleasure. The house at Exeter was irregularly built; but the white stone wings and the look-out over the main building gave an appearance of taste to the mansion. The fine old trees intercepted the view, though adding greatly to its beauty. The porter's lodge, and the wide lawn entered by its open gates, the gardens at either side of the building, and the neatness and good condition of the out-houses, all showed a prosperous state of affairs with the owner. Soon the large porch with its green blinds, and the sweetbrier entwining them, came in view, and the family party that occupied it were discernible. Before Mr. Barbour had reached the point for alighting from his horse, a servant stood in readiness to take charge of him, and Alice Weston emerged from her hiding-place among the roses, with her usual sweet words of welcome. Mr. Weston, the owner of the mansion and its adjoining plantation, arose with a dignified but cordial greeting; and Mrs. Weston, his sister-in-law, and Miss Janet, united with him in his kind reception of a valued guest and friend. Mr. Weston was a widower, with an only son; the young gentleman was at this time at Yale College. He had been absent for three years; and so anxious was he to graduate with honor, that he had chosen not to return to Virginia until his course of study should be completed. The family had visited him during the first year of his exile, as he called it, but it had now been two years since he had seen any member of it. There was an engagement between him and his cousin, though Alice was but fifteen when it was formed. They had been associated from the earliest period of their lives, and Arthur declared that should he return home on a visit, he would not be able to break away from its happiness to the routine of a college life: he yielded therefore to the earnest entreaties of his father, to remain at New Haven until he graduated. Mr. Weston will stand for a specimen of the southern gentleman of the old school. The bland and cheerful expression of his countenance, the arrangement of his soft fine hair, the fineness of the texture and the perfect cleanliness of every part of his dress, the plaiting of his old-fashioned shirt ruffles, the whiteness of his hand, and the sound of his clear, well-modulated voice--in fact, every item of his appearance--won the good opinion of a stranger; while the feelings of his heart and his steady course of Christian life, made him honored and reverenced as he deserved. He possessed that requisite to the character of a true gentleman, a kind and charitable heart. None of the present members of his family had any lawful claim upon him, yet he cherished them with the utmost affection. He requested his brother's widow, on the death of his own wife, to assume the charge of his house; and she was in every respect its mistress. Alice was necessary to his happiness, almost to his existence; she was the very rose in his garden of life. He had never had a sister, and he regarded Alice as a legacy from his only brother, to whom he had been most tenderly attached: had she been uninteresting, she would still have been very dear to him; but her beauty and her many graces of appearance and character drew closely together the bonds of love between them; Alice returning, with the utmost warmth, her uncle's affection. Mrs. Weston was unlike her daughter in appearance, Alice resembling her father's family. Her dark, fine eyes were still full of the fire that had beamed from them in youth; there were strongly-marked lines about her mouth, and her face when in repose bore traces of the warfare of past years. The heart has a writing of its own, and we can see it on the countenance; time has no power to obliterate it, but generally deepens the expression. There was at times too a sternness in her voice and manner, yet it left no unpleasant impression; her general refinement, and her fine sense and education made her society always desirable. Cousin Janet, as she was called by them all, was a dependant and distant relation; a friend faithful and unfailing; a bright example of all that is holy and good in the Christian character. She assisted Mrs. Weston greatly in the many cares that devolved on the mistress of a plantation, especially in instructing the young female servants in knitting and sewing, and in such household duties as would make them useful in that state of life in which it had pleased God to place them. Her heart was full of love to all God's creatures; the servants came to her with their little ailings and grievances, and she had always a soothing remedy--some little specific for a bodily sickness, with a word of advice and kindness, and, if the case required it, of gentle reproof for complaints of another nature. Cousin Janet was an old maid, yet many an orphan and friendless child had shed tears upon her bosom; some, whose hands she had folded together in prayer as they knelt beside her, learning from her lips a child's simple petition, had long ago laid down to sleep for ever; some are living still, surrounded by the halo of their good influence. There was one, of whom we shall speak by-and-by, who was to her a source of great anxiety, and the constant subject of her thoughts and fervent prayers. Many years had gone by since she had accepted Mr. Weston's earnest entreaty to make Exeter her home; and although the bread she eat was that of charity, yet she brought a blessing upon the house that sheltered her, by her presence: she was one of the chosen ones of the Lord. Even in this day, it is possible to entertain an angel unawares. She is before you, reader, in all the dignity of old age, of a long life drawing to a close; still to the last, she works while it is yet day! With her dove-colored dress, and her muslin three-cornered handkerchief, pinned precisely at the waist and over her bosom, with her eyes sunken and dim, but expressive, with the wrinkles so many and so deep, and the thin, white folds of her satin-looking hair parted under her cap; with her silver knitting-sheath attached to her side, and her needles in ever busy hands, Cousin Janet would perhaps first arrest the attention of a stranger, in spite of the glowing cheek and golden curls that were contrasting with her. It was the beauty of old age and youth, side by side. Alice's face in its full perfection did not mar the loveliness of hers; the violet eyes of the one, with their long sweep of eyelash, could not eclipse the mild but deep expression of the other. The rich burden of glossy hair was lovely, but so were the white locks; and the slight but rounded form was only compared in its youthful grace to the almost shadowy dignity of old age. It was just sundown, but the servants were all at home after their day's work, and they too were enjoying the pleasant evening time. Some were seated at the door of their cabins, others lounging on the grass, all at ease, and without care. Many of their comfortable cabins had been recently whitewashed, and were adorned with little gardens in front; over the one nearest the house a multiflora rose was creeping in full bloom. Singularly musical voices were heard at intervals, singing snatches of songs, of a style in which the servants of the South especially delight; and not unfrequently, as the full chorus was shouted by a number, their still more peculiar laugh was heard above it all. Mr. Barbour had recently returned from a pleasure tour in our Northern States, had been absent for two months, and felt that he had not in as long a time witnessed such a scene of real enjoyment. He thought it would have softened the heart of the sternest hater of Southern institutions to have been a spectator here; it might possibly have inclined him to think the sun of his Creator's beneficence shines over every part of our favored land. "Take a seat, my dear sir," Mr. Weston said, "in our sweetbrier house, as Alice calls it; the evening would lose half its beauty to us, if we were within." "Alice is always right," said Mr. Barbour, "in every thing she says and does, and so I will occupy this arm-chair that I know she placed here for me. Dear me! what a glorious evening! Those distant peaks of the Blue Ridge look bluer than I ever saw them before." "Ah! you are glad to tread Virginia soil once more, that is evident enough," said Mr. Weston. "There is no danger of your getting tired of your native state again." "Who says I was ever tired of her? I challenge you to prove your insinuation. I wanted to see this great New England, the 'great Norrurd,' as Bacchus calls it, and I have seen it; I have enjoyed seeing it, too; and now I am glad to be at home again." "Here comes Uncle Bacchus now, Mr. Barbour," said Alice; "do look at him walk. Is he not a curiosity? He has as much pretension in his manner as if he were really doing us a favor in paying us a visit." "The old scamp," said Mr. Barbour, "he has a frolic in view; he wants to go off to-morrow either to a campmeeting, or a barbecue. He looks as if he were hooked together, and could be taken apart limb by limb." Bacchus had commenced bowing some time before he reached the piazza, but on ascending the steps he made a particularly low bow to his master, and then in the same manner, though with much less reverence, paid his respects to the others. "Well, Bacchus?" said Mr. Weston. "How is yer health dis evenin, master? You aint been so well latterly. We'll soon have green corn though, and that helps dispepsy wonderful." "It may be good for dyspepsia, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, "but it sometimes gives old people cholera morbus, when they eat it raw; so I advise you to remember last year's experience, and roast it before you eat it." "I shall, indeed," replied Bacchus; "'twas an awful time I had last summer. My blessed grief! but I thought my time was done come. But de Lord was mighty good to me, he brought me up again--Miss Janet's physic done me more good though than any thing, only it put me to sleep, and I never slept so much in my born days." "You were always something of a sleeper, I am told, Bacchus," said Cousin Janet; "though I have no doubt the laudanum had that effect; you must be more prudent; old people cannot take such liberties with themselves." "Lor, Miss Janet, I aint so mighty ole now; besure I aint no chicken nother; but thar's Aunt Peggy; she's what I call a raal ole nigger; she's an African. Miss Alice, aint she never told you bout de time she seed an elerphant drink a river dry?" "Yes," said Alice, "but she dreamed that." "No, Miss, she actually seed it wid her own eyes. They's mighty weak and dim now, but she could see out of 'em once, I tell ye. It's hot nuff here sometimes, but Aunt Peggy says it's winter to what 'tis in Guinea, whar she was raised till she was a big gall. One day when de sun was mighty strong, she seed an elerphant a comin along. She runned fast enough, she had no 'casion to grease her heels wid quicksilver; she went mighty fast, no doubt; she didn't want dat great beast's hoof in her wool. You and me seed an elerphant de time we was in Washington, long wid master, Miss Alice, and I thought 'bout Aunt Peggy that time. 'Twas a _'nageree_ we went to. You know I held you in my arms over de people's heads to see de monkeys ride. "Well, Aunt Peggy say she runned till she couldn't run no longer, so she clumb a great tree, and sat in de branches and watched him. He made straight for de river, and he kicked up de sand wid his hoofs, as he went along, till he come to de bank; den he begins to drink, and he drinks, I tell you. Aunt Peggy say every swaller he took was least a gallon, and he drunk all dat blessed mornin. After a while she seed de water gitting very low, and last he gits enuff. He must a got his thirst squinched by dat time. So Aunt Peggy, she waded cross de river, when de elephant had went, and two days arter dat, de river was clean gone, bare as my hand. Master," continued Bacchus, "I has a great favor to ax of you." "Barbecue or campmeeting, Bacchus?" said Mr. Barbour. "If you please, master," said he, addressing Mr. Weston, but at the same time giving an imploring look to Mr. Barbour, "to 'low me to go way to-morrow and wait at de barbecue. Mr. Semmes, he wants me mightily; he says he'll give me a dollar a day if I goes. I'll sure and be home agin in the evenin." "I am afraid to give you permission," said Mr. Weston; "this habit of drinking, that is growing upon you, is a disgrace to your old age. You remember you were picked up and brought home in a cart from campmeeting this summer, and I am surprised that you should so soon ask a favor of me." "I feels mighty shamed o' that, sir," said Bacchus, "but I hope you will 'scuse it. Niggers aint like white people, no how; they can't 'sist temptation. I've repented wid tears for dat business, and 'twont happen agin, if it please the Lord not to lead me into temptation." "You led yourself into temptation," said Mr. Weston; "you took pains to cross two or three fences, and to go round by Norris's tavern, when, if you had chosen, you could have come home by the other road." "True as gospel, ma'am," said Bacchus, "I don't deny de furst word of it; the Lord forgive me for backsliding; but master's mighty good to us, and if he'll overlook that little misfortune of mine, it shan't happen agin." "You call it a misfortune, do you, Bacchus?" said Mr. Barbour; "why, it seems to me such a great Christian as you are, would have given the right name to it, and called it a sin. I am told you are turned preacher?" "No, sir," said Bacchus, "I aint no preacher, I warn't called to be; I leads in prayer sometimes, and in general I rises de tunes." "Well, I suppose I can't refuse you," said Mr. Weston; "but come home sober, or ask no more permissions." "God bless you, master; don't be afeard: you'll see you can trust me. I aint gwine to disgrace our family no more. I has to have a little change sometimes, for Miss Janet knows my wife keeps me mighty straight at home. She 'lows me no privileges, and if I didn't go off sometimes for a little fun, I shouldn't have no health, nor sperrets nother." "You wouldn't have any sperrits, that's certain," said Alice, laughing; "I should like to see a bottle of whisky in Aunt Phillis's cabin." Bacchus laughed outright, infinitely overcome at the suggestion. "My blessed grief! Miss Alice," said he, "she'd make me eat de bottle, chaw up all de glass, swaller it arter dat. I aint ever tried dat yet--best not to, I reckon. No, master, I intends to keep sober from this time forrurd, till young master comes back; _den_ I shall git high, spite of Phillis, and 'scuse me, sir, spite of de devil hisself. When is he comin, any how, sir?" "Next year, I hope, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston. "Long time, sir," said Bacchus; "like as not he'll never see old Aunt Peggy agin. She's failin, sir, you can see by de way she sets in de sun all day, wid a long switch in her hand, trying to hit de little niggers as dey go by. Sure sign she's gwine home. If she wasn't altogether wore out, she'd be at somefin better. She's sarved her time cookin and bakin, and she's gwine to a country whar there's no 'casion to cook any more. She's a good old soul, but wonderful cross sometimes." "She has been an honest, hard-working, and faithful servant, and a sober one too," said Mr. Weston. "I understand, sir," said Bacchus, humbly; "but don't give yourself no oneasiness about me! I shall be home to-morrow night, ready to jine in at prayers." "Very well--that will do, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, who felt anxious to enjoy the society of his friend. "Good evenin to you all," said Bacchus, retreating with many bows. We will see how Bacchus kept his word, and for the present leave Mr. Weston to discuss the subjects of the day with his guest; while the ladies paid a visit to Aunt Peggy, and listened to her complaints of "the flies and the little niggers," and the thousand and one ailings that belong to the age of ninety years. CHAPTER II. "You rode too far this afternoon, Alice, you seem to be very tired," said Mr. Weston. "No, dear uncle, I am not fatigued; the wind was cold, and it makes me feel stupid." "Why did not Walter come in?" asked Mr. Weston. "I saw him returning with you by the old road." "He said he had an engagement this evening," replied Alice, as she raised her head from her uncle's shoulder. "Poor Walter!" said Cousin Janet; "with the education and habits of a gentleman, he is to be pitied that it is only as a favor he is received, among those with whom he may justly consider himself on an equality." "But is not Walter our equal?" asked Alice. Cousin Janet held her knitting close to her eyes to look for a dropped stitch, while Mr. Weston replied for her: "My love, you know, probably, that Walter is not an equal by right of birth to those whose parents held a fair and honorable position in society. His father, a man of rare talents, of fascinating appearance, and winning address, was the ruin of all connected with him. (Even his mother, broken-hearted by his career of extravagance and dissipation, found rest in the termination of a life that had known no rest.) His first wife, (not Walter's mother,) a most interesting woman, was divorced from him by an unjust decision of the law, for after her death circumstances transpired that clearly proved her innocence. Walter's mother was not married, as far as is known; though some believe she was, and that she concealed it in consequence of the wishes and threats of Mr. Lee, who was ashamed to own the daughter of a tradesman for his wife." "But all this is not Walter's fault, uncle," said Alice. "Assuredly not; but there is something due to our long established opinions. Walter should go to a new country, where these things are not known, and where his education and talents would advance him. Here they are too fresh in the memory of many. Yet do I feel most kindly towards him, though he rather repels the interest we take in him by his haughty coldness of manner. The attachment between him and my son from their infancy draws me towards him. Arthur writes, though, that his letters are very reserved and not frequent. What can be the meaning of it?" "There was always a want of candor and generosity in Walter's disposition," remarked Alice's mother. "You never liked him, Anna," said Mr. Weston; "why was it?" "Arthur and Walter contrast so strongly," answered Mrs. Weston. "Arthur was always perfectly honest and straight-forward, even as a little child; though quiet in his way of showing it, he is so affectionate in his disposition. Walter is passionate and fickle, condescending to those he loves, but treating with a proud indifference every one else. I wonder he does not go abroad, he has the command of his fortune now, and here he can never be happily situated; no woman of delicacy would ever think of marrying him with that stain on his birth." "How beautiful his mother was, Cousin Janet!" said Mr. Weston. "I have never seen more grace and refinement. I often look at Walter, and recall her, with her beautiful brown hair and blue eyes. How short her course was, too! I think she died at eighteen." "Do tell me about her, uncle," said Alice. "Cousin Janet can, better than I, my darling. Have you never told Alice her history, cousin?" "No, it is almost too sad a tale for Alice's ear, and there is something holy, in my mind, in the recollection of the sorrows of that young person. I believe she was a wife, though an unacknowledged one. If the grave would give up its secrets--but it will, it will--the time will come for justice to all, even to poor Ellen Haywood. "That young creature was worse than an orphan, for her father, thriving in business at one time, became dissipated and reckless. Ellen's time was her own; and after her mother's death her will was uncontrolled. Her education was not good enough to give her a taste for self-improvement. She had a fine mind, though, and the strictest sense of propriety and dignity. Her remarkable beauty drew towards her the attention of the young men of her own class, as well as those of good family; but she was always prudent. Poor girl! knowing she was motherless and friendless, I tried to win her regard; I asked her to come to the house, with some other young girls of the neighborhood, to study the Bible under my poor teachings; but she declined, and I afterwards went to see her, hoping to persuade her to come. I found her pale and delicate, and much dispirited. Thanking me most earnestly, she begged me to excuse her, saying she rarely went out, on account of her father's habits, fearing something might occur during her absence from home. I was surprised to find her so depressed, yet I do not remember ever to have seen any thing like guilt, in all the interviews with her, from that hour until her death. "Ellen's father died; but not before many had spoken lightly of his daughter. Mr. Lee was constantly at the house; and what but Ellen's beauty could take him there! No one was without a prejudice against Mr. Lee, and I have often wondered that Ellen could have overlooked what every one knew, the treatment his wife had received. You will think," continued Cousin Janet, "that it is because I am an old maid, and am full of notions, that I cannot imagine how a woman can love a man who has been divorced from his wife. I, who have never loved as the novelists say, have the most exalted ideas of marriage. It is in Scripture, the type of Christ's love to the church. Life is so full of cares; there is something holy in the thought of one heart being privileged to rest its burden on another. But how can that man be loved who has put away his wife from him, because he is tired of her? for this is the meaning of the usual excuses--incompatibility of temper, and the like. Yet Ellen did love him, with a love passing description; she forgot his faults and her own position; she loved as I would never again wish to see a friend of mine love any creature of the earth. "Time passed, and Ellen was despised. Mr. Lee left abruptly for Europe, and I heard that this poor young woman was about to become a mother. I knew she was alone in the world, and I knew my duty too. I went to her, and I thank Him who inclined me to seek this wandering lamb of his fold, and to be (it may be) the means of leading her back to His loving care and protection. I often saw her during the last few weeks of her life, and she was usually alone; Aunt Lucy, her mother's servant, and her own nurse when an infant, being the only other occupant of her small cottage. "Speaking of her, brings back, vividly as if it happened yesterday, the scene with which her young life closed. Lucy sent for me, as I had charged her, but the messenger delayed, and in consequence, Ellen had been some hours sick when I arrived. Oh! how lovely her face appears to my memory, as I recall her. She was in no pain at the moment I entered; her head was supported by pillows, and her brown hair fell over them and over her neck. Her eyes were bright as an angel's, her cheeks flushed to a crimson color, and her white, beautiful hand grasped a cane which Dr. Lawton had just placed there, hoping to relieve some of her symptoms by bleeding. Lucy stood by, full of anxiety and affection, for this faithful servant loved her as she loved her own life. My heart reproached me for my unintentional neglect, but I was in a moment by her side, supporting her head upon my breast. "It is like a dream, that long night of agony. The patience of Ellen, the kindness of her physician, and the devotion of her old nurse--I thought that only a wife could have endured as she did. "Before this, Ellen had told me her wishes as regards her child, persuaded that, if it should live, she should not survive its birth to take care of it. She entreated me to befriend it in the helpless time of infancy, and then to appeal to its father in its behalf. I promised her to do so, always chiding her for not hoping and trusting. 'Ellen,' I would say, 'life is a blessing as long as God gives it, and it is our duty to consider it so.' "'Yes, Miss Janet, but if God give me a better life, shall I not esteem it a greater blessing? I have not deserved shame and reproach, and I cannot live under it. Right glad and happy am I, that a few sods of earth will soon cover all.' "Such remarks as these," continued Cousin Janet, "convinced me that there was grief, but not guilt, on Ellen's breast, and for her own sake, I hoped that she would so explain to me her past history, that I should have it in my power to clear her reputation. But she never did. Truly, 'she died and made no sign,' and it is reserved to a future day to do her justice. "I said she died. That last night wore on, and no word of impatience or complaint escaped her lips. The agony of death found her quiet and composed. Night advanced, and the gray morning twilight fell on those features, no longer flushed and excited. Severe faintings had come on, and the purple line under the blue eyes heralded the approach of death. Her luxuriant hair lay in damp masses about her; her white arms were cold, and the moisture of death was gathering there too. 'Oh! Miss Ellen,' cried old Lucy, 'you will be better soon--bear up a little longer.' "'Ellen dear,' I said, 'try and keep up.' But who can give life and strength save One?--and He was calling to her everlasting rest the poor young sufferer. "'Miss Ellen,' again cried Lucy, 'you have a son; speak to me, my darling;' but, like Rachel of old, she could not be thus revived, 'her soul was in departing.' "Lucy bore away the child from the chamber of death, and I closed her white eyelids, and laid her hands upon her breast. Beautiful was she in death: she had done with pain and tears forever. "I never can forget," continued Cousin Janet, after a pause of a few moments, "Lucy's grief. She wept unceasingly by Ellen's side, and it was impossible to arouse her to a care for her own health, or to an interest in what was passing around. On the day that Ellen was to be buried, I went to the room where she lay prepared for her last long sleep. Death had laid a light touch on her fair face. The sweet white brow round which her hair waved as it had in life--the slightly parted lips--the expression of repose, not only in the countenance, but in the attitude in which her old nurse had laid her, seemed to indicate an awakening to the duties of life. But there was the coffin and the shroud, and there sat Lucy, her eyes heavy with weeping, and her frame feeble from long fasting, and indulgence of bitter, hopeless grief. "It was in the winter, and a severe snow-storm, an unusual occurrence with us, had swept the country for several days; but on this morning the wind and clouds had gone together, and the sun was lighting up the hills and river, and the crystals of snow were glistening on the evergreens that stood in front of the cottage door. One ray intruded through the shutter into the darkened room, and rested on a ring, which I had never observed before, on Ellen's left hand. It was on the third finger, and its appearance there was so unexpected to me, that for a moment my strength forsook me, and I leaned against the table on which the coffin rested, for support. "'Lucy,' I said, 'when was that placed there?' "'I put it there, ma'am.' "'But what induced you?' "'She told me to do so, ma'am. A few days before she was taken sick, she called me and took from her bureau-drawer, that ring. The ring was in a small box. She was very pale when she spoke--she looked more like death than she does now, ma'am. I know'd she wasn't able to stand, and I said, 'Sit down, honey, and then tell me what you want me to do.' "'Mammy,' said she, 'you've had a world of trouble with me, and you've had trouble of your own all your life; but I am not going to give you much more--I shall soon be where trouble cannot come.' "'Don't talk that way, child,' said I, 'you will get through with this, and then you will have something to love and to care for, that will make you happy again.' "'Never in this world,' said she; 'but mammy, I have one favor more to ask of you--and you must promise me to do it.' "'What is it, Miss Ellen?' said I, 'you know I would die for you if 'twould do you any good.' "'It is this,' she said, speaking very slowly, and in a low tone, 'when I am dead, mammy, when you are all by yourself, for I am sure you will stay by me to the last, I want you to put this ring on the third finger of my left hand--will you remember?--on the third finger of my left hand.' She said it over twice, ma'am, and she was whiter than that rose that lays on her poor breast.' "'Miss Ellen,' says I, 'as sure as there's a God in heaven you are Mr. Lee's wife, and why don't you say so, and stand up for yourself? Don't you see how people sneer at you when they see you?' "'Yes, but don't say any more. It will soon be over. I made a promise, and I will keep it; God will do me justice when he sees fit.' "'But, Miss Ellen,' says I, 'for the sake of the child'-- "'Hush! mammy, that is the worst of all; but I will trust in Him. It's a dreadful sin to love as I have, but God has punished me. Do you remember, dear mammy, when I was a child, how tired I would get, chasing butterflies while the day lasted, and when night came, how I used to spring, and try to catch the lightning-bugs that were flying around me--and you used to beg me to come in and rest or go to bed, but I would not until I could no longer stand; then I laid myself on your breast and forgot all my weariness? So it is with me now; I have had my own way, and I have suffered, and have no more strength to spend; I will lie down in the grave, and sleep where no one will reproach me. Promise me you will do what I ask you, and I will die contented.' "'I promised her, ma'am, and I have done it.' "'It is very strange, Lucy,' said I, 'there seems to have been a mysterious reason why she would not clear herself; but it is of no use to try and unravel the mystery. She has no friends left to care about it; we can only do as she said, leave all to God.' "'Ah ma'am,' said Lucy, 'what shall I do now she is gone? I have got no friend left; if I could only die too--Lord have mercy upon me.' "'You have still a friend, Lucy,' I said. 'One that well deserves the name of friend. You must seek Him out, and make a friend of Him. Jesus Christ is the friend of the poor and desolate. Have you no children, Lucy?' "'God only knows, ma'am.' "'What do you mean?' I said. 'Are they all dead?' "'They are gone, ma'am--all sold. I ain't seen one of them for twenty years. Days have come and gone, and nights have come and gone, but day and night is all the same to me. You did not hear, may be, for grand folks don't often hear of the troubles of the poor slave--that one day I had seven children with me, and the next they were all sold; taken off, and I did not even see them, to bid them good-by. My master sent me, with my mistress to the country, where her father lived, (for she was sickly, and he said it would do her good,) and when we came back there was no child to meet me. I have cried, ma'am, enough for Miss Ellen, but I never shed a tear for my own.' "'But what induced him, Lucy, to do such a wicked thing?' "'Money, ma'am, and drinking, and the devil. He did not leave me one. My five boys, and my two girls, all went at once. My oldest daughter, ma'am, I was proud of her, for she was a handsome girl, and light-colored too--she went, and the little one, ma'am. My heart died in me. I hated him. I used to dream I had killed him, and I would laugh out in my sleep, but I couldn't murder him on her account. My mistress, she cried day and night, and called him cruel, and she would say, 'Lucy, I'd have died before I would have done it.' I couldn't murder him, ma'am, 'twas my mistress held me back.' "'No, Lucy,' said I, ''twas not your mistress, it was the Lord; and thank Him that you are not a murderer. Did you ever think of the consequences of such an act?' "'Lor, ma'am, do you think I cared for that? I wasn't afraid of hanging.' "'I did not mean that, Lucy. I meant, did you not fear His power, who could not only kill your body, but destroy your soul in hell?' "'I didn't think of any thing, for a long time. My mistress got worse after that, and I nursed her until she died; poor Miss Ellen was a baby, and I had her too. When master died I thought it was no use for me to wish him ill, for the hand of the Lord was heavy on him, for true. 'Lucy,' he said, 'you are a kind nurse to me, though I sold your children, but I've had no rest since.' I couldn't make him feel worse, ma'am, for he was going to his account with all his sins upon him.' "'This is the first time Lucy,' I said, 'that I have ever known children to be sold away from their mother, and I look upon the crime with as great a horror as you do.' "'Its the only time I ever knowed it, ma'am, and everybody pitied me, and many a kind thing was said to me, and many a hard word was said of him; true enough, but better be forgotten, as he is in his grave.' "Some persons now entered, and Lucy became absorbed in her present grief; her old frame shook as with a tempest, when the fair face was hid from her sight. There were few mourners; Cousin Weston and I followed her to the grave. I believe Ellen was as pure as the white lilies Lucy planted at her head." "Did Lucy ever hear of her children?" asked Alice. "No, my darling, she died soon after Ellen. She was quite an old woman, and had never been strong." "Uncle," said Alice, "I did not think any one could be so inhuman as to separate mother and children." "It is the worst feature in slavery," replied Mr. Weston, "and the State should provide laws to prevent it; but such a circumstance is very uncommon. Haywood, Ellen's father, was a notoriously bad man, and after this wicked act was held in utter abhorrence in the neighborhood. It is the interest of a master to make his slaves happy, even were he not actuated by better motives. Slavery is an institution of our country; and while we are privileged to maintain our rights, we should make them comfortable here, and fit them for happiness hereafter." "Did you bring Lucy home with you, Cousin Janet?" asked Alice. "Yes, my love, and little Walter too. He was a dear baby--now he is a man of fortune, (for Mr. Lee left him his entire property,) and is under no one's control. He will always be very dear to me. But here comes Mark with the Prayer Book." "Lay it here, Mark," said Mr. Weston, "and ring the bell for the servants. I like all who can to come and unite with me in thanking God for His many mercies. Strange, I have opened the Holy Book where David says, (and we will join with him,) 'Praise the Lord, oh! my soul, and all that is within me, praise his holy name.'" CHAPTER III. After the other members of the family had retired, Mr. Weston, as was usual with him, sat for a while in the parlor to read. The closing hour of the day is, of all, the time that we love to dwell on the subject nearest our heart. As, at the approach of death, the powers of the mind rally, and the mortal, faint and feeble, with but a few sparks of decaying life within him, arouses to a sense of his condition, and puts forth all his energies, to meet the hour of parting with earth and turning his face to heaven; so, at the close of the evening, the mind, wearied with its day's travelling, is about to sink into that repose as necessary for it as for the body--that repose so often compared to the one in which the tired struggler with life, has "forever wrapped the drapery of his couch about him, and laid down to pleasant dreams." Ere yielding, it turns with energy to the calls of memory, though it is so soon to forget all for a while. It hears voices long since hushed, and eyes gaze into it that have looked their last upon earthly visions. Time is forgotten, Affection for a while holds her reign, Sorrow appears with her train of reproachings and remorse, until exhaustion comes to its aid, and it obtains the relief so bountifully provided by Him who knoweth well our frames. With Mr. Weston this last hour was well employed, for he not only read, but studied the Holy Scriptures. Possessed of an unusually placid temperament, there had occurred in his life but few events calculated to change the natural bent of his disposition. The death of his wife was indeed a bitter grief; but he had not married young, and she had lived so short a time, that after a while he returned to his usual train of reflection. But for the constant presence of his son, whose early education he superintended, he would have doubted if there ever had been a reality to the remembrance of the happy year he had passed in her society. With his hand resting on the sacred page, and his heart engrossed with the lessons it taught, he was aroused from his occupation by a loud noise proceeding from the kitchen. This was a most unusual circumstance, for besides that the kitchen was at some distance from the house, the servants were generally quiet and orderly. It was far from being the case at present. Mr. Weston waited a short time to give affairs time to right themselves, but at length determined to inquire into the cause of the confusion. As he passed through the long hall, the faces of his ancestors looked down upon him by the dim light. There was a fair young lady, with an arm white as snow, unconcealed by a sleeve, unless the fall of a rich border of lace from her shoulder could be called by that name. Her golden hair was brushed back from her forehead, and fell in masses over her shoulders. Her face was slightly turned, and there was a smile playing about her mouth. Next her was a grave-looking cavalier, her husband. There were old men, with powdered hair and the rich dress of bygone times. There were the hoop and the brocades, and the stomacher, and the fair bosom, against which a rose leaned, well satisfied with its lounging place. Over the hall doors, the antlers of the stag protruded, reminding one that the chase had been a favorite pastime with the self-exiled sons of Merry England. Such things have passed away from thee, my native State! Forever have they gone, and the times when over waxed floors thy sons and daughters gracefully performed the minuet. The stately bow, the graceful curtsey are seen no more; there is hospitality yet lingering in thy halls, but fashion is making its way there too. The day when there was a tie between master and slave,--is that departing, and why? Mr. Weston passed from the house under a covered way to the kitchen, and with a firm but slow step, entered. And here, if you be an Old or a New Englander, let me introduce you--as little at home would be Queen Victoria holding court in the Sandwich Islands, as you here. You may look in vain for that bane of good dinners, a cooking stove; search forever for a grain of saleratus or soda, and it will be in vain. That large, round block, with the wooden hammer, is the biscuit-beater; and the cork that is lifting itself from the jug standing on it, belongs to the yeast department. Mr. Weston did not, nor will we, delay to glance at the well-swept earthen floor, and the bright tins in rows on the dresser, but immediately addressed himself to Aunt Peggy, who, seated in a rush-bottomed chair in the corner, and rocking herself backwards and forwards, was talking rapidly. And oh! what a figure had Aunt Peggy; or rather, what a face. Which was the blacker, her eyes or her visage; or whiter, her eyeballs or her hair? The latter, unconfined by her bandanna handkerchief as she generally wore it, standing off from her head in masses, like snow. And who that had seen her, could forget that one tooth projecting over her thick underlip, and in constant motion as she talked. "It's no use, Mister Bacchus," said she, addressing the old man, who looked rather the worse for wear, "it's no use to be flinging yer imperence in my face. I'se worked my time; I'se cooked many a grand dinner, and eat 'em too. You'se a lazy wagabond yerself." "Peggy," interposed Mr. Weston. "A good-for-nothing, lazy wagabond, yerself," continued Peggy, not noticing Mr. Weston, "you'se not worth de hommony you eats." "Does you hear that, master?" said Bacchus, appealing to Mr. Weston; "she's such an old fool." "Hold your tongue, sir," said Mr. Weston; while Mark, ready to strangle his fellow-servant for his impertinence, was endeavoring to drag him out of the room. "Ha, ha," said Peggy, "so much for Mr. Bacchus going to barbecues. A nice waiter he makes." "Do you not see me before you, Peggy?" said Mr. Weston, "and do you continue this disputing in my presence? If you were not so old, and had not been so faithful for many years, I would not excuse such conduct. You are very ungrateful, when you are so well cared for; and from this time forward, if you cannot be quiet and set a good example in the kitchen, do not come into it." "Don't be afeard, master, I can stay in my own cabin. If I has been well treated, it's no more den I desarves. I'se done nuff for you and yours, in my day; slaved myself for you and your father before you. De Lord above knows I dont want ter stay whar dat ole drunken nigger is, no how. Hand me my cane, dar, Nancy, I ain't gwine to 'trude my 'siety on nobody." And Peggy hobbled off, not without a most contemptuous look at Bacchus, who was making unsuccessful efforts to rise in compliment to his master. "As for you, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, "never let this happen again. I will not allow you to wait at barbecues, in future." "Don't say so, master, if you please; dat ox, if you could a smelled him roastin, and de whiskey-punch," and Bacchus snapped his finger, as the only way of concluding the sentence to his own satisfaction. "Take him off, Mark," said Mr. Weston, "the drunken old rascal." "Master," said Bacchus, pushing Mark off, "I don't like de way you speak to me; t'aint 'spectful." "Carry him off," said Mr. Weston, again. "John, help Mark." "Be off wid yourselves, both of ye," said Bacchus; "if ye don't, I'll give you de devil, afore I quits." "I'll shut your mouth for you," said Mark, "talking so before master; knock him over, John, and push him out." Bacchus was not so easily overcome. The god whose namesake he was, stood by him for a time. Suddenly the old fellow's mood changed; with a patronizing smile he turned to Mr. Weston, and said, "Master, you must 'scuse me: I aint well dis evening. I has the dyspepsy; my suggestion aint as good as common. I think dat ox was done too much." Mr. Weston could not restrain a smile at his grotesque appearance, and ridiculous language. Mark and John took advantage of the melting mood which had come over him, and led him off without difficulty. On leaving the kitchen, he went into a pious fit, and sung out "When I can read my title clar." Mr. Weston heard him say, "Don't, Mark; don't squeeze an ole nigger so; do you 'spose you'll ever get to Heaven, if you got no more feelins than that?" "I hope," said Mr. Weston, addressing the other servants, "that you will all take warning by this scene. An honest and respectable servant like Bacchus, to degrade himself in this way--it gives me great pain to see it. William," said he, addressing a son of Bacchus, who stood by the window, "did you deliver my note to Mr. Walter?" "Yes, sir; he says he'll come to dinner; I was on my way in to tell you, but they was making such a fuss here." "Very well," said Mr. Weston. "The rest of you go to bed, quietly; I am sure there will be no more disturbance to-night." But, what will the Abolitionist say to this scene? Where were the whip and the cord, and other instruments of torture? Such consideration, he contends, was never shown in the southern country. With Martin Tupper, I say, "Hear reason, oh! brother; Hear reason and right." It has been, that master and slave were friends; and if this cannot continue, at whose door will the sin lie? The Abolitionist says to the slave, Go! but what does he do that really advances his interest? He says to the master, Give up thine own! but does he offer to share in the loss? No; he would give to the Lord of that which costs him nothing. Should the southern country become free, should the eyes of the world see no stain upon her escutcheon, it will not be through the efforts of these fanatics. If white labor could be substituted for black, better were it that she should not have this weight upon her. The emancipation of her slaves will never be accomplished by interference or force. Good men assist in colonizing them, and the Creator may thus intend to christianize benighted Africa. Should this be the Divine will, oh! that from every port, steamers were going forth, bearing our colored people to their natural home! CHAPTER IV. My readers must go with me to a military station at the North, and date back two years from the time of my story. The season must change, and instead of summer sunsets and roses, we will bring before them three feet of snow, and winter's bleakest winds. Neither of these inconvenienced the company assembled in the comfortable little parlor of Captain Moore's quarters, with a coal-grate almost as large as the room, and curtains closely drawn over the old style windows: Mrs. Moore was reduced to the utmost extremity of her wits to make the room look modern; but it is astonishing, the genius of army ladies for putting the best foot foremost. This room was neither square nor oblong; and though a mere box in size, it had no less than four doors (two belonged to the closets) and three windows. The closets were utterly useless, being occupied by an indomitable race of rats and mice; they had an impregnable fortress somewhere in the old walls, and kept possession, in spite of the house-keeping artillery Mrs. Moore levelled against them. The poor woman gave up in despair; she locked the doors, and determined to starve the garrison into submission. She was far more successful in other respects, having completely banished the spirits of formality and inhospitality that presided in these domains. The house was outside the fort, and had been purchased from a citizen who lived there, totally apart from his race; Mrs. Moore had the comfort of hearing, on taking possession, that all sorts of ghosts were at home there; but she was a cheerful kind of woman, and did not believe in them any more than she did in clairvoyance, so she set to work with a brave heart, and every thing yielded to her sway, excepting the aforesaid rats and mice. Her parlor was the very realization of home comfort. The lounge by the three windows was covered with small figured French chintz, and it was a delightful seat, or bed, as the occasion required. She had the legs of several of the chairs sawed off, and made cushions for them, covered with pieces of the chintz left from the lounge. The armchairs that looked at each other from either side of the fireplace place, not being of velvet, were made to sit in. In one corner of the room, (there were five,) a fine-toned guitar rested against the wall; in another, was a large fly-brush of peacock's feathers, with a most unconscionable number of eyes. In the third, was Captain Moore's sword and sash. In the fourth, was Mrs. Moore's work-basket, where any amount of thimbles, needles, and all sorts of sewing implements could be found. And in the fifth corner was the baby-jumper, its fat and habitual occupant being at this time oblivious to the day's exertions; in point of fact, he was up stairs in a red pine crib, sound asleep with his thumb in his mouth. One of Chickering's best pianos stood open in this wonderful little parlor, and Mrs. Moore rung out sweet sounds from it evening after evening. Mrs. M. was an industrious, intelligent Southern woman; before she met Captain Moore, she had a sort of antipathy to dogs and Yankees; both, however, suddenly disappeared, for after a short acquaintance, she fell desperately in love with the captain, and allowed his great Newfoundland dog, (who had saved the captain, and a great number of boys from drowning,) to lick her hand, and rest his cold, black nose on her lap; on this evening Neptune lay at her feet, and was another ornament of the parlor. Indeed, he should have been mentioned in connection with the baby-jumper, for wherever the baby was in the day time, there was Neptune, but he seemed to think that a Newfoundland dog had other duties incumbent upon him in the evening than watching babies, so he listened attentively to the music, dozing now and then. Sometimes, during a very loud strain, he would suddenly rouse and look intently at the coal-fire; but finding himself mistaken, that he had only dreamed it was a river, and that a boy who was fishing on its banks had tumbled in, and required his services to pull him out, would fall down on the rug again and take another nap. I have said nothing of this rug, which Neptune thought was purchased for him, nor of the bright red carpet, nor of the nice china candlesticks on the mantel-piece, (which could not be reached without a step-ladder,) nor of the silver urn, which was Mrs. Moore's great-grandmother's, nor of the lard-lamp which lit up every thing astonishingly, because I am anxious to come to the point of this chapter, and cannot do justice to all these things. But it would be the height of injustice, in me, to pass by Lieutenant Jones's moustaches, for the simple reason, that since the close of the Mexican war, he had done little else but cultivate them. They were very brown, glossy, and luxuriant, entirely covering his upper lip, so that it was only in a hearty laugh that one would have any reason to suppose he had cut his front teeth; but he had, and they were worth cutting, too, which is not always the case with teeth. The object of wearing these moustaches was, evidently, to give himself a warlike and ferocious appearance; in this, he was partially successful, having the drawbacks of a remarkably gentle and humane countenance, and a pair of mild blue eyes. He was a very good-natured young man, and had shot a wild turkey in Mexico, the tail of which he had brought home to Mrs. Moore, to be made into a fan. (This fan, too, was in the parlor, of which may be said what was once thought of the schoolmaster's head, that the only wonder was, it could contain so much.) Next to Mr. Jones we will notice a brevet-second lieutenant, just attached to the regiment, and then introduce a handsome bachelor captain. (These are scarce in the army, and should be valued accordingly.) This gentleman was a fine musician, and the brevet played delightfully on the flute; in fact, they had had quite a concert this evening. Then there was Colonel Watson, the commanding officer, who had happened in, Mrs. Moore being an especial favorite of his; and there was a long, lean, gaunt-looking gentleman, by the name of Kent. He was from Vermont, and was an ultra Abolitionist. They had all just returned from the dining-room, where they had been eating cold turkey and mince pies; and though there was a fair chance of the nightmare some hours hence, yet for the present they were in an exceedingly high state of health and spirits. Now, Mrs. Moore had brought from Carolina a woman quite advanced in life. She had been a very faithful servant, and Mrs. Moore's mother, wishing her daughter to have the benefit of her services, and feeling perfect confidence in Polly's promise that under no circumstances would she leave her daughter without just cause, had concluded that the best way of managing affairs would be to set her free at once. She did so; but Polly being one of those persons who take the world quietly, was not the least elated at being her own mistress; she rather felt it to be a kind of experiment to which there was some risk attached. Mrs. Moore paid her six dollars a month for her services, and from the time they had left home together until the present moment, Polly had been a most efficient servant, and a sort of friend whose opinions were valuable in a case of emergency. For instance, Captain Moore was a temperance man, and in consequence, opposed to brandy, wine, and the like being kept in his house. This was quite a trouble to his wife, for she knew that good mince pies and pudding sauces could not be made without a little of the wherewithal; so she laid her difficulties before Aunt Polly, and begged her to advise what was best to do. "You see, Aunt Polly, Captain Moore says that a good example ought to be set to the soldiers; and that since the Mexican war the young officers are more inclined to indulge than they used to be; that he feels such a responsibility in the case that he can't bear the sight of a bottle in the house." "Well, honey," said Aunt Polly, "he says he likes my mince pies, and my puddins, mightily; and does he 'spect me to make 'em good, and make 'em out of nothin, too?" "That's what I say, Aunt Polly, for you know none of us like to drink. The captain belongs to the Temperance Society; and I don't like it, because it gets into my head, and makes me stupid; and you never drink any thing, so if we could only manage to get him to let us keep it to cook with." "As to that, child," said Aunt Polly, "I mus have it to cook with, that's a pint settled; there aint no use 'sputin about it. If he thinks I'm gwine to change my way of cookin in my old age, he's mightily mistaken. He need'nt think I'm gwine to make puddins out o' one egg, and lighten my muffins with snow, like these ere Yankees, 'kase I aint gwine to do it for nobody. I sot out to do my duty by you, and I'll do it; but for all that, I aint bound to set to larnin new things this time o' day. I'll cook Carolina fashion, or I wont cook at all." "Well, but what shall I do?" said Mrs. Moore; "you wouldn't have me do a thing my husband disapproves of, would you?" "No, that I wouldn't, Miss Emmy," said Aunt Polly. "My old man's dust and ashes long ago, but I always done what I could to please him. Men's mighty onreasonable, the best of 'em, but when a woman is married she ought to do all she can for the sake of peace. I dont see what a man has got to do interferin with the cookin, no how; a woman oughter 'tend to these matters. 'Pears to me, Mr. Moore, (captain, as you calls him,) is mighty fidjetty about bottles, all at once. But if he cant bear the sight of a brandy bottle in the house, bring 'em down here to me; I'll keep 'em out of his sight, I'll be bound. I'll put 'em in the corner of my old chist yonder, and I'd like to see him thar, rummagin arter brandy bottles or any thing else." Mrs. Moore was very much relieved by this suggestion, and when her husband came in, she enlarged on the necessity of Polly's having her own way about the cooking, and wound up by saying that Polly must take charge of all the bottles, and by this arrangement he would not be annoyed by the sight of them. "But, my dear," said he, "do you think it right to give such things in charge of a servant?" "Why, Aunt Polly never drinks." "Yes, but Emmy, you don't consider the temptation." "La, William, do hush; why if you talk about temptation, she's had that all her life, and she could have drank herself to death long ago. Just say yes, and be done with it, for it has worried me to death all day, and I want it settled, and off my mind." "Well, do as you like," said Captain Moore, "but remember, it will be your fault if any thing happens." "Nothing is going to happen," said Mrs. Moore, jumping up, and seizing the wine and brandy bottles by the necks, and descending to the lower regions with them. "Here they are, Aunt Polly. William consents to your having them; and mind you keep them out of sight." "Set 'em down in the cheer thar, I'll take care of 'em, I jist wanted some brandy to put in these potato puddins. I wonder what they'd taste like without it." But Mrs. Moore could not wait to talk about it, she was up stairs in another moment, holding her baby on Neptune's back, and more at ease in her mind than she had been since the subject was started, twenty-four hours before. There was but one other servant in the house, a middle-aged woman, who had run away from her mistress in Boston; or rather, she had been seduced off by the Abolitionists. While many would have done well under the circumstances, Susan had never been happy, or comfortable, since this occurred. Besides the self-reproach that annoyed her, (for she had been brought on from Georgia to nurse a sick child, and its mother, a very feeble person, had placed her dependence upon her,) Susan was illy calculated to shift for herself. She was a timid, delicate woman, with rather a romantic cast of mind; her mistress had always been an invalid, and was fond of hearing her favorite books read aloud. For the style of books that Susan had been accustomed to listen to, as she sat at her sewing, Lalla Rookh would be a good specimen; and, as she had never been put to hard work, but had merely been an attendant about her mistress' room, most of her time was occupied in a literary way. Thus, having an excellent memory, her head was a sort of store-room for lovesick snatches of song. The Museum men would represent her as having snatched a feather of the bird of song; but as this is a matter-of-fact kind of story, we will observe, that Susan not being naturally very strong-minded, and her education not more advanced than to enable her to spell out an antiquated valentine, or to write a letter with a great many small i's in it, she is rather to be considered the victim of circumstances and a soft heart. She was, nevertheless, a conscientious woman; and when she left Georgia, to come North, had any one told her that she would run away, she would have answered in the spirit, if not the expression, of the oft quoted, "Is thy servant a dog?" She enjoyed the journey to the North, the more that the little baby improved very much in strength; she had had, at her own wish, the entire charge of him from his birth. The family had not been two days at the Revere House before Susan found herself an object of interest to men who were gentlemen, if broadcloth and patent-leather boots could constitute that valuable article. These individuals seemed to know as much of her as she did of herself, though they plied her with questions to a degree that quite disarranged her usual calm and poetic flow of ideas. As to "Whether she had been born a slave, or had been kidnapped? Whether she had ever been sold? How many times a week she had been whipped, and what with? Had she ever been shut up in a dark cellar and nearly starved? Was she allowed more than one meal a day? Did she ever have any thing but sweet potato pealings? Had she ever been ducked? And, finally, she was desired to open her mouth, that they might see whether her teeth had been extracted to sell to the dentist?" Poor Susan! after one or two interviews her feelings were terribly agitated; all these horrible suggestions _might become_ realities, and though she loved her home, her mistress, and the baby too, yet she was finally convinced that though born a slave, it was not the intention of Providence, but a mistake, and that she had been miraculously led to this Western Holy Land, of which Boston is the Jerusalem, as the means by which things could be set to rights again. One beautiful, bright evening, when her mistress had rode out to see the State House by moonlight, Susan kissed the baby, not without many tears, and then threw herself, trembling and dismayed, into the arms and tender mercies of the Abolitionists. They led her into a distant part of the city, and placed her for the night under the charge of some people who made their living by receiving the newly ransomed. The next morning she was to go off, but she found she had reckoned without her host, for when she thanked the good people for her night's lodging and the hashed cod-fish on which she had tried to breakfast, she had a bill to pay, and where was the money? Poor Susan! she had only a quarter of a dollar, and that she had asked her mistress for a week before, to buy a pair of side-combs. "Why, what a fool you be," said one of the men; "Didn't I tell you to bring your mistress' purse along?" "And did you think I was going to steal besides running off from her and the poor baby?" answered Susan. "It's not stealing," said the Abolitionist. "Haven't you been a slaving of yourself all your life for her, and I guess you've a right to be paid for it. I guess you think the rags on your back good wages enough?" Susan looked at her neat dress, and thought they were very nice rags, compared to the clothes her landlady had on; but the Abolitionist was in a hurry. "Come," said he, "I'm not going to spend all my time on you; if you want to be free, come along; pay what you owe and start." "But I have only this quarter," said Susan, despairingly. "I don't calculate to give runaway niggers their supper, and night's lodging and breakfast for twenty-five cents," said the woman. "I aint so green as that, I can tell you. If you've got no money, open your bundle, and we can make a trade, like as not." Susan opened her bundle, (which was a good strong carpet-bag her mistress had given her,) and after some hesitation, the woman selected as her due a nice imitation of Cashmere shawl, the last present her mistress had given her. It had cost four dollars. Susan could hardly give it up; she wanted to keep it as a remembrance, but she already felt herself in the hands of the Philistines, and she fastened up her carpet-bag and set forward. She was carried off in the cars to an interior town, and directed to the house of an Abolitionist, to whom she was to hire herself. Her fare was paid by this person, and then deducted from her wages--her wages were four dollars a month. She cooked and washed for ten in family; cleaned the whole house, and did all _the chores_, except sawing the wood, which the gentleman of the house did himself. She was only required to split the hard, large knots--the oldest son splitting the easy sticks for her. On Saturday, the only extra duty required of her was to mend every item of clothing worn in the family; the lady of the house making them herself. Susan felt very much as if it was out of the frying pan into the fire; or rather, as if she had been transferred from one master to another. She found it took all her wages to buy her shoes and stockings and flannel, for her health suffered very much from the harsh climate and her new mode of life, so she ventured to ask for an increase of a dollar a month. "Is that your gratitude," was the indignant reply, "for all that we've done for you? The idea of a nigger wanting over four dollars a month, when you've been working all your life, too, for nothing at all. Why everybody in town is wondering that I keep you, when white help is so much better." "But, ma'am," replied Susan, "they tell me here that a woman gets six dollars a month, when she does the whole work of a family." "A _white_ woman does," said this Abolitionist lady, "but not a nigger, I guess. Besides, if they do, you ought to be willing to work cheaper for Abolitionists, for they are your friends." If "save me from my friends," had been in Lalla Rookh, Susan would certainly have applied it, but as the quotation belonged to the heroic rather than the sentimental department, she could not avail herself of it, and therefore went on chopping her codfish and onions together, at the rate of four dollars a month, and very weak eyes, till some good wind blew Captain Moore to the command of his company, in the Fort near the town. After Mrs. Moore's housekeeping operations had fairly commenced, she found it would be necessary to have a person to clean the house of four rooms, and to help Neptune mind the baby. Aunt Polly accordingly set forward on an exploration. She presented quite an unusual appearance as regards her style of dress. She wore a plaid domestic gingham gown; she had several stuff ones, but she declared she never put one of them on for any thing less than "meetin." She had a black satin Methodist bonnet, very much the shape of a coal hod, and the color of her own complexion, only there was a slight shade of blue in it. Thick gloves, and shoes, and stockings; a white cotton apron, and a tremendous blanket shawl completed her costume. She had a most determined expression of countenance; the fact is, she had gone out to get a house-servant, and she didn't intend to return without one. I forgot to mention that she walked with a cane, having had a severe attack of rheumatics since her arrival in "the great Norrurd," and at every step she hit the pavements in such a manner as to startle the rising generation of Abolitionists, and it had the good effect of preventing any of them from calling out to her, "Where did you get your face painted, you black nigger, you?" which would otherwise have occurred. Susan was just returning from a grocery store with three codfish in one hand, and a piece of salt pork and a jug of molasses in the other, when she was startled by Aunt Polly's unexpected appearance, bearing down upon her like a man of war. Aunt Polly stopped for a moment and looked at her intensely, while Susan's feelings, which, like her poetry, had for some time been quite subdued by constant collision with a cooking stove, got the better of her, and she burst into tears. Aunt Polly made up her mind on the spot; it was, as she afterwards expressed it, "'A meracle,' meeting that poor girl, with all that codfish and other stuff in her hand." Susan did not require too much encouragement to tell her lamentable tale, and Aunt Polly in return advised her to leave her place when her month was up, informing the family of her intention, that they might supply themselves. This Susan promised to do, with a full heart, and Aunt Polly having accomplished her mission, set out on her return, first saying to Susan, however, "We'll wait for you, you needn't be afeard, and I'll do your work 'till you come, 'taint much, for we puts out our washin. And you need'nt be sceard when you see the sogers, they aint gwine to hurt you, though they do look so savage." Susan gave notice of her intention, and after a season of martyrdom set forward to find Captain Moore's quarters. She had no difficulty, for Polly was looking out for her, with her pipe in her mouth. "Come in, child," said she, "and warm yourself; how is your cough? I stewed some molasses for you, 'gin you come. We'll go up and see Miss Emmy, presently; she 'spects you." Susan was duly introduced to Mrs. Moore who was at the time sitting in the captain's lap with the baby in hers, and Neptune's forepaws in the baby's. The captain's temperance principles did not forbid him smoking a good cigar, and at the moment of Susan's entrance, he was in the act of emitting stealthily a cloud of smoke into his wife's face. After letting the baby fall out of her lap, and taking two or three short breaths with strong symptoms of choking, Mrs. Moore with a husky voice and very red eyes, welcomed Susan, and introduced her to the baby and Neptune, then told Aunt Polly to show her where to put her clothes, and to make her comfortable in every respect. Aunt Polly did so by baking her a hoe-cake, and broiling a herring, and drawing a cup of strong tea. Susan went to bed scared with her new happiness, and dreamed she was in Georgia, in her old room, with the sick baby in her arms. Susan's _friends_, the Abolitionists, were highly indignant at the turn affairs had taken. They had accordingly a new and fruitful subject of discussion at the sewing societies and quilting bees of the town. In solemn conclave it was decided to vote army people down as utterly disagreeable. One old maid suggested the propriety of their immediately getting up a petition for disbanding the army; but the motion was laid on the table in consideration of John Quincy Adams being dead and buried, and therefore not in a condition to present the petition. Susan became quite cheerful, and gained twenty pounds in an incredibly short space of time, though strange rumors continued to float about the army. It was stated at a meeting of the F.S.F.S.T.W.T.R. (Female Society for Setting the World to Rights) that "army folks were a low, dissipated set, for they put wine in their _puddin_ sauce." I do not mean to say liberty is not, next to life, the greatest of God's earthly gifts, and that men and women ought not to be happier free than slaves. God forbid that I should so have read my Bible. But such cases as Susan's do occur, and far oftener than the raw-head and bloody-bones' stories with which Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has seen fit to embellish that interesting romance, Uncle Tom's Cabin. CHAPTER V. Capt. Moore suddenly seized the poker, and commenced stirring the fire vigorously. Neptune rushed to his covert under the piano, and Mrs. Moore called out, "Dont, dear, for heaven's sake." "Why, it's getting cold," said Captain Moore, apologetically. "Don't you hear the wind?" "Yes, but I don't feel it, neither do you. The fire cannot be improved. See how you have made the dust fly! You never can let well alone." "That is the trouble with the Abolitionists," said Colonel Watson. "They can't let well alone, and so Mr. Kent and his party want to reorganize the Southern country." "There is no well there to let alone," said Mr. Kent, with the air of a Solomon. "Don't talk so, Mr. Kent," said Mrs. Moore, entreatingly, "for I can't quarrel with you in my own house, and I feel very much inclined to do so for that one sentence." "Now," said the bachelor captain, "I do long to hear you and Mr. Kent discuss Abolition. The colonel and I may be considered disinterested listeners, as we hail from the Middle States, and are not politicians. Captain Moore cannot interfere, as he is host as well as husband; and Mr. Jones and Scott have eaten too much to feel much interest in any thing just now. Pray, tell Mr. Kent, my dear madam, of Susan's getting you to intercede with her mistress to take her back, and see what he says." "I know it already," said Mr. Kent, "and I must say that I am surprised to find Mrs. Moore inducing a fellow-creature to return to a condition so dreadful as that of a Southern slave. After having been plucked from the fire, it should be painful to the human mind to see her thrown in again." "Your simile is not a good one, Mr. Kent," said Mrs. Moore, with a heightened color. "I can make a better. Susan, in a moment of delirium, jumped into the fire, and she called on me to pull her out. Unfortunately, I cannot heal all the burns, for I yesterday received an answer to my letter to her mistress, who positively refuses to take her back. She is willing, but Mr. Casey will not consent to it. He says that his wife was made very sick by the shock of losing Susan, and the over-exertion necessary in the care of her child. The baby died in Boston; and they cannot overlook Susan's deserting it at a hotel, without any one to take charge of it; they placing such perfect confidence in Susan, too. He thinks her presence would constantly recall to Mrs. Casey her child's death; besides, after having lived among Abolitionists, he fancies it would not be prudent to bring her on the plantation. Having attained her freedom, he says she must make the best of it. Mrs. Casey enclosed me ten dollars to give to Susan, for I wrote her she was in bad health, and had very little clothing when she came to me. Poor girl! I could hardly persuade her to take the money, and soon after, she brought it to me and asked me to keep it for her, and not to change the note that came from home. I felt very sorry for her." "She deserves it," said Mr. Kent. "I think she does," said Mrs. Moore, smiling, "though for another reason." Mr. Kent blushed as only men with light hair, and light skin, and light eyes, can blush. "I mean," said Mr. Kent, furiously, "she deserves her refusal for her ingratitude. After God provided her friends who made her a free woman, she is so senseless as to want to go back to be lashed and trodden under foot again, as the slaves of the South are. I say, she deserves it for being such a fool." "And I say," said Mrs. Moore, "she deserves it for deserting her kind mistress at a time when she most needed her services. God did not raise her up friends because she had done wrong." "You are right, Emmy, in your views of Susan's conduct; but you should be careful how you trace motives to such a source. She certainly did wrong, and she has suffered; that is all we can say. We must do the best we can to restore her to health. She is very happy with us now, and will, no doubt, after a while, enjoy her liberty: it would be a most unnatural thing if she did not." "But how is it, Mr. Kent," said the colonel, "that after you induce these poor devils to give up their homes, that you do not start them in life; set them going in some way in the new world to which you transfer them. You do not give them a copper, I am told." "We don't calculate to do that," said Mr. Kent. "I believe you," said Mrs. Moore, maliciously. Mr. Kent looked indignant at the interruption, while his discomfiture was very amusing to the young officers, they being devoted admirers of Mrs. Moore's talents and mince pies. They laughed heartily; and Mr. Kent looked at them as if nothing would have induced him to overlook their impertinence but the fact, that they were very low on the list of lieutenants, and he was an abolition agent. "We calculate, sir, to give them their freedom, and then let them look out for themselves." "That is, you have no objection to their living in the same world with yourself, provided it costs you nothing," said the colonel. "We make them free," said Mr. Kent. "They have their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are no longer enslaved, body and soul. If I see a man with his hands and feet chained, and I break those chains, it is all that God expects me to do; let him earn his own living." "But suppose he does not know how to do so," said Mrs. Moore, "what then? The occupations of a negro at the South are so different from those of the people at the North." "Thank God they are, ma'am," said Mr. Kent, grandly. "We have no overseers to draw the blood of their fellow creatures, and masters to look on and laugh. We do not snatch infants from their mothers' breasts, and sell them for whisky." "Neither do we," said Mrs. Moore, her bosom heaving with emotion; "no one but an Abolitionist could have had such a wicked thought. No wonder that men who glory in breaking the laws of their country should make such misstatements." "Madam," said Mr. Kent, "they are facts; we can prove them; and we say that the slaves of the South shall be free, cost what it will. The men of the North have set out to emancipate them, and they will do it if they have to wade through fire, water, and blood." "You had better not talk in that style when you go South," said Captain Moore, "unless you have an unconquerable prejudice in favor of tar and feathers." "Who cares for tar and feathers?" said Mr. Kent; "there has been already a martyr in the ranks of Abolition, and there may be more. Lovejoy died a glorious martyr's death, and there are others ready to do the same." "Give me my cane, there, captain, if you please," said Colonel Watson, who had been looking at Mr. Kent's blazing countenance and projecting eyes, in utter amazement. "Why, Buena Vista was nothing to this. Good night, madam, and do tell Susan not to jump into the fire again; I wonder she was not burned up while she was there. Come, captain, let us make our escape while we can." The captain followed, bidding the whole party good night, with a smile. He had been perfectly charmed with the Abolition discussion. Mr. Jones had got very sleepy, and he and Mr. Scott made their adieu. Mr. Kent, with some embarrassment, bade Mrs. Moore good night. Mrs. Moore begged him to go South and be converted, for she believed his whole heart required changing. Captain Moore followed them to the door, and shivered as he inhaled the north-easter. "Come, Emmy," said he, as he entered, rubbing his hands, "you've fought for your country this night; let's go to bed." Mrs. Moore lit a candle, and put out the lard-lamp, wondering if she had been impolite to Mr. Kent. She led the way to the staircase, in a reflective state of mind; Neptune followed, and stood at the foot of the steps for some moments, in deep thought; concluding that if there should be danger of any one's falling into a river up there, they would call him and let him know, he went back, laid down on the soft rug, and fell asleep for the night. * * * * * It does not take long to state a fact. Mr. Kent went to Washington on Abolition business,--through the introduction of a senator from his own State he obtained access to good society. He boarded in the same house with a Virginian who had a pretty face, very little sense, but a large fortune. Mr. Kent, with very little difficulty, persuaded her he was a saint, ready to be translated at the shortest notice. He dropped his Abolition notions, and they were married. At the time that my story opens, he is a planter, living near Mr. Weston, and we will hear of him again. CHAPTER VI. Arthur Weston is in his college-room in that far-famed city, New Haven. He is in the act of replacing his cigar in his mouth, after having knocked the ashes off it, when we introduce to him the reader. Though not well employed, his first appearance must be prepossessing; he inherited his mother's clear brunette complexion, and her fine expressive eyes. His very black hair he had thrown entirely off his forehead, and he is now reading an Abolition paper which had fallen into his hands. There are two other young men in the room, one of them Arthur's friend, Abel Johnson; and the other, a young man by the name of Hubbard. "Who brought this paper into my room?" said Arthur, after laying it down on the table beside him. "I was reading it," said Mr. Hubbard, "and threw it aside." "Well, if it makes no difference to you, Mr. Hubbard, I'd prefer not seeing any more of these publications about me. This number is a literary curiosity, and deserves to be preserved; but as I do not file papers at present, I will just return it, after expressing my thanks to you for affording me the means of obtaining valuable information about the Southern country." "What is it about, Arthur," said Abel Johnson, "it is too hot to read this morning, so pray enlighten me?" "Why, here," said Arthur, opening the paper again, "here is an advertisement, said to be copied from a Southern paper, in which, after describing a runaway slave, it says: 'I will give four hundred dollars for him alive, and the same sum for satisfactory proof that he has been killed.' Then the editor goes on to say, 'that when a planter loses a slave, he becomes so impatient at not capturing him, and is so angry at the loss, that he then does what is equivalent to inducing some person to murder him by way of revenge.' Now, is not this infamous?" "But it is true, I believe," said Mr. Hubbard. "It is not true, sir," said Arthur, "it is false, totally and entirely false. Why, sir, do you mean to say, that the life of a slave is in the power of a master, and that he is not under the protection of our laws?" "I am told that is the case," said Mr. Hubbard. "Then you are told what is not true; and it seems to me, you are remarkably ignorant of the laws of your country." "It is not my country," said Mr. Hubbard, "I assure you. I lay no claims to that part of the United States where slavery is allowed." "Then if it is not your country, for what reason do you concern yourself so much about its affairs?" "Because," replied Mr. Hubbard, "every individual has the right to judge for himself, of his own, and of other countries." "No, not without proper information," said Arthur. "And as you have now graduated and intend to be a lawyer, I trust you will have consideration enough for the profession, not to advance opinions until you are sufficiently informed to enable you to do so justly. Every country must have its poor people; you have yours at the North, for I see them--we have ours; yours are white, ours are black. I say yours are white; I should except your free blacks, who are the most miserable class of human beings I ever saw. They are indolent, reckless, and impertinent. The poorer classes of society, are proverbially improvident--and yours, in sickness, and in old age, are often victims of want and suffering. Ours in such circumstances, are kindly cared for, and are never considered a burden; our laws are, generally speaking, humane and faithfully administered. We have enactments which not only protect their lives, but which compel their owners to be moderate in working them, and to ensure them proper care as regards their food." "But," said Mr. Hubbard, "you have other laws, police-laws, which deprive them of the most innocent recreations, such as are not only necessary for their happiness, but also for their health." "And if such laws do exist," said Arthur, "where is the cause? You may trace it to the interference of meddling, and unprincipled men. They excite the minds of the slaves, and render these laws necessary for the very protection of our lives. But without this interference, there would be no such necessity. In this Walsh's Appeal, which is now open before me, you will find, where Abel left off reading, these remarks, which show that not only the health and comfort of the slaves, but also their feelings, are greatly considered. 'The master who would deprive his negro of his property--the product of his poultry-house or his little garden; who would force him to work on holidays, or at night; who would deny him common recreations, or leave him without shelter and provision, in his old age, would incur the aversion of the community, and raise obstacles to the advancement of his own interest and external aims.'" "Then," said Mr. Hubbard, "you mean to say, he is kind from self-interest alone." "No, I do not," replied Arthur; "that undoubtedly, actuates men at the South, as it does men at the North; but I mean to say, so universal is it with us to see our slaves well treated, that when an instance of the contrary nature occurs, the author of it is subject to the dislike and odium of his acquaintances." "But," said Mr. Hubbard, "that does not always protect the slaves--which shows that your laws are sometimes ineffectual. They are not always secure from ill-treatment." "But, do your laws always secure you from ill-treatment?" said Arthur. "Of course," said Mr. Hubbard, "the poorest person in New England is as safe from injustice and oppression, as the highest in the land." "Nonsense," said Arthur, "don't you think I can judge for myself, as regards that? Abel, do tell Mr. Hubbard of our little adventure in the bakehouse." "With pleasure," said Abel, "especially as you two have not let me say a word yet. Well, Mr. Hubbard, Arthur and I having nothing else to do, got hungry, and as it was a fine evening, thought we would walk out in search of something to satisfy our appetites, and there being a pretty girl in Brown's bakehouse, who waits on customers, we took that direction. Arthur, you know, is engaged to be married, and has no excuse for such things, but I having no such ties, am free to search for pretty faces, and to make the most of it when I find them. We walked on, arm-in-arm, and when we got to the shop, there stood Mrs. Brown behind the counter, big as all out doors, with a very red face, and in a violent perspiration; there was some thing wrong with the old lady 'twas easy to see." "'Well, Mrs. Brown,' said Arthur, for I was looking in the glass cases and under the counter for the pretty face, 'have you any rusk?' "'Yes, sir, we _always_ have rusk,' said Mrs. Brown, tartly. "'Will you give us some, and some cakes, or whatever you have? and then we will go and get some soda water, Abel.' "Mrs. Brown fussed about like a 'bear with a sore head,' and at last she broke out against _that gal_. "'Where on earth has she put that cake?' said she. 'I sent her in here with it an hour ago; just like her, lazy, good-for-nothing Irish thing. They're nothing but white niggers, after all, these Irish. Here, Ann,' she bawled out, 'come here!' "'Coming,' said Ann, from within the glass door. "'Come this minute,' said the old woman, and Ann's pretty Irish face showed itself immediately. "'Where's that 'lection cake I told you to bring here?' "'You didn't tell me to bring no cake here, Mrs. Brown,' said Ann. "'I did, you little liar, you,' said Mrs. Brown. 'You Irish are born liars. Go, bring it here.' "Ann disappeared, and soon returned, looking triumphant. 'Mr. Brown says he brought it in when you told him, and covered it in that box--so I aint such a liar, after all.' "'You are,' said Mrs. Brown, 'and a thief too.' "Ann's Irish blood was up. "'I'm neither,' said she; 'but I'm an orphan, and poor; that's why I'm scolded and cuffed about.' "Mrs. Brown's blood was up too, and she struck the poor girl in the face, and her big, hard hand was in an instant covered with blood, which spouted out from Ann's nose. "'Now take that for your impudence, and you'll get worse next time you go disputing with me.' "'I declare, Mrs. Brown,' said Arthur, 'this is, I thought, a free country. I did not know you could take the law into your own hands in that style.' "'That gal's the bother of my life,' said Mrs. Brown. 'Mr. Brown, he was in New York when a ship come, and that gal's father and mother must die of the ship-fever, and the gal was left, and Mr. Brown calculated she could be made to save us hiring, by teaching her a little. She's smart enough, but she's the hard-headedest, obstinatest thing I ever see. I can't make nothin' of her. You might as well try to draw blood out of a turnip as to get any good out of her.' "'You got some good blood out of her,' said I, 'at any rate,' for Mrs. Brown was wiping her hands, and the blood looked red and healthy enough; 'but she is not a turnip, that's one thing to be considered.' "'Well, Mrs. Brown, good evening,' said Arthur. 'I shall tell them at the South how you Northern people treat your white niggers.' "'I wish to the Lord,' said Mrs. Brown, 'we had some real niggers. Here I am sweatin, and workin, and bakin, all these hot days, and Brown he's doin nothin from morning 'till night but reading Abolition papers, and tendin Abolition meetings. I'm not much better than a nigger myself, half the time.' "Now," said Arthur, "Mr. Hubbard, I have been fortunate in my experience. I have never seen a slave woman struck in my life, though I've no doubt such things are done; and I assure you when I saw Mrs. Brown run the risk of spoiling that pretty face for life, I wondered your laws did not protect 'these bound gals,' or 'white niggers,' as she calls them." "You see, Hubbard," said Abel, "your philanthropy and Arthur's is very contracted. He only feels sympathy for a pretty white face, you for a black one, while my enlarged benevolence induces me to stand up for all female 'phizmahoganies,' especially for the Hottentot and the Madagascar ones, and the fair sex of all the undiscovered islands on the globe in general." "You don't think, then," said Mr. Hubbard, argumentatively, "that God's curse is on slavery, do you?" "In what sense?" asked Arthur. "I think that slavery is, and always was a curse, and that the Creator intended what he said, when he first spoke of it, through Noah." "But, I mean," said Mr. Hubbard, "that it will bring a curse on those who own slaves." "No, _sir_," said Arthur, "God's blessing is, and always has been on my father, who is a slaveholder; on his father, who was one; and on a good many more I could mention. In fact, I could bring forward quite a respectable list who have died in their beds, in spite of their egregious sin in this respect. There are Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Calhoun, Henry Clay, and not a few others. In this case, the North, as has been said, says to her sister South, 'Stand aside, for I am holier than thou!' that is, you didn't need them, and got rid of them." "We were all born free and equal," said Mr. Hubbard, impressively. "Equal!" said Abel, "there is that idiot, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, across the street: was he born equal with you?" "It strikes me," said Arthur, "that our slaves are not born free." "They ought to be so, then," said Mr. Hubbard. "Ah! there you arraign the Creator," said Arthur; "I must stop now." "What do you think is the meaning of the text 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren,' Hubbard?" said Abel. "I don't think it justifies slavery," said Hubbard. "Well, what does it mean?" said Abel. "It must mean something. Now I am at present between two doctrines; so I am neither on your nor on Arthur's side. If I can't live one way I must another; and these are hard times. If I can't distinguish myself in law, divinity, or physic, or as an artist, which I would prefer, I may turn planter, or may turn Abolition agent. I must do something for my living. Having no slaves I can't turn planter; therefore there is more probability of my talents finding their way to the Abolition ranks; so give me all the information you can on the subject." "Go to the Bible," said Mr. Hubbard, "and learn your duty to your fellow-creatures." "Well, here is a Bible my mother sent here for Arthur and myself, with the commentaries. This is Scott's Commentary. Where is Canaan?" said he, turning over the leaves; "he is very hard to be got at." "You are too far over," said Arthur, laughing, "you are not in the habit of referring to Scott." "Here it is," said Abel, "'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.' And in another verse we see 'God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.' So we are Japheth and Shem, and the colored population are Canaan. Is that it, Arthur?" said Abel. "See what Scott says, Abel," said Arthur; "I'm not a commentator." "Well, here it is,--'There is no authority for altering the text, and reading, as some do, Cursed be Ham, the father of Canaan, yet the frequent mention of Ham, as the father of Canaan, suggests the thought that the latter was also criminal. Ham is thought to be second, and not the youngest son of Noah; and if so, the words, 'Knew what his younger son had done,' refers to Canaan, his grandson. Ham must have felt it a very mortifying rebuke, when his own father was inspired on this occasion to predict the durable oppression and slavery of his posterity. Canaan was also rebuked, by learning that the curse would especially rest on that branch of the family which should descend from him; for his posterity were no doubt principally, though not exclusively, intended.'" "Now," continued Abel, "I shall have to turn planter, and get my niggers as I can; for I'll be hanged if it wasn't a curse, and a predicted one, too." "That does not make it right," said Mr. Hubbard. "Don't it," said Abel; "well, if it should be fated for me to turn parson, I shan't study divinity with you, for my mother has told me often, that God's prophecies were right, and were fulfilled, too; as I think this one has been." "I suppose, then, you think slavery will always continue, Mr. Weston?" said Hubbard. "Well, I am only a man, and cannot prophesy, but I think, probably not. Slavery is decreasing throughout the world. The slave trade is about being abolished on the coast of Africa. You Abolitionists are getting a good many off from our southern country, and our planters are setting a number of theirs free, and sending them to Africa. I know a gentleman in Georgia who liberated a number, and gave them the means to start in Liberia as free agents and men. He told me he saw them on board, and watched the ship as she disappeared from his sight. At last he could not detect the smallest trace of her, and then such a feeling of intense satisfaction occupied his breast as had been a stranger there until that time. 'Is it possible that they are gone, and I am no longer to be plagued with them? They are free, and I am free, too.' He could hardly give vent to his feelings of relief on the occasion." "And are they such trouble to you, Arthur?" asked Abel. "No, indeed," said Arthur, "not the least. My father treats them well, and they appear to be as well off as the working classes generally are. I see rules to regulate the conduct of the master and slave in Scripture, but I see no where the injunction to release them; nor do I find laid down the sin of holding them. The fact is, you northern people are full of your isms; you must start a new one every year. I hope they will not travel south, for I am tired of them. I should like to take Deacon and Mrs. White back home with me. Our servants would be afraid of a man who has worked sixteen hours a day half his lifetime." "Deacon White is worth twenty thousand dollars," said Abel, "every cent of which he made mending and making common shoes." "What does he do with it?" said Arthur. "Hoards it up," said Abel, "and yet an honester man never lived. Did I not tell you of the time I hired his horse and chaise? I believe not; well, it is worth waiting for. The deacon's old white horse is as gray and as docile as himself; the fact is, the stable is so near the house, that the horse is constantly under the influence of 'Old Hundred;' he has heard the good old tune so often, that he has a solemn way of viewing things. Two or three weeks ago I wanted to take my sister to see a relative of ours, who lives seven or eight miles from here, and my mother would not consent to my driving her, unless I hired the deacon's horse and chaise--the horse, she said, could not run if he wanted to. So I got him, and Harriet asked Kate Laune to go too, as the chaise was large enough for all three; and we had a good time. We were gone all day, and after I took the girls home, I drove round to the deacon's house and jumped out of the chaise to pay what I owed. "You know what a little fellow the deacon is, and he looked particularly small that evening, for he was seated in his arm-chair reading a large newspaper which hid him all but his legs. These are so shrunken that I wonder how his wife gets his stockings small enough for him. "'Good evening, Mrs. White,' said I, for the old lady was sitting on the steps knitting. "'Mercy's sake, deacon,' said she, 'put down your newspaper; don't you see Mr. Johnson?' "'The deacon did not even give me a nod until he had scrutinized the condition of the horse and chaise, and then he said, 'How are you?' "'Not a screw loose in me, or the horse and chaise either, for I had two girls with me, and I'm courting one of them for a quarter, so I drove very carefully. I am in a hurry now, tell me what I am to pay you?' "'Twelve and a half cents,' said the deacon, slowly raising his spectacles from his nose. "'No!' said I. 'Twelve and a half cents! Why, I have had the horse all day.' "'That is my price,' said the deacon. "'For a horse and chaise, all day?' said I. 'Why, deacon, do charge me something that I aint ashamed to pay you.' "'That is my regular price, and I can't charge you any more.' "I remonstrated with him, and tried to persuade him to take twenty-five cents--but, no. I appealed to Mrs. White; she said the 'deacon hadn't ought to take more than the horse and chaise was worth.' However, I induced him to take eighteen and three-quarter cents, but he was uneasy about it, and said he was afraid he was imposing on me. "The next morning I was awakened at day-dawn--there was a man, they said, who wanted to see me on pressing business, and could not wait. I dressed in a hurry, wondering what was the cause of the demand for college-students. I went down, and there stood the deacon, looking as if his last hour were come. 'Mr. Abel,' he said, 'I have passed a dreadful restless night, and I couldn't stand it after the day broke--here's your six and a quarter cents--I hadn't ought to have charged you more than my usual price.' I was angry at the old fellow for waking me up, but I could not help laughing, too." "''Twas very ugly of you, Mr. Abel, to persuade me to take so much,' said he; 'you're welcome to the horse and chaise whenever you want it, but twelve and a half cents is my usual price.'" "Now," said Mr. Hubbard, "he is like the Portuguese devils; when they are good, they are too good--I should distrust that man." "He is close to a farthing," said Abel, "but he is as honest as the day. Why he has the reputation of a saint. Harriet says she wishes he wore a long-tailed coat instead of a short jacket, so that she could hang on and get to heaven that way." "My sister saw Mrs. White not long ago, and complimented her on her new bonnet being so very becoming to her. 'Now I want to know!' said Mrs. White; 'why I thought it made me look like a fright.' "'But what made you get a black one,' said Harriet, 'why did you not get a dark green or a brown one?' "'Why, you see,' said Mrs. White, 'the deacon's health is a failin'; he's dreadful low in the top knots lately, and I thought as his time might come very soon, I might as well get a black one while I was a getting. We're all born to die, Miss Harriet; and the deacon is dwindlin' away.'" The young men laughed, and Arthur said "What will he do with his money? Mrs. White will not wear the black bonnet long if she have twenty thousand dollars; she can buy a new bonnet and a new husband with that." "No danger," said Abel, "Deacon White has made his will, and has left his wife the interest of five thousand dollars; at her death the principal goes, as all the rest, to aid some benevolent purpose. "But there are the letters; what a bundle for you, Arthur! That is the penalty of being engaged. Well I must wait for the widow White, I guess she'll let me have the use of the horse and chaise, at any rate." Mr. Hubbard arose to go, and Arthur handed him his newspaper. "That is a valuable document, sir, but there is one still more so in your library here; it is a paper published the same month and year of the Declaration of Independence, in which are advertised in the New England States negroes for sale! Your fathers did not think we were all born free and equal it appears." "We have better views now-a-days, said Mr. Hubbard; the Rev. Mr. H. has just returned from a tour in the Southern States, and he is to lecture to-night, won't you go and hear him?" "Thank you, no," said Arthur. "I have seen some of this reverend gentleman's statements, and his friends ought to advise him to drop the reverend for life. He is a fit subject for an asylum, for I can't think a man in his senses would lie so." "He is considered a man of veracity," said Mr. Hubbard, "by those who have an opportunity of knowing his character." "Well, I differ from them," said Arthur, "and shall deprive myself of the pleasure of hearing him. Good evening, sir." "Wouldn't he be a good subject for tar and feathers, Arthur? They'd stick, like grim death to a dead nigger," said Abel. "He is really such a fool," said Arthur, "that I have no patience with him; but you take your usual nap, and I will read my letters." CHAPTER VII. We will go back to the last evening at Exeter, when we left Mr. Weston to witness the result of Bacchus's attendance at the barbecue. There were other hearts busy in the quiet night time. Alice, resisting the offers of her maid to assist her in undressing, threw herself on a lounge by the open window. The night air played with the curtains, and lifted the curls from her brow. Her bloom, which of late had been changeful and delicate, had now left her cheek, and languid and depressed she abandoned herself to thought. So absorbed was she, that she was not aware any one had entered the room, until her mother stood near, gently reproving her for thus exposing herself to the night air. "Do get up and go to bed," she said. "Where is Martha?" "I did not want her," said Alice; "and am now going to bed myself. What has brought you here?" "Because I felt anxious about you," said Mrs. Weston, "and came, as I have often before, to be assured that you were well and enjoying repose. I find you still up; and now, my daughter, there is a question I have feared to ask you, but can no longer delay it. By all the love that is between us, by the tie that should bind an only child to a widowed mother, will you tell me what are the thoughts that are oppressing you? I have been anxious for your health, but is there not more cause to fear for your happiness?" "I am well enough, dear mother," said Alice, with some irritation of manner, "Do not concern yourself about me. If you will go to bed, I will too." "You cannot thus put me off," said Mrs. Weston. "Alice, I charge you, as in the presence of God, to tell me truly: do you love Walter Lee?" "It would be strange if I did not," said Alice, in a low voice. "Have we not always been as brother and sister?" "Not in that sense, Alice; do not thus evade me. Do you love him with an affection which should belong to your cousin, to whom you are solemnly engaged, who has been the companion of your childhood, and who is the son of the best friend that God ever raised up to a widow and a fatherless child?" Alice turned her head away, and after a moment answered, "Yes, I do, mother, and I cannot help it." But on turning to look at her mother, she was shocked at the expression of agony displayed on her countenance. Her hand was pressed tightly over her heart, her lips quivered, and her whole person trembled. It was dreadful to see her thus agitated; and Alice, throwing her arms around her mother exclaimed, "What is it, dearest mother? Be not look so deathlike. I cannot bear to see you so." Oh! they speak falsely who say the certainty of evil can be better borne than suspense. Watcher by the couch of suffering, sayest thou so? Now thou knowest there is no hope, thy darling must be given up. There is no mistaking that failing pulse, and that up-turned eye. A few hours ago, there was suspense, but there was hope; death was feared, but not expected; his arm was outstretched, but the blow was not descending; now, there is no hope. Mrs. Weston had long feared that all was not well with Alice--that while her promise was given to one, her heart had wandered to another; yet she dreaded to meet the appalling certainty; now with her there is no hope. The keen anguish with which she contended was evident to her daughter, who was affrighted at her mother's appearance. So much so, that for the first time for months she entirely forgot the secret she had been hiding in her heart. The young in their first sorrow dream there are none like their own. It is not until time and many cares have bowed us to the earth, that we look around, beholding those who have suffered more deeply than ourselves. Accustomed to self-control, Mrs. Weston was not long in recovering herself; taking her daughter's hand within her own, and looking up in her fair face, "Alice," she said, "you listened with an unusual interest to the details of suffering of one whom you never saw. I mean Walter Lee's mother; she died. I can tell you of one who has suffered, and lived. "It is late, and I fear to detain you from your rest, but something impels me that I cannot resist. Listen, then, while I talk to you of myself. You are as yet almost unacquainted with your mother's history." "Another time, mother; you are not well now," said Alice. "Yes, my love, now. You were born in the same house that I was; yet your infancy only was passed where I lived until my marriage. I was motherless at an early age; indeed, one of the first remembrances that I recall is the bright and glowing summer evening when my mother was carried from our plantation on James River to the opposite shore, where was our family burial-ground. Can I ever forget my father's uncontrolled grief, and the sorrow of the servants, as they followed, dressed in the deepest mourning. I was terrified at the solemn and dark-looking bier, the black plumes that waved over it, and all the dread accompaniments of death. I remember but little for years after this, save the continued gloom of my father, and his constant affection and indulgence toward me, and occasionally varying our quiet life by a visit to Richmond or Washington. "My father was a sincere and practical Christian. He was averse to parting with me; declaring, the only solace he had was in directing my education, and being assured of my happiness. "My governess was an accomplished and amiable lady, but she was too kind and yielding. I have always retained the most grateful remembrance of her care. Thus, though surrounded by good influences, I needed restraint, where there was so much indulgence. I have sometimes ventured to excuse myself on the ground that I was not taught that most necessary of all lessons: the power of governing myself. The giving up of my own will to the matured judgment of others. "The part of my life that I wish to bring before you now, is the year previous to my marriage. Never had I received an ungentle word from my father; never in all my waywardness and selfwill did he harshly reprove me. He steadily endeavored to impress on my mind a sense of the constant presence of God. He would often say, 'Every moment, every hour of our lives, places its impress on our condition in eternity. Live, then, as did your mother, in a state of waiting and preparation for that account which we must all surely give for the talents entrusted to our care.' Did I heed his advice? You will hardly believe me, Alice, when I tell you how I repaid his tenderness. I was the cause of his death." "It could never be, mother," said Alice, weeping, when she saw the tears forcing their way down her mother's cheek. "You are excited and distressed now. Do not tell me any more to-night, and forget what I told you." Mrs. Weston hardly seemed to hear her. After a pause of a few moments, she proceeded: "It was so, indeed. I, his only child, was the cause of his death; I, his cherished and beloved daughter, committed an act that broke his heart, and laid the foundation of sorrows for me, that I fear will only end with my life. "Alice, I read not long since of a son, the veriest wretch on earth; he was unwilling to grant his poor aged father a subsistence from his abundance; he embittered the failing years of his life by unkindness and reproaches. One day, after an altercation between them, the son seized his father by his thin, white hair, and dragged him to the corner of the street. Here, the father in trembling tones implored his pity. 'Stop, oh! stop, my son' he said, 'for I dragged my father here, God has punished me in your sin.' "Alice, can you not see the hand of a just God in this retribution, and do you wonder, when you made this acknowledgment to me to-night, the agony of death overcame me? I thought, as I felt His hand laid heavily upon me, my punishment was greater than I could bear; my sin would be punished in your sorrow; and naught but sorrow would be your portion as the wife of Walter Lee. "Do not interrupt me, it is time we were asleep, but I shall soon have finished what I have to say. My father and Mr. Weston were friends in early life, and I was thrown into frequent companionship with my husband, from the time when we were very young. His appearance, his talents, his unvaried gayety of disposition won my regard. For a time, the excess of dissipation in which he indulged was unknown to us, but on our return to Virginia after an absence of some months in England, it could no longer be concealed. His own father joined with mine in prohibiting all intercourse between us. For a time his family considered him as lost to them and to himself; he was utterly regardless of aught save what contributed to his own pleasures. I only mention this to excuse my father in your eyes, should you conclude he was too harsh in the course he insisted I should pursue. He forbade him the house, and refused to allow any correspondence between us; at the same time he promised that if he would perfectly reform from the life he was leading, at the end of two years he would permit the marriage. I promised in return to bind myself to these conditions. Will you believe it, that seated on my mother's grave, with my head upon my kind father's breast, I vowed, that as I hoped for Heaven I would never break my promise, never see him again, without my father's permission, until the expiration of this period; and yet I did break it. I have nearly done. I left home secretly. I was married; and I never saw my father's face again. The shock of my disobedience was too hard for him to bear. He died, and in vain have I sought a place of repentance, though I sought it with tears. "I have suffered much; but though I cannot conceal from you that your father threw away the best portion of his life, his death was not without hope. I cling to the trust that his sins were washed away, and his soul made clean in the blood of the Saviour. Then, by the memory of all that I suffered, and of that father whose features you bear, whose dying words gave testimony to my faithfulness and affection to him, I conjure you to conquer this unfortunate passion, which, if yielded to, will end in your unceasing misery. "There was little of my large fortune left at your father's death; we have been almost dependant on your uncle. Yet it has not been dependance; he is too generous to let us feel that. On your father's death-bed, he was all in all to him--never leaving him; inducing him to turn his thoughts to the future opening before him. He taught me where to look for comfort, and bore with me when in my impatient grief I refused to seek it. He took you, then almost an infant, to his heart, has cherished you as his own, and now looks forward to the happiness of seeing you his son's wife; will you so cruelly disappoint him?" "I will do whatever you ask me, dear mother," said Alice. "I will never see Walter again, if that will content you. I have already told him that I can never be to him more than I have always been--a sister. Yet I cannot help loving him." "Cannot help loving a man whose very birth is attended with shame," said Mrs. Weston; "whose passions are ungovernable, who has already treated with the basest ingratitude his kindest friends? Have you so little pride? I will not reproach you, my darling; promise me you will never see Walter again, after to-morrow, without my knowledge. I can trust you. Oh! give up forever the thought of being his wife, if ever you have entertained it. Time will show you the justice of my fears, and time will bring back your old feelings for Arthur, and we shall be happy again." "I will make you the promise," said Alice, "and I will keep it; but I will not deceive Arthur. Ungrateful as I may appear, he shall know all. He will then love some one more worthy of him than I am." "Let us leave the future in the hands of an unerring God, my Alice. Each one must bear her burden, I would gladly bear yours; but it may not be. Forget all this for a while; let me sleep by you to-night." Alice could not but be soothed by the gentle tone, and dear caress. Oh, blessed tie! uniting mother and child. Earth cannot, and Heaven will not break it. CHAPTER VIII. As absurd would it be for one of the small unsettled stars, for whose place and wanderings we care not, to usurp the track of the Queen of night or of the God of day, as for an unpretending writer to go over ground that has been trodden by the master minds of the age. It was in the olden time that Cooper described a dinner party in all its formal, but hospitable perfection. Washington was a guest there, too, though an unacknowledged one; we cannot introduce him at Exeter, yet I could bring forward there, more than one who knew him well, valuing him not only as a member of society and a hero, but as the man chosen by God for a great purpose. Besides, I would introduce to my readers, some of the residents of L----. I would let them into the very heart of Virginia life; and, although I cannot arrogate to it any claims for superiority over other conditions of society, among people of the same class in life, yet, at least, I will not allow an inferiority. As variety is the spice of society, I will show them, that here are many men of many minds. Mark, was a famous waiter, almost equal to Bacchus, who was head man, on such occasions. They were in their elements at a dinner party, and the sideboard, and tables, on such an occasion, were in their holiday attire. A strong arm, a hard brush, and plenty of beeswax, banished all appearance of use, and the old servants thought that every article in the room looked as bright and handsome as on the occasion of their young mistress' first presiding at her table. The blinds of the windows looking south, were partly open; the branches of the lemon-tree, and the tendrils of the white-jessamine, assisted in shading the apartment, making it fragrant too. The bird-cages were hung among the branches of the flowers, and the little prisoners sang as if they had, at last, found a way of escape to their native woods; old-fashioned silver glittered on the sideboard, the large china punch-bowl maintaining its position in the centre. William had gone to the drawing-room to announce the important intelligence, "Dinner is ready!" and Bacchus looked around the room for the last time, to see that every thing was, as it should be, snuffing up the rich fumes of the soup as it escaped from the sides of the silver-covered tureen. He perceived that one of the salt-cellars was rather near the corner of the table, and had only time to rearrange it, when William threw open the doors. The company entered, and with some delay and formality took their places. We need not wait until the Rev. Mr. Aldie says grace, though that would not detain us long; for the Rev. Mr. Aldie, besides being very hungry, has a great deal of tact, and believes in short prayers; nor will we delay to witness the breaking down of the strongholds of precision and ultra propriety, that almost always solemnizes the commencement of an entertainment; but the old Madeira having been passed around, we will listen to the conversation that is going on from different parts of the table. "We have outlived, sir," said Mr. Chapman, addressing a northern gentleman present, "we have outlived the first and greatest era of our country. Its infancy was its greatest era. The spirit of Washington still breathes among us. One or two of us here have conversed with him, sat at his table, taken him by the hand. It is too soon for the great principles that animated his whole career to have passed from our memory. I am not a very old man, gentlemen and ladies, yet it seems to me a great while since the day of Washington's funeral. My father called me and my brothers to him, and while our mother was fastening a band of black crape around our hats, 'My boys,' said he, 'you have seen the best days of this republic.' It is so, for as much as the United States has increased in size, and power, and wealth, since then, different interests are dividing her." "Was Washington a cheerful man?" asked an English gentleman who was present, "I have heard that he never laughed. Is it so?" Miss Janet, who was considered a kind of oracle when personal memories of Washington were concerned, answered after a moment's pause, "I have seen him smile often, I never saw him laugh but once. He rode over, one afternoon, to see a relative with whom I was staying; it was a dark, cloudy day, in November; a brisk wood fire was very agreeable. After some little conversation on ordinary topics, the gentlemen discussed the politics of the times, Washington saying little, but listening attentively to others. "The door opened suddenly, and a son of my relative entered, in a noisy bustling manner. Passing the gentlemen with a nod, he turned his back to the fire, putting his hands behind him. 'Father,' said he, scarcely waiting until the sentence that General Washington was uttering, was finished, 'what do you think? Uncle Jack and I shot a duck in the head!' He deserved a reproof for his forwardness; but Washington joined the rest in a laugh, no doubt amused at the estimation in which the youth held himself and Uncle Jack. The two together, killed a duck, and the boy was boasting of it in the presence of the greatest man the world ever produced. The poor fellow left the room, and for a time his sporting talents were joked about more than he liked." After the ladies retired, Mr. Selden proposed the health of the amiable George Washington. "Good heavens! sir," said Mr. Chapman, the veins in his temples swelling, and his whole frame glowing with vexation, "what is that you say? Did ever any one hear of a soldier being amiable? No, sir, I will give you a toast that was drank just before the death of the greatest and best of men. I picked up an old newspaper, and laid it aside in my secretary. In it I read a toast worth giving. Fill high, gentlemen--'The man who forgets the services of George Washington, may he be forgotten by his country and his God.'" Mr. Selden, who possessed in a remarkable degree the amiableness that he had ascribed to another, swallowed the wine and approved the toast. Mr. Chapman was some time recovering his composure. "You intend to leave Virginia very soon, Mr. Lee," said Mr. Kent, addressing Walter. "Very soon, sir," Walter replied. "Where shall you go first?" asked Mr. Kent. "I have not decided on any course of travel," said Walter. "I shall, perhaps, wander toward Germany." "We will drink your health, then," said Mr. Weston. "A pleasant tour, Walter, and a safe return." * * * * * "You are from Connecticut, I believe, Mr. Perkins?" said Mr. Barbour, "but as you are not an Abolitionist, I suppose it will not be uncourteous to discuss the subject before you. I have in my memorandum book a copy of a law of your State, which was in existence at one time, and which refers to what we have been conversing about. It supports the Fugitive Slave Law, in prospect. At that time you New Englanders held not only negro, but Indian slaves. Let me read this, gentleman. 'Be it enacted by the Governor, Council, and Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, that whatsoever negro, mulatto, or Indian servant or servants, shall be wandering out of the bounds of the town or place to which they belong, without a ticket or pass, in writing, under the hand of some Assistant or Justice of the Peace, or under the hand of the master or owner of such negro, mulatto, or Indian servant or servants, shall be deemed and accounted as runaways, and may be treated as such. And every person inhabiting in this colony, finding or meeting with any such negro, mulatto, or Indian servant or servants not having a ticket as aforesaid, is hereby empowered to seize and secure him or them, and bring him or them before the next authority, to be examined and returned to his or their master or owner, who shall satisfy the charge accruing thereby. "'And all ferrymen within the colony are hereby requested not to suffer any Indian, mulatto, or negro servant without certificate as aforesaid, to pass over their respective ferries by assisting them, directly or indirectly, on the penalty of paying a fine of twenty shillings for every such offence, to the owner of such servants.' In the same act," continued Mr. Barbour, "a free person who receives any property, large or small, from a slave, without an order from his master, must either make full restitution or be openly whipped with so many stripes, (not exceeding twenty.)" "Now, gentlemen," said Mr. Chapman, who was an impetuous old gentleman, "don't you see those Yankees were close enough in taking care of their own slaves, and if they could have raised sugar and cotton, or had deemed it to their advantage to be slaveholders to this day, they'd have had a Fugitive Slave Law long before this. A Daniel would have come to judgment sooner even than the immortal Daniel Webster." "Wait a moment, my dear sir," said Mr. Barbour. "Another paragraph of the same act provides, 'that if any negro, mulatto, or Indian servant or slave, shall be found abroad from home, in the night season, after nine o'clock, without a special order from his or their master or mistress, it shall be lawful for any person or persons to apprehend and secure such negro, mulatto, or Indian servant or slave, so offending, and him, her, or them, bring before the next assistant or justice of the peace, which authority shall have full power to pass sentence upon such servant or slave, and order him, her, or them, to be publicly whipped on the _naked_ body, not exceeding ten stripes, &c.'" "Pretty tight laws you had, sir," said Mr. Chapman, addressing Mr. Perkins. "A woman could be picked up and whipped, at the report of any body, on the naked body. Why, sir, if we had such laws here, it would be whipping all the time, (provided so infamous a law could be carried into execution.) There is one thing certain, you made the most of slavery while you had it." "But we have repented of all our misdeeds," said Mr. Perkins, good-humouredly. "Yes," said Mr. Chapman, "like the boy that stole a penny, and when he found it wouldn't buy the jack-knife he wanted, he repented, and carried it to the owner." "But you must remember the times, my dear sir," said Mr. Perkins. "I do, I do, sir," said Mr. Chapman. "The very time that you had come for freedom yourself, you kidnapped the noble sons of the soil, and made menials of them. I wonder the ground did not cry out against you. Now we have been left with the curse of slavery upon us, (for it is in some respects a curse on the negro and the white man,) and God may see fit to remove it from us. But why don't the Abolitionists buy our slaves, and send them to Liberia?" "That would be against their principles," said Mr. Perkins. "Excuse me, sir," said Mr. Chapman, "but d----n their principles; it is against their pockets. Why don't those who write Abolition books, give the profits to purchase some of these poor wretches who are whipped to death, and starved to death, and given to the flies to eat up, and burned alive; then I would believe in their principles, or at least in their sincerity. But now the fear is for their pockets. I am a poor man. I own a few slaves, and I will sell them to any Northern man or woman at half-price for what I could get from a trader, and they may send them to Liberia. Lord! sir, they'd as soon think of buying the d----l himself. You must excuse my strong language, but this subject irritates me. Not long ago, I was in the upper part of the State of New York, looking about me, for I do look about me wherever I am. One morning I got up early, and walked toward the new railroad that they were constructing in the neighborhood. I chanced to get to the spot just in time to see a little fracas between a stout, burly Irishman, and the superintendent of the party. "'I thought, be Jasus,' said the Irishman, just as I approached near enough to hear what was going on, 'that a man could see himself righted in a free country.' "'Go to your work,' said the superintendent, and if you say another word about it, I'll knock you over.' "'Is it you'll knock me over, you will,' began the Irishman. "He was over in a moment. The superintendent, sir, gave him a blow between the eyes, with a fist that was hard as iron. The man staggered, and fell. I helped him up, sir; and I reckon he thought matters might be worse still, for he slowly walked off. "'D----d free country,' he muttered to me, in a kind of confidential tone. 'I thought they only knocked niggers over in Ameriky. Be me soul, but I'll go back to Ireland.' "I could not help expressing my astonishment to the superintendent, repeating the Irishman's words, 'I thought only niggers could be knocked over in this country.' "'Niggers!' said the superintendent, 'I guess if you had to deal with Irishmen, you'd find yourself obliged to knock 'em down.' "'But don't the laws protect them?' I asked. "'Laws! why railroads have to be made, and have to be made the right way. I aint afraid of the laws. I think no more of knocking an Irishman over, sir, than I do of eating my dinner. One is as necessary as the other.' "Now," continued Mr. Chapman, "if an Abolitionist sees a slave knocked over, he runs home to tell his mammy; it's enough to bring fire and brimstone, and hail, and earthquakes on the whole country. A man must have a black skin or his sorrows can never reach the hearts of these gentlemen. They had better look about at home. There is wrong enough there to make a fuss about." "Well," said the Englishman, "you had both better come back to the mother country. The beautiful words, so often quoted, of Curran, may invite you: 'No matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery, the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the God sink together in the dust, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.'" "Thank you, sir, for your invitation," said Mr. Chapman, "but I'll stay in Virginia. The old State is good enough for me. I have been to England, and I saw some of your redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled people--I saw features on women's faces that haunted me afterward in my dreams. I saw children with shrivelled, attenuated limbs, and countenances that were old in misery and vice--such men, women, and children as Dickens and Charlotte Elizabeth tell about. My little grand-daughter was recovering from a severe illness, not long ago, and I found her weeping in her old nurse's arms. 'O! grandpa,' said she, as I inquired the cause of her distress, 'I have been reading "The Little Pin-headers."' I wept over it too, for it was true. No, sir; if I must see slavery, let me see it in its best form, as it exists in our Southern country." "You are right, sir, I fear," said the Englishman. "Well," said Mr. Perkins, "I am glad I am not a slaveholder, for one reason; I am sure I should never get to heaven. I should be knocking brains out from morning till night, that is if there are brains under all that mass of wool. Why, they are so slow, and inactive--I should be stumbling over them all the time; though from the specimens I have seen in your house, sir, I should say they made most agreeable servants." "My servants are very faithful," said Mr. Weston, "they have had great pains taken with them. I rarely have any complaints from the overseer." "Your overseers,--that is the worst feature in slavery," said Mr. Perkins. "Why, sir," said Mr. Chapman, ready for another argument, "you have your superintendents at the North--and they can knock their people down whenever they see fit." "I beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Perkins. "I had forgotten that." "Stay a little while with us," said Mr. Chapman, as Mr. Weston rose to lead the way to the drawing-room. "You will not find us so bad as you think. We may roast a negro now and then, when we have a barbecue, but that will be our way of showing you hospitality. You must remember we are only 'poor heathenish Southerners' according to the best received opinions of some who live with you in New England." * * * * * "Alice," said Mrs. Weston, at a late hour in the evening, when the last of the guests were taking their departure, "Walter would like to see you in the library; but, my love, I wish you would spare yourself and him the useless pain of parting." "I must see him, dear mother, do not refuse me; it is for the last time--pray, let me go." "If you choose," and Alice glided away as her mother was interrupted by the leave-taking of some of their visitors. The forms, the courtesies of life had no claims upon her now--she was enduring her first sorrow; the foundation of youth's slight fabric of happiness was yielding beneath her touch. The dread "nevermore," that Edgar Poe could not drive from his heart and sight, was oppressing her. She sought him before whom her young heart had bowed, not the less devotedly and humbly that it was silently and secretly. It was to be a bitter parting, not as when she watched to the last Arthur Weston, who was dear to her as ever was brother to a sister, for they had the promise and hope of meeting again; but now there was no tear in her eye, no trembling in her frame, and no hope in her heart. From the utmost depth of her soul arose the prophetic voice, "Thou shalt see him no more." "Alice," said Walter, taking her hand between both of his, and gazing at her face, as pale and sad as his own, "it is your mother's wish that from this time we should be strangers to each other, even loving as we do; that our paths on earth should separate, never to meet again. Is it your wish too?" "We must part; you know it, Walter," said Alice, musingly, looking out upon, but not seeing the calm river, and the stars that gazed upon its waves, and all the solemn beauty with which night had invested herself. "But you love me, Alice; and will you see me go from you forever, without hope? Will you yourself speak the word that sends me forth a wanderer upon the earth?" said Walter. "What can I do?" said Alice. "Choose, Alice, your own destiny, and fix mine." "Walter, I cannot leave my mother; I would die a thousand times rather than bring such sorrow upon her who has known so much. My uncle, too--my more than father--oh! Walter, I have sinned, and I suffer." "You are wise, Alice; you have chosen well; you cling to mother, and home, and friends; I have none of these ties; there is not upon earth a being so utterly friendless as I am." "Dear Walter, you have friends, and you can make them; you have wealth, talent, and many gifts from God. Go forth into the world and use them. Let your noble heart take courage; and in assisting others and making them happy, you will soon be happy yourself." Walter looked at her with surprise: such words were unlike her, whom he had been accustomed to consider a loving and lovely child. But a bitter smile passed over his countenance, and in a stern voice he said, "And you, Alice, what are you to do?" "God alone knows," said Alice, forced into a consideration of her own sorrow, and resting against a lounge near which she had been standing. She wept bitterly. Walter did not attempt to restrain her, but stood as if contemplating a grief that he could not wish to control. Alice again spoke, "It must come, dear Walter, first or last, and we may as well speak the farewell which must be spoken--but I could endure my part, if I had the hope that you will be happy. Will you promise me you will try to be?" "No, Alice, I cannot promise you that; if happiness were in our own power, I would not be looking on you, whom I have loved all my life, for the last time. "But I will hope," he continued, "you may be fortunate enough to forget and be happy." "Children," said Miss Janet--for she had gently approached them--"do you know when and where happiness is to be found? When we have done all that God has given us to do here; and in the heaven, above those stars that are now looking down upon you. Look upon Alice, Walter, with the hope of meeting again; and until then, let the remembrance of her beauty and her love be ever about you. Let her hear of you as one who deserves the pure affection of her young and trusting heart. You have lived as brother and sister; part as such, and may the blessing of God be upon both of you forever." Walter took Alice in his arms, and kissed her cheek; all sternness and pride had gone from his handsome face, but there was such a look of hopeless sorrow there, as we would not willingly behold on the countenance of one so young. Cousin Janet led him away, and with words of solemn, deep affection, bade him farewell--words that came again, for a time, unheeded and unwelcomed--words that at the last brought hope and peace to a fainting heart. Cousin Janet returned to Alice, whose face lay hidden within her hands: "Alice, darling," she said, "look up--God is here; forget your own grief, and think of one who suffered, and who feels for all who, like Him, must bear the burden of mortality. Think of your many blessings, and how grateful you should feel for them; think of your mother, who for years wept as you, I trust, may never weep; think of your kind uncle, who would die to save you an hour's pain. Trust the future, with all its fears, to God, and peace will come with the very effort to attain it." "Oh, Cousin Janet," said Alice, "if Walter were not so lonely; he knows not where he is going, nor what he is going to do." "It is true," said Cousin Janet, weeping too; "but we can hope, and trust, and pray. And now, my love, let us join your mother in her room; it is a sad parting for her, too, for Walter is dear to us all." * * * * * Reader! have so many years passed away, that thou hast forgotten the bitterness of thy first sorrow, or is it yet to come? Thinkest thou there is a way of escape--none, unless thou art young, and Death interpose, saving thee from all sadness, and writing on thy grave, "Do not weep for me, thou knowest not how much of sorrow this early tomb has saved me." When were thy first thoughts of death? I do not mean the sight of the coffin, the pall, or any of its sad accompaniments, but the time when the mind first arrested itself with the melancholy convictions of mortality. There was a holiday for me in my young days, to which I looked forward as the Mohammedan to his Paradise; this was a visit to a country-place, where I revelled in the breath of the woodbines and sweetbriers, and where I sat under tall and spreading trees, and wondered why towns and cities were ever built. The great willows swept the windows of the chamber where I slept, and faces with faded eyes looked upon me from their old frames, by the moonlight, as I fell asleep, after the day's enjoyment. I never tired of wandering through the gardens, where were roses and sweet-williams, hyacinths and honeysuckles, and flowers of every shape and hue. This was the fairy spot of my recollection, for even childhood has its cares, and there were memories of little griefs, which time has never chased away. There I used to meet two children, who often roamed through the near woods with me. I do not remember their ages nor their names; they were younger though than I. They might not have been beautiful, but I recollect the bright eyes, and that downy velvet hue that is only found on the soft check of infancy. Summer came; and when I went again, I found the clematis sweeping the garden walks, and the lilies-of-the-valley bending under the weight of their own beauty. So we walked along, I and an old servant, stopping to enter an arbor, or to raise the head of a drooping plant, or to pluck a sweet-scented shrub, and place it in my bosom. "Where are the little girls?" I asked. "Have they come again, too?" "Yes, they are here," she said, as we approached two little mounds, covered over with the dark-green myrtle and its purple flowers. "What is here?" "Child, here are the little ones you asked for." Oh! those little myrtle-covered graves, how wonderingly I gazed upon them. There was no thought of death mingled with my meditation; there was, of quiet and repose, but not of death. I had seen no sickness, no suffering, and I only wondered why those fair children had laid down under the myrtle. I fancied them with the fringed eyelids drooping over the cheeks, and the velvet hue still there. How much did I know of death? As little as of life! Time passed with me, and I saw the sorrows of others. Sometimes I thought of the myrtle-covered graves, and the children that slept beneath. Oh! how quiet they must be, they utter no cry, they shed no tears. Time passed, and an angel slept in my bosom, close to my heart. Need I say that I was happy when she nestled there? that her voice was music to my soul, and her smile the very presence of beauty? Need I say it was joy when she called me, Mother? Then I lived for the present; all the sorrow that I had seen around me, was forgotten. God called that angel to her native heaven, and I wept. Now was the mystery of the myrtle-covered graves open before my sight. I had seen the going forth of a little life that was part of my own, I remembered the hard sighs that convulsed that infant breast. I knew that the grave was meant to hide from us, silence and pallor, desolation and decay. I was in the world, no longer a garden of flowers, where I sought from under the myrtle for the bright eyes and the velvet cheeks. I was in the world, and death was there too; it was by my side. I gave my darling to the earth, and felt for myself the bitterness of tears. Thus must it ever be--by actual suffering must the young be persuaded of the struggle that is before them--well is it when there is one to say, "God is here." CHAPTER IX. We must bring Uncle Bacchus's wife before our readers. She is a tall, dignified, bright mulatto woman, named Phillis; it is with the qualities of her heart and mind, rather than her appearance, that we have to do. Bayard Taylor, writing from Nubia, in Upper Egypt, says:--"Those friends of the African race, who point to Egypt as a proof of what that race has done, are wholly mistaken. The only negro features represented in Egyptian sculpture are those of the slaves and captives taken in the Ethiopian wars of the Pharaohs. The temples and pyramids throughout Nubia, as far as Abyssinia, all bear the hieroglyphics of these monarchs. There is no evidence in all the valley of the Nile that the negro race ever attained a higher degree of civilization than is at present exhibited in Congo and Ashantee. I mention this, not from any feeling hostile to that race, but simply to controvert an opinion very prevalent in some parts of the United States." It seemed impossible to know Phillis without feeling for her sentiments of the highest respect. The blood of the freeman and the slave mingled in her veins; her well-regulated mind slowly advanced to a conclusion; but once made, she rarely changed it. Phillis would have been truly happy to have obtained her own freedom, and that of her husband and children: she scorned the idea of running away, or of obtaining it otherwise than as a gift from her owner. She was a firm believer in the Bible, and often pondered on the words of the angel, "Return and submit thyself to thy mistress." She had on one occasion accompanied her master and Mrs. Weston to the North, where she was soon found out by some of that disinterested class of individuals called Abolitionists. In reply to the question, "Are you free?" there was but a moment's hesitation; her pride of heart gave way to her inherent love of truth, "I'll tell no lie," she answered; "I am a slave!" "Why do you not _take_ your freedom?" was the rejoinder. "You are in a free state; they cannot force you to the South, if you will take the offers we make you, and leave your master." "You are Abolitionists, I 'spose?" asked Phillis. "We are," they said, "and we will help you off." "I want none of your help," said Phillis. "My husband and children are at home; but if they wasn't, I am an honest woman, and am not in the habit of _taking_ any thing. I'll never _take_ my freedom. If my master would give it to me, and the rest of us, I should be thankful. I am not going to begin stealing, and I fifty years of age." An eye-witness described the straightening of her tall figure, and the indignant flashing of her eye, also the discomfited looks of her northern friends. I have somewhere read of a fable of Iceland. According to it, lost souls are to be parched in the burning heat of Hecla, and then cast for ever to cool in its never-thawing snows. Although Phillis could not have quoted this, her opinions would have applied it. For some reason, it was evident to her mind (for she had been well instructed in the Bible) that slavery was from the first ordained as a curse. It might, to her high spirit, have been like burning in the bosom of Hecla; but taking refuge among Abolitionists was, from the many instances that had come to her knowledge, like cooling in its never-thawing snows. At the time that we introduced her to the reader, she was the mother of twelve children. Some were quite young, but a number of them were grown, and all of them, with the exception of one, (the namesake of his father,) inherited their mother's energy of character. She had accustomed them to constant industry, and unqualified obedience to her directions; and for this reason, no one had found it necessary to interfere in their management. Pride was a large ingredient in Phillis's composition. Although her husband presented one of the blackest visages the sun ever shone upon, Phillis appeared to hold in small esteem the ordinary servants on the plantation. She was constantly chiding her children for using their expressions, and tried to keep them in the house with white people as much as possible, that they might acquire good manners. It was quite a grief to her that Bacchus had not a more genteel dialect than the one he used. She had a great deal of family pride; there was a difference in her mind between family servants and those employed in field labor. For "the quality" she had the highest respect; for "poor white people" only a feeling of pity. She had some noble qualities, and some great weaknesses; but as a _slave!_ we present her to the reader, and she must be viewed as such. Miss Janet was, in her eyes, perfection. Her children were all the better for her kind instructions. Her youngest child, Lydia, a girl of six or seven years old, followed the old lady everywhere, carrying her key and knitting-basket, looking for her spectacles, and maintaining short conversations in a confidential tone. One of Phillis's chiefest virtues was, that she had been able to bring Bacchus into subjection, with the exception of his love for an occasional spree. Spoiled by an indulgent master, his conceit and wilfulness had made him unpopular with the servants, though his high tone of speaking, and a certain pretension in his manner and dress, was not without its effect. He was a sort of patriarch among waiters and carriage-drivers; could tell anecdotes of dinners where Washington was a guest; and had been familiar with certain titled people from abroad, whose shoes he had had the honor of polishing. The only person in whose presence he restrained his braggadocio style was Phillis. Her utter contempt for nonsense was too evident. Bacchus was the same size as his master, and often fell heir to his cast-off clothes. A blue dress-coat and buff vest that he thus inherited, had a great effect upon him, bodily and spiritually. Not only did he swagger more when arrayed in them, but his prayers and singing were doubly effective. He secretly prided himself on a likeness to Mr. Weston, but this must have been from a confusion of mind into which he was thrown, by constantly associating himself with Mr. Weston's coats and pantaloons. He once said to Phillis, "You might know master was a born gentleman by de way his clothes fits. Dey don't hang about him, but dey 'pears as if dey had grow'd about him by degrees; and if you notice, dey fits me in de same way. Pity I can't wear his shoes, dey's so soft, and dey don't creak. I hates boots and shoes all time creakin, its so like poor white folks when they get dressed up on Sunday. I wonders often Miss Anna don't send me none of master's old ruffled shirts. 'Spose she thinks a servant oughtn't to wear 'em. I was a wishin last Sunday, when I gin in my 'sperience in meetin, that I had one of master's old ruffled shirts on. I know I could a 'scoursed them niggers powerful. Its a hard thing to wear a ruffled shirt. Dey sticks out and pushes up to people's chins--I mean people dat aint born to wear 'em. Master wears 'em as if he was born in 'em, and I could too. I wish you'd put Miss Janet up to gittin one or two for me. Miss Janet's mighty 'bliging for an ole maid; 'pears as if she liked to see even cats happy. When an ole maid don't hate cats, there aint nothin to be feared from 'em." Phillis ruled her husband in most things, but she indulged him in all his whims that were innocent. She determined he should have, not an old ruffled shirt, but a new one. She reported the case to Miss Janet, who set two of her girls to work, and by Saturday night the shirt was made and done up, and plaited. Bacchus was to be pleasantly surprised by it next morning appearing on the top of his chest. It happened that on this identical Sunday, Bacchus had (as the best of men will sometimes) got up wrong foot foremost, and not having taken the trouble to go back to bed, and get up again, putting the right foot out first, he continued in the same unhappy state of mind. He made, as was his wont, a hasty toilet before breakfast. He wore an old shirt, and a pair of pantaloons that did not reach much above his hips. One of his slippers had no instep; the other was without a heel. His grizzly beard made him look like a wild man of the woods; a certain sardonic expression of countenance contributed to this effect. He planted his chair on its remaining hind leg at the cabin door, and commenced a systematic strain of grumbling before he was fairly seated in it. "I believe in my soul," Phillis heard him say, "dat ole Aunt Peggy al'ars gits up wrong on a Sabbath mornin. Will any one hear her coughin? My narves is racked a listenin to her. I don't see what she wants to live for, and she most a hundred. I believe its purpose to bother me, Sabbath mornins. Here, Phillis, who's this bin here, diggin up my sweet-williams I planted?--cuss dese children--" "The children had nothing to do with it," said Phillis. "Master wanted some roots to give to Mr. Kent and he asked me for 'em. I dug 'em up and they're all the better for being thinned out." "I wish master'd mind his own business, and not be pryin and pilferin 'bout other people's gardens; givin my flowers to that yallow-headed Abolitioner. I'll speak my mind to him about it, any how." "You'd better," said Phillis, drily. "I will so," said Bacchus; "I'd rather he'd a burned 'em up. Kent's so cussed mean, I don't b'lieve he'd 'low his flowers ground to grow in if he could help hisself. If Miss Nannie'd let him, he'd string them niggers of hers up, and wallop their gizzards out of 'em. I hate these Abolitioners. I knows 'em,--I knows their pedigree." "Much you know about 'em," said Phillis, who was shaking the dew drops off her "morning glory." "I knows enuff of 'em--I reckon Miss Nannie do, about dis time. De ole gentleman did right, any how, when he lef 'em all to her--if he hadn't, dat feller would a sold 'em all off to Georgia 'fore this, and a runn'd off wid de money." "Well," said Phillis, "you'd better mind your own affairs; come in and eat your breakfast, if you want any, for I aint going to keep it standin there all day, drawing the flies." Bacchus kicked his slippers off and stumbled into a chair beside the table. "I'll swar," said he, after a glance at the fried ham and eggs, "if ever a man had to eat sich cookin as dis. Why didn't you fry 'em a little more?" Phillis not minding him, he condescended to eat them all, and to do justice to the meal in general. "The old fool," thought Phillis, amused and provoked; "talkin of master's pilferin--never mind, I've put his ruffled shirt out, and he'll get in a good humor when he sees it, I reckon." Having finished his breakfast, Bacchus put an enormous piece of tobacco in his mouth, and commenced sharpening a small-sized scythe, that he called a razor. In doing so, he made a noise like a high-pressure steamboat, now and then breathing on it, and going in a severe fit of coughing with every extra exertion. On his table was a broken piece of looking-glass, on the quicksilver side of which, Arthur had, when a child, drawn a horse. Into this Bacchus gave a look, preparatory to commencing operations. Then, after due time spent in lathering, he hewed down at each shave, an amount of black tow that was inconceivable. After he had done, he gathered up his traps, and stowed them away in the corner of his chest. Phillis sat outside the door, smoking; looking in at the window, occasionally, to observe the effect of the first sight of the new shirt. She saw him turn toward the little red painted bureau, on which she had laid out his clean clothes, starting with surprise and pleasure, when his eye first took in the delightful vision. Cortez, when he stood conqueror of Mexico, did not feel the glow of satisfaction that thrilled through Bacchus's heart as he gently patted the plaited ruffles and examined the wristbands, which were stitched with the utmost neatness. He got weak in the knees with pleasure, and sat down on the chest in the corner, to support with more ease this sudden accession of happiness, while his wife was reaping a harvest of gratification at the success of her efforts toward his peace of mind. All at once she saw a change pass over his visage. Bacchus recollected that it would not do for him so suddenly to get into a good humor; besides, he reflected it was no more than Phillis's duty to make him ruffled shirts, and she ought to have been so doing for the last twenty years. These considerations induced him not to show much pleasure on the occasion, but to pretend he was not at all satisfied with the style and workmanship of the article in question. "Why, lord a massy," said he, "Phillis, what do you call dis here? t'aint a shirt? at fust I thought 'twas one of Miss Janet's short night gowns you'd been a doing up for her." Phillis smoked on, looking inquiringly into the distant hills. "Phillis, you don't mean me to wear dis here to meetin? T'aint fit. Dese wristbands is made out o' cotton, and I b'lieves in my soul Aunt Peggy done dis stitchin widout any spectacles." Phillis knocked the ashes out of her pipe, and puffed on. "Look here, Phillis," said Bacchus, going to the door as fast as the uncertain condition of his pantaloons would allow him, "did you 'spose I was sich a fool as to wear dis to meetin to-day?" "Yes, I did," said Phillis. "Why, t'aint fit for a nigger to hoe corn in, its as big as a hay-stack." "Have you tried it on?" asked Phillis. "T'aint no use," said Bacchus, "I can tell by de looks." "I'm sorry you don't like it," said Phillis. "Like it," said Bacchus, contemptuously, "why, if it twasn't for the trouble of going to my chist, I'd wear one of my old ones. Cuss de ruffles, I wish you'd cut 'em off." Bacchus went in, and in due time made his appearance in full dress. He wore the blue coat and buff vest, and a pair of white pantaloons, made after the old style. His shoes were as bright as his eyes, and his hat dusted until it only wanted an entire new nap to make it as good as new. His hair was combed in a sort of mound in front, and the _tout ensemble_ was astounding. He passed Phillis in a dignified way, as if she were a valuable cat that he would not like to tread upon. Phillis looked after him with a most determined expression of face. If she had been made out of stone she could not have seemed more resolved. She got up, however, soon after, and went in to arrange matters after her lord and master. Bacchus purposely passed Aunt Peggy's cabin, making her a stylish bow. Peggy had taken off her handkerchief, to air her head, her hair standing off every which way, appearing determined to take her up somewhere, the point of destination being a matter of no consequence. She chuckled audibly as she saw Bacchus. "Look at dat ole fool now, wid dat ruffled shirt on; he's gwine to bust dis blessed mornin. Look at de way he's got his wool combed up. I b'lieves in my soul he's got somebody buried up thar. He's a raal ole peacock. Dat's de way! 'Kase I'm ole and wuthless, no matter 'bout me; and dat ole nigger 'lowed to make a fool of hisself, dressin up drunk in a ruffled shirt. No matter, I'll be dead and out of der way, fore long." Bacchus prayed with great effect this morning, calling himself and the whole congregation the most dreadful names, with the utmost satisfaction. He made a short address too, warning the servants against sin in general, and a love of finery in particular. On his return he beamed forth upon Phillis like one of her own "morning glories." The rest of the day he was brimful of jokes and religion. The next Sunday came around. Phillis smoked outside while Bacchus made his toilet. "Phillis," said the old fellow, blandly, coming to the door, "I don't see my ruffled shirt out here." "High" said Phillis, "I laid your shirt with the rest; but I'll look. Here it is," said she, pleasantly, "jest where I put it." "Why, whar's the ruffles?" "I cut 'em off," said Phillis; "you asked me to." Bacchus got weak in the knees again, and had to sit down on the old chest. Not a word escaped his lips; a deep sigh burst from the pent-up boiler of his remorse. With an agonized countenance he seized a piece of rag which he had used as a shaving towel, and wiped away a repentant tear. His soul was subdued within him. He went to meeting, but declined officiating in any capacity, pleading a pain in his stomach as an excuse. At dinner he found it impossible to finish the remaining quarter of a very tough old rooster Phillis had stuffed and roasted for him. At sundown he ate a small-sized hoe-cake and a tin pan of bonnyclabber; then observing "That he believed he was put into dis world for nothing but to have trouble," he took to his bed. Phillis saw that he would be more docile for the rest of his life; for a moment, the thought of restoring the shirt to its original splendor occurred to her, but she chased it away as if it had been a fox, and took the greatest satisfaction in "having given the old fool a lesson that would last him all the days of his life." "To you, generous and noble-minded men and women of the South, I appeal, (I quote the words of a late writer on Abolitionism, when I say,) Is _man_ ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power? Can anybody fail to make the inference, what the practical result will be?"[A] Although she is here speaking of slavery _politically_, can you not apply it to matrimony in this miserable country of ours? Can we not remodel our husbands, place them under our thumbs, and shut up the escape valves of their grumbling forever? To be sure, St. Paul exhorts "wives to be obedient to their own husbands," and "servants to be obedient to their own masters," but St. Paul was not an Abolitionist. He did not take into consideration the necessities of the free-soil party, and woman's _rights_. This is the era of mental and bodily emancipation. Take advantage of it, wives and negroes! But, alas for the former! there is no society formed for _their_ benefit; their day of deliverance has not yet dawned, and until its first gleamings arise in the _east_, they must wear their chains. Except when some strong-minded female steps forth from the degraded ranks, and asserts her position, whether by giving loose to that unruly member the tongue, or by a piece of management which will give "an old fool a lesson that will last him all the days of his life." CHAPTER X. Phillis was at her ironing early in the morning, for she liked to hurry it over before the heat of the day. Her cabin doors were open, and her flowers, which had been watered by a slight rain that fell about daybreak, looked fresh and beautiful. Her house could be hardly called a cabin, for it was very much superior to the others on the plantation, though they were all comfortable. Phillis was regarded by the Weston family as the most valuable servant they owned--and, apart from her services, there were strong reasons why they were attached to her. She had nursed Mrs. Weston in her last illness, and as her death occurred immediately after Arthur's birth, she nourished him as her own child, and loved him quite as well. Her comfort and wishes were always objects of the greatest consideration to the family, and this was proved whenever occasion allowed. Her neatly white-washed cottage was enclosed by a wooden fence in good condition--her little garden laid out with great taste, if we except the rows of stiffly-trimmed box which Phillis took pride in. A large willow tree shaded one side of it; and on the other, gaudy sunflowers reared their heads, and the white and Persian lilacs, contrasted with them. All kinds of small flowers and roses adorned the front of the house, and you might as well have sought for a diamond over the whole place, as a weed. The back of the lot was arranged for the accommodation of her pigs and chickens; and two enormous peacocks, that were fond of sunning themselves by the front door, were the handsomest ornaments about the place. The room in which Phillis ironed, was not encumbered with much furniture. Her ironing-table occupied a large part of its centre, and in the ample fireplace was blazing a fire great enough to cook a repast for a moderate number of giants. Behind the back door stood a common pine bedstead, with an enormous bed upon it. How any bedstead held such a bed was remarkable; for Phillis believed there was a virtue in feathers even in the hottest weather, and she would rather have gone to roost on the nearest tree than to have slept on any thing else. The quilt was of a domestic blue and white, her own manufacture, and the cases to the pillows were very white and smooth. A little, common trundle bedstead was underneath, and on it was the bedding which was used for the younger children at night. The older ones slept in the servants' wing in the house, Phillis making use of two enormous chests, which were Bacchus's, and her wardrobes, for sleeping purposes for a couple more. To the right of the bed, was the small chest of drawers, over which was suspended Bacchus's many-sided piece of shaving glass, and underneath it a pine box containing his shaving weapons. Several chairs, in a disabled state, found places about the room, and Phillis's clothes-horse stood with open arms, ready to receive the white and well-ironed linen that was destined to hang upon it. On each side of the fireplace was a small dresser, with plates and jars of all sizes and varieties, and over each were suspended some branches of trees, inviting the flies to rest upon them. There was no cooking done in this room, there being a small shed for that purpose, back of the house; not a spot of grease dimmed the whiteness of the floors, and order reigned supreme, marvellous to relate! where a descendant of Afric's daughters presided. Lydia had gone as usual to Miss Janet, and several of the other children were busy about the yard, feeding the chickens, sweeping up, and employed in various ways; the only one who ever felt inclined to be lazy, and who was in body and mind the counterpart of his father, being seated on the door step, declaring he had a pain in his foot. The adjoining room was the place in which Phillis's soul delighted, the door of it being at all times locked, and the key lost in the depths of her capacious pocket. From this place of retirement it emerged when any of the family honored her with their company, especially when attended by visitors; and after their departure, traces of their feet were carefully sought with keen and anxious eyes, and quickly obliterated with broom and duster. This, her sanctum sanctorum, was a roomy apartment with three windows, each shaded by white cotton curtains. On the floor was a home-made carpet; no hand was employed in its manufacture save its owner's, from the time she commenced tearing the rags in strips, to the final blow given to the last tack that confined it to the floor. A very high post bedstead, over which were suspended white cotton curtains, gave an air of grandeur to one side of the room. No one had slept in it for ten years, though it was made with faultless precision. The quilt over it contained pieces of every calico and gingham dress that had been worn in the Weston family since the Revolution, and in the centre had been transferred from a remnant of curtain calico, an eagle with outstretched wings. The pillow cases were finished off with tape trimming, Alice's work, at Cousin Janet's suggestion. Over an old fashioned-mahogany bureau hung an oval looking glass, which was carefully covered from the flies. An easy chair stood by the window at the foot of the bed, which had, like most of the other ancient looking pieces of furniture, occupied a conspicuous place in Mr. Weston's house. Six chairs planted with unyielding stiffness against the walls seemed to grow out of the carpet; and the very high fender enclosed a pair of andirons that any body with tolerable eyesight could have seen their faces in. Over the mantel piece were suspended two pictures. One was a likeness of Mr. Weston, cut in paper over a black surface, with both hands behind him, and his right foot foremost; the other was a picture of the Shepherds in Pilgrim's Progress, gazing through a spy-glass at the Celestial city. Alice's first sampler, framed in a black frame, hung on one side of the room, and over it was a small sword which used to swing by Arthur's side, when receiving lessons in military science from Bacchus, who, in his own opinion, was another Bonaparte. Into this room Phillis's children gazed with wondering eyes; and those among the plantation servants who had been honored with a sight of it, declared it superior, in every respect, to their master's drawing room; holding in especial reverence a small table, covered with white, which supported the weight of Phillis's family Bible, where were registered in Arthur's and Alice's handwriting, the births of all her twelve descendants, as well as the ceremony which united her to their illustrious father. Phillis was ironing away with a good heart, when she was interrupted by a summons to attend her master in the library. She obeyed it with very little delay, and found Mr. Weston seated in his arm-chair, looking over a note which he held in his hand. "Come in, Phillis," he said, in a kind but grave manner. "I want to speak with you for a few moments; and as I have always found you truthful, I have no doubt you will be perfectly so on the present occasion." "What is it, master?" Phillis said, respectfully. "I received a note, yesterday, from Mr. Dawson, about his servant Jim, who ran away three weeks ago. He charges me with having permitted my servants to shelter him for the night, on my plantation; having certain information, that he was seen leaving it the morning after the severe storm we had about that time. If you know any thing of it, Phillis, I require you to tell it to me; I hardly think any of the other servants had opportunities of doing so, and yet I cannot believe that you would so far forget yourself as to do what is not only wrong, but calculated to involve me in serious difficulties with my neighbors." "I hope you will not be angry with me, master?" said Phillis, "but I can't tell a lie; I let Jim stay in my room that night, and I've been mightily troubled about it; I was afeard you would be angry with me, if you heard of it, and yet, master, I could not help it when it happened." "Could not help it! Phillis," said Mr. Weston. "What do you mean by that? Why did you not inform me of it, that I might have sent him off?" "I couldn't find it in my heart, sir," said Phillis, the tears coming in her fine eyes. "The poor creature come in when the storm was at its worst. I had no candle lit; for the lightning was so bright that I hadn't no call for any other light. Bacchus was out in it all, and I was thinking he would be brought in dead drunk, or dead in earnest, when all at once Jim burst open the door, and asked me to let him stay there. I know'd he had run away, and at first I told him to go off, and not be gitting me into trouble; but, master, while I was sending him off such a streak of lightning come in, and such a crash of thunder, that I thought the Almighty had heard me turn him out, and would call me to account for it, when Jim and me should stand before him at the Judgment Day. I told Jim he had better go back to his master, that he wouldn't have any comfort, always hiding himself, and afeard to show his face, but he declared he would die first; and so as I couldn't persuade him to go home agin, I couldn't help myself, for I thought it would be a sin and shame, to turn a beast out in such a storm as that. As soon as the day began to break, and before, too, I woke him up, and told him never to come to my cabin again, no matter what happened. And so, master, I've told you the whole truth, and I am sure you couldn't have turned the poor wretch out to perish in that storm, no matter what would have come of it after." Phillis had gained confidence as she proceeded, and Mr. Weston heard her without interruption. "I can hardly blame you," he then said, "for what you have done; but, Phillis, it must never be repeated. Jim is a great rascal, and if I were his master I would be glad to be rid of him, but my plantation must not shelter runaway slaves. I am responsible for what my servants do. I should be inclined to hold other gentlemen responsible for the conduct of theirs. The laws of Virginia require the rights of the master to be respected, and though I shan't make a constable of myself, still I will not allow any such thing to be repeated. Did Bacchus know it?" "No, indeed, sir; he hates Jim, and no good, may be, would have come of his knowing it; besides, he was asleep long after Jim went off, and there was too much whiskey in him to depend on what he'd have to say." "That will do, Phillis; and see that such a thing never happens again," said Mr. Weston. Phillis went back to her ironing, assured her master was not angry with her. Yet she sighed as she thought of his saying, "see that such a thing never happens again." "If it had been a clear night," she thought within herself, "he shouldn't have stayed there. But it was the Lord himself that sent the storm, and I can't see that he never sends another. Anyway its done, and can't be helped;" and Phillis busied herself with her work and her children. I have not given Phillis's cottage as a specimen of the cabins of the negroes of the South. It is described from the house of a favorite servant. Yet are their cabins generally, healthy and airy. Interest, as well as a wish for the comfort and happiness of the slave, dictates an attention to his wants and feelings. "Slavery," says Voltaire, "is as ancient as war; war as human nature." It is to be wished that _truth_ had some such intimate connection with human nature. Who, for instance, could read without an indignant thought, the following description from the pen of Mrs. Stowe: "They (their cabins) were rude shells, destitute of any pieces of furniture, except a heap of straw, foul with dirt, spread confusedly over the floor." "The small village was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices, contending at the handmills, where their morsel of hard corn was yet to be ground into meal to fit it for the cake that was to constitute their only supper." But such statements need no denial; the very appearance of the slaves themselves show their want of truth. Look at their sound and healthy limbs, hear the odd, but sweet and musical song that arrests the traveler as he goes on his way; listen to the ready jest which is ever on his lips, and see if the slavery which God has permitted in all ages to exist, is as is here described; and judge if our fair Southern land is tenanted by such fiends as they are represented to be, by those who are trying to make still worse the condition of a mass of God's creatures, born to a life of toil, but comparative freedom from care. If it be His will that men should be born free and equal, that will is not revealed in the Bible from the time of the patriarchs to the present day. There are directions there for the master and the slave. When the period of emancipation advances, other signs of the times will herald it, besides the uncalled-for interference, and the gross misrepresentations, of the men and women of the North. Sidney Smith said of a man, who was a great talker, that a few flashes of silence would make a great improvement in him. So of the Abolition cause, a few flashes of truth would make it decidedly more respectable. CHAPTER XI. "Come, Alice," said Mr. Barbour, "I hear, not the trump of war, but the soul-inspiring scrape of the banjo. I notice the servants always choose the warmest nights to dance in. Let us go out and see them." "We'll go to the arbor," said Alice; "where we will be near enough to see Uncle Bacchus's professional airs. Ole Bull can't exceed him in that respect." "Nor equal him," said Mr. Barbour. "Bacchus is a musician by nature; his time is perfect; his soul is absorbed in his twangs and flourishes." "I must come, too," said Mr. Weston. "You are afraid of the night air, Cousin Janet?" "Never mind me," said Cousin Janet; "I'll sit here and fan myself." "And as I prefer music, especially the banjo, at a distance, I will stay too," said Mrs. Weston. Aunt Phillis was smoking outside her door, her mind divided between speculations as to what had become of Jim, and observations on the servants, as they were collecting from every direction, to join in the dancing or to find a good seat to look on. The first sound of the banjo aroused Bacchus the younger from his dreams. He bounded from his bed on the chest, regardless of the figure he cut in his very slight dishabille, and proceeded to the front door, _set_, as his mother would have said, on having his own way. "Oh, mammy," he said, "dare's de banjo." "What you doin here?" said Phillis. "Go long to bed this minute, 'fore I take a switch to you." "Oh, mammy," said the boy, regardless of the threat in his enthusiastic state of mind, "jist listen, daddy's gwine to play 'Did you ever see the devil?'" "Will any body listen to the boy? If you don't go to bed"-- "Oh, mammy, _please_ lem me go. Dare's Jake, he's gwine to dance. Massa said I'd beat Jake dancin one o' dese days." "High," said Phillis; "where's the sore foot you had this morning?" "Its done got well. It got well a little while ago, while I was asleep." "Bound for you; go long," said Phillis. Bacchus was about to go, without the slightest addition to his toilet. "Come back here," said Phillis, "you real cornfield nigger; you goin there naked?" The boy turned back, and thrust his legs in a pair of pants, with twine for suspenders. His motions were much delayed, by his nervous state of agitation, the consequence of the music which was now going on in earnest. He got off finally, not without a parting admonition from his mother. "Look here," said she, "if you don't behave yourself, I'll skin you." Allusion to this mysterious mode of punishment had the effect of sobering the boy's mind in a very slight degree. No sooner was he out of his mother's sight than his former vivacity returned. His father, meanwhile, had turned down a barrel, and was seated on it. Every attitude, every motion of his body, told that his soul, forgetful of earth and earthly things, had withdrawn to the regions of sound. He kicked his slippers off keeping time, and his head dodged about with every turn of the quick tune. A stranger, not understanding the state of mind into which a negro gets after playing "The devil among the tailors," would have supposed he was afflicted with St. Vitus's dance. The mistake would soon have been perceived, for two of the boys having tired themselves out with manoeuvres of every kind, were obliged to sit down to get some breath, and Bacchus fell into a sentimental mood, after a little tuning up. It was uncertain in what strain he would finally go off. First came a bar that sounded like Auld Lang Syne, then a note or two of Days of Absence, then a turn of a Methodist hymn, at last he went decidedly into "Nelly was a lady." The tune of this William had learned from Alice singing it to the piano. He begged her to teach him the words. She did so, telling him of the chorus part, in which many were to unite. Bacchus prepared an accompaniment; a number of them sang it together. William sang the solos. He had a remarkably good voice and fine taste; he therefore did justice to the sweet song. When the full but subdued chorus burst upon the ear, every heart felt the power of the simple strain; the master with his educated mind and cultivated taste, and the slave with the complete power of enjoyment with which the Creator has endowed him. Hardly had the cadence of the last note died away, when "Shout, shout, the devil's about," was heard from a stentorian voice. Above the peals of laughter with which the words were received, rose Jake's voice, "Come on, ole fiddler, play somefin a nigger kin kick up his heels to; what's de use of singing after dat fashion; dis aint no meetin." "What'll you have, Jake?" said Bacchus. "What'll I have? Why, I never dances to but one tune," and Jake started the first line of "Oh, plantation gals, can't you look at a body," while Bacchus was giving a prelude of scrapes and twangs. Jake made a circle of somersets, and come down on his head, with his heels in the air, going through flourishes that would have astonished an uninitiated observer. As it was, Jake's audience were in a high condition of enjoyment. They were in a constant state of expectation as to where he would turn up, or what would be the nature of the next caper. Now, he cut the pigeon-wing for a length of time that made the spectators hold their breath; then he would, so to speak, stand on his hands, and with his feet give a push to the barrel where Uncle Bacchus was sitting, and nearly roll the old man underneath. One moment he is dancing with every limb, making the most curious contortions of his face, rolling out his tongue, turning his eyes wrong side out. Suddenly, he stretches himself on the grass, snoring to a degree that might be heard at almost any distance. Starting up, he snaps his fingers, twirls round, first on one foot, and then on the other, till feeling the time approaching when he must give up, he strikes up again: "Shout, shout, the devil's about; Shut the door and keep him out," leaps frog over two or three of the servants' shoulders, disappearing from among them in an immoderate state of conceit and perspiration. Bacchus is forced at this crisis to put down the banjo and wipe his face with his sleeve, breathing very hard. He was thinking he wouldn't get near so tired if he had a little of the "Oh, be joyful" to keep up his spirits, but such aspirations were utterly hopeless at the present time: getting tipsy while his master, and Mr. Barbour, and Alice were looking at him, was quite out of the question. He made a merit of keeping sober, too, on the ground of setting a good example to the young servants. He consoled himself with a double-sized piece of tobacco, and rested after his efforts. His promising son danced Juba at Mr. Weston's particular request, and was rewarded by great applause. A little courting scene was going on at this time, not far distant. Esther, Phillis's third daughter, was a neat, genteel-looking servant, entirely above associating with "common niggers," as she styled those who, being constantly employed about the field, had not the advantage of being called upon in the house, and were thus very deficient in manners and appearance from those who were so much under the eye of the family. Esther, like her mother, was a great Methodist. Reading well, she was familiar with the Bible, and had committed to memory a vast number of hymns. These, she and her sister, with William, often sung in the kitchen, or at her mother's cabin. Miss Janet declared it reminded her of the employment of the saints in heaven, more than any church music she had ever heard; especially when they sang, "There is a land of pure delight." That heart must be steeled against the sweet influences of the Christian religion, which listens not with an earnest pleasure to the voice of the slave, singing the songs of Zion. No matter how kind his master, or how great and varied his comforts, he is a slave! His soul cannot, on earth, be animated to attain aught save the enjoyment of the passing hour. Why need he recall the past? The present does not differ from it--toil, toil, however mitigated by the voice of kindness. Need he essay to penetrate the future? it is still toil, softened though it be by the consideration which is universally shown to the feelings and weaknesses of old age. Yet has the Creator, who placed him in this state, mercifully provided for it. The slave has not the hopes of the master, but he is without many of his cares. He may not strive after wealth, yet he is always provided with comfort. Ambition, with its longings for fame, and riches, and power, never stimulates his breast; that breast is safe from its disappointments. His enjoyments, though few, equal his expectations. His occupations, though servile, resemble the mass of those around him. His eye can see the beauties of nature; his ear drinks in her harmonies; his soul content itself with what is passing in the limited world around him. Yet, he is a slave! And if he is ever elevated above his condition, it is when praising the God of the white man and the black; when, with uplifted voice, he sings the songs of the redeemed; when, looking forward to the invitation which he hopes to receive, "Come in, thou servant of the Lord." Christian of the South, remember who it was that bore thy Saviour's cross, when, toiling, and weary, and fainting beneath it, he trod the hill of Calvary. Not one of the rich, learned, or great; not one of thine ancestors, though thou mayest boast of their wealth, and learning, and heroic acts--it was a black man who relieved him of his heavy burden; Simon of Cyrene was his name. Christian of the North, canst thou emancipate the Southern slave? Canst thou change his employments, and elevate his condition? Impossible. Beware then, lest thou add to his burden, and tighten his bonds, and deprive him of the simple enjoyments which are now allowed him. * * * * * Esther, seated on the steps of a small porch attached to the side of the house, was mentally treating with great contempt the amusements of the other servants. She had her mother's disposition, and disliked any thing like noisy mirth, having an idea it was not genteel; seeing so little of it in her master's family. She was an active, cheerful girl, but free from any thing like levity in her manner. She had a most devoted admirer in the neighborhood; no less a personage than Mrs. Kent's coachman. His name was Robert, after Mrs. Kent's father. Assuming the family name, he was known as Robert Carter. Phillis called him a harmless goose of a fellow, and this gives the best idea of his character. He understood all about horses, and nothing else, if we except the passion of love, which was the constant subject of his conversation. He had made up his mind to court Esther, and with that in view he dressed himself in full livery, as if he were going to take his mistress an airing. He asks Mrs. Kent's permission to be married, though he had not the slightest reason to suppose Esther would accept him, with a confidence and self-exultation that man in general is apt to feel when he has determined to bestow himself upon some fortunate fair one. He went his way, passing the dancers without any notice, and going straight to that part of the house where he supposed he should find Esther. Esther received him with politeness, but with some reserve; not having a chair to offer him, and not intending him to take a seat on the steps beside her, she stood up, and leaned against the porch. They talked a little of the weather, and the health of the different members of their respective families, during which, Robert took the opportunity to say, "His master, (Mr. Kent) had a bilious attack, and he wished to the Lord, he'd never get better of it." Finally, he undid one of the buttons of his coat, which was getting too small for him, and drawing a long breath, proceeded to lay himself (figuratively) at Esther's feet. He did not come to the point at once, but drove round it, as if there might be some impediment in the way, which, though it could not possibly upset the whole affair, might make a little unnecessary delay. Esther thought he was only talking nonsense, as usual, but when he waxed warm and energetic in his professions, she interrupted him with, "Look here, Robert, you're out of your head, aint you?" "No deed, Miss Esther, but I'm dying in love with you." "The best thing you can do, is to take yourself home," said Esther. "I hope you're sober." "I was never soberer in my life," said Robert, "but the fact is, Miss Esther, I'm tired of a bachelor's life; 'pears as if it wasn't respectable, and so I'm thinking of settling down." "You want settling down, for true," said Esther. "I'm mighty happy to hear you say so," said Robert, "and if you'll only mention what time it'll be agreeable to you to make me the happiest man in Virginny, I'le speak to Uncle Watty Harkins about performing the ceremony, without you prefer a white minister to tie the knot." "Robert," said Esther, "you're a born fool; do you mean to say you want me to marry you?" "Certainly, Esther; I shouldn't pay you no attentions, if I didn't mean to act like a gentleman by you." "Well, I can tell you," said Esther, "I wouldn't marry you, to save your life." "You ain't in earnest, Esther?" "Indeed I am," said Esther, "so you better not be coming here on any such fool's errand again." "Why, Esther," said Robert, reproachfully, "after my walking home from meeting with you, and thinking and dreaming about you, as I have for this long time, aint you going to marry me?" "No, I aint," said Esther. "Then I'll bid you good night; and look here, Esther, to-morrow, mistress will lose one of her most valuable servants, for I shall hang myself." Esther went up the steps, and shut the door on him, internally marvelling at the impudence of men in general; Robert, with a strong inclination to shed tears, turned his steps homeward. He told Mrs. Kent, the next morning, that he had come to the conclusion not to be married for some time yet, women were so troublesome, and there was no knowing how things would turn out. Mrs. Kent saw he was much dejected, and concluded there were sour grapes in the question. After due consideration, Robert determined not to commit suicide; he did something equally desperate. He married Mrs. Kent's maid, an ugly, thick-lipped girl, who had hitherto been his especial aversion. He could not though, entirely erase Esther's image from his heart--always feeling a tendency to choke, when he heard her voice in meeting. Esther told her mother of the offer she had had, and Phillis quite agreed with her, in thinking Robert was crazy. She charged "Esther to know when she was well off, and not to bring trouble upon herself by getting married, or any such foolishness as that." CHAPTER XII. "I tell you what, Abel," said Arthur Weston, "the more I think about you Northern people, the harder it is for me to come to a conclusion as to what you are made of." "Can't you experiment upon us, Arthur; test us chemically?" "Don't believe you could be tested," said Arthur, "you are such a slippery set. Now here is a book I have been looking over, called Annals of Salem, by Joseph B. Felt, published in 1827. On the 109th page it says: 'Captain Pierce, of the ship Desire, belonging to this port, was commissioned to transport fifteen boys and one hundred women, of the captive Pequods, to Bermuda, and sell them as slaves. He was obliged, however, to make for Providence Island. There he disposed of the Indians. He returned from Tortugas the 26th of February following, with a cargo of cotton, tobacco, salt, and negroes.' In the edition of 1849, this interesting fact is omitted. Now, was not that trading in human bodies and souls in earnest? First they got all they could for those poor captive Pequods, and they traded the amount again for negroes, and some _et ceteras_. You are the very people to make a fuss about your neighbours, having been so excessively righteous yourselves. No wonder that the author left it out in a succeeding edition. I am surprised he ever put it in at all." "It seems more like peddling with the poor devils than any thing else," said Abel. "But you must remember the _spirit of the age_, Arthur, as Mr. Hubbard calls it?" "Yes," said Arthur, "I forgot that; but I wonder if Mr. Hubbard excuses the conduct of England to her colonies in consideration of the spirit of the age--_that_ allowed taxation and all of her other forms of oppression, I suppose. It is a kind of charity that covers a multitude of sins. But I was saying," continued Arthur, "that I could not make you out. While they were carrying on two kinds of slave trade, they were discussing in Boston the propriety of women's wearing veils, having lectures about it. Let me read to you. 'Mr. Cotton, though while in England of an opposite opinion on this subject, maintained that in countries where veils were to be a sign of submission, they might be properly disused. But Mr. Endicott took different ground, and endeavored to retain it by general argument from St. Paul. Mr. Williams sided with his parishioner. Through his and others' influence, veils were worn abundantly. At the time they were the most fashionable, Mr. Cotton came to preach for Mr. Skelton. His subject was upon wearing veils. He endeavored to prove that this was a custom not to be tolerated. The consequence was, that the ladies became converts to his faith in this particular, and for a long time left off an article of dress, which indicated too great a degree of submission to the lords of creation.' Did you ever hear of such a set of old meddlers, lecturing and preaching about women's dressing. I suppose the men wore petticoats at that time themselves." "If they did," said Abel, "I am very glad they have turned them over to the other sex since, as they are worn in the number which the present fashion requires. I should think they would be very uncomfortable. But, Arthur, I heard such a good story the other day, about Lawyer Page. He fights bravely with his tongue for other people's rights, but he daren't say his soul's his own before his wife. Well, when that affair came out about Morton's whipping his wife, as he was going to the Courthouse, Page said to old Captain Caldwell, 'Do you know, captain, that before all the facts were out in this case about Morton, they actually had it in every direction that it was I who had whipped my wife.' 'Now Page,' said the old captain, 'you know that's no such thing; for every body in New Haven is well aware that when there was any flogging going on in the matrimonial line, in your house, it was you that came off the worst.' Page did not say a word." "I am glad I am not yoked with one of your New Haven belles, if turning a Jerry Sneak is to be the consequence," said Arthur. "This marrying is a terrible necessity, Arthur," said Abel. "I don't know how I'll be supported under it when my time comes; but after all, I think the women get the worst of it. There were not two prettier girls in New Haven than my sisters. Julia, who has been married some eight or nine years, was really beautiful, and so animated and cheerful; now she has that wife-like look of care, forever on her countenance. Her husband is always reproaching her that that little dare devil of a son of hers does not keep his clothes clean. The other evening I was at their house, and they were having a little matrimonial discussion about it. It seems little Charlie had been picked up out of the mud in the afternoon, and brought in in such a condition, that it was sometime before he could be identified. After being immersed in a bathing tub it was ascertained that he had not a clean suit of clothes; so the young gentleman was confined to his chamber for the rest of the evening, in a night gown. This my brother-in-law considered a great hardship, and they were talking the matter over when I went in. "'Why don't you make the boy clothes enough, Julia?' said he. "'I am forever making and forever mending,' said Julia; 'but it is impossible to keep that young one clean. He had twelve pairs of pantaloons in the wash last week, and the girl was sick, and I had to iron them myself. I guess if you had all the trouble I have with him, you would put him to bed and make him stay there a week.' "'I tell you what it is, good people,' said I, 'when I go courting I intend to ask the lady in the first place if she likes to make boys' clothes. If she says No, I shan't have her, no matter what other recommendations she may possess.' "'She'll be sure to give you the mitten for your impudence,' said Julia. Then, there is my pretty sister Harriet, quilting quilts, trimming nightcaps, and spoiling her bright eyes making her wedding-clothes; after a while she'll be undergoing some of the troubles of the married state, which will lengthen her face. The men get the best of it, decidedly; for they have not all the petty annoyances a woman must encounter. What do you think about it, Arthur?" "I hardly know," said Arthur. "I have been in love ever since I could tell my right hand from my left. I have hardly ever looked forward to marriage; my time has been so much occupied here, that when I get a few moments for reflection, my thoughts go back to Alice, and the happy years I have passed with her, rather than to anticipations of any kind. I suppose I shall find out, though, and then you may profit by my experience." "You will have a sad experience with those niggers of yours, I am afraid, Arthur," said Abel. "Our people are determined never to let them alone. I wonder you do not employ white hands upon the plantation, and have done with any trouble about the matter." "What would be done with the slaves in the mean time?" said Arthur. "Set 'em free," said Abel; "colonize, or hang 'em all." "The latter is the more practicable suggestion," said Arthur. "As to setting them free, they could not remain in Virginia afterward if I were willing to do so: there is a law against it. Colonizing them would be equally difficult, for the most of them would refuse to go to Africa; and if I have not the right to hold them slaves, I certainly have not a right to force them into another country. Some of them would be willing and glad to come to the North, but some would object. My father set a house-servant free; he was absent a year, and returned voluntarily to his old condition. Mark had got some Abolition notions in his head, and my father told him he might have his free papers, and go: I have told you the result. The fact is, Abel, you Yankees don't stand very well with our slaves. They seem to consider you a race of pedlars, who come down upon them in small bodies for their sins, to wheedle away all their little hoardings. My father has several times brought servants to New York, but they have never run away from him. I think Virginia would do well without her colored people, because her climate is moderate, and white labor could be substituted. But it is not so with the more Southern States. I would like to see a Louisiana sun shining upon your New England States for a while--how quickly you would fit out an expedition for Africa. It is the mere accident of climate that makes your States free ones." "I suppose so," said Abel. "A great many of your slaves run away through the year, don't they?" "No, indeed," said Arthur; "comparatively, very few. Just before I came to New Haven, I went to pass a few weeks at a plantation belonging to a family with whom we were intimate. One of the sons and I went on the river, two of the servants rowing us. I said to one of them, a large fat negro, 'What's your name, uncle?' 'Meschach, sir,' he said. 'Meschach,' said I; 'why, you ought to have two brothers, one named Shadrach and the other Abednego.' 'So I had, sir.' 'Well, what has become of them?' said I. 'Shadrach, he's dead,' he answered. 'And where is Abednego?' said I. 'He's gone, too,' he replied, in a low voice. My friend gave me a look, and told me afterwards that Abednego had ran away, and that his family considered it a disgrace, and never spoke of him. I hear of a negro boy who absconded, and when he was found and being brought home, an old washerwoman watched him as he went up the street. 'La,' said she, 'who'd a thought he'd a beginned to act bad so young,' But let us leave off Abolition and take a walk. Our cigars are out and we will resume the subject to-morrow afternoon, when we light some more." * * * * * "Now," said Abel, "having a couple of particularly good cigars, where did we leave off?" "Its too warm for argument," said Arthur, watching the curling of the gray smoke as it ascended. "We need not argue," said Abel; "I want to catechize you." "Begin." "Do you think that the African slave-trade can be defended?" "No, assuredly not." "Well," said Abel, "how can you defend your right to hold slaves as property in the United States?" "Abel," said Arthur, "when a Yankee begins to question there is no reason to suppose he ever intends to stop. I shall answer your queries from the views of Governor Hammond, of Carolina. They are at least worthy of consideration. What right have you New England people to the farms you are now holding?" "The right of owning them," said Abel. "From whom did you get them?" asked Arthur. "Our fathers." "And how did they get them?" "From the Red men, their original owners." "Well," said Arthur, "we all know how these transactions were conducted all over the country. We wanted the lands of the Red men, and we took them. Sometimes they were purchased, sometimes they were wrested; always, the Red men were treated with injustice. They were driven off, slaughtered, and taken as slaves. Now, God as clearly gave these lands to the Red men as he gave life and freedom to the African. Both have been unjustly taken away." "But," said Abel, "we hold property in land, you in the bodies and souls of men." "Granted," said Arthur; "but we have as good a right to our _property_ as you to yours--we each inherit it from our fathers. You must know that slaves were recognized as _property_ under the constitution, John Q. Adams, speaking of the protection extended to the peculiar interests of South, makes these remarks: 'Protected by the advantage of representation on this floor, protected by the stipulation in the constitution for the recovery of fugitive slaves, protected by the guarantee in the constitution to owners of this _species of property_, against domestic violence.' It was considered in England as any other kind of commerce; so that you cannot deny our right to consider them as property now, as well as then." "But can you advocate the enslaving of your fellow man?" said Abel. "No," said Arthur, "if you put the question in that manner; but if you come to the point, and ask me if I can conscientiously hold in bondage slaves in the South, I say yes, without the slightest hesitation. I'll tell you why. You must agree with me, if the Bible allow slavery there is no sin it. Now, the Bible does allow it. You must read those letters of Governor Hammond to Clarkson, the English Abolitionist. The tenth commandment, your mother taught you, no doubt: 'thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife nor his _man-servant_ nor his _maid-servant_, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.' These are the words of God, and as such, should be obeyed strictly. In the most solemn manner, the man-servant and the maid-servant are considered the _property_ of thy neighbor. Generally the word is rendered slave. This command includes all classes of servants; there is the Hebrew-brother who shall go out in the seventh year, and the hired-servant and those 'purchased from the heathen round about,' who were to be bondmen forever. In Leviticus, speaking of the 'bondmen of the heathen which shall be round about' God says, 'And ye shall take them for an inheritance, for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession they shall be your bondmen forever.' I consider that God permitted slavery when he made laws for the master and the slave, therefore I am justified in holding slaves. In the times of our Saviour, when slavery existed in its worst form, it was regarded as one of the conditions of human society; it is evident Abolition was not shadowed forth by Christ or his apostles. 'Do unto all men as ye would have them do unto you,' is a general command, inducing charity and kindness among all classes of men; and does not authorize interference with the established customs of society. If, according to this precept of Christ, I am obliged to manumit my slaves, you are equally forced to purchase them. If I were a slave, I would have my master free me; if you were a slave, and your owner would not give you freedom, you would have some rich man to buy you. From the early ages of the world, there existed the poor and the rich, the master and the slave. "It would be far better for the Southern slaves, if our institution, as regards them, were left to 'gradual mitigation and decay, which time _may_ bring about. The course of the Abolitionists, while it does nothing to destroy this institution, greatly adds to its hardships.' Tell me that 'man-stealing' is a sin, and I will agree with you, and will insist that the Abolitionists are guilty of it. In my opinion, those who consider slavery a sin, challenge the truth of the Bible. "Besides, Abel," continued Arthur, "what right have you to interfere? Your Northern States abolished slavery when it was their interest to do so: let us do the same. In the meantime, consider the condition of these dirty vagabonds, these free blacks, who are begging from me every time I go into the street. I met one the other day, who had a most lamentable state of things to report. He had rheumatism, and a cough, and he spit blood, and he had no tobacco, and he was hungry, and he had the toothache. I gave him twenty-five cents as a sort of panacea, and advised him to travel South and get a good master. He took the money, but not the advice." "But, Arthur, the danger of insurrection; I should think it would interfere greatly with your comfort." "We do not fear it," said Arthur. "Mobs of any kind are rare in the Southern country. We are not (in spite of the bad qualities ascribed to us by the Abolitionists) a fussy people. Sometimes, when an Abolitionist comes along, we have a little fun with him, the negroes enjoying it exceedingly. Slaveholders, as a general thing, desire to live a peaceful, quiet life; yet they are not willing to have their rights wrested from them." "One great disadvantage in a slaveholding community is, that you are apt to be surrounded by uneducated people," said Abel. "We do not educate our slaves," said Arthur; "but you do not presume to say that we do not cultivate our minds as assiduously as you do yours. Our statesmen are not inferior to yours in natural ability, nor in the improvement of it. We have far more time to improve ourselves than you, as a general thing. When you have an opportunity of judging, you will not hesitate to say, that our women can bear to be compared with yours in every respect, in their intellect, and refinement of manners and conversation. Our slaves are not left ignorant, like brutes, as has been charged upon us. Where a master feels a religious responsibility, he must and does cause to be given, all necessary knowledge to those who are dependent upon him. I must say, that though we have fewer sects at the South, we have more genuine religion. You will think I am prejudiced. Joining the church here is, in a great measure, a form. I have formed this opinion from my own observation. With us there must be a proper disregard of the customs of the world; a profession of religion implying a good deal more than a mere profession. Look at the thousand new and absurd opinions that have agitated New England, while they never have been advanced with us. There is Unitarianism, that faith that would undermine the perfect structure of the Christian religion; that says Christ is a man, when the Scriptures style him 'Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.' Why, it is hardly tolerated at the South. Have you any right to claim for yourself superior holiness? None whatever. "There never was any thing so perfectly false (I cannot help referring to it again,) as that religion is discouraged among our slaves. It is precisely the contrary. Most of them have the same opportunities of attending worship as their owners. They generally prefer the Methodist and Baptist denominations; they worship with the whites, or they have exclusive occasions for themselves, which they prefer. They meet on the plantations for prayer, for singing, or for any religious purpose, when they choose; the ladies on the plantations instruct them in the Bible, and how to read it. Many of them are taught to write. "Religion seems to be a necessary qualification of the female mind--I think this, because I have been so fortunate in those of our own family. My mother died soon after my birth; her friends often dwell on the early piety so beautifully developed in her character. We have a relative, an old maid, who lives with us; she forgets her own existence, laboring always for the good of others. My aunt is a noble Christian woman, and Alice has not breathed such an atmosphere in vain. We have a servant woman named Phillis, her price is far above rubies. Her industry, her honesty, her attachment to our family, exceeds every thing. I wish Abolitionists would imitate one of her virtues--humility. I know of no poetry more beautiful than the hymns she sang to me in my infancy; her whole life has been a recommendation of the religion of the Bible. I wish my chance of Heaven were half as good as hers. She is a slave here, but she is destined to be a saint hereafter." CHAPTER XIII. The evening is drawing on again at Exeter, and Alice and her mother are in a little sitting room that opens on the porch. Mrs. Weston is fanning her daughter, who has been suffering during the day from headache. Miss Janet is there, too, and for a rare occurrence, is idle; looking from the window at the tall peaks of the Blue Ridge upon which she has gazed for many a year. Little Lydia stands by her side, her round eyes peering into Miss Janet's face, wondering what would happen, that she should be unemployed. They are awaiting Mr. Weston's return from an afternoon ride, to meet at the last and most sociable meal of the day. "Miss Janet," said Lydia, "aint Miss Alice white?" "Very pale," said Miss Janet, looking at Alice; then, with a sigh, turning to the mountains again. "What makes her so white?" asked Lydia, in an under tone. "She has had a headache all day. Be quiet, child," said Miss Janet. After a moment, Lydia said, "I wish I could have de headache all de time." "What do you say such a foolish thing as that for, Lydia?" "'Kase I'd like to be white, like Miss Alice." Miss Janet did not reply. Again Lydia spoke, "If I was to stay all time in de house, and never go in de sun, would I git white?" "No--no--foolish child; what gives you such ideas?" There was another pause. Mrs. Weston fanned Alice, who, with closed eyes, laid languidly on the lounge. "Miss Janet," said Lydia, speaking very softly, "who made de lightning-bugs?" "God made them," said Miss Janet. "Did God make de nanny-goats, too?" "You know that God made every thing," said Miss Janet. "I have often told you so." "He didn't make mammy's house, ma'am; I seed de men makin it." "No; man makes houses, but God made all the beautiful things in nature. He made man, and trees, and rivers, and such things as man could not make." Lydia looked up at the sky. The sun had set, and the moon was coming forth, a few stars glistened there. Long, fleecy clouds extended over the arch of heaven, and some passing ones for a moment obscured the brightness that gilded the beautiful scene. "Miss Janet," said Lydia, "its mighty pretty there; but 'spose it was to fall." "What was to fall?" "De sky, ma'am." "It cannot fall. God holds it in its place." Another interval and Lydia said: "Miss Janet, 'spose God was to die, den de sky would broke down." "What put such a dreadful thought into your head, child?" said Miss Janet. "God cannot die." "Yes, ma'am, he kin," said Lydia. "No, he cannot. Have I not often told you that God is a spirit? He created all things, but he never was made; he cannot die." Lydia said inquiringly, "Wasn't Jesus Christ God, ma'am?" "Yes, he was the Son of God, and he was God." "Well, ma'am, he died onct, dat time de Jews crucified him--dat time de ground shook, and de dead people got up--dat time he was nailed to de cross. So, ma'am, if God died onct, couldn't he die agin?" Miss Janet, arousing herself from her reverie, looked at the child. There she stood, her eyes fixed upon the sky, her soul engaged in solving this mysterious question. Her little hands hung listlessly by her side; there was no beauty in her face; the black skin, the projecting lips, the heavy features, designated her as belonging to a degraded race. Yet the soul was looking forth from its despised tenement, and eagerly essaying to grasp things beyond its reach. "Could he die agin, Miss Janet?" asked Lydia. Poor child! thought Miss Janet, how the soul pinioned and borne down, longs to burst its chains, and to soar through the glorious realms of light and knowledge. I thought but now that there was no more for me to do here; that tired of the rugged ascent, I stood as it were on the tops of those mountains, gazing in spirit on the celestial city, and still not called to enter in. Now, I see there is work for me to do. Thou art a slave, Lydia; yet God has called thee to the freedom of the children that he loves; thou art black, yet will thy soul be washed white in the blood of the Lamb; thou art poor, yet shalt thou be made rich through Him who, when on earth, was poor indeed. Jesus, forgive me! I murmured that I still was obliged to linger. Oh! make me the honored instrument of good to this child, and when thou callest me hence, how gladly will I obey the summons. "Lydia," she said, "the Son of God died for us all, for you and for me, but he was then in the form of man. He died that we might live; he never will die again. He rose from the dead, and is in heaven, at the right hand of God. He loves you, because you think about him." "He don't love me like he do Miss Alice, 'kase she's so white," said Lydia. "He loves all who love him," said Miss Janet, "whether they are black or white. Be a good child, and he will surely love you. Be kind and obliging to everybody; be industrious and diligent in all you have to do; obey your mother and father, and your master. Be truthful and honest. God hates a liar, and a deceitful person. He will not take care of you and love you, unless you speak the truth. Sometimes you try to deceive me. God will not be your friend if you deceive any one. And now go to your mother, she will put you to bed." Lydia made a curtsey, and said, "Good-night, ma'am." She went to Mrs. Weston, and bade her good-night too. Then turning toward Alice, she gazed wonderingly at her pale face. "Is you got de headache now, Miss Alice?" "Not much," said Alice, gently. "Good night, miss," said Lydia, with another curtesy, and she softly left the room. "Oh, mammy," she said, as she entered her mother's cabin, "Miss Janet say, if I'm a good child, God will love me much as he loves Miss Alice, if I is black. Miss Alice is so white to-night; you never see'd her look as white as she do to-night." * * * * * Mr. Weston alighted from his horse, and hurried to the sitting-room, "Have you waited tea for me?" he said. "Why did you do so? Alice, darling, is your head better?" "A great deal, uncle," said Alice. "Have you had a pleasant ride?" "Yes; but my child, you look very sick. What can be the matter with you? Anna, did you send for the doctor?" "No--Alice objected so." "But you must send for him--I am sure she is seriously ill." "There is nothing the matter with me, but a headache," said Alice. "After tea, I will go to bed, and will be well in the morning." "God grant you may, my sweet one. What has come over you?" "Tea is ready," said Cousin Janet. "Let us go in to it, and then have prayers, and all go to bed early. Why Cousin Weston, you are getting quite dissipated in your old age; coming home to tea at this hour; I suppose I shall begin such practices next." Miss Janet's suggestion of retiring early, was followed. Phillis came in to see how Alice's head was, and recommended brown paper and vinegar. She made no comment on her appearance, but did not wonder that Lydia was struck with the expression of her countenance. There was an uneasiness that was foreign to it; not merely had the glow of health departed, there was something in its place, strange there. It was like the storm passing over the beautiful lake; the outline of rock, and tree, and surface, is to be seen, but its tranquil beauty is gone; and darkness and gloom are resting where has been the home of light, and love, and beauty. Alice undressed and went to bed; her mother raised all the windows, put out the candle, and laid down beside her. Hoping that she would fall asleep, she did not converse, but Alice after a few minutes, called her. "What is it, Alice?" "Did you hear what Cousin Janet said to Lydia, to-night, mother? God hates those who deceive." "Why think of that now, my love?" "Because it refers to me. She did not mean it for me, but it came home to my heart." "To _your_ heart? That has always been truth and candor itself. Try and banish such thoughts. If you were well, fancies like these would not affect you." "They are not fancies, they are realities," said Alice. She sighed and continued, "Am I not deceiving the kind protector and friend of my childhood? Oh, mother, if he knew all, how little would he love me! And Arthur, can it be right for me to be engaged to him, and to deceive him, too?" "Dear Alice, how often have we talked about this, and hoped you were satisfied as to the propriety of being silent on the subject at present. Your uncle's health is very feeble; he is subject to sudden and alarming attacks of sickness, and easily thrown into a state of agitation that endangers his life. Would you run such a risk? What a grief would it be to him to know that the hopes of years were to be destroyed, and by one whom he had nursed in his own bosom as a child. Poor Arthur, too! away from home so long--trusting you with such confidence, looking forward with delight to the time of his return, could you bear thus to dash his dearest prospects to the earth?" "But he must know it, mother. I could not marry him with a lie in my right hand." "It will not be so, Alice; you cannot help loving Arthur, above all men, when you are with him; so noble, so generous, so gifted with all that is calculated to inspire affection, you will wonder your heart has ever wavered." "But it has," said Alice; "and he must know all." "Of course," said Mrs. Weston; "nothing would justify your having any reserve with him, but this is not the time for explanation. If I believed that you really and truly loved Walter, so as to make it impossible for you to forget him and return Arthur's affection; if I thought you could not one day regard Arthur as he deserves, I would not wish you to remain silent for a day. It would be an injustice, and a sin, to do so. Yet I feel assured that there is no such danger. "A woman, Alice, rarely marries her first love, and it is well that it is so. Her feelings, rather than her judgment, are then enlisted, and both should be exercised when so fearful a thing as marriage is concerned. You have been a great deal with Walter, and have always regarded him tenderly, more so of late, because the feelings strengthen with time, and Walter's situation is such as to enlist all your sympathies; his fascinating appearance and interesting qualities have charmed your affections. You see him casting from him the best friends he has ever had, because he feels condemned of ingratitude in their society. He is going forth on the voyage of life, alone, you weep as any sister would, to see him thus. I do not blame him for loving you; but I do censure him in the highest degree, for endeavoring to win more than a sister's regard from you, in return; it was selfish and dishonorable. More than all, I blame myself for not foreseeing this. You said yesterday, you could not bear the thought of being separated from Arthur. You do not know your own heart, many a woman does not, until time has been her teacher; let it be yours. Cousin Janet has thus advised you; be guided by us, and leave this thing to rest for a while; you will have reason to rejoice in having done so. Would you leave me for Walter, Alice?" "No, mother. How could you ask me?" "Then trust me; I would not answer for your uncle's safety were we to speak to him on this subject. How cruel to pain him, when a few months may restore us to the hopes and happiness which have been ours! Do what is right, and leave the future to God." "But how can I write to Arthur, when I know I am not treating him as I would wish him to treat me?" "Write as you always have; your letters have never been very sentimental. Arthur says you write on all subjects but the one nearest his heart. If you had loved him as I thought you did, you never would have allowed another to usurp his place. But we cannot help the past. Now dear child, compose yourself; I am fatigued, but cannot sleep until you do." Alice, restless for a while, at last fell asleep, but it was not the rest that brings refreshment and repose. Her mother watched her, as with her hand now pressed on her brow, now thrown on the pillow, she slept. Her mind, overtaxed, tried even in sleep to release itself of its burden. The wish to please, and the effort to do right, was too much for her sensitive frame. It was like the traveler unaccustomed to fatigue and change, forced to commence a journey, unassured of his way, and ignorant of his destination. Her mother watched her--a deep hue was settled under her eyelashes, the veins in her temple were fearfully distinct, and a small crimson spot rested on her cheek. She watched her, by the moonlight that glanced over every part of the room. She listened to her heavy breathing, and lightly touched her dry and crimson lips. She stroked the long luxuriant curls, that appeared to her darker than they ever had before. She closed the nearest window, lest there should be something borne on the breath of night, to disturb the rest of the beloved one. But, mother! it will not do; the curse of God is still abroad in the world, the curse on sin. It falls, like a blighting dew, on the loveliest and dearest to our hearts. It is by our side and in our path. It is among the gay, the rich, the proud, and the gifted of the earth; among the poor, the despised, the desolate and forsaken. It darkens the way of the monarch and the cottager, of the maiden and the mother, of the master and the slave. Alas! since it poisoned the flowers in Eden, and turned the children of God from its fair walks, it is abroad in the world--the curse of God on sin. There is a blessing, too, within the reach of all. He who bore the curse, secured the blessing. Son of God! teach us to be like thee; give us of thy spirit, that we may soften to each other the inevitable ills of life. Prepare us for that condition to which we may aspire; for that assembly where will be united the redeemed of all the earth, where will rejoice forever in thy presence those of all ages and climes, who looked up from the shadow of the curse, to the blessing which thou didst obtain, with thy latest sigh, on Calvary! CHAPTER XIV. After Phillis left Mrs. Weston's room, she was on her way to her cabin, when she noticed Aunt Peggy sitting alone at the door. She was rather a homebody; yet she reproached herself with having neglected poor old Peggy, when she saw her looking so desolate and dejected. She thought to pay her a visit, and bidding her good evening, sat down on the door-step. "Time old people were in bed, Aunt Peggy," said she; "what are you settin up for, all by yourself?" "Who's I got to set up wid me?" said Aunt Peggy. "Why don't you go to bed, then?" asked Phillis. "Can't sleep, can't sleep," said Aunt Peggy; "aint slep none dese two, three nights; lays awake lookin at de moon; sees people a lookin in de winder at me, people as I aint seen since I come from Guinea; hears strange noises I aint never heard in dis country, aint never hearn sence I come from Guinea." "All notions," said Phillis. "If you go to sleep, you'll forget them all." "Can't go to sleep," said Aunt Peggy; "somefin in me won't sleep; somefin I never felt afore. It's in my bones; mebbe Death's somewhere in the neighborhood." "I reckon you're sick, Aunt Peggy," said Phillis; "why didn't you let me know you wasn't well?" "Aint sick, I tell you," said Aunt Peggy, angrily; "nothin the matter wid me. 'Spose you think there's nothin bad about, 'cep what comes to me." Phillis was astonished at her words and manner, and looked at her intently. Most of the servants on the plantation stood in awe of Aunt Peggy. Her having been brought from Africa, and the many wonders she had seen there; her gloomy, fitful temper; her tall frame, and long, skinny hands and arms; her haughty countenance, and mass of bushy, white hair. Phillis did not wonder most people were afraid of her. Besides, Peggy was thought to have the power of foresight in her old age. The servants considered her a sort of witch, and deprecated her displeasure. Phillis had too much sense for this; yet there was one thing that she had often wondered at; that was, that Aunt Peggy cared nothing about religion. When employed in the family, she had been obliged to go sometimes to church: since she had been old, and left to follow her own wishes, she had never gone. Miss Janet frequently read the Bible, and explained it to her. Alice, seated on a low stool by the old woman's side, read to her scenes in the life of Christ, upon which servants love to dwell. But as far as they could judge, there were no good impressions left on her mind. She never objected, but she gave them no encouragement. This Phillis had often thought of; and now as she sat with her, it occurred to her with overwhelming force. "Death's about somewhere," said Aunt Peggy. "I can't see him, but I feels him. There's somefin here belongs to him; he wants it, and he's gwine to have it." "'Pears to me," said Phillis, "Death's always about. Its well to be ready for him when he 'comes; 'specially we old people." "Always ole people," said Aunt Peggy, "you want to make out that Death's always arter ole people. No such thing. Look at the churchyard, yonder. See any little graves thar? Plenty. Death's always arter babies; 'pears like he loves 'em best of all." "Yes," said Phillis, "young people die as well as old, but 'taint no harm to be ready. You know, Aunt Peggy, we aint never ready till our sins is repented of, and our souls is washed in the blood of Jesus. People ought to think of that, old and young, but they don't." "Death loves young people," said Aunt Peggy; "always arter 'em. See how he took young Mr. William Jones, thar, in town, and he healthy and strong, wid his young bride; and his father and mother old like me. See how he took little George Mason, not long ago, that Uncle Geoffrey used to bring home wid him from town, setting on de horse, before him. Didn't touch his ole grandmother; she's here yet. Tell you, Death loves 'em wid de red cheeks and bright eyes." Phillis did not reply, and the old woman talked on as if to herself. "Thinks thar's nothin bad but what comes to niggers; aint I had nuff trouble widout Death. I aint forgot de time I was hauled away from home. Cuss him, 'twas a black man done it; he told me he'd smash my brains out if I made a sound. Dragged along till I come to de river; thar he sold me. I was pushed in long wid all de rest of 'em, crying and howlin--gwine away for good and all. Thar we was, chained and squeezed together; dead or live, all one. Tied me to a woman, and den untied me to fling her into de sea--dead all night, and I tied to her. Come long, cross de great sea; more died, more flung to de sharks. No wonder it thundered and lightened, and de waves splashed in, and de captain prayed. Lord above! de captain prayed, when he was stealin and murderin of his fellow-creeturs. We didn't go down, we got safe across. Some went here, some went thar, and I come long wid de rest to Virginny. Ever sence, workin and slavin; ever sence, sweatin and drivin; workin all day, workin all night." "You never worked a bit in the night time, Aunt Peggy," said Phillis; "and you know it." "Worked all time," said Aunt Peggy, "niggers aint made for nothin else. Now, kase Death's somewhar, wantin somefin, thinks it must be me." "I didn't say 'twas you, Aunt Peggy," said Phillis. "Wants somefin," said Aunt Peggy. "Tell you what, Phillis," and she laughed, "wants Miss Alice." "What's come over you?" said Phillis, looking at her, terrified. "There's nothing the matter with Miss Alice but a headache." "Headache!" said Aunt Peggy, "that's all?" and she laughed again. "Think I didn't see her yesterday? Whars the red cheeks?--white about her lips, black about her eyes; jist like Mistis when she was gwine fast, and de young baby on her arm. Death wants Miss Alice--aint arter me." "Aint you ashamed to talk so about Miss Alice, when she's always coming to you, bringing you something, and trying to do something for you?" said Phillis. "You might as well sit here and talk bad of one of the angels above." "Aint talking bad of her," said Aunt Peggy; "aint wishin her no harm. If there is any angels she's as good as any of 'em; but it's her Death's arter, not me; look here at my arms--stronger than yourn--" and she held out her sinewy, tough arm, grasping her cane, to go in the house. Phillis saw she was not wanted there, and looking in to be assured that Nancy (Aunt Peggy's grand-daughter, who lived with her to take care of her,) was there, went home and thought to go to bed. But she found no disposition to sleep within her. Accustomed, as she was, to Aunt Peggy's fault finding, and her strange way of talking, she was particularly impressed with it to-night. 'Twas so strange, Phillis thought, that she should have talked about being stolen away from Guinea, and things that happened almost a hundred years ago. Then her saying, so often that, "Death was about." Phillis was no more nervous than her iron tea-kettle, but now she could not feel right. She sat down by the door, and tried to compose herself. Every one on the plantation was quiet; it seemed to her the night got brighter and brighter, and the heavens more crowded with stars than she had ever seen them. She looked at her children to see if they all were well, and then gave a glance at old Bacchus, who was snoring loud enough to wake the dead. She shook him heartily and told him to hush his clatter, but she might as well have told a twenty-four pounder to go off without making a noise. Then she sat down again and looked at Alice's window, and could not avoid seeing Aunt Peggy's house when she turned in that direction; thus she was reminded of her saying, "Death was about and arter somefin." Wondering what had come over her, she shut the door and laid down without undressing herself. She slept heavily for several hours, and waked with the thought of Aunt Peggy's strange talk pressing upon her. She determined not to go to bed again, but opened the door and fixed the old rush-bottomed chair within it. Bacchus, always a very early riser, except on Sunday, was still asleep; having had some sharp twinges of the rheumatism the day before, Phillis hoped he might sleep them off; her own mind was still burdened with an unaccountable weight. She was glad to see the dawning of "another blue day." Before her towered, in their majestic glory, Miss Janet's favorite mountains, yet were the peaks alone distinctly visible; the twilight only strong enough to disclose the mass of heavy fog that enveloped them. The stars had nearly all disappeared, those that lingered were sadly paling away. How solemn was the stillness! She thought of the words of Jacob, "Surely God is here!"--the clouds were flying swiftly beneath the arch of Heaven, as if from God's presence. Many thoughts were suggested to her by the grandeur of the scene, for my reader must remember, that an admiration of the glories of nature is not unfrequently a characteristic of an uneducated mind. Many verses of Scripture occurred to her, "From the rising of the sun, unto the going down of the same, the Lord's name be praised. The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high? Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in Heaven, and in the earth." The soul of the slave-woman rejoiced in the Lord, her Maker and her Redeemer. Gradually a soft light arose above the mountains; the fog became transparent through its influence. A red hue gilded the top of the mist, and slowly descended toward it, as it sank away. All the shadows of the night were disappearing, at the command once given, "Let there be light," and re-obeyed at the birth of every day. Phillis's heart warmed with gratitude to God who had given to her a knowledge of himself. She thought of her many mercies, her health, her comforts, and the comparative happiness of each member of her family; of the kindness of her master and the ladies; all these considerations affected her as they never had before, for gratitude and love to God ever inspires us with love and kindness to our fellow creatures. Her thoughts returned to Alice, but all superstitious dread was gone; Aunt Peggy's strange wanderings no longer oppressed her; her mind was in its usual healthy state. "The good Lord is above us all," she said, "and Miss Alice is one of his children." She saw the house door open, and William coming toward her on his way to the stable. It was without any agitation that she asked what was the matter? "Miss Alice is very sick," said William, "and I am going for the doctor." "I am glad I happened to be here," said Phillis, "may be they want me." "You better not go in now," said William, "for she's asleep. Miss Anna told me to walk very easy, for she would not have her waked for all the world." So Phillis, seeing Aunt Peggy's door open, thought she would step over and find out if the old lady had slept off her notions. Aunt Peggy's cabin had two rooms, in one of which, she and her granddaughter slept, in the other Nancy cooked and washed, and occupied herself with various little matters. Nancy had been up a short time and was mixing some Indian bread for their breakfast. She looked surprised, at having so early a visitor. "How is your grandmother, child?" said Phillis; "did she sleep well?" "Mighty well," said Nancy. "She aint coughed at all as I heard, since she went to bed." "Well, I'm glad to hear it," said Phillis, "for I thought she was going to be sick, she was so curious last night." "She didn't complain, any way," said Nancy, going on with her breadmaking, so Phillis got up to go home. As she passed the door of the other room, she could but stop to look in at the hard, iron features of the old creature, as she lay in slumber. Her long black face contrasted most remarkably with the white pillow on which it was supported, her hair making her head look double its actual size, standing off from her ears and head. One long black arm lay extended, the hand holding to the side of the bed. Something impelled Phillis to approach. At first she thought of her grumbling disposition, her bitter resentment for injuries, most of which were fanciful, her uncompromising dislike to the servants on the plantation. She almost got angry when she thought "the more you do for her, the more she complains." Then she recalled her talk the night before; of her being torn away from her mother, and sold off, tied to a dead woman, and the storm and the sharks; a feeling of the sincerest pity took the place of her first reflections, and well they did--for the next idea--Phillis' knees knocked together, and her heart beat audibly, for what was before her? What but death! with all his grimness and despair, looking forth from the white balls that were only partially covered with the dark lids--showing his power in the cold hands whose unyielding grasp had closed in the struggle with him. Setting his seal on brow and lips, lengthening the extended form, that never would rouse itself from the position in which the mighty conqueror had left it, when he knew his victory was accomplished. What but death, indeed! For the heart and the pulse were still forever, and the life that had once regulated their beatings, had gone back to the Giver of life. The two slave women were alone together. She who had been, had gone with all her years, her wrongs, and her sins, to answer at the bar of her Maker. The fierce and bitter contest with life, the mysterious curse, the dealings of a God with the children of men. Think of it, Oh! Christian! as you gaze upon her. The other slave woman is with the dead. She is trembling, as in the presence of God. She knows he is everywhere, even in the room of death. _She_ is redeemed from the slavery of sin, and her regenerate soul looks forward to the rest that remaineth to the people of God. She "submits herself to an earthly master," knowing that the dispensation of God has placed her in a state of servitude. Yet she trusts in a Heavenly Master with childlike faith, and says, "May I be ready when he comes and calls for me." Phillis was perfectly self-possessed when she went back to the kitchen. "Nancy," she said, "didn't you think it was strange your grandmother slept so quiet, and laid so late this morning? She always gets up so early." "I didn't think nothin about it," said Nancy, "for I was 'sleep myself." "Well there's no use putting it off," said Phillis. "I might as well tell you, first as last. She's dead." "Dead, what do you mean?" said Nancy. "I mean she's dead," said Phillis, "and cold, and very likely has been so, for most of the night. Don't be frightened and make a noise, for Miss Alice is very sick, and you're so near the house." Nancy went with her to the other room. A child would have known there was no mistake about death's being there, if the idea had been suggested to it. Nancy was in a moment satisfied that such was the case, but she shed very few tears. She was quite worn out taking care of the old woman, and the other servants were not willing to take their turns. They said they "couldn't abide the cross, ill-natured old thing." Phillis went home for a few moments, and returned to perform the last offices. All was order and neatness under her superintendence; and they who avoided the sight of Aunt Peggy when alive, stood with a solemn awe beside her and gazed, now that she was dead. All but the children. Aunt Peggy was dead! She who had been a kind of scarecrow in life, how terrible was the thought of her now! The severest threat to an unruly child was, "I will give you to Aunt Peggy, and let her keep you." But to think of Aunt Peggy in connection with darkness, and silence, and the grave, was dreadful indeed. All day the thought of her kept them awed and quiet; but as evening drew on, they crept close to their mothers' side, turning from every shadow, lest she should come forth from it. Little Lydia, deprived of Miss Janet's company in consequence of Alice's sickness, listened to the pervading subject of conversation all day, and at night dreamed that the old woman had carried her off to the top of the highest of the mountains that stood before them; and there she sat scowling upon her, and there, they were to be forever. When the next afternoon had come, and the body was buried, and all had returned from the funeral, Phillis locked up the vacant cabin. Nancy was to be employed in the house, and sleep in the servants' wing. Then Phillis realized that death had been there, and she remembered once more, Aunt Peggy's words, "He's arter somefin, wants it, and he's gwine to have it; but it ain't me." There is one thing concerning death in which we are apt to be sceptical, and that is, "Does he want me?" CHAPTER XV. Aunt Peggy's funeral was conducted quietly, but with that respect to the dead which is universal on Southern plantations. There was no hurry, no confusion. Two young women remained with the corpse during the night preceding the burial; the servants throughout the plantation had holiday, that they might attend. At Mr. Weston's request, the clergyman of the Episcopal church in X read the service for the dead. He addressed the servants in a solemn and appropriate manner. Mr. Weston was one of the audience. Alice's sickness had become serious; Miss Janet and her mother were detained with her. The negroes sung one of their favorite hymns, "Life is the time to serve the Lord," their fine voices blending in perfect harmony. Mr. Caldwell took for his text the 12th verse of the 2d chapter of Thessalonians, "That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and his glory." He explained to them in the most affectionate and beautiful manner, that _they_ were called unto the kingdom and glory of Christ. He dwelt on the glories of that kingdom, as existing in the heart of the believer, inciting him to a faithful performance of the duties of life; as in the world, promoting the happiness and welfare of all mankind, and completed in heaven, where will be the consummation of all the glorious things that the humble believer in Jesus has enjoyed by faith, while surrounded by the temptations and enduring the trials of the world. He told them _they_ were all called. Christ died for all; every human being that had heard of Jesus and his atonement, was called unto salvation. He dwelt on the efficacy of that atonement on the solemn occasion when it was made, on the perfect peace and reconciliation of the believer. He spoke of the will of God, which had placed them in a condition of bondage to an earthly master; who had given them equal hope of eternal redemption with that master. He reminded them that Christ had chosen his lot among the poor of this world; that he had refused all earthly honor and advantage. He charged them to profit by the present occasion, to bring home to their hearts the unwelcome truth that death was inevitable. He pointed to the coffin that contained the remains of one who had attained so great an age, as to make her an object of wonder in the neighborhood. Yet her time had come, like a thief in the night. There was no sickness, no sudden failing, nothing unusual in her appearance, to intimate the presence of death. God had given her a long time of health to prepare for the great change; he had given her every opportunity to repent, and he had called her to her account. He charged them to make their preparation now closing, by bringing before their minds that great day when the Judge of the earth would summon before him every soul he had made. None could escape his all-piercing eye; the king and his subject, the rich and the poor the strong and the weak, the learned and the ignorant the white and the colored, the master and his slave! each to render his or her account for the deeds done in the body. The servants were extremely attentive, listening with breathless interest as he enlarged upon the awful events of the Judgment. Many a tear fell, many a heart throbbed, many a soul stretched forth her wings toward the kingdom and glory which had been the clergyman's theme. After he concluded, their attention was absorbed by the preparation to remove the body to its final resting place. The face was looked upon, then covered; the coffin lid screwed down; strong arms lifting and bearing it to the bier. Nancy and Isaac, her only relatives, were near the coffin, and Mr. Weston and the clergyman followed them. The rest formed in long procession. With measured step and appropriate thought they passed their cabins toward the place used for the interment of the slaves on the plantation. They had gone a little way, when a full, rich female voice gently broke in upon the stillness; it was Phillis's. Though the first line was sung in a low tone, every one heard it. "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed!" They joined in, following the remains of their fellow-servant, and commemorating the sufferings of one who became as a servant, that He might exalt all who trust in Him. It might be there was little hope for the dead, but not less sufficient the Atonement on Calvary, not less true that for each and all "did he devote that sacred head;" that for pity which he felt for all, "He hung upon the tree: Amazing pity, grace unknown! And love beyond degree!" While the voices swept through the air, a tribute of lowly hearts ascended to God. They had now reached the burial ground; all was in readiness, and the men deposited their burden in the earth. Deep and solemn thought was portrayed on every face; music had softened their feelings, and the reflections suggested by the hymn prepared them for kind sentiments toward the dead, though no one had loved her in life. The first hard clod that rattled on the coffin, opened the fountain of their tears; she who had been the object of their aversion was gone from them forever; they could not now show her any kindness. How many a heart reproached itself with a sneering word, hasty anger, and disdainful laugh. But what was she now? dust and ashes. They wept as they saw her hidden from their eyes, turning from the grave with a better sense of their duties. Reader, it is well for the soul to ponder on the great mystery, Death! Is there not a charm in it? The mystery of so many opposite memories, the strange union of adverse ideas. The young, the old, the gay, the proud, the beautiful, the poor, and the sorrowful. Silence, darkness, repose, happiness, woe, heaven and hell. Oh! they should come now with a startling solemnity upon us all, for while I write, the solemn tolling of the bells warns me of a nation's grief; it calls to millions--its sad resonance is echoed in every heart. HENRY CLAY IS DEAD! Well may the words pass from lip to lip in the thronged street. The child repeats it with a dim consciousness of some great woe; it knows not, to its full extent, the burden of the words it utters. The youth passes along the solemn sentence; there is a throb in his energetic heart, for he has seen the enfeebled form of the statesman as it glided among the multitude, and has heard his voice raised for his country's good; he is assured that the heart that has ceased to beat glowed with all that was great and noble. The politician utters, too, the oft-repeated sound--Henry Clay is dead! Well may he bare his breast and say, for _what_ is my voice raised where his has been heard? Is it for my country, or for my party and myself? Men of business and mechanics in the land, they know that one who ever defended their interests is gone, and who shall take his place? The mother--tears burst from her eyes, when looking into her child's face, she says, Henry Clay is dead! for a nation's freedom is woman's incalculable blessing. She thinks with grief and gratitude of him who never ceased to contend for that which gives to her, social and religious rights. Henry Clay is dead! His body no longer animated with life; his spirit gone to God. How like a torrent thought rushes on, in swift review, of his wonderful and glorious career. His gifted youth, what if it were attended with the errors that almost invariably accompany genius like his! Has he in the wide world an enemy who can bring aught against him? Look at his patriotism, his benevolence, his noble acts. Recall his energy, his calmness, his constant devotion to the interests of his country. Look, above all, at his patience, his humility, as the great scenes of life were receding from his view, and futurity was opening before him. Hear of the childlike submission with which he bowed to the Will that ordained for him a death-bed, protracted and painful. "Lead me," he said to a friend, "where I want to go, to the feet of Jesus." Listen to the simplicity with which he commended his body to his friends, and his spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ, to his God. Regard him in all his varied relations of Christian, patriot, statesman, husband, father, _master_, and friend, and answer if the sigh that is now rending the heart of his country is not well merited. Yes! reader, thoughts of death are useful to us all, whether it be by the grave of the poor and humble, or when listening to the tolling of the bell which announces to all that one who was mighty in the land has been summoned to the judgment seat of God. CHAPTER XVI. Mr. Weston and Phillis returned to the sick-room from the funeral. Fever was doing its work with the fair being, the beloved of many hearts, who was unconscious of aught that was passing around her. There was a startling light from the depths of her blue eyes; their natural softness of expression gone. The crimson glow had flushed into a hectic; the hot breath from her parted lips was drying away their moisture. The rich, mournful tones of her voice echoed in sad wailing through the chambers; it constantly and plaintively said Mother! though that mother answered in vain to its appeal. The air circulated through the room, bearing the odor of the woods, but for her it had no reviving power; it could not stay the beatings of her pulse, nor relieve the oppression of her panting bosom. Oh! what beauty was about that bed of sickness. The perfect shape of every feature, the graceful turn of the head, the luxuriant auburn hair, the contour of her rounded limbs. There was no vacancy in her face. Alas! visions of sorrow were passing in her mind. A sad intelligence was expressed in every glance, but not to the objects about her. The soul, subdued by the suffering of its tenement, was wandering afar off, perchance endeavoring to dive into the future, perchance essaying to forget the past. What says that vision of languishing and loveliness to the old man whose eyes are fixed in grief upon it? "Thou seest, O Christian! the uselessness of laying up thy treasures here. Where are now the hopes of half thy lifetime, where the consummation of all thy anxious plans? She who has been like an angel by thy side, how wearily throbs her young heart! Will she perpetuate the name of thy race? Will she close thine eyes with her loving hand? Will she drop upon thy breast a daughter's tear?" What does the vision say to thee, oh! aged woman? "There is still more for thee to do, more for thee to suffer. It is not yet enough of this mortal strife! Thou mayest again see a fair flower crushed by the rude wind of death; perchance she may precede thee, to open for thine entrance the eternal gates!" And what to thee, thou faithful servant? "There are tears in thine eye, and for me. For me! Whom thou thoughtest above a touch of aught that could bring sorrow or pain. Thou seest, not alone on thy doomed race rests a curse; the fierce anger of God, denounced against sin--the _curse_, falls upon his dearest children. I must, like you, abide by God's dealing with the children of men. But we shall be redeemed." What to thee, oh, mother? Thou canst not read the interpretation--a cloud of darkness sweeps by thy soul's vision. Will it pass, or will it rest upon thee forever? Yet the voice of God speaks to each one; faintly it may be to the mother, but even to her. There is a rainbow of hope in the deluge of her sorrow; she sees death in the multitude that passes her sight, but there is another there, one whose form is like unto the Son of God. She remembers how He wept over Lazarus, and raised him from the dead; oh! what comfort to place her case in his pitying bosom! Many were the friends who wept, and hoped, and prayed with them. Full of grief were the affectionate servants, but most of all, Phillis. It was useless to try and persuade her to take her usual rest, to remind her of her children, and her cares; to offer her the choice morsel to tempt her appetite, the refreshing drink she so much required. She wanted nothing but to weep with those who wept--nor rest, nor food, nor refreshing. * * * * * It is universal, the consideration that is shown to the servants at the South, as regards their times of eating and of rest. Whatever may have occurred, whatever fatigue the different members of the family may feel obliged to undergo, a servant is rarely called upon for extra attendance. In the Northern country the whole labor of a family is frequently performed by one female, while five or six will do the same amount of work in the South. A servant at the South is rarely called upon at night; only in cases of absolute necessity. Negroes are naturally sleepy-headed--they like to sit up late at night,--in winter, over a large fire, nodding and bumping their heads against each other, or in summer, out of doors; but they take many a nap before they can get courage to undress and go regularly to bed. They may be much interested in a conversation going on, but it is no violation of their code of etiquette to smoke themselves to sleep while listening. Few of the most faithful servants can keep awake well enough to be of real service in cases of sickness. There is a feeling among their owners, that they work hard during the day and should be allowed more rest than those who are not obliged to labor. "Do not disturb servants when they are eating," is the frequent charge of a Southern mother, "they have not a great many pleasures within their reach; never do any thing that will lessen their comforts in the slightest degree." Mrs. Weston, even in her own deep sorrow, was not unmindful of others; she frequently tried to induce Phillis to go home, knowing that she must be much fatigued. "I cannot feel tired, Phillis; a mother could not sleep with her only child as Alice is; I do not require the rest that you do." "You needs it more, Miss Anna, though you don't think so now. I can take care of myself. Unless you drive me away, I shan't go until God's will be done, for life or death." Miss Janet often laid down and slept for an hour or two, and returned refreshed to the sick chamber. Her voice retained its cheerfulness and kept Mrs. Weston's heart from failing. "Hope on, Anna," she would say, "as long as she breathes we must not give her up; how many have been thought entirely gone, and then revived. We must hope, and God will do the rest." This "hoping on" was one great cause of Cousin Janet's usefulness during a long life; religion and reason alike demand it of us. Many grand and noble actions have been done in the world, that never could have been accomplished without hoping on. When we become discouraged, how heavy the task before us; it is like drooping the eyes, and feebly putting forth the hands to find the way, when all appears to us darkness; but let the eye be lifted and the heart hope on, and there is found a glimmering of light which enables the trembling one to penetrate the gloom. Alice's symptoms had been so violent from the first, her disease had progressed so rapidly, that her condition was almost hopeless; ere Mr. Weston thought of the propriety of informing Arthur of her condition. The first time it occurred to him, he felt convinced that he ought not to delay. He knew that Arthur never could be consoled, if Alice, his dearly loved, his affianced wife, should die without his having the consolation of a parting word or look. He asked Cousin Janet her opinion. She recalled all that had passed previous to Alice's illness. As she looked into Mr. Weston's grieved and honest face, the question suggested itself,--Is it right thus, to keep him in ignorance? She only wavered a moment. Already the traces of agitation caused by his niece's illness, were visible in his flushed face and nervous frame; what then might be the result of laying before him a subject in which his happiness was so nearly concerned? Besides, she felt convinced that even should Alice improve, the suffering which had been one cause of her sickness, might be renewed with double force if suggested by Arthur's presence. "I know, my dear cousin," she said, "it will be a terrible grief to Arthur, should Alice be taken from us, yet I think you had better not write. Dr. Lawton says, that a very short time must decide her case; and were the worst we fear to occur, Arthur could not reach here in time to see her with any satisfaction. If he lose her, it will probably be better for him to remember her in health and beauty." Mr. Weston trembled, and burst into tears. "Try and not give way," said Miss Janet again; "we are doing all we can. We must hope and pray. I feel a great deal of hope. God is so merciful, he will not bring this stroke upon you in your old age, unless it is necessary. Why do you judge for him? He is mighty to save. 'The Lord on high, is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.' Think of His mercy and power to save, and trust in Him." In these most trying scenes of life, how little do we sympathize with the physician. How much oppressed he must feel, with the charge upon him. He is the adviser--to him is left the direction of the potions which may be the healing medicine or the deadly poison. He may select a remedy powerful to cure, he may prescribe one fatal to the invalid. How is he to draw the nice line of distinction? he must consider the disease, the constitution, the probable causes of the attack. His reputation is at stake--his happiness--for many eyes are turned to him, to read an opinion he may not choose to give in words. If he would be like the great Healer, he thinks not only of the bodily sufferings that he is anxious to assuage, but of the immortal soul on the verge of the great Interview, deciding its eternal destiny. He trembles to think, should he fail, it may be hurried to its account. If he be a friend, how do the ties of association add to his burden. Here is one whom he has loved, whose voice he is accustomed to hear; shall he, through neglect or mismanagement, make a void in many hearts? Shall he, from want of skill, bring weeping and desolation to a house where health and joy have been? Alice was very dear to Dr. Lawton, she was the companion of his daughters; he had been accustomed to regard her as one of them; he was untiring in his attendance, but from the first, had feared the result. Mrs. Weston had concealed nothing from him, she knew that he considered a physician bound in honour to know the affairs of a family only among themselves--she had no reserves, thus giving him every assistance in her power, in conducting the case. She detailed to him, explicitly, all that might have contributed to produce it. "You know, my dear madam," the doctor said, "that at this season we have, even in our healthy country, severe fevers. Alice's is one of the usual nature; it could have been produced by natural causes. We cannot say, it may be that the circumstances you have been kind enough to confide to me, have had a bad effect upon her. The effort to do right, and the fear lest she should err, may have strained her sensitive mind. She must have felt much distress in parting with Walter, whom she has always loved as a brother. You have only done your duty. I should not like to see a daughter of mine interested in that young man. I fear he inherits his father's violent passions, yet his early training may bring the promised blessing. Alice has that sort of mind, that is always influenced by what is passing at the time; remember what a child she was when Arthur left. There are no more broken hearts now-a-days--sometimes they bend a little, but they can be straightened again. If Alice gets well, you need not fear the future; though you know I disapprove of cousins marrying." "Doctor," said Mrs. Weston, "I know you have not given her up!" "I never give anybody up," said the doctor. "Who will say what God intends to do? I trust she will struggle through. Many a storm assails the fair ship on her first voyage over the seas. She may be sadly tossed about with the wind and waves; but may breast it gallantly, and come back safe, after all. We must do what we can, and hope for the best." These words strengthened the mother's heart to watch and hope. The doctor laid down to sleep for an hour or two in the afternoon. Cousin Janet, Mrs. Weston, and Phillis kept their watch in silence. The latter gently fanned Alice, who lay gazing, but unconscious; now looking inquiringly into her mother's face, now closing her eyes to every thing. There was no tossing or excitement about her, _that_ was over. Her cheek was pale, and her eyes languid and faded. One would not have believed, to have looked upon her, how high the fever still raged. Suddenly she repeated the word that had often been on her lips--"Mother." Then, with an effort to raise herself, she sank back upon her pillow, exhausted. A sorrowful look, like death, suffused itself over her countenance. Ah! how throbbed those hearts! Was the dreaded messenger here? "Miss Anna," whispered Phillis, "she is not gone, her pulse is no lower; it is the same." "Is it the same? are you sure?" said Mrs. Weston, who, for a few moments, had been unable to speak, or even to place her finger on the pulse. "It is no worse, if you'll believe me," said Phillis; "it may be a little better, but it is no worse." "Had I not better wake the doctor?" said Mrs. Weston, who hardly knew what to believe. Miss Janet gently touched the wrist of the invalid. "Do not wake him, my dear; Phillis is right in saying she is no worse; it was a fainting, which is passing away. See! she looks as usual. Give her the medicine, it is time; and leave her quiet, the doctor may be disturbed to-night." The night had passed, and the morning was just visible, as symptoms of the same nature affected the patient. Dr. Lawton had seen her very late at night, and had requested them to awaken him should there be any change in her appearance or condition. Oh, how these anxious hearts feared and hoped through this night. What might it bring forth; joy or endless weeping? This dread crisis past, and what would be the result? "Doctor," said Phillis, gently awaking him, "I'm sorry to disturb you. Miss Alice has had another little turn, and you'd better see her." "How is her pulse?" said the doctor, quickly. "Is it failing?" "'Pears to me not, sir; but you can see." They went to the room, and the doctor took Alice's small wrist, and lightly felt her pulse. Then did the mother watch his face, to see its writing. What was there? Nothing but deep attention. The wrist was gently laid down, and the doctor's hand passed lightly over the white arm. Softly it touched the forehead, and lay beneath the straying curl. There is no expression yet; but he takes the wrist again, and, laying one hand beneath it, he touches the pulse. Softly, like the first glance of moonlight on the dark waters, a smile is seen on that kind face. There is something else besides the smile. Large tears dropped from the physician's eyes; tears that he did not think to wipe away. He stooped towards the fragile sufferer, and gently as the morning air breathes upon the drooping violet, he kissed her brow. "Alice, sweet one," he said, "God has given you to us again." Where is that mother? Has she heard those cheering words? She hears them, and is gone; gone even from the side of her only one. The soul, when there is too much joy, longs for God. She must lay her rich burden at the mercy-seat. Now, that mother kneels, but utters no word. The incense of her heart knows no language and needs none; for God requires it not. The sacrifice of praise from a rejoicing heart, is a grateful offering that he accepts. "Miss Anna," said Phillis, with trembling voice, but beaming eye, "go to bed now; days and nights you have been up. How can you stand it? The doctor says she is a great deal better, but she may be ill for a good while yet, and you will give out. I will stay with her if you will take a sleep." "Sleep;" said Mrs. Weston. "No, no, faithful Phillis not yet; joy is too new to me. God for ever bless you for your kindness to me and my child. You shall go home and sleep, and to-night, if she continue to do well, I will trust her with you, and take some rest myself." Mr. Weston awoke to hear glad tidings. Again and again, through the long day, he repeated to himself his favorite Psalm, "Praise the Lord, oh my soul." Miss Janet's joy, deep but silent, was visible in her happy countenance. Nor were these feelings confined to the family; every servant on the estate made his master's joy his own. They sorrowed with him when he sorrowed, but now that his drooping head was lifted up, many an honest face regarded him with humble congratulation, as kindly received as if it had come from the highest in the land. CHAPTER XVII. Alice steadily, though slowly, improved; and Phillis again employed herself with her children and her work. Things had gone on very well, with one of her daughter's constant superintendence; but Bacchus had taken advantage of being less watched than usual, and had indulged a good deal, declaring to himself that without something to keep up his spirits he should die, thinking about Miss Alice. Phillis, lynx-eyed as she always was, saw that such had been the case. It was about a week after Alice commenced to improve, that Phillis went to her house in the evening, after having taken charge of her for several hours, while Mrs. Weston slept. Alice was very restless at night, and Mrs. Weston generally prepared herself for it, by taking some repose previously; this prevented the necessity of any one else losing rest, which, now that Alice was entirely out of danger, she positively refused to permit. As Phillis went in the door, Lydia was on her knees, just finishing the little nightly prayer that Miss Janet had taught her. She got up, and as she was about to go to bed, saw her mother, and bade her good night. "Good night, and go to bed like a good child. Miss Alice says you may come to see her again to-morrow," Phillis replied. Lydia was happy as a queen with this promise. Aunt Phillis took her pipe, and her old station outside the door, to smoke. Bacchus had his old, crazy, broken-backed chair out there already, and he was evidently resolving something in his mind of great importance, for he propped the chair far back on its one leg, and appeared to be taking the altitude of the mountains in the moon, an unfailing sign of a convulsion of some kind in the inner man. "Phillis," said he, after a long silence, "do you know, it is my opinion that that old creature," pointing with his thumb to Aunt Peggy's house, "is so long used to grumblin' and fussin', that she can't, to save her life, lie still in her grave." "What makes you think so?" said Phillis. "Bekase, I believes in my soul she's back thar this minute." "People that drink, Bacchus, can't expect nothin' else than to be troubled with notions. I was in hopes Aunt Peggy's death would have made you afeered to go on sinning. 'Stead of that, when we was all in such grief, and didn't know what was comin' upon us, you must go drinking. You'd better a been praying, I tell you. But be sure your 'sin will find you out' some day or other. The Lord above knows I pray for you many a time, when I'm hard at work. My heart is nigh breaking when I think where the drunkards will be, when the Lord makes up his jewels. They can't enter the kingdom of Heaven; there is no place for them there. Why can't you repent? 'Spose you die in a drunken fit, how will I have the heart to work when I remember where you've got to; 'where the worm never dieth, and the fire is not quenched.'" Bacchus was rather taken aback by this sudden appeal, and he moved uneasily in his chair; but after a little reflection, and a good long look at the moon, he recovered his confidence. "Phillis," said he, "do you b'lieve in sperrits?" "No, I don't," said Phillis, drily, "of no kind." Bacchus was at a loss again; but he pretended not to understand her, and giving a hitch to his uncertain chair, he got up some courage, and said, doggedly, "Well, I do." "I don't," said Phillis, positively, "of no kind." Bacchus was quite discomposed again, but he said in an appealing voice to his wife, "Phillis, I couldn't stand it; when Miss Alice was so low, you was busy, and could be a doin somethin for her; but what could I do? Here I sot all night a cryin, a thinkin about her and young master. I 'spected for true she was gwine to die; and my blessed grief! what would have come of us all. Master Arthur, he'd a come home, but what would be the use, and she dead and gone. Every which way I looked, I think I see Miss Alice going up to Heaven, a waving her hand good-by to us, and we all by ourselves, weepin and wailin. 'Deed, Phillis, I couldn't stand it; if I hadn't had a little whiskey I should a been dead and cold afore now." "You'll be dead and cold afore long with it," said Phillis. "I couldn't do nothing but cry, Phillis," said Bacchus, snuffing and blowing his nose; "and I thought I might be wanted for somethin, so I jest took a small drop to keep up my strength." Phillis said nothing. She was rather a hard-hearted woman where whiskey was concerned; so she gave Bacchus no encouragement to go on excusing himself. "I tell you why I believes in ghosts," said Bacchus, after a pause. "I've see'd one." "When?" said Phillis. "I was telling you that while Miss Alice was so ill," said Bacchus, "I used to set up most of de night. I don't know how I kep up, for you know niggers takes a sight of sleep, 'specially when they aint very young, like me. Well, I thought one time about Miss Alice, but more about old Aunt Peggy. You know she used to set outside de door thar, very late o' nights. It 'peared like I was 'spectin to see her lean on her stick, and come out every minute. Well, one night I was sure I hear somethin thar. I listened, and then somethin gin a kind o' screech, sounded like de little niggers when Aunt Peggy used to gin 'em a lick wid her switch. Arter a while I see de curtain lifted up. I couldn't see what it was, but it lifted it up. I hearn some more noise, and I felt so strange like, that I shut de door to, and went to bed. Well, I seed dat, and heard it for two or three nights. I was gettin scared I tell you; for, Phillis, there's somethin awful in thinkin of people walking out of their graves, and can't get rest even thar. I couldn't help comin, every night, out here, 'bout twelve o'clock, for that's time sperrits, I mean ghosts, is so uneasy. One night, de very night Miss Alice got better, I hearn de screech an de fuss, and I seed de curtain go up, and pretty soon what do you think I saw. I'm tellin' you no lie, Phillis. I seed two great, red eyes, a glarin out de winder; a glarin right at me. If you believe me, I fell down out of dis very cheer, and when I got up, I gin one look at de winder, and thar was de red eyes glarin agin, so I fell head-foremost over de door step, tryin to get in quick, and then when I did get in, I locked de door. My soul, wasn't I skeered. I never looked no more. I seen nuff dat time." "Your head was mighty foolish," said Phillis, "and you just thought you saw it." "No such thing. I saw de red eyes--Aunt Peggy's red eyes." "High!" said Phillis, "Aunt Peggy hadn't red eyes." "Not when she was 'live?" said Bacchus. "But thar's no knowin what kind of eyes sperrits gets, 'specially when they gets where it aint very comfortable." "Well," said Phillis, "these things are above us. We've got our work to do, and the Lord he does his. I don't bother myself about ghosts. I'm trying to get to heaven, and I know I'll never get there if I don't get ready while I'm here. Aunt Peggy aint got no power to come back, unless God sends her; and if He sends her, its for some good reason. You better come in now, and kneel down, and ask God to give you strength to do what is right. We've got no strength but what He gives us." "I wish you'd pray loud to-night," said Bacchus; "for I aint felt easy of late, and somehow I can't pray." "Well, I can't do much, but I can ask God to give us grace to repent of our sins, and to serve him faithfully," said Phillis. And they both kneeled down, and prayer went forth from an earnest heart; and who shall say that a more welcome offering ascended to His ear in that time of prayer, than the humble but believing petition of the slave! Phillis was of a most matter-of-fact disposition, and possessed, as an accompaniment, an investigating turn of mind; so, before any one was stirring in her cottage, she dressed herself, and took from a nail a large-sized key, that was over the mantel-piece. She hung it to her little finger, and made straight for Aunt Peggy's deserted cabin. She granted herself a search-warrant, and determined to find some clue to Bacchus's marvellous story. Her heart did not fail her, even when she put the key in the lock, for she was resolved as a grenadier, and she would not have turned back if the veritable red eyes themselves had raised the cotton curtain, and looked defiance. The lock was somewhat out of repair, requiring a little coaxing before she could get the key in, and then it was some time before she succeeded in turning it; at last it yielded, and with one push the door flew open. Now Phillis, anxious as she was to have the matter cleared up, did not care to have it done so instantaneously, for hardly had she taken one step in the house before she, in the most precipitous manner, backed two or three out of it. At first she thought Aunt Peggy herself had flown at her, and she could hardly help calling for assistance, but making a great effort to recover her composure, she saw at a glance that it was Aunt Peggy's enormous black cat, who not only resembled her in color, but disposition. Jupiter, for that was the cat's name, did not make another grab, but stood with his back raised, glaring at her, while Phillis, breathing very short, sunk into Aunt Peggy's chair and wiped the cold perspiration from her face with her apron. "Why, Jupiter," said Phillis, "is this you? How on earth did I happen to forget you. Your eyes is red, to be sure, and no wonder, you poor, half-starved creature. I must a locked you up here, the day after the funeral, and I never would a forgot you, if it hadn't been my mind was so taken up with Miss Alice. Why, you're thin as a snake,--wait a minute and I'll bring you something to eat." Jupiter, who had lived exclusively on mice for a fortnight, was evidently subdued by the prospects of an early breakfast. The apology Phillis had made him seemed not to be without its effect, for when she came back, with a small tin pan of bread and milk, and a piece of bacon hanging to a fork, his back was not the least elevated, and he proceeded immediately to the hearth where the provender was deposited, and to use an inelegant Westernism, "walked into it;" Phillis meanwhile going home, perfectly satisfied with the result of her exploration. Bacchus's toilet was completed, he was just raising up from the exertion of putting on his slippers, when Phillis came in, laughing. This was an unusual phenomenon, so early in the morning, and Bacchus was slightly uneasy at its portent, but he ventured to ask her what was the matter. "Nothing," said Phillis, "only I've seen the ghost." "Lord! what?" "The ghost!" said Phillis, "and its got red eyes, too, sure enough." "Phillis," said Bacchus, appealingly, "you aint much used to jokin, and I know you wouldn't tell an ontruth; what do you mean?" "I mean," said Phillis, "that the very ghost you saw, and heard screeching, with the red eyes glarin at you through the window, I've seen this morning." "Phillis," said Bacchus, sinking back in his chair, "'taint possible! What was it a doin?" "I can tell you what its doing now," said Phillis, "its eating bread and milk and a piece of bacon, as hard as it can. Its eyes is red, to be sure, but I reckon yours would be red or shut, one, if you'd a been nigh a fortnight locked up in an empty house, with now and then a mouse to eat. Why, Bacchus, how come it, you forgot old Jupiter? I was too busy to think about cats, but I wonder nobody else didn't think of the poor animal." "Sure enough," said Bacchus, slowly recovering from his astonishment, "its old Jupiter--why I'd a sworn on the Bible 'twas Aunt Peggy's sperrit. Well, I do b'lieve! that old cat's lived all this time; well, he aint no cat any how--I always said he was a witch, and now I knows it, that same old Jupiter. But, Phillis, gal, I wouldn't say nothin at all about it--we'll have all dese low niggers laughin at us." "What they going to laugh at me about?" said Phillis. "I didn't see no ghost." "Well, its all de same," said Bacchus, "they'll laugh at me--and man and wife's one--'taint worth while to say nothin 'bout it, as I see." "I shan't say nothing about it as long as you keep sober; but mind, you go pitching and tumbling about, and I aint under no kind of promise to keep your secret. And its the blessed truth, they'd laugh, sure enough, at you, if they did know it." And the hint had such a good effect, that after a while, it was reported all over the plantation that Bacchus "had give up drinkin, for good and all." CHAPTER XVIII. It was in answer to Arthur's letter, expressing great anxiety to hear from home, in consequence of so long a time having passed without his receiving his usual letters, that Mr. Weston wrote him of Alice's illness. She was then convalescing, but in so feeble and nervous a condition, that Dr. Lawton advised Arthur's remaining where he was--wishing his patient to be kept even from the excitement of seeing so dear a relative. Mr. Weston insisted upon Arthur's being contented with hearing constantly of her improvement, both from himself and Mrs. Weston. This, Arthur consented to do; but in truth he was not aware of the extent of the danger which had threatened Alice's life, and supposed it to have been an ordinary fever. With what pleasure did he look forward, in his leisure moments, to the time when it would be his privilege always to be near her; and to induce the tedious interval to pass more rapidly, he employed himself with his studies, as constantly as the season would allow. He had formed a sincere attachment to Abel Johnson, whose fine talents and many high qualities made him a delightful companion. Mr. Hubbard was a connection of young Johnson's, and felt privileged often to intrude himself upon them. It really was an intrusion, for he had at present a severe attack of the Abolition fever, and he could not talk upon any other subject. This was often very disagreeable to Arthur and his friend, but still it became a frequent subject of their discussion, when Mr. Hubbard was present, and when they were alone. In the mean time, the warm season was passing away, and Alice did not recover her strength as her friends wished. No place in the country could have been more delightful than Exeter was at that season; but still it seemed necessary to have a change of scene. September had come, and it was too late to make their arrangements to go to the North, and Alice added to this a great objection to so doing. A distant relation of Mr. Weston, a very young girl, named Ellen Graham, had been sent for, in hopes that her lively society would have a good effect on Alice's unequal spirits; and after much deliberation it was determined that the family, with the exception of Miss Janet, should pass the winter in Washington. Miss Janet could not be induced to go to that Vanity Fair, as she called it; and if proper arrangements for her comfort could not be made, the project would have to be given up. After many proposals, each one having an unanswerable difficulty, the old lady returned from town one day, with a very satisfied countenance, having persuaded Mrs. Williams, a widow, and her daughter, to pass the winter at Exeter with her. Mrs. Williams was a much valued friend of the Weston family, and as no objection could be found to this arrangement, the affair was settled. Alice, although the cause of the move, was the only person who was indifferent on the subject. Ellen Graham, young and gay as she was, would like to have entered into any excitement that would make her forget the past. She fancied it would be for her happiness, could the power of memory be destroyed. She had not sufficient of the experience of life to appreciate the old man's prayer, "Lord, keep my memory green." Ellen at an early age, and an elder brother, were dependent, not for charity, but for kindness and love, on relatives who for a long time felt their guardianship a task. They were orphans; they bore each other company in the many little cares of childhood; and the boy, as is not unusual in such a case, always looked to his sister for counsel and protection, not from actual unkindness, but from coldness and unmerited reproof. They never forgot their parting with their mother--the agony with which she held them to her bosom, bitterly reflecting they would have no such resting-place in the cold world, in which they were to struggle. Yet they were not unkindly received at their future home. Their uncle and aunt, standing on the piazza, could not without tears see the delicate children in their deep mourning, accompanied only by their aged and respectable colored nurse, raise their eyes timidly, appealing to them for protection, as hand in hand they ascended the steps. It was a large and dreary-looking mansion, and many years had passed since the pictures of the stiff looking cavalier and his smiling lady, hanging in the hall, had looked down upon children at home there. The echoes of their own voices almost alarmed the children, when, after resting from their journey, they explored the scenes of their future haunts. On the glass of the large window in the hall, were the names of a maiden and her lover, descended from the cavaliers of Virginia. This writing was cut with a diamond, and the children knew not that the writing was their parents'. The little ones walked carefully over the polished floors; but there seemed nothing in all they saw to tell them they were welcome. They lifted the grand piano that maintained its station in one of the unoccupied rooms of the house; but the keys were yellow with age, and many of them soundless--when at last one of them answered to the touch of Ellen's little hand, it sent forth such a ghostly cry that the two children gazed at each other, not knowing whether to cry or to laugh. Children are like politicians, not easily discouraged; and Ellen's "Come on, Willy," showed that she, by no means, despaired of finding something to amuse them. They lingered up stairs in their own apartment, William pointing to the moss-covered rock that lay at the foot of the garden. "Willy, Willy, come! here is something," and Willy followed her through a long passage into a room, lighted only by the rays that found entrance through a broken shutter. "Only see this," she continued, laying her hand on a crib burdened with a small mattress and pillow; "here too," and she pointed to a little child's hat that hung over it, from which drooped three small plumes. "Whose can they be?" "Come out o' here, children," said the nurse, who had been seeking them. "Your aunt told me not to let you come into this part of the house; this was her nursery once, and her only child died here." The children followed their nurse, and ever afterward the thought of death was connected with that part of the house. Often as they looked in their aunt's face they remembered the empty crib and the drooping plumes. Time does not always fly with youth; yet it passed along until Ellen had attained her sixteenth year, and William his eighteenth year. Ellen shared all her brother's studies, and their excellent tutor stored their minds with useful information. Their uncle superintended their education, with the determination that it should be a thorough one. William did not intend studying a profession; his father's will allowed him to decide between this, or assuming, at an early age, the care of his large estate, with suitable advisers. Ellen made excellent progress in all her studies. Her aunt was anxious she should learn music, and wished her to go to Richmond or to Alexandria for that purpose, but Ellen begged off; she thought of the old piano and its cracked keys, and desired not to be separated from her brother, professing her dislike to any music, but her old nurse's Methodist hymns. William was tall and athletic for his age, passionate when roused by harshness or injustice, but otherwise affectionate in his disposition, idolizing his sister. His uncle looked at him with surprise when he saw him assume the independence of manner, which sat well upon him; and his aunt sometimes checked herself, when about to reprove him for the omission of some unimportant form of politeness, which in her days of youth was essential. Ellen dwelt with delight upon the approaching time, when she would be mistress of her brother's establishment, and as important as she longed to be, on that account. Though she looked upon her uncle's house as a large cage, in which she had long fluttered a prisoner, she could not but feel an affection for it; her aunt and uncle often formal, and uselessly particular, were always substantially kind. It was a good, though not a cheerful home, and the young look for joy and gaiety, as do the flowers for birds and sunshine. Ellen was to be a ward of her uncle's until she was of age, but was to be permitted to reside with her brother, if she wished, from the time he assumed the management of his estate. The young people laid many plans for housekeeping. William had not any love affair in progress, and as yet his sister's image was stamped on all his projects for the future. Two years before Ellen came to Exeter, William stood under his sister's window, asking her what he should bring her from C----, the neighboring town. "Don't you want some needles," he said, "or a waist ribbon, or some candy? make haste, Ellen; if I don't hurry, I can't come home to-night." "I don't want any thing, Willie; but will you be sure to return to-night? I never sleep well when you are away. Aunt and I are going on Tuesday to C----; wait and we will stay all night then." "Oh, no," said William, "I must go; but you may depend upon my being back: I always keep my promises. So good-by." Ellen leaned from the window, watching her handsome brother as he rode down the avenue leading into the road He turned in his saddle, and bowed to her, just before he passed from her sight. "Oh, mammy," she said to her attendant, for she had always thus affectionately addressed her; "did you ever see any one as handsome as Willie?" "Yes, child," she replied, "his father was, before him. You both look like your father; but Master Willie favors him more than you do. Shut down the window, Miss Ellen, don't you feel the wind? A strong March wind aint good for nobody. Its bright enough overhead to-day, but the ground is mighty damp and chilly. There, you're sneezin; didn't I tell you so?" Late in the same day Ellen was seated at the window, watching her brother's return; gaily watching, until the shadows of evening were resting on his favorite rocks. Then she watched anxiously until the rocks could no longer be seen; but never did he come again, though hope and expectation lingered about her heart until despair rested there in their place. William was starting on horseback, after an early dinner at the tavern in C----. As he put his foot in the stirrups, an old farmer, who had just driven his large covered wagon to the door, called to him. "You going home, Mr. William?" said he. "Yes, I am; but why do you ask me?" "Why, how are you going to cross Willow's Creek?" asked the old man. "On the bridge," said William, laughing; "did you think I was going to jump my horse across?" "No, but you can't cross the bridge," said the farmer, "for the bridge is broken down." "Why, I crossed it early this morning," said William. "So did I," said the farmer, "and, thank God, I and my team did not go down with it. But there's been a mighty freshet above, and Willow's Creek is something like my wife--she's an angel when she aint disturbed, but she's the devil himself when any thing puts her out. Now, you take my advice, and stay here to-night, or at any rate don't get yourself into danger." "I must go home to-night," said William; "I have promised my sister to do so. I can ford the creek;" and he prepared again to start. "Stop, young man," said the farmer, solemnly, "you mind the old saying, 'Young people think old people fools, but old people know young people are fools.' I warn you not to try and ford that creek to-night; you might as well put your head in a lion's mouth. Havn't I been crossing it these fifty years? and aint I up to all its freaks and ways? Sometimes it is as quiet as a wearied baby, but now it is foaming and lashing, as a tiger after prey. You'd better disappoint Miss Ellen for one night, than to bring a whole lifetime of trouble upon her. Don't be foolhardy, now; your horse can't carry you safely over Willow's Creek this night." "Never fear, farmer," said William. "I can take care of myself." "May the Lord take care of you," said the farmer, as he followed the youth, dashing through the town on his spirited horse. "If it were not for this wagon-load, and there are so many to be clothed and fed at home, I would follow you, but I can't do it." William rode rapidly homeward. The noonday being long passed, the skies were clouding over, and harsh spring winds were playing through the woods. William enjoyed such rides. Healthy, and fearing nothing, he was a stranger to a feeling of loneliness. Alternately singing an old air, and then whistling with notes as clear and musical as a flute, he at last came in sight of the creek which had been so tranquil when he crossed it in the morning. There was an old house near, where lived the people who received the toll. A man and his wife, with a large family of children, poor people's inheritance, had long made this place their home, and they were acquainted with all the persons who were in the habit of traveling this way. William, whom they saw almost daily, was a great favorite with the children. Not only did he pay his toll, but many a penny and sixpence to the small folks besides, and he was accustomed to receive a welcome. Now the house was shut up. It had rained frequently and heavily during the month, and the bright morning, which had tempted the children out to play, was gone, and they had gathered in the old house to amuse themselves as they could. The bridge had been partly carried away by the freshet. Some of the beams were still swinging and swaying themselves with restless motion. The creek was swollen to a torrent. The waters dashed against its sides, in their haste to go their way. The wind, too, howled mournfully, and the old trees bent to and fro, nodding their stately heads, and rustling their branches against each other. "Oh, Mr. William, is it you?" said the woman, opening the door. "Get off your horse, and come in and rest; you can't go home to-night." "Yes, I can though," said William, "I have often forded the creek, and though I never saw it as it is now, yet I can get safely over it, I am sure." "Don't talk of such things, for the Lord's sake," said Mrs. Jones. "Why, my husband could not ford the creek now, and you're a mere boy." "No matter for that," said William. "I promised my sister to be at home to-night, and I must keep my word. See how narrow the creek is here! Good-by, I cannot wait any longer, it is getting dark." "Don't, try it, please don't, Mr. William," again said Mrs. Jones. All the children joined her, some entreating William, others crying out at the danger into which their favorite was rushing. "Why, you cowards," cried William, "you make more noise than the creek itself. Here's something for gingerbread." None of the children offered to pick up the money which fell among them, but looked anxiously after William, to see what he was going to do. "Mr. William," said Mrs. Jones, "come back; look at the water a roaring and tossing, and your horse is restless already with the noise. Don't throw your life away; think of your sister." "I'm thinking of her, good Mrs. Jones. Never fear for me," said he, looking back at her with a smile, at the same time urging his horse toward the edge of the creek, where there was a gradual descent from the hill. As Mrs. Jones had said, the horse had already become restless, he was impatiently moving his head, prancing and striking his hoofs against the hard ground. William restrained him, as he too quickly descended the path, and it may be the young man then hesitated, as he endeavored to check him, but it was too late. The very check rendered him more impatient; springing aside from the path he dashed himself from rock to rock. William saw his danger, and with a steady hand endeavored to control the frightened animal. This unequal contest was soon decided. The nearer the horse came to the water the more he was alarmed,--at last he sprang from the rock, and he and his rider disappeared. "Oh, my God!" said Mrs. Jones, "he is gone. The poor boy; and there is no one to help him." She at first hid her eyes from the appalling scene, and then approached the creek and screamed as she saw the horse struggling and plunging, while William manfully tried to control him. Oh! how beat her heart, as with uplifted hands, and stayed breath, she watched for the issue--it is over now. "Hush! hush! children," said their mother, pale as death, whose triumph she had just witnessed. "Oh! if your father had been here to have saved him--but who could have saved him? None but thou, Almighty God!" and she kneeled to pray for, she knew not what. "Too late, too late!" yet she knelt and alternately prayed and wept. Again she gazed into the noisy waters--but there was nothing there, and then calling her frightened and weeping children into the house, she determined to set forth alone, for assistance--for what? * * * * * Oh! how long was that night to Ellen, though she believed her brother remained at C----. She did not sleep till late, and sad the awakening. Voices in anxious whispers fell upon her ear; pale faces and weeping eyes, were everywhere around her--within, confusion; and useless effort without. Her uncle wept as for an only son; her aunt then felt how tenderly she had loved him, who was gone forever. The farmer, who had warned him at the tavern-door, smote his breast when he heard his sad forebodings were realized. The young and the old, the rich and the poor, assembled for days about the banks of the creek, with the hopes of recovering the body, but the young rider and his horse were never seen again. Ah! Ellen was an orphan now--father, mother, and friend had he been to her, the lost one. Often did she lay her head on the kind breast of their old nurse, and pray for death. As far as was in their power, her uncle and aunt soothed her in her grief. But the only real comfort at such a time, is that from Heaven, and Ellen knew not that. How could she have reposed had she felt the protection of the Everlasting Arms! But time, though it does not always heal, must assuage the intensity of grief; the first year passed after William's death, and Ellen felt a wish for other scenes than those where she had been accustomed to see him. She had now little to which she could look forward. Her chief amusement was in retiring to the library, and reading old romances, with which its upper shelves were filled; this, under other circumstances, her aunt would have forbidden, but it was a relief to see Ellen interested in any thing, and she appeared not to observe her thus employing herself. So Ellen gradually returned to the old ways; she studied a little, and assisted her industrious aunt in her numerous occupations. As of old, her aunt saw her restlessness of disposition, and Ellen felt rebellious and irritable. With what an unexpected delight, then, did she receive from her aunt's hands, the letters from Mrs. Weston, inviting her to come at once to Exeter, and then to accompany them to Washington. She, without any difficulty, obtained the necessary permission, and joyfully wrote to Mrs. Weston, how gladly she would accept the kind invitation. CHAPTER XIX. There was an ancient enmity between Jupiter and Bacchus. While the former was always quiet when Phillis came to see his mistress during her life, Bacchus never went near him without his displaying symptoms of the greatest irritation; his back was invariably raised, and his claws spread out ready for an attack on the slightest provocation. Phillis found it impossible to induce the cat to remain away from Aunt Peggy's house; he would stand on the door-step, and make the most appalling noises, fly into the windows, scratch against the panes, and if any children approached him to try and coax him away, he would fly at them, sending them off in a disabled condition. Phillis was obliged to go backward and forward putting him into the house and letting him out again. This was a good deal of trouble, and his savage mood continuing, the servants were unwilling to pass him, declaring he was a good deal worse than Aunt Peggy had ever been. Finally, a superstitious feeling got among them, that he was connected in some way with his dead mistress, and a thousand absurd stories were raised in consequence. Mr. Weston told Bacchus that he was so fierce that he might do some real mischief, so that he had better be caught and drowned. The catching was a matter of some moment, but Phillis seduced him into a bag by putting a piece of meat inside and then dexterously catching up the bag and drawing the string. It was impossible to hold him in, so Bacchus fastened the bag to the wheelbarrow, and after a good deal of difficulty, he got him down to the river under the bridge, and threw him in. He told Phillis when he got home, that he felt now for the first time as if Aunt Peggy was really dead, and they all might hope for a little comfort. Twenty-four hours after, however, just as the moon was rising, Bacchus was taken completely by surprise, for Jupiter passed him with his back raised, and proceeded to the door of his old residence, commencing immediately a most vociferous demand to be admitted. Bacchus was speechless for some moments, but at last made out to call Phillis, who came to the door to see what was the trouble. "Look thar," said he, "you want to make me b'lieve that aint ole Aunt Peggy's wraith--ground can't hold her, water can't hold him--why I drowned him deep--how you 'spose he got out of that bag?" Phillis could not help laughing. "Well, I never did see the like--the cat has scratched through the bag and swam ashore." "I b'lieves you," said Bacchus, "and if you had throw'd him into the fire, he wouldn't a got burned; but I tell you, no cat's a gwine to get the better of me--I'll kill Jupiter, yet." Phillis, not wanting the people aroused, got the key, and unlocked the door, Jupiter sprang in, and took up his old quarters on the hearth, where he was quiet for the night. In the morning she carried some bread and milk to him, and told Bacchus not to say any thing about his coming back to any one, and that after she came home from town, where she was going on business for Mrs. Weston, they would determine what they would do. But Bacchus secretly resolved to have the affair settled before Phillis should return, that the whole glory of having conquered an enemy should belong to him. Phillis was going on a number of errands to L----, and she expected to be detained all day, for she understood shopping to perfection, and she went charged with all sorts of commissions; besides, she had to stop to see one or two sick old colored ladies of her acquaintance, and she told Mrs. Weston she might as well make a day of it. Thus it was quite evening when she got home--found every thing had been well attended to, children in bed, but Bacchus among the missing, though he had promised her he would not leave the premises until her return. Now, if there is a severe trial on this earth, it is for a wife (of any color) who rarely leaves home,--to return after a day of business and pleasure, having spent all the money she could lay her hands on, having dined with one friend and taken a dish of tea and gossiped with another--to return, hoping to see every thing as she expected, and to experience the bitter disappointment of finding her husband gone out in spite of the most solemn asseverations to the contrary. Who could expect a woman to preserve her composure under such circumstances? Poor Phillis! she was in such spirits as she came home. How pretty the flowers look! She thought, after all, if I am a slave, the Lord is mighty good to me. I have a comfortable home, and a good set of children, and my old man has done so much better of late--Phillis felt really happy; and when she went in, and delivered all her parcels to the ladies, and was congratulated on her success in getting precisely the desired articles, her heart was as light as a feather. She thought she would go and see how all went on at home, and then come back to the kitchen and drink a cup of good tea, for the family had just got through with theirs. What a disappointment, then, to find any thing going wrong. It was not that Bacchus's society was so entirely necessary to her, but the idea of his having started on another spree. The fear of his being brought home sometime to her dead, came over her with unusual force, and she actually burst into tears. She had been so very happy a few minutes before, that she could not, with her usual calmness, make the best of every thing. She forgot all about the pleasant day she had passed; lost her wish for a cup of tea; and passing even her pipe by, with a full heart she took her seat to rest at the door. For some time every thing seemed to go wrong with her. All at once she found out how tired she was. Her limbs ached, and her arm hurt her, where she had carried the basket. She had a great many troubles. She had to work hard. She had more children than anybody else to bother her; and when she thought of Bacchus she felt very angry. He might as well kill himself drinking, at once, for he was nothing but a care and disgrace to her--had always been so, and most likely would be so until they were both under the ground. But this state of mind could not last long. A little quiet, rest, and thought had a good effect. She soon began again to look at the bright side of things, and to be ashamed of her murmuring spirit. "Sure enough he has kept very sober of late, and I can't expect him to give it up entirely, all of a sudden. I must be patient, and go on praying for him." She thought with great pity of him, and her heart being thus subdued, her mind gradually turned to other things. She looked at Aunt Peggy's house, and wondered if the old woman was better off in another world than she was in this; but she checked the forbidden speculation. And next she thought of Jupiter, and with this recollection came another remembrance of Bacchus and his antipathy both to the mistress and her cat. All at once she recalled Bacchus's determination to kill Jupiter, and the strange ferocity the animal evinced whenever Bacchus went near him; and she got up to take the key and survey the state of things at the deserted house. There was no key to be found; and concluding some one had been after Jupiter, she no longer delayed her intention of finding out what had occurred in that direction. She found the key in the door, but every thing was silent. With some caution she opened it, remembering Jupiter's last unexpected onset; when, looking round by the dim light, she perceived him seated opposite Aunt Peggy's big chest, evidently watching it. On hearing the door open, though, he got up and raised his back, on the defensive. Phillis, having an indefinable feeling that Bacchus was somehow or other connected with the said elevation, looked carefully round the room, but saw nothing. Gradually the chest lid opened a little way, and a sepulchral voice, issuing from it, uttered in a low tone these words: "Phillis, gal, is that you?" The cat looked ready to spring, and the chest lid suddenly closed again. But while Phillis was recovering herself the lid was cautiously opened, and Bacchus's eyes glaring through the aperture. The words were repeated. "Why, what on earth?" said the astonished woman: "Surely, is that you, Bacchus?" "It is, surely," said Bacchus; "but put that devil of a tiger out of de room, if you don't want me to die dis minute." Phillis's presence always had an imposing effect upon Jupiter; and as she opened the door to the other room, and called him in, he followed her without any hesitation. She shut him in, and then hurried back to lift up the chest lid, to release her better half. "Why, how," said she, as Bacchus, in a most cramped condition endeavored to raise himself, "did the lid fall on you?" "No," groaned Bacchus. "Are you sure de middle door's shut. Let me git out o' dis place quick as possible, for since ole Peggy left, de ole boy hisself has taken up his abode here. 'Pears as if I never should git straight agin." "Why, look at your face, Bacchus," said his wife. "Did Jupiter scratch you up that way." "Didn't he though? Wait till I gits out of reach of his claws, and I'll tell you about it;" and they both went out, Phillis locking the door to keep Jupiter quiet, that night at least. After having washed the blood off his face and hands, and surveyed himself with a dismal countenance in the looking-glass, Bacchus proceeded to give an account of his adventure. After dinner he thought he would secure Jupiter, and have him effectually done for before Phillis came back. He mustered up all his courage, and unlocking the house, determined to catch and tie him, then decide on a mode of death that would be effectual. He had heard some officer from Mexico describe the use of the lasso, and it occurred to him to entrap Jupiter in this scientific manner. But Jupiter was an old bird; he was not to be caught with chaff. Bacchus's lasso failed altogether, and very soon the cat became so enraged that Bacchus was obliged to take a three-legged stool, and act on the defensive. He held the stool before his face, and when Jupiter made a spring at him, he dodged against him with it. Two or three blows excited Jupiter's anger to frenzy, and after several efforts he succeeded in clawing Bacchus's face in the most dreadful manner, so that it was with the greatest difficulty he could clear himself. Desperate with pain and fright, he looked for some way of escape. The door was shut, and Jupiter, who seemed to be preparing for another attack, was between him and it. He had but one resource, and that was to spring into Aunt Peggy's great chest, and close the lid to protect himself from another assault. Occasionally, when nearly suffocated, he would raise the lid to breathe, but Jupiter immediately flew at him in such a furious manner, that he saw it would be at the risk of his life to attempt to escape, and he was obliged to bide his time. What his meditations were upon while in the chest, would be hard to decide; but when once more protected by the shadow of his own roof, he vowed Jupiter should die, and be cut in pieces before he was done with him. Phillis went to Miss Janet, and gave her an account of the whole affair, with Bacchus's permission, and the kind old lady came to him with some healing ointment of her own manufacture, and anointed his wounds. William was sent for; and the result of the discussion was, that he and his father should, early next morning, shoot the much dreaded cat effectually. This resolution was carried into effect in the following manner. Phillis went a little in advance with a large bowl of bread and milk, and enticed Jupiter to the hearth. As he was very hungry, he did not perceive William entering with a very long gun in his hand, nor even Bacchus, his ancient enemy, with a piece of sticking-plaster down his nose and across his forehead. William was quite a sportsman. He went through all the necessary formalities. Bacchus gave the word of command in a low voice: Make ready, take aim, fire--bang, and William discharged a shower of shot into Jupiter's back and sides. He gave one spring, and all was over, Bacchus looking on with intense delight. As in the case of Aunt Peggy, now that his enemy was no more, Bacchus became very magnanimous. He said Jupiter had been a faithful old animal, though mighty queer sometimes, and he believed the death of Aunt Peggy had set him crazy, therefore he forgave him for the condition in which he had put his face, and should lay him by his mistress at the burial-ground. Lydia begged an old candle-box of Miss Janet, for a coffin, and assisted her father in the other funeral arrangements. With a secret satisfaction and a solemn air, Bacchus carried off the box, followed by a number of black children, that Lydia had invited to the funeral. They watched Bacchus with great attention while he completed his work, and the whole party returned under the impression that Aunt Peggy and Jupiter were perfectly satisfied with the morning's transactions. CHAPTER XX. The time had come to leave home, and the Westons had but one more evening. Neither Mr. Weston nor Alice were well, and all hoped the change would benefit them. They were to travel in their own carriage, and the preparations were completed. The three ladies' maids were to go by the stage. Miss Janet had a number of things stowed away in the carriage, which she thought might be useful, not forgetting materials for a lunch, and a little of her own home-made lavender, in case of a headache. The pleasure of going was very much lessened by the necessity of leaving the dear old lady, who would not listen to their entreaties to accompany them. "You, with your smooth cheeks and bright eyes, may well think of passing a winter in Washington; but what should I do there? Why, the people would say I had lost my senses. No, we three ladies will have a nice quiet time at Exeter, and I can go on with my quilting and patchwork. You see, Miss Alice, that you come back with red cheeks. The birds and the flowers will be glad to see you again when the spring comes." "Ring the bell, Alice," said Mr. Weston. "I must know how Mr. Mason's little boy is. I sent Mark shortly after dinner; but here he is. Well, Mark, I hope the little fellow is getting well?" "He is _receased_, sir," said Mark, solemnly. "He is what?" said Mr. Weston. "Oh! ah! he is dead--I understand you. Well, I am truly sorry for it. When did he die?" "Early this morning, sir," said Mark. "Have you any more orders to give, sir? for as I am to be up mighty early in the morning, I was thinking of going to bed when you are done with me." "Nothing more," said Mr. Weston; and Mark retired. "Mark," continued Mr. Weston, "has the greatest propensity for using hard words. His _receased_ means deceased. He was excessively angry with Bacchus the other day for interfering with him about the horses. 'Nobody,' said he, 'can stand that old fellow's airs. He's got so full of tomposity, that he makes himself disagreeable to everybody.' By _tom_posity, I suppose you all know he meant pomposity. Bacchus is elated at the idea of going with us. I hope I shall not have any trouble with him." "Oh! no, uncle," said Alice; "he is a good old fellow, and looks so aristocratic with his gray hair and elegant bows. Ellen and I will have to take him as a beau when you are out. Aunt Phillis says, that he has promised her not to drink a drop of any thing but water, and she seems to think that he has been so sober lately that he will keep his word." "It is very doubtful," said Mr. Weston; "but the fact is he would be troublesome with his airs and his _tomposity_ were I to leave him; so I have no choice." "Dear Alice," said Ellen, fixing her large dark eyes on her; "how can I ever be grateful enough to you?" "For what?" asked Alice. "For getting sick, and requiring change of air, which is the first cause of my being here on my way to the great metropolis. Whoever likes a plantation life is welcome to it; but I am heartily sick of it. Indeed, Miss Janet, good as you are, you could not stand it at uncle's. Ten miles from a neighbor--just consider it! Uncle disapproves of campmeetings and barbecues; and aunt is sewing from morning till night; while I am required to read the Spectator aloud. I have a mortal grudge against Addison." "But, my dear," said Miss Janet, "you must remember you are to return to your uncle's, and you must not learn to love the great world too much." "Perhaps," said Mr. Barbour, who was much depressed at the approaching parting, "Miss Ellen may not mean to return to her uncle's. A young lady with good looks, and a heavy purse, will be found out in Washington. She will just suit a great many there--clerks with small salaries, army and navy men with expensive habits; and foreign attachés, who, being nothing in their own country, turn our young ladies' heads when they come here." "So you think I am destined for no other fate than to pay a fortune-hunter's debts. Thank you, Mr. Barbour!" "The fact is, Mr. Barbour wants you himself, Ellen, and he is afraid somebody will carry you off. He will pay us a visit this winter, I expect," said Mrs. Weston. "Well," said Ellen laughingly, "I'd rather take up with him than to go back to my old life, now that I see you are all so happy here." "But your aunt and uncle," said Miss Janet, "you must not feel unkindly toward them." "No, indeed," said Ellen, "they are both good and kind in their way, but uncle is reserved, and often low-spirited. Aunt is always talking of the necessity of self-control, and the discipline of life. She is an accomplished teaze. Why, do you know," continued Ellen, laughingly, as she removed Miss Janet's hand from her mouth, the old lady thus playfully endeavoring to check her, "after I had accepted Mrs. Weston's kind invitation, and mammy and I were busy packing, aunt said I must not be too sanguine, disappointments were good for young people, and that something might occur which would prevent my going. I believe I should have died outright, if it had turned out so." "And so," said Mr. Barbour, "to get rid of a dull home, you are determined to fly in the face of fate, and are going to Washington after a husband. Ah! Miss Ellen, beware of these young men that have nothing but their whiskers and their epaulettes. Let me tell you of a young friend of mine, who would marry the man of her choice, in spite of the interference of her friends, and one April morning in the honey moon they were seen breakfasting under a persimmon tree. However, as you are a young lady of fortune, you will always be sure of coffee and hot rolls; your good father has made such a sensible will, that the principal never can be touched. How many fine fortunes would have been saved, if Southerners had taken such precautions long ago. You will have a fine time young ladies, you must keep an account of your conquests, and tell me of them when you come back." "Its only Ellen who is going in search of love adventures, Mr. Barbour," said Alice. "Make yourself easy, Mr. Barbour," said Ellen. "I mean to have a delightful time flirting, then come back to marry you, and settle down. Mammy says I can't help getting good, if I live near Miss Janet." "Well, I will wait for you," said Mr. Barbour. "And now Alice, sing me a sweet old Scotch song. Sing, ''Twas within half a mile of Edinburgh town'." "I can't come quite so near it as that," said Alice, "but I will sing ''Twas within a mile.'" She sang that, and then "Down the burn Davie." Then Miss Janet proposed 'Auld lang syne,' in which they all joined; in singing the chorus, Mr. Barbour, as usual, got very much excited, and Alice a little tired, so that the music ceased and Alice took her seat by her uncle on the sofa. "Miss Janet," said Mr. Barbour, "you look better than I have seen you for a long time." "Thank you," said Miss Janet. "Mr. Washington asked me the other day if I were ever going to die. I suppose, like Charles II., I ought to apologize for being so long in dying; but I am so comfortable and happy with my friends, that I do not think enough of the journey I soon must take to another world. How many comforts I have, and how many kind friends! I feel now that we are about to be separated, that I should thank you all for your goodness to me, lest in the Providence of God we should not meet again. Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, my poor thanks are most gratefully offered." "Oh! Cousin Janet," said Alice, with her eyes full of tears, "why will you not go with us; your talking so makes me dread to part with you." "My darling, we must all try to get to Heaven, where there are no partings. I cannot be a great while with you; remember, I am eighty-five years old. But I will not grieve you. We will, I trust, all meet here in the spring. God is here, and He is in the great city; we are all safe beneath His care. Next summer He will bring Arthur home again." "Partings should be as short as possible," said Mr. Barbour. "So I mean to shake hands with everybody, and be off. Young ladies, be generous; do not carry havoc and desolation in your train; take care of your uncle, and come back again as soon as possible." He then took a friendly leave of Mr. and Mrs. Weston, and mounted his horse to return home. "What a nice old beau Mr. Barbour would make," said Ellen, "with his fine teeth and clear complexion. I wonder he never married." "Upon my word!" said Miss Janet, "you will be wondering next, why I never married. But know, Miss Ellen, that Mr. Barbour once had a romantic love-affair--he was to have been married to a lovely girl, but death envied him his bride, and took her off--and he has remained true to her memory. It was a long time before he recovered his cheerfulness. For two years he was the inmate of an asylum." "Poor old gentleman," said Ellen. "I do believe other people besides me have trouble." "Ah! when you look around you, even in the world, which you anticipate with so much pleasure, you will see many a smiling face that tries to hide a sad and aching heart; a heart that has ached more painfully than yours." "No," said Ellen, looking up from the ottoman at Miss Janet's feet, where she was seated; and then bursting into tears. "Oh! thoughtless and frivolous as I am, I shall never forget _him_. If you knew how I have wept and suffered, you would not wonder I longed for any change that would make me forget." "Dear child," said Miss Janet, laying her hand on that young head, "I did not mean to reprove you. When God brings sorrow on the young, they must bear it with resignation to his will. He delights in the happiness of his creatures, and it is not against his will that the young should enjoy the innocent pleasures of life. Then go you and Alice into the world, but be not of the world, and come back to your homes strengthened to love them more. Cousin Weston has the Bible opened, waiting for us." * * * * * In the mean time, Bacchus has received a good deal of wholesome advice from Phillis, while she was packing his trunk, and in return, he has made her many promises. He expresses the greatest sorrow at leaving her, declaring that nothing but the necessity of looking after his master induces him to do so, but he is secretly anticipating a successful and eventful campaign in Washington. All the servants are distressed at the prospect of the family being away for so long a time; even old Wolf, the house-dog, has repeatedly rubbed his cold nose against Alice's hand, and looked with the most doleful expression into her beautiful face; but dogs, like their masters, must submit to what is decreed, and Wolf, after prayers, went off peaceably with William to be tied up, lest he should attempt, as usual, to follow the carriage in the morning. CHAPTER XXI. You are very much mistaken in your estimate of the character of a Virginian, if you suppose he allows himself, or his horses, to be driven post-haste, when there is no urgent necessity for it. It is altogether different with a Yankee; there is no enjoyment for him from the time he starts on a journey until he reaches the end of it. He is bound to be in a hurry, for how knows he but there may be a bargain depending, and he may reach his destination in time to whittle successfully for it. The Westons actually lingered by the way. There were last looks to be taken of home, and its neighborhood; there were partings to be given to many objects in nature, dear from association, as ancient friends. Now, the long line of blue hills stands in bold relief against the hazy sky--now, the hills fade away and are hid by thick masses of oak and evergreen. Here, the Potomac spreads her breast, a mirror to the heavens, toward its low banks, the broken clouds bending tranquilly to its surface. There, the river turns, and its high and broken shores are covered with rich and twining shrubbery, its branches bending from the high rocks into the water, while the misty hue of Indian summer deepens every tint. Fair Alice raises her languid head, already invigorated by the delightful air and prospect. The slightest glow perceptible is making its way to her pale cheek, while the gay and talkative Ellen gazes awhile at the scenery around her, then leans back in the carriage, closes her brilliant eyes, and yields, oh! rare occurrence, to meditation. Two days are passed in the journey, and our party, arrived safely at Willard's, found their comfortable apartments prepared for them, and their servants as glad of their arrival as if they had been separated a year, instead of a day. And now, dear reader, I do not intend discussing Washington society. It must be a more skilful pen than mine that can throw a sun of light upon this chaos of fashionable life, and bring forth order and arrangement. We are only here for relaxation and change of air, and when our invalids feel their good effects, we must return with them to their quiet, but not unuseful life. There were many preparations to be made, for our young ladies proposed to enter into the gayeties of the season. Ellen was to throw off her mourning, and her old nurse begged her and Alice "to buy a plenty of nice new clothes, for they might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion." They both agreed with her, for they were determined to be neither unnoticed nor unknown among the fair ones of the Union who were congregated at the capital. Do not be astonished; there is already a tinge of red beneath the brown lashes on Alice's cheek. And as for her heart, oh! that was a great deal better, too; for it has been found by actual experiment, that diseases of the heart, if treated with care, are not fatal any more than any other complaints. Mrs. Weston grew happier every day; and as to Alice's uncle, he hardly ever took his eyes off her, declaring that there must be something marvellously strengthening in the atmosphere of our much abused city; while Alice, hearing that Walter Lee was mixing in all the gayeties of Richmond, already began to question her attachment to him, and thinking of Arthur's long-continued and devoted affection, trembled lest she should have cast away the love of his generous heart. Mr. Weston often felt the time hang heavily upon him, though he saw many valued friends. He would not have exchanged the life of a country gentleman for all the honors that politics could offer to her favorite votary; and for the ordinary amusements which charmed Alice and Ellen, even in advance, the time had come for him to say, "I have no pleasure in them." But thinking of Alice's health only, and, above all, anxious that her marriage with his son should be consummated during his lifetime, no sacrifice appeared to him too great to make. The weather was still delightful, and as the soirées, assemblies, and matinées had not yet commenced, a party was formed to go to Mount Vernon. The day fixed upon was a brilliant one, in the latter part of November. A number of very agreeable persons boarding in the hotel were to accompany them. Bacchus was exceedingly well pleased at the prospect. "'Deed, Miss Alice," he said, "I is anxious to see de old gentleman's grave; he was a fine rider; the only man as ever I seed could beat master in de saddle." Mark objected to his carriage and horses being used over such rough roads, so a large omnibus was engaged to carry the whole party, Mark and Bacchus going as outriders, and a man in a little sort of a carry-all having charge of all the eatables, dishes, plates, &c., which would be required. The company were in good spirits, but they found traveling in the State of Virginia was not moving over beds of roses. Where are such roads to be found? Except in crossing a corduroy road in the West, where can one hope to be so thoroughly shaken up? I answer, nowhere! And have I not a right to insist, for my native State, upon all that truth will permit? Am I not a daughter of the Old Dominion, a member of one of the F.F.V's? Did not my grandfather ride races with General Washington? Did not my father wear crape on his hat at his funeral? Let that man or woman inclined to deny me this privilege, go, as I have, in a four-horse omnibus to Mount Vernon. Let him rock and twist over gullies and mud-holes; let him be tumbled and jostled about as I was, and I grant you he will give up the point. Our party jogged along. At last the old gates were in sight, and the ragged little negroes stood ready to open them. Here we should begin to be patriotic, but do not fear being troubled with a dissertation on this worn-out subject. I will not even observe that by the very gate that was opened for the Westons did the Father of his country enter; for it would be a reflection on the memory of that great and good man to suppose that he would have put his horse to the useless trouble of jumping the fence, when there was such a natural and easy way of accomplishing his entrance. Ellen, however, declared "that she firmly believed those remarkable-looking children that opened the gates, were the same that opened them for Washington; at any rate, their clothes were cut after the same pattern, if they were not the identical suits themselves." There was a gentleman from the North on the premises when they arrived. He joined the party, introduced himself, and gave information that he was taking, in plaster, the house, the tomb, and other objects of interest about the place, for the purpose of exhibiting them. He made himself both useful and agreeable, as he knew it was the best way of getting along without trouble, and he was very talkative and goodnatured. But some, as they approached the grave, observed that Mr. Weston, and one or two others, seemed to wish a certain quietness of deportment to evince respect for the hallowed spot, and the jest and noisy laugh were suddenly subdued. Had it been a magnificent building, whose proportions they were to admire and discuss; had a gate of fair marble stood open to admit the visitor; had even the flag of his country waved where he slept, they could not have felt so solemnized--but to stand before this simple building, that shelters his sarcophagus from the elements; to lean upon unadorned iron gates, which guarded the sacred spot from intrusion; to look up and count the little birds' nests in the plastered roof, and the numberless hornets that have made their homes there too; to pluck the tendrils of the wild grapes that cluster here--this simple grandeur affected each one. He was again in life before them, steadily pursuing the great work for which he was sent, and now, reposing from his labor. And then they passed on to the old, empty grave. It was decaying away, yawning with its open mouth as if asking for its honored tenement. Ellen gazed down and sprang in, and ere the others could recover from their astonishment, or come forward to offer her assistance, she looked up in her beauty from the dark spot where she was standing. "Let me get out alone," said she; "I have such a prize;" and she held in her hand a bird's nest, with its three little white eggs deposited therein. "Oh! Ellen," said Mrs. Weston, robbing a bird's nest. "Put it back, my dear." "No, indeed, Mrs. Weston, do not ask me. Think of my finding it in Washington's grave. I mean to have it put on an alabaster stand, and a glass case over it, and consider it the most sacred gem I possess. There, Uncle Bacchus, keep it for me, and don't crush the eggs." "I won't break 'em, Miss Ellen," said Bacchus, whose thoughts were apt to run on "sperrits." "I thought for certain you had see'd de old gentleman's ghost, and he had called you down in dat dark hole. But thar aint no danger of his comin back agin, I reckon. 'Pears as if it hadn't been long since I followed him to dis very grave." "What!" said the Northern gentleman, "were niggers allowed to attend Washington's funeral?" "Colored people was, sir," said Bacchus, in a dignified manner. "We aint much used to being called niggers, sir. We calls ourselves so sometimes, but gentlemen and ladies, sir, mostly calls us colored people, or servants. General Washington hisself, sir, always treated his servants with politeness. I was very well acquainted with them, and know'd all about the general's ways from them." Mr. Weston could not but smile at the reproof Bacchus had given. He turned and apologized to the gentleman for his servant's talkativeness, saying he was an old and much indulged servant. They turned away from that empty grave. The young girls round whom so many affections clustered; the fond and anxious mother; the aged and affectionate relative; the faithful and valued servant--turned away from that empty grave. When will stay the tumultuous beatings of their hearts? When will they sleep in the shadow of the old church? Each heart asked itself, When? Ere they left this hallowed spot, Mr. Weston addressed a gentleman who lingered with him. This gentleman was an Abolitionist, but he acknowledged to Mr. Weston that he had found a different state of things at the South from what he expected. "Sir," said he to Mr. Weston, "there is a melancholy fascination in this hollow, deserted grave. It seems to be typical of the condition in which our country would be, should the spirit that animated Washington no longer be among us." Mr. Weston smiled as he answered, "Perhaps it is good for you to be here, to stand by the grave of a slaveholder, and ask yourself 'Would I dare here utter the calumnies that are constantly repeated by the fanatics of my party?' On this spot, sir, the Abolitionist should commune with his own heart, and be still. Well was it said by one of your own statesmen, 'My doctrines on the slavery question are those of my ancestors, modified by themselves, as they were in an act of Confederation. In this one respect they left society in the political condition in which they found it. A reform would have been fearful and calamitous. A political revolution with one class was morally impracticable. Consulting a wise humanity, they submitted to a condition in which Providence had placed them. They settled the question in the deep foundations of the Constitution.' Would you then, sir, destroy the fabric, by undermining the Constitution? Alas! this would be the consequence, were it possible to carry out the views of the Abolition party." * * * * * The beautiful words of Harrison G. Otis, delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Aug. 22d, 1835, would have been appropriate here, too. Speaking of the formation of Anti-slavery Societies, he said, "Suppose an article had been proposed to the Congress that framed the instrument of Confederation, proposing that the Northern States should be at liberty to form Anti-slavery Associations, and deluge the South with homilies upon slavery, how would it have been received? The gentleman before me apostrophized the image of Washington. I will follow his example, and point to the portrait of his associate, Hancock, which is pendant by its side. Let us imagine an interview between them, in the company of friends, just after one had signed the commission for the other; and in ruminating on the lights and shadows of futurity, Hancock should have said, 'I congratulate my country upon the choice she has made, and I foresee that the laurels you gained in the field of Braddock's defeat, will be twined with those which shall be earned by you in the war of Independence; yet such are the prejudices in my part of the Union against slavery, that although your name and services may screen you from opprobrium, during your life, your countrymen, when millions weep over your tomb, will be branded by mine as man-stealers and murderers; and the stain of it consequently annexed to your memory.'" But, alas! the Abolitionist will not reflect. He lives in a whirlpool, whither he has been drawn by his own rashness. What to him is the love of country, or the memory of Washington? John Randolph said, "I should have been a French Atheist had not my mother made me kneel beside her as she folded my little hands, and taught me to say, 'Our Father.'" Remember this, mothers in America; and imprint upon the fair tablet of your young child's heart, a reverence for the early institutions of their country, and for the patriots who moulded them, that "God and my country" may be the motto of their lives. CHAPTER XXII. "Alice," said Mrs. Weston, as they sat together one morning, before it was time to dress for dinner, "if you choose, I will read to you the last part of Cousin Janet's letter. You know, my daughter, of Walter's gay course in Richmond, and it is as I always feared. There is a tendency to recklessness and dissipation in Walter's disposition. With what a spirit of deep thankfulness you should review the last few months of your life! I have sometimes feared I was unjust to Walter. My regret at the attachment for him which you felt at one time, became a personal dislike, which I acknowledge, I was wrong to yield to; but I think we both acted naturally, circumstanced as we were. Dear as you are to me, I would rather see you dead than the victim of an unhappy marriage. Love is not blind, as many say. I believe the stronger one's love is, the more palpable the errors of its object. It was so with me, and it would be so with you. That you have conquered this attachment is the crowning blessing of my life, even should you choose never to consummate your engagement with Arthur. I will, at least, thank God that you are not the wife of a man whose violent passions, even as a child, could not be controlled, and who is destitute of a spark of religious principle. I will now read you what Cousin Janet says. "'I have received a long letter from Mr. C., the Episcopal clergyman in Richmond, in answer to mine, inquiring of Walter. All that I feared is true. Walter is not only gay, but dissipated. Mr. C. says he has called to see him repeatedly, and invited him to his house, and has done all that he could to interest him in those pleasures that are innocent and ennobling; but, alas! it is difficult to lay aside the wine cup, when its intoxicating touch is familiar to the lips, and so of the other forbidden pleasures of life. To one of Walter's temperament there is two-fold danger. Walter is gambling, too, and bets high; he will, of course, be a prey to the more experienced ones, who will take advantage of his youth and generosity to rob him. For, is a professed gambler better than a common thief? "'It is needless for me to say, I have shed many tears over this letter. Tears are for the living, and I expect to shed them while I wear this garment of mortality. Can it be that in this case the wise Creator will visit the sins of the father upon the child? Are are all my tears and prayers to fail? I cannot think so, while He reigns in heaven in the same body with which He suffered on earth. In the very hand that holds the sceptre is the print of the nails; under the royal crown that encircles His brow, can still be traced the marks of the thorns. He is surely, then, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and He will in the end, bring home this child of my love and my adoption. I often say to myself, could I see Alice and Arthur and Walter happy, how happy should I be! I would be more than willing to depart; but there would be still a care for something in this worn-out and withered frame. It will be far better to be with Jesus, but He will keep me here as long as He has any thing for me to do. The dear girls! I am glad they are enjoying themselves, but I long to see them again. I hope they will not be carried away by the gay life they are leading. I shall be glad when they are at their home duties again. "'It will be well with Arthur and Alice; you know old maids are always the best informed on other people's love affairs. When Arthur left home Alice felt only a sisterly affection for him; when Walter went away it was really no more for him either, but her kind heart grieved when she saw him so situated: and sympathy, you know, is akin to love. She must remember now the importance that attaches itself to an engagement of marriage, and not give Arthur any more rivals. She was off her guard before, as her feeling an affection for Arthur was considered rather too much a matter of course; but she cannot fail at some future day to return his devoted affection. In the mean time, the young people are both, I trust, doing well. Arthur, so long in another section of his own dear country, will be less apt to be unduly prejudiced in favor of his own; and Alice will only mingle in the gay world enough to see the vanity of its enjoyments. She will thus be prepared to perform with fidelity the duties that belong to her position as the wife of a country gentleman. No wonder that my spectacles are dim and my old eyes aching after this long letter. Love to dear Cousin Weston, to the girls, to yourself, and all the servants. "'From COUSIN JANET.' "'Phillis says she has not enough to do to keep her employed. She has not been well this winter; her old cough has returned, and she is thinner than I ever saw her. Dr. L. has been to see her several times, and he is anxious for her to take care of herself. She bids me say to Bacchus that if he have broken his promise, she hopes he will be endowed with strength from above to keep it better in future. How much can we all learn from good Phillis!'" Alice made no observation as her mother folded the letter and laid it on her dressing table; but there lay not now on the altar of her heart a spark of affection for one, who for a time, she believed to be so passionately beloved. The fire of that love had indeed gone out, but there had lingered among its embers the form and color of its coals--these might have been rekindled, but that was past forever. The rude but kind candor that conveyed to her the knowledge of Walter's unworthiness had dissolved its very shape; the image was displaced from its shrine. Walter was indeed still beloved, but it was the affection of a pure sister for an erring brother; it was only to one to whom her soul in its confiding trust and virtue could look up, that she might accord that trusting devotion and reverence a woman feels for the chosen companion of her life. And this, I hear you say, my reader, is the awakening of a love dream so powerful as to undermine the health of the sleeper--so dark as to cast a terror and a gloom upon many who loved her; it is even so in life, and would you have it otherwise? Do you commend that morbid affection which clings to its object not only through sorrow, but sin? through sorrow--but not in sin. Nor is it possible for a pure-minded woman to love unworthily and continue pure. This Alice felt, and she came forth from her struggle stronger and more holy; prizing above all earthly things the friends who had thus cleared for her her pathway, and turning with a sister's love, which was all indeed she had ever known, to that one who, far away, would yet win with his unchanging affection her heart to his own. Walter Lee's case was an illustration of the fact that many young men are led into dissipation simply from the want of proper occupation. There was in him no love of vice for itself; but disappointed in securing Alice's consent to his addresses, and feeling self-condemned in the effort to win her affections from Arthur, he sought forgetfulness in dissipation and excitement. He fancied he would find happiness in the ball-room, the theatre, the midnight revel, and at the gambling table. Have you not met in the changing society of a large city, one whose refined and gentle manners told of the society of a mother, a sister, or of some female friend whose memory, like an angel's wing, was still hovering around him? Have you not pitied him when you reflected that he was alone, far away from such good influences? Have you not longed to say to him, I wish I could be to you what _she_ has been, and warn you of the rocks and quicksands against which you may be shipwrecked. There were many who felt thus towards Walter; his strikingly handsome face and figure, his grace and intelligence, with a slight reserve that gave a charm to his manner. To few was his history familiar; the world knew of his name, and to the world he was an object of importance, for gold stamps its owner with a letter of credit through life. Walter launched into every extravagance that presented itself. He was flattered, and invited to balls and parties; smiles met him at every step, and the allurements of the world dazzled him, as they had many a previous victim. Sometimes, the thought of Alice in her purity and truth passed like a sunbeam over his heart; but its light was soon gone. She was not for him; and why should he not seek, as others had done, to drown all care? Then the thought of Cousin Janet, good and holy Cousin Janet, with her Bible in her hand, and its sacred precepts on her lips, would weigh like a mountain on his soul; but he had staked all for pleasure, and he could not lose the race. It is not pleasant to go down, step after step, to the dark dungeon of vice. We will not follow Walter to the revel, nor the gaming-table. We will close our ears to the blasphemous oaths of his companions, to the imprecations on his own lips. The career of folly and of sin was destined to be closed; and rather would we draw a veil over its every scene. Step by step, he trod the path of sin, until at last, urged by worldly and false friends to a quarrel, commenced on the slightest grounds, he challenged one who had really never offended him; the challenge was accepted, and then--Walter Lee was a murderer! He gazed upon the youthful, noble countenance; he felt again and again the quiet pulse, weeping when he saw the useless efforts to bring back life. He was a murderer, in the sight of God and man! for he had been taught that He who gave life, alone had the power to take it away. He knew that God would require of him his brother's blood. He knew, too, that though the false code of honor in society would acquit him, yet he would be branded, even as Cain. He could see the finger of scorn pointed towards him; he could hear men, good men, say, "There is Walter Lee, who killed a man in a duel!" Ah! Cousin Janet, not in vain were your earnest teachings. Not in vain had you sung by his pillow, in boyhood, of Jesus, who loved all, even his enemies. Not in vain had you planted the good seed in the ground, and watered it. Not in vain are you now kneeling by your bedside, imploring God not to forsake forever the child of your prayers. Go to your rest in peace, for God will yet bring him home, after all his wanderings; for Walter Lee, far away, is waking and restless; oppressed with horror at his crime, flying from law and justice, flying from the terrors of a burdened conscience--he is a murderer! Like Cain, he is a wanderer. He gazes into the depths of the dark sea he is crossing; but there is no answering abyss in his heart, where he can lose the memory of his deed. He cannot count the wretched nights of watching, and of thought. Time brings no relief, change no solace. When the soul in its flight to eternity turns away from God, how droop her wings! She has no star to guide her upward course; but she wanders through a strange land, where all is darkness and grief. He traversed many a beautiful country; he witnessed scenes of grandeur; he stood before the works of genius and of art; he listened to music, sweet like angels' songs; but has he peace? Young reader, there is no peace without God. Now in this world, there is many a brow bending beneath the weight of its flowers. Could we trace the stories written on many hearts, how would they tell of sorrow! How many would say, in the crowded and noisy revel, "I have come here to forget; but memory will never die!" CHAPTER XXIII. Alice and Ellen, accompanied by Mrs. Weston, and some gentlemen from their section of the country, were to attend a private ball, expected to be one of the most brilliant of the season. Mr. Weston, not feeling well, retired early, preferring to listen to the young ladies' account of the evening, after his breakfast and newspaper the next morning. When they were ready to go, they came into Mr. Weston's parlor, to obtain his commendation on their taste. Mrs. Weston was there awaiting them; and her own appearance was too striking to be passed over without notice. She was still really a handsome woman, and her beauty was greatly enhanced by her excellent taste in dress. Her arms, still round and white, were not uncovered. The rich lace sleeves, and the scarf of the same material that was thrown over her handsome neck and shoulders, was far more becoming than if she had assumed the bare arms and neck which was appropriate to her daughter. Her thick dark hair was simply put back from her temples, as she always wore it, contrasting beautifully with the delicate white flowers there. Her brocade silk, fitting closely to her still graceful figure, and the magnificent diamond pin that she wore in her bosom; the perfect fitness of every part of her apparel gave a dignity and beauty to her appearance, that might have induced many a gay lady who mixes, winter after winter, in the amusements of our city, to go and do likewise. When youth is gone forever, it is better to glide gracefully into middle age; and if half the time and thought that is expended on the choice of gay colors and costly material, were passed in properly arranging what is suitable to age and appearance, the fashionable assemblies of the present day would not afford such spectacles, as cannot fail both to pain and amuse. Mr. Weston turned to the door as it opened, expecting the girls to enter; and a little impatient, too, as it was already half-past ten o'clock. The gentlemen had been punctual to their appointed hour of ten, but declared that three quarters of an hour was an unusually short time to be kept waiting by ladies. Ellen came first, her tall but well-proportioned figure arrayed in a rose-colored silk of the most costly material. She wore a necklace and bracelet of pearl, and a string of the same encircled her beautifully-arranged hair. The rich color that mantled in her cheeks deepened still more, as she acknowledged the salutation of the gentlemen; but Alice, who entered immediately after her, went at once to her uncle, and putting her hand in his, looked the inquiry, "Are you pleased with me?" No wonder the old man held her hand for a moment, deprived of the power of answering her. She stood before him glowing with health again, the coral lips parted with a smile, awaiting some word of approval. The deep-blue eyes, the ivory skin, the delicately-flushed cheeks, the oval face, the auburn curls that fell over brow and temple, and hung over the rounded and beautiful shoulders; the perfect arm, displayed in its full beauty by the short plain sleeve; the simple dress of white; the whole figure, so fair and interesting, with no ornaments to dim its youthful charms; but one flower, a lily, drooping over her bosom. The tears gathered in his large eyes, and drawing her gently towards him, he kissed her lips. "Alice, my beloved," he said, "sweetest of God's earthly gifts, you cannot be always as fair and young as you are now; but may God keep your heart as pure and childlike, until he take you to the Heaven which is your destiny." Before any one could reply, he had bowed to the rest of the company and left the room; and even Alice, accustomed as she was to his partial affection, felt solemnized at the unusual earnestness with which he had addressed her; but Mrs. Weston hurried them off to the scene of fashion and splendor which they had been anticipating. * * * * * Mr. Weston was about to retire, when Bacchus suddenly entered the room, preceded by a slight knock. He was very much excited, and evidently had information of great importance to communicate. "Master," said he, without waiting to get breath, "they're all got took." "What is the matter, Bacchus?" "Nothing, sir, only they're all cotched, every mother's son of 'em." "Of whom are you speaking?" "Of them poor misguided niggers, sir, de Abolitioners got away; but they're all cotched now, and I'm sorry 'nuff for 'em. Some's gwine to be sold, and some's gwine to be put in jail; and they're all in the worst kind of trouble." "Well, Bacchus, it serves them right; they knew they were not free, and that it was their duty to work in the condition in which God had placed them. They have nobody to blame but themselves." "'Deed they is--'scuse me for contradictin you--but there's them as is to blame a heap. Them Abolitioners, sir, is the cause of it. They wouldn't let the poor devils rest until they 'duced them to go off. They 'lowed, they would get 'em off, and no danger of their being took agin. They had the imperance, sir, to 'suade those poor deluded niggers that they were born free, when they knowed they were born slaves. I hadn't no idea, sir, they was sich liars; but I've been up to de place whar the servants is, and its heart-breaking to hear 'em talk. Thar's Simon, that strapping big young man, as drives Mrs. Seymour's carriage; they got him off. He's a crying up thar, like a baby a month old. He's been a hidin and a dodgin for a week--he's nigh starved. And now he's cotched, and gwine to be sold. He's a raal spilt nigger: his master dressed him like a gentleman, and he had nothin to do all day but to drive de carriage; and he told me hisself, when he was out late at night wid de young ladies, at parties, he never was woke in de mornin, but was 'lowed to sleep it out, and had a good hot breakfast when he did wake. Well, they got him off. They made out he'd go to the great Norrurd, and set up a trade, or be a gentleman, may be; and like as not they told him he stood a good chance of being President one of dese days. They got him off from his good home, and now he's done for. He's gwine to be sold South to-morrow. He's a beggin young Mr. Seymour up thar not to sell him, and makin promises, but its no use; he's goin South. I bin hearin every word he said to his young master. 'Oh, Master George,' says he, 'let me off dis time. I didn't want to go till the Abolitioners told me you had no right to me, kase God had made me free; and you, they said, was no better than a thief, keepin me a slave agin natur and the Bible too.'" "'But, Simon,' said young Mr. Seymour, 'you stole a suit of my new clothes when you went off; and you got money, too, from Mrs. Barrett, saying I had sent you for it. How came you to do that?' "'I will 'fess it all, sir,' said Simon, 'and God knows I'm speakin truth. I took de suit of clothes. The Abolitioner, he said I'd be a gentleman when I got North, and I must have somethin ready to put on, to look like one. So he said you'd always had the use of me, and twasn't no harm for me to take de suit, for I was 'titled to it for my sarvices. He axed me if any body owed my mistis money, as I know'd of. I told him, yes, Mrs. Barrett did, and mistis often sent me after it without any order, for she know'd I'd bring it straight to her. Now, my boy, said the Abolitioner, dis money is yourn--its your wages. You've got a better right to it than ever your mistis had. You can't start on a journey without money; so you go to dis lady and tell her you was sent for money by your mistis, and you keep de money for your own use. Here's de money,' said he, 'Master George, take it to mistis, and tell her de truth.' "'Damn the rascals,' says young Mr. Seymour, 'they're not content with man-stealing, but they're stealing money and clothes, and every thing they can lay their hands upon. So much for your Abolition friends, Simon,' says he. 'I wish you joy of them. They've brought you to a pretty pass, and lost you as good a home as ever a servant had.' "'Oh, master,' said Simon, 'won't you take me back? Indeed I will be faithful.' "'Can't trust you, Simon,' said Mr. Seymour; 'besides, none of your fellow-servants want you back. You have no relations. My mother bought you, when you was a little boy, because she knew your mother; and after she died you were knocked about by the other servants. My sister taught you how to read the Bible, and you have been a member of the Methodist church. If you was a poor ignorant fellow, that didn't know what was right, I would take you back; but you've done this wid your eyes open. Our servants say they wants no runaways to live 'long o' them. Now, if you can get any of your Abolition friends to buy you, and take you North, and make a gentleman of you, I'll sell you to them; but they wouldn't give a fip to keep you from starving. I am sorry its so, but I can't take you back.' He said these very words, sir. He felt mighty bad, sir; he talked husky, but he went out. Simon called after him, but he didn't even look back; so I know Simon's goin for true." "I am really sorry for the servants, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, "but they won't take warning. I'm told that since Abolitionists have come to live in Washington, and have been going among the colored people, that it is almost impossible to employ an honest servant; it is on this account that the Irish are so much employed. Some years ago the families had no trouble with their domestics, but Abolition has ruined them. What a wretched looking class they are, too! lazy and dirty; these are the consequences of taking bad advice." "Well, master," said Bacchus, "I wish to de Lord we could take 'em all to Virginny, and give 'em a good coat of tar and feathers; thar's all them feathers poor Aunt Peggy had in them barrels. We aint got no call for 'em at home. I wish we could put 'em to some use. I wouldn't like no better fun than to spread de tar on neat, and den stick de feathers on close and thick." "Well, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, "its near bedtime, and I am not well; so I will retire." "Certainly, master; you must 'scuse me, I'm afeard I've kep you up; I felt mightily for them poor creaturs, thar. Lor', master, I aint nigh so weakly as you, and think I nussed you, and used to toat you on my back when you was a little boy. You was mighty fat, I tell you--I used to think my back would bust, sometimes, but I'm pretty strong yet. 'Pears like I could toat you now, if I was to try." "Not to-night, thank you, Bacchus. Though if any thing should occur to make it necessary, I will call you," said Mr. Weston. Bacchus slept in a kind of closet bedroom off his master's, and he went in accordingly, but after a few moments returned, finding Mr. Weston in bed. "Will you have any thing, sir?" "Nothing, to-night." "Well, master, I was thinkin to say one thing more, and 'tis, if dese Abolitioners, dat has so much larnin, if they only had some of the Bible larnin my wife has, how much good 'twould do 'em. My wife says, 'God put her here a slave, and she's a gwine to wait for Him to set her free; if he aint ready to do so till he calls her to Heaven, she's willin to wait.' Lord, sir, my wife, she sets at de feet of Jesus, and larns her Bible. I reckon de Abolitioners aint willin to do that; they don't want to get so low down; 'pears as if they aint willin to go about doin good like Jesus did, but they must be puttin up poor slaves to sin and sorrow. Well, they've got to go to their account, any how." Bacchus finally retired, but it was with difficulty he composed himself to sleep. He was still mentally discussing that great subject, Abolition, which, like a mighty tempest, was shaking the whole country. All at once it occurred to him "that it wouldn't do no good to worry about it," so he settled himself to sleep. A bright idea crossed his mind as he closed his eyes upon the embers that were fading on the hearth in his master's room; in another moment he was reposing, in utter oblivion of all things, whether concerning his own affairs or those of the world in general. The next morning, just as Mr. Weston had finished his paper, Bacchus came in with a pair of boots, shining astonishingly. "I believe," said Mr. Weston, "I won't put them on yet, our ladies have not come down to breakfast, and its hardly time, for it is but half-past nine o'clock; I think it must have been morning when they came home." "Yes sir," said Bacchus; "they aint awake yet, Aunt Marthy tells me." "Well, let them sleep. I have breakfasted, and I will sit here and enjoy this good fire, until they come." Bacchus lingered, and looked as if he could not enjoy any thing that morning. "Any thing the matter, Bacchus?" said Mr. Weston. "Well," said Bacchus, "nothin more I 'spose than what I had a right to expect of 'em. Simon's got to go. I done all I could for him, but it aint nothin, after all." "What could you do?" said Mr. Weston. "Well, master, I was nigh asleep last night, when all at once I thought 'bout dis here Abolition gentleman, Mr. Baker, that boards long wid us. Now, thinks I, he is a mighty nice kind of man, talks a heap 'bout God and the Gospel, and 'bout our duty to our fellow-creaturs. I know'd he had a sight of money, for his white servant told me he was a great man in Boston, had a grand house thar, his wife rode in elegant carriages, and his children has the best of every thing. So, I says to myself, he aint like the rest of 'em, he don't approve of stealing, and lying, and the like o' that; if he thinks the Southern gentlemen oughter set all their niggers free, why he oughter be willin to lose just a little for one man; so I went straight to his room to ask him to buy Simon." "That was very wrong, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, sternly. "Don't you know your duty better than to be interfering in the concerns of these people? I am excessively mortified. What will this gentleman think of me?" "Nothin', master," said Bacchus. "Don't be oneasy. I told him I come to ax him a favor on my own 'sponsibility, and that you didn't know nothin' about it. Well, he axed me if I wanted a chaw of tobacco. 'No sir,' says I, 'but I wants to ax a little advice.' 'I will give you that with pleasure,' says he. "'Mr. Baker,' says I, 'I understands you think God made us all, white and colored, free and equal; and I knows you feels great pity for de poor slaves that toils and frets in de sun, all their lives like beasts, and lays down and dies like beasts, clean forgot like 'em too. I heard you say so to a gentleman at de door; I thought it was mighty kind of you to consider so much 'bout them of a different color from your own. I heard you say it was de duty of de gentlemen of de South to set their slaves free, if it did make 'em poor, kase Jesus Christ, he made hisself poor to set us all free. Warn't dat what you said, sir?' "'Exactly,' says he. 'I didn't know you had such a good memory.' "'Now, Mr. Baker,' says I, 'you're a Christian yourself, or you couldn't talk dat way. I know Christians must like to make other people happy; they're bound to, for their Master, Christ, did. Well, sir, all de poor creturs dat de Abolitionists got off is cotched--they're gwine to be sold, and thar's one young man thar, that had a good home and a good mistis, and him they 'suaded off, and now he's gwine to be sold South, whar he'll toil and sweat in de hot sun. Now, Mr. Baker, if de Southern gentlemen's duty's so plain to you, that they oughter make themselves poor, to make their slaves free and happy, surely you'll buy this one poor man who is frettin' hisself to death. It won't make you poor to buy jist this one; his master says he'll sell him to any Abolitioner who'll take him to the great Norrurd, and have him teached. Buy him, sir, for de Lord's sake--de poor fellow will be so happy; jist spend a little of your money to make dat one poor cretur happy. God gave it all to you, sir, and he aint gave none to de poor slaves, not even gave him his freedom. You set dis one poor feller free, and when you come to die, it will make you feel so good to think about it; when you come to judgment, maybe Christ may say, "You made dis poor man free, and now you may come into de kingdom and set down wid me forever." Oh! sir,' says I, 'buy him, de Lord will pay you back, you won't lose a copper by him.'" "Well," said Mr. Weston, "what did he say?" "Why, sir," said Bacchus, "he got up and stood by de fire, and warmed hisself, and says he, 'Ole felur, if I'd a had de teaching of you, I'd a larned you to mind your own business. I'll let you know I didn't come to Washington to buy niggers.' 'Here,' says he, to dat white nigger that waits on him, 'Next time dis feller wants me, tell him to go 'bout his business.' "'Good mornin' sir,' says I, 'I shan't trouble you agin. May de Lord send better friends to de slaves than de like of you.'" "Well, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, "you did very wrong, and I hope you will not again take such a liberty with any person. You see for yourself what an Abolitionist is. I wish those poor runaways had had some such experience, it would have saved them from the trouble they are now in." "Yes, indeed, master. I've been down thar agin, to-day. I went right early; thar's an ole woman thar that tried to run away. She's gwine too, and she leaves her husband here. She aint a cryin, though, her heart's too full for tears. Oh! master," said Bacchus, sighing deeply, "I think if you'd seed her, you'd do more than the Abolitioners." * * * * * In the afternoon Mr. Weston usually walked out. He did not dine with the ladies at their late hour, as his complaint, dyspepsia, made it necessary for him to live lightly and regularly. Bacchus attended him in his walks, and many a person turned back to look upon the fine-looking old gentleman with his gold-headed cane, and his servant, whose appearance was as agreeable as his own. Bacchus was constantly on the lookout for his master, but he managed to see all that was going on too, and to make many criticisms on the appearance and conduct of those he met in his rambles. Bacchus followed his master, and found that he was wending his steps to the place where the arrested runaways were confined. This was very agreeable to him, for his heart was quite softened towards the poor prisoners, and he had an idea that his master's very presence might carry a blessing with it. "Bacchus," said Mr. Weston, as they were going in, "you need not point out the servants to me. I will observe for myself, and I do not wish to be conspicuous." There were a great many lounging about, and looking round there. Some were considering the scene as merely curious; some were blaming the slaves; some their masters, some the Abolitionists. There was confusion and constant going in and out. But though the countenances of the runaways expressed different emotions, it was evident that one feeling had settled in each breast, and that was, there was no hope that any thing would occur to relieve them from their undesirable position. Mr. Weston easily recognized Simon, from Bacchus's description. He had a boyish expression of disappointment and irritation on his countenance, and had evidently been recently weeping. There were several men, one or two of them with bad faces, and one, a light mulatto, had a fine open countenance, and appeared to be making an effort not to show his excessive disappointment. In the corner sat the woman, on a low bench--her head was bent forward on her lap, and she was swaying her body slightly, keeping motion with her foot. "What is the woman's name, Bacchus?" asked Mr. Weston in a low tone. "I axed her dis mornin, sir. Its Sarah--Sarah Mills." Mr. Weston walked up nearer to her, and was regarding her, when she suddenly looked up into his face. Finding herself observed, she made an effort to look unconcerned, but it did not succeed, for she burst into tears. "I'm sorry to see you here, Sarah," said Mr. Weston, "you look too respectable to be in such a situation." Sarah smoothed down her apron, but did not reply. "What induced you to run away? You need not be afraid to answer me truthfully. I will not do you any harm." "My blessed grief!" said Bacchus. "No, master couldn't do no harm to a flea." "Hush, Bacchus," said Mr. Weston. There was something in Mr. Weston's appearance that could not be mistaken. The woman gave him a look of perfect confidence, and said-- "I thought I could better myself, sir." "In what respect? Had you an unkind master?" said Mr. Weston. "No," said the woman, "but my husband I was afear'd might be sold, and I thought I could make so much money at the North, that I could soon help him to buy himself. He's a barber, sir, lives on the Avenue, and his master, when he was young, had him taught the barber's trade. Well, his master told him some time ago that he might live to himself, and pay him so much a month out o' what he made, but seemed as if he couldn't get along to do it. My husband, sir, drinks a good deal, and he couldn't do it on that account; so, a year or two ago his master sent for him, and told him that he was worthless, and unless he could buy himself in three years he would sell him. He said he might have himself for five hundred dollars, and he could have earned it, if he hadn't loved whiskey so, but 'pears as if he can't do without that. We aint got no children, thank God! so when the Abolitionists advised me to go off, and told me they would take care of me until I got out of my master's reach, and I could soon make a sight of money to buy my husband, I thought I would go; and you see, sir, what's come of it." Sarah tried to assume the same look of unconcern, and again she wept bitterly. "I don't mean to reproach you, now that you are in trouble," said Mr. Weston, "but you colored people in this city have got into bad hands. God has made you slaves, and you should be willing to abide by his will, especially if he give you a good master." "Yes, sir, it was mighty hard though, to think of my poor husband's being sold,--he and I don't belong to the same person." "So, I suppose," said Mr. Weston; "but you have only made your condition worse." "Yes, sir; but I didn't think things would turn out so. The Abolitionists said they would see that I got off free." "They ought to be cotched, and tied up, and have a good whaling besides," said Bacchus, indignantly. "'Taint no use wishin 'em harm," said Sarah; "the Lord's will be done," at the same time her pale lips quivered with emotion. Mr. Weston paused a few moments in deep thought, then went into the other room. When he returned, she was sitting as when he first entered, her face buried in her lap. "Sarah," he said, and she looked up as before, without any doubt, in his open countenance, "are you a good worker?" "I am, at washin and ironin. I have been makin a good deal for my master that way." "Well," said Mr. Weston, "if I were to purchase you, so as you could be near your husband, would you conduct yourself properly; and if I wish it, endeavor to repay me what I have given for you?" Such a thought had not entered the despairing woman's mind. She was impressed with the idea that she should never see her husband again; other things did not effect her. It was necessary, therefore, for Mr. Weston to repeat what he had said before she comprehended his meaning. When she heard and understood, every energy of her soul was aroused. Starting from her seat, she clasped her hands convulsively together; her face became deathlike with agitation. "Would I, sir? Oh! try me! Work! what is work if I could be near my poor husband as long as I can. Buy me, sir, only for Jesus' sake, buy me. I will work day and night to pay you, and the blessing of God Almighty will pay you too, better than any money I could earn." Bacchus, the tears rolling down his cheeks, looked earnestly at his master's face. "Buy her, master, buy her, for the love of God," he said. "Sarah," said Mr. Weston, "I do not like to be in a public place; do not, therefore, become excited, and say any thing that will draw observation to me. I have bought you, and I will not require you to repay me. Come to me to-night, at Willard's, and I will give you your free papers; I will see also what I can do for your husband. In the mean time, Bacchus will help you take your things from this place. Stay here though a few moments, until he gets me a carriage to go home in, and he will return to you." Sarah perfectly understood that Mr. Weston wanted no thanks at that time. With streaming eyes, now raised to heaven--now to her benefactor, she held her peace. Mr. Weston gladly left the dreadful place. Bacchus assisted him to a hack, and then came back to fulfil his directions as regards the woman. Oh! noble heart, not here thy reward! Thy weak and trembling frame attests too well that the scene is too trying to afford thee pleasure. The All-seeing Eye is bent upon thee, and thine own ear will hear the commendation from the lips of Christ: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Nor thou alone! Many a generous act is done by the slaveholder to the slave. God will remember them, though here they be forgotten or unknown. We need not dwell on the unhoped-for meeting between Sarah and her husband, nor on Bacchus's description of it to his master. It suffices to close the relation of this incident by saying, that at night Sarah came to receive directions from Mr. Weston; but in their place he gave her the necessary free papers. "You are your own mistress, now, Sarah," said he. "I hope you will prove yourself worthy to be so. You can assist your husband to pay for himself. If you are honest and industrious, you cannot fail to do well." Sarah's heart overflowed with unlooked-for happiness. She thanked Mr. Weston over and over again, until, fearing to be troublesome, she withdrew. Bacchus went as far as the corner, and promised to look in upon herself and husband, repeatedly; which he did. He impressed his new acquaintances with a proper sense of his own importance. With the exception of one grand spree that he and Sarah's husband had together, the three enjoyed a very pleasant and harmonious intercourse during the remainder of the Westons' stay at Washington. * * * * * The gay winter had passed, and spring had replaced it; but night after night saw the votaries of fashion assembled, though many of them looked rather the worse for wear. Ellen and Alice tired of scenes which varied so little, yet having no regular employment, they hardly knew how to cease the round of amusements that occupied them. Ellen said, "Never mind, Alice, we will have plenty of time for repentance, and we might as well quaff to the last drop the cup of pleasure, which may never be offered to our lips again." Very soon they were to return to Virginia, and now they proposed visiting places of interest in the neighborhood of the city. One morning, after a gay party, and at a later hour than usual, the three ladies entered the breakfast-room. Mr. Weston was waiting for them. "Well, young ladies," he said, "I have read my paper, and now I am ready to hear you give an account of your last evening's triumphs. The winter's campaign is closing; every little skirmish is then of the greatest importance. How do you all feel?" "I do not know how I feel, uncle," said Alice, languidly. "Alice has expressed my feelings exactly, and Mrs. Weston's too, I fancy," said Ellen. Mr. Weston smiled, but said he should not excuse them from their promise of giving him a faithful description of the scene. "Well, my dear sir," said Ellen, "I have a decided talent for description; but remember, Mrs. Weston, my genius must not be cramped. Do not break the thread of my discourse by 'Ellen, do not talk so!' A Washington party is what you have called it, Mr. Weston, a skirmish. You remember how the wind blew last night. When we reached Mr. ----'s front door, the people had collected in such crowds in the hall, to get a little air, that it was fully ten minutes before we could get in. We had the benefit of a strong harsh breeze playing about our undefended necks and shoulders. As soon as we were fairly in, though, we were recompensed for our sufferings in this respect. We went from the arctic to the torrid zone; it was like an August day at two o'clock. "We tried to make our way to the lady of the house, but understood, after a long search, that she had been pushed by the crowd to the third story; and being a very fat person, was seen, at the last accounts, seated in a rocking-chair, fanning herself violently, and calling in vain for ice-cream. After a while we reached the dancing-room, where, in a very confined circle, a number were waltzing and Polka-ing. As this is a forbidden dance to Alice and me, we had a fine opportunity of taking notes. Mrs. S. was making a great exhibition of herself; she puffed and blew as if she had the asthma; her ringlets streamed, and her flounces flew. I was immensely anxious for the little lieutenant her partner. He was invisible several times; lost in the ringlets and the flounces. There were people of all sizes and ages dancing for a wager. I thought of what our good bishop once said: 'It was very pretty to see the young lambs gambolling about; but when the old sheep began to caper too, he'd rather not look on.' There was poor old Mr. K., with his red face and his white hair, and his heels flying in every direction. (I am ashamed of you for laughing at Mr. K., Mrs. Weston, when I am trying to impress upon Alice's mind the folly of such a scene.) I dare say Mr. K.'s wife was at that very moment, five hundred miles off, darning her children's stockings. "All the people did not dance the Polka," continued Ellen; "and I was dazzled with the pretty faces, and the wise-looking heads. Mr. Webster was there, with his deep voice, and solemn brow, and cavernous eyes; and close up to him, where she could not move or breathe, there was a young face, beautiful and innocent as a cherub's, looking with unfeigned astonishment upon the scene. There was Gen. Scott, towering above everybody; and Mr. Douglass, edging his way, looking kindly and pleasantly at every one. There were artists and courtiers; soldiers and sailors; foolish men, beautiful women, and sensible women; though I do not know what they wanted there. There were specimens of every kind in this menagerie of men and women. Dear Mr. Weston, I have not quite done. There was a lady writer, with a faded pink scarf, and some old artificial flowers in her hair. There was _a she Abolitionist too_; yes, a genuine female Abolitionist. She writes for the Abolition papers. She considers Southerners heathens; looks pityingly at the waiters as they hand her ice-cream. She wants Frederick Douglass to be the next President, and advocates amalgamation. I am quite out of breath; but I must tell you that I looked at her and thought Uncle Bacchus would just suit her, with his airs and graces; but I do not think she is stylish enough for him." "But, my dear," said Mrs. Weston, "you forget Bacchus has a wife and twelve children." "That is not of the least consequence, my dear madam," said Ellen; "I can imagine, when a woman approves of amalgamation, she is so lost to every sense of propriety that it makes no difference to her whether a man is married or not. Now, Alice, I resign my post; and if you have any thing to say I will give you the chair, while I run up to my room and write aunt a good long letter." CHAPTER XXIV. "The afternoon is so delightful," said Mr. Weston, "that we had better take our ride to the Congress burial ground. Your time is short, young ladies; you cannot afford to lose any of it, if all your plans are to be carried out." The ladies gladly agreed to go, and were not long in their preparation. Mark was a perfect prince of a driver. When the ladies had occasion to go into the country, he entreated them to hire a carriage, but he was always ready to display his handsome equipage and horses in the city, especially on the Avenue. He drove slowly this afternoon, and Mrs. Weston remembered, as she approached Harper's, that she had one or two purchases to make. Fearing it might be late on their return, she proposed getting out for a few moments. A stream of gayly-dressed people crowded the pavements. The exquisite weather had drawn them out. Belles with their ringlets and sun-shades, and beaux with canes and curled moustaches. Irish women in tawdry finery, and _ladies_ of color with every variety of ornament, and ridiculous imitation of fashion. Now and then a respectable-looking negro would pass, turning out of the way, instead of jostling along. "Truly," said Mr. Weston, "Pennsylvania Avenue is the great bazaar of America. Here are senators and members--three and four walking arm in arm. Here are gay young men, dressed in the latest style; here is the army and navy button; old people and young children with their nurses; foreigners and natives; people of every shade and hue. There is our President, walking unattended, as a republican president should walk. And see! there are a number of Indians, noble-looking men, and a white boy throwing a stone at them. I wish I had the young rascal. On our right, in their carriages, are the wives and children of the rich; while, scattered about, right and left, are the representatives of the poor. But what is this, coming along the side-walk?" The girls put their heads out of the window, and saw a colored man, sauntering along in an impudent, dont-carish manner. His dress--indeed his whole appearance--was absurd. He wore a stylish, shiny black hat; the rim slightly turned up in front, following the direction of the wearer's nose, which had "set its affections on things above." His whiskers were immense; so were his moustaches, and that other hairy trimming which it is the fashion to wear about the jaws and chin; and for which I know no better name than that which the children give--goatee; a tremendous shirt collar; brass studs in his bosom; a neck handkerchief of many colors, the ends of which stood out like the extended wings of a butterfly; a gorgeous watch chain; white kid gloves; pantaloons of a large-sized plaid, and fitting so very tightly that it was with the greatest difficulty he could put out his feet; patent leather gaiter-boots, and a cane that he flourished right and left with such determined strokes, that the children kept carefully out of his way. Several persons looked back to wonder and laugh at this strange figure, the drollery of which was greatly enhanced by his limber style of walking, and a certain expression of the whole outer man, which said, "Who says I am not as good as anybody on this avenue; Mr. Fillmore, or any one else?" Now it happened, that walking from the other direction toward this representative of the much-injured colored race, was a stranger, who had come to Washington to look about him. He was from Philadelphia, but not thinking a great deal of what he saw in our capital on a former visit, he had quite made up his mind that there was nothing to make it worth his while to come again; but hearing of the convalescing turn the city had taken since the immortal supporters of the Compromise and the Fugitive Slave law had brought comparative harmony and peace, where there had been nought but disorder and confusion, he suddenly fancied to come and see for himself. He was not an Abolitionist, nor a Secessionist, nor one of those unfortunate, restless people, who are forever stirring up old difficulties. He had an idea that the Union ought to be preserved in the first place; and then, whatever else could be done to advance the interests of the human race in general, without injury to our national interests, should be attended to. He was always a good-tempered man, and was particularly pleasant this afternoon, having on an entire new suit of clothes, each article, even the shirt-collar, fitting in the most faultless manner. As he walked along, he noticed the colored man advancing towards him, and observed, too, what I forgot to mention, that he held a cigar, and every now and then put it to his mouth, emitting afterwards a perfect cloud of smoke. The thought occurred to him that the man did not intend to turn out of the way for anybody, and as they were in a line, he determined not to deviate one way or the other, but just observe what this favorite of fashion would do. They walked on, and in a minute came up to each other, the colored man not giving way in the least, but bumping, hat, goatee, cane, cigar, and all, against our Philadelphian, who, with the greatest coolness and presence of mind, doubled up his fist and giving the colored Adonis two blows with it, (precisely on the middle brass stud which confined his frilled shirt-bosom,) laid him full length upon the pavement. "Now," said the Philadelphian, "you've had a lesson; the next time you see a gentleman coming along, turn out of the way for him, and you'll save your new clothes." Without another glance at the discomfited beau, who was brushing his plaid pantaloons with his pocket-handkerchief, and muttering some equivocal language that would not do here, he went on his way to see the improvements about the City Hall. Mark's low laugh was heard from the driver's seat, and Bacchus, who was waiting to open the carriage door for Mr. Weston, stood on the first step, and touching his hat, said, with a broad grin, "Dat's de best thing we've seen sence we come to Washington. Dat beats Ole Virginny." Mrs. Weston came from the store at the same moment, and Bacchus gallantly let down the steps, and, after securing the door, took his place beside Mark, with the agility of a boy of sixteen. Mr. Weston, much amused, described the scene. Mrs. Weston declared "it served him right; for that the negroes were getting intolerable." "I can hardly believe," she said, "the change that has been made in their appearance and conduct. They think, to obtain respect they must be impertinent. This is the effect of Abolition." "Yes," said Mr. Weston, "this is Abolition. I have thought a great deal on the condition of the negroes in our country, of late. I would like to see every man and woman that God has made, free, could it be accomplished to their advantage. I see the evils of slavery, it is sometimes a curse on the master as well as the slave. "When I purchased Sarah; when I saw those grieving, throbbing souls, my own was overwhelmed with sympathy for them. This is slavery, I said to myself. Poor creatures, though you have done wrong, how severe your punishment; to be separated from all that your life has had to make it pleasant, or even tolerable. This is slavery indeed, and where is the man, come from God, who will show us a remedy? I look at the free blacks of the North and South. I say again, this is Abolition! How worthless, how degraded they are, after they imbibe these ridiculous notions. When I behold the Southern country, and am convinced that it is _impossible_ to manumit the slaves, I conclude that here, at least, they are in their natural condition. Heretofore, I feel that I have only done my duty in retaining mine, while I give them every means of comfort, and innocent enjoyment, that is in my power. Now I have seen the result of the Abolition efforts, I am _more_ convinced that my duty has been, and will be, as I have said. Could they be colonized from Virginia, I would willingly consent to it, as in our climate, white labor would answer; but _farther_ South, _only the negro_ can labor, and this is an unanswerable objection to our Southern States becoming free. Those servants that are free, the benevolent and generous Abolitionists ought to take North, build them colleges, and make good to them all the promises they held out as baits to allure them from their owners and their duties." Mr. Weston found he had not two very attentive listeners in the young ladies, for they were returning the many salutations they received, and making remarks on their numerous acquaintances. The carriage began slowly to ascend Capitol Hill, and they all remarked the beautiful prospect, to which Washingtonians are so much accustomed that they are too apt not to notice it. Their ride was delightful. It was one of those lovely spring days when the air is still fresh and balmy, and the promise of a summer's sun lights up nature so joyfully. There were many visitors at the burial-ground, and there had been several funerals that day. A woman stood at the door of the house, at the entrance of the cemetery, with a baby in her arms; and another child of two years old was playing around a large bier, that had been left there until it should be wanted again. Mrs. Weston met with an acquaintance, soon after they entered the ground, and they stopped to converse, while Mr. Weston and the younger ladies walked on. Near a large vault they stopped a moment, surprised to see two or three little boys playing at marbles. They were ruddy, healthy-looking boys, marking out places in the gravel path for the game; shooting, laughing, and winning, and so much occupied that if death himself had come along on his pale horse, they would have asked him to wait a while till they could let him pass, if indeed they had seen him at all. Mr. Weston tried to address them several times, but they could not attend to him until the game was completed, when one of them sprang upon the vault and began to count over his marbles, and the others sat down on a low monument to rest. "Boys," said Mr. Weston, "I am very sorry to see you playing marbles in a burial-ground. Don't you see all these graves around you?" "We don't go on the dead people," said an honest-faced little fellow. "You see the grass is wet there; we play here in the walk, where its nice and dry." "But you ought to play outside," said Mr. Weston. "This is too sacred a place to be made the scene of your amusements." "We don't hurt any body," said the largest boy. "When people are dead they don't hear nothin; where's the harm?" "Well," said Mr. Weston, "there's one thing certain, none of you have any friends buried here. If you had, you would not treat them so unkindly." "My mother is buried over yonder," said the boy on the vault; "and if I thought there was any thing unkind in it, I would never come here to play again." "You are a good boy," said Mr. Weston. "I hope you will keep your word. If you were buried there, I am sure your mother would be very sad and quiet by your grave." The boy drew the string to his bag, and walked off without looking back. "I wish," said Mr. Weston, "you would all follow his example. We should always be respectful in our conduct, when we are in a burial-ground." As soon as they were gone, the boys laughed and marked out another game. Mrs. Weston joined her party, and they went towards the new portion of the cemetery that is so beautifully situated, near the river. "I think," said Mr. Weston, "this scene should remind us of our conversation this morning. If Washington be the meeting-place of all living, it is the grand cemetery of the dead. Look around us here! We see monuments to Senators and Members; graves of foreigners and strangers; names of the great, the rich, the powerful, men of genius and ambition. Strewed along are the poor, the lowly, the unlearned, the infant, and the little child. "Read the inscriptions--death has come at last, watched and waited for; or he has come suddenly, unexpected, and undesired. There lies an author, a bride, a statesman, side by side. A little farther off is that simple, but beautiful monument." They approached, and Alice read the line that was inscribed around a cross sculptured in it, "Other refuge have I none!" Underneath was her name, "Angeline." "How beautiful, how much more so in its simplicity than if it had been ornamented, and a labored epitaph written upon it," said Mr. Weston. "Here too are members of families, assembled in one great family. As we walk along, we pass mothers, and husbands, and children; but in life, they who lie here together, were possibly all strangers." "What is that large vault open to-day for?" said Ellen, to a man who seemed to have some charge in the place. "That is the public receptacle," said the man. "We are obliged to air it very often, else we could never go in and out with the coffins we put there. There's a good many in there now." "Who is there?" said Mr. Weston. "Well," said the man, "Mrs. Madison is there, for one, and there are some other people, who are going to be moved soon. Mrs. Madison, she's going to be moved, too, some time or another, but I don't know when." Ellen stooped down and looked in, but arose quickly and turned away. Two gentlemen were standing near observing her, and one of them smiled as she stepped back from the vault. Mr. Weston knew this person by sight; he was a clergyman of great talent, and almost equal eccentricity, and often gave offence by harshness of manner, when he was only anxious to do good to the cause in which his heart was absorbed. "Ah! young ladies," he said, looking kindly at them both, "this is a good place for you to come to. You are both beautiful, and it may be wealthy; and I doubt not, in the enjoyments of the passing season, you have forgotten all about death and the grave. But, look you! in there, lies the mortal remains of Mrs. Madison. What an influence she had in this gay society, which you have doubtless adorned. Her presence was the guarantee of propriety, as well as of social and fashionable enjoyment; the very contrast that she presented to her husband made her more charming. Always anxious to please, she was constantly making others happy. She gave assistance and encouragement to all, when it was in her power. She had more political influence than any woman in our country has had, before or since. But think of her now! You could not bear to approach the coffin that contains her remains. Where is her beauty--and her grace and talent? Ah! young ladies," he continued, "did she rightly use those talents?" "It is hardly a fair question to ask now," said Mr. Weston. "Let us tread lightly o'er the ashes of the dead." "Let the living learn a lesson from the dead," said the clergyman, sternly. "You are leading, it may be, a heartless life of pleasure, but, young ladies, forget not this grave. She could not escape it, nor will you. Pause from your balls, and your theatres, and your gay doings, and ask, what is the end of it all. Trifle not with the inestimable gift of life. Be not dead while you live. Anticipate not the great destroyer. Hear the appeal of one who was once the idol of every heart; she speaks to you from the grave, 'Even as I am, shalt thou be!'" He turned from them, and wandered over the ground. Mr. Weston led the way to the carriage, and Ellen and Alice thought, that if a lesson of life was to be learned in the gay ball of the night before, a still more necessary one was found in the cemetery which they were now leaving, as the shadows of the evening were on the simple monument and the sculptured slab, and their silent tenants slept on, undisturbed by the gambols of thoughtless children, or the conversation of the many who came to visit their abode. * * * * * The next morning, Bacchus brought no letter for Mr. Weston, but one for each lady; for Ellen from her aunt, for Alice from Arthur, and Cousin Janet's handwriting was easily recognized on the outside of Mrs. Weston's. Hardly had the girls arisen from the table to take theirs' to their rooms for a quiet perusal, when an exclamation from Mrs. Weston, detained them. "Is anything the matter at home, Anna?" said Mr. Weston, "Is Cousin Janet--?" "Cousin Janet is well, my dear brother," said Mrs. Weston. "I was very thoughtless, but our dear neighbor, Mrs. Kent, is no more." "Can it be possible?" said Mr. Weston, much agitated. "Read the letter aloud." Mrs. Weston, turned to the beginning, and read aloud, "MY DEAR ANNA: "The time is near which will bring you all in health and happiness, I trust, to your home; and could you see how lovely it looks, I think you would be tempted to fix upon an earlier day. You see how selfish I am, but I confess that I quite count the days, as a child does to Christmas, and am ashamed of my impatience. "Throughout the winter I had no care. My kind friends did all the housekeeping, and the servants in the house, and on the plantation, were so faithful, that I feel indebted to all who have made my time so easy; and your absence has not, I am sure, been attended with any ill effects, without you find me a little cross and complaining, and Mr. Barbour out of his senses with joy, on your return. Good Mr. Barbour! he has superintended and encouraged the servants, and visited us forlorn ladies frequently, so that he must come in for a portion of our thanks too. "You will perhaps think I ought only to write you cheerful news, but it is best to let you know as well as I can, the condition that you will find us in, on your return. Phillis is the only one of us, whose concerns are of any immediate importance, but I am sorry to have to tell you that she is now seriously indisposed. Her cough has never really yielded--her other symptoms have varied; but for the last few weeks, her disease has not only progressed, but assumed a certain form. She is in consumption, and has no doubt inherited the disease from her mother. "I have, throughout the winter, felt great anxiety about her, and have not permitted her to work, though sometimes I found it hard to prevent her. Her children have been constantly with her; indeed, I have passed a great deal of my own time in her cabin, which, under Martha's superintendence, is so neat and comfortable. "You will all perhaps blame me that I have not been thus plain with you before, but Dr. Lawton said it was not necessary, as she has never been in any immediate danger, and Phillis would not consent to my doing so. She wanted you to enjoy yourselves, and Alice to have a good chance to regain her health. 'No doubt, Miss Janet,' she said, 'the Lord will spare me to see them yet, and I have every thing I want now--they couldn't stop my pains any more than you, and I feel that I am in the Lord's hands, and I am content to be.' She has not been confined to her bed, but is fast losing strength, though from my window now I see her tying up her roses, that are beginning to bud. Some other hand than hers will care for them when another Spring shall come. "Her nights are very restless, and she is much exhausted from constant spitting of blood; the last week of pleasant weather has been of service to her, and the prospect of seeing you all at home gives her the most unfeigned pleasure. "I have even more painful intelligence to give you. Our young neighbor, Mrs. Kent, has done with all her trials, and I trust they sanctified her, in preparation for the early and unexpected death which has been her lot. You are not yet aware of the extent of her trials. A fortnight ago her little boy was attacked with scarlet fever, in its most violent form. From the first moment of his illness his case was hopeless, and he only suffered twenty-four hours. I went over as soon as I heard of his death; the poor mother's condition was really pitiable. She was helpless in her sorrow, which was so unexpected as to deprive her at first of the power of reason. The Good Shepherd though, had not forgotten her--he told her that he had taken her little lamb, and had gently folded it in his bosom, and that he would wander with it in the lovely pastures of Paradise. She was soon perfectly reconciled to the sad dispensation; sad indeed, for the child was her only earthly solace. Victim of an unhappy marriage, the dear engaging little boy was a great consolation to her, and his amusement and instruction occupied her mind, and passed away happily many a weary hour. "She insisted upon attending the funeral, and I accompanied her. Mr. Kent was with her, too, much distressed, for this hard man loved his child, and keenly felt his loss. "She got out of the carriage to hear the funeral service read, and was calm until they took up the coffin to lower it into the grave. Then it was impossible to control her. Placing her arms upon it, she looked around appealingly to the men; and so affected were they, that they turned from her to wipe away their own tears. Her strength gave way under the excitement, and she was carried, insensible, to the carriage, and taken home. "I found her very feverish, and did not like to leave her, thinking it probable that she might also have the disease which had carried off her child. Before night she became really ill, and Dr. Lawton pronounced her complaint scarlet fever. The disease was fearfully rapid, and soon ended her life. She was, I think, well prepared to go. Her solemn and affectionate farewell to her husband cannot fail to make an impression upon him. "I shall have a great deal to tell you of her when you return. The past winter has been a sad one; a constant coolness existing between her and her husband. A short time ago he was brutally striking that faithful old man of her father's, Robert, and Mrs. Kent interfered, insisting upon Robert's returning to his cabin, and in his presence forbidding Mr. Kent again to raise his hand against one servant on the plantation; Mr. Carter's will, allowing Mr. Kent no authority over his servants, and commending them to his daughter's kindness and care, showed great discrimination of character. This, though, has been a constant source of irritation to Mr. Kent, and he has never been kind to the people. Mrs. Kent, usually so timid, was roused into anger by his treatment of Robert, and interfered, as I have related to you. She told me of this, and said how unhappy it had made her, though she could not blame herself. Since then there has only been a formal politeness between them; Mr. Kent not forgiving his wife for the part she took against him. Poor little woman! Robert had been her father's faithful nurse in his long illness, and I do not wonder at her feelings on seeing him struck. "Yesterday the will was read, and Dr. Lawton, who was present, informed us of the result. Mrs. Kent has left most of her property to her husband, but her servants free! The plantation is to be sold, and the proceeds expended in preparing those who are willing to go to Liberia, or where they choose; as they cannot, manumitted, remain in Virginia. The older servants, who prefer staying in Virginia as they are, she has left to you, with an allowance for their support, considering you as a kind of guardian; for in no other way could she have provided for their staying here, which they will like better. "Who would have thought she could have made so wise a will? "Dr. Lawton says that Mr. Kent showed extreme anger on hearing it read. He intends returning to the North, and his $30,000 will be a clear gain, for I am told he had not a cent when he married her. "Write me when you have fixed the time for your return, and believe me, with love to all, "Your affectionate relative, JANET WILMER." Bacchus entered in time to hear the latter part of this letter. He had his master's boots in his hands. When Mrs. Weston stopped reading, he said, "That's good; bound for Mister Kent. I'm glad he's gwine, like Judas, to his own place." CHAPTER XXV. The carriage was slowly ascending the road to the old church, a familiar and dear object to each member of the Weston family. A village churchyard fills up so gradually, that one is not startled with a sudden change. Mr. Weston looked from the window at the ivy, and the gothic windows, and the family vault, where many of his name reposed. The inmates of the carriage had been conversing cheerfully, but as they approached the point where they would see home, each one was occupied with his or her musings. Occasionally, a pleasant word was exchanged, on the appearance of the well-known neighborhood, the balmy air, and the many shades of green that the trees presented; some of them loaded with white and pink blossoms, promising still better things when the season should advance. Alice leaned from the window, watching for the first glimpse of the well-remembered house. She greeted every tree they passed with a lively look, and smiled gaily as the porter's lodge presented itself. The gates of it flew open as the carriage approached, and Exeter in its beauty met their view. "Oh, uncle," she said, turning from the window, "look! look! Is there any place in the world like this?" "No, indeed, Alice;" and he took a survey of the home which had been so blessed to him. "How beautiful every thing looks! and how we will enjoy it, after a crowded, noisy hotel. Anna, you are not sorry to see its familiar face again. Ellen, my darling, we have not forgotten you--Exeter is your home, too; you are as welcome as any of us. Why, you look sober; not regretting Washington already?" "No sir," said Ellen, "I was thinking of other things." "Well," said Mrs. Weston, "we must look very happy this evening. I wonder, Ellen, Mr. Barbour has not met us." "I suppose," said Alice, laughing, "he is too much agitated at the thought of meeting Ellen again--he will be over this evening, I dare say." "I am sorry I can't keep my word with Mr. Barbour," said Ellen, "but I have concluded to marry Abel Johnson, on Arthur's recommendation, and I ought not to give good Mr. Barbour any false expectations." "You must know, dear uncle," said Alice, "that Ellen and Arthur have been carrying on a postscript correspondence in my letters, and Arthur has turned matchmaker, and has been recommending Abel Johnson to Ellen. They have fallen in love with each other, without having met, and that was the reason Ellen was so hard-hearted last winter." "Ah! that is the reason. But you must take care of these Yankee husbands, Miss Ellen, if Mr. Kent be a specimen," said Mrs. Weston. "I am quite sure," said Alice, "Arthur would not have such a friend." Mr. Weston smiled, and looked out again at home. They were rapidly approaching the gates, and a crowd of little darkies were holding them open on each side. "I wish Arthur were here," said he. "How long he has been away! I associate him with every object about the place." Alice did not answer; Arthur was in her thoughts. This was his home, every object with which she was surrounded breathed of him. She had thought of it as her home, but she had no right here--she was really only a guest. The thought was new and painful to her. Could the whole of her past existence have been dreamed away?--had she indeed no claim to the place she loved best on earth--was she dependant on the will of others for all the gay and joyous emotions that a few moments before filled her breast? She thought again of Arthur, of his handsome appearance, his good and generous heart, his talents, and his unchanging love to her--of Walter, and of all with which he had had to contend in the springtime of his life. Of his faults, his sin, and his banishment; of his love to her, too, and the delusion under which she had labored, of her returning it. Arthur would, ere long, know it all, and though he might forgive, her proud spirit rebelled at the idea that he would also blame. She looked at her uncle, whose happy face was fixed on the home of his youth and his old age--a sense of his protecting care and affection came over her. What might the short summer bring? His displeasure, too--then there would be no more for her, but to leave Exeter with all its happiness. Poor child! for, at nearly nineteen, Alice was only a child. The possibility overpowered her, she leant against her uncle's bosom, and wept suddenly and violently. "Alice, what is the matter?" said her mother. "Are you ill?" "What _is_ the matter?" said her uncle, putting his arm around her, and looking alarmed. "Nothing at all," said Alice, trying to control herself. "I was only thinking of all your goodness to me, and how I love you." "Is that all," said Mr. Weston, pressing her more closely to his bosom. "Why, the sight of home has turned your little head. Come, dry up your tears, for my old eyes can distinguish the hall door, and the servants about the house collecting to meet us." "I can see dear Cousin Janet, standing within--how happy she will be," said Mrs. Weston. "Well," said Ellen, "I hope Abel will make a fuss over me, for nobody else ever has." "If you are to be married," said Alice, smiling through her tears, "you must have his name changed, or always call him Mr. Johnson." "Never," said Ellen. "I have a perfect passion for the name of Abel. There was a picture in my room of Abel lying down, and Cain standing, holding the club over him. Whenever I got into a passion when I was a child, mammy used to take me to the picture and say, 'Look there, honey, if you don't learn how to get the better of your temper, one of these days you will get in a passion like Cain and kill somebody. Just look at him, how ugly he is--because he's in such a rage.' But I always looked at Abel, who was so much prettier. I have no doubt Abel Johnson looks just as he does in the picture." They were about to pass through the gates leading to the grounds; some of the servants approached the carriage, and respectfully bowing, said, 'Welcome home, master,' but passed on without waiting to have the salutation returned. Mrs. Weston guessed the cause of there not being a general outbreak on the occasion of their return. Miss Janet had spoken to a number of the servants, telling them how unable Mr. Weston was to bear any excitement, and that he would take the earliest opportunity of seeing them all at their cabins. As he was much attached to them and might feel a good deal at the meeting after so long a separation, it would be better not to give him a noisy welcome. She had, however, excepted the children in this prohibition, for Miss Janet had one excellent principle in the management of children, she never forbade them doing what she knew they could not help doing. Thus, as the carriage passed the lodge, a noisy group of small-sized darkies were making a public demonstration. "Massa's come home," says one. "I sees Miss Alice," says another. "I sees Miss Anna, too," said a third, though, as yet, not a face was visible to one of them. They put their heads out of the carriage, notwithstanding, to speak to them, and Alice emptied a good-sized basket of sugar-plums, which she had bought for the purpose, over their heads. "Take care, Mark," said Mr. Weston, "don't cut about with that whip, while all these children are so near." "If I didn't, sir," said Mark, "some of 'em would a been scrunched under the carriage wheels 'fore now. These little niggers," he muttered between his teeth, "they're always in the way. I wish some of 'em would get run over." Mark's wife was not a very amiable character, and she had never had any children. "Hurrah! daddy, is that you?" said an unmistakeable voice proceeding from the lungs of Bacchus the younger. "I been dansin juba dis hole blessed day--I so glad you come. Ask mammy if I aint?" "How is your mother, Bacchus?" said Mr. Weston, looking out the window. "Mammy, she's well," said the young gentleman; "how's you, master?" "Very well, I thank you, sir," said Mr. Weston. "Go down there and help pick up the sugar-plums." Bacchus the elder, now slid down from the seat by Mark, and took a short cut over to his cabin. "Poor Aunt Phillis!" said Mrs. Weston, looking after him, "I hope she will get well." "Ah!" said Mr. Weston, "I had forgotten Phillis on this happy day. There is something, you see, Anna, to make us sigh, even in our happiest moments. "But you shall not sigh, dearest uncle," said Alice, kissing his hand, "for Aunt Phillis will get well now that we are all back. Oh, there is Cousin Janet, and little Lydia--I wish the carriage would stop." "You are the most perfect child I ever saw, Alice," said Mrs. Weston. "I think you are out of your senses at the idea of getting home." The carriage wheeled round, and William let down the steps, with a face bright as a sunflower. Miss Janet stood at the top of the portico steps, in her dove-colored gown, and her three-cornered handkerchief, with open arms. Alice bounded like a deer, and was clasped within them. Then Mrs. Weston, then Ellen; and afterwards, the aged relatives warmly embraced each other. Little Lydia was not forgotten, they all shook hands with her, but Alice, who stooped to kiss her smooth, black cheek. William was then regularly shaken hands with, and the family entered the large, airy hall, and were indeed at home. Here were collected all the servants employed about the house, each in a Sunday dress, each greeted with a kind word. Alice shook hands with them two or three times over, then pointing to the family pictures, which were arranged along the hall, "Look at them, uncle," said she; "did you ever see them so smiling before?" They went to the drawing-room, all but Alice, who flew off in another direction. "She is gone to see Phillis," said Mr. Weston, gazing after her. "Well, I will rest a few moments, and then go too." Never did mother hold to her heart a child dearer to her, than Phillis, when she pressed Alice to her bosom. Alice had almost lived with her, when she, and Walter, and Arthur were children. Mrs. Weston knew that she could not be in better hands than under the care of so faithful and respectable a servant. Phillis had a large, old clothes' basket, where she kept the toys, all the little plates and cups with which they played dinner-party, the dolls without noses, and the trumpets that would not blow. Her children were not allowed to touch them when the owners were not there, but they took a conspicuous part in the play, being the waiters and ladies' maids and coach-drivers of the little gentlemen and Alice. After Walter and Arthur went away, Alice was still a great deal with Phillis, and she, regarding her as Arthur's future wife, loved her for him as well as for herself. Alice loved Phillis, too, and all her children, and they considered her as a little above mortality. Bacchus used to insist, when she was a child, that she never would live, she was _too good_. When, during her severe illness, Phillis would go to her cabin to look around, Bacchus would greet her with a very long face, and say, "I told you so. I know'd Miss Alice would be took from us all." Since her recovery, he had stopped prophesying about her. "Aunt Phillis," said Alice, "you don't look very sick. I reckon you _will_ work when you ought not. Now I intend to watch you, and make you mind, so that you will soon be well." "I am a great deal better than I was, Miss Alice, but there's no knowing; howsomever, I thank the Lord that he has spared me to see you once more. I want to give Master time to talk to Miss Janet a little while, then I am going in to see him and Miss Anna." "Oh! come now," said Alice, "or he will be over here." Phillis got up, and walked slowly to the house, Alice at her side, and Bacchus stumping after her. As they went in, Alice tripped on first, and opened the drawing-room door, making way for Phillis, who looked with a happy expression of face towards her master. "Is this you, Phillis?" said Mr. Weston, coming forward, and taking her hand most kindly. Mrs. Weston and Ellen got up to shake hands with her, too. "I am very glad to find you so much better than I expected," continued Mr. Weston; "you are thin, but your countenance is good. I hope you will get perfectly well, now that we are going to have summer weather." "Thank you, sir," said Phillis. "I am a great deal better. Thank God, you all look so well, Miss Anna and all. Miss Janet began to be mighty lonesome. I've been a great trouble to her." "No, you have not," said Miss Janet; "you never were a trouble to any one." "Master," said Bacchus, "I think the old ooman looks right well. She aint nigh so bad as we all thought. I reckon she couldn't stand my bein away so long; she hadn't nobody to trouble her." "You will never give her any more trouble," said Alice. "Aunt Phillis, you don't know how steady Uncle Bacchus has been; he is getting quite a temperance man." "Old Nick got the better of me twice, though," said Bacchus. "I did think, master, of tryin to make Phillis b'lieve I hadn't drank nothin dis winter; but she'd sure to find me out. There's somefin in her goes agin a lie." "But that was doing very well," said Alice; "don't you think so, Aunt Phillis? Only twice all through the winter." "Its an improvement, honey," said Phillis; "but what's the use of getting drunk at all? When we are thirsty water is better than any thing else; and when we aint thirsty, what's the use of drinking?" Phillis had been sitting in an arm-chair, that Mrs. Weston had placed for her. When she first came in, her face was a little flushed from pleasure, and the glow might have been mistaken as an indication of health. The emotion passed, Mrs. Weston perceived there was a great change in her. She was excessively emaciated; her cheek-bones prominent, her eyes large and bright. The whiteness of her teeth struck them all. These symptoms, and the difficulty with which she breathed, were tokens of her disease. She became much fatigued and Miss Janet advised her to go home and lie down. "They shan't tell you of their grand doings to-night, Phillis," she said; "for you have been excited, and must keep quiet. In the morning you will be able to listen to them. Don't tell any long stories, Bacchus," she continued. "Dr. Lawton wants her to keep from any excitement at night, for fear she should not sleep well after it. All you travelers had better go to bed early, and wake up bright in the morning." Alice went home with Phillis, and came back to welcome Mr. Barbour, who had just arrived. The happy evening glided away; home was delightful to the returned family. Bacchus gave glowing descriptions of scenes, in which he figured largely, to the servants; and Bacchus the younger devoutly believed there had not been so distinguished a visitor to the metropolis that winter, as his respected father. Dr. Lawton came regularly to see Phillis, who frequently rallied. Her cheerfulness made her appear stronger than she was; but when Alice would tell her how well she looked, and that the sight of Arthur would complete her recovery, she invariably answered, "I want to see him mightily, child; but about my gettin well, there's no telling. God only knows." CHAPTER XXVI. "Do sit down, my dear cousin," said Miss Janet to Mr. Weston, who was walking up and down the drawing-room. "Here, in August, instead of being quiet and trying to keep cool, you are fussing about, and heating yourself so uselessly." "I will try," said Mr. Weston, smiling, and seating himself on the sofa; but you must recollect that for three years I have not seen my only son, and that now he is coming home to stay. I cannot realize it; it is too much happiness. We are so blessed, Cousin Janet, we have so much of this world's good, I sometimes tremble lest God should intend me to have my portion here." "It is very wrong to feel so," said Cousin Janet; "even in this world, He can give his beloved rest." "But am I one of the beloved?" asked Mr. Weston, thoughtfully. "I trust so," said Cousin Janet. "I do not doubt it. How lamentable would be your situation and mine, if, while so near the grave, we were deprived of that hope, which takes from it all its gloom." "Are you talking of gloom?" said Mrs. Weston, "and Arthur within a few miles of us? It is a poor compliment to him. I never saw so many happy faces. The servants have all availed themselves of their afternoon's holiday to dress; they look so respectable. Esther says they have gone to the outer gate to welcome Arthur first; Bacchus went an hour ago. Even poor Aunt Phillis has brightened up. She has on a head-handkerchief and apron white as snow, and looks quite comfortable, propped up by two or three pillows. "Arthur will be sadly distressed to see Phillis, though he will not realize her condition at first. The nearer her disease approaches its consummation, the brighter she looks." "It seems but yesterday," said Mr. Weston, "that Phillis sat at her cabin door, with Arthur (a baby) in her arms, and her own child, almost the same age, in the cradle near them. She has been no eye-servant. Faithfully has she done her duty, and now she is going to receive her reward. I never can forget the look of sympathy which was in her face, when I used to go to her cabin to see my motherless child. She always gave Arthur the preference, putting her own infant aside to attend to his wants. Phillis is by nature a conscientious woman; but nothing but the grace of God could have given her the constant and firm principle that has actuated her life. But this example of Christian excellence will soon be taken from us; her days are numbered. Her days _here_ are numbered; but how blessed the eternity! Sometimes, I have almost reproached myself that I have retained a woman like Phillis as a slave. She deserves every thing from me: I have always felt under obligations to her." "You have discharged them," said Mrs. Weston. "Phillis, though a slave, has had a very happy life; she frequently says so. This is owing, in a great measure, to her own disposition and rectitude of character. Yet she has had every thing she needed, and a great deal more. You have nothing with which to reproach yourself." "I trust not," said Mr. Weston. "I have endeavored, in my dealings with my servants, to remember the All-seeing eye was upon me, and that to Him who placed these human beings in a dependant position, would I have to render my account. Ah! here are the girls. Alice, we had almost forgotten Arthur; you and Ellen remind us of him." "Really," said Ellen, "I am very unhappy; I have no lover to expect. You see that I am arrayed in a plain black silk, to show my chagrin because Mr. Johnson could not come now. Alice has decked herself so that Arthur can read her every thought at the first glance. She has on her blue barège dress, which implies her unvarying constancy. Then--" "I did not think of that," said Alice, blushing deeply, and looking down at her dress; "I only--" "Miss Alice," said Lydia, "I hears somethin." "No, no," said Miss Janet, looking from the window, "there is nothing--" "Deed the is," said Lydia. "Its Mas' Arthur's horse, I know." Mr. Weston went out on the porch, and the ladies stood at the windows. The voices of the servants could be distinctly heard. From the nature of the sound, there was no doubt they were giving a noisy welcome to their young master. "He _is_ coming," said Miss Janet, much agitated; "the servants would not make that noise were he not in sight." "I hear the horses, too," said Ellen; "we will soon see him where the road turns." "There he comes," said Mrs. Weston. "It must be Arthur. William is with him; he took a horse for Arthur to the stage house." The father stood looking forward, the wind gently lifting the thin white hair from his temples; his cheek flushed, his clear blue eye beaming with delight. The horseman approached. The old man could not distinguish his face, yet there was no mistaking his gay and gallant bearing. The spirited and handsome animal that bore him flew over the gravelled avenue. Only a few minutes elapsed from the time he was first seen to the moment when the father laid his head upon his son's shoulder; and while he was clasped to that youthful and manly heart experienced sensations of joy such as are not often felt here. Alice had known, too, that it was he. But when we long to be assured of happiness, we are often slow to believe. It was not until her eyes could distinguish every feature that her heart said, "It is Arthur." Then all was forgotten--all timidity, all reserve--all, save that he was the dearly loved brother of her childhood; the being with whom her destiny had long been associated. She passed from the drawing-room to the porch as he alighted from his horse, and when his father released him from a long embrace, Arthur's eyes fell upon the dear and unchanged countenance, fixed upon him with a look of welcome that said more than a thousand words. * * * * * "Aunt," said Arthur, a week after his return, as he sat with Mrs. Weston and Alice in the arbor, "before you came, Alice had been trying to persuade me that she had been in love with Walter; but I can't believe it." "I never did believe it for a moment. She thought she was, and she was seized with such a panic of truth and honor that she made a great commotion; insisted on writing to you, and making a full confession; wanted to tell her uncle, and worry him to death; doing all sorts of desperate things. She actually worked herself into a fever. It was all a fancy." "I have too good an opinion of myself to believe it," said Arthur. "I am sorry," said Alice, "for it is true. It is a pity your vanity cannot be a little diminished." "Why, the fact is Alice, I remember Uncle Bacchus's story about General Washington and his servant, when the general's horse fell dead, or rather the exclamation made by the servant after relating the incident: 'Master, _he_ thinks of everything.' I do too. When we were children, no matter how bad Walter was, you took his part. I remember once he gave William such a blow because he stumbled over a wagon that he had been making, and broke it. I asked him if he were not ashamed to do so, and you said, 'Hush, Arthur, he feels bad; if you felt as sorry as he does, you would behave just in the same way.' So, the fact is, last summer you saw he _felt bad_, and your tender heart inundated with sympathy." "That was it," said Mrs. Weston; "it was a complete inundation." "You are not in love with him now, are you, Alice?" said Arthur, smiling. "No, indeed," said Alice, "I am not in love with him, or you either--if being in love is what it is described in novels. I never have palpitation of the heart, never faint away, and am not at all fond of poetry. I should make a sad heroine, I am such a matter-of-fact person." "So as you make a good wife," said Arthur, "no matter about being a heroine." "A planter's wife has little occasion for romance," said Mrs. Weston; "her duties are too many and too important. She must care for the health and comfort of her family, and of her servants. After all, a hundred servants are like so many children to look after." "Ellen would make an elegant heroine," said Alice. "She was left an orphan when very young; had an exacting uncle and aunt; was the belle of the metropolis; had gay and gallant lovers; is an heiress--and has fallen in love with a man she never saw. To crown all, he is not rich, so Ellen can give him her large fortune to show her devotion, and they can go all over the world together, and revel in romance and novelty." "Well," said Arthur, "I will take you all over the world if you wish it. When will you set out, and how will you travel? If that is all you complain of in your destiny, I can easily change it." "I do not complain of my destiny," said Alice, gaily. "I was only contrasting it with Ellen's. I shall be satisfied never to leave Exeter, and my migrations need not be more extended than were Mrs. Primroses's, 'from the green room to the brown.' Poor Walter! I wish he would fall in love with some beautiful Italian, and be as happy as we are." "Do not fear for Walter," said Mrs. Weston. "He will take care of himself; his last letter to Cousin Janet was very cheerful. I shall have to diminish your vanity, Alice, by telling you Walter will never 'die for love of Alice Weston.' He will be captivated some day with a more dashy lady, if not an Italian countess. I have no doubt he will eventually become a resident of Europe. A life of repentance will not be too much for a man whose hands are stained with the blood of his fellowman. The day is past in our country, and I rejoice to say it, when a duellist can be tolerated. I always shudder when in the presence of one, though I never saw but one." Mr. Weston now entered, much depressed from a recent interview with Phillis. This faithful and honored servant was near her departure. Angels were waiting at the throne of the Eternal, for his command to bear her purified spirit home. * * * * * The master and the slave were alone. No eye save their Maker's looked upon them; no ear save his, heard what passed between them. Mr. Weston was seated in the easy chair, which had been removed from the other room, and in which his wife had died. Phillis was extended on a bed of death. Her thin hands crossed on her bosom, her eyes fearfully bright, a hectic glow upon her cheek. "Master," she said, "you have no occasion to feel uneasy about that. I have never had a want, I nor the children. There was a time, sir, when I was restless about being a slave. When I went with you and Miss Anna away from home, and heard the people saying colored people ought to be free, it made me feel bad. I thought then that God did not mean one of his creatures to be a slave; when I came home and considered about it, I would often be put out, and discontented. It was wicked, I know, but I could not help it for a while. "I saw my husband and children doing well and happy, but I used to say to myself, they are slaves, and so am I. So I went about my work with a heavy heart. When my children was born, I would think 'what comfort is it to give birth to a child when I know its a slave.' I struggled hard though, with these feelings, sir, and God gave me grace to get the better of them, for I could not read my Bible without seeing there was nothing agin slavery there; and that God had told the master his duty, and the slave his duty. You've done your duty by me and mine, sir; and I hope where I have come short you will forgive me, for I couldn't die in peace, without I thought you and I was all right together." "Forgive you, Phillis," said Mr. Weston, much affected. "What have I to forgive? Rather do I thank you for all you have done for me. You were a friend and nurse to my wife, and a mother to my only child. Was ever servant or friend so faithful as you have been!" Phillis smiled and looked very happy. "Thank you, master," she said, "from my heart. How good the Lord is to me, to make my dying bed so easy. It puts me in mind of the hymn Esther sings. She's got a pleasant voice, hasn't she, sir? 'And while I feel my heart-strings break, How sweet the moments roll! A mortal paleness on my cheek And glory in my soul.' "Oh! master, its sweet for me to die, for Jesus is my friend; he makes all about me friends too, for it seems to me that you and Miss Janet, and all of you are my friends. Poor Bacchus! he takes on sadly about me; he always was a tender-hearted soul. Master, when I am gone, I know you will be good to him and comfort him, but, please sir, do something else. Talk to him, and pray for him, and read the blessed Book to him! Oh! if he would only give up liquor! I trust in the Lord he will live and die a sober man, else I know we'll never meet again. We won't be on the same side at the Judgment Seat. There's no drunkards in that happy place where I am going fast. No drunkards in the light of God's face--no drunkards at the blessed feet of Jesus." "I think Bacchus has perfectly reformed," said Mr. Weston, "and you may feel assured that we will do every thing for his soul as well as his body, that we can. But, Phillis, have you no wishes to express, as regards your children?" Phillis hesitated--"My children are well off," she said; "they have a good master; if they serve him and God faithfully they will be sure to do well." "If there is any thing on your mind," said Mr. Weston, "speak it without fear. The distinction between you and me as master and slave, I consider no longer existing. You are near being redeemed from my power, and the power of death alone divides you from your Saviour's presence. That Saviour whose example you have tried to follow, whose blood has washed your soul from all its sin. I am much older than you, and I live in momentary expectation of my summons. We shall soon meet, I hope, in that happy place, where the distinctions of this world will be forgotten. I have thought of you a great deal, lately, and have been anxious to relieve your mind of every care. It is natural that a mother, about to leave such a family as you have, should have some wishes regarding them. "I have thought several times," continued Mr. Weston, "of offering to set your children free at my death, and I will do so if you wish. You must be aware that they could not remain in Virginia after they were manumitted. In the Middle and Northern states free blacks are in a degraded condition. There is no sympathy for or with them. They have no more rights than they have as slaves with us, and they have no one to care for them when they are sick or in trouble. You have seen a good deal of this in your occasional visits to the North. In Washington, since the Abolitionists have intermeddled there, the free blacks have become intolerable; they live from day to day in discomfort and idleness. I mean as a general thing; there are, of course, occasional exceptions. Bacchus is too old to take care of himself; he would not be happy away from Exeter. Consider what I say to you, and I will be guided by your wishes as regards your children. "They might go to Liberia; some of them would be willing, no doubt. I have talked to William, he says he would not go. Under these circumstances they would be separated, and it is doubtful whether I would be doing you or them a favour by freeing them. Be perfectly candid, and let me know your wishes." "As long as you, or Master Arthur and Miss Alice live, they would be better off as they are," said Phillis. "I believe they would," said Mr. Weston, "but life and death cannot be too much considered in connection with each other. I must soon go. I am only lingering at the close of a long journey. Arthur will then have control, and will, I am certain, make his servants as happy as he can. My family is very small; you are aware I have no near relations. I have made my will, and should Arthur and Alice die without children, I have left all my servants free. Your children I have thus provided for. At my death they are free, but I would not feel justified in turning them into the world without some provision. The older children can take care of themselves; they are useful and have good principles. I have willed each one of them to be free at the age of twenty years. Thus, you see, most of them will soon be free, while none will have to wait very long. In the mean time they will be well taught and cared for. My will is made, and all the forms of law attended to. Arthur and Alice are very much pleased with it. Your older children know it; they are very happy, but they declare they will never leave Exeter as long as there is a Weston upon it.[B] And now, Phillis, are you satisfied? I shall experience great pleasure in having been able to relieve you of any anxiety while you have so much pain to bear." "Oh! master," said Phillis, "what shall I say to you? I haven't no learning. I am only a poor, ignorant woman. I can't thank you, master, as I ought. My heart is nigh to bursting. What have I done that the Lord is so good to me. He has put it into your heart to make me so happy; Thank you, master, and God for ever bless you." The tears streamed down her cheeks, as Mr. Weston arose to go. Esther had come to see if her mother wanted any thing. "Master," said Phillis, "wait one moment--there's nothing between me and Heaven now. Oh! sir, I shall soon be redeemed from all sin and sorrow. I think I see the glory that shines about the heavenly gates. I have never felt myself ready to go until now, but there is nothing to keep me. The Lord make your dying bed as easy as you have mine." Mr. Weston endeavored to compose himself, but was much agitated. "Phillis," he said, "you have deserved more than I could ever do for you. If any thing should occur to you that I have not thought of, let me know, it shall, if possible, be done. Would you like again to see Mr. Caldwell, and receive the communion?" "No, master, I thank you. You and Miss Janet, and Miss Anna, and poor Bacchus, took it with me last week, and I shall soon be where there will be no more need to remind me of the Lamb that was slain; for I shall be with him; I shall see him as he is. And, master, we will all meet there. We will praise him together." Esther was weeping; and Mr. Weston, quite overcome, left the room. "Esther, child," said Phillis, "don't do so. There's nothing but glory and peace. There's no occasion for tears. God will take care of you all here, and will, I hope and pray, bring you to heaven at last. Poor master! To think he is so distressed parting with me. I thought I should have stood by his dying bed. The Lord knows best." "Mother," said Esther, "will you take this medicine--it is time?" "No, honey. No more medicine; it won't do me no good. I don't want medicine. Jesus is what I want. He is all in all." * * * * * Reader! have you ever stood by the dying bed of a slave? It may be not. There are those who are often there. The angels of God, and One who is above the angels. One who died for all. He is here now. Here, where stand weeping friends--here, where all is silence. You may almost hear the angel's wings as they wait to bear the redeemed spirit to its heavenly abode. Here, where the form is almost senseless, the soul fluttering between earth and heaven. Here, where the Spirit of God is over-shadowing the scene. "Master," said Phillis, "all is peace. Jesus is here. I am going home. You will soon be there, and Miss Janet can't be long. Miss Anna too. Bacchus, the good Lord will bring you there. I trust in Him to save you. My children, God bless them, little Lydia and all." "Master Arthur," said she, as Arthur bent over her, "give my love to Master Walter. You and Miss Alice will soon be married. The Lord make you happy. God bless you, Miss Ellen, and make you his child. Keep close, children to Jesus. Seems as if we wasn't safe when we can't see him. I see him now; he is beckoning me to come. Blessed Jesus! take me--take me home." Kind master, weep not. She will bear, even at the throne of God, witness to thy faithfulness. Through thee she learned the way to heaven, and it may be soon she will stand by thee again, though thou see her not. She may be one of those who will guide thee to the Celestial City; to the company of the redeemed, where will be joy forever. Weep not, but see in what peace a Christian can die. Watch the last gleams of thought which stream from her dying eyes. Do you see any thing like apprehension? The world, it is true, begins to shut in. The shadows of evening collect around her senses. A dark mist thickens, and rests upon the objects which have hitherto engaged her observation. The countenances of her friends become more and more indistinct. The sweet expressions of love and friendship are no longer intelligible. Her ear wakes no more at the well-known voice of her children, and the soothing accents of tender affection die away unheard upon her decaying senses. To her the spectacle of human life is drawing to its close, and the curtain is descending which shuts out this earth, its actors, and its scenes. She is no longer interested in all that is done under the sun. Oh! that I could now open to you the recesses of her soul, that I could reveal to you the light which darts into the chambers of her understanding. She approaches that world which she has so long seen in faith. The imagination now collects its diminished strength, and the eye of faith opens wide. "Friends! do not stand thus fixed in sorrow around this bed of death. Why are you so still and silent? Fear not to move; you cannot disturb the visions that enchant this holy spirit. She heeds you not; already she sees the spirits of the just advancing together to receive a kindred soul. She is going to add another to the myriads of the just, that are every moment crowding into the portals of heaven. She is entering on a noble life. Already she cries to you from the regions of bliss. Will you not join her there? Will you not taste the sublime joys of faith? There are seats for you in the assembly of the just made perfect, in the innumerable company of angels, where is Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and God, the Judge of all." CONCLUDING REMARKS. I must be allowed to quote the words of Mrs. Harriet B. Stowe: "The writer has often been (or will be) inquired of by correspondents from different parts of the country, whether this narrative is a true one; and to these inquiries she will give one general answer. The separate incidents that compose the narrative are to a very great extent authentic, occurring, many of them, either under her own observation, or that of her personal friends. She or her friends have observed characters the counterpart of almost all that are here introduced; and many of the sayings are word for word as heard herself, or reported to her." Of the planter Legree, (and, with the exception of Prof. Webster, such a wretch never darkened humanity,) she says: "Of him her brother wrote, he actually made me feel of his fist, which was like a blacksmith's hammer or a nodule of iron, telling me that it was calloused with knocking down niggers." Now as a parallel to this, I will state a fact communicated to me by a clergyman, (a man of great talent, and goodness of character, and undoubted veracity,) that a superintendent of Irishmen, who were engaged on a Northern railroad, told him he did not hesitate to knock any man down that gave him the least trouble; and although the clergyman did not "examine his fist and pronounce it like a blacksmith's hammer," yet, I have not the slightest doubt it was "calloused with knocking down Irishmen." At any rate, I take the license of the writers of the day, and say it was. Mrs. Stowe goes on to say, "That the tragical fate of Tom also has too many times had its parallel, there are living witnesses all over our land to testify." Now it would take the smallest portion of common sense to know that there is no witness, dead or living, who could testify to such a fact, save a _false witness_. This whole history is an absurdity. No master would be fool enough to sell the best hand on his estate; one who directed, and saved, and managed for him. No master would be brutish enough to sell the man who had nursed him and his children, who loved him like a son, _even for urgent debt_, had he another article of property in the wide world. But Mr. Shelby does so, according to Mrs. Stowe, though he has a great many other servants, besides houses and lands, &c. Preposterous! And such a saint as Uncle Tom was, too! One would have thought his master, with the opinion he had of his religious qualifications, would have kept him until he died, and then have sold him bone after bone to the Roman Catholics. Why, every tooth in his head would have brought its price. St. Paul was nothing but a common man compared with him, for St. Paul had been wicked once; and even after his miraculous conversion, he felt that sin was still impelling him to do what he would not. But not so with Uncle Tom! He was the very perfection of a saint. Well might St. Clare have proposed using him for a family chaplain, or suggested to himself the idea of ascending to heaven by Tom's skirts. Mrs. Stowe should have carried out one of her ideas in his history, and have made him Bishop of Carthage. I have never heard or read of so perfect a character. All the saints and martyrs that ever came to unnatural deaths, could not show such an amount of excellence. I only wonder he managed to stay so long in this world of sin. When, after fiery trials and persecutions, he is finally purchased by a Mr. Legree, Mrs. Stowe speaks of the horrors of the scene. She says though, "it can't be helped." Did it ever occur to her, that Northerners might go South, and buy a great many of these slaves, and manumit them? They do go South and buy them, but they keep them, and work them as slaves too. A great deal of this misery _might_ be helped. Tom arrives at Legree's plantation. How does he fare? Sleeps on a little foul, dirty straw, jammed in with a lot of others; has every night toward midnight enough corn to stay the stomach of one small chicken; and is thrown into a most dreadful state of society--men degraded, and women degraded. We will pass over scenes that a woman's pen should never describe, and observe the saint-like perfection of Tom. He was, or considered himself, a missionary to the negroes, evidently liked his sufferings, and died, by choice, a martyr's death. He made the most astonishing number of conversions in a short time, and of characters worse than history records. So low, so degraded, so lost were the men and women whose wicked hearts he subdued, that their conversion amounted to nothing less than miracles. No matter how low, how ignorant, how depraved, the very sight of Tom turned them into advanced, intelligent Christians. Tom's lines were indeed cast in a sad place. I have always believed that the Creator was everywhere; but we are told of Legree's plantation "The Lord never visits these parts." This might account for the desperate wickedness of most of the characters, but how Tom could retain his holiness under the circumstances is a marvel to me. His religion, then, depended on himself. Assuredly he was more than a man! Legree had several ways of keeping his servants in order--"they were burned alive; scalded, cut into inch pieces; set up for the dogs to tear, or hung up and whipped to death." Now I am convinced that Mrs. Stowe must have a credulous mind; and was imposed upon. She never could have conceived such things with all her talent; the very conception implies a refinement of cruelty. She gives, however, a mysterious description of a certain "place way out down by the quarters, where you can see a black blasted tree, and the ground all covered with black ashes." It is afterward intimated that this was the scene of a negro burned alive. Reader, you may depend, it was a mistake; that's just the way a tree appears when it has been struck by lightning. Next time you pass one, look at it. I have not the slightest doubt that this was the way the mistake was made. We have an occasional wag at the South, and some one has practised upon a soft-hearted New Englander in search of horrors; this is the result. She mentions that the ashes were black. Do not infer from this that it must have been a black man or negro. But I will no longer arraign your good sense. It was not, take my word for it, as Mrs. Stowe describes it, some poor negro "tied to a tree, with a slow fire lit under him." Tom tells Legree "he'd as soon die as not." Indeed, he proposes whipping, starving, burning; saying, "it will only send him sooner where he wants to go." Tom evidently considers himself as too good for this world; and after making these proposals to his master, he is asked, "How are you?" He answers: "The Lord God has sent his angel, and shut the lion's mouth." Anybody can see that he is laboring under a hallucination, and fancies himself Daniel. Cassy, however, consoled him after the style of Job's friends, by telling him that his master was going "to hang like a dog at his throat, sucking his blood, bleeding away his life drop by drop." In what an attitude, O Planters of the South, has Mrs. Stowe taken your likenesses! Tom dies at last. How could such a man die? Oh! that he would live forever and convert all our Southern slaves. He did not need any supporting grace on his deathbed. Hear him--"The Lord may help me, or not help, but I'll hold on to him." I thought a Christian could not hold on to the Lord without help. "Ye can of yourself do nothing." But Tom is an exception--to the last he is perfect. All Christians have been caught tripping sometimes, but Tom never is. He is "bearing everybody's burdens." He might run away, but he will not. He says, "The Lord has given me a work among these yer poor souls, and I'll stay with 'em, and bear my cross with 'em to the end." Christian reader, we must reflect. We know where to go for _one_ instance of human perfection, where the human and the Divine were united, but we know not of another. Tom converts Cassy, a most infamous creature from her own accounts, and we are to sympathize with her vileness, for she has no other traits of character described. Tom converts her, but I am sorry to see she steals money and goods, and fibs tremendously afterwards. We hope the rest of his converts did him more credit. The poor fellow dies at last--converting two awful wretches with his expiring breath. The process of conversion was very short. "Oh! Lord, give me these two more souls, I pray." That prayer was answered. The saddest part of this book would be, (if they were just,) the inferences to be drawn from the history of this wretch, Legree. Mrs. Stowe says, "He was rocked on the bosom of a mother, cradled with prayer and pious hymns, his now seared brow bedewed with the waters of baptism. In early childhood, a fair-haired woman had led him, at the sound of Sabbath bells, to worship and to pray. Far in New England that mother had trained her only son with long unwearied love and patient prayers." Believe it not, Christian mother, North or South! Thou hast the promises of Scripture to the contrary. Rock thy babe upon thy bosom--sing to him sweet hymns--carry him to the baptismal font--be unwearied in love--patient in prayers; he will never be such a one. He may wander, but he will come back; do thy duty by him, and God will not forget his promises. "He is not man that he will lie; nor the son of man that he will repent." Legree is a Northerner. Time would fail me to notice all the crimes with which Southern men and women are charged; but their greatness and number precludes the possibility of their being believed. According to Mrs. Stowe, mothers do not love their beautiful children at the South. The husbands have to go to New England and bring back old maids to take care of them, and to see to their houses, which are going to rack and ruin under their wives' surveillance. Oh! these Southern husbands, a heart of stone must pity them. Then again, Southern planters keep dogs and blood-hounds to hunt up negroes, tear women's faces, and commit all sorts of _doggish_ atrocities. Now I have a charitable way of accounting for this. I am convinced, too, this is a misapprehension; and I'll tell you why. I have a mortal fear of dogs myself. I always had. No reasoning, no scolding, ever had the slightest effect upon me. I never passed one on my way to church with my prayer-book in my hand, without quaking. If they wag their tails, I look around for aid. If they bark, I immediately give myself up for lost. I have died a thousand deaths from the mere accident of meeting dogs in the street. I never did meet one without believing that it was his destiny to give my children a step-mother. In point of fact, I would like to live in a world without dogs; but as I cannot accomplish this, I console myself by living in a house without one. I always expect my visitors to leave their dogs at home; they may bring their children, but they must not bring their dogs. I wish dogs would not even look in my basement windows as they pass. I am convinced therefore, that some Northerner has passed a plantation at the South, and seen dogs tied up. Naturally having a horror of dogs, he has let his imagination loose. After a great deal of mental exercise, the brain jumps at a conclusion, "What are these dogs kept here for?" The answer is palpable: "To hunt niggers when they run away." Reader, imitate my charity; it is a rare virtue where white faces are concerned. All the rest of Mrs. Stowe's horrors can be accounted for satisfactorily. It is much better to try and find an excuse for one's fellow-creatures than to be always calling them "story-tellers," and the like. I am determined to be charitable. But still it is misrepresentation; for if they took proper means, they would find out the delusions under which they labor. Abolitionists do not help their cause by misrepresentation. It will do well enough, in a book of romance, to describe infants torn from the arms of their shrieking mothers, and sold for five and ten dollars. It tells well, for the mass of readers are fond of horrors; but it is not true. It is on a par with the fact stated, that masters advertise their slaves, and offer rewards for them, dead or alive. How did the snows of New England ever give birth to such brilliant imaginations! Family relations are generally respected; and when they are not, it is one of the evils attendant on an institution which God has permitted in all ages, for his inscrutable purposes, and which he may in his good time do away with. The Jews ever turn their eyes and affections toward Jerusalem, as their home; so should the free colored people in America regard Liberia. Africa, once their mother country, should, in its turn, be the country of their adoption. As regards the standard of talent among negroes, I fancy it has been exaggerated; though no one can, at present, form a just conclusion. Slavery has, for ages, pressed like a band of iron round the intellect of the colored man. Time must do its work to show what he is, without a like hindrance. The instance mentioned in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of a young mulatto, George Harris, inventing a machine, is _very solitary_. The negroes, like a good many of their owners, are opposed to innovations. They like the good old way. The hot sun under which they were born, and the hotter one that lighted the paths of their ancestors, prejudices them against any new effort. I think, _when they do get in Congress_, they will vote for agricultural against manufacturing interests. I am sure they would rather pick cotton than be confined to the din and dust of a factory. An old negro prefers to put his meal bags in a covered wagon, and drive them to market at his leisure, with his pocket full of the tobacco he helped to raise, and the whole country for a spit-box, to being whirled away bodily in a railroad car, in terror of his life, deaf with the whistling and the puffing of the engine. When Liberia or Africa does become a great nation, (Heaven grant it may soon,) they will require many other buildings there, before a patent office is called for. George Harris is a _natural_ Abolitionist, with a dark complexion. He is a remarkable youth in other respects, though I should first consider the enormous fact of George's master appropriating to himself the benefit of his servant's cleverness. Even with a show of right this may be a mean trick, but it is the way of the world. A large portion of New England men are at this time claiming each other's patents. I know of an instance down East, for Southerners can sometimes "tak notes, and prent 'em too." A gentleman took a friend to his room, and showed him an invention for which he was about to apply for a patent. The friend walked off with his hands in his pocket; his principles had met, and passed an appropriation bill; the invention had become his own--in plain English, he stole it. Washington is always full of people claiming each other's brains. The lawyers at the Patent Office have their hands full. They must keep wide awake, too. Each inventor, when he relates his grievances, brings a witness to maintain his claim. There is no doubt that, after a while, there will be those who can testify to the fact of having seen the idea as it passed through the inventor's mind. The way it is settled at present is this--whoever can pay the most for the best lawyer comes off triumphantly! Poor George is not the only smart fellow in the world outdone by somebody better off than himself. George positively refuses to hear the Bible quoted. He believes in a higher law, no doubt, Frederic Douglas being editorial expounder; a sort of Moses of this century, a little less meek, though, than the one who instructed the Israelites. George won't hear the Bible; he prefers, he says, appealing to the Almighty himself. This makes me fear his Abolitionist friends are not doing right by him; putting him up to shooting, and turning Spanish gentleman, and all sorts of vagaries; to say nothing of disobeying the laws of the country. No one blames him, though, for escaping from a hard master; at least, I do not. It would be a grand thing to stand on the shore of a new country, and see before you, _free_, every slave and prisoner on the soil of the earth; to hear their Te Deum ascend to the listening heavens. Methinks the sun would stand still, as it did of old, and earth would lift up her voice, and lead the song of her ransomed children; but, alas! this cannot be yet--the time is not come. Oppression wears her crown in every clime, though it is sometimes hidden from the gaze of her subjects. George declares he knows more than his master; "he can read and write better;" but his logic is bad. He thus discusses the indications of Providence. A friend reminds him of what the apostle says, "Let every man abide in the condition in which he is called," and he immediately uses this simile: "I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come, and take you a prisoner, away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your life hoeing corn for them, if you'd think it your duty to abide in that condition in which you were called. I rather think, that you'd think the first stray horse you could find an indication of Providence--shouldn't you?" This does not apply to slavery. A man born a slave, in a country where slavery is allowed by law, should feel the obligation of doing his duty while a slave; but Mr. Wilson, carried off by Indians, would feel as if he had been called to a state of life previous to the one in which he was so unfortunate to be doomed, while he was among savages. George goes on to say--"Let any man take care that tries to stop me, for I am desperate, and I'll fight for my liberty. You say your fathers did it: if it was right for them, it is right for me." Too fast, George! You are out in your history, too. Your master must be a remarkably ignorant man if you know more than he. Our glorious ancestors were never condemned to slavery, they nor their fathers, by God himself. Neither have they ever been considered in the light of runaways; they came off with full permission, and having _honestly_ and _honorably_ attained their liberties, they fought for them. Besides being of a prettier complexion, and coming of a better stock than you, they were _prepared_ to be free. There is a great deal in that. Then, those very ancestors of ours--ah! there's the rub--(and the ancestors of the Abolitionists, too,) they got us and you into this difficulty--think of it! They had your ancestors up there in New England, until they found you were so lazy, and died off so in their cold climate, that it _did not pay to keep you_. So I repeat to you the advice of Mr. Wilson, "Be careful, my boy; don't shoot anybody, George, unless--well--you'd better not shoot, I reckon; at least, I wouldn't hit anybody, you know." As regards the practice of marking negroes in the hand, I look upon it as one of the imaginary horrors of the times--delusion like spiritual rappings, got up out of sheer timidity of disposition, though I have heard of burning old women for witches in New England, and placing a scarlet letter on the bosom of some unhappy one, who had already sorrow and sin enough to bear. It won't do; the subject has, without doubt, been duly investigated already. I'd be willing (were I not opposed to betting) to bet my best collar and neck ribbon, that a committee of investigation has been appointed, consisting of twelve of Boston's primmest old maids, and they have been scouring the plantations of the South, bidding the negroes hold out their hands, (not as the poor souls will at first suppose, that they may be crossed with a piece of silver,) and that they are now returning, crest-fallen, to their native city, not having seen a branded hand in all their journeying. Could aught escape _their_ vigilance? But they will say they saw a vast number, and that will answer the purpose. (Ah! Washington Irving, well mayest thou sigh and look back at the ladies of the Golden Age. "These were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets." These days are for ever gone. Prophetic was thy lament! Now we may wear pockets--but, alas! we neither stay at home, nor read our Bible. We form societies to reform the world, and we write books on slavery!) Talking of our ancestors, George, in the time of the Revolution, (by-the-by, yours were a set of dear, honest old creatures, for there were no Abolitionists then among us,) reminds me of an anecdote about George Washington and a favorite servant. Billy Lee was an honest, faithful man, and a first-rate groom, and George Washington--you need not blush to be a namesake of his, though he was a slaveholder. The two were in a battle, the battle of Monmouth, the soldiers fighting like sixty, and Billy Lee looking on at a convenient distance, taking charge of a led horse, in case Washington's should be shot from under him. O, but it was a hot day! Washington used to recall the thirst and the suffering attendant upon the heat, (thinking of the soldiers' suffering, and not of his own.) As for Billy Lee, if he did not breathe freely, he perspired enough so to make up for it. I warrant you he was anxious for the battle to be over, and the sun to go down. But there he stood, true as steel--honest, old patriot as he was--quieting the horse, and watching his noble master's form, as proud and erect it was seen here and there, directing the troops with that union of energy and calmness for which he was distinguished. Washington's horse fell under him, dying from excessive heat; but hear Billy Lee describe it: "Lord! sir, if you could a seen it; de heat, and dust, and smoke. De cannons flyin, and de shot a whizzin, and de dust a blowing, and de horses' heels a kickin up, when all at onct master's horse fell under him. It warn't shot--bless your soul, no. It drapped right down dead wid de heat. Master he got up. I was scared when I see him and de horse go; but master got up. He warn't hurt; couldn't hurt him. "Master he got up, looked round at me. 'Billy,' says he, 'give me the other horse, and you take care of the new saddle on this other poor fellow.' "Did you ever hear de like?" added Billy Lee, "thinking of de saddle when de balls was a flyin most in our eyes. But it's always de same wid master. He thinks of every thing." I agree with the humane jurist quoted by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe: "The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him." She thinks slavery is worse still; but when "I think of every thing," I am forced to differ from her. The most of our Southern slaves are happy, and kindly cared for; and for those who are not, there is hope for the better. But when a man is hung up by the neck until he is dead, he is done for. As far as I can see, there is nothing that can be suggested to better his condition. I have no wish to uphold slavery. I would that every human being that God has made were free, were it in accordance with His will;--free bodily, free spiritually--"free indeed!" Neither do I desire to deny the evils of slavery, any more than I would deny the evils of the factory system in England, or the factory and apprenticeship system in our own country. I only assert the necessity of the existence of slavery at present in our Southern States, and that, as a general thing, the slaves are comfortable and contented, and their owners humane and kind. I have lived a great deal at the North--long enough to see acts of oppression and injustice there, which, were any one so inclined, might be wrought into a "living dramatic reality." I knew a wealthy family. All the labor of the house was performed by a "poor relation," a young and delicate girl. I have known servants struck by their employers. At the South I have never seen a servant struck, though I know perfectly well such things are done _here_ and _everywhere_. Can we judge of society by a few isolated incidents? If so, the learned professors of New England borrow money, and when they do not choose to pay, they murder their creditors, and cut them in pieces! or men kill their sleeping wives and children! Infidelity has been called a magnificent lie! Mrs. Stowe's "living dramatic reality" is nothing more than an interesting falsehood; nor ought to be offered, as an equivalent for truth, the genius that pervades her pages; rather it is to be lamented that the rich gifts of God should be so misapplied. Were the exertions of the Abolitionists successful, what would be the result? The soul sickens at the thought. Scenes of blood and horror--the desolation of our fair Southern States--the final destruction of the negroes in them. This would be the result of immediate emancipation here. What has it been elsewhere? Look at St. Domingo. A recent visitor there says, "Though opposed to slavery, I must acknowledge that in this instance the experiment has failed." He compares the negroes to "a wretched gibbering set, from their appearance and condition more nearly allied to beasts than to men." Look at the free colored people of the North and in Canada. I have lived among them at the North, and can judge for myself. Their "friends" do not always obtain their affection or gratitude. A colored woman said to me, "I would rather work for any people than the Abolitionists. They expect us to do so much, and they say we ought to work cheaper for them because they are 'our friends.'" Look at them in Canada. An English gentleman who has for many years resided there, and who has recently visited Washington, told me that they were the most miserable, helpless human beings he had ever seen. In fact he said, "They were nuisances, and the people of Canada would be truly thankful to see them out of their country." He had never heard of "a good missionary" mentioned by Mrs. Stowe, "whom Christian charity has placed there as a shepherd to the outcast and wandering." He had seen no good results of emancipation. On one occasion he hired a colored man to drive him across the country. "How did you get here?" he said to the man. "Are you not a runaway?" "Yes, sir," the man replied. "I came from Virginny." "Well, of course you are a great deal happier now than when you were a slave?" "No, sir; if I could get back to Virginny, I would be glad to go." He looked, too, as if he had never been worse off than at that time. The fact is, liberty like money is a grand thing; but in order to be happy, we must know how to use it. It cannot always be said of the fugitive slave,-- "The mortal puts on immortality, When mercy's hand has turned the golden key, And mercy's voice hath said, Rejoice, thy soul is free." The attentive reader will perceive that I am indebted to Mrs. Stowe for the application of this and other quotations. The author of Uncle Tom's Cabin speaks of good men at the North, who "receive and educate the oppressed" (negroes). I know "lots" of good men there, but none good enough to befriend colored people. They seem to me to have an unconquerable antipathy to them. But Mrs. Stowe says, _she_ educates them in her own family with her own children. I am glad to hear she feels and acts kindly toward them, and I wish others in her region of country would imitate her in this respect; but I would rather _my_ children and negroes were educated at different schools, being utterly opposed to amalgamation, root and branch. She asks the question, "_What_ can any individual do?" Strange that any one should be at a loss in this working world of ours. Christian men and women should find enough to occupy them in their families, and in an undoubted sphere of duty. Let the people of the North take care of their own poor. Let the people of the South take care of theirs. Let each remember the great and awful day when they must render a final account to their Creator, their Redeemer, and their Judge. THE END LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. * * * * * FROST'S JUVENILE SERIES. TWELVE VOLUMES, 16mo., WITH FIVE HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS. WALTER O'NEILL, OR THE PLEASURE OF DOING GOOD. 25 Engrav'gs. JUNKER SCHOTT, and other Stories. 6 Engravings. 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THOMAS SCOTT, D.D.; WITH EXTENSIVE EXPLANATORY, CRITICAL AND PHILOLOGICAL NOTES, Selected from Scott, Doddridge, Gill, Adam Clarke, Patrick, Poole, Lowth, Burder, Banner, Calmet, Rosenmueller, Bloomfield, Stuart, Bush, Dwight, and many other writers on the Scriptures. The whole designed to be a digest and combination of the advantages of the best Bible Commentaries, and embracing nearly all that is valuable in HENRY, SCOTT, AND DODDRIDGE. Conveniently arranged for family and private reading, and, at the same time, particularly adapted to the wants of Sabbath-School Teachers and Bible Classes; with numerous useful tables, and a neatly engraved Family Record. Edited by Rev. WILLIAM JENKS, D.D., PASTOR OF GREEN STREET CHURCH, BOSTON. Embellished with five portraits, and other elegant engravings, from steel Plates; with several maps and many wood-cuts, illustrative of Scripture Manners, Customs, Antiquities, &c. In 6 vols. super-royal 8vo. Including Supplement, bound in cloth, sheep, calf, &c., varying in Price from $10 to $15. The whole forming the most valuable as well as the cheapest Commentary published in the world. * * * * * NOTICES AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMPREHENSIVE COMMENTARY. The Publishers select the following from the testimonials they have received as to the value of the work: We, the subscribers, having examined the _Comprehensive Commentary_, issued from the press of Messrs. L., G. & Co., and highly approving its character, would cheerfully and confidently recommend it as containing more matter and more advantages than any other with which we are acquainted; and considering the expense incurred, and the excellent manner of its mechanical execution, we believe it to be one of the _cheapest_ works ever issued from the press. We hope the publishers will be sustained by a liberal patronage, in their expensive and useful undertaking. We should be pleased to learn that every family in the United States had procured a copy. B.B. WISNER, D.D., Secretary of Am. Board of Com. for For. Missions. WM. COGSWELL, D.D., " " Education Society. JOHN CODMAN, D.D., Pastor of Congregational Church, Dorchester. Rev. HUBBARD WINSLOW, " " Bowdoin street, Dorchester. Rev. SEWALL HARDING, Pastor of T.C. Church, Waltham. Rev. J.H. FAIRCHILD, Pastor of Congregational Church, South Boston. GARDINER SPRING, D.D., Pastor of Presbyterian Church, New York city. CYRUS MASON, D.D., " " " " " THOS. McAULEY. D.D., " " " " " JOHN WOODBRIDGE, D.D., " " " " " THOS. DEWITT, D.D., " Dutch Ref. " " " E.W. BALDWIN, D.D., " " " " " Rev. J.M. McKREBS, " Presbyterian " " " Rev. ERSKINE MASON, " " " " " Rev. J.S. SPENCER, " " " Brooklyn " EZRA STILES ELY, D.D., Stated Clerk of Gen. Assem. of Presbyterian Church. JOHN McDOWELL, D.D., Permanent " " " " JOHN BRECKENRIDGE, Corresponding Secretary of Assembly's Board of Education. SAMUEL B. WYLIE, D.D., Pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. N. LORD, D.D., President of Dartmouth College. JOSHUA BATES, D.D., President of Middlebury College. H. HUMPHREY, D.D., " Amherst College. E.D. GRIFFIN, D.D., " Williamstown College. J. WHEELER, D.D., " University of Vermont, at Burlington. J.M. MATTHEWS, D.D., " New York City University. GEORGE E. PIERCE, D.D., " Western Reserve College, Ohio. Rev. Dr. BROWN, " Jefferson College, Penn. LEONARD WOODS, D.D., Professor of Theology, Andover Seminary. THOS. H. SKINNER, D.D., " Sac. Rhet. " " Rev. RALPH EMERSON, " Eccl. Hist. " " Rev. JOEL PARKER, Pastor of Presbyterian Church, New Orleans. JOEL HAWES, D.D., " Congregational Church, Hartford, Conn. N.S.S. BEAMAN. D.D., " Presbyterian Church, Troy, N.Y. MARK TUCKER, D.D., " " " " " Rev. E.N. KIRK, " " " Albany, N.Y. Rev. E.B. EDWARDS, Editor of Quarterly Observer. Rev. STEPHEN MASON, Pastor First Congregational Church, Nantucket. Rev. ORIN FOWLER, " " " " Fall River. GEORGE W. BETHUNE, D.D., Pastor of the First Reformed Dutch Church, Phila., Pa. Rev. LYMAN BEECHER, D.D., Cincinnati, Ohio. Rev. C.D. MALLORY, Pastor Baptist Church, Augusta, Ga. Rev. S.M. NOEL, " " " Frankfort, Ky. _From the Professors at Princeton Theological Seminary._ The Comprehensive Commentary contains the whole of Henry's Exposition in a condensed form, Scott's Practical Observations and Marginal References and a large number of very valuable philological and critical notes, selected from various authors. The work appears to be executed with judgment, fidelity, and care; and will furnish a rich treasure of scriptural knowledge to the Biblical student, and to the teachers of Sabbath-Schools and Bible Classes. A. ALEXANDER, D.D. SAMUEL MILLER, D.D. CHARLES HODGE, D.D. * * * * * The Companion to the Bible. In one super-royal volume. DESIGNED TO ACCOMPANY THE FAMILY BIBLE, OR HENRY'S, SCOTT'S, CLARKE'S, GILL'S, OR OTHER COMMENTARIES: CONTAINING 1. A new, full, and complete Concordance; Illustrated with monumental, traditional, and oriental engravings, founded on Butterworth's, with Cruden's definitions; forming, it is believed, on many accounts, a more valuable work than either Butterworth, Cruden, or any other similar book in the language. The value of a Concordance in now generally understood; and those who have used one, consider it indispensable in connection with the Bible. 2. A Guide to the Reading and Study of the Bible; being Carpenter's valuable Biblical Companion, lately published in London, containing a complete history of the Bible, and forming a most excellent introduction to its study. It embraces the evidences of Christianity, Jewish antiquities, manners, customs, arts, natural history, &c., of the Bible, with notes and engravings added. 3. Complete Biographies of Henry, by Williams; Scott, by his son; Doddridge, by Orton; with sketches of the lives and characters, and notices of the works, of the writers on the Scriptures who are quoted in the Commentary, living and dead, American and foreign. This part of the volume not only affords a large quantity of interesting and useful reading for pious families, but will also be a source of gratification to all those who are in the habit of consulting the Commentary; every one naturally feeling a desire to know some particulars of the lives and characters of those whose opinions he seeks. Appended to this part, will be a BIBLIOTHECA BIBLICA, or list of the best works on the Bible, of all kinds, arranged under their appropriate heads. 4. A complete Index of the Matter contained in the Bible Text. 5. A Symbolical Dictionary. A very comprehensive and valuable Dictionary of Scripture Symbols, (occupying about _fifty-six_ closely printed pages,) by Thomas Wemyss, (author of "Biblical Gleanings," &c.) Comprising Daubux, Lancaster, Hutcheson, &c. 6. The Work contains several other Articles, Indexes, Tables, &c. &c., and is, 7. Illustrated by a large Plan of Jerusalem, identifying, as far as tradition, &c., go, the original sites, drawn on the spot by F. Catherwood, of London, architect. Also, two steel engravings of portraits of seven foreign and eight American theological writers, and numerous wood engravings. The whole forms a desirable and necessary fund of instruction for the use not only of clergymen and Sabbath-school teachers, but also for families. When the great amount of matter it must contain is considered, it will be deemed exceedingly cheap. "I have examined 'The Companion to the Bible,' and have been surprised to find so much information introduced into a volume of so moderate a size. It contains a library of sacred knowledge and criticism. It will be useful to ministers who own large libraries, and cannot fail to be an invaluable help to every reader of the Bible." HENRY MORRIS, Pastor of Congregational Church, Vermont. The above work can be had in several styles of binding. Price varying from $1.75 to $5.00. * * * * * ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, In one super-royal volume. DERIVED PRINCIPALLY FROM THE MANNERS, CUSTOMS, ANTIQUITIES, TRADITIONS, AND FORMS OF SPEECH, RITES, CLIMATE, WORKS OF ART, AND LITERATURE OF THE EASTERN NATIONS: EMBODYING ALL THAT IS VALUABLE IN THE WORKS OF ROBERTS, HARMER, BURDER, PAXTON, CHANDLER, And the most celebrated oriental travellers. Embracing also the subject of the Fulfilment of Prophecy, as exhibited by Keith and others; with descriptions of the present state of countries and places mentioned in the Sacred Writings. ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS LANDSCAPE ENGRAVINGS, FROM SKETCHES TAKEN ON THE SPOT. Edited by Rev. GEORGE BUSH, Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature in the New York City University. The importance of this work mast be obvious, and, being altogether _illustrative_, without reference to doctrines, or other points in which Christians differ, it is hoped it will meet with favour from all who love the sacred volume, and that it will be sufficiently interesting and attractive to recommend itself, not only to professed Christians of _all_ denominations, but also to the general reader. The arrangement of the texts illustrated with the notes, in the order of the chapters and verses of the authorized version of the Bible, will render it convenient for reference to particular passages; while the copious _Index_ at the end will at once enable the reader to turn to every subject discussed in the volume. _This volume is not designed to take the place of Commentaries, but is a distinct department of biblical instruction, and may be used as a companion to the Comprehensive or any other Commentary, or the Holy Bible._ THE ENGRAVINGS In this volume, it is believed, will form no small part of its attractions. No pains have been spared to procure such as should embellish the work, and, at the same time, illustrate the text. Objections that have been made to the pictures commonly introduced into the Bible, as being mere creations of fancy and the imagination, often unlike nature, and frequently conveying false impressions, cannot be urged against the pictorial illustrations of this volume. Here the fine arts are made subservient to utility, the landscape views being, without an exception, _matter-of-fact views of places mentioned in Scripture, as they appear at the present day_; thus in many instances exhibiting, in the most forcible manner, _to the eye_, the strict and _literal_ fulfilment of the remarkable prophecies; "the present ruined and desolate condition of the cities of Babylon, Nineveh, Selah, &c., and the countries of Edom and Egypt, are astonishing examples, and so completely exemplify, in the most minute particulars, every thing which was foretold of them in the height of their prosperity, that no better description can now be given of them than a simple quotation from a chapter and verse of the Bible written nearly two or three thousand years ago." The publishers are enabled to select from several collections lately published in London, the proprietor of one of which says that "several distinguished travellers have afforded him the use of nearly _Three Hundred Original Sketches_" of Scripture places, made upon the spot. "The land of Palestine, it is well known, abounds in scenes of the most picturesque beauty. Syria comprehends the snowy heights of Lebanon, and the majestic ruins of Tadmor and Baalbec." The above work can be had in various styles of binding. Price from $1.50 to $5.00. * * * * * THE ILLUSTRATED CONCORDANCE, In one volume, royal 8vo. A new, full, and complete Concordance; illustrated with monumental, traditional, and oriental accounts, a more valuable work than either Butterworth, Cruden, or any other similar book in the language. The value of a Concordance is now generally understood; and those who have used one, consider it indispensable in connection with the Bible. Some of the many advantages the Illustrated Concordance has over all the others, are, that it contains near two hundred appropriate engravings; it is printed on fine white paper, with beautiful large type. Price One Dollar. * * * * * LIPPINCOTT'S EDITION OF BAGSTER'S COMPREHENSIVE BIBLE. In order to develope the peculiar nature of the Comprehensive Bible, it will only be necessary to embrace its more prominent features. 1st. The SACRED TEXT is that of the Authorized Version, and is printed from the edition corrected and improved by Dr. Blaney, which, from its accuracy, is considered the standard edition. 2d. The VARIOUS READINGS are faithfully printed from the edition of Dr. Blaney, inclusive of the translation of the proper names, without the addition or diminution of one. 3d. In the CHRONOLOGY, great care has been taken to fix the date of the particular transactions, which has seldom been done with any degree of exactness in any former edition of the Bible. 4th. The NOTES are exclusively philological and explanatory, and are not tinctured with sentiments of any sect or party. They are selected from the most eminent Biblical critics and commentators. It is hoped that this edition of the Holy Bible will be found to contain the essence of Biblical research and criticism, that lies dispersed through an immense number of volumes. Such is the nature and design of this edition of the Sacred Volume, which, from the various objects it embraces, the freedom of its pages from all sectarian peculiarities, and the beauty, plainness, and correctness of the typography, that it cannot fail of proving acceptable and useful to Christians of every denomination. In addition to the usual references to parallel passages, which are quite full and numerous, the student has all the marginal readings, together with a rich selection of _Philological, Critical, Historical, Geographical_, and other valuable notes and remarks, which explain and illustrate the sacred text. Besides the general introduction, containing valuable essays on the genuineness, authenticity, and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and other topics of interest, there are introductory and concluding remarks to each book--a table of the contents of the Bible, by which the different portions are so arranged as to read in an historical order. Arranged at the top of each page is the period in which the prominent events of sacred history took place. The calculations are made for the year of the world before and after Christ, Julian Period, the year of the Olympiad, the year of the building of Rome, and other notations of time. At the close is inserted a Chronological Index of the Bible, according to the computation of Archbishop Ussher. Also, a full and valuable index of the _subjects_ contained in the Old and New Testaments, with a careful analysis and arrangement of texts under their appropriate subjects. Mr. Greenfield, the editor of this work, and for some time previous to his death the superintendent of the editorial department of the British and Foreign Bible Society, was a most extraordinary man. In editing the Comprehensive Bible, his varied and extensive learning was called into successful exercise, and appears in happy combination with sincere piety and a sound judgment. The Editor of the Christian Observer, alluding to this work, in an obituary notice of its author, speaks of it as a work of "prodigious labour and research, at once exhibiting his varied talents and profound erudition." * * * * * LIPPINCOTT'S EDITION OF THE OXFORD QUARTO BIBLE. The Publishers have spared neither care nor expense in their edition of the Bible; it is printed on the finest white vellum paper, with large and beautiful type, and bound in the most substantial and splendid manner, in the following styles: Velvet, with richly gilt ornaments; Turkey super extra, with gilt clasps; and in numerous others, to suit the taste of the most fastidious. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "In our opinion, the Christian public generally will feel under great obligations to the publishers of this work for the beautiful taste, arrangement, and delicate neatness with which they have got it out. The intrinsic merit of the Bible recommends itself; it needs no tinsel ornament to adorn its sacred pages. In this edition every superfluous ornament has been avoided, and we have presented us a perfectly chaste specimen of the Bible, without note or comment. It appears to be just what is needed in every family--'the _unsophisticated_ word of God.' "The size is quarto, printed with beautiful type, on white, sized vellum paper, of the finest texture and most beautiful surface. The publishers seem to have been solicitous to make a perfectly unique book, and they have accomplished the object very successfully. We trust that a liberal community will afford them ample remuneration for all the expense and outlay they have necessarily incurred in its publication. It is a standard Bible. "The publishers are Messrs. Lippincott, Grambo & Co., No. 14 North Fourth street, Philadelphia."--_Baptist Record._ "A beautiful quarto edition of the Bible, by L., G. & Co. Nothing can exceed the type in clearness and beauty; the paper is of the finest texture, and the whole execution is exceedingly neat. No illustrations or ornamental type are used. Those who prefer a Bible executed in perfect simplicity, yet elegance of style, without adornment, will probably never find one more to their taste."--_M. Magazine_. "A beautiful quarto edition of the Bible, by L., G. & Co. Nothing can exceed the type in clearness and beauty; the paper is of the finest texture, and the whole execution is exceedingly neat. No illustrations or ornamental type are used. Those who prefer a Bible executed in perfect simplicity, yet elegance of style, without adornment, will probably never find one more to their taste."--_M. Magazine._ * * * * * LIPPINCOTT'S EDITIONS OF THE HOLY BIBLE. SIX DIFFERENT SIZES, Printed in the best manner, with beautiful type, on the finest sized paper, and bound in the most splendid and substantial styles. Warranted to be correct, and equal to the best English editions, at much less price. To be had with or without plates; the publishers having supplied themselves with over fifty steel engravings, by the first artists. Baxter's Comprehensive Bible, Royal quarto, containing the various readings and marginal notes; disquisitions on the genuineness, authenticity, and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; introductory and concluding remarks to each book; philological and explanatory notes; table of contents, arranged in historical order; a chronological index, and various other matter; forming a suitable book for the study of clergymen, Sabbath-school teachers, and students. In neat plain binding, from $4.00 to $5.00.--In Turkey morocco, extra, gilt edges, from $8.00 to $12.00.--In do., with splendid plates, $10.00 to $15.00.--In do., bevelled side, gilt clasps and illuminations, $15.00 to $25.00. The Oxford Quarto Bible, Without note or comment, universally admitted to be the most beautiful Bible extant. In neat plain binding, from $4.00 to $5.00.--In Turkey morocco, extra, gilt edges, $8.00 to $12.00.--In do., with steel engravings, $10.00 to $15.00.--In do., clasps, &c., with plates and illuminations, $15.00 to $25.00.--In rich velvet, with gilt ornaments, $25.00 to $50.00. Crown Octavo Bible, Printed with large clear type, making a most convenient hand Bible for family use. In neat plain binding, from 75 cents to $1.50.--In English Turkey morocco, gilt edges, $1.00 to $2.00.--In do., imitation, &c., $1.50 to $3.00.--In do., clasps, &c., $2.50 to 56.00.--In rich velvet, with gilt ornaments, $5.00 to $10.00. The Sunday-School Teacher's Polyglot Bible, with Maps, &c., In neat plain binding, from 60 cents to $1.00.--In imitation gilt edge. $1.00 to $1.50.--In Turkey, super extra, $1.75 to $2.25.--In do. do., with clasps, $2.50 to $3.75.--In velvet, rich gilt ornaments, $3.50 to $8.00. The Oxford 18mo., or Pew Bible, In neat plain binding, from 50 cents to $1.00.--In imitation gilt edge, $1.00 to $1.50.--In Turkey super extra, $1.75 to $2.25.--In do. do., with clasps, $2.50 to $3.75.--In velvet, rich gilt ornaments, $3.50 to $8.00. Agate 32mo. Bible, Printed with larger type than any other small or pocket edition extant. In neat plain binding, from 50 cents to $1.00.--In tucks, or pocket-book style, 75 cents to $1.00.--In roan, imitation gilt edge, $1.00 to $1.50.--In Turkey, super extra, $1.00 to $2.00.--In do. do. gilt clasps, $2.50 to $3.50.--In velvet, with rich gilt ornaments, $3.00 to $7.00. 32mo. Diamond Pocket Bible; The neatest, smallest, and cheapest edition of the Bible published. In neat plain binding, from 30 to 50 cents.--In tucks, or pocket-book style, 60 cents to $1.00.--In roan, imitation gilt edge, 75 cents to $1.25.--In Turkey, super extra, $1.00 to $1.50.--In do. do. gilt clasps, $1.50 to $2.00.--In velvet, with richly gilt ornaments, $2.50 to $6.00. CONSTANTLY ON HAND, A large assortment of BIBLES, bound in the most splendid and costly styles, with gold and silver ornaments, suitable for presentation; ranging in price from $10.00 to $100.00. A liberal discount made to Booksellers and Agents by the Publishers. * * * * * ENCYCLOP�DIA OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE; OR, DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, THEOLOGY, RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY, ALL RELIGIONS, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, AND MISSIONS. Designed as a complete Book of Reference on all Religious Subjects, and Companion to the Bible; forming a cheap and compact Library of Religious Knowledge. Edited by Rev. J. Newton Brown. Illustrated by wood-cuts, maps, and engravings on copper and steel. In one volume, royal 8vo. Price, $4.00. * * * * * Lippincott's Standard Editions of THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, IN SIX DIFFERENT SIZES, ILLUSTRATED WITH A NUMBER OF STEEL PLATES AND ILLUMINATIONS. COMPREHENDING THE MOST VARIED AND SPLENDID ASSORTMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. THE ILLUMINATED OCTAVO PRAYER-BOOK, Printed in seventeen different colours of ink, and illustrated with a number of Steel Plates and Illuminations; making one of the most splendid books published. To be had in any variety of the most superb binding, ranging in prices. In Turkey, super extra, from $5.00 to $8.00.--In do. do., with clasps, $6.00 to $10.00.--In do. do., bevelled and panelled edges, $8.00 to $15.00.--In velvet, richly ornamented, $12.00 to $20.00. 8vo. In neat plain binding, from $1.50 to $2.00.--In imitation gilt edge, $2.00 to $3.00.--In Turkey, super extra, $2.50 to $4.50.--In do. do., with clasps, $3.00 to $5.00.--In velvet, richly gilt ornaments, $5.00 to $12.00. 16mo. Printed throughout with large and elegant type. In neat plain binding, from 75 cents to $1.50.--In Turkey morocco, extra, with plates, $1.75 to $3.00.--In do. do., with plates, clasps, &c., $2.50 to $5.00.--In velvet, with richly gilt ornaments, $4.00 to $9.00. 18mo. In neat plain binding, from 25 to 75 cents.--In Turkey morocco, with plates, $1.25 to $2.00.--In velvet, with richly gilt ornaments, $3.00 to $8.00. 32mo. A beautiful Pocket Edition, with large type. In neat plain binding, from 50 cents to $1.00.--In roan, imitation gilt edge, 75 cents to $1.50.--In Turkey, super extra, $1.25 to $2.00.--In do. do., gilt clasps, $2.00 to $3.00.--In velvet, with richly gilt ornaments, $3.00 to $7.00. 32mo., Pearl type. In plain binding, from 25 to 37 1-2 cents.--Roan, 37 1-2 to 50 cents.--Imitation Turkey, 50 cents to $1.00.--Turkey, super extra, with gilt edge. $1.00 to $1.50.--Pocket-book style, 60 to 75 cents. PROPER LESSONS. 18mo. A BEAUTIFUL EDITION, WITH LARGE TYPE. In neat plain binding, from 50 cents to $1.00.--In roan, imitation gilt edge, 75 cents to $1.50.--In Turkey, super extra, $1.50 to $2.00.--In do. do., gilt clasps, $2.50 to $3.00.--In velvet, with richly gilt ornaments, $3.00 to $7.00. THE BIBLE AND PRAYER-BOOK, In one neat and portable volume. 32mo., in neat plain binding, from 75 cents to $1.00.--In imitation Turkey, $1.00 to $1.50.--In Turkey, super extra, $1.50 to $2.50. 18mo., in large type, plain, $1.75 to $2.50.--In imitation, $1.00 to $1.75.--In Turkey, super extra, $1.75 to $3.00. Also, with clasps, velvet, &c. &c. * * * * * The Errors of Modern Infidelity Illustrated and Refuted. BY S.M. SCHMUCKER, A.M. In one volume, 12mo.; cloth. Just published. We cannot but regard this work, in whatever light we view it in reference to its design, as one of the most masterly productions of the age, and fitted to uproot one of the most fondly cherished and dangerous of all ancient or modern errors. God must bless such a work, armed with his own truth, and doing fierce and successful battle against black infidelity, which would bring His Majesty and Word down to the tribunal of human reason, for condemnation and annihilation.--_Alb. Spectator_ * * * * * The Clergy of America: CONSISTING OF ANECDOTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE CHARACTER OF MINISTERS OF RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES, BY JOSEPH BELCHER, D.D., Editor of "The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller," "Robert Hall," &c. "This very interesting and instructive collection of pleasing and solemn remembrances of many pious men, illustrates the character of the day in which they lived, and defines the men more clearly than very elaborate essays."--_Baltimore American_. "We regard the collection as highly interesting, and judiciously made."--_Presbyterian_. * * * * * JOSEPHUS'S (FLAVIUS) WORKS, FAMILY EDITION. BY THE LATE WILLIAM WHISTON, A.M. FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION, COMPLETE. One volume, beautifully illustrated with Steel Plates, and the only readable edition published in this country. As a matter of course, every family in our country has a copy of the Holy Bible; and as the presumption is that the greater portion often consult its pages, we take the liberty of saying to all those that do, that the perusal of the writings of Josephus will be found very interesting and instructive. All those who wish to possess a beautiful and correct copy of this valuable work, would do well to purchase this edition. It is for sale at all the principal bookstores in the United States, and by country merchants generally in the Southern and Western States. Also, the above work in two volumes. * * * * * BURDER'S VILLAGE SERMONS; Or, 101 Plain and Short Discourses on the Principal Doctrines of the Gospel. INTENDED FOR THE USE OF FAMILIES, SUNDAY-SCHOOLS, OR COMPANIES ASSEMBLED FOR RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN COUNTRY VILLAGES. BY GEORGE BURDER. To which is added to each Sermon, a Short Prayer, with some General Prayers for Families, Schools. &c., at the end of the work. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. These sermons, which are characterized by a beautiful simplicity, the entire absence of controversy, and a true evangelical spirit, have gone through many and large editions, and been translated into several of the continental languages. "They have also been the honoured means not only of converting many individuals, but also of introducing the Gospel into districts, and even into parish Churches, where before it was comparatively unknown." "This work fully deserves the immortality it has attained." This is a fine library edition of this invaluable work: and when we say that it should be found in the possession of every family, we only reiterate the sentiments and sincere wishes of all who take a deep interest in the eternal welfare of mankind. * * * * * FAMILY PRAYERS AND HYMNS, ADAPTED TO FAMILY WORSHIP, AND TABLES FOR THE REGULAR READING OF THE SCRIPTURES, By Rev. S.C. WINCHESTER, A.M., Late Pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia; and the Presbyterian Church at Natchez, Miss. One volume, 12mo. * * * * * SPLENDID LIBRARY EDITIONS. ILLUSTRATED STANDARD POETS. ELEGANTLY PRINTED, ON FINE PAPER, AND UNIFORM IN SIZE AND STYLE. The following Editions of Standard British Poets are illustrated with numerous Steel Engravings, and may be had in all varieties of binding. BYRON'S WORKS. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. INCLUDING ALL HIS SUPPRESSED AND ATTRIBUTED POEMS; WITH SIX BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS. This edition has been carefully compared with the recent London edition of Mr. Murray, and made complete by the addition of more than fifty pages of poems heretofore unpublished in England. Among these there are a number that have never appeared in any American edition; and the publishers believe they are warranted in saying that this is _the most complete edition of Lord Byron's Poetical Works_ ever published in the United States. THE POETICAL WORKS OF MRS. HEMANS. Complete in one volume, octavo; with seven beautiful Engravings. This is a new and complete edition, with a splendid engraved likeness of Mrs. Hemans, on steel, and contains all the Poems in the last London and American editions. With a Critical Preface by Mr. Thatcher, of Boston. "As no work in the English language can be commended with more confidence, it will argue bad taste in a female in this country to be without a complete edition of the writings of one who was an honour to her sex and to humanity, and whose productions, from first to last, contain no syllable calculated to call a blush to the cheek of modesty and virtue. There is, moreover, in Mrs. Hemans's poetry, a moral purity and a religious feeling which commend it, in an especial manner, to the discriminating reader. No parent or guardian will be under the necessity of imposing restrictions with regard to the free perusal of every production emanating from this gifted woman. There breathes throughout the whole a most eminent exemption from impropriety of thought or diction; and there is at times a pensiveness of tone, a winning sadness in her more serious compositions, which tells of a soul which has been lifted from the contemplation of terrestrial things, to divine communings with beings of a purer world." MILTON, YOUNG, GRAY, BEATTIE, AND COLLINS'S POETICAL WORKS. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. WITH SIX BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS. COWPER AND THOMSON'S PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. Including two hundred and fifty Letters, and sundry Poems of Cowper, never before published in this country; and of Thomson a new and interesting Memoir, and upwards of twenty new Poems, for the first time printed from his own Manuscripts, taken from a late Edition of the Aldine Poets, now publishing in London. WITH SEVEN BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS. The distinguished Professor Silliman, speaking of this edition, observes: "I am as much gratified by the elegance and fine taste of your edition, as by the noble tribute of genius and moral excellence which these delightful authors have left for all future generations; and Cowper, especially, is not less conspicuous as a true Christian, moralist and teacher, than as a poet of great power and exquisite taste." * * * * * THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROGERS, CAMPBELL, MONTGOMERY, LAMB, AND KIRKE WHITE. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. WITH SIX BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS. The beauty, correctness, and convenience of this favourite edition of these standard authors are so well known, that it is scarcely necessary to add a word in its favour. It is only necessary to say, that the publishers have now issued an illustrated edition, which greatly enhances its former value. The engravings are excellent and well selected. It is the best library edition extant. CRABBE, HEBER, AND POLLOK'S POETICAL WORKS. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. WITH SIX BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS. A writer in the Boston Traveller holds the following language with reference to these valuable editions:-- "Mr. Editor:--I wish, without any idea of puffing, to say a word or two upon the 'Library of English Poets' that is now published at Philadelphia, by Lippincott, Grambo & Co. It is certainly, taking into consideration the elegant manner in which it is printed, and the reasonable price at which it is afforded to purchasers, the best edition of the modern British Poets that has ever been published in this country. Each volume is an octavo of about 500 pages, double columns, stereotyped, and accompanied with fine engravings and biographical sketches; and most of them are reprinted from Galignani's French edition. As to its value, we need only mention that it contains the entire works of Montgomery, Gray, Beattie, Collins, Byron, Cowper, Thomson, Milton, Young, Rogers, Campbell, Lamb, Hemans, Heber, Kirke White, Crabbe, the Miscellaneous Works of Goldsmith, and other masters of the lyre. The publishers are doing a great service by their publication, and their volumes are almost in as great demand as the fashionable novels of the day; and they deserve to be so: for they are certainly printed in a style superior to that in which we have before had the works of the English Poets." No library can be considered complete without a copy of the above beautiful and cheap editions of the English Poets; and persons ordering all or any of them, will please say Lippincott, Grambo & Co.'s illustrated editions. * * * * * A COMPLETE Dictionary of Poetical Quotations: COMPRISING THE MOST EXCELLENT AND APPROPRIATE PASSAGES IN THE OLD BRITISH POETS; WITH CHOICE AND COPIOUS SELECTIONS FROM THE BEST MODERN BRITISH AND AMERICAN POETS. EDITED BY SARAH JOSEPHA HALE. As nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light Of Nature and of Beauty. _Bailey's Festus._ Beautifully illustrated with Engravings. In one super-royal octavo volume, in various bindings. The publishers extract, from the many highly complimentary notices of the above valuable and beautiful work, the following: "We have at last a volume of Poetical Quotations worthy of the name. It contains nearly six hundred octavo pages, carefully and tastefully selected from all the home and foreign authors of celebrity. It is invaluable to a writer, while to the ordinary reader it presents every subject at a glance.--_Godey's Lady's Book_. "The plan or idea of Mrs. Hale's work is felicitous. It is one for which her fine taste, her orderly habits of mind, and her long occupation with literature, has given her peculiar facilities; and thoroughly has she accomplished her task in the work before us."--_Sartain's Magazine_. "It is a choice collection of poetical extracts from every English and American author worth perusing, from the days of Chaucer to the present time."--_Washington Union_. "There is nothing negative about this work; it is _positively_ good."--_Evening Bulletin_. * * * * * THE DIAMOND EDITION OF BYRON. THE POETICAL WORKS OF LORD BYRON, WITH A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. COMPLETE IN ONE NEAT DUODECIMO VOLUME, WITH STEEL PLATES. The type of this edition is so perfect, and it is printed with so much care, on fine white paper, that it can be read with as much ease as most of the larger editions. This work is to be had in plain and superb binding, making a beautiful volume for a gift. "_The Poetical Works of Lord Byron_, complete in one volume; published by L., G. & Co., Philadelphia. We hazard nothing in saying that, take it altogether, this is the most elegant work ever issued from the American press. "'In a single volume, not larger than an ordinary duodecimo, the publishers have embraced the whole of Lord Byron's Poems, usually printed in ten or twelve volumes; and, what is more remarkable, have done it with a type so clear and distinct, that, notwithstanding its necessarily small size, it may be read with the utmost facility, even by failing eyes. The book is stereotyped; and never have we seen a finer specimen of that art. Everything about it is perfect--the paper, the printing, the binding, all correspond with each other; and it is embellished with two fine engravings, well worthy the companionship in which they are placed. "'This will make a beautiful Christmas present.' "We extract the above from Godey's Lady's Book. The notice itself, we are given to understand, is written by Mrs. Hale. "We have to add our commendation in favour of this beautiful volume, a copy of which has been sent us by the publishers. The admirers of the noble bard will feel obliged to the enterprise which has prompted the publishers to dare a competition with the numerous editions of his works already in circulation; and we shall be surprised if this convenient travelling edition does not in a great degree supersede the use of the large octavo works, which have little advantage in size and openness of type, and are much inferior in the qualities of portability and lightness."--_Intelligencer_. * * * * * THE DIAMOND EDITION OF MOORE. (CORRESPONDING WITH BYRON.) THE POETICAL WORKS OF THOMAS MOORE, COLLECTED BY HIMSELF. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. This work is published uniform with Byron, from the last London edition, and is the most complete printed in the country. * * * * * THE DIAMOND EDITION OF SHAKSPEARE, (COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME,) INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. UNIFORM WITH BYRON AND MOORE. THE ABOVE WORKS CAN BE HAD IN SEVERAL VARIETIES OF BINDING. * * * * * GOLDSMITH'S ANIMATED NATURE. IN TWO VOLUMES, OCTAVO. BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED WITH 385 PLATES. CONTAINING A HISTORY OF THE EARTH, ANIMALS, BIRDS, AND FISHES; FORMING THE MOST COMPLETE NATURAL HISTORY EVER PUBLISHED. This is a work that should be in the library of every family, having been written by one of the most talented authors in the English language. "Goldsmith can never be made obsolete while delicate genius, exquisite feeling, fine invention, the most harmonious metre, and the happiest diction, are at all valued." * * * * * BIGLAND'S NATURAL HISTORY Of Animals, Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, and Insects. Illustrated with numerous and beautiful Engravings. By JOHN BIGLAND, author of a "View of the World." "Letters on Universal History," &c. Complete in 1 vol., 12 mo. * * * * * THE POWER AND PROGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES. THE UNITED STATES; Its Power and Progress. BY GUILLAUME TELL POUSSIN, LATE MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF FRANCE TO THE UNITED STATES. FIRST AMERICAN, FROM THE THIRD PARIS EDITION. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY EDMOND L. DU BARRY, M.D., SURGEON U.S. NAVY. In one large octavo volume. * * * * * SCHOOLCRAFT'S GREAT NATIONAL WORK ON THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH BEAUTIFUL AND ACCURATE COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS. HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING THE HISTORY, CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE Indian Tribes of the United States. COLLECTED AND PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, PER ACT OF MARCH 3, 1847, BY HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT, LL.D. ILLUSTRATED BY S. EASTMAN, CAPT. U.S.A. PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF CONGRESS. * * * * * THE AMERICAN GARDENER'S CALENDAR, ADAPTED TO THE CLIMATE AND SEASONS OF THE UNITED STATES. Containing a complete account of all the work necessary to be done in the Kitchen Garden, Fruit Garden, Orchard, Vineyard, Nursery, Pleasure-Ground, Flower Garden, Green-house, Hot-house, and Forcing Frames, for every month in the year; with ample Practical Directions for performing the same. Also, general as well as minute instructions for laying out or erecting each and every of the above departments, according to modern taste and the most approved plans; the Ornamental Planting of Pleasure Grounds, in the ancient and modern style; the cultivation of Thorn Quicks, and other plants suitable for Live Hedges, with the best methods of making them, &c. To which are annexed catalogues of Kitchen Garden Plants and Herbs; Aromatic, Pot, and Sweet Herbs; Medicinal Plants, and the most important Grapes, &c., used in rural economy; with the soil best adapted to their cultivation. Together with a copious Index to the body of the work. BY BERNARD M'MAHON. Tenth Edition, greatly improved. In one volume, octavo. * * * * * THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL; OR, DOMESTIC AND MORAL DUTIES NECESSARY TO SOCIAL HAPPINESS, BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED. 16mo. square cloth. Price 50 and 75 cents. * * * * * THE FARMER'S AND PLANTER'S ENCYCLOP�DIA, The Farmer's and Planter's Encyclopædia of Rural Affairs. BY CUTHBERT W. JOHNSON. ADAPTED TO THE UNITED STATES BY GOUVERNEUR EMERSON. Illustrated by seventeen beautiful Engravings of Cattle, Horses, Sheep, the varieties of Wheat, Barley, Oats, Grasses, the Weeds of Agriculture. &c.; besides numerous Engravings on wood of the most important implements of Agriculture, &c. This standard work contains the latest and best information upon all subjects connected with farming, and appertaining to the country; treating of the great crops of grain, hay, cotton, hemp, tobacco, rice, sugar, &c. &c.; of horses and mules; of cattle, with minute particulars relating to cheese and butter-making; of fowls, including a description of capon-making, with drawings of the instruments employed; of bees, and the Russian and other systems of managing bees and constructing hives. Long articles on the uses and preparation of bones, lime, guano, and all sorts of animal, mineral, and vegetable substances employed as manures. Descriptions of the most approved ploughs, harrows, threshers, and every other agricultural machine and implement; of fruit and shade trees, forest trees, and shrubs; of weeds, and all kinds of flies, and destructive worms and insects, and the best means of getting rid of them; together with a thousand other matters relating to rural life, about which information is so constantly desired by all residents of the country. IN ONE LARGE OCTAVO VOLUME. * * * * * MASON'S FARRIER--FARMERS' EDITION. Price, 62 cents. THE PRACTICAL FARRIER, FOR FARMERS: COMPRISING A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE NOBLE AND USEFUL ANIMAL, THE HORSE; WITH MODES OF MANAGEMENT IN ALL CASES, AND TREATMENT IN DISEASE. TO WHICH IS ADDED, A PRIZE ESSAY ON MULES; AND AN APPENDIX, Containing Recipes for Diseases of Horses, Oxen, Cows, Calves, Sheep, Dogs, Swine, &c. &c. BY RICHARD MASON, M.D., Formerly of Surry County. Virginia. In one volume, 12mo.; bound in cloth, gilt. * * * * * MASON'S FARRIER AND STUD-BOOK--NEW EDITION. THE GENTLEMAN'S NEW POCKET FARRIER: COMPRISING A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE NOBLE AND USEFUL ANIMAL, THE HORSE; WITH MODES OF MANAGEMENT IN ALL CASES, AND TREATMENT IN DISEASE. BY RICHARD MASON, M.D., Formerly of Surry County, Virginia. To which is added, A PRIZE ESSAY ON MULES; and AN APPENDIX, containing Recipes for Diseases of Horses, Oxen, Cows, Calves, Sheep, Dogs, Swine, &c. &c.; with Annals of the Turf, American Stud-Book. Rules for Training, Racing, &c. WITH A SUPPLEMENT, Comprising an Essay on Domestic Animals, especially the Horse; with Remarks on Treatment and Breeding; together with Trotting and Racing Tables, showing the best time on record at one, two, three and four mile heats; Pedigrees of Winning Horses, since 1839, and of the most celebrated Stallions and Mares; with useful Calving and Lambing Tables. By J.S. SKINNER, Editor now of the Farmer's Library, New York, &c. &c. * * * * * HINDS'S FARRIERY AND STUD-BOOK--NEW EDITION. FARRIERY, TAUGHT ON A NEW AND EASY PLAN: BEING A Treatise on the Diseases and Accidents of the Horse; With Instructions to the Shoeing Smith, Farrier, and Groom; preceded by a Popular Description of the Animal Functions in Health, and how these are to be restored when disordered. BY JOHN HINDS, VETERINARY SURGEON. With considerable Additions and Improvements, particularly adapted to this country, BY THOMAS M. SMITH, Veterinary Surgeon, and Member of the London Veterinary Medical Society. WITH A SUPPLEMENT, BY J.S. SKINNER. The publishers have received numerous flattering notices of the great practical value of these works. The distinguished editor of the American Farmer, speaking of them, observes:--"We cannot too highly recommend these books, and therefore advise every owner of a horse to obtain them." "There are receipts in those books that show how _Founder_ may be cured, and the traveller pursue his journey the next day, by giving a _tablespoon of alum_. This was got from Dr. P. Thornton, of Montpelier, Rappahannock county, Virginia, as founded on his own observation in several cases." "The constant demand for Mason's and Hinds's Farrier has induced the publishers, Messrs. Lippincott, Grambo & Co., to put forth new editions, with a 'Supplement' of 100 pages by J.S. Skinner, Esq. We should have sought to render an acceptable service to our agricultural readers, by giving a chapter from the Supplement, 'On the Relations between Man and the Domestic Animals, especially the Horse, and the Obligations they impose;' or the one on 'The Form of Animals;' but that either one of them would overrun the space here allotted to such subjects." "Lists of Medicines, and other articles which ought to be at hand about every training and livery stable, and every Farmer's and Breeder's establishment, will be found in these valuable works." * * * * * TO CARPENTERS AND MECHANICS. Just Published. A NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION OF THE CARPENTER'S NEW GUIDE, BEING A COMPLETE BOOK OF LINES FOR CARPENTRY AND JOINERY; Treating fully on Practical Geometry, Saffu's Brick and Plaster Groms, Niches of every description, Sky-lights, Lines for Roofs and Domes: with a great variety of Designs for Roofs, Trussed Girders, Floors, Domes, Bridges. &c., Angle Bars for Shop Fronts, &c., and Raking Mouldings. ALSO, Additional Plans for various Stair-Cases, with the Lines for producing the Face and Falling Moulds never before published, and greatly superior to those given in a former edition of this work. BY WILLIAM JOHNSON, ARCHITECT, OF PHILADELPHIA. The whole founded on true Geometrical Principles; the Theory and Practice well explained and fully exemplified, on eighty-three copper plates, including some Observations and Calculations on the Strength of Timber. BY PETER NICHOLSON, Author of "The Carpenter and Joiner's Assistant," "The Student's Instructor to the Five Orders," &c. Thirteenth Edition. One volume. 4to., well bound. * * * * * A DICTIONARY OF SELECT AND POPULAR QUOTATIONS, WHICH ARE IN DAILY USE. TAKEN FROM THE LATIN, FRENCH, GREEK, SPANISH AND ITALIAN LANGUAGES. Together with a copious Collection of Law Maxims and Law Terms, translated into English, with Illustrations, Historical and Idiomatic. NEW AMERICAN EDITION, CORRECTED, WITH ADDITIONS. One volume, 12mo. This volume comprises a copious collection of legal and other terms which are in common use, with English translations and historical illustrations; and we should judge its author had surely been to a great "Feast of Languages," and stole all the scraps. A work of this character should have an extensive sale, as it entirely obviates a serious difficulty in which most readers are involved by the frequent occurrence of Latin, Greek, and French passages, which we suppose are introduced by authors for a mere show of learning--a difficulty very perplexing to readers in general. This "Dictionary of Quotations," concerning which too much cannot be said in its favour, effectually removes the difficulty, and gives the reader an advantage over the author; for we believe a majority are themselves ignorant of the meaning of the terms they employ. Very few truly learned authors will insult their readers by introducing Latin or French quotations in their writings, when "plain English" will do as well; but we will not enlarge on this point. If the book is useful to those unacquainted with other languages, it is no less valuable to the classically educated as a book of reference, and answers all the purposes of a Lexicon--indeed, on many accounts, it is better. It saves the trouble of tumbling over the larger volumes, to which every one, and especially those engaged in the legal profession, are very often subjected. It should have a place in every library in the country. * * * * * RUSCHENBERGER'S NATURAL HISTORY, COMPLETE, WITH NEW GLOSSARY THE ELEMENTS OF NATURAL HISTORY, EMBRACING ZOOLOGY, BOTANY AND GEOLOGY: FOR SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND FAMILIES. BY W.S.W. RUSCHENBERGER, M.D. IN TWO VOLUMES. WITH NEARLY ONE THOUSAND ILLUSTRATIONS, AND A COPIOUS GLOSSARY. Vol. I. contains _Vertebrate Animals_. Vol. II. contains _Invertebrate Animals, Botany, and Geology_. * * * * * A Beautiful and Valuable Presentation Book. THE POET'S OFFERING. EDITED BY MRS. HALE. With a Portrait of the Editress, a Splendid Illuminated Title-Page, and Twelve Beautiful Engravings by Sartain. Bound in rich Turkey Morocco, and Extra Cloth, Gilt Edge. To those who wish to make a present that will never lose its value, this will be found the most desirable Gift-Book ever published. "We commend it to all who desire to present a friend with a volume not only very beautiful, but of solid intrinsic value."--_Washington Union_. "A perfect treasury of the thoughts and fancies of the best English and American Poets. The paper and printing are beautiful, and the binding rich, elegant, and substantial; The most sensible and attractive of all the elegant gift-books we have seen."--_Evening Bulletin_. "The publishers deserve the thanks of the public for so happy a thought, so well executed. The engravings are by the best artists, and the other portions of the work correspond in elegance."--_Public Ledger_. "There is no book of selections so diversified and appropriate within our knowledge."--_Pennsylv'n_. "It is one of the most valuable as well as elegant books ever published in this country."--_Godey's Lady's Book_. "It is the most beautiful and the most useful offering ever bestowed on the public. No individual of literary taste will venture to be without it."--_The City Item_. * * * * * THE YOUNG DOMINICAN; OR, THE MYSTERIES OF THE INQUISITION, AND OTHER SECRET SOCIETIES OF SPAIN. BY M.V. DE FEREAL. WITH HISTORICAL NOTES, BY M. MANUEL DE CUENDIAS, TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. ILLUSTRATED WITH TWENTY SPLENDID ENGRAVINGS BY FRENCH ARTISTS One volume, octavo. * * * * * SAY'S POLITICAL ECONOMY. A TREATISE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY; Or, The Production, Distribution and Consumption of Wealth. BY JEAN BAPTISTE SAY. FIFTH AMERICAN EDITION, WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES, BY C.C. BIDDLE, ESQ. In one volume, octavo. It would be beneficial to our country if all those who are aspiring to office, were required by their constituents to be familiar with the pages of Say. The distinguished biographer of the author, in noticing this work, observes: "Happily for science, he commenced that study which forms the basis of his admirable Treatise on _Political Economy_; a work which not only improved under his hand with every successive edition, but has been translated into most of the European languages." The Editor of the North American Review, speaking of Say, observes, that "he is the most popular, and perhaps the most able writer on Political Economy, since the time of Smith." * * * * * LAURENCE STERNE'S WORKS, WITH A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR: WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. WITH SEVEN BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS, ENGRAVED BY GILBERT AND GIHON, FROM DESIGNS BY DARLEY. One volume, octavo; cloth, gilt. To commend or to criticise Sterne's Works, in this age of the world, would be all "wasteful and extravagant excess." Uncle Toby--Corporal Trim--the Widow--Le Fevre--Poor Maria--the Captive--even the Dead Ass,--this is all we have to say of Sterne; and in the memory of these characters, histories, and sketches, a thousand follies and worse than follies are forgotten. The volume is a very handsome one. * * * * * THE MEXICAN WAR AND ITS HEROES; BEING A COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE MEXICAN WAR, EMBRACING ALL THE OPERATIONS UNDER GENERALS TAYLOR AND SCOTT. WITH A BIOGRAPHY OF THE OFFICERS. ALSO, AN ACCOUNT OF THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO, Under Gen. Kearny, Cols. Doniphan and Fremont. Together with Numerous Anecdotes of the War, and Personal Adventures of the Officers. Illustrated with Accurate Portraits, and other Beautiful Engravings. In one volume, 12mo. * * * * * NEW AND COMPLETE COOK-BOOK. THE PRACTICAL COOK-BOOK, CONTAINING UPWARDS OF ONE THOUSAND RECEIPTS, Consisting of Directions for Selecting, Preparing, and Cooking all kinds of Meats, Fish, Poultry, and Game; Soups, Broths, Vegetables, and Salads. Also, for making all kinds of Plain and Fancy Breads, Pastes, Puddings, Cakes, Creams, Ices, Jellies, Preserves, Marmalades, &c. &c. &c. Together with various Miscellaneous Recipes, and numerous Preparations for Invalids. BY MRS. BLISS. In one volume, 12mo. * * * * * The City Merchant; or The Mysterious Failure. BY J.B. JONES, AUTHOR OF "WILD WESTERN SCENES," "THE WESTERN MERCHANT," &c. ILLUSTRATED WITH TEN ENGRAVINGS. In one volume, 12mo. * * * * * EL PUCHERO; or, A Mixed Dish from Mexico. EMBRACING GENERAL SCOTT'S CAMPAIGN, WITH SKETCHES OF MILITARY LIFE IN FIELD AND CAMP; OF THE CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY, MANNERS AND WAYS OF THE PEOPLE, &c. BY RICHARD M'SHERRY, M.D., U.S.N., LATE ACTING SURGEON OF REGIMENT OF MARINES. In one volume, 12mo. WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. * * * * * MONEY-BAGS AND TITLES: A HIT AT THE FOLLIES OF THE AGE. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF JULES SANDEAU. BY LEONARD MYERS. One volume, 12mo. "'_Money-Bags and Titles_' is quite a remarkable work, amounts to a kindly exposure of the folly of human pride, and also presents at once the evil and the remedy. If good-natured ridicule of the impostures practised by a set of self-styled reformers, who have nothing to lose, and to whom change must be gain--if, in short, a delineation of the mistaken ideas which prevent, and the means which conduce to happiness, be traits deserving of commendation,--the reader will find much to enlist his attention and win his approbation in the pages of this unpretending, but truly meritorious publication." * * * * * WHAT IS CHURCH HISTORY? A VINDICATION OF THE IDEA OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS, BY PHILIP SCHAF. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN. In one volume, 12mo. * * * * * DODD'S LECTURES. DISCOURSES TO YOUNG MEN. ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS HIGHLY INTERESTING ANECDOTES. BY WILLIAM DODD, LL.D., CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO HIS MAJESTY GEORGE THE THIRD. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, WITH ENGRAVINGS. One volume, 18mo. * * * * * THE IRIS: AN ORIGINAL SOUVENIR. With Contributions from the First Writers in the Country. EDITED BY PROF. JOHN S. HART. With Splendid Illuminations and Steel Engravings. Bound in Turkey Morocco and rich Papier Mache Binding. IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. Its contents are entirely original. Among the contributors are names well known in the republic of letters; such as Mr. Boker, Mr. Stoddard, Prof. Moffat, Edith May, Mrs. Sigourney, Caroline May, Mrs. Kinney, Mrs. Butler, Mrs. Pease, Mrs. Swift, Mr. Van Bibber, Rev. Charles T. Brooks, Mrs. Dorr, Erastus W. Ellsworth, Miss E.W. Barnes, Mrs. Williams, Mary Young, Dr. Gardette, Alice Carey, Phebe Carey, Augusta Browne, Hamilton Browne, Caroline Eustis, Margaret Junkin, Maria J.B. Browne, Miss Starr, Mrs. Brotherson, Kate Campbell, &c. * * * * * GEMS FROM THE SACRED MINE; OR, HOLY THOUGHTS UPON SACRED SUBJECTS. BY CLERGYMEN OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. EDITED BY THOMAS WYATT, A.M. In one volume, 12mo. WITH SEVEN BEAUTIFUL STEEL ENGRAVINGS. The contents of this work are chiefly by clergymen of the Episcopal Church. Among the contributors will be found the names of the Right Rev. Bishop Potter, Bishop Hopkins, Bishop Smith, Bishop Johns, and Bishop Doane; and the Rev. Drs. H.V.D. Johns, Coleman, and Butler; Rev. G.T. Bedell, M'Cabe, Ogilsby, &c. The illustrations are rich and exquisitely wrought engravings upon the following subjects:--"Samuel before Eli," "Peter and John healing the Lame Man," "The Resurrection of Christ," "Joseph sold by his Brethren," "The Tables of the Law." "Christ's Agony in the Garden," and "The Flight into Egypt." These subjects, with many others in prose and verse, are ably treated throughout the work. * * * * * HAW-HO-NOO: OR, THE RECORDS OF A TOURIST. BY CHARLES LANMAN, Author of "A Summer in the Wilderness," &c. In one volume, 12mo. "In the present book, '_Haw-ho-noo_,' (an Indian name, by the way, for America,) the author has gathered up some of the relics of his former tours, and added to them other interesting matter. It contains a number of carefully written and instructive articles upon the various kinds of fish in our country, whose capture affords sport for anglers; reminiscences of unique incidents, manners, and customs in different parts of the country; and other articles, narrative, descriptive, and sentimental. In a supplement are gathered many curious Indian legends. They are related with great simplicity and clearness, and will be of service hereafter to the poem makers of America. Many of them are quite beautiful."--_National Intelligencer_. * * * * * LONZ POWERS; Or, The Regulators. A ROMANCE OF KENTUCKY. FOUNDED ON FACTS. BY JAMES WEIR, ESQ. IN TWO VOLUMES. The scenes, characters, and incidents in these volumes have been copied from nature, and from real life. They are represented as taking place at that period in the history of Kentucky, when the Indian, driven, after many a hard-fought field, from his favourite hunting-ground, was succeeded by a rude and unlettered population, interspersed with organized bands of desperadoes, scarcely less savage than the red men they had displaced. The author possesses a vigorous and graphic pen, and has produced a very interesting romance, which gives us a striking portrait of the times he describes. * * * * * THE WESTERN MERCHANT. A NARRATIVE, Containing useful Instruction for the Western Man of Business, who makes his Purchases in the East. Also, Information for the Eastern Man, whose Customers are in the West. Likewise, Hints for those who design emigrating to the West. Deduced from actual experience. BY LUKE SHORTFIELD, A WESTERN MERCHANT. One volume, 12mo. This is a new work, and will be found very interesting to the Country Merchant, &c. &c. A sprightly, pleasant book, with a vast amount of information in a very agreeable shape. Business, Love, and Religion are all discussed, and many proper sentiments expressed in regard to each. The "moral" of the work is summed up in the following concluding sentences: "Adhere steadfastly to your business; adhere steadfastly to your first love; adhere steadfastly to the church." * * * * * A MANUAL OF POLITENESS, COMPRISING THE PRINCIPLES OF ETIQUETTE AND RULES OF BEHAVIOUR IN GENTEEL SOCIETY, FOR PERSONS OF BOTH SEXES. 18mo., with Plates. * * * * * Book of Politeness. THE GENTLEMAN AND LADY'S BOOK OF POLITENESS AND PROPRIETY OF DEPORTMENT DEDICATED TO THE YOUTH OF BOTH SEXES. BY MADAME CELNART. Translated from the Sixth Paris Edition, Enlarged and Improved. Fifth American Edition. One volume, 18mo. * * * * * THE ANTEDILUVIANS; Or, The World Destroyed. A NARRATIVE POEM, IN TEN BOOKS. BY JAMES M'HENRY, M.D. One volume, 18mo. * * * * * Bennett's (Rev. John) Letters to a Young Lady, ON A VARIETY OF SUBJECTS CALCULATED TO IMPROVE THE HEART, TO FORM THE MANNERS, AND ENLIGHTEN THE UNDERSTANDING. "That our daughters may be as polished corners of the temple." The publishers sincerely hope (for the happiness of mankind) that a copy of this valuable little work will be found the companion of every young lady, as much of the happiness of every family depends on the proper cultivation of the female mind. * * * * * THE DAUGHTER'S OWN BOOK: OR, PRACTICAL HINTS FROM A FATHER TO HIS DAUGHTER. One volume, 18mo. This is one of the most practical and truly valuable treatises on the culture and discipline of the female mind, which has hitherto been published in this country; and the publishers are very confident, from the great demand for this invaluable little work, that ere long it will be found in the library of every young lady. * * * * * THE AMERICAN CHESTERFIELD: Or, "Youth's Guide to the Way to Wealth, Honour, and Distinction" &c. 18mo. CONTAINING ALSO A COMPLETE TREATISE ON THE ART OF CARVING. "We most cordially recommend the American Chesterfield to general attention: but to young persons particularly, as one of the best works of the kind that has ever been published in this country. It cannot be too highly appreciated, nor its perusal be unproductive of satisfaction and usefulness." * * * * * SENECA'S MORALS. BY WAY OF ABSTRACT TO WHICH IS ADDED, A DISCOURSE UNDER THE TITLE OF AN AFTER-THOUGHT. BY SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE, KNT. A new, fine edition; one volume, 18mo. A copy of this valuable little work should be found in every family library. * * * * * NEW SONG-BOOK. Grigg's Southern and Western Songster; BEING A CHOICE COLLECTION OF THE MOST FASHIONABLE SONGS, MANY OF WHICH ARE ORIGINAL. In one volume, 18mo. Great care was taken, in the selection, to admit no song that contained, in the slightest degree, any indelicate or improper allusions; and with great propriety it may claim the title of "The Parlour Song-Book, or Songster." The immortal Shakspeare observes-- "The man that hath not music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." * * * * * ROBOTHAM'S POCKET FRENCH DICTIONARY, CAREFULLY REVISED, AND THE PRONUNCIATION OF ALL THE DIFFICULT WORDS ADDED. * * * * * THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN. COMPRISING THE HUMOROUS ADVENTURES OF UNCLE TOBY AND CORPORAL TRIM. BY L. STERNE. Beautifully Illustrated by Darley. Stitched. * * * * * A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. BY L. STERNE. Illustrated as above by Darley. Stitched. The beauties of this author are so well known, and his errors in style and expression so few and far between, that one reads with renewed delight his delicate turns, &c. * * * * * THE LIFE OF GENERAL JACKSON, WITH A LIKENESS OF THE OLD HERO. One volume, 18mo. * * * * * LIFE OF PAUL JONES. In one volume, 12mo. WITH ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES HAMILTON. The work is compiled from his original journals and correspondence, and includes an account of his services in the American Revolution, and in the war between the Russians and Turks in the Black Sea. There is scarcely any Naval Hero, of any age, who combined in his character so much of the adventurous, skilful and daring, as Paul Jones. The incidents of his Life are almost as startling and absorbing as those of romance. His achievements during the American Revolution--the fight between the Bon Homme Richard and Serapis, the most desperate naval action on record--and the alarm into which, with so small a force, he threw the coasts of England and Scotland--are matters comparatively well known to Americans; but the incidents of his subsequent career have been veiled in obscurity, which is dissipated by this biography. A book like this, narrating the actions of such a man, ought to meet with an extensive sale, and become as popular as Robinson Crusoe in fiction, or Weems's Life of Marion and Washington, and similar books, in fact. It contains 400 pages, has a handsome portrait and medallion likeness of Jones, and is illustrated with numerous original wood engravings of naval scenes and distinguished men with whom he was familiar. * * * * * THE GREEK EXILE; Or, A Narrative of the Captivity and Escape of Christophoros Plato Castanis, DURING THE MASSACRE ON THE ISLAND OF SCIO BY THE TURKS TOGETHER WITH VARIOUS ADVENTURES IN GREECE AND AMERICA. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF, Author of an Essay on the Ancient and Modern Greek Languages; Interpretation of the Attributes of the Principal Fabulous Deities; The Jewish Maiden of Scio's Citadel; and the Greek Boy in the Sunday-School. One volume, 12mo. * * * * * THE YOUNG CHORISTER; Collection of New and Beautiful Tunes, adapted to the use of Sabbath-Schools, from some of the most distinguished composers; together with many of the author's compositions. EDITED BY MINARD W. WILSON. * * * * * CAMP LIFE OF A VOLUNTEER, A Campaign in Mexico; Or, A Glimpse at Life In Camp. BY "ONE WHO HAS SEEN THE ELEPHANT." * * * * * Life of General Zachary Taylor, COMPRISING A NARRATIVE OF EVENTS CONNECTED WITH HIS PROFESSIONAL CAREER, AND AUTHENTIC INCIDENTS OF HIS EARLY YEARS. BY J. REESE FRY AND R.T. CONRAD. With an original and accurate Portrait, and eleven elegant illustrations, by Darley. In one handsome 12mo. volume. "It is by far the fullest and most interesting biography of General Taylor that we have ever seen."--_Richmond (Whig) Chronicle_. "On the whole, we are satisfied that this volume is the most correct and comprehensive one yet published."--_Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_. "The superiority of this edition over the ephemeral publications of the day consists in fuller and more authentic accounts of his family, his early life, and Indian wars. The narrative of his proceedings in Mexico is drawn partly from reliable private letters, but chiefly from his own official correspondence." "It forms a cheap, substantial, and attractive volume, and one which should be read at the fireside of every family who desire a faithful and true life of the Old General." * * * * * GENERAL TAYLOR AND HIS STAFF: Comprising Memoirs of Generals Taylor, Worth, Wool, and Butler; Cols. May, Cross, Clay, Hardin, Yell, Hays, and other distinguished Officers attached to General Taylor's Army. Interspersed with NUMEROUS ANECDOTES OF THE MEXICAN WAR, and Personal Adventures of the Officers. Compiled from Public Documents and Private Correspondence. With ACCURATE PORTRAITS, AND OTHER BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS. In one volume, 12mo. * * * * * GENERAL SCOTT AND HIS STAFF: Comprising Memoirs of Generals Scott, Twiggs, Smith, Quitman, Shields, Pillow, Lane, Cadwalader, Patterson, and Pierce; Cols. Childs, Riley, Harney, and Butler; and other distinguished officers attached to General Scott's Army. TOGETHER WITH Notices of General Kearny, Col. Doniphan, Col. 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This book will be found replete with information, not only to the traveller, but likewise to the man of business. In its preparation, an entirely new plan has been adopted, which, we are convinced, needs only a trial to be fully appreciated. Among its many valuable features, are tables showing at a glance the _distance_, _fare_, and _time_ occupied in travelling from the principal cities to the most important places in the Union; so that the question frequently asked, without obtaining a satisfactory reply, is here answered in full. Other tables show the distances from New York, &c., to domestic and foreign ports, by sea; and also, by way of comparison, from New York and Liverpool to the principal ports beyond and around Cape Horn, &c., as well as _via_ the Isthmus of Panama. Accompanied by a large and accurate Map of the United States, including a separate Map of California, Oregon, New Mexico and Utah. Also, a Map of the Island of Cuba, and Plan of the City and Harbor of Havana; and a Map of Niagara River and Falls. * * * * * THE LEGISLATIVE GUIDE: Containing directions for conducting business in the House of Representatives; the Senate of the United States; the Joint Rules of both Houses; a Synopsis of Jefferson's Manual, and copious Indices; together with a concise system of Rules of Order, based on the regulations of the U.S. Congress. Designed to economise time, secure uniformity and despatch in conducting business in all secular meetings, and also in all religious, political, and Legislative Assemblies. BY JOSEPH BARTLETT BURLEIGH, LL. D. In one volume, 12mo. This is considered by our Judges and Congressmen as decidedly the best work of the kind extant. Every young man in the country should have a copy of this book. * * * * * THE INITIALS; A Story of Modern Life. THREE VOLUMES OF THE LONDON EDITION COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME 12MO. A new novel, equal to "Jane Eyre." * * * * * WILD WESTERN SCENES: A NARRATIVE OF ADVENTURES IN THE WESTERN WILDERNESS. Wherein the Exploits of Daniel Boone, the Great American Pioneer, are particularly described. Also, Minute Accounts of Bear, Deer, and Buffalo Hunts--Desperate Conflicts with the Savages--Fishing and Fowling Adventures--Encounters with Serpents, &c. By LUKE SHORTFIELD, Author of "The Western Merchant." BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED. One volume, 12mo. * * * * * POEMS OF THE PLEASURES: Consisting of the PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION, by Akenside; the PLEASURES OF MEMORY by Samuel Rogers; the PLEASURES OF HOPE, by Campbell; and the PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP, by McHenry. With a memoir of each Author, prepared expressly for this work. 18mo. * * * * * BALDWIN'S PRONOUNCING GAZETTEER. A PRONOUNCING GAZETTEER: CONTAINING TOPOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL, AND OTHER INFORMATION, OF ALL THE MORE IMPORTANT PLACES IN THE KNOWN WORLD, FROM THE MOST RECENT AND AUTHENTIC SOURCES. BY THOMAS BALDWIN. _Assisted by several other Gentlemen._ To which is added an APPENDIX, containing more than TEN THOUSAND ADDITIONAL NAMES, chiefly of the small Towns and Villages, &c., of the United States and of Mexico. NINTH EDITION, WITH A SUPPLEMENT, Giving the Pronunciation of near two thousand names, besides those pronounced in the Original Work: Forming in itself a Complete Vocabulary of Geographical Pronunciation. ONE VOLUME 12MO.--PRICE, $1.50. * * * * * Arthur's Library for the Household. Complete in Twelve handsome 18mo. Volumes, bound in Scarlet Cloth. 1. WOMAN'S TRIALS; OR, TALES AND SKETCHES FROM THE LIFE AROUND US. 2. MARRIED LIFE; ITS SHADOWS AND SUNSHINE. 3. THE TWO WIVES; OR LOST AND WON. 4. THE WAYS OF PROVIDENCE; OR, "HE DOETH ALL THINGS WELL." 5. HOME SCENES AND HOME INFLUENCES. 6. STORIES FOR YOUNG HOUSEKEEPERS. 7. LESSONS IN LIFE, FOR ALL WHO WILL READ THEM. 8. SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP. 9. 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BY JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. IN ONE VOLUME, 12MO--PRICE $1.25. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: Uncle Tom's Cabin.] [Footnote B: A number of slaves have been manumitted recently at the South--in one instance more than half preferred to remain in slavery in New Orleans, to going to the North.] 
27949	----	DAISY. BY ELIZABETH WETHERELL, AUTHOR OF "THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD," "QUEECHY," ETC., ETC. [Illustration: Floral Squiggle] LONDON: WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C. NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE. [Illustration: Frontis "'And you love Jesus, Darry,' I said." _Page 59_ ] CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. MISS PINSHON 9 CHAPTER II. MY HOME 27 CHAPTER III. THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE 45 CHAPTER IV. SEVEN HUNDRED PEOPLE 68 CHAPTER V. IN THE KITCHEN 97 CHAPTER VI. WINTER AND SUMMER 119 CHAPTER VII. SINGLEHANDED 149 CHAPTER VIII. EGYPTIAN GLASS 165 CHAPTER IX. SHOPPING 185 CHAPTER X. SCHOOL 205 CHAPTER XI. A PLACE IN THE WORLD 226 CHAPTER XII. FRENCH DRESSES 244 CHAPTER XIII. GREY COATS 275 CHAPTER XIV. YANKEES 297 CHAPTER XV. FORT PUTNAM 320 CHAPTER XVI. HOPS 338 CHAPTER XVII. OBEYING ORDERS 356 CHAPTER XVIII. SOUTH AND NORTH 379 CHAPTER XIX. ENTERED FOR THE WAR 392 DAISY. CHAPTER I. MISS PINSHON. I want an excuse to myself for writing my own life; an excuse for the indulgence of going it all over again, as I have so often gone over bits. It has not been more remarkable than thousands of others. Yet every life has in it a thread of present truth and possible glory. Let me follow out the truth to the glory. The first bright years of my childhood I will pass. They were childishly bright. They lasted till my eleventh summer. Then the light of heavenly truth was woven in with the web of my mortal existence; and whatever the rest of the web has been, those golden threads have always run through it all the rest of the way. Just as I reached my birthday that summer and was ten years old, I became a Christian. For the rest of that summer I was a glad child. The brightness of those days is a treasure safe locked up in a chamber of my memory. I have known other glad times too in my life; other times of even higher enjoyment. But among all the dried flowers of my memory, there is not one that keeps a fresher perfume or a stronger scent of its life than this one. Those were the days without cloud; before life shadows had begun to cast their blackness over the landscape. And even though such shadows do go as well as come, and leave the intervals as sunlit as ever; yet after that change of the first life shadow is once seen, it is impossible to forget that it may come again and darken the sun. I do not mean that the days of that summer were absolutely without things to trouble me; I had changes of light and shade; but, on the whole, nothing that did not heighten the light. They were pleasant days that I had in Juanita's cottage at the time when my ankle was broken; there were hours of sweetness with crippled Molly; and it was simply delight I had all alone with my pony Loupe, driving over the sunny and shady roads, free to do as I liked and go where I liked. And how I enjoyed studying English history with my cousin Preston. It is all stowed away in my heart, as fresh and sweet as at first. I will not pull it out now. The change, and my first real life shadow came, when my father was thrown from his horse and injured his head. Then the doctors decided he must go abroad and travel, and mamma decided that it was best that I should go to Magnolia with Aunt Gary and have a governess. There is no pleasure in thinking of those weeks. They went very slowly, and yet very fast; while I counted every minute and noted every step in the preparations. They were all over at last; my little world was gone from me; and I was left alone with Aunt Gary. Her preparations had been made too; and the day after the steamer sailed we set off on our journey to the south. I do not know much about that journey. The things by the way were like objects in a mist to me and no more clearly discerned. Now and then there came a rift in the mist; something woke me up out of my sorrow-dream; and of those points and of what struck my eyes at those minutes I have a most intense and vivid recollection. I can feel yet the still air of one early morning's start, and hear the talk between my aunt and the hotel people about the luggage. My aunt was a great traveller and wanted no one to help her or manage for her. I remember acutely a beggar who spoke to us on the sidewalk at Washington. We stayed over a few days in Washington, and then hurried on; for when she was on the road my Aunt Gary lost not a minute. We went, I presume, as fast as we could without travelling all night; and our last day's journey added that too. By that time my head was getting steadied, perhaps, from the grief which had bewildered it; or grief was settling down and taking its proper place at the bottom of my heart, leaving the surface as usual. For twelve hours that day we went by a slow railway train through a country of weary monotony. Endless forests of pine seemed all that was to be seen; scarce ever a village; here and there a miserable clearing and forlorn-looking house; here and there stoppages of a few minutes to let somebody out or take somebody in; once, to my great surprise, a stop of rather more than a few minutes to accommodate a lady who wanted some flowers gathered for her. I was surprised to see flowers wild in the woods at that time of year, and much struck with the politeness of the railway train that was willing to delay for such a reason. We got out of the car for dinner, or for a short rest at dinner-time. My aunt had brought her lunch in a basket. Then the forests and the rumble of the cars began again. At one time the pine forests were exchanged for oak, I remember; after that, nothing but pine. It was late in the day, when we left the cars at one of those solitary wayside station-houses. I shall never forget the look and feeling of the place. We had been for some miles going through a region of swamp or swampy woods, where sometimes the rails were laid on piles in the water. This little station-house was in the midst of such a region. The woods were thick and tangled with vines everywhere beyond the edge of the clearing; the ground was wet beneath them, and in places showed standing water. There was scarcely a clearing; the forest was all round the house; with only the two breaks in it where on one side and on the other the iron rail track ran off into the distance. It was a lonely place; almost nobody was there waiting for the train; one or two forlorn coloured people and a long lank-looking countryman, were all. Except what at first prevented my seeing anything else--my cousin Preston. He met me just as I was going to get down from the car; lifted me to the platform, and then with his looks and words almost broke up the composure which for several days had been growing upon me. It was not hardened yet to bear attacks. I was like a poor shell-fish, which, having lost one coat of armour and defence, craves a place of hiding and shelter for itself until its new coat be grown. While he was begging me to come into the station-house and rest, I stood still looking up the long line of railway by which we had come, feeling as if my life lay at the other end of it, out of sight and quite beyond reach. Yet I asked him not to call me "poor" Daisy. I was very tired, and I suppose my nerves not very steady. Preston said we must wait at that place for another train; there was a fork in the road beyond, and this train would not go the right way. It would not take us to Baytown. So he had me into the station-house. It wearied me and so did all that my eyes lighted upon, strange though it was. The bare room, not clean; the board partition, with swinging doors, behind which, Preston said, were the cook and the baker! the untidy waiting girls that came and went, with scant gowns and coarse shoes, and no thread of white collar to relieve the dusky throat and head rising out of the dark gown, and no apron at all. Preston did what he could. He sent away the girls with their trays of eatables; he had a table pulled out from the wall and wiped off, and then he ordered a supper of eggs, and johnny cake, and all sorts of things. But I could not eat. As soon as supper was over I went out on the platform to watch the long lines of railway running off through the forest, and wait for the coming train. The evening fell while we looked; the train was late; and at last when it came I could only know it in the distance by the red spark of its locomotive gleaming like a firefly. It was a freight train, there was but one passenger car, and that was full. We got seats with difficulty, and apart from each other. I hardly know whether that, or anything, could have made me more forlorn. I was already stiff and weary with the twelve hours of travelling we had gone through that day; inexpressibly weary in heart. It seemed to me that I could not long endure the rumble and the jar and the closeness of this last car. The passengers, too, had habits which made me draw my clothes as tight around me as I could, and shrink away mentally into the smallest compass possible. I had noticed the like, to be sure, ever since we left Washington; but to-night, in my weary, faint, and tired-out state of mind and body every unseemly sight or sound struck my nerves with a sense of pain that was hardly endurable. I wondered if the train would go on all night; it went very slowly. And I noticed that nobody seemed impatient or had the air of expecting that it would soon find its journey's end. I felt as if I could not bear it many half hours. My next neighbour was a fat, good-natured, old lady, who rather made matters worse by putting her arm round me and hugging me up, and begging me to make a pillow of her and go to sleep. My nerves were twitching with impatience and the desire for relief; when suddenly the thought came to me that I might please the Lord by being patient. I remember what a lull the thought of Him brought; and yet how difficult it was not to be impatient, till I fixed my mind on some Bible words--they were the words of the twenty-third Psalm--and began to think and pray them over. So good they were, that by and by they rested me. I dropped asleep and forgot my aches and weariness until the train arrived at Baytown. They took me to a hotel, then, and put me to bed, and I did not get up for several days. I must have been feverish, for my fancies wandered incessantly in unknown places with papa, in regions of the old world; and sometimes, I think, took both him and myself to rest and home where wanderings are over. After a few days this passed away. I was able to come downstairs, and both Preston and his mother did their best to take good care of me. Especially Preston. He brought me books, and fruit, and birds to tempt me to eat, and was my kind and constant companion when his mother was out, and indeed when she was in, too. So I got better by the help of oranges and rice-birds. I could have got better faster, but for my dread of a governess which was hanging over me. I heard nothing about her and could not bear to ask. One day Preston brought the matter up and asked if Daisy was going to have a school-mistress? "Certainly," my Aunt Gary said. "She must be educated, you know." "_I_ don't know," said Preston; "but if they say so, I suppose she must. Who is it to be, mamma?" "You do not know anything about it," said Aunt Gary. "If my son was going to marry the greatest heiress in the State; and she is very nearly that--goodness! I did not see you were there, Daisy, my dear; but it makes no difference;--I should think it proper that she should be educated." "I can't see what her being an heiress should have to do with it," said Preston, "except rather to make it unnecessary as well as a bore. Who is it, mamma?" "I have recommended Miss Pinshon." "Oh, then, it is not fixed yet." "Yes, it is fixed. Miss Pinshon is coming as soon as we get to Magnolia." "I'll be off before that," said Preston. "Who is Miss Pinshon?" "How should _you_ know? She has lived at Jessamine Bank,--educated the Dalzell girls." "What sort of a person, mamma!" "What sort of a person?" said my Aunt Gary; "why a governess sort of a person. What sort should she be." "Any other sort in the world," said Preston, "for my money. That is just the sort to worry poor little Daisy out of her life." "You are a foolish boy!" said Aunt Gary. "Of course if you fill Daisy's head with notions, she will not get them out again. If you have anything of that sort to say, you had better say it where she will not hear." "Daisy has eyes--and a head," said Preston. As soon as I was able for it Preston took me out for short walks; and as I grew stronger he made the walks longer. The city was a strange place to me; very unlike New York; there was much to see and many a story to hear; and Preston and I enjoyed ourselves. Aunt Gary was busy making visits, I think. There was a beautiful walk by the sea which I liked best of all; and when it was not too cold my greatest pleasure was to sit there looking over the dark waters and sending my whole soul across them to that unknown spot where my father and mother were. "Home," that spot was to me. Preston did not know what I liked the Esplanade for; he sometimes laughed at me for being poetic and meditative; when I was only sending my heart over the water. But he was glad to please me in all that he could; and whenever it was not too cold, our walks always took me there. One day, sitting there, I remember we had a great argument about studying. Preston began with saying that I must not mind this governess that was coming, nor do anything she bade me unless I liked it. As I gave him no answer, he repeated what he had said. "You know, Daisy, you are not obliged to care what she thinks." I said I thought I was. "What for?" said Preston. "I have a great deal to learn you know," I said, feeling it very gravely indeed in my little heart. "What do you want to know so much?" said Preston. I said, everything. I was very ignorant. "You are no such thing," said Preston. "Your head is full this minute. I think you have about as much knowledge as is good for you. I mean to take care that you do not get too much." "O Preston," said I, "that is very wrong. I have not any knowledge scarcely." "There is no occasion," said Preston stoutly. "I hate learned women." "Don't you like to learn things?" "That's another matter," said he. "A man must know things, or he can't get along. Women are different." "But I think it is nice to know things too," said I. "I don't see how it is different." "Why, a woman need not be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a professor," said Preston; "all she need do, is to have good sense and dress herself nicely." "Is dressing so important?" said I, with a new light breaking over me. "Certainly. Ribbons of the wrong colour will half kill a woman. And I have heard Aunt Randolph say that a particular lady was ruined by her gloves." "Ruined by her gloves!" said I. "Did she buy so many?" Preston went into such a laugh at that, I had to wait some time before I could go on. I saw I had made some mistake, and I would not renew that subject. "Do _you_ mean to be anything of that sort?" I said, with some want of connection. "What sort? Ruined by my gloves? Not if I know it." "No, no! I mean, a lawyer or a doctor or a professor?" "I should think not!" said Preston, with a more emphatic denial. "Then, what are you studying for?" "Because, as I told you, Daisy, a man must know things, or he cannot get on in the world." I pondered the matter, and then I said, I should think good sense would make a woman study too. I did not see the difference. "Besides, Preston," I said, "if she didn't, they would not be equal." "Equal!" cried Preston. "Equal! O Daisy, you ought to have lived in some old times. You are two hundred years old, at least. Now don't go to studying that, but come home. You have sat here long enough." It was my last hour of freedom. Perhaps for that reason I remember every minute so distinctly. On our way home we met a negro funeral. I stopped to look at it. Something, I do not know what, in the long line of dark figures, orderly and even stately in their demeanour, the white dresses of the women, the peculiar faces of men and women both, fascinated my eyes. Preston exclaimed at me again. It was the commonest sight in the world, he said. It was their pride to have a grand funeral. I asked if _this_ was a grand funeral. Preston said "pretty well; there must be several hundred of them and they were well dressed." And then he grew impatient and hurried me on. But I was thinking; and before we got to the hotel where we lodged, I asked Preston if there were many coloured people at Magnolia. "Lots of them," he said. "There isn't anything else." "Preston," I said presently, "I want to buy some candy somewhere." Preston was very much pleased, I believe, thinking that my thoughts had quite left the current of sober things. He took me to a famous confectioner's; and there I bought sweet things till my little stock of money was all gone. "No more funds?" said Preston. "Never mind--go on, and I'll help you. Why I never knew you liked sugarplums so much. What next? burnt almonds? _this_ is good, Daisy--this confection of roses. But you must take all this sugar in small doses, or I am afraid it wouldn't be just beneficial." "O Preston!" I said--"I do not mean to eat all this myself." "Are you going to propitiate Miss Pinshon with it? I have a presentiment that sweets won't sweeten her, Daisy." "I don't know what 'propitiate' means," I said, sighing. "I will not take the almonds, Preston." But he was determined I should; and to the almonds he added a quantity of the delicate confection he spoke of, which I had thought too delicate and costly for the uses I had purposed; and after the rose he ordered candied fruits; till a great packet of varieties was made up. Preston paid for them--I could not help it--and desired them sent home; but I was bent on taking the package myself. Preston would not let me do that, so he carried it; which was a much more serious token of kindness, in him, than footing the bill. It was but a little way, however, to the hotel. We were in the hall, and I was just taking my sugars from Preston to carry them upstairs, when I heard Aunt Gary call my name from the parlour. Instinctively, I cannot tell how, I knew from her tone what she wanted me for. I put back the package in Preston's hands, and walked in; my play over. How well I knew my play was over, when I saw my governess. She was sitting by my aunt on the sofa. Quite different from what I had expected, so different that I walked up to her in a maze, and yet seemed to recognize in that first view all that was coming after. Probably that is fancy; but it seems to me now that all I ever knew or felt about Miss Pinshon in the years that followed, was duly begun and betokened in those first five minutes. She was a young-looking lady, younger looking than she was. She had a dark, rich complexion, and a face that I suppose would have been called handsome; it was never handsome to me. Long black curls on each side of her face, and large black eyes, were the features that first struck one; but I immediately decided that Miss Pinshon was not born a lady. I do not mean that I think blood and breeding are unseverable; or that half a dozen lady ancestors in a direct line secure the character to the seventh in descent; though they _do_ often secure the look of it; nevertheless, ladies are born who never know all their lives how to make a curtsey, and curtseys are made with infinite grace by those who have nothing of a lady beyond the trappings. I never saw Miss Pinshon do a rude or an awkward thing, that I remember; nor one which changed my first mind about her. She was handsomely dressed; but there again I felt the same want. Miss Pinshon's dresses made me think always of the mercer's counter and the dressmaker's shop. My mother's robes always seemed part of her own self; and so, in a certain true sense, they were. My aunt introduced me. Miss Pinshon studied me. Her first remark was that I looked very young. My aunt excused that, on the ground of my having been always a delicate child. Miss Pinshon observed further that the way I wore my hair produced part of the effect. My aunt explained _that_ to my father's and mother's fancy; and agreed that she thought cropped heads were always ungraceful. If my hair were allowed to fall in ringlets on my neck I would look very different. Miss Pinshon next inquired how much I knew? turning her great black eyes from me to Aunt Gary. My aunt declared she could not tell; delicate health had also here interfered; and she appealed to me to say what knowledge I was possessed of. I could not answer. I could not say. It seemed to me I had not learned anything. Then Preston spoke for me. "Modesty is apt to be silent on its own merits," he said. "My cousin has learned the usual rudiments; and in addition to those the art of driving." "Of _what_? What did you say?" inquired my governess. "Of driving, ma'am. Daisy is an excellent whip for her years and strength." Miss Pinshon turned to Preston's mother. My aunt confirmed and enlarged the statement, again throwing the blame on my father and mother. For herself, she always thought it very dangerous for a little girl like me to go about in the country in a pony-chaise all alone. Miss Pinshon's eyes could not be said to express anything, but to my fancy they concealed a good deal. She remarked that the roads were easy. "Oh, it was not here," said my aunt; "it was at the North, where the roads are not like our pine forest. However the roads were not dangerous there, that I know of; not for anybody but a child. But horses and carriages are always dangerous." Miss Pinshon next applied herself to me. What did I know? "beside this whip accomplishment," as she said. I was tongue-tied. It did not seem to me that I knew anything. At last I said so. Preston exclaimed. I looked at him to beg him to be still; and I remember how he smiled at me. "You can read, I suppose?" my governess went on. "Yes, ma'am." "And write, I suppose?" "I do not think you would say I know how to write," I answered. "I cannot do it at all well; and it takes me a long time." "Come back to the driving, Daisy," said Preston. "That is one thing you do know. And English history, I will bear witness." "What have you got there, Preston?" my aunt asked. "Some horehound drops, mamma." "You haven't a sore throat?" she asked, eagerly. "No, ma'am--not just now, but I had yesterday; and I thought I would be provided." "You seem provided for a long time," Miss Pinshon remarked. "Can't get anything up at Magnolia, except rice," said Preston, after making the lady a bow which did not promise good fellowship. "You must take with you what you are likely to want there." "You will not want all that," said his mother. "No ma'am, I hope not," said Preston, looking at his package demurely. "Old Uncle Lot, you know, always has a cough; and I purpose delighting him with some of my purchases. I will go and put them away." "Old Uncle Lot!" my aunt repeated. "What Uncle Lot? I did not know you had been enough at Magnolia to get the servants' names. But _I_ don't remember any Uncle Lot." Preston turned to leave the room with his candy, and in turning gave me a look of such supreme fun and mischief that at another time I could hardly have helped laughing. But Miss Pinshon was asking me if I understood arithmetic? "I think--I know very little about it," I said hesitating. "I can do a sum." "In what?" "On the slate, ma'am." "Yes, but in what?" "I don't know, ma'am--it is adding up the columns." "Oh, in _addition_, then. Do you know the multiplication and division tables?" "No, ma'am." "Go and get off your things, and then come back to me; and I will have some more talk with you." I remember to this day how heavily my feet went up the stairs. I was not very strong yet in body, and now the strength seemed to have gone out of my heart. "I declare," said Preston, who waited for me on the landing, "she falls into position easy! Does she think she is going to take _that_ tone with you?" I made no answer. Preston followed me into my room. "I won't have it, little Daisy. Nobody shall be mistress at Magnolia but you. This woman shall not. See, Daisy--I am going to put these things in my trunk for you, until we get where you want them. That will be safe." I thanked him. "What are you going to do now?" "I am going downstairs, as soon as I am ready." "Do you expect to be under all the commands this High Mightiness may think proper to lay upon you?" I begged him to be still and leave me. "She will turn you into stone!" he exclaimed. "She is a regular Gorgon, with those heavy eyes of hers. I never saw such eyes. I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, Daisy--not one, do you hear?" I heard too well. I faced round upon him and begged him to remember that it was my _mother_ I must obey in Miss Pinshon's orders: and said that he must not talk to me. Whereupon Preston threw down his candies, and pulled my cloak out of my unsteady hands, and locked his arms about me; kissing me and lamenting over me that it was "too bad." I tried to keep my self-command; but the end was a great burst of tears; and I went down to Miss Pinshon with red eyes and at a disadvantage. I think Preston was pleased. I had need of all my quiet and self-command. My governess stretched out her hand, drew me to her side and kissed me; then with the other hand went on to arrange the ruffle round my neck, stroking it and pulling it into order, and even taking out a little bit of a pin I wore, and putting it in again to suit herself. It annoyed me excessively. I knew all was right about my ruffle and pin; I never left them carelessly arranged; no fingers but mamma's had ever dared to meddle with them before. But Miss Pinshon arranged the ruffle and the pin, and still holding me, looked in my face with those eyes of hers. I began to feel that they were "heavy." They did not waver. They did not seem to wink, like other eyes. They bore down upon my face with a steady power, that was not bright but ponderous. Her first question was, whether I was a good girl. I could not tell how to answer. My aunt answered for me, that she believed Daisy meant to be a good girl, though she liked to have her own way. Miss Pinshon ordered me to bring up a chair and sit down; and then asked if I knew anything about mathematics; told me it was the science of quantity; remarked to my aunt that it was the very best study for teaching children to think, and that she always gave them a great deal of it in the first year of their pupilage. "It puts the mind in order," the black-eyed lady went on; "and other things come so easily after it. Daisy, do you know what I mean by 'quantity?'" I knew what _I_ meant by quantity; but whether the English language had anything in common for Miss Pinshon and me, I had great doubts. I hesitated. "I always teach my little girls to answer promptly when they are asked anything. I notice that you do not answer promptly. You can always tell whether you know a thing or whether you do not." I was not so sure of that. Miss Pinshon desired me now to repeat the multiplication table. Here at least there was certainty. I had never learned it. "It appears to me," said my governess, "you have done very little with the first ten years of your life. It gives you a great deal to do for the next ten." "Health has prevented her applying to her studies," said my aunt. "The want of health. Yes, I suppose so. I hope Daisy will be very well now, for we must make up for lost time." "I do not suppose so much time need have been lost," said my aunt; "but parents are easily alarmed, you know; they think of nothing but one thing." So now there was nobody about me who would be easily alarmed. I took the full force of that. "Of course," said Miss Pinshon, "I shall have a careful regard to her health. Nothing can be done without that. I shall take her out regularly to walk with me, and see that she does not expose herself in any way. Study is no hindrance to health; learning has no malevolent effect upon the body. I think people often get sick for want of something to think of." How sure I felt, as I went up to bed that night, that no such easy cause of sickness would be mine for long years to come! CHAPTER II. MY HOME. The next day we were to go to Magnolia. It was a better day than I expected. Preston kept me with him, away from Aunt Gary and my governess; who seemed to have a very comfortable time together. Magnolia lay some miles inland, up a small stream or inlet called the Sands River; the banks of which were studded with gentlemen's houses. The houses were at large distances from one another, miles of plantation often lying between. We went by a small steamer which plied up and down the river; it paddled along slowly, made a good many landings, and kept us on board thus a great part of the day. At last Preston pointed out to me a little wooden pier or jetty ahead, which he said was my landing; and the steamer soon drew up to it. I could see only a broken bank, fifteen feet high, stretching all along the shore. However a few steps brought us to a receding level bit of ground, where there was a break in the bank; the shore fell in a little, and a wooded dell sloped back from the river. A carriage and servants were waiting here. Preston and I had arranged that we would walk up and let the ladies ride. But as soon as they had taken their places I heard myself called. We declared our purpose, Preston and I; but Miss Pinshon said the ground was damp and she preferred I should ride; and ordered me in. I obeyed, bitterly disappointed; so much disappointed that I had the utmost trouble not to let it be seen. For a little while I did not know what we were passing. Then curiosity recovered itself. The carriage was slowly making its way up a rough road. On each side the wooded banks of the dell shut us in; and these banks seemed to slope upward as well as the road, for though we mounted and mounted, the sides of the dell grew no lower. After a little, then, the hollow of the dell began to grow wider, and its sides softly shelving down; and through the trees on our left we could see a house, standing high above us, but on ground which sloped towards the dell, which rose and widened and spread out to meet it. This sloping ground was studded with magnificent live oaks; each holding its place in independent majesty, making no interference with the growth of the rest. Some of these trees had a girth that half a dozen men with their arms outstretched in a circle could not span; they were green in spite of the winter; branching low, and spreading into stately, beautiful heads of verdure, while grey wreaths of moss hung drooping from some of them. The house was seen not very distinctly among these trees; it showed low, and in a long extent of building. I have never seen a prettier approach to a house than that at Magnolia. My heart was full of the beauty this first time. "This is Magnolia, Daisy," said my aunt. "This is your house." "It appears a fine place," said Miss Pinshon. "It is one of the finest on the river. This is your property, Daisy." "It is papa's," I answered. "Well, it belongs to your mother, and so you may say it belongs to your father; but it is yours for all that. The arrangement was, as I know," my aunt went on, addressing Miss Pinshon--"the arrangement in the marriage settlements was, that the sons should have the father's property, and the daughters the mother's. There is one son and one daughter; so they will each have enough." "But it is mamma's and papa's," I pleaded. "Oh, well--it will be yours. That is what I mean. Ransom will have Melbourne and the Virginia estates; and Magnolia is yours. You ought to have a pretty good education." I was so astonished at this way of looking at things, that again I lost part of what was before me. The carriage went gently along, passing the house, and coming up gradually to the same level; then making a turn we drove at a better pace back under some of those great evergreen oaks, till we drew up at the house door. This was at a corner of the building, which stretched in a long, low line towards the river. A verandah skirted all that long front. As soon as I was out of the carriage I ran to the farthest end. I found the verandah turned the corner; the lawn too. All along the front it sloped to the dell; at the end of the house it sloped more gently and to greater distance down to the banks of the river. I could not see the river itself. The view of the dell at my left hand was lovely. A little stream which ran in the bottom had been coaxed to form a clear pool in an open spot, where the sunlight fell upon it, surrounded by a soft wilderness of trees and climbers. Sweet branches of jessamine waved there in their season; and a beautiful magnolia had been planted or cherished there, and carefully kept in view of the house windows. But the wide lawns, on one side and on the other, grew nothing but the oaks; the gentle slope was a play-ground for sunshine and shadow, as I first saw it; for then the shadows of the oaks were lengthening over the grass, and the waving grey wreaths of moss served sometimes as a foil, sometimes as an usher to the sunbeams. I stood in a trance of joy and sorrow; they were fighting so hard for the mastery; till I knew that my aunt and Miss Pinshon had come up behind me. "This is a proud place!" my governess remarked. I believe I looked at her. My aunt laughed; said she must not teach me that; and led the way back to the entrance of the house. All along the verandah I noticed that the green-blinded long windows made other entrances for whoever chose them. The door was open for us already, and within was a row of dark faces of men and women, and a show of white teeth that looked like a welcome. I wondered Aunt Gary did not say more to answer the welcome; she only dropped a few careless words as she went in, and asked if dinner was ready. I looked from one to another of the strange faces and gleaming rows of teeth. These were my mother's servants; that was something that came near to my heart. I heard inquiries after "Mis' Felissy" and "Mass' Randolph," and then the question, "Mis' 'Lizy, is this little missis?" It was asked by an old, respectable-looking, grey-haired negress. I did not hear my aunt's answer; but I stopped and turned to the woman and laid my little hand in her withered palm. I don't know what there was in that minute; only I know that whereas I touched one hand, I touched a great many hearts. Then and there began my good understanding with all the coloured people on my mother's estate of Magnolia. There was a general outburst of satisfaction and welcome. Some of the voices blessed me; more than one remarked that I was "like Mass' Randolph;" and I went into the parlour with a warm spot in my heart, which had been very cold. I was oddly at home at once. The room indeed was a room I had never seen before; yet according to the mystery of such things, the inanimate surroundings bore the mark of the tastes and habits I had grown up among all my life. A great splendid fire was blazing in the chimney; a rich carpet was on the floor; the furniture was luxurious though not showy, and there was plenty of it. So there was plenty of works of art, in home and foreign manufacture. Comfort, elegance, prettiness, all around; and through the clear glass of the long windows the evergreen oaks on the lawn showed like guardians of the place. I stood at one of them, with the pressure of that joy and sorrow filling my childish heart. My aunt presently called me from the window, and bade me let Margaret take off my things. I got leave to go upstairs with Margaret and take them off there. So I ran up the low easy flight of stairs--they were wooden and uncarpeted--to a matted gallery lit from the roof, with here and there a window in a recess looking upon the lawn. Many rooms opened into this gallery. I went from one to another. Here were great wood fires burning too; here were snowy white beds, with light muslin hangings; and dark cabinets and wardrobes; and mats on the floors, with thick carpets and rugs laid down here and there. And on one side and on the other side the windows looked out upon the wide lawn, with its giant oaks hung with grey wreaths of moss. My heart grew sore straitened. It was a hard evening, that first evening at Magnolia; with the loveliness and the brightness, the warm attraction, and the bitter cold sense of loneliness. I longed to throw myself down and cry. What I did, was to stand by one of the windows and fight myself not to let the tears come. If _they_ were here, it would be so happy! If they were here--oh, if they were here! I believe the girl spoke to me without my hearing her. But then came somebody whom I was obliged to hear, shouting "Daisy" along the gallery. I faced him with a great effort. He wanted to know what I was doing, and how I liked it, and where my room was. "Not found it yet?" said Preston. "Is this it? Whose room is this, hey?--you somebody?" "Maggie, massa," said the girl, dropping a curtsey. "Maggie, where is your mistress's room?" "This is Mis' 'Liza's room, sir." "Nonsense! Miss 'Liza is only here on a visit--_this_ is your mistress. Where is her room, hey?" "Oh stop, Preston!" I begged him. "I am not mistress." "Yes, you are. I'll roast anybody who says you ain't. Come along, and you shall choose which room you will have; and if it isn't ready they will get it ready. Come!" I made him understand my choice might depend on where other people's rooms were; and sent him off. Then I sent the girl away--she was a pleasant-faced mulatto, very eager to help me--and left to myself I hurriedly turned the key in the lock. I _must_ have some minutes to myself if I was to bear the burden of that afternoon; and I knelt down with as heavy a heart, almost, as I ever knew. In all my life I had never felt so castaway and desolate. When my father and mother first went from me, I was at least among the places where they had been; June was with me still, and I knew not Miss Pinshon. The journey had had its excitements and its interest. Now I was alone; for June had decided, with tears and woeful looks, that she would not come to Magnolia; and Preston would be soon on his way back to college. I knew of only one comfort in the world; that wonderful, "Lo, I am with you." Does anybody know what that means, who has not made it the single plank bridge over an abyss? No one found out that anything was the matter with me, except Preston. His caresses were dangerous to my composure. I kept him off; and he ate his dinner with a thundercloud face which foretold war with all governesses. For me, it was hard work enough to maintain my quiet; everything made it hard. Each new room, every arrangement of furniture, every table appointment, though certainly not what I had seen before, yet seemed so like home that I was constantly missing what would have made it home indeed. It was the shell without the kernel. The soup ladle seemed to be by mistake in the wrong hands; Preston seemed to have no business with my father's carving knife and fork; the sense of desolation pressed upon me everywhere. After dinner the ladies went upstairs to choose their rooms, and Miss Pinshon avowed that she wished to have mine within hers; it would be proper and convenient, she said. Aunt Gary made no objection; but there was some difficulty, because all the rooms had independent openings into the gallery. Miss Pinshon hesitated a moment between one of two that opened into each other, and another that was pleasanter and larger but would give her less facility for overlooking my affairs. For one moment I drew a breath of hope; and then my hope was quashed. Miss Pinshon chose one of the two that opened into each other; and my only comfort was the fact that my own room had two doors and I was not obliged to go through Miss Pinshon's to get to it. Just as this business was settled, Preston called me out into the gallery and asked me to go for a walk. I questioned with myself a second whether I should ask leave; but I had an inward assurance that to ask leave would be not to go. I felt I must go. I ran back to the room where my things lay, and in two minutes I was out of the house. My first introduction to Magnolia! How well I remember every minute and every foot of the way. It was delicious, the instant I stepped out among the oaks and into the sunshine. Freedom was there, at all events. "Now, Daisy, we'll go to the stables," Preston said, "and see if there is anything fit for you. I am afraid there isn't; though Edwards told me he thought there was." "Who is Edwards?" I asked, as we sped joyfully away through the oaks, across shade and sunshine. "Oh, he is the overseer." "What is an overseer?" "What is an overseer?--why, he is the man that looks after things." "What things?" I asked. "All the things--everything, Daisy; all the affairs of the plantation; the rice fields and the cotton fields and the people, and everything." "Where are the stables? and where are we going?" "Here--just here--a little way off. They are just in a dell over here--the other side of the house, where the quarters are." "Quarters?" I repeated. "Yes. Oh, you don't know anything down here, but you'll learn. The stables and quarters are in this dell we are coming to; nicely out of sight. Magnolia is one of the prettiest places on the river." We had passed through the grove of oaks on the further side of the house, and then found the beginning of a dell which, like the one by which we had come up a few hours before, sloped gently down to the river. In its course it widened out to a little low sheltered open ground, where a number of buildings stood. "So the house is between two dells," I said. "Yes; and on that height up there, beyond the quarters, is the cemetery; and from there you can see a great many fields and the river, and have a beautiful view. And there are capital rides all about the place, Daisy." When we came to the stables, Preston sent a boy in search of "Darius." Darius, he told me, was the coachman, and chief in charge of the stable department. Darius came presently. He was a grey-headed, fine-looking, most respectable black man. He had driven my mother and my mother's mother; and being a trusted and important man on the place, and for other reasons, he had a manner and bearing that were a model of dignified propriety. Very grave "Uncle Darry" was; stately and almost courtly in his respectful courtesy; but he gave me a pleasant smile when Preston presented him. "We's happy to see Miss Daisy at her own home. Hope de Lord bress her." My heart warmed at these words like the ice-bound earth in a spring day. They were not carelessly spoken, nor was the welcome. My feet trod the greensward more firmly. Then all other thoughts were for the moment put to flight by Preston's calling for the pony and asking Darius what he thought of him, and Darry's answer. "Very far, massa; very far. Him no good for not'ing." While I pondered what this judgment might amount to, the pony was brought out. He was larger than Loupe, and had not Loupe's peculiar symmetry of mane and tail: he was a fat dumpy little fellow, sleek and short, dapple grey, with a good long tail and a mild eye. Preston declared he had no shape at all and was a poor concern of a pony; but to my eyes he was beautiful. He took one or two sugarplums from my hand with as much amenity as if we had been old acquaintances. Then a boy was put on him, who rode him up and down with a halter. "He'll do, Darius," said Preston. "For little missis? Just big enough, massa. Got no tricks at all, only he no like work. Not much spring in him." "Daisy must take the whip, then. Come and let us go look at some of the country where you will ride. Are you tired, Daisy?" "Oh no," I said. "But wait a minute, Preston. Who lives in all those houses?" "The people. The hands. They are away in the fields at work now." "Does Darius live there?" "Of course. They all live here." "I should like to go nearer, and see the houses." "Daisy, it is nothing on earth to see. They are all just alike, and you see them from here." "I want to look in," I said, moving down the slope. "Daisy," said Preston, "you are just as fond of having your way as----" "As what? I do not think I am, Preston." "I suppose nobody thinks he is," grumbled Preston, following me, "except the fellows who can't get it." I had by this time almost forgotten Miss Pinshon. I had almost come to think that Magnolia might be a pleasant place. In the intervals when the pony was out of sight, I had improved my knowledge of the old coachman; and every look added to my liking. There was something I could not read that more and more drew me to him. A simplicity in his good manners, a placid expression in his gravity, a staid reserve in his humility, were all there; and more yet. Also the scene in the dell was charming to me. The ground about the negro cottages was kept neat; they were neatly built of stone and stood round the sides of a quadrangle; while on each side and below the wooded slopes of ground closed in the picture. Sunlight was streaming through and brightening up the cottages, and resting on Uncle Darry's swart face. Down through the sunlight I went to the cottages. The first door stood open, and I looked in. At the next I was about to knock, but Preston pushed open the door for me; and so he did for a third and a fourth. Nobody was in them. I was a good deal disappointed. They were empty, bare, dirty, and seemed to be very forlorn. What a set of people my mother's hands must be, I thought. Presently I came upon a ring of girls, a little larger than I was, huddled together behind one of the cottages. There was no manners about them. They were giggling and grinning, hopping on one foot, and going into other awkward antics; not the less that most of them had their arms filled with little black babies. I had got enough for that day, and turning about, left the dell with Preston. At the head of the dell, Preston led off in a new direction, along a wide avenue that ran through the woods. Perfectly level and smooth, with the woods closing in on both sides and making long vistas through their boles and under their boughs. By and by we took another path that led off from this one, wide enough for two horses to go abreast. The pine trees were sweet overhead and on each hand, making the light soft and the air fragrant. Preston and I wandered on in delightful roaming; leaving the house and all that it contained at an unremembered distance. Suddenly we came out upon a cleared field. It was many acres large; in the distance a number of people were at work. We turned back again. "Preston," I said, after a silence of a few minutes,--"there seemed to be no women in those cottages. I did not see any." "I suppose not," said Preston; "because there were not any to see." "But had all those little babies no mothers?" "Yes, of course, Daisy; but they were in the field." "The mothers of those little babies?" "Yes. What about it? Look here--are you getting tired?" I said no; and he put his arm round me fondly, so as to hold me up a little; and we wandered gently on, back to the avenue, then down its smooth course further yet from the house, then off by another wood path through the pines on the other side. This was a narrower path, amidst sweeping pine branches and hanging creepers, some of them prickly, which threw themselves all across the way. It was not easy getting along. I remarked that nobody seemed to come there much. "I never came here myself," said Preston, "but I know it must lead out upon the river somewhere, and that's what I am after. Hollo! we are coming to something. There is something white through the trees. I declare, I believe----" Preston had been out in his reckoning, and a second time had brought me where he did not wish to bring me. We came presently to an open place, or rather a place where the pines stood a little apart; and there in the midst was a small enclosure. A low brick wall surrounded a square bit of ground, with an iron gate on one side of the square; within, the grassy plot was spotted with the white marble of tombstones. There were large and small. Overhead, the great pine trees stood and waved their long branches gently in the wind. The place was lonely and lovely. We had come, as Preston guessed, to the river, and the shore was here high; so that we looked down upon the dark little stream far below us. The sunlight, getting low by this time, hardly touched it; but streamed through the pine trees and over the grass, and gilded the white marble with gold. "I did not mean to bring you here," said Preston, "I did not know I was bringing you here. Come, Daisy--we'll go and try again." "Oh stop!" I said--"I like it. I want to look at it." "It is the cemetery," said Preston. "That tall column is the monument of our great--no, of our great-great-grandfather; and this brown one is for mamma's father. Come, Daisy!----" "Wait a little," I said. "Whose is that with the vase on top?" "Vase?" said Preston--"it's an urn. It is an urn, Daisy. People do not put vases on tombstones." I asked what the difference was. "The difference? O Daisy, Daisy! Why vases are to put flowers in; and urns--I'll tell you, Daisy,--I believe it is because the Romans used to burn the bodies of their friends and gather up the ashes and keep them in a funeral urn. So an urn comes to be appropriate to a tombstone." "I do not see how," I said. "Why because an urn comes to be an emblem of mortality and all that. Come, Daisy; let us go." "I think a vase of flowers would be a great deal nicer," I said. "We do not keep the ashes of our friends." "We don't put signs of joy over their graves either," said Preston. "I should think we might," I said meditatively. "When people have gone to Jesus--they must be very glad!" Preston burst out with an expression of hope that Miss Pinshon would "do something" for me; and again would have led me away; but I was not ready to go. My eye, roving beyond the white marble and the low brick wall, had caught what seemed to be a number of meaner monuments, scattered among the pine trees and spreading down the slope of the ground on the further side, where it fell off towards another dell. In one place a bit of board was set up; further on a cross; then I saw a great many bits of board and crosses; some more and some less carefully made; and still as my eye roved about over the ground they seemed to start up to view in every direction; too low and too humble and too near the colour of the fallen pine leaves to make much show unless they were looked for. I asked what they all were. "Those? Oh, those are for the people, you know." "The people?" I repeated. "Yes, the people--the hands." "There are a great many of them," I remarked. "Of course," said Preston. "You see, Daisy, there have been I don't know how many hundreds of hands here for a great many years, ever since mother's grandfather's time." "I should think," said I, looking at the little board slips and crosses among the pine cones on the ground,--"I should think they would like to have something nicer to put up over their graves." "Nicer? those are good enough," said Preston. "Good enough for them." "I should think they would like to have something better," I said. "Poor people at the North have nicer monuments, I know. I never saw such monuments in my life." "Poor people!" cried Preston. "Why these are the _hands_, Daisy,--the coloured people. What do they want of monuments?" "Don't they care?" said I, wondering. "Who cares if they care? I don't know whether they care," said Preston, quite out of patience with me, I thought. "Only, if they cared, I should think they would have something nicer," I said. "Where do they all go to church, Preston?" "Who?" said Preston. "These people?" "What people? The families along the river do you mean?" "No, no," said I; "I mean _our_ people--these people; the hands. You say there are hundreds of them. Where do they go to church?" I faced Preston now in my eagerness; for the little board crosses and the forlorn look of the whole burying-ground on the side of the hill had given me a strange feeling. "Where do they go to church, Preston!" "Nowhere, I reckon." I was shocked, and Preston was impatient. How should he know, he said; he did not live at Magnolia. And he carried me off. We went back to the avenue and slowly bent our steps again towards the house; slowly, for I was tired, and we both, I think, were busy with our thoughts. Presently I saw a man, a negro, come into the avenue a little before us with a bundle of tools on his back. He went as slowly as we, with an indescribable, purposeless gait. His figure had the same look too, from his lop-sided old white hat to every fold of his clothing, which seemed to hang about him just as it would as lieve be off as on. I begged Preston to hail him and ask him the question about church going, which sorely troubled me. Preston was unwilling and resisted. "What do you want me to do that for, Daisy?" "Because Aunt Gary told Miss Pinshon that we have to drive six miles to go to church. Do ask him where they go!" "They don't go _anywhere_, Daisy," said Preston, impatiently; "they don't care a straw about it, either. All the church they care about is when they get together in somebody's house and make a great muss." "Make a muss!" said I. "Yes; a regular muss; shouting and crying and having what they call a good time. That's what some of them do; but I'll wager if I were to ask him about going to church, this fellow here would not know what I mean." This did by no means quiet me. I insisted that Preston should stop the man; and at last he did. The fellow turned and came back towards us, ducking his old white hat. His face was just like the rest of him; there was no expression in it but an expression of limp submissiveness. "Sambo, your mistress wants to speak to you." "Yes, massa. I's George, massa." "George," said I, "I want to know where you go to church?" "Yes, missis. What missis want to know?" "Where do you and all the rest go to church?" "Reckon don't go nowhar, missis." "Don't you ever go to church?" "Church for white folks, missis; bery far; long ways to ride." "But you and the rest of the people--don't you go anywhere to church? to hear preaching?" "Reckon not, missis. De preachin's don't come dis way, likely." "Can you read the Bible, George?" "Dunno read, missis. Never had no larnin'." "Then don't you know anything about what is in the Bible? don't you know about Jesus?" "Reckon don't know not'ing, missis." "About Jesus?" said I again. "'Clar, missis, dis nigger don't know not'ing, but de rice and de corn. Missis talk to Darry; he most knowin' nigger on plantation; knows a heap." "There!" exclaimed Preston, "that will do. You go off to your supper, George--and Daisy, you had better come on if you want anything pleasant at home. What on earth have you got now by that? What is the use? Of course they do not know anything; and why should they? They have no time and no use for it." "They have no time on Sundays?" I said. "Time to sleep. That is what they do. That is the only thing a negro cares about, to go to sleep in the sun. It's all nonsense, Daisy." "They would care about something else, I dare say," I answered, "if they could get it." "Well, they can't get it. Now, Daisy, I want you to let these fellows alone. You have nothing to do with them, and you did not come to Magnolia for such work. You have nothing on earth to do with them." I had my own thoughts on the subject, but Preston was not a sympathising hearer. I said no more. The evergreen oaks about the house came presently in sight; then the low verandah that ran round three sides of it; then we came to the door, and my walk was over. CHAPTER III. THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE. My life at Magnolia might be said to begin when I came downstairs that evening. My aunt and Miss Pinshon were sitting in the parlour, in the light of a glorious fire of light wood and oak sticks. Miss Pinshon called me to her at once; inquired where I had been; informed me I must not for the future take such diversion without her leave first asked and obtained; and then put me to reading aloud, that she might see how well I could do it. She gave me a philosophical article in a magazine for my proof piece; it was full of long words that I did not know and about matters that I did not understand. I read mechanically, of course; trying with all my might to speak the long words right, that there might be no room for correction; but Miss Pinshon's voice interrupted me again and again. I felt cast away in a foreign land; further and further from the home feeling every minute; and it seemed besides as if the climate had some power of petrifaction. I could not keep Medusa out of my head. It was a relief at last when the tea was brought in. Miss Pinshon took the magazine out of my hand. "She has a good voice, but she wants expression," was her remark. "I could not understand what she was reading," said my Aunt Gary. "Nor anybody else," said Preston. "How are you going to give expression, when there is nothing to express?" "That is where you feel the difference between a good reader and one who is not trained," said my governess. "I presume Daisy has never been trained." "No, not in anything," said my aunt. "I dare say she wants a good deal of it." "We will try," said Miss Pinshon. It all comes back to me as I write, that beginning of my Magnolia life. I remember how dazed and disheartened I sat at the tea-table, yet letting nobody see it; how Preston made violent efforts to change the character of the evening; and did keep up a stir that at another time would have amused me. And when I was dismissed to bed, Preston came after me to the upper gallery and almost broke up my power of keeping quiet. He gathered me in his arms, kissed me and lamented me, and denounced ferocious threats against "Medusa;" while I in vain tried to stop him. He would not be sent away, till he had come into my room and seen that the fire was burning and the room warm, and Margaret ready for me. With Margaret there was also an old coloured woman, dark and wrinkled, my faithful old friend Mammy Theresa! but indeed I could scarcely see her just then, for my eyes were full of big tears when Preston left me; and I had to stand still before the fire for some minutes before I could fight down the fresh tears that were welling up and let those which veiled my eyesight scatter away. I was conscious how silently the two women waited upon me. I had a sense even then of the sympathy they were giving. I knew they served me with a respect which would have done for an Eastern princess; but I said nothing hardly, nor they, that night. If the tears came when I was alone, so did sleep too at last; and I waked up the next morning a little revived. It was a cool morning, and my eyes opened to see Margaret on her knees making my fire. Two good oak sticks were on the fire dogs, and a heap of light wood on the floor. I watched her piling and preparing, and then kindling the wood with a splinter of light wood which she lit in the candle. It was all very strange to me. The bare painted and varnished floor; the rugs laid down here and there; the old cupboards in the wall; the unwonted furniture. It did not feel like home. I lay still, until the fire blazed up and Margaret rose to her feet, and seeing my eyes open dropped her curtsey. "Please, missis, may I be Miss Daisy's girl?" "I will ask Aunt Gary," I answered, a good deal surprised. "Miss Daisy is the mistress. We all belong to Miss Daisy. It will be as she say." I thought to myself that very little was going to be "as I said." I got out of bed, feeling terribly slim-hearted, and stood in my nightgown before the fire, trying to let the blaze warm me. Margaret did her duties with a zeal of devotion that reminded me of my old June. "I will ask Aunt Gary," I said; "and I think she will let you build my fire, Margaret." "Thank'e, ma'am. First-rate fires. I'll make, Miss Daisy. We'se all so glad Miss Daisy come to Magnoly." Were they? I thought, and what did she mean by their all "belonging to me?" I was not accustomed to quite so much deference. However, I improved my opportunity by asking Margaret my question of the day before about church. The girl half laughed. "Ain't any church big enough to hold all de people," she said. "Guess we coloured folks has to go widout." "But where _is_ the church?" I said. "Ain't none, Miss Daisy. People enough to make a church full all himselves." "And don't you want to go?" "Reckon it's o' no consequence, missis. It's a right smart chance of a way to Bo'mbroke, where de white folks' church is. Guess they don't have none for poor folks nor niggers in dese parts." "But Jesus died for poor people," I said, turning round upon my attendant. She met me with a gaze I did not understand, and said nothing. Margaret was not like my old June. She was a clear mulatto, with a fresh colour and rather a handsome face; and her eyes, unlike June's little anxious, restless, almond-shaped eyes, were liquid and full. She went on carefully with the toilet duties which busied her; and I was puzzled. "Did you never hear of Jesus?" I said presently. "Don't you know that He loves poor people?" "Reckon He loves rich people de best, Miss Daisy," the girl said, in a dry tone. I faced about to deny this, and to explain how the Lord had a special love and care for the poor. I saw that my hearer did not believe me. "She had heerd so," she said. The dressing-bell sounded long and loud, and I was obliged to let Margaret go on with my dressing; but in the midst of my puzzled state of mind, I felt childishly sure of the power of that truth, of the Lord's love, to break down any hardness and overcome any coldness. Yet, "how shall they hear without a preacher?" and I had so little chance to speak. "Then, Margaret," said I at last, "is there no place where you can go to hear about the things in the Bible?" "No, missis; I never goes." "And does not anybody, except Darry when he goes with the carriage?" "Can't, Miss Daisy; it's miles and miles; and no place for niggers neither." "Can you read the Bible, Margaret?" "Guess not, missis; we's too stupid; ain't good for coloured folks to read." "Does _nobody_, among all the people, read the Bible?" said I, once more stopping Margaret in my dismay. "Uncle Darry--he does," said the girl; "and he do 'spoun some; but I don't make no count of his 'spoundations." I did not know quite what she meant; but I had no time for anything more. I let her go, locked my door and kneeled down; with the burden on my heart of this new revelation; that there were hundreds of people under the care of my father and mother who were living without church and without Bible, in desperate ignorance of everything worth knowing. If papa had only been at Magnolia with me! I thought I could have persuaded him to build a church and let somebody come and teach the people. But now--what could I do? And I asked the Lord, what could I do? but I did not see the answer. Feeling the question on my two shoulders, I went downstairs. To my astonishment, I found the family all gathered in solemn order; the house servants at one end of the room, my aunt, Miss Pinshon and Preston at the other, and before my aunt a little table with books. I got a seat as soon as I could, for it was plain that something was waiting for me. Then my aunt opened the Bible and read a chapter, and followed it with prayer read out of another book. I was greatly amazed at the whole proceeding. No such ceremony was ever gone through at Melbourne; and certainly nothing had ever given me the notion that my Aunt Gary was any more fond of sacred things than the rest of the family. "An excellent plan," said Miss Pinshon, when we had risen from our knees and the servants had filed off. "Yes," my aunt said, somewhat as if it needed an apology;--"it was the custom in my father's and grandfather's time; and we always keep it up. I think old customs always should be kept up." "And do you have the same sort of thing on Sundays, for the out-of-door hands?" "What?" said my aunt. It was somewhat more abrupt than polite; but she probably felt that Miss Pinshon was a governess. "There were only the house servants gathered this morning." "Of course; part of them." "Have you any similar system of teaching for those who are outside? I think you told me they have no church to go to." "I should like to know what 'system' you would adopt," said my aunt, "to reach seven hundred people." "A church and a minister would not be a bad thing." "Or we might all turn missionaries," said Preston; "and go among them with bags of Bibles round our necks. We might all turn missionaries." "Colporteurs," said Miss Pinshon. Then I said in my heart, "I will be one." But I went on eating my breakfast and did not look at anybody; only I listened with all my might. "I don't know about that," said my aunt. "I doubt whether a church and a minister would be beneficial." "Then you have a nation of heathen at your doors," said Miss Pinshon. "I don't know but they are just as well off," said my aunt. "I doubt if more light would do them any good. They would not understand it." "They must be very dark if they could not understand light," said my governess. "Just as people that are very light cannot understand darkness," said Preston. "I think so," my aunt went on. "Our neighbour Colonel Joram, down below here at Crofts, will not allow such a thing as preaching or teaching on his plantation. He says it is bad for them. We always allowed it; but I don't know." "Colonel Joram is a heathen himself, you know, mother," said Preston. "Don't hold _him_ up." "I will hold him up for a gentleman, and a very successful planter," said Mrs. Gary. "No place is better worked or managed than Crofts. If the estate of Magnolia were worked and kept as well, it would be worth half as much again as it ever has been. But there is the difference of the master's eye. My brother-in-law never could be induced to settle at Magnolia, nor at his own estates either. He likes it better in the cold North." Miss Pinshon made no remark whatever in answer to this statement; and the rest of the talk at the breakfast-table was about rice. After breakfast my school life at Magnolia began. It seemed as if all the threads of my life there were in a hurry to get into my hand. Ah! I had a handful soon! But this was the fashion of my first day with my governess. All the days were not quite so bad; however, it gave the key of them all. Miss Pinshon bade me come with her to the room she and my aunt had agreed should be the schoolroom. It was the back room of the house, though it had hardly books enough to be called a library. It had been the study or private room of my grandfather; there was a leather-covered table with an old bronze standish; some plain bookcases; a large escritoire; a terrestrial globe; a thermometer and a barometer; and the rest of the furniture was an abundance of chintz-covered chairs and lounges. These were very easy and pleasant for use; and long windows opening on the verandah looked off among the evergreen oaks and their floating grey drapery; the light in the room and the whole aspect of it was agreeable. If Miss Pinshon had not been there! But she was there, with a terrible air of business; setting one or two chairs in certain positions by a window, and handing one or two books on the table. I stood meek and helpless, expectant. "Have you read any history, Daisy?" I said no; then I said yes, I had; a little. "What?" "A little of the history of England last summer." "Not of your own country?" "No, ma'am." "And no ancient history?" "No, ma'am." "You know nothing of the division of the nations, of course?" I answered, nothing. I had no idea what she meant; except that England, and America, and France, were different, and of course divided. Of Peleg the son of Eber and the brother of Joktan, I then knew nothing. "And arithmetic is something you do not understand," pursued Miss Pinshon. "Come here, and let me see how you can write." With trembling, stiff little fingers--I feel them yet--I wrote some lines under my governess's eye. "Very unformed," was her comment. "And now, Daisy, you may sit down there in the window and study the multiplication table. See how much of it you can get this morning." Was it to be a morning's work? My heart was heavy as lead. At this hour, at Melbourne, my task would have been to get my flat hat and rush out among the beds of flowers; and a little later, to have up Loupe and go driving whither I would, among the meadows and cornfields. Ah, yes; and there was Molly who might be taught, and Juanita who might be visited; and Dr. Sandford who might come like a pleasant gale of wind into the midst of whatever I was about. I did not stop to think of them now, though a waft of the sunny air through the open window brought a violent rush of such images. I tried to shut them out of my head and gave myself wistfully to "three times one is three; three times two is six." Miss Pinshon helped me by closing the window. I thought she might have let so much sweetness as that come into the multiplication table. However I studied its threes and fours steadily for some time; then my attention flagged. It was very uninteresting. I had never in all my life till then been obliged to study what gave me no pleasure. My mind wandered, and then my eyes wandered, to where the sunlight lay so golden under the live oaks. The wreaths of grey moss stirred gently with the wind. I longed to be out there. Miss Pinshon's voice startled me. "Daisy, where are your thoughts?" I hastily brought my eyes and wits home and answered, "Out upon the lawn, ma'am." "Do you find the multiplication table there?" It was so needless to answer! I was mute. I would have come to the rash conclusion that nature and mathematics had nothing to do with each other. "You must learn to command your attention," my governess went on. "You must not let it wander. That is the first lesson you have to learn. I shall give you mathematics till you have learnt it. You can do nothing without attention." I bent myself to the threes and fours again. But I was soon weary; my mind escaped; and without turning my eyes off my book, it swept over the distance between Magnolia and Melbourne, and sat down by Molly Skelton to help her in getting her letters. It was done and I was there. I could hear the hesitating utterances; I could see the dull finger tracing its way along the lines. And then would come the reading _to_ Molly, and the interested look of waiting attention, and once in a while the strange softening of the poor hard face. From there my mind went off to the people around me at Magnolia; were there some to be taught here perhaps? and could I get at them? and was there no other way--could it be there was no other way but by my weak little voice--through which some of them were ever to learn about my dear Saviour? I had got very far from mathematics, and my book fell. I heard Miss Pinshon's voice. "Daisy, come here." I obeyed and came to the table, where my governess was installed in the leather chair of my grandfather. She always used it. "I should like to know what you are doing." "I was thinking," I said. "Did I give you thinking to do?" "No, ma'am; not of that kind." "What kind was it?" "I was thinking, and remembering----" "Pray what were you remembering?" "Things at home--and other things." "Things and things," said Miss Pinshon. "That is not a very elegant way of speaking. Let me hear how much you have learned." I began. About all of the "threes" was on my tongue; the rest had got mixed up hopelessly with Molly Skelton and teaching Bible reading. Miss Pinshon was not pleased. "You must learn attention," she said. "I can do nothing with you until you have succeeded in that. You _must_ attend. Now I shall give you a motive for minding what you are about. Go and sit down again and study this table till you know the threes and the fours and the fives and the sixes, perfectly. Go and sit down." I sat down, and the life was all out of me. Tears in the first place had a great mind to come, and would put themselves between me and the figures in the multiplication table. I governed them back after a while. But I could not study to purpose. I was tired and down-spirited; I had not energy left to spring to my task and accomplish it. Over and over again I tried to put the changes of the numbers in my head; it seemed like writing them in sand. My memory would not take hold of them; could not keep them; with all my trying I grew only more and more stupefied and fagged, and less capable of doing what I had to do. So dinner came, and Miss Pinshon said I might get myself ready for dinner and after dinner come back again to my lesson. The lesson must be finished before anything else was done. I had no appetite. Preston was in a fume of vexation, partly aroused by my looks, partly by hearing that I was not yet free. He was enraged beyond prudent speaking, but Miss Pinshon never troubled herself about his words; and when the first and second courses were removed, told me I might go to my work. Preston called me to stay and have some fruit; but I went on to the study, not caring for fruit or for anything else. I felt very dull and miserable. Then I remembered that my governess probably did care for some fruit and would be delayed a little while; and then I tried what is the best preparation for study or anything else. I got down on my knees, to ask that help which is as willingly given to a child in her troubles as to the general of an army. I prayed that I might be patient and obedient and take disagreeable things pleasantly and do my duty in the multiplication table. And a breath of rest came over my heart, and a sort of perfume of remembered things which I had forgotten; and it quite changed the multiplication table to think that God had given it to me to learn, and so that some good would certainly come of learning it; at least the good of pleasing Him. As long as I dared I stayed on my knees; then I was strong for the fives and sixes. But it was not quick work; and though my patience did not flag again nor my attention fail, the afternoon was well on the way before I was dismissed. I had then permission to do what I liked. Miss Pinshon said she would not go to walk that day; I might follow my own pleasure. I must have been very tired; for it seemed to me there was hardly any pleasure left to follow. I got my flat and went out. The sun was westing; the shadows stretched among the evergreen oaks; the outer air was sweet. I had tried to find Preston first, in the house; but he was not to be found; and all alone I went out into the sunshine. It wooed me on. Sunshine and I were always at home together. Without knowing that I wanted to go anywhere, some secret attraction drew my steps towards the dell where I had seen Darry. I followed one of several well-beaten paths that led towards the quarters through the trees, and presently came out upon the stables again. All along the dell the sunshine poured. The ground was kept like a pleasure ground, it was so neat; the grass was as clean as the grass of a park; the little stone houses scattered away down towards the river, with shade trees among them, and oaks lining the sides of the dell. I thought surely Magnolia was a lovely place! if only my father and mother had been there. But then, seeing the many cottages, my trouble of the morning pressed upon me afresh. So many people, so many homes, and the light of the Bible not on them, nor in them? And, child as I was, and little as I knew, I knew the name of Christ too unspeakably precious, for me to think without a sore heart, and all these people were without what was the jewel of my life. And they my mother's servants! my father's dependants! What could I do? The dell was alone in the yellow sunlight which poured over the slope from the west: and I went musing on till getting to the corner of the stables I saw Darry just round the corner grooming a black horse. He was working energetically, and humming to himself as he worked a refrain which I learned afterwards to know well. All I could make out was, "I'm going home"--several times repeated. I came near before he saw me, and he started; then bid me good evening and "hoped I found Magnolia a pleasant place." Since I have grown older I have read that wonderful story of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom; he reminded me of Darry then, and now I never think of the one without thinking of the other. But Darry, having served a different class of people from Uncle Tom's first owners, had a more polished style of manners, which I should almost call courtly; and he was besides a man of higher natural parts, and somewhat more education. But much commerce in the Court which is above all earthly dignities, no doubt had more to do with his peculiarities than any other cause. I asked him what he was singing about home? and where his home was? He turned his face full upon me, letting me see how grave and gentle his eye was, and at the same time there was a wistful expression in it that I felt. "Home ain't nowheres here, missie," he said. "I'm 'spectin' to go by and by." "Do you mean home up _there_?" said I, lifting my finger towards the sky. Darry fairly laughed. "'Spect don't want no other home, missie. Heaven good enough." I stood watching him as he rubbed down the black horse, feeling surely that he and I would be friends. "Where is your home here, Darry?" "I got a place down there, little missie--not fur." "When you have done that horse, will you show me your place? I want to see where you live." "Missie want to see Darry's house?" said he, showing his white teeth. "Missie shall see what she mind to. I allus keeps Sadler till the last, 'cause he's ontractable." The black horse was put in the stable, and I followed my black groom down among the lines of stone huts to which the working parties had not yet returned. Darry's house was one of the lowest in the dell, out of the quadrangle, and had a glimpse of the river. It stood alone in a pretty place, but something about it did not satisfy me. It looked square and bare. The stone walls within were rough as the stone-layer had left them; one little four-paned window, or rather casement, stood open; and the air was sweet; for Darry kept his place scrupulously neat and clean. But there was not much to be kept. A low bedstead; a wooden chest; an odd table made of a piece of board on three legs; a shelf with some kitchen ware; that was all the furniture. On the odd table there lay a Bible, that had, I saw, been turned over many a time. "Then you can read, Uncle Darry?" I said, pitching on the only thing that pleased me. "De good Lord, He give me dat happiness," the man answered gravely. "And you love Jesus, Darry," I said, feeling that we had better come to an understanding as soon as possible. His answer was an energetic-- "Bress de Lord! Do Miss Daisy love Him, den?" I would have said yes; I did say yes, I believe; but I did not know how or why, at this question there seemed a coming together of gladness and pain which took away my breath. My head dropped on Darry's little window-sill, and my tears rushed forth, like the head of water behind a broken mill-dam. Darry was startled and greatly concerned. He wanted to know if I was not well--if I would send him for "su'thing"--I could only shake my head and weep. I think Darry was the only creature at Magnolia before whom I would have so broken down. But somehow I felt safe with Darry. The tears cleared away from my voice after a little; and I went on with my inquiries again. It was a good chance. "Uncle Darry, does no one else but you read the Bible?" He looked dark and troubled. "Missie sees--de folks for most part got no learning. Dey no read, sure." "Do you read the Bible to them, Darry?" "Miss Daisy knows, dere ain't no great time. Dey's in the field all day, most days, and dey hab no time for to hear." "But Sundays?" I said. "Do try," he said, looking graver yet. "Me do 'tempt su'thing. But missie knows, de Sabbat' be de only day de people hab, and dey tink mostly of oder tings." "And there is no church for you all to go to?" "No, missis; no church." There was a sad tone in his answer. I did not know how to go on. I turned to something else. "Uncle Darry, I don't think your home looks very comfortable." Darry almost laughed at that. He said it was good enough; would last very well a little while longer. I insisted that it was not _comfortable_. It was cold. "Sun warm, Miss Daisy. De good Lord, He make His sun warm. And dere be fires enough." "But it is very empty," I said. "You want something more in it, to make it look nice." "It never empty, Miss Daisy, when de Lord Hisself be here. And He not leave His chil'n alone. Miss Daisy know dat?" I stretched forth my little hand and laid it in Darry's great black palm. There was an absolute confidence established between us. "Uncle Darry," I said, "I _do_ love Him--but sometimes, I want to see papa!----" And therewith my self-command was almost gone. I stood with full eyes and quivering lips, my hand still in Darry's, who on his part was speechless with sympathy. "De time pass quick, and Miss Daisy see her pa'," he said at last. I did not think the time passed quick. I said so. "Do little missie ask de Lord for help?" Darry said, his eyes by this time as watery as mine. "Do Miss Daisy know, it nebber lonesome where de Lord be? He so good." I could not stand any more. I pulled away my hand and stood still, looking out of the window and seeing nothing, till I could make myself quiet. Then I changed the subject and told Darry I should like to go and see some of the other houses again. I know now, I can see, looking back, how my childish self-control and reserve made some of those impulsive natures around me regard me with something like worshipful reverence. I felt it then, without thinking of it or reasoning about it. From Darry, and from Margaret, and from Mammy Theresa, and from several others, I had a loving, tender reverence, which not only felt for me as a sorrowful child, but bowed before me as something of higher and stronger nature than themselves. Darry silently attended me now from house to house of the quarters; introducing and explaining and doing all he could to make my progress interesting and amusing. Interested I was; but most certainly not amused. I did not like the look of things any better than I had done at first. The places were not "nice;" there was a coarse, uncared-for air of everything within, although the outside was in such well-dressed condition. No litter on the grass, no untidiness of walls or chimneys; and no seeming of comfortable homes when the door was opened. The village, for it amounted to that, was almost deserted at that hour; only a few crooning old women on the sunny side of a wall, and a few half-grown girls, and a quantity of little children, depending for all the care they got upon one or the other of these. "Haven't all these little babies got mothers!" I asked. "For sure, Miss Daisy--dey's got modders." "Where _are_ the mothers of all these babies, Darry?" I asked. "Dey's in de field, Miss Daisy. Home d'rectly." "Are they working like _men_ in the fields!" I asked. "Dey's all at work," said Darry. "Do they do the same work as the men?" "All alike, Miss Daisy." Darry's answers were not hearty. "But don't their little babies want them?" said I, looking at a group of girls in whose hands were some very little babies indeed. I think Darry made me no answer. "But if the men and women both work out," I went on, "papa must give them a great deal of money; I should think they would have things more comfortable, Darry. Why don't they have little carpets, and tables and chairs, and cups and saucers? Hardly anybody has teacups and saucers. Have _you_ got any, Uncle Darry?" "'Spect I'se no good woman to brew de tea for her ole man," said Darry; but I thought he looked at me very oddly. "Couldn't you make it for yourself, Uncle Darry?" "Poor folks don't live just like de rich folks," he answered, quietly, after a minute's pause. "And I don't count fur to want no good t'ing, missie." I went on with my observations; my questions I thought I would not push any further at that time. I grew more and more dissatisfied, that my father's work-people should live in no better style and in no better comfort. Even Molly Skelton had a furnished and appointed house, compared with these little bare stone huts; and mothers that would leave their babies for the sake of more wages, must, I thought, be very barbarous mothers. This was all because, no doubt, of having no church and no Bible. I grew weary. As we were going up the dell towards the stables, I suddenly remembered my pony; and I asked to see him. Darry was much relieved, I fancy, to have me come back to a child's sphere of action. He had out the fat little grey pony, and talked it over to me with great zeal. It came into my head to ask for a saddle. "Dere be a saddle," Darry said, doubtfully. "Massa Preston he done got a saddle dis very day. Dunno where Massa Preston can be." I did not heed this. I begged to have the saddle and be allowed to try the pony. Now Preston had laid a plan that nobody but himself should have the pleasure of first mounting me; but I did not know of this plan. Darry hesitated, I saw, but he had not the power to refuse me. The saddle was brought out, put on, and carefully arranged. "Uncle Darry, I want to get on him--may I?" "O' course--Miss Daisy do what she mind to. Him bery good, only some lazy." So I was mounted. Preston, Miss Pinshon, the servants' quarters, the multiplication table, all were forgotten and lost in a misty distance. I was in the saddle for the first time, and delight held me by both hands. My first moment on horseback! If Darry had guessed it he would have been terribly concerned; but as it happened, I knew how to take my seat; I had watched my mother so often mounting her horse that every detail was familiar to me; and Darry naturally supposed I knew what I was about after I was in my seat. The reins were a little confusing; however, the pony walked off lazily with me to the head of the glen, and I thought he was an improvement upon the old pony chaise. Finding myself coming out upon the avenue, which I did not wish, it became necessary to get at the practical use of the bridle. I was at some pains to do it; finally I managed to turn the pony's head round, and we walked back in the same sober style we had come up. Darry stood by the stables, smiling and watching me; down among the quarters the children and old people turned out to look after me; I walked down as far as Darry's house, turned and came back again. Darry stood ready to help me to dismount; but it was too pleasant. I went on to the avenue. Just as I turned there, I caught, as it seemed to me, a glimpse of two ladies, coming towards me from the house. Involuntarily I gave a sharper pull at the bridle, and I suppose touched the pony's shoulder with the switch Darry had put into my hand. The touch so woke him up, that he shook off his laziness and broke into a short galloping canter to go back to the stables. This was a new experience. I thought for the first minute that I certainly should be thrown off; I seemed to have no hold of anything, and I was tossed up and down on my saddle in the way that boded a landing on the ground every next time. I was not timid with animals, whatever might be true of me in other relations. My first comfort was finding that I did _not_ fall off; then I took heart and settled myself in the saddle more securely, gave myself to the motion, and began to think I should like it by and by. Nevertheless, for this time I was willing to stop at the stables; but the pony had only just found how good it was to be moving, and he went by at full canter. Down the dell, through the quarters, past the cottages, till I saw Darry's house ahead of me, and began to think how I _should_ get round again. At that pace I could not. Could I stop the fellow? I tried, but there was not much strength in my arms; one or two pulls did no good, and one or two pulls more did no good; pony cantered on, and I saw we were making straight for the river. I knew that I _must_ stop him; I threw so much good-will into the handling of my reins that, to my joy, the pony paused, let himself be turned about placidly, and took up his leisurely walk again. But now I was in a hurry, wanting to be dismounted before anybody should come; and I was a little triumphant, having kept my seat and turned my horse. Moreover, the walk was not good after that stirring canter. I would try it again. But it took a little earnestness now and more than one touch of my whip before the pony would mind me. Then he obeyed in good style and we cantered quietly up to where Darry was waiting. The thing was done. The pony and I had come to an understanding. I was a rider from that time, without fear or uncertainty. The first gentle pull on the bridle was obeyed and I came to a stop in front of Darry and my cousin Preston. I have spent a great deal of time to tell of my ride. Yet not more than its place in my life then deserved. It was my last half hour of pleasure for I think many a day. I had cantered up the slope, all fresh in mind and body, excited and glad with my achievement and with the pleasure of brisk motion; I had forgotten everybody and everything disagreeable, or what I did not forget I disregarded; but just before I stopped I saw what sent another thrill than that of pleasure tingling through all my veins. I saw Preston, who had but a moment before reached the stables, I saw him lift his hand with a light riding switch he carried, and drew the switch across Darry's mouth. I shall never forget the coloured man's face, as he stepped back a pace or two. I understood it afterwards; I _felt_ it then. There was no resentment; there was no fire of anger, which I should have expected; there was no manly and no stolid disregard of what had been done. There was instead a slight smile, which to this day I cannot bear to recall; it spoke so much of patient and helpless humiliation; as of one wincing at the galling of a sore and trying not to show he winced. Preston took me off my horse, and began to speak. I turned away from him to Darry, who now held two horses, Preston having just dismounted; and I thanked him for my pleasure, throwing into my manner all the studied courtesy I could. Then I walked up the dell beside Preston, without looking at him. Preston scolded. He had prepared a surprise for me, and was excited by his disappointment at my mounting without him. Of course I had not known that; and Darry, who was in the secret, had not known how to refuse. I gave Preston no answer to his charges and reproaches. At last I said I was tired and I wished he would not talk. "Tired! you are something besides tired," he said. "I suppose I am," I answered with great deliberation. He was eager to know what it was; but then we came out upon the avenue and were met flush by my aunt and Miss Pinshon. My aunt inquired, and Preston, who was by no means cool yet, accused me about the doings of the afternoon. I scarcely heeded one or the other; but I did feel Miss Pinshon's taking my hand and leading me home all the rest of the way. It was not that I wanted to talk to Preston, for I was not ready to talk to him; but this holding me like a little child was excessively distasteful to my habit of freedom. My governess would not loose her clasp when we got to the house; but kept fast hold and led me upstairs to my own room. CHAPTER IV. SEVEN HUNDRED PEOPLE. "Do you think that was a proper thing to do, Daisy?" my governess asked when she released me. "What thing, ma'am?" I asked. "To tear about on that great grey pony." "Yes, ma'am," I said. "You think it _was_ proper?" said Miss Pinshon, coolly. "Whom had you with you?" "Nobody was riding with me." "Your cousin was there?" "No, ma'am." "Who then?" "I had Uncle Darry. I was only riding up and down the dell." "The coachman! And were you riding up and through the quarters all the afternoon?" "No, ma'am." "What were you doing the rest of the time?" "I was going about----" I hesitated. "About where?" "Through the place there." "The quarters? Well, you think it proper amusement for your mother's daughter? You are not to make companions of the servants, Daisy. You are not to go to the quarters without my permission, and I shall not give it frequently. Now get yourself ready for tea." I did feel as if Preston's prophecy were coming true and I in a way to be gradually petrified; some slow, chill work of that kind seemed already to be going on. But a little thing soon stirred all the life there was in me. Miss Pinshon stepped to the door which led from her room into mine, unlocked it, took out the key, and put it on her own side of the door. I sprang forward at that, with a word, I do not know what; and my governess turned her lustrous, unmoved eyes calmly upon me. I remember now how deadening their look was, in their very lustre and moveless calm. I begged however for a reversal of her last proceeding; I wanted my door locked sometimes, I said. "You can lock the other door." "But I want both locked." "I do not. This door remains open, Daisy. I must come in here when I please. Now make haste and get ready." I had no time for anything but to obey. I went downstairs, I think, like a machine; my body obeying certain laws, while my mind and spirit were scarcely present. I suppose I behaved myself as usual; save that I would have nothing to do with Preston, nor would I receive anything whatever at the table from his hand. This, however, was known only to him and me. I said nothing; not the less every word that others said fastened itself in my memory. I was like a person dreaming. "You have just tired yourself with mounting that wild thing, Daisy," said my Aunt Gary. "Wild!" said Preston. "About as wild as a tame sloth." "I always heard that was very wild indeed," said Miss Pinshon. "The sloth cannot be tamed, can it?" "Being stupid already, I suppose not," said Preston. "Daisy looks pale at any rate," said my aunt. "A little overdone," said Miss Pinshon. "She wants regular exercise; but irregular exercise is very trying to any but a strong person. I think Daisy will be stronger in a few weeks." "What sort of exercise do you think will be good for her, ma'am?" Preston said, with an expression out of all keeping with his words, it was so fierce. "I shall try different sorts," my governess answered, composedly. "Exercise of patience is a very good thing, Master Gary. I think gymnastics will be useful for Daisy too. I shall try them." "That is what I have often said to my sister," said Aunt Gary. "I have no doubt that sort of training would establish Daisy's strength more than anything in the world. She just wants that to develop her and bring out the muscles." Preston almost groaned; pushed his chair from the table, and I knew sat watching me. I would give him no opportunity, for _my_ opportunity I could not have then. I kept quiet till the ladies moved; I moved with them; and sat all the evening abstracted in my own meditations, without paying Preston any attention; feeling indeed very old and grey, as no doubt I looked. When I was ordered to bed Miss Pinshon desired I would hold no conversation with anybody. Whereupon Preston took my candle and boldly marched out of the room with me. When we were upstairs he tried to make me disobey my orders. He declared I was turning to stone already; he said a great many hard words against my governess; threatened he would write to my father; and when he could not prevail to make me talk, dashed off passionately and left me. I went trembling into my room. But my refuge there was gone. I had fallen upon evil times. My door must not be locked, and Miss Pinshon might come in any minute. I could not pray. I undressed and went to bed; and lay there, waiting, all things in order, till my governess looked in. Then the door was closed, and I heard her steps moving about in her room. I lay and listened. At last the door was softly set open again; and then after a few minutes the sound of regular slow breathing proclaimed that those wide-open black eyes were really closed for the night. I got up, went to my governess's door and listened. She was sleeping profoundly. I laid hold of the handle of the door and drew it towards me; pulled out the key softly, put it in my own side of the lock and shut the door. And after all I was afraid to turn the key. The wicked sound of the lock might enter those sleeping ears. But the door was closed; and I went to my old place, the open window. It was not my window at Melbourne, with balmy summer air, and the dewy scent of the honeysuckle coming up, and the moonlight flooding all the world beneath me. But neither was it in the regions of the North. The night was still and mild, if not balmy; and the stars were brilliant; and the evergreen oaks were masses of dark shadow all over the lawn. I do not think I saw them at first; for my look was up to the sky, where the stars shone down to greet me, and where it was furthest from all the troubles on the surface of the earth; and with one thought of the Friend up there, who does not forget the troubles of even His little children, the barrier in my heart gave way, my tears gushed forth; my head lay on the window-sill at Magnolia, more hopelessly than in my childish sorrow it had ever lain at Melbourne. I kept my sobs quiet; I must; but they were deep, heartbreaking sobs, for a long time. Prayer got its chance after a while. I had a great deal to pray for; it seemed to my child's heart now and then as if it could hardly bear its troubles. And very much I felt I wanted patience and wisdom. I thought there was a great deal to do, even for my little hands; and promise of great hindrance and opposition. And the only one pleasant thing I could think of in my new life at Magnolia, was that I might tell of the truth to those poor people who lived in the negro quarters. Why I did not make myself immediately ill, with my night's vigils and sorrow, I cannot tell; unless it were that great excitement kept off the effects of chill air and damp. However, the excitement had its own effects, and my eyes were sadly heavy when they opened the next morning to look at Margaret lighting my fire. "Margaret," I said, "shut Miss Pinshon's door, will you?" She obeyed, and then turning to look at me, exclaimed that I was not well. "Did you say you could not read, Margaret?" was my answer. "Read! no, missis. Guess readin' ain't no good for servants. Seems like Miss Daisy ain't lookin' peart this mornin'." "Would you _like_ to read?" "Reckon don't care about it, Miss Daisy. Where'd us get books, most likely?" I said I would get the books; but Margaret turned to the fire and made me no answer. I heard her mutter some ejaculation. "Because, Margaret, don't you know," I said, raising myself on my elbow, "God would like to have you learn to read, so that you might know the Bible and come to heaven." "Reckon folks ain't a heap better that knows the Bible," said the girl. "'Pears as if it don't make no difference. Ain't nobody good in _this_ place, 'cept Uncle Darry." In another minute I was out of bed and standing before the fire, my hand on her shoulder. I told her I wanted _her_ to be good too, and that Jesus would make her good, if she would let Him. Margaret gave me a hasty look and then finished her fire making; but to my great astonishment, a few minutes after, I saw that the tears were running down the girl's face. It astonished me so much that I said no more; and Margaret was as silent, only dressed me with the greatest attention and tenderness. "Ye want your breakfast bad, Miss Daisy," she remarked then in a subdued tone; and I suppose my looks justified her words. They created some excitement when I went downstairs. My aunt exclaimed; Miss Pinshon inquired; Preston inveighed, at things in general. He wanted to get me by myself, I knew, but he had no chance. Immediately after breakfast Miss Pinshon took possession of me. The day was less weary than the day before, only I think because I was tired beyond impatience or nervous excitement. Not much was done; for though I was very willing I had very little power. But the multiplication table, Miss Pinshon said, was easy work; and at that and reading and writing, the morning crept away. My hand was trembling, my voice was faint, my memory grasped nothing so clearly as Margaret's tears that morning, and Preston's behaviour the preceding day. My cheeks were pale, of course. Miss Pinshon said we would begin to set that right with a walk after dinner. The walk was had; but with my hand clasped in Miss Pinshon's I only wished myself at home all the way. At home again, after a while of lying down to rest, I was tried with a beginning of calisthenics. A trial it was to me. The exercises, directed and overseen by Miss Pinshon, seemed to me simply intolerable, a weariness beyond all other weariness. Even the multiplication table I liked better. Miss Pinshon was tired perhaps herself at last. She let me go. It was towards the end of the day. With no life left in me for anything, I strolled out into the sunshine: aimlessly at first; then led by a secret inclination I hardly knew or questioned, my steps slowly made their way round by the avenue to the stables. Darry was busy there as I had found him yesterday. He looked hard at me as I came up; and asked me earnestly how I felt that afternoon? I told him I was tired; and then I sat down on a huge log which lay there and watched him at his work. By turns I watched the sunlight streaming along the turf and lighting the foliage of the trees on the other side of the dell; looking in a kind of dream, as if I were not Daisy nor this Magnolia in any reality. I suddenly started and awoke to realities as Darry began to sing,-- "My Father's house is built on high, Far, far above the starry sky; And though like Lazarus sick and poor, My heavenly mansion is secure. I'm going home,-- I'm going home,-- I'm going home To die no more! To die no more-- To die no more-- I'm going home To die no more!" The word "home" at the end of each line was dwelt upon in a prolonged sonorous note. It filled my ear with its melodious, plaintive breath of repose; it rested and soothed me. I was listening in a sort of trance, when another sound at my side both stopped the song and quite broke up the effect. It was Preston's voice. Now for it. He was all ready for a fight, and I felt miserably battered and shaken and unfit to fight anything. "What are you doing here, Daisy?" "I am doing nothing," I said. "It is almost tea-time. Hadn't you better be walking home, before Medusa comes looking out for you?" I rose up, and bade Uncle Darry good-night. "Good-night, missis," he said heartily, "and de morning dat hab no night, for my dear little missis, by'm by." I gave him my hand, and walked on. "Stuff!" muttered Preston, by my side. "You will not think it 'stuff' when the time comes," I said, no doubt very gravely. Then Preston burst out. "I only wish Aunt Felicia was here! You will spoil these people, Daisy, that's one thing, or you would if you were older. As it is, you are spoiling yourself." I made no answer. He went on with other angry and excited words, wishing to draw me out, perhaps; but I was in no mood to talk to Preston in any tone but one. I went steadily and slowly on, without even turning my head to look at him. I had hardly life enough to talk to him in _that_ tone. "Will you tell me what is the matter with you?" he said, at last, very impatiently. "I am tired, I think." "Think? Medusa is stiffening the life out of you. _Think_ you are tired! You are tired to death; but that is not all. What ails you?" "I do not think anything ails me." "What ails _me_, then? What is the matter? What makes you act so? Speak, Daisy--you must speak!" I turned about and faced him, and I know I did not speak then as a child, but with a gravity befitting fifty years. "Preston, did you strike Uncle Darry yesterday?" "Pooh!" said Preston. But I stood and waited for his answer. "Nonsense, Daisy!" he said again. "What is nonsense?" "Why, _you_. What are you talking about?" "I asked you a question." "A ridiculous question. You are just absurd." "Will you please to answer it?" "I don't know whether I will. What have you to do with it?" "In the first place, Preston, Darry is not your servant." "Upon my word!" said Preston. "But yes, he is; for mamma is regent here now. He must do what I order him anyhow." "And then, Preston, Darry is better than you, and will not defend himself; and somebody ought to defend him; and there is nobody but me." "Defend himself!" echoed Preston. "Yes. You insulted him yesterday." "Insulted him!" "You know you did. You know, Preston, some men would not have borne it. If Darry had been like some men, he would have knocked you down." "Knocked me down!" cried Preston. "The sneaking old scoundrel! He knows that I would shoot him if he did." "I am speaking seriously, Preston. It is no use to talk that way." "I am speaking very seriously," said my cousin. "I would shoot him, upon my honour." "Shoot him!" "Certainly." "What right have you to shoot a man for doing no worse than you do? I would _rather_ somebody would knock me down, than do what you did yesterday." And my heart swelled within me. "Come, Daisy, be a little sensible!" said Preston, who was in a fume of impatience. "Do you think there is no difference between me and an old nigger?" "A great deal of difference," I said. "He is old and good; and you are young, and I wish you were as good as Darry. And then he can't help himself without perhaps losing his place, no matter how you insult him. I think it is cowardly." "Insult!" said Preston. "Lose his place! Heavens and earth, Daisy! are you such a simpleton?" "You insulted him badly yesterday. I wondered how he bore it of you; only Darry is a Christian." "A fiddlestick!" said Preston impatiently. "He knows he must bear whatever I choose to give him; and therein he is wiser than you are." "Because he is a Christian," said I. "I don't know whether he is a Christian or not; and it is nothing to the purpose. I don't care what he is." "Oh, Preston! he is a good man--he is a servant of God; he will wear a crown of gold in heaven; and you have dared to touch him." "Why, hoity, toity!" said Preston, "what concern of mine is all that! All I know is, that he did not do what I ordered him." "What did you order him?" "I ordered him not to show you the saddle I had got for you, till I was here. I was going to surprise you. I am provoked at him!" "I am surprised," I said. But feeling how little I prevailed with Preston, and being weak in body as well as mind, I could not keep back the tears. I began to walk on again, though they blinded me. "Daisy, don't be foolish. If Darry is to wear two crowns in the other world, he is a servant in this, all the same; and he must do his duty." "I asked for the saddle," I said. "Why, Daisy, Daisy!" Preston exclaimed, "don't be such a child. You know nothing about it. I didn't touch Darry to hurt him." "It was a sort of hurt that if he had not been a Christian he would have made you sorry for." "He knows I would shoot him if he did," said Preston coolly. "Preston, don't speak so!" I pleaded. "It is the simple truth. Why shouldn't I speak it?" "You do not mean that you would do it?" I said, scarce opening my eyes to the reality of what he said. "I give you my word, I do. If one of these black fellows laid a hand on me I would put a bullet through him, as quick as a partridge." "But then you would be a murderer," said I. The ground seemed taken away from under my feet. We were standing still now, and facing each other. "No, I shouldn't," said Preston. "The law takes better care of us than that." "The law would hang you," said I. "I tell you, Daisy, it is no such thing! Gentlemen have a right to defend themselves against the insolence of these black fellows." "And have not the black fellows a right to defend themselves against the insolence of gentlemen?" said I. "Daisy, you are talking the most unspeakable nonsense," said Preston, quite put beyond himself now. "_Don't_ you know any better than that? These people are our servants--they are our property--we are to do what we like with them; and of course the law must see that we are protected, or the blacks and the whites could not live together." "A man may be your servant, but he cannot be your property," I said. "Yes he can! They are our property, just as much as the land is; our goods to do as we like with. Didn't you know that?" "Property is something that you can buy and sell," I answered. "And we sell the people, and buy them too, as fast as we like." "_Sell_ them!" I echoed, thinking of Darry. "Certainly." "And who would buy them?" "Why all the world; everybody. There has been nobody sold off the Magnolia estate, I believe, in a long time; but nothing is more common, Daisy; everybody is doing it everywhere, when he has got too many servants, or when he has got too few." "And do you mean," said I, "that Darry and Margaret and Theresa and all the rest here, have been _bought_?" "No; almost all of them have been born on the place." "Then it is not true of these," I said. "Yes, it is; for their mothers and fathers were bought. It is the same thing." "Who bought them?" I asked, hastily. "Why our mothers, and grandfather and great-grandfather." "_Bought_ the fathers and mothers of all these hundreds of people?" said I, a slow horror creeping into my veins, that yet held childish blood, and but half comprehended. "Certainly--ages ago," said Preston. "Why, Daisy, I thought you knew all about it." "But who sold them first?" said I, my mind in its utter rejection of what was told to me, seeking every refuge from accepting it. "Who sold them first?" "Who first? Oh, the people that brought them over from Africa, I suppose; or the people in their own country that sold them to _them_." "They had no right to sell them," I said. "Can't tell about that," said Preston. "We bought them. I suppose we had a right to do that." "But if the fathers and mothers were bought," I insisted, "that gave us no right to have their children." "I would like you to ask Aunt Felicia or my Uncle Randolph such a question," said Preston. "Just see how they would like the idea of giving up all their property! Why, you would be as poor as Job, Daisy." "That land would be here all the same." "Much good the land would do you, without people to work it." "But other people could be hired as well as these," I said, "if any of these wanted to go away." "No, they couldn't. White people cannot bear the climate nor do the work. The crops cannot be raised without coloured labour." "I do not understand," said I, feeling my child's head puzzled. "Maybe none of our people would like to go away?" "I dare say they wouldn't," said Preston, carelessly. "They are better off here than on most plantations. Uncle Randolph never forbids his hands to have meat; and some planters do." "Forbid them to have meat!" I said, in utter bewilderment. "Yes." "Why?" "They think it makes them fractious, and not so easy to manage. Don't you know, it makes a dog savage to feed him on raw meat! I suppose cooked meat has the same effect on men." "But don't they get what they choose to eat?" "Well, I should think not!" said Preston. "Fancy their asking to be fed on chickens and pound cake. That is what they would like." "But cannot they spend their wages for what they like?" "Wages!" said Preston. "Yes," said I. "My dear Daisy," said Preston, "you are talking of what you just utterly don't understand; and I am a fool for bothering you with it. Come! let us make it up and be friends." He stooped to kiss me, but I stepped back. "Stop," I said. "Tell me--can't they do what they like with their wages?" "I don't think they have wages enough to 'do what they like' exactly," said Preston. "Why, they would 'like' to do nothing. These black fellows are the laziest things living. They would 'like' to lie in the sun all day long." "What wages does Darry have?" I asked. "Now, Daisy, this is none of your business. Come, let us go into the house and let it alone." "I want to know, first," said I. "Daisy, I never asked. What have I to do with Darry's wages?" "I will ask himself," I said; and I turned about to go to the stables. "Stop, Daisy," cried Preston. "Daisy, Daisy! you are the most obstinate Daisy that ever was, when once you have taken a thing in your head. Daisy, what have you to do with all this? Look here--these people don't want wages." "Don't want wages?" I repeated. "No; they don't want them. What would they do with wages? they have everything they need given them already; their food and their clothing and their houses. They do not want anything more." "You said they did not have the food they liked," I objected. "Who does?" said Preston. "I am sure _I_ don't--not more than one day in seven, on an average." "But don't they have any wages at all?" I persisted. "Our coachman at Melbourne had thirty dollars a month; and Logan had forty dollars and his house and garden. Why shouldn't Darry have wages, too? Don't they have any wages at all, Preston?" "Why, yes! they have plenty of corn, bread, and bacon, I tell you; and their clothes. Daisy, they _belong_ to you, these people do." Corn, bread, and bacon was not much like chickens and pound cake, I thought; and I remembered our servants at Melbourne were very, very differently dressed from the women I saw about me here, even in the house. I stood bewildered and pondering. Preston tried to get me to go on. "Why shouldn't they have wages?" I asked at length, with lips which I believe were growing old with my thoughts. "Daisy, they are your servants; they _belong_ to you. They have no right to wages. Suppose you had to pay all these creatures--seven hundred of them--as you pay people at Melbourne: how much do you suppose you would have left to live upon yourselves? What nonsense it is to talk!" "But they work for us," I said. "Certainly. There would not be anything for any of us if they didn't. Here, at Magnolia, they raise rice crops and corn, as well as cotton; at our place we grow nothing but cotton and corn." "Well, what pays them for working?" "I told you! they have their living and clothing and no care; and they are the happiest creatures the sun shines on." "Are they willing to work for only that!" I asked. "Willing!" said Preston. "Yes," said I, feeling myself grow sick at heart. "I fancy nobody asks them that question. They have to work, I reckon, whether they like it or no." "You said they _like_ to lie in the sun. What makes them work?" "Makes them!" said Preston, who was getting irritated as well as impatient. "They get a good flogging if they do not work--that is all. They know, if they don't do their part, the lash will come down: and it don't come down easy." I suppose I must have looked as if it had come down on me. Preston stopped talking and began to take care of me, putting his arm round me to support my steps homeward. In the verandah my aunt met us. She immediately decided that I was ill, and ordered me to go to bed at once. It was the thing of all others I would have wished to do. It saved me from the exertion of trying to hold myself up and of speaking and moving and answering questions. I went to bed in dull misery, longing to go to sleep and forget all my troubles of mind and body together; but while the body rested, the mind would not. That kept the consciousness of its burden; and it was that, more than any physical ail, which took away my power of eating, and created instead a wretched sort of half nausea, which made even rest unrefreshing. As for rest in my mind and heart, it seemed at that time as if I should never know it again. Never again! I was a child--I had but vague ideas respecting even what troubled me; nevertheless I had been struck, where may few children be struck! in the very core and quick of my heart's reverence and affection. It had come home to me that papa was somehow doing wrong. My father was in my childish thought and belief, the ideal of chivalrous and high-bred excellence;--and _papa_ was doing wrong. I could not turn my eyes from the truth; it was before me in too visible a form. It did not arrange itself in words, either; not at first; it only pressed upon my heart and brain that seven hundred people on my father's property were injured, and by his will, and for his interests. Dimly the consciousness came to me; slowly it found its way and spread out its details before me; bit by bit one point after another came into my mind to make the whole good; bit by bit one item after another came in to explain and be explained and to add its quota of testimony; all making clear and distinct and dazzling before me the truth which at first it was so hard to grasp. And this is not the less true because my childish thought at first took everything vaguely and received it slowly. I was a child and a simple child; but once getting hold of a clue of truth, my mind never let it go. Step by step, as a child could, I followed it out. And the balance of the golden rule, to which I was accustomed, is an easy one to weigh things in; and even little hands can manage it. For an hour after they put me to bed my heart seemed to grow chill from minute to minute; and my body, in curious sympathy, shook as if I had an ague. My aunt and Miss Pinshon came and went and were busy about me; making me drink negus and putting hot bricks to my feet. Preston stole in to look at me; but I gathered that neither then nor afterwards did he reveal to any one the matter of our conversation the hour before. "Wearied"--"homesick"--"feeble"--"with no sort of strength to bear anything"--they said I was. All true, no doubt; and yet I was not without powers of endurance, even bodily, if my mind gave a little help. Now the trouble was, that all such help was wanting. The dark figures of the servants came and went too, with the others; came and stayed; Margaret and Mammy Theresa took post in my room, and when they could do nothing for me, crouched by the fire and spent their cares and energies in keeping that in full blast. I could hardly bear to see them; but I had no heart to speak even to ask that they might be sent away, or for anything else; and I had a sense besides that it was a gratification to them to be near me; and to gratify any one of the race I could have borne a good deal of pain. It smites my heart now, to think of those hours. The image of them is sharp and fresh as if the time were but last night. I lay with shut eyes, taking in as it seemed to be, additional loads of trouble with each quarter of an hour; as I thought and thought, and put one and another thing together, of things past and present, to help my understanding. A child will carry on that process fast and to far-off results; give her but the key and set her off on the track of truth with a sufficient impetus. My happy childlike ignorance and childlike life was in a measure gone; I had come into the world of vexed questions, of the oppressor and the oppressed, the full and the empty, the rich and the poor. I could make nothing at all of Preston's arguments and reasonings. The logic of expediency and of consequences carried no weight with me, and as little the logic of self-interest. I sometimes think a child's vision is clearer, even in worldly matters, than the eyes of those can be who have lived among the fumes and vapours that rise in these low grounds, unless the eyes be washed day by day in the spring of truth, and anointed with unearthly ointment. The right and the wrong were the two things that presented themselves to my view; and oh, my sorrow and heartbreak was, that papa was in the wrong. I could not believe it, and yet I could not get rid of it. There were oppressors and oppressed in the world; and _he_ was one of the oppressors. There is no sorrow that a child can bear, keener and more gnawingly bitter than this. It has a sting of its own, for which there is neither salve nor remedy; and it had the aggravation, in my case, of the sense of personal dishonour. The wrong done and the oppression inflicted were not the whole; there was besides the intolerable sense of living upon other's gains. It was more than my heart could bear. I could not write as I do--I could not recall these thoughts and that time--if I had not another thought to bring to bear upon them; a thought which at that time I was not able to comprehend. It came to me later with its healing, and I have seen and felt it more clearly as I grew older. I see it very clearly now. I had not been mistaken in my childish notions of the loftiness and generosity of my father's character. He was what I had thought him. Neither was I a whit wrong in my judgment of the things which it grieved me that he did and allowed. But I saw afterwards how he, and others, had grown up and been educated in a system and atmosphere of falsehood, till he failed to perceive that it was false. His eyes had lived in the darkness till it seemed quite comfortably light to him; while to a fresh vision, accustomed to the sun, it was pure and blank darkness, as thick as night. He followed what others did and his father had done before him, without any suspicion that it was an abnormal and morbid condition of things they were all living in; more especially without a tinge of misgiving that it might not be a noble, upright, dignified way of life. But I, his little unreasoning child, bringing the golden rule of the gospel only to judge of the doings of hell, shrank back and fell to the ground, in my heart, to find the one I loved best in the world concerned in them. So when I opened my eyes that night, and looked into the blaze of the firelight, the dark figures that were there before it stung me with pain every time; and every soft word and tender look on their faces--and I had many a one, both words and looks--racked my heart in a way that was strange for a child. The negus put me to sleep at last, or exhaustion did; I think the latter, for it was very late; and the rest of that night wore away. When I awoke, the two women were there still, just as I had left them when I went to sleep. I do not know if they sat there all night, or if they had slept on the floor by my side; but there they were, and talking softly to one another about something that caught my attention. I bounced out of bed--though I was so weak, I remember I reeled as I went from my bed to the fire, and steadied myself by laying my hand on Mammy Theresa's shoulder. I demanded of Margaret _what_ she had been saying. The women both started, with expressions of surprise, alarm, and tender affection, raised by my ghostly looks, and begged me to get back into bed again. I stood fast, bearing on Theresa's shoulder. "What was it?" I asked. "'Twarn't nothin', Miss Daisy, dear!" said the girl. "Hush! don't tell me that," I said. "Tell me what it was--tell me what it was. Nobody shall know; you need not be afraid; nobody shall know." For I saw a cloud of hesitation in Margaret's face. "'Twarn't nothin', Miss Daisy--only about Darry." "What about Darry?" I said, trembling. "He done went and had a praise-meetin'," said Theresa; "and he knowed it war agin the rules; he knowed that. 'Course he did. Rules mus' be kep'." "Whose rules?" I asked. "Laws, honey, 'taint 'cording to rules for we coloured folks to hold meetin's no how. 'Course, we's ought to 'bey de rules; dat's clar." "Who made the rules?" "Who make 'em? Mass' Ed'ards--he made de rules on dis plantation. Reckon Mass' Randolph, he make 'em a heap different." "Does Mr. Edwards make it a rule that you are not to hold prayer-meetings?" "Can't spec' for to have everyt'ing jus like de white folks," said the old woman. "We's no right to spect it. But Uncle Darry, he sot a sight by his praise-meetin'. He's cur'ous, he is. S'pose Darry's cur'ous." "And does anybody say that you shall not have prayer-meetings?" "Laws, honey! what's we got to do wid praise-meetin's or any sort of meetin's? We'se got to work. Mass' Ed'ards, he say dat de meetin's dey makes coloured folks onsettled; and dey don't hoe de corn good if dey has too much prayin' to do." "And does he forbid them then? doesn't he let you have prayer-meetings?" "'Tain't Mr. Edwards alone, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, speaking low. "It's agin the law for us to have meetin's anyhow, 'cept we get leave, and say what house it shall be, and who's a comin', and what we'se comin' for. And it's no use asking Mr. Edwards, 'cause he don't see no reason why black folks should have meetin's." "Did Darry have a prayer-meeting without leave?" I asked. "'Twarn't no count of a meetin'!" said Theresa, a little touch of scorn, or indignation, coming into her voice; "and Darry, he war in his own house prayin'. Dere warn't nobody dere, but Pete and ole 'Liza, and Maria, cook, and dem two Johns dat come from de lower plantation. Dey couldn't get a strong meetin' into Uncle Darry's house; 'tain't big enough to hold 'em." "And what did the overseer do to Darry?" I asked. "Laws, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, with a quick look at the other woman; "he didn't do nothing to hurt Darry; he only want to scare de folks." "Dey's done scared," said Theresa, under her breath. "What is it?" I said, steadying myself by my hold on Theresa's shoulder, and feeling that I must stand till I had finished my inquiry: "how did he know about the meeting? and what did he do to Darry? Tell me! I must know. I must know, Margaret." "Spect he was goin' through the quarters, and he heard Darry at his prayin'," said Margaret. "Darry he don't mind to keep his prayers secret, he don't," she added, with a half laugh. "Spect nothin' but they'll bust the walls o' that little house some day." "Dey's powerful!" added Theresa. "But he warn't prayin' no harm; he was just prayin', 'Dy will be done on de eart' as it be in de heaven'--Pete, he tell me. Darry warn't saying not'ing--he just pray 'Dy will be done.'" "Well?" I said, for Margaret kept silent. "And de oberseer, he say--leastways he swore, he did--dat _his_ will should be done on dis plantation, and he wouldn't have no such work. He say, der's nobody to come togedder after it be dark, if it's two or t'ree, 'cept dey gets his leave, Mass' Ed'ards, he say; and dey won't get it." "But what did he do to Darry?" I could scarcely hold myself on my feet by this time. "He whipped him, I reckon," said Margaret, in a low tone, and with a dark shadow crossing her face, very different from its own brown duskiness. "He don't have a light hand, Mass' Ed'ards," went on Theresa, "and he got a sharp, new whip. De second stripe--Pete, he tell me this evenin'--and it war wet; and it war wet enough before he got through. He war mad, I reckon; certain, Mass' Ed'ards, he war mad." "_Wet?_" said I. "Laws, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, "'tain't nothin'. Them whips, they draws the blood easy. Darry, he don't mind." I have a recollection of the girl's terrified face, but I heard nothing more. Such a deadly sickness came over me that for a minute I must have been near fainting; happily it took another turn amid the various confused feelings which oppressed me, and I burst into tears. My eyes had not been wet through all the hours of the evening and night; my heartache had been dry. I think I was never very easy to move to tears, even as a child. But now, well for me, perhaps, some element of the pain I was suffering found the unguarded point--or broke up the guard. I wept as I have done very few times in my life. I had thrown myself into Mammy Theresa's lap, in the weakness which could not support itself, and in an abandonment of grief which was careless of all the outside world; and there I lay, clasped in her arms and sobbing. Grief, horror, tender sympathy, and utter helplessness, striving together; there was nothing for me at that moment but the woman's refuge and the child's remedy of weeping. But the weeping was so bitter, so violent, and so uncontrollable, that the women were frightened. I believe they shut the doors, to keep the sound of my sobs from reaching other ears; for when I recovered the use of my senses I saw that they were closed. The certain strange relief which tears do bring, they gave to me. I cannot tell why. My pain was not changed, my helplessness was not done away; yet at least I had washed my causes of sorrow in a flood of heart drops, and cleansed them so somehow from any personal stain. Rather I was perfectly exhausted. The women put me to bed, as soon as I would let them; and Margaret whispered an earnest "Do, don't, Miss Daisy, don't say nothin' about the prayer meetin'!" I shook my head; I knew better than to say anything about it. All the better not to betray them, and myself, I shut my eyes, and tried to let my face grow quiet. I had succeeded, I believe, before my Aunt Gary and Miss Pinshon came in. The two stood looking at me; my aunt in some consternation, my governess reserving any expression of what she thought. I fancied she did not trust my honesty. Another time I might have made an effort to right myself in her opinion; but I was past that and everything now. It was decided by my aunt that I had better keep my bed as long as I felt like doing so. So I lay there during the long hours of that day. I was glad to be still, to keep out of the way in a corner, to hear little and see nothing of what was going on; my own small world of thoughts was enough to keep me busy. I grew utterly weary at last of thinking, and gave it up, so far as I could; submitting passively, in a state of pain, sometimes dull and sometimes acute, to what I had no power to change or remedy. But my father _had_, I thought; and at those times my longing was unspeakable to see him. I was very quiet all that day, I believe, in spite of the rage of wishes and sorrows within me; but it was not to be expected I should gain strength. On the contrary, I think I grew feverish. If I could have laid down my troubles in prayer! but at first, these troubles, I could not. The core and root of them being my father's share in the rest. And I was not alone; and I had a certain consciousness that if I allowed myself to go to my little Bible for help, it would unbar my self-restraint, with its sweet and keen words, and I should give way again before Margaret and Theresa: and I did not wish that. "What shall we do with her?" said my Aunt Gary when she came to me towards the evening. "She looks like a mere shadow. I never saw such a change in a child in four weeks--never!" "Try a different regimen to-morrow, I think," said my governess, whose lustrous black eyes looked at me sick, exactly as they looked at me well. "I shall send for the doctor, if she isn't better," said my aunt. "She's feverish now." "Keeping her bed all day," said Miss Pinshon. "Do you think so?" said my aunt. "I have no doubt of it. It is very weakening." "Then we will let her get up to-morrow, and see how that will do." They had been gone half an hour, when Preston stole in and came to the side of my bed, between me and the firelight. "Come, Daisy, let us be friends!" he said. And he was stooping to kiss me; but I put out my hand to keep him back. "Not till you have told Darry you are sorry," I said. Preston was angry instantly, and stood upright. "Ask pardon of a servant!" he said. "You would have the world upside down directly." I thought it was upside down already; but I was too weak and downhearted to say so. "Daisy, Daisy!" said Preston--"And there you lie, looking like a poor little wood flower that has hardly strength to hold up its head; and with about as much colour in your cheeks. Come, Daisy, kiss me, and let us be friends." "If you will do what is right," I said. "I will--always," said Preston; "but this would be wrong, you know." And he stooped again to kiss me. And again I would not suffer him. "Daisy, you are absurd," said Preston, vibrating between pity and anger, I think, as he looked at me. "Darry is a servant, and accustomed to a servant's place. What hurt you so much did not hurt him a bit. He knows where he belongs." "You don't," said I. "What?" "Know anything about it." I remember I spoke very feebly. I had hardly energy left to speak at all. My words must have come with a curious contrast between the meaning and the manner. "Know anything about what, Daisy? You are as oracular and as immovable as one of Egypt's monuments; only they are very hard, and you are very soft, my dear little Daisy!--and they are very brown, according to all I have heard, and you are as white as a wind-flower. One can almost see through you. What is it I don't know anything about?" "I am so tired, Preston!" "Yes; but what is it I don't know anything about?" "Darry's place--and yours," I said. "His place and mine! His place is a servant's, I take it, belonging to Rudolf Randolph, of Magnolia. I am the unworthy representative of an old Southern family, and a gentleman. What have you to say about that?" "He is a servant of the Lord of lords," I said; "and his Master loves him. And He has a house of glory preparing for him, and a crown of gold, and a white robe, such as the King's children wear. And he will sit on a throne himself by and by. Preston, where will _you_ be?" These words were said without the least heat of manner--almost languidly; but they put Preston in a fume. I could not catch his excitement in the least; but I saw it. He stood up again, hesitated, opened his mouth to speak and shut it without speaking, turned and walked away and came back to me. I did not wait for him then. "You have offended one of the King's children," I said; "and the King is offended." "Daisy," said Preston, in a sort of suppressed fury, "one would think you had turned Abolitionist; only you never heard of such a thing." "What is it?" said I, shutting my eyes. "It is just the meanest and most impudent shape a Northerner can take; it is the lowest end of creation, an Abolitionist is; and a Yankee is pretty much the same thing!" "Dr. Sandford is a Yankee," I remarked. "Did you get it from _him_?" Preston asked, fiercely. "What?" said I, opening my eyes. "Your nonsense. Has he taught you to turn Abolitionist?" "I have not _turned_ at all," I said. "I wish you would. It is only the people who are in the wrong that ought to turn." "Daisy," said Preston, "you ought never to be away from Aunt Felicia and my uncle. Nobody else can manage you. I don't know what you will become or what you will do, before they get back." I was silent; and Preston, I suppose, cooled down. He waited awhile, and then again begged that I would kiss and be friends. "You see, I am going away to-morrow morning, little Daisy." "I wish you had gone two days ago," I said. And my mind did not change, even when the morning came. CHAPTER V. IN THE KITCHEN. I was ill for days. It was not due to one thing, doubtless, nor one sorrow, but the whole together. My aunt sent to Baytown for the old family physician. He came up and looked at me, and decided that I ought to "play" as much as possible! "She isn't a child that likes play," said my aunt. "Find some play that she does like, then. Where are her father and mother?" "Just sailed for Europe, a few weeks ago." "The best thing would be for her to sail after them," said the old doctor. And he went. "We shall have to let her do just as they did at Melbourne," said my aunt. "How was that?" said Miss Pinshon. "Let her have just her own way." "And what was that?" "Oh, queer," said my aunt. "She is not like other children. But anything is better than to have her mope to death." "I shall try and not have her mope," said Miss Pinshon. But she had little chance to adopt her reforming regimen for some time. It was plain I was not fit for anything but to be let alone, like a weak plant struggling for its existence. All you can do with it is to put it in the sun; and my aunt and governess tacitly agreed upon the same plan of treatment for me. Now, the only thing wanting was sunshine; and it was long before that could be had. After a day or two I left my bed, and crept about the house, and out of the house under the great oaks, where the material sunshine was warm and bright enough, and caught itself in the grey wreaths of moss that waved over my head, and seemed to come bodily to woo me to life and cheer. It lay in the carpet under my feet, it lingered in the leaves of the thick oaks, it wantoned in the wind, as the long draperies of moss swung and moved gently to and fro; but the very sunshine is cold where the ice meets it; I could get no comfort. The thoughts that had so troubled me the evening after my long talk with Preston were always present with me; they went out and came in with me; I slept with them, and they met me when I woke. The sight of the servants was wearying. I shunned Darry and the stables. I had no heart for my pony. I would have liked to get away from Magnolia. Yet, be I where I might, it would not alter my father's position towards these seven hundred people. And towards how many more? There were his estates in Virginia. One of the first things I did, as soon as I could command my fingers to do it, was to write to him. Not a remonstrance. I knew better than to touch that. All I ventured, was to implore that the people who desired it might be allowed to hold prayer-meetings whenever they liked, and Mr. Edwards be forbidden to interfere. Also I complained that the inside of the cabins were not comfortable; that they were bare and empty. I pleaded for a little bettering of them. It was not a long letter that I wrote. My sorrow I could not tell, and my love and my longing were equally beyond the region of words. I fancy it would have been thought by Miss Pinshon a very cold little epistle, but Miss Pinshon did not see it. I wrote it with weak trembling fingers, and closed it and sealed it and sent it myself. Then I sank into a helpless, careless, listless state of body and mind, which was very bad for me; and there was no physician who could minister to me. I went wandering about, mostly out of doors, alone with myself and my sorrow. When I seemed a little stronger than usual, Miss Pinshon tried the multiplication table; and I tried, but the spring of my mind was for the time broken. All such trials came to an end in such weakness and weariness, that my governess herself was fain to take the book from my hands and send me out into the sunshine again. It was Darry at last who found me one day, and, distressed at my looks, begged that I would let him bring up my pony. He was so earnest that I yielded. I got leave, and went to ride. Darry saddled another horse for himself and went with me. That first ride did not help me much; but the second time a little tide of life began to steal into my veins. Darry encouraged and instructed me; and when we came cantering up to the door of the house, my aunt, who was watching there, cried out that I had a bit of a tinge in my cheeks, and charged Darry to bring the horses up every day. With a little bodily vigour a little strength of mind seemed to come; a little more power of bearing up against evils, or of quietly standing under them. After the third time I went to ride, having come home refreshed, I took my Bible and sat down on the rug before the fire in my room to read. I had not been able to get comfort in my Bible all those days; often I had not liked to try. Right and wrong never met me in more brilliant colours or startling shadows than within the covers of that book. But to-day, soothed somehow, I went along with the familiar words as one listens to old music, with the soothing process going on all along. Right _was_ right, and glorious, and would prevail some time; and nothing could hinder it. And then I came to words which I knew, yet which had never taken such hold of me before. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." "_That_ is what I have to do!" I thought immediately. "That is my part. That is clear. What _I_ have to do, is to let my light shine. And if the light shines, perhaps it will fall on something. But what _I_ have to do, is to shine. God has given me nothing else." It was a very simple child's thought; but it brought wonderful comfort with it. Doubtless, I would have liked another part to play. I would have liked--if I could--to have righted all the wrong in the world; to have broken every yoke; to have filled every empty house, and built up a fire on every cold hearth: but that was not what God had given me. All He had given me, that I could see at the minute, was to shine. What a little morsel of a light mine was, to be sure! It was a good deal of a puzzle to me for days after that, _how_ I was to shine. What could I do? I was a little child: my only duties some lessons to learn: not much of that, seeing I had not strength for it. Certainly, I had sorrows to bear; but bearing them well did not seem to me to come within the sphere of _shining_. Who would know that I bore them well? And shining is meant to be seen. I pondered the matter. "When's Christmas, Miss Daisy?" Margaret asked this question one morning as she was on her knees making my fire. Christmas had been so shadowed a point to me in the distance, I had not looked at it. I stopped to calculate the days. "It will be two weeks from Friday, Margaret." "And Friday's to-morrow?" she asked. "The day after to-morrow. What do you do at Christmas, Margaret? all the people?" "There ain't no great doings, Miss Daisy. The people gets four days, most of 'em." "Four days--for what?" "For what they like; they don't do no work, those days." "And is that all?" "No, Miss Daisy, 'tain't just all; the women comes up to the house--it's to the overseer's house now--and every one gets a bowl o' flour, more or less, 'cordin' to size of family--and a quart of molasses, and a piece o' pork." "And what do they do to make the time pleasant?" I asked. "Some on 'em's raised eggs and chickens; and they brings 'em to the house and sells 'em; and they has the best dinner. Most times they gets leave to have a meetin'." "A prayer-meeting?" I said. "Laws, no, Miss Daisy! not 'cept it were Uncle Darry and _his_ set. The others don't make no count of a prayer-meetin'. They likes to have a white-folks' meetin' and 'joy theirselves." I thought very much over these statements; and for the next two weeks bowls of flour and quarts of molasses, as Christmas doings, were mixed up in my mind with the question, how I was to shine? or rather, alternated with it; and plans began to turn themselves over and take shape in my thoughts. "Margaret," said I, a day or two before Christmas, "can't the people have those meetings you spoke of without getting leave of Mr. Edwards?" "Can't have meetin's, no how!" Margaret replied decidedly. "But if _I_ wanted to see them, couldn't they, some of them, come together to see me?" "To see Miss Daisy! Reckon Miss Daisy do what she like. 'Spect Mass' Ed'ards let Miss Daisy 'lone!" I was silent, pondering. "Maria cook wants to see Miss Daisy bad. She bid me tell Miss Daisy won't she come down in de kitchen, and see all the works she's a-doin' for Christmas, and de glorifications?" "I? I'll come if I can," I answered. I asked my aunt and got easy leave; and on Christmas eve I went down to the kitchen. That was the chosen time when Maria wished to see me. There was an assembly of servants gathered in the room, some from out of the house. Darry was there; and one or two other fine-looking men who were his prayer-meeting friends. I supposed they were gathered to make merry for Christmas eve; but, at any rate, they were all eager to see me, and looked at me with smiles as gentle as have ever fallen to my share. I felt it and enjoyed it. The effect was of entering a warm, genial atmosphere, where grace and good-will were on every side; a change very noticeable from the cold and careless habit of things upstairs. And _grace_ is not a misapplied epithet; for these children of a luxurious and beauty-loving race, even in their bondage, had not forgotten all traces of their origin. As I went in, I could not help giving my hand to Darry; and then, in my childish feeling towards them, and in the tenderness of the Christmas-tide, I could not help doing the same by all the others who were present. And I remember now the dignity of mien in some, the frank ease in others, both graceful and gracious, with which my civility was met. If a few were a little shy, the rest more than made it up by their welcome of me, and a sort of politeness which had almost something courtly in it. Darry and Maria together gave me a seat, in the very centre and glow of the kitchen light and warmth; and the rest made a half circle around, leaving Maria's end of the room free for her operations. The kitchen was all aglow with the most splendid fire of pine knots it was ever my lot to see. The illumination was such as threw all gaslights into shade. We were in a great stone-flagged room, low-roofed, with dark cupboard door; not cheerful, I fancy, in the mere light of day: but nothing could resist the influence of those pine-knot flames. Maria herself was a portly fat woman, as far as possible from handsome; but she looked at me with a whole world of kindness in her dark face. Indeed, I saw the same kindness more or less shining out upon me in all the faces there. I cannot tell the mixed joy and pain that it, and they, gave me. I suppose I showed little of either, or of anything. Maria entertained me with all she had. She brought out for my view her various rich and immense stores of cakes and pies and delicacies for the coming festival; told me what was good and what I must be sure and eat; and what would be good for me. And then, when that display was over, she began to be very busy with beating of eggs in a huge wooden bowl; and bade Darry see to the boiling of the kettle at the fire; and sent Jem, the waiter, for things he was to get upstairs; and all the while talked to me. She and Darry and one or two more talked, but especially she and Theresa and Jem; while all the rest listened and laughed and exclaimed, and seemed to find me as entertaining as a play. Maria was asking me about my own little life and experiences before I came to Magnolia; what sort of a place Melbourne was, and how things there differed from the things she and the rest knew and were accustomed to at the South; and about my old June, who had once been an acquaintance of hers. Smiling at me the while, between the thrusts of her curiosity, and over my answers, as if for sheer pleasure she could not keep grave. The other faces were as interested and as gracious. There was Pete, tall and very black, and very grave, as Darry was also. There was Jem, full of life and waggishness, and bright for any exercise of his wits; and grave shadows used to come over his changeable face often enough too. There was Margaret, with her sombre beauty; and old Theresa with her worn old face. I think there was a certain indescribable reserve of gravity upon them all, but there was not one whose lips did not part in a white line when looking at me, nor whose eyes and ears did not watch me with an interest as benign as it was intent. I had been little while seated before the kitchen fire of pine knots before I felt that I was in the midst of a circle of personal friends; and I feel it now, as I look back and remember them. They would have done much for me, every one. Meanwhile Maria beat and mixed and stirred the things in her wooden bowl; and by and by ladled out a glassful of rich-looking, yellow, creamy froth--I did not know what it was, only it looked beautiful--and presented it to me. "Miss Daisy mus' tell Mis' Felissy Maria hain't forgot how to make it--'spect she hain't, anyhow. Dat's for Miss Daisy's Christmas." "It's very nice!" I said. "Reckon it is," was the capable answer. "Won't you give everybody some, Maria?" For Jem had gone upstairs with a tray and glasses, and Maria seemed to be resting upon her labours. "Dere'll come down orders for mo', chile; and 'spose I gives it to de company, what'll Mis' Lisa do wid Maria? I have de 'sponsibility of Christmas." "But you can make some more," I said, holding my glass in waiting. "Do, Maria." "'Spose hain't got de 'terials, hey?" "What do you want? Aunt Gary will give it to you." And I begged Jem to go up again and prefer my request to her for the new filling of Maria's bowl. Jem shrugged his shoulders, but he went; and I suppose he made a good story of it; for he came down with whatever was wanted--my Aunt Gary was in a mood to refuse me nothing then--and Maria went anew about the business of beating and mixing and compounding. There was great enjoyment in the kitchen. It was a time of high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as much as it amused. It was very unlike the enjoyment of a set of white people holding the same social and intellectual grade. It was the manifestation of another race, less coarse and animal in their original nature, more sensitive and more demonstrative, with a strange touch of the luxurious and refined for a people whose life has had nothing to do with luxury, and whom refinement leaves on one side as quite beyond its sphere. But blood is a strange thing; and Ham's children will show luxurious and æsthetic tastes, take them where you will. "Chillen, I hope you's enjoyed your supper," Maria said, when the last lingering drops had been secured, and mugs and glasses were coming back to the kitchen table. Words and smiles answered her. "We's had a splendid time, Aunt Maria," said one young man as he set down his glass. He was a worker in the garden. "Den I hope's we's all willin' to gib de Lord t'anks for His goodness. Dere ain't a night in de year when it's so proper to gib de Lord t'anks, as it be dis precious night." "It's to-morrow night, Aunt Maria," said Pete. "To-morrow's Christmas night." "I don't care! One night's jus' as good as another, you Pete. And now we's all together, you see, and comfortable together; and I feel like giving t'anks, I do, to de Lord, for all His mercies." "What's Christmas, anyhow?" asked another. "It's jus' de crown o' all the nights in de year. You Solomon, it's a night dat dey keeps up in heaven. You know nothin' about it, you poor critter. I done believe you never hearn no one tell about it. Maybe Miss Daisy wouldn't read us de story, and de angels, and de shepherds, and dat great light what come down, and make us feel good for Christmas; and Uncle Darry, he'll t'ank de Lord." The last words were put in a half-questioning form to me, rather taking for granted that I would readily do what was requested. And hardly anything in the world, I suppose, could have given me such deep gratification at the moment. Margaret was sent upstairs to fetch my Bible; the circle closed in around the fire and me; a circle of listening, waiting, eager, interested faces, some few of them shone with pleasure, or grew grave with reverent love, while I read slowly the chapters that tell of the first Christmas night. I read them from all the gospels, picking the story out first in one, then in another; answered sometimes by low words of praise that echoed but did not interrupt me--words that were but some dropped notes of the song that began that night in heaven, and has been running along the ages since, and is swelling and will swell into a great chorus of earth and heaven by and by. And how glad I was in the words of the story myself, as I went along. How heart-glad that here, in this region of riches and hopes not earthly, those around me had as good welcome, and as open entrance, and as free right as I. "There is neither bond nor free." "And base things of this world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are." I finished my reading at last, amid the hush of my listening audience. Then Maria called upon Darry to pray, and we all kneeled down. It comes back to me now as I write--the hush and the breathing of the fire, and Darry's low voice and imperfect English. Yes, and the incoming tide of rest and peace and gladness which began to fill the dry places in my heart, and rose and swelled till my heart was full. I lost my troubles and forgot my difficulties. I forgot that my father and mother were away, for the sense of loneliness was gone. I forgot that those around me were in bonds, for I felt them free as I, and inheritors of the same kingdom. I have not often in my life listened to such a prayer, unless from the same lips. He was one of those that make you feel that the door is open to their knocking, and that they always find it so. His words were seconded--not interrupted, even to my feelings--by low-breathed echoes of praise and petition, too soft and deep to leave any doubt of the movement that called them forth. There was a quiet gravity upon all when we rose to our feet again. I knew I must go; but the kitchen had been the pleasantest place to me in all Magnolia. I bade them good-night, answered with bows and curtseys and hearty wishes; and as I passed out of the circle, tall black Pete, looking down upon me with just a glimmer of white between his lips, added, "Hope you'll come again." A thought darted into my head which brought sunshine with it. I seemed to see my way begin to open. The hope was warm in my heart as soon as I was awake the next morning. With more comfort than for many days I had known, I lay and watched Margaret making my fire. Then suddenly I remembered it was Christmas, and what thanksgivings had been in heaven about it, and what should be on earth; and a lingering of the notes of praise I had heard last night made a sort of still music in the air. But I did not expect at all that any of the ordinary Christmas festivities would come home to me, seeing that my father and mother were away. Where should Christmas festivities come from? So, when Margaret rose up and showed all her teeth at me, I only thought last night had given her pleasure, and I suspected nothing, even when she stepped into the next room and brought in a little table covered with a shawl, and set it close to my bedside. "Am I to have breakfast in bed?" I asked. "What is this for?" "Dunno, Miss Daisy," said Margaret, with all her white teeth sparkling;--"'spose Miss Daisy take just a look, and see what 'pears like." I felt the colour come into my face. I raised myself on my elbow and lifted up cautiously one corner of the shawl. Packages--white paper and brown paper--long and short, large and small! "O Margaret, take off the shawl, will you!" I cried; "and let me see what is here." There was a good deal. But "From Papa" caught my eye on a little parcel. I seized it and unfolded. From papa, and he so far away! But I guessed the riddle before I could get to the last of the folds of paper that wrapped and enwrapped a little morocco case. Papa and mamma, leaving me alone, had made provision beforehand, that when this time came I might miss nothing except themselves. They had thought and cared and arranged for me; and now they were thinking about it, perhaps, far away somewhere over the sea. I held the morocco case in my hand a minute or two before I could open it. Then I found a little watch; my dear little watch! which has gone with me ever since, and never failed nor played tricks with me. My mother had put in one of her own chains for me to wear with it. I lay a long time looking and thinking, raised up on my elbow as I was, before I could leave the watch and go on to anything else. Margaret spread round my shoulders the shawl which had covered the Christmas table; and then she stood waiting, with a good deal more impatience and curiosity than I showed. But such a world of pleasure and pain gathered round that first "bit of Christmas"--so many, many thoughts of one and the other kind--that I for awhile had enough with that. At last I closed the case, and keeping it yet in one hand, used the other to make more discoveries. The package labelled "From Mamma," took my attention next; but I could make nothing of it. An elegant little box, that was all, which I could not open; only it felt so very heavy that I was persuaded there must be something extraordinary inside. I could make nothing of it: it was a beautiful box; that was all. Preston had brought me a little riding whip, both costly and elegant. I could not but be much pleased with it. A large, rather soft package, marked with Aunt Gary's name, unfolded a riding cap to match; at least, it was exceeding rich and stylish, with a black feather that waved away in curves that called forth Margaret's delighted admiration. Nevertheless, I wondered, while I admired, at my Aunt Gary's choice of a present. I had a straw hat which served all purposes, even of elegance, for my notions. I was amazed to find that Miss Pinshon had not forgotten me. There was a decorated pen, wreathed with a cord of crimson and gold twist, and supplemented with two dangling tassels. It was excessively pretty, as I thought of Aunt Gary's cap; and _not_ equally convenient. I looked at all these things while Margaret was dressing me; but the case with the watch, for the most part, I remember I kept in my hand. "Ain't you goin' to try it on and see some how pretty it looks, Miss Daisy?" said my unsatisfied attendant. "The cap?" said I. "Oh, I dare say it fits. Aunt Gary knows how big my head is." "Mass' Preston come last night," she went on; "so I reckon Miss Daisy'll want to wear it by and by." "Preston come last night!" I said. "After I was in bed?"--and feeling that it was indeed Christmas, I finished getting ready and went downstairs. I made up my mind I might as well be friends with Preston, and not push any further my displeasure at his behaviour. So we had a comfortable breakfast. My aunt was pleased to see me, she said, look so much better. Miss Pinshon was not given to expressing what she felt; but she looked at me two or three times without saying anything, which I suppose meant satisfaction. Preston was in high feather, making all sorts of plans for my divertisement during the next few days. I, for my part, had my own secret cherished plan, which made my heart beat quicker whenever I thought of it. But I wanted somebody's counsel and help; and on the whole I thought my Aunt Gary's would be the safest. So after breakfast I consulted Preston only about my mysterious little box, which would not open. Was it a paper weight? Preston smiled, took up the box and performed some conjuration upon it, and then--I cannot describe my entranced delight--as he set it down again on the table, the room seemed to grow musical. Softest, most liquid sweet notes came pouring forth one after the other, binding my ears as if I had been in a state of enchantment; binding feet and hands and almost my breath, as I stood hushed and listening to the liquid warbling of delicious things, until the melody had run itself out. It was a melody unknown to me; wild and dainty; it came out of a famous opera, I was told afterward. When the fairy notes sunk into silence, I turned mutely towards Preston. Preston laughed. "I declare!" he said,--"I declare! Hurra! you have got colour in your cheeks, Daisy; absolutely, my little Daisy! there is a real streak of pink there where it was so white before." "_What_ is it?" said I. "Just a little good blood coming up under the skin." "Oh no, Preston--_this_; what is it?" "A musical box." "But where does the music come from?" "Out of the box. See, Daisy; when it has done a tune and is run out, you must wind it up, so,--like a watch." He wound it up and set it on the table again. And again a melody came forth, and this time it was different; not plaintive and thoughtful, but jocund and glad; a little shout and ring of merriment, like the feet of dancers scattering the drops of dew in a bright morning; or like the chime of a thousand little silver bells rung for laughter. A sort of intoxication came into my heart. When Preston would have wound up the box again, I stopped him. I was full of the delight. I could not hear any more just then. "Why, Daisy, there are ever so many more tunes." "Yes. I am glad. I will have them another time," I answered. "How very kind of mamma!" "Hit the right thing this time, didn't she? How's the riding cap, Daisy?" "It is very nice," I said. "Aunt Gary is very good; and I like the whip _very_ much, Preston." "That fat little rascal will want it. Does the cap fit, Daisy?" "I don't know," I said. "Oh yes, I suppose so." Preston made an exclamation, and forthwith would have it tried on to see how it looked. It satisfied him; somehow it did not please me as well; but the ride did, which we had soon after; and I found that my black feather certainly suited everybody else. Darry smiled at me, and the house servants were exultant over my appearance. Amid all these distracting pleasures, I kept on the watch for an opportunity to speak to Aunt Gary alone. Christmas day I could not. I could not get it till near the next day. "Aunt Gary," I said, "I want to consult you about something." "You have always something turning about in your head," was her answer. "Do you think," said I slowly, "Mr. Edwards would have any objection to some of the people coming to the kitchen Sunday evenings to hear me read the Bible?" "To hear _you_ read the Bible!" said my aunt. "Yes, Aunt Gary; I think they would like it. You know they cannot read it for themselves." "_They_ would like it. And you would be delighted, wouldn't you?" "Yes, Aunt Gary. I should like it better than anything." "You are a funny child! There is not a bit of your mother in you--except your obstinacy." And my aunt seemed to ponder my difference. "Would Mr. Edwards object to it, do you think? Would he let them come?" "The question is whether _I_ will let them come. Mr. Edwards has no business with what is done in the house." "But, Aunt Gary, you would not have any objection." "I don't know, I am sure. I wish your father and mother had never left you in my charge; for I don't know how to take care of you." "Aunt Gary," I said, "please don't object! There is nobody to read the Bible to them--and I should like to do it very much." "Yes, I see you would. There--don't get excited about it--every Sunday evening, did you say?" "Yes, ma'am, if you please." "Daisy, it will just tire you; that's what it will do. I know it, just as well as if I had seen it. You are not strong enough." "I am sure it would refresh me, Aunt Gary. It did the other night." "The other night?" "Christmas eve, ma'am." "Did you read to them then?" "Yes, ma'am; they wanted to know what Christmas was about." "And you read to them. You are the oddest child!" "But Aunt Gary, never mind--it would be the greatest pleasure to me. Won't you give leave?" "The servants hear the Bible read, child, every morning and every night." "Yes, but that is only a very few of the house servants. I want some of the others to come--a good many--as many as can come." "I wish your mother and father were here!" sighed my aunt. "Do you think Mr. Edwards would make any objection?" I asked again, presuming on the main question being carried. "Would he let them come?" "Let them come!" echoed my aunt. "Mr. Edwards would be well employed to interfere with anything the family chose to do." "But you know he does not let them meet together, the people, Aunt Gary; not unless they have his permission." "No, I suppose so. That is his business." "Then will you speak to him, ma'am, so that he may not be angry with the people when they come?" "I? No," said my aunt. "I have nothing to do with your father's overseer. It would just make difficulty, maybe, Daisy; you had better let this scheme of yours alone." I could not without bitter disappointment. Yet I did not know how further to press the matter. I sat still and said nothing. "I declare, if she isn't growing pale about it!" exclaimed my aunt. "I know one thing, and that is, your father and mother ought to have taken you along with them. I have not the least idea how to manage you; not the least. What is it you want to do, Daisy?" I explained over again. "And now if you cannot have this trick of your fancy you will just fidget yourself sick! I see it. Just as you went driving all about Melbourne without company to take care of you. I am sure I don't know. It is not in my way to meddle with overseers--How many people do you want to read to at once, Daisy?" "As many as I can, Aunt Gary. But Mr. Edwards will not let two or three meet together anywhere." "Well, I dare say he is right. You can't believe anything in the world these people tell you, child. They will lie just as fast as they will speak." "But if they came to see _me_, Aunt Gary?" I persisted, waiving the other question. "That's another thing, of course. Well, don't worry. Call Preston. Why children cannot be children passes my comprehension." Preston came, and there was a good deal of discussing of my plan; at which Preston frowned and whistled, but on the whole, though I knew against his will, took my part. The end was, my aunt sent for the overseer. She had some difficulty, I judge, in carrying the point; and made capital of my ill-health and delicacy and spoiled-child character. The overseer's unwilling consent was gained at last; the conditions being, that every one who came to hear the reading should have a ticket of leave, written and signed by myself, for each evening; and that I should be present with the assembly from the beginning to the close of it. My delight was very great. And my aunt, grumbling at the whole matter, and especially at her share in it, found an additional cause of grumbling in that, she said, I had looked twenty per cent. better ever since this foolish thing got possession of my head. "I am wondering," she remarked to Miss Pinshon, "whatever Daisy will do when she grows up. I expect nothing but she will be--what do you call them?--one of those people who run wild over the human race." "Pirates?" suggested Preston. "Or corsairs?" "Her mother will be disappointed," went on my aunt. "That is what I confidently expect." Miss Pinshon hinted something about the corrective qualities of mathematics; but I was too happy to heed her or care. I _was_ stronger and better, I believe, from that day; though I had not much to boast of. A true tonic had been administered to me; my fainting energies took a new start. I watched my opportunity, and went down to the kitchen one evening to make my preparations. I found Maria alone and sitting in state before the fire--which I believe was always in the kitchen a regal one. I hardly aver saw it anything else. She welcomed me with great suavity; drew up a chair for me; and finding I had something to say, sat then quite grave and still looking into the blaze, while I unfolded my plan. "De Lord is bery good!" was her subdued comment, made when I had done. "He hab sent His angel, sure!" "Now, Maria," I went on, "you must tell me who would like to come next Sunday, you think; and I must make tickets for them. Every one must have my ticket, with his name on it; and then there will be no fault found." "I s'pose not," said Maria--"wid Miss Daisy's name on it." "Who will come, Maria?" "Laws, chile, dere's heaps. Dere's Darry, and Pete--Pete, he say de meetin' de oder night war 'bout de best meetin' he eber 'tended; he wouldn't miss it for not'ing in de world; he's sure; and dere's ole 'Lize; and de two Jems--no, dere's _tree_ Jems dat is ser'ous; and Stark, and Carl, and Sharlim----" "_Sharlim_?" said I, not knowing that this was the Caffir for Charlemagne. "Sharlim," Maria repeated. "He don' know much; but he has a leanin' for de good t'ings. And Darry, he can tell who'll come. I done forget all de folks' names." "Why, Maria," I said, "I did not know there were so many people at Magnolia that cared about the Bible." "What has 'um to care for, chile, I should like fur to know? Dere ain't much mo' in _dis_ world." "But I thought there were only very few," I said. "'Spose um fifty," said Maria. "Fifty ain't much, I reckon, when dere's all de rest o' de folks what _don't_ care. De Lord's people is a little people yet, for sure; and de world's a big place. When de Lord come Hisself, to look for 'em, 'spect He have to look mighty hard. De world's awful dark." That brought to my mind my question. It was odd, no doubt, to choose an old coloured woman for my adviser, but indeed, I had not much choice; and something had given me a confidence in Maria's practical wisdom, which early as it had been formed, nothing ever happened to shake. So, after considering the fire and the matter a moment, I brought forth my doubt. "Maria," said I, "what is the best way--I mean, how can one let one's light shine?" "What Miss Daisy talkin' about?" "I mean--you know what the Bible says--'Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.'" "For sure, I knows dat. Ain't much shining in dese yere parts. De people is dark, Miss Daisy; dey don' know. 'Spect dey would try to shine, some on 'em, ef dey knowed. Feel sure dey would." "But that is what I wanted to ask about, Maria. How ought one to let one's light shine?" I remember now the kind of surveying look the woman gave me. I do not know what she was thinking of; but she looked at me, up and down, for a moment, with a wonderfully tender, soft expression. Then turned away. "How let um light shine?" she repeated. "De bestest way, Miss Daisy, is fur to make him burn good." I saw it all immediately; my question never puzzled me again. Take care that the lamp is trimmed; take care that it is full of oil; see that the flame mounts clear and steady towards heaven; and the Lord will set it where its light will fall on what pleases Him, and where it will reach, mayhap, to what you never dream of. CHAPTER VI. WINTER AND SUMMER. From the Christmas holidays I think I began slowly to mend. My aunt watched me, and grumbled that kitchen amusements and rides with Darry should prove the medicines most healing and effectual; but she dared stop neither of them. I believe the overseer remonstrated on the danger of the night gatherings; but my Aunt Gary had her answer ready, and warned him not to do anything to hinder me, for I was the apple of my father's eye. Miss Pinshon, sharing to the full my aunt's discontent, would have got on horseback, I verily believe, to be with me in my rides; but she was no rider. The sound of a horse's four feet always, she confessed, stamped the courage out of her heart. I was let alone; and the Sunday evenings in the kitchen, and the bright morning hours in the pine avenues and oak groves, were my refreshment and my pleasure and my strength. What there was of it; for I had not much strength to boast for many a day. Miss Pinshon tried her favourite recipe whenever she thought she saw a chance, and I did my best with it. But my education that winter was quite in another line. I could not bear much arithmetic. Bending over a desk did not agree with me. Reading aloud to Miss Pinshon never lasted for more than a little while at a time. So it comes, that my remembrance of that winter is not filled with school exercises, and that Miss Pinshon's figure plays but a subordinate part in its pictures. Instead of that, my memory brings back, first and chiefest of all, the circle of dark faces round the kitchen light wood fire, and the yellow blaze on the page from which I read; I, a little figure in white, sitting in the midst amongst them all. That picture--those evenings--come back to me, with a kind of hallowed perfume of truth and hope. Truth, it was in my lips and on my heart; I was giving it out to those who had it not. And hope--it was in more hearts than mine, no doubt; but in mine it beat with as steady a beat as the tickings of my little watch by my side, and breathed sweet as the flowers that start in spring from under the snow. I had often a large circle; and it was part of my plan, and well carried into execution, that these evenings of reading should supply also the place of the missing prayer-meeting. Gradually I drew it on to be so understood; and then my pieces of reading were scattered along between the prayers, or sometimes all came at first, followed by two or three earnest longer prayers from some of those that were present. And then, without any planning of mine, came in the singing. Not too much, lest, as Maria said, we should "make de folks upstairs t'ink dere war somethin' oncommon in de kitchen;" but one or two hymns we would have, so full of spirit and sweetness that often nowadays they come back to me, and I would give very much to hear the like again. So full of music, too. Voices untrained by art, but gifted by nature; melodious and powerful; that took different parts in the tune, and carried them through without the jar of a false note or a false quantity; and a love both of song and of the truth which made the music mighty. It was the greatest delight to me that singing, whether I joined them or only listened. One,--the thought of it comes over me now and brings the water to my eyes,-- "Am I a soldier of the cross-- Of the cross-- Of the cross-- A follower of the Lamb; And shall I fear to own his cause, Own his cause-- Own his cause-- Or blush to speak his name?" The repetitions at the end of every other line were both plaintive and strong; there was no weakness, but some recognition of what it costs in certain circumstances to "own His cause." I loved that dearly. But that was only one of many. Also, the Bible words were wonderful sweet to me, as I was giving them out to those who else had a "famine of the word." Bread to the hungry is quite another thing from bread on the tables of the full. The winter had worn well on, before I received the answer to the letter I had written my father about the prayer-meetings and Mr. Edwards. It was a short answer, not in terms but in actual extent; showing that my father was not strong and well yet. It was very kind and tender, as well as short; I felt that in every word. In substance, however, it told me I had better let Mr. Edwards alone. He knew what he ought to do about the prayer-meetings and about other things; and they were what I could not judge about. So my letter said. It said, too, that things seemed strange to me because I was unused to them; and that when I had lived longer at the South they would cease to be strange, and I would understand them and look upon them as every one else did. I studied and pondered this letter; not greatly disappointed, for I had had but slender hopes that my petition could work anything. Yet I had a disappointment to get over. The first practical use I made of my letter, I went where I could be alone with it--indeed, I was that when I read it,--but I went to a solitary lonely place, where I could not be interrupted; and there I knelt down and prayed, that however long I might live at the South, I might never get to look upon evil as anything but evil, nor ever become accustomed to the things I thought ought not to be, so as not to feel them. I shall never forget that half hour. It broke my heart that my father and I should look on such matters with so different eyes; and with my prayer for myself, which came from the very bottom of my heart, I poured out also a flood of love and tears over him, and of petition that he might have better eyesight one day. Ah yes! and before it should be too late to right the wrong he was unconsciously doing. For now I began to see, in the light of this letter first, that my father's eyes were not clear but blind in regard to these matters. And what he said about me led me to think and believe that his blindness was the effect, not of any particular hardness or fault in him, but of long teaching and habit and custom. For I saw that everybody else around me seemed to take the present condition of things as the true and best one; not only convenient, but natural and proper. Everybody, that is, who did not suffer by it. I had more than suspicions that the seven hundred on the estate were of a different mind here from the half dozen who lived in the mansion; and that the same relative difference existed on the other plantations in the neighbourhood. We made visits occasionally, and the visits were returned. I was not shut out from them, and so had some chance to observe things within a circle of twenty miles. Our "neighbourhood" reached so far. And child as I was, I could not help seeing: and I could not help looking, half unconsciously, for signs of what lay so close on my heart. My father's letter thus held some material of comfort for me, although it refused my request. Papa would not overset the overseer's decision about the prayer-meetings. It held something else. There was a little scrap of a note to Aunt Gary, saying, in the form of an order, that Daisy was to have ten dollars paid to her every quarter; that Mrs. Gary would see it done; and would further see that Daisy was not called upon, by anybody, at any time, to give any account whatever of her way of spending the same. How I thanked papa for this! How I knew the tender affection and knowledge of me which had prompted it. How well I understood what it was meant to do. I had a little private enjoyment of Aunt Gary's disconsolate face and grudging hands as she bestowed upon me the first ten dollars. It was not that she loved money so well, but she thought this was another form of my father's unwise indulging and spoiling of me; and that I was spoiled already. But I--I saw in a vision a large harvest of joy, to be raised from this small seed crop. At first I thought I must lay out a few shillings of my stock upon a nice purse to keep the whole in. I put the purse down at the head of the list of things I was making out, for purchase the first time I should go to Baytown, or have any good chance of sending. I had a good deal of consideration whether I would have a purse or a pocket-book. Then I had an odd secret pleasure in my diplomatic way of finding out from Darry and Maria and Margaret what were the wants most pressing of the sick and the old among the people; or of the industrious and the enterprising. Getting Darry to talk to me in my rides, by degrees I came to know the stories and characters of many of the hands; I picked up hints of a want or a desire here and there, which Darry thought there was no human means of meeting or gratifying. Then, the next time I had a chance, I brought up these persons and cases to Maria, and supplemented Darry's hints with her information. Or I attacked Margaret when she was making my fire, and drew from her what she knew about the parties in whom I was interested. So I learned--and put it down in my notebook accordingly--that Pete could spell out words a little bit, and would like mainly to read; if only he had a Testament in large type. He could not manage little print; it bothered him. Also I learned, that Aunt Sarah, a middle-aged woman who worked in the fields, "wanted terrible to come to de Sabbas meetin's, but she war 'shamed to come, 'cause her feet was mos' half out of her shoes; and Mr. Ed'ards wouldn't give her no more till de time come roun." Sarah had "been and gone and done stuck her feet in de fire for to warm 'em, one time when dey was mighty cold, and she burn her shoes. Learn her better next time." "But does she work every day in the field with her feet only half covered?" I asked. "Laws! she don't care," said Maria. "'Taint no use give dem darkies not'ng; dey not know how to keep um." But this was not Maria's real opinion, I knew. There was often a strange sort of seeming hard edge of feeling put forth which I learned to know pointed a deep, deep, maybe only half-conscious irony, and was in reality a bitter comment upon facts. So a pair of new shoes for Sarah went down in my list with a large print Testament for Pete. Then I found that some of the people, some of the old ones, who in youth had been accustomed to it, like nothing so well as tea; it was ambrosia and Lethe mingled; and a packet of tea was put in my list next to the Testament. But the tea must have sugar; and I could not bear that they should drink it out of mugs, without any teaspoons; so to please myself I sent for a little delf ware and a few pewter spoons. Little by little my list grew. I found that Darry knew something about letters; could write a bit; and would prize the means of writing as a very rare treasure and pleasure. And with fingers that almost trembled with delight, I wrote down paper and pens and a bottle of ink for Darry. Next, I heard of an old woman at the quarters, who was ailing and infirm, and I am afraid ill-treated, who at all events was in need of comfort, and had nothing but straw and the floor to rest her poor bones on at night. A soft pallet for her went down instantly on my list; my ink and tears mingled together as I wrote; and I soon found that my purse must be cut off from the head of my list for that time. I never ventured to put it at the head again; nor found a chance to put it anywhere else. I spent four winters at Magnolia after that; and never had a new purse all the time. I had to wait awhile for an opportunity to make my purchases; then had the best in the world, for Darry was sent to Baytown on business. To him I confided my list and my money, with my mind on the matter; and I was served to a point and with absolute secrecy. For that I had insisted on. Darry and Maria were in my counsels, of course; but the rest of the poor people knew only by guess who their friend was. Old Sarah found her new shoes in her hut one evening, and in her noisy delight declared that "some big angel had come t'rough de quarters." The cups and saucers it was necessary to own, lest more talk should have been made about them than at all suited me; Darry let it be understood that nothing must be said and nobody must know of the matter; and nobody did; but I took the greatest enjoyment in hearing from Maria how the old women (and one or two men) gathered together and were comforted over their cups of tea. And over the _cups_, Maria said: the cups and spoons made the tea twice as good; but I doubt their relish of it was never half so exquisite as mine. I had to give Pete his Testament; he would not think it the same thing if he did not have it from my own hand, Maria said; and Darry's pens and ink likewise. The poor woman for whom I had got the bed was, I fear, beyond enjoying anything; but it was a comfort to me to know that she was lying on it. The people kept my secret perfectly; my aunt and governess never, I believe, heard anything of all these doings; I had my enjoyment to myself. And the Sunday evening prayer-meeting grew, little by little. Old Sarah and her new shoes were there, of course, at once. Those who first came never failed. And week by week, as I went into the kitchen with my Bible, I saw a larger circle; found the room better lined with dark forms and sable faces. They come up before me now as I write, one and another. I loved them all. I love them still, for I look to meet many of them in glory; "where there is neither bond or free." Nay, that is _here_ and at present, to all who are in Christ; we do not wait for heaven, to be all one. And they loved me, those poor people. I think Pete had something the same sort of notion about me that those Ephesians had of their image of Diana, which they insisted had fallen from heaven. I used to feel it then, and be amused by it. But I am too long about my story. No wonder I linger, when the remembrance is so sweet. With this new interest that had come into my life, my whole life brightened. I was no longer spiritless. My strength little by little returned. And with the relief of my heart about my father, my happiness sprung back almost to its former and usual state when I was at Melbourne. For I had by this time submitted to my father's and mother's absence as a thing of necessity, and submitted entirely. Yet my happiness was a subdued sort of thing; and my Aunt Gary still thought it necessary to be as careful of me, she said, "as if I were an egg-shell." As I grew stronger, Miss Pinshon made more and more demands upon my time with her arithmetic lessons and other things; but my rides with Darry were never interfered with, nor my Sunday evening readings; and, indeed, all the winter I continued too delicate and feeble for much school work. My dreaded governess did not have near so much to do with me as I thought she would. The spring was not far advanced before it was necessary for us to quit Magnolia. The climate, after a certain day, or rather the air, was not thought safe for white people. We left Magnolia; and went first to Baytown and then to the North. There our time was spent between one and another of several watering-places. I longed for Melbourne; but the house was shut up; we could not go there. The summer was very wearisome to me. I did not like the houses in which our time was spent, or the way of life led in them. Neither did Miss Pinshon, I think, for she was out of her element, and had no chance to follow her peculiar vocation. Of course, in a public hotel, we could not have a schoolroom; and with the coming on of warm weather my strength failed again so sensibly, that all there was to do was to give me sea air and bathing, and let me alone. The bathing I enjoyed; those curling salt waves breaking over my head are the one image of anything fresh or refreshing which my memory has kept. I should have liked the beach; I did like it; only it was covered with bathers, or else with promenaders in carriages and on foot, at all times when I saw it; and though they were amusing, the beach was spoiled. The hotel rooms were close and hot; I missed all the dainty freedom and purity of my own home; the people I saw were, it seemed to me, entirely in keeping with the rooms; that is, they were stiff and fussy, not quiet and busy. They were busy after their own fashion, indeed; but it always seemed to me busy about nothing. The children I saw too did not attract me; and I fear I did not attract them. I was sober-hearted and low-toned in spirit and strength; while they were as gay as their elders. And I was dressed according to my mother's fancy, in childlike style, without hoops, and with my hair cropped short all over my head. They were stately with crinoline, and rich with embroidery, stiff with fine dresses and plumes; while a white frock and a flat straw were all my adornment, except a sash. I think they did not know what to make of me; and I am sure I had nothing in common with them; so we lived very much apart. There was a little variation in my way of life when Preston came; yet not much. He took me sometimes to drive, and did once go walking with me on the beach; but Preston found a great deal where I found nothing, and was all the time taken up with people and pleasures; boating and yachting and fishing expeditions; and I believe with hops and balls too. But I was always fast asleep at those times. It was a relief to me when the season came to an end, and we went to New York to make purchases before turning southward. I had once hoped, that this time, the year's end might see my father and mother come again. That hope had faded and died a natural death a long while ago. Letters spoke my father's health not restored: he was languid and spiritless and lacked vigour; he would try the air of Switzerland; he would spend the winter in the Pyrenees! If that did not work well, my mother hinted, perhaps he would have to try the effect of a long sea voyage. Hope shrunk into such small dimensions that it filled but a very little corner of my heart. Indeed, for the present I quite put it by and did not look at it. One winter more must pass, at any rate, and maybe a full year, before I could possibly see my father and mother at home. I locked the door for the present upon hope; and turned my thoughts to what things I had left with me. Chiefest of all these were my poor friends at Magnolia. My money had accumulated during the summer; I had a nice little sum to lay out for them, and in New York I had chance to do it well, and to do it myself, which was a great additional pleasure. As I could, bit by bit, when I was with Aunt Gary shopping, when I could get leave to go out alone with a careful servant to attend me, I searched the shops and catered and bought, for the comfort and pleasure of--seven hundred! I could do little. Nay, but it was for so many of those that I could reach with my weak hands; and I did not despise that good because I could not reach them all. A few more large-print Testaments I laid in; some copies of the Gospel of John, in soft covers and good type; a few hymn books. All these cost little. But for Christmas gifts, and for new things to give help and comfort to my poor pensioners, I both plagued and bewitched my brain. It was sweet work. My heart went out towards making _all_ the people happy for once, at Christmas; but my purse would not stretch so far; I had to let that go, with a thought and a sigh. One new thing came very happily into my head, and was worth a Peruvian mine to me, in the pleasure and business it gave. Going into a large greenhouse with my aunt, who wanted to order a bouquet, I went wandering round the place while she made her bargain. For my Aunt Gary made a bargain of everything. Wandering in thought as well, whither the sweet breath of the roses and geraniums led me, I went back to Molly in her cottage at Melbourne, and the Jewess geranium I had carried her, and the rose tree; and suddenly the thought started into my head, might not my dark friends at Magnolia, so quick to see and enjoy anything of beauty that came in their way--so fond of bright colour and grace and elegance--a luxurious race, even in their downtrodden condition; might not _they_ also feel the sweetness of a rose, or delight in the petals of a tulip? It was a great idea; it grew into a full-formed purpose before I was called to follow Aunt Gary out of the greenhouse. The next day I went there on my own account. I was sure I knew what I wanted to do; but I studied a long time the best way of doing it. Roses? I could hardly transport pots and trees so far; they were too cumbersome. Geraniums were open to the same objection, besides being a little tender as to the cold. Flower seeds could not be sown, if the people had them; for no patch of garden belonged to their stone huts, and they had no time to cultivate such a patch if they had it. I must give what would call for no care, to speak of, and make no demands upon overtasked strength and time. Neither could I afford to take anything of such bulk as would draw attention or call on questions and comments. I knew, as well as I know now, what would be thought of any plan of action which supposed a _love of the beautiful_ in creatures the only earthly use of whom was to raise rice and cotton; who in fact were not half so important as the harvests they grew. I knew what unbounded scorn would visit any attempts of mine to minister to an æsthetic taste in these creatures; and I was in no mind to call it out upon myself. All the while I knew better. I knew that Margaret and Stephanie could put on a turban like no white woman I ever saw. I knew that even Maria could take the full effect of my dress when I was decked--as I was sometimes--for a dinner party; and that no fall of lace or knot of ribbon missed its errand to her eye. I knew that a _picture_ raised the liveliest interest in all my circle of Sunday hearers; and that they were quick to understand and keen to take its bearings, far more than Molly Skelton would have been, more than Logan, our Scotch gardener at Melbourne, or than my little old friend Hephzibah and her mother. But the question stood, In what form could I carry beauty to them out of a florist's shop? I was fain to take the florist into my partial confidence. It was well that I did. He at once suggested bulbs. Bulbs! would they require much care? Hardly any; no trouble at all. They could be easily transported: easily kept. All they wanted was a little pot of earth when I was ready to plant them; a little judicious watering; an unbounded supply of sunshine. And what sorts of bulbs were there? I asked diplomatically; not myself knowing, to tell truth, what bulbs were at all. Plenty of sorts, the florist said; there were hyacinths, all colours; and tulips, striped and plain, and very gay; and crocuses, those were of nearly all colours too; and ranunculus, and anemones, and snowdrops. Snowdrops were white; but of several of the other kinds I could have every tint in the rainbow, both alone and mixed. The florist stood waiting my pleasure, and nipped off a dead leaf or two as he spoke, as if there was no hurry and I could take my time. I went into happy calculation, as to how far my funds would reach; gave my orders, very slowly and very carefully; and went away the owner of a nice little stock of tulips, narcissus, crocuses, and above all, hyacinths. I chose gay tints, and at the same time inexpensive kinds; so that my stock was quite large enough for my purposes; it mattered nothing to me whether a sweet double hyacinth was of a new or an old kind, provided it was of first-rate quality; and I confess it matters almost as little to me now. At any rate, I went home a satisfied child; and figuratively speaking, dined and supped off tulips and hyacinths, instead of mutton and bread and butter. That afternoon it fell out that my aunt took me with her to a milliner's on some business. In the course of it, some talk arose about feathers and the value of them; and my aunt made a remark which, like Wat Tyrrell's arrow, glanced from its aim and did execution in a quarter undreamed of. "That feather you put in the little riding cap you sent me," she said to the milliner--"your black feather, Daisy, you know--you charged me but fifteen dollars for that; why is this so much more?" I did not hear the milliner's answer. My whole thought went off upon a track entirely new to me, and never entered before My feather cost fifteen dollars! Fifteen dollars! Supposing I had that to buy tulips with? or in case I had already tulips enough, suppose I had it to buy print gowns for Christmas presents to the women, which I had desired and could not afford? Or that I had it to lay out in tea and sugar, that my poor old friends might oftener have the one solace that was left to them, or that more might share it? Fifteen dollars! It was equal to one quarter and a half's allowance. My fund for more than a third of the year would be doubled, if I could turn that black feather into silver or gold again. And the feather was of no particular use that I could see. It made me look like the heiress of Magnolia, my aunt said; but neither could I see any use in _that_. Everybody knew, that is, all the servants and friends of the family knew, that I was that heiress; I needed no black feather to proclaim it. And now it seemed to me as if my riding cap was heavy with undeveloped bulbs, uncrystallized sugar, unweighed green tea. No transformation of the feather was possible; it must wave over my brow in its old fashion, whether it were a misguided feather or not; but my thoughts, once set a going in this train, found a great deal to do. Truth to tell, they have not done it all yet. "Aunt Gary," I said that same evening, musing over the things in my boxes, "does lace cost much?" "That is like the countryman who asked me once, if it took long to play a piece of music! Daisy, don't you know any more about lace than to ask such a question?" "I don't know what it costs, Aunt Gary. I never bought any." "Bought! No; hardly. You are hardly at the age to _buy_ lace yet. But you have worn a good deal of it." "I cannot tell what it cost by looking at it," I answered. "Well, _I_ can. And you will, one day, I hope; if you ever do anything like other people." "Is it costly, ma'am?" "Your lace is rather costly," my aunt said, with a tone which I felt implied satisfaction. "How much?" I asked. "How much does it cost? Why it is the countryman's question over again, Daisy. Lace is all sorts of prices. But the lace you wear is, I judge, somewhere about three and five, and one of your dresses ten, dollars a yard. That is pretty rich lace for a young lady of your years to wear." I never wore it, I must explain, unless in small quantity, except on state occasions when my mother dressed me as part of herself. "No, I am wrong," my aunt added, presently; "that dress I am thinking of is richer than that; the lace on that robe was never bought for ten dollars, or fifteen either. What do you want to know about it for, Daisy?" I mused a great deal. Three and five, and ten, and fifteen dollars a yard, on lace trimmings for me--and no tea, no cups and saucers, no soft bed, no gardens and flowers, for many who were near me. I began to fill the meshes of my lace with responsibilities too heavy for the delicate fabric to bear. Nobody liked the looks of it better than I did. I always had a fancy for lace, though not for feathers; its rich, delicate, soft falls, to my notion, suited my mother's form and style better than anything else, and suited me. My taste found no fault. But now that so much good was wrought into its slight web, and so much silver lay hidden in every embroidered flower, the thing was changed. Graceful, and becoming, and elegant, more than any other adornment; what then? My mother and father had a great deal of money, too, to spare; enough, I thought, for lace and for the above tea and sugar, too; what then? And what if not enough? I pondered till my Aunt Gary broke out upon me, that I would grow a wizened old woman if I sat musing at that rate, and sent me to bed. It stopped my pondering for that night; but not for all the years since that night. My preparations were quite made before my aunt got her feathers adjusted to her satisfaction; and in the bright days of autumn we went back again to Magnolia. This was a joyful journey and a glad arriving, compared to last year; and the welcome I got was something which puzzled my heart between joy and sorrow many times during the first few days. And now Miss Pinshon's reign fairly began. I was stronger in health, accustomed to my circumstances; there was no longer any reason that the multiplication table and I should be parted. My governess was determined to make up for lost time; and the days of that winter were spent by me between the study table and fire. That is, when I think of that winter my memory finds me there. Multiplication and its correlatives were the staple of existence; and the old book room of my grandfather was the place where my harvests of learning were sown and reaped. Somehow, I do not think the crops were heavy. I tried my best, and Miss Pinshon certainly tried her best. I went through and over immense fields of figures; but I fancy the soil did not suit the growth. I know the fruits were not satisfactory to myself, and, indeed, were not fruits at all, to my sense of them; but rather dry husks and hard nut shells, with the most tasteless of small kernels inside. Yet Miss Pinshon did not seem unsatisfied; and, indeed, occasionally remarked that she believed I meant to be a good child. Perhaps that was something out of my governess's former experience; for it was the only style of commendation I ever knew her indulge in, and I always took it as a compliment. It would not do to tell all my childish life that winter. I should never get through. For a child has as many experiences in her little world as people of fifty years old have in theirs; and to her they are not little experiences. It was not a small trial of mind and body to spend the long mornings in the study over the curious matters Miss Pinshon found for my attention; and after the long morning the shorter afternoon session was un-mixed weariness. Yet I suffered most in the morning; because then there was some life and energy within me which rebelled against confinement, and panted to be free and in the open air, looking after the very different work I could find or make for myself. My feet longed for the turf; my fingers wanted to throw down the slate pencil and gather up the reins. I had a good fire and a pleasant room; but I wanted to be abroad in the open sunshine, to feel the sweet breath of the air in my face, and see the grey moss wave in the wind. That was what I had been used to all my life; a sweet wild roaming about, to pick up whatever pleasure presented itself. I suppose Miss Pinshon herself had never been used to it nor known it; for she did not seem to guess at what was in my mind. But it made my mornings hard to get through. By the afternoon the spirit was so utterly gone out of me and everything, that I took it all in a mechanical stupid way; and only my back's aching made me impatient for the time to end. I think I was fond of knowledge and fond of learning. I am sure of it, for I love it dearly still. But there was no joy about it at Magnolia. History, as I found it with my governess, was not in the least like the history I had planned on my tray of sand, and pointed out with red and black headed pins. There was life and stir in that, and progress. Now there was nothing but a string of names and dates to say to Miss Pinshon. And dates were hard to remember, and did not seem to mean anything. But Miss Pinshon's favourite idea was mathematics. It was not my favourite idea; so every day I wandered through a wilderness of figures and signs which were a weariness to my mind and furnished no food for it. Nothing was pleasant to me in my schoolroom, excepting my writing lessons. They were welcomed as a relief from other things. When the studies for the day were done, the next thing was to prepare for a walk. A walk with Miss Pinshon alone, for my aunt never joined us. Indeed, this winter my aunt was not unfrequently away from Magnolia altogether; finding Baytown more diverting. It made a little difference to me; for when she was not at home, the whole day, morning, afternoon and evening, meal times and all times, seemed under a leaden grey sky. Miss Pinshon discussed natural history to me when we were walking--not the thing, but the science; she asked me questions in geography when we were eating breakfast, and talked over some puzzle in arithmetic when we were at dinner. I think it was refreshing to her; she liked it; but to me, the sky closed over me in lead colour, one unbroken vault, as I said, when my aunt was away. With her at home, all this could not be; and any changes of colour were refreshing. All this was not very good for me. My rides with Darry would have been a great help; but now I only got a chance at them now and then. I grew spiritless and weary. Sundays I would have begged to be allowed to stay at home all day and rest; but I knew if I pleaded fatigue my evenings with the people in the kitchen would be immediately cut off; not my drives to church. Miss Pinshon always drove the six miles to Bolingbroke every Sunday morning, and took me with her. Oh how long the miles were! how weary I was, with my back aching and trying to find a comfortable corner in the carriage; how I wanted to lie down on the soft cushions in the pew and go to sleep during the service. And when the miles home were finished, it seemed to me that so was I. Then I used to pray to have strength in the evening to read with the people. And I always had it; or at least I always did it. I never failed; though the rest of the Sunday hours were often spent on the bed. But, indeed, that Sunday evening reading was the one thing that saved my life from growing, or settling, into a petrifaction. Those hours gave me cheer, and some spirit to begin again on Monday morning. However, I was not thriving. I know I was losing colour, and sinking in strength, day by day; yet very gradually; so that my governess never noticed it. My aunt sometimes, on her return from an absence that had been longer than common, looked at me uneasily. "Miss Pinshon, what ails that child?" she would ask. My governess said, "Nothing." Miss Pinshon was the most immovable person, I think, I have ever known. At least, so far as one could judge from the outside. "She looks to me," my aunt went on, "exactly like a cabbage, or something else, that has been blanched under a barrel. A kind of unhealthy colour. She is not strong." "She has more strength than she shows," my governess answered. "Daisy has a good deal of strength." "Do you think so?" said my aunt, looking doubtfully at me. But she was comforted. And neither of them asked me about it. One thing in the early half of the winter was a great help; and for a while stayed my flitting spirits and strength. My father wrote an order, that Daisy should make arrangements for giving all the people on the plantation a great entertainment at Christmas. I was to do what I liked and have whatever I chose to desire; no one altering or interfering with my word. I shall never forget the overflowing of largest joy, with which my heart swelled as I ran in to tell this news to Aunt Gary. But first I had to kneel down and give thanks for it. I never saw my aunt more displeased about anything. Miss Pinshon only lifted up her black eyes and looked me over. They did not express curiosity or anything else; only observation. My aunt spoke out. "I think there must be some mistake, Daisy." "No, Aunt Gary; papa says just that." "You mean the house servants, child." "No, ma'am; papa says every one; all the people on the place." "He means the white people, you foolish child; everybody's head is not full of the servants, as yours is." "He says the coloured people, Aunt Gary; all of them. It is _only_ the coloured people." "Hear her!" said my aunt. "Now she would rather entertain them, I don't doubt, than the best company that could be gathered of her own sort." I certainly would. Did I not think with joy at that very minute of the words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of _these_, ye have done it unto me?" I knew what guest would be among my poor despised company. But I said not a word. "Daisy," said my aunt, "you _must_ be under a mistake; you must let me see what your father says. Why, to give all these hundreds an entertainment, it would cost--have you any idea what it would cost?" I had not indeed. But my father's letter had mentioned a sum which was to be the limit of my expenditure; within which I was to be unlimited. It was a large sum, amounting to several hundreds, and amply sufficient for all I could wish to do. I told my aunt. "Well!" she said, twisting herself round to the fire, "if your father has money to fling about like that, I have of course no more to say." Miss Pinshon looked up again at me. Those black eyes were always the same; the eyelids never drooped over them. "What are you going to do, Daisy?" she asked. Truly I did not know, yet. I gave my aunt a note to the overseer from my father, which I begged her to forward; and ran away to take sweet counsel with myself. I had had some little experience of such an entertainment in the strawberry festival at Melbourne. I remembered that good things to eat and drink were sure to be enjoyed, and not these only, but also a pretty and festive air thrown about these things. And much more would this be true among the beauty-loving, and luxurious-natured children of the tropics, than with the comparatively barbarous Celtic blood. But between entertaining thirty and seven hundred there was a difference. And between the season of roses and fruits, and the time of mid-winter, even though in a southern clime, there was another wide difference. I had need of a great deal of counsel-taking with myself, and I took it; and it was very good for me. In every interval between mathematical or arithmetical problems, my mind ran off to this other one, with infinite refreshment. Then I consulted Maria; she was a great help to me. I thought at first I should have to build a place to hold our gatherings in; the home kitchen was not a quarter large enough. But Darry told me of an empty barn not far off, that was roomy and clean. By virtue of my full powers I seized upon this barn. I had it well warmed with stoves; Darry saw to that for me, and that they were well and safely put up; I had it adorned and clothed and made gay with evergreens and flowers, till it was beautiful. The carpenters on the place put up long tables, and fitted plenty of seats. Then I had some rough kitchens extemporised outside of it; and sent for loads of turkeys from Baytown; and for days before and after Christmas my band of cooks were busy, roasting and baking and cake-making. Coffee was brewed without measure, as if we had been a nation of Arabs. And then tickets were furnished to all the people on the place, tickets of admission; and for all the holidays, or for Christmas and three days after, I kept open house at the barn. Night and day I kept open house. I went and came myself, knowing that the sight of me hindered nobody's pleasure; but I let in no other white person, and I believe I gained the lasting ill-will of the overseer by refusing him. I stood responsible for everybody's good behaviour, and had no forfeits to pay. And enjoyment reigned, during those days, in the barn; a gay enjoyment, full of talk and of singing as well as of feasting; full of laughter and jokes, and full of utmost good-humour and kindness from one to another. Again, most unlike a party of Celtic origin. It was enjoyment to me too; very great; though dashed continually by the thought how rare and strange it was to those around me. Only for my sake and dependent on my little hand of power; having no guarantee or security else for its ever coming again. As the holiday drew near its end, my heart grew sore often at the thought of all my poor friends going back into their toil, hopeless and spiritless as it was, without one ray to brighten the whole year before them till Christmas should come round again. Ay, and this feeling was quickened every now and then by a word, or a look, or a tone, which told me that I was not the only one who remembered it. "Christmas is almos' gone, Tony," I heard one fine fellow say to another at the end of the third day; and under the words there was a thread of meaning which gave a twitch to my heartstrings. There were bursts of song mingled with all this, which I could not bear to hear. In the prayer-meetings I did not mind them; here, in the midst of festivities, they almost choked me. "I'm going home" sounded now so much as if it were in a strange land; and once when a chorus of them were singing, deep and slow, the refrain, "In the morning-- Chil'len, in the morning--" I had a great heartbreak, and sat down and cried behind my sugarplums. I can bear to think of it all now. There were years when I could not. After this entertainment was over, and much more stupid ones had been given among polished people at the house, and the New Year had swept in upon us with its fresh breeze of life and congratulations, the winter and Miss Pinshon settled down for unbroken sway. I had little to help me during those months from abroad. That is, I had nothing. My father wrote seldom. My mother's letters had small comfort for me. They said that papa's health mended slowly--was very delicate--he could not bear much exertion--his head would not endure any excitement. They were trying constant changes of scene and air. They were at Spa, at Paris, at Florence, at Vevay, in the Pyrenees; not staying long anywhere. The physicians talked of a long sea voyage. From all which I gradually brought down my hopes into smaller and smaller compass; till finally I packed them up and stowed them away in the hidden furthermost corner of my heart, only to be brought out and looked at when there should be occasion. Spring came without the least prospect that such occasion would be given me soon. My father and mother were making preparation to journey in Norway; and already there was talk of a third winter in Egypt! It was hoped that all these changes were not without some slow and certain effect in the way of improvement. I think on me they had another sort of effect. Spring as usual drove us away from Magnolia. This summer was spent with my Aunt Gary at various pleasant and cool up-country places, where hills were, and brooks, and sweet air, and flowers, and where I might have found much to enjoy. But always Miss Pinshon was with me, and the quiet and freedom of these places, with the comparative cool climate, made it possible for her to carry on all her schemes for my improvement just as steadily as though we had been at Magnolia. And I had not Darry and my pony, which indeed, the latter had been of small use to me this year; and I had not my band of friends on the Sunday evening; and even my own maid Margaret Aunt Gary had chosen to leave behind. Miss Pinshon's reign was absolute. I think some of the Medusa properties Preston used to talk about must have had their effect upon me at this time. I remember little of all that summer, save the work for Miss Pinshon, and the walks with Miss Pinshon, and a general impression of those black eyes and inflexible voice, and mathematics and dates, and a dull round of lesson getting. Not knowledge getting--that would have been quite another affair. I seemed to be all the while putting up a scaffolding, and never coming to work on the actual Temple of Learning itself. I know we were in beautiful regions that summer, but my recollection is not of them but of rows of figures; and of a very grave, I think dull, and very quiet little personage, who went about like a mouse for silentness, and gave no trouble to anybody excepting only to herself. The next winter passed as the winter before had done, only I had no Christmas entertainment. My father and mother were in Egypt--perhaps he did not think of it. Perhaps he did not feel that he could afford it. Perhaps my aunt and the overseer had severally made representations to which my father thought it best to listen. I had no festivities at any rate for my poor coloured people; and it made my own holidays a very shaded thing. I found, however, this winter one source of amusement, and in a measure, of comfort. In the bookcases which held my grandfather's library, there was a pretty large collection of books of travel. I wanted to know just then about Egypt, that I might the better in imagination follow my father and mother. I searched the shelves for Egypt, and was lucky enough to light upon several works of authority and then recent observation. I feasted on these. I began in the middle, then very soon went back to the beginning, and read delightedly, carefully, patiently, through every detail and discussion in which the various authors indulged. Then I turned all their pictures into living panorama; for I fancied my father and mother in every place, looking at every wonder they described; and I enjoyed not merely what they described, but my father's and mother's enjoyment of it. This was a rare delight to me. My favourite place was the corner of the study fire, at dusk, when lessons and tiresome walks for the day were done, and Miss Pinshon was taking her ease elsewhere in some other way. I had the fire made up to burn brightly, and pine knots at hand to throw on if wanted; and with the illumination dancing all over my page, I went off to regions of enchantment, pleasant to me beyond any fairy tale. I never cared much for things that were not true. No chambers of Arabian fancy could have had the fascination for me of those old Egyptian halls, nor all the marvels of magic entranced me like the wonder-working hand of time. Those books made my comfort and my diversion all the winter. For I was not a galloping reader; I went patiently through every page; and the volumes were many enough and interesting enough to last me long. I dreamed under the Sphynx; I wandered over the pyramids; no chamber nor nook escaped me; I could have guided a traveller--in imagination. I knew the prospect from the top, though I never wrote my name there. It seemed to me that _that_ was barbarism. I sailed up the Nile--delightful journeys on board the Nile boats--forgetting Miss Pinshon and mathematics, except when I rather pitied the ancient Egyptians for being so devoted to the latter; forgetting Magnolia, and all the home things I could not do and would have liked to do; forgetting everything, and rapt in the enjoyment of tropical airs, and Eastern skies; hearing the plash of water from the everlasting _shadoof_, and watching the tints and colours on the ranges of hills bordering the Nile valley. All _my_ hills were green; the hues of those others were enough of themselves to make an enchanted land. Still more, as I stopped at the various old temples along the way, my feeling of enchantment increased. I threaded the mazes of rubbish, and traced the plans of the ruins of Thebes, till I was at home in every part of them. I studied the hieroglyphics and the descriptions of the sculptures, till the names of Thothmes III., and Amunoph III., and Sethos and Rameses, Miamun and Rameses III., were as well known to me as the names of the friends whom I met every Sunday evening. I even studied out the old Egyptian mythology, the better to be able to understand the sculptures, as well as the character of those ancient people who wrought them, and to be able to fancy the sort of services that were celebrated by the priests in the splendid enclosures of the temples. And then I went higher up the Nile, and watched at the uncovering of those wonderful colossal figures which stand, or sit, before the temple of Abou-Simbel. I tried to imagine what manner of things such large statues could be; I longed for one sight of the faces, said to be so superb, which showed what the great Rameses looked like. Mamma and papa could see them, that was a great joy. Belzoni was one of my prime favourites; and I liked particularly to travel with him, both there and at the Tombs of the Kings. There were some engravings scattered through the various volumes, and a good many plans, which helped me. I studied them faithfully, and got from them all they could give me. In the Tombs of the Kings, my childish imagination found, I think, its highest point of revelling and delight. Those were something stranger, more wonderful, and more splendid, even than Abou-Simbel and Karnak. Many an evening, while the firelight from a Southern pine knot danced on my page, I was gone on the wings of fancy thousands of miles away; and went with discoverers or explorers up and down the passages and halls and staircases and chambers, to which the entrance is from _Biban el Malook_. I wandered over the empty sarcophagi; held my breath at the pit's sides; and was never tired of going over the scenes and sculptures done in such brilliant colours upon those white walls. Once in there, I quite forgot that mamma and papa could see them; I was so busy seeing them myself. This amusement of mine was one which nobody interfered with, and it lasted, as I said, all winter. All the winter my father and mother were in Egypt. When spring came, I began to look with trembling eagerness for a letter that should say they would turn now homewards. I was disappointed. My father was so much better that his physicians were encouraged to continuing their travelling regimen; and the word came that it was thought best he should try a long sea voyage--he was going to China, my mother would go with him. I think never in my life my spirits sank lower than they did when I heard this news. I was not strong nor very well, which might have been in part the reason. And I was dull-hearted to the last degree under the influence of Miss Pinshon's system of management. There was no power of reaction in me. It was plain that I was failing; and my aunt interrupted the lessons, and took me again to watering-places at the North, from one to another, giving me as much change as possible. It was good for me to be taken off study, which Miss Pinshon had pressed and crowded during the winter. Sea bathing did me good, too; and the change of scene and habits was useful. I did not rise to the level of enjoying anything much; only the sea waves when I was in them; at other times I sat on the bank and watched the distant smokestack of a steamer going out, with an inexpressible longing and soreness of heart. Going where I would so like to go! But there was no word of that. And indeed it would not have been advisable to take me to China. I did think Egypt would not have been bad for me; but it was a thought which I kept shut up in the farthest stores of my heart. The sea voyage however was delayed. My mother took sick, was very ill, and then unable to undertake the going to China. My father chose to wait for her; so the summer was spent by them in Switzerland and the autumn in Paris. With the first of the New Year they expected now to sail. It suddenly entered my Aunt Gary's head that it was a good time for _her_ to see Paris; and she departed, taking Ransom with her, whom my father wished to place in a German university, and meantime in a French school. Preston had been placed at the Military Academy at West Point, my aunt thinking that it made a nice finishing of a gentleman's education, and would keep him out of mischief till he was grown to man's estate. I was left alone with Miss Pinshon to go back to Magnolia and take up my old life there. CHAPTER VII. SINGLEHANDED. As my aunt set sail for the shores of Europe, and Miss Pinshon and I turned our faces towards Magnolia, I seemed to see before me a weary winter. I was alone now; there was nobody to take my part in small or great things; my governess would have her way. I was so much stronger now that no doubt she thought I could bear it. So it was. The full tale of studies and tasks was laid on me; and it lay on me from morning till night. I had expected that. I had looked also for the comfort and refreshment of ministering to my poor friends in the kitchen on the Sunday evenings. I began as usual with them. But as the Sundays came round, I found now and then a gap or two in the circle; and the gaps as time went on did not fill up; or if they did they were succeeded by other gaps. My hearers grew fewer, instead of more; the fact was undoubted. Darry was always on the spot; but the two Jems not always, and Pete was not sure, and Eliza failed sometimes, and others; and this grew worse. Moreover, a certain grave and sad air replaced the enjoying, almost jocund, spirit of gladness which used to welcome me and listen to the reading and join in the prayers and raise the song. The singing was not less good than it used to be; but it fell oftener into the minor key, and then poured along with a steady, powerful volume, deepening and steadying as it went, which somehow swept over my heart like a wind from the desert. I could not well tell why, yet I felt it trouble me; sometimes my heart trembled with the thrill of those sweet and solemn vibrations. I fancied that Darry's prayer had a somewhat different atmosphere from the old. Yet when I once or twice asked Margaret the next morning why such and such a one had not been at the reading, she gave me a careless answer, that she supposed Mr. Edwards had found something for them to do. "But at night, Margaret?" I said. "Mr. Edwards cannot keep them at work at night." To which she made no answer; and I was for some reason unwilling to press the matter. But things went on, not getting better but worse until I could not bear it. I watched my opportunity and got Maria alone. "What is the matter," I asked, "that the people do not come on Sunday evening as they used? Are they tired of the reading, Maria?" "I 'spect dey's as tired as a fish mus' be of de water," said Maria. She had a fine specimen under her hand at the moment, which I suppose suggested the figure. "Then why do they not come as usual, Maria? there were only a few last night." "Dere was so few, it was lonesome," said Maria. "Then what is the reason?" "Dere is more reasons for t'ings, den Maria can make out," she said thoughtfully. "Mebbe it's to make 'em love de priv'lege mo'." "But what keeps them away, Maria? what hinders?" "Chile, de Lord hab His angels, and de debil he hab his ministers; and dey takes all sorts o' shapes, de angels and de ministers too. I reckon dere's some work o' dat sort goin' on." Maria spoke in a sort of sententious wisdom which did not satisfy me at all. I thought there was something behind. "Who is doing the work, Maria?" I asked, after a minute. "Miss Daisy," she said, "dere ain't no happenin' at all widout de Lord lets it happen. Dere is much contrairy in dis world--fact, dere is; but I 'spect de Lord make it up to us by'm by." And she turned her face full upon me with a smile of so much quiet resting in that truth, that for just a moment it silenced me. "Miss Daisy ain't looking quite so peart as she use to look," Maria went on. But I slipped away from that diversion. "Maria," I said, "you don't tell me what is the matter; and I wish to know. What keeps the people, Pete, and Eliza, and all, from coming? What hinders them, Maria? I wish to know." Maria busied herself with her fish for a minute, turning and washing it; then, without looking up from her work, she said, in a lowered tone,-- "'Spect de overseer, he don't hab no favour to such ways and meetin's." "But with _me_?" I said; "and with Aunt Gary's leave?" "'Spose he like to fix t'ings his own way," said Maria. "Does he forbid them to come?" I asked. "I reckon he do," she said, with a sigh. Maria was very even-tempered, quiet, and wise, in her own way. Her sigh went through my heart. I stood thinking what plan I could take. "De Lord is berry good, Miss Daisy," she said, cheerily, a moment after; "and dem dat love Him, dere can be no sort o' separation, no ways." "Does Mr. Edwards forbid them _all_ to come?" I asked. "For a good many do come." "'Spect he don't like de meetin's, nohow," said Maria. "But does he tell all the people they must not come?" "I reckon he make it oncomfor'ble for 'em," Maria answered gravely. "Dere is no end o' de mean ways o' sich folks. Know he ain't no gentleman, nohow!" "What does he do, Maria?" I said, trembling, yet unable to keep back the question. "He can do what he please, Miss Daisy," Maria said, in the same grave way. "'Cept de Lord above, dere no one can hinder--now massa so fur. Bes' pray de Lord, and mebbe He sen' His angel, some time." Maria's fish was ready for the kettle; some of the other servants came in, and I went with a heavy heart up the stairs. "Massa so fur"--yes! I knew that; and Mr. Edwards knew it too. Once sailed for China, and it would be long, long, before my cry for help, in the shape of one of my little letters, could reach him and get back the answer. My heart felt heavy as if I could die, while I slowly mounted the stairs to my room. It was not only that trouble was brought upon my poor friends, nor even that their short enjoyment of the word of life was hindered and interrupted; above this and worse than this was the sense of _wrong_ done to these helpless people, and done by my own father and mother. This sense was something too bitter for a child of my years to bear; it crushed me for a time. Our people had a right to the Bible as great as mine; a right to dispose of themselves as true as my father's right to dispose of himself. Christ, my Lord, had died for them as well as for me; and here was my father--_my father_--practically saying that they should not hear of it, nor know the message He had sent to them. And if anything could have made this more bitter to me, it was the consciousness that the _reason_ of it all was that we might profit by it. Those unpaid hands wrought that our hands might be free to do nothing; those empty cabins were bare, in order that our houses might be full of every soft luxury; those unlettered minds were kept unlettered that the rarest of intellectual wealth might be poured into our treasury. I knew it. For I had written to my father once to beg his leave to establish schools, where the people on the plantation might be taught to read and write. He had sent a very kind answer, saying it was just like his little Daisy to wish such a thing, and that his wish was not against it, if it could be done; but that the laws of the State, and for wise reasons, forbade it. Greatly puzzled by this, I one day carried my puzzle to Preston. He laughed at me as usual, but at the same time explained that it would not be safe; for that if the slaves were allowed books and knowledge, they would soon not be content with their condition, and would be banding together to make themselves free. I knew all this, and I had been brooding over it; and now when the powerful hand of the overseer came in to hinder the little bit of good and comfort I was trying to give the people, my heart was set on fire with a sense of sorrow and wrong that, as I said, no child ought ever to know. I think it made me ill. I could not eat. I studied like a machine, and went and came as Miss Pinshon bade me; all the while brooding by myself and turning over and over in my heart the furrows of thought which seemed at first to promise no harvest. Yet those furrows never break the soil for nothing. In due time the seed fell; and the fruit of a ripened purpose came to maturity. I did not give up my Sunday readings, even although the number of my hearers grew scantier. As many as could, we met together to read and to pray, yes, and to sing. And I shall never in this world hear such singing again. One refrain comes back to me now-- "Oh, had I the wings of the morning-- Oh, had I the wings of the morning-- Oh, had I the wings of the morning-- I'd fly to my Jesus away!" I used to feel so too, as I listened and sometimes sung with them. Meantime, all that I could do with my quarterly ten dollars, I did. And there was many a little bit of pleasure I could give; what with a tulip here and a cup of tea there, and a bright handkerchief, or a pair of shoes. Few of the people had spirit and cultivation enough to care for the flowers. But Maria cherished some red and white tulips and a hyacinth in her kitchen window, as if they had been her children; and to Darry a white rose-tree I had given him seemed almost to take the place of a familiar spirit. Even grave Pete, whom I only saw now and then this winter at my readings, nursed and tended and watched a bed of crocuses with endless delight and care. All the while, my Sunday circle of friends grew constantly fewer; and the songs that were sung at our hindered meetings had a spirit in them, which seemed to me to speak of a deep-lying fire somewhere in the hearts of the singers, hidden, but always ready to burst into a blaze. Was it because the fire was burning in my own heart? I met one of the two Jems in the pine-avenue one day. He greeted me with the pleasantest of broad smiles. "Jem," said I, "why don't you come to the house Sunday evenings any more?" "It don't 'pear practical, missie." Jem was given to large-sized words, when he could get hold of them. "Mr. Edwards hinders you?" "Mass' Ed'ards berry smart man, Miss Daisy. He want massa's work done up all jus' so." "And he says that the prayer-meeting hinders the work, Jem?" "Clar, missis, Mass' Ed'ards got long head; he see furder den me," Jem said, shaking his own head as if the whole thing were beyond him. I let him go. But a day or two after I attacked Margaret on the subject. She and Jem, I knew, were particular friends. Margaret was oracular and mysterious, and looked like a thundercloud. I got nothing from her, except an increase of uneasiness. I was afraid to go further in my inquiries; yet could not rest without. The house servants, I knew, would not be likely to tell me anything that would trouble me if they could help it. The only exception was mammy Theresa; who with all her love for me had either less tact, or had grown from long habit hardened to the state of things in which she had been brought up. From her, by a little cross questioning, I learned that Jem and others had been forbidden to come to the Sunday readings; and their disobeying had been visited with the lash, not once nor twice; till, as mammy Theresa said, "'peared like it warn't no use to try to be good agin de devil." And papa was away on his voyage to China--away on the high seas, where no letter could reach him; and Mr. Edwards knew that. There was a fire in my heart now that burned with sharp pain. I felt as if it would burn my heart out. And now took shape and form one single aim and purpose, which became for years the foremost one of my life. It had been growing and gathering. I set it clear before me from this time. Meanwhile, my mother's daughter was not willing to be entirely baffled by the overseer. I arranged with Darry that I would be at the cemetery-hill on all pleasant Sunday afternoons, and that all who wished to hear me read, or who wished to learn themselves, might meet me there. The Sunday afternoons were often pleasant that winter. I was constantly at my post; and many a one crept round to me from the quarters and made his way through the graves and the trees to where I sat by the iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine-leaves. Why not? Are they not all God's voices? And the words of the Book were very precious there, to me and many another. I was rather more left to myself of late. My governess gave me my lessons quite as assiduously as ever; but after lesson-time she seemed to have something else to take her attention. She did not walk often with me as the spring drew near; and my Sunday afternoons were absolutely unquestioned. One day in March I had gone to my favourite place to get out a lesson. It was not Sunday afternoon, of course. I was tired with my day's work, or I was not very strong; for though I had work to do, the witcheries of nature prevailed with me to put down my book. The scent of pine-buds and flowers made the air sweet to smell, and the spring sun made it delicious to feel. The light won its way tenderly among the trees, touching the white marble tombstones behind me, but resting with a more gentle ray upon the moss and turf where only little bits of rough board marked the sleeping-places of our dependants. Just out of sight, through the still air I could hear the river, in its rippling, flow past the bank at the top of which I sat. My book hung in my hand, and the course of Universal History was forgotten, while I mused and mused over the two sorts of graves that lay around me, the two races, the diverse fate that attended them, while one blue sky was over, and one sunlight fell down. And "while I was musing the fire burned" more fiercely than ever David's had occasion when he wrote those words, "Then spake I with my tongue." I would have liked to do that. But I could do nothing; only pray. I was very much startled while I sat in my muse to hear a footstep coming. A steady, regular footstep; no light trip of children; and the hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My first thought was, the overseer's come to spy me out. The next minute I saw through the trees and the iron railings behind me that it was not the overseer. I knew _his_ wideawake; and this head was crowned with some sort of a cap. I turned my head again and sat quiet; willing to be overlooked, if that might be. The steps never slackened. I heard them coming round the railing--then just at the corner--I looked up to see the cap lifted, and a smile coming upon features that I knew; but my own thoughts were so very far away that my visitor had almost reached my side before I could recollect who it was. I remember I got up then in a little hurry. "It is Doctor Sandford!" I exclaimed, as his hand took mine. "Is it, Daisy?" answered the doctor. "I think so," I said. "And I _think_ so," he said, looking at me after the old fashion. "Sit down, and let me make sure." "You must sit on the grass, then," I said. "Not a bad thing, in such a pleasant place," he rejoined, sending his blue eye all round my prospect. "But it is not so pleasant a place as White Lake, Daisy." Such a flood of memories and happy associations came rushing into my mind at these words--he had not given them time to come in slowly. I suppose my face showed it, for the doctor looked at me and smiled as he said, "I see it _is_ Daisy; I think it is certainly Daisy. So you do not like Magnolia?" "Yes, I do," I said, wondering where he got that conclusion. "I like the _place_ very much, if----" "I should like to have the finishing of that 'if'--if you have no objection." "I like the _place_," I repeated. "There are some things about it I do not like." "Climate, perhaps?" "I did not mean the climate. I do not think I meant anything that belonged to the place itself." "How do you do?" was the doctor's next question. "I am very well, sir." "How do you know it?" "I suppose I am," I said. "I am not sick. I always say I am well." "For instance, you are so well that you never get tired?" "Oh I get tired very often. I always did." "What sort of things make you tired? Do you take too long drives in your pony-chaise?" "I have no pony-chaise now, Dr. Sandford. Loupe was left at Melbourne. I don't know what became of him." "Why didn't you bring him along? But any other pony would do, Daisy." "I don't drive at all, Dr. Sandford. My aunt and governess do not like to have me drive as I used to do. I wish I could!" "You would like to use your pony and chaise again?" "Very much. I know it would rest me." "And you have a governess, Daisy? That is something you had not at Melbourne." "No," I said. "A governess is a very nice thing," said the doctor, taking off his hat and leaning back against the iron railing, "if she knows properly how to set people to play." "To play!" I echoed. "I don't know whether Miss Pinshon approves of play." "Oh! She approves of work then, does she?" "She likes work," I answered. "Keeps you busy?" "Most of the day, sir." "The evenings you have to yourself?" "Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes I cannot get through with my lessons, and they stretch on into the evening." "How many lessons does this lady think a person of your age and capacity can manage in the twenty-four hours?" said the doctor, taking out his knife as he spoke and beginning to trim the thorns off a bit of sweetbriar he had cut. I stopped to make the reckoning. "Give me the course of your day, Daisy. And by-the-by when does your day begin?" "It begins at half past seven, Dr. Sandford." "With breakfast?" "No, sir. I have a recitation before breakfast." "Please of what?" "Miss Pinshon always begins with mathematics." "As a bitters. Do you find that it gives you an appetite?" By this time I was very near bursting into tears. The familiar voice and way, the old time they brought back, the contrasts they forced together, the different days of Melbourne and of my Southern home, the forms and voices of mamma and papa, they all came crowding and flitting before me. I was obliged to delay my answer. I knew that Dr. Sandford looked at me; then he went on in a very gentle way-- "Sweetbriar is sweet, Daisy,"--putting it to my nose. "I should like to know how long does mathematics last, before you are allowed to have coffee?" "Mathematics only lasts half an hour. But then I have an hour of study in mental philosophy before breakfast. We breakfast at nine." "It must take a great deal of coffee to wash down all that," said the doctor, lazily trimming his sweetbriar. "Don't you find that you are very hungry when you come to breakfast?" "No, not generally," I said. "How is that? where there is so much sharpening of the wits, people ought to be sharp otherwise." "My wits do not get sharpened," I said, half laughing. "I think they get dull; and I am often dull altogether by breakfast time." "What time in the day do you walk?" "In the afternoon, when we have done with the schoolroom. But lately Miss Pinshon does not walk much." "So you take the best of the day for philosophy?" "No, sir, for mathematics." "Oh! Well, Daisy, _after_ philosophy and mathematics have both had their turn, what then?--when breakfast is over." "Oh, they have two or three more turns in the course of the day," I said. "Astronomy comes after breakfast; then Smith's 'Wealth of Nations;' then chemistry. Then I have a long history lesson to recite; then French. After dinner we have natural philosophy, and physical geography and mathematics; and then we have generally done." "And then what is left of you goes to walk," said the doctor. "No, not very often now," I said. "I don't know why--Miss Pinshon has very much given up walking of late." "Then what becomes of you?" "I do not often want to do much of anything," I said. "To-day I came here." "With a book," said the doctor. "Is it work or play?" "My history lesson," I said, showing the book. "I had not quite time enough at home." "How much of a lesson, for instance?" said the doctor, taking the book and turning over the leaves. "I had to make a synopsis of the state of Europe from the third century to the tenth--synchronising the events and the names." "In writing?" "I might write it if I chose, I often do, but I had to give the synopsis from memory." "Does it take long to prepare, Daisy?" said the doctor, still turning over the leaves. "Pretty long," I said, "when I am stupid. Sometimes I _cannot_ do the synchronising, my head gets so thick; and I have to take two or three days for it." "Don't you get punished for letting your head get thick?" "Sometimes I do." "And what is the system of punishment at Magnolia for such deeds?" "I am kept in the house for the rest of the afternoon sometimes," I said; "or I have an extra problem in mathematics to get out for the next morning." "And _that_ keeps you in, if the governess don't." "Oh no," I said; "I never can work at it then. I get up earlier the next morning." "Do you do nothing for exercise but those walks, which you do not take?" "I used to ride last year," I said; "and this year I was stronger, and Miss Pinshon gave me more studies; and somehow I have not cared to ride so much. I have felt more like being still." "You must have grown tremendously wise, Daisy," said the doctor, looking round at me now with his old pleasant smile. I cannot tell the pleasure and comfort it was to me to see him; but I think I said nothing. "It is near the time now when you always leave Magnolia, is it not?" "Very near now." "Would it trouble you to have the time a little anticipated?" I looked at him, in much doubt what this might mean. The doctor fumbled in his breast pocket and fetched out a letter. "Just before your father sailed for China, he sent me this. It was some time before it reached me; and it was some time longer before I could act upon it." He put a letter in my hand, which I, wondering, read. It said, the letter did, that papa was not at ease about me; that he was not satisfied with my aunt's report of me, nor with the style of my late letters; and begged Dr. Sandford would run down to Magnolia at his earliest convenience and see me, and make inquiry as to my well-being; and if he found things not satisfactory, as my father feared he might, and judge that the rule of Miss Pinshon had not been good for me on the whole, my father desired that Dr. Sandford would take measures to have me removed to the North and placed in one of the best schools there to be found; such a one as Mrs. Sandford might recommend. The letter further desired that Dr. Sandford would keep a regular watch over my health, and suffer no school training nor anything else to interfere with it; expressing the writer's confidence that Dr. Sandford knew better than any one what was good for me. "So you see, Daisy," the doctor said, when I handed him back the letter, "your father has constituted me in some sort your guardian until such time as he comes back." "I am very glad," I said, smiling. "Are you? That is kind. I am going to act upon my authority immediately, and take you away." "From Magnolia?" I said breathlessly. "Yes. Wouldn't you like to go and see Melbourne again for a little while?" "Melbourne!" said I; and I remember how my cheeks grew warm. "But--will Miss Pinshon go to Melbourne?" "No; she will not. Nor anywhere else, Daisy, with my will and permission, where you go. Will that distress you very much?" I could not say yes, and I believe I made no answer, my thoughts were in such a whirl. "Is Mrs. Sandford in Melbourne--I mean, near Melbourne--now?" I asked at length. "No, she is in Washington. But she will be going to the old place before long. Would you like to go, Daisy?" I could hardly tell him. I could hardly think. It began to rush over me, that this parting from Magnolia was likely to be for a longer time than usual. The river murmured by--the sunlight shone on the groves on the hillside. Who would look after my poor people? "You like Magnolia after all?" said the doctor. "I do not wonder, so far as Magnolia goes, you are sorry to leave it." "No," I said, "I am not sorry at all to leave Magnolia; I am very glad. I am only sorry to leave--some friends." "Friends?" said the doctor. "Yes." "How many friends?" "I don't know," said I. "I think there are a hundred or more." "Seriously?" "Oh yes," I said. "They are all on the place here." "How long will you want, Daisy, to take proper leave of these friends?" I had no idea he was in such practical haste; but I found it was so. CHAPTER VIII. EGYPTIAN GLASS. It became necessary for me to think how soon I could be ready, and arrange to get my leave-takings over by a certain time. Dr. Sandford could not wait for me. He was an army surgeon now, I found, and stationed at Washington. He had to return to his post and leave Miss Pinshon to bring me up to Washington. I fancy matters were easily arranged with Miss Pinshon. She was as meek as a lamb. But it never was her way to fight against circumstances. The doctor ordered that I should come up to Washington in a week or two. I did not know till he was gone what a hard week it was going to be. As soon as he had turned his back upon Magnolia, my leave-takings began. I may say they began sooner; for in the morning after his arrival, when Margaret was in my room, she fell to questioning me about the truth of the rumour that had reached the kitchen. Jem said I was going away, not to come back. I do not know how he had got hold of the notion. And when I told her it was true, she dropped the pine splinters out of her hands, and rising to her feet, besought me that I would take her with me. So eagerly she besought me, that I had much difficulty to answer. "I shall be in a school, Margaret," I said. "I could not have anybody there to wait on me." "Miss Daisy won't never do everything for herself?" "Yes, I must," I said. "All the girls do." "I'd hire out then, Miss Daisy, while you don't want me--I'd be right smart--and I'd bring all my earnin's to you regular. 'Deed I will! Till Miss Daisy want me herself." I felt my cheeks flush. She would bring _her_ earnings to _me_. Yes, that was what we were doing. "'Clar, Miss Daisy, do don't leave me behind! I could take washin' and do all Miss Daisy's things up right smart--don't believe they knows how to do things up there!--I'll come to no good if I don't go with Miss Daisy, sure." "You can be good here as well as anywhere, Margaret," I said. "Miss Daisy don' know. Miss Daisy, s'pose the devil walkin' round about a place; think it a nice place fur to be good in?" "The devil is not in Magnolia more than anywhere else," I said. "Dere Mass' Edwards--" Margaret said half under her breath. Even in my room she would not speak the name out loud. The end of it was, that I wrote up to Washington to Dr. Sandford to ask if I might take the girl with me; and his answer came back, that if it were any pleasure to me I certainly might. So that matter was settled. But the parting with the rest was hard. I do not know whether it was hardest for them or for me. Darry blessed me and prayed for me. Maria wept over me. Theresa mourned and lamented. Tears and wailings came from all the poor women who knew me best and used to come to the Sunday readings: and Pete took occasion to make private request, that when I was grown, or when at any time I should want a manservant, I would remember and send for him. He could do anything, he said; he could drive horses or milk cows or take care of a garden, or _cook_. It was said in a subdued voice, and though with a gleam of his white circle of teeth at the last-mentioned accomplishment, it was said with a depth of grave earnestness which troubled me. I promised as well as I could; but my heart was very sore for my poor people, left now without anybody, even so much as a child, to look after their comfort and give them any hopes for one world or the other. Those heavy days were done at last. Margaret was speedy with my packing; a week from the time of Dr. Sandford's coming, I had said my last lesson to Miss Pinshon, read my last reading to my poor people, shaken the last hand-shakings; and we were on the little steamer plying down the Sands river. I think I was wearied out, for I remember no excitement or interest about the journey, which ought to have had so much for me. In a passive state of mind I followed Miss Pinshon from steamer to station; from one train of cars to another; and saw the familiar landscape flit before me as the cars whirled us on. At Baytown we had been joined by a gentleman who went with us all the rest of the way; and I began by degrees to comprehend that my governess had changed her vocation, and instead of taking care, as heretofore, was going to be taken care of. It did not interest me. I saw it, that was all. I saw Margaret's delight, too, shown by every quick and thoughtful movement that could be of any service to me, and by a certain inexpressible air of deliverance which sat on her, I cannot tell how, from her bonnet down to her shoes. But her delight reminded me of those that were not delivered. I think of all the crushing griefs that a young person can be called to bear, one of the sorest is the feeling of wrongdoing on the part of a beloved father or mother. I was sure that my father, blinded by old habit and bound by the laws of the country, did not in the least degree realise the true state of the matter. I knew that the real colour of his gold had never been seen by him. Not the less, _I_ knew now that it was bloody; and what was worse, though I do not know _why_ it should be worse, I knew that it was soiled. I knew that greed and dishonour were the two collectors of our revenue, and _wrong_ our agent. Do I use strong words? They are not too strong for the feelings which constantly bore upon my heart, nor too bitter; though my childish heart never put them into such words at the time. That my father did not know, saved my love and reverence for him; but it did not change anything else. In the last stage of our journey, as we left a station where the train had stopped, I noticed a little book left on one of the empty seats of the car. It lay there and nobody touched it: till we were leaving the car at Alexandria and almost everybody had gone out, and I saw that it lay there still and nobody would claim it. In passing I took it up. It was a neat little book, with gilt edges, no name in it, and having its pages numbered for the days of the year. And each page was full of Bible words. It looked nice. I put the book in my pocket; and on board the ferry-boat opened it again, and looked for the date of the day in March where we were. I found the words--"He preserveth the way of his saints." They were the words heading the page. I had not time for another bit; but as I left the boat this went into my heart like a cordial. It was a damp, dark morning. The air was chill as we left the little boat cabin; the streets were dirty; there was a confusion of people seeking carriages or porters or baggage or custom; then suddenly I felt as if I had lighted on a tower of strength, for Dr. Sandford stood at my side. A good-humoured sort of a tower he looked to me, in his steady, upright bearing; and his military coat helped the impression of that. I can see now his touch of his cap to Miss Pinshon, and then the quick glance which took in Margaret and me. In another minute I had shaken hands with my governess, and was in a carriage with Margaret opposite me; and Dr. Sandford was giving my baggage in charge to somebody. And then he took his place beside me and we drove off. And I drew a long breath. "Punctual to your time, Daisy," said the doctor. "But what made you choose such a time? How much of yourself have you left by the way?" "Miss Pinshon liked better to travel all night," I said, "because there was no place where she liked to stop to spend the night." "What was your opinion on that subject?" "I was more tired than she was, I suppose." "Has she managed things on the same system for the four years past?" The doctor put the question with such a cool gravity, that I could not help laughing. Yet I believe my laughing was very near crying. At first he did so put me in mind of all that was about me when I used to see him in that time long before. And an inexpressible feeling of comfort was in his presence now; a feeling of being taken care of. I had been looked after, undoubtedly, all these years--sharply looked after; there was never a night that I could go to sleep without my governess coming in to see that I was in my room, or in bed, and my clothes in order, and my light where it ought to be. And my aunt had not forgotten me, nor her perplexities about me. And Preston had petted me when he was near. But even Preston sometimes lost sight of me in the urgency of his own pleasure or business. There was a great difference in the strong hand of Dr. Sandford's care; and if you had ever looked into his blue eyes, you would know that they forgot nothing. They had always fascinated me; they did now. Mrs. Sandford was not up when we got to the house where she was staying. It was no matter, for a room was ready for me; and Dr. Sandford had a nice little breakfast brought, and saw me eat it, just as if I were a patient. Then he ordered me to bed, and charged Margaret to watch over me, and he went away, as he said, till luncheon time. I drew two or three long breaths as Margaret was undressing me; I felt so comfortable. "Are Miss Pinshon done gone away, Miss Daisy?" my handmaid asked. "From Magnolia? yes." "Where she gwine to?" "I don't know." "Then she don't go furder along the way we're goin'?" "No. I wonder, Margaret, if they will have any prayer-meetings in Magnolia now?" For with the mention of Magnolia my thoughts swept back. "'Spect the overseer have his ugly old way!" Margaret uttered with great disgust. "Miss Daisy done promise me, I go 'long with Miss Daisy?" she added. "Yes. But what makes _you_ want to get away from home more than all the rest of them?" "Reckon I'd done gone kill myself, s'pose Miss Daisy leave me there," the girl said gloomily. "If dey send me down South, I _would_." "Send you South!" I said; "they would not do that, Margaret." "Dere was man wantin' to buy me--give mighty high price, de overseer said." In excitement Margaret's tongue sometimes grew thick, like those of her neighbours. "Mr. Edwards has no right to sell anybody away from the place," I insisted, in mixed unbelief and horror. "Dunno," said Margaret. "Don't make no difference, Miss Daisy. Who care what he do? Dere's Pete's wife--" "Pete's wife?" said I. "I didn't know Pete was married! What of Pete's wife?" "Dat doctor will kill me, for sure!" said Margaret, looking at me. "Do, don't, Miss Daisy! The doctor say you must go right to bed, now. See! you ain't got your clothes off." "Stop," said I. "What about Pete's wife?" "I done forget. I thought Miss Daisy knowed. Mebbe it's before Miss Daisy come home." "What?" said I. "What?" "It's nothin', Miss Daisy. The overseer he done got mad with Pete's wife and he sold her down South, he did." "Away from Pete?" said I. "Pete, he's to de old place," said Margaret, laconically. "'Spect he forgot all about it by dis time. Miss Daisy please have her clothes off and go to bed?" There was nothing more to wait for. I submitted, was undressed; but the rest and sleep which had been desired were far out of reach now. Pete's wife?--my good, strong, gentle, and I remembered always _grave_, Pete! My heart was on fire with indignation and torn to pieces with sorrow, both at once. Torn with the helpless feeling too that I could not mend the wrong. I do not mean this individual wrong, but the whole state of things under which such wrong was possible. I was restless on my bed, though very weary. I would rather have been up and doing something, than to lie and look at my trouble; only that being there kept me out of the way of seeing people and of talking. Such things done under my father and mother's own authority,--on their own land--to their own helpless dependants; whom yet it was _they_ made helpless and kept subject to such possibilities. I turned and tossed, feeling that I _must_ do something, while yet I knew I could do nothing. Pete's wife! And where was she now? And _that_ was the secret of the unvarying grave shadow that Pete's brow always wore. And now that I had quitted Magnolia, no human friend for the present remained to all that crowd of poor and ignorant and needy humanity. Even their comfort of prayer forbidden; except such comfort as each believer might take by himself alone. I did not know, I never did know till long after, how to many at Magnolia that prohibition wrought no harm. I think Margaret knew, and even then did not dare tell me. How the meetings for prayer were not stopped. How watch was kept on certain nights, till all stir had ceased in the little community; till lights were out in the overseer's house (and at the great house, while we were there); and how then, silently and softly from their several cabins, the people stole away through the woods to a little hill beyond the cemetery, quite far out of hearing or ken of anybody; and there prayed, and sang too, and "praised God and shouted," as my informant told me; not neglecting all the while to keep a picket watch about their meeting-place, to give the alarm in case anybody should come. So under the soft moonlight skies and at depth of night, the meetings which I had supposed broken up, took new life, and grew, and lived; and prayers did not fail; and the Lord hearkened and heard. It would have comforted me greatly if I could have known this at the time. But, as I said, I supposed Margaret dared not tell me. After a long time of weary tossing and heartache, sleep came at last to me; but it brought Pete and his wife and the overseer and Margaret in new combinations of trouble; and I got little refreshment. "Now you have waked up, Miss Daisy?" said Margaret when I opened my eyes. "That poundin' noise has done waked you!" "What noise?" "It's no Christian noise," said Margaret. "What's the use of turnin' the house into a clap of thunder like that? But a man was makin' it o' purpose, for I went out to see; and he telled me it was to call folks to luncheon. Will you get up, Miss Daisy?" Margaret spoke as if she thought I had much better lie still; but I was weary of the comfort I had found there and disposed to try something else. I had just time to be ready before Dr. Sandford came for me and took me to his sister-in-law. Mrs. Sandford welcomed me with great kindness, even tenderness; exclaimed at my growth; but I saw by her glance at the doctor that my appearance in other respects struck her unfavourably. He made no answer to that, but carried us off to the luncheon-room. There were other people lodging in the house besides my friends; a long table was spread. Dr. Sandford, I saw, was an immense favourite. Questions and demands upon his attention came thick and fast from both ends and all sides of the table; about all sorts of subjects and in all manner of tones, grave and gay. And he was at home to them all, but in the midst of it never forgot me. He took careful heed to my luncheon; prepared one thing, and called for another; it reminded me of a time long gone by; but it did not help me to eat. I could not eat. The last thing he did was to call for a fresh raw egg, and break it into a half glass of milk. With this in his hand we left the dining-room. As soon as we got to Mrs. Sandford's parlour he gave it to me and ordered me to swallow it. I suppose I looked dismayed. "Poor child!" said Mrs. Sandford. "Let me have it beaten up for her, Grant, with some sugar; she can't take it so." "Daisy has done harder things," he said. I saw he expected me to drink it, and so I did, I do not know how. "Thank you," he said smiling, as he took the glass. "Now sit down and I will talk to you." "How she is growing tall, Grant!" said Mrs. Sandford. "Yes," said he. "Did you sleep well, Daisy?" "No, sir; I couldn't sleep. And then I dreamed." "Dreaming is not a proper way of resting. So tired you could not sleep?" "I do not think it was that, Dr. Sandford." "Do you know what it was?" "I think I do," I said, a little unwillingly. "She is getting very much the look of her mother," Mrs. Sandford remarked again. "Don't you see it, Grant?" "I see more than that," he answered. "Daisy, do you think this governess of yours has been a good governess?" I looked wearily out of the window, and cast a weary mental look over the four years of algebraics and philosophy at the bright little child I saw at the further end of them. "I think I have grown dull, Dr. Sandford," I said. He came up behind me, and put his arms round me, taking my hand in his, and spoke in quite a different tone. "Daisy, have you found many 'wonderful things' at Magnolia?" I looked up, I remember, with the eagerness of a heart full of thoughts, in his face; but I could not speak then. "Have you looked through a microscope since you have been there, and made discoveries?" "Not in natural things, Dr. Sandford." "Ha!" said the doctor. "Do you want to go and take a drive with me?" "Oh yes!" "Go and get ready then, please." I had a very pleasant, quiet drive; the doctor showing me, as he said, not wonderful things but new things, and taking means to amuse me. And every day for several days I had a drive. Sometimes we went to the country, sometimes got out and examined something in the city. There was a soothing relief in it all, and in the watchful care taken of me at home, and the absence of mathematics and philosophy. All day when not driving or at meals, I lay on Mrs. Sandford's sofa or curled myself up in the depth of a great easy-chair, and turned over her books; or studied my own blue book which I had picked up in the car, and which was so little I had Margaret to make a big pocket in my frock to hold it. But this life was not to last. A few days was all Mrs. Sandford had to spend in Washington. The place I liked best to go to was the Capitol. Several times Dr. Sandford took me there, and showed me the various great rooms, and paintings, and smaller rooms with their beautiful adornments; and I watched the workmen at work; for the renewing of the building was not yet finished. As long as he had time to spare, Dr. Sandford let me amuse myself as I would; and often got me into talks which refreshed me more than anything. Still, though I was soothed, my trouble at heart was not gone. One day we were sitting looking at the pictures in the great vestibule, when Dr. Sandford suddenly started a subject which put the Capitol out of my head. "Daisy," said he, "was it your wish or Margaret's, that she should go North with you?" "Hers," I said, startled. "Then it is not yours particularly." "Yes, it is, Dr. Sandford, _very_ particularly." "How is that?" said he. I hesitated. I shrank from the whole subject; it was so extremely sore to me. "I ought to warn you," he went on, "that if you take her further, she may, if she likes, leave you, and claim her freedom. That is the law. If her owner takes her into the free States, she may remain in them if she will, whether he does or not." I was silent still, for the whole thing choked me. I was quite willing she should have her freedom, get it any way she could; but there was my father, and his pleasure and interest, which might not choose to lose a piece of his property; and my mother and _her_ interest and pleasure; I knew what both would be. I was dumb. "You had not thought of this before?" the doctor went on. "No, sir." "Does it not change your mind about taking her on?" "No, sir." "Did it ever occur to you, or rather, does it not occur to you now, that the girl's design in coming may have been this very purpose of her freedom?" "I do not think it was," I said. "Even if not, it will be surely put in her head by other people before she has been at the North long; and she will know that she is her own mistress." I was silent still. I knew that I wished she might. "Do you think," Dr. Sandford went on, "that in this view of the case we had better send her back to Magnolia when you leave Washington?" "No," I said. "I think it would be better," he repeated. "Oh, no!" I said. "Oh, no, Dr. Sandford. I can't send her back. You will not send her back, will you?" "Be quiet," he said, holding fast the hand which in my earnestness I had put in his; "she is not my servant; she is yours; it is for you to say what you will do." "I will not send her back," I said. "But it may be right to consider what would be Mr. Randolph's wish on the subject. If you take her, he may lose several hundred dollars' worth of property: it is right for me to warn you. Would he choose to run the risk?" I remember now what a fire at my heart sent the blood to my face. But with my hand in Dr. Sandford's, and those blue eyes of his reading me, I could not keep back my thought. "She ought to be her own mistress," I said. A brilliant flash of expression filled the blue eyes and crossed his face--I could hardly tell what, before it was gone. Quick surprise--pleasure--amusement--agreement; the first and the two last certainly; and the pleasure I could not help fancying had lent its colour to that ray of light which had shot for one instant from those impenetrable eyes. He spoke just as usual. "But, Daisy, have you studied this question?" "I think I have studied nothing else, Dr. Sandford." "You know the girl is not yours, but your father's." "She isn't anybody's," I said slowly, and with slow tears gathering in my heart. "How do you mean?" said he, with again the quiver of a smile upon his lips. "I mean," I said, struggling with my thoughts and myself, "I mean that nobody could have a right to her." "Did not her parents belong to your father?" "To my mother." "Then she does." "But, Dr. Sandford," I said, "nobody _can_ belong to anybody--in that way." "How do you make it out, Daisy?" "Because nobody can give anybody a _right_ to anybody else in that way." "Does it not give your mother a right, that the mother of this girl and her grandmother were the property of your ancestors?" "They could not be their property justly," I said, glad to get back to my ancestors. "The law made it so." "Not God's law, Dr. Sandford," I said, looking up at him. "No? Does not that law give a man a right to what he has honestly bought?" "No," I said, "it _can't_--not if it has been dishonestly sold." "Explain, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, very quietly; but I saw the gleam of that light in his eye again. I had gone too far to stop. I went on, ready to break my heart over the right and wrong I was separating. "I mean, the _first_ people that sold the first of these coloured people," I said. "Well?" said the doctor. "They could not have a right to sell them." "Yes. Well?" "Then the people that bought them could not have a right, any more," I said. "But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "do you know that there are different opinions on this very point?" I was silent. It made no difference to me. "Suppose for the moment that the first people, as you say, had no precise right to sell the men and women they brought to this country; yet those who bought them and paid honest money for them, and possessed them from generation to generation--had not _they_ a right to pass them off upon other hands, receiving their money back again?" "I don't know how to explain it," I said. "I mean--if at first--Dr. Sandford, hadn't the people that were sold, hadn't they rights too?" "Rights of what sort?" "A right to do what they liked with themselves, and to earn money, and to keep their wives?" "But those rights were lost, you know, Daisy." "But _could_ they be?" I said. "I mean--Dr. Sandford, for instance, suppose somebody stole your watch from you; would you lose the right to it?" "It _seems_ to me that I should not, Daisy." "That is what I mean," I said. "But there is another view of the case, Daisy. Take Margaret, for instance. From the time she was a child, your father's, or your mother's money has gone to support her; her food and clothing and living have been wholly at their expense. Does not that give them a right to her services? ought they not to be repaid?" I did not want to speak of my father and mother and Margaret. It was coming too near home. I knew the food and clothing Dr. Sandford spoke of; I knew a very few months of a Northern servant's wages would have paid for it all; was this girl's whole life to be taken from her, and by my father and mother, and for such a cause? The feeling of grief and wrong and shame got possession of me. I was ready to break my heart in tears; but I could not show Dr. Sandford what I felt, nor confess to what I thought of my father's action. I had the greatest struggle with myself not to give way and cry. I was very weak bodily, but I know I stood still and did not shed a tear; till I felt Dr. Sandford's hands take hold of me. They put me gently back in the chair from which I had risen. "What is the matter, Daisy?" he said. I would not speak, and he did not urge it; but I saw that he watched me till I gained command of myself again. "Shall we go home now?" he asked. "In a minute. Dr. Sandford, I do not think papa knows about all this--I do not think he knows about it as I do. I am sure he does not; and when he knows he will think as I do." "Or perhaps you will think as he does." I was silent. I wondered if that could be possible--if I too could have my eyes blinded as I saw other people's were. "Little Daisy," said my friend the doctor, "but you are getting to be not _little_ Daisy. How old are you?" "I shall be fourteen in June." "Fourteen. Well, it is no wonder that my friend whom I left a philosopher at ten years old, I should find a woman at fourteen; but Daisy, you must not take it on your heart that you have to teach all the ignorant and help all the distressed that come in your way; because simply you cannot do it." I looked up at him. I could not tell him what I thought, because he would not, I feared, understand it. Christ came to do just such work, and His servants must have it on their hearts to do the same. I cannot tell what was in my look, but I thought the doctor's face changed. "One Molly Skelton will do for one four years," he said as he rose up. "Come, Daisy." "But, Dr. Sandford," I said, as I followed him, "you will not do anything about sending Margaret back?" "Nothing, till you do, Daisy." Arrived at home, the doctor made me drink a raw egg, and lie down on Mrs. Sandford's sofa; and he sat down and looked at me. "You are the most troublesome patient that ever I had," said he. "I am?" I exclaimed. "Yes. Quite innocently. You cannot help it, Daisy; and you need not be troubled about it. It is all in the way of my profession. It is as if a delicate vessel of Egyptian glass were put to do the work of an iron smelting furnace; and I have to think of all the possible bands and hardening appliances that can be brought into use for the occasion." "I do not understand," I said. "No; I suppose not. That is the worst of it." "But why am I an _Egyptian_ glass?" I asked. "I am not very old." The doctor gave me one of those quick, bright glances and smiles that were very pleasant to get from him and not very common. There came a sort of glow and sparkle in his blue eye then, and a wonderful winsome and gracious trick of the lips. "It is a very doubtful sort of a compliment," said Mrs. Sandford. "I did not mean it for a compliment at all," said the doctor. "I don't believe you did," said his sister; "but what _did_ you mean? Grant, I should like to hear you pay a compliment for once." "You do not know Egyptian glass," said the doctor. "No. What was it?" "Very curious." "Didn't I say that you couldn't pay compliments?" said Mrs. Sandford. "And unlike any that is made nowadays. There were curious patterns wrought in the glass, made, it is supposed, by the fusing together of rods of glass, extremely minute, of different colours; so that the pattern once formed was ineffaceable and indestructible, unless by the destruction of the vessel which contained it. Sometimes a layer of gold was introduced between the layers of glass." "How very curious!" said Mrs. Sandford. "I think I must take you into consultation, Daisy," the doctor went on, turning to me. "It is found that there must be a little delay before you can go up to take a look at Melbourne. Mrs. Sandford is obliged to stop in New York with a sick sister; how long she may be kept there it is impossible to say. Now you would have a dull time, I am afraid; and I am in doubt whether it would not be pleasanter for you to enter school at once. In about three months the school term will end and the summer vacation begin; by that time Mrs. Sandford will be at home and the country ready to receive you. But you shall do whichever you like best." "Mrs. Sandford will be in New York," I said. "Yes." "And I would see you constantly, dear, and have you with me all the Saturdays and Sundays and holidays. And if you like it better, you shall be with me all the time; only I should be obliged to leave you alone too much." "How long does the summer vacation last?" I inquired. "Till some time in September. You can enter school now or then, as you choose." I thought and hesitated, and said I would enter at once. Dr. Sandford said I was not fit for it, but it was on the whole the best plan. So it was arranged, that I should just wait a day or two in New York to get my wardrobe in order and then begin my school experience. But my thoughts went back afterwards, more than once, to the former conversation; and I wondered what it was about me that made Dr. Sandford liken me to Egyptian glass. CHAPTER IX. SHOPPING. It was settled that I should wait a day or two in New York to get my wardrobe arranged, and then begin my school experience. But when we got to New York, we found Mrs. Sandford's sister so ill as to claim her whole time. There was none to spare for me and my wardrobe. Mrs. Sandford said I must attend to it myself as well as I could, and the doctor would go with me. He was off duty, he reported, and at leisure for ladies' affairs. Mrs. Sandford told me what I would need. A warm school dress, she said; for the days would be often cold in this latitude until May, and even later; and schoolrooms not always warm. A warm dress for every day was the first thing. A fine merino, Mrs. Sandford said, would be, she thought, what my mother would choose. I had silks which might be warm enough for other occasions. Then I must have a thick coat or cloak. Long coats, with sleeves, were fashionable then, she told me; the doctor would take me where I would find plenty to choose from. And I needed a hat, or a bonnet. Unless, Mrs. Sandford said, I chose to wear my riding-cap with the feather; that was warm, and very pretty, and would do. How much would it all cost? I asked. Mrs. Sandford made a rapid calculation. The merino would be two dollars a yard, she said; the coat might be got for thirty-five or thereabouts sufficiently good; the hat was entirely what I chose to make it. "But you know, my dear," Mrs. Sandford said, "the sort of quality and style your mother likes, and you will be guided by that." Must I be guided by that?--I questioned with myself. Yes, I knew. I knew very well; but I had other things to think of. I pondered. While I was pondering, Dr. Sandford was quietly opening his pocket-book and unfolding a roll of bills. He put a number of them into my hand. "That will cover it all, Daisy," he said. "It is money your father has made over to my keeping, for this and similar purposes." "Oh, thank you!" I said, breathless; and then I counted the bills. "Oh, thank you, Dr. Sandford: but may I spend all this?" "Certainly. Mr. Randolph desired it should go, this and more of it, to your expenses, of whatever kind. This covers my sister's estimate, and leaves something for your pocket besides." "And when shall we go?" I asked. "To spend it? Now, if you like. Why, Daisy, I did not know--" "What, sir?" I said as he paused. "Really, nothing," he said, smiling. "Somehow I had not fancied that you shared the passion of your sex for what they call _shopping_. You are all alike in some things." "I like it very much to-day," I said. "It would be safe for you to keep Daisy's money in your own pocket, Grant," Mrs. Sandford said. "It will be stolen from her, certainly." The doctor smiled and stretched out his hand; I put the bills into it: and away we went. My head was very busy. I knew, as Mrs. Sandford said, the sort and style of purchases my mother would make and approve; but then on the other hand the remembrance was burnt into me, whence that money came which I was expected to spend so freely, and what other uses and calls for it there were, even in the case of those very people whose hands had earned it for us. Not to go further, Margaret's wardrobe needed refitting quite as much as mine. She was quite as unaccustomed as I to the chills and blasts of a cold climate, and fully as unfurnished to meet them. I had seen her draw her thin checked shawl around her, when I knew it was not enough to save her from the weather, and that she had no more. And her gowns, of thin cotton stuff, such as she wore about her housework at Magnolia, were a bare provision against the nipping bite of the air here at the North. Yet nobody spoke of any addition to _her_ stock of clothes. It was on my heart alone. But now it was in my hand too, and I felt very glad; though just how to manage Dr. Sandford I did not know. I thought a great deal about the whole matter as we went through the streets; as I had also thought long before; and my mind was clear, that while so many whom I knew needed the money, or while _any_ whom I knew needed it, I would spend no useless dollars upon myself. How should I manage Dr. Sandford? There he was, my cash-keeper; and I had not the least wish to unfold my plans to him. "I suppose the dress is the first thing, Daisy," he said, as we entered the great establishment where everything was to be had; and he inquired for the counter where we should find merinoes. I had no objection ready. "What colour, Daisy?" "I want something quiet," I said. "Something dark," said the doctor, seating himself. "And fine quality. Not green, Daisy, if I might advise. It is too cold." "Cold!" said I. "For this season. It is a very nice colour in summer, Daisy," he said, smiling. And he looked on in a kind of amused way, while the clerk of the merinoes and I confronted each other. There was displayed now before me a piece of claret-coloured stuff, dark and bright; a lovely tint and a very beautiful piece of goods. I knew enough of the matter to know that. Fine and thick and lustrous, it just suited my fancy; I knew it was just what my mother would buy; I saw Dr. Sandford's eye watch me in its amusement with a glance of expectation. But the stuff was two dollars and a quarter a yard. Yes, it suited me exactly; but what was to become of others if I were covered so luxuriously? And how could I save money if I spent it? It was hard to speak, too, before that shopman, who held the merino in his hand, expecting me to say I would take it; but I had no way to escape that trouble. I turned from the rich folds of claret stuff to the doctor at my side. "Dr. Sandford," I said, "I want to get something that will not cost so much." "Does it not please you?" he asked. "Yes; I like it: but I want some stuff that will not cost so much." "This is not far above my sister's estimate, Daisy." "No--" I said. "And the difference is a trifle--if you like the piece." "I like it," I said; "but it is very much above _my_ estimate." "You had one of your own!" said the doctor. "Do you like something else here better?--or what is your estimate, Daisy?" "I do not want a poor merino," I said. "I would rather get some other stuff--if I can. I do not want to give more than a dollar." "The young lady may find what will suit her at the plaid counter," said the shopman, letting fall the rich drapery he had been holding up. "Just round that corner, sir, to the left." Dr. Sandford led the way, and I followed. There certainly I found plenty of warm stuffs, in various patterns and colours, and with prices as various. But nothing to match the grave elegance of those claret folds. It was coming down a step, to leave that counter for this. I knew it perfectly well; while I sought out the simplest and prettiest dark small plaid I could find. "Do you like these things better?" the doctor asked me privately. "No, sir," I said. "Then why come here, Daisy? Pardon me, may I ask?" "I have other things to get, Dr. Sandford," I said low. "But Daisy!" said the doctor, rousing up, "I have performed my part ill. You are not restricted--your father has not restricted you. I am your banker for whatever sums you may need--for whatever purposes." "Yes," I said, "I know. Oh no, I know papa has not restricted you; but I think I ought not to spend any more. It is my own affair." "And not mine. Pardon me, Daisy; I submit." "Please, Dr. Sandford, don't speak so!" I said. "I don't mean that. I mean, it is my own affair and not papa's." "Certainly, I have no more to say," said the doctor, smiling. "I will tell you all about it," I said; and then I desired the shopman to cut off the dress I had fixed upon; and we went upstairs to look for cloaks, I feeling hot and confused and half perplexed. I had never worn such a dress as this plaid I had bought in my life. It was nice and good, and pretty too; but it did not match the quality or the elegance of the things my mother always had got for me. _She_ would not have liked it nor let me wear it; I knew that; but then--whence came the wealth that flowed over in such exquisite forms upon her and upon me? Were not its original and proper channels bare? And whence were they to be, even in any measure, refilled, if all the supply must, as usual, be led off in other directions? I mused as I went up the stairs, feeling perplexed, nevertheless, at the strangeness of the work I was doing, and with something in my heart giving a pull at my judgment towards the side of what was undoubtedly "pleasant to the eyes." So I followed Dr. Sandford up the stairs and into the wilderness of the cloak department, where all manner of elegancies, in silk, and velvet, and cloth, were displayed in orderly confusion. It was a wilderness to me, in the mood of my thoughts. Was I going to repeat here the process just gone through downstairs? The doctor seated me, asked what I wanted to see, and gave the order. And forthwith my eyes were regaled with a variety of temptations. A nice little black silk pelisse was hung on the stand opposite me; it was nice; a good gloss was upon the silk, the article was in the neatest style, and trimmed with great simplicity. I would have been well satisfied to wear that. By its side was displayed another of velvet; then yet another of very fine dark cloth; perfect in material and make, faultless in its elegance of finish. But the silk was forty-five and the cloth was forty, and the velvet was sixty dollars. I sat and looked at them. There is no denying that I wanted the silk or the cloth. Either of them would do. Either of them was utterly girl-like and plain, but both of them had the finish of perfection, in make, style, and material. I wanted the one or the other. But, if I had it, what would be left for Margaret? "Are you tired, Daisy?" said Dr. Sandford, bending down to look in my face. "No, sir. At least, that was not what I was thinking of." "When then?" said he. "Will one of these do?" "They would do," I said slowly. "But, Dr. Sandford, I should like to see something else--something that would do for somebody that was poorer than I." "Poorer?" said the doctor, looking funny. "What is the matter, Daisy? Have you suddenly become bankrupt? You need not be afraid, for the bank is in my pocket; and I know it will stand all your demands upon it." "No, but--I would indeed, if you please, Dr. Sandford. These things cost too much for what I want now." "Do you like them?" "I like them very well." "Then take whichever you like best. That is my advice to you, Daisy. The bank will bear it." "I think I must not. Please, Dr. Sandford, I should like to see something that would not cost so much. Do they _all_ cost as much as these?" The doctor gave the order as I desired. The shopman who was serving us cast another comprehensive glance at me--I had seen him give one at the beginning--and tossing off the velvet coat and twisting off the silk one, he walked away. Presently he came back with a brown silk, which he hung in the place of the velvet one, and a blue cloth, which replaced the black silk. Every whit as costly, and almost as pretty, both of them. "No," said the doctor,--"you mistook me. We want to look at some goods fitted for persons who have not long purses." "Something inferior to these--" said the man. He was not uncivil; he just stated the fact. In accordance with which he replaced the last two coats with a little grey dreadnought, and a black cloth; the first neat and rough, the last not to be looked at. It was not in good taste, and a sort of thing that I neither had worn nor could wear. But the grey dreadnought was simple and warm and neat, and would offend nobody. I looked from it to the pretty black cloth which still hung in contrast with it, the one of the first there. Certainly, in style and elegance _this_ looked like my mother's child, and the other did not. But this was forty dollars. The dreadnought was exactly half that sum. I had a little debate with myself--I remember it, for it was my first experience of that kind of thing--and all my mother's training had refined in me the sense of what was elegant and fitting, in dress as well as in other matters. Until now, I had never had my fancy crossed by anything I ever had to wear. The little grey dreadnought--how would it go with my silk dresses? It was like what I had seen other people dressed in; never my mother or me. Yet it was perfectly fitting a lady's child, if she could not afford other; and where was Margaret's cloak to come from? And who had the best right? I pondered and debated, and then I told Dr. Sandford I would have the grey coat. I believe I half wished he would make some objection; but he did not; he paid for the dreadnought and ordered it sent home; and then I began to congratulate myself that Margaret's comfort was secure. "Is that all, Daisy?" my friend asked. "Dr. Sandford," said I, standing up and speaking low, "I want to find--can I find here, do you think?--a good warm cloak and dress for Margaret." "For Margaret?" said the doctor. "Yes; she is not used to the cold, you know; and she has nothing to keep her comfortable." "But, Daisy!" said the doctor,--"sit down here again; I must understand this. Was _Margaret_ at the bottom of all these financial operations?" "I knew she wanted something, ever since we came from Washington," I said. "Daisy, she could have had it." "Yes, Dr. Sandford;--but--" "But what, if you will be so good?" "I think it was right for me to get it." "I am sorry I do not agree with you at all. It was for _me_ to get it--I am supplied with funds, Daisy--and your father has entrusted to me the making of all arrangements which are in any way good for your comfort. I think, with your leave, I shall reverse these bargains. Have you been all this time pleasing Margaret and _not_ yourself?" "No, sir," I said,--"if you please. I cannot explain it, Dr. Sandford, but I know it is right." "What is right, Daisy? My faculties are stupid." "No, sir; but--Let it be as it is, please." "But won't you explain it? I ought to know what I am giving my consent to, Daisy; for just now I am constituted your guardian. What has Margaret to do with your cloaks? There is enough for both." "But," said I, in a great deal of difficulty,--"there is not enough for me and everybody." "Are you going to take care of the wants of everybody?" "I think--I ought to take care of all that I can," I said. "But you have not the power." "I won't do but what I _have_ the power for." "Daisy, what would your father and mother say to such a course of action? would they allow it, do you think?" "But _you_ are my guardian now, Dr. Sandford," I said, looking up at him. He paused a minute doubtfully. "I am conquered!" he said. "You have absolutely conquered me, Daisy. I have not a word to say. I wonder if that is the way you are going through the world in future? What is it now about Margaret?--for I was bewildered and did not understand." "A warm cloak and dress," I said, delighted; "that is what I want. Can I get them here?" "Doubtful, I should say," he answered; "but we will try." And we did succeed in finding the dress, strong and warm and suitable; the cloak we had to go to another shop for. On the way we stopped at the milliner's. My Aunt Gary and Mrs. Sandford employed the same one. "I put it in your hands, Daisy!" Dr. Sandford said, as we went in. "Only let me look on." I kept him waiting a good while, I am afraid; but he was very patient and seemed amused. _I_ was not. The business was very troublesome to me. This was not so easy a matter as to choose between stuffs and have the yards measured off. Bonnets are bonnets, as my aunt always said; and things good in themselves may not be in the least good for you. And I found the thing that suited was even more tempting here than it had been in the cloak wareroom. There was a little velvet hat which I fancied mamma would have bought for me; it was so stylish, and at the same time so simple, and became me so well. But it was of a price corresponding with its beauty. I turned my back on it, though I seemed to see it just as well through the back of my head, and tried to find something else. The milliner would have it there was nothing beside that fitted me. The hat must go on. "She has grown," said the milliner, appealing to Dr. Sandford; "and you see this is the very thing. This tinge of colour inside is just enough to relieve the pale cheeks. Do you see, sir?" "It is without a fault," said the doctor. "Take it off, please," I said. "I want to find something that will not cost so much--something that will not cost near so much." "There is that cap that is too large for Miss Van Allen--" the milliner's assistant remarked. "It would not suit Mrs. Randolph at all," was the answer aside. But I begged to see it. Now this was a comfortable, soft quilted silk cap, with a chinchilla border. Not much style about it, but also nothing to dislike, except its simplicity. The price was moderate, and it fitted me. You are going to be a different Daisy Randolph from what you have been all your life--something whispered to me. And the doctor said, "That makes you look about ten years old again, Daisy." I had a minute of doubt and delay; then I said I would have the cap; and the great business was ended. Margaret's purchases were all found, and we went home, with money still in my bank, Dr. Sandford informed me. I was very tired; but on the whole I was very satisfied, until my things came home, and I saw that Mrs. Sandford did not like them. "I wish I could have been with you!" she said. "What is the matter?" said the doctor. It was the evening, and we were all together for a few minutes, before Mrs. Sandford went to her sister. "Did you choose these things, Grant?" "What is the matter with them?" "They are hardly suitable." "For the third time, what is the matter with them?" said the doctor. "They are neat, but they are not _handsome_." "They will look handsome when they are on," said Dr. Sandford. "No they won't; they will look common. I don't mean _vulgar_--you could not buy anything in bad taste--but they are just what anybody's child might wear." "Then Mrs. Randolph's child might." Mrs. Sandford gave him a look. "That is just the thing," she said. "Mrs. Randolph's child might _not_. I never saw anybody more elegant or more particular about the choice of her dress than Mrs. Randolph; it is always perfect; and Daisy's always was. Mrs. Randolph would not like these." "Shall we change them, Daisy?" said the doctor. I said "No." "Then I hope they will wear out before Mrs. Randolph comes home," he said. All this, somehow, made me uncomfortable. I went off to the room which had been given to me, where a fire was kept; and I sat down to think. Certainly, I would have liked the other coat and hat better, that I had rejected; and the thought of the rich soft folds of that silky merino were not pleasant to me. The plaid I had bought _did_ wear a common look in comparison. I knew it, quite as well as Mrs. Sandford; and that I had never worn common things; and I knew that in the merino, properly made, I should have looked my mother's child; and that in the plaid my mother would not know me. Was I right? was I wrong? I knelt down before the fire, feeling that the straight path was not always easy to find. Yet I had thought I saw it before me. I knelt before the fire, which was the only light in the room, and opened the page of my dear little book that had the Bible lessons for every day. This day's lesson was headed, "That ye adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." The mist began to clear away. Between adorning and being adorned, the difference was so great, it set my face quite another way directly. I went on. "Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ." And how should that be? Certainly, the spirit of that gospel had no regard to self-glorification; and had most tender regard to the wants of others. I began to feel sure that I was in the way and not out of it. Then came--"If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye. But let none of you suffer ... _as a thief, or as an evildoer_"--"Let your light so shine before men"--"Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck;"--"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are _just_ ... think on these things." The words came about me, binding up my doubts, making sound my heart, laying a soft touch upon every rough spot in my thoughts. True, honest, just, lovely, and of good report,--yes, I would think on these things, and I would not be turned aside from them. And if I suffered as a Christian, I determined that I would not be ashamed; I prayed that I might never; I would take as no dishonour the laughter or the contempt of those who did not see the two sides of the question; but as a _thief_ I would not suffer. I earnestly prayed that I might not. No beauty of dresses or stylishness of coats or bonnets should adorn me, the price of which God saw belonged and was due to the sufferings of others; more especially to the wants of those whose wants made my supply. That my father and mother, with the usage of old habit, and the influence of universal custom, should be blind to what I saw so clearly, made no difference in my duty. I had the light of the Bible rule, which was not yet, I knew, the lamp to their feet. _I_ must walk by it, all the same. And my thought went back now with great tenderness to Mammy Theresa's rheumatism, which wanted flannel; to Maria's hyacinths, which were her great earthly interest, out of the things of religion; to Darry's lonely cottage, where he had no lamp to read the Bible o' nights, and no oil to burn in it. To Pete's solitary hut, too, where he was struggling to learn to read well, and where a hymn-book would be the greatest comfort to him. To the old people, whose one solace of a cup of tea would be gone unless I gave it them; to the boys who were learning to read, who wanted testaments; to the bed-ridden and sick, who wanted blankets; to the young and well, who wanted gowns (not indeed for decency, but for the natural pleasure of looking neat and smart)--and to Margaret, first and last, who was nearest to me, and who, I began to think, might want some other trifles besides a cloak. The girl come in at the minute. "Margaret," I said, "I have got you a warm gown and a good thick warm cloak, to-day." "A cloak! Miss Daisy--" Margaret's lips just parted and showed the white teeth between them. "Yes. I saw you were not warm in that thin shawl." "It's mighty cold up these ways!--" the girls shoulders drew together with involuntary expression. "And now, Margaret, what other things do you want, to be nice and comfortable? You must tell me now, because after I go to school I cannot see you often, you know." "Reckon I find something to do at the school, Miss Daisy. Ain't there servants?" "Yes, but I am afraid there may not be another wanted. What else ought you to have, Margaret?" "Miss Daisy knows, I'll hire myself out, and reckon I'll get a right smart chance of wages; and then, if Miss Daisy let me take some change, I'd like to get some things--" "You may keep all your wages, Margaret," I said hastily; "you need not bring them to me; but I want to know if you have all you need _now_, to be nice and warm?" "'Spect I'd be better for some underclothes--" Margaret said, half under her breath. Of course! I knew it the moment she said it. I knew the scanty coarse supply which was furnished to the girls and women at Magnolia; I knew that more was needed for neatness as well as for comfort, and something different, now that she was where no evil distinction would arise from her having it. I said I would get what she wanted; and went back again to the parlour. I mused as I went. If I let Margaret keep her wages--and I was very certain I could not receive them from her--I must be prepared to answer it to my father. Perhaps,--yes, I felt sure as I thought about it--I must contrive to save the amount of her wages out of what was given to myself; or else my grant might be reversed and my action disallowed, or at least greatly disapproved. And my father had given me no right to dispose of Margaret's wages, or of herself. So I came into the parlour. Dr. Sandford alone was there, lying on the sofa. He jumped up immediately; pulled a great arm chair near to the fire, and taking hold of me, put me into it. My purchases were lying on the table, where they had been disapproved, but I knew what to think of them now. I could look at them very contentedly. "How do they seem, Daisy?" said the doctor, stretching himself on the cushions again, after asking my permission and pardon. "Very well,"--I said, smiling. "You are satisfied?" I said yes. "Daisy," said he, "you have conquered me to-day--I have yielded--I owned myself conquered; but won't you enlighten me? As a matter of favour?" "About what, Dr. Sandford?" "I don't understand you." I remember looking at him and smiling. It was so curious a thing, both that he should, in his philosophy, be puzzled by a child like me, and that he should care about undoing the puzzle. "There!" said he,--"that is my old little Daisy of ten years old. Daisy, I used to think she was an extremely dainty and particular little person." "Yes--" said I. "Was that correct?" "I don't know," said I. "I think it was." "Then Daisy, honestly--I am asking as a philosopher, and that means a lover of knowledge, you know,--did you choose those articles to-day to please yourself?" "In one way, I did," I answered. "Did they appear to you as they did to Mrs. Sandford,--at the time?" "Yes, Dr. Sandford." "So I thought. Then, Daisy, will you make me understand it? For I am puzzled." I was sorry that he cared about the puzzle, for I did not want to go into it. I was almost sure he would not make it out if I did. However, he lay there looking at me and waiting. "Those other things cost too much, Dr. Sandford--that was all." "There is the puzzle!" said the doctor. "You had the money in your bank for them, and money for Margaret's things too, and more if you wanted it; and no bottom to the bank at all, so far as I could see. And you like pretty things, Daisy, and you did not choose them?" "No, sir." I hesitated, and he waited. How was I to tell him? He would simply find it ridiculous. And then I thought--"If any of you suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed." "I thought I should be comfortable in these things, Dr. Sandford," I then said, glancing at the little chinchilla cap which lay on the table;--"and respectable. And there were other people who needed all the money the other things would have cost." "What other people?" said the doctor. "As I am your guardian, Daisy, it is proper for me to ask, and not impertinent." I hesitated again. "I was thinking," I said, "of some of the people I left at Magnolia." "Do you mean the servants?" "Yes, sir." "Daisy, they are cared for." I was silent. "What do you think they want?" "Some that are sick want comfort," I said, "and others who are not sick want help; and others, I think, want a little pleasure." I would fain not have spoken, but how could I help it? The doctor took his feet off the sofa and sat up and confronted me. "In the meantime," he said, "you are to be 'comfortable and respectable.' But, Daisy, do you think your father and mother would be satisfied with such a statement of your condition?" "I suppose not," I was obliged to say. "Then do you think it proper for me to allow such to be the fact?" I looked at him. What there was in my look it is impossible for me to say; but he laughed a little. "Yes," he said,--"I know--you have conquered me to-day. I own myself conquered--but the question I ask you is whether I am justifiable." "I think that depends," I answered, "on whether _I_ am justifiable." "Can you justify yourself, Daisy?" he said, bringing his hand down gently over my smooth hair and touching my cheek. It would have vexed me from anybody else; it did not vex me from him. "Can you justify yourself?" he repeated. "Yes, sir," I said; but I felt troubled. "Then do it." "Dr. Sandford, the Bible says, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.'" "Well," said he, refusing to draw any conclusions for me. "I have more than I want, and they have not enough. I don't think I ought to keep _more_ than I want." "But then arises the question," said he, "how much do you want? Where is the line, beyond which you, or I, for instance, have too much?" "I was not speaking of anybody but myself," I said. "But a rule of action which is the right one for you, would be right for everybody." "Yes, but everybody must apply it for himself," I said. "I was only applying it for myself." "And applying it for yourself, Daisy, is it to cut off for the future--or ought it--all elegance and beauty? Must you restrict yourself to mere 'comfort and respectability'? Are furs and feathers, for instance, wicked things?" He did not speak it mockingly; Dr. Sandford never could do an ungentlemanly thing; he spoke kindly and with a little rallying smile on his face. But I knew what he thought. "Dr. Sandford," said I, "suppose I was a fairy, and that I stripped the gown off a poor woman's back to change it into a feather, and stole away her blankets to make them into fur; what would you think of fur and feathers then?" There came a curious lightning through the doctor's blue eyes. I did not know in the least what it meant. "Do you mean to say, Daisy, that the poor people down yonder at Magnolia want such things as gowns and blankets?" "Some do," I said. "You know, nobody is there, Dr. Sandford, to look after them; and the overseer does not care. It would be different if papa was at home." "I will never interfere with you any more, Daisy," said the doctor,--"any further than by a little very judicious interference; and you shall find in me the best helper I can be to all your plans. You may use me--you have conquered me,"--said he, smiling, and laying himself back on his cushions again. I was very glad it had ended so, for I could hardly have withstood Dr. Sandford if he had taken a different view of the matter. And his help, I knew, might be very good in getting things sent to Magnolia. CHAPTER X. SCHOOL. I had another time the next day between Mrs. Sandford and the mantua-maker. The mantua-maker came to take orders about making my school dress. "How will you have it trimmed?" she asked. "This sort of stuff will make no sort of an appearance unless it is well trimmed. It wants that. You might have a border of dark green leaves--dark green, like the colour of this stripe--going round the skirt; that would have a good effect; the leaves set in and edged with a very small red cord, or green if you like it better. We trimmed a dress so last week, and it made a very good appearance." "What do you say, Daisy?" "How much will it cost?" I asked. "Oh, the cost is not very much," said the milliner. "I suppose we would do it for you, Mrs. Sandford, for twenty-five dollars." "That is too much," I said. "You wouldn't say so, if you knew the work it is to set those leaves round," said the mantua-maker. "It takes hours and hours; and the cording and all. And the silk you know, Mrs. Sandford, _that_ costs nowadays. It takes a full yard of the silk, and no washy lining silk, but good stiff dress silk. Some has 'em made of velvet, but to be sure, that would not be suitable for a common stuff like this. It will be very common, Mrs. Sandford, without you have it handsomely trimmed." "Couldn't you put some other sort of trimming?" "Well, there's no other way that looks _distingué_ on this sort of stuff; that's the most stylish. We could put a band of rows of black velvet--an inch wide, or half an inch; if you have it narrower you must put more of them; and then the sleeves and body to match; but I don't think you would like it so well as the green leaves. A great many people has 'em trimmed so; you like it a little out of the common, Mrs. Sandford. Or, you could have a green ribbon." "How much would _that_ be?" said Mrs. Sandford. "Oh really, I don't just know," the woman answered; "depends on the ribbon; it don't make much difference to you, Mrs. Sandford; it would be--let me see, Oh, I suppose we could do it with velvet for you for fifteen or twenty dollars. You see there must be buttons or rosettes at the joinings of the velvets; and those come very expensive." "How much would it be to make the dress plain?" I asked. "_That_ would be plain," the mantua-maker answered quickly. "The style is, to trim everything very much. Oh, that would be quite plain with the velvet." "But without any trimming at all?" I asked. "How much would that be?" I felt an odd sort of shame at pressing the question: yet I knew I must. "Without trimming!" said the woman. "Oh, you could not have it _without trimming_; there is nothing made without trimming; it would have no appearance at all. People would think you had come out of the country. No young ladies have their dresses made without trimming this winter." "Mrs. Sandford," said I, "I should like to know what the dress would be without trimming." "What would it be, Melinda?" The woman was only a forewoman at her establishment. "Oh, well, Mrs. Sandford, the naked dress I have no doubt could be made for you for five dollars." "You would not have it _so_, Daisy, my dear?" said Mrs. Sandford. But I said I would have it so. It cost me a little difficulty, and a little shrinking, I remember, to choose this and to hold to it in the face of the other two. It was the last battle of that campaign. I had my way; but I wondered privately to myself whether I was going to look very unlike the children of other ladies in my mother's position: and whether such severity over myself was really needed. I turned the question over again in my own room, and tried to find out why it troubled me. I could not quite tell. Yet I thought, as I was doing what I knew to be duty, I had no right to feel this trouble about it. The trouble wore off before a little thought of my poor friends at Magnolia. But the question came up again at dinner. "Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "did you ever have anything to do with the Methodists?" "No, ma'am," I said, wondering. "What are the Methodists?" "I don't know, I am sure," she said, laughing, "only they are people who sing hymns a great deal, and teach that nobody ought to wear gay dresses." "Why?" I asked. "I can't say. I believe they hold that the Bible forbids ornamenting ourselves." I wondered if it did; and determined I would look. And I thought the Methodists must be nice people. "What is on the carpet now?" said the doctor. "Singing or dressing? You are attacking Daisy, I see, on some score." "She won't have her dress trimmed," said Mrs. Sandford. The doctor turned round to me, with a wonderful genial pleasant expression of his fine face; and his blue eye, that I always liked to meet full, going through me with a sort of soft power. He was not smiling, yet his look made me smile. "Daisy," said he, "are you going to make yourself unlike other people?" "Only my dress, Dr. Sandford," I said. "L'habit, c'est l'homme!--" he answered gravely, shaking his head. I remembered his question and words many times in the course of the next six months. In a day or two more my dress was done, and Dr. Sandford went with me to introduce me at the school. He had already made the necessary arrangements. It was a large establishment, reckoned the most fashionable, and at the same time one of the most thorough, in the city; the house, or houses, standing in one of the broad clear Avenues, where the streams of human life that went up and down were all of the sort that wore trimmed dresses and rolled about in handsome carriages. Just in the centre and height of the thoroughfare Mme. Ricard's establishment looked over it. We went in at a stately doorway, and were shown into a very elegant parlour; where at a grand piano a young lady was taking a music lesson. The noise was very disagreeable; but that was the only disagreeable thing in the place. Pictures were on the walls, a soft carpet on the floor; the colours of carpet and furniture were dark and rich; books and trinkets and engravings in profusion gave the look of cultivated life and the ease of plenty. It was not what I had expected; nor was Mme. Ricard, who came in noiselessly and stood before us while I was considering the wonderful moustache of the music teacher. I saw a rather short, grave person, very plainly dressed--but indeed I never thought of the dress she wore. The quiet composure of the figure was what attracted me, and the peculiar expression of the face. It was sad, almost severe; so I thought it at first; till a smile once for an instant broke upon the lips, like a flitting sunbeam out of a cloudy sky; then I saw that kindliness was quite at home there, and sympathy and a sense of merriment were not wanting; but the clouds closed again, and the look of care, of sorrow, I could not quite tell what it was, only that it was _unrest_, retook its place on brow and lip. The eye, I think, never lost it. Yet it was a searching and commanding eye; I was sure it knew how to rule. The introduction was soon made, and Dr. Sandford bid me good-bye. I felt as if my best friend was leaving me; the only one I had trusted in since my father and mother had gone away. I said nothing, but perhaps my face showed my thought, for he stooped and kissed me. "Good-bye, Daisy. Remember, I shall expect a letter every fortnight." He had ordered me before to write to him as often as that, and give him a minute account of myself; how many studies I was pursuing, how many hours I gave to them each day, what exercise I took, and what amusement; and how I throve withal. Mme. Ricard had offered to show me my room, and we were mounting the long stairs while I thought this over. "Is Dr. Sandford your cousin, Miss Randolph?" was the question which came in upon my thoughts. "No, ma'am," I answered in extreme surprise. "Is he any relation to you?" "He is my guardian." "I think Dr. Sandford told me that your father and mother are abroad?" "Yes, ma'am; and Dr. Sandford is my guardian." We had climbed two flights of stairs, and I was panting. As we went up, I had noticed a little unusual murmur of noises, which told me I was in a new world. Little indistinguishable noises, the stir and hum of the busy hive into which I had entered. Now and then a door had opened, and a head or a figure came out; but as instantly went back again on seeing Madame, and the door was softly closed. We reached the third floor. There a young lady appeared at the further end of the gallery, and curtseyed to my conductress. "Miss Bentley," said Madame, "this is your new companion, Miss Randolph. Will you be so good as to show Miss Randolph her room?" Madame turned and left us, and the young lady led me into the room she had just quitted. A large room, light and bright, and pleasantly furnished; but the one thing that struck my unaccustomed eyes was the evidence of fulness of occupation. One bed stood opposite the fireplace; another across the head of that, between it and one of the windows; a third was between the doors on the inner side of the room. Moreover, the first and the last of these were furnished with two pillows each. I did not in the moment use my arithmetic; but the feeling which instantly pressed upon me was that of want of breath. "This is the bed prepared for you, I believe," said my companion civilly, pointing to the third one before the window. "There isn't room for anybody to turn round here now." I began mechanically to take off my cap and gloves, looking hard at the little bed, and wondering what other rights of possession were to be given me in this place. I saw a washstand in one window and a large mahogany wardrobe on one side of the fireplace; a dressing table or chest of drawers between the windows. Everything was handsome and nice; everything was in the neatest order; but--where were my clothes to go? Before I had made up my mind to ask, there came a rush into the room; I supposed, of the other inmates. One was a very large, fat, dull-faced girl; I should have thought her a young woman, only that she was here in a school. Another, bright and pretty, and very good-humoured if there was any truth in her smiling black eyes, was much slighter and somewhat younger; a year or two in advance of myself. The third was a girl about my own age, shorter and smaller than I, with also a pretty face, but an eye that I was not so sure of. She was the last one to come in, and she immediately stopped and looked at me; I thought, with no pleasure. "This is Miss Randolph, girls," said Miss Bentley. "Miss Randolph, Miss Macy." I curtseyed to the fat girl, who gave me a little nod. "I am glad she isn't as big as I am," was her comment on the introduction. I was glad, too. "Miss Lansing--" This was bright-eyes, who bowed and smiled--she always smiled--and said, "How do you do?" Then rushed off to a drawer in search of something. "Miss St. Clair, will you come and be introduced to Miss Randolph?" The St. Clair walked up demurely and took my hand. Her words were in abrupt contrast. "Where are her things going, Miss Bentley?" I wondered that pretty lips could be so ungracious. It was not temper which appeared on them, but cool rudeness. "Madame said we must make some room for her," Miss Bentley answered. "I don't know where," remarked Miss Macy. "_I_ have not two inches." "She can't have a peg nor a drawer of mine," said the St. Clair. "Don't you put her there, Bentley." And the young lady left us with that. "We must manage it somehow," said Miss Bentley. "Lansing, look here, can't you take your things out of this drawer? Miss Randolph has no place to lay anything. She _must_ have a little place, you know." Lansing looked up with a perplexed face, and Miss Macy remarked that nobody had a bit of room to lay anything. "I am very sorry," I said. "It is no use being sorry, child," said Miss Macy; "we have got to fix it, somehow. I know who _ought_ to be sorry. Here--I can take this pile of things out of this drawer; that is all _I_ can do. Can't she manage with this half?" But Miss Lansing came and made her arrangements, and then it was found that the smallest of the four drawers was cleared and ready for my occupation. "But if we give you a whole drawer," said Miss Macy, "you must be content with one peg in the wardrobe--will you?" "Oh, and she can have one or two hooks in the closet," said bright-eyes. "Come here, Miss Randolph, I will show you." And there in the closet I found was another place for washing, with cocks for hot and cold water; and a press and plenty of iron hooks; with dresses and hats hanging on them. Miss Lansing moved and changed several of these, till she had cleared a space for me. "There," she said, "now you'll do, won't you? I don't believe you can get a scrape of a corner in the wardrobe; Macy and Bentley and St. Clair take it up so. _I_ haven't but one dress hanging there, but you've got a whole drawer in the bureau." I was not very awkward and clumsy in my belongings, but an elephant could scarcely have been more bewildered if he had been requested to lay his proboscis up in a glove box. "I cannot put a dress in the drawer," I remarked. "Oh, you can hang one up here under your cap; and that is all any of us do. Our things, all except our everyday things, go down stairs in our trunks. Have you many trunks?" I told her no, only one. I did not know why it was a little disagreeable to me to say that. The feeling came and passed. I hung up my coat and cap, and brushed my hair; my new companion looking on. Without any remark, however, she presently rushed off, and I was left alone. I began to appreciate that. I sat down on the side of my little bed; to my fancy the very chairs were appropriated; and looked at my new place in the world. Five of us in that room! I had always had the comfort of great space and ample conveniences about me; was it a _luxury_ I had enjoyed? It had seemed nothing more than a necessity. And now must I dress and undress myself before so many spectators? could I not lock up anything that belonged to me? were all my nice and particular habits to be crushed into one drawer and smothered on one or two clothes-pins? Must everything I did be seen? And, above all, where could I pray? I looked round in a sort of fright. There was but one closet in the room, and that was a washing closet, and held besides a great quantity of other people's belongings. I could not, even for a moment, shut it against them. In a kind of terror, I looked to make sure that I was alone, and fell on my knees. It seemed to me that all I could do was to pray every minute that I should have to myself. They would surely be none too many. Then, hearing a footstep somewhere, I rose again and took from my bag my dear little book. It was so small I could carry it where I had not room for my Bible. I looked for the page of the day, I remember now, with my eyes full of tears. "Be watchful," were the first words that met me. Aye, I was sure I would need it; but how was a watch to be kept up, if I could never be alone to take counsel with myself? I did not see it; this was another matter from Miss Pinshon's unlocked door. After all, that unlocked door had not greatly troubled me; my room had not been of late often invaded. Now I had no room. What more would my dear little book say to me? "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." Was the battle to go so hard against me? and what should I do without that old and well-tried weapon of "all-prayer?" Nothing; I should be conquered. I must have and keep that, I resolved; if I lay awake and got up at night to use it. Dr. Sandford would not like such a proceeding; but there were worse dangers than the danger of lessened health. I _would_ pray; but what next? "Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently."--"What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch." I stood by the side of my bed, dashing the tears from my eyes. Then I heard, as I thought, some one coming, and in haste looked to see what else might be on the page: what further message or warning. And something like a sunbeam of healing flashed into my heart with the next words. "Fear thou not: for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." "I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand." I was healed. I put up my little book in my bag again, feeling whole and sound. It did not matter that I was crowded and hindered and watched; for it was written also, "He preserveth the way of his saints;" and I was safe. I sat a little while longer alone. Then came a rush and rustle of many feet upon the stairs, many dresses moving, many voices blending in a soft little roar; as ominous as the roar of the sea which one hears in a shell. My four room-mates poured into the room, accompanied by two others; very busy and eager about their affairs that they were discussing. Meanwhile they all began to put themselves in order. "The bell will ring for tea directly," said Miss Macy, addressing herself to me; "are you ready?" "'Tisn't much trouble to fix _her_ hair," said my friend with the black eyes. Six pair of eyes for a moment were turned upon me. "You are too old to have your hair so," remarked Miss Bentley. "You ought to let it grow." "Why don't you?" said Miss Lansing. "She is a Roundhead," said the St. Clair, brushing her own curls; which were beautiful and crinkled all over her head, while my hair was straight. "I don't suppose she ever saw a Cavalier before." "St. Clair, you are too bad!" said Miss Macy. "Miss Randolph is a stranger." St. Clair made no answer, but finished her hair and ran off; and presently the others filed off after her; and a loud clanging bell giving the signal, I thought best to go too. Every room was pouring forth its inmates; the halls and passages were all alive and astir. In the train of the moving crowd, I had no difficulty to find my way to the place of gathering. This was the school parlour; not the one where I had seen Mme. Ricard. Parlours, rather; there was a suite of them, three deep; for this part of the house had a building added in the rear. The rooms were large and handsome; not like school rooms, I thought; and yet very different from my home; for they were bare. Carpets and curtains, sofas and chairs and tables were in them, to be sure; and even pictures; yet they were bare; for books and matters of art and little social luxuries were wanting, such as I had all my life been accustomed to, and such as filled Mme. Ricard's own rooms. However, this first evening I could hardly see how the rooms looked, for the lining of humanity which ran round all the walls. There was a shimmer as of every colour in the rainbow; and a buzz that could only come from a hive full. I, who had lived all my life where people spoke softly, and where many never spoke together, was bewildered. The buzz hushed suddenly, and I saw Mme. Ricard's figure going slowly down the rooms. She was in the uttermost contrast to all her household. Ladylike always, and always dignified, her style was her own, and I am sure that nobody ever felt that she had not enough. Yet Mme. Ricard had nothing about her that was conformed to the fashions of the day. Her dress was of a soft kind of serge, which fell around her or swept across the rooms in noiseless yielding folds. Hoops were the fashion of the day; but Mme. Ricard wore no hoops; she went with ease and silence where others went with a rustle and a warning to clear the way. The back of her head was covered with a little cap as plain as a nun's cap; and I never saw an ornament about her. Yet criticism never touched Mme. Ricard. Not even the criticism of a set of school-girls; and I had soon to learn that there is none more relentless. The tea-table was set in the further room of the three. Mme. Ricard passed down to that. Presently I heard her low voice saying, "Miss Randolph." Low as it always was, it was always heard. I made my way down through the rooms to her presence; and there I was introduced to the various teachers. Mademoiselle Géneviève, Miss Babbitt, Mme. Jupon, and Miss Dumps. I could not examine them just then. I felt I was on exhibition myself. "Is Miss Randolph to come to me, Madame?" the first of these ladies asked. She was young, bright, black-eyed, and full of energy; I saw so much. "I fancy she will come to all of you," said Madame. "Except Miss Babbitt. You can write and read, I dare say, Miss Randolph?" she went on with a smile. I answered of course. "What have been your principal studies for the past year?" I said mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy and history. "Then she is mine!" exclaimed Mlle. Géneviève. "She is older than she looks," said Miss Babbitt. "Her hair is young, but her eyes are not," said the former speaker, who was a lively lady. "French have you studied?" Madame went on. "Not so much," I said. "Mme. Jupon will want you." "I am sure she is a good child," said Mme. Jupon, who was a good-natured, plain-looking Frenchwoman, without a particle of a Frenchwoman's grace or address. "I will be charmed to have her." "You may go back to your place, Miss Randolph," said my mistress. "We will arrange all the rest to-morrow." "Shall I go back with you?" asked Mlle. Géneviève. "Do you mind going alone?" She spoke very kindly, but I was at a loss for her meaning. I saw the kindness; why it showed itself in such an offer I could not imagine. "I am very much obliged to you, ma'am," I began, when a little burst of laughter stopped me. It came from all the teachers; even Mme. Ricard was smiling. "You are out for once, Géneviève," she said. "La charmante!" said Mme. Jupon. "Voyez l'a plomb!" "No, you don't want me," said Mlle. Géneviève, nodding. "Go--you'll do." I went back to the upper room and presently tea was served. I sat alone; there was nobody near me who knew me; I had nothing to do while munching my bread and butter but to examine the new scene. There was a great deal to move my curiosity. In the first place, I was surprised to see the rooms gay with fine dresses. I had come from the quiet of Magnolia, and accustomed to the simplicity of my mother's taste; which if it sometimes adorned me, did it always in subdued fashion, and never flaunted either its wealth or beauty. But on every side of me I beheld startling costumes; dresses that explained my mantua-maker's eagerness about velvet and green leaves. I saw that she was right; her trimmings would have been "quiet" here. Opposite me was a brown merino, bordered with blocks of blue silk running round the skirt. Near it was a dress of brilliant red picked out with black cord and heavy with large black buttons. Then a black dress caught my eye which had an embattled trimming of black and gold, continued round the waist and completed with a large gold buckle. Then there was a grey cashmere with red stars; and a bronze-coloured silk with black velvet a quarter of a yard wide let into the skirt; the body all of black velvet. I could go on if my memory would serve me. The rooms were full of this sort of thing. Yet more than the dresses the heads surprised me. Just at that time the style of hair dressing was one of those styles which are endurable, and perhaps even very beautiful, in the hands of a first-rate artist and on the heads of those very few women who dress well; but which are more and more hideous the farther you get from that distant pinnacle of the mode, and the lower down they spread among the ranks of society. I thought, as I looked from one to another, I had never seen anything so ill in taste, so outraged in style, so unspeakable in ugliness as well as in pretension. I supposed then it was the fashion principally which was to blame. Since then, I have seen the same fashion on one of those heads that never wear anything but in good style. It gathered a great wealth of rich hair into a mass at the back of the head, yet leaving the top and front of the hair in soft waves; and the bound up mass behind was loose and soft and flowed naturally from the head, it had no hard outline nor regular shape; it was nature's luxuriance just held in there from bursting down over neck and shoulders; and hardly that, for some locks were almost escaping. The whole was to the utmost simple, natural, graceful, rich. But these caricatures! All that they knew was to mass the hair at the back of the head; and that fact was attained. But some looked as if they had a hard round cannon-ball fastened there; others suggested a stuffed pincushion, ready for pins; others had a mortar-shell in place of a cannon-ball, the size was so enormous; in nearly all, the hair was strained tight over or under something; in not one was there an effect which the originator of the fashion would not have abhorred. Girlish grace was nowhere to be seen, either in heads or persons; girlish simplicity had no place. It was a school: but the company looked fitter for the stiff assemblages of ceremony that should be twenty years later in their lives. My heart grew very blank. I felt unspeakably alone; not merely because there was nobody there whom I knew, but because there was nobody whom it seemed to me I ever should know. I took my tea and bits of bread and butter, feeling forlorn. A year in that place seemed to me longer than I could bear. I had exchanged my King Log for King Stork. It was some relief when after tea we were separated into other rooms and sat down to study. But I dreamed over my book. I wondered how heads could study that had so much trouble on the outside. I wandered over the seas to that spot somewhere that was marked by the ship that carried my father and mother. Only now going out towards China; and how long months might pass before China would be done with and the ship be bearing them back again. The lesson given me that night was not difficult enough to bind my attention; and my heart grew very heavy. So heavy, that I felt I _must_ find help somewhere. And when one's need is so shut in, then it looks in the right quarter--the only one left open. My little book was upstairs in my bag: but my thoughts flew to my page of that day and the "Fear thou not, for I am with thee." Nobody knows, who has not wanted them, how good those words are. Nobody else can understand how sweet they were to me. I lost for a little all sight of the study table and the faces round it. I just remembered who was WITH ME; in the freedom and joy of that presence both fears and loneliness seemed to fade away. "I, the Lord, will hold thy right hand." Yes, and I, a weak little child, put my hand in the hand of my great Leader, and felt safe and strong. I found very soon I had enemies to meet that I had not yet reckoned with. The night passed peacefully enough; and the next day I was put in the schoolroom and found my place in the various classes. The schoolrooms were large and pleasant; large they had need to be, for the number of day scholars who attended in them was very great. They were many as well as spacious; different ages being parted off from each other. Besides the schoolrooms proper, there were rooms for recitation, where the classes met their teachers; so we had the change and variety of moving from one part of the house to another. We met Mlle. Géneviève in one room, for mathematics and Italian; Mme. Jupon in another, for French. Miss Dumps seized us in another, for writing and geography, and made the most of us; she was a severe little person in her teaching and in her discipline; but she was good. We called her Miss Maria, in general. Miss Babbitt had the history; and she did nothing to make it intelligible or interesting. My best historical times thus far, by much, had been over my clay map and my red and black headed pins, studying the changes of England and her people. But Mlle. Géneviève put a new life into mathematics. I could never love the study; but she made it a great deal better than Miss Pinshon made it. Indeed, I believe that to learn anything under Mlle. Géneviève would have been pleasant. She had so much fire and energy; she taught with such a will; her black eyes were so keen both for her pupils and her subject. One never thought of the discipline in Mlle. Géneviève's room, but only of the study. I was young to be there, in the class where she put me; but my training had fitted me for it. With Mme. Jupon also I had an easy time. She was good-nature itself, and from the first showed a particular favour and liking for me. And as I had no sort of wish to break rules, with Miss Maria too I got on well. It was out of school and out of study hours that my difficulties came upon me. For a day or two I did not meet them. I was busy with the school routine, and beginning already to take pleasure in it. Knowledge was to be had here; lay waiting to be gathered up; and that gathering I always enjoyed. Miss Pinshon had kept me on short allowance. It was the third or fourth day after my arrival, that going up after dinner to get ready for a walk I missed my chinchilla cap from its peg. I sought for it in vain. "Come, Daisy," said Miss Lansing, "make haste. Babbitt will be after you directly if you aren't ready. Put on your cap." "I can't find it," I said. "I left it here, in its place, but I can't find it." There was a burst of laughter from three of my room-mates, as Miss St. Clair danced out from the closet with the cap on her own brows; and then with a caper of agility, taking it off, flung it up to the chandelier, where it hung on one of the burners. "For shame, Faustina, that's too bad. How can she get it?" said Miss Bentley. "I don't want her to get it," said the St. Clair coolly. "Then how can she go to walk?" "I don't want her to go to walk." "Faustina, that isn't right. Miss Randolph is a stranger; you shouldn't play tricks on her." "Roundheads were always revolutionists," said the girl recklessly. "_A la lanterne!_ Heads or hats--it don't signify which. That is an example of what our Madame calls 'symbolism.'" "Hush--sh! Madame would call it something else. Now how are we going to get the cap down?" For the lamp hung high, having been pushed up out of reach for the day. The St. Clair ran off, and Miss Macy followed; but the two others consulted, and Lansing ran down to waylay the chambermaid and beg a broom. By the help of the broom handle my cap was at length dislodged from its perch, and restored to me. But I was angry. I felt the fiery current running through my veins; and the unspeakable saucy glance of St. Clair's eye, as I passed her to take my place in the procession, threw fuel on the fire. I think for years I had not been angry in such a fashion. The indignation I had at different times felt against the overseer at Magnolia was a justifiable thing. Now I was angry and piqued. The feeling was new to me. I had been without it very long. I swallowed the ground with my feet during my walk; but before the walk came to an end the question began to come up in my mind, what was the matter? and whether I did well? These sprinklings of water on the flame I think made it leap into new life at first; but as they came and came again, I had more to think about than St. Clair when I got back to the house. Yes, and as we were all taking off our things together I was conscious that I shunned her; that the sight of her was disagreeable; and that I would have liked to visit some gentle punishment upon her careless head. The bustle of business swallowed up the feeling for the rest of the time till we went to bed. But then it rose very fresh, and I began to question myself about it in the silence and darkness. Finding myself inclined to justify myself, I bethought me to try this new feeling by some of the words I had been studying in my little book for a few days past. "The entrance of thy words giveth light"--was the leading text for the day that had just gone; now I thought I would try it in my difficulty. The very next words on the page I remembered were these--"God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." It came into my mind as soon, that this feeling of anger and resentment which troubled me had to do with darkness, not with the light. In vain I reasoned to prove the contrary; I _felt_ dark. I could not look up to that clear white light where God dwells, and feel at all that I was "walking in the light as he is in the light." Clearly Daisy Randolph was out of the way. And I went on with bitterness of heart to the next words--"Ye _were_ sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord; walk as children of light." And what then? was I to pass by quietly the insolence of St. Clair? was I to take it quite quietly, and give no sign even of annoyance? take no means of showing my displeasure, or of putting a stop to the naughtiness that called it forth? My mind put these questions impatiently, and still, as it did so, an answer came from somewhere,--"Walk as children of light." I _knew_ that children of light would reprove darkness only with light; and a struggle began. Other words came into my head then, which made the matter only clearer. "If any man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other." "Love your enemies." Ah, but how could I? with what should I put out this fire kindled in my heart, which seemed only to burn the fiercer whatever I threw upon it? And then other words came still sweeping upon me with their sweetness, and I remembered who had said, "I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee." I softly got out of bed, wrapped the coverlid round me, and knelt down to pray. For I had no time to lose. To-morrow I must meet my little companion, and to-morrow I _must_ be ready to walk as a child of light, and to-night the fires of darkness were burning in my heart. I was long on my knees. I remember, in a kind of despair at last I flung myself on the word of Jesus, and cried to Him as Peter did when he saw the wind boisterous. I remember how the fire died out in my heart, till the very coals were dead; and how the day and the sunlight came stealing in, till it was all sunshine. I gave my thanks, and got into bed, and slept without a break the rest of the night. CHAPTER XI. A PLACE IN THE WORLD. I was an humbler child when I got out of bed the next morning, I think, than ever I had been in my life before. But I had another lesson to learn. I was not angry any more at Miss St. Clair. That was gone. Even when she did one or two other mischievous things to me, the rising feeling of offence was quickly got under; and I lived in great charity with her. My new lesson was of another sort. Two or three days passed, and then came Sunday. It was never a comfortable day at Mme. Ricard's. We all went to church of course, under the care of one or other of the teachers; and we had our choice where to go. Miss Babbitt went to a Presbyterian church. Miss Maria to a high Episcopal. Mme. Jupon attended a little French Protestant chapel; and Mlle. Géneviève and Mme. Ricard went to the Catholic church. The first Sunday I had gone with them, not knowing at all whither. I found that would not do; and since then I had tried the other parties. But I was in a strait; for Miss Maria's church seemed to me a faded image of Mlle. Géneviève's; the Presbyterian church which Miss Babbitt went to was stiff and dull; I was not at home in either of them, and could not understand or enjoy what was spoken. The very music had an air of incipient petrification, if I can speak so about sounds. At the little French chapel I could as little comprehend the words that were uttered. But in the pulpit there was a man with a shining face; a face full of love and truth and earnestness. He spoke out of his heart, and no set words; and the singing was simple and sweet and the hymns beautiful. I could understand them, for I had the hymn-book in my hands. Also I had the French Bible, and Mme. Jupon, delighted to have me with her, assured me that if I listened I would very soon begin to understand the minister's preaching just as well as if it were English. So I went with Mme. Jupon, and thereby lost some part of Mlle. Géneviève's favour; but that I did not understand till afterwards. We had all been to church as usual, this Sunday, and we were taking off our hats and things upstairs, after the second service. My simple toilet was soon made; and I sat upon the side of my little bed, watching those of my companions. They were a contrast to mine. The utmost that money could do, to bring girls into the fashion, was done for these girls; for the patrons of Mme. Ricard's establishment were nearly all rich. Costly coats and cloaks, heavily trimmed, were surmounted with every variety of showy head-gear, in every variety of unsuitableness. To study bad taste, one would want no better field than the heads of Mme. Ricard's seventy boarders dressed for church. Not that the articles which were worn on the heads were always bad; some of them came from irreproachable workshops; but there was everywhere the bad taste of overdressing, and nowhere the tact of appropriation. The hats were all on the wrong heads. Everybody was a testimony of what money can do without art. I sat on my little bed, vaguely speculating on all this as I watched my companions disrobing; at intervals humming the sweet French melody to which the last hymn had been sung; when St. Clair paused in her talk and threw a glance in my direction. It lighted on my plain plaid frock and undressed hair. "Don't you come from the country, Miss Randolph?" she said, insolently enough. I answered yes. And I remembered what my mantua-maker had said. "Did you have that dress made there?" "For shame, St. Clair!" said Miss Bentley; "let Miss Randolph alone. I am sure her dress is very neat." "I wonder if women don't wear long hair where she came from?" said the girl, turning away from me again. The others laughed. I was as little pleased at that moment with the defence as with the attack. The instant thought in my mind was, that Miss Bentley knew no more how to conduct the one than Miss St. Clair to make the other; if the latter had no civility, the first had no style. Now the St. Clair was one of the best dressed girls in school and came from one of the most important families. I thought, if she knew where I came from, and who my mother was, she would change her tone. Nevertheless, I wished mamma would order me to let my hair grow, and I began to think whether I might not do it without order. And I thought also that the spring was advancing, and warm weather would soon be upon us; and that these girls would change their talk and their opinion about me when they saw my summer frocks. There was nothing like _them_ in all the school. I ran over in my mind their various elegance, of texture and lace, and fine embroidery, and graceful, simple drapery. And also I thought, if these girls could see Magnolia, its magnificent oaks, and its acres of timber, and its sweeps of rich fields, and its troops of servants, their minds would be enlightened as to me and my belongings. These meditations were a mixture of comfort and discomfort to me; but on the whole I was not comfortable. This process of comparing myself with my neighbours, I was not accustomed to; and even though its results were so favourable, I did not like it. Neither did I quite relish living under a cloud; and my eyes being a little sharpened now, I could see that not by my young companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went out of doors just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by degrees more room in them. It was not till the Sunday came round again, that I got any more light. The afternoon service was over; we had come home and laid off our bonnets and cloaks; for though we were in April it was cold and windy; and my schoolfellows had all gone downstairs to the parlour, where they had the privilege of doing what they pleased before tea. I was left alone. It was almost my only time for being alone in the whole week. I had an hour then; and I used to spend it in my bedroom with my Bible. To-day I was reading the first epistle of John, which I was very fond of; and as my custom was, not reading merely, but pondering and praying over the words verse by verse. So I found that I understood them better and enjoyed them a great deal more. I came to these words,-- "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not." I had dwelt sometime upon the first part of the verse, forgetting all my discomforts of the week past; and came in due course to the next words. I never shall forget how they swept in upon. "_The world knoweth us not._"--What did that mean? "Because it knew him not." How did it not know Him; He was in the midst of men; He lived no hidden life; the world knew Him well enough as a benefactor, a teacher, a reprover; in what sense did it _not_ know Him? And I remembered, it did not know Him as one of its own party. He was "this fellow,"--and "the deceiver;"--"the Nazarene;" "they called the master of the house Beelzebub." And so the world knoweth _us_ not; and I knew well enough why; because we must be like Him. And then, I found an unwillingness in myself to have these words true of me. I had been very satisfied under the slighting tones and looks of the little world around me, thinking that they were mistaken and would by and by know it; they would know that in all that they held so dear, of grace and fashion and elegance and distinguished appearance, my mother, and of course I, were not only their match but above them. Now, must I be content to have them never know it? But, I thought, I could not help their seeing the fact; if I dressed as my mother's child was accustomed to dress, they would know what sphere of life I belonged to. And then the words bore down upon me again, with their uncompromising distinctness,--"_the world knoweth us not_." I saw it was a mark and character of those that belonged to Christ. I saw that, if I belonged to Him, the world must not know me. The conclusion was very plain. And to secure the conclusion, the way was very plain too; I must simply not be like the world. I must not be of the world; and I must let it be known that I was not. Face to face with the issue, I started back. For not to be of the world, meant, not to follow their ways. I did not want to follow some of their ways; I had no desire to break the Sabbath, for example; but I did like to wear pretty and elegant and expensive things, and fashionable things. It is very true, I had just denied myself this pleasure, and bought a plain dress and coat that did not charm me; but that was in favour of Margaret and to save money for her. And I had no objection to do the same thing again and again, for the same motive; and to deny myself to the end of the chapter, so long as others were in need. But that was another matter from shaking hands with the world at once, and being willing that for all my life it should never know me as one of those whom it honoured. Never _know_ me, in fact. I must be something out of the world's consciousness, and of no importance to it. And to begin with, I must never try to enlighten my schoolfellows' eyes about myself. Let them think that Daisy Randolph came from somewhere in the country and was accustomed to wear no better dresses in ordinary than her school plaid. Let them never be aware that I had ponies and servants and lands and treasures. Nay, the force of the words I had read went farther than that. I felt it, down in my heart. Not only I must take no measures to proclaim my title to the world's regard; but I must be such and so unlike it in my whole way of life, dress and all, that the world would not wish to recognize me, nor have anything to do with me. I counted the cost now, and it seemed heavy. There was Miss Bentley, with her clumsy finery, put on as it were one dollar above the other. She patronized me, as a little country-girl who knew nothing. Must I not undeceive her? There was Faustina St. Clair, really of a good family, and insolent on the strength of it; must I never let her know that mine was as good and that my mother had as much knowledge of the proprieties and elegances of life as ever hers had? These girls and plenty of the others looked down upon me as something inferior; not belonging to their part of society; must I be content henceforth to live so simply that these and others who judge by the outside would never be any wiser as to what I really was? Something in me rebelled. Yet the words I had been reading were final and absolute. "The world knoweth us _not_;" and "us," I knew meant the little band in whose hearts Christ is king. Surely I was one of them. But I was unwilling to slip out of the world's view and be seen by it no more. I struggled. It was something very new in my experience. I had certainly felt struggles of duty in other times, but they had never lasted long. This lasted. With an eye made keen by conscience, I looked now in my reading to see what else I might find that would throw light on the matter and perhaps soften off the uncompromising decision of the words of St John. By and by I came to these words-- "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own. But because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, _therefore the world hateth you_." I shut the book. The issue could not be more plainly set forth. I must choose between the one party and the other. Nay, I had chosen;--but I must agree to belong but to one. Would anybody say that a child could not have such a struggle? that fourteen years do not know yet what "the world" means? Alas, it is a relative term; and a child's "world" may be as mighty for her to face, as any other she will ever know. I think I never found any more formidable. Moreover, it is less unlike the big world than some would suppose. On the corner of the street, just opposite to our windows, stood a large handsome house which we always noticed for its flowers. The house stood in a little green courtyard exquisitely kept, which at one side and behind gave room for several patches of flower beds, at this time filled with bulbous plants. I always lingered as much as I could in passing the iron railings, to have a peep at the beauty within. The grass was now of a delicious green, and the tulips and hyacinths and crocuses were in full bloom, in their different oval-shaped beds, framed in with the green. Besides these, from the windows of a greenhouse that stretched back along the street, there looked over a brilliant array of other beauty; I could not tell what; great bunches of scarlet and tufts of white and gleamings of yellow, that made me long to be there. "Who lives in that house?" Miss Bentley asked one evening. It was the hour before tea, and we were all at our room windows gazing down into the avenue. "Why, don't you know?" said slow Miss Macy. "That's Miss Cardigan's house." "I wonder who she is?" said Miss Lansing. "It isn't a New York name." "Yes, it is," said Macy. "She's lived there for ever. She used to be there, and her flowers, when I was four years old." "I guess she isn't anybody, is she?" said Miss Bentley. "I never see any carriages at the door. Hasn't she a carriage of her own, I wonder, or how does she travel? Such a house ought to have a carriage." "I'll tell you," said the St. Clair, coolly as usual. "She goes out in a wagon with an awning to it. _She_ don't know anything about carriages." "But she must have money, you know," urged Miss Bentley. "She couldn't keep up that house, and the flowers, and the greenhouse and all, without money." "She's got money," said the St. Clair. "Her mother made it selling cabbages in the market. Very likely she sold flowers too." There was a general exclamation and laughter at what was supposed to be one of St. Clair's flights of mischief; but the young lady stood her ground calmly, and insisted that it was a thing well known. "My grandmother used to buy vegetables from old Mrs. Cardigan when we lived in Broadway," she said. "It's quite true. That's why she knows nothing about carriages." "That sort of thing don't hinder other people from having carriages," said Miss Lansing. "There's Mr. Mason, next door to Miss Cardigan,--his father was a tailor; and the Steppes, two doors off, do you know what they were? They were millers, a little way out of town; nothing else; had a mill and ground flour. They made a fortune I suppose, and now here they are in the midst of other people." "Plenty of carriages, too," said Miss Macy; "and everything else." "After all," said Miss Bentley, after a pause, "I suppose everybody's money had to be made somehow, in the first instance. I suppose all the Millers in the world came from real millers once; and the Wheelrights from wheelwrights." "And what a world of smiths there must have been first and last," said Miss Lansing. "The world is full of their descendants." "_Everybody's_ money wasn't made, though," said the St. Clair, with an inexpressible attitude of her short upper lip. "I guess it was,--if you go back far enough," said Miss Macy, whom nothing disturbed. But I saw that while Miss Lansing and Miss St. Clair were at ease in the foregoing conversation, Miss Bentley was not. "You _can't_ go back far enough," said the St. Clair, haughtily. "How then?" said the other. "How do you account for it? Where did their money come from?" "It grew," said the St. Clair ineffably. "They were lords of the soil." "Oh!--But it had to be dug out, I suppose?" said Miss Macy. "There were others to do that." "After all," said Miss Macy, "how is money that grew any better than money that is made? it is all made by somebody, too." "If it is made by somebody else, it leaves your hands clean," the St. Clair answered, with an insolence worthy of maturer years; for Miss Macy's family had grown rich by trade. She was of a slow temper however and did not take fire. "My grandfather's hands were clean," she said; "yet he made his own money. Honest hands always are clean." "Do you suppose Miss Cardigan's were when she was handling her cabbages?" said St Clair. "I have no doubt Miss Cardigan's house smells of cabbages now." "O St. Clair!" Miss Lansing said, laughing. "I always smell them when I go past," said the other, elevating her scornful little nose; it was a handsome nose too. "I don't think it makes any difference," said Miss Bentley, "provided people _have_ money, how they came by it. Money buys the same thing for one that it does for another." "Now, my good Bentley, that is just what it _don't_," said St. Clair, drumming up the window-pane with the tips of her fingers. "Why not?" "Because!--people that have always had money know how to use it; and people who have just come into their money _don't_ know. You can tell the one from the other as far off as the head of the avenue." "But what is to hinder their going to the same milliner and mantua-maker, for instance, or the same cabinet-maker,--and buying the same things?" "Or the same jeweller, or the same--anything? So they could if they knew which they were." "Which _what_ were? It is easy to tell which is a fashionable milliner, or mantua-maker; everybody knows that." "It don't do some people any good," said St. Clair, turning away. "When they get in the shop they do not know what to buy; and if they buy it they can't put it on. People that are not fashionable can't _be_ fashionable." I saw the glance that fell, scarcely touching, on my plain plaid frock. I was silly enough to feel it too. I was unused to scorn. St. Clair returned to the window, perhaps sensible that she had gone a little too far. "I can tell you now," she said, "what that old Miss Cardigan has got in her house--just as well as if I saw it." "Did you ever go in?" said Lansing eagerly. "We don't visit," said the other. "But I can tell you just as well; and you can send Daisy Randolph some day to see if it is true." "Well, go on, St. Clair--what is there?" said Miss Macy. "There's a marble hall, of course; that the mason built; it isn't her fault. Then in the parlours there are thick carpets, that cost a great deal of money and are as ugly as they can be, with every colour in the world. The furniture is red satin, or may be blue, staring bright, against a light green wall panelled with gold. The ceilings are gold and white, with enormous chandeliers. On the wall there are some very big picture frames, with nothing in them--to speak of; there is a table in the middle of the floor with a marble top, and the piers are filled with mirrors down to the floor: and the second room is like the first and the third is like the second, and there is nothing else in any of the rooms but what I have told you." "Well, it is a very handsome house, I should think, if you have told true," said Miss Bentley. St. Clair left the window with a scarce perceptible but most wicked smile at her friend Miss Lansing; and the group scattered. Only I remained to think it over and ask myself, could I let go my vantage ground? could I make up my mind to do for ever without the smile and regard of that portion of the world which little St. Clair represented? It is powerful even in a school! I had seen how carelessly this undoubted child of birth and fashion wielded the lash of her tongue; and how others bowed before it. I had seen Miss Bentley wince, and Miss Macy bite her lip; but neither of them dared affront the daughter of Mrs. St. Clair. Miss Lansing was herself of the favoured class, and had listened lightly. Fashion was power, that was plain. Was I willing to forego it? Was I willing to be one of those whom fashion passes by as St. Clair had glanced on my dress--as something not worthy a thought. I was not happy, those days. Something within me was struggling for self assertion. It was new to me; for until then I had never needed to assert my claims to anything. For the first time, I was looked down upon, and I did not like it. I do not quite know why I was made to know this so well. My dress, if not showy or costly, was certainly without blame in its neatness and niceness, and perfectly becoming my place as a schoolgirl. And I had very little to do at that time with my schoolmates, and that little was entirely friendly in its character. I am obliged to think, looking back at it now, that some rivalry was at work. I did not then understand it. But I was taking a high place in all my classes. I had gone past St. Clair in two or three things. Miss Lansing was too far behind in her studies to feel any jealousy on that account; but besides that, I was an unmistakable favourite with all the teachers. They liked to have me do anything for them or with them; if any privilege was to be given, I was sure to be one of the first names called to share it; if I was spoken to for anything, the manner and tone were in contrast with those used towards almost all my fellows. It may have been partly for these reasons that there was a little positive element in the slight which I felt. The effect of the whole was to make a long struggle in my mind. "The world knoweth us not"--gave the character and condition of that party to which I belonged. I was feeling now what those words mean,--and it was not pleasant. This struggle had been going on for several weeks, and growing more and more wearying, when Mrs. Sandford came one day to see me. She said I did not look very well, and obtained leave for me to take a walk with her. I was glad of the change. It was a pleasant bright afternoon; we strolled up the long avenue, then gay and crowded with passers to and fro in every variety and in the height of the mode; for our avenue was a favourite and very fashionable promenade. The gay world nodded and bowed to each other; the sun streamed on satins and laces, flowers and embroidery; elegant toilets passed and repassed each other, with smiling recognition; the street was a show. I walked by Mrs. Sandford's side in my chinchilla cap, for I had not got a straw hat yet, though it was time; thinking--"The world knoweth us not"--and carrying on the struggle in my heart all the while. By and by we turned to come down the avenue. "I want to stop a moment here on some business," said Mrs. Sandford, as we came to Miss Cardigan's corner; "would you like to go in with me, Daisy?" I was pleased, and moreover glad that it was the hour for my companions to be out walking. I did not wish to be seen going in at that house and to have all the questions poured on me that would be sure to come. Moreover, I was curious to see how far Miss St. Clair's judgment would be verified. The marble hall was undoubted; it was large and square, with a handsome staircase going up from it; but the parlour, into which we were ushered the next minute, crossed all my expectations. It was furnished with dark chintz; no satin, red or blue, was anywhere to be seen; even the curtains were chintz. The carpet was not rich; the engravings on the walls were in wooden frames varnished; the long mirror between the windows, for that was there, reflected a very simple mahogany table, on which lay a large work basket, some rolls of muslin and flannel, work cut and uncut, shears and spools of cotton. Another smaller table held books and papers and writing materials. This was shoved up to the corner of the hearth, where a fire--a real, actual fire of sticks--was softly burning. The room was full of the sweet smell of the burning wood. Between the two tables, in a comfortable large chair, sat the lady we had come to see. My heart warmed at the look of her immediately. Such a face of genial gentle benevolence; such a healthy sweet colour in the old cheeks; such a hearty, kind, and withal shrewd and sound, expression of eye and lip. She was stout and dumpy in figure, rather fat; with a little plain cap on her head and a shawl pinned round her shoulders. Somebody who had never been known to the world of fashion. But oh, how homely and comfortable she and her room looked! she and her room and her cat; for a great white cat sat with her paws doubled under her in front of the fire. "My sister begged that I would call and see you, Miss Cardigan," Mrs. Sandford began, "about a poor family named Whittaker, that live somewhere in Ellen Street." "I know them. Be seated," said our hostess. "I know them well. But I don't know this little lady." "A little friend of mine, Miss Cardigan; she is at school with your neighbour opposite,--Miss Daisy Randolph." "If nearness made neighbourhood," said Miss Cardigan, laughing, "Mme. Ricard and I would be neighbours; but I am afraid the rule of the Good Samaritan would put us far apart. Miss Daisy--do you like my cat; or would you like maybe to go in and look at my flowers?--yes?--Step in that way, dear; just go through that room, and on, straight through; you'll smell them before you come to them." I gladly obeyed her, stepping in through the darkened middle room, where already the greeting of the distant flowers met me; then through a third smaller room, light and bright and full of fragrance, and to my surprise, lined with books. From this an open glass door let me into the greenhouse and into the presence of the beauties I had so often looked up to from the street. I lost myself then. Geraniums breathed over me; roses smiled at me; a daphne at one end of the room filled the whole place with its fragrance. Amaryllis bulbs were magnificent; fuchsias dropped with elegance; jonquils were shy and dainty; violets were good; hyacinths were delicious; tulips were splendid. Over and behind all these and others, were wonderful ferns, and heaths most delicate in their simplicity, and myrtles most beautiful with their shining dark foliage and starry white blossoms. I lost myself at first, and wandered past all these new and old friends in a dream; then I waked up to an intense feeling of homesickness. I had not been in such a greenhouse in a long time; the geraniums and roses and myrtles summoned me back to the years when I was a little happy thing at Melbourne House--or summoned the images of that time back to me. Father and mother and home--the delights and freedoms of those days--the carelessness, and the care--the blessed joys of that time before I knew Miss Pinshon, or school, and before I was perplexed with the sorrows and the wants of the world, and before I was alone--above all, when papa and mamma and I were _at home_. The geraniums and the roses set me back there so sharply that I felt it all. I had lost myself at first going into the greenhouse; and now I had quite lost sight of everything else, and stood gazing at the faces of the flowers with some tears on my own, and, I suppose, a good deal of revelation of my feeling; for I was unutterably startled by the touch of two hands upon my shoulders and a soft whisper in my ear, "What is it, my bairn?" It was Miss Cardigan's soft Scotch accent, and it was besides a question of the tenderest sympathy. I looked at her, saw the kind and strong grey eyes which were fixed on me wistfully; and hiding my face in her bosom I sobbed aloud. I don't know how I came to be there, in her arms, nor how I did anything so unlike my habit; but there I was, and it was done, and Miss Cardigan and I were in each other's confidence. It was only for one moment that my tears came; then I recovered myself. "What sort of discourse did the flowers hold to you, little one?" said Miss Cardigan's kind voice; while her stout person hid all view of me that could have been had through the glass door. "Papa is away," I said, forcing myself to speak,--"and mamma:--and we used to have these flowers--" "Yes, yes; I know. I know very well," said my friend. "The flowers didn't know but you were there yet. They hadn't discretion. Mrs. Sandford wants to go, dear. Will you come again and see them? They will say something else next time." "Oh, may I?" I said. "Just whenever you like, and as often as you like. So I'll expect you." I went home, very glad at having escaped notice from my schoolmates, and firmly bent on accepting Miss Cardigan's invitation at the first chance I had. I asked about her of Mrs. Sandford in the first place; and learned that she was "a very good sort of person; a little queer, but very kind; a person that did a great deal of good and had plenty of money. Not in society, of course," Mrs. Sandford added; "but I dare say she don't miss that; and she is just as useful as if she were." "Not in society." That meant, I supposed, that Miss Cardigan would not be asked to companies where Mrs. Randolph would be found, or Mrs. Sandford; that such people would not "know" her, in fact. That would certainly be a loss to Miss Cardigan; but I wondered how much? "The world knoweth us not,"--the lot of all Christ's people,--could it involve anything in itself very bad? My old Juanita, for example, who held herself the heir to a princely inheritance, was it any harm to her that earthly palaces knew her only as a servant? But then, what did not matter to Juanita or Miss Cardigan might matter to somebody who had been used to different things. I knew how it had been with myself for a time past. I was puzzled. I determined to wait and see, if I could, how much it mattered to Miss Cardigan. CHAPTER XII. FRENCH DRESSES. My new friend had given me free permission to come and see her whenever I found myself able. Saturday afternoon we always had to ourselves in the school; and the next Saturday found me at Miss Cardigan's door again as soon as my friends and room-mates were well out of my way. Miss Cardigan was not at home, the servant said, but she would be in presently. I was just as well pleased. I took off my cap, and carrying it in my hand I went back through the rooms to the greenhouse. All still and fresh and sweet, it seemed more delightful than ever, because I knew there was nobody near. Some new flowers were out. An azalea was in splendid beauty, and a white French rose, very large and fair, was just blossoming, and with the red roses and the hyacinths and the violets and the daphne and the geraniums, made a wonderful sweet place of the little greenhouse. I lost myself in delight again; but this time the delight did not issue in homesickness. The flowers had another message for me to-day. I did not heed it at first, busy with examining and drinking in the fragrance and the loveliness about me; but even as I looked and drank, the flowers began to whisper to me. With their wealth of perfume, with all their various, glorious beauty, one and another leaned towards me or bent over me with the question--"Daisy, are you afraid?--Daisy, are you afraid?--The good God who has made us so rich, do you think he will leave you poor? He loves you, Daisy. You needn't be a bit afraid but that HE is enough, even if the world does not know you. He is rich enough for you as well as for us." I heard no voice, but surely I heard that whisper, plain enough. The roses seemed to kiss me with it. The sweet azalea repeated it. The hyacinths stood witnesses of it. The gay tulips and amaryllis held up a banner before me on which it was blazoned. I was so ashamed, and sorry, and glad, all at once, that I fell down on my knees there, on the stone matted floor, and gave up the world from my heart and for ever, and stretched out my hands for the wealth that does not perish and the blessing that has no sorrow with it. I was afraid to stay long on my knees; but I could hardly get my eyes dry again, I was so glad and so sorry. I remember I was wiping a tear or two away when Miss Cardigan came in. She greeted me kindly. "There's a new rose out, did ye see it?" she said; "and this blue hyacinth has opened its flowers. Isn't that bonny?" "What is _bonny_, ma'am?" I asked. Miss Cardigan laughed, the heartiest, sonsiest low laugh. "There's a many things the Lord has made bonny," she said. "I thank Him for it. Look at these violets--they're bonny; and this sweet red rose." She broke it off the tree and gave it to me. "It's bad that it shames your cheeks so. What's the matter wi' 'em, my bairn?" Miss Cardigan's soft finger touched my cheek as she spoke; and the voice and tone of the question were so gently, tenderly kind that it was pleasant to answer. I said I had not been very strong. "Nor just weel in your mind. No, no. Well, what did the flowers say to you to-day, my dear? Eh? They told you something?" "Oh yes!" I said. "Did they tell you that 'the Lord is good; a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in Him?'" "Oh yes," I said, looking up at her in surprise. "How did you know?" For all answer, Miss Cardigan folded her two arms tight about me and kissed me with earnest good will. "But they told me something else," I said, struggling to command myself;--"they told me that I had _not_ 'trusted in Him.'" "Ah, my bairn!" she said. "But the Lord is good." There was so much both of understanding and sympathy in her tones, that I had a great deal of trouble to control myself. I felt unspeakably happy too, that I had found a friend that could understand. I was silent, and Miss Cardigan looked at me. "Is it all right, noo?" she asked. "Except _me_,--" I said with my eyes swimming. "Ah, well!" she said. "You've seen the sky all black and covered with the thick clouds--that's like our sins: but, 'I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins.' You know how it is when the wind comes and clears the clouds all off, and you can look up through the blue, till it seems as if your eye would win into heaven itself. Keep the sky clear, my darling, so that you can always see up straight to God, with never the fleck of a cloud between. But do you ken what will clear the clouds away?" And I looked up now with a smile and answered, "'The precious blood of Christ'"--for the two texts had been close together in one of the pages of my little book not long before. Miss Cardigan clapped her hands together softly and laughed. "Ye've got it!" she said. "Ye have gotten the pearl of great price. And where did ye find it, my dear?" "I had a friend, that taught me in a Sunday-school, four years ago,--" I said. "Ah, there weren't so many Sunday-schools in my day," said Miss Cardigan. "And ye have found, maybe, that this other sort of a school, that ye have gotten to now, isn't helpful altogether? Is it a rough road, my bairn?" "It is my own fault," I said, looking at her gratefully. The tender voice went right into my heart. "Well, noo, ye'll just stop and have tea with me here; and whenever the way is rough, ye'll come over to my flowers and rest yourself. And rest me too; it does me a world o' good to see a young face. So take off your coat, my dear, and let us sit down and be comfortable." I was afraid at first that I could not; I had no liberty to be absent at tea-time. But Miss Cardigan assured me I should be home in good season; the school tea was at seven, and her own was always served at six. So very gladly, with an inexpressible sense of freedom and peace, I took off my coat and gloves, and followed my kind friend back to the parlour where her fire was burning. For although it was late in April, the day was cool and raw; and the fire one saw nowhere else was delightful in Miss Cardigan's parlour. Every minute of that afternoon was as bright as the fire glow. I sat in the midst of that, on an ottoman, and Miss Cardigan, busy between her two tables, made me very much interested in her story of some distressed families for whom she was working. She asked me very little about my own affairs; nothing that the most delicate good breeding did not warrant; but she found out that my father and mother were at a great distance from me, and I almost alone, and she gave me the freedom of her house. I was to come there whenever I could and liked; whenever I wanted to "rest my feet," as she said; especially I might spend as much of every Sunday with her as I could get leave for. And she made this first afternoon so pleasant to me with her gentle beguiling talk, that the permission to come often was like the entrance into a whole world of comfort. She had plenty to talk about; plenty to tell, of the poor people to whom she and others were ministering; of plans and methods to do them good; all which somehow she made exceedingly interesting. There was just a little accent to her words, which made them, in their peculiarity, all the more sweet to me; but she spoke good English; the "noo" which slipped out now and then, with one or two other like words, came only, I found, at times when the fountain of feeling was more full than ordinary, and so flowed over into the disused old channel. And her face was so fresh, rosy, round and sweet, withal strong and sound, that it was a perpetual pleasure to me. As she told her stories of New York needy and suffering, I mentally added my poor people at Magnolia, and began to wonder with myself, was all the world so? Were these two spots but samples of the whole? I got into a brown study, and was waked out of it by Miss Cardigan's "What is it, my dear?" "Ma'am?" I said. "Ye are studying some deep question," she said, smiling. "Maybe it's too big for you." "So it is," said I, sighing. "Is it so everywhere, Miss Cardigan?" "So how, my bairn?" "Is there so much trouble everywhere in the world?" Her face clouded over. "Jesus said, 'The poor ye have always with you, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.'" "But that is what I don't understand about," I said. "_How much_ ought one to do, Miss Cardigan?" There came a ray of infinite brightness over her features; I can hardly describe it; it was warm with love, and bright with pleasure, and I thought sparkled with a little amusement. "Have you thought upon that?" she said. "Yes," I said,--"very much." "It is a great question!" she said, her face becoming grave again. "I know," I said, "of course one ought to do all one can. But what I want to know is, how much one _can_. How much ought one to spend, for such things?" "It's a great question," Miss Cardigan repeated, more gravely than before. "For when the King comes, to take account of His servants, He will want to know what we have done with every penny. Be sure, He will." "Then how can one tell?" said I, hoping earnestly that now I was going to get some help in my troubles. "How can one know? It is very difficult." "I'll no say it's not difficult," said Miss Cardigan, whose thoughts seemed to have gone into the recesses of her own mind. "Dear, its nigh our tea-time. Let us go in." I followed her, much disappointed, and feeling that if she passed the subject by so, I could not bring it up again. We went through to the inner room; the same from which the glass door opened to the flowers. Here a small table was now spread. This room was cosy. I had hardly seen it before. Low bookcases lined it on every side; and above the bookcases hung maps; maps of the city and of various parts of the world where missionary stations were established. Along with the maps, a few engravings and fine photographs. I remember one of the Colosseum, which I used to study; and a very beautiful engraving of Jerusalem. But the one that fixed my eyes this first evening, perhaps because Miss Cardigan placed me in front of it, was a picture of another sort. It was a good photograph, and had beauty enough besides to hold my eyes. It showed a group of three or four. A boy and girl in front, handsome, careless, and well-to-do, passing along, with wandering eyes. Behind them and disconnected from them by her dress and expression, a tall woman in black robes with a baby on her breast. The hand of the woman was stretched out with a coin which she was about dropping into an iron-bound coffer which stood at the side of the picture. It was "the widow's mite;" and her face, wan, sad, sweet, yet loving and longing, told the story. The two coins were going into the box with all her heart. "You know what it is?" said my hostess. "I see, ma'am," I replied; "it is written under." "That box is the Lord's treasury." "Yes, ma'am," I said,--"I know." "Do you remember how much that woman gave?" "Two mites,"--I said. "It was something more than that," said my hostess. "It was more than anybody else gave that day. Don't you recollect? It was _all her living_." I looked at Miss Cardigan, and she looked at me. Then my eyes went back to the picture, and to the sad yet sweet and most loving face of the poor woman there. "Ma'am," said I, "do you think people that are _rich_ ought to give all they have?" "I only know, my Lord was pleased with her," said Miss Cardigan softly; "and I always think I should like to have Him pleased with me too." I was silent, looking at the picture and thinking. "You know what made that poor widow give her two mites?" Miss Cardigan asked presently. "I suppose she wanted to give them," I said. "Ay," said my hostess, turning away,--"she loved the Lord's glory beyond her own comfort. Come, my love, and let us have some tea. She gave all she had, Miss Daisy, and the Lord liked it; do ye think you and me can do less?" "But that is what I do not understand," I said, following Miss Cardigan to the little tea-table, and watching with great comfort the bright unruffled face which promised to be such a help to me. "Now you'll sit down there," said my hostess, "where you can see my flowers while I can see you. It's poor work eating, if we cannot look at something or hear something at the same time; and maybe we'll do the two things. And ye'll have a bit of honey--here it is. And Lotty will bring us up a bit of hot toast--or is bread the better, my dear? Now ye're at home; and maybe you'll come over and drink tea with me whenever you can run away from over there. I'll have Lotty set a place for you. And then, when ye think of the empty place, you will know you had better come over and fill it. See--you could bring your study book and study here in this quiet little corner by the flowers." I gave my very glad thanks. I knew that I could often do this. "And now for the 'not understanding,'" said Miss Cardigan, when tea was half over. "How was it, my dear?" "I have been puzzled," I said, "about giving--how much one ought to give, and how much one ought to spend--I mean for oneself." "Well," said Miss Cardigan brightly, "we have fixed that. The poor woman gave _all her living_." "But one must spend _some_ money for oneself," I said. "One must have bonnets and cloaks and dresses." "And houses, and books, and pictures," said Miss Cardigan, looking around her. "My lamb, let us go to the Bible again. That says, 'whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' So I suppose we must buy cloaks and bonnets on the same principle." I turned this over in my mind. Had I done this, when I was choosing my chinchilla cap and grey cloak? A little ray of infinite brightness began to steal in upon their quiet colours and despised forms. "If the rich are to give their all, as well as the poor, it doesn't say--mind you--that they are to give it all to the hungry, or all to the destitute; but only, they are to give it all _to Christ_. Then, He will tell them what to do with it; do ye understand, my dear?" Miss Cardigan's eye was watching me, not more kindly than keen. A wise and clear grey eye it was. "But isn't it difficult to know sometimes what to do?" I said. "I have been so puzzled to know about dresses. Mamma is away, and I had to decide." "It's no very difficult," said Miss Cardigan,--"if once ye set your face in the right _airth_--as we speak. My dear, there's a great many sorts of dresses and bonnets and things; and I'd always buy just that bonnet and that gown, in which I thought I could do most work for my Master; and that wouldn't be the same sort of bonnet for you and for me," she said with a merry smile. "Now ye'll have another cup of tea, and ye'll tell me if my tea's good." It was wonderfully good to me. I felt like a plant dried up for want of water, suddenly set in a spring shower. Refreshment was all around me, without and within. The faces of the flowers looked at me through the glass, and the sweet breath of them came from the open door. The room where I was sitting pleased me mightily, in its comfortable and pretty simplicity; and I had found a friend, even better than my old Maria and Darry at Magnolia. It was not very long before I told all about these to my new counsellor. For the friendship between us ripened and grew. I often found a chance to fill my place at the dear little tea-table. Sundays I could always be there; and I went there straight from afternoon church, and rested among Miss Cardigan's books and in her sweet society and in the happy freedom and rest of her house, with an intensity of enjoyment which words can but feebly tell. So in time I came to tell her all my troubles and the perplexities which had filled me; I was willing to talk to Miss Cardigan about things that I would have breathed to no other ear upon earth. She was so removed from all the sphere of my past or present life, so utterly disconnected from all the persons and things with which I had had to do, it was like telling about them to a being of another planet. Yet she was not so removed but that her sympathies and her judgment could be living and full grown for my help; all ready to take hold of the facts and to enter into the circumstances, and to give me precious comfort and counsel. Miss Cardigan and I came to be very dear to each other. All this took time. Nobody noticed at first, or seemed to notice, my visits to the "house with the flowers," as the girls called it. I believe, in my plain dress, I was not thought of importance enough to be watched. I went and came very comfortably; and the weeks that remained before the summer vacation slipped away in quiet order. Just before the vacation, my aunt came home from Europe. With her came the end of my obscurity. She brought me, from my mother, a great supply of all sorts of pretty French dresses hats, gloves, and varieties--chosen by my mother--as pretty and elegant, and simple too, as they could be; but once putting them on, I could never be unnoticed by my schoolmates any more. I knew it, with a certain feeling that was not displeasure. Was it pride? Was it anything more than my pleasure in all pretty things? I thought it was something more. And I determined that I would not put on any of them till school was broken up. If it _was_ pride, I was ashamed of it. But besides French dresses, my aunt brought me a better thing; a promise from my father. "He said I was to tell you, Daisy my dear,--and I hope you will be a good child and take it as you ought--but dear me! how she is growing," said Mrs. Gary, turning to Mme. Ricard; "I cannot talk about Daisy as a 'child' much longer. She's tall." "Not too tall," said madame. "No, but she is going to be tall. She has a right; her mother is tall, and her father. Daisy, my dear, I do believe you are going to look like your mother. You'll be very handsome if you do. And yet, you look different----" "Miss Randolph will not shame anybody belonging to her," said Mme. Ricard, graciously. "Well, I suppose not," said my aunt. "I was going to tell you what your father said, Daisy. He said--you know it takes a long while to get to China and back, and if it does him good he will stay a little while there; and then there's the return voyage, and there may be delays; so altogether it was impossible to say exactly how long he and your mother will be gone. I mean, it was impossible to know certainly that they would be able to come home by next summer; indeed I doubt if your father ever does come home." I waited in silence. "So altogether," my aunt went on, turning for a moment to Mme. Ricard, "there was a doubt about it; and your father said, he charged me to tell Daisy, that if she will make herself contented--that is, supposing they cannot come home next year, you know--if she will make herself happy and be patient and bear one or two years more, and stay at school and do the best she can, _then_, the year after next or the next year he will send for you, your father says, _unless_ they come home themselves--they will send for you; and then, your father says, he will give you any request you like to make of him. Ask anything you can think of, that you would like best, and he will do it or get it, whatever it is. He didn't say like King Herod, 'to the half of his kingdom,' but I suppose he meant that. And meanwhile, you know you have a guardian now, Daisy, and there is no use for me in your affairs; and having conveyed to you your mother's gifts and your father's promises, I suppose there is nothing further for me to do to you." I was silent yet, thinking. Two years more would be a dear purchase of any pleasure that might come after. Two years! And four were gone already. It seemed impossible to wait or to bear it. I heard no more of what my aunt was saying, till she turned to me again and asked, "Where are you going to pass the vacation?" I did not know, for Mrs. Sandford was obliged to be with her sister still, so that I could not go to Melbourne. "Well, if your new guardian thinks well of it--you can consult him if it is necessary--and if he does not object, you can be with me if you like. Preston has leave of absence this summer, I believe; and he will be with us." It was in effect arranged so. My aunt took me about the country from one watering place to another; from Saratoga to the White Mountains; and Preston's being with us made it a gay time. Preston had been for two years at West Point; he was grown and improved everybody said; but to me he was just the same. If anything, _not_ improved; the old grace and graciousness of his manner was edged with an occasional hardness or abruptness which did not use to belong to him, and which I did not understand. There seemed to be a latent cause of irritation somewhere. However, my summer went off smoothly enough. September brought me back to Mme. Ricard's, and in view of Miss Cardigan's late roses and budding chrysanthemums. I was not sorry. I had set my heart on doing as much as could be done in these next two years, if two they must be. I was the first in my room; but before the end of the day they all came pouring in; the two older and the two younger girls. "Here's somebody already," exclaimed Miss Macy as she saw me. "Why, Daisy Randolph! is it possible that's you? Is it Daisy Randolph? What have you done to yourself? How you _have_ improved!" "She is very much improved," said Miss Bentley more soberly. "She has been learning the fashions," said Miss Lansing, her bright eyes dancing as good-humouredly as ever. "Daisy, now when your hair gets long you'll look quite nice. That frock is made very well." "She is changed," said Miss St. Clair, with a look I could not quite make out. "No," I said; "I hope I am not changed." "Your dress is," said St. Clair. I thought of Dr. Sandford's "_L'habit, c'est l'homme_". "My mother had this dress made," I said; "and I ordered the other one; that is all the difference." "You're on the right side of the difference, then," said Miss St. Clair. "Has your mother come back, Daisy?" Miss Lansing asked. "Not yet. She sent me this from Paris." "It's very pretty!" she said, with, I saw, an increase of admiration; but St. Clair gave me another strange look. "How much prettier Paris things are than American!" Lansing went on. "I wish I could have all my dresses from Paris. Why, Daisy, you've grown handsome." "Nonsense!" said Miss Macy; "she always was, only you didn't see it." "Style is more than a face," said Miss St. Clair cavalierly. Somehow I felt that this little lady was not in a good mood awards me. I boded mischief; for being nearly of an age, we were together in most of our classes, studied the same things, and recited at the same times. There was an opportunity for clashing. They soon ran off, all four, to see their friends and acquaintances and learn the news of the school. I was left alone, making my arrangement of clothes and things in my drawer and my corner of the closet; and I found that some disturbance, in those few moments, had quite disarranged the thoughts of my heart. They were peaceful enough before. There was some confusion now. I could not at first tell what was uppermost; only that St. Clair's words were those that most returned to me. "She has changed." _Had_ I changed? or was I going to change? was I going to enter the lists of fashion with my young companions, and try who would win the race? No doubt my mother could dress me better than almost any of their mothers could dress them; what then? would this be a triumph? or was this the sort of name and notoriety that became and befitted a servant of Jesus? I could not help my dresses being pretty; no, but I could help making much display of them. I could wear my own school plaid when the weather grew cooler; and one or two others of my wardrobe were all I need show. "Style is more than a face." No doubt. What _then?_ Did I want style and a face too? Was I wishing to confound St. Clair? Was I escaping already from that bond and a mark of a Christian--"The world knoweth us not?" I was startled and afraid. I fell down on my knees by the side of my bed, and tried to look at the matter as God looked at it. And the Daisy I thought he would be pleased with, was one who ran no race for worldly supremacy. I resolved she should not. The praise of God, I thought, was far better than the praise of men. My mind was quite made up when I rose from my knees; but I looked forward to a less quiet school term than the last had been. Something told me that the rest of the girls would take me up now, for good and for evil. My Paris dress set me in a new position, no longer beneath their notice. I was an object of attention. Even that first evening I felt the difference. "Daisy, when is your mother coming home?" "Oh, she is gone to China; Daisy's mother is gone to China!"--"She'll bring you lots of queer things, won't she?"--"What a sweet dress!"--"_That_ didn't come from China?"--"Daisy, who's head in mathematics, you or St. Clair? I hope you will get before her!" "Why?" I ventured to ask. "Oh, you're the best of the two; everybody knows that. But St. Clair is smart, isn't she?" "She thinks she is," answered another speaker; "she believes she's at the tip-top of creation; but she never had such a pretty dress on as that in her days; and she knows it and she don't like it. It's real fun to see St. Clair beat; she thinks she is so much better than other girls, and she has such a way of twisting that upper lip of hers. Do you know how St. Clair twists her upper lip? Look!--she's doing it now." "She's handsome though, ain't she?" said Miss Macy. "She'll be beautiful." "No," said Mlle. Géneviève; "not that. Never that. She will be handsome; but beauty is a thing of the soul. _She_ will not be beautiful. Daisy, are you going to work hard this year?" "Yes, mademoiselle." "I believe you," she said, taking my face between her two hands and kissing it. "Whoever saw Mlle. Géneviève do that before!" said Miss Macy, as the other left us. "She is not apt to like the scholars." I knew she had always liked me. But everybody had always liked me, I reflected; this time at school was the first of my knowing anything different. And in this there now came a change. Since my wearing and using the Paris things sent to me by my mother, which I dared not fail to use and wear, I noticed that my company was more sought in the school. Also my words were deferred to, in a way they had not been before. I found, and it was not an unpleasant thing, that I had grown to be a person of consequence. Even with the French and English teachers; I observed that they treated me with more consideration. And so I reflected within myself again over Dr. Sandford's observation, "_L'habit, c'est l'homme._" Of course it was a consideration given to my clothes, a consideration also to be given up if I did not wear such clothes. I saw all that. The world _knew me_, just for the moment. Well, the smooth way was very pleasant. I had it with everybody for a time. My little room-mate and classmate St. Clair was perhaps the only exception to the general rule. I never felt that she liked me much. She let me alone, however; until one unlucky day--I do not mean to call it unlucky, either--when we had, as usual, compositions to write, and the theme given out was "Ruins." It was a delightful theme to me. I did not always enjoy writing compositions; this one gave me permission to roam in thoughts and imaginations that I liked. I went back to my old Egyptian studies at Magnolia, and wrote my composition about "Karnak." The subject was full in my memory; I had gone over and over and all through it; I had measured the enormous pillars and great gateways, and studied the sculpture on the walls, and paced up and down the great avenue of sphinxes. Sethos, and Amunoph and Rameses, the second and third, were all known and familiar to me; and I knew just where Shishak had recorded his triumphs over the land of Judea. I wrote my composition with the greatest delight. The only danger was that I might make it too long. One evening I was using the last of the light, writing in the window recess of the school parlour, when I felt a hand laid on my shoulders. "You are so hard at work!" said the voice of Mlle. Géneviève. "Yes, mademoiselle, I like it." "Have you got all the books and all that you want?" "Books, mademoiselle?"--I said wondering. "Yes; have you got all you want?" "I have not got any books," I said; "there are none that I want in the school library." "Have you never been in madame's library?" "No, mademoiselle." "Come!" I jumped up and followed her, up and down stairs and through halls and turnings, till she brought me into a pretty room lined with books from floor to ceiling. Nobody was there. Mademoiselle lit the gas with great energy, and then turned to me, her great black eyes shining. "Now what do you want, _mon enfant_? here is everything." "Is there anything about Egypt?" "Egypt! Are you in Egypt? See here--look, here is Denon--here is Laborde; here are two or three more. Do you like that? Ah! I see by the way your grey eyes grow big--Now sit down, and do what you like. Nobody will disturb you. You can come here every evening for the hour before tea." Mademoiselle scarce stayed for my thanks, and left me alone. I had not seen either Laborde or Denon in my grandfather's library at Magnolia; they were after his time. The engravings and illustrations also had not been very many or very fine in his collection of travellers' books. It was the greatest joy to me to see some of those things in Mme. Ricard's library, that I had read and dreamed about so long in my head. It was adding eyesight to hearsay. I found a good deal too that I wanted to read, in these later authorities. Evening after evening I was in madame's library, lost among the halls of the old Egyptian conquerors. The interest and delight of my work quite filled me, so that the fate of my composition hardly came into my thoughts, or the fact that other people were writing compositions too. And when it was done, I was simply very sorry that it was done. I had not written it for honour or for duty, but for love. I suppose that was the reason why it succeeded. I remember I was anything but satisfied with it myself, as I was reading it aloud for the benefit of my judges. For it was a day of prize compositions; and before the whole school and even some visitors, the writings of the girls were given aloud, each by its author. I thought, as I read mine, how poor it was, and how magnificent my subject demanded that it should be. Under the shade of the great columns, before those fine old sphinxes, my words and myself seemed very small. I sat down in my place again, glad that the reading was over. But there was a little buzz; then a dead expectant silence; then Mme. Ricard arose. My composition had been the last one. I looked up with the rest, to hear the award that she would speak; and was at first very much confounded to hear my own name called. "Miss Randolph--" It did not occur to me what it was spoken for; I sat still a moment in a maze. Mme. Ricard stood waiting; all the room was in a hush. "Don't you hear yourself called?" said a voice behind me. "Why don't you go?" I looked round at Miss Macy, who was my adviser, then doubtfully I looked away from her and caught the eyes of Mlle. Géneviève. She nodded and beckoned me to come forward. I did it hastily then, and found myself curtseying in front of the platform where stood madame. "The prize is yours, Miss Randolph," she said graciously. "Your paper is approved by all the judges." "Quite artistic,"--I heard a gentleman say at her elbow. "And it shows an amount of thorough study and perfect preparation, which I can but hold up as a model to all my young ladies. You deserve this, my dear." I was confounded; and a low curtsey was only a natural relief to my feelings. But madame unhappily took it otherwise. "This is yours," she said, putting into my hands an elegant little bronze standish;--"and if I had another prize to bestow for grace of good manners, I am sure I would have the pleasure of giving you that too." I bent again before madame, and got back to my seat as I could. The great business of the day was over, and we soon scattered to our rooms. And I had not been in mine five minutes before the penalties of being distinguished began to come upon me. "Well, Daisy!" said Miss Lansing,--"you've got it. How pretty! isn't it, Macy?" "It isn't a bit prettier than it ought to be, for a prize in such a school," said Miss Macy. "It will do." "I've seen handsomer prizes," said Miss Bentley. "But you've got it, more ways than one, Daisy," Miss Lansing went on. "I declare! Aren't you a distinguished young lady! Madame, too! why we all used to think we behaved pretty well _before company_,--didn't we, St. Clair?" "I hate favour and favouritism!" said that young lady, her upper lip taking the peculiar turn to which my attention had once been called. "Madame likes whatever is French." "But Randolph is not French, are you, Randolph?" said Blackeyes, who was good-natured through everything. "Madame is not French herself," said Miss Bentley. "I hate everything at school!" St. Clair went on. "It's too bad," said her friend. "Do you know, Daisy, St. Clair always has the prize for compositions. What made you go and write that long stuff about Rameses? the people didn't understand it, and so they thought it was fine." "I am sure there was a great deal finer writing in Faustina's composition," said Miss Bentley. I knew very well that Miss St. Clair had been accustomed to win this half-yearly prize for good writing. I had expected nothing but that she would win it this time. I had counted neither on my own success nor on the displeasure it would raise. I took my hat and went over to my dear Miss Cardigan; hoping that ill-humour would have worked itself out by bed-time. But I was mistaken. St Clair and I had been pretty near each other in our classes, though once or twice lately I had got an advantage over her; but we had kept on terms of cool social distance until now. Now the spirit of rivalry was awake. I think it began to stir at my Paris dresses and things; Karnak and Mme. Ricard finished the mischief. On my first coming to school I had been tempted in my horror at the utter want of privacy to go to bed without prayer; waiting till the rest were all laid down and asleep and the lights out, and then slipping out of bed with great care not to make a noise, and watching that no whisper of my lips should be loud enough to disturb anybody's slumbers. But I was sure after a while, that this was a cowardly way of doing; and I could not bear the words, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father." I determined in the vacation that I would do so no more, cost what it might the contrary. It cost a tremendous struggle. I think, in all my life I have done few harder things, than it was to me then to kneel down by the side of my bed in full blaze of the gaslights and with four curious pairs of eyes around to look on; to say nothing of the four busy tongues wagging about nothing all the time. I remember what a hush fell upon them the first night; while beyond the posture of prayer I could do little. Only unformed or half formed thoughts and petitions struggled in my mind, through a crowd of jostling regrets and wishes and confusions, in which I could hardly distinguish anything. But no explosion followed, of either ridicule or amusement, and I had been suffered from that night to do as I would, not certainly always in silence, but quite unmolested. I had carried over my standish to Miss Cardigan to ask her to take care of it for me; I had no place to keep it. But Miss Cardigan was not satisfied to see the prize; she wanted to hear the essay read; and was altogether so elated that a little undue elation perhaps crept into my own heart. It was not a good preparation for what was coming. I went home in good time. In the hall, however, Mlle. Géneviève seized upon me; she had several things to say, and before I got up stairs to my room all the rest of its inmates were in bed. I hoped they were asleep. I heard no sound while I was undressing, nor while I knelt, as usual now, by my bedside. But as I rose from my knees I was startled by a sort of grunt that came from St. Clair's corner. "Humph!--Dear me! we're so good,--Grace and Devotion,--Christian grace, too!" "Hold your tongue, St. Clair," said Miss Macy, but not in a way, I thought, to check her; if she could have been checked. "But it's too bad, Macy," said the girl. "We're all so rough, you know. _We_ don't know how to behave ourselves; we can't make curtseys; our mothers never taught us anything,--and dancing masters are no good. We ought to go to Egypt. There isn't anything so truly dignified as a pyramid. There is a great deal of _à plomb_ there!" "Who talked about _à plomb_?" said Miss Bentley. "You have enough of that, at any rate, Faustina," said Lansing. "Mrs. St. Clair's child ought to have that," said Miss Macy. "Ah, but it isn't Christian grace, after all," persisted Faustina. "You want a cross at the top of a pyramid to make it perfect." "Hush, Faustina!" said Miss Macy. "It's fair,"--said Miss Bentley. "You had better not talk about Christian grace, girls. That isn't a matter of opinion." "Oh, isn't it!" cried St. Clair, half rising up in her bed. "What is it, then?" Nobody answered. "I say!--Macy, what _is_ Christian grace--if you know! If you _don't_ know, I'll put you in the way to find out." "How shall I find out?" "Will you do it, if I show it you?" "Yes." "Ask Randolph. That's the first step. Ask her,--yes! just ask her, if you want to know. I wish Mme. Ricard was here to hear the answer." "Nonsense!" said Macy. "Ask her! You said you would. Now ask her." "What is Christian grace, Daisy?" said Miss Bentley. I heard, but I would not answer. I hoped the storm would blow over, after a puff or two. But Blackeyes, without any ill-nature, I think, which was not in her, had got into the gale. She slipped out of bed and came to my side, putting her hand on my shoulder and bringing her laughing mouth down near my ear. A very angry impulse moved me before she spoke. "Daisy!"--she said, laughing, in a loud whisper,--"come, wake up! you're not asleep, you know. Wake up and tell us;--everybody knows _you_ know;--what _is_ Christian grace? Daisy!--" She shook me a little. "If you knew, you would not ask me,"--I said in great displeasure. But a delighted shout from all my room-mates answered this unlucky speech, which I had been too excited to make logical. "Capital!" cried St. Clair. "That's just it--we _don't_ know; and we only want to find out whether she does. Make her tell, Lansing--prick a little pin into her--that will bring it out." I was struggling between anger and sorrow, feeling very hurt, and at the same time determined not to cry. I kept absolutely still, fighting the fight of silence with myself. Then Lansing, in a fit of thoughtless mischief, finding her shakes and questions vain, actually put in practice St. Clair's suggestion, and attacked me with a pin from the dressing table. The first prick of it overthrew the last remnant of my patience. "Miss Lansing!"--I exclaimed, rousing up in bed and confronting her. They all shouted again. "Now we'll have it!" cried St. Clair. "Keep cool, Blackeyes; let's hear--we'll have an exposition now. Theme, Christian grace." Ah, there rushed through my heart with her words a remembrance of other words--a fluttering vision of something "gentle and easy to be entreated"--"first pure, then peaceable"--"gentleness, goodness, meekness."--But the grip of passion held them all down or kept them all back. After St. Clair's first burst, the girls were still and waited for what I would say. I was facing Miss Lansing, who had taken her hand from my shoulder. "Are you not ashamed of yourself?" I said; and I remember I thought how my mother would have spoken to them. "Miss Lansing's good nature"--I went on slowly,--"Miss Macy's kindness--Miss Bentley's independence--and Miss St. Clair's good breeding!"-- "_And_ Miss Randolph's religion!" echoed the last-named, with a quiet distinctness which went into my heart. "What about my independence?" said Miss Bentley. "Now we've got enough, girls,--lie down and go to sleep," said Miss Macy. "There's quite enough of this. There was too much before we began. Stop where you are." They did not stop, however, without a good deal of noisy chaffing and arguing, none of which I heard. Only the words, "Miss Randolph's religion," rung in my ears. I lay down with them lying like lead on my heart. I went to sleep under them. I woke up early, while all the rest were asleep, and began to study them. "Miss Randolph's religion!" If it had been only that, only mine. But the religion I professed was the religion of Christ; the name I was called by was _His_ name, the thing I had brought into discredit was His truth. I hope in all my life I may never know again the heart-pangs that this thought cost me. I studied how to undo the mischief I had done. I could find no way. I had seemed to prove my religion an unsteady, superficial thing; the evidence I had given I could not withdraw; it must stand. I lay thinking, with the heartache, until the rousing bell rang, and the sleepers began to stir from their slumbers. I got up and began to dress with the rest. "What was it all that happened last night?" said Miss Lansing. "Advancement in knowledge,"--said Miss St. Clair. "Now, girls--don't begin again," said Miss Macy. "Knowledge is a good thing," said the other, with pins in her mouth. "I intend to take every opportunity that offers of increasing mine; especially I mean to study Egyptians and Christians. I haven't any Christians among my own family or acquaintance--so you see, naturally, Macy, I am curious; and when a good specimen offers--" "I am not a good specimen," I said. "People are not good judges of themselves, it is said," the girl went on. "Everybody considers Miss Randolph a sample of what that article ought to be." "You don't use the word right," remarked Miss Macy. "A _sample_ is taken from what is,--not from what ought to be." "I don't care," was St. Clair's reply. "I did not behave like a Christian last night," I forced myself to say. "I was impatient." "Like an impatient Christian then, I suppose," said St Clair. I felt myself getting impatient again, with all my sorrow and humiliation of heart. And yet more humbled at the consciousness, I hastened to get out of the room. It was a miserable day, that day of my first school triumphs, and so were several more that followed. I was very busy; I had no time for recollection and prayer; I was in the midst of gratulations and plaudits from my companions and the teachers; and I missed, O how I missed the praise of God. I felt like a traitor. In the heat of the fight I had let my colours come to the ground. I had dishonoured my Captain. Some would say it was a little thing; but I felt then and I know now, there are no little things; I knew I had done harm; how much it was utterly beyond my reach to know. As soon as I could I seized an opportunity to get to Miss Cardigan. I found her among her flowers, nipping off here a leaf and there a flower that had passed its time; so busy, that for a few moments she did not see that I was different from usual. Then came the question which I had been looking for. "Daisy, you are not right to-day?" "I haven't been right since I got that standish," I burst forth. Miss Cardigan looked at me again, and then did what I had not expected; she took my head between her two hands and kissed me. Not loosing her hold, she looked into my face. "What is it, my pet?" "Miss Cardigan," I said, "can any one be a Christian and yet--yet--" "Do something unworthy a Christian?" she said. "I wot well they can! But then, they are weak Christians." I knew that before. But somehow, hearing her say it brought the shame and the sorrow more fresh to the surface. The tears came. Miss Cardigan pulled me into the next room and sat down, drawing me into her arms; and I wept there with her arms about me. "What then, Daisy?" she asked at length, as if the suspense pained her. "I acted so, Miss Cardigan," I said; and I told her all about it. "So the devil has found a weak spot in your armour," she said. "You must guard it well, Daisy." "How can I?" "How can you? Keep your shield before it, my bairn. What is your shield for? The Lord has given you a great strong shield, big enough to cover you from head to foot, if your hands know how to manage it." "What is that, Miss Cardigan?" "The shield of _faith_, dear. Only believe. According to your faith be it unto you." "Believe what?" I asked, lifting my head at last. "Believe that if you are a weak little soldier, your Captain knows all about it; and any fight that you go into for His sake, He will bear you through. I don't care what. Any fight, Daisy." "But I got impatient," I said, "at the girls' way of talking." "And perhaps you were a wee bit set up in your heart because you got the prize of the day." "_Proud!_" said I. "Don't it look like it? Even proud of being a Christian, mayhap." "Could I!" I said. "Was I?" "It wouldn't be the first time one with as little cause had got puffed up a bit. But heavenly charity 'is not puffed up.'" "I know that," I said and my tears started afresh. "How shall I help it in future?" I asked after a while, during which my friend had been silent. "Help it?" she said cheerfully. "You can't help it--but Jesus can." "But my impatience, and--my pride," I said, very downcast. "'Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; when I fall I shall arise.' But there is no need you should fall, Daisy. Remember 'the Lord is able to make him stand'--may be said of every one of the Lord's people." "But will He keep me from impatience, and take pride out of my heart? Why, I did not know it was there, Miss Cardigan." "Did He say 'Whatsoever you shall ask in my name, I will do it?' And when He has written 'Whatsoever,' are you going to write it over and put 'anything not too hard'? Neither you nor me, Daisy?" "_Whatsoever_, Miss Cardigan," I said slowly. "He said so. Are you going to write it over again?" "No," I said. "But then, may one have _anything_ one asks for." "Anything in the world--if it is not contrary to His will--provided we ask in faith, nothing doubting. 'For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.'" "But how can we _know_ what is according to His will?" "_This_ is, at any rate," said Miss Cardigan; "for He has commanded us to be holy as He is holy." "But--other things?" I said. "How can one ask for everything 'in faith, nothing wavering?' How can one be sure?" "Only just this one way, Daisy, my dear," Miss Cardigan answered; and I remember to this day the accent of her native land which touched every word. "If ye're wholly the Lord's--wholly, mind,--ye'll not like aught but what the Lord likes; ye'll know what to ask for, and ye'll know the Lord will give it to you:--that is, if ye want it _enough_. But a 'double-minded man is unstable in all his ways;' and his prayers can't hit the mark, no more than a gun that's twisted when it's going off." "Then,"--I began and stopped, looking at her with my eyes full of tears. "Ay," she said,--"just so. There's no need that you nor me should be under the power of the evil one, for we're _free_. The Lord's words arn't too good to be true: every one of 'em is as high as heaven; and there isn't a sin nor an enemy but you and I may be safe from, if we trust the Lord." I do not remember any more of the conversation. I only know that the sun rose on my difficulties, and the shadows melted away. I had a happy evening with my dear old friend, and went home quite heart-whole. CHAPTER XIII. GREY COATS. I went back to school comforted. I had got strength to face all that might be coming in the future. And life has been a different thing to me ever since. Paul's words, "I can do all things through Christ,"--I have learned are not his words any more than mine. From that time I grew more and more popular in the school. I cannot tell why; but popularity is a thing that grows upon its own growth. It was only a little while before my companions almost all made a pet of me. It is humbling to know that this effect was hastened by some of the French dresses my mother had sent me, and which convenience obliged me to wear. They were extremely pretty; the girls came round me to know where I got them, and talked about who I was; and "Daisy Randolph," was the name most favoured by their lips from that time until school closed. With the exception, I must add, of my four room-mates. Miss St. Clair held herself entirely aloof from me, and the others chose her party rather than mine. St. Clair never lost, I think, any good chance or omitted any fair scheme to provoke me; but all she could do had lost its power. I tried to soften her; but Faustina was a rock to my advances. I knew I had done irreparable wrong that evening; the thought of it was almost the only trouble I had during those months. An old trouble was brought suddenly home to me one day. I was told a person wanted to speak to me in the lower hall. I ran down, and found Margaret. She was in the cloak and dress I had bought for her; looking at first very gleeful, and then very business-like, as she brought out from under her cloak a bit of paper folded with something in it. "What is this?" I said, finding a roll of bills. "It's my wages, Miss Daisy. I only kept out two dollars, ma'am--I wanted a pair of shoes so bad--and I couldn't be let go about the house in them old shoes with holes in 'em; there was holes in both of 'em, Miss Daisy." "But your wages, Margaret?" I said--"I have nothing to do with your wages." "Yes, Miss Daisy--they belongs to master, and I allowed to bring 'em to you. They's all there so fur. It's all right." I felt the hot shame mounting to my face. I put the money back in Margaret's hand, and hurriedly told her to keep it; we were not at Magnolia; she might do what she liked with the money; it was her own earnings. I shall never forget the girl's confounded look, and then her grin of brilliant pleasure. I could have burst into tears as I went up the stairs, thinking of others at home. Yet the question came too, would my father like what I had been doing? He held the girl to be his property and her earnings his earnings. Had I been giving Margaret a lesson in rebellion, and preparing her to claim her rights at some future day? Perhaps. And I made up my mind that I did not care. Live upon stolen money I would not, any more than I could help. But was I not living on it all the while? The old subject brought back! I worried over it all the rest of the day, with many a look forward and back. As the time of the vacation drew near, I looked hard for news of my father and mother, or tidings of their coming home. There were none. Indeed, I got no letters at all. There was nothing to cause uneasiness; the intervals were often long between one packet of letters and the next; but I wanted to hear of some change now that the school year was ended. It had been a good year to me. In that little world I had met and faced some of the hardest temptations of the great world; they could never be new to me again; and I had learned both my weakness and my strength. No summons to happiness reached me that year. My vacation was spent again with my Aunt Gary, and without Preston. September saw me quietly settled at my studies for another school year; to be gone through with what patience I might. That school year had nothing to chronicle. I was very busy, very popular, kindly treated by my teachers, and happy in a smooth course of life. Faustina St. Clair had been removed from the school; to some other I believe; and with her went all my causes of annoyance. The year rolled round, my father and mother in China or on the high seas; and my sixteenth summer opened upon me. A day or two before the close of school, I was called to the parlour to see a lady. Not my aunt; it was Mrs. Sandford; and the doctor was with her. I had not seen Mrs. Sandford, I must explain, for nearly a year; she had been away in another part of the country, far from New York. "Why, Daisy!--is this Daisy?" she exclaimed. "Is it not?" I asked. "Not the old Daisy. You are so grown, my dear!--so--That's right, Grant; let us have a little light to see each other by." "It is Miss Randolph--" said the doctor, after he had drawn up the window shade. "Like her mother! isn't she? and yet, not like--" "Not at all like." "She is, though, Grant; you are mistaken; she _is_ like her mother; though as I said, she isn't. I never saw anybody so improved. My dear, I shall tell all my friends to send their daughters to Mme. Ricard." "Dr. Sandford," said I, "Mme. Ricard does not like to have the sun shine into this room." "It's Daisy, too," said the doctor, smiling, as he drew down the shade again. "Don't _you_ like it, Miss Daisy?" "Yes, of course," I said; "but she does not." "It is not at all a matter of course," said he; "except as you are Daisy. Some people, as you have just told me, are afraid of the sun." "Oh, that is only for the carpets," I said. Dr. Sandford gave me a good look, like one of his looks of old times, that carried me right back somehow to Juanita's cottage. "How do you do, Daisy?" "A little pale," said Mrs. Sandford. "Let her speak for herself." I said I did not know I was pale. "Did you know you had head-ache a good deal of the time?" "Yes, Dr. Sandford, I knew that. It is not very bad." "Does not hinder you from going on with study?" "Oh no, never." "You have a good deal of time for study at night, too, do you not?--after the lights are out." "At night? how did you know that? But it is not always _study_." "No. You consume also a good deal of beef and mutton, nowadays? You prefer substantials in food as in everything else?" I looked at my guardian, very much surprised that he should see all this in my face, and with a little of my childish fascination about those steady blue eyes. I could not deny that in these days I scarcely lived by eating. But in the eagerness and pleasure of my pursuits I had not missed it, and amid my many busy and anxious thoughts I had not cared about it. "That will do," said the doctor. "Daisy, have you heard lately from your father or mother?" My breath came short as I said no. "Nor have I. Failing orders from them, you are bound to respect mine; and I order you change of air, and to go wherever Mrs. Sandford proposes to take you." "Not before school closes, Dr. Sandford?" "Do you care about that?" "My dear child," said Mrs. Sandford, "we are going to West Point--and we want to take you with us. I know you will enjoy it, my dear; and I shall be delighted to have you. But we want to go next week." "Do you care, Daisy?" Dr. Sandford repeated. I had to consider. One week more, and the examination would be over and the school term ended. I was ready for the examination; I expected to keep my standing, which was very high; by going away now I should lose that, and miss some distinction. So at least I thought. I found that several things were at work in my heart that I had not known were there. After a minute I told Mrs. Sandford I would go with her when she pleased. "You have made up your mind that you do not care about staying to the end here?" said the doctor. "Dr. Sandford," I said, "I believe I _do_ care; but not about anything worth while." He took both my hands, standing before me, and looked at me, I thought, as if I were the old little child again. "A course of fresh air," he said, "will do you more good than a course of any other thing just now. And we may find 'wonderful things' at West Point, Daisy." "I expect you will enjoy it, Daisy," Mrs. Sandford repeated. There was no fear. I knew I should see Preston, at any rate; and I had been among brick walls for many months. I winced a little at the thought of missing all I had counted upon at the close of term; but it was mainly pride that winced, so it was no matter. We left the city three or four days later. It was a June day--can I ever forget it? What a brilliance of remembrance comes over me now? The bustle of the close schoolrooms, the heat and dust of the sunny city streets, were all left behind in an hour; and New York was nowhere! The waves of the river sparkled under a summer breeze; the wall of the palisades stretched along, like the barriers of fairyland; so they seemed to me; only the barrier was open and I was about to enter. So till their grey and green ramparts were passed, and the broader reaches of the river beyond, and as evening began to draw in we came to higher shores and a narrower channel, and were threading our way among the lights and shadows of opposing headlands and hilltops. It grew but more fresh and fair as the sun got lower. Then, in a place where the river seemed to come to an end, the "Pipe of Peace" drew close in under the western shore, to a landing. Buildings of grey stone clustered and looked over the bank. Close under the bank's green fringes a little boat-house and large clean wooden pier received us; from the landing a road went steeply sloping up. I see it all now in the colours which clothed it then. I think I entered fairyland when I touched foot to shore. Even down at the landing, everything was clean and fresh and in order. The green branches of that thick fringe which reached to the top of the bank had no dust on them; the rocks were parti-coloured with lichens; the river was bright, flowing and rippling past; the "Pipe of Peace" had pushed off and sped on, and in another minute or two was turning the point, and then--out of sight. Stillness seemed to fill the woods and the air as the beat of her paddles was lost. I breathed stillness. New York was fifty miles away, physically and morally at the antipodes. I find it hard to write without epithets. As I said I was in fairyland; and how shall one describe fairyland? Dr. Sandford broke upon my reverie by putting me into the omnibus. But the omnibus quite belonged to fairyland too; it did not go rattling and jolting, but stole quietly up the long hill; letting me enjoy a view of the river and the hills of the opposite shore, coloured as they were by the setting sun, and crisp and sharp in the cool June air. Then a great round-topped building came in place of my view; the road took a turn behind it. "What is that?" I asked the doctor. "I am sorry, Daisy, I don't know. I am quite as ignorant as yourself." "That's the riding-hall," I heard somebody say. One omnibus full had gone up before us; and there were only two or three people in ours besides our own party. I looked round, and saw that the information had been given by a young man in a sort of uniform; he was all in grey, with large round gilt buttons on his coat, and a soldier's cap. The words had been spoken in a civil tone, that tempted me on. "Thank you!" I said. "The riding-hall!--who rides in it?" "We do," he said, and then smiled,--"The cadets." It was a frank smile and a pleasant face and utterly the look of a gentleman. So, though I saw that he was very much amused, either at himself or me, I went on-- "And those other buildings?" "Those are the stables." I wondered at the neat beautiful order of the place. Then, the omnibus slowly mounting the hill, the riding-hall and stables were lost to sight. Another building, of more pretension, appeared on our left hand, on the brow of the ascent; our road turned the corner round this building, and beneath a grove of young trees the gothic buttresses and windows of grey stone peeped out. Carefully dressed green turf, with gravelled walks leading from different directions to the doors, looked as if this was a place of business. Somebody pulled the string here and the omnibus stopped. "This is the library," my neighbour in grey remarked; and with that rising and lifting his cap, he jumped out. I watched him rapidly walking into the library; he was tall, very erect, with a fine free carriage and firm step. But then the omnibus was moving on and I turned to the other side. And the beauty took away my breath. There was the green plain girded with trees and houses, beset with hills, the tops of which I could see in the distance, with the evening light upon them. The omnibus went straight over the plain; green and smooth and fresh, it lay on the one side and on the other side of us, excepting one broad strip on the right. I wondered what had taken off the grass there; but then we passed within a hedge enclosure and drew up at the hotel steps. "Have you met an acquaintance already, Daisy?" Dr. Sandford asked as he handed me out. "An acquaintance?" said I. "No, but I shall find him soon, I suppose." For I was thinking of Preston. But I forgot Preston the next minute. Mrs. Sandford had seized my hand and drew me up the piazza steps and through the hall, out to the piazza at the north side of the house. I was in fairyland surely! I had thought so before, but I knew it now. Those grand hills, in the evening colours, standing over against each other on the east and on the west, and the full magnificent river lying between them, bright and stately, were like nothing I had ever seen or imagined. My memory goes back now to point after point of delight which bewildered me. There was a dainty little sail sweeping across just at the bend of the river; I have seen many since; I never forget that one. There was a shoulder of one of the eastern hills, thrown out towards the south-west, over which the evening light fell in a mantle of soft gold, with a fold of shadow on the other side. The tops of those eastern hills were warm with sunlight, and here and there a slope of the western hills. There was a point of the lower ground, thrust out into the river, between me and the eastern shore, which lay wholly in shadow, one shadow, one soft mass of dusky green, rounding out into a promontory. Above it, beyond it, at the foot of the hills, a white church spire rose as sharp as a needle. It is all before me, even the summer stillness in which my senses were wrapt. There was a clatter in the house behind me, but I did not hear it then. I was obliged to go away to get ready for tea. The house was full; only one room could be spared for Mrs. Sandford and me. That one had been engaged beforehand, and its window looked over the same view I had seen from the piazza. I took my post at this window while waiting for Mrs. Sandford. Cooler and crisper the lights, cooler and grayer the shadows had grown; the shoulder of the east mountain had lost its mantle of light; just a gleam rested on a peak higher up; and my single white sail was getting small in the distance, beating up the river. I was very happy. My school year, practically, was finished, and I was vaguely expecting some order or turn of affairs which would join me to my father and mother. I remember well what a flood of satisfied joy poured into my heart as I stood at the window. I seemed to my self so very rich, to taste all that delight of hills and river; the richness of God's giving struck me with a sort of wonder. And then being so enriched and tasting the deep treasures of heaven and earth which I had been made to know, happy so exceedingly--it came to my heart with a kind of pang, the longing to make others know what I knew; and the secret determination to use all my strength as Christ's servant--in bringing others to the joy of the knowledge of Him. I was called from my window then, and my view was exchanged for the crowded dining-room, where I could eat nothing. But after tea we got out upon the piazza again, and a soft north-west breeze seemed to be food and refreshment too. Mrs. Sandford soon found a colonel and a general to talk to; but Dr. Sandford sat down by me. "How do you like it, Daisy?" I told him, and thanked him for bringing me. "Are you tired?" "No--I don't think I am tired." "You are not hungry, of course, for you can eat nothing. Do you think you shall sleep?" "I don't feel like it now. I do not generally get sleepy till a great while after this." "You will go to sleep somewhere about nine o'clock," said the doctor; "and not wake up till you are called in the morning." I thought he was mistaken, but as I could not prove it I said nothing. "Are you glad to get away from school?" "On some accounts. I like school too, Dr. Sandford; but there are some things I do not like." "That remark might be made, Daisy, about every condition of life with which I am acquainted." "I could not make it just now," I said. He smiled. "Have you secured a large circle of friends among your schoolmates,--that are to last for ever?" "I do not think they love me well enough for that," I said, wondering somewhat at my guardian's questioning mood. "Nor you them?" "I suppose not." "Why, Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "I am surprised! I thought you used to love everybody." I tried to think how that might be, and whether I had changed. Dr. Sandford interrupted my thoughts again-- "How is it with friends out of school?" "Oh, I have none," I said; thinking only of girls like myself. "None?" he said. "Do you really know nobody in New York?" "Nobody,--but one old lady." "Who is that, Daisy?" He asked short and coolly, like one who had a right to know; and then I remembered he had the right. I gave him Miss Cardigan's name and number. "Who is she? and who lives with her?" "Nobody lives with her; she has only her servants." "What do you know about her then, besides what she has told you? Excuse me, and please have the grace to satisfy me." "I know I must," I said half laughing. "_Must?_" "You know I must too, Dr. Sandford." "I don't know it, indeed," said he. "I know I must ask; but I do not know what power can force you to answer." "Isn't it my duty, Dr. Sandford?" "Nobody but Daisy Randolph would have asked that question," he said. "Well, if duty is on my side, I know I am powerful. But, Daisy, you always used to answer me, in times when there was no duty in the case." "I remember," I said, smiling to think of it; "but I was a child then, Dr. Sandford." "Oh!--Well, apropos of duty, you may go on about Miss Cardigan." "I do not know a great deal to tell. Only that she is very good, very kind to me and everybody; very rich, I believe; and very wise, I think. I know nothing more--except the way her money was made." "How was it?" "I have heard that her mother was a marketwoman," I said very unwillingly; for I knew the conclusions that would be drawn. "Is it likely," Dr. Sandford said slowly, "that the daughter of a marketwoman should be a good friend in every respect for the daughter of Mrs. Randolph?" "It may not be _likely_," I answered with equal slowness;--"but it is true." "Can you prove your position, Daisy?" "What is your objection to her, Dr. Sandford?" "Simply what you have told me. The different classes of society are better apart." I was silent. If Miss Cardigan was not of my class, I knew I wanted to be of hers. There were certain words running in my head about "a royal priesthood, a peculiar people," and certain other words too--which I thought it was no use to tell Dr. Sandford. "She has no family, you say, nor friends who live with her, or whom you meet at her house?" "None at all. I think she is quite alone." There was silence again. That is, between the doctor and me. Mrs. Sandford and her officers kept up a great run of talk hard by. "Now, Daisy," said the doctor, "you have studied the matter, and I do not doubt you have formed a philosophy of your own by this time. Pray make me the wiser." "I have no philosophy of my own, Dr. Sandford." "Your own thus far, that nobody shares it with you." "Is that your notion of me?" I said, laughing. "A very good notion. Nothing is worse than commonplace people. Indulge me, Daisy." So I thought I had better. "Dr. Sandford--if you will indulge me. What is _your_ notion of dignity?" He passed his hand over his hair, with a comical face. It was a very fine face, as I knew long ago; even a noble face. A steady, clear, blue eye like his, gives one a sure impression of power in the character, and of sweetness, too. I was glad he had asked me the question, but I waited for him to answer mine first. "My notion of dignity!" he exclaimed. "I don't believe I have any, Daisy." "No, but we are talking seriously." "Very. We always are when you are one of the talkers." "Then please explain your notion of dignity." "I know it when I see it," said the doctor; "but faith! I don't know what makes it." "Yes, but you think some people, or some classes, are set up above others." "So do you." "What do you think makes the highest class, then?" "You are going too deep, or too high, which is the same thing. All I mean is, that certain feet which fate has planted on lofty levels, ought not to come down from them." "But it is good to know where we stand." "Very," said Dr. Sandford, laughing. That is, in his way of laughing. It was never loud. "I will tell you where I want to stand," I went on. "It is the highest level of all. The Lord Jesus said, 'Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is MY BROTHER, and MY SISTER, and MOTHER.' I want to be one of those." "But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "the society of the world is not arranged on that principle." I knew it very well. I said nothing. "And you cannot, just yet, go out of the world." It was no use to tell Dr. Sandford what I thought. I was silent still. "Daisy," said he, "you are worse than you used to be." And I heard a little concern in his words, only half hid by the tone. "You do not suppose that such words as those you quoted just now, were meant to be a practical guide in the daily affairs of life? Do you?" "How can I help it, Dr. Sandford?" I answered. "I would like to have my friends among those whom the King will call His sisters and brothers." "And what do you think of correct grammar, and clean hands?" he asked. "Clean hands!" I echoed. "You like them," he said, smiling. "The people you mean often go without them--if report says true." "Not the people _I_ mean," I said. "And education, Daisy; and refined manners; and cultivated tastes; what will you do without all these? In the society you speak of they are seldom found." "You do not know the society I speak of, Dr. Sandford; and Miss Cardigan has all these, more or less; besides something a great deal better." Dr. Sandford rose up suddenly and introduced me to a Captain Southgate who came up; and the conversation ran upon West Point things and nothings after that. I was going back over my memory, to find in how far religion had been associated with some other valued things in the instances of my experience, and I heard little of what was said. Mr. Dinwiddie had been a gentleman, as much as any one I ever knew; he was the first. My old Juanita had the manners of a princess, and the tact of a fine lady. Miss Cardigan was a capital compound of sense, goodness, business energies, and gentle wisdom. The others--well, yes, they were of the despised orders of the world. My friend Darry, at the stables of Magnolia--my friend Maria, in the kitchen of the great house--the other sable and sober faces that came around theirs in memory's grouping--they were not educated nor polished nor elegant. Yet well I knew, that having owned Christ before men, He would own them before the angels of heaven; and what would they be in that day! I was satisfied to be numbered with them. I slept, as Dr. Sandford had prophesied I would that night. I awoke to a vision of beauty. My remembrance of those days that followed is like a summer morning, with a diamond hanging to every blade of grass. I awoke suddenly, that first day, and rushed to the window. The light had broken, the sun was up; the crown of the morning was upon the heads of the hills; here and there a light wreath of mist lay along their sides, floating slowly off, or softly dispersing; the river lay in quiet beauty waiting for the gilding that should come upon it. I listened--the brisk notes of a drum and fife came to my ear, playing one after another joyous and dancing melody. I thought that never was a place so utterly delightsome as this place. With all speed I dressed myself, noiselessly, so as not to waken Mrs. Sandford; and then I resolved I would go out and see if I could not find a place where I could be by myself; for in the house there was no chance of it. I took Mr. Dinwiddie's Bible and stole downstairs. From the piazza where we had sat last night, a flight of steps led down. I followed it and found another flight, and still another. The last landed me in a gravelled path; one track went down the steep face of the bank, on the brow of which the hotel stood; another track crossed that and wound away to my right, with a gentle downward slope. I went this way. The air was delicious; the woods were musical with birds; the morning light filled my pathway and glancing from trees or rocks ahead of me, lured me on with a promise of glory. I seemed to gather the promise as I went, and still I was drawn farther and farther. Glimpses of the river began to show through the trees; for all this bank side was thickly wooded. I left walking and took to running. At last I came out upon another gravelled walk, low down on the hillside, lying parallel with the river and open to it. Nothing lay between but some masses of granite rock, grey and lichened, and a soft fringe of green underbrush and small wood in the intervals. Moreover, I presently found a comfortable seat on a huge grey stone, where the view was uninterrupted by any wood growth; and if I thought before that this was fairyland, I now almost thought myself a fairy. The broad river was at my feet; the morning light was on all the shores, sparkled from the granite rocks below me and flashed from the polished leaves, and glittered on the water; filling all the blue above with radiance; touching here and there a little downy cloud; entering in and lying on my heart. I shall never forget it. The taste of the air was as one tastes life and strength and vigour. It all rolled in on me a great burden of joy. It was not the worst time or place in the world to read the Bible. But how all the voices of nature seemed to flow in and mix with the reading, I cannot tell, no more than I can number them; the whirr of a bird's wing, the liquid note of a wood thrush, the stir and movement of a thousand leaves, the gurgle of rippling water, the crow's call, and the song-sparrow's ecstasy. Once or twice the notes of a bugle found their way down the hill, and reminded me that I was in a place of delightful novelty. It was just a fillip to my enjoyment, as I looked on and off my page alternately. By and by I heard footsteps, quick yet light footsteps, sounding on the gravel. Measured and quick they came; then two figures rounded a point close by me. There were two, but their footfalls had sounded as one. They were dressed alike, all in grey, like my friend in the omnibus. As they passed me, the nearest one hastily pulled off his cap, and I caught just a flash from a bright eye. It was the same. I looked after them as they left my point and were soon lost behind another; thinking that probably Preston was dressed so and had been taught to walk so; and with renewed admiration of a place where the inhabitants kept such an exquisite neatness in their dress and moved like music. There was a fulness of content in my mind, as at length I slowly went back up my winding path to the hotel, warned by the furious sounds of a gong that breakfast was in preparation. As I toiled up the last flight of steps I saw Dr. Sandford on the piazza. His blue eye looked me all over and looked me through, I felt. I was accustomed to that, both from the friend and the physician, and rather liked it. "What is on the other side of the house?" I asked. "Let us go and see." And as we went, the doctor took my book from my hand to carry it for me. He opened it, too, and looked at it. On the other side or two sides of the house stretched away the level green plain. At the back of it, stood houses half hidden by trees; indeed all round two sides of the plain there was a border of buildings and of flourishing trees as well. Down the north side, from the hotel where we were, a road went winding: likewise under arching trees; here and there I could see cannon and a bit of some military work. All the centre of the plain was level and green, and empty; and from the hotel to the library stretched a broad strip of bare ground, brown and dusty, alongside of the road by which we had come across last night. In the morning sun, as indeed under all other lights and at all other hours, this scene was one of satisfying beauty. Behind the row of houses at the western edge of the plain, the hills rose up, green and wooded, height above height; and an old fortification stood out now under the eastern illumination, picturesque and grey, high up among them. As Dr. Sandford and I were silent and looking, I saw another grey figure pass down the road. "Who are those people that wear grey, with a black stripe down the leg?" I asked. "Grey?" said the doctor. "Where?" "There is one yonder under the trees," I said, "and there was one in the omnibus yesterday. Are those the cadets?" "I suppose so." "Then Preston wears that dress. I wonder how I shall find him, Dr. Sandford?" "Find whom?" said the doctor, waking up. "My cousin Preston--Preston Gary. He is here." "Here?" repeated the doctor. "Yes--he is a cadet--didn't you know it? He has been here a long while; he has only one more year, I believe. How can we find him, Dr. Sandford?" "I am ignorant, Daisy." "But we must find him," I said, "for of course he will want to see me, and I want to see him, very much." The doctor was silent, and I remember an odd sense I had that he was not pleased. I cannot tell how I got it; he neither did nor said anything to make me think so; he did not even look anywise different from usual; yet I felt it and was sure of it, and unspeakably mystified at it. Could Preston have been doing anything wrong? Yet the doctor would not know that, for he was not even aware that Preston was in the Military Academy till I told him. "I do not know, Daisy," he said at last; "but we can find out. I will ask Captain Southgate or somebody else." "Thank you," I said. "Who are those, Dr. Sandford, those others dressed in dark frock coats, with bright bars over their shoulders?--like that one just now going out of the gate?" "Those are officers of the army." "There are a good many of them. What are they here for? Are there many soldiers here?" "No--" said the doctor, "I believe not. I think these gentlemen are put here to look after the grey coats--the cadets, Daisy, The cadets are here in training, you know." "But that officer who just went out--who is walking over the plain now--he wore a sword, Dr. Sandford; and a red sash. They do not all wear them. What is that for?" "What is under discussion?" said Mrs. Sandford, coming out. "How well Daisy looks this morning, don't she?" "She has caught the military fever already," said the doctor. "I brought her here for a sedative; but I find it is no such matter." "Sedative!" said Mrs. Sandford; but at this instant my ears were "caught" by a burst of music on the plain. Mrs. Sandford broke into a fit of laughter. The doctor's hand touched my shoulder. "Get your hat, Daisy," he said, "I will go with you to hear it." I might tell of pleasure from minute to minute of that day, and of the days following. The breath of the air, the notes of the wind instruments, the flicker of sunlight on the gravel, all come back to me as I write, and I taste them again. Dr. Sandford and I went down the road I have described, leading along the edge of the plain at its northern border; from which the view up over the river, between the hills, was very glorious. Fine young trees shaded this road; on one side a deep hollow or cup in the green plain excited my curiosity; on the other, lying a little down the bank, a military work of some odd sort planted with guns. Then one or two pyramidal heaps of cannon-balls by the side of the road, marked this out as unlike all other roads I had ever traversed. At the farther side of the plain we came to the row of houses I had seen from a distance, which ran north and south, looking eastward over all the plain. The road which skirted these houses was shaded with large old trees, and on the edge of the greensward under the trees we found a number of iron seats placed for the convenience of spectators. And here, among many others, Dr. Sandford and I sat down. There was a long line of the grey uniforms now drawn up in front of us; at some little distance; standing still and doing nothing, that I could see. Nearer to us and facing them stood a single grey figure; I looked hard, but could not make out that it was Preston. Nearer still, stood with arms folded one of those whom the doctor had said were army officers; I thought, the very one I had seen leave the hotel; but all like statues, motionless and fixed. Only the band seemed to have some life in them. "What is it, Dr. Sandford?" I whispered, after a few minutes of intense enjoyment. "Don't know, Daisy." "But what are they doing?" "I don't know, Daisy." I nestled down into silence again, listening, almost with a doubt of my own senses, as the notes of the instruments mingled with the summer breeze and filled the June sunshine. The plain looked most beautiful, edged with trees on three sides, and bounded to the east, in front of me, by a chain of hills soft and wooded, which I afterwards found were beyond the river. Near at hand, the order of military array, the flash of a sword, the glitter of an epaulette, the glance of red sashes here and there, the regularity of a perfect machine. I said nothing more to Dr. Sandford; but I gathered drop by drop the sweetness of the time. The statues broke into life a few minutes later, and there was a stir of business of some sort; but I could make out nothing of what they were doing. I took it on trust, and enjoyed everything to the full till the show was over. CHAPTER XIV. YANKEES. For several days I saw nothing of Preston. He was hardly missed. I found that such a parade as that which pleased me the first morning came off twice daily; and other military displays, more extended and more interesting, were to be looked for every day at irregular times. I failed not of one. So surely as the roll of the drum or a strain of music announced that something of the sort was on hand, I caught up my hat and was ready. And so was Dr. Sandford. Mrs. Sandford would often not go; but the doctor's hat was as easily put on as mine, and as readily; and he attended me, I used to think, as patiently as a great Newfoundland dog. As patient, and as supreme. The evolutions of soldiers and clangour of martial music were nothing to _him_, but he must wait upon his little mistress. I mean of course the Newfoundland dog; not Dr. Sandford. "Will you go for a walk, Daisy?" he said, the morning of the third or fourth day. "There is nothing doing on the plain, I find." "A walk? Oh, yes!" I said. "Where shall we go?" "To look for wonderful things," he said. "Only don't take the child among the rattlesnakes," said Mrs. Sandford. "_They_ are wonderful, I suppose, but not pleasant. You will get her all tanned, Grant!" But I took these hints of danger as coolly as the doctor himself did; and another of my West Point delights began. We went beyond the limits of the post, passed out at one of the gates which shut it in from the common world, and forgot for the moment drums and fifes. Up the mountain side, under the shadow of the trees most of the time, though along a good road; with the wild hill at one hand rising sharp above us. Turning round that, we finally plunged down into a grand dell of the hills, leaving all roads behind and all civilization, and having a whole mountain between us and the West Point plain. I suppose it might have been a region for rattlesnakes, but I never thought of them. I had never seen such a place in my life. From the bottom of the gorge where we were, the opposite mountain side sloped up to a great height; wild, lonely, green with a wealth of wood, stupendous, as it seemed to me, in its towering expanse. At our backs, a rocky and green precipice rose up more steeply yet, though to a lesser elevation, topped with the grey walls of the old fort, the other face of which I had seen from our hotel. A wilderness of nature it was; wild and stern. I feasted on it. Dr. Sandford was moving about, looking for something; he helped me over rocks, and jumped me across morasses, and kept watchful guard of me; but else he let me alone; he did not talk, and I had quite enough without. The strong delight of the novelty, the freedom, the delicious wild things around, the bracing air, the wonderful lofty beauty, made me as happy as I thought I could be. I feasted on the rocks and wild verdure, the mosses and ferns and lichen, the scrub forest and tangled undergrowth, among which we plunged and scrambled: above all, on those vast leafy walls which shut in the glen, and almost took away my breath with their towering lonely grandeur. All this time Dr. Sandford was as busy as a bee, in quest of something. He was a great geologist and mineralogist; a lover of all natural science, but particularly of chemistry and geology. When I stopped to look at him, I thought he must have put his own tastes in his pocket for several days past that he might gratify mine. I was standing on a rock, high and dry and grey with lichen; he was poking about in some swampy ground. "Are you tired, Daisy?" he said, looking up. "My feet are tired," I said. "That is all of you that can be tired. Sit down where you are--I will come to you directly." So I sat down and watched him, and looked off between whiles to the wonderful green walls of the glen. The summer blue was very clear overhead; the stillness of the place very deep; insects, birds, a flutter of leaves, and the grating of Dr. Sandford's boot upon a stone, all the sounds that could be heard. "Why you are warm, as well as tired, Daisy," he said, coming up to my rock at last. "It _is_ warm," I answered. "Warm?" said he. "Look here, Daisy!" "Well, what in the world is that?" I said, laughing. "A little mud or earth is all that I can see." "Ah, your eyes are not good for much, Daisy--except to look at." "Not good for much for _that_," I said, amused; for his eyes were bent upon the earth in his hand. "I don't know," said he, getting up on the rock beside me and sitting down. "I used to find strange things in them once. But this is something you will like, Daisy." "Is it?" "If you like wonderful things as well as ever." "Oh, I do!" I said. "What is it, Dr. Sandford?" He carefully wrapped up his treasure in a bit of paper and put it in his pocket; then he cut down a small hickory branch and began to fan me with it; and while he sat there fanning me he entered upon a lecture such as I had never listened to in my life. I had studied a little geology of course, as well as a little of everything else; but no lesson like this had come in the course of my experience. Taking his text from the very wild glen where we were sitting and the mountain sides upon which I had been gazing, Dr. Sandford spread a clear page of nature before me and interpreted it. He answered unspoken questions; he filled great vacancies of my ignorance; into what had been abysms of thought he poured a whole treasury of intelligence and brought floods of light. All so quietly, so luminously, with such a wealth of knowledge and facility of giving it, that it is a simple thing to say no story of Eastern magic was ever given into more charmed ears around an Arabian desert fire. I listened and he talked and fanned me. He talked like one occupied with his subject and not with me: but he met every half-uttered doubt or question, and before he had done he satisfied it fully. I had always liked Dr. Sandford; I had never liked him so much; I had never, since the old childish times, had such a free talk with him. And now, he did not talk to me as a child or a very young girl, except in bending himself to my ignorance; but as one who loves knowledge likes to give it to others, so he gave it to me. Only I do not remember seeing him like to give it in such manner to anybody else. I think the novelty added to the zest when I thought about it; at the moment I had no time for side thoughts. At the moment my ears could but receive the pearls and diamonds of knowledge which came from the speaker's lips, set in silver of the simplest clear English. I notice that the people who have the most thorough grasp of a subject make ever least difficulty of words about it. The sun was high and hot when we returned, but I cared nothing for that. I was more than ever sure that West Point was fairyland. The old spring of childish glee seemed to have come back to my nerves. "Dinner is just ready," said Mrs. Sandford, meeting us in the hall. "Why, where _have_ you been? And look at the colour of Daisy's face! Oh, Grant, what have you done with her?" "Very good colour--" said the doctor, peering under my hat. "She's all flushed and sunburnt, and overheated." "Daisy is never anything but cool," he said; "unless when she gets hold of a principle, and somebody else gets hold of the other end. We'll look at these things after dinner, Daisy." "Principles?" half exclaimed Mrs. Sandford, with so dismayed an expression that the doctor and I both laughed. "Not exactly," said the doctor, putting his hand in his pocket. "Look here." "I see nothing but a little dirt." "You shall see something else by and by--if you will." "You have never brought your microscope here, Grant? Where in the world will you set it up?" "In your room--after dinner--if you permit." Mrs. Sandford permitted; and though she did not care much about the investigations that followed, the doctor and I did. As delightful as the morning had been, the long afternoon stretched its bright hours along; till Mrs. Sandford insisted I must be dressed, and pushed the microscope into a corner and ordered the doctor away. That was the beginning of the pleasantest course of lessons I ever had in my life. From that time Dr. Sandford and I spent a large part of every day in the hills; and often another large part over the microscope. No palace and gardens in the Arabian nights were ever more enchanting, than the glories of nature through which he led me; nor half so wonderful. "A little dirt," as it seemed to ordinary eyes, was the hidden entrance way ofttimes to halls of knowledge more magnificent and more rich than my fancy had ever dreamed of. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sandford found a great many officers to talk to. It was not till the evening of the next day following my first walk into the mountains, that I saw Preston. It was parade time; and I was sitting as usual on one of the iron settees which are placed for the convenience of spectators. I was almost always there at parade and guardmounting. The picture had a continual fascination for me, whether under the morning sun, or the evening sunset; and the music was charming. This time I was alone, Dr. and Mrs. Sandford being engaged in conversation with friends at a little distance. Following with my ear the variations of the air the band were playing my mind was at the same time dwelling on the riches it had just gained in the natural history researches of the day, and also taking in half consciously the colours of the hills and the light that spread over the plain; musing, in short, in a kind of dream of delight; when a grey figure came between me and my picture. Finding that it did not move, I raised my eyes. "The same Daisy as ever!" said Preston, his eyes all alight with fun and pleasure. "The same as ever! And how came you here? and when did you come? and how did you come?" "We have been here ever since Friday. Why haven't you been to see me? Dr. Sandford sent word to you." "Dr. Sandford!" said Preston, taking the place by my side. "How did you come here, Daisy?" "I came by the boat, last Friday. How should I come?" "Who are you with?" "Dr. Sandford--and Mrs. Sandford." "_Mrs._ Sandford, and Dr. Sandford," said Preston, pointedly. "You are not with the doctor, I suppose." "Why yes, I am," I answered. "He is my guardian--don't you know, Preston? He brought me. How tall you have grown!" "A parcel of Yankees," said Preston. "Poor little Daisy." "What do you mean by 'Yankees'?" I said. "You do not mean just people at the North, for you speak as if it was something bad." "It is. So I do," said Preston. "They are a mean set--fit for nothing but to eat codfish and scrape. I wish you had nothing to do with Yankees." I thought how all the South lived upon stolen earnings. It was a disagreeable turn to my meditations for a moment. "Where have you hid yourself since you have come here?" Preston went on. "I have been to the hotel time and again to find you." "Have you!" I said. "Oh, I suppose I was out walking." "With whom were you walking." "I don't know anybody here, but those I came with. But, Preston, why are you not over yonder with the others?" I was looking at the long grey line formed in front of us on the plain. "I got leave of absence, to come and see you, Daisy. And _you_ have grown, and improved. You're wonderfully improved. Are you the very same Daisy? and what are you going to do here?" "Oh, I'm enjoying myself. Now, Preston why does that man stand so?" "What man?" "That officer--here in front, standing all alone, with the sash and sword. Why does he stand so?" "Hush. That is Captain Percival. He is the officer in charge." "What is that?" "Oh, he looks after the parade, and things." "But why does he stand so, Preston?" "Stand how?" said Preston, unsympathizingly. "That is good standing." "Why, with his shoulders up to his ears," I said; "and his arms lifted up as if he was trying to put his elbows upon a high shelf. It is _very_ awkward." "They all stand so," said Preston. "That's right enough." "It is ungraceful." "It is military." "Must one be ungraceful in order to be military?" "_He_ isn't ungraceful. That is Percival--of South Carolina." "The officer yesterday stood a great deal better," I went on. "Yesterday? That was Blunt. He's a Yankee." "Well, what then, Preston?" I said laughing. "I despise them!" "Aren't there Yankees among the cadets?" "Of course; but they are no count--only here and there there's one of good family. Don't you have anything to do with them, Daisy!--mind;--not with one of them, unless I tell you who he is." "With one of whom? What are you speaking of?" "The cadets." "Why I have nothing to do with them," I said. "How should I?" Preston looked at me curiously. "Nor at the hotel, neither, Daisy--more than you can help. Have nothing to say to the Yankees." I thought Preston had taken a strange fancy. I was silent. "It is not fitting," he went on. "We are going to change all that. I want to have nothing to do with Yankees." "What are you going to change?" I asked. "I don't see how you can help having to do with them. They are among the cadets, and they are among the officers." "We have our own set," said Preston. "I have nothing to do with them in the corps." "Now, Preston, look; what are they about? All the red sashes are getting together." "Parade is dismissed. They are coming up to salute the officer in charge." "It is so pretty!" I said, as the music burst out again, and the measured steps of the advancing line of "red sashes" marked it. "And now Captain Percival will unbend his stiff elbows. Why could not all that be done easily, Preston?" "Nonsense, Daisy!--it is military." "Is it? But Mr. Blunt did it a great deal better. Now they are going. Must you go?" "Yes. What are you going to do to-morrow?" "I don't know--I suppose we shall go into the woods again." "When the examination is over, I can attend to you. I haven't much time just now. But there is really nothing to be done here, since one can't get on horseback out of the hours." "I don't want anything better than I can get on my own feet," I said joyously. "I find plenty to do." "Look here, Daisy," said Preston--"don't you turn into a masculine, muscular woman, that can walk her twenty miles and wear hobnailed shoes--like the Yankees you are among. Don't forget that you are the daughter of a Southern gentleman--" He touched his cap hastily and turned away--walking with those measured steps towards the barracks; whither now all the companies of grey figures were in full retreat. I stood wondering, and then slowly returned with my friends to the hotel; much puzzled to account for Preston's discomposure and strange injunctions. The sunlight had left the tops of the hills; the river slept in the gathering grey shadows, soft, tranquil, reposeful. Before I got to the hotel, I had quite made up my mind that my cousin's eccentricities were of no consequence. They recurred to me, however, and were as puzzling as ever. I had no key at the time. The next afternoon was given to a very lively show: the light artillery drill before the Board of Visitors. We sat out under the trees to behold it; and I found out now the meaning of the broad strip of plain between the hotel and the library, which was brown and dusty in the midst of the universal green. Over this strip, round and round, back, and forth, and across, the light artillery wagons rushed, as if to show what they could do in time of need. It was a beautiful sight, exciting and stirring; with the beat of horses' hoofs, the clatter of harness, the rumble of wheels tearing along over the ground, the flash of a sabre now and then, the ringing words of command, and the soft, shrill echoing bugle which repeated them. I only wanted to understand it all; and in the evening I plied Preston with questions. He explained things to me patiently. "I understand," I said, at last, "I understand what it would do in war time. But we are not at war, Preston." "No." "Nor in the least likely to be." "We can't tell. It is good to be ready." "But what do you mean?" I remember saying. "You speak as if we might be at war. Who is there for us to fight?" "Anybody that wants putting in order," said Preston. "The Indians." "O Preston, Preston!" I exclaimed. "The Indians! when we have been doing them wrong ever since the white men came here; and you want to do them more wrong!" "I want to hinder them from doing us wrong. But I don't care about the Indians, little Daisy. I would just as lief fight the Yankees." "Preston, I think you are very wrong." "You think all the world is," he said. We were silent, and I felt very dissatisfied. What _was_ all this military schooling a preparation for, perhaps? How could we know. Maybe these heads and hands, so gay to-day in their mock fight, would be grimly and sadly at work by and by, in real encounter with some real enemy. "Do you see that man, Daisy?" whispered Preston, suddenly in my ear. "That one talking to a lady in blue." We were on the parade ground, among a crowd of spectators, for the hotels were very full, and the Point very gay now. I said I saw him. "That is a great man." "Is he?" I said, looking and wondering if a great man could hide behind such a physiognomy. "Other people think so, I can tell you," said Preston. "Nobody knows what that man can do. That is Davis of Mississippi." The name meant nothing to me then. I looked at him as I would have looked at another man. And I did not like what I saw. Something of sinister, nothing noble, about the countenance; power there might be--Preston said there was--but the power of the fox and the vulture it seemed to me; sly, crafty, selfish, cruel. "If nobody knows what he can do, how is it so certain that he is a great man?" I asked. Preston did not answer. "I hope there are not many great men that look like him." I went on. "Nonsense, Daisy!" said Preston, in an energetic whisper. "That is Davis of Mississippi." "Well?" said I. "That is no more to me than if he were Jones of New York." "Daisy!" said Preston. "If you are not a true Southerner, I will never love you any more." "What do you mean by a true Southerner? I do not understand." "Yes, you do. A true Southerner is always a Southerner, and takes the part of a Southerner in every dispute--right or wrong." "What makes you dislike Northerners so much?" "Cowardly Yankees!" was Preston's reply. "You must have an uncomfortable time among them, if you feel so," I said. "There are plenty of the true sort here. I wish you were in Paris, Daisy; or somewhere else." "Why?" I said, laughing. "Safe with my mother, or _your_ mother. You want teaching. You are too latitudinarian. And you are too thick with the Yankees, by half." I let this opinion alone, as I could do nothing with it; and our conversation broke off with Preston in a very bad humour. The next day, when we were deep in the woods, I asked Dr. Sandford if he knew Mr. Davis of Mississippi. He answered Yes, rather drily. I knew the doctor knew everybody. I asked why Preston called him a great man. "Does he call him a great man?" Dr. Sandford asked. "Do you?" "No, not I, Daisy. But that may not hinder the fact. And I may not have Mr. Gary's means of judging." "What means can he have?" I said. "Daisy," said Dr. Sandford suddenly, when I had forgotten the question in plunging through a thicket of brushwood, "if the North and the South should split on the subject of slavery, what side would you take?" "What do you mean by a 'split'?" I asked slowly, in my wonderment. "The States are not precisely like a perfect crystal, Daisy, and there is an incipient cleavage somewhere about Mason and Dixon's line." "I do not know what line that is." "No. Well, for practical purposes, you may take it as the line between the slave States and the free." "But how could there be a split?" I asked. "There is a wedge applied even now, Daisy--the question whether the new States forming out of our Western territories, shall have slavery in them or shall be free States." I was silent upon this; and we walked and climbed for a little distance, without my remembering our geological or mineralogical, or any other objects in view. "The North say," Dr. Sandford then went on, "that these States shall be free. The South--or some men at the South--threaten that if they be, the South will split from the North, have nothing to do with us, and set up for themselves." "Who is to decide it?" I asked. "The people. This fall the election will be held for the next President; and that will show. If a slavery man be chosen, we shall know that a majority of the nation go with the Southern view." "If not?"-- "Then there may be trouble, Daisy." "What sort of trouble?" I asked hastily. Dr. Sandford hesitated, and then said, "I do not know how far people will go." I mused, and forgot the sweet flutter of green leaves, and smell of moss and of hemlock, and golden bursts of sunshine, amongst which we were pursuing our way. Preston's strange heat and Southernism, Mr. Davis's wile and greatness, a coming disputed election, quarrels between the people where I was born and the people where I was brought up, divisions and jealousies, floated before my mind in unlovely and confused visions. Then, remembering my father and my mother and Gary McFarlane, and others whom I had known, I spoke again. "Whatever the Southern people say, they will do, Dr. Sandford." "_Provided_--" said the doctor. "What, if you please?" "Provided the North will let them, Daisy." I thought privately they could not hinder. Would there be a trial? Could it be possible there would be a trial? "But you have not answered my question," said the doctor. "Aren't you going to answer it?" "What question?" "As to the side you would take." "I do not want any more slave States, Dr. Sandford." "I thought so. Then you would be with the North." "But people will never be so foolish as to come to what you call a 'split,' Dr. Sandford." "Upon my word, Daisy, as the world is at present, the folly of a thing is no presumptive argument against its coming into existence. Look--here we shall get a nice piece of quartz for your collection." I came back to the primary rocks, and for the present dismissed the subject of the confusions existing on the surface of the earth; hoping sincerely that there would be no occasion for calling it up again. For some time I saw very little of Preston. He was busy, he said. My days flowed on like the summer sunshine, and were as beneficent. I was gaining strength every day. Dr. Sandford decreed that I must stay as long as possible. Then Mr. Sandford came, the doctor's brother, and added his social weight to our party. Hardly needed, for I perceived that we were very much sought after; at least my companions. The doctor in especial was a very great favourite, both with men and women; who I notice are most ready to bestow their favour where it is least cared for. I don't know but Dr. Sandford cared for it; only he did not show that he did. The claims of society however began to interfere with my geological and other lessons. A few days after his brother's arrival, the doctor had been carried off by a party of gentlemen who were going back in the mountains to fish in the White Lakes. I was left to the usual summer delights of the place; which indeed to me were numberless; began with the echo of the morning gun (or before) and ended not till the three taps of the drum at night. The cadets had gone into camp by this time; and the taps of the drum were quite near, as well as the shrill sweet notes of the fife at reveille and tattoo. The camp itself was a great pleasure to me; and at guardmounting or parade I never failed to be in my place. Only to sit in the rear of the guard tents and watch the morning sunlight on the turf, and on the hills over the river, and shining down the camp alleys, was a rich satisfaction. Mrs. Sandford laughed at me; her husband said it was "natural," though I am sure he did not understand it a bit; but the end of all was, that I was left very often to go alone down the little path to the guard tents among the crowd that twice a day poured out there from our hotel and met the crowd that came up from Cozzens's hotel below. So it was, one morning that I remember. Guardmounting was always late enough to let one feel the sun's power; and it was a sultry morning, this. We were in July now, and misty, vaporous clouds moved slowly over the blue sky, seeming to intensify the heat of the unclouded intervals. But wonderful sweet it was; and I under the shade of my flat hat, with a little help from the foliage of a young tree, did not mind it at all. Every bit of the scene was a pleasure to me; I missed none of the details. The files of cadets in the camp alleys getting their arms inspected; the white tents themselves, with curtains tightly done up; here and there an officer crossing the camp ground and stopping to speak to an orderly; then the coming up of the band, the music, the marching out of the companies; the leisurely walk from the camp of the officer in charge, drawing on his white gloves; his stand and his attitude; and then the pretty business of the parade. All under that July sky; all under that flicker of cloud and sun, and the soft sweet breath of air that sometimes stole to us to relieve the hot stillness; and all with that setting and background of cedars and young foliage and bordering hills over which the cloud shadows swept. Then came the mounting-guard business. By and by Preston came to me. "Awfully hot, Daisy!" he said. "Yes, you are out in it," I said, compassionately. "What are _you_ out in it for?" "Why, I like it," I said. "How come you to be one of the red sashes this morning?" "I have been an officer of the guard this last twenty-four hours." "Since yesterday morning?" "Yes." "Do you like it, Preston?" "_Like_ it!" he said. "Like guard duty! Why, Daisy, when a fellow has left his shoe-string untied, or something or other like that, they put him on extra guard duty to punish him." "Did you ever do so, Preston?" "Did I ever do so?" he repeated savagely. "Do you think I have been raised like a Yankee, to take care of my shoes? That Blunt is just fit to stand behind a counter and measure inches!" I was very near laughing, but Preston was not in a mood to bear laughing at. "I don't think it is beneath a gentleman to keep his shoe-strings tied," I said. "A gentleman can't always think of everything!" he replied. "Then you are glad you have only one year more at the Academy?" "Of course I am glad! I'll never be under Yankee rule again; not if I know it." "Suppose they elect a Yankee President?" I said; but Preston's look was so eager and so sharp at me that I was glad to cover my rash suggestion under another subject as soon as possible. "Are you going to be busy this afternoon?" I asked him. "No, I reckon not." "Suppose you come and go up to the fort with me?" "What fort?" "Fort Putnam. I have never been there yet." "There is nothing on earth to go there for," said Preston, shrugging his shoulders. "Just broil yourself in the sun, and get nothing for it. It's an awful pull uphill; rough, and all that; and nothing at the top but an old stone wall." "But there is the view!" I said. "You have got it down here--just as good. Just climb up the hotel stairs fifty times without stopping, and then look out of the thing at the top--and you have been to Fort Putnam." "Why, I want you to go to the top of Crow's Nest," I said. "Yes! I was ass enough to try that once," said Preston, "when I was just come, and thought I must do everything; but if anybody wants to insult me, let him just ask me to do it again!" Preston's mood was unmanageable. I had never seen him so in old times. I thought West Point did not agree with him. I listened to the band, just then playing a fine air, and lamented privately to myself that brass instruments should be so much more harmonious than human tempers. Then the music ceased and the military movements drew my attention again. "They all walk like you," I observed carelessly, as I noticed a measured step crossing the camp ground. "Do they?" said Preston sneeringly. "I flatter myself I do not walk like _all_ of them. If you notice more closely, Daisy, you will see a difference. You can tell a Southerner, on foot or on horseback, from the sons of tailors and farmers--strange if you couldn't!" "I think you are unjust, Preston," I said. "You should not talk so. Major Blunt walks as well and stands much better than any officer I have seen; and he is from Vermont; and Capt. Percival is from South Carolina, and Mr. Hunter is from Virginia, and Col. Forsyth is from Georgia. They are all of them less graceful than Major Blunt." "What do you think of Dr. Sandford?" said Preston in the same tone; but before I could answer I heard a call of "Gary!--Gary!" I looked round. In the midst of the ranks of spectators to our left stood a cadet, my friend of the omnibus. He was looking impatiently our way, and again exclaimed in a sort of suppressed shout--"Gary!" Preston heard him that time; started from my side, and placed himself immediately beside his summoner, in front of the guard tents and spectators. The two were in line, two or three yards separating them, and both facing towards a party drawn up at some little distance on the camp ground, which I believe were the relieving guard. I moved my own position to a place immediately behind them, where I spied an empty camp-stool, and watched the two with curious eyes. Uniforms, and military conformities generally, are queer things if you take the right point of view. Here were these two, a pair, and not a pair. The grey coat and the white pantaloons (they had all gone into white now), the little soldier's cap, were a counterpart in each of the other; the two even stood on the ground as if they were bound to be patterns each of the other; and when my acquaintance raised his arms and folded them after the most approved fashion, to my great amusement Preston's arms copied the movement: and they stood like two brother statues still, from their heels to their cap rims. Except when once the right arm of my unknown friend was unbent to give a military sign, in answer to some demand or address from somebody in front of him which I did not hear. Yet as I watched, I began to discern how individual my two statues really were. I could not see faces, of course. But the grey coat on the one looked as if its shoulders had been more carefully brushed than had been the case with the other; the spotless pantaloons, which seemed to be just out of the laundress's basket, as I suppose they were, sat with a trimmer perfection in one case than in the other. Preston's pocket gaped, and was, I noticed, a little bit ripped; and when my eye got down to the shoes, his had not the black gloss of his companion's. With that one there was not, I think, a thread awry. And then, there was a certain relaxation in the lines of Preston's figure impossible to describe, stiff and motionless though he was; something which prepared one for a lax and careless movement when he moved. Perhaps this was fancy and only arose from my knowledge of the fact; but with the other no such fancy was possible. Still, but alert; motionless, but full of vigour; I expected what came; firm, quick, and easy action, as soon as he should cease to be a statue. So much to a back view of character; which engrossed me till my two statues went away. A little while after Preston came. "Are you here yet?" he said. "Don't you like to have me here?" "It's hot. And it is very stupid for you, I should think. Where is Mrs. Sandford?" "She thinks as you do, that it is stupid." "You ought not to be here without some one." "Why not? What cadet was that who called you, Preston?" "Called me? Nobody called me." "Yes he did. When you were sitting with me. Who was it?" "I don't know!" said Preston. "Good-bye. I shall be busy for a day or two." "Then you cannot go to Fort Putnam this afternoon?" "Fort Putnam? I should think not. It will be broiling to-day." And he left me. Things had gone wrong with Preston lately, I thought. Before I had made up my mind to move, two other cadets came before me. One of them Mrs. Sandford knew, and I slightly. "Miss Randolph, my friend Mr. Thorold has begged me to introduce him to you." It was _my_ friend of the omnibus. I think we liked each other at this very first moment. I looked up at a manly, well-featured face, just then lighted with a little smile of deference and recognition; but permanently lighted with the brightest and quickest hazel eyes that I ever saw. Something about the face pleased me on the instant. I believe it was the frankness. "I have to apologize for my rudeness, in calling a gentleman away from you, Miss Randolph, in a very unceremonious manner, a little while ago." "Oh, I know," I said. "I saw what you did with him." "Did I do anything with him?" "Only called him to his duty, I suppose." "Precisely. He was very excusable for forgetting it; but it might have been inconvenient." "Do you think it is ever excusable to forget duty?" I asked; and I was rewarded with a swift flash of fun in the hazel eyes, that came and went like forked lightning. "It is not easily pardoned here," he answered. "People don't make allowances?" "Not officers," he said, with a smile. "Soldiers lose the character of men, when on duty; they are only reckoned machines." "You do not mean that exactly, I suppose." "Indeed I do!" he said, with another slighter coruscation. "Intelligent machines, of course, and with no more latitude of action. You would not like that life?" "I should think you would not." "Ah, but we hope to rise to the management of the machines, some day." I thought I saw in his face that he did. I remarked that I thought the management of machines could not be very pleasant. "Why not?" "It is degrading to the machines--and so, I should think, it would not be very elevating to those that make them machines." "That is exactly the use they propose them to serve, though," he said, looking amused; "the elevation of themselves." "I know," I said, thinking that the end was ignoble too. "You do not approve it?" he said. I felt those brilliant eyes dancing all over me and, I fancied, over my thoughts too. I felt a little shy of going on to explain myself to one whom I knew so little. He turned the conversation, by asking me if I had seen all the lions yet. I said I supposed not. "Have you been up to the old fort?" "I want to go there," I said; "but somebody told me to-day, there was nothing worth going for." "Has his report taken away your desire to make the trial?" "No, for I do not believe he is right." "Might I offer myself as a guide? I can be disengaged this afternoon; and I know all the ways to the fort. It would give me great pleasure." I felt it would give me great pleasure too, and so I told him. We arranged for the hour, and Mr. Thorold hastened away. CHAPTER XV. FORT PUTNAM. "I am going to Fort Putnam this afternoon, with Mr. Thorold," I announced to Mrs. Sandford, after dinner. "Who is Mr. Thorold?" "One of the cadets." "One of the cadets! So it has got hold of you at last, Daisy!" "What, Mrs. Sandford?" "But Fort Putnam? My dearest child, it is very hot!" "Oh, yes, ma'am--I don't mind it." "Well, I am very glad, if you don't," said Mrs. Sandford. "And I am very glad Grant has taken himself off to the White Lakes. He gave nobody else any chance. It will do you a world of good." "What will?" I asked, wondering. "Amusement, dear--amusement. Something a great deal better than Grant's 'elogies and 'ologies. Now this would never have happened if he had been at home." I did not understand her, but then I knew she did not understand the pursuits she so slighted; and it was beyond my powers to enlighten her. So I did not try. Mr. Thorold was punctual, and so was I; and we set forth at five o'clock, I at least was happy as it was possible to be. Warm it was, yet; we went slowly down the road, in shadow and sunshine; tasting the pleasantness, it seems to me, of every tree, and feeling the sweetness of each breath; in that slight exhilaration of spirits which loses nothing and forgets nothing. At least I have a good memory for such times. There was a little excitement, no doubt, about going this walk with a cadet and a stranger, which helped the whole effect. I made use of my opportunity to gain a great deal of information which Dr. Sandford could not give. I wanted to understand the meaning and the use of many things I saw about the Point. Batteries and fortifications were a mysterious jumble to me; shells were a horrible novelty; the whole art and trade of a soldier, something well worth studying, but difficult to see as a reasonable whole. The adaptation of parts to an end, I could perceive; the end itself puzzled me. "Yet there has always been fighting," said my companion. "Yes," I assented. "Then we must be ready for it." But I was not prepared in this case with my answer. "Suppose we were unjustly attacked?" said Mr. Thorold; and I thought every one of the gilt buttons on his grey jacket repelled the idea of a peaceable composition. "I don't know," said I, pondering. "Why should the rule be different for nations and for individual people?" "What is your rule for individual people?" he asked, laughing, and looking down at me, as he held the gate open. I can see the look and the attitude now. "It is not _my_ rule," I said. "_The_ rule, then. What should a man do, Miss Randolph, when he is unjustly attacked?" I felt I was on very untenable ground, talking to a soldier. If I was right, what was the use of his grey coat, or of West Point itself? We were mounting the little steep pitch beyond the gate, where the road turns; and I waited till I got upon level footing. Then catching a bright inquisitive glance of the hazel eyes, I summoned up my courage and spoke. "I have no rule but the Bible, Mr. Thorold." "The Bible! What does the Bible say? It tells us of a great deal of fighting." "Of bad men." "Yes, but the Jews were commanded to fight, were they not?" "To punish bad men. But we have got another rule since that." "What is it?" "If any man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also." "Is it possible you think the Bible means that literally?" he said. "Do you think it would say what it did not mean?" "But try it by the moral effect; what sort of a fellow would a man be who did so, Miss Randolph?" "I think he would be fine!" I said; for I was thinking of One who, "when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not." But I could not tell all my thought to Mr. Thorold; no more than I could to Dr. Sandford. "And would you have him stand by and see another injured?" my companion asked. "Wouldn't you have him fight in such a case?" I had not considered that question. I was silent. "Suppose he sees wrong done; wrong that a few well-planted blows, or shots, if you like--shots are but well-directed blows," he said, smiling--"wrong that a few well-planted blows would prevent. Suppose somebody were to attack you now, for instance; ought I not to fight for it?" "I should like to have you," I said. "Come!" he said, laughing, and stretching out his hand to shake mine, "I see you will let me keep my profession, after all. And why should not a nation do, on a larger scale, what a man may do?" "Why it may," I said. "Then West Point is justified." "But very few wars in the world are conducted on that principle," I said. "Very few. In fact I do not at this moment recollect the instances. But you would allow a man, or a nation, to fight in self-defence, would not you?" I pondered the matter. "I suppose he has a right to protect his life," I said. "But, 'if a man smite thee on the cheek,' _that_ does not touch life." "What would you think of a man," said my companion, gravely, "who should suffer some one to give him such a blow, without taking any notice of it?" "If he did it because he was _afraid_," I said, "of course I shouldn't like that. But if he did it to obey the Bible, I should think it was noble. The Bible says, 'it is glory to pass by a transgression.'" "But suppose he was afraid of being thought afraid?" I looked at my companion, and felt instinctively sure that neither this nor my first supposed case would ever be true of him. Further, I felt sure that no one would ever be hardy enough to give the supposed occasion. I can hardly tell how I knew; it was by some of those indescribable natural signs. We were slowly mounting the hill; and in every powerful, lithe movement, in the very set of his shoulders and head, and as well in the sparkle of the bright eye which looked round at me, I read the tokens of a spirit which I thought neither had known nor ever would know the sort of indignity he had described. He was talking for talk's sake. But while I looked, the sparkle of the eye grew very merry. "You are judging me, Miss Randolph," he said. "Judge me gently." "No, indeed," I said. "I was thinking that you are not speaking from experience." "I am not better than you think me," he said, laughing, and shaking his head. And the laugh was so full of merriment that it infected me. I saw he was very much amused; I thought he was a little interested, too. "You know," he went on, "my education has been unfavourable. I have fought for a smaller matter than that you judge insufficient." "Did it do any good?" I asked. He laughed again: picked up a stone and threw it into the midst of a thick tree to dislodge something--I did not see what; and finally looked round at me with the most genial amusement and good nature mixed. I knew he was interested now. "I don't know how much good it did to anybody but myself," he said. "It comforted me--at the time. Afterwards I remember thinking it was hardly worth while. But if a fellow should suffer an insult, as you say, and not take any notice of it, what do you suppose would become of him in the corps--or in the world either?" "He would be a noble man, all the same," I said. "But people like to be well thought of by their friends and society." "I know that." "He would be sent to Coventry unmitigatedly." "I cannot help it, Mr. Thorold," I said. "If anybody does wrong because he is afraid of the consequences of doing right, he is another sort of a coward--that is all." Mr. Thorold laughed, and catching my hand as we came to a turn in the road where the woods fell away right and left, brought me quick round the angle, without letting me go to the edge of the bank to get the view. "You must not look till you get to the top," he said. "What an odd road!" I remarked. "It just goes by zigzags." "The only way to get up at all, without travelling round the hill. That is, for horses." It was steep enough for foot wayfarers, but the road was exceeding comfortable that day. We were under the shade of trees all the way; and talk never lagged. Mr. Thorold was infinitely pleasant to me; as well as unlike any one of all my former acquaintances. There was a wealth of life in him that delighted my quieter nature; an amount of animal spirits that were just a constant little impetus to me; and from the first I got an impression of strength, such as weakness loves to have near. Bodily strength he had also, in perfection; but I mean now the firm, self-reliant nature, quick at resources, ready to act as to decide, and full of the power that has its spring and magazine in character alone. So, enjoying each other, we went slowly up the zigzags of the hill, very steep in places, and very rough to the foot; but the last pitch was smoother, and there the grey old bulwarks of the ruined fortification faced down upon us, just above. "Now," said Mr. Thorold, coming on the outside of me to prevent it, "don't look!"--and we turned into the entrance of the fort, between two outstanding walls. Going through, we hurried up a little steep rise, till we got to a smooth spread of grass, sloping gently to a level with the top of the wall. Where this slope reached its highest, where the parapet (as Mr. Thorold called it) commanded a clear view from the eastern side, there he brought me, and then permitted me to stand still. I do not know how long I stood quite still without speaking. "Will you sit down?" said my companion; and I found he had spread a pocket-handkerchief on the bank for me. The turf in that place was about eighteen inches higher than the top of the wall, making a very convenient seat. I thought of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh; but I also thought the most queenly thing I could do was to take the offered civility, and I sat down. My eyes were bewildered with the beauty; they turned from one point to another with a sort of wondering, insatiable enjoyment. There, beneath our feet, lay the little level green plain; its roads and trees all before us as in a map, with the lines of building enclosing it on the south and west. A cart and oxen were slowly travelling across the road between the library and the hotel, looking like minute ants dragging a crumb along. Beyond them was the stretch of brown earth, where the cavalry exercises forbade a blade of grass to show itself. And beyond that, at the farther edge of the plain, the little white camp; its straight rows of tents and the alleys between all clearly marked out. Round all this the river curved, making a promontory of it; a promontory with fringed banks, and levelled at top, as it seemed, just to receive the Military Academy. On the other side the river, a long sweep of gentle hills, coloured in the fair colours of the evening; curving towards the north-east into a beautiful circle of soft outlines back of the mountain which rose steep and bold at the water's edge. This mountain was the first of the group I had seen from my hotel window. Houses and churches nestled in the curve of tableland, under the mountain. Due north, the parapet of the fort rising sharply at its northern angle a few feet from where I sat, hindered my full view. Southerly, the hills swept down, marking the course of the river for many a mile; but again from where I sat I could not see how far. With a sigh of pleasure my eye came back to the plain and the white tents. "Is guard duty very disagreeable?" I asked, thinking of Preston's talk in the morning. "Why at mid-day, with the thermometer at 90°, it is not exactly the amusement one would choose," said Mr. Thorold. "I like it at night well enough." "What do you do?" "Nothing, but walk up and down, two hours at a time." "What is the use of it?" "To keep order, and make sure that nothing goes in or out that has no business to do it." "And they have to carry their guns," I said. "Their muskets--yes." "Are they very heavy?" "No. Pretty heavy for an arm that is new to it. I never remember I have mine." "Mr. Caxton said," (Mr. Caxton was the cadet who had introduced Mr. Thorold to me)--"Mr. Caxton told Mrs. Sandford that the new cadets are sometimes so exhausted with their tour of duty that they have to be carried off the ground." Mr. Thorold looked at me, a very keen bright look of his hazel eyes; but he said nothing. "And he said that the little white boxes at the corners of the camp, were monuments to those who had fallen on duty." "Just four of them!" said Mr. Thorold, settling his cap down over his brows; but then he laughed, and I laughed; how we laughed! "Don't you want to see the rest of it?" he said, jumping up. I did not know there was anything more to see. Now however he brought me up on the high angle of the parapet that had intercepted my view to the north. I could hardly get away from there. The full magnificence of the mountains in that quarter; the river's course between them, the blue hills of the distant Shawangunk range, and the woody chasm immediately at my feet, stretching from the height where I stood over to the crest of the Crow's Nest; it took away my breath. I sat down again, while Mr. Thorold pointed out localities; and did not move, till I had to make way for another party of visitors who were coming. Then Mr. Thorold took me all round the edge of the fort. At the south, we looked down into the woody gorge where Dr. Sandford and I had hunted for fossil infusoria. From here the long channel of the river running southernly, with its bordering ridge of hills, and above all, the wealth and glory of the woodland and the unheaved rocks before me, were almost as good as the eastern view. The path along the parapet in places was narrow and dizzy; but I did not care for it, and my companion went like a chamois. He helped me over the hard places; hand in hand we ran down the steep slopes; and as we went we got very well acquainted. At last we climbed up the crumbling masonry to a small platform which commanded the view both east and south. "What is this place for?" I asked. "To plant guns on." "They could not reach to the river, could they?" "Much further--the guns of nowadays." "And the old vaults under here--I saw them as we passed by,--were they prisons, places for prisoners?" "A sort of involuntary prisoners," said Mr. Thorold. "They are only casemates; prisons for our own men occasionally, when shot and shell might be flying too thick; hiding-places, in short. Would you like to go to the laboratory some day, where we learn to make different kinds of shot, and fire-works and such things?" "Oh, very much! But, Mr. Thorold, Mr. Caxton told me that André was confined in one of these places under here; he said his name was written upon the stones in a dark corner, and that I would find it." Mr. Thorold looked at me, with an expression of such contained fun that I understood it at once; and we had another laugh together. I began to wonder whether every one that wore a uniform of grey and white with gilt buttons made it his amusement to play upon the ignorance of uninitiated people; but on reflection I could not think Mr. Thorold had done so. I resolved to be careful how I trusted the rest of the cadets, even Preston; and indeed my companion remarked that I had better not believe anything I heard without asking him. We ran down and inspected the casemates; and then took our seats again for one last look on the eastern parapet. The river and hills were growing lovely in cooler lights; shadow was stealing over the plain. "Shall I see you to-morrow evening?" my companion asked suddenly. "To-morrow evening?" I said. "I don't know. I suppose we shall be at home." "Then I shall _not_ see you. I meant, at the hop." "The hop?" I repeated. "What is that?" "The cadets' hop. During the encampment we have a hop three times a week--a cotillion party. I hope you will be there. Haven't you received an invitation?" "I think not," I said. "I have heard nothing about it." "I will see that that is set right," Mr. Thorold remarked. "And now, do you know we must go down?--that is, _I_ must; and I do not think I can leave you here." "Oh, you have to be on parade!" I exclaimed, starting up; "and it is almost time!" It was indeed, and though my companion put his own concerns in the background very politely, I would be hurried. We ran down the hill, Mr. Thorold's hand helping me over the rough way and securing me from stumbling. In very few minutes we were again at the gate and entered upon the post limits. And there were the band, in dark column, just coming up from below the hill. We walked the rest of the way in orderly fashion enough, till we got to the hotel gate; there Mr. Thorold touched his cap and left me, on a run, for the camp. I watched till I saw he got there in time, and then went slowly in; feeling that a great piece of pleasure was over. I had had a great many pieces of pleasure in my life, but rarely a _companion_. Dr. Sandford, Miss Cardigan, my dear Capt. Drummond, were all much in advance of my own age; my servants were my servants, at Magnolia; and Preston had never associated with me on just the footing of equality. I went upstairs thinking that I should like to see a great deal more of Mr. Thorold. Mrs. Sandford was on the piazza when I came down, and alone; everybody was gone to parade. She gave me a little billet. "Well, my dear Daisy!--are you walked to death? Certainly, West Point agrees with you! What a colour! And what a change! You are not the same creature that we brought away from New York. Well, was it worth going for, all the way to see that old ruin? My dear! I wish your father and mother could see you." I stood still, wishing they could. "There is more pleasure for you," Mrs. Sandford went on. "What is this, ma'am?" "An invitation. The cadets have little parties for dancing, it seems, three times a week, in summer; poor fellows! it is all the recreation they get, I suspect; and of course, they want all the ladies that can be drummed up, to help them to dance. It's quite a charity, they tell me. I expect I shall have to dance myself." I looked at the note, and stood mute, thinking what I should do. Ever since Mr. Thorold had mentioned it, up on the hill, the question had been recurring to me. I had never been to a party in my life, since my childish days at Melbourne. Aunt Gary's parties at Magnolia had been of a different kind from this; not assemblies of young people. At Mme. Ricard's I had taken dancing lessons, at my mother's order; and in her drawing room I had danced quadrilles and waltzes with my schoolfellows; but Mme. Ricard was very particular, and nobody else was ever admitted. I hardly knew what it was to which I was now invited. To dance with the cadets! I knew only three of them; however, I supposed that I might dance with those three. I had an impression that amusements of this kind were rather found in the houses of the gay than the sober-minded; but this was peculiar, to help the cadets' dance, Mrs. Sandford said. I thought Mr. Thorold wished I would come. I wondered Preston had not mentioned it. He, I knew, was very fond of dancing. I mused till the people came back from parade and we were called to tea; but all my musings went no further. I did not decide _not_ to go. "Now, Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford the next morning, "if you are going to the hop to-night, I don't intend to have you out in the sun burning yourself up. It will be terribly hot; and you must keep quiet. I am so thankful Grant is away! he would have you all through the woods, hunting for nobody knows what, and bringing you home scorched." "Dear Mrs. Sandford," I said, "I can dance just as well, if I _am_ burnt." "That's a delusion, Daisy. You are a woman, after all, my dear--or you will be; and you may as well submit to the responsibility. And you may not know it, but you have a wonderfully fine skin, my dear; it always puts me in mind of fresh cream." "Cream is yellow," I said. "Not all the cream that ever _I_ saw," said Mrs. Sandford. "Daisy, you need not laugh. You will be a queen, my dear, when you cease to be a child. What are you going to wear to-night?" "I don't know, ma'am; anything cool, I suppose." "It won't matter much," Mrs. Sandford repeated. But yet I found she cared, and it did matter, when it came to the dressing-time. However she was satisfied with one of the embroidered muslins my mother had sent me from Paris. I think I see myself now, seated in the omnibus and trundling over the plain to the cadets' dancing-rooms. The very hot, still July night seems round me again. Lights were twinkling in the camp, and across the plain in the houses of the professors and officers; lights above in the sky too, myriads of them, mocking the tapers that go out so soon. I was happy with a little flutter of expectation; quietly enjoying meanwhile the novel loveliness of all about me, along with the old familiar beauty of the abiding stars and dark blue sky. It was a five minutes of great enjoyment. But all natural beauty vanished from my thoughts when the omnibus drew up at the door of the Academic Building. I was entering on something untried. At first sight, when we went into the room, it burst upon me that it was very pretty. The room was dressed with flags,--and evergreens,--and with uniforms; and undoubtedly there is charm in colour, and a gilt button and a gold strap do light up the otherwise sombre and heavy figures of our Western masculine costume. The white and rosy and blue draperies and scarfs that were floating around the forms of the ladies, were met and set off by the grey and white of the cadets and the heavier dark blue of the officers. I never anywhere else saw so pretty gatherings. I stood quite enchanted with the pleasure of the eye; till to my startled astonishment, Capt. Percival came up and asked me to dance with him. I had not expected to dance with anybody except Preston, and Mr. Thorold, and perhaps Mr. Caxton. Mr. Thorold came up before the dance began, and I presented him to Mrs. Sandford. He asked me for the first dance, then for the second. And there was no more time for anything, for the dancing began. I had always liked dancing at school. Here the music was far better and the scene infinitely prettier; it was very pleasant, I thought. That is, when Capt. Percival did not talk; for he talked nothings. I did not know how to answer him. Of course it had been very hot to-day; and the rooms were very full; and there were a good many people at the hotel. I had nothing but an insipid affirmative to give to these propositions. Then said Capt. Percival insinuatingly-- "You are from the South?" I had nothing but an insipid assent again. "I was sure of it," he said. "I could not be mistaken." I wondered how he knew, but it did not suit me to ask him; and we danced on again till the dance came to an end. I was glad when it did. In a minute more I was standing by Mrs. Sandford and introduced to Capt. Boulanger, who also asked me to dance, and engaged me for the next but one; and then Mr. Caxton brought up one of his brother cadets and presented him, and _he_ asked me, and looked disappointed when for both the next dances I was obliged to refuse him. I was quite glad when Mr. Thorold came and carried me off. The second quadrille went better than the first; and I was enjoying myself unfeignedly, when in a pause of the dance I remarked to my partner that there seemed to be plenty of ladies here to-night. "Plenty," he said. "It is very kind of them. What then?" "Only--" I said--"so many people came and asked me to dance in the few minutes I stood by Mrs. Sandford, and one of them looked quite disappointed that he could not have me." I was met by a look of the keenest inquiry, followed instantly and superseded by another flash of expression. I could not comprehend it at the time. The eyes, which had startled me by their steely gleam, softened wonderfully with what looked like nothing so much as reverence, along with some other expression which I could neither read at the moment nor fathom afterwards. Both looks were gone before I could ask him what they meant, or perhaps I should have asked; for I was beginning to feel very much at my ease with Mr. Thorold. I trusted him. "Did he want you for this dance?" was all he said. "For this, and for the next," I answered. "Both gone! Well, may I have the third, and so disappoint somebody else?" he said, laughing. If I did not talk much with Mr. Thorold in intervals of dancing, at least we did not talk nonsense. In the next pause he remarked that he saw I was fond of this amusement. "I think I like everything," I told him. "Are the hills better than this?" he whispered. "Oh, yes!" I said. "Don't you think so?" He smiled, and said "truly he did." "You have been over the Flirtation walk, of course?" he added. "I do not know which it is." He smiled again, that quick illuminating smile, which seemed to sparkle in his hazel eyes; and nodded his head a little. "I had the pleasure to see you there, very early one morning." "Oh, is that it?" I said. "I have been down that way from the hotel very often." "That way leads to it. You were upon it, where you were sitting. You have not been through it yet? May I show it to you some day? To-morrow?" I agreed joyfully; and then asked who were certain of the cadets whom I saw about the room, with rosettes of ribbon and long streamers on the breast of their grey coats? "Those are the Managers," said my companion. "You will see enough of them. It is their duty to introduce poor fellows who want partners." I did not see much of them, however, that evening. As soon as I was released from that dance, Capt. Percival brought up Capt. Lascelles; and somebody else, Mr. Sandford, I believe, introduced Lt. Vaux, and Major Fairbairn; and Major Pitt was another, I believe. And Col. Walruss brought up his son, who was in the corps of cadets. They all wanted to dance with me; so it was lucky Mr. Thorold had secured his second dance, or I could not have given it to him. I went over and over again the same succession of topics, in the intervals of standing still. How the day had been warm, and the evening kept up its character; the hotels were full now; the cadets well off to have so many ladies; dancing a pleasant pastime, and West Point a nice place. I got so accustomed to the remarks I might expect, that my mouth was ready with an assenting "yes" before the speaker began. But the talking was a small part of the business, after all; and the evening went merrily for me, till on a sudden a shrill piercing summons of drum and fife, rolling as it were into our very ears, put a stop to proceedings. Midway in the movement the dancers stopped; there was a hurried bow and curtsey, and an instant scattering of all the grey-coated part of the assembly. The "hop" was over. We went home in the warm moonlight, I thinking that I had had a very nice time, and glad that Mr. Thorold was coming to take me to walk to-morrow. CHAPTER XVI. HOPS. The afternoon was very sultry; however, Mr. Thorold came, and we went for our walk. It was so sultry we went very leisurely and also met few people; and instead of looking very carefully at the beauties of nature and art we had come to see, we got into a great talk as we strolled along; indeed, sometimes we stopped and sat down to talk. Mr. Thorold told me about himself, or rather, about his home in Vermont and his old life there. He had no mother, and no brothers nor sisters; only his father. And he described to me the hills of his native country, and the farm his father cultivated, and the people, and the life on the mountains. Strong and free and fresh and independent and intelligent--that was the impression his talk made upon me, of the country and people and life alike. Sometimes my thoughts took a private turn of their own, branching off. "Mr. Thorold," said I, "do you know Mr. Davis of Mississippi?" "Davis? No, I don't know him," he said shortly. "You have seen him?" "Yes, I have seen him often enough; and his wife, too." "Do you like his looks?" "I do not." "He looks to me like a bad man--" I said slowly. I said it to Mr. Thorold; I would hardly have made the remark to another at West Point. "He is about bad business--" was my companion's answer. "And yet I do not know what he is about; but I distrust the man." "Mr. Thorold," said I, beginning cautiously, "do you want to have slavery go into the territories?" "No!" said he. "Do you?" "No. What do you think would happen if a Northern President should be elected in the fall?" "Then slavery would _not_ go into the territories," he said, looking a little surprised at me. "The question would be settled." "But do you know some people say--some people at the South say--that if a Northern President is elected, the Southern States will not submit to him?" "Some people talk a great deal of nonsense," said Mr. Thorold. "How could they help submitting?" "They say--it is said--that they would break off from the North and set up for themselves. It is not foolish people that say it, Mr. Thorold." "Will you pardon me, Miss Randolph, but I think they would be very foolish people that would do it." "Oh, I think so too," I said. "I mean, that some people who are not foolish believe that it might happen." "Perhaps," said Mr. Thorold. "I never heard anything of it before. You are from the South yourself, Miss Randolph?" he added, looking at me. "I was born there," I said. And a little silence fell between us. I was thinking. Some impression, got I suppose from my remembrance of father and mother, Preston, and others whom I had known, forbade me to dismiss quite so lightly, as too absurd to be true, the rumour I had heard. Moreover, I trusted Dr. Sandford's sources of information, living as he did in habits of close social intercourse with men of influence and position at Washington, both Southern and Northern. "Mr. Thorold,"--I broke the silence,--"if the South should do such a thing, what would happen?" "There would be trouble," he said. "What sort of trouble?" "Might be all sorts," said Mr. Thorold, laughing; "it would depend on how far people's folly would carry them." "But suppose the Southern States should just do that;--say they would break off and govern themselves?" "They would be like a bad boy that has to be made to take medicine." "How could you _make_ them?" I asked, feeling unreasonably grave about the question. "You can see, Miss Randolph, that such a thing could not be permitted. A government that would let any part of its subjects break away at their pleasure from its rule, would deserve to go to pieces. If one part might go, another part might go. There would be no nation left." "But how could you _help_ it?" I asked. "I don't know whether we could help it," he said; "but we would try." "You do not mean that it would come to _fighting_?" "I do not think they would be such fools. I hope we are supposing a very unlikely thing, Miss Randolph." I hoped so. But that impression of Southern character troubled me yet. Fighting! I looked at the peaceful hills, feeling as if indeed "all the foundations of the earth" would be "out of course." "What would _you_ do in case it came to fighting?" said my neighbour. The words startled me out of my meditations. "I could not do anything." "I beg your pardon. Your favour--your countenance, would do much; on one side or the other. You would fight--in effect--as surely as I should." I looked up. "Not against you," I said; for I could not bear to be misunderstood. There was a strange sparkle in Mr. Thorold's eye; but those flashes of light came and went so like flashes, that I could not always tell what they meant. The tone of his voice, however, I knew expressed pleasure. "How comes that?" he said. "You _are_ Southern?" "Do I look it?" I asked. "Pardon me--yes." "How, Mr. Thorold?" "You must excuse me. I cannot tell you. But you _are_ South?" "Yes," I said. "At least, all my friends are Southern. I was born there." "You have _one_ Northern friend," said Mr. Thorold, as we rose up to go on. He said it with meaning. I looked up and smiled. There was a smile in his eyes, mixed with something more. I think our compact of friendship was made and settled then and at once. He stretched out his hand, as if for a further ratification. I put mine in it, while he went on,--"How comes it, then, that you take such a view of such a question?" There had sprung up a new tone in our intercourse, of more familiarity, and more intimate trust. It gave infinite content to me; and I went on to answer, telling him about my Northern life. Drawn on, from question to question, I detailed at length my Southern experience also, and put my new friend in possession not only of my opinions, but of the training under which they had been formed. My hand, I remember, remained in his while I talked, as if he had been my brother; till he suddenly put it down and plunged into the bushes for a bunch of wild roses. A party of walkers came round an angle a moment after; and waking up to a consciousness of our surroundings, we found, or _I_ did, that we were just at the end of the rocky walk, where we must mount up and take to the plain. The evening was falling very fair over plain and hill when we got to the upper level. Mr. Thorold proposed that I should go and see the camp, which I liked very much to do. So he took me all through it, and showed and explained all sorts of things about the tents and the manner of life they lived in them. He said he should like it very much, if he only had more room; but three or four in one little tent nine feet by nine, gave hardly, as he said, "a chance to a fellow." The tents and the camp alleys were full of cadets, loitering about, or talking, or busy with their accoutrements; here and there I saw an officer. Captain Percival bowed, Captain Lascelles spoke. I looked for Preston, but I could see him nowhere. Then Mr. Thorold brought me into his own tent, introduced one or two cadets who were loitering there, and who immediately took themselves away; and made me sit down on what he called a "locker." The tent curtains were rolled tight up, as far as they would go, and so were the curtains of every other tent; most beautiful order prevailed everywhere and over every trifling detail. "Well," said Mr. Thorold, sitting down opposite me on a candle-box--"how do you think you would like camp life?" "The tents are too close together," I said. He laughed, with a good deal of amusement. "That will do!" he said. "You begin by knocking the camp to pieces." "But it is beautiful," I went on. "And not comfortable. Well, it is pretty comfortable," he said. "How do you do when it storms very hard--at night?" "Sleep." "Don't you ever get wet?" "_That_ makes no difference." "Sleep in the rain!" said I. And he laughed again at me. It was not banter. The whole look and air of the man testified to a thorough soldierly, manly contempt of little things--of all things that might come in the way of order and his duty. An intrinsic independence and withal control of circumstances, in so far as the mind can control them. I read the power to do it. But I wondered to myself if he never got homesick in that little tent and full camp. It would not do to touch the question. "Do you know Preston Gary?" I asked. "He is a cadet." "I know him." I thought the tone of the words, careless as they were, signified little value for the knowledge. "I have not seen him anywhere," I remarked. "Do you want to see him? He has seen you." "No, he cannot," I said, "or he would have come to speak to me." "He would if he could," replied Mr. Thorold--"no doubt; but the liberty is wanting. He is on guard. We crossed his path as we came into the camp." "On guard!" I said. "Is he? Why, he was on guard only a day or two ago. Does it come so often?" "It comes pretty often in Gary's case," said my companion. "Does it?" I said. "He does not like it." "No," said Mr. Thorold, merrily. "It is not a favourite amusement in most cases." "Then why does he have so much of it?" "Gary is not fond of discipline." I guessed this might be true. I knew enough of Preston for that. But it startled me. "Does he not obey the regulations?" I asked presently, in a lowered tone. Mr. Thorold smiled. "He is a friend of yours, Miss Randolph?" "Yes," I said; "he is my mother's nephew." "Then he is your cousin?" said my companion. Another of those penetrative glances fell on me. They were peculiar; they flashed upon me, or through me, as keen and clear as the flash of a sabre in the sun; and out of eyes in which a sunlight of merriment or benignity was even then glowing. Both glowed upon me just at this moment, so I did not mind the keen investigation. Indeed, I never minded it. I learned to know it as one of Mr. Thorold's peculiarities. Now, Dr. Sandford had a good eye for reading people, but it never flashed, unless under strong excitement. Mr. Thorold's were dancing and flashing and sparkling with fifty things by turns; their fund of amusement and power of observation were the first things that struck me, and they attracted me too. "Then he is your cousin?" "Of course, he is my cousin." I thought Mr. Thorold seemed a little bit grave and silent for a moment; then he rose up, with that benign look of his eyes glowing all over me, and told me there was the drum for parade. "Only the first drum," he added; so I need not be in a hurry. Would I go home before parade? I thought I would. If Preston was pacing up and down the side of the camp ground, I thought I did not want to see him nor to have him see me, as he was there for what I called disgrace. Moreover, I had a secret presentiment of a breezy discussion with him the next time there was a chance. And I was not disappointed. The next day in the afternoon he came to see us. Mrs. Sandford and I were sitting on the piazza, where the heat of an excessive sultry day was now relieved a little by a slender breeze coming out of the north-west. It was very hot still. Preston sat down and made conversation in an abstracted way for a little while. "We did not see you at the hop the other night, Mr. Gary," Mrs. Sandford remarked. "No. Were you there?" said Preston. "Everybody was there--except you." "And Daisy? Were _you_ there, Daisy?" "Certainly," Mrs. Sandford responded. "Everybody else could have been better missed." "I did not know you went there," said Preston, in something so like a growl that Mrs. Sandford lifted her eyes to look at him. "I do not wonder you are jealous," she said composedly. "Jealous!" said Preston, with growl the second. "You had more reason than you knew." Preston grumbled something about the hops being "stupid places." I kept carefully still. "Daisy, did _you_ go?" I looked up and said yes. "Whom did you dance with?" "With everybody," said Mrs. Sandford. "That is, so far as the length of the evening made it possible. Blue and grey, and all colours." "I don't want you to dance with everybody," said Preston, in a more undertone growl. "There is no way to prevent it," said Mrs. Sandford, "but to be there and ask her yourself." I did not thank Mrs. Sandford privately for this suggestion; which Preston immediately followed up by inquiring "if we were going to the hop to-night?" "Certainly," Mrs. Sandford said. "It's too confounded hot!" "Not for us who are accustomed to the climate," Mrs. Sandford said, with spirit. "It's a bore altogether," muttered Preston. "Daisy, are you going to-night?" "I suppose so." "Well, if you must go, you may as well dance with me as with anybody. So tell anybody else that you are engaged. I will take care of you." "Don't you wish to dance with anybody except me?" "I do not," said Preston, slowly. "As I said, it is too hot. I consider the whole thing a bore." "You shall not be bored for me," I said. "I refuse to dance with you. I hope I shall not see you there at all." "Daisy!" "Well?" "Come down and take a little walk with me." "You said it is too hot." "But you will dance?" "You will not dance." "I want to speak to you, Daisy." "You may speak," I said. I did not want to hear him, for there were no indications of anything agreeable in Preston's manner. "Daisy!" he said, "I do not know you." "You used to know her," said Mrs. Sandford; "that is all." "Will you come and walk with me?" said Preston, almost angrily. "I do not think it would be pleasant," I said. "You were walking yesterday afternoon." "Yes." "Come and walk up and down the piazza, anyhow. You can do that." I could, and did not refuse. He chose the sunny western side, because no one was there. However, the sun's rays were obscured under a thick haze and had been all day. "Whom were you with?" Preston inquired, as soon as we were out of earshot. "Do you mean yesterday?" "Of course I mean yesterday! I saw you cross into the camp With whom were you going there?" "Why did you not come to speak to me?" I said. "I was on duty. I could not." "I did not see you anywhere." "I was on guard. You crossed my path not ten feet off." "Then you must know whom I was with, Preston," I said, looking at him. "_You_ don't know--that is the thing. It was that fellow Thorold." "How came you to be on guard again so soon? You were on guard just a day or two before." "That is all right enough. It is about military things that you do not understand. It is all right enough, except these confounded Yankees. And Thorold is another." "Who is _one_!" I said, laughing. "You say he is _another_." "Blunt is one." "I like Major Blunt." "Daisy," said Preston, stopping short, "you ought to be with your mother. There is nobody to take care of you here. How came you to know that Thorold?" "He was introduced to me. What is the matter with him?" "You ought not to be going about with him. He is a regular Yankee, I tell you." "What does that mean?" I said. "You speak it as if you meant something very objectionable." "I do. They are a cowardly set of tailors. They have no idea what a gentleman means, not one of them, unless they have caught the idea from a Southerner. I don't want you to have anything to do with them, Daisy. You _must_ not dance with them, and you must not be seen with this Thorold. Promise me you will not." "Dr. Sandford is another," I said. "I can't help Dr. Sandford. He is your guardian. You must not go again with Thorold!" "Did you ever know _him_ cowardly?" I asked. I was sure that Preston coloured; whether with any feeling beside anger I could not make out; but the anger was certain. "What do you know about it?" he asked. "What do you?" I rejoined. But Preston changed more and more. "Daisy, promise me you will not have anything to do with these fellows. You are too good to dance with them. There are plenty of Southern people here now, and lots of Southern cadets." "Mr. Caxton is one," I said. "I don't like him." "He is of an excellent Georgia family," said Preston. "I cannot help that. He is neither gentlemanly in his habits nor true in his speech." Preston hereupon broke out into an untempered abuse of Northern things in general, and Northern cadets in particular, mingled with a repetition of his demands upon me. At length I turned from him. "This is very tiresome, Preston," I said; "and this side of the house is very warm. Of course, I must dance with whoever asks me." "Well, I have asked you for this evening," he said, following me. "You are not to go," I said. "I shall not dance with you once," and I took my former place by Mrs. Sandford. Preston fumed; declared that I was just like a piece of marble; and went away. I did not feel quite so impassive as he said I looked. "What are you going to wear to-night, Daisy?" Mrs. Sandford asked presently. "I do not know, ma'am." "But you must know soon, my dear. Have you agreed to give your cousin half the evening?" "No, ma'am--I could not; I am engaged for every dance, and more." "More!" said Mrs. Sandford. "Yes, ma'am--for the next time." "Preston has reason!" she said, laughing. "But I think, Daisy, Grant will be the most jealous of all. Do him good. What will become of his sciences and his microscope now?" "Why, I shall be just as ready for them," I said. Mrs. Sandford shook her head. "You will find the hops will take more than that," she said. "But now, Daisy, think what you will wear; for we must go soon and get ready." I did not want to think about it. I expected, of course, to put on the same dress I had worn the last time. But Mrs. Sandford objected very strongly. "You must not wear the same thing twice running," she said, "not if you can help it." I could not imagine why not. "It is quite nice enough," I urged. "It is scarcely the least tumbled in the world." "People will think you have not another, my dear." "What matter would that be?" I said, wholly puzzled. "Now, my dear Daisy!" said Mrs. Sandford, half laughing--"you are the veriest Daisy in the world, and do not understand the world that you grow in. No matter; just oblige me, and put on something else to-night. What have you got?" I had other dresses like the rejected one. I had another still, white like them, but the make and quality were different. I hardly knew what it was, for I had never worn it; to please Mrs. Sandford I took it out now. She was pleased. It was like the rest, out of the store my mother had sent me; a soft India muslin, of beautiful texture, made and trimmed as my mother and a Parisian artist could manage between them. But no Parisian artist could know better than my mother how a thing should be. "That will do!" said Mrs. Sandford approvingly. "Dear me, what lace you Southern ladies do wear, to be sure! A blue sash, now, Daisy?" "No, ma'am, I think not." "Rose? It must be blue or rose." But I thought differently, and kept it white. "_No_ colour?" said Mrs. Sandford. "None at all. Then let me just put this little bit of green in your hair." As I stood before the glass and she tried various positions for some geranium leaves, I felt that would not do either. Any dressing of my head would commonize the whole thing. I watched her fingers and the geranium leaves going from one side of my head to the other, watched how every touch changed the tone of my costume, and felt that I could not suffer it; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I, who a little while before had not cared about my dress for the evening, now did care and that determinedly. I knew I would wear no geranium leaves, not even to please Mrs. Sandford. And for the first time a question stole into my mind, what was I, Daisy, doing? But then I said to myself, that the dress without this head adorning was perfect in its elegance; it suited me; and it was not wrong to like beauty, nor to dislike things in bad taste. Perhaps I was too handsomely dressed, but I could not change that now. Another time I would go back to my embroidered muslins, and stay there. "I like it better without anything, Mrs. Sandford," I said, removing her green decorations and turning away from the glass. Mrs. Sandford sighed, but said "it would do without them," and then we started. I can see it all again; I can almost feel the omnibus roll with me over the plain, that still sultry night. All those nights were sultry. Then, as we came near the Academic Building, I could see the lights in the upper windows; here and there an officer sitting in a window-sill, and the figures of cadets passing back and forth. Then we mounted to the hall above, filled with cadets in a little crowd, and words of recognition came, and Preston, meeting us almost before we got out of the dressing-room. "Daisy, you dance with me?" "I am engaged, Preston, for the first dance." "Already! The second, then, and all the others?" "I am engaged," I repeated, and left him, for Mr. Thorold was at my side. I forgot Preston the next minute. It was easy to forget him, for all the first half of the evening I was honestly happy in dancing. In talking, too, whenever Thorold was my partner; other people's talk was very tiresome. They went over the platitudes of the day; or they started subjects of interest that were not interesting to me. Bits of gossip--discussions of fashionable amusements with which I could have nothing to do; frivolous badinage, which was of all things most distasteful to me. Yet, amid it, I believe there was a subtle incense of admiration which by degrees and insensibly found its way to my senses. But I had two dances with Thorold, and at those times I was myself and enjoyed unalloyed pleasure. And so I thought did he. I saw Preston, when now and then I caught a glimpse of him, looking excessively glum. Midway in the evening it happened that I was standing beside him for a few moments, waiting for my next partner. "You are dancing with nobody but that man whom I hate!" he grumbled. "Who is it now?" "Captain Vaux." "Will you dance with me after that?" "I cannot, Preston. I must dance with Major Banks." "You seem to like it pretty well," he growled. "No wonder," said Mrs. Sandford. "You were quite right about the geranium leaves, Daisy; you do not want them. You do not want anything, my dear," she whispered. At this instant a fresh party entered the room, just as my partner came up to claim me. "There are some handsome girls," said the captain. "Two of them, really!" "People from Cozzens's," said Mrs. Sandford, "who think the cadets keep New York hours." It was Faustina St. Clair and Mary Lansing, with their friends and guardians, I don't know whom. And as I moved to take my place in the dance, I was presently confronted by my school adversary and the partner she had immediately found. The greeting was very slight and cool on her side. "Excessively handsome," whispered the captain. "A friend of yours?" "A schoolfellow," I said. "Must be a pleasant thing, I declare, to have such handsome schoolfellows," said the captain. "Beauty is a great thing, isn't it? I wonder, sometimes, how the ladies can make up their minds to take up with such great rough ugly fellows as we are, for a set. How do you think it is?" I thought it was wonderful, too, when they were like him. But I said nothing. "Dress, too," said the captain. "Now look at our dress! Straight and square and stiff, and no variety in it. While our eyes are delighted, on the other side, with soft draperies and fine colours, and combinations of grace and elegance that are fit to put a man in Elysium!" "Did you notice the colour of the haze in the west, this evening, at sunset?" I asked. "Haze? No, really. I didn't know there was any haze, really, except in my head. I get hazy amidst these combinations. Seriously, Miss Randolph, what do you think of a soldier's life?" "It depends on who the soldier is," I said. "Cool, really!" said the captain. "Cool! Ha! ha!--" And he laughed, till I wondered what I could have said to amuse him so much. "Then you have learned to individualize soldiers already?" was his next question, put with a look which seemed to me inquisitive and impertinent. I did not know how to answer it, and left it unanswered; and the captain and I had the rest of our dance out in silence. Meanwhile, I could not help watching Faustina. She was so very handsome, with a marked, dashing sort of beauty that I saw was prodigiously admired. She took no notice of me, and barely touched the tips of my fingers with her glove as we passed in the dance. As he was leading me back to Mrs. Sandford, the captain stooped his head to mine. "Forgive me," he whispered. "So much gentleness cannot bear revenge. I am only a soldier." "Forgive you what, sir?" I asked. And he drew up his head again, half laughed, muttered that I was worse than grape or round shot, and handed me over to my guardian. "My dear Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "If you were not so sweet as you are, you would be a queen. There, now, do not lift up your grey eyes at me like that, or I shall make you a reverence the first thing I do, and fancy that I am one of your _dames d'honneur_. Who is next? Major Banks? Take care, Daisy, or you'll do some mischief." I had not time to think about her words; the dances went forward, and I took my part in them with great pleasure until the tattoo summons broke us up. Indeed, my pleasure lasted until we got home to the hotel, and I heard Mrs. Sandford saying, in an aside to her husband, amid some rejoicing over me--"I was dreadfully afraid she wouldn't go." The words, or something in them, gave me a check. However, I had too many exciting things to think of to take it up just then, and my brain was in a whirl of pleasure till I went to sleep. CHAPTER XVII. OBEYING ORDERS. As I shared Mrs. Sandford's room, of course I had very scant opportunities of being by myself. In the delightful early mornings I was accustomed to take my book, therefore, and go down where I had gone the first morning, to the rocks by the river's side. Nobody came by that way at so early an hour; I had been seen by nobody except that one time, when Thorold and his companion passed me; and I felt quite safe. It was pleasanter down there than can be told. However sultry the air on the heights above, so near the water there was always a savour of freshness; or else I fancied it, in the hearing of the soft liquid murmur of the little wavelets against the shore. But sometimes it was so still I could hear nothing of that; then birds and insects, or the faint notes of a bugle call, were the only things to break the absolute hush; and the light was my refreshment, on river and tree and rock and hill; one day sharp and clear, another day fairylandlike and dreamy through golden mist. It was a good retiring place in any case, so early in the day. I could read and pray there better than in a room, I thought. The next morning after my second dancing party, I was there as usual. It was a sultry July morning, the yellow light in the haze on the hills threatening a very hot day. I was very happy, as usual; but somehow my thoughts went roaming off into the yellow haze, as if the landscape had been my life, and I were trying to pick out points of light here and there, and sporting on the gay surface. I danced my dances over again in the flow of the river; heard soft words of kindness or admiration in the song of the birds; wandered away in mazes of speculative fancy among the thickets of tree stems and underbrush. The sweet wonderful note of a wood-thrush, somewhere far out of sight, assured me, what everything conspired to assure me, that I was certainly in fairyland, not on the common earth. But I could not get on with my Bible at all. Again and again I began to read; then a bird or a bough or a ripple would catch my attention, and straightway I was off on a flight of fancy or memory, dancing over again my dances with Mr. Thorold, dwelling upon the impression of his figure and dress, and the fascination of his brilliant, changing hazel eyes; or recalling Captain Vaux's or somebody else's insipid words and looks, or Faustina St. Clair's manner of ill-will; or on the other hand giving a passing thought to the question how I should dress the next hop night. After a long wandering, I would come back and begin at my Bible again, but only for a little; my fancy could not be held to it; and a few scarcely read verses and a few half-uttered petitions were all I had accomplished before the clangour of the hotel gong, sounding down even to me, warned me that my time was gone. And the note of the wood-thrush, as I slowly mounted the path, struck reproachfully and rebukingly upon the ear of my conscience. How had this come about? I mused as I went up the hill. What was the matter? What had bewitched me? No pleasure in my Bible; no time for prayer; and only the motion of feet moving to music, only the flutter of lace and muslin, and the flashing of hazel eyes, filling my brain. What was wrong? Nay, something. And why had Mrs. Sandford "feared" I would not go to the hops? Were they not places for Christians to go to? What earthly harm? Only pleasure. But what if pleasure that marred better pleasure--that interrupted duty? And why was I ruminating on styles and colours, and proposing to put on another dress that should be more becoming the next time? and thinking that it would be well it should be a contrast to Faustina St. Clair? What! entering the lists with her, on her own field? No, no; I could not think of it. But what then? And what was this little flutter at my heart about gentlemen's words and looks of homage and liking? What could it be to me, that such people as Captain Vaux or Captain Lascelles liked me? Captain Lascelles, who when he was not dancing or flirting was pleased to curl himself up on one of the window seats like a monkey, and take a grinning survey of what went on. Was I flattered by such admiration as his?--or _any_ admiration? I liked to have Mr. Thorold like me; yes, I was not wrong to be pleased with that; besides, that was _liking_; not empty compliments. But for my lace and my India muslin and my "Southern elegance"--I knew Colonel Walrus meant me when he talked about that--was I thinking of admiration for such things as these, and thinking so much that my Bible reading had lost its charm? What was in fault? Not the hops? They were too pleasant. It could not be the hops. I mounted the hill slowly and in a great maze, getting more and more troubled. I entering the lists with Faustina St. Clair, going in her ways? I knew these were her ways. I had heard scraps enough of conversation among the girls about these things, which I then did not understand. And another word came therewith into my mind, powerful once before, and powerful now to disentangle the false from the true. "The world knoweth us not." Did it not know me, last night? Would it not, if I went there again? But the hops were so pleasant! It almost excites a smile in me now to think how pleasant they were. I was only sixteen. I had seen no dancing parties other than the little school assemblages at Mme. Ricard's; and I was fond of the amusement even there. Here, it seemed to me, then, as if all prettiness and pleasantness that could come together in such a gathering met in the dancing room of the cadets. I think not very differently now, as to that point. The pretty accompaniments of uniform; the simple style and hours; the hearty enjoyment of the occasion; were all a little unlike what is found at other places. And to me, and to increase my difficulty, came a crowning pleasure; I met Thorold there. To have a good dance and talk with him was worth certainly all the rest. Must I give it up? I could not bear to think so, but the difficulty helped to prick my conscience. There had been only two hops, and I was so enthralled already. How would it be if I had been to a dozen; and where might it end? And the word stands,--"The world knoweth us _not_." It must not know me, Daisy Randolph, as in any sort belonging to it or mixed up with it; and therefore--Daisy Randolph must go to the hop no more. I felt the certainty of the decision growing over me, even while I was appalled by it. I staved off consideration all that day. In the afternoon Mr. Thorold came and took me to see the laboratory, and explained for me a number of curious things. I should have had great enjoyment, if Preston had not taken it into his head, unasked, to go along; being unluckily with me when Thorold came. He was a thorough marplot; saying nothing of consequence himself, and only keeping a grim watch--I could take it as nothing else--of everything we said and did. Consequently, Mr. Thorold's lecture was very proper and grave, instead of being full of fun and amusement, as well as instruction. I took Preston to task about it when we got home. "You hinder pleasure when you go in that mood," I told him. "What mood?" "You know. You never are pleasant when Mr. Thorold is present or when he is mentioned." "He is a cowardly Yankee!" was Preston's rejoinder. "_Cowardly_, Gary?"--said somebody near; and I saw a cadet whom I did not know, who came from behind us and passed by on the piazza. He did not look at us, and stayed not for any more words; but turning to Preston, I was surprised to see his face violently flushed. "Who was that?" "No matter--impertinence!" he muttered. "But what _is_ the matter? and what did he mean?" "He is one of Thorold's set," said Preston; "and I tell you Daisy, you shall not have anything to do with them. Aunt Felicia would never allow it. She would not look at them herself. You shall not have anything more to do with them." How could I, if I was going no more to the hops? How could I see Thorold, or anybody? The thought struck to my heart, and I made no answer. Company, however, kept me from considering the matter all the evening. But the next day, early, I was in my usual place: near the river side, among the rocks, with my Bible; and I resolved to settle the question there as it ought to be settled. I was resolved; but to do what I had resolved was difficult. For I wanted to go to the hop that evening very much. Visions of it floated before me; snatches of music and gleams of light; figures moving in harmony; words and looks; and--my own white little person. All these made a kind of quaint mosaic with flashes of light on the river, and broad warm bands of sunshine on the hills, and the foliage of trees and bushes, and the grey lichened rocks at my foot. It was confusing; but I turned over the leaves of my Bible to see if I could find some undoubted direction as to what I ought to do, or perhaps rather some clear permission for what I wished to do. I could not remember that the Bible said anything about dancing, _pro_ or _con_; dancing, I thought, could not be wrong; but this confusion in my mind was not right. I fluttered over my leaves a good while with no help; then I thought I might as well take a chapter somewhere and study it through. The whole chapter, it was the third of Colossians, did not seem to me to go favourably for my pleasure; but the seventeenth verse brought me to a point,--"Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." There was no loophole here for excuses or getting off, "_Whatsoever ye do._" Did I wish it otherwise? No, I did not. I was content with the terms of service; but now about dancing, or rather, the dancing party? "In the name of the Lord Jesus." Could I go there in that name? as the servant of my Master, busy about His work, or taking pleasure that He had given me to take? That was the question. And all my visions of gay words and gay scenes, all the flutter of pleased vanity and the hope of it, rose up and answered me. By that thought of the pretty dress I would wear, I knew I should not wear it "in the name of the Lord Jesus;" for my thought was of honour to myself, not to Him. By the fear which darted into my head, that Mr. Thorold might dance with Faustina if I were not there, I knew I should not go "in the name of the Lord," if I went; but to gratify my own selfish pride and emulation. By the confusion which had reigned in my brain these two days, by the tastelessness of my Bible, by the unaptness for prayer, I knew I could not go in the name of my Lord, for it would be to unfit myself for His work. The matter was settled in one way; but the pain of it took longer to come to an end. It is sorrowful to me to remember now how hard it was to get over. My vanity I was heartily ashamed of, and bade that show its head no more; my emulation of Faustina St. Clair gave me some horror; but the pleasure--the real honest pleasure, of the scene, and the music and the excitement and the dancing and the seeing people--all that I did not let go for ever without a hard time of sorrow and some tears. It was not a _struggle_, for I gave that up at once; only I had to fight pain. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. And the worst of all and the most incurable was, I should miss seeing Mr. Thorold. One or two more walks, possibly, I might have with him; but those long, short evenings of seeing and talking and dancing! Mrs. Sandford argued, coaxed, and rallied me; and then said, if I would not go, she should not; and she did not. That evening we spent at home together, and alone; for everybody else had drifted over to the hop. I suppose Mrs. Sandford found it dull; for the next hop night she changed her mind and left me. I had rather a sorrowful evening. Dr. Sandford had not come back from the mountains; indeed, I did not wish for him; and Thorold had not been near us for several days. My fairyland was getting disenchanted a little bit. But I was quite sure I had done right. The next morning, I had hardly been three minutes on my rock by the river, when Mr. Thorold came round the turn of the walk and took a seat beside me. "How do you do?" said he, stretching out his hand. I put mine in it. "What has become of my friend, this seven years?" "I am here--" I said. "I see you. But why have I _not_ seen you, all this while?" "I suppose you have been busy," I answered. "Busy! Of course I have, or I should have been here asking questions. I was not too busy to dance with you: and I was promised--how many dances? Where have you been?" "I have been at home." "Why?" Would Mr. Thorold understand me? Mrs. Sandford did not. My own mother never did. I hesitated, and he repeated his question, and those hazel eyes were sparkling all sorts of queries around me. "I have given up going to the hops," I said. "Given up? Do you mean, you _don't_ mean, that you are never coming any more?" "I am not coming any more." "Don't you sometimes change your decisions?" "I suppose I do," I answered; "but not this one." "I am in a great puzzle," he said. "And very sorry. Aren't you going to be so good as to give me some clue to this mystery? Did you find the hops so dull?" And he looked very serious indeed. "Oh no!" I said. "I liked them very much--I enjoyed them very much. I am sorry to stay away." "Then you will not stay away very long." "Yes--I shall." "Why?" he asked again, with a little sort of imperative curiosity which was somehow very pleasant to me. "I do not think it is right for me to go," I said. Then, seeing grave astonishment and great mystification in his face, I added, "I am a Christian, Mr. Thorold." "A Christian!" he cried, with flashes of light and shadow crossing his brow. "Is _that_ it?" "That is it," I assented. "But my dear Miss Randolph--you know we are friends?" "Yes," I said, smiling, and glad that he had not forgotten it. "Then we may talk about what we like. Christians go to hops." I looked at him without answering. "Don't you know they do?" "I suppose they may--" I answered, slowly. "But they _do_. There was our former colonel's wife--Mrs. Holt; she was a regular church-goer, and a member of the church; she was always at the hop, and her sister; they are both church members. Mrs. Lambkin, General Lambkin's wife, she is another. Major Banks' sisters--those pretty girls--they are always there; and it is the same with visitors. Everybody comes; their being Christians does not make any difference." "Captain Thorold," said I--"I mean Mr. Thorold, don't you obey your orders?" "Yes--general," he said. And he laughed. "So must I." "You are not a soldier." "Yes--I am." "Have you got orders not to come to our hop?" "I think I have. You will not understand me, but this is what I mean, Mr. Thorold. I _am_ a soldier, of another sort from you; and I have orders not to go anywhere that my Captain does not send me, or where I cannot be serving Him." "I wish you would show those orders to me." I gave him the open page which I had been studying, that same chapter of Colossians, and pointed out the words. He looked at them, and turned over the page, and turned it back. "I don't see the orders," he said. I was silent. I had not expected he would. "And I was going to say, I never saw any Christians that were soldiers; but I have, one. And so you are another?" And he bent upon me a look so curiously considering, tender, and wondering, at once, that I could not help smiling. "A soldier!" said he, again. "You? Have you ever been under fire?" I smiled again, and then, I don't know what it was. I cannot tell what, in the question and in the look, touched some weak spot. The question called up such sharp answers; the look spoke so much sympathy. It was very odd for me to do, but I was taken unawares; my eyes fell and filled, and before I could help it were more than full. I do not know, to this day, how I came to cry before Thorold. It was very soon over, my weakness, whatever it was. It seemed to touch him amazingly. He got hold of my hand, put it to his lips, and kissed it over and over, outside and inside. "I can see it all in your face," he said, tenderly: "the strength and the truth to do anything, and bear--whatever is necessary. But I am not so good as you. I cannot bear anything unless it _is_ necessary; and this isn't." "Oh no, nor I!" I said; "but this is necessary, Mr. Thorold." "Prove it--come." "You do not see the orders," I said; "but there they are. 'Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.' I cannot go to that place 'in His name.'" "I do not think I understand what you mean," he said, gently. "A soldier, the best that ever lived, is his own man when he is off duty. We go to the hop to play--not to work." "Ah, but a soldier of Christ is never 'off duty,'" I said. "See, Mr. Thorold--_'whatsoever_ ye do'--'whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do.' That covers all; don't you see?" "That would make it a very heavy thing to be a Christian," he said; "there would be no liberty at all." "Oh, but it is all liberty!" I said,--"When you love Jesus." He looked at me so inquiringly, so inquisitively, that I went on. "You do not think it hard to do things for anybody you love?" "No," said he. "I would like to do things for you." I remember I smiled at that, for it seemed to me very pleasant to hear him say it; but I went on. "Then you understand it, Mr. Thorold." "No," said he, "I do not understand it; for there is this difficulty. I do not see what in the world such an innocent amusement as that we are talking of can have to do with Christian duty, one way or another. Every Christian woman that I know comes to it,--that is young enough; and some that aren't." It was very hard to explain. "Suppose they disobey orders," I said slowly;--"that would be another reason why I should obey them." "Of course. But do they?" "I should," I said. "I am not serving Christ when I am there. I am not doing the work He has given me to do. I cannot go." "I came down here on purpose to persuade you," he said. It was not necessary to answer that, otherwise than by a look. "And you are unpersuadable," he said; "unmanageable, of course, by me; strong as a giant, and gentle as a snowflake. But the snowflake melts; and you--you will go up to the hotel as good a crystal as when you came down." This made me laugh, and we had a good laugh together, holding each other's hand. "Do you know," said he, "I must go? There is a roll of a summons that reaches my ear, and I must be at the top of the bank in one minute and a quarter. I had no leave to be here." "Hadn't you?" I said. "Oh, then, go, go directly, Mr. Thorold!" But I could not immediately release my hand, and holding it and looking at me, Thorold laughed again; his hazel eyes sparkling and dancing and varying with what feelings I could not tell. They looked very steadily, too, till I remember mine went down, and then, lifting his cap, he turned suddenly and sprang away. I sat down to get breath and think. I had come to my place rather sober and sorrowful; and what a pleasant morning I had had! I did not mind at all, now, my not going to the dances. I had explained myself to Mr. Thorold, and we were not any further apart for it, and I had had a chance to speak to him about other things too. And though he did not understand me, perhaps he would some day. The warning gong sounded before I had well got to my Bible reading. My Bible reading was very pleasant this morning, and I could not be baulked of it; so I spent over it near the whole half hour that remained, and rushed up to the hotel in the last five minutes. Of course, I was rather late and quite out of breath; and having no voice and being a little excited, I suppose was the reason that I curtseyed to Dr. Sandford, whom I met at the head of the piazza steps. He looked at me like a man taken aback. "Daisy!" he exclaimed. "Yes, sir," I answered. "Where have you come from?" "From my study," I said. "I have a nice place down by the river which is my study." "Rather a public situation for a private withdrawing place," said the doctor. "Oh no!" said I. "At this hour--" But there I stopped and began again. "It is really very private. And it is the pleasantest study place I think I ever had." "To study what?" I held up my book. "It agrees with you," said the doctor. "What?" said I, laughing. "Daisy!" said Dr. Sandford--"I left a quiet bud of a flower a few days ago--a little demure bit of a schoolgirl, learning geology; and I have got a young princess here, a full rose, prickles and all, I don't doubt. What has Mrs. Sandford done with you?" "I do not know," said I, thinking I had better be demure again. "She took me to the hop." "The hop?--how did you like that?" "I liked it very much." "You did? You liked it? I did not know that you would go, with your peculiar notions." "I went," I said; "I did not know what it was. How could I help liking it? But I am not going again." "Why not, if you like it?" "I am not going again," I repeated. "Shall we have a walk to the hills to-day, Dr. Sandford?" "Grant!" said his sister-in-law's voice, "don't you mean the child shall have any breakfast? What made you so late, Daisy? Come in, and talk afterwards. Grant is uneasy if he can't see at least your shadow all the while." We went in to breakfast, and I took a delightful walk with Dr. Sandford afterward, back in the ravines of the hills; but I had got an odd little impression of two things. First, that he, like Preston, was glad to have me give up going to the hops. I was sure of it from his air and tone of voice, and it puzzled me; for he could not possibly have Preston's dislike of Northerners, nor be unwilling that I should know them. The other thing was, that he would not like my seeing Mr. Thorold. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew it. I thought--it was very odd--but I thought he was _jealous_; or rather, I felt he would be if he had any knowledge of our friendship for each other. So I resolved he should have no such knowledge. Our life went on now as it had done at our first coming. Every day Dr. Sandford and I went to the woods and hills, on a regular naturalist's expedition; and nothing is so pleasant as such expeditions. At home, we were busy with microscopic examinations, preparations, and studies; delightful studies, and beautiful lessons, in which the doctor was the finest of instructors, as I have said, and I was at least the happiest of scholars. Mrs. Sandford fumed a little, and Mr. Sandford laughed; but that did no harm. Everybody went to the hops, except the doctor and me; and every morning and evening, at guardmounting and parade, I was on the ground behind the guard tents to watch the things done and listen to the music and enjoy all the various beauty. Sometimes I had a glimpse of Thorold; for many both of cadets and officers used to come and speak to me and rally me on my seclusion, and endeavour to tempt me out of it. Thorold did not that; he only looked at me, as if I were something to be a little wondered at but wholly approved of. It was not a disagreeable look to meet. "I must have it out with you," he said one evening, when he had just a minute to speak to me. "There is a whole world of things I don't understand, and want to talk about. Let us go Saturday afternoon and take a long walk up to 'Number Four'--do you like hills?" "Yes." "Then let us go up there Saturday--will you?" And when Saturday came, we went. Preston luckily was not there; and Dr. Sandford, also luckily, was gone to dine at the General's with his brother. There were no more shadows on earth than there were clouds in the sky, as we took our way across the plain and along the bank in front of the officers' quarters looking north, and went out at the gate. Then we left civilization and the world behind us, and plunged into a wild mountain region; going up, by a track which few feet ever used, the rough slope to "Number Four." Yet that a few feet used it was plain. "Do people come here to walk much?" I asked, as we slowly made our way up. "Nobody comes here--for anything." "Somebody _goes_ here," I said. "This is a beaten path." "Oh, there is a poor woodcutter's family at the top; they do travel up and down occasionally." "It is pretty," I said. "It is pretty at the top; but we are a long way from that. Is it too rough for you?" "Not at all," I said. "I like it." "You are a good walker for a Southern girl." "Oh, but I have lived at the North; I am only Southern born." Soon, however, he made me stop to rest. There was a good grey rock under the shadow of the trees; Thorold placed me on that and threw himself on the moss at my feet. We were up so high in the world that the hills on the other side of the river rose beautifully before us through the trees, and a sunny bit of the lower ground of the plain looked like a bit of another world that we were leaving. It was a sunny afternoon and a little hazy; every line softened, every colour made richer, under the mellowing atmosphere. "Now you can explain it all to me," said Thorold, as he threw himself down. "You have walked too fast. You are warm." "And you do not look as if it was warm at all." "I! This is nothing to me," he said. "But perhaps it will warm me and cool you if we get into a talk. I want explanations." "About what, Mr. Thorold?" "Well--if you will excuse me--about you," he said, with a very pleasant look, frank and soft at once. "I am quite ready to explain myself. But I am afraid, when I have done it, that you will not understand me, Mr. Thorold." "Think I cannot?" said he. "I am afraid not--without knowing what I know." "Let us see," said Thorold. "I want to know why you judge so differently from other people about the right and the wrong of hops and such things. Somebody is mistaken--that is clear." "But the difficulty is, I cannot give you my point of view." "Please try," said Thorold, contentedly. "Mr. Thorold, I told you, I am a soldier." "Yes," he said, looking up at me, and little sparkles of light seeming to come out of his hazel eyes. "I showed you my orders." "But I did not understand them to be what you said." "Suppose you were in an enemy's country," I said; "a rebel country; and your orders were, to do nothing which could be construed into encouraging the rebels, or which could help them to think that your king would hold friendship with them, or that there was not a perfect gulf of division between you and them." "But this is not such a case?" said Thorold. "That is only part," I said. "Suppose your orders were to keep constant watch and hold yourself at every minute ready for duty, and to go nowhere and do nothing that would unfit you for instant service, or put you off your watch?" "But, Miss Randolph!" said Thorold, a little impatiently, "do these little dances unfit you for duty?" "Yes," I said. "And put me off my watch." "Your watch against what? Oh, pardon me, and _please_ enlighten me. I do not mean to be impertinent." "I mean my watch for orders--my watch against evil." "Won't you explain?" said Thorold, gently and impatiently at once. "What sort of evil can _you_ possibly fear, in connection with such an innocent recreation? What 'orders' are you expecting?" I hesitated. Should I tell him; would he believe; was it best to unveil the working of my own heart to that degree? And how could I evade or shirk the question? "I should not like to tell you," I said at length, "the thoughts and feelings I found stirring in myself, after the last time I went to the dance. I dare say they are something that belongs especially to a woman, and that a man would not know them." Thorold turned on me again a wonderfully gentle look, for a gay, fiery young Vermonter, as I knew him to be. "It wanted only that!" he said. "And the orders, Miss Randolph--what 'orders' are you expecting? You said orders." "Orders may be given by a sign," I said. "They need not be in words." He smiled. "I see, you have studied the subject." "I mean, only, that whenever a duty is plainly put before me--something given me to do--I know I have 'orders' to do it. And then, Mr. Thorold, as the orders are not spoken, nor brought to me by a messenger, only made known to me by a sign of some sort--If I did not keep a good watch, I should be sure to miss the sign sometimes, don't you see?" "This is soldiership!" said Thorold. And getting up, he stood before me in attitude like a soldier as he was, erect, still with arms folded, only not up to his chin, like Capt. Percival, but folded manfully. He had been watching me very intently; now he stood as intently looking off over the farther landscape. Methought I had a sort of pride in his fine appearance; and yet he did in no wise belong to me. Nevertheless, it was pleasant to see the firm, still attitude, the fine proportions, the military nicety of all his dress, which I had before noticed on the parade ground. For as there is a difference between one walk and another, though all trained, so there is a difference between one neatness and another, though all according to regulation: and Preston never looked like this. He turned round at last, and smiled down at me. "Are you rested?" "O yes!" I said, rising. "I was not fatigued." "Are you tired talking?" "No, not at all. Have I talked so very much?" He laughed at that, but went on. "Will you be out of patience with my stupidity?" I said no. "Because I am not fully enlightened yet. I want to ask further questions; and asking questions is very impertinent." "Not if you have leave," I said. "Ask what you like." "I am afraid, nevertheless. But I can never know, if I do not ask. How is it--this is what puzzles me--that other people who call themselves Christians do not think as you do about this matter?" "Soldiership?" I asked. "Well, yes. It comes to that, I suppose." "You know what soldiership ought to be," I said. "But one little soldier cannot be all the rank and file of this army?" he said, looking down at me. "O no!" I said, laughing--"there are a great many more--there are a great many more--only you do not happen to see them." "And these others, that I do see, are not soldiers, then?" "I do not know," I said, feeling sadly what a stumbling-block it was. "Perhaps they are. But you know yourself, Mr. Thorold, there is a difference between soldiers and soldiers." He was silent a while, as we mounted the hill; then he continued-- "But it makes religion a slavery--a bondage--to be _all_ the while under arms, on guard, watching orders. _Always_ on the watch and expecting to be under fire--it is too much; it would make a gloomy, ugly life of it." "But suppose you _are_ under fire?" I said. "What?" said he, looking and laughing again. "If you are a good soldier in an enemy's country, always with work to do; will you wish to be off your guard, or off duty?" "But what a life!" said Thorold. "If you love your Captain?" said I. He stopped and looked at me with one of the keenest looks of scrutiny I ever met. It seemed to scrutinize not me only, but the truth. I thought he was satisfied; for he turned away without adding anything more at that time. His mind was at work, however; for he broke down a small branch in his way and busied himself with it in sweeping the trunks of the trees as we went by; varying the occupation with a careful clearing away of all stones and sticks that would make my path rougher than it need be. Finally, giving me his hand to help me spring over a little rivulet that crossed our way. "Here is an incongruity, now I think of it," said he, smiling. "How is it that you be on such good terms with a rebel? Ought you to have anything to do with me?" "I may be friends with anybody in his private capacity," I answered in the same tone. "That does not compromise anything. It is only when--You know what I mean." "When they are assembled for doubtful purposes." "Or gathered in a place where the wrong colours are displayed," I added. "I must not go there." "There was no false banner hung out on the Academic Building the other night," he said humorously. But I knew my King's banner was not either. I knew people did not think of Him there, nor work for Him, and would have been very much surprised to hear any one speak of Him. Say it was innocent amusement; people did not want Him with them there; and where He was not, I did not wish to be. But I could not tell all this to Mr. Thorold. He was not contented, however, without an answer. "How was it?" he asked. "You cannot understand me and you may laugh at me," I said. "Why may I not understand you?" he asked deferentially. "I suppose, because you do not understand something else," I said; "and you cannot, Mr. Thorold, until you know what the love of Jesus is, and what it is to care for His honour and His service more than for anything else in the world." "But are they compromised?" he asked. "That is the thing. You see, I want you back at the hop." "I would like to come," said I; "but I must not." "On the ground--?" "I told you, Mr. Thorold. I do not find that my orders allow me to go. I must do nothing that I cannot do in my King's name." "That is--" "As His servant--on His errands--following where He leads me." "I never heard it put so before," said Thorold. "It bears the stamp of perfection--only an impossible perfection." "No--" said I. "To ordinary mortals," he rejoined, with one of his quick, brilliant flashes of the eye. Then, as it softened and changed again-- "Miss Randolph, permit me to ask one question--Are you happy?" And with the inquiry came the investigating look, keen as a razor or a rifle ball. I could meet it, though; and I told him it was _this_ made me happy. For the first time his face was troubled. He turned it from me and dropped the conversation. I let it drop, too; and we walked side by side and silently the remainder of the steep way; neither of us, I believe, paying much attention to what there was to be seen below or around us. At the top, however, this changed. We found a good place to rest, and sat there a long time looking at the view; Thorold pointing out its different features, and telling me about them in detail; his visits to them, and exploration of the region generally. And we planned imaginary excursions together, one especially to the top of the Crow's Nest, with an imaginary party, to see the sun rise. We would have to go up, of course, overnight; we must carry a tent along for shelter, and camp-beds, and cooking utensils, at least a pot to boil coffee; and plenty of warm wraps and plenty of provisions, for people always eat terribly in cold regions, Thorold said. And although the top of the Crow's Nest is not Arctic by any means, still, it is cool enough even in a warm day, and would be certainly cool at night. Also the members of our party we debated; they must be people of good tempers and travelling habits, not to be put out for a little; people with large tastes for enjoyment, to whom the glory of the morning would make amends for all the toil of the night; and good talkers, to keep up the tone of the whole thing. Meanwhile, Thorold and I heartily enjoyed Number Four; as also I did his explanations of fortifications, which I drew from him and made him apply to all the fortifications in sight or which I knew. And when the sun's westing told us it was time to go home, we went down all the way talking. I have but little remembrance of the path. I remember the cool, bright freshness of the light, and its brilliant gleam in the distance after it had left the hillside. I have an impression of the calm clear beauty that was underfoot and overhead that afternoon; but I saw it only as I could see it while giving my thought to something else. Sometimes, holding hands, we took runs down the mountain side; then walked demurely again when we got to easier going. We had come to the lower region at last, and were not far from the gate, talking earnestly and walking close together, when I saw Thorold touch his cap. "Was that anybody I knew?" I asked. "I believe it was your friend Dr. Sandford," he said, smiling into my face with a smile of peculiar expression and peculiar beauty. I saw something had pleased him, pleased him very much. It could not have been Dr. Sandford. I cannot say I was pleased, as I had an intuitive assurance the doctor was not. But Thorold's smile almost made amends. That evening the doctor informed us he had got intelligence which obliged him to leave the Point immediately; and as he could go with us part of the way to Niagara, we had better all set off together. I had lost all my wish to go to Niagara; but I said nothing. Mrs. Sandford said there was nothing to be gained by staying at the Point any longer, as I would not go to the hops. So Monday morning we went away. CHAPTER XVIII. SOUTH AND NORTH. We made a round of pleasure after leaving West Point. That is, it was a round of pleasure to the rest of the party. I had left my best pleasure behind me. Certainly, I enjoyed Catskill, and Trenton Falls, and Niagara, after some sort; but there was nothing in them all like my walk to "Number Four." West Point had enough natural beauty to satisfy any one, I thought, even for all summer; and there I had besides what I had not elsewhere and never had before, a companion. All my earlier friends were far older than I, or beneath me in station. Preston was the single exception; and Preston and I were now widely apart in our sympathies; indeed, always had been. Mr. Thorold and I talked to each other on a level; we understood each other and suited each other. I could let out my thoughts to him with a freedom I never could use with anybody else. It grieved me a little that I had been forced to come away so abruptly that I had no chance of letting him know. Courtesy, I thought, demanded of me that I should have done this; and I could not do it; and this was a constant subject of regret to me. At the end of our journey I came back to school. Letters from my father and mother desired that I would do so, and appointed that I was to join them abroad next year. My mother had decided that it was best not to interfere with the regular course of my education; and my father renewed his promise that I should have any reward I chose to claim, to comfort me for the delay. So I bent myself to study with new energies and new hope. I studied more things than school books that winter. The bits of political matter I had heard talked over at West Point were by no means forgotten; and once in a while, when I had time and a chance, I seized one of the papers from Mme. Ricard's library table and examined it. And every time I did so, something urged me to do it again. I was very ignorant. I had no clue to a great deal that was talked of in these prints: but I could perceive the low threatening growl of coming ill weather, which seemed to rise on the ear every time I listened. And a little anxiety began to grow up in my mind. Mme. Ricard, of course, never spoke on these subjects, and probably did not care about them. Dr. Sandford was safe in Washington. I once asked Miss Cardigan what she thought. "There are evil men abroad, dear," she said. "I don't know what they will be permitted to do." "Who do you hope will be elected?" I asked. "I don't vote myself," said Miss Cardigan; "so I do not fash myself much with what I can't help; but I hope the man will be elected that will do the right thing." "And who is that?" I asked. "You do not want slavery to be allowed in the territories?" "I? Not I!" said Miss Cardigan. "And if the people want to keep it out of them, I suppose they will elect Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if he is the right man or no; but he is on the right side. 'Break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.' That is my maxim, Daisy." I pondered this matter by turns more and more. By and by there began to be audible mutterings of a storm in the air around me. The first I heard was when we were all together in the evening with our work, the half hour before tea. "Lincoln is elected," whispered one of the girls to another. "Who cares?" the other said aloud. "What if he is?" asked a third. "Then," said a gentle, graceful-looking girl, spreading her embroidery out on her lap with her slim white fingers--"_then_ there'll be fighting." It was given, this announcement, with the coolest matter-of-fact assurance. "Who is going to fight?" was the next question. The former speaker gave a glance up to see if her audience was safe, and then replied, as coolly as before,-- "My brother, for one." "What for, Sally?" "Do you think we are going to have these vulgar Northerners rule over _us_? My cousin Marshall is coming back from Europe on purpose that he may be here and be ready. I know my aunt wrote him word that she would disinherit him if he did not." "Daisy Randolph--you are a Southerner," said one of the girls. "Of course, she is a Southerner," said Sally, going on with her embroidery. "She is safe." But if I was safe, I was very uncomfortable. I hardly knew why I was so uncomfortable. Only, I wished ardently that troubles might not break out between the two quarters of the country. I had a sense that the storm would come near home. I could not recollect my mother and my father, without a dread that there would be opposing electricities between them and me. I began to study the daily news more constantly and carefully. I had still the liberty of Madame's library, and the papers were always there. I could give to them only a few minutes now and then; but I felt that the growl of the storm was coming nearer and growing more threatening. Extracts from Southern papers seemed to my mind very violent and very wrong-headed; at the same time, I knew that my mother would endorse and Preston echo them. Then South Carolina passed the ordinance of secession. Six days after, Major Anderson took possession of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour, and immediately the fort he had left and Castle Pinckney were garrisoned by the South Carolinians in opposition. I could not tell how much all this signified; but my heart began to give a premonitory beat sometimes. Mississippi followed South Carolina; then United States' forts and arsenals were seized in North Carolina and Georgia and Alabama, one after the other. The tone of the press was very threatening, at least of the Southern press. And not less significant, to my ear, was the whisper I occasionally heard among a portion of our own little community. A secret whisper, intense in its sympathy with the seceding half of the nation, contemptuously hostile to the other part, among whom they were at that very moment receiving Northern education and Northern kindness. The girls even listened and gathered scraps of conversation that passed in their hearing, to retail them in letters sent home; "they did not know," they said, "what might be of use." Later, some of these letters were intercepted by the General Government, and sent back from Washington to Madame Ricard. All this told me much of the depth and breadth of feeling among the community of which these girls formed a part; and my knowledge of my father and mother, Aunt Gary and Preston, and others, told me more. I began to pray that God would not let war come upon the land. Then there was a day, in January, I think, when a bit of public news was read out in presence of the whole family; a thing that rarely happened. It was evening, and we were all in the parlour with our work. I forget who was the reader, but I remember the words: "'The steamer, _Star of the West_ with two hundred and fifty United States troops on board for Fort Sumter, was fired into' (I forget the day) 'by the batteries near Charleston.' Young ladies, do you hear that? The steamer was fired into. That is the beginning." We looked at each other, we girls; startled, sorry, awed, with a strange glance of defiance from some eyes, while some flowed over with tears, and some were eager with a feeling that was not displeasure. All were silent at first. Then whispers began. "I told you so," said Sally. "Well, _they_ have begun it," said Macy, who was a native of New York. "Of course. What business had the _Star of the West_ to be carrying those troops there? South Carolina can take care of her own forts." "Daisy Randolph, you look as solemn as a preacher," said another. "Which side are you on?" "She is on the right side," said another. "Of course," said Sally. "She is the daughter of a Southern gentleman." "I am not on the side of those who fire the first shot," I said. "There is no other way," said Sally, coolly. "If a rat comes in your way you must shoot him. I knew it had got to come. I have heard my uncle talk enough about that." "But what will be the end of it?" said another. "Pooh! It will end like smoke. The Yankees do not like fighting--they would rather be excused, if you please. Their _forte_ is quite in another line--out of the way of powder." I wondered if that was true. I thought of Thorold, and of Major Blunt. I was troubled; and when I went to see Miss Cardigan, next day, I found she could give me little comfort. "I don't know, my dear," she said, "what they may be left to do. They're just daft, down there; clean daft." "If they fight, we shall be obliged to fight," I said, not liking to ask her about Northern courage; and, indeed, she was a Scotswoman, and what should she know? "Aye, just that," she replied; "and fighting between the two parts of one land is just the worst fighting there can be. Pray it may not come, Daisy; but those people are quite daft." The next letters from my mother spoke of my coming out to them as soon as the school year should be over. The country was likely to be disturbed, she said; and it would not suit with my father's health to come home just now. As soon as the school year should be over, and Dr. Sandford could find a proper opportunity for me to make the journey, I should come. I was very glad; yet I was not all glad. I wished they had been able to come to me. I was not, I hardly knew why I was not quite ready to quit America while these troubles threatened. And as days went on, and the cloud grew blacker, my feeling of unwillingness increased. The daily prints were full of fresh instances of the seizure of United States property, of the secession of New States; then the Secession Congress met, and elected Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens their president and vice-president; and rebellion was duly organized. Jefferson Davis! How the name took me back to the summer parade on the West Point plain, and my first view of that smooth, sinister, ill-conditioned face. Now _he_ was heading rebellion. Where would Dr. Sandford, and Mr. Thorold, and Preston be? How far would the rebels carry their work? and what opposition would be made to it? Again I asked Miss Cardigan. "It's beyond _me_, Daisy," she said. "I suppose it will depend very much on whether we've got the right man to head us or no; and that nobody can tell till we try. This man, Buchanan, that is over us at present, he is no better than a bit of cotton-wool. I am going to take a look at Mr. Lincoln as he comes through, and see what I think of him." "When is he coming?" "They say to-day," said Miss Cardigan. "There'll be an uncommon crowd, but I'll risk it." A great desire seized me, that I might see him too. I consulted with Miss Cardigan. School hours were over at three; I could get away then, I thought; and by studying the programme of the day we found it possible that it would not be too late then for our object. So it proved; and I have always been glad of it ever since. Miss Cardigan and I went forth and packed ourselves in the dense crowd which had gathered and filled all the way by which the President-elect was expected to pass. A quiet and orderly and most respectable crowd it was. Few Irish, few of the miserable of society, who come out only for a spectacle; there were the yeomanry and the middle classes, men of business, men of character and some substance, who were waiting, like us, to see what promise for the future there might be in the aspect of our new chief. Waiting patiently; and we could only wait patiently like them. I thought of Preston's indignation if he could have seen me, and Dr. Sandford's ready negative on my being there; but well were these thoughts put to flight when the little cavalcade for which we were looking hove in sight and drew near. Intense curiosity and then profound satisfaction seized me. The strong, grave, kindly lineaments of the future Head of the Country gave me instantly a feeling of confidence, which I never lost in all the time that followed. That was, confidence in his honesty and goodness; but another sort of trust was awakened by the keen, searching, shrewd glances of those dark eyes, which seemed to penetrate the masses of human intelligences surrounding him, and seek to know what manner of _material_ he might find them at need. He was not thinking of himself, that was plain; and the homely, expressive features got a place in my heart from that time. The little cavalcade passed on from us; the crowd melted away, and Miss Cardigan and I came slowly again up Fifth Avenue. "Yon's a mon!" quoth Miss Cardigan, speaking, as she did in moments of strong feeling, with a little reminder of her Scottish origin. "Didn't you like him?" I rejoined. "I always like a man when I see him," said my friend. "He had need be that, too, for he has got a man's work to do." And it soon appeared that she spoke true. I watched every action, and weighed every word of Mr. Lincoln now, with a strange interest. I thought great things depended on him. I was glad when he determined to send supplies into Fort Sumter. I was sure that he was right; but I held my breath, as it were, to see what South Carolina would do. The twelfth of April told us. "So they have done it, Daisy!" said Miss Cardigan, that evening. "They are doing it, rather. They have been firing at each other all day." "Well, Major Anderson must defend his fort," I said. "That is his duty." "No doubt," said Miss Cardigan; "but you look pale, Daisy, my bairn. You are from those quarters yourself. Is there anybody in that neighbourhood that is dear to you?" I had the greatest difficulty not to burst into tears, by way of answer, and Miss Cardigan looked concerned at me. I told her there was nobody there I cared for, except some poor coloured people who were in no danger. "There'll be many a sore heart in the country if this goes on," she said, with a sigh. "But it will not go on, will it?" I asked. "They cannot take Fort Sumter; do you think so?" "I know little about it," said my friend, soberly. "I am no soldier. And we never know what is best, Daisy. We must trust the Lord, my dear, to unravel these confusions." And the next night the little news-boys in the streets were crying out the "Fall of Fort Sum--ter!" It rang ominously in my heart. The rebels had succeeded so far; and they would go on. Yes, they would go on now, I felt assured; unless some very serious check should be given them. Could the Yankees give that? I doubted it. Yet _their_ cause was the cause of right, and justice, and humanity; but the right does _not_ always at first triumph, whatever it may do in the end; and good swords, and good shots, and the spirit of a soldier, are things that are allowed to carry their force with them. I knew the South had these. What had the North? Even in our school seclusion, we felt the breath of the tremendous excitement which swayed the public mind next day. Not bluster, nor even passion, but the stir of the people's heart. As we walked to church, we could hear it in half caught words of those we passed by, see it in the grave, intense air which characterised groups and faces; feel it in the atmosphere, which was heavy with indignation and gathering purpose. It was said no Sunday like that had been known in the city. Within our own little community, if parties ran high, they were like those outside, quiet; but when alone, the Southern girls testified an exultation that jarred painfully upon my ears. "Daisy don't care." "Yes, I care," I said. "For shame not to be glad! You see, it is glorious. We have it all our own way. The impertinence of trying to hold our forts for us!" "I don't see anything glorious in fighting," I said. "Not when you are attacked?" "We were not attacked," I said. "South Carolina fired the first guns." "Good for her!" said Sally. "Brave little South Carolina! Nobody will meddle with her and come off without cutting his fingers." "Nobody did meddle with her," I asserted. "It was _she_ who meddled, to break the laws and fight against the government." "What government?" said Sally. "Are we slaves, that we should be ruled by a government we don't choose? We will have our own. Do you think South Carolina and Virginia _gentlemen_ are going to live under a rail-splitter for a President? and take orders from him?" "What do you mean by a 'rail-splitter'?" "I mean this Abe Lincoln the northern mudsills have picked up to make a President of. He used to get his living by splitting rails for a Western fence, Daisy Randolph." "But if he is President, he is President," I said. "For those that like him. _We_ won't have him. Jefferson Davis is my President. And all I can do to help him I will. I can't fight; I wish I could. My brother and my cousins and my uncle will, though, that's one comfort; and what I can do I will." "Then I think you are a traitor," I said. I was hated among the Southern girls from that day. Hated with a bitter, violent hatred, which had indeed little chance to show itself, but was manifested in the scornful, intense avoidance of me. The bitterness of it is surprising to me even now. I cared not very much for it. I was too much engrossed with deeper interests of the time, both public and private. The very next day came the President's call for seventy-five thousand men; and the next, the answer of the governor of Kentucky, that "Kentucky would furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." I saw this in the paper in the library; the other girls had no access to the general daily news, or I knew there would have been shoutings of triumph over Governor Magoffin. Other governors of other States followed his example. Jefferson Davis declared in a proclamation that letters of marque and reprisal would be issued. Everything wore the aspect of thickening strife. My heart grew very heavy over these signs of evil, fearing I knew not what for those whom I cared about. Indeed, I would not stop to think what I feared. I tried to bury my fears in my work. Letters from my mother became very explicit now; she said that troublesome times were coming in the country, and she would like me to be out of it. After a little while, when the independence of the South should be assured, we would all come home and be happy together. Meantime, as soon after the close of the school year as Dr. Sandford could find a good chance for me, I was to come out to them at Lausanne, where my mother thought they would be by that time. So I studied with all my strength, with the double motive of gaining all I could and of forgetting what was going on in the political world. Music and French, my mother particularly desired that I should excel in; and I gave many hours to my piano, as many as possible, and talked with Mlle. Géneviève, whenever she would let me. And she was very fond of me and fond of talking to me; it was she who kept for me my library privilege. And my voice was good, as it had promised to be. I had the pleasure of feeling that I was succeeding in what I most wished to attain. It was succeeding over the heads of my schoolfellows; and that earned me wages that were not pleasant among a portion of my companions. Faustina St. Clair was back among us; she would perhaps have forgiven if she could have forgotten me; but my headship had been declared ever since the time of the bronze standish, and even rivalry had been long out of the question. So the old feud was never healed; and now, between the unfriendliness of her party and the defection of all the Southern girls, I was left in a great minority of popular favour. It could not be helped. I studied the harder. I had unlimited favour with all my teachers, and every indulgence I asked for. The news of the attack in Baltimore upon the Massachusetts troops passing through the city, and Governor Andrew's beautiful telegram, shook me out of my pre-occupation. It shook me out of all quiet for a day. Indignation, and fear, and sorrow rolled through my heart. The passions that were astir among men, the mad results to which they were leading, the possible involvement of several of those whom I loved, a general trembling of evil in the air, made study difficult for the moment. What signified the course and fate of nations hundreds of years ago? Our own course and fate filled the horizon. What signified the power or beauty of my voice, when I had not the heart to send it up and down like a bird any longer? Where was Preston, and Dr. Sandford, and Ransom, and what would become of Magnolia? In truth, I did not know what had become of Ransom. I had not heard from him or of him in a long time. But these thoughts would not do. I drove them away. I resolved to mind my work and not read the papers, if I could help it, and not think about politics or my friends' course in them. I could do nothing. And in a few months I should be away, out of the land. I kept my resolve pretty well. Indeed, I think nothing very particular happened to disturb it for the next two or three weeks. I succeeded in filling my head with work and being very happy in it. That is, whenever I could forget more important things. CHAPTER XIX. ENTERED FOR THE WAR. One evening, I think before the end of April, I asked permission to spend the evening at Miss Cardigan's. I had on hand a piece of study for which I wanted to consult certain books which I knew were in her library. Mlle. Géneviève gave me leave gladly. "You do study too persevering, m'amie," she said. "Go, and stop to study for a little while. You are pale. I am afraid your doctor--ce bon Monsieur le docteur--will scold us all by and by. Go, and do not study." But I determined to have my play and my study too. As I passed through Miss Cardigan's hall, the parlour door, standing half open let me see that a gentleman was with her. Not wishing to interrupt any business that might be going on, and not caring also to be bored with it myself, I passed by and went into the inner room where the books were. I would study now, I thought, and take my pleasure with my dear old friend by and by, when she was at leisure. I had found my books, and had thrown myself down on the floor with one, when a laugh that came from the front room laid a spell upon my powers of study. The book fell from my hands; I sat bolt upright, every sense resolved into that of hearing. What, and who had that been? I listened. Another sound of a word spoken, another slight inarticulate suggestion of laughter; and I knew with an assured knowledge that my friend Cadet Thorold, and no other, was the gentleman in Miss Cardigan's parlour with whom she had business. I sat up and forgot my books. The first impulse was to go in immediately and show myself. I can hardly tell what restrained me. I remembered that Miss Cardigan must have business with him, and I had better not interrupt it. But those sounds of laughter had not been very business-like, either. Nor were they business words which came through the open door. I never thought or knew I was listening. I only thought it was Thorold, and held my breath to hear, or rather to feel. My ears seemed sharpened beyond all their usual faculty. "And you haven't gone and fallen in love, callant, meanwhile, just to complicate affairs?" said the voice of Miss Cardigan. "I shall never fall in love," said Thorold, with (I suppose) mock gravity. His voice sounded so. "Why not?" "I require too much." "It's like your conceit!" said Miss Cardigan. "Now, what is it that you require? I would like to know; that is, if you know yourself. It appears that you have thought about it." "I have thought, till I have got it all by heart," said Thorold. "The worst is, I shall never find it in this world." "That's likely. Come, lad, paint your picture, and I'll tell you if _I_ know where to look," said Miss Cardigan. "And then you'll search for me?" "I dinna ken if you deserve it," said Miss Cardigan. "I don't deserve it, of course," said Thorold. "Well--I have painted the likeness a good many times. The first thing is a pair of eyes as deep and grey as our mountain lakes." "I never heard that your Vermont lakes were _grey_," said Miss Cardigan. "Oh, but they are! when the shadow of the mountains closes them in. It is not cold grey, but purple and brown, the shadow of light, as it were; the lake is in shadow. Only, if a bit of blue _does_ show itself there, it is the very heaven." "I hope that it is not going to be in poetry?" said Miss Cardigan's voice, sounding dry and amused. "What is the next thing? It is a very good picture of eyes." "The next thing is a mouth that makes you think of nothing but kissing it; the lines are so sweet, and so mobile, and at the same time so curiously subdued. A mouth that has learned to smile when things don't go right; and that has learned the lesson so well, you cannot help thinking it must have often known things go wrong; to get the habit so well, you know." "Eh?--Why, boy!"--cried Miss Cardigan. "Do you know anybody like it?" said Thorold, laughing. "If you do, you are bound to let me know where, you understand." "What lies between the eyes and mouth?" said Miss Cardigan. "There goes more to a picture." "Between the eyes and mouth," said Thorold, "there is sense and dignity, and delicacy, and refinement to a fastidious point; and a world of strength of character in the little delicate chin." "Character--_that_ shows in the mouth," said Miss Cardigan, slowly. "I told you so," said Thorold. "That is what I told you. Truth, and love, and gentleness, all sit within those little red lips; and a great strength of will, which you cannot help thinking has borne something to try it. The brow is like one of our snowy mountain tops with the sun shining on it." "And the lady's figure is like a pine-tree, isn't it? It sounds gay, as if you'd fallen in love with Nature, and so personified and imaged her in human likeness. Is it real humanity?" Thorold laughed his gay laugh. "The pine-tree will do excellently, Aunt Catherine," he said. "No better embodiment of stately grace could be found." My ears tingled. "Aunt Catherine?" _Aunt!_ Then Thorold must be her relation, her nephew; then he was not come on business; then he would stay to tea. I might as well show myself. But, I thought, if Thorold had some other lady so much in his mind (for I was sure his picture must be in a portrait), he would not care so very much about seeing me, as I had at first fancied he would. However, I could not go away; so I might as well go in; it would not do to wait longer. The evening had quite fallen now. It was April, as I said, but a cold, raw spring day, and had been like that for several days. Houses were chill; and in Miss Cardigan's grate a fine fire of Kennal coals were blazing, making its red illumination all over the room and the two figures who sat in front of it. She had had a grate put in this winter. There was no other light, only that soft red glow and gloom, under favour of which I went in and stood almost beside them before they perceived me. I did not speak to Miss Cardigan. I remember my words were, "How do you do, Mr. Thorold?"--in a very quiet kind of a voice; for I did not now expect him to be very glad. But I was surprised at the change my words made. He sprang up, his eyes flashing a sort of shower of sparks over me, gladness in every line of his face, and surprise, and a kind of inexpressible deference in his manner. "Daisy!" he exclaimed. "Miss Randolph!" "Daisy!" echoed Miss Cardigan. "My dear--do you two know each other? Where did you come from?" I think I did not answer. I am sure Thorold did not. He was caring for me, placing his chair nearer his aunt, and putting me into it, before he let go the hand he had taken. Then, drawing up another chair on the other side of me, he sat down, looking at me (I thought afterwards, I only felt at the moment), as if I had been some precious wonder; the Koh-i-noor diamond, or anything of that sort. "Where did you come from?" was his first question. "I have been in the house a little while," I said. "I thought at first Miss Cardigan had somebody with her on business, so I would not come in." "It is quite true, Daisy," said Miss Cardigan; "it is somebody on business." "Nothing private about it, though," said Thorold, smiling at me. "But where in the world did you and Aunt Catherine come together?" "And what call have ye to search into it?" said Miss Cardigan's good-humoured voice. "I know a great many bodies, callant, that you know not." "I know this one, though," said Thorold. "Miss Randolph--won't you speak? for Aunt Catherine is in no mood to tell me--have you two known each other long?" "It seems long," I said. "It is not very long." "Since last summer?" "Certainly!" "If that's the date of _your_ acquaintanceship," said Miss Cardigan, "we're auld friends to that. Is all well, Daisy?" "All quite well, ma'am. I came to do a bit of study I wanted in your books, and to have a nice time with you, besides." "And here is this fellow in the way. But we cannot turn him out, Daisy; he is going fast enough; on what errand, do you think, is he bent?" _I_ had not thought about it till that minute. Something, some thread of the serious, in Miss Cardigan's voice, made me look suddenly at Thorold. He had turned his eyes from me and had bent them upon the fire, all merriment gone out of his face, too. It was thoroughly grave. "What are you going to do, Mr. Thorold?" I asked. "Do you remember a talk we had down on Flirtation Walk one day last summer, when you asked me about possible political movements at the South, and I asked you what you would do?" "Yes," I said, my heart sinking. "The time has come," he said, facing round upon me. "And you--?" "I shall be on my way to Washington in a few days. Men are wanted now--all the men that have any knowledge to be useful. I may not be very useful. But I am going to try." "I thought"--it was not quite easy to speak, for I was struggling with something which threatened to roughen my voice--"I thought you did not graduate till June?" "Not regularly; not usually; but things are extraordinary this year. We graduate and go on to Washington at once." I believe we were all silent a few minutes. "Daisy," said Miss Cardigan, "you have nobody that is dear to _you_ likely to be engaged in the fray--if there is one?" "I don't know--" I said, rather faintly. I remember I said it; I cannot tell why, for I _did_ know. I knew that Preston and Ransom were both likely to be in the struggle, even if Ransom had been at the moment at the opposite side of the world. But then Thorold roused up and began to talk. He talked to divert us, I think. He told us of things that concerned himself and his class personally, giving details to which we listened eagerly; and he went on from them to things and people in the public line, of which and of whom neither Miss Cardigan nor I had known the thousandth part so much before. We sat and listened, Miss Cardigan often putting in a question, while the warm still glow of the firelight shed over us and all the room its assurance of peace and quiet, woven and compounded of life-long associations. Thorold sat before us and talked, and we looked at him and listened in the fire-shine; and my thoughts made swift sideway flights every now and then from this peace and glow of comfort, and from Thorold's talk, to the changes of the camp and the possible coming strife; spectres of war, guns and swords, exposure and wounds--and sickness--and the battlefield--what could I tell? and Miss Cardigan's servant put another lump of coal on the fire, and Thorold presently broke it, and the jet of illumination sprang forth, mocking and yet revealing in its sweet home glow my visions of terror. They were but momentary visions; I could not bear, of course, to look steadily at them; they were spectres that came and went with a wave of a hand, in a jet of flame, or the shadow of an opening door; but they went and came; and I saw many things in Thorold's face that night besides the manly lines of determination and spirit, the look of thought and power, and the hover of light in his eye when it turned to me. I don't know what Miss Cardigan saw; but several times in the evening I heard her sigh; a thing very unusual and notable with her. Again and again I heard it, a soft long breath. I gave it no heed at the time. My eyes and thoughts were fixed on the other member of the party; and I was like one in a dream. I walked in a dream; till we went into the other room to tea, and I heard Miss Cardigan say, addressing her nephew-- "Sit there, Christian." I was like one in a dream, or I should have known what this meant. I did know two minutes afterwards. But at the moment, falling in with some of my thoughts, the word made me start and look at Thorold. I cannot tell what was in my look; I know what was in my heart; the surprised inquiry and the yearning wish. Thorold's face flushed. He met my eyes with an intense recognition and inquiry in his own, and then, I am almost sure, his were dim. He set my chair for me at the table, and took hold of me and put me in it with a very gentle touch that seemed to thank me. "That is my name, Miss Randolph," he said, "the name given me by my parents." "You'll earn it yet, boy," said Miss Cardigan. "But the sooner the better." There was after that a very deep gravity upon us all for the first minutes at the table. I wondered to myself, how people can go on drinking tea and eating bread and butter through everything; yet they must, and even I was doing it at the moment, and not willing to forego the occupation. By degrees the wonted course of things relieved our minds, which were upon too high a strain. It appeared that Thorold was very hungry, having missed his dinner somehow; and his aunt ordered up everything in the house for his comfort, in which I suppose she found her own. And then Thorold made me eat with him. I was sure I did not want it, but that made no difference. Things were prepared for me and put upon my plate, and a soft little command laid on me to do with them what I was expected to do. It was not like the way Dr. Sandford used to order me, nor in the least like Preston's imperiousness, which I could withstand well enough; there was something in it which nullified all my power and even will to resist, and I was as submissive as possible. Thorold grew very bright again as the meal went on, and began to talk in a somewhat livelier strain than he had been in before tea; and I believe he did wile both his aunt and me out of the sad or grave thoughts we had been indulging. I know that I was obliged to laugh, as I was obliged to eat. Thorold had his own way, and seemed to like it. Even his aunt was amused and interested, and grew lively, like herself. With all that, through the whole supper-time I had an odd feeling of her being on one side; it seemed to be only Thorold and I really there; and in all Thorold was doing and through all he was talking, I had a curious sense that he was occupied only with me. It was not that he said so much directly to me or looked so much at me; I do not know how I got the feeling. There was Miss Cardigan at the head of the table busy and talking as usual, clever and kind; yet the air seemed to be breathed only by Thorold and me. "And how soon, lad," Miss Cardigan broke out suddenly, when a moment's lull in the talk had given her a chance, "how soon will ye be off to that region of disturbance whither ye are going?" "Washington?" said Thorold. "Just as soon as our examination can be pushed through; in a very few days now." "You'll come to me by the way, for another look at you, in your officer's uniform?" "Uniform? nobody will have any uniform, I fancy," said Thorold; "nobody has any time to think of that. No, Aunt Catherine, and I shall not see you, either. I expect we shall rush through without the loss of a train. I can't stop. I don't care what clothes I wear to get there." "How came you to be here now, if you are in such a hurry?" "Nothing on earth would have brought me, but the thing that did bring me," said Thorold. "I was subpoenaed down, to give my evidence in a trial. I must get back again without loss of a minute; should have gone to-night, if there had been a train that stopped. I am very glad there was no train that stopped!" We were all silent for a minute; till the door-bell rang, and the servant came, announcing Mr. Bunsen, to see Miss Cardigan about the tenant houses. Miss Cardigan went off through the open doors that led to the front parlour; and standing by the fire, I watched her figure diminishing in the long distance till it passed into Mr. Bunsen's presence and disappeared. Mr. Thorold and I stood silently on either side of the hearth, looking into the fire, while the servant was clearing the table. The cheerful, hospitable little table, round which we had been so cheerful at least for the moment, was dismantled already, and the wonted cold gleam of the mahogany seemed to tell me that cheer was all over. The talk of the uniform had overset me. All sorts of visions of what it signified, what it portended, where it would go, what it would be doing, were knocking at the door of my heart, and putting their heads in. Before tea these visions had come and vanished; often enough, to be sure; now they came and stayed. I was very quiet, I am certain of that; I was as certainly very sober, with a great and growing sadness at my heart. I think Thorold was grave, too, though I hardly looked at him. We did not speak to each other all the time the servant was busy in the room. We stood silent before the fire. The study I had come to do had all passed away out of my mind, though the books were within three feet of me. I was growing sadder and sadder every minute. "Things have changed, since we talked so lightly last summer of what might be," Thorold said at last. And he said it in a meditative way, as if he were pondering something. "Yes," I assented. "The North does not wish for war. The South have brought it upon themselves." "Yes," I said again, wondering a little what was coming. "However disagreeable my duty may be, it is my duty; and there is no shirking it." "No," I said. "Of course." "And if your friends are on one side and I on the other,--it is not my fault, Miss Randolph." "No," I said; "not at all." "Then you do not blame me for taking the part I _must_ take?" "No," I said. "You must take it." "Are you sorry I take it?" said Thorold with a change of tone, and coming a step nearer. "Sorry?" I said, and I looked up for an instant. "No; how could I be sorry? it is your duty. It is right." But as I looked down again I had the greatest difficulty not to burst into tears. I felt as though my heart would break in two with its burden of pain. It cost a great effort to stand still and quiet, without showing anything. "What is it, then?" said Thorold; and with the next words I knew he had come close to my side and was stooping his head down to my face, while his voice dropped. "What is it, Daisy?--Is it--O Daisy, I love you better than anything else in the world, except my duty! Daisy, do you love me?" Nothing could have been more impossible to me, I think, than to answer a word; but, indeed, Thorold did not seem to want it. As he questioned me, he had put his arm round me and drawn me nearer and nearer, stooping his face to me, till his lips took their own answer at mine; indeed, took answer after answer, and then, in a sort of passion of mute joy, kissed my face all over. I could not forbid him; between excitement and sorrow and happiness and shame, I could do nothing. The best I could do was to hide my face; but the breast of that grey coat was a strange hiding-place for it. With that inconsistent mingling of small things with great in one's perceptions, which everybody knows, I remember the soft feel of the fine grey cloth along with the clasp of Thorold's arms and the touch of his cheek resting upon my hair. And we stood so, quite still, for what seemed both a long and a short time, in which I think happiness got the upper hand with me, and pain for the moment was bid into the background. At last Thorold raised his head and bade me lift up mine. "Look up, darling," he said; "look up, Daisy! let me see your face. Look up, Daisy--we have only a minute, and everything in the world to say to each other. Daisy--I want to see you." I think it was one of the most difficult little things I ever had in my life to do, to raise my face and let him look at it; but I knew it must be done, and I did it. One glance at his I ventured. He was smiling at me; there was a flush upon his cheek; his eye had a light in it, and with that a glow of tenderness which was different from anything I had ever seen; and it was glittering, too, I think, with another sort of suffusion. His hand came smoothing down my hair and then touching my cheek while he looked at me. "What are you going to do with yourself now?" he said softly. "I am going on with my studies for another month or two." "And you belong to me, Daisy?" "Yes." He bent his head and kissed my brow. There is an odd difference of effect between a kiss on the lips and on the forehead, or else it was a difference in the manner. This seemed a sort of taking possession or setting a seal; and it gave me a new feeling of something almost like awe, which I had never associated with the grey coat or with its wearer before. Along with that came another impression that I suppose most women know, and know how sweet it is; the sense of an enveloping protection. Not that I had not been protected all my life; but my mother's had been the protection of authority; my father's also, in some measure; Dr. Sandford's was emphatically that of a _guardian_; he guarded me a little too well. But this new thing that was stealing into my heart, with its subtle delight, was the protection of a champion; of one who set me and mine above all other interests or claims in the world, and who would guard me as if he were a part of myself, only stronger. Altogether Thorold seemed to me different from what he had been the last summer; there was a gravity now in his face and air at times that was new and even stern; the gravity of a man taking stern life work upon him. I felt all this in a minute, while Thorold was smiling down into my face. "And you will write to me?" he said. "Yes." "And I will write to you. And I belong to you, Daisy, and to no other. All I have is yours, and all that I am is yours--after my duty; you may dispose of me, pretty one, just as you like. _You_ would not have that put second, Daisy." A great yearning came over me, so great and strong that it almost took away my breath. I fancy it spoke in my eyes, for Thorold's face grew very grave, I remember, as he looked at me. But I must speak it more plainly than so, at any costs, breath or no breath, and I must not wait. "Christian," I whispered, "won't you earn your right to your name?" He pressed his lips upon mine by way of answer first, and then gave me a quick and firm "Yes." I certainly thought he had found a mouth he was talking of a little while ago. But at that instant the sound of the distant house door closing, and then of steps coming out from the parlour, made me know that Miss Cardigan's business was over, and that she was returning to us. I wanted to free myself from Thorold's arm, but he would not let me; on the contrary, held me closer, and half turned to meet Miss Cardigan as she came in. Certainly men are very different from women. There we stood, awaiting her; and I felt very much ashamed. "Come on, Aunt Catherine," Thorold said, as she paused at the door,--"come in, come in, and kiss her--this little darling is mine." Miss Cardigan came in slowly. I could not look up. "Kiss her, Aunt Catherine," he repeated; "she is mine." And to my great dismay he set her the example; but I think it was partly to reassure me, and cover my confusion, which he saw. "I have kissed Daisy very often before now," said Miss Cardigan. I thought I discerned some concern in her voice. "Then come, do it again," said Thorold, laughing. "You never kissed her as anything belonging to me, Aunt Catherine." And he fairly laid me in Miss Cardigan's arms, till we kissed each other as he desired. But Miss Cardigan's gravity roused me out of my confusion. I was not ashamed before her; only before him. "Now, Aunt Catherine," he said, pulling up a comfortable arm chair to the corner of the hearth, "sit there. And Daisy--come here!" He put me into the fellow chair; and then built up the wood in the fireplace till we had a regular illumination. Then drew himself up before the fire, and looked at his aunt. "It's like you!" broke out Miss Cardigan. "Ever since you were born, I think, you did what you liked, and had what you liked; and threw over everything to get at the best." "On the contrary," said Thorold, "I was always of a very contented disposition." "Contented with your own will, then," said his aunt. "And now, do you mean to tell me that you have got this prize--this prize--it's a first class, Christian--for good and for certain to yourself?" I lifted my eyes one instant, to see the sparkles in Thorold's eyes; they were worth seeing. "You don't think you deserve it?" Miss Cardigan went on. "I do not think I deserve it," said Thorold. "But I think I will." "I know what that means," said his aunt. "You will get worldly glory--just a bit or two more of gold on your coat--to match you with one of the Lord's jewels, that are to be 'all glorious within'; and you think that will fit you to own her." "Aunt Catherine," said Thorold, "I do not precisely think that gold lace is glory. But I mean that I will do my duty. A man can do no more." "Some would have said 'a man can do no less,'" said Miss Cardigan, turning to me. "But you are right, lad; more than our duty we can none of us do; where _all_ is owing, less will not be overpay. But whatever do you think her father will say to you?" "I will ask him when the time comes," said Thorold, contentedly. His tone was perfect, both modest and manly. Truth to say, I could not quite share his content in looking forward to the time he spoke of; but that was far ahead, and it was impossible not to share his confidence. My father and my mother had been practically not my guardians during six and a half long years; I had got out of the habit of looking first to them. "And what are you going to do now in Washington?" said his aunt. "You may as well sit down and tell us." "I don't know. Probably I shall be put to drill new recruits. All these seventy-five thousand men that the President has called for, won't know how to handle a gun or do anything else." "And what is he going to do with these seventy-five thousand men, Christian?" "Put down treason, if he can. Don't you realize yet that we have a civil war on our hands, Aunt Catherine? The Southern States are mustering and sending their forces; we must meet them, or give up the whole question; that is, give up the country." "And what is it that _they_ will try to do?" said Miss Cardigan. "It is a mystery to me what they want; but I suppose I know; only bad men are a mystery to me always." "They will try to defy the laws," said Thorold. "We will try to see them executed." "They seem very fierce," said Miss Cardigan; "to judge by what they say." "And do," added Thorold. "I think there is a sort of madness in Southern blood." He spoke with a manner of disgustful emphasis. I looked up at him to see an expression quite in keeping with his words. Miss Cardigan cried out-- "Hey, lad! ye're confident, surely, to venture your opinions so plainly and so soon!" His face changed, as if sunlight had been suddenly poured over it. He came kneeling on one knee before me, taking my hand and kissing it, and laughing. "And I see ye're not confident without reason!" added Miss Cardigan. "Daisy'll just let ye say your mind, and no punish you for it." "But it is _true_, Miss Cardigan," I said, turning to her. I wished I had held my tongue the next minute, for the words were taken off my lips, as it were. It is something quite different from eating your own words, which I have heard of as not being pleasant; mine seemed to be devoured by somebody else. "But is it true they are coming to attack Washington?" Miss Cardigan went on, when we had all done laughing. "I read it in the prints; and it seems to me I read every other thing there." "I am afraid you read too many prints," said Thorold. "You are thinking of 'hear both sides,' Aunt Catherine? You must know there is but one side to this matter. There never are two sides to treason." "That's true," said Miss Cardigan. "But about Washington, lad? I saw an extract from a letter written from that city, by a lady, and she said the place was in a terror; she said the President sleeps with a hundred men, armed, in the east room, to protect him from the Southern army; and keeps a sentinel before his bedroom door; and often goes clean out of the White House and sleeps somewhere else, in his fear." I had never seen Thorold laugh as he did then. And he asked his aunt "where she had seen that extract?" "It was in one of the papers--it was in an extract itself, I'm thinking." "From a Southern paper," said Thorold. "Well, I believe it was." "I have seen extracts, too," said Thorold. "They say, Alexander H. Stephens is counselling the rebels to lay hold on Washington." "Well, sit down and tell us what you do know, and how to understand things," said Miss Cardigan. "I don't talk to anybody, much, about politics." So Thorold did as he was asked. He sat down on the other side of me, and with my hand in his, talked to us both. We went over the whole ground of the few months past, of the work then doing and preparing, of what might reasonably be looked for in both the South and the North. He said he was not very wise in the matter; but he was infinitely more informed than we; and we listened as to the most absorbing of all tales, till the night was far worn. A sense of the gravity and importance of the crisis; a consciousness that we were embarked in a contest of the most stubborn character, the end of which no man might foretell, pressed itself more and more on my mind as the night and the talk grew deeper. If I may judge from the changes in Miss Cardigan's face, it was the same with her. The conclusion was, the North was gathering and concentrating all her forces to meet the trial that was coming; and the young officers of the graduating class at the Military Academy had been ordered to the seat of war a little before their time of study was out, their help being urgently needed. "And where is Preston?" said I, speaking for the first time in a long while. "Preston?" echoed Thorold. "My Cousin Preston--Gary; your classmate Gary." "Gary! Oh, he is going to Washington, like the rest of us." "Which side will he take?" "You should know, perhaps, better than I," said Thorold. "He always _has_ taken the Southern side, and very exclusively." "_Has_ taken?" said I. "Do you mean that among the cadets there has been a South and a North--until now, lately?" "Aye, Daisy, always, since I have been in the Academy. The Southern clique and the Northern clique have been well defined; there is always an assumption of superiority on the one side, and some resenting of it on the other side. It was on that ground Gary and I split." "Split!" I repeated. But Thorold laughed and kissed me, and would give me no satisfaction. I began to put things together, though. I saw from Christian's eyes that _he_ had nothing to be ashamed of, in looking back; I remembered Preston's virulence, and his sudden flush when somebody had repeated the word "coward," which he had applied to Thorold. I felt certain that more had been between them than mere words, and that Preston found the recollection not flattering, whatever it was; and having come to this settlement of the matter, I looked up at Thorold. "My gentle little Daisy!" he said. "I will never quarrel with him again--if I can help it." "You _must_ quarrel with him, if he is on the wrong side," I answered. "And so must I." "You say you must go immediately back to West Point," said Miss Cardigan. "Leave thanking Daisy's hand, and tell me _when_ you are going; for the night is far past, children." "I am gone when I bid you good-night," said Thorold. "I must set out with the dawn--to catch the train I must take." "With the dawn!--_this_ morning!" cried Miss Cardigan. "Certainly. I should be there this minute, if the colonel had not given me something to do here that kept me." "And when will ye do it?" "Do it! It is done," said Thorold; "before I came here. But I must catch the first train in the morning." "And you'll want some breakfast before that," she said, rising. "No, I shall not," said Thorold, catching hold of her. "I want nothing. I _did_ want my supper. Sit down, Aunt Catherine, and be quiet. I want nothing, I tell you, but more time." "We may as well sit up the rest of the night," I said; "it is so far gone now." "Yes, and what will you be good for to-morrow?" said Miss Cardigan. "You must lie down and take a bit of rest." I felt no weariness; but I remember the grave, tender examination of Thorold's eyes, which seemed to touch me with their love, to find out whether I--and himself--might be indulged or not. It was a bit of the thoughtful, watchful affection which always surrounded me when he was near. I never had it just so from anybody else. "It won't do, Daisy," said he gaily. "You would not have me go in company with self-reproaches all day to-morrow? You must lie down here on the sofa; and, sleep or not, we'll all be still for two hours. Aunt Catherine will thank me to stop talking for that length of time." I was not sleepy, but Miss Cardigan and Thorold would not be resisted. Thorold wheeled up the sofa, piled the cushions, and made me lie down, with the understanding that nobody should speak for the time he had specified. Miss Cardigan, on her part, soon lost herself in her easy chair. Thorold walked perseveringly up and down the room. I closed my eyes and opened my eyes, and lay still and thought. It is all before me now. The firelight fading and brightening: Thorold took care of the fire; the gleam of the gaslight on the rows of books; Miss Cardigan's comfortable figure gone to sleep in the corner of her chair; and the figure which ever and anon came between me and the fire, piling or arranging the logs of wood, and then paced up and down just behind me. There was no sleep for my eyes, of course. How should there be? I seemed to pass all my life in review, and as I took the bearings of my present position I became calm. I rose up the moment the two hours were over, for I could bear the silence no longer, nor the losing any more time. Thorold stopped his walk then, and we had along talk over the fire by ourselves, while Miss Cardigan slept on. Trust her, though, for waking up when there was anything to be done. Long before dawn she roused herself and went to call her servants and order our breakfast. "What are you going to do now, Daisy?" said Thorold, turning to me with a weight of earnestness in his eyes, and a flash of that keen inspection which they sometimes gave me. "You know," I said, "I am going to study as hard as I can for a month or two more,--till my school closes." "What then, Daisy? Perhaps you will find some way to come on and see me at Washington--if the rebels don't take it first?" It must be told. "No--I cannot.--My father and mother wish me to go out to them as soon as I get a chance." "Where?" "In Switzerland." "Switzerland! To stay how long?" "I don't know--till the war is over, I suppose. I do not think they would come back before." "I shall come and fetch you then, Daisy." But it seemed a long way off. And how much might be between. We were both silent. "That is heavy for me," said Thorold at last. "Little Daisy, you do not know how heavy!" He was caressing my hair, smoothing and stroking it as he spoke. I looked up and his eyes flashed fire instantly. "Say that in words!" he exclaimed, taking me in his arms. "Say it, Daisy! say it. It will be worth so much to me." But my lips had hardly a chance to speak. "Say what?" "Daisy, you _have_ said it. Put it in words, that is all." But his eyes were so full of flashing triumph that I thought he had got enough for the time. "Daisy, those eyes of yours are like mountain lakes, deep and still. But when I look quite down to the bottom of them--sometimes I see something--I thought I did then." "What?" I asked, very much amused. "I see it there now, Daisy!" I was afraid he did, for _his_ eyes were like sunbeams, and I thought they went through everything at that minute. I don't know what moved me, the consciousness of this inspection or the consciousness of what it discovered; but I know that floods of shyness seemed to flush my face and brow, and even to the tips of my fingers. I would have escaped if I could, but I could not; and I think Thorold rather liked what he saw. There was no hiding it, unless I hid it on his shoulder, and that I was ashamed to do. I felt that his lips knew just as well as his eyes what state my cheeks were in, and took their own advantage. Though presently their tenderness soothed me too, and even nullified the soft little laugh with which he whispered, "Are you ashamed to show it to _me_, Daisy?" "You know," said I, still keeping my eyes veiled, "you have me at advantage. If you were not going--away--so soon, I would not do a great many things." "Daisy!" said he, laughing--"Daisy!"--And he touched my cheek as one who meant to keep his advantage. Then his voice changed, and he repeated, with a deeper and deepening tone with each word--"Daisy! my Daisy!" I had very nearly burst out into great sobs upon his breast, with the meeting of opposite tides of feeling. Sweet and bitter struggled for the upper hand; struggled, while I was afraid he would feel the laboured breath which went and came, straining me. And the sweetness, for the moment, got the better. I knew he must go, in an hour or little more, away from me. I knew it was for uncertain and maybe dangerous duty. I knew it might at best be long before we could see each other again; and back of all, the thought of my father and mother was not reassuring. But his arms were round me and my head was on his shoulder; and that was but the outward symbol of the inward love and confidence which filled all my heart with its satisfying content. For the moment happiness was uppermost. Not all the clouds on the horizon could dim the brightness of that one sun ray which reached me. I do not know what Thorold thought, but he was as still for a while as I was. "Daisy," he said at last, "my Daisy, you need not grudge any of your goodness to me. Don't you know, you are to be my light and my watchword in what lies before me?" "Oh no!" I said, lifting my head; "Oh no, Christian!" "Why no?" said he. "I want you to have a better watchword and follow a better light. Not me. O Christian, won't you?" "What shall my watchword be?" said he, looking into my eyes. But I was intent on something else then. I answered, "Whatsoever ye do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." "A soldier, Daisy?" "A soldier more than anybody," I said; "for He calls us to be soldiers, and you know what it means." "But you forget," said he, not taking his eyes from my face--"in my service I must obey as well as command: I am not my own master exactly." "Let Christ be your Master," I said. "How then with this other service?" "Why it is very plain," I said. "Command in the love of God and obey in the fear of God; that covers all." I did not see the natural sequence of what followed; for it was a succession of kisses that left no chance for a word to get out of my mouth. Then Thorold rose up, and I saw Miss Cardigan enter. "I will not forget, Daisy," he said, in a tone as if we had been talking of business. I thought, neither should I. And then came Miss Cardigan, and the servant behind her bringing coffee and bread and eggs and marmalade--I don't know what beside--and we sat down again to the table, knowing that the next move would be a move apart. But the wave of happiness was at the flood with me, and it bore me over all the underlying roughness of the shore--for the time. I do not think anybody wanted to eat much; we played with cups of coffee and with each other, and dallied with the minutes till the last one was spent. And then came the parting. That was short. THE END. Transcriber's Notes The following items were considered to be typographical errors and have been changed. Other typographic, spelling, punctuation errors and parochial speech has been left as they appear in the book. Page 17--Changed period into comma after the word "too" in the sentence--"But I think it is nice to know things too," said I. Page 37--Corrected "awkward" from "awkard" in the sentence--They were giggling and grinning, hopping on one foot, and going into other awkward antics; not the less that most of them had their arms filled with little black babies. Page 40--Changed question mark to period and deleted quotation mark in the sentence--I asked what they all were." Page 51--Changed single quote to double quote after "light" in the sentence--"They must be very dark if they could not understand light," said my governess. Page 56--Removed superfluous "n" from governess in--Then I remembered that my governess probably did care for some fruit Page 87--Corrected "string" to read "sting" in the sentence--It has a sting of its own, for which there is neither salve nor remedy; and it had the aggravation, in my case, of the sense of personal dishonour. Page 91--Added apostrophe to "girls" in the sentence--I have a recollection of the girl's terrified face, but I heard nothing more. Page 93--removed " from the start of the sentence--They had been gone half an hour, when Preston stole in and came to the side of my bed, between me and the firelight. Page 97--Added " after Melbourne in the sentence--"We shall have to let her do just as they did at Melbourne," said my aunt. Page 110--Added " after the word "by" in the sentence--"Mass' Preston come last night," she went on; "so I reckon Miss Daisy'll want to wear it by and by." Page 163--Changed period to ? in the sentence--"Will that distress you very much?" Page 178--Changed Mr. to Dr. in the sentence--"But, Dr. Sandford," I said, "nobody can belong to anybody--in that way." Page 193--Changed 'be' to 'he' in the sentence starting--I believe I half wished be would make some objection; Page 206--Added "le" to "aves" to make "leaves" in--"You wouldn't say so, if you knew the work it is to set those leaves round," said the mantua-maker. Page 240--Changed "for" into "far" in--but I am afraid the rule of the Good Samaritan would put us far apart. Page 249--Changed exclamation mark to question mark in--"Is there so much trouble everywhere in the world?" Page 250--Changed "I" to "It" in--It was a good photograph, and had beauty enough besides to hold my eyes. Page 257--Capitalised "W" in--Is it Daisy Randolph? What have you done to yourself? Page 266--changed beside to bedside in--I heard no sound while I was undressing, nor while I knelt, as usual now, by my bedside. Page 283--Changed rapidily to rapidly in--I watched him rapidly walking into the library; Page 285--Added question mark instead of period to--"Are you tired?" Page 316--Changed inmediately to immediately in--and placed himself immediately beside his summoner, Page 349--Changed "not" to "nor" in--"I cannot help that. He is neither gentlemanly in his habits nor true in his speech." Page 350--Added comma after "said" in--"You must not wear the same thing twice running," she said, "not if you can help it." Page 355--Changed period to question mark after "next" in--Who is next? Major Banks? Take care, Daisy, or you'll do some mischief." Page 374--Deleted comma after "see" in--Nevertheless, it was pleasant to see the firm, still attitude, the fine proportions, the military nicety of all his dress, which I had before noticed on the parade ground. Page 386--Changed subtance to substance in--men of business, men of character and some substance, Page 407--Changed "weel" to "well" in--"You may as well sit down and tell us." 
35295	----	The Maroon By Captain Mayne Reid Published by Hurst and Blackett, 13 Great Marlborough Street, London. This edition dated 1862. Volume One, Chapter I. A JAMAICA SUGAR ESTATE. A sugar estate, and one of the finest in the "land of springs," is that of "Mount Welcome." It is situated about ten miles from Montego Bay, in a broad valley, between two rounded ridges. These ridges, after running parallel for more than a mile, and gradually increasing in elevation, at length converge with an inward sweep--at their point of convergence, rising abruptly into a stupendous hill, that fairly merits the name which it bears upon the estate--_the "mountain_." Both the ridges are wooded almost down to their bases; the woods, which consist of shining pimento trees, ending on each side in groves and island copses, pleasantly interspersed over a park-like greensward. The "great house" or "buff" of the estate stands under the foot of the mountain, just at the point of union between the two ridges--where a natural table or platform, elevated several feet above the level of the valley, had offered a tempting site to the builder. In architectural style it is not very different from other houses of its kind, the well-known planter's dwelling of the West Indies. One storey--the lower one, of course--is of strong stone mason-work; the second and only other being simply a wooden "frame" roofed with "shingles." The side and end walls of this second story cannot with propriety be termed walls: since most part of them are occupied by a continuous line of Venetian shutters--the "jalousies" of Jamaica. These impart a singular cage-like appearance to the house, at the same time contributing to its coolness--a quality of primary importance in a tropical climate. Outside in the front centre a flight of broad stone steps, resting upon arched mason-work, and bordered by strong iron balustrades, conducts to the level of the second storey--the real dwelling-house: since the ground-floor is entirely occupied by store-rooms and other "offices." The entrance door is from the landing of the aforesaid _escalier_, and conducts at once into the "hall"--a spacious apartment, of crucifix-shape, running clear across the building from side to side, and end to end. The current of air admitted by the open jalousies, passing constantly through this apartment, renders it at all times delightfully cool; while the lattice-work serves to mellow the glare of light, which, under the sky of the tropics, is almost as disagreeable as the heat. An uncarpeted floor, composed of the hardest sorts of native wood, and subjected to a diurnal polish, contributes to increase the coolness. This great hall is the principal apartment of the dwelling. It is dining and drawing-room in one--where side-boards and cheffoniers may be seen in juxta-position with lounge chairs, fauteuils, and ottomans--a grand chandelier in the centre extending its branches over all. The bed-chambers occupy the square spaces to one side of the cross; and these also have their jalousied windows to admit the air, and exclude, as much as possible, the sultry rays of the sun. In Mount Welcome House, as in all other country mansions of Jamaica, a stranger would remark a want of correspondence between the dwelling itself and the furniture which it contains. The former might be regarded as slight, and even flimsy. But it is this very character which renders it appropriate to the climate, and hence the absence of substantiality or costliness in the style and materials of the building. The furniture, on the other hand--the solid tables of mahogany, and other ornamental woods--the shining carved side-boards--the profuse show of silver and cut glass that rests upon them--the elegant couches and chairs--the glittering lamps and candelabras--all combine to prove that the _quasi_ meanness of the Jamaica planter's establishment extends no farther than to the walls of his house. If the case be a cheap one, the jewels contained in it are of the costliest kind. Outside, the great house of Mount Welcome looks grand enough. Its broad facade, in which the deep green of the jalousies contrasts pleasantly with the white of the surrounding walls--the massive stone stairway in front--the wooded mountain sweeping up and forming a background of variegated green--the noble avenue of nearly a mile in length, with its double rows of tamarinds and cocoa-palms, leading up in front from the lower end of the valley--all contribute to produce a picture of almost palatial grandeur. Nor does a nearer view detract from the splendour of this picture. The platform on which the house is built affords space for a large garden and shrubbery, extending rearward to the mountain-foot, from which they are separated by a high wall of stone. The _mountain_ is a conspicuous feature of the landscape. Not so much from its height: for there are others of equal elevation near to it; and further off, though still within sight, many still higher. Even the famed "Blue Peak" is visible, towering hundreds of feet above the surrounding summits. Nor is it conspicuous from being isolated. On the contrary, it is only a spur of that vast elevated chain of hills, that, separated by deep gorge-like valleys, and soaring thousands of feet above the level of the Caribbean Sea, are known as the "Blue Mountains of Jamaica." Covering almost the entire area of the island--which is thus broken into an endless succession of gigantic corrugations--Jamaica presents a surface rough and irregular as the crumplings upon a cabbage-leaf; and "land of mountains" would be a title as appropriate as its ancient Indian appellation, "the land of fountains." The hill which overlooks the estate of Mount Welcome is less than two thousand feet above sea-level; but what renders it remarkable is the geometrical regularity of its outlines, and, still more, its singularly-shaped summit. Viewed from the valley below, it presents the appearance of an exact and somewhat acute cone, up to within about fifty yards of its top. There the sloping outline ends--the line on each side thence trending vertically, and abruptly terminating in a square table-top, forty or fifty feet in diameter. In general appearance, this truncated summit is not unlike that of the famed "Cofre di Perote" of Mexico. The sloping sides of the mountain are densely wooded, especially that fronting the valley of Mount Welcome--towards which is presented a broad frowning _facade_, thickly clothed with a forest that appears primeval. Alone at its top is it treeless--bare and bald as the crown of a Franciscan friar. There stands the square coffer-like summit, a mass of solid rock, which repels the approach of the vegetable giants that crowd closely around its base, some of them stretching out their huge arms as if to strangle or embrace it. One tree alone has succeeded in scaling its steep rampart-like wall. A noble palm--the _areca_--has accomplished this feat, and stands conspicuously upon the table-top, its plumed leaves waving haughtily aloft, like a triumphal banner planted upon the parapet of some conquered castle. This summit rock presents a singular appearance. Its seamed and scarred surface is mottled with a dark glaze, which during the sunlight, and even under the mellower beams of the moon, gives forth a coruscation, as if the light were reflected from scale armour. To the denizens of the valley below it is known as the _Jumbe Rock_--a name characteristic of the superstitious ideas attached to it. Though constantly before their eyes, and accessible by an hour's climbing up the forest path, there is not a negro on the estate of Mount Welcome, nor on any other for miles around, that would venture alone to visit the Jumbe rock; and to most, if not all of them, the top of this mountain is as much of a _terra incognita_ as the summit of Chimborazo! I am speaking of a period more than half a century ago. At that time the terror, that was attached to the Jumbe Rock, did not altogether owe its origin to a mere superstition. It had been partly inspired by the remembrance of a horrid history. The rock had been the scene of an execution, which for cruel and cold-blooded barbarity rather deserves to be called a crime. That table-summit, like the blood-stained temples of the Moctezumas, had been used as an altar, upon which a human sacrifice had been offered up. Not in times long past, neither by the sanguinary priesthood of Azteca, but by men of white skin and European race--their victim a black and an African. This incident, illustrating Jamaica justice during the dark days of slavery, deserves to be given in detail. Volume One, Chapter II. THE MYAL-MAN. In the West Indies, a few years previous to the Emancipation, there was much agitation on the subject of _Obeah-ism_. The practice of this horrid art had become appallingly common--so common that upon almost every extensive estate in the island there was a "professor" of it; in other words, an "Obeah-man." "Professor," though often used in speaking of these charlatans, is not a correct title. To have _professed_ it--at least in the hearing of the whites--would have been attended with peril: since it was punishable by the death penalty. _Practitioner_ is a more appropriate appellation. These mysterious doctors were almost always men--very rarely women--and usually natives of Africa. Universally were they persons of advanced age and hideous aspect: the uglier the more successful in the pursuit of their criminal calling. There was a class of them distinguished as "myal-men," whose chief distinction consisted in their being able to _restore life to a dead body_. Such was the belief of their ignorant fellow slaves, who little suspected that the defunct subject had been all the while only dormant, his death-like slumber secretly brought about by the myal-man himself, assisted by a prescription of the branched "calalue"--a species of _caladium_. I cannot here enter into an explanation of the mysteries of Obi, which are simple enough _when understood_. I have met it in every land where it has been my lot to travel; and although it holds a more conspicuous place in the social life of the savage, it is also found in the bye-lanes of civilisation. The reader, who may have been mystified about its meaning, will perhaps understand what it is, when I tell him that the _obeah-man_ of the West Indies is simply the counterpart of the "medicine man" of the North-American Indians, the "piuche" of the South, the "rain-maker" of the Cape, the "fetish man" of the Guinea coast, and known by as many other titles as there are tribes of uncivilised men. It is the _first dawning of religion on the soul of the savage_; but even when its malignant spirit has become changed to a purer aspiration after eternal life, it still lingers amidst the haunts of ignorance, its original form almost unaltered--_witchcraft_. To the statement above made--that on every large plantation there was an obeah-man--the estate of Mount Welcome was no exception. It, too, was blessed, or rather cursed, by a follower of the art, an old Coromantee negro--Chakra by name--a man whose fell and ferocious aspect could not have failed to make him one of the most popular of its practitioners. Such, to his misfortune, had he become. He had long been suspected of having poisoned his master, the former owner of the estate, who had made an abrupt and mysterious exit from the world. The fate of this man, however, was not much lamented, as he bore the reputation of being a cruel slave-master. The present proprietor of Mount Welcome had least reason to regret it: since it gave him possession of an estate he had long coveted. It was greater chagrin to him, that since entering upon the enjoyment of the property, several of his most valuable slaves had terminated their existence suddenly, and in a manner which could only be accounted for by the supposition that Obi had accomplished their destruction. Chakra, the myal-man, was suspected of causing their deaths. He was arraigned and brought to trial. His judges were three--three justices of the neighbourhood--for that number was sufficient to pass the death-sentence upon a slave. The president of the court was the man's own master--Loftus Vaughan, Esquire, proprietor of Mount Welcome, and _custos rotulorum_ of the precinct. The substance of the crime charged against Chakra was "practising the arts of Obi." The charge had no reference to the death of his former master. The proofs were not very clear; but were deemed sufficiently so by the court to warrant a conviction. Strange to say that of the three justices, the man's own master--the president of the court--appeared the most anxious to bring the trial to this termination. So anxious indeed, that he used every effort to overrule the opinions of the other two: his superior position as _custos_ giving him a certain power of controlling the decision. One of them had actually pronounced in favour of an acquittal; but after a whispering consultation with the custos, he retracted his former opinion, and gave his vote for the verdict. There was a rumour at the time, that Loftus Vaughan, in this trial, was actuated by meaner motives than either a stern love of justice, or the desire to put down the practice of Obi. There was a whisper abroad of some secrets--family secrets--with which the Coromantee had become acquainted; some strange transaction, of which he was the sole living witness; and of such a character, that even the testimony of a negro would have been an inconvenience; and it was suspected that this, and not obeah-ism, was the crime for which Chakra had to answer with his life. Whether this was true or not, the Coromantee was condemned to die. The trial was not more irregular than the mode of execution, which these irresponsible justices thought fit to decree. It was almost as whimsical as it was cruel towards the wretched criminal. He was to be taken to the top of the Jumbe rock, chained to the palm-tree, and there left to perish! It may be asked why this singular mode of execution was selected. Why was he not hanged upon the scaffold, or burnt at the stake--a custom not unusual with condemned criminals of his kind? The answer is easy. As already stated, at this particular period, much unpleasant feeling prevailed on the subject of obeah-ism. In almost every district mysterious deaths had occurred, and were occurring--not only of black slaves, but of white masters, and even mistresses--all attributed to the baneful influence of Obi. The African demon was ubiquitous, but invisible. Everywhere could be witnessed his skeleton hand upon the wall, but nowhere himself. It had become necessary to make a conspicuous example of his worshippers. The voice of all planterdom called for it; and the myal-man, Chakra, was selected for that example--in the belief that his fearful fate would terrify the votaries of the vile superstition to their very hearts' core. The Jumbe rock suggested itself as the most appropriate place for the execution of the Coromantee. The terrors with which the place was already invested--added to those now to be inspired by the fearful form of punishment of which it was to be the scene--would exert a beneficial effect on the superstitious understandings of the slaves, and for ever destroy their belief in Obeah and Obboney. Under this belief was the myal-man escorted up to the summit of the Jumbe rock; and, like a modern Prometheus, chained there. No guards were placed near him--none were required to stay by the spot. His chains, and the terror inspired by the act, were deemed sufficient to prevent any interference with his fate. In a few days, thirst and hunger, aided by the vultures, would perform the final and fatal ceremony--as surely as the rope of the hangman, or the axe of the executioner. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was long before Loftus Vaughan ascended the mountain to ascertain the fate of the unfortunate negro, his _ci-devant_ slave. When, stimulated by curiosity, and, perhaps, a motive still stronger--he, at length, climbed to the top of the Jumbe rock, his hopes and expectations were alike confirmed. A skeleton, picked clean by the John-crows, hung suspended to the stem of the tree! A rusty chain, warped around the bones, kept the skeleton in place. Loftus Vaughan had no inclination to dwell long upon the spot. To him the sight was fearful. One glance, and he hurried away; but far more fearful--far more terrifying--was that which he saw, or fancied he saw, in passing homeward down the forest path--either the ghost of the myal-man, or the man himself! Volume One, Chapter III. A JAMAICA DEJEUNER. On a tranquil morning in the fair month of May--fair in Jamaica, as elsewhere on the earth--a large bell ringing in the great hall of Mount Welcome announced the hour of breakfast. As yet there were no guests around the table, nor in the hall--only the black and coloured domestics, who, to the number of half-a-dozen, had just come up from the kitchen with trays and dishes containing the viands that were to compose the meal. Though but two chairs were placed by the table--and the disposition of the plates, knives, and forks indicated that it had been set for only that number of guests--the profusion of dishes, thickly covering the snow-white damask cloth, might have led to the belief that a large party was expected. It was emphatically a _dejeuner a la fourchette_. There were cutlets plain, and with _sauce piquante_, _cavished_ fish, _entrees_ of devilled fowl and duck, broiled salmon, and the like. These _hors d'oeuvres_ were placed around the table, while a cold ham on one dish, and a tongue on another, occupied the centre. Of "bread kind" there were mealy yams--some mashed with milk and butter, and dished up in shapes--roast plantains, hot rolls, toast, cassada cakes, and sweet potatoes. But that a splendid silver tea-service, and a large glittering urn were conspicuous, the spread might have been mistaken for a dinner, rather than the matutinal meal. The hour--nine o'clock a.m.--also precluded the idea of its being dinner. Whoever were to be the guests at this table, it was intended they should fair sumptuously. So did they every day of their lives; for there was nothing occasional in that morning's meal. Both the style and the profuseness were of diurnal occurrence--the mode of Jamaica. Soon after the tones of the bell had ceased to vibrate through the hall, they for whom the summons was intended made their appearance--entering from opposite sides, not together, but one coming in a little before the other. The first was a gentleman of somewhat over middle age, of a hale complexion, and fall, portly form. He was dressed in a suit of nankeens--jacket and trousers, both of ample make--the former open in front, and displaying a shirt bosom of finest white linen, the broad plaits of which were uncovered by any vest. A wide turn-down collar was folded back, exhibiting a full development of throat--which, with the broad jaws of ruddy hue, appeared clean and freshly shaven. From a fob in the waistband of his trousers hung a massive gold chain, with a bunch of seals and watch-keys at one end; while at the other was an immense chronometer watch of the old-fashioned "guinea gold," with white dial, upon which the black figures were conspicuously painted. The watch itself could be seen; as, on entering, the wearer had drawn it out of its fob with a view of ascertaining whether his servants were punctual to the minute: for the gentleman in question was a very martinet in such matters. Loftus Vaughan, Esquire, proprietor of Mount Welcome,--Justice of the Peace, and _Custos Rotulorum_,--was the man thus characterised. After casting a scrutinising glance at the display of viands, and apparently satisfied with what he saw, the master of Mount Welcome seated himself before the table, his face beaming with a smile of pleasant anticipation. He had scarce taken his seat when a fair apparition appeared entering from the further end of the hall--a young virgin-like creature, looking as fresh and roseate as the first rays of the Aurora. She was habited in a dress, or rather an undress, of purest white: a morning wrapper of fine lawn, that, fitting closely behind, displayed the waving _contour_ of her back. In front, the dress fell in loose folds--scarce, however, concealing the full, bold outlines of her bosom; and then draped gracefully downward, so low as to leave nothing visible but the tips of a pair of tiny satin slippers, alternately showing themselves like white mice as the young girl glided over the polished surface of the floor. Her throat, full and finely rounded, was encircled with a string of amber beads; and a crimson blossom--the beautiful bell of the Quamoclit--glittered amidst the ample folds of her hair. This, of a rich chestnut colour, was parted on her forehead, and carried in a curving sweep over cheeks that rivalled the radiance of the flower. It would have required an experienced eye--one well acquainted with the physiological characteristics of race--to have told that that young girl was not of the purest Caucasian blood. And yet the slight undulation of the hair; a rotund rather than an oval face; eyes of darkest umber, with a light gleaming perpetually in the pupils; a singular picturelike expression in the colouring of the cheeks--were all characteristics, that proclaimed the presence of the _sang-melee_. Slight indeed was the _taint_; and it seems like profanation to employ the phrase, when speaking of a creature so beautifully fair--for beautifully fair was the daughter of Loftus Vaughan. She was his only daughter--the only member of his family: for the proprietor of Mount Welcome was a widower. On entering the hall, the young girl did not proceed directly to seat herself; but, gliding behind the chair occupied by her father, she flung her arms around his neck, and imprinted a kiss upon his forehead. It was her usual matutinal salute; and proved that, on that morning they had met for the first time. Not that it was the first appearance of either: for both had been much earlier abroad--up with the sun, indeed, as is the universal custom in Jamaica. Mr Vaughan had entered the hall from the front door, and the broad-brimmed Leghorn hat, and cane carried in his hand, told that he had been out for a walk--perhaps to inspect the labour going on at the "works," or ascertain the progress made in the cultivation of his extensive cane-fields. His daughter, on the contrary, might have been seen entering the house some half-hour before, in riding costume--hat, habit, and whip--proving that her morning exercise had been taken on horseback. After saluting her father as described, the young girl took her seat in front of the coffee urn, and commenced performing the duties of the table. In this she was assisted by a girl apparently of her own age, but of widely-different appearance. Her waiting-maid it was, who, having entered at the same time, had taken her station behind the chair of her mistress. There was something strikingly peculiar in the aspect of this personage--as well in her figure as in the colour of her skin. She was of that slender classic shape which we find in antique sculptures--like the forms of the Hindoo women known in England as "ayahs" and differing altogether from the negro outline. Her complexion, too, was not that of a negress--still less of a mulatta or quadroon. It was an admixture of black and red, resulting in a chestnut or mahogany colour; which, with the deep damask tincture upon her cheeks, produced an impression not unpleasing. Nor were the features at all of a negro type. On the contrary, far removed from it. The lips were thin, the face oval, and the nose of an aquiline shape--such features as may be traced on Egyptian sculptured stones, or may be seen in living forms in the lands of the Arab. Her hair was not woolly, though it differed altogether from the hair of a European. It was straight, and jet-black, yet scarcely reaching to her shoulders. Not that it had been shortened by the scissors: for it appeared to be at its fullest growth; and, hanging, as it did, loosely over her ears, it imparted a youthful appearance to the brown-skinned damsel. The girl was far from ill-looking; and, to an eye accustomed to her "style," she may have appeared even handsome. Her elegant shape, exposed by the extreme scantiness of her costume--a sleeveless robe, with a Madras kerchief worn _a la toque_ upon her head--her graceful attitudes, which seemed natural to her, either when in motion or standing poised behind the chair of her mistress; the quick glance of her fine, fiery eyes; and the pearl-like whiteness of her teeth; all contributed to make up a picture that was far from commonplace. This young girl was a slave--the slave _Yola_. Volume One, Chapter IV. TWO LETTERS. Instead of standing in the middle of the floor, the breakfast table had been placed close to the front window--in order that, with the jalousies thrown open, the fresh air might be more freely felt, while at the same time a view could be obtained of the landscape outside. A splendid view it was, comprising the valley with its long palm-shaded avenue, a reach of the Montego river, the roofs and spires of the town, the shipping in the bay and roadstead, the bay itself, and the blue Caribbean beyond. Striking as was this landscape, Mr Vaughan just then showed no inclination to look upon it. He was too busily occupied with the rich viands upon the table; and when he at length found time to glance over the window-sill, his glance extended no further than to the negro "gang" at work among the canes--to see if his drivers were doing their duty. The eyes of Miss Vaughan were oftener directed to the outside view. It was at this hour that one of the servants usually returned from Montego Bay, bringing the letters from the post-office. There was nothing in her manner that betrayed any particular anxiety about his arrival; but simply that lively interest which young ladies in all countries feel when expecting the postman--hoping for one of those little letters of twelve sheets with closely-written and crossed lines, most difficult to decipher, and yet to them more interesting than even the pages of the newest novel. Very soon a dark object, of rudely Centaurean form, appeared coming along the avenue; and, shortly after, an imp-like negro lad upon the back of a rough pony galloped up to the front entrance. This was Quashie--the post-boy, of Mount Welcome. If Miss Vaughan expected a billet, she was doomed to disappointment. There were only two letters in the bag, with a newspaper; and all three were for the Custos himself. All bore the English post-mark; and the superscription of one of the letters was by him at once recognised--a pleasant smile stealing over his features as he broke open the seal. A few moments sufficed to make him master of its contents, when the smile increased to a look of vivid gratification; and, rising from his chair, he paced for some time back and forward, snapping his fingers, and ejaculating, "Good--good! I thought so!" His daughter regarded this behaviour with surprise. Gravity was her father's habit, at times amounting to austerity. Such an exhibition of gaiety was rare with Loftus Vaughan. "Some pleasing news, papa?" "Yes, you little rogue; very." "May I not hear it?" "Yes--no--no--not yet a while." "Papa! It is cruel of you to keep it from me. I promise I shall share your joy." "Ah! you will when you hear the news--that is, if you're not a little simpleton, Kate." "I a simpleton, papa? I shall not be called so." "Why, you'll be a simpleton if you don't be joyful--when you--never mind, child--I'll tell you all about it by-and-by. Good, good!" continued he, in a state of ecstatic frenzy. "I thought so--I knew he would come." "Then you expect some one, papa?" "I do. Guess who it is!" "How could I? You know I am unacquainted with your English friends." "Not with their names? You have heard their names, and seen letters from some of them?" "Oh, yes, I often hear you speak of one--Mr Smythje. A very odd name it is! I wouldn't be called Smythje for the world." "Ta, ta, child! Smythje is a very pretty name, especially with Montagu before it. Montagu is magnificent. Besides, Mr Smythje is the owner of Montagu Castle." "Oh, papa! how can that make his name sound any better? Is it he whom you expect?" "Yes, dear. He writes to say that he will come by the next ship--the _Sea Nymph_ she is called. She was to sail a week after the letter was written, so that we may look out for his arrival in a few days. Gad! I must prepare for him. You know Montagu Castle is out of repair. He is to be my guest; and, hark you, Catherine!" continued the planter, once more seating himself at the table, and bending towards his daughter, so that his _sotto voce_ might not be overheard by the domestics, "_you_ must do your best to entertain this young stranger. He is said to be an accomplished gentleman, and I know he is a rich one. It is to my interest to be friendly with him," added Mr Vaughan, in a still lower tone of voice, and as if in soliloquy, but loud enough for his daughter to hear what was said. "Dear papa!" was the reply, "how could I be otherwise than polite to him? If only for your sake--" "If only for _your own_," said the father, interrupting her, and accompanying the remark with a sly look and laugh. "But, dear Catherine," continued he, "we shall find time to talk of this again. I must read the other letter. Who on earth can it be from? Egad! I never saw the writing before." The announcement of the projected visit of Mr Montagu Smythje, with the trumpet-like flourish of his many accomplishments--which Kate Vaughan had not now listened to for the first time--appeared to produce in the heart of the young lady no very vivid emotions of pleasure. She received it with perfect indifference, not seeming to care much one way or the other. If there was a balance, it was rather against him: for it so chanced that much of what she had heard in relation to this gentleman was not at all calculated to prepossess her in his favour. She had heard that he was an exquisite--a fop, in fact--perhaps of all other characters the one most repulsive to a young Creole: for, notwithstanding the natural disposition of these to become enamoured of fine personal appearance, it must be accompanied by certain qualities of mind, if not of the highest morality, or even intellectuality, yet differing altogether from the frivolous accomplishments of mere dandyism. Nature, that inspires the creole maiden to give her _whole heart away and without any reserve_, has also taught her to bestow it with judgment. Instinct warns her not to lay her precious offering upon an altar unworthy of the sacrifice. There was another circumstance calculated to beget within the heart of Kate Vaughan a certain feeling of repulsion towards the lord of Montagu Castle; and that was the conduct of her own father in regard to this matter. From time to time--when speaking of Mr Montagu Smythje--he had made use of certain expressions and innuendoes, which, though couched in ambiguous language, his daughter very easily comprehended. The heart of woman is quick, as it is subtle, in the understanding of all that relates to the disposal of itself; and this even at the earliest age of maidenhood. It is prone to repel any effort to guide it from its natural inclinings, or rob it of its right to choose. Mr Vaughan, in his ignorance of these rather recondite truths, was erecting a barrier to his own designs, all the while that he fancied he was successfully clearing the track of presumptive obstructions, and making the path smooth and easy. At match-making he was likely to prove a bungler: for it was evident that match-making was in his mind. "Never saw the handwriting before," said he, in repetition, as he broke open the seal of the second epistle. If the contents of the first had filled him with joy, those of the second produced an effect directly the opposite. "'Sdeath!" exclaimed he, crushing the letter, as he finished reading it, and once more nervously springing to his feet. "Dead or living, that ill-starred brother of mine seems as if created to be a curse to me! While alive, always wanting money; and now that he is dead sending his son--a never-do-well, like himself--to trouble, and, perhaps, disgrace me." "Dear father!" said the young girl, startled more by his wild demeanour than what he was saying--for the words were muttered in a low voice, and rather in soliloquy--"has the other letter brought unpleasant news?" "Ah! that it has. You may read for yourself." And once more seating himself, he tossed the unwelcome epistle across the table, and recommenced eating with apparent voracity--as if by that means to tranquillise his perturbed spirit. Kate took up the rejected letter; and, smoothing out the paper, ran her eye over the contents. The perusal did not require much time: for considering that the letter had made such a long journey, its contents were of the shortest:-- London, June 10, 18--. "Dear Uncle, "I have to announce to you the melancholy intelligence that your brother, my dear father, is no more. His last words were, that I should go over to you: and, acting in accordance with his wish, I have taken passage for Jamaica. The ship is the _Sea Nymph_, and is to sail upon the 18th instant. I do not know how long we shall be at sea, but I hope it will prove a short voyage: as poor father's effects were all taken by the sheriffs officer, and I am compelled, for want of money, to take passage in the _steerage_, which I have been told is anything but a luxurious mode of travelling. But I am young and strong, and no doubt shall be able to endure it. "Yours affectionately, "Herbert Vaughan." Whatever effect the reading of the letter may have had upon Kate Vaughan, it certainly did not produce indignation. On the contrary, an expression of sympathy stole over her face as she mastered the contents or the epistle; and on finishing it, the phrase, "poor fellow!" dropped as if involuntarily, and just audibly, from her lips. Not that she knew anything of Herbert Vaughan, more than the name, and that he was her cousin; but the word _cousin_ has an attractive sound, especially in the ears of young people, equalling in interest--at times even surpassing--that of sister or brother. Though uttered, as we have said, in a tone almost inaudible, the words reached the ears of her father. "Poor fellow!" he repeated, turning sharply to his daughter, and regarding her with a glance of displeasure, "I am surprised, Kate, to hear you speak in that strain of one you know nothing about--one who has done nothing to deserve your compassion. An idle, good-for-nothing fellow--just as his father was before him. And only to think of it-- coming over here a _steerage_ passenger, in the very same ship with Mr Montagu Smythje! 'Sdeath! What a disgrace! Mr Smythje will be certain to know who he is--though he is not likely to associate with such _canaille_. He cannot fail to notice the fellow, however; and when he sees him here, will be sure to remember him. Ah! I must take some steps to prevent that. Poor fellow, indeed! Yes, poor enough, but not in that sense. Like his father, I suppose, who fiddled his life away among paint-brushes and palettes instead of following some profitable employment, and all for the sake of being called an _artist_! Poor fiddlestick! Bah! Don't let me hear you talk in that strain again!" And as Mr Vaughan ended his ill-natured harangue, he tore the wrapper off the newspaper, and endeavoured, among its contents, to distract his mind from dwelling longer on the unpleasant theme either of the epistle, or him who had written it. The young girl, abashed and disconcerted by the unusual violence of the rebuke, sat with downcast eyes, and without making any reply. The red colour had deepened upon her cheeks, and mounted to her forehead; but, notwithstanding the outrage done to her feelings, it was easy to see that the sympathy she had expressed, for her poor but unknown cousin, was felt as sensibly as ever. So far from having stifled or extinguished it, the behaviour of her father was more likely to have given it increase and strength: for the adage of the "stolen waters" is still true; and the forbidden fruit is as tempting now as upon the morning of creation. As it was in the beginning, so will it ever be. Volume One, Chapter V. THE SLAVER. A hot West Indian sun was rapidly declining towards the Caribbean Sea-- as if hastening to cool his fiery orb in the blue water--when a ship, that had rounded Pedro Point, in the Island of Jamaica, was seen standing eastward for Montego Bay. She was a three-masted vessel--a barque--as could be told by the lateen rig of her mizen-mast--and apparently of some three or four hundred tons burden. As she was running under one of the gentlest of breezes, all her canvas was spread; and the weather-worn appearance of her sails denoted that she was making land at the termination of a long ocean voyage. This was further manifest by the faded paint upon her sides, and the dark, dirt-coloured blotches that marked the position of her hawse-holes and scuppers. Besides the private ensign that streamed, pennon-like from her peak, another trailed over her taffrail; which, unfolded by the motion of the vessel, displayed a blue starry field with white and crimson stripes. In this case the flag was appropriate--that is, in its stripes and their colour. Though justly vaunted as the flag of the free, here was it covering a cargo of slaves: the ship was a _slaver_. After getting fairly inside the bay, but still at a long distance from the town, she was observed suddenly to tack; and, instead of continuing on towards the harbour, head for a point on the southern side, where the shore was uninhabited and solitary. On arriving within a mile of the land she took in sail, until every inch of canvas was furled upon her yards. Then the sharp rattling of the chain, as it dragged through the iron ring of the hawse-hole, announced the dropping of an anchor. In a few moments after the ship swung round; and, drifting till the chain cable became taut, lay motionless upon the water. The object for which the slaver had thus anchored short of the harbour will be learnt by our going aboard of her--though this was a privilege not granted to the idle or curious. Only the initiated were permitted to witness the spectacle of which her decks now became the theatre: only those who had an interest in the disposal of her cargo. Viewed from a distance, the slaver lay apparently inert; but for all that a scene of active life was passing upon her deck--a scene of rare and painful interest. She carried a cargo of two hundred human beings--"bales," according to the phraseology of the slave-trader. These bales were not exactly alike. It was, as her skipper jocularly styled it, an "assorted cargo"--that is, one shipped on different points of the African coast, and, consequently, embracing many distinct varieties of the Ethiopian race. There was the tawny, but intelligent Mandingo, and by his side the Jolof of ebon hue. There the fierce and warlike Coromantee, alongside the docile and submissive Pawpaw; the yellow Ebo, with the visage of a baboon, wretched and desponding, face to face with the cannibal Moco, or chained wrist to wrist with the light-hearted native of Congo and Angola. None, however, appeared of light heart on board the slaver. The horrors of the "middle passage" had equally affected them all, until the dancing Congese, and the Lucumi, prone to suicide, seemed equally to suffer from dejection. The bright picture that now presented itself before their eyes--a landscape gleaming with all the gay colours of tropical vegetation--was viewed by them with very different emotions. Some seemed to regard it with indifference; others it reminded of their own African homes, from which they had been dragged by rude and ruffian men; while not a few gazed upon the scene with feelings of keen apprehension--believing it to be the dreaded _Koomi_, the land of the gigantic cannibals--and that they had been brought thither _to be eaten_! Reflection might have convinced them that this would scarcely be the intention of the _Tobon-doo_--those white tyrants who had carried them across the ocean. The hard, unhusked rice, and coarse maize corn--their only food during the voyage--were not viands likely to fatten them for the feast of Anthropophagi; and their once smooth and shining skins now exhibited a dry, shrivelled appearance, from the surface coating of dandruff, and the scars of the hideous _cra-cra_. The blacks among them, by the hardships of that fearful voyage, had turned ashy grey and the yellows of a sickly and bilious hue. Males and females--for there were many of the latter--appeared to have been alike the objects of ill-usage, the victims of a starved stomach and a stifled atmosphere. Some half-dozen of the latter--seen in the precincts of the cabin-- presented a different aspect. These were young girls, picked from the common crowd on account of the superiority of their personal charms; and the flaunting vestments that adorned their bodies--contrasting with the complete nudity of their fellow-voyagers--told too plainly why they had been thus distinguished. A horrid contrast--wantonness in the midst of woe! On the quarter-deck stood the slave-skipper--a tall, lathy individual of sallow hue--and, beside him, his mate--a dark-bearded ruffian; while a score of like stamp, but lower grade, acting under their orders, were distributed in different parts of the ship. These last, as they tramped to and fro over the deck, might be heard at intervals giving utterance to profane oaths--as often laying violent hands upon one or other of their unfortunate captives--apparently out of the sheer wantonness of cruelty! Immediately after the anchor had been dropped, and the ropes belayed and coiled in their places, a new scene of this disgusting drama was entered upon. The living "bales," hitherto restrained below, were now ordered, or rather driven, upon deck--not all at once, but in lots of three or four at a time. Each individual, as he came up the hatchway, was rudely seized by a sailor, who stood by with a soft brush in his hand and a pail at his feet; the latter containing a black composition of gunpowder, lemon-juice, and palm-oil. Of this mixture the unresisting captive received a coating; which, by the hand of another sailor, was rubbed into the skin, and then polished with a "dandybrush," until the sable epidermis glistened like a newly-blacked boot. A strange operation it might have appeared to those who saw it, had they not been initiated into its object and meaning. But to the spectators there present it was no uncommon sight. It was not the first time those unfeeling men had assisted at the spectacle of black bales _being made ready for the market_! One after another were the dark-skinned victims of human cupidity brought from below, and submitted to this demoniac anointment--to which one and all yielded with an appearance of patient resignation, like sheep under the hands of the shearer. In the looks of many of them could be detected the traces of that apprehension felt in the first hours of their captivity, and which had not yet forsaken them. Might not this process be a prelude to some fearful sacrifice? Even the females were not exempted from this disgusting desecration of God's image; and they too, one after another, were passed through the hands of the rough operators, with an accompaniment of brutal jests, and peals of ribald laughter! Volume One, Chapter VI. JOWLER AND JESSURON. Almost on the same instant that the slave-barque had dropped anchor, a small boat shot out from the silent shore; which, as soon as it had got fairly clear of the land, could be seen to be steering in the direction of the newly-anchored vessel. There were three men in the boat--two of whom were plying the oars. These were both black men--naked, with the exception of dirty white trousers covering their limbs, and coarse palm-leaf hats upon their heads. The third occupant of the skiff--for such was the character of the boat--was a white, or more properly, a _whitish_ man. He was seated in the stern-sheets, with a tiller-rope in each hand; and steering the craft--as his elbows held a-kimbo, and the occasional motion of his arms testified. He bore not the slightest resemblance to the oarsmen, either in the colour of his skin, or the costume that covered it. Indeed, it would not have been easy to have found his counterpart anywhere either on land or at sea. He appeared to be about sixty years old--he might have been more or less--and had once been white; but long exposure to a West Indian sun, combined with the numerous dirt-bedaubed creases and furrows in his skin, had darkened his complexion to the hue of leaf-tobacco. His features, naturally of an angular shape, had become so narrowed and sharpened by age as to leave scarce anything in front; and to get a view of his face it was necessary to step to one side, and scan it _en profil_. Thus viewed, there was breadth enough, and features of the most prominent character--including a nose like the claw of a lobster--a sharp, projecting chin--with a deep embayment between, marking the locality of the lips: the outline of all suggesting a great resemblance to the profile of a parrot, but still greater to that of a Jew--for such, in reality was its type. When the mouth was opened in a smile--a rare occurrence, however--only two teeth could be detected within, standing far apart, like two sentinels guarding the approach to the dark cavern within. This singular countenance was lighted up by a pair of black, watery orbs, that glistened like the eyes of an otter; and eternally glistened, except when their owner was asleep--a condition in which it was said he was rarely or never caught. The natural blackness of his eyes was rendered deeper by contrast with long white eyebrows running more than half-way around them, and meeting over the narrow ridge of the nose. Hair upon the head there was none-- that is, none that was visible--a skull-cap of whitish cotton-stuff covering the whole crown, and coming down over both ears. Over this was a white beaver hat, whose worn nap and broken edges told of long service. A pair of large green goggles, resting on the humped bridge of his nose, protected his eyes from the sun; though they might, perhaps, have been worn for another purpose--to conceal the villainous expression of the orbs that sparkled beneath them. A sky-blue cloth coat, whitened by long wear, with metal buttons, once bright, now changed to the hue of bronze; small-clothes of buff kerseymere glistening with grease; long stockings, and tarnished top-boots, made up the costume of this unique individual. A large blue cotton umbrella rested across his knees, as both hands were occupied in steering the skiff. The portrait here given--or, perhaps, it should be styled profile--is that of Jacob Jessuron, the slave-merchant; an Israelite of Germanic breed, but one in whom--it would not have been truth to say--there was "no guile." The two oarsmen were simply his slaves. The little craft had put out from the shore--from a secluded spot at a distance from the town, but still within view of it. It was evidently making for the newly-anchored barque; and evidently rowed at its best speed. Indeed, the steersman appeared to be urging his blacks to the exertion of their utmost strength. From time to time he was seen to twist his body half round and look towards the town--as though he expected or dreaded to see a rival boat coming from that quarter, and was desirous to reach the barque ahead of her. If such was his design it proved successful. Although his little skiff was a considerable time in traversing the distance from shore to ship--a distance of at least a mile--he arrived at the point of his destination without any other boat making its appearance. "Sheep ahoy!" shouted he, as the skiff was pulled up under the larboard quarter of the barque. "Ay, ay!" responded a voice from above. "Ish that Captain Showler I hearsh?" "Hilloo! who's there?" interrogated some one on the quarter-deck; and the moment after, the sallow face of Captain Aminadab Jowler presented itself at the gangway. "Ah! Mister Jessuron, that you, eh? Determined to have fust peep at my blackeys? Well! fust kim, fust served; that's my rule. Glad to see you, old fellow. How'd deo?" "Fusht-rate!--fusht-rate! I hopsh you're the same yourshelf, Captain Showler. How ish you for cargo?" "Fine, old boy! got a prime lot this time. All sizes, colours, and _sexes_, too; ha! ha! You can pick and choose to suit yourself, I reckin. Come! climb aboard, and squint your eye over 'em!" The slave-merchant, thus invited, caught hold of the rope-ladder let down for his accommodation; and scrambling up the ship's side with the agility of an old ape, stepped upon the deck of the slaver. After some moments spent in handshaking and other forms of gratulation; proving that the trader and merchant were old friends--and as thick as two thieves could possibly be--the latter fixed the goggles more firmly on the ridge of his nose, and commenced his inspection of the "cargo." Volume One, Chapter VII. THE FOOLAH PRINCE. On the quarter-deck of the slaver, and near the "companion," stood a man of unique appearance--differing not only from the whites who composed the crew, but also from the blacks and browns who constituted the cargo. His costume, attitude, and some, other trivial circumstances, proclaimed him as belonging neither to one nor the other. He had just stepped up from the cabin, and was lingering upon the quarter-deck. Having the _entree_ of the first, and the privilege of remaining upon the second, he could not be one of the "bales" of this human merchandise; and yet both costume and complexion forbade the supposition that he was of the slaver's crew. Both denoted an African origin-- though his features were not of a marked African type. Rather were they Asiatic, or, more correctly, Arabian; but, in some respects, differing also from Arab features. In truth, they were almost European; but the complexion again negatived the idea that the individual in question belonged to any of the nationalities of Europe. His hue was that of a light Florentine bronze, with a tinge of chestnut. He appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen years of age; with a person well proportioned, and possessing the following characteristics:--A fine arched eyebrow, spanning an eye full and rotund; a nose slightly aquiline; thin, well-modelled lips; white teeth--whiter from contrast with the dark shading on the upper lip--and over all an ample _chevelure_ of jet-black hair, slightly curling, but not at all woolly. In nothing did he differ more, from the dark-skinned helots of the hold, than in his costume. While none of these had any clothing upon their bodies, or next to none, he, on the contrary, was splendidly apparelled--his face, throat, arms, and limbs, from the knee to the ankle, being the only parts not covered by a garment. A sort of sleeveless tunic of yellow satin, with a skirt that just reached below his knees, was bound around his waist by a scarf of crimson China crape, the ends of which, hanging still lower, were adorned with a fringe-work of gold. Over the left shoulder rested loosely another scarf of blue _burnous_ cloth, concealing the arm over which it hung; while half hidden beneath its draping could be perceived a scimitar in its richly-chased scabbard, with a hilt of carved ivory. A turban on the head, and sandals of Kordofan leather upon the feet, completed his costume. Notwithstanding the Asiatic character of the dress, and the resemblance of the wearer to those East Indians known as Lascars, he was a true African--though not of that type which we usually associate with the word, and which suggests a certain _negroism_ of features. He was one of a people entirely distinct from the negro--the great nation of the Foolahs (Fellattas)--that race of shepherd warriors whose country extends from the confines of Darfur to the shores of the Atlantic--the lords of Sockatoo and Timbuctoo--those fanatic followers of the false prophet who conspired the death of Laing, and murdered Mungo Park upon the Quorra. Of such race was the individual who stood on the quarter-deck of the slaver. He was not alone. Three or four others were around him, who also differed from the wretched creatures in the hold. But their dresses of more common material, as well as other circumstances, told that they were his inferiors in rank--in short, his attendants. The humble mien with which they regarded him, and the watchful attention to his every look and gesture, proclaimed the habitual obedience to which they were accustomed; while the turbans which they wore, and their mode of salutation--the _salaam_--told of an obeisance Oriental and slavish. To the richness of the young man's attire was added a certain haughtiness of mien that proclaimed him a person of rank--perhaps the chieftain of some African tribe. And such, in reality, he was--a Foolah prince, from the banks of the Senegal. There, neither his presence nor appearance would have attracted more than passing observation; but here, on the western side of the Atlantic, on board a slave-ship, both required explanation. It was evident that he was not in the same category with his unfortunate countrymen "between decks"--doomed to perpetual captivity. There were no signs that he had been treated as a captive, but the contrary. How, then, was his presence on board the slave-barque to be accounted for? Was he a passenger? In what relationship did he stand to the people who surrounded him? Such, though differently worded, were the interrogatories put by the slave-merchant, as, returning from the fore-deck, after completing his inspection of the cargo, his eyes for the first time fell upon the young Fellatta. "Blesh my shtars, Captain Showler!" cried he, holding up both hands, and looking with astonishment at the turbaned individuals on the quarter-deck. "Blesh my shtars!" he repeated; "what ish all thish? S'help my Gott! theesh fellows are not shlaves, are they?" "No, Mister Jessuron, no. They ain't slaves, not all on 'em ain't. That 'ere fine fellow, in silk and satin, air a owner o' slaves hisself. He air a prince." "What dosh you say, Captin Showler? a prinshe?" "Ye ain't 'stonished at that, air ye? 'Tain't the fust time I've had an African prince for a passenger. This yeer's his Royal Highness the Prince Cingues, son o' the Grand Sultan of Foota-toro. The other fellows you see thar by him are his attendants--courteers as waits on him. That with the yellow turban's `gold stick;' him in blue 's `silver stick;' an' t'other fellow's `groom o' the chamber,' I s'pose." "Sultan of Foota-toro!" exclaimed the slave-merchant, still holding up the blue umbrella in surprise; "King of the Cannibal Islandsh! Aha, a good shoke, Captain Showler! But, serious, mine friend, what for hash you tricked them out in this way? They won't fetch a joey more in the market for all theesh fine feathers." "Seerus, Mister Jessuron, they're not for the market. I sw'ar to ye the fellur's a real Afrikin prince." "African fiddleshtick!" echoed the slave-merchant with an incredulous shrug. "Come, worthy captin, what'sh the mashquerade about?" "Not a bit of that, ole fellur! 'Sure ye the nigger's a prince, and my passenger--nothing more or less." "S'help you gott, ish it so?" "So help me that!" emphatically replied the skipper. "It's just as I've told ye, Mister Jessuron." "Blesh my soul!--a passenger, you shay?" "Yes; and he's paid his passage, too--like a prince, as he is." "But what's hish business here in Shamaica?" "Ah! that's altogether a kewrious story, Mister Jessuron. You'll hardly guess his bizness, I reckon?" "Lesh hear it, friend Showler." "Well, then, the story air this: 'Bout twelve months ago an army o' Mandingoes attacked the town of Old Foota-toro, and, 'mong other plunder, carried off one o' his daughters--own sister to the young fellur you see there. They sold her to a West India trader; who, in course, brought the girl over here to some o' the islands; which one ain't known. Old Foota-toro, like the rest o' 'em, thinks the slaves are all fetched to one place; and as he's half beside himself 'bout the loss of this gurl--she war his favourite, and a sort of a court belle among 'em--he's sent the brother to search her out, and get her back from whoever hez purchased her on this side. There's the hul story for you." The expression that had been gathering on the countenance of the Jew, while this relation was being made to him, indicated something more than a common interest in the tale--something beyond mere curiosity. At the same time, he seemed as if trying to conceal any outward sign of emotion, by preserving, as much as possible, the rigidity of his features. "Blesh my soul!" he exclaimed, as the skipper had concluded. "Ash I live, a wonderful shtory! But how ish he ever to find hish sister? He might ash well look for a needle in a hayshtack." "Wall, that's true enough," replied the slave-skipper. "As for that," added he, with an air of stoical indifference, "'taint no business o' mine. My affair hez been to carry the young fellur acrost the Atlantic; an' I'm willin' to take him back on the same tarms, and at the same price, if he kin pay it." "Did he pay you a goodsh price?" inquired the Jew, with evident interest in the answer. "He paid like a prince, as I've told you. D'ye see that batch o' yellow Mandingoes by the windlass yonder?" "Yesh-yesh!" "Forty there air--all told." "Wen?" "Twenty on 'em I'm to have for fetchin' him acrost. Cheap enough, ain't it?" "Dirt sheep, friend Showler. The other twenty?" "They are _hisn_. He's brought 'em with him to swop for the sister-- when he finds her." "Ah, yesh! if he finds the girl." "In coorse, if he finds her." "Ach!" exclaimed the Jew, with a significant shrug of his shoulders; "that will not be an easy bishness, Captin Showler." "By Christopher Columbus, old fellow!" said the trader, apparently struck with an idea; "now I think of it, you might gie him some help in the findin' o' her. I know no man more likely than yourself to be able to pilot him. You know everybody in the island, I reckon. No doubt he will pay you well for your trouble. I'm rayther anxious he should succeed. King Foota-toro is one of my best sources of supply; and if the gurl could be found and took back, I know the old nigger would do the handsome to me on my next trip to the coast." "Well, worthy captin, I don't know that there's any hope, and won't hold out any to hish royal highnesh the prince. I'm not as able to get about ash I ushed to was; but I'll try my besht for you. As you shay, I might do something towardsh putting him in the way. Well, we'll talk it over; but let ush first settle our other bishness, or all the world will be aboard. Twenty, you shay, are his?" "Twenty of them 'ere Mandingoes." "Hash he anything besides?" "In cash? no, not a red cent. Men and women are the dollars of his country. He hez the four attendants, you see. They air his slaves like the others." "Twenty-four, then, in all. Blesh my soul! What a lucky fellow ish this prinsh. Maybe I can do something for him; but we can talk it over in the cabin, and I'm ready for something to drink, worthy Showler." "Ah!" he exclaimed, as, on turning round, he perceived the group of girls before mentioned. "Blesh my soul! Some likely wenches. Just the sort for chambermaids," added he, with a villainously significant look. "How many of that kind hash you got, good Showler?" "About a dozen," jocularly responded the skipper; "some splendid breeders among 'em, if you want any for that bizness." "I may--I may. Gad! it's a valuable cargo--one thing with another! Well, let ush go below," added he, turning towards the companion. "What's in your locker? I musht have a drink before I can do bishness. Likely wenches! Gad--a valuable cargo!" Smacking his lips, and snapping his fingers as he talked, the old reprobate descended the companion stairway--the captain of the slaver following close behind him. We know not, except by implication, the details of the bargaining that took place below. The negotiation was a secret one--as became the nature of any transaction between two such characters as a slave-dealer and a slave-stealer. It resulted, however, in the purchase of the whole cargo; and in so short a time, that just as the sun sank into the sea, the gig, cutter, and long-boat of the slaver were lowered into the water; and, under the darkness of night, the "bales" were transported to the shore, and landed in the little cove whence the skiff of the slave-merchant had put out. Amongst them were the twenty Mandingoes, the attendants of the prince, and the "wenches," designed for improving the breed on Jessuron's plantation: for the slave-merchant was also a land-proprietor and planter. The skiff was seen returning to the shore, a cable's-length in the wake of the other boats. Now, however, a fourth personage appeared in it, seated in the stern, face to face with the owner. The gaily-coloured costume, even in the darkness, shining over the calm shadowy surface of the sea, rendered it easy to recognise this individual as the Foolah prince. The wolf and the lamb were sailing in the same boat. Volume One, Chapter VIII. A HANDSOME OFFER. On the day after the slave-ship had landed her cargo, and at an early hour in the morning, Mr Vaughan, looking from the front window of his house, perceived a solitary horseman approaching by the long avenue. As the stranger drew nearer, the animal he bestrode appeared gradually to transform itself into a mule; and the rider was seen to be an old gentleman in a blue coat, with metal buttons, and ample outside pockets--under which were breeches and top-boots, both sullied by long wear. A damaged brown beaver hat upon his head, with the edge of a white cotton skull-cap showing beneath it--green goggles upon the nose-- and a large blue umbrella, instead of a whip, grasped in the right hand--enabled Mr Vaughan to identify one of his nearest neighbours: the penn-keeper Jacob Jessuron, who, among other live stock, was also known as an extensive speculator in slaves. "The old Jew!" muttered Mr Vaughan, with an accent that betokened a certain degree of discontent. "What can _he_ want at this early hour? Some slave stock for sale, I suppose? That looked like a trader I saw yesterday in the offing; and he's sure to have had a lot or two out of her. Well, he won't find a market here. Fortunately, I'm stocked. Morning, Mr Jessuron!" continued he, hailing his visitor as the latter dismounted by the bottom of the stairway. "As usual, you are early abroad. Business, eh?" "Ach, yesh, Mishter Vochan! Bishness must be minded. A poor man like me can't afford to shleep late theesh hard times!" "Ha! ha! Poor man, indeed! That's a capital joke, Mr Jessuron! Come in. Have you breakfasted?" "Yesh, thanks, Mishter Vochan," replied the Jew, as he climbed up the steps. "I always breakfasht at six." "Oh, that is early! A glass of swizzle, then?" "Thanks, Mishter Vochan; you ish very kind. A glash of shwizzell will be better ash anything else. Itsh warm thish morning." The _swizzle_, a mixture of rum, sugar, water, and lime-juice, was found in a large punch-bowl that stood upon the sideboard, with a silver ladle resting across the rim, and glasses set around it. This is a standing drink in the dwelling of a Jamaica planter--a fountain that may be said never to go dry, or, at all events, renewed as soon as exhausted. Stepping up to the sideboard, where he was attended to by a black butler, the penn-keeper briskly quaffed off a tumbler of the swizzle; and then smacking his lips, and adding the observation, "'Tish goot!" he returned towards the window, where a chair had been placed for him beside the one already occupied by his host. The visitor removed his beaver hat, though the white skull-cap--not over clean--was still permitted to keep its place upon his head. Mr Vaughan was a man possessed of considerable courtesy, or at least, an affectation of it. He remained silent, therefore, politely waiting for his guest to initiate the conversation. "Well, Mishter Vochan," began the Jew, "I hash come over to see you on a shmall bishness--a very shmall bishness it is, shcarcely worth troubling you about." Here the speaker hesitated, as if to put some proposition into shape. "Some black stock for sale, eh? I think I've heard that a cargo came in yesterday. You got part, I suppose?" "Yesh, yesh, I bought a shmall lot, a very shmall lot. I hadn't the monish to buy more. S'help me gott! the shlaves ish getting so dear ash I can't afford to buy. This talk about shtoppin' the trade ish like to ruin ush all. Don't you think so, Mishter Vochan?" "Oh, as for that, _you_ needn't fear. If the British Government should pass the bill, the law will be only a dead letter. They could never guard the whole of the African coast--no, nor that of Jamaica neither. I think, Mr Jessuron, you would still contrive to land a few bales, eh?" "Ach, no, Mishter Vochan! dear, oh dear, no! I shouldn't venture againsht the laws. If the trade ish to be stop, I musht give up the bishness. Slaves would be too dear for a poor Jewsh man like me to deal in: s'help me, yesh! they're too dear ash it ish." "Oh, that's all nonsense about their getting dearer! It's very well for you to talk so, Mr Jessuron: you have some to sell, I presume?" "Not now, Mishter Vochan, not now. Posshible, I may have a shmall lot to dishpose of in a day or two; but joosht now, I haven't a shingle head ready for the market. Thish morning I want to buy, instead of shell." "To buy! From me, do you mean?" "Yesh, Mishter Vochan, if you're disposed to shell." "Come, that's something new, neighbour Jessuron! I know you're always ready for a trade; but this is the first time I ever heard of you buying slaves on a plantation." "Well, the truth ish, Mishter Vochan, I hash a cushtomer, who wants a likely wench for waiting at hish table. Theresh none among my shtock, he thinks good enough for hish purposh. I wash thinking you hash got one, if you could shpare her, that would suit him nishely." "Which do you mean?" "I mean that young Foolah wench ash I sold you lasht year--joosh after crop time." "Oh! the girl Yola?" "Yesh, I think that wosh her name. Ash you had her dirt sheep, I don't mind giving you shomething on your bargain--shay ten pounds currenshy?" "Poh, poh, poh!" replied the planter, with a deprecating shrug. "That would never do--even if I meant to sell the girl. But I have no wish to part with her." "Shay twenty, then?" "Nor twice twenty, neighbour. I wouldn't, under any circumstances, take less than two hundred pounds for that girl. She has turned out a most valuable servant--" "Two hunder poundsh!" interrupted the Jew, starting up in his chair. "Och! Mishter Vochan, theresh not a black wench in the island worth half the monish. Two hunder poundsh! Blesh my soul, that ish a prishe! I wish I could shell some of my shtock at that prishe! I'd be glad to give any two I hash for two hunder poundsh." "Why, Mr Jessuron! I thought you said just now slaves were getting very dear?" "Dear, yesh; but that is doublish dear. S'help me gott! You don't mean it, Mishter Vochan?" "But I do mean it; and even if you were to offer me two hundred--" "Don't shay more about it," said the slave-merchant, hurriedly interrupting the hypothetical speech; "don't shay more; I agreesh to give it. Two hunder poundsh!--blesh my shtars! it'll make a bankrup' of me." "No, it will not do that: since I cannot agree to take it." "Not take two hunder poundsh?" "No--nor twice that sum." "Gott help ush, Mishter Vochan; you ish shurely shokin? Why will you not take two hunder? I hash the monish in my pocket." "I am sorry to disappoint you, neighbour; but the fact is, I could not sell the girl Yola at any price, without the consent of my daughter--to whom I have given her." "Mish Vochan?" "Yes--she is her maid; and I know that my daughter is very fond of her. It is not likely she would consent to the girl's being sold." "But, Mishter Vochan! you shurely don't let your daughter shtand between you and a good bargain? Two hunder poundsh is big monish--big monish, Cushtos. The wench ish not worth half ash much, and, for myshelf, I wouldn't give half; but I don't want to dishappoint a good cushtomer, who'sh not so particular ash to prishe." "Your customer fancies the girl, eh?" said Mr Vaughan, glancing significantly at his guest. "She is very good-looking--no wonder. But, if that be the reason for his wanting to buy her, I may as well tell you, I should myself not be inclined to part with her; and, as for my daughter, if she suspected such a purpose, all the money you have got, Mr Jessuron, wouldn't reach the price of Yola." "S'help me gott, Mishter Vochan, you're mishtaken! The cushtomer I speak of never shet hish eyes on the wench. Itsh only a waiting-maid he wants for hish table; and I thought of her, ash she'sh joost what he deshcribes. How do you know that Mish Vochan might not conshent to let her go? I promish to get her another young girl ash goot or better ash Yola." "Well," replied the planter, after a moment's reflection, and apparently tempted by the handsome offer, "since you seem so determined upon buying the wench, I'll consult my daughter about it. But I can hold out very little hope of success. I know that she likes this young Foolah. I have heard that the girl was some king's daughter in her own country; and I am as good as certain Kate won't consent to her being sold." "Not if _you_ wished it, Mishter Vochan?" "Oh, if I insisted upon it, of course; but I gave my daughter a promise not to part with the girl against her wish, and I never break my word, Mr Jessuron--not to my own child." With this rather affected profession, the planter walked out of the room, leaving the slave-merchant to his reflections. "May the diffel strike me dead if that man ishn't mad!" soliloquised the Jew, when left to himself; "shtark shtarin mad! refuse two hunder poundsh for a she wench ash brown ash a cocoa-nut! Blesh my shtars!" "As I told you, Mr Jessuron," said the planter, re-entering the hall, "my daughter is inexorable. Yola cannot be sold." "Good morning, Mishter Vochan," said the slave-merchant, taking up his hat and umbrella, and making for the door. "Good morning, shir: I hash no other bishness to-day." Then, putting on his hat and grasping his umbrella, with an air of spitefulness he was unable to conceal, he hurried down the stone steps, scrambled upon the back of his mule, and rode away in sullen silence. "Unusually free with, his money this morning," said the planter, looking after him. "Some shabby scheme, I have no doubt. Well, I suppose I have thwarted it; besides, I am glad of an opportunity of disobliging the old curmudgeon: many's the time he has done as much for me!" Volume One, Chapter IX. JUDITH JESSURON. In the most unamiable of tempers did the slave-speculator ride back down the avenue. So out of sorts was he at the result of his interview, that he did not think of unfolding his blue umbrella to protect himself from the hot rays of the sun, now striking vertically downward. On the contrary, he used the _parapluie_ for a very different purpose--every now and then belabouring the ribs of his mule with it: as if to rid himself of his spleen by venting it on the innocent mongrel. Nor did he go in silence, although he was alone. In a kind of involuntary soliloquy he kept muttering, as he rode on, long strings of phrases denunciatory of the host whose roof he had just quitted. The daughter, too, of that host came in for a share of his muttered denunciations, which at times, assumed the form of a menace. Part of what he said was spoken distinctly and with emphasis:-- "The dusht off my shoosh, Loftish Vochan--I flingsh it back to you! Gott for damsch! there wash a time when you would be glad for my two hunder poundsh. Not for any monish? Bosh! Grand lady, Mish Kate--Mish Quasheby! Ha! I knowsh a thing--I knowsh a leetle thing. Some day, may be, yourshelf sell for lesh ash two hunder poundsh. Ach! I not grudgsh twice the monish to see that day! "The dusht off my shoosh to both of yoush!" he repeated, as he cleared the gate-entrance. "I'sh off your grounds, now; and, if I hash you here, I shay you something of my mind--something ash make you sell your wench for lesh ash two hunder poundsh! I do so, some time, pleash gott! Ach!" Uttering this last exclamation with a prolonged aspirate, he raised himself erect in his stirrups; and, half turning his mule, shook his umbrella in a threatening manner towards Mount Welcome--his eye accompanying the action with a glance that expressed some secret but vindictive determination. As he faced back into the road, another personage appeared upon the scene--a female equestrian, who, trotting briskly up, turned her horse, and rode along by his side. She was a young girl, or, rather a young woman--a bright, beautiful creature--who appeared an angel by the side of that demonlike old man. She had evidently been waiting for him at the turning of the road; and the air of easy familiarity, with the absence of any salutation as they met, told that they had not long been separated. Who was this charming equestrian? A stranger would have asked this question, while his eye rested upon the object of it with mingled feelings of wonder and admiration: admiration at such rare beauty--wonder at beholding it in such rude companionship! It was a beauty that need not be painted in detail. The forehead of noble arch; the scimitar-shaped eyebrows of ebon blackness; the dark-brown flashing pupils; the piquant prominence of the nose, with its spiral curving nostrils; were all characteristics of Hebraic beauty--a shrine before which both Moslem and Christian have ofttimes bent the knee in humblest adoration. Twenty cycles have rolled past--twenty centuries of outrage, calumny, and wrong--housed in low haunts--pillaged and persecuted--oft driven to desperation--rendered roofless and homeless--still, amid all, and in spite of all, lovely are Judah's dark-eyed daughters--fair as when they danced to the music of cymbal and timbrel, or, to the accompaniment of the golden-stringed harp, sang the lays of a happier time. Here, in a new world, and canopied under an occidental sky, had sprung up a very type of Jewish beauty: for never was daughter of Judah lovelier than the daughter of Jacob Jessuron--she who was now riding by his side. A singular contrast did they present as they rode together--this fair maid and that harsh-featured, ugly old man--unlike as the rose to its parent thorn. Sad are we to say, that the contrast was only physical morally, it was "like father like daughter." In external form, Judith Jessuron was an angel; in spirit--and we say it with regret--she was the child of her father--devilish as he. "A failure?" said this fair she, taking the initiative. "Pah! I needn't have asked you: it's clear enough from your looks--though, certes, that beautiful countenance of yours is not a very legible index to your thoughts. What says Vanity Vaughan? Will he sell the girl?" "No." "As I expected." "S'help me, he won't!" "How much did you bid for her?" "Och! I'sh ashamed to tell you, Shoodith." "Come, old rabbi, you needn't be backward before me. How much?" "Two hunder poundsh." "Two hundred pounds! Well, that is a high figure! If what you've told me be true, his own daughter isn't worth so much. Ha! ha! ha!" "Hush, Shoodith, dear! Don't shpeak of that--for your life don't shpeak of it. You may shpoil some plansh I hash about her." "Have no fear, good father. I never spoiled any plan of yours yet--have I?" "No, no! You hash been a good shild, my daughter!--a good shild, s'help me gott, you hash." "But tell me; why would the Custos not sell? He likes money almost as well as yourself. Two hundred pounds is a large price for this copper-coloured wench--quite double what she's worth." "Ach, Shoodith dear, it wash not Vochan hishelf that refused it." "Who then?" "Thish very daughter you speaksh of." "She!" exclaimed the young Jewess, with a curl of the lip, and a contemptuous twist of her beautiful nostril, that all at once changed her beauty into very ugliness. "She, you say? I wonder what next! The conceited _mustee_--herself no better than a slave!" "Shtop--shtop, Shoodith," interrupted the Jew, with a look of uneasiness. "Keep that to yourshelf, my shild. Shay no more about it-- at leasht, not now, not now. The trees may have earsh." The burst of angry passion hindered the fair "Shoodith" from making rejoinder, and for some moments father and daughter rode on in silence. The latter was the first to re-commence the conversation. "You are foolish, good father," said she; "absurdly foolish." "Why, Shoodith?" "Why? In offering to buy this girl at all." "Ay--what would you shay?" inquired the old Jew, as if the interrogatory had been an echo to his own thoughts. "What would you shay?" "I would say that you are silly, old rabbi Jacob; and that's what I do say." "Blesh my shoul! What dosh you mean, Shoodith?" "Why, dear and worthy papa, you're not always so dull of comprehension. Answer me: what do you want the Foolah for?" "Och! you know what I wants her for, Thish prinshe will give hish twenty Mandingoes for her. There ish no doubt but that she's his sister. Twenty good shtrong Mandingoes, worth twenty hunder poundsh. Blesh my soul! it'sh a fortune?" "Well; and if it is a fortune, what then?" "If it ish? By our fathers! you talk of twenty hunder poundsh ash if monish was dirt." "My worthy parent, you misunderstand me." "Mishunderstand you, Shoodith?" "You do. I have more respect for twenty hundred pounds than you give me credit for. So much, as that I advise you to _get it_." "Get it! why, daughter, that ish shoosht what I am trying to do." "Ay, and you've gone about it in such a foolish fashion, that you run a great risk of losing it." "And how would you have me go about it, mine Shoodith?" "By _taking it_." The slave-merchant suddenly jerked upon the bridle, and pulled his mule to a stand--as he did so darting towards his daughter a look half-puzzled, half-penetrating. "Good father Jacob," continued she, halting at the same time, "_you_ are not wont to be so dull-witted. While waiting for you at the gate of this pompous sugar-planter, I could not help reflecting; and my reflections led me to ask the question: what on earth had taken you to his house?" "And what answer did you find, Shoodith?" "Oh, not much; only that you went upon a very idle errand." "Yesh, it hash been an idle errand: I did not get what I went for." "And what matters if you didn't?" "Mattersh it? Twenty Mandingoes mattersh a great deal--twenty hunder poundsh currenshy. That ish what it mattersh, Shoodith mine darling!" "Not the paring of a Mandingo's toe-nail, my paternal friend." "Hach! what shay you, mine wise Shoodith?" "What say I? Simply, that these Mandingoes might as well have been yours without all this trouble. They may be yet--ay, and their master too, if you desire to have a prince for your slave. _I_ do." "Speak out, Shoodith; I don't understand you." "You will presently. Didn't you say, just now, that Captain Jowler has reasons for not coming ashore?" "Captain Showler! He would rather land in the Cannibal Islands than in Montego Bay. Well, Shoodith?" "Rabbi Jessuron, you weary my patience. For the Foolah prince--as you say he is--you are answerable only to Captain Jowler. Captain Jowler comes not ashore." "True--it ish true," assented the Jew, with a gesture that signified his comprehension of these preliminary premises. "Who, then, is to hinder you from doing as you please in the matter of these Mandingoes?" "Wonderful Shoodith!" exclaimed the father, throwing up his arms, and turning upon his daughter a look of enthusiastic admiration. "Wonderful Shoodith! Joosh the very thing!--blesh my soul!--and I never thought of it!" "Well, father; luckily it's not too late. _I_ have been thinking of it. I knew very well that Kate Vaughan would not part with the girl Yola. I told you she wouldn't; but, by the bye, I hope you've said nothing of what you wanted her for? If you have--" "Not a word, Shoodith! not a word!" "Then no one need be a word the wiser. As to Captain Jowler--" "Showler daren't show hish face in the Bay: that'sh why he landed hish cargo on the coast. Besides, there wash an understanding between him and me. He doeshn't care what ish done with the prinshe--not he. Anyhow, he'll be gone away in twenty-four hours." "Then in twenty-four hours the Mandingoes may be yours--prince, attendants, and all. But time is precious, papa. We had better hasten home at once, and strip his royal highness of those fine feathers before some of our curious neighbours come in and see them. People will talk scandal, you know. As for our worthy overseer--" "Ah, Ravener! he knowsh all about it. I wash obliged to tell him ash we landed." "Of course you were; and it will cost you a Mandingo or two to keep _his_ tongue tied: that it will. For the rest, there need be no difficulty. It won't matter what these savages may say for themselves. Fortunately, there's no scandal in a black man's tongue." "Wonderful Shoodith!" again exclaimed the admiring parent. "My precious daughter, you are worth your weight in golden guinish! Twenty-four shlaves for nothing, and one of them a born prinshe! Two thousand currenshy! Blesh my soul! It ish a shplendid profit--worth a whole year's buyin' and shellin'." And with this honest reflection, the slave-merchant hammered his mule into a trot, and followed his "precious Shoodith"--who had already given the whip to her horse, and was riding rapidly homeward. Volume One, Chapter X. THE SEA NYMPH. On the third day after the slaver had cast anchor in the Bay of Montego, a large square-rigged vessel made her appearance in the offing; and, heading shoreward, with all sail set, stood boldly in for the harbour. The Union Jack of England, spread to the breeze, floated freely above her taffrail; and various boxes, bales, trunks, and portmanteaus, that could be seen on her deck--brought up for debarkation--as well as the frank, manly countenances of the sailors who composed her crew, proclaimed the ship to be an honest trader. The lettering upon her stern told that she was the "_Sea Nymph_, of Liverpool." Though freighted with a cargo of merchandise, and in reality a merchantman, the presence on board of several individuals in the costume of landsmen, denoted that the _Sea Nymph_ also accommodated passengers. The majority of these were West India planters, with their families, returning from a visit to the mother country--their sons, perhaps, after graduating at an English university, and their daughters on having received their final _polish_ at some fashionable metropolitan seminary. Here and there an "attorney"--a constituent element of West Indian society, though not necessarily, as the title suggests, a real limb of the law. Of the latter there might have been one or two, with a like number of unpractised disciples of Aesculapius; both lawyer and doctor bent on seeking fortune--and with fair prospects of finding it in a land notorious for crime as unwholesome in clime. These, with a sprinkling of nondescripts, made up the list of the _Sea Nymph's_ cabin-passengers. Among these nondescripts was one of peculiarities sufficiently distinctive to attract attention. A single glance at this personage satisfied you that you looked upon a London Cockney, at the same time a West-End exquisite of the very purest water. He was a young man who had just passed the twenty-first anniversary of his birth; although the indulgence of youthful dissipation had already brushed the freshness from his features, giving them the stamp of greater age. In complexion he was fair--pre-eminently so--with hair of a light yellowish hue, that presented the appearance of having been artificially curled, and slightly darkened by the application of some perfumed oil. The whiskers and moustache were nearly of the same colour; both evidently cultivated with an elaborate assiduity, that proclaimed excessive conceit in them on the part of their owner. The eyebrows were also of the lightest shade; but the hue of the eyes was not so easily told: since one of them was kept habitually closed; while a glancing lens, in a frame of tortoise-shell, hindered a fair view of the other. Through the glass, however, it appeared of a greenish grey, and decidedly "piggish." The features of this individual were regular enough, though without any striking character; and of a cast rather effeminate than vulgar. Their prevailing expression was that of a certain superciliousness, at times extending to an affectation of sardonism. The dress of the young man was in correspondence with the foppery exhibited in the perfumed locks and eye-glass. It consisted of a surtout of broadcloth, of a very light drab, with a cape that scarce covered the shoulders; a white beaver hat; vest and pants of spotless huff kerseymere; kid gloves on his hands; and boots, blight as lacquer could make them, on his feet. These items of apparel, made in a style of fashion and worn with an air of _savoir faire_, loudly proclaimed the London fop of the time. The affected drawl in which the gentleman spoke, whenever he condescended to hold communion with his fellow-passengers, confirmed this character. Notwithstanding a certain ill-disguised contempt with which he was regarded by some of his fellow-voyagers, not a few treated him with marked deference; and the obeisance paid him by the steward and cabin boys of the _Sea Nymph_ gave evidence of his capability to bestow a liberal largess. And such capability did he possess: for Mr Montagu Smythje, the individual in question, was a youth of good family and fortune--the latter consisting of a magnificent sugar estate in Jamaica, left him by a deceased relative, to visit which was the object of his voyage. The estate he had never seen, as this was his first trip across the Atlantic; but he had no reason to doubt the existence of the property. The handsome income which it had afforded him, during several years of his minority, and which had enabled him to live in magnificent style in the most fashionable circles of London society, was a substantial proof that Montagu Castle--such was the name of the estate--was something more than a castle in the air. During his minority, the estate had been managed by a _trustee_ resident in the island: one Mr Vaughan, himself a sugar-planter, whose plantation adjoined that of Montagu Castle. Mr Smythje had not come over the water with any intention of settling upon his Jamaica estate. "Such an ideaw," to use his own phraseology, "nevwaw entawed ma bwain. To exchange London and its pwesyaws for a wesidence among those haw-ed niggaws--deaw, no--I could nevwaw think of such a voluntawy banishment; that would be a baw--a decided baw!" "A meaw twip to see something of the twopics, of which I've heard such extwaor'nary stowies--have a look at my sugaw plantation and the dem'd niggaws--besides, I have a stwong desire to take a squint at these Queeole queetyaws, who are said to be so dooced pwetty. Haw! haw!" After such fashion did Mr Montagu Smythje explain the purpose of his voyage to such of his fellow-passengers as chanced to take an interest in it. There were but few travellers in the steerage of the _Sea Nymph_. They who are compelled to adopt that irksome mode of voyaging across the Atlantic have but little errand to the West Indies, or elsewhere to tropical lands--where labour is monopolised by the thews and sinews of the slave. Only three or four of this class had found accommodation on board the _Sea Nymph_; and yet among these humble voyagers was one destined to play a conspicuous part in our story. The individual in question was a young man, in appearance of the same age as Mr Montagu Smythje, though differing from the latter in almost everything else. In stature he was what is termed "middle height," with limbs well set and rounded, denoting activity and strength. His complexion, though not what is termed _brunette_, was dark for a native of Britain, though such was he. His features were nobly defined; and his whole countenance sufficiently striking to attract the attention of even an indifferent observer. Dark-brown eyes, and hair of like colour, curling jauntily over his cheeks, were characteristic points of gracefulness; and, take him all in all, he was what might justly be pronounced a handsome young fellow. The garments he wore were his best--put on for the first time during the voyage, and for the grand occasion of _landing_. A dark blue tunic frock, faced with black braid, skirting down over a pair of close-fitting tights, and Hessian boots, gave him rather a _distingue_ air, notwithstanding a little threadbarishness apparent along the seams. The occupation in which the young man was engaged betrayed a certain degree of refinement. Standing near the windlass, in the blank leaf of a book, which appeared to be his journal, he was sketching the harbour into which the ship was about to enter; and the drawing exhibited no inconsiderable degree of artistic skill. For all that, the sketcher was _not_ a professional artist. Professionally, indeed, and to his misfortune, he was nothing. A poor scholar--without trick or trade by which he might earn a livelihood--he had come out to the West Indies, as young men go to other colonies, with that sort of indefinite hope, that Fortune, in some way or other, might prove kinder abroad than she had been at home. Whatever hopes of success the young colonist may have entertained, they were evidently neither sanguine nor continuous. Though naturally of a cheerful spirit, as his countenance indicated, a close observer might have detected a shadow stealing over it at intervals. As the ship drew near to the shore, he closed the book, and stood scanning the gorgeous picture of tropical scenery, now, for the first time, disclosed to his eyes. Despite the pleasant emotions which so fair a scene was calculated to call forth, his countenance betrayed anxiety--perhaps a doubt as to whether a welcome awaited him in that lovely land upon which he was looking. Only a few moments had he been thus occupied, when a strange voice falling upon his ear caused him to turn towards the speaker--in whom he recognised the distinguished cabin-passenger, Mr Montagu Smythje. As this gentleman had voyaged all the way from Liverpool to Jamaica without once venturing to set his foot across the line which separates the sacred precincts of the quarter from the more plebeian for'ard deck, his presence by the windlass might have been matter of surprise. A circumstance, however, explained it. It was the last hour of the voyage. The _Sea Nymph_ was just heading into the harbour; and the passengers of all degrees had rushed forward, in order to obtain a better view of the glorious landscape unfolding itself before their eyes. Notwithstanding his often-expressed antipathy to the "abom'nable smell of taw" it was but natural that Mr Smythje should yield to the general curiosity, and go forward among the rest. Having gained an elevated stand-point upon the top of the windlass, he had adjusted the glass to his eye, and commenced _ogling_ the landscape, now near enough for its details to be distinguished. Not for long, however, did Mr Smythje remain silent. He was not one of a saturnine habit. The fair scene was inspiring him with a poetical fervour, which soon found expression in characteristic speech. "Dooced pwetty, 'pon honaw!" he exclaimed; "would make a spwendid dwop-scene faw a theataw! Dawnt yaw think so, ma good fwend?" The person thus appealed to chanced to be the young steerage passenger; who, during the long voyage, had abstained from going _abaft_ of the main-mast with as much scrupulousness as Mr Smythje had observed about venturing forward. Hence it was that the voice of the exquisite was as strange to him, as if he had never set eyes on that illustrious, personage. On perceiving that the speech was meant for himself, he was at first a little nettled at its patronising tone; but the feeling of irritation soon passed away, and he fixed his eyes upon the speaker, with a good-humoured, though somewhat contemptuous expression. "Aw--haw--it is yaw, my young fellaw," continued the exquisite, now for the first time perceiving to whom he had made his appeal. "Aw, indeed! I've often observed yaw from the quawter-deck. Ba Jawve! yes--a veway stwange individwal!--incompwehensibly stwange! May I ask--pawdon the liberty--what is bwinging yaw out heaw--to Jamaica, I mean?" "That," replied the steerage passenger, again somewhat nettled at the rather free style of interrogation, "which is bringing yourself--the good ship _Sea Nymph_." "Aw, haw! indeed! Good--veway good! But, my deaw sir, that is not what I meant." "No?" "No, I ashaw yaw. I meant what bisness bwings yaw heaw. P'waps you have some pwofession?" "No, not any," replied the young man, checking his inclination to retaliate the impertinent style of his interrogator. "A twade, then?" "I am sorry to say I have not even a trade." "No pwofession! no twade! what the dooce daw yaw intend dawing in Jamaica? P'waps yaw expect the situation of book-keepaw on a pwantation, or niggaw-dwivaw. Neithaw, I believe, requiaws much expewience, as I am told the book-keepaw has pwositively no books to keep--haw! haw! and shawly any fellaw, howevaw ignowant, may dwive a niggaw. Is that yaw expectation, my worthy fwend?" "I have no expectation, one way or another," replied the young man, in a tone of careless indifference. "As to the business I may follow out here in Jamaica, that, I suppose, will depend on the will of another." "Anothaw! aw!--who, pway?" "My uncle." "Aw, indeed! yaw have an uncle in Jamaica, then?" "I have--if he be still alive." "Aw--haw! yaw are not shaw of that intewesting fact? P'waps yaw've not heard from him wately?" "Not for years," replied the young steerage passenger, his poor prospects now having caused him to relinquish the satirical tone which he had assumed. "Not for years," repeated he, "though I've written to him to say that I should come by this ship." "Veway stwange! And pway, may I ask what bisness yaw uncle follows?" "He is a planter, I believe." "A sugaw plantaw?" "Yes--he was so when we last heard from him." "Aw, then, p'waps he is wich--a pwopwietor? In that case he may find something faw yaw to daw, bettaw than niggaw-dwiving. Make yaw his ovawseeaw. May I know yaw name?" "Quite welcome to it. Vaughan is my name." "Vawrn!" repeated the exquisite, in a tone that betrayed some newly-awakened interest; "Vawn, did I understand yaw to say?" "Herbert Vaughan," replied the young man, with firmer emphasis. "And yaw uncle's name?" "He is also called Vaughan. He is my father's brother--or rather _was_--my father is dead." "Not Woftus Vawn, Esquire, of Mount Welcome?" "Yes, Loftus Vaughan; my uncle is so called, and Mount Welcome is, I believe, the name of his estate." "Veway stwange! incompwehensibly stwange! D'yaw know, my young fellaw, that yaw and I appeaw to be making faw the same pawt. Woftus Vawn, of Mount Welcome, is the twustwee of my own pwoperty--the veway person to whom I am consigned. Deaw me! how dooced stwange if yaw and I should yet be guests undaw the same woof!" The remark was accompanied by a supercilious glance, that did not escape the observation of the young steerage passenger. It was this glance that gave the true signification to the words, which Herbert Vaughan interpreted as an insult. He was on the point of making an angry rejoinder, when the exquisite turned abruptly away--as he parted drawling out some words of leave-taking, with the presumptive conjecture that they might meet again. Herbert Vaughan stood for a moment looking after him, an expression of high contempt curling upon his lip. Only for a short while, however, did this show itself; and then, his countenance resuming its habitual expression of good-nature, he descended into the steerage, to prepare his somewhat scanty baggage for the debarkation. Volume One, Chapter XI. LOFTUS VAUGHAN ON THE LOOK-OUT. Every day, after that on which he had received the two English letters-- and almost every hour during daylight--might Loftus Vaughan have been seen, telescope in hand, at one of the front windows of his house, sweeping with his glass the roadstead and offing of Montego Bay. The object of this telescopic observation was, that he might descry the _Sea Nymph_ before she had entered the harbour: in order that his carriage should be at the port to receive the distinguished Smythje on the moment of his landing. At this period there were no steamers trading across the Atlantic, punctual to a day, and almost to an hour. Though the letter of advice had been written several days before that on which the _Sea Nymph_ was to sail, there could be no calculation made upon such uncertain data as winds and waves; and the ship which carried Montagu Smythje might arrive at any hour. That some distinguished guest was expected, was a fact that had become well-known to every domestic in the establishment of Mount Welcome. Every day saw some article or articles of costly furniture brought home from the "Bay"; and the chambers of the "great house" were being freshly decorated to receive them. The house-wenches and other indoor servants were furnished with new dresses, some even with liveries--an unusual piece of finery in Jamaica--while shoes and stockings were forced upon feet that, perhaps, had never felt such _impedimenta_ before, and whose owners would have been only too glad to have escaped the torture of wearing them. It need scarcely be said that the planter was undergoing all this extravagant expenditure for the reception of Mr Montagu Smythje, and him alone. Had it been only his nephew that was expected, no such continuous look-out would have been kept, and no such preparations made to do him honour on his arrival. Neither do Mr Vaughan's motives require explanation: the reader will ere this have surmised them. He was the father of a daughter ready at any moment for marriage. Mr Montagu Smythje was, in his eyes, not only an eligible, but highly desirable, specimen for a son-in-law. The young man was possessed of a splendid property, as Mr Vaughan well knew: for the worthy planter was not only Custos Rotulorum, but for many long years had been custos of Montagu Castle, and could tell its value to a shilling "currency." It lay contiguous to his own. He had looked with a longing eye upon its broad acres and black retainers, until he had become imbued with a desire, amounting indeed to a passion, to possess it--if not in his own right, at least in that of his daughter. The union of the two estates, Mount Welcome and Montagu Castle, would make a magnificent domain--one of the richest in the Island. To accomplish this object had long been the wish of Loftus Vaughan. It had grown and grown upon him, till it had become the most cherished purpose of his heart. Let us not conceal a really creditable motive that Mr Vaughan had for desiring this union. He had been too long in Jamaica to be ignorant of the true social position of his daughter. However beautiful and accomplished Kate Vaughan was; however much her father loved her--and, to do him justice, his paternal affection was of the strongest--he knew that her mother was a _quadroon_, and she only a _mustee_. No matter how little trace there might be of the _taint_--however imperceptible to the outward eye--he knew that between her and the young gentlemen of his acquaintance--that is, those who would have been eligible--there was still enough to erect a certain social barrier. He knew, moreover, that young Englishmen, especially on their first arrival, make light of this barrier; in fact, altogether disregard it, until corrupted by the "society" of the island. In his match-making designs the Jamaica planter was not more of a sinner than hundreds of other parents both at home and abroad; and there is this much in his favour: that, perhaps, his affection for his daughter, and the desire of ennobling her--for by such an alliance would the _taint be extinguished_--were the chief motives for the conduct he was pursuing in regard to Montagu Smythje. So far Mr Vaughan's conduct may be excused. But, unfortunately, the studied courtesy with which he was preparing to receive the lord of Montagu Castle presented a damaging contrast to the discourtesy he had designed for his kinsman. In the latter case, both his acts and intentions were paltry beyond parallel. The announcement in the nephew's letter, that he had taken a _steerage passage_, had been to his uncle a source of bitter chagrin. Not that he would have cared a whit about the thing, had the young fellow voyaged in any other vessel than the _Sea Nymph_, or had he travelled unrecognised. What troubled Mr Vaughan was the fear that the relationship might become known to Mr Montagu Smythje, and thus create in the mind of the latter a suspicion of his, the planter's, respectability. The dread of this _expose_ so preyed upon Mr Vaughan's mind that, had it been possible, he would have denied the relationship altogether. He had conceived a hope that this recognition might not take place during the voyage: building his hope on the character of the aristocratic Cockney, which he knew to be a type of supercilious pride. Confiding in the faith that nothing might transpire on board ship to make Mr Smythje acquainted with the connection, he was determined there should be no chance on shore. To preclude the possibility of such a thing, he had conceived a design as childish as it was cruel: his nephew was to be _kept out of the way_. The plan of action he had traced out long before the arrival of the _Sea Nymph_. Mr Montagu Smythje was to be met at the landing, and at once hurried off to Mount Welcome. Herbert Vaughan was likewise to be conducted thither; but not direct. A different means of transport was to be provided for him; and on his arrival within the bounds of the plantation, he was to be taken by a private road to the house of the overseer--which stood in a secluded corner of the valley, nearly half a mile distant from the "Buff." Here he was to remain as the guest of the latter, until such time as his uncle could find a way of disposing of him--either by procuring some employment for him at Montego Bay, or the situation of book-keeper on some distant plantation. With this ingenious contrivance did Mr Vaughan await the arrival of his guests. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was upon the third day after receiving his letters of advice, and near the hour of noon, that the planter, playing as usual with his telescope, perceived in the offing of Montego Bay, and standing in for the port, a large square-rigged vessel--a ship. It might be the Sea Nymph, and it might not; but, taking into consideration some circumstances, known to Mr Vaughan, the probabilities were that it was the expected vessel. Whether or no, the planter was determined that the programme, he had so ingeniously sketched out, should _not_ be spoiled by any mismanagement in the performance; and its execution was ordered upon the instant. Bells were rung for a general muster of the domestics; a horn was sounded to summon the overseer; and, in less than half an hour afterwards, the family barouche--a handsome equipage, drawn by a pair of splendidly-caparisoned horses--was on the road to the Bay, with the overseer on horseback, riding as an escort behind it. In rear of this went a waggon, to which eight large oxen were attached; and behind the waggon appeared an escort _sui generis_: a rough negro boy, mounted on the shaggiest of steeds, who was no other than the post-boy already mentioned--the identical Quashie. Quashie was not on his usual diurnal duty: his present errand was one of a far more important character, and the duty confided to him of an exceedingly delicate nature. At this hour the great hall of Mount Welcome exhibited a scene that, to the eye of a stranger to West Indian customs, might have appeared curious enough. Scattered over the floor, at certain distances from each other, were some six or eight negro girls, or "wenches," as they are called, most of them being of the younger brood of the plantation blacks. All were down on their knees--each one having by her side, and within reach of her hand, an orange freshly cut in halves, some bees'-wax, and a portion of the fibrous pericarp of a cocoa-nut. The floor itself was without carpet of any kind; but instead of being of plain deal, it presented a mosaic of hard woods, of different colours-- among which might be recognised the mahogany and heart-wood, the bread-nut and bully-tree. To give the tesselated surface a polish was the business of the dark damsels on their knees; and for that purpose were the oranges and cocoa-husks provided. To an islander the sight was one of common, indeed daily, occurrence. The lustre of his hall floor is a matter of pride with a Jamaica planter; as much so as the quality or pattern of his drawing-room carpet to a householder at home; and every day, and at the same hour, the dark-skinned housemaids make their appearance, and renew the glitter of the surface, whose gloss has been tarnished by the revels of the preceding night. The hour set apart for this quaint custom is just before laying the cloth for dinner--about three or four o'clock; and that she may not sully the polish while carrying in the dishes, the barefooted Abigail adopts a plan that deserves mention on account of its originality. Having provided herself with two small pieces of linen or cotton cloth, she spreads them out upon the floor, and then places a foot upon each. As the toes of a West Indian house-wench are almost as prehensile as her fingers, she finds no difficulty in "cramping" the cloth and holding it between the "big toe" and its nearest neighbour; and with this simple _chaussure_ she is enabled to slide over the floor without in the least degree "smoutching" its gloss, or leaving any sign of her passage over its shining surface. While such a busy scene was transpiring in the great hall of Mount Welcome, one of a different character, but of equal activity, was going on in the kitchen. This "office" stood a little apart from the main dwelling, communicating with its lower storey by a covered gallery. Along this passage black and yellow wenches could be seen constantly going and returning, each with her load--a haunch of venison, a ham of the wild hog, a turtle, ramier pigeons, and mountain crabs, all on their way to the spit, the stew-pan, or the chafing-dish. A similar sight might have been witnessed at Mount Welcome any other day in the year; but perhaps with a less abundant variety in the materials, and with not half so much movement among the staff of wenches pertaining to the _cuisine_--whose excited manner in the performance of their specific duties testified, as much as the variety of luxuries lying around, that on this particular day a repast of the most sumptuous kind was expected from their skill. Their master did not leave these preparations to be made without his own personal surveillance. From the time that the ship had been descried, he was everywhere--in the stable, to look after the sable grooms; in the kitchen, to instruct the cooks; in the great hall, to inspect the polishing of the floor; and, at last, on the landing outside, standing, telescope to his eye, and looking down the long avenue, where the carriage containing his distinguished visitor might at any moment be expected to make its appearance. Volume One, Chapter XII. KATE AND YOLA. Occupying one corner of the mansion of Mount Welcome--that which was farthest removed from the din and clangour of the kitchen--was a small chamber, richly and elegantly furnished. The light was admitted into it on two sides through latticed windows, that, when open, left a free passage from the floor to a little balcony outside--with which each of the windows was provided. One of these windows looked out to the rearward, commanding a view of the garden, and the wooded steep beyond. The other opened to the left side of the house, upon the shrubbery grounds that extended in that direction as far as the foot of the ridge. Even had there been no one within this little chamber, the style and character of its furniture would have told, that the person to whom it appertained was of the gentler sex. In one corner stood a bed, with carved posts of yellow lance wood; from which hung what at first sight might have been taken for white muslin curtains, but which, on closer scrutiny, could be seen to be the gauze-like netting of a "mosquito bar." The size of the bed told that it was intended for but one individual. Its habitual occupant was therefore unmarried. In the bay of one of the windows stood a dressing-table of _papier mache_, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; and upon this was placed a mirror of circular shape on a stand of the finest Spanish mahogany. In front of the mirror was a variety of objects of different forms-- among which might be noticed the usual implements of the toilet, with many of those eccentric little articles of _luxe_ and _vertu_, that bespeak the refined presence of woman. Other pieces of furniture in the room were three or four Chinese chairs; a small marqueterie table; a work-box of tortoise-shell veneer, on a pedestal of like material; and a little cabinet of ebony wood, richly inlaid with buhl. There was neither mantel nor fireplace--the climate of eternal summer precluding all necessity for such "fixtures." The window-curtains were of a thin transparent muslin, with a pattern of pink flowering woven into the stuff, and bordered with a fringe of alternate pink and white tassels. A breeze, laden with the perfume of a thousand flowers, blowing in through the open lattice-work of the jalousies, kept these light hangings almost continually in motion, imparting an aspect of coolness to the chamber. This was further heightened by the glossy smoothness of the hard-wood floor, which glistened under foot like a mirror. No one could have glanced into this little apartment, without being struck with its costly yet chaste adornment. Rich and elegant, however, as was the case, it was no more than worthy of the jewel which it was accustomed to contain. It was the bedroom and boudoir of "Lilly Quasheba," the heiress _presumptive_ of Mount Welcome. But few were ever favoured with a glance into that luxurious chamber. It was a sacred precinct, into which curious eyes were not permitted to penetrate. Its polished floor was not to be trodden by vulgar feet. With the exception of her father, no man had ever intruded into that virgin shrine; and he, only on rare and extraordinary occasions. Even to the domestics it was not of free access. Only one, besides its mistress, could enter it unbidden--her brown-skinned handmaid Yola. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On that same day--shortly after the ringing of the bells had announced the arrival of the English ship, and while the dusky domestics were engaged, as described, in their ante-prandial preparations--two individuals occupied the chamber in question. One was the young lady to whom the apartment pertained--the other her maid. They were in different attitudes: the mistress seated upon one of the Chinese chairs in front of the window, while the maid was standing behind, occupied in arranging her mistress's hair. The girl was just entering upon her task--if we may so designate that which many might have deemed a pleasure. Already the complicated machinery of combs and hair-pins lay strewed over the table; and the long chestnut-coloured tresses hung in luxuriant confusion around those shoulders of snow, in whose velvet-like epidermis there appeared no trace of the _taint_. Involuntarily the maid ceased from her task, and stood gazing upon her young mistress with a look of instinctive admiration. "Oh, beautiful!" exclaimed she, in a low, murmured voice; "you beautiful, missa!" "Tut, Yola: 'tis only flattery of you to say so! You are as beautiful as I; only your beauty is of a different order. No doubt, in your country you would be a great belle." "Ah, missa, you belle anywhere--black man--white man--all think you beautiful--all the same!" "Thank you, Yola! but I shouldn't particularly desire to be the object of such universal admiration. For my part, I don't know one male biped in whose eyes I care to appear attractive." "Perhaps missa no so say, when come young buckra from Inglis' country!" "Which buckra?--there are two of them expected from the English country." "Yola no hear two come. Massa she hear speak of one--only one." "Oh, you've heard speak of one only! Did you hear his name mentioned?" "Yes; he grand man--great lord--Sultan of Mongew. He have other name-- Yola hear it; but she no sabbey speak it." "Ha! ha! ha! I don't wonder at that. It's as much as I `sabbey' myself to pronounce that second name: which I presume to be _Smythje_. Is that the name you heard?" "That it, missa--he berry fine gentl'man, he beauty man. Massa he so tell Massr' Trusty." "Ah, Yola! your master is a man, and men are not always the best judges of one another's looks. Perhaps the Sultan of Mongew, as you call him, might not be such a pattern of perfection as papa describes him. But no doubt, we shall soon have an opportunity of judging for ourselves. Did you hear your master say nothing about another `buckra' that is expected?" "No, Missa Kate. One only he speak of--dis same one of Mongew Castle." A low ejaculation, expressive of disappointment, escaped the lips of the young Creole, as she settled down into an attitude of silent reflection, her eyes turned upon the shining floor at her feet. It is not easy to tell why she put the last interrogatory. Perhaps she had some suspicion of her father's plans. At all events, she knew there was some mystery, and was desirous of penetrating it. The maid was still gazing upon her, when all at once the dark Arab-like features of the latter assumed a changed expression--the look of admiration giving place to one of earnest inquiry, as if some strange thought had occurred to her. "Allah!" ejaculated she, still keeping her eyes fixed upon the face of her mistress. "Well, Yola," said the latter, attracted by the exclamation, and looking up; "why do you call upon Allah? Has anything occurred to you?" "Oh! beauty missa! you so like one man." "I like a man! I resemble a man! Is that what you mean?" "Yes, missa. Nebber see it before--you berry, berry like!" "Well, Yola, you are certainly not flattering me now. Who might this man be? I pray you tell me." "He man of the mountains--Maroon." "Oh! worse and worse! I resemble a _Maroon_? Gracious me! Surely you are jesting, Yola?" "Oh! missa, he beauty man; roun black eyes that glance like the fire-fly in the wood--eyes like yours--berry like you eyes, missa." "Come, silly girl!" said the young lady, speaking in a tone of reproval, more affected than real; "do you know that it is very naughty of you, to compare me to a man--much more to a Maroon?" "Oh! Missa Kate, he beauty man--berry beauty man." "That I doubt very much; but even were it so, you should not speak of his resembling _me_." "Me pardon, missa. I no more so say." "No, you had better not, good Yola. If you do, I shall ask papa to _sell_ you." This was said in a tone of gentle raillery, which told that any intention of carrying out the threat was far from the speaker's thoughts. "By the bye, Yola," continued the young lady, "I could get a good price for you. How much do you suppose I was offered for you the other day?" "Missa Kate, I no know. Allah forbid me you ebber leave! If you no more my missa, I care no more live." "Thanks, Yola," said the young Creole, evidently touched by the words of her attendant, the sincerity of which was proved by the tone in which they were spoken. "Be not afraid of my parting with you. As proof that I shall not, I refused a very large sum--how much, can you guess?" "Ah! missa, I worth nothing to no one but you. If I you forced leave, I be no more happy in this world." "Well, there is one who thinks you worth two hundred pounds, and has offered that for you." "Who, missa?" "Why--he who sold you to papa--Mr Jessuron." "Allah help poor Yola! Oh! missa Kate, he bad master; he berry wicked man. Yola die--Cubina kill her! Yola herself kill rather than she go back to Jew slave-dealer! Good missa!--beauty missa!--you no sell you poor slave?" The girl fell upon her knees at the feet of her young mistress, with her hands clasped over her head, and for some moments remained in this attitude. "Don't fear my selling you," said the young lady, motioning the suppliant to rise to her feet; "least of all to him--whom I believe to be what you have styled him, a very wicked man. Have no fear for that. But tell me, what name was that you pronounced just now? _Cubina_, was it not?" "Yes, missa, Cubina." "And pray who is Cubina?" The brown maid hesitated before making reply, while the crimson began to show itself on her chestnut-coloured cheeks. "Oh, never mind!" said her young mistress, noticing her hesitation. "If there's any secret, Yola, I shall not insist upon an answer." "Missa, from you Yola no have secret. Cubina, he mountain man--Maroon." "What! is he the Maroon I am supposed to resemble?" "True, missa, he same." "Oh! I see how it is--I suppose that accounts for you thinking _me_ beautiful? This Cubina, no doubt, is a sweetheart of yours?" Yola lowered her eyes without making reply. The crimson appeared in deeper tint through the chestnut. "You need not answer, good Yola," said the young Creole, with a significant smile. "I know what your answer _ought_ to be, if you were to speak your mind. I think I have heard of this Cubina. Have a care, my girl! These Maroons are a very different sort of men from the coloured people on the plantations. Like me, he is--ha! ha! ha!" and the young beauty glanced coyly at the mirror. "Well, Yola, I'm not angry with you, since it is your sweetheart with whom I am compared. Love, they say, is a wonderful beautifier; and no doubt Master Cubina is, in your eyes, a perfect Endymion. "Come girl!" added she, coquettishly tossing the chestnut tresses over her shoulders of ivory, "I fear we have been wasting time. If I'm not ready to receive this grand guest, I'll get into trouble with papa. Go on, and trick me out in a style becoming the mistress of Mount Welcome." With a peal of merry laughter at the air of grandeur she had thus jestingly assumed, the young lady bent down her head, submitting her magnificent _chevelure_ to the manipulation of her maid. Volume One, Chapter XIII. QUASHIE. In less than half an hour after the brief conversation between Mr Montagu Smythje and the young steerage passenger, the _Sea Nymph_ had got warped into port, and was lying alongside the wharf. A gangway-plank was stretched from the shore; and over this, men and women, of all shades of colour, from blonde to ebony black, and of as many different callings, came crowding aboard; while the passengers, sick of the ship and everything belonging to her, hastened to get on shore. Half-naked porters--black, brown, and yellow--commenced wrangling over the luggage--dragging trunks, boxes, and bags in every direction but the right one, and clamouring their gumbo jargon with a volubility that resembled the jabbering of apes. On the wharf appeared a number of wheeled vehicles, that had evidently been awaiting the arrival of the ship--not hackneys, as would have been the case in a European port, but private carriages--some of them handsome "curricles" drawn by a pair, and driven by black Jehus in livery; others only gigs with a single horse, or two-wheelers of even an inferior description--according to the wealth or style of the individual for whose transport each had been brought to the port. Waggons, too, with teams of oxen--some having eight in the yoke--stood near the landing-place, waiting for baggage: the naked black drivers lounging silently by the animals, or occasionally calling them by their names, and talking to them, just as if their speeches had been understood! Among the different carriages ranged along the wharf, a handsome barouche appeared conspicuous. It was attached to a pair of cream-coloured horses, splendidly caparisoned. A mulatto coachman sat upon the box, shining in a livery of lightest green, with yellow facings; while a footman, in garments of like hue, attended at the carriage-step, holding the door for some one to get in. Herbert Vaughan, standing on the fore-deck of the _Sea Nymph_--as yet undecided as to whether he should then go ashore--had noticed this magnificent equipage. He was still gazing upon it, when his attention was attracted to two gentlemen, who, having walked direct from the vessel, had just arrived by the side of the carriage. A white servant followed them; and behind were two negro attendants, carrying a number of parcels of light luggage. One of the gentlemen and the white servant were easily recognised by Herbert: they were Mr Montagu Smythje and his valet. Herbert now recalled the odd expression made use of, but the moment before, by his fellow-passenger--that he was "consigned" to the proprietor of Mount Welcome. The carriage having received Mr Montagu Smythje, and the footman having mounted the box--leaving the rumble to the English valet--was driven off at full speed; the second gentleman, who appeared to be an overseer, following on horseback as an escort. Herbert watched the receding vehicle, until a turn in the road hid it from his view; and then, dropping his eyes towards the deck, he stood for some moments in a reflective attitude,--revolving in his mind some thoughts that were far from agreeable. No one there to meet _him_ and bid him welcome! The countenance of the young adventurer became clouded under the influence of this thought; and he stood silently gazing upon the deck with eyes that saw not. "Sa!" said a negro boy, at this moment stepping up and interrupting his reflections. "Ha!" rejoined Herbert, looking up and perceiving, with some surprise, that the darkey was regarding him with a fixed stare. "What might you want, my lad? If it be money, I have none to give you." "Money, sa? wharra fo' Quashie want money? He do wha' massr bid. Young buckra ready go now?" "Ready to go! where?--what mean you, boy?" "Go fo' da great house." "Great house! of what great house are you speaking?" "Moun' Welc'm', sa--Massr Va'n. You fo' Massr Va'n, sa?" "What!" exclaimed Herbert, in surprise, at the same time scanning the darkey from head to foot; "how do you know that, my boy?" "Quashie know dat well 'nuf. Cappen ob da big ship, obaseeah say so. Obaseeah point out young buckra from de waff--he send Quashie fetch young buckra to Moun' Welc'm'. Ready go now, sa?" "You are from Mount Welcome, then?" "Ya, sa--me hoss-boy da, an' pose-boy--fetch pony for young Englis' buckra. Obaseeah he bring b'rouche for grand Englis' buckra. Baggage dey go in de ox-waggon." "Where is your pony?" "Up yonna, sa; on de waff, sa. Ready go, sa?" "All right," said Herbert, now comprehending the situation of affairs. "Shoulder that portmanteau, and toss it into the waggon. Which road am I to take?" "Can't miss um road, sa--straight up da ribber till you come to de crossin'. Dar you take de road dat don't lead to da leff--you soon see Moun' Welc'm', sa." "How far is it?" "Bout sebben or eight mile, sa--reach dar long 'fore sun-down; pony go like de berry lightnin'. Sure you no keep to da left by da crossin'." Thus instructed, the young steerage-passenger took his departure from the ship--after bidding adieu to the friendly tars, who had treated him so handsomely during his irksome voyage. With his gun, a single-barrelled fowling-piece, on his shoulder, he strode over the platform, and up the wooden wharf. Then detaching the pony from the wheel of the ox-waggon, to which it had been tied, he threw himself into the saddle, and trotted off along the road pointed out as the one that would conduct him to Mount Welcome. The excitement produced by the sudden change from ship to shore--the stir of the streets through which he had to pass--the novel sights and sounds that at every step saluted his eyes and ears--hindered Herbert Vaughan from thinking of anything that concerned himself. Only for a short time, however, was his mind thus distracted from dwelling on his own affairs. Before he had ridden far, the road-- hitherto bordered by houses--entered under a dark canopy of forest foliage; and the young traveller, all at once, found himself surrounded by a perfect solitude. Under the sombre shadow of the trees, his spirit soon returned to its former gloomy forebodings; and, riding more slowly over a stretch of the road where the ground was wet and boggy, he fell into a train of thoughts that were anything but pleasant. The subject of his reflections may be easily guessed. He had not failed to notice--how could he?--the distinction made between himself and his fellow-voyager. While a splendid equipage had been waiting for the latter--and his landing had been made a sort of ovation, how different was the means of transport provided for him! "By the memory of my father!" muttered he, as he rode on, "it is an insult I shall not overlook: an insult to him more than to myself. But for the fulfilment of _his_ dying wish, I should not go one step farther and as he said this, he drew his rough roadster to a halt--as if half-resolved to put his hypothetic threat into practice. "Perhaps," he continued, again moving forward, with a more hopeful air, "perhaps there may be some mistake? But no," he added with a strong emphasis on the negative monosyllable, "there can be none! This shallow fop is a young man of fortune--I a child of misfortune;" and he smiled bitterly at the antithesis he had drawn; "that is the reason why such a distinction has been made between us. Be it so!" he continued, after a pause. "Poor as I am, this churlish relative will find me as proud as himself. I shall return him scorn for scorn. I shall demand an explanation of his behaviour; and the sooner I have it the better!" As if stimulated by a sense of the outrage, as also by a half-formed purpose of retaliation, the young adventurer gave the whip to his shaggy steed, and dashed onward at full gallop. Volume One, Chapter XIV. TRAVELLING AT THE TAIL. For nearly an hour did the cob continue its gallop, without pause or slacking. The road was a wide one, much tracked by wheels; and, as it ran in a direct course, the rider took it for granted he was keeping the right path. Now and then he caught a glimpse of water through the trees--no doubt, the river mentioned in the directions given him by the darkey. The crossing at length came in sight, causing him to desist from his rapid pace--in order that he might ford the stream. There was no appearance of a bridge. The water, however, was only knee-deep; and, without hesitation, the pony plunged in and waded over. Herbert halted on the opposite bank: for there appeared in front of him a dilemma. The road forked. The negro boy had warned him of this-- telling him at the same time to take the one that _didn't_ lead to "da leff"; but instead of two "tines" to the fork, there were _three_! Here was a puzzle. It was easy enough to know which of the three _not_ to take--the one that _did_ lead to "da leff"; but which of the other two was to be chosen was the point that appeared to present a difficulty in the solution. Both were plain, good roads; and each as likely as the other to be the one which would conduct him to Mount Welcome. Had his rider left the pony to its own guidance, perhaps it would have chosen the right road. In all likelihood he would have done so in the end; but, before determining on any particular line of action, he thought it better to look for the wheel-tracks of the carriage, that he knew must have passed in advance of him. While thus cogitating, the silence occasioned by his momentary halt was all at once interrupted by a voice that sounded at his very side, and the tones of which he fancied were not new to him. On suddenly turning in the saddle, and looking in the direction whence the voice appeared to proceed, what was his astonishment on beholding the negro boy--the veritable Quashie! "Da, sa! das da crossin' me you tell 'bout; you no take by de leff--dat lead to ole Jew penn; nor da right--he go to Mon'gew Cassel; de middle Massr Va'n road--he go straight na Moun' Welc'm'." The young traveller sat for some moments without speaking, or making reply in any way--surprise, as by a spell, holding him silent. He had left the boy on the forward deck of the ship, to look after his luggage; and he had seen him--he could almost swear to it--still on board, as he rode away from the wharf! Moreover, he had ridden a stretch of many miles--most of the way at full gallop, and all of it at a pace with which no pedestrian could possibly have kept up! How, then, was he to account for the lad's presence upon the spot? This was the first question that occurred to him; and which he put to the darkey, as soon as he had sufficiently recovered from his surprise to be able to speak. "Quashie foller young buckra--at him pony heels." The answer went but a short way towards enlightening the "young buckra;" since he still believed it utterly impossible for any human being to have travelled as fast as he had ridden. "At the pony's heels! What, my black skin! do you mean to say you have run all the way after me from the landing-place?" "Ya, sa: dat hab Quashie do." "But I saw you on board the ship as I started off. How on earth could you have overtaken me?" "Yaw, massa, dat wa' easy 'nuf. Young buckra, he start off; Quashie, he put him porkmantle in da ox-waggon, an' den he foller. Buckra, he go slow at fuss, Quashie soon cotch up, and den easy run 'long wi' da pony--not much in dat, sa." "Not much! Why, you imp of darkness, I have been riding at the rate of ten miles an hour, and how you've kept up with me is beyond my comprehension! Well, you're a noble runner, that I will say! I'd back you at a foot-race against all comers, whether black ones or white ones. The middle road, you say?" "Ya, sa, dat de way to Moun' Welc'm'; you soon see de big gate ob de plantation." Herbert headed his roadster in the direction indicated; and moved onward along the path--his thoughts still dwelling on the odd incident. He had proceeded but a few lengths of his pony, when he was tempted to look back--partly to ascertain if Quashie was still following him, and partly with the intention of putting a query to this singular escort. A fresh surprise was in store for him. The darkey was nowhere to be seen! Neither to the right, nor the left, nor yet in the rear, was he visible! "Where the deuce can the boy have gone?" inquired Herbert, involuntarily, at the same time scanning the underwood on both sides of the road. "Hya, sa!" answered a voice, that appeared to come out of the ground close behind--while at the same instant the brown mop of Quashie, just visible over the croup of the cob, proclaimed his whereabouts. How the boy had been able to keep up with the pony was at length explained: he had been _holding on to its tail_! There was something so ludicrous in the sight, that the young Englishman forgot for a moment the grave thoughts that had been harassing him; and once more checking his steed into a halt, gave utterance to roars of laughter. The darkey joined in his mirth with a grin that extended his mouth from ear to ear--though he was utterly unconscious of what the young buckra was laughing at. He could not see anything comic in a custom which he was almost daily in the habit of practising--for it was not the first time Quashie had travelled at the tail of a horse. Journeying about half a mile further along the main road, the entrance-gate of Mount Welcome was reached. There was no lodge--only a pair of grand stone piers, with a wing of strong mason-work on each flank, and a massive folding gate between them. From the directions Herbert had already received, he might have known this to be the entrance to his uncle's plantation; but Quashie, still clinging to the pony's tail, removed all doubt by crying out,-- "Da's da gate, buckra gemman--da's de way fo' Moun' Welc'm'!" On passing through the gateway, the mansion itself came in sight--its white walls and green jalousies shining conspicuously at the extreme end of the long avenue; which last, with its bordering rows of palms and tamarinds, gave to the approach an air of aristocratic grandeur. Herbert had been prepared for something of this kind. He had heard at home that his father's brother was a man of great wealth; and this was nearly all his father had himself known respecting him. The equipage which had transported his more favoured fellow-voyager--and which had passed over the same road about an hour before him--also gave evidence of the grand style in which his uncle lived. The mansion now before his eyes was in correspondence with what he had heard and seen. There could be no doubt that his uncle was one of the grandees of the island. The reflection gave him less pleasure than pain. His pride had been already wounded; and as he looked up the noble avenue, he was oppressed with a presentiment that some even greater humiliation was in store for him. "Tell me, Quashie," said he, after a spell of painful reflection, "was it your master himself who gave you directions about conducting me to Mount Welcome? Or did you have your orders from the overseer?" "Massr no me speak 'bout you, sa; I no hear him say nuffin." "The overseer, then?" "Ya, sa, de obaseeah." "What did he tell you to do? Tell me as near as you can; and I may make you a present one of these days." "Gorry, massr buckra! I you tell all he say, 'zactly as he say um. `Quashie,' say he, `Quashie,' he say, `you go down board de big ship; you see dat ere young buckra'--dat war yourseff, sa--`you fotch 'im up to de ox-waggon, you fotch 'im baggage, too; you mount 'im on Coco,'-- da's de pony's name--`and den you fetch him home to _my_ house.' Da's all he say--ebbery word." "To _his_ house? Mount Welcome, you mean!" "No, young buckra gemman--to de obaseeah own house. And now we jess got to da road dat lead dar. Dis way, sa! dis way!" The darkey pointed to a bye-road, that, forking off from the main avenue, ran in the direction of the ridge, where it entered into a tract of thick woods. Herbert checked the pony to a halt, and sat gazing at his guide, in mute surprise. "Dis way, sa!" repeated the boy. "Yonna's de obaseeah's house. You see wha da smoke rise, jess ober de big trees?" "What do you mean, my good fellow? What have I to do with the overseer's house?" "We's agwine da, sa." "Who? you?" "Boff, sa; an' Coco too." "Have you taken leave of your senses, you imp of darkness?" "No, sa; Quashie only do what him bid. Da obaseeah Quashie bid fotch young buckra to him house. Dis yeer's da way." "I tell you, boy, you must be mistaken. It is to Mount Welcome I am going--my uncle's house--up yonder!" "No, buckra gemman, me no mistake. Da obaseeah berry partikler 'bout dat same. He tell me you no fo' da great house--da Buff. He say me fotch you to 'im _own_ house." "Are you sure of that?" Herbert, as he put this interrogatory, leant forward in the saddle, and listened attentively for the reply. "Lor, buckra gemman! I'se sure ob it as de sun am in de hebbens dar. I swa' it, if you like." On hearing this positive affirmation, the young Englishman sat for a moment, as if wrapt in a profound and painful reverie. His breast rose and fell as though some terrible truth was breaking upon him, which he was endeavouring to disbelieve. At this moment, Quashie caught the rein of the bridle, and was about to lead the pony into the bye-path. "No!" shouted the rider, in a voice loud and angry. "Let go, boy! let go, or I'll give you the whip. This is _my_ way." And, wrenching the rein from the grasp of his sable guide, he headed the pony back into the main avenue. Then laying on the lash with all his might, he pressed forward, at full gallop, in the direction of the "great house." Volume One, Chapter XV. A SLIPPERY FLOOR. The carriage conveying Mr Montagu Smythje from Montego Bay to Mount Welcome, passed up the avenue and arrived at the great house, just one hour before Herbert Vaughan, mounted on his rough roadster, and guided by Quashie, made his appearance at the entrance-gate of the plantation. Mr Smythje had arrived at half-past three, p.m. Four was the regular dining hour at Mount Welcome: so that there was just neat time for the valet to unpack the ample valises and portmanteaus, and dress his master for the table. It had been the aim of Mr Vaughan to make the introduction of Mr Smythje to his daughter as effective as possible. He was sage enough to know the power of first appearances. For this reason, he had managed to keep them apart until the moment of meeting at the dinner-table, when both should appear under the advantage of a full dress. So far as the impression to be made on Mr Smythje was concerned, Mr Vaughan's scheme was perfectly successful. His daughter really appeared superb--radiant as the crimson quamoclit that glistened amidst the plaits of her hair; graceful as nature, and elegant as art, could make her. The heart of the cockney felt--perhaps for the first time in his life-- that true sentiment of admiration which beauty, combined with virgin modesty, is almost certain to inspire. For a moment, the remembrance of the ballet girl and the lewd recollections of the _bagnio_ were obliterated; and a graver and nobler inspiration took their place. Even vulgar Loftus Vaughan had skill enough to note this effect; but how long it would last--how long the plant of a pure passion would flourish in that uncongenial soil--was a question which it required an abler physiologist than Loftus Vaughan to determine. The sugar-planter congratulated himself upon his success. Smythje was smitten, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Had the calculating father been equally anxious to perceive a _reciprocity_ of this fine first impression, he would have been doomed to a disappointment. As certainly as that of Mr Smythje was a sentiment of admiration, so certainly was that of Kate Vaughan a feeling of _degout_; or at least of indifference. In truth, the Londoner had made a most unfortunate _debut_. A _contretemps_ had occurred in the ceremony of introduction--just at that crisis-moment when all eyes are sharply set, and all ears acutely bent in mutual _reconnoissance_. Mr Vaughan had committed a grand error in causing the presentation to take place in the grand hall. Ice itself was not more slippery than its floor. The consequence was unavoidable; and the cockney, essaying one of his most graceful attitudes, fell flat upon his face at the feet of her he simply intended to have saluted! In that fall he had lost everything--every chance of winning Kate Vaughan's heart. A thousand acts of gracefulness, a thousand deeds of heroism, would not have set him up again, after that unfortunate fall. It was a clear paraphrase of the downfall of Humpty Dumpty--the restoration alike hopeless, alike impossible. Mr Montagu Smythje was too well stocked with self-complacency to suffer much embarrassment from a _lapsus_ of so trifling a character. His valet had him upon his feet in a trice; and with a "Haw-haw!" and the remark that the floor was "demmed swippeway," he crept cautiously to his chair, and seated himself. Though the Londoner had been all his life accustomed to dining well, he could not help indulging in some surprise at the plentiful and luxurious repast that was placed before him. Perhaps in no part of the world does the table groan under a greater load of rich viands than in the West Indian Islands. In the prosperous times of sugar-planting, a Jamaican dinner was deserving of the name of feast. Turtle was the common soup; and the most sumptuous dishes were arranged thickly over the board. Even the ordinary every-day dessert was a spread worthy of Apicius; and the wines--instead of those dull twin poisons, port and sherry--were south-side Madeira, champagne, claret, and sparkling hock--all quaffed in copious flagons, plenteous as small beer. These were glorious times for the white-skinned oligarchy of the sugar islands--the days of revel and rollicky living--before the wedge of Wilberforce split the dark pedestal which propped up their pomp and prosperity. A dinner of this good old-fashioned style had Loftus Vaughan prepared for his English guest. Behind the chairs appeared troops of coloured attendants, gliding silently over the smooth floor. A constant stream of domestics poured in and out of the hall, fetching and removing the dishes and plates, or carrying the wine decanters in silver coolers. Young girls of various shades of complexion--some nearly white--stood at intervals around the table, fanning the guests with long peacock plumes, and filling the great hall with an artificial current of delicious coolness. Montagu Smythje was delighted. Even in his "dear metwopolis" he had never dined so luxuriously. "Spwendid, spwendid--'pon honaw! A dinner fit for a pwince!" he exclaimed, in compliment to his entertainer. The savoury dishes were partaken of, and removed, and the table, arranged for _dessert_, exhibited that gorgeous profusion which a tropic clime can alone produce--where almost every order of the botanical world supplies some fruit or berry of rarest excellence. Alone in the intertropical regions of the New-World may such variety be seen--a _dessert table_ upon which Pomona appears to have poured forth her golden _cornucopiae_. The cloth having been removed from the highly-polished table, the sparkling decanters were once more passed round. In honour of his guest, the planter had already made free with his own wines, all of which were of most excellent quality. Loftus Vaughan was at that moment at a maximum of enjoyment. Just at that very moment, however, a cloud was making its appearance on the edge of the sky. It was a very little cloud, and still very far off; but, for all that, a careful observer could have seen that its shadow became reflected on the brow of the planter. Literally speaking, this cloud was an object on the earth, of shape half human, half equine, that appeared near the extreme end of the long avenue, moving towards the house. When first seen by Loftus Vaughan, it was still distant, though not so far off but that, with the naked eye, he could distinguish a man on horseback. From that moment he might have been observed to turn about in his chair--at short intervals casting uneasy glances upon the centaurean form that was gradually growing bigger as it advanced. For a time, the expression on the face of Mr Vaughan was far from being a marked one. The looks that conveyed it were furtive, and might have passed unnoticed by the superficial observer. They had, in fact, escaped the notice both of his daughter and his guest; and it was not until after the horseman had made halt at the entrance of the bye-path, and was seen coming on for the house, that the attention of either was drawn to the singular behaviour of Mr Vaughan. Then, however, his nervous anxiety had become so undisguisedly patent, as to elicit from Miss Vaughan an ejaculation of alarm; while the cockney involuntarily exclaimed, "Bless ma soul!" adding the interrogatory,-- "Anything wong, sir?" "Oh! nothing!" stammered the planter; "only--only--a little surprise-- that's all." "Surprise, papa! what has caused it? Oh, see! yonder is some one on horseback--a man--a young man. I declare it is our own pony he is riding; and that is Quashie running behind him! How very amusing! Papa, what is it all about?" "Tut! sit down, child!" commanded the father, in a tone of nervous perplexity. "Sit down, I say! Whoever it be, it will be time enough to know when he arrives. Kate! Kate! 'tis not well-bred of you to interrupt our dessert. Mr Smythje--glass of Madeira with you, sir?" "Plesyaw!" answered the exquisite, turning once more to the table, and occupying himself with the decanter. Kate obeyed the command with a look that expressed both reluctance and surprise. She was slightly awed, too; not so much by the words, as the severe glance that accompanied them. She made no reply, but sat gazing with a mystified air in the face of her father--who, hob-nobbing with his guest, affected not to notice her. The pony and his rider were no longer visible: as they were now too close to the house to be seen over the sill of the window; but the clattering hoofs could be heard, the sounds coming nearer and nearer. Mr Vaughan was endeavouring to appear collected, and to say something; but his _sang froid_ was assumed and unnatural; and being unable to keep up the conversation, an ominous silence succeeded. The sound of the hoofs ceased to be heard. The pony, having arrived under the windows, had been brought to a halt. Then there were voices--earnest and rather loud. They were succeeded by the noise of footsteps on the stone stairway. Someone was coming up the steps. Mr Vaughan looked aghast. All his fine plans were about to be frustrated. There was a hitch in the programme--Quashie had failed in the performance of _his_ part. "Aha!" ejaculated the planter, with returning delight, as the smooth, trim countenance of his overseer made its appearance above the landing. "Mr Trusty wishes to speak with me. Your pardon, Mr Smythje--only for one moment." Mr Vaughan rose from his seat, and hastened, as if wishing to meet the overseer, before the latter could enter the room. Trusty, however, had already stepped inside the doorway; and, not being much of a diplomatist, had bluntly declared his errand--in _sotto voce_, it is true, but still not low enough to hinder a part of his communication from being heard. Among other words, the phrase "your nephew" reached the ears of Kate--at that moment keenly bent to catch every sound. The reply was also partially heard, though delivered in a low and apparently tremulous voice:--"Show him--summer-house--garden--tell him to wait--there presently." Mr Vaughan turned back to the table with a half-satisfied air. He was fancying that he had escaped from his dilemma, at least, for the time; but the expression which he perceived on the countenance of his daughter restored his suspicions that all was not right. Scarce a second was he left in doubt, for almost on the instant, Kate cried out, in a tone of pleased surprise,-- "Oh, papa, what do I hear? Did not Mr Trusty say something about `your nephew'? After all, has cousin come? Is it he who--" "Kate, my child," quickly interrupted her father, and appearing not to have understood her interrogatory, "you may retire to your room. Mr Smythje and I would like to have our cigar; and the smoke of tobacco don't agree with you. Go, child--go!" The young girl instantly rose from her chair, and hastened to obey the command--notwithstanding the protestations of Mr Smythje, who looked as if he would have much preferred her company to the cigar. But her father hurriedly repeated the "Go, child--go!" accompanying the words with another of those severe glances which had already awed and mystified her. Before she had passed fairly out of the great hall, however, her thoughts reverted to the unanswered interrogatory; and as she crossed the threshold of her chamber, she was heard muttering to herself: "I wonder if cousin be come!" Volume One, Chapter XVI. THE KIOSK. A portion of the level platform, on which Mount Welcome was built, extended to the rear of the dwelling; and was occupied, as already described, by a garden filled with rare and beautiful plants. Near the midst of this garden, and about a dozen paces from the house, stood a small detached building--a summer-house--the materials of which were ornamental woods of various kinds, all natives of the island, famed for such products. The pieces composing this summer-house, or "kiosk," as it was habitually called, had all been cut and carved with skilful care; and the whole structure had been designed as a representation of a miniature temple, with a cupola upon its top, surmounted by a gilded and glittering vane. Inside there were neither stairs nor partitions--the whole space being taken up by a single apartment. There were no glass windows: but all around, the walls were open, or closed only with Venetian blinds, the laths of which were of the finest mahogany. A Chinese mat covered the floor, and a rustic table of bamboo cane pieces, with some half-dozen chairs of like manufacture, constituted the principal part of the furniture. On the aforesaid table stood an inkstand of silver, elaborately chased, with plume pens pertaining to it. Some writing-paper lay beside it; and on a silver tray there were wafers, red sealing-wax, and a signet seal. An escritoire stood on one side; and two or three dozen volumes placed upon the top of this--with a like number thrown carelessly on chairs-- formed the library of Mount Welcome. Some magazines and journals lay upon the centre-table, and a box of best Havannahs--open and half used--showed that the summer-house served occasionally for a smoking-room. It was sometimes styled the "Library," though its purposes were many. Mr Vaughan, at times, used it for the reception of visitors--such as might have come upon errands of business--such, in short, as were not deemed worthy of being introduced to the company of the grand hall. Just at the moment when Kate Vaughan quitted the dinner-table, a young man was shown into this detached apartment, Mr Trusty, the overseer, acting as his chaperon. It is not necessary to say that this young man was Herbert Vaughan. How he came to be conducted thither is easily explained. On learning from Quashie the destination designed for him--aggrieved and angry at the revelation--he had hurried in hot haste up to the house. To Mr Trusty, who was keeping guard at the bottom of the stairway, he had announced his relationship with Mr Vaughan, and demanded an interview-- making his requisition in such energetic terms as to disturb the habitual _sang froid_ of the overseer, and compel him to the instantaneous delivery of his message. Indeed, so indignant did Herbert feel, that he would have mounted the steps and entered the house without further parley, had not Mr Trusty put forth his blandest entreaties to prevent such a terrible catastrophe. "Patience, my good sir!" urged the overseer, interposing himself between the new comer and the stairway; "Mr Vaughan _will_ see you, presently-- not just this moment; he is engaged--company with him. The family's at dinner." So far from soothing the chafed spirit of the young man, the announcement was only a new mortification. At dinner, and with company--the cabin-passenger, of course--the ward--not even a relative-- while he, the nephew--no dinner for him! In truth, Herbert recognised in this incident a fresh outrage. With an effort, he gave up the idea of ascending the stairs. Poor though he was, he was nevertheless a gentleman; and good breeding stepped in to restrain him from this unbidden intrusion: though more than ever did he feel convinced that an insult was put upon him, and one that almost appeared premeditated. He stood balancing in his mind whether he should turn upon his heel, and depart from his uncle's house without entering it. A feather would have brought down the scale. The feather fell on the negative side, and decided him to remain. On being conducted into the summer-house and left to himself, he showed no wish to be seated; but paced the little apartment backward and forward in a state of nervous agitation. He took but slight heed of aught that was there. He was in no mood for minutely observing--though he could not help noticing the luxurious elegance that surrounded him: the grandeur of the great house itself; the splendid _parterres_ and gardens filled with plants and flowers of exquisite beauty and fragrant perfume. These fine sights, however, instead of soothing his chafed spirit, only made him more bitterly sensible of his own poor fortunes, and the immeasurable distance that separated him from his proud, rich uncle. Through the open sides of the kiosk he merely glanced hastily at the grounds; and then his eyes became bent upon the great house--directed habitually towards an entrance at the back that by a flight of steps conducted into the garden. By this entrance he expected his uncle would come out; and in angry impatience did he await his coming. Had he seen the beautiful eyes that were, at that moment, tenderly gazing upon him from behind the lattice-work of the opposite window, perhaps the sight would have gone far towards soothing his irate soul. But he saw them not. The jalousies were closed; and though from the shadowy interior of the chamber, the kiosk and its occupant were in full view, the young Englishman had no suspicion that he was at that moment the object of observation--perhaps of admiration--by a pair of the loveliest eyes in the island of Jamaica. After turning, for the twentieth time, across the floor--at each turn scanning the stairs with fresh impatience--he somewhat spitefully laid hold of a book, and opened it--in the hope of being able to kill time over its pages. The volume which came into his hands--by chance: he had not chosen it-- was but little calculated to tranquillise his troubled spirit. It was a digest of the statutes of Jamaica relating to slavery--the famous, or rather infamous, _black code_ of the island. There he read: that a man might mutilate his own image in the person of a fellow-man--torture him, even to death, and escape with the punishment of a paltry fine! That a man with a black skin--or even white, if at all tainted with African blood--could hold no real estate, no office of trust; could give no evidence in a court of law--not even had he been witness of the crime of murder; that such a man must not keep or ride a horse; must not carry a gun, or other weapon of defence; must not defend himself when assaulted; must not defend wife, sister, or daughter--even when ruffian hands were tearing them from him for the most unholy of purposes! In short, that a _man of colour_ must do nothing to make himself different from a docile and submissive brute! To the young Englishman, fresh from a Christian land--at that period ringing with the eloquent denunciations of a Wilberforce, and the philanthropic appeals of a Clarkson--the perusal of this execrable statute-book, instead of producing tranquillity, only infused fresh bitterness into his soul; and stamping his foot fiercely on the floor, he flung the detestable volume back to its place. At that moment--just as he had reached the maximum of reckless defiance--a noise was heard in the direction of the great house, and the door of the stair-landing was seen to turn on its hinges. Of course, he expected to see a surly old uncle, and was resolved to be as surly as he. On the contrary, and to his pleased surprise, he beheld in the doorway a beautiful young girl, bending her eyes upon him with an affectionate look, and as if courting recognition! A sudden revulsion of feeling passed through his whole frame; his countenance changed its angry expression to one of admiration; and, unable to utter a word, he remained silently gazing on this lovely apparition. Volume One, Chapter XVII. A BOLD RESOLVE. Far better would it have been for Mr Vaughan--at least, for the success of his schemes--had he adopted an honourable course with his nephew; and at once introduced him, openly and above-board, to his table, his daughter, and his aristocratic guest. Had he known before dinner what he was made aware of in less than five minutes after it, he would, in all likelihood, have adopted this course. It would have spared him the chagrin he was made to feel, on Mr Smythje reporting to him the encounter he had had on board ship--which the latter proceeded to do, the moment after Kate had been so unceremoniously dismissed from the hall. Smythje had also overheard the communication of the overseer--the word "nephew," at least--and this recalled to his mind--not without some unpleasant remembrance of the satire from which he had suffered--the steerage passenger who had treated him so brusquely on board the _Sea Nymph_. The miserable bubble was burst; and the onus of a somewhat bungling explanation was put upon the shoulders of the pompous planter--into whose heart a bitter drop of gall was infused by the disclosure. As the deception could be sustained no longer, the relationship was necessarily acknowledged; but the spark of ire thus introduced boded a still more unwelcome reception to the unlucky nephew. The planter partially cleared himself of the scrape by a false representation. In other words, he told a lie, in saying that his nephew had not been expected. Smythje knew it was a lie, but said nothing; and the subject was allowed to drop. Loftus Vaughan was a common man; and the course he had followed--shallow and self-defeating--was proof of an intellect as low as its morality. By his shabby treatment of his nephew, he was investing that young man with a romantic interest in the eyes of his daughter, that perhaps might never have been felt, or, at all events, not so readily. Misfortune-- especially that which springs from persecution--is a grand suggester of sympathy--that is, when the appeal is made to noble hearts; and the heart of Kate Vaughan was of this quality. Moreover, this surreptitious dealing with the poor relative--smuggling him into the house like a bale of contraband goods--was sufficient of itself to pique the curiosity of those whom it was meant to mystify. So far as Kate Vaughan was concerned, that very effect it produced: for, on leaving the dining-room--from which, to say the truth, she was only too happy to escape--the young girl glided at once to that window that opened out upon the garden; and, parting the lattice with her fingers, looked eagerly through. In the brief undertone that had passed between her father and the overseer, she had heard the command, "Show him to the summer-house." She knew that the summer-house was within view of her chamber-window. She was curious to see what in all her life she had never beheld--a _cousin_. Her curiosity was not balked. On looking through the lattice, her cousin was before her eyes--pacing the little apartment as described. With his braided frock, buttoned tightly over his breast--glittering Hessian boots on his well-turned limbs--his neat three-cornered hat set lightly over his brown curls--he was not a sight likely to terrify a young girl--least of all a cousin. Even the bold, somewhat fierce, expression upon his countenance--at that moment reflecting the angry emotions that were stirring within him--did not, in the eyes of the young Creole, detract from the beauty of the face she saw before her. What impression did the sight produce? Certainly not terror--certainly not dislike. On the contrary, she appeared gratified by it: else, why did she continue her gaze, and gaze so earnestly? Why became her eyes filled with fire, and fixed, as by some fascination? Why did her young bosom heave and fall, as if some new, undefinable emotion was for the first time germinating within it? For some moments she remained in the same attitude, gazing steadfastly and silent. Then, without turning, there escaped from her lips, low murmured, and as if by an involuntary effort, the interrogatory,--"Yola! is he not beautiful?" "Beautiful, missa," repeated the maid, who had not yet beheld the object for whom this admiration was meant; "who beautiful?" "Who? My cousin, Yola." "You cousin--what cousin, young missa?" "Look yonder, and see! That's my cousin." "I see a man." "Ah! and saw you ever such a man?" "True, missa; never see man look so--he surely angry, missa?" "Angry?" "Berry angry. He go back, he go forward, like hyena in a cage." "He is only impatient at being kept waiting. My word! I think he looks all the better for it. Ah! see how his eye flashes. Oh! Yola, how handsome he is--how different from the young men of this island. Is he not a beautiful fellow?" "He curled hair, like Cubina!" "Cubina! ha! ha! ha! This Cubina must be a very Proteus, as well as an Adonis. Do you see any other resemblance, except in the hair? If so, my cousin may, perhaps, resemble _me_." "Cubina much darker in de colour ob him skin, missa." "Ha! ha! that is not unlikely." "Cubina same size--same shape--'zactly same shape." "Then I should say that Cubina is a good shape; for, if I know anything of what a man ought to be, that cousin of mine is the correct thing. See those arms! they look as if he could drag down that great tamarind with them! Gracious me! he appears as if he intended doing it! Surely, he must be very impatient? And, after his coming so far, for papa to keep him waiting in this fashion! I really think I should go down to him myself. What is your opinion, Yola? Would it be wrong for me to go and speak with him? He is my cousin." "What am cousin, missa?" "Why, cousin is--is--something like a brother--only not exactly--that is--it's not quite the same thing." "Brudder! Oh, missa! if he Yola brudder, she him speak; she care not who be angry." "True, Yola; and if he were my brother--alas! I have none--I should do the same without hesitation. But with a cousin--that's different. Besides, papa don't like this cousin of mine--for some reason or another. I wonder what he can have against him. I can't see; and surely it can be no reason for _my_ not liking him? And, surely, his being my cousin is just why I should go down and talk to him. "Besides," continued the young girl, speaking to herself rather than to the maid, "he appears very, very impatient. Papa may keep him waiting-- who knows how long? since he is so taken up with this Mr Montagu What's-his-name! Well, I may be doing wrong--perhaps papa will be angry--perhaps he won't know anything about it! Right or wrong, I'll go! I _shall_ go!" So saying, the young Creole snatched a scarf from the fauteuil; flung it over her shoulders; and, gliding from the chamber, tripped silently along the passage that conducted towards the rear of the dwelling. Volume One, Chapter XVIII. THE ENCOUNTER OF THE COUSINS. Opening the door, and passing out, Kate Vaughan paused timidly upon the top of the stairway that led down into the garden. Her steps were stayed by a feeling of bashful reserve, that was struggling to restrain her from carrying out a resolve somewhat hastily formed. Her hesitancy was but the matter of a moment; for on the next--her resolution having become fixed--she descended the stairs, and advanced blushingly towards the kiosk. Herbert had not quite recovered from surprise at the unexpected apparition, when he was saluted by the endearing interrogatory,--"Are you my cousin?" The question, so _naively_ put, remained for a moment unanswered: for the tone of kindness in which it was spoken had caused him a fresh surprise, and he was too much confused to make answer. He soon found speech, however, for the hypothetical reply:-- "If you are the daughter of Mr Loftus Vaughan--" "I am." "Then I am proud of calling myself your cousin. I am Herbert Vaughan-- from England." Still under the influence of the slight which he believed had been put upon him, Herbert made this announcement with a certain stiffness of manner, which the young girl could not fail to notice. It produced a momentary incongeniality, that was in danger of degenerating into a positive coolness; and Kate, who had come forth under the promptings of an affectionate instinct, trembled under a repulse, the cause of which she could not comprehend. It did not, however, hinder her from courteously rejoining:-- "We were expecting you--as father had received your letter; but not to-day. Papa said not before to-morrow. Permit me, cousin, to welcome you to Jamaica." Herbert bowed profoundly. Again the young creole felt her warm impulses painfully checked; and, blushing with embarrassment, she stood in an attitude of indecision. Herbert, whose heart had been melting like snow under a tropic sun, now became sensible that he was committing a rudeness; which, so far from being natural to him, was costing him a struggle to counterfeit. Why should the sins of the father be visited on the child--and such a child? With a reflection kindred to this, the young man hastened to change his attitude of cold reserve. "Thanks for your kind welcome!" said he, now speaking in a tone of affectionate frankness; "But, fair cousin, you have not told me your name." "Catherine--though I am usually addressed by the shorter synonym, Kate." "Catherine! that is a family name with us. My fathers mother, and your father's, too--our grandmamma--was a Catherine. Was it also your mother's name?" "No; my mother was called Quasheba." "Quasheba! that is a very singular name." "Do you think so, cousin? I am sometimes called Quasheba myself--only by the old people of the plantation, who knew my mother. Lilly Quasheba they call me. Papa does not like it, and forbids them." "Was your mother an Englishwoman?" "Oh, no! she was born in Jamaica, and died while I was very young--too young to remember her. Indeed, cousin, I may say I never knew what it was to have a mother!" "Nor I much, cousin Kate. My mother also died early. But are you my only cousin?--no sisters nor brothers?" "Not one. Ah! I wish I had sisters and brothers!" "Why do you wish that?" "Oh, how can you ask such a question? For companions, of course." "Fair cousin! I should think _you_ would find companions enough in this beautiful island." "Ah! enough, perhaps; but none whom I like--at least, not as I think I should like a sister or brother. Indeed," added the young girl, in a reflective tone, "I sometimes feel lonely enough!" "Ah!" "Perhaps, now that we are to have guests, it will be different. Mr Smythje is very amusing." "Mr Smythje! Who is he?" "What! you do not know Mr Smythje? I thought that you and he came over in the same ship? Papa said so; and that _you_ were not to be here until to-morrow. I think you have taken him by surprise in coming to-day. But why did you not ride out with Mr Smythje? He arrived here only one hour before you, and has just dined with us. I have left the table this moment, for papa and him to have their cigars. But, bless me, cousin! Pardon me for not asking--perhaps _you_ have not dined yet?" "No," replied Herbert, in a tone that expressed chagrin, "nor am I likely to dine here, to-day." The storm of queries with which, in the simplicity of her heart, the young Creole thus assailed him, once more brought back that train of bitter reflections, from which her fair presence and sweet converse had for the moment rescued him. Hence the character of his reply. "And why, cousin Herbert?" asked she, with a marked air of surprise. "If you have not dined, it is not too late. Why not here?" "Because,"--and the young man drew himself proudly up--"I prefer going without dinner to dining where I am not welcome. In Mount Welcome, it seems, I am _not_ welcome." "Oh, cousin--!" The words, and the appealing accent, were alike interrupted. The door upon the landing turned upon its hinge, and Loftus Vaughan appeared in the doorway. "Your father?" "My father!" "Kate!" cried the planter, in a tone that bespoke displeasure, "Mr Smythje would like to hear you play upon the harp. I have been looking for you in your room, and all over the house. What are you doing out there?" The language was coarse and common--the manner that of a vulgar man flushed with wine. "Oh, papa! cousin Herbert is here. He is waiting to see you." "Come you here, then! Come at once. Mr Smythje is waiting for you." And with this imperious rejoinder Mr Vaughan reentered the house. "Cousin! I must leave you." "Yes; I perceive it. One more worthy than I claims your company. Go! Mr Smythje is impatient." "It is papa." "Kate! Kate! are you coming? Haste, girl! haste, I say!" "Go, Miss Vaughan! Farewell!" "Miss Vaughan? Farewell?" Mystified and distressed by those strange-sounding words, the young girl stood for some seconds undecided, but the voice of her father again came ringing along the corridor--now in tones irate and commanding. Obedience could no longer be delayed; and, with a half-puzzled, half-reproachful glance at her cousin, she reluctantly parted from his presence. Volume One, Chapter XIX. A SURLY RECEPTION. After the young Creole had disappeared within the entrance, Herbert remained in a state of indecision as to how he should act. He no longer needed an interview with his uncle, for the sake of having an explanation. This new slight had crowned his convictions that he was there an unwelcome guest; and no possible apology could now retrieve the ill-treatment he had experienced. He would have walked off on the instant without a word; but, stung to the quick by the series of insults he had received, the instinct of retaliation had sprung up within him, and determined him to stay--at all events, until he could meet his relative face to face, and reproach him with his unnatural conduct. He was recklessly indifferent as to the result. With this object, he continued in the kiosk--his patience being now baited with the prospect of that slight satisfaction. He knew that his uncle might not care much for what he should say: it was not likely such a nature would be affected by reproach. Nevertheless, the proud young man could not resist the temptation of giving words to his defiance--as the only means of mollifying the mortification he so keenly felt. The tones of a harp, vibrating through the far interior of the dwelling, faintly reached the kiosk; but they fell on his ear without any soothing effect. Rather did they add to his irritation: for he could almost fancy the music was meant to mock him in his misery. But no; on second thoughts, that could not be. Surely, that sweet strain was not intended to tantalise him. He caught the air. It was one equally appropriate to the instrument and to his own situation. It was the "Exile of Erin." Presently a voice was heard accompanying the music--a woman's voice-- easily recognisable as that of Kate Vaughan. He listened attentively. At intervals he could hear the words. How like to his own thoughts! "`Sad is my fate,' said the heart-broken stranger; `The wild deer and wolf to the covert can flee, But I have no refuge from famine and danger-- A home and a country remain not to me!'" Perhaps the singer intended it as a song of sympathy for him? It certainly exerted an influence over his spirits, melting him to a degree of tenderness. Not for long, however, did this feeling continue. As the last notes of the lay died away in the distant corridor, the rough baritones of the planter and his guest were heard joining in loud laughter--perhaps some joke at the expense of himself, the poor exile? Shortly after, a heavy footstep echoed along the passage. The door opened; and Herbert perceived it was his uncle, who had at length found time to honour him with an interview. Though so joyous but the moment before, all traces of mirth had disappeared from the countenance of Loftus Vaughan, when he presented himself before the eyes of his nephew. His face, habitually red, was fired with the wine he had been drinking to the hue of scarlet. Nevertheless, an ominous mottling of a darker colour upon his broad massive brow foretold the ungracious reception his relative was likely to have at his hands. His first words were uttered in a tone of insolent coolness:-- "So you are my brother's son, are you?" There was no extending of the hand, no gesture--not even a smile of welcome! Herbert checked his anger, and simply answered,-- "I believe so." "And pray, sir, what errand has brought you out to Jamaica?" "If you have received my letter, as I presume you have, it will have answered that question." "Oh, indeed!" exclaimed Mr Vaughan, with an attempt at cynicism, but evidently taken down by the unexpected style of the reply. "And what, may I ask, do you purpose doing here?" "Have not the slightest idea," answered Herbert, with a provoking air of independence. "Have you any profession?" "Unfortunately, not any." "Any trade?--I suppose not." "Your suppositions are perfectly correct." "Then, sir, how do you expect to get your bread?" "Earn it, the best way I can." "Beg it, more likely, as your father before you: all his life begging it, and from me." "In that respect I shall not resemble him. You would be the last man I should think of begging from." "S'death! sirrah, you are impertinent. This is fine language to me, after the disgrace you have already brought upon me!" "Disgrace?" "Yes, sir, disgrace. Coming out here as a pauper, in the steerage of a ship! And you must needs boast of your relationship--letting all the world know that you are my nephew." "Boast of the relationship!" repeated Herbert, with a smile of contempt. "Ha! ha! ha! I suppose you refer to my having answered a question asked me by this pretty jack-a-box you are playing with. Boast of it, indeed! Had I known you then as well as I do now, I should have been ashamed to acknowledge it!" "After that, sir," shouted Mr Vaughan, turning purple with rage--"after that, sir, no more words! You shall leave my house this minute." "I had intended to have left it some minutes sooner. I only stayed to have an opportunity of telling you what I think of you." "What is that, sir? what is that?" The angry youth had summoned to the top of his tongue a few of the strongest epithets he could think of, and was about to hurl them into his uncle's teeth, when, on glancing up, he caught sight of an object that caused him to change his intention. It was the beautiful face of the young creole, that appeared through the half-open lattice of the window opposite. She was gazing down upon him and his uncle, and listening to the dialogue with an anguished expression of countenance. "He is _her_ father," muttered Herbert to himself; "for _her_ sake I shall not say the words;" and, without making any reply to the last interrogatory of his uncle, he strode out of the kiosk, and was walking away. "Stay, sir!" cried the planter, somewhat taken aback by the turn things had taken. "A word before you go--if you _are_ going." Herbert turned upon his heel and listened. "Your letter informs me that you are without funds. It shall not be said that a relative of Loftus Vaughan left his house penniless and unprovided. In this purse there are twenty pounds currency of the island. Take it; but on the condition that you say nothing of what has occurred here; and, furthermore, that you keep to yourself that you are the nephew of Loftus Vaughan." Without saying a word, Herbert took the proffered purse; but, in the next moment, the chink of the gold pieces was heard upon the gravel walk as he dashed the bag at the feet of his uncle. Then, turning to the astonished planter, and measuring him with a look that scorned all patronage, he faced once more to the path, and walked proudly away. The angry "Begone, sir!" vociferated after him, was only addressed to his back, and was altogether unheeded. Perhaps it was even unheard: for the expression in the eyes of the young man told that at that moment his attention was occupied elsewhere. As he walked towards the house--with the design of going round it to get upon the front avenue--his glance was directed upwards to the window where that beautiful face had been just seen. The lattice was now closed; and he endeavoured to pierce the sombre shadows behind it. The face was no longer there. No eyes met his. He glanced back towards the kiosk to see if he might linger a moment. His uncle was in a bent attitude, gathering the scattered pieces of gold. In this position the shrubbery concealed him. Herbert was about to glide nearer to the window, and summon his cousin by name, when he heard his own pronounced, in a soft whisper, and with the endearing prefix "cousin." Distinctly he heard "Cousin Herbert!" and as if spoken around the angle of the building. He hastened thither: for that was his proper path by which to arrive at the front of the house. On turning the wall, he looked up. He saw that another window opened from the same chamber. Thence came the sweet summons, and there appeared the fair face for which he was searching. "Oh, cousin Herbert! do not go in anger! Papa has done wrong--very wrong, I know; but he has been taking much wine--he is not--Good cousin, you will pardon him?" Herbert was about to make reply, when the young Creole continued:-- "You said in your letter you had no money. You have refused father's-- you will not refuse mine? It is very little. It is all I have. Take it!" A bright object glistened before his eyes, and fell with a metallic chink at his feet. He looked down. A small silk purse containing coin, with a blue ribbon attached, was seen lying upon the ground. The young man raised it, and, holding it in one hand, hesitated for a moment--as if he had thoughts of accepting it. It was not that, however, but another thought that was passing in his mind. His resolve was soon taken. "Thanks!" said he. "Thanks, cousin Kate!" he added, with increasing warmth. "_You_ have meant kindly, and though we may never meet again--" "Oh, say not so!" interrupted the young girl, with an appealing look. "Yes," continued he, "it is probable we never shall. Here there is no home for me. I must go hence; but, wherever I may go, I shall not soon forget this kindness. I may never have an opportunity of repaying it-- you are beyond the necessity of aught that a humble relative could do for you; but remember, Kate Vaughan! should you ever stand in need of a strong arm and a stout heart, there is one of your name who will not fail you! "Thanks!" he repeated, detaching the ribbon from the bag, and flinging the latter, with its contents, back through the open window. Then, fastening the ribbon to the breast-button of his coat, he added: "I shall feel richer with the possession of this token than with all the wealth of your father's estate. Farewell! and God bless you, my generous cousin!" Before the young Creole could repeat her offer, or add another word of counsel or consolation, he had turned the angle of the building, and passed out of sight. Volume One, Chapter XX. THE JEW'S PENN. While these scenes were transpiring upon the plantation of Mount Welcome, others of a still more exciting nature were being enacted on that which adjoined it--the property of Jacob Jessuron, slave-merchant and penn-keeper. Besides a "baracoon" in the Bay, where his slaves were usually exposed for sale, the Jew was owner of a large plantation in the country, on which he habitually resided. It lay contiguous to the estate of the Custos Vaughan--separated from the latter by one of the wooded ridges already mentioned as bounding the valley of Mount Welcome. Like the latter, it had once been a sugar estate, and an extensive one; but that was before Jessuron became its owner. Now it was in the condition termed _ruinate_. The fields where the golden cane had waved in the tropic breeze were choked up by a tangled "second growth," restoring them almost to their primitive wildness. With that quickness characteristic of equatorial vegetation, huge trees had already sprung up, and stood thickly over the ground--logwoods, bread-nuts, cotton, and calabash trees, which, with their pendent parasites, almost usurped dominion over the soil. Here and there, where the fields still remained open, instead of cultivation, there appeared only the wild nursery of nature--glades mottled with flowering weeds, as the Mexican horn-poppy, swallow-worts, West Indian vervains, and small _passiflorae_. At intervals, where the underwood permitted them to peep out, might be seen stretches of "dry wall," or stone fence, without mortar or cement, mostly tumbled down, the ruins thickly trellised with creeping plants-- as convolvuli, cereus, and aristolochia; cleome, with the cheerful blossoming _lantana_; and, spreading over all, like the web of a gigantic spider, the yellow leafless stems of the American dodder. In the midst of this domain, almost reconquered by nature, stood the "great house"--except in size, no longer deserving the appellation. It consisted rather of a _pile_ than a single building--the old "sugar works" having been joined under the same roof with the dwelling--and negro cabins, stables, offices, all inclosed within an immense high wall, that gave to the place the air of a penitentiary or barrack, rather than that of a country mansion. The enclosure was a modern construction--an afterthought--designed for a purpose very different from that of sugar-making. Garden there was none, though evidence that there _had been_ was seen everywhere around the building, in the trees that still bloomed: some loaded with delicious fruits, others with clustering flowers, shedding their incense on the air. Half wild, grew citrons, and _avocado_ pears, sop and custard apples, mangoes, guavas, and pawpaws; while the crown-like tops of cocoa-palms soared high above the humble denizens of this wild orchard, their recurvant fronds drooping as in sorrow at the desolation that surrounded them. Close to the buildings stood several huge trees, whose tortuous limbs, now leafless, rendered it easy to identify them. They were the giants of the West Indian forest--the silk-cotton-tree (_Eriodendron anfractuosum_). The limbs of these vegetable monsters--each itself as large as an ordinary tree--were loaded with parasites of many species; among which might be distinguished ragged _cactacae_, with various species of wild pines, from the noble _vriesia_ to the hoary, beard-like "Spanish moss," whose long streaming festoons waved like winding-sheets in the breeze--an appropriate draping for the eyrie of the black vultures (John-Crows) that might at all times be seen seated in solemn silence upon the topmost branches. In the olden time, this plantation had borne the name of "Happy Valley"; but during the ownership of Jessuron, this designation--perhaps deemed inappropriate--had been generally dropped; and the place was never spoken of by any other name than that of the "Jew's Penn." Into a "penn" (grazing farm) Jessuron had changed it, and it served well enough for the purpose: many of the old sugar fields, now overgrown by the valuable Guinea grass, affording excellent pasturage for horses and cattle. In breeding and rearing the former for the use of the sugar estates, and fattening the latter for the beef markets of the Bay, the industrious Israelite had discovered a road to riches, as short as that he had been travelling in the capacity of slave-dealer; and of late years he had come to regard the latter only as a secondary calling. In his old age, Jessuron had become ambitious of social distinction; and for this reason, was desirous of sinking the slave-merchant in the more respectable profession of penn-keeper. He had even succeeded so far in his views as to have himself appointed a justice of the peace--an office that in Jamaica, as elsewhere, is more distinctive of wealth than respectability. In addition to penn-keeper, the Jew was also an extensive spice-cultivator, or rather spice-gatherer: for the indigenous pimento forests that covered the hills upon his estate required no cultivation-- nothing further than to collect the aromatic berries, and cure them on the _barbacoa_. Though changed from a plantation to a penn, the estate of Jacob Jessuron was not less a scene of active industrial life. In the fields adjacent to the house, and through the glades of Guinea grass, horses and half wild cattle might be seen in turns neighing and bellowing, pursued by mounted herdsmen, black and half-naked. Among the groves of pimento on the hills, gangs of negro wenches could be heard screaming and chattering continually, as they picked the allspice berries from the branches; or, with the filled baskets poised on their heads, marched in long, chanting files towards the _barbacoa_. Outside the gate-entrance, upon the broad avenue leading to the main road, negro horse-tamers might every day be seen, giving their first lessons to rough colts fresh caught from the pastures; while inside the grand enclosure, fat oxen were being slaughtered to supply the markets of the Bay--huge, gaunt dogs holding carnival over the offal--while black butchers, naked to the waist, their brown arms reeking with red gore, stalked over the ground, brandishing blood-stained blades, and other instruments of their sanguinary calling. Such scenes might be witnessed diurnally on the estate of Jacob Jessuron; but on the day succeeding that on which the slave-merchant had made his unsuccessful errand to Mount Welcome, a spectacle of a somewhat rarer kind was about to be exhibited at the penn. The scene chosen for this exhibition was an inner inclosure, or courtyard, contiguous to the dwelling--the great house itself forming one side of this court, and opening upon it by a broad verandah, of a dingy, dilapidated appearance. _Vis-a-vis_ with the dwelling was another large building which shut in the opposite side of the court--the two being connected by high massive walls, that completed the quadrangle. A strong double gate, opening near the centre of one of these walls, was the way out--that is, to the larger enclosure of the cattle-penn. From the absence of chimneys and windows, as well as from its plain style of architecture, the building that stood opposite the dwelling-house might have been taken for some large granary or barn. But a peep into its interior at once controverted this idea. Inside could be seen groups of human beings, of all colours, from ebony black to jaundice yellow, in all attitudes--seated, standing, or lying upon the floor--and not a few of them, in pairs, manacled to one another. Their attitudes were not more various than the expressions upon their faces. Some looked sad and sullen; some glanced fearfully around, as if waking from horrid dreams, and under the belief that they were realities; others wore the vacant stare of idiotcy; while here and there a group--apparently regardless of past, present, or future--chattered in their barbaric language with an air of gaiety that bespoke the most philosophic _insouciance_. The building that contained them was the baracoon--the storehouse of the slave-merchant. Its occupants were his stores! The "stock" had been just replenished by the cargo of the slave-ship, though there were also some old "bales" on hand; and these were in the act of entertaining the new comers, and initiating them into the ways of the place. Their means, of showing hospitality had been limited--as testified by the empty calabashes and clean-scraped wooden platters that lay scattered over the floor. Not a grain of rice, not a spoonful of the pepper-pot, not a slice of plantain, was left. The emptiness of the vessels showed that the rations had been as short as the viands were coarse and common. Outside, in the yard, were many groups, happier to escape from the stifled atmosphere of their crowded quarters; though that was freedom when compared with the 'tween-decks of the _middle passage_. Each group was gathered around some old hand--some compatriot who had preceded them across the great sea--and who, himself initiated into slavery under a western sky, was giving them some notions of what they had to expect. Eager looks of all, from time to time, directed towards the verandah, told that they were awaiting some event of more than ordinary interest. There were white men in the courtyard--three of them. Two were of dark complexion--so swarth that many of the coloured slaves were as fair-skinned as they. These two men were lounging by the stairway of the verandah--one of them seated upon the steps. Both were sparely clad in check shirts and trousers, having broad-brimmed palmetto hats on their heads, and rough buskins on their feet and ankles. Each carried a long, rapier-like blade--a _machete_--hanging over his hip in its leathern sheath; while a brace of fierce dogs--looped in cotton-rope leashes, attached to belts worn around their waists-- crouched upon the ground at their feet. The faces of these men were clean-shaven--a pointed chin-tuft, or "bigote," alone being left; and the hair on the heads of both was close-cropped. Their sharp, angular features were thus fully displayed, denoting a high order of intelligence; which might have produced a pleasing effect, but for the pronounced expression of cruelty which accompanied it. The exclamations that from time to time escaped from their lips, with the few words of conversation that passed between them, bespoke them of Spanish race. Their costume--their arms and accoutrements--their comrades, the fierce dogs--plainly proclaimed, their calling, as well as the country from whence they came. They were _cacadores de negros_-- negro-hunters from the Island of Cuba. The third white man who appeared in the courtyard differed essentially from these--not so much in colour, for he was also of swarth complexion--but in size, costume, and calling. A pair of horse-skin riding-boots reached up to his thighs, on the heels of which appeared heavy spurs, with rowels three inches in diameter. A sort of monkey-jacket of thick cloth--notwithstanding its unsuitableness to the climate--hung down to his hips; under which appeared a waistcoat of scarlet plush, with tarnished metal buttons, and a wool comforter of the same flaming colour. Crowning all was a felt hat; which, like the other articles of his dress, gave evidence of exposure to all weathers--sun and rain, storm and tornado. A thick shock of curling hair, so dark in colour as to pass for black; a heavy beard, jet-black, and running most of the way around his mouth; amber-coloured eyes, with a sinister, shining light that never seemed to pale; lips of an unnatural redness gleaming through the black beard; and a nose of aquiline oblique, were the points in the personal appearance of this man that most prominently presented themselves. The effect of this combination was to impress you with the conviction, that the individual in question belonged to the same nationality as the proprietor of the penn. Such was in reality the case: for the bearded man was another of the race of Abraham, and one of its least amiable specimens. His name was Ravener, his calling that of overseer: he was the overseer of Jessuron. The symbol of his profession he carried under his arm--a huge cart-whip. He had it by him at all hours--by night, as by day--for by night, as by day, was he accustomed to make use of it. And the victims of his long lash were neither oxen nor horses--they were men and _women_! No sparing use made he of this hideous implement. "Crack, crack!" was it heard from morn to eve; "crack, crack!" from eve to midnight; if need be, from midnight to morning again: for some said that the overseer of Jessuron never slept. "Crack, crack!" did he go through the courtyard, apparently proud of exhibiting his power before the newly-arrived negroes--here and there swinging his long bitter lash among the groups, as if to break up and scatter them in sheer wantonness. Volume One, Chapter XXI. A FIERY BAPTISM. It was about twelve o'clock in the day. Jessuron and his daughter had just stepped forth into the verandah, and taken their stand by the balustrade looking down into the court. The countenance of both betrayed a certain degree of solicitude, as if they had come out to be witnesses to some spectacle of more than common interest. The house-wenches and other domestics, trooping behind them with curious looks, showed that some rare scene was to be enacted. A small iron furnace, filled with live coals, had been placed in the courtyard, near the bottom of the steps. Three or four sullen-looking men--blacks and mulattoes--stood around it in lounging attitudes. One of these stooped over the furnace, turning in the fire what appeared to be a soldering iron, or some other instrument of a brazier. It was not that, however, as the spectators well knew. All who beheld it recognised the dreaded _branding iron_: for every one present, the whites and newly-arrived Africans excepted, had, ere now, felt its hot, seething fire in their flesh. These last had already learnt what was preparing for them; and most of them stood regarding the preparations with looks of silent awe. Some Coromantees there were among the number, who looked on with reckless indifference, chatting as gaily--and, at intervals, laughing as loudly--as if they awaited the beginning of some merry game. Little cared these courageous sons of Ethiopia--whose sable skins bore scars of many a native fray--little cared they for the scorching of that simple brand. It was not long before the inhuman spectacle commenced. The entrance of Jessuron and his daughter was the cue to begin; and the bearded overseer, who was master of the ceremonies, had only been waiting till these should make their appearance. The man, from experience, knew that his master always gave his personal superintendence when such a scene was to be enacted. He knew, moreover, that his master's daughter was equally accustomed to assist at these interesting ceremonies! "Go on, Mishter Ravener!" cried the Jew, on reaching the front of the verandah. "Theesh first," he added, pointing towards a group of Eboes-- who stood trembling with apprehension in one corner of the yard. At a sign from the overseer, who was one of the taciturn sort, a number of old negroes--evidently used to the business--laid hands upon the Eboes, and led them up to the furnace. As the victims were brought near to the fire, and saw the red iron glowing amid the coals, fear became strongly depicted upon their faces, and their frames shook with a convulsive terror. Some of them, the younger ones, screamed aloud, and would have rushed away from the spot, had they not been held in the grasp of the attendants. Their appeals, made by the most pitiful looks and gestures, were answered only by unfeeling jeers and shouts of laughter, in which the old Jew himself joined--in which, incredible to relate, joined his beautiful daughter! Nor was it a mere smile which appeared on the face of the fair Judith; clear laughter rang from her lips, exhibiting her regular rows of ivory-like teeth--as if some fiend had assumed the form of an angel! The Eboes were led forward, and held firmly by the assistants, while their breasts were presented to receive the brand. The red-hot iron flashed for a moment in the eyes of each; and then fell with a dull clap upon the clammy skin. Smoke ascended with a hiss, till the court became filled with a smell of roasting flesh! A struggle, some wild cries, and the operation was over. The slave was marked with those indelible initials, to be carried with him to his grave. One by one, the poor beings received this terrible baptism, and were led away from the ground. A batch of Pawpaws--from the Whidaw country--came next. They were brought up one by one, like the Eboes; but altogether unlike these was their behaviour. They neither gave way to extreme fear, nor yet displayed extraordinary courage. They appeared to submit with a sort of docile resignation: as though they regarded it in the light of a destiny or duty. The operation of branding them was a short work, and afforded no mirth to the bystanders: since there was no ludicrous display of terror to laugh at. This facile disposition renders the Whidaw the most valuable of slaves. A group of Coromantees were now to undergo the fiery ordeal. These bold and warlike indigenes of Africa evinced, by their attitudes and actions, the possession of a moral nature altogether different from that either of Pawpaw or Eboe. Instead of waiting to be led forward, each stepped boldly up, as he did so baring his breast to receive the red brand, at which he glanced with an air of lordly contempt! One young fellow even seized the iron from the grasp of the operator; and, turning it in his hand, struck the stamp firmly against his breast, where he held it until the seething flesh told that a deep imprint had been made! Then, flinging the instrument back into the furnace, he strode away from the spot with the air of a triumphant gladiator! At this moment there occurred a pause in the proceedings--not as if the drama was ended, but only an act. Another was yet to come. Ravener stepped up to the verandah, in front of the place where Jessuron and his daughter stood. With the former, or indeed with both, he communicated in a voice just audible,--not as if with any design of concealing what he said--but because there was no necessity for loud talking. The two man-hunters were the only persons there he might have had any care to be cautious about; but these were at that moment busy with their dogs, and not heeding aught that was going on. Branding a batch of negroes was no new sight to them; and they were spectators, merely from having, at the moment, nothing better to do. "Which next?" was the question put by Ravener to the Jew; "the Mandingoes?" "Either them or the prinshe," replied Jessuron; "it don't matter which ish marked first." "Oh, the prince first, by all means!" suggested the amiable Judith, with a smile of satisfaction. "Bring him out first, Mr Ravener; I'm curious to see how his royal highness will stand fire." The overseer made no reply; but, taking the wish of the young lady as a command, proceeded to obey it. Stepping across the court he opened a door that led into a room, separate from that in which the slaves had been lodged. The overseer entered the room; and in a few minutes came out again, bringing with him an individual who, by his dress, it might have been difficult to recognise as the young Fellatta seen on board the slaver, but whose noble mien still rendered it possible to identify him: for it was he. Changed, indeed, was his costume. The turban was gone, the rich silken tunic, the sandals and scimitar--all his finery had been stripped off; and in its place appeared a coarse Osnaburg shirt and trousers--the dress of a plantation negro. He looked wretched, but not crestfallen. No doubt he had by this time learnt, or suspected, the fate that was in store for him; but, for all that, his features exhibited the proud air of a prince; and the glances which he cast upon the overseer by his side, but oftener upon Jessuron--whose instrument he knew the other to be--were those of concentrated anger and defiance. Not a word escaped his lips, either of protest or reproach. This had all passed before--when the first rude assault had been made upon him, to deprive him of his garments and the adornments of his person. The hour of recrimination was past. He knew he had no alternative but submission, and he was submitting--though in angry and sullen silence. He had no idea of what was now designed for him. He had been shut up in a windowless room, and saw nothing of the spectacle that had just passed. Some new outrage he anticipated; but of what nature he could not guess. He was not allowed to remain long in ignorance. Ravener, roughly grasping him by the wrist, led him up to the furnace. The iron by this time was ready--glowing red-hot among the coals. The operator stood watching for the signal to use it; and on its being given, he seized the instrument in his grasp, and poised it aloft. The prince now perceived the intention, but shrank not at the sight. His eyes were not upon the iron, but, gleaming with a fire like that of the furnace itself, were directed upon the face of the old Jew--at intervals upon that of the angel-like demon at his side. The Jew alone shrank from the glance; his daughter returned it with a mocking imperturbability! In another instant the red brand hissed as it burnt into the flesh of the Fellattas bosom. Prince Cingues was the slave of Jacob Jessuron! As if the terrible reality had now for the first time burst upon him, the young man sprang forward with a cry; and before anyone could oppose his progress, he had bounded up the steps and entered the verandah. Then, gliding along the gallery, to the spot occupied by Jessuron and his daughter, he launched himself forward upon the Jew. As he clutched the latter by the throat, both came together to the ground, and rolled over and over in the writhings of a desperate struggle. Fortunate it was for the slave-merchant that his victim had been disarmed: else that moment would have been fatal to him. As it was, he came very near being strangled; and had it not been for Ravener and the two Spaniards, who hastened to his rescue, the betrayal of the Foolah prince would have been the last treason of his life. Overpowered by numbers, Cingues was at length secured; and the throat of the slave-merchant was extricated from his death-like clutch. "Kill him!" cried the Jew, as soon as he found breath to speak. "No, don't kill him yet," added he, correcting himself, "not joosh yet, till I punish him for it! an' if I don't punish him--ach!" "Flog the savage!" shouted the beautiful Judith; "make an example of him, Mr Ravener: else those others will be rising upon us in the same style." "Yesh, flog him! that'll do to begin with. Flog him now, goot Ravener. Give him a hundred lashes thish minute!" "Ay, ay!" responded the overseer, dragging the victim down the steps; "I'll give him his full dose--never fear you!" Ravener was as good as his word. The spectacle that followed was even more horrible to behold than that which has been described: for the punishment of the lash is among the most fearful of exhibitions. The young Foolah was tied to a post--one that stood there for the purpose. A strong _headman_ wielded the cruel _quirt_; and as the last stripe was administered, completing that horrid hundred, the poor victim sank fainting against the blood-stained stake. The occupants of the verandah showed not the slightest signs of having been moved to pity by this horrid spectacle. On the contrary, both father and daughter seemed to draw delight from it; and, instead of retiring when the fearful scene was over, both, seemingly with perfect unconcern, remained to witness the _finale_ of the day's work--the marking of the Mandingoes! Volume One, Chapter XXII. A COUCH OF SILK-COTTON. On parting from the presence of his fair cousin, and, at the same time, from the house of his inhospitable relative, Herbert Vaughan struck off through the shrubbery that stretched towards the ridge on the right. Notwithstanding the storm that was raging in his breast, a reflection had occurred to him, which hindered him from going by the main avenue. Suffering from a keen sense of humiliation, he had no desire to meet with any of his uncle's people: since the very slaves seemed to be privy to his false position. Still less desirous was he of being observed, while making the long traverse of the avenue, by eyes that might be directed upon him from the windows of the great house. On reaching the limits of the level platform, he leaped a low wall, that separated the shrubbery from the outer fields; and then, under cover of the pimento groves, commenced ascending the slope of the ridge. For some time the conflicting emotions that were stirring in his soul hindered him from anything like tranquil reflection. Conflicting, I say: for two very opposite sentiments had been aroused by the two individuals with whom he had just held interview; opposite as darkness from light--as sorrow from joy--perhaps, as hate from love. The conflict might have lasted longer, had there been an opportunity to give way to idle emotions. But there was not. The young man felt too forlorn and friendless to indulge in the luxury of passionate thought; and, on this account, the sooner did the storm subside. On reaching the crest of the ridge, and before plunging into the deep forest that stretched away on the other side, he endeavoured, through an opening in the trees, to catch a view of those white walls and green jalousies. In that glance there was more of regretfulness than anger-- an expression of despair, such as may have appeared on the face of the fallen angel when gazing back over the golden palings of Paradise. As the young man turned away, and entered under the sombre shadows of the forest, the expression of despair seemed to become deeper and darker. To make Montego Bay--to seek in it such humble home as might offer--to wait there till his poorly-stocked portmanteau, now on its way to Mount Welcome, should be returned to him--these were the simple plans that suggested themselves. His mind was still too much on the rack to permit of his dwelling upon any ulterior purpose. He walked on through the woods, without taking much heed as to the direction in which he was going. Anyone who could have seen him just then might have supposed that he had lost his way, and was wandering. It was not so, however. He knew or believed that by keeping to the left of his former course he would get out upon the main road, by which he had reached the entrance-gate of Mount Welcome. In any case, he could not fail to find the river he had already crossed; and by following it downward, he would in time arrive at the town. With this confidence, false as it may have been, he was not wandering; only absorbed in thought--in common parlance, absent-minded. But this absence of mind lasted so long, that it led to the result it resembled: he lost his way in reality. The trees hindered him from seeing the sun--now low down. But even if a view of the golden orb had been afforded him, it would have served no purpose: since, on riding out to Mount Welcome, he had taken no note of the relative directions between it and the Bay. He was not much disconcerted by the discovery that he had lost himself. The reflection that in Montego Bay he would be no better off, hindered him from greatly regretting the circumstance. He had not the means to command the shelter of a roof--even in the midst of a whole city full-- and the chances were he might find none better than that which was above him at the moment--the spreading fronds of a gigantic cotton-tree. At the time that this reflection crossed his mind, the sun had gone quite down: for the cotton-tree stood upon the edge of an opening where he could see the sky above him; and he perceived that it was already tinged with the purple of twilight. To find his way in the darkness would be no longer possible, and he resolved for that night to accept the hospitality of the _ceiba_. It had even spread a couch for him: for the seed capsules had burst upon its branches; and the pale-brown staple thickly covered the ground beneath--offering a couch that, under the canopy of a West Indian summer sky, was sufficiently luxuriant. Was there a supper as well? Herbert looked around--he was hungry. Not a morsel had he eaten since breakfast--only a piece of mess-pork and a brown wormy biscuit, on parting from the ship. Hunger had already made itself felt. During his wanderings, having his gun with him, he had looked out for game. Had any appeared, he was too good a sportsman to have let it escape. But none had shown itself--neither beast nor bird. The woods seemed deserted as himself. He could hear the voices of birds--all strange to his ear--he could see bright-winged creatures fluttering amongst the leaves; but none near enough for the range of his fowling-piece. Now that he had come to a halt, and having nothing better to do, he took his stand, watching the open glade. Perhaps some bird might yet show itself passing from tree to tree, or flying about in pursuit of prey. It was the hour for owls. He felt hungry enough to eat one. Neither owl nor night-jar came in sight; but his attention was attracted to an object edible as either, and which promised to relieve him from the pangs he was suffering. Close by the cotton-tree stood another giant of the forest--rivalling the former in height, but differing from it as an arrow from its bow. Straight as a lance, it rose to the height of an hundred feet. It was branchless as a column of polished malachite or marble--up to its high summit, where its long green fronds, radiating outward, drooped gracefully over, like a circlet of reflexed ostrich plumes. A child could have told it to be a palm; but Herbert knew more. He had heard of the noble "mountain-cabbage" of Jamaica--the kingly _areca oredoxia_. He knew that in the centre of that circlet of far-stretching fronds--in that crown--there was a jewel that had often proved more precious than gems or gold: for often had it been the means of saving human life. How was this jewel to be obtained? Like all crowns, it was placed high--far above the reach of ordinary mortals. Young and active though he was, and a climber at school, he could never "swarm up" that tall, smooth shaft. Without a ladder a hundred feet in length, it would not be possible to reach its summit. But, see! the palm-tree stands not alone. A great black lliana stretches tortuously from the earth up to the crown, where its head is buried among the tufted leaves, as if it were some huge dragon in the act of devouring its victim. Herbert stood for a moment reconnoitring the grand stay-cable, that, trailing from the summit of the palm, offered, as it were, a natural ladder for ascending it. Hunger stimulated him to the attempt; and, resting his gun against the trunk of the _ceiba_, he commenced climbing upward. Without much difficulty, he succeeded in reaching the top, and making his way among the huge _pinnae_ of the leaves--each in itself a leaf of many feet in length. He arrived at the youngest of them all--that still enfolded in the envelope of the bud--and which was the object for which he had climbed. With his knife he separated this summit leaf from the stem, flung it to the earth; and then, descending to the bottom of the tree, made his supper upon the raw but sweet and succulent shoots of the mountain-cabbage. Supper over, he collected a quantity of the strewn fleece of the silk-cotton; and, placing it between two of the great buttress-like root-spurs of the tree, constructed for himself a couch on which, but for some hard thoughts within, he might have slept as softly and soundly as upon a bed of eider. Volume One, Chapter XXIII. THE TREE FOUNTAIN. That he did not sleep soundly may be attributed solely to his anxieties about the morrow: for the night was mild throughout, and the composition of his improvised couch kept him sufficiently warm. His cares, however, had rendered his spirit restless. They were vivid enough to act even upon his dreams--which several times during the night awoke him, and again, finally, just after the break of day. This time, on opening his eyes, he perceived that the glade was filled with soft blue light; and the quivering fronds of the cabbage-palm--just visible from where he lay--had caught the first trembling rays of the sun. Only there, and among the summit-branches of the _ceiba_, far overtopping the _spray_ of the surrounding forest, was the sun yet visible. Everything else was tinted with the blue grey of the morning twilight. He could sleep no longer; and rose from his forest lair, intending to make an immediate departure from the spot. He had no toilet to trouble him--nothing to do, further than brush off the silken floss of the tree-cotton, shoulder his gun, and go. He felt hunger, even more than on the preceding night; and, although the raw mountain-cabbage offered no very tempting _dejeuner_, he determined before starting, to make another meal upon it--remembering, and very wisely acting upon, the adage of "a bird in the hand." There was plenty left from the supper to serve him for breakfast; and, once more making a vigorous onslaught on the _chou de palmiste_, he succeeded in appeasing his hunger. But another appetite, far more unpleasant to bear, now assailed him. In truth, it had assailed him long before, but had been gradually growing stronger; until it was now almost unendurable. It was the kindred appetite, thirst; which the cabbage-palm, instead of relieving, had, from a certain acridity in its juice, only sharpened-- till the pain amounted almost to torture. The sufferer would have struck off into the woods in search of water. He had seen none in his wanderings; still he had hopes of being able to find the river. He would have started at once, but for an idea he had conceived that there was water near the spot where he had slept. Where? He had observed neither stream nor spring, pond nor river; and yet he fancied he had seen water--in fact, he felt sure of it! In a very singular situation he had seen it--so thought he at the time-- since it was over his head in the cotton-tree! On the previous evening, while upon the crown of the cabbage-palm, he had glanced slantingly across, among the branches of the _ceiba_. This, as with all great trees in the tropical forests, was loaded with parasites--_vriesias_, long ragged-looking cacti, bromelias, epiphytical orchids, and the like. _Tillandsias_ too, of the kind known as "wild pines," grew in the forks, or on the upper surface of the great limbs, flourishing as luxuriantly as if their roots rested in the richest soil. Among them was conspicuous the most magnificent of the genus, the noble _Tillandsia lingulata_, with its spike of gorgeous crimson flowers projecting from the midst of its broad sheathing leaves. It was in the concavities of these huge leaves that Herbert had observed something which did not belong to the plant--something he believed to be _water_. It would cost but a few seconds' time to confirm or refute this belief-- a climb among the branches of the _ceiba_. Another huge parasite, from the same root as the former, trended tortuously up to the limbs of the silk-cotton-tree--here and there touching and twisting around them. Its diagonal direction rendered it easy of ascent; and Herbert, impelled by his desire to drink, commenced climbing it. Ere long, he had succeeded in reaching a main fork of the _ceiba_, where nestled one of the largest of the wild pines. He had not been deceived. In a hollow formed by one of its huge ventricose leaves was the natural reservoir he had noticed--the gathering of dew and rain, which the rays of the sun could never reach. At his approach, the green _hyla_ sprang out from this aerial pool; and leaping, frog-like, from leaf to leaf--guarded against falling by the clammy sponge-disks of its feet--soon disappeared amid the foliage. It was this singular creature whose voice Herbert had been hearing throughout the livelong night; and which, in constant chorus with others of its kind, had recalled to his memory the groaning and working of the _Sea Nymph_ in a storm. The presence of the tree-toad in this its natural haunt, did not deter the young man from drinking. Raging thirst has no scruples; and, bending over one of the leaves of the _tillandsia_, he placed his lips to the cool water, and freely quaffed it. The labour of scrambling up the _lliana_ had taken away his breath, and to some extent fatigued him. Instead, therefore, of descending at once--which he knew would cost him an effort equal to that of the ascent--he determined to rest for a few minutes upon the large limb of the _ceiba_ on which he had seated himself. "Well!" muttered he, in satisfied soliloquy, "if the people of this island have proved inhospitable, I can't say the same of its trees. Here are two of them--almost the first I have encountered. They have yielded me the three necessaries of life--meat, drink, and lodging-- lodging, too, with an excellent bed, a thing not so common in many a human hostelry. What more is wanted? Under such a sky as this, who need care to have walls around, or a roof over him? Verily, to sleep here, _sub Jove_, is rather a luxury than an inconvenience! And, verily," continued he, "were it not that I should feel rather lonely, and that man is designed to be a social animal, I might pass my whole life in these glorious woods, without work or care of any kind. No doubt there is game; and I was told at home there are no game laws--so I might poach at pleasure. Ha! game? What do I see? A deer? No! a hog! Yes, hog it is; but such a singular fellow--prick ears, red bristles, long legs, and tusks. A boar! and why not a wild boar?" There was no reason why it should not be, since it _was_ one--a wild boar of the Jamaica forest--a true descendant of the Canarian hog, transported thither by the Spaniards. The young Englishman, never having seen a wild boar in its native haunts, put the question conjecturally; but a moment's observation of the animal convinced him that his conjecture was correct. The short upright ears, the long head, hams, and legs, the shaggy neck and frontlet, the foxy red colour, the quick short step as it moved onward-- all these _points_, combined with a certain savage air which Herbert noticed at a glance, satisfied him that the animal under his eyes was not one of the domestic breed, but a genuine wild hog of the woods. The grunt, too, which the creature uttered as it moved across the glade-- short, sharp and fierce--had but slight resemblance to the squeaking sounds of the farm-yard. A wild boar beyond a doubt! On perceiving this noble head of game, and so near him, Herbert's first reflection was one of extreme regret. How unlucky that he should be up in the tree, with his gun upon the ground! It was very tantalising; but the young man saw it would be impossible to get possession of his gun without giving the alarm. To attempt descending from the tree, or even make a movement upon the branch, would be sufficient to send the boar scampering from the spot: of course never to be seen more. Conscious of this, Herbert preferred remaining upon his perch--the silent spectator of a scene of wild Nature, to which chance had so oddly introduced him. Volume One, Chapter XXIV. THE HOG-HUNTER. The boar had stopped over the _debris_ of Herbert's breakfast--some fragments of the mountain-cabbage which had been left upon the ground. Switching his feathered tail, and uttering a short grunt, expressive of satisfaction, the animal proceeded to snap up the scattered pieces, crunching them between his formidable grinders. All of a sudden, the tranquil tableau became transformed into a scene of a more exciting nature. As Herbert continued to gaze, he saw the boar suddenly make a start, jerk his muzzle high in the air, at the same instant uttering a peculiar cry. It was a cry of alarm, mingled with angry menace--as testified by the bristles upon his back, which had suddenly shot up into an erect spinous mane. Herbert looked for the enemy. None was in sight--at least to his eyes. The boar, however, had either seen or heard something: for he was evidently upon the strain to spring off. Just then, a loud report reverberated through the glade, a bullet hissed through the air, and the animal, with a shrill scream, turned over upon its back, the blood spouting from a wound in its thigh. In an instant it was on its feet again; but rage appeared to hinder it from attempting flight! It retreated only a few paces, taking its stand between two of the buttresses of the _ceiba_--on the very spot where the young Englishman had passed the night. There--protected on both flanks and in the rear--and uttering fierce grunts of defiance--it stood, as if awaiting an enemy. Soon after a man emerged from the underwood, armed with what appeared to be a straight sword or cutlass. In a dozen quick strides he crossed the glade; and, having reached the roots of the cotton-tree, became engaged in a deadly struggle with the wounded boar. Notwithstanding the damage done to it, the creature was still a formidable antagonist; and it required all the address of the hunter-- habile though he appeared to be--to avoid contact with his terrible tusks. Each alternatively charged upon the other--the hunter endeavouring to thrust the quadruped with his long blade, while the boar in its turn would repeatedly rush towards its antagonist, suddenly rear itself upon its hind legs, and strike upwards with its armed and grinning muzzle. It was one of the fore-legs of the animal that had been broken by the shot; but the wound, although greatly disabling it, did not hinder it from making a protracted and desperate defence. The spurs of the cotton-tree rising on each side proved its best protectors--hindering its assailant from turning its flanks and piercing it in the side. The combat, therefore, was face to face; and the blade of the hunter, repeatedly thrust forward, as often glanced harmlessly from the hard skull, or glinted with a metallic ring against the tusks of the boar. For several minutes did this singular contest continue--the young Englishman all the while watching it with lively interest; but without giving the slightest signs of his being a spectator. Indeed, the scene was so exciting, and had come under his eyes so unexpectedly, that he was for a time held speechless by sheer surprise. After a while the struggle between biped and quadruped was brought to a termination. The former--who appeared to possess all the craft of his calling--put in practice a _ruse_ that enabled him to give his antagonist the _coup de grace_. It was a feat, however, accompanied by no slight danger: and so adroitly did the hunter perform it, as to create within the mind of his spectator--himself a sportsman--both surprise and admiration. Thus was the feat accomplished. In charging forward upon his human adversary, the boar had incautiously ventured beyond the flanking buttresses of the tree. In fact, the hunter had enticed the animal outward--by making a feint of retreating from the contest. Just then--and before the brute could divine his intention--the hunter rushed forward, and, throwing all his strength into the effort, sprang high into the air. Quite clearing the quadruped, he alighted in the angle formed by the converging spurs of the tree. The boar had now lost his position of defence; though that of the hunter for the moment appeared desperate. He had calculated his chances, however: for before the enraged animal--hindered by its hanging limb-- could face round to assail him, he had lunged out with his long blade, and buried it up to the hilt between the creature's ribs. With a shrill scream the boar fell prostrate to the earth--the red stream from his side spurting over and spoiling the improvised mattress of cotton-tree flock upon which the young Englishman had passed the night. Up to this moment the latter had done nothing, either by word or gesture, to make known his presence. He was about to descend and congratulate the hunter for the performance of a feat that had filled him with admiration. A fancy, passing through his mind at the moment, determined him to remain where he was a little longer; and, in obedience to this fancy, he sat gazing down upon the successful sportsman at the bottom of the tree. To say the least, the appearance presented by this individual was singular--especially so in the eyes of an Englishman unacquainted with West Indian characters and costumes. But, in addition to picturesqueness of attire, there was something in the carriage and features of the man that could not fail to make a remarkable impression upon the beholder. This impression was decidedly pleasing, though the face that produced it was not that of a _white_ man. Neither was it the face of a black man; nor yet the yellow countenance of the mulatto. It was a shade lighter than the last, with a dash of crimson in the cheeks. It was this colouring of the cheeks, perhaps, combined with a well-rounded, sparkling iris, that imparted the agreeable expression. The man was young. Herbert Vaughan might have guessed him about his own age without being many months astray; and, in point of size and shape, there was no great dissimilitude between them. In the colour of their hair, complexion, and features, there was no resemblance whatever. While the face of the young Englishman was of the oval type, that of the West Indian hunter was rotund. A prominent, well-cut chin, however, hindered it from degenerating into any expression of feebleness. On the contrary, firmness was the prevailing cast of the features; and the hold, swelling throat was a true physical index of daring. The complexion of the hunter betokened a _sang-mele_ between African and Caucasian, which was further confirmed by the slight crisping that appeared among the jet-black curls of hair thickly covering his head. The luxuriance of these curls was partly kept in check by a head-dress that Herbert Vaughan would have been less surprised to see in some country of the East: for, at the first glance, he had mistaken it for a turban. On closer examination, however, it proved to be a brilliant kerchief--the Madras check--ingeniously folded around the forehead, so as to sit coquettishly over the crown, with the knot a little to one side. It was a _toque_--not a turban. The other articles of dress worn by the young hunter were an outer coat, or shirt, of sky-blue cottonade, cut somewhat blouse-fashion; an under-shirt of fine white linen, ruffled and open at the breast; trousers of the same material as the coat; and buff coloured boots of roughly-cleaned cowskin. There were straps and strings over both shoulders, all crossing each other on the breast. From the two that hung to the right side were suspended a powder-horn and skin shot-pouch. On the same side hung a large calabash canteen, covered with a strong network of some forest withe to protect it from injury. Under the left arm was a carved and curving cow's horn, evidently not for holding powder, since it was open at both ends. Below this, against his hip, rested a black leathern sheath--the receptacle of that long blade still reeking with the blood of the boar. This weapon was the _machete_--half sword, half hunting-knife--which, with its straight, short blade, and haft-like hilt of greyish horn, is to be found in every cottage of Spanish America, from California to the "Land of Eire." Even where the Spaniards have been, but _are_ no longer--as in Jamaica--the universal _machete_ may be seen in the hands of hunter and peasant--a relic of the conqueror colonists. Volume One, Chapter XXV. THE RUNAWAY. Up to the moment that the boar was laid prostrate upon the ground, he in the _toque_ had been kept too well employed with his fierce game to find time for looking at anything else. It was only after dealing the deathblow to his adversary that he was able to stand erect and take a survey around him. In an instant his eye fell upon the gun of the young Englishman, and then the white pieces of palm-cabbage upon which the boar had been browsing. "Hoh!" exclaimed he, still gasping for breath, but with a look that betrayed surprise; "A gun! Whose? Some runaway slave who has stolen his master's fowling-piece? Nothing more likely. But why has he left the piece behind him? And what has started him away from here? Surely not the boar? He must have been gone before the animal got up? _Crambo_! a richer prize than the porker, if I could only have set eyes on him! I wonder in which direction he has tracked it? Hish! what do I see? The runaway! yes--yes, it is he! Coming back for his gun? _Crambo_! This is unexpected luck, so early in the morning--a slave capture--a _bounty_!" As the hunter hurriedly muttered these concluding phrases, he glided with stealthy tread between the two buttresses; and, having placed himself in the extreme angle of their convergence, remained perfectly still--as if to await the approach of some one who was advancing towards the tree. Herbert, from his perch, had a full view of the new comer thus announced. A young man of a copper red colour, with straight black hair, shaggily tossed and pulled over his forehead, as if some one had been tearing it from his head! His face, too--a fine one, notwithstanding its mahogany colour--appeared freshly lacerated; and his whole body bore the marks of inhuman abuse. The coarse cotton shirt that covered his shoulders was blotched with blood; and long, crimson-coloured stripes running across his back, looked like the imprints of an ensanguined lash! The attitude in which he was advancing was as peculiar as his costume. When Herbert first set eyes on him he was _crawling_ upon his hands and knees, yet going with considerable speed. This led to the belief that his bent position was assumed rather with a view towards concealment, than from the inability to walk erect. This belief was soon after confirmed: for on entering the glade the young man rose to his feet, and trotted on--but still with body bent-- towards the _ceiba_. What could he want there? Was he making for the huge tree as a haven of safety from some deadly pursuers? Herbert fancied so. The hunter believed he was coming back for his gun--having no suspicion that the real owner of the piece was just over his head. Both remained silent; though from motives having no similitude to each other. In a few seconds' time, the fugitive--for his actions proved him one-- had reached the bottom of the tree. "Halt!" cried the hunter, showing himself round the buttress, and stepping in front of the new comer. "You are a runaway, and my prisoner!" The fugitive dropped upon his knees, crossed his arms over his breast, and uttered some phrases in an unknown tongue--amongst which Herbert could distinguish the word "Allah." His captor appeared equally at fault about the meaning of the words; but neither the attitude of the speaker, nor the expression upon his countenance, could be mistaken: it was an appeal for mercy. "_Crambo_!" exclaimed the hunter, bending forward, and gazing for a moment at the breast of the runaway--on which the letters "J.J." were conspicuously branded--"with that tattoo on your skin, I don't wonder you've given leg-bail to your master. Poor devil! they've tattooed you still more brutally upon the back." As he said this--speaking rather to himself than to the wretched creature that knelt before him--the hunter stretched forth his hand, raised the shirt from the shoulders of the runaway, and gazed for a while upon his naked back. The skin was covered with purple wales, crossing each other like the arteries in an anatomic plate! "God of the Christian!" exclaimed the yellow hunter, with evident indignation at the sight, "if this be your decree, then give me the fetish of my African ancestors. But no," added he, after a pause, "J.J. is _not_ a Christian--he cares for no God." The soliloquy of the hunter was here interrupted by a second speech from the suppliant, spoken in the same unknown tongue. This time the gesture signified that it was an appeal for protection against some enemy in the rear: for the sympathetic looks of his captor had evidently won the confidence of the fugitive. "They are after you--no doubt of it," said the hunter. "Well, let them come--whoever are your pursuers. This time they have lost their chance; and the bounty is mine, not theirs. Poor devil! it goes against my grain to deliver you up; and were it not for the law that binds me, I should scorn their paltry reward. Hark! yonder they come! Dogs, as I'm a man! Yes, it's the bay of a bloodhound! Those villainous man-hunters of Batabano--I knew old Jessuron had them in his pay. Here, _my_ poor fellow, in here!" and the hunter half-led, half-dragged the fugitive over the carcass of the wild boar, placing him between the buttresses of the _ceiba_. "Stand close in to the angle," he continued. "Leave me to guard the front. Here's your gun; I see it's loaded. I hope you know how to use it? Don't fire till you're sure of hitting! We'll need both blade and shot to save ourselves from these Spanish dogs, that will make no distinction between you and me. Not they! _Crambo_! there they come!" The words had scarce issued from the speaker's lips, when two large dogs broke, with a swishing noise, out of the bushes on the opposite side of the glade--evidently running on the trail of the fugitive. The crimson colour of their muzzles showed that they had been baited with blood--which, darkening as it dried, rendered more conspicuous the white fang-like teeth within their jaws. They were half-hound, half-mastiff; but ran as true-bred hounds on a fresh trail. No trail could have been fresher than that of the flogged fugitive; and, in a few seconds after entering the glade, the hounds had got up to the _ceiba_, in front of the triangular chamber in which stood the runaway and his protector. These dogs have no instinct of self-preservation--only an instinct to discover and destroy. Without stopping to bark or bay--without even slackening their pace--both dashed onward, bounding into the air as they launched themselves upon the supposed objects of their pursuit. The first only impaled himself upon the outstretched _machete_ of the yellow hunter; and as the animal came down to the earth, it was to utter the last howl of his existence. The other, springing towards the naked fugitive, received the contents of the fowling-piece, and, like the first, rolled lifeless upon the earth. Volume One, Chapter XXVI. A COMBAT DECLINED. The spectator in the tree began to fancy that he was dreaming. Within the short space of twenty minutes he had been the witness of a greater number of exciting events than he might have seen, in his own land, during the same number of years! And yet he had not witnessed the _finale_ of the drama. The gestures of the runaway, and the speeches of his captor, had already warned him that there was another act to come; and, from the attitudes of both, it was evident that this act would be performed on the same stage, without any change of scene. As yet the young Englishman saw no particular reason why he should cease to be a spectator, and become an actor, in this West Indian drama. That the yellow hunter should kill a wild boar, capture a runaway slave, and afterwards shield both his captive and himself from a brace of bloodhounds, by killing the fierce brutes, was no affair of his. The only thine: that concerned him was the unceremonious use that had been made of his fowling-piece; but it is scarce necessary to say that Herbert Vaughan, had he been asked, would have freely lent the piece for such a purpose. Nothing, however, had yet transpired to tempt him from a strict neutrality; and, until something should, he determined to preserve the passive attitude he had hitherto held. Scarce had he come to this determination, when three new actors appeared upon the scene. One, the foremost, and apparently the leader, was a tall, black-bearded man in a red plush waistcoat, and high-topped horse-skin boots. The other two were lean, lithe-looking fellows in striped shirt and trousers, each wearing broad-brimmed palm-leaf hats that shadowed their sharp Spanish physiognomies. The bearded man was armed with gun and pistols. The others appeared to be without firearms of any kind; but each carried in his hand a long rapier-like blade, the sheath of which hung dangling from his hip. It was the _machete_--the same kind of weapon as that which the yellow hunter had but the moment before so skilfully wielded. On perceiving the tableau under the tree, the three new comers halted-- and with no slight surprise depicted in their looks. The men of Spanish face appeared more especially astonished--indignation mingling with their surprise--when they beheld in that grouping of figures the bodies of their own bloodhounds stretched dead upon the sward! The bearded man, who, as we have said, appeared to be the leader, was the first to give speech to the sentiment that animated all three. "What game's this?" he cried, his face turning purple with rage. "Who are you that has dared to interfere with our pursuit?" "_Carajo_! he's killed our dogs?" vociferated one of the Spaniards. "_Demonios_! you'll pay for this with your lives!" added the other, raising his _machete_ in menace. "And what if I have killed your dogs?" rejoined the yellow hunter, with an air of _sang froid_, which won the silent applause of the spectator. "What if I have? If I had not killed _them_, they would have killed _me_!" "No," said one of the Spaniards; "they would not have touched you. _Carrambo_! they were too well trained for that--they were after _him_. Why did you put yourself in the way to protect him? It's no business of yours." "There, my worthy friend, you are mistaken," replied he in the _toque_, with a significant sneer. "It _is_ my business to protect him--my _interest_ too: since he is my captive." "_Your_ captive!" exclaimed one of the men, with a glance of concern. "Certainly, he is my captive; and it was my interest not to let the dogs destroy him. Dead, I should only have got two pounds currency for his head. Living, he is worth twice that, and mileage money to boot; though I'm sorry to see by the `J.J.' on his breast that the mileage money won't amount to much. Now, what more have you to say, my worthy gentlemen?" "Only this," cried the man with the black beard; "that we listen to no such nonsense as that there. Whoever you may be, I don't care. I suspect who you are; but that don't hinder me from telling you, you've no business to meddle in this affair. This runaway slave belongs to Jacob Jessuron. I'm his overseer. He's been taken on Jessuron's own ground: therefore you can't claim the captive, nor yet the bounty. So you'll have to give him up to _us_." "_Carrambo, si_!" vociferated both the Spaniards in a breath, at the same time that the three advanced towards the runaway--the bearded overseer pistol in hand, and his two comrades with their _machetes_ drawn, and ready to be used. "Come on, then!" cried the hunter, in a taunting tone--as he spoke making signs to the runaway to stand to his defence. "Come on! but, remember! the first that lays hand upon him is a dead man. There are three of you, and we are but two--one already half-dead with your inhuman cruelty." "Three against two! that's not a fair fight!" cried the young Englishman, dropping down from the tree, and ranging himself on the weaker side. "Perhaps it'll be a better match now," added he, taking a pistol from under the breast of his coat, and cocking it as he did so-- evidently with the intention of using it, should the affair be carried further. "And who are you, sir?" demanded the overseer, with as much arrogance as he could throw into his manner. "Who, sir, may I inquire, is the white man who thus places himself in opposition to the laws of the island? You know the penalty, sir; and by _my_ word, you shall pay it!" "If I have committed a breach of the laws," replied Herbert, "I presume I shall have to answer for it. But I have yet to learn what law I have broken; and I don't choose that you shall be my judge." "You are aiding in the escape of a slave!" "That's not true," interrupted the yellow hunter. "The slave is already captured; he could not have escaped; and this young gentleman--who is as much a stranger to me as to you--I am sure, had no intention of assisting him to escape." "Bah!" exclaimed the overseer; "we care not for your talk--we deny your right to capture him; and you had no business to interfere. We had already tracked him down with the dogs; and should have had him without any help from you. He is _our_ prize, therefore; and I again demand of you to give him up!" "Indeed!" sneeringly responded the yellow hunter. "I make the demand," continued the other, without noticing the sneer, "in the name of Jacob Jessuron--whose overseer I've told you I am." "Perhaps, were you Jacob Jessuron himself, I might resist your demand," rejoined the hunter, coolly, and without any appearance of braggadocio. "You refuse to surrender him, then?" said the overseer, as if making his final overture. "I do," was the firm reply. "Enough--you shall repent this; and you, sir," continued the deputy of Jessuron, turning a fierce look upon Herbert, "you shall answer before a magistrate for the part it has pleased you to play in this transaction. A pretty white man you for the island of Jamaica! A few more of your sort, and we'd have a nice time with our niggers. Don't fear, mister; you'll see me again." "I have no particular desire," rejoined Herbert; "for, certainly," continued he, with provoking jocularity, "an uglier-looking face than yours I have never set eyes upon; and it could be no pleasure to me to look upon it again." "Confusion!" cried the overseer. "You'll repent that insult before you're a month older--curse me if you don't!" And with this characteristic menace, the ruffian turned and walked sullenly away. "_Caspita_!" cried one of the Spaniards, as the two hastened to follow their leader. "My brave dogs! Ah, _demonio_! you shall pay dearly for them. Two hundred _pesos_ each--not a _cuartito_ less!" "Not a _cuartito_ for either!" responded the yellow hunter, with a mocking laugh. "Haven't I proved that they are not worth it? With all your boasting of what your bloodhounds could do, look at them now. _Vaya_! my fine fellows! Go back to your own country, and hunt runaway negroes there. Here you must leave that game to those who know how to manage it--_the Maroons_!" Herbert observed that the hunter, on pronouncing these last words, drew himself up with an air of majestic pride--as he did so, glancing scornfully towards the crestfallen _cacadores_. An angry "_Carrai_!" simultaneously hissed from the lips of both, was the only reply made by the two Spaniards; who, at the same instant, turned their backs upon the _ceiba_, and followed their leader across the glade. Volume One, Chapter XXVII. THE MAROONS. As soon as they were gone out of sight, the hunter turned towards Herbert, his eyes sparkling with gratitude. "Master!" said he, making a low obeisance as he spoke, "after that, words are but a poor way of offering thanks. If the brave white gentleman who has risked his life for a coloured outcast will let me know his name, it will not be forgotten by _Cubina, the Maroon_." "Cubina, the Maroon!" Struck by the oddness of the name and title--as he had already been by the appearance and behaviour of him who bore them--Herbert repeated the phrase mechanically, rather than otherwise. "Yes, that is my name, master." The young Englishman, though not yet enlightened as to the odd appellation, was too well-bred to press for an explanation. "Pardon me," said he, "for not directly replying to your request. I am an Englishman; my name Vaughan--Herbert Vaughan." "By that name, master, I take it you have relatives in the island. The owner of Mount Welcome estate--" "Is my uncle." "Ah! then, sir, anything a poor Maroon hunter could do for you would not be much. All the same, you have my thanks; and if--; but, master," continued the speaker, suddenly changing his tone, as if in obedience to some instinct of curiosity, "may I make bold to ask why you are afoot so early? The sun is not yet ten minutes above the trees, and Mount Welcome is three miles distant. You must have tracked it here in the dark--no easy matter, through these tangled woods?" "I passed the night here," replied the Englishman, smiling; "that was _my_ bed, where the boar is now sleeping." "Then the gun is yours, not his?" The hunter nodded interrogatively towards the runaway, who, standing some paces off, was regarding both the speakers with glances of gratitude, not, however, unmingled with some signs of uneasiness. "Yes, it is my gun. I am very glad the piece was not empty: since it enabled him to destroy the fierce brute that would otherwise have had him by the throat. Wretched as the poor fellow appears, he handled his weapon well. What is he, and what have they been doing to him?" "Ah, Master Vaughan; by those two questions, it is easy to tell you are a stranger to the island. I think I can answer both--though I never saw the young man before. Poor wretch! The answers are written out upon his skin, in letters that don't require much scholarship to read. Those upon his breast tell that he's a slave--the slave of J.J.: Jacob Jessuron. You'll excuse me from giving my opinion of _him_." "What have they done to you, my poor fellow?" asked Herbert of the runaway--his compassion hindering him from waiting for the more roundabout explanation of the Maroon. The blood-bedaubed creature, perceiving that the speech was addressed to him, made a long rejoinder; but in a tongue unknown both to the hunter and Herbert. The latter could distinguish two words that he had heard before--"Foolah" and "Allah"--both of which occurred repeatedly in the speech. "It's no use asking him, Master Vaughan. Like yourself, he's a stranger to the island; though, as you see, they've already initiated him into some of its ways. Those brands upon his breast are nearly fresh--as you may tell by the red skin around the letters. He's just been landed from Africa, it appears. As for the marks upon his back--those have been made by a plaything, the white planters and their overseers in these parts are rather too fond of using--the cart-whip! They've been flogging the poor devil; and, _Crambo_! they've given it to him thick and sharp." As the Maroon made this remark, he raised the blood-stained shirt, exposing to view that back so terribly reticulated. The sight was sickening. Herbert could not bear to gaze upon it; but averted his eyes on the instant. "From Africa, you say? He has not got negro features!" "As to his features, that don't signify. There are many African tribes who are not negro-featured. I can tell from his that he is a Foolah. I hear him use the word as he talks." "Yoy--Foolah! Foolah!" cried the runaway on hearing pronounced the name of his people; and then he continued in a strain of the same language, accompanied by much gesticulation. "I wish I knew his lingo," said the hunter. "I know he's a Foolah. It is some reason why I should take an interest in him; and may be, if only for that, I might--" The speaker paused, as if he had been talking to himself; and then continued the soliloquy only in thought. After a pause he resumed speech. "_Crambo_! very little would tempt me _not_ to restore him to his master." "And must you?" "I must. We Maroons are bound by a treaty to deliver up all runaways we may take; and if we fail to do so--that is, _when it is known_; but these villains of old Jessuron know I have him--" "You will receive a bounty, you say?" "Yes. They will try to deprive me of that; but it isn't the bounty would tempt me in this case. There is something about this young fellow.--My word! he _is_ like her!--ay, as if he were her brother." This last speech was delivered in soliloquy. "Like her! Like whom?" demanded Herbert with a puzzled look. "Your pardon," replied the hunter. "I was struck with a resemblance between this poor fellow and one whom I know; but, Master Vaughan," he continued, as if wishing to change the subject, "you have not said how you came to be all night in the woods? You were hunting yesterday and lost your way?" "True, I lost my way, but not exactly while hunting." "Perhaps that is all the sort of breakfast you have had?" and the Maroon pointed to some pieces of the palm-cabbage that still lay on the turf. "I have both supped and breakfasted upon it," replied Herbert. "I had climbed the tree for water, when the boar came up to break his fast upon what remained of it." The Maroon smiled at this explanation of some circumstances by which even he had been mystified. "Well," said he, "if you are not anxious to return at once to Mount Welcome, and will give me five minutes' time, I think I can provide you something better than raw cabbage." "I am not particularly in a hurry about getting back to Mount Welcome. Perhaps I may never go back!" These words, combined with the air of the young Englishman as he uttered them, did not escape the notice of the intelligent Maroon. "Something strange in this young man's history!" said he to himself, though he had the delicacy not to demand an explanation of the ambiguous speech just made. "Well, it's not my affair, I suppose!" Then, addressing himself to Herbert, he said aloud-- "Do you agree, Master Vaughan, to eat a forest breakfast of my providing?" "Indeed, with pleasure," answered Herbert. "Then I must ring for my servants." As he said this, the hunter raised his curved horn to his lips and blew a long, tremulous blast. "That should procure us company and something to eat, master," said he, allowing the horn to drop back to its place. "Hark!" he continued, the instant after, "there are some of my fellows. I thought they could not be far off." As he spoke the sound of a horn was heard reverberating through the woods; and then another, and another--until nearly a dozen could be distinguished, yet all in different directions. They were evidently answers to the signal he had sounded. "So, Master Vaughan," he resumed, with an air expressive of triumph, though in a restrained and modest way, "you see these vultures would not have had it all their own way? My hawks were too near for that. Not the less am I beholden to you, Master Vaughan. I did not think it worth while to call my people. I knew the poltroons would not venture beyond a little swaggering talk. See! they come!" "Who?" "The Maroons!" Herbert heard a rustling among the bushes on the opposite side of the glade; and, at the same time, about a dozen armed men emerged from the underwood, and advanced rapidly towards the _ceiba_. Volume One, Chapter XXVIII. A FOREST BREAKFAST. The young Englishman gazed upon the advancing troop with keen curiosity. There were about a dozen of them, all black men, or nearly all--only one or two of them showing any admixture of colour. There was not a dwarfish or deformed figure in the party. On the contrary, every man of them possessed a tall stalwart form, strong muscular limbs, a skin shining with health, and eyes sparkling with a vigorous brilliance that betokened an innate sense of freedom and independence. Their erect, upright carriage and free, forward step confirmed the belief, which Herbert had already formed, that these black men were not _bondsmen_. There was nothing of the slave either in their looks or gestures. But for the colour of their skins, he would never have thought of associating such men with the idea of slavery. Armed as they were with long knives and guns, some of them with stout spears, they could not be slaves. Besides, their equipments told that they were hunters--and warriors, if need he. All of them had horns, with pouches suspended over their shoulders; and each was provided with a netted calabash for water, like that of the yellow hunter, already described. A few carried an equipment altogether different--consisting of a small pannier of withe-work, or palm-fibre neatly woven. It rested upon the back, where it was held in place by a band of palm sinnet, crossing the breast, and another brought over the forehead, which thus sustained a portion of the weight. This pannier was the _cutacoo_--the depository of their provisions, and of such articles as were required in their wild forest rambles. With regard to their costume, that was _bizarre_, though not unpicturesque. No two were dressed alike, though there was a certain idiosyncrasy in their attire, which proclaimed them all of one following. The _toqued_ "bandanna" was the most common head-dress--a few having palm-leaf hats. Only some of them had a shirt with sleeves; others wanted a complete pair of trousers; and one or two were naked from the waist upward, and from the thighs downwards--the white cotton loin-cloth being the unique and only garment! All of them had their feet and ankles covered: as the stony and thorny paths they were accustomed to tread rendered necessary. The _chaussure_ was the same with all; and appeared to be a tight-fitting jack-boot, of some species of raw hide, without seam or stitching of any kind. The reddish bristles standing thinly over its surface, proclaimed the character of the material. It was the skin of the wild hog: the hind leg of a boar, drawn upon the foot while fresh and warm, as it dries tightening over the instep and ankle like an elastic stocking. A little trimming with the knife is all that is necessary for this ready-made mocassin; and once on, it is never taken off till the wearing of the sole renders necessary a refit. Drawing on his boots, therefore, is no part of the diurnal duties of a Jamaica hog-hunter. I have said that Herbert Vaughan regarded the new comers with a feeling of curiosity as well as surprise. It was no wonder he did so. The mode in which they had been summoned into his presence, their echo-like answers to the horn signal, and their prompt, almost instantaneous appearance, formed a series of incidents that more resembled what might have been witnessed upon the stage of a theatre than in real life; and had the yellow hunter been a white man, and he and his followers clad in Lincoln green, the young Englishman might have fancied himself in Sherwood Forest, with bold Robin _redivivus_, and his merry men mustering around him! "This white gentleman has not eaten breakfast," said Cubina to his followers as they came up. "Well, Quaco! what have you got in your cutacoos?" The individual thus appealed to was a jet-black negro of large dimensions, with a grave yet quizzical cast of countenance. He appeared to be a sort of lieutenant: perhaps the "Little John" of the party. "Well, worthy capten," answered he, saluting the yellow hunter with a somewhat awkward grace; "I believe there's enough, one thing with another--that be, if the gen'lman has got a good appetite, and's not too nice about what he eats." "What is there? Let me see!" interrupted Cubina, as he proceeded to inspect the panniers. "A ham of wild hog barbecued," continued he, turning out the contents of a cutacoo. "Well, that to begin with--the white gentry are rather partial to our barbecued hog! What else? a brace of soldier-crabs. So far good. Ah! better still, a pair of ramier pigeons, and a wild guinea-fowl. Who carries the coffee and sugar?" "Here, captain," cried another of the cutacoo men, throwing his pannier to the ground, and drawing out several bags which contained the necessary materials for coffee-making. "A fire, and be quick!" commanded Cubina. At the word given a tinder was struck, dry leaves and branches quickly collected, and a sparkling, crackling fire soon blazed upon the ground. Over this was erected a crane--resting horizontally on two forked sticks--which soon carried a brace of iron pots suspended in the blaze. With so many cooks, the process of preparing the meat for the pots was very short and quick. The pigeons and guinea-fowl were singed as fast as feathers would burn; and then being "drawn and quartered," were flung in torn fragments into the largest of the pots. The soldier-crabs shared the same fate; and some pieces of the wild hog ham. A handful of salt was added, water, a few slices of plantain, eddoes, calalue, and red capsicum--all of which ingredients were supplied from the cutacoos. A strong fire of dried faggots soon brought the pot to a furious boil; and the lieutenant Quaco--who appeared also to act as _chef de cuisine_--after repeatedly testing the contents, at length declared that the _pepper-pot_ was ready for serving up. Dishes, bowls, cups, and platters made their appearance--all being shells of the calabash, of different shapes; and as soon as Herbert and the captain were helped to the choicest portions of the savoury stew, the remainder was distributed among the men: who, seating themselves in groups over the ground, proceeded to discuss the well-known viand with an avidity that showed it was also their breakfast. The _pepper-pot_ was not the sole dish of the _dejeuner_. Pork steaks, cut from the carcass of the freshly-slain boar, were added; while plantains and "cocoa-fingers," roasted in the ashes, contributed a substitute for bread not to be despisingly spoken of. The second pot boiling over the fire contained the coffee; which, quaffed from the calabashes, tasted as fine as if sipped out of cups of the purest Sevres porcelain. In this "al-fresco" feast the poor captive was not forgotten, but was supplied among the rest--the colossal Quaco administering to his wants with an air of quizzical compassion. The young Englishman desired enlightenment about the character of his hosts; but delicacy forbade any direct inquiries. Could they be robbers--brigands with black skins? Their arms and accoutrements gave colour to the supposition. _Maroons_ they called themselves, but the name was new, and helped not Herbert in his perplexity. "If robbers," thought he, "they are the gentlest of their calling." Breakfast over, the Maroons gathered up their traps, and prepared to depart from the spot. Already the wild boar had been butchered, cut up into portable flitches, and packed away in the cutacoos. The wales upon the back of the runaway had been anointed by the hand of Quaco with some balsamic cerate; and by gestures the unfortunate youth was made to understand that he was to accompany the party. Instead of objecting to this, his eyes sparkled with a vivid joy. From the courtesy he had already received at their hands, he could not augur evil. The Maroons, out of respect to their chief--whom they appeared to treat with submissive deference--had moved some distance away, leaving Captain Cubina alone with his English guest. The latter, with his gun shouldered, stood ready to depart. "You are a stranger in the island?" said the Maroon, half interrogatively. "I fancy you have not been living long with your uncle?" "No," answered Herbert. "I never saw my uncle before yesterday afternoon." "_Crambo_!" exclaimed the hunter-captain in some surprise; "you have just arrived, then? In that case, Master Vaughan--and that is why I have made bold to ask you--you will scarce be able to find your way back to Mount Welcome. One of my people will go with you?" "No, thank you. I think I can manage it alone." Herbert hesitated to say that he was not going to Mount Welcome. "It is a crooked path," urged the Maroon; "though straight enough to one who knows it. You need not take the guide so far as the great house; though Mr Vaughan, I believe, does not object to our people going on his grounds, as some other planters do. You can leave the man when you get within sight of the place. Without a guide, I fear you will not be able to find the path." "In truth, Captain Cubina," said Herbert, no longer caring what idea his words might communicate to his Maroon acquaintance, "I don't wish to find the path you speak of. I'm not going that way." "Not to Mount Welcome?" "No." The Maroon remained for a moment silent, while a puzzled expression played over his features. "Only arrived yesterday--out all night in the woods--not going back! Something strange in all this." Such were the quick reflections that passed through his mind. He had already noticed an air of distraction--of dejection, too--in the countenance of the stranger. What could it mean? The gay ribbon knotted in the button-hole of his coat--what could that mean? Captain Cubina was of the age--and perhaps just then in the very temper--to observe all matters that appeared indications of a certain soft sentiment; and both the blue ribbon and the thoughtful attitude were of that signification. He knew something of the white denizens of Mount Welcome--more, perhaps, of those with a coloured skin. Could the odd behaviour of the young Englishman be attributed to some family difficulty that might have arisen there? The Maroon mentally answered this interrogatory for himself: with the reflection that something of the kind had occurred. Perhaps Captain Cubina was not merely guessing! Perhaps he had already listened to some whisper of plantation gossip: for electricity itself can scarce travel faster than news in the negro _quarter_! If the hunter-captain had any suspicions as to the real position of his woodland guest, he was polite enough not to express them. On the contrary, he waived the opportunity given him by Herbert's ambiguous rejoinder, and simply said-- "If you are going elsewhere, you will need a guide all the same. This glade is surrounded by a wide stretch of tangled woods. There is no good path leading anywhere." "You are very kind," answered Herbert, touched by the delicate solicitude of this man with a coloured skin. "I wish to reach Montego Bay; and if one of your men would set me on the main road, I should certainly feel under great obligations. As to rewarding him for his trouble, beyond thanking him, I am sorry to say that circumstances just now have placed it out of my power." "Master Vaughan!" said the Maroon, smiling courteously as he spoke, "were you not a stranger to us and our customs, I should feel offended. You speak as if you expected me to present you with a bill for your breakfast. You seem to forget that, scarce an hour ago, you threw yourself before the muzzle of a pistol to protect the life of a Maroon-- a poor outcast mulatto of the mountains! And now--but I forgive you. You know me not--" "Pardon me, Captain Cubina; I assure you--" "Say no more! I know your English heart, master--still uncorrupted by vile prejudices of caste and colour. Long may it remain so; and whether Captain Cubina may ever see you again, remember! that up yonder in the Blue Mountain,"--the Maroon pointed as he spoke to the purple outline of a mountain ridge, just visible over the tops of the trees--"up yonder dwells a man--a coloured man, it is true, but one whose heart beats with gratitude perhaps as truly as that of the whitest; and should you ever feel the fancy to honour that man with a visit, under his humble roof you will find both a friend and a welcome." "Thanks!" cried the young Englishman, stirred to enthusiasm by the free friendship of the yellow hunter. "I may some day avail myself of your hospitable offer. Farewell!" "Farewell!" responded the Maroon, eagerly grasping the hand which Herbert had held out to him. "Quaco!" he cried, calling to his lieutenant, "conduct this gentleman to the main road that leads to the Bay. Farewell, Master Vaughan, and may fortune favour you!" Volume One, Chapter XXIX. QUACO. It was not without regret that Herbert parted with this new friend; and long time was he following upon the heels of Quaco, before he ceased to reflect on the circumstances that had led to his making so singular an acquaintance. Quaco, being one of the taciturn sort, made no attempt to interrupt Herbert's meditations until the two had walked together for more than a mile. Then, however, some matter upon his mind brought the guide to a halt, and the commencement of a conversation. "Two tracks from here, buckra. We can follow either; but dis to the right am the shortest--the best road, too." "Why not take it, then?" "O--a master; there may be reasons." "What! for avoiding it?" "Ya--a!" replied Quaco, in a thoughtful, drawling tone. "What reasons, friend?" "Don't you see the roof of a house--just over the tops of them pawpaws?" "Yes--what of that?" "That's the baracoon." "The baracoon?" "Ya--the penn of de Jew Jess'ron." "And what if it be?" "Ah, buckra, what if it be? If we take the path to the right we must pass the Jew's house, and some of his people are sure see us. That John Crow's a justice of the peace, and we may get into trouble." "Oh! about the affair of the runaway, you mean? Your captain said he belonged to a Mr Jessuron." "As much 'bout the dogs as the man. Captain had a right to claim the runaway as his catch; but these Spanish cusses'll make a muss 'bout thar dogs. They'll say our captain killed them out o' spite--that they'll swar to; since it's well-known we mountainee men don't like such interlopers here, meddlin' with our business." "But neither you nor I killed the dogs?" "All, buckra, all the same--you helped--your gun helped kill them. Besides, you hindered the John-Crows from pecking the hawk." "For what I have done I am not afraid to answer before a justice,--be it this Mr Jessuron, or any other," said the young Englishman; conscious of having acted rightly in the part he had taken in the quarrel. "Not much justice to be expected from Justice Jess'ron, master. My advice be to keep out of the hands of justice as long's we can; and that we can only do by taking the road to the left." "Will it be much out of our way?" asked Herbert; not caring to greatly inconvenience himself for the reasons set forth by his sable guide. "Nothing to signify," answered Quaco, though not speaking very truthfully: for the path he intended to take was really much longer than the one leading by Jessuron's house. "In that case," assented Herbert, "take which way you please!" Without further parley, Quaco strode forward on the path branching to the left--as before, silently followed by him whom he was guiding. The track they had taken ran entirely through woods--in some places very difficult to traverse on account of the thorny thickets as well as the unevenness of the ground, which caused the path to be constantly ascending, or trending rapidly downward. At length, however, they arrived at the summit of a high ridge, and were moving onwards amidst groves of pimento, more open than the forest from which they had emerged. From the top of the ridge, Herbert saw a large house shining against the verdant background of the landscape, which he at once recognised as the mansion of Mount Welcome. They were not going towards the house, but in a diagonal direction, which would bring them out on the avenue near the entrance-gate. Herbert called out to his guide to make halt. The young man did not like the idea of entering upon the avenue, lest he might encounter some of his uncle's people--a circumstance which he should not wish to have reported at the great house. He therefore requested Quaco to conduct him by some way lying more to the right--so that he might reach the main road without being seen from Mount Welcome. The guide yielded compliance, though not without a little grumbling reluctance--as he turned off, muttering some words about giving "as wide a berth as possible to the ole Jew penn." He obliqued, however, into a new direction; and after another traverse through the woods, Herbert had the satisfaction of finding himself on the main road leading to Montego Bay. The young Englishman had no farther need of a guide, and Quaco was just on the point of taking leave of him, when at that moment a party of horsemen suddenly made appearance round a bend in the road. There were six or seven in all; and they were riding forward at a rapid pace, as if bent upon some serious business. At the first sight of these strangers, Quaco shot like an arrow into the underwood--calling upon the buckra to follow his example. Herbert, however, disdaining to hide himself, remained standing in the middle of the road. Seeing his determination, Quaco returned to his side; as he did so, clamorously protesting against the imprudence of his _protege_. "Don't like their looks," muttered the Maroon, as he glanced apprehensively towards the horsemen. "It might be--by the Great Accompong it is!--that harpy Ravener, the overseer of Jess'ron. Golly! buckra, we's in for it! No use tryin' to 'scape 'em now." As Quaco finished speaking, the horsemen rode forward on the ground--one and all halting as they came to the spot where the pedestrians were standing. "Here's our fellow!" cried the bearded man at their head, whom Herbert easily identified. "Just dropped upon him, like a duck upon a June bug. Now, Mr Tharpey, do your duty! We'll hear what this young gentleman's got to say before the justice." "I arrest you, sir," said the person appealed to as Mr Tharpey. "I am head constable of the parish--I arrest you in the name of the law." "On what charge?" demanded Herbert, indignantly. "Mr Ravener here will bring the charge. I've got nothing to do with that part of it. You must come before the nearest justice. I reckon the nighest justice from here is the Custos Vaughan?" This half-interrogatory of the constable was addressed, not to Herbert, but to his own followers. Though it was spoken rather in an undertone, the young man heard it with sufficient distinctness, and with very little complacency. To be carried back into the presence of his uncle-- whom he had so lately defied--and in the character of a felon; to be brought, under such humiliating circumstances, before the eyes of his fair cousin--before the eye-glass of his late fellow-passenger--was a prospect that could not fail to be unpleasant. It was a sort of relief, therefore, when Ravener--who appeared to use some guiding influence over the constable and his _posse comitatus_-- overruled the suggestion that Mr Vaughan was the nearest magistrate, and claimed that honour for Jacob Jessuron, Esquire, of the Happy Valley. After some discussion between the parties upon this moot legal point, the overseer's opinion was adopted: and it was determined that the case should be carried before Justice Jessuron. Both Herbert and his guide were then formally arrested in the name of the king, and marched off in custody--not without some very vociferous protestations on the part of Quaco, with a long string of threats that he would some day make both constable and overseer pay for this outrage upon the person of a free Maroon. Volume One, Chapter XXX. A JAMAICA JUSTICE. Jessuron, Esquire, held court in the verandah of his dingy dwelling-house, where we have already seen him assisting at a different spectacle. He was now seated, with a small table before him, covered with a piece of green baize, and carrying a gold snuff-box, an inkstand, pens, and some sheets of paper. A book or two lay upon the table, one of which, by the lettering upon its cover, proclaimed its title and character--_The Jamaica Justice_. It was bound in black leather--a colour sufficiently emblematic of the chief subject on which it treated: for more than four-fifths of the laws and regulations it contained, related to creatures with black skins. The Justice was in full costume, as the occasion required--that is, he wore his best blue body-coat with gilt buttons, his drab small-clothes and top-boots. The brownish beaver had been laid aside: as the sanctity of justice requires even the judge's head to be uncovered; but the white cotton skull-cap still remained upon his cranium; justice in Jamaica not being so rigorous as to exact its removal. With the spectacles well set upon his nose, and his thin face screwed into an expression of pompous importance, Squire Jessuron sate behind his bench, waiting till the parties to the suit should get well into their places. He was sole justice present; but, of course, it was merely a "preliminary inquiry before a magistrate." To have tried a white criminal on the serious charge brought against Herbert Vaughan, would have required a fuller bench--at least three magistrates, and one of them a custos. Jessuron's power could go no farther than to _commit_ the presumed criminal to prison, until a more formal process should be organised against him. Herbert had been brought up in front of the table--his captor, the constable, and one or two of the _posse_ standing behind him. On the right side appeared Ravener, backed by the two Spanish _cacadores_; the last-mentioned worthies no longer--as had formerly been their constant custom--attended by their canine companions. Quaco had been left in the yard below--unguarded--since there was, in reality, no charge against _him_. There was one other witness to this magisterial trial--the daughter of the Justice himself. Yes, the fair Judith was present--as on all important occasions; but this time not conspicuously so. On the contrary, she was seated in a window that opened on the verandah, her beautiful face half-concealed behind the netted fringe-work of the curtains. The position enabled her to observe what was passing, without formally exposing her own person to view. Her face was not altogether hidden; and her white shining forehead and dark lustrous eyes, gleaming through the gauzy muslin that veiled them, only appeared more piquantly attractive. It was evident, from her actions, that the gentle Judith had no intention of remaining unseen. There were several rather good-looking men in the party that accompanied the constable--young planters he had picked up by the way--and who desired nothing better than a lark of this kind. From the moment that these had entered the courtyard, the fair mistress of the mansion had remained almost constantly by the window. It was only, however, after the people had got grouped in the gallery, that she took her seat behind the curtain, and entered upon a more minute inspection of their faces and persons. She was not long engaged in this game, when a change might have been observed passing over her countenance. At first her eyes had wandered from face to face with rather a sneering, cynical expression--such as the Jewess well knew how to put on. All at once, however, her gaze became fixed; and the contemptuous smile gradually gave place to a look of more serious regard. By following the direction of her eyes, the object of this regard could easily be discovered. It was the "prisoner at the bar!" What was the meaning of that gaze? Sympathy for the accused? She knew why the young man was there. Ravener had already informed her father of all that had transpired, and the daughter had heard the tale. Was it a generous pity for the position in which this unknown youth was placed, that was now stirring within the breast of the fair Judith, and had produced that sudden change in the expression of her countenance? Hers was hardly the soul for such a sentiment. Certainly, however, she was actuated by some motive different from the common: for as the trial progressed she no longer looked stealthily from behind the curtain; but having drawn it to one side, she directed her full glance on the stranger, and kept her eyes fixed upon him, apparently regardless of any observation which her conduct might call forth! Her father, whose back was towards her, saw nothing of this; though it was not unnoticed by the others. The young Englishman--though little disposed at that moment to the contemplation of aught beyond his own unpleasant position--could not help observing the beautiful face directly opposite to where he stood; nor did he fail to notice the peculiar glances with which he was being regarded. Was the old man, before whom he stood on trial, the father of that fair creature at the window? Such was his interrogative reflection, as he glanced inquiringly from one to the other. Some time had been occupied by the overseer in telling his story--to substantiate the charge he had made. That done, the prisoner was put upon his defence. "Young man!" said the Justice, "you have heard what thish witness alleges against you. What hash you to say in your defence? And first tell ush what's your name?" "Herbert Vaughan." Jessuron re-adjusted his spectacles, and looked at the prisoner with some show of surprise. The bystanders--stolid constable and all--seemed a little startled. Quaco, whose colossal form rose above the railings in the background, uttered a grunt of satisfaction on hearing the young man's name--which he had not known before--a name all-powerful in the district, being that of the mighty Custos himself! There was one upon whom the words appeared to produce an impression different from that of mere surprise. A glance of anger shot from the dark eyes of the Jewess as she heard it pronounced, and the look of sympathy for the moment disappeared. Evidently, to her the name was distasteful. "Herbert Vochan?" repeated the Justice. "Might you be any kinshman of Mishter Vochan of Mount Welcome?" "His nephew," was the laconic reply. "Ah! hish nephew! Bless me! ish that true?" This announcement, as testified by his speech, produced a sudden commotion in the mind of the Jew-justice. From some little that was known of his secret hostility towards his neighbour of Mount Welcome-- Ravener knew more than a little--it might have been expected that the discovery of the relationship of the prisoner would have put him in high glee. To be sitting in judgment upon the near kinsman of the Custos-- accused of a serious crime, too--was a proud position for Jacob Jessuron, who could remember many a slight he had received from the haughty lord of Mount Welcome. What a splendid _revanche_! Certainly the manner of the Justice, on learning who was before him, seemed to indicate that such were his reflections. He rubbed his skinny hands together; helped himself from his gold snuff-box; gleefully smiled from behind his glasses, which were once more shifted upon the sharp ridge of his nose; and then, bending his face forward over the table, he remained for some moments smiling, but silent and thoughtful, as if considering how he should proceed. After a time he raised his eyes, and freshly scrutinised the prisoner-- who had already returned an affirmative answer to his last query. "Blesh my soul!--I never knew that Mishter Vochan had a nephew! You are from England, young man? Hash your uncle any more English nephews?" "Not that I am aware of," replied Herbert, frankly. "I believe I am his only relative of that kind--in England, at least." The proviso in this reply betrayed a significant fact: that the young man was not very well acquainted with the family affairs of his colonial kinsman. The astute Justice did not fail to notice this deficiency in the nephew's knowledge. "How long hash you been in Shamaica?" asked he, as if endeavouring to arrive at an explanation of some point that was puzzling him. "A night, and part of two days--in all, about twenty-four hours," replied Herbert, with scrupulous exactness. "Blesh my soul!" again exclaimed the Justice; "only twenty-four hours! It'sh a wonder you're not at your uncle's house? You hash been there?" "Oh, yes," answered Herbert, carelessly. "You come to shtay at Mount Welcome, I supposhe?" Herbert made no reply to this interrogatory. "You shleep there lash night? Excushe me young man, for ashking the question, but ash a magistrate--" "You are perfectly welcome to the answer, _your worship_," said Herbert, laying a satirical emphasis on the titular phrase; "I did _not_ sleep there last night." "Where did you shleep then?" "In the woods," answered Herbert. "Moshesh!" exclaimed the Jew-justice, raising his spectacles in surprise. "In the woods, you shay?" "In the woods," re-affirmed the young man; "under a tree; and a very good bed I found it," he added, jocosely. "And did your uncle know of thish?" "I suppose my uncle knew nothing about it, and as little did he care," replied Herbert, with a reckless indifference as to what answer he gave. The bitter emphasis on the last words, with the tone in which they were delivered, did not escape the observation of Jessuron. A suspicion had arisen in his mind, that there was something amiss in the relationship between the young man and his uncle; to the comprehension of which the answer of the former, aided by a knowledge of the character and affairs of the latter, was gradually giving him a clue. A secret joy sparkled in his sunken eyes, as he listened to the last answer given. All at once he discontinued the direct examination of the prisoner; and, signing to Ravener and the constable to come near, he became engaged with these two worthies in a whispering conversation. What passed between the trio, the young Englishman could not tell--nor indeed any one else who chanced to be present. The result, however, was to Herbert as pleasant as unexpected. When Jessuron again returned to address him, a complete change appeared to have taken place in his manner; and, instead of the frowning Justice, Herbert now saw before him a man who appeared more in the character of a friendly protector--bland, smiling, almost obsequious! "Mashter Vochan," said he--rising from his magisterial seat, and extending his hand to the prisoner--"you will excushe the rough treatment you hash had from theshe people. It ish a great crime in thish country--helping a runaway shlave to eshcape; but as you hash joosh landed, and cannot be ekshpected to know our shtatutes, the law deals mershifully with a firsht offence. Besides, in thish instance, the runaway--who ish one of my own shlaves--did not eshcape. He ish in the hands of the Maroons, and will soon be brought in. The punishment I inflict upon you--and I shall inshist upon its being carried out--ish, that you eats your dinner with me, and--I think that ish punishment enough. Mishter Ravener," added he, calling to his overseer, and at the same time, pointing to Quaco, "take that good fellow and see that he ish cared for. Now, Mashter Vochan! pleashe to step inside, and allow me to introshuce you to my daughter Shoodith." It would have been contrary to all human nature had Herbert Vaughan not felt gratified at the pleasant turn which this disagreeable affair had taken; and perhaps this gratification was enhanced at the prospect of the proposed introduction. Indeed, no man, however cold his nature, could have looked upon those lovely eyes--so long wistfully watching him from the window--without wishing a nearer acquaintance with their owner. The angry glance had been evanescent. It was gone long before the conclusion of the trial scene; and as the young Englishman--in obedience to the invitation of his _ci-devant_ judge--stepped across the verandah, the fair face, retreating from the window, was suffused with the sweetest and most sympathetic of smiles. Volume One, Chapter XXXI. AN UNEXPECTED PATRON. Thus had the chapter of accidents that conducted Herbert Vaughan to the penn of Jacob Jessuron been brought to a very unexpected termination. But the end was not yet. There was more to come--much more. Herbert was surprised at the turn things had taken. The only explanation he could think of was, that it was to his uncle's name he was indebted for the honours that were being done to him--a mere neighbourly feeling of the penn-keeper for the great sugar-planter. "They are friends," thought Herbert, "and this kindness to me is the offspring of that friendship." The reflection did not give him pleasure, but the contrary. He felt himself in an awkward position--the recipient of a hospitality not meant for himself, but rather for one who had injured him; and who, although his own relative, he now regarded as his enemy. His uncle would hear of it--no doubt, soon--and would be able to accuse him of taking advantage of his name. The thought caused Herbert a feeling of uneasiness. Perhaps he would have cared less had there been no one but his uncle to be cognisant of the false position. But there was. His short and troubled visit to Mount Welcome had made Herbert Vaughan acquainted with one whose remembrance was likely for a long time to exert an influence over his thoughts--even though lips as red, and eyes, perhaps, as brilliant as hers, were now smiling courteously upon him. The memory of his cousin Kate was still mellow. He could fancy her soft, sweet voice yet ringing in his ears; the warm glow of her virgin presence seemed hanging like a halo around him: all urging him to preserve the heroism of his character, if only for the sake of standing well in her estimation. Influenced by these considerations, he resolved to throw off the mask with which circumstances had momentarily invested him, and declare the true position in which he stood to his haughty relative. It was not until the conclusion of the dinner--after the daughter of his host had retired smilingly from the table--that the young Englishman unburdened himself. Then--perhaps a little prompted by the wine--he made a full confession of the disagreeable circumstances existing between himself and the master of Mount Welcome. Was it the wine--somewhat freely pressed upon him--that hindered him from perceiving the displeasure which his communication had produced upon his hearer? Was there any show of displeasure? If there was, Herbert did not perceive it. On the contrary, had the young man been closely observant, he might have noticed an effect of altogether an opposite character. Behind the green goggles, he might have seen those deep dark Israelitish eyes sparkling with joy at the revelation he had made. "I'm exsheedingly sorry, young Mashter Vochan," said the Jew, after his surprise at Herbert's revelations had apparently subsided--"exsheedingly sorry I ish--to hear that you and your uncle are not on good terms. Ah! well; we mush hope for the besht; and ash I am one of Mishter Vochan's humble friendsh, possibly I might do somethingsh to reconshile your little quarrel. Doosh you not intend going back to Mount Welcome?" "Never. After what has passed, never!" "Ach! yoush musht not be too revengeful. Mishter Vochan ish a proud man; and I musht say he hash behaved badly--very badly; but still he ish your uncle." "He has not acted as such." "That ish true--very true--thish fine gentleman you shpeak of--shtill, that ish no reason why Mishter Vochan should treat hish own nephew so shabby. Well, well--I am sorry--exsheedingly sorry. But, Mashter Herbert," continued the penn-keeper, interrogating his guest with evident interest, "what _dosh_ you intend to do? I supposhe you hash monish of your own?" "I am sorry to say, Mr Jessuron, I have not." "No monish at all!" "Not a shilling," affirmed Herbert, with a careless laugh. "That _ish_ bad. Where dosh you think of going--since you shay you will not return to Mount Welcome?" "Well," said Herbert, still preserving his air of jocularity, "I was making for the port again, when your worthy overseer and his friends intercepted me--luckily, I may say: since, but for their intervention, I should in all likelihood have gone without dinner to-day--at all events, I should not have dined so sumptuously." "A wretched dinner, Mashter Vochan--a misherable dinner to what your uncle could have given you. I'm but a poor humble man compared with the Cushtos; but what I hash ish at your service any time." "Thanks!" said Herbert. "I know not, Mr Jessuron, how I shall ever repay you for your hospitality. I must not tax it any longer, however. I see, by the sun, it is time I should be making for the Bay." As Herbert spoke, he was rising to take his departure. "Shtop, shtop!" cried his host, pushing him back into his chair; "not to-night, Mashter Vochan, not thish night. I can't promish you ash fine a bed as yoush might get at Mount Welcome, but I think I can give you a better ash you shleep in lash night--ha, ha! You musht stay with ush thish night; and Shoodith will make you some music. Don't shay a word; I takesh no refushal." The offer was a tempting one; and, after some further pressure, Herbert acquiesced in it. He was partly influenced to stay where he was, by the poor prospect of a lodging which the Bay afforded him; and, perhaps, a little from a desire to hear the promised music. The conversation was continued, by his host putting some further interrogatories:--How did Herbert intend to employ himself in the Bay? What prospect had he of employment; and in what line? "I fear not much in any _line_," replied the young man, answering both questions in one, and in a tone of sarcastic despondence. "Hash you no profeshion?" "Alas, no!" replied Herbert. "It was intended by my father I should have one; but he died before my education was completed; and my college--as is too often the case--has taught me little more than a knowledge of dead languages." "No ushe--no ushe whatever," rejoined the intelligent Israelite. "I can draw a landscape," pursued the young man, modestly, "or paint a portrait tolerably well, I believe--my father himself taught me these accomplishments." "Ah! Mashter Vochan, neither ish of the shlightest ushe here in Shamaica. If you could paint a house, or a waggon, or a shopkeeper'sh sign, it would bring you more monish than to make the likeneshes of every face in the island. What saysh you to the situation of book-keeper?" "Unfortunately, I know nothing of accounts. The very useful science of book-keeping I have not been taught." "Ha! ha! ha!" replied Jessuron, with an encouraging chuckle, "you ish what we, in Shamaica, call _green_, Mashter Vochan. You musht know that a book-keeper here hash no books to keep. He doesh not even put a pen to paper." "How is that, Mr Jessuron? I have heard the statement before, though I did not comprehend what was meant by it." "Then I musht explain, Mashter Vochan. There ish a law here which makes all proprietors of shlaves keep a white man on hish estate for every fifty blacksh. A very shilly law it ish; but it ish a law. Theesh white supernumeraries are called book-keepers: though, ash I've told you, they keepsh no books. Now you understand what it meansh." "Then, what duties do they perform?" "Oh! that depends on circumshtances. Some look after the shlaves, and some do thish and some that. But, egad! now I think of it, Mashter Vochan, I am myshelf in need of a book-keeper. I have joosh bought a new lot of blacksh, and I musht not break the law. I am ushed to give my book-keepers fifty poundsh a-year, currenshy; but if you would be content to accept such a berth, I would make the salary--on account of your uncle--a hundred poundsh a-year. You would also be found in everything elshe. What dosh you shay, Mashter Vochan?" This unexpected proposal on the part of the penn-keeper, caused his guest to hesitate and reflect. Not long, however. His forlorn, homeless situation presented itself too forcibly to his mind, to keep him long in doubt as to what answer he should make. Suffice it to say, that the offer--which to the young Englishman appeared only too generous--was accepted; and from that hour the Happy Valley became his home. Volume One, Chapter XXXII. A PLOTTING PARENT. Jacob Jessuron was never known to be generous without expecting some reward. Never did he fling out a sprat without the expectation of catching a salmon. What object had he in view in thus becoming the patron and protector of the young Englishman--an outcast adventurer, apparently incapable of making him any return? Why such liberal conditions unasked, and to all appearance unmerited--for, to say the truth, Herbert Vaughan was not the stuff for a _slave-driver_, a term almost synonymous with that of _book-keeper_. No doubt the Jew had some deep scheme; but in this, as in most other matters, he kept his counsel to himself. Even his "precious Shoodith" was but half-initiated into his designs upon this special subject: though a conversation, which occurred between father and daughter, had placed before the latter some data calculated to assist her in guessing at them. The date of this dialogue was upon the morning after Herbert's arrival at the penn. "Show the young man every kindness, Shoodith dear! Don't shpare pains to pleashe him." "Why particularly _him_, my worthy parent?" "Hush! mine Shoodith! Shpeak low, for the luf of Gott! Don't let him hear you talk in that shtyle. Theesh young Englishmen are not ushed to our ways. I hash a reason for being friendly to him." "What! because he is the nephew of Vanity Vaughan? Is that your reason, rabbi?" "I shay, shpeak low! He's in his shleeping room, and may hear you. A single word like that you shay might shpoil all my plans." "Well, father, I'll talk in whispers, if you like. But what _are_ your plans? You'll let _me_ know them, I suppose?" "I will, Shoodith, but not shoost now. I hash an idea, mine daughter--a grand idea, it ish! And if all goes right, you, Shoodith, will be the richest woman in Shamaica." "Oh, I have no objection to that--to be the richest woman in Jamaica, with a prince for my footman! Who won't envy Judith Jessuron, the daughter of the slave-merchant?" "Shtay! a word about that, Shoodith dear. In hish presence we musht say as little ash possible upon the subject of shlaves. He musht see no shlave-whipping here--at leasht till he gets ushed to it. Ravener musht be told to behave himshelf. I knowsh of more than one young Englishmans who left his place joosh for that very thing. He needn't go among the field handsh at all. I'll take care of that. But, dearest Shoodith! everything depends on you; and I knowsh you can, if you will." "Can what, worthy father?" "Make this young fellow satishfied to shtay with ush." The look which accompanied these words betokened some other meaning, than what they might have literally conveyed. "Well," replied Judith, affecting to understand them literally, "I fancy there will not be much difficulty about that. If he's as poor as you say, he'll only be too well pleased to get a good situation, and keep it, too, I should think." "I'sh not so sure about that. He'sh a young man of a proud spirit. That ish proved by hish leaving his uncle ash he has done--without a shilling in hish pocket--and then to defy the Cushtos faysh to faysh! Blesh my soul! what a foolish young fellow he ish! He must be managed, Shoodith, dear--he must be managed; and you're shoost the one to do it." "Why, father, to hear you talk, one would think that this poor young Englishman was a rich sugar estate--to be managed for some grand profit--" "Aha!" exclaimed the other, interrupting her; "maybe yesh--maybe he _ish_ a rich sugar estate. We shee--we shee." "Now, had it been the grand guest of Mount Welcome," continued Judith, without heeding the interruption; "had it been this lord of Montagu Castle that you wished me to _manage_,"--at the word the Jewess smiled significantly--"I might have come nearer comprehending you." "Ah! there is no schance there--no schance whatever, Shoodith." "No chance of what?" abruptly inquired the Jewess. "Why, no schance of--that ish--" "Come, worthy rabbi, speak out! You needn't be afraid to tell me of what you're thinking: I know it already." "Of what wash I thinking, Shoodith?" The father put this question rather with a view to escape from an explanation. The daughter instantaneously answered, "You were thinking, and I suppose still are, that I--your daughter, the child of an old nigger-dealer as you are--would have no chance with this aristocratic stranger who has arrived--this Mr Montagu Smythje. That's your thought, Jacob Jessuron?" "Well, Shoodith, dear! you know he ish to be the guesht of the Cushtos; and the Cushtos, ash I hash reason to know, hash an eye on him for his own daughter. Miss Vochan is thought a great belle, and it would be no ushe for ush to ashpire--" "She a belle!" exclaimed the Jewess, with a proud toss of her head, and a slight upturning of her beautiful spiral nostril; "she was not the belle of the last ball at the Bay--not she, indeed; and as for _aspiring_, the daughter of a slave-dealer is at least equal to the daughter of a slave--maybe a slave herself--" "Hush, Shoodith! not a word about that--not a whisper in the hearing of thish young man. You know he ish her cousin. Hush!" "I don't care if he was her brother," rejoined the Jewess, still speaking in a tone of spiteful indignation--for Kate Vaughan's beauty was Judith Jessuron's especial fiend; "and if he were her brother," continued she, "I'd treat him worse than I intend to do. Fortunately for him, he's only her cousin; and as he has quarrelled with them all, I suppose--has he said anything of _her_?" The interrogatory was put as if suggested by some sudden thought--and the questioner seemed to wait with considerable anxiety for the answer. "Of hish cousin Kate, you mean?" "Why, who should I mean!" demanded Judith, bluntly. "There is no other _she_ in Mount Welcome the young fellow is likely to be talking about; nor _you_ either--unless, indeed, you've still got that copper-coloured wench in your head. Of course, it's Kate Vaughan I mean. What says he of her? He must have seen her--short as his visit seems to have been; and, if so, you must have talked about her last night--since you sat late enough to have discussed the whole scandal of the island." With all this freedom of verbiage, the Jewess seemed not to lose sight of the original interrogatory; and her frequent repetition of it was rather intended to conceal the interest with which she looked for the answer. If her words did not betray that interest, her looks certainly did: for, as she bent forward to listen, a skilled observer might have detected in her eyes that sort of solicitude which springs from a heart where the love-passion is just beginning to develop itself--budding, but not yet blooming. "True, Shoodith, true," admitted the slave-merchant, thus bantered by his own bold offspring. "The young man did shpeak of hish cousin; for I hash a wish to know what wash hish opinion of her, and ashked him. I wash in hopes he had quarrelled with her too; but, ach! no--he hashn't-- he hashn't." "What might that signify to you?" "Moch, moch, daughter Shoodith; a great deal." "You're a mysterious old man, father Jacob; and, though I've been studying you for nearly a score of years, I don't half understand you yet. But what did he say of Kate Vaughan? He saw her, I suppose?" "Yesh. He had an interview with her. He saysh she behaved very kind to him. He'sh not angry with _her_. S'help me, no!" This information appeared to produce no very pleasant impression upon the Jewess; who, with her eyes downcast upon the floor, remained for some moments in a thoughtful attitude. "Father," she said, in a tone half serious, half in simplicity, "the young fellow has got a bit of blue ribbon in his button-hole. You have noticed it, I suppose? I am curious to know what he means by wearing that. Is it an order, or what? Did he tell you?" "No. I notished it; but, ash he shayed nothings about it, I did not ashk him. It'sh no order--nothing of the kind. His father was only a poor artisht." "I wonder where he procured that piece of ribbon?" said Judith, speaking in a low tone, and half in soliloquy. "You can ashk him for yourself, Shoodith. There ish no harm in that." "No, not I," answered Judith, suddenly changing countenance, as if ashamed of having shown the weakness of curiosity. "What care I for him, or his ribbon?" "No matter for that, Shoodith, dear; no matter for that, if yoush can make him _care for you_." "Care for _me_! What, father! do you want him to fall in love with me?" "Joosh that--joosh so." "For what reason, pray?" "Don't ash know. I hash a purpose. You shall know it in good time, Shoodith. You make him in luff with you--over head and earsh, if you like." The counsel did not appear averse to her who received it. Anything but displeasure was in her looks as she listened to it. "But what," asked she, after a reflective pause, and laughing as she spake, "what if, in luring him, I should myself fall into the lure? They say that the tarantula is sometimes taken in its own trap." "If you succeed in catching your fly, mine goot shpider Shoodith, that won't signify. So much the better ish that. But fusht catch your fly. Don't let go the shtrings of your heart, till you hash secured hish; and then you may do as you pleashe about falling in luff with him. Hush! I hear him coming from hish shamber. Now, Shoodith dear, show him every reshpect. Shower on him your sweetest of shmiles!" And terminating the dialogue with this parental injunction, Jacob Jessuron walked off to conduct his guest into the great hall. "Ah! worthy father!" said Judith, looking after him with a singular expression upon her countenance, "for once, you may find me a dutiful daughter; though not for you or your purpose--whatever that may be. I have my suspicion of what it is. No: not for that either--grand destiny as it might be deemed. There is something grander still--a passion perilous to play with; and just for that peril shall I play with it. Ha--he comes! How proud his step! He looks the master, and yon old Israelite his overseer--his book-keeper--ha! ha! ha!" "Ach!" she exclaimed, suddenly checking her laughter, and changing her smile to a frown; "the ribbon! he wears it still! What can it mean? No matter now! Ere long I shall unravel the skein of its silken mystery-- even if this heart should be torn in the attempt!" Volume One, Chapter XXXIII. ANOTHER OF THE SAME. On that same morning, and about the same hour, a scene of remarkable parallelism was passing at Mount Welcome. Loftus Vaughan was holding dialogue with his daughter, as Jacob Jessuron with Judith--the subject very similar--the motives of planter and penn-keeper equally mean. "You have sent for me, papa?" said Kate, entering the great hall in obedience to a summons from her father. "Yes, Catherine," replied Mr Vaughan, in a tone of unwonted gravity. The grave tone was not needed. The "Catherine" was enough to tell Kate that her father was in one of his serious moods: for it was only when in this vein, that he ever pronounced her baptismal name in full. "Sit down there," he proceeded, pointing to a fauteuil in front of where he was himself seated. "Sit down, my daughter, and listen: I have something of importance to say to you." The young lady obeyed in silence, and not without a little of that reluctant _gaucherie_ which patients display when seating themselves in front of a physician, or a naughty child composing itself to listen to the parental lecture. The natural gaiety of "Lilly Quasheba" was not easily restrained; and though the unusual gravity depicted in her father's face might have checked it, the formality with which he was initiating the interview had an opposite effect. At the corners of her pretty little mouth might have been observed something that resembled a smile. Her father did observe something that resembled it. "Come, Catherine!" said he, reprovingly, "I have called you out to talk over a serious matter. I expect you to listen seriously, as becomes the subject." "Oh! papa, how can I be serious, till I know the subject? You are not ill, I hope?" "Tut, no--no. It has nothing to do with my health--which, thank Providence, is good enough--nor yours neither. It is our wealth, not our health, that is concerned--our wealth, Catherine!" The last phrase was uttered with emphasis, and in a confidential way, as if to enlist his daughter's sympathies upon the subject. "Our wealth, papa? I hope nothing has happened? You have had no losses?" "No, child," replied Mr Vaughan, now speaking in a fond, parental tone; "nothing of the sort, thanks to fortune, and perhaps a little to my own prudence. It is not losses I am thinking about, but gains." "Gains!" "Ay, gains--gains, Catherine, which you can assist me in obtaining." "I, papa? How could I assist you? I know nothing of business--I am sure I know nothing." "Business! ha! ha! It's not business, Kate. The part which you will have to play will be one of pleasure--I hope so, at least." "Pray tell me what it is, papa! I am sure I'm fond of pleasure at all times--everybody knows that." "Catherine!" said her father, once more adopting the grave tone, "do you know how old you are?" "Certainly, papa! at least, what I have been told. Eighteen--just past last birthday." "And do you know what young girls should, and generally do, think about, when they come to be of that age?" Kate either affected or felt profound ignorance of the answer she was expected to make. "Come!" said Mr Vaughan, banteringly, "you know what I mean, Catherine?" "Indeed, papa, I do not. You know I keep no secrets from you; you taught me not. If I had any, I would tell them to you." "I know you're a good girl, Kate. I know you would. But that is a sort of secret I should hardly expect you to declare--even to me, your father." "Pray what is it, papa?" "Why, at your age, Kate, most girls--and it is but right and natural they should--take to thinking about a young man." "Oh! that is what you mean! Then I can answer you, papa, that I _have_ taken to thinking about one." "Ha!" ejaculated Mr Vaughan, in a tone of pleased surprise; "you have, have you?" "Yes, indeed," answered Kate, with an air of the most innocent _naivete_. "I have been thinking of one--and so much, that he is scarce ever out of my mind." "Ha!" said the Custos, repeating his exclamation of surprise, and rather taken aback by a confession so unexpectedly candid. "Since how long has this been, my child?" "Since how long?" rejoined Kate, musingly. "Yes. When did you first begin to think of this young man?" "Oh! the day before yesterday, after dinner--ever since I first saw him, father." "_At_ dinner you first saw him," said Mr Vaughan, correcting his daughter. "But, no matter for that," he continued, gleefully rubbing his hands together, and not noticing the puzzled expression upon Kate's countenance. "It might be, that you did not think of him in the first moments of your introduction. It's not often people do. A little bashfulness has to be got over. And so then, Kate, you like him now-- you think you like him now?" "Oh! father, you may be sure I do--better than any one I ever saw-- excepting yourself, dear papa." "Ah! my little chit, that's a different sort of liking--altogether different. The one's love--the other is but filial affection--each very well in its place. Now, as you're a good girl, Kate, I have a bit of pleasant news for you." "What is it, papa?" "I don't know whether I should tell you or not," said the Custos, playfully patting his daughter upon the cheek; "at least, not now, I think. It might make you too happy." "Oh, papa! I have told you what you wished me; and I see it has made you happy. Surely you will not conceal what you say will do the same for me? What is the news?" "Listen, then, Kate!" Mr Vaughan bending forward, as if to make his communication more impressive, pronounced in a whisper:-- "He reciprocates your feeling--_he likes you_!" "Father, I fear he does not," said the young Creole, with a serious air. "He does--I tell you so, girl. He's over head and ears in love with you. I know it. In fact, I saw it from the first minute. A blind man might have perceived it; but then a blind man can see better than a young lady that's in love. Ha! ha! ha!" Loftus Vaughan laughed long and loudly at the jest he had so unexpectedly perpetrated: for at that moment he was in the very mood for merriment. His dearest dream was about to be realised. Montagu Smythje was in love with his daughter. That he knew before. Now his daughter had more than half admitted--in fact, quite confessed--that she liked Smythje; and what was _liking_ but _love_? "Yes, Kate," said he, as soon as his exultation had to some extent subsided, "you are blind, you little silly--else you might have seen it before. His behaviour would show how much he cares for you." "Ah! father, I think that his behaviour would rather show that he cares not for either of us. He is too proud to care for any one." "What! too proud? Nonsense! it's only his way. Surely he has not shown anything of that to you, Kate?" "I cannot blame him," continued the young girl, still speaking in a serious tone. "The fault was not his. Your treatment of him, father-- you must not be angry at me for telling you of it--now that I know all, dear papa--was it not enough to make him act as he has done?" "My treatment of him!" cried the Custos, with a self-justifying, but puzzled look. "Why, child, you rave! I could not treat him better, if I was to try ever so. I have done everything to entertain him, and make him feel at home here. As to what _he_ has done, it's all nonsense about his pride: at least, with us he has shown nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he is acting admirably throughout the whole matter. Certainly, no man could behave with more politeness to you than Mr Smythje is doing?" "Mr Smythje!" The entrance of this gentleman at the moment prevented Mr Vaughan from noticing the effect which the mention of his name had produced: an unexpected effect, as might have been seen by the expression which Kate's features had suddenly assumed. But for that interruption--hindering the _eclaircissement_ which, no doubt, his daughter would on the instant have made--Mr Vaughan might have sat down to breakfast with his appetite considerably impaired. His guest requiring all his attention, caused him to withdraw suddenly from the dialogue; and he appeared neither to have heard the exclamatory repetition of Smythje's name, nor the words uttered by Kate in a lower tone, as she turned towards the table:-- "_I thought it was Herbert_!" Volume One, Chapter XXXIV. A SWEETHEART EXPECTED. The departure of the young Englishman, under the conduct of Quaco, was a signal for the black band to disperse. At a word from their chief, they broke up into knots of two or three individuals each; and went off in different directions--disappearing amid the underwood as silently as they had emerged from it. Cubina alone remained in the glade, the captured runaway cowering upon a log beside him. For some minutes, the Maroon captain stood resting upon his gun--which one of his followers had brought up--his eyes fixed upon the captive. He appeared to be meditating what course he should pursue in relation to the unfortunate slave; and the shadow upon his countenance told that some thought was troubling him. The Maroon captain felt himself in a dilemma. His duty was in conflict with his desires. From the first, the face of the captive had interested him; and now that he had time to scan it more narrowly, and observe its noble features, the idea of delivering him up to such a cruel master, as he whose initials he bore upon his breast, became all the more repugnant. Duty demanded him to do so. It was the law of the land--one of the terms of the treaty by which the Maroons were bound--and disobedience to that law would be certain to meet with punishment stringent and severe. True, there was a time when a Maroon captain would have held obedience to this law more lightly; but that was before the conquest of Trelawney town--or rather its traitorous betrayal--followed by the basest banishment recorded among men. That betrayal had brought about a change. The Maroons who had avoided the forced exile, and still remained in the mountain fastnesses, though preserving their independence, were no longer a powerful people--only a mere remnant, whose weakness rendered them amenable, not only to the laws of the island, but to the tyranny and caprice of such planter-justices as might choose to persecute them. Such was the position of Cubina and his little band, who had established themselves in the mountains of Trelawney. With the Maroon captain, therefore, it was a necessity as well as a duty, to deliver up the runaway captive. Failing to do so, he would place his own liberty in peril. He knew this, without the threat which Ravener had fulminated in such positive terms. His interest also lay in the line of his duty. This also he could understand. The captive was a prize for which he would be entitled to claim a reward--the _bounty_. Not for a moment was he detained by this last consideration. The prospect of the reward would have had no weight with him whatever; it would not even have cost him a reflection, but that, just then, and for a very singular purpose, Cubina required money. This purpose was revealed in a soliloquy that at that moment escaped from his lips. "_Crambo_!" he muttered, using an exclamation of the Spanish tongue, still found in a corrupted form among the Maroons; "if it wasn't that I have to make up the purchase-money of Yola--_Por Dios_! he is as like to Yola as if he was her brother! I warrant he is of the same nation-- perhaps of her tribe. Two or three times he has pronounced the word _Foolah_. Besides, his colour, his shape, his hair--all like hers. No doubt of it, he's a Foolah." The last word was uttered so loud as to reach the ear of the runaway. "Yah! Foolah, Foolah!" he exclaimed, turning his eyes appealingly upon his captor. "No slave--no slave!" added he, striking his hand upon his breast as he repeated the words. "Slave! no slave!" echoed the Maroon, with a start of surprise; "that's English enough. They've taught him the ugly word." "Foolah me--no slave!" again exclaimed the youth, with a similar gesture to that he had already made. "Something curious in this," muttered the Maroon, musingly. "What can he mean by saying he is no slave--for that is certainly what he is trying to say? Slave he must be; else how did he get here? I've heard that a cargo has been just landed, and that the old Jew got most or all of them. This young fellow must be one of that lot. Very likely he's picked up the words aboard ship. Perhaps he is speaking of what he was in his own country. Ah, poor devil! he'll soon find the difference here! "_Santos Dios_!" continued the Maroon, after a pause, in which he had been silently regarding the countenance of the newly-arrived African. "It's a shame to make a slave of such as he--a hundred times more like a freeman than his master. Poor fellow! it's a hard row he'll have to hoe. I feel more than half-tempted to risk it, and save him from such a fate." As this half-determination passed through the mind of the Maroon, a noble and proud expression came over his features. "If they had not seen him in my possession;" he continued to reflect; "but the overseer and those Spanish poltroons know all, and will--Well, let them!--at all events I shall not take him back till I've seen Yola. No doubt she can talk to him. If he's Foolah she can. We'll hear what he's got to say, and what this `no slave' means." On saying this, the speaker turned his eyes upward; and appeared for some moments to scan the sun. "Good," he exclaimed. "It is near the hour. I may expect her at any moment. Oh! I must have him out of sight, and these dead dogs, too, or my timid pet will be frayed. There's been so much doing about here-- blood and fire--she will scarcely know the old trysting-place. Hark you, Foolah! Come this way, and squat yourself in here till I call you out again." To the runaway the gestures of his captor were more intelligible than his words. He understood by them that he was required to conceal himself between the buttresses of the _ceiba_; and, rising from the log, he readily obeyed the requisition. The Maroon captain seized the tail of one of the dead bloodhounds; and, after trailing the carcase for some distance across the glade, flung it into a covert of bushes. Returning to the _ceiba_, in a similar manner he removed the other; and then, once more cautioning the runaway to remain silent in his concealment, he awaited the approach of her who had given him assignation. Volume One, Chapter XXXV. A LOVE SCENE UNDER THE CEIBA. The lover who is beloved need never fear disappointment. True to her tryst, and punctual to the time, did the expected sweetheart make her appearance within the glade. With shy but graceful mien, she advanced towards the _ceiba_, and with sufficient firmness of step to show that she came not in doubt. A smile, confident and slightly coquettish, dancing in her dark eyes, and playing upon her prettily-curved lips, told of a love already plighted-- at the same time betokening full faith in the vows that had been exchanged. Cubina stepped forth to receive her; and the lovers met in the open ground, at some distance from the tree. Their demeanour at meeting told that it was not their first assignation; but that ofttimes before had they been together in that same rendezvous. The presence of the runaway--not seen, however, from the spot--did not hinder Cubina from saluting his sweetheart with a kiss, nor prevent him from folding her for a short moment in his arms. That spasm of exquisite pleasure passed, the dialogue began. The girl spoke first. "Oh, Cubina! news I have tell." "Come, my love--what news? Ah! you are looking grave, Yola; your news is not very joyful, I fear?" "No, not joyful--bad news." "Let me hear them, love. Something Cynthy has been saying to you? You shouldn't heed what that girl says." "No, Cubina, I no care what her me tell. I her know, wicked, bad girl. Not Cynthy say that thing me trouble now. Missa Kate me tell." "Ah! something Miss Vaughan has told you? I wouldn't look for bad news from her. But what is it, dear Yola? Maybe, after all, it's nothing?" "Ah! yes, Cubina, something. I fear me keep from you long, long time." "Keep you from me! Surely Miss Vaughan don't object to your meeting me?" "No--not that. Something I fear me hinder from be--." "Be what?" inquired the lover, seeing that his sweetheart hesitated to pronounce some word, the thought of which was causing her to blush. "Come, dear Yola, don't fear to tell _me_. You know we're engaged. There should be no secret between us. What were you going to say?" In a low, murmured voice, and looking lovingly in his eyes as she spoke, the girl pronounced the word "marry." "Ho! ho!" exclaimed the lover, in a confident tone. "I think nothing can occur to hinder that--at least, for a very long time. I have now nearly a hundred pounds laid by, and a lucky capture I've just made this morning will help still further to make up that sum. Surely the Custos will not require more than a hundred pounds; though if you were once mine," continued the speaker, casting a look of smiling fondness upon his sweetheart's face, "all the money in the world wouldn't tempt me to part with you. I hope," added he, speaking in a jocular air, "a hundred pounds will be enough to make you _my slave_?" "You slave, Cubina?" "Yes, Yola, as I am yours now." "Ah--that way, Yola yours; yours ever--evermore." "I will believe you, dear girl," rejoined the lover, gazing, with a gratified look, in the face of his beloved. "I am very happy to think that in that way you are mine; and that I have, as you assure me, your heart and soul. But, dearest Yola, so long as another is the owner of your body--not with the right, but the powder to do, ay--indeed, almost as he might please--for who can hinder these proud planters from committing crimes of which they are their own judges? Ah! Yola, girl, it is fearful to reflect on their wicked doings. This very morning I have come across a sample of their cruelty; and when I think of you being in the power of one, it makes me feel as if every hour was a day until I can obtain your freedom. I am always in fear lest something may happen to hinder me. "Just to-day I am in high hopes," continued the lover, evincing the truth of his words by a pleasant smile. "I have succeeded in raising nearly the hundred pounds; and the bounty I expect to receive for the runaway I have caught will make it quite that." The girl returned no reply to this speech of her lover, but stood gazing upon him silently, and as if half reproachfully. Something of this kind he read, or fancied he read, in her looks. "What, Yola, you are not satisfied with what I have said? You reproach me? Ah! true. I confess it is not a very creditable way of procuring your purchase-money. _Maldito_! what can I do? We Maroons have no other way of raising money, except by hunting the wild hogs, and selling their barbecued flesh. But that barely gives us a living. _Crambo_! I could never have got together a hundred pounds in that way. So do not reproach me, dear Yola, for what I've done. I assure you it goes against my grain, this man-hunting business. As for the young fellow I caught this morning, I'd risk a good real rather than give him up--if it wasn't for the purpose of procuring your freedom. For that I must have the hundred pounds, which it is to be hoped will be enough to satisfy your master." "All, Cubina!" replied his slave-love, with a sigh, "that the bad news I you bring. Hundred pound no more enough. Only two days go, he have him offer twice so much for poor slave Yola." "Two hundred pounds offered for _you_!" exclaimed the Maroon, with a start of surprise, his brow becoming suddenly clouded. "Is that what you mean, Yola?" "Ah, yes!" answered the slave, repeating her sad sigh. "And who--who is he?" demanded the lover, in a quick earnest tone, at the same time that a gleam of jealous thought flashed from his dark eyes, like forked lightning across a clouded sky. He knew that no man would have bid two hundred pounds for a slave--even for Yola--without some wicked motive. The girl's beauty, combined with the extravagant offer, would have suggested the motive to one disinterested in her fate. How much more was it calculated to arouse the suspicions of a lover! "A white man," continued he, without waiting for the reply to his first question. "I need not ask that. But tell me, Yola, who is he that's so desirous of becoming your owner. You know, I suppose." "Missa Kate me tell all. He Jew--wicked white man! Same who me take from big ship; and me first sell Massa Vaughan." "Ha!" sharply ejaculated the lover, "that old wretch it is? Wicked white man you may well call him. I know the old villain well. _Crambo_! what can he want with her?" muttered the Maroon, musingly, but with a troubled mien. "Some vile purpose, to a certainty? Oh, sure!" Then once more addressing himself to his slave sweetheart-- "You are certain, Yola, the old Jew made this offer?" "So me say young missa." "Two hundred pounds! And Mr Vaughan refused it?" "Missa Kate no allow Massa Vaughan me sell. She say `Never!' Ah! young missa! she good for say so! No matter what money he give, she never let wicked white man buy Yola. She so say many time." "Miss Kate said this? Then she is good, she is generous! It must have been her doing, else the Custos would never have refused such a tempting offer. Two hundred pounds! It is a large sum. Well, I must begin again. I must work night and day to get it. And then, if they should refuse _me_! Ha! what then?" The speaker paused, not as if expecting a reply from her who stood by his side, but rather from his own thoughts. "Never mind!" continued he, his countenance assuming an expression partly hopeful, partly reckless. "Have no fear of the future, Yola. Worst come worst, you shall yet be mine. Ay, dearest, you shall share my mountain home, though I may have to make it the home of an outlaw!" "Oh!" exclaimed the young girl, slightly frayed by the wild look and words of her lover, her _eye_ at the same instant falling upon the red pool where the hounds had been slain. "Blood, Cubina?" "Only that of some animals--a wild boar and two dogs--just killed there. Don't let that frighten you, pet. You must be brave, my Yola; since you are to be the wife of a Maroon! Ours is a life of many dangers." "With you Yola no fear. She go any where--far over the mountains--to Jumbe Rock--anywhere you her take, Cubina." "Thanks, dearest! Maybe, some day, we may be forced to go far over the mountains--in _flight, too_, Yola. But we shall try to avoid that. If your master will only act right, there will be no need. If not, then you will fly with me--will you not?" "What Cubina do, Yola do same; where he go, she go." The passionate promise was sealed by a kiss, followed by an interval of sacred silence. "Enough, then!" said the lover, after the pause had passed. "As a last resource, we can do that. But we shall hope for the best; and, maybe, some good fortune may befall. My followers are true, and would help me; but, alas! all are poor hunters, like myself. Well, it may take some time before I can call you my own fearlessly, in the face of the world-- longer, maybe, than I expected. Never mind for that; we can meet often. And now, dear Yola, listen to what I am going to say to you--listen, and keep it in your mind! If ever a white man insults you--you know what I mean?--if you are in danger of such a thing--as you would have been, were old Jessuron to become your master--ay, and who knows how, where, or when?--well, then, fly to this glade, and wait here for me. If I do not come, some one will. Every day I shall send one of my people to this place. Don't fear to run away. Though I may not care to get into trouble about a common slave, I shall risk all to protect you-- yes, my life, dearest Yola!" "Oh, Cubina!" exclaimed the girl, in passionate admiration. "Oh, brave, beauty Cubina! you not fear danger?" "There is no great danger in it," returned the Maroon, in a confident tone. "If I had made up my mind to run away with you, I could soon take you beyond the reach of pursuit. In the _Black Grounds_ we could live without fear of the tyranny of white men. But I don't want to be hunted like a wild hog. I would rather you should become mine by honest means--that is, I would rather buy you, as I intend to do; and then we may settle down near the plantations, and live without apprehension. Perhaps, after all, the Custos may not be so hard with me as with the old Jew--who knows? Your young mistress is kind, you have told me: she may do something to favour our plans." "True, Cubina--she me love; she say never me part." "That is well; she means, she would not part with you against your will. But if I offer to buy you, it would be a different thing. Perhaps you might let her know all, after a while. But I have something to learn first, and I don't wish you to tell her till then. So keep our secret, dear Yola, for a little longer. "And now," continued the Maroon, changing his tone, and turning towards the _ceiba_ as he spoke, "I've got something to show you. Did you ever see a runaway?" "Runaway!" said the girl; "no, Cubina--never." "Well, my love, there's one not far off; he that I said I had captured this morning--only a little while ago. And I'll tell you why I've kept him here: because I fancied that he was like yourself, Yola." "Like me?" "Yes; and that is why I felt for the poor fellow something like pity: since it is to this cruel old Jew he belongs. From what I can make out, he must be one of your people; and I'm curious to know what account he will give of himself." "He Foolah, you think?" inquired the African maiden, her eyes sparkling with pleasure at the anticipation of seeing one of her own race. "Yes; I am as good as sure of that. In fact, he has called himself a Foolah several times, though I can't make out what he says. If he is one of your tribe, you will be able to talk to him. There he is!" Cubina had by this time conducted his sweetheart round the tree, to that side on which the runaway was concealed between the two spurs. The young man was still crouching within the angle, close up to the trunk of the _ceiba_. The moment the two figures came in front of him, and his eyes fell upon the face of the girl, he sprang to his feet, uttering a cry of wild joy. Like an echo, Yola repeated the cry; and then both pronouncing some hurried phrases in an unknown tongue, rushed together, and became folded in a mutual embrace! Cubina stood transfixed to the spot. Surprise--something more--held him speechless. He could only think:-- "She knows him! Perhaps her lover in her own land!" A keen pang of jealousy accompanied the thought. Rankling it remained in the breast of the Maroon, till Yola, untwining her arms from the fond embrace, and pointing to him who had received it, pronounced the tranquillising words:-- "_My brother_!" END OF VOLUME ONE. Volume Two, Chapter I. SMYTHJE IN SHOOTING COSTUME. Several days had elapsed since that on which Mr Montagu Smythje became the guest of Mount Welcome; and during the time neither pains nor expense had been spared in his entertainment. Horses were kept for his riding--a carriage for his driving--dinners had been got up--and company invited to meet him. The best society of the Bay and the neighbouring plantations had been already introduced to the rich English exquisite-- the owner of one great sugar estate, and, as society began to hear it whispered, the prospective possessor of another. The matrimonial projects of the worthy Custos--that had been suspected from the first--soon became the subject of much discussion. It may be mentioned--though it is scarce necessary--that in his designs upon Smythje, Mr Vaughan was not left all the field to himself. There were other parents in the planter fraternity of the neighbourhood blessed with good-looking daughters; and many of them, both fathers and mothers, had fixed their eyes on the lord of Montagu Castle as a very eligible sample for a son-in-law. Each of these aspiring couples gave a grand dinner; and, in turn, trotted out their innocent lambs in presence of the British "lion." The exquisite smiled amiably upon all their efforts--adopting his distinguished position as a matter of course. Thus merrily passed the first fortnight of Smythje's sojourn in Jamaica. On a pleasant morning near the end of this fortnight, in one of the largest bed-chambers of Mount Welcome house--that consecrated to the reception of distinguished strangers--Mr Smythje might have been seen in front of his mirror. He was engaged in the occupation of dressing himself--or, to speak more correctly, permitting himself to be dressed by his _valet de chambre_. In the extensive wardrobe of the London exquisite there were dresses for all purposes and every occasion: suits for morning, dinner, and evening; one for riding, and one for driving; a shooting dress, and one for the nobler sport of the _chasse au cheval_; a dress for boating, _a la matelot_; and a grand _costume de bal_. On the occasion in question, Mr Smythje's august person was being enveloped in his shooting dress; and, although a West India sportsman or an English squire would have smiled derisively at such a "rig," the Cockney regarded it with complacency as being "just the thing." It consisted of a French tunic-shaped coatee of green silk velvet, trimmed with fur; a helmet-shaped hunting-cap to match; and a purple waistcoat underneath, embroidered with cord of gold bullion. Instead of breeches and top-boots, Mr Smythje fancied he had improved upon the costume, by encasing his limbs in long trousers. These were of dressed fawn-skin, of a straw colour, and soft as the finest chamois leather. They fitted tightly around the legs, notwithstanding that the wearer was rather deficient in that quarter. Moreover, they were strapped at the bottoms, over a pair of brightly-shining lacquered boots--another error at which a true sportsman would have smiled. Mr Smythje, however, was well satisfied with the style of his dress: as appeared from the conversation carried on between him and his valet Thoms, while the latter was making him ready for the field. "'Pon honaw! a demmed becoming costume!" exclaimed he, surveying himself from head to foot in the mirror. "Dawnt yaw think so, Thoms?" "Pe Cod! it's all that, yer honner!" replied Thoms, with just enough of an Irish accent to show that he was a Welshman. The object, for which Mr Smythje was thus having his person apparelled, was a shooting excursion to the hills, which he designed making, in order to vary his pleasures by committing havoc among the ramier pigeons and wild guinea-fowl which, he had been told, abounded there. The projected expedition was not any grand affair by appointment--merely an ordinary, improvised thing. The sportsman intended going alone--as the Custos on that day had some important business at the Bay; and Mr Smythje, by a ramble through the neighbouring woods, fancied he might kill the time between breakfast and dinner pleasantly enough. This was all that was intended; and a darkey to guide him all that was needed. "Weally!" resumed the exquisite, after some moments spent in enthusiastic admiration of his person, "weally, Thoms, these Queeole queetyaws are chawming--positively chawming! Nothing in the theataw or opwa at all to compare with them. Such lovely eyes! such divine figaws! and such easy conquests! Ba Jawve! I can count a dozen alweady! Haw, haw!" added he, with a self-gratulatory giggle, "it's but natywal that-- dawnt yaw think so, Thoms?" "Parfectly natyeral, your honner," replied Thoms, "considherin' yer honner's good looks." "Aw haw! that's it, Thoms--that's it. They can't wesist." Either the lady-killer was not content with his twelve easy conquests, and wished to have the number more complete by making it "the baker's dozen"--either this, or he was uncertain about his victory over one of the twelve--as would appear by the dialogue that followed between him and his confidential man. "Hark yaw, Thoms!" said he, approaching the valet in a more serious way; "yaw are an exceedingly intelligent fellaw--yaw are, 'pon honnaw." "Thank yer honner. It's keepin' yer honner's company has made me so." "Nevaw mind--nevaw mind what--but I have observed yaw intelligence." "It's at yer honner's humble sendee." "Ve-well, Thoms; ve-well! I want you to employ it." "In what way, yer honner? anything yer honner may desire me to do." "Yaw know the niggaw girl--the bwown girl with the tawban, I mean?" "Miss Vaghan's waitin'-maid?" "Exactly--ya-as. Yolaw, or something of the sawt, is the queetyaw's name." "Yis--Yowla; that's her name, yer honner." "Well, Thoms, I pwesume you have excellent oppwotunities of holding convawsation with haw--the niggaw, I mean?" "Plenty of oppurtunity, yer honner. I've talked with her scores of times." "Good. Now, the next time yaw talk with haw, Thoms, I want you to pump haw." "Pump her! what's that, yer honner?" "Why, dwaw something out of haw!" "Feth! I don't understan' yer honner." "Not undawstand! yaw are stoopid, Thoms." "Keeping yer honner's company--" "What, fellaw? keeping my company make yaw stoopid?" "No, yer honner; ye didn't hear me out. I was goin' to say, that keeping yer honner's company would soon take that out o' me." "Haw--haw--that's diffwent altogethaw. Well, listen now, and I'll make yaw undawstand me. I want you to talk with this Yolaw, and dwaw some seek wets out of haw." "Oah!" answered Thoms, dwelling a long time upon the syllable, and placing his forefinger along the side of his nose. "_Now_ I comprehend yer honner." "All wight--all wight." "I'll manage that, don't fear me; but what sort of saycrets does yer honner want me to draw out af her?" "I want yaw to find out what she says about _me_--not the niggaw, but haw mistwess." "What the negur says about her mistress?" "Thoms, yaw are intolawably stoopid this mawning. Not at all--not at all; but what haw mistress says about _me--me_." "Oh! fwhat Miss Vaghan says about yer honner?" "Pwecisely." "Faith! I'll find that out--ivery word af it." "If yaw do, Thoms, I shall be your debtaw faw a guinea." "A guinea, yer honner!" "Ya-as; and if yaw execute yaw commission clevawly, I shall make it two--two guineas, do yaw heaw?" "Never fear, yer honner. I'll get it out of the negur, if I should have to pull the tongue from between thim shinin' teeth af hers!" "No, Thoms--no, my good fellaw! There must be no woodness. Wemember, we are guests heaw, and Mount Welcome is not an hotel. Yaw must work by stwategy, not stwength, as Shakespeaw or some other of those skwibbling fellaws has said. No doubt stwategy will win the day." And with this ambiguous observation--ambiguous as to whether it referred to the issue of Thoms's embassy, or his own success in the wooing of Miss Vaughan--Mr Montagu Smythje closed the conversation. Thoms now gave the last touch to the sportsman's toilet, by setting the hunting-cap on his head, and hanging numerous belts over his shoulders-- among which were included a shot-pouch, a copper powder-horn, a pewter drinking flask with its cup, and a hunting-knife in its leathern sheath. Thus equipped, the sportsman strode stiffly from the apartment; and wended his way towards the great hall, evidently with the design of encountering the fair Kate, and exhibiting himself in his killing costume. Volume Two, Chapter II. A COCKNEY SPORTSMAN. That he had obtained the interview he sought, and that its result had gratified him, might be inferred from the complacent smile that played upon his countenance as he sallied forth from the house. Moreover, in crossing the two or three hundred yards of open ground which separated the dwelling from the wooded slope of the ridge, he walked with an exalted, gingerly step--occasionally glancing back over his shoulder, as if conscious of being observed. He _was_ observed. Two faces could be seen at a window, one of which Mr Smythje knew to be that of Kate Vaughan. The other, of darker hue, was the face of the maid Yola. Both were set in smiles. It did not matter to Mr Smythje whether the maid smiled or not; but he fondly fancied he could distinguish a pleased expression on the countenance of the mistress. He was at too great a distance to be certain; but he had little doubt of its being a look of intense admiration that was following him through his fine paces. Had he been near enough to translate the expression more truly, he might have doubted whether he was the object of so much admiration; and had the remark made by Yola to her mistress reached his ear, with the clear ringing laughter it called forth, his doubts would have had a melancholy confirmation. "He berry gran', missa!" said the maid. "He like cock-a-benny turned yellow-tail!"--a plantation proverb, which, translated into plain English, means, that the coarse and despised little fish, the "cock-a-benny," had become metamorphosed into the splendid and esteemed species known among the negroes as the "yellow-tail." As the sportsman neither heard the remark nor the laugh it elicited, he was enabled to carry his self-esteem into the woods unhurt and undiminished. At his heels walked an attendant--a negro boy, whose sole costume consisted of an Osnaburgh shirt, with a huge game-bag slung over his shoulders, and hanging down to his hams. It was the veritable Quashie, post-boy, horseboy, and factotum. Quashie's duties on the present occasion were to guide the English buckra to the best shooting ground among the hills, and carry the game when killed. As there was no dog--pigeon and pintado shooting not requiring the aid of this sagacious animal--Quashie was to act also as finder and retriever. For a full mile over hill and dale, through "brake, brush, and scaur," tramped the ardent sportsman--his Ethiopian attendant, keeping like a shadow at his heels. Still not a head of game had as yet been bagged. Ramiers were scarce and shy, and as for the beautiful speckled hen--the exotic _Numida meleagris_--not as much as the crest of one could be seen. Their shrill skreek, like the filing of a frame saw, could be occasionally heard afar off; and the hope of getting sight of one enticed the sportsman still further into the forest. Another mile was passed over, and another hour spent, almost equally unfruitful in events. A few ramiers had been sighted and shot at; but the thick corselet of feathers, that covers the bold breasts of these beautiful birds, seemed impenetrable to the shot of a gun; at least, they proved so to the double-barrelled "Manton" of the London sportsman. Another mile traversed--another hour spent--still nothing bagged! His want of success did not hinder the sportsman from growing hungry; and, at the end of his third mile, he began to feel a certain void about the epigastric region that called for viands. He knew that the bag which Quashie carried contained a luncheon that had been carefully provided and packed by the major-domo of Mount Welcome. It was time to examine this luncheon; and, seating himself under the shadow of a spreading tree, he directed the darkey to draw it forth. Nothing loth was Quashie to respond to this request; for the weight of the bag, which he had been wincing under for some hours, and its distended sides, promised pickings for himself--after the grand buckra should satisfy his hunger. Certainly, there appeared enough for both, and to spare: for on "gutting" the game-bag, a whole capon was turned out upon the grass, with sundry slices of bread, ham, and tongue, and all the paraphernalia of salt, pepper, and mustard. A bottle of--claret was found at the bottom of the bag; which, in addition to the flask of _eau de vie_ that the sportsman himself carried, and which he now laid aside to disencumber him, was liquid enough to wash down the savoury solids which the thoughtful steward had provided. A knife and fork were also turned out; and, as Mr Montagu Smythje was more habile in the handling of these weapons than he was in the use of a gun, in a trice the capon was cut into convenient pieces. In an equally short space of time, many of these pieces had disappeared between his teeth, in company with sundry slices of the ham and tongue. Quashie was not invited to partake; but sat near the grand buckra's feet, wistfully watching his movements, as a dog would his master similarly occupied. As the masticatory powers of the Cockney sportsman appeared to be of no mean order, Quashie's look began to betray astonishment, mingled with a growing dread that the "oughts" he might be called upon to eat would be neither very numerous nor very bulky. Half the capon had already disappeared, with a large proportion of the odd slices of ham and tongue! "I b'lieve de dam buckra glutton za gwine eat 'um all up--ebbery bit!" was Quashie's mental, and not very good-humoured, soliloquy. "Ay, an' drink 'um up too--ebbery drop!" continued he, in thought, as he saw Mr Smythje quaff off a full cup of the claret without taking the vessel from his lips. Shortly after, another cup was poured into the same capacious funnel: for the exercise he had undergone, combined with the warmth of the day, had rendered the sportsman _drouthy_. To the great chagrin of Quashie, and the no small mortification of Smythje himself, a worse misfortune than that of its being drunk befell the remainder of the claret. On setting down the bottle, after filling his cup for the second time, the sportsman had performed the act in an unskilful manner. The consequence was that the bottle, losing its balance, toppled over; and the _balance_ of the claret trickled out upon the grass. Both Quashie's temper and patience were put to a severe test; but the buckra's appetite being at length appeased, the _debris_ of the feast-- still a considerable quantity--remained to Quashie's share; and he was directed to fall to and make his best of it. The darkey was not slow in complying with the order; and, from the manner in which he went to work, it was evident, that unless Mr Smythje should make better shooting after luncheon than he had done before it, the game-bag would go back to the house much lighter than it had left it. While Quashie was masticating his meal, the refreshed sportsman--his spirits elevated by the claret he had quaffed--bethought him of taking a stroll by himself. There was no time to be wasted--as the contingency of having to return to Mount Welcome with an empty bag had already begun to suggest itself; and after the sanguine expectations which his grand sporting costume must have given rise to--assisted by some little bravado he had indulged in while leave-taking--his failing to fulfil these expectations could not be otherwise than humiliating. He resolved, therefore, to return to his shooting with a more serious earnestness, and, if possible, make up for the deficiencies of the morning. Slinging on his horn and pouch, and laying hold of his gun, the sportsman once more started off, leaving his retriever busily employed in polishing off the "drumsticks" of the capon. Volume Two, Chapter III. STALKING A TURKEY. It almost seemed as if the divine patron of the chase--the good Saint Hubert--had regarded the spilt wine as an oblation to himself, and, in return, had consented to give the sportsman success. Scarce had the latter advanced two hundred yards from the spot where he had lunched, when his eyes were gratified by the spectacle of a large, fine-looking bird, perched upon the top of a tree stump. At first he believed it to be a guinea-hen, but its dusk colour--it was brownish-black--forbade that supposition. It had a naked head and neck, just like a turkey; and in several other respects it resembled this well-known bird. "A tawkey it is!" exclaimed Smythje, after scanning it a little. "A wild tawkey, by Jawve!" The London exquisite had heard, somehow or somewhere, that the wild turkey was indigenous to America, and, of course, also to Jamaica--since Jamaica is part of America. However erroneous the deduction, the reasoning satisfied Smythje; and, firmly convinced that he saw before him a wild turkey, he determined on taking measures to _circumvent_ it. The stump upon which the bird was perched, stood upon the edge of an opening, about a hundred yards from the spot where Smythje first came in sight of it. To insure success, the sportsman dropped upon his knees, and crawled forward impressively, but with due caution. If he could only make thirty yards in advance, he knew his gun was good for the other seventy. In fine, after considerable damage done to his fawn-skin trousers, the thirty yards were accomplished, and still the turkey remained upon its perch. The gun was brought to bear upon the bird; Joe Manton did the work; and, simultaneously with the "bang," the turkey was seen to tumble over, disappearing as it did so from the top of the stump. The overjoyed sportsman hastened forward to secure his game; and soon arrived at the spot where he expected to find it. To his surprise it was not there! Had it taken to wing and escaped? Impossible! He had seen it fall, and without a flutter. It must have been shot quite dead? It could not have come to life again? He searched all about--going round the stump at least a dozen times, and carefully scrutinising every inch of the ground for a score of yards on each side--but no turkey could be found! Had the unlucky sportsman been at all doubtful of the fact of his having killed the bird, he would have given up the search in despair. But upon this point he was as certain as of his own existence; and it was that which rendered him so pertinacious in his endeavours to find it. He was determined to leave neither stick nor stone unturned; and, to aid him in the prosecution of his search, he called loudly for his retriever Quashie. But to his repeated calls no Quashie came; and Mr Smythje was forced to the conclusion that the darkey had either gone to sleep, or had strayed away from the spot where he had left him. He had some thoughts of going back to look for Quashie; but, while he was meditating on the matter, an idea occurred to him, which promised to explain the mysterious disappearance of the bird. The stump upon which the "turkey" had been perched could scarcely have been termed a _stump_. It was rather the trunk of a large tree, that had been abruptly broken off below the limbs, and still stood some fifteen or twenty feet in height, erect and massive as the tower of some ruined castle. Though quite a dead-wood, and without any branches of its own, it was, nevertheless, garnished with verdure. A complete matting of vines that grew around its roots, and parasites that sprang from its decaying sides, inclosed it with a tortuous trellis-work--so that only near its top could the shape of the old tree be distinguished. At first the sportsman supposed that his game had dropped down among the ragged shrubbery; and he searched the whole of this with elaborate minuteness, but in vain. It now occurred to him--and this was the idea that promised the _eclaircissement_ spoken of--that the bird had _not_ fallen from the stump, but had dropped dead upon the top of it, and there might still be lying! The dead-wood, which, at its broken summit, appeared to be some five or six feet in diameter, rendered this conjecture probable enough; and Smythje resolved upon putting it to the proof, by climbing to the top. He would have appointed Quashie to the performance of this feat; but Quashie _non esset inventus_. Several thick, cable-like vines, that struggled up to the summit, promised an easy means of ascent; and, although the Cockney could climb about as dexterously as a shod cat, he fancied there could be no great difficulty in attaining the top of the dead-wood. Throwing aside his gun, he entered enthusiastically upon the attempt. The feat was not so easy of performance but that it cost him an exertion. Stimulated, however, by the desire to _retrieve_ his game and the reflections about the game-bag, already alluded to, he put forth his utmost energies, and succeeded in reaching the summit. His conjecture proved correct. There lay the bird--not _on_ the stump, but _in_ it--at the bottom of a large cylinder-shaped concavity, which opened several feet down into the heart of the dead-wood. There it was, dead as the tree itself. The sportsman could not restrain himself from uttering a cry of joy--as he saw his fine game at length secure within his reach. It proved not exactly within his reach, however: as, upon kneeling down and stretching his arm to its full length, he found that he could not touch the bird, even with the tips of his fingers. That signified little. It would only be necessary for him to descend into the cavity, and this he could easily do: as it was wide enough, and not over four feet in depth. Without further reflection, he rose to his feet again and leaped down into the hole. It would have been a wiser act if he had remembered the prudent counsel of the paternal frog, and looked before leaping. That was one of the most unfortunate leaps Mr Smythje had ever made in his life. The brown surface upon which the bird lay, and which looked so deceptively solid, was nothing more than a mass of rotten heartwood, honeycombed with long decay. So flimsy was it in structure, that though supporting a dead bird, it gave way under the weight of a living man; and the lord of Montagu Castle shot as rapidly out of sight as if he had leaped feet foremost from the mainyard of the _Sea Nymph_ into the deepest soundings of the Atlantic! Volume Two, Chapter IV. SMYTHJE EMBARRASSED BY HIS BOOTS. Rapid as was the pitch, and dark the abyss into which it was made, the sportsman was not killed. Neither was he much hurt: for the "punk" through which he had pitched, though not firm enough to support him, had offered some resistance to the velocity of his descent; and towards the bottom he had settled down more gradually. But though neither killed nor yet stunned by the fall, he was for awhile as completely deprived of his senses as if he had been both. Surprise had bereft him not only of the power of speech, but of thought as well; and for some moments he was as quiet as Jack, after being jerked into his box. After a time, however, feeling that, though badly scared, he was not much hurt, his consciousness began to return to him; and he made a scramble to recover his legs: for in going down, he had somehow got doubled up in a sort of tailor-fashion. He found his feet after an effort; and, as he saw that light came from above, he raised his eyes in that direction. It took him some time to make out the exact character of the place in which he was: for a thick "stoor" was swimming around him, that not only impeded his sight, but having entered his mouth and nostrils, had inducted him into a violent fit of sneezing. The dust however gradually thinned away; and Smythje was enabled to "define his position." Above his head was a clear circular patch, which he knew to be the sky; whilst all around him was a dark brown wall, rising many feet beyond the reach of his outstretched arms. He became conscious that he was standing in the concavity of a huge upright cylinder, with a surface of corrugated rotten wood circling all around him. As his senses grew clearer--along with the atmosphere--he arrived at a better understanding of the mishap that had befallen him. He did not, at first, regard it in the light of a _misfortune_--at least, not a very heavy one--and he was rather disposed to laugh at it as a ludicrous adventure. It was not till he began to think of climbing out, and had actually made the attempt, that he became aware of a difficulty hitherto unsuspected; and the contemplation of which at once inspired him with a feeling of alarm. A second attempt to get out was unsuccessful as the first; a third equally so; a fourth had no better issue; a fifth was alike a failure; and after the sixth, he sank down upon the rotten rubbish in a state bordering on despair. Well might he have exclaimed, "_Facilis descensus Averni, sed revocare gradum_." But the mind of Mr Smythje was now under the influence of an indescribable awe, which excluded all thoughts of the classic. When reflection came to his aid, it was only to make more certain the fearful reality of his situation. The more he reflected upon it, the more he became convinced of the peril into which his rash leap had precipitated him. It was not simply a slight mishap--a ludicrous adventure--he no longer saw it in that light. Neither was it a mere misfortune; but a positive danger--the danger of his life. Yes, his life was most certainly in danger; and he was not slow in arriving at this knowledge. The chain of inductive reasoning that led to it was but too palpably clear--every link of it--from premisses to conclusion. If he could not help himself out of the prison, in which by his unlucky leap he had incarcerated himself, who was to help him? Hope could not long dwell upon Quashie. The darkey had been left some distance off; and since he had not answered to his calls, he must be asleep or straying. In either case--or even if awake and still on the ground of the bivouac--what chances would Quashie have of finding him? Who was to find him, if not Quashie? Ah! who else? Who was likely to come that way? Not a soul! The tree that contained him stood in the midst of a wild tract--a solitary forest all around--no roads, no paths--he had observed none. He might be there for a month without a human being approaching the place; and a week would be enough to finish him! Yes, in one week, perhaps far less, he might expect to die of starvation! The prospect was appalling. And it so appalled him, that again his mind gave way under it, and relapsed into the stupor of despondence. It is not natural that one should sink at once into utter despair, without making an extreme effort. The instinct of self-preservation-- common to the lowest animals--will nerve even the weakest spirit of man. That of Montagu Smythje was none of the strongest, and had given way at the first shock; but, after a time, a reaction arose, stimulating him to make a fresh effort for his life. Once more starting to his feet, he attempted to scale the steep walls that encircled him; but the attempt, as before, proved a failure. In this last trial, however, he discovered that his exertions were greatly hindered by three special _impedimenta_--the tight fawn-skin trousers that, moistened with perspiration, clung closely around his legs; his boots; but, above all, the straps that bound boots and trousers together. To get rid of these obstacles became his next thought; and the execution of such a design might appear easy enough. On trial, however, it proved a most difficult undertaking. From the confined space in which he stood, he could not get into a stooping attitude, so as to reach down to the straps and unbutton them; and so long as these remained buttoned, it was impossible to take off the boots. He could squat down tailor-fashion, as he had already done; but, in that posture the straps became so tightened, that to unbutton them was clearly out of the question. The delicate fingers of the dandy were unequal to the effort. "Necessity is the mother of invention." This adage held good in Smythje's case: for it just then occurred to him to unfasten his _suspenders_ instead of his straps, and divest himself of his under garments all at once! For this purpose he rose to his feet; but in doing so, a better idea suggested itself: to cut off his fawn-skin inexpressibles just above the knees, and thus free boots, straps, and pantaloon bottoms all together! He had left his hunting-knife by his brandy-flask, and both on the ground of the bivouac. Fortunately, however, a penknife, which he carried in his waistcoat pocket, would answer even better; and, drawing it forth, he proceeded to execute his design. A cross section of the fawn-skins, just above the knees, was at once made; and then--by the alternate application of toe to heel--boots, trouser-bottoms, and all, were cast simultaneously, and Smythje stood in his stockings! He did not remain long inactive. Danger urged him to exert himself; and once more he essayed to scale the walls of his tree-prison. Alas! after many efforts--many oft-repeated, but unsuccessful clamberings--he was forced back to the appalling conviction that the thing was impossible. He could get up within about four feet of the orifice; but there the surface, which had been long open to the atmosphere, was worn so smooth by the weather--besides being still wet and slippery from late rains-- that he could find no holding place upon it; and at every endeavour to grasp the rotten wood, he lost his balance, and fell backward to the bottom. These falls frequently stunned him, almost knocking the breath out of his body. They were from a considerable height--ten or twelve feet-- and, but for the soft rubbish below, that modified the shock as he came down, one such descent would have been sufficient to cripple him for life. Once more his spirit sank within him. Once more Smythje yielded to despair. Volume Two, Chapter V. A TROPIC SHOWER. When reflection again favoured the unfortunate man--which it did after a short time had passed over--his thoughts took a new turn. He made no further attempt at climbing out. Repeated trials had fully convinced him of the impracticability of that; and he was now satisfied that his only hope lay in the chance of Quashie or some one else coming that way. It is true that this chance appeared grievously doubtful. Even should one pass near the dead-wood, how was he to know that he, Smythje, was inside it? Who would suspect that the old tree was hollow? and, least of all, that a human being was inclosed within its cylindrical cell-- buried alive, as it were, in this erect wooden sarcophagus? A person passing might see the gun lying upon the ground outside; but that would be no clue to the whereabouts of its owner. After all, some one _might_ be passing, and as he could not be _seen_, his only hope lay in making himself _heard_. The moment this thought came into his mind, he commenced crying out at the highest pitch of his voice. He regretted that he had not done so before: since some one might have passed in the interim. After falling in, he had shouted several times during the moments of his first surprise: but while making his attempts to clamber out, he had desisted--the earnestness of his exertions having reduced him to silence. Now that he comprehended the necessity of making a noise, he determined to make up for his former remissness; and he continued to send forth scream after scream with all the power of his lungs, at intervals varying his voice from an abrupt sharp screech, to the more prolonged and dismal monotone of a groan. For nearly an hour did he continue this melancholy _cavatina_, without receiving any response beyond the echoes of his own voice, which reverberated through the concavity in hollow, sepulchral tones--a mournful monologue of alternate groanings and howlings, interrupted at intervals as the utterer paused to listen for a response. But none came. No change took place in his situation, except one that was calculated to make it still more deplorable and forlorn. As if his lugubrious appeals had invoked the demon of the storm, the sky above became suddenly overcast with heavy black clouds; from which came pouring rain, such as might have fallen during the forty days of the deluge! It was one of those tropic showers, where the water gushes from the sky, not in single, isolated drops, but in long, continuous streams; as if heavens canopy was one great shower-bath, of which the string had been jerked and tied down. Though well sheltered from wind, the unfortunate Smythje had no roof--no cover of any kind--to shield him from the rain, which came down upon his devoted head, as though the spout of a pump had been directed into the hollow of the dead-wood. Indeed, the funnel-shaped orifice, which was wider than the rest of the concavity, aided in conducting a larger quantity of rain into it; and, but that the water found means of escape, by percolating through the mass of dry rubbish below, Mr Smythje might have been in danger of a more sudden death than by starvation: since, as he himself afterwards asserted, there fell sufficient water to have "dwowned" him. If not drowned, however, he was well _douched_. There was not a stitch of clothing upon his person that was not wetted through and through: the silk velvet shooting-coat, the purple vest, and what remained of the fawn-skin trousers, all were alike soaked and saturated. Even his whiskers had parted with their crisp rigidity; the curls had come out of the tails of his moustaches; his hair had lost its amplitude; and all-- hair, whiskers, and moustaches--hung dripping and draggled. In that melancholy image of manhood that stood shivering in the hollow tree, it would have required a quick imagination to have recognised Mr Montagu Smythje, the _debonnaire_ sportsman of the morning. Lugubrious as were his looks, they were nothing to compare with his thoughts. There were moments when he felt angry--angry at his ill-fortune--angry at Quashie--angry at Mr Vaughan, for having provided an attendant so inattentive to his duties. There were moments when he felt spiteful enough to swear. Yes, in that fearful crisis, Smythje _swore_--the owner of Mount Welcome and Quashie being alternately the object of his abjurations. Jamaica, too, came in for a share of his spite--its pigeons and guinea-hens, its trees, and, above all, its wild turkeys! "The howwid Island!" he cried, in his anguish; "would to ma Makeaw I had nevaw set foot on its shaws!" What, at that moment, would he not have given to be once more in his "deaw metwopolis?" Gladly would he have exchanged his tree-prison for a chamber in the King's Bench--for a corner in the meanest cell which the Old Bailey could have afforded him! Poor Smythje! he had not yet reached the climax of his sorrows. A new suffering was in store for him--one in comparison with which all he had undergone was but a mild endurance. It was only when that slimy thing came crawling over his feet, and began to entwine itself round his ankles--its cold clammy touch painfully perceptible through his silk stockings--it was only then that he felt something like a sensation of real horror! He was on his legs at the moment; and instantly sprang upward, as if coals had been suddenly applied to the soles of his feet. But springing upward did not avail him, since it only resulted in his dropping down again on the same spot; and, as he did so, he felt writhing beneath his feet the slippery form of a _serpent_! Volume Two, Chapter VI. A DANGEROUS DANCE. Beyond the shadow of a doubt was Smythje standing upon a snake, or rather, _dancing_ upon one: for as he felt the scaly creature crawling and writhing under his feet with a strong muscular action, it was contrary to human nature that he should remain at rest upon such a perilous pedestal. For some moments he hopped about upon this dangerous _dais_, expecting every instant to feel the sharp sting of a bite. Any one who could have looked on him at that crisis would have seen a face white with horror, eyes starting from their watery sockets, and dripping hair and whiskers doing their best to stand on end. Through his dark sky of dread a gleam of light flashed upon his spirit: he remembered having heard that in Jamaica there is no _poisonous_ serpent. It was but a spark of consolation. If the reptile could not _sting_, it could _bite_; and, being such an enormous creature as to cover with its coils the whole floor of his _cylindric_ chamber, its bite should be a formidable one. Perhaps, after all, it was not a single snake? Perhaps there was a whole family of serpents, crawling one over another, and wreathing fantastic figures of eight beneath his feet? If so--and this was probable enough--he might be bitten by all; repeatedly bitten--torn to pieces--devoured! What matter whether they were poisonous or not? He might as well perish from their fangs, as by their teeth! Fortunate it was for Smythje that the snakes--for his conjecture that there were more than one was correct--fortunate for him that they were still half asleep, else the danger he dreaded might have come to pass. As it was, the whole band of reptiles had just been aroused from a state of torpidity--the wash of cold rain having reached them in their crushed cave, and scattered the mutual coil in which they had been cosily slumbering. Still only half awakened, in the confusion of their ideas they could not distinguish friend from foe; and to this was Mr Smythje indebted for the circumstance that his skin, and even his silk stockings, still remained intact. Notwithstanding this, his dread remained undiminished, and incited him to a fresh effort at escape. Only one mode suggested itself: to clamber up the "chimney" as far as he could go, and by that means get out of reach of the reptiles. On conceiving this new design, he sprang upward, shaking the serpent coils from his feet; and, after a few seconds of scratching and scrambling, he arrived at an elevation of some ten feet from the bottom of the tree. Here a slight projection offered a tolerable support for his posteriors; and, setting his toes well against the opposite side, he did his very best to sustain himself in position. It was an irksome effort, and could not have lasted long--as to his consternation he soon discovered. His strength would soon give way, his toes become cramped and nerveless; and then, losing his hold, he must inevitably drop down among the monsters below--who, perhaps, in a second collision with him, would be less chary about using their teeth? The prospect of such a terrible fate stimulated him to put forth all his energies in preserving his balance and his place--at the same time that it drew from him cries of the keenest anguish. His cries at this crisis proved his salvation. His strength was well-nigh exhausted; and he was on the point of letting go, when, just then, an object came before his upturned eyes that determined him to hold on a little longer--even should his toes be torn out of their joints. Above him, and half filling the orifice of the hollow, appeared an enormous head, with a face black as Erebus, and two yellowish-white eyes shining in the midst of it. No other feature was at first seen; but presently a double row of great white teeth appeared, gleaming between a pair of freshly-opened purplish lips, of a massive, cartilaginous structure. In the confusion of his senses Smythje was, for the moment, inclined to believe himself between two demons--one below, in the shape of a monstrous serpent, and the other above him, in human form: for the grinning white teeth, and yellow eyeballs rolling in sockets of sable ground, presented an appearance sufficiently demoniac. Of the two demons, however, he preferred the company of the one who bore something of his own shape; and when a huge black arm--like the trunk of a young tree--with the hand of a Titan attached to it, was stretched down to him, he did not decline to take it; but eagerly clutching at the gigantic paw thus proffered, he felt himself raised upward, as lightly as if elevated upon the extremity of a "see-saw!" In another instant he found himself upon the summit of the dead-wood, his deliverer standing by his side. So much light rushing all at once into the eyes of the rescued Smythje, instead of enabling him to see distinctly, quite blinded him; and it was only by the touch that he knew a man was by his side, who, the next moment, lifting him with one arm carried him down to the bottom of the tree, with as much apparent facility as if he, Smythje, had been a little infant! On reaching the ground, Smythje's eyes had become sufficiently strengthened to bear the light; and then he saw, in full length, the individual who had rescued him from his perilous dilemma. He was a jet-black negro of colossal size, nearly naked, with a number of straps and strings passing over his shoulders, to which were suspended horns, bullet-pouches, and other accoutrements of a more mysterious kind. His head-dress was equally odd as the rest of his costume, and consisted simply of the crown of an old beaver hat, with the brim closely trimmed off just above the ears. This gave a ludicro-comic expression to the face, which, though black as ebony, was otherwise not disagreeable. Still there was a wild look about the man, which, combined with his gigantic size, was calculated to impress one with the idea of his being no ordinary character. Nor was he, for the deliverer of Mr Smythje was no other than our old acquaintance Quaco. Smythje knew nothing of the Maroon. It might be a robber into whose hands he had fallen; but even so, the Cockney was no longer in a condition to be frightened. All fear had been scared out of him by his adventure with the snakes; and perceiving, from his amiable smiles, that his deliverer meant him no harm, he proceeded to give the latter a full account of all that had befallen him. As soon as the sportsman had finished his narrative, Quaco, without saying a word, scrambled back to the summit of the dead-wood. Fastening a cord, which he carried up with him, around the top of the stump, he fearlessly let himself down into the dark, snake-tenanted chamber, which Mr Smythje had been so glad to get out of! He had not been more than half a minute out of sight, when a glittering object was seen projected above the top of the stump. It was of serpent form, and bright yellow colour. Wriggling and writhing, it hung, for a moment, suspended in the air; and then, yielding to the laws of gravitation, it came down with a thump upon the turf. Its large size, and its lines of black and gold, rendered it easy of identification as the "yellow snake" of Jamaica (_chilabothrus inornatus_). Scarce had it touched the ground when a second and similar projectile was ejected from the hollow stump; and then a third--and another, and yet another, until no less than a dozen of these hideous reptiles lay scattered over the grass, to the no small consternation of Smythje, who, however, took care to keep well out of their reach. After the dead-wood had been delivered of its last snake, an object of a far different character was seen to issue forth in a similar manner. It was a misshapen mass, of a dirty buff colour, and proved, upon inspection, to be one of Mr Smythje's boots, still incased in its fawn-skin covering! Its mate soon followed; and then, the "wild turkey," which had led the sportsman into his deplorable dilemma, and which now, with half its plumage gone, and the other half "drooked" and bedraggled, offered but a poor chance for the garnishing of his game-bag. Smythje, however, too well contented at escaping with his life, thought no more of his game-bag, nor of anything else, but getting back to Mount Welcome by the shortest route possible. His boots being restored to him, he lost no time in drawing them on, leaving the bottoms of his trousers in the companionship of the worthless "turkey," which Quaco, better acquainted with the ornithology of Jamaica, on coming out of the hollow tree, assured him, was, after all, no turkey, but only a turkey-buzzard--a John Crow--in short, a stinking vulture! Volume Two, Chapter VII. QUASHIE IN A QUANDARY. During all this time, where was Quashie? Mr Smythje did not know, and no longer did he care. Too glad to get away from the scene of his unpleasant adventure, he made no inquiry about his negligent squire; nor did he even think of going back to the place where he had left him. His deliverer had offered himself as a guide; and the road by which he conducted the sportsman from the dead-wood led in quite another direction. As to the empty game-bag left with Quashie, it made no difference what became of that; and, for the hunting-knife and brandy-flask, no doubt the darkey would see to them. In this conjecture Mr Smythje hit the nail upon the head--at least so far as regarded the brandy-flask. It was by seeing too well to it, that Quashie had lost all sight of everything else--not only of the duties he had been appointed to perform, but of the whole earth and everything upon it. The buckra had not been twenty minutes out of his presence, when Quashie, by repeated application of the brandy-flask to his lips, brought his optical organs into such a condition, that he could not have told the difference between a turkey and a turkey-buzzard any more than Mr Smythje himself. The drinking of the _eau de vie_ had an effect upon the negro the very reverse of what it would have had upon an Irishman. Instead of making him noisy and quarrelsome, it produced a tendency towards tranquillity-- so much so, that Quashie, in less than five minutes after his last suck at the flask, coggled over upon the grass, and fell fast asleep. So soundly slept he, that not only did he fail to hear the report of Smythje's gun, but the discharge of a whole battery of field-pieces close to his ear would not, at that moment, have awakened him. It is scarce possible to say how long Quashie would have continued in this state of half-sleep, half-inebriety, had he been left undisturbed; nor was he restored to consciousness by human agency or living creature of any kind. That which brought him to himself--waking and, at the same time, partially sobering him--was the rain; which, descending like a cold shower-bath on his semi-naked skin, caused him to start to his feet. Quashie, however, had enjoyed more than an hour's sleep, before the rain began to fall; and this may account for the _eau de vie_ having in some measure lost its influence when he awoke. He was sensible that he had done wrong in drinking the buckra's brandy; and as the temporary courage with which it had inspired him was now quite gone, he dreaded an encounter with the white "gemman." He would have shunned it, had he known how; but he knew very well that to slink home by himself would bring down upon him the wrath of massa at Mount Welcome--pretty sure to be accompanied by a couple of dozen from the cart-whip. After a while's reflection, he concluded that his most prudent plan would be to wait for the young buckra's return and tell him the best tale he could. To say he had been searching for him, and that was how he had spent the time--was the story that suggested itself to the troubled imagination of Quashie. To account for the disappearance of the cognac--for he had drunk every drop of it--the darkey had bethought him of another little bit of fabrication--suggested, no doubt, by the mischance that had befallen the bottle of claret. He intended to tell the grand buckra--and "thrape" it down his throat if need be--that he, the buckra, had left out the stopper of the flask, and that the brandy had followed the example set by the "heel-tap" of wine. Thus fortified with a plausible story, Quashie awaited the return of the sportsman. The sky cleared after a time, but no buckra came; nor yet, after a considerable spell of fine weather had transpired, did he make his appearance. Quashie became impatient, and slightly anxious. Perhaps the English "gemman" had lost himself in the woods; and if so, what would be done to him, the guide? Massa Vaughan would be sure to punish him. In fancy he could hear the crack of the cart-whip resounding afar off over the hills. After waiting a while longer, he determined to put an end to his anxiety, by going in search of the sportsman; and taking up the empty bag, along with the equally empty flask, and hunting-knife, he set forth. He had seen Mr Smythje go towards the glade, and so far he could follow his trail; but once arrived at the open ground, he was completely at fault. He had not the slightest idea of what direction to take. After pausing to reflect, he took the right--that which would conduct him to the dead-wood, which was visible from the point where he had entered the glade. It was not altogether accident that conducted him thither; but rather that, in that direction, he heard, or fancied he heard, voices. As he drew near to the decapitated tree, a glittering object on the ground caught his eye. He halted, thinking it might be a snake--a creature of which most plantation negroes have a wholesome dread. On scrutinising the object more closely, Quashie was surprised to perceive that the glittering object was a gun; and, on a still nearer acquaintance with it, he saw that it was the gun of the buckra sportsman! It was lying upon the grass near the bottom of the dead-wood. What was it doing there? Where was the buckra himself? Had some accident happened to him? Why had he abandoned his gun? Had he shot himself? Or had somebody else shot him? Just at that moment the most lugubrious of sounds fell upon Quashie's ear. It was a groan, long-drawn and hollow--as if some tortured spirit was about taking its departure from the earth! It resembled the voice of a man, as of some one speaking from the interior of a tomb! The darkey stood horrified--his black epidermis turning to an ashy-grey colour, quick as the change of a chameleon. He would have taken to his heels, but a thought restrained him. It might be the buckra still alive, and in trouble? In that case he, Quashie, would be punished for deserting him. The voice appeared to issue from behind the dead-wood. Whoever uttered it must be there. Perhaps the sportsman lay wounded upon the other side? Quashie screwed up his courage as high as it would go, and commenced moving round to the other side of the stump. He proceeded cautiously, step by step, scrutinising the ground as he went. He reached the other side. He looked all over the place. Nobody there--neither dead nor wounded! There were no bushes to conceal an object so large as the body of a man--at least, not within twenty yards of the stump. The groan could not have come from a greater distance! Nor yet could a man be hidden under the trellis of climbing plants that clung around the underwood. Quashie had still enough courage left to peep among them and see. There was nobody there! At this moment, a second groan sounded in the darkey's ear, increasing his terror. It was just such a one as the first--long, protracted, and sepulchral, as if issuing from the bottom of a well. Again it came from behind the stump; but this time from the side which he had just left, and where he had seen no one! Had the wounded man crawled round to the other side, while he, Quashie, was proceeding in the opposite direction? This was the thought that occurred to him; and to determine the point, he passed back to the side whence he had come--this time going more rapidly, lest the mysterious moaner might again escape him. On reaching the spot from which he had originally set out, he was more surprised than ever. Not a soul was to be seen. The gun still lay in its place as he had left it. No one appeared to have touched it--no one was there! Again the voice--this time, however, in a shrill treble, and more resembling a shriek! It gave Quashie a fresh start; while the perspiration spurted out from his forehead, and ran down his cheeks like huge tears. The shriek, however, was more human-like--more in the voice of a man; and this gave the darkey sufficient courage to stand his ground a little longer. He had no doubt but that the voice came from the other side of the dead-wood; and once more he essayed to get his eyes upon the utterer. Still in the belief that the individual, whoever it was, and for whatever purpose, was dodging round the tree, Quashie now started forward with a determination not to stop till he had run the dodger to earth. For this purpose he commenced circling around the stump, going first at a trot; but hearing now and then the groans and shrieks--and always on the opposite side--he increased his pace, until he ran with all the speed in his power. He kept up this exercise, till he had made several turns around the tree; when, at length, he became convinced that no human being could be running before him without his seeing him. The conviction brought him to an abrupt halt, followed by a quick reflection. If not a human being, it must be a "duppy, or de debbil hisself!" The evidence that it was one or the other had now become overpowering. Quashie could resist it no longer. "Duppy! Jumbe! de debbil!" cried he, as with chattering teeth, and eyeballs protruding from their sockets, he shot off from the stump, and "streaked it" in the direction of Mount Welcome, as fast as a pair of trembling limbs were capable of carrying him. Volume Two, Chapter VIII. A SCARCITY OF TROUSERS. Following his gigantic guide, Mr Smythje trudged unhappily homeward. How different his craven, crestfallen look, from the swell, swaggering sportsman of the morning! while the condition of his person was not more dilapidated than that of his spirit. It was no longer the disgrace of returning with an empty game-bag, but the chagrin which he expected to have to undergo, presenting himself at Mount Welcome in the "pickle" in which his adventure had left him. He was now even in a more ludicrous plight than when Quaco had extracted him from the hollow tree: for the rain, that had long since ceased, had been succeeded by a blazing hot sun, and the atmosphere acting upon what remained of his wet fawn-skin trousers, caused them to shrink until the ragged edges had crept up to mid-thigh; thus leaving a large section of thin knock-kneed legs between them and the tops of his boots! In truth, the sportsman had become the _beau ideal_ of a "guy"; and, more than half conscious of this fact, he would at that moment have given the situation of book-keeper on his estate to any individual who should have presented him with a pair of pantaloons. His guide could do nothing for him. In the line of inexpressibles Quaco was no better provided than himself. Verily, the prospect was appalling! Could he reach the house, and steal to his own chamber unseen? What chance was there of his doing so? On reflection, not much. Mount Welcome, like all other mansions in Jamaica, was a cage--open on every side. It was almost beyond the bounds of probability that he could enter the house unobserved. Still, he could try, and on the success of that trial rested his only hope. Oh, for that grand secret known only to the jealous Juno--the secret of rendering one's-self invisible! What would Smythje not have given for a ten minutes' hire of that Carthaginian cloud? The thought was really in his mind; for Smythje, like all young Englishmen of good family, had studied the classics. The idea, moreover, proved suggestive. If there was no probability of being provided with the nimbus of Juno, there was the possibility of shadowing himself under the nimbus of night. Darkness once on, he might enter the house, reach his chamber unperceived, and thus escape the unpleasant exposure he so much dreaded. Smythje stopped, looked at his guide, looked at the sun, and lastly at his naked knees--now, from the enfeebled state of his limbs, oscillating towards each other. Mount Welcome was in sight. The guide was about to leave him; and, therefore, in whatever way he might choose to act, there would be no witness. Just then the Maroon made his adieus, and the _ci-devant_ sportsman was left to himself. Once more he scanned the sun, and consulted his watch. In two hours it would be twilight. The crepusculous interval would enable him to approach the house; and in the first moments of darkness--before the lamps were lit--he _might_ enter unobserved--or, at all events, his plight might not very plainly be perceived. The scheme was feasible, and having determined to adopt it, Smythje cowered down in the covert, and awaited the setting of the sun. He counted the hours, the half-hours, and minutes--he listened to the voices coming up from the negro village--he watched the bright-winged birds that fluttered among the branches overhead, and envied them their _complete_ plumage. Notwithstanding many rare sights and sweet sounds that reached him, the two hours spent in his secret lair were not passed pleasantly-- solicitude about the success of his scheme robbing him of all zest for the enjoyment of that fair scene that surrounded him. The hour of action drew nigh. The sun went down over the opposite ridge, where lay Montagu Castle, his own domain. The twilight, like a purple curtain, was gently drawn over the valley of Mount Welcome. It was time to start. Smythje rose to his feet; and, after making a _reconnoissance_ of the ground before him, set off in the direction of the house. He aimed at keeping as much as possible under cover of the woods; and this he was enabled to do--the pimento groves on that side stretching down to the shrubbery that surrounded the dwelling. He had got past the negro village--keeping it upon his right--without being observed. To both the "quarter" and the sugar works he gave as wide a berth as the nature of the ground would permit. He succeeded in reaching the platform on which the house stood--so far unperceived. But the moment of peril was not yet past. The dangerous ground still lay before him, and had still to be traversed. This was the open _parterre_ in front of the house: for it was to the front that the path had conducted him. It was dusk; and no one appeared--at least he could see no one--either on the stair-landing or in the windows of the great hall. So far good. A rush for the open doorway, and then on to his own chamber, where Thoms would soon clothe him in a more becoming costume. He started to make the rush, and had succeeded in getting half-way across the _parterre_, when, all at once, a crowd of people, carrying large flaming torches above their heads, appeared, coming from the rear of the dwelling. They were the domestics and some field hands of the plantation, with Trusty, the overseer, at their head. One might have fancied that they were setting out upon some ceremonious procession; but their hurried advance, and the presence of Quashie trotting in the lead, proclaimed a different purpose. Smythje divined their errand. They were going in search of himself! The sight filled him with despair. The torch-bearers had anticipated him. They had already reached the front of the house, and the glare of their great flambeaux illuminated every object, as if a new sun had suddenly shot up athwart the sky! There was no chance of successfully running the gauntlet under that bright flame: Smythje saw not the slightest. He stopped in his tracks. He would have retreated back among the bushes, and there awaited the departure of the torch-bearers, but he feared that his retrograde movement would attract their eyes upon him; and then all would be over--his adventure terminating in the most undesirable manner. Instead of retreating, therefore, he stood where he had stopped--fixed and immobile, as if pinned to the spot. At that moment two figures appeared on the top of the stairway--in the brilliant light easily recognisable as the planter and his daughter. The maid Yola was behind them. Mr Vaughan had come out to give some directions about the search. All three stood facing the crowd of torch-bearers, and, of course, fronting towards Smythje. The planter was just opening his lips to speak, when a cry from the maid, echoed by her young mistress, interrupted him. The sharp eyes of the Foolah had fallen upon Smythje, whose wan, white face, shining under the light of the links, resembled those of the statues that were set over the _parterre_. Smythje was among the shrubbery; and as the girl knew that no statue stood there, the unexpected apparition had elicited her cry of alarm. All eyes were instantly turned upon the spot, while the torch-bearers, with Trusty at their head, hurried towards it. There was no chance of escape. The unfortunate sportsman was discovered and brought broadly into the light, under the fierce battery of eyes-- among others, the eyes of his lady-love, that, instead of expressing sympathy for his forlorn condition, appeared rather to sparkle with satirical delight! It was a terrible catastrophe--to be contemplated in such a plight; and Smythje, hurrying through the crowd, lost no time in withdrawing from observation by betaking himself to his chamber; where, under the consolatory encouragement of the sympathising Thoms, he was soon rendered presentable. Volume Two, Chapter IX. HERBERT IN THE HAPPY VALLEY. Inappropriate as Jacob Jessuron's neighbours may have deemed the title of his estate--the Happy Valley--Herbert Vaughan had no reason to regard it as a misnomer. From the hour in which he entered upon his situation of book-keeper, it was a round of pleasures, rather than duties, that he found himself called upon to fulfil; and his new life, so far from being laboriously spent, was one continued scene, or series of scenes, of positive pastime. Instead of keeping books, or looking after slaves--or, in short, doing anything that might be deemed useful--most of his time was spent in excursions, that had no other object than recreation or amusement. Drives to the Bay--in which he was accompanied by Jessuron himself, and introduced to his mercantile acquaintances; visits to neighbouring penns and plantations with the beautiful Judith--in which he was made acquainted with her circle; fishing parties upon the water, and picnics in the woods: all these were afforded him without stint. He was furnished with a fine horse to ride; dogs and equipments for the chase; everything, in short, calculated to afford him the life of a gentleman of elegant leisure. A half-year's salary had been advanced to him unasked--thus delicately giving him the means of replenishing his wardrobe, and enabling him to appear in proper costume for every occasion. Certainly, the prospects of the poor steerage-passenger seemed to have undergone a change for the better. Through the generosity of his unexpected patron, he was playing a role at the Jew's penn not unlike that which his fellow-voyager was, at that very time, performing at Mount Welcome; and as there was not much difference in the social rank of the respective circles in which they were each revolving, it was by no means improbable that the two might meet again, and upon a more equal footing than formerly. To do Herbert Vaughan justice, it should be stated that he was more surprised than gratified by the luxurious life he was leading. There was something rather extraordinary in the generous patronage of the Jew--something that puzzled him not a little. How was he to account for such kind hospitality? Thus for days after Herbert Vaughan had made the Happy Valley his home, matters moved on smoothly enough to the superficial observer. Slight incongruities that did occur from time to time, were ingeniously explained; and the young Englishman, unsuspicious of any evil design, with the exception of the unwonted hospitality that was being bestowed upon himself, saw nothing extraordinary in the circumstances that surrounded him. Had he been less the honoured guest of his Israelitish host, perhaps his perceptions might have been more scrupulous and discriminative. But the Arabs have a proverb--"It is not in human nature to speak ill of the horse that has borne one out of danger;" and human nature in the East is but the counterpart of its homonym in the West. Noble as was the nature of the young Englishman, still was it human; and to have "spoken ill of the bridge that had carried him safely over"--and from that desolate shore on which he had late been stranded--would have argued a nature something more than human. If he entertained any suspicion of his patron's integrity, he zealously kept it to himself--not with any idea of surrendering either his independence or self-respect; but to await the development of the somewhat inexplicable courtesy of which he was the recipient. This courtesy was not confined to his Hebrew host. As Herbert had long been aware, his daughter exercised it in an equal degree, and far more gracefully. Indeed, among other transformations that had been remarked as occurring in the Happy Valley, the spirit of the fair Jewess seemed also to have sustained a remarkable change. Though upon occasions the proud, imperious temper would manifest itself, more generally now was Judith in a sentimental vein--at times approaching to sadness. There were other times when the old spitefulness would show itself. Then the spiral nostrils would curl with contempt, and the dark Israelitish eyes flash with malignant fire. Happily, these rather ungraceful exhibitions--like the tornadoes of her native land--were rare: for a certain name--the cause that called them forth--was but rarely pronounced in her hearing. Kate Vaughan was the name. Judith's dislike for the young Creole had originated in a mere rivalry of charms. Both enjoyed a wide-spread reputation for beauty--oft descanted upon, and often compared, by the idle gallants of the Bay. These discussions and comparisons reached the ears of the Jewess; and, to her chagrin, the decisions were not always in her favour. Hence the origin of her enmity. Hitherto it had been only _envy_; and, with a toss of the head, and a slight curl of the nostril, the unpleasant theme would be dismissed. Of late, however, a stronger emotion than envy had begun to exhibit itself; and, whenever the name of Kate Vaughan was introduced into the conversation--no matter how incidentally or undesigned--the eye of the Jewess would light up with a jealous fire, her lip quiver as if muttering curses, and she, who but the moment before seemed a very angel, would become all at once transformed into the semblance of a demon! The behaviour of the Jewess admits of easy explanation. _She was in love, and with Herbert Vaughan_. At first the motive had been part vanity, part coquetry--blended, however, with some serious admiration. Mingled also with this was a desire to vex Kate Vaughan: for, from the first, she had suspected rivalry in that quarter. Even though she had been made aware of the very short interview between the cousins, she could not feel satisfied but that something had passed between them; and there was that bit of ribbon, which Herbert still cherished, and of the symbolism of which she had vainly endeavoured to obtain a solution. Her suspicions did not die out, as it might be supposed they would, in the absence of any demonstration on Herbert's part towards his cousin. On the contrary, they only grew stronger as her own interest in the young Englishman increased, for then she could not understand how a young girl--Kate Vaughan, or any other--could have looked upon the man who had impressed her, without being herself impressed. And she had become impressed by him, not gradually, but rapidly and profoundly; until her love had grown into a fierce passion--such as a tigress might be suspected of conceiving for her tawny mate. Herbert Vaughan had passed scarce a week under the roof of the Jew's mansion when its mistress was in love with him--to the ends of her fingers--to the very extreme of jealousy! As for the object of this fervent passion, the young man was at this time altogether unable to analyse his own feelings. It is true that the imperious spirit of the Jewess, aided by her endless wiles, had gained a certain ascendancy over him; but not so as to obliterate the image that had recently become impressed upon his heart. In the short interview which he had had with his cousin Kate, Herbert Vaughan had looked, for the first time in his life, on one whom to look at was to love. The blue-eyed belle of his native village, the pretty barmaid at the inn, the sweet-faced chorister in the church--with other boyish fancies, already half obliterated by two months of absence--were swept instantaneously into the dustbin of oblivion by that lovely apparition. He was face to face with a woman worthy of his love--one who deserved every aspiration of his soul. Intuitively and at the first glance he had felt this; and still more was he impressed with it, as he pronounced those warm words on his painful parting. Hence the ardent proffer of the strong arm and the stout heart--hence the chivalric refusal of the purse, and the preference of a piece of ribbon. Not that he had any reason to regard the latter as a love-token. He knew that the kind words that had been spoken in that short but stormy interview--as well as the offer of gold that had ended it--were but the promptings of a pitying heart; and rather a negation of love, than a sign of its existence. Glad as he might have been to have regarded the piece of ribbon as a _guage d'amour_, he could only prize it as a _souvenir_ of friendship--of no higher signification than the purse to which it had belonged, or the gold treasure which that purse had contained. Though sensible that he had no claim upon his cousin beyond that of kinship--though not a word had been spoken by her to show that she felt for him any other kind of regard, Herbert, strange enough, had conceived a hope, that some day or other, a more endearing relationship might exist between them. Not for long was he cheered by this sweet expectancy. It was too transitory to stand the test of time. As day succeeded day, rumours reached him of the gay scenes that were transpiring at Mount Welcome. Especially was he informed of the contentedness of his cousin Kate in the society of the new companion which her father had provided for her. The effect of this information was a gradual but grievous extinction of the slight hope which Herbert had conceived. The circumstances with which chance had now surrounded him may have rendered these regrets less painful. Though his cousin cared not for him, he had no reason to feel forsaken or forlorn. By his side--and almost constantly by his side--was beauty of no common brilliance, showering smiles upon him of no ordinary attractiveness. Had he been the recipient of those smiles only one day sooner--before the image of Kate Vaughan had made that slight impression upon his heart--he might the more readily have yielded to their influence. And, perhaps, on the other hand, could he have known how _his_ image had fallen upon her heart, and made lodgment there, he might have offered a sterner resistance to the syren seductions with which he was now beset. But lovers' hearts are not things of glass; and though at times they resemble mirrors, mentally reflecting each other, too often, by the ruling of contrarieties, do the mirrors become reversed and with the reflecting images facing darkly inward. In such a dilemma was the heart of Herbert Vaughan. No wonder he found a difficulty in effecting its analysis! In a condition somewhat similar to Herbert's was the heart of his cousin: though hers was easier to analyse. It was simply trembling under the influence of a first and virgin love. Two forms had been presented to it in the same hour, both in the blush of youthful manhood--one, a distinguished gentleman, the other, an humble adventurer. The former had the additional advantage in priority of introduction; the latter was not even introduced. But the favourite does not always win. The earliest on the course may be the latest in the race; and though the heart of the young Creole, on its pure virgin page, had received love's image at first sight, it was not that of him who first presented himself to make the impression. Nor was she kept in ignorance of outward events. Her maid Yola was the medium by which she was acquainted with them. Through this medium she had heard of Herbert's proximity--of his happiness and prosperity. The news would have given her joy, but that she had heard he was _too happy_. Strange that this should be a cause of bitterness! The thoughts that succeeded--the hopes and fears--the dark doubts by day and by night--the dreams, often delusively bright--need not be detailed. There are none who have not known a first love; few who have not felt this chequered alternation of emotions. As for the distinguished Smythje, he was not always in one mind. He, too, was troubled with an alternation of hopes and fears. The former, however, generally predominated; and, for the most part, he felt in his spirit the proud confidence of a conqueror. Often, with Thoms as his audience, might Smythje be heard exultingly repeating the despatch of Caesar:--"_Veni, vidi, vici_!" Volume Two, Chapter X. IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE. The mutual spite between planter and penn-keeper was of old standing-- dating, in fact, from their first acquaintance with each other. Some sharp practice between them, in the sale and purchase of slaves, had given origin to it; and circumstances were always occurring to hinder it from dying out. This was more especially the case since the Jew, by the purchase of the Happy Valley estate, had become the contiguous neighbour--and, in point of wealth, almost the rival--of the proprietor of Mount Welcome. On the side of the Custos there had been for some time past another feeling mixed up with his antipathy to his Israelitish neighbour--a vague sense of fear. This was of modern origin--dating from a period subsequent to the execution of Chakra, the myal-man--and begotten of some remarks which, as reported to Mr Vaughan, the Jew had made in connection with that ugly incident. If nothing had of late transpired to increase this fear on the part of the Custos, a circumstance had arisen to strengthen his hostility. The protection which had been given to his discarded nephew, and the parade which his neighbour was making of him, had proved to the Custos a scandal of the most irksome kind; and almost every day was he made aware of some unpleasant bit of gossip connected with the affair. So irritated had he become with rumours, constantly reaching him, that his hatred for the Jew had grown stronger than ever before; and he would have given a dozen hogsheads of his best _muscovado_ to any one who would have provided him with the means of humiliating the detested penn-keeper. Just at this crisis, chance or fortune stepped in to favour him, apparently offering the very opportunity he desired; and in a way that, instead of costing him a dozen hogsheads of sugar, was likely to put far more than that amount of property into his pocket. It was the day before that on which Smythje had dropped into the dead-wood. The Custos was in his kiosk alone, smoking a plantation cigar, and conning over the statutes of the "black code"--a favourite study with him. Just at that moment Mr Trusty's shadow was projected into the summer-house. "Well, Trusty, what is it?" "There's a man below wants to see your worship." "On what business, pray?" "Don't know," answered the laconic overseer; "he won't tell. Says it's important, and can only communicate to yourself." "What sort of a man is he? Negro or white?" "Neither, your worship. He's a clear mulatto. I've seen him about before. He's one of the Maroons that have their settlement over among the Trelawney Hills. He calls himself Cubina." "Ah!" said the Custos, showing a slight emotion as the name was pronounced; "Cubina! Cubina! I've heard the name. I fancy I've seen the man--at a distance. A young fellow, isn't he?" "Very young; though they say he's the captain of the Trelawney band." "What on earth can the Maroon want with me?" muttered Mr Vaughan, half to himself. "He hasn't brought in any runaways, has he?" "No," answered the overseer. "Thanks to your worship's good management, we haven't any of late--not since that old schemer Chakra was put out of the way." "Thanks to _your_ good management, Mr Trusty," said the planter, returning his overseer's compliment, not without a show of nervous uneasiness, which the reference to Chakra had called forth. "Then it's nothing of that kind, you think?" he hastily added, as if desirous of changing the theme. "No, your worship. It cannot be: there's not a runaway upon my list;" replied Trusty, with an air of triumph. "Gad! I'm glad to hear it," said the Custos, rubbing his hands together as an expression of his contentment. "Well; I suppose the young fellow has come to consult me in my magisterial capacity. In some scrape, no doubt? These Maroons are always getting themselves into trouble with our planters. I wonder who he's come to complain about?" "Well, that much I think I can tell you," rejoined the overseer, evidently knowing more of the Maroon's errand than he had yet admitted-- for Mr Trusty was a true disciple of the secretive school. "If I should be allowed to make a guess, your worship, I should say it is something relating to our neighbour of the Happy Valley." "What! the Jew?" "Jacob Jessuron, Esquire." "You think so, Trusty?" inquired Mr Vaughan, with an earnest and gratified look. "Has the young fellow said anything?" "No," answered the overseer; "it's not anything _he_ has said. I heard something a day or two ago about a runaway the Maroons have got among them--a slave belonging to the Jew. It appears they don't want to give him up." "Whom did you hear it from?" "Why, not exactly from any one, your worship. I should rather say I _overheard_ it, quite by accident. One of the Trelawney Maroons--a big fellow that comes down here occasionally after Black Bet--was telling her something. I was passing Bet's cabin, and heard him talking about this runaway." "Don't want to give him up! And for what reason do they refuse?" "Can't tell, your worship. I could only make out part of the conversation." "So you think it's about that the young fellow has come?" "I think it likely, your worship. He's close, however, and I couldn't get a word out of him about his business. He says he must see you." "All right, then! You can show him in here. And hark ye, Mr Trusty! See Black Bet, and get what you can out of her. This is an interesting matter. A Maroon refusing to deliver up a runaway! There must be something in it. Perhaps the mulatto will tell me all about it; but whether he does or not, you may see Bet. You can promise her a new gown, or whatever you like. Show the young fellow up at once. I am ready to receive him." Mr Trusty bowed, and walked off in the direction of the works, where the Maroon had remained in waiting; while the Custos, composing himself into an official attitude, awaited the approach of his visitor. "I'd give a good round sum," soliloquised he, "to learn that the old rascal has got into some scrape with these Maroon fellows. I shouldn't wonder," he added, in gleeful anticipation, "I shouldn't wonder! I know they don't much like him--less since he's taken the Spaniards into his pay--and I suspect he's been engaged in some underhand transactions of late. He's been growing grander every day, and nobody knows where all the money comes from. Maybe Master Maroon has a tale to tell; and, if it's against Jessuron, I'll take care he has an opportunity of telling it. Ah, here he comes! Egad, a fine-looking fellow! So, so! This is the young man that my daughter jokes Yola about! Well, I don't wonder the Foolah should have taken a fancy to him; but I must see that he doesn't make a fool of her. These Maroons are dangerous dogs among the women of the plantations; and Yola, whether a princess or not in her own country-princess, ha! ha! Well, at all events the wench is no common nigger; and it won't do for Master Maroon to be humbugging her. I shall lecture him about it, now that I've got him here." By this time the Maroon captain--equipped just as we have seen him in the forest--had arrived in front of the kiosk; and, making a deferential bow, though without taking off his hat--which, being the _toqued kerchief_, could not conveniently be removed--stood waiting for the Custos to address him. The planter remained for a considerable time without vouchsafing further speech than the mechanical salutation, "Good morning." There was something in the physiognomy of his visitor that had evidently made an unpleasant impression upon him; and the gaze, with which he regarded the latter, was one which bespoke some feeling different from that of mere curiosity or admiration. Whatever the feeling was, he seemed desirous of suppressing it; and, making an effort to that effect, appeared to succeed: for the shadow, that for an instant had shown itself on his countenance, cleared away; and, with a magisterial but courteous smile, he commenced the conversation. Volume Two, Chapter XI. MAGISTRATE AND MAROON. "Well, young man," continued the Custos, in an affable tone, "you, I believe, are one of the Maroons of Trelawney?" "Yes, worship," bluntly rejoined Cubina. "The captain of a town, are you not?" "Only a few families, worship. Ours is a small settlement." "And your name is--?" "Cubina." "Ah! I've heard the name," said the Custos. "I think," added he, with a significant smile, "we have a young girl here on the plantation who knows you?" Cubina blushed, as he stammered out an affirmative. "Oh! that's all right," said the planter, encouragingly. "So long as there's no harm meant, there's no harm done. Mr Trusty tells me you have business with me. Is it about that?" "About what, your worship?" inquired the Maroon, a little taken by surprise at the question so unexpectedly put to him. "About your sweetheart!" "My sweetheart, worship?" "Ay, Yola. Is she not your sweetheart?" "Well, Mr Vaughan," rejoined the Maroon, "I'm not going to deny that something has passed between me and the young girl; but it wasn't exactly about her I've come to see you, though now, bein' here, I might as well talk about that matter, too, if it so please your worship." "Very good, Captain Cubina. I'm ready to hear what you have to say. Go on!" "Well, then, your worship, the truth is, I want to buy Yola." "What? Buy your own sweetheart?" "Just so, worship. Of course, as soon as she would be mine, I'd set her free." "That is, you would change the bonds she now wears for the bonds of matrimony?--ha! ha! ha! Is that it, Captain Cubina?" and the Custos laughed at the conceit he had so neatly expressed. "Something of that sort, your worship," replied the Maroon, slightly participating in the worthy magistrate's mirth. "And do you think Yola desires to become Mrs Cubina?" "If I didn't think so, your worship, I wouldn't propose to buy her. It would be nothing to me to own the girl, if she wasn't agreeable." "She _is_ agreeable, then?" "Well, worship, I think so. Not that she don't like the young mistress that owns her at present; but, you see, your worship--but--" "But there's somebody she likes better than her mistress; and that's yourself, Master Cubina?" "Well, you see, worship, that's a different sort of liking, and--" "True enough--true enough!" interrupted Mr Vaughan, as if wishing to come to the end of the conversation--at least, upon that particular topic. "Well, Captain Cubina," he added, "suppose I was willing to part with Yola, how much could you afford to give for her? Mind you, I don't say I am willing: for, after all, the girl belongs to my daughter; and _she_ would have something to say in the matter." "Ah, sir!" exclaimed Cubina, in a tone of tender confidence, "Miss Vaughan is good and generous. I've often heard say so. I am sure she would never stand in the way of Yola's being happy." "Oh, you think it would make Yola happy, do you?" "I hope so, your worship," answered the Maroon, modestly dropping his eyelids as he made the reply. "After all," said the planter, "it would be a matter of business. My daughter, even if she wished it, could not afford to part with the girl for less than the market price; which in Yola's case would be a large one. How much do you suppose I have been offered for her?" "I've heard two hundred pounds, your worship." "Just so; and I refused that, too." "Maybe, Mr Vaughan, you would not have refused it from another--from me, for instance?" "Ah, I don't know about that! But could _you_ raise that large sum?" "Not just now, your worship. I am sorry to say I could not. I had scraped together as good as a hundred--thinking that would be enough-- when, to my sorrow, I learnt I had only got half-way. But, if your worship will only allow me time, I think I can manage--in a month or two--to get the other hundred, and then--" "Then, worthy captain, it will be time to talk about buying Yola. Meanwhile, I can promise you that she shan't be sold to anybody else. Will that satisfy you?" "Oh, thank your worship! It is very kind of you, Mr Vaughan: I'll not fail to be grateful. So long as Yola--" "Yola will be safe enough in my daughter's keeping. But now, my young fellow, since you say this was not exactly the business that brought you here, you have some other, I suppose? Pray tell me what it is." The Custos, as he made this request, set himself to listen, in a more attentive attitude than he had yet assumed. "Well, your worship!" proceeded Cubina, "I've come over to ask you for some advice about a matter I have with Mr Jessuron--he as keeps penn close by here." Mr Vaughan became doubly attentive. "What matter?" asked he, in a simple phrase--lest any circumlocution might distract the speaker from his voluntary declaration. "It's an ugly business, your worship; and I wouldn't bother about it, but that the poor young fellow who's been robbed out of his rights, turns out to be neyther more nor less than the brother of Yola herself. It's a queer story altogether; and if it wasn't the old Jew that's done the thing, one could hardly believe it." "What thing? Pray be explicit, my friend." "Well, your worship, if you'll have patience to hear me, I'll tell you the whole story from beginning to end--that is, as far as it has gone: for it ain't ended yet." "Go on!" commanded the Custos. "I'll hear it patiently. And don't be afraid, Captain Cubina," added he, encouragingly. "Tell me all you know--every circumstance. If it's a case for justice, I promise you justice shall be done." And with this magisterial commonplace, the Custos resumed his attitude of extreme attention. "I'll make no secrets, your worship, whether it gets me into trouble or no. I'll tell you all--leastwise, all that's come to my knowledge." And with this proviso, the Maroon captain proceeded to detail the circumstances connected with the capture of the runaway; the singular encounter between brother and sister; and the mutual recognition that followed. Then afterwards the disclosures made by the young man: how he was an African prince; how he had been sent in search of his sister; the ransom he had brought with him; his landing from the ship, consigned by Captain Jowler to the care of Jessuron; his treatment and betrayal by the Jew; the branding of his person, and robbing him of his property; his escape from the penn; his capture by Cubina, already described; and, finally, his detention by the latter, in spite of several messages and menaces, sent by the Jew, to deliver him up. "Good!" cried Loftus Vaughan, starting from his chair, and evidently delighted by the recital, somewhat dramatically delivered by the Maroon. "A melodrama, I declare! wanting only one act to complete it. Egad, I shall feel inclined to be one of the actors before it's played out. Ho!" exclaimed he, as if some thought had suddenly struck him; "this may explain why the old rascal wanted to buy the wench--though I don't clearly see his purpose in that. It'll come clear yet, no doubt." Then addressing himself once more to the Maroon:-- "Twenty-four Mandingoes, you say--twenty-four belonged to the prince?" "Yes, your worship. Twenty regular slaves, and four others that were his personal attendants. There were more of the slaves; but these were the lawful property of the captain, the price paid for bringing him over." "And they were all carried to the Jew's penn?" "All of them, with the others: the whole cargo was taken there. The Jew bought all. There were some Coromantees among them; and one of my men, Quaco, who had talk with these, heard enough to confirm the young man's story." "Ha! what a pity, now, that black tongues can't wag to any purpose! _Their_ talk goes for nothing. But I'll see what may be done without it." "Did your prince ascertain the name of the captain that brought him over?" inquired the magistrate, after considering a minute. "Oh yes, your worship; Jowler, he was called. He trades upon the Gambia, where the prince's father lives. The young man knows him well." "I think I know something of him, too--that same Jowler. I should like to lay my hands upon him, for something else than this--a precious scamp! After all, it wouldn't help our case if we had him. No doubt, the two set their heads together in the business, and there's only one story between them. "Humph! what are we to do for a _white_ witness?" continued the magistrate, speaking rather to himself than his visitor. "That, I fear, will be a fatal difficulty. Stay! Ravener, you say, Jessuron's overseer, was at the landing of the cargo?" "Oh, yes, your worship. That individual took an active part in the whole transaction. It was he who stripped the prince of his clothes, and took all his jewellery away from him." "Jewellery, too?" "_Crambo_, yes! He had many valuable things. Jowler kept most of his plunder aboard ship." "A robbery! Egad, a wholesale robbery!" "Well, Captain Cubina," proceeded the Custos, changing his tone to one of more business-like import, "I promise you that this shall not be passed over. I don't yet clearly see what course we may have to take. There are many difficulties in a prosecution of this kind. We'll have trouble about the testimony--especially since Mr Jessuron is a magistrate himself. Never mind about that. Justice shall be done, even were he the highest in the land. But there can be no move made just yet. It will be a month before the assize court meets at Savannah; and that is where we must go with it. Meanwhile, not a word to any one--not a whisper of what you know!" "I promise that, your worship." "You must keep the Foolah prince where you have him. Don't on any account deliver him up. I'll see that you're protected in holding him. Considering the case, it's not likely the Jew will go to extremities with you. _He_ has a glass house over his head, and will 'ware to throw stones--so you've not much to fear. "And now, young man!" added the Custos, changing his tone to one that showed how friendly he could be to him who had imparted such gratifying intelligence, "if all goes well, you'll not have much difficulty in making up the hundred pounds for the purchase of your sweetheart. _Remember that_!" "Thanks, worthy Custos," said Cubina, bowing gratefully; "I shall depend upon your promise." "You may. And now--go quietly home, and wait till I send for you. I shall see my lawyer to-morrow. We may want you soon." Volume Two, Chapter XII. THE SMYTHJE ECLIPSE. The celebrated eclipse of Columbus, by which that shrewd navigator so advantageously deluded the simple savages of Don Christopher's Cove, is not the only one for which the island of Jamaica _should_ be famous. It is my duty to introduce another: which, if not worthy of being recorded upon the page of history, deserves at least a chapter in our romance. The eclipse in question, though not so important in its results as that which favoured the great world-finder, was nevertheless of considerable interest--more especially to some of the _dramatis personae_ of our tale, whose fortunes it influenced in no slight degree. Occurring about two weeks after the arrival of the distinguished Smythje, it seemed as if the sun had specially extinguished himself for the occasion: as a sort of appropriate climax to the round of brilliant _fetes_ and entertainments, of which the lord of Montagu Castle had been the recipient. It deserves, therefore, to be designated the "Smythje eclipse." On the day before that on which the obscuration of the sun was expected to take place, the Cockney had conceived a brilliant design--that of viewing the eclipse from the top of the mountain--from the summit of the Jumbe Rock! There was something daringly original in this design; and for that had Smythje adopted it. Kate Vaughan was to be his companion. He had asked, and of course obtained, Mr Vaughan's consent, and hers also of course--for Kate had found of late, more than ever, that her father's will was to be her law. Smythje was not without a purpose in the proposed ascent to the natural observatory of the Jumbe Rock. In that hour when all the earth would be in _chiaro-oscuro_--as if shrouded under the pall of infinity--in that dark and solemn hour, Smythje had determined upon _popping the question_! Why he had selected such a place and time--both pre-eminently sombre-- must for ever remain a mystery. He may have been under an impression that the poetical reputation of the place, combined with the romantic solemnity of the scene and the hour, might exercise a dissolving influence over the heart of the young Creole, and incline her to an affirmative answer. Or, perhaps, _au fait_ as he was to theatrical contrivances, he may have drawn his idea from something he had seen upon the stage, and chosen his climax accordingly. Some two hours before the expected contact between the limbs of the two great luminaries--in time to allow of leisurely walking--Smythje started out for the Jumbe Rock, of course accompanied by Kate Vaughan. Attendants there were none; for the exquisite, on such an occasion, preferred being alone; and had so signified--declining the sable escort which his host had provided. The morning was one of the fairest. The sun was still shining brightly. Not a speck could be distinguished upon the azure arch of a West-Indian sky; and the scenes through which the path conducted Mr Smythje and his fair companion were among the loveliest to be found in the domain of Nature. Around the dwelling of Mount Welcome--in its gardens and _parterres_-- the eye delighted to dwell upon a variety of vegetable forms, both indigenous and exotic--some planted for shade; some for the beauty of their blossoms; and others for their fruit. There could be seen the genip, the tamarind of Oriental fame, palms of several species, the native pawpaw, and the curious trumpet-tree. Distinguished for their floral beauties, were the cordia, the oleander, and South-Sea rose, the grand magnolia, and the perfumed Persian lilac. Bearing luscious fruits, were the cashew, the mango, and Malay apple; the sop, the guava, with every variety of the citron tribe--as oranges, lemons, limes, and the huge shaddock. Climbing the standard trunks, and twining around the branches, were parasites of many species--rare and beautiful flowering plants: as the wax-like _hoya carnosa_, the crimson quamoclit, _barsavolas_, _ipomeas_, and other magnificent orchids. It was a scene to stir the soul of a botanist to enthusiastic admiration; resembling a vast botanical garden--some grand house of palms, having for its roof the azure canopy of heaven. To the eyes of the young creole--all her life accustomed to look upon those fair vegetable forms--there was nothing in the sight of them to beget astonishment; and the Cockney cared but little for trees. His late adventure had cured him of all inclination for a forest life; and, in his eyes, a cabbage-palm was of no more interest than a cabbage. Smythje, however, was not unmusical. Constant attendance at the opera had, to some extent, attuned his soul to song; and he could not help expressing some surprise at the melody of the Western songsters--so much misrepresented and maligned. In truth, upon that morning they appeared to be giving one of their grandest concerts. In the garden groves could be heard the clear voice of the banana-bird, like the tones of a clarionet, mingled with the warbling tones of the blue quit. There, too, could be seen the tiny vervain humming-bird, seated upon the summit of a tall mango-tree, trilling out its attenuated and fairy-like lay, with as much enthusiastic energy as if its little soul was poured forth in the song. In the dark mountain woods could be heard other songsters--the glass-eye merle singing his rich and long-continued strain; and, at intervals, the wild, plaintive cry of the solitaire, littered in sweet but solemn notes, like the cadenced chaunting of a psalm--in perfect keeping with the solitude which this singular songster affects. Above all could be distinguished the powerful voice of the New World nightingale--the far-famed mock-bird--excelling all the other music of the groves; except when at intervals the rare May-bird condescended to fling his melody upon the breeze, when the mock-bird himself would instantly interrupt his lay, and become a listener. Add to these sounds the humming of bees, the continuous "skirling" of grasshoppers, lizards, and cicadas--the metallic cluckling of tree-frogs, the rustling of the breeze among the lanceolate leaves of the tall bamboos, and the sighing of a cascade among the distant hills-- add these, and you may have some idea of the commingling of sounds that saluted the ear of Mr Montagu Smythje, as, with his fair companion, he ascended the mountain slope. Cheerful as were the birds and brisk the bees, Smythje appeared cheerful and brisk as they. He was gay both in spirits and costume. Thoms had equipped him in one of his favourite suits; and his spirits were elevated by the prospect of his grand love triumph. On arriving at the bottom of the ravine which conducted to the summit of the rock, Smythje showed his courage by boldly advancing to scale the steep path. He would have offered a hand to assist his companion; but in the difficult ascent he found full occupation for both; and in this ungallant manner was he compelled to climb upward. Kate, however--who was accustomed to the path, and could possibly have given him assistance--found no difficulty in following; and in a few seconds both had arrived on the summit of the rock, and stood under the shadow of the palm. The skeleton form, once chained to the tree, was no longer there to fray them. It had been mysteriously removed. Mr Smythje consulted his repeater. They had arrived just in the nick of time. In five minutes the eclipse would commence; and the discs of the two great heavenly orbs would appear in contact. It was not this crisis, however, that Smythje had chosen for the cue to his important speech. Nor yet the moment of deepest darkness; but just when the sun should begin to re-appear, and, by his renewed brightening symbolise the state of the lover's own feelings. He had prepared some pretty speeches which he meant to repeat by way of ushering in the declaration: how his own heart might be compared to the sun--now burning with passion--now darkened by deep despair; then once more brightening up, with rekindled hope, at the prospect of Kate making him the happiest of mortals. He had prepared them pit-a-pat the night before, and gone over them with Thoms in the morning. He had rehearsed them more than a dozen times-- ending with a dress rehearsal just before starting out. Unless the eclipse should in some way deprive him of the use of his tongue, there could be no danger of his breaking down. With perfect confidence, therefore, in his speech-making, and equally confident of the issue, the romantic Smythje restored his repeater to its fob; and, with sun-glass in hand, awaited the coming on of the eclipse. Volume Two, Chapter XIII. A PROPOSAL POSTPONED. Slowly, silently, and still unseen, stole the soft luminary of night towards her burning god--till a slight shadow on his lower limb betokened the contact. "The ekwipse is commencing," said Smythje, holding the glass to his eye. "The sun and moon are just kissing, like two lovers. How pwetty it is! Dawn't yaw think so, fayaw Kate?" "Rather a distant kiss for lovers, I should say--some ninety odd millions of miles between them!" "Haw, haw! veway good, veway good indeed! And in that sawt of thing, distance dawn't lend enchantment to the view. Much bettaw to be near, just as yaw and I are at this moment. Dawn't yaw think so, fayaw Kate?" "That depends upon circumstances--whether the love be reciprocal." "Wecipwocal!--yas, twoo enough--thaw is something in that." "A great deal, I should think, Mr Smythje. For instance, were I a man, and my sweetheart was frowning on me--as yonder moon seems to be upon his majesty the sun--I should keep my distance, though it were ninety millions of miles." Had Mr Smythje at that moment only removed the glass from his eye, and turned towards _his_ sweetheart, he might have read in her looks that the speech just made possessed a significance, altogether different from the interpretation which it pleased him to put upon it. "Haw, haw! veway pwetty of yaw, 'pon honaw! But yaw must wemember that yondaw moon has two faces. In that she wesembles the queetyaw called woman. Her bwight face is turned towards the sun, and no doubt she is at this moment smiling upawn the fellaw. Her frowns, yaw see, are faw us, and all the west of mankind; thawfo' she wesembles a devoted queetyaw. Dawn't yaw think so, fayaw Kate?" Kate was compelled to smile, and for a short moment regarded Smythje with a glance which might have been mistaken for admiration. In the analogy which the exquisite had drawn there was a scintillation of intellect--the more striking that it was not expected from such a source. Withal, the glance was rather indicative of surprise than admiration, though Smythje evidently interpreted it for the latter--his self-esteem assisting him to the interpretation. Before she could make reply, he repeated the interrogatory. "Oh, yes!" answered she, the smile disappearing from her countenance; "I can well imagine, Mr Smythje, that your simile is just. I should think that a woman who loves devotedly, would not bestow her smiles on any other than him she loves; and though he were distant as yonder sun, in her heart she would smile on him all the same." The young Creole as she spoke lowered her eyes, no longer regarding the eclipse, but as if involuntarily directing her glance downward. "Ah, yes!" continued she in thought, "and even if alike impossible for them ever to meet, still would her smiles be his! Ah, yes!" For some seconds she remained silent and abstracted. Smythje, attracted by the altered tone of her voice, had taken the telescope from his eye, and turned towards her. Observing this abstracted air, which he had often before remarked, he did not think of attributing it to any other cause than that which his vanity had already divined. Kate Vaughan was in love; and with whom but himself? His sympathetic soul was ready to give way; and he was almost on the point of departing from the programme which he had so ingeniously traced out. But the remembrance of the pretty speeches he had rehearsed with Thoms--and the thought that any deviation from the original design would deprive him of the pleasure of witnessing the effects which they must undoubtedly produce--restrained him from a premature declaration, and he remained silent. It did not hinder him from some unspoken reflections. "Poor queetyaw! evidently suffwing! Neithaw distance nor absence can make the slightest impwession upon her love--not the slightest. Ba Jawve! I feel more than half-inclined to bweak the spell, and reweive her fwom her miseway. But no--it would nevaw do. I must wesist the temptation. A little more suffwing can do no harm, since the situation of the queetyaw wesembles the pwoverb: `The darkest hour is that which is neawest the day.' Haw! haw!" And with this fanciful similitude before his mind, the sympathetic and self-denying lover concluded his string of complacent reflections; and returning the glass to his eye, once more occupied himself in ogling the eclipse. The young Creole, seeing him thus engaged, withdrew to one side; and placing herself on the very edge of the cliff, stood gazing outward and downward. It was evident that the grand celestial phenomenon had no attraction for her. She cared neither to look upon the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars that would soon be visible in the fast-darkening sky. Her eyes, like her thoughts, were turned upon the earth; and as the penumbra began to cast its purple shadow over the fair face of Nature, so could a cloud be seen overspreading her beautiful countenance. There was now deep silence below and around. In a few seconds of time a complete change had taken place. The uttering of the forest was no longer heard. The birds had suddenly ceased their songs, and if their voices came up at intervals, it was in screams and cries that denoted fear. Insects and reptiles had become silent, under the influence of a like alarm. The more melancholy sounds alone continued--the sighing of the trees, and the sough of the distant waterfall. This transformation reminded Kate Vaughan of the change which had taken place in her own heart. Almost equally rapid had it been--the result of only a few days, or perhaps only hours: for the once gay girl had become, of late, habitually grave and taciturn. Well might she compare her thoughts to the forest sounds! The cheerful and musical were gone--those that were melancholy alone remained! For this change there was a cause, not very different from that which Smythje had divined. He was right in assigning it to that passion--the most powerful that can dwell in a woman's heart. Only as to its object did Mr Smythje labour under a misconception. His self-conceit had guided him to a very erroneous conjecture. Could he have divined the thoughts at that moment passing in the mind of his companion, it would have completely cured him of the conceit that he was the maker of that melancholy. The mansion of Mount Welcome was in sight, gaily glittering amidst gorgeous groves. It was not upon it that the eyes of Kate Vaughan were bent; but upon a sombre pile, shadowed by great cotton-trees, that lay in the adjoining valley. Her heart was with her eyes. "Happy Valley!" soliloquised she, her thoughts occasionally escaping in low murmur from her lips. "Happy for _him_, no doubt! There has he found a welcome and a home denied him by those whose duty it was to have offered both. There has he found hospitality among strangers; and there, too--" The young girl paused, as if unwilling to give words to the thought that had shaped itself in her mind. "No," continued she, unable to avoid the painful reflection; "I need not shut my eyes upon the truth. It is true what I have been told--very true, I am sure. There has he found one to whom he has given his heart!" A sigh of deep anguish succeeded the thought. "Ah!" she exclaimed, resuming the sad soliloquy; "he promised me a strong arm and a stout heart, if I should ever need them. Ah, me! promise now bitter to be remembered--no longer possible to be kept! And the ribbon he was to prize so highly--which gave me such joy as he said it. Only another promise broken! Poor little souvenir! no doubt, long ere this, cast aside and forgotten! ah, me!" Again the sigh interrupted the soliloquy. After a time it proceeded:-- "`We may never meet more!' These were almost his last words. Alas! too prophetic! Better, now, we never should. Better this than to meet him--with her by his side--Judith Jessuron--his wife--his wife--oh!" The last exclamation was uttered aloud, and with an undisguised accent of anguish. Smythje heard it, and started as he did so--letting the sun-glass fall from his fingers. Looking around, he perceived his companion standing apart--unheeding as she was unheeded--with head slightly drooping, and eyes turned downward upon the rock--her face still bearing the expression of a profound anguish which her thoughts had called forth. The heart of Smythje melted within him. He knew her complaint--he knew its cure. The remedy was in his hands. Was it right any longer to withhold it? A word from him, and that sad face would be instantly suffused with smiles! Should that word be spoken or postponed? Spoken! prompted humanity. Spoken! echoed Smythje's sympathetic heart. Yes! perish the cue and the climax! Perish the fine speech and the rehearsal with Thoms--perish everything to "relieve the deaw queetyaw fwom the agony she is suffwing!" With this noble resolve, the confident lover stepped up to the side of his beloved, leaving a distance of some three feet between them. His movements were those of a man about entering upon the performance of some ceremonial of the grandest importance; and to Mr Smythje, in reality, it was so. The look of surprise with which the young Creole regarded him, neither deterred him from proceeding, nor in anywise interfered with the air of solemn gravity which his countenance had all at once assumed. Bending one knee down upon the rock--where he had dropped the glass--and placing his left hand over the region of his heart, while with the right he had raised his hat some six inches above his perfumed curls, there and then he was about to unburden himself of that speech, studied for the occasion--committed to Smythje's memory, and more than a dozen times delivered in the hearing of Thoms--there and then was he on the eve of offering to Kate Vaughan his hand--his heart--his whole love and estate--when just at this formidable crisis, the head and shoulders of a man appeared above the edge of the rock, and behind, a black-plumed beaver hat, shadowing the face of a beautiful woman! Herbert Vaughan!--Judith Jessuron! Volume Two, Chapter XIV. THE OBSCURATION. "Intawupted!" exclaimed Smythje, briskly restoring his person to its erect position. "What an infawnal haw!" he continued, drawing out his handkerchief, and dusting the knee on which he had been kneeling. "I wondaw who are the intwoodaws? Aw! ah! It's the young fellaw, yaw cousin! Shawly it is; and--a--a pwetty girl with him--a dooced pwetty girl, ba Jawve!" A satirical titter, loud enough to be termed a laugh, was heard issuing from between the white teeth of the Jewess. It somewhat discomfited Smythje: since he knew that the satire could only be pointed at the ridiculous _tableau_ just broken up, and of which he had himself been the conspicuous figure. His _sang froid_, however, did not quite forsake him, for the Cockney possessed considerable presence of mind-- the offspring of an infinite superciliousness. This at the moment came to his relief, bringing with it an idea that promised to rescue him from his embarrassment. The spy-glass lying upon the rock suggested the idea. Dropping back upon his knee--in an attitude similar to that from which he had just arisen--he took up the telescope, and, once more rising to his feet, presented it to Kate Vaughan, as she stood bent and blushing. The _ruse_ was well intended, and not badly executed; but Mr Smythje had to deal with one as cunning as himself. It was of no use endeavouring to throw dust in the keen, quick eyes of Judith Jessuron; and the laugh was repeated, only in a louder and more quizzical tone. It ended in Smythje himself joining in the laughter, which, under the circumstances, was the very best course he could have pursued. Notwithstanding the absurdity of the situation, Herbert did not seem to share in his companion's mirth. On the contrary, a shadow was visible upon his brow--not that produced by the gradually deepening twilight of the eclipse--but one that had spread suddenly over his face at sight of the kneeling Smythje. "Miss Vaughan!" pronounced the Jewess, springing lightly upon the rock, and, with a nod of recognition, advancing towards the young Creole and her companion; "an unexpected pleasure this! I hope we are not intruding?" "Not at all--nothing of the sawt, I ashaw yaw," replied Smythje, with one of his profoundest bows. "Mr Smythje--Miss Jessuron," interposed Kate, performing the duty of introduction with dignified but courteous politeness. "We have climbed up to view this eclipse," continued Judith. "The same errand as yourselves, I presume?" added she, with a glance of quizzical malignity directed towards Kate. "Aw, yes! sawtinly!" stammered out Smythje, as if slightly confused by the innuendo of the interrogative. "That is pwecisely the pawpose which bwought us heaw--to view this cewestial phenomenon fwom the Jumbe Wock. A spwendid observatowy it is, ba Jawve!" "You have had the advantage of us," rejoined Judith. "I feared we should arrive too late. Perhaps, we are soon enough?" The satirical tone and glance were reiterated. Perhaps Kate Vaughan did not perceive the meaning of this ambiguous interrogatory, though addressed to her even more pointedly than the former; at all events, she did not reply to it. Her eyes and thoughts were elsewhere. "Quite in time, Miss Jessuwon!" answered Smythje. "The ekwipse is fawst assuming a most intewesting phase. In a few minutes the sun will be in penumbwa. If yaw will step this way, yaw may get a bettaw standing-place. Pawmit me to offaw yaw the tewescope? Aw, haw!" continued he, addressing himself to Herbert, who had just come forward, "aw, how do, ma fwiend? Happy to have the pwesyaw of meeting you again!" As he said this, he held out his hand, with a single finger projecting beyond the others. Herbert, though declining the proffered finger, returned the salutation with sufficient courtesy; and Smythje, turning aside to attend upon Judith, escorted her to that edge of the platform facing towards the eclipse. By this withdrawal--perhaps little regretted by either of the cousins-- they were left alone. A bow, somewhat stiff and formal, was the only salutation that had yet passed between them; and even for some seconds after the others had gone aside, they remained without speaking to each other. Herbert was the first to break the embarrassing silence. "Miss Vaughan!" said he, endeavouring to conceal the emotion which, however, his trembling voice betrayed, "I fear our presence here will be considered an intrusion? I would have retired, but that my companion willed it otherwise." "_Miss_ Vaughan!" mentally repeated the young creole, as the phrase fell strangely upon her ear, prompting her, perhaps, to a very different rejoinder from that she would otherwise have made. "Since you could not follow your _own_ inclination, perhaps it was wiser for you to remain. Your presence here, so far as I am concerned, is no intrusion, I assure you. As for _my_ companion, he appears satisfied enough, does he not?" The rapid exchange of words, with an occasional cachinnation, heard from the other side of the rock, told that a gay conversation was going on between Smythje and the Jewess. "I regret that our arrival should have led even to your temporary separation. Shall I take Mr Smythje's place and permit him to rejoin you?" The reply was calculated to widen the breach between the two cousins. It was indebted for its character to the interpretation which Herbert had placed upon Kate's last interrogatory. "Certainly, if it would be more agreeable to you to do so," retorted Kate, in a tone of defiant bitterness. Here a pause occurred in the conversation, which from the first had been carried on defiance against defiance. It was Herbert's turn to speak; but the challenge conveyed in Kate's last words placed him in a position where it was not easy to make an appropriate rejoinder, and he remained silent. It was now the crisis of the eclipse--the moment of deepest darkness. The sun's disc had become completely obscured by the opaque orb of the night, and the earth lay lurid under the sombre shadow. Stars appeared in the sky, to show that the universe still existed; and those voices of the forest heard only in nocturnal hours, came pealing up to the summit of the rock--a testimony that terrestrial nature was not yet extinct. It was equally a crisis between two loving hearts. Though standing near, those wild words had outlawed them from each other, far more than if ten thousand miles extended between them. The darkness without was naught to the darkness within. In the sky there were stars to delight the eye; from the forest came sounds to solace the soul; but no star illumined the horizon of their hearts with its ray of hope--no sound of joy cheered the silent gloom that bitterly embraced them. For some minutes not a word was exchanged between the cousins, nor spoken either to those who were their sharers in the spectacle. These, too, were silent. The solemnity of the scene had made its impression upon all; and, against the dark background of the sky, the figures of all four appeared in sombre _silhouette_--motionless as the rock on which they stood. Thus for some minutes stood Herbert and Kate without exchanging word or thought. Side by side they were, so near and so silent, that each might have heard the breathing of the other. The situation was one of painful embarrassment, and might have been still more so, but for the eclipse; which, just then complete, shrouded both in the deep obscurity of its shadow, and hindered them from observing one another. Only for a short while did the darkness continue; the eclipse soon re-assuming the character of a penumbra. One by one the stars disappeared from the canopy of the sky--now hastening to recover its azure hue. The creatures of darkness, wondering at the premature return of day, sank cowering into a terrified silence; and the god of the heavens, coming forth triumphantly from the cloud that had for a short while concealed him, once more poured his joyous effulgence upon the earth. The re-dawning of the light showed the cousins still standing in the same relative position--unchanged even as to their attitudes. During the interval of darkness Herbert had neither stirred nor spoken; and after the harsh rejoinder to which, in the bitterness of her pique, the young Creole had given words, it was not her place to continue the conversation. Pained though Herbert was by his cousin's reply, he nevertheless remembered his indebtedness to her--the vows he had made--the proud proffer at parting. Was he now to repudiate the debt of gratitude and prove faithless to his promise? Was he to pluck from his breast that silken _souvenir_, still sheltering there, though in secret and unseen? True, it was but the memorial of an act of friendship--of mere cousinly kindness. He had never had reason to regard it in any other light; and now, more than ever, was he sure it had no higher signification. She had never said she loved him--never said a word that could give him the right to reproach her. On her side there was no repudiation, since there had been no compromise. It was unjust to condemn her--cruel to defy her, as he had done. That she loved another--was that a crime? Herbert now knew that she loved another--was as sure of it as that he stood upon the Jumbe Rock. That interrupted _tableau_ had left him no loop to hang a doubt on. The relative position of the parties proclaimed the purpose--a proposal. The kneeling lover may not have obtained his answer; but who could doubt what that answer was to have been? The situation itself proclaimed consent. Bitter as were these reflections, Herbert made an effort to subdue them. He resolved, if possible, to stifle his spleen; and, upon the ruin of his hopes, restore that relationship--the only one that could now exist between himself and his cousin--friendship. With a superhuman effort he succeeded; and this triumph of virtue over spite, backed by the strongest inclinings of the heart, for a moment solaced his spirit, and rendered it calmer. Alas! that such triumph can be only temporary. The struggle upon which he was entering was one in which no man has ever succeeded. Love undenied, may end in friendship; but love thwarted or unreciprocated, never! "Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves its way between Heights, that appear as lovers who have parted In hate, whose mining depths so intervene, That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted; Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted, Love was the very root of the fond rage Which blighted their life's bloom--" Herbert Vaughan was perhaps too young--too inexperienced in the affairs of the heart--to have ever realised the sentiment so expressed; else would he have desisted from his idle attempt, and surrendered himself at once to the despair that was certain to succeed it. Innocent--perhaps happily so--of the knowledge of these recondite truths, he yielded to the nobler resolve--ignorant of the utter impracticability of its execution. Volume Two, Chapter XV. AN ENCOUNTER OF EYES. While Herbert Vaughan was making these reflections, the light began to re-dawn--gradually, as it were, raising the veil from the face of his cousin. He could not resist turning to gaze upon it. During the interval of the obscurity, a change had passed over the countenance of the young girl, both in its hue and expression. Herbert noticed the change. It even startled him. Before, and during the unhappy dialogue, he had looked upon a flushed cheek, a fiery eye, an air proud and haughty, with all the indices of defiant indifference. All were gone: Kate's eye still sparkled, but with a milder light; a uniform pallor overspread her cheeks, as if the eclipse had robbed them of their roses; and the proud expression had entirely disappeared, replaced by one of sadness, or rather of pain. Withal, the face was lovely as ever--lovelier, thought Herbert. Why that sudden transformation? What had caused it? Whence sprang that painful thought, that was betraying itself in the pale cheek and lips compressed and quivering? Was it the happiness of another that was making that misery? Smythje seemed happy--very happy, to judge from his oft-repeated "Haw! haw!" Was this the cause of that expression of extreme sadness that displayed itself on the countenance of his cousin? So did Herbert interpret it. Making a fresh effort to subdue within himself the same spirit which he believed to be actuating her, he remained silent--though unable to withdraw his glance from that lorn but lovely face. While still gazing upon it, a sigh escaped him. It could scarce have been heard by her who stood nearest; nor hers by him: for she had also sighed, and at the same instant of time! Perhaps both were moved by some secret sympathetic instinct? Herbert had succeeded in obtaining another momentary triumph over his emotions: and was once more on the eve of uttering words of friendship, when the young girl looked up and reciprocated his gaze. It was the first time during the interview their eyes had met: for up to that moment Kate had only regarded her cousin with furtive glances. For some seconds they stood face to face--each gazing into the eyes of the other, as if both were the victims of some irresistible fascination. Not a word passed between them--their very breathing was stilled. Both seemed to consider the time too important for speech: for they were seeking in one another's eyes--those faithful mirrors of the soul--those truest interpreters of the heart--the solution of that, the most interesting enigma of their existence. This silent interrogation was instinctive as mutual--uncorrupted by a shadow of coquetry. It was bold and reckless as innocence itself-- unregarding outward observation. What cared they for the eclipse? What for the sun or the moon, or the waning stars? What for the universe itself? Less--far less for those human forms that chanced to be so near them! Drew they gratification from that mutual gaze? They must--else why did they continue it? Not for long: not for long were they allowed. An eye was upon them--the eye of that beautiful demon. Ah! fair Judith, thy flirtation has proved a failure! The _ruse_ has recoiled upon thyself! The golden sunlight once more fell upon the Jumbe Rock, revealing the forms of four individuals--all youthful--all in love, though two only were beloved! The returning light brought no joy to Judith Jessuron. It revealed to her that glance of mutual fascination, which, with a quick, sharp cry, she had interrupted. A bitter embarrassment seemed all at once to have seized upon her proud spirit, and dragged it into the dust. Skilled in the silent language of the eyes, she had read in those of Herbert Vaughan, as he bent them upon his cousin, an expression that stung her, even to the utterance of a scream! From that moment the flirtation with Smythje ceased; and the Cockney exquisite was forsaken in the most unceremonious manner left to continue his telescopic observations alone. The conversation was no longer _dos y dos_, but at once changed to a _trio_; and finally restored to its original _quartette_ form--soon, however, to be broken up by an abrupt separation of the parties. The Jewess was the first to propose departure--the first to make it. She descended from the Jumbe Rock in a less lively mood than that in which she had climbed up to it; inwardly anathematising the eclipse, and the fortune that had guided her to the choice of such an ill-starred observatory. Perhaps, had the interview been prolonged, the cousins might have separated with a better understanding of each other than was expressed in that cold, ceremonious adieu with which they parted. Smythje and Kate Vaughan were once more alone upon the summit of the rock; and the supercilious lover was now free to continue the declaration. One might suppose that he would have instantly dropped back upon his knees, and finished the performance so vexatiously interrupted. Not so, however. The spirit of Smythje's dream seemed equally to have undergone a change; as if he, too, _had seen something_. His air of high confidence had departed, as also the climax on which he had counted: for the sun's disc was now quite clear of the eclipse, and the pretty speeches, intended for an anterior time, would now have been pointless and inappropriate. Whether it was this that influenced him, or a presentiment that the offer of his heart and hand might just then stand some chance of a rejection, can never be known: since Smythje, who alone could divulge it, has left no record of the reason. Certain it is, however, that the proposal did not take place on the Jumbe Rock on the day of the eclipse; but was postponed, _sine die_, to some future occasion. Volume Two, Chapter XVI. THE SMYTHJE BALL. As if the eclipse had not been a sufficient climax to the round of _fetes_ got up for the express amusement of Mr Smythje, only a few days--or, rather, nights--after, still another was inaugurated, to do honour to this young British lion. Unlike the eclipse, it was a terrestrial phenomenon--one of the most popular of sublunary entertainments--a ball--a complimentary ball--Mr Smythje the recipient of the compliment. Montego Bay was to be the place; which, notwithstanding its _provinciality_, had long been celebrated for its brilliant assemblies-- from the time that fandangoes were danced by the old Spanish pork-butchers, down to that hour when Mr Montagu Smythje had condescended to honour its _salons_ by the introduction of some very fashionable steps from the world's metropolis. The hall was to be a grand affair--one of the grandest ever given in the Bay--and all Planterdom was expected to be present. Of course, Kate Vaughan would be there; and so, too, the Custos himself. Mr Smythje would be the hero of the night; and, as such, surrounded by the fairest of the fair--hedged in by a galaxy of beautiful belles, and beset by an army of matchmaking parents, all seeking success with as much eagerness as Loftus Vaughan himself. Under these circumstances, it would be but simple prudence that Kate should be there to look after him: for the worthy Custos was not unacquainted with the adage, that "the sweetest smelling flower is that nearest the nose." Mr Vaughan would have rejoiced at the opportunity thus offered, of letting all the _monde_ of Jamaica know the relationship in which he stood, and was likely to stand, to the distinguished individual to whom the entertainment was dedicated. He had no doubt but that Kate would be chosen as the conspicuous partner: for well knew he the condition of Mr Smythje's mind upon that subject. To him the latter had made no secret of his affections; and the cunning Custos, who had been all along warily watching the development of the passion, now knew to a certainty that the heart of Montagu's lord was not only smitten with his daughter, but was irretrievably lost--so far as such a heart could suffer love's perdition. No doubt, then, Mr Vaughan would have looked forward to the Smythje ball with pleasant anticipation--as likely to afford him a social triumph--but for a little circumstance that had lately come to his knowledge. It was the incident which had transpired on the Jumbe Rock-- the meeting between his daughter and nephew on the day of the eclipse. The Custos had been the more particular in obtaining the details of that interview from his presumptive son-in-law, on account of a suspicion that had arisen in his mind as to the inclinings of his daughter's heart. Something she had said--during the first days after Herbert's _brusque_ dismissal from Mount Welcome--some sympathetic expressions she had made use of--unguarded and overheard, had given rise to this suspicion of her father. He was sufficiently annoyed about Kate having met Herbert on the Jumbe Rock; and believed it quite possible that the latter had come there in the hope of encountering his cousin. In Mount Welcome the name of Herbert Vaughan was no longer heard. Even Kate--whether it was that she had grown more sage--for she had been chided more than once for introducing it into the conversation--or whether she had ceased to think of him--even she never pronounced his name. For all that, Mr Vaughan was still vexed with some lingering suspicion that in that direction lurked danger; and this determined him to prevent, as far as possible, any further interview between his daughter and nephew. After the encounter on the Jumbe Rock, he had taken his daughter to task upon this subject; and, using the full stretch of parental authority, compelled her to a solemn promise, that she was not again to speak to her cousin, nor even acknowledge his presence! It was a hard promise for the poor girl to make. Perhaps it would have been still harder, had she known Herbert's disposition towards her. There can be no doubt that her father, in extracting this promise, had in view the event about to take place--the grand Smythje ball. There an encounter between the cousins was not only possible, but probable; so much so as to render Mr Vaughan apprehensive. Judith Jessuron was sure to be present--perhaps the Jew himself; and Herbert, of course. The nephew was now cordially disliked. Stung by the defiant speeches which the young man had made on the day of his arrival, his uncle even detested him: for the proud planter was himself too poor in spirit to admire this quality in any one else. The Custos had heard all about the hospitality which his neighbour was extending to Herbert, and the kindnesses which the patron was lavishing upon his protege. Though not a little mystified by what was going on, he availed himself of the ordinary explanation--that it was done to vex himself; and, if so, the stratagem of the Jew was proving perfectly successful: for vexed was Mr Vaughan to his very heart's core. The night of the Smythje ball came round in due course. The grand ball-room of the Bay was decorated as became the occasion. Flags, festoons, and devices hung around the walls; and over the doorway a large transparency--supported by the loyal emblems of the Union Jack and banner of Saint George, and surmounted by the colonial colours-- proclaimed, in letters of eighteen inches diameter:-- "Welcome to Smythje!" The hour arrived; the band shortly after; close followed by strings of carriages of every kind current in the Island, containing scores--ay, hundreds of dancers. Twenty miles was nothing to go to a Jamaica ball. The grand barouche of Loftus Vaughan arrived with the rest, only fashionably behind time, bringing the Custos himself, his truly beautiful daughter, but, above all--as before all perhaps should have been mentioned--the hero of the night. "Welcome to Smythje!" How his proud heart swelled with triumph under the magnificent ruffles of his shirt, as he caught sight of the flattering transparency! How conquering his smile, as he turned towards Kate Vaughan, to note the effect which it could not fail to produce! "Welcome to Smythje!" pealed from a hundred pairs of lips, as the carriage drove up to the door; and then a loud cheer followed the words of greeting; and then the distinguished stranger was ushered into the hall-room; and, after remaining a few moments in a conspicuous position--the cynosure of at least two hundred pairs of eyes--the great man set the example by pairing off with a partner. The hand struck up, and the dancing began. It need scarce be said who was Smythje's first partner--Kate Vaughan, of course. The Custos had taken care of that. Smythje looked superb. Thoms had been at him all the afternoon. His hay-coloured hair was in full curl--his whiskers in amplest bush--his moustache crimped spirally at the points; and his cheek pinked with just the slightest tinting of vermillion. Arrived a little late, the Jewess had not appeared in the first set. In the waltz she was conspicuous: not from her dress of rich purple velvet--not from the splendid tiara of pearls that glistened against the background of her glossy raven hair--not from the dazzling whiteness of her teeth, that gleamed between lips like curved and parted rose-leaves--not from the damask tinting of her cheeks; nor the liquid light that flashed incessantly from her black, Israelitish eyes--not from any of these was she conspicuous; but from all combined into one, and composing a grand and imperious picture. It was a picture upon which more than one eye gazed with admiration; and more than one continued to gaze. The partner of Judith was not unworthy to embrace such beauty. She was in the arms of a young man, a stranger to most in the room; but the glances bestowed upon him by bright eyes--some interrogative, some furtive, some openly admiring--promised him an easy introduction to any one he might fancy to know. Not that this stranger appeared to be conceitedly conscious of the graces which nature had so lavishly bestowed upon him; or even sensible of the good fortune that had given him such a partner. On the contrary, he was dancing with despondency in his look, and a cloud upon his brow that even the exciting whirl of the waltz was failing to dissipate! The partner of Judith Jessuron was Herbert Vaughan. A ball-room may be likened to a kaleidoscope: the personages are the same, their relative positions constantly changing. Design it or not, either during the dance or the interregnum--one time or another--you will find yourself face to face, or side by side, with every individual in the room. So in the ball-room of Montego Bay came face to face two sets of waltzers--Smythje and Kate, Herbert and Judith. The situation arose as they were resting from the dizzy whirl of a waltz. Smythje bent profoundly towards the floor--Judith, with an imperious sweep, returned the salutation--Herbert bowed to his cousin, with a half-doubting, half-appealing glance; but the nod received in return was so slight, so distant, that even the keen-eyed Custos, closely watching every movement of the quartette, failed to perceive it! Poor Kate! She knew that the paternal eye, severely set, was upon her. She remembered that painful promise. Not a word passed between the parties. Scarce a moment stood they together. Herbert, stung by Kate's salutation--unexpectedly cold, almost insultingly distant--warped his arm around the waist of his willing partner, and spun off through the unobservant crowd. Though often again upon that same night Smythje and Kate, Herbert and the Jewess were respectively partners--so often as to lead to general observation--never again did the four stand _vis-a-vis_ or side by side. Whenever chance threatened to bring them together, design, or something like it, stepped in to thwart the approximation! Almost all the night did Herbert dance with the Jewess--no longer with despondency in his look, but with the semblance of a gay and reckless joy. Never had Judith received from the young Englishman such ardent attention; and for the first time since their introduction to each other did she feel conscious of something like a correspondence to her own fierce love. For the moment her proud, cruel heart became dissolved to a true feminine tenderness; and in the spiral undulations of the waltz, as she coiled round the robust form of her partner, her cheek rested upon his shoulder, as if laid there to expire in the agony of an exquisite bliss. She stayed not to question the cause of Herbert's devotedness. Her own heart, blinded by love, and yearning for reciprocity, threw open its portals to receive the passion without challenge or scrutiny--without knowing whether it was real or only apparent. A wild anguish would she have experienced at that moment, could she have divined what was passing in Herbert's mind. Little did she suspect that his devotedness to her was only a demonstration intended to act upon another. Little dreamt she that real love for another was the cause and origin of that counterfeit that was deceiving herself. Happily for her heart's peace she knew not this. Herbert alone knew it. As the kaleidoscope evolved the dazzling dancers one after another, often did the face of Kate Vaughan flit before the eyes of her cousin, and his before her eyes. On such occasions, the glance hastily exchanged was one of defiant indifference: for both were playing at piques! The cold salutation had given _him_ the cue, ignorant as he was of its cause. _She_ had begun the game only a little later--on observing the attitude of extreme contentment which Herbert had assumed towards his companion. She knew not that it was studied. Her skill in coquetry, although sufficient for the pretence of indifference, was not deep enough to discern it in him; and both were now behaving as if each believed the love of the other beyond all hope. Before abandoning the ball-room, this belief--erroneous as it might be on both sides--received further confirmation. A circumstance arose that strengthened it to a full and perfect conviction. From the gossip of a crowded ball-room many a secret may be learnt. In those late hours, when the supper champagne has untied the tongue, and dancers begin to fancy each other deaf, he who silently threads his way or stands still among the crowd, may catch many a sentence not intended to be overheard, and often least of all by himself. Many an involuntary eavesdropper has fallen into this catastrophe. At least two instances occurred at the Smythje hall; and to the two individuals in whom, perhaps, we are most interested--Herbert and Kate Vaughan. Herbert for a moment was alone. Judith, not that she had tired of her partner, but perhaps only to save appearances, was dancing with another. It was not Smythje, whom all the evening she had studiously avoided. She remembered the incident on the Jumbe Rock; and feared that dancing with him might conduct to a similar disposition of partners as that which had occurred on the day of the eclipse. It was not flirtation in any way. On that night Judith had no need. Confident in her success with Herbert, she was contented; and cared not to do anything that might hazard a rupture of the blissful chain she believed she had woven around him. Herbert was standing alone in the crowd. Two young planters were near him, engaged in conversation. They had mixed their liquor, and therefore talked loud. Herbert could not help hearing what they talked of; and, having heard, could not help heeding it. He was interested in the subject, though not from its singularity; for it was the common topic of the ball-room, and had been throughout the night. The theme was Smythje; and coupled with his name was that of Kate Vaughan. On hearing these names, Herbert was no longer an involuntary listener. He strained his ears to catch every word. He had not heard the beginning of the dialogue, but the introduction was easily inferred. "When is it to come off?" inquired the least knowing of the planters, from him who was imparting the information. "No time fixed yet," was the reply; "at least, none has been mentioned. Soon, I suppose." "There'll be a grand spread upon the occasion--breakfast, dinner, supper, and ball, no doubt?" "Sure to be all that. The Custos is not the man to let the ceremony pass without all the _eclat_." "Honeymoon tour afterwards?" "Of course. He takes her to London. I believe they are to reside there. Mr Smythje don't much relish our colonial life: he misses the opera. A pity: since it'll make one beautiful woman less in the Island!" "Well, all I've got to say is, that Loff Vaughan has sold his nigger well." "Oh, for shame! to use such a word in speaking of the beautiful--the accomplished Miss Vaughan. Come, Thorndyke! I'm shocked at you." Thorndyke, by the expression, had hazarded the punching of his head--not by his companion, but by a stranger who stood near. Herbert curbed his indignation. Kate cared not for him! Perhaps she would not have accepted him even as her champion! Almost at that same moment Kate, too, was listening to a dialogue painfully analogous. Smythje could not dance all the night with her. Too many claimed the honour of his partnership; and for a set or two she had been forsaken by him--left under the guardianship of the watchful Custos. "Who can he be?" inquired one of two gentle gossips within earshot of Kate. "A young Englishman, I have heard: a relative of Vaughans of Mount Welcome; though, for some reason, not acknowledged by the Custos." "That bold girl appears willing enough to acknowledge him. Who is she?" "A Miss Jessuron. She is the daughter of the old Jew penn-keeper, who used to deal largely in blacks." "Faugh! she is behaving as if she belonged to a--" The last word was whispered, and Kate did not hear it. "True enough!" asserted the other; "but, as they are engaged, that, I take it, is nobody's business but their own. He's a stranger in the Island; and don't know much about certain people's position, I suppose. A pity! He seems a nice sort of a young fellow; but as he makes his bed, so let him lie. Ha! ha! If report speaks true of Miss Judith Jessuron, he'll find no bed of roses there. Ha! ha! ha!" What causes merriment to one may make another miserable. This was true of the words last spoken. From the speaker and her companion they elicited a laugh--from Kate Vaughan they drew a sigh, deep and sad. She left the ball with a bleeding heart. "Lost! lost for ever!" murmured she, as she laid her cheek upon a sleepless pillow. "Won!" triumphantly exclaimed Judith Jessuron, flinging her majestic form on a couch. "Herbert Vaughan is mine!" "Lost! lost for ever!" soliloquised Herbert, as he closed the door of his solitary sleeping-room. "Won!" cried the victorious Smythje, entering his elegant bed-chamber, and, in the fervour of his enthusiasm, dropping his metropolitan _patois_. "Kate Vaughan is mine!" Volume Two, Chapter XVII. AFTER THE BALL. The time was rapidly drawing nigh when the ambitious scheme of the Custos Vaughan was either to be crowned with success, or end in failure. Of the latter he had little apprehension. Though Smythje, having lost the opportunity of the eclipse, had not yet declared himself, Mr Vaughan knew it was his intention to do so on an early occasion. Indeed, the declaration was only postponed by the advice of the Custos himself, whose counsel had been sought by his intended son-in-law. Not that Mr Vaughan had any fear of Kate's giving a negative answer. The stern father knew that he had his daughter too well in hand for that. His wish would be her will--on that point was he determined; and it was less the fear of a refusal than some other circumstances that had hindered him from bringing the matter earlier to a crisis. As for Smythje, he never dreamt of a rejection. Kate's behaviour at the ball had confirmed him in the belief that she was entirely his own; and that without him her future existence would be one of misery. Her pale cheek, and sad, thoughtful air, as she appeared next morning at the breakfast-table, told him too plainly that she would never be happy under any other name than that of Mrs Smythje. Again, upon that morning, it occurred to him that the proposal should be made. It would be an appropriate _finale_ to the _fete_ of the preceding night. His brow still glowing with the laurels that had bedecked it, like a second Antony he would approach his Cleopatra, triumphantly irresistible. After breakfast, Mr Smythje drew the Custos into a corner, and once more expressed his solicitude to become his son-in-law. Whether, because Kate's behaviour at the ball had also impressed Mr Vaughan with the appropriateness of the time, or for some other reason, Smythje found him agreeable. Only first, the father desired to have a few words with his daughter, in order to prepare her for the distinguished honour of which she was so soon to be the recipient. Kate had gone out into the kiosk. There Mr Vaughan sought her, to bring about the proposed preliminary interview. Smythje also stepped into the garden; but, instead of going near the summer-house, he sauntered along the walks at a distance, occasionally plucking a flower, or chasing the butterflies, bright and gay as his own thoughts. Kate's countenance still preserved the air of melancholy that had clouded it all the morning; and the approach of the Custos did nothing to dissipate it. On the contrary, its shadows became deeper, as if the ponderous presence of her father, coming between her and the sun, was about to shut out the little light left shining in her heart. From what she had heard that morning, she presumed that the time had arrived when she must either submit to the wishes of her father, and resign herself to an unhappy fate; or, by disobedience, brave his anger, and perhaps--she knew not what. She only knew that she did not like Mr Smythje, and never could. She did not hate the man--she did not detest him. Her feeling towards him was that of indifference, slightly tinctured with contempt. Harmless she deemed him; and, no doubt, a harmless husband he would make; but that was not the sort to suit the taste of the young Creole. Far different was the hero of her heart. Neither the lover nor his prospective father-in-law could have chosen a time more opportune for making their approaches. Although at that time Kate Vaughan felt towards Smythje more indifference--perhaps more contempt--than she had ever done, at that very hour was she wavering in the intention, hitherto cherished, of refusing him. Though both lover and father had erroneously interpreted her air of dejection, it was nevertheless in their favour. It was not love for Smythje under which she was suffering; but despair of this passion for another; and in that despair lay the hope--the only hope--of the lord of Montagu Castle. It was a despair not unmingled with pique--with anger; that proud rage, which painfully wringing the heart, prompts it to desperate resolves: even to the utter annihilation of all future hope--as if happiness could be obtained by destroying the happiness of the one only being who could give it! Yes, the heart of Kate Vaughan had reached, or almost reached, that fearful phase of our moral nature, when love, convinced of its unrequital, seeks solace in revenge! The Smythje ball, which had crowned the hopes of him to whom the compliment was given, had been fatal to those of Kate Vaughan. Certain it was that she had conceived hopes that pointed to Herbert Vaughan. Love could scarce have been kindled without them. They were founded upon those fond words spoken at their first parting. Slight as was the foundation, up to that night had they endured: for she had treasured and cherished them in spite of absence, and calumny, and false report. True, as time passed they had waxed fainter, with longer intervals of doubt, until the day in which had occurred the unexpected incident of their meeting upon the Jumbe Rock. Then they had become revived, and since then they had lived with more or less intermission until that fatal night--the night of the Smythje ball--when they were doomed to utter extinction. All night long he had come but once near her--only that once by the mere chance of changing positions. And that bow--that single salutation, friendly as it might have been deemed, she could only remember as being cold--almost cynical! She did not think how cold and distant had been her own--at least, how much so it must have appeared to him. Though her eyes had often sought him in the crowd, and often found him, she did not know that his were equally following her, and equally as often fixed upon her. Both were ignorant of this mutual espionage: for each had studiously declined responding to the glance of the other. Never more that night had he come near--never again had he shown a desire or made an attempt to address her; though opportunities there were--many--when no paternal eye was upon her to prevent an interview. All night long had his attentions been occupied by another--apparently engrossed--and that other, a bold, beautiful woman--just such an one as Herbert might love. "He loves her! I am sure he loves her!" was the reflection that passed often and painfully through the thoughts of Kate Vaughan, as she swept her eye across that crowded ball-room. And then came the climax--that half-whispered gossip that reached her ear, falling upon it like a knell of death. They were to be married: they were already betrothed! It needed no more. In that moment the hopes of the young creole were crushed--so cruelly, so completely, that, in the dark future before her, no gleam of light arose to resuscitate them. No wonder the morning sun shone upon a pale cheek--no wonder that an air of deep dejection sate upon the countenance of Kate Vaughan. In this melancholy mood did the father find his daughter on entering the kiosk. She made no attempt to conceal it--not even with a counterfeit of a smile. Rather with a frown did she receive him; and in her eyes might have been detected the slightest scintillation of anger, whether or not he was its object. It is possible that just then the thought was passing through her mind that but for him her destiny might have been different; but for him, Herbert Vaughan, not Montagu Smythje, might have been on the eve of offering for her hand, which would then have gone with her heart. Now, in the contingency of her consenting to the proposal she expected, would she and Herbert be separated, and for ever! Never more was she to experience that supreme happiness--the supremest known upon earth, and perhaps, equalling the joys of heaven itself-- never more could she indulge in that sweet delicious dream--a virgin's love--with the hope of its being returned. Her love might remain like a flower that had lost its perfume, only to shed it on the solitary air; no more a sweet passion, but a barren, bitter thought, without hope to cheer it till the end of time. Ah, Custos Vaughan! proud, foolish parent! Could you have known how you were aiding to destroy the happiness of your child--how you were contributing to crush that young heart--you would have approached less cheerfully to complete the ceremony of its sacrifice! Volume Two, Chapter XVIII. PAVING THE WAY. "Katherine!" gravely began the father, on stepping inside the kiosk. "Father!" The parental appellative was pronounced in a low murmur, the speaker not uplifting her eyes from the object upon which she had been gazing. That object was a small silken purse that lay upon the table. Stringless it was, though the broken strands of a blue ribbon attached to it showed that it had not always been so. Loftus Vaughan knew not the history of that purse, neither why it lay there, what had stripped it of its string, or why his daughter was so sadly gazing upon it. This last circumstance he noticed on entering the kiosk. "Ah, your pretty purse!" said he, taking it up, and examining it more minutely. "Some one has torn the string from it--a pity! who can have done it?" Little did he care for an answer. As little did he suspect that the rape of that bit of ribbon had aught to do with his daughter's dejection, which he had observed throughout the morning. The surprise he had expressed, and the question put, were only intended to initiate the more serious conversation he was about to introduce. "Oh, papa! it don't signify," said Kate, avoiding a direct answer; "'tis but a bit of ribbon. I can easily replace it by another." Ah, Kate! you may easily replace the ribbon upon the purse, but not so easily that peace of mind which parted from your bosom at the same time. When that string was torn, torn, too, were the strings of your heart! Some such reflection must have passed through her mind as she made the reply; for the shadow visibly deepened over her countenance. Mr Vaughan pursued the subject of the purse no further, but looking through the lattice-work and perceiving Smythje in chase of the butterflies, endeavoured to draw his daughter's attention to that sportive gentleman. This was the more easily done as Mr Smythje was at the moment humming a tune, and could be heard as well as seen. "`I'd be a butterfly,'--" sang Smythje-- "`born in a bower, Where lilies, and roses, and violets meet; Sporting for ever, from flower to flower; And--'" And then, as if to contradict this pleasant routine of insect life, he was at that instant seen seizing a splendid _vanessa_, and crushing the frail creature between his kid-gloved fingers! "Isn't he a superb fellow?" said Mr Vaughan, first gazing enthusiastically on Smythje, and then fixing his eyes upon his daughter, to note the character of the reply. "I suppose he must be, papa--since everybody says so." There was no enthusiasm in Kate's answer--nothing to encourage the Custos. "Don't _you think so_, Kate?" This was coming more directly to the point; but the response proved equally evasive. "_You_ think so, papa--and that should do for both of us." The melodious voice of Smythje again interrupted the dialogue, and turned it into a new channel. _Smythje, singing_,-- "I'd never languish for wealth nor for power, I'd never sigh to see slaves at my feet!" "Ah, Mr Smythje!" exclaimed the Custos, in a kind of soliloquy, though meant for the ear of Kate; "you have no need to sigh for them--you have them; five hundred of them. And beauties, too! Wealth and power, indeed! You needn't languish for either one or the other. The estate of Montagu Castle provides you with both, my boy!" _Smythje, still chantant_:-- "Those who have wealth may be watchful and wary, Power, alas! nought but misery brings." "Do you hear that, Kate? What fine sentiments he utters!" "Very fine, and _apropos_ to the occasion," replied Kate, sarcastically. "They are not his, however; but, no doubt, he feels them; and that's just as good." "A splendid property!" continued Mr Vaughan, returning to what interested him more than the sentiments of the song, and not heeding the sarcasm conveyed in the speech of his daughter,--"a splendid property, I tell you; and, with mine joined to it, will make the grandest establishment in the Island. The Island, did I say? In the West Indies--ay, in the Western World! Do you hear that, my daughter?" "I do, papa," replied the young Creole. "But you speak as if the two estates were to be joined together? Does Mr Smythje intend to purchase Mount Welcome? or you Montagu Castle?" These questions were asked with an air of simplicity evidently assumed. In truth, the interrogator knew well enough to what the conversation was tending; and, impatient with the ambiguity, every moment growing more painful to her, desired to bring it to its crisis. Mr Vaughan was equally desirous of arriving at the same result, as testified by his reply. "Ah, Kate! you little rogue!" said he, looking gratified at the opening thus made for him. "Egad! you've just hit the nail on the head. You've guessed right--only that we are both to be buyers. Mr Smythje is to purchase Mount Welcome; and what do you suppose he is to pay for it? Guess that!" "Indeed, father, I cannot! How should I know? I am sure I do not. Only this I know, that I am sorry you should think of parting with Mount Welcome. I, for one, shall be loth to leave it. Though I do not expect _now_ ever to be happy here, I think I should not be happier anywhere else." Mr Vaughan was too much wound-up in the thread of his own thoughts to notice the emphasis on the word "now," or the double meaning of his daughter's words. "Ha! ha! ha!" laughed he; "Mr Smythje's purchase won't dispossess us of Mount Welcome. Don't be afraid of that, little Kate. But, come, try and guess the price he is to pay?" "Father, I need not try. I am sure I could not guess it--not within thousands of pounds." "Not a thousand pounds! no, not one pound, unless his great big heart weighs that much, and his generous hand thrown into the scale--for that, Catherine, that is the price he is to pay." Mr Vaughan wound up this speech with a significant glance, and a triumphant gesture, expressive of astonishment at his own eloquence. He looked for a response--one that would reciprocate his smiles and the joyful intelligence he fancied himself to have communicated. He looked in vain. Notwithstanding the perspicuity of his explanation, Kate obstinately refused to comprehend it. Her reply was provokingly a "shirking of the question." "His heart and his hand, you say? Neither seem very heavy. But is it not very little for an estate where there are many hands and many hearts, too? To whom does he intend to give his? You have not let me know that, papa!" "I shall let you know now," replied the father, his voice changing to a more serious tone, as if a little nettled by Kate's evident design to misunderstand him. "I shall let you know, by telling you what I intend to give him for Montagu Castle. I told you we were both to be buyers in this transaction. It is a fair exchange, Kate, hand for hand, and heart for heart. Mr Smythje freely gives his, and I give _yours_." "Mine!" "Ay, yours. Surely, Kate, I have not made a mistake? Surely you are agreeable to the exchange?" "Father," said the young girl, speaking in a tone of womanly gravity, "there can be no exchange of hearts between Mr Smythje and myself. He may have given his to me. I know not, nor do I care. But I will not deceive you, father. My heart he can never have. It is not in my power to give it to him." "Nonsense!" exclaimed Mr Vaughan, startled by this unexpected declaration; "you are deceiving yourself, my child, when you talk thus. I do not see how you can fail to like Mr Smythje--so generous, so accomplished, so handsome as he is! Come, you are only jesting, Kate? You do like him? You do not hate him?" "No, no! I do not hate him! Why should I? Mr Smythje has done nothing to offend me. I believe he is very honourable." "Why, that is almost saying that you like him!" rejoined the father, in a tone of returning gratification. "Liking is not love," murmured Kate, as if speaking to herself. "It may turn to it," said the Custos, encouragingly. "It often does-- especially when two people become man and wife. Besides, it's not always best for young married folks to be too fond of each other at first. As my old spelling book used to say, `Hot love soon grows cold.' Never fear, Kate! you'll get to like Mr Smythje well enough, when you come to be the mistress of Montagu Castle, and take rank as the grandest lady of the Island. Won't that be happiness, little Kate?" "Ah!" thought the young Creole, "a cabin shared with _him_ would be greater happiness--far, far greater!" It is needless to say that the "him" to whom the thought pointed was not Smythje. "As Mrs Montagu Smythje," proceeded the Custos, with a design of painting the future prospects of his daughter in still more glowing tints, "you will have troops of friends--the highest in the land. _And remember, my child, it is not so note_. You know it, Catherine?" These last words were pronounced in a tone suggestive of some secret understanding between father and daughter. Whether the speech produced the desired effect, he who made it did not stay to perceive; but continued on in the same breath to finish the rose-coloured picture he had essayed to paint. "Yes, my little Kate! you will be the observed of all observers--the _cynosure_ of every eye, as the poets say. Horses, slaves, dresses, carriages at will. You will make a grand tour to London--egad! I feel like going myself! In the great metropolis you will hob-nob with lords and ladies; visit the operas and balls, where you will be a belle, my girl--a belle, do you hear? Every one will be talking of Mrs Montagu Smythje! How do you like it now?" "Ah, papa!" replied the young Creole, evidently unmoved by these promises of pomp and grandeur, "I should not like it at all. I am sure I should not. I never cared for such things--you know I do not. They cannot give happiness--at least, not to me. I should never be happy away from our own home. What pleasure should I have in a great city? None, I am sure; but quite the contrary. I should miss our grand mountains and woods--our beautiful trees with their gay, perfumed blossoms--our bright-winged birds with their sweet songs! Operas and balls! I dislike balls; and to be the belle of one--papa, I detest the word!" Kate, at that moment, was thinking of the Smythje ball, and its disagreeable souvenirs--perhaps the more disagreeable that, oftener than once, during the night she had heard the phrase "belle of the ball" applied to one who had aided in the desolation of her heart. "Oh! you will get over that dislike," returned Mr Vaughan, "once you go into fashionable society. Most young ladies do. There is no harm in balls--after a girl gets married, and her husband goes with her, to take care of her--no harm whatever. But now, Kate," continued the Custos, betraying a certain degree of nervous impatience, "we must come to an understanding. Mr Smythje is waiting." "For what is he waiting, papa?" "Tut! tut! child," said Mr Vaughan, slightly irritated by his daughter's apparent incapacity to comprehend him. "Surely you know! Have I not as good as told you? Mr Smythje is going to--to offer you his heart and hand; and--and to ask yours in return. That is what he is waiting to do. You will not refuse him?--you cannot: you _must_ not!" Loftus Vaughan would have spoken more gracefully had he omitted the last phrase. It had the sound of a command, with an implied threat; and, jarring upon the ear of her to whom it was addressed, might have roused a spirit of rebellion. It is just possible that such would have been its effect, had it been spoken on the evening before the Smythje ball, instead of the morning after. The incidents occurring there had extinguished all hope in the breast of the young Creole that she should ever share happiness with Herbert Vaughan--had, at the same time, destroyed any thought of resistance to the will of her father; and, with a sort of apathetic despair, she submitted herself to the sacrifice which her father had determined she should make. "I have told you the truth," said she, gazing fixedly in his face, as if to impress him with the idleness of the arguments he had been using. "I cannot give Mr Smythje my heart; I shall tell _him_ the same." "No--no!" hastily rejoined the importunate parent; "you must do nothing of the kind. Give him your hand; and say nothing about your heart. That you can bestow afterwards--when you are safe married." "Never, never!" said the young girl, sighing sadly as she spoke. "I cannot practise that deception. No, father, not even for you. Mr Smythje shall know all; and, if he choose to accept my hand without my heart--" "Then you promise to give him your hand?" interrupted the Custos, overjoyed at this hypothetical consent. "It is _you_ who give it; not _I_, father." "Enough!" cried Mr Vaughan, hastily turning his eyes to the garden, as if to search for the insect-hunter. "I _shall_ give it," continued he, "and this very minute. Mr Smythje!" Smythje, standing close by the kiosk, on the _qui vive_ of expectation, promptly responded to the summons; and in two seconds of time appeared in the open doorway. "Mr Smythje--sir!" said the Custos, putting on an air of pompous solemnity befitting the occasion; "you have asked for my daughter's hand in marriage; and, sir, I am happy to inform you that she has consented to your becoming my son-in-law. I am proud of the honour, sir." Here Mr Vaughan paused to get breath. "Aw, aw!" stammered Smythje. "This is a gweat happiness--veway gweat, indeed! Quite unexpected!--aw, aw!--I am shure, Miss Vawn, I never dweamt such happiness was in store faw me." "Now, my children," playfully interrupted the Custos--covering Smythje's embarrassment by the interruption--"I have bestowed you upon one another; and, with my blessing, I leave you to yourselves." So saying, the gratified father stepped forth from the kiosk; and, wending his way along the walk, disappeared around an angle of the house. We shall not intrude upon the lovers thus left alone, nor repeat a single word of what passed between them. Suffice it to say, that when Smythje came out of that same kiosk, his air was rather tranquil than triumphant. A portion of the shadow that had been observed upon Kate's countenance seemed to have been transmitted to his. "Well?" anxiously inquired the intended father-in-law. "Aw! all wight; betwothed. Yewy stwange, thaw--inexpwicably stwange!" "How, strange?" demanded Mr Vaughan. "Aw, vewy mild. I expected haw to go into hystewics. Ba Jawve! naw: she weceived ma declawation as cool as a cucumbaw!" She had done more than that; she had given him a hand without a heart. And Smythje knew it: for Kate Vaughan had kept her promise. Volume Two, Chapter XIX. THE DUPPY'S HOLE. On the flank of the "Mountain" that frowned towards the Happy Valley, and not far from the Jumbe Rock, a spring gushed forth. So copious was it as to merit the name of fountain. In its descent down the slope it was joined by others, and soon became a torrent--leaping from ledge to ledge, and foaming as it followed its onward course. About half-way between the summit and base of the mountain, a deep longitudinal hollow lay in its track--into which the stream was precipitated, in a clear, curving cascade. This singular hollow resembled the crater of an extinct volcano--in the circumstance that on all sides it was surrounded by a precipice facing inward, and rising two hundred feet sheer from the level below. It was not of circular shape, however--as craters generally are--but of the form of a ship, the stream falling in over the poop, and afterwards escaping through a narrow cleft at the bow. Preserving the simile of a ship, it may be stated that the channel ran directly fore and aft, bisecting the bottom of the valley, an area of several acres, into two equal parts--but in consequence of an obstruction at its exit, the stream formed a lagoon, or dam, flooding the whole of the fore-deck, while the main and quarter-decks were covered with a growth of indigenous timber-trees, of appearance primeval. The water, on leaving the lagoon, made its escape below, through a gorge black and narrow, bounded on each side by the same beetling cliffs that surrounded the valley. At the lower end of this gorge was a second waterfall, where the stream again pitched over a precipice of several hundred feet in height; and thence traversing the slope of the mountain, ended in becoming a tributary of the Montego River. The upper cascade precipitated itself upon a bed of grim black boulders; through the midst of which the froth-crested water seethed swiftly onward to the lagoon below. Above these boulders hung continuously a cloud of white vapour, like steam ascending out of some gigantic cauldron. When the sun was upon that side of the mountain, an iris might be seen shining amidst the fleece-like vapour. But rare was the eye that beheld this beautiful phenomenon: for the Duppy's Hole--in negro parlance, the appellation of the place--shared the reputation of the Jumbe Rock; and few were the negroes who would have ventured to approach, even to the edge of this cavernous abysm: fewer those who would have dared to descend into it. Indeed, something more than superstitious terror might have hindered the execution of this last project: since a descent into the Duppy's Hole appeared an impossibility. Down the beetling cliffs that encompassed it, there was neither path nor pass--not a ledge on which the foot might have rested with safety. Only at one point--and that where the precipice rose over the lagoon--might a descent have been made: by means of some stunted trees that, rooting in the clefts of the rock, formed a straggling screen up the face of the cliff. At this point an agile individual might possibly have scrambled down; but the dammed water-- dark and deep--would have hindered him from reaching the quarter-deck of this ship-shaped ravine, unless by swimming; and this, the suck of the current towards the gorge below would have rendered a most perilous performance. It was evident that some one had tempted this peril: for on scrutinising the straggling trees upon the cliff, a sort of stairway could be distinguished--the outstanding stems serving as steps, with the parasitical creepers connecting them together. Moreover, at certain times, a tiny string of smoke might have been seen ascending out of the Duppy's Hole; which, after curling diffusely over the tops of the tall trees, would dissolve itself, and become invisible. Only one standing upon the cliff above, and parting the foliage that screened it to its very brink, could have seen this smoke; and, if only superficially observed, it might easily have been mistaken for a stray waif of the fog that floated above the waterfall near which it rose. Closely scrutinised, however, its blue colour and soft filmy haze rendered it recognisable as the smoke of a wood fire, and one that must have been made by human hands. Any day might it have been seen, and three times a-day--at morning, noon, and evening--as if the fire had been kindled for the purposes of cooking the three regular meals of breakfast, dinner, and supper. The diurnal appearance of this smoke proved the presence of a human being within the Duppy's Hole. One, at least, disregarding the superstitious terror attached to the place, had made it his home. By exploring the valley, other evidences of human presence might have been found. Under the branches of a large tree, standing by the edge of the lagoon, and from which the silvery tillandsia fell in festoons to the surface of the water, a small canoe of rude construction could be seen, a foot or two of its stem protruding from the moss. A piece of twisted withe, attaching it to the tree, told that it had not drifted there by accident, but was moored by some one who meant to return to it. From the edge of the lagoon to the upper end of the valley, the ground, as already stated, was covered with a thick growth of forest timber-- where the eye of the botanical observer might distinguish, by their forms and foliage, many of those magnificent indigenous trees for which the _sylva_ of Jamaica has long been celebrated. There stood the gigantic cedrela, and its kindred the bastard cedar, with elm-like leaves; the mountain mahoe; the "tropic birch;" and the world-known mahogany. Here and there, the lance-like culms of bamboos might be seen shooting up over the tops of the dicotyledons, or forming a fringe along the cliffs above, intermingled with trumpet-trees, with their singular peltate leaves, and tall tree-ferns, whose delicate lace-like fronds formed a netted tracery against the blue background of the sky. In the rich soil of the valley flourished luxuriantly the noble cabbage-palm-- the _prince_ of the Jamaica forest--while, by its side, claiming admiration for the massive grandeur of its form, stood the _patriarch_ of West-Indian trees--the grand _ceiba_; the hoary Spanish moss that drooped from its spreading branches forming an appropriate beard for this venerable giant. Every tree had its parasites--not a single species, but in hundreds, and of as many grotesque shapes; some twining around the trunks and boughs like huge snakes or cables--some seated upon the limbs or in the forking of the branches; and others hanging suspended from the topmost twigs, like streamers from the rigging of a ship. Many of these, trailing from tree to tree, were loaded with clusters of the most brilliant flowers, thus uniting the forest into one continuous arbour. Close under the cliff, and near where the cascade came tumbling down from the rocks, stood a tree that deserves particular mention. It was a _ceiba_ of enormous dimensions, with a buttressed trunk, that covered a surface of more than fifty feet in diameter. Its vast bole, rising nearly to the brow of the cliff, extended horizontally over an area on which five hundred men could have conveniently encamped; while the profuse growth of Spanish moss clustering upon its branches, rather than its own sparse foliage, would have shaded them from the sun, completely shutting out the view overhead. Not from any of these circumstances was the tree distinguished from others of its kind frequently met with in the mountain forests of Jamaica. What rendered it distinct from those around was, that between two of the great spurs extending outwards from its trunk, an object appeared which indicated the presence of man. This object was a hut constructed in the most simple fashion--having for its side walls the plate-like buttresses already mentioned, while in front a stockade of bamboo stems completed the inclosure. In the centre of the stockade a narrow space had been left open for the entrance-- which could be closed, when occasion required, by a door of split bamboos that hung lightly upon its hinges of withe. In front, the roof trended downward from the main trunk of the tree-- following the slope of the spurs to a height of some six feet from the ground. Its construction was of the simplest kind--being only a few poles laid transversely, and over these a thatch of the long pinnate leaves of the cabbage-palm. The hut inside was of triangular shape, and of no inconsiderable size-- since the converging spurs forming its side walls extended full twelve feet outwards from the tree. No doubt it was large enough for whoever occupied it; and the platform of bamboo canes, intended as a bedstead, from its narrowness showed that only one person was accustomed to pass the night under the shelter of its roof. That this person was a man could be told by the presence of some articles of male attire lying upon this rude couch--where also lay a strip of coarse rush matting, and an old, tattered blanket--evidently the sole stock of bedding which the hut contained. The furniture was scanty as simple. The cane platform already mentioned appeared to do duty also as a table and chair; and, with the exception of an old tin kettle, some calabash bowls and platters, nothing else could be seen that might be termed an "utensil." There were articles, however, of a different character, and plenty of them; but these were neither simple nor their uses easily understood. Against the walls hung a variety of singular objects--some of them of ludicrous and some of horrid aspect. Among the latter could be observed the skin of the dreaded galliwasp; the two-headed snake; the skull and tusks of a savage boar; dried specimens of the ugly gecko lizard; enormous bats, with human-like faces; and other like hideous creatures. Little bags, suspended from the rafters, contained articles of still more mysterious import. Balls of whitish-coloured clay; the claws of the great-eared owl; parrots' beaks and feathers; the teeth of cats, alligators, and the native agouti; pieces of rag and broken glass; with a score of like odds and ends, forming a medley as miscellaneous as unintelligible. In one corner was a wicker basket--the cutacoo--filled with roots and plants of several different species, among which might be identified the dangerous dumb-cane; the savanna flower; and other "simples" of a suspicious character. Entering this hut, and observing the singular collection of specimens which it contained, a stranger to the Island of Jamaica would have been puzzled to explain their presence and purpose. Not so, one acquainted with the forms of the serpent worship of Ethiopia--the creed of the Coromantees. The grotesque objects were but symbols of the African _fetish_. The hut was a temple of Obi: in plainer terms, the dwelling of an _Obeah-man_. Volume Two, Chapter XX. CHAKRA, THE MYAL-MAN. The sun was just going down to his bed in the blue Caribbean, and tinting with a carmine-coloured light the glistening surface of the Jumbe Rock, when a human figure was seen ascending the mountain path that led to that noted summit. Notwithstanding the gloom of the indigenous forest--every moment becoming more obscure under the fast-deepening twilight--it could be easily seen that the figure was that of a woman; while the buff complexion of her face and naked throat, of her gloveless hands, and shoeless and stockingless feet and ankles, proclaimed her a woman of colour--a mulatta. Her costume was in keeping with her caste. A frock of cotton print of flaunting pattern, half-open at the breast: a toque of Madras kerchief of gaudy hues--these were all she wore, excepting the chemise of scarcely white calico, whose embroidered border showed through the opening of her dress. She was a woman of large form, and bold, passionate physiognomy; possessing a countenance not altogether unlovely, though lacking in delicacy of feature--its beauty, such as it was, being of a purely sensual character. Whatever errand she was on, both her step and glance bespoke courageous resolve. It argued courage--her being upon the "Mountain," and so near the Jumbe Rock, at that unusual hour. But there are passions stronger than fear. Even the terror of the supernatural fades from the heart that is benighted with love, or wrung by jealousy. Perhaps this lone wanderer of the forest path was the victim of one or the other? A certain expression of nervous anxiety--at times becoming more anguished--would have argued the latter to be the passion which was uppermost in her mind. Love should have looked more gentle and hopeful. Though it was evident that her errand was not one of ordinary business, there was nothing about her to betray its exact purpose. A basket of palm wickerwork, suspended over her wrist, appeared to be filled with provisions: the half-closed lid permitting to be seen inside a congeries of yams, plantains, tomatoes, and capsicums; while the legs of a guinea-fowl protruded from the opening. This might have argued a certain purpose--an errand to market; but the unusual hour, the direction taken, and, above all, the air and bearing of the mulatta, as she strode up the mountain path, forbade the supposition that she was going to market. The Jumbe Rock was not a likely place to find sale for a basket of provisions. After all, she was not bound thither. On arriving within sight of the summit, she paused upon the path; and, after looking around for a minute or two--as if making a reconnoissance--she faced to the left, and advanced diagonally across the flank of the mountain. Her turning aside from the Jumbe Rock could not have been from fear: for the direction she was now following would carry her to a place equally dreaded by the superstitious--the Duppy's Hole. That she was proceeding to this place was evident. There was no distinct path leading thither, but the directness of her course, and the confidence with which she kept it, told that she must have gone over the ground before. Forcing her way through the tangle of vines and branches, she strode courageously onward--until at length she arrived on the edge of the cliff that hemmed in the cavernous hollow. The point where she reached it was just above the gorge--the place where the tree stairway led down to the lagoon. From her actions, it was evident that the way was known to her; and that she meditated a descent into the bottom of the valley. That she knew she could accomplish this feat of herself, and expected some one to come to her assistance, was also evident from her proceeding to make a signal as soon as she arrived upon the edge of the cliff. Drawing from the bosom of her dress a small white kerchief, she spread it open upon the branch of a tree that grew conspicuously over the precipice; and then, resting her hand against the trunk, she stood gazing with a fixed and earnest look upon the water below. In the twilight, now fast-darkening down, even the white kerchief might have remained unnoticed. The woman, however, appeared to have no apprehension upon this head. Her gaze was expectant and full of confidence: as if the signal had been a preconcerted one, and she was conscious that the individual for whom it was intended would be on the look-out. Forewarned or not, she was not disappointed. Scarce five minutes had transpired from the hanging out of the handkerchief, when a canoe was seen shooting out from under the moss-garnished trees that fringed the upper edge of the lagoon, and making for the bottom of the cliff beneath the spot where she stood. A single individual occupied the canoe; who, even under the sombre shadow of the twilight, appeared to be a man of dread aspect. He was a negro of gigantic size; though that might not have appeared as he sat squatted in the canoe but for the extreme breadth of his shoulders, between which was set a huge head, almost neckless. His back was bent like a bow, presenting an enormous hunch--partly the effect of advanced age, and partly from natural malformation. His attitude in the canoe gave him a double stoop: so that, as he leant forward to the paddle, his face was turned downward, as if he was regarding some object in the bottom of the craft. His long, ape-like arms enabled him to reach over the gunwale without bending much to either side; and only with these did he appear to make any exertion--his body remaining perfectly immobile. The dress of this individual was at the same time grotesque and savage. The only part of it which belonged to civilised fashion was a pair of wide trousers or drawers, of coarse Osnaburgh linen--such as are worn by the field hands on a sugar plantation. Their dirty yellowish hue told that they had long been strangers to the laundry: while several crimson-coloured blotches upon them proclaimed that their last wetting had been with blood, not water. A sort of _kaross_, or cloak, made out of the skins of the _utia_, and hung over his shoulders, was the only other garment he wore. This, fastened round his thick, short neck by a piece of leathern thong, covered the whole of his body down to the hams--the Osnaburgh drawers continuing the costume thence to his ankles. His feet were bare. Nor needed they any protection from shoes--the soles being thickly covered with a horn-like callosity, which extended from the ball of the great toe to the broad heel, far protruding backward. The head-dress was equally _bizarre_. It was a sort of cap, constructed out of the skin of some wild animal; and fitting closely, exhibited, in all its phrenological fulness, the huge negro cranium which it covered. There was no brim; but, in its place, the dried and stuffed skin of the great yellow snake was wreathed around the temples--with the head of the reptile in front, and two sparkling pebbles set in the sockets of its eyes to give it the appearance of life! The countenance of the negro did not need this terrific adornment to inspire those who beheld it with fear. The sullen glare of his deep-set eye balls; the broad, gaping nostrils; the teeth, filed to a point, and gleaming, sharklike, behind his purple lips; the red tattooing upon his cheeks and broad breast--the latter exposed by the action of his arms-- all combined in making a picture that needed no reptiliform addition to render it hideous enough for the most horrid of purposes. It seemed to terrify even the wild denizens of the Duppy's Hole. The heron, couching in the sedge, flapped up with an affrighted cry; and the flamingo, spreading her scarlet wings, rose screaming over the cliffs, and flew far away. Even the woman who awaited him--hold as she may have been, and voluntary as her rendezvous appeared to be--could not help shuddering as the canoe drew near; and for a moment she appeared irresolute, as to whether she should trust herself in such uncanny company. Her resolution, however, stimulated by some strong passion, soon returned; and as the canoe swept in among the bushes at the bottom of the cliff, and she heard the voice of its occupant summoning her to descend, she plucked the signal from the tree, fixed the basket firmly over her arm, and commenced letting herself down through the tangle of branches. The canoe re-appeared upon the open water, returning across the lagoon. The mulatta woman was seated in the stern, the man, as before, plying the paddle, but now exerting all his strength to prevent the light craft from being carried down by the current, that could be heard hissing and groaning through the gorge below. On getting back under the tree from which he had started, the negro corded the canoe to one of the branches; and then, scrambling upon shore, followed by the woman, he walked on towards the temple of Obi--of which he was himself both oracle and priest. Volume Two, Chapter XXI. THE RESURRECTION. Arrived at the cotton-tree hut, the myal-man--for such was the negro-- dived at once into the open door, his broad and hunched shoulders scarce clearing the aperture. In a tone rather of command than request he directed the woman to enter. The mulatta appeared to hesitate. Inside, the place was dark as Erebus: though without it was not very different. The shadow of the _ceiba_, with its dense shrouding of moss, interrupted every ray of the moonlight now glistening among the tops of the trees. The negro noticed her hesitation. "Come in!" cried he, repeating his command in the same gruff voice. "You me sabbey--what fo' you fear?" "I'se not afraid, Chakra," replied the woman, though the trembling of her voice contradicted the assertion; "only," she added, still hesitating, "it's so dark in there." "Well, den--you 'tay outside," said the other, relenting; "you 'tay dar wha you is; a soon 'trike a light." A fumbling was heard, and then the chink of steel against flint, followed by fiery sparks. A piece of punk was set a-blaze, and from this the flame was communicated to a sort of lamp, composed of the _carapace_ of a turtle, filled with wild-hog's lard, and having a wick twisted out of the down of the cotton-tree. "Now you come in, Cynthy," resumed the negro, placing the lamp upon the floor. "Wha! you 'till afeard! You de dauter ob Juno Vagh'n--you modder no fear ole Chakra. Whugh! she no fear de Debbil!" Cynthia, thus addressed, might have thought that between the dread of these two personages there was not much to choose: for the Devil himself could hardly have appeared in more hideous guise than the human being who stood before her. "O Chakra!" said she, as she stepped inside the door, and caught sight of the weird-looking garniture of the walls; "woman may well be 'fraid. Dis am a fearful place!" "Not so fearful as de Jumbe Rock," was the reply of the myal-man, accompanied by a significant glance, and something between a smile and a grin. "True!" said the mulatta, gradually recovering her self-possession; "true: you hab cause say so, Chakra." "Das a fac', Cynthy." "But tell me, good Chakra," continued the mulatta, giving way to a woman's feeling--curiosity, "how did you ebber 'scape from the Jumbe Rock? The folks said it was your skeleton dat was up there--chain to de palm-tree!" "De folk 'peek da troof. My 'keleton it was, jess as dey say." The woman turned upon the speaker a glance in which astonishment was mingled with fear, the latter predominating. "_Your_ skeleton?" she muttered, interrogatively. "Dem same old bones--de 'kull, de ribs, de jeints, drumticks, an' all. Golly, gal Cynthy! dat ere 'pears 'stonish you. Wha fo'? Nuffin in daat. You sabbey ole Chakra? You know he _myal-man_? Doan care who know _now_--so long dey b'lieve um dead. Wha for myal-man, ef he no bring de dead to life 'gain? Be shoo Chakra no die hisseff, so long he knows how bring dead body to de life. Ole Chakra know all dat. Dey no kill _him_, nebber! Neider de white folk nor de brack folk. Dey may shoot 'im wid gun--dey may hang 'im by de neck--dey may cut off 'im head--he come to life 'gain, like de blue lizard and de glass snake. Dey _did_ try kill 'im, you know. Dey 'tarve him till he die ob hunger and thuss. De John Crow pick out him eyes, and tear de flesh from de old nigga's body--leab nuffin but de bare bones! Ha! Chakra 'lib yet-- he hab new bones, new flesh! Golly! you him see? he 'trong--he fat as ebber he wa'! Ha! ha! ha!" And as the hideous negro uttered his exulting laugh, he threw up his arms and turned his eyes towards his own person, as if appealing to it for proof of the resurrection he professed to have accomplished! The woman looked as if petrified by the recital; every word of which she appeared implicitly to believe. She was too much terrified to speak, and remained silent, apparently cowering under the influence of a supernatural awe. The myal-man perceived the advantage he had gained; and seeing that the curiosity of his listener was satisfied--for she had not the slightest desire to hear more about that matter--he adroitly changed the subject to one of a more natural character. "You've brought de basket ob wittle, Cynthy?" "Yes, Chakra--there." "Golly! um's berry good--guinea-hen an' plenty ob vegable fo' de pepperpot. Anything fo' drink, gal? Habent forgot daat, a hope? De drink am da mose partickla ob all." "I have not forgotten it, Chakra. There's a bottle of rum. You'll find it in the bottom of the basket. I had a deal trouble steal it." "Who you 'teal 'im from?" "Why, master: who else? He have grown berry partickler of late--carries all de keys himself; and won't let us coloured folk go near de storeroom, as if we were all teevin' cats!" "Nebba mind--nebba you mind, Cynthy--maybe Chakra watch _him_ by'm-bye. Wa, now!" added he, drawing the bottle of rum out of the basket, and holding it up to the light. "De buckra preacher he say dat 'tolen water am sweet. A 'pose dat 'tolen rum folla de same excepshun. A see ef um do." So saying, the negro drew out the stopper; raised the bottle to his lips; and buried the neck up to the swell between his capacious jaws. A series of "clucks" proclaimed the passage of the liquor over his palate; and not until he had swallowed half a pint of the fiery fluid, did he withdraw the neck of the bottle from between his teeth. "Whugh!" he exclaimed, with an aspirate that resembled the snort of a startled hog. "Whugh!" he repeated, stroking his abdomen with his huge paw. "De buckra preacher may talk 'bout him 'tolen water, but gib me de 'tolen rum. You good gal, Cynthy--you berry good gal, fo' fetch ole Chakra dis nice basket o' wittle--he sometime berry hungry--he need um all." "I promise to bring more--whenebber I can get away from the Buff." "Das right, my piccaninny! An' now, gal," continued he, changing his tone, and regarding the mulatta with a look of interrogation, "wha fo' you want see me dis night? You hab some puppos partickla? Dat so--eh, gal?" The mulatta stood hesitating. There are certain secrets which woman avows with reluctance--often with repugnance. Her love is one; and of this she cares to make confession only to him who has the right to hear it. Hence Cynthia's silent and hesitating attitude. "Wha fo' you no 'peak?" asked the grim confessor. "Shoo' you no hah fear ob ole Chakra? You no need fo' tell 'im--he know you secret a'ready--you lub Cubina, de capen ob Maroon? Dat troof, eh?" "It is true, Chakra. I shall conceal nothing from you." "Better not, 'cause you can't 'ceal nuffin from ole Chakra--he know ebbery ting--little bird tell um. Wa now, wha nex'? You tink Cubina no lub you?" "Ah! I am sure of it," replied the mulatta, her bold countenance relaxing into an anguished expression. "I once thought he love me. Now I no think so." "You tink him lub some odder gal?" "I am sure of it--Oh, I have reason!" "Who am dis odder?" "Yola." "Yola? Dat ere name sound new to me. Whar d's she 'long to?" "She belongs to Mount Welcome--she Missa Kate's maid." "Lilly Quasheba, _I_ call dat young lady," muttered the myal-man, with a knowing grin. "But dis Yola?" he added; "whar she come from? A nebber hear de name afo'." "Oh, true, Chakra! I did not think of tellin' you. She was bought from the Jew, and fetched home since you--that is, after you left the plantation." "Arter I lef' de plantation to die on de Jumbe Rock; ha! ha! ha! Dat's wha you mean, Cynthy?" "Yes--she came soon after." "So you tink Cubina lub _her_?" "I do." "An' she 'ciprocate de fekshun?" "Ah, surely! How could she help do that?" The interrogatory betrayed the speaker's belief that the Maroon captain was irresistible. "Wa, then--wha you want me do, gal? You want rebbenge on Cubina, 'cause he hab 'trayed you? You want me put de _death-pell_ on him?" "Oh! no--no! not that, Chakra, for the love of Heaven!--not that!" "Den you want de _lub-spell_?" "Ah! if he could be make love me 'gain--he did once. That is--I thought he did. Is it possible, good Chakra, to make him love me again?" "All ting possble to old Chakra; an' to prove dat," continued he, with a determined air, "he promise put de lub-spell on Cubina." "Oh, thanks! thanks!" cried the woman, stretching out her hands, and speaking in a tone of fervent gratitude. "What can I do for you, Chakra? I bring you everything you ask. I steal rum--I steal wine--I come every night with something you like eat." "Wa, Cynthy--dat berry kind ob you; but you muss do more dan all dat." "Anything you ask me--what more?" "You must yourseff help in de spell. It take bof you an' me to bring dat 'bout." "Only me tell what to do; and trust me, Chakra, I shall follow your advice." "Wa, den--lissen--I tell you all 'bout it. But sit down on da bedsed dar. It take some time." The woman, thus directed, took her seat upon the bamboo couch, and remained silent and attentive--watching every movement of her hideous companion, and not without some misgivings as to the compact which was about to be entered into between them. Volume Two, Chapter XXII. THE LOVE-SPELL. The countenance of the myal-man had assumed an air of solemnity that betokened serious determination; and the mulatta felt a presentiment that, in return for his services, something was about to be demanded of her--something more than a payment in meat and drink. His mysterious behaviour as he passed around the hut; now stopping before one of the grotesque objects that adorned the wall,--now fumbling among the little bags and baskets, as if in search of some particular charm--his movements made in solemn silence only broken by the melancholy sighing of the cataract without; all this was producing on the mind of the mulatta an unpleasant impression; and, despite her natural courage, sustained as it was by the burning passion that devoured her, she was fast giving way to an indefinable fear. The priest of Obi, after appearing to have worshipped each _fetish_ in turn, at length transferred his devotions to the rum-bottle--perhaps the most potent god in his whole Pantheon. Taking another long-protracted potation, followed by the customary "Whugh!" he restored the bottle to its place; and then, seating himself upon a huge turtle-shell, that formed part of the plenishing of his temple, he commenced giving his devotee her lesson of instructions. "Fuss, den," said he, "to put de lub-spell on anybody--eider a man or a woman--it am nessary, at de same time, to hab de _obeah_-spell go 'long wi' it." "What!" exclaimed his listener, exhibiting a degree of alarm; "the _obeah_-spell?--on Cubina, do you mean?" "No, not on _him_--dat's not a nessary consarquence. But 'fore Cubina be made lub you, someb'dy else muss be made _sick_." "Who?" quickly inquired the mulatta, her mind at the moment reverting to one whom she might have wished to be the invalid. "Who you tink fo'? who you greatest enemy you wish make sick?" "Yola," answered the woman, in a low muttered voice, and with only a moment of hesitation. "Woan do--woman woan do--muss he man; an' more dan dat, muss be free man. Nigga slave woan do. Obi god tell me so jess now. Buckra man, too, it muss be. If buckra man hab de obeah-'pell, Cubina he take de lub-spell 'trong--he lub you hard as a ole mule can kick." "Oh! if he would!" exclaimed the passionate mulatta, in an ecstasy of delightful expectation; "I shall do anything for that--anything!" "Den you muss help put de obeah-spell on some ob de white folk. You hab buckra enemy?--Chakra hab de same." "Who?" inquired the woman, reflectingly. "Who! No need tell who Chakra enemy--you enemy too. Who fooled you long time 'go? who 'bused you when you wa young gal? No need tell you dat, Cynthy Vagh'n?" The mulatta turned her eyes upon the speaker with a significant expression. Some old memory seemed resuscitated by his words,-- evidently anything but a pleasant one. "Massa Loftus?" she said, in a half-whisper. "Sartin shoo, Massa Loftus--dat ere buckra you enemy an' mine boaf." "And you would--?" "Set de obeah fo' him," said the negro, finishing the interrogatory, which the other had hesitated to pronounce. The woman remained without making answer, and as if buried in reflection. The expression upon her features was not one of repentance. "Muss be him!" continued the tempter, as if to win her more completely to his dark project; "no odder do so well. Obi god say so--muss be de planter ob Moun' Welc'm." "If Cubina will but love me, I care not who," rejoined the mulatta, with an air of reckless determination. "'Nuff sed," resumed the myal-man. "De obeah-spell sha' be set on de proud buckra, Loftus Vagh'n; an' you, Cynthy, muss 'sist in de workin' ob de charm." "How can I assist?" inquired the woman, in a voice whose trembling told of a slight irresolution. "How, Chakra?" "Dat you be tole by'm-bye--not dis night. De 'pell take time. God Obi he no act all at once, not eben fo' ole Chakra. You come 'gain when I leab de signal fo' yon on de trumpet-tree. Till den you keep dark 'bout all dese ting. You one ob de few dat know ole Chakra still 'live. Odders know ob de ole myal-man in de mask, but berry few ebber see um face, an' nebba suspeck who um be. Das all right. You tell who de myal-man am, den--" "Oh, never, Chakra," interrupted his listener, "never!" "No, berra not. You tell dat, Cynthy, you soon feel de obeah-spell on youseff. "Now, gal," continued the negro, rising from his seat, and motioning the mulatta to do the same, "time fo' you go. I specks one odder soon: no do fo' you to be cotch hya when dat odder come. Take you basket, an' folla me." So saying, he emptied the basket of its heterogeneous contents; and, handing it to its owner, conducted her out of the hut. Volume Two, Chapter XXIII. CHAKRA REDIVIVUS. The scene that had thus transpired in the depths of the Duppy's Hole requires some explanation. The dialogue which Cynthia had held with the hideous Coromantee, though couched in ambiguous phrase, clearly indicated an intention to assassinate the Custos Vaughan; and by a mode which these arch-conspirators figuratively--almost facetiously--termed the _obeah-spell_! In the diabolical design, the woman appeared to be acting rather as coadjutor than conspirator; and her motive for taking part in the plot, though wicked enough, presents, in the language of French law, one or two "extenuating circumstances." A word or two of the mulatta's history will make her motive understood, though her conversation may have already declared it with sufficient distinctness. Cynthia was a slave on the plantation of Mount Welcome--one of the house-wenches, or domestics belonging to the mansion; and of which, in a large establishment like that of Custos Vaughan, there is usually a numerous troop. The girl, in earlier life, had been gifted with good looks. Nor could it be said that they were yet gone; though hers was a beauty that no longer presented the charm of innocent girlhood, but rather the sensualistic attractions of a bold and abandoned woman. Had Cynthia been other than a slave--that is, had she lived in other lands--her story might have been different. But in that, her native country--and under conditions of bondage that extended alike to body and soul--her fair looks had proved only a fatal gift. With no motive to tread the paths of virtue--with a thousand temptations to stray from it--Cynthia, like, it is sad to think, too many of her race, had wandered into ways of wantonness. It might be, as Chakra had obscurely hinted, that the slave had been abused. Wherever lay the blame, she had, at all events, become abandoned. Whether loving them or not, Cynthia had, in her time, been honoured with more than one admirer. But there was one on whom she had at length fixed her affections--or, more properly, her passions--to a degree of permanence that promised to end only with her life. This one was the young Maroon captain, Cubina; and although it was a love of comparatively recent origin, it had already reached the extreme of passion. So fierce and reckless had it grown, on the part of the wretched woman, that she was ready for anything that promised to procure her its requital--ready even for the nefarious purpose of Chakra. To do Cubina justice, this love of the slave Cynthia was not reciprocated. To the levities and light speeches habitually indulged in by the Maroons, in their intercourse with the plantation people, Cubina was a singular exception; and Cynthia's statement that he had once returned her love--somewhat doubtingly delivered--had no other foundation than her own groundless conjectures, in which the wish was father to the thought. Some friendly words may have passed between the Maroon and mulatta--for they had often met upon their mutual wanderings; but the latter, in mistaking them for words of love, had, sadly for herself, misconceived their meaning. Of late her passion had become fiercer than ever--since jealousy had arisen to stimulate it--jealousy of Cubina with Yola. The meeting and subsequent correspondence of the Maroon with the Foolah maiden were events of still more recent date; but already had Cynthia seen or heard enough to produce the conviction that in Yola she had found a rival. With the passionate _sang-mele_, jealousy pointed to revenge; and she had begun to indulge in dark projects of this nature just at that time when Chakra chanced to throw his shadow across her path. Cynthia was one of those slaves known as _night-rangers_. She was in the habit of making occasional and nocturnal excursions through the woods for many purposes; but of late, principally in the hope of meeting Cubina, and satisfying herself in regard to a suspicion she had conceived of meetings occurring between him and Yola. In one of these expeditions she had encountered a man whose appearance filled her with terror; and very naturally: since, as she at first supposed, it was not a _man_, but a _ghost_ that she saw--the ghost of Chakra, the myal-man! That it was the "duppy" of old Chakra, Cynthia on sight firmly believed; and might have continued longer in that belief, had she been permitted to make her escape from the spot--as she was fast hastening to do. But the long, ape-like arms of the myal-man, flung around her on the instant, restrained her flight until she became convinced that it was not Chakra's ghost, but Chakra himself, who had so rudely embraced her! It was not altogether by chance this encounter had occurred--at least, on the part of Chakra. He had been looking out for Cynthia for some time before. He wanted her for a purpose. The mulatta made no revelation of what she had seen. With all his ugliness, the myal-man had been the friend of her mother--had often dandled her, Cynthia, upon his knees. But the tongue of Juno's daughter was held silent by stronger ties than those of affection. Fear was one; but there was also another. If Chakra wanted Cynthia for a purpose, a quick instinct told her she might stand in need of _him_. He was just the instrument by which to accomplish that revenge of which she was already dreaming. On the instant, mulatta and myal-man became allies. This mutual confidence had been but very recently established--only a few days, or rather nights, before that on which Cynthia had given Chakra this, her first _seance_ in the temple of Obi. The purpose for which the myal-man wanted the mulatta--or one purpose, at least--has been sufficiently set forth in the dialogues occurring between them. He required her assistance to put the obeah-spell upon the planter, Loftus Vaughan. The character of Cynthia, which Chakra well understood--with the opportunities she had, in her capacity of housemaid--promised to provide the assassin with an agency of the most effective kind; and the pretended love-spell he was to work upon Cubina had given him a talisman, by which his agent was but too easily induced to undertake the execution of his diabolical design. Among many other performances of a like kind, it was part of Chakra's programme, some day or other, to put the death-spell upon the Maroon himself; to "obeah" young Cubina--as it was suspected he had the old Cubina, the father--after twenty years of temptation. It was but the want of opportunity that had hindered him from having long before accomplished his nefarious project upon the son, as upon the father--in satisfaction of a revenue so old as to be anterior to the birth of Cubina himself, though associated with that event. Of course, this design was not revealed to Cynthia. His motive for conspiring the death of Loftus Vaughan was without any mystery whatever; and this--perhaps more than any other of his crimes, either purposed or committed--might plead "extenuating circumstances." His cruel condemnation, and subsequent exposure upon the Jumbe Rock, was a stimulus sufficient to have excited to revenge a gentler nature than that of Chakra, the Coromantee. It need scarce be said that it had stimulated his to the deadliest degree. The resurrection of the myal-man may appear a mystery--as it did to the slave, Cynthia. There was one individual, however, who understood its character. Not to an African god was the priest of Obi indebted for his resuscitation, but to an Israelitish man--to Jacob Jessuron. It was but a simple trick--that of substituting a carcase--afterwards to become a skeleton--for the presumed dead body of the myal-man. The baracoon of the slave-merchant generally had such a commodity in stock. If not, Jessuron would not have scrupled to manufacture one for the occasion. Humanity had nothing to do in the supplying of this proxy. Had there been no other motive than that to actuate the Jew, Chakra might have rotted under the shadow of the cabbage-palm. But Jessuron had his purpose for saving the life of the condemned criminal--more than one, perhaps--and he had saved it. Since his _resurrection_, Chakra had pursued his iniquitous calling with even more energy than of old; but now in the most secret and surreptitious manner. He had not been long in re-establishing a system of confederates--under the auspices of a new name--but only at night, and with disguised form and masked face, did he give his clients rendezvous. Never in the Duppy's Hole; for few were sufficiently initiated into the mysteries of myalism to be introduced to its temple in that secure retreat. Although the confederates of the obeah-man rarely reveal the secret of his whereabouts--even his _victims dreading to divulge it_--Chakra knew the necessity of keeping as much as possible _en perdu_; and no outlaw, with halter around his neck, could have been more cautious in his outgoings and incomings. He knew that his life was forfeit on the old judgment; and, though he had once escaped execution, he might not be so fortunate upon a second occasion. If recaptured, some surer mode of death would be provided--a rope, instead of a chain; and in place of being fastened to the trunk of a tree, he would be pretty certain of being suspended by the neck to the branch of one. Knowing all this, Chakra _redivivus_ trod the forest paths with caution, and was especially shy of the plantation of Mount Welcome. Around the sides of the mountain he had little to fear. The reputation of the Jumbe Rock, as well as that of the Duppy's Hole, kept the proximity of these noted places clear of all dark-skinned stragglers; and there Chakra had the heat to himself. Upon dark nights, however, like the wolf, he could prowl at pleasure and with comparative safety--especially upon the outskirts of the more remote plantations: the little intercourse allowed between the slaves of distant estates making acquaintanceship among them a rare exception. It was chiefly upon these distant estates that Chakra held communication with his confederates and clients. It was now more than a year since he had made his pretended resurrection; and yet so cautiously had he crawled about, that only a few individuals were aware of the fact of his being still alive. Others _had seen his ghost_! Several negroes of Mount Welcome plantation would have sworn to having met the "duppy" of old Chakra, while travelling through the woods at night, and the sight had cured these witnesses of their propensity for midnight wandering. Volume Two, Chapter XXIV. THE BARGAIN OF OBEAH. For a while after the departure of Cynthia, the temple of Obi remained untenanted, except by its dumb deities: its priest having gone to ferry his neophyte across the lagoon. In a few minutes he returned alone--having left the mulatta to make her way up the cliff, and homeward to Mount Welcome, where she belonged. It was evident that the visit of the mulatta had given him gratification. Even in the dim light of his lard lamp an expression of demoniac joy could be distinguished upon his ferocious visage, as he re-entered the hut. "One dead!" cried he, in an exulting tone; "anodder upon 'im death-bed; and now de third, de las' an' wuss ob 'em all--ha! ha! ha!--he soon feel de vengeance ob Chakra, de myal-man!" Thrice did the wild, maniac-like laugh peal from under the spreading limbs of the _ceiba_--reverberating with an unearthly echo against the cliffs that hemmed in the Duppy's Hole. It startled the denizens of the dark lagoon; and, like echoes, came ringing up the ravine the scream of the crane, and the piercing cry of the wood-ibis. These sounds had scarce died away, when one of a somewhat different intonation was heard from above. It resembled a shriek; or rather as if some one had whistled through his fingers. Whoever gave utterance to the sound was upon the top of the cliff--just over the hut. Chakra was not startled. He knew it was a signal; and that it was given by the guest he was expecting. "Das de ole Jew!" muttered he, taking the rum-bottle, and concealing it under the bedstead. "You stay dar till I wants ye 'gain," added he, addressing himself in a confidential tone to this, the object of his greatest adoration. "Now for de nigga-dealer! I'se hab news fo' him 'll tickle 'im in de ribs like a ole guana lizzard. Not dat Chakra care fo' him. No--only, on dis voyage, boaf am sailin' in de same boat. Da he go 'gain!" This last exclamation referred to a repetition of the signal heard further down: as if he who was sounding it was advancing along the cliff, towards the gorge at the lower end. A third call proceeded from that point where the tree stairway scaled the precipice--indicating to Chakra that his visitor was there awaiting him. Without further delay, the ferryman--grim as Charon himself--returned to his canoe; and once more paddled it across the lagoon. While Chakra was thus occupied, a man could be seen descending the cliff, through the tangle of climbing plants, who, on the arrival of the canoe at the bottom, was standing, half concealed among the bushes, ready to step into it. The moon shone upon a blue body-coat, with bright buttons; upon a brown beaver hat and white skull-cap; upon tarnished top-boots, green goggles, and an enormous umbrella. Chakra did not need to scan the sharp Israelitish features of the man to ascertain who he was. Jacob Jessuron was there by appointment; and the myal-man knew both his presence and his purpose. Not a word of recognition passed between the two, nor sign. Only a caution from Chakra--as the Jew, swinging by a branch, let himself down into the canoe. "'Tep in lightly, Massr Jake, an' doan' push da canoe down 'tream. 'T am jess' as much as I kin do to keep de ole craff out ob de eddy. Ef she get down da, den it 'ud be all up wifh boaf o' us." "Blesh my soul! D'you shay so?" rejoined the Jew, glancing towards the gorge, and shivering as he listened to the hoarse groaning of the water among the grim rocks. "S'help me, I didn't know it was dangerous. Don't fear, Shakra! I shtep in ash light ash a feather." So saying, the Jew dropped his umbrella into the bottom of the boat; and then let himself down upon the top of it, with as much gentleness as if he was descending upon a basket of eggs. The ferryman, seeing his freight safely aboard, paddled back to the mooring-place; and, having secured his craft as before, conducted his visitor up the valley in the direction of the hut. On entering the temple of Obi, Jessuron--unlike the devotee who had just left it--showed no signs either of surprise or fear at its fantastic adornments. It was evident he had worshipped there before. Nor did he evince a special veneration for the shrine; but, seating himself familiarly on the bamboo bedstead, uttered as he did so a sonorous "Ach!" which appeared as if intended to express satisfaction. At the same time he drew from the ample pocket of his coat a shining object, which, when held before the lamp, appeared to be a bottle. The label seen upon its side, with the symbolical bunch of grapes, proved it to be a bottle of cognac. The exclamation of the myal-man, which the sight of the label had instantaneously elicited, proved that on his side equal satisfaction existed at this mode of initiating an interview. "Hash you a glass among your belongingsh?" inquired the Jew, looking around the hovel. "No; dis yeer do?" asked his host, presenting a small calabash with a handle. "Fush rate. Thish liquor drinksh goot out of anything. I had it from Capten Showler on hish lasht voyage. Jesh taste it, good Shakra, before we begins bishness." A grunt from the negro announced his willing assent to the proposal. "Whugh!" he ejaculated, after swallowing the allowance poured out for him into the calabash. "Ach! goot it ish!" said his guest, on quaffing off a like quantity; and then the bottle and gourd being set on one side, the two queer characters entered into the field of free conversation. In this the Jew took the initiative. "I hash news for you," said he, "very shtrange news, if you hashn't already heard it, Shakra? Who dosh you think ish dead?" "Ha!" exclaimed the myal-man, his eye suddenly lighting up with a gleam of ferocious joy; "he gone dead, am he?" "Who? I hashen't told you," rejoined the Jew, his features assuming an expression of mock surprise. "But true," he continued, after a pause; "true, you knew he wash sick--you knew Justish Bailey wash sick, an' _not likely to get over it_. Well--he hashen't, poor man!--he's dead and in hish coffin by thish time: he breathed hish lasht yesterdays." A loud and highly-aspirated "Whugh!" was the only answer made by the myal-man. The utterance was not meant to convey any melancholy impression. On the contrary, by its peculiar intonation, it indicated as much satisfaction as any amount of words could have expressed. "It ish very shtrange," continued the penn-keeper, in the same tone of affected simplicity; "so short a time shince Mishter Ridgely died. Two of the three shustices that sat on your trial, goot Shakra. It looksh ash if Providensh had a hand in it--it dosh!" "Or de Dibbil, mo' like, maybe?" rejoined Chakra, with a significant leer. "Yesh--Gott or the Devil--one or t'other. Well, Shakra, you hash had your refenge, whichever hash helped you to it. Two of your enemies ish not likely to trouble you again; and ash for the third--" "Nor he berry long, I'se speck'," interrupted the negro, with a significant grin. "What you shay?" exclaimed the Jew, in an earnest undertone. "Hash you heard anythings? Hash the wench been to see you?" "All right 'bout her, Massr Jake." "Goot--she _hash_ been?" "Jess leab dis place 'bout quar'r ob an hour 'go." "And she saysh she will help you to set the obeah-shpell for him?" "Hab no fear--she do all dat. Obi had spell oba her, dat make her do mose anythin--ah! any thin' in de worl'--satin shoo. Obi all-powerful wi' dat gal." "Yesh, yesh!" assented the Jew; "I knowsh all that. And if Obi wash to fail," added he, doubtingly, "you hash a drink, goot Shakra--I know you hash a drink, ash potent as Obi or any other of your gotsh." A glance of mutual intelligence passed between the two. "How long dosh it take your shpell to work?" inquired the penn-keeper, after an interval of silence, in which he seemed to be making some calculation. "Dat," replied the negro, "dat depend altogedder on de saccomstance ob how long de spell am _wanted_ to work. Ef 'im wanted, Chakra make 'im in tree day fotch de 'trongest indiwiddible cla out o' 'im boots; or in tree hour he do same--but ob coorse dat ud be too soon fo' be safe. A spell of tree hours too 'trong. Dat not Obi work--'im look berry like pisen." "Poison--yesh, yesh, it would." "Tree day too short--tree week am de correct time. Den de spell work 'zackly like fever ob de typos. Nobody had s'picion 'bout 'um." "Three weeks, you shay? And no symptoms to make schandal? You're shure that ish sufficient? Remember, Shakra; the Cushtos ish a strong man-- strong ash a bull." "No mar'r 'bout dat. Ef he 'trong as de bull, in dat period ob time he grow weak as de new-drop calf--I'se be boun' he 'taggering Bob long 'fore dat. You say de word, Massr Jake. Obi no like to nigga. Nigga only brack man: he no get pay fo' 'im work. Obi 'zemble buckra man. He no work 'less him pay." "Yesh--yesh! dat ish only shust and fair. Obi should be paid; but shay, goot Shakra! how much ish his prishe for a shpell of thish kind?" "Ef he hab no interest hisseff in de workin' ob de 'pell, he want a hunder poun'. When he hab interest, das different--den he take fifty." "Fifty poundsh! That ish big monish, good Shakra! In thish case Obi hash an interest--more ash anybody elshe. He hash an enemy, and wants refenge. Ish that not true, goot Shakra!" "Das da troof. Chakra no go fo' deny 'im. But das jess why Obi 'sent do dat leetle _chore_ fo' fifty poun'. Obi enemy big buckra--'trong as you hab jess say--berry diff'cult fo' 'pell 'im. Any odder myal-man charge de full hunder poun'. Fack, no odder able do de job--no odder but ole Chakra hab dat power." "Shay no more about the prishe. Fifty poundsh be it. Here'sh half down." The tempter tossed a purse containing coin into the outstretched palm of the obeah-man. "All I shtipulate for ish, that in three weeks you earn the other half; and then we shall both be shquare with the Cushtos Vochan--for I hash my refenge to shatisfy ash well as you, Shakra." "Nuff sed, Massr Jake. 'Fore tree day de 'pell sha' be put on. You back come to de Duppy Hole tree night from dis, you hear how 'im work. Whugh!" The gourd shell was again brought into requisition; and, after a parting "kiss" at the cognac, the "heel-tap" of which remained in the hut, the precious pair emerged into the open air. The priest of Obi having conducted his fellow-conspirator across the lagoon, returned to his temple, and set himself assiduously to finish what was left of the liquor. "Whugh!" ejaculated he, in one of the pauses that occurred between two vigorous pulls at the bottle; "ole villum Jew wuss dan Chakra--wuss dan de Debbil hisseff! Doan' know why _he_ want rebbenge. Das nuffin' to me. _I_ want rebbenge, an', by de great Accompong! I'se a g'wine to hab it! Ef dis gal proob true, as de odder's did--she _muss_ proob true--in tree week de proud, fat buckra jussis dat condemn me to dat Jumbe Rock--`Cussos rodelorum,' as de call 'im--won't hab no more flesh on 'im bones dan de 'keleton he tink wa' myen. And den, when 'im die-- ah! den, affer 'im die, de daughter ob dat Quasheba dat twenty year 'go 'corn de lub ob de Coromantee for dat ob de yellow Maroon--maybe her dauter, de Lilly Quasheba, sleep in de arms ob Chakra de myal-man! Whugh!" As the minister of Obi gave utterance to this hypothetical threat, a lurid light glared un in his sunken eyes, while his white, sharklike teeth were displayed in an exulting grin--hideous as if the Demon himself were smiling over some monstrous menace! Both cognac and rum-bottle were repeatedly tasted, until the strong frame of the Coromantee gave way to the stronger spirit of the alcohol; and, muttering fearful threats in his gumbo jargon, he at length sank unconscious on the floor. There, under the light of the lard lamp--now flickering feebly--he lay like some hideous satyr, whom Bacchus, by an angry blow, had felled prostrate to the earth! Volume Two, Chapter XXV. THE MYSTERIOUS MOTIVE. The original motive of the myal-man, in conspiring the death of the Custos Vaughan, would have been strong enough to urge him on without this new instigation. As we have seen, it was one of deadly revenge-- simple, and easily understood. Not so easily understood was that which actuated the Jew. On the contrary, so secretly had he conceived his purposes, that no living man--not even Chakra himself--had been made privy to them. Up to this moment they may have appeared mysterious; and the time has arrived when it becomes necessary to reveal them. The explanation will show them to be only natural--only in keeping with the character of this crooked and cruel old man. It is scarce necessary to say that Jacob Jessuron was no type of his race; nor, indeed, of any race. A German Jew by birth, it was not necessarily this that made him either slave-dealer or slave-stealer. Christians have taken their full share in both branches of the nefarious trade; and equally with Jews and Mohammedans have they been guilty of its most hideous enormities. It was not, therefore, because Jacob Jessuron chanced to be a Jew that he was a trafficker in human flesh and blood--any more than that he was a villainous man; but because he was Jacob Jessuron--a representative of neither race nor nation, but simply a character _sui generis_. Without dwelling upon his general demerits, let us return to the more particular theme of the motives which were instigating him to make a victim of his neighbour Vaughan--a death victim: for his conversation with Chakra showed that this was the very starting-point of his intentions. In the first place, he was well acquainted with the domestic history of the planter--at least, with that portion of it that had transpired subsequent to the latter's coming into possession of Mount Welcome. He knew something of Mr Vaughan previously--while the latter was manager of the Montagu Castle estate--but it was only after the Custos had become his nearer neighbour, by removal to his present residence, that the Jew's knowledge of him and his private affairs had become intimate and accurate. This knowledge he had obtained in various ways: partly by the opportunities of social intercourse, never very cordial; partly through business transactions; and, perhaps, more than all--at least, as regarded some of the more secret passages of Mr Vaughan's history--from the myal-man, Chakra. Notwithstanding his grotesque hideousness, the Coromantee was gifted with a rare though dangerous intelligence. He was _au fait_ to everything that had occurred upon the plantation of Mount Welcome for a past period of nearly forty years. As already hinted, he knew too much; and it was this inconvenient omniscience that had caused him to be consigned to the Jumbe Rock. For more than one purpose had the Jew made use of the myal-man; and if the latter was at present assisting him in his dark design, it was not the first by many, both deep and dark, in which Chakra had lent him a hand. Their secret partnership had been of long duration. The Jew's knowledge of the affairs of Loftus Vaughan extended to many facts unknown even to Chakra. One of these was, that his neighbour was blessed with an English brother, who had an only son. An artist was the English brother, without fortune--almost without name. Many other circumstances relating to him had come to the knowledge of Jessuron; among the rest, that the proud Custos knew little about his poor English relatives, cared less, and scarcely kept up correspondence with them. In what way could this knowledge interest Jacob Jessuron?--for it did. Thus, then: it was known to him that Loftus Vaughan had never been married to the quadroon Quasheba. That circumstance, however, would have signified little, had Quasheba been a white woman, or even a "quinteroon"--in Jamaica termed a _mustee_, and by some fanciful plagiarists, of late, pedantically styled "octoroon"--a title which, it may here be stated, has no existence except in the romantic brains of these second-hand _litterateurs_. We repeat it--had the slave Quasheba been either a white woman, or even a _mustee_, the fact of a marriage, or no marriage, would have signified little--so far as regarded the succession of her offspring to the estates of the father. It is true that, if not married, the daughter would, by the laws of Jamaica--as by those of other lands--still have been _illegitimate_; but for all that, she could have inherited her father's property, _if left to her by will_: since in Jamaica no _entail_ existed. As things stood, however, the case was widely, and for the Lilly Quasheba--Kate Vaughan--dangerously different. Her mother was _only a quadroon_; and, married or unmarried, she, the daughter, could not inherit--_even by will_--beyond the paltry legacy of 2000 pounds currency, or 1500 pounds sterling! Kate Vaughan was herself only a _mustee_--still wanting one step farther from slavery to bring her within the protecting pale of freedom and the enjoyment of its favours. No will that Loftus Vaughan could decree, no testamentary disposition he might make, could render his daughter his devisee--his heiress. He might will his property to anybody he pleased: so long as that anybody was a so-called _white_; but, failing to make such testament, his estate of Mount Welcome, with all he possessed besides, must fall to the next of his own kin--in short, to his nephew Herbert. Was there no remedy for this unspeakable dilemma? No means by which his own daughter might be saved from disinheritance? There was. A special act might be obtained from the Assembly of the Island. Loftus Vaughan knew the remedy, and fully intended to adopt it. Every day was he designing to set out for Spanish Town--the capital--to obtain the _special act_; and every day was the journey put off. It was the execution of this design that the Jew Jessuron of all things dreaded most; and to prevent it was the object of his visit to the temple of Obi. Why he dreaded it scarce needs explanation. Should Loftus Vaughan fail in his intent, Herbert Vaughan would be the heir of Mount Welcome; and Herbert's heart was in the keeping of Judith Jessuron. So fondly believed the Jewess; and, with her assurance of the fact, so also the Jew. The _love-spell_ woven by Judith had been the first step towards securing the grand inheritance. The second was to be the _death-spell_, administered by Chakra and his acolyte. Volume Two, Chapter XXVI. THE DEATH-SPELL. On the night after that on which Chakra had given reception to Jessuron, and about the same hour, the Coromantee was at home in his hut, engaged in some operation of a nature apparently important: since it engrossed his whole attention. A fire was burning in the middle of the floor, in a rude, extemporised furnace, constructed with four large stones, so placed as to inclose a small quadrangle. The fuel with which this fire was fed, although giving out a great quantity of smoke, burnt also with a bright, clear flame. It was not wood, but consisted of a number of black agglutinated masses, bearing a resemblance to peat or coal. A stranger to Jamaica might have been puzzled to make out what it was; though a denizen of the Island could have told at a glance, that the dark-coloured pieces piled upon the fire were fragments detached from the nests of the Duck-ants; which, often as large as hogsheads, may be seen adhering to the trees of a tropical forest. As the smoke emitted by this fuel is less painful to the eyes than that of a wood fire, and yet more efficacious in clearing out the mosquitoes--that plague of a southern clime--it may be supposed that the Coromantee had chosen it on that account. Whether or not, it served his purpose well. A small iron pot, without crook or crane, rested upon the stones of the furnace; and the anxious glances with which the negro regarded its simmering contents--now stirring them a little, now lifting a portion in his wooden spoon, and carefully scrutinising it under the light of the lamp--told that the concoction in which he was engaged was of a _chemical_, rather than _culinary_ nature. As he bent over the fire-- like a he-Hecate stirring her witches' cauldron--his earnest yet stealthy manner, combined with his cat-like movements and furtive glances, betrayed some devilish design. This idea was strengthened on looking at the objects that lay near to his hand--some portions of which had been already consigned to the pot. A cutacoo rested upon the floor, containing plants of several species; among which a botanist could have recognised the branched _calalue_, the dumb-cane, and various other herbs and roots of noxious fame. Conspicuous was the "Savannah flower," with its tortuous stem and golden corolla--a true dogbane, and one of the most potent of vegetable poisons. By its side could be seen its antidote--the curious nuts of the "nhandiroba": for the myal-man could _cure_ as well as _kill_, whenever it became his interest to do so. Drawing from such a larder, it was plain that he was not engaged in the preparation of his supper. Poisons, not provisions, were the ingredients of the pot. The specific he was now concocting was from various sources, but chiefly from the sap of the Savannah flower. It was the _spell of Obeah_! For whom was the Coromantee preparing this precious hell-broth? His mutterings as he stooped over the pot revealed the name of his intended victim. "You may be 'trong, Cussus Vaugh'n--dat I doan deny; but, by de power ob Obeah, you soon shake in you shoes. Obeah! Ha! ha! ha! Dat do fo' de know-nuffin' niggas. My Obeah am de Sabbana flower, de branch calalue, and the allimgator apple--dem's de 'pell mo' powerful dan Obi hisseff-- dem's de stuff dat gib de shibberin' body and de staggerin' limbs to de enemies ob Chakra. Whugh!" Once more dipping the spoon into the pot, and skimming up a portion of the boiling liquid, he bent forward to examine it. "'T am done!" he exclaimed. "Jess de right colour--jess de right tickness. Now fo' bottle de licka!" Saying this, he lifted the pot from the fire; and after first pouring the "liquor" into a calabash, and leaving it for some moments to cool, he transferred it to the rum-bottle--long since emptied of its original contents. Having carefully pressed in the cork, he set the bottle to one side--not in concealment, but as if intended for use at no very distant time. Then, having gathered up his scattered pharmacopoeia, and deposited the whole collection in the cutacoo, he stepped into the door way of the hut, and, with a hand on each post, stood in an attitude to listen. It was evident he expected some visitor; and who it was to be was revealed by the muttered soliloquy in which he continued to indulge. The slave Cynthia was to give him another _seance_. "Time dat yella wench wa' come. Muss be nigh twelve ob de night. Maybe she hab call, an' a no hear her, fo' de noise ob dat catrack? A bess go down b'low. Like nuf a fine her da!" As he was stepping across the threshold to put this design into execution, a cry, uttered in the shrill treble of a woman's voice--and just audible through the soughing sound of the cataract--came from the cliff above. "Da's de wench!" muttered the myal-man, as he heard it. "A make sartin shoo she'd come. Lub lead woman troo fire an' water--lead um to de Debbil. Seed de time dat ar' yella' gal temp' dis chile. No care now. But one Chakra ebber care 'brace in dese arms. Her he clasp only once, he content--he willen' den fo' die. Augh!" As the Coromantee uttered the impassioned ejaculation, he strode outward from the door, and walked with nervous and hurried step--like one urged on by the prospect of soon achieving some horrible but heartfelt purpose he had been long contemplating from a distance. Volume Two, Chapter XXVII. THE INVOCATION OF ACCOMPONG. The canoe soon made its trip, and returned with Cynthia seated in the stern. As upon the occasion of her former visit, she carried a basket upon her arm filled with comestibles, and not forgetting the precious bottle of rum. As before, she followed the myal-man to his hut--this time entering with more confidence, and seating herself unbidden upon the side of the bamboo bedstead. Still, she was not without some feeling of fear; as testified by a slight trembling that might be observed when her eyes rested upon the freshly-filled bottle, that stood in a conspicuous place. The look which she turned upon it told that she possessed some previous information as to the nature of its contents--or perhaps she had only a suspicion. "Da's de bottle fo' you," said the myal-man, noticing her glance, "and dis hya," continued he, drawing the other out of Cynthia's basket, "dis hya am de one fo'--" He was about to add "me," but before he could pass the word out of his mouth, he had got the neck of the rum-bottle into it; and the "gluck-gluck" of the descending fluid was substituted for the personal pronoun. The usual "Whugh!" wound up the operation, clearing the Coromantee's throat; and then, by a gesture, he gave Cynthia to understand that he was ready to proceed with the more serious business of the interview. "Dat bottle," said he, pointing to the one that contained his decoction, "am de obeah-'pell. It make Cubina lub you while dar's a tuff ob wool on de top o' 'im head. Dat long 'nuf, I reck'n; fo' when 'im go bald, you no care fo' 'im lub." "Is that the love-spell you spoke of?" inquired the mulatta, with an ambiguous expression of countenance, in which hope appeared struggling with doubt. "De lub-spell? No--not 'zackly dat. De lub-spell am different. _It_ am ob de nature ob an ointment. Hya! I'se got 'im in dis coco-shell." As Chakra said this he raised his hand, and drew out from a cranny in the thatch about three-quarters of the shell of a cocoa-nut; inside which, instead of its white coagulum, appeared a carrot-coloured paste, resembling the pulp of the _sapotamammee_--for this, in reality, it was. "Da's de lub mixture!" continued the obeah-man, in a triumphant tone; "da's for Cubina!" "Ah! Cubina is to take that?" "Shoo he am. He mus' take 'im. A gib it him, and den he go mad fo' you. You he lub, an' he lub you, like two turtle dove in de 'pring time. Whugh!" "Good Chakra--you are sure it will do Cubina no harm?" The query proved that the jealousy of the mulatta had not yet reached the point of revenge. "No," responded the negro; "do 'im good--do 'im good, an' nuffin else. Now, Cynthy, gal," continued he, turning his eyes upon the bottle; "das for de ole Cussus ob Moun' Welc'm--take um--put 'im in you basket." The woman obeyed, though her fingers trembled as she touched the bottle that contained the mysterious medicine. "And what am I to do with it, Chakra?" she asked, irresolutely. "Wha you do? I tole you arready wha you do. You gib to massr--you enemy and myen." "But what is it?" "Why you ask daat? I tole you it am de obeah-'pell." "Oh, Chakra! is it poison?" "No, you fool--ef 'twa pizen, den it kill de buckra right off. It no kill 'im. It only make um sick, an' den, preehap, it make 'im die long time atterward. Daz no pizen! You 'fuse gib 'im?" The woman appeared to hesitate, as if some sparks of a better nature were rising within her soul. If there were such sparks, only for a short while were they allowed to shine. "You 'fuse gib 'im?" repeated the tempter, hastening to extinguish them. "If you 'fuse, I no put de lub-spell on Cubina. Mor'n dat--I set de obeah fo' you--you youseff!" "Oh, no--no, Chakra!" cried she, cowering before the Coromantee; "I not refuse--I give it--anything you command me." "Dere, now--das sensible ob you, Cynthy. Now I gib you de instrukshin how fo' 'minister de 'pell. Lissen, an' 'member ebbery ting I go 'peak you." As the hideous sorcerer said this, he sat down in front of his neophyte--fixing his eyes upon hers, as if the better to impress his words upon her memory. "Fuss an' formoss, den, de grand buckra ob Moun' Welcome, ebbery night 'fore he go bed, hab glass ob rum punch. I know he used hab--he so 'till, eh?" "Yes--he does," mechanically answered the mulatta. "Berry likely--dat ere am one ob de habits neider buckra nor brack man am like break off. Ebbery night, shoo?" "Yes--every night--one glass--sometimes two." "Gorry! ef twa me, me hab two--not sometime, but alway--'cept when a make um tree, ha! ha! Berry well, das all right; and now, gal, who mix de punch fo' 'im? You use do dat youseff, Cynthy!" "It is still my business. I make it for him every night." "Good--das jess de ting. Whugh! now we know how set de 'pell ob de obeah. You see dis hya? It am de claw of de mountain crab. You see de 'cratch--dar--inside ob de machine? Well--up to dat mark it holds jess de 'zack quantum. Ebbery night you make de punch, you fill up dar out ob dis bottle. You pour in de glass--fuss de sugar an' lemon--den de water--den de rum, which am 'tronger dan de water; an' affer dat de 'pell out of dis bottle, which am de 'trongest ob dem all. You 'member all a hab tell you?" "I shall remember it," rejoined the woman, with a firmness of voice, partly assumed--for she dreaded to show any sign of irresolution. "Ef you no do, den de spell turn roun' an' he work 'gin youseff. When de Obi once 'gins he no 'top till he hab 'im victim. Now a go fo' 'voke de god Accompong. He come whenebba Chakra call. He make 'im 'pearance in de foam ob de catrack out yonner. Affer dat no mortal him lay not till one be promise fo' de sacrafize. You 'tay in hya--De god muss not see _no woman_--you lissen--you hear um voice." Rising with a mysterious air, and taking down from its peg an old palm-leaf wallet, that appeared to contain some heavy article, the myal-man stepped out of the hut, closing the door behind him, lest--as he informed the mulatta, in _sotto voce_--the god might set his eyes on her, and get into a rage. Cynthia seemed to consider the precaution scarce sufficient; for the moment the door was closed, in order to make herself still more secure against being seen, she glided up to the light and extinguished it. Then, groping her way back to the bedstead, she staggered down upon it, and sate shivering with apprehension. As the myal-man had enjoined upon her, she listened; and, as he had promised her, she heard--if not the voice of Accompong--sounds that were worthy of having proceed from the throat of that Ethiopian divinity. At first a voice reached her which she knew to be human: since it was the voice of Chakra himself. It was uttered, nevertheless, in strange and unnatural tones, that at each moment kept changing. Now it came ringing through the interstices of the bamboos, in a kind of long-drawn solo, as if the myal-man was initiating his ceremonies with the verse of a psalm. Then the chaunt became quicker, by a sort of _crescendo_ movement, and the song appeared transformed to a _recitative_. Next were heard sounds of a very different intonation, resembling the shrill, harsh call of a cow-horn or conch-shell, and gradually dying off into a prolonged bass, like the groaning of a cracked trombone. After this had continued for some moments, there ensued a dialogue--in which the listener could recognise only one of the voices as that of Chakra. Whose could be the other? It could only be that of Accompong. The god was upon the ground! Cynthia trembled as she thought how very near he was. How lucky she had blown out the light! With the lamp still burning, she must have been seen: for both Chakra and the deity were just outside the door, and so near that she could not only hear their voices with distinctness, but the very words that were spoken. Some of these were in an unknown tongue, and she could not understand them. Others were in English, or rather its synonym in the form of a negro _patois_. These last she comprehended; and their signification was not of a character to tranquillise her thoughts, but the contrary. _Chakra, chantant_:-- "Open de bottle--draw de cork, De 'pell he work--de 'pell he work; De buckra man muss die!" "_Muss die_!" repeated Accompong, in a voice that sounded as if from the interior of an empty hogshead. "De yella gal she gib 'im drink; It make 'im sick--it make 'im sr'ink, It send 'im to 'im grave!" "_Him grave_!" came the response of Accompong. "An' if de yella gal refuse, She 'tep into de buckra's shoes, An' fill de buckra's tomb." "_Buckra's tomb_!" echoed the African god, in a sonorous and emphatic voice, that told there was no alternative to the fate thus hypothetically proclaimed. There was a short interval of silence, and then the shrill, conch-like sound was again heard--as before, followed by the long-drawn bass. This was the exorcism of the god--as the same sounds, previously heard, had been his invocation. It was also the _finale_ of the ceremony: since the moment after Chakra pushed open the door, and stood in the entrance of the hut. "Cynthy, gal," said he, with a look of mysterious gravity, "why you blow out de light? But no matter for light. It's all oba. Did you hear the god 'peak?" "I did," murmured the mulatta, still trembling at what she had heard. "You hear wha him say?" "Yes--yes." "Den he 'peak de troof. Nuffin mor'n dat. You take heed--I 'vise you, as you friend. You go troo wif de 'pell now 'im 'gun, else you life not worth so much trash ob de sugar-cane. A say no more. Ebbery night, in um fuss glass, de full ob de crab-claw, up to de mark. Now, gal, come 'lon'." The last command was the more readily obeyed since Cynthia was but too glad to get away from a place whose terrors had so severely tested her courage. Taking up the basket--in which the bottle containing the dangerous decoction had been already placed--she glided out of the hut, and once more followed the Coromantee to his canoe. Volume Two, Chapter XXVIII. MIDNIGHT WANDERERS. Once more under the _ceiba_, that gigantic trysting tree, stood the Maroon and his mistress. Not, as before, in the bright noonday sun, but near the mid-hour of the night. The Foolah had dared the dangers of the forest to meet her beloved Cubina. And there were dangers in that forest, more to be dreaded than fierce beasts or ravenous reptiles--more to be dreaded than the tusks of the wild boar, or the teeth of the scaly alligator. There were monsters in human form far more fearful to be encountered; and at that moment not very distant from the spot where the lovers had made their rendezvous. Love recks little of dangers. Cubina knew of none; and, in Yola's belief, there was no danger while Cubina was near. The moon was in high heaven, full, calm, and clear. Her beams filled the glade with a silvery effulgence. It was a moonlight that almost rivalled the brightness of day. The flowers over the earth, and the blossoms upon the trees, appeared full blown: as if they had opened their petals to drink in the delightful dew. Borne upon the soft, silent breeze, the nocturnal sounds of the forest fell with a tremulous cadence upon the ear; while the nightingale of the West, as if proud of the superiority of her counterfeit notes, in turns imitated them all. The lovers stood in shadow--but it was the shadow of the _ceiba_. There was none in their hearts; and had the moonlight at that moment fallen upon their faces, no trace of a cloud could have been detected there. It was a happy meeting--one of the happiest they had yet enjoyed. Each had brought good news to the other. Cubina, that the brother of his beloved was still safe under his protection--safe and well; Yola, that her young mistress had promised to bestow upon her her freedom. Within the few days since they had last met, many things had transpired to interest both. Each had a tale to tell. Yola related how the story of her brother's misfortunes, though strictly kept from the servants at Mount Welcome, had been told to her mistress; how Miss Vaughan, on hearing it, had requested her father to grant her (Yola's) manumission; and how the Custos had consented to the request. Conditionally, however. Her "free papers" were to be dated from a certain day--that on which Kate Vaughan was to become a bride, but that day was supposed not to be far distant. It was joyous news for the Maroon. He might keep his hundred pounds for the plenishing of his mountain home! This piece of intelligence might have taken Cubina more by surprise, but for the understanding that now existed between him and the Custos--whom he had of late frequently visited. Certain conditions had become established between the magistrate and the Maroon, which rendered the latter less apprehensive about the future. Mr Vaughan had made some promises to himself in regard to the manumission of Yola. It is true, these had also been _conditional_; and their performance was to depend, to a great degree, on the success of the prosecution to be instituted against the Jew. But, with the Custos himself as a prosecutor, Cubina felt sanguine that the conditions would be accomplished. These were circumstances to be kept secret. Even to his sweetheart the lover was not permitted to impart the knowledge of this affair. Only did he make known to her that steps were being taken to cause the restitution of her brother's property; but how, where, and when, could not be divulged until that day when war should be openly declared against the enemy. So had the Custos commanded. Cubina, nevertheless, could not help being gratified by the intelligence which Yola had conveyed to him. The promise of Miss Vaughan had but one condition--her bridal day; and that was definite and certain. "Ah!" said Cubina, turning with a proud look towards his sweetheart, "it will be a happy day for all. No, not for all," added he, his face suddenly assuming an expression of sadness; "not for all. There is one, I fear, to whom that day will not bring happiness!" "I know one, too, Cubina," rejoined the girl, her countenance appearing to reflect the expression that had come over his. "Oh, you know it, too? Miss Vaughan has told you then, I suppose? I hope she does not boast of it?" "What she boast of, Cubina?" "Why, of breaking his heart, as you would do mine, if you were to marry somebody else. Poor young fellow! _Crambo_! If I'm not mistaken, it will be a sad day for him!" The girl looked up, in puzzled surprise. "Sad day for him! No, Cubina; he very happy. For her--poor missa--that day be sad." "_Vayate_! What do you mean, Yola?" "No more dan I say, Cubina. Missa Kate be very unhappy that day she marry Mr Mongew--she very so now." "What!" exclaimed Cubina, suddenly placing himself in an attitude of unusual attention; "do I understand you to say that Miss Vaughan don't wish to marry this Mr Smythje?" "She no love him, Cubina. Why she wish marry him, then?" "Ha!" significantly ejaculated the Maroon, while an expression of joy came over his countenance; "what makes you think she don't love him? Have you a reason, Yola?" "Missa me say so. She me tell everything, Cubina." "You are sure she has said that she don't love him?" "She laugh at him--she no care for him. Girl no love one she laugh at-- never." "_Vaya_! I hope you will never laugh at me, then! But say, dearest; do you know why she is going to marry Mr Smythje?" "Massa her make marry. He Mr Mongew very, very rich--he great planter. That why she him go to marry." "Ho!--ho!" thoughtfully ejaculated the captain of Maroons. "I suspected there was some compulsion," continued he, not speaking to his companion, but muttering the words to himself. "Can you tell me, Yola," he asked, turning again to his sweetheart; "do you know _why_ your mistress does not like this grand gentleman? Has she told you any reason?" "Very good reason, Cubina. She another love; that why she Mongew not like." "Ah! she's in love with somebody else! Have you heard who it is, Yola?" "Oh, yes; you know him youself. He Missa Kate's cousin; she _him_ love." "Her cousin, Herbert Vaughan?" "Yes, he name Herber'; he come once--never more come. No matter, she love him first time--she him love ever more! Same I you, Cubina; I you love first time, all the same for ever." "You are sure of all this?" inquired Cubina, in his anxiety to know more, resisting the temptation to reciprocate the endearing speech; "you are sure Miss Vaughan loves her cousin Herbert?" "Sure, Cubina; missa say so many, many time. She have very much grief for him. She hear he marry one fine, bad lady. You know old Jew Jess'ron--his daughter he go marry." "I have heard so," rejoined Cubina, evidently keeping back from his sweetheart a more definite knowledge of the subject which he himself possessed; "I have heard so. After all," he continued, speaking reflectingly, "it might not happen--neither of these marriages. There's a proverb, Yola, I've heard among the white folks--`_Many a slip between the cup and the lip_.' I hope it won't be true of you and me; but it might come to pass between young Master Vaughan and Miss Jessuron. Who knows? I know something. _Por Dios_! you've given me good news, I think, for somebody. But tell me, Yola; have you heard them say _when_ your mistress and this great gentleman are to be married?" "Massa he say soon. He tell Missa Kate he go great journey. When he come back they get marry; he Missa Kate say so yesterday." "The Custos going a journey? Have you heard where?" "Spanish Town, missa me tell--a great big city far away." "I wonder what that can be for," said Cubina to himself, in a conjectural way. "Well, Yola," he added, after a pause, and speaking more earnestly, "listen to me. As soon as Mr Vaughan has set out on this journey, you come to me. Perhaps I may have a message for your mistress. Have you heard when he intends to take the road?" "He go morrow morning." "Ha! so soon! Well, so much the better for us, and maybe for somebody else. You must meet me here to-morrow night. Tell your mistress it concerns herself. No, don't tell her," he added, correcting himself, "she will let you come without that excuse; besides, it might be that-- never mind! Come, anyhow. I shall be waiting for you at this same hour." Yola gave her willing promise to keep an appointment so accordant to her inclinations. For some time longer the lovers conversed, imparting to each other the ordinary news of life--the details of common things--to be at length succeeded by words only of love, of far, far deeper interest. Cubina swore eternal truth--by the trees around--by the sky above--by the bright moon, and the blue heavens. He had done the same a score of times; and as often had he been believed. But lovers never tire of such vows--neither of hearing nor repeating them. The African maiden answered with promises of faithfulness, alike free, alike fervent. She no longer sighed for her far Gambian home--no more mourned the fate that had torn her from a court to consign her to slavery. The dark hours of her life seemed to have ended; and her future, as her present, was full of hope and bliss! For more than an hour did the enamoured pair indulge in this sweet converse. They were about to close it with a parting kiss. The Maroon stood with his strong arms tenderly entwined around the waist of his mistress, who willingly yielded to the embrace. Her slender form, under the shadow of the _ceiba_, looked like the statue of some Egyptian maiden in bronze antique. The adieu had been spoken more than once; but still the lovers lingered, as if loth to give the parting kiss. There had been more than one, but not that which was to end the interview. Ere their lips had met to achieve it, the design was interrupted. Voices fell upon their ears, and two forms emerging into the moonlight at the lower end of the glade, rapidly advanced in the direction of the _ceiba_. As if by a common instinct, Cubina and his mistress stepped silently and simultaneously back, retiring together between the buttresses of the tree. There it was dark enough for concealment. Only an eye bent on purposed scrutiny could have detected their presence. The forms drew near. They were those of a man and a woman. The moonlight shining full upon them, rendered them easy of recognition; but their voices had already declared their identity. Both the intruders were known to both the lovers. They were the Jew Jessuron and the slave Cynthia. "_Crambo_!" muttered the Maroon, as he saw who they were. "What on earth can _they_ be doing together, at this time of the night, and here--so far away from any house? _Maldito_! some wicked business, I warrant." By this time the brace of midnight strollers had got opposite to the tree, and the Jew was delivering himself of a speech, which was plainly heard by those who stood concealed in its shadow. "Now, Cynthy--goot wench!--you hashn't said yet why he hash sent for me! Do you know what it ish for?" "I don't, Mass Jess'ron, unless it be--" "Unlesh what, wench?" "Somethin' 'bout the news I took him afore I come to you, when I went with his basket of provisions--" "Ah-ha! you took him some newsh--what newsh, girl?" "Only that Massr Vagh'n am a-goin' away in the mornin'." "Blesh my soul!" exclaimed the Jew, suddenly stopping in his tracks, and turning towards the mulatta with a look of troubled surprise. "Blesh my soul! You don't shay that, dosh you?" "Dey say so at the Buff, Massr Jess'ron. Besides, I know m'self he's a-goin'. I help pack up him shirts in de trabbelin' valise. He's a-goin' a hossaback." "But where, wench? where?" gasped the Jew, in hurried and anxious speech. "Dey say to 'Panish Town--odder side ob de Island." "Spanish Town! ach!" cried the penn-keeper, in a tone betokening that the words had conveyed some very unwelcome intelligence. "Spanish Town! S'help me, it ish! I knew it! I knew it! ach!" And, as he repeated the aspirated ejaculation, he struck his umbrella fiercely into the ground--as if to render more emphatic the chagrin that had been communicated by the answer. Only for a few seconds did he make pause upon the spot. "Come on!" cried he to his companion, hurriedly moving off from the tree; "come on, wench! If that'sh the case, ash you shay, there'sh no time to be losht--not a minute, s'help me!" And with this elegant reflection, he ended the brief dialogue, and strode swiftly and silently onward across the glade--the woman following close upon his heels. "_Demonios_!" muttered the Maroon, as they went off. "That John Crow and his pretty partner are on some ugly errand, I fear! It appears to be the Custos they're conspiring against. _Crambo_! I wonder what they are after with him! What can the old Jew have to do with his going to Spanish Town? I must follow them, and see if I can discover. There appears to be some scheme brewing, that bodes no good to Mr Vaughan. Where can they be gadding to at this time of night? _From_ the Jew's penn, instead of _towards_ it!" These interrogative reflections the Maroon made to himself. Then, turning once more to his sweetheart, with a gesture that declared his intention to be gone, he said:-- "We must part, Yola, and this instant, love: else I may lose their trail. Adieu! adieu!" And, with a quick kiss and equally hurried embrace, the lovers separated--Yola returning to Mount Welcome, by a path well-known to her; while the Maroon glided off on the track taken by the penn-keeper and his female companion. Volume Two, Chapter XXIX. TRACKING THE STROLLERS. The Maroon was but a few moments in recovering the "spoor" of the two nocturnal strollers. At the point where they had gone out of the glade, there was a path that led up the hills in the direction of the Jumbe Rock. It was a mere cattle track--used only very occasionally by bipeds. Being the only path that went that way, and judging, moreover, that neither the Jew nor his follower would be likely to traverse the thicket at random, Cubina concluded that they had gone by this path. Throwing himself upon it, and advancing with a quick but silent step, he soon recovered sight of them. The shade of the gigantic trees--it was a primeval forest through which they were passing--was favourable to his design; and without much risk of being seen, he was able to keep them in view, and almost within earshot. At that moment, the mind of the Jew was too pre-occupied to be suspicious; and the mulatta was not likely to trouble her thoughts about whether they were followed or not. Had she known, however--had she even suspected--that her steps were dogged, and by Cubina, the Maroon, it would, no doubt, have sharpened her senses. "They appear to be making for the Jumbe Rock?" mentally soliloquised Cubina, as they commenced ascending the slope of the mountain. "_Crambo_! That is odd enough! What do they intend to do there at this hour of the night--or at any hour, I might say? And who's the _he_ that's been sending for Jessuron? She took _him_ a provision basket! By that, it ought to be some runaway. But what has the old Jew to do with a runaway? To get out of his bed at this time of the night, and tramp it three miles through the woods! For that matter, they say he don't sleep much anyhow; and, like the owl, night's his favourite time, I suppose. Something's being cooked for the Custos: for that girl's a very devil! Not that I should care about _him_, or what happened to him, at any other time. He's not much; and is only helping me in that matter because he hates the other. No matter for him; but from what Yola's told me, I'd go to the world's end for his daughter. Ha! I may do her a service yet. _Valga me Dios_! what's up now? They've stopped!" The Jew and his companion, about a hundred yards ahead, had suddenly come to a stand. They appeared to be scrutinising the path. Cubina, crouching in the shadow of the bushes, stopped likewise; and waited for the others to advance. They did so after a short interval--hastening on as before; but in a slightly divergent direction. "Ho, ho!" muttered the Maroon; "not for the Jumbe Rock, but the Duppy's Hole! I remember now. The path forks up yonder. They've taken that which goes to the Hole. Well! it don't help me to comprehend their purpose a bit clearer. _Carrai_! that Duppy's Hole! Didn't some of my fellows tell me they've heard strange noises there lately? Quaco is ready to swear he saw the ghost of the old myal-man, Chakra, standing upon the edge of the cliff! They're going there, as sure as my name's Cubina!" And with this conjectural reflection the Maroon forsook the shadow under which he had been sheltering, and flitted forward along the path. Another five hundred yards further on, his conjecture was confirmed. The parties dogged by him had reached the edge of the precipice that frowned down upon the Duppy's Hole, and there halted. Cubina also made stop--as before concealing himself within the black shadow of the bushes. He had scarcely crouched down, when his ears were saluted by a shrill whistle--not made by the lips, but proceeding from some instrument, as a reed or a common dog-call. It was plainly a signal, sounded either by Cynthia or the Jew, Cubina could not tell which. Only once was it given. And there was no answer--for that similar sound, that came like an echo from the far forest, was a counterfeit. It was the mimic-note of the mock-bird. Cubina, skilled in these voices of the night, knew this, and paid no heed to the distant sound. His whole attention was absorbed in watching the movements of the two individuals still standing upon the edge of the cliff. The white sky was beyond them, against which he could see their dark _silhouettes_ outlined with perfect distinctness. After about a minute's time, he saw them once more in motion; and then both appeared to vanish from his view--not wasting into the air, but sinking into the ground, as if a trap-door had admitted them to the interior of the earth. He saw this without much surprise. He knew they must have gone down the precipice, but how they had performed this feat was something that did surprise him a little. It was but a short spell of astonishment. In a score of seconds he stood upon the edge of the precipice, at the spot where they had disappeared. He looked down. He could trace, though dimly, a means of descent among the wattle of boughs and corrugated creepers that clasped the _facade_ of the cliff. Even under the fantastic gleam of the moon, he could see that human hands had helped the construction of this natural ladder. He stayed not to scrutinise it. An object of greater interest challenged his glance. On the disc of the lagoon--in the moonlight, a sheet of silver, like a mirror in its frame of dark mahogany--moved a thing of sharp, elliptical shape--a canoe. Midships of the craft, a form was crouching. Was it human or demon? The aspect was demon--the shape scarce human. Long, ape-like arms; a hunched back; teeth gleaming in the moonlight like the incisors of a shark; features everything but human to one who had not seen them before! Cubina had seen them before. To him, though not familiar, they were known. If not the ghost of Chakra, he saw Chakra himself! Volume Two, Chapter XXX. CYNTHIA IN THE WAY. The heart of the young Maroon, though by nature bold and brave, was for a moment impressed with fear. He had known the myal-man of Mount Welcome--never very intimately--but enough to identify his person. Indeed, once seen, Chakra was a man to be remembered. Cubina had, like every one else for miles around, heard of the trial of the Coromantee conjuror, and his condemnation to exposure on the Jumbe Rock. The peculiar mode of his execution--the cruel sentence--the celebrity of the scene where the criminal had been compelled to pass the last miserable hours of his existence--all combined to render his death even more notorious than his life; and few there were in the western end of the Island who had not heard of the myal-man of Mount Welcome, and the singular mode of atonement that justice had demanded him to make for his crimes. In common with others, Cubina believed him dead. No wonder, then, that the heart of the Maroon should for a moment misgive him on seeing Chakra seated in a canoe, and paddling himself across the calm surface of the lagoon! Under any circumstances, the sight of the Coromantee was not calculated to beget confidence in the beholder; but his unexpected appearance just then produced within the mind of the Maroon a feeling somewhat stronger than astonishment, and for some seconds he stood upon the cliff overcome by a feeling of awe. Very soon, however, he remembered the statement which his lieutenant had made, and which Quaco had put in the form of an asseveration. Quaco, like most of his colour, a firm believer in "Duppy" and "Jumbe," had believed it to be Chakra's ghost he had seen; and under the terror with which the sight had inspired him, instead of making an attempt to pursue the apparition, and prove whether it was flesh and blood, or only "empty air," he had used his utmost speed to get away from the spot, leaving the myal-man's ghost full master of the ground. Cubina, less given to superstitious inclinings, only for a moment permitted himself to be mystified with the idea of a "Duppy." Quaco's experience, along with the presence of the penn-keeper and his companion--there evidently for a purpose--guided him to the conclusion that what he saw in the canoe was no spiritual Chakra, but Chakra in the flesh. How the Coromantee came to be still living and moving, the Maroon could not so easily comprehend; but Cubina possessed acute reasoning powers, and the presence of the Jew, evidently _en rapport_ with the restored conjuror, went far towards explaining the mystery of the latter's resurrection. Satisfied that he saw Chakra himself, the Maroon placed himself in a position to watch the movements both of the men in the canoe, and those who had summoned him across the lagoon. In another moment the canoe was lost sight of. It had passed under the bushes at the bottom of the cliff, where it was not visible from above. Voices now ascended, which could be heard, but not distinctly. Cubina could distinguish three voices taking part in the conversation-- Chakra's, the Jew's, and, at longer intervals, the shrill treble of the slave Cynthia. He bent his ear, and listened with keen attention--in hopes of hearing what they said. He could only catch an occasional word. The roar of the cascade rising along with the voices hindered him from hearing them distinctly; and, notwithstanding his earnest desire to do so, he was unable to make out the matter of the conversation. Only for a short while was he kept waiting. The _trialogue_ came to a close, followed by a brief interval of silence--at the end of which the canoe once more made its appearance upon the open water of the lagoon. Two persons only were in it, Chakra and the Jew. Cynthia had stayed by the bottom of the cliff. Cubina made this observation with some chagrin. It was a circumstance that promised to frustrate the design he had suddenly conceived: of following the myal-man to his lair. This he desired to do, in order to make himself acquainted with the hiding-place of the remarkable runaway. That it was down in the Duppy's Hole there could be no doubt; and therefore the Maroon might at any time find him there. This reflection would have contented him; but, on seeing the Jew ferried across the lagoon, he conjectured that he and Chakra were bent upon the completion of some horrid plot, which, by following, he, Cubina, might overhear, and, perhaps, be enabled to counteract. The Maroon was aware of the difficulty of descending into the Duppy's Hole. He knew there was but one way--by the bushes that clustered along the face of the cliff at his feet. Once, while on the chase, he and his followers, aided by a rope-ladder, had gone down; and, in search of game, had explored the wooded covert beyond. At that time, however, Chakra had not been _executed_; and the hunter had found no trace of human presence in the solitary place. He knew that he could follow the canoe by swimming; as in this way he had crossed before, but now that Cynthia barred the way, it would be impossible for him to reach the water unobserved. To follow the conspirators further was out of the question. His chance was cut off by the interposition of the mulatta. He could only remain on the cliff and await their return. He was reflecting upon what course to pursue, when a rustling sound reached him from below. It was made by some one moving among the bushes that grew against the face of the precipice. He caught one of the branches; and, supporting himself by it, craned his neck over the cliff. His eye fell upon the brilliant chequer of a _bandanna_, visible among the leaves. It was the toque upon the head of Cynthia. It was in motion; and he could see that she was ascending by the tree stairway he had already observed. Without staying to witness the ascent, he turned back into the underwood by the side of the path; and, crouching down, he waited to see what the woman intended doing. Perhaps her part in the performance had been played out--at least, for that night--and she was on her way homeward? That was what Cubina conjectured, as well as just what he would have wished. His conjecture proved correct. The mulatta, on mounting to the crest of the cliff, stopped only for a moment, to adjust upon her arm a basket she had brought up--from the half-open lid of which protruded the neck of a bottle. Then, casting her eyes forward, she struck off into the shadowy forest path, and was soon out of sight. The moment after she had passed him, the Maroon glided silently forward to the edge of the cliff, and commenced descending the stair. Such feat was nothing to him; and in a few seconds he had reached the edge of the lagoon. Here he paused--to make sure that the canoe had arrived at its destination, and that its late occupants had disembarked from it. After a moment spent in this _reconnoissance_--looking sharply, and listening with all his ears--he became satisfied that the coast was clear; and, letting himself stealthily into the water, he swam for the opposite shore of the lagoon. Upon only about two-thirds of the surface of the lagoon did the moonlight fall--the cliff casting its shadow upon the other third. Keeping within the boundaries of this shadow, and swimming as silently as a fish, Cubina succeeded in reaching the opposite shore, without perceiving any sign that he had been observed. Under the heavy timber, with which the upper half of the ravine was covered, the darkness was as deep as if not a ray of moonlight came down from the sky. Only on the stream itself, and here and there through a break in the umbrageous forest, could the moonbeams reach the surface of the earth. Elsewhere, from cliff to cliff, the obscurity was complete. Cubina conjectured, and correctly, that there was a path leading from the anchorage of the canoe; and to find this was his first purpose. Keeping around the edge of the lagoon, he soon came upon the craft-- empty, and anchored under a tree. The moonlight, entering here from the open water, showed him the _embouchure_ of the path, where it entered the underwood; and, without losing a moment's time, he commenced moving along it. Silently as a cat he stole onward, at intervals pausing to listen; but he could only bear the hissing sound of the upper cascade--to which he was now making approach. There was a space in front of the waterfall, where the trees stood thinly, and this opening was soon reached. On arriving at its edge the Maroon again stopped to reconnoitre. Scarcely a second of time did he need to pause. Light flashed in his eyes through the interstices of what appeared to be a sort of grating. It was the bamboo door of the obeah hut. Voices, too, reverberated through the bars. Within were the men upon whom it was his purpose to play eavesdropper. In another instant Cubina was cowering under the cotton-tree, close up to the doorpost. Volume Two, Chapter XXXI. STRANGE DISCLOSURES. The two plotters were palavering loud enough. In that place there was no need--at least, so thought they--for restrained speech; and the listener could have heard every word, but for the hoarse hissing of the cataract. This, at times, hindered him from distinguishing what was said; and only in detached portions could he pick up the thread of the discourse. Enough, however, heard he to cause him astonishment--the greatest of all, that in the Island of Jamaica, or upon the earth, existed two such villains as Chakra, the Coromantee, and Jessuron, the Jew! He could see the conspirators as well as hear them. The chinks between the bamboos enabled him to obtain a view of both. The Jew, slightly blown with his long walk against the hill, had dropped into a sitting attitude upon the truck-like bedstead; while the Coromantee stood before him, leaning against the buttress of the tree which formed one side of his dwelling. The conversation had commenced before Cubina came up. It could not have proceeded far. The lard lamp seemed recently lit. Besides, the Maroon knew that he had been only a few minutes behind them. The plot, therefore, whatever it was, had not yet made much progress. So reasoned the listener; but it soon appeared that it was the continuation of a plot, and not its first conception, to which he was to become privy--a plot so demoniac as to include _murder_ in its design! The Jew, when Cubina first got eyes on him, appeared as if he had just given utterance to some angry speech. His dark, weasel-like orbs were sparkling in their sunken sockets, with a fiendish light. The goggles were off, and the eyes could be seen. In his right hand the eternal umbrella was grasped, with a firm clutch, as if held in menace! Chakra, on the other hand, appeared cowed and pleading. Though almost twice the size, and apparently twice the strength of the old Israelite, he looked at that moment as if in fear of him! "Gorry, Massr Jake!" said he, in an appealing tone; "how ebber wa' _I_ to know de Cussus warn a gwine so soon? A nebber speered ob dat; an' you nebber tole me you wanted de obeah-spell to work fasser dan war safe. Ef a'd a know'd dat, a kud a fotch de dam Cussus out o' him boots in de shake ob a cat's tail--dat cud a a' did!" "Ach!" exclaimed the Jew, with an air of unmistakable chagrin; "he's going to shlip us. S'help me, he will! And now, when I wants more ash ever the shpell upon him. I'sh heard something from thish girl Cynthy of a conshpiracy against myshelf. Sheesh heard them plotting in the summer-house in the Cushtos's garden." "Wha' dey plot 'gain you, Massr Jake? Who am dey dat go plottin'?" "The Cushtos is one, the other ish that scamp son of Cubina, the Maroon--the young Cubina. You knowsh him?" "Dat same a know well 'nuf." "Ah! the proud Cushtos don't know--though he hash his sushpicions--that hish wife Quasheba wash the mishtress of a Maroon. Ha! ha! ha! And she luffed the mulatto better as ever she luffed Vanities Vochan! Ha! ha! ha!" "Dat am berry near de troof," observed the negro, with a thoughtful air. "Little dosh the Cushtos think," continued Jessuron, without heeding the interpolation, "that thish young fellow, whosh a-helpin' him to conshpire againsht me, is a sort of a son to hish consheited worship. Ha! ha! ha!" It was startling intelligence for the listener outside the door. It was the first intimation the young Maroon ever had as to who was his mother. Some vague hints had been conveyed to him in early childhood; but his memory recalled them only as dreams; and he himself had never allowed them expression. His father he had known well--called, as himself, Cubina, the Maroon. But his mother, who or what she had been, he had never known. Was it possible, then, that the quadroon, Quasheba--of whose fame he, too, had heard--was it true she was his own mother? That "Lilly Quasheba," the beautiful, the accomplished daughter of the Custos Vaughan, was his half-sister? He could not doubt it. The conversation that followed put him in possession of further details, and more ample proofs. Besides, such relationships were too common in the Island of Jamaica, to make them matter either of singularity or surprise. Notwithstanding, the listener was filled with astonishment--far more than that--for the revelation was one to stir his soul to emotions of the strangest and strongest kind. New thoughts sprang up at the announcement; new vistas opened before the horoscope of his future; new ties were established within his heart, hitherto unfelt and unknown. Stifling his new-sprung emotions as well as he was able--promising them indulgence at some other time--he re-bent his ear to listen. He heard enough to satisfy him that he had a sister--a half-sister, it is true--but still a sister. The next point determined on between the conspirators was equally calculated to startle and astonish him. It was no less than a design to render that sister _brotherless_! "You musht put the shpell on _him_, too," said the Jew; "for heesh the principal in thish plot againsht me. Even if the Cushtos wash out of the way, thish Captain Cubina will go to some other magistrate to carry out hish design. There will be plenty to help him. You musht shpell _him_, and soon ash you can, Shakra. There'sh no time to lose--not a minnit, s'help me!" "A do wha a can, Massr Jake; but a mout's well tell ye, that it a'nt so easy to put de spell on a Maroon. It coss me more'n twenty year to put de obeah on him ole fadder, and I'se a been tryin' um on dis young Cubina fo' some time--ebber since him fadder die. A hate de young un, same a hated de ole un. You knows why a hate boaf." "I knowsh all that--I knowsh all that." "Wa, den! a do ma bess. Dat ar m'latta gib me no hope. She soon 'dminster de spell ef she hab chance--kase she think um de lub drink. She no hab chance, fo' Cubina he no let her come nigh o' him. Nebba mind: Chakra he find oppotunity some day; 'fore long he put de death-spell on de son ob dat quaderoom." "Perhaps not so soon!" was the mental rejoinder of him who listened to this confident declaration. "It'sh less matter about him than the other!" cried the Jew, giving way to a fresh burst of rage. "S'help me! the Cushtos is going to shlip out of my fingers--the eshtate--all! Ach!" he ejaculated, as his disappointment came more palpably before him, "you hash played me false, Shakra! I b'lief you've been playin' me false!" As the Jew gave utterance to this conjectural speech, he started to his feet--taking a tighter hold upon his umbrella, and standing before his _vis-a-vis_ in a threatening attitude. "No, Massr Jake," replied the myal-man, without altering the air of obeisance he had hitherto assumed,--"no--nuffin ob dat--anyhow, I'se can say dar's nuffin ob dat. You yaseff sabbey well 'nuff a hab as good reezun as you to make de spell work, an' I tell you _it shall work_!" "Yesh! when too late--too late! I don't care then. If the Cushtos get to Spanish Town--if he procuresh the shpecial act, I'm a ruined Shew! I don't care a shtraw if the death-shpell wash put on myshelf! I don't!" This speech was rather a soliloquy than addressed to Chakra, who listened to it without clearly comprehending its import: for the chief motive which was stimulating the Jew was still unknown to his fellow-conspirator. "I tell you," resumed Jessuron, still in threatening speech, "I believe you hash been fooling me, Shakra! You hash some interest of your own-- perhaps, with thish Lilly Quasheba. Ha! never mind! I tell you thish time--I tell you, Shakra, if the shpell dosh fail--yesh, if it fail, and the Cushtos reach the capital--where he ish going--I tell you, Shakra, you may look out for shqualls! You loosh your monish I promised you. Ay, you may loosh your life ash well. I hash only to shay a word, and the Duppy's Hole will be searched by the houndsh of the law. Now will you do your besht to keep the Cushtos from reaching the capital of the Island?" As Jessuron finished the speech containing this conditional threat, he moved in the direction of the door, apparently with the intention of taking his departure. The Maroon, perceiving the movement, stepped further back into the shadow of the cotton-tree--taking care to conceal himself effectually. This change of position prevented him from hearing what subsequently passed between the two conspirators. Some more conversation there was on both sides--an interchange of it--which lasted for several minutes; but although the listener could hear the sound of their voices, he was unable to make out the words spoken by either. What was said by the Jew was principally a repetition of his menace--in terms the most emphatic he could employ; while Chakra, with equal emphasis, repeated his promises to accomplish the nefarious purpose already agreed upon between them. "A promise, Massr Jake," said the myal-man, in conclusion, "by de great Accompong, a do ma bess. Ef de Cussus 'trive 'scape, den you do wid ole Chakra whasomediver you hab mind to. 'Liver him up, ef you like! Ha! de Cussus no 'scape. Dis night Cynthy hab take bottle in her basket of de 'trongest kind. It do de bizness in 'bout twenty-fo' hour. _Daat am de true death-spell_. Whugh!" "In twenty-four hours? You ish shure, Shakra? you ish shure?" "Shoo' as a 'm now in de Duppy Hole, Massr Jake. Doan' you hab no mo' doubt ob ole Chakra. He hab no lub fo' Cussus Va'ghan mo' dan youseff. P'raps he lub de Cussus' dau'ter, but dat am berry diffrent sort ob 'fecshun. Whugh!" With this speech of fiendish signification the dialogue ended; and the Jew was seen stepping outside, followed by his confederate. Both walked away from the spot, Chakra taking the lead, the Maroon closely watching their movements. On reaching the canoe the conspirators stepped aboard, and the craft was paddled over the lagoon. Cubina waited for its return; and then, seeing Chakra safe within his hut, he hastened back to the water; and, as before, swimming under the shadow of the rock, he re-ascended the tree stairway, and stood once more on the summit of the cliff. Volume Two, Chapter XXXII. A STORMY SCENE. On emerging from the Duppy's Hole, the penn-keeper tracked it, as straight as the path would permit him, towards his own home. He walked with hurried steps, as if he had some purpose before him beyond that of going to bed. Late as was the hour--or early, it should rather be said, since it was getting on for daybreak--in the eye of the old Israelite there was no sign of sleepiness; but, on the contrary, a wide-awake expression that betokened his intention to accomplish some desired object before retiring to rest. The mutterings which fell from his lips, as he moved onward among the trees, told that his discontent still continued. Chakra's assurances, that had, for the moment, partially removed his ill-humour, on reflection failed to satisfy him. More than once before, the myal-man had given him promises which he had failed in keeping; and so might it be with the promise of the death-spell. With this thought was revived in full vigour the apprehension that his enemy might escape; and, consequently, his deep-conceived scheme would result in ignominious failure. The measures which the myal-man had taken for administering the _spell-medicine_--that bottle of strong waters which Cynthia carried home in her basket--had been revealed to the Jew. The revelation had been made--as suited the subject--in a low tone of voice; and it was this part of the dialogue between the two conspirators which Cubina had not heard. But the Coromantee might be mistaken in his skill? The prescription might fail in producing the desired effect? The slave might not find the opportunity to administer it? Considering the early hour at which the traveller was to start--Jessuron knew the hour--Cynthia might not have a chance to give the _medicine_? Or, frayed by contemplation of the fearful consequence, which she now knew would follow almost instantaneously upon the act, she might in the end shy from the dangerous duty? The intended victim might, in the meantime, have become suspicious of the mixtures prepared by the mulatta, and decline to drink the deadly draught? There were many chances that the Custos might escape. "`There ish many a shlip between the cup and the lipsh'!" muttered the wicked old man, quoting one of his favourite proverbs. "Ach! that ish true," he added, with bitter emphasis, as the probabilities of failure passed more palpably before his mind. "S'help me!" continued he, with an attempt at self-consolation; "I shall not be deprived of my refenge--that ish certain--whether he goesh to Spanish Town, or shtays at home. Ach!" he exclaimed, again changing his tone to one of chagrin, "what dosh that signify, beshide the other? If he could be shtopped, it wash a grand destiny for mine Shoodith, for myshelf--me, old Shacob Shessuron! Mount Welcome wash mine! It musht belong to this young fellow--he belongs to Shoodith--Shoodith belongsh to me! Ach! what a pity if my shkeme ish to fail--after all I hash done to make it succeed! "If it fail," he continued, the probabilities of failure presenting a new phase to him, "if it fail, I'm a ruined man!--I am! Shoodith may want to marry this young fellow. I believe she luffs him--I'm afeerd she doesh--and he hasn't the worth of the shoosh he shstands in. Blesh my shoul! I musht try to prevent it. It musht go no further till I'm sure of the Cushtos. Not a shtep--not a shtep. She musht be seen, and thish very night. Yesh; I musht see Shoodith before I shleep." Urged on by the desire of the interview thus announced, the Jew hastened his steps; and soon arrived under the shadow of the dark pile that constituted his dwelling. Admitted by the black porter at the gate--for that of the courtyard, or slave inclosure, was always kept locked--he mounted the wooden steps, and stole as silently along the verandah, as if he had been a stranger in the house instead of its owner. His object, in this stealthy movement, appeared to be to avoid disturbing some one who slept in a hammock near one end of the long gallery. It was towards the other end, however, that he went--in the direction of a chamber through the lattice-window of which a light was streaming. It was the sleeping apartment of the Jewess. On arriving opposite the door, he knocked, not loudly--at the same time pronouncing, in a half-whisper, the name "Shoodith!" "That you, rabbi?" inquired a voice from within; while a footstep passing across the floor told either that the Jewess had not yet sought her couch, or had sought, and again forsaken it. The door was opened; and the worthy father of this wakeful daughter passed inside. "Well," said she, as he entered, "I won't inquire what errand you've been on, my good papa Jessuron: some slave speculation, I suppose? But what have I to do with it, that you should compel me to sit up for you till this time of the night? It's now near morning; and I am precious sleepy, I can tell you!" "Ach! Shoodith, dear," replied the father, "everything ish goin' wrong! s'help me, everything!" "Well, one might think so, from that doleful phiz of yours. What's troubling you now, my worthy parent?" "Ach! Shoodith! Don't dishtress me by your speeches. I hash something of importance to shay to you, before I go to shleep." "Say it quick, then: for I want to go to sleep myself. What is it, pray?" "Well, Shoodith, dear, it ish this: you mushn't trifle any more with thish young fellow." "What young fellow do you mean, my good man?" "Vochan, of coursh--Mashter Vochan." "Ho! ho! you've changed your tune. What's this about?" "I hash reason, Shoodith; I hash reason." "Who said I was trifling with him? Not I, father! Anything but that, I can assure you." "That ish not what I mean, Shoodith." "Well, then, what do you mean, old gentleman? Come now! make yourself intelligible!" "I mean thish, Shoodith: you mushn't let things go any further with the young fellow--that ish, shoost now--till I knowsh something more about him. I thought he wash going to be lich--you know I thought that, mine daughter--but I hash found out, thish very night, that--perhaps--he may never be worth a shingle shilling; and therefore, Shoodith, you couldn't think of marrying him--and mushn't think of it till we knowsh more about him!" "Father!" replied the Jewess, at once throwing aside her habitual badinage, and assuming a serious tone, "it is too late! Did I not tell you that the tarantula might get caught in its own trap? The proverb has proved true; _I_ am that unhappy spider!" "You don't say so, Shoodith?" inquired the father, with a look of alarm. "O do! Yonder sleeps the fly,"--and the speaker pointed along the gallery in the direction of the hammock--"secure from any harm I can ever do him. And were he as poor as he appears to be--as humble as the lowest slave on your estate--he is rich enough for me. Ah! it will be _his_ fault, not _mine_, if he do not become my husband!" The proud, determined tone in which the Jewess spoke, was only modified as she uttered the last words. The conjunctive form of the closing speech, with a certain duplexity of expression upon her countenance showed that she was not yet sure of the heart of Herbert Vaughan. Notwithstanding his attentions at the ball--notwithstanding much that had since occurred, there appeared to be a doubt--a trace of distrust that still lingered. "Never, Shoodith!" cried the father, in a tone of determined authority. "You mushn't think of it! You shall never marry a pauper--never!" "Pauper him as much as you like, father; he won't care for that, any more than I do." "I shall disinherit you, Shoodith!" said the Jew, giving way to a feeling of spiteful resentment. "As you like about that, too. Disinherit me at your pleasure. But remember, old man, it was you who began this game--you who set me to playing it; and if you are in danger of losing your stake--whatever it may be--I tell you you're in danger of losing _me_--that is, if he--" The hypothetic thought--whatever it was--that at this crisis crossed the mind of the Jewess, was evidently one that caused her pain: as could be seen by the dark shadow that came mantling over her beautiful brow. Whether or not she would have finished the speech is uncertain. She was not permitted to proceed. The angry father interrupted her:-- "I won't argue with you now, Shoodith. Go to your bed, girl! go to shleep! Thish I promish you--and, s'help me, I keepsh my promish!--if thish pauper ish to be a pauper, he never marries you with my conshent; and without my conshent he never touches a shilling of my monish. You understand that, Shoodith?" And without waiting to hear the reply--which was quite as defiant as his own declaration--the Jew hurried out of his daughter's chamber, and shuffled off along the verandah. Volume Two, Chapter XXXIII. WHERE NEXT? The Maroon, after mounting to the summit of the cliff, paused for some moments to reflect upon a course of action. In his bosom were many new emotions, springing from the strange revelations to which he had just listened. His mind was in such a state of chaotic confusion, that it required some time to determine what he ought to do next, or whither he should go. The thought that thrilled him most, was that which related to the discovery of his maternal relationship to Miss Vaughan. But this matter, however strange it was, required no immediate action to be taken on his part; and though the semi-fraternal affection, now felt for the first time, strengthened the romantic friendship which he had conceived for the young lady--whom he had now seen several times--still, from what he had overheard of the scheme of the conspirators, his new-discovered sister did not appear to be in any danger. At least, not just then: though some horrid hints darkly thrown out by Chakra pointed to a probable peril at some future time. That her father was in danger, Cubina could not doubt. Some demoniac plot had been prepared for the Custos, which was to deprive him even of life; and from what the Maroon could make out of the half-heard conversation of the conspirators, action was to be taken upon it, so early as the following morning. Mr Vaughan intended a journey. Yola had herself told him so; and the confabulation between Jessuron and Chakra confirmed it. Cynthia had been their informant; and it was evident that upon that very night she had brought the news from Mount Welcome. Evident, also, that the piece of intelligence thus conveyed had taken both the conspirators by surprise--causing them to hasten the _denouement_ of some devilish plan that before that night had not been quite ripe for execution. All this was clear enough to the mind of the Maroon. Equally clear was it, that the plan was no other than an atrocious plot to murder the proprietor of Mount Welcome; and that poison was the safe, silent weapon to be used--for Cubina was not unacquainted with the signification of the _death-spell of Obeah_. Before that night he had reason to believe that his own father had fallen by that secret shaft, and reasons to suspect that Chakra had shot it. What he had just heard confirmed his belief; and but that he saw the necessity of hastening to the rescue of the threatened Custos--and knew, moreover, that he could now find Chakra at any time--he would, in all probability, have avenged his father's death before leaving the Duppy's Hole. The young Maroon, however, was a man of mild character--combining prudence with an extreme _sang froid_--that hindered him from bringing any event to a hasty or ambiguous ending. Though leaving Chakra for the time, he had determined soon to return to him. The resurrection of the myal-man, though it at first very naturally astonished him, had soon ceased to be a mystery to the mind of the Maroon. In fact, the presence of the Jew had at once explained the whole thing. Cubina conjectured, and correctly, that Jessuron had released the condemned criminal from his chains, and substituted the body of some dead negro--afterwards to become the representative of Chakra's skeleton. For this the Jew, well-known for wickedness, might have many motives. The Maroon did not stay to speculate upon them. His thoughts were directed to the present and future rather than the past--to the rescue of the Custos, over whom a fearful fate seemed to impend. It need not be denied that Cubina felt a certain friendship for the planter of Mount Welcome. Heretofore it had not been of a very ardent character; but the relations lately established between him and the Custos--in prospect of the process to be taken against their common enemy, the penn-keeper--had, of course, occasioned a fellow-feeling between them. The revelations of that night had strengthened the interest which the Maroon had begun to feel for Mr Vaughan; and it is not to be wondered at that he now felt an honest desire to save the father of her, whom he was henceforth to regard as his own sister. To this end, then, were his thoughts directed. He stayed not long to speculate upon the motives either of Chakra or Jessuron. Those of the myal-man he could guess to a certainty. Revenge for the sentence that exposed him to that fearful fate on the Jumbe Rock. The motives of the Jew were less transparent. His deepest did not appear in the confabulation Cubina had overheard. Even Chakra did not know it. It might be fear of the approaching trial: which by some means the Jew had become apprised of. But no. On reflection, Cubina saw it could not be that: for the conversation of the conspirators betrayed that their plot had been anterior to any information which the Jew could have had of the design of the Custos. It could not be that. No matter what. Mr Vaughan, the father of the generous young lady--she who had promised to make him a present of his beloved bride, and who now proved to be his own stepsister--her father was in danger! Not a moment was to be lost. Without regard to motives, measures must be taken to avert that danger, and punish the miscreants who designed it. For some minutes Cubina remained on the spot, reflecting upon what step should be first taken. Should he go direct to Mount Welcome and warn the Custos, by reporting to him what he had heard? That was the first idea that presented itself to his mind; but at that hour Mr Vaughan would be abed, and he--a Maroon--might not be admitted, unless, indeed, he could show, by pleading the urgency of his errand, good cause for arousing the Custos from his slumber. This, undoubtedly, would he have done, had he known that the scheme of the conspirators had been definitely arranged. But, as already stated, he had not heard Chakra's concluding speech--referring to Cynthia and the bottle of strong medicine; and all the rest only pointed vaguely at some measures to be taken for frustrating the expedition to Spanish Town. It would be time enough, thought he, to meet these measures by going to Mount Welcome in the morning. He could get there before Mr Vaughan should start upon his journey. He could go at an early hour, but one when his appearance would not give cause for any unnecessary remark. It did not occur to him to reflect, that the time of the traveller's departure from Mount Welcome--of which Cubina had not been apprised-- might be anterior to that of his arrival there. The Maroon, thinking that the great Custos was not likely to inconvenience himself by early rising, had no apprehension of missing him by being himself too late. With this confidence, then, he resolved to postpone his visit to Mount Welcome until some hour after daybreak; and, in the meantime, to carry out the preliminaries of a programme, referring to a very different affair, and which had been traced out the day before. The first scene in this programme was to be a meeting with Herbert Vaughan. It had been appointed to take place between them on the following morning; and on the same spot where the two young men had first encountered one another--in the glade, under the great _ceiba_. The interview was of Herbert's own seeking, for, although neither had seen the other since the day on which the runaway had been rescued, some items of intelligence had passed between them--Quaco acting as the medium of their correspondence. Herbert had an object in seeking the interview. He desired a conference with Cubina, in hopes of obtaining from him an explanation of more than one circumstance that had lately arisen to puzzle and perplex him. His patron's suspicious story about the red runaway was one of these circumstances. Herbert had heard from Quaco that the slave was still staying with the Maroons in their mountain town; and had been adopted into their little community--in fact, had himself become a Maroon. This did not correspond with the account given by Jessuron. Of course, Quaco could not state the reasons. The secrecy enjoined by the Custos kept Cubina's tongue tied upon that theme; and his own men knew nothing of the design which their captain had conceived against the Jew. This was not the only matter which mystified the young Englishman, and which he was in hopes of having cleared up by Cubina. His own position at the penn--of late developing itself in a manner to surprise and startle him--also needed elucidation. There was no one near of whom he could ask a question in regard to it, and never in his life did he stand more in need of a confidant. In this dilemma he had thought of his old acquaintance, the Maroon captain. The intelligent mulatto appeared to be the very man. Herbert remembered the promise made at parting, his own conditional acceptance of it, which now appeared prophetic; since the contingency then expressed had come to pass. He had need to avail himself of the friendly proffer; and for that purpose had he made the appointment under the _ceiba_. Equally desirous was the Maroon to meet with the young Englishman. He had preserved a grateful recollection of his generous interference in what appeared a very unequal combat; and, so far from having lost sight of his noble ally, he had been keeping him in mind--after a fashion that was calculated to show the deep gratitude with which Herbert's conduct had inspired him. He longed for an opportunity of giving renewed expression to this gratitude; but he had other reasons for wishing to see the young Englishman just then; and the meeting with. Yola on that same night had an object some what different from the mere repetition of love vows-- already pronounced over and over again, upon a score of distinct occasions. Now that the night had nearly passed, and that the morning was nigh, the Maroon, instead of returning to his mountain home, decided on going back to the glen, and spending the few hours of interval under the shadow of the _ceiba_. Indeed, the time would not allow of his returning home. The sun would be up in three or four hours. A little after sunrise was the appointed time for the meeting with Herbert Vaughan. Before that hour should arrive, he could scarce reach his own "town" and get back again. The thing, therefore, was not to be thought of. To sleep under a tree, or _on_ one, was no new thing for Cubina. It would never occur to him to consider such a couch as inconvenient. In his hog-hunting excursions--often continuing for days and even weeks--he was accustomed to repose upon the cold ground--upon the swirl of withered leaves--upon the naked rock--anywhere. Not much did it matter to a Maroon to be sheltered by a roof--not much, whether a tree shadowed his slumbers, or whether on his grassy couch she saw shining over him the starry canopy of the sky. These were but the circumstances of his every-day life. Having come to the conclusion that his best plan would be to pass the remaining hours of the night under the _ceiba_, he made no further delay by the Duppy's Hole; but turning into the path that led down the slope he proceeded back towards the glade. He moved down the mountain road, slowly, and with some degree of circumspection. He went slowly, because there was no need for haste. It would be several hours before the young Englishman should be abroad. As already stated, a little after sunrise was the time agreed upon, through the messenger Quaco. There was no particular reason for Cubina's being in a hurry to get to the glade--unless he wished to have more time for his nap under the tree. For sleep, however, he had but little relish just then. Wild thoughts, consequent on the strange disclosures he had listened to, were passing through his mind; and these were sufficient to deprive him even of the power of sleep. He moved onward with circumspection from a different motive. He knew that Jessuron, in returning to his penn, must have taken the same path. Should the latter be loitering--since he had only started but a few minutes before--Cubina might overtake him; and he had no wish to see any more of the Jew for that night--or, at all events, to be himself seen by the latter. To avoid all chance of an encounter, he stopped at intervals, and reconnoitred the wood ahead of him. He arrived in the glade without seeing either Jew, Christian, or living being of any kind. The penn-keeper had passed through a good while before. Cubina could tell this by an observation which he made on coming out into the open ground. A mock-bird, perched on a low tree that stood directly by the path, was singing with all its might. The Maroon had heard its melody long before entering the glade. Had any one passed recently, the bird would have forsaken its perch--as it did on the approach of Cubina himself. On reaching the rendezvous, his first concern was to kindle a fire. Sleep in a wet shirt was not to be thought of; and every stitch upon his body had been soaked in swimming the lagoon. Otherwise, it would not have mattered about a fire. He had nothing to cook upon it; nor was he hungry--having already eaten his supper. Kindled by a woodman's skill, a fire soon blazed up; and the hunter stood erect beside it, turning himself at intervals to dry his garments, still dripping with water. He was soon smoking all over, like freshly-slaked lime; and, in order to pass the time more pleasantly, he commenced smoking in another sense-- the _nicotian_--his pipe and tobacco-pouch affording him an opportunity for this indulgence. Possibly the nicotine may have stimulated his reflective powers: for he had not taken more than a dozen puffs at his pipe, when a sudden and somewhat uneasy movement seemed to say that some new reflection had occurred to him. Simultaneous with the movement, a muttered soliloquy escaped from his lips. "_Crambo_!" exclaimed he, giving utterance to his favourite shibboleth; "say he should come an hour after sunrise--at least another we should be in getting to Mount Welcome. _Por Dios_! it may be too late then! Who knows what time the Custos may fancy to set out?" he added, after a pause; "I did not think of that. How stupid of me not to have asked Yola! "_Crambo_!" he again exclaimed, after another interval passed in silent reflection. "It won't do to leave things to chance, where a man's life is in danger. Who knows what scheme these John Crows have contrived? I couldn't hear the whole of their palaver. If Master Vaughan was only here, we might go to Mount Welcome at once. Whatever quarrel he may have with the uncle, he won't wish to let him be murdered--no likelihood of that. Besides, the young fellow's interference in this matter, if I mistake not, would be likely to make all right between them--I'd like that, both for his sake and hers--ah! hers especially, after what Yola's told me. _Santa Virgen_! wouldn't that be a disappointment to the old dog of a Jew! Never mind! I'll put a spark in his powder before he's many days older! The young Englishman must know all. I'll tell him all; and after that, if he consents to become the son-in-law of Jacob Jessuron, he would deserve a dog's--. Bah! it cannot be! I won't believe it till he tells me so himself; and then--. "_Por Dios_!" exclaimed he, suddenly interrupting the above train of reflections and passing to another. "It won't do for me to stay here till he comes. Two hours after sunrise, and the Custos might be cold. I'll go down to the Jew's penn at once, and hang about till I see young Vaughan. He'll be stirring about daybreak, and that'll save an hour, anyhow. A word with him, and we can soon cross to Mount Welcome." In obedience to the thought, and without staying to complete the drying of his habiliments, the Maroon stepped out from the glade; and turning into the track--little used--that led towards the Happy Valley, proceeded in that direction. Volume Two, Chapter XXXIV. A DARK COMPACT. On closing so abruptly the stormy dialogue with his daughter, Jessuron proceeded to his own sleeping apartment--like the others, opening upon the verandah. Before entering the room, he glanced along the gallery, towards the suspended hammock. In that hammock slept Herbert Vaughan. His long sea-voyage had accustomed him to the use of a swing couch--even to a liking for it; and as the night was warm, he had preferred the hammock to his bed in the contiguous chamber. Jessuron had a fear that the angry conversation might have been overheard by the occupant of the hammock; for, in the excitement of temper, neither he nor Judith had observed the precaution of speaking low. The hammock hung motionless, oscillating scarce an inch; and this only under the influence of the night breeze that blew gently along the verandah. Its occupant appeared to be in the middle of a profound slumber. Satisfied of this, the Jew returned to his own chamber. There was no light, and on entering, he sat down in the darkness. The moon shining in through the window gave him light enough to discover a chair; and into that he had flung himself, instead of seeking his couch. For a time he displayed no intention either of undressing or betaking himself to bed; but remained in the high-backed chair in which he had seated himself, buried in some reflection, silent as profound. We are permitted to know his thoughts. "S'help me, she'll marry him!" was that which came uppermost. "She will, s'help me!" continued he, repeating the reflection in an altered form, "shpite of all I can shay or do to prevent her! She ish a very deffil when raished--and she'll have her own way, she will. Ach! what ish to be done?--what ish to be done?" Here a pause occurred in the reflections, while the Jew, with puzzled brain, was groping for an answer to his mental interrogatory. "It ish of no ushe!" he continued, after a time, the expression on his face showing that he had not yet received a definite reply. "It'sh no ushe to opposhe her. She'd run away with thish young man to a certainty!" "I might lock her up, but that ish no good. She'd contrive to escape some time. I couldn't alwaysh keep her under lock and key? No--no, it ish imposhible! "And if she marriesh him without the monish--without the great shugar eshtate! Blesh me! that ish ruin! "It musht not be. If she marriesh him, she musht marry Mount Welcome. She musht! she musht! "But how ish it to be? How ish he to be made the heir?" Again the Jew appeared to puzzle his brains for an answer to this last interrogatory. "Ha!" he exclaimed aloud, at the same time starting from his chair, as if the solution had discovered itself; "I hash it! I hash it!--the Spaniards! I hash it! "Yesh," he continued, striking the ferrule of his umbrella against the floor, "theesh are the very fellows for the shob--worth a shcore of Shakra's shpells, and hish bottles to boot! There ish no fear that their medishin will fail. S'help me, no! Now, ash I think of it," continued he, "that ish the plan--the very besht. There ish no other safe and sure, like that ish. Ha! Cushtos! you shan't eshcape yet. Ha! Shoodith, mine girl, you ish welcome to your way; you shall have the young man after all!" On giving utterance to these ambiguous speeches, the Jew dropped back into his chair, and sat for some minutes in silent but earnest meditation. The matter of his meditation may be known by the act that followed. "There ishn't an hour to be losht!" muttered he, starting to his feet, and hurriedly making for the door; "no, not ash much ash a minute. I musht see them now. The Cushtos ish to shtart at sunrishe. The wench hash said it. They'll joosht have time to get upon hish track. S'help me," he added, opening the door, and glancing up at the sky, "ash I live, it'sh mosht sunrishe now!" Sticking his beaver firmly upon his head, and taking a fresh clutch of the everlasting umbrella, he rushed rapidly out of the verandah, crossed the courtyard, re-passed the porter at his own gate, and then traversing the little enclosure outside, stood in the open fields. He did not stand long--only to look around him, and see that the ground was clear of stragglers. Satisfied on this head, he proceeded onward. At the distance of some three or four hundred yards from the outside stockade stood a detached cabin, more than half hidden among the trees. Towards this he directed his steps. Five minutes sufficed for him to reach it; and, on arriving at the door, he knocked upon it with the butt of his umbrella. "_Quien es_?" spoke a voice from within. "It'sh me, Manuel--me--Shessuron!" replied the Jew. "It's the _Dueno_," (master), was heard muttering one of the Spaniards to the other--for the cabin was the dwelling of these notable negro-hunters. "_Carajo_! what does the old _ladron_ want at this hour?" interrogated the first speaker, in his own tongue, which he knew was not understood by the Jew. "_Maldito_!" added he, in a grumbling voice; "it's not very pleasant to be waked up in this fashion. Besides, I was dreaming of that yellow-skin that killed my dogs. I thought I had my _machete_ up to the hilt in his carcase. What a pity I was only dreaming it!" "_Ta-ta_!" interrupted the other; "be silent, Andres. The old _ganadero_ is impatient. _Vamos_! I'm coming, Senor Don Jacob!" "Make hashte, then!" answered the Jew from without. "I hash important bishness with both of yoush." At this moment the door opened; and he who answered to the name of Manuel appeared in the doorway. Without waiting for an invitation, Jessuron stepped inside the cabin. "Does your business require a candle, senor?" inquired the Spaniard. "No--no!" answered the Jew, quickly and impressively, as if to prevent the striking of a light. "It ish only talk; we can do it in the darknesh." And darkness, black and profound, was most appropriate to the conversation that followed. Its theme was _murder_--the murder of Loftus Vaughan! The plan proposed was for the two Spaniards--fit instruments for such purpose--to waylay the Custos upon the road--in some dark defile of the forest--anywhere--it mattered not, so long as it was on this side of Spanish Town. "Fifty poundsh apeesh; goot Island currenshy," was the reward promised-- offered and accepted. Jessuron instructed his brace of _entrepreneurs_ in all the details of the plan. He had learnt from Cynthia that the Custos intended to take the southern road, calling at Savanna-le-Mer. It was a roundabout way to the capital; but Jessuron had his suspicions why that route had been chosen. He knew that Savanna was the assize town of Cornwall; and the Custos might have business there relating to himself, Prince Cingues, and his two dozen Mandingoes! It was not necessary to instruct the _cacadores_ in these multifarious matters. There was no time to spend on any other than the details of their murderous plan; and these were made known to them with the rapidity of rapine itself. In less than twenty minutes from the time he had entered the cabin the Jew issued out again, and walked back, with joyous mien and agile step, towards his dark dwelling. Volume Two, Chapter XXXV. STALKING THE SLEEPER. Cubina, on arriving near the precincts of the penn, moved forward with increased caution. He knew that the penn-keeper was accustomed to keep dogs and night-watchers around his enclosure, not only to prevent the cattle and other quadrupeds from straying, but also the black bipeds that filled his baracoons. The Maroon was conscious, moreover, that his own attitude towards the slave-merchant was, at this time, one of extreme hostility. His refusal to restore the runaway had been a declaration of open war between them; and the steps he had since taken in conjunction with the Custos--which he now knew to be no longer a secret to the slave-stealer--could not otherwise than render him an object of the Jew's most bitter hatred. Knowing all this, he felt the necessity of caution in approaching the place: for should the penn-keeper's people find him prowling about the premises, they would be certain to capture him, if they could, and carry him before Jacob Jessuron, J.P., where he might expect to be treated to a little "justice's justice." With this prospect before him, in the event of being detected, he approached the Jew's dwelling as cautiously as if he had been a burglar about to break into it. It was towards the back of the house that he was advancing from the fields--or rather, the side of it, opposite to that on which lay the cattle and slave enclosures. He had made a short circuit to approach by this side, conjecturing that the others would be more likely to be guarded by the slave and cattle watchers. The fields, half returned to the condition of a forest, rendered it easy to advance under cover. A thick, second growth of logwood, bread-nut, and calabash trees covered the ground; and nearer the walls the old garden, now ruinate, still displayed a profusion of fruit-trees growing in wild luxuriance, such as guavas, mangoes, paw-paws, orange and lemon, sops, custard-apples, the akee, and avocada pear. Here and there a cocoa-palm raised its tufted crown far above the topmost spray of the humbler fruit-trees, its long, feathery fronds gently oscillating under the silent zephyrs of the night. On getting within about a hundred yards of the house Cubina formed the intention not to go any nearer just then. The plan he had traced out was to station himself in some position where he could command a view of the verandah--or as much of it as it was possible to see from one place. There he would remain until daybreak. His conjecture was, that Herbert Vaughan would make his appearance as soon as the day broke, and this was all the more probable on account of his engagement with the Maroon himself. The _protege_ of Jessuron would show himself in the verandah on leaving his chamber. He could not do otherwise, since all the sleeping-rooms-- and Cubina knew this--opened outward upon the gallery. Once seen, a signal by some means--by Cubina showing himself outside, or calling the young Englishman by name--would bring about the desired interview, and hasten the execution of the project which the Maroon had conceived. A slight elevation of the ground, caused by the crumbling ruins of an old wall, furnished the _vidette_ station desired; and the Maroon mounting upon this, took his stand to watch the verandah. He could see the long gallery from end to end on two sides of the dwelling, and he knew that it extended no farther. Though the house glistened under a clear moonlight, the verandah itself was in shade; as was also the courtyard in front--the old grey pile projecting its sombre shadow beyond the walls that surrounded it. At the end, however, the moonbeams, slanting diagonally from the sky, poured their light upon the floor of the verandah, there duplicating the strong bar-like railing with which the gallery was inclosed. The Maroon had not been many minutes upon the stand he had taken, when an object in the verandah arrested his attention. As his eye became more accustomed to the shadowy darkness inside, he was able to make out something that resembled a hammock, suspended crosswise, and at some height above the balustrade of the verandah. It was near that end where the moonlight fell upon the floor. As the moon continued to sink lower in the sky, her beams were flung farther along the gallery; and the object which had attracted the attention of Cubina came more into the light. It was a hammock, and evidently occupied. The taut cordage told that some one was inside it. "If it should be the young Englishman himself!" was the conjectural reflection of Cubina. If so, it might be possible to communicate with him at once, and save the necessity of waiting till daybreak. How was the Maroon to be satisfied that it was he? It might be some one else! It might be Ravener, the overseer; and Cubina desired no conversation with him. What step could he take to solve this uncertainty? As the Maroon was casting about for some scheme that would enable him to discover who was the occupant of the hammock, he noticed that the moonbeams had now crept nearly up to it, and in a few minutes more would be shining full upon it. He could already perceive, though very dimly, the face and part of the form of the sleeper inside. Could he only get to some elevated position a little nearer to the house, he might be able to make out who it was. He scanned the ground with a quick glance. A position sufficiently elevated presented itself, but one not so easy to be reached. A cocoa-nut palm stood near the wall, whose crest of radiating fronds overlooked the verandah, drooping towards it. Could he but reach this tree unobserved, and climb up to its crown, he might command a close view of him who slept in the swinging couch. A second sufficed to determine him; and, crawling silently forward, he clasped the stem of the cocoa-tree, and "swarmed" upward. The feat was nothing to Cubina, who could climb like a squirrel. On reaching the summit of the palm, he placed himself in the centre of its leafy crown--where he had the verandah directly under his eyes, and so near that he could almost have sprung into it. The hammock was within ten feet of him; in a downward direction. He could have pitched his tobacco-pipe upon the face of the sleeper. The moonlight was now full upon it. It was the face of Herbert Vaughan! Cubina recognised it at the first glance; and he was reflecting how he could awake the young Englishman without causing an alarm, when he heard a door turn upon its hinges. The sound came up from the courtyard; and on looking in that direction, Cubina saw that the gate leading out to the cattle enclosure was in the act of being opened. Presently a man passed through, entering from the outside; and the gate, by some other person unseen, was closed behind him. He who had entered walked directly towards the dwelling; and, mounting the steps, made his way into the verandah. While crossing the courtyard, the moonlight, for a moment, fell upon his face, discovering to Cubina the sinister countenance of the Jew. "I must have passed him on the path!" reflected the Maroon. "But no, that couldn't be," he added, correcting himself; "I saw his return track in the mud-hole just by. He must have got here before me. Like enough, he's been back, and out again on some other dark business. _Crambo_! it's true enough what I've heard say of him: that he hardly ever goes to sleep. Our people have met him in the woods at all hours of the night. I can understand it now that I know the partner he's got up there. _For Dios_! to think of Chakra being still alive!" The Maroon paused in his reflections; and kept his eye sharply bent upon the shadowy form that, like a spirit of darkness, was silently flitting through the corridor. He was in hopes that the Jew would soon retire to his chamber. So long as the latter remained outside, there was not the slightest chance for Cubina to communicate with the occupant of the hammock without being observed. Worse than that, the Maroon was now in danger of being himself seen. Exposed as he was upon the cocoa--with nothing to shelter him from observation but its few straggling fronds--he ran every risk of his presence being detected. It was just a question of whether the Jew might have occasion to look upwards; if so, he could scarce fail to perceive the dark _silhouette_ of a man, outlined, as it was, against the light blue of the sky. That would be a discovery of which Cubina dreaded the consequences, and with reason. It might not only frustrate the intended interview with the young Englishman, but might end in his own capture and detention-- the last a contingency especially to be avoided. Under this apprehension the Maroon stirred neither hand nor foot; but kept himself silent and rigid. In this attitude of immobility he looked like some statue, placed in a sedentary posture upon the summit of a Corinthian column--the crushed crocus represented by the fronds of the palm-tree. Volume Two, Chapter XXXVI. A MISSION FOR THE MAN-HUNTERS. Cubina for some time preserved his constrained position. He dared not derange it; since the Jew still stayed in the shadowy corridor-- sometimes moving about; but more generally standing at the head of the wooden stairway, and looking across the courtyard, towards the gate through which he had come in. It seemed as if he was expecting some one to enter after him. This conjecture of Cubina's proved correct. The great gate was heard once more turning on its hinges; and, after a word or two spoken by the black porter outside, and answered by a voice of different tone, two men were seen stepping inside the court. As they passed under the moonlight, Cubina recognised them. Their lithe, supple forms, and swarthy angular lineaments, enabled him to identify the Cuban _cacadores_. They walked straight up to the stairway, at the bottom of which both stopped. The Jew, on seeing them inside the gate, had gone back into a room that opened upon the verandah. He was gone but for an instant; and, coming out again, he returned to the top of the stairway. One of the Spaniards, stepping up, reached out, and received something from his hand. What it was Cubina could not have told, but for the words of the Jew that accompanied the action. "There'sh the flashk," said he; "it ish the besht brandy in Shamaica. And now," he continued, in an accent of earnest appeal, "my goot fellish! you hashn't a minute to shpare. Remember the big monish you're to gain; and don't let thish runaway eshcape!" "No fear about that, Senor Don Jacob," replied he who received the flask. "_Carrai_! he'll have long legs to get out of our way--once we're well on the trail of him." And without further dialogue or delay, the _cacador_ descended the stair, rejoined his comrade, and both hurriedly re-crossing the courtyard, disappeared through the door by which they had entered. "An expedition after some poor slave!" muttered Cubina to himself. "I hope the scoundrels won't catch him, anyhow, and I pity him if they do. After all, they're no great hands at the business, spite of their braggadocio." With this professional reflection, the Maroon once more bent his eyes upon the form that remained in the shadow of the verandah. "Surely," conjectured he, "the old John Crow will now go to his roost? Or has he more of the like business on hand? Till he's out of that I can't make a move. I durstn't stir, not for the life of me!" To the joy of Cubina, the Jew at that moment stepped back into his chamber--the door of which had been left standing open. "Good!" mentally ejaculated the Maroon; "I hope he'll stay in his hole, now that he's in it. I don't want to see any more of him this night. _Crambo_!" As the exclamation indicated, the congratulatory speech was cut short by the re-appearance of the Jew; not in his blue body-coat, as before, but wrapped in a sort of gabardine, or ample dressing-gown, the skirts of which fell down to his feet. His hat had been removed--though the skull-cap, of dirty whitish hue, still clung around his temples; for it was never doffed. To the consternation of Cubina he came out, dragging a chair after him: as if he meant to place it in the verandah and take a seat upon it. And this was precisely his intention, for, after drawing the chair--a high-backed one--out into the middle of the gallery, he planted it firmly upon the floor, and then dropped down into it. The moment after, Cubina saw sparks, accompanied by a sound that indicated the concussion of flint and steel. The Jew was striking a light! For what purpose? The smell of burning tobacco borne along the gallery, and ascending to Cubina's nostrils upon the summit of the palm, answered that question. A red coal could be seen gleaming between the nose and chin of the Israelite. He was smoking a cigar! Cubina saw this with chagrin. How long would the operation last? Half-an-hour--an hour, perhaps? Ay, maybe till daybreak--now not very distant. The situation had changed for the worse. The Maroon could not make the slightest move towards the awakening of Herbert. He dared not shift his own position, lest his presence should be betrayed to the Jew. He dared not stir upon the tree, much less come down from it! He saw that he was in a fix; but there was no help for it. He must wait till the Jew had finished his cigar: though there was no certainty that even that would bring the _seance_ to a termination. Summoning all the patience he could command, he kept his perch, silent and motionless, though anxious, and suffering from chagrin. For a long hour, at least, did he continue in this desperate dilemma-- until his limbs ached underneath him, and his composure was well-nigh exhausted. Still the Jew stuck to his chair, as if glued to the seat-- silent and motionless as Cubina himself. The latter fancied that not only a first cigar, but a second, and, perhaps, a third, had been lighted and smoked; but in the sombre shadow, in which the smoker sat, he could not be certain how many. More than one, however, from the time spent in the operation; for during the full period of an hour a red coal could be seen glowing at the tip of that aquiline proboscis. Cubina now perceived what troubled him exceedingly--the blue dawn breaking over the tops of the trees! By slightly turning his head he could see the golden gleam of sunlight tinting the summit of the Jumbe Rock! "_Crambo_! what was to be done?" so ran his reflections. If he stayed there much longer he might be sure of being discovered. The slaves would soon be starting to their work--the overseer and drivers would soon be out and about. One or other could not fail to see him upon the tree! He would be lucky now to escape himself, without thinking any longer of the hammock or him who slept within its tight-drawn meshes. While considering how he might slip unperceived from the tree he glanced once more towards the occupant of the chair. The gradually brightening dawn, which had been filling him with apprehension, now favoured him. It enabled him to perceive that the Jew was asleep! With his head thrown back against the sloping upholstery, Jessuron had at last surrendered to the powerful divinity of dreams. His goggles were off; and Cubina could see that the wrinkled lids were closed over his sunken orbs. Undoubtedly he was asleep. His whole attitude confirmed it. His legs lay loosely over the front of the chair--his arms hung down at the sides: and the blue umbrella rested upon the floor at his feet. This last evidence of somnolency was not even counterbalanced by the stump of a cigar, burnt close, and still sticking between his teeth! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ END OF VOLUME TWO. Volume Three, Chapter I. A STARTLING SUMMONS. On the part of Cubina it was now a struggle between prudence and a desire to carry out his original programme--whether he should not go off alone, or still try to communicate with the sleeper in the hammock. In the former case he could return to the glade, and there await the coming of Herbert Vaughan as at first fixed. But, by so doing, at least two hours would be lost; and even then, would the young Englishman be punctual to his appointment? Even against his inclination something might occur to cause delay--a thing all the more probable, considering the circumstances that surrounded him; considering the irregularity of events in the domicile where he dwelt. But even a delay of two hours! In that interval, Loftus Vaughan might have ceased to live! These thoughts coursed quickly through the mind of the Maroon-- accustomed as it was to perceptions almost intuitive. He saw that he must either go by himself to Mount Welcome, or awake the sleeper at once. Perhaps he would have decided on the former course, but that he had other motives for an interview with Herbert Vaughan, almost as immediate in their necessity as that which related to the safety of the Custos. He had as yet no reason to believe that the peril in which the planter stood was so proximate as it really was: for it never occurred to him that the departure of the two Spaniards had any other object than that which related to their calling--the capture of some runaway slave. Had he suspected the design of the two ruffians--had he known the mission of murder on which the slave-merchant had dispatched them--he would scarce have stayed for aught else than to have provided the means of intercepting their design. In the dark about all this, he did not believe there was such necessity for extreme haste; though he knew something was on foot against the Custos which would not allow of much loss of time. At that moment the occupant of the hammock turned over with a yawn. "He is going to awake!" thought Cubina; "now is my time." To the disappointment of the Maroon, the limbs of the speaker again became relaxed; and he returned to a slumber profound as before. "What a pity!" murmured the Maroon; "if I could only speak a word. But no. Yonder John Crow is more like to hear it than he. I shall throw something down into the hammock. Maybe that will awake him?" Cubina drew out his tobacco-pipe. It was the only thing he could think of at the moment; and, guiding his arm with a good aim, he pitched it into the hammock. It fell upon the breast of the sleeper. It was too light. It awoke him not. "_Crambo_! he sleeps like an owl at noontide! What can I do to make him feel me? If I throw down my _machete_, I shall lose the weapon; and who knows I may not need it before I'm out of this scrape? Ha! one of these cocoa-nuts will do. That, I dare say, will be heavy enough to startle him." Saying this, the Maroon bent downward; and extending his arm through the fronds beneath him, detached one of the gigantic nuts from the tree. Poising it for a moment to secure the proper direction, he flung the ponderous fruit upon the breast of Herbert. Fortunately the sides of the hammock hindered it from falling upon the floor, else the concussion might also have awakened the sleeper in the chair. With a start, the young Englishman awoke, at the same time raising himself upon his elbow. Herbert Vaughan was not one of the exclamatory kind, or he might have cried out. He did not, however; though the sight of the huge brown pericarp, lying between his legs, caused him considerable surprise. "Where, in the name of Ceres and Pomona, did you rain down from?" muttered he, at the same time turning his eyes up for an answer to his classical interrogatory. In the grey light he perceived the palm, its tall column rising majestically above him. He knew the tree well, every inch of its outlines; but the dark _silhouette_ on its top--the form of a human being _couchant_, and crouching--that was strange to him. The light, however, was now sufficiently strong to enable him to distinguish, not only the form, but the face and features of his _ci-devant_ entertainer under the greenwood tree--the Maroon captain, Cubina! Before he could say a word to express his astonishment, a gesture, followed by a muttered speech from the Maroon, enjoined him to silence. "Hush! not a word, Master Vaughan!" spoke the latter, in a half whisper, at the same time that he glanced significantly along the corridor. "Slip out of your hammock, get your hat, and follow me into the forest. I have news for you--important! Life and death! Steal out; and, for your life, don't let _him_ see you!" "Who?" inquired Herbert, also speaking in a whisper. "Look yonder!" said the Maroon, pointing to the sleeper in the chair. "All right! Well?" "Meet me in the glade. Come at once--not a minute to be lost! _Those who should be dear to you are in danger_!" "I shall come," said Herbert, making a motion to extricate himself from the hammock. "Enough! I must be gone. You will find me under the cotton-tree." As he said this, the Maroon forsook his seat, so long and irksomely preserved--and, sliding down the slender trunk of the palm, like a sailor descending the mainstay of his ship, he struck off at a trot, and soon disappeared amid the second growth of the old sugar plantation. Herbert Vaughan was not slow to follow upon his track. Some disclosures of recent occurrence--so recent as the day preceding--had prepared him for a somewhat _bizarre finale_ to the fine life he had of late been leading; and he looked to the Maroon for enlightenment. But that strange speech of Cubina stimulated him more than all. "_Those who should be dear to you are in danger_!" There was but one being in the world entitled to this description. Kate Vaughan! Could it be she? Herbert stayed not to reflect. His hat and cloak hung in the chamber close by; and in two seconds of time both were upon him. Another second sufficed to give him possession of his gun. He was too active, too reckless, to care for a stairway at that moment, or at that height from the ground--too prudent to descend by that which there was in front, though guarded only by a sleeper! Laying his leg over the balustrade, he leaped to the earth below; and, following the path taken by the Maroon, like him was soon lost among the second growth of the ruinate garden. Volume Three, Chapter II. BLUE DICK. In making his hurried departure from the Happy Valley, Herbert Vaughan narrowly escaped observation. A delay of ten minutes longer would have led to his design being interrupted; or, at all events, to his being questioned as to the object of his early excursion; and, in all probability, followed and watched. He had scarce passed out of sight of the penn, when he heard the jangling tones of a swing bell--harshly reverberating upon the still air of the morning. The sounds did not startle him. He knew it was not an alarm; only the plantation bell, summoning the slaves to enter upon their daily toil. Knowing that it must have awakened the sleeper in the chair, he congratulated himself on his good luck at getting away, before the signal had been sounded--at the same time that it caused him to quicken his steps towards the _rendezvous_ given by the Maroon. Cubina, though from a greater distance, had also heard the bell, and had in a similar manner interpreted the signal, though with a greater degree of uneasiness as to the effect it might have produced. He, too, had conjectured that the sounds must have awakened the sleeper in the chair. Both had reasoned correctly. At the first "ding-dong" of the bell, the Jew had been startled from his cat-like slumber, and, rising erect in his seat, he glanced uneasily around him. "Blesh my soul!" he exclaimed, spitting out the bit of burnt cigar that clung adheringly to his lips. "It ish broad daylight. I musht have been ashleep more ash two hours. Ach! theesh are times for a man to keep awake. The Cushtos should be on his road by thish; and if theesh Spanish hunters do their bishness as clefferly as they hash promise, he'll shleep sounder thish night ash effer he hash done before. Blesh my soul!" he again exclaimed, with an accent that betokened a change in the tenor of his thoughts. "Supposhe they make bungle of the bishness? Supposhe they should get caught in the act? Ha! what would be the reshult of that? There ish danger--shtrike me dead if there ishn't! Blesh me! I neffer thought of it," continued he, after some moments spent in reflection of an apparently anxious kind. "They might turn King'sh evidence, and implicate me--me, a shustice! To save themselves, they'd be likely to do ash much ash that. Yesh; and eefen if they didn't get taken in the act, still there ish danger. That Manuel hash a tongue ash long ash his _machete_. He'sh a prattling fool. I musht take care to get him out of the Island--both of them--ash soon ash I can." In his apprehensions the Jew no longer included Chakra: for he was now under the belief that the dark deed would be accomplished by the Spanish assassins; and that to _steel_, not _poison_, would the Custos yield up his life. Even should Cynthia have succeeded in administering the deadly dose--a probability on which he no longer needed to rely--even should the Custos succumb to poison, the myal-man was not to be feared. There was no danger of such a confederate declaring himself. As for Cynthia, the Jew had never dealt directly with her; and therefore she was without power to implicate him in the hellish contract. "I musht take some shteps," said he, rising from his chair, and making a feint towards retiring to his chamber, as if to adjust his dress. "What ish besht to be done? Let me think," he added, pausing near the door, and standing in an attitude of reflection; "yesh! yesh! that's it! I musht send a messensher to Mount Welcome. Some one can go on an excushe of bishness. It will look strange, since we're such bad neighboursh of late? No matter for that. The Cushtos is gone, I hope; and Rafener can send the message to Mishter Trusty. That will bring ush newsh. Here, Rafener!" continued he, calling to his overseer, who, cart-whip in hand, was moving through the court below, "I wan't ye, Mishter Rafener!" Ravener, uttering a grunt to signify that he had heard the summons, stepped up to the stairway of the verandah; and stood silently waiting to know for what he was wanted. "Hash you any bishness about which you could send a messenger to Mishter Trusty--to Mount Welcome, I mean?" "Humph! There's business a plenty for that. Them consarned hogs of the Custos has got into our corn-patch up the valley, and played pitch and toss with the young plants. Ye must get damages for it." "That ish right--that ish right." "Humph! You won't say it's right when once you've seen the mess they've made. We'll have a sorry show at crop time, I tell ye." "Neffer mind that--we'll have an action. Ishe not let it pass; but joosh now I hash other bishness on hand. You send a messensher to Mishter Trusty, and tell him about it. And, harksh you, Mishter Rafener! I want this messensher to be dishcreet. I want him to find out whether the Cushtos ish at home--without making a direct ashking about it. I have heard that he ish going on a shourney; and I want to know if he hash set out yet. You undershtands me?" "All right," replied Ravener, with an air that betokened comprehension, "All right! I'll send a fellow that'll get an answer to that question without asking it. Blue Dick can do that." "Ah! true, Blue Dick ish the one! And, harksh you, Mishter Rafener! tell him to try if he can see the mulatta wench, Cynthy." "What is he to say to her?" "He ish to tell her to come ofer here, if she hash an opportunity. I wants to shpeak with _her_. But, mind ye, Mishter Rafener! Dick ish to be careful what he saysh and doesh. He musht talk with the girl _only in whishpers_." "I'll instruct him in all that," replied the overseer, in a tone of confidence. "You want him to go now?" "Thish minute--thish very minute. I hash a reason for being in a hurry. Send him off as soon ash you can." Ravener, without further parley, walked off to dispatch his messenger; and a few minutes after he had gone out of the court, that yellow "complected" Mercury, known by the _sobriquet_ of "Blue Dick," was seen "streaking" it along the path which conducted from the Jew's penn to the mansion of Mount Welcome. Volume Three, Chapter III. THE MYSTERIOUS ABSENCE. The brief conversation between Jessuron and his overseer had taken place _sotto voce_: as it was not desirable that it should be overheard by any one--much less by the nephew of him who was its chief subject, and who was supposed to be suspended in a hammock not ten paces from the spot. The hammock, however, was not visible from the front stairway--being hung in that part of the verandah that extended along the other side of the house. On the departure of Ravener from his presence, the Jew proceeded with his original intention--to put his person in order for the day. His toilette did not take long. After a very brief absence within his room, he reappeared on the gallery in the same pocketed blue coat, breeches, and tops, that served him for all purposes and occasions. The coat was buttoned over his breast, the whitey-brown beaver once more upon his head, and the goggles adjusted on the knife-back ridge of his nose. It was evident he intended a stroll. This was all the more certain as he had regained the umbrella--which had dropped from him during sleep--and, holding it in his grasp, stood by the top of the stairway, as if on the eve of setting forth. Whither was he going? For what purpose, so early? His muttered soliloquy declared his design. "It musht be to-day--yesh, I musht get them married thish very day; and before any newsh can come. The report of the Cushtos' death might shpoil all my plans. Who knowsh what the young man might do, if he hash only a hint of hish goot luck? After all, may be, Shoodith ish not so shure of him? She hash said something last night. Ha! it musht be thish day. It is no ushe going to the rector of the parish. He ish the Cushtos' friend, and might make some obsheckshun. That won't do--s'help me, no! I musht go to the other. Hee'sh poor, and won't sthand shilly-shally. Besides, hish knot would be shoost as hard to looshe as if it wash tied by the Bishop of Shamaica. He'll do; and if _he_ won't, then I knowsh one who will--for monish; ay, anything for monish!" After this soliloquy he was about setting foot upon one of the steps with the intention of descending, when a thought appeared to strike him; and turning away from the stair, he walked with shuffling gentleness along the gallery, towards that part of the verandah where the hammock was suspended. "I supposhe the young shentleman is shtill ashleep. Shentleman, indeed! _now_ he ish all that, or will be the next time he goesh to shleep. Well, if he ish, I mushn't dishturb him. Rich shentlemen mushn't have their shlumbers interrupted. _Ach_!" The exclamation escaped from his lips, as, on rounding the angle of the verandah, he came within sight of the hammock. "'Tish empty, I declare! He'sh early astir! In hish room, I supposhe?" _Sans ceremonie_, the Jew kept on along the gallery, until he had arrived in front of his book-keeper's private apartment. There he stopped, looking inward. The door was ajar--almost wide open. He could see the greater portion of the interior through the door; the rest of it through the jalousies. There was no one in the room--either sitting, standing, or moving about! "Mashter Vochan! Are you there?" The interrogatory was put rather by way of confirming his observation: for he saw there was no one inside. "Where are you, Mashter Herbert?" continued he, repeating the interrogatory in an altered form--at the same time craning his neck into the apartment, and glancing all around it. "Ash I live, it'sh empty, like the hammock! He musht have gone out. Yesh. Hish hat's not here-- his cloak ish not here; and I see no gun. He alwaysh kept hish gun joosh there. How hash he passed me without my hearing his foot? I shleeps so ash I can hear a cat shtealin' over the floor! Hash he gone by the shtairway at all? Ash I live, no! Blesh my soul! there is a track where somebody musht have shumped over the railing down into the garden! S'help me, it ish his track! There'sh no other but him to have made it. What the deffil ish the young fellow after this morning? I hope there ish nothing wrong in it." On missing the young Englishman out of his hammock and room, the penn-keeper felt at first no particular uneasiness. His _protege_ had, no doubt, gone out for a stroll in the woods. He had taken his gun along with him, to have a shot at some early bird looking for the early worm. He had done so many a time before--though never at so early an hour. The hour, however, was not enough of itself to cause any surprise to his patron; nor even the fact of his having leaped over the verandah railing. He might have seen the owner of the house asleep in his chair near the head of the stairway; and, not wishing to disturb him, had chosen the other mode of exit. There was nothing in all this to cause uneasiness. Nor would the Jew have thought anything of it had it not been for some other circumstances which quickly came under his notice--guiding him to the suspicion that something _might be amiss_. The first of these circumstances was that Herbert, although having taken his gun along with him, had left behind his shot-belt and powder-flask! Both were there in his room, hanging upon their peg. They did not escape the sharp glance of the Jew, who at once began to draw conclusions from their presence. If the young man had gone out on a shooting excursion, it was strange that he did not take his ammunition along with him! Perhaps, however, he had seen some sort of game near the house, and, in his hurry to get a shot at it, had gone off hastily--trusting to the two charges which his gun contained. In that case he would not go far, and in a few minutes might be expected back. A few minutes passed, and a great many minutes--until a full hour had transpired--and still nothing was heard or seen of the book-keeper, though messengers had been dispatched in search of him, and had quartered all the ground for half a mile around the precincts of the penn. Jessuron--whose matutinal visit to the minister had been postponed by the occurrence--began to look grave. "It ish shtrange," said he, speaking to his daughter, who had now arisen, and was far from appearing cheerful; "shtrange he should go abroad in thish fashion, without shaying a word to either of ush!" Judith made no reply: though her silence could not conceal a certain degree of chagrin, from which she was evidently suffering. Perhaps she had even more reason than the "rabbi" to suspect there was something amiss? Certainly, something disagreeable--a misunderstanding at least, had arisen between her and Herbert on the preceding day. Her speech had already given some slight hint of it; but much more her manner, which, on the night before, and now unmistakably in the morning, betrayed a mixture of melancholy and suppressed indignation. It did not add to the equanimity of her temper, when the house wench-- who was unslinging the hammock in which Herbert had slept--announced it to contain two articles scarce to be expected in such a place--a cocoa-nut and a tobacco-pipe! The pipe could not have belonged to Herbert Vaughan: he never smoked a pipe; and as for the cocoa-nut, it had evidently been plucked from the tree standing near. The trunk of the palm exhibited scratches as if some one had climbed up it, and above could be seen the freshly-torn peduncle, where the fruit had been wrenched from its stalk! What should Herbert Vaughan have been doing up the palm-tree, flinging cocoa-nuts into his own couch? His unaccountable absence was becoming surrounded by circumstances still more mysterious. One of the cattle-herds, who had been sent in search of him, now coming in, announced a new fact, of further significance. In the patch of muddy soil, outside the garden wall, the herd had discovered the book-keepers track, going up towards the hills; and near it, on the same path, the footprint of another man, who must have gone over the ground twice, returning as he had come! This cattle-herd, though of sable skin, was a skilled tracker. His word might be trusted. It was trusted, and produced an unpleasant impression both on Jessuron and Judith--an impression more unpleasant as time passed, and the book-keeper was still unreturned. The father fumed and fretted; he did more--he threatened. The young Englishman was his debtor, not only for a profuse hospitality, but for _money advanced_. Was he going to prove ungrateful? A defaulter? Ah! little had that pecuniary obligation to do with the chagrin that was vexing the Jew Jessuron--far less with those emotions, like the waves of a stormy sea, that had begun to agitate the breast of his daughter; and which every slight circumstance, like a strong wind, was lashing into fury and foam. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Blue Dick came back. He had executed his errand adroitly. The Custos was gone upon a journey; he had started exactly at the hour of daybreak. "Goot!" said Jessuron; "but where is hish nephew?" Blue Dick had seen Cynthia; and whispered a word in her ear, as the overseer had instructed him. She would come over to the penn, as soon as she could find an opportunity for absence from Mount Welcome. "Goot!" answered the Jew. "But where is Mashter Vochan? where hash he betaken himshelf?" "Where?" mentally interrogated Judith, as the noonday sun saw the black clouds coursing over her brow. Volume Three, Chapter IV. A SHADOWED SPIRIT. The sun was just beginning to re-gild the glittering flanks of the Jumbe Rock, his rays not yet having reached the valley below, when lights streaming through the jalousied windows of Mount Welcome proclaimed that the inmates of the mansion were already astir. Lights shone through the lattices of several distinct windows--one from the Custos' sleeping room, another from the apartment of Lilly Quasheba, while a brilliant stream, pouring through the jalousies in front, betokened that the chandelier was burning in the great hall. From Smythje's chamber alone came no sign either of light or life. The windows were dark, the curtains close drawn. Its occupant was asleep. Yes, though others were stirring around him, the aristocratic Smythje was still sleeping as soundly and silently as if dead, perhaps dreaming of the fair "cweeole queetyaws," and his twelve conquests now happily extended to the desired baker's dozen, by the successful declaration of yesterday. Though a light still burned in the sleeping apartment of the Custos, and also in that of Kate, neither father nor daughter were in their own rooms. Both were in the great hall, seated by a table, on which, even at this early hour, breakfast had been spread. It was not the regular matutinal meal, as certain circumstances showed. Mr Vaughan only was eating; while Kate appeared to be present merely for the purpose of pouring out his coffee, and otherwise attending upon him. The costume in which the Custos appeared differed from his every-day wear. It was that of a man about to set forth upon a journey--in short, a travelling costume. A surtout, of strong material, with ample outside pockets; boots reaching above his knees; a belt, with pistol holsters, around his waist--a guard against any chance encounter with runaway negroes; a felt hat, lying on a chair beside him, and a camlet cloak, hanging over the back of the same chair--all proclaimed the purpose of a journey, and one about to be entered upon within a few minutes of time. A pair of large silver spurs buckled over his boots, told also the mode of travel intended. It was to be on horseback. This was further manifested by the fact that two horses were at that moment standing at the bottom of the stone stairs outside, their forms dimly visible through the blue dawn. Both were saddled, bridled, and equipped, with a black groom by their side, holding them in hand-- himself in travelling toggery. Valises, buckled upon the croup, and saddlebags suspended across the cantle, showed that the travellers were to carry their luggage along with them. The object of the intended journey is already known. Mr Vaughan was about to put into execution a design long delayed--to perform a duty which he owed to his daughter, and which, if left unaccomplished, would seriously imperil the prosperity and happiness of her future life. He was about proceeding to the capital of the Island, to obtain from the Assembly that special act of grace, which they alone could give; and which would free his daughter from those degrading disabilities the Black Code had inflicted upon all of her unfortunate race. Six lines from the Assembly, with the governors signature attached, though it might not extinguish the _taint_, nor the _taunt_ of malevolent lips, would, nevertheless, remove all obstacles to hereditament; and Kate Vaughan could then become the heiress to her own father's property, without fear of failure. To sue for this act and obtain it was the purpose of that journey upon which Loftus Vaughan was on the eve of setting forth. He had no apprehension of a failure. Had he been only a book-keeper or small tradesman, he might have been less sanguine of success; but, Custos of an important precinct, with scores of friends in the Assembly, he knew that he would only have to ask and it would be given him. For all that, he was not setting out in very high spirits. The unpleasant prospect of having such a long and arduous journey to make was a source of vexation to him: for the Custos liked an easy life, and hated the fatigue of travel. But there was something besides that dispirited him. For some days past he had found his health giving way. He had lost appetite, and was rapidly losing flesh. A constant and burning thirst had seized upon him, which, from morning to night, he was continually trying to quench. The plantation doctor was puzzled with the symptoms, and his prescriptions had failed in giving relief. Indeed, so obstinate and _death-like_ was the disease becoming, that the sufferer would have given up his intention of going to Spanish Town--at least, till a more fitting time--but for a hope that, in the capital, some experienced physician might be found who would comprehend his malady and cure it. Indulging in this hope, he was determined to set forth at all hazards. There was still another incubus upon his spirits, and one, perhaps, that weighed upon them more heavily than aught else. Ever since the death of Chakra--or rather, since the glimpse he had got of Chakra's ghost--a sort of supernatural dread had taken possession of the mind of Loftus Vaughan. Often had he speculated on that fearful phenomenon, and wondered what it could have been. Had he alone witnessed the apparition, he might have got over the awe it had occasioned him: for then could he have attributed it to an illusion of the senses--a mere freak of his imagination, excited, as it was at the time, by the spectacle on the Jumbe Rock. But Trusty had seen the ghost, too! and Trusty's mind was not one of the imaginative kind. Besides, how could both be deluded by the same fancy, and at the same instant of time? Turn the thing in his own mind as he might, there was something that still remained inexplicable--something that caused the heart of the Custos to tingle with fear every time that he thought of Chakra and his ghost. This intermittent awe had oppressed him ever since the day of his visit to the Jumbe Rock--that day described; for he never went a second time. Nor yet did he afterwards care to venture alone upon the wooded mountain. He dreaded a second encounter with that weird apparition. In time, perhaps, the fear would have died out, and, in fact, was dying out--the intervals during which it was not felt becoming gradually more extended. Loftus Vaughan, though he could never have forgotten the myal-man, nor the terrible incidents of his death, might have ceased to trouble himself with the oughts about Chakra's ghost, but for a circumstance that was reported to him on the day that Smythje sank into the dead-wood. On the afternoon of that day, as Quashie was making his way homeward through the forest and over the hills, the darkey declared that, on passing near a noted spot called the Duppy's Hole, he had "see'd de gose ob ole Chakra!" Quashie, on reaching home, announced the fact, with chattering teeth, and eyes rolling wildly in their sockets; and, though the loutish boy was only laughed at by his fellow-slaves, the statement made a most painful impression on the mind of his master--restoring it to the state of habitual terror that had formerly held possession of it, and from which it had become only partially relieved. The circumstance related by Quashie--still fresh in the thoughts of the Custos--had contributed not a little to increase that feeling of dejection and discouragement, under which he suffered at the moment of setting out upon his proposed expedition. Volume Three, Chapter V. THE STIRRUP-CUP. If Loftus Vaughan was in low spirits, not more joyful seemed his daughter, as she assisted at that early _dejeuner_. On the contrary, a certain sadness overspread the countenance of the young Creole; as if reflected from the spirit of her father. A stranger to the circumstances that surrounded her might have fancied that it was sympathy--at seeing him so dull and downcast--mingled with the natural regret she might have at his leaving home, and fop so lone: an absence. But one who scrutinised more closely could not fail to note in those fair features an expression of sadness that must have sprung from a different and deeper source. The purpose of her father's journey may, in part, explain the melancholy that marked the manner of the young Creole. She knew that purpose. She had learnt it from her father's lips, though only on the evening before. Then, for the first time in her life, was she made acquainted with those adverse circumstances that related to her birth and parentage: for up to that hour she had remained ignorant of her position, socially as well as legally. Then, for the first time, was fully explained to her her own true status in the social scale--the disabilities and degradation under which she suffered. It was to remove these disabilities--and wipe out, as it were, the degradation--that her father was now going forth. The young girl did not fail to feel gratitude; but perhaps the feeling might have been stronger had her father taken less trouble to make her sensible of the service he was about to perform--using it as a lever to remove that reluctance to the union with Smythje which still lingered. During the few minutes that Mr Vaughan was engaged in eating his breakfast, not many words passed between them. The viands, luxurious enough, were scarce more than tasted. The intended traveller had no appetite for the solids with which the table was spread, and seemed to care only for drink. After quaffing off several cups of coffee, solely from a desire to quench thirst, and without eating bread or anything else along with it, he rose from the table, and prepared to take his departure. Mr Trusty entering, announced that the horses and the attendant groom were ready, and waiting outside. The Custos donned his travelling hat, and with the assistance of Kate and her maid Yola, put on his sleeved cloak: as the air of the early morning was raw and cold. While these final preparations were being made, a mulatta woman was seen moving about the room--at times acting as an attendant upon the table, at other times standing silently in the background. She was the slave Cynthia. In the behaviour of this woman there was something peculiar. There was a certain amount of nervous agitation in her manner as she moved about; and ever and anon she was seen to make short traverses to different parts of the room--apparently without errand or object. Her steps, too, were stealthy, her glances unsteady and furtive. All this would have been apparent enough to a suspicious person; but none of the three present appeared to notice it. The "swizzle" bowl stood on the side-board. While breakfast was being placed on the table, Cynthia had been seen refilling the bowl with this delicious drink, which she had mixed in an outside chamber. Some one asked her why she was performing that, her diurnal duty, at so early an hour--especially as master would be gone before the time of swizzle-drinking should arrive: usually during the hotter hours of the day. "P'raps massr like drink ob swizzle 'fore he go," was the explanatory reply vouchsafed by Cynthy. The girl made a successful conjecture. Just as the Custos was about to step outside for the purpose of descending the stairway, a fit of choking thirst once more came upon him, and he called for drink. "Massr like glass ob swizzle?" inquired Cynthia, stepping up to his side. "I've mixed for massa some berry good," added she, with impressive earnestness. "Yes, girl," replied her master. "That's the best thing I can take. Bring me a large goblet of it." He had scarce time to turn round, before the goblet was presented to him, full to the rim. He did not see that the slave's hand trembled as she held it up, nor yet that her eyes were averted--as if to hinder them from beholding some fearful sight. His thirst prevented him from seeing anything, but that which promised to assuage it. He caught hold of the goblet, and gulped down the whole of its contents, without once removing it from his lips. "You've overrated its quality, girl," said he, returning her the glass. "It doesn't seem at all good. There's a bitterish taste about it; but I suppose it's my palate that's out of order, and one shouldn't be particular about the stirrup-cup." With this melancholy attempt at appearing gay, Loftus Vaughan bade adieu to his daughter, and, climbing into the saddle, rode off upon his journey. Ah! Custos Vaughan! That stirrup-cup was the last you were ever destined to drink! In the sparkling "swizzle" was an infusion of the baneful _Savannah flower_. In that deep draught you had introduced into your veins one of the deadliest of vegetable poisons! Chakra's prophecy will soon be fulfilled. The death-spell will now quickly do its work. In twenty-four hours you will be a corpse! Volume Three, Chapter VI. THE HORN SIGNAL. Cubina, on getting clear of the penn-keeper's precincts, lost little time in returning to the glade; and, having once more reached the _ceiba_, seated himself on a log to await the arrival of the young Englishman. For some minutes he remained in this attitude--though every moment becoming more fidgetty, as he perceived that time was passing, and no one came. He had not even a pipe to soothe his impatience: for it had been left in the hammock, into which he had cast it from the cocoa. Before many minutes had passed, however, a pipe would have been to little purpose in restraining his nervous excitement; for the non-appearance of the young Englishman began to cause him serious uneasiness. What could be detaining him? Had the Jew been awakened? and was he by some means or other, hindering Herbert from coming out? There was no reason, that Cubina could think of, why the young man should be ten minutes later than himself in reaching the _ceiba_. Five minutes--even the half of it--might have sufficed for him to robe himself in such garments as were needed; and then, what was to prevent him from following immediately? Surely, the appeal that had been made to him-- the danger hinted at to those dear to him, the necessity for haste, spoken in unmistakable terms--surely, all this would be sufficient to attract him to the forest, without a moment's hesitation! Why, then, was he delaying? The Maroon could not make it out: unless under the disagreeable supposition that the Jew no longer slept, and was intercepting his egress. What if Herbert might have lost his way in proceeding towards the rendezvous? The path was by no means plain, but the contrary. It was a mere cattle-track, little used by men. Besides, there were others of the same--scores of them trending in all directions, crossing and converging with this very one. The half-wild steers and colts of the penn-keeper ranged the thickets at will. Their tracks were everywhere; and it would require a person skilled in woodcraft and acquainted with the _lay_ of the country, to follow any particular path. It was likely enough that the young Englishman had strayed. Just then these reflections occurred to Cubina. He chided himself for not thinking of it sooner. He should have stayed by the penn--waited for Herbert to come out, and then taken the roads along with him. "Not to think of that! _Crambo_! how very stupid of me!" muttered the Maroon, pacing nervously to and fro: for his impatience had long since started him up from the log. "Like enough, he's lost his way? "I shall go back along the path. Perhaps I may find him. At all events, if he's taken the right road, I must meet him." And as he said this, he glided rapidly across the glade, taking the back track towards the penn. The conjecture that Herbert had strayed was perfectly correct. The young Englishman had never revisited the scene of his singular adventure, since the day that introduced him to the acquaintance of so many queer people. Not but that he had felt the inclination, amounting almost to a desire, to do so; and more than once had he been upon the eve of satisfying this inclination, but, otherwise occupied, the opportunity had not offered itself. Not greatly proficient in forest lore--as Cubina had also rightly conjectured--especially in that of a West-Indian forest, he had strayed from the true path almost upon the instant of entering upon it; and was at that very moment wandering through the woods in search of the glade where grew the gigantic cotton-tree! No doubt, in the course of time, he might have found it, or perhaps stumbled upon it by chance, for--made aware, by the earnest invitation he had received, that time was of consequence--he was quartering the ground in every direction, with the rapidity of a young pointer in his first season with the gun. Meanwhile the Maroon glided rapidly back, along the path leading to the penn, without seeing aught either of the Englishman or his track. He re-entered the ruinate fields of the old sugar estate, and continued on till within sight of the house, still unsuccessful in his search. Proceeding with caution, he stepped over the dilapidated wall of the old orchard. Caution was now of extreme necessity. It was broad day; and, but for the cover which the undergrowth afforded him, he could not have gone a step further without the risk of being seen from the house. He reached the ruin from which he had before commanded a view of the verandah; and, once more stealing a glance over its top, he obtained a full view of the long rambling corridor. Jessuron was in it--not as when last seen, asleep in his armchair, but on foot, and hurrying to and fro, with quick step and excited mien. His black-bearded overseer was standing by the stair, as if listening to some orders which the Jew was issuing. The hammock was still hanging in its place, but its collapsed sides showed that it was empty. Cubina could see that, but no signs of its late occupant--neither in the gallery nor about the buildings. If still there, he must be in some of the rooms? But that one which opened nearest the hammock, and which Cubina conjectured to be his bedroom, appeared to be unoccupied. Its door stood ajar, and no one seemed to be inside. The Maroon was considering whether he should stay a while longer upon the spot, and watch the movements of the two men, when it occurred to him that if the young man had gone out, and up the right path, he must have crossed a track of muddy ground, just outside the garden wall. Being so near the house--and in the expectation of seeing something there to explain Herbert's delay--he had not stayed to examine this on his second approach. Crouching cautiously among the trees, he now returned to it; and, almost at the first glance, his eye revealed to him the truth. A fresh footprint was in the mud, with its heel to the house, and its toe pointing to the path! It was not his own: it must be that of the young Englishman! He traced the tracks as far as they could be distinguished; but that was only to the edge of the damp earth. Beyond, the ground was dry and firm--covered with a close-cropped carpet of grass, upon which the hoof of a horse would scarcely have left an impression. The tracks, however, on leaving the moist ground, appeared as if trending towards the proper path; and Cubina felt convinced that, for some distance at least, the young Englishman had gone towards the glade. That he was no longer by the house was sufficiently certain; and equally so that he had kept his promise and followed Cubina into the woods. But where was he now? "He may have reached the glade in my absence, and be now waiting for me!" was the reflection of the Maroon. Stimulated by this, as well as by the chagrin which his mischances or mismanagement were causing him, he started back along the path at a run--as if struggling in a match against time. Far quicker than before he reached the glade, but, as before, he found it untenanted! _No_ Englishman was under the _ceiba_--no human being in sight. As soon as he had fairly recovered breath, he bethought him of shouting. His voice might be of avail in guiding the wanderer to the glade; for Cubina now felt convinced that the young Englishman was straying-- perhaps wandering through the woods at no great distance from the spot. His shouts might be heard; and although the stranger might not recognise the voice, the circumstances were such that he might understand the object for which it was put forth. Cubina shouted, first at a moderate pitch, then hallooed with all the strength of his lungs. No answer, save the wood echoes. Again and again: still no response. "_Crambo_!" exclaimed he, suddenly thinking of a better means of making his presence known. "He may hear my horn! He may remember that, and know it. If he's anywhere within a mile, I'll make him hear it." The Maroon raised the horn to his lips and blew a long, loud blast--then another, and another. There was a response to that signal; but not such as the young Englishman might have been expected to make. Three shrill bugle blasts, borne back upon the breeze, seemed the echoes of his own. But the Maroon knew they were not. On hearing them, he let the horn drop to his side, and stood in an attitude to listen. Another--this time a single wind--came from the direction of the former. "Three and one," muttered the Maroon; "it's Quaco. He needn't have sounded the last, for I could tell his _tongue_ from a thousand. He's on his way back from Savanna-la-Mer--though I didn't expect him to return so soon. So much the better--I may want him." On finishing the muttered soliloquy, the Maroon captain stood as if considering. "_Crambo_!" he muttered after a pause, and in a tone of vexation. "What has become of this young fellow? I must sound again--lest Quaco's horn may have misled him. This time, lieutenant, hold your tongue!" So saying, and speaking as if the "lieutenant" was by his side, he raised the horn once more to his lips, and blew a single blast--giving it an intonation quite different from the others. After an interval of silence, he repeated the call in notes exactly similar, and then, after another pause, once again. To none of these signals did the "tongue" of Quaco make reply; but shortly after, that worthy responded to the original summons by presenting himself _in propria persona_. Volume Three, Chapter VII. QUACO'S QUEER ENCOUNTER. Quaco came into the glade carrying a large bundle upon his back--under which he had trudged all the way from Savanna-la-Mer. He was naked to the breech-cloth--excepting the hog-skin greaves upon his shanks, and the old brimless hat upon his head. This, however, was all the costume Quaco ever wore--all, indeed, that he owned; for, notwithstanding that he was the lieutenant, his uniform was no better than that of the meanest private of the band. His captain, therefore, exhibited no surprise at the scantiness of Quaco's clothing; but what did surprise Cubina was the air with which he entered the glade, and some other circumstances that at once arrested his attention. The skin of the colossus was covered with a white sweat that appeared to be oozing from every pore of his dark epidermis. This might have been occasioned by his long walk--the last hour of it under a broiling sun, and carrying weight, as he was: for the bag upon his back appeared a fifty-pounder, at least, to say nothing of a large musket balanced upon the top of it. None of these circumstances, however, would account for that inexplicable expression upon his countenance--the wild rolling of his yellow eyeballs--the quick, hurried step, and uncouth gesticulations by which he was signalising his approach. Though, as already stated, they had arrested the attention of his superior, the latter, accustomed to a certain reserve in the presence of his followers, pretended not to notice them. As his lieutenant came up, he simply said:-- "I am glad you are come, Quaco." "An' a'm glad, Cappin Cubina, I've foun' ye har. War hurryin' home fass as my legs cud carry me, 'spectin' to find ye thar." "Ha!" said Cubina; "some news, I suppose. Have you met anyone in the woods--that young Englishman from the Jew's penn? I'm expecting him here. He appears to have missed the way." "Han't met no Englishman, Cappin. Cussos Vaughan am that--I'se a met _him_!" "_Crambo_!" cried Cubina, starting as he uttered the exclamation. "You've met Custos Vaughan? When and where?" "When--dis mornin'. Where--'bout fo' mile b'yond the crossin' on the Carrion Crow road. That's where I met _him_." The emphasis upon the last word struck upon the ear of Cubina. It seemed to imply that Quaco, on his route, had encountered others. "Anybody else, did you meet?" he inquired, hurriedly, and with evident anxiety as to the answer. "Ya-as, Cappin," drawled out the lieutenant, with a coolness strongly in contrast with his excited manner on entering the glade. But Quaco saw that his superior was waiting for the coming of the young Englishman, and that he need not hurry the communication he was about to make. "Ya-as, I met ole Plute, the head driver at Moun' Welcome. He was ridin' 'longside o' the Cussos, by way o' his escort." "Nobody else?" "Not jess then," answered Quaco, evidently holding back the most interesting item of news he had to communicate. "Not jess then, Cappin Cubina." "But afterwards? Speak out, Quaco! Did you meet anyone going on the same road?" The command, with the impatient gesture that accompanied it, brought Quaco to a quicker confession than he might have volunteered. "I met, Cappin Cubina," said he, his cheeks bulging with the importance of the communication he was about to make, while his eyes rolled like "twin jelly balls" in their sockets--"I met next, not a _man_, but a _ghost_!" "A ghost?" said Cubina, incredulously. "A duppy, I sw'ar by the great Accompong--same as I saw before--the ghost of ole Chakra!" The Maroon captain again made a start, which his lieutenant attributed to surprise at the announcement he had made. Cubina did not undeceive him as to the cause. "And where?" interrogated he, in hurried phrase. "Where did you meet the ghost?" "I didn't zackly meet it," answered Quaco. "I only seed it on the road afore me--'bout a hundred yards or tharaway. I wor near enuf to be sure o' it--and it was Chakra's ghost--jess as I seed him t'other day up thar by the Duppy Hole. The old villain can't sleep in his grave. He's about these woods yet." "How far was it from where you met Mr Vaughan?" "Not a great way, Cappin. 'Bout a quarrer o' a mile, I shed think. Soon as it spied me, it tuk to the bushes, and I seed no more on it. It was atter daylight, and the cocks had crowed. I heard 'em crowing at ole Jobson's plantation close by, and, maybe, that sent the duppy a-scuttlin' into the river." "We must wait no longer for this young man--we must be gone from here, Quaco." And as Cubina expressed this intention, he appeared about to move away from the spot. "Stop, Cappin," said Quaco, interrupting with a gesture that showed he had something more to communicate; "you han't heard all. I met more of 'em." "More of whom?" "That same queer sort. But two mile atter I'd passed the place where I seed the duppy o' the ole myal-man, who dye think I met nex'?" "Who?" inquired Cubina, half guessing at the answer. "Them debbil's kind--like enough company for the duppy--them dam' Spaniards of de Jew's penn." "Ah! _maldito_!" cried the Maroon captain, in a voice of alarm, at the same time making a gesture as if a light had suddenly broken upon him. "The Spaniards, you say! They, too, after him! Come, Quaco, down with that bundle! throw it in the bush--anywhere! there's not a moment to be lost. I understand the series of encounters you have had upon the road. Luckily, I've brought my gun, and you yours. We may need them both before night. Down with the bundle, and follow me!" "Stop and take me with you," cried a voice from the edge of the glade; "I have a gun, too." And at the same moment the young Englishman, with his gun upon his shoulder, was seen emerging from the underwood and making towards the _ceiba_. Volume Three, Chapter VIII. AN UNCLE IN DANGER. "You appear to be in great haste, Captain Cubina," said Herbert, advancing in double-quick time. "May I know what's the matter? Anything amiss?" "Amiss, Master Vaughan? Much, indeed. But we shouldn't stand to talk. We must take the road to Savannah, and at once." "What! you want me to go to Savannah? I'm with you for any reasonable adventure; but my time's not exactly my own, and I must first have a reason for such a journey." "A good reason, Master Vaughan. Your uncle, the Custos, is in trouble." "Ah!" exclaimed the young Englishman, with an air of disappointment. "Not so good a reason as you may think, Captain. Was it he you meant when you said, just now, one who _should be_ dear to me was in danger?" "It was," answered Cubina. "Captain Cubina," said Herbert, speaking with a certain air of indifference, "this uncle of mine but little deserves my interference." "But his life's in danger!" urged the Maroon, interrupting Herbert in his explanation. "Ah!" ejaculated the nephew, "do you say that? If his life's in danger, then--" "Yes," said the Maroon, again interrupting him, "and _others_, too, may be in peril from the same enemy--yourself, perhaps, Master Vaughan. Ay, and maybe those that might be dear to you as yourself." "Ha!" exclaimed Herbert--this time in a very different tone of voice, "you have some evil tidings, Captain! pray tell me all at once." "Not now, Master Vaughan, not now! There's not a moment to be wasted in talk; we must take the route at once. I shall tell you as we go along." "Agreed, then," cried Herbert. "If it's a life and death matter, I'm with you--even to Savannah! No _book-keeping_ to-day, Master Jessuron, and--" (the speaker only mentally pronounced the name) "Judith may well spare me for one day--especially for such a purpose as the saving of lives. All right; I'm with you, Captain Cubina." "_Vamos_!" cried the Maroon, hastily moving off. "For want of horses we must make our legs do double-quick time. These skulking scoundrels have sadly got the start of us." And saying this, he struck into the up-hill path, followed by Herbert-- the taciturn lieutenant, no longer embarrassed by his bundle, keeping close in the rear. The path Cubina had chosen appeared to conduct to Mount Welcome. "You are not going _there_?" inquired Herbert, in a significant way, at the same time stopping, and appealing to his conductor for an answer. It had just occurred to the nephew that a visit to his uncle's house might place him in a position both unpleasant and embarrassing. "No!" answered the Maroon; "there is no longer any need for us to go to the house: since the Custos has left it long hours ago. We could learn nothing there more than I know already. Besides, it's half a mile out of our way. We should lose time; and that's the most important of all. We shall presently turn out of this path, into one that leads over the mountain by the Jumbe Rock. That's the shortest way to the Savannah road. _Vamos_!" With this wind-up to his speech, the Maroon again moved on; and Herbert, his mind now at rest, strode silently after. Up to this time the young Englishman had received no explanation of the object of the journey he was in the act of undertaking; nor had he asked any. The information, though as yet only covertly conveyed--that those dear to him were in danger--was motive enough for trusting the Maroon. Before long, however, it occurred to him that he ought to be informed of the nature of that danger; over whom it impended; and what was the signification of the step they were now taking to avert it. These questions he put to his conductor, as they hastened together along the path. In hurried phrase the Maroon made known to him much, though not all, of what he himself knew of the position of affairs--more especially of the peril in which the Custos appeared to be placed. He gave an account of his own descent into the Duppy's Hole; of the conversation he had overheard there; and, though still ignorant of the motives, stated his suspicions of the murderous plot in which Herbert's own employer was playing a principal part. It is needless to say that the young Englishman was astounded by these revelations. Perhaps he would have been still more astonished, but that the development of these wicked dealings was only a confirmation of a whole series of suspicious circumstances that for some days before had been constantly coming under his notice, and for which he had been vainly seeking an explanation. From that moment all thoughts of returning to dwell under the roof of Jacob Jessuron vanished from his mind. To partake of the hospitality of such a man--a murderer, at least by intent--was completely out of the question. He at once perceived that his fine sinecure situation must be given up; and, despite the scandal his desertion might bring about, he could never again make his home in the Happy Valley. Even the fascinations of the fair Judith would not be strong enough to attract him thither. Cubina listened to these resolves, and apparently with great satisfaction. But the Maroon had not yet made known to Herbert many other secrets, of which he had become the depository; and some of which might be to the young Englishman of extremest interest. The communication of these he reserved to a future opportunity--when time might not be so pressing. Herbert Vaughan, now apprised of the peril in which his uncle stood, for the time forgot all else, and only thought of pressing onward to his aid. Injuries and insults appeared alike forgotten and forgiven--even that which had stung him more sharply than all--the cold, chilling bow at the Smythje ball. Beyond the Jumbe Rock, and at no great distance from the by-path by which they were travelling, lay the proper country of the Maroons. By winding a horn, it might have been heard by some of the band; who at that hour would, no doubt, be engaged in their usual occupation--hunting the wild hog. Cubina knew this; and, on arriving at that point on the path nearest to his town, he halted, and stood for a moment reflecting. Then, as if deeming himself sufficiently strong in the companionship of the robust young Englishman and the redoubtable lieutenant, he gave up the idea of calling any of them to his assistance; and once more moved forward along the route towards the Savannah road. Volume Three, Chapter IX. AN EQUESTRIAN EXCURSION. Throughout the day the penn-keeper kept to his penn. The unexplained absence of his protege rendered it prudent to postpone his proposed visit to the minister: besides, Cynthia was expected. From the mulatta he hoped to obtain much information. Her knowledge of events must be fresher than even that of Chakra--else would he have gone up to the Duppy's Hole to consult the oracle of Obi. Cynthia would be likely to know all. She could at least tell him whether the spell had been administered--how, and when. These were facts worth knowing, and Jessuron stayed at home to await the advent of Cynthia. Not so Judith. Devoured by spleen, inaction was too irksome. She could not content herself in the house; and resolved to seek outside, if not solace, at least distraction to her thoughts. Shortly after breakfast she ordered her steed to be saddled, and prepared to set forth. Strange it was that he should absent himself on that day above any other! Just after his uncle had departed on a journey! That was strange! Judith summoned the herdsman who had discovered the tracks in the mud. "You are sure it was the track of young Master Vaughan you saw?" "Sartin sure, Missa Jessuron--one ob 'em war." "And the other? What was _it_ like? Was it also the track of a man?" "Ya, missa; 'twar a man's track--leastwise, I nebber seed a woman track big as dat 'ere. Sartin de sole dat make it wor de fut ob a man, though it wa'n't the boot ob a gen'l'man like young Massa Vaughan." Whip in hand, the Jewess stood reflecting. A messenger might it be? From whom, if not from Kate Vaughan? With whom else was he acquainted? Such strange conditions of relationship! The mysterious mode by which the messenger must have approached him: for fresh mud upon the bark of the tree told that he who had climbed up must have been the same who had made the footmarks by the garden wall. The articles found in the hammock had been flung down to awake and warn the sleeper. Clearly a secret message, delivered by a crafty messenger! Clearly a surreptitious departure! And the motive for all this? No common one?--it could not be. No errand after game. The fowling-piece was gone; but that was no evidence of an intention to spend the day in sporting. Herbert was in the habit of taking his gun, whenever he strolled out into the fields or forest. But the other and necessary paraphernalia had been left behind! A shooting excursion? Nothing of the sort! A messenger with a love message--a summons willingly accepted--promptly responded to! "Oh, if it be!" cried the proud, passionate woman, as she sprang upon the back of her steed; "if it be, I shall know it! I shall have revenge!" The horse came in for a share of this jealous indignation. A spiteful cut of the whip, and a fierce "dig" from her spurred heel, set the animal in rapid motion--his head towards the hills. Judith Jessuron was a splendid equestrian, and could manage a horse as well as the best breaker about her father's penn. In the saddle she was something to be seen and admired: her brilliant beauty, enhanced by the charm of excitement, exhibiting itself in the heightened colour of her cheeks, and the stronger flashing of her dark Jewish eyes. The outline of her form was equally attractive. Of full womanly development, and poised in the saddle with an air of piquant _abandon_, it illustrated the curve of Hogarth in all its luxuriant gracefulness. Such a spectacle was calculated to elicit something more than ordinary admiration; and it required a heart already pre-occupied to resist its fascinations. If Herbert Vaughan had escaped them, it could only have been from having his heart thus defended from a danger that few men might have tempted with a chance of safety! Galloping across the old garden, with a single leap she cleared the ruined wall; and, arriving at the spot where were still to be seen those tell-tale tracks, she reined up, and leaned over to examine them. Yes--that was his track--his small foot was easily distinguished! The other? There it was--the footprint of a negro--pegged brogans! White men do not wear them. Some of the slave people of Mount Welcome? But why twice back and forward? Was not once sufficient? Had there been a double message? There might have been--a warning, and afterwards an appointment! Perhaps, to meet in the forest? Ha! perhaps at that moment! The bitter conjecture brought her reflections to an abrupt ending; and, once more plying whip and spur, the jealous equestrian dashed rapidly on, up the sloping path that trended towards the hills. The purpose of this expedition, on the part of the Jewess, was altogether indefinite. It simply sprang from that nervous impatience that would not permit her to rest--a faint hope that during her ride she might discover some clue to the mysterious disappearance. Wretchedness might be the reward of that ride. No matter! Uncertainty was unendurable. She did not go exactly in the direction of Mount Welcome, though thither went her thoughts. She had never been a guest of the Custos, and therefore had no colourable excuse for presenting herself at the mansion--else she would have ridden direct to it. Her design was different. Though she might not approach the house, she could reconnoitre it from a distance; and this had she determined upon doing. She had fixed upon the Jumbe Rock as the best point of observation. She knew that its summit commanded a bird's-eye view of Mount Welcome estate, lying under the mountain like a spread map, and that any movement by the mansion, or in the surrounding inclosures, might be minutely marked--especially with the aid of a powerful _lorgnette_, with which she had taken the precaution to provide herself. With this intent did she head her horse towards the Jumbe Rock--urging the animal with fierce, fearless energy up the difficult acclivity of the mountain. Volume Three, Chapter X. SMYTHJE AMONG THE STATUES. At that hour, when the heart of Judith Jessuron was alternately torn by the passions of love and jealousy, a passion equally profound, though apparently more tranquil, was burning in the breast of Lilly Quasheba, inspired by the same object--Herbert Vaughan. In vain had the young creole endeavoured to think indifferently of her cousin: in vain had she striven to reconcile her love with what her father had taught her to deem her duty, and think differently of Mr Smythje--in vain. The effort only ended in a result the very opposite to that intended--in strengthening her passion for the former, and weakening her regard for the latter. And thus must it ever be with the heart's inclinings, as well as its disinclinings. Curbed or opposed, it is but its instinct in both cases to rebel. From that hour in which Kate had yielded to the will of her father, and consented to become the wife of Montagu Smythje, she felt more sensibly than ever the sacrifice she was about to make. But there were none to step forth and save her--no strong hand and stout heart to rescue her from her painful position. It had now become a compromise; and, summoning all the strength of her soul, she awaited the unhappy issue with such resignation as she could command. She had but one thought to cheer her, if cheer it could be called--she had not sacrificed her _filial_ affection. She had performed the wishes of her father--that father who, however harsh he might be to others, had been ever kind and affectionate to her. Now, more than ever, did she feel impressed with his kindness, when she considered the errand on which he had gone forth. Though thus resigned, or trying to feel so, she could neither stifle her passion for Herbert, nor conceal the melancholy which its hopelessness occasioned; and during all that morning, after her father had left her, the shadow appeared upon her countenance with more than its wonted darkness. Her lover--that is, her _fiance_--for Smythje now stood to her in that relationship--did not fail to observe her unusual melancholy, though failing to attribute it to the true cause. It was natural that the young lady should feel sad at the absence of her worthy parent, who for many years had never been separated from her beyond the period of a few hours' duration, or, at most, a single day. She would soon get used to it, and then all would be right again. With some such reflections did Smythje account for the abstraction which he had observed in the behaviour of his betrothed. During all the morning he had been assiduous in his attentions--more than wontedly so. He had been left by the Custos in a proud position-- that of _protector_--and he was desirous of showing how worthy he was of the trust reposed in him. Alas! in the opinion of Kate he was by far too assiduous. The _protegee_ felt importuned; and his most well-meant attentions had the effect only to weary her. Too glad would she have been to be left alone to her sighs and her sadness. Shortly after breakfast, Smythje proposed a stroll--a short one. He had no zest for toilsome excursions; and, since the day of his shooting adventure, no zeal again to attempt any distant traverse of the forest. The stroll was only to extend to the shrubbery and among the statues set there. The weather was temptingly fine. There was no reason why Kate Vaughan should refuse; and, with a mechanical air, she acceded to the proposal. Smythje discussed the statues, drawing largely from the stock of classic lore which his University had afforded him--dilating more especially on those of Venus, Cupid, and Cleopatra, all suggestive of the tender sentiments that were stirring within his own romantic bosom, and to which, more than once, he took occasion to allude. Though narrowly did he watch to see what effect his fine speeches were producing, he failed to perceive any that gave him gratification. The countenance of his companion obstinately preserved that air of pre-occupation that had been visible upon it all the morning. In the midst of one of his scholastic dissertations, the classical exquisite was interrupted by the advent of his valet, Thoms--who appeared coming from the house with the air of a servant who brings a message for his master. The message was declared: a gentleman friend of Mr Smythje--for he had now many such in the Island--had called to see him. No particular business--merely a call of compliment. The name was given. It was one which should be honoured by a polite reception; else the proud owner of Montagu Castle might have declined leaving the company in which he was upon so trivial a purpose. But the visitor was one of note--a particular friend, too. Miss Vaughan would not deem him rude, leaving her only for a moment? "By no means," said Kate, with a free haste that almost said as much as that she was only too glad to get quit of him. Smythje followed his valet into the house; and the young Creole was left among the statues alone--herself the fairest shape in all that classical collection. Volume Three, Chapter XI. A STRANGE DETERMINATION. For some moments after Smythje was gone, Kate Vaughan remained where he had left her--silent and motionless as the sculptured marbles by her side. Niobe was near; and, as if by accident, the eyes of the young Creole turned upon the statue of the weeping daughter of Dione. "Ah!" muttered she, struck with a strange thought; "unhappy mother of a murdered offspring! If thy sadness was hard to endure as mine, thy punishment must have been a pleasure. Would that I, like thee, were suddenly turned into stone. Ah, me!" And finishing her apostrophe with a profound sigh, she stood for some time silently gazing upon the statue. After a while her thoughts underwent some change; and along with it her eyes wandered away from the statues and the shrubbery. Her glance was turned upward towards the mountain, and rested upon its summit--the Jumbe Rock now glittering gaily under the full sheen of the sunlight. "There," soliloquised she, in a low murmur, "upon that rock, and there only, have I felt one hour of true happiness--that happiness of which I have read in books of romance, without believing in; but which I now know to be real--to gaze into the eyes of him you love, and think, as I then thought, that you are loved in return. Oh! it was bliss! it was bliss!" The remembrance of that brief interview with her cousin--for it was to that her words referred--came so forcibly before the mind of the impassioned young Creole as to stifle her utterance, and for a moment or two she was silent. Again she continued--"An hour, have I said? Ah! scarce a minute did the sweet delusion last; but had I my choice I would rather live that minute over again, than all the rest of my past life--certainly, than all of it that is to come!" Again she paused in her speech, still gazing upon the rock--whose sparkling surface seemed purposely presented to her eyes, as if to cheer her heart with the sweet _souvenir_ it recalled. "Oh! I wonder," she exclaimed at length, "I wonder how it would be, were I but up there again! To stand on the spot where I stood! Could I fancy him, as then, beside me? Could I recall the look he gave me, and my own sweet thoughts as I returned it? Oh! it would be like some delicious dream!" Passion again called for a pause; but soon after, her reflections found speech. "And why should I not indulge in it? why not? What harm can it do me? Even if the _souvenir_ should bring sadness, it cannot add to that which now overwhelms me. No; I need not fear to tempt the trial; and I shall. This very hour shall I go up and stand upon that same spot. There shall I invoke the past, and give to memory, to fancy, its fullest play. I need not fear. There will be no witness but the heaven above and the God who dwells in it--alike witness to the sacrifice of a broken heart made in the fulfilment of my duty." On completing this impassioned speech, the young girl raised a kerchief of white cambric which she carried in her hand, and hastily adjusting it over the luxuriant plaits of her hair, glided towards the rear of the mansion. She did not turn aside to enter the house, nor even to warn any one of her sudden determination, but, hastening on, soon reached the back of the garden. There a small wicket-gate gave her egress into the woods--a path from that point trending in traverses, zigzag fashion, up the mountain slope. It was the same path she had followed upon the day of the eclipse; but how different were the thoughts that now agitated her bosom from those she had indulged in upon that memorable occasion! Even then, it is true, her spirits were far from being cheerful; but still there was hope ahead. She had not then arrived at the full knowledge of Herbert's indifference towards her--of his determination towards her more fortunate rival. The circumstances that had since transpired--the scenes that had come under her own observation--the rumours heard and too substantially confirmed--all had combined to extinguish that little gleam of hope so faint and feebly flickering. Indeed, there was upon that very morning a new thought in her mind, calculated still further to render her sad and humiliated. The revelations which her father had made before starting on his journey--the admissions as to the inferiority of her race, and contingently of her social rank, which he had been compelled to make-- had produced, and no wonder, a painful impression upon the spirits of the quinteroon. She could not help asking herself whether Herbert's disregard of her had aught to do with this? Was it possible that her own cousin was slighting her on account of this social distinction? Did he, too, feel shy of the _taint_? More than once during that day had she mentally put these interrogatories without being able to determine whether they merited a negative or affirmative answer. And what was her errand now? To resuscitate within her soul the memory of one moment of bliss--to weave still more inextricably around her heart the spell that was threatening to strangle it--to stifle the happiness of her whole life. But that was already gone. There could be no daring now--no danger worth dread. The zigzag path she ascended with free step and air undaunted--her fair, bright form gleaming, meteor-like, amid the dark-green foliage of the forest. Volume Three, Chapter XII. A JEALOUS RECONNOISSANCE. The ravine leading up the rear of the Jumbe Rock--the only way by which its summit could be reached--though easily scaled by a pedestrian, was not practicable for a person on horseback. On reaching the base of the cliff the jealous equestrian dismounted, made fast her bridle to the branch of a tree, and, after unbuckling the little spur and removing it from her heel, continued the ascent _a pied_. Arrived at the summit she took her stand near the edge of the platform, in a position that commanded an unbroken view of the mansion of Mount Welcome, its shrubberies and surroundings. Satisfied with the situation, she instantly commenced her _reconnoissance_. She did not at first make use of her _lorgnette_. Any human figures that might be moving around the house could be seen by the naked eye. It would be time enough to use the magnifying lens should there be a difficulty of identifying them. For some moments after she had taken her stand no one made appearance near or around the dwelling. A complete tranquillity reigned over the spot. A pet _axis_ deer skipping over the lawn, some pea-fowl moving amidst the shrubbery of the _parterre_--their purple gorgets gaily glittering in the sun--were the only objects animate that could be seen near the house. Farther off in the fields gangs of negroes were at work among the cane, with what appeared to be a white overseer moving in their midst. These had no interest for the observer upon the rock; and her eye, scarce resting on them for a second, returned to scan the inclosed space approximate to the dwelling, in the hope of there seeing something-- form, incident, or scene--that might give her some clue to the mystery of the morning. In respect to the former, she was not disappointed. Forms, scenes, and incidents were all offered in succession; and though they did but little to elucidate the enigma which had carried her to that aerial post of observation, they had the effect of calming, to some extent, the jealous thought that was distressing her. First she saw a gentleman and lady step out from the house and take their stand among the statues. At the sight she felt a slight flutter of uneasiness; until through the _lorgnette_ she looked upon hay-coloured hair and whiskers, enabling her to identify the owner as Smythje. This gave her a species of contentment; and her jealous spirit was still further tranquillised when the glass revealed to her the features of Kate Vaughan overspread with an expression of extreme sadness. "Good!" muttered the delighted spy; "that tells a tale. She cannot have seen him? Surely not, or she would not be looking so woe-begone?" At this moment another figure was seen approaching across the _parterre_ towards the two who stood among the statues. It was that of a man in a dark dress. Herbert Vaughan wore that colour. With a fresh flutter of uneasiness, the _lorgnette_ was carried back to the eye. "Bah! it is not he. A fellow with a common face--a servant, I suppose. Very likely the valet I've heard of! He has brought some message from the house. Ha! they're going in again. No, only the master. She stays. Odd enough he should leave her alone! So much for your politeness, Mr Montagu Smeithjay!" And, with a sneering laugh as she pronounced the name, the fair spy again took the glass from her eye, and appeared for a moment to give way to the gratification which she had drawn from what she had succeeded in observing. Certainly there were no signs of the presence of Herbert Vaughan about the precincts of Mount Welcome, nor anything to indicate that he had had an interview with his cousin. If so, it must have ended just as the Jewess might have wished: since the expression observable on the countenance of Kate showed anything but the traces of a reconciliation. Pleased to contemplate her in this melancholy mood, her jealous rival again raised the glass to her eye. "Ha!" she exclaimed on the instant. "Whatever is the nigger doing in front of the statue? She appears to be talking to it. An interesting dialogue, I do declare! Ha! ha! ha! Perhaps she is worshipping it? Ha! ha! She seems as much statue as it. `Patience upon a monument, smiling'--Ha! ha! ha!" "Ah, now," resumed the hilarious observer, still gazing through the glass, "she turns from the statue. As I live, she is looking up this way! She cannot see me? No, not with the naked eye. Besides, there is only my head and hat above the edge of the rock. She won't make them out. How steadfastly she looks this way! A smile upon her face! That, or something like it! One might fancy she was thinking of that pretty scene up here, the interesting tableau--Smythje on his knee. Ha! ha! ha!" "Ah! what now?" she continued, interrogatively; at the same time suddenly ceasing from her laughter, as she saw the young creole adjust the scarf over her head, and glide towards the back of the house. "What can it mean? She appears bent on an excursion! Alone, too! Yes, alone, as if she intended it! See! she passes the house with stealthy step--looks towards it, as if fearing some one to come forth and interrupt her! Through the garden!--through the gate in the wall! Ha! she's coming up the mountain!" As the Jewess made this observation, she stepped a pace forward upon the rock, to gain a better view. The _lorgnette_ trembled as she held it to her eye: her whole frame was quivering with emotion. "Up the mountain!" muttered she. "Yes, up the mountain! And for what purpose? To meet--Herbert Vaughan?" A half-suppressed scream accompanied the thought: while the glass, lowered by her side, seemed ready to fall from her fingers. Volume Three, Chapter XIII. A SPY IN AMBUSH. You have seen a proud bird, whose wing has been broken by the fatal bullet, drop helpless to the earth? So fell the heart of Judith Jessuron from the high confidence that but the moment before had been buoying it up. The sight of Kate Vaughan coming up the mountain path at once robbed it of exultation--even of contentment. What errand could the young Creole have up there, unless that of an assignation? And with whom, but the man who was so mysteriously missing? Her surreptitious departure from the dwelling--the time chosen, when Smythje was out of the way--her quick gait and backward glances as she stole through the shrubbery: all indicated a fear of being seen and followed. And why should she fear either, if bent upon an ordinary errand? Mr Smythje was not her father, nor, as yet, her husband. Why should she care to conceal her intentions from him: unless indeed they were clandestine, and pointing to that very purpose which the jealous Jewess had conjectured--a rendezvous with Herbert Vaughan? Judith felt convinced of it--so fully that, as soon as she saw the young Creole fairly started up the sloping path, she glided to the rear edge of the platform, and looked down, expecting to see the other party to the assignation. True, she saw no one; but this did little to still the agitation now vibrating through every nerve of her body. _He_ was not in sight, but that signified not. Perhaps he was at that moment within hearing, and might be seen, but for the forest screen that covered the _facade_ of the mountain? Where was it their design to meet? Where had they named their appointment? Judith did not doubt that there was design--jealousy did not stay to ask the question. She was convinced that an arrangement had been made, and on that very morning. What else could be the meaning of the double message? First, to demand a meeting; secondly to appoint the place. Yes, that would explain the repetition of those footmarks--that had gone twice to and fro. What spot had they chosen for the scene of their clandestine encounter? A sudden apprehension seized upon the spy. She might lose sight of them; and then they would enjoy their meeting in secret and uninterrupted. By Heavens, that must not be! Her spirit, now roused to the extreme pitch of jealousy, cared not for consequences. End as the scene might, she was resolved on its interruption. The only chance of discovering the place of assignation would be to keep Kate Vaughan in sight. Perhaps Herbert was already there waiting for her? He would be there. The lover is always first upon the ground! Obedient to this thought, the Jewess rushed back across the platform; and once more directed her glance down the mountain. She saw what she looked for: the snow-white snood, easily distinguishable among the dark-green foliage--now hidden as the wearer walked under the tall trees--again appearing at the open angles where the road zigzagged. Most of the path could be seen from the summit of the rock: for, although rarely used, it had once been cleared by the axe, and formed an open tract through the timber, narrow, but perceptible from above. Judith, still marking the movements of the kerchief, swept the path with her glance and her glass--up to the point where it reached the base of the rock and ran round to the rear. Repeatedly she scanned the track, far in advance of the climber, expecting to see some one appear--Herbert Vaughan, of course. If aught showed among the trees--a bird fluttering in the foliage, frayed by the approach of the gentle intruder--the heart of the jealous Jewess experienced a fresh spasm of pain. Though certain she was soon to see it, she dreaded to behold the first blush of that clandestine encounter. To see them come together, perhaps rush into each other's arms, their lips meeting in the kiss of mutual love--oh, agony unendurable! As she surmised the scene before her fancy, for a moment her proud spirit shrank, quailed, and cowed within her, and her form of bold, noble development shook like a fragile reed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Up the steep, with springy step, climbed the young Creole, lightly as a bird upon the wing, unconscious that she was observed, and, of all others, by the rival she had most reason to dread. After completing the numerous windings of the path, she at length arrived within some twenty paces of the rock--where the road turned round to the rear. She knew the way; and, without pausing, kept on till she stood within the _embouchure_ of the sloping ravine. Up to this point the Jewess had marked her every movement, watching her along the way. Not without some surprise had she perceived her intention to climb the Jumbe Rock--which by the direction she had taken was now evident. The surprise soon passed, however, with a quick reflection. The summit of the rock--that place already hallowed by a love scene--was the spot chosen for the meeting! On discovering Kate's determination to ascend the rock, which she had now divined by seeing her pass round to the rear, the Jewess stayed no longer upon the platform. That would have necessarily led to an encounter between the two. Not that Judith would have shunned it, however awkward, however _contra-tiempo_. It was not from any feeling of delicacy that she determined on leaving the place; on the contrary, the action that followed betrayed a motive of a very opposite character. Just where the ravine debouched upward on the platform, a lateral cleft opened to one side. Its bottom was but a few feet below the summit level; covered with a thick growth of evergreen bushes, whose tops, rising to an equal height with the table above, completely filled the hollow with their dense frondage. The quick eye of Judith Jessuron at once detected the convenience of this covert. There concealed, she could see without being seen. From under the grim shadow of those dark evergreens, she could behold what was like enough to wring her heart: though she was now reckless of the result. Watching her opportunity--when the eyes of the young Creole were turned downwards--she glided into the lateral ravine, and concealed herself behind the curtain of leaves. Cowering within the covert, she awaited the ascent of her rival. Amidst the tumult of her emotions, there was no chance to reason calmly. Suspicion of Herbert's perfidy--for it is not to be denied that the young man had shown her attentions, or, at all events, had passively permitted her to think so--suspicion of his faithlessness had now become certainty. There could be no mistake about the intended meeting between him and his cousin--at least, so Judith, blinded by her passions, believed. There was Kate coming upon the ground, and Herbert--he would soon be after! Strange, he had not arrived first! But that had not much significance. He could not be far off; and, no doubt, would be there in good time--perhaps, overtake his sweetheart ere she could reach the summit of the rock? Thus ran the reflections of the rival. She listened for Herbert's voice--expecting every moment to hear him hailing from below. She cast listless glances down the ravine, in the belief she should presently see him following frantically upon the footsteps of his cousin, and chiding himself for not being foremost at the tryst. Volume Three, Chapter XIV. A FELL PURPOSE DEFEATED. Judith had as yet traced out no definite plan of action--trusting to circumstances to suggest what course she should pursue. Only on one thing had she come to a determination--to permit both to pass up on the rock before showing herself. She resolved, as long as possible, to restrain her instinct of revenge. She would see them meet--be witness of their mutual endearments--be sure of it; and then would be her time to launch forth into the full torrent of recrimination. Something of this kind was the course she had shaped out for herself-- still but vaguely, still dependent on chance. The young Creole, little suspecting the proximity of her spiteful rival, ascended the ravine--close passing the spot where the latter was concealed. Altogether unconscious of being observed, she stepped lightly upon the platform; and, crossing over, stopped near the opposite edge--precisely upon the spot where she had stood during the eclipse, hallowed by such sweet remembrance. Undoing the slight knot that had confined the kerchief under her chin, and holding it in both hands, so as to shade her eyes from the sun, she stood for some time gazing into the valley below--not the one where lay the mansion of her father, but that in which dwelt a relative still dearer. As before, her eyes were bent upon the penn--that sombre pile which, despite the dim shadows that surrounded it, seemed to her the brightest spot upon the earth. The sun in the sky above was nothing in brightness to the light that circled there--the light of Herbert's love. What would she not have given to have lived in that light? What to have been that favourite who now basked in it? "Would that I could see him once again," she murmured, "before that hour when we must meet no more: for then even the thought would be a crime! If I could only see him once--only speak with him, I feel as if I should tell him all. Though he cannot love me, I am sure he would pity me. Even that, it seems to me, would soothe--it could not cure. Oh! why did he, upon this very spot--why those glances I can never forget? I can see them now--his eyes as they were then, gazing into mine, as if something passed between us--something that sank into the very depths of my soul. Oh! Herbert! why did you so regard me? But for that it might have passed. But now--never! Ah, Herbert! Herbert!" In her anguish the young Creole pronounced the last words aloud. Only the name was heard by Judith Jessuron; but they fell upon her ear with fearful effect, piercing through her heart like a poisoned arrow. If she had any doubts about the purpose of Kate's presence, that word had decided them. The Creole had now declared it with her own tongue! On the instant a thought, dread and dire, commenced taking shape in the heart of the jealous woman. She felt her bosom stirred to a purpose bold and black as hell itself. That purpose was nothing less than the destruction of her rival--the death of Kate Vaughan! The circumstances suggested the mode. The young Creole was standing upon the escarpment of the cliff--scarce three feet from its edge. A slight push from behind would project her into eternity! Not much risk either in the committal of the crime. The bushes below would conceal her body--at least, for a length of time; and, when found, what would be the verdict? What could it be, but _felo-de-se_? The circumstances would give colour to this surmise. Even her own father might fancy it, as the consequence of his forcing her to be wedded against her will. Besides, had she not stolen surreptitiously from the house, taking advantage of an opportunity when no eye was upon her? Other circumstances equally favoured the chances of safety. No one seemed to know that Kate had come up to the Jumbe Rock; and not a soul could be aware that she, Judith, was there: for she had neither passed nor met anyone by the way. No eye was likely to be witness of the act. Even though the forms of the actors might be descried from the valley below, it would be at too great a distance for anyone to distinguish the character of the proceeding. Besides, it was one chance in a thousand if any eye should be accidentally turned towards the summit of the mountain. At that hour the black labourers in the fields were too busy with their task to be allowed the freedom of gazing idly upon the Jumbe Rock. With a fearful rapidity coursed these thoughts through the mind of the intending murderess--each adding fresh strength to her horrible purpose, and causing it to culminate towards the point of execution. Her jealousy had long since become a strong passion, to which she had freely abandoned her soul. Already was it yearning for revenge; and now that an opportunity seemed to offer for gratifying it, she could no longer restrain herself. The chance was too tempting--the demoniac desire became uncontrollable. Casting a glance down the ravine to make sure that no one came that way, and another towards Kate to see that her face was still turned away, Judith stole softly out of the bushes and mounted upon the rock. Silently, as treads the tigress approaching her prey, did she advance across the platform towards the spot where stood her intended victim, utterly unconscious of the dread danger that was so nigh. Was there no voice to warn her? There was--the voice of Smythje! "Aw-haw, deaw Kate! that yaw up there on the wock! Aw, ba Jawve! what a pwecious chase aw've had aftaw yaw! There isn't a bweath left in my body! Haw! haw!" Judith heard the voice, and, like a cheated tigress, was about to retreat to her lair, when Kate, half facing about, compelled her to keep her ground. With the suddenness of a thought she had changed her terrific attitude, and, as the eyes of the Creole rested upon her, she was standing with her arms hanging negligently downward, in the position of one who had just stepped forward upon the spot. Kate beheld her with surprise, not unmixed with alarm; for the wild look that still lingered in the eye of the disappointed and balked murderess could not escape observation. Before either could say a word, the voice of Smythje was again heard speaking from below. "Deaw queetyaw, I am coming! Aw shall pwesently be up," continued he; his voice, constantly changing its direction, proclaiming that he continued to advance round the rock towards the ravine in the rear. "I beg your pardon, Miss Vaughan," said the Jewess, with a sweeping curtsey and a cynical glance towards Kate; "most emphatically I beg your pardon. The second time I have intruded upon you in this delightful place! I assure you my presence here is altogether an accident; and, to prove that I have no desire to interfere, I shall bid you a very good morning!" So saying, the daughter of Jacob Jessuron turned towards the downward path, and had disappeared from the platform before Kate could command words to express either her astonishment or indignation. "Ba Jaw-aw-ve!" gasped Smythje, breathless, on reaching the platform. "Had yaw company up heaw? Shawly aw saw some one gawing out fwom the wavine--a lady in a widing dwess!" "Miss Jessuron has been here." "Aw, Miss Jessuwon--that veway wemarkable queetyaw! Gawing to be mawied to the--yaw cousin, 'tis repawted. Ba Jawve, she'll make the young fellaw a fine wife, if she dawn't want too much of haw awn way. Haw! haw! what do yaw think about it, deaw Kate?" "I have no thoughts about it, Mr Smythje. Pray let us return home." Smythje might have noticed, though without comprehending it, the anguished tone in which these words were uttered. "Aw, veway well. A'm weady to go back. But, deaw Kate, what a womp yaw are, to be shawr! Yaw thought to pway me a twick, like the young bwide in the `Misletaw Bough.' Haw! haw! veway amusing! Nevaw mind! Yaw are not so unfawtunate as that fair queetyaw was. I saw yawr white scarf amid the gween twees, and that guided me to yaw seqwet hiding-place. Haw! haw!" Little suspected Smythje how very near had been his affianced to a fate as unfortunate as that of the bride of Lovel--as little as Kate that Smythje had been her preserver. Volume Three, Chapter XV. CYNTHIA'S REPORT. Cynthia was not slow in responding to the summons of the Jew, who possessed an influence over her which, if not so powerful, was also less mysterious than that wielded by the myal-man, since it was the power of _money_. The mulatta liked money, as most people do, and for the same reason as most--because it afforded the means for indulging in dissipation, which with Cynthia was a habit. Very easily did she find an opportunity for paying a visit to the penn-- the more easily that her master was absent. But even had he been at home, she would have had but little difficulty in framing an excuse, or, rather, she would have gone without one. In the days of which we write, slavery had assumed a very altered phase in the West Indies--more especially in the Island of Jamaica. The voices of Wilberforce and Clarkson had already reached the remotest corners of the Island, and the plantation negroes were beginning to hear the first mutterings of the emancipation. The slave trade was doomed; and it was expected that the doom of slavery itself would soon be declared. The black bondsmen had become emboldened by the prospect; and there was no longer that abject submission to the wanton will of the master, and the whip of the driver, which had existed of yore. It was not uncommon for slaves to take "leave of absence" without asking it--often remaining absent for days; returning without fear of chastisement, and sometimes staying away altogether. Plantation revolts had become common, frequently ending in incendiarism and other scenes of the most sanguinary character; and more than one band of "runaways" had established themselves in the remote fastnesses of the mountains; where, in defiance of the authorities, and despite the preventive service-- somewhat negligently performed by their prototypes, the Maroons--they preserved a rude independence, partly sustained by pilfering, and partly by freebooting of a bolder kind. These runaways were, in effect, playing a _role_, in complete imitation of what, at an earlier period, had been the _metier_ of the original Maroons; while, as already stated, the Maroons themselves, employed upon the sage but infamous principle of "set a thief to catch a thief," had now become the detective police of the Island. Under such conditions of slavery, the bold Cynthia was not the woman to trouble herself about asking leave of absence, nor to be deterred by any slight circumstance from taking it; therefore, at an early hour of the day, almost on the heels of Blue Dick, the messenger, she made her appearance at the penn. Her conference with Jessuron, though it threw no light either on the whereabouts of the missing book-keeper, or on the cause of his absence, was not without interest to the Jew, since it revealed facts that gave him some comfort. He had already learnt from Blue Dick that the Custos had started on his journey, and from Cynthia he now ascertained the additional fact, that before starting he _had taken the spell_. It had been administered in his _stirrup-cup_ of "swizzle." This intelligence was the more gratifying, in view of the apprehensions which the Jew was beginning to feel in regard to his Spanish _employes_. If the spell should do its work as quickly as Chakra had said, these worthies would be anticipated in the performance of their dangerous duty. Another important fact was communicated by Cynthia. She had seen Chakra that morning--just after her master had taken his departure. There had been an arrangement between her and the myal-man to meet at their usual trysting-place--contingent on the setting out of the Custos. As this contingency had transpired, of course the meeting had taken place--its object being that Cynthia might inform Chakra of such events as might occur previous to the departure. Cynthia did not know for certain that Chakra had followed the Custos. The myal-man had not told her of his intention to do so. But she fully believed he had. Something he had let fall during their conference guided her to this belief. Besides, on leaving her, Chakra, instead of returning towards his haunt in the Duppy's Hole, had gone off along the road in the direction of Savanna. This was the substance of Cynthia's report; and having been well rewarded for the communication, the mulatta returned to Mount Welcome. Notwithstanding the gratification which her news afforded, it was far from tranquillising the spirit of Jacob Jessuron. The absence of Herbert Vaughan still continued--still unexplained; and as the hours passed and night drew near, without any signs of his return, Jessuron--and it may be said Judith as well--became more and more uneasy about his disappearance. Judith was puzzled as well as pained. Her suspicion that Herbert had had an appointment with his cousin Kate had been somewhat shaken, by what she had seen--as well as what she had _not_ seen: for on leaving the Jumbe Rock she had not ridden directly home. Instead of doing so, she had lingered for a length of time around the summit of the mountain, expecting Herbert to show himself. As she had neither encountered him, nor any traces of him, she was only too happy to conclude that her surmises about the meeting were, after all, but fancy; and that no assignation had been intended. Kate's coming up to the Jumbe Rock was a little queer; but then Smythje had followed her, and Judith had not heard that part of the conversation which told that _his_ being there was only an accident--the accident of having discovered the retreat to which the young Creole had betaken herself. These considerations had the effect of soothing the jealous spirit of the Jewess; but only to a very slight extent: for Herbert's absence was ominous--the more so, thought Judith, as she remembered a conversation that had lately passed between them. Nor did she feel any repentance for the dark deed she had designed, and would certainly have executed, but for the well-timed appearance of Smythje upon the scene. The words which had fallen from the lips of Kate Vaughan had been a sufficient clue to her reflections; and though he whose name she had mentioned was not present in person, the Jewess did not doubt that he, and only he, was the subject of that soliloquy. There might have been remorse for the deed, had it been accomplished; but there was no repentance for the design. Jealousy, bitter as ever in the breast of Judith, forbade this. Judith's return did not make the matter any clearer to Jessuron. She had no story to tell, except that which she deemed it more prudent to keep to herself. Her not having encountered Herbert during her ride, only rendered his absence more difficult of explanation. Volume Three, Chapter XVI. A DAY OF CONJECTURES. Towards sunset a fresh inspection was made of the tracks, Jessuron going in person to examine them. The skilled herdsman was again questioned; and on this occasion a fresh fact was elicited; or rather a conjecture, which the man had not made before, since he had not noticed the circumstance on which he rested it. It was some peculiarity in the sole of the shoe that had made the strange track, and which guided the herdsman to guess who was the owner. In scouring the forest paths in search of his cattle, he had observed that footmark before, or one very like it. "If't be de same, massa," remarked he, in reply to the cross-questioning of the Jew, "den I knows who owns dat fut. It longs to that ere cappen of Maroons." "Cubina?" "Ah--that's jest the berry man." The Jew listened to this conjecture with marked inquietude; which was increased as another circumstance was brought to his knowledge: that Quaco the Maroon--who had been arrested along with Herbert on the day of his first appearance at the penn--had been lately seen in communication with the latter, and apparently in a clandestine manner. Blue Dick was the authority for this piece of incidental intelligence. The penn-keeper's suspicions had pointed to Cubina at an earlier hour of the day. These circumstances strengthened them. It needed but another link to complete the chain of evidence, and this was found in the tobacco-pipe left in the hammock: a rather unique implement, with an iron bowl, and a stem made out of the shankbone of an ibis. On being shown the pipe, the herdsman recognised it on sight. It was the "cutty" of Captain Cubina. More than once had he met the Maroon with the identical instrument between his teeth. Jessuron doubted no longer that Cubina had been the abductor of his book-keeper. Nor Judith, either: for the Jewess had taken part in the analytical process that guided to this conclusion. Judith was rather gratified at the result. She was glad it was no worse. Perhaps, after all, the young Englishman had only gone on a visit to the Maroon, with whom she knew him to be acquainted: for Judith had been informed of all the circumstances connected with their first encounter. What was more natural than a sort of attachment between them, resulting from such an odd introduction? Curiosity may have induced Herbert to accompany the Maroon to his mountain home; and this was sufficient to explain his absence. True, there were circumstances not so easily explained. The presence of the Maroon at the penn--his track twice to and fro--the hurried departure of Herbert, without any previous notice either to herself or to her father--all these circumstances were suspicious; and the spirit of the jealous Judith, though partially tranquillised by a knowledge of the new facts that had come to light, was, nevertheless, not quite relieved from its perplexity. The same knowledge had produced an effect on the spirit of her worthy parent altogether different. So far from being gratified by the idea that his book-keeper was in the company of the Maroon captain, he was exceedingly annoyed by it. He at once remembered how pointedly Herbert had put certain questions to him, in relation to the fate of the flogged runaway--the prince. He remembered, also, his own evasive answers; and he now foresaw, that in the case of the questioner being in the company of Cubina, the latter would give him a very different account of the transaction--in fact, such a statement as could not fail to bring about the most crooked consequences. Once in possession of those damning facts, the young Englishman--of whose good moral principles the old Jew had become cognisant--would be less likely to relish him, Jessuron, for a father-in-law. Such an awkward affair coming to his knowledge might have the effect, not only to alienate his much-coveted friendship--his equally-solicited love--but to drive him altogether from a house, whose hospitality he might deem suspicious. Was it possible that this very result had already arisen? Was the whole scheme of the penn-keeper to prove a failure? Had murder--the blackest of all crimes--been committed in vain? There was but little doubt left on the mind of Jacob Jessuron that the deed was now done. Whether by the poison of Chakra, or the steel of the _cacadores_, so far as the Custos himself was concerned, that part of the programme would, by this time, be complete; or so near its completion, that no act of the instigator could stay its execution. How, when, and where was it done? And had it been done in vain? During the early part of that same night--and on through the midnight hours--thus interrogatively reflected the Jew. He slept not; or only in short spells of unquiet slumber, taken in his chair--as on the night before, in the open verandah. It was care, not conscience, that kept him awake--apprehension of the future, rather than remorse for the past. After midnight, and near morning, a thought became uncontrollable--a desire to be satisfied, if not about the last of these interrogatories, at least in relation to the former. In all likelihood Chakra would, by that time, have returned?--would be found in his lair in the Duppy's Hole? Why he had followed the Custos, Jessuron could not tell. He could only guess at the motive. Perhaps he, Chakra, was in fear that his spell might not be sufficient; and, failing, he might find an opportunity to strengthen it? Or, was it that he wished to be witness to the final scene? to exult over his hated enemy in the last hour of life? Knowing, as the Jew did, the circumstances that had long existed between the two men--their mutual malice--Chakra's deadly purposes of vengeance--this conjecture was far from improbable. It was the true one; though he also gave thought to another--that perhaps the myal-man had followed his victim for the purpose of _tendering him_. To ascertain that he had succeeded in the preliminary step--that of murdering him--the Jew forsook his chair couch; and, having habited himself for a nocturnal excursion, proceeded in the direction of the Duppy's Hole. Volume Three, Chapter XVII. THE SICK TRAVELLER. After passing beyond the precincts of his own plantation, and traversing for some distance a by-road known as the Carrion Crow, Mr Vaughan at length reached the main highway, which runs between Montego Bay on the north and Savanna-la-Mer on the southern side of the Island. Here, facing southward, he continued his route--Savanna-la-Mer being the place where he intended to terminate his journey on horseback. Thence he could proceed by sea to the harbour of Kingston, or the Old Harbour, or some other of the ports having easy communication with the capital. The more common route of travel from the neighbourhood of Montego Bay to Spanish Town, when it is desired to make the journey by land, is by the northern road to Falmouth Harbour, and thence by Saint Ann's, and across the Island. The southern road is also travelled at times, without the necessity of going to the port of Savanna, by Lacovia, and the parish of Saint Elizabeth. But Mr Vaughan preferred the easier mode of transit-- on board ship; and knowing that coasting vessels were at all times trading from Savanna to the ports on the southern side, he anticipated no difficulty in obtaining a passage to Kingston. This was one reason why he directed his course to the seaport of Savanna. He had another motive for visiting this place, and one that influenced him to an equal or greater extent. Savanna-la-Mer, as already stated, was the _assize town_ of the western district of the Island--otherwise the county of Cornwall--including under its jurisdiction the five great parishes of Saint James, Hanover, Westmoreland, Trelawney, and Saint Elizabeth, and consequently the town of Montego Bay. Thus constituted, Savanna was the seat of justice, where all plaints of importance must be preferred. The process which Mr Vaughan was about to institute against the Jew was one for the consideration of a full court of assize. A surreptitious seizure of twenty-four slaves was no small matter; and the charge would amount to something more than that of mere malversation. Loftus Vaughan had not yet decided on the exact terms in which the accusation was to be made; but the assize town being not only the seat of justice, but the head-quarters of the legal knowledge of the county, he anticipated finding there the counsel he required. This, then, was his chief reason for travelling to Spanish Town _via_ Savanna-la-Mer. For such a short distance--a journey that might be done in a day--a single attendant sufficed. Had he designed taking the land route to the capital, then it would have been different. Following the fashion of the Island, a troop of horses, with a numerous escort of servants, would have accompanied the great Custos. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The day turned out to be one of the hottest, especially after the hour of noon; and the concentrated rays of the sun, glaring down upon the white chalky road, over which the traveller was compelled to pass, rendered the journey not only disagreeable, but irksome. Added to this, the Custos, not very well on leaving home, had been getting worse every hour. Notwithstanding the heat, he was twice attacked by a severe chill--each time succeeded by its opposite extreme of burning fever, accompanied by thirst that knew no quenching. These attacks had also for their concomitants bitter nausea, vomiting, and a tendency towards cramp, or _tetanus_. Long before night, the traveller would have stopped--had he found a hospitable roof to shelter him. In the early part of the day he had passed through the more settled districts of the country, where plantations were numerous; but then, not being so ill, he had declined making halt--having called only at one or two places to obtain drink, and replenish the water canteen carried by his attendant. It was only late in the afternoon that the symptoms of his disease became specially alarming; and then he was passing through an uninhabited portion of the country--a wild corner of Westmoreland parish, where not a house was to be met with for miles alone: the highway. Beyond this tract, and a few miles further on the road, he would reach the grand sugar estate of Content. There he might anticipate a distinguished reception; since the proprietor of the plantation, besides being noted for his profuse hospitality, was his own personal friend. It had been the design of the traveller, before starting out, to make Content the halfway house of his journey, by stopping there for the night. Still desirous of carrying out this design, he pushed on, notwithstanding the extreme debility that had seized upon his frame, and which rendered riding upon horseback an exceedingly painful operation. So painful did it become, that every now and then he was compelled to bring his horse to a halt, and remain at rest, till his nerves acquired strength for a fresh spell of exertion. Thus delayed, it was sunset when he came in sight of Content. He did get sight of it from a hill, on the top of which he had arrived just as the sun was sinking into the Caribbean Sea, over the far headland of Point Negriee. In a broad valley below, filled with the purple haze of twilight, he could see the planter's dwelling, surrounded by its extensive sugar-works, and picturesque rows of negro cabins, so near that he could distinguish the din of industry and the hum of cheerful voices, borne upward on the buoyant air; and could see the forms of men and women, clad in their light-coloured costumes, flitting in mazy movement about the precincts of the place. The Custos gazed upon the sight with dizzy glance. The sounds fell confusedly on his ear. As the shipwrecked sailor who sees land without the hope of ever reaching it, so looked Loftus Vaughan upon the valley of Content. For any chance of his reaching it that night, without being carried thither, there was none: no more than if it had been a hundred miles distant--at the extreme end of the Island. He could ride no further. He could no longer keep the saddle; and, slipping out of it, he tottered into the arms of his attendant! Close by the road-side, and half hidden by the trees, appeared a hut-- surrounded by a kind of rude inclosure, that had once been the garden or "provision ground" of a negro. Both hut and garden were ruinate--the former deserted, the latter overgrown with that luxuriant vegetation which, in tropic soil, a single season suffices to bring forth. Into this hovel the Custos was conducted; or rather carried: for he was now unable even to walk. A sort of platform, or _banquette_, of bamboos--the usual couch of the negro cabin--stood in one corner: a fixture seldom or never removed on the abandonment of such a dwelling. Upon this the Custos was laid, with a horse-blanket spread beneath, and his camlet cloak thrown over him. More drink was administered; and then the attendant, by command of the invalid himself, mounted one of the horses, and galloped off to Content. Loftus Vaughan was alone! Volume Three, Chapter XVIII. A HIDEOUS INTRUDER. Loftus Vaughan was not long alone, though the company that came first to intrude on the solitude that surrounded him was such as no man, either living or dying, would desire to see by his bedside. The black groom had galloped off for help; and ere the sound of his horse's hoofs had ceased to reverberate through the unclayed chinks of the cabin, the shadow of a human form, projected through the open doorway, was flung darkly upon the floor. The sick man, stretched upon the cane couch, was suffering extreme pain, and giving way to it by incessant groaning. Nevertheless, he saw the shadow as it fell upon the floor; and this, with the sudden darkening of the door, admonished him that someone was outside, and about to enter. It might be supposed that the presence of any living being would at that moment have pleased him--as a relief to that lugubrious loneliness that surrounded him; and perhaps the presence of a living being would have produced that effect. But in that shadow which had fallen across the floor, the sick man saw, or fancied he saw, the form of one who should have been long since dead--the form of Chakra the myal-man! The shadow was defined and distinct. The hut faced westward. There were no trees before the door--nothing to intercept the rays of the now sinking sun, that covered the ground with a reddish glare--nothing save that sinister _silhouette_ which certainly seemed to betray the presence of Chakra. Only the upper half of a body was seen--a head, shoulders, and arms. In the shadow, the head was of gigantic size--the mouth open, displaying a serrature of formidable teeth--the shoulders, surmounted by the hideous hump--the arms long and ape-like! Beyond doubt was it either the shadow of Chakra, or a duplication of his ghost--of late so often seen! The sick man was too terrified to speak--too horrified to think. It scarce added to his agony when, instead of his shadow, the myal-man himself, in his own proper and hideous aspect, appeared within the doorway, and without pause stepped forward upon the floor! Loftus Vaughan could no longer doubt the identity of the man who had made this ill-timed intrusion. Dizzy though his sight was, from a disordered brain, and dim as it had been rapidly becoming, it was yet clear enough to enable him to see that the form which stood before him was no phantasy--no spirit of the other world, but one of this--one as wicked as could well be found amid the phalanx of the fiends of darkness. He had no longer either fancy or fear about Chakra's ghost. It was Chakra's self he saw--an apparition far more to be dreaded. The scream that escaped from the lips of Loftus Vaughan announced the climax of his horror. On uttering it, he made an effort to rise to his feet, as if with the intention of escaping from the hut; but finally overpowered by his own feebleness, and partly yielding to a gesture of menace made by the myal-man--and which told him that his retreat was intercepted--he sank back upon the _banquette_ in a paralysis of despair. "Ha!" shouted Chakra, as he placed himself between the dying man and the door. "No use fo' try 'scape! no use wha'somdever! Ef ye wa able get 'way from hya, you no go fur. 'Fore you walk hunder yard you fall down, in you track, like new-drop calf. No use, you ole fool. Whugh!" Another shriek was the only reply which the enfeebled man could make. "Ha! ha! ha!" vociferated Chakra, showing his shark-like teeth in a fiendish laugh. "Ha! ha! ha! Skreek away, Cussus Va'ghan! Skreek till you bust you windpipe. Chakra tell you it no use. De death 'pell am 'pon you--it am _in_ you--an' jess when dat ar sun hab cease shine upon de floor, you go join you two brodder jussuses in de oder world, wha' you no fine buckra no better dan brack man. Dey gone afore. Boaf go by de death 'pell. Chakra send you jess de same; only he you keep fo' de lass, 'kase you de grann Cussus, an' he keep him bess victim fo' de lass. De Debbil him better like dat way." "Mercy, mercy!" shrieked the dying man. "Ha! ha! ha!" scornfully answered Chakra. "Wha' fo' you cry `mercy?' D'you gib mercy to de ole myal-man, when you 'im chain up dar to de cabbage-tree? You show no mercy den--Chakra show none now. You got die!" "Oh! Chakra! good Chakra!" cried the Custos, raising himself upon the couch, and extending his arms in a passionate appeal. "Save me! save my life! and I will give you whatever you wish--your freedom--money--" "Ha!" interrupted Chakra, in a tone of triumphant exultation. "Gib me freedom, would you? You gib me dat arready. You money dis hya nigga doan' care 'bout--not de shell ob a cocoa. He hab plenty money; he get wha' he want fo' de lub spell and de death 'pell. Whugh! De only ting you hab dat he care 'bout, you no can gib. Chakra take dat 'ithout you gibbin." "What?" mechanically asked the dying man, fixing his eyes upon the face of Chakra with a look of dread import. "Lilly Quasheba!" cried the monster, in a loud voice, and leering horridly as he pronounced the name. "Lilly Quasheba!" he repeated, as if doubly to enjoy the fearful effect which his words were producing. "De dawter ob de quaderoom! Da's only fair, Cussus," continued he, in a mocking tone. "You had de modder yourseff--dat is, affer de Maroon! You know dat! It am only turn an' turn 'bout. Now you go die, Chakra he come in fo' de dawter. Ha! ha! ha! "Whugh!" he exclaimed, suddenly changing his tone, and bending down over the form of the Custos, now prostrate upon the couch. "Whugh! I b'lieve de buckra gone dead!" He was dead. On hearing the name "Lilly Quasheba," accompanied by such a fearful threat, a wild cry had escaped from his lips. It was the last utterance of his life. On giving tongue to it, he had fallen back upon the bamboo bedstead, mechanically drawing the cloak over his face, as if to shut out some horrid sight; and while the myal-man, gloating over him, was endeavouring to procrastinate his pangs, the poison had completed its purpose. Chakra, extending one of his long arms, raised the fold from off his face; and holding it up, gazed for a moment upon the features of his hated foe, now rigid, blanched, and bloodless. Then, as if himself becoming frightened at the form and presence of death, the savage miscreant dropped the cover quickly to its place; rose from his stooping position; and stole stealthily from the hut. Volume Three, Chapter XIX. TWO SPECULATIVE TRAVELLERS. The sun was sinking out of sight into the bosom of the blue Caribbean, and the twilight, long since extended over the valley below, was now spreading its purple robe around the summit of the hill, on which stood the hut. The shadows cast by the huge forest trees were being exchanged for the more sombre shadows of the coming night; and the outlines of the hovel--now a house of death--were gradually becoming obliterated in the crepusculous obscurity. Inside that deserted dwelling, tenanted only by the dead, reigned stillness, solemn and profound--the silence of death itself. Outside, were sounds such as suited the solemnity of the scene: the mournful _loo-who-ah_ of the eared owl, who had already commenced quartering the aisles of the forest; while from the heaven above came the wild wail of the potoo, as the bird went across the fast-darkening sky, in search of its insect prey. To these lugubrious utterances there was one solitary exception. More cheerful was the champing of the steel bit--proceeding from the horse that had been left tied to the tree--and the quick, impatient stroke of his hoof, as the animal fretted under the stings of the musquitoes, becoming more bitter as the darkness descended. The body of Loftus Vaughan lay upon the bamboo bedstead, just as Chakra had left it. No hand had been there to smooth that rude pillow--no friendly finger to close those eyes that were open, and saw not--those orbs glassed and coldly glaring from their sunken sockets! As yet the attendant had not returned with that succour which would come too late. Nor was it possible for him to get back in much less than an hour. Content, though in actual distance scarcely a mile from the hut, was full five in point of time. The slope of the mountain road was at an angle with the horizon of at least fifty degrees. There could be no rapid riding on that road--neither up nor down, upon the most urgent errand; and the black groom was not going to risk life by a broken neck, even to save the life of a Custos. It would be a full hour, then, before the man would return. As yet only twenty minutes had passed, and forty more were to come. But it was not fated that even for those forty minutes the body of the Custos Vaughan should be permitted to rest in peace. Twenty minutes had scarcely elapsed after Chakra had stolen away from the side of the corpse, when there came others to disturb it, and with a rude violence almost sufficient to arouse it from the slumber of death! Had Chakra, on leaving the hut, only taken the main road back to Montego Bay--and that was the direction in which he intended going--he would have met two strange men. Not so strange but that they were known to him; but strange enough to arrest the attention of an ordinary traveller. But among the proclivities of the myal-man, that of travelling along _main roads_ was one in which he did not indulge, except under the most unavoidable circumstances. Following his usual practice, as soon as he had cleared the precincts of the negro cabin, he struck off into a by-path leading through the bushes; and by so doing lost the opportunity of an encounter with two individuals, who, although of a different nationality, were as great villains as himself. The brace of worthies thus described are already known. They were the man-hunters of Jacob Jessuron, Manuel and Andres--_cacadores de cimmarones_ from the Island of Cuba. With the object for which they were journeying along the Savanna road the reader is equally _au fait_. Jessuron's talk with them, on starting them off, has plainly proclaimed the vile intent of his two truculent tools. All day long had these human bloodhounds been following upon the track of the Custos--now nearer to him--now further off--according to the halts which the traveller had made, and the relative speed of horseman and pedestrian. More than once had they sighted their intended victim afar off on the white dusty road. But the presence of the stout negro attendant, as well as the broad open daylight, had deterred them from proceeding in their nefarious purpose; and they had postponed its execution till that time which gives opportunity to the assassin--the going down of the sun. This hour had at length arrived; and just as the real murderer was hastening away from the hut, the intending assassins were hurrying towards it, with all the speed in their power! "_Carrambo_!" exclaimed he who was the older, and in consequence the _leader_ of the two, "I shouldn't be surprised, Andres, if the _ingeniero_ was to slip out of our clutches to-night! Not far beyond lies Content, and the owner of that _ingenio_ is a friend of his. You remember Senor Jacob said he would be like to put up there for the night?" "Yes," replied Andres, "the old Judio was particular about that." "Well, if he gets there before we can overhaul him, there'll be nothing done to-night. We must take our chance on the road between that and Savanna." "_Carajo_!" responded Andres, with somewhat spiteful emphasis; "if it wasn't for them ugly pistols he carries, and that big buck nigger by his side, we might have stopped his breath before this. Supposing he gets to Savanna before we can have a talk with him? what then, _compadre_?" "Then," answered he thus godfatherly addressed, "then our lines won't lie in pleasant places. Savanna's a big city; and it isn't so easy to murder a man in the street of a town as among these trees. People prowling about have tongues, where the trees haven't; and fifty pounds, Jamaica money, a'nt much for killing a man--more especially a _Custos_, as they call him. _Carajo_! we must take care, or we may get our necks twisted for this simple trick! These Custoses are like our _alcaldes_-- kill one, and a dozen others will spring up to prosecute you." "But what," inquired Andres, who, although the younger of the two, appeared to be gifted with a greater degree of prudence than his companion--"what if we don't find a chance--even in Savanna?" "Then," replied the other, "we stand a good chance of losing our fifty pounds--shabby currency as it is." "How that, Manuel?" "How that? Why, because the _ingeniero_, once in Savanna, will take ship and travel by sea. The _dueno_ said so. If he do that, we may bid adieu to him; for I wouldn't make another sea-voyage for five times fifty pounds. That we had from Batabano was enough to last me for my life. _Carajo_! I thought it was the _vomito prieto_ that had seized upon me. But for the fear of another such puking spell I'd have gone home with the rest, instead of staying in this nest of Jews and nigger-drivers; and how I'm ever to get back to Batabano, let alone making a voyage for the purpose of--" The Cubano refrained from finishing his speech--not from any delicacy he had about declaring the purpose, but because he knew that the declaration would be supererogatory to an associate who already comprehended it. "In that case," counselled the more sagacious Andres, "we must finish our business before Savanna comes in sight. Perhaps, _compadre_, by pushing on rapidly now, we may overtake the party before they get anchored in Content?" "You're right, _hombre_; you're right about that. Let us, as you say, push on; and, if it suits you as it does me, let our motto be, `_Noche o nunca_' (this night or never)!" "_Vamos_!" rejoined Andres; and the assassins increased their speed, as if stimulated by the fear of losing their prey. Volume Three, Chapter XX. NO BLOOD. The sun had already hidden his red disc under the sea horizon, when the man-hunters mounted the hill, and approached the hut where Custos Vaughan had been compelled to make halt, and in which he was now lying lifeless. "_Mira_, Manuel!" said Andres, as they came within sight of the hovel, and at the same instant saw the horse standing tied to the tree; "_un cavallo_! saddled, bridled, and with _alforjas_!" "A traveller's horse!" rejoined Manuel, "and that very traveller we've been tracking. Yes! it's the horse of the great alcalde of Mount Welcome! Don't you remember, when we saw them before us at mid-day, that one of the horses was a bay, and the other a grey? There's the grey, and it was on that very animal the Custos was riding." "Quite true, _compadre_; but where's the other?" "Maybe among the trees, or tied round the other side of the hut. The riders must be inside." "Both, do you think, Manuel?" "Of course, both; though where Blackskin's horse can be is more than I can say. _Carrambo_! what's halted them here? There's nobody lives in the ranche. I know that: I came this way about a week ago and it had no tenant then. Besides, the _ingenio_ where he was to put up for the night is just below. What, in the name of Saint Mary, has stopped them here?" "_Por Dios, compadre_!" said the younger of the two _cacadores_, looking significantly at the saddlebags still hanging over the cantle of the Custos's saddle. "There ought to be something valuable in those _alforjas_?" "_Caval_! you're right; but we mustn't think of that just yet, _camarado_! After the other's done, then we shall have the opportunity--I wonder whether they're both inside? It's very odd we don't see the negro's horse!" "Ha!" rejoined Andres, apparently struck with an idea. "What if he's gone on to the plantation for some purpose? Suppose an accident has happened to the Custos's steed, or, _carrai_! suppose he's himself taken sick? You remember the man we met, who told us about them ugly pistols--he said that one of the travellers--the white man--looked sick. Didn't the fellow say he saw him puking?" "_Por Dios_! he did. As you say, there may be something in it. If Blackskin's out of the way, now's our time; for there is more to be feared from that big buck nigger than his master, when it comes to a struggle. If it should prove that the Custos is sick--I hope it is so-- he won't be in a condition to make much use of his weapons; and _carrambo_! we must get hold of them before he knows what we're after!" "Hadn't we better go round first?" counselled the sagacious Andres. "Let us explore the back of the hut, and see whether the other horse is there. If he's not, then certainly the negro's gone off on some errand! We can steal through the bushes to the other side, and get right up to the walls without any danger of being seen!" "That's our plan, _camarado_. Let's lose no time, then, for, if it be so that Blackskin's abroad, we're in luck. We mayn't find such another chance--not between here and the world's end. Follow me, _hombre_! and set down your feet as if you were stepping upon eggs with young birds in them. _Vamos_!" So saying, the chief of the two _cacadores_ skulked in among the trees, closely followed by his companion. After making a circuit through the underwood, the assassins stole silently in towards the back of the hovel. They saw no other horse--only the grey, which stood tied to the tree in front. The bay was gone, and in all probability his rider. Andres already congratulated himself upon his conjecture being correct: the negro had ridden off upon some errand. This was put beyond all doubt by their perceiving the fresh tracks of a horse, leading away from the hut along the road towards Content. The hoof-prints were so plain as to be visible at some distance. The turf on the road-edge was torn up, and deeply indented--where the negro groom had urged his horse into a gallop. The assassins saw this, even without returning to the road; and were now satisfied that the attendant was gone away. It only remained to make sure that the traveller himself was inside the hut. Creeping cautiously up to the wall, the _cacadores_ peeped through the unclayed chinks of the cabin. At first the darkness inside hindered them from distinguishing any object in particular. Presently, as their eyes grew more accustomed to the obscurity, they succeeded in making out the bamboo bedstead in the corner, with something that resembled the figure of a man stretched lengthwise upon it. A dark cloak covered the form, the face as well; but the feet, booted and spurred, protruding from under the cover, told that it was a man who was lying in that outstretched attitude--the man who was to be murdered! He appeared to be sound asleep: there was no motion perceptible--not even as much as would indicate that he breathed! Lying on the floor, at some distance from the couch, was a hat, and beside it a pair of pistols, in their holsters--as if the traveller had unbuckled them from his belt, and flung them down, before going to sleep. Even if awake he could scarce get hold of the pistols, before his assailants could spring upon him. The assassins looked towards one another with a significant glance. The fates appeared to favour their attempt; and, as both on the instant were actuated by the same sanguinary instinct, they leaped simultaneously to their feet, drew their sharp _machetes_, and rushed together through the doorway. "_Matelo! matelo_!" (kill him!) cried both, in the same voice, each with a view of encouraging the other; and, as they uttered the cruel cry, they buried the blades in the body of the unresisting traveller-- stabbing it repeatedly through the cloak. Convinced that they had finished their bloody work, the murderers were about to rush out again--probably with an eye to the saddlebags outside, when it occurred to them as strange that the victim of their hired villainy should have kept so quiet. In their frenzied excitement--while dealing what they supposed to be his death-blows--they had not stopped to notice anything odd in the behaviour of the man whom they were murdering. Now that the deed was done, and they could reflect more coolly, a sudden surprise seized upon them--springing from the circumstance that the wretched man had made not the slightest motion-- had neither stirred nor cried out! Perhaps the first stab had gone right through his heart: for it was so intended by Andres, who had given it. But even that does not produce instantaneous death, and the man-hunters knew it. Besides, on the blade of Andres' _machete_, as well as that of his comrade, _there was no blood_! It was very strange. Could the cloak or under-garments have wiped it off? Partially they might, but not altogether! Their blades were wet, but not with blood--of that they showed scarce a stain! "It's a queer thing, comrade," exclaimed Manuel. "I could almost fancy--_Vaya_! Lift the cloak, and let's have a look at him." The other, stepping closer to the couch, stooped forward, and raised the fold of the camlet from the face of the murdered man. As he did so, his hand came in contact with the cold skin, while his glance fell upon the stiffened features of a corpse--upon eyes whose dull, blank film showed that the light had long since forsaken them! The assassin stayed not for a second look. With a cry of terror he let go the garment; and rushed towards the door, followed by his equally terrified companion. In another moment both would have escaped outside; and perhaps have taken the back track, without thinking any more about the saddlebags; but just as Andres had set foot upon the door-sill, he saw before him something that caused him to pull up, and with a precipitancy that brought his comrade with a violent concussion against his back. The something which had led to this sudden interruption was the presence of three men, standing in a triangular row, scarce five paces from the door. Each was holding a gun, in such position, that its dark, hollow tube was visible to the eyes of the assassin--pointing directly upon himself. The three men were of three distinct colours--white, yellow, and black; all three known to the man-hunter and his companion. They were Herbert Vaughan, Cubina, captain of Maroons, and Quaco, his lieutenant. Volume Three, Chapter XXI. THE CAPTURE OF THE CACADORES. The black, though presumably the lowest in rank, was the first to break speech. "No, ye don't!" cried he, moving his musket up and down, while still keeping it levelled upon the foremost of the _cacadores_. "No, Mister Jack Spaniard, not a foot d'you set outside that door till we see what you've been a-doin' 'ithin there. Steady, now, or thar's an ounce of lead into yer garlicky inside! Steady!" "Surrender!" commanded Cubina, in a firm, authoritative voice, and with a threatening gesture, which, though less demonstrative than that of his lieutenant, was equally indicative of determination. "Drop your _machetes_, and yield at once! Resistance will only cost you your lives." "Come, my Spanish worthies," said Herbert, "you know me! I advise you to do as you're bid. If there's nothing against you, I promise no harm--Ha! 'ware heels!" he continued, in sharp haste, observing that the Spaniards were looking over their shoulders, as if intending to escape by the back of the hut. "Don't attempt to run away. You'll be caught, no matter how fast you go. I've got two barrels here; and each is good for a bird on the wing. Show your backs, and they'll be preciously peppered, I promise you." "_Carajo_!" hissed out the older of the _cacadores_. "What do you want with us?" "Ay!" added the other, in a tone of innocent reproach; "what have we been doing to make all this _fanfaron_ about?" "What have you been doing?" rejoined the Maroon captain: "that's just what we desire to know, and are determined upon knowing." "There is nothing to be known," answered the man, speaking with an air of assumed simplicity; "at the least, nothing that's very particular. We were on our way to Savanna--me and my comrade here--" "Stach yer palaver!" cried Quaco, becoming impatient, and pushing the muzzle of his musket within an inch of the Spaniard's ribs. "Did ye hear the cappen tell ye to drop yer toastin' forks and surrender? Down with 'em this minnit, I say, an' do yer jaw-waggin' atterwards!" Thus threatened, either with a poke in the ribs, or, perhaps, a bullet between them, Andres sulkily let fall his _machete_ upon the floor--an action that was instantly imitated by his senior and superior. "Now, my braves!" proceeded the black lieutenant, still holding his huge gun to the Spaniard's breast; "lest ye mout be wantin' to gie us leg-bail, you muss submit to be trussed a trifle. Down upon yer behinds, both o' ye; and keep that way till I get the cords and skewers ready." The _cacadores_ perfectly understood the order; and, perceiving that there was no chance for disobedience, squatted down upon the floor--each on the spot where he had been standing. Quaco now picked up the two _machetes_, placing them beyond the reach of their _ci-devant_ owners. Then, handing his great gun over to the care of Cubina--who with Herbert was left to guard the prisoners--he walked off to a short distance among the trees. Presently he returned, trailing after him a long creeping plant that resembled a piece of cord, and carrying two short sticks, each about three feet in length. All this was accomplished with as much celerity, and in as brief a space of time, as if he had simply taken the articles from an adjacent store-room. Meanwhile, Cubina and Herbert had kept their guns still pointed upon the two _cacadores_: for it was evident that the villains were most eager to get off; and as it was now nearly night, had the least chance been allowed them, they might have succeeded in escaping through the darkness. Their captors were determined they should have no chance: for although neither Herbert nor Cubina could see into the obscure interior of the cabin, and were as yet ignorant of the fearful spectacle that there awaited them, they had reason to suspect that the Spaniards had either intended some dark deed, or had already committed it. They had learnt something along the road of the progress of the _cacadores_, and their mode of journeying, which, to more than one whom they met, had appeared mysterious. The horse standing tied to the tree--caparisoned as he was for travel-- that was the most suspicious circumstance of all. Though none of the three pursuers recognised the animal as belonging to Custos Vaughan, as soon as they set eyes upon it they had felt a presentiment that they had arrived too late. The wild haste with which the Spaniards were rushing from the cabin when intercepted at the door, almost confirmed their unpleasant foreboding; and before any of the three had entered the hut, they were half prepared to find that it contained a corpse--perhaps more than one, for the disappearance of Pluto was not yet explained. Quaco, habile in handling cordage of all kinds, more especially the many sorts of supple withes with which the trees of a Jamaica forest are laced together, soon tied the two Spaniards wrist to wrist, and ankle to ankle, as tightly as could have been done by the most accomplished gaoler. A long practice in binding runaway blacks had made Quaco an expert in that department, which, indeed, constitutes part of the professional training of a Maroon. The captors had already entered within the cabin, now dark as death itself. For some moments they stood upon the floor, their eyes endeavouring to read the gloom around them. Silent they stood--so still, that they could hear their own breathing, with that of the two prisoners upon the floor. At length, in the corner, they could dimly make out something like the form of a man lying stretched upon a low bedstead. Quaco, though not without some trepidation, approached it. Stooping down, he applied his hand to it with cautious touch. "A man!" muttered he: "eyther asleep or dead. "Dead!" he ejaculated the instant after, as, in groping about, his fingers chanced to fall upon the chill forehead--"dead and cold!" Cubina and Herbert stepping forward, and stooping over the corpse, verified the assertion of Quaco. Whose body was it? It might not be that of Loftus Vaughan! It might be the black attendant, Pluto! No! it was not a black man. It needed no light to show that. The touch of the hair was sufficient to tell that a white man lay dead upon the couch. "Catch me one of those _cocuyos_!" said the Maroon captain, speaking to his lieutenant. Quaco stepped outside the hut. Low down along the verge of the forest were flitting little sparks, that appeared to be a galaxy of stars in motion. These were the _lampyridae_, or small fire-flies. It was not with these Quaco had to do. Here and there, at longer intervals, could be seen much larger sparks, of a golden green colour. It was the great winged beetle--the _cocuyo_ [Pyrophorus Nectilucus.]--that emitted this lovely light. Doffing his old hat-crown, Quaco used it as an insect-net; and, after a few strokes, succeeded in capturing a _cocuyo_. With this he returned into the hut, and, crossing over, held it near the head of the corpse. He did not content himself with the gold green light which the insect emits from the two eyelike tubercles on its thorax. The forest-craft of Quaco enabled him to produce a brighter and better. Holding open the elytra with his fingers, and bending back the abdomen with his thumb, he exposed that oval disc of orange light--only seen when the insect is on the wing. A circle of a yard in diameter was illuminated by the phosphoric glow. In that circle was the face of a dead man; and sufficiently bright was the lamp of the _cocuyo_, to enable the spectators to identify the ghastly lineaments as those of the Custos Vaughan. Volume Three, Chapter XXII. A DOUBLE MURDER. None of the three started or felt surprise. That had been gradually passing: for before this their presentiment had become almost a conviction. Quaco simply uttered one of those exclamations that proclaim a climax; Cubina felt chagrined--disappointed in more ways than one; while Herbert gave way to grief--though less than he might have done, had his relative more deserved his sorrow. It was natural they should inquire into the circumstances of the Custos's death. Now, firmly believing he had been murdered, and by the _cacadores_, they proceeded to make an examination of the body. Mystery of mysteries! a dozen stabs by some sharp instrument, and no blood! Wounds through the breast, the abdomen, the heart--all clean cut punctures, and yet no gore--no extravasation! "Who gave the stabs? you did this, you wretches!" cried Herbert, turning fiercely upon the _employes_ of Jessuron. "_Carrambo_! why should we do such a thing, master?" innocently inquired Andres. "The alcalde was dead before we came up." "Spanish palaver!" cried Quaco. "Look at these blades!" he continued, taking up the two _machetes_, "they're wet now! 'Ta'nt blood azzactly; but somethin'--. See," he exclaimed, holding his _cocuyo_ over the wounds, and presenting one of the _machetes_ to the light, "they fit to these holes like a cork to a bottle. 'Twere they that made em, nothin' but they, an' you did it, ye ugly skinks!" "By the Virgin, Senor Quaco!" replied Andres, "you wrong us. I'll swear on the holy evangelists, _we_ didn't kill the alcalde--Custos, I mean. _Carrambo_! no. We were as much surprised as any of you, when we came in here and found him lying dead--just as he is now." There was an air of sincerity in the declaration of the wretch that rendered it difficult to believe in his guilt--that is, the guilt of him and his companion as the real murderers, though their intention to have been so was clear enough to Cubina. "_Crambo_! why did you stab him?" said he to the two prisoners. "You need not deny that you did that." "Senor capitan," answered the crafty Andres, who in all delicate questions appeared to be spokesman, "we won't deny that. It is true--I confess it with shame--that we did run our blades once or twice through the body." "A dozen times, you John Crow!" corrected Quaco. "Well, Senor Quaco," continued the Spaniard, "I won't be particular about the number. There may have been a thrust or two less, or more. It was all a whim of my comrade, Manuel, here--a little bit of a wager between us." "A wager for what?" asked Herbert. "Well, you see, master, we'd been journeying, as I've said already, to Savanna. We saw the horse tied outside this little rancho, and thought we would go in and see who was inside. _Carrambo_! what should we see but the body of a dead man lying stretched out on the bamboos! _Santissima! Senores_, we were as much startled as you!" "Terribly surprised, I suppose?" sarcastically spoke Cubina. "Nearly out of our senses, I assure you, senor." "Go on, you wretch!" commanded Herbert. "Let us hear what tale you have to tell." "Well!" said the _cacadore_, resuming his narration, "after a while we got a little over our fright--as one naturally does, you know--and then Manuel says to me, `Andres!' `What is it, Manuel?' said I. `Do you think,' said he, `that blood would run out of a dead body?' `Certainly not,' said I; `not a drop.' `I'll bet you five pesos it will,' challenged my _camarado_. `Done!' said I; and then, to settle the thing, we--I acknowledge it--did run our _machetes_ through the body of the Custos--of course, we could do him no harm then." "Monsters!" exclaimed Herbert; "it was almost as bad as killing him! What a horrid tale! Ha! you wretches, notwithstanding its ingenuity, it'll not save your necks from a halter!" "Oh, senorito," said Andres, appealingly, "we've done nothing to deserve that. I can assure you we are both right sorry for what we've done. Ain't you sorry, Manuel?" "_Carrai_! that I am," earnestly answered Manuel. "We both regretted it afterwards," continued Andres, "and to make up for what we had done, we took the cloak and spread it decently over the body--in order that the poor alcalde should rest in peace." "Liar!" cried Quaco, throwing the light of his _cocuyo_ on the corpse. "You did no such thing; you stabbed him _through_ the cloak. Look there!" And as Quaco gave this indignant denial, he pointed to the cuts in the cloth to prove the falsehood of the Spaniard's statement. "_Carrai-ai-i_!" stammered out the confounded Andres. "Sure enough there's a cut or two. Oh, now I recollect: we first covered him up. It was after we did that, we then made the bet--didn't we, Manuel?" Manuel's reply was not heard: for at that instant the hoof-strokes of horses were heard in front of the hut; and the shadowy forms of two horsemen could be distinguished just outside the doorway. It was the black groom, who had returned from Content, accompanied by the overseer of the estate. Shortly after a number of negroes appeared on foot, carrying a stretcher. Their purpose was to convey the sick man to Content. Circumstances had occurred to make a change in the character of their duty. Volume Three, Chapter XXIII. CHAKRA ON THE BACK TRACK. Of the three magistrates who condemned the Coromantee, one had been slumbering in his grave for six months; the second, about that number of days; and the third--the great Custos himself--was now a corpse! Of all three had the myal-man been the murderer; though in the case of the first two there had been no suspicion of foul play, or, at least, not enough to challenge inquest or investigation. Both had died of lingering diseases, bearing a certain resemblance to each other; and though partaking very much of the nature of a wasting, intermittent fever, yet exhibiting symptoms that were new and strange--so strange as to baffle the skill of the Jamaican disciples of Aesculapius. About the death of either one Chakra had not felt the slightest apprehension--nor would he even had an investigation arisen. In neither murder had his hand appeared. Both had been accomplished by the invisible agency of Obi, that at this period held mysterious existence on every plantation in the Island. With the assassination of the Custos, however, it was different. Circumstances had caused that event to be hurried, and there was danger--as Chakra himself had admitted--that the spell of Obi might be mistaken for a spell of poison. A death so sudden, and by natural causes inexplicable, would, undoubtedly, provoke speculation, and lead to the opening and examining of the body. Chakra knew that inside would be found something stronger than even the sap of the Savanna flower or the branched _calalue_; and that in all probability the malady to which the Custos had succumbed would be pronounced _murder_. With this upon his mind, he was not without apprehension--his fears pointing to Cynthia. Not that he suspected the _honesty_ of his confederate; but only that her _consistency_ might be too weak to withstand the cross-questioning of a coroner. Fearing this, he had scarce got out of sight of the Custos's corpse before he commenced contriving how Cynthia's tongue could be tied--in other words, how the mulatta was to be made away with. Upon this design his thoughts were for the moment bent. He had less, if any, apprehension about his other accomplice in the crime. He fancied that Jessuron was himself too deeply dyed to point out the spots upon his fellow-conspirator; and this rendered him confident of secrecy on the part of the Jew. Neither did he dwell long upon the danger to be apprehended from Cynthia, and so trivial a matter as the silencing of her tongue soon became obliterated or blended with another and far more important project, to the execution of which he was now hastening. On leaving the hut where lay the dead body of his victim, he had taken to by-paths and bushes. Only for a short time did he keep to these. The twilight rapidly darkening into night left the highway free to him; and, availing himself of this privilege, he returned to it--showing by his hurried steps, as he regained the road, that he was glad to escape from a circuitous path. His face once more set towards the Trelawney hills, he walked in silence, and with a rapidity scarce credible--his long, ape-like legs, split trestle fashion to the centre of his body, enabling him to glide over the ground almost as fast as a mule could mince. Whenever anyone appeared upon the road before him, he adopted his customary plan of betaking himself to the bushes until they had passed; but when travellers chanced to be going the same way--which more than once did happen--he avoided an encounter by making a circuit through the woods, and coming out far ahead of them. The trouble thus taken to gain time, as well as the earnest manner with which the myal-man was hastening forward, proved that the crime just committed was not the crisis of Chakra's villainies; but that some other evil purpose--to him of equal or greater import--was yet before him; and soon to be achieved, or, at least, attempted. Following back the main route between Savanna-la-Mer and the Bay, he at length arrived at the Carrion Crow Road, and, after traversing this for some distance, came within view of the Jumbe Rock, now glancing with vitreous sheen in the clear moonlight. Almost as soon as he had caught sight of the well-known land-mark, he forsook the road; and struck off into a by-path that led through the woods. This path, trending diagonally up the side of the Jumbe mountain, and passing near the base of the rock, was the same which Herbert Vaughan and the two Maroons had traversed on their way from the Happy Valley on that same morning. Chakra, however, knew nothing of this; nor aught either of the design or expedition of Cubina and his comrades. Equally ignorant was he of the errand on which Jessuron had dispatched his Cuban emissaries--by way of having his bow twice stringed. The Coromantee, fancying himself the only player in that game of murder, had no idea that there were others interested in it as much as he; and although once or twice during the day he had seen men moving suspiciously behind him along the road, it had never occurred to him who they were--much less that they had been deputed to complete his own job, should the "spell" fail to prove sufficiently potent. A somewhat long _detour_--which he had taken after leaving the hut--had brought him out on the main road behind both parties; and thus had he remained ignorant of their proximity, at the same time that he had himself escaped the observation both of the villains who intended to assassinate the Custos, and of the men who were pressing forward to save him. Still continuing his rapid stride, Chakra climbed the mountain slope, with the agility of one accustomed to the most difficult paths. On arriving under the Jumbe Rock, he halted--not with any intention of remaining there, but only to consider. He looked up towards the summit of the cliff, in whose dark shadow he was standing; and then, raising his eyes still higher, he gazed for a short while upon the sky. His glance betrayed that interrogative scrutiny characteristic of one who, not being furnished with a watch, endeavours to ascertain the time. Chakra needed no watch. By day, the sun was sufficient to inform him of the hour; by night the stars, which were old and familiar acquaintances. The sinking of Orion towards the silvered surface of the sea told him that in two hours, or thereabout, no stars would be seen. "Kupple ob hour!" muttered he, after making the observation; "woan do-- woan do. By de time I get to de Duppy Hole fo' de lamp, an' den back to de rock fo' fix um--It woan do! Adam an' his men de better part ob an hour 'fore dey ked climb up hya; an' den it be daylight. _Daat_ woan do nohow. Muss be done in de night, else we git follered, an' de Duppy Hole no longer safe 'treat fo' Chakra. Mussent risk dat, whasomebber a do. "Whugh!" he continued, after reflecting a moment, and with a look of villainous chagrin overspreading his countenance; "'tam a piece of cuss crooked luck fo' me no' be hya 'bout two hour soona. Dat 'ud 'a been s'fishint to got 'em all up in time; an' dar wud den a been gobs o' time to 'complish de whole bizness. "Nebba mind!" cried he, after a pause, and rousing himself from the attitude of reflection; "nebba mind, ye old Coromantee fool! 'morra night do jess as well. Den dar be plenty ob time. 'Taint like dey get de dead corpus ob de Cussus back to de Buff afore two, tree day; an' ef dat ere nigga fotch de news, it do no harm. Maybe do good, in de 'fusion it make 'bout de place. Nebba mind. It be all right fo' 'morr' night. 'Fore dis time ob de mornin' de Lilly Quasheba--de beau'ful dauter ob dat proud quaderoom--she sleep in de 'brace o' ole Chakra de myal-man. Whugh! "Two hour 'fore day," added he, after a longer pause, in which he appeared to gloat over his fiendish expectations; "two hour. I'se jess hab time go down to de Jew penn, an' den back to de Duppy Hole 'fore daylight. Dat ole sinner, he want know what's a been done; an' a want get de balance ob dat fifty poun'. A mout stan' need ob de money, now a's a-gwine ta hab a wife, an' take to de keepin' ob a 'tablishment. Ha! ha! ha!" And as he gave utterance to the laugh, the prospective bridegroom once more put his hideous form in motion, and followed the path leading to the Jew's penn. Volume Three, Chapter XXIV. THE VIGIL OF LOVE AND THE VIGIL OF JEALOUSY. Yola, true to her tryst, set forth to meet her beloved Maroon. The hour of midnight was the time that had been appointed; but, in order to secure punctuality, she took her departure from Mount Welcome long before that hour--leaving herself ample time to reach the rendezvous. Of late these after-night expeditions had become known to Miss Vaughan, and their object as well. To her young mistress, the Foolah maiden had confessed her _penchant_ for Cubina--her belief of its being reciprocated; in short, had told the whole story of her love. Common report spoke well of the young Maroon captain--Yola warmly; and as everything contributed to proclaim his intentions honourable, Miss Vaughan made no objection to his meetings with her maid. There was something in her own sentiments to incline her to this liberal line of conduct. The young creole could sympathise with hearts that truly loved--all the better that, by experience, her own heart had learnt the bitterness of being thwarted. At all times, therefore--so far as she was concerned--the brown-skinned sweetheart of Cubina had free leave to meet her lover. On that particular night permission was granted to the maid more freely than ever, since, for a certain reason, the mistress herself desired the interview to take place. The reason may be guessed without difficulty. On the previous night Cubina had thrown out a hint, which his sweetheart had communicated to her mistress. She had spoken of some news he might have that would interest the latter; and although there was nothing definite in that, still the hint had led to an indulgence in speculations--vague as dreams, it is true, but tinged with a certain sweetness. Kate knew something of the romantic friendship that had been established between Herbert and Cubina. Yola had long ago told her of this--as well as the incident that had given origin to it. Perhaps that knowledge may explain the interest, almost amounting to anxiety, she now felt to ascertain the nature of the communication which the Maroon had hypothetically promised to make. It was only in the afternoon of the day--after the excursion to the Jumbe Rock--that the maid had imparted this piece of intelligence to her mistress: and the altered demeanour of the latter during the rest of the evening proved how interesting it must have been to her. Her anxiety was scarce of the sorrowful kind, but rather tinged with an air of cheerfulness--as if some secret instinct had infused into her spirit a certain buoyancy--as if on the dark horizon of her future there was still lingering, or had suddenly arisen, a faint ray of hope. Yola had not told all she knew. She said nothing of certain surmises that had escaped the lips of Cubina. With a woman's tact, she perceived that these, being only conjectural, might excite false hopes in the breast of her young mistress: for whom the girl felt a true affection. In fear of this, she kept back the allusion to the marriage of Herbert and Judith, and its probable failure, which Cubina had so emphatically illustrated by a proverb. Yola intended this reserve to be only temporary--only until after her next meeting with her lover--from which she hoped to return with a fuller power of explaining it. Neither had she made known to her mistress the circumstance of having seen Cynthia in company with the Jew, and the conference that had occurred between them, overheard by herself and Cubina--much less the suspicions to which the latter had given expression. Under the apprehension that a knowledge of these strange facts and suspicions might trouble her young mistress, she had withheld them. The young Creole had not retired to rest when Yola took her departure from the house, nor yet for long after. Anxious to know the result of the interview between her maid and the Maroon, she remained awake within her chamber--burning the midnight lamp far into the hours of morning. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notwithstanding the more than permission that had been accorded to her, the princess-slave stole softly from the house--passing the precincts of the mansion, and traversing the grounds outside with considerable caution. This partly arose from the habit of that half-barbaric life, to which, in her own country and from earliest childhood, she had been accustomed. But there was also, perhaps, some suspicion of present danger, or, at all events, that fear of interruption natural to one on the way to keep an appointment of the kind towards which she was now betaking herself. From whatever motive sprung her cautious behaviour, it was not sufficient to prevent her departure from being observed; nor did it enable her to perceive that thing of woman's shape that, like an evil shadow, flitted after her across the fields, and went following her along the forest path. Whenever she turned it also turned, only not preserving an erect bearing, nor going in the same continuous gait; but every now and then pausing upon the path, sometimes in crouched attitude, as if seeking concealment under the shadow of the bushes--then gliding rapidly onward to make stop as before. After having got beyond the surroundings of the house, and some distance into the pimento forest, the Foolah walked with more freedom--as if no longer fearing interruption. She was, therefore, less likely to perceive that ill-omened shadow, that still continued on her track-- following, as before, by a series of progressive traverses, and in death-like silence. On reaching the glade, the young girl advanced towards the _ceiba_, and took her stand within its shadow--on a spot, in her eyes, "hallowed down to earth's profound, and up to heaven." She merely glanced round to satisfy herself that Cubina was not there. She scarce expected him yet. The hour, though late, was earlier than the time appointed. It had not yet gone twelve--else she would have heard the plantation clock announcing it. Allowing her eyes to drop to the ground at her feet, she stood for some minutes buried in a reverie of reflection--a sweet reverie, as befitted her situation of pleasant expectancy. She was startled from this abstraction by the behaviour of a bird--a scarlet tanager, that rose, fluttering and frightened, out of a small clump of bushes about ten paces from the _ceiba_, and in which it had been reposing. The bird, uttering a cry of alarm, forsook the shelter, and flew off into the forest. Yola could see nothing that should have caused the creature to make so abrupt a departure from its roosting-place. Her own presence could scarce have been the cause: since she had been some minutes upon the ground, and standing in tranquil _pose_. Some of its natural enemies had frayed the bird? Perhaps a rat, an owl, or a serpent? Thus reasoned she; and was so satisfied. If, instead of contenting herself with this conjecture, she had stepped ten paces forward, and looked into the little copse, she would have seen there something very different from any of the three creatures her fancy had conjured up. She would have seen the form of a woman crouching within the shadow, with features set in suppressed rage, and eyes glowing indignantly upon herself. Easily, too, would she have recognised the face as that of her fellow-slave, Cynthia! But she saw it not, though Cynthia saw her--though for hours did the two remain in this singular juxtaposition--one occupied with the vigil of love, the other absorbed in the vigil of jealousy. For long hours did the Foolah maid wait for the coming of her beloved Cubina--her ear keenly bent to catch any sound that might announce his approach; her bosom every moment becoming more and more a prey to painful impatience. Equally long stayed the spy in her place of concealment--equally suffering torture from jealous imaginings. To both it was a relief, when a footstep upon the path, and a rustling of branches, proclaimed the approach of some one towards the spot. It was but a momentary relief, mocking the anticipations of both--thwarting the joy of the one, and the vengeful design of the other. Instead of the expected lover, a very different personage made his appearance; and almost at the same instant another, coming from the opposite side. Both, at the same time, advanced towards the middle of the glade; and, without exchanging a word, stopped face to face near the _ceiba_, as if they had met by appointment. They were out in the open ground, and under the full light of the moon. Both were men, and the faces of both could be distinctly seen. Yola knew only one of them, and the sight of him hindered her from staying to look upon the other. She merely glanced at a countenance that was fearful--though not more fearful to her than the one she had already recognised, and which had at once determined her to get away from the ground. Keeping the great trunk between herself and the new comers, and retreating silently under its shadow, she glided back into the underwood of the forest, and was soon far from the presence of the two intruders, who had brought her long and vain vigil to such an unsatisfactory termination. Cynthia could not have followed her example, even had she been so inclined. The two men had stopped within six paces of the spot in which she lay concealed. On every side of it the ground was clear of cover, with the moon shining full upon it. A cat could not have crept out of the copse without attracting the attention of one or the other. Cynthia knew both the men--was the confederate of both--though not without fearing them. At first sight of them she would have discovered herself, but disliked to come under the observation of her rival. Afterwards, when the two men had entered into conversation, she was held in her place by a dread of a different kind. She had already overheard part of what they were saying; and she feared they might punish her for eavesdropping, involuntary though it was. Better for Cynthia had she then declared herself; but dreaming not of discovery, or the fearful fate that might be involved in it, she determined to be still, and listen to the dark dialogue to its ending. Volume Three, Chapter XXV. CYNTHIA IN TROUBLE. The two men who had thus interrupted the silent tableau by the _ceiba_ tree were Jacob Jessuron and Chakra the Coromantee. Just at the time that Chakra departed from the Jumbe Rock to pay his nocturnal visit to the Jew, the latter was leaving his penn to honour the Coromantee with a similar call. As both were travelling the same path, and in adverse directions, it was more than probable--a necessity, in fact--that each should meet the other before reaching the end of his journey. Also, as the glade, where stood the great _ceiba_, was on the same path, and midway between the Jumbe Rock and the Jew's penn, it was natural this encounter should take place not far from that noted trysting-place. In effect, it occurred within the glade: the two men having entered it almost at the same instant of time. The Jew had got first into the open ground, and was first seen. The myal-man might have had these advantages had he wished: he had been the first to arrive on the edge of the opening; but, true to his instinct of caution, he had kept under cover until making a reconnoissance, in which he saw and recognised his advancing _vis-a-vis_. They met near the middle of the glade, just outside the shadow of the great tree, stopping face to face when within a pace or two of each other. Not the slightest salutation was exchanged between the two men-- any more than if they had been two tigers who had just come together in the jungle. The secret compact between them precluded the necessity for compliment or palaver. Each understood the other; and not a word was spoken to introduce the dialogue except that which was pertinent to the business between them. "Well, goot Shakra! you hash news for me?" interrogated the Jew, taking the initiative in the conversation. "You hash been in the direction of Savanna? Ish all right on the road?" "Whugh!" vociferated the myal-man, throwing out his breast and jerking up his shoulders with an air of triumphant importance. "All right, eh? Well, not azzackly on de road, but by de side ob daat same, dar lie a corp', wich by dis time oughter be as cold as de heart ob a water-millyum, an' 'tiff as--'tiff as--as--de 'keleton ob ole Chakra. Ha! ha! ha!" And the speaker uttered a peal of fierce laughter at the simile he had had so much difficulty in conceiving; but which, when found, recalled the sweet triumph of his vengeance. "Blesh my soul! Then it ish all over?" "Daat's all ober--Ise be boun'." "And the shpell did it? There wash no need--" With a start the Jew paused in his speech, as if about to say something he had not intended; and which had been very near escaping him. "There wash no need--no need for you to haf gone after?" This was evidently not the question originally upon his tongue. "No need!" repeated Chakra, a little puzzled at the interrogatory; "no need, so far as dat war consarned. Ob coos de 'pell did de work, as a knowd it wud, an' jess as a told you it wud. 'Twan't fo' dat a went arter, but a puppos ob my own. Who tole ye, Massr Jake, dat I wor gone arter?" "Goot Shakra, I washn't quite sure till now. The wench Cynthy thought ash how you had followed the Cushtos." "Whugh! dat 'ere gal talk too much. She hab her tongue 'topped 'fore long. She _muss_ hab her tongue 'topp, else she gess boaf o' us in trouble. Nebba mind! A make dat all right too--by-'m-bye. Now, Massr Jake, a want dat odder twenty-five pound. De job am finish, an' de work am done. Now's de time fo' de pay." "That ish right, Shakra. I hash the monish here in red gold. There it ish." As the Jew said this, he passed a bag containing gold into the hands of Chakra. "You'll find it ish all counted correct. Twenty-five poundsh currenshy. Fifty pounsh altogether, ash agreed. A deal of monish--a deal of monish, s' help me!" Chakra made no reply to this significant insinuation; but, taking the bag, deposited it in the lining of his skin _kaross_, as he did so giving utterance to his favourite ejaculation, "Whugh!" the meaning of which varied according to the accentuation given to it. "And now, goot Shakra!" continued the Jew: "I hash more work for you. There ish another shpell wanted, for which you shall have another fifty poundsh; but firsht tell me, hash you seen anyone to-day on your travels?" "Seed any one, eh? Well, dat am a quessin, Massr Jake. A seed a good wheen on my trabbels: more'n seed me, I'se be boun'." "But ash you seen anyone ash you know?" "Sartin a did--de Cussus fo' one, tho', by de gollies! a hardly wud a knowd him, he wa' so fur gone--moas to de bone! He am almos' as much a 'keleton as ole Chakra hisself. Ha! ha! ha!" "Anybody elshe that you hash a knowledge of?" "No--nob'dy--neery one as a know anythin' bout 'ceppin' de Cussus' 'tendant. A seed odder men on de road, but dey wur fur off, and a keep dem fur off as a kud. Oa! yes, dar wa' one who comed near--mose too near--him I knowd. Dat wa' one ob dem 'ere Trelawney Maroon--Quaco dey call um." "Only Quaco, you shay? You hash seen nothing of hish capt'in, Cubina, nor of a young white gentlemansh along with him?" "Neider de one nor de todder ob dem two people. Wha fo' you ask dat, Massr Jake?" "I hash a good reason, Shakra. The young fellow I speaksh of ish a book-keeper of mine. He hash left the penn thish very morning. I don't know for why, or whither he ish gone; but I hash a reason to think he ish in company with Capt'in Cubina. Maybe not, and maybe he'll be back again; but it looksh suspicious. If he'sh gone for goot, the shpell will be all for nothingsh. 'S'help me, for nothingsh!" "Dat's a pity! I'm sorry fo' dat, Massr Jake. A hope he no gone." "Whether or not, I mushn't go to shleep about it. There ish another shpell that will be more needed now ash ever." "De Obi am ready. Who d'ye want um set fo' nex'?" "For this rashcal Cubina." "Ah, dat ere in welkum. De god do him bess to 'pell _him_." "He hash trouble for me. It ish not like to come so soon now, ash the Cushtos ish out of the way. But who knowsh how soon? And better ash the shpell should be set at once. So, good Shakra, if you can manish to do for Cubina in as short a time ash you hash done the Cushtos, there ish another fifty poundsh ready for you." "A'll do ma bess, Massr Jake, to earn you money. All do ma bess--de bess can do no mo." "That ish true, goot Shakra! Don't you think this wench, Cynthy, can help you?" "Not a bit ob help from dat quar'r--not worth a 'traw for 'pelling Cubina. He no let de m'latta come nigh o' 'im fo' no considerashun. He sick ob de sight o' her. Besides, dat gal, she know too much now. She one ob dese days fotch de white folk to de Duppy Hole. Dat nebba do. No furrer use now. She hab serb her turn, an' mus' be got rid ob--muss go 'long wi' de odders--long wi' de Cussus. Da's my way--de only way keep a woman tongue tied, am to 'top 'um waggin' altogedder. Whugh!" After uttering the implied threat, the monster stood silent a moment, as if reflecting upon some mode by which he could make away with the life of the mulatta. "You think, Shakra, you ish likely to find somebody elshe to assist you?" "Nebba fear, Massr Jake. Leab dat to ole Chakra--ole Chakra an' ole Obi. Dey do de bizness widout help from any odder." "Fifty poundsh, then, Shakra. Ach! I'd give twice the monish--yes, s'help me, ten times the monish--if I knew it wash all right with young Vochan. Ach! where ish he gone?" The expression of bitter chagrin, almost anguish, with which the villainous old Jew, for at least the tenth time on that day, repeated this interrogative formula, told that, of all the matters upon his mind, the absence of his book-keeper was the one uppermost, and deemed by him of most importance. "Blesh my soul!" continued he, lifting his umbrella high in air, and continuing to hold it up, "Blesh my soul! if he ish gone for goot, I shall have all thish trouble for nothing--all the cr-r--inconvenience!" It was "crime" he was about to have said; but he changed the word--not from any delicacy in the presence of Chakra, but rather to still a shuddering within himself, to which the thought had given rise. "Nebba mind, Massr Jake," said his confederate, encouragingly; "you hab got rid ob an enemy--same's masseff. Dat am someting, anyhow; an' a promise you soon get shot ob one odder. A go at once 'bout dat berry bizness." "Yesh! yesh! soon, goot Shakra, soon ash you can! I won't keep yoush any longer. It ish near daylight. I musht go back, and get some shleep. S'help me! I hash not had a wink thish night. Ach! I can't shleep so long ash he'sh not found. I musht go home, and see if there ish any newsh of him." So saying, and turning on his heel, without "good night," or any other parting salutation, the Jew strode abstractedly off, leaving Chakra where he stood. Volume Three, Chapter XXVI. A FATAL SNEEZE. "Whugh!" ejaculated the Coromantee, as soon as his confederate was out of hearing; "dar's someting heavy on de mind ob dat ere ole Jew-- someting wuss dan de death ob de Cussus Va'gh'n. Wonder now wha' em be all 'bout? 'Bout dis yar book-keeper a knows it am. But wha' 'bout him? A'll find out 'fore a'm many hour older. Daat a'll do. Gollies! A muss go an' git some sleep too. A'm jess like de Jew masseff--han't had ne'er a wink dis night, nor de night afore neider; nor doan expeck get de half ob a wink morrer night! Dat will be night ob all odder! Morrer night, if all ting go well, Chakra he no sleep him 'lone--he sleep no more by hisseff--he hab for him bedfellow de beauty ob all de Island ob Jamaica. He sleep wi' de Lilly--." Ere the full name of the victim threatened with this horrid fate had passed from his lips, the menace of the myal-man was interrupted. The interruption was caused by a sound proceeding from the little clump of bushes close to where Chakra stood. It sounded exactly as if some one had sneezed--for it was that in reality. Cynthia had sneezed. She had not done so intentionally--far from it. After what she had heard, it was not likely she would have uttered any sound to proclaim her presence. At that instant she would have given all she possessed in the world--all she ever hoped to possess, even the love of Cubina--to have been miles from the spot, within the safe kitchen of Mount Welcome--anywhere but where she then was. Long before the conversation between the Jew and Chakra had come to a close, she had made up her mind never to see the myal-man again--never willingly. Now an encounter appeared inevitable: he must have heard the sneeze! The wretched woman reasoned aright--he had heard it. A fierce "whugh!" was the ejaculation it called forth in response; and then the myal-man, turning suddenly in the direction whence it appeared to have proceeded, stood for a short time silent, and listening. "By golly!" said he, speaking aloud; "dat 'ere soun' berry like a 'neeze! Some ob dem 'ere trees ha' been a-takin' snuff. A'd jess like know wha' sort ob varmint made dat obstropolus noise. It wan't a bush-- dat's sartin. Nor yet wa' it a bird. What den? It wan't 't all onlike de 'neeze ob a nigga wench! But what wud a wench be a-doin' in tha? Da's what puzzles me. Lookee hya!" added he, raising his voice, and addressing himself to whoever or whatever might have produced the noise; "les's hear dat ag'in, whosomebber you be! Take anodder pince ob de snuff--louder dis time, so a can tell whedder you am a man or whedder you be femmynine." He waited for a while, to see if his speech would elicit a response; but none came. Within the copse all remained silent, as if no living thing was sheltered under its sombre shadows. "You wan't 'neeze agin," continued he, seeing there was no reply; "den, by golly, a make you, ef you am what a 'speck you is--someb'dy hid in dar to lissen. No snake can't a 'neeze dat way, no' yet a lizzart. You muss be eyder man, woman, or chile; an' ef you be, an' hab heerd wha's been say, by de great Accompong! you life no be worth--Ha! ha!" As he entered upon this last paragraph of his apostrophe he had commenced moving towards the copse, which was only six paces from his starting-point. Before the speech was completed he had passed in among the bushes; and, bending them over with his long, ape-like arms, was scrutinising the ground underneath. The exclamation was called forth by his perceiving the form of a woman in a crouching attitude within the shadow. In another instant he had seized the woman by the shoulder, and with a quick wrench jerked her into an erect position. "Cynthy!" he exclaimed, as the light fell upon the countenance of the mulatta. "Yes, Chakra!" cried the woman, screaming ere she spoke; "it's me, it's me!" "Whugh! Wha' you do hya? Youb been lissenin'. Wha' fo' you lissen?" "Oh, Chakra! I did not intend it. I came here--" "How long you been hya? Tell dat quick!" "Oh, Chakra--I came--" "You hya 'fore we came in' de glade. Needn't axe dat. You no kud git hya atterwad. You heer all been said? You muss hab heer it." "Oh, Chakra, I couldn't help it. I would have gone--" "Den you nebba hear nodder word more. Won't do let you go now. You come hya; you stay hya. You nebba go out ob dis 'pot. Whugh!" And giving to the monosyllable an aspirate of fierceness, that caused it to sound more like the utterance of a wild beast than a human being, the monster threw out his long dark arms, and rushed towards his intended victim. In another instant his long muscular fingers were clutched round the throat of the mulatta, clamping it with the tightness and tenacity of an iron garotte. The wretched creature could make no resistance against such a formidable and ferocious antagonist. She tried to speak; she could not even scream. "Chak-r-a, de-ar Chak-r-r-a," came forth in a prolonged thoracic utterance, and this was the last articulation of her life. After that there was a gurgling in her throat--the death-rattle, as the fingers relaxed their long-continued clutch--and the body, with a sudden sound, fell back among the bushes. "You lie da!" said the murderer, on seeing that his horrid work was complete. "Dar you tell no tale. Now for de Duppy Hole; an' a good long sleep to 'fresh me fo' de work of de morrer night. Whugh!" And turning away from the image of death he had just finished fashioning, the fearful Coromantee pulled the skirts of his skin mantle around him, and strode out of the glade, with as much composure as if meditating upon some abstruse chapter in the ethics of Obi. Volume Three, Chapter XXVII. CHAKRA TRIMMING HIS LAMP. Day was dawning when the tiger Chakra returned to his lair in the Duppy's Hole. With him night was day, and the dawn of the morn the twilight of evening. He was hungry: having eaten only a morsel of food since starting out on his awful errand, just twenty-four hours ago. The remains of a pepper-pot, still unemptied from the iron skillet in which it had been cooked, stood in a corner of the hut. To warm it up would require time, and the kindling of a fire. He was too much fatigued to be fastidious; and, drawing the skillet from its corner, he scooped up the stew, and ate it cold. Finally, before retiring to rest, he introduced into his stomach something calculated to warm the cold pepper-pot--the "heel-tap" of a bottle of rum that remained over from the preceding night; and then, flinging himself upon the bamboo bedstead, so heavily that the frail reeds "scrunched" under his weight, he sank into a profound slumber. He lay upon his hunched back, his face turned upward. A protuberance on the trunk of the tree, of larger dimensions than that upon his own person, served him for a bolster--a few handfuls of the silk cotton laid loosely upon it constituting his pillow. With his long arms extended loosely by his side--one of them hanging over until the murderous fingers rested upon the floor--and his large mouth, widely agape, displaying a double serrature of pointed, shining teeth, he looked more like some slumbering ogre than a human being. His sleep could not be sweet. It was far from being silent. From his broad, compressed nostrils came a sonorous snoring, causing the cartilage to heave outward, accompanied by a gurgling emission through his throat that resembled the breathing of a hippopotamus. Thus slumbered Chakra throughout the livelong day, dreaming of many crimes committed, or, perhaps, only of that--the sweetest crime of all-- which was yet in abeyance. It was near night when he awoke. The sun had gone down--at least, he was no longer visible from the bottom of the Duppy's Hole--though some red rays, tinting the tops of the trees upon the summit of the cliff, told that the orb of day was still above the horizon. Extended on his couch, Chakra saw not this. His hut was dark, the door being shut close; but through the interstices of the bamboos he could see to some distance outside, and perceived that twilight was fast deepening among the trees. The cry of the bittern, coming up from the lagoon, the shriek of the _potoo_, heard through the sough of the cataract, and the hoot of the great-eared owl--all three true voices of the night--reaching his ears, admonished him that his hour of action had arrived. Springing from his couch, and giving utterance to his favourite ejaculation, he set about preparing himself for the adventure of the night. His first thought was about something to eat, and his eyes fell upon the skillet, standing where he had left it, near the middle of the floor. It still contained a quantity of the miscellaneous stew--enough for a meal. "Woan do eat um cold," he muttered, proceeding to kindle a fire, "not fo' de second time. Gib me de ager chills, it wud. Mus' fortify de belly wi' someting warm--else a no be fit to do de work dat am to be done." The kindling of the fire, the warming up of the pepper-pot, and its subsequent consumption, were three operations that did not take Chakra any very great amount of time. They were all over just as the darkness of night descended over the earth. "Now fo' get ready de signal," soliloquised he, moving about over the floor of his hut, and looking into crannies and corners, as if in search of some object. "As de good luck hab it, dar be no moon to-night--leastways, till atter midnight. Atter den a doan care she shine as bright as de sun hisseff. Dare be plenty ob dark fo' Adam to see de signal, and plenty fo' de odder bizzness at Moun' Welc'm'. Dar'll be light 'nuf 'bout dat ere 'fore we takes leab o' de place. Won't dat be a blaze? Whugh! "Wha hab a put dat ere tellemgraff lamp?" said he, still searching around the hut. "I'se fo'got all 'bout wha it am, so long since a use de darned ting. Muss be un'er de bed. Ya--hya it am!" As he said this, he drew from under the bamboo bedstead a gourd shell, of nearly egg shape, but of the dimensions of a large melon. It had a long, tapering shank--part of the fruit itself, where the pericarp narrowed towards its peduncle--and through this a string had been passed, by which the gourd could be suspended upon a peg. Holding it by the handle, he raised the shell to the light of his lard lamp, already kindled, and stood for some time silently inspecting it. The gourd was not perfect--that is, it was no longer a mere empty shell, but a manufactured article, containing within a most singular apparatus. On one side appeared a hole, several inches in diameter, and cut in a shape nearly pyramidal, the base being above the thick end of the oval, and the apex, somewhat blunt, or truncated, extending towards the shank. Up to the level of the opening the shell was filled with lard, in the middle of which appeared a wick of silk cotton staple; and behind this were two hits of broken looking-glass, set slanting to each other. The whole apparatus bore some resemblance to a reflecting lamp; and that was in reality the purpose for which the rude contrivance had been constructed. After a careful examination, its owner appeared to be satisfied that it was in good order; and having "trimmed" it, by adding a little fresh lard, and straightening up the wick, he set the lamp aside, and proceeded with the preparation of some other paraphernalia necessary for the night's expedition. A stick, some four feet in length, and a piece of strong cord, were the next articles procured; and these were also put on one side. To these succeeded a long-bladed knife, and a stout pistol, with flint lock, which the Coromantee loaded and primed with great care. Both were stuck behind a belt which he had already buckled around his ribs, under the skin kaross. "A doan 'ticipate," said he, as he armed himself with these formidable weapons, "dar a-gwine be much need fo' eider ob 'em. Dar ain't nob'dy down dar am like show fight. Dat ere gran' buckra ob late come to Moun' Welc'm' de say he be 'fraid ob de shadda ob danger; an' as fo' de brack folks, de look ob dese weapon be suffishient fo' dem. Ef dat woan do, den a trow off my mask. De sight ob ole Chakra, dat dribe 'em into fits. Dat send ebbery nigga on de plantashun into de middle ob next week. Whugh!" Another weapon appeared to be wanting, in the shape of a large black bottle, containing rum. With this the Coromantee soon supplied himself, drawing one out from its secret hiding-place, and holding it before the light, to make sure that it was full. "Dis bottle," said he, as he thrust it into a pouch in his kaross, "I hab kep fo' dis 'pecial 'casion; it am de bess weapon fo' my puppos. When dem fellas get dar dose ob de rum, dar'll be no back out in 'em den. Golly!" he added, glancing out, and seeing that it was now quite dark, "a muss be gone fro' hya. By de time ole Adam sees de tellemgraff, an' gets 'cross dem 'ere mountains, it be late 'nuf for de bizness to begin." Finishing with this reflection, the sable conjuror took up his "telegraphic apparatus," and, stepping over the threshold, hurried away from the hut. Volume Three, Chapter XXVIII. SETTING THE SIGNAL. The short tropic twilight had passed, and night had descended upon the Island of Jamaica. It promised to be a night of deepest darkness. The moon would not rise before midnight; and even then she might not be seen, as the canopy was covered with a thick curtain of black cumulus clouds, through which neither star nor speck of blue sky was visible. Alike lay valleys and mountains shrouded in amorphous darkness; and even the Jumbe Rock--the highest and most conspicuous summit for miles around--was wrapped in complete obscurity. Its vitreous flanks no longer sparkled in the light, since there was none; and its dark mass was so dimly outlined against the equally sombre background of the sky, as to be invisible from the valley below. The form of a man, groping his way up the narrow ravine that debouched upon the summit of the rock, could not have been distinguished, much less the black hue of his skin, the deformity that marked his figure, or the hideous aspect of his countenance. And yet a man so characterised climbed up there, about half-an-hour after the going down of the sun. It need scarce be said that that man was Chakra, the Coromantee. Who else would be seeking the Jumbe Rock at that hour? What was his errand up there? Let the sequel declare. On setting foot upon the platform, he undid the knot that fastened the skin mantle over his shoulders; and then taking off the garment, he spread it out upon the rock. The stick he had brought up with him he placed along one edge, and there made it fast with some pieces of string. When this was accomplished, he lifted both stick and cloak from the rock, and, proceeding to the palm, he laid the stick transversely across the stem, at about the height of his own hand, and then lashed it fast to the tree. The kaross now hung down the stem, in a spread position, the transverse stick keeping it extended to its full width. While arranging it thus, Chakra evidently had an eye to the direction-- that is, the plane represented by the spread garment had one face fronting the valley of Mount Welcome and the cultivated lowlands between that and Montego Bay, while the reverse side was turned towards the "black grounds" of Trelawney--a tract of wild country in which not a single estate, plantation, or penn had been established, and where no such thing as a white settlement existed. In this solitude, however, there were _black_ colonies of a peculiar kind; for that was the favourite haunt of the absconded slave--the lurking-place of the outlaw--the retreat of the runaway. There, even might the assassin find an asylum, secure from the pursuit of justice. There had he found it: for among those dark, forest-clad mountains more than one murderer made his dwelling. Robbers there were many--even existing in organised bands, and holding the authorities of the Island at defiance. All these circumstances were known to Chakra; and some of the robbers, too, were known to him--some of the fiercest who followed that free calling. It was to communicate with one of these bands that the preparations of the myal-man were being made. Chakra was preparing the signal. Satisfied that the skin cloak was extended in the proper direction, the Coromantee next took up his reflector-lamp; and having attached it against that side of the kaross facing towards the mountains, he took out his flint, steel, and tinder, and, after striking a light, set the wick on fire. In an instant the lamp burned brightly, and the light, reflected from the bits of looking-glass, might have been seen from the back country to the distance of many miles; while, at the same time, it was completely screened from any eye looking from the side of the plantations. The projecting edges of the calabash hindered the rays from passing to either side; while the interposed disc of the spread kaross further prevented the "sheen" that otherwise might have betrayed the presence of the signal. It was not meant for the eyes of honest men in the direction of Montego Bay, but for those of the robbers among the far hills of Trelawney. "Jess de sort ob night fo' dem see it," muttered the myal-man, as with folded arms foe stood contemplating the light. "De sky brack as de Debbil's pitch-pot. Ole Adam, he sure hab some 'un on de look-out. De sure see 'im soon." Chakra never looked more hideous than at that moment. Stripped of the ample garment, that to some extent aided in concealing his deformity a scant shirt, of coarse crimson flannel, alone covering the hunch; most part of his body naked, exposing to the strong light of the reflector his black corrugated skin; the aspect of his ferocious features compressed by the snake-encircled turban upon his temples, the long-bladed knife and pistol appearing in his waist-belt--all combined to produce a fearful picture, that could not fail to strike terror into whoever should have the misfortune to behold it. Standing immovable under the glare of the lamp, his misshapen figure projected across the surface of the summit platform, he might easily have been mistaken for a personification of the fiend--that African fiend--after whom the rock had been named. In this situation he remained, observing perfect silence, and with his eyes eagerly bent upon the distant mountains, dimly discernible through the deep obscurity of the night. Only for a few minutes was this silence preserved, and the attitude of repose in which he had placed himself. "Whugh!" he exclaimed, dropping his arms out of their fold, as if to set about some action. "I know'd dey wud soon see um. Yonner go' de answer!" As he spoke, a bright light was seen suddenly blazing up on the top of a distant eminence, which was suddenly extinguished. After a short interval another, exactly similar, appeared in the same place, and in a similar manner went out again; and then, when an equal interval had elapsed, a third. All three resembled flashes produced by powder ignited in a loose heap. The moment the third response had been given to his signal, the Coromantee stepped up to his reflector and blew out the light. "Dar's no use fo' you any mo'," said he, apostrophising the lamp; "dar _am_ some danger keepin' you dar. B'side, it am a gettin' cold up hya. A want my ole cloak." So saying, he took down the reflector, and after it the kaross; and, separating the latter from the piece of stick, he once more suspended the garment around his shoulders. This done, he moved forward to the front of the platform; and dropping his legs over, sat down upon the edge of the rock. Volume Three, Chapter XXIX. THE CRY OF THE SOLITAIRE. From the spot where he had seated himself, the mansion of Mount Welcome was in view--that is, it would have been, had it been daytime, or even a moonlight night. As it was, however, darkness veiled the whole valley under its opaque shadows; and the situation of the house could only have been guessed at, had it not been for the light streaming through the jalousied windows. These revealed its position to the eyes of the Coromantee. More than one window showed light--several that were side by side giving out a strong glare. These Chakra knew to be the side windows of the great hall, or drawing-room. Its front windows could not be seen from the Jumbe Rock: since they faced towards the valley and not to the mountain. The myal-man knew all this. A forty years' residence on the estate of Mount Welcome had rendered perfectly accurate his knowledge of the topography of the place. So much light shining out suggested the idea of cheerfulness, as if company were entertained within. "Whugh!" ejaculated Chakra, as his eye caught the lights. "Doan look berry much like dey war grievin'. Dey can't hab heer'd o' dat 'fair yet. P'raps de hab take de body to de plantashun ob Content? Leetle dey know down dar wha's been done. Leetle dey dream dat de proud masser ob dat ere Buff am jess at dis minnit a cold corpus. Da's no house ob mournin'. Dar's feas'in a-gwine on da', a be boun'? Nebba mind! Nebba mind! Patience, ole nigga! maybe you come in fo' share ob dem wittle 'fore he gits cold; and maybe you hab share of the dishes on which de wittle am sa'v'd up--de forks, an' de 'poons, and de silber plate generumly. Daat _will_ be a haul. Whugh! "But wha' care I fo' de forks an' de 'poons? Nuffin! Dar's but one ting a care fo', an' dat am more dan silber, more na gold, more na Moun' Wele'm, itseff! Dat am de Lilly Quasheba. Whugh! A hab lub her fo' many long year--lub her more'n ebba; yes, a lub her wi' de whole 'trength ob my soul. Once a git dat bewfu' gal in dese arms, a no care for de forks and de 'poons. Ole Adam be welc'm take all dem rubbish. "No," continued he, after a pause, apparently relenting of his liberality; "dat no do, neider. A soon need boaf de forks and de 'poons. A'll want him fo' de housekeepin'. A'll want de silber an' de gold to buy odder ting. Muss hab m' share 'long wi' de ress. "Wha am de bess place take my wife to?" muttered the intended husband, continuing the same strain of reflections. "Muss leab de Duppy Hole. Dat place no longer safe. Too near de ole plantashun. Boun' to be a debbil ob a rumpus atter she carried 'way--daat are ef dey b'lieve she _am_ carried away. Guess a know de way make um b'lieve diff'rent. Nebba mind. A know how manage dat!" At this moment the reflections of the Coromantee were interrupted by a sound that caused him to draw his legs up on the rock, and assume an attitude as if about to spring to his feet. At the repetition of the sound, he started up, and rapidly re-crossed to the opposite side. At the point where the upward path debouched upon the platform, he stopped to listen. For the third time the sound was repeated. There was nothing strange in it--at least, to ears familiar with the voices of a Jamaica forest. It was the call of a common yet peculiar bird--the _solitaire_. The only thing strange was to hear it at that hour of the night. It was not the time when the soft and flute-like note of the _solitaire_ should fall upon the ear of the forest wanderer. Hearing it at that hour was by no means strange to Chakra. It was not that which had startled him from his seat, and caused him to cross quickly to the other side of the platform. On the contrary, it was because he knew that what he had heard was _not_ the note of the _solitaire_, but a counterfeit call from his confederate, Adam! Chakra's private slogan was different--more mournful and less musical. It was an imitation of that melancholy utterance heard at night from the sedgy shores of the dark lagoon--the cry of the wailing bittern. With a small reed applied to his lips, the Coromantee produced an exact imitation of this cry, and then remained silent, awaiting the result. At the bottom of the ravine could be heard a murmur of voices, as if several men were together, talking in guarded tones. Following this came a sound of scratching against the stones, and a rustling of branches, each moment becoming more distinct. Shortly after, the form of a man emerged out of the shadowy cleft, stepping cautiously upon the platform. Another followed, and another, until six in all stood upon the summit of the rock. "Dat you, brodder Adam?" said Chakra, stepping forward to receive the first who presented himself at the head of the sloping path. "Ya--ya! Am it Chakra?" "Dat same ole nigga." "All right, kommarade. We've see yar signal as soon as it war hoisted. We wan't long a comin', war we?" "Berry quick. A didn't 'speck ye fo' half an hour mo'." "Well, now we're hya, what's the game? I hope dar's a good big stake to play for! Our stock of stuff wants remplenishin' berry badly. We haven't had de chance of a job fo' more dan a month. We're a'most in want o' wittles!" "Wittles!" exclaimed the myal-man, laying a scornful emphasis on the word. "Dar's a ting for ye do dis night dat'll gib ye mo' dan wittle-- it gib you wealth--ebbery one ob ye. Whugh!" "Good!" ejaculated Adam, simultaneously with a chorus of like exclamations; "glad to hear dat ere bit o' intelligence. Am it dat ere little job you speak me 'bout last time I see you? Dat it, ole humpy?" "Dat same," laconically answered Chakra, "only wi' dis diffurence," added he; "dat a call um de big job in'tead of de little un." "Big or little," rejoined the other, "we've come ready to do it--you see we hab?" The speaker, who appeared to be the leader of the party who accompanied him, pointed to the others as he made this remark. The hint was scarce regarded by Chakra. Notwithstanding the murky gloom that enveloped the forms of Adam and his companions, the myal-man could see that they were all armed and equipped, though in the most varied and uncouth fashions. The weapons of no two were alike. One carried an old musket, red with rust; another a fowling-piece, in like condition. Others were provided with pistols, and nearly all had long knives, or _machetes_. Thus provided, it was scarce probable that the job for whose execution Chakra had summoned them could be one of a pacific character. Had a light been thrown upon the group that surrounded Chakra, it would have revealed a collection of faces, each provided with a set of features but little less sinister than those of Chakra himself. In not one of them would have been found a line indicative of either peace or mercy--for it was the band of the black robber Adam, celebrated as the most notorious cut-throats in the Island. Chakra expressed no surprise at seeing them armed, nor felt any. He had expected it; and the flourish which their leader had made of this fact was only intended to make manifest that they were ready for the ordinary requirements of their vocation. Eagerly willing were they for the extremest action; but, in order to make more certain of their compliance, Chakra thought it prudent to ply them with a little rum. "Ma frien's," said he, in an affectionate tone, "you hab had de fatigue ob a long walk troo de darkness ob de night. A hab got hya a leetle drop ob someting dat's berry good fo' keep de cold out ob you. 'Pose we all take a wet from dis bottle?" To this proposition there was a general assent, expressed in varied phraseology. There was no teetotaller in that crowd of worthies. Chakra had not thought of providing himself with either drinking-cup or calabash; but the want was scarcely felt. The robbers each in turn refreshed himself directly from the neck of the bottle, until the rum ran out. "Well, ole humpy," said Adam, drawing Chakra aside, and speaking in that familiar phrase that betokened a thickness of thieves between them. "I suppose the chance you spoke 'bout hab come round at las'?" "Da's a fack, brodder Adam. It hab come now." "De great buckra gone from home?" "He gone from home, and gone _to_ home, ha! ha!" "Come, dat's a riddle. What you mean by gone _to_ home?" "To 'im long home. Da's wha' I mean." "Ha!" exclaimed Adam; "you don't say the Cussos--" "Nebber mind 'bout the Cussus now, brodder Adam. Dat you know all 'bout atter wards. It am the Cussus' silber plate dat consarn you now; and dar's no time to was'e in p'laverin'. By de time we gets down da, an' puts on de masks, dey'll be a-gwine to bed. Better dey wa' gone to bed; but by dat time, you see, de moon 'ud be up, an' fo' all dese clouds mout shine out. Dat, as you know, won't nebba do. We must 'ticipate de risin' ob de moon." "True enuf. All right! I'm ready, and so are de rest." "Den foller me, all ob you. We can plan de mode ob 'tack as we trabbel 'long. Plenty ob time fo' dat, when we find out how de land lie down below. Foller me!" And with this injunction, the Coromantee commenced descending the ravine, followed by Adam and his band of burglars. Volume Three, Chapter XXX. A SAD PROCESSION. On that same evening, about half-an-hour before sunset, a singular procession was seen moving along the Carrion Crow Road, in the direction of Mount Welcome. Its slow progress, with the staid looks and gestures of those who composed the procession, betokened it to be one of a melancholy character. A rude litter, carried upon the shoulders of four men, confirmed this impression; more especially when the eye rested upon a human form stretched along the litter, and which could easily be identified as a dead body, notwithstanding the camlet cloak that covered it. There were ten individuals forming this funeral _cortege_; though all were not mourners. Two were on horseback, a little in advance of the rest. Four followed, carrying the litter; while close behind these came four others, two and two--the foremost pair being lashed arm and arm to one another--each also with his hands tied behind his back, and both evidently prisoners. The two that brought up the rear appeared to be guarding them. The individuals composing this mournful procession may be easily identified. The two riding in advance were Herbert Vaughan and the Maroon captain; the horses they bestrode being the same that had passed over that road the day before, carrying the Custos and his negro attendant. The prisoners were the Spanish _cacadores_--their guards, Quaco and the before-mentioned attendant; while the four men bearing the body were slaves belonging to the plantation of Content. It need scarce be added that the corpse, stretched stark and stiff upon the litter, was all that remained of the grand Custos Vaughan. Strictly describing them, not one of the procession party could be called a mourner. None of them had any reason to be greatly aggrieved by the fate that had befallen the owner of Mount Welcome--not even his relative. Notwithstanding this absence of a cause for grief, the faces of all--the prisoners excepted--wore a look of decent gravity becoming the occasion. Perhaps the nephew would have more keenly felt the situation--for now that his uncle was no more, every spark of hostility had become extinguished--perhaps he might even have mourned, but for certain circumstances that had just come to his knowledge; and which had the effect not only to counteract within his heart all tendency towards sorrow, but almost to overpower it with joy. It was only with an effort, therefore, that he could preserve upon his features that expression of sadness, due to the melancholy position in which he was placed. Despite the presence of death, his heart was at that moment filled with a secret satisfaction--so sweet that he could not deny himself its indulgence. The source of this satisfaction may be easily traced. It will be found in the information communicated to him by the Maroon captain. During their journey of the preceding day, their vigil of the night, and, still further, their long, slow march of that morning, Cubina had made known to him many circumstances of which he had been hitherto ignorant; among other items of intelligence, one of the most interesting that language could have imparted. It need scarce be said what this was. It may be guessed at by recalling the conversation between the Maroon and his mistress Yola, occurring at the last tryst under the _ceiba_--that part of it which related to the Lilly Quasheba. Though Cubina's knowledge was only second-hand, it was sufficiently definite to inspire Herbert with hope--something more than hope; and hence that secret joy whose outward manifestation he found it difficult to suppress. Every word of the conversation that had passed between the Maroon and his mistress--every word that referred to _her_ mistress--Cubina had been compelled to repeat over and over again; till Herbert knew it as well as if he had been present during the dialogue. No wonder he was not in a condition to feel very profoundly for the sad fate that had befallen his uncle--hitherto only known to him as a relative harsh and hostile. Other secrets had Cubina disclosed to him--among the rest, the true character of his patron, Jessuron--which Herbert had already begun to suspect, and which was now revealed to him in all its hideous wickedness. The history of the Foolah prince--hitherto unknown to Herbert--besides his own experiences during the last twenty-four hours, was sufficient to confirm any suspicion that might point to Jacob Jessuron. Though it was plain that the two prisoners in the custody of Quaco had not actually assassinated the Custos, it was equally clear that such had been their intention, anticipated by a death of another kind. This both Cubina and Herbert conjectured to have proceeded from the same hand--the hand of Herbert's _ci-devant_ host. The phrase is appropriate. Long before Herbert had heard one half of Cubina's disclosures, he had resolved never more voluntarily to set foot in the Happy Valley--much less return to seek shelter under the roof of Jessuron. If he should hereafter have aught to do with the Israelite, it would be in the course of justice; as avenger of the death of his murdered relative. That Loftus Vaughan was the victim of assassination neither he nor the Maroon for a moment doubted. The conversation which the latter had listened to between Chakra and the Jew--and which, unfortunately, at the time he had not clearly comprehended--was no longer mysterious; only its motive remained so. The deed itself had now furnished the terrible interpretation. Neither Herbert nor Cubina had any idea of permitting the matter to drop. An event of such fearful significance called for the fullest investigation; and they were now proceeding with the preliminary step-- carrying the body to Mount Welcome, in order that the authorities might be called together, and an inquest instituted. How different were the feelings of Herbert from those he experienced on his former and first approach to the mansion of his haughty relative! He was now the victim of emotions so varied and mingled as to defy description! Volume Three, Chapter XXXI. THE ABDUCTION. To Chakra, viewing them from the summit of the Jumbe Rock, the well-lighted windows of Mount Welcome had proclaimed the presence of company within the mansion. In this, however, the Coromantee was mistaken. In the past such an appearance might have had that signification, or up to a very late period--that is, up to the date of the arrival of the distinguished Smythje. Since the latter had become the guest of Mount Welcome, however, the illumination of the mansion with chandelier and candelabra was not only not unusual, but had been the nightly practice. This was Mr Vaughan's pleasure; which, in his absence, the house steward had injunctions to carry out. The grand hall was only lit up as usual, its lustrous floor glistening in the brilliant light, while the profusion of cut glass and silver plate sparkled upon the sideboards, loudly proclaiming the opulence of the planter. There was no strange company present--none expected--no one who did not belong to the family, except Mr Smythje; and he could scarcely be considered a stranger. Rather might he be regarded--for the time at least--as the master of the mansion: since in that charge had the Custos left him. The only individuals occupying this splendid apartment were Smythje and the young mistress of Mount Welcome--both yet ignorant of what had occurred upon the Savanna Road--that fearful event which had left Kate Vaughan a fatherless orphan, at the same time depriving her of the proud title we have just bestowed upon her. Yola, her attendant, went and came at intervals, and Thoms occasionally presented himself in the apartment, in obedience to a summons from his master. Notwithstanding the absence of company, Smythje was in full evening dress--body-coat, breeches, silk stockings, and pumps, with silver buckles. It was his custom to dress, or be dressed, every evening--a custom so scrupulously observed, that had there been no one in the house except the negro domestics of the establishment, Smythje would have appeared in full fashionable costume all the same. With him the exigencies of fashion were as rigorous as to a holy friar would be the observances of his religion. The gentleman was in high spirits--merry, indeed; and, strange to say, his companion was less melancholy than of late. No doubt this had given him his cue for mirth. Why she had been enabled to escape from her habitual dejection was not known to Smythje; but he was fain to attribute the improvement in her spirits to the near prospect of that pleasant ceremony which in a few days must indubitably take place. In a week, or a fortnight at most, Mr Vaughan might be expected back; and then it was understood by all-- tacitly by the young lady herself--that the union of Mount Welcome and Montagu Castle should be no longer delayed. Smythje had even begun to talk of the wedding _trousseau_; of the honeymoon tour--which was to extend to the grand metropolis; and as Kate, at his request, seated herself to the harp, suggesting a musical conversation, he commenced enlarging upon the theme of the grand "opwa," and its attractions--so dear and delightful to himself. This sort of talk, upon other occasions, had invariably the effect of making his listener more sad; but, strange to say, on that evening, it produced no such a disagreeable consequence. Kate's fingers flitted over the strings of the instrument, drawing music from them that was far from melancholy. In truth, the young creole was not listening to the _couleur de rose_ descriptions of the "metwopolis," and its "opwa," which Smythje was so strenuously endeavouring to impart to her. Though seated by the harp, and striking mechanically upon its trings, she was dwelling upon thoughts of a far different character--thoughts suggested by some further intelligence which Yola had communicated to her, and which was the true source of that joy--perhaps but a transitory gleam--that overspread her countenance. Little did Kate Vaughan suspect that the corpse of her father--lying cold and lifeless upon a stretcher, and surrounded by strange mourners-- was at that moment scarce five miles distant from where she sat, and slowly approaching the now masterless mansion of Mount Welcome! Little did she suspect, while making that music for Smythje, that, from another direction, monsters in human form were moving towards that mansion--their dark shadows projected across the glare of the window-lights--now stationary, now flitting stealthily onward--at each progressive movement drawing nearer and nearer to the walls! She saw not these shadowy, demon-like men--had no suspicion either of their approach or intent--an intent which comprehended robbery, rapine of a far more fearful kind--murder, if need be. Neither its mistress, neither Smythje, nor any one else of Mount Welcome, saw or suspected this mysterious circumvallation, until the movement had been successfully executed. Not a word of warning, not a sign or gesture, was given to the occupants of the apartment, until, with wild, unearthly yells, half-a-dozen fiend-like forms--men of horrid aspect--some with black masks, others with naked visage even more hideous to behold--burst into the grand hall, and commenced the work of pillage. One, of gigantic size, masked from crown to throat, and wrapped in an ample covering of skin--though not sufficient to conceal the deformity of a hunched back--rushed directly up to where the fair musician was seated; and, dashing the harp to one side, seized upon her wrist before she could disengage herself from her chair. "Whugh!" came the ejaculation, in loud aspirate, from behind the mask, "I'se got ye at lass, ma Lilly Quasheba--atter many's de yea' ob longin' fo' hab ye. Ef de quaderoom, ya mudder, she 'cape an' 'corn me, I'se take care de dauter doan' get de same chance. You come 'long wi' me!" And as the ravisher pronounced these words, he commenced dragging his shrieking victim across the room towards the stair entrance. Smythje's half irresolute interposition was of no avail. With one sweep of his long, flail-like arm, he in the skin cloak sent the exquisite sprawling upon the floor. The terrified Cockney no longer thought of resistance; but after scrambling awhile over the polished planks at length succeeded in gaining his feet. Then, without waiting to receive a second knock-down, he shot out through the open doorway, and, descending the stone stairs, in a couple of skips, disappeared in the darkness below. Meanwhile the alarm had been communicated to the kitchen and all over the house. Shouts of surprise were succeeded by screams of terror. The domestics came running in from all directions; but a shot or two from the muskets and pistols of the black burglars, fired for the purpose of increasing the confusion, scattered the whole establishment of servants, Thoms among the rest, and sent them in full flight towards the sugar-works and negro village beyond. In less than a score of seconds, Adam and his confederates had the mansion to themselves. It was but the work of a few minutes to fling, open the buffets and sideboards, and plunder them of their most valuable contents. In less than a quarter of an hour the black burglars had finished their "job," and were ready to depart. While his confederates were thus engaged, Chakra had secured his victim at the bottom of the front stairway, where he was impatiently awaiting the completion of the pillage. Though determined upon having his share of the booty, he cared less for that than for the gratification of that wicked desire that had so long possessed his savage soul--so long by circumstances restrained. Notwithstanding his eagerness for this demoniac indulgence, he still possessed a certain degree of prudence. As soon as Adam and his associates made their appearance, loaded with spoils, he placed his prisoner under the charge of one of the robbers, and, commanding the others to follow him, rapidly re-ascended the stairway, and once more entered the plundered apartment. In an incredibly short space of time the harp, the chairs, the ottomans, and other articles of light furniture, were piled up in the middle of the floor; the jalousies were wrenched from their fastenings, flung upon the heap, and then set on fire. Quick as tinder the dry wood blazed up; and in five minutes the noble mansion of Mount Welcome was in flames! In five minutes more, under the red glare, flung far out into the distant fields, the robbers were seen, slowly and laboriously seeking concealment within the shadows beyond--six of them burdened with shining utensils that gave back the gleam of the blazing mansion; while the seventh, the most formidable figure of all, carried in his arms an object of a far different kind--the body of a beautiful woman--the fainting form of Lilly Quasheba! Volume Three, Chapter XXXII. BURGLARS! ROBBERS! MURDERERS! In solemn pace the procession which accompanied the corpse of Custos Vaughan moved silently on along the lonely road. The Jumbe Rock was now in sight, encarmined by the last rays of the sinking sun. Beyond lay Mount Welcome--a house to which the sad _cortege_ was about to carry the cue for wailing and desolation. Ah! little dreamt they who composed it that the demon was already there before them--if not of death, of a doom equally as dark! Could Herbert only have known that at that moment the beautiful being he loved with his whole heart, and now more than ever--she who loved him, was struggling in the arms! No matter. The terrible truth will reach him but too soon. It will meet him on his way. In another hour the sweet dreams in which, throughout that long day, he has been indulging, will meet with a dread dissipation. At a turning of the road there stood several gigantic trees, offering a grand canopy of foliage. Under these the party halted, by the joint command of Herbert and Cubina, who at the same moment dismounted from their horses. It was not the shade that had tempted them, for the sun had now gone down; nor yet that the bearers might obtain rest; the men were strong, and the wasted form was far from being a heavy burden. It was not for that reason that the halt had been ordered, but on account of a thought that had suggested itself to Herbert, and which was approved of by Cubina. It was the apprehension of the dread impression which their arrival might produce at Mount Welcome--of course, on her whose father's corpse they were carrying. They had stopped to consider what was best to be done. A plan soon suggested itself. A messenger could be sent forward upon one of the horses to communicate the sad tidings to Trusty, the overseer, and through him the melancholy news might be more gradually made known to her whom it most concerned. Herbert would have gone himself, but was hindered by certain delicate considerations, based on the conflicting emotions that were stirring within him. It mattered little who should bear the melancholy tidings to Trusty; and the negro attendant was finally chosen. The man received his instructions; and, having mounted his own horse, rode off at such speed as the darkness, now down upon the earth, would permit. For another hour the party remained in the place where they had halted, to give time for the messenger to execute his commission. Then, once more taking the road, they moved forward at a slow pace, Herbert alongside Cubina--now a-foot, and leading the horse upon which he had hitherto ridden. Quaco alone guarded the prisoners; a duty to which the Maroon lieutenant was quite equal, and which he had rendered the more easy of accomplishment, by pressing into his service a piece of rope, attached round the neck of the one that was nearest, and which, held halter-fashion in his hand, enabled him to prevent either of them from straying in the darkness. Neither, however, made any attempt to escape, knowing as both did, that the slightest movement in that direction would cost them a "thwack" from a stout cudgel--an additional implement carried in the hands of Quaco. In this way the _cortege_ had proceeded for some half-mile or so beyond its last resting-place, when it was again brought to a halt by the orders of those in the lead. The cause of this interruption was declared to all of the party at once. All heard the hoof-strokes of a horse coming rapidly along the road, and _from_ the opposite direction to that in which they were moving. Going, as he appeared to be, at full gallop, in five minutes more, or in half the time, the horseman should be in their midst. Was he a stranger? Or could it be their own messenger coming back? He had not been directed to return. It was deemed sufficient for him to see Mr Trusty, and make known the news which he had been entrusted to communicate. It was not without a feeling of surprise therefore, as the horseman dashed forward upon the ground, and pulled up in front of the procession, that Herbert and Cubina recognised the returned attendant. He left them no time to speculate on the mystery of his re-appearance. The white froth upon the flanks of his steed, shining through the gloom, told of fast riding; while the stammering and terrified accents in which the man proclaimed the purpose of his return rendered more startling the news he had come to communicate. Mount Welcome was, at that moment, attacked by a band of burglars, robbers, and murderers! There were men in masks, and men without them--equally terrible to look upon. They were plundering the great hall, had murdered Mr Smythje, were ill-treating the young mistress of the mansion, and firing guns and pistols at every one who came in their way! The messenger had not stayed to see Mr Trusty. He had learnt all this from the domestics, who were hurrying in flight from the mansion. Confounded by the shouting and shots he had himself heard, and thinking that the likeliest chance of assistance would be found in the party he had just left--and which he believed to be much nearer--he had galloped back along the road. These were the main facts of the attendant's story--not communicated, however, with any regard to sequence, but in the most incoherent manner, and liberally interspersed with exclamations of alarm. It was a fearful tale, and fell with a terrible effect upon the ears of those to whom it was told--Herbert and Cubina. Burglars--robbers--murderers! Mr Smythje killed! The young mistress of Mount Welcome in the act of being abused! and Yola? she, too-- "Quaco!" cried the Maroon captain, rushing to the rear, and addressing himself to his lieutenant, "think you our men can hear us from here? Sound your horn on the instant: your blast is stronger than mine. There is trouble at Mount Welcome. We may need every man of them. Quick-- quick!" "The devil!" cried Quaco, dropping his hold of the halter, and raising the horn to his mouth, "I'll make them hear, if they're in the Island of Jamaica. You keep your ground, ye pair of John Crows!" he added, as he held the horn an inch or two from his lips. "If either of you budge a foot out of your places, I'll send a brace of bullets through your stinkin' carcadges, and stop you that away. See if I don't!" And with this emphatic admonition, the colossus applied the horn to his mouth, and blew a blast that might have been heard for miles. In echoes it rang from the sides of the Jumbe Rock, and from many a peak lying far beyond. So loud and shrill rang it, that one might almost have believed in Quaco's affirmation: that it could be heard to the extremities of the Island! At all events, it was heard by some not so far off: for scarce had its echoes ceased to reverberate, when half-a-dozen similar sounds, proceeding from different directions, and apparently from different distances, came back in response. Cubina waited not to hear their repetition. "Enough," cried he, "there are half-a-dozen of them anyhow. That will no doubt be enough. You, Quaco, stay here till they come up, and then follow to Mount Welcome. Sound again, to direct them; and see that these two murderous villains don't escape you." "Hadn't I better put a brace of bullets through them?" naively inquired Quaco. "It'll save trouble if I do that! What say you, Capen Cubina?" "No, no, Quaco! Justice will settle accounts with them. Bring them on along with you; and follow as soon as our men get up!" Before Quaco could offer any further suggestions, the Maroon captain had mounted the messenger's horse--Herbert having already leaped into the saddle of the other--and both, without further speech, rode forward as fast as their steeds could carry them. Volume Three, Chapter XXXIII. DREAD CONJECTURES. Observing a profound silence, the two young men pressed forward. Neither liked to put question to the other. Each dreaded the answer the other might make--each was thinking only of the danger of her who was dearest to him. They urged on their steeds with equal eagerness, for both were alike interested in the _denouement_ of the dreadful drama at that moment being enacted at the mansion of Mount Welcome. Their reflections were similar, and similarly painful. They might be too late! Ere they could arrive upon the scene, the stage might be deserted--the tragedy played out--the players gone! It needed not these thoughts to stimulate them to increased speed: they were already riding as if life or death rested on the issue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ They had neared the flank of the Jumbe mountain, and were heading for the ridge that separated the estates of Montagu Castle and Mount Welcome. At this point the road debouched from the forest, and the ridge came in sight. At the same instant, a cry escaped from the lips of Cubina, as with a quick wrench he drew his horse to a halt. Herbert echoed the cry of his comrade--at the same time imitating his action. Neither thought of questioning the other. Both had halted under the same impulse. The evil omen had been seen simultaneously by both. Over the summit of the ridge a yellow light glared, halo-like, against the sky. "Fire!" exclaimed Cubina. "Just over Mount Welcome! _Santa Madre_! the mansion is in flames!" "Oh, heavens!" cried Herbert; "we shall be too late!" Not another word passed between the two horsemen. Stirred by the same instinct, they renewed their gallop; and silently, side by side, urged their horses up the hill. In a few minutes they had attained the summit of the ridge, whence they could command a full view of the valley of Mount Welcome. The mansion _was_ in flames. There was no further utterance of surprise: that was past. It was scarce a conjecture which Cubina had pronounced, on seeing that glare against the sky, but a conviction; and the crackling sounds which had assailed their ears, as they were riding upward to the crest of the ridge, had fully confirmed the event before their eyes looked on the fire itself. There was no more a mansion of Mount Welcome. In its place a blazing pile--a broad sheet of flame, rising in gigantic jets to the sky, crowned with huge sparks and murky smoke, and accompanied by a continuous roaring and crackling of timbers, as if fiends were firing a _feu-de-joie_ in the celebration of some terrible holocaust. "Too late!--too late!" muttered both the horsemen in the same breath; and then, with despair on their faces and black fear in their hearts, they once more gave rein to their steeds; and, riding recklessly down the slope, galloped on towards the conflagration. In a few seconds' time they had crossed the inclosures, and halted in front of the blazing pile; as near to it as their frayed steeds would consent to carry them. Both at the same instant sprang from their saddles; and, with guns grasped and ready to defend themselves against whatever enemy, approached nearer and nearer to the building. No one appeared in front of the house. They hurried round to the rear: no one was there. Equally deserted were the grounds and the garden. Not a soul was to be seen anywhere--not a voice to be heard, except their own, as they called aloud; and this only feebly, through the hissing and roaring of the flames. Back and forth rushed the two men in eager haste, going round and round the house, and exploring every spot that might be expected to conceal either friend or foe. But in spite of their most eager search, and the constant summons of their shouts, not a creature appeared, and no response reached them. For a moment they paused to consider. It was evident the conflagration had been going on for some time. The upper storey--which was but a framework of light timber--was now nearly consumed, and only the stonework below left standing. Over this the larger beams had fallen--no longer emitting flame, but lying transversely upon each other, charred, red, and smouldering. On finding no one near the dwelling, Cubina and Herbert made for the works. These were all standing untouched; and it was evident that no attempt had been made to fire them. Only the mansion had been given to the flames. On arriving among the out-buildings, the two men again raised their voices; but as before, without receiving a reply. Here everything was dark and silent as the tomb--a silence more impressive by contrast with the awe-inspiring sounds of the conflagration raging at a distance. Neither in the curing-house, nor the mill, nor the mash-house, nor the stable, could anyone be discovered. Not an individual to be seen, not a voice to respond to their oft-repeated halloos. On rushed they to the negro cabins. Surely there someone would be found? All could not have fled through fear of the robber-band? As the two men turned in the direction of the negro village, a figure started up in the path--having just emerged out of the bushes. In that semblance to the imp of darkness, seen under the distant glare of the conflagration, Herbert recognised his old acquaintance Quashie. Quashie had already identified him. "Oh, young massr!" cried the darkey, as he rose to his feet; "de Buff am a-blazin'! It be all burn up!" "_Crambo_! tell us something we don't know!" impatiently demanded Cubina. "Who has set it on fire? Do you know that!" "Did you see the incendiaries?" hurriedly added Herbert. "See who, massr?" "Those who set the house on fire?" inquired Herbert, still speaking with anxious haste. "Yes--massr, I seed dem--when dey first rush up de front 'tairway." "Well--speak quickly--who and what were they? What were they like?" "Law, massr, dey war like so many debbils. Dey were nigga men, an' some had mask on dar faces. Folks say it war de Maroon ob de mountains. Black Bet she deny dat, and say no. She say 'twar some robbers of de mountains, an' dat dey come fo' carry off--" "Your young mistress? Miss Vaughan? Where? where?" interrupted Herbert, gasping out the unfinished interrogatory. "And Yola, my lad! have you seen her?" added Cubina. "No, genlums," replied Quashie; "I seen neider de young missa, no' de brown gal Yola. Dey war boaf up in de great hall. I no go up dar myseff. I'se afeard dey'd kill dis chile ef he go up da. I stayed down below, till I see Mr 'Mythje a comin' down de stair. Lor--how de did streak it down dem dere stone step! He run in under de arch below. I guess he go hide dere. Den I took to ma heels, 'long wif de oder folk; an' we all go hide in de bushes. Massa Thom an' de house people dey all run for de woods--dey none o' em nebber come back yet." "Oh, heavens!" exclaimed Herbert, in a voice of anguish; "can it be possible? You are sure," said he, once more appealing to the darkey, "you are sure you saw nothing of your young mistress?" "Nor of Yola?" asked the Maroon, equally as distressed as his companion. "I decla' I didn't--neider o' 'em two," emphatically exclaimed Quashie. "See yonner!" he added, pointing towards the burning pile, and speaking in an accent of alarm. "Golly! dey a'n't gone 'way yet--de robbers! de robbers!" Herbert and Cubina, who, while in conversation with Quashie, had been standing with their backs towards the fire, faced suddenly round. As they did so, they perceived several dark forms moving between them and the bright background of the flames; their shadows projected in gigantic outlines up to the spot where the spectators stood. There were about half-a-dozen in all--just about the number at which Quashie had roughly estimated the incendiaries. Both sprang forward, regardless of consequences, resolved upon knowing the worst; and, if their apprehensions should prove true, determined upon death or vengeance. Volume Three, Chapter XXXIV. SMYTHJE STILL LIVING. With their pieces cocked, and ready for instant execution, Cubina and Herbert were pressing to get within range, when the notes of a horn, sounded by one of the men before the fire, came swelling upon their ears. The sounds were re-assuring. Cubina knew the signal of his lieutenant, and they were now near enough to recognise the colossal Quaco standing in the glare of red light, surrounded by some half-dozen of his comrades. Quaco had left the corpse upon the road, and the prisoners well guarded by a couple of his followers; and, thinking he might be wanted at Mount Welcome, had hurried forward close upon the heels of the horsemen. This accession of strength might have proved useful had the enemy been upon the ground. Where were the robbers--the incendiaries--perhaps the murderers? Where was Miss Vaughan? Where the maid Yola? Had they escaped among the domestics, or--? The alternative thought was too horrible for utterance. Is either Herbert nor Cubina could trust themselves to give speech to it. Only in their minds did the interrogatory shape itself: _had they perished in the flames_? Fearful as was the thought, it could not fail to be entertained; and, in the solemn silence which the reflection produced, all stood hopelessly gazing upon the ruthless fire that was fast reducing the noble mansion to a shapeless and smouldering ruin. At that moment the stillness was interrupted by a voice proceeding from an unexpected quarter. It appeared to come from out the great arched vault under the stone stairway, from a corner shrouded in comparative darkness. It was partly an exclamation--partly a groan. Quaco was the first to seek an explanation. Seizing a faggot that still flared, he rushed under the archway, regardless of the scorching heat. Herbert and Cubina quickly followed, and all three stood within the vault. Quaco waved the torch in front of his body, to illuminate the place. The eyes of all three simultaneously rested upon an object that, at any other time, might have elicited from them peals of laughter. In the corner of the vault stood a half-hogshead, or large tub--its head covered with a heavy lid. Near the upper edge a square hole had been sawed out; so that a hand containing a quart measure might be inserted, without the necessity of raising the lid. Inside, and directly opposite this opening, appeared the face of a man, with ample whiskers and moustaches; which face, despite the bedaubment of something that resembled treacle or tar, was at once identified as that of the aristocratic Smythje! "Mr 'Mythje!" cried Quashie, who had followed the others under the archway. "I seed him--." "Fact, ma fwends, it's nawbody else but maself," interrupted the ludicrous image within the hogshead, as soon as he recognised his ancient deliverer, Quaco. "Aw took wefuge here fwom those howid wobbers. Be so good as waise the wid, and pawmit me to get out of this queeaw situation. Aw was afwaid aw should be dwowned. Ba Jawve! aw bwieve it's tweakle?" Quaco, endeavouring to suppress his laughter, lost no time in throwing up the lid, and extracting the sufferer from his sweet, though unpleasant position--for it was, in reality, a hogshead of molasses into which the terrified Smythje had soused himself, and in which, during the continuance of the tragedy enacted over his head, he had remained buried up to the neck! Placed upright upon his legs on the flagged floor of the vault, glistening from neck to heel with a thick coat of the slimy treacle, the proud proprietor of Montagu Castle presented even a more ludicrous appearance than when Quaco had last seen him upon the summit of the hollow stump. The latter, recalling this scene to memory, and unrestrained by other sentiments, could no longer restrain himself from giving way to loud laughter, in which Quashie, equally free from sorrow, took part. With Herbert and Cubina it was not the moment for mirth; and, as soon as Smythje had been fairly deposited on his feet, both eagerly questioned him as to the circumstances that had transpired. Smythje admitted having fled--at the same time making an awkward attempt to justify himself. According to his own account, and the statement was perfectly true, it was not till after he had been overpowered and struck down, that he betook himself to flight. How could he do otherwise? His antagonist was a giant, a man of vast magnitude and strength. "A howid queetyaw," continued Smythje; "a queetyaw with long arms, and a defawmity--a pwotubewance upon his shawders, like the haunch of a dwomedawy!" "And what of Kate, my cousin?" cried Herbert, interrupting the exquisite, with contemptuous impatience. "Aw--aw--yes! yaw cousin--ma paw Kate! A feaw the wobbers have bawn her off. A know she was bwought outside. Aw heard haw scweam out as they were dwagging' haw down the staiw--aw--aw--." "Thank Heaven, then!" exclaimed Herbert; "thank Heaven, she still lives!" Cubina had not waited for the whole of Smythje's explanation. The description of the robber had given him his cue: and, rushing outside, he blew a single blast upon his horn--the "assembly" of his band. The Maroons, who had scattered around the ruin, instantly obeyed the signal, and soon stood mustered on the spot. "Upon the scent, comrades," cried Cubina. "I know the wild boar that has been making this havoc. I know where the monster makes his den. _Crambo_! Ere an hour passes over his head, he shall answer for this villainy with his accursed life. Follow me!" Volume Three, Chapter XXXV. ON THE TRACK OF THE DESTROYER. As Cubina pronounced this command, he faced towards the mountain, and was hastening to gain the wicket in the garden wall, when an object came before his eyes that caused him to halt. Amidst the gloom, it was a sight that gave him joy. He was not the only one to whom it brought gladness. Among the Maroons that had come with Quaco was one who had been suffering anguish equally with Herbert and Cubina--one who had equal cause for grief--if not for the loss of sweetheart or cousin, for that which should be dear as either--a _sister_. A sister for whose sake he had crossed the wide ocean--had been sold into slavery--robbed by ruthless men--branded as a felon--chastised by the cruel scourge--had suffered every indignity which man could put on man. In this individual may be identified the young Foolah prince--the unfortunate Cingues. What was it that gave Cubina joy--shared thus by Cingues? It may be easily guessed. It was the sight of a female form, recognised by both--the sweetheart of the one, the sister of the other--Yola! The girl was at that moment seen coming through the wicket-gate. Once inside, she made no stop, but hastened across the garden towards the group of men. In another instant she was standing between her brother and lover, sharing the embrace of both. Her story was soon told, and by all listened to with breathless attention--by Herbert Vaughan with emotions that wrung blood-drops from his heart. It was short, but far too long for the impatience of apprehension and revenge. The girl had been in one of the chambers as the robbers entered the great hall. Regardless of consequences, she had rushed out among them. Like Smythje, she had been struck down, and lay for some minutes insensible, unconscious of what was transpiring. When her senses returned, and she could look around her, she perceived that her young mistress was no longer in the room. The monsters were at that moment in the act of setting fire to the mansion. A scream outside directed her. She recognised the voice of her mistress. Springing to her feet, she glided through the open door, and down the stairway. The robbers were too much occupied--some with their booty, others with their scheme of incendiarism; they either did not observe or did not think it worth while--further to molest her. On getting outside, she saw her young mistress borne off in the arms of a huge, misshapen man. He wore a mask over his face; but, for all this, she could tell that it was the same individual she had seen upon the preceding night in company with the Jew. The masked man, whose attention seemed wholly engrossed by his precious prize, went off alone, leaving the others to continue their work of plunder and devastation. The African maid, in her native land habituated to similar scenes, with a quick instinct perceived the impossibility of rescuing her mistress at that moment; and, abandoning the idea of making an idle attempt, she determined to follow and ascertain to what place the robber was taking her. She might then return to Mount Welcome, and guide those who would be sent upon the pursuit. Gliding silently along the path, and taking care not to show herself, she had kept the robber in view, without losing sight of him for a moment. The darkness was in her favour, as also the sloping path-- enabling her to see from below, while she was herself in little danger of being seen. In this way had she followed the robber up the declivity of the mountain, and in an oblique direction across it, still keeping close behind him; when all at once, and to her astonishment, she saw him suddenly disappear into the earth--bearing her young mistress upon his arm--like some monstrous fiend of the other world, who had stolen a sweet image of this, and was carrying her to his dread home in the regions of darkness. Notwithstanding the supernatural fear with which the sudden disappearance had inspired her, the bold maiden was not deterred from proceeding to the spot. Both her terror and astonishment were in some degree modified when she looked over a cliff, and saw the sheen of water at the bottom of a dark abysm yawning beneath her feet. In the dim light, she could trace something like a means of descent down the face of the cliff, and this at once dispelled all idea of the supernatural. She made no attempt to follow further. She had seen enough to enable her to guide the pursuit; and, instantly turning back upon the path, she hastened down the declivity of the mountain. She was thinking of Cubina and his Maroons--how soon her courageous sweetheart with his brave band would have rescued her unfortunate mistress--when at that moment, in the light of the flickering fire, she recognised the very image that was occupying her thoughts. Her story was communicated in hurried phrase to Cubina and his comrades, who, without losing a moment of time, passed through the wicket-gate, and, with all the speed in their power, commenced ascending the mountain road. Yola remained behind with Quashie and the other domestics, who were now flocking around the great fire, looking like spectres in the flickering light. Cubina required no guide to conduct him. Forewarned by that wild conversation he had overheard, as well as by the events of the preceding day, he had already surmised the author of that hellish deed. More than surmised it: he was satisfied that, whatever head had planned, the hand that had perpetrated it was that of Chakra, the Coromantee. Volume Three, Chapter XXXVI. TOO LATE. Eager as hounds upon a fresh trail--quick as young, strong limbs could carry them--pressed the pursuers up the steep path that led to the Duppy's Hole. Words could but feebly express the agony rankling in the heart of Herbert Vaughan. He knew not Chakra in person; but a full description of him, morally as well as physically, had been imparted to him by Cubina on the day before. It was not strange he should tremble with fear for the fate of her who was now in the power of a monster so fell and fiend-like--not strange that his soul should be filled with anguish. That conditional phrase--"We may be too late!"--spoken as he urged his horse along the road; repeated as he came within sight of the burning mansion--once more found utterance on his lips; but now more emphatically and with a far more fearful significance. His was a situation to stir the soul to its profoundest depths. Even had the victim of the vile abduction been no more than his cousin, he could not have failed to feel keenly the danger that threatened her. But now that he viewed Kate Vaughan in another and very different light--certain, from what Cubina had told him, that she reciprocated his love--under the influence of this sentiment, his distress was tenfold greater. So late, too, had he become possessed of that knowledge--so sweet had been the ecstasy it produced--that the sudden revulsion was all the more dreadful to endure. While murmuring the words "We may be too late," he dare scarce trust himself to give thought to the form of danger whose dread was thus hypothetically predicted. Cubina, though, perhaps, a little less anxious than before, was equally earnest in the pursuit; and, indeed, every one of the Maroon band showed to some extent the feelings of painful apprehension that actuated their leader, whom they knew to be the friend of the young Englishman. No one showed a disposition to lag. All were alike eager to aid in the rescue of the unfortunate young lady, known to most of them, and honoured by those to whom she was known. The horses had been left behind. On the steep and tangled path, they would have been only an encumbrance. Perhaps, never before, by man on foot, had that path been traversed in so short a space of time. There was no delay on account of the darkness. As if by Divine favour, the moon had opportunely arisen, just as they were passing through the wicket-gate, and by her light they were able to proceed without pause or interruption. No stop was made anywhere, till the pursuers stood upon the edge of the Duppy cliff, and looked down into that dark abysm, where they hoped to find the spoiler and his victim. Scarce a moment there, either. One after another they descended the tree stairway, Cubina going first, Herbert next, the others following, with like rapidity. With the instinct of trained hunters all made the descent in silence. Only on arriving at the bottom of the cliff did an exclamation escape from the lips of their chief--Cubina. The sight of a canoe, drawn up under the bushes, had elicited this exclamation--which expressed surprise mingled with disappointment. Herbert saw the canoe almost at the same instant of time, but without drawing the inference that had caused Cubina to utter that cry. He turned to the latter for an explanation. "The canoe!" whispered Cubina, pointing down to the little craft half hidden under the leafy branches. "I see it," said Herbert, also speaking in a whisper. "What does it signify?" "They have gone out again." "Oh, heavens!" cried Herbert, in an accent of anguish, the more expressive from the low tone in which the words were uttered. "If that be so, then we _are_ too late--she is lost!--lost!" "Patience, comrade! Perhaps it is only Chakra himself who has gone out; or, maybe, some one of the robbers who have been helping him, and who may be expected to return again. In any case, we must search the valley and make sure. Step into the canoe! You can't swim in your clothes, while my fellows are not embarrassed in that way. Here, Quaco! get your guns aboard this cockle-shell, and all of you take to the water. Swim silently. No splashing, do you hear? Keep close under the cliff! Swim within the shadow, and straight for the other side." Without more delay the guns were passed from hand to hand, until all were deposited in the canoe. Cubina and Herbert had already stepped into the frail craft, the former taking possession of the paddle. In another instant the little vessel shot out from the bushes, and glided silently under the shadow of the cliff. Some half-dozen human forms, their heads just appearing above the surface of the water, followed in its wake--swimming with as little noise as if they had been a brood of beavers. There was no need to direct the canoe to its old landing-place under the tree. Cubina knew that this had been chosen for concealment. Instead of going thither, he made for the nearest point of the opposite shore. On touching land he stepped out, making a sign to his fellow-voyager to imitate his example. The Maroons waded out the moment after; and once more getting hold of their guns, followed their captain and his companion--already on their route to the upper cascade. There was no path from the point where they had landed; and for some time they struggled through a thicket almost impervious. There was no danger, however, of their losing the way. The sound of the falling water was an infallible guide; for Cubina well remembered the proximity of the hut to the upper cascade, and it was for this point they were making. As they advanced, the underwood became easier to traverse; and they were enabled to proceed more rapidly. There was something lugubrious in the sound of the cataract. Cubina was painfully impressed by it, and equally so his companion. It sounded ominous in the ears of both; and it was easy to fancy sighs of distress, wild wailings of a woman's voice, mingling with the hoarser tones of the torrent. They reached at length the edge of the opening that extended for some distance beyond the branches of the cotton-tree. The hut was before their eyes. A light was shining through the open door. It cast its reflection across the ground shadowed by the great tree, till it met the surface silvered by the moon. Though faint, and apparently flickering, the light gave joy to the eyes that beheld it. It was evidence that the hut was occupied. Who but Chakra could be there? And if Chakra, there too must be his victim. Oh! was she his victim? Had the rescue arrived _too late_? Cubina's bosom was filled with sad forebodings. Herbert's heart was on fire. It was with difficulty that either could control his emotion to approach with that caution that prudence required. Making a sign to his followers to stay among the trees, the Maroon captain, with Herbert by his side, crept up towards the cotton-tree. Having got fairly under its shadow, they rose to their feet, and, with the silence of disembodied spirits, glided close up to the entrance of the hut. In another instant the silence was broken by both. A simultaneous cry escaped them as they arrived in front of the open door and looked in. It was a cry that expressed the extreme of disappointment. The hovel was empty! Volume Three, Chapter XXXVII. THE CORPSE OF A COUSIN. Yes, the temple of Obi was untenanted, save by those dumb deities that grinned grotesquely around its walls. To ascertain this fact it was not necessary to enter within the shrine of the Coromantee Pantheon. Nevertheless, Cubina and Herbert, as if moved by a mechanical impulse, rushed inside the door. They looked around with inquiring glances. There were signs of late occupation. The lighted lamp was of itself sufficient evidence of this. Who save Chakra could have lit it? It was a lamp of lard, burning in the carapace of a tortoise. It could not have been loner alight: since but little of the lard was consumed. There was no doubt that Chakra had been there, with his captive. That added nothing to the knowledge they possessed already: since Yola had witnessed their descent into the Duppy's Hole. But why had the robber so suddenly forsaken this apparently safe retreat? That the lamp was left burning betokened a hasty departure. And whither could he have gone? "Oh, where?--oh, where?" distractedly interrogated Herbert. Cubina could make no answer. He was equally astonished at not finding the Coromantee within his hut. Had he once more gone out from the Duppy's Hole? The position of the canoe gave colour to this conjecture. But why should he have done so? Had he caught sight of that agile girl gliding like a shadow after him? and, becoming suspicious that his retreat might be discovered, had he forsaken it for some other at a greater distance from the scene of his crime? In any case, why should he have left in such haste, not staying to put out the light--much less to carry with him his peculiar Penates? "After all," thought Cubina, "he may still be in the Duppy's Hole. The canoe may have been used by some one else--some confederate. Chakra might have seen his pursuers crossing the lagoon, or heard them advancing through the thicket, and, taking his captive along with him, may have hastily retreated into some dark recess among the trees." His sudden abandonment of the hovel rendered this view of the case the more probable. Quick as came the thought, Cubina once more rushed out of the hut, and summoning his men around him, directed them to procure torches and search every corner of the wood. Quaco was despatched back to the canoe, with orders to stay by it, and prevent any chance of escape in that direction. While the Maroons proceeded to procure the torchwood, their chief, accompanied by Herbert, commenced quartering the open ground in search of any trace which Chakra might have left. By the edge of the water, where the trees stood thinly, the moon afforded ample light to favour the investigation. On advancing towards the cascade, an object came under the eyes of Cubina that caused him to utter a quick ejaculation. It was something white that lay by the side of the cauldron into which the stream was precipitated. Within the pool itself were broad flakes of white foam floating upon the water; but this was not in the water, but above it, on one of the boulders; and all the more conspicuous from the black colour of the rock. Herbert had seen the white object at the same instant of time, and both simultaneously ran forward to examine it. A scarf! It bore evidence of ill-usage. It was tossed and torn, as if it had fallen from someone who had been struggling! Neither could identify the scarf, but neither doubted to whom it had belonged. Its quality declared it to have been the property of a lady. Who else could have owned it but she for whom they were in search? Cubina appeared to pay less attention to the scarf than to the place in which it lay. It was close up to the cliff, on the very edge of the pool into which the stream was projected. Behind this pool, and under the curved sheets of the falling water, a sort of ledge ran across, by which one could pass under the cascade. Cubina knew this: for, while on his hunting excursions, he had gone under it. He knew, moreover, that, half way across, there was a large cave or grotto in the cliff, several feet above the water in the pool. As the scarf was found lying upon the ledge that conducted to this grotto, the circumstance caused the Maroon to remember it, at the same time that it guided him to the conjecture that Chakra might be there. Alarmed by their approach, there was nothing more likely than for the Coromantee to have chosen the cave for his place of retreat--the last place where anyone, not aware of its existence, would have thought of looking for him. These reflections cost Cubina scarce two seconds of time. Quick as the conjecture had shaped itself, he ran back to the hut; and, seizing a torch, which one of his men had prepared, he hurried back towards the cascade. Then, signing to Herbert, and one or two others to follow him, he glided under the canopy of falling waters. He proceeded not rashly, but with due caution. There might be others within the cave besides Chakra! His robber confederates might be there; and these the Maroon knew to be desperate characters--men of forfeit lives, who would die before suffering themselves to be captured. With his drawn _machete_ in one hand, and the torch in the other, Cubina advanced silently and stealthily towards the entrance of the grotto. Herbert was close behind, grasping his double-barrelled gun, in readiness to fire, in case resistance should be offered from within. Holding the torch in advance of him, Cubina entered first, though Herbert, anxious and eager, was close upon his heels. The glare of the torch was reflected back from a thousand sparkling stalactites, and for a while the sight of both was bewildered. Soon, however, their eyes became accustomed to the dazzling coruscation; and then a white object, lying along the floor of the cave, seen by both at the same instant, caused them to utter a simultaneous cry--as they did so, turning to each other with looks of the most painful despair. Between two large masses of stalagmite was the body of a woman, robed in white. It was lying upon its back, stretched out to its full length-- motionless; apparently dead! They needed not to pass the torch over that pale face to identify it. It was not necessary to scrutinise those wan, silent features. On first beholding the prostrate form, too easily had Herbert rushed to the sad conclusion--that it was the corpse of his cousin! Volume Three, Chapter XXXVIII. THE SLEEP-SPELL. During all this time where was Chakra? As soon as he had seen the mansion of Mount Welcome fairly given to the flames, the Coromantee, bearing its young mistress in his arms, hurried away from the spot. Outside the garden wicket he made stop: only for a moment, which was spent in a hasty consultation with the chief of the black bandits. In the brief dialogue which there took place between them, Adam was enjoined to carry the whole of the booty to his mountain home, where Chakra promised in due time to join him. The Coromantee had no intention to resign his share of the spoils; but just then he was in no mood for making the division. He was at that moment under the influence of a passion stronger than the love of plunder. Adam was only too eager to accede to these terms; and the confederates parted company--the robber and his followers at once shouldering their booty, and setting out for their forest dwelling among the far mountains of Trelawney. Like the tiger who has killed his prey--and, not daring to devour it on the spot, bears it to his jungle covert--so Chakra, half dragging, half carrying Kate Vaughan, proceeded up the mountain path in the direction of the Duppy's Hole. Lifeless as the victim of the ferocious beast appeared the form of Lilly Quasheba, hanging supple and unconscious over the arm of the human monster--equally ferocious. Her screams no longer fell upon the ear. Her terror had exhausted her strength. Syncope, resembling death, had succeeded. It continued, happily for her, during the whole of the transit up the mountain. The wild forest path had no terrors for her: neither the descent into the dank solitudes of the Duppy's Hole. In the traverse over that dark lagoon, she was not frightened by the scream of the startled night bird, nor the threatening roar of the close cataract. She knew no fear, from the moment she was earned away in the arms of a hideous monster, on a path lighted by the blaze of the roof under which she had been born and reared: she experienced no feeling of any kind, until she awoke to consciousness in a rude triangular hut, lit by a feeble lamp, whose glare fell upon a face hitherto well-known--the face of Chakra, the myal-man. His mask had been removed. The Coromantee stood before her in all his deformity--of soul as of person. Terror could go no further. It had already produced its ultimate effect. Under such circumstances reproach would have been idle; indignation would only have been answered by brutal scorn. Though she might not clearly comprehend her situation, the young Creole did not think she was dreaming. No dream could be so horrid as that! And yet it was difficult to believe that such a fearful scene could be real! O God! it was real. Chakra stood before her--his harsh voice was ringing in her ears. Its tone was mocking and exultant. She was upon the bamboo bedstead, where the myal-man had placed her. She had lain there till, on her senses returning, she discovered who was her companion. Then had she started up--not to her feet, for the interposition of the Coromantee had hindered her from assuming an erect position, but to an attitude half reclining, half threatening escape. In this attitude was she held--partly through fear, partly by the hopelessness of any attempt to change it. The Coromantee stood in front of her. His attitude? Was it one of menace? No! Not a threat threw out he--neither by word nor gesture. On the contrary, he was all softness, all suppliance--a wooer! He was bending before her, repeating vows of love! Oh, heavens! more fearful than threats of vengeance! It was a terrible tableau--this paraphrase of the Beast on his knees before Beauty. The young girl was too terrified to make reply. She did not even listen to the disgusting speeches addressed to her. She was scarce more conscious than during the period of her syncope. After a time, the Coromantee appeared to lose patience. His unnatural passion chafed against restraint. He began to perceive the hopelessness of his horrid suit. It was in vain to indulge in that delirious dream of love--in the hope of its being reciprocated--a hope with which even satyrs are said to have been inspired. The repellent attitude of her, the object of his demoniac adoration--the evident _degout_ too plainly expressed in her frightened features--showed Chakra how vain was his wooing. With a sudden gesture he desisted, raising himself into an attitude of determination that bespoke some dreadful design--who knows what? A shrill whistle pealing from without prevented its accomplishment, or, at all events, stayed it for the time. "'Tam de signal ob dat ole Jew!" muttered he, evidently annoyed by the interruption. "Wha he want dis time ob de night? 'Pose it somethin' 'bout dat ere loss book-keeper? Wa! a know nuffin 'bout him. Dere 'tam 'gain, and fo' de tree time. Dat signify he am in a hurry. Wha's dat? Foth time! Den da be some trouble, sa'tin. Muss go to him--_muss go_. He nebba sound de signal fo' time 'less da be some desp'rate 'casion fo' do so. Wonder what he want!" "Nebba mind, Lilly Quasheba!" added he, once more addressing his speech to his mute companion. "Doan bex yaseff 'bout dis interupshun. De bisness 'tween you 'n me 'll keep till a gets back, an' den, p'raps, a no find you so ob'tinate. You come--you 'tay out hya--you muss no be seen in dis part ob de world." As he said this, he seized the unresisting girl by the wrist, and was about leading her out of the hut. "Ha!" he exclaimed, suddenly stopping to reflect; "dat woan do, neider. De ole Jew mussn't know she hya--no account. She mout run back in de shanty, darfur she muss be tied. An' den she mout 'cream so he hear her, darfur she muss be gagged." Still holding her wrist in his grasp, he looked around the hut as if in search of the means to put this design into execution. "Ha!" he ejaculated, as if inspired by some new thought, "what hab a been bodderin' ma brains 'bout? Dar's a better plan dan eider tyin' or gaggin'--better dan boaf put togedder! De sleepin' draff. Da's de berry ting keep her quiet. Wha's de bottle, a wonder? Dar um be." With this, he stretched forth his disengaged hand, and drew something out of a sort of pocket cut in the palm-leaf thatch. It appeared to be a long narrow phial, filled with a dark-coloured fluid, and tightly corked. "Now, young missa!" said he, drawing out the cork with his teeth, and placing himself as if intending to administer a draught to his terrified patient; "you take a suck out ob dis hya bottle. Doan be 'feerd. He do no harm--he do you good--make you feel berry comf'able, I'se be boun'. Drink!" The poor girl instinctively drew back; but the monster, letting go her wrist, caught hold of her by the hair, and, twisting her luxuriant tresses around his bony fingers, held her head as firmly as if in a vice. Then, with the other hand, he inserted the neck of the phial between her lips, and, forcing it through her teeth, poured a portion of the liquid down her throat. There was no attempt to scream--scarce any at resistance--on the part of the young creole. Almost freely did she swallow the draught. So prostrate was her spirit at that moment, that she would scarce have cared to refuse it, even had she known it to be poison! And not unlike to poison was the effect it produced--equally quick in subduing the senses--for what Chakra had thus administered was the juice of the _calalue_, the most powerful of narcotics. In a few seconds after the fluid had passed her lips, the face of the young girl became overspread with a death-like pallor--all through her frame ran a gentle, tremulous quivering, that bespoke the sudden relaxation of the muscles. Her lithe limbs gave way beneath her; and she would have sunk down upon the floor, but for the supporting arm of the weird conjuror who had caused this singular collapse. Into his arms she sank--evidently insensible--with the semblance rather of death than of sleep! "Now, den!" muttered the myal-man, with no sign of astonishment at a phenomenon far from being strange to him--since it was to that same sleeping-spell he was indebted for his professional reputation--"now, den, ma sweet Lilly, you sleep quiet 'nuff 'till I want wake you 'gain. Not hya, howsomedever. You muss take you nap in de open air. A muss put you wha de ole Jew no see you, or maybe he want you fo' himself. Come 'long, disaway!" And thus idly apostrophising his unconscious victim, he lifted her in both arms, and carried her out of the hut. Outside he paused, looking around, as if searching for some place in which to deposit his burden. The moon was now above the horizon, and her beams were beginning to be reflected feebly, even through the sombre solitude of the Duppy's Hole. A clump of low bushes, growing just outside the canopy of the cotton-tree, appeared to offer a place of concealment; and Chakra was proceeding towards them, when his eye fell upon the cascade; and, as if suddenly changing his design, he turned out of his former direction, and proceeded towards the waterfall. On getting close up to the cliff over which the stream was precipitated, he paused for an instant on the edge of the seething cauldron; then, taking a fresh hold of the white, wan form that lay helpless over his arm, he glided behind the sheet of foaming water, and suddenly disappeared from the sight--like a river-demon of Eld, bearing off to his subaqueous cavern some beautiful victim, whom he had succeeded in enticing to his haunt, and entrancing into a slumber more fatal than death. In a few seconds the hideous hunchback reappeared upon the bank, no longer embarrassed by his burden; and hearing the whistle once more skirling along the cliffs, he faced down stream, and walked rapidly in the direction of his canoe. Volume Three, Chapter XXXIX. A NEW JOB FOR CHAKRA. Chakra, on reaching the crest of the cliff, found Jacob Jessuron in a state of impatience bordering upon torment. The Jew was striding back and forth among the trees, at intervals striking the ground with his umbrella, and giving utterance to his favourite exclamatory phrases--"Blesh my soul!" and "Blesh me!"--with unusual volubility. Now and then also could be heard the Teutonic ejaculation, "Ach!" proving that his soul was under the influence of some unpleasant passion, that was vexing him even to torture. "Wha's de trouble, Massr Jake?" inquired the myal-man, scrambling over the edge of the rock. "Dar's something go wrong, a 'pose, from de way you hab soun' de signal? A hear de whissel fo' time." "There ish something wrong--a great deal ish wrong--s'help me, there ish! What hash kept you, Shakra?" he added, with a show of vexation. "Golly, Massr Jake, a war asleep; da's wha' d'layed me." "How, then, hash you heard the signal four times?" The query appeared slightly to puzzle Chakra. "O--a--de signal fo' time," stammered he, after a pause of reflection. "Wa, ye see, a hear de fuss time in ma sleep--den de second time he wake me--de third a got to ma feet; and when de fo'th--" The Jew--either satisfied with the explanation, or too much hurried to hear the end of it--interrupted Chakra at "de fo'th." "It ish no time for talk when Mount Welcome ish in flames. You knowsh that, I supposhe?" Chakra hesitated, as if considering whether to make a negative or affirmative reply. "Of course you knowsh it. I needn't haf ashked. Who wash it? Adam hash been there. Wash it him?" "Ole Adam hab a hand in dat ere bizness, a b'lieve." "You knowsh it, Shakra; and I knowsh another that hash had a hand in it. That ish not my bishness, nor what I hash come here about. There ish worse than that." "Wuss, Massr Jake?" inquired the myal-man, with an air of feigned surprise. It might have been real. "Wuss dan dat? Hab de young man no come back?" "Ach! that ish nothings. There ish far worse--there ish danger: s'help me, there ish!" "Danger! Wha from, Massr Jake?" "Firsh tell me where ish Adam now? I want him, and all his fellish." "He am gone back to de mountains." "Ach! Gone back, you shay? How long ish he gone? Can you overtake him, Shakra?" "Possab'e a mout; dey won't trabbel fass. Dey am too hebby load fo' dat. But wha' fo' you want ole Adam, Massr Jake?" "Bishness of the greatesht importance. It ish life and death. Blue Dick hash been over to Mount Welcome. He hash heerd shtrange news--ach! terrible news! A messhenger who came in from the Saffana road hash brought the newsh of many dishagreeable things--among the resht that my Shpaniards haf been made prisoners by Cubina and thish ungrateful villain of a Vochan. They are accushed of murdering the Cushtos. Blesh my soul!" "What harm dat do you, Massr Jake? Wha's de danger?" "Danger! Dosh you not see it, Shakra? If theesh hunters ish brought to trial, do you supposhe they would hold their tongues? S'help me, no! They will turn Shtate's efidence; and then I should be exshposed-- arreshted--ruined! Oh! why hash I ever trushted theesh clumshy fellish with a bishness of such importance?" "Dey am clumsy fellas, jess as you say, Massr Jake." "Ach! it ish too late to shpeak of regretsh. It ish necessary to take some shteps to prevent thish terrible mishfortune. You musht go after Adam, and find him thish instant--thish instant, Shakra." "All right, Massr Jake. A do whatebber you bid me, nebba fear. A soon track up Adam; but wha d'ye want me say to de ole nigga when a hab foun' 'im?" "You needn't shay anything--only bring him back with you to the Shumbe Rock. I shall wait there for you till you come. Don't keep me long in sushpense, Shakra. Make all the shpeed in your power. If you don't get back before sunrishe, all will be losht! I'll be ruined--I will, s'help me!" "Nebba fear, Massr Jake. A woan lose a minnit. A doan tink dat ere ole nigga's got far 'way jess yet. A soon obertake 'im. A go atter him at once. Whugh!" As Chakra uttered the exclamation, he turned on his heel, and was about to start up the mountain, in the direction of the Jumbe Rock, near which he would have to pass on his way towards the haunt of the black robbers. "Shtay!" cried the Jew, "I'she going with you ash far ash the Shumbe Rock. I may ash well wait there ash anywhere elshe. It ish no ushe my going home now. S'help me! I cannot resht till thish thing ish settled. And now, when I thinksh of it, you may ash well let Adam know for what he ish wanted--so ash he may come prepared. Say to him he ish to go shtraight to Mount Welcome--that ish, where it ushed to be. He'sh not to show hishelf there, but prosheed along the road, till he meets the Cushtos' body, and them that ish with it. Then he ish to find some way to rescue the Shpaniards, an' let them eshcape to me. You musht go along with Adam and hish men, elshe they may shpoil all. He musht bring his fellish well armed; you may shtand in need of them all. The messenger said there were some negroes from the eshtate of Content. Theesh won't signify. They will all run away ash soon as you show yourselves; but the others may be inclined to make fight. There ish Cubina, and the young raschal of an Englishman, besides that giant Quaco, and the messenger hishself. You thinksh you can manage them, Shakra?" "Sure ob dat." "You musht take them by an ambushcade." "P'raps we kill some o' dem." "Ash many ash you like. Only make shure to get the Shpaniards off." "Be no great harm to kill dem too--atter de fool dey hab made ob demselves, lettin' dem fellas take um pris'ner dat a way. Whugh!" "No, no, goot Shakra!--we mushn't kill our friendsh--we may need them again. You may promish Adam goot pay for the shob. I don't care for the cosht, so long as it ish clefferly done." "All right, Massr Jake; leab dat to me an' Adam. We do de ting clebberly 'nuf, I'se be boun'." And with this assurance Chakra strode off up the mountain, the Jew having set the example by starting forward in advance of him. Volume Three, Chapter XL. DEAD, OR ASLEEP? On beholding what he believed to be the dead body of his cousin, the grief of Herbert Vaughan proclaimed itself in a wild cry--in tones of the bitterest agony. He flung his gun upon the rock--knelt down by the side of the corpse--raised her head upon his arm, and, gazing upon that face, in death beautiful as ever, drew it nearer to his own, kissed the cold, unconscious lips--kissed them again and again, as though he had hopes that the warmth of his love might re-animate the fair form over which he was bending. For some time his frenzied caresses were continued--their fervour unchecked by the presence of his rude companions who stood around. Respecting the sanctity of his grief, all observed a solemn silence. Nor word nor sound escaped the lips of any one. Sobs alone proceeded from Cubina. The Maroon had also cause to sorrow at that sad spectacle--but these were not heard. They were drowned by a more powerful voice--the melancholy monotone of the cataract--that had been speaking incessantly since the creation of the world. It was a long time before the heart of Herbert consented to his discontinuing those cold but sweet kisses--the first he had ever had; the last he was destined to have--from those pale lips; long before he could withdraw his supporting arm from beneath that beautiful head, whose shining tresses lay dishevelled along the rock. The torch held in the hands of Cubina was burning to its base. Only when warned by its flickering light, did the chief mourner rise once more to his feet; and then making a feeble signal to those who stood around, he moved in solemn silence towards the entrance of the grotto. His gesture was understood, and promptly obeyed. By the authority of his greater grief he had become master of the mournful ceremonies now to be observed. The Maroons, quietly crossing their arms under the inanimate form, raised it from the rock; and, following him who had given them their silent direction, they bore it to the hut--there placing it upon the cane couch. With instinctive delicacy all retired upon the completion of their task, leaving Herbert and Cubina alone with the body. An interval elapsed before either essayed to speak. Both were under the influence of a profound grief, that almost stifled reflection, Cubina was the first to have other thoughts, and to give expression to them. "_Santa Virgen_!" said he, in a voice husky with emotion, "I know not how she has died, unless the sight of Chakra has killed her. It was enough to have done it." The suggestive speech received no other answer than a groan. "If the monster," continued the Maroon, "has used other violence, I see no trace of it. There is no wound--no appearance of anything that should have produced death. Poor young creature!--there's something dark inside her lips--but it's not blood--" "O God!" cried Herbert, interrupting the speaker with a fresh paroxysm of grief. "Two corpses to be carried home to the same house--father and daughter on the same day--in the same hour: both the victims of villainy. O God!" "Both victims of the same villain, I have my belief," rejoined Cubina. "The same hand that has laid low the Custos, if I mistake not, has been at the bottom of this horrible crime. Chakra is but the weapon. Another has dealt the blow--you know who, Master Vaughan?" Herbert was hindered from making reply. A dark form appearing in the door, distracted the attention of both from the theme of their conversation. Quaco had heard the melancholy tidings; and, relieved from his duty by the canoe, had hurried back to the hut. He it was who now appeared in the doorway, filling it from post to post--from step to lintel. Neither his chief nor Herbert offered any remark. Quaco's presence did not surprise them. It was natural he should come to the hut--if only to satisfy his curiosity. Weighted with their sorrow, neither took any notice of his arrival, nor of his movements after he had entered the hut--which he did without waiting to be invited. Having stepped inside, the colossus stood for some moments by the couch, gazing down upon the sweet, silent face. Even on his features was depicted an expression of sorrow. Gradually this became more subdued, or rather appeared to undergo a total change--slowly but surely altering to an expression of cheerfulness. Slight at first, and imperceptible on account of the large scale upon which Quaco's features were formed, the expression was every moment becoming more pronounced; until at length it attracted the notice of the others, notwithstanding the abstraction caused by their poignant grief. Both observed it at the same instant, and to both it caused a feeling of annoyance--amounting almost to indignation. "Lieutenant," said Cubina, addressing his subaltern in a tone of reproach, "it is not exactly the time for being gay. May I ask you what is making you smile, while others around you are overwhelmed with sorrow?" "Why, cappen!" rejoined Quaco, "I can't see what yar all a-grievin' 'bout. Can't be the Custos: since, sartinly, you've got over grievin' for him long afore this!" The reply--grotesque in character, and almost jovial in the manner of its delivery--could not fail still further to astonish those to whom it was addressed. Both started on hearing it; and for some moments bent their _eyes_ on the speaker in an expression of wonder, mingled with indignation. Had Quaco gone mad? "In the presence of death, sir," said the young Maroon captain, directing a severe glance upon his lieutenant, "you might lay aside that merry mood, too common with you. It ill becomes you--" "Death, do ye say, cappen?" interrupted Quaco; "who's gone dead here?" There was no reply to this abrupt interrogatory. Those to whom it was addressed were too much taken by surprise to say a word. "If you mean the young buckra lady," continued Quaco, "I'd give all the barbecued hog I ever owned nebber to be more dead than she jess now. Dead, i'deed? nonsense dat: she only sleep!" Herbert and Cubina started from their seats, each uttering a cry of astonishment, in which might be detected the accents of hope. "Who's got a piece o' lookin'-glass!" continued Quaco, turning his glance interrogatively around the hut. "Good," he exclaimed, as the sparkle of a piece of broken mirror came under his eyes; "here's the thing itself! "Now, lookee hyar!" resumed he, taking the bit of glass from the place where it had been deposited, and rubbing its surface with a piece of rag: "you see thar's ne'er a speck upon it?" The others, still held silent by surprise, made answer only by nodding their assent. "Wal, now," continued Quaco, "watch me a bit." Placing the smooth surface of the mirror to the mute lips, he held it there for a minute or more; and then, turning, he raised it up, and held it close to the light of the lamp. "Ye see," he cried, triumphantly pointing to a white filmy bloom that appeared upon the glass, partially obscuring its sheen, "that's her breath! She no gone dead, else how she hab breath?" His listeners were too excited to make reply. Only by exclamations did they signify their assent to the truth of his hypothesis. "Ho!" exclaimed Quaco, suddenly dropping the bit of glass, and clutching hold of a phial that lay upon the floor--now for the first time noticed. "What we got here?" continued he, drawing the cork with his teeth, and thrusting the neck up his wide nostril. "Sleepin' draugh'! I thought so. So this is the spell that's put the young buckra lady to rest. Well, there's another that'll wake her, if I can only find it. It's boun' be hya, somewheres about; and if I can git my claws on it, I'll make this hya young creatur' talk to ye in less than ten minutes!" So saying, the colossus commenced searching around the hut, looking into the numerous chinks and crannies with which both walls and roof were provided. Restrained by surprise, blended with hopeful anticipation, neither Herbert nor Cubina offered to interrupt his actions, by word or gesture. Both remained in their respective places--silently but anxiously awaiting the event. Volume Three, Chapter XLI. QUACO TURNED MYAL-MAN. To Herbert Vaughan it was a moment of tumultuous emotions--joy springing up in the midst of utter woe. That his cousin still breathed he could not doubt; that she lived he was only too ready to believe. Though mystified beyond measure by what appeared the perfect semblance of death, the words of Quaco had given him some clue to a remarkable mystery--at the same time inspiring him with the belief that in that motionless form the soul was yet present. Her breathing upon the mirror had made him sure of it. The mystery to which Quaco's speeches had introduced him was that of _myalism_. In this the Maroon lieutenant claimed to have skill almost equalling the regular professors of the art. In addition to being Cubina's deputy on all important occasions, Quaco was the doctor of the band; and in his medical experience he had picked up some knowledge of the system of Obeah--more especially of the trick by which, in the belief of the ignorant, a dead body can be brought to life again--that dread secret of the Coromantee charlatan, known in the West Indies as _myalism_. "Only a sleep-spell," said Quaco, still continuing his search; "nothin' more than that--a draught given her by the myal-doctor. I know it well enough; and I knows what'll make all right again; though 'ithout that she'd come to of herself. A-ha! hyar it is! hyar's the anecdote!" A small bottle glistened between his fingers; which in another instant was uncorked and brought in contact with his nostrils. "Yes, dis is the stuff that's a-goin' to countrack that spell. In 'less 'n ten minutes' time you see her wake up, brisk as ebber she been in her life. Now, young master, if you jess hold up the young lady's head while I spill a drop or two down her throat--It must go down to do her good." Herbert, with joyful willingness, obeyed the request; and the beautiful head once more received the support of his arm. Quaco, with all the gentleness of which his huge, coarse fingers were capable, parted the pale lips; and, inserting the neck of the phial, poured out a portion of its contents into the mouth of the sleeper. This done, he held the bottle for some minutes to her nostrils; and then, laying it aside, he commenced chafing her hands between his own broad, corrugated palms. With heart wildly beating, and eyes alternately scanning the face of Quaco and the countenance of the silent sleeper, Herbert made no effort to conceal his terrible solicitude. It would have been far more terrible, but for the confident manner of the negro, and the triumphant tone in which he predicted the result. Scarce five minutes had elapsed from the time of administering the antidote--to Herbert they appeared fifty--when the bosom of the sleeper was seen to swell upward; at the same time that a sigh, just audible, escaped from her lips! Herbert could no longer restrain his emotions. With a cry of supreme joy, he bent his face nearer to that of the young girl, and pressed his lips to hers, at the same time gently murmuring her name. "Be quiet, young master!" cautioned Quaco, "else you may keep her longer from wakin' up. Hab patience. Leave the anecdote to do its work. 'Tan't goin' to be very long." Herbert, thus counselled, resumed his former attitude; and remained silently but earnestly gazing upon the beautiful face, already showing signs of re-animation. As Quaco had predicted, the "anecdote" was not long in manifesting its effects. The bosom of the young girl began to rise and fall in quick spasmodic motion, showing that respiration was struggling to return; while, at shorter intervals, sighs escaped her, audible even amidst the sounds, so similar, heard from without. Gradually the undulations of the chest became more regular and prolonged, and the lips moved in soft murmuring--as when one is endeavouring to hold converse in a dream! Each instant these utterances became more distinct. Words could be distinguished; and, among others, one that filled the heart of Herbert with happiness indescribable--his own name! Despite the prudent counsel of Quaco, he could no longer restrain himself; but once more imprinting a fervent kiss upon the lips of his beloved cousin, responded to her muttering by loudly pronouncing her name, coupled with words of love and exclamations of encouragement. As if his voice had broken the charm--dispelling the morphine from out her veins--the eyes of the young girl all at once opened. The long, crescent-shaped lashes displayed through their parting those orbs of lovely light, brown as the berry of the _theobroma_, and soft as the eyes of a dove. At first their expression was dreamy--unconscious--as if they shone without seeing--looked without recognising. Gradually this appearance became changed. The spark of recognition betrayed itself fast spreading over pupil and iris--until at length, it kindled into the full flame of consciousness. Close to hers was the face of which she had been dreaming. Looking into hers were those eyes she had beheld in her sleep, and with that same glance with which, in her waking hours, they had once regarded her--that glance so fondly remembered! Again was it fixed upon her; but no longer in silence, and unexplained. Now it was accompanied by words of love--by phrases of endearment-- spoken with all the wild _abandon_ of an impassioned heart. "Herbert! cousin!" she exclaimed as soon as speech was restored to her. "It is you? Where am I? No matter, since you are by me. It is your arm that is around me?" "Yes, dearest cousin--never more to part from this sweet embrace. Oh, speak to me! Tell me that you live!" "Live? Ah! you thought me dead? I thought so myself. That horrid monster! He is gone? I see him not here! Oh! I am saved! It is you, Herbert? you who have delivered me from worse than death?" "Mine is not the merit, cousin. This brave man by my side--it is he to whom we are both indebted for this deliverance." "Cubina! and Yola?--poor Yola? She, too, has escaped? Oh! it is a fearful thing. I cannot comprehend--" "Dearest cousin! think not of it now. In time you shall understand all. Know that you are safe--that all danger is past." "My poor father! if he knew--Chakra alive--that fearful monster!" Herbert was silent, Cubina, at the same time, withdrawing from the hut to give some orders to his followers. "Ah, cousin, what is that upon your breast?" inquired the young girl, innocently touching the object with her fingers. "Is it not the ribbon you took from my purse? Have you been wearing it all this time?" "Ever since that hour! Oh, Kate! no longer can I conceal the truth. I love you! I love you! I have heard. But tell me, dearest cousin!-- with your own lips declare it--do you return my love?" "I do! I do!" Once more Herbert kissed the lips that had given utterance to the thrilling declaration. In that kiss two loving souls were sealed for ever! Volume Three, Chapter XLII. THE RESCUE. On starting off from the Duppy's Hole, it had been the intention of the Jew to wait by the base of the Jumbe Rock for the return of Chakra with the robbers. Before arriving at the rock, a better plan presented itself. In the absence of Chakra--which might be a prolonged one--it occurred to him that he might profitably pass the interval of time by making a reconnoissance of Mount Welcome and its precincts. Before parting from Chakra, therefore, a new place of rendezvous was arranged between them--at a particular place upon the mountain slope, only a short distance from the rear of the garden. This point being settled, Chakra continued on after the home-returning bandits; while his fellow-conspirator, facing down the mountain, proceeded towards the valley of Mount Welcome. He soon came upon the path habitually used in the ascent and descent of the mountain. Only for a short distance did he follow it, however. He conjectured that a pursuit would be already set on foot; and, apprehensive of encountering the pursuers, he preferred making his approach to the house by working his way through the woods, where no path existed. By this means he should advance more slowly, but with greater safety. Favoured by an occasional flash from the smouldering fires--seen at intervals through the trees--he had no difficulty in guiding himself in the right direction; and in due time he arrived at the rearward of the garden. Crouching behind the wall, and looking cautiously over its top, he could command a full view of the grounds--no longer containing a grand house, but only a smouldering mass of half-consumed timbers. There was still sufficient flame springing up amidst the smoke to reveal to the eyes of Jessuron a terrible _tableau_. Under the light could be seen a number of human figures grouped around an object resembling a rude bier. On this lay the body of a white man, whose ghastly visage--ghastlier under the glare of the unnatural light-- betokened it to be a corpse. A white man stood beside it, bent over the body, and looking thoughtfully on the face. Jessuron recognised in this individual the overseer of the estate. The others were blacks--both men and women-- easily known as the domestics and field slaves of the plantation. At a short distance from these was another group--smaller in individual numbers, but equally conspicuous. Two men lay along the grass in attitudes that showed them to be fast bound. They were white men, in colonial phraseology, though their complexions of dark olive were but a shade or two lighter than those of the negroes who surrounded them. Jessuron easily identified them as his own _employes_, the Cuban _cacadores_. Some three or four black men stood around them, apparently acting as guards. The costume, arms, and accoutrements of these last--but quite as much their bold, upright bearing--proclaimed them to be men of a different caste from the negroes who encompassed the corpse. They were the Maroons whom Quaco had left in charge of the prisoners. As soon as Jessuron had finished making these observations, he returned to the place of rendezvous, where he was soon joined by Chakra and the robbers. The latter, on their homeward route, having halted for a rest not far beyond the Jumbe Rock, were there overtaken by the myal-man, and brought instantaneously back. The report of Jessuron was delivered to Chakra, who, along with Adam and his followers, advanced to the garden wall, and became himself a spectator of the scene already described. The circumstances suggested the necessity of immediate action. It was evident that Cubina and the main body of the Maroons had gone off in pursuit of the incendiaries at once. No account was made of the presence of the plantation negroes, and the weak guard of the Maroons that had been left could be easily overpowered. Such were the reflections of Chakra and Adam, acted upon almost as soon as conceived; and, leaving Jessuron to await their return, they and their followers crept forward through the shrubbery of the garden. A volley from their guns, fired from an ambush, was heard shortly after. It caused most of the Maroon guard to fall dead by the side of their prisoners, at the same time putting to flight the people of the plantation, with their overseer at their head. Nothing then remained but to relieve the captives from their cords; and this being readily accomplished, both robbers and _cacadores_ retreated up the mountain. On nearing the Jumbe Rock, the confederates once more separated. Adam and his followers continued on towards their mountain home, while Chakra, accompanied by the Jew, and followed by Manuel and Andres, proceeded in the direction of the Duppy's Hole. It was the design of Jessuron that the two Cubanos should remain in that safe asylum--as guests of the Coromantee--until such time as he might find an opportunity for shipping them back to the country whence they had come. Chakra's consent to this arrangement had not yet been obtained, and it was to this end that the Jew was now on his errand--for the second time that night--to the sombre solitude of the Duppy's Hole. Volume Three, Chapter XLIII. DOWN THE MOUNTAIN. The midnight hour had passed ere the lovers forsook the solitude of the Duppy's Hole. From mingled motives Herbert had lingered on that wild spot. He feared the dread development which he knew must take place on their return to Mount Welcome. What a terrible blow to that young bosom, now in the full enjoyment of earth's supremest happiness! He knew the fatal truth could not loner be concealed; nevertheless, he was desirous of keeping it back as long as possible--at least until his cousin had further recovered from the shock which her spirit had that night sustained. In concert with Cubina, he had spent some time in reflecting how this temporary concealment might be effected. Only one way suggested itself--to conduct his cousin to the house of the overseer; there to remain until, as she might suppose, her rather could receive the news of the conflagration that had occurred, and return home again. The young girl knew that the mansion was burnt down. Its blaze was before her eyes when they ceased to see--lighting her ravisher along the forest path. The roof that had sheltered her childhood was a ruin. She knew all that. It was therefore but natural that a temporary home should be sought elsewhere, and in the house of the overseer. She could have no suspicion of any design in their taking her thither. Neither Herbert nor Cubina knew whether the corpse of the Custos had yet reached its destination. Quaco, on hurriedly parting with it, had given no orders, either to the bearers or the Maroons left in charge of the two prisoners, to move forward. The funeral _cortege_ might still be upon the road, where it had been left by Herbert and Cubina. If so, it might be possible for them to pass the ruined dwelling, and reach the house of the overseer, without any news of the assassination being communicated to her--the only one likely to be profoundly affected by that dread disaster. Once under the roof of Mr Trusty, means could be taken to keep silent the tongues of those who should be brought in contact with her. Such was the scheme, hastily concerted between Herbert and Cubina; and which they now proceeded to execute, by conducting the young creole out of the Duppy's Hole and commencing their descent towards the valley of Mount Welcome. Only the two accompanied her. The Maroons, under their lieutenant, Quaco, remained behind; and for an important purpose--the capturing of Chakra. Cubina would himself have stayed, but for a certain impatience once more to enjoy the company of his beloved Yola, who had been left among the other domestics of the desolated establishment. The Maroon captain had perfect confidence--both in the skill of his lieutenant, and the courage of his followers. He could trust them for an affair like that; and as he parted from the Duppy's Hole he had very little doubt that by daybreak, or perhaps before that time, Chakra would be the captive of Quaco. Slowly Herbert and his cousin moved down the mountain. The moon, now shining sweetly upon the perfumed path, favoured their descent; but there was no need--no desire for haste. Cubina kept ahead, to secure them from surprise or danger. The young girl walked side by side with Herbert, leaning upon his arm--that strong arm, once so freely and affectionately promised. The time had arrived when that offer was accepted and welcomed--a proud time for the young Englishman--a happy time, as he walked on, thrilled by the touch of that round arm softly pressing his own--at times more heavily leaning upon him, not from any physical weakness on the part of his companion, but rather out of the pure fondness of her affection. The strength of the young Creole had become almost restored--the effects of the narcotic having completed disappeared. She had also recovered from the prostration of spirit which it had produced--perhaps all the sooner from the cheering presence of him who was by her side. The terrible sufferings she had endured were succeeded by a happiness tranquil and profound. She now knew that Herbert loved her: more than once within the hour had he given her that sweet assurance. On her part there was no coyness--not a shadow of coquetry. She had responded to his vows by a full, free surrender of her heart. And her hand? Was it still free? Herbert sought an answer to this question as they passed onward--only indirectly, and with all the delicacy that circumstances would permit. Was it true, what he had heard, that a promise had been given to Smythje? With downcast eyes the young girl remained for some moments without vouchsafing any reply. Her trembling arm betrayed the painful struggle that was agitating her bosom. Presently the storm appeared to have partially subsided. Her features became fixed, as if she had resolved upon a confession; and in a firm, but low, murmured voice, she made answer,-- "A promise! yes, Herbert, wrung from me in my darkest hour--then, when I thought _you_ cared not for me--when I heard that you also had made such promise--to another. Oh, Herbert! oh, cousin! believe me it was against my will; it was forced from me by threats, by appeals--" "Then it is not binding!" eagerly interrupted the lover. "There was no oath--no betrothal between you? Even if there had been--" "Even if there had been!" cried the young girl, repeating his words--the hot Creole blood mounting suddenly to her cheeks, while her eyes expressed a certain determination. "There was no oath. Even if there had been, it could no longer bind me. No! After what has occurred this night--in the hour of danger deserted by him--no, no! After that, I could never consent to be the wife of Mr Smythje. Rather suffer the charge of perjury, from which my own conscience would absolve me, than to fulfil that promise. Rather shall I submit to the disinheritance which my father threatens, and which upon his return he will doubtless execute. Yes, death itself, rather than become the wife of a coward!" "How little danger of that disinheritance!" thought Herbert. "How shall I tell the fearful tidings? How reveal to her that she is at this moment the mistress of Mount Welcome? Not yet--not yet!" For a while the young man remained silent, scarce knowing how to continue the conversation. She noticed his air of thoughtful abstraction. It guided her to unpleasant conjectures. "Cousin! are you angry with me for what I have said? Do you blame me--" "No--no!" cried Herbert, impressively; "far from it. By the conduct of this man--woman, I should call him, were it not for disgracing the name--by his behaviour to you, you would be released from the most solemn of oaths--much more a mere promise given against your will. It was not of that I was thinking." "Of what, Herbert?" As she put this question she leant towards him, and gazed into his eyes with a look of troubled inquiry. The young man was puzzled for a reply. His thoughtful silence was evidently causing her uneasiness that each moment increased. Her glances betokened some painful suspicion. She did not wait for his answer; but, in a voice that trembled, put the additional interrogative,-- "Have _you_ made a promise?" "To whom?" "Oh, Herbert! do not ask me to pronounce the name. You must know to whom I allude." Herbert was relieved by the interrogatory. It changed the current of his thoughts, at the same time giving him a cue for something to say. "Ha! ha!" laughed he; "I think, cousin, I comprehend you. A promise, indeed! Nothing of the sort, I assure you; though, since _you_ have been good enough to make confession, neither shall I conceal what has passed between her to whom you refer and myself. There was no love between us--at least, none upon my side, I can assure you, cousin. But, I will confess that, stung by what I fancied was your coldness to me-- misled by a thousand reports, now happily found to be false--I had nearly committed myself to the speaking of a word which no doubt I should have rued throughout all the rest of my life. Thank fortune! circumstances have saved me--saved us both, may I say?" "Oh, happiness! Herbert--Herbert! then you will be mine--mine only?" Yielding to the promptings of an all-absorbing passion, the young creole gave utterance to this bold interrogatory. "Dearest Kate!" replied the lover, half delirious with joy, "my heart is yours--all yours. My hand--oh, cousin, I scarce dare to offer it! You are rich--grand--and I--I poor--penniless--even without a home!" "Alas! Herbert, you know not. Were I rich--ten times as rich as you, believe me, you would be welcome to all. But no. Perhaps I may be poor as yourself. Ah me! you do not know; but you shall. I shall conceal nothing. Know, then, dearest cousin, that my mother was a quadroon, and I am only a _mustee_. I cannot inherit my father's property, except by will; and not even that till an act is obtained from the Assembly. That is the errand upon which my father is gone. But whether he succeed or not, matters not now. Too surely will he disinherit me; for never shall I consent to become the wife of the man he has commanded me to many-- never!" "Oh, cousin!" cried Herbert, enraptured by the emphatic tone in which she had declared her determination, "if you consent to become mine, I care not for your riches. Your heart is the wealth I covet--that will be enough for me. What matters it even should we both be poor? I am young. I can work. I can strive. We may yet find friends, or, if not, we can do without them. Be mine!" "Yours for any fate!--for life, Herbert! for life!" Volume Three, Chapter XLIV. AN ORPHAN. These earnest utterances of love exchanged between the two cousins were suddenly interrupted. Sounds of woe broke upon the stillness of the night, and in the same place as before. They had arrived within view of what was once the mansion of Mount Welcome. Through the foliage that fringed the path, they could see glancing some remnants of red light, here and there flickering into a faint blaze. Now and then, as they descended the slope, they had heard the crash of falling timbers, as they gave way under the wasting fire. A murmur of human voices, too, had reached their ears; but only as of men engaged in an ordinary conversation; or, at all events, not exhibiting excitement beyond what might be expected at the _finale_ of such a scene as had there transpired. All at once abruptly breaking upon this comparative tranquillity--at the same time interrupting the dialogue of the lovers--were heard utterances of a far different import: the cries of men, the screaming of women, shots, and loud shouting! All these sounds appeared to proceed from the spot that but a few hours before had echoed to the clangour of a chorus equally diabolical in its accents. Cubina, who had been moving some paces in advance, sprang instantly back upon the path; and, with troubled look, stopped in front of the lovers. "What can it mean?" asked Herbert, equally showing signs of apprehension. "The robbers! Master Vaughan! They have returned; but for what purpose I cannot guess. It must be they. I know that voice, louder than the rest. Do you hear it? 'Tis the voice of the brigand Adam! _Crambo_! I'll silence it some day ere long--maybe, this very night. Hark! there's another, still louder and wilder. Ho! that, too, I can distinguish. It's the hellish shriek of Chakra!" "But why should they have come again? They took everything a robber would care for. What can have brought them back? There is nothing--" "There _is_!" cried Cubina, with a quick gesture, as though the solution had just then presented itself to his mind. "_There is Yola_!" As he said this he faced around, as if about to rush towards the fray, still strepitant--its noise rather on the increase. For an instant he appeared to be undecided; though not from any fear of going forward. No, it was another thought that had caused that indecision; which was soon made manifest by his words. "Master Herbert Vaughan!" he exclaimed, in a tone of appeal; "I have helped you to rescue _your_ sweetheart. Mine is in danger!" The young Englishman stood in no need of this appeal. Already he had disengaged his arm from that of his cousin, and stood ready for action. "Oh, Herbert!" cried the young girl, in wild accents of distress; "there is fearful danger! Oh, you must not go. Oh, do not leave me!" Cubina looked as if regretting the challenge he had thrown out. "Perhaps you had better not?" said he, with no sarcasm meant by the words. "There is danger, but you must not share it. Your life now belongs to another. I did not think of that, Master Vaughan." "In the eyes of that other," replied Herbert, "my life would be worthless, as it would to myself, were I to play the poltroon. Brave Cubina! I cannot fail you now. Dear Kate! it is Yola who is in danger--Yola, to whom we are both indebted. But for her I should not have known that you loved me; and then we should both--" "Ah! Yola in danger!" interrupted the young Creole, her affection for her maid half stifling the fear for her beloved. "Oh, Herbert! go if you will, but let me go with you. I should die if you returned not. Yes, yes; if death comes to you, it shall be mine also. Herbert, do not leave me behind!" "Only for a moment, Kate! I shall soon return. Fear not. With right on our side, the brave Cubina and I can conquer a score of these black robbers. We shall be back before you can count a hundred. There! conceal yourself in these bushes, and wait for our coming. I shall call out for you. Behind the bushes you will be safe. Not a word, not a movement, till you hear me calling your name." As he uttered these admonitions, the brave young man gently guided his cousin into the thicket. Causing her to kneel down in a shaded covert, he imprinted a hurried kiss upon her forehead, and then hastily leaving her, followed Cubina towards the fight. In a few seconds they ran down to the garden wall, and passed rapidly through the wicket-gate, which they found standing open; on through the garden, and straight towards the place from which they imagined the sounds had proceeded. Strange enough, these had ceased as abruptly as they had risen--the cries of the men, the screaming of the women, the shots, and the loud shouting! All, as if by a simultaneous signal, had become silent; as though the earth had opened and swallowed not only the noises, but those who had been causing them! Unheeding the change, Herbert and Cubina kept on; nor came to a stop until they had passed the smoking remains of the mansion, and stood upon the platform that fronted it. There halted they. There was still some fitful light from the burning beams; but the beams of the moon told a truer tale. They illumined a _tableau_ significant as terrible. Near the spot was a stretcher, on which lay the corpse of a white man, half uncovered, ghastly as death could make it. Close to it were three others, corpses like itself, only that they were those of men with a black epidermis. Herbert easily identified the first. It had been his companion on that day's journey. It was the corpse of his uncle. As easily did Cubina recognise the others. They were, or had been, men of his own band--the Maroons--left by Quaco to guard the prisoners. The prisoners! where were they? Escaped? It took Cubina but little time to resolve the mystery. To the practised eye of one who had tied up many a black runaway, there was no difficulty in interpreting the sign there presented to his view. A tangle of ropes and sticks brought to mind the contrivances of Quaco for securing his captives. They lay upon the trodden ground, cast away, and forsaken. The _cacadores_ had escaped. The affair had been a rescue! Rather relieved by this conjecture, which soon assumed the form of a conviction, Herbert and Cubina were about returning to the place where they had left the young Creole--whom they supposed to be still awaiting them. But they had not calculated on the bravery of love--much less upon its recklessness. As they faced towards the dark declivity of the mountain, a form like a white-robed sylph was seen flitting athwart the trunks of the trees, and descending towards the garden wall. On it glided--on, and downward--as the snow-plumed gull in its graceful parabola. Neither was mystified by this apparition. At a glance both recognised the form, with its soft, white drapery floating around it. Love could no longer endure that anxious suspense. The young Creole had forsaken her shelter, to share the danger of him she adored. Before either could interfere to prevent the catastrophe, she had passed through the wicket--a way better known to her than to them--and came gliding across the garden, up to the spot where they stood. An exclamation of joy announced her perception that her lover was still unharmed. Quick as an echo, a second exclamation escaped from her lips--but one of a far different intonation. It was a cry of wildest despair--the utterance of one who suddenly knew herself to be _an orphan_. Her eyes had fallen upon the corpse of her father! Volume Three, Chapter XLV. AN INVOLUNTARY SUICIDE. On seeing the dead body of her father, Kate Vaughan sank to the earth beside it; not unconsciously, but on her knees, and in an agony of grief. Bending over it, she kissed the cold, speechless lips--her sobs and wilder ejaculations following each other in rapid succession. Only the face of the corpse was uncovered. The camlet cloak still shrouded the body, and its gaping but bloodless wounds. She saw not these; and made no inquiry as to the cause of her father's death. The wasted features, now livid, recalled the disease under which he had been suffering previous to his departure. It was to that he had succumbed; so reasoned she. Herbert made no attempt to undeceive her. It was not the time to enter into details of the sad incident that had transpired. The most mournful chapter of the story was now known--the rest need scarce be told: Kate Vaughan was fatherless. Without uttering a word--not even those phrases of consolation so customary on such occasions, and withal so idle--the young man wound his arms round the waist of his cousin, gently raised her to an erect attitude, and supported her away from the spot. He passed slowly towards the rear of the ruined dwelling. There was still enough light emitted from the calcined embers to make plain the path--enough to show that the little summer-house in the garden still stood there in its shining entirety. Its distance from the dwelling-house had saved it from the conflagration. Into this Herbert conducted his protegee, and, after placing her on a settee of bamboos, which the kiosk contained, seated himself in a chair beside her. Yola, who had once more appeared upon the scene, followed them, and flinging herself on the floor, at her young mistress's feet, remained gazing upon her with sympathetic looks, that evinced the affectionate devotion of the Foolah maiden. Cubina had gone in search of the overseer, and such of the domestics as might still have concealed themselves within a reasonable distance. The Maroon might have acted with more caution, seeing that the second attack of the robbers had unexpectedly been made. But he had no fear of their coming again. The escape of the prisoners explained their second appearance--the sole object of which had been to rescue the _cacadores_. For a while the three individuals in the kiosk appeared to be the only living forms that remained by the desolated mansion of Mount Welcome. The return of the robbers had produced even a more vivid feeling of affright than their first appearance; and the people of the plantation-- white as well as black--had betaken themselves to places of concealment more permanent than before. The whites--overseer, book-keepers, and all--believing it to be an insurrection of the slaves, had forsaken the plantation altogether, and fled towards Montego Bay. Among these panic-struck fugitives, or rather at the head of them, was the late distinguished guest of Mount Welcome--Mr Montagu Smythje. On being left alone, after the departure of the pursuing party, he had made a rapid retreat towards the stables; and there, by the assistance of Quashie, had succeeded in providing himself with a saddled horse. Not even staying to divest himself of his sacchariferous envelope, he had mounted and ridden at top speed for the port, announcing his fixed determination to take the first ship that should sail for his "deaw metwopolis." Smythje had seen enough of Jamaica, and its "queeole queetyaws," and more than enough of "its howid niggaws." Cubina, returning with Quashie--who again, imp-like, had started up in his path--the only living being the Maroon could discover, announced the fact that Mr Smythje was no longer on the ground. From those who occupied the kiosk, the intelligence elicited no response. Notwithstanding the many jealous pangs he had cost Herbert Vaughan, and the important part he had played in the history of the young Creole's life, the great lord of Montagu Castle was no longer regarded even as a unit in the situation. Neither spoke of him--neither gave a thought to him. With perfect indifference, both Herbert and his cousin listened to the report that he was no longer on the ground. But there was at that very moment one upon the ground who might have been better spared--one whose proximity was a thousand times more perilous than that of the harmless Smythje. As we have said, Cubina had no apprehensions about the return of the robbers; but there was a danger near, and equally to be dreaded--a danger of which neither he nor any of the others could have had even the slightest suspicion. The Maroon had delivered his report at the kiosk, and with Quashie attending on him, had gone back to the spot where the dead body still rested. He had gone thither to ascertain which of his own men had fallen in the late struggle, and also the better to acquaint himself with the direction which the robbers might have taken. Just as he had turned his back upon the kiosk, a human figure--gliding so softly that it might have been mistaken for a shadow--passed through the wicket-gate in the rear of the garden, and, with stealthy step, advanced in the direction of the summer-house. Notwithstanding an ample cloak in which the figure was enveloped, its _contour_ could be distinguished as that of a woman--one of boldly-developed form. The blaze of the still-burning timbers was no longer constant. At intervals some piece--losing its equilibrium under the effect of the consuming fire--would fall with a crushing sound; to be followed by a fresh glare of light, which would continue for a longer or shorter period of time, according to the circumstances that created it. Just as the silent figure, approaching along the path, had arrived within a few paces of the summer-house, one of these sudden coruscations arose, lighting up not only the interior of the summer-house, but the whole enclosure to its furthest limits. Under that light, had anyone been looking rearwards across the garden, they would have beheld a beautiful face--beautiful, yet disfigured by an expression of mingled rage and pain, that rendered it even hideous. It was the face of Judith Jessuron. It is not necessary to explain why she was there. The fire of jealousy was still burning in her breast--more furiously, more bitterly than ever. In another instant she had placed herself in a position that commanded a view of the interior of the kiosk. What she saw there was not calculated to extinguish the fearful fire that consumed her. On the contrary, like the collision of the falling timbers, it had the effect of stirring it to increased strength and fierceness. Kate Vaughan had raised herself from her reclining position, and was sitting upright on the bamboo settee. Herbert was by her side, also seated. Their bodies were in contact--the arm of the young man softly encircling the waist of his cousin. It would have been evident to the most uninterested observer that their hearts were equally _en rapport_; that between them was a tie--the strongest on earth--the tie of mutual love! It needed no reasoning on the part of Judith Jessuron to arrive at this conclusion. The tableau was typical. It was a picture that required no explanation, nor did she who looked upon it ask for any. She did not even stay to notice the brown-skinned damsel, who seemed to be guarding the entrance of the kiosk; but, springing past her, she stood in a defiant attitude in the presence of the lovers. "Herbert Vaughan!" cried she, in a tone of bitter abandonment; "traitor! perjured villain! you have been false to me--" "It is not true, Judith Jessuron!" cried the young man, interrupting her, and, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise, springing to his feet. "It is not true. I--I never intended--" "Ha!" screamed the Jewess, her rage apparently becoming more fierce at the attempted explanation; "never intended what?" "Never intended to marry you. I never gave you promise--" "False!" cried Judith, once more interrupting him. "No matter now--it is all past; and since you never intended to marry me, she at least will never be your wife!" The action that followed rendered the menace of the mad woman too easily intelligible. As she gave utterance to it she passed her hand under the mantle in which her figure was enveloped; and, as she drew it forth again, a shining object appeared between her fingers. It was a pistol, with silver sheen and ivory handle--small, but large enough to take life at such close quarters. It was presented as soon as drawn, but not at Herbert Vaughan. It was towards his companion that its muzzle was pointed! Scarce a second passed before the report was heard; and, for a time, the kiosk was filled with smoke. When this cleared away, and the shining light once more penetrated the apartment, a woman was seen extended on the floor, her form quivering in the last throes of life. In another instant it was motionless--a corpse! The shot had proved fatal; but the victim was not Kate Vaughan, but Judith Jessuron! The transposition was due to the Foolah maid. Seeing the life of her mistress in such imminent peril, she had sprung up from her seat by the door; and, bounding forward with the supple quickness of a cheetah, had seized the wrist of the intended murderess, with the intention of averting her aim, and, in doing so, had directed it upon herself. It was by accident, therefore, and not from design on the part of Yola, that Judith Jessuron thus terminated her life by an involuntary suicide. Volume Three, Chapter XLVI. QUACO IN AMBUSH. The Maroon captain, before leaving the Duppy's Hole, had given official orders to his lieutenant about the capture of Chakra. There could no longer be any question of the absence of the myal-man from his haunt. The Maroons had continued their search after the discovery in the cave, still thinking that he might be concealed somewhere in the wood. The bushes were well beaten--the trees, where it was possible for a man to have climbed, were all scrutinised; and the search had ended without their finding any other trace of the Coromantee than what had been already discovered. Beyond doubt, Chakra had gone abroad--though in what direction, no one could guess; and to have attempted tracking him at night, and through a pathless forest, would have been labour lost. The correct scheme for capturing him was for the Maroons to remain in the Duppy's Hole, against his return; and, by keeping in ambuscade until he should have re-crossed the lagoon, they would have him, as it were, in a trap. This was the plan chosen--with the execution of which Quaco was intrusted. Indeed, the initiatory steps had been taken already: for ever since the search by torchlight had been abandoned, Quaco and his men had been placed in ambush. Cubina perceived the error he had committed in causing the search to be made. Chakra might have been upon the cliff above, where he could not have failed to see the light of the torches. If so, there would not be the slightest hope of his returning for that night. After witnessing such an invasion of his secret haunt, his caution would be upon the _qui vive_--enough to hinder him from venturing down into the Duppy's Hole, notwithstanding the attractive lure he had there left behind him. Cubina thus reflected with regret--with chagrin. The capture of Chakra had now become an object of primary importance. After all, the apprehension that he had seen the torches, or in any way become aware of the intrusion of strangers upon his solitary domain, may have been an idle one. If so, then he would be certain to come back. The presence of his prisoner was earnest of his return, and at no distant period of time. To make sure of his capture, the Maroon captain had himself planned the ambush. Quaco and his men were placed under the great tree--where the myal-man was accustomed to moor his craft. Some of them were stationed on the tree, among its branches, with the design that they should drop upon the shoulders of the Coromantee, as soon as he should arrive at his anchorage. The canoe itself was to be left at the bottom of the stairway, after being taken thither by the Maroon captain and his two companions, on their departure from the place. All this was done as designed. Before parting from the canoe, Cubina had taken the precaution to place it in the exact position in which it had been left by Chakra: so that the latter could have no suspicions that the craft had been used during his absence. These arrangements having been completed, Quaco and his comrades-- Cingues among the number--from their station by the edge of the lagoon, with eyes bent alternately upon the water and the face of the cliff, awaited the coming of the Coromantee. The Maroons were armed with guns, loaded and primed. Not that they intended to kill Chakra. On the contrary, Cubina's orders were to capture him. Criminal as was the outlawed myal-man, it was not their province to decide upon his criminality--at least, not so far as to the depriving him of his life. Free as was the licence enjoyed by these mountain rovers, there were laws around them by which even they were bound to abide. Besides, there would be no danger of his escaping from the punishment that was his due. They knew that Chakra's capture would be but the prelude to his execution. They had a different reason for being attentive to their arms. It was just possible the Coromantee might _not return alone_. They knew he had been in the company of others--Adam and his band of desperate robbers. These confederates might come back along with him. In that case, the quiet scheme of their capture might be transformed into a sanguinary encounter. It was not necessary all should keep awake. One-half of the little band were appointed sentinels, while the others went to sleep. The lieutenant himself was among the number of those who were entitled to the latter privilege: since for two days and nights he had scarce slept a wink. Speedily surrendering himself to the drowsy god, Quaco indulged in a profound slumber--snoring in such fashion, that, but for the louder intonation of the waters surging through the gorge below, his huge nostrils would have betrayed his presence to the expected Chakra--even before the latter should have set foot in his canoe. As it was, however, the roaring of the cataract quite drowned the nasal music of the sleeping Quaco, and his companions suffered him to snore on. Volume Three, Chapter XLVII. THE DOOM OF DESTINY. Until daybreak was Quaco permitted to continue his snoring and his slumber. Up to that time, no Chakra appeared; but just as the red aurora began to tinge the tops of the forest trees, a dark form was distinguished upon the summit of the cliff, just over the tree stairway. It had scarce made its appearance, when another was seen coming forward by its side; and, in the rear of both, another--and then a fourth. All four halted for a moment upon the brow of the precipice. Whether they were in conversation could not be told. Likely they were, but their voices could not be heard above the mutterings of the moving water. Presently, he who had first made his appearance commenced descending the cliff, followed by the others, apparently in the same order in which they had arrived upon its edge. Cingues had already shaken Quaco from his slumbers. The other sleepers had also been aroused by their companions; and, perceiving the numbers of the enemy, had grasped their guns with a firmer hold. Though the day had now dawned, none of the four shadowy figures, outlined against the facade of the cliff, could be identified. The dark rock and the bramble hindered them from being fairly seen. Not even when they had reached the bottom of the stair could they be recognised: for there also the frondage afforded them cover. It was only after the two foremost had entered the canoe, and the craft was seen gliding out into the open water, that Quaco could tell who were the two individuals thus seeking the solitude of the Duppy's Hole. "Chakra!" said he, in a whisper to Cingues. "The t'other? Prince! if my eyes don't bamboozle me, it's your old acquaintance, the penn-keeper!" To the Fellatah this piece of information was superfluous: he had already recognised the well-known features of the man who had so deeply injured him. The memory of all his wrongs rushed into his heart, accompanied by a thirst for vengeance--keen, irresistible. With a wild cry--and before Quaco could interpose--he raised his piece and fired. The young African was a marksman of unerring aim; and but for the upraised arm of Quaco, that had disturbed the level of that deadly tube, the hours of Jacob Jessuron would have been numbered. And numbered they were. Despite the interruption--despite the accident that guided that leaden missile far wide of its mark--destiny had determined upon having its victim. Neither of the occupants of the canoe appeared to have been wounded; but as the smoke cleared away, it could be seen that the shot had not passed them without effect. Chakra's hands were empty; the paddle had been struck by the bullet; and, carried clean out of them, was now seen on the surface of the water, fast gliding towards the gorge! A shrill cry escaped from the lips of the Coromantee. He alone understood the danger to which this accident had exposed him. He alone knew of the whirl that threatened to overwhelm both himself and his companion. Instantly he threw himself upon his knees, and, with an arm extended on each side of the canoe, and his body bent down to the gunwale, he commenced heating the water with his broad palms. His aim was to prevent the craft from being drawn into the centre of the current. For some moments this strange struggle was kept up--the canoe just holding its own--making way neither upwards nor downwards. The Maroons watched the movement with mute surprise; and no doubt would have continued to do so, but that the two men left by the bottom of the stairway--perhaps stirred by a like curiosity--had rushed forward to the edge of the water, and thus permitted their faces to be seen. At the same instant were they recognised by one who had an old account to settle with them. "The jack Spaniards!" cried Quaco, surprised beyond measure at the sight of his _ci-devant_ prisoners. "They have got loose from our guard. Fire upon them, comrades! Don't let them escape a second time!" The stentorian voice of the Maroon lieutenant, audible above all other sounds, at once awakened the _cacadores_ to a sense of their dangerous situation; and, like a brace of baboons, they commenced sprawling up the tangled stairway. Too late had they taken this resolution. Before they had got a third of the way to the summit, half-a-dozen triggers were pulled; and their bodies, one after the other, fell with a heavy plunge into the water below. Meanwhile Chakra, in the canoe, had kept up his life and death struggle, now going against the current--and now the watery element appearing to prevail. For the moment the Maroons could not have decided that strife. They were engaged in re-loading their guns; and the Coromantee was left free to continue his struggles without interruption. Chakra's bitterest enemies could scarce have desired to bring that scene to a speedy termination. No avenger need have wished his victim in a more terrible situation than were he and his confederate at that moment. The former, acting under the instinct of self-preservation, had not yet given way to despair; while the terrified look of the latter, who appeared to have already succumbed to it, might have restrained his deadliest foe from interference. Between the long, sinewy arms of Chakra and the strength of the current, it was difficult to decide which would conquer. For many minutes the forces appeared to be equally balanced. But the strength of the man was declining, while that of the element remained the same. In the end, the waters must prevail. Chakra at length appeared to become convinced of this; and cast round him a glance of mingled inquiry and despair. At that moment an idea seemed to strike him--some thought, perhaps, that promised him a chance of escape. All at once he desisted from his hopeless efforts to stay the canoe, as if some resolution had suddenly become fixed; and, turning towards his companion, he bent down, apparently with the intention of whispering to him. His wild, dark look, however, declared his design to be far different. When fairly within reach, he threw out his long arms with a sudden jerk, and, clutching the Jew by both shoulders, drew him up into his embrace, like some gigantic spider seizing upon its prey. Suddenly changing his hold, he grasped an arm and limb; and, raising the body high in air, with an immense muscular effort, he projected it clear over the gunwale of the canoe. One shriek from the Jew--emitted in the extremest accent of grief--was heard simultaneously with the plunge; and then the body of the unfortunate man disappeared beneath the dark waters of the lagoon. His hat and umbrella alone floated on the surface, both rapidly carried along by the current. The wretched creature rose again, but not to discover any chance of saving himself from destruction. The only gratification he could have drawn from his temporary emergence was to perceive that his false confederate must perish as well as himself. Chakra had hoped that by lightening the canoe he might contend more successfully with the current; but it soon became evident that his hopes would prove vain. In disembarrassing himself of his _compagnon du voyage_ he had lost way; and, before he could recover it, the canoe was sucked into a charybdis, from which even the power of the paddle could not have extricated it. In less than ten seconds the craft entered the embouchure of the gorge, gliding downward with the velocity of an arrow. It was but a despairing effort on the part of its occupant to seize upon a tree that grew horizontally from the rocks; though in his despair Chakra clutched it. Even had the bush been firmly rooted, his strength would not have sustained him against the fierce, resistless flood. But it was not. The roots gave way; and, in another instant, the Coromantee and his canoe were precipitated an hundred feet sheer among the black rocks below! His confederate had preceded him only by two seconds of time; and the dead bodies of both came once more in close contact--circling round and round, amidst the frothy spume that creamed over the cauldron below! Volume Three, Chapter XLVIII. CONCLUSION. On the morning that succeeded the occurrence of these tragic events, one entering at the great gate of Mount Welcome estate, and directing his eye up the long, palm-shaded avenue, would have beheld but a mass of black, smoking ruins. On any other morning, twelve months after, the eye of a person looking in the same direction, would have been gladdened by a sight far different. Smiling in all its splendour, at the end of that vegetable vista, once more could be seen the proud mansion of Mount Welcome--_renaissant_ in every respect--its stone stairway still standing--its white walls and green-jalousied windows looking as if they had sprung, phoenix-like, from the flames--every item of the architecture so closely in imitation of the former structure, that even the eye of an old acquaintance could have detected no trace of the transformation. Outside, everything appeared as before. It was only upon entering the mansion that you might perceive a change, and this chiefly relating to its occupancy and ownership. Instead of a stout, red-faced, and somewhat plebeian personage, of over forty years old, you would see in the present proprietor of Mount Welcome a youth of noble mien, by age scarce claiming the privileges of manhood, but in aspect and demeanour evidently fit for the performance of its duties--deserving to be the master of that aristocratic mansion. Near him--oh! certain to be near him--there is one upon whom the eye rests with still greater interest; one who had graced the old mansion-- yet more gracing the new--the daughter of its former proprietor, the wife of its present one. She has not even changed her name--only her condition. Lilly Quasheba is no longer _Miss_ but _Mrs_ Vaughan! Both these personages may be seen seated in that great hall, with floor as smooth and furniture as resplendent as ever. It is the hour after breakfast, and also, as of yore, the hour when the post may be expected. Not that either cared to look abroad for that diurnal messenger--more welcome to those around whom Hymen has not yet wound his golden chain. Equally indifferent were these two happy individuals to the actions of the outside world: neither cared for its news. Their love, still in the fresh flush of its honeymoon, was world enough for them; and what interest could either feel in the arrival of the mail? But the post has no respect either for indifference or anxiety. It is transmitted alike to the grave and the gay. It brings joy to the heart heavy laden, and sorrow to that which the moment before its arrival may have been bounding with bliss. In that great hall in the mansion of Mount Welcome there were two bosoms brimful of bliss, or a feeling near akin to it. Nay, why should we say _akin_ to it, since they were two hearts in the enjoyment of a mutual love? If that be not bliss, there is no other--either on earth or in heaven. Without any attempt at concealment, the eyes of both betrayed their mutual delight. Gazing on each other, in sweet reciprocal admiration, they saw not that dark form--rudely centaurean--that approached up the long avenue. Had they seen it, it would have created no surprise. It was only the post-boy, Quashie, on his shaggy cob, returning from the Bay. After this speculative peroration, the reader may be apprehensive of some dire development springing from the letter-bag slung over the shoulders of the darkey. Nothing of the kind. There was a letter, but not one that might be unwelcome. But for the post-mark, it might have remained for hours unopened. But the impress was peculiar. It was African. The letter was stamped with the name of a port near the mouth of the Gambia. It was addressed to "Herbert Vaughan, Esquire, Mount Welcome, Jamaica." The young planter broke the seal, and rapidly ran over the contents of the letter. "From your brother, Cubina," said he, though he knew that he imparted no information by this. "He writes to say he is coming back again to Jamaica." "Oh! I am so glad of that! I knew he would never live contented among those wild people, notwithstanding he has been made a prince over them; but Yola--" "She comes with him, of course. It is not likely he would leave her behind. She longs for her island-home again. I don't wonder, dearest Kate. There is one spot on the earth hallowed beyond all others--the spot where heart meets heart in the free confession of a mutual love. No wonder the African maiden should desire to return to it. Human nature is everywhere the same. To me this Island is the elysium of earth!" "Ah! to me also!" On giving utterance to this mutual confession, the young husband and wife bent towards each other, and pressed lips as fervently as if they had never been married! After this fond embrace, Herbert continued the reading of the letter. "Oh!" exclaimed he, when he had perused another portion of the epistle; "your brother wants to know whether he can either become our tenant or purchase that piece of land that lies beyond the Jumbe Rock. The old king has given him a capital to start with, and he wants to turn coffee-planter." "I am glad he has such intentions. Then he will settle down, and be near us." "He must not be permitted to purchase it. We shall present it to him, since we have enough without it. What say you, Kate? It is yours, not mine to give." "Ah!" returned the young wife, in a tone of playful reproach, "do not distress me with those sad _souvenirs_. You know that I gave it to you when I might have believed myself its mistress; and--" "Stay, dearest. Do not you distress _me_ by such an appeal! You were its rightful owner, and should have been. Even had we not become joint proprietors, I could never have thought of dispossessing you. Say, then, that the land shall be Cubina's!" A repetition of that sweet embrace pronounced the consent of both to the proposal of Cubina. Herbert resumed the reading of the letter. "Good heavens!" cried he, on finishing its perusal, "what a singular story! The captain of the slaver, who brought Yola's brother over to Jamaica, has been back again to the coast. What a terrible retaliation!" "What, dear Herbert?" "Only that _they have eaten him_!" "Oh, merciful Father!" "Sad and terrible though it be, it is true; else Cubina would not have written it. Hear what he says:-- "`Jowler'--that was the name of the slaver's captain--`presented himself before old Foolah-foota, in search of a fresh cargo of slaves. The king, already apprised of the skipper's treason to Cingues, instantly ordered him to be seized; and, without trial or other formality, caused him to be chopped to pieces upon the spot. He was afterwards cooked and eaten, at the grand national feast, which was held on the celebration of my nuptials with the princess Yola. _Crambo_! it was a painful scene; and one might have felt sympathy for the unfortunate wretch, had he been anything else than a dealer in human flesh; but, under that reflection, I stood by without feeling any great desire to interfere in his behalf. In fact, my Fellatah father-in-law was so furious, I could not have saved the wretch from a fate which, after all, was perhaps not more than he deserved; and to which, no doubt, the poor victims he had carried across the Atlantic would have been only too glad to have seen him consigned.'" "It is well," said Kate, with a thoughtful air, "that Cubina has determined upon leaving a land where, I fear, such scenes are too common. I shall be so happy to see them both once more in our dear, beautiful Island. And you, Herbert, I am sure, will rejoice at their return." "Most certainly I shall. Ah, Kate! did it ever occur to you how much we are indebted to them?" "Often, Herbert--often. And were it not that I am a firm believer in destiny, I should fancy that but for them--" "Nonsense, Kate!" playfully interrupted the young husband. "None of your Creole superstitions. There is no such thing as destiny. It was not that which ruled my heart to believe you the fairest thing in creation--but because you _are_ so. Don't be ungenerous to Cubina and Yola. Give them all the credit that is due to them. Say frankly, love, that but for them you might have become Mrs Smythje, and I--I--" "Oh, Herbert! speak not of the past. Let that be buried in oblivion, since our present is everything we can desire!" "Agreed! But for all that, dearest, do not let us forget the gratitude we owe to Cubina and his dark-skinned bride. And to prove it to them, I propose something more than giving them the piece of land. Let us build them a house upon it; so that upon their arrival they may have a roof to shelter them." "Oh, that would be a pleasant surprise for them!" "Then we shall bring it about. What a lovely morning! Don't you think so, Kate?" As Herbert put this interrogatory, he glanced out through the open jalousies. There was nothing particularly fine about the morning--at least, for Jamaica, but Kate saw with Herbert's eyes; and just then, to the eyes of both, everything appeared _couleur-de-rose_. "Indeed, a beautiful morning!" answered the young wife, glancing inquiringly towards her husband. "What say you, then, to a little excursion, _a pied_?" "I should be delighted, Herbert. Where do you think of going?" "Guess now!" "No--you must tell me." "You forget. According to Creole custom, our honeymoon is to last for twelve months. Until that be terminated, you are to be master, sweet Kate. Where would you most like to go?" "I have no choice, Herbert. Anywhere. In your company it is all the same to me. You must decide." "Well, then, dearest, since you leave it to me, I declare for the Jumbe Rock. Its summit overlooks the piece of land we intend presenting to our brother, Cubina. While we are there we can select the site for his house. Is it agreeable to you?" "Dearest Herbert," replied the young wife, entwining her arm around that of her husband's, and gazing fondly into his eyes--"the very place I was thinking of." "Why of it? Tell me, Kate!" "Shame, Herbert! Must I tell you? You know that I have told you before." "Tell me again. It gives me pleasure to hear you speak of that hour." "Hour! scarce a minute was it, and yet a minute worth all the rest of my life! A minute in which I learnt that the language of your eyes was truer than that of your tongue! But for that belief, Herbert, I might, indeed, have yielded to despair. The memory of that sweet glance haunted me--sustained me through all. Despite all, I continued to hope!" "And I, too, Kate. That remembrance is as dear to me as it can be to you. Let us seek the hallowed spot." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ An hour after, and they stood upon the Jumbe Rock, on that spot so consecrated in their hearts. Herbert appeared to have forgotten his purpose. Not a word was said about Cubina or the site of his dwelling. Not a word of the Happy Valley, or the unpleasant recollections it was calculated to call up. All the past appeared to be forgotten, except that one sweet scene; and on this were concentrated the thoughts of both--their words as well. "And you loved me then?" inquired he, only to enjoy the luxury of an affirmative answer. "You loved me then?" "Oh, Herbert! how could I help loving you? Your eyes were so beautiful then!" "What! Are they not so now?" "How cruel to ask the question! Ah! far more beautiful now! Then I beheld them only with anticipation; now I look into them with the consciousness of possession. That moment was pleasure--this is ecstasy!" The last word was perfectly appropriate--not a shade too strong to express the mutual feeling that existed between Herbert Vaughan and his cousin-wife. As their rounded arms became entwined, and their young bosoms pressed fondly together, both believed that even in this unhappy world ecstasy may exist. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE END.